#dad caustic | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yeyinde · 4 months ago

Text

baby blues

John Price + the panic of fatherhood x reader

pregnancy. babies. soft. sappy. angsty. slight allusions to rough sex. John being possessive and smitten. allusions to childhood trauma. the fear of children is somehow more potent than the fear of god. girl dad John. mentions of Price's divorce lmao

Most assume he'd take to fatherhood like he'd been born for the role; handcrafted to cradle a swaddled babe in his arms. The perfect father figure. But as he hovers over your sleeping form, the little bundle nestled in the sleepy bracket of your arms, he's overcome with a sense of dread that punches hard enough to shatter bone.

The reality is this: Price doesn't understand kids. He wants them. Covets them with a viciousness that almost immediately sets alarm bells off in the heads of those who were opposed to the idea of children, parenthood. Giving birth. But when it comes to being a dad, a role model, an effigy to siphon wisdom and knowledge off of, he flounders. Hesitates.

All he has as an idea of fatherhood is bruises laughed off by the neighbours as him being a clumsy boy. A man who drank in the living room, silent in his fury, his belligerence, until something—anything, really—set him off. He always seemed like he was itching for a reason to punish.

And god, was he ever fucking good at it.

If anger issues are hereditary, then Price picked up the generational slack of his seething ancestors.

It's this, and the plethora of scars and burns that decorate his skin (well hidden, tucked away like a dirty secret because if Old Man Price was anything, it certainly wasn't stupid; he knows how to hide the ugliness of himself away, and how to turn a boy into a punching bag without causing too much damage, too much alarm) that make him ache something fierce when he sees his chubby little child for the first time.

Price doesn't know how to be gentle. All he has are worn, rough hands and a constant stench of smoke. A voice that makes grown men tremble. An ire unmatched thus far in his life.

Until you. Little spitfire. His hellion. You stood on the tips of your toes just to tell him off for being a stubborn pig! and then taught him how to hold you. How to be tender. But even now, he can see the wear on your skin from his bites. His propensity for violence that he morphs into desire. Into lust.

How is he supposed to be a dad when he's this caustic? This mean?

The answer doesn't come. All he gets is the rhythmic sigh of your breath as you sleep, well and truly exhausted after giving birth to their child. All alone. A constant in your lives, it seems. Aloneness. His work takes him away, throws him into dangerous situations. And you carry the brunt of it.

It caused the rupture of his first marriage and is a needling fear he carried with him when you started pursuing him some odd years ago. To think that he'd be standing here now, gazing down at you with your heavy eyes and your soft cheeks, rounded with the additional weight you gained during your early trimesters. A plushness he's trying to keep on you for good—all softened edges, flesh that gives when he touches you, marshmallows out between his fingers when he squeezes.

You look good like this. Motherhood, despite your misgivings (it took three years of him hinting and hounding you before you'd relented with a sure, what's the worst that could happen? We're terrible parents and raise a terrible kid? Or we end up the catalyst for a list of psychological issues and get reamed out during their therapy sessions later on in life?), suits you. Fits you like a glove.

A fact you'd been quietly overwhelmed by in the first few months, grieving the loss of something he couldn't ever understand, or experience. A piece of yourself morphing into the mother that raised you. A kaleidoscope of feelings that you choke on when he asks, unable to render them into coherent words.

But you're good at that, aren't you? Good at culling expectations, at superseding the limits others place on you. Even him.

Especially him.

When he'd said, don't know what you're gettin’ yourself into, love, you took it to the chin like he challenged you to a brawl, and set out to show him why you knew what this was, what he was, and why it didn't matter much.

Even now—

Giving birth all alone. Overcoming the isolation of being shackled to a man who married his post first. Sisterwife to his career. Second in all things.

Even this.

He was in Iceland when he got the call. Laswell, of all people, was on the other line telling him his own wife was in the delivery room. Water broke. Baby is on the way.

And you—

Don't worry, old man. Just do what needs to be done and we'll be waiting. Always.

—well. You certainly are. Alone in a hospital room with the curtains drawn to blot out the sun as you sleep, cradling this thing he made with his fingers shoved deep into your mouth, uttering foul under his breath as he crushed you to the bed, rutting you like an animal—the most tender he could ever be—and he's suddenly all too aware of his own inadequacies. His shortcomings. Failures.

He's not a dad. He's not the sort of man people think about when they think healthy father figure. He likes cigars and whiskey, and sometimes aches for a mission that will let him cut his knuckles on teeth—bloodletting; exorcising his demons out on the people he's sanctioned to kill. How is he supposed to guide a child when he threw a man over a railing without a second thought—

The bundle stirs. Wrinkled, red face scrunching up tight. Little thing is just like you, huh? All softness and give. All—

They cry, and it's shrill. Loud. It jars him.

Not the sound, but the anguish he feels piercing through his chest as they bellow out their confusion to the world, this lost little thing. Strapped with a father who was beaten black and blue and told to be a man when he cried.

But right now—anger is the furthest thing on his mind. He can't fathom that emotion when his child is whimpering in your arms, chubby little fingers grasping at the air. Seeking comfort.

Waking you feels cruel when you've spent the better part of two days awake. Four, really. You couldn't sleep when the contractions hit, wide-eyed and worried about everything. What if something went wrong? If they hated you? What if you hurt them—

Worries he tried to assuage, but couldn't deny he felt them, too.

All he knows how to do is hurt. But as he reaches down for this little thing squirming in your arms, he tells himself to be tender. To be the man his dad never was.

And they're soft. So fuckin’ soft. Tiny, too. His hands dwarf them, engulfing them completely. He tries to blame the way he trembles on the denial of nicotine for so long, but the mist in his eyes, and the burn in his throat, call him a liar. He doesn't know what to do. Even with all the hours spent thumbing through manuals and books and scoffing under his breath at the parenting courses you dragged him to (but paid rigid attention to every word the heavily bangled woman said to him), he feels lost. Unsure. The ground is shaky. Control slips. And that's maybe the crux of it all—

Babies can't be controlled. And it's the loss of this, what makes him whole, keeps him steady, that has him feeling rubber-limbed and fawn-like.

