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#dirtier
mafaldaknows · 1 year
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Instagram: johnp.shanley
AS IF
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simon-sehs · 12 days
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suffer (18+)
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tags / cw: f!reader, fluff, angst, smut, hatefucking, injury mention, dirty talk, insults, enemies to lovers, enemies with benefits, pathetic!simon, love confession, happy ending
To this day, you still couldn’t fathom what Ghost’s issue with you was. Granted, he was a weird and mysterious man to begin with, so making sense of his thoughts and feelings seemed daunting when there were bigger concerns.
At least, that’s what you told yourself. It didn’t stop the fact that despite the glares and insults, he often graced your bed.
Or you in his.
You were at least glad he was a gracious lover. Maybe it was an ego or superiority thing; after all, if you’re going to fuck the brains of someone you dislike, you may as well make them see stars and ruin them for anyone else.
Unfortunately, he also loved the sound of his own voice.
“Aww, look at you, sergeant. So desperate and needy for me…”
His dick slipped into your cunt with ease, much to your embarrassment. This, of course, would not go unnoticed, or unspoken.
“That’s right… take me in, doll…” He chuckled. “Must suck, feeling how well that pretty pussy molds around me. Like it was made specifically for me…”
“Jesus, shut up and fuck me already.”
“What’s wrong, love?” He slowly moved inside you, his pace gradually building to make you crave more with each second. “I hit a nerve? You gonna throw a tantrum, slap me around?” He smirked.
“Ugh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Freak.” You moaned and felt yourself clenching around him at the thought, despite your insult.
Ghost’s grip on your thighs tightened. “Maybe. Or maybe I just feel like giving you a free pass. God knows your… aw, fuck… hand-to-hand is abysmal. Couldn’t kick my ass to save your life…”
You grit your teeth. “I don’t need to beat your ass. All I need is a few good hits to make you hurt for a while.”
"Hah, you really think you can hurt me… when I've literally taken a bullet for the both of us?" He said bitterly.
You tensed. “Huh? What… mmm… the hell are you on about?”
“Don’t play dumb, you’re too pretty for that.”
You just stared at him.
Slowly, he stopped and stared down at you. “…Are you… serious?”
You blinked up at him.
His face gradually softened, before he let out a sigh. “You don’t know, do you?”
It was your turn to sigh. “Know what?”
He leaned back, despite still being inside you. “That mission we had together, where we were supposed to bring the target in alive… I took a bullet for you after you got knocked out.” His hand traced a scar on his shoulder. “It was either let you die… or let the target escape.”
You stared at him, speechless. “No, you… I… no… no one told me….”
“You were pissed about the target getting away, I… thought you knew. I don’t know.” He rubbed his jaw.
“What? No! I… you’re lying. You’re trying to make this my fault when it was your incompetence that resulted in him getting away…” You said, but with each word that came out, you could feel your resolve crumbling, as pieces clicked into place.
He glared. “You think I care if you believe me? You couldn’t possibly understand why I did what I did.”
“Try me.”
He pulled out of you with a grunt, and you had to resist the urge to whimper at the loss.
“You don’t want to know.”
You were getting pissed. “Quit fucking around, Simon, tell me.”
He growled. Honest to god, growled. “Fuckin’ hell, because I love you.”
Your eyes widened. He stared.
Seconds ticked by. The two of you were stuck in a staring contest.
You relented and glanced away, frowning. But then a gentle touch of his fingers on your chin brought your face back to gaze at his. More staring.
“Christ, say something, you daft girl.”
“Shut up.” You snapped. “I don’t believe you. You’re messing with me.”
“I have better things to do than lie about this shit. Stuffing your cunt, for example.”
“Why do you act like you hate me then?”
He sighed and rubbed his face. “I… because it’s easier to push you away than face the fact that I… Look, it’s to protect the both of us.”
“And yet you’re somehow in my bed.”
“…Yeah.” His fingers remained on your chin. “Tell me you don’t feel the same way and I’ll go. Hell, I’ll leave you alone, even.”
You swallowed, your heart pounding viciously in your chest. “I… I can’t.” You croaked.
Ghost’s face falls. “No… fuck, no…”
“I… I love—“
“Don’t. Don’t fuckin’ say it. Fuck. You’re not supposed to… we can’t. Don’t you get it? We can’t.”
Your eyes started to blur with tears. “Simon… I love you.”
He glanced away, his chest heaving. “Fuck…”
Now you found yourself turning his face to yours, your hand soft on his cheek. Your heart tore at the sight of his own glossy eyes.
“I love you.” You repeated.
He crumbled.
His face sunk into your neck, and he wept.
You froze up, unsure of what to do. But then you found your arms wrapping around him tightly as his tears dotted your sweaty skin.
“I love you…” You say again, softly.
He mumbled something incoherent into your skin.
“Huh?”
Ghost pulled back slightly. “I said, we’re both fuckin’ idiots.”
“Simon… kiss me…”
He stared at you with pathetic puppy eyes, before leaning in and kissing you. It was different, this time. It wasn’t like the previous kisses. The heat was still there, but there was intimacy, longing, love.
You pulled back to moan as he buried himself back inside your aching hole.
His arms wrapped around your body, pulling you close to his chest as if you were at risk of being pulled away from him. Then, he buried his nose back into your neck.
“Fuck… Love you… so much… fuck…”
Ghost pumped into you slowly but deliberately, each stroke a token of his affection.
You could feel a tear of your own running down your cheek. “My Simon… my love…”
He groaned at that, twitching inside you. “Be mine. Only mine. Please. Please…”
“I’m y-yours. Always have been…”
“Fffuck… prove it… come for me, baby…”
You whimpered as his hips slowly met yours over and over again, his pelvis grinding against your clit. “Yes, baby, yes…”
He breathed heavily against your throat. “Say that again. Call me ‘baby’ again…”
“Baby…”
And then you came, fluttering around his cock as his arms tightened around you.
“Fuck… fuck…” He mumbled.
It took four more strokes for him to follow suit, his body shaking slightly on top of you. You had never seen him in such a state before.
Then the room was silent, except for your ragged breaths.
As the both of you laid there, you reached a hand out to tentatively trace the scar on his shoulder. Ghost snuggled into you further.
“I’m yours… never forget that…” He murmured.
“Or… what… you’ll get… shot again?” You smirk.
He sighed. “I was thinking… more along the lines of… making love to you again… to remind you, but… sure… Why not…?”
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doobea · 7 months
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BEHIND CLOSED QUARTERS - SAE ITOSHI
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synopsis: Sae decides to find a roommate when he moves to Spain. Being physical with said roommate is the last thing he would expect to happen.
contents: in which he moves to Spain much later on, afab!reader, fem!reader is sexually active and extroverted, sae is just there vibing until he's not, explicit content (mentions of voyeurism, m!masturbation, f!masturbation, fingering, he calls u a slut once :( , vaginal penetration, unprotected whoops), strangers to fwb, kinda narration heavy, word vomity, mdni word count: 2.5K a/n: bro this is literally just pure smut and for my sae brain rot so look away >:(( @saeshimii i hope u enjoy this happy meal
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Sae decides to move to Spain when he receives an exclusive club offer.
And since Madrid isn't exactly an affordable city, he decides to look for a roommate. He spends about a week looking for something within his price range and a place with a reasonable distance from his training grounds. Sae had set his preferences looking for someone who's neat, easy to communicate with, and has a similar schedule since he wakes up early. So, when he looks within those parameters, he stumbles upon your listing and sends you a message.
Sae had no issue with having a female roommate, not that it really matters, since he plans to spend most of his free time either out of the apartment or in his room. The two of you seem to stay cordial over emails, not overly creeped out by each other, and you promise that his room will be cleaned and ready to move into as soon as Sae lands in the country.
One thing that you did warn is that you often have hookups over, but you assure him that the bedrooms are far apart enough, with added insulation, that he shouldn't worry about the volume. Sae didn't care, you have every right to do whatever you wanted, just as long it didn't interrupt his own plans.
You're a lot more chatty in person, he thinks. Warm, welcoming, and likes to overshare a tad bit for his liking, but he doesn't stop you. You two spend the first night out in the streets of Madrid, out of your hospitality. Apparently, you are also temporarily living in Spain as part of a work transfer and have been living in the country for a little bit over a year now. So, for the first month, he approaches you for transit tips and local stops.
Afterward, Sae doesn't spend a lot of time with you through the following months because he's either training, playing for his team, or sleeping. As the new season approaches, the two of you will occasionally catch up through small talk over the dinner table, though it would mainly be you talking about the latest gossip at your work. Sae will soon take notice that you keep your intimate life rather private. Sometimes he'll catch a glance of an extra pair of shoes by the doorway when he gets up in the morning and, occasionally, he'll bump into your hookups in the hallway asking for directions to the bathroom. But, nevertheless, you keep the conversation rather PG and stick with anecdotes about your day.
It isn't until the second week of Spring that he accidentally catches you with one of your one-night stands. Sae would wake up on the living room couch in the middle of the night, oversleeping his daily one-hour nap due to fatigue from his recent matches, and try to retreat to his room located down the hallway past yours.
He freezes when he hears a loud, wet sound from your bedroom. Sae isn't the type to eavesdrop when not needed, especially when it comes to people outside of his very limited social circle. But he finds himself standing there and listens for a moment until he hears you moaning something to your latest partner.
"Slow down, not too hard. My roommate might hear us."
Sae wasn't sure why, but hearing you say that made him more flustered than he's ever gotten in his life. He's half debating whether or not to stay and listen, hands hovering over his awakening heat. Another stifled moan from you and Sae decides to throw the rest of his morals out the window. He's overheated, now fully aware that his length is coming to life alarmingly fast, his boxers now uncomfortably tight, and the hot mess of arousal churning in his stomach.
He shuts his eyes as another round of your moans emit behind the door, his hands immediately flying to his sweats, exposing his raging head to the cool air. Your moans are similar to the way you talk and laugh, loud and honest. They're not the overdone type of moans that he's heard from the few erotica videos he's seen — they're raw and real, which in itself makes it all more enjoyable than any sexual act he's ever witnessed.
He fists his length to the sounds of sloppy, wet thrusts and bites down his t-shirt to compress back his low groans. His mind wanders to the image of your naked body, head thrown back against the pillows, and legs spread for him and not the guy you were currently fucking. Sae might not have a high body count compared to the rest of his teammates, but he knows he can make your vocals twice as loud.
"—I'm close! So close!" Your sweet mewls make him physically shudder under his own touch as he pumps faster, trying to imagine the lewd expression you're currently making.
