#do i need to be luckier than someone else | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yeyinde · 2 years ago

Text

riptide | Simon "Ghost" Riley x f!Reader

"Thought we lost you." His voice is a crackle; sap popping as it burns in the fire. The log charring in the kindling. There was a battle in his head; artillery fire in the gaps of his eyes. "Thought we— fuck, pet. Thought you were gone, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it." His knuckles graze the mark in your temple, gentle around the tight, irritated flesh—it's proof that you lived, that despite the tragedy of the betrayal from the man you counted on the most, you survived. You made it. You won His touch is featherlight. But his eyes– His eyes are heavy with the promise of nothing but ruin.

(it's like holding a lit cigarette to your pulse.)

part ii of in undertow

tw: gratuitous smut; unfettered filth; gendered reader; f!reader; female anatomy; near death experiences, MAJOR spoilers for the game (seriously, if you haven’t played it are saving it for later, or you haven’t finished, maybe don’t read this yet); PINING; cigarettes after sex was listened to on repreat during the making of this; also, i had “THAT’LL DO!” and “AHUEVO” on a loop, y’all. blame that.

notes: whenever someone asks what “doing the most” means, feel free to point them to this. it’s 16K. fullstop. it was only supposed to be smut. this ended up more plot than porn. but i so wanted the pining; the ambiguity, the danger, the drama. (i mean, this has none of that, but i wanted it.)

i told my very Welsh dad i was in love with an English man, and he said how could you do this to me? and that is pretty much all you need to know about Welsh culture.

Porthmadog hasn't changed much at all since you last washed up on the sandy shores, one hand gripping the strap of your off-duty duffle bag, and the other clenched around your passport. Wound tight. Ready to flee. A constant state of fight or flight.

The air is heady with the scent of the sea. Algae. Seaweed. Salt. Your lungs burn with the thickness of it. The sulphur sits in your throat, sticking to your larynx. It clicks when you swallow, refusing to budge. It curls behind your teeth when you suck the air in through parted, salt-chapped lips; the taste lingers in that strange microcosm of being both achingly nostalgic, and woefully foreign in the same breath.

The streets, too, live there: a realm of vague memories flashing by as your feet tap against the cobblestone. Boots heavy with exhaustion, and jet lag.

You're not ready to face it. Not yet.

Head bowed, you stare at the quasi-familiar cracks on the sandstone, and wonder how everyone else is fairing right now. An hour after takeoff. Soap would have been dropped off, wouldn't he? Safe and sound in Edinburgh.

You're both luckier than your American counterparts—the ones who have a full nine hours left to go.

Bouncing from the Middle East to Europe is a blink.

Europe to America is a whole ocean.

You and Soap played rock, paper, scissors for who got to depart first. In the end, you won. Wales was closer, anyway.

You left them behind with a heaviness that settled in your pericardium, compunction dipping in the valley of your pinched brow.

A strange feeling leaks from the fissures.

Ghost didn't depart.

They didn't stop in England at all. Right to Wales, right to Scotland. America. Mexico.

You try not to think about your prickly Lieutenant, but he flashes behind your eyelids, anyway. A bonfire in the dead of night. Tendrils of smoke drifting into the midnight blue aether. You're too close to the crackling flame. The heat scorches your skin.

He, too, sits heavy in your chest. A spooled cluster of questions bereft of answers. An unknown chasm gaping below. What it all means–

You woke up when the interior lights of the jet flickered on a few rows ahead, the jaundiced glow rousing you from your slumber. Your temple rested on something warm. Firm, sturdy. You blinked into existence, the ghost of a breath on your lips; a passing dream now left behind to rot. A world, forever unattainable, dissolving into nothing. Sand on your fingertips.

The world knits back into the cold clutch of reality: you're on a plane, and–

And you find yourself staring at tightly woven black thread. A balaclava.

Your eyes dart up.

The pad in his hands bathes him in iridescent light. It casts shadows on his face, in the pocks of his mask, and illuminates the white of the artificial bones. The paint used is tinged blue, brushed with cyan where it meets the black.

His lidded eyes crest low as he stares at the screen—a profile open on a man named Zyani stares back. Your eyes don't linger too long, pulled, instead, to the man you're leaning against. The coal under his eyes is smudged, nearly eroded away in the inner corners. You wonder if he rubbed them earlier, eyes gritty and heavy, but refusing to close. He won't sleep on the plane. He never does.

You don't usually, either.

Why didn't he wake you? Why did he let you stay?

There is no time for discussion—not on a jet that reeks of testosterone with ears everywhere. It will have to wait; shelved for another time when Gaz isn't snoring a few pews away, and Soap hasn't been glancing at you in intervals since you sat down.

Bonnie… you can almost hear him say. What are you doin'?

You can hear the steady breaths he takes, the sound swells through you.

It's the first time you've seen him so relaxed since–

Where are you going? Loose-limbed, one hand still wrapped around his softening cock, the other settles on the bend where your thigh meets the crease of your hip, fingers ghosting over the knob of your bone. His eyes are half moons. I didn't say I was finished with you yet, pet.

You shudder, a quiet breath leaving your lips. It draws his attention. His shoulder tenses under you. His head tilts just enough for him to slide his gaze from the screen balanced on his thick thighs to your open stare.

His eyes are liquid. Honeyed words over smouldering charcoal. "Alright?"

Your lungs quiver with your inhale. Outside of the acrid smell of ammunition, ozone, and gunfire, he carries something musky in his scent. Driftwood. Salt—sweat, blood, the sea. It's potent. You breathe him in again, lids lowering. You hold his scent there, nestled in the gummy webbing of your lungs, dripping down your throat.

Your eyes feel gritty when they slip shut. Anchors pull them down. You nod your head, slow and languid, murmuring your assent in a barely coherent mumble. The drag of his rough fatigues under your cheek, the straps of his tactical vest grinding into your cheekbone. And then—awareness. It startles you back into reality. Your eyes pop open, meeting the black pools above.

You wish you could chisel open his head, and read whatever it is that might be lingering in those unfathomable depths. His expression is shuddered, hidden by the thick of his mask. Eyes lidded and heavy and narrowed right on you.

Intense focus.

Sometimes, the others talk about Ghost like he's a berserker. A wild, untamed beast let loose in the shadows. Even the vilest people pale when they see him—his larger-than-life frame lingering in the background—and it's fear that dances in the cut of their brow, in their shaking glare.

You heard stories, of course.

Those always paled in comparison to seeing him on the field.

You got it, then, why no one mocked him. Why even the worst of the worst never bothered with leading him around by the nose.

He asked a question, and they answered.

For a long while, you thought it was his heigh. His size. Immense power. Expert precision.

But no. It's just him. Those eyes. His presence.

He doesn't just receive attention, he commands it.

You should move. You're awake, now. There is no reason for such intimacy with your Lieutenant, for a man more distant and unreachable than the sea.

You should.

But you don't.

He's warm milk under your chin. Heat bleeds into your skin from the firm bracket of his body. Ghost smells good—sweat and timbre—and feels even better. You could sleep again like this. Lashes fan down, sleep digs into the back of your eyes. You force them open.

Your fingers are tucked into the crook of his arm, pressed tight to his chest; there's a note of domesticity in the way he breathes with you, a palpable weight that falls on you like a thick quilt. His muscles jump. Body tense.

Eyes on you. Always.

But then they're gone. A flutter. They cut out to the pews, and you follow his gaze. Price wades closer.

The bubble pops. You're clinging to your Lieutenant like it's a luxury you're allowed.

Like it's something commonplace.

There is distance in his eyes when they flicker to you. The molasses hardened into something once again unreachable. A wall now sits between you.

(Maybe, that conversation will never come, after all.)

You should have known better than to let yourself want.

The air is crisp when you draw it in. The chill hurts your teeth.

You slip your fingers out from the wedge of his arm and ribs, already mourning the loss of him under your flesh—ticking muscles coiled tight; velvet draped iron. Ghost says nothing when you move, but his gaze is heavy on you when you fold yourself back into your seat. Proper, now. Lieutenant and soldier. You press yourself as far away from him as you can until your arms dig into the plastic around the window, and sit straight—as if you weren't sleeping on his shoulder.

As if he didn't let you.

He looks away when Price takes the bench on the opposite side, offers a nod.

Price echoes it. Flashes a tight smile your way.

Then his eyes linger. Not on you. Not on Ghost. He rests his pensive gaze on the sliver of space between the two of you. Where Ghost's bulky arm takes several inches of space up on your own seat, flesh glued together, parting only at the elbows. He's too big to get away from. Takes up all the space—

(—in your lungs, in your head, in your—)

Price, mercifully, isn't the type of man to pry. His brows buoy on his head, a fleeting glance sent in Ghost's direction, and then he's all business. Astute leader. Battle-ready even on a sleepy jet.

He clears his throat. "Where are you headed?"

It's for you.

Gaz is going to America with the men you'd picked up for this mission. His offer for you to join was swiftly rejected. The invitations from the Mexican operatives, notably Alverez, to come and enjoy the coast were also rejected.

"Is Soap going home?" You ask, hands fisting into balls on your lap.

Price's smile is wan. "He is. Not joining Gaz on his American adventure."

"Misadventure, more like." Ghost's dry tone makes your toes curl.

You can still hear the way he growled out pet.

You huff. "I'm…"

There is nowhere for you to go.

—Well. Nowhere else.

(Your knees ache, chafed and raw. Pebbles dig into your skin.)

"Wales," you murmur. You hear the ruffle of fabric when Ghost dips his head to look at you. "Whatever is easier. I'll take a taxi."

"Right," Price nods. "Get some rest while you're home."

It sounds like a dismissal.

Baleen lines fill your periphery when you turn your head. Your gaze sticks to the crease where his chin meets his neck. You can't bring yourself to look up.

"Better go fight it out with Soap."

He doesn't stop you when you stand, when you squeeze past him, thighs brushing his knees.

He says nothing at all when you depart.

(Don't think about it. Don't get your hopes up—)

The town is silent save your heavy steps on the cobblestone. In the distance, the roar of the ocean crashes along the beige shore.

Something inside of you begins to crumble.

(Too late.)

The woman by the apartment block greets you warmly, but the words are a strange amalgam of vowels and consonants that do not belong together. Her accent sounds English. The words make no sense to you.

Your bewilderment must show on your face. Her smile dips, a touch of laughter paints her words when she says, in English:

Sorry, dove. I thought you were Welsh.

It feels a little bit like a slap to the wrist. Naughty child… mind your manners, and speak your tongue.

"I'm not…," you murmur, chastised despite having done nothing wrong.

Wales isn't where you came from. Here is not the place of your birth. It's a paradoxical realm: a land where you were taken to as a child, and told welcome home; all memories erased of the other times they said the exact same thing. A taboo, now. Faux pas. A fresh start (for the nth time). Welcome home.

It's the place you stayed the longest, though. Your developing years from a child to a teenager, to a spiteful preadolescent with too much to prove, and an ocean to live up to.

(You wonder if the pavement is still stained red.)

You know Welsh. Have spoken it for years. You came, fresh-faced and chubby-cheeked, and the ladies cooed while they taught you the words.

But it's buried. They are covered in dust; a forgotten relic. You remember pieces of the greeting, but your lips are no longer used to forming them. Your tongue is too heavy, too foreign.

You say nothing at all, trailing off into a stifling silence.

"Right," her brows knot, rheumy eyes regard you warily. "Do you need a hotel—?"

"I live here."

You bend down, peeling the pristine welcome mat back, and fish out the key you keep tucked away. Years of training echo in the background; a firm voice rings out, one that sounds suspiciously like Ghost's, barking out how that's trouble. You'll come home to a world of hurt if you keep doin' that, soldier.

(You already do.)

You pull your duffle bag up when it slips, and nod at the bemused woman.

It's not much of a homecoming.

It never is.

The flat you own is barren. A bed that feels too comfortable at night for you to ever truly relax on is shoved into the bedroom, a wardrobe with civilian clothes, a shoe rack in the foyer. A kitchen that's always empty.

You mostly sleep on the worn, old couch where the springs dig into your shoulder blades, and remind you of that night you spent in Sierra Leone, belly full of yabeh. Ghost a hair's length away from you. His gloved hand brushing yours.

The duffle bag falls to the tiles with a heavy thud. Your passport will go in the safe along with all of your other belongings—clearance badge, certificates, your guns—until the call comes in for your next mission.

You hope it's soon. That Shepherd and Laswell trudge up some calamity that will take you far away from this place. A long-haul mission. The kind where you go deep into the trenches, and when you surface, it feels like an aeon has passed.

It's too quiet at night.

Your home reeks of dust. Disuse.

You settle on the couch, eyes fixed on the popcorn ceiling, and pretend you can't feel his shoulder under your head even now.

A world away, and you still think of him.

(Always, always.)

Shepherd calls you weeks later. A secret mission with the Shadow Company, he tells you. When you ask about the others, his voice is tight.

Just you, soldier. Just you.

Breaking up the Task Force isn't unheard of. Ghost does so many secretive missions on his own that meeting people he worked with in the past on a group venture isn't at all a rarity anymore. Price is the same. Soap, sometimes, too.

There isn't much else to do.

(You held your phone in your hand each night for those weeks, finger hovering over the CALL button. Two letters— Lt— on the contact screen. His profile picture is a dune of sand.

It never rang. You never called.)

You give your affirmative, and go to the coordinates where his operatives will be waiting for you.

"Show me what you got," he says, a challenge in his voice.

Your grin is sharp. "Always, Actual."

Phillip Graves meets you with a wide grin on his face. The American flag on his fatigues sticks out against the green. So used to the British flag, you can't stop your eyes from sliding down to it, drawn like a beacon.

(Maybe, in a bygone era, it, too, might have been home.)

"Welcome aboard, soldier." His eyes flash in the setting sun. Eager. Heavy. You echo it in your own smile. "Let's get these son'of'a'bitches."

You're back at the bottom.

The Shadow Operatives stare at you when they think you aren't looking. Low murmurs fill the jet— princess, chick, girl— and you gazed, pointedly, out the window.

Your hands itch; the phantom scabs prickle.

It makes you miss 141 more than you thought possible. Gaz, Price, Soap, Ghost. They flicker in your mind, and you wonder what they'd do in this situation.

How would they prove themselves to everyone around them?

(Answer: they wouldn't.)

The only one who isn't pushing you in a box is Graves.

"Heard great things about you," his smile crests over his lips. Eyes hungry. Ready for battle. "Can't wait to see what you can do."

He worked with Ghost a month ago. You find this out when he mentions it offhand. Secret mission with your Lieutenant. Is he always that much of an asshole—?

Actual is in your ear, stay alert. Keep your eyes out, always. Never know what you might miss.

But it's Ghost you think of.

(Always, always.)

"He's not an asshole," you say, shrugging. "Just a man who cares too much."

Almost immediately, you want to swallow the words back down. Stupid. Stupid. You force yourself to remain still, nonchalant.

(How presumptuous of you to think you know him.)

Military likes to gossip. It'll come back to him somehow. The little rookie who stuck up for him. Who said he cared.

Graves' eyes flicker. "That right?"

You blush. English is gone. The only language in your throat is Welsh.

(Graves' guffaw echoes in the jet.)

Graves purses his lips, rolling them from side to side, as you sift through the documents in front of you. He's been pacing the room for the last ten minutes while you meticulously translate each paper in your grasp. Agitation bleeds through the usual warmth in his countenance.

It's tense. A slaughter.

His compatriots flank all of the exits; sounds of gunfire resound through the compound.

The infiltration was easy.

This—

This is not.

"So…," he drawls, the thick accent is warm, but his voice is constricted; pinched. "Heard you were the best at sniffing things out. What do you think?"

"It's not—," you pause, eyes skimming the page, squinting at it.

"What?"

His tone is sharp. Icy. The usual warmth dissipates into a palpable tension; a tight unease.

The shift is strange. Focus on the mission.

"It's not just Konni in this. They're being backed."

"That so?"

You suck in a deep breath. "We should leave. Tell Actual what's going on–"

"Yeah," he intones, crouching down in front of you. His eyes are placid. "We'll do just that."

It all happens so fast. A clichè, really, but a fitting one.

Head turned out the window of the cargo van, deadly missiles being dragged behind. Your mind is full, racing. Nothing makes sense.

You wish Ghost was here. Price. Soap. They're the ones you use to bounce ideas off of: this is what is happening, this is the missing equation, and this is what I think.

Good, bonnie. Now, tell us something we don't know.

And what if the equation is wrong?

Crafty, soldier. How do we prove it?

And then the world shatters.

Konni Operates. A gun to your head. Graves yelling in the distance; spitting curses, threats. Actual in your ear— you'll die here, soldier.

Chaos. Death presses cold metal to your forehead, snapped words in rapid-fire Russian, too fast for you to pick up.

The only ones that leak through are oozing glee. I'm going to blow your head off.

A dead-end. You think of Gaz—the closest to you in age, passing jokes back and forth; playing Never Have I Ever when the missions lull, the others looking on with amusement.

Kids these days, they scoff.

Have you seen this video? He asks, dropping into the vacant seat beside you. Ghost looks up. It's a club in London.

Soap huffing when you ask if he wants to come. Too old for that, bonnie.

You kids have fun, Price says, lips twitching. A rare show of amusement from the man. But I'll have to pass.

What if we went to a pub instead, you geezer? You chuckle.

Geezer? He nudges Ghost to his left, eyes dry. You've been rubbing off on the kids.

You meet his stare over the plastic table. Smile turns shy. Wanna come with us, Lt?

He holds it. Halfmoon. Eclipse. Liquid black. Negative, soldier.

You try not to let the sting of rejection show. It's stupid. Stupid—

Nice one, kid.

Y'did good, bonnie.

Let's show these old boys what us kids can do, yeah?

Their voices echo in your mind. One rings louder than the others. A sharp bark. Gravel shattering. Move, soldier!

You're a dutiful soldier. You never disobey a command from your superior officer. From him.

White-hot pain splits across your temple. The world turns static. You're falling down, down, down—

Waves lap at your body, tugging you out to sea. The briny water fills your throat.

Stay alert, soldier. The General. Voices.

"Well, shit." Graves. He sounds distant. Far away.

You think of Sierra Leone. Your first mission.

Hiding in a concrete house with no windows, no doors, no cover. Gunfire booming across the landscape, cloaked in the pitch black darkness of night. Flickers of yellow-red light pop in the distance.

You don't breathe. Don't make a sound. Your hands tremble around your rifle. Eyes wavering.

Warmth against your back. You startle. A gloved hand over your mouth. The brush of a balaclava against your neck.

"Easy, soldier. They'll see you if you jump."

They'll see you—

"They dead?" A boot knocks against your calf.

You go limp.

"Yeah," Graves. Companion. Comrade. Be careful who you trust, soldier. All you have right now is yourself. Trust your gut; you're on your own.

Copper on your tongue. You let it pool between your teeth, keeping it held in the space between your lips. It tastes of pennies. You try not to choke.

