#sharks are friends not food | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ceilidho · 2 months ago

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'still wakes the deep' au

prompt: You're an environmental scientist conducting research on an off-shore oil rig with only a few days left before you're slated to leave. The eldritch creature they accidentally awaken throws a wrench in the works. First Meeting masterlist

Choppy waters like Neptune’s eye meet your gaze when you look back at where you came from, the land on the other side but a beige striation on the horizon.

“Afraid of heights, doctor?” your escort asks, his amusement borderline distasteful. It must stroke their ego to watch newcomers come aboard and flounder, gawking at the swells and waves crashing against the oil rig, each wave so cataclysmic that it’s a wonder the structure stays upright. A wonder of engineering, that is.

The rig manager stands closer to the railing, staring without fear out into the ocean surrounding you. His sea legs are likelier studier than the ones that wash up ashore every fourteen days when he’s due for his OSHA mandated break. His knees don’t even buckle at the sight of the barnacles clinging nerve-wrackingly high up on the rig legs. Far too high up for comfort.

“No, sir,” you reply, shaking your head. “Just water.”

He barks a laugh at that. “Plenny o’ that around here. Wouldn’y go leaning my head over the rail then, if I was you.”

You take another look down, balking at the frothy white streaking the latticework barrier around the jacket legs. No worries there; there isn’t a chance in hell you’ll be going anywhere near the rails. You’re too high up to know for sure, but you wonder if there are sharks plumbing the depths beneath the rig, excited by the noise and activity on board.

You’d be shark chum if you went overboard. Beyond that, you’d be fish food; no sympathy from the sea to be found this far from land.

“Where should I set up?” you ask instead.

Sensing your eagerness to get started—and to get away from the edge of the rig—he gestures for you to follow him and sets off towards the door closest to you, leading you into the interior of the rig. “This way, doc—got a room already set up for ye. Cozier in there than out here.”

The first few days aren’t so bad after that. You spend the first day getting unpacked, your suitcase already waiting for you in your quarters, which doubles as your office, and then turn in early after prepping for the next day.

As anticipated, you spend the next day hunched over the toilet bowl, stomach roiling from spending too long staring at the turbulent waters below. You’ve done this before but it never gets any easier. Despite your chosen field of research, you’re suited for dry land, not the sea. It’s the price you have to pay though.

No coffee that first morning. Just tea to help settle your stomach. And it does for a bit—lets you get through your first day worth of tests without you upchucking while collecting water samples from the discharge point. You’ll save your indoor work for the days when the crests of the waves are high enough to spray the working deck. By dinner, your stomach is a little more settled, but still you elect to eat in your quarters instead of with the workers in the mess.

You haven’t been on the rig long enough to have made any enemies, nor do you think that’s something that’ll happen during your brief time on board, but you definitely haven’t made any friends. It comes with the territory. The men that work on these rigs out in the middle of the ocean—even the ones on land, for that matter—tend to view your kind with distrust at the very least, if not outright hostility.

It’s hard to blame them. The purpose of your visit isn’t to shower them with praises. You’re stationed on the rig for the next few days to collect data and samples to assess the environmental impact of the rig’s operations. It puts you somewhat at odds with them, the outcome of your work being potentially to the detriment of theirs.

Some whisper the word like blasphemy. Government worker. They say it like you’re the Baba Yaga or a witch living in a cottage at the edge of the village, like uttering the word too loudly will summon you. There’s too much work to do around the rig for them to cluck their tongues like gossipy hens, but the men find time for it anyway. You’d roll your eyes if you were any greener.

The truth is though, you’re used to it, and at this point in your career, you don’t have it in you to act like it’s such a shock that they wouldn’t give you the red carpet treatment. All you need is a hot cup of coffee, an office (or even just a desk) to write your reports, and some space to conduct your research without being badgered with questions.

Most of the men tend to blur together, a medley of fluorescent yellow hard hats and navy coveralls, respirators strung around their necks and goggles covering their eyes. It’s easy enough to mistake them for one another.

Only one of them has managed to catch your eye so far, though you can’t say it’s for a particularly good reason. Of the lot of them, he’s the loudest. Which is saying something, considering that the crew tend to speak in shouts and hollers to make up for the crashing waves beneath them and the howling winds above them. He’s also among the tallest, broad shouldered and muscled—a former first responder or military, if you had to guess, though you keep your assumptions to yourself.

You know better than to ask questions around him because you’ve learned in the short time that you’ve spent on the rig not to give him—Soap, they call him, or MacTavish when the rig manager is particularly pissed off—even an inch.

It’s another crew member that gives you that heads up. “Din’y pay him any mind.”

“Who?” you ask, looking up from your work.

The crew member nods to the man posted on the other side of the main deck. “Soap. Bit of a showboat, that one. Always stirrin’ up the boys, gettin’ ‘em all riled up. Din’y let him distract ye too much.”

“Oh. Thanks.” You look back down at the data sheets in front of you. “I’m not worried though. He hasn’t been too much trouble.”

Famous last words.

He isn’t too much trouble until he suddenly is; until he’s suddenly everywhere, always in your way somehow. Not so much underfoot as just always around the corner waiting with his stupid smug smirk that you’ve grown to despise and half-lidded electric blue eyes roving up and down the length of you. Aggravating you at every turn.