“Quiet, now,” he murmurs, and then winces at the rough drag of his voice in the silence of the room. Too firm, too forceful. All the gentleness he has in his bones was devoured by your greedy mouth when you cracked him open like the legs of a snow crab, marrow slurped up until he was hollow. Empty. His tenderness rests inside your belly. What else does he have to give—

But the warm bundle in his awkward, clumsy hold stops their shrill cries. A girl, he remembers you saying. Crying. Sobbing into the phone when he called, all ugly and gross. He heard you sniffle, snot undoubtedly dribbling from your nose as you wept to him about how fucking cute their baby was. Their little girl.

She's soft. Smells of a newborn, too—something powdery. Sweet. Warmed milk, fresh bread. The clinical books that made you squeamish, the ones that outlined every anatomical and chemical change to your body, mentioned that newborns smelled distinct to each parent. A phenomenon meant to encourage protection and bonding.

It made you shiver, muttering my little parasite under your breath, even as your hand curved possessively over your bulging belly.

He knows that's what this is. Chemical. His mind is evolving, shifting. Changing. And it's then that he feels something hot thicken in his throat. Something ugly, and bitter. The scars on his knuckles, the cigarette burns on his fingers are a sharp reminder of what his father felt and ignored.

He scoffs, then, irritated at himself. He's a grown man and still—

Still thinks of him.

“Won't be like that,” he says, still rough. Still firm. She blinks up at him, eyes rheumy and wide. “Not with you.”

Never. Never. He pins the word to his pericardium, letting it rot his tissue. He'd rather die, he thinks, than ever hurt this little girl. But despite that, he knows he will. Inevitably. Just like he does everything good—or bad—in his life. Leaching from the goodness of others, sucking them dry and letting them moulder. A disappointment everywhere except the battlefield where he screams himself hollow and rents the air with his ire. Incorrigible. Immovable. An object of cruelty. Unforgiving in all aspects. A curse that follows him home, into his marital bed when he pins you down, and makes you profess your love for the beast inside of him. Never satiated, never quelled, until you're shackled at his side. Tucked away from the world he knows is too cruel to people like you who end up a corpse he has to step over on his way for empty retribution.

He thinks, too, about all the ways he's going to ruin this chubby little thing in his arms, and wishes, suddenly, he was a better man.

“Gonna hate my fuckin' guts when you're sixteen, aren't you?” In response, this little thing just opens its red maw and blows bubbles. He huffs. “You're gonna be nothin’ but trouble, mm? Steal my car. Crash it because your mum's gonna teach you how to drive and she backed into the garage six times already. Gonna gang up on me. Both of you. Little nightmares.”

He's not sure what else to say, and thinks, already, that he said too much. Bared his belly to her too soon. She'll have this memory, buried down in the deep recesses of her psyche of her father falling to pieces while he held her. An impossibility, he knows, but can't shake the feeling that this, in itself, is an epoch. A marker for what's to come. All the ugly, the hate. The screaming matches that make him curl his hand into fists as she levels his failures at him. Not to hit. Never to hit. But to stop the tremble that won't stop. That has already started. The shake in his joints that tell him to run before he hurts. Before he ruins this precious mass of his blood and your tissue in his arms.

“Gonna—” he isn't crying. Isn't. But there's a thickness in his throat as he thinks about how quickly she'll grow up. Age marked in the crows feet that gather around your eyes. The laugh lines. “Gonna be a fuckin' menace, and I'll—” he chokes, then, when she reaches up with a pudgy, red fist and snags the strap of his vest he didn't even bother taking off before he fled here. Fat, tiny fingers curling into the spot he grabs to ground himself from lashing out. “Fuck.”

He'd burn the world for her, he knows. Sacrifice everyone and everything just to keep her warm. Both of you. It begins and ends with this little thing that has your eyes and his nose.

But he doesn't know how to translate that into love. Into affection.

It comes out caustic. Abrasive. Possessive.

And he is.

Now that he has her in his hands he knows that nothing else will ever compare. That they'll never be empty because she'll always fit in his palms no matter how big she gets. There's only ever been enough space in his heart for you. Chiselled into with a fuckin’ pickaxe because you wouldn't wait for it to grow on its own.

But there's give, he realises. This domicile you carved yourself has a room attached. A place for her. And she fits like a glove. Sliding inside. Cocooned against his pulse.

He loves her. Endlessly. Forever. She deserves better. More.

But when he tells her this, she makes a noise and it sounds like a giggle.

“Laughin’ at me already, mm?”

She giggles again, and he likes that her laugh is a little ugly. A little mean.

“Scarin’ the wits outta me,” he confesses, shifting her weight as she occupies herself with the clasp of his vest, disinterested in the man that breaks into pieces around her now. “I don't know—fuck, I don't—”

You come to in a panic. It starts as a slow roll to the side before your eyes flash open, wide and furious even as sleep congeals in the corners, pawing at the empty spot where the lingering warmth of your child presses into your chest. Anger, fury, darkens over your brow, and the apoplectic rage that simmers in the gaps of your dread, your fostering panic, softens him. Makes him melt. The burn of your ire, your fear, liquifying his bones.

He falls in love with you a little bit more at that moment. When the snarl rucks your upper lip up, up, teeth bared to the world as you whip your head around in frantic, desperate dismay, searching for the little girl he knows you, too, will burn the world for.

“I've got her,” he says, whisper-soft and low. Cadence even, clear. Tries to quell the howl he can see hammering its fists against your throat before it rips from your lips and scorches the world around you in a hail of horrifying anguish. “She's safe.”

It says something when you immediately go still at the sound of his voice, muscles going lax, slack, as you slowly turn your head toward him, blinking against the fog clotting your vision. Something that cuts him to the core. Rents his chest in halves. One side for you, and the other for her. Nothing left to spare.

This feeling brimming in his chest sweetens when you startle at the sight of him, them, lashes shuttering like an old camera as if you were trying to sear the image in your head forever. Branded on the back of your eyelids. (A sentiment he knows all too well considering the stream of photos added to his camera roll of you and her nuzzled together.)

“You—” your voice catches, breaks from sleep. Fatigue. You swallow, slowly licking your lips. “When did you get in?”

Your eyes are glued to them. Unblinking. Widened with pure affection, the intensity of which makes him want to touch you, hold you.

“A few hours ago,” he murmurs, glancing down at his—

It cuts a jagged line through his chest. Knicks his bone with how deep it goes. False starts pressed tight to his heart.