Sir… you whisper the words against his tactical vest. Feel the shift of his body when he looks at you from over his shoulder. Let's get yabeh after this.

We're not on holiday, soldier.

Really? Feels like one.

You need to get out more.

Yeah… maybe…

C'mon, now. Stay with me, pet.

Always… sir. Always…

You drag him to someplace you'd heard of through your new friends–best yabeh in all of Salone; gotta try the Jollof, too, Sesay insists–and he fits in like a sore thumb.

You both stand out, really. Foreigners in the middle of a place visited only by locals. Him in his denim trousers, and short-sleeved shirt, tactical vest fixed on his chest; his mask stays on. A ball cap low over his brow. He exudes danger. The rippling musculature of a tiger. The stealth of a panther.

You—nondescript and tiny beside him.

There is something to be said about seeing your new Lieutenant in denim. In the custom facemask instead of the full balaclava.

With the baleen lines missing over his chin and neck, he almost feels too exposed to you. Too vulnerable. Too open.

You can't stop fixing your gaze on the scant flesh, uncovered, above the collar of his shirt. His arms, bulky, and big, fold over his massive chest.

He barely fits inside the small booth.

Your eyes dance. Amusement. A roseate veil shudders over you—a novice, a rookie—and high off of the success of a mission.

"Sesay says this is the best place in town."

"Sesay says a lot of things, don't he?"

You blink, fingers tapping against the worn wood of the table. It's hot in Sierra Leone. A wet swelter that brands your skin with white-hot intensity. It's different from the dryness of the Sahara.

Somehow, his tone is drier than the arid desert you crawled out of. Drier than the burning heat of the massive sun.

"That he does…," you agree, floundering.

Was this a mistake? Maybe you shouldn't have come here. What were you thinking? Dragging your superior out for dinner. You flush. It's barely discernable from the blistering sunburn over the bridge of your nose. Unfamiliar with the intense sun that scorches the land.

You're drowning, now. Wallowing in this limbo of uncertainty. Maybe you should have just come later with Sesay and Abdul. They asked you when you pestered for directions, but you met Ghost's stare from over their shoulders, and hadn't heard a thing of what they were saying once you met him in the middle.

He's a whole head taller than everyone he meets. Massive. The locals' baulk at him: this huge, terrifying being with a skull on his face, cutting through the throng of people like a tank.

There was so much going on once you started the mission. After the Intel was gathered, and the forces were ready, those long nights spent inside a tent that was barely big enough for yourself let alone the behemoth bulk of your Lieutenant came to an end. It was abrupt. Sudden.

It was just you and him.

And then it was a sea of people.

You'd spent the better part of a year pouring over documents in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Scorpions and sand, and him.

The tent was deadly during the day; balmy with a humidity fit for the Amazon. At night, any complaints you might have had about the heat turned into regrets. It was freezing. You could see white clouds of condensation when you breathed out.

You'd lie next to each other. Grains of sand is the only thing keeping you apart. He was warm—bonfire hot.

You'll be frustrated, mad. That's normal when you spend so much time with a stranger. You might argue, bicker. But just focus on the mission. This is a test of camaraderie as much as it is endurance.

It wasn't like that at all. It was—

Seamless.

His ebb and flow were easy to adjust to. Maybe, it was the fact that you were a neophyte that made it so. Too afraid to let the bundle of frustration rear when this was your first mission. Your first test.

But—

It wasn't quite like that. You found that you enjoyed his company. His barbed insults spoken in a flat, serious tone often flew over the heads of the men you had to work with, but you grew accustomed to them. Enjoyed them, even. He was—

An enigma. A year later, and you know nothing about Simon Riley, and as much as he'll allow about Ghost. There is distance still, but;

It wanes. It cracks. Fills with the sharpness of his sarcasm, the stoic dedication to his mission; the grains of sand that stick to his sweat-slicked forehead. The deep hue of red from the mask he refuses to take off.

You'll suffocate, you quip, eyes glued to the paper in front of you.

Don't worry about me.

That's a silly thing to say…

It ain't. You shouldn't.

Mindless, stupid: well, I do.

Silence. Brutal and stifling. Then: focus on the mission, Rookie. Not on me.

You'd hummed noncommittally. It slipped into the back of your head, eyes fixed on the numbers in front of you.

But it wells, now. When Sesay asks if you want to go with him for dinner, when he tells you how to get there, and what to order.

Not on me.

Your eyes haven't left his. He holds your stare.

The chossy wobbles, cracks. Your hand on his arm. C'mon, boss, let's eat. It stays there while you lead him through winding valleys. The heat of his arm—bare, veins ticking under your palm, too burly for you to wrap your whole hand around the thick of him—bleeds into you. You, cold-blooded, leach the warmth from his flesh.

And now—

He doesn't eat when dinner is brought out. Doesn't take his mask off.

You watch him through the steam that wafts off the Jollof rice, his eyes roaming around the room like clockwork, looking for something that might strike. Hyper-vigilant. Wary. Cold. Distant.

A puzzle not meant to be put together, but your fingers itch with the urge to try.

Why did he come, you wonder. Why didn't he say no?

As if hearing your thoughts, his eyes are on yours. Tendrils of translucent white fog the air between you. His brow pinches. Lids crest.

It punches the air from your lungs. There is a phantom heat in your palm. Your hands shake around the fufu in your grasp, tightening around the tacky food until it bulges between your fingers.

The syphoned heat begins to simmer in your belly.

It bubbles over, blustering through your insides when his head pulls close, chin over the table, and says:

You did good, rookie. Might make a soldier of you, yet.

You bow your head. "Cachu hwch."

"English, soldier."

You shake your head. "N-nothing, sir… burnt my tongue."

You wake up in an empty hospital room. It was early August when you left for Al Mazrah. The calendar on your wall says it's now late September.

The space in between is a blur. Left in the mud. Graves was taken. Was he okay–

You don't remember anything after the point of passing out in the mud, and waking up—sick from infection, burning from a fever—and finding yourself strapped down on a jet. Medics surround you.

You'll be okay, you'll be fine–

You'd passed out again. The world slipping away until you felt the heat on your shoulder blades. The scent of yabeh thick in your nose.

You move, sluggish and heavy, on the rough hospital bed, fingers gripping the sheets below.

You still feel the grit of sand against your arm.

Heat in your belly.

(Cachu hwch, indeed.)

Shepherd calls you a day later on the phone in your private room. Your prison. The men outside say you're not allowed to leave. It's dangerous.

"Did good out there, rookie."

"Thanks, Actual," you murmur, hands clenched around the receiver. "Couldn't have done it without your help. Without you."

You want to ask about Graves. About your team.

You remember the rapid Russian spat in your ear. And this one? You bite your tongue, body pickling with unease.

"Rest up, now. My boys will be keeping an eye on you. They'll keep you safe."

You are discharged at the end of October.

Hands pressed against the still-healing scar on your temple. They peeled the bandage off yesterday.

The infection made it worse. It wasn't healing with the sickness you had. You're lucky some local boys found you in the mud when they did. You would have died.

Laswell finds you outside. Hand against her throat, eyes wide.

She looks like she's seen a ghost.

You certainly feel like one.

The ride to your safehouse is punctuated by a game of catch-up. She tells you about the mission they went on, the one you were exempt from.

The phone calls from Soap, Gaz make sense now. Straight to voicemail.

Hey, you skimpin' out on us, yeah? Skippin' duty? Not like you at all. Kinda worried, y'know? Text me somethin'. You know I don't like callin'. Anyway… we're keepin' it together, yeah? But kinda freakin' out. Uhh… anyway—

Not like you to miss one, bonnie. Call me when you can, aye? Want to make sure you're okay.

Price calls nine times. Leaves no voicemail.

A single text from Ghost. Wheels up at 16:00. Expect to see you there.

You didn't get your phone back until today. These were sent at the end of October.

The clock on your screen reads 2nd November.

"No one knew…," you murmur, hands clenched around the metal. "Why didn't Shepherd—"

"Shepherd said you were sent on recon. Said something happened. He didn't tell the others—just me and Price. Didn't want to distract them from the job."

"When did you find out?"

"That you were alive?" Her lips thinned, skin paling. "Yesterday."

"Where are they now?"

"That's confidential."

A scoff. "Sure. Now, off the record…"

"Mexico."

Something doesn't feel right at all. It sits like an anvil in your stomach.

"Laswell…"

"Get some rest," she says, even. Her eyes are glossy when she stares at you. "We'll keep you updated. I'm sure everyone will be relieved to know you're alive."

Your phone rings two days later.

The screen flashes. Lt.

Your hands tremble when you answer it.

"It was Shepherd," he admits.

Your head swims with the admission. Shepherd. Did good out there, rookie. Now, stay good. Stay alert. Keep your eyes out, always. Never know what you might miss.

"Is he–?"

"No," he grouses, the word a sliver short of being a growl. "He's alive. Graves is dead."

It hits you in the sternum—a punch unlike any other you'd received. Air knocked from your lungs, chest throbbing in agony, you sink down into your bed, fingers gripping the sheets until your knuckles bleach white.

This shouldn't have happened.

This is what you do. It's your purpose. It's your job. Your role. You were selected by Shepherd, by Laswell, Price for that, for your ability to gather information, to weed out the moles, the rats. To sniff them out, and puncture holes in their ship until they sank to the bottom, secrets leaking out.

The words roll out of your mouth before you stop them.

"I should have been there."

The tremulous quiver makes you wince. Weakness. You're not weak. You're not—

Ghost won't see it as such, you know this; he doesn't really react to the harsh emotions of others. He carries an unwavering focus, rapt attention to the overarching mission, the end goal; pragmatic, astute on the battlefield, he doesn't flinch.

It's a toss-up if he'll ever respond. If he does, it's usually with a dry, biting dismissal. Sarcasm with him often rides the line of being too sincere, and too flat. It's not just murky, but opaque. He'll say something—equal parts scathing and wise: it's already done, no sense dwelling on what you can't change. Do better next time.

The bite in his words hurt; it was enough to make even the most impassive man irritated by the blunt, almost cruel tinge to his tone.

But it's later when the message will unravel itself. When you're lying alone in your cot, picking over the things he said, and why he said them, and then—

Oh.

Do better next time.

Right.

A soft sound. The rush of air being inhaled through clenched teeth.

Then: "I'm glad you weren't."

Silence. Your heart thunders. I'm glad you weren't.

It could mean a lot of things. A lot of bad things, but:

He thought you were either dead, or missing, or just—gone. You get it:

The last job didn't kill you—the evidence stacks in your head; one conclusion drawn:

It should have. It was meant to.

Your brush with death was a footnote. Nothing at all in the grand scheme of things.

They wanted you dead. They failed.

Soap called you last night, voice tight. You good, bonnie?

Getting there, you joked. Actual had my back. Graves, too. I'm alive because of them.

You choke.

"You alright?"

It's on the tip of your tongue to say yeah. The usual response. Practised. Easy. Distant. But you think of his words, and your ears ring with the deep husk of his voice. He was honest with you. Open. And that's—

Your words are a rush, dipped in vulnerability. "I don't want to be alone right now."

Too much. Too honest.

Too open.

You flinch. Heart thudding in your throat.

Ghost makes you feel like an exposed wire. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Raw.

He says your name—a low, brassy rasp that tickles the back of your neck. It's rare for him to call you by your given name. It's much too intimate. Too—

Well. It's just too much. You want to lean into it, to drape yourself in the rich utterance. Have it whispered into your ear late at night, while he fucks into you the same way he bucked into his hand.

And in the morning when he first wakes. When he rolls over, body folding over your own. Lips against the shell of your ear. A husky rasp; the word dragged over gravel.

You want it, want him, in ways that are unattainable.

Domestic.

You gasp. "I–um. Thanks," you fumble over your words, head roaring with the realisation that there is more than just attraction in the way your heart flutters in your chest; the downy soft wings of a small bird ruffling its fresh plumage. "I'll… talk later."

Your name is barked through the phone when you pull it away. It's cut off before he can finish.

They video call you from some pub.

The sight of them together—Gaz, Soap, Price, Laswell, Ghost—makes you smile.

"Christ, bonnie." Soap's eyes are fixed on the line near your temple. Scabbed. Plum colour. Healing, but not yet there. An inch over, and you'd have been—

You flinch, shrugging. "Could be worse–"

"What happened?" It's a command. You try not to tremble at the bark in Ghost's tone. Perhaps Laswell didn't tell them everything.

His eyes are wide, the whites cresting over the puddles of black. You can't match his stare. You drop, darting to the clock in the corner.

It's Laswell who tells them about the mission with the Shadow Company. Graves. Shepherd.

"...Fuckin', aye." Gaz murmurs. He echoes Ghost's question. "What happened? No one told us anything. We thought— and then Shepherd said you were out for the mission. Not that—that you'd been— "

It falls silent. They don't know about the mission's end aside from Shepherd's lies. Laswell knows. She was the first face you saw in the hospital.

Let's talk…

"We were ambushed," you start, shrugging again. Blasé. Nonchalant. You pretend you can't feel the intensity of Ghost's stare through the screen. "I… they were going to shoot me. I got away. Got a scratch—," a scoff from Soap, a murmur of more than a scratch, aye; you ignore it. "They thought I was dead, so they left me there…"

There is more to it. Graves. The whispers in your head. Them, in your final moments. Agents outside your hospital door. Two inches from death. A day away from rotting.

You swallow it down. It doesn't matter. It happened and now it's over.

"Bonnie…," there is something raw in Soap's voice. It pricks your pericardium.

Left for dead. Abandoned by everyone around you. The ones you trusted the most. Your own team didn't even look. Had no time to mourn, no time to worry.

You know what they must see; the lines they must be drawing. How they, themselves, currently feel, and what they would do if it were them instead of you. It—

It hurts.

"I'd have joined you at the pub," you murmur, voice a shaky worble, before he can say anything else. "But–," you lift your head, eyes downcast. A facsimile of a smile flickers. You wonder if it hits the mark. "Maybe next time."

Price nods in your periphery. "Listen—"

"I'll be ready for Makarov," you interrupt. "I'm… I gotta go, though. Am I — can I be dismissed?"

"...Yeah, yeah you can."

You hang up without another word.

In the silence of your flat—in a land more foreign to you than the Sahara—you break.

Your night dissolves into a series of firsts in quick succession:

A knock on your door. No one knows that you live here. No one but Laswell when she dropped you off. The rheumy-eyed lady with knobby knuckles who mutters at you in warm Welsh. Words you pretend you can't understand.

Shepherd, too, because he needed a location to put down on paper. A place to find you if they couldn't get a hold of you.

You think it might be him—back for vengeance—and you hold your pistol in your hands, back pressed flat against the wall. One hand drops the brass doorknob.

"Who is it?"

A beat.

"It's me." A thick baritone—enough, you think, pulse racing, to rattle the door with his voice alone. "It's Simon."

Simon. Not Ghost—

Right. Off-duty, now. Until you get a lead on Makarov.

Your Lieutenant knocking on your door at—gritty eyes flicker to the stovetop in the kitchen—quarter to five in the evening is another first. Almost paradoxical, really.

Gun shoved into the holster, you turn to face the wood. Through the little window above, covered by a paper-thin curtain, you can see the dark shape of him, unmoving, as he stands on your porch.

There are a number of reasons why he'd be here, but only one makes you yearn.

You pull the door open, and the sight of him makes you dizzy. Hypoxia. Seasickness. Homesick.

He's dressed as casually as Simon is capable of. Black hoodie, wet on the hood from the snow that falls in clumps outside. A black beanie on his head. Skull mask flat against the bridge of his nose. Denim. Black boots.

The coal around his eyes is smudged. A nebula of pale skin through a black oasis.

"What—?"

"Shepherd." Right. He could have called. Got the Intel from Laswell. His words leave no room for argument when he lets out an amalgam of a snarl, a growl; it's ground to dust when he says: "we need to talk."

"Not—," you don't want him to see the emptiness inside. The vacancy. Militaristically barren. Lonely. "Not here…"

Shepherd was here, too. Not him, specifically—maybe. You don't know for certain. But his agents, definitely. Polluting the inside.

It's a flimsy excuse. You hear the threadbare conviction in your tone.

"Shepherd was here," you say, and then wince. "Not now, I mean—"

The words die on your tongue. Ghost— Simon —is smart. Of course he wouldn't think Shepherd was here now. He'd fled. Went into hiding. You shift on your feet.

He can read you like no one else.

(You wonder if anyone at all can read him.)

You flounder. "I don't want…not here…"

"Where do you want to go?"

Somewhere stiflingly hot. "Anywhere."

Simon doesn't press. He never does. His head rolls, tips toward the street. "C'mon, then. Get your stuff."

He reads it on your face, in the things you don't say. It reminds you of Sierra Leone— eat, rookie, you haven't all day; get some sleep, you're dead on your feet; I'll take the first watch— and the memory clots behind your ribs.

"Okay," you murmur.

You feel his gaze on your back when you turn around. The door is left open. He doesn't follow.

There is a chill in the air when you step outside, bundled up in a knit sweater that does little to stem the frigid sea breeze from cutting through the cracks in the threaded cable.

It's a cold night in Porthmadog.

Snow falls in clumps from the indigo-smeared sky, sticking to the cobblestone under your feet.

Simon says nothing as you walk out of the apartment block. He stays close to you, so close you could inch your elbow out and touch him. The heat from his body is a beacon. You're at war with yourself, struggling not to get pulled into his current, and swept out to sea.

Despite the closeness, there is a distance in the way he paces. Eyes roaming under the hood, taking in the lights strewn overhead, lingering on the alcoves where someone might hide.

Having him here feels a little surreal. Porthmadog is off-limits to everyone—it's a place where you come to rot.

His presence shatters the sense that it doesn't really exist outside of those long nights when you stare up at the ceiling, and want. A metaphysical realm that laps at the cracks inside of you, eroding the thick veneer you cobbled together over the years until it withers away, and you have to patch it up when you get called in for another assignment.

Intact soldier. Whole. Nile.

It's a place, now. Real. Tangible.

Seeing Simon—Ghost, Lt—walk beside you down Lombard Street, footfalls echoing through the winding road, makes something churn in your guts. It sits inside, and feels a little like finality.

How could you possibly come back to a place you pretend doesn't exist? A place that is just en-route to wherever else you have to go?

A place you come to because you have nowhere else.

You can't come back here now that the streets are tainted with the nitroglycerin scent of Simon. A bonfire on the beach. The burning logs doused in kerosene. The miasma will suffocate you.

It clots inside of your lungs, sticking to the gummy lining when you breathe him in.

He smells of bourbon. Cigarettes. Carries the scent of everyone else with him—Gaz's cologne: thick vetiver; the sickly sweet tang of Price's cigars; thick metallic: ozone and gasoline that Soap wears after a mission—and you greedily take it in.

You let it sit, red-hot barbed wire, against your chest.

Your eyes slip. Illegal. Wrong. They find him, always. Bathed in the streetlight above; flushed yellow. It casts shadows on him, and makes his eyes look lighter.

