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halcyone-of-the-sea · 1 year ago

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Choke On The Sun

PAIRING: John Price x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: You'd known John ever since the Academy, and even after losing touch, the love you had for one another was never gone. Like a snake, it had stayed hidden in unseen places. But it was always there.

WORDCOUNT: 13.8k

WARNINGS: Blood, intense gore, torture, detailed descriptions of torture i.e. electrocution, loss of a finger, gunshot wounds, knife wounds, discussion of torture, canon-typical violence, death, near-death experiences, guns, weapons, abductions, betrayals, intended for mature audiences, happy ending, etc.

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

You remember a story you’d been told when you were a rookie—fresh off the cut and eager-eyed with far fewer scars. A more of a glass-half-full type of outlook on life, unknowing of what you’d experience during your years with the SAS: what choices you would have to make.

It went something like this.

There was a herd of deer that had jumped over the side of a bridge. On either end of that bridge, there were two trucks with their high beams on—not moving but sitting there; the deer got pressured. Spooked. One by one they just…hopped over and died on the rocks below—no noise above the breaking of bone and the clatter of antlers shattering to pieces.

You have to wonder if it was the fault of the first one who had jumped over for leading the rest to a quick end, or the drivers of the cars just trying to get where they needed to go; ignorant of the way they’d been ogling to see the panic in wide, black eyes. Either way, a whole herd of ten met their fate and left their bodies to feed the larvae and the birds.

The story had been told over drinks at a pub, at the time you’d taken an interest in it with no more than a slow comment of ‘poor things’ before you’d brought your glass to your lips. You don't know why you’re thinking about it now.

The timing could have been more opportune.

You send a bullet into the man’s kneecap, hearing the bone disintegrate and the flesh open like a flower. His scream follows, loud and hoarse—sobbing trapped behind a bitten tongue that drips blood down his chin.

Hand snapping up, you grasp the lower half of his face with a grunt, head shoving itself forward until you lock onto fluttering eyes and get consumed by a whining sob.

“I asked you a question,” you lick your lips, tasting sweat as it slithers down your skin. Your voice is slow and even, grip tight. With a shove, you push back the man’s face, wrist limp with the Basilisk as you wipe at your nose with it, unblinking, when you get to your full height.

The room wasn’t anything different from a million other black sites you’d been to. A single chair where your mark sits tied up, a desk that had been pushed to the wall, and a single door placed into the cracking foundations of a concrete wall. No windows. No vents.

Hotter than hell, too, and that place was something you were acutely in tune with.

“Anthony,” you say, waving your free hand as the scent of blood gets stronger, pools of it already on the hard floor. “I’m gonna call you Tony, alright?”

Tony yells, wrenching his arms against the zip-ties and screaming until his voice is hoarse.

“Damn you! I told you I don’t know anything!” He sobs. “My leg—I can’t feel my leg, oh, God it hurts.”

You frown, glancing at the door.

“Stop lying to me,” you look back, eyes unblinking in the low light. “You still have one left—tell me where your buyer is and I let you keep the ability to walk upright with a cane.”

“I don’t know his name—!”

“I don’t need a name, Tony,” you growl, irritated. “I need a location.”

“Copenhagen!” He wails, body spasming and hair dancing atop his head. “The warehouse is in Copenhagen, please, that’s all I know!”

You blink.

“Denmark?” You mutter, brows furrowing.

“Fuck!” Tony screams long, his skull tilting forward as he releases his guts to the floor through quick gasps. Backing up a step to stay out of the spray, you watch him silently; thinking. The flood of the man’s crimson fluids ripples. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Denmark,” grumbling to yourself once more, you shake your head and sigh aggressively. “Of course.”

Without another glance, you turn and exit the room, pushing your Basilisk into its holster as the gear on your chest clinks lightly like the sound of rain hitting a metal roof. The door closes behind you, voice calling to one of the guards as he looks up quickly. His face is pale. Tony’s wails still echo out; water filling a bucket.

“Get a medic,” is what you settle with—slipping past on a fleet foot and new intel to pass on to Laswell. She’ll be intrigued, no doubt.

One step closer, your mind hisses to you. Just a little bit longer.

It’s too late to gain a conscious now.

Emmett Kinsman had been dodging you for years—dodging the Task Force—but with one of his suppliers giving away a location you’d been unable to pin, there was hope for a swift resolution to this mess.

The radio on your chest sizzles to life.

“Hart, sit-rep. How’s it lookin’ on the black site.” Kate’s American accent leaks into the earpiece attached to you, the cord looping the back of your neck and inserted into the shell; a device of black metal and plastic.

“I have a location for Kinsman. Copenhagen,” you ease out, moving a finger to the earpiece and pressing. Glancing at the rows and rows of doors in this endless hallway of dark smoke and obsidian mirrors—you’re eager to get your boots to the ground. Your other hand snatches at the rag swinging from your belt, taking it out and rubbing at your face with it until the stain of oil and flecks of blood smear like frosting on a cake. “Where are the boys? I need to be wheels-up to meet them ASAP.”

“Coming to you.”

“They’re here?” Your face twists as the words settle in, confused. “Why? Thought they were tracking another lead in Romania.”

Kate’s voice is smooth in your ear, moving like water as you turn a corner, stuffing your rag back into your belt.

“Are you surprised?” The woman jokes in a monotone; you’d only taken it as such because you knew her dry state of humor. “Really, Hart, you know he can’t stop until you’re back at his side. I was going to tell you sooner, but you were…occupied.”

Your feet pause for a moment at the beginning of her sentence, instinctual heat moving the length of your neck until you clench your jaw and continue onward at a slightly slower pace—eyes narrowed on the floor ahead of you.

“It isn’t like that, Kate,” you mutter. A low hum echoes the line and you fight a scowl as a group of soldiers walk past. Itching at your forearm, you shake your head. “John just likes having everyone together on missions like these. If it had been different, I’m sure he would have told me to fly back to them regardless of the intel. We’re tight on time.”

“I’ve known you both for more years than I can remember,” Laswell sighs. “Don’t try that with me, Captain.” You frown, clicking your tongue. “They’ll be arriving on the tarmac—get ready for a quick exit. We need Kinsman by month’s end.”

“Copy,” you utter, removing your hand from the earpiece and glaring ahead of you. A still-air silence envelopes the hallway, the only sound of your boots to the concrete and the reverberation that booms after.

It was so quiet here.

John Price—Captain Price—and yourself had a… complicated history. You’d joined up together; gotten through SAS selection neck-and-neck until time and its grubby fingers had forced your lives in different directions. Like two vines of reaching ivy, it had only been three years ago that you’d seen the other again, though you’d heard stories as you’re sure he had about you.

Hart: not the kind that beats but the kind that bleats, you had to explain to most—you weren’t unknown to the darker side of the job and the people that specialized in it. Your file was stretched with so much black ink that when you’d gotten the call on your phone, an unknown number, you’d recognized the gruff voice behind it and the first question you’d asked was how the hell he’d gotten clearance to track you down.

“No hello, then, Hart?”

“Not one for pleasantries, John. Explain. Quickly.”

“Business as always.” He’s wasted no time, voice going to a low grumble over the line that day. “Laswell took in a favor. You’ve been busy, Love…Room for one more joint-Op?”

It hadn’t panned out to only ‘one more joint-Op’.

After the mission was over, it had been raining on base. The sky had shed tears from clouds deeper than the gray shades of your gear, splattering packed dirt and concrete. Above your head, the thin overhang off of the armory door had spared you some of it, but when the wind had shifted your clothes absorbed specks of water like spots on a fawn. Your eyes had been looking out—expression open.

When the man exited the building and came up beside you, you both didn’t speak for a long time. You had been aware of his form, devoid of vest and gear, while yours was still layered with it to the utmost degree. You’d expected to leave that night—a good old-fashioned Irish Goodbye with a C-17 already waiting for you to board. To carry you off to another hellish deed done with ravaging cruelty for the sake of people who would never even know you existed.

The storm had stopped you…or, maybe something else had.

“Good to see you again, Hart,” John had stated, still not looking over at you as his arms had crossed, feet situating themselves. “Been too long.”

You had stayed silent—watching. The drain across the street was flooded. Sticks and leaves stuck at the drain as a whirlpool formed; only dangerous to bugs and the bits of garbage blown in by the wind.

Only after the wind shifts again did you speak.

“And what has John Price been up to in that time?” Your eyes had slid to stare, piercing in the low illumination of the armory’s outside light.

A huff of a chuckle, the one you’d remembered in the days of selection—coated in mud from crawling through man-made trenches and a sharp smirk of a snap when the barbed wire had grazed his back.

There were too many stories here. Too many. So many it became impossible to wonder what could have been and what couldn’t—all that existed were the little moments of fondness.

The two of you were nothing else but souls long past redemption; stuck on that knife’s edge and waiting for the hand to shake and send you through it.

You are made of memories.

“That’s a story told over bourbon,” John’s lips had flickered, and you’d blinked slowly, head tilting. “Not anything worth reliving, yeah?”

“Everything is relivable, Captain. You just need to find a reason as to why.”

The man had nodded his head your way, conceding with his blank eyes ahead to the rain. A rumble of distant thunder had flown out, making your ears twitch. You couldn’t stop watching him now that you had the chance—the brunette strands; the fatigues, and that accent. The muscle you don’t remember him having in that specific place all those years ago. The wrinkles on his forehead from age and stress are shown in yours as a mirror.

Tall; formidable.

There was a tension in the air that you chose not to dwell on—the same that had been brewing for as long as you’d known him.

“I want you to join up with me,” the sudden comment had made your body tense, eyes snapping away. In your pockets, your fingers twitch with surprise.

“Join?”

“Thought I’d catch you before you disappeared again, yeah?” A sheen of slight embarrassment is over your skin. John chuckles again. “Extend a formal offer—Laswell was the one who suggested it.”

“Well,” you’d huffed, licking your lips. “Now I’m surely not accepting.”

“Let me fuckin’ finish, Love,” John’s lips were pulled in a slight smirk—beard shifting. A pause as the wind whips again, shaking the trees before he grunts. “One-Four-One. My Task Force. Been thinking I’d need someone like you, but I knew you’d never agree to it.”

“Oh?” Your brow raises.

“Not bloody stupid.” He sighs. “Thought I’d ask anyway. Give you a proper goodbye if you weren’t so keen on handing it out.”

“I don’t like goodbyes,” you mutter, hearing John’s feet shift—his boots scraping.

“I know.” It’s low and even—not a prod or a dig. An observation.

A hand is moved out to you, hovering.

There isn’t any need for words when you glance down at it, and then up at him; staring into those blue eyes that so perfectly illustrate the hues of a roaring river, hidden away in the confines of a verdant forest.

A slow smile pulls at your lips, and you see the corner of the man’s eyes soften.

“Knew I’d get one out of you again,” he mutters as you slip your hand into his, a firm and all-encompassing heat of flesh and care.

“Don’t get used to it, John.” Shaking his hand, you smirk, legs shifting.

“Never,” he chuffs, squeezing your limb.

You don’t know why you stayed under that overhang with him that night. You don’t think you’ll ever be able to explain it as you had looked up and seen the C-17 fly off without you in its cargo hold, hands resting on your vest collar and blue eyes watching you, slightly narrowed.

You never even verbally told him you were sticking around…it had happened like a stray cat under the porch of your childhood home; taken in and cared for. Just the same, John never mentioned it beyond paperwork.

Shaking your head, you blink back to the black site, turning that last corner and making it to one of the exits. Pushing the metal-reinforced door open, you shift outside and move a hand to cover the glare of the setting sun from your eyes, grunting.

Laswell’s voice peaks back in as you jog toward the far-off body of a whirling plane, three figures just managing to walk down the ramp.

“Hart? It’s Laswell.”

“Copy,” you say, knees taking the brunt of the heavy items you carry in pouches and have strapped to your form. “What is it?”

“The Task Force is a go for Denmark—when you get there, I need everyone searching; we can’t lose him again.”

“Affirm. I’m on it, Kate.” You breathe. “John and I’ll get him. It’s personal for us, you know that.”

“That I do. Make sure to keep your heads on with this, Hart. Out.”

You lick your lips, nodding even if she can’t see you.

Slowing as you near the plane, friendly smiles spark up from the two Sergeants. Gaz comes over, grasping at your shoulder and speaking above the engine behind him.

“Ma’am! Good to have you back.” Soap chuckles, tilting his head your way as you grasp Kyle’s forearm—squeezing in greeting with a twinkle in your eye.

“Surprised to see us?” The Scot calls.

You scoff. “Laswell gave you up.”

“Damn,” Kyle moves back, fixing the cap atop his head and glancing back at his fellow Sergeant. Simon nods from behind the two to which you respond in like. “She bloody betrayed us.”

“Not as much as Kinsman,” the mood sours; lips thinning as you speak firmly. “Where’s John?”

“Right here,” the man in question comes down the ramp, blue eyes meet yours. A second of inspection passes, eyes from both parties flickering up and down forms for any mistreatment—any ailments. “Kate already told me. We’re leaving now that we have you.”

Bumping Simon’s fist with yours as you pass him, you ascend the ramp, Soap muttering under his breath about the flight time from behind.

Standing beside John, you pause like a bird, eyes half narrowed. “You didn’t have to pick me up, you know? I could have gotten another plane.”

The man the same rank as you hums, making sure the men are all inside and taking one last look out to the black site, eyes missing nothing down to the concrete structure to the lights that will soon illuminate the pure nothingness of the fields of this area.

“Wait time would have put us back.” Tiny eyes blink, a hand coming up to rest on his collar as his face shifts to you. “You good?”

“Always,” you mutter without hesitation. “Nothing from Romania, then?”

He grumbles, clenching his jaw and taking in your words. “Negative.”

A silence settles in which you quirk your brow—a small flicker of a smirk makes him turn away and stalk back into the hull, grunting in annoyance. You follow on silent feet.

“That’s it? It must have been horrible, then. Care to explain?”

“Get in your seat, Captain.”

You hold back a low chuckle, walking beside him until you both come to the back of the plane—easing back into the hard plastic, you huff as you clip in your seatbelt.

It’s all relative silence until the large metal beast is in the air; everyone's bodies shifting as the floor evens out. John and you take long breaths and, feeling the occasional jostle of the plane, you occupy yourself by picking at the dried blood all over your hands as the flight begins—Tony’s blood.

Blue eyes blink down at you, watching from the side.

“He know anything important?” You stifle a yawn on your lips, one hand coming up to cover the open-jawed expression of tiredness.

Glancing, you shrug with a slow response of, “Only a location. Even then I don’t know if it’ll pan out like we want it to, John.”

Everyone had been hoping for more, but they also knew that you were the best at interrogations and information retrieval. If you had called it that the man only knew a city and nothing else, John wasn’t one to question you. He knew better.

A large hand shifts to grasp your right bloody one, picking it up and bringing it to his lap. You let him do it without protest, shoulders loosening at the roughness of his calluses moving across yours until the familiar ritual begins to take part like a black mass.

Fingers twitching, you hear a hum as John takes out a rag from his pocket, opening it with a flick of his wrist. Moments later, the water bottle on the seat next to him is taken and the droplets that are left are scattered like rain over the fabric until they absorb.

“All dirty, Love,” he grumbles as your eyes soften, watching him trace the lines of your palm with the wet rag—dabbing away the beads of red. Watching, you listen as he continues. “We’ll figure it out, eh?”

Blue locks with you, holding your gaze until the permanent set of his brows slowly loosens. “We will,” he reaffirms firmly.

“...I should have shot him when I had the chance,” you whisper to John, words low and tone nothing more than a mouse’s murmur; a small pebble hitting the ground. “Don’t lie and say it wasn’t my fault.”

“You’re going to fucking ruin yourself with that, Hart.” He advises, his cleaning of blood coming to a slow halt. “You did what you thought was best,” John leans in closer, not blinking as you try to move your head away with a half-hidden scoff. A damp hand grabs lightly at your chin, shifting it back as you blink in mild shock into John’s face. He doesn’t falter. “It’s all any of us can do, yeah?”

As if it were nothing, he lets you go and shifts his focus back to cleaning your hand. You watch for a long moment, oblivious to the elbows hitting sides from farther down the hull, quick glances tossed between Sergeants and a Lieutenant who quirks a brow under his mask, huffing a sound in his throat.

“If I had,” you force back the stutter in your voice. “More people would still be alive.”

“Maybe,” John tilts his head, the rag brushing the length of your fingers. “Maybe not. We don’t know that, do we? No use wasting our breath talking about it then. What matters, Hart, is how we fix this.”

You sigh, repressing a shiver as his thumb brushes scars and blemishes, moving like moss over stone.

“And we don’t leave our bloody problems for the next poor bastard, do we?” You puff air from your nose, shaking your head at the smirked comment. You watch John’s beard move with it—taking in the crinkling of his eyes and the way his knee hits yours.

“Wonderful pep-talk, Captain.” You lean your head back against the netted sides of the aircraft, letting your eyes flutter shut; oblivious to the way he watches you. “The service is lost on you—therapist is right up your alley.”