—his daughter. Fuck’s sake.

He's choked. Strangled. Rendered mute, immobilised. It guts him, this. Daughter. The ring of it echoes in his head, filling the recesses of his mind. Embedding itself within his head. Congealed over. Fixed in place.

“I have a fuckin’ daughter,” he breathes at length, the air knocked from his lungs. He's not sure why this is what breaks him, but it does. And it's you, then, holding the fracturing pieces together, hands reaching out—in a startling mimicry of his daughter, and fuck, doesn't that just eviscerate him—and curling against the heaving brackets of his ribs, boxing him in.

“John,” you say, but your voice wobbles. Wavers. When he peels his eyes away from the sleepy yawn she lets out long enough to look at you, there's tears flooding your lashline. Threatening to break. “Fuck,” you say, crass and beautiful, and he's overcome with the urge to tuck you into his other arm, keep you both cradled in his hands. “Don't make me cry or my stitches will tug.”

“We've got a daughter,” he says again, just to hear it uttered aloud. We. Yours. His. It messes with him. Bludgeons into his core. “We've—”

“She's beautiful, isn't she?”

Your words shatter him, but the pinch of your hands on his waist keeps him from buckling.

“Yeah,” he rasps, voice thick. Ugly. It's mangled in his throat. All fractured and raw. “Just like her mother.”

He shows his affection in the burn of his embrace. In the way he holds you tight, refusing to let go. Keeps his words callous and firm. Soft utterances, declarations of love, tucked away in the sure, greedy way he clings to you in his sleep. Yields to you like no one else. Lets you in.

And he supposes he ought to say it more often if the way your face crinkles up just like his daughter when she cried, tears spilling over your rounded cheeks.

“Don't,” you heave, ugly and brittle, and he thinks you're the prettiest thing he'd ever seen in his life. “Don't or I'll rip my stitches—”

He huffs. Nods only once, and then steps toward you. “Do you want—?”

“Keep her for a little while,” you mutter, leaning back into the bed, eyes lidded by fond. So in love with him, the picture they paint, it's almost sickening. “She likes you.”

He snorts. “She's only three hours old. Give her time.”

You're quiet for a beat. Pensive. Mulling something over. It's never a good thing when you're silent, and the unease that grows in his belly is justified when you heave out a long, tired exhale through your nose.

The way you look at him is raw. “You're not your father, John.”

And isn't that just the worst lie he'd ever heard.

He scoffs, then. Shifts his weight, still cradling his daughter tight to his chest. “Mm, 'dunno about that.”

“I do.”

“Jus’—” leave it. Keep going. Keep feeding him lies as he stands here and pretends that he wasn't a horrible bastard for wanting this from you. From taking it. Strapping you with a man who's always, always, one foot out the door—

“No.” You say, soft and sure. “You're not him. I know you're not because you're still here.”

“So was he.”

You don't acknowledge the interruption. Content, it seems, to rattle off lies and half-truths into the stifling air. Your eyes close, the curve of your lashes leonine. Breathtaking.

“Do you want me to take her?” You ask instead of the multitude of things he can see piling behind your eyes. Some of the ugly. Jagged glass. Others powder soft.

He shakes his head. “You need your rest,” it's a half-truth. Fatigue clings to you still, swathed in the purpling of your skin. The slow, heavy blinks you take to try and fight the tug of an artificial sleep.

But the real reason is this:

He's just not ready to let her go.

Thinks, viciously, suddenly, that if he does, this moment built between them in budding, liquid blue will cease forever. Severed too soon. She'll carry the same resentment in her heart he feels for his own father, and he'll die in a shallow pit thinking about how badly he wanted just a second longer.

Generational, right? Trickle down hatred. Ancestral rage. It's what your grandma talks about sometimes over tea and fried bread, half disbelieving you brought a white man into her home, and making a show, a facade, of wisdom even though he spotted the how to raise a child notebook she hastily shoved into the kitchen drawer when you arrived. Taking over in place of your own mother, stepping up. And yet—

She just doesn't get it, you said, rubbing your hands over your belly when she steps away after another long-winded conversation about traditions, spirits, and dead languages. Raising a child like yours in a world like this. She's just. I don't know. Ignore her.

(He doesn't. But you don't have to know that.)

So. He clings to her a little tighter. Holds her a little firmer. Brings her close to his chest and hopes she can hear the echo of his heartbeat and know that this tired, old song is just for her.

(The heart itself for you—)

And maybe—

Maybe he's not quite ready to see you be a mother. Some perverse part of him is already trembling at the promise of watching you nurture and feed her, the tantalising whisper is enough to make the air in his lungs turn humid, sticky. Tar, you remind him sometimes, having seen the ugly spatter of black in the grainy photos the doctor in Hereford likes to shove at him. Never too late to reverse the damage, John.

Or maybe he wants you for himself just a moment longer. An hour. A day. When you're still you, shackled and bound to a man who reeks of stale tobacco, and started sneaking cigarettes in the dead of night like some pimply, awkward teenager when you first came to him, cheeks wet and eyes wild, and said:

“John, I'm—”

Pregnant.

He did it, of course. Put that baby in you. Made it with his teeth buried into your throat and your hips canting up to meet him, taking everything he had to offer. Animal aggression. Nothing tender in the way he chewed you up, made you beg him for it. But still—

Wanting and having are worlds apart, aren't they?

Faced with it, the consequences of his actions, he's at a standstill.

You hum, and when your eyes slide open, he feels the mallet against his head. Cracked open. You fossick about until you find what you're looking for. Cheeky fuckin’ thing—

“Fine. Just pull up a chair before you keel over, old man.”

“M’fine,” he grouses in that voice that serves as a dice roll between making you feel hot or homicidal depending on the mood he catches you in. Muttering something under your breath that sounds like a whispered plea for guidance (“tss, gimme strength.”)

But even with the waspish denial, he's inching closer to the spare chair left in the corner, looping his ankle around the leg to slide it closer. The squeal of rubber on aluminium makes him grimace, eyes darting down to his sleeping girl, nestled in his arms. Her brow pinches in the same way your grandma’s do when she's annoyed by the news. Her bingomates. The way he refuses her offering of burning tobacco and lemongrass whenever he goes away for a while, unable to really commit to this little, broken family that feels more like home than his own ever did.

