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fictional-men-have-my-heart · 6 months

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If you love Ghost, give this a read. It's a 3 part AU series from @halcyone-of-the-sea, who's writing I absolutely love. Check out their other AUs and works for Gaz, Price, Soap, and others!

Black Metal and Bourbon (III)

AU MASTERLIST || THE FINAL PART

PAIRING: Biker/Mechanic!Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Bartender!Reader

WORDCOUNT: 7.9k

WARNINGS: Depictions of injuries, blood, gore, abductions, death, talks about bike crashes, violence, guns, intended harm, past toxic relationship, murder, protective!Simon, suggestive content, (1) dirty joke, etc. (18+ mini-series)

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

You remember the long nights when you would sit in the empty bar and wonder why you’d never left. Why you couldn’t up and disappear like you wanted to—a bird taking flight and choosing any direction at all to travel, just as long as you didn’t stay on this branch. It wouldn’t have been hard. There wasn’t anything here that mattered to you.

This invisible string was holding you back, waiting; tying you to something that you would never understand for as long as you lived. You had dreams and aspirations.

So why hadn’t you grabbed them by the throat and dragged them along with you?

Maybe there were larger powers in that old town, a mischievous spirit that played a game of chess with the lives of its inhabitants. It certainly felt like it.

Especially when you’re flying through the air, the rain falling in slow motion as hands slash past wind to grab at your body. You recall flashes of that day. Snippets.

Even now, you feel like you see it in the third person, your form getting tossed by the momentum of the flipping motorcycle and cutting the storm—Simon’s hands reaching out and grasping you. He had dragged you into his chest, his back taking the force of the ground as you slid along the wet streets, pained grunts echoing into your soul as your panic resulted in a shocked muteness. His hands had been gripping you so tight that veins had burst, the view of the sky above you as your back conformed to his chest.

And then you’d both tumbled, rolled over and over as the screech of metal grated your ringing eardrums and pain flared like fire. Your head slammed into the front of the helmet with a smack, and nothing else is recalled.

Until now, of course.

You try to move your fingers, the tight hold of a cast over the entirety of your left forearm—the action brings a wave of weakness with it, making you grit your teeth. You’d woken up in the hospital with black dots in your vision, your body so unresponsive your mind had panicked thinking you wouldn’t be able to move at all.

And Simon?

Where was Simon? You’d been so loud with your hoarse calling that the nurses had rushed in and had to put you back under, letting you drift and brushing their hands over your head as you babbled on failing breath. Never once had your brain left you void of the mechanic’s brown eyes—his hands grabbing you, keeping you safe at the risk of his own flesh.

He hadn’t been wearing a helmet.

But now…now you were fully conscious.

“Where is he?” Your face is perhaps one of the few parts of you that was unscathed. Your legs were skinned—wrapped so tightly you couldn’t move them. While Simon’s leather jacket had saved your arms, they were still battered and bulging with blisters as big as your hand. Your forearm was broken.

The nurse shushed you, and your voice snapped. “Loralie, I’ve known you since middle school,” she pauses, lips thinning as she messes with your IV drip. “You’re going to tell me where the hell he is, or I’m going to scream that you made Braylan Holt forge your high school diploma.”

Sizzling eyes meet yours, but not even that will deter you—your heart is heard, rapid on the screen to your left.

“You’re a damn horror, Bartender.”

“You’re acting like I give a shit,” you growl and the nurse slightly moves back, never hearing that venom from you before to such a degree. “Where the fuck is Simon before I get up myself.”

It’s like a dog with fear aggression—you can’t comprehend the man you’d formed such a bond with hurt, much less here in this hospital with you and…and…

Your heart rate increases even more.

He wasn’t wearing a helmet.

“That’s not gonna happen, Sweetheart,” Loralie grits out. “You won’t be walkin’ for another week, at least. Not with all that damage—your legs were so bloody the EMTs couldn’t tell where the hell the blood was even comin’ from.”

Your working hand curls into a tight fist, teeth snapping together as you restrain a flinch. You don’t want to think about that right now.

“Simon,” you grunt, shaking.

The woman stares for a moment before sighing.

“You’re something strange, Girl. How the hell you managed to be stuck here is some mystery I can’t fathom. Fine,” she glares before a fast whisper. “But you best forget about that stint with Holt, alright? You never mention that again—”

“Already forgotten,” you grind out, impatient. Even the muddled agony from under the sheen of the pain meds couldn’t stop you. “Speak.”

“The man’s in rough shape. Hasn’t woken up yet.” Your jaw clenches tight, blood pumping like a river. A finger is leveled at you, moving in an accusing motion. “He’s lucky he didn’t die, by all accounts the shape he was in he should have. Had to go into surgery to get the bike shrapnel out of his legs.”

“Surgery?” Your eyes go wide, your voice frantic. “W-what about his head—did he hit it, or…or is he—”

“His brain waves are active.” The nurse tidies the blankets at the end of your bed. “Can’t say that about his body.”

Your throat sinches violently, and you have to look away to hide your tears. Moments later, the woman lets out an aggressive sigh, her hands moving to cross over her chest.

“That man must fucking love you,” you blank, blinking quickly as you sniffle and try to shift your expression back to fake anger.

“What…?” You ask, your tone defeated.

Loralie stares, her eyes moving to the IV only to waft back when she can gather her thoughts.

“If he hadn’t grabbed you, you would have gone right off the edge of the road into the rocks.” In the bed, your body goes as still as possible, your ears twitching at the confession. “In the middle of getting road-burned to all hell, he still grabbed you. If you would have gone over, we’d only be having one of our intensive care rooms filled up…you hear?”

You can’t say anything, only watch as the nurse finishes up her work and exits with one last look of exasperation.

Alone, your brain finally tries to comprehend what you’d just been told.

“...Simon,” you whisper to dead air long minutes later, the machines all around you beeping.

The tears come easily.

—

When your legs finally started working again, it didn’t bring you any comfort. Only Simon could do that, and seeing the looks from the other staff, they knew it as well. You couldn’t keep your full weight on your limbs, only bend the toes and knees in small intervals.

The doctor said it was a fantastic start, but you felt helpless.

You wanted to see him, yet first came the interview with the Sheriff to explain what had happened. After the details started coming back, a larger picture was formed, and when you had been able to get ahold of a phone—your own shattered and little more than a box—you’d heard a case had already been opened.

Simon’s bike had been tampered with.

After you’d given your statement, you had been surprised to find three mechanics at your door, walking in quickly and throwing over concerned looks at your busted forearm and hidden legs.

“Christ,” Soap says, a flash of anger crossing like lightning over his eyes. “You don’t hurt much, do you?”

“No,” you lie easily. “Could be worse,” your words were whispered.

John sends you an indiserable look as Gaz sips off his hat and keeps it in his grip as he frowns.

“We’re happy you’re alright, Love. Scared us half to death when we heard the news—thought the worst,” Kyle commented, the Brit’s hand running over his neck slowly.

They could all tell that you weren’t in the right mindset.

“He’s alive,” you look over to Price sharply. Those blue eyes don’t waver. “That’s all that matters. He’s alive.”

“Aye,” Johnny agrees, nodding his head and crossing his arms. A stubborn expression was on his face. “Never known someone like Simon. The man’ll push through without a doubt—just needs time to rest up.”

“I shouldn’t have agreed to go out,” you mutter, rubbing at your cheek, thinking about a man with a mangled body and skinned bones. Jesus, he needed to be alright. He had to be.

“No one could have thought that would happen,” Kyle comes over and puts a firm hand on your shoulder. “Hey, c’mon,” you look at him with a guilty face; fear under your tiny pupils. The man smiles, but it’s shaky at best. “We all know who to blame for this, yeah? Don’t go taking that from the person who needs to carry it.”

“We’ve been keeping up with it,” Soap adds, frowning. “Still no trace.”

“They haven't found him yet?” Your brows turn in with concern, a sudden paranoia entering your head—if they hadn’t found Graham, what’s to stop him from doing something like this again? Hell, if he was unhinged enough to commit attempted murder, what was stopping him from pushing those boundaries now that he’s already gone through with the former?

“We’re not going anywhere,” John seems to sense this. You look at him quickly. The man grunts, lips moving as he speaks. “Not until he’s found.”

A piece of your heart eases at that, thankfulness flooding your veins.

“...Do,” your voice pauses, and you swallow down saliva slowly before you continue. “Do you know when they’ll let me see him?”

Soap and Gaz share a glance, the Scot going to ease into the chair on the other side of the room with a low sigh.

“They’re not letting anyone in,” Kyle utters. “Not until his condition improves a bit. We tried.”

“Two weeks,” John nods to you. “They’re only giving estimates.”

Fingers twitching, you look down at your lap, the hospital bed hard under you. The words come out, and you find they’re met with a hard certainty from the men around you.

“What if they don’t find Graham?”

“...Then we will.”

—

The mechanics had all looked over their bikes for any tampering and had found none when they reported back to you—the bolts had been loosened only on Simon’s. Soap was the one who had mentioned that you might have never been the target at all, and that Graham had been a spiteful man who just wanted to make a point about his past relationships’ new attraction. The thought didn’t settle you.

