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ohraicodoll · 1 year

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Teeth

Joel Miller x f!Reader (Feral Reader as you’ve all lovingly called her) The Last of Us (show/game) 4.5K Words (3rd POV) Part II to Monsters Summary: “Only Joel could make offering to get her off sound like a business transaction. But the intention was clear. This wasn’t intimacy, wasn’t passion boiling over, wasn’t romance. It was bodies and tactfulness and practicality.“ Warning: 18 + Minors DNI. Smut, pwp, mentions of violence, enemies to fwb, can be read standalone Part I | Part II

The house was too quiet.

So often on the road, they’d taken to sleeping in whatever buildings they could secure, alcoves in the woods, even an old run down vehicle on the side of the road occasionally. But this time they all got their own rooms, beds, to sleep in and instead of being comforting it made her anxious. She was used to the sounds of nature going on at night, the steady breathing of her companions, the slight vibrations of the world around her. There was nothing in the cabin but silence. They’d strategically picked rooms, Ellie taking the master bedroom as that was the farthest away from the entrance with hers and Joel’s closest to the front door. If someone went through the effort of getting through all the defenses and fences and managed to get inside, they’d have to get past their rooms first. Except not even that because she was awake and laying on the floor in the living room. The bed had been too soft, the walls pressing into her too much. Caged. So she had grabbed the blankets and pillows and thrown them on the floor on top of the couch cushions she’d yanked down. All where she could have a good vantage point of the front door, pistol resting beside her head and knife under the pillow. It was better, but still not the same.

All the clothes in the house were too big, no matter how tight she knotted the drawstrings, so she’d forgone pants and had thrown on an oversized shirt while her pants dried in what the previous owners had deemed the “laundry room.” The blankets were warm but a little itchy against her bare skin and she sighed. It was hard to relax, to take advantage of the amenities. The need to constantly be prepared for anything a humming nerve under her skin. She tried to calm herself, to focus, to slow the constant stream of thoughts going over the previous day. Finding the group, the bullet graze on her shoulder, the look of pure uninhibited rage as Joel caved the man’s skull in with his bare fist. And then the feel of that same hand in hers, rough skin against her own, and the warmth of Joel’s thighs against her body. “Except you’re wrong if you don’t think I like seeing you on your knees for me.” She wasn’t an idiot. The man was attractive and had been since the day she met him, no matter how much he set her teeth on edge and made her want to wring his neck. They were the same, hackles raised and maws snapping at every turn. She didn’t feel the need to play nice and hide who she was. He never batted an eye at her lack of hesitation towards violence, never looked at her fearfully or disapprovingly for shooting or stabbing first. She’d been around others before, had seen the way they skittered away in fear as if in a blood haze she’d go after them as well. Joel Miller was a survivor and knew that the world was ugly. And sometimes you had to match that ugliness to see the next day. He would have been the type of man that had intimidated her when she was younger. Too gruff, hardened, assured with his cocky attitude and rare smiles. Nothing like Harry. She’d been bashful before, wanting to break out of her shell but unable to take that leap. Not a leader, not a go-getter. Not quite the best at social interaction, at interacting with men specifically, words never coming easily. She would have blushed from one look from the Texan. The world wasn’t made for blushing anymore though and that was twenty years ago. That girl was dead. She was just wearing her skin. A skinwalker. A monster wearing a human form. The Outbreak had changed them all.

Now it was hard to feel anything. She felt tiny sparks of amusement from Ellie when she tried out new jokes to get a reaction, concern as she took note of the weight that seemed to be on the young girl’s shoulders, affection watching her take in every new surrounding, irritation when Joel bossed them both around. Rage and anger were the easiest to feel, so she took aim at the older man. Like poking a bear if only to feel the exhilaration of being chased. She felt most alive in the middle of a fight and when Joel’s eyes were glaring into her, teeth snapping at her. Staring up at the ceiling, the slight creak of a hinge caught her ear from down the hall followed by almost silent footsteps. Too heavy to be Ellie, too quiet for the girl that blew through life like a tornado. No, she watched and waited as Joel came around the corner, the lantern she had left lit in the corner of the room illuminating the frown tilting his lips down. The sweatpants that hadn’t fit her fit him perfectly, settling loose and comfy on his hips while the faded shirt stretched snuggly across his broad chest. She could see the telltale signs that he’d been running his hands through his head, the slight curls in disarray and silver catching the light. If he had been asleep, she couldn’t tell. Maybe he’d heard her leave her own room. He always did seem to know when she was moving around. “What’re you doin’ out here?” he grumbled quietly, the sound rough and low. The darkness hid his eyes from her but she knew he was probably glaring. Still annoyed over their exchange earlier most likely. She blinked at him then went back to staring at the ceiling, “Bed’s too soft.” My mind won’t shut off, the room is too quiet, the walls are too close, I don’t like sleeping alone anymore. The words were there, buried underneath layers of skin. Joel grunted, scratching at his chin and the patchy beard there before placing his hands on his hips and taking her in. He could tell when she was bullshitting, she knew that, but he wasn’t about to call her out on it. They didn’t do feelings, didn’t confess their fears in the dark. It was practical and that’s how they both liked it. So she reasoned it was in the name of practicality that he sighed and walked over. Because they had shit to get done the next day and he’d gripe at her if she was tired and couldn’t pull her weight. He nudged her side with his foot, the silent command to scoot over, and rather than be a brat and stare him down she did so. The cushions were wide and worn down, big enough for both of them and weren’t entirely uncomfortable. Better than what they were used to sleeping on. Odd sleeping arrangements weren’t new, the three of them pressed tight together like sardines trying to fit in whatever small safe space they could find. So it wasn’t exactly odd for him to be pressed close to her. There’d been many nights she’d fallen asleep to her cheek against his shoulder blades and Ellie wrapped around her back. Maybe he had come out to the living room for the same reasons she had. She wasn’t sure but wasn’t about to ask. Joel placed his own gun on the ground next to his side of the cushions, carefully kneeling down and lifting the blanket up to get underneath. She could feel his pause more than she could see it, could hear the slight curse under his breath, “You wearin’ any pants?” “Does it look like it?” He shook his head, jaw clenching but continued climbing in beside her. The apocalypse did away with a lot of things like modesty and politeness. She didn’t care, had gone and helped him in only a towel earlier because she was already there and wasn’t going to take the time to change just to tend to his hand. Practical. He shifted beside her, getting comfortable under the shared blanket and laying on his side facing away from her where he could still hear from his good side. There was a moment where his arm went under the pillow and he paused, pulling out the blade while giving her a look before moving it beside him. Never surprised, always annoyed. The heat from his body made up for having to share the blanket, warmth radiating from him and seeping into her. She hadn’t moved, eyes still glued to the ceiling though now her concentration was mostly on the slight sound of Joel’s breathing next to her, the way his back muscles shifted against her arms, the anxiety lessening now that she wasn’t alone. “You’re thinking too loud,” his voice growled next to her, bare feet brushing hers as he adjusted. “That’s not a thing,” she replied, very much still awake. Joel sighed and looked at her over his shoulder, “You gonna go to sleep anytime soon or should I go back to my room?” Rolling her eyes, she met his gaze in the dim lantern light, his irises practically black, “You act like I’m not trying to sleep. Brain’s too wired. Feel free to go back if all you’re gonna do is complain, I didn’t ask you to sleep in here.” He huffed, facing away from her and let the silence take back over.

This time the silence felt weighted, a heavy tension as they both acknowledged that neither of them were sleeping. Using his own words, she could hear him thinking loudly and it kicked up her nerves. She was extra aware of his heat, the press of his back against her arm, the slow and steady way his breath filled the air. It made her sensitive, made the world around her seem to vibrate. Joel was the one to break the silence again, the words deep and rough with his accent, “I can help, if you want…Distract you so you get to sleep.” Her heart sped up, the sound like a raging river in her mind. Her skin was tingling. “How so?” she could hear her own voice get huskier as she whispered back, the barest sound slipping out. He turned to look at her again over his shoulder, gaze heated, “You know how.” She did. Had more than once imagined his mouth on her, fingers slick with arousal and touching her- “Didn’t seem that into the idea earlier when you damn near bit my head off,” she scoffed and tried to ignore how every nerve was on fire. How he had been the one to bring it up and what he was offering. Joel didn’t say anything for a long minute, the memory of her on her knees and his fingers digging into his own thigh fresh. It’d been to rile him up, be a dick to him as he was being to her, but it wasn’t exactly not an invitation. She’d fucked worse to alleviate the tension, to say thanks, to satisfy a need. “Then maybe you weren’t listening correctly,” he grunted, “You want help or not? The window’s closing fast.” Only Joel could make offering to get her off sound like a business transaction. But the intention was clear. This wasn’t intimacy, wasn’t passion boiling over, wasn’t romance. It was bodies and tactfulness and practicality. She nodded, eyes on the ceiling. “Gonna need it out loud, darlin’,” he muttered lowly. Darlin. Not Starshine or Red or Hey You. It was a new one. “Okay,” she whispered and chewed on the inside of her cheek. She didn’t look at him, didn’t try and gauge his reaction or the look on his face. As unaffected as she was trying to come across, her heart was in her throat. It’d been a while, a good long while since someone else had touched her and it was Joel of all people breaking that dry spell. He turned over on his other side to face her and she could feel his eyes, the way they burned into her skin, “Turn over.” She didn’t argue, didn’t bristle at being ordered, simply faced away. It was better this way. It was too intimate to let him see her face, to watch his, and that wasn’t what this was. His chest was flush against her back and she could feel his breath against her neck, hands finding her waist as one of his knees pushed between hers. She expected him to be rougher, quicker, more methodical but he was soft and slow, taking his time. His fingers skimmed over her sides and down to her thighs, finding the hem of the worn shirt then the large expanse of bare skin. His palm was rough against the smooth skin and she bit down on her lip at the contrast in texture, finding she liked the feeling. Then the tips of his fingers were playing with the band of her underwear as his nose dragged along her neck, hot breath almost causing her to shiver. He slid his fingers along the thin straps, hand brushing against her heated skin and she could feel the edge of the bandage on the back of it. The bandage covering the split knuckles and sliced skin from him beating a man to death.