(“aint my place,” he says, and she scoffs.

“fuck, s'matter wit’cha?” is her counter, the harsh line between her brows now perfectly superimposed on his daughter’s face. “tss. ain't yer place, eh. are you tryna piss me off? fuck, you make me mad—”)

He sees that spitting anger in you. Generational, he knows. The same inherited attitude his daughter will inevitably have. The one that singles him out as an outlier. Outnumbered. Three, now, to one—

There's got to be a reason why his chest bubbles, innervated by the thought of a Sunday dinner when she's old enough to watch her grandma make intricate bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and pins with thread and glass beads as you, her mother, cuss at the stove that doesn't burn as hot as it used to, flipping over golden dough in a sizzling pan.

Orange juice in old cups your grandma kept since the nineties. Something soft playing on the radio. The peeling, waterlogged wallpaper flakes off the wall when you slam the pan down too hard. The way the spill of the sun through the rusting window rents the room in half. Pale yellow and oak. Little orange blossoms in soft pink above the speckled granite countertops. Everything awash in a gossamer of sleepy-eyed affection.

Just like it is now. But—

He looks down at her, head full of lead. Cotton.

Complete, maybe.

“Don't know how to be a dad,” he confesses to you, and thinks of how much easier it is to slam a sledgehammer into a metal door than it is to peel back the veneer sometimes. “Don't want to mess up.”

“You'll be fine.”

The crinkle of the plastic mattress, the scratch of the sheets sliding across the bed is louder now than it was before. He cuts the gentle sounds with an abrading hum that clicks off his teeth.

“Get some sleep,” he says again instead of the awful truth that buoys in his throat. Things like you don't know and I tricked you this whole time into thinking I'm a good man and look what you’ve let me do to you. “You need it.”

Another noise. In his periphery, he watches you lean back against the upright pillows, lips parted on a soft sigh. He feels—

Small, then. An oxymoron considering he has to duck his head to get in and out of the room, towering over most he meets daily. But the inadequacies gut him. Vivisect him. He should be more comforting to you, he knows. This whole thing has been difficult. Tiresome. Cut into and having the life you grew inside of you cut out—

“Did good,” he rasps, still staring down at her even as he pulls the chair as close to your bed as he can get. “With her.”

You snort. It's inelegant. Ugly. Brittle, like you're holding back tears.

When he glances up, he finds that you are. “You're strong,” he adds, and knows he should have started with this first. “Doin’ this all on your own.”

“I had help.”

It's awkward trying to adjust himself in the seat with his daughter perched in his arms, but he finds a way. Settled, then, with her still sleeping away, he lifts his hand from her back, keeping her cradled in his arm with the other, and reaches for you.

The starchy sheets catch on the bramble of hair on his knuckles, the back of his hand, and the static jolts tickle against the rough scar tissue thickened over his knuckles, some still fresh, scabbed from the latest mission he'd been deployed to. You watch him, misty-eyed and tremulous, as he draws nearer, eyes flickering like a pendulum between the bundle nestled on the thick of his arm, to him, watching you back. Greedily taking in every spasm, every blink.

Something inside of him cracks. Softens. He thinks, breathless, that you've never been as beautiful to him as you are right now. Bubbles of snot in your nose. Eyes reddened, dropping from exhaustion. A dizzying mess. The sort that speaks of tireless work, of physicality. Muted pain brimming in the backs of your eyes when you pull on your stitches.

“Got a pretty wife,” he says, and it's not enough. He knows it isn't. Looks away before the fracture lilt to his tone breaks him in two. “And—” it's hard to say. He forces himself to. “And a beautiful daughter.”

The tears stream down your face at this quiet, clumsy admission.

“Don't—” you sniffle, hoarse. “Or I'll tear my stitches.”

“M’not doin' anythin’, love.”

“Fuck you, John—”

He leans back in his chair with a hum, eyes slipping shut. A brief respite amid the panic still clinging tight to his ribcage. “Love you too.”

It's quiet. Nothing but the soft drag of each breath his daughter takes, the tremulous sniffle you give as you try to dam the tears sliding down your cheeks. His heart hammering in his ears. He commits it all to memory. Glueing it to the fibrils of mind where it'll stay, embedded in tissue, for as long as he is of sound mind.

Much like the grainy, black-and-white ultrasounds stuffed in his breast pocket. Tucked inside the drawer of his desk where he keeps the pictures of you. Keepsakes he's unnecessarily possessive over, elbowing the rowdier men who try to needle him for sparse information on the little wife he hides at home and the baby they'll never meet. Something just for him. Unshareable to the rest of the world because they don't deserve you.

The feathered snores tell him you're finally asleep, and he thinks about resting for a moment as well—the bone-deep exhaustion he feels jetting from Iceland to home, to the hospital catches up to him with a vicious kick to temples—but the weight in his arm keeps him awake. Hyperviligent.

There's this urge clawing at him, making ruins of his chest, and he answers its worried insistence by opening his eyes just a sliver to stare down at the little bundle in his arms only to find she's staring back at him. Eyes wide. Comically too big for her chubby face.

She has your complexion, but his dark curls. Her eyes, though, are the perfect equilibrium between pools of sapphire, burnt blue, marbled with the dark gleam, that vibrant shade of yours that he's so fond of, the one that's often accompanied by a smart-ass remark. Seeing it gaze up at him with such incipient adoration knocks the air from his lungs. Has his heart shuddering in the brackets of his chest.

It's love, he thinks first. Instantaneous. Apodictic. And then, cold, callous—

Chemical.

Just to hurt himself, maybe. Just to let it cut deep. Scar. Because as he stares down at her, he knows it doesn't matter. No amount of hatred, of anger, will ever rip her away from him. His daughter. His family. His.

Like her mother. The root of it all. The catalyst. The start.

Shackled to this gaping chasm that devours endlessly, never satiated. Always starving.

Needy. Full of greed.

Because even now he covets. Craves. Muses to himself about how he can convince you to have another the moment the opportunity arises and you're healed. Whole. Aching for it.

He wasn't joking when he said he wanted a football team.

But for now—

The soft sighs you make in your sleep, ones that almost sound like his name, and the comforting weight of his daughter in his arms are enough to make the beast inside purr. Preening under its own conquest, its own victory of successfully turning your body into a home he can rest his weary head on. Sacrosanct.