All of them were undeniably worried about their friend.

You’d tried to get what you could out of the other nurses—any signs of waking or getting better, but there were only stiff looks as if it was taboo to talk about him. Like an inside joke with the devil.

The staff had finally said they would tell you themselves if there was any change in Simon’s health. It didn’t stop you from asking, though. It currently didn’t stop you from sneaking out in the middle of the night after visiting hours, either.

Your legs were still weak, sometimes going numb entirely as you dragged them over the floor. Inside your eyes, black dots swirled as you effectively dodged the front desk by taking the far back hallway; the lights above your head were too bright and too loud.

Your arm burned something awful.

Eyes blinking rapidly, you pant as you go from room to room, not stopping even to breathe before room fourteen makes your soul pull in on itself like a crow holding a bell. The bit of metal jingles, attached to a red string that flutters in the wind—reaching back to the wreath it was stolen from.

Not understanding the instinctual feeling, you grasp the handle and push open the door with more force than you’re able to push out of you; your working arm quivering violently.

But the sight behind the door is something you would cross mountains for.

Simon lies still on the bed, attached to so many machines he seems more like a cyborg than a man. Over his face, an oxygen mask takes the place of a balaclava, and the right side of flesh is patched with so many bandages the bulk makes your stomach drop.

“Simon,” you whisper, stuttering as your blood falls internally to pool at your feet.

Walking over as quickly as you’re able, you pause at the side of his bed, nearly falling over as your knees buckle. You lean your weight on the frame and take a deep breath.

This man saved your life.

You look at him, unable to say anything—unable to utter a sarcastic quip. Your hand stutters in its course through the sterile air, but at the very end of it, your skin settles over Simon’s hand; the limb on his chest.

“Simon,” you say again, licking your lips, fingers squeezing his tattoos as if to bring the images to life. “Can you hear me, Brown-Eyes?”

You needed him to wake up—needed to speak to him, see that October gaze lock so numbly with yours. Dead eyes had never meant so much to you than when the man that wore them wasn’t blinking so softly. Where had he gone?

“Simon,” you plead, getting choked up when nothing happens beyond the flicking of the light on the ceiling. The beeping of his pulse didn’t change, not even when you intertwined your fingers together to lock them like a knot—a promise. “I need you to be okay,” your voice stutters.

“We have to get through this together…I…” Tears splatter his tattoos, his lovely, beautiful, tattoos, you hiccup. “We need each other.��

Maybe it was cliche, two people who relied on one another in a town of nobodies, but it didn’t make it untrue. And maybe it was a partial lie—after all, you didn’t know what Simon thought of you exactly, but the way he looked at you, how he cast his shadow above yours, was a well enough guess in the right direction. But you needed to say it, and your heart ached to see him like this.

Simon doesn’t move, his hand is cold and his lashes stuck to his cheeks.

“Simon,” you hiss, sniffling.

The hours pass, and you stay there for as long as you’re able before your body is about to give out on you. You reluctantly kiss his forehead and leave with a crushing weight on your shoulders, so much so that the flashes of broken metal and rain don’t even bother you at this point.

A rage grows in your breast.

But when you sneak back to your room, you don’t go to bed. You can’t. The smell in the space is something that leaves your eyes stuck wide until your legs actually do buckle. Your eyes stare at the far wall blankly.

Cigarette smoke lingers in the air.

—

“He woke up last night.” Your blank eyes stare, expression stuck firm. Loralie gives you your lunch, setting it down on the bed tray. “Around three. Said your name and then passed out again.”

“Why didn’t you get me?” You’re already pushing off the bed, your lips letting loose a grunt. The boys had to be at work today—a Thursday—so that left you alone and bored until they took a break and walked over to keep an eye on things.

Wincing when your feet touch down, you’re quickly, and very easily, pushed back into bed with a scoff.

“Loralie,” you growl, venom in your throat like a rampaging bull.

“Sit down and let me finish.” The both of you glare before she rolls her eyes and points to the food. “Acting like a damn teenager. Eat.” She doesn’t start until you pick up the fork just to shove a single piece of the lunch into your mouth to spite her, slowly chewing it with a scowl. Loralie rubs at her temple. “He’s getting better, but it’s still a long road. Activity’s peaking every now and again—fingers been twitching, too. Some of the bandages have been able to come off.”

“Thank the fucking lord,” you breathe, running both hands over your face as you sigh out slowly. “Any estimate on when he might fully wake up.”

“God knows,” the nurse huffs. “He had brain bleed. Man was all kinds of messed-up.”

Your chest tightens, but you say nothing. You’d suddenly lost your appetite.

As the afternoon rolls around, you take down your pain medicine and fight the blurriness of your eyes. Healing was a very long and very tiring process—it seemed like no matter how much sleep you got you still woke up tired. And you suppose that was why you fell into an uncomfortable nap and woke up to the window still open, the moonlight rays like sheer fabric cascading down to the tile floors.

Groaning, your head lifts from the pillow; your first thoughts are always of Simon and how he’s doing. It was time to see him again.

Your TV-static mind reruns how he looks over and over again—the bloody bandages, the wrappings around his face. Even the machines now seemed to sneer at you as your guilt grew harder to ignore. He’d saved you at the cost of himself…without even hesitating.

Why would he do that?

“You really had to go and make me love you, huh?” You ask into the cold air, a breeze shifting through as you slowly sit up on one arm. “Simon, if I’d known you would have gone and done this, I would have never looked at that sold sign. At least then you’d be okay.”

“You love him?” Your body twists up, large patches of gauze pulling at dried blood and mixed plasma as your body keeps itself upright. The shadow in the corner of the room moves as your fatigued brain wakes itself back up in no time at all.

Graham.

Eyes stuck to the far corner, the phantom of your Ex stands tall—his eyes beady. Your entire being freezes as your lips part in horror, yet, you can’t make a sound.

He’s disheveled looking, but those eyes of his have never been more rageful. Like walking through the hospital and coming face-to-face with a grizzly bear of all things. It’s strange, but your thoughts immediately go to Simon as he steps forward, sneering at you.

“The first man that comes into town and you love him? I didn’t think you were so easy, but I guess I was wrong.”

“What are you doing here?” Your voice is hushed, panicked—adrenaline spikes in your veins.

If you screamed, who’s to say he wouldn’t just pounce on you?

Graham runs a hand over his hair, his scent taking up your nostrils until you feel the need to nearly gag at ash and tobacco. “I needed to see you—explain,” he stutters, emotions swiftly flicking from anger to fake remorse.

Your hand slowly inches to the nurse-call button attached to the wall near the bed, the cord leaking out like a snake as your fingertip catches against it.

“You weren’t supposed to be on that bike, okay? Celina fucking messed it up—she was supposed to keep you workin’ until he went out on his own.” He’s coming closer, and you push back up the mattress in distress.

He doesn’t stop.

“What the fuck, Graham,” your voice rises slightly, cracking in the middle.

The man growls. “It wasn’t my fault! J-just forget about it, okay? You’re fine now, it all worked out.”

“You tried to kill us!” You shout, and Graham’s instant hiss makes you flinch back and scamper as you slam the wall behind you.

“Don’t do that,” he snaps. “Do not…do that. Keep your damn voice down!”

“And if I scream?” You tilt your head, shaking violently. “What then, huh? You lousy son of a bitch.”

“You’re lucky I don’t pay that Simon of yours a visit, yeah?” Your lungs tighten, a wheezing inhale stuck in your throat.

“You wouldn’t, Graham,” you whisper hastily. “Not with all of this shit you’ve gotten yourself into—turn yourself in and fix this.”

The man spays his hands and your hand shifts to the bulk of the nurse’s button, running over the top until you find the correct one to press.

It moves in with a slight pop of plastic, the darkness of the room giving you extra coverage as you slowly drop it back down.

“It’s too late for that.” Graham shakes his head, and his stench overtakes you as you gag lightly, casted hand coming up to hide your nose. He pauses near the side of the bed, and you push to the opposite side and hear your feet slap the ground. The size of your makeshift barrier doesn’t fill you with confidence. “You need to come with me.”

“What,” you laugh in exasperation; fear coating the hoarse noise. “No! Leave!”

It was obvious that your usual sarcastic tone had slipped to a fearful one, your heart making your voice palpitate with every thump of the veins in your neck.

The door opens and Graham’s hand darts to the back of his pants.

Loralie’s body comes into view. “What’s happened now—”

A great ear-shattering boom leaves you screaming as blood splatters into the air.

—

Simon woke up to the world spinning.

He grunts heavily, the oxygen mask over his face tight before he can slap a weak hand to the plastic and pull it back. The man coughs, spine curling before a bone-deep pain makes him stop with a firm inhale.

Blinking sluggishly, he grinds his teeth together and lets the mask slip to his cheek. Movement at his slide makes Simon pause—trying to gather his bearings.

What was going on?

“Simon, easy with it.” Scottish. Johnny. “Christ…how am I going to explain this?” More shuffling and fast feet over to the side of the bed.

“Johnny,” Simon grunts, vocal cords tight. He needed water.