“Fuck’s sake,” John scoffs. “I’d sooner go back to the academy than that.”

“The food was utter shite, wasn’t it?” You agree.

“No need to bring it up,” John comments lowly, amusement thick in his words.

You don’t know when you fell asleep, but you do know that the pressure around your limb stayed there for a long while—the rag moving over every sliver of skin until only the base was left behind; like a painter creating an ocean scene, shrouded in mist, every bit of red was gone.

Your dreams are plagued by Emmett Kinsman. His sharp face; his sly eyes and his knack for being undetected.

He’d been a part of your and John’s class in the Royal Military Academy—when all was done, he’d graduated and begun to serve in the 22nd SAS Regiment just as the both of you had. There was never much interaction there, beyond shared drinks and a few good words, a single operation, but the bonds of brotherhood run deep. If given the chance over any deployment or service, John or yourself would have given your lives for him—for the boy you’d bled and persevered with to a point of utter loyalty akin to beasts; unrestrained by any threat of violence, sharp attitude, or past faults.

And in the end, he’d thrown that all away to get into bed with terrorists.

Location: London, England

Time: 1718

Operation: ‘Purple Cloth’

Your eyes rest behind the glass of the bookstore, gazing out over the street from the second floor with a level of new-found skill and a surety in yourself. Fresh off the cut, you aren’t overly eager for this, but you’re assured in your abilities.

There can be no failure.

Emmett is down below, sitting at a café and sipping tea as John is stationed at a building farther down the street; waiting. Another man, directly relaying information to Emmett, is at the café as well, sitting in the corner reading a newspaper and facing the individual you’re supposed to follow. Only the four of you for this, and you’re not overly familiar with half of them. John was your only shining grace.

“Target’s getting the bill,” you shift your head into the collar of your shirt, muttering. “He’ll move soon.”

“He carrying?” John’s voice slithers in, a soft murmur.

You stare, expression lax at the large body that shifts and stands with a tight shirt on, waving off the barista when she tells him to have a good day. “If I had to guess? Negative. Nothing big—no bulge at his spine. At the very opposite end, I’d say an X13 could be concealed and accessed via a slit in the pant’s pocket and in a holster at his thigh. They’re baggy enough for it, but the draw time’ll be longer. Drug runners are sloppy.”

John grunts, and you address Emmett. “How are we doing, Mate?”

A smooth, suave, tone moves into your ear. “Not too bad, Sweet Thing. Else, I'd be better if you were sharing a drink with me before I disappear.”

“Only in your imagination, Kinsman,” John interrupts, unimpressed drawl taking your attention. “Keep on it.”

“I swear I rank the same as you, Price. Where do you get off ordering me around like your dog?” The comment is so easily dismissed as a joke between comrades that there’s no hostility there.

“Since I was given oversight,” the amusement is easily taken in John’s voice. “I’m the one keeping your arse alive, eh?”

The other addition to your team speaks up, a voice that in the future you’ve already long forgotten. He says to cut the chatter, and you have to agree.

Emmett and the target are nearing an alley.

“I’m heading down,” you utter, already turning and heading to the stairs, swiftly moving down them and exiting the building.

“Copy,” John’s voice fizzles the line. “I’ll head them off.”

“Emmett,” you move to link up with the fourth member of the team as he joins at your side, both of you sharking a glance and a jerk of your heads. “Keep him away from civilians. We can’t deal with casualties in this populated of an area.”

“He won’t have a chance to shoot them,” the comment makes your brows furrow, the tone not a cocky gloat but rather...quiet. A moment of silence wafts out. “What in the bloody hell is that supposed to mean, Kinsman?” You frown tightly, your gut swirling with something unidentifiable. The X12 in the back of your baggy sweatshirt is heavy—suddenly ten times more so.

In the corner of your eye, you see John far across the way shift, leaning before on a trash can, now standing upright. You swear you lock eyes with him, both gifted in all sense when it comes to war. Perhaps it was ingrained into both of your DNA—a knowledge of all things deadly; of threats unseen. Some primal and horrible understanding spanning back to when man had first raised a fist to another.

“Oi,” your voice pushes. “What does that mean?” Feet pivoting, you move closer to the alley where the light shade of hair disappears.

The line is silent.

Silent before a loud gunshot rings.

Birds scatter, and you instinctively duck down, hand snapping to your service weapon as your eyes go wide. Head snapping about, you dash to the alley opening above the screaming; pushing past fleeing people.

“Hart!”

“He’s in the alley!”

“Do not engage until I get there, do you hear me?!” You’re already at the entrance, X12 ahead of you, and the safety flicked off with a heavy finger. “Hart!”

The body of your mark is on the ground—a bullet in the back of his skull.

“Fuck!” You shout, feet slapping the concrete as you zoom past. “Price—target’s down, Emmett shot him in the damn head, on his tail now.”

“Fucking hell.” The man is growling out at you, voice heated.

Your eyes snap this way and that, weapon at the ready as you take a sharp turn. At the very end of the opening, you see him.

Kinsman slips his service weapon back into the base of his spine, pulling at his shirt to cover the grip as a mass of the crowd is just behind him. He rushes quickly on long legs.

“Emmett!” Your voice makes him freeze. There’s a long pause before anything is spoken; you have your sights trained—a perfect line-up to the roundness of his skull.

“I had hoped to be fast enough,” the man tells you, head tilting to the side, “but I should have known you’d move head-long into danger without backup.”

“Hart,” John’s voice nearly startles you from the line. “Sitrep, now!”

“Why would you do that, Emmett?”

“There’s more to this than being pawns, Hart,” Kinsman growls at you. “I play my game right, I always come on top. I needed to earn their trust; our target had a price on his head and no one else could get as close as me. Well,” he pauses, “us.”

“I’m taking you in,” you grit your teeth, hands tight on the gun. You don’t even want to think about what he means by ‘their’ or his ‘game’. It was always word puzzles with this man—one second you had the right piece, and the next the entire picture had changed like sand in the waves of a tide.

“Are you really that torn up about a drug runner?” A scoff makes you hold back a snarl, but your resolve is shaking. This was a man you had trusted—now fast can something that was forged with steel break?

“He was just some filthy nobody, Hart.” Emmett starts walking into the crowd ahead of him, and in your mind you know if you take that shot you run the risk of shooting an innocent civilian. “I’ll be more than a nobody. Or a grunt soldier. People are going to know me.”

Bodies flee quickly—screams. Mothers, children, husbands.

Kinsman smirks, and as your finger tightens on the trigger, he’s already swallowed by the hoard.

“I’ll be seeing you.”

John and you sit in the safehouse, for a moment, surrounded by quiet and the smell of hot tea. One week in Denmark, and you have no leads. The other three are away, sleeping in the rooms down the hallway.

“You’re still thinking about him,” John speaks up, eyes on you. It’s blunt, but that was just how he was.

You peek your eyes open slowly, your body slouching in the chair and feet outstretched under the table. Your boot lightly touches John’s own. A long sigh exits your nose, grumbling on your tired lips.

“John,” you level, drawing the name out like the years of your life. A thin warning.

The man clenches his jaw slightly, bringing up his cup and taking a slow slip. You see the flesh of his throat bob with the liquid as it goes down, the overhead light of the kitchen only a single bulb of warm glow.

“Been chasing him for years, Hart,” he says when the item is back to the woodgrain. Voice a deep murmur—a scrape of vocal chords. “We both have.”

“He knows too much,” you reply. “I can’t let him get away again. Strategies, operators, everything.” Your eyes shift as your head raises, blinking away the sleep in your glinting orbs. “For years he’s been under our nose, getting away with who knows what—”

“Hart,” your rant is interrupted, and you stop with a snap of your teeth. Blue eyes lock a concerned sheen to them. “Breathe.”

Your face moves away, arms loosely crossed over your chest tensing.

John’s body shifts to you, leaning forward until his elbows are resting on his knees. He stares, brows a line on his flesh. You send a swift glance, lips pulling.

“...Stop that,” your voice murmurs, echoing off the walls of the kitchen. John blinks, not speaking as you move in your seat. The man tilts his head, a slow something making his lips go back slightly. Gradually, your face goes hotter, blinking at him a few times; sucked in like a fox to a trap. “John, quit it.”

“M’not doing anything, Love.”

“Bullshit,” you try and glare at the looseness of his expression, his smirk that makes your gut tighten. Goosebumps move up your arms. “You’re a horror.”

A low chuckle wafts out, John shrugging casually before he leans back.

He takes up his cup again and takes down the last of the remnants. “Go to sleep,” hits your ears as your pounding heart takes a breather. It’s a grumble on the air—not as much an order as it is a suggestion. “It’s late.”

You decide to sip at your own drink as well, eyes drooping at the steam that wafts around your face, nose twitching to the scents.

“You?” John hums, looking you up and down; seeing the fatigue you carry. You’d been relentless for the week you’d all been here, holding the few strings of the lead you had to your chest—five-fingered grasping with a desperate prayer to all things unholy.

“I’ll be here.” You tilt your head his way, eyes still half-closed in your seat. Your answer is easy, pushed out in a slow sentence.

“Then so will I.”

John sighs under his breath. It’s a moment before an exasperated chuckle moves through your earbuds. You smile, eyes slipping closed fully.

Yet, they startle back open as the cup is taken from your hands, your chair moved back firmly.

“Up you get, then,” John grunts, and his arms snake around you. Blinking quickly, your jaw is slack as you get taken up into a tight carry; John’s chest firm and your nose brushing the side of his chin.

Air getting sucked into your lungs, you stifle a hitch in your breath.

It’s only after he starts walking forward, hiking you farther up into him, and his fingers gliding over your clothes, that you start to relax. His heat seeps like a warm fire.

Head sagging to the side, you grumble into his neck as you miss his eyes looking down at you, eyes soft in a way only you would have been able to see. “Can walk, y’know.”

He hums, head shifting back to the hallway as he carries you to the last door on the right, bumping into the wood with his shoulder and shifting to walk in sideways so you don’t let your legs on the frame.

“Remember Preu? 05’?” John asks you, moving over to the bed and setting you down slowly, a tiny huff exiting his mouth. Your body sinks into the mattress, head to the pillow as your hand comes up to rub at your eyes. The man moves to grab the blanket at the end of the bed—knowing your trained habit of sleeping atop the comforter on operations; not tangled up in sheets just in case. He slips off your boots. “Carried you two miles.”

“I recall it,” you grunt, a tired flicker coming to your lips. “Bleeding out and all.”

“Well,” John hums, quirking a brow. “Wasn’t about to let my Hart die on me. Blood was the least of my worries.”

Your pulse flutters at the title, even if it’s just your codename and not the beating muscular organ inside of your breast.

My Heart.

But it’s never that simple.

A hand moves up your cheek, a kiss pressed to your forehead.

The both of you already know you love each other. It wasn’t a secret. You were smart; eyes sharper than a blade—you caught the way he watched you, saw the softness of his expression, and felt the drag of his hand. Just as he caught the way you stayed beside him, an ever-present pair of eyes watching his six. The content nature that only you showed him.

With feet so eager to leave at any moment, it said much that you chose to exist near him simply because you wanted to.

You loved each other.

Boil it down, and you’d both known even back in the Academy that it would be the two of you at the end of all things. The rivers said your name. The valleys rustled with the breeze of your breath. You saw John in the bits of water that sloshed the rocks and in the earth beneath your palms.

Over the years you’d been apart, the yearning hadn’t been any less sharp—any less potent. In every birdsong, the echoes of the other's voice flew and disappeared on wingbeats. In everything that existed, there was a fraction of what should be.

What should be.

“John,” your voice is a whisper, nothing more than a rustle of a cloth. He keeps his lips to your forehead, resting there for a moment against all sense and responsibility. John’s eyes droop down, lashes resting on the swell of his cheeks. “You know I love you.”

He takes a breath. Rain is in the air—the movement of a storm’s wind. A leaving C-17.

It’s a low mutter into your flesh.

“I know.”

You grasp at his wrist, pulling lightly. Without a noise, John slips in beside you, kicking off his boots with a single clop of the soles to the wood and the movement of your blanket. He grunts, pushing his nose into your scalp, arms going around your middle. Your head slots under his chin, lips to his Adam’s apple.

The house is silent beyond the murmur of the pipes—the buzz of awaiting electricity.

So many memories. So many lost dreams. It was akin to two skeletons lying in a grave of their own making, forever holding the bones of the other. Duty and honor are etched into the fractures.

But he still holds you, he still murmurs into your ear, “Sleep, Love.”

“And you?” You ask, mirroring the conversation in the kitchen.

John’s lips move along your flesh, moving into a soft smile as he glances down at you. His beard scrapes you delicately.

“I’ll be here.”

Then it is here you’ll stay, dreaming of deer and the way nothing could compare to how he held you in his arms.

—

“I have eyes on,” your head snaps up, blankly staring ahead as your fingers hover over the hanging beads of a wind chime. You stand outside of a restaurant in the heart of Copenhagen.

Laswell had sent in more eyes for the Task Force to use—local soldiers that knew the layout of the city better and where would be a good place to look. For days you’d been moving through the streets; far-off storage units and hidden buildings providing fruitless harvests. Anthony had said a warehouse, but that was panning out as nothing as well.

False information? Possibly, but unlikely. The man had been genuine in his pain and pleading, and it only served to confuse you more.

You had Gaz with you and five others, taking over as the leader of this fireteam while John headed the other with Johnny and Ghost. They were on the opposite side of the city, and you can’t help but compare this to the moment Emmett had become an enemy.

But divide and conquer was the only option in times like these.

Emmett had become someone, just as he said he would. The man was in charge of supplying arms to terrorist organizations all over the world, and with his knowledge of how the SAS operates as well as any number of special forces, he’d utterly disappeared off the radar.

A wraith of lies and murder.

He had locations all over the globe with his goods, shipped out for money and power.

And now you have a positive ID.

“Where are you,” your voice is hard and stiff, the body already moving back from the chime and leaving its little bits and bobs swinging.

“Café down the street,” feet nearly locking together, you continue down the street to where you know Gaz’s last position was. “He’s just…sitting there.” A pause. “You want to know what it’s called in English, Ma’am?”

“The café?” your brows furrow, jogging across the street.

“‘The Warehouse.’” Growling under your breath, you shake your head and send a curse into the air after a pause.

“I think the man thought he was clever,” Kyle’s voice is smooth and teasing.

“Should have shot his other leg,” you grunt. “You told Laswell? John?”

“Negative, I’ll get on it—”

“I’ll do it,” you interrupt. “Tell the others to group up at your position and spread out to create a choke point; we can’t let him get away.”

“Rog. Will do.”

You patch into John’s frequency.

“We have him,” you instantly breathe out. “Down Holbergsgade—café called ‘The Warehouse’.”

It’s swiftly that an answer hits you. “Get him surrounded, we’re coming.”

Your heart is moving rapidly, fast in your chest as you pass people and business quickly. You didn’t like this—didn’t like the similarities, the…nostalgic dread that builds. A café of all places? Sitting down? Waiting?

It was so ironic it made alarm bells go off.

“John,” you lick your lips, glancing at faces as they pass. “I think he knows we’re here.”

“Explain.”

“A café?” John’s low grunt lets you know he understands. “Just sitting there? He knows—he’s not dumb enough to throw away all of his secrecy just as we so happen to get here and begin looking for him.”

“How sure are you?” The man takes your words into account, and you hear his breath puffing as he runs to your location.

“Ninety,” you breathe.

“Then I’m callin’ it off.” Your eyes widen, feet skidding as you come to a stop.

You have no clue as to how far John will go to keep you safe—even if it means potentially letting one of the SAS’s highest HVTs go. There wasn’t anything that could compare to the thought of you getting in harm's way. Not you.

John had spent his whole life watching soldiers die in the worst ways possible; they haunted his dreams and he knew they’d follow him to his grave—men he’d led down paths that they never should have been on.

Not you.

Losing you would break what little was left of him, the remnants held on by tape and sheer stubbornness. One of the last old faces he could still look at anymore; could draw comfort from in the thin hours. To hold and to love.

You both knew you wouldn’t stand for it.

“No,” your voice cuts across, monotone. “I’m not allowing that.”

“Bloody hell, Hart, listen to me—do not,” John growls, making your spine tingle, “go after him. If he knows we’re fuckin’ here, we need to pull back and close off the area.”

You’re walking forward, that same pressure of a gun at the back of your spine. It was almost poetic.

A thought sparks. Years of knowledge and understanding lighting up.

Emmett was a snake.

A snake that liked to play games and prove points; greed stuck into his brain for reasons you can’t quite say for certain. Even if you did catch him, he would never tell the locations of his goods or the buyers.

But there was one way to find out. One way this might turn.

“There’s a tracker in my arm,” you speak, growing more sure of your actions with every fast movement of your body. The café is just up the street, and a head of blonde hair is a knife to your vision. “I asked Laswell to insert and monitor it years back when I had to infiltrate a cell before I joined up with you again. Cautionary procedure since I had to forgo my rig and gear.”

