#funny prick tag

[honestcactusblog]

[egguv]

no reflection needed.

[saragrosie]

I have been sketching. So much tma. Here's some expansions on my Jon and Martin designs I've been doing.

Another note I forgor to mention is I love how after hearing Simon go "it's enough to make your hair turn white" about Martin's office in s4 many of us collectively agreed his hair turned white because of his association with the Lonely. The shared consciousness is real and we use it to play hot potato with the communal brain cell dedicated to the sillies.

Closeup of apocalypse boyfriends (also to the person who said they love my s5 Jon's fancy white girl updo: I think about that every day)

[evilmortymortimer]

prick

[triglycercule]

if dust takes off his hood and scarf then nobody can recognize him. he has literally no permanent traits that make him recognizable (which actually kinds upsets me because,,,,, there is no physical representation of his character development from sans to dust BUT EAAHHHH whatever,,, we cope with it.) but in like a silly goofy comedic way. it's like perry the playapus ans dr doofenshirmst (incorrect spelling but only by societies standards)

dust with hood down and no scarf

killer: a sans?

he puts on the scarf

horror: a GENOCIDE sans???

the hood goes up

killer: DUST SANS AKA MURDER SANS AKA DUSTTALE SANS FROM HIT AU DUSTTALE?????

horror's skull breaks a second time on the other side from sheer shock

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

making a cutesy joking name for GROOMING ALLEGATIONS is never acceptable no matter how fake you think they are btw. no one who calls ALLEGATIONS OF CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION a “drituation” cares about victims of sexual trauma shut up and think about WHAT EXACTLY you’re joking about.

[manicpixiemeatboy]

Yeah New X-Men sucked fucking ass BUT it gave me the most insane O5 rarepair I have in my repertoire. Scott being so adamant that Hank isn't gay (because he isn't; he KNOWS he isn't) and Hank simply must be right all the time. HankScott during Utopia... LORD. Anyways, someone said this sketch wasn't convincing enough, so I drew Hank giving Scott a massive hickey. Enjoy.

[geekgirles]

Seeing content of your NOTP be like:

On the outside: *keeps scrolling because even though you don't like something, that's no reason to be a prick about it and pick a fight with its enjoyers*

On the inside:

[darkclouds-rainsounds]

“Someday, I'll solve every riddle in the legends of Hisui's Pokémon. And on that day, I'll stand before Arceus at last— No, I will CONQUER it! No matter how many years, how many decades, how many centuries it takes me!”

Rambling Musing under cut

[Addition to this concept]

I can't have been the only person who thought of this; of Volo having died sometime not all that long after the battle at Spear Pillar and because of his excessive spite and hatred, he would come back as a Hisuian Zoroark. I have seen quite a few people do this concept with Akari where she ends up dying during her exile, but I haven't seen it done with Volo after Spear Pillar where he would be at his most vulnerable.

There was one person who had a similar idea whose username I can't remember nor care to, who had an idea (au concept???) of Volo having been a Zoroark the whole time who wanted a better world out of missing the way things used to be pre-human civilization (subtle way of saying he hates humans settling in Hisui and bridging the gap between themselves and pokemon).

Like, I know this is pokemon of all things, but considering the literal fact I made a psycho-analysis of Volo that would prompt practically everyone into going "It's not that deep", I always found it a little too perfect how if one is a believer of the hiker theory or just has any headcanon that he didn't die, that means Volo somehow survived the worst of what was to come after Spear Pillar.

After Spear Pillar, he was emotionally and mentally exhausted and very much not in his right mind because Arceus decided to be a jackass and summon the Azure Flute the moment the spooky plate made its way into the player's hands and set him off again after he calmed down. The anger; the rage and absolute vitriol he felt towards Arceus and still yet so, the player, was still relatively fresh and with his defeat and loss of his greatest ally in getting to Arceus (I mean, I get why he yelled at Giratina but also 🤨?????), that left very large room for recklessness and acting illogically.

Not only that, but with the likelihood that the clans and Galaxy team would catch wind sooner or later that he was the one who opened the rift and nearly destroyed the world by accident in the process then explicitly tried to do so again on purpose, he wouldn't be accepted in any settlement. This also applies to the Ginko Guild: they would want absolutely nothing to do with him once they find out as he'd be a blemish upon their reputation.

So you have a very bitter, very not mentally stable man trying to survive in the wilderness of Hisui almost entirely alone. It's a miracle that in terms of the hiker theory, he manages to survive past that, because the most likely thing that would have happened was him dying— like I can't convey to you just how lucky he was.

But this is ~pokemon~ so of course that didn't happen despite Volo being surprisingly realistic for a character. And to that I query, "what if it did?"

So here we are back at the beginning, Volo died and came back as a Hisuian Zoroark due to his overwhelming spite and hate.

How?

With what I've said previously, I decided that his death would be in the Alabaster Icelands. With there being very dangerous pokemon around, random holes in the ground with steep drops that can easily injure or kill you if you aren't watching where you're going, and deadly blizzards, death is guaranteed for the unprepared. Why would Volo go up that far north if it's so dangerous then— SHH SHUT! I am trying to convey an idea, the minute intricacies are lost on me right now. All I can imagine as of current is that Volo was in the Alabaster Icelands for one reason or another, something happened that was out of his and his pokemon's control and they couldn't save him (I'll tell you this: the cold on its own isn't what would kill him, otherwise his death wouldn't occur because he has his Arcanine.), and he came back as a Zoroark.

Part of the reason for the Alabaster Icelands is that I'm fairly certain? that only those who die— normal Zorua, Zoroark, or humans— there can become Hisuian Zoroark. If they die anywhere else regardless of the other criteria being met I'm pretty sure they can't become Hisuian Zoroarks, so Volo would have to be in the Alabaster Icelands for this to happen to him.

One can only imagine the grief his pokemon felt when they realized the oddly yellow Hisuian Zorua by their trainer's frozen corpse was their trainer. How they would feel that if they knew sooner or were out before it happened, his death would have been avoided. How Lucario, a pokemon that can sense aura, and his beloved Togekiss (because Gamefreak said fuck any visible notion his Roserade cares about him I guess), would instantly know that the Zorua was him.

Now,

for explanations on his appearance and his personality. Since I am unable to draw this digitally without it being immensely more difficult than it should be, I will have to heavily hint towards the symbolism since rarely ever do I draw or write something that is straightforward.

•His color pallette is still a lot like the normal Hisuian Zoroark, aka very white, but the typically red areas in a Hisuian Zoroark's hair and fur are instead the same blonde yellow as his hair from when he was alive. (White and yellow instead of yellow and white huh?)

•The eyes don't look as... narrow... as they should. Strange...

•Is it just me, or does this Zoroark not look as... wispy, as the others?

•Since I do not use color traditionally, I will have to say that the bulbous black areas on his arms and legs are supposed to be a dark red-brown and not a bright red. Hm, wonder why...

•He just has more scars because I personally headcanon Volo as actually having quite a few scars and had that directly translate into his Zoroark appearance.

And now for something lighter (by my standards atleast).

•Upon his becoming a Hisuian Zorua, he gained the ability to understand pokemon and speak with them on their level.

•It took a while for him to figure out how to talk human languages again (like pokeani meowth) and even longer to do so so it sounds natural and not... off (again, pokeani meowth)

•Very spiteful and angry little ball of fluff that simmered down faster than he would have in the even that he didn't die. Since, y'know, your death ultimately being caused by your hatred will make you reevaluate a few things about yourself.

•Loathed not having hands until evolving which only gave him three claws but it's better than useless bitty paws.

•Him calming down much faster and realizing how damaging he was being to himself and to his pokemon by tunnel visioning on figuring out how to usurp Arceus and seeing anything else that wasn't that as being in his way— provided much relief to his team that the person they knew and loved was coming back and not what he was twisting himself into in his downward spiral. (Again, this does happen when he lives, it just takes years rather than like... one)

•Took time to learn how to master casting illusions but the only illusion he can really even do at this point is of himself when he was alive. (Other Hisuian Zoroarks: able to do countless illusions of people and pokemon to varying degrees of accuracy. Hisuian Zoroark!Volo: can only do an illusion of himself but it's absolutely flawless)

•Wears his Celestica pendant at all times (forgot to draw it, don't want to deal with wrestling with my camera phone to retake the picture)

•He also wears his backpack and hat as well; they're not part of the illusion (didn't draw them since I 1. don't know how to draw either and 2. wanted him to be as unobscured as possible)

•He can still be the hiker, it's just that he's a ghost rather than immortal. Yes, his friendly, charismatic demeanor has returned despite him being like this now but there is the difference of a layer of somberness underneath and an even thinner layer of well-concealed vitriol towards Arceus and Arceus alone. (If you've read my post on Quincent and how I interpret Banettes, the same principal of spite functioning as fuel for a flame applies to Hisuian Zoroarks as well. However it is a bit different in that where a grudge functions as the fuel for Banettes animation, spite functions as the tether for Hisuian Zoroarks not moving on in the afterlife. It could be considered "unfinished business" but it's not really the same)

•Yes, this also means his illusion was changed to be that of what he would look like as a hiker rather than when he was in the Ginko Guild (he had figured out that illusion a long time ago since him being mistakenly affiliated with the Guild would be bad and eventually the uniform would become outdated as the Guild would no longer exist in the state it did when he was still alive at the least and would cause people to look at him weirdly)

•Had to get really good at not responding and talking to pokemon or else he garner unwanted attention.

•Can maintain the illusion through being touched so long as he anticipates it, otherwise he kinda just goes poof.

•The illusion obviously goes away when he's asleep and starts to wane when he's tired.

•He maintains the illusion for as long as he can upon awakening but it is incredibly draining on him to focus on maintaining it for such a long stretch of time that he does end up tired far quicker than if he simply didn't do it for so long or so often.

•Can also partially cast the illusion and look uncannily inhuman. +The illusion starts to wane when he's experiencing strong emotions since he can't focus on maintaining it and it's kinda terrifying to see some guy slowly be engulfed in billowing smoke with no known source out of nowhere and watch his features warp and shift into something very much not human.

•His moveset does not contain bitter malice by the time of pokemon platinum.

(•Just for those wondering, no he doesn't blame Akari/Dawn in any way for his death and very much acknowledges it to be no one's fault but his)

•There is also the question of "if Volo is Cynthia's ancestor but he died before he could have children, does she just not exist?" and the answer is: she still does, but she's Cogita's direct descendant now and not Volo's. (wtf is up with Celestica genes? Yeah a lot of the other characters in PLA have descendants that look almost identical to them, but with Cogita, Volo, and Cynthia, we have three people from a single bloodline that have MANY generations between them— that is, if you headcanon Cogita as being Volo's ancestor— and they hardly look any different. WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEIR GENES??? Also forgot about Cynthia's sister who doesn't have a canon design but if Cynthia is any indication...

•Ghost types have the ability of distinctly knowing something's up when he's casting the illusion of himself and basically look at him like '🤨'. Kinda difficult to keep a straight face when a swarm of gastly are just staring unblinkingly at you like "tf is this". +Normal living Zoroarks can instantly tell that he isn't human and get the wrong idea thinking he's trying to trick someone rather than him clinging to the humanity he had.

[animentality]

I'm sorry for getting so upset I think I am really going through it rn actually. Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt even though I didn't deserve it with my response

It's ok.

Your intentions were good. I came off strong. And I always have. Not your fault. I've riled up a lot of people here, with non-sarcastic posts.

You're not wrong to challenge people if you think they have bad views or whatever, but try and remember that sometimes it really isn't worth it. Not when you're in a bad mental state, not when you're in a good mental state.

I'm not one of them, despite how I come across, but there are people who just get off on hurting and harassing people here. They're not worth talking to. I wouldn't have blamed you for blocking me.

[honestcactusblog]

Just finished Good Omens S2

NEIL, WHAT THE FUCK

[desperatepleasures]

ok i thought i was done talking about proof of life but im going through my screencaps again and laughing at the fact that the Images That Proceed Racism i posted before are immediately followed up by a heartwarming flashforward of wolfram committing a microaggression

like admittedly we’ve come a long way from the “get your filthy human hands off of me” we got in episode 1 but i think we can still improve upon “wash your filthy human hands before they get near me”

(conrad meanwhile is smiling like “wow! :) he didn’t call me any slurs today! :)”)

[minimomoe]

Not just Neighbors

Pairing: Logan Howlett (the worst Logan) x fem reader

Summary: Wade had a way of attracting the most unlikely people and keeping them around, but his newest roommate Mr. Tall, Dark, and Scowling is living with him until he figures out his way in this new universe. While Logan's come to peace with not dwelling on the past, the past always has a way of coming back to him.

Tags: MDNI!, Mutual Pining, Wade Wilson is a Little Shit, Next door Neighbors and roommate situation, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Smut, porn with some plot, unprotected sex, vaginal fingering, p in v sex, breeding (like a tad), oral (fem receiving)

word ct: 7.7k (get comfy)

song inspo: Iris- Goo Goo Dolls

AN: this could potentially become a throuple if you guys want. you just gotta let me know

You were there when Wade brought in his new flatmate for the first time. Wade had gone on and on about how he was akin to Jesus and how he managed to save you and everybody else in the goddamn world with the help of this newcomer and the rat of a dog he brought back home with him. You weren’t surprised at all. Wade had a way of attracting the most unlikely people and keeping them around. If you thought about it a little harder, it was one of the reasons why you were friends with Wade in the first place. His constant bouts of word vomit and funny quips annoyed you to no end but his kindness is what made you stick around. 

But as for Logan, Wade’s new friend, they were truly the most unlikely pair. You couldn’t wrap your head around how they had to work together for anything. You suppose the “how” didn’t really matter here with everybody smiling with the occasional conversation bursting with unadulterated laughter. Wherever Wade picked Logan up from, he fit in perfectly in the group. 

Somehow you got stuck with one of the newest guests at the get together, Mary Puppins, and you looked down at the mutt with a less than ecstatic grimacing smile. You didn’t like how naked she was, her skin only having matted tufts of fur in none of the places that mattered. 

“No no no, you can’t hold her and have that face. If you’re holding Dogpool you have to smile. She invokes happiness, like a vibrator,” Wade said. He took the dog from your arms and rubbed noses with her. “Who’s the prettiest princess in the world? Is it you or me?”

The floppy tongue of Puppins licked all around his face and you could barely hold back gagging. “Dude, that’s disgusting. Who knows what fucking diseases you just got.” 

“Not surprised that you find true love disgusting. You remind me of a snapping turtle with chlamydia. You got an itch you can never reach so now you have to make it everybody else’s problem.” 

“I just told you to stop tonguing down your dog, prick. I’d rather drink rubbing alcohol than do what you’re doing.” 

Your friend gasped loudly and clapped his hands excitedly. He pointed excitedly at Logan who felt the new pairs of eyes on him from across the room even though he was in the middle of a conversation with others. His eyes hardened on Wade, glaring at him before travelling over to you. You thought you had imagined it when he had first walked in, but Logan did not want to deal with you. His eyes softened marginally before sweeping back to the laughter that bursted in front of him, tilting into concerned territories instead of pure annoyance, but still paid you no mind. You had no idea what you had done to the man, but his adverse behaviour made you eye twitch. 

“He drinks rubbing alcohol! You two would get right along with your premature wrinkles from being sour pussies and the lust for emotionally reserved people. Actually, have you said hey to Logan, my newest roommate? Don’t worry, he bites. Once he sinks his teeth in you have to shake him off. I think we should get him a muzzle. I would show you the marks he left on me but they’re in places only my eyes can see.” 

He tucked the dog under his arm and dragged you closer to the other man hurriedly without asking if you wanted to say hey to Logan. He was just your type, dark eyes, dark hair, imposing stature, but totally and completely uninterested in you.

“If they’re for your eyes only, why show them to me?” 

“Because that’s what friends do! What are you, new here? You’ve helped me take some amazing nudes so don’t get all chaste on me,” Wade exasperated. 

Unfortunately he said that loud enough for Logan to hear, who lifted an arched brow at you and Wade’s locked arms. You were getting an eyeful of his chest that was unbuttoned in his blue flannel top that made it hard to drag your eyes back up at a respectable angle. 

“Logan, this is my bestie who is also the best damn cook this place has ever seen. She could cook cocaine from scratch if she put her mind to it like that one tiktok lady and it would be heavenly. I know you crazy kids will hit it off, but if you ever need a third,” he gave you a suggestive look. 

You jabbed your elbow in Wade’s side. “Stop that. And I have never made cocaine before and I will never do that,” you corrected. 

Wade had already left to talk to Vanessa and your irritation already ebbed away at the sight of the two of them together. You shook your head and gazed back down at Logan whose jaw was ticking and you guessed that you were the cause. You nervously shifted on your feet as you talked, not wanting to make the newcomer any more uncomfortable. 

“Look, I’m not gonna pry. I do want to thank you for whatever you did with Wade. I was getting worried about him but he seems genuinely happy as of late after knowing you,” you said sincerely. 

Finally Logan looked up to meet your eyes. He scanned your entire visage and something like pain flicked across his face. 