“One second, just wait. Let me…” A pause before a sloshing of water. Above the man in the bed, the ceiling moves and swirls—dancing. Simon remembers water…the bike…

“Can you hold it, then?” He doesn’t answer the Scot, instead slapping out a hand to curl the body of the glass, bringing it to his lips and downing the liquid as it slips from the side and dribbles down the side of his face.

Johnny grumbles, “Alright.”

You.

Simon choked on the drink, moving it back before his arms slammed to the bed, the glass bouncing off and shattering against the floor.

“Fucking hell!” Johnny shouts, rushing forward to put a stiff hand on Simon’s chest, trying to push him back down and avoid the glass that now litters the tile. “Stop it, you’ll destroy all the damn work they did, ya idiot!”

“Where is she?” Simon garbles out, glaring forward even as his body screams and peels back healed flesh.

“Stay the fuck down and I will!” Blue eyes sear downward, meeting brown as they battle for a moment.

Simon clenches his hands, but compiles, top half moving back to collapse to the pillows once more. Not once do his eyes stray from the Scot, ordering him mutely to continue as his heart pounds in his breast. He remembers grabbing you and then nothing else—the scream of sirens in his ears like a distant call from a dream. But his body ached far too much for this to be a dream.

“Where,” Simon forces out through his accent, throat like gravel. His chest was filled with dread at the nervous sheen over Johnny’s face.

“Ah…” The Scot begins. “She’s fine, Simon. She’s alive.”

That didn’t give him any reassurance.

Simon hisses, quickly trying to get back up again and succeeding in straining his body enough to sit halfway upward. All of the wires and cords attached to him rip and pop off, frantic beeping emanating from the room.

“Take me to ‘er. Now.”

“I can’t do that!” Johnny hisses, hands out and failing to keep him stationary. “Would you just calm down?”

The man doesn’t answer, not until the nurses rush into the room due to the noise and tell him false words to try and get him to lay back down. Simon knew something was wrong—instincts going haywire.

Were you…dead? No, you couldn’t be. That wouldn't be possible. Johnny knew better than to lie to him.

“Johnny!” Simon shouts as loud as he’s able; raw authority in his mouth. Even the nurses freeze at that.

The mohawked man’s twisted face is wracked with guilt, and there calls to the fact that Gaz and Price are nowhere to be seen.

Simon says it slowly, wounds bleeding and his face opening the long scrapes of road-burn on his left side. It burns like a fire—itching like no other. But it’s secondary to the pure adrenaline keeping him awake.

“Where.”

Even Johnny can’t fight that tone.

“Graham has ‘er.”

—

This was a hunting shed, you knew. One out in the middle of the trees—about three miles from town with its rot-infected walls and a chipping wood fireplace. The floor is nearly covered in cigarette butts.

You stay stuck in the far corner—hands and feet zip-tied together. Your head had been covered by a bag that you had grabbed and ripped off when the world stopped jostling from the trunk of a car. From then, you had been dragged at gunpoint through the hell portal of the front door.

Graham is watching from the single chair across the room, itching at his scalp with the barrel of a .44 Magnum and using his other hand to rub along his thigh.

“Shit,” he mutters as you watch, silent and as still as a stake in the ground. “Shit, shit, shit.” Loralie’s blood is still splattered along your face.

He’d shot her through the stomach. You’d seen her body drop: dead in an instant.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Graham stands suddenly, and your body recoils with a slam of your shoulder into the wall. The frame shakes. The man quivers as he glares at you. “It wasn’t my fault she came in through the fucking door!”

You only nod tinily in frantic agreement, looking around the room in search of anything that might help you. But there’s only so much you can do against a man holding a gun—a man who finds himself wanted for a slough of crimes which now just got incredibly long.

You had heard the sirens bouncing over the hills hours prior, but no one knew you were out here unless they happened to be the best-trained tracker of all time.

It should be morning now, but the threat of rain outside obscures the tiny slivers of light that try to pierce the leaves of the forest.

“Fuck!” Graham screams, foot kicking out to connect with the chair and sending it flying backward before it splinters and clatters—all termite-eaten legs and cracked seat.

Your mouth releases a squeak, panting breath a sharp gasp.

You needed to figure something out. Quickly.

The single window is smashed in, glass sprinkling the ground in large shards, and you don’t care if it’s the result of some teenagers smashing property or anything else for that matter—you had to snap these bonds.

It wasn’t like the termites could help.

“Graham.” You’d never call yourself stupid, and heaven help anyone else who tried to. You didn’t work at a bar without learning more and more about the human psyche than all the years in school and adult life combined. Everyone had games they played inside of their head, a series of tic-tac-toe boards or grandiose plots of fanatical sagas; it just so happened that Graham fashioned himself the hero of every single one of them. Every line was his chicken scratch signature.

“Graham,” you raise your voice and say again, forcing past the quiver in your tone to a lake’s calm waters.

The man’s panicking—restless as he paces the front door, guarding it from you. It wasn’t too far-fetched to believe he could kill you now to put an end to this shit-show. He’d always taken the easy way out, after all.

But his eyes snap to yours regardless, and you have to not scream at him as he does.

“What?” He hisses, motioning to you with the gun with a limp arm. “You wanna weigh in, then? I did this for you and you went and ruined it!”

“I know I did, baby,” you breathe, alarm bells blaring. “I’m sorry—I just wasn’t thinking. I wanted you to fight for me.”

Your throat simmers with bile.

What were you saying? You had no idea, but it played into Graham’s weaknesses. Maybe Simon had rubbed his casual strength over to subjugate your brash sarcasm and brutish aggression.

Simon.

God, thinking about him made you want to cry.

“What are you talkin’ about?” Graham intently listens, the gun shaking. “Don’t….Don’t fucking play with me right now,” he warns, growling.

“I’m not playing,” you raise your hands up, the cast protecting one wrist, but the other had the harsh plastic suffocating your veins like it was a supple neck under a cougar’s jaw. “I’m not. I got with Simon because I wanted to make you jealous—at that party?” You suck down a fast breath. “I wanted you to swing on him, yeah? I know you could have made an example out of him.”

“Course I would have,” Graham mutters, pushing his hand up over his face to clear it of the sweat and crimson droplets. “Lousy no good mechanic with a shitty bike.”

“Graham, can you cut off the zip-ties, please?” He laughs and shakes his head immediately.

“I’m not that stupid there, Sweetness.” Your jaw clenches, anger spiking.

“I never said that you were,” you snapped desperately, hospital gown all dirty and your bandages hanging off of you like you were a mummy trapped in a tomb. It didn’t sound that far out of place. “You’re hurting me.”

The floors creak as you shuffle, moving your body forward trying to stand on bound ankles. It doesn’t work. Your ears twitch above the rumble from the clouds far above, past the hole-filled roof, to the sound of an exasperated scoff.

“You’ll live. Now be quiet and let me think—you’ve made a mess of everything.” Adrenaline gives everyone a high like no other. It happens fast and can start up from the adrenal glands in mere moments when under stress or danger; when it leaves, it can result in lightheadedness, and trembling. Go long enough to where you can get it out of you entirely, it can even lead to tiredness.

Three hours pass, and it’s storming outside as Graham is sleeping near the door. Curled like a wolf, the silver glint of the magnum is still clutched in his hand, fingers loose like worms as his face twitches. You had waited the past hour to see if he would wake up.

Now it was time to act.

As you slowly hobble to your elbows and knees, dragging yourself along the cigarette-coated floor, you collect dust like the knick-knacks in your home. Taking small and quick breaths, your eyes lock with a sharp piece of glass as your agonizing injuries pull and break open. Blood is so heavy in the air that it’s able to be tasted on your tongue—coated so thick even the deluge of rain can’t get rid of the stain.

Graham mutters in his sleep, and your heart beats far into your mouth; body locking up as your gaze flashes over to the twitching shadow. Lightning flashes outside as you slowly start back up again—one eye always to the side and the pupils smaller than a spec of dirt.

You lick your lips, creeping onward until you can reach out your fingers and slice them on the side of the glass. Your lips hold tight a whine of pain, hand clenched over the material as you twist it around and line the edge up with the zip-tie.

Your breath is all you can hear—loud inside of your head before the sawing motion makes the cuts over your hands grow deeper the more you press into the plastic. Welts had burst by now, puss seeping to the ground as the zip-tie around your wrists popped with a snap of hard material.

A yell of achievement is kept inside of your sputtering chest as you shove your leaking palms to the wood, rolling to your back and bending your knees to bring your ankles upward.

The second tie snaps just like the last, and your limbs roll themselves in circles to get the circulation back as quickly as possible, gaze jerking back and forth to Graham as your pulse roars.

Run. Run. Run.

Every rush of your blood sings the same order.

Lose him in the storm.

Your legs wobble as you shove yourself up, the glass still held in your hand—an infectious thought entering your body as you stare at the magnum. Stumbling, your bare feet steady themselves as your shoulder knocks the back wall, face contorted inwards.

How hard would it be to steal it? He was sleeping.

Blinking away the black fireworks in your vision, you look from the broken window to the door, remembering the bike crash as the rain seeps in from the roof. Water splashes as the minutes spread like crimson pools.