That kind of rage wasn’t supposed to be a turn on, but it had been. The old her would have been terrified, traumatized, backing away from him out of fear but not the person she was now. He had her back, had watched out for her and been there in the second she had been blinded by her overwhelming need to protect Ellie.

Joel had her. She pressed herself back into him and could hear his swallowed groan as her ass rubbed against his groin, at his obvious arousal pressing against her. He didn’t speak and neither did she. Only the sounds of their quickening breaths filled the silence of the living room and then a barely audible gasp as his fingers finally slipped underneath the cloth and found her center already hot and wet. He trailed along her slit, gathering the arousal soaking there, and spread it around, encircling her clit. He took his time, going slow, getting to know her and the sounds she desperately tried to keep locked inside her. She’d been quiet back in the day. Never been one for dirty talk or loud moans. Maybe because she’d been bashful and inexperienced and easily embarrassed. Soft, breathless, throaty. Now it was more out of instinct, survival, control. There wasn’t much she could control in the world but herself and any noises she made were for her to decide if she wanted them to be heard. So she swallowed the moan that strained to leave her lips as Joel circled her clit even more urgently, lightning shooting through her. His hand was large, so much bigger than hers. His whole body could probably wrap around her completely, cover her up and shield her from everything around them. Joel was a solid wall behind her and as his finger finally dipped inside, she gripped the pillow tightly in a clawed hand while the other dug into the bicep stretched across her. He curled inside her, thumb pressing down on her clit, and she clenched her teeth against another moan, throwing her head back. Salt and pepper curls tickled her chin and then his mouth was on her neck, hot and wet with teeth and tongue. She could smell him, gunpowder and musk and pine. Distinctly Joel and she bit down on her tongue hard, welcoming the slight tinge of copper in her attempt to keep from drowning in him. Another finger entered her and she almost sobbed at the stretch. The coil inside of her was winding tighter and tighter with each stroke, each slow pump, as he managed to tease a part of her that had her delirious with pleasure. He was methodical, precise, bringing her to the edge then pulling back to bring her back down to the shallows before building her up again. It was the perfect kind of torture that had her pushing into hand, searching for more. Her nails were making indents in his skin from how hard she was digging in, struggling to keep herself in control.

At last a gasp slipped through her lips unbidden. A crack forming. The small sound seemed to almost snap something in Joel. He cursed, pressing his forehead to her shoulder, before yanking her until she was on her back with his hand still down her panties. Before she could question him, his mouth was latched onto her neck and he was pressing deeper into her all the way to his knuckles, no longer going slow, no longer keeping her turned away from him. Their legs were tangled, thigh between his and hips pulled wider, and she could feel the hard length of his own arousal rubbing against her. She didn’t stop to wonder if this was about practicality anymore. If this had been part of the unspoken arrangement. Not when his mouth had inched down the collar of her shirt and he was pressing teeth into the small stars along her collarbone, worshiping the slip of skin. No, her hand reached out and pressed against his sweatpants, feeling him and taking in the way he hissed against her skin and jerked into her hand. Her back arched off the pillows as pleasure grew and their heated pants filled the room. Joel’s beard was scratchy against her skin and she knew there would be red marks all over her neck and across her chest but she didn’t care. His teeth nipped sharp spots of pain into her skin and then he would soothe the spot with his tongue. All while his fingers pumped in and out of her, the slick sound dampened by the underwear he’d shoved aside. Her own hand gripped him through his sweatpants, feeling his weight and length, mouth almost going dry at the size. He didn’t protest, didn’t say anything when she slipped her hand under the band of pants and past his underwear, feeling the hot velvet skin of his erection and passing a thumb over the tip to collect the moisture there. Instead he bit down harder and jutted into her hand, rocking and thrusting faster into her. Fuck, he was big and onehanded she stroked him the best she could, blind in the dark and moving in time with him. She was close, could feel the coil going taut and her breath coming out faster and faster. Her own face pressed into his shoulder, feeling the tight muscles in the arm holding himself over her. He almost seemed to shiver as she dragged her mouth along his skin then bit down, groaning open mouthed onto him as her orgasm crashed hard and unyielding. She didn’t slow down, didn’t release him, even as her body felt loose and HER breath came out in shaky pants. No, she had him and wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to take control over the smuggler. She stroked from tip to base, massaging him and drawing out his grunts with each movement. His fingers pulled out of her and gripped her thigh, smearing her own arousal all over the skin and digging in tight enough to bruise. “Fuck,” Joel hissed into her neck and she let go of the pillow she had been gripping with her free hand, combing through his hair and running nails along his scalp. She wanted to tear him open with her claws, rip away the hardened shell he’d built around himself and climb into him. Force some vulnerability to the surface in the same way he had with her. Revenge maybe, but the word didn’t feel right. He pushed himself up and finally met her gaze, their breath mingling as their eyes found each other in the dark. She wasn’t sure what he was looking for, felt almost more exposed than when his fingers were deep inside her. But she didn’t break her stride, didn’t blink or look away. She met him head on and it reminded her of that first day they had met. Saving Ellie, killing that man with a baseball bat, equal amounts of fury and brokenness meeting the other. A mirror. Joel grit his teeth and she watched the words “fuck it” shape on his lips but never forming sound before his lips were on hers. She hadn’t been expecting it. Kissing was for intimacy and this wasn’t that. But the kiss wasn’t gentle or soft or tentative, instead a clash that shook their bones. He was trying to devour her and she was trying to dominate him, his weight pressing down into her fully. She moaned into his mouth and hooked a leg around his waist, trying to draw him in as close as possible with her hand still tangled in his hair. She couldn’t define his taste. It was…Joel. Earthy and sweet and intoxicating. His tongue discovered every crevice of her mouth, sliding along hers, and she tugged at his hair until a hiss danced along their lips. Kissing Joel Miller was dangerous in its addiction. Her lungs burned and she thought she could taste copper, blood, but she couldn’t get enough, wanting to swallow every innocuous sound that left his throat because they were the only pieces of himself he let go of freely. She palmed his member, massaging it and feeling how desperate he was for release, before finally pulling away enough to whisper against him, “You can either fuck my hand or you can fuck me, Miller. What’s it gonna be?” He groaned as she squeezed him harder, hips jerking, “Jesus Christ…” Then his hands were tugging her underwear down in answer and he was on top of her fully between her thighs, lips bruising while she released him and helped yank his sweatpants down. It was frantic, hands clawing, teeth biting. A desperation she hadn’t felt in a while, only akin to when things were life or death and she was fighting for her life.

Practicality had gone out the window and she wasn’t sure when it had happened. She felt alive, sharp and bright, and that had her fully pulling him to her, feeling him slide along her wet core heavy and pulsing and so fucking good. Joel braced himself with an elbow beside her head, muscles straining, hand gripping her hair tightly to keep her lips against his. His other fist pumped himself, sliding against her clit and drawing breathless moans into his mouth. There was no discussion about going slow, about making sure she was ready or stretched enough for him. That required a level of care, affection. No, that wasn’t them. Inside he hitched her leg higher around his waist and pushed into her fast and rough. Both of them groaned at the stretch, at the way he filled her completely, teeth swallowing the sounds. It never left their mouths, wasn’t for the world to hear, simply passed from one to the other like a secret. Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him flush against her as he started to move. The proximity had him grinding against her, the rough hairs at his base adding friction and sending sparks through her. It was fast and bordered on painful, but it only heightened the feeling for her. She didn’t want him to be gentle with her, didn’t want to be handled like a doll.

She needed to feel something even if it was pain and god, if the man didn’t cause every single inch of her to alight with fire. “Fucking hell,” he whispered against her, the words a growl as he broke from her mouth and pressed his forehead to her shoulder, “Feel so fucking good.” His thrusts were beginning to lose their rhythm, going faster and harder as if he was aiming to tear her in half. She only wrapped both legs around his waist, hooking them at the ankle, the silent promise that she was fully along for the ride until the end. “This better than me on my knees, Miller,” she hissed, fingers tightening on his curls. He gripped the back of her head and drove deeper into her almost in answer, “Shut the fuck up, darlin’.” There was a reply on her lips but it never managed to escape, his lips crushing hers as they both began to hit the edge. She pulsed and tightened around him as her orgasm hit her like a freight train, lightning searing every nerve and dragging Joel down with her. He came hard with her, his warm release filling her and coating both of them as he fucked her through the last waves and aftershocks of their climax. Their breathless pants wrapped around them and painted their lips, a few centimeters apart but not fully pulled away from the other. She could feel him twitching inside of, was drowning in his scent and that familiar whiff of sex that clung to them. Even with his weight bearing down onto her, she felt good, filled to the brim, awake. Joel groaned, forehead against hers, sweat trickling down his neck and into the collar of his shirt, “Fuck.” “Ditto,” she mumbled, trying to catch her breath, releasing her tight grip on his hair and sliding it along his bag. He almost shivered at the slight caress. “I should have pulled out,” he frowned, brow furrowed as reality started to sink in. “It’s fine,” she answered heavily and fell back fully against the pillow, neck stretched beneath him, “Can’t get pregnant. Plumbing don’t work.” Her sentences were stuttered, short and to the point as a clear indication that it wasn’t a topic she wanted to elaborate on. It was the smallest admittance of something personal, a rarity between them, and he filed it away in the back of his mind.

