#was man in the box to on the nose for Ghost? maybe....

[ostaramoon]

02. takes one to know one

ᯓ★ story index abt, you join your new friend, outlaw!dean, in a little game of cops and robbers. warnings, robbery, guns, suggestive language, sprinkle of angsty hidden feelings, there's only one bed couch (more of that in prt3!!) 2.7k words

The sheriff had a lot more going on than just civil duties, the vast ranch set picturesque before you can attest for that. The house itself is massive, pure white siding glowing in the moonlight. Beyond that, a sleek brown barn cuts into the night sky. From where you and Dean sit, crouched behind one of the dozen jagged shaped trees that line the outskirts of the property, it looks deceptively peaceful. 

But you know better.

This stash of gold Dean assures you is hidden within those walls, isn’t gonna be an easy swipe. Guards patrol the quiet ranch, a few are pacing the front as you watch and search for a blindspot. 

“You sure about doin’ this, darlin’?” Dean drawls in a hushed whisper, his eyes light and playful, almost daring you to say no. 

Your narrow-eyed gaze goes toe-to-toe with his, your lips curling into a smile. “I was born sure, Winchester.” you quip, not missing a beat. 

Dean’s husky voice drops lower, momentarily lacking it’s usual cocky drawl, “you just stick to the plan, alright? You do that for me ‘n we’ll be swimmin’ in gold before sunrise.”

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t ignore the steady thrum of adrenaline in your veins. The plan—Dean’s plan—was simple enough: get past the guards, crack the safe and get the hell out of dodge. Simple, of course, was a relative term when talking about breaking into the home of a man who probably shot first and asked questions—never. 

“Remind me again why I agreed to this?” you tease, tucking your body closer to his. Your chin grazing his leather-clad shoulder as you both keep steady eyes on the ranch. 

Dean gives a quick glance, the moonlight catching in the green of his eyes. That pretty grin of his making a slow return. “Because you couldn’t resist me.”

Playfully hitting his arm, you shoot back at him, “or maybe I couldn’t resist the payday.” His eyes are back on you, lingering as his lashes slowly lift as he takes in your features at this newfound closeness. He merely offers a quiet hum in response, brushing against you as he shifts to hand you a small set of lockpicks. 

“Figure, with the way you work a cue stick,” he mumbles, voice low and as teasing as his eye contact, “you got this part handled.” He places the small box in your hand, clasping his large hands on either side of yours as he smirks, “And I’ve got a knack for getting into trouble. Perfect match, huh?”

Before you could reply, the sound of boots crunching on gravel causes both your heads to snap towards the ranch. A guard passes by, just a few yards away, his rifle glinting in the moonlight. Dean’s playful demeanor is entirely consumed by a sharp alertness that makes you wonder just how many times he’s been in a situation like this. 

The stillness passes as the guard meanders away, the sound of his boots dying out in the quiet of the desert. Your new partner’s shoulders relax at the false alarm. That lopsided smile playing at his lips again as he tugs you closer, his nose brushing your cheekbone.

“Showtime, baby.” Dean whispers, pulling back with a wink as two fingers reach up to tip his hat. 

The two of you slip through the shadows of the ranch like ghosts. A mere step between your bodies as you stick close to the edges of the house where the moonlight doesn’t touch. Dean leads, moving with surprising stealth for someone so broad. Every now and then, he glanced back at you, giving a little nod of reassurance. His focused eyes softened slightly each time he turned back. 

Moving through the property was easier than you thought, but Dean’s uncanny sense for danger has made it so. He pauses just before a light sweeps over your path, his hand shooting out to pull you into the shadow of a nearby tree when he detects movement before you do. The guards are predictable, too. Their routes timed perfectly to give just enough room to duck behind a stack of barrels or hop over a fence. One guard left his post at the backdoor, leaving an opening to slip into the darkened home. 

You follow Dean’s silent lead of avoiding spots of creaky floorboards as you step inside, pulse thrumming with adrenaline. As you move through the dark, Dean peeks through doors with deliberate slowness. You watch between him and the back door, until he’s motioning you over with the flick of a finger. 

The study was just as grand as you’d imagined—dark wood paneling, glass cases displaying expensive weapons and memorabilia. A massive desk cluttered with papers sits before two large windows. In the center space, a portrait of some grim-faced ancestor takes up most of the wall. 

Dean’s already hovering over it, inspecting the frame. The sharp edges of his side profile illuminated by the moonlight spilling in through the window. His eyes finally catch yours, nodding for you to come over, a sly grin on his lips as he leans down over your shoulder. 

“These rich sons of bitches are always so predictable.” He laughs dryly, “go on ‘n tug on that side of the frame for me, Sweetheart.” 

You don’t waste a second, pulling on the frame until it pops open. Swinging like a hidden door, revealing a built in safe on the adjacent wall. Pulling the small box of tools Dean gave you earlier, you get to work on the silver lock. The tumblers click softly as you go, each sound loud in the otherwise silent room. Dean stood behind you, close enough to hear his steady breathing. Keeping an eye on the door, his hand resting lightly on the gun tucked into his waistband.

“Got it,” you whispered after what felt like an eternity. The safe door swung open, revealing stacks of gold bars that gleamed even in the dim light.

Dean let out a low whistle. “Now that’s a sight.”

You quickly began transferring the bars into the canvas bag Dean had brought, your heart pounding with a mix of excitement and fear. 

This plan of his had gone so smoothly, too damn smooth to be more accurate. 

Just as you finish zipping the bag, heart still hammering in your chest, a muffled voice barks from the hallway, “check the study!”

Dean’s jaw tightened as he reached for the gun tucked in his belt, but the door burst open before he could draw. Two guards stormed in, their guns trained on you both.

“Drop the bag,” one of them ordered, his eyes narrowing.

Your mind raced as Dean slowly raised his hands, palms out in mock surrender. His smirk returned, cool and steady, as if staring down the barrels of two guns was just a typical Thursday night for him.

“Well,” he drawled, his gaze sliding to you. “Guess now’s a good time to make a confession.”

Your stomach dropped. “Dean—”

“I mean, might as well, right?” he continued, cutting you off. His smirk softened into something maddeningly sincere, his eyes holding yours even as the guards barked for him to shut up. “You’re the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen. And if I were a better man, I’d have asked you on a proper date. Y’know, steak dinner and all that crap.”

You blinked, completely thrown, but before you could respond, Dean’s hand shot out, grabbing the desk lamp and hurling it at one of the guards. The heavy base struck him square in the face, and chaos erupted.

Dean didn’t hesitate. He ducked under the second guard’s arm, grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting it until the gun clattered to the floor. “Move!” he shouted at you, his voice sharp.

You didn’t need to be told twice. Snatching the bag, you bolted for the window, Dean hot on your heels. He shoved you ahead of him, glass shattering as you both tumbled through the opening and into the cool night air.

The shouts behind you were nearly drowned out by the pounding of your heart. Bullets whirl through the air, but Dean grabbed your hand, dragging you across the open yard and toward the safety of the rugged desert terrain ahead.

You didn’t stop running until the ranch was a distant glow behind you, your legs screaming in protest as you collapsed against a tree.

Dean slid down next to you, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. A laugh escaped him, soft and incredulous. “Hell of a night,” he muttered.

A wicked laughing fit hurls out of you through panting breaths, reeling from the cooling adrenaline icing your veins. “You really had me for a second, y’know,” you manage through heavy breathes, “d’you mean any of that? Or was it all just part of your plan?” 

Dean smirked, taking off his stetson to run a hand through his messy hair. “Which part?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” you teased, biting your lip in mock-deep thought. “The part about me being the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen? Or the bit about steak dinners?”

Dean chuckled, leaning his head back against the tree trunk, lazily tilting to peek down at you through his lashes, “I told you I wouldn’t lie to you, didn’t I?” He’s doing it again—that smug little smirk—a sweet boyish charm that tempts your nerves in the most unfamiliar way. 

You turn away from his gaze, settling your eyes on the bag in your lap and letting your hair fall around your face to cover the blush that’s creeping in. “Mhm,” you hum into the quiet between, “careful now, cowboy. I might just hold you to your word.”

He doesn’t answer, and you pretend there isn’t a slight twist straining your heart for half a beat. Quietly, he places his hat back on. Pressing into the ground, he rises to his feet with a huff. Dean extends a hand, his eyes scanning the distance as you take his offer. 

Boots kick up dirt as you walk side by side down the dusty terrain. And for a moment—in the quiet of the desert, with the bag of stolen gold between you, the danger of the heist morphed with the dawn settling in the horizon. A warm toned thing, burning at the edges of your cold exterior, new nerve endings bleeding light between your thoughts of Dean and the feelings he keeps insighting. 

Trudging on, the sheriff’s ranch is out of sight. The weight of the gold was growing heavier, hanging from your shoulder. But you’d be damned if you let him carry it, not when it felt like grasping some essence of control. 

“So,” you drawl, kicking at a red rock, “you looked like a real professional back there. How long’ve you been sniffing out trouble like this?”

Dean shrugs, burying his hands in his pockets as he considers his words. “Sorta spent my whole life in some type of trouble.” he states plainly, voice quieter as he continues, “Been on my own a couple of years, give or take. Found the type of trouble I like best in all that time.”

You glance up at him, his skin soaking up the orange light peeking over morning clouds. The warmth of the hue makes his eyes impossibly green. Like the cactuses zig zagging your path, sharp and rich in color. “You like it? Being on the road?”

“Yeah,” he sounds unsure, pausing with his lips parted, “Most of the time, I do. It’s… simple.” His hands return, moving with each word, “No strings, no one to answer to.” 

You hum back, nodding in agreement. It’s a sentiment you can agree with, the same idea you've convinced yourself of for much longer than just a couple years. 

“But,” he sighs, eyes flicking across the landscape, “I miss my brother, Sam.” The name makes a smile creep onto his lips as he mutters, mostly to himself, “m’little Sammy.” 

There’s a softness on the name that makes your chest ache, “Why don’t you go see him, then?”

Dean hesitates, jaw tightening, “not that simple.” He let out a low breath, running a hand over his chin. “I don’t even know where I’d start. And if I ever tried to show my face to my old man…” His voice trails off, the words tangling in a wide-eyed huff that says it all in one motion. 

You part your lips to reassure him, daring to give the advice of it’s-never-too-late to a soul you know won’t take it. But, before you could he hummed a low, dismissive note. 

“Anyways,” he quips, a lazy grin returning to his face, “look at me, turning into a regular chatterbox. This your doin’, pretty girl?” His eyes find yours, but the usual playfulness isn’t as prevalent as it has been all night. In its place is something dark, trying desperately to work its way out. 

A look you know better than to pry at. 

Leaning over to nudge his shoulder, you offer a small smile. “Maybe I’m just easy to talk to.”

Dean’s grin shifts into something softer, but he doesn't answer. With a deep inhale his chin is up in the air again, eyes looking at anything but you.

 A splotch of brown you both assumed to be more rugged desert hills comes into focus—a vacant ranch tucked between scattered fields of jagged trees and cacti. The barn had collapsed, its frame a shadow of what it once was, but the house stood stubbornly, its roof intact and its windows dark against the rising sun. 

Dean raised his brows, eyes glancing over, “looks cosy.”

You scoff, giving him a worried look, “if your idea of cozy is ‘haunted ranch on the hill’, sure it is.”

“Better than sleepin’ out in the dirt,” he shoots back, already heading for the porch. He spins on the heel of his boots as he walks backwards, “‘sides, darlin’, if there’s a ghost around I’ll keep you safe.” 

With a wink that works a giggle out of you, Dean jogs up the creaky steps and disappears into the run-down house. 

 The inside is covered in a layer of dust and dirt, but there’s furniture scattered around—a worn couch covered by a sheet sits in an otherwise empty space. A creaky dining table in the kitchen, where you plop the heavy bag of gold, a cloud of grey puffing around it. 

“Not too shabby,” Dean coos, coming down a set of weathered stairs. “Just an old mattress on the floor with, uh, minimal stains and a whole lotta dust. Looks like we’ve got options.” He crosses the creaky floor until his boots are inches from yours. A smirk shining down at you, as his voice finds that teasing tone again, “Unless, of course, you’re afraid of ghosts.” 

Your eyes roll at his taunts as you cross your arms. “Please. I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Uh, huh,” his brows furrow, lips twisting with contemplation as his eyes dance across the curves of your face.

“Yes, huh. Cross my heart.” You swear with a reassuring nod. 

His eyes fall to the couch, and then back to the stairs before they settle back to you. His thoughts written in the smirk on his lips. “Mattress is kinda gross, actually. Couch could fit two—”

You cut him off, throwing your palm up with a humph. “Look, Cowboy, I may look the type but it takes a whole lot more than a game of pool and stealing gold to get me all cozied up on a dusty ‘ol couch in the middle of the desert.”

Dean barks out a laugh, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, hey—’m not suggesting a thing, little miss.”

You arch your bows with a “mhm,” the faintest hint of a smile tugging at your lips. Dean follows as you walk into the living room, discarding the sheet and plopping onto the cushion with a sigh. The couch dips under Dean’s weight on the opposite end. A quiet set in for a moment, comfortable and as warm as the growing heat of the sunrise. 

“Will say, though,” Dean sighs, his thighs sprawling over the soft surface as he relaxes into the creaky furniture, “I’d be a gentleman—”

“Shut up.” you shoot back, unable to hide the laugh that slips between the words.

hmmmmm should they boink in the next part???? hmm hm hmm

tags <3 @the-fandoms-onceler @a1ecmcdowell @titsout4jackles

[dutiful-wildcraft]

Task Force 141 Music Headcannons

Price

-He has some significant influences from 70s/80s heavy metal, mostly influenced from his mum who was a rebellious metalhead (and a feral KISS fan) herself, but toned down her partying when John was born. That didn't stop her from showing him the good stuff. 

-John’s earliest memories are of him and his mother going on roadtrips, radio blaring. His mom giving him little music “tests,” urging John to guess the artists of the song before they ended. Being so proud of him when he got them right.  His mom had a huge stereo system, an outrageously pricey thing compared to the rest of their meager home. It could play both CD’s and tapes and it was his mom’s pride and joy. 

-They had “cleaning” days where they would deep clean the house. Taking turns between swapping songs as they danced and dusted. A trend that extended well into his teenage years until he joined up.

-John would later pick up more thrash and progressive metal influences from his older CO’s and later by his own team. John is a radio kind of man, and other than the stuff he got from his mum he doesn't bother much with collecting, but he usually can find a radio station or two that plays what he likes. He still blares music when he cleans or works out.  

-John also dips into a bit of blues, folk and country.  He’s fond of the acoustic elements, it’s easy listening and some of them tell a good story.  

-Absolutely owned a “Frampton Comes Alive” CD. 

-Price was a bit petty about it at first, but the rest of the 141’s music tastes aren’t terrible…he still shoves the foam earplugs in on the truck ride home once Soap gets ahold of the aux cord. Though it gives him one hell of a laugh to see Soap cut a rug.  

-Gaz downloaded a huge playlist for the man and crammed it on his phone. Price was tickled pink over the selections, and now this is the only mix he fusses with, throwing it on shuffle and letting it play while he smokes and does his paperwork. 

-Man actually loves to dance, he doesn't just bop around like Soap does but he will take you by the hand and groove a bit with you. He loves to feel a warm body moving with his, letting the music move them together. This is actually how he woo’s ladies at the bar. A bit of liquid courage, and smooth song. He has someone giggling in his arms in no time. 

Soap

-His library is mostly made up of funk/groove metal, metalcore, pop, disco and electronic. He can party to really anything really, he just loves anything that is fast. Something that has a bounce to it.  There is never a wrong setting for this. Has nearly slipped and busted his head open having a one man mosh in the shower.  

-Used to have several piercings, his tongue and eyebrow namely, as well as a couple more pieces in his ears and nipples. They unfortunately had to go when he joined up. But he will still throw the earrings in when it's time to party. Some thicker captive bead earrings from where he had them stretched just the slightest. 

-He's actually pretty solid with a guitar. Doesn’t talk about it because it makes him feel like a douche. But he and his friends did have shitty garage band as teenagers. (Anyway..here's Wonderwall).

-Tries to keep it heavier when hangin with the boys but don't buy his tough guy bullshit, the next song is Madonna. His shuffle will give you whiplash. 

-He and Gaz vibe the most, both crowding into the front seats to put on a concert the whole ride. Having a jam session while they cook together or having heated arguments on whether something is a cover or not (Gaz is always right). 

Gaz

-The most eclectic out of all of them. Pretty similar to Soap, he tends to gravitate toward alt rock/indie, r&b, pop, and psychedelic. While he enjoys the upbeat electronic stuff that Soap enjoys, he prefers the groove. Something a bit slower and well…sexier.  

-He is actually pretty knowledgeable (special interest you could say) about music. The man is like an encyclopedia for music. Can name songs by the first 2 seconds alone. He is a menace on trivia nights for this reason. 

-Has started collecting records in his free time. He has favorites sure, but sometimes he'll just snag a few with interesting covers and give them a spin. He has found some gems this way…and also some straight *trash*. These songs have turned into memes between he and Soap.

-Makes playlists as a love language.

-Always trusted as the trip DJ, takes his job very seriously and considers all his teams tastes to carefully weave a mix everyone can vibe too. 

-Sung in the church choir as a kid, absolutely hated every minute of it. He was always the star of the christmas cantatas until he quit going as a teen.

-He and his sisters would have knock down drag out fights over the sole CD player they had as kids. Genuinely can't stand boy bands due to his big sisters obsession with them at the time. (The shit was on repeat for months.)

Ghost

-absolutely uses the balaclava to hide a earbud when he's just doing paperwork in his office.

-It's his ritual after an op. Simon pops his earbuds in, leans his head back and rests. You don't talk to Simon during this time. He'll take them out when he's ready to talk. 

-He also keeps one in while on leave, focusing on his music in the grocery or doing mundane errands. But just one earbud, he keeps the other out to listen for anything sus.

-Simon's music is pretty precious to him, and something he's actually pretty protective of. He never listened to his music out loud, even kept it turned down low with his headphones to prevent any accidental overhearing. 

-He picked up a lot from his brother that he used as a springboard after that. Lyrics that gave him goosebumps, words for feelings he could never articulate. To him, there was music for anything. Anger, sadness, elation. 

-Simon Riley who's favorite past time was rooting through old used CD's with his big brother at old video rental shops.

-Tommy who would usher him into the bathroom, putting big clunky headphones over his ears to block the sounds of their father's abuse. Clicking play and mouthing a “Stay here” as he clicked the door shut behind him. 

-Simon Riley who scrawled his favorite lyrics onto the soles of old dingey converse. Colored them into the skin of his forearms in a mock up of the tattoos he would later get.

-And he would, Gaz finds them later, inky poetry weaved into the images along his arms, and on his collar. He subtly looks up the words later. Smiling as lyrics of old grungey 90s songs fill his screen. 

-Tool enjoyer, literally just plays the albums start to finish, he is actually really fond of the instrumentals

BONUS!! Alex

-very similar to Price though he leans away from some of the heavier stuff. He loves the easy yacht rock type vibes with some classic rock. As well as some 90s and outlaw country. 

-He is an absolute crooner when he’s drunk. He actually has a gorgeous singing voice, low and rich, reminiscent of Tracy Lawrence.

-He does know the dance to Copperhead Road, tried to teach Farah who does not have rhythm to save her life. 

Actual Playlists

Price Soap Gaz Ghost Alex

I'll be adding to all these mixes as time passes, I would love to hear what you have in mind too <3

[risuola]

ENTRY #11 ♡ F. READER X GOJO SATORU // I starve for your touch yet fear to savor it.

contents: arranged marriage!au, nudity, reader discretion is advised — wc. 1690

a/n: there was no way i wouldn't write a fic based on this picture. just no way.

series masterlist

Satoru loves to sleep naked.

The beauty of his innate technique, the blessing that he mastered to no end, has stripped him off one of the most basic human needs — touch. He wasn’t missing it that much, he thought, but there was something in letting go of everything and allowing himself to be wrapped in the silky layers of bedsheets that made his body crave the feeling.

He has always picked expensive garments, the ones with soft fabrics and luxurious feel, despite everyone telling him it’s unreasonable to spend so much on a shirt or a pair of trousers, but to him, it did matter. To him, that was the only thing touching his body when a thin layer of infinity effectively forced everything else back. To Satoru, touch was forbidden, threatening. It was a vulnerability that he, the strongest, couldn’t afford.

But that until he’s met you. Until he’s married you.

You were one of not many people he’s made an exception for. You were able to touch him whenever you wanted because the protective surface of endless matter let you in. Because he himself altered his technique to make you capable of laying your hands on his body.

He longed for your touch. So soft, and delicate, and warm. He craved more of it and yet, despite being shameless and confident, he has not allowed himself to sleep bare even once since the day you and him were bound by the knot of matrimony. It would cross boundaries he wasn’t sure you’d wish to cross; it would make you uncomfortable, awkward maybe — and he liked the way your relationship looked like now. He liked the late evenings you talked quietly, alone and intimate in the warm embrace of sheets and your own house.

For you, he let go of the way he used to sleep before because you were worth the sacrifice, but now, you were gone for few days. You were sent on a mission away from Tokyo and the hours Satoru spent alone in bed, thinking of nothing more but your fingertips on top of his skin, made him desperate — and so, he allowed himself the comfort of soft cotton and silk.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You were tired. Exhausted even, by the intense fight you had to pull through, by the uncomfortable nights spent in the dingy hotel room, by the humid weather and rains. In moments like this, there was nothing you envied more in the world than your husband’s ability to warp from one place to another, but you got lucky. Incredibly so, because Ijichi offered you a ride home two days earlier than you were supposed to head back and you thanked all gods and devils for that man’s kindness. He was willing to put on some more road just to get you home.

“Thank you so, so much, Ijichi,” you kissed his cheek — a ghost of a peck that made him all red and steamy and you felt giddy for a moment, seeing the tips of his ears turn crimson. Adorable. You liked him, he was dutiful, polite, trustworthy and constantly terrorized by your husband, so you were determined to at least be the Gojo he likes.

“You’re very welcome,” he mumbled and fixed the frames on the bridge of his nose, pushing them up with the tip of his pointer finger. “Have a good rest.”

“You too, Ijichi.”

Then, he was gone and you were stepping into the house with a deep sense of relief washing over you. Home sweet home. If you were to guess, it was most likely somewhere around 4 am, way too early for anyone to be up — especially your husband — so you gave it your all to stay as quiet as possible. The sun was just showing its first rays from way below the horizon line, crawling up with golden hues and breaking the nightly, navy darkness.

On your toes you moved across the house. It seemed as if Gojo was spending his time alone quite ordinarily — you saw a modest stack of empty takeout boxes, much less humble pile of candy wrappers and his uniform jacket thrown over the couch backrest, along with few other little items that you struggled to differentiate in the nocturnal haze.

You put down your bag, hung up your coat and pushed off the shoes. Ghosting your way towards the bathroom, you were desperate to wash away the combat residuals. You lathered up the shower gel in a rush, desperate to rest and sleep in the comfort of your own bed and then, wrapped in the towel, you tippy-toed to the bedroom, but—

“Came back earlier?”

—you truly didn’t expect to be met with a sight like this. Your husband was awake, just barely, most likely awaken by the water running in the bathroom. His eyes were closed, hidden underneath his forearm and shielded from the lights that were slowly creeping inside, between the dark curtains and onto his face. His body seemed relaxed between the sheets. The softest, gentlest lines of golden glimmer that painted its patterns over his uncovered chest and leg, his hip and one of the muscular arms. The duvet was covering less than half of him, hiding a part of his stomach, the other leg and—

“You’re staring.”

Satoru didn’t even have to look at you to know that your gaze was lingering on his frame. On his very, very naked frame, just barely concealed by the comforter.

“Sorry,” you mumbled, feeling the heat creeping up your cheeks and reaching the tips of your ears and you thanked the darkness for hiding it away. You walked around the bed, hoping to find your pajama where you left it and trying to force your head out of the gutter. You heard your husband letting out a deep exhale and then, a soft hum. His voice was as melodic as always, though you could tell how much sleepiness was laced into it.

Satoru should’ve notice you when you entered the area of your house, but he didn’t. Tired by his own job, by the classes and all of the meetings, he allowed himself to lower his guard and when he realized you’re home, he contemplated for a moment getting up and dressed, but he just didn’t want to.

“You’re exhausted, screw pajamas, just come here,” he said before he managed to think twice about it. It was a daring offer, inappropriate even and he opened his mouth to apologize for it, but then, you rendered him speechless.

Your weight felt good on top of him. You lay your body over his own with feathery gentleness and carefully maneuvered your way to rest on his chest completely. The touch of your skin flush to his own made his brain to short circuit, it felt divine, too good to be true and just so very right, he couldn’t say a word.

“Is that alright?” You asked quietly, pressing your ear right above his heart and letting out a breath that you held for a little too long. Your face felt hot, you were flushed and flustered but also oddly at ease with the current position and you wondered for a moment if it was the tiredness that made you so bold.

“More than that,” he replied, pulling the covers to hide you beneath them. He allowed one of his arms to snake around your waist and his lips to kiss the top of your head. “Rest. Sleep well, wifey.”

“Good night.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

10:19 AM

Satoru thought he was dreaming, but the weight on top of him felt too real. The soft scent of citrusy shower gel that lingered on your skin filled in his lungs each time he took a breath in and there was a tickle, he realized — every time his chest raised, a strand of your hair seemed to be moving against his jawline. You were not a dream.

He opened his eyes, blinking few times, adjusting them to the bright light that forced its way into the bedroom and then, he looked at you. You were still very deep asleep, he could tell based off the long inhales you were taking, slow and relaxed, fanning against his peck rhythmically. Your body was mostly on top of him, you were on his chest, your leg was between his and only your hips were resting on the bed. He still had his arm around you, as if making sure you were as close as possible.

It felt incredible. Intimate. It was everything he could have wished for. A touch, skin to skin, so intense it almost took his breath away. He felt nauseous at the thought, realizing that it’s the first time in his life, he’s that close to someone. So impossibly close that just a little bit more and you’d become a part of him. His heartbeat quickened.

It was so right. So awfully correct and at the same time, so very threatening. He felt helpless. Vulnerable. He was at your mercy, he was robbed of everything what made him the strongest, because at this very moment, he was bare. Uncovered before you, wrapped in an embrace that felt loving, that felt soothing, addicting, but if you only wished to hurt him, you’d—

You moved, shifting your weight a little bit, adjusting the position and the way your hand run down his side made him shiver. A soft sound escaped your throat when you let out a deeper exhale. He felt your fingers squeezing the flesh above his hip and then, you relaxed again.

“Your heart is beating so fast,” you whispered, not bothering to open your eyes, and Satoru held his breath. “Relax…”

And he chuckled. His chest vibrated below your ear and the adorable sound of displeasure you let out made him lose all of the tension. He turned, twisting his body inside your embrace to face you fully and he squeezed you with both of his arms, pulling you close. So impossibly close, and you whimpered, suddenly enclosed in a tight hold of your husband’s limbs. That was it for your sleep.

You could get used to it.

taglist: @kinny-away @anan-baban @lotomber @netflix-imagines @kawliflo @nishloves @ghostfacefricker6969 @thejujvtsupost @yozora7154 @cherrycolabarbedwirebedpost @stuckinmoilalaland @ae-mius @ropickle @chokesonspit @lansy-4 @mo0sin @just-pure-trash @foliea @bakarinnie @big-booty-joe

[yeyinde]

bos taurus | dogmeat series pt., i

mafia butcher Simon Riley x Reader

You don't question your brother when he sends you to drop off packages to his friends, but when the enforcer for the 141 shows up to teach the small-time dealer selling on their turf a lesson, you realize there are different ways to pay someone back with pounds of flesh.

(OR: your brother owes them, and Ghost is content to let you settle the debt. after all, if you wanted freedom, then you shouldn't have caught the eye of the butcher of the 141, should you?)

18+ SMUT. noncon. objectification. marking. kidnapping. threats of violence. unsafe sex (manipulation into unprotected sex). rough sex. size difference. breathplay. 10k of foreplay. light pussy slapping. overstimulation. mafia au.

SERIES MASTERLIST | AO3

The goal is to be as quick and discreet as possible. 

In and out, he says, looping the baggie around his index finger. Inside, a snowfall of white powder settles at the bottom. 

Meth this time. Oxytocin the last. 

He ties it tight before giving the bag a quick shake, breaking up the clumps. Satisfied with the way it looks, he turns toward you. Levels you with a sombre look, the picture of a concerned older brother. 

You almost fall for it. Believe it. But the clouded, flat edge to his gaze undercuts his worry for what it really is. A farce. 

“And if it seems sketchy—”

—run.

But your knees are locked, soles glued to the pavement. You can't move even though everything is screaming at you to flee. 

The problem, maybe, is that there's nowhere to go. Escape cut off, filled by a body, a man—even though the idea, the mere notion, of thinking this behemoth as human, flesh and bone; blood and tissue, is laughable when he's so clearly a beast. A monster. 

He fills up your field of vision. Your line of sight was eclipsed by the thickness of his waist, the broad expanse of his shoulders. Thighs that are as wide as the trunk of a tree. Arms boxing you in. A prison of obsidian. A black shadow. 

In the panic that surfaces, surging to the top like an oil spill, you catch a pocket where he doesn't root. A small alcove between the bend of his elbow and the slot of his knee perched against the wall. Enough room for you to—

“Wouldn't do tha’ if I were you.” 

His voice seems to shake the earth, rolling out of his broad chest like the low, brassy roar of a lion; a rumbling thunderclap. 

You feel sick—

The leather covering his hand is cold when it closes around your arm, grip tight. Bruising. Trapping you with just the slightest effort. 