Your first meeting is an accident. At least, it seems that way, and likely is—he seems too blunt for coincidences or chance meetings, happy to tell you to your face that he manipulated the situation in order to get you on your own.

You’re wandering down one of the many circulatory hallways and slightly lost when a door suddenly opens, blocking your way. A jumpsuit-clad man twice your size walks out, his hair just brushing the top of the doorframe. Though you recognize him instantly, you’d never gotten close enough for the details to cement in your mental image of him. Up close, you get a better look.

The faint lines around his eyes and mouth betray either his age or the life he’s lived. Weathered; bronzed from days at a time spent under the sun. You’d noticed the mohawk earlier, but staring at the side of his head now, you can see the faint puckering of a healed wound splintering out from his temple into his hairline. Though the sides of his head are freshly shorn, the scar looks old—maybe a year, maybe more.

When he notices that he’s not alone in the hall, his head turns in your direction and he stops, one foot still in the other room. Two thick brows go up at the sight of you standing there with your tablet clutched to your chest.

“Hullo gorgeous,” Soap purrs, pupils suddenly pinpricks and your stomach drops.

Because of course he would. You’d long figured he might be an arrogant piece of work from what little you’ve observed of him from across the rig, but you should’ve known he’d also be a flirt. He’s too good-looking not to be one. Tall and broad, with biceps the size of your head. You’re sure he rolls his shirt sleeves up just to feel them strain against the muscles of his arms. You certainly can’t help the way your eyes are drawn there.

“Ah ken who ye are,” he says, taking a step towards you until the tips of his boots nearly touch yours. The door is still wide open behind him, swinging slowly towards the wall behind it. Soap towers over you easily, tipping his head to stare down at you. Your lips press into a tight line when his eyes drop to your chest, staring at the outline of your tits through your cardigan.

“Okay,” you say through stiff lips.

“Yer that lass from the government. Ah thought ye'd be auld,” he jokes, shit-eating grin on his face.

You nearly groan. It’s too early for this shit and you’re too tired from being up all night working on your report on the rig’s discharge water quality.

“Well, I’m not,” you reply woodenly instead, altogether unimpressed with him.

For as fit as he is, you’re not here to flirt or hookup, and you’re good at separating work and your personal life. If anyone manages to get under your skin enough to tempt you, it won’t be the man undressing you with his eyes while covered in a thin layer of grime and sweat.

“Nae, yer no’,” he agrees, voice a low burr. His eyes flick up to meet yours. “I’m John, by the way.”

“I know.”

“…It’s polite tae give yer name when someone introduces thersel's tae ye.”

“I’d rather you just call me doctor.”

“Doctor, eh?” Soap purrs, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “Dae ye dae house calls, doc? Hae been feelin’ a wee bit feverish lately.”

You can’t help the way your cheeks heat at his comment. “Not that kind of doctor. Do you mind getting out of the way?”

“Jesus, I din’y ken ye’d be so fuckin’ prickly. Thought ye government workers were cheery a' the time.”

“Not when we have work to do,” you bite out, decidedly uncomfortable with his shameless perusal and eager just to get on with your day. “Can you move please? I have somewhere to be.”

All that does is force him to take another step closer, toe-to-toe with you now. You should’ve known he’d take that as an invitation. He reeks of grease and brine, the smell pungent and clinging to his skin and clothes. Almost like he sleeps and works in the same pair of coveralls instead of bringing his dirty clothes down to the laundry facility like everyone else at the end of the week.

You tell yourself to stop staring at where his coveralls open to a sweat-slicked chest, dark hair poking up over the neckline, but your eyes don’t comply. A small cross dangles from a chain around his neck, nestled in the hair just above his pecs.

“Good Catholic lass, are ye?” Soap asks, noticing the focal point of your gaze.

You scrunch up your nose at that. “No. I didn’t—it’s none of your business anyway.”

The stutter is where his eyes light up, a little gleam in the blue that lets you know you’ve caught his interest. Like seeing a storm well off in the distance and bracing for it anyway, knowing that you’re in its path no matter what you do.

“A’right, doc, Ah'll leave ye tae it. Gotta get back myself anyway,” he says, rolling his shoulders back and standing up taller, and it’s only in that moment that you realize how low his neck had been bent in order to get closer to you. “Wait. I can’y let ye go lookin’ like that.”

You’re about to ask him what he means when he suddenly grabs you by the front of your cardigan and pulls you towards him, getting the grease on his hands all over the fabric. Your eyes nearly bug out of your skull as he pops the topmost button into its corresponding hole, the only one you’d left purposefully loose.

The only reason you don’t snap at him to take his hands off you is because your tongue is a knot in your throat.

“There we go,” Soap coos when the button is in, looking down at his handiwork all over the front of your shirt. “Lookin’ like part o’ the crew already.”

Your heart pounds in your chest long after he lets you go. When he steps to the side, the door flush with the wall by now, you dart around him, walking away as fast as your legs can carry you without sprinting. You ignore the way he belts out a laugh at your swift departure. Ignore the way your stomach cramps at the sound as well.

He might end up being more trouble than you thought.

#ceil writing #soap x reader #cod x reader #soap/reader #soap x you #john soap mactavish x reader #john mactavish x reader

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