Sae finishes after what felt like an eternity when you finally succumb to your own end and he makes sure to not leave a mess right outside your door. He quickly wipes up the white slick on his stomach with his shirt and finally retreats to his room when he hears you asking the guy for a wet towel. Funny enough, Sae would've prepared everything beforehand to make sure that you didn't even need to ask.
Sae rolls onto his back in bed, hands coming up to cover his eyes as he heaves a heavy sigh at the action he's just committed. Guilty is what he should be feeling right now. But he's feeling everything but guilt. Maybe this is just what he needed.
The night slips into morning and, for some reason, catching you in the act helps loosen Sae's tongue. He brings it up over breakfast, as if he was announcing the weather, and watches your face go from bliss to embarrassment and to unashamed. Your shamelessness makes Sae feel a bit more comfortable.
"Care to repeat that again?"
Sae sips nonchalantly on his coffee and repeats, "Your one-night stand seemed threatened by me this morning." He replies cooly. Sae had bumped into him as he was getting ready for his daily jog. Apparently, your one-night stand was taken aback that you were living with a male. Let alone an athlete.
"Ah," You make it seem like it was expected and stir your own cup of coffee around. "He needs a lot of reassurance." You answer honestly.
"Maybe pick a better choice in partners." Sae lazily suggests and you merely laugh in response.
"And what about you? Have you been seeing anyone since moving here?"
Sae shakes his head. "Don't have the time or energy to."
Your eyes sparkle as you wave a playful finger in the air. "People always say to watch out for the quiet ones."
A half scoff escapes his lips, though the thought does run true in his case. "How about you watch out for the type of people you bring back here?"
You laugh heartily, "I'll keep it in mind."
Another month creeps by and Sae has gotten your sleeping pattern down to the bone. At least twice a week, you'll bring home someone around the time when you think he's asleep. After ten minutes, Sae would show up, back slack against your doorframe, with his throbbing arousal tightly wrapped around his grasp. He always makes sure to cum at the same time as you, which ranges from anywhere between fifteen minutes to almost thirty. Each time he's gotten better at timing his little escape before you notice that he was even there in the first place.
During some nights, when you didn't bring home a partner, he catches glimpses of you masturbating with your one of many vibrators. It appears that you become rather forgetful of locking your doors whenever you perform a solo act, but Sae doesn't mind it one bit. Not when he has the pleasure to catch you playing with yourself mindlessly through the slightest of cracks from the door.
He has gotten a loose general idea of where you like being touched, what names you like being called, and what positions you love being fucked in. All this information and imagery is stored deeply in his brain all while he loves pretending to be the aloof, innocent roommate the very next morning.
That is until you catch him one night.
Sae had been too caught up in his own little built-up pleasure that he didn't hear your footsteps until it was too late. You swing the door open, poised in a tank top and pair of white cotton panties, and almost shriek at the sight of him pumping his arousal away. Keyword: almost.
"I knew it was you."
Again, Sae believes he should be feeling guilty, now caught red-handed, that he's shamelessly jacking off to you, his roommate, but he doesn't. Because the sultry look that you flash him tells him all that he needs to know.
He lets you take a step forward. Your expression looks more beautiful and vulnerable than he could ever imagine from behind the walls. One tug at his collar and Sae finds himself bending easily at your beck and call, crashing into your lips in a suffocating kiss as if you've also been wanting this to happen. Instinctively, Sae's hands find their way to the curve of your hips and squeeze at your flesh down to the plump of your ass, all while pulling you roughly against his needy body.
You make a low sound of approval and rub your bare thighs against his probing length that's now wet with pre. Sae takes this sign to hoist you up in his arms, your legs automatically wrapping around his firm waist, and he smirks against your lips as you try and catch your breath. The journey to your bed is a short one. Once settled down, Sae discards his sweats fully and swipes off his shirt in a single motion before towering over your flushed figure. He feels like he could cum on the spot at just the sight of you, but where would the fun in that be?
"You're so fucking loud, you know that?" He practically purrs right against your ears, teeth grazing against your neck and hands wandering to your clothed chest.
You try and squeeze your legs together in return but Sae keeps them propped open. "Maybe I was putting on a show for you, ever thought about that?" You only wince in response as Sae nips playfully at your ear before marring your flesh with hickey after hickey along the line of your neck.
His hands leave your chest and tug your soaked panties down to your ankles. A sigh of relief rushes out of you as your dripping heat is exposed to the air. His mouth leaves contact with your neck. Sae wants to see your face, wants to desperately watch your face contort in pleasure as his fingers enter you for the first time. And you didn't disappoint.
"You're fucking soaked down there." Sae marvels at the sight of your entrance sucking his digits in with ease. "What a slut."
He flattens his palm against your throbbing clit with each thrust of his calloused fingers as they stretch out your twitching heat. The moans you make are incomparable to the muffled versions he's used to. They're broken, uncontrolled, intense, and undoubtedly louder than what your previous partners could do. To say he enjoys this sight is an understatement.
Sae might just become addicted to the way you squirm against his touch and how you leave bright, red crescent marks against his thighs. He loves feeling the muscles deep within you contracting around his digits at each probing motion. And, the best part? You crying out his name.
"Sae—Sae, please!"
His voice is unforgiving as he pulls out, almost grinning at the lewd, wet sounds from your slit. "Not yet."
A desperate whimper slips from your parted lips as Sae slowly and deliberately rolls his erection forward, just barely brushing across the heat of your entrance, hands now finding solitude on your thighs.
"Ask me nicely," Sae whispers. "I'll make sure to take care of you."
You lose your last remaining composure under him, tears pool at the ends of your eyes, and you throw your arms around his neck in a frantic motion. "Please make me cum. Fuck me like you hate me."
A dark glint flutters across his eyes. "That's it." Sae holds the back of your head to keep your mouth planted against his, muffling your loud cry when he slides into you, stretching your heat slowly. "I'm going to take care of you and make sure you only think about me."
Your legs wrap around his hips, ankles crossing at the bottom of his back and tightening ever so slightly to keep him as deep as possible. You manage to mumble out his name like a prayer, "You make me feel so full."
A single snap from his hips knocks the air out of you. Soon, the only sounds filling the bedroom are of your wet slick masked with the hoarse rasps from your throat. He presses his lips against your collarbone, then up your neck until your mouths are crushed together in a desperate attempt of thrashing tongues and lips.
Sae feels one of your hands tug at his locks and the other claws at his back. He can tell that you're close. Sae pulls away from the kiss and removes the hand behind your head and lets it slip between your bodies, thumb immediately finding solitude on your swollen nerve. He presses down gently and rubs it in circles until your whole body is arching under him.
"Go on ahead," Sae coos and traces a free hand across the curves of your cheeks. "Go and cum for me. Make a mess."
Your entire body tightens as you give out a final cry of his name into his shoulder, nails sinking deep into his skin that he's almost positive that it broke skin. With your arousal pulsing around his length, Sae's thrusts soon become erratic, throwing away his calculative motions and judgments as his final movements are nothing but punishment into your dripping entrance and he spills, painting your fleshy insides in strips of white.
You're a mess. Hair in disarray, drool seeping out of the corner of your gaping lips, eyes half-lidded, and tears of pleasure streaming down your flushed face. Sae thinks it's beautiful that he can make you like this.
He pulls out almost immediately, watching as his seed pours from your slick folds and spills down your thighs and onto the bedding. Sae doesn't give you a chance to talk, because he knows exactly what you're going to say next. Within a few seconds, Sae returns from the bathroom with a warm, damp towel and gently starts cleaning up the combined mess at your entrance.
He thinks if he's going to spend his next few years in Spain, he might as well spend it like this.
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frownyalfred · 1 month
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Your slut Bruce headcanons please🙏
He can’t kiss easily/well in the cowl so he has to take it off before things get heavy. This leads to him with windswept hair, slightly flushed cheeks from yanking the cowl off, and wide, blinking eyes as he adjusts to the new light.
Bruce learns very quickly the effect this has on people and starts using it to his advantage.
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olivercore · 2 months
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the oliver family reveal scene is such a character defining moment for felix. it reveals how deeply self serving he is as a person. ignoring that oliver is lying, since felix isn't aware of that at this point, felix is forcing his seemingly deeply traumatized friend back into said traumatizing environment because he feels the need to play the savior. "i'm not taking no for an answer. you have to fix this" why is felix insistent upon involving himself in these deeply personal family matters? to the point where he's bringing oliver there against his will? answering his phone and talking to his mom for him? as venetia said, he's known ollie for around six months. he couldn't truly begin to understand a family history that complicated and so opposite of his own in such short time, yet he's made himself an authority on mending this broken relationship between an abusive addict mother and her son. by deception. on ollie's birthday!!!!
the attention is taken away from this aspect of the dynamic very quickly since yknow, we find out everything is a farce anyway, but felix imposed himself like it was nothing. he has no concept of boundaries or overstepping- he cannot handle the word no. you can tell it's not the first time he's said "i'm not taking no for an answer" and it wouldn't be the last. and it wasn't ever even truly for ollie's sake, it was another part of felix's fantasy. it's another part of the role ollie plays for him. felix is a damsel that doesn't understand he's the damsel. he thinks he's the knight. and when his damsel isn't actually in distress, the illusion falls apart. suddenly, felix is the one actually in danger and the whole play is ruined.
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pursuitseternal · 3 months
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“Wrap Me Up:” 🎀 A Merry (NSFW) for the Vampire Lord Astarion, “The Rogue You Were” Christmas Special 🕯️
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Ascended Astarion x F!Reader | E | 5.6K of thawing his “Scrooge-ish” heart with bondage and ice play
Based on “A Christmas Carol,” because Astarion would be a total “Scrooge”
Part 2: “Yuletide in Faerûn”
Summary: He hates Yuletide, a time where he is haunted by the ghosts of Yuletides past, but you won’t let him remain so cold, not when all he needs is a little warmth and pleasure to thaw…
CW: Bondage, Ice Play, temperature play, Dom/sub tones, face fucking, nipple play, breast biting, blood kink, sex as healing, face the ghost of Yuletide past, make him look towards the ghosts of Yuletide present and future with you
AO3 link | Read “Rogue You Were” | Masterist
🧊🔥🧊🔥🧊🔥🧊🔥🧊🔥🧊🔥🧊🔥🧊🔥🧊
Cazador was dead to begin with…. His palace redone, reclaimed by your love, your master. No longer some distasteful, neglected home of a miser and monster. It is the toast of Baldur’s Gate, the lavish, decadent crowning jewel of the city, and home to the man all admired and feared. Astarion, Vampire Ascendant.