“Go’ a problem, you and I,” he starts, and it's almost conversational. Might be, perhaps, if the clean, sleek outline of his gun inside the unclasped holster around his ungodly thick waist wasn't threatening you more than the grip he has on your arm. “How do you reckon we can fix it?”

You have a meagre twenty dollars in your pocket. Less money for them to take if things go awry. If they decide that the little girl standing in for her older brother was an easier target to rob—money and drugs—than to settle things fairly. Money, goods. Hand over hand. 

Just like the movies, he'd said. 

Just like the movies, you think when he leans in closer, bulk swallowing you whole. 

There is a pockmark in the corner of his crooked, misshapen nose and the crease of his eye. A scar, maybe. It's circular—almost perfectly so; a silver-pink moon on the angular ridge of his nose. Uneven, craggy, like crumpled printer paper. 

It looks almost like—

You think of the mark on your arm. Soot-stained. The smell of burning hair, tissue. The searing pain. 

“I–I can pay you—” you stammer out, tearing your gaze away from the ugly mark on his skin. A cigarette burn. It makes you shudder. 

He cocks his head slowly like a big, dumb dog, but there's something eerie in the ink spill of his eyes. The soft matte of a saltwater crocodile staring at you from beneath the murk. Calculative. Hungry. 

“Pay me?” He echoes slowly, dragging the words out mockingly. “D’you know ‘ow much trouble your brother is in? For sellin’ ‘ere of all places?” 

“No,” you swallow. It feels like your heart is stuck inside your throat. “I–I just—”

“Run ‘is errands,” he finishes cruelly but you can't deny it. “Ain't you a good little sister? Almost makes me wish I ‘ad somethin’ as sweet as you f’myself growin’ up.”

You don't answer. He doesn't seem to be looking for one, really; just empty words to fill space. To echo in your head, barbed wire around any sense of comfort you might have felt. Punishing cruelty. 

He has the upper hand, it says. He's the one who makes derisive jokes while you tremble in his grasp, and try to make yourself as small, as unassuming, as possible. Hiding from the predator in plain sight. Hoping he passes you over for something bigger, more calorie-dense; the effort to catch and consume you expends more energy than the return. Hardly worth it in the long run. The comfort of a risk-reward ratio, right?

But he's opportunistic, it seems. A snacking scavenger. 

Could eat, it says, like a basking tiger keeping a mouse trapped between his paws, letting it squirm and squeak as he slowly licks his lips. Not enough to fill its belly but enough to satisfy the gluttonous urge a predator has to eat. Sharpening its teeth on flimsy bones. Child’s play. 

It's a fitting image, especially with the way he arches over you, looms; fingers looped around the thick of your arm, holding firm, but not—

Not as tight as he could. 

It's a loose-fisted grasp. Lazy, almost. He knows you won't run—or, at the very least, knows you won't get far. 

You peel your gaze away from his, dropping it to the curve of his shoulders—the width of them is just as dizzying as his height; broad, muscular. Pulling it further down the length of his arm, covered in a thick jacket. Black corduroy. Ashes stain the cuffs. A bulky watch juts out from his wrist. Gold. Glinting even in the grey-blue gloom of an overcast evenfall. 

His muscles tense. Hand tightening around your arm, fingers digging hard. Rubbing muscle painfully against bone. 

A warning, maybe. Stop looking—

But something else catches your eye. Blood red. The colour of meat. A fresh kill. 

The back of his hand has a blooming rose. Petals spread out, unfurled. In the middle, a milky skull sits. Stencilled in boxy, yellow letters is ONE-FOUR-ONE—

You know what it means even as your mind whirs, gears turning, turning; plummeting into a tailspin, making excuses as it falls, dragging your heart down alongside it. An area code. Some special date. An inside joke. 

But you've seen the marking around town before. Heard whispers about them from your brother, his friends. 141, they say, and then: mafia. 

The real deal, he said, puffing around a joint his friend rolled. It's too tight. He scoffs, and rips it out from between his lips. Shitty roll, man, make another one—

Mob. Mafia. Gangsters. It seemed so extreme, Hollywood. Fiction, fantasy, all rolled into one. Tony Soprano. Ralph Cifaretto. Michael and Vito Corleone. Tony Montana. Larger-than-life men created on paper. 

You think your brother thought so too. Child's play. Grown men selling weed to kids for two hundred an ounce. Buying themselves sleek, black cars—G Wagons, Escalades, Cullinans—on the Xanax they sell at clubs, parties. Cocaine. Heroin. 

Nothing to worry about. 

Then his friend went missing. 

Sent out on a routine delivery to drop off cocaine to well-dressed men in suits outside of a local butcher shop. A normal, nondescript Tuesday. 

But he wouldn't answer his phone. Texts were being delivered, read, but no chat bubble appeared. Nothing sent back. Calls went straight to voicemail. He wasn't at home. Wasn't at his mum's. No one saw him. Heard from him. 

Your brother didn't call the police. Didn't report him as missing. 

It's just not what they do, he said. You don't involve them. Ever. 

The most shocking part of it was that no one saw anything. He just vanished. Disappeared—stock an’ all, your brother angrily spits—without a trace, picked up off the streets. 

If it was the police, someone would have said something by now. They're hardly discreet. And a rival—

Well.

The biggest problem was that your brother was blindsided by his own small-time success. An accumulation of little wins bolstered his confidence. Overfed his ego. This fallout was tunnel vision. A refusal to see the bigger picture. 

Or the storm clouds looming on the horizon. 

You'd heard of the 141 in passing. Little quips, anecdotes from the passel of friends that congregated around your brother—often getting high on the couch and watching old cartoons; sharing a joint back and forth between gossip. 

Through rheumy eyes, they'd talk about the real gangsters in town—much to the irritation of your brother—and swap tales of run-ins and feats they heard from a friend (of a friend, of a friend). Most of the guys were known already. Soap and Gaz are the biggest names that cropped up on the streets through reputation alone. Both fighters for a gym. MMA, mostly, but whispers of street fighting and extracurricular activities weren't uncommon. 

Liked the thrill of it, they said. But the worst was a man simply known as the Ghost. An enforcer for the 141—a fucking butcher, more like, Liam cut in, jaundiced eyes widening—the guy who took care of problems. 

“Can't be,” your brother scoffed, lifting off the couch to reach in his back pocket for his wallet. A small anthill of white powder poured into the glass table. “They don't get involved in our shit—”

And for the most part, you're sure that's true. Dealing to the same circle of people—outreach spread through word of mouth—seemed paltry in comparison to the scale of an operation that had a money laundering gym. But the problem was that your brother lacked common sense. His ego often got in the way of foresight. The shadow greed casts blocking out the bigger picture. 

Like—

Territory is territory—regardless of what's being pushed. 

You wish there was a modicum of surprise when his friend turned up. Barely recognizable. Sent right to the morgue as a John Doe. 

Most would see the marks on the man's skin—the distinct lack of blood—as an indicator to abandon ship, find the boss, beg for forgiveness, and maybe even try to strike up a deal. But—

That picture is hidden under his anger. Greed. Selfishness. 

He sends you instead. 

You're somethin’ they ain't expectin’, he said. Won't mess with you.

Right. 

He catches the realisation dripping down your brow—beads of sweat gathering at your hairline; anxiety, fear, churning your stomach—and hums. Cocks his head to the side. 

“Was expectin’ ‘im t’show up, though—” he murmurs, hand tightening around your arm. The pressure, the sting, is eclipsed by the gnawing sense of dread biting viciously into you. “Told ‘im if I caught ‘im sellin’ on our streets again, there'd be trouble. Thought we ‘ad an agreement after ‘is friend. But—”

His eyes cut to yours. It feels like a knife to your guts, sinking into soft tissue. A pain you can't breathe around. 

Won't mess with you, you think, and then viciously—sadly—he knew. Was warned by them and still sent you out. Let you take his place for whatever comeuppance they decided he deserved. 

It should shock you. You almost wish it did. Desperately clinging to the threads of surprise that slip through your oily fingers, grasping onto the nothing but empty air. Numbed to the resignation that trickles in. 

Of course he would leave you here to save himself. Letting you fend off whatever they threw at you alone. Leaving you trapped between a brick wall and a wall of a man. 

The excuses are there. They pool on the tip of your tongue—it isn't me, don't do this, it's my (stupid, selfish) brother you want, not me—but you swallow them down and try not to wince at how quickly they dissipate when you do. It doesn't matter in the end because whatever you have to say won't negate the drugs in your backpack. The empty house you'll lead them to—your brother probably squirrelled away somewhere until this blows over. Half-hopeful you'd call him and say everything is fine, the deal went smoothly. You're on your way back. Or that the debt he racked up with them is settled by you. 

It's half-hearted when it slips out again, caught between resignation and dread. A brittle whisper. A prayer—

“I can pay you. Whatever he owes, I can—”

He's already shaking his head. 

“Too late for that, birdie. ‘sides, I don't want your money.”

He moves back, rocking on his heels to put a small measure of distance between your bodies. In that scant space, he drops his gaze, sweeping it over you. His eyes darken.

When he pivots them down, catching yours, you can't stop the shiver that crawls up your spine. 

That calculative gleam is back. 

“But I think we can work something else out.”

Something else turns out to be ushering you into the backseat of an old Ford pickup. 

The door whines when he opens it. Rust flaking off, falling to the ground by your feet. Your mind reels. Spins comparisons to falling snow, dried blood. 

He hauls you in with his hand wrapped around the nape of your neck, thick thigh sliding between your own to boost you up. The protest—a mindless, reactionary squeal at being manhandled—only makes him chuff. A brief flex of his fingers around the skin of your neck is the only warning he gives before it pulls away, and wraps tight around your waist. His thigh flexes, muscle drawing taut as he shifts his foot up to the running board, lifting your feet off the ground and seating you fully on his leg like a child.

(In his hands, you feel like one, too.)

The motion makes you slip, back glueing along his broad chest with a shallow thump. You feel the rumble of his laugh trembling up your spine before you hear it. 

“Careful,” he drawls, oiled with amusement. “Might slip.”

Anything you could say in response is choked back when he bumps the corded steel of his thigh into the seam of your legs, pushing tight to your clothed cunt. His intention is unmistakable this time. Unignorable. And with the rasp of filtered, balmy air against your crown; the pull of a groan when you rock back into his groin, the noise still slicked with mirth, you feel a knot of dread spool tight in your belly. 

Something else is dragged back to the forefront, coiling like wisps of smoke around you. 

And you knew. It's shocking, you think, but not necessarily a surprise. To call it a dichotomy would be lying to yourself, and so, you settle against it. This notion that what he wants—wanted—is flesh. Not money. Not retribution. 

Not to talk things out like you'd hoped he’d try (grabbing onto the idealistic thread, holding it tight to your chest); bringing you in and forcing you to convince your—stupid selfish greedy—older brother that quitting was the only option. Dangling you—baby sister—over his head in an appeal to his emotions. Familial bonds. Love. 

That thread is cut. Snipped. 

Probably severed when they first came to him with an offer. No strikes against him and yet—

The idea of using you to make him bend was expunged from the drawing board. It's not even a plan b, or c, or z. 

And—

You knew. Have known. Maybe that's why it's so easy to swallow around the panic when it lances through your chest, climbs up your throat. You can think and feel and breathe around this dagger in your back like it was there the whole time and you've only just noticed it now. 

Nothing but a small, whispered oh in the roiling polyphony of your emotions. 

It sits there as he manuevers you into the passenger seat of his truck, your head spinning around the indescribable sensation of being woefully cognisant despite the paralysing fugue pressing against the bubble of stark awareness that keeps it at bay. It manifests itself as a numbed sort of shock. Or more accurately—

Indifference. 

Defeat. 

His hand brushes your cheek, the snag of dry leather against humid skin tugs uncomfortably at your flesh, stinging as they dance down to your jaw, the delicate line of your vulnerable throat, skimming over the curve of your breast—

And it's too much. Too present. Too real. 

Autopilot. Dissociation. Derealisation. All of these concepts slip past the bubble of hypervigilance, skidding the surface like a pebble thrown over a lake. Out of reach as he unashamedly gropes you, barely making an effort to mask his actions as just buckling you in. 

You pretend, though. Curl your fists around the sides of the seat, fingers digging into the worn foam. Head lulling back on the headrest. Eyes fixed out the window as he walked around the front, head and shoulders still visible in the windshield despite the height of the truck. It makes your heart leap, stuttering in your chest as the absurdity of his size is brought back into focus. Too big, you think. Grossly so. 

There's a moment when you think about running. Toying with the idea of sliding your hand over the lock, pulling the door open when he's too busy on his side to notice. It'll give you an advantage—a head start. Enough time to slink through the dense forest of concrete buildings lining the industrial zone, and into somewhere safe. Help, a behemoth is chasing me—

But the door clicks. Swings open with a squeal of rusted metal just as your fingers twitch toward the handle. Hope evaporates with each lurch of the cab as he climbs inside, metal creaking under his weight when he settles in the seat. 

From the corner of your eye, you can see his head tip. Chin angling toward you. Staring. Assessing. 

When he speaks, you feel the words like cold fingers dancing maliciously down your spine. 

“‘pected you t’run.” 

It's said idly enough. Nonchalant. Tone even, if a little cruel, and you wonder if this is some test. One that you passed—and failed—in equal measure. 

He doesn't look away. It takes less effort than you wish it did to peel your lips apart, to breathe in the stale, mulch scent of the cab—something overgrown, rotting, and damp—and mumble:

Where would I go?

It seems to amuse him. He hums around a mouthful of mockery before turning away, pawing at the ignition. Gloved hand curling over the wheel. 

“Smart girl.”

You don't feel very smart. In fact, you feel very small. Stupid. Maybe you should have taken a stab at it—running. Tried, at least, to save your own life before the jaws of the beast closed over you like an iron bear trap around your ankle. Fought like hell. Clawed and kicked and screamed. 

When most kids read the back of a cereal box, you learned about secondary locations. You know better than this. 

But the truck sputters to life in a belly-deep rumble, hacking up soot into the air as he pulls the lever into DRIVE. The fight inside of you—however ephemeral it might have been—dies inside the smoke spilling out of his exhaust. Gone so quickly that you begin to wonder if it was even there at all—

Must be, you think, eyes listing outward. Keen. Mapping the twists and turns—a futile effort in the end: he doesn't bother hiding where he's taking you, and you've been down these old, grim streets more times than you can count. 

It doesn't surprise you much when he turns down the street leading to the butcher shop. An old relic that still carries the marks of a booming farming town before it fell victim to industrialisation. Concrete skyscrapers in place of lush cornfields. Warehouses over old barns, ranches. Cattle, meat, produce—it all used to be a mainstay here but now hides under layers of steel. 

The dark windows of the small shop gleam with hazy smears of neon blue, red, when you pull up, catching on the array of rowdy bars across the street. All clubs that belong to the 141. A playground of drugs, sex. More money than you'd ever see in your lifetime. 

It's an uncanny juxtaposition to the quiet, assuming street right across from it. Barber, butcher, accountant firm, antique store. All dark inside and bathed in the smeared stream of glimmering neon as lights flash in the fading glow of twilight. 

He pulls up to the curb in front of the shop. A bold move if the streets weren't so empty. Lifeless. The clubs won't be open for four more hours. Everything else follows the same nine to five as the rest of the world. The shops closed an hour ago, and everyone in town seems to know not to linger here after dark. 

The air seems to stagnate in your lungs when he cuts the ignition. Slips the key into his pocket. 

“Don't get any funny ideas in tha' pretty little ‘ead o’yours.” 

“Funny ideas,” you echo, toneless. Flat. It rolls out with your exhale. Words that might have been smarter to swallow down. “Like following a stranger to a butcher shop?” 

“Lippy little thing, ain't you?” He scoffs. The truck creaks when he shifts. “Ain't go’ no one t’blame but yourself. Told you what would ‘appen if you kept sellin’ in our territory. You should ‘ave known better.”

“That was my brother.” The words slip out before you can stop them. “Not me—”

“‘ow am I suppose t’know that? You were sellin’ where I told ‘im not to—” he has the gall to shrug. Spit these careless words at you like it wasn't life or death. “That's all there is to it, birdie.”

“That's not fair—”

The truck groans under his weight, shaking from side to side as he leans over to push his door open before turning back to you, rolling his eyes. 

“Life ain't very fair, is it?” 

The acerbic words are flicked out from between his teeth; an apathetic, droning curl clinging to each syllable. He doesn't care. Won't. What happens to you next is your choice, and yours alone. 

And he's just doing his job—

“When I get out of ‘ere, you ain't gonna do anythin’ funny—”  

His hand lashes out. Gloved fingers close over the thick of your throat in a blink. Fear lags by a beat, giving him enough time to sink his fingers over your neck, and when it catches up—heart rabbiting in your chest, thudding in your ears; roaring as your pulse thunders beneath the press of his thumb—he’s already got you in his hold. The width forces your chin to lift, stretching up to accommodate the curl of his hand around you. 

Trapped like a rabbit. Cattle to the slaughter. 

He tilts his head down, keeping his eyes on yours as he forces your crown into the headrest, chin lifted up. It's uncomfortable. The curve of your neck cuts off your airways. Constricts your breathing to shallow gasps. An ache grows in your nape. 

The swell of panic, fear, in your eyes makes him hum. But there's nothing echoing back. An absence of light in the deep, placid pits. It looks like still water. A stagnant lake. 

It's unnerving how dispassionately expressive his eyes are. Wild, wild. Vats of ink. Pools of obsidian. Ringed in red-lined ivory. Long, ashen lashes dusting over the smears of charcoal under his eyes. Sleepless nights, maybe. Fatigue. The corners are tattooed with coal, leaving behind a thumbprint in the crease. 

But empty. Barren. No light.

Like black holes. Eating everything around it. Devouring all that gets too close, but giving nothing in return except a bottomless crater in the bruised-plum nebulous of space around it. 

You're not sure you like it. You can't look away. 

But in staring back so hard (getting pulled in deeper and deeper), you catch the twitch in his left eye. A shallow spasm. It throws off the symmetry when he blinks, one eye a sliver of a second behind. Desynchronized in a way that seems so—

Unlike him. 

Disjointed. 

You blink in response. Perfectly synchronous. 

His lid twitches again. Just once. Brief. Pale, pink eyelids drop, unveiling a nebula of indigo veins on the smooth, thin surface as they roll down to half-mast over his eyes, now narrowed slightly in contemplation. Thought. 

Whatever is happening in his head can't be good. It causes a ripple over the lake. Little rings rebound outwards. 

He looks away first. A quick slide of his eyes to the corners, glancing out of the passenger side window. Whatever catches his attention is unknown to you. The anchor on his hand around your throat keeps you still. Immovable.

(Every instinct in your body compels you not to look away from him because nothing outside could ever be scarier, more dangerous, than him.)

A second later, he breathes in through his nose. The fabric of his mask is pulled into his nostrils from the force, forming little black holes under the crooked arch. 

You hadn't really given much thought to his appearance outside of big, massive. But there's a strange asymmetry to the slopes and valleys beneath the balaclava. Trying to map his face, fill in the blanks with just black cloth and vague, lopsided outlines, is impossible. There are too many gaps. Too many missing pieces. You can only wonder, then, what he looks like under it. 

Monstrous, you hope. 

It's just a coincidence that he looks at you the moment the thought passes, but you flinch like a naughty child getting caught doing something you shouldn't when the heavy, dour weight of his impenetrable stare is levelled at you once more. Your heart stutters. It's loud in your ears. In the truck. 

You wonder if he can hear it just as loudly as you do—

Another blink, and his gaze flickers down, settling on the gap between your lips, watching the little tremble they make with each shallow hiccup of air you greedily suck in. His head tilts to the side, eyes never leaving your mouth even as he leans down, masked lips brushing over the beading sweat gathering on your hairline. 

It's a brief touch. A taste. You tremble when he pulls back, fingers tightening around your flesh. 

His eyes are lavascapes.  

“Are you, birdie?” 

You almost forget what he's asking. The conversation hidden between the scant beats it took for him to measure your worth with the blistering intensity of his stare, and the tumult of your feelings still looping around each other in your belly. Knotting up tight into a ball. There's fear, of course there is. 

But the rest—

You'd rather not think about. 

The grip on your throat eases just enough for you to shake your head no to whatever he is asking. Doing anything funny, you think, scrambling at the tangle of memories flipping past, trying to connect the pieces to a puzzle you've already forgotten. 

It must be the right response. Or maybe it's another question like before, a test where there’s no right answer. 

Run, stay. 

Smart and stupid. 

But it seems to appease him—marginally. His eyes crease. Tightening. His other hand folds over your throat, sliding until his palms kiss the sides of your neck in a near-perfect symmetry. 

Something frissons across the blank, placid lake of his expression. Another ripple. A shudder. He leans in for a moment, nose touching the apple of your cheek, and when he breathes in, it’s sharp, reedy. Cold air ghosts over your skin. Long, pale lashes flutter when you swallow. 

He hums quietly under his breath before peeling back. The flatness to his gaze is back; a cold, impenetrable distance widening like a chasm as he uncoils around you. You almost fall for this—this indifference. An icy nonchalance. But you've been eating the minuscule quirks of him just as ravenously as he's been devouring yours. 

There is something there. A fracture, maybe. A splinter. 

But what leaks through from the other side isn't anything close to warmth. It's—

Hunger. 

The shift in your throat draws his molten gaze to your neck, still wrapped tight in his firm grip. Your reflection blooms in the vat of black; eyes wide, all white. Pupils narrowed to a pinprick. Mouth slack, corners tugging downward from the pressure of his hand. The tilt of your head. His thumbs press under your chin, pushing you back further until it feels like your neck might break—

He stops. Shifts. You puff out a shallow breath. 

What looks back at you is unremarkable in the murk. A sliver of fear. A slip of unease.

Eye of the beholder, you think when his breath chuffs out shallowly through the mask. When that hunger is ground down to a raw, esoteric fissure hairlining the black of his eyes. The widening expanse of his pupil. 

You wonder if it's your fear that itches under his skin, dredging up something predatory in his hindbrain. The urge to chase. To bite. 

But the nearly indiscernible flicker of his gaze has you brushing that idea aside when it snags on the expanse of his hand coiled around your throat. Easily swallowing it whole with just his palms. 

You're not a small thing, but the indomitable size of him makes you feel insignificant. 

You think he feels it, too. 

His fingers flex over your nape, stretching. Pulling. It pushes the flat of his palm into your throat, ridges crushed against your trachea. But you can still breathe. It's shallow. Hoarse. A touch painful. Dizzying in a way that makes you feel like you're on a rollercoaster. A teacup ride that just spins and spins and spins—

The gap closes. A sliver of air snakes down your throat. Muscles flexing, shifting. Struggling to swallow around the pinch of his hand. A harrowing task when you feel the gloved fingers link to the first, then the second knuckle, tying together in a too-tight, impossible, noose around your neck. Thumbs overlap. Fingers slide into place. It forms a chain of his hands with no gaps between them. Not a single sliver of skin shows from under the leather of his gloves. 

He makes a sound when they meet—a nasal groan in the back of his throat, mouth clenched shut so the air has no choice but to tear through his nose. It's raw. Fractured. The devastating moan of a tiger nuzzling at its meal. 

Your vision blurs. A black fog presses into the edges, seeping over the arch of your peripherals. Dripping down slowly over the hazy smear of the man. The way the ochre sun peeks over the angular roof of the accountant's office illuminates his back and casts swaths of shadows over his front. Drenching him in murk. 

Despite the flickering darkness shuttering over your sight, you don't blink. Even as the tears prickle at your eyes, they stay open. Fixed on him. Black holes, you think, watching as the fever marbling those obsidian pools recedes. Cools. 

He makes that noise again. Softer this time. A purr from deep in his chest. A breath. And then he peels back. His hands go slack. His shoulders slumping back into the lax, easy spread from before as you gasp hard, nearly choking on the flood of air that roars down your throat. 

Your cheeks feel hot for a moment, and then cold. Icy. You don't have to touch them to know that you're crying. That the deluge clinging to your lashline spilt over, dripping messily to the collar of your shirt. 

The placid lake is back. In the stillness, you heave. Mouth hanging open, chin quivering. His thumb lifts, slides over the curve of your chin. You don't feel it. Numbed, maybe, by the brief kiss of hypoxia. But you see it. Watch as he slides it up to the jut of your lower lip, the black, angular tip tickling over your skin. He follows the seam between skin and lip, tracing it to the corner of your mouth. It's slick. Drool pools in the crease, dribbles over the top of his finger. His eyes drop when he mops it up, catching it on the pad. 

He makes another noise. An arid rasp bubbling between the soft tissue behind the roof of his mouth and the back of his tongue. It's ugly. The shiver you try to fight back slinks through. 

His hand peels away from your neck, movements lax. Slow. The unwinding gait of an idling tiger in no real rush, no hurry, because there's nothing in the frigid Arctic that can touch him. 

You watch him with flared eyes as he brings his thumb to his clothed mouth, and rubs your spit into the fabric of his mask. 

His eyes don't break away from yours once. 

Your spit doesn't stand out against the black of balaclava, but the idea of it burns through you. Throwing you headfirst into a dazed stupor. Dizzy. Confused. 

Satisfied with whatever it was supposed to mean, he clambers out of the truck before coming around to your side. Distantly, you're sure this is what he meant by funny ideas when he passes the headlight, head straight and eyes gliding around the empty street. An opening to run. You know where you are. It would be easy to flee. Hide in the construction zone just ahead, tucking yourself into the tightest corner you can find until help arrives. 

Help, though. 

Officer, please. I got caught selling meth in the mob's territory and now they're going to skin me alive. Please hurry—

Right. 

They'd rather help bury your body than get in the way of the mafia. Gangland violence isn't their concern unless it tumbles out into the street. Fat wallets keep even the most compassionate person quiet. Willing to turn a blind eye. 

You'd be thrown in a cell. Or dropped off at their doorstep. 

Either way—

You won't be coming back alive. 

There's nothing to steel, harden, when he pulls the door open, your nerves long since ground down to fine powder. Nothing to fight against, either. He hauls you out of the truck, hands firm on your skin. Bursting blood vessels easily between his fingers. Barely any effort at all to crack your bones. 

The moment in the car seems miles away when he pulls you in front of him, hand curling over your nape. Any flicker of humanity rendered out when he pinches you tight and shoves you forward. Dragging you back to the butcher shop by the scruff of your neck, leading you down a narrow set of stairs to the basement where pale white carcasses hang from hooks on the ceiling. He laughs when you tense. When your heels dig into the brown-stained linoleum. 

Ain't gonna hang you, he mocks, fingers dipping punishingly into the sides of your neck. “Not yet, anyway—”

It brings little comfort when he drags you to a room in the back, kicking open the door with the toe of his boot before pushing you inside with a nudge against your nape. 

It's dark. Walls covered in stains; mould, mildew. Something you hope is just rust. A single mattress is shoved into the corner; sheets stained with sweat and grime. Tinged a pale brown. Two pillows sit at the top, lopsided and matted with use. Threadbare. A twisted, black heap of fabric sits at the bottom. Wisps of cotton poke out from the cigarette burns. 

A pair of muddy, black boots sit against the wall at the end of the bed. A basket of clothes—jeans, black shirts, black sweaters—is piled on the wall across from the door. 

The room smells of stale sweat and old cigarettes. 

You don't want to be here. The thought is abrupt. Immediate. Unease prickles along your nape, warmed and damp under his gloved palm. Between the look of the room—the floors stained the same suspicious brown, the rumpled bed in a corner—and the smell, you know this is not a place you want to stay. To be trapped inside with a man cut from Everest; whose hands are more dangerous than the sharp end of a knife. 

He must feel the tension brimming beneath your skin; the spark of adrenaline surging through your veins. The clamp of his hand on your nape digs in tighter. Holding firm. 

A breath tumbles out, thickening with mockery. “Like I said,” he leans down, pressing the mountainous width of his chest into your spine. The accentuation in your size difference, how big he is in comparison to you, makes you feel like prey. Small. Brittle, thin. He eats you whole. Spares nothing for later. “I wouldn't do that if I were you.” 

Another nudge and you're pushed further into the room. He leans away, foot shoving back on the door until it snaps shut with a noise that cuts through the gossamer that spun around you, bifurcating reality from dream. The haze is wafted away, and all that remains is a barren room with a lumpy mattress, the smeared stain of rotten blood coagulating on the floor, and his body boxing you in. No escape. 

The rumble of his chest shakes loose the cobwebs spooling across your thoughts. A brush of humid air ghosts along the line of your jaw, dampening the skin below your ear as he leans in close, too close, and purrs: 

“Go on now. Strip for me.” 

Each scrap of clothing you slowly roll off of your body is exchanged for a slip of information about him—who he is (Simon Riley, the name rumbled through the split between his teeth; a low, brassy purr as his eyes gleam in the dark, drilling into the expanse of skin unveiled to him)—and what he wants—

Nothing, he tells you, lifting one massive shoulder up in a half-hearted shrug. Jus’ what's owed to me, pet. For stickin’ my neck out f’you. 

You don't think he did. Not really. But you're harshly reminded of the unsubtle threat. The gun balanced on his massive thigh. So wide, so big, it seems to make it look smaller in comparison. Tiny. A toy. 

Child's play. 

It's made worse, somehow, as he lounges. Sprawls out on the bed, legs spread, pulling taut on the jeans that stretch around the thickness of his upper thigh, bunching around his calves in a half-tuck inside his black boots. Arms flexing. Folded over his broad chest. He rolled the sleeves of his black shirt up to his elbow, showing off an impressive tapestry of harsh, faded black ink. Crisscrossing lines. All asymmetrical. Guns, barbed wire. A bullet with a wide, toothy grin—

All of it knits together; woven into a tangled mass of muscle. Of man, hidden under scar tissue. Rope burns on his wrists cut so deep that the skin is permanently dented in. More cigarette burns hidden inside the mess of ink. Jagged lines—from a knife, maybe; bullet wounds. 