He looks at her, then, and feels the dread ease into pride. Into elation. An emotion he knows should have come first, but it's here now, and that's all that really matters.

“Gonna be trouble,” he grouses, watching her pink mouth gape wide, blood-red maw grinning up at him in delirious glee only babies can imbue. Unhindered by the ruination of the world around them. Unfettered.

Something he couldn't protect you from, but knows you're both on the same wavelength when it comes to her. At all costs, you'd said, hand against the burgeoning swell. And he kissed you until he couldn't feel his lips anymore. Until all he tasted, all he knew, was the taste of you.

“Of the best kind, though, mm?”

In response, she coos. And he hews the sound into his chest where it sits beside the brand of when you first said, i love you, too, John.

So, he relaxes. Whispers soft, conspiratorily. "Think you might need'a brother, mm? What'd you say about that?"

And she giggles.

#john price x reader #captain price x reader #i am at a loss for words #this is gross and sappy mlahhhhh #sprinkled with the slightest indigeneity #captain john price x reader

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eddiespornstache · 3 months ago

Text

It starts because they don’t think they like each other very much

Josh has always been unlucky in love. Nobody ever sticks around for him. So he’s jaded. He’s internalized that he isn’t easy to deal with, let alone love. Fine, if he can’t have a partner, he can at least blow off steam with a fuckbuddy. And there’s been a few, and Josh is resigned to that being his life.

Eddie’s a nester, but he’s spent his entire life trying to build nests in the wrong places with the wrong people for the wrong reasons. He’s been doing everything based off what he thought was best for Chris and now he’s driven Chris away. So now, at his lowest, Eddie is maybe thinking about wanting what he’s spent years trying not want.

Josh and Eddie used to be coworkers, but they aren’t anymore. They’ve got mutual friends, but they’ve never spent significant time together. They aren’t unknown entities to each other, but it’s not like they particularly care about each other either. They’re both bitter, caustic men at their worst, but they can handle each other’s barbs.

Josh is the perfect guy for Eddie to explore having gay sex with without any strings. Eddie is the perfect guy for Josh to have another meaningless hook-up based relationship with.

And once Eddie gets his sea legs, it’s good sex. It’s great sex! Josh has a ton of experience and Eddie has always had a gift for pleasing his partners. They make each other feel incredible. And for a while that’s all it is.

But the longer that they’re going at it, and the more they realize that their bickering is foreplay, the more they realize they don’t dislike each other nearly as much as they thought. And suddenly, ‘I don’t care about him, but he can handle me at my worst’ becomes ‘he can handle me at my worst and, damn, I think i might really like him for it’.

And slowly the time they spend together becomes less and less about just sex. They can talk for hours, teasing and sniping and commiserating and giggling together. They start hanging out in other contexts. It’s almost like they’re dating. And that’s when they realize, they’ve fallen into it so naturally. They are dating.

And Josh is charmed by Christopher, because everybody is, and when they get officially introduced they get along quite well, even though Josh isn’t interested in being another dad to him. But Eddie realizes that it’s not what Chris wants either—and that it’s okay for Josh to be just another trusted adult in Chris’s life when he’s something more to Eddie. He’s Chris’s dad, and he’s enough.

And Josh could never have dreamed of a partner more dedicated, and adoring, and romantic as Eddie Diaz once he lets down his walls and lets himself want something wholeheartedly. They’re both something to each other they never thought or expected they’d be able to have.

#anyway they could be a perfect fit for each other #and their dynamic would be nothing like any canon couple on the show rn so they’d feel so fresh too #I wouldn’t actually calls this a manifesto or whatever but this is what I came up with lol #eddiejosh #eddie diaz #josh russo #911 abc #911 headcanons #911 season 8 #diaz boys #christopher diaz

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ne-videl · 11 months ago

Text

𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐡

♡

yandere archon Zhongli x mean fem reader

Morax turned your new life into hell and you despise him for that.

MDNI, sub then dom then sub Zhongli, yandere, unhealthy relationship, forced marriage, kidnapping, just very very unhappy and abused reader, sexual violence, slight violence from reader, nsfw?? or just heavily suggestive, poor english!!! please tell me if I forgot anything ><

word count: ~2k

a/n: hiii everyone! welcome to my first post!! as a fellow yandere x reader enjoyer I decided to share some of my own stuff here. (it took a while bc translating any of my work is hell)

I hate violent and domineering yanderes so at the end geo grandpa gets what he deserved for being toxic ^^

I think Zhongli was a menace in his youth and you can't change my mind.

basically we just turn mean and cruel yandere morax into pathetic yandere morax

bon appètit.

you push your fingers deeper, harder, making his knees tremble and his back arch.

Zhongli exhales noisily, pressing his heated face against the cold wall.

you squeezed his throat with your long, musical fingers: the lack of oxygen made his heart beat even faster.

"why...?" he whispered with a hoarse moan, turning an intoxicated, misty gaze on you.

"for you being alive."

____*:･ﾟ✧

your new life was good, even better than the previous one – you thought. kind and affectionate parents, friends, little shop in a little village. little people doing their little things.

when you realized you were in the game, your new body was about three years old. "Liyue" fell from your mother's lips, and that was enough for you to understand.

"what a strange Liyue they have here... still in it's cradle, perhaps." – little you thought, concentrated on sorting out bright and shiny stones, sitting on the porch of your modest house.

over the years, little girls turn into beautiful women: with pink cheeks, delicate skin and lips with the color of fresh peach tree fruits.

when you, bright and beautiful you, working in the shop of your dear parents, met a man with amber eyes, you were sixteen.

even at the first glance you recognized your deity. beaming, you greeted him from behind the counter. the only answer for you was silence and his heavy gaze.

chrysanthemums silently looked at you with their curious heads, standing in a vase on an old table top.

when Morax came for the second time, you realized that he was here for you. all that remained was to silently say goodbye to mom and dad, cheerful girls at the neighborhood and to kind elders of your tiny village: you will never see them all again. while he was leading you through the corridors of his cold palace, clutching your little hand until it hurt, you were saying goodbye to your old life. It was impossible to even think about who you were before: it was as if she didn't exist anymore at all.

you wanted to cry.

from that day on, you began to hate chrysanthemums.