Your love. Your Master. Your spouse.
But even still, as the streets of the city filled with snow, wet and heavy from the sea, as the air filled with the sights and sounds and smells of Yuletide, your home remained cheerless.
Cazador was dead, and so was the infamous Yule Ball he hosted in his decrepit halls—forbidden by its new lord and master. Astarion had no wish to carry on any of that monster’s legacy. A gala event meant to make his spawn work all the harder for victims at the risk of torture… a night of sumptuous darkness, where victims were aplenty, a prize for their master.
And so… Yuletide was banished. Halls were bright, but no more shining than usual. No evergreens or music or mirth. No gatherings or carols or banquets or dances.
And no… gifts. Those were his orders.
Orders that you understand, but ones that make you grieved. That make you wish to show him the true meaning of Yuletide. And you will show him tonight. To do so, you have been sneaky, subtle, deceptive. And above all… disobedient. But that only makes this plot of yours all the more delicious.
He’s been away all day, corrupting officials and threatening the right people. Turning the powerful into puppets, ensuring everyone pays their tribute to the most powerful being in all the realms. In fact, you think as you begin to peer out the window looking down into the drive, banks of snow scattered to the side and torches flaming to await the master’s arrival, he has been extraordinarily ruthless of late. These last weeks leading into Yuletide, he’s been extorting more money, squeezing favor after favor from the influential, securing all the wealth he could to line his own coffers. And all the while, he grinned that brilliant fang-toothed smile, laughing to be such a menace before the festivities.
Little did he know what you are doing in his absence. Your little secret.
It wasn’t easy to keep. You had to block out his mind, the little ways he liked to check on you from a distance, swirling into your thoughts down your bonded minds as master and bride. You were careful these last few days. Conveniently sending him only thoughts of how much he pleasures you… his hands gripping your ass, his fangs in your throat, his cock shoved to the hilt between your thighs or down your throat, the slick feeling of his cum or its rich and bitter tang….
And once he was satisfied, his presence would leave you, back to your own devices.
Even when he was home of late, he spent much of his time in the treasure vaults, counting and recounting your wealth… until he wandered back to your bed for sweet words of praise and pride in your victories… and for all the carnal ways he loved to consolidate that power with you.
And so, you were free to continue your little plan. You are free to complete your plan.
The eve before Yuletide, and you place a few finishing touches around the library. His favorite place. Not only because he was fond of books, but it is a room all of his own creation. A room free from the ghosts of Cazador’s abuse and violence.
A room all his own.
And now, you made it… festive. The air smells of fresh evergreen and holly, spiced rum punch and sugared sweets, candle smoke and… him. Of citrus and rosemary, that makes your mouth and your cunt wet. Your eyes peer out from the slit in the curtains, watching the snowdrifts billow up in the wind and weather, more flakes of white falling heavy in the night. All that soft, fresh fallen snow muffles the rattle of Astarion’s carriage as it glides up the drive.
Your heart leaps, your hand pulling the curtain back, making sure the light illumines behind you. Making sure he sees you wait for his return, his most beloved spawn in his most beloved room.
He is like shadow incarnate, his black cloak wrapped tightly around his body as it still flaps in the icy winds. Those crimson eyes catch your figure, backlit by the glow within, intrigued, suspicious, his smirking grin makes your quiver, even at this distance.
“Little love… whatever could you be up to?” His voice caresses your mind, sultry and purring to warm your soul.
“Oh, don’t be so cold, my love,” you throw back down the bond of your minds, “why not come and… make yourself warm?”
“Make myself…” he continues to purr even as he strides inside the doors to your palace, “…or permit you to warm me?”
“Come and find out, my darling…”
You can feel his approach, as if you travel as his shadow. Sensing the moment he undoes his clasp, the wet wool of his cloak flopping to the tile. Riding the movement of his legs as he climbs the stairs two at a time. Hearing the sniffs of that aquiline nose that makes a little growl resonate in his throat.
“What have you done?” he hisses into your mind, a pulse of rage and suspicion flaring down your bond.
“It will please you greatly,” you chide in reply, “as long as you overlook my loving disobedience.”
His presence pulls away, only because his hand tears the handle from the library door, the panes of its dark wood flying open to reveal him.
Where he fumes in the entrance.
Crimson eyes glow as he takes in the sight… the fresh scent of spices and sweets and evergreens making his nose turn up in disgust… his gaze scanning from the decorated mantle to the table of sweets, to where you await him near the window.
“My… defiant… little… consort,” he speaks steadily through his grit teeth. “Do you wish to tell me the meaning of all this before I punish you or will it be an extra sweet revelation I pry from you… during…?”
“Or, consider this, my love,” you give him a warm and sultry smile, “you let me, your beloved bride, your treasure, lavish you with some festive joy,” you gesture to the mantle and the table of spiced punch and sweets, “bestow upon you some adoring gifts to show my undying love for you,” you point to the two, small gift wrapped boxes waiting on the table, “and of course some very… merry… entertainment…” You would blush harder if it were possible, your hand tracing down the deep cut of your silken dressing gown. His crimson eyes darkening and dilating as it follows your touch on your own skin.
“You, of all people, my darling should know the dangers involved in tampering with the ghosts of the past that still haunt me…” he crosses the room in what feels like a single bound, his hands closing on your upper arms, his warm touch crushing you against his chest. “You are on some very thin ice… darling. Tread. Very. Carefully.”
“The Rogue I love wouldn’t shy from a fight, even against facing the ghosts that once tormented him,” you smirk up at his enraged face, you can feel his heart racing in a heady mix of emotion, see it throbbing in the veins of his neck. That powerful ascended heart. “Won’t you… at least open my gifts? Let me spoil you for once this Yuletide, as you have never been spoiled before…”
A single brow raises at that. “Well,” he sniffs, tilting his head, eyes falling to the boxes impeccably wrapped before him. “I do rather like being spoiled.” It was a quiet, begrudging sort of acquiescence. “And…” he sighed through his frowning, open mouth, “I suppose you did make a huge effort… even if it was a secret…” he hisses, suddenly giving you that gaze as if you are his next, most delicious meal, “…and disobedient… and deceptive sort of effort for me…”
You smile, such a saccharine look of innocence. “I’m glad you’re beginning to see it, my love.”
His hands fly to your chin, clasping around it before slinking down to claw gently around your neck. “I still expect much from you, darling, to make reparation for your… defiance, as loving as it might be.” You laugh, letting your throat vibrate beneath his touch, as he brings your lips in for a consuming kiss.
However brief.
He presses against your throat, breaking with that dark, conceited grin. “Now, my dearest pet,” he purrs, “impress me with your festive spirit…”
You give him that slightly pouting smile that seems to lower that haze of lust over his eyes. You keep his gaze locked, reaching for the large box,
wrapped in golden paper, tied with golden ribbon. He accepts it into his hands, sifting its weight, shaking it just a touch to feel something hefty sliding inside the container. Then, you see it, almost like the first trickle down an icicle as it starts to melt, the corner of his lips turns just a little higher.
His fingers grip the end of the bow, slowly unraveling it. “What is it?” he asks, a skeptical brow raised.
“The gift to help you chase away the ghost of Yuletide past, my love…” you grin, feeling so confident, so sure of your choices, of your knowledge of him more than he would even admit to his ascended self.
That wins you a twist of those full lips. Those crimson eyes flicker up to yours briefly as his long, dexterous fingers lift open the lid. “Is that a… crown?” pure amusement, voice tickled with the flattery only a perfect gift could give.
You reach your hands in, lifting the metal circlet from its box, the little interwoven strands of dark metal rising into little spikes. “Elegant and vicious,” you hum as you take it between your hands and raise it to rest on his tousle of silver hair. “Just like you, my roguish love.”
“Well if this is your idea of spoiling me with festive cheer…” he raises a brow, turning his head to test out the weight upon his head, “you’re exceeding my expectations.” He turns to the wall behind you, where you have draped boughs of holly leaves and blood red berries around the ornate and gilded mirror on the wall. A fixture in every room now, so he may bask in his own reflection when he wishes. He primps and preens before the glass, turning and twisting to view every angle.
“And I must say, you’ve really captured my power and prestige with something so deadly and…” He pauses lost to the silence as he lavishes in his own reflection, rubbing a finger over the sharpened edges of the points.
You sneak up behind him, where he is lost in his own reflection, that piercing red stare meets yours in the reflection. “A gift, reforged from the past… your old, sadistic master’s dagger, melted down to make you into the sovereign you have always deserved to be…”
He pouts, dramatic and whining and most of all, fake, “A dagger for a crown?” Sighing, he turns quickly to capture you in his arms. “I’ll say, it is the only acceptable repurposing of a blade. You’re lucky I love you so much, if you’re going to be turning my weapons into jewelry…” He presses his lips against your neck, “But even a crown worthy of my handsome head won’t spare you from your own recompense.”
“For my loving disobedience,” you laugh, arching your neck to expose even more of your skin. “And perhaps, you should open your second gift, my love, before you settle on any ideas of exacting such delicious… retribution. Especially now that your chilled heart seems to have thawed.”
“Me?” he rasps into your ear, “cold? Chilled? Cheeky little pup… do you forget that my heart beats now, my skin warmed over as your ascended lord?”
“Hmmmm,” you sigh, “why don’t you open that second gift, a little something to help you embrace the spirit of your Yuletide present and future with me, your own… forever…”
“Oh,” he smirked, wicked and ravenous, “if you’re my gift… and all the many ways I can play with you, I doubt you’ll fit in any little box, darling.” he gave a loud giggle, “but I can imagine how festive you would look… all wrapped up in ribbon…”
You feel his hands wandering over your body, his touch seeping its warmth through the fabric of your dress as he does wrap you in arms and presses you against his unyielding body.
“My little treat, ready to be unwrapped once she’s been very… very… good to me,” he growls in your ear. Shivers racing down your spine as you giggle. Your stomach flips upside down, despite the months of this… of being his, forever. Your body still gives you away with each encounter.
And you grin like a lovesick fool, reaching to the table beside you for that second, smaller package.
He palms its wrapped sides in a single hand, the other remains clutched firmly around your waist with his hand curved hard over the swell of your ass. He smirks, dark and playful, as he bites into the end of the bow and tugs the black silken ribbon apart with those gleaming fangs. The silk slides, no resistance as the bow comes apart in his mouth.
You know that feeling all too well. Of coming apart at the command of those teeth or lips or tongue… You love that feeling. Crave that feeling.