His skin tells stories of a terrible life. Ink spills over the worst of them, but they're visible under the fading charcoal. A series of burns—acid, fire, chemical—and raw, torn skin. He looks like he's been mauled. Pressed into the cold metal of a wood chipper until chunks of flesh were taken out. But even with these deep gouges, craters of missing tissue, he's big. Bulky. Soft—like a tiger. Predatory muscle tucked away under a thick layer of fatty tissue. 

The pillowed pouch of his belly, the softness around his biceps—

It belies the danger underneath. The steel. 

But as scary as it is, it has nothing on his eyes. 

Glinting in the dim room. Dark pools of obsidian that follow each movement with an almost clinical keenness. Sharpened to a razor's edge. 

They might be pretty, you think, if they weren't so intense. So liquid. His eyes gleam like wet ink, languidly rolling along his lashline as you clumsily shed your jacket, your blouse. Shoes, socks. Pants. Until you're in nothing but your panties.

Swallowing around the influx of panic that flutters like little birds beating their wings against the soft walls of your throat, you slip your fingers into the hem, now or never, and—

And you hesitate. 

There's a difference between undressing willingly and doing so to save your life. It should spurn you on—survive, survive, survive—but you freeze at the apex. The summit is within reach. 

You know what happens when you climb it. Cross over the invisible threshold. 

What you've been trying to ignore this whole time, ever since he shoved you into the room with a huff, taking his perch on the edge of the bed, legs spread wide, but in such a terrifying state of vulnerability, nearly nude, you can't any longer. Can't avert your gaze to the stained linoleum in a thinly veiled effort to keep from glancing at the thickening bulge lying prone against his thigh. 

His—

Well. 

You knew what he wanted when he grabbed your face in his hand, squeezing your cheeks until your lips pursed, puckered for him to run his finger along the inseam. Prying your teeth apart. Rubbing his finger over your tongue, eyes dark—full; black holes pulling, tugging you in, dragging you closer to the event horizon framed in a ring of arsenic—and locked on to the sight of his gloved knuckle disappearing into your mouth. Wanting. Hungry. 

You knew. And now—

Committing to it is legions above what you’re mentally prepared for. Nausea brims, churns your stomach. Unease curdling inside of you like rotten milk. 

You don’t want this. But you don’t have a choice, do you?

That notion, the idea, prickles along your nape, raising the fine, peach-fuzz there until it stands on end. 

You freeze. Movements still as every muscle in your body tenses. Coils. You can't do it. Can't—

A huff is dragged out of his chest as he sits up, knocking the gun carelessly to the mattress. His eyes daggering, sharpening into needlepoints, as he stares at you. 

“Gotta do everything f’myself, do I?” 

A grunt and he’s up. Pulling himself to his feet with nothing but the flex of his abdominal muscles. 

There's no reprieve. Not a moment graced to gather your bearings before he crosses the distance between you. Once a comfort, a chasm, now conquered in a single stride.  

The tips of his gloves are cold when they brush over your skin, sliding down the slope of your waist until they meet the hem of your panties. The last piece of modesty you have—

But he doesn't wait.

You're aware that this isn't a non-consensual thriller where the lead looms over the hapless love interest, eyes blazing with passion and need. That each interaction is drenched in a thick, palpable tension tethering the two together. Urges coalescing. Threads pulling taut, magnetic, dragging them closer and closer to the brink until they tumble over. 

This is reality. And he doesn't stare into your eyes with an all-consuming desire as he slowly removes that last scrap of fabric keeping him from devouring you. No. 

His skin-warmed fingers push under the elastic band with a rough shove, curling into the fabric until it tightens across your pelvis and thighs, and then he huffs, annoyed, and pulls. Pulls—

Until something gives. 

The lace yields to the tension in his flexing bicep, and scrapes over your skin as it rips apart in his hand, threads snapping. Popping. 

It hurts. Stings. You hiss, but the noise is ignored when he peels the ruined scrap of fabric from your legs, shoving it into his back pocket with a grunt of satisfaction. He looks back to you, eyes rippling like the dark, ink-black surface of a lake during nightfall, and coos, mocking and mean—

“Not s’hard, was it?”

He leans closer to you, a hand skimming up your spine before his fingers curl around your nape, keeping you still for just a breath before he pulls you into him with too much force. Your hands lift, palms slapping against his thick stomach when the movement nearly topples you over and threatens to break your nose on his chest.

“Makin’ me do all the work when y’supposed t’be payin’ me back? Ain't very nice o’you, is it?”

He touches you like he's taking stock of your worth. Grabbing a heavy, rough palmful of your beast in his hand, squeezing. Testing the weight, the softness, how supple you were between his fingers like he might with a piece of fruit. Meat. Prodding into the flesh, feeling the ripeness there. Gauging whether or not it was a piece he wanted to keep. 

It's demeaning. Humiliating. He treats you like cattle; presses into the elasticity of your muscle, examines every inch of your skin for blemishes. Scouring for imperfections. There's no softness in the way he grabs handfuls of your body—squeezing your breasts, pushing them together, rolling your nipples between his thumb and forefinger; pinching your belly, your sides, your waist; curling his fingers under your thigh, lifting it until it hitches over his waist, cunt exposed and pressed tight to the bulge trapped in his jeans. Your ass is handled rougher than the rest. Each cheek sitting in a hand, squeezed and punched and spread embarrassingly wide. 

He ruts into you as he does it. Pushes the thick, fat length of him into your belly, rolling his hips against you with a heavy, ragged puff of air. 

He feels big. 

Everywhere, of course—it’s not so much his height, but the absurd width of him that really digs into your hindbrain, crossing all those intricate wires until they're tangled up, knotted together. Seeing his thigh, the same scale as a tree truck, slotting between yours—a mere branch by comparison—makes your belly flop. Turn over itself.

The muddled wires spark. Heat pools between your hips.

He could crush your head between them like a bear pushing its paw down on a watermelon. 

It's fear and heat. 

The two work in tandem, forming a seamless cohesion, as they flit down your spine, brimming up the urge to sink to your knees, the need to roll over and show your belly. A paradoxical desire to both run and be chased. 

You're not sure if he's tendering your meat to eat later or if this is the usual type of foreplay he engages in, but once satisfied you're softened up enough for him, he shoves his fingers between your thighs with an abrasive hum that reverberates through his belly, tickling your palms. 

“Tired o’waitin’,” is what he says when your head jerks up, eyes widening in shock. Terror. Horror. “Don't look so surprised,” he huffs, dryly. Voice a rough scrap over your cheek. “What'd y’think was gonna ‘appen?”

“Wait—” but he doesn't. 

His fingers twist, pushing through your folds to graze your clit. It isn't gentle. It's sudden, quick. You gasp more from shock than pleasure; the rough slide of leather feels strange on your flesh, and your head is too muddled to separate fear from bliss.  

Despite that, your body heats. Reacts to his touch. Your lower lip wobbles. You bite back another sound that crawls up your throat when his knuckle catches on your clit again, the pressure just shy of too much. 

The burn, the fever, melts the unease. Shallow gasps spill out. Your cunt clenches, fluttering around nothing—throbbing, growing sticky, slick; achy and empty—when he starts to glide his digit between your folds. Little sawing motions drag each groove and stitch of his gloves over your pebbled clit, each thrust of his hand between your thighs making heat pool between your hips. It's done so clinically, so detached, like his hand rubbing over your leaking pussy was nothing to him. An action to get done, a task to complete. 

It's the shame of that, the embarrassment, that makes you want to weep. Your fingers dig into his chest, nails pulling uncomfortably on the pleated bumps of his jacket as you grip the fabric right between your fists, clinging to him like a newborn fawn—all wet-nosed, teary-eyed; knobbly knees threatening to buck. 

“S–stop—” you mewl when the monotonous rhythm melts into something harder, more intense. Heart thudding in your chest, heat burning you up as he turns his hand, palm up, between your sticky, shaking thighs. He rubs his hand back and forth, curling his middle finger up when he passes your hole, tip pushing against your leaking rim. 

The friction aches. The stretch stings. The leather feels strange, foreign when it pries your folds apart and dips inside of you. 

You don't like it. It's too much—

He makes a sound—a tut—when you pull away from him, standing on the tips of your toes until the blunt curve of his finger slides out of you. He sucks his teeth in a mockery of disappointment before digging his fingers, hard, into the sides of your neck. A warning. You whine. Whimper—

It goes unheeded. And when you press your thighs tight together, shivering at the slip-slide of your skin rubbing against each other, he growls. The noise is inhuman. Animalistic. 

Your act of deviance comes with a swift, bruising punishment. 

His fingers tighten on your neck once again. A warning squeeze as he reaches down with his other hand, grabbing your hip. It keeps you still, immobile, as he bullies his boot between your feet, kicking your legs apart. You're not expecting it. When you stumble, he huffs in amusement. Can't hold yourself up? Want me that bad, huh? Needy fuckin' thing, ain't you?

You don't get a chance to respond. His palm splays wide over your hip, leather creaking as he flexes, stretching his fingers out, tapping some soundless beat out against your skin. Touching you like he's owed the privilege. The right. And in many ways—

Go’ a problem, you an’ I

—he does. 

Brute strength, and an unmatched, almost laughable, dearth in your physicality ensures that he has the upper hand—even without the gun he left on the mattress; darker and flat, a full matte compared to what you were expecting. 

(They're always so shiny in movies, aren't they?)

The threat of it—dull as it might be—roots you to the spot as he slides his hand down, thumb brushing over your belly button, dipping in; pressing until your stomach starts to ache—

It peels away when the whine wells up, sloping down, down. Teases your mound with the tips of his fingers, gentle swipes along the sensitive seam of your belly and pelvis, the sensation is an odd tickle that pulls at your navel, pulses at the apex of your thighs. You mewl—a slow, soft thing that barely makes it out from between your teeth—and he lets his hand drop. Palm flat against the soft flesh of your mons, fingers reaching, spreading, until they curl over your folds. Index and ring finger tucked tight into the hollow bend of your pelvis and thigh. The tip of his middle rubs gentle strokes over the skin above your clit. It's a whisper of pleasure. The idea of a touch. 

Mindless, your hips flit, following his hand—

“Needy.” 

It cows you. Douses you in icy shame. There's barely any mockery in his even, observant tone, but you feel it unfurl over your shoulders all the same. 

He doesn't give you a moment to think, to let the ripples of humiliation take over, forcing you to pull away, hide. His fingers trail over your hood, the pebble of your clit. The sensation, the cool undertone in the leather of his glove, is unlike anything you'd felt before. The thick stitches in the fabric catch on your flesh, nerve endings flaring in pleasure. Heat blooms in your belly. 

It feels good. 

You gasp, head tipping back. His hand winds around your waist when your knees buckle, catching you with a rasping huff—

“Feelin’ good, ain't you?” He pulls you tight to his chest, finger rubbing circles around your throbbing clit. Your cunt clenches, empty, and you whine, needing something more. Something to fill the ache inside of you—

His finger slips. Slides easily between your folds, parting your lips around the thick of him until he reaches your drenched hole. The sounds it makes when he taps his finger against your fluttering core makes your toes curl. Has heat blistering over your cheeks, down the slope of your neck. 

It makes him groan. The low growl makes you throb, clenching in needy little pulls, pulses, as his finger dips into the slick dripping out of you. 

“Suckin’ me in,” he grunts, and pushes his finger inside, thrusting up to the last knuckle. Palm tapping against your folds as his index and ring finger close to give him more room to sink deeper into you. The messy, slick squelch is loud, rolling over the mewling gasps that tumble from your lips. 

Heat floods your belly at the belly-deep groans he lets out when you squeeze around him. 

“Stranglin’ my fuckin’ finger, birdie—” 

He leans down, knocking his forehead against the side of your face. It's more intimate than you were expecting. Jarring. The proximity plays a twisted game inside your head—the urge to run, to roll over coalescing into a paralyzing tailspin. Rooting you to the ground when the warm, damp knit of his mask grazes your cheek. 

The intimacy of his head on yours is eclipsed when you can feel the shape of his mouth through the fabric. 

It's softer than you expected. A plush, fleshy give when he presses his lips against your skin. And—

A gap.

On the side of his mouth, there's a gouge. A pockmark. You feel the gap, the absence, of his flesh when he rolls it over your cheekbone. You try to read the asymmetry of his face—mapping all of these misshapen parts; his mauled lips, the crooked nose that digs into your skin and leaves behind a tacky smear of condescension when he breathes out through his nostrils in a heavy puff of air—and convince yourself that you're doing it so you can bring these patchwork pieces to the police later. 

Survival, you think, your head tilting back as he noses down your neck, tickling along your skin. 

(And when your cunt flutters around the rough, thick drag of his finger petting along your walls, you add: a bodily reaction. That's all it is.)

He takes another lungful of your scent before he rocks back on his heels, pulling away from you. Straightening up. Looming above you once more. 

“Now—”

He pulls his finger out of you slowly and you try not to whimper at the empty feeling that brims up. The way your hips rock toward him, seeking and eager. Wanting.

Needy, just like he said. 

Just a bodily reaction—

He holds his hand up to the dim light flickering over his head, fingers spreading apart as he takes in the glossy shine of his middle finger. 

The gleam of it makes your ears feel hot. Shame pools in your belly as he makes another noise—a groan, deep and low, in the back of his throat. Eyes darkening as his pupils bloom, eclipsing his irises in an endless pool of black. They flicker toward you, listing half-mast in a way to leonine, so predatory, that it shudders through your bones. Run, run—

His hand flexes around your waist when you twitch. A warning. A threat. You tremble when he leans in, masked lips brushing over your cheek once more. Breath ghosting through the fabric, tickling the inside of your ear. 

He smells of war. Of fire and brimstone. Napalm and nitroglycerine. You want to close your eyes, look away, but you can't. His proximity alone roots you to the spot. Turns you into a prey animal, frozen on instinct alone as he prowls around, creeping closer. Maw stretching wide, drooling dripping off razor-sharp canines—

“Let's see if y’worth all the trouble.” 

—and he bites.

Knocks his palm into your sternum, roughly shoving you down on the mattress.

His hands fall to the button of his jeans. “Ready?” He asks, but doesn't seem to care about your answer. Opts, instead, to fall to his knee beside you. It pulls on his zipper, tugs it all the way down with a sharp, metallic sound that cuts through the stagnant air as each ring of teeth is pried apart. 

You can't help it. You look. Dragged there by something primal, magnetic—the morbid curiosity to see the monster for yourself as it tries to take a bite. 

And almost immediately, you wish you hadn't. 

The spread of pale skin, dark curls jutting out from the split of his jeans, makes everything feel more real, and moving fast. Whiplash quick. Happening in a blink:

The shift of fabric as he pulls the mask up over his lips, letting rest on the crooked bridge of his nose. A flash of his mouth, mangled. Mauled. Full of ugly, pale pink scars. A gap where tissue once knit his upper lip together. The bite of crooked teeth as he brings the sticky, wet tip of his glove to his mouth, sinking in. Pulling. Tugging. The roll of skin—a rose, a gun, a skull—all encased in barbed wire; thick rivers of blue-green veins. 

Another pull and it's free. Dangling between his teeth for a moment as he reaches up and shoves the jacket off his shoulders. Rolling and thick. Wide. A broad chest. Soft belly. There's an inch of flesh around the expanse of him—biceps, thighs, calves, chest, stomach, shoulders—but it's a buffer for the corded, streamlined muscle beneath. A layer of fatty tissue. 

Like a tiger, hiding its dizzying musculature beneath a thick, loose pelt. 

When he moves, it flexes. His shoulders roll; muscles bunching together, pulling taut under soft skin. The jacket slides off. Falls to the ground behind the mattress. Forgotten, discarded. The glove is next to go. Dropping from between his teeth, landing just beside your ankle with a muted thud. 

He follows after it. Ink spilling over his lashline as his eyes drop, staring at the roll of his skin tucked on the outside of your thigh. Trailing up to your knee. Your hip. The split of your cunt beneath your other leg; knee tucked to your chest. 

A flash of something, a flicker, is the only warning you get before the back of his hand is nudging the glove off of your skin, replacing it with the rough, calloused grip of his palm. 

You jerk at his touch, flinching back—

He's intimidating above you like this. Leaning back on his haunches but still as tall as you are standing up. The sheer absurdity of his height—his width—is dizzying. Gives you vertigo when you look up. 

His throat shifts when you move. A swallow. Coarse stubble grows down the column of his neck, dusting over his lower jaw, chin. The rest is swallowed by the balaclava bunched around his crooked nose. 

He's not—

He's not handsome. 

A smattering of crisscrossing scars, burns, skin pocked and gouged out in deep pockets along his flesh—the slide of a knife carving away at him, you think; digging down to his marrow—all take away from any sense of modern attractiveness you might feel for him with his broad, jagged nose and full lips. 

But there's something rugged about him. Untamed. Wild. Appealing in a dangerous way. 

You don't know if you would have let this happen under different circumstances. If this minacious beauty of his would have worked on you enough to want it outside of this awful, almost unfathomable trade. 

He's too big. Wouldn't even fit inside of your house—

The graze of his thumb on your angle knocks the thought loose, and you're dragged back to the heat of his hand. Rough and coarse; palms slightly damp from the glove. It tugs on your flesh as he draws it up, a rubbery sort of pain as it catches on the soft, dry skin of your ankle. Your shin. 

He follows behind a second later, pulling himself into the mattress with a huff, knees shuffling forward as he crawls over you. The jostling rocks your body. Makes your breasts shake as he lumbers on the bed, hand still sliding up, up, until his fingers curl over the bend of your knee. 

The bed dips under his weight. Your body sagging, rolling into the divot beneath his knees. Tucked under him. Loomed over. He stares down at you through the cutout of his mask, eyes liquid in the gloam. Pools of melting, dripping obsidian. Black holes. Event horizon—

You look away before it drags you in. Submissive. Softened under the harsh burn of his flat, wide stare. He chuffs when your nose brushes over the thin skin of his wrist, mouth sliding over the thick, pulsing vein stretching down from his inner arm and curling into the bend of his hand. Your lips purse, and he makes that noise again. 

Quietly amused, and—

He shuffles forward until the backs of your thighs are pulled over his, spread out on his lap. Bare. Open to him. 

And he looks. 

And looks. 

Hungry, you think. Quietly amused and hungry—

The notion is wrenched out of your head when he shifts his weight. Watches the folds of your pussy open for him as he pulls your knees wider apart, head dropping between his massive shoulders, gaze drilling into the split of your thighs. Gasping at the sting, the sudden stretch, does little to deter him from shoving your leg down until the outside of your knee touches the bed. Muscles straining. Pinching. It hurts; hipbones twinging in agony. 

But the embarrassment burning through you singes all the pain. 

You're spread open under him. Bare. Legs tangled around his waist, stretched wide around the width of him. Ankles knocking into the hard plains of his lower back each time he shifts. 

“Fuckin’ hell—” he grunts. Snarls. The word ripped up from the back of his throat, forced through the twisting channels of his nose. Nasal and ugly when it scrapes out between his teeth. “Gonna ruin this pretty pussy, birdie.”

It's a threat. A promise. You twist, mouthing your protests into the warm skin of his wrist. 

There's something about his voice—that airy, brassy tone—that strikes a chord deep inside you. Makes heat pool between your thighs, leaking out in a syrupy mess—

His hand peels away from your knee, sliding down your sticky, damp inner thigh until his knuckles graze the sensitive slip of skin sitting between your outer lip and hip. That ticklish, belly-fluttering sensation blooms in your groin as he rubs his scarred knuckles over the crease, catching the slick gathered there on his thick, meaty thumb. 

“Fuckin’ soaked,” he groans, shifting his fingers until they cover the whole of your cunt, cradling you in his hand. He holds you like that for a beat, eyes locked on the way you're swallowed up by the broad stretch of his palm. 

The rough drag of his skin over your folds feels good. An all-encompassing heat spreads over your tender flesh from the curve of your ass to the bump of your mons where his middle finger rests, almost touching the strip of skin between your loins and your belly. Held in his grasp. Cradled in his palm. 

Your thighs twitch. A shallow jerk as your knees try to bend over his hand, but you can't. With his thumb and pinkie tucking into each crease between your outer lip and leg, it keeps you from closing your legs. Hinged by the wide, flat cup of his palm. 

And it shouldn't bludgeon through you the way it does. All heat. All want. Need. A growing ache you can't think around. 

(bodily reaction, you think even as the image of his hand—big with thick fingers, scarred knuckles; streaks of faded, ashy ink etched into milky, veined skin—laying over your pussy, swallowing it whole, sears into your mind—)

“Can feel your little cunt,” he grunts, feeling the pulse, the little throbbing pulls of your muscles as they twitch at the sight. The feeling. Clenching down around nothing. “Greedy little thing, ain't you, birdie?”

Anger paints his words as he rasps them out. A teeth gnashing, jaw clenching frustration that needles into the scorn, the fury, forced out between the tight seam of his crooked teeth. 

You don't understand it. Can't, maybe. 

But it's tucked away as quickly as it appeared, shifting into an ugly, mocking derision. Dry. Acerbic. His teeth flash, lip pulling upward in a sneer—a snarl—before he hums, sliding his hand down. The drag of his damp, rough fingers over your swollen folds has your knees falling open wider around his thick thighs, baring yourself willingly to him. 

Want it bad, don't you? He mocks, and the sound of his voice alone has your pussy clenching tight, belly fluttering around the abrasive scrape of his tone. Brassy and full. Gritty. You whine, hips inching up—

His hand peels off of your slit. The rush of cold air drags another whimper out of you, hips pushing up to chase the heady, molten feeling of his skin on yours. And he's amused by it—a laugh echoes out, crackling in the hollow of his throat at your desperation—but you're too achy, too hot, to feel the simmer of humiliation nipping the apples of your cheeks. 

He's not even making a real effort to pleasure you, to make you feel good, and yet—

Your hips twitch toward him in needy, mewling cants; please sits on the tip of your tongue, cradled between your teeth. Slips out on a shaky, breathless gasp when he meets you on the next buck of your hips, palm slapping over your wet slit. 

The crack echoes through the room. Rough, dry skin on soaked flesh. 

And it shocks you more than it hurts. The sting is there, of course, but it's just an afterthought to astonishment. An eye-widening disbelief masking the way your cunt smarts, throbbing from the slap. Nerves muffled behind the burn in your eyes, the searing heat pooling in your sinuses. 

Wrenched open, unblinking as you stare up at him, your eyes begin to sting, to water. You blink, and feel something hot trickle down your cheek. A tear. His eyes snap to it. Pupils narrowing to a pinprick as he watches it slide down your face, little droplets clinging to your jaw. 

“Poor baby,” he mocks, tilting his head as he tracks the teardrop. “Better behave.” 

Behave. Like he's admonishing a child and not an adult. 

It morphs; rots. Becomes yet another thing you shouldn't feel feverish over. The slick, sticky feeling grows between your thighs as your cunt flutters at the humiliation of it all. 

And deeper—maybe—the bastardized sense of care—

(Punishment is affection in its own, special (awful) way and you've been aching for something just like it, haven't you—)

It's pushed down. Swallowed. And you know in the back of your head that if you keep eating these feelings, you're going to be sick. But you can't stop. Barely breathe around the idea of them sometimes—

“Tha’s’it,” he coos like he knows. Sees them bright and burning behind your irises. Little flickers of need, a smouldering want that you'll never grasp at yourself. 

So he gives it to you. 

The rough slide of his hand, all scarred and dry and calloused, scrapes over your slit once more. A full, flat stroke upward until your clit bumps into the ridge of his palm. Then down, down—

His fingers spread. Ring and index prying your folds apart as he pushes up once more, opening your seam to slip his middle finger through the slick, sticky mess that drips out of your burning cunt. 

“Gonna be good f’me?” 

The slide of his fingers drags the tip up to the bump of your clit. You stare down at it, fixed on the jut of his ink-black knuckles threading through your folds. The crease of his nail as he slips his fingers up higher, pad pushing over your pebbled clit. They're dirty. Grey-black under his nails. Congealed with dirt. Blood, maybe. 

Your stomach churns even as your hips lift. Eager, searching. Hating yourself each second of it. It's gross. Disgusting. 

You want his dirty, thick fingers inside of you—

“When I ask a question—” the tip circles over your clit. A shallow roll that pools heat between your thighs. “I expect an answer.” 

“Y–yes,” you stammer out, hips flexing against his hand. Seeking more of that white-hot bloom of pleasure he brings with each pass of his finger. 

“Good girl—” and you hate how it burns you up from the inside out. “Wasn't s’hard, was it?”

The retort is bitten back with the slow swipe of his finger drawing tight, small circles around your clit. His fingers are rough, scarred. Too dry. The abrasive drag over your soft sensitive flesh makes you whine—a drawn-out whimper nestled between clenched teeth. 

It's too much. 

Too harsh. Too sharp.

He rolls your clit under the pads of his fingers in jerking half-circles. Puts too much pressure on the bundle of nerves than you ever would—your touches are always soft, sickeningly sweet; gentling your flesh until you cum—and the sting, the burn, of it makes your toes curl. Body burn. 

It's good. 

And that's the problem. 

It shouldn't be. His touch shouldn't make you so wet, growing slick and sticky between your spread thighs, bare to his hungry, prying gaze. Shouldn't make you moan. Hips twitching with each stroke of his fingers—

And then he peels away from you, but the time to mourn the loss of his touch, the fear of losing this trembling ember pleasure, is snuffed out when he presses his wet, slick fingers against the inside of your knee. The touch is intentional. Insistent. He makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat before pushing it down to the mattress. The twinge of pain swallowed up as quickly as it forms when he drops to his elbows between your thighs, forearms curling under your legs, and tugs you sharply into him. 

Heat floods your belly when the backs of your thighs press tight to his broad, muscular shoulders, but it's nothing compared to the sight of him on his knees between your legs. It's so obscene you nearly weep—

And then he leans down and licks a long, broad swipe of his tongue over your cunt. 

You hadn't expected it, maybe. His mouth on your pussy, his broken, jagged lips sealing over your pebbled clit. Going down on you seemed too intimate for what he was after. His end goal. It does nothing for him at all—

You realise your mistake when he dips his tongue into your hole and his hips jerk forward. Unconscious. Eager. Seeking. The shifting drags his jeans down his hips, and his cock slips free. 

Most of the cocks you've seen—in porn, pictures, art—jut out from the person's groin. standing at attention, the nasty comments used to say. Jokes whispered on the playground. But his falls. Droops down between big, folded thighs. Skin marbled in shades of red, peach. Deep gouges dot his upper thighs, some sinking deep enough to reach bone. More scar tissue than flesh. 

—than man.

It looks raw. Fresh. Some injuries not too dissimilar to the Wagyu hanging in the front of the storeroom, on display and oh, so out of place in a town where the richest man must be just a hair above the poverty line. 

On paper, anyway. 

You swallow, avoiding his gaze as he pauses, dark eyes watching you with his mouth pressed against your seam. Unmoving. Still as a predator between your thighs, cock visible between the bow of his torso, jutting sickeningly from mangled legs as you gawk at this hideous thing that makes several, half-hearted attempts to spring up towards you, spitting clear, milky liquid all over with each jerk. Tugged down by its own weight. Too heavy to fight against gravity like the rest of the cocks you've seen have done—

Normal cocks, you amend. Textbook. 

His is anything but. 

Ugly, you think again, stomach churning. Roiling. Obscene. An odd thing considering what you're looking at but all too fitting with the way it droops, big, flared head drooling pre-cum all over the bed in long, dangling stands that prickle over your jaws—half nauseous, half hungry, too. Saliva pools in your mouth even though the sight of his cock scares you. Fills your belly with dread. Misery. 

It looks like a bruise. Skin smeared with purples, reds. Patches of pink. Long, thick veins run up from the fattened, full base to the divot of his frenulum. Thick. It hangs low. Drips. 

He raises slightly and shoves his hand down between his thighs, big hand curling over the fat base of his cock. His grip is tight around himself, and he strokes up, from base to tip. It squeezes more precum from the flushed, fat head, and dribbles between your spread thighs in a thick, pearlescent puddle. 

It makes your mouth dry. That twinge in your jaws coming back. Festering. You wonder if he'll make you take that thing in your mouth. Choke you on it. Taste his precum—

“Fuck,” he snarls into your cunt, hand jerking over his cock. “Keep lookin’ at my cock like tha’, birdie—”

You gasp at the rough grunt, the way it seems to tremble through your sensitive flesh. More, though, from the way he sounds. His voice brassy, rough. Unkind, but the words bloom a fresh heat behind your navel. 

His voice does things to you. Things you're not allowed to like. 

Those thoughts are knocked from your head when he bows down again, eyes still fixed on you, and seals his wicked mouth over your cunt. It's hard to compare it to anything else other than being devoured. Eaten in the truest sense of the word. 

His tongue splits down your seam, tip digging into your slick hole. A groan bubbles up at your taste—the soft, fluttering clench of your body trying to drag him in deeper. Needing him deeper. A huff of air ghosts over you, dipped in the same derision as earlier but the harsh slap of skin on skin, his hand working furiously over his cock, makes you acutely aware of how much this affects him. 

“Taste good, birdie,” he grunts, and then sucks your fold into his mouth, laving it with his tongue and teeth until the skin is tender, swollen. “S’fuckin’ good—”

Your breath catches when the crooked arch of his nose presses taut to your clit. Pleasure twisting in a dizzying pirouette inside your belly, winding tighter and tighter—

His nose jerks up on your clit. Lips moulded to your seam, you hear him rasp eyes on me, birdie. Don't fuckin’ look away—

The rough snarl trembles through your body, sinking its teeth into the coil until it snaps under its jaw. Your knees snap around his head as your release locks your joints tight. His name, Simon, a hoarse cry on your lips. You barely have time to bask in the ripples of pleasure throbbing through your body before he rips away from you with his teeth bared, and his chin wet. 