____*:･ﾟ✧

day 345765. your 948th anniversary is approaching.

life is akin to hell.

warrior god knew nothing about love. you've already lost count of the nights you've had to perform "marital duty", waking up with back pain and counting bloody red hickeys on your delicate skin.

your husband's stamina could only be matched by his insatiability.

you examine your neck, covered with bitemarks, with the gaze of a pathologist looking at a corpse before vivisection.

what a vile, gut-wretching sight.

over the years, the personality of geo archon's spouse has suppressed the personality of the one you used to be. and the attachment of a girl who spends the night playing videogame towards her favorite character no longer existed at all.

only hatred remained. blind, caustic, it alone forced you to get up in the morning, waiting for never coming end of this nightmare.

someday you will make him regret that he was even born into the world.

he wasn't the character you loved: not Zhongli, not the funeral parlor consultant. only person you knew now was Rex Lapis, lord of geo.

he alone was capable of destroying your pride: tearing off all the sparkling jewels from you, depriving you of the shine of false power with which you methodically surrounded yourself with decades.

it was making you angry, irritated to the point of trembling in your hands: it made the inferiority complex tear your chest with it's disgusting little claws and wail plaintively. he is the master, and you are the property.

you aren't trembling under your husband's steady gaze. you didn't like being alone with him, but on every night you spent together, your posture was stiff, like an unbending bamboo shoot. haughtily raised chin and burning eyes. burning not with passion, no. with disgust.

"I..."

I belong to you. the words you've said at least hundreds of times by now.

"I hate you. I despise you with every little piece of my soul."

Morax greedily bites into your lips, and you feel your skin cracking under his sharp fangs, while hot hands painfully squeeze your shoulder under the silk hanfu.

painful. disgusting.

he takes you, as he did on many nights before: cruelly and vulgarly.

and you scream, you grin at his impassive face: you promise your husband that someday you will kill him, will wring his neck. that you will hate him for the rest of your endless life. you desperately tear the skin of his broad back with your blunt nails, growling and whining like a hunted, beaten dog.

Rex Lapis licked the blood off a fresh bite on your skin.

pulling the maid by the hair, who dared to chatter right in your ear early in the morning about how romantic it all was, was quite in the spirit of the "noble spouse", known for her more than bad, bilious temper.

"nights and nights long, oh, what a passion! what a burning, beautiful love!"

you are so lucky, madam.

girl is sobbing, with her head pressed against the wall. you hiss, venomously and viciously, tightening your grip on strands of her hair with tenacious, elegant fingers.

"stupid bitch. romantic, huh? you think I enjoy it? what, want to take my place?" – frightened maid runs out of her mistress's luxurious bedroom in tears.

you were jealous of that innocent girl. a girl who was able to cry when after being raped. who could see something beautiful in trivial things. who probably had a loving husband and family. that pathetic maid was better than you, an icy cold shell of a human driven only by hatred and a thirst for revenge.

you pursed your lips in disgust.

you developed a habit of despising everything that was better than you.

____*:･ﾟ✧

you always loved music, and over time you became very fond of playing it on your own. it helped to keep your mind in order.

whether it's a guqin with silk strings or an elegant erhu, or, a more exotic one, a lacquered piano brought especially for you from Fontaine – over time you have mastered every available musical instrument perfectly.

it was a good way to keep yourself busy, to not think of useless things. you've had more than enough time in a couple thousand years to master all this.

thin fingers drum on the keys: furiously, with malice, while the piano obediently gives out note after note.

Morax loved listening to you play, especially erhu. his delicate dragon hearing gravitated towards graceful, gentle melodies. even in this matter, your opinions did not agree: you, his spouse, loved to play music so that the maids, shuddering, thought why their mistress was furious once again.

you had beautiful hands, as befits a great musician; and with those beautiful hands you were concentrated on running your fingers through your husband's long hair.

the tips of the strands shimmer with amber in your delicate hands.

you never took the initiative or showed affection, and Morax, although genuinely surprised by such a sudden request, gladly complied. it was nice to feel the gentle touch of your thin fingers, occasionally touching the scalp and sending shivers down his back. low, guttural rumble came from his chest as he closed his eyes in euphoric bliss.

you put the jade comb aside.

"indeed, what a beautiful hair." – you drawled indifferently, noticing the hot blush on his neck, which burned even more after you pulled harder.

indeed, beautiful. how nice it would be to hit his head on an expensive countertop, wrapping it around your fist. how he would react? you would really like to see tears and fear in his bright eyes.

"beauuutiful..." – you hissed with a caustic sneer at the very ear of the lord of geo, pulling especially hard.

your husband's uncharacteristically high-pitched moan was your answer.

____*:･ﾟ✧

with each millennium spent together, your spouse has become softer. calmer, more respectful towards you. and even if you still noticed the possessive twinkle in his amber eyes, it was incomparable to the fire of poisonous passion that burned in them once.

at least now you were allowed to manage your own time. how generous of him, to end your imprisonment within the walls of the palace – you thought with caustic sarcasm, picking up another glaze lily for a bouquet.

now you even had friends – if that's what you could call the adepti and other loyal companions of Morax. all of them, of course, sympathized with your situation, but never made any attempts to help. they didn't interfere – no one ever did.

the sunset was blazing bright orange – or scarlet, or pink – didn't matter. you frowned, looking into nowhere.

Guizhong plopped a large bouquet of glaze lilies into your hands, snatching you out of your gloomy thoughts, but immediately running away in embarrassment.

"and why?" – you felt the urge to roll your eyes, but pulled yourself out of the annoying habit. goddess of dust, although considered you friends and did not hide the fact that she liked you, the wife of Morax, alone with you trembled like an autumn leaf in the wind.

piercing, cold eyes slid to embarrassed goddess, and you tried to give her a smile: the best you were still capable of, if were capable at all. so that it doesn't look like a facial muscle spasm.

"thank you. they're pretty." – goddess of dust smiled back: bright and sunny. in your gaze, for a second, shifted a non malicious envy, with which elders who have lived a long, harsh lives look at children. you yourself forgot how to smile like that a long time ago.

yes, perhaps you were really a little jealous of Guizhong. of the fact that she did not meet Morax as a young and cruel deity. the lady of the Guili Assembly knew him as wise and merciful, her faithful ally and reliable support. you didn't blame her for that, but you still couldn't help a slight tremor in your hands at the sight of your husband having a pleasant conversation with his friends.

well, after another millennia, Rex Lapis has come to love having pleasant conversations with you too.