He nodded and lifted himself up, only giving her a small warning before sliding himself from her. They both groaned at the sensation and loss of warmth, laying on their backs side by side under the blanket. The air was much cooler on their sweat slicked skin and in the back of her mind she was thankful that at least she’d get to take a shower in the morning. A second later though, her thoughts were cut off when Joel grabbed her and tugged her closer into his side, her arm across his chest. She froze, not quite expecting him to even acknowledge her after the deed was done, much less want to touch her. His ankle was still wrapped around hers and the threadbare shirt was soft under her cheek, his hand resting on her shoulder. “Didn’t take you for a cuddler,” the words lacked their usual mocking tone or bite, bordered on unsurety. This was out of her comfort zone and she was stiff, in unfamiliar territory with the smuggler. Sex and rage she knew, but not…whatever this was. “Shut up and go to sleep, Red,” Joel’s eyes were already closed, breathing relaxed and even. He wasn’t rising to take the bait, all the fight gone out of him. Biting her lip, she sighed. And true to his word, she followed him into slumber quickly after, leaving the new aspect of their relationship to ponder in the daylight.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x oc #joel miller x feral reader #tlou #tlou fanfiction #tlou fanfic #the last of us #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us fanfic #raicodoll writes #fic: monsters #fic: teeth #Feral Reader Series #I guess that's what we're calling it now lol #OC: Red #joel miller #series: feral

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sluckythewizard · 26 days

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Keep calm, and drink soda

[CW for blood and gore and vomit] takes place a day or two after emizel was sired. just two boys adjusting to a shift in their daily norms. would YOU drink your homies blood? still not used to writing fanfic so any and all advice IS appreciated. i hope u enjoy.

There were very few things that Soda enjoyed more than well, drinking soda. It was a hobby, an interest, a comfort. And by extension there were very few errands that Soda would look forward to more than the occasional soda run.

The gas station closest to the Demons hideout had stopped selling Faygo entirely about a month or two ago, and it was near impossible to find it anywhere else. The closest place was now this janky little Shell gas station, lovingly titled the Shady Shell, that thankfully sold more flavors than any of the other ones ever did.

It made the hour and a half walk here entirely worth it. Even if this side of town made his skin crawl. Normally he would ask someone to accompany him on this daring little quest, but everyone at the hide out tonight just seemed too tired, too preoccupied, too uninterested.

He knew not everyone really got the soda thing, but they were accepting of it for the most part. Soda is something that, clearly, Soda really loves, but he knew not everyone else was into it.

Which was fine, of course. They didn't need to get it. But, still, sometimes Soda found himself wondering how much of it was a bit, and how much was him.

Emizel gets it perfectly though. He would've been the first person Soda would ask to go on this soda run with him, but, well. He's been preoccupied too, with the whole vampire thing.

It's been a bit more than a day since Soda had last seen his close comrade. For a friend that he saw just about everyday, going without him this long left him feeling a little emptier.

That was fine, though. Emizel had shit he was working out, he had things he needed to do. It's not like he could go out in the day anymore, so of course Soda wouldn't be seeing him at all the usual times.

It was a lot of weird and heavy magical stuff, it made Soda think about those superhero shows. Where the hero needs to keep his identity hidden from everyone. Family especially. He knows how much of a piece of shit Emizels dad is, so he hoped that Emizels home life wasn't stirred up all stupid-like over this.

He hasn't told anyone else, about what happened that night. For the last 2 days, Soda would spend time with close friends and not let them know a thing about what happened to Emizel so, so recently. Why he's so suddenly absent, so distant, so.. off…

'Maybe his dad's just giving him a hard time', he would say, hoping to smother their questions. The less questions they ask, the better. At least until this vampire stuff gets figured out a bit more. Should Emizel wear a disguise when he goes out at night now? Just like a superhero? What kind of hero outfit would Emizel have anyways? Soda figured it would be something really cool.

If anyone could figure out a way to balance all this vampire stuff, and all the leaderly responsibilities that come with being the biggest dog in the Demons, it was Emizel for sure. That guy is so seriously cool.

He was sure this rough patch would even out, and they would weather the next rough patch together no problem. There was really nothing to worry about! All Soda has to do is stay positive, and well, drink soda.

As Soda walks quietly down the crumbling sidewalks of this dreary hive of strip malls and shops, he goes to pull his backpack around to his chest, fumbling with the zipper in the dark. Which was a little annoying, considering the tab of his zipper had fallen off forever ago. He really needed to get around to fixing this damn thing. Maybe another ziptie and a soda tab will do the trick.

Humid air hangs heavy in the night, the sidewalks still somewhat warm after a hotter day. The diesel-soaked air provided enough warmth on its own that Soda had considered taking his jacket off a few times, only for the occasional, annoyingly sharp and chilly breeze to brush by, reminding him to keep the thing on.

Tripping only once and only slightly on an uneven sidewalk, Soda manages to pull a bottle of Faygo from his backpack, a smile glowing on his face. Another short fight with the zipper seals up the bag, and he slings it over his shoulder again.

His flavor of choice tonight was actually the Red Pop, the tried and true, the absolute classic, one of the best Faygo flavors for sure.

But, this kind wasn't actually his favorite. Normally he would stock up on the cotton candy ones, but something about the last few days had him craving the red stuff.

Securing his backpack all the way, he goes to crack open the bottle. Just the clack and the hisssss of the fizzy drink were enough to lift his mood.

Not that his mood needed lifting or anything. Of course. Sure he missed his friend and sure he found himself wondering what he’s doing and where he is and if he's okay. Maybe sometimes he found himself wishing they talked about funeral plans more.

Emizel talked up all sorts of crazy funeral ideas for himself, usually involving the use of his dead body as an inconvenience for others. Outlandish and hilarious ideas, like filling it with explosives and tossing it into a busy road. But what would he want seriously? What would Soda ever do if he just stopped showing up one day?

He had to swallow down all these unnecessary anxieties, so he took a swig of his soda. Sweet, bubbly, comforting. He felt better already! Just stay positive, and drink soda..

It was a lovely night out, and he didn't come all this way planning on letting it go to waste. There was a place he was heading towards, a particular alleyway in this particular place that led off to a particularly tall concrete ledge.

It was a run-down little space, littered with trash and shitty trees and those bushes with just too many goddamn ants in them. But the view was fairly nice, overlooking a massive deformed intersection. A particularly stupid one, at that; about 3 times a week you could witness a gnarly crash at this spot. Soda always heard people saying that LA folks can't drive, but he was just starting to figure that maybe no one can drive.

That was the place he really wanted to go to enjoy this soda, and he wasn't too far off from it. Just a few more blocks, and he would be there.

Oh wait, didn't he still have a bag of chips in this backpack somewhere? Hell yeah, he couldn't wait to sit down and relax with a good soda, a good snack, and a good view of the night.

Living as a Demon had its fair share of stresses. He felt lucky to have this life, but he knew well that it could be better. That not everyone has to worry about survival the way they do. That not everyone gets injured on the regular and not everyone has to worry about being sick and never getting better.

Living is hard. But it's finding the small moments of joy that make it all worth it. Dying would be scarier anyway. He didn't want to die, and he felt glad to feel so confident in that nowadays.

The sudden THUNK of something slamming into the ground just a block away from him, jolts him out of his thoughts, all his gears screeching to a halt as he freezes in place. What the fuck was that?

It looked like a person, laying flat on the ground with only their head and shoulders peeking out of the alleyway ahead. Fuck. He hated this side of town..

Anxiety churns in his stomach as he debates just turning around, but the way the victim reaches an arm out, attempting to crawl away; it made his heart ache aswell. he's no goddamn fighter, but he couldn't just leave someone like th-

The body is suddenly yanked back into the alley, snatched at a startling speed. It didn't feel exactly real, how could something vanish so fast? It reminded Soda of something from a horror movie, or whatever. What the fuck was that??

His foot takes a step forward, before the rest of his body notices its rebellion and locks down again. Was he seriously going to investigate that? He could just walk away and take another alley. But that was the one he was supposed to turn down! All the other alleys are either walled off or gated off and he wasn't about to go climbing over a damn wire gate. His soda would get too shaken up! Fuck!

Another foot goes in for another step forward. He's gotta get the fuck out of here. He could hear more commotion in the alleyway, a scuffle, a skirmish. He could hear someone cursing through a choked breath. A loud and nauseating crack echoes out from the alley, and yet, Soda takes another step forward.

This was stupid, he shouldn't be getting tangled up in someone else's business. What if something happened to all this soda?

Thankfully, it was that thought that actually got him to pause, and take in a deep breath. It wasn't worth it, maybe he should head straight home.

Atleast, that was the thought his heart and mind were about to agree on, until a particularly familiar grroowwwwlll bleeds out from the alley.

Emizel?

All reason immediately evaporates as Soda makes that connection in his head, stepping right up to the corner of the brick walls, and peering around to investigate.

There was a body on the floor, face down in a puddle of red, head split open in a way that reminded Soda of a smashed watermelon.

But standing over that body, was the familiar, blackened coat, and short blonde hair, of Sodas closest comrade, Emizel.

Despite the carnage on the floor, Soda couldn't help the smile that lights up his face. That was Emizel! That was his boy!

But before he could get over just how happy he felt to see his best friend, something else caught his eye. Movement, behind the dumpster closest to the vampire boy. A person, rising out from the shadows with a glinting baseball bat clutched fiercely in their hands.

"Oh fuck, look out!" Soda speaks up, and Emizels gaze immediately clicks over to him, silencing Soda with just that startlingly red stare.

He had forgotten just how uneasy those red eyes made him..

The attacker, silent and professional, rushes up behind Emizel and CRACKS the metal bat downwards onto his blonde head, the sound ringing out like a gun shot in that dark little alleyway.

Soda cringes from just the sound of the impact, but was amazed to find that the bat had warped under the force of it!

The attacker hardly had a chance to process his mangled weapon before Emizel whips around to retaliate.

It looked like he had just swung his hand at his opponent, so the way a shower of red spills outward from the slash, catches Soda completely off guard. The monster boy had cleaved an excruciatingly massive gash up from the attackers right hip, to his left shoulder, the slice spewing with scarlet.

It wasn't until Emizel had pulled back his arm, that Soda could process the way it had darkened with more than just blood, distorted into an odd, spear-like shape.