“Fuck—!” he snarls again, shoving your knees apart as he lifts his massive body up from between your thighs. “Gonna fuck you, birdie. Gotta be inside your tight cunt—”

He towers over you, grinding his cock into the apex of your thighs. The drag of his cock—a little damp from being stuck inside his jeans all day; balmy—against the dry skin of your belly makes you shudder. Shivering beneath him as he huffs through the mask. Head bowing. Dipping to look at the way his cock slaps down on you. Cockhead nudging above your belly button, dribbling a small puddle of pre-cum that gets smeared into your skin when he rocks back on his haunches. 

His hand wraps around the thick base of his cock once more, squeezing tight as he grips himself above you. It makes the head swell, engorged with blood. Thickening in his hand as globs of pre-spend leak out onto your belly. That feeling in your jaws comes back—nauseous and wanting. 

He leans back with a hum. “Like my cock, eh, birdie?” 

The crass words bring a fresh bloom of heat simmering in your veins, creeping up your collar. Like doesn't really cover what you feel when you stare at it—his inked hands running along the long, veined shaft—and the unsettled feeling in the pit of your belly rears when he nudges forward, the weeping head of his cock bumping your mound. 

It's humiliating how much want floods through you just looking at it. At him. Disgust, dread, desire. 

You don't answer. Not that you really need to—

Your silence is loud enough. 

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs, the rasp thick in his throat. “M’gonna give it to you, pet—”

And he does just that. Slips the head of his cock down the slope of your mound, letting it graze your clit until you're panting, whining softly for more, and pulls it over your slit until his pre-cum is smeared over your drenched folds. You know exactly what this is even without glimpsing the ugly burn of his possessive desire smouldering in the back of his eyes—ownership. Greed. Hunger. It revels in the stain on your skin, from belly to slit; his, all his. Outside and soon—

In. 

It shocks a creeping sense of worry into you. “Wait, what about a condom—”

He snorts, ugly and caustic. “What about ‘em?” He taunts, and it's flat. Playful. 

“You should—”

He drags his gaze away from the pearlescent smear of his spend on your folds, your clit, and the even, placid look in that stagnant lake tells you everything you already knew. 

“I've never—” you start, wincing at the kernel of fear lacing your hoarse words. “Not without a condom—”

It's the wrong thing to say. Near cataclysmic. He drops his head back with a groan that rumbles out of the slope of his throat, sounding like the rip of a chainsaw. 

“Firsts for everything,” he purrs, and he nudges your entrance with the bare, weeping tip of his cock. 

“But—”

His hand lifts, catching your jaw in the too-wide span of his palm. The force makes your teeth clack together. 

“Need me to gag you, birdie?” 

You swallow. It's not much of a choice. Gagged and fucked raw, or—

Just fucked raw. 

No gag. No condom. You fight back a shiver and wish it was all just from fear. 

“No,” you murmur, like you have a choice. “No gag.”

“An’?” 

“Um. No–no condom, either—”

It's not enough. "What are you gonna let me do to this pussy, birdie?"

You know what he wants. What he's angling for. But there's a line, you think. A delineation between unwilling participant, coercion, and giving into the need that slinks down your spine, and rots inside your belly.

(Being forced to ask for it isn't permission, but what happens when you want it more than your next breath?)

The shame can come later, you think, and feel yourself give in. 

"Cum—cum inside me—"

“Good girl, birdie.” 

You hate what that does to you. How eagerly your body reacts to the dark possessive curl in his eyes when you do something he likes. 

He nudges your entrance again, this time with purpose. Intent. A heavy pressure pushing on your rim. Too tight, you think, and the sting of the first inch he feeds—forces—into you burns, pulsing behind your navel. His tip isn't even in yet, and it's already too much. 

You think about telling him so, offering up your mouth instead, but he leans down on his forearms, and catches your lips in a bruising, biting pantomime of a kiss. A blood-soaked parody with more teeth and tongue—sinking into your lips, nipping hard until the skin splits; catching all that spills with his tongue. 

With his weight pressed against you like this, there's nowhere to run when he cups your throat in his hand, winding the other up above your head, forearm tight on your crown to cage you in. And then he shifts. Bears his hips down on yours until the fat head of his cock pops inside of you. 

Your squeal is chewed up between his teeth, swallowed down with a rumbling groan. 

Caught beneath him, trapped, he works himself into you demanding, heavy thrusts. Each inch burns more than the last. A stinging stretch that brings tears to your eyes. It's already too much and it's not even half. Barely even the tip.

“Can't—” you slur into his wet, demanding mouth. “No more. I–I can't—”

The breath rushes out between his teeth. Your watery eyes drop to the divot above his canine. A permanent snarl. A condescending sneer. 

“You can,” he says decisively, words ground out from between crooked teeth. He presses them to your cheek, nipping at the skin under your eye. Possessive and wanting—

(Hungry for something you can't name—)

“And you will.” 

—Or maybe you just don't want to. Can't look at the thunderous need draped over his mangled, battered face without thinking of the rumble in your chest that echos back against his thundering call—)

Stupid, foolish thing—

The dark promise of his words isn't a threat until his hand tightens around your neck, nails grazing your skin, and he adds, all of me, birdie as he grinds his hips into yours shallowly. Broad chest expanding with each ragged inhale. Cementing his taunt with a steel edge as you try not to come undone beneath him. 

You'll take every fuckin’ inch—

He pulls back until only his glands stretch you open, and you know what's coming when his fingers grip the sides of your neck tight. Holding on. Anchoring you to the bed as he nudges his forearm tighter between your skull and the wall, a protective hold. 

Before you can tense up, bracing for it, or even cry out no, please, don't, you can't take it, he huffs, and then slams his hips forward, splitting you open on the fat stretch of his thick, too heavy cock. 

Maybe it's hysteria, delirium, but the blunt press of his length against your tender, sore walls balms the ache, the sting. The deeper he pushes, the less it hurts. A paradox that leaves you whimpering under his hand, heels digging into the broad stretch of his waist as you struggle to decide if you want to kick him away or pull him closer. 

A war you don't have the power to win when he surges forward, burying himself to the hilt with a growl that shakes the fragile tendons surrounding your heart. Fear, misery. Pleasure, pain. It admixes. Coalescing into a dizzying sense of fullness, unbearable pressure. Catastrophic in its heaviness as your mind reels, struggles to come to terms with the gut-wrenching, heart-aching uncertainty of how you're supposed to go on without having him seated as deep inside of you as he can get. You've never known emptiness before him. Before now. Mere seconds ago. 

And now, the thought of it leaves a palpable hollowness itching behind your ribs. Festering. Rotting tissue and bone. 

“Simon,” you choke, sobbing his name out under the firm press of his hand. “Simon—”

But he knows. 

His arm curls over your head like a crown, and you can easily forget the pinch of each thorn when he holds you tight. Protectively. Possessively. Securing you in his arms before he lifts up, palm sliding over the mattress, touch tender against your cheeks, and then settles it on the indent of your knee. Widening you for him as he spreads his thighs under yours until you're opened up for him. 

Those dark eyes are dragged down to the split of your legs where his cock disappears into your slick, swollen cunt. You follow it down, gazing at the impressive width of his stomach bowing over you until they land on the jut of skin pushing out from a messy smatter of damp curls around the base of his cock. 

The coarse hair of his groin unfurls as it sticks to your wet lips, and he rolls his head back over his shoulders he heaves through the too tight stretch of your walls over his length. You feel the pulse of him inside of you, thudding like a heartbeat. It blooms molten under the feverish weight of his lidded, dark gaze. 

“Fuck, birdie,” he rasps, and it's scorched. Charred. “Look at you—”

As the world is condensed, narrowed down to nothing but the near impossible stretch of his cock seated as deep inside of you as he can get, he leans down, scarred, mangled lips brushing cruelly over your ear, and whispers, see? Told you'd take me. 

Every fuckin’ inch. 

Your hand jerks to your belly, fingers dancing over your navel as if to feel him there, bulging from under your skin. Nearly hysterical as you try to come to terms with the pulsing, white-hot ache of him inside of you, slowly acclimating to his girth, his length. 

He grunts when he sees what you're doing, eyes flaring as your fingers skirt around your navel. 

“It's—” you shudder, gasping for air. “It's too much, Simon, I can't take it—”

He rolls his hips with a groan. “m’cock too big for you, birdie?” 

His usual cadence is flat, droll, but an unmistakable sense of masculine pride, a deep, egotistic sense of satisfaction, drapes itself over his brassy words. Glueing to the scorching rasp of his voice in a way that makes you unerringly certain that he likes it. Likes that his cock is too big for you. That it hurts. 

“Y’can take it,” he prompts, forcing more of himself into you until something snaps. Splits. Makes room. Carves out a space for him to fit. 

The brief flash of pain is soothed when he's seated deep. That same paradoxical balm making itself known as he flattens his hips into yours with a noise—half a grunt, or a growl; a lazy, pleasure-soaked snarl. You're not sure what it is, but the sound knocks the air from your lungs, igniting inside of you like a spark inside a tinderbox. 

It's only when his balls are flush against you that the same masculine pride brims up again. Primal. Animalistic. The urge to present your soft belly rears up suddenly, and it's only stifled when he grunts again, looking down at you with lidded, black eyes. 

“Now, be good and let me fuck your tight cunt.”

He's not looking for assent. Nothing you could say at this moment will sway his mind one way or the other. There's a nasty spool of determination welling up like blood on a pricked finger. Beading up to the surface in a clean, neat droplet as he rolls his broad shoulders, and shuffles into a comfortable position on his haunches between your spread thighs. The motion jostles his cock in a way that makes your breath hitch with each jerk. 

It's not painful. Not particularly. But you're overwhelmed by the sensation of utter fullness in a way you've never experienced before. Each grind of his cock against your overly stretched walls deeping that incipient feeling of anxiety brewing in your belly that one wrong move and you'll tear. He's just—

Too big. 

And despite his claims—or rather, in spite of them—you don't think you can do it. Don't think you can take him. It's too much. It feels like being turned inside out and then put back into place. An uneasy sense of discomfiture blooms with each too-tight, too-sharp tug of his cock pulling taut on your rim. 

Almost deliriously, you think you can feel the pulse of his cock inside your goddamn throat. 

“Simon—” you start on a tremulous breath but he cuts you off with a hum. 

“Relax.” 

You can't. Can't—

“Fuckin’ hell, bird,” he rasps, leaning down suddenly until his face was pushed tight into the curve of your neck, breath shallow on your thudding pulse. “Stop squirmin’ ‘round me like tha’ or I'll cum right fuckin’ now.”

Your heart stutters. Gallops painfully in your chest. His words make you dizzy because for as much as this feeling of him, his cock, inside of you dances on a delicate precipice of being more than you can feasibly handle and somehow the most incredible thing you'd ever experienced before, you hadn't considered how he'd feel. 

Inexplicably, it pleases you. 

There's something so strange—so extraordinary—about bringing a man like him, like this, to his knees. Pleasuring him by just heaving through the white-hot stretch of his cock inside of you. Making him bury his head in your neck, groaning about how he was gonna fuckin’ bust, pretty thing, fuck—

It was a powerful feeling. 

Unwarranted, maybe. But incredible, nevertheless. 

“Fuck,” he grunts, and you feel his throat work around a thick swallow. “Gonna fuck you, birdie. Gonna fuck this pretty cunt so fuckin' hard until you beg me stop—”

And he does just that. Rears back from your neck, and settles again between your thighs—quicker this time. With an urgency that makes you whimper when his cock grinds against your walls hard enough to bruise. 

When he finally pulls out until only the flared head of his cock remains, you knot a fist into the thin pillow, clinging on, and latch the other onto his hip as if that could somehow stop the vicious promise in his eyes about poundin’ you into the goddamn mattress. There's a flash, a brief flicker of his eyes, and then he thrusts back inside of you with a grunt that makes your belly clench, and your back arch. 

True to the promises he gave, it's brutal. Violent. 

Any pleasure you feel is leached through osmosis. A tether bound around his own. 

His arm is shoved under your back, angling your pelvis up. Thighs dangling over the thick spread of his own, ass seated in his lap. He drives into you, thrusts deep—grinds his hips until your moans break into hoarse screams, whimpers. Makes your eyes roll so far back, all you see is black even when you blink your eyes up at him. 

He carves a spot deep inside of you with each delirious piston of his cock, pounding into you with brutal thrusts, and then holding tight when his balls slap against your ass. Digging the head of his cock into the seal of your womb until it aches behind your navel. Each breath feels like glass in your lungs—

“Tha’s it,” he slurs in your ear, mouth damp against your skin. “Take my cock so good, pretty birdie. Little pussy was made for it, weren't you? Tight cunt all mine—”

His gruff words tug on that tether until you're wrapped around him like a bow. Following him down this endless spiral as he slams inside of you over and over again, cooing in your ear about the sounds you made for him, pretty cunt so fuckin’ wet f’me, birdie, hear tha’? all f’me—

“Cum f'me, birdie. Want this pussy cummin’ ‘round my cock—”

“Can't—” you gasp, arching into him, desperate and needy. It rides a line between pain and pleasure; a needlepoint you wobble on. “Need—”

You try to reach down, to touch your clit, but grinds his hips into yours with a snarl. “Cum ‘around my cock, birdie.”

“Touch me—”

“Fuckin’ hell—”

It edges on too much. Pain and pleasure teetering on a knife's edge, split apart by a line the width of a razer. Looping and tangling around each other until you can't differentiate between the two. But it makes sense, you suppose, staring up at him arched above you like a black cloud of smoke. All hunger and fire. Consuming, devouring, everything in its path. A wildfire. 

Butcher, you think again when his hand wraps around your throat. A mimicry of what he did in the truck, forcing your eyes on him. Your life tucked neatly against his palm.

These hands take lives. It's what they're made for. All scarred, and thick. Scar tissue and bone. Muscle and cartilage. Meant to render meat of cattle. Slaughterhouse in the shape of a man. Consumption personified. 

But where there should be fear, all you feel is an echoing sense of hunger. Leatherbound to each other, maybe—

The look that passes over his eyes as he stares down at you, cupped in his palm, seems to fit perfectly into the fractured gaps inside yourself you try so hard to ignore. And what doesn't—

Well. 

He'll make room to fit. 

You reach up, curling your fingers around his thick wrist. His eyes flash, but he doesn't slow his thrusts. Doesn't stop. Just watches as you peel his hand away from your neck, bringing it up to your mouth. 

On his palm, there's a piece of skin that's unblemished compared to the rest of his worn, burnt hands. A strip just big enough for you to sink your teeth into. 

And you do. 

“Fuck, Birdie—!” The snarl is ripped from his throat. His thrusts grow harder, sloppier. Each bit of strength in his muscled hips and thighs is used to pound into you until your vision blacks out. It hurts. Aches. Your heels slip down, catching on the broad expanse of his lower back. And you tighten them around his waist, pulling him closer. Deeper. “Fuck, Birdie, fuckin’ cunt was made f'me, wasn’t it? So cum on my cock. Now—”

Whining, you shake your head. “Can't. I can't. I need—”

You don't get to finish. With a huff of anger, he rips his hand off of the mattress, leaning back on his haunches, and shoves his hand between your thighs, scarred fingers stroking over your pebbled clit. It's rough. Sloppy. His anger hums through his body, skewering into you as he glared down, gaze swinging like a pendulum between the split of your thighs where his cock disappears into your swollen cunt, his fingers rubbing over your clit, and back up the hand around your neck, the tears staining your cheeks. 

There's an edge to his thrusts. A viciousness in the way he pistons his hips into you. Dark eyes catching every flicker—each wince, gasp, moan, whine all meticulously catalogued and exploited. He finds the spots that make your hips jerk, twitching both toward and away from him. Angling into the ones that have your eyes rolling back into your head, drool dribbling past your slack lips as you gasp his name out into the dank, humid air. 

It smells of sweat, sex, and him. Something brutal, bloody, and dark. Rotten leaves. Charred forests after a rain shower. Dangerous. Tinged with a slight acrid, chemical stench—benzene, oxidizing iron. It drips down your throat, and drenches your lungs. Staining you from the inside out. 

And he exploits that, too. Leans in, and breathes heavily against your upper lip, your cheek. Drowns you in his scent. His sweat beads along his jaw, droplets raining down over your brow. Soaked in his essence. Unable to see, smell, or touch anything that isn't him. 

With his hand over your mouth, teeth sunk into his palm, all you can taste is him, too. Leather. Gun oil. Blood. 

The ravenous look in his eye sharpens, turning into deadly points. 

“Such a pretty fuckin' bird.” He rasps, the words shattered, mangled in the back of his throat. They carry the scent of blood when you breathe them in, and you wonder if he forced them through glass. Pushed them out with his bloody fists. 

You bite down harder in response, keening through the white-hot pain of his cock spearing deeper than before, stretching you past your limits. The taste of blood on your tongue, the rasping snarl pulled from his chest, his fingers toying with your clit, push you over the edge once more. Again and again, and again, and—

His hand peels away from your oversensitive clit, dropping down to the mattress beside your face. He follows quickly after several impossibly deep thrusts that shove you higher up on the mattress, pressing in until his balls sit flush against your ass, cockhead battering against your cervix, and he groans—deep and liquid—when he comes, spilling inside of you. Rooted deep, cock twitching, Simon drops to his elbow beside your head, smothering you under his weight as the tension in his body bleeds out. 

Your teeth stick to the divots in his hand, and the sensation of ungluing them from the wounds you gave him makes you shiver. Slowly, you roll your tongue out, chasing the drops of blood, and breathe heavily through your nose as he burrows deeper inside of you, chest shuddering over yours. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” he rasps, hips jerking into yours with a slap that echoes through the room. “Little tease, ain't you?” 

Even with his cock softening inside of you, it's still thick. Fat. Stretching you open as he yawns out above you, bloodied hand dropping down to cup your neck again, forearm resting heavily between your breasts. He raises slightly on his elbow, black eyes glinting in the shallow dark of the room. Piercing as they drill into your sweat-slicked face. 

It aches when he moves. When he presses his hips harder into yours, the muscles in your legs throb as his broad waist splits them apart. Your feet dangle, sliding uselessly down his back, over his ass, before coming to rest curled around his thighs. Melting into the mattress, tender and sore and all chewed up—

You feel like a massive contusion instead of a person. A pestle. His. 

The thought makes you shiver, and his eyes flash in triumph like he knows. 

The feeling of him pulling out of you draws a whimper from your lips. The drag on your sensitive, bruised walls is a strange mix of tender pleasure and pain. He chuckles at your mewl—dark and low; the sound of nightmares, you think. Crackling sap on charred wood. 

You try to pretend it doesn't make you shudder, but the way he hums in response dashes the feigned oblivion before it can form. All you can do is heave on the bed, and watch him through narrowed slits as he leans back on his haunches once again, head cocking to the side. His dark eyes fixed on the split of your legs. The ache in your cunt growing sharp under his molten stare. 

“Fuck,” he rasps, the shallow groan pulled out from between clenched teeth. You wonder if the mangled curse was unintentional. Ripped from his throat before he could clamp his jaws around it—a crack in the facade. A hairline splinter in the indomitable mask he wears. 

Your heart lurches. None of this makes sense, but your head is too muddled, too syrupy, to think much at all. A quandary for later when he throws you from his bed with a harsh slap on your ass and a and don't think about doing this ever again. 

But you don't think you can move. “Give me a minute,” you start on a trembling breath. “And I'll—”

His brows move but his eyes stay fixed on your sore cunt. You can feel him leak out of you, spilling on the mattress in thick globs. The sensation makes you shiver. 

“You'll what?” 

It looks like he has to forcibly tear his eyes away from you, reluctance forming a cold, angry crater between his brows. The brunt of his ire—white, burning—makes you want to supplicate yourself at his feet, roll over on your belly and show the beast you mean no harm. 

(Run, and run far—)

He huffs. “You'll what, birdie?”

It takes a minute to find your voice through all the panic clogging your throat. “I'll leave, um—”

He peels away from you with a loud, rough snort, and drops to his his elbow beside you. Hands curling possessively over your waist, fingers tight. Unyielding. 

“Not goin’ anywhere, birdie. Told you, didn't I? You're mine.” 

“I'm—”

“Go to sleep.” 

He pulls you roughly to his chest until your head is pillowed on his shoulder, and then rolls on his back, keeping you cushioned at his side. You try to move, but his arm wedges under your neck, curling over your shoulder. Trapping you to him. 

The panic wants to come now. To rage against the shackle of his embrace, to run home and scrub your skin until it bleeds. But the exhaustion collapses over it all until your eyes feel too heavy to hold open. Too painful.

As you drift, aimless and dreamless, his voice cuts through the fog. “Gotta learn ‘ow to cum with nothin’ but my cock inside of you sooner or later, birdie. Or you won't be coming at all—”

It sounds like a threat. A promise. You fall asleep with the words echoing in your head, his arm an anchor around your waist. 

He wakes up hungry. 

A gnawing in his belly pulls him from the thin doze he fell into after fucking you three more times—with your face pressed into the mattress, ass in the air for him to rut against like a beast; teetering over his hips, the spread of them too wide for your thighs to split over leaving you precariously unbalanced and shifting your weight above him as neither knee sat comfortably on the mattress; and on your belly with him crushing you to the floor under his bulk. The memory of which makes his spent cock stir, twisting limply against his damp, sticky thigh. Matted down with drying cum, sweat, the slick wetness of being buried inside your messy cunt. 

Filled now with his cum. 

He groans low in his throat as he thinks about it. The sloppy way you let him take you over and over again until you couldn't keep your eyes open anymore, passing out before he finished. Letting him fuck his cum inside of you as you whimpered in your sleep—

Perfect little thing, aren't you? So good to him.

Simon can't remember the last time he fucked someone, much less when it was this enjoyable (an understatement, of course; in the back of his head, wheels spin round and round as he tries to come up with a plan to keep his cock buried inside of you at all times while still doing his work—), and the overflow of unquenched lust churns in his belly. A hunger he can now slake on your willing body. In the silence, he purrs—

But the effort, the exertion, dredged up a different need inside him. 

Simple hunger. An appetite. 

He could eat—

his eyes slant toward the top of your crown in the dark, and he amends it, quickly, to: in more ways than one. 

He'll go home in a minute. Make himself a steak from the prime cut he butchered a few days ago, leftovers that no one had any qualms about when he took several pieces home with him. 

(and really, why would they argue with the butcher who keeps their wallets fat and their bills paid?)

It was left on the counter earlier before he got the call that your brother was making another move. Now a perfect room temperature as it waits for him to come back. Cook it the way he likes—

Rare. 

The perfect grill is a nice char on the outside, but bleeding red on the inside. Basted in duck fat and garlic. A sprig of rosemary in the pan, but not touching the meat. Just enough to give the juice that earthy, sweet flavour. Let it rest for ten minutes under foil with the rest of the fat poured over it from the pan. Served as is with maybe a dash of salt and pepper on the side. 

Simple. But incredibly difficult to perfect, he finds. 

Everyone tries to make it fancier than what it needs to be, but at the end of the day, meat is meat. And going from picking scraps from the garbage outside of the Italian butcher on the corner to ordering his own pretentious filet mignon still gives him a sense of unease. Whiplash, perhaps. Nothing to something—how about that, Tommy? 

Maybe that's why he prefers to raise and butcher his own cattle. A never-ending supply of meat for him to sink his teeth into even if this whole thing goes belly up and he's back to begging for morsels on the corner. Tommy hiding in the shadows with a baseball bat waiting to ambush the richer men who happen to feel altruistic that day. 

This practice bled over into his current occupation, too. The basement of that same Italian butcher shop he used to sneak expired sausage from out of the bins is now his home base of sorts. A money laundering front of the 141. Headquarters for them to congregate in secrecy upstairs. And here—

A torture chamber for those who tried to cross them. Strung up on meat hooks like the cattle they eat, the ones he feeds them, until he makes up his mind on what he wants to do to them. 

It's where you should have been, he supposes, thumb brushing a spot of dried blood on your shoulder, right below a nasty bite mark on your forearm. The ring nearly black from the clotted blood pooling in the indents. It matches several others on your thighs—top, insides, back—and neck, belly, collarbones, sternum. All chewed up. Marked by the butcher. 

In working for the old Italian man who ran the shop when he was eighteen, he learned that most of the butchers preferred to mark their carcasses when they came in. A little x on the fat to signify they'd be the ones carving up the prime meat. 

He didn't think you could handle his knife, so he gave you his teeth instead. But the implication is clear. 

His. 

It's overkill considering his reputation, and the claim he already had on you. Because even before this, back when he saw you through the window of his shop as he was moonlit as a legitimate butcher and businessman instead of the enforcer, the brute, everyone already knew he was, his interest was clear. You were off-limits. His to deal with. 

And while Price refers not to get involved in small-time street dealers, the warnings Soap and Gaz impressed onto your brother should have been the end of an irritating situation and not the beginning of a fuckin’ headache. But no. He had to push. And push.  

Until Price gave the order to take care of it. 

And that he did. 

(With the added benefit of killing one bird and keeping the other in a pretty cage.)

Price probably won't like his solution, but Simon racked up enough favours to keep a little pet of his own. Been a good boy for a long, long time now, and he supposes he's owed a bone. 

Or a sweet thing tucked tight to his side having passed out some two hours ago after he slaked his dizzying thirst on you over and over again even though it doesn't feel like it's been enough. 

It's rare that he has an appetite for people. Even rarer that he lets this meagre hunger consume him like this. But there's something about you that makes his teeth ache in the same way they often do whenever he's hungry for meat. 

He wants to devour you. Consume you. Eat you alive and save nothing for anyone else to taste. 

(So—

Price will just have to let him keep you, won't he?)

The mattress vibrates under him. His phone buzzing with an incoming text. He reaches over, pulling it close enough to read the notification on his screen. It's from Soap.

All her stuff is on your porch. 

He hums, but doesn't reply. Simply opts to drop his phone on his belly, and tug you closer to his broad chest. He'll wake you in an hour, and the stirring in his groin tells him it'll be for another round. Maybe he'll take you in the freezer. Make you cling to the hook hanging down from the ceiling as he fucks you like that. He has a pair of ties for ox, lamb legs, that he can loop around your wrists and heft you up on. 

It'll hurt, he's sure. The binds weren't designed with comfort in mind, but he can easily bear your weight as he pounds into you from below, your pretty legs wrapped tight around his waist. 

The image, the thought, alone has him thickening against his thigh. He reaches down, gripping the base tight in his hand as he pulls you even closer, burying his nose in your crown. 

At the very least, he wouldn't be lying when he told Price he strung you up. 

Three rounds—on your back, your hands and knees, perched above him like a pretty goddess he stole away from a temple—and he still isn't satisfied. Fuck. He breathes in your scent and doesn't think he ever will be. 

He'll get you out of here, take you home. Make you the steak he likes for a late dinner, rare and simple—the same one he gave your brother weeks ago when he dragged him into the shop, strung him up on a hook, and demanded payment for his disrespect. 

Who'd have thought that his payment would be you? 

(fitting, though, since he'd had his eye on you for a while now—)

He nudges you when his phone chimes again with another message doubtless from Soap telling him all your things have been tucked away. Matters dealt with. 

“C’mon,” he grunts, running his hand down your spine. “We’re leavin’.”

You blink at him slowly. “Leaving?”

He nods. “Get dressed.” 

You're quiet as he turns, reaching for his jeans left in a heap beside the mattress, but he hears the hitch in your throat. The click when you swallow. Unbothered by it, he turns, giving you his back as he wedges his feet inside the trousers, pulling them up his legs. 

The bed shifts behind him. “I—I can walk back to my brother's—”

The hope in your voice is a delicate thing. Fragile like fine china. A pretty, vulnerable tchotchke meant to be seen, admired, but not touched. Not handled roughly. 

Unfortunately for you, he's never had much of a gentle touch. 

When he throws a glance over his shoulder, he's not surprised to find your arm folded over your bare breasts as you kneel on the mattress, your palm resting flat between your parted thighs, wrist and forearm covering the slip of heaven between them from his greedy, prying gaze. 

It paints a startling picture, he finds. One with you looking thoroughly ravaged. Taken. But presenting it in a soft sort of sensuality meant to make a man feel both hot under the collar and like an unrepentant voyeur. 

Pretty bird, he thinks, and feels his cock stir. 

He rises swiftly, hiking up his jeans around his thighs as he goes, and then turns to you with a heady desire to crush that gossamer of hope between his greedy hand like a silken cobweb that will stick to his fingers. 

“Not goin’ to your brothers,” he says, pushing his tongue against his cheek to stem the ache burning in his muscles. 

You shiver, eyes growing wide, frenzied with fear as you stare up at him. The shift of your throat when you swallow makes pre-cum dribble out of his fattened cock. He's never really had much of a taste for it, but he's overcome with the urge to see you cry—

“Where are we going?”

Amid the ache in his loins, the flickering fantasies of your pretty, lachrymal face gazing up at him helpless, hopeless, and needy, he catches the edge of panic when you speak. The razor-sharp tremble of fear. 

But buried amongst it, hidden in the bruised look you give him as he towers over you with his cock bulging in his slacks and his eyes burning with want, he finds a keen sense of eagerness amongst the rubble. Agog, almost. 

And fuck. If that doesn't do something awful to him. 

“What?” He taunts, cocking his head to the side as your breath grows shallow and your eyes wide. “Did you think that was enough to pay your debt, birdie?”

“What? You can't—”

“Don't like it—” he lifts his shoulder up in a cool, indifferent shrug, enjoying the dismayed expression that falls over your brow more than he should. “—go to the police.”