A peaking shoal in the middle of the midnight blue ocean.

He's dangerous. Makes your fingers prickle with want; with the urge to touch.

Makes you greedy.

Stupid.

Despite not knowing the area, Simon cuts through the supine street like he's familiar with it already. Maybe, he is. He must have looked at the map on his phone before he got here, eyes locked on the space, the landscape. Mentally cataloguing each hiding spot.

You follow him—a stranger in your own home—and cross your arms over your chest when the thick chatter carries from inside the shops along the street. Heavy Welsh. Warm milk and honey.

Salt in your wounds.

You don't belong here.

The familiar green of the carpet and flooring shop nearly makes you trip, but you steady yourself. Ball your hands into fists by your side, and drop your gaze to the cracked ground below.

You can feel the moment his gaze shifts, sliding over to you. It bores into your temple; abrasive, and grating.

Goosebumps erupt over your flesh. You blame it all on the cold—the stutter in your chest, the ache in your lungs, the shiver dancing down your spine. The frigid weather. The icy breeze.

Another shiver rolls through you, different this time, when you catch sight of the park.

Your chin hits the pavement. Palms sliding through jagged gravel. Knees splitting.

Your blood puddles on the grey rocks.

They crack you open. Nothing spills from the gaping hole.

"You with me?"

You blink. The reverie shakes, shudders. The little girl with her chin on the ground warbles.

Simon stands there, his back to the streetlights. His presence makes the image distort, and bend to fit him inside. It doesn't belong.

"What's a'matter with you?"

You flinch at his voice, and peer up at him from under clumpy, wet lashes, heavy with melting snow.

The words are harsh, but his tone is—

He steps forward, a few paces ahead. You didn't realise you stopped.

He doesn't come to a halt until there is barely an arm's length of space between you, and seeing him this close to you, his face concealed, blank and empty, has that strange feeling pooling in the pit of your stomach again.

His lashes are blond. It surprises you. You'd always imagined he had black hair. Black hair, black eyes.

It's blonde.

You don't know why it matters, why you can't stop staring at the soft wisps around his lids. They flutter shut, fanning across the smudged ink skin under his eyes. The tips are blond. The bottoms are ash. They're nice, you note, a flavour of that same something blistering through you.

His lids slide open, the corner tightening as his gaze sharpens, focusing on you. "Y'alright?" He asks again, waiting for an answer.

You swallow, and it tastes of sand. Gritty, and painful when it slips down your throat. Your voice is a rasp, a shiver above a whisper, when you say, "yeah. "

His eyes tighten again, deeper this time. Something flashes in those polychrome depths. Under the hat, his brow pulls taut together.

The indent makes your fingers itch, the urge to reach out, to soothe it, is nearly overwhelming.

"You lyin' to me?" He grumbles, an edge to his voice you can't place.

"No," you mutter, the words dragged out of you by force. "Just a —a headache."

He has a look in his eyes that makes you think he knows, somehow. That he can chisel inside your head, and rummage through all the secrets you try to keep.

Your neck aches from having to tip your chin back so much to even look at him, the 90-degree angle making you feel dizzy. The opposite of vertigo where you sometimes look up at the unending sky yawning overhead and feel that tendril of fear curling around you, admixing the awe, until you feel the urge to dig your fingers into the ground, and hold on. You can't fall up, but in those moments, it almost feels like you might.

Ghost gives you that same feeling.

His chin dips low, eyes lidded and heavy. You could almost mistake it for bland disinterest had his jaws not been working, gnashing together in a wordless tick. He says nothing. You watch the bones move. The fabric teeth snap.

All his focus is centred on the blood-red gash near your temple. The black sutures keeping the split skin together.

Ghost makes a sound, and you almost mistake it for a growl. Inhumane. Animal. It's pulled from his throat, but bitten off by his teeth before it can take shape.

You blink up at him, wide and owlish, when he reaches for you.

His hand is warm even through the glove. The rough fabric grazes your skin when he brushes your hair away with his knuckle. His eyes are fixed on your forehead, hardened, all militaristic concentration as he looks you over.

"It's—it's fine…"

"It ain't."

Gritty sandpaper. Harsh, abrading.

It's hushed, though.

Speaking above a whisper feels taboo. This whole thing does, honestly. Illicit, wrong. Ghost shouldn't be lasering his glare on your forehead, searching for a reason to do something about the anger that now brims in those dark depths. His knuckles on your skin feel sacrilegious. Touching you is exempt. Illegal. Off-limits.

But he does it, anyway. Strips the barriers pitched in front of you both like tissue paper, and holds his four knuckles to your temple, his thumb brushing a hair beneath the irritated skin. Gentle. Soft.

You didn't think these hands knew how to do something so delicate. That they were made, instead, to break. To crush. To ruin.

He might, yet: the pad of his finger feels like a brand when it ghosts over the soft curve of your forehead, soothing the phantom hurt, and you think you might just shatter if he doesn't stop touching you like this. Gingerly. Calming. A balm over your aching flesh.

You'd gotten so used to the pain, the constant throb in your head, that this respite from it feels like bliss. Nirvana wrapped in leather.

His touch is magnetic. It pulls a sound from deep within your chest, something desperate and wanting, and you can't snap your jaws shut quick enough before it's loose in the atmosphere, and cresting over him.

Ghost's gentle prods go still. With his thumb pressed into a place that makes liquid heat spume in your vein, you can feel it tremble when your tongue snakes out, gliding over your lower lip.

Your head swims. Phosphenes dance across the back of your lids, and you struggle to remember when you shut your eyes in the first place.

They flutter open.

His stare is fixed on your lips in a total eclipse, honed in on the slow roll of your blood-red tongue as it peeks out from the warm cavern of your mouth. The wet trail left behind is swallowed by his gaze. It flickers up, catching the bloom of heat under your cheeks. The darkened flush makes him rumble; the soft rattle of an engine purring. A frisson passes over his expression, lashes fluttering.

He's close. Closer than he was before. You can feel the molten heat bleeding into your skin with his proximity. Taste the gunpowder, the ash, and the ichor that clings to him; he smells of war when you breathe him in. Gasoline. Copper. A livewire scent that makes your lungs itch.

Dangerous. Powerful. Deadly.

Every synapse in your head misfires, sending off warning signs and sirens to run from the man that reeks of gun oil, and fire; napalm-scented demise with blood-soaked hands meant to ruin. But it only makes you lean in closer until the acrid burn of him corrodes your throat.

His body is warm, and the heat is stifling.

You're drunk off the fumes he exudes; reckless and wanting, and in the slurried molasses of your mind, you wonder if this is what it feels like for a gazelle to stand so close to a lion.

Something cold pools at the base of your spine, making you shiver. A warning—distant, ancient—but the calls of your ancestors are dimmed under the bulk of his shadow. The heavy iron in his gaze rests over you, and you imagine that his body pressed into yours would carry the same heft.

He's somehow bigger up close, you think. Wide shoulders, thick arms, a broad chest and waist; muscular thighs, firm calves.

He's not Adonis, but you imagine he feels just like marble all the same.

"Thought we lost you." His voice is a crackle; sap popping as it burns in the fire. The log charring in the kindling. "Thought we— fuck, pet. Thought you were gone, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it."

We. He says we, now. It's new. You shudder in his hold.

"I'm here," you whisper the words, afraid of breaking this strange spell between you. It feels like everything else around you has melted away until only you and he exists on this lonely street that makes you ache.

"You are…" he rasps; a low hush. Maybe he, too, is afraid of shattering it. "You did good, soldier."

His knuckles graze the mark in your temple, gentle around the tight, irritated flesh—it's proof that you lived, that despite the tragedy of the betrayal from the man you counted on the most, you survived. You made it. You won.

His touch is featherlight. But his eyes–

His eyes are heavy with the promise of nothing but ruin.

A million thoughts run through your head, ones that taste like kerosene, and cauterise inside you like a cigarette to your skin. The heat blooms again, but it's not enough—all you can think of is how you wished you had more of him.

(You wonder if you run your tongue along his skin, kiss that acrid mouth, if he'd taste of napalm.)

Chiselled open, exposed to the air. Ghost takes a deep breath, holding the fumes of your burning need in his lungs. When he exhales, you can taste the smoke in the air.

His hand drops, fingers sliding down the curve of your face until he meets the plush softness where your chin and cheek meet. The hand he keeps on you is firm.

His eyes bore into yours. He wants your attention. Demands it. Then, he holds it steady until your mouth drops in a series of short, gasping breaths.

Your voice is featherlight when you say his name. His real one. Simon. It simmers in the air between you, and the scent of it almost makes his eyes snap shut, shoulders coiling. Tensed. Wanting. His muscles flex, bunching together in tight knots. Clench. Release. Clench.

It's only when you hear his haggard breath through the nylon, do you realise he's holding himself back from you.

Your belly flutters at the rumble roiling out of his throat.

Another command falls, deeper, darker, and your spine nearly snaps with how quickly you straighten up when he utters two words.

"Later, pet."

It's a promise. A demand. An out.

His mind made up, decisive and sure, he's now shoving the choice in your hands. Leaving the decision with you for safekeeping.

Like before, there is only ever one choice. As if you had any other answer for him.

When you nod, firm and eager, his chest shudders. "Fuckin' Christ–" it's a snarl, full of tension. Excitement.

His hand slides away from your face, and presses into the base of your spine, settling heavily over the curve of your ass. There is pressure, an urgency.

"C'mon," he rasps, jerking his chin to the end of the park. "Parked over here."

He keeps his hand on you, heavy and hot. A possessive branding as he leads you away from this place.

When you pass, your eyes drop to the pavement.

The gravel is clean. Your blood is nowhere to be found.

Your muscles go lax. You get pulled into his current, shoulder brushing over his chest.

Simon tightens his hold, and pulls you closer.

(Dragging you out to open water until you can't see the shoreline anymore.)

He leads you to a black jeep with tinted windows, and grounds out that it's rental when you press the heel of your palm into your mouth, futilely trying to hide a smile.

"It's nice," you quip, light and airy. "Very you."

"Just get your ass inside already," he says, pulling the door open for you. "Got a drive ahead of us."

His hand settles on your waist when you step up on the first rung, heavy. Firm. You want to lean into him. Have him pressed up against you like this for an eternity.

"Where are we going?" You breathe, shivering from the molten look in his eye. The heat in his chest.

He tugs you back into him, chin grazing the space between your neck and shoulder. His voice is white-hot in your ear. "My safe house."

Your eyes flutter. Heat blooms. "Simon—" his name is a whimper on your lips.

His fingers dig into your hips. "Fuckin' hell, pretty thing. You keep saying my name like that, and we won't make it to Southport."

There is no lie in the words that are forced out of his throat; inhumane, a growl. You don't want him here —in this town where you moulder.

Your fingers trail over his wrist. The coarse hair on his arms tickles your skin.

"Get me out of here."

His eyes sharpen. "Gladly."

Two hours and a half hours from Porthmadog to Southport.

A lot of time for him to reconsider. For that coldness he wears like a shield, that unbreakable distance, to pitch itself in front of him once more, locking you out. Perhaps, it'll be for good. Maybe—

Your hands ball into fists. Knuckles dig into the plush seat.

You know what you want. Know what you've wanted since before you stupidly opened your mouth— keeping my seat warm— and he saw it through.

But what about him? There was no time on the jet for a grand discussion, not when everyone was on top of each other already; not when Soap kept glancing at you, brow drawn tight, as if to ask really, bonnie?

Memories of Sierra Leone have you in a chokehold. Your purgatory, your limbo, your afterlife; when you were dying, it was all of him. Of the desert. Of the town that felt so warm, so inviting. The people baulked at his size but still ushered you over, offering snacks, and treats.

So tiny beside him, a woman laughs. You need to eat more. Your man should make you fat and happy.

You blushed. He's not—

Yes, yes… A wink. A coy grin. He watches from the dirt path as she presses bundled cassava into your hands. He says nothing at all. Your man. You like the sound of it more than you should.

You know what you want. What you've wanted.

It puddles inside of you. Droplets leaking through the fissures that have been splintering for years, now.

A man stands in front of you. Promise me, you'll get him.

You: young, naïve, nodded. I promise.

Ghost pulled you aside. He yells—quite often, in fact—but he's ice cold when he says, we don't make promises, rookie. Deadly. Your heart is in your throat when you apologise.

And then the scent of fire. A mission in Mesaieed left you and Gaz trapped. Helpless. Smoke clogging your lungs. Gaz wheezing under the intense blase; the noxious fumes billowing from the smoulder.

His voice in your ear. We'll get you out of there, rookie. Hang tight.

That a promise? You gasp, gagging from the black cloud drenching your lungs. Close to death, and cracking jokes. Confident. Assured. Nile crocodile lurking below the surface.

He isn't there to see your hands shake. You're thankful for it. Stupid, stupid—you want nothing more to impress your Lieutenant. Match him wit-for-wit. Vile joke for vile joke.

It surprises you when his voice filters through the line, one word slurred into your ear: yes.

Are you a man who keeps his promises?

Always. That's why I never make them. Close to a fiery death, and his voice crackles again. Why wasn't Jesus born in Liverpool?

Gaz coughed. Fuck's sake… Lemme die in peace.

Why, Lt?

There are no wise men or virgins.

Funny. I like that one.

Knew you would. Cover your heads.

The window above shattered. They saved you—just like they said they would.

(You realised then that Ghost cared for you, for all his subordinates, more than he let on.)

And now—

There is no turning back. Later, he said. He promised. A man who keeps his promises.

You think, then, of the look on his face under the streetlamp. Snowfall trickles between you. There was a battle in his head; artillery fire in the gaps of his eyes when he said:

"Thought we—fuck, pet. Thought you were gone, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it."

The words get lodged in his throat. They're ripped out with a harshness that bludgeons through you.

You turn to him, taking in his profile as he leans back in the seat, looking out the windshield.

As if he feels your stare, his eyes cut from the window, and find yours. He holds it until you taste smoke in your throat, until your lip trembles. Then it sinks low to your lap. One hand peels off of the steering wheel.

It feels like an anvil when it rests on your thigh.

"Almost there," it's a strangled rasp. A promise.

You nod. Your smile feels flushed when it pulls on your lips. Sunkissed. Warm. Expectant.

Your hand unfurls, fingers aching from the strain of your grip, and you curl them over his wrist. His pulse thuds under your thumb. You stroke it, and wonder what he would say if he knew yours beat the same.

The safehouse in Southport is not at all what you were expecting.

The winding road he drives on leads to a small, modest cabin on the outskirts of the town. Perched away from the rest of civilisation, it sits on its own island. Cut-off from the mainland.

The distance is something that makes a smile pull on your lips. So fittingly him —your lone wolf leader who only just learned the word we —but the sight of the house makes something gnarl inside of your chest. It's quaint.

Somehow, you'd expected a flat in the heart of the city. London, perhaps. Somewhere close to the airport, to the UK base used when you needed the closest weapons cache or jet.

The little abode in the middle of a farm doesn't mesh with the image you'd drawn of your prickly Lieutenant. It's too—

Wholesome.

"It's temporary," he grouses when he catches your teeth sink into your palm, a wide grin splitting across your face. "I haven't been back here in a long time."

"Is it yours?" You ask, turning to him. The jeep hums, idling. Neither of you makes any move to get out.

His fingers drum on the wheel. "Grew up here."

"I thought you were from East London."

"No. Moved there, then back here." He offers.

You nod. You get it.

"It's nice." You say instead, and it really is. A sprawling farmland with rolling hills in the distance where you know the sun hits in the morning. Where it'll bathe the boscage in ochre. "Peaceful."

"I'd have taken you to London," he grinds the words out from between his molars. "But it's too far."

Too far. Roughly four hours.

You've been sitting for nearly three. You shudder, eyes lidded when you turn to him.

A slow roll of your tongue has his arms flexing, hands gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles are stained white. Bleached.

"Maybe next time."

A promise. A question.

The vein in his forearm throbs. "C'mon, let's go."

You barely have enough time to pace a few feet into the foyer before it starts. You turn to look at him from over your shoulder—taking in the chimney, the chaise, the distinct lack of anything personal outside of a safe, a lighter on top of the fireplace—and he's suddenly there. Boots off. Hands curled into fists by his side. Head dipped down, and eyes more dangerous than you'd ever seen them.

That thrill pools—a warning. Run, run.

He stalks toward you, eyes burning coal. "Are you hungry?"

"No," you shake your head, swallowing thickly.

A step back. A step forward. They spark when you run.

"Thirsty?"

"N—no…"

Two steps bring him closer to you. Your back presses flush to the wall next to the fireplace, and he moulds over you like a liquid shadow. Dark, imposing. He's massive. You can't see anything but him.

Simon rests his forearm against the wall over your head, bending it at the elbow to bring him closer to you. The rough graze of his mask over your cheek has you panting.

His hand is a brand on your thigh. It slips down, fingers crooking in the fold of your knee, wrenching it up his hip. You gasp, hands grasping the bulk of his biceps when he drags your centre flush over the growing bulge in his pants.

Your head swims when he growls in your ear. "Is there anything you need to do before I drag you to my bed?" You shake your head slightly, pulse humming in your chest. "Because once I'm inside this pretty cunt, nothing at all will get me out. Understood?"

Your brain short circuits. A complete whiteout.

"A—affirmative." You choke, somehow coherent despite the absolute mess in your head. "Sir."

He rumbles. His chest pushes into yours; the sound reverberating through your bones. "Good girl."

He turned his back to you after he let you inside a modest bedroom, pulling the black sweater over his head. His back exposed—rippling muscles, etches of black from the tattoos—all pale skin wrapped in thick sinew. The sound you make has his shoulders coiling tight.

"Fuck, pet… I haven't even touched you, yet."

He turns, the mask slightly lopsided, and his beanie missing. His hair without the full balaclava sends a shock to your system. The newness of discovering something; elation bleeds in. His hair is ashen brown. Lighter than chocolate, darker than caramel.

You want to sink your fingers into the thick of it.

Thighs pressed tight together, your greedy eyes take him in. The way his hair—moussed from the hat—falls over his forehead; not cropped to the grain like Soap, and barely centimetres longer than Price.

He gazes at you. Waiting, maybe.

Your hands fall to your pants, eager to rid yourself of every barrier between your skin and his. You want him on you— in you. It itches like a sickness. Burns like a fever.

Your trousers fall. Fingers looped into the hem of your panties. He stops you, then, with his words.

"I took the mask off for the team."

You falter, bent down to push the panties the rest of the way off, and blink up at him.

The first thought, of course, is that Gaz saw his face before you. Gaz. The rookie rivalry (playful, carrying the flavour of siblings vying for their approval) makes you burn.

You swallow the jealousy on your tongue. "Oh…"

He waits, still.

"You don't have to…" you want to see him. He's a mosaic; an incomplete piece. You have two halves but the middle is murky. You try to fit them in your head, but the image doesn't line up.

"Lay back," he ordered, hands dropping to his belt buckle.