He lets it drop from his teeth to flutter to the floor, a finger flicking open the top of the box to fall to the same fate. Then his brows furrow, he lips drawing in a smile so wide, those perfect teeth glint in the flickering warmth of the firelight.
“My, my…” he purrs, lifting his touch from your backside to fish out the gift within.
It’s coiled, wrapped around itself, this long strand of thick and smooth, a long velvet ribbon, as crimson as his own eyes.
“Perhaps our minds are shared more than the bond formed when you made me, my love,” you taunt, a lilt in your voice as you press into him harder, letting the curves of your breast flatten, the panting of your belly push into his. “Now… are you going to finally let that cold, beating heart of yours be melted by Yuletide warmth?”
He cocks a brow, tilting his crowned head at that rakish angle, hand returning to claw around the base of chin. That free set of eager fingers slipping the gifted ribbon from the box. You gasp as those fingers pull you against his lips. He sucks and caresses with all the hunger that flares under his touch and behind his eyes. “I think I’d rather watch you melt, watch you puddle on my fingers and come when I say, my consort, beloved but also naughty.”
“Sounds like you’re burning to use your gifts, my love…” you growl between his lips. “My lover with the warm touch and the ice in his heart, a bit different than before, my love….” You rake your nails into his hair. “Now I can make you warm all over.”
He chuckles, his grasp easing around your throat, winding to the back of your neck to tilt you open for his tongue all the more. “Sounds like you’re missing that icy touch of your undead rogue, my treasure,” he snaps in return, biting down on your lower lip just enough to draw blood.
“And what are you going to do to remedy that?” you reply, a little moan coloring your voice as his hands begin tearing off your clothes.
“Shh, shh, shh,” he taps his thumb over your swollen lips. “Not a sound, not if you wish to earn my forgiveness, and perhaps receive a little sort of gift of your own in return…” you shudder in his arms, the only reply needed for him to flash you that feral, twisted grin. “Then lay down, my love, and warm yourself by the flames of the fire.”
A hand tugs apart the last laces from your dress, sliding the sleeves from your shoulders. “Oh, and you won’t be needing any of that now…” Your silken gown becomes a silken puddle around your feet. Your skin turns to gooseflesh as he scores his nails down your sides. He snaps his gift, your velvet ribbon, between his hands. “Get comfortable, my treasure, while you still can…”
His gaze scalds you, intensity beyond even your expectations. He is about to enjoy this… and you are too.
He lets you settle on the puddle of furs, the thick white skin of some animal that lines the floor before the fire. Back turned on you, he busies himself at the table of sweets and punch, the clatter of dishes enough to make you smile; he is indulging. You lounge, letting the light flicker over your flesh, letting the fire warm your skin, a cascade of heat over your back and shoulders and ass. One that almost rivals the heat that puddles and pools between your folds.
“Hurry,” you mewl, rubbing your thighs together. “I’m burning for you…”
“Don’t worry, my greedy pet,” he snickers from the table of refreshments, his back to you, purposefully hiding just what he is busying his hands with. You hear the silver spoon stirring the bowl of punch, the clatter of metal and the clacking of ice cubes as he chuckles to himself. “I’m confident there are many ways to cool that lust in your veins, darling.”
He turns slowly, his face leering at you, you see why he has suddenly begun a low rumbling laugh in his chest, a small glass holds a few of the cubes of ice, your velvet ribbon hangs over his wrist, and his eyes glow with that simmering power that crawls beneath his skin. Stalking towards you, you flash him your own fanged smile, running your fingers through the lush fur that cradles your naked form.
Astarion steps over you as you lie on your back, settling down to straddle your belly, making you work for every breath beneath his weight. “Now, for the toughest decision, just what sense to control as your reparation for such a willing… if loving… transgression.” He sets the ice down at his side, the silk of his breeches strained taught with his arousal as he covers you with his body. “Do I take away your sight to awaken all your other senses, do I gag that pretty little mouth of yours to make your screams deeper and richer… or do I bind your hands and make you crave only my touch for your release.”
He trails the soft, fluttering edge of the ribbon up and down your belly, your eyes following it, drawn to the way it makes your gaze flicker to his own straining cock. You snigger, gripping your nails shamelessly into his hips, running them down his thighs hard enough to score his flesh. Stopping only once you cup that erection you crave.
“I guess that seals your fate, my love,” he licks his lips, gripping your offending hands by the wrists to stretch them overhead. The velvet caresses your skin, soft and cool as he snugs it around you, tethering them together and binding them around the leg of the chair nearest you.
It wouldn’t hold you captive, not for real, but this… this was for fun… delightful divertisment to help him rekindle his… festive spirit.
And as he leans over you, satisfied with the work of his skilled fingers to bind your hands above your head, you moan when he slips his legs between yours. Prying you wider, grinding that confined erection against you, the slippery feel of his silken pants soaking with your arousal.
Wet and warm before the fire, every nerve ignites under his attention, flaming with your need to have his skin against yours. “Seems unfair,” you try to whine as your voice ripples more as a whimper, “for me to be so… unwrapped and ready for you to enjoy.”
“You’re going to have to beg and plead more sweetly than that, my darling,” he smirks against your whining mouth, capturing it with his. You taste the burst of flavors on his tongue, the sweet and spices of the punch, his tongue cool in your mouth from having imbibed it.
Just like old times. You shudder and moan to feel it tangle with your own, that flavorful concoction, the tingle of alcohol spiking your senses. “Mmm, delicious,” you moan against his fangs.
“Not as delicious as it will be as I taste you, my pet. Be a good little consort, plead so prettily, and you’ll get everything you desire tonight.” He gives a little extra, hips undulating into your slick, his breeches undoubtably ruined by your arousal. You groan at that ferocity, that untamable hunger. And you, you buck your hips to ride that friction. You give him what he wants, a loud mewl of your pleasure to tickle his punch-coated tongue.
“Very good,” he smirks, raising back to his knees. “I’d ask you to help me…” he taunts, rubbing his hand down the front of his decadently embroidered jacket, slowly letting his buttons free one at a time. “… but you seem already… tied up…”
“Oh, you must be feeling merry to throw such taunting puns at me, my love,” you smile.
“Hush, love,” he grins wickedly, tossing that jacket to the side, the firelight dancing over his ivory skin, rippling over all the rises and ridges of his torso. “Or if you insist on that insolent mouth teasing me, I might just have to find something with which to gag you.”
You smirk, hungry and defiant, as you stick out your tongue. A taunt. And an invitation.
“If you wish,” he growls happily, hands quick to unbutton his breeches. A split second, and he frees that cock, drips of his seed already seeping from its tip. You keep your tongue dangling as he scoots forward straddling your shoulders, until your mouth has nothing more to do than let him in.
With a groan, he thrusts into that familiar wet. Head thrown back, but not so far as to risk that magnificent crown to tumble off. He’s slow, languorous, savoring the way you’ve taken him so well. “Such a good little consort, earning your penance and more…” One hand knots in your hair at the crown of your head, the other you can’t see.
But you hear his movements, that dull clank of ice cubes on glass. And suddenly, you gasp, that frigid cold in his invisible grip, trailing its cold up your thigh. He’s so quick, his face scrutinizing your slacked mouth as he continues to fuck your throat, a twist of total delight on his lips as you shiver.
That is your only warning, the only inkling of his devious intentions before he slips that cube of ice between your folds. His mouth grins so wide, you see every tooth, his pleasure cemented as he thrusts between your moaning lips. Your body fights against his pinning weight. Thrusts begin to accelerate, timed with the swirls of that ice as he circles faster over your clit.
You feel the water beginning to drip, same as your slick, and your body shudders, heated by the fire and his body, frozen between your thighs as he still sweeps the melting ice through your seam.
Wave after wave consumes you, total swept away by the play of hot and cold, the merry dance of ice and fire that crashes through your body. It makes your buck and writhe, panting and choking on his cock between your cheeks. He withdraws a bit to let you savor your pleasure, pouring those praises over you once more, “Perfect, my treasure, coming for me so hard and beautifully.”
He chuckles, stroking his fingers through your long hair, lifting your head for a few really slow, really deep thrusts. Ones that you curve your tongue around and suck hard until you gag.
“Yes…” he growls, taking his cock back in his hand as he withdraws it from your now swollen lips, “good girl, so delicious… I’m sure you’ve learned your lesson of loving disobedience.”
“Savored the fruits of it, more like…” you grin, sultry, desirous, licking your lips clean of his juices that have already snuck out to coat your lips, your tongue.
That ice, so much smaller already, skates up your mound, your belly, settling it in your navel. “Astarion,” you screech as he leaves it there, as the chill settles over where you crave the heat and weight of pelvis, where you wish for him to crush you and fuck you.
“So greedy, little love,” he purrs. “And isn’t I who should be the greedy one? Denied any semblance of Yuletide joy for so long?”
“Then be… greedy… be naughty, and I will be very, very nice,” you giggle, deep in your throat as you watch him sliding down to settle between your burning thighs.
But not before he sneaks another ice cube from the cup. You lose track of it… until he grins with his mouth spread wide, his gleaming teeth biting down on that piece of ice, shining like crystal in the firelight. You shiver in anticipation. Waiting, watching for just what he might do next.
Angling down agonizingly slowly, his eyes lock into yours, his mouth aiming that fragment of ice for your already straining taught nipples. You scream again, bucking and writhing as the cold shoots right through you, racing down your every nerve. He laughs, taking that cube back inside his mouth, swirling that ice-cold tongue now over your flesh, sucking it hard between his lips.
“I will be undone, my love…” you groan, arching under his tongue.
“That’s the point,” he laughs darkly taking out that cube to rub over your other aching nipple as he teases and toys with it, “be undone before you’ll be… unwrapped, my darling.”
It steals your breath, making you writhe and tug against your binds as you feel every shiver down your spine consuming every sensation. Then he sets the ice, nearly gone back in your navel.
Heavy-lidded, Astarion licks his lips, dragging his tongue over his fang, announcing his next desire loud and clear.
“Hungry? Then get to it, greedy love,” you squirm and squeal as he gives a bite on your breast, just enough to bring a little blood to the surface. “Hgnf,” you groan as he drinks from you, those little hums and noises he makes as he feeds bring even more arousal pooling between your thighs.
You feel his cock hardening even more, as if that was possible, the union of your bloods, that tremor down your bond as he feeds from you, chin red with your essence. It makes him grind against your mound, cock twitching, a mind of its own to find that wet and clenching pressure he craves more than anything.