“The ones on your payroll?” You spit, eyes flaring wide like an angry cat. “You—”

Several things might have continued in place of your choked, angry sob, but it's swallowed down as pragmatically as it was the first time he cornered you earlier today. And as beautiful as your ire is, he finds the cornered look on your face to be much more pleasing. Prettier. 

“C’mon, bird,” he mocks, holding his hand out toward you with a tick of his lips. “All your stuff is at home. Don't be stupid.” 

“Stupid?” You gasp in indignation, but there's a bruised look in your eyes. A wounded thing that makes his breath hitch in his lungs for reasons he can't really ascertain, but just knows that he likes it. Likes it a lot. “This is—insane.”

Again, he shrugs, but the indifference this time isn't the same manufactured callousness meant to inspire fear. The conversation is stale already. Grating on him. He's not used to having his orders ignored or questioned. What he says usually goes—either through association or reputation, or just the fact that no one has ever come close to filling the same measure of space as he does—and questioning him like this makes him feel too much like a boy, and not enough like the living ghost he pretends to be. 

“You can't do this. It's not right.”

An appeal to his humanity. Cute. He huffs, reaching down to fasten the button of his jeans. The sound the zipper makes cuts through the room. “You're mine, birdie. Better get used to it.” 

Catching your eye as he says it was only meant to reignite the kindling fear you have of him from extinguishing. A scared prey animal was a better pet than an angry one. But the look on your face catches him off-guard. 

It reminds him of a flightless little bird shivering in a child's shoebox. Tiny broken thing his mum warned him not to touch or its mother would abandon it to die on its own. 

“Until the debt is paid off.”

A statement, not a question. He shrugs, but doesn't respond. Tilts his head toward the door. “Let's go.” 

His lack of reassurance doesn't soften the flint in your gaze, but the prospect of recompense seems to spurn you on. Another wishbone of hope to cling to. And despite himself, he lets you keep it. Lets your little finger wrap around the delicate bone for comfort because as much as you might think there's a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bigger piece, he has no intentions of letting something like that get in the way of his appetite even if you do. 

(And his hunger has always been particularly voracious, hasn't it?)

“Come, birdie. Gotta get you home, and fed, don't I?” 

[quarterlifekitty]

okay, I had been thinking about but after you commented on my post it’s just— [explodes]

maybe a weaknesses post with the CoD men on your monthly? I’m begging on my knees, I’m sure they (König) could fix me❤️‍🩹✨also thinking about how König probably refers to it as “strawberry week” (German euphemism for it) [explodes pt 2]

Maybe? Machveil. For you? Anything. Also, please look at my favorite period euphemisms, found while researching for this post:

ペリー来航 - Arrival of Matthew Perry

Le petit clown qui saigne du nez - The little clown with a nose bleeding

Weaknesses part 9: the red death

cw: period play, breeding mention, exhibitionism mention

Gaz grew up with a sister— he is no stranger to the ill tidings that come with owning a uterus. He’s a man that probably already has pads and tampons at his place for guests. And Gaz is the kind of son of a bitch who kinda likes it when you’re sick, cause it means he gets to spend time nursing you— so he loves your period. Picking up comfort foods, doing a bit of extra laundry, making sure your vibrator is charged. He calls it “Lady time”.

Soap is not very sympathetic in this matter. He finds it kinda funny, to be honest. He’ll still do anything you ask, but he has a condescending little smile on his face. Calls you his little ketchup packet. Tickles you, knowing it makes you gush a little. That said, he will eat you out during it. His doglike nature knows no bounds. Refers to it as being “on the rag”.

Ghost is like a knight in your royal service when you’ve got a rough menstrual. At your command in any matter, no matter the inconvenience, with no complaint. While he will fuck you and make you cum, it’s purely for your benefit. Blood usually reminds him a bit too much of work for it to be a huge turn on. But he does melt under the praise of “none of my boyfriends before would do this for me— they all said it was gross :(“. Makes him feel like a real man. He calls it Shark Week.

Price feels, in just the tiniest way, like resources have been wasted when you get your period. Like… you’re paying rent on an empty apartment (your baby chamber) when it could be full (with a baby). He’ll never say that, but it’s in the back of his mind. And if you loudly complain about being on you’re period a lot he’ll be like “I know a way to make it stop for a while :{)” (the curly bracket is his mustache). Like man, shut up. Also, blame it on being English, but he’s constantly offering tea for every single symptom. He calls it “code red”.

König. This is a sick man. He feels a bit bad about it, but he does like that your period makes you so slick, and so sensitive— he doesn’t even have to do anything to get you going before he fucks you. Despite his career, he rather likes the look of your blood all over his cock and splashing up his pelvis. And he gets super proud if he’s the first man to ever fuck you on your period. He buys you a big, expensive box of imported chocolate truffles when you’re having a terrible period. Calls it “Erdbeerwoche” (strawberry week).

Nikolai… patron saint of your helplessness. Thinks of your period as a part of his responsibility as your man. Happy wife happy life type of thing. He does a lot of cooking. And he keeps you perched on his thigh at every opportunity for as long as you can stand it. He’s got a hand dipping into your panties and playing with you throughout the day (his non dominant, but that’s never stopped him) while he works, relaxes, entertains guests (Price). Makes you cum until you’re a boneless mess, your blood soaked clean through his jeans. Calls it “Красная шапочка (krasnaya shapochka)” (little red riding hood)

[mokulule]

A Man has Needs part 1

This will hopefully be a short thing, maybe three or four parts. Silly with a small dash of angst for flavor. Also someone needs to stop me from starting new stories, instead of indulging my insanity.

Ship: Dead on Main (Jason/Danny)

It had been an exhausting Friday, people were out celebrating the weekend and payday both. To top it off it was prime petty crime weather too with no rain. It was a patrol that would never end. Crime Alley had really lived up to its name tonight.

Jason was exhausted. Not because anything had been particularly challenging or dangerous, but it had just been one very long night of constant stupid little crimes.

It was five in the morning and his bed was calling him. He’d already stashed his gear in storage on the roof and he was so close to being home he could practically feel the soft sheets, the promise of sleep. The open bathroom window was a bother when he was this tired. Maybe he should have just gone down to the street and walked in the door, but keys also seemed like such a bother right now and more stairs… No, window was fine, he was in.

Bed. Now.

He bumped into something outside the bathroom door. Fuzzily he looked down to see a moving box - odd. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, he’d deal with that in the morning. Bed, comfort, safe.

He stumbled into the bedroom when it turned out the door wasn’t properly shut just pushed mostly closed.

Okay check list. Boots off. What else? Pants off, shirt off. He’d pick up in the morning. Did he forget anything? Toothbrush. He glanced backwards halfheartedly, he’d already left the bathroom; bed was right there.

The bed won. Tomorrow he would deal with teeth.

Tomorrow…

He crawled under the sheets. Warm and nice and safe and mmmmh he snuggled closer to the source, breathing in mint and something biting like frosty morning air. His nose buried into soft short hair and breathed in deep again. Good. Amazing. Safe. Sated.

Sleep.

Oo o oO

Danny turned and stretched with a yawn. He frowned when something held him into place. Must have gotten himself caught in the sheets again. It wasn’t a problem, he just slipped away intangibly, rolling to the edge of the bed to reach blindly for the night table.

Where was the phone? It took him a moment but finally it connected with his hand.

He groaned when he saw the time, it was nearly midday. Jazz would frown at him for already messing his sleep schedule up, but he’d just wanted to get as much set up in his apartment as possible, that had to be an okay excuse? He turned back on his back and looked at the light dancing across the ceiling from the light breeze moving the curtains. Okay time to get up. He had another day of unpacking today.

He got out and stretched absently. He turned around intending to make his bed if only to look responsible for when Jazz would come later to see the apartment.

He turned and promptly clapped his hands over his mouth to contain the frightened scream.

There was a guy in his bed! How was there a guy in his bed?! Ancients, what the fuck?!

Wait.

Danny tilted his head, eyes trailed down the muscular and scarred back, to a well shaped butt, which the tight boxers did very little to hide, and then those thighs!

There was a hot guy in Danny’s bed!

Focus Danny. He shook his head and slapped himself for good measure. That wasn’t what was important right now - though those thighs… Ancients, Danny would happily die again crushed by them.

No!

What was important was somehow there was a (hot) stranger in his bed. Danny had not invited him, of that he was sure. He had been unpacking yesterday, there had been no consumption of ghost zone alcohol yesterday, which could otherwise explain the lack of memory.

Which meant the guy had for some reason entered Danny’s apartment and slept with him - in the boring ordinary sense, Danny lamented this fact quietly for a moment.

Danny wasn’t surprised he hadn’t woken up, he slept, well, like the dead. The only thing that would wake him was very loud noises (like his alarm or his Dad’s inside voice) or occasionally his ghost sense.

It wasn’t even that Danny was surprised to find a bedmate. It was rare that Danny slept alone these days. He was, no matter how you put it, a very powerful ghost and he gave off a lot of good concentrated ambient ectoplasm.

Sometime last year the blobs and animal ghosts in Amity had started to join him every now and then when he slept. According to Frostbite it wasn’t so strange. They fed on the energy he gave off and also benefitted from his presence, which apparently radiated safety.

At first he’d been woken up by his ghost sense every time, but he’d gotten to a point where he just subconsciously dismissed the sense when the ghosts in question didn’t have ill intentions.

So Danny wasn’t surprised he wasn’t alone. He’d expected a bit more time to pass before whatever weak ghosts might be around figured out he was here, but you don’t wake up six days out of seven with cuddly animal ghosts in your bed and get surprised by it.

No, Danny was surprised by the fact that it was a guy. A human. A person. With muscled arms and- Oh, Danny realized cheeks heating up, that probably hadn’t been the sheets he’d been stuck in earlier.

Danny covered his face with his hands and groaned in despair.

Why was there a guy in his bed? Why couldn’t there be a guy in his bed for normal reasons? Danny would have brought this guy to his bed for normal bringing a guy to bed reasons.

He crawled onto the bed intending to wake the stranger, but as he reached out for the guy’s shoulder he turned leaning into the touch and sighed like the weight of the world had just lifted off his shoulders.

Danny was frozen, staring at the point of contact. He could sense it now: the man’s malnourished ghost core.

Danny swallowed thickly, suddenly seeing the many scars on the man’s back in a different light and that pure white streak in the otherwise black hair, it all seemed so obvious now.

The man was a halfa, or halfa adjacent. Because that was definitely warm human flesh underneath Danny’s hand.

So incredibly, unbelievably, absurdly this was essentially the same situation as usual, except not at all, because this was a person. Humanoid ghosts and ghosts with human-like or above intelligence didn’t do this. There were social conventions in place and not to mention they were usually powerful enough on their own to not need the ectoplasm.

But this guy was malnourished. He probably never had a good stable source of ectoplasm to properly develop his metabolism. Also to Danny’s metaphysical senses he smelled like he’d done the ghostly equivalent of dumpster diving to survive. Danny’s ectoplasmic aura had to be like the siren call of a buffet table.

Shit.

New plan. Danny was not gonna embarrass the poor guy. The situation was weird enough as it was. Danny was just gonna act like this was normal. Danny woke up with guests practically every day.

This was a person, not an animal, therefore petting was out of the question, so coffee.

Coffee was normal to offer guests. Also Danny needed coffee. He nodded to himself in satisfaction and floated off the bed to enter his combined kitchen and living room. The coffee machine was the first thing he got set up yesterday, clearly smart of past Danny.

It wouldn’t be long before his guest awoke with Danny no longer in the room to supply passive ectoplasm.

Maybe his human stomach wanted food too?

Oo o oO

Jason woke up with his head and nose buried in a pillow that smelled wonderful and comfortable somehow. He breathed in deep, catching mint and that biting cold he vaguely remembered from last night. Now, however he wasn’t dead on his feet, he was awake, more rested than he remember feeling for a long time and his brain connected the details into very alarming facts:

This was not his pillow. This was not his bed.

He sat up, quickly taking in the bare white walls and the stack of emptied and flattened moving boxes leaning against the wall next to a built-in closet.

This was very much not his apartment.

There was a noise of a cupboard clanging shut and Jason’s head snapped to the door that was open just a crack; he was not alone.

Shit.

He jumped out of bed, bending his knees upon impact to soften the sound. He needed to leave. Where was his clothes? His gaze darted around and he hurried to pick up his discarded items of clothing as he found them. Somehow one of his boots had ended up under the bed.

Quickly he pulled on the jeans and the shirt, was he wearing a jacket yesterday? He didn’t remember. Boots on and then he was going out the window- except there was the scent of coffee and something in the air. What was that smell?

He found himself moving to the door instead. The door squeaked as he pulled it open and he froze, hand still on the door handle, when the sound drew the attention of the young man in the kitchen.

His hair was black and sleep tousled, he had a slender athletic build and as he walked around the kitchen island bearing two cups it became apparent he was just wearing boxers. Jason’s inspection ended on his legs, which were admittedly very nice. When he looked back up he found the man standing a cautious distance away and a cute pink blush stretched all the way from his cheeks to his chest. Sky blue eyes looked up a him from underneath slightly frowning brows.

“So, you’re awake,” the man opened with an admirable attempt at a smile considering the situation. There was a beat of silence in which Jason grasped for what to even say, then the man reached his hand forward offering one of the cups, “coffee?”

There were many a thing Jason could say or should say. Like, what the fuck? You’re just gonna offer the guy who broke into your apartment coffee? Or, I’m sorry I broke into your apartment (and bed!)? And, why do you sleep with your windows open and unlocked? This is freaking Crime Alley! Or, what is it that smells so good?

What he actually said was a quiet, “yes, please.”

The cup was warm in his hands as he sipped it. And clearly this was enough for the cute guy because his smile turned more real and he nodded to himself and walked back to the kitchen counter. Jason really hoped that didn’t mean the coffee was poisoned.

“Feel free to take a seat. I hope you like pop tarts, it’s kinda all that I have at the moment.” As if summoned the toaster made a swish noise popping up the tarts. Hesitantly Jason sat down at the small square table paired with two mismatched foldable chairs. He really should turn and jump out a window. There had to be some kind of reckoning coming. Maybe the guy really cared about hospitality and Jason would be questioned after the food? Maybe that’s what was going on.

But also strangely his gut was telling him he was safe here? He really had no clue what to do with that.A paper plate with a pop tart was set down in front of him and after setting down his own pop tart and coffee the man joined him.

Jason was supremely aware of the few inches between their knees. This wasn’t a large table after all and if he moved just slightly they would be touching. But why would he want them to be touching? Why was it so tempting?

Jason clenched his hands firmly and stared down at the pop tart, with an intensity born of the fact that for some reason he had to focus on not knocking knees with a stranger.

“You look at that poor pop tart as if you think it’s gonna explode, that’s not actually what pop tart means, you know.”

Jason looked up at the guy in disbelief.

He rubbed the back of his neck, “yeah that was terrible I know.”

Silence stretched between them and clearly embarrassed the guy hastily took a sip of his coffee and a bite of his pop tart avoiding Jason’s gaze.

Guilt twisted in Jason’s chest, not only did he invade his home he was also making him uncomfortable. His only comfort was the fact that the guy clearly wasn’t afraid of him.

Jason started eating the pop tart. For whatever the reason breakfast was part of the script the guy had decided on to make an attempt at normalcy. What else was Jason to do? He hadn’t fled when he had the chance and-

Oh-

The guy had shifted in his chair, one of their knees were touching, there was a spark and it felt like something uncurled inside him, a weight lifted. Jason blinked. This was…Mint and frost was a sting in his nose, a fullness in his chest. Goose bumps ran along his arms, and it tingled all the way to his fingertips.

Jason snapped his head up, but the guy was just looking at his phone sipping his coffee. As if he couldn’t feel the cold electricity between them. There was no way he could sit like that if he felt it? Was Jason just imagining it? He shuddered and moved slightly, just enough that they weren’t touching and instantly he regretted it. The wave of longing was almost enough to make his vision black out.

The guy looked up with a frown. “You okay, man?”

“Fine,” Jason said hoarsely, desperately focusing on the half eaten pop tart and taking another bite.

When the pop tarts were eaten and the cups emptied the man stood and Jason matched him. Jason wasn’t sure what he expected to happen at this point but it certainly wasn’t the guy, to walk over to his front door with a casual, “well I should get ready for the day.”It was a clear dismissal. An out for the whole strange situation. Jason stood up and walked over to the door.

The guy opened the door letting Jason out with a short electrifying clap on the back and a “Take care, man.”

Jason was left standing outside the door to the previously empty apartment 4A, several floors below Jason’s own top floor apartment. How did he ever mistake it for his own?

What was the deal with the guy’s touch and why did Jason crave it so desperately?

Unsettled. he started walking towards the stairwell. As he moved further away from the apartment the pull to go back lessened. It was still there, but it was replaced quickly by something else.

He felt rested, energized in a way he hadn’t felt in a long while. There was an urge to do something. He felt like he could take on the world - maybe even Sunday dinner at the manor tomorrow.

Jason laughed. Wouldn’t that surprise everyone?

He was so caught up in the euphoria of productivity and social interactions that didn’t go sour for the next couple of days, that he completely forgot about the strange Saturday morning.

-

If you liked this consider telling me your thoughts in the replies or tags, it is motivating. Now to hopefully write a bit on Catnip. Edit: Masterpost now up if you wanna subscribe

[sim0nril3y]

Helloooo, I love your work!

The breeding kink drabble made me do a think 🤔

What if you find baby pictures of simon (just be delusional w me here pls🫠)

And he's so cute and chonky frowning at the camera 😭

So you're poking his cheeks and pouting because they're not squishy anymore and asking him to turn smol again 😔

And he snorts and makes a deal to give you a chonky baby to coo over 🤭😏sjjehehe bye💞

Note: THIS REQUEST IS FREAKING ADORABLE! Love it, love it, love it. Hope that it held up to what you were thinking! Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Civilian!Reader Warnings: No mask Simon (It's my personal headcanon in his regular life he probably wouldn't wear it), established relationship, pregnancy talk, talk of starting a family, canon-typical swearing.

There was a lot of things that were surprising about living with Simon but the discovery of a small shoebox full of pictures of him throughout his childhood was certainly shocking. It felt like you sat there for hours sifting through each of the pictures, fulling appreciating just how cute he looked like as a chubby little baby, becoming a toddling toddler and then finally a wild child.

It was the pictures of Simon as a baby that you couldn’t stop obsessing over. He was absolutely adorable, chubby little legs, chubby little arms, chubby cheeks. Oh, the sight of it alone was sending you spiralling into an overwhelming feeling of baby fever. Obviously, he had grown into a handsome, sturdy, hardworking man, but you couldn’t help but wonder if he was to give you a child if they would be just as chunky as he was.

“What you looking at?” A voice came from behind you, glancing over your shoulder then and attempting to hide the pictures back into the shoebox. “What the…” He snatched them all from your hands quickly. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? You snooping through my things?”

Indignantly you answered. “No.” Almost hurt by the accusation. “I… stumbled across them and I’m naturally a curious person.” Then shrugging with your nose held high. “I don’t snoop as you put it…”

A hard huff came from Simon, beginning to put the photos away back into the box. “But Simon…” You pick up another photo of him as a baby, sat surrounded by toy trains but still scowling into the camera. “Look at how adorable you are in these photos~” You cooed, looking at it closely and then back at him. “That is the exact same face you make now when I take a picture of you!”

Simon grumbled a few cuss words under his breath. “Well, maybe not the exact same…” Then reaching up to cup and pinch his cheek. “Looks like you lost some of that baby fat~” He gifted you a false smile, snatching the phone from your fingers and placing it into the box, but this only lead you to grab another and cooing dramatically all over again. “Simon, I just… I cannot get over how fucking adorable you were when you were a baby.”

His fingers braced onto the same photo you were holding and leaning in behind you Simon pressed a small kiss to your temple, muttering in your ear. “How about…” You felt him smirk. “How about if we put these photos away and never talk about them again, I’ll give you a chubby little baby to coo over?” He nibbed at your earlobe.

A warm shiver ran down your spine, quirking a brow and saying. “You mean…” “I mean…” He slipped the photo from your fingers. “I’ll bend you over this fucking table and pump you full until you’re knocked up… that’s what I mean.” Seconds later the photos were stored away safely and you were bent over the table exactly as Simon had promised.

Masterlist | Ask | 08-12-2023

[ragingbookdragon]

Someday We'll Be All That We Need

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Reader

Word Count: 1.7K Warnings: Explicit Language, Angst

Author's Note: I made a new friend so I made that friend a fic. @temeyes <3 -Thorne

**********************************************************************

Other than the shivering, Simon doesn’t so much as twitch in the corner they’re huddled in. She’s cold herself, but nothing feels as terrifying as losing the man wedged in between her thighs, head resting against her chest. The bleeding has stopped though, the bullet wound plugged well enough that him exsanguinating is the least of her worries—it’s the ever-dropping temperature and the broken-down cabin that scares her.

It was thirty degrees Fahrenheit when the mission started; the last reading was ten and dropping. The cabin they’d taken shelter in was worn down, broken windows and missing ceiling allowing streams of frigid winter air and snow to fall in and continue to chill their bones. Simon had sealed his wound and managed to stay awake but with the blood loss he’d suffered and the stress, fatigue had set in, and that’s when she’d found herself curled up in the corner with the emergency blanket from her kit wrapped around his torso, his body wedged up against hers, trying to conserve energy and heat.

The comms had gone down, Simon’s radio busted in a skirmish of hand to hand with an enemy, and she had only managed to get one SOS out before the line cut off. They were alone in the middle of enemy territory, in a temperature-dropping environment, wounded and unable to call for help. Her worst fears were coming alive.

She swallowed thickly, shaking the thoughts away, and readjusted her grip on Simon, jostling him awake in the process. “Alrigh’, love?” he murmured lowly, tongue lazy and slow; he only called her love when they were alone and serious.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “You?”

“Back’s killin’ me.”

She huffed a laugh. “I bet it is. You’re folded like a pretzel.”

Simon shifted, or tried to, and rested his head on her shoulder. “How long’s it been since I feel asleep?”

“Maybe an hour?” she blinked, looking around the room; snow was beginning to pile up where the holes in the ceiling dropped to the floor. “I haven’t really been paying attention to the time.”

“Hmm.” He breathed into her neck. “I can’t feel my toes.”

Her eyes shifted to his feet, and she let out a breath, a mixture of shock and fear. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” he admitted. “‘s bad, love. Spreading up.”

“Motherfucker,” she laughed in disbelief and wrapped her arms tighter around him. “Price heard the SOS. He’s coming, okay? Just…just keep it together until then.”

Simon swallowed thickly; his eyes still shut as he nudged her neck with his mask-covered nose. “Got a safety deposit box back in Manchester,” he muttered. “Key’s in my nightstand back at base.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Got ‘bout five-hundred thousand pounds in’it.” He shifted again as if trying to get into her skin to be warmer. “Deed to a property in Herefordshire. Got it a few years ago when I was staying with Price.”

“Simon, stop,” she warned—she knew exactly what he was doing.

“Want you to get out and go live there. You’ve served long enough to get pension. You’ll be set for the rest of your life out there.”

“No. Not without you I won’t.”

He shook his head. “I don’ think I’m comin’ back, love. Not this time.”

“Don’t say that,” she stressed, turning her face to his. “They’re coming. We’ll be okay.”

Simon didn’t bother to open his eyes. “Want you to buy one of those big black Corso’s. Name her Morrigan. Let her take care of you and the land.”

Tears began to gather in her eyes. “You’re a bastard,” she whispered. “Quit it.”

“I want you to listen. I want you to be taken care of. I want—”

“I want you alive,” she cut off. “Now shut up and save some energy.”

Simon cracked an eye open and simply gazed at her. “I love you. I know I didn’ say it enough. ‘m sorry, love.”

She clenched her jaw against the wave eating her chest inside out and inhaled deeply. “Simon, stop and rest. I won’t say it again.”

He let his eyes close and laid his head back down. “Alright, love.”

***

It was at least another two hours before noise echoed outside, and it drew her from a slumber she hadn’t realized she was in; she jolted up, Simon jostling with her. “Simon,” she whispered. “Someone’s outside.” He didn’t respond to her, and she pulled away, looking at him. “Simon?” he was asleep, unresponsive to any of the stimuli around him. “Fuck, Simon?” the noise outside grew louder, and she pushed past her fear and shifted from under him, tucking him against the wall as she grabbed her gun and rose to her feet.

Kneeling down, she put a hand against his face. “I’ll be back, okay? I promise.” She swallowed. “I’m coming right back, Simon.”

She rose again and headed for the door, cracking it open and slipping outside as a vehicle pulled up; tucking behind the railing, she breathed deeply and lifted her head, catching sight of a few men exiting.

Before she could even raise her weapon, she heard, “Contact!”

Ducking again, she cocked her rifle and listened as the others did the same, obviously hiding behind shelter themselves. It had to be the rest of that enemy squad that she failed to take out when Simon got injured. Fuck, she only had one mag left and she was running on fumes herself. She had to be quick. She had to be careful. She had—

“Identify yourself, or we will shoot!”

Wait, that sounded like—

“I will not say it again! Identify yourself or—”

“Price!” she called and peeked over the railing. “Price, it’s me! It’s me!”

Soap and Gaz appeared on the other side of the SUV. “Athena?”

She felt tears gather in her eyes as she stood up and lowered her gun. “Holy shit, I’ve never been so glad to see you guys.”

Price stopped in front of her, pulling her into a quick hug. “Good to see you. Where’s Simon?”

Simon.

Her heart dropped. “Fuck.” She turned on her heel and sprinted back into the cabin and to the corner, the men on her heels; she got to him first and dropped to her knees, shaking him. “Simon! Simon, wake up!”

He didn’t move.

“Simon!” she called again, lifting her cold fingers to his neck. Whether it was her own anxiety or him, she couldn’t feel a thing and she started panicking. “I can’t get a pulse!” she turned to them. “I can’t wake him up!”

Soap pulled her back as Price and Gaz got to work and she thrashed in his arms. “LET GO!”

“Lass, calm down!”

“LET GO! SIMON!” she screamed, her own vision beginning to haze, exhaustion weighing taking its toll.

“We’ve gotta start compressions,” she heard Gaz say and he looked at Price. “He’s not going to make it back if we don’t do something now.”

Price looked back. “Soap, get her in the SUV, we’ll prep Simon for transport.”

“Aye, sir,” Soap said and hefted her up against her thrashing.

“NO! I’M NOT LEAVING HIM BEHIND! LET GO OF ME GODDAMNIT!”

“Lass, you can’t help him even if you wanted to.”

Her body felt like lead and she felt her limbs going numb as her breathing kicked into a wildness, head light and heavy all at the same time. She kept trying to get out of his arms when Price tossed a syringe his way, and a prick to her arm drew blackness into all sides of her gaze, the last thing she saw was Gaz yanking open Simon’s gear to press his hands to his chest.

***

There was an impossibly annoying beeping going off on the side of Simon’s bed and she had half a mind to kick him in his hip and gripe at him to turn it off; she managed to mumble something akin to it but when the beeping didn’t stop, she managed with great effort to crack her eyes open, only to be met with the sterile walls of a medical room.

It all came back in an instant and she sat up straight, yanking the IV out of arm, the oxygen tube from her nose, rolling from the bed. Her knees kissed the floor and pain seared up her legs as she scrambled for the door, only to fall again, but she crawled on her hands and knees to the handle. Lifting herself, she pulled the door open and leaned heavily on the wall of the hallway as she stumbled down, looking in every room for her lover.

“Simon!” she called weakly; the mission had taken its toll on her. She was weak, far beyond her own capacity and she was barely standing as it was. “Simon!” she yelled again, and Soap stuck his head out from a door about five doors down.

“Athena? Holy shite, you shouldn’t be up!” he made it to her, trying to help her, but she pushed past him.

“Where’s Simon?”

“Love, you need to go back to—”

“WHERE IS HE!”

Soap recoiled and recovered, gently wrapping his arm around her. “He’s down here. Still asleep.” His grip was steel. “I’ll take you to him.”

“I can—”

“You either let me help or I take you back to your room.”

She fell silent and let him, that was until she turned the corner of Simon’s room, and darted from his arms, barely managing to avoid face-planting into the hospital bed railing as she clambered onto the bed with the man.

“Simon?” she whispered, grabbing his face in her hands; he was so warm now. Tears seeped down her cheeks. “Simon, sweetheart?” she said again, pressing her head to his chest to feel his steady heartbeat thumping beneath; a choked sound of happiness escaped her, and she looked at Soap. “He’s alive.”

He smiled at her. “Yeah, love, he’s alive.”

“He’s okay?”

“Eh, we’re a little worried about his toes, but so far yeah.”

She buried her face in Simon’s chest, crying into the gown he wore, and grabbed one of his hands; she squeezed it tightly, relief flooding her as his fingers tightened around hers in his sleep.

[writingfromasgard]

The Book Burrow [Ghost]

[Masterlist] || Requests are Open || GIF by hollow-epitaph

cw: Simon using an identity to hide from his previous job?, n/a

synopsis: The dodgy bar down the street was turned into a bookstore a few months earlier in your town and its the last place to try to find the book series your friend recommended to you.

The darkly tinted windows showed your reflection as you squinted, trying to peer inside to discern whether this was truly a bookstore or a bar with a gimmick. It'd previously been a bar that was shut down so the bar seemed the more likely scenario in your mind. The odd hours on the door mirrored that of any bar in the area, perhaps opening a little earlier.

Your teeth gnaw on your bottom lip. There was a singular book series you have been trying to find for the past week and the author listed this place specifically on their website. It seemed odd that an author would promote a specific, new maybe-bar bookstore.

While you've been in bars before, they didn't give you any joy to spend time there. The smell of alcohol made your stomach churn most days. You take a deep breath, gripping the handle firmly and tugging on it.