"lovely flowers." – Morax patted you on your shoulder, smiling tenderly, but you, however, did not consider it necessary to respond in kind.

"Guizhong gave it to me." – you mumbled dryly.

"I see. do you like her?" – geo archon leaned closer to you, affection shining in his amber eyes.

"I don't know." – you closed your cold eyes, without taking your tired gaze from the bouquet.

Morax kissed the top of your head, and you twisted your face in disgust.

____*:･ﾟ✧

war of the archons died down with great noise, bringing destruction and devastation. having lost many, Morax took his place among the Seven.

and even Guizhong, sweet and kind Guizhong, fell victim to this massacre. although, of course, for the wife of the geo archon her death and the deaths of many others were not as much a blow as for himself.

slender fingers pluck the strings of the erhu, playing an elegant, long-drawn melody.

"[name]. I know you hate me, but still-" Rex Lapis looked at his wife with deep, sick affection and sadness in his amber eyes, like a beaten puppy, – "but still, please..."

you lift your eyelids, giving him a cold, indifferent look, and put down the instrument.

"you do not worth pity." – you say dryly, pursing your lips, – "at least not mine."

Morax rests his head on your shoulder, desperately inhaling your scent, as if afraid that you will disappear.

"please. just this once. help me just once, I beg you." – you feel the hot moisture staining the silk of your hanfu.

your beautiful hand rests on the top of his head, and you hear a noisy intake of breath, and his fingers tightly grip your forearm in a desperate embrace.

your little god is so pathetic. how disgusting.

see, how simple everything turns out to be? beg, even better if you cry, and maybe I'll feel a little sorry for you.

but you both knew that you would never allow him the luxury of your pity.

your tenacious fingers grabbed his hair in a firm grip, and you lift his head so that your husband looks into your eyes. into your cold, mocking eyes.

the only thing you desired to see in your former tormentor's gaze was fear, but even in that matter he disappointed you. Morax was looking at you with the same sick love that you had never been able to get used to over the last millennium.

you were waiting for fear, hatred, anything, but not this.

you huffed, relaxing your grip. your husband's arms wrapped around your waist, and he rested his head on your shoulder once again.

"you can be cruel. you can shout at me or hate me. you can do whatever you want with me, just please, please... don't go away."

there was no answer for him.

____*:･ﾟ✧

warm midday sun illuminated the domain in the Aocang mountain. fluffy clouds floated overhead while you sipped fragrant herbal tea, entertaining yourself with conversations with the Guardian of the Clouds.

"Zhongli, huh? how sweet. well, why don't you invite him to have tea with us?" – you giggled venomously, enjoying the intense gaze of the adepti. – "I will be more than glad to see him once again."

guilt will always follow geo archon, you will make sure of this.

you will be glad to see his sadness again, to hear the regret in his voice, and maybe, maybe even laugh a little when you'll see the same pathetic obsession in his eyes.

because it doesn't matter if it's Morax or Zhongli, he will always come back to you.

geo archon will always desire, and you will always despise.

always. forever.

thanks to everyone who (for strange reason 🤨🤨) finished reading this!!! honestly I was so scared to post it and my english is probably awful uuuh

maybe I'll post something else but it'll sure take a while bc as a said before, translating any of my stuff takes a shit ton of time

bye!!

#yandere genshin impact #yandere genshin x reader #sub yandere #yandere genshin x you #yandere zhongli #sub zhongli #yandere morax #yandere x you #yandere x reader #genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin smut #yandere genshin smut #yandere #misha.writes

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vexwerewolf · 4 months ago

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In Golden Flame v1.03

Major Changes

BEAT 22: The Hall of Mirrors now has two extra pages added in which it is possible to hold a conversation with CAUSTIC.

Added section in Running the Campaign: The Team (p. 61) regarding team backstories, including six new alternate backstories.

In keeping with major lore changes made to Act 2 (work still in progress), all references to the diasporan Kingdom Aniline have been retroactively removed. House Aniline is now a minor house of the House of Smoke.

Mechanical

COMBAT: A Face to a Name - the coolant pipe junctions are now in a line, and rupture in sequence. They can now also be intentionally triggered by characters shooting them.

COMBAT: Shoo the Vultures - removed Sentinel from 4-player lineup.

COMBAT: Silence the Guns - removed Rapid Response from Archer.

COMBAT: Silence the Guns - Bombard moved to 4-player lineup from 5-player lineup. Added High-Impact Shells.

COMBAT: Silence the Guns - Assault moved to 5-player lineup from 4-player lineup.

COMBAT: Silence the Guns - reactors can now explode.

COMBAT: Break the Line - added Assault Launcher to Lobber.

The Cult Influence clock did not specify how many ticks it should have. This has been rectified to 8.

Statistical

Corrected orbit distance of Impact Plaza from 357,000 km to 187,000 km. Some intern accidentally parked the station at the L4 LaGrange of the wrong moon, and has consequently been shoved out of an airlock.

Formatting

Reflowed parts of Running the Campaign: The Team (p. 61).

Reflowed combats to remove "The Battlefield" and "The Fight" section headers, ironically allowing more space for information about the battlefields and the fights.

Writing and Lore

A number of corrections in typography, spelling, grammar and formatting that, due to the fact that I started doing it way before I started making this changelog, will have to go unenumerated.

Decreased instances of the word "fuck" in Act 1 from 82 to 67, meaning I officially give 18.29% less of a fuck.

All references to "RA" by Valentinian children changed to "YMIR," to better reflect their dad's weird obsession.

Added more detail about outlander culture to ENCOUNTER: Ghost Town.

Added the worst line in the history of writing to COMBAT: Bad Star.

#lancer #lancer rpg #lancerrpg #lancer-rpg #in golden flame #patch notes

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theshitpostcalligrapher · 1 year ago

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here are the cards folks bought with their subs and donations on stream this week!