The image of him tugging the leather, veins rippling under the black ink of his burly forearms, feels unholy. It douses you with a want so palpable, your belly quivers with need.

You don't need foreplay, you think. Not when the sight of him pulling off a belt already has you melting. Has your pussy throbbing, your thighs slick.

"Damn, Lieutenant…" you mewl, dropping down on the bed, knees pressed taut together to stem the ache. "How are you so—"

"Simon," he rasps. The belt hangs in his hands. You wonder if he'd tie you up one day with it. Leave you quivering below him, completely at his mercy.

Or, would he let you use it on him? Let you bind this behemoth to the bed for your pleasure.

Your toes curl. The thoughts alone are enough to get you off, you think.

But it's the sight of him, then, standing over you, trousers hanging low on his hips, kept in place only by the thick thigh he slots between your knees, that really makes you shudder.

"Lay back," he orders again, hand dropping—white-hot, rough—to your shaking knee. His chin lowers, eyes staring at your pussy. "I want to taste you again, pet."

Fuck. Fuck —

He lowers to his knees, still somehow taller than you, and gazes at you between your bent legs. Dark eyes flashing. Goosebumps prickle along your flesh as he trails his gaze down the length of your body, settling, once again, on your cunt.

He looks as if he's going to devour you. Eyes wide, whites full, when he pries your legs apart, spreading your cunt for him once more. He hadn't seen you bare like this—beneath him for his own pleasure—and you feel the ghost of his breath on your sex when he leans in close, breathing in deeply.

"Bloody- fuckin' -hell, pet—" it sounds like a curse when he says it. A choked snarl. "So wet for me, and I haven't even touched you."

His hands are on the outside of your thighs, rough skin grazing the sensitive flesh as he trails them down to the soft flesh beneath your knee. With his thumbs hooked in the bend, pressing sharply into the cartilage, he wrenches them apart, opening you wider for him until your pussy is bared to him completely.

The groan he makes edges on the equinox of being absolutely filthy and wrecked when he drinks you in.

"Missed this pretty little cunt." His masked cheek rests on your knee, head cocked as he stares down at you. When he tips his chin, gazing at you, his eyes are blacker than midnight. A pool of ink. Desire brims.

He hooks your thighs over his broad shoulders, finger looping in the gap between his mask and the skin beside his nose.

You don't have a chance to see it. Fucking tease —

He dips his head before he tugs it down, and you feel the molten heat of his tongue slipping between your folds.

Your head falls back on the pillow, toes curling as that greedy mouth devours you once more. The stubble around his chin prickles the skin of your thighs. His grip is so tight, you already see blooms of blue pooling beneath the tips of his fingers.

The first time wasn't a flute. Simon presses his mouth to your cunt like he can't get enough; lips sealing over your throbbing clit, tongue lapping at you in even, thick strokes that make you see white behind your eyelids. It's good, so good —

He's going to ruin you.

"Simon—"

You remember those filthy groans rumbling against your slit, and your hand lifts, reaching down to tangle in his locks. A tug—sharp, pointed—makes him pant into your pussy, makes his fingers tighten until you can feel capillaries bursting under his firm hold. Until his short nails make indents in your flesh.

"Yeah, pet," his voice is molten rock; you throb, aching, from the sound alone. "Just like that…"

His mouth is on you again, devouring you whole.

You lift your head, staring down at the black eyes that bore into you, the thick locks of hair spilling out between your fingers, and you break.

You fall back with a groan, arching your cunt into his eager mouth, desperate for more. More of that liquid bliss that spools in your core, that has you leaking a puddle under his chin.

His hands shift, sliding down the meat of your thighs until they wriggle under your ass. Your flesh spills between his fingers when he grips you tight, lifting your hips, your cunt, to him.

Simon helps you buck against him, lets you cant your hips into his face, nearly smothering him with the sopping heat of your centre. When you're mewling, panting, with your head tossed back, and rapture in a quiver of his name spilling from your lips, he shifts.

His hold changes, and one hand falls back. His lips seal around your aching clit as a finger—long, thick—presses against your entrance. His tongue laves over you when he slowly presses it inside, crooking it to stroke against your fluttering walls.

The choked sob that leaves your throat is a mangled wreck of pleasure, of want.

"More," you mewl, but the plea barely has a chance to pass your lips before he's dragging his finger out until only the tip keeps you open. "Please, sir—"

He thrusts it into the last knuckle, groaning against you at the slick, wet sound that it makes. "Fuck, pet. Always so wet for me, aren't you?"

"Always," you gasp, fingers gripping his hair tight. "Simon, I need more—"

He pulls his finger out; another joins it when you whimper. The stretch feels good. Heat blooms in your belly. You won't last long. Your thighs quiver with each roll of his fingers pushing in as deep as they will go; with each stroke of his tongue over your clit.

You're going to cum—

"Simon—"

The coil snaps, pussy clenching on the thick fingers wedged inside of you, hips canting into his eager mouth as he rides you through the spasming pleasuring that ripples through your abdomen.

"That's it… that's a good girl," he slurs against you.

It's almost too much when he forces another finger into your throbbing cunt. You keen at the stretch, at the too-full feeling of him splitting your walls.

"Simon, I can't—"

"Yes, you can. You're taking me so well already."

His voice is liquid sex; the wrecked sound of him makes your toes curl, and your spine arch. You want him inside of you. You want to know if he'd make those same grunts of pleasure with your pussy wrapped around him.

High of the sudden burst of endorphins, you look down at him—sloppy with your wetness, his face hidden by your cunt—and you tug his hair until he meets your blown-out gaze.

"Fuck me," you try to demand, but the word comes out as a shaky plea.

"Too tight, pet," he rumbles. "Gotta get you ready for me."

Three fingers buried to the last knuckle, and he says it still isn't enough.

You'd think him cocky had you not the pleasure of seeing him hard and aching already. Big, fat cock leaking between the seal of his palm. You shiver, head dropping to the pillow.

It's all you can do but take whatever he gives you—long, thick fingers stretching you out, brushing the gummy walls inside that flutter when his mouth seals over your clit. It feels like an eternity since he pulled you inside the room.

A tug of your hand makes him groan. You meet his stare, pleading. Breathless. It's too much—

And not enough.

"I don't care," you slur, drunk and stupid on the way his hot mouth glues to your cunt. "I wanna feel you inside of me for days, sir—"

"Fuck!"

It's a harsh snarl that makes you whimper. The sound ripped from his chest, and rubbed raw as it was scraped out. His forehead is pressed to your mound, breathing you in once more.

His head lifts.

It's dark in the room. You can't really make out the entirety of his features—the familiar long nose, the cut of his jaw. His lips. It's bathed in black, in shadows, but through the glimmer of the washed-out moon that spills inside, you can see the distinct wetness gleaming on his mouth, his chin.

You whimper, eyes burning with tears of desperation. When he speaks, it's shredded rocks. Gravel. Low and dark.

"You're gonna feel me for weeks, pet."

It's a dangerous precipice. His voice alone shatters your resolve, and seeing those full, pink lips form the words that will ruin you, it's overwhelming. Your cunt throbs, walls shuddering in pleasure ripped through your being.

He feels it against his fingers; it makes his eyes flutter. His tongue sweeps out. Eye hooded, half-mast as they take you in.

He sits back, hands slipping to the crease of your knees. His chin dips.

"Hold 'em open for me, pet."

You gasp, belly knotting tight from the command that drips from his drenched, wicked, mouth. Your hand reluctantly falls from the soft locks to do as you're told. The warmth of his skin brushes over your fingers when you take his place, keeping your legs bent, spread, for him. You're on display. Open, wanting.

His hand, now free, reaches for the bundle of fabric pooled at the base of his neck. The mask is fixed into place again—a needless action, you think, pouting. Gaz saw his face in better lighting.

(You hope he had the wherewithal to take a picture for you.)

But there is something to be said about how illicit he looks, mouth now concealed from your view until just his eyes are visible. The coal is rubbed off, shadows along the crease, the corner of his nose, under his eyes, but it feels dangerous like this.

With the mask on, he's Ghost. Deadly. Dangerous. Fearsome. Men cower from him. His name alone scorches the earth, and makes the underbelly tremble.

And he's going to be inside of you. Claiming you, taking you. It's a cigarette thrown on a sea of gasoline. Your skin, fervid, begins to blister.

When you look up, it's ink-blot eyes in a sea of white. Red tendrils in the corners; rivers of ichor.

If he keeps looking at you like that, like you're a feast for him, you might go a little crazy, a little delirious.

Simon stares for a moment longer, hand dipping below the bed to grasp himself in his hand. A grunt at the touch, a flutter of his lashes, and then he moves. Coiled muscle; rippling flesh. He looms above you like a Cimmerian god—drenched in tenebrose, mask soaked from your slick—his haunting eyes gazing at you like you're an offering meant to be savoured.

His thighs—thicker than the tree trunks in the distance—slot beneath yours, and the sheer width of them makes you dizzy. The bulk is bigger than your head. Simon must notice the way you're drooling over them, knuckles white as you stare, open and hungry, wanting, as he takes a small amount of mercy on you. He shifts until the bulk of it is pressed taut to your core.

Your back arches, legs trembling. Fuck—

You want to ride his thighs. Want him to perch you on his massive lap, and have those molten eyes fixed on you as you use him to get yourself off.

You could do it, you think, mind blanking out; that soporific pleasure slurring all logic from taking root until a gossamer spools inside, filled with want. With greed.

"Wanna ride you…" you slur, wrecked on the notion alone. "Your thighs. They're so big, Simon, fuck— you're so big—"

"I like that idea, pet," he rasps, thigh notching closer to your throbbing cunt, smearing slick all over the coarse hair that covers his flesh. "Wanna see you desperate for it."

"I am…" you whine, breathless. "I want you so bad, I can't stand it…"

His hands fall, bracketing his burly arms beside your head until the absurd heft of him fills your vision. The muscles in his core pull taut; veins in his arms pulse.

He told you to keep your legs spread, but your fingers itch with the need to touch him. To feel him against your palm.

His cock hangs, daunting and thick, between his legs, head brushing your belly. Prespend smears over your skin; warm, tacky. You want a taste—

When you tell him as much, chin tipped backwards to whisper the words into his neck, he shudders above you. His cock twitches, spits more prespend on you. You want him to cum on your face, you gasp, words liquid, slurred. You're not entirely sure they're in English. You don't think you have the capacity to think beyond want, want, want—

"Yeah?" He rasps, elbow bending as he drops to his forearm. It brings his chest flush to yours. The dark smattering of hair rubs against your nipples. His face is a constellation: white jowls, black eyes. The look alone makes you smoulder. "Don't worry about me, pet."

You're shaking your head, but the protests die on your tongue when his hips slip between your thighs, prying you further apart. Completely spread beneath the bulk of his body, you crumble.

He knocks your hands away, a low murmur of his approval slipping past those sinful lips for listening to him, as if there was ever a choice, and he notches your knees against his hips, pressing himself closer to your core.

Finally free, your hands spring down to grab him, gripping his bicep in a vice just to feel the way it jumps under your fingers, and the other flat against his heated chest. His pulse thunders against your palm.

"Gonna give it to you, now."

You wanted it— ached for it—but as he feeds his thick cock into your pussy, you wonder if maybe you'd been a little overconfident before. That, perhaps, he was right.

It's swallowed down, smothered with a whimper. His stupidly fat cock will not break you.

"That's it, pet," he slurs, mask pressed tight to your ear. "Take it… C'mon, now."

He pulls back, widening your thighs, and then pushing them up until you're nearly folding in half beneath him. The movement jostles his cock, and it nudges something inside of you that makes you spasm around him.

"Fuckin' hell…" he groans, sinking in deeper. His eyes are fixed on the spot where he stretches you taut. Skin raw; cunt pushed to the mettle. "Almost there… look'it your pretty cunt take my cock…"

The air is punched from your lungs when he pushes in deeper, when the blunt head batters up behind your belly button. He knocks against your cervix, and the deep ache has tears leaking from the corners of your eyes.

"Go on, pretty thing," he husks in your ear, words drenched in pleasure. Your fingers dig into the bulk of his body, crescent moons embedded into his skin.

He bludgeons into something inside of you that has you see stars—galaxies burst behind your eyelids, and heat, supernova hot, burns low in your belly. It burns at the place where his cocks ruts into you so deeply that you can feel him in your sternum, almost taste him in your throat. It liquefies your body. You melt into a conduit under him; a receptacle that leaches pleasure from the stretch of his cock inside you.

Your body slackens. There is a give; something breaks. And he's suddenly deeper than you knew existed, than you ever thought possible. You feel him almost knocking against the cap of your womb. Each persistent jerk has your pussy clenching around him, milking him, trying to get him deeper.

As if that was possible. As if there was any room left inside of you for him to claim.

You're stuffed to the brim; overflowing with him. You can't take anymore.

You sob brokenly when his hips pull back until only the mushroom head of his cock splits your aching, raw cunt open. The seam of you flutters around him, as if begging to be filled again.

He grunts, a hoarse, low noise dredged from the depths of his chest when he shifts, his cock spearing back into you.

It nearly makes you scream. Your nails rake over his flesh, desperate to find purchase amid a crumbly chossy that threatens to send you plummeting down a precipice, hurtling you toward an unknown abyss.

"Easy, now," he commands, the bark of his voice bitten between clenched teeth. "You're gonna make me cum before I've gotten my fill of this cunt, pet."

"Want it," you slur, babbling on the liquid bliss roaring through your veins. "Want you to fill me up, Simon."

A snarl of your name is the only warning you get before his cock is battering against your gummy walls, blunt head jarring into that little place inside of you that has phosphenes filling your vision, has your lungs aching with hypoxia. Head dizzy, chest shuddering with each breath. You can't get enough of it. Of the heady scent of him, the sun-drenched heat.

Simon is normally so controlled, constrained, and you find yourself fracturing into pieces as his ironclad resolve seems to shatter with each squeeze of your cunt. It's a dizzying feeling to reduce your cold-hearted Lieutenant into a rutting beast, spoiling himself with each tight clench of your soft insides against his thick, hard cock.

Your eyes open, wet lashes flutter and stick to the crease of your eyelid, and you find the way his brow is pinched tight together as he burrows himself deep within you, until the taste of salt is heavy on your tongue, absolutely breathtaking. It's enough to get you hooked. Enough to make such an utter mess of you, that you don't know how you'll recover from this.

It's an intense feeling having him seated so deeply within you. Edging deliriously along that equinox of unfathomable bliss, and the sharp, distinct too much—too full quiver of pain. It's a pinch within your guts, a deep throb that follows the unending plume of pleasure so blistering as it batters into you, that you almost find yourself getting swept away by the sheer thrill of it all. Mindless, driven stupid by the way he takes, the way he ruins.

(You don't ever want him to stop.)

It's one thing to have his mouth on you, but another thing entirely to see how he breaks when he's inside of you. It's addicting. A powerful high that renders everything else static.

Pleasure, red-hot and dizzily intense, lacerates through your core, spooling at the base of your spine. It fills your limbs with molten bliss until nothing remains except the way he pounds inside of you, filling you over and over again with every inch he has to offer. You think you might just go insane if you don't have him. If you don't get to feel the delicious drag of his cockhead rubbing against your pulsating walls.

Your hands slide over his skin. The muscles clenching under the pads of your fingers as you drag them up, over his arm, his biceps, his broad shoulders.

The bulk of his back makes your fingers itch. You sink them into the corded muscles, clinging to him as Simon drags you to that hazy place where euphoria clots inside of your veins, and the heat you syphoned from him bubbles, frothing over.

It's pulled taut—an elastic band that stretches well past the breaking point, and makes your fingers sting when it snaps. You convulse beneath him, sobbing out barely coherent words that sound like a quivering war cry of his name, of how good he feels, and how you're mad with the taste of him nestled so deeply within you.

Your nails digging into his skin, his name on your lips like a gospel, the molten clench of you around—it all congeals together until he's snarling in your ear, a raspy grunt that makes your toes curl, that has you seeing nirvana once more. It's your name—somewhere in the mess of his growl, his groan—that is pulled out from him, and pierces you deep, makes your core tremble at the ragged sound of it, broken and hoarse.

He throbs like a heartbeat, cock pulsing as he sputters out a thick pool of cum. It's almost too much; your pussy is overstuffed, forced to take both the heaviness of his cock, and molten spume that fills you to the brim. It leaks out from around the plug of him, pushed to the base until not even an inch remains, and you feel it gathering under you.

You want a taste of it. It swells inside, fills you deep, and you wonder if he'd let you lick it off of him.

You murmur it into his drenched chest, more slurred words that only vaguely sound English. Maybe it's the tone of your voice—ruined and raw, and drunk of the taste of him—that punctures through, but it hits the mark. Simon buries his head into your neck with another gravelled rasp of your name that sticks to his throat, breaking over the vowels. His softening cock twitches within you.

Words, or sentiment, whispered into the crackling atmosphere that smells of sex and kerosene, and goes straight to his groin.

"Cheeky little—," he starts, a husking grumble, but you squeeze your sore, aching sex around him, fluttering like a soft heartbeat, and it dies with a groan.

The victory doesn't last long. Your raw, abused cunt aches from overstimulation, a throbbing sting from your tender flesh making you wince. You're too keyed up. A ragdoll against the shoreline, caught in the current that batters your body until you feel like one massive contusion.

Fucking Simon feels like surviving a war. It feels like clawing your way out of the trenches, tasting the heavy, gunmetal tang of acrid artillery fire in the air, and standing victorious. Brutalised, dazed, and numb from the beating, but full of the banquet of victory.

He keeps you under him, still buried to the hilt, and pants into your neck. Flushed with exertion, his chest red and drenched in sweat, you slip your hands through the mess of him, and find purchase where the knob of his spine protrudes from his flesh.

Simon's head rises. His eyes—quivering, glossy ink—lidded and sleepy with pleasure, and that tangible post-sex haze that permeates the air, find yours.

Sweat drips down his forehead, over his brow, his temple. It's swallowed by the fabric of his mask, lopsided on his cheeks. Red peaks over the black horizon. A deep flush the same bloodied hue as his chest.

(You wonder if it tastes like ichor.)

His eyes shudder, body trembling from the ripple of it.

"Fuck me, pet…"

You tip your heavy, mushy head back, and grin. Big, and wide. The smile of elation. Of success. "I already did."

He huffs, heavy and full, through his nose. "Bloody hell—" in response to your tease, he grinds his cock against your aching walls.

Your breath is sucked in through clenched teeth; a breathy, high-pitched whimper.

"Mae hi wedi cachi arna i…"

"English, pet."

Your ankles try to link at the base of his spine, body drawn like a bow. "Your cock ruined me."

His eyes are rapacious, tainted with the fervour of conquest.

"It was meant to." The smoke in his timbre makes your toes curl. Your lungs smoulder with the heat of it.

Simon has you seeing nirvana again, and again before the light outside crests through the thin curtains.

He rolls you under him, ankles hooked on his shoulders, and makes you watch as his cock spears deep inside of your well-fucked cunt.