It opens with a creak of its hinges and you smell.. coffee. It's not so strong that it assaults your nose. It wraps around your figure, drawing you further into the building. Your eyes glitter with the scene before you: a legitimate bookstore, no booze included.

Shelves, sparsely populated with books, stand under large handwritten signs marking each section. You tilt your head, realizing the labels aren’t what you'd expect.

The traditional genre labels of "fiction", "romance" or even "nonfiction" have been superseded by handwritten replacements. Each section has it a descriptive tag hanging down above it -- 'Better than Stephen King', 'Mostly Accurate Espionage', 'Horrible Backstory with Good Story', and 'Monster dating'.

Laughter bubbles out of your throat. You approach the 'Monster Dating' section, plucking a random book to scan over the synopsis of it. It's indeed about dating in a fantasy universe where Werewolves and other things go bump in the night.

Engrossed in the first few pages, you don't notice the presence behind you until a throat clears. You jump, snapping the book closed and turning to face a man an intimidating aura to him. He's bulky, the t-shirt stretching over obvious muscles while his face is obscured by a half-mask with a skull's upper and lower jaw printed on it.

"Anything I can help you with?" His voice is full of gravel like his words claw their way out of his throat.

Clutching the book to your chest, you stammer, "I'm looking for a series by Grace Kirkly?"

"Oh." He mutters, motioning you to follow him with two fingers.

The floorboards creak under your steps as you follow him to the counter. He steps to his left, motioning to the display right beside the counter. Your eyes light up as you see the sale sign - twenty percent knocked off the first book, fifteen percent off the second book when purchased together.

You pick up the books, happy to be able to buy all three books in the series in one go. "Thank you."

The books land on the counter with a heavy thump while he rounds the counter. His eyes feel heavy on you as you timidly put the 'monster boyfriend' book on the counter as well.

"Ever read 'em?" He questions, scanning each book leisurely.

"No, a friend recommended her to me." You respond, digging your card out of your purse to hand it over.

"For the series, the first book is more setting up for the second. I enjoyed the second's descriptiveness during the sex scenes. The third shows he's growing as a writer, too." He tore off a patch of brown paper, centering your books on them. "The other book you picked up is a personal favorite of mine."

He creases the brown paper with sharp folds, making the stack of four books look like a singular box. He rolls a piece of tape on top then holds his hand out for your card. You hand it over quickly, a question balancing on the tip of your tongue.

"I thought Grace was a woman. Do you.. read a lot?" As soon as the question leaves your mouth, you feel stupid. He works in a bookstore - he can read as many books as he wants for free, most likely.

He swipes the card then lays it on the counter between you two, his gaze sharp. "Every book in my shop has been read by me. I didn't want to put anything I couldn't say was good on the shelves."

"So the signs are..?"

"It's nice to walk into a place and know exactly what you're getting." He grabs a small card, punching two holes into it before sliding it and your card toward you. "Tenth punch is a free book."

Your eyes read over the card's information - ten little skulls line edges of the card. In the middle is the shop's name - The Book Burrow and under that - Managed by Morys Neil.

Your eyes meet his again, a smile on your lips, "Thank you, Mister Neil."

"I can show you similar authors if you enjoy Grace Kirkly when you return." Morys leaned on the counter, picking up a book from under it to start reading. His combat boots land on the edge of the counter next to your books as he settles into his chair.

"I'll try to get through them as quickly as possible then." The words leave your mouth and a moment later, you realize how flirtatious it sounds.

His eyes leave the book momentarily, "Anticipation is the best part of any story. No need to rush to see me."

[milliesfishes]

⋆౨ৎO Brawling Love, O Loving Hate⋆౨ৎ

[fem reader] contains: angst. so much angst. pairing: billy the kid x fem reader summary: billy finds his way back to you author’s note: yeah...yeah. thank you all for 500, I hope you enjoy this!! Pinterest Board Spotify Playlist

The days without him were empty boxes tied up with ribbon. In a failed attempt to spin them into light like straw to gold, you told yourself that those long hours evicted from Billy's arms only made the little time you had with him all the sweeter. It did little to raise your spirits.

You tried not to miss him before he was gone. Here, sheets pulled up to your waist, the smell of straw tickling your nose in the chapel of the barn on your father's property, you found heaven on earth. His hair was tangled, and you could see the ghost of your fingers trailing through it, twisting around his curls and reveling in the way the light from the cracked window caught his face just right.

Billy's eyes were closed, his hand trailing absentmindedly up and down your side like a rolling wave. Your head was resting on his other bicep, back molded to his chest. That same arm was held in your grasp against you like a child's bear.

Though you were resting, body blissfully tired from loving all night, you were staring at the wall, lost in thought with no map. In the corner of the loft, his clothes were messily folded, hat perched haphazardly on the arm. One boot was sitting upright, the other on its side, heel touching its mate. It was a third presence in the supposed safety of this space. As long as those boots were here, he could leave.

When you'd first met him in town, you hadn't at all known what you were in for. One minute you had been petting a stranger's horse, giggling as the creature nuzzled into your hand. The next, a handsome man with bright blue eyes was telling you that the animal belonged to him, and that he didn't usually take to people so easily.

A spark became a fire, and before you knew it you were ducking into alleyways to kiss him, sneaking through your bedroom window late at night and finding your way into bars to spend a few hours under his arm as his girl. You were living inside a secret.

Billy shifted, adjusting his arm under your head. Dipping, he nudged his lips against your crown, and you swore you heard him breathe in. He knew. He was just as aware of how delicate this all was, maybe more than you were.

Tucking a stray strand behind your ear, he nuzzled into your neck, hand creeping around the corridors of your body to find yours. Still keeping hold of his arm, your other fingers closed around his, and you tilted your head back.

"You okay?" Billy murmured; voice smoky with sleep. His thumb traveled up the hills of your knuckles, rubbing the valleys between.

You hummed, turning around to face him, hair wrapping around your neck like a scarf. Now his eyes were open, and the deep blue of them nearly drowned you. A slow, sleepy smile crept up his lips like a crescent moon shadow, and you blinked lazily at him. "I'm okay."

He pulled the wispy sheet further up without letting go of your hand, raising it to his lips afterward and settling them between you. "I've gotta go soon."

"Don't," you mumbled, kissing his chest. "Stay here with me."

"'nd what happens when your daddy finds us in here 'n pulls a shotgun on me?"

"Are you the fastest draw in the West or not?"

"Baby," Billy groaned, hands falling to your hips and lifting you up, positioning you atop his own. He lifted under your arms to keep you upright as he sat up. It made no difference- you flopped against him as soon as he was close again, slouching like a low hanging branch.

He chuckled into your hair, and you treasured the sound, sealing it away for later like a lover's Pandora's box. "Can't just go 'round guns blazin' cause you want more cuddles."

You pushed your bottom lip out like a dresser drawer, eyes going round and glassy, a pool of reflection. "Don't tell me you don't want more cuddles."

"I do." His hand petted your hair leisurely, and you lifted your head into the touch like a sun-drunk cat. The other fell to your bottom, nudging at it gently to move you forward on his thighs. "But I've gotta go, sweet girl. You know I've gotta go."

"Hmph." Your lips puckered into a pout, and he laughed, kissing it once. Lifting your chin, you let your eyelashes touch your lids as you stared at him. "When will you come back?"

Billy's face fell, and he thumbed your cheek, not responding. You whimpered, searching his eyes and grasping at him desperately. "Billy."

"I'll be back soon," he promised, and you huffed, getting off him and turning to lie on your stomach. Even though it felt childish, acting this way, after Billy risked life and liberty to see you, you couldn't help it. Billy was your air, and you needed to breathe.

A hand settled on your back, rubbing slightly. Billy would never reprimand you, never deem you ungrateful even if that was exactly what you were. He felt terrible about the circumstance of it all, you knew. A kiss was pressed to the crown of your head, and he slid an arm under your tummy, pulling you into his side. "I know. I know, sweet girl. 'm so sorry."

The earnesty in his voice struck you like an arrow to the heart. You turned your head to face him, breathing in softly. "I'm being a brat."

"No, baby, never." Billy let his chin rest on your head, hand crept around the circumference of your body. He kissed your bare shoulder. "I don't wanna leave you either."

You burrowed into his chest, feeling like an animal seeking hibernation's warmth. He let you, and you could almost feel his reluctance, the impending doom of the time to let go. He didn't draw any attention to it, since it was already looming over the two of you like a dark shadow.

"I'll write you lots more," Billy promised, burying his nose in your hair. "And you'll write me too?"

It was his way of checking to see if you were upset with him, you knew. And he sounded so hopeful, like dawn cracking the day's eggshell open to the sunburst within.

You nodded, punctuating it with a quiet, "Yes. Of course."

"There we go." Billy pressed a kiss to your forehead, drawing a smile from you, hidden in his chest. Already you could hear the signs of the world coming to life, reminding you that it was bigger than the space you took up here. Below the loft, his horse snuffled, hooves against straw tapping a reminder.

Billy's lips found your hair again, and then he began to untangle himself from you, gently tucking your arms under the sheet and smoothing it over you. Protests died on your lips when you caught his expression, bittersweet and longing.

When he began to dress himself, you did not stop him, merely lying back on the loft bed and watching him fasten his pants, button his shirt up save for the top three. You'd told him once how handsome he looked with a looser collar, and it had stayed with him.

Sitting on the bed by your knees, he began to tug his boots on, and you wanted to cry at the sight. At least he hadn't put his hat on yet. You let your eyes fall to your hand in front of you, nails smooth and rounded. Billy liked it when you scratched his head after a long day.

He leaned over, forearms bracketing your body, and let his chin nestle on your chest. His eyes grew soft, brow relaxing, an almost-smile probing at the corners of his mouth. You'd flung one arm above your head, the other on your collarbone. Billy took the latter, kissing the curve below your thumb. "I'll come back soon, my love."

"Soon," you repeated softly, searching his eyes. He nodded, reaching up to kiss your forehead, then your nose, all the while holding your hand. Billy always saved a kiss to the lips for last. You'd come to associate it with endings.

His mouth found yours, and you savored it, an invisible hand recording every detail to reminisce on later. The bed creaked as he stood, and you didn't let go of his hand until he was too far to reach.

Closing your eyes, you refused to watch him leave. It was better sometimes to convince yourself that it was all a dream.

Five years is an eternity when you loved her. Longer when you still do.

Through the dusty, endless stretches of the desert, most nights spent lonely, Billy tried and failed to find solace in time. It was his enemy, yet an attempted comfort. He wasn’t watching an hourglass, he was inside one, drowning in every second, every grain of sand that settled atop him, spilling from the brim of his hat.

He wandered near and far, finding nearly forgotten cities to pass through that were nearly identical to each other. Maybe someday he would wither away into the palm of the earth, his body decaying into nothingness, and then the pain would end.

You had imprinted yourself on him, left a gaping hole like a bullet wound he couldn't seem to stitch up. The memories circled him like a pack of wolves, baring their pearly teeth and threatening to pounce. He managed to keep them at bay.

There was a part of him that couldn't seem to take any final step. One that gently pushed the hands of hired women off his shoulders at the places he stayed, one that seeped into every crack and corner of his being. You haunted him- it was as plain as that.

It was that last recollection, the most recent, that came to him in dreams, touched his shoulders and whispered how badly he'd messed up. The image of you, eyes shut, stained with dried tear tracks.

Your details were recalled individually, and in desperate hours, he tried to put them back together. But they wouldn't form a whole. Your bright eyes, your soft skin. The ribbons you always wore in your hair. The way you held him, kissed him. Billy was nearly sure he'd dreamt you to life. Had he gone dry in the sandy expanse of the desert, hallucinated something beyond even the wildest dreams of men?

He didn't know what he was doing back here. It was a shot in the dark, something wildly out of place and reckless beyond his instincts. Even though he'd left for you, he couldn't help searching. Every woman your height with your hair that passed had him turning his head. It was stupidly hopeless, and Billy hated how lost he was in any possibility. After what had happened, he didn't even deserve to look at you.

The town square was bustling, crammed with people about all businesses. Billy concluded his dealings fairly quickly, packing his finds into the saddlebags slung over his horse's back. He shifted the strap of it, tightening the belt, eyes focused and thoughts far away. It'd be at least two days ride to the next town, no matter which direction he decided to go.

Everywhere he looked was crawling with memories, infested almost. Billy suppressed a shiver, mind wandering to places he didn't want it to. Your ghost was hot on his heels, nipping at him like the cold. Billy didn't want to dwell on it- it would only lead to a night of longing for what was lost.

Truthfully, he should be grateful he even had you to begin with. The softest, sweetest girl he'd ever met, and you'd been all his for more than a year. Maybe it was enough to stretch across a lifetime without you.

He turned, wiping his brow with the back of his head and looking into the crowd. From where he was standing, there was a modicum of privacy, near an alleyway. Nobody was sparing him a second glance, and for that he was grateful.

It was too late in the day to start riding for the next spot. He'd take the night here and then start up early in the morning. An outlaw's life kept him moving, though admittedly, maybe he didn't need to as much as he had five years ago.

But he had a habit. The pattern was set, and Billy supposed he would keep running from place to place with accompanying memories dogging him for the rest of his life. The thought probed him whenever he tried to fall asleep, and he evaded it for as long as he could. It was a miserable thing to think about, especially when he knew now what it was to be happy.

He heaved a breath, turning his head to the side, eyes roving from person to person. Then something like a flower in a wasteland made him freeze, caught like a fish on a hook.

You. Lovely as ever, petting the neck of your chocolate horse, sweeping a strand of hair over your shoulder. He'd know you anywhere, out of a crowd of millions. Billy was shell-shocked, feeling the same way he did the last time he'd laid eyes on you, just as stunned as the first.

Time looked good on you. It had taken your beauty and spun it into something he would call angelic. Your demeanor still shone like a star, an emanating thing that glowed. Billy couldn't tear his eyes away. His chest ached at the fact that he'd missed whatever changes had occurred all these years, that he hadn't been there for every second. You were the woman he'd wanted to grow old with, and now it was devastatingly clear that nothing had paused when he'd left.

You looked up, likely feeling his eyes on him, and went rigid. Eyes widening, lips parting, you looked as though you'd seen someone killed. Billy couldn't find it in himself to move, to do anything. It felt like you were the only two people in the world.

He wanted to run over, lift you into his arms and kiss you silly, show you how sorry he was for everything. For leaving you, for doing the one thing he promised he wouldn't. For the night he'd told you he was hitting the road. He wanted to turn back the hands of the clock and fix it, revise his regrets.

You were moving toward him before he could do any of that, and he was stunned still. Was this how it would feel to see you walk down the wedding aisle to him? Billy's heart was beating double-time, as if to make up for the time spent away from its mate.

When you were three feet away, you came to a stop, just looking at him. Now that you were close, he could piece you together again. You were an ethereal being, a desert angel. He thought he might be dreaming until you spoke up, voice soft. "Billy."

"Darlin'." The word slipped out before he could regulate it, and something seemed to change in your eyes.

There were a thousand things he wanted to say, and they all fizzled out before he could even try. You beat him to it. "You're back in town."

"Yeah." Billy was cursing himself internally as he said it. Five years separated from the love of his life and that was all he could think to say?

The air was thick with both heat and tension, and he was choking on it. Billy's eyes fell to your left hand, heart panging hopelessly when he noticed the gold band encircling it.

You followed his gaze, an almost guilty expression taking over. "I...my father arranged it. He got a good deal on a nice plot of land down south."

Billy was silent, glued to the sight of it. He didn't know how he could have been so stupid. Every grand vision he'd had since deciding to ride over here dissipated, leaving nothing but dust. Of course you'd been married. Of course a girl as beautiful and effervescent as you had been snatched up like a fresh flower in the spring, whether it was by your choice or not.

He could see it all whenever he looked at you. The future he'd wished for when you both were young lovers, blissful and innocent. The house he wanted to build for you, the children born from you whom he'd tried to imagine. Growing old, seeing strands of white and silver that would only serve your beauty. Billy once had it all in the palm of his hand, and he'd been forced to let it go.

But he'd done it for you. Everything since he'd met you had been.

Opening his mouth to congratulate you, to wish you the best, he suddenly noticed the chain falling over your collarbone, the pendant dipping into the bodice of your dress.

Countless nights invaded his memory, hours shrouded under darkness tracing every inch of you. That very same chain brushing his cheek, heart-shaped charm falling to his neck as you bent over and kissed him.

Billy was reaching out before he could ask permission, lifting the pendant from your neckline like a fisherman pulling up his catch. His eyes widened.

There it was. The heart, the one he knew without checking had his initials on the other side, so pretty they didn't look like they belonged to such a roughened man as he. But that wasn't what drew his lips apart, made him look back at you.

It was the golden circlet with tiny curlicued flowers engraved into the surface, clinking alongside the silver heart.

You looked like you were about to cry, breath hitching when he asked softly, "You kept it?"

"Of course I kept it," you whispered, searching his eyes.

Now his heart was beating for an entirely different reason. He could feel his soul gravitating towards yours like a moth to a flame. The logical side of his head was shaking him, poking him in the eyes. She's married. She's married, stop it.

You had kept the ring. The one he never could have given another woman, the one he'd left in the spot where he usually lay the last time he met you for a late-night rendezvous in your father's abandoned barn.

Billy knew you. He knew your nature, your being, your soul. This wasn't nothing.

"Baby..." he breathed, letting the necklace fall against your breast.

Something beyond what he knew, a baser instinct, was pulling him in, like gravity had taken on a new form. You were his sunshine, and he was orbiting around you, getting closer as you burned brighter. Billy could see it in your eyes as you moved forward, delicate hands finding his chest.

Five years could have been five days. And he would have missed you this much.

You didn't tuck the necklace back into your dress, instead standing on your tiptoes and letting your lips brush his, ever so slightly.

He was pressing you to the door, hand at the base of your neck as you tilted your head back, hair cushioning your head against the wood. You whimpered as his hands fell to your waist, gripping you tight and pulling you in so you were pressed right against him. His thumbs rubbed your hip bones, the intimacy of it along with his lips hungrily dashing down your neck making your tummy jump.

Billy slid one leg between your thighs, moving it up to your most sensitive spot, and a tiny moan slithered from your lips. You gasped, hands flying to his shirt, gripping both sides of it. Instantly your fingers began to tug at his buttons, eager to feel him, the warmth of his skin. It had been so long...too long.

When he'd left, you'd never expected to see him again. With each year you became more hopeless, resigning that the one love you'd ever had was lost forever. You had mourned it, refused to let go of any piece of him. Even once the ring of another man was slid onto your finger, all you thought of was Billy.

And now here he was, body pinning you to the door of your husband's house.

Your spouse was out of town, on a trip that would take weeks there and back, the purpose of which you hadn't bothered to ask about. It would have been forgotten anyways, as Billy practically devoured you. All that mattered was that he wasn't here. And that Billy was.

Lifting his knee into you at just the right angle, Billy breathed in when you moaned. "That's it...right there, baby? Right there."

His lips found yours again, and you practically melted under his hands. In a swoop, you were in his arms, being carried somewhere you couldn't place. A mattress found your back, and you recognized your bedroom. How he had found it was a mystery, but it was irrelevant.

"All this time..." he murmured into your mouth. "You ain't been kissed the way you should be. Woman like you..." Billy pecked your lips once, tearing his suspenders away and carefully unhooking the buttons of your dress, exposing your chemise. "Needa be kissed good."

He repeated your name like a mantra, taking you places you'd missed, his skin blooming into yours. You breathed in, your body moving of its own accordance against his. One large hand found your jaw, thumb digging into your cheek as his lips moved rhythmically against yours.

It reminded you of the ocean. The way you crashed and flowed together, two parts becoming a whole. He fit in all the same spots he used to, his touch electric just like it was the very first time. Your Billy. Your senses clouded until he was the only thing left, holding you tenderly and kissing you where you wanted to be.

Afterglow was golden hour, wildflowers and sugar cubes on your tongue. But it was also this, lying here in the arms of the man you'd loved in darkness for as long as you'd known him. His chest was bare, his head tilted back in a show of pure bliss. You were tucked under his arm, one palm flat on your back, his other hand at your waist. The way he held you, you got the distinct impression that he was worried you'd disappear.

Lifting your head, your smile lighting like sunshine. Even after this, after he'd taken your clothes off and kissed you senseless, done something with you that only ever meant anything with him, you were still unsure if this was a dream or not. Had you passed out from the heat in town, now a crumpled figure beside your horse?

Billy reached up with the hand that had been on your back, two fingers stretching out to gather your hair and tuck it behind your ear like curtains from a window. He watched you for a moment the same way you watched flowers begin to bloom in the springtime.

"When does your husband come back?" he whispered, trying to tiptoe around the delicate bubble you were both encased in.

You exhaled through your nose, using your forearms on his chest to prop yourself up. He grunted lightly, but didn't move you. The necklace you'd kept on fell atop his collarbone, a bit of the chain pooling around the heart and ring. Staring at it, you murmured, "Three weeks. Maybe four."

This was the part you were used to. The part you had been dreading without realizing it. The part where he left. Now the bubble had popped.

Sitting up, you pulled your knees to your chest, letting his arm around you fall like a leaf in autumn down to the mess of sheets. Billy joined you, lips pressing to your shoulder. His hand settled against your waist, and you wished you could fasten it there permanently.

Your eyelashes touched your cheek. "How long are you in town?"

He paused, fingers stroking up and down. "Three weeks. Maybe four."

Silence.

The world stood still, the clock's hands pausing their torturous ticking. You turned to face him, saw the look in his eyes that told you everything you needed to know.

The clouds were pink outside your window, giving him a halo you would have crafted and crammed over his shape years ago if it would have made him stay. Your hand found his, fingers twisting around each other like vines over a garden wall.

He kissed your temple. You squeezed his palm so he'd linger.

Dusk. A house empty save for the two of you. His boots discarded a few feet away, and you delightfully bare and lazily stretched over the blanket he'd laid on the floor in front of the roaring fire. You were drawing hearts on his stomach, and he wished your finger were a pen, the ink permanent.

Time had sailed by, cruel in passing as it always was. He tried to rein it in, tried to slow everything down for himself, for you.

The hours were sun-drunk, blissful blinks of an eye that were filled with love, pure light and happiness that he wanted to bottle. You passed the days in his arms mostly, always touching him in some way. The two of you took long walks in the nearby woods, went on rides where he insisted on taking only one horse so he could still hold you.

It was a doomed narrative. He could feel it in every touch, every kiss, every lingering semblance of love. But he didn't dare comment on it, not wanting to break the spell. For now, he had his girl in his arms and that was all that mattered.

You slid your hand up his chest, rubbing him lightly over his heart. Sometime within the first week, you'd removed his ring from the chain around your neck and put it on your left hand, abandoning the other in a dresser drawer. It filled him with a sense of pride seeing it there. And in glimpses he was able to pretend you were his. His wife.

When you spun around in the sunset, your silhouette usurping into the half shadow of the moon beginning to make an appearance, you were his wife. You were his wife when you kissed the space between his thumb and index finger because you liked the way it felt. In the bath you were his wife with strands of hair sticking to your chest and shoulders as he held you, your wet skin sliding against his, porcelain cool against his back.

He kissed you in shadows still, the curtains of the window hiding your secret from the world. He kissed you under starlight, your eyes glimmering brighter than anything he could see in the sky. There were a million things to explore that the sands of time had given you, things that he felt under his hands, along the curve of your waist and the weight of your breasts. You were a treasure, through and through.

The hours became thin like spun glass, the crystallite workings of a snowflake melting rapidly under his warm touch. He would freeze his hands to extend the time. There had never been a time in his life he felt so freely happy. It was always reaching through the bars with you, able to grasp each other for a second before being forced apart.

The workings of this house were intricate, richer than most places Billy had graced. The carpet beneath your head was plush, ornate detailing in the pattern. He lifted his eyes from your face, staring at the oak chest of drawers in his line of vision. Silvery trinkets that looked as though they were from far off places were littered across the surface, a single framed photograph in their midst.

He'd studied it further in the moments when you were upstairs putting your boots on, or just in the kitchen, putting a pot on the stove while he built a fire. The shadowy picture depicted you in a white dress, a bundle of flowers clasped in your hands. The man beside you was solemn, his eyes cold even through the bounds of a moment trapped in a frame.

Trying to ignore the pangs of something he didn't want to confront, Billy had been tempted to turn it face down. It was like a monument to his failure.

As he looked down at you now, it was clear that you had the best of everything, except for love. Your husband had left you starved for affection, and Billy tried to pay the other man's debts with interest. But Billy's own love was imperfect, the consequences of his actions clear.

He'd reminded you that you loved him. And it was going to ruin your life. Rubbing his hand over your back, he murmured, "I'll have to leave soon. Before he comes back."

Lifting your head, you pressed a soft kiss over his heart, meeting his eyes. He felt as though he was looking at a doe, beautifully belonging in the bed of this moment. But the ecstasy of a few minutes ago was replaced with a weight he wanted to carry across his shoulders without ever knowing what it was, a cross of unbearable magnitude.

You searched his eyes, brow knitting in a way he wanted to unravel. When you spoke, your voice was soft as the coo of a mourning dove. "I want to come with you."

"No." His response was immediate, and he was upset at himself even quicker. Your face fell like an avalanche, and he felt a stab of guilt in his heart, a knife he never wanted to yield. The warmth of you sprawled across his chest was removed when you sat up, and a cloud settled over the room.

You pulled your legs to your chest, eyes falling to the edge of the blanket underneath you. Hair tumbling over your shoulders, you breathed in. Billy could practically hear the tears pricking your eyes.

He reached a hand out to cover yours on your knee, rubbing your knuckle with his thumb. "Baby...I-"

"So that's it?" Your tone was bruised. "You're just going to leave again?"

Billy's shoulders slumped, and he reached out for you. "Sweetheart, c'mere.-"

You turned to face him, and every thought was swept away from his mind. Even on the verge of tears you were beautiful, a vision he couldn't have possibly invented. Looking up into his eyes, your bottom lip quivered ever so slightly. "Why can't I come with you?"

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. A love as beautiful as yours was supposed to be for all time, not hidden away like a dusty relic. It was not supposed to be forbidden. Billy sighed through his nose, holding your eyes with his bright blue stare. "Baby...I can't put you through that kinda life. You don't deserve to get hurt."

"You're hurting me now," you breathed, smoothing your hair back with your hands and taking in deep breaths, trying to calm down. "I...I..."

He could practically see your heart pounding through your chest, your breathing cutting itself short. "Honey-"

"No!" You stood abruptly, reaching for the nearest article of clothing, which happened to be his shirt. Throwing it over your body, you began to pace like a caged animal. All he could do was watch as one of your hands covered your mouth. You were gathering words like berries in a basket. "All these years...I've been waiting for you without realizing it...and you won't even let me come with... I want to!"

"I know." Billy sat all the way up, reaching for his underwear. "I know you do."

"Then why-?"

"What if I died out there?" he burst out, standing up and taking you by the arms. "What if I died and you were dependin' on me...what if we were married? I couldn't stand to leave you a widow."

"I'd be just as devastated if you died tomorrow as if you died as my husband." Your eyes were firm, unmoving in their emotion.

"And I'd never forgive myself if you got hurt because of the stupid things I get myself into." His voice was harsher than he meant as he gripped your arms. When your eyes widened, he tried a quieter tone. "You'll stay here, and you'll stay safe."

"What if I was pregnant?" you asked desperately, and he could see the tears springing to your eyes like rain in the spring. "After all we've done-"

"Then you both would be safe." The words nearly physically hurt coming out of his mouth. It was quiet for a moment, and he had time to regret what he'd just said. That moment never came. You were his north star, and yet he'd never felt more lost.

Taking in shallow breaths, you reached for him, taking his face in your hands and leaning in, pressing your lips to his. Then again. And again. "Please." Kiss. "Don't...do this..." Kiss. "I love you, isn't that enough?"

His eyes stayed open, the gravity in yours weighing him down more by the minute. You grasped his face, rubbing your thumb over his cheek.. "We love each other, that's enough." You sounded like you were trying to convince yourself too.

The silence cut deep. Billy searched for something to say but everything went still before he could form the words. He wanted to reassure you, to take you in his arms and kiss you tenderly and tell you that you were right.

But you both knew it. Love isn’t always enough.

You straightened between his hands, lifting your chin and searching his eyes, trying to decode something he hadn't been aware was locked. That had always been your forte- unearthing the secrets within him when he thought he'd given you every part of him. Once again, he was lost in the boundless space of your beauty, transfixed by every movement. Removing one of his hands from your arm, you held it between you, eyes never leaving his.

"I'd rather be unsafe and happy."

As Billy stared at you, saw how determined you were, how steadfast and boundless the love you possessed was, he was almost convinced. The moment of fear and doubt was held at bay, taunting him from afar, but he thought maybe it would never reach him. What you and him had was beyond special, it was legendary. It was a folklore the best of writers couldn't fathom to pen, something the stars weren't bold enough to know. A future bloomed before his eyes, one where you could finally be together, the restraints cut and abandoned. It was golden, it was limitless.

But then the moment pushed its way to shore. And the fleeting hope slipped through his fingers.

Underneath your legs the grass was dry, prickly to the touch. The point of your toe brushed his ankle over his boot, both feet leaning toward each other. Billy's arms were bent at the elbow, sheathing you against his chest. When you whispered your eyes were closed, one cheek pressed into him, but you could imagine the look on his face. It was one you never wanted to see.

"Will you leave before I wake up?"

His fingers began to rove up and down your back and his nose shifted in your hair, the soft press of his lips chinking another crack into your heart. Just another thing to miss.

Yesterday Billy told you he would leave the day after today. Yesterday you fought and cried and begged and clung to his shirt, your tear-soaked face turned to him like a sunflower to the nearest star. Yesterday he let you yell at him until your voice went raspy, gathering you into his arms when you finally reached for him. Today he was still holding on, as if he were repenting for some future sin.