Graham’s troubled face shifts as he groans, and you’re already out of the window with a slide of glass and a slap of wet grass.

You’re running through the forest as if a deer, crashing through undergrowth and slipping down ravines. The gown and the trailing bandages have long been soaked, heavy in their own right—a second skin hanging off as your blood gets washed away by the rain. You don’t know when you started crying, but the sky’s tears bled with your own exceptionally well.

There were multiple times when you swore there were footsteps behind you—right on your tail as your blurry vision finds phantoms in the bushes and the leaves as they fly up behind you at a kick of your mud-covered feet.

You didn’t have a destination, and as far as you cared, you could die in these woods happily as long as Graham never had the chance to make a decision. In the end, his own ability to fuck himself over never had the chance to change—thank God.

A hand slams on your shoulder.

Half a scream is stifled, as another is leveled to your mouth—your body is yanked to the side. Dragged behind the bark of a tree, lightning flares overhead as if as shocked as you were, arms and legs kicking out.

There’s a stiff grunt, and large biceps that curl your waist. Words are about to be uttered into your ear canal before your teeth chomp down on the thick material of padded gloves, eyes wide with blurry panic.

“Sunshine!” You don’t listen over your muffled curses, nails clawing into a forearm as your casted limb aches.

Whirled around, your spine finds a trunk, and you snarl before, once more, “Bloody hell, Sunshine, it’s me!”

Finally able to see who was keeping you hostage, your struggling halts with a knee halfway up and ready to send full force into a crotch. You blink multiple times, panting into the palm before the hand drops entirely and you can take down fragmented breaths.

A skeleton-painted balaclava is only a glimpse before those October eyes suck you in.

Simon and you stare at one another as the storm rages on.

He was in all black—straps and holsters clipped onto his thighs and chest above a combat vest that you’d seen in military documentaries on TV; a compression shirt under a water-resistant covering rolled up to his elbows. And guns.

Guns at his thighs, a rifle at his chest, a knife at his belt.

Simon Riley was dressed for war.

You stutter, eyes beady as you open and close your mouth.

Wasn’t he supposed to be in the hospital? How did he find you?

“How…” You blink as the man’s concerned eyes scan you over, rage shimmering in his expression as water saturates his mask. His gloved hands settle at your shoulders and squeeze before they move once more. “How did you…?”

“Let me look,” he mutters, touching your wrist and bringing it up. Your mouth shuts tight, flinching. Simon halts and quickly glances back up with a simmering gaze. He doesn’t move, and when he blinks, whatever anger that was mounting is re-hidden back behind the void of his irises. You stare as his browns melt.

“Can I touch you, Love?” Water slaps your head but the barrier of trees helps slightly. The question was one of the most important he could have asked.

You nod, but he still waits.

“Yes,” your voice pushes out. Simon’s large hand recaptures your flesh like a precious object, twisting it around.

He tenses at the blood, and, just like the realization outside of the vandalized shop, he tells you quietly, “You’re shaking.”

“Simon,” your lips wobble, sniffling.

Your body is shielded in an instant.

“It’s alright.” He breathes into your scalp—you feel his pulse, his hard surety; this wasn’t a hold that was quick to leave. “I’m ‘ere, I’ve got you. We’ll be alright. Focus on me, Sunshine. Focus.”

It wasn’t soon after that those arms separated for a moment, the velcro of a vest in your ears before a rain jacket is carefully, yet quickly, pulled through your arms and zipped up. The rifle is leaning against a rock as the hood is pulled to protect your visage from the downpour. But the rain is the last thing on your mind.

Screaming echoes out over the night and you gasp, head jerking up to the trees as the yowls vaguely take the incorporeal shape of your name on the battling wind.

Simon growls, hand coming up to rest beside your skull on the trunk as he leans over you, gazing off into the night.

“Stay still,” he utters into your ear, the compression shirt tight enough to make the bulk of bandages easily visible all along his arms and shoulders. A pistol is held loosely from his free hand—his fingers twitching around it as numb eyes move along the open spaces of forest.

Not about to muster a response, your fatigued and addled mind begins to blank of all else but the scent of muddled oil and metal; tattoo ink.

Simon grips you closer to his chest as the wrathful calls bounce on air-waves like arrows right to his building fury. The man’s jaw clenched tightly—body shaking not from the chill but from restraint.

He’d broken out of the hospital with one goal: track you down and get you back. Anything else was an added pleasure that the veteran had mulled over as he busted out his old gear and strapped himself with whatever he might need.

Everyone’s only concern was with how he was still shaky on his feet after the crash, but in reality, Simon barely noticed. The minute he’d heard you were gone, all bets were off.

No one had clung to military life more than him, not even Price.

No one messed with someone he cared about and got off scot-free, even if it ended in a life sentence in jail. Eating a meal was too good for Graham Whitaker—breathing was too good.

But before all of that dark work, first came you.

Nothing else was touching you. Ever.

So the rushing feet weren’t much of a concern to the man, truth be told. Simon clocked the fool a mile before his huffing was etching like a point through the storm, cheek to your scalp as you shiver and shake, fingers curled into his shirt as your eyelids flutter.

He needed to get you medical attention—clean those wounds.

But Graham.

“No!” His screaming continues, stumbling through about ten feet away—the glint of a gun at the fool’s thigh unmistakable. “No! I was asleep for five minutes!”

Brown eyes don’t blink as they watch, feeling you tense and tighten even at the phonics of the man’s speech.

“Don’t look, then, yeah?” Simon utters softly. The sound of the safety being flipped off on his gun was drowned out. Your mind barely comprehends the words, all of it slurring together as Simon’s hand curls your skull and covers your ear above the hood. An oil painting smeared by blood-coated fingers that hold you so sweetly. “Easy. It’ll be over soon.”

You get drunk on it as you nuzzle your face into his neck. Simon’s focus threatens to give way before he blinks at the scene ahead of him.

Graham twists in a circle, nearly sobbing as he yells even more and grips one hand into his hair, pulling harshly. It was like watching a toddler having a tantrum, though this was far more serious. And deadly.

But all of that searching wasn't for nothing.

Simon lets his eyes lock with Graham Whitaker only once, and even then it was a mere glance. A Ghost deserves nothing more before it disappears back into smoke.

Panicked widening, an arm seizing up.

It had been for more of the mechanic’s benefit than anything else—torture in its own right as a rabbit stares down a wolf and its foaming maw. Simon was never reckless; never eager to kill even back then. It had been his job, and he’d done it tactfully—resourcefully. A dance of instinct and sheer nuance to get the ques down that had taken him decades to perfect. Training like that didn’t just go away.

People only saw him coming if he wanted them to.

And Simon desperately wanted this man to look into his eyes as he pulled that trigger. Not even the maggots would want the body he gives to them.

—

You both lay in bed, silent.

The sheets are warm with body heat, and the cast around your arm had only come off two days ago—the flesh sore and the muscles weak. Around you, hard limbs are anchoring you to a chest filled with scars; scars you’d memorized easily as you traced over them like a painter with her favorite brush.

He wouldn’t tell you the stories behind them, and you have to admit you were relieved about that. It was the past, after all.

This moment was for the future.

“Want you to work with me in the shop,” Simon mutters as he stares into your eyes. You blink, brows lightly furrowing before his hand comes up and his digits brush your cheek softly. Your lashes flutter at the scrape of calluses as he continues in a low grumble. “Custom detailing.”

“...And will I be paid for this?” You ask him, teasingly—delicately.

“As much as you want.” Simon isn’t joking. “More than what the fuckin’ bar can give you,” his breath moves over your pulse, making you shiver.

Your half-lidded eyes stay locked into those endless voids, his slow blinking waiting for an answer as the bulk of his belongings sits in the corner of your room.

“Haven’t even finished the mural yet,” you huff. “Eager to get me next to you?”

“Yes.” Simon moves forward, and, without the need to hide himself from you, presses his lips to your chin, head dipping to tilt your face and allow him access to your neck. You hear him nearly purr when your fingers card his hair, nails set into his flesh.

“I make pretty good tips, Brown-Eyes.” Fingers pulse at your hips, slipping over flesh.

There’s no reason to keep talking about this—your answer is already obvious—but the both of you enjoy this endless chase.

Something new and, for you, something to make your feet stationary.

Simon had taken out his CB1000R for the first time for your date yesterday, his eyes avoiding yours as you’d asked why he’d been five minutes late. He’d said it was because he’d been checking the motorcycle over all day—re-checking it once before coming over with a knot in his intestines.

There was the very obvious change of two helmets, as well. You had thought you’d be hesitant to get on a bike again, but the feeling of Simon’s body in front of yours was more of a comfort than anything that came before. The wind at your sides as he’d driven far slower than ever—glancing back nearly every minute to make sure you were alright.

Big teddy bear, you thought affectionately.

“Can give you a better one,” Simon jokes crudely in your bed, grunting like a beast. Your lips let loose a snort, head flopping down to rest on the top of the man’s skull. At his back, your fingers play with the brunt of his old scars as well as the new ones that are still and an angry red; barely closed.

“That was horrible.” Simon shivers under your study when your lips mutter your amusement.