ID on each of the cards under the cut

12 photos of cards with handwritten calligraphy on them against a dark brown woodgrain desk. Cards read as follows:

royal blue ink: Happy Dad's Big Fat Hairy Butt Day!: bought by @jackthebard

purple ink: Maybe the real treasure is the war crimes we committed along the way: bought by @chaos-connie

silver ink, black paper: We live in the caustic spaces of the worst part of the Internet: bought by @idkhowtomakeaname

brown ink: I forgot the word "clean" and went with "dirtn't": bought by @geminidoomed

light blue ink: Cocomelon is the doctor. His real name is cocomelon's monsters: bought by @chaos-connie

brown shimmer ink: this is my son sir goop farts a lot and he loves to eat flour: bought by spacewolftc on twitch

silver ink, black paper: Fuck Tennessee Williams; I'm hilarious. bought by @jelliclesong

light blue ink: Brain empty, only parentheses: bought by @hubris-i

brown shimmer ink: Ammonites are ammonice: bought by @idkhowtomakeaname

black ink: CAPYBARAH!: bought by adaliyahfire on twitch

brown shimmer ink: I say nothing of your being born out of wedlock: bought by RavenintheVoid7 on twitch

gold ink: The Habsburg is the international unit for measuring how inbred someone is: bought by @ozziescribbler

#calligraphy #shitpost #twitch

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spasmsofthought · 1 year ago

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you fell hard, I thought good riddance (j.s. x reader)

An angsty thing inspired by “Best” by Gracie Abrams. (I wrote this at work cause I had the free time and couldn’t help myself.) Let me know what you think! (Probably some inaccuracies, especially if you squint - my step-dad may have done a career in the Navy, but I did and will not lol.) Wrote this all at once, so please have grace for any spelling or grammar mistakes. xo

https://open.spotify.com/track/5HO2RD12vZ5NcIdAULo43M?si=0ce82485daa44829

+++

Jake knows what he did.

While not at the forefront of his mind, it weighs on the deepest part of his consciousness and he’s reminded of what he did in what feels like the most random moments.

When he’s swallowing the last drops of beer in the bottle that’s pressed to his mouth. Or when he’s standing on the beach as the waves are softly rolling against the shore and it’s quiet. Or when he ends up on the couch watching crappy television at 3 a.m. because his flashbacks are keeping him awake and the moment his eyes close, he feels like he’s startled awake because a brightly-colored ad is flashing on the TV screen.

He sees you every once and a while, he thinks. Whether it’s when he’s tipsy at The Hard Deck and sees someone turn the corner who looks just enough like you from the back. Someone can laugh just the right way down the hall when he’s in the office at work and he has to do a double-take to make sure it’s not you that’s laughing.

He’s never actually, though, confronted with your physical presence until he finds himself at a joint military exercise in European waters and you are on the same carrier. He’s walking into the cafeteria after a morning of training exercises and immediately zeroes in on you. Once he’s aware of you, he can’t look away.

It takes a moment for your senses to catch on. (To be fair, the cafeteria is not really known to be an oasis of peace. It’s loud and busy. You’re sitting with friends anyhow.) Your eyes flit to the area where he’s making his way in and he can tell the moment your mind makes sense of what you’re seeing. You glance at him for one long moment, and then you turn towards your friends and stay that way until you all leave. The only thing that has changed about your demeanor is the frown that settles on your expression throughout the rest of your meal.

He thinks you look even better now than you did back then.

He thinks he took you by surprise. That you’ve gotten so used to not seeing him around on your deployments and where you’re stationed that you didn’t think you would need to brace yourself on this go around.

Jake knows what he did and he feels terrible. He didn’t then, but he does now.

Seeing you in actual flesh and blood makes him remember.

He remembers your utter devotion during your brief time together.

He remembers that the first time he approached you, he made you laugh. The kind of laughter that leaves a person gasping for air and makes their eyes water. You fell hook, line, and sinker. He remembers the way you would try to make time and space for him whenever you could, despite how busy you were trying to progress in your career. He remembers how he didn’t do the same.

He remembers that on your off days, you would come over and stay the nights. He remembers the smell of you when you would climb into bed next to him after showering. And when he couldn’t sleep, when his mind was churning and taking him back to things he just wanted to forget, you would sit next to him on the couch at 3 a.m. as he turned the television on. When he closed his eyes, he knows you were the one to turn to TV screen off so he didn’t wake up. He remembers how you would kiss him: sweet and complete and open, always moving in step with him.

He remembers how wholehearted you were when you were with him. Giving your whole self, all the time.

Even when he would say sharp, caustic words that would make tears form in your eyes, even when he shut his bedroom door so he wouldn’t feel responsible for making you cry, you stayed.

He remembers the way you stayed.

And he remembers how his half-hearted attempts, quarter-hearted attempts really, to draw you back in eventually ran you dry. You were willing to do so much, and he wasn’t really willing to do anything. He was young, but he knows that’s not an excuse now.

He remembers the light in your eyes changing. He remembers the way you stopped coming over. He remembers the way you didn’t have the courage to tell him you wanted to leave.

He remembers that you held onto him until the bitter end.

He knows you won’t talk to him. Every time you see him on the carrier, you make a point to avoid him or walk the other way. He knows you probably resent him (there’s a reason he can’t find you on any social media platforms). He understands why you don’t seem to want anything to do with him.

So, he investigates. He does what he knows how to do best: he talks and charms and weasels his way through the crowds of people on the carrier. Making his way from one group to another, day and night, Jake gleans for information and eventually finds what he needs. He knows your bunkmate’s name now (and their shift and their position, and even where they like to hang out and what time they prefer to go to the gym).

You may never read it, he knows. You may can it or tear it up and throw it out into the ocean. You may even wait until you can set it on fire and watch it burn.

But he knows he has to try.

So when he finds your bunkmate, he hands them a piece of paper and tells them it’s for you. It’s small and doesn’t take up much room. Your bunkmate only nods, a look of confusion passing over their face. He says it’s important that it be delivered to you. Those are his only instructions.

If he had the opportunity to talk to you in person, he might have the chance to elongate. To say more, be more. But he might not ever get the chance to do that, so he’s going to take what he can get.

You pass your bunkmate between shifts: you’re just getting back for some sleep, and they’re heading out. They say there’s a piece of paper you need to read on your pillow. Hand-delivered, they say the instructions were. No follow-up is required. You wait until they leave. Until you’re left alone.

You open up the folded-up piece of paper.

This is what it says:

I’m sorry. You deserved better.

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