A sharp bark. He knew what you were insinuating. “Hart!” You were going to get yourself taken hostage.

“Get Kate to watch it, John.” You move off his frequency before he can comment again, half of a roaring refusal cut off. Speaking to Gaz with a restricted throat, you say, “Kyle?”

“Right here, Ma’am.”

“Good. Don’t engage—I’m moving in.”

A stiff breath is taken in. “W…what was that?”

You don’t reply, only saying, “Whatever happens, I order you and the others to stay back, yeah?”

Your hand pulls the earpiece out and shoves it into your pocket right as you slip into the chair directly across from Emmett Kinsman.

“Emmett,” you say in greeting, moving up a few fingers to a barista with a low call of your order. The individual nods and moves off before you lock on green eyes; they nearly make you flinch.

You can only imagine what Gaz is telling John right now.

Kinsman blinks at you, but he isn’t surprised. You were right.

“Hart,” the man smiles. His voice is still the same, though he looks older. ��Pleasure seeing you again. Enjoying the sights of the city?”

“Not particularly,” you stare at him.

He chuckles, tilting his head before he brings his drink to his lips. He swallows and continues.

“You always were serious. No fun.” You take the insult without any emotion, blinking at him slowly. What was his play?

“Why?”

“You already know why,” he shrugs, dressed in a nice suit. “I’ve made a name for myself—my name will be remembered for ages.” A twinkle in his eye. “SAS soldier turned weapon supplier; isn’t it exciting.”

“It’s a disgrace,” you lean forward, only stopping your voice from rising as a cup is placed down in front of you by the barista.

Your face plasters a fake smile and you nod, moving it in front of you. Emmett watches with a smirk.

“I call it a change of heart.” He sighs, smirk simmering to a casual smile. “But I am glad to see you, you’ve been creating a big mess of things and I took it upon myself to have a meeting between us as old friends.”

“I’m not your friend,” you growl. “You’ve killed innocent people for no more than a fucking paycheck.”

“Well,” he snorts. “I don’t kill anyone. I’m the middle man—there’s a difference.”

Rage makes your eyes go to slits.

“And innocents, Sweet Thing?” Emmett leans in closer, face so smug and open you want to pull your weapon on him and worry about the consequences later. “What do I call what you do then?”

“A necessary evil,” you huff. “One I carry on my shoulders just like every other soldier does. One that was far better than supplying terrorists.”

Kinsman shrugs, moving back and picking up his drink, swirling it. “If you say so.” He hums. “You have to try the pastries here, you know. They’re very good.”

“I know you’re here because you expected us to find you, what I can’t figure out is why you broke your cover in the open instead of turning yourself in.” You look around at the faces in the outdoor seating, studying them trying to pinpoint if they’re civilians or in league with Kinsman. “Tell me before I decide to shoot you right here and now and end this regardless of hidden goods.”

“You already tried that, Hart,” Emmett laughs. “Pointing a gun at me didn’t work last time.”

“I’m not going to use a gun,” you ease out. “I’m going to take the butter knife on the table and slit your throat.”

“Uncivilized,” Emmet grumbles, frowning at the silver object near your hands. “It isn’t even sharp.”

“Good.” Green eyes narrow, unimpressed. He sighs, fingers moving in an outward gesture of exasperation.

“If you must know before the main finale, I wanted to bring you here to say that I’m thoroughly impressed with your drive.” You try to stave off the shock in your stomach at the words coming out like a charmer’s flute. Raising a slow brow, you’re caught off guard. Emmett chuckles. “You nearly caught me at several instances throughout our game of cat and mouse. Many times I forget who the assigned roles were even given to; I’m telling you that I had fun.”

You stare, face tight.

Emmett hums and his eyes go to slits.

“But every game has to come to an end. I’m growing tired of it.”

The building across the street erupts into a great ball of fire.

—

John hears the explosion in the air, the shockwave that leaves his body halting to look into the sky in time to see black smoke.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath. “Fuck!”

He rushes into the panicked crowd, memories stuck in his head and a bone-deep fear he’d been feeling since you cut the connection in your earpiece. Gaz had been relaying to him what was going on action for action—a football game, only the difference was that your life was on the line.

“Kate,” John shouts. “Get the authorities down here now! We have an explosion on Holbergsgade.”

“Explosion?” The woman’s voice is sharp and disbelieving. “What’s going on—”

“Hart’s in the bloody crossfire, there’s no time!” John’s face is tight, wind whipping past his ears as screams fly on the wind; crying. “The fool is trying to get herself taken fucking hostage for intel!”

Whatever else was said was lost to the wind—Gaz comes over the line, calling to him in a panic as Johnny and Simon join in.

“The entire building just went up in—”

“Fucking Christ—”

“Price, what is this?”

“All of you get down here!” John sprints past people on the ground, ripping his gun out of the back of his waistband. There’s no arguing.

When the Captain turns the last corner, carnage greets him.

The building across from the café was reduced to nothing but rubble and a still-burning flame. Eyes wide, John only looks at it for a few moments, too preoccupied with you.

Where were you?

His jaw clenches, eyes burning with rage. Such a perfect soldier yet such a flawed sense of teamwork, he had a feeling you’d try something like this—had left Gaz with you for that very reason. Fuck he should have been at your side. He should have known.

A low grumble moves through his lips, head snapping all around. There are bodies on the ground. Blood pooling under thick building material—fabric in the breeze.

“Hart!” John yells, running to the café and seeing the remnants of a fast fight.

The Captain’s heart drops to his feet, face burning with hellfire so much that a sheen comes to his cheek. His hand moves out to touch the handle of a butter knife that had been slammed into the table now half-fallen over, eyes stuck on only one thing on the ground under it.

Through the wails and the call of sirens, the man stares at the two long fingers sitting in the dust.

Never in his life had he felt a fear like this.

—

“I wanted to be kind about this,” Emmett fiddles with the wrappings of his bandaged left hand, only three fingers remaining. “I was going to make it quick.”

You’re locked in a cell-like room, head to the side and blood leaking out of a cut face. Burns travel up your arm, the sticky puss leaking out only serving to make you shiver. You don’t know where you are—don’t know what happened after you severed Kinsman’s fingers with that knife.

But you know the pain isn’t something that you haven’t already gone through before.

Your voice is hoarse but firm as it leaks out of you, vision spotty. You’d been thrown in here after a ride in the trunk of a car. The ground is concrete.

“...Don’t make me laugh.”

Emmett growls, eyes wide with hatred.

“Pathetic!” He barks eyes looking you over with disgust. “Look at what you did to my hand!”

His other hand connects with the bars of the cage, producing a metal ringing sound as you push yourself up with one arm, eyelids flinching in pain. Sitting up, your body falls back to the wall behind it, and you grunt when the air in your lungs is expelled. You lick at your dust-coated lips, your head ringing and your focus failing. Concussion.

“Least of your worries,” you roll your jaw, a wave of pain making your body seize up and your hands tense with quivering shakes. Your mouth opens with sharp pants. Bile pools in the base of your throat.

It’s nothing.

John will come soon. The tracker. If Laswell can get it working again, you’d be out of here and you would have whatever this location turns out to be and the intel that it can offer you—computer databases would be a one-and-done game. You would get names, coordinates, and buyers. It could all be over.

Your clothes are melted into your skin, and when you move, they peel away with the remnant of your epidermis. The flesh of your left thigh and arm had taken the worst of it—and the cut from flying debris over your left cheek hasn’t stopped bleeding.

Blood drips from it, and a loud ache makes your head pound all the worse.

You’ve gone through worse.

“I don’t know why I bother,” Emmett snarls, the crimson bandages thick over his hand. “But it isn’t a problem,” he says, moving his other hand to slick back his hair. “It isn’t a problem,” the man utters again. “You’re going to help me. Yes…I’ve made up my mind. I need you to understand why I do the things I do.”

Your brows furrow, but above this burning in your head, it’s hard to understand what’s being said to you. Shadows move and Emmett orders one of his men to open the cell door.

You fight the black dots at the sides of your vision, leaking until you’ve accepted the reality of yourself going unconscious. As your body slouches to the side, hands ruthlessly grasp under your arms and drag you to your feet.

“Everyone has a breaking point.”

—

“What do you mean,” John glares at Laswell, his arms crossed over his chest; hands tightly grasping at his biceps. “You can’t find her?”

“The tracker was old, John,” the woman tries to explain, furiously typing at her computer that rests on the table in front of her—her spine bent over as the rest of the One-Four-One stay in a limbo of anxious looks. “To get it working again, it would need something to restart it. I don’t know if you can see,” Kate’s eyes are hard as they lock with his, “but I can’t do anything if she’s not here first.”

“Well of course she’d not bloody here Laswell, fucking Kinsman has her!” He shouts, hands moving out in a display of aggression.

“Captain,” Kate rises to the challenge, hand moving flat to the table and glaring with the heat of a thousand missiles. “Do not take that tone with me.”

John snarls and jerks his head away, feet on the ground trading weight.

The man was borderline feral—all snapping teeth and sharp glances. Gaz had seen him like this only a handful of times, MacTavish even fewer. Ghost, of course, knew, but even his brown eyes wouldn’t leave his Captain, absorbed in the way he was unable to stay still for even a moment. He was in full gear, too. Had put it on directly after returning to a local base.

John was ready to go to war, down to the rifle that swung from a strap at his side, the ammunition stuffed to his chest—sidearm at his thigh. A rabid dog with intelligence and the knowledge of where teeth needed to be applied to a neck for a clean kill. Simon doubted he wanted it to be clean.

John was ready to rip people to pieces.

“Give me something,” the Captain says in a low growl, beard shifting. “Give me what I need.”

Kate splays her hands. “All we have is surveillance of a car leaving the area—the smoke covers all chances of the drone we had flying picking up a clear picture. John,” Laswell eases, standing up, “there’s only so much we can do. We need to wait—”

“We can’t bloody wait,” Gaz speaks up, “What’ll he do to her in the meantime?”

“Garrick’s right, we need to be on the ground with this.” Johnny nods, mohawk bobbing. “That’s one of our own—we’re not sitting around with our thumbs up our arses, Laswell. Not with Hart.”

Simon blinks, humming. Laswell’s eyes shift to him, near pleading for one to be on her side with this and see sense. Ghost shrugs. “I’m with them. Hart’s one of our own; we’ll do what needs to be done.”

John’s chest swells with pride while his eyes get stuck on your file on the table, your printed picture, and your black ink—he’d never loved an image more, but nothing could beat the real thing. He needed you back. He’d gone through hell with you for his entire life; you’d suffered with him and only locked your hands together and held on tighter.

That was love—that was duty.

John Price wasn’t against skewing his morals for the sake of your safety. You would always be his most important mission. The man didn’t want to think about what might happen if he found you too late.

“Give me the video of the vehicle,” he grunts, jaw tight and his eyes beady. His body slightly leans forward to Kate, love going lower. “Or I’m going out there myself.”

Laswell frowns tightly at him.

“I just sent it into forensics—they’re trying to get a match. Go out if you want, but I won’t be able to stop the firestorm that comes out of it.”

She closes her laptop and moves past him, sending one last comment into the stone man as he towers ever taller.

“She’s strong, John. If you’re smart, you’ll keep yourself out of the crossfire until we have a definitive hit.”

Her voice echoes from behind him as his hands slowly move to clench into knuckle-whitening fists.

“If Kinsman gets a tip we’re still onto him—you’ll never see Hart again.”

—

Day Three:

Your days start blending. One moment you hear the snapping of your bones, and then the next you’re wasting away in this cell—ears ringing and eyes buggy. So much blood. Blood on the walls—blood on the chair they strap you into in the other room; even stuck in the groves of your flesh.

You don’t think you can stop closing your eyes and seeing a deer at the bottom of a bridge drop-off. It’s stuck in your head like a virus; those car lights in the back of your mind just waiting for you.

There’s no sense as to what they do to you—all its purpose is, is to prove a point to Emmett. A sort of broken retribution for your interference and his fingers.

Vain man, really. You’d told him as much when he was watching you get your own finger torn off my pliers; spit it at him as the blood from your bitten tongue stayed his suit. You remember the feeling of the knuckle popping first, and then the burning heat of the flesh being twisted to the side. Two firm yanks and the flesh had sprung like elastic, fissuring, the tendon snapping.

You think you blacked out after that, but you can’t be sure. All you remember doing is screaming.

You woke up with your left pinkie finger completely gone, resting outside in the hallway to mock you from past the bars. Your eyes could see the bone sticking out of it, and all that was left on you was a badly cauterized stump.

When Emmett had come to gloat, you started slurring out laughter.

“I’m going to rip you apart.” Your broken body had jerked back and forth like a marionette doll, only succeeding in spreading more red over the floors as green eyes widened and went dumbfounded.

It sounded like a choking fish.

All he’d done was left, quickly passing the pinkie left limp on the ground.

Day five:

You can’t move your body as they dump you back into the chair—the drain below you flooded over with crimson and bits of hair; vomit and torn-off fingernails. You’re unable to open your eyelids fully.

A hand grasps at your face, yanking it up into the overhead light until a bucket of water is dumped directly over your head. Your body jerks, coughing and darting forward until you’re shoved to the back of the chair and the rope is tied around the front of your shoulders, the second at your wrists.

Trying to suck down air, you shiver with the strength of an earthquake. Whoever said that they would never be afraid while being tortured was a liar; whoever thinks that they would be able to push through it—a fraud. Emmett was right, everyone had a breaking point.

But you admitted yours would only come after your death.

Your legs are seized, bent up as you hiss as well as you’re able, teeth snapping.

They’re dumped back down into a bucket of ice-cold water as droplets drip from your nose—wet skin for the moment only holding streaks of gore. Even with your scattered mind, you know what this means.

Heart tight and eyes widening, you try to push back in the chair; try to fight the rope and the way your body won’t respond.

A battery is rolled up beside you on a metal cart. Jumper cables.

There’s a low chuckle at the way your face goes fearful.

—

John shoves open the door to Laswell’s temporary office, already talking before it hits the far wall.

“Do we have her?” His hands move beside him, brushing the grip of his sidearm. He hadn’t been out of his full gear for more than five minutes in days. Waiting day and night for any word; sleeping in it, eating in it. The forensics team had been stumped, unable to get more than a model out of the picture.

But this might finally give him something to act on.

Kate is moving, grabbing documents and her laptop, speeding past him and out of the door.

“Kate!” John shouts, following after. “Hey,” he calls, grabbing at her arm to stop her.

The woman only halts to say, quickly, “We have a hit. Follow me.”

John’s heart is rampaging, pulse wild under his skin as his gloved hands twitch. Finally. He can only smoke so many cigars—only think of so many scenarios until he feels he needs to vomit. You’d been gone for too long. Every moment had been like trying to walk with a cloth over his head; lost.

He’d grown stiff. Stiffer than normal. Everyone had seen it.

“Where is it, then?” John asks as Laswell pushes open the door to the meeting room, the other three already inside.

“A property outside of Copenhagen—bought through a proxy on a fund that was linked to blood money in South America; it all went directly back to Kinsman. It was found only ten minutes ago.” A pause. Electricity in the air. “But that’s not how we found it.”

“How,” Simon asks, moving closer.

John gives the woman his full undivided attention, hands moving to rest at his collar in a soothing gesture.

“Her tracker came back on.” Eyes go wide, all sharing rapid glances as Kate opens her laptop and opens a man, turning the device for them to see. “Same location.”

Johnny blinks, his eyes narrowing. “And what does that mean?”

“That can’t have just done that by itself,” Gaz mutters, brown eyes sliding over to John who’s stiller than a wolf. The Sergeant pauses.

His eyes are dead set on that screen. His thighs were so tense it was nearly like the Captain was about to sprint out of the room. Kyle’s face goes blank at that, never quite seeing the extent that your disappearance had on the man. His superior had bags under his eyes; far more pale than usual. His apparel was ruffled, too. Even in the more serious of situations, the Sergeant had never seen John so…out of it. He was always the one with the even head, even if he had a short fuse with certain things. Nothing was ever done without thought, he should say.

But this is something else.

“Torture,” Simon gives his two cents and John’s cheek twitches at the word. “Electrocution. They jump-started it and didn’t even know.”

“Bloody Jesus,” John breathes. Everyone had already had a hunch, but no one had wanted to name it.

It’s a low rumble that makes the rest of them freeze, though. It was so dead in tone that it even made Kyle’s spine lock up; Johnny’s eyes went a smidgen upward. Simon, although his face was covered, felt his lips twitch.

John looks at nothing but that dot on the computer screen.

“Am I green, Laswell?”

Kate looks at John. It’s like setting a hellhound loose.

“You’re green, Captain.”

—

You’re tossed into the cell and your body rolls along the floor, bouncing and flinching until your back slams into the wall. Air is forced from your lungs, coming out in a loud grunt before you land on your stomach in a heap. Staying there, your nerves are fried.