“A bit.” He smirks. “You givin’ me an answer, Sunshine?”

This would be the last chance to get out of this town—say no and disappear, never to be seen again just like the hundreds before you. What life could you have out there? What could you build differently—build like a pack of wooden blocks and poke at before they fall down?

What could you nurture what you already had blooming?

You sigh, arm moving back to perch under Simon’s neck. Pulling him back, you tilt his head to meet yours as he hums, kissing him on the lips and taking his freedom as your own. Simon’s hand spans your spine as his fingers spread; the stretch of his tattoos corrupting your soul one atom at a time as he opens his eyes to watch.

A loyal sin had never tasted better.

You ease back and whisper over his open mouth, “Yes.”

October eyes consume you whole.

—

This town is small—it talks. Everyone knew what happened to Graham Whitaker; everyone knew who killed him.

But small towns always have big secrets that no one ever discusses.

They never found his body, and the boys had all made sure they never would. So, to this day, the bastard is still listed as he should be:

MISSING: GRAHAM WHITAKER

Dangerous individual believed armed and dangerous. Do not attempt to approach.

Information? Contact your local police force at the provided number below.

Celina and the rest of Graham’s goons never showed their faces again, and even then, there was no evidence to directly tie them to anything beyond the loose connection to the vandalism.

Of course, the bar was always bustling, eager to speak about it even when ivy had crept over the telephone post flyers and hidden them from any eyes. That one cold case that was ingrained into its history until something else came along—told on long nights to ease the bored atmosphere of passing folk and crumbling buildings. Grumbled over the raw scent of black metal and grunted at the rim of a Neat Kentucky Bourbon.

The twitched smirk over those lips is always a staple, though, and so is the brown-eyed look passed your way as you sit content under the stretch of his arm, art journal open to yet another page as the appointments piled up.

You haven’t shown him yet, but all of your sketches are of him.

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fictional-men-have-my-heart · 6 months

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If you're an avid reader of Joel Miller materials, or Pedro Pascal's characters in general, I can't recommend @undercoverpena enough. The beginning of this is absolutely beautiful, and I love how their stories progress. Please give them a chance if you're looking for more to read!

i. to fix a porch

joel miller x f!reader | chapter one of honey stained hands

chapter summary: it’s why he allows himself the chance to look, to admire. His hand slides in yours all over again, as you offer your name—dutifully exchanged. and all he can think is, you’re a pretty thing. He’s seen pretty, laid with it lifetimes ago, but there’s something different in you.

wordcount: 3.5k warnings: typical canon-angst. my spelling. joel trying to fit in and be good for ellie. an: i am so nervous about this. i hope you like. huge thanks to @guyfieriii + @thetriumphantpanda for holding both my hands.

The world had gone to shit, but the world hadn’t gone to shit.

It still grew, expanded—and changed.

Just as it once had. The grass didn’t stop turning green. The trees didn’t stop rustling, the flowers didn’t stop pollinating between bones and disintegrating fabric.

Nature, in all its immensity, didn’t bow to the cordyceps that stole minds and whispered destruction along roads and grass. Nature didn’t allow the rot to take the seasons, as it had done with so many other things.

The end of times wasn’t allowed to touch the moon’s schedule. It didn’t have an impact on how the daylight grew shorter and the night span longer. It had no bearing on the way leaves turned golden, the dew appeared on tall grass, or how both danced under amber-rising and lemon-setting suns.

The outbreak took souls, but it didn’t rid the craved scents of stews and freshly baked apples—two aromas that flooded Jackson's roads.

Mostly, even if something else thrummed along the ground, and spoke in claimed lives, it couldn’t try and claim to have any effect on the way frost made the morning path glitter—or how it made the world still feel magical.

Fungus had stolen a lot. Had spread its poison across state lines and once happy towns. But it couldn’t thieve the natural beauty that shifted in three monthly turns.

He wakes in a sea of sweat, panic and desperation. Forehead clammy. Salt and pepper hair clinging in thin spider-leg lines against the creases of his frown.

Each morning since Joel has been here has followed the same pattern. The shadowy nightmares were still there, ever-present—swirling and twirling, not ready to stop their dance. Even if the sun is blasting through, informing them it’s morning—it’s the time their claws should retract and allow him to experience a new day.

They never really do. They remain, hanging in the edges of his thoughts, his eyes—even as sleeping thoughts diluted into the present day.

Just the same as he did yesterday and the day before, his closed fist rubs in gentle circles against his chest—right over his heart. Where it thumps and beats, hammering quickly. Fingers and palm attempting to soothe it, half-wishing he could weave under milk-white bone and release the guilt-wrapped tendrils around it.

It doesn’t matter what his routine involves, it’s all in vain.

Little to nothing alleviates it. Not the circles of his hand over the bobbled t-shirt he sleeps in or the way he wills himself to breathe, to fill his lungs—advice given against his will.

Joel has attempted a lot of things, but the tightness always remains. The imaginary vines forever constricting, all stemmed with thorns, digging in, tightening their hold as he struggled to gasp, never mind breathe. It’s like a fungus of its own, a thing poisoning him, ruining him, blackening what’s left of his soul.

All because he made a choice—one he’d make a thousand times (if given the chance).

Blinking, he slowly sits. Back aching, body groaning as the honeyed sun coats the place he calls his. It flutters over the set of drawers, the flannel draped over the handle of his closet, and the strings of the guitar, gifted by Tommy to keep him busy and out of trouble.

It’s a good place he’s found himself in. A normal place—one found in the centre of moving on and trying to live life. Something he gives enough of a shit not to let it be torn from him and a thing he worries is being tugged from his grip all the same.

One wrong move.

That’s what he hears, even if no one says it. It never leaves their lips, but instead is etched into the faces of everyone he has been introduced to. It was discernible on his sister-in-law's face when he and Ellie appeared; it was poorly concealed by his brother when he’d handed him the instrument.

So much so, that he’s become worried all of this—the safety, the future for Ellie—will be taken from him if he breathes wrong. If he makes eye contact a little too quickly, a little too sternly, too forcibly and not followed quickly enough by a half-smile.

He tries. Not for him, but for her. The same person he keeps his jeans close by and his t-shirt on for—the one that makes him sleep on the side so his good ear can hear a scream of his name—just in case. The same person who manages to shift off the worry, dusting him down without knowing the impact she has on him—the young person who forms him, shapes him into someone half-decent, who is willing to try, who is willing to do things with his hands that isn’t fighting or shooting.

The only time Ellie has shouted for him since being here, though, is for breakfast.

Now, the house is silent—too silent. A smile almost appearing all on its own. An image bubbling, appearing, blanketing over the nightmares that tried to linger. One of her, in her new bedroom—the one she keeps talking about painting—all asleep, mouth open, catching flies.

Joel snorts, swallowing it back. All of the darkness that is weaved inside of him. Focuses on the little flecks of dust that glitter in the glow of a new day, how they fall absently in the space between light and dark—making a choice, one he makes each day, to be here. To try.

His hand slides from his chest, landing on his wrist. Sighing, he closes his eyes and lets his thumb slide over the broken glass of his watch—the one he never removes—another thing he does daily. Another thing that has become a routine.

He knew what Jackson was when he arrived the second time. A communal, a place where everyone chips in.

Joel had expected something more to be requested from him. Almost braced to be told he would be stationed on the other side of the gate—in a more permanent role than others. But, he wasn’t.

If anything, he was given tasks.

Menial things, but tasks all the same.

Little jobs, all reminiscent of a handyman back before things to fungus and rot. Oddities, bits and bobs. Projects half-finished or never begun at all—assigned, handed to him, chosen for him because he’s there and capable. And not, as Tommy explains, is because no one trusts him.

The first had been his own porch. The wood split, cracked, creaking—an accident waiting to happen (a thing he’d muttered to Tommy when he’d first walked up the steps of it), more so as the days became shorter and the nights loomed closer.

He shouldn’t have been surprised to find a toolbox placed at his feet the next day. A smug look on his younger brother’s face: think it’s time y’fix y’damn porch, brother. A clap on the back to cement it, a promise silently exchanged—that he could ask more of him when he was done.

And Tommy did, just not how he expected.

His breath mists the same as Tommy’s when he sighs, the weather biting as the two hovered on his newly repaired porch: got something else for you to do.

Maybe he should have said something when the silence filled the air when Joel suggested after. That he’d be good on patrol, that he could help in ways that weren’t repairing porches, front of shops and whatever else he brought to his door. If not for the fact he was grateful for the chance, for her—for the girl who is slowly making friends, who is beginning to smile—he may have done. The old Joel would have. He’d have pointed out that his skin isn’t stained with scarlet, that his hands are worn, but not smeared with the guts of those who’d crossed him. That he’d hung up as much of the former demons as he could.

He suspected, deep down, that Tommy could still see them haunting him. Knew that they kept him awake when the world went silent—that Joel didn’t sleep until the moon was at its highest, and woke with them jeering at him, perched on his shoulders, poking holes into his soul.