Eyes on us, soldier. Don't you dare look away.

On your knees, head nearly smothered by the pillow, he covers you with the entirety of his bulk until everything around you is pitch black with the shadow he casts. He looms over you, chest pressed against your back, and fucks you slow, and deep. The position almost has you blacking out from the depths he reaches like this, and the burn of the stretch as your pussy pulls taut against his cock.

You can take it. This pretty cunt was made for my cock, pet.

Your favourite is being lowered onto him. Chests pressed together. You bury your hand in his damp hair, your face in his neck, and sink your teeth into the column of his throat until the salt of his skin nearly drowns you.

Fuckin' hell…

(In response, his hand brands the cheeks of your ass with the perfect impression of his massive palms.)

He lays back with you barely lucid, aching, sprawled on top of him, and runs his hands down your spine, husking in your ear about how good you've been for him, how pretty you look blissed out from his cock.

His words are mercury in your head.

"...wanna be good for you, Simon," you murmur into his collarbones.

He shudders under you.

His chest is slick with sweat when you rest your head on it, pulse thudding under your palm. His arm around your waist is an anchor, locking you tight to his side.

You'd woken up to the sun bleeding through the window, the room thick with the balmy swelter of sex. Ashes in your throat, salt on your tongue. Simon's heat burrows into your marrow.

There is a lot to be said, you think. Words that you were too cowardly to admit when in the soft, dazed atmosphere of the plane.

Only one thing buoys to the forefront. The only things you'd been clutching at this whole time. Life on the line, and all you could think of was the dunes outside of your tent. The searing heat on your back.

(Not on me.)

(Always, always.)

"...Since Sierra Leone," you confess into his flesh, mouth pressed against the side of his pectoral. His ashen chest hair tickles your nose.

Simon tenses under you. The soft strokes of his fingers–bare, warm–on your hip still.

You wonder if you misread things. If you made a mistake. Your mouth parts on his flesh. The briny taste of his skin is sharp on your tongue.

You won't apologise. The words are there, the confession lingering in the air like opaque tendrils of smoke. It's in his hands now. This little thing that flutters within your chest, tucked away for safekeeping since he turned to you, eyes dark and narrow, and said you did good, rookie.

His fingers coil over you, tightening against your flesh.

"Everything…" he rasps. Everything. It's pulled out of him; rolled over barbed wire.

Confused, you raise your head, brows knitting together. Everything—

A total eclipse. The ocean in the dead of night. Endless, unfathomable pools of black. The current threatens to drag you under to those depths that shudder in front of you.

The words die on your tongue, ashes in the back of your throat.

What good is a man if he has nothing to lose? So, what do you have to lose, soldier?

A smile splits across your face; a sun dawning over the beige spalls that seem to never end.

It tastes of the sea when you press your lips to his. You feel sand under your fingers, his pulse on your palm.

—Price calls it, has known since Mesaieed. He'd bet on Gaz, maybe even Soap. It never crosses his mind to think of Simon.

—But thinking about it now, it was obvious from the start.

("Sierra Leone. Wanna take Gaz with you–"

"No. I'll take the rookie.")

#simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon riley fanfic #simon riley #Simon Ghost Riley #call of duty #call of duty modern warfare #cod #cod mw2 #cod mw2 spoilers #cod spoilers #simon riley cod

3K notes · View notes

rikanescence · 5 months ago

Text

you meant it when you rejected leon last summer. he was a sweetheart, but he wasn't your type. too... awkward and clingy. without changing the nature of your relationship, leon was still keen on acting like your boyfriend. begging you to stay friends with him despite the one-sided pining. his eyes looked so sad. you remember how his voice cracked, the shaky words leaving between his soft, pink lips. he didn't wanna let you go, you were too important. he promised you that he wouldn't try anything. the sight, the ego boost you got from it, or both, were sufficient in making you oblige. you kissed his cheek and he told you he'd ‘go try find someone else.’

someone else, he'd found. he pleaded for you to help him. he had never kissed anyone before and he wasn't going to risk screwing up his date by 'biting the skin off their lips', according to his text messages. they had to be pretty special. that or leon was just being obsessive as usual. begging again. his panic only grew once you told him to use a pillow. you received and listened to a voice message of leon berating your nonchalance. he whined that it needed to be you he kissed. you sent an ambiguous reply somewhere between yes, no, and maybe so.

rolling off your bed, you were some sort of giddy thinking of your new arrangement with leon. yeah, you weren't into him like that, but being a guy's first kiss? how precious.

—♡—

pushing down his door handle, you smiled at how leon always left his front door unlocked until it was dark out. you could never even think of doing that. you were opposites to a comedic extent. you waltzing into leon's place in a skimpy tank top and shorts, what you always wore during your sleepovers back in high-school. leon nearly collapsing from nerves, but being pissed enough to march towards you and grab you by the shoulders. your grin was smug whilst his blue eyes bore holes into yours.

“you? what are you doing here? didn't you tell me to use a pillow? and stop smiling, this is serious, damn it!"

he shook you, and your foreheads collided in time with your noses. you glanced down and saw your mouth was close to leon's, almost touching.

"trying to sneak a kiss in so early? hm, that's not how you do it," you teased. leon's face flushed, but his irritation came back in a flash.

"oh, shut up," he muttered, releasing your shoulders and turning back towards his room. he stopped, then glared at you.

"are you going to help me or not?"

you followed leon and made your way up the stairs to his bedroom. falling onto his bed, leon’s only reaction was a downcast grumbling of how he ‘just did the sheets.’ so emo.

"come on, leon. don’t you want help," you questioned with a raised brow, that expression of a suppressed laugh you always held when leon was around smeared on your face. you sat up and patted the space next to you, feeling the mattress sink beneath you as you kneeled. once leon had plopped beside you on his bed, you took his face in your hands and pulled a little at his cheeks, giggling at how butthurt he looked.

"awww, don't look so sad," you teased, "there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a grown man who's never had a kiss."

"asshole," he scoffed, pushing your hands off his face and pinning you by the wrists so you couldn't grab it anymore.

"i mean it. your date is very lucky," you praise, “but i’m luckier.”

you click your tongue in annoyance when you find leon’s grip is too strong for you to wriggle your hands out of. despite his tendencies to follow your lead, leon was stronger than you. he could easily overpower you. he wouldn't dream of doing that, or maybe he would, but you liked it.

“gonna take me in, officer kennedy?”

you fell forward as to topple onto him. leon gasped once you made a seat of his midriff, his surprise causing him to release your hands. just as planned. you reached out to cup his face, and lifted it to yours. leon didn't know what to say, or do, or think, or feel, or anything. he didn't know anything when you kissed him. his attempt at returning one was pitiful-- he pretty much smooshed his mouth against yours and hoped for the best, you couldn't help but laugh. leon still hadn't gotten over you.

"no, leon..."

“what? what do you want then,” he spat with creases between his harsh brows, his mouth down while he fidgeted in place and looked to the side.

“like you can do it better. that—” he licked his lips before raising his voice. “what you gave me wasn’t even french! i barely felt it. are you the teacher or the student?” leon's criticism was unbelievable and impossible to be offended by. not when he couldn’t even look at you. not when you caught him tugging his shirt lower over his jeans. this idiot.

you caressed his textured face with your thumb, guiding his eyelids shut before you kissed him again. your hands fell to his chest and pushed him into the mattress, forcing him to relax. a state of meditation is good for guys like him.

“there, there, leon. don’t want you popping an artery,” you mock.

you sank to his level, the silk warmth of your shorts right below leon's hips making his eyes snap open another time. you laughed at him, he frowned again.

“sorry,” you offered without a trace of sincerity. you’d sat on something sensitive, for sure. your back arched like a cat, your plump lips pecked the corner of leon's mouth. your fingernails, teasing his chest through his shirt, had his front teeth lodging into his lip as he tried to stifle a whimper. leon didn't want you to notice the goosebumps that flared up on his skin as you did that. always so bad at playing it cool. you bit leon's swollen bottom lip to pull it away from his own teeth, your hand going to his neck and your thumb pressing into his adam's apple.

“you can't just… do that,” he choked.

“do what? you're saying you don't like my kisses?” you put on a hurt expression and leon shook his head in quick distress.

“no, wait, not like that. you know what i mean,” he grouched, only continuing because of the look you were giving him. “i like it. please don't stop.”

better. the gap between his lips was perfect and slick. your frisky tongue rolled, sliding from your open mouth to leon's while it lapped the inside of your sweet, wet kiss that tasted of mouthwash. or maybe a mint?

pushing him up against the wooden headboard, your hands gripped his hips-- one spreading out to roam his toned abdomen. you wrapped your legs around his center and ran a hand through his tousled hair, eliciting those sweet sounds you love to hear from him when you massaged his head like that. leon's big hand grabbed your breast, squeezing it so tight.

“fuck, leon,” you exhale with your pretty lips touching his.

“is that okay?” you opened your eyes to see him looking up at you for approval, his thumb swiping your nipple through the thin fabric clothing it.

“yeah, you're doing so… good,” you assured.

leon smiled. you captured his lips again, loving the way he relaxed as you did, his right hand losing its grip and the other running up and down your back. you nestled yourself further against his center, your fingertips pushing past the band of his cotton boxers. leon whined your name into the kiss, his hips bucked up into you. needy. the friction-charged feel of denim rubbed you just right. you stayed breathing him in, taking all you could get before leon fucked it up. your tongue clashed with his blunt-forced teeth, and you disconnected that very instant. leon was red-faced, his chest heaving with such intensity you swore you could see his pumping heart beating against it.

"fuck, i'm sorry. i didn't mean to. you don't have to stop," he pleaded. you glanced at his bedside alarm clock then to him, trying to seem fine despite feeling short of breath yourself. typical. you'd had enough fun.

"aren't you gonna be late for your... date?"

leon frowned, his eyes down instead of on you.

"are you seriously..." he was still struggling to breathe. "are you seriously asking me that right now?"

your gaze fell, too. although belated, your eyes landed on the bulge you'd been feeling earlier. leon caught your attention and took the opportunity to plead with you.

"please..."

leon's arms remained limp at his side, but he clenched a fist. he wanted more.

"what's wrong," you cooed. you placed a hand on the tent in his coarse, blue jeans and palmed it. a moan escaped leon. looking up at him, his eyes seemed glossy. you smiled.

"this doesn't change anything, leon. we can still be friends."

#leon kennedy #leon x reader #re2 remake #re2 leon #not proofread

113 notes · View notes

sodaskateboard · 9 months ago

Text

Ganyu NSFW Headcanons

AN: Sigh, thinking about my goat wife,, my precious princess, Gender Neutral Reader/ No Autonomy Given for Reader

Cannot dom to save her life

She will cry if you ask her to because she doesn't want to upset you but still just,, can't do it. Poor girl

Sex is very intimate and private for her, so she can't do hook ups or be with someone she doesn't love

She's also had very few, if any, sexual partners and wasn't very interested in sex before you so she's pretty inexperienced

You get to teach her the joy of "stress relief"

She needs it now regularly or else the stress just builds up again. Please. She physically needs it. Please, please, please

She needs constant reassurance and praise

It has to be romantic and sweet and soft

That said, you can tease her a little, but it has to be nice. Don't insult her even as a joke

"Is my sweet girl needy?" you ask her, already knowing the answer from how she sinks her body into your lap, trying to grind on you, without making it obvious. And maybe it wouldn't be if her breath wasn't so uneven, peaking around her small moans that she couldn't stop from escaping. She lets out a louder moan in response and leans back into your chest. It's clear what she wants, but she's too cute to pass up on. "Sorry sweetheart, you're gonna have to use your words." She whines loudly in protest and hides her red face in your neck, too embarrassed to say anything, only getting out her moan and pants and bucking into your hand.

Gets overstimulated easily

Loves having when you play with her tits. Massage them, kiss them, pinch her nipples, and suck on them

She's cummed just from having them sucked on while riding your thigh

Finds it embarrassing to finish and it takes a lot of energy from her

So it's even more overwhelming

Loves holding your hand while she finishes

She can't cum unless she feels safe

So hold her, pet her hair, whisper to her that's she's the most beautiful creature to ever exist, that you love with your whole soul, that you're going to make her your wife one day, how happy seeing her makes you

Her favourite dirty talk is the kind that if you just read it with no context, it could sound like wedding vows

Once you read her a love poem while fingering her in your lap and now she can't hear the poet's name without being mortified,, and a little excited

Her favourite place is in your or hers teapot. That way she knows no one can see you two

Imagine her surprise when you recreated her office in it. And several streets from Liyue outside,,,

She feels so dirty for imagining getting fucked somewhere like her work place or public, but she likes it so much

The first time you had sex outside in the teapot, she learned she was so sensitive even the wind's gentlest blow on her bare skin made her hot

She tastes very close to water, maybe with a bit of a herbal taste since she eats and drinks very healthy

She needs post sex cuddles more than she needs air. She needs a lot of emotional support during and after, so she knows you still like her after and are staying with her

"You work so hard Ganyu, I think you need at least one more. Just to be sure we got all the stress out of you." The half adeptus has her legs over your shoulder, the waves of her last orgasm still rippling through her body, making her head go back and her hips buck into nothing while her back tenses and all of her shakes. You place a hand her outer hip, gently patting her up and down until she can answer. You hum and watch her writhe.

She may be the divine being, knowing the Archon and adepti of Liyue for centuries and being raised them, but with the sight of her, you know you're the one truly blessed. To have Ganyu in your arms, to love and be her lover, there is not a mortal or immortal luckier than you. With her, you would stand in front of not only the adepti, or all of the Liyue, but all of Teyvat and its' archons and beyond. Even among Celestia, there is none more blessed than you, you're sure of it.

Your lovely girlfriend whines and squirms still. Maybe it was a little mean to make her finish four times. Or maybe what made it mean was that you planned to go for five tonight without telling her your goal. "You ready to go again pretty girl?" She whines loudly, either in protest or agreement. You softly giggle, "what does that mean?". She looks away from you, grabbing a pillow and putting it over her face. Then she starts to hump the air, wanting you to take care of her again. You were sure from the cry she let out when you began licking her heat again that making her cum five times was the meanest thing. Only maybe your cute little workaholic needed someone to be mean to her to get her to relax.

#ganyu x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact smut #ganyu x reader smut #genshin imagines #genshin smut #ganyu imagine

154 notes · View notes

sandwhitches · 3 months ago

Note

Hii love your writing event, can i have spf 50 with Kuroo and Begin againby TaylorSwift? Thank you so muchh<3

-> a/n: i still need to make a banner for kuroo whoopsie daisy

-> genre: fluff

-> content warning: mentions of bad past relationships

-> wc: 421

this is a part of my summer writing event!!! please feel free to send some requests my way :3

Isn’t being in love such a strange feeling? You think that to yourself as Kuroo takes a seat across from you at the café table, carefully settling down your cup of coffee with a quick little clink. You hum in thanks, blowing carefully on the drink as the steam wafts away from your face, swirling up into the air.

Kuroo’s eyeing you with a honeyed grin, “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” He knows you too well, better than anyone else who has ever known you before, and he knows you well enough to recognize the slightest expression in your eyes that hints at a flurry of thoughts happening behind them.

Truth be told, it’s a bit embarrassing; I’m so lucky, you had thought to yourself as you watched your boyfriend order your coffees, remembering a time in which you were with someone who wouldn’t do such a thing for you, who didn’t remember your coffee order like the back of their hand, nor did they ever insist on taking you out as much as Kuroo did.

A sheepish grin makes its appearance on your face, making way for a hushed huffy laugh to spill from your upturned lips, “Just thinking I’m lucky, that’s all.”

Kuroo raises an eyebrow at you behind his mug of coffee, setting it down, “You’re the lucky one?” He scoffs playfully, “I think you’ve got it the wrong way.”

You giggle at his response, yet there is still the remaining thought that you are lucky. Not very often have you ever felt as special as Kuroo makes you feel, basking you in his endearing gaze with each word you say, laughing full-bellied laughs at jokes you didn’t even think were that funny, listening to you talk about your favorite movie like he’s never seen one before.

“Maybe we’re both lucky,” you suggest with a coy grin, holding your warm mug up to your pursed lips, and Kuroo smiles at this like he always does at the things you say. You’re not sure what you felt in the past for other people, but, you know it’s nothing like this, not even close. Never once have you ever felt so confident in the word love than when you look at Kuroo inches away from you.

“Nah, I still think I’m luckier,” he teases, drumming his fingers on the side of his mug, “Just admit you’re a total catch, already,” Kuroo adds with a playful nudge to your leg under the table, “I can’t get enough of you, you know that?”

#kuroo fluff #kuroo x reader #haikyuu kuroo #kuroo tetsurou #kuroo tetsuro x reader #haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #🍒.kuroo #☀️.summer event 2k24

59 notes · View notes

loudclan-clangen · 4 months ago

Text

Fierce x Silt would be an ABSOLUTE POWER COUPLE and you are welcome to ship them all you want (as always) but in cannon Fiercestripe would never, even for a moment, consider taking another mate. If Wildfirecry dies before her she will wait that shit out cause she's not single, her husband is just in starclan. I honestly think that even without Wildfirecry in the picture she's just too much of a caretaker/mom friend to ever be in a relationship with someone younger than her. Fiercestripe needs her mate to be the one person in her life that she is not worried about if that makes sense? She'll help find Silt a nice new boyfriend who is not 48 moons older than her and they can be crochety grandparents in the elder's den together.

No. <3

Thank you! And do not be sorry because YES! You're so right! She's seeing herself in the stars and so she doesn't look any farther into it but it's just an image she's projecting, not something someone is showing her. She also doesn't put any thought into the fact that in order to walk amongst the stars she would have to pass away so, she's literally seeing a future where she dies due to her own inflated self image and it just inflates her self image more. It's a self fulfilling prophecy and it makes me love her and her story so much!

It was not intentional as I haven't watched centaurworld, but upon listening to it I see what you mean! It definitely fits in with what I was trying to reference, which are those kinda ominous lullabies (hush a bye baby was the specific one that came to mind while drawing), but to be honest with you it's a relatively minor detail in the overall comic. What the character is saying is a lot less important than what the character is about to do so i didn't put a ton of thought into it.

Thank you! I am also shocked by how little time has passed in story like what do you mean we aren't even at two years yet? Eklutna wasn't even here for a moon? How is that possible?! I know that Moon 21 brought and is still bringing a LOT of people to the blog and I am so grateful for that! Loudclan gained like 200 followers over my break and that's AWESOME but also a little bit terrifying tbh. Don't worry I also got attached to Mothtree and I was like lying in bed thinking about the fact that she dies for like three whole months while I and everyone else drew cute art of her.

Thank you! I'm so happy to be at a point where I'm happy with my art and my process and that has a lot to do with all the support I've gotten from you guys! You're an awesome community who has encouraged my growth at every opportunity and I couldn't be luckier! All that said I hope you get to enjoy a minor version of the same process all over again as I get back in the routine of drawing cats again after my break lol.

