#i am fr so scared to tag people ahekgheg

[stacispratt]

unnatural as it feels

okay i do not feel like this is a good piece of writing at all BUT it’s the first thing i’ve finished in over a month so i’m gonna try n cut myself a little slack. so here’s a john/wes/ell thing i’ve been writing for way too long!!! thank you to @consumedkings for letting me write with your girl, i love her <3 also tagging @oorah22 @lilwritingraven @ohfaiths !!

“Okay, close your eyes.”

“I’m not closing my eyes.”

“Come on," John drawls, "be a good sport now, dearest.” He squeezes her hip, all while he has a shit-eating grin on his face. Every inch of him screams pleased beyond belief, which almost, almost makes Elliot smile back at him. She feels a caveat coming, though, so she just gives him a very, very dry look.

“John.”

“Fine, spoil all the fun," John huffs and squeezes her waist affectionately once more. She smacks at his arm. "The present will still be a nice surprise," he says, and takes her over the threshold to the dining room. He gestures wide, both hands extended toward her present, fingers spread wide.

Ell stops short, a foot past the doorway. “... You’re not serious." She looks from the dining table to John, face blank, gone flat with disbelief at her husband. "You’re fucking shitting me.”

Wesley Beltran is chained to one of their fucking dining room chairs. Literally, actually chained. Bound all over, across his shoulders, around his midsection, all the way around his forearms, his calves. Like John is unwilling to allow any possibility of a repeat of Wes's escape from his Confession.

“No," John says, grin barely contained, so near bursting onto his lips that Elliot can hear it in his damn voice. "Not kidding. I got him. Presenting, Deputy Wesley Beltran, over for dinner.”

Elliot stares at Wes, then cuts her eyes to John. “He’s fucking unconscious, you moron.”

“Yeah, and?" John huffs, arms crossed over his chest. Elliot levels a capital-L Look at him. "The point is that he’s here, and you got what you wanted. What’s the problem?” he snipes. "You wanted Wes over for dinner, you've got him."

"Are you fucking deranged?" Elliot snaps. "I said I wanted Wes to accept our invitation to dinner, not for a second attempt at his Confession in our dining room!"

"It's not a Confession! He's just— you know, here! Like you wanted!"

"You're insufferable," Ell hisses, but she tugs him in by the shirt collar for a kiss anyway. "You idiot," she mutters against his lips. "Sit the fuck down."

                                                            /

Wes wakes up to see a plate set before him on a dining table.

He blinks. Maybe it's a hallucination from the Bliss. His vision is a little sparkly, but nothing bad— nothing like when he's with Faith, when he normally hallucinates. His vision's not cloudy, not tainted green, and normally that means he couldn’t be hallucinating, but there's a plate with a– a stupid fucking steak on his plate, so he has to be hallucinating.

"There, he's awake," someone says, with a kind of are you happy now? tone of voice.

Wes blinks, slow and sticky, then, as delicate as he can so his head doesn't pound, raises his eyes.

John and Elliot.

He's– sitting at a table with John Seed and Elliot Honeysett.

"Oh," he mumbles. He tries to move his hands, but metal digs into him from his elbow to his wrist. He glances down. Chains are pretty much… everywhere. "Oh," he says again, then shakes his head a little. "Are we– dinner?"

"See?" John says, gesturing to Wes as he looks to Ell. "Even Wes gets what's going on. He's fine with it."

Fine with it. Wes lets out a clipped, hysterical laugh. "My– m'hands are bound. I can't eat dinner."

John scoffs. "We're not going to fucking eat," he snaps. Then he settles on the arm of Wes's chair, grabs his jaw in one hand, and kisses him.

Wes grunts but leans into it anyway, shoulders flexing against the chain. John purrs and slips his hand up to cup Wes's cheek. "Yeah, there you are, my good boy. Our good boy."

Elliot scoffs as a chair scratches back against the floor. "He's not good. He's terribly behaved, just like you."

"Mm." John doesn't pull from Wes to hum, just keeps their lips pressed together. Coasts his hand up into Wes's hair to slowly curl his fingers into it, closes his fist and tugs gently to make Wes whimper. John leans away with an inhale. Smiles as he watches Wes list toward him and pull against John's fist in his hair. 

John turns his smug smile onto Ell. "See? He can behave."

"He can speak for himself," Wes mumbles.

"Yeah, but you can't," Ell huffs from somewhere behind Wes, completely ignoring him. "Get off our houseguest."

John huffs but crawls off Wes all the same and stands just to his right, while Ell settles at his left. She smooths her hand through Wes's hair, eases John's fist to relax and slip away. "John's so indelicate," she murmurs, as if in apology. "I tell him I'd like you to accept my dinner invitation and he drugs you. Dumbass." She sighs. "I am the one who married him."