Joel also presumed that Tommy could see the way guilt had looped itself inside of him, strangling, making truthfulness harder to spill. Even if Tommy had no idea. Even if Joel hadn’t whispered to even the animals, never mind a person, what happened before he and Ellie had arrived.

So, he doesn’t argue, not as he’s handed another task, and another, then another. Days seep into weeks, weeks ticking into another month. Each time, his jaw grits, and his head nods, all well-versed, practised, as he picks up his toolbox and heads where he’s needed.

Except, today, when he’d finished up the fence that contained the sheep, a request came from someone else—a person he had spotted, but never spoken to. They were weary, guarded—approaching with caution as though bracing for him to snap, to become the callous individual they’ve likely heard through the whispers of gossiped stories.

In time, they approach, asking, burying their hands into their pockets as they do, before they continue with their reasoning for the request—one not for themself, but another person in Jackson.

A person Joel realised was his neighbour.

He’d been a good neighbour once, almost a lifetime ago.

Had hoped that it would come to him when Tommy had introduced him to you the following morning after he and Ellie returned. Your hand in his, smaller, but warm, a smile that was inviting, but slid over to Ellie upon Tommy’s introduction.

You usually rose early, that he had learnt when he’d begun to watch the sunrise before the leaves not just changed, but began to litter the floor in an array of shades. A pattern of habits he had picked up when he’d descended his own staircase, finding you already passing his home or your lights were on, already busy ticking off the hours of your day.

Today, he’d spotted (thankfully) the latter. His coat was thrown on, boots stepped into, toolbox in hand before he closed his door behind him and headed over. Your name on the tip of his tongue, all heavy, thick—an array of unsorted letters he’s hoping will shift into something as he climbs the steps to your front door. The syllables there, desperate to form, but in no order when his hand lifts to knock.

Air is what greets him, as the door rips open before his knuckles can even make contact.

Now, he’s standing in front of you—again. Your eyes land on him, brushing over in thick strokes of warmth, and all he can focus on is how you don’t step back in fright or stand a little taller. If anything, you don’t react, don’t move, as though it’s normal he’s there standing, talking to you.

“Oh, hi? It’s Joel, isn’t it?”

It’s kind, sweet, your tone. Eyes wide in a way that reminds him of a surprised, small animal—except, you’re grinning, not spooked. No sign of fear or question sketched across your features, or into the rest of your face, not as he stands, hovering.

It’s why he allows himself the chance to look, to admire. His hand slides in yours all over again, as you offer your name—dutifully exchanged.

And all he can think is, you’re a pretty thing. He’s seen pretty, laid with it lifetimes ago, but there’s something different in you. Something that has remained, that has weathered the storm of whatever it is, and however you came to be. Your smile rises, sliding into your cheeks, as his brain snaps a Polaroid of it and stores it somewhere less dusty in his mind.

“I just have to nip out, do you need something?”

Your hand sliding a jacket—one he’d just noticed in your hand—around your frame. It buries you, smothering, hiding yourself into it as you pull it around, watching, studying him as he does the same to you.

Shaking his head, he glances at your porch. “No, ma’am. Jus’ here to fix your porch.”

Sighing, you roll your eyes. “I make one comment and… anyway, I don’t want to trouble you. You don’t have to.”

“Maybe I want to.”

Looking down, you stare around at the porch. Him waiting, watching. “Guess it’s lucky for you, I wasn’t planning on taking it with me.”

It tugs from him, not forcibly pulled, but rather rolling from his mouth willingly: a laugh. It’s gruff, covered in cobwebs and sheets. It’s different, laughing with an adult compared to a pun book in the hands of a child.

“Well, definitely makes my life a bit easier that you’re not.”

Smirking, you lick your lips—a thing he spots, and finds makes his cheeks burn. “Yeah, guessing that following me around the animal pen wouldn’t be your favourite thing… after the other day.”

His eyes narrow, attempting to follow—until it dawns. Until it slams into him.

“You saw.”

“I did. Roscoe is a very boisterous sheep, though. So, it’s more on him than you.”

Cursing under his breath, he dips his head. Trying to stifle the embarrassment, the one rising in him like a phoenix, swarming up.

“Anyway, do you need any tools…”

That’s when he notices how your voice dies, your smile fading. Your words all fall from existence as the warmth around the two of you suddenly chills, as though he’s been plunged into a snowstorm. Your eyes had dropped, landing on the box in his hand.

It’s long, too long.

Almost prolonged, the quietness shifting into awkwardness until you’re blinking, head lifting, chin rising, determined and full of insolence.

“I’ll be back soon, yeah?”

Nodding, he swallows. Ignoring, for your sake, that your voice cracks before you’re hurrying past him. Watching, and staring until you’re a blip, a little figure in the distance of the cold morning—unable to forget about it, the look, the one that unhooked something in him.

Because it made him question—made him want to ask.

His hand shifts around the handle of the toolbox, staring down at it—the one he suspects belongs to someone you knew, someone you were close to. One that is in the hands of someone you don’t know, someone you live next to, that you know nothing about.

Except stories.

And fuck, Joel knows the stories can’t be good.

Joel had maybe made an assumption that you’d never speak to him again.

Sarah’s voice, barely discernable, wafting around his mind, assumptions make an ass of you and me, dad. He blamed it on being bitter, tired—or grumpy, as Ellie liked to call him. The kind of qualities he’d rather be known for, than the ones he sees reflected in the eyes of the people living here, wondering the kind of man he was to go back out there and then return.

He’d made the assumption based on the way your eyes flicked to the toolbox when you’d eventually returned home—him halfway done, waving away your offer to help. You barely spoke, and skirted around him, only placing a glass of lemonade on the welcome mat as you wrapped your arms around yourself.

He drained the glass, and hated how good it tasted. Keeping in mind to leave the toolbox outside when he rapped his knuckles on your open door to bring the glass back in, inform you that he’s done. You call out to him, eventually coming into view—apron on, doused in flour, cheeks and smile smothered in it.

For a moment, he could almost forget an outbreak had even happened with the way you looked at him—the way you looked in general. Something out of one of those cooking shows that play at ridiculous hours of the night; a thing that’d had a street talking about with sweet you sounded.

“I bake—sometimes,” you announce, hands down your apron, leaving flour-finger strokes against the navy blue.

He could see that. Placing the glass on the side, thanking you—watching you glance around him, likely for that. He almost tells you, informs you it’s outside, left on your porch. But, he waves himself off as a beeping begins, that he’ll get out of your hair, because you’re busy—knowing deep down it’s the right thing to do.

That’s how he left it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

His thoughts sliding to you when he saw you talking to others; his mind unable to rid himself of the way you’d looked at the box he’d been given to be a helping hand.

So, it surprised him when he watched you climb the steps of his porch from outside Tommy’s. Something in his chest narrowing—different from the way it does when he wakes up in the morning. Observing how you’re nervously shaking your free hand, moving from one foot to the other—a thin t-shirt covering your frame (no coat or jacket on your arms) as you try to stand still in the chill at his dark doorstep.

It’s only as he nears that he sees what your other hand is holding. A bottle, the contents from appearing amber in shade. The hesitancy woven into your figure is more prominent as he reaches his own boundary, unsure whether to clear his throat—and only doing so when you knock.

“Heard he’s out fixing more porches.”

Turning, he finds you smirking. Spinning around on your heels, slowly taking a step down—still above him—before your hand gestures for him to take the bottle. “A thank you.”

Thank you, he thinks, staring at it. His thumb catches your fingers as he tries to ignore the twist and knot of his stomach when he eyes the label. It used to help, for all the wrong reasons. It’s why he’d tried not to drink since arriving here, still able to remember how it used to scratch an itch, how it smothered over scabs—ones that never healed.

It unlocks that part of him that worries that they’ll become inflamed again. All raw, hot to the touch.

“Y’didnt need to.”

“Well, it was alcohol or baked goods—and you strike me as a drinker over shortbread.”

Snorting, he lifted his head, swallowing. “I do like shortbread.”

Your face lights up—shimmers—under the slowly setting sun. A part of him wishing you’d brought him a tin of those instead.

Because the main reason he hadn’t been to the Tipsy Bison is that he preferred the version of him that didn’t drink. The one from before all of this happened—the one with a clearer mind. One that isn’t trying to run but rather settle and live—the one that comes out when he tastes something akin to what he shared with Tess.

The bottle in his hand demands his attention—a note attached to it that reads the same as your words. Gratitude humming, rolling from you, all in plenty. The entry at being neighbours suddenly ajar, the door taken from the hinges so it can never be closed again.

“Next time, then?”

You say it purposeful, full of genuine nature. And, it makes him roll his jaw, biting the inside of his cheek. Palm and fingers still clutching the bottle—unsure if he likes this. The neighbour thing—the pretty neighbour thing. Especially one who looks at him with a sweet smile and who makes lemonade just because.

“I should go, don’t want to interrupt your evening—”

“Well, the only thing you’re interrupting is whether or not I should open this now or wait.”

You stop moving at that, coming to a stop in front of him, smile broadening, almost turning into a smirk. “

Rubbing the back of his neck, he sighs. “Got another job in the morning. Be a lot on my own.”

“What problems to have, ay?”

He snorts.