Every moment you think the twitching of your fingers will stop—the dance of your muscles responding to the aftereffects of electrocution, it only starts back up again. Your eyes blink rapidly; your clothes have the scent of smoke to them.

Gasping for breath, you feel like you’re drowning and being set on fire all at once.

Yet the question in your head was a simple one, one you’d been asking for days.

Where was John?

Emmett enters the cell, clicking his tongue as the metal hinges squeak.

“I’m not surprised it’s taking this long,” he explains. “But I am surprised you’re still alive, admittingly.”

A boot comes out and places itself atop your shoulder, pressing down slowly until its full weight is on top of you. Your mouth opens in a shuddering sound of a dying animal, blood dripping from your ears and nose.

“I know you’ve taken torture before—even taken a part of it,” Kinsman sighs. “But, shit Hart, you really do scare me when I know you’re strong enough to get through th—”

Your body jolts up, grappling Emmet’s leg and twisting it to the side. Regardless of pain—of agony—there’s such primal rage inside of you that what little adrenaline you can bring forth is all that more addictive.

The man collapses in a heap, gasping, but you’re already on top of him, wrestling your hand to his neck, missing finger and all. Blood moves, staining his precious suit and dripping from your mouth into his hairline. You bare down your weight on him, teeth clenched and eyes wild—one orb holding nothing but red from burst veins and the other full of a vicious gleam of ferality.

Hands snap up to your wrists, mouth opening in flapping panic.

But Emmett has grown weak; he’s out of practice. All of those years out of the SAS, giving up on the training of the body to match the mind. The idiot wasn’t even carrying a gun when he walked into the cell of a charging stag, its antlers dripping gore, sharper than any knife.

When the flaps of his eyes fall there’s no gloating speech—there’s no snort of a tall and proper victor. All you do is take the front of his face, grasp it, and start sending his skull back into the concrete floors.

Crack.

…Crack.

….Crack.

Only when the sound of his head breaking open meets your ringing ears, do you force your wheezing lungs to take a large breath.

Emmet Kinsman died as he lived.

A fucking piece of shit.

“Fuck you,” you spit on his corpse, saliva bloody; his jaw is loose as you release the man’s face, eyes bulging. Falling to the side, you groan in pain, your body curling into itself until you resemble a sleeping fawn. You’re shaking more and more with every second, coughing with the force of an earthquake until your shredded vocal chores force you to stop.

But the brain is a funny thing.

In times of danger, survival is the only thing that takes priority. It was why, in a long shove of your hand to the floor, with your bones creaking and your vomit meeting the ground, you’re able to stand. It isn’t enough to help you heal the snapped bone of your right leg, however, and in a steadily failing stupor, you drag it behind you. In this state, nothing else matters to you besides a simple command: get out.

Your shoulder slaps the metal of the cell as you stumble out of it, careening into the far wall and letting out a loud shout.

Eyes fluttering, you connect your temple to the cool concrete, trying to breathe.

It hurts too much, your mind says. God, I can’t feel my limbs.

A long trail of blood follows you down the hallway as you slide along the wall, using it as a brace.

You want to see John, you whisper inside of your head. You want to be held by him—be taken into his chest; cared for away from all of this fighting.

A trip back to Herefordshire with him, to go deep into the country together; rest in the green grass where no one can find you for just a few good hours. It didn’t have to be forever, you would say. Just a few hours. A few hours of sky and earth wrapped in a time loop of just your own.

You want to kiss him there. In the open, out in the wild. You want to stay by his side, your mind thinks as you stumble over the three dead bodies in the left corridor, bullet wounds in their heads. You want to be by his side forever, no more gaps in years, not more longing. It’s so close you can nearly reach out and grasp it—

Your name is yelled on a heavy breath, and hands capture your shoulders as you fall straight into them with no more strength.

Blue eyes lock with yours as you’re hurriedly settled to the ground, body limp and eyes trying to stay open.

Blue eyes on a grassy hill.

“Hart, fucking hell.” Hands move your body, pressing and sliding—finding every opening and spreading blood like water. “Fucking hell! Hey!”

You’re yelled at, and the ripping of pouches and the familiar sound of bandages being wrapped come to the back of your brain. A hand shakes your head, locked under your chin as you take slow, broken, breaths.

“Please, fuck sake, please,” it’s a desperate growl, so familiar and yet a world away. Your body is moved and manipulated as every leaking wound is packed with so much gauze it hangs out of you like you’re a mummy. The burns along your flesh are crust and infected, open skin peeling back.

But the pain is lesser now. Easier to manage.

There’s such a ruckus that it’s hard to focus on John—the man on the hill. In the grass and the wind. Brown hair moves in the breeze as white clouds roll past. On the air, there’s the scent of rain, and in the far distance, you can see a group of ten deer grazing, ears twitching.

Maybe you’ll ask them if they blame their leader, or the two trucks on the end of a bridge.

“Keep your eyes on me!” You blink into John’s tiny blues, that mist rolling back. You stare for a moment as he frantically screams into his radio; night vision rig on his head and all-black gear covering him from you. His face is pale, his eyes glossy. “Look at me, hey,” he blinks as he notices you watching, surging forward. “Hey, keep 'em open, yeah? You keep them fucking open, Love.”

Your chest is heavy.

“John,” you push out a flicker coming to your lips as your vision slightly unblurs itself to the sight of a flood of blood on the man’s body—an unimaginable amount.

“I’m ‘ere,” his accent grows deeper with emotion, one hand holding your cheek and the other at your shoulder, keeping you still to stop any additional damage. “I’ve got you, you understand me? I’m not letting you go, so don’t you think that I will.”

It’s a double-edged sword.

A smile peels back your chapped lips, red running from the corner of your mouth. You glance at his stained gear again. The abyss swirls at the corners of your eyes.

“Is that your blood, or mine, John Price?”

You hear him scream for a medic, and then it all goes numb.

—

You dream of deer on a hill, but every time you search for John, he isn’t there. You go past rivers—

“She’s dropping!”

“Get me the defibrillator!”

—past copses. Your voice goes high and low, but all the while you look, there’s nothing but a nagging feeling in the back of your head that you shouldn’t be here.

“Again!”

It’s a strange nagging, truly. Like falling asleep in the middle of the day and waking up in the night without any remembrance of what had happened prior. A displacement of the mind.

“We’ve got a pulse, Doctor, do we stop and—”

“No, I need to finish off the internal bleeding or else she won’t make it another day. Get me the cauterizer, now.”

You blink and grip your chest, a sudden pain sharp in your heart as the grass moves about your ankles. Coughing, you bend over, your eyes fluttering rapidly. In the deepest part of your eardrum, you hear a murmur of a voice you can’t place.

“The man came back, again. He’s been out there for days. He just…sits there, waiting until someone tells him something. He can’t come in, and I’m sorry about that. I’m sure hearing his voice would help more than mine, but you’re in too much of an unstable condition for that. If you get another infection, you won’t…hm, I shouldn’t talk about that. Everyone in school said only to talk positively to patients when they’re like this. I…I’m sure he’ll be able to come in soon. I think everyone calls him John if that rings a bell?”

“John?” Your eyes flutter open, sharp light above you making you snap them back closed. No one answers.

It’s a long moment before you find the strength to breathe in the oxygen from the mask over your face, taking a long and deep inhale before a slight cough makes your abdomen tight. You flinch at the pull of stitches, all coming from so many places, that it’s unwise to move too much.

Gradually, you open back up your eyes, pushing past the sting. Inside of your throat, the skin is so dried out you can feel it cracking at every articulation of your words.

“Where's…John?” When you shift your head to the side, no one’s there. No one’s even in the room, either.

Blinking through the haze, your lips twitch on your face, skin tight. With a slap of your weak hand, you grasp the oxygen mask and pull it down to your neck, grunting in mild annoyance at the medicated numbness of your form.

Your leg is in a cast—and your left side is tightly bound by wrappings to hide away the burns where skin grafts most likely live. With a glance, you see the missing pinky and the bandages that cover the strange remnants.

The facial wound will scar, you know, but right now it’s patched over and healing. That’s all you can ask for.

Sighing long, you blink slowly at the ceiling, licking your lips. You need water.

Outside, the murmurs are missed to you as your unmarred hand reaches for the nightstand table, where a half-drunk bottle of water sits next to a tray of food. Even if your stomach rumbles, water takes precedence. Your throat was like the Sahara desert.

“Forget something, John?”

“Bloody fork. The bastard gave me the slip. Dropped mine, needed to go back and grab another.”

“Oh, that’s alright—you could have asked one of us to get one for you. We’d hate for you to miss any time for visiting hours.”

“It’s fine; gets me moving, eh?”

“Just grab us if you need anything else!”

A low grunt is accented by the opening of the door; immediately you tense and pause, neck fighting itself to shift forward once more.

Wide blues lock with your own, and it’s like every pain fades away.

John’s jaw is slack hidden under the layers of his beard bristles, brows going atop his head in an instant. The sound of a dropping metal utensil echoes through the room.

You both stare at one another for a long time, and the murmur of nurses accumulates to some peaking through the crack; their expressions also going to shock. A few scurry off, probably to get a doctor.

“What?” Your hoarse voice asks, unnerved by this.

At the sound of your voice, John flinches forward on his boots. The nurses get shut out with beaming faces as the barrier closes with a small click of metal.

Walking to the side of your bed, John clears his throat, eyes looking you up and down in two glances. A million things are hidden in them. After an opening and closing of his mouth, which you watch closely while squinting, he speaks.

“How are we feeling, then?” You breathe slowly and in tiny puffs. John looks at the oxygen mask as if telling you to put it back on, but you refuse for a moment.

“Like shit,” you utter, voice cracking.

With a huff, John pushes away your reaching hand and gets the water himself, unscrewing it. Bringing it to your lips, you take it down as he speaks.

“Easy, Love.”

When you’d had your fill and the ache settled, you brought a hand to your head and rubbed at your injured cheek before John sighed and grabbed at it, intertwining his fingers with yours and lowering the limb back to your chest.

You stare at him, and he stares at you.

“I don’t know what to ask,” you confess.

“You don’t have to ask anything,” John mutters, and his face is tight with worry. “You’ve been in a coma for three weeks, all you need to do is ease back into it.”

Your eyes snap back.

“Tell me if it hurts,” He speaks slowly, moving on one word at a time so the realization doesn’t dwell in your brain. “I can get someone to come in, yeah?”

Your hand in his burns, and John pulls at the chair by the nightstand until he’s able to sit down in it fully with a tiny grunt.

“No,” you say, “no, it’s…I’m fine.”

Better now that you’re here, but your body is tense. Three weeks?

“Just need to take it easy,” the man states, thumb running up and down your knuckles. “You’ll be better soon.”

A dry look is sent his way, and he hides a soft quirk on his lips. “You’ll be better, Love.”

You hum, head moving back more heavily into the pillow.

“When do I get to go back?”

“When you’re healed,” he grunts. “Not a fuckin’ moment sooner.”

“We get anything on the other locations of the—”

“Hart,” you’re interrupted. Blue eyes stare at you heavily, digging past every shield you’d put up and every fear. What happened was still heavy in your mind; it pained you to imagine it, even the way John had found you—even if it was all glimpses. “Slow down. That’s not an order coming from a soldier, it’s a caution from an old friend.” John says, squeezing your flesh. His other hand comes to your shoulder, sitting there heavily.

“Breathe,” he orders, face gruff. “We always figure it out.”

You close your eyes and sigh, frowning.

A low chuckle moves along the air a second later.

“Never sit down, do you?” A flicker dances over your lips like a butterfly. “Impossible, you are.”

“You’re one to talk,” you huff, eyes shifting back to him.

He’s smiling at you, and you can’t help but mirror it right back at the sight. Your facial injury pulls and tightens, but you would welcome an ache like that for as long as it stayed. A scar born of the stretch of lips is one well-earned. Only John could ever make it a reality.

The man stares at your lips, his wide build eager to stay over you in this state. He can’t stop himself from caressing your skin; to feel you alive and breathing. Talking.

“Scared me,” John admits under his breath.

You blink, your smile fading slowly until it was like it was never there. Your body builds with guilt; also something only he could bring. “I’m sorry, John.”

A small thinning of his lips is what you get, accented by a hum.

“Hart,” he grunts. “I…”

John’s eyes closed for a moment before opening back up—spearing you with their gaze. Your tired eyes crinkle in confusion.

“What is it?” Over the tingle of your flesh from where he touches you, it isn’t hard to forget the world is around you when he’s here like this. You’re nearly trapped by his eyes, yet you welcome it eagerly. His voice moves out, accent and natural gravel, all.

“I love you.”

Your nose lets a chuff exit. Was that all?

“I love you, too, John—”

“No, Hart,” he pushes slightly harder, moving closer and licking his lips as he glances away. “No,” John looks you dead in the eye as you lay here battered and broken within an inch of your life—a risk that you took willingly as if it had meant nothing. The both of you weren’t new to this; you both knew that on any day you or he would do it over and over again until it resulted in death. That was the way of this game; this trial.

You had both always been content with that, but when had it changed?

Why was the thought of losing you more fear-invoking than anything else he’d ever encountered?

You watch him as his lips utter the words, lips close to yours and your eyes locked.

“I love you.”

Your voice is caught in your throat, stuck in the throws of a quick gasp. Not blinking, the man waits for you—waits for an answer to the earth-shattering confession. But it all came far easier than you would ever admit to anybody besides him. It was already known, after all.

All that remained was the pesky words.

“I love you, too.” You beam, words low with intimacy. “I think I always have.”

John chuckles, a large smile pushing at his reddening cheeks. “Good,” he nods, clearing his throat. “Good,” he says again. “Well, I—”

You softly connect your lips with his, and you feel him pause, breathing you down for a moment as hearts beat at the same tempo. He sighs, one hand coming up to capture your cheek, holding it there for you as you sag into it and live in this everlasting moment.

It’s there you had a revelation.

It was never Hart to him. John had never been calling you that.

He’d always just been saying Heart.

You breathe out a laugh, when you separate, beaming in a happiness you thought was long gone from you—stolen in the dark nights and sold through even darker deeds. Neither of you was worthy of this, of the love that breeds in broken things. Yet, here it is regardless. Here, among blood and the blue eyes of a man you’d known since knowing anything became important. You had always known it was John. And finally, finally, finally.

“I would marry you in an instant, John Price,” you breathe when you separate, not weak enough to stop the words from exiting from the deepest part of your soul.

His crinkled eyes watch, reverently gazing at every blemish and mark; everything he could learn new again. John’s eyes are as soft as you ever imagined them to be, and he gives them over freely to you.

He kisses you again and leaves the taste of his heavy, happy, chuckle tingling across your lips.

“Seems I’d better get on that, then.”

A/N: This fic is strangely nostalgic for me even if I just wrote it - I remember the first ever fic I posted on here was a rescue fic, as well as a John Price fic; it's amazing to see how far I've come in regards to overall content/story building and how my understanding of the character has evolved. This might not be the best work I've posted on my blog, but I'm glad to say I'm proud of myself and how far I've come. It's so wonderful that I can have this feeling for such a big moment and still feel so drawn back to the past at the same time. Totally not tearing up at the thought rn.

Thank you all very much for your support.

TAGS:

@sheviro-blog, @ivebeentrashsince2001, @mrshesh, @berryjuicyy, @romantic-homicide, @kmi-02, @neelehksttr, @littlemisstrouble, @copperchromewriting , @coelhho-brannco, @pumpkinwitchcrusade, @fictional-men-have-my-heart, @sleepyqueerenergy, @cumikering, @everything-was-dark, @marmie-noir, @anna-banana27, @iamcautiouslyoptimistic, @irenelunarsworld, @rvjaa, @sarcanti, @aeneanc, @not-so-closeted-lesbian, @mutuallimbenclosure, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @gildedpoenies, @glitterypirateduck, @writeforfandoms, @kohsk3nico, @peteymcskeet, @caramlizedtomatoes, @yoursweetobsession, @quesowakanda, @chthonian-spectre, @so-no-feint, @ray-rook, @extracrunchymilk, @doggydale, @frazie99, @develised, @1-800-no-users-left, @nuncubus, @aldis-nuts, @clear-your-mind-and-dream, @noonanaz, @cosmicpro, @stinkaton, @waves-against-a-cliff, @idocarealot

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jellyfishoreo1206 · 3 months ago

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Home? (Sebastian Solace x Reader)

Notes: Small Drabble, Sebby and Painter really need their happy ending guys :(

Credit to @cafekitsune for the divider ^^

Tears fell down your cheeks when the scene of nature invaded your senses. It felt so . . . overwhelming to be back home. After agonizing day after agonizing day down in that hellhole. The gently swaying of the trees, the soft chirps of the birds and the sound of rushing water greeting your ears contrasted greatly to the sounds of the empty ocean and horrifying screams that seemed to ring out days on end; finally seeing colors that aren't grey; the fresh smell of the trees and plants invading your sense of smell made you forget the strong smell of iron and saltwater that seemed to be present in every room.