“Nice to meet you. You’re also one of Wade’s friends?”

“And next door neighbor,” you waved your hands. You received another thinly veiled grimace. “I think Al is calling me,” you muttered so you could leave this painful conversation. 

You couldn’t have known that Logan’s gaze stayed on you even after you turned your back on him to talk to Al. There was no way for you to know that Logan had met you before, in a different universe once upon a time, and you two were a lot more than neighbors. Seeing that you didn’t have an ounce of recognition for him was jarring but he couldn’t decide which one was worse. You having no memory of him, or you knowing just how low he got before finally getting his shit together. Whenever he caught your eyes across the room you quickly focused your attention elsewhere. As much as it bothered him, he thought it would be for the best to keep his distance. 

The night passed and you didn’t make another attempt to talk to Logan. In fact, he didn’t see you again until a week later when he opened his front door and you had your fist raised in the air ready to knock on the heavy wood. 

“Oh. Logan,” you drawled, dropping your hand. You were dressed for the heat in dark wash shorts that stopped high on your thigh with a cut up t-shirt of some new age tv show. Your hair was different from the last time he saw you. A million, tiny braids wrapped up in a knot on top of your head decorated with gold jewelry. Under your arm was a basket of clothes resting against your hip. You peeked over his shoulders, looking for anybody else in the apartment. 

“I wanted to grab Al’s laundry while I’m heading down there. You mind if I get it?”

This was his chance to try to set the record straight. Logan looked at you for so long you started to frown, wondering if you had said something wrong. 

“Your hands are already full,” he said without further explanation and you fell back when he went inside with the door closing in your face. The shock of his audacity is what kept you frozen in place, but not even ten seconds later it reopened with Logan holding Althea’s laundry basket. 

“You want to do it together?” You asked incredulously. 

Logan shrugged. “I got nothing else better to do.” 

You said nothing as he walked past you down the hall to the stairwell. All you could do is stare at his nice ass saunter away after you rolled your eyes. When down in the laundry room on the first floor you took the basket out of Logan’s hands, quickly sorted the clothes then placed them in the machine. You sat down on the bench, staring down at your hands, clenching your fingers into your palms before slowly stretching them back out. 

“What’s wrong with your hands?” Logan was still standing, leaning against a machine that wasn’t on as he looked at you with concern. You moved from stretching your fingers all at once to bending them one by one until they released a crisp pop!

“I feel like they're getting stiff. Gotta stretch so I can keep braiding hair for a few more years before the arthritis kicks in,” you sighed. “Sit down already. You’re making me nervous hovering over there like that.” 

He dropped himself on the other side of the bench you were sitting on, making it creak in protest. 

It wasn’t like you to fill the quiet with small talk but you didn’t know much about Logan and he seemed to be in an agreeable mood. After a few minutes of watching a video on your phone, you paused it to ask him a question. 

“So what do you do? You know, for a living?”

Logan slowly tilted his head to regard your inquisitive stare. “I work in construction.” 

You nodded, his occupation making total sense to you. He had the look of somebody who was blue collar. “I don’t know how it fully works but can you tell the city to fix the road on the bridge? It has holes bigger than a pornstar’s.” 

Logan chuckled at your choice of words and it made you grin. It dawned on you that it was the first time you have really seen a happy expression on his face and you wanted to see more of it. 

“I’ll move it up the docket,” he snorted. 

“I’m counting on you.” 

This was going much smoother than the first time you met him and you wondered if you had imagined the unsettling encounter in the first place. You wanted to test the waters without pushing your luck, so you went back to the paused hair tutorial on your phone and the quiet hum of the washing machines tumbling filled the empty space. You kept sneaking glances up at Logan who sat comfortably on the bench, taking up twice as much space than needed with his manspreading with arms crossed over his chest and his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell softly like he was sleeping. 

“You wanna say something, bub?”

Your cheeks flamed like you were caught doing something you weren’t supposed to. “Do you call everybody that?” 

Logan opened his eyes and looked at you from the corner of his eye.“I don’t bother myself too much with people’s names. It’s easier for me.” 

“So you can’t be bothered to remember my name, nice,” you snorted. Before he could respond you put your hand up. “It’s okay, I’ll forget yours so we’ll be even. I was just wondering if you styled your hair like cat ears or if you just woke up like that, but then again, it looks like that every time I see you.” 

He immediately ran his hands through his hair but failed to do anything about the style. You snorted then stretched your arm out to brush through his hair with your own fingers. The locks of hair were persistent in their upright position. You gave an amused hum before dropping your hand. “It’s pretty cute.” 

Logan bit his tongue from mentioning how the you from his universe always made fun of his hair. He couldn’t compare the two, it wouldn’t be right, but you were so obviously the same person he cared for without even trying. He abruptly got up, leaving you bewildered on the bench by yourself. 

“Call Wade to help you take this shit back to our place. I have something to take care of,” he said gruffly. Without another glance he left the laundry room. You watched his frame from the large windows walk down the street until he was no longer visible and scoffed. 

“Fuck you too, Logan,” you cursed under your breath. 

Your touch had ignited something in Logan, something that he needed to walk off lest he exploded. You had no fucking idea what you were doing to him and it wasn’t until Logan looked up and realized that he was about to walk into a new city limit that his feelings dawned on him too. You had left him in the previous universe, ending things with him before he was a full blown alcoholic because you didn’t want to be there when he self-destructed. It’s not that you had left without begging him to change, trying to help him get better, but he was too busy drowning in self pity to grab the hand that was reaching out for him. Seeing your expression full of hope and wonder in this world made Logan’s chest cave in from disappointment. It reminded him of a time where you loved him before he became The Worst Logan. He couldn’t find it in him to fully explain the turmoil that was going on with his mind and heart without it sounding utterly insane to you. The ghost of your fingers in his hair replayed in his mind for days as he kept himself busy with work and the gym, trying to minimize his chances of bumping into you to zero. The only problem was that it was an impossible task. You lived next door, and you were Wade’s friend. He could hear your voice through the drywall when he holed himself up in his room while you talked to Wade and Al. 

“Trust me, he doesn’t hate you. Unless you have a smart mouth. Then he might hate you a little bit.” 

“Is that really all the advice you can give me?” 

“He really likes Madonna?”

“Thank you. Thank you for absolutely nothing,” you groaned. 

—•—

Even though days have passed since his time spent in the laundry room with you, he was bound to cross paths with you again. He came home late at night at the same time as you who was having trouble with opening your door. 

“Shit,” he heard you mutter. “Fuck. Shit-fuck, where is my key?”

More rustling ensued as he came up the stairs to see you paw through your bag. You dropped your hand in futile defeat and pressed your forehead on the door with a soft thump. You then whipped around, making your way to his apartment, Wade’s apartment, and freezing like a deer caught in headlights when you see him down the hall. You started to backtrack but Logan called out your name.

“I was just gonna ask Wade to pick my lock again. I can’t get in,” you explained.

“Wade’s not in there. He went out with Vanessa,” Logan said. He took slow steps closer to you and you stiffened up. “I could open it for you.”

Your eyes widened at the offer, then you eyed him suspiciously. “Are you saying that but gonna fuck off to who knows where halfway through?”

Logan sucked his teeth in. “I’m sorry about that. I just— I needed to leave.”

You gave him a disbelieving stare. Even now with the tiredness of the day weighing you down you looked beautiful to him. You had your hair held back with a silk scarf that freed your face so your knitted eyebrows were showing clear confusion. Your full lips were hard pressed in a line with the corners tugging down.

“Fine. Whatever. Just open the door,” you scoffed. “Please,” you added after some thought. 

He would’ve opened it even if you yelled at him. You stood behind Logan, unable to see him extend a single claw to pick your lock. In no time you heard the click of your door being opened and you clapped in relief. Logan opened the door wide for you to step in, fully prepared to close it after but you took his hand to drag him inside.

“Thanks,” you muttered. “You’re coming home late too so you must be hungry. I doubt Wade got anything good to eat over there.” 

He watched you move around your space, kicking your shoes off at the corner and hanging your bag on some hooks next to the door. He did the same with his shoes, padding behind you in his socks as you walked over to your kitchen.

“Un-fucking-believable,” you scoffed. He looked at what you were staring at and it was your lanyard of keys sitting pretty on your countertop. “Well, is there anything you’re in the mood for?”

“Do you still have any of that lasagna you brought over last time? It was fucking amazing.”

“So you do eat my food,” you said bashfully. “Unfortunately I do not but I’ll make it again soon, buuut I do have spaghetti sauce with big ole meatballs leftover, so we can have that.” 

You gave Logan a hopeful look, silently asking him to stay for dinner. He didn’t know what else to do with himself in your tiny kitchen but he stuck around, scanning the walls and other surfaces for bits of you plastered all over the place. You had a little bit of everything tucked in all corners, books in haphazard stacks, miniature plants in colorful pots, and random trinkets tucked in corners. It wasn’t messy, but your space was lived in. It was a visual representation of your personality. 

In the same bowl you threw your keys in after you found them there was a large flat disc that he recognized. It was a token given to those who attended the same AA meetings he went to, the exact same design, that said “1 year”. You saw him eyeballing the coin and picked it up. 

“Oh yeah I don’t drink. Gotta keep my streak up,” you chuckled dryly. “It’s actually been three years but I don’t go as often as I should. I think I got a good handle on it now.” 

Logan’s brow raised up. He only recently started to go to AA meetings secretly on his own. While he didn’t have to hide it, having everyone close to him know how much he needed help made his stomach turn. The way you spoke about your past freely to him made him more willing to be open and honest with himself. 

“I’m trying to get better at that too,” he said in a steady voice, looking at you head on. You regarded him without any apprehension. “I go to the latest meetings of the night.”

“At the rec center on 5th?”

Logan nodded and you gave a soft smile. Your thumb brushed over the engraving on the token. “They’re good people over there. They really helped me get back on my feet.” 

You shuffled over to your pantry to pull out a pack of spaghetti, then to your cabinets to get olive oil and salt. 

You moved with ease in your kitchen like you could find all the stuff with your eyes closed and it reminded Logan of simpler times. Him coming back from a mission to you making a meal if it wasn’t the middle of the night. He’d stick to your side like a starfish, not wanting to let go until you started complaining about your dwindling range of motion. Then he’d pull you in his lap when food was served, having you sit and feed him until you slowly stopped bringing out two plates to just one so you could eat off of one together. This domestic scene that played in front of him was something that Logan thought that he had lost forever. 

“I grew up in Butt Fuck Nowhere, USA. All there was to do for fun was go to the liquor store and get drunk in parking lots until it wasn’t just for fun but a necessity to avoid everything. Over the years I just… wandered. When I ended up in the hospital and nobody came to check on me is when it really hit. I could’ve died and I wouldn’t have anything to show for my life.” 

Once you filled a pot full of water on the stove, you toyed with the token while leaning over the counter. You spun the coin around on the table until it reached the speed to where it looked like a transparent sphere. 

“I must’ve relapsed at least 50 times when I first started going to meetings. Hell, it took me almost two years before I even went to meetings regularly. I don’t mean to lecture you or anything. Lord knows I have no business giving advice to anybody,” you chuckled. The coin slowed and collapsed on itself. You flicked it over to Logan and he caught it under his fingers. “But I do know what you’re going through. So if you feel yourself slipping let me know. It would’ve been nice to have somebody to lean on back then.” 

The only noise that could be heard in your apartment was the soft bubbling of the pasta boiling. Logan picked up the coin that you slid over to him and turned it over in his hand. The timer you set for the spaghetti beeped so you went to tend to the pot, grabbing oven mitts for the drawer and prepped your strainer. You poured out the boiling hot water in the sink, hissing when the steam billowed in your face. 

“Careful,” Logan muttered behind you, his hand on the small of your waist. He took the burning pot out of your hand with no protection and placed it back on the stove. 

“It’s just a little steam,” you waved off. “You must’ve burned yourself. Here, run your hand under cold water first.” 

You took his hand to inspect it and saw the red welts and fingertips quickly disappear back into his normal skin color. You gaped at his hand, running your fingers over his palm like a psychic reader. 

“You’re like Wade,” you gasped in awe. “No wonder he brought you home.”

He carefully slipped his hand out of your hold and held it over the sink, exposing the claws that sprung from between his knuckles. When he retracted the claws you took his fist and inspected his knuckles, trying to find the exit point with knitted eyebrows full with concern. 

“Does that hurt you?”

“I barely feel it anymore,” he shrugged. 

“How much do you know about mutants?” Logan breathed out. This was the closest you've ever been to him. He could smell your shampoo wafting off of your hair and the slightest bit of your perfume. Just like his old timeline, you always favored vanilla and coconut scents. 

“Not much. Something, something, genetic mutation, the next step for human evolution, can be a variety of different powers or appearances. I know that a few of Wade’s other friends are mutants and I unfortunately have the base model human form,” you joked. “But it’s a good thing you’re not hurt.” 

You never stopped rubbing Logan’s hand and he never took it away. Instead he pressed his palms to yours then slotted his fingers in the available spaces until he was gently holding your hand. You nervously cleared your throat but didn’t say anything for him to stop. 

“I don’t know how much of the story you got from Wade, but I had my own timeline, my own universe, that I fucked up before he pulled me out of there to save this one. You were there.” 

That made your eyebrows fly up. “Holy shit— there’s another me? Or another variant of me. I think that’s how Wade explained it.”

“Yeah, another variant of you. And I let you down. I mean I fucking blew it at the time. So I see you now, knowing that I’m being given a second chance, and fuck I’m scared I’m gonna mess it up again.” 

All the agonizing looks and sudden disappearances finally made sense. You always felt like Logan had known something about you that you weren’t aware of, albeit you weren’t thinking it was this major. Still, the corners of your mouth curled up.

“Don’t go looking too far ahead in the future, Logan. You could start small by not running out of the room when you see me and you could always stop by for dinner.” 

Logan’s heart was drumming in his chest so hard he swore you could hear it. There you went again, bridging the gap between him and you like you always did. You stated things so simply because it was that simple to you. You went back to preparing dinner, dishing out plates of spaghetti for the both of you and diving into a story about the marital issues one of your clients were having. You were so animated when you talked, your eyes bright and hands waving, he held onto every single word. Before he knew it there was no food left on his plate and you two had been talking for nearly an hour. Once he saw you yawn he excused himself, taking your plates and washing them off, promising to see you the next day and you looked happy with his new attitude. 

So Logan started small just like you said to. There wasn’t a time when he saw you that he didn’t say hi, and your face lighting up made him want to say it again and again. He surprised you with compression gloves to help your hands and offered to do your grocery shopping whenever he could. You made good on your word by bringing twice as much food over to the apartment, going as far as packing him a separate plate with his name written on a neon post it note with your curly handwriting. You had no idea how long he kept one of the notes in his pocket, neatly folded until the corners were devoid of pigment. He would swipe over it while he went to his meetings and be reminded of your encouraging voice. 

When he felt himself itching for a drink, his throat feeling dry and the tremors in his hand returning, his first call was to you. It must’ve been almost 12 am when he called the first time, but you answered and talked him down out of the bar full of his temptations and into your apartment where you had two cups of tea and a listening ear. When he didn’t want to talk you offered a distraction, putting on the shittiest comedies you found and forcing him to sit on your couch and watch them with you until the tension in his shoulders melted away and he could finally hear the voices that were coming from the tv. By that time you were already in a deep sleep, your face peaceful and the most interesting thing to watch was you, not the screen. Movie nights became a normal, weekly occurrence for the two of you after that, something that Logan looked forward to. 

Even Wade and Blind Al noticed the change in the relationship. 

“It’s always ‘where’s Logan, Logan, Logan?’ with her. Soon she won’t even bother to cook for us anymore. I used to be the only person she’d make chimichangas for so why the fuck do you get a plate now? All she cares about is that slutty waist decorated with a big fat shiny belt buckle,” Wade complained. 

“Motherfucker, if that little angel stops bringing me her sweet potato pound cakes, I will drop kick you out of the window.” Al pointed her can in the middle of Logan’s chest. 

Logan’s phone buzzed on the coffee table and all three of them turned to face it. 

“Speaking of that gorgeous devil. Must be a slow day at work if she can be sexting you. Do you even know what that is or do you only send horny notes via quill pen and carrier pigeon?” 

“Mind your own goddamn business,” Logan said, snatching up his phone before Wade could reach it. It was a message from you, and it wasn’t a sexy message at all (to someone who isn’t attracted to you like Logan was). Instead you had sent him a picture of one of your client’s hair with an intricate braid design with only your fingers in the frame. You were wearing the gloves he gave you and he was too busy looking at that than the hair. Another message popped up. 

-took me only ten hours and she tipped the same amount as the price!!!

-finally gonna buy a new stand mixer

“Oooo she sends you hand pictures. I didn’t know you had a fetish for that, you freaky frogs. Cover your eyes Althea, they’re getting nasty.”

That earned Wade three stabs in his leg and Logan stepped out of the living room to call you back in peace.