But then, he finds you nodding, licking your lips. “How about this, for the safety of the porches of Jackson, I’ll help you with your problem.”

“And what’s my problem?”

“You don’t wanna drink alone—likely worried about what it means if you do.”

You say it nonchalantly, as though seeing through him was a relatively easy task. Your body is still not moving; the cold either not bothering you, or you are faking it all so well.

“Alright.”

“Alright,” you say, slightly more chipper than him.

CHAPTER TWO ->

#joel miller #tlou #handyman joel #give this author a read!

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I may have to come back and check this out. We have Camp Damascus in my uni library right now, actually.

it is only a matter of time before tumblr understands what this means

#chuck tingle #the tingleverse #book 2024 #misha #main character Misha #not Misha Collins (?)#maybe?#i have so many questions #and im super excited

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Am I getting a good grade in tumblr mutual?

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Fanfic is a community. There will be styles you don't like, and in that case, just

💫scroll on💫 🖖

Alright, fanfic authors. Laugh with me. (Also, feel free to analyze this—now blocked—anon to your heart’s content.)

#fic is whatever you want it to be #hence the name #FAN fic #if you dont enjoy their style #kindly move along and let others enjoy it if they please #dont be a soggy donut

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reblog this post to remind the person you reblogged it from that they’re valued and loved and seen

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Have to day I'm liking the darker, more horror novel esque tone and elements of this. You're doing great!

Blood-Stained Wool Spun At Midnight (II)

AU MASTERLIST || PART III

PAIRING: Werewolf!Ghost x F!Tailor!Reader (Set in Van Helsing Era/Aesthetic)

WORDCOUNT: 7.7k

WARNINGS: Blood, very intense gore and body horror, angst, mutilation, violence, wounds, blades, death, being hunted, VERY intense religious imagery/references, nudity, protective!Simon, etc.

A/N: All I can say is that I'm sorry...take that as you will

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

He was still watching you when you woke up, groggily blinking and your mouth dry. It was amusing to him, really, how you twisted your lips and furrowed your brows before you shoved your cheek back into the pillow away from the cold light.

Simon tilts his head and stares—letting you come to your senses while he sits in his chair. He hadn’t moved once, thinking and stewing in questions.

It wasn’t rare for him to completely forget what he had gotten up to in his…state. More often than not, he remembered only the scent of blood and wind; broken earth and the taste of the moon. This time it was different.

You were different.

Simon remembered your scent. Recalls tracking it down as he abandoned all the others in the air. Racing to it with a rapid heart like a simple fool. He knows he held you down, laid his great snout along your neck, and tried to scent you—layer your flesh with him so your sweet fragrance mixed with his own.

The thought made his lips thin and his hands clench, the blanket sitting tightly wrapped around his waist as his body expanded with a tight-jawed huff.

There was still a spark of pain in between his legs, but at that, he welcomed the grounding reality of it. In fact, a bit of pride even made his nose twitch. Simon’s lashes caress his cheeks as he blinks at you, shifting his thighs wider as his hands hang off the arms of the chair.

He hadn’t expected you to come to this forest during his little problem—this could have gone very, very wrong. The man runs a hand over his head, pushing his fingers through his locks and watching you slowly sit up; confusion is seen in the lines on your forehead.

“Can I ‘ave my fuckin’ clothes back now?” You flinch at the low question, sleepy eyes snapping open and locking onto the nearly nude man in his chair.

The air stalls in your lungs, strangled down as you bite your tongue so hard you taste copper. Brown eyes flicker to your mouth before Simon’s lips move in a thin smirk.

“C’mon now. Easy, then.”

“Mr. Riley,” you clear your throat, gawking at the rippling tension in his abdomen and the scars along his pecs. Your entire soul burns as you snap your head away from the image of his face—the first time you’d seen it fully.

Stubble along a strong jaw; bent nose and carefully crafted lips with pulling disfigurements.

“You…you’re back,” you push out, fingers intertwining into the sheets. Simon gazes into the sliver of flesh from above the collar of his shirt that you wear, licking at the corner of his mouth before he looks away.

“And getting cold, Love,” he levels to you. The strips of his own clothes had been thrown on the table, no use wearing them as they offered no coverage. All he had was the blanket. “You hear?”

“Right,” you’re still not looking at him, nervous. Standing quickly, you stubble and brush your hands along the man’s top—flattening it before scampering to grab your clothes from yesterday.

Ripped and dirty, you drag them to you while having to stand closer to Simon as his knee hits yours. He tenses lightly but doesn’t comment.

“My apologies, Mr. Riley, I didn’t want to dirty your bed, you see.” Your hands are shaking. “I suppose I could have taken the floor, of course, but I admit, I didn’t think about—”

A hand grabs your one shoe and hands it to you, Simon having stood up and his chest against your shoulder. You still, breath hitching tight.

You stare at the shoe before your free hand carefully moves out to take it, being side-eyed by an earthen stare and blank expressions. Fingers blush, and you have to swallow a sigh at the heat you feel emanating from Simon’s bareness.

Taking your shoe back, you clear your throat. “Thank you.”

“No need to apologize—that’s my bloody cross, yeah?” He moves back from you, and your lungs take down air again. You don’t like how you respond to him or his touch. How you’re stuttering and stumbling over words.

Sure you found him attractive…incredibly attractive, but with the knowledge you now held all of this became jumbled. The memory of your sheer terror flashes, a mad dash and gripping thorns. The murders. Your wounds pulse.

“Mr. Riley?” You ask, lips twisting at his comment. The man rubs a hand over his face, and you notice the bags under his eyes with a small bead of concern.

“Simon,” he glances at you. “Just Simon. Figure with all I’ve done that’s better than nothing.” A hand hovers over the bottom of your sleeve, pushing it back a smidge to look at the bloodied bandages. “Fuckin’ hell, I do this?”

He leans closer again, picking at the bandages as you explain.

“No,” you breathe. You’re taken aback by his attitude—his flickering eyes as they slowly move to look up at you. “No, I ran through some thorns.”

“Can smell the blood.” Simon bluntly eases out, releasing you and taking a step back. “Get dressed—there’s a stream. I’ll get some fresh water.”

Before you can say anything, the man’s walking outside in nothing but a tied towel, the door opening and quickly closing behind him. Gobsmacked, you blink rapidly as you open and close your mouth, pushing your clothes farther into your chest. Inside your ribcage, your heart palpitates; the flesh is an inferno of contained fire.

“My neighbor is a werewolf,” you breathe, putting a hand to your temple. “Simon Riley is the Ghost. Oh,” you drag. “Where’s the alcohol when you need it?”

Dressing went quickly, and you hope Whistlejacket is out of the forest and was able to find shelter like you had. It became obvious as you tightened your belt and slipped your silver blade into it, that Simon would not hurt you—not in this state or the other. When you’d woken up, you’d feared that if the man was back in the monster’s place, he would snap at the sight of you.

Damage control. But now…

“Now I’m just bloody confused,” you huff, glaring down at your one shoe as you wiggle your toes. Back in your skirt and shirtwaist, you frown at the damage done and vehemently avoid looking at Simon’s own scraps. It would only serve to make you angrier.

Pushing your gloves into your pockets, you grimace at the aching in your wrist and legs but push forward until you open the door to a small covering of snow. The world overnight had continued without you, it seemed, and you frown as you wrap your hands across your chest from the chill.

Wherever you look, the forest rules. It speaks and lives—writhing and bending; this place wasn’t meant for you or your kind. It was meant for monsters.

But was Simon a monster?

You find with all the memories you have in your head, you can’t answer that question anymore. Before you can, you need to get answers.

Real answers.

You wait for the man to return, and he does so with a wooden bucket sloshing liquid over his blanket-skirt. Blinking, you hold open the door and allow him in. He grunts in thanks, running his eyes up and down your outfit.

“You fell from your horse.” It isn’t a question, but the tone makes it seem like he doesn’t know for sure. Simon places the bucket on the floor and gathers his clothes that you’d folded.

“Miriam’s horse. Yes.” You take down a breath. “Simon?” He stares hard at his shirt, nose twitching and eyes going small.

The man’s fingers clench over the fabric before he comes back to the present.

“What is it?” He forces the shirt over his head, blanket holding fast. Simon has to stop himself from shaking as your scent buries itself into his nostrils. A noose around his neck that makes his voice gruff and breathy.

“You’re going to explain to me what’s going on.” He grunts.

“Bit complicated, that is—”

“What’s complicated is that I just got chased through the forest by a dog as tall as a damn statue that stands on two legs. Not to mention the strange obsession you have with smelling me.”

“It’s not fuckin’ me,” Simon growls, eyes flashing. You tense and he settles, snapping his head away to glare at the far wall. He grabs for his blanket and you just manage to snap your head up before you see anything besides the very tops of his large hips and the dip of his pelvis.

The fabric hits the ground and your under-the-skin hellscape spreads all the way to your curling toes.

“You weren’t supposed to be in here.” The man pulls up his pants, shoving himself into them and pulling the strings tight. “Got distracted.”

“I apologize for having work to complete,” you huff, still hyper aware of every sound from the man a few feet away. “I wasn’t aware that I’d get favored by a dog.”