The victim hardly had a chance to yelp before that blade swoops up into his chest at the speed of a snapping bear trap, plunging through meat and bone with disturbing ease, and forcing blood and viscera to erupt outwards. The red patters down onto the concrete behind, the sound similar to rain...

With another low, inhuman snarl, Emizel brings the twitching, dying body closer, until that signature squish of teeth sinking into fresh meat bleeds outward into the space.

What a disgusting sound, Sodas first instinct was to simply avert his eyes, but as the sound persists, he resolves that he has to do something.

He finally steps out into the alley, and speaks.

"Hey ma-"

He could hardly get two words out before Emizel suddenly rips its teeth away from its victims throat, tearing out a hefty chunk of jellied meat, and slamming the remaining fodder onto the concrete floor.

It immediately whips around to stare down Soda, red eyes glowing with reflected light, and with hardly a chance to process the moment-

-It's immediately right infront of Soda.

A gasp lurches from Soda's lungs as he almost stumbles back in shock. How was Emizel so fucking fast?

Other than that single step back, Soda was frozen in shock, his tongue buzzing with the physical pain of such a startling jolt. 'White boy jumpscare' is something that came to mind, but while usually such a thought would evoke some sort of laugh from Soda, this time it offered no such comfort. Okay maybe it did a little.

Emizels snarling face was only inches away from Sodas. Its eyes were wild and unnatural, teeth menacingly sharp and reddened with so much fucking blood. It was everywhere, coating most of his face, smothering his shirt and his coat, and absolutely choking the air with its thick, metallic stench.

Soda would gag if he felt he was safe to even move. He felt like he was locking eyes with that of a creature, something he would only ever see in his nightmares or in scary movies. But it was real. Those monsters are real. And his best friend is one of those monsters. His bestest friend in the world...

His mind was skewered on that unnatural glare, completely frozen with anxiety. Stalling too hard to come to a proper conclusion, Soda instead falls back onto what Soda does best.

"H-hey man... You want some soda?"

He very gently presses the opened bottle of Faygo into Emizels chest.

The two boys stand there for a moment, locked in a tense, silent pause, before the monster boy finally peels its gaze down to the bottle.

It's quiet, for a few seconds, the gears turning in its head. Until the monster blinks, and its eyes clear, and Emizel processes the sight of the bottle.

"Oh, fuck yeah dude, is that the Candy Apple Faygo? Man, that stuffs my favorite!" Emizel smiles as he goes to accept the bottle, and immediately takes a massive swig.

Soda tries to disregard the way his hands were still shaking. "Uh, n-nah man, its just Red Po-"

The words are bit off as Emizel suddenly retches, a heavy flood of red blood and red Faygo spewing out onto Soda, as the vampire boys body entirely rejects the fizzy drink.

The shock of getting fucking projectile vomited on had snapped Soda out of whatever daze he was just in, and it seemed to snap Emizel out of it too. Soda backs up with a groan, looking down at all the blood and bile and pop on his shirt and coat.

"Ohhh fuck dude, what the hell??" He cringes, not even wanting to try smearing any of it off with his hand.

Emizel was coughing, still holding out the Faygo bottle, but hunched over as his body dared to convulse again.

"Ohhhhhh fuck, ohhooohhh fuuuuucckkk" he grumbles towards the floor "Fuuuck I’m sorry dude, I don't know what fuckin- oohhhgg shit,” He coughs and groans, offering the bottle back to Soda.

Soda was still staring at his messied coat with a displeased grimace, but looking up to meet Emizels eyes...

There was a guilt on Emizels face that Soda didn't see too often, and it helped wash away that irritation he felt. This sucked, but Emizel was probably going through a lot more.

“It’s, uhm.. don't, don't worry about it, man..” Soda decides to reassure him, offering a sympathetic smile, and a hand on Emizels shoulder, as his comrade spits out the remaining blood and bile.

"Fuckin hell… I’m uh, I'm sorry about your shirt, man."

"What? Nahh it's okay man, don’t worry about it." Soda shrugs, taking the Faygo bottle back. "I mean, are you okay man? That uh.. looked like a pretty crazy fight."

Emizel was rubbing his eyes, smearing more blood across his face as he seems to be collecting himself. he spares a glance back at the carnage behind him.

"Ah.. yeah.. I thought I uh.. I thought I saw that one fucker from uh. That one night. Yknow, the one that uh.." He snaps his fingers, as if trying to summon back the memory. "Vampire bitch... Anyway after that I just kind of, uh.."

He seems to space out again as he looks around. It was as if he was just woken up from a deep sleep, like he was certain he had just known what he was doing, but found the dream escaping him. "I guess I just.. went crazy on these guys. I dunno, they're Fangs anyways." he finally shrugs it all off, but Soda still felt unsatisfied by the answer.

"Oh.. huh…” is the only response he manages to scrounge together. Sure they were Fangs, but did they really deserve.. all that? It just seemed a bit brutal, even by Emizels standards.

He found his eyes wandering over to the split-open head. It was mostly red and bloody, but even in the dark, he could still make out some of the finer details of the gray jelly seeping from the gash. A human brain. He wondered if his own brain looked the same on the inside..

“So what are you doing out here, man?” Emizels question helps Soda pull his eyes away from the gore, instead looking over to his bloodied comrade.

Emizel looked messy and even exhausted, but his drowsy gaze was focused on Soda with a worried expression.

“Oh, uh, yknow, just a soda run. Decided I would stock up on some Faygo from the Shady Shell.” Soda shrugs, his eyes flickering down to the opened Faygo in his hand. The top was covered in regurgitated blood. unnaturally blackened blood…

“Are you.. okay, by the way? Other than the whole..” Soda gestures vaguely at the gruesome crime scene. “Are you hurt?”

The question has Emizel pausing to consider. He straightens his back and stretches his arms, as if trying to detect any pain from any possible injury. Nothing seemed to be bothering him though, and after a second, he decides to shrug.

“Nah, I'm all good.”

“Oh.. That's good, I uh…” Soda found himself looking over Emizel aswell, searching for any wounds the monster boy might be simply disregarding, as he often does.

There was a fairly gnarly gash on his shin..

“Hey uh, I was actually gonna go hang out by the ledge down that way. Yknow, the one with the funny intersection.” Soda says, gesturing off towards where he intended to go. “Wanna come with?”

Emizel looks back that way, before turning back to Soda with a big smile on his face.

“Oh hell yeah I do! I love the funny intersection!” he starts to walk down the alley, about to step over the body of the broken skull, when Soda speaks up.

“Uh, hey, shouldn't we uh.. Do something about the.. uh..” He waves a hand over towards the bodies, trying not to look directly at them.

Emizel spares the corpses an inconvenienced glance, and a sigh, but ultimately shrugs them off. “Ehhh I'll just dump 'em in a dumpster again.. That's what I've been doing anyway.”

“And you're not worried about, like, anyone finding them?”

Soda anxiously watches on as Emizel paces around the body with the torn-out throat, licking the blood from his own mouth. Was his tongue always that long and pointed? That's neat, and normally Soda would point it out, but he was a bit.. preoccupied right now

“Nahh not really. I haven't had anyone bother me at least.. Anyone been bothering you?” Emizels eyes finally flick back over to Soda.

“Nah, I'd say things are actually more lax than usual. Anything that would end up being trouble’s been pretty much crushe- er, killed- destr- stamped out, by uh, by you.” Sods was cringing with every attempt to find a word that didn’t make his stomach turn, but Emizel didn’t seem to notice or mind.

Emizels eyes were currently a bit more focused on the body laying before him. He had that weird look on his face again…

“Uhh, yeah, yeah that's good that uh, no troubles coming back to you guys…”

There’s a moment of quiet between the two as Emizel stares at this corpse, and Soda was about to open his mouth to fill the silence, but Emizel speaks up instead.

“Hey uh, why don’t you go ahead of me? I’ll uh, I'll meet you at the place.” He suggests, pointing vaguely off down the alley, but not removing his eyes from the kill.

Soda certainly hesitates, his eyes narrowing before he even forms a thought. He opens his mouth to object, but then his eyes flicker back towards the body.

“Are you gonna eat this one too?”

The question leaves Sodas mouth as soon as it comes to mind.

Emizel pauses, and considers, before giving a shrug. “I don't see why not. Perfectly good blood.” He reaches down to grab his kill by the shirt, the one with the split open head. As the corpse rises from the concrete, gray matter drips and sloughs from the crack in its skull. Once again, Soda felt the need to look away, and yet his stupid eyes remained fixated on the horrendous sight. Emizel looks over the spilling brain of his meal, licking his lips curiously. “Dude, what do you think would happen if I ate his brain?” Emizel asks, looking back over to Soda with a wild, bloodied smile. Something about that look made Soda shiver, but.. Not really in a bad way… “Uh, I.. Dunno…. Eating a persons brain is how you get like, mad cow disease right? But you might also be immune to disease.. Are you immune to disease?” “Uhhh, I don't know yet actually. I'm still figuring out how much of this is like video games,” Emizel says, rubbing the back of his head as he idly sways the body of his kill around, watching the blood and gore drip and drop from its broken head. “Eh, I'll chance it later.” Without another word or thought, Emizel goes to sink his teeth into the shoulder of his kill, a pleased growl radiating from him as the blood gushes around the bite. More fresh blood upon less fresh blood upon old blood upon older blood. Just so much fucking blood. Soda thought he was used to seeing blood, but this… this was just egregious. Was he really starting to get used to this? It’s just blood after all, and it’s not from his comrades, so it's… fine… He finally manages to pull his eyes away from the gruesome sight of Emizel feeding, but his eyes instead wander down to the blood on his own shirt. Emizels blood was strange, darker than usual, and carrying a different scent. Something about the smell of his blood was more savory, more appealing than the standard metallic miasm. His shirt was smothered in it, his jacket was coated in it, and his opened bottle of Faygo was also splattered with the deep red ichor. Ink swirls within the bottle of red fizzy, spreading out into all sorts of odd patterns. It was a lot of blood. He was certain a lot of it came from however many people Emizels been feeding on. With how much hes been terrorizing the Fangs in just the last few days, and with how nonchalantly he feasts on his kills, who knows how much blood hes actually ingested… Soda swirls the bottle, watching the blood inside thin out into strands, dancing within the bubbly soda as they gradually dissipate, fully assimilating into the drink. A bad idea chews at the back of his head… The sound of ripping flesh once again knocks at Sodas head. He doesn’t look up this time, but he knew Emizel was just playing with his food again.. Did blood taste good to a vampire? Did some blood taste better than others? What did Sodas blood taste like? What did Emizels blood taste like? There's a visceral snap of something among the chewing and ripping, very clearly a bone or a joint snapping out of place. It made Soda shiver a little. When did his heart start pounding? There's an animal standing only 8 feet away from him, feeding on its kill. That animal is a person, and so is its kill. He wanted to know what vampire blood tasted like, but he already knew what human blood tasted like. It hung so densely in the air, he could feel it forming a vile film over his tongue. The blood of a person just like him. Eaten by an animal that eats people. All this stress was no good. This bile rising to his throat was no good. This creeping anxiety was no good. He's friends with an animal that eats people. Would it eat him? This weird feeling was no good. Maybe it will never eat him. But it needs to eat people. This worry was no good. He needed to wash this awful taste from his mouth, replace it with something sweeter. He needed to keep his head clear enough to be there for Emizel when he needed to be. He needed to hold a light to these shadows. And he needed to stay positive, and drink soda. He takes a swig of the open Faygo bottle.