—•—

Another night eating dinner together and you excitedly pulled Logan to the kitchen and made him cover his eyes with the palms of his hands so he wouldn’t peek. He heard the fridge open and close, matches being struck, and the soft ring of utensils being set down. Then you stood behind him, replacing his hands with yours. 

“Okayyy open!” 

Logan opened his eyes to a small, round cake displayed in front of him with a single candle lit in the middle. In elaborate cursive, “Happy One Month” was written in blue and yellow frosting. He had given you his token earlier this week from his meetings with a shy smile and you were ecstatic for him. He wasn’t expecting you to do anything more than that from you because he still had a long way to go. But you stood behind Logan, your hands resting on his shoulders while you peeked over his body to try to see his expression. 

“We need to celebrate things like this,” you said fondly. “You’re doing fucking amazing.” 

Your hands left his body and you went to get plates to serve the cake with. “I hope you like chocolate cake. You seem like a chocolate type of guy.”

Your knife was poised over the cake ready to slice down when you felt Logan’s heavy hands rest on your waist. You have been trying to be normal about him for weeks, not wanting to assume that he would be interested in you now because you looked similar to someone he knew before while your own attraction was off the charts. His body heat covering your entire back and circling around your abdomen made it impossible to make a steady cut in the cake and you pulled out a crooked slice. 

“Logan?”

You pivoted on your heels to face him. His arms never loosened around your body. His expression was dark and heady, ever so ready to eat you rather than the cake. Your gaze went from his eyes to his lips before dragging back up. Heat swirled in your stomach, one that has been growing since you met him but it was finally bubbling over. 

“Nobody else would think to do this but you,” he said in a low voice. It only sent tingles right down your spine. You ran your hands on his shoulders before hooking them together behind his head. Logan slotted one leg in between yours, his thigh pressing lightly on your sex, and your lower back pressed into the table. The cool tile barely soothed your sizzling skin.

“It doesn’t take much to do,” you shrugged. “I want to cheer you on.” 

One of his hands snaked up the front of your body until he cupped your chin, tilting your head back and you both shared open mouthed breaths. You combed his nape, watching his eyes roll back into his head and he cursed. Logan’s lips came crashing down on you with reckless abandon, his tongue making quick acquaintance with the inside of your mouth and you hiked your leg up his waist to lock him in closer. He lifted you up to sit you on the counter and the heights changed. You sat a little taller than him, controlling the kiss with just as much gusto and both legs around his waist. You pushed off the jacket he was wearing, not liking how many layers of clothing were separating you from him and his hands rubbed up your bare thighs till he was under your shorts. A moan that left you biting his lip escaped your mouth and Logan showed just enough restraint to say something. 

“Tell me you want this,” Logan groaned. His gaze was so deep, full of the regret of some other timeline where he had once failed you once before and he needed to know that this wasn’t some hyper realistic dream that he was letting himself get swept into. You cupped his face, kissing the stray tear that fell from his right eye before capturing his lips again. He was hungry for you, getting drunk off the salty kiss but had enough control left to pull away and repeated himself. “Say you want this.”

“I want this,” you nodded vigorously. “I want you. The Logan that’s here in front of me. I want all of you.” 

You were afraid that your answer wasn’t enough as Logan stared at you like he couldn’t believe that you were real. His head dropped to your shoulder and your hands made home in his hair. You gently scraped his scalp with your nails when you felt open mouth kisses on the side of your neck that shot electricity through your veins. You hummed quietly, sagging into his embrace and he continued his burning map of passion down your body. He heaved you off of the countertop, walking over to your sectional rather than your room because he couldn’t afford to waste any more time before settling into the soft cushions with you on top of him. Your mouths were back on each other, feverishly seeking what the other was offering in a desperate manner. Teeth clashing on each other did nothing to slow you down outside of giving you a moment to breathe before you could get lightheaded.

Logan’s large hands roamed over your body, nearly tearing off your shorts to feel the wetness of your pussy. You meweled when his fingers slipped past your folds and smeared the arousal he gathered from your entrance. Not wanting to be the only one feeling good, you worried his belt buckled, jerking the leather out of the way to free his length from the confinements of his pants. Your fingers wrapped around his cock strung out a long groan from Logan from deep inside his chest. You were equally as loud, whimpering whenever he circled your clit and clenching your thighs around his hips. 

“Holy fuck, Logan,” you shuddered. He inserted another one of his thick fingers, moving two in a scissoring fashion that made your vision hazy around the corners. You were tight and he wanted to take his time preparing you, but you were riding his hand and his palms were drenched in your arousal. You spat in your hand and pumped his cock faster, taking his mouth again for a dizzying kiss. 

“That’s enough,” he growled out. With a bruising grip he guided your hips to line up with his stiff cock. His tip nudged your oversensitive bundle of nerves and you hissed, your fingers digging in his shoulders. You sank down slowly on him, his cock splitting you open with a delicious stretch you had been imagining for weeks now. None of your toys could compare to the real thing. Logan coaxed you to keep your eyes on him while he fucked you from below. Your lashes were lined with tears as you slid down inch by tantalizing inch of his length. You still had your top on and that was a problem for Logan. He hastily pushed your shirt off of your body and was rewarded to your breasts falling in his face. If he could smother himself with them he could. Your nipples stood out, clearly begging for his attention, and he flattened his tongue to lap them up. 

You clutched him to your chest, gasping and writhing on top of him, still trying to get down to the base. He closed the gap, bucking his hips up with a satisfying slap to the back of your thigh.

“Yesss,” you hissed. “God yes.” Logan was fully seated inside of you, your velvet walls pulsing around him in an intoxicating rhythm. A sob of relief fell from your lips when he controlled the tempo from below. He could leave handprints on your ass with how tightly he was holding you, rolling your hips, hurtling you towards an orgasm. It was your turn to take off his shirts. You didn’t need anything to slow the large wave of pleasure ready to crash over you. Once you had a clear view of his top half, viewing his muscles that flexed from holding you up, you splayed your hands on his broad chest to steady you. His hands wrapped around your wrists, bringing one up to kiss the pulse point that was beating a hundred miles a minute, then drag his tongue over the vein. He left open-mouth marks up your arm, pulling you closer until it was your lips he was devouring once again. 

Logan’s thumb stimulated your clit and you whimpered in his mouth. You were forehead to forehead, eyelashes tangling with each other with each blink. You always broke contact first, too overwhelmed with the building pressure deep in your core and Logan would lure you back to him. 

“Don’t leave me all alone, pretty,” he moaned, and it was all it took to have you staring deep in his eyes again. 

You came crying out Logan’s name. You buried your face in his neck, rolling your hips feverishly against him to ride out the rest of your high. His arms laced around your back, holding you together as you fell apart. When you released the final heaving breath he flipped you on your back on the couch, slipping out of your sex to settle his head between your plush thighs. 

“Whaa–?” You were still dazed, floating in the cloud with slight tremors running through your body, only being brought back down to earth when you felt the brush of Logan’s beard on the inside of your leg. 

“You have no idea how good you smell,” he gritted out. 

He was practically salivating at the sight of your pussy, his hand cupping your ass and he spread your legs further apart so that no part of you was hidden. You rested on your elbows to watch him from down below, his hazel eyes blown wide at the feast presented to him. He dived in nose deep, messily eating you out, drenching the bottom half of his face from his spit and your arousal that dripped all over the couch. Your hands made a home in his head of hair, tugging him to and fro whenever you thought you were close. Arching your back off the couch offered you no break, Logan’s hands curled around you to keep you in place and firmly stuck on his mouth. He enjoyed the harsh pulls on his scalp, the way that you murmured sorry like you could actually hurt him. “Lo–logan,” you whined out. It was almost too much to bear. He was relentless, his oral fixation on your clit becoming numbing as your nerves were in overdrive. Your nails clawed his back, the tops of his shoulders, trying to find purchase in anything to keep from the mounting spiraling sensation that kept you crying for him. 

“Keep saying my name like that,” he commanded. It came out muffled, you didn’t actually hear a word that came out of his mouth, but you felt the vibrations of them and it made more tears fall from your eyes. 

He moved from fucking you with his tongue to slipping his fingers inside, crooking them up to your spot and keeping a tight seal on your clit. Your release hit you like a freight train. You clamped your shaking thighs together around his head, and Logan fucked you through it until you were sobbing, begging him to let you breathe. Every muscle in your body was trembling from the gratifying exertion. 

However, Logan was far from finished with you. 

His beard was slick with your second orgasm. He finally came up for air, kissing up your softness of your stomach, a slow trail through the middle of your chest.“You taste fucking amazing too.” 

“Let me see,” you crooned, cuffing the back of his neck to mash your lips on his. Both your arms and legs wrapped around Logan, containing his body in your embrace with the rest of the strength you could muster up. He slipped inside of your cunt in one fluid motion, fucking you to the edge once again. You fluttered and clenched around him, his strokes languid yet hitting your spot with precision. You were beyond fucked out, a blubbering mess that wanted him to finish inside of you. 

“Please, please, please give it to me. Come on– fuck, baby,” you begged. “Don’t you wanna come inside?” 

“Asking so nicely,” he gave a low chuckle. “How bad do you want it?”

Your hands squeezing his ass was all the answer he needed. Logan was notched deep inside of you, hips rolling and teeth bared over your skin. Desperation fueled him. The need to make you completely his, filling you up with his come. Your eyes wandered to between you, the point where you both were conjoined to watch the raunchy scene of his cock fucking your slippery pussy with amazement. You glided your finger over your clit for one more high with Logan’s filthy words in your ears. 

“Come for me, sweetheart. One more time and I’ll give you exactly what you're begging for. You already made a fucking mess everywhere–” 

You crested with a high keen that made everything flash white. The sheer force of your orgasm had you coming for what seemed to be a few long minutes. Words were useless to describe the lewdness of your moans accompanied with the final, sharp snaps of his hips on the back of your thighs. Logan couldn’t hold out any longer, finally spilling inside of you with a growling shout. His hands were sunken inside of a decorative pillow above your head on your couch that was ruined from his claws extending at the height of his peak. Ragged pants were shared between you, heart rates finally slowly. You locked your legs around his waist, wanting Logan to lay his full weight on top of your body like a stone press. You basked in the afterglow, grazing your nails on his skin, enjoying his body heat. He nestled further into your neck, breathing in your scent, content with your affectionate embrace. Logan could finally put all worries of ruining his relationship with you in this world to bed.  

—•—

You weren’t sure if you had slept for only a few minutes or hours, but you woke up feeling hungry, sore, and overheated.  It was all due to Logan, who was starfishing on top of your body. Only one hand was curved around your waist to ensure that you wouldn’t escape even while he was in the dreamlands and you chuckled. You took the liberty of touching him freely while he slumbered, craning your neck to skate your finger down the slope of his nose and cheek. His nose twitched, shaking off your finger to remain sleeping. You really had to pee but you didn’t want to disturb him. That’s when you realized that you were no longer on the couch like you were the night before. You don’t know how many times you did it, how many positions you went through with the insatiable man who craved you for hours. He must’ve carried you to the bed when you were too tired to walk on your own and when you ran you hand down on parts of your body that wasn’t buried under him you were clean. You thought about waking him up so you could convince him to take a shower with him when your phone rang on your nightstand. You felt your way to grabbing it, stretching your arm as far out as you could to snatch it off the table and read the caller ID. 

“Wade, this better be important.” 

“Good morning to you too, sunshine. I just wanted to say the headphones you got Al work great. After the third, or was it the fourth round, I put those bad boys on and couldn’t hear a thing. Send me the link so I can buy them for myself.”

You threw your arm over your eyes in embarrassment. “Fuck me, you heard us?”

“Oh yeah,” he snickered. “You two sounded like banshees fucking on a rollercoaster. Tell me, is he huge down under? I would take a hike down his happy trail any day.” 

“I’m hanging up now,” you said, and did just that. You tossed your phone back on your nightstand when Logan rustled. 

“Who was that?” His voice was even deeper than usual, hitting your ears with a delicious gravelly tone. You pressed your legs together at the sound of him. 

“Wade. Just know that he heard us and will be an annoying little shit about it.”

“Fucking great,” he groaned. You combed your fingers through his hair to soothe him. 

You were going to say something else when the state of your pillow caught your attention. 

“Holy shit,” you murmured, running your hand over the torn fabric. Three streaks sliced through it, exposing the soft down within. Logan tilted his head to see what you were looking at and winced. 

“I’ll replace that too.” 

You could only laugh in disbelief. His chin rested on your sternum and you held an amused expression, a small smile dancing on your lips. 

“What is it?” He asked. 

“My question is finally answered. You wake up with the little cat ears.”

Thanks for reading loves!! lemme know what ya think xx

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[strangelylass]

Good news: My doctor finally got me an alternative to my Adderall

Bad news: The medication costs...

Four 

HUNDRED 

DOLLARS

[yeyinde]

dangle on the leash | Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Reader

The flimsy sarcophagus housing all his wants, his desires, cracks open when Price announces that his missus is pregnant. Ghost cocks his head in consideration. Intentionally knocking you up is amoral. Probably illegal. Somehow, even more dastardly when the reason for it is simply selfishness. Want. Greed. Hunger. But he's a rabid dog burning with the urge to bite. No one should really be surprised when he finally decides to sink his teeth into you. Unfortunately, that hail mary Price sent into the aether never reached you.

(your bird is too big for a cage— —but maybe a collar would do.)

this is a babytrapping fic lmao but please read the tags carefully. a companion piece to this (Price + babytrapping).

DEAD DOVE. SMUT. 18+

HARD WARNINGS—coercion. dependency. intentional alienation. unsafe, unprotected sex. this very much toes the line of noncon (that is still very dubcon even when consent is given) in many ways, notably: somnophilia, and condom/contraceptive tampering. intrusive, violent thoughts. mentions of violence. manipulation; slight gaslighting. implied kidnapping. references to past abuse (Ghost), brief mention of drugging/threats of drugging (ambiguous as to if it was ever followed through on or not, mostly just Ghost's internal monologue unfiltered). ADDITIONAL TAGS—smut. rough sex. unsafe sex. dom!Ghost. mean, obsessive, unhinged!Ghost. spit kink. dacryphilia.

he's feral, but he's yours. too bad for you, no one is really sure if that's a good thing or not.

One of the things Price often tells new recruits is to shove their old life into a box. 

“There's home,” he huffs, fingers twitching as if he's subconsciously flexing around the hilt of a lit cigar. “And then there's work. Whatever box you decide to put this, or your family, your personal life, into is your choice. But for fuck’s sake. Keep them separate.” 

Most of the new recruits are fresh off selection, shaded sickly chartreuse, and take his words as a literal gospel. Work, this; home, them. They don't start to unravel the second part of his gruff speech until much later. Until they can't wash the blood from their hands, and the scent of their mum’s eucalyptus hand soap is nauseating. Unfamiliar. When being in civvies feels like wearing skin that doesn't fit, and everyone around you is alien, foreign. They don't know. They'll never know. 

It's only when they find themselves gazing at the clock on the wall of their family home, counting down the minutes until their mandatory leave is over do they realise that home is the barracks. 

That's something Ghost has always understood. Maybe it was because his home life was already in ruins, tatters. Beer soaking into the knock-off Persian rug a cousin nicked from a flea market when he was nine. No fine china in the cupboards because it'll end up in shards on the floor. Plastic plates and forks and cups. Always. Howling in his head. Screaming from down the hall in his mum's room. His bedroom door creaking open at night. The anger, the curdling fear (shameful—be a man; punch him back, hit him before he hits you, you useless prick—), of not knowing whether or not it was his dad, high as hell and itching for a fight after busting their mum’s lip wide open, or Tommy sneaking into his bed at night because his is soaked in piss and he can’t sleep when they scream at each other like this.  

(Funny that, he always found; neither of them could ever sleep when it was silent, either.)

Blood on the linoleum. Trying to eat burnt toast and overcooked beans with a busted lip and a twinge in his jaw—

(Fractured, they'll say later, years later, during his mandatory medical checkup when he's first recruited. Healed all wrong. Son, didn't anyone take you to hospital?) 

He understands the separation between home and work—even if the former lost all relevancy nearly a decade ago. Back when he buried them all. Was buried himself—

What Ghost never really understood was the box. 

Shove it into a box. 

When he asks over cheap whisky somewhere in Siberia, Price tightens his fingers around his glass before bringing it up to his head. His index finger juts out. He knocks the tip of that bruised, scabbed knuckle against his temple. Once, thrice. Levels Simon with a pointed look he both can’t understand and somehow knows all too well. 

“Up here."

“Paid nearly fifty quid for that,” he grouses, shaking his head. “Think I've been ripped-off, Price.” 

Price scoffs, places the glass down with a hollow thud. “Don't be a fuckin’ muppet, Simon—” his real name makes his shoulders tense. Around the barracks, they know him only as the Ghost. “You put it away somewhere. Hide it. I don't fuckin’ know. But if it keeps you goin’, keeps you sane, and doesn't become a mess I gotta clean up, well—”

The implication is stark. Heavy. 

Price was always good at chiselling through layers of accumulated indifference to get to the madness within, but considering Ghost’s past and his mile-long rap sheet, the warning digging into his words like a dull blade isn't unwarranted. 