Yeah . . . you were finally home.

With company, too. Risking a glance over to Sebastian, in his hands was the monitor of Painter, memories flood your brain that lead up to this exact moment. UrbanShade saw him as too much as a threat to the company, so much that they had sent out several EXR-P's to attempt to kill him only to fail miserably. You happened to be one of those EXR-P's. But you weren't able to go through with it, you read his file before being sent out. How he was accused of a crime he didn't commit, to being mutated beyond belief whilst in a great immense of pain, to being treated like an animal by the personnel of the company.

So when you finally encountered the man, you simply took the gun out of its holster, and handed it over to him with no hesitation. When he asked? You simply told him you refuse to be another chess piece for a company that has brought him suffering, and you wished to help him go against them.

He laughed at you for a good minute, calling you stupid for thinking that your, "little trick", would work on him of all people.

---

"Then shoot me." Those words seemed to snap him out of his laughter, bewildered bright eyes snapping in your direction when those words tumbled out, meeting determined eyes "If you believe me to be the same as those of UrbanShade," You took a step closer to him, giving him the opportunity to shoot you at point-blank, "-then shoot me dead."

---

Ever since, you teamed up against the company—though he helped take out the chip before you could proceed any further, saying how it was too much of a risk that they could be listening in—gathering any pieces of data you could potentially use against them in exchange for your freedom. It seemed to have become easier when Painter joined the cause.

An opportunity soon made itself known, months spent preparing for this one moment, none of you could mess it up. You only had one chance at succeeding. No mess-ups were allowed. It was a grueling process, but you pushed forward, determined to see the light of the sun.

And it worked. A few injuries here and there, but you now had the crystal in your possession. Once the personal heard wind of it, they immediately doubled their efforts to get their grubby hands on the crystal, like a school of piranhas going after a piece of dead meat. Though their efforts ceased when Sebastian threatened to break it with no hesitation, unless they met your demands.

Freedom, a duffel with $XXXXXX of cash and a computer for Painter to use. No chips, no trackers, no bombs, nothing. Unless they want their precious crystal to be destroyed.

And once you finally stepped foot on the surface? You let Painter and Sebastian do what they've wanted to do for a loooonng time; releasing every single piece of data that UrbanShade had to offer to the public.

It spread in a span of minutes.

The government found out about the operation Urbanshade was running, helping you all with building a case against them. The court date was set, so now you could only wait.

Now all that was left to do was watch them burn, in your old farmhouse within the woods, finally free from their clutches.

"Ready to start all over?" You were only met with silence, only the noises of the woods answering you, maybe he didn't hear you. But a glance proved you wrong, his face said everything. There was an unbelievably soft look on his face, his eyes scanning everything that surrounded him; his bottom lip seemed to tremble slightly as an overwhelming tsunami of emotions hit him all at once when the fact he was on the surface again sunk in. His eyes taking on a glassy look, his frame now trembling, holding onto Painter to make sure the AI didn't fall.

Painter only let out a sound of awe at their surrounding, their giggles echoing into the woods when a yellow butterfly landed on the frame of their screen, opening and closing its wings before flying off.

Smiling softly, you intertwined your fingers with Sebastians bigger one, giving it a small squeeze to pull him back to Earth. Taking a deep breath, he straightened his back, readjusting his hold on the computer before looking over at you.

". . . Yeah," A slight crack was heard in his voice, clearing his throat before speaking again, "-yeah I'm ready."

"Let's go home then." Heading towards the worn out path, you missed the look Sebastian made at the mention of home. Home, how long has he thought about home? The safety of one, the shelter of one, the warmth of one?

"Home?"

"Yeah, home."

Next Part

#uhhh idk if this is good or not #open to constructive critism #sebastian solace x reader #sebastian solace #pressure roblox #roblox #pressure sebastian #painter pressure #they deserve their happy ending #literally wrote this up in like two hours #proud of that tbh #slice of life pressure ☀︎

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lev1hei1chou · 9 months ago

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JUJUTSU KAISEN MASTERLIST

A- Angst

F- Fluff

C- Comfort

Requests open

GOJO SATORU

Boyfriend!Gojo (F) - Oddly specific Bf!Gojo headcanons By Your Side (A, F) - What if Gojo didn't die and was revived Dentist Calls (F) - Gojo gets a cavity Kikufuku (F) - Kikufuku chef Gojo ft. his cooking partner Serendipity (F) - A tall, handsome stranger at a bookshop 9:01 (F) - Gojo gets a piercing with you Why him? (F) - Gojo's daughter wants to marry uncle Geto 7:36 (F) - Gojo proposes in his own style As I Was Saying (F) - Gojo is determined to interrupt your phonecall First Day (F) - Dad Gojo's sends his child to preschool Skincare Rituals (F) - Gojo and skincare Jealousy, Jealousy (F) - Gojo gets hit on at a date Marked By Love (F) - Gojo finds your tattoo A Blossoming Proposal (F) - Gojo has competition: a child. Gym Time (F) - Gojo works out with you Curses Unveil Confessions (F) - Confess after getting injured in a mission Sick Day (F) - Gojo is a total pain when he's sick First Steps (F) - Dad Gojo gets a surprise when he returns from a mission Flowers For You (F) - Gojo gets you flowers, just because Birthday Present (F) - Dad Gojo teaches your toddler some words Little Snitch (F) - Gojo's son is a snitch Caught (F) - Gojo and your child have been caught lying Mini Gojo (F) - You dress up your baby like a miniature of Gojo Monopoly (F) - Gojo and the gang play monopoly Boop Wars (F) - You boop Gojo and start the boop war Birds and bees? (F) - How are babies made? You hug! Old Man (F) - A child calls Gojo 'old man' Grammy (F) - Gojo thinks he deserves a grammy Impressioner (F) - Gojo tries to impress you (and fails) Kitchen Catastrophe (F) - Gojo isn't the best cook, but he tries Fashion Icon (F) - Gojo's baby has to be a fashion icon 7:25 (C) - You think Gojo deserves better Cravings (F) - Gojo rates your pregnancy cravings Run Away (F) - Gojo's daughter wants to run away from home 3:27 (F) - Gojo finds you sleeping in his uniform A Dad's Promise (F) - Gojo meets his baby for the first time Make or Break (A-F) - You get into an argument with Gojo Abstract Art (F) - Gojo tries painting and calls it "abstract art" Family Halloween (F) - Halloween featuring your little addition Sleeping Beauty (F) - You fall asleep on Gojo A New Addition (F) - Gojo and your child return from a walk with a puppy Tantrums (F) - How can Gojo say no to his precious miracle? Gojo to the Rescue (F) - Gojo picks up his tipsy girlfriend Photobooth Session (F) - Gojo goes into a photobooth with you Physics Class (F) - Gojo teaches physics to his child, and it doesn't go the way they want it to. Cafe Drama (F) - Gojo loves drama when he’s not the center of it Aunt Flo (F) - That time of the month Daddy's Little Stylist (F) - Gojo's daughter gives him a makeover

Bunny Boy (F) - Gojo loses a bet One Piece (F) - Gojo is jealous of your favourite fictional men Gummy Date (F) - Gojo and an impromptu gummy date Anesthesia Antics (F) - Gojo feels loopy thanks to the anaesthesia A What? (F) - You ask for a baby out of nowhere Silent Treatment Prank (F) - Gojo tries the silent treatment prank on you Hoodie Thief (F) - Gojo's hoodies have been disappearing mysteriously Tricks (F) - What Gojo does to make you talk to him again Late, but why? (F) - Gojo is late to a date. Why? Cuddles and Jealousy (F) - Gojo is jealous of your baby 10:07 (F) - Soft Gojo hours A Silent Drive (A,F) - You're upset at Gojo Gojo And Love Languages (F) Little Rival (F) - Your baby is Gojo's rival

NANAMI KENTO

Faded (A) - Breaking up with Nanami The Shibuya Incident (A) - Nanami's fate in Shibuya, pt 2 of Faded Warm Mornings (A) - He's not gone, right? pt 3 of Faded Second Chances (F) - Patch up with Nanami, alt ending of Faded Trip to Malaysia (F) - Nanami moves to Malaysia with you A Future with You (F) - Nanami builds a future, pt 2 of Trip to Malaysia Sakura Blossom (F) - Cafe date with Nanami Little Superhero (F) - Dad Nanami gets called to the preschool Zoo Day (F) - Nanami visits a zoo in Australia

FUSHIGURO TOJI

Guardian (F) - Toji saves someone, uncharacteristically

GETO SUGURU

Geto's Warning (F) - Geto's daughter wants to marry uncle Gojo

MULTIPLE CHARACTERS

Orange Peel Theory (F) - Gojo, Nanami Lipstick Kisses (F) - Gojo, Nanami Makeup Artists (F) - Gojo, Nanami, Toji My Husband (F) - Gojo, Nanami Your child wants a sibling (F) - Gojo, Nanami

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oblique-lane · 6 months ago

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hey since you’ve posted two pieces in a row about my boy Scout I was wondering if maybe you could write more your thoughts/your hcs about him? I think he’s really interesting and I don’t often see people realize that he’s more complex that what he seems, like this man just seems very sad inside. i really like your analyses and your takes are some of my favorites

hope you have a good day!

Appreciate it! Although I probably won't say anything particularly new... Okay, let's talk about Scout!

Though he no doubt wears the persona of a confident cool guy, protecting his ego from vulnerability, I wouldn't say there's sadness inside him. More accurate would be fear.

People with sadness baggage are pretty passive and quiet. And Scout's reaction is to hit, run, scare away, cling anxiously to the object of security. That's fear. He's fearful.

He doesn't think about it much, he's a pretty happy guy in the environment he's in. But if something makes him go off the rails and he starts, God forbid, thinking.....

His core fear is not living up to his place in the world. He knows there's a place for him, but for some reason he feels like people think he's not good enough to take it. Anyone better and stronger could take his place at any time. He's on bird's rights here.

Growing up with older brothers, being not good at school, being the smallest and youngest mercenary of the team, this feeling doesn't leave him ever. It's a tiresome inner struggle: "How do I make my stay secure?", "How do I become worthy?"

Falling into this cognitive trap of searching for self validation in the outside world instead of inside of himself, he was doomed to be stuck in ambivalence:

To continue to pretend, risking being exposed as an imposter, or to be sincere and inevitably endure the unbearable pain of rejection and loneliness?

He laughs and taunts and overexplains himself so much. He clings to the only thing he's better than everyone at. He overcompensates; he demands attention and tries to make himself bigger. He hates being alone as it basically feels like being actually pushed off his place in the world. He clings to people but immediately pushes them away for being too dangerously close to finding out his fears. He needs to be with everyone to know and to control what they think about him.

And it never makes him calm down anyway, since all those efforts take a lot of energy. Tiresome to be, tiresome to pretend. And the prize is nowhere near the sight.

This loop of pain will never end, unless he breaks the very core mindset of his. The answer is stepping into this fear, but he can't even think about it! It feels like death! His ego will die and it's going to feel like he's dying as a whole.

A full existential, primal fear of an child to be rejected by his parent. "Not worthy of living".

(Based on the Lise Bourbeau's model of 5 soul wounds: Abandonment)

#Bourbeau's model is not exactly reliable but still has a good base #Scout doesn't fit into this type perfectly and there's overlapping but overall yeah that's him #character analysis #analysis #tf2 headcanons #tf2 scout #scout tf2 #team fortress 2 #team fortress fanart #team fortress #tf2 #tf2 theory #artists on tumblr #my art

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boundinparchment · 7 months ago

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Essence

Behind you, Dottore clicked his tongue against his teeth, and continued rooting around in the cabinet. This wasn’t the first time today. In fact, it was the third after an errant vial rolled from a top shelf and broke earlier that morning. You and your samples remained uncontaminated only due to Dottore leaning forward and covering both of you. Or: an accident with a questionable substance leads to a new experiment. Dottore/Female Reader. Accidental exposure to aphrodisiac; breeding kink towards the end, pwp. Divider by cafekitsune. Available on AO3 here.

“Don’t move.”

You froze, acutely aware of the source of heat and muscle against your back as Dottore reached above you.

This wasn’t a new occurrence; every once in a while, either Dottore himself or a Segment needed to get into the cabinets above your workstation. Extra vial trays, pipettes, errant extra microscope slides, among other items. Things you used for blood and chemical analysis. You were used to the briefest moment of keeping your head down, front pressed against the edge of your workstation, and feeling Dottore’s heat against you.

Funny, you thought, when he always came across as indifferent to everything. The Segments were a few degrees warmer, no doubt due to their components. Their presence was akin to touching a hot pan out of the oven with nothing between your skin whereas Dottore, the prime origin point, was porcelain warmed by fresh tea.

Behind you, Dottore clicked his tongue against his teeth, and continued rooting around in the cabinet.

This wasn’t the first time today.

In fact, it was the third after an errant vial rolled from a top shelf and broke earlier that morning. You and your samples remained uncontaminated only due to Dottore leaning forward and covering both of you.

You hadn’t caught a glimpse at the label but the contents hadn’t seemed harmful. Dottore, although not melting, was far from pleased. He barked to take better inventory of your workstation as your eyes traced the pink substance that soaked his hair, feathery mantle, and immaculate white coat.

He had since removed his formal trappings and appeared all the more graceful for it.

A breath tickled your scalp as he placed his free hand on your waist, holding you still.

The touch sent jolts through you, as if you were standing in a field during a thunderstorm. Dottore kept his hand there and you tried to keep your breath from hitching, his finger flexing occasionally. Was he testing whether you were ticklish?

His breathing was unnaturally slow in return, pressing against you further with every inhale.

“What are you looking for, Lord Harbinger?” you asked, neck craned low.

It was best to continue to work. Before you were samples of primordial water. The substance glistened in standing vials, each awaiting their next step.

You felt him shift forward and your hips met his properly. He had, quite effectively, sandwiched you between him and the counter. A dull yearning sat low in your belly and you doubled your efforts on the samples in front of you.

To say you did not find your supervisor attractive would be a lie; like most, you often wondered what lay beneath the bird-like mask, literally and metaphorically. The lower half of his face was charming, home to a well-shaped jaw and a set of lips that were, at times, distracting. The conversations held between you often led down other avenues. It was clear to you that few, if any, would ever be a match for him in how he saw the world.

The thought that crossed your mind was bold: someone like him did not need a matching piece, an opposite to dilute him. A mind like his needed the challenge of one who complemented his thought processes. More like a fine wine pairing rather than a Hydro slime dousing a flaming flower.

When Dottore didn’t respond, his body tense against you and hand tight on your waist, you spoke up. Was he ill?

“Lord Harbinger?”

You shifted in the hopes that your moving might break his thoughts. Dottore inhaled sharply and pushed you forward again, chest and hips pressing against you further. His other arm was still raised, as though he hadn’t quite finished in his search high above.

“I said: don’t move.”

The words were hissed against your ear and you felt the tip of his mask against your scalp. His chest rose and fell in harsh, stilted motions and you swore you heard him mutter something into your hand when he squeezed your waist again.

Against your backside, you now realized why, precisely, he’d requested your stillness. The dull pangs from earlier became aching throbs at the apex of your thighs. You pushed away the thoughts, reminding yourself biological reactions were simply part of being human. The position you were in was one many would envy.

“I cannot find the tincture that is usually kept here. But the longer I stay, the worse this problem will be,” Dottore whispered into your ear.

His voice was always so alluring and now it was one of the only parts you could focus on. Blood drained from your extremities, keen on flooding other parts of your body.

“What was in that vial, sir?”

“Cherubic sea hare venom and whopperflower nectar, stabilized by a single Agate gemstone, finely ground. All batches of it were purged. Or should have been.”

An interesting mixture, you mused, as Dottore’s raised arm came down and reached behind you. You heard a telltale click and then watched as he rested the familiar mask off to the side, next to your tray. When you went to turn your head and look over your shoulder, his now-free hand found your jaw and pulled your gaze back forward. Through his gloves, his touch felt feverish, scalding.

“Eye contact will make it worse. Do as I ask.”

His voice was tight, breathing ragged now, nose buried in your hair. Archons, you’d had fleeting thoughts of him but this was torture. Here he was, struggling against whatever he’d come into contact with while trying to work. All because of an accident that wouldn’t have occurred if you didn’t need to work exactly at this location. Fate was a cruel mistress but this was sheer misfortune for both of you.

“Those substances are hardly volatile on their own, sir,” you offered.

He always enjoyed discussing ideas and he encouraged an environment conducive to it among your peers. Distracting him might help.

You wanted to move your hips, as though friction would give you any kind of relief, but remained as still as possible. He wasn’t giving you much of a choice and the longer you stayed still, the more aware you became of everything else. You were acutely aware of your own wetness, your uniform pants already sticking to the apex of your thighs when you felt him twitch. His presence was overwhelming on a good day when there were several feet between you.

“The whopperflower nectar is a good base for any mixture but tends to result in disorientation and temperature changes depending on its source,” he said into your hair, his other hand falling to grip your waist. “Agate, of course, contains the power and passion of the pyro archon.”