#NO MAIN TAGS WE DIE LIKE ROADKILL #WOW ISNT IT WEIRD THAT YOUR BESTEST FRIEND IN THE WHOOOLE WORLD EATS PEOPLE NOW #ISNT IT WEIRD THAT YOU KIND OF WISH YOU WOULD BE EATEN. EXCEPT NOT RLY BC U WOULD DIE. MAYBE HE COULD HAVE A NIBBLE #i might come back to ramble in the tags more later. STAY TUNED!!!#OKAY IM BACK TO RAMBLE. FIZZFAGS SEAL O APPROVAL IN THE TAGS U MEAN THE WWWOORRLLD TO MEEEE #THIS IS ALL YOUR FFAAAUULTT UR THE ONLY REASON THESE LOSERS ARE ROTATING IN MY BRAIN SO SO FAST #I DO INTEND TO WRITE MORE!! AND I DO INTEND TO LET IT GET WEIRDER #Iwanna make a lil chapter two w them hanging out at the funny intersection while soda maybe tries to patch emizel up.#wouldnt it be fucked up if u saw ur best friend get bled out n then sired right infront of u #and wouldnt it be fucked up if ina vampiric daze he almost sinks his crazy shark teeth into your throat #and wouldnt it be fucked up if you kinda wish he did. like not in a weird way or anything its not weird its not weird at all #RAAHH IM SO HAPPY THAT PPL LIKE MY WRITING STYLE N MY CHARACTERIZATIONS ASWELL IT MEANS SO MUCH TO MMEEEE #NICE WORDS GIVE ME SO MMUCH POOWWEERRRRR RAAGHGHHH!!!thank you guys for being so niceys to me #ive also been thinkin abt writing Post Suckening fics. EXCITED FOR SEASON TWO. in the meantime what if theo had to put up w shenanigens #one shenanigen for example being emizel going feral and attacking a comrade.#then theo needs to stake him n pull him aside n set him straight or something. set him gay. whatever.#ive also had an idea in my head. BC GABRIEL IS TOTALLY INSIDE OF EMIZELS BRAIN NOW #could u imagine doing acid or shrooms w ur homies n then suddenly ur nemesis is showing up in ur fractal hallucinations #anyway i think thats all da ramble i got in me. thanku for enjoying my writing thank yooouuu

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stellamancer · 1 year

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empty threat (implied-ish gn!reader x satoru gojo)

notes: hi my name is niku and for some fucking reason everyone i know and love thinks i am a gojo fucker. first of all, they are wrong. uh anyway. one of them said a thing and that’s why this fic exists. it’s also @willowser’s fault so they should take responsibility. thanks to fabi for checking this for me cuz never wrote this man before.

word count: 1.1k

“What the hell!”

You’re not sure what you were expecting when you asked to spar with Satoru Gojo. To spend twenty or thirty minutes of your time chasing after a basically untouchable foe until he got bored and decisively ended the fight? To get your ass handed to you as he reminded you, once again, of the difference between you and him? To totally and magnificently lose?

What you can say is you definitely weren't expecting to end up pinning the man who holds the title of the world's strongest sorcerer to the ground. You both know it's not due to your skill as a sorcerer or even due some dumb luck. The only reason why you've got Gojo pinned is simply because he's letting you.

And it pisses you off. It's not like you were expecting to win, but this is just…

"What's wrong?" Gojo asks, mocking you with that disgusting saccharine voice of his. "You look upset. I thought you wanted to beat me."

You do your best to remain calm and not respond to his provocations. Even so, your grip on his wrists tightens ever so slightly.

He notices because of course he does and winces dramatically. "Owie!"

"I know it doesn't hurt," you tell him flatly, resisting the urge to squeeze tighter. It won't do anything to him, but maybe it'd make you feel a little better.

"Nope, not one bit!"

Before you can stop it an annoyed growl escapes your throat and Gojo latches onto it, ready and more than willing to weaponize anything he possibly can. “Come on, what’s got you all frustrated? You can tell me, you know?"

Stupid fucking dumbass piece of shit jerk knows exactly why you’re mad. He probably let you get him because he knew how much it’d aggravate you.

“No need to be so shy,” he continues purposely ignoring your growing rage. “We’re friends after all, aren’t we?”

You choose to remain silent and instantly find it’s the wrong response as Gojo starts to prattle on and on about how he thought that you were friends and how sad he is that you, as his friend won't talk to him, won’t rely on him and blah blah blah. He really loves the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he? Normally, you would just tune him out, but your agitation has left you impaired and on edge.

You need Satoru Gojo to shut up.

Like yesterday.

Instinct takes over and your body moves on its own, you pull back just a bit before slamming your head in his direction full force. But the hit doesn’t connect because of course it doesn’t. Instead, you feel like you are just hovering over him like an empty threat that you’ll never make good on.

He laughs and your frustration flashes in your chest hot, agitation at its peak. “You know, if you wanted to kiss , you could have just asked.”

“I do not want to kiss you!” you snarl, refusing to take the accusation in silence.

“Oh? You don’t?”

“Hell no!”

“What a shame! I made sure to put on one of Nobara’s lip masks on last night so my lips would be super soft today!”

In a moment of weakness, your eyes flicker to his mouth and his lips curve upward in a smirk. Fuck. It doesn't matter that it was for just a split second— he caught you looking. You consider accusing him of stealing Kugisaki's skin care products to deflect the accusations that are sure to come but before you can the infinity between you dissipates unexpectedly bringing you mere inches from Gojo's infuriating face.

"Well?" he asks, voice intentionally seductive, his warm breath perfuming your face. You manage to suppress a shiver. It's an act. It's an act. He's just trying to get under your skin. "Wanna see for yourself?"

Your refusal lingers at the tip of your tongue— stuck for some reason you don't care to delve into right now.

"Come on." He almost sounds like he's pleading with you, and you keep reminding yourself that the bastard is just fucking with you. "I promise they're really soft."

Your eyes, traitorous things that they are, try to look again, but you force your gaze upward. Maybe if you try headbutting him again it'll work. There's nothing between you now, right?

No harm in trying.

You shift, trying to conceal your movements as best you can before going in for another headbutt. Surely Gojo will put infinity between you when he realizes that you're trying again, saving you both from what could be a massive headache.

But he doesn't.

You end up stopping yourself this time— your mouths even closer now. Too close. You finally take notice of your heart thumping wildly in your chest, the sound echoing in your ears. You should move. You need to move. Now. If you don't, one weird move from either of you will likely close the distance between you.

It's unfortunate for you that Gojo is a fan of weird moves.

He shifts beneath you, just slightly, his chin tilting up and you feel like a thread that's just snapped in two. You reel backwards, repelled by the thought of kissing Satoru Gojo, rejecting the thought, the notion, that for the breadth of a second your lips connected. It didn't happen. It didn't. You still want to wipe your mouth though, just in case. You don’t because you don’t want him to think that maybe there was contact.

Beneath you, Gojo laughs again, amused as he always is. Unsure of what to expect, you jump off him and assume a defensive stance. He rises so that he's sitting up, and you can't tell for sure with that blindfold but you feel like he's watching you.

"I think that's enough for today," he says, pushing himself to his feet. You eye him nervously, keeping your guard up in case it's a fake out. Gojo walks past you nonchalantly and you think that's confirmation that he really is done for the day.

"It was fun," he remarks cheerfully and the fact that it sounds like he means it annoys you a little. Then, his voice drops as he adds, "We should do it again some time."

The way his voice sounds makes it seem like you've just wrapped up a date and not a fight. It makes you feel funny inside and you scowl as you turn to face him, fully intending to tell him to shut up.

But you don't.

Satoru Gojo instead blows you a kiss, immobilizing you before he saunters out the door looking far too pleased with himself.

You stare, your heartbeat erratic and your face warmed by what you're determined to call rage.