Old dogs, he'd called the pair of them when they first met. There was a sharp keenness in his eye when he lifted his hand, waved his cigar toward the tangled mess of scar tissue crisscrossing his face (made with a dull, rusted knife, one that gouged out deep pocks of skin, ugly fuck, looks like the badlands, don't he? like a postcard from the Grand Canyon, sweetheart. not so cute anymore, are ya, pretty boy—), and said, “well, you're fuckin’ rabid, ain't you? Better put a muzzle on that before it becomes a problem, mm.”

His problem, specifically. 

And Ghost gets it. Thinks Price might understand that particular brand of madness—despite growing up on literal opposite sides of the track, his Manchester to the others Liverpool; poverty and prestige—if only just. Because Price seems to be able to curb those baser impulses in a way Ghost hadn't yet mastered (and won't for quite some time yet). He's put together. Sort of. Respected. Normal.

The men in the barracks don't look at him and flinch. 

But he sees the way the man's eyes linger in the crowd, shrewd and careless, before falling on the pretty bartender in the back. The one with roses in her eyes and a smile full of dandelions. Soft, like butterscotch. It's here when they darken. When he reaches, almost angrily, for his whisky. Pats his chest with a heavy fist searching for his cigar. 

She's a sweet thing, he reckons. All pretty and trusting. Birds like her make his head itch—

“Don't even think about it, Simon,” Price grumbles, and it feels like territorial posturing, a challenge he almost raises to meet with his chin, if only to make Price fluster, but it's hollow. Empty. He denies himself, too. The prick. 

“How'd you do it?” He asks, and doesn't specify. Doesn't think he needs to. 

When Price swallows, it looks like a grimace. “Years of practice.” 

He considers the weight of it, his eyes straying back to the woman behind the bar. She's tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, wrist delicate like bone china, the kind they could never afford, and for a moment, the intrusive thoughts, the ones he gets sometimes about wanting to tear things to bloody pieces, rears—

It's stamped down in a swig of flat lager You stupid fuckin’ mutt, Price would say tomorrow morning, shaking his head. You always think with your prick? 

Simon cranks his head sharply to the side instead. The resounding crack seems to echo through the empty pub. 

Price just shakes his head. “Christ. No one ever house break you, yet?” 

“Yeah, they did,” he rasps, staring at the bartender who gazes back at him now. Skittish, unsure. Not so sweet after all. She looks away, cowed. Her hands tremble. He leans back, and hums. “And now I piss outside, like a good ‘ol boy.” “Ain't nothin’ good about you, Simon. Fuckin' Christ—”

And he's not wrong. 

The Ghost has a reputation of being a cold-hearted bastard. A Frankensteinian beast cobbled together with spare parts robbed from a jailhouse graveyard. Worst of the worst. An arm from a mass murder. The leg from a spree killer. Heart a patchwork mess of ichor and sulphur. Sutured together with barbed wire. 

It's all sort of macabre. Rather trite, too. 

The rumour mill in the barracks is insatiable.

But sometimes, he wakes up and he's still buried. Still dead. Dirt in his throat, lodged in his nose. He breathes in and feels pebbles scraping his lungs. Feels worms in his ears. Maggots in his head. 

They crawl through his grey matter. Leeches burrowing into his thoughts, sucking the good in him dry. 

Or, whatever's left of it, anyway. 

He thinks with his teeth because it's easier that way. Cold, calculative instinct. Just barely boxed into a neat package slapped on the desk of Price's higher-ups. 

A good man, they say, and turn him loose on the streets. One of the best we have, as he breaks jaws, and tears through jugulars. A force to be reckoned with. 

They hand him a gun, a rifle, when the bloodied footprints leading back to camp become too much of a hassle to clean. Shoot from a distance. He takes to it like the bulk of metal was made for his scarred hands. Scythe to a Reaper. 

It feels like bloodletting. Draining him of his anger, his fury, until a cold, gnarled indifference curls in the basin left behind. Icy, frigid. Down to the bone. 

Sometimes, he doesn't remember what it felt like to be warm, even buried under a thick balaclava and layers of military fatigues. 

Frankenstein’s monster. Patched together from the rotten remains of horrible men. 

And as he stares in the mirror at the patchwork ruins of his face, his body, he wonders if there's some truth to it, after all. He's pretty sure if someone cracked his skull open—again—they’d find rot. Tumulus. Infested with maggots and worms. Cobwebs behind his eyes. In his nose. His brain perfectly preserved: a zombified tombstone. And oh, how it hungers. 

Wants. 

But in a box it goes. One shaped like a coffin. Placed pretty in the back of his broken head. 

He stares in the mirror and thinks he sees something moving under his eye. Wriggling around. The temptation to claw it out rears, but the shredded tissue on his thighs reminds him of what happens when he listens to that insidious hiss in the back of his head (some amalgamation of his old man, and that bastard—) and goes searching for gold in bone marrow. 

He huffs. Fingers curling around the porcelain. His head is rotten. Putrefied. He can feel the decomposing sludge press against his temples. It grows teeth sharp like a razor blade and hacks away at jaundiced bone. Ghost lifts his hand, digs his fingers into his temple. Down boy—

(Simon doesn't even want to consider what his heart must look like, then.)

Cold-hearted, sure—

But he likes sweet things. 

The kind that will undoubtedly give him cavities. A spillover, perhaps, when candy bars were too expensive, and the only dessert he was given was a toffee by the neighbour when she wasn't moaning to his old man about all the shit he and Tommy got up to. 

(Bruises came afterwards, the colour of liquorice. Sour cherries.)

Unfortunately for him, sweet things don't like him much—a shame, really. Simon has always had a sweet tooth. 

His rough edges are too sharp for their liking, and Simon's—

Intense. Like a dog with a bone, he doesn't know when to let go. When to unhinge his jaw from the morsel between his teeth. He bites hard. Shakes his head. Tears into the things he wants until it's bloodied meat pinched in his incisors. 

And so, they keep their distance. Like they can smell the rot on him. The funeral dirt. The stench of an unearthed sarcophagi. 

Sometimes, though, the wiley ones will inch closer, looking to get messed up badly by a bad man, and it makes something inside his head howl when he turns them down. Following Price’s creed. Can't give in to the pretty ones, he'd said. Nothin’ but trouble. 

Trouble, like a pair of shackles. A noose. Trouble, like gentle, clean hands and fragile bones. Fine china. Fine powder. The marshmallow soft kind of trouble that will melt in the acid that leaks from his pores. Aqua regia. Attacking anything that gets close. 

(Breakable, is what Price means. Pretty chew toys that are beyond repair once he's finished with them.

He must think Ghost is some sort of psychopath—)

But still. He stays away. It's easier on base, in safe houses, too far out from the general public to have to worry about doe eyes and soft touches. He doesn't need it, anyway—

Then comes you. 

And the forfeiture of his self-control. 

You're trouble of a different kind. 

Trouble, like the end of a sledgehammer. Trouble, like the grill of a car. The barrel of a gun. 

In the shape of a battering ram, one strong enough to dislodge the madness in the back of his head. Where the corrosive acid should ruin you, eat you alive, it doesn't. Not with your tantalum skin. 

But oh, do you pack a punch—

At first, you think he's homeless. 

Some scruffed-up man sleeping on a park bench outside of your apartment. 

In another life, he might have been. He isn't a stranger to bad habits, and had the military not been his only choice in life for some semblance of good (laughable, considering what he does for a living), he could see the threads of his life leading him here. Drugs. Manchester is good for it, this he knows all too well. Especially the shithole neighbourhood he's from. 

He doesn't clue into this, though, until you glance at him, warily, and then shuffle into the cafè he’s holed outside of, the place where his current target gorges himself on steeped tea and crumpets. 

(Price's dry text sits, open, on his burner phone: and don't fuck this up—)

It feels a bit like an omen. Made worse when you meet his gaze through the glass, and—

Well. Shit. 

The impact is a collision. Hitting a pole at top speed. Metal bent around concrete. 

His teeth ache (so, so bad—).

You emerge from the small building a few minutes later—the faded eggshell with chocolate trim is nauseatingly sweet against your pastel yellow raincoat—holding a takeaway bag, and balancing a tray of coffees in your hand. 

He tenses. It's instinctual. There's nothing about you that's an immediate threat to his person—unless you plan on adding to his scars with the tip of your umbrella, the scalding coffee in your hand—but it's odd, isn’t it? No one approaches him. Not unless they have a reason to. 

And no one, in his experience, ever has a good one. 

“Hi,” you chirp, disarmingly sweet, as you come to stand in front of him. His jaw aches. Even sprawled across a bench, you're barely looking down at him. Sticky, cold fingers tap a strange rhythm down his spine. “I, um, hope this isn't weird, but I saw you sitting here, and—well. I got this—”

You wiggle the bag. He smells something greasy. A breakfast sandwich, he's sure.

It's an unusual assassination attempt. Price will be livid. 

“What for?” He rumbles, sitting up in the seat. The shift of his bulk seems to make you nervous. You take a step back, and he fights the urge to follow. To back you into a corner. No escape. 

You regain your footing, even if the smile on your face wobbles. Weakens under his flat stare. Some people can smell the rot on him. 

He wonders if you can, too. 

(Pity that. You're a pretty bird, ain't you?)

And the way you take him in lacks a distinct thrum of hesitation, fear that’s normally there. It occurs to him, then, that you see him as just another man. Just another person. 

(“deader than a doorknob, this one. such a goddamn waste, boss. he was a fun one, wasn’t he? should we burn ‘em?” 

nah. bury him out back—)

It's laughable, really. A joke. He has the urge to crack one—sick and awful enough to make that little smile on your face wilt. Wither away. Almost does, too, but it get tangled in his throat when he feels the weight of your stare on him. 

The easy sweep of your eyes is barely discrete, but it's clinical. Pitying. But the softened edges of that empathy dissolve as your pretty head adds up all the numbers on him, coming to a standstill. Your eyes linger on his wrist. The gold of his wristwatch peeks out beneath the black sleeve of his hoodie. An intricate web of complex timekeeping that only he's privy to. A little luxury he picked up in Italy when the cash he'd been given was getting too tiresome to carry around. 

Dead men, after all, don't need bank accounts. 

And then—

You fluster. “Sorry, I just thought—”

It clicks, then. The pity. The soft words. The goddamn coffee— 

His gums itch. He has the sudden urge to be mean about it. Pick you apart in this street until nothing but embarrassment and humiliation remains. 

“That I was homeless? ‘nd you brought me, what? A coffee? ‘ow sweet of you. Some breakfast, too. Well, aren't you a lovely girl?” 

You are embarrassed. It blisters across your expression. Has your hands trembling around the cardboard tray, spilling droplets of coffee down the side. Your head is bowed, cowed in shame. It reminds him of that bartender some years prior. Pulling away when the bad dog growls—

But there's a thin sheen of intrigue in your eyes, burrowing holes into the shoes in front of you; a tangled knot of want coiling in the heat of your embarrassment over this blunder. Over offending him. 

Well—

That's new. 

Some get off on it. On humiliation. Specifically, of the public variety. He didn't take you as the type. The way you twist, squirming in place, is odd, though. It doesn't fit as well as he originally thought. No. It's not the public shame, but—

Him. 

Ah. 

Sweet, sweet girl. 

(So naïve.)

He reckons he could get you to do just about anything to make it up to him. You would, too. You're soft enough to be submissive, to bow your head in contrition, but there's a flicker of defiance in the jut of your chin when you lift your head. 

This is a blunder and you're sweetly embarrassed, sure, but it isn't enough to break you. 

And now Simon just wants to ruin you. Teach you a lesson about bad, vile men—

(Something you'd welcome with open arms, wouldn't you?)

“Didn’t know Manchester was so charitable,” he rasps. His throat is dry. Parched. He reaches for the coffee—black, with extra creamer and sugar on the side, tucked neatly in a little bag; fuckin’ hell. Ain't you just adorable—and places it on the spot beside him. “I’ll be takin’ this. Will need it for later.” 

You look like you want to protest. Fight back. His hackles rise, ready for it—eager. Something anticipatory, dark, bleeds through the moulted mess of his head. Sickly. Terrible. He thinks about what you'd look like sprawled under him, shaking and begging for more, for him to stop—

Fuck. Birds usually make his head itch, but you make his fucking skin crawl. 

In the end, you just huff. Roll your eyes. He wants to chew them out of your head. Pop them between his teeth. He bet you'd taste divine. 

You walk away from him before he can. You don't look back once. 

Pity, he thinks. Someone's gonna snatch you clean off the streets like that—

Hours later, he sends Price a text message with the coordinates for where to pick up the package Ghost left. 

He considers it a blessing when the man sends him back, good job, now get a pint from me as a little reward. Can't say I don't treat my team well. 

A reward, huh? 

Well. With your stature in comparison to his own, Ghost easily can see you being considered a pint. 

So, he follows you home, and tallies this one as being on Price. 

It's easy. Too easy. He slips deftly behind you, tucked away from view, and masks his footsteps under the echo of yours until he's standing in the shadows outside of your house. This, too, feels like a blessing. It's a duplex. He waits for one of the lights to flicker on, and—

The window brightens. Room number two. 

He hums, and palms his pockets for the pack of smokes he nicked off the man. Needing something to take the edge off. To quell the urge to bite. 

It's even easier to engineer meetings. Random run-ins. All blamed on happenstance, chance. Of course. This towering mountain of a man with his thick manc twang—the sort of gallows humour that can only be found in the blue-collar streets of Salford from the nasty old men squatting on the corners—must have better things to do than stalk you. Surely. You're not special enough to be hunted, right? 

Still. You're a touch wary of him. Distrustful. You keep your distance—six inches for Jesus Christ, aren’t you a peach?—and try to skirt the line between neutrally polite to the strange man loitering outside of the shops you frequent (your schedule burned to his memory, naturally) and that fascinating skittish intrigue from before. All simmering heat. Blunt want. The kind wrapped up in silk threads. 

It's interesting to watch it play out when he steps closer and all those long-forgotten instincts in the back of your head flare up. The shaky step you take back. The inward frown of confusion when you're not sure why your body craves space, acting almost on its own. And then the sweet defiance that breaks over you. The intentional step closer. The feigned warmth in your tone as you talk to him.

It's easy to pocket the uglier aspects of his personality. The coldness. The indifference. The flat, droll insincerity that leaks into his tone. All of it shelved, locked away, and he's not sure if Price would be happy that he listened to what he said, followed his example, or furious that he's bastardising it to lure this pretty fish in.

)The latter, undoubtedly. But Simon gets a sick kick from it all.)

Especially when it brings you closer to him. Thaws you as you rationalise his reaction during the first meeting, gears spinning. Kicking up excuses. 

Anyone would be angry, offended. It's natural. He's alright now—

It makes you look at him differently as you forcefully fight the urge to flee. 

Silly bird. 

Wary eyes rake over his massive bulk. Brows furrow at the series of black medical masks he wears in public. Always. That, in addition to the heavy black of his wardrobe—black jacket, black hoodie, black leather gloves—sometimes makes you glance at him with a touch of worry. Fear. Probably wondering if you brought home a delinquent. 

But it changes when he rolls up his sleeves one day after you've been moaning about your broken beach cruiser (the, I don't know, chain—or something—keeps catching—), and crouches down to fix it. 

There's a hitch in your breath. A distinct swallow. A guilty tinge of something shy, deliciously so, shading your eyes ruby-red when you look down at him. 

And ah—

Sweet little treat snagged on the line. Ain't he a lucky lad? 

It's all the better when you do the work for him. Reeling yourself in, practically throwing yourself in his cooler when you ask about his tattoos, carefully—considerately—nudging the topic away from his ugly scars. 

He guts you clean as he tells you he's in the military. Top secret, pet. Don't ask because I'd hate to ‘ave to hurt a pretty face like yours—

You preen under it. Pet. Pretty. You don't even notice when he slides his knife over your scales, dices you up on his chopping board. 

You're the picture of sweetness when he unkinks the chain in your bike, and sets it straight. All happiness. Smiles. Appreciative glances. You flutter your pretty eyes at him as you say—

“Thank you—”

You're waiting for a name. His belly rumbles. He could eat, he thinks, and licks his teeth. 

“Simon. Simon Riley.” 

The risk-reward ratio is balanced when you breathe it out between plump lips, chasing the end of it with your tongue. He wants to eat it out of your mouth. Swallow it down. 

You touch his arm, hand warm, soft. “If there's anything I can do to pay you back—”

He takes you out for a kebab later on. Nudges you out of the way when you open your wallet to pay. Draft girl. Naïve, too, because he can feel the heat in your cheeks from where he stands, reaching over to snatch the bag from the man with a grunt. 

You must think him quite the gentleman. So trusting. 

Doesn't matter. He lets it take root. Especially when you shyly invite him back to yours to eat. 

He makes a feast of it, and fucks you on your mint green chaisse after he's finished. 

(Not on birth control, you say, and hand him a box of condoms, suddenly shy. It's unopened. He hums, and burns that to memory.) 