His hands tightened, squeezing right at the junction of your hips.

“And the sea hare venom?”

This had to stop at some point, though, right? None of those substances ever left behind permanent effects. On their own, they were relatively harmless, but if synthesized together in the right dose, would…

Dottore nuzzled your hair and then worked his way down to your neck, lips ghosting the shell of your ear and the tender spot beneath your earlobe.

“Enhances one’s awareness of their partner’s needs and changes in pheromones. Along with an increased stamina.”

“Partner’s needs?”

Your heart pounded as it was but seemed to miss two beats at his wording. He was already specific and precise. Purposeful.

“This substance only works when the subjects already have an attraction to another individual, a pre-existing bias. It is similar to tunnel vision, an obsessive focus on the other with decreased inhibitions.”

You gasped as he pressed against you further, his hardened member against the curve of your ass, situated perfectly. Heat rose from your chest to your face as you finally put the pieces together and your own arousal caught up with you.

“And you, my dear, keep moving despite my warnings. Are you eager or were you contaminated as well?”

You stiffened at the realization that, lost in the headiness of it all, you’d been bucking against him the entire conversation. Your body had a mind of its own and your mouth ran dry.

“I—“

You knew you hadn’t gotten a drop on you. Somehow that felt all the more shameful. He needed help out of this situation and all you’d done was chase your own arousal, relished in the moment. Even if he walked away now, he would still likely require relief and release. Still be plagued with thoughts of you. The way forward was obvious, wasn’t it?

“I want to help, my lord. My mind is clear. Would it not be beneficial to…see the experiment through?”

The tiniest bit of tension seemed to ease as he flexed his fingers. Did he like that, you wondered, the way your skin sank beneath his fingers?

“The results might be promising. But I must warn you…”

Before you could formulate your next thought, Dottore’s hips pinned you in place as he pushed away the objects in front of you with little care. No sooner had the fleeting consideration for your samples crossed your mind, you felt open-mouthed kisses on your neck, hasty and hungry. You arched your back and leaned into him, closing your eyes and tilting your neck to give him better access.

“This will only be the first stage,” he whispered. “And there is no going back.”

You did not trust your vocal cords as he found a particularly sensitive spot near your ear, stifling a moan and keeping it in your throat. His hands remained flat against the surface of your work station, further pinning you, surrounding you. Dottore lifted his head from the curve of your neck long enough to reach out and drag back a pencil and a nearby sheet of paper.

He managed to scribble something in shorthand that you recognized as observations of his symptoms and a basic outline. You had suggested he treat it like an experiment, after all.

You felt his cock twitch again as his other hand freed itself from the surface to skim the edge of your uniform top. A low growl rippled through his chest and he paused only to pull off his gloves; as soon as he was free, the pencil was in his hand again and he was grazing the pads of his fingers over your stomach.

Every touch felt as if you were being held above a fire, the flames licking and searing but never leaving a trace. Your breath left your lips in short, staccato gasps and you shivered, relishing the soft jolts that ran through you.

He squeezed your hip again on occasion and his fingers dipped beneath the edge of your pants, tracing the lines where your clothes left their mark. The pressure behind you eased only enough for him to fit his hand between both of you and head lower, grabbing the soft flesh of your ass. A low moan rumbled behind you as his fingers delved a little further, skimming your outer lips. You were soaked, his touch gliding over you; you wriggled against him and felt his teeth skim your neck in warning.

“Eager indeed,” he whispered, breath hot against your ear. “I could already smell it but this is a pleasant surprise. Have you had thoughts of me, my dear? Have you fantasized about this?”

Your cheeks burned and Dottore chuckled, his fingers prodding your hot, soaked core once more before withdrawing and cupping your ass again. He obviously had, otherwise neither of you would be here in this predicament; after all, Dottore stated the substance only worked precisely because there was already a cognitive bias.

You whimpered as his hand let go of your plush flesh and reached around, fingertip hovering over your swollen clit. Dottore touched you just enough to cause a squeezing ache through you, your swollen walls demanding more.

“I have, Lord Harbinger,” you panted.

He made another notation as he withdrew his touch, the pencil snapping in his hand just as he finished the last flourish, the last of his restraint gone. He cast aside the remnants with a flick of his wrist and tugged your pants down just past your hips. Dottore didn’t bother to do more than unfasten his belt and free himself from the confines of his trousers, bare cock situated between your wet thighs.

The Harbinger pressed a hand to your back and pressed you forward, bending you over the surface, all the better to expose yourself to him. He leaned over you, sheltering you, as he aligned the head of his member with your entrance, running his length across your lips. A gasp left you at the sound of your slickness. Whatever shame you had the decency to feel was gone, replaced with only a blinding need to be full, complete.

He sank into you slowly, his cock stretching your swollen walls with each shallow thrust, his hands fisted so tight his knuckles were bone-white. You shuddered when he brushed past a particular spot every time, the edge already much closer than you expected. An icy jolt ran through your core, walls clenching from the pressure of being pressed against the table. Dottore hissed and his strokes grew long and full, nose buried in the crook of your neck as the sounds and scents of your coupling filled the air.

At least this lab was more secluded but you long since lost control of any thoughts about being caught.

“The timing could not have been better,” Dottore murmured, his pace increasing. “How perfect.”

You meant to ask but he drove into you harder, the edge of the table pushing into your diaphragm, preventing you from speaking. The impending bliss was already making you see stars and the lack of air was only enhancing the coil tightening deep inside. You stifled your moans, although perhaps there was no point, as teeth grazed your ear and neck. Hands reached for your hair, your waist, your hips as he continued to thrust, white hot heat searing across your vision as the pressure finally snapped. Dottore groaned as you fluttered around his cock, squeezing and pulsing.

His rhythm never changed through your aftershocks and he sent you over the edge twice more, legs quivering. All thoughts of documenting his observations seemed gone now as he sank his teeth into the curve where your neck met your shoulder. With a few quick snaps of his hips, Dottore shuddered atop you and you felt a shooting warmth, filling you to the brim and then some.

Dottore remained inside you, body covering yours. His hands massaged your hips as he pulled away from your neck enough to press his lips to the open skin and lick away the blood.

“Decreased inhibitions indeed…” you muttered, tongue heavy.

You tried to shift, or at least stand straight slightly. Your back was beginning to protest and between the man inside you and the table, catching your breath proved difficult. Dottore chuckled as he ground his hips into yours, his cock still hard and buried deep inside you.

“We’re far from done, my dear. Stage one is not over yet. This substance can take days to wear off. In that time, I’m certain I’ll obtain the results necessary to move right into stage two. Taking you on your back might improve the timeline, though…”

Your stomach sank as you managed to turn your head and cast a look through your peripheral over your shoulder. All you caught was a glimpse of a wide smile and glittering ruby eyes staring down at you.

“Oh, did I not mention that? It’s quite convenient that your body is ready, based on your pheromones; I cannot stop until we’ve guaranteed success.”

#dottore x reader #il dottore x reader #il dottore #dottore #il dottore x female reader #dottore x female reader #x reader #x female reader #pwp #smut fic #tw: smut #cw: smut #smut #female reader #tw: breeding #cw: breeding #tw: aphrodisiac #cw: aphrodisiac #don't look at this too closely it needed to be out of my head

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rooksamoris · 7 months ago

Note

I've come to humbly request and spread propaganda for Jamil L/N.

Jamil taking his s/o's name strikes 3 birds with one stone: freedom from the Asims (you can't tell me there hasn't been a single Viper who didn't marry into another family and adopt their trade), freedom to marry the love of his life, and guaranteeing freedom for his descendants. Depending on how things go with Najma, they could erase the Viper name and, by extension, their servitude.

Also how does he react being called Mr.L/N?

💞 — in which jamil marries you and takes your last name.

💞 — jamil viper x reader

💞 — warnings: none, this is pure fluff and romance

💞 — 1.2k words. i ended up writing a mix of drabbles and headcanons <33 your propaganda turned into me making even more propaganda for this idea. honestly, seems very plausible that he would do something like this.

“I’ll take your last name. If we want to get married, I have to take your name, or else you’d be stuck serving with me,” Jamil said, breaking the silence. His eyes remained on the book in his lap, looking through the various pictures from his parents’ wedding. He would be wearing his father’s old garments.

The man had an intricate belt with a jambiyah (dagger) tied around the waist of his thobe (long dress-like garment), and his hair was done in various braids with a shemagh (men’s headscarf) tied over it. He had a few ornate pieces of fabric draped over him like a cape and a spot of henna on the inside of his palm. The usual kohl (eyeliner) was a bit smudged from all the festivities—Jamil had never seen his father look this happy.

His mother was dressed similarly, with old pieces of gold and silver jewelry about. Her big earrings had matched the rings his father wore, and she had kohl drawn on both her eyes and her chin, in the shape of ancient tattoos. Here hair had scented plants interwoven in the strands, and Jamil wondered if he should do the same with his hair, draping a shemagh over it. It seemed like something you would enjoy, and he would enjoy you taking them out at the end of the night. He spoke again, “What do you think of that?” he asked, concerning him taking your name.

You smiled and rested your head on his shoulder, flipping the page to another picture of his parents’s wedding, this one featuring his mother shyly lifting a piece of her sitara (long piece of fabric with various designs which directly translates to ‘curtain’) to hide her face from her husband, “I think it's a wonderful idea.”

🩷 — Taking your last name was probably the best decision he could have made. He indulged in the marriage festivities with you for both your sake and his parent’s sake. What he was excited about was signing the contract that officially gave him your surname—freeing him from the shackles of the Viper clan.

🩷 — He did it after the festivities when it was just the two of you guys and the imam as well as a legal advisor. You both were still in the wedding clothes, sitting on an ornate rug with a little table in front of you.

🩷 — Jamil could feel the tremors of his heart in his hand as he lifted the pen and signed his name beside yours. This time, Viper was nowhere to be found.

🩷 — With that, Jamil shook hands with the imam and then handed the page to the legal advisor to be put in the Scalding Sands’s records. It all felt so surreal. He glanced over his shoulder to see you gleefully talking to the imam about the marriage and showing off your wedding band.

🩷 — It was a thin gold ring that he had made with the antiquities left by his family. Nothing fancy—he wanted to give you diamonds, and yet you were so smitten with it and him.

Once nightfall came, Jamil lay beside you in your bed. A bed for the both of you. It was a bed he bought under his new name, Jamil (L/N), under the surname you gifted him. His charcoal eyes watched as you sat down at the edge of the bed, your night robe dipped down your back. It matched his nightgown, save for the patterns. He helped you fall in love with the comfortable garb of his homeland.

You turned slightly to see him, your eyes growing tender at the sight of him all disheveled. This was a sight just for you, “What are you thinking about?” you asked, reaching out to take his hand.

Jamil pulled you closer to him by your hand, forcing you to lay on top of him. He kissed your knuckles, “Thinking about you, hayati (my life),” he muttered, before letting his hand trail up your arm and to the back of your neck. His gaze had softened and his features relaxed, “Thank you,”

You did not need to ask why he thanked you. You knew he felt indebted to you for being patient with him and becoming his spouse. You gave him the greatest gift ever, freedom. Free to be yours, free from Kalim Al-Asim. You freed his descendants… he would spend the rest of his life as your husband, repaying you with kisses across your skin and warm meals in your belly.

🩷 — It takes him a long time to get used to his new name, as well as his newfound freedom. After your wedding, he takes you out to do many of the things he could not do before, such as travel to another country, but even simple things like going out to parks.

🩷 — He did not have to worry about Kalim anymore, just your and his enjoyment.

🩷 — Jamil still has yet to get used to being called by your surname. When he notices it, he is filled with a smug and quiet pride, but most of the time he just ends up ignoring whoever is calling for him, or glancing over at you in confusion, thinking that they are speaking with you and not him.

🩷 — This was particularly apparent when it came to the reunion at Night Raven College.

🩷 — He did not want to go, but he could not reject you either. You were excited about seeing your silly friends, and who was he to stop you from going? Instead, he just sighed and went along with you, standing off to the side and watching as you ran about to gather Ace and Deuce, as well as greeting your other friends.

“If it isn’t the new Mr. (L/N),” Azul approached his former classmate with a suave grin. He had grown up, but it was clear he still kept that usual ‘evil businessman’ charm to him. His suit was freshly pressed and his hair, which had grown a bit, was brushed back neatly. Though, he was still wearing the same thin-rimmed glasses.

Jamil turned around when he heard your surname being called, and it took him a moment to realize what was happening. He was your husband. Sure, he remembered your wedding—he carried a picture from it all the time, but it was still strange hearing it affirmed by someone else. He tried to hide how happy he was to hear it behind a raised brow and his usual frown, “What do you want, Azul? My spouse isn’t going to be pulled into one of your schemes anymore,” he said, arms crossed.

Azul laughed at that, tilting his cane a bit as he leaned away from Jamil, “You wound me, Jamil. As if I would try anything like that anymore,” he replied, and the irony was not lost on him at all. Instead, he sighed and watched as Jamil’s eyes found your figure again. You were chasing Epel around, trying to get a hug from your old friend. It was just like before, except now you wore a ring from Jamil and he wore a name from you.

“You don’t seem so poor and unfortunate now,” Azul said.

Jamil could not bite back the slight twitch of his lips, “Not at all.”

#💖 — amoris writes #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #jamil viper #twst jamil x reader #jamil viper x reader #twst jamil #twst headcanons #jamil viper headcanons

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ma1dita · 1 year ago

Text

kiss his face with an uppercut

smutty part 2 here-> heavy hitter

words: 4k

summary: james potter is so attractive you could beat him to death with a bludger. james potter x fem!beater!reader not from gryffindor (for the plot!!)

warnings: none! james gets physically hurt multiple times by reader, multiple innuendos, enemies to lovers kinda, less serious lovey dove more sexual tension!!! probably not accurate quidditch gameplay

a/n: sorry for the hold up guys this took almost a month of on and off editing lmfao— this whole oneshot makes me think of the filipino word ‘gigil’– simply translating to cuteness aggression; i barely know jack shit about sports much less quidditch but this concept had me looking up quidditch rules to be able to provide– eat up kids

Y/S- sibling name

Y/H- house

(posted & edited 10/10/23)

—

Oh BROTHER, this guy STINKS! I mean, how has he not gotten walloped at least once during this godforsaken game? You suck your teeth at the sight of James flying around the pitch blowing kisses to his fan club and Lily Evans, who turns her nose up at the sight of him.

Merlin, when will this game end?

The Hogwarts Quidditch Semi-Finals of 1977 was a game to watch… until both teams stopped scoring what seemed like hours ago. Both Gryffindor & (Y/H) were at a stalemate, down some players due to injury and now, even lower team morale. Gryffindor team captain and chaser James Potter, notorious Marauder, and resident flirt, is not someone who likes to lose. He’s spent all season drilling his teammates, memorizing plays, and thinking of every outcome possible to ensure another Gryffindor victory. James�� affinity to be right takes precedence over anything, after all. But after beating down almost all of (Y/H)’s reserves, James was almost vibrating with confidence. He really doesn’t lose, not if he can help it.

“AND ANOTHER (Y/H) IS DOWN WITH AN INJURY— Team captain Whithall calls for a timeout as they reconvene on what to do next! Hope you’re still comfy in the stands, folks….” the student announcer grumbles.

There’s absolute chaos on the field, and like birds scuffling over a piece of bread, (Y/S), the team’s last good beater is floating on a gurney, ready to be transported to the Hospital Wing.

“Oh, here comes trouble…” Sirius murmurs, smacking James on the back to grab his attention.

You jump down from the stands to check on (Y/S), and James is too busy reveling in the idea of winning the goddamn semi-finals that he doesn’t notice you putting Quidditch gear on.

“Easy win from here on out, Pads! The little lady’s just checking the damage. Not important,” he chortles before Sirius physically grabs his head to face the girl walking towards him, currently storming across the turf to meet him and his team.

“I’m subbing in,” you say, angry at how dirty Gryffindor’s been playing, and angry that you even have to play in (Y/S)’s stead.

“Sweetheart, this game is for serious, you know that right?” James says a bit dumbly with a furrowed brow. Both of you are head to head, and James sees the twitch in your eye as you cross your arms. Hot air is seeping out of your pores but James’s lip simply quirks up in intrigue. You’re someone he hasn’t noticed before, and the only thing running through his mind besides winning the game is that you’re really pretty. But then again, he’s always found angry women to be attractive, in retrospect.

“Yeah, for the actual cup, not…for Sirius… It’s the wrong time to joke, innit?” Sirius says to break the ice, noticing the palpable tension between your glares. Your faces are inches away from each other and he’s not sure if you two are going to fight or kiss, but it makes him grimace all the same.

“Who do you think (Y/S) practices with? Unlike you and your friends, I know when to take things seriously,” You say through gritted teeth.