#gojo x reader #gojo x you #satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo x you #nikuniku fics #tbh there was going to be talk of going feral and thinking about ripping his jugular with his teeth #but that didn't happen because uh the positioning of it i guess #i think it could be done with a tie yank sort of thing but that is neither here nor there #i wanna beat him up #i put a lot of my heart into this reader LMAO #as i also wanna beat him up #infinite loop!verse

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i-eat-deodorant · 6 months

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recent conversations reminded me but. so many songs by Crane Wives fit narilamb perfectly

#prove me wrong.#you can't.#currently vibing Tongues and Teeth HARD for narinder #'i am not a vessel for your good intent' is SUCH a profound thing to say for him #his love is a feral thing of teeth and claws #The Hand That Feeds is such a lamb song imo #'the hand that feeds deserves to be bitten when it beats' HITS #Allies or Enemies partly inspired some fics #of course there's Curses but everyone knows that one. still a banger though #paviscreams

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smoshpvnk · 22 days

Note

”do you mind if i smoke” as a dialogue prompt! (Love it cuz its from one of my fave TV Girl songs :3)

ARROW MY BELOVED okay i think of sarah christ,,, i’ll do it based on a fic i’m writing that i probably won’t finish (prompt from here)

All Augustus remembered was picking up the GameBoy. Everything before that was a temporary blur.

“Who the hell are you? Where’s The Chosen?!” a woman’s voice asked defensively.

Augustus pushed his glasses out of his face, rubbing his eyes and looking around, completely disoriented. Slowly, his memory came back—and his instinct to raise his hands in innocence. The woman before him wore an army green jacket, a golden badge around her neck, and a hand ghosting over a gun on her hip.

“I just picked up this GameBoy on the planet I was on,” Augustus reasoned.

She squinted at the device, then snatched it from his hand.

“Shit,” the woman grumbled, “This is my only way of tracking him.”

Augustus was still on the floor of what seemed like a trailer, leaned back on his hands. His head pounded, an incoming migraine pulsing at the sides of his skull.

“And who is that?”

“Chosen? He’s…uh…a friend of mine. I think he might be in danger,” she said, messing with the buttons of the GameBoy.

“Does he happen to have a middle part and sporty sunglasses?” Augustus asked her.

The woman looked up, shocked.

“Yes,” she said, “Did you happen to see him? Before you got teleported here?”

“Uh…I didn’t see him, but his face was plastered all over the screens of the planet I was on.”

She thought for a moment, then asked, “Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”

Augustus scratched his chin.

“What about you? You said he’s in danger, I’d prefer to know who I’m giving information to if it also threatens my safety, thank you very much,” he said bluntly.

The woman set the GameBoy down on the counter of her kitchenette.

“It’s Sarah,” she said, “Sarah Christ, ex-detective.”

Augustus waited, then realized she was waiting for his introduction.

“Oh. I’m Augustus St. Cloud,” he said, “Food enthusiast and five star Yelp reviewer. Do you have any mayonnaise?”

Sarah furrowed her brows, “Maybe, in the fridge. Why do you want mayonnaise?”

“Well, one, I’m hungry, and two, I’m getting a headache, maybe from that little transporter video game device thingy, so that’ll cure it right up,” Augustus explained.

“You’re telling me mayonnaise will cure a headache?”

“Not a headache, dear Sarah,” Augustus said, “My headache. My body loves mayonnaise, so eating some will make it feel better.”

He couldn’t quite read her facial expression, but she had a reaction nonetheless. Still, she went into her fridge, finding a jar of mayonnaise and offering him a seat at her small dining table.

“Thanks. Do you have a spoon? I may eat mayonnaise straight from the jar because my brain is spicy, but I’m not a heathen.”

“Sure,” Sarah retrieved a spoon, placing it on the table and then sitting down. She watched in awe as Augustus fed himself spoonfuls of the condiment, feeling the need to treat herself to a stress reliever in the moment. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all, Detective. This is your spooky trailer, after all.”

GAHHH this was so fun thank you arrow !!!

#i didn’t go back and edit this so hopefully it isn’t complete nonsense #asks #sarah christ #augustus st cloud #smosh #smosh fics #smosh fanfic #ask games #writing #my writing #p #feral-teeth #smosh nintendogs #nintendogs

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matchbet-allofthetime · 1 year

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okay but what's the point of making Merchant fanart if he's not a little creepy?

just a bit Not Right?

i need him with too-wide of eyes and a too-wide smile, teeth too sharp and scars a bit too deep.

i need him with a roman or arched nose of some kind, curved and gorgeous

blue eyes? don't care, you turn the lights off and they go orange-red.

take off the mask? he's got facial scars and you can see some of his teeth even when his mouth is closed.

open his mouth? he'll let out a few long, evidently inhuman tongues and wrap them around your wrist while he grins.

him once he sheds the coat? has a bit of heft and fluff to him, OR he's INCREDIBLY skinny and just ever-so-slightly disproportionate because it's MERCHANT

he's GOTTA be fuckin' creepy, 'tis what makes him so gorgeous tbh

in both the original and the remake, he was always somewhat OFF in so many ways despite being so friendly.

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heresronnie21 · 2 years

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I toppled the black throne of Kronos, and destroyed the Titan Krios with my own hand

#this drawing isn’t doing what I wanted it to and I blame Jason for being a defiant little shit #eventually one day imma write a fic of this scene #and it will be gory #jason grace #pjo hoo toa #heroes of olympus #the lost hero #jason pjo #pjo #Jason my feral wolf son you have every right to rip people apart with your teeth and hands #chew he goddamn face off #rip he throat out #one day I will redraw this as a cool ass ink illustration with gold ink ichor and it’ll look cool as hell #one day when I’m more skilled

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coffee-at-annies · 6 months

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Thinking about EK’s hug for Jarry after that goal. How can you not ship it

#love to have a new fandom bicycle #who am I pairing with EK today? yes.#truly the fact that there isn’t celebratory smut about the goal on ao3 yet is a mark of shame on the fandom #we can do better #anyway this thought brought to you by the current plotbunny of #nesting!fic where feral jars drags ek into the nest by his teeth clamped on ek’s jersey sleeve (w/ Tanger there too as jar’s usual partner)#rpf mention #chit chat

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xamaxenta · 1 year

Note

*scuttles out of an alley in a trench coat* hey kid

I got what yer lookin for right here

https://archiveofourown.org/works/46807789/chapters/120575710

—

This section is straight fucking fire dude this entire fic youre just

#I AM GOING TO FUCKING MURDER KICK MY BEDNJOLY SHIT #GOING ABSOLUTELY CRAZZZYYYYYYYYYYYY #you know those crusty feral stick figure gifs with all the blood ajd teeth #me memmememememememme rifht now over this fic im goring it as we speak #HHHRHRHHR GRRRRRRR SNARLING I LOVE KATAKURI #i want to see Ace get absolutely destroyed by this man

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feral-teeth · 4 months

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This bed is on fire with passionate love

(it’s the best thing that you’ve ever had, the best thing that you’ve ever, ever had)

by Arrow Valentine (feral_tooth on archiveofourown.org) for Arthur @tommybones

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Summary: Spencer likes Courtney. A lot. But he also really likes Tommy.

Rating: Mature No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M, Multi, Other Fandom: Smosh Relationship: Courtney Miller x Spencer Agnew x Tommy Bowe

Additional Tags: She/Her and They/Them Pronouns for Courtney Miller, Movie Night, Cuddling & Snuggling, Character Analysis, Neck Kissing, Sleepy Cuddles, Sleepy Kisses, Queer Character, Queer Themes, Nonbinary Character, Sexual Tension, Internalized Homophobia, Internal Conflict, Neurodiversity, Synesthesia, Kissing, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Polyamory, RPF

Read under the line <3

Spencer likes Courtney.

A lot.

But he also really likes Tommy.

And that shouldn’t be allowed.

At least that’s what society tells him time and time again.

Not exactly directly to his face.

But anything around it just feels… taboo.

Growing up, Spencer never really understood why people would only date and marry one person at a time, cause it seemed so boring.

He loves the idea of holding two others hands, and can’t imagine himself next to only one face when he goes down the aisle.

What he saw on TV as a kid was always only two people in a relationship.

Starting with a man and a woman.

Then later in his life, when people became more open to the ‘lifestyle’, it turned into two people with any gender.

But it was still two people.

Like pillars.

standing side by side.

Totally equal.

Equally balanced.

It feels unbalanced to Spencer though.

He enjoyed the idea of having more when it came to the people in his relationships.

He also had a crush on basically everyone he met.

Or whoever was hot.

So how could he choose?

Why did he have to choose?

It felt unfair to him.

So now when he’s lying in bed with his friends Tommy and Courtney, all of them wrapped up in each other's arms, he shouldn’t be feeling this way.

He should only want one of them.

One part of him feels like what he was doing was wrong.

That he had to choose one person. To send one away to the other room and continue doing what they were doing without the other.

But another part of him knew what they were doing was so right.

Lying there, hugging, felt so electric. He felt the most alive he had ever felt in a long time. It was like there was a constant electric current running through him, electricity shooting through his body and out of his fingers.

Spencer has always been extremely close friends with both Courtney and Tommy from the beginning of his time at Smosh.

When the three of them were together, it was like something clicked into place.

Like three lego pieces that were meant to be together.

Spencer has always been quiet around others. But not when Courtney and Tommy were around.

Courtney brings him out of his shell, and encourages him to be more open with others. And to be more confident with himself and his talents and strengths.

With Tommy however, Spencer becomes the loudest one in the room. Tommy just has that effect on him. But Tommy is always watching and listening with open ears, smiling at Spencer’s dumb rants and vulgar jokes.

When Spencer became the director of the Smosh Games channel, it was Tommy and Courtney that he told first. They both immediately cheered, Courtney and Tommy squealing, squeezing him into a big bear hug as they spun him around in the air.

Ever since that hug, being so close to the both of them, a spark grew in Spencer’s stomach.

And no matter how hard he tried to blow out the flame or stifle it, it just got brighter and louder.

No matter how hard he tried.

He had always been attracted to Courtney and Tommy respectively.

Courtney is so encouraging and personable with others, with an amazing style and personality to match.

Tommy with his witty, quick and dark personality. He has a shyness to him that Spencer finds charming. Spencer would always make jokes to try and see that part of him for a split second.

Courtney and Tommy were also both so hot.

It didn't help working with them and hanging out with them almost every week to stifle those thoughts.