He keeps his distance—an easy feat when he's halfway around the world, and you're stuck in the gloom of Manchester. 

It's purposeful, of course. He made a promise to Price not to give him a reason to worry, but fuck—

You're proving hard to quit. He's never had anyone cuff him upside the head on his bullshit. Not anymore, anyway. Not as the Ghost. He likes the thrill of it, of this chase. 

You don't let him steamroll you when he's in a mood to fight. You punch back, hitting him right in the mess of his guts, and fuck. Fuck. He's a little bit obsessed with it. With you. This wily little fish that acts so shy when he's got three fingers buried in your cunt, but rides him after like you're starving for it. Clawing at his chest. Scratching his arms. It's raw. Primal. He wants to break you—this fiery little kitten that bites his fingers until they bleed, and then purrs in his lap as he drives a pickaxe through your head, shredding logic into pieces. Rummaging around until he nicks the optic nerve that lets you see red. 

You’re everywhere. In everything. In the back of his head, under the howling that hadn't stopped since you trailed your finger down the jagged topography of his bare chest, digging your nail into the crude x across his heart, and whispered, soft and sweet: you're all kinds of fucked up, aren't you? 

A bludgeon to his self-control—

He resists. Has to. Is mean about it, too. Doesn't tell you where he's going (it's need to know), or what he's doing (would ‘ave to bash your pretty ‘ead in if I told you), but keeps you strung on the line (keep thinkin’ about that pretty cunt of yours; can't wait to come ‘ome and ‘ave you sit on my ugly mug—). 

It's dangerous, this game of his. Thrilling for all the wrong reasons. 

But he’s a good mutt. Good—

Until the text. 

The one you send to him when you're out with friends. A picture. You're in a pub somewhere in Moss Side, a drink in hand. A gaggle of nobodies crowded around you. It makes sense, he supposes. There's that old idiom—you’ll trap more flies with honey—and he doesn't know anyone nearly as sweet as you. 

His sweet girl.

(you fuckin’ mutt—)

Ghost stares at you for a moment, teeth aching. The little ensemble—a crop top and jeans—is a vision, he reckons. But it's spoiled when he catches more eyes on you than pointed at the camera. Practically spilling out of your top, aren't you? 

He breathes heavily through his nose. Tastes guncotton in his throat. 

Ghost commits every face to memory, and then calls you. 

You're drunk. Too drunk to remember it tomorrow. Stuck in a pub on what's supposedly a bad part of town. Chatting away about going to your friend’s house. He gets the address, and something sour twits in his stomach. Shit council houses. 

“That safe?” He asks, leaning back in his chair. He's already chubbed up in his slacks at the slur in your voice. “And dressed like that? Didn't take you for a slag—”

It makes you sputter on the line. “I'm—I’m not—”

You're so quick to placate him. So hasty to make him happy. Please don't be angry with me, Simon. I'm just having some fun—

The claws and fangs are tucked away when you're drunk. He shoves the information in the cache, eyes burning. Head aching. He's feverish. Hot under the collar.

Odd considering he's dead—

“Sounds like you will be.”

“It's not like that—”

“‘ow would you know? Might meet a nice fellow. Might take him home.”

“I don’t—I wouldn't—”

The sniffle makes him throb. Fuck. “Yeah? Well, ain't none of my business, I reckon—”

“It is.”

“Oh? How's tha’?”

“I—I like you, Simon—” he can taste your embarrassment through the phone. He didn't even need to bring you flowers and you're already boxing him into monogamy, confessing to him. So sweet. So tender. If he were a better man, he might have told you to sober up. To talk about this tomorrow. 

Too bad for you, he isn't. And what’s worse is that he’s a loyal bastard, too. 

But that's later, and right now—

He's halfway across the world, and you're vulnerable. In the den of hungry mutts. 

It’s charr in his throat. Anger in his veins. “You like me? An’ you go out dressed like that?”

“There's nothing wrong with how I'm dressed—”

He sucks his teeth. “Dunno ‘bout tha’, pet. You look like you're achin’ to get fucked.”

You take a shuddering breath. “I just want you—”

“Yeah?” It's a growl. His cock spits prespend in his trousers. “Then be my good girl. Go home and wait for me.”

It's quiet on the line. He catches the hitch in your throat, the sharp exhale, like you can't really be sure if he's serious or not. He says nothing. Waits. 

Where there would have been a fight—fists and teeth and snarling words—you quieten in the silence. Docile. Submissive. It's in you, he knows. He saw the glimpses back when you first met, when he'd bent down and fixed the bike he broke. All it needs is a little—

“Jus’ worried about my sweet girl, is all.” 

And you relent. 

Corrosive oil spills out of the necrosed holes in his head. It curls over his thoughts, liquid sin. He takes himself in his hand, blood pulsing in his veins, white-hot, damning, and bares his teeth at the urge to come to you, to push you down on the floor, and mount you like a snarling beast—

“Good girl,” he growls when you tell him you'll call a taxi, that you'll go home and have some wine with your friend instead.

Friend. Friends. 

He'll have to do something about that. 

(The thing about deprivation is that it bleeds into a vicious sense of possession when it's finally obtained. Greed. His wants have wants, have wants—

A perfect ouroboros. One you feed into almost destructively.)

Because the thing is—

Simon wants to tie you to his bed. Keep you locked up in the safe house he has in Manchester. Chained, shackled. A prisoner with him as your iron guard. 

It isn't just fantasy, either. 

The flies that congregate around you are an annoying, incessant buzzing in his ears. Remora clinging to the biggest fish. 

But they're easy to scatter when he waves his hand. 

(Waves off. Threatens with bodily harm, with physical aggression—

Same thing.)

The sting in his knuckles and the blood on his shoes are worth it in the end when your tantalum skin cracks. An aggregate of beautiful lines, pretty in their fragility, their brokenness. He wedges his fingers between the splints, widening the chasm to pet at the sticky-soft centre hiding beneath all that rough rock. Sweet girl. Hard candy enclosing taffy-softness. 

His coos melt you to the consistency of mercury. Liquid silver pebbles along your lash line, spilling over in a dizzying display of raw vulnerability. 

It makes every predatory instinct inside of him bristle. Locking onto the sweet lines of crystalline sadness that run down your cheeks. It has his heart racing. Eager, anticipatory. The thrill of the chase, of running you down into the ground until you're fine powder under him. 

And it’s there, it's in his arms—the maw of a beast—where you seek comfort, lamenting the loss of your friends, your coworkers. No one wants to hang out with you anymore. They don't return your calls or answer your texts. 

What did I do? You sniffle, throat bared. Belly turned up. 

Flooded with tears. The lachrymal face that peers up at him makes his teeth ache. He rolls his head back, feels himself thicken in his pants. 

Simon loves it when you cry.

“Fuck ‘em,” he rasps, words sticking to his dry throat. “If they can't see what a catch you are, then they don't even deserve to breathe the same air as you.”

It makes you cry harder, makes you mumble into his chest about how lucky you are to have someone like him. Someone who cares. 

His breath hitches. Warm floods his veins, fever-hot. 

“Thank you, Simon—”

And then you, smooth silver and wickedly sweet, cradle him in your palms as if you could hold all the broken pieces of him together. 

He thinks it's cute. 

Doesn't really have the heart to tell you it's a lost cause.

“Anytime, pet.”

And you're perfect, too.

You take this mangy mutt into your house, and let it eat your food, sleep in your bed. You let him fuck you stupid, and listen so prettily when he convinces you to let him spoil you. Let him pay your rent, your bills. Let Simon dote on you the only way he knows how—mercilessly possessive, and a touch cruel, mean—but you roll over, showing your belly. Submissive and sweet. 

It's even better when you try to lash out at him with a collar in the shape of his teeth branding your neck, spitting and hissing like a feral cat who doesn't know yet that's claws have been clipped. Only to then curl up in his lap, purring as he strokes your fur, and carves out a place for himself in your life. 

He wants to sink his teeth into you, and you think he's a big dog. Undomesticated. One who comes and goes as he pleases. A stray. A mutt. 

It's said fondly. Full of love—

His mouth is full of cavities. His teeth ache. His gums bleed. 

(do you know he's rabid? that the faded name on his dog tags once read cujo—)

Everything about you makes that sludge flood behind his eyes, pounding rotten fists against his temple. take, take, take; mine, mine—

The howling doesn't stop. It tells him to press you into the mattress and fuck you stupid. Tie you to the bedposts and never let you go—

He throws fists in the dark, trying to hit the madness in his head. Ends up with bloody knuckles and laughter in his ears. 

(a voice of reason says, your bird is too big for a cage—)

He clings to it. 

You're warm beside him. Burning hot. He syphons it from your veins when you're asleep, pulling you close just to feel something on his skin other than dirt. Other than blood. 

It's easy to pretend he's fine with these little nips. Leaving teeth marks in your neck. Bloody rings snaking up your thighs. 

He wraps one hand around both of your wrists, holds them high above your head, and tells himself it's enough. Shackled by him, under him, as he takes you apart, pulling at your sense of independence like the gnarled fingers of winter bringing defoliation to summer's bloom, but even with this, all of it, he still aches. Still wants. Needs—

Stupid fuckin’ mutt. 

Then you bring his hands up to your throat, letting him wrap his bearish paws around your delicate neck, and he knows these little bites will never satiate the hunger in his guts. 

He wakes up the next morning feeling warm. Full. Edges softened, if only just, by the sticky sweetness of your breath ghosting over his chest. 

Simon curls his arm around you, holding tight.  He won't let go. Won't—

Hide it. Put it away. 

Ghost does neither of those things. He buries it, instead.  

But in doing so, you find cracks in the foundation. Ones that are just big enough for your willfulness to slip through. To hand him back the cash he gave with a scoff, and a, i work, too, you know? i don't need your money, Simon. that's not why i’m with you—

(All he hears is, I don't need you.)

And then you send him a text. I'm going out with friends from work tonight. We're going drinking. I'll talk to you tomorrow! 

In the zombified remains of his head, a new howling starts. The hisses tell him you're pulling away, running from him—

It's a big world out there. It'll eat you whole—

Like Tommy.

The thing about want is that sometimes it grows teeth, hands. Claws. Without a body of its own, it tends to mould itself after its maker because that's all it knows how to do: devour, consume. Yearn. 

He shouldn't be too surprised to find that this need of his has dug itself out of the grave he buried it in. 

(he did, too—)

The flimsy sarcophagus cracks open when Price announces that his missus is pregnant.

The howling in the back of his head stops abruptly. The pulsing ache in his temple abates. It's heavy, this weight. This absolute, utter emptiness—

No. It's not hollow. The chasm isn't drained, it's—

(In the silence, something growls. Feral. Possessed.)

—full. Perfect equilibrium. All of the patchwork parts of himself, the ones that don't quite fit, suddenly find synergy. 

Communion. 

Ghost cocks his head in consideration.

(your bird is too big for a cage—

—but maybe a collar would do.)

—after all, could you ever leave him with his name etched into your womb—

In leaving the key under the mat for him to come and go as he pleases, you've left yourself vulnerable. But—

Not anymore. 

He has a safehouse he'll take you to. You'll let him, too, because it'll be the best choice for you. The three of you.

He's never entertained any ideas of family, not when the closest approximation he has is drenched in gun oil and smells of smoke from artillery fire, but the howling in his head quietens at the idea of it. He can't shackle you to the bed—stupid fucking mutt—but he can tie you down all the same. Make you his. Wholly. Always. 

And the thing is—despite a pickaxe making figure-eights out of his grey matter; lead poisoning and rust giving him these sour, awful thoughts about locking you up in his house, leaving you a needy mess, dependent only on him—Simon supposes he knows right from wrong. 

Intentionally knocking you up is amoral. Probably illegal. Somehow, even more dastardly when the reason for it is simply selfishness. Want. Greed. Hunger. 

But in carving himself a place in your life, he failed to realise that the walls behind him closed in. No way out. And so, his only option is to go forward. To keep moving.

He'll be crucified for this, but that's fine. 

He doesn't intend for you to find out, anyway. It'll be an accident. He came home early, and found you drunk. Drank with you. Your drunken idiocy merged, creating a terrible, noxious cocktail of awful, bad choices. Permanent ones. Irreversible. 

(You're so sweet, so docile when you're drunk—)

It'll be easy to convince you. To play the part of a stoic man suddenly in turmoil. You'll offer to get rid of it, a suggestion that he'll flinch at—a cornered dog, a hand raising in the air. You'll whimper. Shake in his arms as you tentatively smooth over the wrinkles in his brow, murmuring out your options in a stilted breath.

You'll be a Riley before the end of your term. It's only proper, he'll mutter, stiff and uncomfortable, and you'll melt. Liquid tantalum in his palm. The fruits of his labour laid bare, seeping from the corners of his mouth. Tucked tight between his teeth. Mercury he can swallow down, keep in the bracket of his rotten ribs. Safekeeping from this world that just takes. Devours. 

But not if he eats you first. 

The mere notion alone serves as an anchor, locking him to the seafloor. The tumult in his head calmed at the promise of owning. Biting to claim. To have. Greedy for it. For you, and the strange sense of quiet your proximity brings him. The warmth, too. 

He's a rabid dog. This he knows—has known—for quite some time. Indisputable. It pools in his mouth. Liquid sin. Makes him ache for just a sip. Unquenchable, though, because he's wary of water. Hydrophobia, but only for how it washes his efforts away. Cleanses. 

The urge inside of him to bite, to infect, quietens when he gets closer to you. 

(a rabid mutt licking at the window you're on the opposite side of, dreaming of just a taste—)

A byproduct of that maddening virus in his veins, the one he must have picked up six feet in the ground. Bite, bitebite—

—and give you a collar in the shape of his teeth.

He finds you in bed. A bottle of wine on the end table beside you, courtesy of your friend. The one lingering remora he couldn't snap at—one who sends you messages about how you are being manipulated. Taken advantage of. Fuck that loser, the latest one says when he picks up your phone, scrolling through the dwindling conversations housed within. Just him now, and them. 

It preaches about empowerment. About how you shouldn't let a man pay your bills (textbook manipulation. he's putting you in a position of dependency. making you feel obligated to stay. it's all on Google, babes. like, fucking get a clue!!!!), or how it's moving so quickly (maybe you should come stay with me in Durham for a bit, hun. get away for a weekend. i worry about ya, is all). He hums, thumbing through the old chats. 

You told her to fuck off about the manipulation, but it came after a lot of, oh, yeah. well, he's just. you know. he's different, and you haven't declined the invitation. i’ll think about it, is what you write. 

It simmers under his skin. That independence he plans on stomping out under his heel. With his kin. 

(sick, sick sick, wrong—)

It's desperation, this. Clawing at the walls—the dirt—until his nails are torn off his fingers. Until his skin splits, peels. Broken under rock and rubble. That animalistic need for air. To breathe. Basic training tells him not to save the person drowning unless he's sure they won't kill him in their struggle to live. But what's he supposed to do when that person is his rotting body, sinking down to unfathomable depths? When all he has is you to cling to—

Damnation built by his own hands. 

You'll die together, he reckons, and tosses your phone on the hamper in the corner of the room. 

Ghost can't remember the last time someone made him feel anything at all other than impartiality. Indifference. Casual apathy. 

Price is the exception to this on the grounds of being consanguineous to him.

And you—

An outlier. 

One he intends on sinking as deep as he can with. Anchored, maybe, by this little plan that beats and pulses in the back of his head. That clogs his throat with a want so thick, he can already taste the brine from the ocean. Water in his nose. Down his esophagus—

Better than dirt, he supposes. And it spurns him forward.

You're malleable like this. Tensile. He bends you easily with just a touch until you're flat on your back, a pillow shoved beneath your tailbone, and stripped. The loose shirt you wear to sleep is hiked up under your neck. Panties are pulled off until your sweet, bare cunt is revealed to him. All pretty and soft, and his. Untouched, he notes, and gives an appreciative stroke over your clit with his thumb. 

It was something you were whining about the other day, panting in his ear as if he wasn't a continent away. Pleading with him on the phone to please, please let you come. 

Simon likes the way you cling to him when it's been a while since something has wrecked you as thoroughly as his cock. When your spoiled pussy was neglected for a few days, weeks, and starved for attention. You were so sweet to him then, cooing in his ear how good you've been, how much you want him and only him, need him. Begging so prettily for it. 

He's almost sad to spoil himself in your cunt when you can't weep for it. Can't bully him closer. Try to claw his eyes out. That delicious push-pull where you hiss at him for pulling away, but whine when he gets too close. 

Sad, but—

Not enough to stop himself. 

You're not wet enough for him to slide inside unprepared—his cock too big, something that makes his bones tremble—and he rectifies it by leaning down, letting saliva pool between his teeth and lips. He holds it there for a moment as he spreads your folds apart with his thumb and forefinger. 

And then he spits on your bare cunt. 

It hits your clit, the thick glob siding down your slit. He reaches between your thighs, pawing at you. Slides his fingers through the slick mess he made, teases around your tight rim. 