Opening your eyes and peeking up at him, you murmured, "Please?"

Billy's eyes were tender, and he stroked your hair, chin bobbing. You didn't need to read his mind to know what he was thinking right now. The last time he'd left, he'd done it the exact same way. But last time it wasn't your choice.

He moved you, sitting up straighter against the tree, shirt only catching a little on the bark. Accommodating him, you were sideways across his lap now, legs bent so your feet were tucked under his knees. Holding you right against him with a hand on your shoulder, Billy began to rock back and forth. It was so soft when he said it that you almost thought it was a voice inside your head. "Of course."

You buried your face in his neck, mouth brushing his shirt collar. Maybe his scent would imprint on you, seep into your sleeping hours for the rest of time. It was as though you were grasping at someone turning into a ghost before your eyes. He was fading before your eyes, and you clung to the mirage as long as you could. He was yours. In this moment he was only yours. Holding him was like trying to hold air.

There were novels you could have written full of everything you wanted to tell him. But silence held your tongue, and you regretted it more with every minute. This was the end, a plunge into darkness and you could hardly speak to him, every attempted word stillborn. The walk back home was quiet as death, but you squeezed his hand the whole way.

The sun was peeking over the hills with rosy fingers when he got out of bed the next morning. He tried to be quiet. It wasn't his fault you woke, body wary of his presence, missing him before you did.

You stayed still as he dressed, the soft sounds of his footsteps piercing the early quiet. Still bare from last night, you laid with the sheet draped over your back, pretending he was still touching you the way he had mere hours ago, kissing you fervently.

When he leaned down, breath warm on your cheek for a final kiss, you gave up your act, springing up and flinging your arms around his neck. Breasts pressing into the material of his shirt, you held fast, sure he wouldn't leave if you never let go.

Billy let out a surprised breath, hands smoothing over your back. "Baby...s'posed to be asleep..."

"Don't go," you sniffled, stifling a tiny cry. More tears. And you'd thought you cried yourself dry.

"Shh," Billy soothed, rubbing your back. "You gotta go back to sleep my love. Go back to sleep."

Shaking your head vigorously and hiding in his neck, you whimpered, "No."

"'m not leavin' until you fall asleep again," he whispered into your hair.

"Then I'll never fall asleep again."

His hand found your head. "Scoot over. C'mon. Atta girl." Getting in beside you, Billy laid his head on your pillow, pulling you taut into his chest. Dragging the cast-aside blanket over your shoulders, he tucked your head under his chin and smoothed your spine with his fingers.

You knew what he was doing. This was his swan song, his final act of love. And as much as you fought it, your eyes were growing heavy, his motions pushing you right back into unconsciousness. He breathed, "I love you. Always will."

"I love you." It wasn't the way you wanted to tell him. Your words were pushed together as if you'd had too many drinks. But he smiled into your hair, let his lips linger there for a long time. It was the last thing you were aware of before slipping under, your dreams full of dread.

Every corner of your mind was darkened, abstract shapes rising from the darkness to scare you out of a place you couldn't escape. Every color stabbed at you, made a swipe for your sanity. Eyes flying open in a motion of panic, you heard a door shut downstairs.

Sitting up rapidly, you found the bed cold, empty. But someone was here. He hadn't left, that had only been a dream. Billy was downstairs right now, about to climb the stairs and come to you again. You leapt out of bed, finding your chemise on the ground and yanking it over your head. Determined not to wait a single second longer for him, you nearly tripped opening the door and flying down the stairs, eyes bright as you prepared to greet-

Your husband.

His brow furrowed as he set his travel bag down, looking you up and down. Your smile dropped like a fallen pin, eyes widening. Unconsciously you hid your left hand behind your back. No no no. Panic slithered into your chest and made a home, your body realizing it before you did. Tears spilled from your eyes, dripping down your cheeks before you could regulate them, and your knees met the floor.

To his credit, he came to you, arms finding their way around your body and reeling you in. There was dust from the desert powdering his clothes and staining both your skin and chemise. His hands were stiff against your back.

Billy lazily dragged a hand up your side, his eyes full of starlight. "My girl."

A choked sob escaped your lips as Billy's outline cracked, what was once reality losing its color until it was as stiff and unfeeling as the wedding picture on the front table.

[ghouldtime]

Ghost'ed

Been thinking about literal Ghost! Ghost. Maybe it's playing too many ghost hunting games or watching too many shows but I cannot stop thinking about it. You also cannot convince me this man wouldn't be a restless spirit. His entire life is troubled and I don't see him going down in a peaceful way or leaving until he feels the job is done - and likely ending up trapped as a result

I wrote this at work so sorry in advance for any typos or slip ups!

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Ghost hunting wasn’t exactly what most people would list in "Top ten relaxing hobbies" - but it's not like you were most people. You were simply you. The same you who thought spending your time speculating about spooky specters was one of the best ways to pass by those few stretches of free time that could be all too fleeting in the hellscape known as adulthood.

The stares that followed you when you announced paranormal investigation as a hobby was something you knew all too well. After all, telling someone you’re a ghost hunter only stood as a slightly more socially acceptable version of telling them you believed in bigfoot (you did, but that’s beside the point). The dozens of cheesy TV shows certainly popularized it but they did little to help with the perception of it.

When the face of popular ghost hunting media was full of grown men who screamed like a squirrel high on helium at every little thump of a house settling, it did little to help what people automatically thought of when they heard of your unique hobby. Plenty still turned their noses up, scoffed slightly as they rolled their eyes and sneered, “Aren’t you too old to be doing that?” 

Or worse. They gave a tight-lipped smile, nodded, and crinkled their eyes as they said, "Oh, interesting." While the tension in their body told of holding back laughter or wanting to bolt right on out of there, far far away from you.

Quite frankly, you didn't care what they said anymore as it was your life to live, not theirs. You’d seen enough to know without a fraction of a doubt that there was more beyond the veil of life itself, hiding just out of sight. The hundreds of hours you spent wandering dark hallways and dilapidated ruins with nothing but your flashlight and ghost box proved otherwise. At least it proved it to you.

Proving it to others was a horse of another color. Skeptics who spit their criticism loud enough to deafen even the most positive prevalent of voices in the community were a dime a dozen. Unfortunately, their existence was as certain as the sky is blue. Skepticism was apart of human nature, after all. They would always exist as long as the day and night kept up their eternal dance.

Convincing them was a fruitless effort. You'd sooner be able to convince hippos to fly than you'd convince them of the truth you knew. Trying to get everyone to agree, to acknowledge the paranormal, was hopeless and something you certainly weren't going to waste your life on no matter what they called your or what they said.

As far as you were concerned, being paid to sit in the dark alone and find evidence of life beyond the grimy waters of death itself was a pretty sweet gig. The naysayers could seethe in their own jealousy all they wanted because at the end of the day, you’re getting paid to do what you love. That they never could take away from you.

They'd never be able to have the same thrill that you did as you took on another case, ready to see even more of what the phantasmal realm had to offer.

Anticipation, nervousness, and excitement rolled together in a palpable energy you hid beneath a calmer exterior every time you took a job. There always would be that wonder there, the question of what exactly you might find dangling just out of reach, the hope that maybe, just maybe you might see even more than you already have. Another chance to investigate meant yet another night spent lurking in the shadows, tirelessly trying to find more evidence of the great world beyond the grave and its inhabitants. Tonight certainly would be no different.

An older couple quite reluctantly booked an appointment for a standard investigation after mysterious things that they really could not explain, no matter how they went about it, happened time and time again. They'd tried to ignore it, they said, but it only got worse.

Footsteps that echoed through the house at first in a gentle patter had become confident strides. When they went to look, no one was there. Doors that used to slowly creak open, as if blown by the wind, instead started to rattle the frame with force as they opened or slammed in the middle of the night. The husband looked particularly miffed when he groused about the TV going on at odd hours of the night, while his wife seemed more concerned about the possibility of someone having broken in and the fact that it kept doubling in intensity as time went on. The list went on and on about their complaints ranging from things being moved around to always finding a light turned on in a room in the middle of the night. There most certainly was something going on if all of what they were saying was true.

The glaring parade of red flags that easily would send others running for the hills lured you in. Like a dog with a scent, you weren't going to drop the trail, oh no. You were there to sink your teeth and claws in and not let go. Come hell, heaven, or high water - nothing would stopping you.

True to your title, you were a paranormal investigator which warranted a lot more work and professionalism than the standard ghost hunters you saw on TV who couldn't tell the difference between a gust of wind and a ghost. Your job was to research, conduct a proper paranormal investigation, and provide your evidence - or lack of, if it was truly devoid of haunting. But here hardly sounded like it.

Taking your time and reassuring them that you were, indeed, a professional, you went over all the usual questions with them: when did this start, how old is your house, any history of deaths in it, have you acquired any new items recently, do you have any items that were second hand or antique, any family heirlooms in the house, was it in any particular location, etc etc.

Every angle had to be considered, especially the mundane. Plenty of times, people just had a poorly constructed house, deeply held superstitions, and a touch of paranoia to make for a perfect combination of nothing happening at all. That didn’t seem to be the case here, however. While none of their answers pointed in a clear direction of what it might be, it still all pointed to signs of something unworldly happening. But that's what you were there for. To determine if there actually was a ghost, why it was there, and maybe who it was (if things went well and it felt like cooperating). 

You bid them a good night as they headed off with family friends in a beat up convertible, chattering away without a care in the world as if they didn’t have a paranormal parasite problem. At least they were going to go enjoy their night by having an evening out instead of breathing down your neck like some of those who hired you. Locking the door, you trudged in with your gear and began the initial inspection with practiced ease.

A haunting in a house as young and modern as theirs was quite unusual. Open, airy rooms completed with white, sleek, almost eye-hurtingly clean interiors made up the entirety of the house. Even as night crawled higher and higher into the sky, pulling its dark cloak over the land, the house stayed bright. Nothing about it said haunted or caught your eye. The scariest thing there was likely the heating bill. 

As far as your research showed, there hadn't been a death in it or on the land. The owners also seemed quite appalled at the idea of antiques (go figure) so that went right out the window, too. Normally there might be some stashed somewhere that they weren't thinking about, like the attic, but this house didn’t even have that. No basement, no attic, no creepy graveyard in the back; it was a normal, suburban house that shouldn’t have anything going on.

Perusing the house at a leisurely pace, you browsed each and every room with a thorough consciousness of finding something, anything, that could possibly have started it. Yet you turned up empty handed. Everything was as pure and alabaster as the marble countertops and the expensive sleek metal furniture. 

Oh well, not every job would be easy. And not every haunted house was obligated to look run-down and rustic. Some ghosts just had more upper class tastes - or were unfortunate enough to be stuck in an eyesore like this. Maybe a ghost would add some actual personality to their home...

Seeing as they'd said there wasn't exactly a rhyme or reason as to where things would happen, you decided a central room was your best bet. The living room was open enough for everything and an easy place any spirits could find. It had plenty of room for your equipment and the open layout meant you had a great vantage point for the whole house.

Preparing your gear came as naturally as breathing to you, the tasks you've done dozens of times over were a matter of habit. Moving through the motions was your second nature as you worked, not batting an eye as you checked batteries and strategically stationed your gear. It only took a matter of minutes to have your cameras, light system, motion activated interactable objects, ghost box, and the rest of your fancy gadgets set up all around the room.

Placed on the coffee table was your heaviest piece of equipment - your modified spirit box that you had made some special adjustments to just to make sure your results were as accurate as possible. The broken antenna and attached amp weren't standard, nor were the noise reducers, but they stood as a testament to why you were a professional and why you kept getting called out to different places. You knew how to get results and tuned every tiny thing to your needs. There was no room for error or doubt alike in an already uncertain field.

Double checking everything was ready to go once more once more, you plunged the room into somewhat true darkness as you drew the curtains shut and pressed the button on the spirit box, causing it to crackle to life. Speeding through the static of radio stations, it scanned the many frequencies in a blur, far too fast for any natural noise to come through. The whirring of it evened out into a constant, muffled background noise that you’d spent countless hours listening to. Its familiar hum lulled you into a relaxed state, your heart as steady as your calm breaths despite the slight buzz of familiar adrenaline you always felt when you first started. A small beep signaled the successful activation of the digital thermometer as you walked around in a slow, even pace, checking all around. 

Taking a deep breath, you began as you always had. In a confident, but even tone you called out, “Is there anyone with me right now?”

....

........

Silence.

The static of the spirit box continued to filter through in its usual constant churning hum of white noise. Typical. Many supernatural beings wouldn't want to interact, especially not at first. You don't blame them. If a stranger barged into your house and demanded if you were there, pestering you with questions as threw their belongings around, you'd not want to answer them either. That wasn’t even considering that many were so unused to people hearing them or trying to talk to them, not at them. They didn't exactly register on the same frequency that humans did most of the time.

Walking around the room, your boots echoed on the tile flooring. Your footsteps ricocheted off of the high ceilings, amplified by the lofty ceiling and wonderful acoustics this house apparently had. Keeping your attention ever shifting, you kept alert for signs of anything happening. Looking too long in the dark and expecting things to happen would only yield false results and cause paranoia. You knew far better than to do that. 

Nothing lit up, nothing beeped, nothing changed. There was conclusively nothing happening for the first few, long minutes as everything kept at an unwavering constant. Visiting each room, you rechecked their temperatures and tried to find anything amiss or out of place. Yet all seemed well, still, and normal.

Only when you crossed the hallway back into the living room after a quick visit to the bedrooms did your hair stand on end. A chill ran down your spine, the once warm air now holding the barest bite of cold on the edge. Holding up the thermometer, you narrowed your eyes at the steady decrease. While it wasn't quite freezing, it kept dropping and dropping. Numbers ticked lower and lower, your hair stood further on end as a small shiver ran through you as the chill dipped lower and lower. Bingo. First sign of activity of the night. It wasn’t much but it was plenty to know that something was happening here.

Despite the crisp chill, nothing else shifted in the room. Silence prevailed behind the distant drone of your equipment; mainly the comforting, steady typical static of the spirit box. Even the appliances seemed to have gone quiet, exchanging their usual low thrumming rhythm for a break that suspended them in a noiseless limbo.

Your shifting movements echoed far louder than you would have liked as you paced around the room, looking for something new, anything. An actual tangible reaction you could record would be just what you needed but so far, the haunt was holding out.  “What is your name?” You asked, keeping your voice as steady as you can as you tried to switch it up. 

Continual feedback from the spirit box sounded as steady as can be. Still, there was no voice trying to get through it. The fabricated noise reigned supreme as it did its job, whirring away. Pressing your lips into a thin line, the smallest hint of a frown tugged at your lips as disappointment flickered through you. Okay, that's fine. It usually took a few tries anyways. 

A faint, sparkling crackle escaped from it as you heard one, tiny word in a rumbling timbre. One, single word that halted you mid step, your head snapping towards the machine. 

“Ghost.”

Doing a double take, a grin split across your face as your heart jumped with joy. A response! A true, actual response. Not that it exactly answered your question but it meant something was listening.

There was something here!

Nearly tripping over your own feet, you scampered over to your beloved machine. Your eyes fixated on the glowing orange screen, gleaming with glee. 

“W-what’s your name?” You repeat a bit louder unable to hide the excited tremble in your voice or hands, figuring the ghost likely didn't hear you right. 

Static white noise continued for a few seconds, the little x in the corner flashed once, twice, before it lit up solidly. 

“Ghost.”

The smile you held dropped only for a fraction of a second before you cleared your throat. Well, maybe your slight stutter and excitement got in the way. You did talk fast when excited, after all. Taking a deep breath, undeterred as can be, you repeated in a far steadier voice, “What is your name?”

This time you made sure to enunciate every single syllable, speaking clear and confidently into the air. 

One flashing X glowed in the corner of the screen. Another flash. A third. Fourth. Fifth.

Yet again, the deep voice came a bit louder and rougher this time. A thick Mancunian accent that barely picked up through the filter didn't dull the single word you were trying to avoid, “Ghost.”

Okay. Your brows furrowed deeper, your nose wrinkling slightly as your heart sank. The minor disappointment couldn't be kept off of your face as you really had hoped to hear something else. Approach one clearly isn't working. 

Maybe he didn't speak English. Or maybe he wasn't sure that he was dead. Whatever. There was a ghost and he was answering, that's what mattered, you reminded yourself forcefully until the smile came back to your face and the smallest bit of a headache dissipated. Focus on that. Not on the slight annoyance you felt and the agitated twitch of your fingers.

Exhaling, you pursed your lips. Your grip retightened on your flashlight as you racked through questions in your mind, trying to find something that it would have to answer differently too. 

“Can you do something?”

Hopeful, your eyes trailed around the room, praying that maybe the ghost would do something like interact with the many objects scattered about, or even the motion sensors. 

Nothing happened for a few long moments, silence once again prevailing in the otherwise empty house.

Orange light flashed from the spirit box as the X lit up again, only for a second before the dreaded word repeated itself. 

“Ghost.”

Before you could ask what that even meant, or curse it out for that matter, the spirit box and your flashlight shut off, plunging you into true darkness. The flashlight nearly flew from your hands in surprise as you flinched instinctually, your heart leaping into your throat. Frantically flickering the button of your trusty tool did nothing as you desperately tried to turn on your one source of light with the only way you knew how - only to be met with the continual sight of empty, non-shining bulbs. 

Curses spilled from your lips in all the languages you knew as you fumbled for a battery pack, only to find them missing. What? But you swore that they were right there -- ugh, nevermind. This just wasn't going to be your night.

The initial panic subsided as the chill left the air, the residual regular warmth of the house sinking into the room as if blown in by a lazy breeze. Your hair still stood on end as you walked around with cautious, hesitant steps, having given up on the flashlight. There wasn't coming back from that.

It's only when you approached the spirit box, trying to turn it on to no avail, that you realized what he meant. You asked him to do something and he obliged.

He ghosted you. 

God fucking damn it. 

As you glared at the air in frustration, threw your hands up and personally cursed the fiend, you could've sworn you heard a resonating chuckle behind you as breath brushed against the nape of your neck in a way that sent shivers down your spine for a whole new reason.

Part Two

[rottweiler1]

❝𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧' 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭, 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝.❞

pairing: 141 x male!reader and maybe some los vaqueros + others

summary: the 141 needed a helping hand to protect the world, only 4 wasn't enough. they decided for a interesting 5th member. and seemingly, the 141's other allies were also intrigued.

word count: 582 (promise next ones longer!!)

cw: violence, normal cod gore, angst, poorly translated scottish from google

A/N: this is my first fanfic series so i will make a master list soon enough for this series. this series might only have maybe 10 parts i presume? either way, i hope you'll enjoy this series!! -rottweiler

1/?

part 1 -part 2 - part 3

❝FUCKING IFRINN.❞

After the mission of 141 was half bad and good, they did stop a army of terrorists to infiltrate the city of london but all of them got hurt. Soap was groaning as the medical nurse taking out the gun wound on his shoulder, a pulling it back sent a louder groan from the scott. And maybe he yelled 'fucking hell' in scott. Gaz had 3rd degree burn on his fingers from the bomb getting heated up, close to exploding the hell out of the city. Ghost got some teeth knocked off while fighting off the terrorists, his gun was kicked away from his grip so he had to do hand to hand combat. Price had an ankle sprain from running too fast for his teammates, slipping over with a crack to be heard. Possibly a grade 1.

❝ Captain, we'll never get close to the terrorists. the man gave us false intel.❞ Gaz said, interrupting the silence (apart from soap groaning..) that was made in the medical room. He was bandaging his fingers around, making some whines by the burn still affecting him. Price huffed out his cigar while had some bandaged over his ankle, glancing at the man with the cap. The captain groaned and pinched down his nose bridge, rubbing it from the headache he was on. The mission was still a undergo..

Ghost laid back against the chair that creaked under his large weight, balaclava over his face but with only above his nose. He had a ice pack in his mouth, some bruises on the sides of his cheeks, making him groan a bit from the cold hitching in his mouth. The captain himself got up before saying. ❝ Look, i will talk with Laswell from this. you all get some rest. ❞ All 3 nodded before resting down by the infirmary, The captain walked down the hall, the noise of his boots with his hat having a few holes, made him fucking angry to damage his hat. The captain opened the door to Laswell's office, The woman in her maybe 40's glanced up at the man with a frown. She has heard about the calls of the mission, staring at Price's damaged hat she then said. ❝I know your here to talk to me about the mission to London.❞

Price sat down and sighed out loudly, glaring at the table. ❝ I'm very much aware of that, Laswell. Those fuckin' assholes injured all my boys, including me. And my Fucking Hat.❞ Price said with rage, cold stoned eyes stare at Laswell's, Laswell then stared at Price in raged denial, The man thought it was an easy mission, but its been awhile since the mission was this vile. Laswell then said. ❝ I told you John, those terrorists were not like the other ones you've encountered.❞

Price stared at Laswell before slamming his fist on the table. ❝ SHOULD'VE TOLD ME THAT THEY HAD THEIR FUCKIN' HANDS ON A RPG AND BOXES FULL OF EM' BOMBS. THOSE PEOPLE WERE ON FUCKING STAKE.❞ Laswell stared at him, silent. ❝ I don't fucking mind if it was 6 or 7 people dead. BUT BUILDINGS SIDE BY SIDE WAS FUCKING GONE. IN SHAMBLES.❞ Price yelled as he was fed up, Standing up as he gripped his fist that was on the table, sitting back down slowly as he was disappointed in himself. How could he let that happen?

Laswell spoke up. ❝ Price, we can still try. The army might not be dead but you still saved people. ❞ Laswell then glanced over at the file drawers, she then got up before walking over to the drawers and opened them, taking out some files, at least 25 files. She placed them down on the wooden dark brown surface, sitting back down on her office chair and said: ❝ I think we need an add-on to the taskforce. ❞ Price glanced at her. raising a brow. ❝ An add on.. ❞ Price repeated once under his breath.. looking down at the files.

Price took the files and sighed, Laswell was right. These 4 man missions weren't always easy. and by that, getting hurt lots but a 5th hand doesn't sound like a bad idea. ❝ These are the newest recruits that past selection. Take your time, John.❞ Price then stumbled across a file, building up a smirk on his face.. This one was a big powerhouse.

file;

(Y/N) (L/N).

AGE; (A/N. age number)

COUNTRY; (C/N.)

CALLSIGN; Dino.

That's all price needed to know. ❝ Are you interested in Dino? ❞ Laswell asked before crossing her arms, staring at the man viewing the file with a smile. ❝ I've heard of him.❞ Dino was usually an add on or a solo, Making price saying. ❝ I'll take Dino into the team.❞ Laswell stared before nodding, Dino was a professional sniper.. With his large height and muscular frame, maybe he would be good use. Laswell then said. ❝ I'll call them in tommorow if your free enough.❞ Price happily nodded, getting his hands on such powerhouse.. rumors were the Dino was taller then a door.. The reason they called him Dino was because of those slit pupils of his.. his unbearable scratching, once ripped someone's ear off.

The next day, Dino was then called in by Laswell, walking through the hall with whispers from other soldiers, stepping aside for the giant to walk through. Dino then got in the office with a grunt, the doors were a bit small for him to stand straight and walk to. ❝ Hello.. Are you Laswell. ❞ Laswell turned around as Price stared at the giant in disbelief.. that motherfucker was a whole building. Laswell then said. ❝ Yes, i am Laswell. I've decided to pair you up into a taskforce as a 5th member. You recall the phone call? ❞ Dino then nodded before turning his eyes to the man who stared at him. ❝ This is your captain, Captain price. ❞

Price stood there.. he then got to reality before reaching out his hand and cleared his throat, talking in a calm manner. ❝ Nice to meet' ya, Dino.❞ Dino shook the captains hand being bigger then his, Price then grunted quietly from the heavy shake. He took his hand away, so did price. ❝ John price will escort you to your other teammates, Your mission will be coming up in the 20th.❞ Laswell explained as Dino nodded again, following price down the hall. He got quite the looks from the soldiers, a shocked expression.

Price then looked at Dino with a grin, opening the door to the meeting room that price has assigned his teammates to wait in. Dino got through the door frame before getting looks. ❝Who.. the fuck? ❞ Gaz stared in disbelief. ❝ O shit, is e togalach fucking slàn a tha sin! ❞ (oh shit thats a whole fucking building!) Soap yelled in shock. Ghost had no words.. the man was taller then him, The ghost huntsman itself.. had a dinosaur as a teammate.

Dino stared.. his appearance was his military gear and with the yellow spikes on his back that were sharp to resemble a dinosaur sort of looking spike. Making him look stoned and sharp-minded. Price then spoke up.

❝ You boys fuckin' behave cause hes your new teammate, Dino. ❞

[lialacleaf]

To Care For A Woman

Chapter 7

Simon Riley x Reader

Summary: You join the army as a last-ditch effort to avoid destitution, but when you sustain an injury protecting Lieutenant Ghost and earn yourself a medical discharge, you're stuck all over again. Or maybe not...

Warnings: Tension, Simon wants to care for you, small reader, a little bit spicy but not NSFW, man worrying about a woman's safety, typical cannon violence, deception I'm sorry it's unedited...

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

A loud clatter awoke you from a pleasantly deep sleep, and you blinked away the fog slowly. You had a feeling your husband was in the kitchen judging by the lack of a body beside you in bed.

You pulled the covers off and threw on a robe, stuffing your feet into your slippers as you headed for the kitchen.

You poked your head around the corner, watching as Simon leaned against the counter in front of the teapot on the stove.

“Good morning,” you called, pressing against his side and rubbing over his shoulders.

“Mornin’ love.”

Your brow furrowed slightly and you cocked your head at him. “You sound awful,” you mumbled as he stifled a cough.

“M’ fine,” he mumbled as the kettle whistled. He poured himself a cup of tea, trying not to cough as he took a sip.

“Simon,” you scolded in a warning tone, and he eyed you warily.

You’d made a strict agreement with him. No more lies.

“Jus’ a sore throat, I’ll be fine,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your forehead. You took the opportunity to press the back of your hand against his face, and your eyes widened.

“You’re burning up! Back in bed, now,” you stated firmly, swatting at his arm.

“I’ve gotta work,” he argued, leaning against the counter for support.

You gave him a firm glare and pointed towards the bedroom. “You’re not going anywhere like this, go back to bed.”

Simon groaned, but obliged, setting his half-drunk mug in the sink. “Fine,” he rasped, moving towards the bedroom on unsteady feet.

You rolled your eyes and moved towards the fridge, Moonbeam nuzzling your bag leg as you shuffled around the kitchen. There were a few cloves of garlic left and half a box of chicken broth.

It didn't take long for you to whip up a small home remedy and pour it into a mug. Simon was cocooned in the duvet cover when you returned, and it was an effort not to laugh.

The mighty Ghost, defeated by the common cold.

You were tempted to take a picture to show his teammates, but Simon hated Cameras, especially when he didn't have his mask, and you were feeling gracious enough to not torment your husband while he was ill.

"What're ya smilin' bout' over there?" he asked, eyelids drooping. His accent was thicker and more apparent, and he looked very much as if he was melting into the pillows he'd laid against the headboard.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you whispered with a grin as you held the mug out to him. He frowned deeply, grimacing as he brought it to his nose.

"Cheers," he muttered before downing the drink as quickly as he could, trying to conceal the urge to gag.

~

Despite his delirious insistence that he was fine, Simon's fever spiked around noon. You weren't exactly sure what to do, questioning if you should take him to the hospital, or try a home remedy to give him some relief.

After a brief call with Dr. Radcliffe, you were instructed to let him burn it out, and settled yourself in bed beside him with a sigh.

At some point Simon had shimmied out of his shirt, his upper body covered in sweat, and you placed the back of your hand on his forehead with a frown.

His head laid in your lap rather limply, and every once in a while he'd let out a soft whine of discomfort. You shook your head in exasperation, stroking your fingers through his hair.

"I swear if you came in contact with some sort of bio-weapon and didn't tell me..." you mumbled softly.

"You think I'd bring something like that home to you?" he croaked out, displaying more awareness than you'd expected from him.

"No," you sighed, stroking the back of his head with your fingertips.

"Exactly," he rasped, and you rolled your eyes.

"Nice to see you're feeling better enough to argue," you teased.

"M' not arguing," he mumbled, eyes barely open.

"You gave him a soft 'mhm' and tucked the covers a little tighter around his body, watching as his eyelids closed. Simon slept soundly to the sensation of your nails running across his back, your touch stopping over the exit wound of a bullet on his shoulder.

You pressed your lips together firmly, remembering the sight of him going down after covering you. Your thumb brushed over the spot delicately, and you closed your eyes.

You wouldn't be here if he hadn't gotten shot. You would probably still be a part of the 141, or you'd be dead if he had simply decided to leave you there.

Still, you couldn't help but feel anxiety gnaw at you now that you weren't out there with him. Did anyone have his back in your place?

You didn't want him to come home in a body bag, but you doubted he'd indulge you in just how risky his work was. You couldn't help but wish there was something you could do to keep him safe.

you let out a deep sigh, allowing yourself to drift off to sleep.

~

It was dark, and the wind felt like ice as it kissed your skin. You should have been dressed more appropriately for the cold, but you weren't. You were running down the street in an unfamiliar place. The only thing that guided you was the sound of Simon's voice, calling out for you as if his life depended on it.

You pushed past people, the shout of your captain following you in the distance, but you ignored it. You needed to find Simon.

His call eventually led you to an iron gate, and you tore at the chains around the bars in a desperate attempt to get inside.

"Y/N!" there were people chasing you, faces you barely recognized in your delirious state. You thought you saw Johnny, the Captain, even your mother.

"Y/n, there's nothing you can do!"