Those thoughts of possibly.

Those thoughts that maybe he was attracted to both of them? Starting to swarm.

But then so did the guilt.

And the shame that stabbed him in the back of his mind for wanting both of them when the world pushed for him to only choose one of them.

Sure, he’s had crushes on people at the same time. But there was never anyone who he wanted to step into something more with like Courtney and Tommy.

They had also mostly been celebrities he had multiple crushes on at the same time, but he felt like that didn’t really count.

Not really.

But oh god did he want both of them.

This type of cuddling feels different for Spencer. It felt like there was more tension in the air.

It was also going on for a really, really long time.

Before this, Spencer, Courtney and Tommy were all watching a movie on the couch. But they decided to move to the bed since it was starting to get dark outside and they wanted to be more comfortable.

As soon as the movie was set up and they sat on the bed, they all immediately gravitated towards each other like magnets.

Spencer and Courtney were always close. Especially Courtney, with the way they would always be touching an arm or a leg when she would talk to him.

But Tommy usually was more reserved with his hands in public. Keeping them close to his body when he was at the office. Looking over his shoulder before resting his palm on Spencer’s arm.

Feeling like he would get caught somehow if he was too handsy with him.

Maybe it’s the gay guilt embedded into his skin from the beginning.

To not get too close to someone of the same gender in public.

Just in case.

Spencer was also a bit more reserved with touching others.

But he was happy to cop a feel at Tommy’s arm when the cast ever mentioned him working out. Enjoying the feeling of his strong muscles against his hand.

Tommy was in fact, getting stronger. And Spencer noticed how strong Tommy was getting over the past couple of months.

Even if he was shy about it, Tommy was looking even better than before. So much more fit. And, to Spencer’s delight, and in his own words, so much more tastier than before.

Tommy also had a boyfriend before, so he always felt off limits to Spencer. Like he was safe from his feelings developing into something more because it couldn't go anywhere.

It felt safer to Spencer when Tommy and his boyfriend were in what Spencer knew was a monogamous relationship.

But then Tommy and his boyfriend broke up.

And when Spencer heard the news, his ears couldn’t help but perk up.

He couldn’t stop his thoughts from swirling about how nice Tommy would look in his bed.

After Tommy and his boyfriend broke up, Spencer immediately became the support system for Tommy.

Spencer told himself it wasn't just an excuse to get closer to him.

But he couldn't erase his what if thoughts.

Spencer especially couldn't erase the thoughts of Tommy’s lips. And what they must taste like.

Since Spencer hadn’t filled the role of supportive best friend for his crush during a breakup before, it was new to him. But he liked the feeling of being a shoulder to lean on when Tommy needed.

He finally started allowing himself to get closer to Tommy. To feel his muscles, to flirt with him on and off camera whenever he could. It was worth it to get closer to the man that he craved so desperately.

He played them off as jokes, but he always blushed after saying them.

On the other hand, Spencer also got closer with Courtney when they came out to him as nonbinary.

He already knew that Courtney was pansexual, so Spencer was immediately supportive.

Spencer was a part of the queer community, sure, but he also felt like he was on the outskirts of it. His interests and his wants for more in his relationships were placed outside of the social norm, even for the group of outcasts.

No matter how far away Spencer felt from this so-called fully accepting community, He still knew how to support his friend and knew the lingo for what they were going through.

He made sure to do more research, though, as he wanted to be more supportive to the best of his ability.

He even drove Courtney to a gender therapist so that she could explore their gender identity and expression, and to talk more about the gender dysphoria they were dealing with. Spencer enjoyed helping Courtney out with anything she needed. He wanted to be as supportive as he could be for his other best friend.

Tommy was also immediately supportive when Courtney came out as nonbinary.

Both Spencer and Tommy made sure to use their pronouns right away, and they even threw a small party when she came out to more people around the office and to their friends.

They were already such a close-knit group.

They were now lying on the bed, backs on the headboard, slipping down into a more comfortable position. Their eyes were glued forward to the TV as Jurassic Park was playing.

It was probably the third time Spencer watched Jurassic Park this week.

His response to any ridicule is that it was his comfort movie.

Both Tommy and Courtney found that endearing and valid as they both dabbled in being neurodivergent, and both had their own respective shows and movies that were on repeat when they needed some kind of comfort in their life. So they never judged him.

Giant dinosaurs were taking up the entirety of the screen while the three comparatively tiny actors stood and gazed up at them in awe in their bisexual-coded outfits.

“That’s us!” Courtney giggles into Spencer’s shoulder, pointing and mimicking the amazed look the characters held on their faces. Tommy and Spencer caught onto the bit right away, making the same face as each character on the screen and joking together about it.

Tommy laughs into his hand, falling into Spencer while they all have a giggling fit over the truth in her words.

It really was them.

After the fit of giggles fade, they all focus their attention back on the movie. They all felt a warm glowing ball of light that was growing in the pit of each of their stomachs. All three of their lights were mixing together, glowing brightly together, warming up the room and them in the process.

For once, Spencer isn't paying attention while watching his favorite comfort movie. He couldn't stop thinking about the two stunning people who he called best friends that were in his arms.

It was like magic. It finally hits Spencer who he's with and the situation they're all in, wrapped up in each other's arms in bed.

Spencer finally realized how safe and accepted he finally felt, and he truly found people that understood him.

He glows even brighter. The warmth glows so brightly that it warms Courtney and Tommy. They were feeling it too.

Spencer leans back against the headboard, sighing in contentment as Tommy and Courtney cuddle back into him. Tommy lies to his right, but as on top of him as he can be without squishing him. Tommy’s arms and legs lay over on top of Spencer, wrapping his body closer towards him. And Courtney does the same.

The movie is long forgotten and is just a distant memory after the credits rolled and a blank screen sits on the tv.

They were too busy to turn it off. Arms were being rubbed, the softest nuzzle, and a sigh from Courtney into Spencer’s ear made him blush. Not to mention the fact that Spencer noticed Tommy’s fingertips rubbing circles on his back, giving him goosebumps and chills along his spine.

The tension was growing. The whole group could feel it.

Courtney nuzzles into Spencer’s neck, lightly grazing her lips over his neck.

Tommy followed suit, kissing the other side of his neck.

Spencer couldn’t help but giggle at the feeling, ticklish.

The warmth that was growing within him was something he had never felt before. The nerves in his neck were tingling, flowing all the way down his back.

“Is that ok?” Courtney whispered into Spencer’s ear, concerned.

Spencer leans back on his elbows and moves his head slightly to look at Courtney, a soft smile on his face.

He noticed she was furrowing her brow, a worried look in her eye. Worried that she had stepped over a line. But she also had a glaze over her eyes and a soft smile on her lips.

He nodded, looking to Tommy to see his reaction. Tommy smiled at him, a dazed look in his eye. Smiling and giddy.

They all looked like we were drunk, dazed and content with each other. With messy hair and soft smiles. It was like where they were felt right.

Like they were on a whole other planet, floating in space with just the three of them together, and they could watch movies all day in bed together if they wanted to.

Tommy leaned down and kissed Spencer. Softly, tentatively, as this was the first kiss between them.

His kiss felt like soda pop fizzing in Spencer’s skull.

It reminded him of a hot summer's day. Popsicles dripping onto his tongue and onto the sidewalk. He was a relief from the heat, like a refreshing glass of lemonade.

Spencer’s brain bubbled, the sensation catching him off guard as he had never felt it before.

He fell into the kiss, seeing sparkles and warm colors moving like blobs of paint being traced with a paintbrush behind his eyes. Like soft ghosts of light were having a dance party.

Tommy’s lips were soft, but still rough from the dry air and the coldness of what LA can give. Tommy’s mustache and beard scratched against Spencer’s skin lightly, as if it was a group of tiny little hands that wanted to get closer to his face. Their stubble rubbed against each other, causing friction that heat up their faces.

Courtney kissed and nipped at the skin on Spencer’s neck after a while of watching. Grazing her lips along his stubble, the rough sensation tickled their lips.

Both of their lips on him radiated through Spencer’s body, sending waves of shivers through him.

After Spencer was satisfied, and taking a long time to taste Tommy’s lips to the full extent that he could eagerly, he wanted to taste Courtney. He was craving her lips.

Spencer leaned down towards them. Courtney awkwardly shuffles up with a laugh that broke the tension a bit as they waited for Courtney to meet Spencer’s lips for the first time.

When she finally did, it was like fireworks. He literally saw fireworks behind his eyes. Bright flashes of strong, bold colours were dancing behind his eyes, pulsating and moving as if it were the perfect symphony and choreographed for him.

It was different than kissing Tommy, but equally as delicious and sweet.

They tasted different. Both delicious in their respective tastes.

Tommy had a deeper musky flavour to Spencer. He tasted like the coffee he just drank and dark chocolate.

Courtney tasted sweeter than Tommy. She tasted warm, with a hint of cotton candy. They also tasted like apples and cinnamon, the oatmeal she decided to eat for her midnight snack.

They both tasted so good to Spencer.

But he liked the taste of them mixed together best.

“You taste so good” Courtney murmurs between their long, stretched out kisses that stretch like toffee.

“Fuck, You’re so hot,” Spencer moans into Courtney’s mouth, leaning back over to kiss Tommy again, feeling new and different sensations than his first kiss with him. “And you’re so hot” Spencer mumbles into Tommy’s mouth. Kissing Tommy harder than before, he was inspired by their words to be more confident.

Tommy moans into the kiss between them, too caught up in the feeling to really say anything coherent, but sounded enough like what he just said to feel satisfied.

He felt so comfortable kissing them. Like this was what they were meant to be doing the entire time

They were all a blur of soft touches, first time kisses and tentative movements that got more fluid as they went along.

It became more sloppy, more lazy, as they started to enjoy the feeling and cared less about their inhibitions.

It also got more rough, but it never went away from them. They were all in the moment, still there but also a million miles away in pleasure.