Simon usually likes to take his time with you. Lapping at your pussy for hours until you're a weeping, snot-nosed mess whining in the sheets. Spoiled rotten. Begging him to fuck you already, Simon, you can't take it anymore—

He's mean. Cruel. Edges you for hours until your legs shake, trembling around his ears. He never lets you reach that peak—doesn’t let you come until he's buried inside of you. 

Coming on his tongue, his fingers, is rarely a privilege you ever earn. Too much of a spitfire, a spiteful little kitten, to give in and do what he demands. So he keeps you on the precipice until he's ready to fuck you, ignoring your bribes, your bargains. Simon doesn't give in even when you beg, when you relent and tell him you'll finally be good. 

You never are. 

Spoiled, he always huffs. Down to the fuckin’ bone. 

Like now. Pulling away from him. Him, the only person in your life who stuck around. A little bullying (bones breaking, splintering under his fists; the wet, hot smear of blood on his hands, skulls smacking against the pavement—an’ if you tell anyone, he cracks his battered fists and it sounds like a snarl, a gunshot, your parents will be cryin’ over an empty grave—) shooed the gnats away. He took a more clandestine approach to others. Birds that kept circling you tight. Protective, shrill. They made his head ache, but—

(don't want to start nothin’, but i don't want to be alone wit’ ‘er. tried to kiss me, is all. ain't like that, pet—)

It was a test. And they all failed. All but him. 

Yet—

come to Durham. 

i’ll think about it. 

Ungrateful. It's his fault, though. Simon doted on you too much, cosseted by his affection, when he should have clipped your wings from the beginning. 

Ah, well—

Lesson learned. 

You're wet enough now. He pushes in two fingers, scissoring them apart. You'd be yowling at him, kicking up a fuss if you'd been awake. But you're not. It thrums through him. Thick, heady. He likes you like this—probably more than he should. The heat simmering in his veins bubbles. Pops. Sap on charring wood. It clogs his throat with his smoke until it burns, a dry forest fire. 

He needs you. Needs to be in you. He's tired of waiting. Impatience burrows into him like a maelstrom. 

Simon adjusts his hold on your leg, fingers curling behind your kneecap. Steadying himself. His fingers slip out of your cunt with a sloppy squelch that ghosts across his spine. Anticipatory. A touch anxious. He wants you. Wants you bad—

He takes himself in his hand, and slides the weeping tip over your slit. Taps it once, thrice on your clit. And then guides it to your centre. Your warmth bleeds into him. Eager, he shuffles forward. Feeds you his cock. Eyes drilling into the place where his head slips in, swallowed by your sloppy, wet hole. The glands make you stretch around him. Rim pulled taut. 

The sight alone must have been crafted by some Luciferian dream, dangled before him in the shade of nirvana. 

take a bite, it urges. and then take more—

Like this, passed out with your legs hitched over his shoulders, drooling into the pillow unawares, you're just a doll. 

Made for him, and—

“Fuckin’ hell—” He presses into you—cock splitting tight, warm heat—and tries not to lose himself to the sensation of being bare, raw, inside of you. 

—“A perfect fit.”

It's always been condoms. You're not on birth control. Ink blots in his eyes. He goes a little feral with it. Instincts unleashed. Unfettered. 

Simon bullies his fat cock into you until his hips tap the back of your thighs, buried as deep as he can go. It's molten heat cocooning him—a warm embrace. For the first time, ever, he thinks he understands the meaning of home. Sliding home, in particular. 

(Welcome home. Home. Home. He'll make a house out of your body. Sleep inside the brackets of your thighs, head pillowed on your chest—)

As good as you feel around him—slick, wet, and tight—and as much as he wants to saviour the sight of you, passed out on the pillow, cunt split by his cock, he has a goal, a mission, to see through. 

His hand falls, slick and tacky, to your lower belly. Palm pressing against the subtle bulge in your abdomen, the outline of his cock. You always whine and hiss that he's too big for you. That you can't take him to the root. 

Hurts, you complain, hand against your naval. Fingers knotting over the place that aches. 

He presses his fingers there instead, feeling himself under your skin. Changing your anatomy to make room for him to fit—

It lights him in fire. Spurns him on. He bucks into you, pace sloppy, clumsy. Selfish. He's unrelenting as he splits you apart, drilling the full length of himself into your supine body, supple flesh relaxed under him, practically melting into the sheets. 

The thread keeping his resolve, his self-control, sprung up tight begins to quiver. Each piston into you has delicate fingers drumming across the strings of a harpsichord. It reverberates through him, echoing in the stifling, suffocating, silence of the bedroom, overtaking it. Clouding it with the musk of his desire, his devotion to you, to this dream blooming in the prison of his mind. 

Everything narrows into a needlepoint. 

There's just your burning flesh beneath him, softer than it's ever been; pillowy. Welcoming. And the sounds of him fucking into you—lewd squelches, slick and wet; the sound of his cock finding home in the basin of your spread thighs; his heavy breaths, his groans and growls that seem to rattle the bed. The noise breaks, an incomplete requiem of sin in his head, and he loses himself in the lulling notes, dragged under in the bestial beat of taking what his—

A sudden noise shatters through the room. Beneath him, you stir, gasping wetly. The sound mangled in your throat. 

There's confusion in your sleepy, hazy gaze when you peer up at him, lashes clumping together. You moan, whimpering, as you struggle to latch on to the threads of cognisance that he's content to fuck out of you. Your hand lifts, falls to his wrist still pressed against your lower belly. The grip is lax, loose. You’re not pushing him away, but clinging to him. Centring yourself. 

It makes his blood thicken. Has him burning red-hot. 

“Wha’s a’matter, pet?” He taunts, grinding his cock into you hard enough to make your dazed eyes water. Your hand tightens around him, holding steady. “Don't like it? Not fuckin’ you hard enough?”

“Simon—”

His name tapers off into a keen when he angles hips, and starts pistoning into you with a mean, merciless fury. The desperate noises that spill, unhindered, from your slack mouth is the perfect accompaniment to the lewd sound of him fucking your sopping cunt; the piece he was missing when this started. His requiem, complete. 

It's a serrated blade to his self-control, already frayed and threadbare as it is. The pressure makes it snap.

“C'mon, sweet thing. Thought you wanted this?” 

There's a place in hell just for him. It's sealed when you blink your tired, sleepy eyes up at him, mind a slurry of lingering somnolence and the heady alcohol on your breath, and offer a shuddering whimper. Always so soft for him, so agreeable when you’re drunk. 

“So’ry, Simon—”

You can barely string words together. Poor, pitiful you—vulnerable under him. Breakable. Malleable. Anyone else could have tricked you into this same position when he was away. Got you beneath them like this, compliant and unawares, and took what belongs to him. 

(The only thing in this destitute existence he claims for himself—)

Not anymore. Not ever again. 

It's almost callous when he grinds into you. Hateful. Brutish. Furious. And dazed as you are, you barely even flinch at the snarls that spill, unfettered, from the back of his throat. The low groans of him making promises with devils unknown; constructing shackles from brass, iron. 

Entrenching his future in motion, cupped protectively between the parentheses your thighs make around his hips. It's almost a vicious sort of poetry, one laid bare in the odious ruins of that broken thing he calls a heart. Etched into his rotten pericardium. Necrosed devotion. He'll see it through—however noxious, and putrid, you might find the miasmal stench of it spun tight in his web. 

It's for your own good.

And as if you agree, you answer him in perfect euphony, moaning sweetly as you tilt your hips up for more. 

Ghost groans low in his throat, bestial and spinning rapidly out of his control. He feels everything spinning, slipping; the trudge to the finish line narrows into a pinprink. He needs something to cling to, to hold on to with broken hands—

The only purchase he finds is in your demise. 

His hand lifts, shaking yours loose. He reaches up, fingers dig into your chin, forcing your pouty mouth open. You blink at him, sluggish, but he catches the thin gossamer of awareness spooling thin cobwebs over darkened crevasses, covering the canyons in your eyes with cognisance. It makes him leer. 

“Stick your tongue out, pretty girl,” he rasps, words sticking together, muffled under the mask. Crushed aggregate stone under the weight of his own desire. “Tha’s it. Open up nice and wide—”

He lets spit gather again, pooling on his tongue. It's degrading, you always say. Gross. But you swallow it down like a good girl, anyway. Always. You come at him with fangs and claws, but somehow, you always merge in a perfectly dizzying polyphony. 

Ghost spits on your tongue. Lets it land right in the middle of fleshy pink. A sick, twisted pleasure thrums in his veins at the sight. 

There's checking the boxes of an established kink, and this. Horrifically proprietary. Ownership that ignites a fire in his marrow, setting him alight from the inside out. Turns bone into blackened char, cinder. He can almost taste it on his tongue. 

It's made worse, turned frenzied, when you—sweet, perfect, you—bracket it protectively in the curve of your tongue. Completely dazed, head filled with a heady slurry of somnolence and alcohol, but still aware enough to know, even if only through muscle memory, what you're meant to do when he spits in your mouth. 

If anything, you're more obedient like this. Little doll. Coddling it lovingly, this little piece of him that he gives you. 

And it might be the madness speaking—these fraying thoughts take on a vitriolic edge, corrosive aqua regia pooling in his throat—but Christ. He's been stabbed in the guts, repeatedly, and it somehow packed less of a punch than this. 

He wants, wants—

Family never crossed his mind, was never even on the table or something to be considered, but with you it brims. Blooms in rot. Roots in tenebrous. 

He has this insatiable urge to devour you whole so you'll always be with him. The waves of his desire are monstrous. The waters below are rapacious. A gaping maw eager to eat you up—

Pity it’s not an option. 

But he’ll make do. Buy a ring tomorrow. Something pretty that matches your eyes. The curve of your smile. Sanctioned ownership. A collar in gemstones and gold, glimmering and shining bright enough that should any light fade from your gaze, it’ll illuminate in the gloom; twilight made in sorrow. The prettiest blues—

Said eyes water. Ghost’s hold on your face relaxes when you give a muffled keen, cheeks bubbling up against the pressure. Tongue still stuck out even as he takes his pleasure from your supine flesh. Suspended in motion, stasis. Such a good girl for him—

He swallows. Tastes poison, rot, on his tongue. “Swallow.” 

You're a little sluggish, a little slow, but you follow his command all the same. He knows, then, that it could only ever be you. 

No one gets under his skin like this. No one makes him itch, want, crave, as much as you do—

You make a face, twisted up in some amalgamation of pleasure and confusion. It nudges the ruins of his chest and feels almost like a heartbeat when it pulses in his flesh. 

“Simon, Simon—”

His name is all you can say, and he's not sure if you're begging for mercy, or muttering it out into the scant air between your heaving breaths like an obsecration, an orison, but he eats it all the same. Bites down on your pleas, your cries, your prayers, and chews them up between fangled teeth. Takes them down into the swirling pits of his belly where they're eaten alive by what grows in the decay.

(belly full of dirt:

he heaves, and heaves, but nothing comes out even though he can taste humus in his throat, feel worms using his organs like a playground—)

“Somethin’ you want, pet?” He taunts, and shifts his hips back just enough to drag a few inches of his cock out of your drenched cunt. A tease—cruel and mean. He’d get lobbed upside the head for this had you been in your right mind. A tap to his temple, shaking the cobwebs loose. He would have bent down, and sunk broken teeth into your jugular. Merging violence with love until bloody knuckles feel like a kiss. “All you ‘ave to do is ask. Use your words, pretty thing—”

You whine, low and drawn out. A lazy whimper in the back of your throat. “Pl’se—”

You can barely speak. Tongue too thick. Sleep too heavy in your veins. Alcohol, too. A lesson, perhaps, for his willful little pet come the morning when you struggle to measure just how deep into his gullet you’ve let yourself fall. 

He can’t help rubbing salt into the shallow cuts, if only because he likes the way you pout. 

“C’mon, sweetheart. You can do better’n that.”

And damn him—damn you—you do. Your hand curls over his wrist, pulling it close to your mouth where you place a kiss against his palm. Tender. Chaste. Midnight blooms in your eyes, casts shadows under pale moonlight. His breath stutters in his chest when you lean your head back, letting his hand fall to your bared neck. 

Your heavy, lidded eyes gaze back at him, cutting through the shade of night that sews the air like satin. Etched in the file silk is threads of trust in stark white. The kind that bleeds for him; hungers. One that aches, always tender like a bruise. The throb of it echoes between mouldering ribs. Booms between his ears. 

Ghost doesn’t fall into pieces. Doesn’t shatter. No. Something in the splintered remains shifts. Settles. He wraps his fingers around the thick of your throat, thumb notched tight against your pulse, and he feels complete. Whole. Remade from the ruins. 

Your breath hitches. The sound is a gunshot in his ears. He squeezes down, a gentle press. Just enough to make the air spill out of your lungs, to let your eyes water. Lachrymose, eager. It does something to him when you cry. He feels tipped upside down, torn inside out. Left all askew, asunder. He wants to drown in the pebbling river growing against your lashline. Wants to drink it down until it quenches his neverending thirst. Wants, wants—

He feels his name spill from your lips. Brassy and broken, trembling against his palm. A plea—

More.

And he gives it to you. 

Simon hitches your ankle on his shoulder. Adjusts the grip he has on your throat. He settles over your body, blanketing you under his bulk. Stygian beast devouring the maiden whole. The thought amuses him even as it knocks the air from his lungs. 

He anchors himself into the mattress with his knees, steadying himself, curls his other hand around the iron ring of the headboard. All the while, you look up at him—glossy eyes burning coals in the dark, in the gloom. Wanting, hungry. Mouth held open as if you’re waiting for his scraps—

And then he bucks into you, the leverage giving his thrust a savage edge. 

The whines are snuffed out under his palm. Your eyes widen, tears now spilling down your temple, soaking the pillow below your head. 

He groans, head rolling back. “Fuckin’ hell—ain’t you a pretty sight?”

Tucked under him, throat swallowed by his palm. Split on his cock, slick and wet. The tears streaming down your face makes him feel wicked, foul; but the spit running down your slackened jaw quells any doubt. The hand on his wrist holds him tight, tighter still, to your flesh. 

You want this. His spoiled rotten bird.

So, he gives it to you.

Simon’s almost ruthless when he snaps his hips into yours, cooing viciously into your ear about how you feel, how you look, how you sound—so pretty wrapped around him, under him; his little doll—

“S’where you belong, pet—” guttural words spill, flintlike and savage, from his mangled throat. Reinforced with the hateful way he blugeons his cock into you. Times it perfectly with the firm squeezes against your jugular, never letting you catch your breath. Your eyes roll back, legs trembling. Shaking. But you don’t move, don’t struggle. The hand on his wrist is a shackle, and it makes him smirk, scars pulling up in a gnarled mess of mirth; ugly and mean. “Right where you belong. Ain’t tha’ right?”

He leans down, babbles nonsense into your temple. Promises you the heads of gods, the ichor they bleed. Swears he’ll build a shrine for you in Durham.

But for as mocking as these words he murmurs into your ear are, they’re tremulous. Raw. A current roars beneath; a steady stream, a plea, all full of need: stay, stay staystay—

(please)

He buries his nose into your hairline to stem the ravening ache in his guts, breathes in the heady scent of you—of sex, and wine, and sweat. Drags it into his lungs in harsh, angry gasps to stain his skin with the smell of you. Of him. 

It goes right to his head in a heavy rush until he’s dizzy, almost sick, with the swell of it flooding in. An animal, he thinks, drunk on merging pheromones that make him mindless. Unfettered. 

It’s as if he’s driven on instinct alone; his frenzied pace ebbs, grows sloppy. The air around him feels thick. Syrupy. Stifling. The balmy breath in his chest is nearly as unbearable as it is addicting. Sickeningly sweet. Still—

His chest expands, taking as much of the potent miasma into his lungs as he can, filling them up, up, until he feels the edges threaten to brust. It’s only then, when ink moults across his vision, that he lifts his head just enough to shove his mouth against yours, a broken snarl ripping free from his throat as he forces the infectious air into your mouth, down to your lungs. Polluting you with the same sickness. The same rot. 

Little hiccups tumble past your lips as you swallow it down, taking everything he gives you, and he catches them on his tongue. Plays with them between his teeth, basking in the salty tang of you—brine, loam; peatsalt. Ashes, guncotton. Molasses. He’s not sure if he wants to drown you in him, or crawl into the warm, wet cavern of your mouth that pulses around his tongue like a heartbeat. 

Both, maybe. Everything. All of it. 

Always—

But he’s chasing pleasure on fumes. Trying to run with broken legs. There’s nothing refined about this. About the way he cudgels the head of his cock into the places that make your mouth twist away from his greedy lips in a silent scream. His weight is crushing you, he’s sure, but you cling to him harder, holding him tighter. Almost afraid to let go. And fuck—the notion alone is a kick to the chest, harsh and heavy. He nearly gags on the litany of broken moans spiling out of his mouth, landing on your tongue. 

Driven mad, maybe (or pussy-drunk, and high off of his own poison); but in that madness, he discovers this:

Nirvana exists between your thighs. 

Home, too. 

(well—

not yet.)