I mean... they are kinda yellow... could that mean... PACKMAN IS THE BABYDADDY?!?!?!

I did really enjoy my break! I got to go to Greece and Germany with some of my best friends and then I came home and cracked down on school work (which wasn't necessarily fun, but feels good to be done with), and now I am rested and relaxed and ready to get back into it!

Thank you! I try to put a lot of thought into them! Things like that are generally the first thing that I envision when I'm formulating a comic page and then I build the rest of it around that original idea which I hope helps to make the pages more dynamic and less repetitive.

Thank you, I can't wait to finally drop Part 2! Only 5 more days!

#loudclanasks

70 notes · View notes

funishment-time · 5 months ago

Text

a load of recent official birthday posts from Kodaka!

(since i forgot to do it for a bit, Whoops)

under the cut are:

Mikan

Kirumi

Great Gozu

Nagito

Angie

and Mahiru

💉 Mikan:

autotranslate:

Tsumiki: "Eh...! There's no way someone like me would be celebrated like this...! I can at least tell that this is a prank! Please... stop teasing me...! Wait, what? It's not a prank? Is it really... a present that you sent me? Ehhhh...! Wh...why? I'm so happy I don't know what's going on...!"

🕸️ Kirumi:

autotranslate:

Tojo: "This is for me? I'm glad you remembered my birthday. As always, I'm not used to people doing things for me, so I'm not very good at thanking you, but if you ever need anything, please call me anytime. I'll serve you selflessly as a token of my appreciation."

🐂 Great Gozu:

autotranslate:

Great Gozu: "The time has come. That's all. I'm grateful for the birthday presents I receive every year. Thanks to all of your encouragement, I'm able to take a step forward without hesitation. Don't you get it, idiot?! Look at me with your eyes wide open! Now, everyone chant together! 1, 2, 3...great! Great! Thank you!"

🍀 Nagito's fucking Tale of Two Cities ass thesis:

autotranslate:

Komaeda: "As you all know, I'm just an ordinary piece of trash, with the only good thing about me being that I'm a little luckier than most people. It doesn't matter if I'm here or not, I'm an insignificant existence. The fact that you've given me such a present means that you all have high expectations of me. That I will be a stepping stone... of hope that will brighten up this worthless, hopeless world. I get it, because what this world needs most is hope. It's because we have hope that we can all look forward. Hope is everyone's salvation, and more than anything, it is a precious guidepost. And the darker the surroundings are, the more brilliantly that light shines. Of course, I don't think anyone wants unhappiness, but just as unhappiness allows us to understand the importance of happiness, hope shines because of despair. I'm going to do it. Don't you think fireworks that go off at night are more beautiful than those that go off during the day? If no one else does it, then I'll do it. Yes, I'll turn the surroundings into night. All for the sake of hope. And luckily, there are many seeds of hope that will shine with such a brilliant light right next to me. I'm just a supporting role. What? You're asking me if I don't mind dragging people who don't like the night into this? Haha, who cares about the dust around them when fireworks are dancing in the night sky? It's all for the sake of beautiful and wonderful hope. Everything else doesn't matter. Of course, the same goes for myself. In front of hope, everything is equally worthless trash. Right? Everyone loves hope, don't they? Haha, we're friends now."

🖌️ Angie:

autotranslate:

Yonaga Angie: "Those who believe will be saved. Those who don't believe won't be saved. Haha, I'm relieved that everyone believes in Angie. God is pleased too. Let's continue to believe in Angie and get closer to God. Fill your heads with Angie more and more and more. God will be pleased too. Everyone is godly!"

📷 Mahiru:

autotranslate:

Koizumi: "Are you giving me a birthday present too? Thank you. I'm really happy that you always celebrate with me. This feeling is enough for me, but I want to take a photo with everyone, too. When I look at the photo, I'll remember how I felt at this time, right? I want to be able to remember this feeling."

#danganronpa #mahiru koizumi #angie yonaga #nagito komaeda #great gozu #mikan tsumiki #kirumi tojo

36 notes · View notes

aita-blorbos · 6 months ago

Note

Am I a bad person for saying mean things about my friends?

[cw for gaslighting and manipulation]

I just feel really really super-bad about this, but everyone says it wasn't my fault and I don't need to apologize but it's messing me up and I dunno what to think about it anymore…

I (14F) was having a really bad day the other day. Y'know, the kind where you make the dumbest mistakes and the things people say get at you a lot more than they normally do? And on my way home I found this cute-looking doll and it said it wanted to be my new friend to help cheer me up (which I'm always in favor of, I love making new friends!!), and said that if I be its friend, it would help me be luckier, and that nobody would make fun of me again, just as long as I always kept her with me. It sounded good to me, so I agreed and took it home with me!

And, things were going great! Like the doll said, I was so much luckier, and my magic was getting so much stronger from it! S(14M) and L(14F) were totally wowed, too! But um, then I think I got a little fat-headed and started gloating at R(14F) and K(14M) and kept beating them in magic duels.

Later the doll kept saying that they would all definitely think better of me now, and that it was because we had gotten to be such good friends and. She was kinda loud about it an that was scary, but she was really making me feel good and better and lucky and… even though she was saying that my other friends were horrible and that I was wonderful and that she was my only real friend. It seemed so nice.

And then and then the next day, K and R and S and L were all asking about how much better with magic I had gotten and what had changed. And I wasn't sure what to do or say. So the doll told me that I should tell all of them to shut up, and that I didn't want to pretend at being friends anymore if they were gonna keep picking on me, and all these other horrible things. And I wanted to trust my friend, so I did what she said.

And to make it worse, I accidentally dropped the doll and all I could think of was "I need to keep her with me! She's the only one that understands me! She said so herself" and I pushed poor L away! And when R tried taking her away I just panicked and ran off.

I don't remember much of what happened for the next while. My head was hurting, but the Doll said I'd done well, so I just kept going, and she kept telling me she was my friend. And I just. Kept believing her, because it was getting hard to believe anything else, with my head being as fuzzy as it was…

Then S and L and K and R caught up with me and started trying to take my friend the Doll away again and calling her a liar and I was so scared for her, and for losing her, when she had been so helpful to me. I just couldn't think, so I kept casting spells at them and telling them all to go away and leave us alone.

But then, R and K started saying that they'd miss me if I was gone, because we really were friends and that they liked having me and my usual positivity around. L and S were saying everyone was worried about me, and wanted me to be friends with them again. I was so shaken, I ended up losing the duel I started.

And then it all came rushing back to me. All those awful things I said and did to the people who had been so nice and supportive of me, even if they're not always the best at showing it (K and R are especially really stubborn like that, but I know they meant it). And I just. I just still feel so AWFUL about it!!! There's no way that S and L and K and R would just forgive me, just like that, for being so mean, right?? I must be the bad person here, right???

EDIT: Someone asked what happened to the doll. My homeroom teacher showed up right after that and said something like, the doll puppets people with their hearts and take their powers? I dunno what that has to do with anything, though. Anyway, she took it somewhere else, but I didn't really listen much when she said where she was taking it. Honestly, that just goes to show, I really need to be better about listening too!!

EDIT 2: And now people keep asking why I didn't think it was weird the doll was talking. But why would it be weird? I thought it was kinda like the talking cat plushie my homeroom teacher carries with her, or the old teddy bear that runs the museum.

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality #gaslighting

38 notes · View notes

supernaturalscribe67 · 1 year ago

Text

Lucky

Words: 4,699

POV: 3rd Person

Pairing: Dean/Sam Winchester x Trans!FTM!Winchester!Reader [Platonic]

Warning(s): Mention of surgery, references to top surgery recovery, slight gore (maybe?), language (also, maybe?), loving and supportive family members, fluff

Summary: Top surgery was never something the reader thought was possible. With the help of Sam, he was able to make his dream come true, and his brothers are there for him to help while he's in recovery.

Request:

I would absolutely love Dean and Sam with a younger trans brother who just got top surgery and is in recovery? Just fluff of like helping him wash his hair or getting things for him and reassuring them? Love your content so much!! It so nice to see some more trans content in the supernatural fandom :)

@cometcreates

A/N: I am so sorry this took a little longer to get out than I planned - work has been extremely hectic and draining recently - but I hope you like it! Let me know what you think! Feedback is greatly appreciated!

Much love!

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

People define luck in many different ways. Some say luck is a dollar bill lying on the ground, some say it’s a passing grade once they get their tests back, and others say it’s their true love. (Y/N), however, would define his luck as waking up every morning in the Men of Letters bunker with his brothers.

Years ago when he came out to his older brothers as transgender, although they were a little confused at first, they were fully supportive. They did everything in their power to make sure that their little brother was comfortable, not only in their home and out in public but in his skin as well. They purchased a binder for him, got him better clothing, adjusted rather quickly to his name and pronoun change, and got defensive - sometimes a little too much - whenever someone misgendered him. With all that they were doing for him, (Y/N) couldn’t imagine how luckier he could get. He already had an amazing support system, what else could he need?

At the end of last year, Sam approached him and asked him if he had been wanting to get top surgery, something they had talked about once or twice, but never regularly. When (Y/N) showed his interest in getting the surgery, Sam told him that he had done some research about different places where he could potentially get the procedure done, as well as all the criteria that certain places needed for him to qualify. After they sat and talked for a while, they concluded that, with Sam’s assistance, they would get started on (Y/N)’s journey toward top surgery.

The months following consisted of semi-monthly visits with a psychologist Sam found in Hays, KS - all of the medical professionals required a steady diagnosis of gender-dysphoria from a registered psychologist to be able to consider the patient for the operation - as well as reading up on the aftermath of the surgery and what was to be expected. Of course, (Y/N) knew he would get all of the information from his surgeon before it was done, but he wanted to make sure he was well-informed and nothing was left out of the consultation.

The consultation went well, and, after waiting for an eternity in the examination room, the doctor finally came in and set up the date for the surgery. (Y/N) was over the moon, and he immediately began to count down the days. Sam and Dean helped him get all of the necessary items he needed for the surgery recovery; various snacks, scar care creams, a surgical binder, a mastectomy pillow, and an extremely cozy blanket that he had begged them to buy. Even after they had gotten everything on the list, occasionally, they would buy something they thought would be beneficial for the recovery period.

Then, they waited. Day after day went by and (Y/N) found it difficult to focus on hunting rather than the anxiety and anticipation that bubbled within him, but his brothers kept him grounded in times of distress. They could tell just how excited he was, and they never wanted to dampen the mood by turning his focus back on the job. They wanted him to keep that enthusiasm even after he had the surgery. When the day of the surgery came, they didn’t even try to calm his excitement. Just seeing how happy he was made them feel the same.

The surgery went well. The recovery was going to be the hard part. The doctor made sure to prescribe him pain medication, which the brothers had picked up before they left the surgical center to head back to the bunker, and gave him a pamphlet describing all of his recovery needs in grave detail. Of course, they had already been well-prepared for the occasion, but it was nice to have it on hand. (Y/N) stayed in the hospital under observation for two days until he was finally released, clad in nothing but a pair of shorts, some slides, his surgical binder, the drainage tubes and bulbs connected to each incision underneath the binder, and one of Sam’s flannels that rested against his shoulders, keeping the front open to allow his chest to breathe. After he was wheeled and loaded into the back of the car, the three brothers made the drive back home.

By the time the Impala edged its way into the well-lit garage, the sun had gone down, and the night sky was littered with stars. It wasn’t a long way to Lebanon from Kansas City, about five hours depending on traffic, but the trip wasn’t entirely painless. (Y/N) was thankful for the medications he was given after his surgery, but the bumpy backroads in Kansas were ruthless and did little to provide a comfortable drive home. He initially tried to sleep through the journey, but every pothole they hit - accompanied by an apology from his oldest brother - sent another wave of discomfort coursing through his chest. He had never felt more joy in his entire life than when he saw the familiar dirt road as he and his brothers got closer to the bunker.

Dean parked the car and killed the engine. He turned, arm draped over the back of the front seat. “You feeling okay?” He asked.

(Y/N) glanced over at him and gave a small nod. He adjusted himself and winced as the pain shot through his arms and chest. “Just sore, hurts like hell. When am I due for my next round of meds, Sammy?” He turned to his older brother in the passenger’s seat.

Sam looked back at him for a moment and then down at his phone screen. “You should be able to take some more now. Why don’t we get you inside and into your bed first? That way we can get you something to eat and drink with your medicine.”

“No food,” (Y/N) groaned. “I don’t feel like eating now.”

“You have to eat something.”

“Fine, I’ll eat some crackers, or something small, or one of those snack cakes I got, but I really can’t eat anything filling right now. I’ll eat some more in the morning when I’m feeling better.”

“Alright,”

“Now, can someone let me out? These doors are surprisingly heavy.”

“Yeah!” Dean said, quick to jump out of the car and head towards the back passenger’s side. He opened the door and held out a hand.

(Y/N) smiled weakly as he reached over and grabbed Dean’s hand. He was slow to move out of the seat and plant his feet on the ground. When he stood, his legs shook, but he let out a sigh of relief. His legs were weak. The recovery had consisted of laying in his hospital bed and, occasionally, getting up and taking a few steps inside his room, just to keep the blood flowing in his legs. With the lack of energy he had and the five-hour ride back, his legs felt completely numb, as if they were made of Jell-O.

Dean held (Y/N)’s hand tightly while his opposite arm wrapped around his waist. He moved him away from the car and shut the door. The two of them made their way to the bunker door. Sam jumped out of the car and caught up with them as they walked inside. When they were greeted with the metal stairs that landed in the War Room, (Y/N) stopped. He let out a sigh of defeat.

“This is going to hurt like Hell,” he mumbled. He reached a shaky arm over and grasped the railing until his knuckles paled.

“We’ll take it slow,” Dean nodded softly.

(Y/N) returned the nod and they began to walk down the stairs, one step at a time. The entire time they walked, Dean held onto him tightly, both of their eyes cast down towards the steps. Each step, despite the snail’s pace they walked at, made a jolt of pain shoot through (Y/N)’s back. A pained expression crossed his face multiple times as he pressed his lips together tightly.

Finally, they reached the bottom of the stairs and another contempt sigh left (Y/N)’s lips. Sam brushed past them.

“I’m going to grab your crackers and water and meet you in your room, okay?” He placed a gentle hand on (Y/N)’s shoulder.

“Sounds good,” (Y/N) flashed a thumbs-up towards him before Sam walked down the hallway, toward the kitchen.

(Y/N) was a little quicker when they walked through the halls, and he was thankful when they reached his room. He wasted no time parting himself from his brother and making his way over to his bed. Despite his shaky legs, he held himself up well. He turned on the lamp on his nightstand, illuminating the room with a faint yellow glow.

His bed was neatly made with multiple pillows resting at the head - the doctor recommended that he slept elevated for the first week or so and then slept on his back for several months afterward. It would be an adjustment, but (Y/N) knew that he could get used to it.

He climbed into his bed, careful of the collection bags on his chest, and crawled underneath the layers of blankets. Instantly, he relaxed into the plush mattress, head resting on the stack of pillows behind him. Dean waltzed deeper into the room, eyeing him carefully.

“You okay?” He asked.

“Better now that I’m in bed,” (Y/N) looked over at him. “Although it just feels like I’m in another hospital room.”

“At least you won’t be eating any more hospital food,”

(Y/N) grimaced. “Don’t remind me of that, I’ll throw up.”

Sam entered the room, a bottle of water in one hand, the white bag with (Y/N)’s prescription narcotics tucked under his arm, and a small sleeve of saltines in the other. He set the water bottle and saltines down on the bedside table and opened the bag. He took out the orange pill bottle and fished out an oval-shaped white capsule. He handed it to (Y/N), who took it gratefully. He popped the pill into his mouth and drank some water to wash it down.

“You should probably empty those soon,” Sam said, gesturing towards the bags that rested against (Y/N)’s stomach.

(Y/N) glanced down at them and shook his head. “The doctor said every twelve hours should be good. They changed them right before I left the hospital, so they should be fine for right now.”

“Alright, if you say so,” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you need anything? TV? Books? Some snacks?”

“I’m good, thanks. I think I’m going to catch some shuteye for a bit. That car ride took all the energy out of me.”

Sam nodded and turned to walk towards the door. “If you need anything, let us know.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

“Seriously,” Dean piped up. “If you need anything, even if it’s small, just holler or shoot us a text.”

(Y/N) couldn’t help but chuckle. The overprotective nature of his brothers was something that never changed. “I promise I’ll call if I need anything.”

Dean and Sam both gave him a small smile before they turned and left the room, closing the door behind them. (Y/N) marveled in the silence. No nurses walking outside of his room, no snoring from his brothers on the pull-out beds, no heart monitors beeping constantly. It was peaceful. He reached over and turned off the lamp light, flooding the room, once again, with darkness. The darkness was something he missed. He would never take his pitch-black room for granted ever again.

He awoke six hours later, around the time when the medication began to wear off and the pain resurfaced. He had tried to reach over to the nightstand and grab the pill bottle, but his arms were too stiff. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, a grunt falling from his lips. The pain wasn’t as bad as it had been the day after surgery, it was mostly the sore tenderness he felt in his chest and back that bothered him. When his feet touched the floor, he was able to lean over and grab the pill bottle with ease. He uncapped it, took out another capsule, and popped it into his mouth, followed by a drink of water. The medication would start working in twenty minutes or so.

The ache wasn’t only in his chest and back, however. As he downed the water, he felt it fall into his stomach. A gurgle sounded from his gut and he placed a hand over it. He probably shouldn’t have taken the medication on an empty stomach. He needed some food. For a moment, he considered the saltines on the bedside table but quickly tossed out the idea. They didn’t sound as appetizing as they had before he went to sleep, and even then he had only accepted them to make his brother feel better. He wanted some real food. He wanted some of the snack cakes that he got for the occasion. The real question was; could he get up and walk to the kitchen by himself without bothering his brothers? It was still early, so they were most likely asleep. They had been with him the entire time he was in the hospital, and he wanted to make sure that they got the sleep they deserved.

(Y/N) placed his hands on his knees and let in a deep breath, his eyes falling closed for a second. With a quick exhale, he hoisted himself off of the bed. His legs quivered, and he had to reach back towards the bed to steady himself. After he stood for a couple of minutes, the blood seemed to flow back through his legs. They were unsteady, but less than they had been before. He shuffled his way towards his door and opened it, glancing up and down the hallways. He then made his way towards the kitchen. The sound of his stomach growling echoed throughout the corridor.

“Damn, I’m getting you food, calm down,” (Y/N) mumbled to himself.

It took a lot longer for him to get to the kitchen than it had taken to get to his room the night before. He was slow, uncomfortably so, and he hated it. He felt like an old man. At least I’m an old man without tits, he thought.

When he got into the kitchen, he walked over to the pantry shelves and glanced up. Sat on the second highest shelf were the cupcakes that he had been craving. Those delicate, chocolatey, packaged goodies. They were teasing him with the pictures on the front of the box. He wanted one so bad, and he couldn’t even reach them. He could barely lift his arms enough to reach the shelf directly in front of him. He tried to scour the shelf in front of him for something that sounded at least a little bit appetizing, but nothing made his mouth water as much as the soft, chocolate cakes near the top of the pantry.