Wes nods listlessly. "Would've loved to have steaks with you," he mumbles. "Wanna—" he pauses to cough, then picks up again, "Wanna let me, uh– simmer off the Bliss and we can… continue like civilized people?"

Ell sighs and strokes her hand through his hair again. "God, you are just like John," she mutters.

Wes's eyebrows scrunch together. "You take that back," he slurs. 

"Watch it," John growls. "You're lying anyways. The only reason I had to drug you is because you refused to come over in the first place, after my wife and I invited you over kindly. Three times."

"I hate to break this to you," Wes mutters, eyes lidded and fixed on Ell's face while she continues to pet his hair— trails her fingers down from his curls to his jaw, then up and back down again. She smiles at him, sugar-sweet. Wes shakes his head a little to focus back up. "But– but the two of you keep… keep me pretty busy. I don't… have time."

"Hm." Ell rubs her knuckles into his cheek. "You have time now. Why don't you sleep it off, huh? We can eat when you wake up." Her eyes cut away toward John. "Isn't that right, dearest."

Wes eyes her cautiously. "If you drug me again I'm going to be so fucking pissed," he mutters.

"We're helping you get sober," John informs him, and curls his palm over the back of Wes's neck— over the angel wings he has tattooed there. "Try to keep up."

                                                            /

Once Wes is unbound from all the fucking chains, John handcuffs his hands in front of him, and he and Ell guide Wes into bed, sandwiched between the two of them. John presses his chest to Wes's back and braces a hand over his tummy. Ell pets his eyebrow with her thumb methodically. "Comfy?" she taunts, somehow affectionate even while she does.

"You're using me," Wes murmurs, because apparently he still has no filter, even as he's starting to come down from the Bliss. "It's… not like you want me."

John huffs against the back of his neck, then leaves a kiss at the notch of his spine. "What gave you that impression, Deputy?" Wes feels him grin against his skin. "Is it because we're sharing a bed with you? Cuddling up?"

"You don't want me," Wes insists, bleary, eyes heavy with Elliot's petting, but still determined to get his point across. "I'm just a p– a pawn. You don't care about… about me."

"Well, I'm embarrassed now, Wes," Ell coos. She looks much softer like this, blonde hair half spread over the pillow and half over her shoulder. It's pretty. She's pretty.

If Wes was less sober, he’d tell her so. 

"Were John and I the only ones affected by that night?" Wes locks up. Fuck, he'd hoped they'd forgotten about that— they'd never mentioned it, and Wes figured they'd rub that kinda thing in his face if they remembered. "Don’t you remember?" she cajoles.

Wes whines and cringes back from her, eyes squeezed shut, but he can't get more than an inch away. Elliot only smiles. "You do remember," she drawls. She slips her fingers from his face to his hair. Wraps one of his curls around her finger and tugs gently. "Behind the Spread Eagle. You were havin' a smoke out back when John and I stepped out… I thought we all felt a little something. Hm?"

Felt a little something. Wes had been damn close to going home with them when Staci stepped out, looking for him, and whisked him away.

Ell smirks and taps her finger on Wes's cheek. "Yeah. We've wanted you since then. The rest of this has just been… complications." She sighs affectedly. "You're not a pawn, honey."

"Fuck," Wes breathes, eyes still shut. "Fuck."

"Get some sleep, Wes" John purrs. "We'll talk more when you're sober."

                                                             /

When Wes wakes up, they're both asleep.

I could escape, is his first thought. If I can sneak out of bed, I'm home free.

Hard, but not impossible. Wes has a feeling they’re both light sleepers. Wrangling himself out of bed, from between the two of them, from under the blankets, and levering himself up in bed, all with his hands cuffed together… it wouldn't be easy. He would almost definitely be noticed, which either means a hasty escape, handcuffed with no backup, or recapture with more precautions that time.

But it would be easy to kill one of them, is his second thought. His hands are bound in front of him— strangling one of them would be easiest, but finding a weapon isn't out of the question either. It would— in theory— be quick work to damage either John or Elliot beyond repair, before the other was awake enough to do anything about it.

And finally, very small and very quiet, in the back of his head, exists, or I could stay.

Wes could stay.

He could pretend to be asleep until one of them wakes up, or even… let his eyes shut and genuinely drift back to sleep, warm and comfortable in Seed Ranch, fucking spooning with Holland Valley's most dangerous couple. With his fucking back to John Seed.

Christ.

He'll blame it on the drugs, if it comes up, but he closes his eyes. He studies Elliot's face (remarkably, painfully peaceful in her sleep) and shuts his eyes, forces his muscles to go loose, and measures his breathing. Wills sleep to come.

God help him, Wes decides to stay.

#this is a choppy mess #i am fr so scared to tag people ahekgheg #my fic #oc: elliot honeysett #oc: wesley beltran #john seed #fc5