“She’s legit, Potter. Got added to our reserves last week.” Whithall pipes up, ready to get back to the game. The crowd has been weathered down after hours of anticipation, and they want to see the end of it, no matter the outcome.

“Much to my surprise,” you grumble, elbowing the authority in the form of a teenage boy not much older than yourself. You should’ve known your sibling was looking a little too happy as they got floated off the pitch on a gurney.

“Then let’s play. Don’t hurt yourself, sweetheart.” James says condescendingly, floating away on his broomstick like it’s a walk in the park, but the way you’re slapping the bat against your palm is getting Sirius a tiny bit nervous for his precious countenance. The whistle blows and the game resumes.

“A SURPRISE ADDITION (Y/N) JOINS HER HOUSE AS BEATER! Gryffindor better watch out for her swi—” You slam the bludger in James’s direction and it hurtles toward him so fast that he almost folds in half, barrel-rolling on his broom to dodge it. The move makes Sirius and a few of their other teammates gasp to see James scrambling back onto his broom.

“Oops! Looks like I missed.” you deadpan, balancing midair as you whack another one where it rebounds off the Gryffindor seeker and back towards James, hitting both of them in the gut.

“THIS GIRL’S GOT AN ARM ON HER! Though might I say her hits look a bit targeted…” The commentator says worriedly, and everyone in the crowd is leaning in their seats trying to get a better view.

“Merlin, are you trying to kill me woman?” he yells in outrage.

“I’m trying to finish the game. Your big head is in the way,” you say with a straight face as Sirius bats towards you, and you spin on your broomstick without shifting your posture. The smile on your face as you taunt him should be considered criminal, but he’s looking at you in a new light.

Yeah, now he’s paying attention. The other Gryffindor players can’t seem to figure out your next move and you bat another bludger towards Potter’s extremely large target of a head, and all of a sudden he’s freefalling through the air as his teammates fly to catch him, one by one. His nose still makes impact with the ground before Sirius catches by the ankle like Achilles taking a dip in the River Styx.

“AND (Y/H) HAS CAPTURED THE SNITCH! Good job to their Seeker, Appleby! Congratulations on a job well done, so that we can all finally go home.” The commentator cringes as McGonagall swats at him to leave the podium.

Who even is she, taking over the game and stealing his win like that?

He’s walking up from the sidelines with a bloody nose, going to shake Whithall’s hand and you’re standing behind him, a malicious grin plastered between your rosy cheeks, windswept and almost ethereal while he looks like he got flattened by a hippogriff. Fuck, she’s pretty. You look like you floated down from the heavens, and by the looks his team gives him, he may have just crawled out of the earth.

“Congrats,” he grumbles, turning to you. Really pretty. It’s even worse that you’re devastatingly stunning up close— with sweat glistening on your brow and a pearly white smile, he takes a good moment to really look at you and memorize the flutter of your eyelashes. He’s unsure if he’s concussed or maybe it’s his astigmatism, but there are actual stars in his vision as he peers down at you. Your confidence is actually kind of sexy.

“You look…um…you ride well.” He stutters, shaking his head from his personal reverie.

“Excuse me?” you say, your little mouth agape in what he hopes is not disgust. He looks pathetic, blood sopping down to his jersey as he looks at you like he’s only seeing you for the first time, acknowledging you closely. Something about seeing him flail makes you crinkle your nose as you stifle a grin.

“I mean…Um…” Damn.

Sirius pulls his best friend away before you can bite back your laughter, all of your teammates leading you away to celebrate.

“Mate, what the shit was that? Are you alright in the head?” Sirius says, and if James’ nose wasn’t already bleeding he was going to slap him silly.

“Just…Didn’t see that coming…” he mumbles, and his mind, along with all of Gryffindor is in disarray as they walk back to their tower. He’s got a lot of thinking to do on what his next move will be.

—

James Potter goes through life in three methodical ways: 1.) creating a strategy, 2.) making a scene, 3.) and dragging his friends into it— in that particular order, every single time.

Now notice how considering consequences is not part of said process.

His ego wouldn’t let him rest after a girl, much less a very pretty one that he’d never noticed before—beat him at what he does best; quidditch! In fact, the next few nights were void of sleep and filled with thoughts of you. The way your hair looked so soft in the sunlight, how your lip turns almost Gryffindor red when you bite it in concentration, and maybe how your delicate hands would look as they tightly grasp onto his bat...ahem…your quidditch bat. Some dirty delusions aside, if looks could kill, he’d be dead seven times over, but honestly? He’d probably thank you for it.

James’ new mission was to figure you out, and if that was his mission, it meant it was the rest of the Marauders’ too. For the sake of winning the Cup, of course. That’s what he tries to tell himself until his mates catch him ogling you again at breakfast.

“So what is it with you and girls that inflict you nothing but pain and humiliation?” Remus muses, as the Marauders watch James laugh at a joke you told your friends at the (Y/H) table across the Great Hall. He looks at you like someone who stares at the sun, squinting and burning himself as he ponders on why he’s unable to look away.

James fumbles a response, shoving Remus as they all laugh. “Listen, I’ve got a bit of a masochistic streak, Moony. Just…There’s something about her…”

Your friends are pointing at him now, and as you turn to meet his eyes, you lift a brow inquisitively and flip him off. Sirius’s face pulls up in shock at James’s growing smile at the interaction as he mumbles, “Maybe you’ve met your match, Prongs…”

The boy pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, anything to try to see you clearer as he leans over to put his head in his hands, sighing dreamily. His friends are not as easily amused.

“A match made in heaven, you reckon?”

—

“Match made in hell, more like!” You spit, almost choking on your scrambled eggs at your friends’ insinuations. Your back is as stiff as a board, shoulders tight at the notion of you ever liking James Potter triggering your fight or flight response. When it comes to someone as pompous as him, only the word fight comes to mind.

“Oh come on, love… He’s popular, funny, and quite handsome…It’s James freaking Potter we’re talking about!” your roommate gushes, but you're not the least bit impressed.

“Is that supposed to do anything for me? I can think of a few F words that middle initial can stand for…” Eyes rolling, you peek back at the Gryffindor table to see said boy wiggling his fingers at you teasingly until he accidentally smacks Peter in the face with his toast. Idiot.

“Only hot people get away with stupid shit. I mean look at the four of them!” you continue, gulping down the rest of your coffee. “Potter’s the worst out of all of them though. Big ass head must compensate for a lot of things." You say, shaking your head at your friends.

"And yet, here you are, talking about him for the fourth time this morning," your roommate replies, smirking. " You’ve been Potter crazy since you helped us beat Gryffindor in the semi-finals! Are you sure you don't have a crush on him?"

"No!" you say too quickly, too loudly, that the shrill noise of your voice makes your ears hurt and the shit-eating grins on your friends’ faces reflect how desperate that came off. You slump onto the table, eyes rolling to the back of your head.

“You wanna kiss him, don’t you?” they tease, and you push away their puckering faces as you scoff, “With an uppercut, maybe!” Almost makes you want to stomp over there and wipe the stupid look off his face…and maybe sit on his lap. You run your fingers through your hair in frustration. All this aggression really needs to go somewhere, but unfortunately, James Potter’s lap is the only destination you have in mind.

“He’s just really punchable. I get so annoyed by the sight of him I just want to… ugh!” you groan, your hands shaking as you try to convince them (or yourself). Your friends cackle at the sight of you pretending to squeeze his curly-topped, mothball-filled head, but your brain changes course and you imagine what it’s like to hold his hand. Your fingers flex cautiously at the idea, wondering what his touch would feel like. Grabbing a glass of water to cool your thoughts, your peripherals reveal he’s still staring at you like you make night turn into day. His gaze is searing, and as you put your lips around your straw, he licks his lips slowly. Shit.

—

Availability bias is one hell of a mindfuck. If only they taught psychology at this magic school, maybe the wizarding world would have way fewer problems and more people would be straightforward and not.. Dead. James decides he can categorize his life now as before you, and after you.

Before you, well… he honestly wasn’t even sure if you were a student at Hogwarts until he saw you marching down the pitch, but now… You’re everywhere. He can spot your voice in a crowded hallway, and who was going to tell him you’ve had three classes with him this whole term? Even down to when he shuts his eyes, he’s convinced his eyelids are branded with the imprint of your silhouette. Every conversation he strikes with you ends with you laughing at him, and he’s unsure if that’s a step up or down from the many boisterous rejections from Lily Evans over the years. He sort of wishes you’d laugh with him, and do a number of other things, (heck he’s got a list of ideas he’s wanked off to), and well… His soul is tightly wound with thoughts of you and Godric, listen to this guy…. maybe the boys were right…. Maybe he really does need to get laid.

It’s funny how fate works, two people who’ve barely interacted in the past six years at Hogwarts are now paired together for a History of Magic essay worth 20% of the term grade. You’re trying to get this done as fast as possible, he notices, mapping out ideas and trying to discuss how to piece it all together, yet James does everything but that to get you to pay attention to him. He fills your head with mundane little questions, asking you what your favorite fruit is to the childhood bedtime story your parents told you as a kid.

“What’s your middle name, Potter?” You muse, finally entertaining him after endless chatter. His eyes trail to the exposed skin of your collarbones as you stretch in your seat, and well… you don’t look as menacing as you always do but did it seriously have to be this question? He scratches the back of his head, silent for the first time in the two hours you’ve been trying to craft this essay for the sake of both your grades.

“What? I can’t just go around calling you James Fucking Potter. Spit it out, you know too much about me already.”

He clears his throat, a blush creeping up his neck. “It’s… that’s an intimate question, love… I…”

Your laughter at his response makes his senses shut down. “Oh, so it’s bad. What is it, Franklin? Fabio? Come on, I won’t bite.” A part of him wishes you would, your face equally flushed and so close to him right now, almost leering at him for an answer. It’d be easy to just lean over…

“Fleamont.”

Your lips quirk, until they pucker like you’ve guzzled a lemon. The blush on your cheeks intensifies, and the sound explodes out of you. You laugh so loudly Madam Pince kicks you both out of the library, James carrying both your knapsacks, a hand around your waist as you rush out of there. Your body is firm under his touch, pupils unfocused and dilated looking at him now that you know his dirty little secret. James thinks that if you keep looking at him like that, hell, you can call him anything you want.

—

Fleamont.

What a prick. A really attractive, clueless prick. The memory makes you giggle as you get ready for the Quidditch Cup and your team charges out onto the field to face Gryffindor again, as you’ve both advanced to the finals. He’s not as much of an asshole as you originally thought. It’s undeniable that something pulls you towards him, whether it be hormones, concern, or the fact that it’s actually adorable the way he writes his mother back weekly, or admirable how he moved Sirius out of Black Manor himself last year. Maybe it’s endearing the way he goes out of his way to make first-years smile or heartwarming how even Filch can’t find reasons to hate him. The golden boy. You get it now, why people get trapped in his web, and why many are unwilling to leave.

You pass him outside the locker rooms, bumping shoulders as he smiles almost bashfully. The golden boy, loudmouth, ball of energy is reduced to a nervous pile of teenage ineptness at the sight of you, every time. You could take him (not in a fight). In an actual fight, maybe you could land a few solid hits before his nice muscly arms hold you do—

“Ready to finish this, darling?”

Your eyes refocus when his hand nudges the small of your back, right above your hip. “Mhmm,” you clear your throat, “Ready to lose, Potter?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He moves closer, slowly backing you into the wall.

“Eyes on the prize Potter, I’m in this to win it.” You say, looking at the closing distance between both your chests. James nods, not taking his eyes off of you for a moment, even when the announcer calls out the imminent start of the game.

“WELCOME TO THE HOGWARTS QUIDDITCH CUP OF 1977 GRYFFINDOR VS. (Y/H)! I hope you are all excited as our last match between these teams was quite thrilling at the end of it!” The announcer says, hyping up the roaring crowd as your teams parade onto the pitch.

His eyes are still on you when he shakes Whithall’s hand and the whistle blows. It’s intense, and makes you feel like you’re burning, even if the wind is blowing like crazy today. You bat the bludgers toward anything red on the field that even dares to move toward your teammates. James won’t stop staring at you, and you both lock eyes across the pitch.

“What? Flirt with me later, Potter, I’m trying to win!” you yell.

He’s got you transfixed, and it’s crazy how his timing is always wrong. You bat the bludger away from your captain but don’t notice James flying towards you to respond as you give it your hardest swing, making the impact against his huge target of a head all the more painful.

Holy shit, did you kill him?

He keels off his broom like a shot bird and then he’s falling, and you’re the one chasing the Gryffindor chaser as he flaps his arms like the idiot you know he is as you push forward to catch him before he splits his skull open.

“I’msofuckingsorryJamesareyouokay?” You blurt out as you land, soft hands moving over his broad chest and quickly swelling face. He’s wearing that stupid grin again, and you think you may have finally broken Gryffindor’s team captain.

“You know my name?” he sighs happily, comfortable in your lap and maybe it’s the brain damage you’ve caused him or the way his glasses are bent beyond repair but you will every magical predecessor you can think of to stop you from punching him in the face right now.

“Are you fucking dense?” You scream, shaking your head, and jostling him as his arms try to reach out to swipe the hair away from your face.

“Must’ve hit him so hard you knocked his filter loose..” Sirius muses after he lands next to you two on the grass.

“POTTER’S TAKEN A HIT FROM (Y/H) and it doesn’t look good ladies and gents! Gryffindor calls a timeout to check on their captain!” The announcer calls out, and there are so many eyes on the two of you as James is simply giggling like a prepubescent schoolboy. Fuck, you’ve maimed the golden boy.

“Y’know, sweetheart. You’re…really sexy when you’re on top of me like this,” he says breathily, and you really can’t hit him, so you jab Sirius in the gut instead when he tries to laugh at his best friend’s stupidity.

—

James wakes up in the hospital wing with a blinding headache until someone gently pulls the curtains closed, stroking the hair off his sweaty forehead.

“Poppy you always take such good care of me…” he mumbles. A punch lands on his chest and his eyes rip open, not expecting to see you at his bedside.

“Idiot,” you mutter. “You’re always in my way and now look, you almost got yourself killed and it would’ve been my fault! How dare you, James…” The red is crawling up your neck like a brushfire as you berate him, and he takes it with a grin as you jabber on, putting his arms behind his head.

“Were you worried about me, love?” James smiles cheesily, catching your arm at its half-hearted attempt to slap him across the face.

“I was not. Stubborn people like you are hard to kill. I’m more annoyed that I can’t morally punch your face in since you have a concussion. Madame Pomfrey’s already healed your cheekbone.”

“That you broke,” he says matter-of-factly, taking a chance to kiss the palm of your hand. This concussion is working like a bottle of Felix Felicis. It’s endearing to see you taking care of him, whether you like it or not (even with the punches he’s sure it’ll come with).

“You’re sick in the head.”

“For you. I was trying to come tell you that I never took my eyes off the prize, but then of course you bludgeoned my face in before I could get sweet on yo—”

Your lips crash down on his, and nothing about it is delicate. It’s a month’s worth of yearning, imaginations coming to fruition as he grabs the back of your head to deepen the embrace. Your lips on his are hot and heady, and he could be easily convinced that he’s stuck there, cauterized to the shape of you.

“I know. I could feel you watching.” You breathe into his mouth, leaning up on his chest. His lips chase up again to meet yours, biting down on your bottom lip as you groan. He might like that noise better than the sound of your laughter. It’ll be fun to find out.

“Who won the Cup?”

Laughter spills out of your red, kiss-swollen lips as you pat his cheek gently, fingers grazing over his healed cheekbone.

“Not Gryffindor. But listen closely James, if you be a good boy and get past this concussion, I’ll make up for it by showing you how well I ride…”

He likes the sound of that, Quidditch Cup be damned. You see, James Potter never loses, ladies and gentlemen, not really—and well... there’s always next year.

—

“I like the way

you look at me

like you are

going to talk to me

or devour me

and I am fine with either.”

-N.R. Hart

taglist: @jsjcue

#made by ma1dita ♥︎#marauders x reader #james potter x y/n #james potter x reader #marauders era #james potter x you

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killertoons · 1 month ago

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I've got ideas and a theory for the recent welcome home updates (10/18/2024)

Walk with me-

So that short story alone already showed pulling ideas from Edgar Allen Poe with the tell-tale heart and the cast of amontillado

(I wouldnt be shocked if they reference other Edgar Allen poes works like the raven soon but that's me cheating to peek at clowns kofi and I won't speak further on that-)

Basically Sally is doing a rendition of the tell-tale heart and poppy got cast....only she doesn't want to be involved. It's a scary tale, and for those who didn't take advanced English

The story of the tell-tale hearts about a man so absolutely freaked out by this old man's eyes to quote

'I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture- a pale blue eye, with a film over it.'

So the man sets out to kill him, does so by lurking in the dark for 7 straight nights till finally the 8th night he finally does so, dismembered him and hide the pieces under the floorboards!

But when police came to investigate...he could hear both but a beating heart under the floors and from his guilt he admitted to the murder and ended the tale with

'"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed!- tear up the planks!-here, here!- it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

So already Sally doing a rendition of this tale is wild already as I imagine it's been changed to be more family friendly for the neighborhood, but poppy isn't up for it.