Pleasure fissions down his spine. The paroxysm taking him deeper into the battle-worn depths of his demise until the walls narrow, closing in. Crushing. No escape. But—

He won’t climb out of his hole he dug. Not until he makes a bed from your flesh; shelter out of your bones. He wants to ingrain himself as deep within you as he can, arsenic subsumed down to your marrow. Poisoned with the fill of him, too sick to let go. 

(Bone nausea. 

A death sentence.)

It metastasises inside of him, filling the barren spaces up until it leaks from his pores. 

He wants it: this dream so tantalisingly close. 

Simon lifts his hand from your throat, and reaches out, grasps at it with a shaking paw—

All it takes is a few crass, careless swipes of his calloused thumb across your clit, cock angled toward that spot that makes you rake your broken nails down his back, yowling in his ear for more, there, please, Simon, please—

You clench like a vice around him. A pretty bow tied up at the base of his cock. He bows over you, grunts spilling from his chest as he sinks his teeth into your nape, splitting skin btween his teeth. The warm, ozonous tang of your blood flooding his tongue is euphoric, eclipsing his mind in a haze of pleasure that crackles and burns at the base of his spine, spitting smoke up his body and into his skull. 

The harsh whine you let out—all prey, all animal; wounded, stuck under his muzzle—has some part of him, basal and inborn, rearing up. Roaring in his ears, ripping talons across the jagged remains of his head. 

(mine, mine, mine—)

He answers your scream with a growl, one caught in the smoke clogging his throat. It sounds inhuman when its wrenched out of his mouth—more animal than man: the devastating howl of a forest on fire—but the feel of it vibrating between his teeth is connatural. Innate. It belongs between his incisors; fits like a puzzle piece in his broken muzzle. Unleashed now. Finally free from this ill-fitting cage he housed it, this goddamn box—

Cobbled together from palm ash and brimstone, ichor and salt. Sewed up with copper sutures in the shape of a man for a perfect fit. 

Every cell in his body screams that he was made for this. To be over you, in you. Maw filled with your blood. Pussy stuffed full of his cock. 

He might not have clawed out of the dirt for you, but this mossy, gnarled lump in his chest beats now only for you. Apodictic. Ironclad. His teeth in your jugular, your life pulsing wetly on his tongue. 

It’s his apotheosis. His end. 

His hips stutter. White noise in his head. It drowns out the shrill screams, the hisses. Everything is just—static. Pleasure of a silent kind, humming, buzzing, and molten. Ghost buries himself inside of you as deep as he can, until his cock is fit snug against the plug of your womb, and lays his claim by branding it with the potency of his name. 

Tidally locked, you’re dragged down the summit with him, tumbling to your demise. Too dazed, too wound tight in his arms, his embrace, to see the jagged rock at the bottom of the hungry chasm thirsting for your blood, you just cling to him. Refusing to let go. 

(silly girl—

His pretty little perigee.)

His body aches in ways that cruelly remind him of his age. Joints stiff, stomach quivering. His knuckles sting when he unfurls it from the headboard, skin pink and raw from the tight hold he had around the metal. 

It’s made worse when he heaves a harsh breath, and pulls away from you with a long, drawn out groan. He settles back on his haunches, eyes searing into the space between your thighs. Messy with his spend. It dribbles down your slit, your ass, pools on the sheets below. 

Your chest shudders, legs splayed out how he left you. He thinks, viciously, of gazelles, and wonders if the blood he feels drying on his mouth looks anything like the muddied mane of a lion after eating its fill. 

“Fuckin’ hell—”

He should clean you up, hide his crime, but he burns the image of you into his head (another tattoo over scar tissue), and drops to a heap beside you. The moment his back hits the mattress and all thoughts of moving are erased in silk, in smoke and clover. 

Chest heaving, slick with sweat, he feels the thrum of his victory in his veins. The high of the chase abates, and he nearly purrs with contentment. Hangs his pride on a pedestal, and doesn’t think about the absence of any guilt. Doesn’t even entertain the thought, not when victory dries between your thighs. When you roll over with a huff, reaching out for him. 

It's as if you're trying to bury yourself inside of him, crawl into the safety of his ribs. 

Ghost grunts, feels his sensitive, spent cock give a feeble twitch on his sticky thigh. The idea of you, blissfully unaware, seeking comfort from the man who writ your body with his virile spend, irrevocably changing your life and entwining it so deeply and so messily with his own that to severe either of you from each other is nearly impossible, floods him with satisfaction so deep, euphorically heady, that his chest seems to shudder. Resounding with some amalgamation of a purr, a grow, so utterly primal, that he sounds more beast than man. 

His roots run deep within you, now, and every misaligned piece of his patchwork body seems to sag and shiver in an almost perfect parallelism. Congruence ascertained with the cupping of you between its mismatched maw. Shackled in a baleen prison. Nestled, safe and sound, between white teeth. 

Ghost pulls you close, holding tight, and hums. As you drool on his shoulder, dripping with his spend, he knows he'll keep you there forever, until you're nothing but bones. 

There's a cloud of confusion hanging over you the next morning, a twinge of uncertainty gnarling across the gaps in your memory. The pieces of a puzzle that belong to a different set. He watches you scramble through them, filling in blanks. Oscillating so deliciously between wariness and discontent. 

“‘morning,” he greets, as if his spend hasn’t dried on your thigh last night. Tucked up nice and tight against your fertile, unprotected womb. As if he couldn't taste brimstone in the back of his throat when you wince as you walk, achy and battle-worn from the weight of his desire crushing you all night. 

“Morning,” it's a sticky rasp in your throat. He wonders if you taste him on your tongue. “When did you get in?”

“Las’ night.”

You nod, but it's absent. Flickering through the timeline of events that aren’t drenched in black, shaded over like a heavy bruise. Your expression is fractured. Raw. Pensive. Something untouchable, unchartable, and yet he reads you as plainly as the tea leaves at the bottom of his cup. 

You don’t remember. Don’t know what to make of this chasm, this fissure, that looms, icy and deep, before you. There’s no anger, though. You don’t demand recompense for what he stole, what he took. The lashings he deserves are tucked quietly between your teeth. Hidden under layers of normalcy to prevent yourself from seeing him as is: a beast. 

“Well, um. Some homecoming, huh?” You joke, but it's hollow. Flat. Fragile like fine glass. You're digging for more. Rooting around to connect these vague, absent dots that linger, lost in the vacancy of your memory. 

He almost purrs. 

He wants to chew you up. Spit you in the palm of his hand. Maybe tuck you in his breast pocket, nestled against the lump in his chest—the one those silly enough to dream might call a heart. Keep you there forever. Hidden in the barrel of his loaded gun. 

“Bit rowdy.” 

It’s horrifically vague, but you cling to the prevacation he proffers to you; a lifeline in the turbulent sea, letting it overwrite the absence, the itching in your skull that must be clanging on the walls, begging for you to run. 

“Sorry,” it's sheepish. He knows the ferality in which you sometimes come at him when he's buried deep inside you is something that makes you twinge with embarrassment. Little kitten clawing at the old dog trying to get it to play. Rolling over immediately when it growls. Docile, sickeningly sweet.

But even naive kittens know to watch out for the frothing, foaming maw. 

“Did you use a—?”

He dips his chin. “I might ‘ave.”

And you take it as gospel. As truth. Why would Simon have any reason to lie to you about this? 

Relief shudders over your shoulders. You relax, inching toward the seat across from him. Gazelle making a home for itself in the lion’s den. 

The spell of unease is broken, now, and you quickly fill the chasm with chatter about your day. Your plans. Asking him how he’s been. 

You shove at the warning signs until they’re hidden away, and ignore the bones of your brethren scattered around you. All because you trust him. 

He aches with the urge to crush it between his teeth. 

And he will one day soon, he’s sure, because it’s just as easy to enact his plan as it was to get you to open the door. 

It starts with him convincing you to drink with him after dinner. Jus’ a glass. Got this fancy bottle. Reckon we should ‘ave some. 

But—

Can’t drink forever—no matter what his dogshit dad thought. 

So, he pokes holes in the condoms you hide in the bedside table, a little wary now. A touch fretful about your contraceptives in a way that makes him preen. You have good instincts, but rarely do you listen to them. Your head must be filled with sirens, but it's futile, he supposes. He's already stuffed cotton into your ears. 

It only feeds into that gaping chasm that bellows up from the depths that this world is not good for you. That it will tear you into pieces, into shreds. You need him. Need the Ghost to protect you. 

Case in point:

You’re needy beneath him, panting and mewling into the sheets as he teases your clit with his thumb. So wet, it almost feels like hot oil on his skin. Syrupy thick. 

In your desperation, you cling to him, throat bared. Fragile fine china. Belly up. Vulnerable. 

You barely notice when he pulls off the condom, crumpling it up into a ball and shoving it in the pocket of his slacks.. Don’t even react when he shoves his bare, raw cock into you. 

You don't even notice. 

(or when he slurs in your ear about how badly he wants to knock you up—breed his pretty girl until she’s stuffed full of him, making life with what he offers. salvation in the form of creation. ain’ tha’ a thought? he huffs into your ear, humid mirth curling over your skin. a stain. and the way it unfetters you—tightening around him, gushing slick—he finds his answer, one reinforced in the rolling of your eyes as your common sense, independence, trickle out of your ears and down your slackened jaw—)

And when that fails, he just slips you a sleeping pill. There's always an easier way to the finish line, he finds. 

(stupid fuckin’ mutt—)

Nothing bleeds from the cracks he wrought, or slinks from the shadows cast by his machinations until weeks later. 

Life just goes back to what it once was—Simon coming and going, letting himself into your home with the door you leave unlocked. You go to work, and chatter aimlessly about this vision you have about a home in the countryside, near the ocean. Saving up—uselessly—for sheep and goats, and the sought-after Highland cows. Chickens and ducks first, you say, and barely notice when his gaze drops, drilling holes into your stomach. Watchful. Leering. 

He can almost scent the change on you. Nose pressed to your skin; bloodhound sniffing the ground. 

Ghost keeps time in the slow, susurrus drawl of your voice sifting through the cotton in his ears, waiting for those precious decibels to catch on, to tilt up at the end as your eyes skim the calendar he keeps scratching x’s across in red, almost delicate, innocent even though it's from his sanguinary hand. A countdown to something you haven’t yet caught on to. 

And it’s all so sweet. 

—the waiting game, the subtle changes, the desperate way you cling to normalcy—

Sweet, like the way you carve this life out for yourself, filled with stuffed animals full of idealism. So much so, that it's almost bitter. Acrid. He watches the light glow in your eyes as your plans take shape, moulding putty between your hands, and like a pit viper, he coils in on himself. Frenzied. Fearful—

But only just. 

The excitation has run its course. He’s drifting, languid, into his scheme. Content. The notion of you slipping from his fingers is a thought that rarely crosses his mind these days, especially when that house on the prairie grows from an occupant of one to two—

“And, you know… when you're not out saving the world—” your eye roll and air quotes make his lips twitch, tugging at the scar tissue, the acid burns, splashed across his mouth. An ugly fucking Pollock. “—maybe you can come visit.”

“Never fancied myself a rancher,” he drawls, just to watch you squirm. Brow furrowing into a deep ravine as you struggle to make your intentions known without actually giving them sound. Skirting around the issue of wanting him there, of planning a home with him. 

(Too much, maybe? Or too soon—? 

if only you knew—)

He finds it charming, really. 

Still—

“It's just a thought,” you mutter, downcast. He wants to choke on your misery. Your sadness. Drown himself in your anger. Float in your happiness. 

Fuckin' Christ—

All this playing daddy in his head has thrown him off his rocker. Made him soft. Sentimental. It's probably why he yields to you. Offers a lazy shrug and another smarmy twitch of his lips. 

“Sounds like a plan,” and the way you brighten is a dagger to his chest. 

And the thing is. It does. It sounds like a dream, a perfect vision. Just—

Maybe not in the way you'd want. 

He's been looking into places unmarred by human hands. Ghost towns, uncharted territories. His home here isn't perfect for it, not like the vast geography of Mexico. The uninhabited wilderness of Canada, places so remote that it's almost untethered to modern civilisation. Islands of forest, mountains, all on their own. 

Vast corners and crevasses where someone can disappear and never be found. 

But those won't work in tandem with his flighty lifestyle. While he plans on keeping you barefoot and pregnant (common sense in the back of his head screams that he's foul, vile, monstrous—), he will continue to work. Has to, really, to avoid suspicion. 

So—

Home it is. 

But he gets inspiration from the Highland cows you coo on about and purchases a plot of land in the Western Isles. Gives this whim of his—yours, really—a concrete foundation made of the abstract. The filament provided by his newly christened Sergeant—an overeager mutt that bleeds warning signs from his pores. 

(don’t get close, reactive dog. will bite—

the little mutt is a great pyrenees, ain’t he?)

But bless Johnny’s bleedin’ heart, he thought as the man prattled on about this cabin he owns. A place of solitude. Could fire a gun and no one would even peek out the curtains. Beautiful, the way all of Scotland is. The highlands, he breathes in that shade of catholic madness only the dutiful soldiers of god's right-handed wrath can be, is where he keeps his home. A place chiselled from stone, surrounded by wilderness that eats tourists alive. 

(he didn’t ask at the time why Johnny was so keen on finding these places scattered around Scotland, ones with little traffic and a nearly negligible amount of souls within the vicinity, but he finds its best not to get too close to mutts crossbred with wolves.)

But Simon is nothing if not devoted, and so. 

You’ll get your fantasy ranch in the middle of nowhere. Your highland cows, your billy goats, your chicken, sheep, and ducks. A baby in your arms, too. One that shows its hand the next morning, dashing all your carefully laid plans. These paths of independence of yours run parallel to his whims but never converge. There’s the potential in this for these fraying threads to split, and diverge. Separate. 

(But it’s all put to rest at the sound of you heaving in the adjoining washroom. His path eats yours until it’s overtaken. Consumed. 

The evasive, unfettered little bird trammelled, caught. Wing-clipped, and all his.) 

Any misgivings the part of his gyri not buried under the frothing mess of his polluted grey matter might have is vitiated by the unwavering certitude that, despite his own gains in this, it really is in your best interest. 

And maybe it's something that should have come earlier in your relationship—however threadbare that word is in conjunction with the unhinged desire blooming in the pit of his chest; madness masquerading as love or some obsessive, desperate facsimile of it. Maybe a proper man, a better one, might have dug down and fully laid out the reality of intertwining your life with the living dead. That the idea of danger, death, and revenge are all everpresent threats scratching at the walls of this sickeningly sweet fantasy you wrap around yourself. 

He’s a dangerous man. A creature of devastation—manmade, bent into, or congenital is yet to be unearthed—which, in itself, brings about a certain lifestyle. One with fewer people around, and always shrouded in secrecy. Friends, family—none of that matters when death curdles gnarled fingers around his jugular. 

You’ll get used to it. Eventually. The only other choice is to let you, his now flightless bird, go. Released back into the wild vulnerable and reeking of his stench. 

You’ll be devoured before daylight, ripped into pieces—only if they’re feeling generous, that is. 

Simon has his own twisted remora. Ones with claws and fangs and a hunger that runs deep. Insatiable. Any scraps that fall from his mouth are devoured before they can touch the sea floor. They’ll crush you in their maw and dangle your mangled body from the gaps between their teeth. 

You’re not made for the wild. Not anymore. You’re meant to be protected. You—this fragile, delicate thing. He’ll hold you close, keep you secure and safe in a mausoleum of your own making. 

This little glass jar domicile. 

A billet in the mountains. 

He’ll fill it with the finest things—silk linens, fine china; mahogany and teak, pink ivory; a bed of soft, downy feathers, sherpa, Egyptian cotton; (sticks and stones and grass and moss). Buy you whatever you need. Chickens and ducks. Sheep and goats. 

They’ll keep you company when he’s away. 

(and if that fails, he can always plan playdates for you with whatever dirty secret Johnny’s been keeping tucked away in the woods.)

He draws an x in the empty, white box of the calendar, the tip of his red marker gliding silkily across the glossy surface. Something unfurls in his guts. Blossoms in his bones. There’s an almost indescribable sense of satisfaction—primal and animalistic—that grows from the upturned dirt in his head. Life composted from rot. 

Ghost hums to himself when he turns, the sound nearly a purr—bestial as it is, suffocated under sulphur. It reverberates through his chest, trembling across the brackets of his ribs that expand with his deep, heavy inhale—breathing in the sight that greets him like a lover’s kiss

The kebab he ordered lays untouched on the table across from the television—some trashy reality show playing in the background while you tried to eat; a dating show, you’d said when he merely shrugged, having other things on his mind over what to watch while you ate. It all seems to be preserved in time. Frozen in on the exact moment when you’d sniffed the döner kebab he got for you—the same thing you order each time—and then promptly wrenched yourself back, gagging. The sandwich was flung back in the takeaway box before you slapped your hand over your mouth, rushing into the washroom. 

If his phone wasn’t in the other room, he might have taken a picture. A little memento to remember this moment. Framed it in iron and perched it on the desk they gave him back in Hereford, the one just down the hall from Price. 