You feel that slow undulation, the tip of his length slipping into your folds, teasing just an inch inside you. The chair above your head scrapes across the floor, the ribbon snapping as you struggle against your binds. “Please,” you beg, “free me. I want you… I need you.”
“And why should I release you early?” he asks, barely raising his head from the pillow of your breast as he still laps at your blood. Eyes closed. As if he is too preoccupied to watch your agony. Even though you feel his smiling lips against your skin. “Just what would you do… if… I set you free?”
“Touch you…” you pant, feeling his cock dipping in and out again, shallowly. But he stills, unsatisfied.
“And?” he goads, slowing his tongue, eyes flickering up briefly at last.
“Cling to those powerful scars on your back, trace them since I know them all…”
Another dip inside your channel, slowly still but deeper as he withdraws equally slow.
“…and?” he smirks, licking his bloodied lips and chin.
You give a laugh, heavy with your need. “Clean your face from my blood, you messy thing…”
“Hmm,” he smirks wider, the lights catching in the red of his eyes as he scans your pale skin, where you pant and squirm beneath him. “Tempting, but…”
“Worship you,” you interrupt, “caress every inch of your ivory skin, grip hard into the clenching power of your ass as you fuck me… finally, run my fingers through your hair to keep that perfect crown on your perfect head…”
His lips twitch just once, a single arm reaching for that ribbon as the velvet release from your wrists. You groan, finally… finally touching him again, your voice rasping in your throat as he sheathes himself in fully. Already he commands a punishing pace, but you are so on fire for him, you crave it. You ride it all, legs wrapped tightly around his hips, your hands clutched into his hair, pinning that crown in place.
A good thing too, his body shaking as he loses all his control. His rhythm is feral and driven, giving no regard to anything other than filling you with his cock and making you burst with his cum. But he watches, arms pressed into the floor as his eyes drink in that sight of you. The way your bosoms sway, coated in his spit and your blood as they glisten in the soft light. The way your eyes lock into his, flickering every now and then to watch the way his pale cock spears harder and harder into you.
You snicker, a wicked idea in your head as you glance to the last cube of ice in the glass. “You wouldn’t dare…” he groans inside your head. But it’s too late. You’ve already snagged that chilling, hard lump, tracing it down the planes of his belly as you reach between you.
“Oh, I would…”
You have to be quick, but he lets you… his flawless reflexes could stop you… if he wants.
But instead he just groans so loudly as you press that ice at the base of his cock. Caressing whatever length of him doesn’t thrust inside as he fucks.
He shivers, his arms shaking as he lowers down on top of you. That crown falls into the furs at your side, but he doesn’t care. His mouth devours yours, his grunts and pants as you bring him to climax deafen you, reverberating inside your mouth.
And as the melting ice drips to your seam, you follow him into that wave of pleasure. Heat and ice, fire and cold blast through your bodies. His thrusts are merciless, slamming hard against the end of your channel, the pain adding to the heady mix that steals your breath and sends his name screaming from your lips.
He stills inside you, your greedy walls squeezing out the last of his cum, working against the twitching pulses of his cock. Resting his hot, damp forehead in the nook of your shoulder, he struggles to catch his breath. Nuzzling closer, you feel his warmth saturating your flesh, your arms wrapping tightly around his shoulders as he lays on you and in you.
“I… should thank you, my love,” he whispers, that tenderness he saves for your ears alone. “You never give up on me, never allow me to remain trapped, haunted by those ghosts of my past… however tormenting they may be. You have… done more than make my heart to beat again, to teach me how to love again. For centuries, at this time of year… I wanted nothing more than to take one of those stalks of holly and ram it like a stake through… his heart.”
Cazador’s. He won’t say it. Can’t say it.
“But with you, perhaps it is something just the two of us may… enjoy. To savor…”
“My love,” you whisper, placing a kiss into those silken, gleaming silver locks, “you don’t need to use Yuletide as a reason to wrap me up in pretty ribbons.”
“It is rather pretty, isn’t it?” he chuckles as he raises his head, “not as magnificent as this, however…” His hand closes around that metal circlet, replacing it crookedly on his silver hair. On that head made for a crown. “Seems like you’ll need one of your own, my little consort.”
“I’m open to all sorts of gifts from you…” you purr, catching his chin to bring his mouth to yours.
“Perhaps you need me to give it to you again, my darling?” he speaks into your lips. “Another lesson for me in finding the warmth of Yuletide? I might still feel a bit frozen in the heart, if you’re not thorough, you know…”
“Avernus would freeze over before I abandon you to such a fate, gods bless it…” you catch his lips in your mouth, a good long suck in that thick lower one as you nip it gently in your fangs. Tasting the richness of his blood, the thrumming of his power that rides his essence.
“Then gods bless it,” he growls, hand catching tightly around your chin, a slight drag of his still hardened cock inside you, “every time.”
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talesfromthecrypts · 1 year
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Adam Driver as Mills in 65 (2023)
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ayyunsart · 9 days
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My fav update vs my least fav update from the stardew valley 1.6 update
I'm obsessed with the Shane portrait, I need 100 of them.... BUT WHY DID HIS ROOM IN MARNIE'S RANCH GET DIRTIER?? 😭 sobbing
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sprout-fics · 9 months
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Falling Down to Earth (Part One)
(Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Medic "Fix" Reader)
Part Four of Snowblind
(Part Two Here)
Rating: Mature Wordcount: 7.6k Tags: Slow Burn, Heavy Angst, Trauma, Found Family, Taskforce 141, Team Dynamics, Hurt/Comfort, Unreliable Narrator, Self Esteem Issues, Referenced Familial abuse, Mom Laswell, Domesticity Warnings: References to childhood verbal abuse A/N: Three part character study of the medic named Fix, therapy included
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There's exactly nine hours and ten minutes on the plane ride from England to Washington D.C. for you to finish falling down to Earth.
You sit in a far corner of the C-17, curled up on a seat and away from the other troops. Mostly American, some Canadian. They chatter for the first hour or so, and there's excitement, relief that buzzes through them. There’s smiles and laughter that drowns the fatigue of the things they've seen, the nightmares they'll all have. It doesn't matter right now. They're going home. Home to loved ones and familiar places, to joy and relief before the memories set in.In their camaraderie, someone produces a deck of cards, and there’s jovial laughter and friendly jibes as hands are played.
You listen from afar, gather bits and pieces of their lives- where they were stationed, for how long, where they're going home to, the people waiting for them. There’s an ounce of something that remains untouchable between them, refusing to speak of the bullet, the bombings and bombardments that scream in the silence of your mind. Some of them exchange numbers, share pictures of spouses, children, pets. There's a woman a little older than yourself who confesses she'll be proposing to her girlfriend the moment she lands, and the announcement is met by cheers and hardy claps on her shoulder.
You should join them, let the brightness of their joy drown away the dark pit that opens inside you with every mile that grows between you and the men you called brothers. Instead, every bit of illumination in their eyes seems to only make you sink further into yourself- wanting that happiness desperately for your own tender soul and far too afraid to reach for it.
There's no one to return to when you get home. Nobody to embrace you as you land, to burst from the door of a house and cry as they wrap their arms around you. Nobody to take you out to drinks even as you search the crowd for a familiar dark hoodie, a baseball cap, listen for a smoky, gruff voice or the lilting accent of a Scot. The only people for you are the people you've been forced to leave behind, staring across the sea and hoping maybe they'll think about you too.
You see the way the other troops eye you from afar, see the lost shape of you in your eyes that have long since stopped being able to shed tears. You think maybe one of them will come over, try to drag you from your thoughts, and for a moment you want so desperately for that to come true. It doesn't, and as the buzzer sounds and everyone finds their seats, you feel yourself descending to Earth once more, buckling away that horrid loneliness of you for whatever task comes next.
True to story, there's a small crowd of folks who welcome back the returning heroes with signs and embraces and delight. You tug your cap down a little farther, push past them and towards the direction of the base gate to grab a cab to...somewhere.
There's no one here for you. Not that you expected there to be. It's been a long time since you talked to your family. They'd tried to contact you while you were in university, and even now you can remember your father's commanding voice, warning you against the foolishness of your current path. He had been tempered only by your mother, with her docile, sad tremble, pleading for you to listen, to come home.
You stopped having a home with them a long time ago.
The last time you had heard from any of them was from your brother, the golden child, asking if you'd please consider coming to his candidacy announcement. Sweet, apologetic, filled with false niceties the result of only forceful ignorance.
"I don't know what happened between you and Dad, but maybe consider he said whatever he did because he cares about you?"
You hung up the phone, took your deployment papers, and never looked back.
Now, in a city that you've grown up in, one that feels like a foreign land, you falter, look to the wind for guidance. Air rushes past your form as you feel the center of yourself falling, an Icarus desperately reaching for the sun as you hurtle down into the dark waves of the ocean below. There’s no hands to catch you, nothing to stop your fall as you desperately grasp for an anchor against the gravity that forces you down into nothing.
You turn on your phone, watch it light up and prepare to call yourself a cab to a hotel. You're pretty sure your lease ended a long time ago, apartment cleaned out of the few things remaining there. You didn't bother to check, never expecting you'd be anywhere but here.
Surprisingly, you see a little green bubble pop up from one of the only numbers you have saved.
Laswell.
Fix. It reads, and you can almost hear Kate's clipped, wry tone in her words. If you're looking for a place to stay, come to this address. I've got a spare bedroom, and it sounds like you could use it. Let me know if you make other arrangements.
Attached is an address on the other side of the city, an hour's drive from where you are. You're ready to tap on it when there's one more message that appears beneath your thumb.
Text me when you get this. The boys want to know you made it home safe.
You're glad Kate isn't here to watch the sorrow color your eyes at the reminder of the men who have left you behind. You send a quick reply, summon a ride, and once more feel the world spin once more beneath your gaze as it rushes upwards, uncertain of where you will at last land when you sink through the clouds and into the ruin of yourself.
--------------------------------------------
It’s a nice house, you think.
Pressed up against a small thicket of trees, the brown brick bungalow exudes solitude, tucked away at the end of the aspen lined lane. The roof slopes steeply upwards, shingled and crossed over at the eaves with German styled paneling. It's older than many of the homes on the same street- newer, trying to appear older than they are with the faux stone exteriors and freshly installed windows.
The house before you is one of the few that has remained the same, steadfast against a changing world. Worn, tiles on the roof in need of mending, the stone steps gritty with dirt and age. It's quieter, yet somehow warmer than the homes around it. Like a hearth, it beckons you closer, offers the temptation of sanctuary. You can see a window jutting out into the direction of the side yard, a hidden perch that whispers of a quiet, needed withdrawal.