Curse you, Hostess.

Just as he was about to give up and pick something from a more accessible shelf, the sound of padded footsteps echoed down the hallway. (Y/N) turned his head towards the door as Sam entered. Sam furrowed his brows.

“Hey, what’re you doing up?”

“Oh, the pain medicine wore off, so I took another one. Plus I’m starving,” he then turned his gaze back to the cupcakes.

“Do you want me to make you something for breakfast? I can make scrambled eggs.”

“Sure,” (Y/N) shrugged. “But…I really…want a cupcake.”

“For breakfast?”

(Y/N) looked back at Sam. His bottom lip was pushed out in a small, child-like pout. His eyes were big and his brows were tilted up slightly. It was his own signature puppy-dog eyes. Sam’s puppy-dog eyes were good, but (Y/N)’s was better. Those eyes were the reason behind him getting to pick a place to eat or what movie they watched most of the time.

Sam sighed as he walked over, grabbed the box of cupcakes, and ripped it open. He took out a package and handed it to (Y/N). (Y/N) beamed and ripped the plastic open. He took a big bite of the cupcake and hummed happily.

“Ok, you have your cupcake, but I’m still going to make you some scrambled eggs. You need to have some real food in you.”

“Cupcakes are real food, Samuel. Maybe you’d be happier if you ate one once in a while.”

“And maybe you’d be happier if you ate healthier.”

(Y/N) stuck his tongue out at Sam. Sam rolled his eyes and smirked before he walked over to the fridge. Meanwhile, (Y/N) trudged over to the table and sat down.

“You should probably change your bags soon,” Sam said.

(Y/N) glanced down at the bags and noticed that they were halfway full. He cursed under his breath. “Let me enjoy my cupcake and then I’ll empty them.”

“Do you need help?”

“Nah, I got it, thanks, though.”

Sam smiled and nodded. Without hesitation, (Y/N) shoved the rest of the cupcake in his mouth, a hum of pleasure emitting from his throat. Sam grimaced and turned away. (Y/N) glanced over at him.

“Don’t judge me,” he mumbled with a mouthful of food before he stood up and made his way to the bathroom to drain his bulbs.

Three days had passed, and (Y/N) had already started feeling better. His movement had increased, the pain was starting to diminish, and the fluid that filled the bulbs slowed. His mental health had noticeably improved and every time he looked in the mirror, admiring his newly sculpted chest, the smile would never fail to stick to his face for hours on end. One thing that he didn’t like about the recovery process though, something that stayed a consistent issue, was the lack of personal hygiene.

When his doctor told him that he wouldn’t be able to shower for a while after the procedure, he didn’t think that it would affect him as much as it was. Granted, he still took whore baths, using a damp washcloth and some soap to clean his body off the best that he could, but he could still feel the grime that coated his skin. Specifically, his hair was what bothered him the most. It was wet with grease to the point where it could stand up without any assistance from haircare products. (Y/N) felt disgusting. He needed to get his hair clean, quickly, and he couldn’t do it by himself. If he leaned over too much, the strain on his chest would cause the pain to flair up. He needed help. Sam had been busy researching and assisting other hunters who had called while the brothers were on a break from hunting themselves, so (Y/N) went to the next best person.

(Y/N) knocked on Dean’s door rhythmically. A faint ‘come in’ sounded from inside. He opened the door to see his brother on his bed, lying on his stomach, eyes glued to the television screen in front of him.

“Hey,” Dean said with a smile. “How’re you doing, kiddo?”

“Pretty good. The pain’s not as bad today. I was wondering if you could help me with something, though.”

“Sure,” Dean reached over, grabbed the remote, and turned off the television. He shifted himself so that he was sitting down on the edge of the bed. “What do you need?”

“Can you wash my hair for me?”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to shower yet.”

“I can’t get my chest wet, but I can clean the rest of my body. I’ve been taking whore baths for the past couple of days, but I haven’t been able to get my hair cleaned. Could you help me with that?”

Dean hummed and pursed his lips. “Yeah,” he said as he stood up. “Meet me in the bathroom, I’ll be in there in a bit.”

(Y/N) didn’t wait in the bathroom for long before Dean rounded the corner, a chair dragging behind him. He placed the chair in front of the sink and gestured to it.

“Sit,” he said.

(Y/N) awed. “It’s like a trashy hair salon.”

Dean rolled his eyes and chuckled. He grabbed the shampoo and conditioner from the bathroom cabinet as (Y/N) sat down in the chair. He leaned his head back so that it rested against the cool basin. Dean walked over to the sink and glanced down at his head. He grimaced.

“Damn, kid, you definitely need to wash that hair.” he reached down and touched a lock of his hair, wincing as he pulled his hand back, studying the sheen that the hair left on his fingers. “Ew.”

“Thanks,” (Y/N) deadpanned.

Dean smirked. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you all cleaned up.”

Dean turned on the hot water, the spout shooting out the liquid into the sink. Dean began to run his fingers through (Y/N)’s hair. (Y/N) instinctively closed his eyes. Dean wet his hair, pouring the water over the locks with his cupped hands.

(Y/N) could remember the last time he went to the hair salon. He was young, around the age of six, and Bobby had taken him to get his hair done. Even though Bobby seemed uncomfortable the entire time he was there, he wanted to make sure that (Y/N) had a somewhat normal childhood experience. (Y/N) was ecstatic, and enjoyed every minute of the haircut. His favorite part, however, was when the stylist was washing his hair. It was something about the way her fingers caressed his scalp, massaging the product into the roots of his hair, that brought an overwhelming sense of bliss. Dean’s fingers weren’t as gentle and soft as the stylist’s, but he sure knew how to give a good head massage.

Two fingers gently tapped against the side of (Y/N)’s head. He opened his eyes and looked up at his brother. He hummed in acknowledgment.

“I said ‘Do you like it’?” Dean repeated, a smirk curled into the corner of his lips.

(Y/N) slowly nodded. The suds dripped down from the side of his head and caressed the outside of his ear. “Feels nice. You should have gone to cosmetology school.”

Dean laughed. “I meant your chest. How do you…feel now?”

“Oh,” (Y/N) let out a short laugh. “Honestly, I feel great. I don’t have to bind anymore, which means I won’t have to worry about hunts and catching my breath. I no longer have to worry about if clothes will fit me because of my chest. I don’t look in the mirror and hate what I see…” his voice trailed. “I look in the mirror and I see me. The me that I was supposed to be.”

The two of them were silent for a while as Dean poured water over his hair, washing out the soap. His fingers caressed the back of (Y/N)’s scalp, watching intensely as the conditioner ran down the drain.

“You know, if it makes you feel any better, Sammy and I always saw you as our little brother. I mean, you never really did all that girly crap - makeup, playing with dolls, stuff like that. You were always interested in playing with the mud. The amount of times that you would get in trouble with Bobby because you would bring mudpies into his house, or whenever you would track mud inside when it was raining. He got so pissed,” he chuckled, and (Y/N) joined him.

“But then you got older,” he continued. “And it started to seem like you weren’t really my brother. But…something wasn’t right. I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Calling you my sister felt wrong. I started calling you my little brother again whenever I told people about you, and then it felt right. When you told us you were transgender, it all made sense to me. It clicked. You never really were my little sister. You were my little brother, just with a few extra parts. Now that you got your surgery, I can see just how happy you are. How comfortable you are, and that means more to me than anything else.”

The conditioner was gone. (Y/N)’s freshly washed hair laid against the basin. Dean reached over to the cabinet and grabbed out a small hand towel. He ruffled the towel against (Y/N)’s damp hair, making sure to get all of the water off of the side of his face and his ears. When his face was dry, he helped him sit up.

“And me seeing you like this, I have never felt more proud of you,” Dean concluded.

(Y/N) glanced up at Dean, brows raised. His wet hair dripped onto his naked shoulder. “Really?” He asked in a quiet voice.

Dean smiled softly. “Yeah. I’m proud that you told Sam and me how you felt. I’m proud that you got the courage to go through with the surgery, and,” Dean knelt in front of the chair. “I’m proud to call you my baby brother.”

A lump had formed in (Y/N)’s throat. His eyes glimmered with tears that pooled in their corners. Without saying anything, (Y/N) reached forward and wrapped his arms around Dean’s neck, pulling him into a loose embrace. Dean placed his hands on (Y/N)’s back and smiled into the hug.

“I owe you and Sam so much,” (Y/N) spoke softly. “You guys take such good care of me.”

“You don’t owe us anything. That’s just what big brothers are supposed to do.”

“Not even if I bake you a pie?”

“Now, if you decide to bake a pie, I won’t turn it down,” Dean pulled away and held his hands up.

(Y/N) sniffled and wiped the tears away. “I should make Sammy one of those fancy salads he likes.”

“Oh, he’ll go crazy for that,” Dean mumbled. “Him and his damn rabbit food.”

“You go crazy for pie, though.”

“Yeah, but pie is good. Actually good.”

(Y/N) rolled his eyes, causing Dean to chuckle. Dean stood up and brushed his jeans off, stretching his arms above his head.

“What do you say we get Sammy and go watch a movie?” Dean asked.

(Y/N) smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Great! You go get Sammy and I’ll get the snacks.”

Dean turned and jogged out of the room. (Y/N) stood and tilted his neck from side to side, noting the small strain in his muscles. (Y/N) grabbed the back of the chair he had been sitting in, but stopped as he saw himself in the reflection of the small mirror. His eyes scraped over his body, from his head down to his exposed hips. He shifted so that he could see his torso from the side.

It was almost as if he was in a dream. Like, at any moment, he would blink and wake up in his bed with his breasts still attached to his chest. For years, he had been wanting to get top surgery, but it never seemed like something he was able to achieve. Never in his wildest imagination did he see himself standing in front of a mirror and feeling proud of the body that he stood in. He no longer saw the body of a woman, the man he was trapped inside and desperately attempting to claw his way out. He saw a man, who he truly was, the real (Y/N) Winchester.

And as he stared at his chest, a smile appearing on his lips, the words Dean spoke echoed in his head;

I’m proud to call you my baby brother.

Now, (Y/N) Winchester could confidently say that he was the luckiest man alive.

119 notes · View notes

furiousgoldfish · 2 years ago

Text

As a kid, I used to believe that everyone had it worse than me, and it wasn't a self-imposed point of view. I was informed on a regular basis that I was lucky and had no idea how horrid life was for everyone else. I also was told how nothing good in life can come without the person paying for it dearly, or without the equal amount of suffering for it. So I always assumed, if I saw someone having it better very obviously, that there was a hidden amount of suffering I knew nothing about, and that would break me. And that I was luckier without that thing. And without knowing with what kind of pain it was paid for.

It was a while after escaping, that I started realizing that not only people don't have it worse by a large margin, but also that most people who have something I couldn't imagine, had it without any pain or sacrifice, but as their birthright. Family, for example. Friends. Human rights. Healthy childhood. Pets that are not used against you. Peers that don't bully, use or take advantage of you. Safety. Money they got from their parents as children, without having to work under horrible circumstances, that they weren't made to feel guilty for getting. And later, being able to work, being able to live pain-free, being able to live without having nightmares, flashbacks, and body that doesn't work. Most of what I've believed was a lie. There was a world of people who had things I couldn't dream of, who weren't hurt for it, who sacrificed nothing. Who could take it for granted.

It made me feel dreadful, the knowledge of just how disadvantaged, and naive I was. I didn't want to know that I had all of those things taken from me, that I was lied to and had everything I should have had scammed away, while believing that it was the only way. I didn't want this. I didn't feel strong for surviving without everything. I felt empty, robbed, helpless. Stupid.

And once I started noticing, everything became triggering. Seeing people use resources given to them carelessly, seeing them having people to rely on and people who will defend them, made me hyper aware of everything I don't have. Seeing people gently playing with their children would make me feel at ease for a second, because there was the relief that nobody needed to abuse their kids, and then later, I would break down just thinking how much it would mean to me if I had even a tiny little bit of that. If I had gotten one percent of that assurance, attention and gentleness, how it would have changed my entire life. It became unbearable. People became unbearable once the gap between me and them was visible.

So it became easier to be alone. If I don't see people having it easier, I can pretend that what I'm going thru is normal, and it's calmer that way. It makes socializing difficult, but being aware of how othered and different you are, is also difficult.

None of it was something I did to myself, or a result of any of my actions. I've been put into this situation without any way out of it. I know this when I'm alone, I understand I'm like this because of what was done to me, against my will. When I couldn't fight it, or didn't even know how to. I'm not responsible for this. But I do have to live with the consequences. And some of them are not fixable.

#child abuse #abusive parents #aftermath of abuse #aftermath of brainwashing #comparing to other people #isolation #why people become triggering #noticing the gap #sad post #i'm upset today :(

180 notes · View notes

rosetyler42 · 2 months ago

Text

1. Here's an old idea. I've had this idea in my head for ages of Drac, when he hears about Meteora being told growing up to hide her tail because "Boys don't make passes at girls with Devil tails" basically summing up to "...Vell, perhapz it COULD use a little zomething." and tying a bow on it. I had to simplify it from the more comic like thing in the original idea (doing more than one drawing at a time is always a production) but I kinda like the smug supportive Uncle Drac and overwhelmed Meteora better.

I love the idea of these two as uncle and niece, especially with Meteora having originally grown up isolated and made to hide her monstrosity AND magical qualities, having someone who absolutely adores and gushes over it, and actually looks out for her, even if he's a bit goofy and paranoid is just....and Drac gets to exercise Dad mode on someone who really needs it, help someone else who was shamed for who they were like he was with the whole "Late Fanger" thing. Plus, not like he's going to mind the whole "Soul-sucking, youth draining" business. He'd love having a fierce, loyal, powerful niece who could just flipping OBLITERATE anyone who messes with the family. And who actually wants to stick around without all the lies and hijynx he's gone through to keep Mavis around. And of course, Meteora's less likely to mind his control freak tendencies. She was the same way.

Biggest thing: Meteora's rather brutally honest in her proper poised kind of way, and she'd call out both him and Mavis on their hypocrisy in a way far less nice than Ericka or even Audrey. Particularly the whole HT2 Dennis thing. She's also just about as stubborn and volatile as Ericka, with FAR more patience and capability.

2. Been wanting to draw th together for a while. Considering how similar their stories ARE in a way, though Meteora's ended....alot WORSE than Mavis'. To Meteora, Mavis is far luckier than she could ever know to have a parent like Drac, to have survived unharmed from losing her mother, and live in a world where she and her son are far more accepted than in her own.

@lovelylivelyv @black-ak9 @hotelt-resurrection @serial-serializednovelreader @deathfangirl9 @wingingfromthezing @heartsong1994 @kittyball23 @ebevkisk

7 notes · View notes

et-mberg · 3 months ago

Text

Affection (Isaac McAdoo x fem!OC)

This one may be short, but I still believe it to be adorable.

Thank you to everyone who liked my post about being interested in possible Isaac McAdoo content.

If you would like to read the actual fanfiction (that has only just begun) – you can find it on Wattpad, titled “David Bowie Eyes”

Rhea Ripley as “Bowie” Roscoe

xXx

Just recently Bowie had begun to train with the Boys.

She could no longer work in martial arts, therefore she was much less physically active.

But now, that she could do more extensive training again, having finally fully recovered from her brain surgery, she had to make use of the opportunity.

Sure, she was no footballer, but she certainly could run, do weight training and more similar physical stuff.

She was glad, that not all her hard work in the past had gone to waste during her recovery.

It was after the most recent workout in the gym, when she was sweaty and ready for a shower, that she was approached by the resident Frenchman, “Ma Cherie, I need a favour.”

An eyebrow of suspicion raised and her voice cautious, she agreed, asking what he wanted.

“I have been invited to a wine tasting event by a potential sponsor. I would like to take you with me”

“Okay? Why invite me?”, she was still very much suspicious.

Richard was a flirt, always has been, it was simply a part of him and it did not bother her, it was rather flattering and did good for her self-confidence, but never before had he honestly invited her to something like this, or something without at least one other person from the team.

“We French believe, that beautiful women by our side bring luck”

“That still doesn’t answer my question.”

That sentence was followed by a loud “Oi!” from Captain Isaac McAdoo.

The amount of “Oi!”s yelled by the guys to get someone’s attention was astounding.

A determined look on his face, well, more determined than usual, he made his way over to Bowie and Richard, the second of whom he did not knowledge for the moment, taking the former’s face gently between his hands.

His voice was stern, possibly somewhat angry, even though his words were most certainly not, “You’re fucking beautiful, Bruv. If beautiful women bring luck, then there is no one else he could take to be luckier.”

Isaac’s next words addressed his teammate, looking at him, but not taking his hands from Bowie’s reddening cheeks, “She’s coming with you. Tell me the dress code and I’ll get her something.”

Isaac looked back to Bowie.

After a determined – that man truly was determination personified - nod, he took advantage of his 13 centimeters height advantage to press a kiss to her forehead and walked away without another word.

Richard was quite amused when he asked, “what just happened?”

Bowie, incredibly confused and flustered, simply answered him, that she would apparently join him before taking her change of clothes and walking off to take a shower, knowing that her boys had enough respect for her, to not peek.

And knowing that Roy and Isaac would hurt anyone who tried.

The Richmond players had better things to do, to even think about that, anyway – an animated discussion:

How did those two think, that they were not together?!

#isaacmcaddo #isaac mcadoo #isaac mcadoo x reader #isaac mcadoo x oc #isaac mcadoo x afab!oc #isaac mcadoo x fem!oc #isaac mcadoo x you #ted lasso #ted lasso fanfiction #ted lasso fic #ted lasso one shot #afc richmond

7 notes · View notes

noxturnalmoth · 2 years ago

Text

Scalpels and Paintbrushes || Chishiya Shuntarô x Reader

- read ‘til the end for notes -

When a freelance artist travels to Japan to rekindle her passion for art and her life, she finds herself in a whole other predicament. Dangerous games, dangerous people, a dangerous world with dangerous rules. She’s alone, fending for herself, until she meets a disoriented medical student that will bring her comfort but might bring more difficulties and heartbreak aswell.

TW: gore, Niragi being Niragi

Chapter 7: I am not a Woman I'm a God

The first two weeks of being alone without Chishiya were the worse, I felt disoriented, like I was a ship lost in a turbulent sea without an anchor to keep me in place. I lost an arm and it also felt like I had lost a friend, or more than that... a lover.

I didn't know what we were, everyday, I wrapped my wound and felt the stump left instead of my arm, wanting it to be him helping me lick my wounds. Everyday I fall asleep with my walkie talkie clutched tight in my arms. I was waiting for him, because he was the only one I had left. And unlike Hide or Yumeko, he wasn't dead, I didn't kill him, he was fine....was he? Is he? I still have no news and I am starting to lose my mind. I try to be positive, to tell myself he'll call but then another week passes. Two more games are completed. They are harder when you only have one arm left.