And Sally's sad about it! And of course the neighbors all know why poppy actually didn't wanna do it. And Sally trying to be a good friend realized the play scares her so they gotta do something to let poppy have her cozy state of mind away from anxiety

So they form their plan-

To cask of amontillado her into her house, brick by brick.

Another famous story by Edgar Allen Poe, that one is about a guy luring someone he had a dispute over into a cellar and bricking him up down there to rot.

It's a revenge story, one we have no details other than a man was wronged (we never learn the reason) his anger and vengeance taking center stage.

Through the entire story time, the neighbors are supposed to be following a book along as a read aloud story but they keep breaking into separate lil conversations or making quips to each other... Till the end where audio is lost on the rest of the story after poppy was bricked away.

However...

Because we have the secret website we can check there and what's found was....worse

Poppy in the dark of her barn and something is lurking with her in the dark.

By the end someone gets her out but the sounds of the people aren't named... although they sound familiar to us

I could say what we were all thinking and state the obvious "oh those must be the puppeteers! That was poppy's puppeteer having a freak out moment-"

Which I personally agree but there's more to it.

Do y'all know how big birds puppet works?

It's one person in there, with a screen to tell you where to go and a script taped inside while they maneuver around like this!

I imagine poppy is the same way since she's based design wise off big bird

Now with this in mind, add how hard it is to move or see or perceive where you are in general in that suit. How clasterphobic your gonna be if you can't get out!

I get clasterphobic trying to get out of a dress that fits too tight at the store, I can't imagine how scary this would be especially if your on your own in the dark room as well!

with only your lantern to read your lines and something to occupy yourself- maybe knitting as it's a hobby you picked up-

When you hear breathing that's not yours. From within the suit. A suit that's JUST big enough for you, mind you.

So it be impossible for anyone else to be breathing...only you forgot someone.

The puppet suit itself...is breathing.

And there's scratching at the door, something else is lurking in the dark with you but you can't see it. You can't get out, the suit can't leave but your mind is stuck the doors open but in another world it's closed and sealed-

But I'm getting ahead of myself

What is said is...what if that IS poppy reacting in the dark to something...but also it's the puppeteers reaction to poppy as well. They share a mind and A space for a moment in the dark where their fear matches them and it doesn't break till the door opens and the puppeteers talk..

I think the horror is going higher as both sides are gonna start interacting more and more with each other..

#welcome home arg #welcome home #welcome home update #poppy partridge #this is very long winded #im gonna summerize this in a smaller thing later or draw it out cause thats all thats on my mind #but such a good update and poppy got love finally!!!

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frudoo · 7 months ago

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A Moth Into Flame — Simon “Ghost” Riley

Y’all… this one is sloppy and kinda lazy??? Idk I had a plan but then it kinda crumbled. If there are plot holes or it just doesn’t make sense… it is what it is LMAO. 🫶

Warnings: SMUT, fem!reader, unprotected PIV, creampie, Simon giving poor reader whiplash but she’s fine with it I guess

MDNI

You can smell his cologne even over the pungent aroma of your whiskey, and you suddenly wish that you had just stayed home. Your body tenses at the sound of those all-too-familiar combat boots hitting the floor. He doesn’t allow himself to be heard unless he wants to make his presence known—he always has been deliberate. You feel the unmistakable coarseness of his hands resting themselves on your shoulders before gently grazing their way down your bare arms. You try to hide the shudder that runs through your body, but he sees. He always sees.

“Save a seat f’you,” he whispers, his voice a soft breath against the shell of your ear.

He trails his hand down the curve of your spine to give your ass a firm squeeze, and as quickly as he had approached, he’s gone. You choke down the rest of your whiskey quickly, ignoring the searing burn it leaves in your esophagus. Your eyes scan the bar for the large, imposing figure you’ve grown to know far too well before finding him in the round booth near the back. He’s with his mates, of course, the ones he never lets you say hello to before he’s pulling you out of the bar and taking you back to his apartment.

Those deep molasses eyes beckon you over without having to say a word. Yeah, you should’ve stayed home, because you know exactly how this night is going to end.

Silently you approach, grimacing at the feeling of the cracked red leather of the booth scratching the backs of your thighs as you slid in beside Simon. He wasn’t having that. A strong tattooed arm wraps itself around your waist and pulls you onto his lap. His mitts unashamedly squeeze your supple tits before ultimately resting on your waist. You jab him in the gut with your elbow, but he only gives you an amused grunt in response.

“Finally lettin’ us meet yer lass, LT?” The mohawked man raises an eyebrow, sucking his teeth as he looks you over. “She’s bonnie.”

Simon shrugs, tilting his head to press a kiss to the side of your face through his mask. Despite the fact that the guy had been looking at you like a piece of meat, there was something charming about him, blue eyes holding a boyish innocence, but the smirk he wears gives away his true nature. There’s something captivating about all of the roguish men, but none quite as… alluring as the enigma whose lap you sit on.

The other two men say nothing about your presence and instead shift the conversation back to something you can’t understand. Not that you’d be able to focus, anyway, with the way Simon’s grasping your hips to move you over slightly when he wants to take a drink or add something to the discussion. His hands are so warm that you can feel it through the thin fabric of your dress, and it excites you more than you’d like to admit. You know what those hands can do.

He’s distracted, taken a break from tormenting you with those gentle touches, but it doesn’t help the white-hot desire that’s been building up in your belly, fogging up your head. To go from too much attention to too little won’t do at all. You can beat him at his own game.

You pretend to listen to whatever the bearded man with the weird hat is saying, not looking to draw any attention to yourself—at least, not from anyone other than Simon. You reach forward to grab a pretzel from the bowl on the table, pushing your ass back to deliberately rub against his crotch. He grunts and gives your hip a squeeze, a warning. Bingo. You feign ignorance and lean forward again, this time rolling your hips to add some more friction.

Simon grabs your throat to tip your head back, a threatening undertone in his murmur.

“Playin’ a dangerous game there, bird.”

You snicker, giving another grind of your ass against his growing erection—pouring gasoline onto the fire. His fingertips dig into the flesh of your hips almost painfully, and his bark is a little sharper now, more akin to a bite.

“Fuckin’ quit it.”

A moth into flame.

“Make me.”

That’s all it takes before you’re forced out of the booth, his large hand splayed across your lower back as he ushers you through the crowd, toward the bathroom. You turn to look at his mates over your shoulder, and the one in the ball cap gives you a cheeky wink right before the door slams shut and the only thing in your view is Simon with his balaclava pulled up just above his nose. Without warning, he slams your back against the wall and kisses you with a fervor you’ve only felt in more private areas with him. You moan against his lips, moving to wrap your arms around his neck, but he’s quicker, pinning your wrists above your head to keep you in place.

“Gonna teach y’some bloody manners,” he grumbles against your skin, nipping his way down your jawline and neck. “I like my pets domesticated.”

You gasp as he delivers a particularly harsh bite right to the middle of your throat, spit-slick tongue scalding against the wound. It’ll leave a nasty bruise but you couldn’t care less, clenching your thighs together in an attempt to get some much-needed friction. Simon tuts, briefly nibbling on your lobe before muttering into your ear.

“Spread ‘em.”

A simple command, but you scramble to obey, a soft whine escaping your parted lips. He’s quick to move his free hand down your stomach and between your thighs, cupping your mound roughly. You buck your hips, clothed clit rubbing right up against the heel of his palm. He groans, releasing your wrists to cusp your jaw instead.

“Knickers are fuckin’ soaked, lovie. All f’me?” His dark eyes bore into your own, fingernails leaving creases in the flesh of your cheek.

“All for you,” you reply breathlessly, grabbing onto his biceps to brace yourself for what comes next.

Simon pushes your panties aside and swipes the tip of his middle finger through your slit to collect the sticky dew of your arousal. He circles your clit a few times before teasing your entrance. He swirls his fingertip before pushing inside, all the way to the knuckle. He huffs amusedly at the mewl you let out.

“Mm, she’s droolin’ f’me, baby,” he whispers, his other hand cupping the back of your head and pulling you in for another kiss.

Without warning, he slips another finger inside, curling them to hit that sweet spot perfectly. You let out a keen moan and tilt your head back, too absorbed in pleasure to acknowledge the dull pain that comes when you hit the wall. Simon smiles, licking the tip of your nose teasingly.

“Tha’s the spot,” Simon coos, mouth falling open in the same fashion as yours.

His eyes never leave your face, transfixed on every twitch of your eyebrows and quiver of your lips. He’d argue that he’s more drunk on you than the whiskey he’d been enjoying just a few minutes ago. He pumps his fingers quicker, harder, attacking your neck with more soft kisses and nips. He chuckles when he feels your gummy walls clamping onto his fingers, your nails digging into the flesh of his biceps and leaving half-moons as a result. Simon doesn’t mind.

“Y’close, baby?” He hums, pulling away from your neck to press his forehead against yours.

“Y-yeah,” you pant, opening your eyes to stare into his, deep, dark with desire and burning with passion.

“Cum f’me,” he whispers, sucking your bottom lip into his mouth and massaging your g-spot in mind-numbing thrusts of those thick fingers. “There y’go, lovie, squeeze m’fingers jus’ like tha’.”

Simon moans alongside you as you reach your peak, lips curling into a pleased smirk. The second he feels your walls ease up he pulls his fingers out, causing a whine to slip out of your throat. He clicks his tongue, fingertips wrapping around your throat and squeezing gently.

“On your knees.”

You do as he says, glazed eyes just barely making out the sight of his veiny hands unbuckling his belt. Simon pulls his cock free of its confines, hissing at the sensation of cold air hitting the sensitive skin. His tip is an angry fuschia, dripping rich pearls of precum, and fuck—he must have been just as desperate as you. You’re still in a daze from the blinding ecstasy he put you through, staring at his pretty dick with your hands resting in your lap. He cocks an eyebrow beneath his mask, snapping his fingers at you.

“Well? Y’wanted this fuckin’ cock so bad, so suck it,” he spits, pushing on the back of your head and guiding you towards his throbbing erection.

Pulled out of your hazy state, you stick out your tongue the way you know he loves, grabbing the base of his dick and pulling down the thin layer of foreskin to reveal the thick crown beneath. You smack the tip against the middle of your tongue, moaning in unison with its owner as you stare up at him through fluttering lashes. Simon looks so fucking good like this—one hand rested on your head, the other bracing himself on the cool wall behind you. Unable to resist any longer, you wrap your lips around the tip and suckle softly, swiping your tongue through the slit to collect all of that delicious, salty precum.

“Oh, 'ell yeah,” Simon grunts, chin falling to rest right above his clavicle, drooping eyes focusing on your own. “Always take me so well.”

You smile the best you can with your mouth full, resting your hands on his muscular thighs before taking him deeper. You’re always surprised by his girth no matter how many times you hook up—such a fat cock that your lips have to stretch almost painfully to accommodate. He grunts as you flatten your tongue on the bottom of his dick, massaging the bulging vein and hollowing your cheeks for better suction. One of your hands moves up to cup his balls in your palm, gently squeezing. He shudders and you feel his cock twitch in your mouth; he’s already so close.

“Enough,” Simon pants, tightening his grip on your skull and carefully pulling your mouth off of his cock with a wet pop. “Fuck. What the ‘ell are you doin’ t’me, woman?”

You smile as he cups your cheeks in his hands, pulling you in for a feverish kiss. His tongue prods your mouth, running across your teeth and tongue and everywhere he can reach. Then, he stops, giving your ass a sharp smack.

“Turn around and bend over tha’ sink,” he instructs breathlessly, before deciding that would take too long, instead grabbing your hips and manhandling you into position.

You barely get any warning before he’s shoving your dress up to your waist and tearing off your panties. You gasp and turn to glare at him over your shoulder, but he’s already pocketing the ruined fabric.

“M’sorry, lovie. I’ll buy a new pair f’you… ‘ell, I’ll buy anythin’ y’want. Jus’ let me… ah fuck!” Simon throws his head back as he slides to the hilt inside of you in one blissful, searing stroke.

“Fuck!” You whimper, the painful stretch of your cunt struggling to suck him in causing you to hold onto the cold porcelain for dear life.

Simon wastes no time before starting to pump in and out slowly, giving you just a pinch of time to adjust. Then he takes hold of your hips and ruts into you with reckless abandon, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood trying to stifle his moans. You’re not so careful about your volume, squealing and babbling with every thrust he deals. He grunts, moving one hand to cover your mouth, pulling you back into his chest.

“Tha’ whore mouth o’yours is gonna get us in trouble,” he grumbles through gritted teeth though makes no effort to let up on his devastating thrusts.

“Drive me bloody fuckin’ insane, y’know tha’? Perfect, pretty baby, no fuckin’ good f’me.”

Your eyes roll into the back of your head as the fat tip of his cock kisses your sweet spot with perfect precision. Every stroke, every whisper, every smack of his hips against your ass has you seeing stars. You can feel the mascara and sweat dripping down your face, and you get the feeling that the rest of you looks just as fucked. You turn your head to look at yourself in the mirror, wiping away the fog to watch as Simon fucks you absolutely stupid. You meet his gaze in the reflection and he snickers, pulling the straps of your dress down so that your tits spill out from the fabric.

“Yeah, y’know you’re fuckin’ sexy,” he mutters, alternating between roughly palming at your breasts and tweaking your pert nipples. “Such a hot mess f’me.”

You’re dangerously close, teetering on the edge of that earth-shattering euphoria, and you know that Simon knows—that’s why you let out a defeated sob when he pulls out of you completely, leaving your pussy to clench around the newfound emptiness.

“W-why did you-?”

“Haven’t learned your lesson yet, bird,” he sniffs, tugging your head backwards so that his lips meet your ear. “Apologize for teasin’ me in front o’my mates like tha’.”

“Simon, please,” you beg, hot tears streaming down your puffy cheeks.

Simon tuts, giving your ass a couple of sharp smacks. You yelp, body jolting forward with each painful contact.

“Apologize.”

“I’m sorry!” You whine, fingertips prying at the sink as he glides the head of his cock through your glistening folds.

“For wha’?” He kisses his way down your neck, giving both nipples a rough pinch.

“For teasing you in- in front of your friends,” you mumble, squeezing your eyes tightly shut as his tip catches on the hood of your puffy clit.

“There’s m’good girl,” he purrs, running his hands down to your waist and giving it a soft squeeze. “Next time y’act up like tha’, you’re not gettin’ off this easy.”

“Please make me cum,” your bottom lip quivers as your eyes meet in the mirror once again, desperate for him to tame the fire he’s ignited in your belly and heart.

“Turn back around,” Simon whispers, stepping back to give you room to obey. “Wanna see tha’ pretty face when y’do.”

You turn to face him and wrap your arms around his neck, gasping softly as he cups your bottom in his hands, hoisting you up. He presses your back to the wall with your legs around his waist and kisses you again, but it’s much more tender than the previous ones. He gasps into your mouth as he pushes inside of you again, hands still firmly on your ass to keep you secure as he builds up a pace once more.

“Fuckin’ love you, y’know tha’?” He murmurs against your lips between kisses, his groans turning into softer moans as he gets closer to his climax. “Never jus’ a bloody hookup t’me.”

“S-Simon-” you furrow your eyebrows, pulling back to look at him, shocked by his confession.

“M’sick of actin’—shit—like this is jus’ a good fuck. We both know it’s no’,” he heaves, lewd wet sounds bouncing off the walls as he quickens his pace. “No more fuckin’ lyin’. You’re mine.”

The back of your head falls against the hard wall as you feel the coil in your tummy about to snap, walls contracting around his cock so tightly, like they’re trying to force him out.

“There y’go, pretty baby. Cum f’me, yeah? Fuck, please cum f’me. Cum on my cock, lovie, y’can do it.”

That’s all it takes before you’re crying out his name, your entire body feeling weightless and whole all at the same time. You think that Simon’s moans might be louder than your own, whimpering into your ear and you swear that you heard a sob right before he came. He holds himself deep inside of you as ropes of hot, thick semen fill your womb, refusing to move until the air finally settles between the two of you. He presses his forehead against yours once again, honeyed brown eyes staring into your glossy ones.

“I meant tha’. Every bloody word,” he admits, nuzzling his nose against your sweaty cheek. “You’re m’girl.”

Simon carefully pulls out of you with a gross squelch, helping you back onto your feet. He repositions your straps so that your breasts are in place and covered once again, as you tuck his softening cock back into his pants and buckle his belt. He cups your face in his hands and grins softly, wiping away the black-stained tears on your face with his thumbs.

“Come home with me tonight?” You ask gently, leaning into his touch.

“Always.”

#this wasn’t gonna be romantic but i can’t help myself apparently #call of duty #cod #cod mw2 #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #simon riley x female reader #ghost x female reader #ghost smut #ghost cod #ghost cod smut #simon riley smut #cod smut #call of duty smut

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