The most important thing is that Spencer had never felt more right in the moment than he ever had before.

He’s had partners in the past, sure, but there was always something missing, like there could always be something more.

He didn’t want to, but inevitably he always ended up breaking up with them because there was always something off about the relationship. But he could never quite put his finger on it.

He always made the excuse as the other not being the right person for him.

And now he knew why.

Because there was always someone else missing.

And as they slowly stopped kissing, breathless with beet red faces and panting from the intensity of it all, they unanimously decided that they were going to wait to doing something more.

This was all so new to the three of them, so they were definitely going to talk more about it in the morning.

But for now, they were too spent. They were making new paths in their lives, afterall.

So they cuddled closer and settled into the comfortable silence.

With Spencer wedged between his two best friends, he was the most content he had been in a long time.

Maybe even in his whole life.

He also felt excited to see what was next for the three of them.

And Courtney and Tommy were too.

Courtney and Tommy felt like the last two puzzle pieces in the empty spaces in his heart. And then when he finally found them, they fit just right.

#smosh fic #spourtommy #tommybones #tommy bowe #smoshblr #spencer agnew #smosh valentines day exchange #feral-teeth fics #feral teeth fics #feral-teeth smosh fics #feral teeth smosh fics #courtney miller #smosh

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wint3r-h3art · 2 years

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currently imagining captain strange using his sword (AN ACTUAL SWORD OKAY) to open up reader’s corset 🦋🦋🦋

Ok, I was gonna say, oh he’ll use his sword, alright 😏. But like, if he shreds her corset, wouldn’t her daddy finds out 🥺👉👈

#linda answered #he’ll definitely use his actual sword and maybe his teeth #feral captain goes brr brr #fic: the princess & her captain

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lilpomelito · 24 days

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I go feral for for fics where Eddie is like "I'm a metalhead drug dealer🤘😈, I'm dangerous, I'm from the wrong side of the tracks☠️💉⚠️, I'm bad news baby, you should be scared, I'll eat you up and spit you out⛓️🐺⛔️, you should run, you're a suburban spoiled rich kid and I'm exactly the bad news your mommy warned you about❤️‍🔥🔪😏" and Steve, who fought an interdimensional demon with a bat full of nails, who protected children from the equivalent of radioactive rabid dogs, who endured russian torture, who saw a little girl who was the experiment of a shady government organization explode full grown adults with her mind, who survived a demon bat attack with only his fists and teeth as weapons, he's like "ok sweetie, I'll pick you up at six 🥰✨"

#eddie’s like: I’m dangerous #and steve’s like: you promise? 🥺#steddie #steve harrington #stranger things #eddie munson

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anantaru · 13 days

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imagine: dating alhaitham and waiting for the right time to have sex for the first time :))) (ps. ur my favorite writer <3 xx)

cw. his cock is big in this fic (and in general), passionate and hot and sexy and yum yum bark, fem! reader

alhaitham and you wanted to wait for the right time before you took the next step in your relationship, when the both of you would truly be ready to have sex for the first time— and when he touches you within the fullness of the night, his personality shows two different types.

one being reflective and patient, inspecting the way your body reacts to him while on the other hand, he was shapeless, needy and almost, feral.

he wets his lips in concentration, his weight lingering against your stomach as you couldn't stop your body from shivering out of anticipation that shot through your muscles and pores before looking at the lust in his eyes, the hunger in his expression.

the softness of your skin blossoms beneath his hand as his ears were weakened by the sound of your angelic tunes and whimpers, his finger tips set out with a plan to caress and stroke every nook and cranny of your skin.

"are you alright? d-does that feel good?" he asks and kisses along your cheek, his solid erection sliding through your wetness as you nod eagerly.

answering him with a tranquil whisper, his cock pounds in and out of your warmth as his strong hands instantly grip at your wrists to draw them above your head, pinning them there.

"it— it's so good—" and after your moans, your body warns you with goosebumps rising on your skin in combination with your back arching, your head floating as you gasp out his name again, each time getting louder, needing him close, your teeth digging into his shoulder as gently as you could.

inside this inferno, you struggled, desperate to touch alhaitham too, you almost feel bad that he was the one doing all the work when in reality, the scribe wanted nothing more but to make you feel good tonight, stroke and lick and touch you like you deserve.

your breathing was ragged at how he continuously changed between being overly sweet and caressing to rough and ruthless. the first new taste of his hips smacking forward and beginning to roughly pound you made your blood sing, your heart thumping in your chest.

alhaitham swallows a sound that certainly could not be a whimper, it was more— you simply were too much for him, feeling too tight when he bulges you apart on every single thrust of his cock, your pussy squeezing him like you're going to end up suffocate him dearly.

you stifle a shudder that no doubt promised an imminent climax as you prepared to take it for him, cum with him at the same time, aching by the solid bulk burning in and out your hole, inch by inch until you're moaning into each others lips.

#genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin smut #genshin impact smut #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham smut #genshin x you #genshin impact x you #al haitham x reader #al haitham smut #genshin impact drabbles #alhaitham x you #genshin drabbles

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yeyinde · 4 months

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

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

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

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

DEAD DOVE. SMUT. 18+

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Ghost never really understood was the box.

Shove it into a box.

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

“Up here."

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

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

The implication is stark. Heavy.

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

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

His problem, specifically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he's not wrong.

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

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

The rumour mill in the barracks is insatiable.

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

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

Or, whatever's left of it, anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wants.

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

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

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

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

Cold-hearted, sure—

But he likes sweet things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He must think Ghost is some sort of psychopath—)

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

Then comes you.

And the forfeiture of his self-control.

You're trouble of a different kind.

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

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

But oh, do you pack a punch—

At first, you think he's homeless.

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

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

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

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

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

Well. Shit.

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

His teeth ache (so, so bad—).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wonders if you can, too.

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

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

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

nah. bury him out back—)

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

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

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

And then—

You fluster. “Sorry, I just thought—”

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

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

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

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

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

Well—

That's new.

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

Him.

Ah.

Sweet, sweet girl.

(So naïve.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A reward, huh?

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

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

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

The window brightens. Room number two.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silly bird.

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

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

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

And ah—

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you—”

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

“Simon. Simon Riley.”

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

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

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

You must think him quite the gentleman. So trusting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bludgeon to his self-control—

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

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

But he’s a good mutt. Good—

Until the text.

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

His sweet girl.

(you fuckin’ mutt—)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Odd considering he's dead—

“Sounds like you will be.”

“It's not like that—”

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

“I don’t—I wouldn't—”

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

“It is.”

“Oh? How's tha’?”

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

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

But that's later, and right now—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you relent.

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

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

Friend. Friends.

He'll have to do something about that.

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

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

Because the thing is—

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

It isn't just fantasy, either.

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

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

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

Same thing.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simon loves it when you cry.

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

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

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

“Thank you, Simon—”

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

He thinks it's cute.

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

“Anytime, pet.”

And you're perfect, too.

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

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

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

It's said fondly. Full of love—

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

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

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

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

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

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

He clings to it.

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

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

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

Stupid fuckin’ mutt.

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

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

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

Hide it. Put it away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like Tommy.

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

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

(he did, too—)

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

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

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

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

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

Communion.

Ghost cocks his head in consideration.

(your bird is too big for a cage—

—but maybe a collar would do.)

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

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

Not anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not if he eats you first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(sick, sick sick, wrong—)

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

Damnation built by his own hands.

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

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

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

And you—

An outlier.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sad, but—

Not enough to stop himself.

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

And then he spits on your bare cunt.

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

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

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

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

You never are.

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

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

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

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

Yet—

come to Durham.

i’ll think about it.

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

Ah, well—

Lesson learned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Made for him, and—

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

—“A perfect fit.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything narrows into a needlepoint.

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

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

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

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

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

“Simon—”

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

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

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

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

“So’ry, Simon—”

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

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

Not anymore. Not ever again.

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

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

It's for your own good.

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

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

The only purchase he finds is in your demise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wants, wants—

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

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

Pity it’s not an option.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Simon, Simon—”

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

(belly full of dirt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More.

And he gives it to you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You want this. His spoiled rotten bird.

So, he gives it to you.

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

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

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

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

(please)

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

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

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

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

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

Both, maybe. Everything. All of it.

Always—

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

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

Nirvana exists between your thighs.

Home, too.

(well—

not yet.)

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

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

(Bone nausea.

A death sentence.)

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

He wants it: this dream so tantalisingly close.

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

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

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

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

(mine, mine, mine—)

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

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

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

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

It’s his apotheosis. His end.

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

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

(silly girl—

His pretty little perigee.)

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

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

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

“Fuckin’ hell—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Las’ night.”

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

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

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

He almost purrs.

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

“Bit rowdy.”

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

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

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

“Did you use a—?”

He dips his chin. “I might ‘ave.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But—

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

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

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

Case in point:

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

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

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

You don't even notice.

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

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

(stupid fuckin’ mutt—)

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

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

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

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

And it’s all so sweet.

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

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

But only just.

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

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

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

(Too much, maybe? Or too soon—?

if only you knew—)

He finds it charming, really.

Still—

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

Fuckin' Christ—

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

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

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

Maybe not in the way you'd want.

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

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

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

So—

Home it is.

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

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

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

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

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

But Simon is nothing if not devoted, and so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This little glass jar domicile.

A billet in the mountains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His budding rose.

He coos. “You alright?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But oh. How you try—

His sweet, sweet girl.

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

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

So close he catch the embers in his hand.

“Simon… We should—talk. I, uh—”

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

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

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

but:

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

“Yes, Simon—”

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

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

He leans down, and whispers in your crown—

“Good girl—”

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

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

Click.

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

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

#simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #ghost x reader #goddd this is foul #and was supposed to be up hours agooo but Nahanni closed at 5 today oops #cod #call of duty #simon ghost riley x reader #cod smut #simon riley smut #simon riley cod #ghost call of duty x reader #ghost cod x reader #in many ways this is a psa on the symptoms of rabies

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