A glance down at your phone shows Kate’s message, the white letters contrasted against the gray darkness of your screen.
I won’t be home until after dinner, but Paula will be home. She’ll show you around :)
You shoulder your bag- standard issue military duffel- onto your back, trying to swallow down the gnawing sense of reluctance that paces the inner confines of your thoughts. The wince at the motion comes before you can stop it- the reminder of your suspension still scathing fresh against your skin. The lace of pain in your side instantly summons the memory of words fired between the sterile whiteness of a hospital room, aching with that same hurt.
“You have nothing to prove, Fix.”
“I have EVERYTHING to prove!!”
Even now, the freshly healed bullet wound you’d carefully concealed aches with an insistent, dulled sharpness against your ribs- almost worse than Price’s devastating command, thundering down onto you with dreaded finality.
“You’re suspended. Come back when you’ve got your head on straight.”
It hurts.
Not the wound itself, but the consequences you’ve reaped in the act of hiding it from the others- thinking that your injury would betray your own inner weakness. Deeper than a bullet, the horrifying, dreaded result of your own actions wind around your limbs like shadowy tendrils, dragging you down with an inertia you can’t control, wax wings melted by the sun.
Yet here the windows of the house glow warmly in the drawing dusk, candles in the dimness flicker, summoning you into their gentle embrace.
The hollow knock on the old wooden door seems to mimic the emptiness in your own heart, crying out in an emptiness you’ve always known, one you won’t be able to fill even with the insurmountable number of your disappointments.
The one who answers the door isn’t Kate. No, it’s a figure that’s a bit shorter, brown-eyed, coiling hair pulled away from her face. Still, the warmness of her eyes when she smiles, the brightness of her stare feels familiar, welcome.
“You must be Fix.” Kate’s wife greets, standing aside as your toes balance on the threshold. “I’m Paula. Please, come inside.”
You murmur a thanks, quiet and muted, eyes gazing down at your feet. You shuffle inside, perch precariously in the foyer as she shuts the door behind you.
This feels…wrong.
You desperately want it to not be so. You want to enjoy this- a warm house, a friendly face, a place to stay, to catch yourself. Yet there’s ghosts here, ones that whisper of chandeliers and polished centerpieces, beautiful tapestries and furniture meant only to look at. An artificialness you thought you abandoned long ago but persists even now. The scent of your father's office in your nostrils mutes Paula's gentle words.
“You can put your bag right here, we’ll get you settled later.” Paula gestures to a couch in the room beside you, where a dozing German Shepherd lies splayed against a frayed blanket. He gives you a few lazy thumps of his tail, raising a grey muzzle before flopping back once more. “Don’t mind Whiskey, he just had a run in the backyard, he’ll come say hello in a bit.”
Wordlessly, you drop the bag down on the cushions, turning back to Paula. Yet when your lips part, there’s no words. What do you even say?
I don’t want to be here. I want to be with them. This feels too much like the home I used to know, the same one I want to forget.
…Do you know where I can find myself again?
Your eyes find Paula’s, and all those words seem to be conveyed in your gaze alone. Heartbreak, bitter disappointment, longing, despair, a fury muted only by your own inescapable loneliness.
She takes a step forward, and you almost want to retreat, to press yourself away from her on instinct, a fragile thing that even a gentle touch might shatter. Yet there’s no threat in her eyes. Instead, there’s a warmth, a sadness that’s stifled by something that feels dangerously close to tenderness, to hope.
When her arms wrap around you, it feels less like a sentence and more like the inevitability of falling into a place where you want to rest the tender, hurt fringes of your soul.
You bury your face into her shoulder and sob like the child you never got to be.
--------------------------------------
True to her word, Kate comes home well after dark, bags under her eyes heavy as she drapes her jacket across the back of the couch. Whiskey, who until that point had been sitting attentively by your feet as you idly stroked his ears, barks and bounds over to Laswell, feet splaying forward and tail wagging. You watch as the fatigue in Laswell's eyes brightens to fondness, and she kneels to offer the German Shepherd a ruffle of his neck and a few tender words.
When she stands, she notices you past the door of the kitchen, perching on one of the barstools as Paula finishes making dinner.
"Fix." She offers in greeting, and she sounds oddly pleased, different than her usual, severe instruction to you and the team. "Good to see you."
You swallow around a piece of cracker and cheese and offer her a hesitant, shy glance with a smile that doesn't reach your eyes.
"Hi Chief." You supply in turn, and Kate waves a hand at you as she passes into the kitchen, Whiskey at her heels.
"You can drop the honorifics." She tells you, humor concealing the drain the day has had on her. "You're in my kitchen eating food from my pantry. This is about as informal as it gets."
"That would be my kitchen, actually?" Paula supplies her with an arched eyebrow as she stands over the stovetop, overseeing the steaks in the cast-iron pan. Yet as Laswell reaches her the feigned annoyance in her eyes fades to something sweeter, and she cranes her head as Laswell delivers a fond peck to her wife's cheek. "Hi hun, long day?"
"Aren't they all?" Kate replies, peering over Paula's shoulder and making a pleased noise at what she finds.
You shift a little where you sit, feeling suddenly as if you're deeply intruding on a very private moment between the two women.
Kate seems to notice, and she turns to you, grey eyes regarding your stiff, uneasy figure perched beside the counter. You're still dressed in your fatigues, haven't yet retrieved a change of clothes from your bag still dropped onto the couch. It makes you feel strangely out of place. Within the dim, ambient light of the kitchen, in a place that feels like the tender warmth of a hearth, the green and grey camo of your uniform makes you seem a whole world away.
You think Laswell might follow you there, might immediately ask about what happened in England, about your fight with Price, about the healing bullet wound in your side, about how long you'll be here.
Instead, Kate smiles and asks: "Chocolate or pistachio?"
You falter, perplexed by her non-sequitur, eyes blinking as you provide: "Choc...olate?"
Kate nods sagely and vanishes back in the direction of the living room. You hear her rustle around for a moment before she appears once more, hands full before she deposits a plastic container on the kitchen counter in front of you. You blink at the dessert, once more feeling a bit out of place with the strange mundanity Kate has bestowed upon you.
"Cannoli." She quips, and it startles a little gasp from Paula, who turns and delightedly snatches a plastic container from her wife's hands.
"Eastern Market?" She asks happily, and Kate nods, looking a touch pleased with herself. "No wonder you were so late."
Kate offers a tired shrug, taking a bite of her own dessert, to which Paula tsks.
"Dessert before dinner?" She inquires, and again Kate shrugs. Yet this time there's that wry smile of hers tugging at the corner of her lips as she leans against the counter beside you.
"Who's to say we can't?" She replies, and when she glances at you her eyes flicker down to your own dessert and then up to you with a meaning there you don't fully understand yet. Her grey gaze rests on yours as if she's trying to convey a message through her stare alone. It remains to be deciphered, unwritten and unspooled just like the depths of you.
When you take a bite, the sweetness coats your tongue, and there's a small, foreign part of you that twinkles with joy, like the barest sound of wind chimes in a warm breeze.
-----
Kate shows you to your room after dinner and dishes. It's sparse. A bed, a dresser, a desk, a lamp, a closet. The window you saw earlier looks into the backyard, a cushion seated inside the frame like a silent lookout. It pleases you, oddly, scratches the part of your brain that instinctively seeks perches from which to set up a sniper position.
"It's not the Ritz Carlton." Laswell tells you as you stand, frozen on the threshold. "So, you'll have to bear with it."
"No." You whisper mildly. "It's...it's perfect."
You've spent so much time sleeping in trenches, on rooftops, on planes and in safehouses and not sleeping at all that this- this room with the downy white comforter and the soft hazy light of the lamp by the bedside...is more than you think you deserve.
You lower the duffel onto the bed with a considerable amount of hesitation, feeling Kate's eyes on you as you trace the print on the decorative pillow nestled at the headboard. She's silent, in that way of hers that you know is watchful, contemplative, discerning the secrets of others like sifting sand through her fingers in search of sea glass.
"Thank you." You offer after considerable silence, feeling and gratitude beyond words, trying to swallow down the protests that threaten to spill outwards.
I don't deserve this. You think. How can I possibly stay here, with you, after you chose me and I failed? How can you forgive me for that?
When you turn to Kate, she somehow sees all of this and more written across your gaze, and she sighs.
"Fix." She begins, and normally that's enough to make you panic, shift inwards and prepare yourself to be defensive, to receive orders and bury any doubts in exchange for duty. You expect instructions, constraints, consequences in the way you've lived all your life.
Yet Laswell holds her breath, looks at you with an emotion that feels too wise and sibylline to be pity or concern. Instead, it reminds you of the prophecy she held in her gaze in Ethiopia, where she told you to find her once more, had drawn you in like a moth to flame as if she knew you needed to be burned whole to find yourself amidst the ashes.
"Whatever you need." Kate offers at last. "I'm here. I mean that."
You want to believe her, want so desperately to bask in her comfort and ask of her more than you can bear, but the whisper of something deep and dark and unknown coils in your ear, drags you down and muffles any other sound than "Thank you."
It doesn't seem to satisfy Kate, because the line of her mouth goes taut and grim, form a little tense and it's hard to not think of it as disapproval.
"There's something else." She supplies in the silence that follows. "Price...mandated that you see a therapist while you're on leave. I'm supposed to sign off when you're fit to return to duty."
You can acutely hear the sound of your own heart hammering in your ears, feel the world spin in dizzying chaos once more as you process Kate's words.
"I thought you should know." Kate tells you as your face shifts in something close to fright, anxiousness. "But in exchange you can't keep pretending like there's nothing wrong."
There is nothing wrong. You want to tell her, knowing that it's a lie. So instead, you offer her silence, refuse to damn yourself further with your protests.
Kate paces over to the desk, pulls a drawer and produces a journal, places it gingerly on the surface of the desk before looking back to you.
"You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to. You don't even have to tell your therapist if you want. If you tell no one else, at least try and tell yourself."
You don't respond. What is there to say? Confess why you know you're here, that you think this is wrong despite that? That somehow for all the ruin in you, you're being punished?
Kate holds your gaze for a long moment before she closes her eyes, seemingly in resignation, pacing over to the door.
"The others..." She tells you, halfway turned to you, dim shadows slating across her form. "They care about you, Fix. We all do. I hope you remember that."