You climbed over the gate, running after Simon's voice as the wind carried it to you.

You were suddenly running through a graveyard, your eyes searching out a familiar name on the headstones until you found his.

Simon Riley.

"Simon?" you whispered.

A hand shot out from the ground, waving around frantically as if trying to find help.

You threw yourself to your knees, momentarily wondering about the lack of pain in your left leg, as you began to dig at the dirt around the hand with your fingernails.

"Y/n, you've got to leave him, he's not there anymore!"

You felt tears stream down your face as Johnny and Captain Price pulled you away from the grave.

"He's right there! Can't you see him? He's there!" you wailed.

"Look again, y/n," your mother scolded, and suddenly you were looking at a hole in the ground with an empty coffin. "He's just a ghost. That's all he is. Meant to disappear."

You shook your head as tears streamed down your face. No. Simon wasn't just Ghost. He wouldn't disappear, he wouldn't leave-

Your eyes snapped open as your chest rose and fell rapidly. A dream. It had just been a silly dream.

Simon’s fever must have broken during the night, as he was reading a book in bed beside you. He watched as you stared up at him sleepily, and gently brushed some hair out of your face.

"Feeling better?" you asked as you slowly sat up.

"A bit..." he watched you closely, concern written in his expression. "Are you alright?"

You nodded, nuzzling into his side. "Fine. Everything's fine."

AN: I love some angsty foreshadowing ~ I promise this has a happy ending...

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[bzurk]

 zombie!au 141 x reader

dark content ahead! you've been warned.

It’d been hard at first. Women weren't treated well when people turned on each other, both healthy and infected. You were lucky when the virus started;

You were a dog trainer, surrounded by canines trained in personal protection. It was easy to scare people off. On your travels, your pack grew, a congregation of man’s best friends who were left behind. You had a whole arsenal, eventually; hunting, tracking, attacking.

This winter, though, was particularly difficult. Game was scarce, the ground frozen solid, the older dogs weakened by sore joints and aching limbs. You had run out of supplies weeks ago, trading your trained mutts for scraps and tools. Your only companions were your two remaining dogs, your only hope the compound in the distance, surrounded by wires and gates. The facility's noise, perhaps, was scaring off any nearby game. Maybe, it was already infected. Your doubts were alleviated when you saw little shadows moving about the tarmac.

You walked up to what you hoped was the front gate, arms raised and guns holstered, dogs plastered at each side.

“I come peacefully!” You bellowed, staring straight through the chain links towards the silhouetted figures. They grow closer, slowly, weapons raised and glinting blindingly under the sunlight. “I mean no harm. I would like to know if you have any food to spare. I can trade you for it.” You swung out an arm to gesture to your dogs.

The men wore fatigues and vests, packed with gear and weaponry. Well-equipped. They must have food, fresh game, stocks of MREs, dried rations.

“What you offerin’?” A man’s rough voice called back.

“Can take one of the dogs, if you’ve got enough of worth. I don’t part with them easily. Both trained, they are. Good at keeping out infected.”

It wasn’t long before Price’s three subordinates were staring at him with wide, pleading puppy-dog eyes. “Can we keep ‘em, Cap, please please please?”

Price had to admit you were a sight. Tousled, blood-stained, covered in tattered winter clothes that could barely keep out the cold. A hunting rifle strapped to your back, knives peaking from your pockets. A capable girl. Not many women out this far. He hadn’t come across one in months, not since venturing to trade with nearby settlements. Three or four months, at the least.

“Would you like to come in, love? Looks like you could do with a night of rest.”

They were nice, these four men, if not overly charming and kind. But they were nice enough to let you, and your dogs, in, even providing a tour of the premises – insisting guns were left at the door, of course. You were correct in assuming they were well-stocked. They confirmed they’d been residing in the base since outbreak day, though people came and went. They fed you, and even your two dogs. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t enjoy the human company.

The base was a stark contrast to the wasteland outside. Boxes of food and warm blankets, running water, and electricity powered by a generator. The men showed you their hydroponic garden, where they grew fresh vegetables, and a storeroom stocked with preserved foods and medical supplies. It was a veritable haven.

They introduced themselves: Captain John Price, Lieutenant Ghost, Sergeant Johnny ‘Soap’ MacTavish, and Sergeant Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick. They shared stories of their missions before the outbreak, their camaraderie evident in their banter and shared glances.

You felt a flicker of hope. Maybe, just maybe, you had found a place where you and your dogs could be safe, at least for a few nights. These men were skilled and seemed trustworthy enough, and their compound was secure. It was enough to put your tired mind at ease.

Perhaps too at ease. It didn’t take long for your body to slump in your chair, almost sliding out of it, if not for the hands that held you steady. Your eyes were fuzzy, your hearing diminished to a faint ringing. You could feel a wet snout nosing your limp hand, firm and warm palms divesting you of your coats and the weapons hidden in your pockets, strong arms wrapping around your waist, your tummy digging into a warm shoulder as you were thrown around like a sack of flour.

“Nice little pack of mutts we’ve found, aye, lads? Don’t you worry, we’ll take good care of you. Train you up well.”

if this gets enough interest ill turn it into a fic

[saintship]

🍄 ‘s Request

Synopsis: Reader seems perfectly fine with the rest of the 141 being touchy-feely, but not with Ghost. He wants to know why.

I loved this request it was so detailed!! I hope you like it! -S.S.

Simon Riley x f!Reader - I don’t bite

“Soap, if you keep chewing your gum like that for one more second, I’m going to lose it.”

You sat over a few sheets of paperwork in the common room, Soap at the windowsill tracing patterns in the fogged glass while he waited for the kettle. Unfortunately, a concentrated Soap is also a very loud chewer.

“Haud yer wheesht, yer across the room!” He retorted.

“You’re going to be flying across the room in a minute!” You stood, huffing and walking over to observe his work. He’d drawn a little cartoon ghost with angry-looking eyes.

“Guess who?” He grinned as you rolled your eyes.

“Who’s drinking my tea?” Ghost’s steady voice carried through the tiny kitchen area as he picked up the box of teabags Soap had set down.

“Aye, it’s this one.”

Soap placed his hands on your shoulders. “Wearin’ a mask and all, she’s trying to be like y-"

Soap was cut off by your smacking him with a nearby dish towel, at which he yanked on the end of the cloth and stole an over dramatic kiss to the forehead. You groaned in annoyance, but dissolved into laughter when he attacked you back.

“Get away!” You laughed brightly as Soap snapped the towel at you, turning to spot Gaz walking in, still in his tactical gear from a stakeout.

“He’s insane!” You dodged another one of Soap’s attacks before making a run for it, only to be caught and lifted by Gaz, rendering you immobile.

“You guys suck!” You laughed through your words before breaking free, going back to the kitchen and snatching back the dish towel on the way.

You looked up to see if Simon had snagged Soap’s hot water, but he was gone, the box of tea left discarded on the counter. The lightness in your chest dimmed a bit as you realized the room had carried on with its action and disregarded him.

It wasn’t the end of the world. He was a grown man; he didn’t need to be entertained or catered to at all times, but for some reason it stuck. Like a stone that sank to the bottom of your stomach and remained for days. What that heaviness was, you couldn’t say.

Not two days later, the team was at a dive bar, traditionally following a short and successful mission. You joked with Soap and Gaz that they’d ward off any leering figure. Even though you could defend yourself effortlessly, they were men, and they loved you, so they couldn’t help but edge a bit closer or stand a bit straighter in that sort of environment. At the pool table, Soap was nearly always behind you, warding off any bold patron from “giving you a few pointers”. You barely noticed it now, just continuing in your brazen promises to destroy Gaz at his favorite bar game.

You didn’t see the calm eyes watching you, Simon’s glass being lifted to his lips as the bourbon slipped past his throat and, it seemed, straight into his heart. Your smile, the way you moved, the way you just existed, made him slip into a daydream of kissing you right there at the billiards table, the Task Force both irritated and touched by the display. His balaclava rested just above his nose, his stubbled jaw revealing the faint shadow of a week’s neglect.

It occurred to him that he had never actually attempted to initiate what you had with them.

Sometimes, he would talk to John in his office over a fancy bottle, and sometimes his tongue would slip. On one of those occasions, his Captain couldn’t stand to stay silent.

“Do something about it, Simon.”

Seeing Simon’s state, it was clear the problem wasn’t the conflict of interest, it was him. He wasn’t afraid of Narcos, or sprinting toward gunfire, or any of the things that made his job horrifying, he was afraid of showing you who he was and being laughed at.

“Maybe I will.”

He was drunk and snarky in that moment, but now he’d barely had half a glass, and he still felt that pull toward you. He felt the same ignition in his ribs that he felt in boot camp when another recruit challenged him. His competitiveness, his ambition, it never left. It only simmered, slowly and consistently, until you came along and sent it boiling over.

You were coming over now. He lowered his balaclava, the contact of fabric easing his battering heart.

“Had enough of them?” He murmured. His voice scratched from underuse, and he cleared his throat irritably.

“Always..” You thanked the bartender for your drink, not sitting at the bar but not turning back to the game quite yet.

Simon cursed his own body for the swarm of nerves intersecting in his stomach. Just the sight of you taking off your jacket was forcing him to stay in place instead of bolting to the men’s room and squeezing his eyes shut, raking his hand through his hair and forcing his nervous system down from its overdrive.

He tried to sound casual.

“You winning, then?”

“I plead the fifth..”

“Can’t do that in the Queen’s land, can you?”

The joke slipped like a sleight of hand, and your huff of laughter made his chest warm.

Maybe he could just..

“Least’ you get to show off your artillery.” He tapped a gloved fist on your exposed bicep, the muscle lean from your endless unpacking and carrying of equipment. The touch was hardly even an exchange, a tap to the side of your arm by the side of his hand. It was safe, he figured. But you straightened up and inched away.

His mind blurred your words as you excused yourself back to the pool table. He fucked up. He fucked up.

But you were thinking the same. It had taken nearly ten turns before you gathered enough courage to return to the bar counter, and when he spoke to you first, every faux bit of confidence crumbled to the floor. You saw the shine in his eyes when he made his little quip, and wondered if they looked like that when he cracked those stupid jokes over comms. You wondered what his smile looked like, and then his hand touched your arm, and you inhaled sharply, removing yourself in fear of what you would do, what you would say, how your face looked, how your voice wavered. You fucked up.

Over the next week, somehow you combated your feelings of guilt by doubling down. It pained you to no end, but you didn’t know what to do besides continue what you’d started. You weren’t ready to tell the truth, even to yourself.

You figured the universe decided to punish you for your cowardice by giving you this mission. You and Simon camped on the side of a shallow valley, the foot of the snowy hills harboring a warehouse that a sensitive target was tracked to. The mission was over quickly, but by the time the target was dead, the snow had gotten so severe that the warehouse door was under too much pressure to open. It was safe enough inside, but there was nowhere to go.

“We’ve got to wait it out.” Simon conceded after several attempts of escape.

“It’s definitely below freezing in here..” You grunted as you moved the body to a sealed container.

“He’s not complaining.” Simon nodded to the corpse, making you roll your eyes as you latched the container shut.

After some searching, you started a fire underneath a vent, the wind disturbing the flames but also preventing the smoke from choking the room. The two of you had the brain to pack up your camp before descending the hill, so you laid out what you had and rested on your back. Simon sat on his own bedroll, looking at the flames.

“You’d be warmer if you were closer.”

“I’m right next to the fire.”

“Closer to me.”

Your breath hitched as you avoided his eyes, forcing a sigh. “I’m fine.”

“You know something?”

Your jaw twitched; he saw.

“Cupid could stick an arrow in your back while you stare at me, and you’d still fall for a rock on the floor instead a’ me.”

You adjusted your weight, covering your legs with your thermal blanket. Your heart began to hammer again when you noticed his nose and mouth were exposed. He’d shaved since the night at the bar.

You didn’t reveal a thing.

“What’s the difference?”

But then he laughed, and you saw one of his canines was pointed a bit. You saw he had dimples. You saw the smooth contours of his smile, and it was like your head was fastened irreversibly to look his way. His tongue appeared to wet his dry lips briefly and your cheeks burned. He spoke evenly. You studied how his mouth moved when he talked, following the inflections of his accent with your eyes.

“We’re stuck here, Sergeant. So I’ll be straight. What’s the fuckin’ deal?”

If anyone else swore that way, you’d take it as unnecessary aggression, but his eyes told you he just wanted an answer.

“Not everyone you meet is going to be infatuated with you..” Your words intended to bite, but they fell from your lips like dead leaves.

“Not everyone I meet knows how I think like you do.” His tone dipped with sincerity. “Not everyone cracks filthy jokes and doesn’t care what looks she gets. You’re not everyone, love.”

Your eyes met his at the nickname. “Simon..”

“I don’t bite.” He murmured. “So come get me.”

“Come get..” you breathed, and he nodded.

You sat up, facing him and shifting closer.

“S’a bit cruel, you know..” The quieter he got, the more gravel lined his words. “The other boys gettin’ your lovin’. Leavin’ me out, babe?”

His hand trailed to your jaw, his fingertips traveling from the skin behind your ear until the side of his knuckle held your chin.

“It’s not the same, they’re not.. they’re..”

He was so close now, the breath of his words almost right against your lips. He lifted your mask until he could watch the way your lips parted.

“They’re not me..”

He nailed his words in when he kissed you, slowly and with a confidence you did not expect. He pulled back for a moment, likely to ask if it was alright that he’d practically confessed for you, but you were pulling him back into your arms before he could get a word out. His arm held you upright and close to him, not wandering, but instead soothing up your back with gentle movements, his other hand carefully holding your face and occasionally brushing his thumb over your cheek. The howling of the wind outside seemed to quiet; it was just the sound of his breathing, the faint, intoxicating noise that murmured from his chest. He took a fragment of your lip between his teeth before soothing over the intrusion with his tongue. He was impossibly warm.

“Fuckin’ hell, mate..”

You drew back roughly, Simon grunting in surprise before noticing what had startled you. Gaz stood with the warehouse door pried open, panting from exertion.

“Didn’t know you got down like that, Lieu-"

“That’ll do!”

[razorblade180-heated]

Early Christmas Gift

[Warning, smut. Like the whole thing]

It had been a looooog day for Jaune Arc. The end of a crazy mission that had far too many explosions, the loss of his wallet for half the day which forced him to miss his boat, and finally, bad turbulence on a flight all the way back to Vale. Now it was the dead of night and he was wheeling his luggage down the sidewalks. At least he didn’t vomit on the ride, this time.

“Note to self, Vacou kids are amazing pickpockets.” He mumbled aloud. Thank goodness Ren was quick on his feet and that Nora could be as scary as she could be sweet. If not, things could’ve been worse. Now that he was back in the city, his Scroll was practically blowing up with messages. Notably, his girlfriend, Yang, called a little more than Ruby. Before he could finally return a call, his scroll rang with Yang’s name.

He laughed nervously and smiled, preparing himself as he answered. “H-”

“SO YOU ARE ALIVE!? WHAT THE HECK MAN!?” The blonde yelled, relieved and annoyed.

Honestly, less aggressive than he expected. “Hi baby. I’m sorry.” Jaune deflated as he spoke. “Today has been a day.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Weren’t you supposed to be home seven hours ago? Did the mission go south? You didn’t get hurt did you?”

“No, the mission was pretty Nora core. All and all we made good time but then someone stole my stuff, missed my boat; lots of other very, very exhausting stuff. I’m walking home as we speak.”

“Wow. That’s…definitely a lot. Wait, you’re walking? It’s nearly midnight. You could’ve called me or someone to pick you up from the port.”

“I figured everyone was asleep.”

“Get real. Do you really think I’d be sound asleep before I knew you were okay?”

Those words warmed his heart greatly. “Thanks Yang. I’m fine though. Vale isn’t some ghost town at night. I am sorry though. We had plans to meet today. You must’ve been waiting a while.”

“You…could say that.” Yang laughed sheepishly. “Here I was, ready to see my boyfriend after we finished our missions and his annoying personal challenge was achieved.”

“A month without sex is a test of will and power.” He defended.

“November is the time for good food and being thankful. Anything else is wild. Besides, we’ve both gone years without fun stuff. Why add a month?”

“Heh, I don’t think being a single or a virgin counts. You’re just opted in at that point. How did your mission go by the way?”

“Got home on time.”

“Ouch… where’d the warmth go?” He teases.

“I know you’re fine now. If you want warmth then…maybe I should see you?”

“You’re an island away. Even if you caught the final flight I’d feel guilty. Though if it makes you feel better…I’ve been missing you all day.”

“…Always the charmer. I’ve definitely been missing you too.” She said, a little more bashful than usual.

“There’s always tomorrow. I’m definitely not going anywhere. Aside from grocery shopping.”

“Have you eaten?”

“My apartment should still have something edible. I’ll probably grab a snack, bathe, and crash.” He finally reached his building’s street. “Anyways, I’ve officially made it home safely. Just several feet away. Now you can have pretty dreams knowing I’m safe.”

“Nope. Not until you go through your front door. I’m not hanging up until you do.”

“Okay, okay. Heh, honestly with my luck something crazy would happen if I hung up early.” He laughed.

“Please don’t jinx yourself.”

Jaune made his way down the hall, up some annoying stairs, and to the front of his door.

“Kay, now you are free to sleep.”

“Have a wonderful night, handsome.” Yang made a kiss noise over the phone and hung up.

Just like that, Jaune felt the warmth again. She was so good to him. He’d definitely have to treat her to a dinner or some kind of club date. The man found his keys and went inside his home at last. Instantly his nose was greeted with wonder and bliss. That was…odd. He put down his belongings and walked over to the kitchen; a flick of the light revealed a hot box of pizza. Jaune had to do a double take to make sure this was his place. He then noticed Yang’s emblem drawn in orange on the box.

“Ah, that’s why she asked if I ate.” He smiled before quickly going back to being confused. How was the pizza hot? Yang had a key to his place but when was she over here? Did she leave briefly before he called? Unless…

Jaune looked towards the absolute darkness that was his living room and squinted. Not that it helped with the balcony blinds shut. “Yang?”

His call was answered with snickering. “Hehehe, I do love watching your brain at work. Although…” She pulled the metal lamp string next to her to light up the room. “You’re also cute when it’s derailed.

And derailed it was. There his cute girlfriend was, sitting on his black leather recliner his family had bought him. Her smile was cheeky as well as ear to ear. She sure caught him by surprise, but the real shock was her outfit. A silly little Santa hat on top of her head jingled while the only thing on her body was a red tube top with white frills that was fighting for his life, a matching miniskirt that barely went halfway down her thighs, and very, very long red stockings that compensated for the skirt’s lack of…well, skirt.

Jaune’s mouth went dry and his eyes embarrassingly wide. It was as if Yang had knocked the exhaustion out of them. He wasn’t quite sure where he should’ve been looking at first, but then noticed despite how confidently the lady sat there with her legs crossed, her cheeks were branded pink and her gaze, while excited, was also avoiding complete eye contact.

“For the record, I’ve been in this for quite awhile.” She said, breaking the silence. “It took guts to commit to this surprise.”

“Now I’m curious what you would’ve done if I had called you to pick me up!”

“Then Remnant would’ve gotten a hot Mrs. Claus on a motorcycle.” She smirked. “Although I’m actually very relieved that was not the case. It’s cold out there!”

Not the issue Jaune thought she was going to say but he rolled with it. Not that he had much choice. Yang finally stood up and slowly walked towards him, draping her arms over his shoulders and giving a more endearing grin despite her obvious flustered face. “Welcome home. As you can see, I missed you.”

He nodded, “Yeah, I can feel the yearning. Hehe, you look…wow. Talk about an early present.” His hands automatically went to hold her waist.”

Yang got on her toes and gained a very sweet and joyful kiss. She’s glad her efforts paid off, but she could tell Jaune really had a long day. “Go grab a slice and unwind yourself. I’m not going anywhere so- mmph!?”

Her offer was outright denied, thrown to the side as Jaune pulled her body closer and back into a more passionate kiss that fluttered her heart and stole her breath. The longer kept her in his arms, the more she found herself melting into the embrace to the point her knees buckled before he allowed her to breathe again.

Frazzled, Yang found herself stammering and chewing on her bottom lip. “I um- I uhh can wait a while longer for you to rest.”

“I’ve made you wait long enough.” He said with yearning and restrained lust as he pulled her back into a kiss that took custody of her tongue.

Yang felt herself rise up onto her toes as Jaune’s hands found residence on her shapely rear. He didn’t think twice about squeezing it as he picked her up and allowed her legs to wrap around his waist. It didn’t take long before her man went a step further in sliding his hands under the provocative skirt. Jaune quickly ended their kiss to gaze at her as her face grew red from his curious expression.

“No underwear huh?” He said, sinking his digits into warm flesh. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Funny. I was wondering the same thing.” Her hands rubbed his broad chest. “Come sit on the couch for you me will ya?”

He followed her quest and sat right in the middle of the couch. Yang was about to get off him for the next step, but was clearly taken by surprise when his teeth tugged her tube top down, freeing her massive chest before ravishing them. A jolt ram through her spine as his warm tongue lapped around her nipples. His hands kept her waist pressed down on her lap to the point she had no choice but to feel his pulsing cock through tight jeans. Nevertheless, Yang couldn’t stop her hips from grinning along it, dampening the fabric severely.

“H-Hey…wait! I-mmm” Her voice shook, feeling him sink his teeth into her. Jaune leaned forward, putting Yang on her back as he continued devouring her body. “Jaune! Hold on~ I…had a whole routine~” Yangs mewls only served to make him more daring. His tongue trailed up her neck, causing her entire body to arch as he met her lips again for another kiss. Yang was overwhelmed with the scent of the boy and his rough day, which she increasingly found more and more dulling to her senses. She didn’t even notice Jaune had unzipped his pants until she felt his buring hot tip rubbing along her folds. “Mmmph”

Jaune could already feel her lips quivering as they coated his cock. To get this excited so quickly; he wasn’t one to talk though. He began pushing his hips continuously into the molten warmth.

“Aaaaah!” Yang felt the wind leave her body as Jaune’s thick cock spread her body apart and filled her inch by inch until she felt the weight of his balls against her ass. He slowly began dragging himself out halfway before plummeting back in as he grunted. “Ah fuck!” Yang gripped his forearms as her body tripped to adjust.

“Gods, I missed you. You’re so wet.”

“Who’s fault is that!?” Yang’s breathing became sharper as Jaune started moving. “Nng, too big. Rock solid too~”

“It has been a long month. I’m dying for a release.”

“How do you think I feel!? It hasn’t been easy for me either.” She pouted. Suddenly she felt his movements slow. “Jaune?” He raised himself up and looked down at her with a shocked look from between her legs. “What?”

“Are you telling me you didn’t touch yourself the entire time?”

Yang felt heat rush to her face. Looking at him became a lot harder so she turned her head to the side. “What would be the point? Even if I used a toy, I just wouldn’t feel as good as you.”

A brief silence fell on them. Yang awaited his response when she suddenly felt him twitch inside her. Jaune’s hands held her waist tightly and raised her lower body off the couch with ease, causing her to look his way. “What are you-” was all she could manage before seeing Jaune thrust his hips forward, causing another series of jolts as he began to go all out.

Yang’s mouth fell open and stayed that way as voiceless, broken cries left her throat until a scream finally broke out. “AAAAGHN~” her brain became a mess, her eyes fluttering at the sight of jaune mercilessly fucking her pussy until their sex became loud and wet. Her stomach felt like fire as her hips became numb with the pleasure of being turned inside out. Each deep rub made her gasp for air she couldn’t gain while her chest bounced to the rough rhythm. “B-baby. Baby! Aaah!” Yang reached for him and he gladly returned to her embrace. She knew despite her pleas, his pace would not falter; nor did she want it to. Their pleasure had built too quickly to turn back now. With a final raise of his hips, Yang felt the man bury himself deep inside and release a rush of heat that made her body squeeze him for more as her vision blurred momentarily. When she recovered, Jaune was already pulling out slowly and giving both of their bodies a break. Still, if you were to go by appearances, Jaune’s body hadn’t calmed down in the slightest.

“Looks like all of you missed me.” Yang huffed, sitting up as her legs gained some feeling. “If I didn’t know any better, I would think you were trying to have a kid.”

Jaune watched the woman run her middle finger along her slit to pick up some of the lust he left dripping in her. Yang looked him dead in the eyes as she lapped up the naughty taste, making him blush.

“I had an entire routine planned out and you threw it to the side. Not that I mind.”

“You can’t say the things you said a

and wear this without expecting me to get riled up.”

“Heh, touché.” Her gaze fell on his erection, the near seven inches of solid flesh was still ready. Might as well start her plans now, Yang thought. She leaned forward, crawling on hands and knees until she was in the perfect spot to lower her head.

Jaune shuddered as he felt her hot lips wrap around his length to lick him lavishly. Now he knew Yang was horny for sure. Giving head was never her favorite activity in this fun process, but now her face was happily burying itself in his lap repeatedly. His left hand brushed the blonde bombshell’s hair aside for an unobstructed view of her work.

Yang ran her tongue up and down the girth base, polishing it while making faint moans and wet smacks to turn him on more. She must’ve been losing her mind because the way his taste and smell overwhelmed her senses in the best way possible. Her grip on reality only came back when Jaune's hand struck her rear suddenly, his middle and ring finger slipping inside her body to stir her desires harder.

“Mmmm~”

Jaune couldn’t stop his smirk. “Oh you like that?”

“Mmhmm~” Yang readied herself and pressed down in one motion to feel this man in her throat before coming up for air. Yang could feel his digits grow relentless as they sped up. Unable to focus, she freed Jaune from her mouth in a fit of panting and mewls. Her hips couldn’t stop shaking, pushing against his hand to feel each knuckle rub deeper. “Gods, why is this so good?”

“Cum if you need to. Let me see that pretty face.”

“No~ I…I wanted to use my tits on you. But now I…I’m…” Yang let out a long, heartfelt sigh. How did things get this messy so fast? “Put it back in me. I want it.”

Jaune retracted his fingers and did his best to regain his own composure; a difficult task when the love of his life not only pleaded, but brazenly kissed along his shaft in a stupor of want and desire. “Ngh, Yang, get on my lap if you want it.”

Yang got on her knees then swung her right leg to the other side of Jaune’s waist. The boy wasted no time massaging and kneading her chest, riddling it with bits as Yang cooed. Her body dropped slowly, piercing herself onto Jaune’s flesh.

“Aaaaghn~” her hands ran up his chest and gripped his shoulders as Yang started bouncing on his lap, putting all her weight down each time to feel her womb get knocked on. Jaune’s mouth stayed busy where it was but his hands returned to her rear, molding it like clay as he helped push her down to the base. Her hips buckled. “Fuck!”

Heavy, wet smacks echoed every time her ass slammed onto Jaune’s lap. The man couldn’t believe the tightness that surrounded him; the way it clung it his length and coated it with ecstasy that reached his thighs. Engulfed by Yang’s heat, Jaune finally took a second to separate his lips from his body and removed his shirt. Yang’s arms all but sprang out towards him right after, pulling him into a feverish kiss while her hips moved on their own before his hands returned.

“You’re so in love with my ass tonight.” Yang hummed.

“I’m in love with it every night.” He continued kneading it, his fingers rubbing all of it. “Hey, so how much did you prepare for today?”

Yang didn’t get the question at first, until she felt a single finger tracing her asshole. Yang couldn’t hide the state of blushing red he put her into with his pesky intention. To make it worse, her body already gave him the answer to the question. Yang buried her face into the crook of Jaune’s neck and quivered as the naughty middle finger pressed into her slowly. A moan came from her throat and her hips worked over time on his cock as Jaune began to play his little game.

He could already feel her walls frantically twitching but he knew he could make Yang go crazy. He wanted to make the month of emptiness mean everything. He nipped at her ear as he continued fingering her. “You’re such a good girl, you that? Doing all this for me; allowing me to cut loose~” he thrusted up suddenly.

“AAAHH!” His nipping turned into feverish licks as well. Yang tried staying strong but now he was meeting her thrusts and pumped his finger into her more quickly. Her body became repeated jolts of pleasure to the point Yang could only bite her lover’s shoulder as a way to soften her growls.

Jaune’s only panting became like a drunken breath as he approached his end. “Good girl~” he cooed, leaning right into her ear and whispering it one more time. “Gooood girl.” He pressed her hips down against his waist, going as deep as possible. “Here’s your reward!” He grunted, cumming for the second time.

Every muscle in Yang’s body tensed all at once. She was certain she’d scream, yet the immense rush of pleasure stole voice, leaving nothing but a silent yell as she clung to him like a girl on a wild roller coaster. Pulse after pulse, she felt her insides get marked by Jaune. The dork was brazen enough to call it a “reward” and she had half a mind to thank him for it. They were going crazy. Not that she hated it for a second.

Yang felt Jaune relax under her body while she found the strength to set up after his hands finished toying with her. “Wow, that was- hmm” Yang stopped short as she witnessed Jaune struggling to keep his eyes open. Poor guy was spent! It was almost hard not to laugh. “Pfft, gee, looks like someone should’ve eaten.”

“I was hungry for other things.” He groaned, wrapping his arms around her torso and resting his face in her chest. “But now that pizza sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“Oh what to do with you?” Yang giggled, her hands combing through his hands. Truthfully, she wanted him to stay inside like this a little longer, but the last thing she wanted was her boyfriend withering away. Yang kissed the top of his head. “I’ll go fix you a plate.”

“You’re wonderful.”

“And you’re outstanding. My hips are still floating.” She said, embarrassed by her own honesty.

“Let’s wash up together after we eat.”

“Only washing?” She teased, only to feel him twitch inside of her. Yang gasped a little. Jaune raised his head to look into her eyes with a gaze that made her chew on her bottom lip again. Tonight was going to be a long night. “Welcome home.”