(ah, speaking of—he’ll have to send that caustic bastard a fruit basket, or something, won’t he? maybe some pretty flowers for his lady.)

His reverie is shaken when the door to the washroom creaks open slowly, and you emerge through the gap with sweat on your brow, knots across your forehead, and a shaking hand resting over your churning stomach. 

Shame, he thinks. He really should have brought his phone—

You lean against the wall, taking in deep, shuddering breaths to steady yourself, confusion and worry knitting over you like a thundercloud. It tastes of ozone when he inhales. An approaching storm. In the blue gloom of the living room, illuminated only by the light flooding out from the washroom behind you and the static glow of the television, you look etiolated. A wilting flower. 

His budding rose. 

He coos. “You alright?”

You glance sideways at the kebab on the table, mouth pinching into a grimace as if to stem the nausea still rippling through you. You stare at it for a long moment, seemingly trying to make sense of the reality sitting in front of you on scratched, old pine; confusion runs laps over the dawn cresting in your eyes. This puzzle is too unfathomable for you to piece together; the keys and slots all askew. 

The air around him grows still. Silent. Anticipatory. A tiger crouched low in the tussock. A little fawn roaming too close. 

There’s a heaviness in your eyes when they flicker back to the wall where he stands, drilling holes into the x. Something implacable frissons over your threadbare expression, fracturing across sallow cheeks. 

The air is electric. It pulses across his bare flesh, irritating scar tissue, acid burns, and scorch marks. His skin prickles at its whisper. 

“Feelin’ sick, pet?” He ponders, playing pretend. He’s viciously, deeply amused at the desperate denial splashing across your cheeks. The thin shade of askance that unfurls like the leaves of a flytrap when you look at him. “Mus’t’a been the kebab. Bad meat, I reckon?”

You offer a weak nod in response, pinching your lips tight together. The matter seemingly concluded, brushed aside. Pocketed for later. 

And you say nothing else for the rest of the night—gaze unseeing, turned inward; pensive—but he purrs in contentment as if everything was alright, sprawled across the couch with his head pillowed against your churning stomach as if he could hear the whisper of another heartbeat from within. 

In the saturated blue light, he catches your eyes listing toward the calendar every so often. Wary. Nervous. He thinks you might say something, might ask, but you don’t. It’s caught on a stilted breath. A harsh swallow. 

All you do is bring your hand to his shorn head, and raze the stumps of your clipped claws against his scalp. It’s almost as if you’re trying to soothe the madness from within. Scratching that itch deep inside until it goes away. Gentle hands play pretend and dress up as a panacea. Affection to scrape the illness away. 

He thinks you should know better than that, even as he leans into it with a soft exhale, more relaxed than he'd ever been his entire life. Content. Unassailable in his conquest. 

Simon has always been more scar tissue than man, and no place is damaged more than the upturned tumulus inside his head. 

But oh. How you try—

His sweet, sweet girl. 

The look you give him the next evening is, in parts, brumous. 

A polynya of dread, worry, guilt, fear that frissons across the deep valleys in your eyes, shaded in plumes of darkness, filled in deliciously with the weight of your beleaguered uncertainty. It yawns out before him, this heavy gloom. 

So close he catch the embers in his hand. 

“Simon… We should—talk. I, uh—”

You hold up a little rectangle, dismay, misery, etched in the blue tinge spreading across your face. It seems to steal the words from your throat, turn them into ash. What else are you meant to say, he supposes, when you look out at the world now from the gape in his maw? 

But there’s a veil of wonderment that hides below the tidal wave; this precious, deadly, undercurrent that rents the air, splits his chest in two.

The happiness, however meagre, thin, it is right now (just a sunken boat on the seafloor), is there. Ripe for salvage, and he sees that it’s handled with care. Cupped between his palms, nurtured by his own conviction to do what’s right, an’—fuck, pet—know this ain’t what we planned, but—

but:

The howling quiets, turns to a low growl, and then a susurrus hum, when you shakily utter the words he was waiting for. 

“Yes, Simon—”

You shudder when his fist closes over your wrist, pulling you into his purring chest. Shaking like a prey animal in the jowls of a beast, bested and ensnared. It has a profound, almost predatory, sense of satisfaction curling over his bones. He knows this was the right choice, and is sure, in time, you'll come to realise that, too. You’re in the early stages, he knows. Prodromal. You need to be handled with care to curb the lacrimation, the hyperesthesia. 

And there’s no one better than him to guide you through the throes of it. To lead you to the unequivocal end. 

He leans down, and whispers in your crown—

“Good girl—”

—and the sound of his voice is gravel encased in sticky, sweet honey. Dark, smokey molasses. The very same cadence as a key sliding inside of a lock; metal grazing metal. Turning—

“If it’s a boy, we’ll name him Tommy.”

Click. 

(he gives you that ring he promised when he takes you to the mountains. you smile wide, and tell him it fits like a gyve.)

Simon stops shovelling his want under the cold dirt and starts burying it inside you instead. Makes a domicile from your flesh; a place where he can rest his aching head every night until the howling scraping down fractured bone stops— (paralytic)

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | college au [18+]

kickoff drabble no2. making it up to you

ᰔ pairing. college au - soccer player! gojo x film major! reader

ᰔ drabble summary. after a pretty angsty period between you two, gojo tries to make it up to you with flowers & a kitten he finds on the side of the road. (note: for new readers, this is in continuation of my long fic gojo x reader series “kickoff”!! masterlist is linked below) ᰔ main storyline summary. gojo satoru is the most popular guy on your college campus. he's tall, funny, hot, not to mention he's the most talented soccer forward the school has seen in years. but he's also a frat dude, which puts him in a world very different from your own, as he spends most of his nights partying & drinking while you spend most of yours working on your annoying film major assignments. but when he reaches out to you for a favor, you realize that helping him out might have something in it for you too.

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem reader, fluff, angst, smut, college au, fraternities, sororities, partying, drinking/alcohol, romance, jealousy, pining, slow burn, opposites to lovers, friends to lovers, she falls first he falls harder, gojo being an idiot, marijuana use, sexism, sexual harassment (verbal only)

ᰔ chapter. drabble #2

ᰔ words. 2.2k

a/n. ahhh in the original ver of ch10, i actually wrote these scenes from reader’s pov, but cut them out and condensed them bc the word count was already super high haha. so it’s nice i have a chance to include them like this!! although this is written from gojo’s side of the events :”) hope you enjoy <3

nav. masterlist

☾·̩͙꙳ moodboard no.1 :: ♬.*ﾟplaylist

Gojo finds himself crouched down on the sidewalk outside of your apartment complex as he plucks thorns off of roses one by one, flicking them off of his finger and almost straight into his eyeball with how closely he’s inspecting the stems for any pointed edges.

Are roses poisonous? It’d be bad if they were, since he got pricked in about five different places when he rummaged through bushes at the city park to pluck them for you, walking straight into spring foliage and the no trespassing sign wasn’t going to stop him if it meant he could get the dopamine rush of seeing a smile on your face. But he couldn’t have you getting pricked the way he did. Just in case they were poisonous. And also because he’s not too keen on hurting you anymore than he already has.

“Hm?” he hums as he turns one of the roses in his hands, ankles starting to strain from holding his body weight up on them for so long, something Coach Yaga would make him run laps for, given he skips warm-up stretches at the top of every practice and his lack of flexibility was starting to show. Then he’s wondering if you were any flexible, and the thought threatens to make him horny at 6:17am.

There’s a ladybug creeping up the stem of a soft petalled red rose, missing the opportunity of seamlessly blending into the pigment since it just crawls onto one of the green leaves instead. Absolutely abysmal survival instincts, Gojo thinks to himself. He lets it be, regardless.

Well the flowers didn’t really put a smile on your face, turns out you don’t enjoy having to answer to a doorbell at the crack of dawn on the one day of the week you got to sleep in. He used all the people-reading skills he could possibly muster, and got the vibe that you were annoyed by the gesture. Maybe he could’ve chosen better flowers? He doesn’t know anything about flowers, although he probably should, since his mother used to run a florist shop before she traded it in to run a KFC downtown, near the city’s high school. Better business than selling shriveled up tulips, was how she defended her decision. But maybe if she’d kept it, she could have shown him what arrangement of flowers he should make for a girl he’s trying to apologize to.

You’re rubbing your eye, standing in an oversized stained old T-shirt and some shorts underneath that barely reveal themselves under the hem of the shirt. Cute, so fucking cute. Unbearably, really, but you deny it when he says it.

“You woke me up. And I look like bigfoot standing in front of you,” you say, still rubbing at your eye with a pout on your face.

“I still think you look pretty,” he says and now you’re scratching the top of your head where your hair piles up with coils that look like cotton candy.

“What are you doing here?” you ask through a sleepy voice that sounds a little grumpy.

“I got these for you,” he says, leaning against the doorframe of the entryway and holding out the arrangement of flowers he jumped over a fence to steal. In his defense, none of the supermarkets on the way were open at this hour, but the desperation and urge he had to see you today was so overwhelmingly strong, so he had to find an excuse.

You take the flowers from him, which have been sparsely held together by the newspaper he took from someone’s driveway, and you blink up at him. Your face was a little puffy with sleep, and he can’t help the pursed grin that makes its way onto his face. In very much contrast to your stone face.

“Did you pluck these for me??” you ask, peering into the bouquet.

“Uh-huh,” he affirms.

“From where?”

“The,” he points over his shoulder, “the city park.”

Apparently pilfering flowers from an area of no trespassing was not the romantic gesture he thought it would be, or possibly waking you up just to give them to you was the crime, since you mumbled something about wanting to go back to sleep and then shoo’d him away before he had the chance to ask you what you were doing this weekend. But that’s fine, maybe he’ll get another chance.

Divine intervention came the very next day. Why Gojo considers a kitten he finds in the bushes as an order from God to go talk to you again is a mystery even his good conscience wouldn’t understand, but he’s on a mission to make it up to you. It’s the only thing he wants to do.

He was taking a two minute break during his morning run, pacing down sidewalk panting slightly underneath spring heat, when he heard something crying deep within the bushes. Without a second thought, he’s pushing his way through branches that were a lot more spiky than anticipated, one tearing straight through the fabric of his shirt, but he finally spotted it—

A tiny little soot sprite sitting curled up in a ball between dead leaves and spiky twigs, the round of its form rising and falling fast with its heavy breathing just like Gojo is right now. It lifts his head up, triangular ears dropping then raising, dropping then raising, as it makes sense of its surroundings and eventually it cocks its head all the way up to look Gojo straight in the eye.

A kitten?

With paws rustling the leaves underneath it, it tilts its head and resumes its cries. Loud and sounding so hoarse from exhaustion in its throat that it sounds like a kazoo. All left alone and abandoned.

Gojo picks it up slowly, noticing it’s smaller than the size of his hand, and he holds it up into the air to inspect it. How does he know if it’s a girl or a boy? He pulls his phone out and types it into Google. Okay, in male kittens, the genital shape resembles a colon punctuation mark (:). He looks back at the kitten with no preservation of its genital honor. Yup, it’s a boy.

He has nothing against cats, he’s just not really used to them. His family had a dog growing up, a stunning Mongolian mastiff he could fight and wrestle with like a bear for as long as he could remember through to his teens, but because of that, he has no clue how to be gentle with an animal. And this little kitten seemed like it needed a whole lot of gentle from the way it shivers as he holds it in his arms.

He knows someone gentle.

In hindsight, he should’ve taken a glance in someone’s car door window to inspect for twigs and leaves in his hair before showing up at your front door, and he also should’ve felt weary over the ripped up condition of his shirt, but he didn’t think of those things until he was already standing at your front door. He briefly considered going shirtless, but then the idea of him showing up shirtless to your front door with no notice at an hour that wasn’t much better than the hour he visited you yesterday was something his gut was telling him wouldn’t be a wise thing to do. Although showing up shirtless most places has hardly ever failed him, he just had the feeling that you’d be different.

The kitten he holds in the curled palm of his hand trembles as it claws at Gojo’s shirt, calming down when it feels the warmth of his torso, and Gojo starts to find it cute. Then the door of your apartment flings open.

You stand there, looking neater than yesterday with your hair kept and you’re in some jeans with a light pink University of Tokyo T-shirt tucked into them. Your tote bag was slung around your shoulder, like you were just about to leave.

“S-Satoru?” you squeak out after jumping a little where you stand.

“Hey,” he says, leaning against the doorframe again since you seem to never allow him inside your apartment. Apparently the doorframe is as far as he’ll get.

“What are you doing here?” you ask in the same way you asked it yesterday, and you tuck strands of hair behind your ear. His heart beats faster at the sight, and the kitten probably feels it from the way it starts purring with a nuzzling head under his ribcage.

He pulls the tiny thing from his front and extends his arm out to you, as it sits dazzled and confused in the palm of his hand from the sudden loss of surrounding heat, and then it looks at you. And you look at it. “I brought you a cat.”

“Wha—” you stutter, and your face entirely softens, lower lip jutting out slightly in a pout as you use both hands to pick it up off of his hand, it’s tiny white paws dangling in the air before you settle it snug in your arms, and it chirps a mew before pushing its little face against the pillows of your breasts. Lucky bastard. “But why???”

He shrugs, crossing his arms now as an easy smile makes way onto his face. “I don’t know. I thought you’d think it’s cute and you’d want to keep it.”

“But I can’t,” you whine, your fingers scratching the top of its head and its purrs become louder. “I can’t keep cats in my apartment.” You lift the fluff ball up into the air, its tiny stubby tail now slightly wagging from side to side like it’s a puppy. He makes note that you are a person who has the ability to turn kittens into puppies.

“Keep it anyway,” he tells you, “you wouldn’t be the first college student to unlawfully keep a cat in their apartment.”

“No, no, no, you don’t understand,” you say, cradling the kitten in the nook of your elbow again. “I really can’t.” And your lips turn downwards into a frown, “this complex checks on tenants often. The people who rented this apartment before us couldn’t renew their lease because they got caught having a cat in the unit.”

His eyes widen. “Oh…that—…that sucks.”

“I can’t keep him,” you say, voice trembling slightly as you look down at it. It looked like it had fallen asleep in your arms. “I really want to, but I can’t. And he’s so cuuute, and tiny and sweet and—” He sees tears start to sheen in your eyes.

Uh.

Uh-oh.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

This was not going how he thought it would in his head.

He wasn’t supposed to make you CRY.

That was the last fucking thing he was supposed to do.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he tries to comfort you when he hears you sniffle and sees your lower lip tremble. He holds your shoulders to get you to look at him, and his heart physically hurts at the sight of seeing you so sad. For fuck’s sake, you were going to ruin him. “I’m sorry, I—…I didn’t know that, I shouldn’t have brought it here without knowing that first, it was stupid and—”

“Yes, it was,” you say with a broken voice, shrugging his hold off you and using the back of your hand to wipe at a tear rolling down your cheek.

He pulls you into him now, holding you in his arms against your resistance but you eventually tuck your head into his chest to continue your sniffling as he rests his chin on top of your head and rubs a soothing thumb over your arm. The kitten is sandwiched between you two now, and is probably in the most amount of bliss it’s ever had in its extremely short life so far from the amount of warmth it's being surrounded by right now.

He feels the cool dampness of your tears soaking through his shirt, and he holds you tighter. “I’m sorry. Really, I am.” It feels like he’s apologizing for a lot more than the kitten right now.

You pull one of your arms out, the one that wasn’t holding the kitten, from between the two of you and hold onto his shirt tightly, the places where it’s ripped tearing open even more. “You just don’t think sometimes and it really hurts,” you say, muffled.

He lets out a deep sigh, lips brushing against the top of your head and you two stand still here in the imaginary forcefield of your apartment’s doorframe. “I’ll be better. I promise.”

“Don’t be sweet right now,” you say, voice cracking again, “that hurts even more.”

He’s really confused, in all honesty, but he masks it and can only hope out of the ten things he does wrong, he can do at least one right. “Okay.”

You push yourself out of his hold and hand him back the kitten, all in a rush, and he notices you refuse to look at the soot sprite anymore, like you’re trying not to get attached. “Take him, and leave,” you say, hoisting your totebag higher up onto your shoulder.

“But—” he tries to protest but you push him a few paces backwards by palms against his chest until he’s standing outside into the hallway. There’s a slight scrunch to your brow from your irritation of him, and maybe his problem is that he just finds it cute. And then you shut the door on him.

After a moment of stunned silence, he hears the kitten meow incessantly in his palm.

The little shit’s mocking me, he thinks.

.

.

.

[end]

a/n. thanks for reading!! this was silly to write haha. tbh i think reader was on her period during this scene which is why she became very emotional. i may be projecting bc i sob like a little bitch over cute animals when im on my period LOL. and gojo is trying his best u guys he’s just a little dumb ok ✋🏼😔 his looks have got him this far we have to have patience w a pretty privilege victim okay!!!!

thanks so much for reading!! also i really want to write a drabble of gojo becoming a cat dad now aaaaa

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