There's a pain then, one that flashes through you, makes something dull and rotted inside you crave towards brightness. You don't truly understand why it hurts until much later, curled in bed, staring at the ceiling in the darkness and trying to uncover the secrets of your own heart.
You think, deep inside, it's because you want to care about yourself too.
-------
The days that follow inch by.
You try your best to make yourself at home, memorizing the schedules of the women who host you. Laswell wakes first, at an hour most would consider ungodly, making herself a meager breakfast composed mostly of coffee before she kisses Paula and heads out towards the Pentagon. Paula follows later, flitting about the house muttering about misplaced papers, keys, glasses, her purse. You learn the first evening with them that she's counsel to a large immigration defense firm in the city, her hours intense but fairly flexible. She's usually back by early afternoon and manages to retain a wealth of energy Laswell seems to lack upon her arrival. The days repeat themselves, and every morning you watch them leaves, ears ringing in the quiet, empty house they've left behind.
You try to relax, as Laswell has ordered you, at least for the first few days. You read books, leaf through the Washington Post, go on long, rambling walks with Whiskey and end up with his head in your lap as you flick through movies on TV. You watch the characters there fall into silly, desperate love, jump from burning buildings and look into the camera with dewy, glowing gazes. It feels so foreign to you, so very detached from the things you've experienced, the life you've led.
The journal on your desk goes untouched.
Kate arrives back in the evenings, and sometimes she's too tired to even talk, forcing herself to eat and then collapsing on the couch for an hour, Whiskey splayed across her front. You join her in mutual company, curl onto the other sofa and sink into the confines of your own thoughts in mutual silence. Sometimes you join Paula in the kitchen, aid her in washing dishes and cleaning the remains of dinner. Yet the unwavering warmth in her, the brightened chatter she offers feels too sharp, too indulgent against your frayed, muted senses.
Instead, you find yourself with Kate, who talks in a low, quiet voice. The tone of her feels like the ocean casting gently against a pebbled beach, rhythmic and soothing, cradling you as the clipped, wry intonation of her drops away in the solitude of evening. You feel for the first time as if you're observing not Laswell but Kate. Somehow softer but just as resilient, a glimmering glass that reveals the machinations of the world itself.
Kate talks to you about music, about politics, to which you find yourself closely aligned, about pop culture that Paula chimes in on, about her travels. She regales you with stories about her missions abroad, spending time in the dust bowls of the Middle East, of beautiful tea shops and warm people. She spins images of ruined buildings but the people there straining against injustice and wanting desperately to not just survive but to thrive. She tells you of trips down into the heart of Sub-Saharan Africa, of tracing networks of terrorists through jungles and of the many languages she's spoken to find them.
She doesn't tell you about the lives she'd lost as a result.
She's careful not to talk about work, you notice. Any intel she has to share, that which you would normally be privy to, remains conspicuously absent in your conversations. There's no discussion of intel on AQ, on Russian gangsters or foreign mercenaries or underground criminal networks. She's purposeful, calculated, and more often than not you're led by her conversations so much so that you forget the questions you want to ask.
What did you find? Where? Who? Will you send them? Which ones?
...How are they?
The mere thought of the 141 aches you to the bones, makes you hurt so badly it cracks at the very foundation of you. You haven't heard from them since you left England, and every day that passes you catch yourself staring into the messages last sent by them. Gaz, inviting you to come watch a soccer match with him and Price, one that ended up drawing all of you as Soap groaned in defeat and Gaz stood proudly on the couch whooping at the TV. Price, reminding you wheels up in fifteen, suggesting you double check your medic kit one more time before you all leave. Soap, a selfie of you and the others at a bar, where Price and a dark hooded figure sit passively in the background.
Ghost, with your message a parting, aching gift you sent while you were recovering from your original injury after being shot. He had texted to let you know he and Price would arrive shortly, bring you a change or two of clothes from your bag, that they were five minutes out.
You had sent back "See you soon."
It's on more than one night you hug your phone to your chest, chest lacing with a pain where you can't discern the phantasmal from the physical. It feels like a curse, one with no remedy, a dangerous, sacrilegious hypocrisy you scream against with no escape. It's a reminder that you, you were the one to put yourself here, the rope that bound you to them frayed by your own mistakes and snapping into nothingness, watching them rise far above you atop the summit of impossible expectations you built for yourself. You scrabble to climb it anyways, carrying stones to place at the zenith so you'll never reach the apex of your own victories.
You shake apart in your bed at night, tremble in the dark and find echoes in your sorrow. You feel your chest weigh down with the poisonous solitude and sink you further into the abyss of the ocean, far from the sun. It's dark, cold, insufferably lonely and despite the soft comfort of your bed it feels like at the slightest touch you'll splinter into irreparable fragments of yourself.
You wish you were still with them, and the pain of it draws you taut like a bowstring. Their fingers skim along your thoughts and memories, along the tether of you so they can listen to the hum. At a moment's notice they'll recoil away from you in your thoughts, snap and release. You crave the temptation of allowing yourself to shudder into their grasp, their hands embracing you and tracing along your surface like trying to coax poison from a wound. You want so desperately for them to not leave you behind, to stay in their hearts where they might someday accept you with grace, listening to the whisper of your surrender in being loved by them.
When you wake in the mornings you don't recognize the birdsong outside, mistaking it for the whistle of impending missiles.
You sometimes wonder if they died while you were asleep.
------
It's that second week into your stay that you go to see your issued therapist for the first time.
Despite your protests Paula takes time off work to take you there herself. You assure her you can call a taxi or even walk there if you have to. You've hiked kilometers wearing your whole gear set and pack before, this is not difficult. Yet Paula merely hushes you, reminds you once again of your injury, and you realize it's a lost cause to argue with her.
Even so, you squirm uncomfortably in the car on the way over, cheeks warm, feeling like a little kid again being taken somewhere you don't want to go. The sensation follows you inside, as you sit ramrod straight in the waiting area, too tightly wound to relax even an inch. Paula had given you the grace of leaving you there by yourself, but for some strange reason you wish she hadn't. Even in your shame of attending this mandatory punishment you wish selfishly that maybe she'd return, cover your hand and let the erratic thump of your heartbeat settle in your lungs.
Eventually the door to the interior office opens, and out steps an older man, hunched over with a cane, grey hairs sticking out from under a cap that reads 'Vietnam Veteran'. He glances at you over his glasses, pauses just long enough to give you a nod with a smile that barely contains the grimace underneath. It's only once he's passed that the doctor behind him calls for you, and you shoot to your feet, a live wire rigged with electricity.
The inside of his office is...quiet. It's a little strange, admittedly. There's knick knacks scattered across the shelves, wedged between acclimations and awards, plants with long stems spilling across the windowsill behind his desk. More of them perch on various stands and stools, tenderly cared for and alighting the space in greenery. The bookshelves scarcely contain the number of books within them, some stacked slightly askew to make room for more. Yet despite the crowdedness it isn't messy. It simply feels...full. Cozy, like the warmth of an open heart.
"Fix." You correct him when he sits across from you. You realize he doesn't bother with a pen and paper, doesn't sit in front of a laptop screen. You weren't sure what you were expecting- perhaps a dry, sterile office in pastel colors with motivational poster and a man clinically scratching down shorthand with a murmur of 'and how does that make you feel?'
"Fix." He agrees with a kind smile, and the sound of your own name is enough to make your leg stop bouncing.
He doesn't launch straight in, taking a moment to inform you of your rights and responsibilities as a patient, the things he is and isn't allowed to share. He reminds you that you still need to pass a psych eval before you're cleared for duty, and you swallow the urge to ask him if you can do that part already, recite the answers you already know and get back to where you belong. Yet you know Laswell, with her keen perceptive eyes, would only sigh in disappointment, recognizing the transparency of you.
"I'm a medic." You tell him in response to his prompt to introduce yourself despite the fact he's already read your file. "I'm the designated medic for an international terrorism taskforce. I can't tell you the name."
He waits expectantly, as if for you to provide something else. You falter, trying to figure out if there's anything else you should add. Yet nothing appears, nothing else than your identity built through purpose, a thing designed inherently to be useful for others.
"Do you do anything outside of work, Fix?" He gently pries, and again you hesitate, trying to find something in yourself you aren't sure exists.
"I...sometimes go out with my teammates." You offer after a pause. "Pubs, usually. Soap and Gaz, they..." You trail off, feeling once more that pain pulse through you, a hard and heavy burst of awareness against your ribs that makes the air in your chest catch. "Soap and Gaz, they like to go dancing sometimes. They dragged me along once but I didn't like all the noise and the crowds so I didn't go again."
"Sounds like you're fairly close with them." He remarks as he sits back in his chair, and you try not to grimace at his words. There's a deep ache in your chest that makes you want to press a hand there, feel the hollow where the absence of your team lies.
"Maybe." You reply enigmatically, shifting your eyes away, letting your gaze trace the electric clutter of the room, the morning sunlight streaming through the windows. You think about the veteran you just saw, wonder if that’s how he sees you too- some scarred, broken thing with eyes looking distantly to the past where your nightmares echo into your soul.
"Where are they now?" He goes on, and the chest ache deepens, forces the air low in your ribs as your brow knots. You think about the faces of Soap, of Gaz, as they lingered outside your hospital room after you pushed them away. The guilt, the tearing regret inside you threatens to choke your lungs, send warmth flooding to your eyes with the memory.
"England." You answer, voice very small. "Or...I don't know. They could be deployed. I haven't been told. They..." You trail off, feel the downward spiral open inside you once more, your awareness circling the drain into where your deepest, darkest thoughts lie.
"I failed them." You say suddenly, surprising even yourself with the abrupt confession. It's more to yourself than to anyone else, a solemn reminder of the person you are, the things you couldn't achieve, the deep frost of the shadows they cast on you as they hike ever onwards into the hills.
"How so?" The therapist asks, and you look down into your fingers webbed together, upturning your palms as if they have answers.
"I...fucked up. Got myself shot." You breathe after several long minutes of silence, where you think he will fill the void, and instead waits for you. He takes a deep inhale, lets it go in contemplation before speaking.
"I don't think getting shot counts as failing them, not when you're in our occupation." He provides, and it makes your head shoot up, blinking as you meet his gaze.
"Our...?" You echo.
"Former army medic." There's a gentle smile on his face as he explains. "Left the service and went back to school. I still help soldiers, just a little different these days."
"Oh."