"I should get in better shape, I'm back at letting myself die at this point."

Looking in the mirror I see that the chub that used to be around my hips and waist, and the one around my legs and right arm are gone. My face is looking thinner and my clavicles start to show. It has been hard taking care of myself while lacking an arm and someone to help me in this disorienting situation. I still needed to find ways to make everything easier for myself.

"I need to eat more, and I definitely need to do something about this nest of hair."

"Seriously, I need to put on some muscles, I won't be able to help anyone out if I'm a dead woman standing. C'mon (y/n) he'll call when he can, when he's ready. He said he needed time, and so you will need some too, not thinking about him, but getting better for others and him to see that you are here, alive and well and ready to help."

Because that was my vow to Hide and Yumeko. That I'll help others in this shitshow of a world.

And with a sigh I cover up the mirror and prepare myself to go get the traps I set outside for wild rabbits, hoping for a good catch. Hunting by setting traps was by far the easiest way to get food for me, as I couldnt hunt with only one arm, or at least not yet, I'd adapt sooner or later I hope.

Fortunately, three rabbits were caught in my net. Enough to last me two days, and as I could make broth out of the bones they would last me even more.

That was how my life was since Chishiya left. One armed lass against the cruel world of the borderlands, waiting for her beau to call. Playing games when absolutely needed and hoping they didn't require two arms or else she'd be royally fucked.

And then three weeks turned into four, then five, six, seven, two months, then three, then four.

And as I lost hope of ever seeing him again, whether it be because he died or ghosted me, which would be the same in essence, I decided to take it upon myself to get stronger.

So one might expect a training montage while I say this and honestly it might be better but the reality is more cruel unfortunately.

It started after the one month mark:

In the mornings I'd wake up and run until my legs and lungs gave out, having two arms to catch yourself is easily taken for granted in situations like this one and I most often than not face planted.

Nose bloodied I made my way to the traps, some days luckier and more bountiful than others.

More often than not I'd go to games whenever I could in the evenings, they'd keep my mind sharp and would force me to adapt to my new disability. And as monstrous as it sounds, you easily get adapted to the sight of brain matter and organs on the floor and walls.

My stump hurt like crazy still, it also itched under the bandages. And more often than not, I woke up with the phantom pains, feeling as if my arm got ripped from me, again and again.

I could rarely fall asleep, so I went to take Chishiya's old blouse and used it to cuddle as i curled on myself during the hard nighs, which were most of them.

After the two months mark I got better:

My legs and lungs had a harder time giving out so I ran further and faster until they did.

I also barely managed to cut my hair at this point, it was down to the middle of my back and looked just about ready to be a rat king. So with gardening scissors, a lot of shaking and a lot of patience I managed to look like a little boy who cut his hair with daddy's ball trimmer. It was bad, but more breathable, easier to take care of, and I mean who doesn't like a short haired, one armed wonder?

I didn't but you get used to it when it's all you can have.

I also started hunting bigger catches, like wild boar. And to do so I had to learn by myself, with the help of books I found in the mall book store. My japanese, having gotten much better in the bast two months, helped me enough that I could decypher how to observe and analyse the tell tale signs of the presence of boars. Bite marks on the trees, shape of frictions on the ground, hoof marks...

And that also meant I had to learn how to make spears. You never know how much more useful can your legs get until you use them as a second arm to hold wood down as you sharpen it. And they are definitely of use when trapping a boar down as you pin the beast with all your weight and deliver the killing blow.

That also meant my right arm got much stronger, I mean to compensate for my lacking left one, I had to make it better than it was. So, remembering Yumeko's self defence lessons I started to use them on real people in games.

To train of course.

But also because those people really need to get a grip. The lack of physically present autorities and the permission to commit atrocities really get to some people and they need to get their brains out of their asses before they get got.

Of course if assholes died it isn't much of my fault, I mean I do warn them. But do I go out of my way to save a guy that just groped a middle school girl? Nah. Fuck that. I much prefer saving the pregnant woman from getting killed by a masked kitsune.

And the third month I started to see:

My stump had healed almost fully by this point, it was itchy yes, the phantom pains were killing me, also yes. But there were almost no signs of fresh flesh or almost no risk of infections. That was one less worry to have? But to give me more balance I put a belt around it and gave it some weight, it would help me be better and faster on my feet without fearing that I'll fall every second that I live.

The walkie talkie was loud with silence, it teased me, laughed in my face at my abandonment so I hid it in Yumeko's stuff. And speaking of Yumeko and Hide, I organized their stuff in boxes, but not without crying at the memories and reiterating my vow to them.

I swore once more to them that I'd live once more, but also that as much as I'll help the ones around me I won't trust anyone to be close again. Not if it ends up with death, not if it ends up with them leaving

I left the idea of Chishiya contacting me again, maybe he did die, maybe he really did just leave, or maybe he broke or lost his walkie talkie. But I have to forget him, as good as it was he isn't here anymore so I have to learn to be by myself.

And that had to be the hardest thing.

"Goodbye Shuntarô."

I say as I close the box containing his scrubs, ID and white vest.

And until the summer I thrived:

After the third and fourth months I felt it, how I hardened mentally. The loneliness didn't feel quite as gruelling, the sound of silence not as mean. The pain in my stump stopped and other than my flashes of phantom pain I was, almost back to normal, as normal as I could be lacking a limb.

During a game in Harajuku I also found much better clothes than what I had. And I decided to treat myself, a trench coat, similar to the one from the Kuchisake-Onna game that felt was years ago. But also better, stronger and more comfortable combat boots. The rest was easy enough to find as Harajuku is the fashion district of Tokyo. But looking in the mirror, it was a different me than the one I was when I first came to Japan.

"It pains me to say it, but this batshit insane game really did give me my spark back. Just not in the way I had hoped."

But a win is a win, and I was not about to refuse something alright happening to me.

Hunting was bountiful, once every four to five days I could catch a boar and on the daily would be fish, some rabbit too. I also started to grow chillies, soy, sorghum and wheat as they were easy to conserve and create durable meals out of.

As time passed I saw some sort of faction make itself more and more known, people dressed in bikinis and other swimsuits rolling around in old cars with guns and a strong smell of weed following them. They were loud and participated in a few games with me, seeming more excitable and deranged than the average game player around.

So, I kept an eye on them, danger is common around here but they were trouble.

"Why are you looking at those people like that?"

I turn around to see a tall lanky girl with dreadlocks looking at me curiously.

"It's fine, they just seem way too excited to be here."

"I hear you. I'm Kuina, nice to meet you."

"You're part of their org aren't you Kuina-san?"

"Oh please don't be so formal with me. And yeah, I am. Is that a problem?"

She asks looking a tad bit nervous.

"As long as you don't cause any problem, no. But if your friends do don't expect me to go easy on them."

"You didn't tell me your name?"

"It's (y/n). You've been with them for long?"

"Nah, only a month or so? I had a good card they wanted so they brought me to their boss and boom."

She shows her wrist, showing a locker key bracelet with a number on it.

So, it seems this org was looking for cards, did they want to have every number from every suit? Why would that be?

Could it be their answer to being out here, could it be a way out?

It would be stupid, but maybe not impossible.

All of a sudden a chime is heard.

"Game, Eight of Spades: The Cage. You will have weapons at your disposition and the group will be separated in four smaller player groups, each fighting in one of the four arenas until only one is left alive. The four players left will be granted their visas. Good luck!"

Damn, my fucking arm. I'm fucked, but I need to try.

On the four tables are an array of simple short range weapons, american fists, many types of knives, boxing gloves reinforced with metal, batons, tonfas, bo, kendo swords. All in all, they'd be better for abled people.

All except for one. A long and strudy steel chain whip with its blades looking ready to shred flesh.

I close my hand in a fist, trying to calm my shudders, and take the whip. It was heavy but not too much, the lack of material made it lighter than a two handed sword but the length made it harder to manipulate than a butcher knife. They will do, they have to. and all of a sudden it glows teal, displaying my name on the pommel.

"Players, please separate in even numbers to form the groups"

Kuina and five other people are sent to one side of the room to an arena as she nods good luck to me and I to her. A bald and tattoed man, feeling similar to a snake somehow, lead his group to another arena. A long black haired man with a monochrome patterned shirt and a sadistic smile lead his to the penultimate arena. And I was left walking with my own group to the last one.

Here we were given earphones.

"Welcome to arena four. The rules are simple, the matches are one to one and end only when one of you is dead. The winners will fight each other again one to one until two are left, the winner of this last fight will recieve their visas and be granted the right to keep their weapon. Good luck."

Some look anxious and others look extatic, as for the latter one of them approaches me and grabs me by the stump.

"I'll take you, it'll be an easy win for an easy woman."

"Of course you go for the disabled one, trying to compensate for something big boy?"

The people around us laugh.

"Cause if so c'mere, mommy will put you to sleep so you can think on it. Unless I bashed your brains in enough that I destroyed your last braincells."

I get in the arena and motion for him to come teasingly.

"(y/l/n) (y/n) against Yoshitsuke Kunizaku"

And Kunizaku doesn't waste time, coming at me full speed with his machete. So I drop to the ground and kick his feet from under him, his momentum making him fall harder than he would've normally.

He is like a boar.

He attacks again and again, brashly but with a strength to worry about. So just like a boar I slowly turn around him, I make him lose his breath with unnecessary chases.

He nicks me on the face, under the breasts, on the arm, on the leg. But he breathes herder, and as I evade him I swing my whip, and I cut and lacerate his legs.

And so they give up on him.

And he is left writhing, clawing his way to his machete and when he does he blindly cuts as he tries to get back to his feet.

"You see the sad thing about a bladed whip is that I can't kill you at once, so don't make it harder for yourself little boar."

The whip is lashed at the man, and the arm holding his weapon is cut again and again until only bone and mangled flesh are left. And as he bleeds and screams I swing the whip again and again and again. My rage, my stress, and the pain felt during the past months possessing my senses as I finish by wrapping the whip around his head and cutting it clean off.

"(y/l/n) (y/n) wins"

And I pant as I get off the arena, people looking at me while I pant and wake up from my haze. The rest of the fights are a blur until mine.

She was fast and slippery like a fish. She hit with small cuts, nothing impairing but definitely would make you lose enough blood on the long run so that she could win.

So instead of playing around like with the boar, I take her by her hair and kick her to the ground, then make her a belt out of my whip. I try to shut my brain off as I saw her in half and she screams in agony.

What am I doing with myself. That I what I ask to the inner me who laughs and just say one word that rises bile in my mouth.

"Survive"

Yeah, right, survive.

"(y/l/n) (y/n) wins"

My last oponent is a very tall man, probably ex military. He looks, blank. And I would be scared of him, if I wasn't already of myself. This game was only one of the many after the Eight of Hearts in which I had to kill someone....multiple someones. And I was doing it flawlessly. As I did last time and the time before. And the fact that I didn't feel much while doing it was disgusting me.

But that's how the borderlands are. They change you, and it's never for the best.

"(y/l/n) (y/n) against Hikaru Kazushi"

He waits for me to attack first. He is patient, almost catatonic. It's a game of who will crack first and give the upper hand to the adversary.

So I slowly approach, wating to tease, to tempt him to attack first but he doesn't. So I turn around and prepare my whip, acting as if I was preparing an attack.

And he beats me to it.

Hitting the back of my head with his american fists. He turns me around expertedly and hits just about everything he can.

My eyes start to fade to black.

I need to find an opening

But where?

WHERE?!

I don't want to die, not yet, I need to repent, I need to uphold my promise

I NEED TO LIVE

"Found it."

He was using his left arm more, flinching when using his right. When I heard him move, he limped and seeing as he ended with his right leg he limped from the left.

So as he winds his right arm to hit my face I turn at the last moment, trapping it between my stump and my ribcage in my armpit. I kick his crotch a few times to destabilize him and turn us so I would be on top of him, his arm still in my grasp. And I wind my legs around his left leg and squeeze, hearing a pained yell from him and a crack from the leg. I then take care of the right arm and hit his elbow, hitting it so that it breaks and then bending the limb to an unnatural angle, the arm almost completely cut in two.

"See, now we're twinsies!"

I say as I agitate my stump in his horrified face and then use what is left of my left arm to cut his hair flow. With my right arm I grab my discarded weapon and bring it to the throat of the bleeding man beneath me and slit his throat.

As he gargles with his blood chimes are resonating all around the building.

"Takatora Samura, Suguru Niragi, Hikari Kuina and (y/l/n) (y/n) congratulations!"

I get up and as I do I try not to look beneath me as I fear I will vomit. And I stay here for a while, standing up without moving. My breaths short and rapid, body covered in blood, short hair sticking to me like glue with my sweat and blood.

"Damn woman, that was hot. Do you wanna do the same but in my bed, I'd love for you to draw my blood and use me as a fucking punching ball as I fuck you into my mattress and cut you open."

wha- What the fuck?

"What the hell Niragi, don't you know how to talk to a woman?!"

"As if YOU were a woman Kuina. Plus she isn't just a woman, she's a fucking war machine! A blood Goddess!"

I turn to see that Kuina was arguing with the man that flirted with me...? The psycho himself was the monochrome patterned shirt wearing man from group three.

"Blood Goddess? I'm flattered but refrain from talking to me like that or I'll castrate you kiddo."

The tattoed dobby wannabe snickered at that and full on laughed when Niragi glared at him.

"We've seen you around sexy, you've made quite the impression. Everyone at The Beach knows about you one way or the other, you've killed many of us and always seem to observe. We'd like to recruit you, we're sure you got some good cards, plus we could have some fun you and I. One on one, or if you want more I could always call more friends, fill you up real good with all of us until you're round and satisfied."

I visibly cringe at this, I've seen him around too. Always laughing, always smiling, always with his gun and always sadistic and horrendous towards others if he isn't already gutting them open.

"Listen I get what your org is trying to do and I'm fine on my own, why should I get in?"

"Why not, we have electricity, we have pleanty of food, booze, drugs, anyone you could ever want to have sex with. We have comfortable beds and a shelter that is assured against any type of exterior attack from greedy newbies or other factions."

"Yeah! And (y/n) I could really use a lady friend, shit is pretty much boring for me female wise there, they all act the same and you seem cool! Wouldn't you like a friend?"

"Not really no, you know what happens to people around here, I'm not losing someone else around here Kuina."

She nods, knowing the feeling. And then her head shoots back up with her eyes sparkling. And she starts to talk as we get out of the building and towards their cars.

"Listen I know you don't want to come and I won't force you but if you have enough good cards you could very much become a member of the executive council, and then you'd get infos no one else has and influence!"

"And why why would I care?"

"From what I know you want to protect people right? With those you could very well be the guardian of our people here at The Beach. There will always be a purpose for you there, and you won't be alone!"

That had me interested. Loneliness, I had gotten adapted to it but it was certainly getting to me at times. There I could go to my room or disappear outside if I needed alone time.

I also would have a permanent job. Whether as a card collector or as a "guardian" as Kuina put. It would certainly give me a purpose other than waiting until I get a new game and visa.

And it would certainly beat the emptiness at home.

So I sighed and climbed in the car next to Kuina who beamed at me.

"Niragi, drive before I change my mind."

He snickers and answers with a playful "yes ma'am" as he speeds on the road.

It was quiet surprisingly, the night was black and it was cold enough to stay awake but it was also so comfortable. The wind was blowing on us. And I stood straight, holding the headrest of Last Boss (as I learned he prefers to be called) and let myself relax a bit. The blood caked on me was going to suck ass but I'm finally going to be able to have a bath. From what I've heard they even have a sauna.

"How the fuck do you guys have so much, are you in a hotel?"

"Sorta, yeah. We're in a holiday resort, so there's the hotel but also a shit load more."

"Damn. That's fun."

"Where did you live before?"

"Oh a store in a mall that old friends and I made into a cool living space. We recycled rain water, and lately I even grew my own food for some things. I hunted for my meat in the suburbs, mostly boar and rabbit but also fish. It was calm enough but I had to wack away a few assholes that tried to overrun the place."

Kuina then stands up holding Niragi's headrest to be with me.

"We also recycle rain water, we use the fuel from cars to fuel our generators to make electricity and the old cars are our means of travelling since electronics are not worth much in this world compared to analog."

"Yeah, I can see you guys are self sufficient if The Beach hasn't crumbled yet in the time it has been around, even with the large number you guys seem to be."

And as I finish talking I hear yells from afar, they get louder and louder as we get to the coast where a resort is situated.

They scream at us like the public yells in joy after a gladiator wins his fight against a feral animal, like a country welcoming their war heroes. And I look at Kuina, silently asking her if it was always this way, and by the way she laughs at my face, it seems to be the case.

And after the car was parked Kuina said goodbye to me and Niragi and Last Boss lead me to where I'd be introduced to the "executive council". Overall, I respect the organization of...well, the organization. And so we walked, up many stairs and down many corridors until we arrived at a large double door.

"So uh lady let me tell you, the boss is quit an egotistical asshole so try not to bite his head off, though I'd love to see it."

"Niragi, I'm not interested."

"Hey, but you might be some time!"

"Yeah, no. I like my men less psychotic and my women nicer. Open the door please? I'd rather get this done quickly and be able to shower."

"Sure baby, come to me anytime you want to-"

"Niragi."

And with that he knocked, calling upon the people inside who he contacted previously via walkie talkie, and opened the door with Last Boss. They allowed me to walk first and closed the door behind me.

"Come, come! Please sit! I am Hatter, the boss of this utopia that is The Beach!"

Yeah he's a hatter alright, a mad one for sure. Extravagant and loud but most importantly way too confident.

"And you, who are you sweetie? I gotta know who my future member is after all!"

"(y/n)."

"Not a talker are you?"

"Not really no, I'm efficient in my work, that's all you need to know."

"And that's fine! I love it when we have efficient players! What cards do you have darling?"

I reach into my backpack and pull a packet of a dozen or so cards and Hatter looks extatic. And as he looks excitedly through the cards that he snatched from me I look around the room. There is one man with glasses, he seems tense. A woman with sunglasses who seems to be impatient. A woman with short side bangs and long black hair who seems almost like she is pleased. A tall muscular man, probably ex military. And in the far back someone, in white...

In Hide's old clothes.

He looks at me, face lacking expressions but eyes showing surprise and maybe even fear.

The man that left.

The man who abandonned me.

The man I tried so hard not to think about anymore, not to love anymore.

Shuntarô Chishiya

M.list

taglist wanters

WELCOME BACK TO S&C EVERYBODY, I never forgot about this story I just had a rapidly declining mental and physical healthy I HAD to take a drastic time off of everything. Writing was the lesser concern so I appologize for continuing this story only nearly two years after last chapter. But due to my now stronger than ever mental fortitude, the new season of AiB and a multitude of projects that I have: I decided to come back and make it count. SO welcome to the new and bettered Arcanox tumblr which will in substance, be the my main hub of influence since it is where I have the most followers!

131 notes · View notes