You're not really sure what to say to that, face turning downwards towards your hands once more. You think about the times they've been caked with blood, how often you've felt someone else's pulse bleed across your fingertips. The memories of the men and women you'd treated amidst the hail of gunfire, the whistle of incoming mortars and the distant thunder of tanks rise automatically- a warm, wet pulse on the underside of your skin. You remember every face, every set of eyes on the people you've saved, the horror of death looming in the distance.
All of them. Afraid. Confused. Desperate. Lost.
Just as you are, you think. Lost in a fate you can't seem to control no matter how desperately you strive against it. You’re constantly trying to strain towards the heavens even as you hurtle down through layers of clouds, watching feathers cast an abstract of loss behind your descending form.
"Can you tell me about what happened after you were shot?" The man before you offers once more in the silence that follows, one filled only with the thrum of your heartbeat. You breathe shaky, unsteady sigh, trying to calm the twisting knot in your stomach as you struggle to answer against the pain of recalling what events led you here.
"I went back to our home base with them" You answer at last. "...But they had to be called away on another mission, and I was still healing so I couldn't go."
You remember Price. You remember his hands on your shoulders, his face turned down. Weary but kind, stern but gentle, all the things you desperately wanted in him, soothing the balm of forgotten memories. The sound of the oak door in your father's office shutting behind you with a click that spoke of finality.
"I...was trying to heal faster." You go on, leg bouncing once more as you fail to contain the rising, frenetic energy inside of you. "I was trying to make sure I could be fine once they got back, but..."
You trail off, feel silence press heavy on your shoulders.
"But?"
"I ended up really fucking things up instead." You reply, voice small, and it hurts. The volume of your words sounds like childhood, of the echo bouncing back from the repository of the things you longed desperately to shed, to be made anew. "Made a right mess of things."
"How so?"
You grimace, feel tears threaten in your eyes. The taste of a sob sours on your tongue, and you force yourself to swallow the bitterness of it instead.
Don't cry. Don't cry. You remind yourself. Don't show them. Don't let them know.
They might leave you.
When you don't answer, let minutes lap into nothingness, his voice at last fills the emptiness between you. Gentle, coaxing, reminding you of a smoke laden reassurance that shudders through you with longing.
"It sounds like you put a lot of pressure on yourself." He observes quietly.
You pause.
Your bullet wound hurts.
"Yeah, well, someone has to." You at last reply ruefully. Your shoulders feel too tight, aching with the weight of the wings you’ve used to loft yourself towards sparkling heavens, only to reach too far and instead witness the looming maw of darkness under you.
You hate this.
You hate the feeling of someone peeling back layers of your skin, slicing through the exterior of you with a scalpel like gaze. You hate how gentle his eyes are despite how wretchedly vulnerable you feel, despise the way he can be so soothing and yet somehow reveal the rotten interior of your soul. It burns, and the pain concentrates on the center of your failures, where a bullet ripped flesh from your form and rendered you lost in the labyrinth of yourself, unable to find a way out.
"-and that person is you? Why?" He asks, and his voice echoes out, feels like it reverberates in the hollow center of you, bouncing endlessly in an irreligious choir that sings of the things you don't understand.
"I...don't know." You answer, and it's a lie. You know it is. You know the tether that binds you extends years into the past, is wrapped tight in the fist of the one whose voice echoes in the cavern of your thoughts. He dwells in the ocean below, where churning, disastrous waves of emotion close over your drowning form.
"Worthless."
The man before you pauses, seems to consider the things you've said, and the words that stay unspoken in the silence. It reminds you a bit of Laswell, of the way she can pluck unseen things from the mist and discern them like the tides of the world itself. You're caught in the rip current, carried to an unknown destination as the men you hold dear drift further away from you, their backs turned from your voice that refuses to call out.
You wish they’d turn and cast their eyes upon your form, that maybe they'd rescue you.
You're too afraid to ask.
"I think we can find out, Fix." The man before you offers at last, and it feels both like a shimmer of light in the darkness and a shadow that blots out the sun. Hopeful, terrifying, entirely foreign but somehow wanted.
"Will you tell me more about your teammates?" He goes on to ask, and you do raise your head at that, blink into his spectacled gaze with his warm smile that feels like an embrace you don't deserve.
The words tumble out before you can stop them.
You tell him. You tell him about the men you've served with, of your brothers. You tell him about Soap, with his brawny and boisterous voice, of his playful and endearing banter. You tell him about how the Scot was the first besides Price to welcome you to the team, was the one to give you your nickname when he had bled into your hands. You tell him about the moments where Soap is softer, gentler, offering himself to you in a way he hoped you'd might one day return.
Gaz, with his softer smile and unwavering focus, his deep loyalty to his team members that bolsters you all. He sees the things the rest of you don't, gaze sharp like the scope of a rifle you're all too familiar with. There's a softness to him unlike the others, one that you will sometimes forget in the midst of him at your back under a hail of gunfire. You know the sound of his laughter, know the bump of his arm against yours and the tenderness in his eyes at the things you won't admit.
Then Price, with his stern guidance that you never fail to adhere to, the hand on your shoulder that conveys more than words. You feel safety under the shelter of his wing, look to his stare that looks past the obstacles that stand in his way. He paves the way before you all, secures the ground behind you, stands in unrelenting, furious opposition to the forces that dare advance upon your mission. Yet despite his violence you feel the trust he shares in you, and you desperately crave to someday live up to it.
Ghost.
Ghost, whose real name you don't yet know, just like so many things about him. The first time you met him was in a briefing room, Price standing tall beside you and announcing you to the team. Ghost had leveled his dark, dead gaze at you from afar, and despite the urge to shrink away you had instead returned his stare wordlessly, allowing your own resilience to shine through. You remember how his eyes had widened a mere fraction, a tell you would come to learn as interest.
You know it had been him who had taken off your boots when you collapsed into your bunk after Nepal. You know it had been him to give Price the thermos of tea to bring you in the hospital. You know it had been him who had gently lowered you onto the floor of the plane upon your return to England, ensured you wouldn't wake up sore and hurting.
You know it was he who had told Price of your failures- had revealed the depths of your own self-hatred blossoming like carnations across the skeletal grasp of his glove.
You know he's always been able to see you more than anyone else.
You don't say all this, of course, the secrets of your wishes and desires for these men stay close to your heart. You know by now the sacredness of things left unsaid, even if the swell of them inside you threatens to fester your bones, rip feathers from your flesh.
Don't let them know. Don't let them know. Don't let them know because you'll find out just how disappointed they are. You'll find out they never wanted you to begin with.
At last, your therapist nods, as if to himself, before leaning forward a bit so his elbows rest on his knees. He looks at you, and in your weary heart left in the wake of your memories, you feel the clairvoyant gaze of him pierce into your ribs where the ache of it all dwells.
"Can you come back next week?" Is all he offers.
You aren't sure. You want to say no, that this is far too much, that you've already spoken more than you want to. You're afraid if you share more he might somehow decide your fate for you, might pull the strings of fate so you will never return to the place you're supposed to be.
Yet, somehow, you say yes instead.
------
You go home, silent on the drive with Paula, who gives you grace in the absence of words. You are silent for the rest of the day too, offer scant bits of conversation as you pick at dinner. The world feels different somehow. The air rushing past your ears feels quieter, the wind not as sharp against your skin. You’re still falling, still sinking, still watching the heavens loom too large above your form. You recall the memory of being younger, smaller, looking up at the unfathomable expanse of the world and wondering when you would grow to meet its size.
You stare up at it in the darkness of your bedroom, hear the gale howl in the silence of midnight. There’s questions left to you that you have no answers for, upturning your palms once more and trying to sift sand through them in search of something there you don’t yet know.
"That person is you? Why?"
It has to be me. You think to yourself, hearing the sound of your own voice hush against the emptiness of your room. Nobody else is here anymore to do the same. I have to be better. I can't fail. I can't disappoint them. That way they can't see the failure I am inside.
Don't let them see. Please, dear God don't let them see.
It's a desperate cry into the midnight, a hand thrown up in desperation that sears against the sun. The blistering brightness of it burns against the back of your eyelids, rendering you blind to yourself. White consumes your vision, and you hear the fated whisper of snow blindness echo against the fraught fringes of your soul once more.
"I see you. Just you."
You blink, once more feel the tug of pain in your side where his hand had clamped down on your scarlet wound. The sight of his eyes is inescapable in the realm of your thoughts. Dark, grim, gazing into you as if somehow he is discerning himself. You remember those same eyes as you had bled over his fingertips, had begged him to please, please not look. You remember seeing something that flickered across his stare, that had shaken you to your core, trembled the foundation of the earth under your feet.
Grief.
You rise from your bed, stare into the darkness of your room, feeling the Earth rotate under your falling form. You spread your arms, trying to slow your descent as you pace over to your desk where the gift from Laswell lies.
If you can't tell anyone. At least tell yourself.
You pick up the journal and begin to write.
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Tag List: (Reblog this post to be added to future fics from this series! If you'd like to be removed please DM me!)
@dankest-farrik @zwiiicnziiix @moondirti @sritashimada @ladiilokii @yeyinde @sandinthemachine @verdandis-blog @guyfieriiii @fan-of-encouragement @starlitnotes @alicesfracturedmirror @rentaldarling @mockerycrow @atenceladusiaawfytbwb @tinykaka @dumb-djarin @homicidal-slvt @soapskneebrace @nightingale-ghost-writer @selinn777 @nachtcirce @jujubashow @mutuallimbenclosure @kkinky @trash-boi-4-life @scatter-mind001
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choccy-milky · 11 months
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chapter 13 might end up bein a little late so heres the wip of the drawing for that chapter in the meantime 😇👀👀
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heart-in-atrophyy · 7 months
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Some part of me must have died
the first time that you called me 'baby'
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belladonazeppole · 30 days
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If Alastor is royalflush number 1 hater then you know who are their number 1 fans?
Asmodeus and Angel Dust.
Angel is overjoy that Husk found somebody that treats him right, care for his feelings and respect him, while Asmodeus is happy that Lucifer finally move on from his divorce and could find somebody that he has good communication.
Also both of them are relief that their friends are finally getting laid again since is being too fucking long since those two got any sex.
They want the details 😏
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drewpicturesani · 10 days
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Brainrot for my lancer pilot and their totally stable NHP. Nothing is wrong with either of them.
Promise 🤞
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froggoblinking · 2 years
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all i’ve ever really wanted in life is to be a hobbit - does anyone have advice on how to completely live like one ?
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fenrir-flamekeeper · 8 months
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australian outback looks
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leyside · 9 months
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the girls (a middle-aged private detective with a british accent and the ageless entity sharing a body with him) are fiiiiiighting
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