A low growl lets you know his displeasure at the comment.

“Dog, yeah?” Simon grunts.

“Am I wrong,” you state dryly, glaring at the ceiling.

“Bloody mutt can’t compare to me, Love.” The man scoffs and pushes his top into his pants, walking over to his trunk to peel it open and snatch at the pair of large boots inside.

“Oh,” you breathe, slowly looking back to him and sighing when he’s fully clothed. “I’m so very lucky, Sir.”

“Would you quit it?” Simon snaps. “Christ, just ask your damn questions. And use the water on your wounds.”

Rolling your eyes, you walk forward and pull out a chair at the table—grabbing at the bucket and pushing up your sleeves. You tap at your forearms with your fingers, open your mouth as you think, and begin to speak.

Yet something’s missing. A weight at your side. Something that was there before but is now absent.

Pausing, you blink slowly, finally able to calm yourself and get a handle on your emotions. Looking down at your hip where the comfortable weight of your satchel is supposed to be, you grow tense.

Wait a second…

Simon pulls out a rough-looking jacket from the trunk, shifting his large arms into it and quickly fixing the collar as he rubs at his chin.

“...Where’s my bag?”

The man pauses, hand leaving the last few buttons of his shirt open to glance at you—confusion grows in his eyes.

“What?” You’re already standing, turning in a circle.

“My bag,” you say again. “I had it on Whistlejacket but now it's gone. I…must have dropped it when he bucked me off.”

Simon’s jaw clenches, expression going somewhat tight at the mention. “Thought you said you fell.”

You wave a hand and step around the bucket, walking swiftly to the door with your one shoe and intent on trekking back to the path.

“Same thing,” your lips utter, frowning. “It must have slipped off my shoulder. Hell.”

You’re only able to put your hand on the barrier before you’re pulled back into a firm chest. You’re reminded of the blanket of fur that had encompassed you just yesterday, and while the sensation might not be the same, the pure muscle underneath is still just as prominent.

An arm circles your waist and you’re lifted easily.

“Hey!” You shout, but Simon says nothing until you’re dropped back down into the chair and you’re glaring heavily at him. His heat leaves for only a moment before he pulls up your sleeves with his large palms; fingers slipping under the bandages and caressing your skin with scars and calluses.

Watching, wide-eyed, you grumble out, shocked, “What exactly are you doing, you brute?”

“Making sure that you don’t get fuckin’ sick if you insist on being difficult.” You pull your head back, lips parted.

“I’m the difficult one? Simon, you do realize that you turn into a god-forsaken gigantic wolf in your free time?” You’re leveled with an unimpressed look and dead eyes. “Don’t you stare at me like that,” your face burns, nose pointing up. “You know I’m right.”

“You speak too much,” the accent gravels, blunt.

“Well you kill people too much,” is the answer, and none of the fear that should be there is. It’s as if the second you realized that the Ghost was Simon Riley, the terror had leaked out of you steadily to form annoyance instead. “And rip up all of my work.”

Simon clenched his jaw and reached for the water in the bucket, picking up a rag from the table and dipping it in before closing his fist around the fabric to wring most of the liquid out.

“I pay you,” he tries, voice hissing.

Growling, you glare into his head as he presses the rag into your small cuts. “Not enough.”

“Why were you in the forest,” you’re snappily asked. You try not to show how his grasp on your wrist makes you weak to him, the scent of his body so close bleeding into your nostrils. Even Simon seems to react to the close contact, a pulse in his veins making his grip tighten before loosening. Something flashes his deep browns; brows tight on his scarred forehead before he grunts and rolls his shoulders.

“I needed wool from the farmers.” You huff, body lightly shifting on the chair. “Why did you kill all of those hunters?”

“They were trying to kill me.” Tight orbs glance up as the inside of your forearm is soaked with the warmth of his touch—the essence of his inner care. You tilt your head, narrowing your vision. You could believe that, of course, but there was one man you couldn’t.

“And Mr. Lambert?” Simon pauses, chest expanding with a grating sigh. But even he knows you won’t be taking anything short of the truth.

He shifts his feet, moving back to grasp your ankle and begin peeling at the wrappings there as you blink in surprise at his willingness to help. You rewrap your arm and frown, shivering at the slide of his hand under your calf; yet you can’t stop the shaky inhale you take.

The man delays, half-narrowed eyes turning their attention to you in slow intervals of flicking earth and glinting charcoal. He stares, not blinking, not moving. Exactly like the beast that had waited at the edge of the glade to lock eyes and turn your insides outward—splaying you open like a book and flipping the pages of your mind.

You don’t know how someone can stare like that, can’t make sense of it. If those brown eyes kept stuck with yours, you wouldn’t find it entirely unpleasant.

Simon grips your leg tighter and blinks, tilting his head away. The rag lets water drip long down your flesh, but it’s wiped away by a thumb before the accented voice graces your eardrums.

“He was trying to bite you.” You’re torn back to the present, your face and neck tight with burning sin. You clear your throat and re-think the words you’d just heard.

Silence falls for a moment.

“He…what?” Simon’s lips flicker into some semblance of a smirk. He stands and tosses the rag to the table.

“Vampire.” It’s like your heart nearly jumps out of your chest.

A Vampire? Speechless, you stand carefully and turn your head to the side in rapid thought.

“That’s not…” Simon interjects.

“Pinned him to the tree branch, right?” He had done that. “Never came to visit, ‘cept at night, yeah?” The man shrugs, putting his hands into his pockets. “Could smell it.” Watching. Dead burial-mound eyes. “Didn’t like him comin’ ‘round to bother you.”

It’s how he explains this that makes you wonder, an internal understanding as you stutter a question.

“You don’t remember things when you’re…like that,” you breathe, “do you?”

He had said the beast wasn’t him—that had stuck with you. The shock of Mr. Lambert being a monster sunk in, dots connected with thread. It made your shoulders tight to imagine what could have happened if Simon wasn’t there every time the other man was. There was no way you’d be able to fight something like that by yourself.

The man blinks, and for the first time, he can’t answer that question honestly because now he truly doesn’t know how to.

Simon hums, looking at the door.

He only remembered you despite all else.

“I’ll bring you back to the path,” the man grunts, moving to the door and exiting the hut with a last comment over his shoulder. “Keep the knife on you.”

Simon slips out of the house, door open and the chilled breeze filtering through. You watch him take a silent deep breath and begin walking into the trees. With one last shaky twitch of your hands, you look at the journal on the desk and dart after him.

It’s a silent affair until you speak, and Simon had known without a doubt that you would the minute the dark trunks were all around. He guides you with heavy steps.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Don’t know.” A lie.

“Why did you shove your head under my neck?”

“I don’t know.” A second lie. The man’s tone doesn’t change, a bare grumble as he walks ahead of you.

“What else lives in this forest?” Simon stops walking. The dead air all around you is thick and heavy, like a blanket of uneasy weight; you can put a description to it now, and your last question wasn’t only out of curiosity but a hunch.

It felt like the very trees were listening when you spoke.

“Things like me. Things that are worse.” Simon turns and gives you a tight look as you stare up at him and barely feel yourself breathe. “So never for one second leave my sight.” He nods his head to your knife in a quick jerk. “And ever lose that if you don’t want to end up on a bloody butcher’s block, eh?”

You nod slowly, swallowing. The man looks like he wants to say more but refrains, making a noise in the back of his throat before he locks onto the shivering of your body. Not even noticing that the cold was getting to you, you had words coming off your lips in small chatterings of teeth.

“W-Well, if all of the things in this forest will let me live, they can’t be that b-bad.” Squeaking, a jacket is layered over your shoulders, and in a flurry of skirts, you’re picked up into a bridal hold as your hands snap to wrap a thick neck.

A voice in the shell of your ear.

“They’re not like me, Love.” Your eyes widen. “An’ they won’t take a fancy to you like I ‘ave, hear?”

He carries you with as much ease as the trunks of fabric for your shop, stepping over rocks and easily stomping up ravines. From the side of his eye, he blinks at you as his smell surrounds your body to coat it just the way he wants it to, even if he hates the instinct with a bitter grudge.

Why couldn’t you have just stayed away until he came back to the city? When all of his senses were eased back to normal, when the song of the wolf was no longer in his head—that call and primal embrace of fang and claw.

There was a reason he left, there was a reason he always wore your clothes to keep him here—away from others and not to seek you out.

Your scent.

The oils on your flesh that press into him and make his head swim; hold you tighter into him to take it in. Simon’s heart pounds, his eyes going small the longer you stay here with him.

You were both a blessing in the dark and the very phantoms that haunt it at the same time. A hurdle and a stepstool. You made it worse, but, damn him, you also made it better.

Grunting, Simon shakes his head once, staring straight ahead and willing away the sharp pinch of claws poking from his nail beds. He clenches his jaw as you melt into him, legs swaying with the loping movements of his legs. Your hands around his neck dig into the skin softly, letting it mold around you as you lick your lips and avoid his eyes, shy to this type of chivalry.

You shivered far less than before.

“Thank you,” you say, hesitantly.

Simon huffs a chuckle at the tone.

The man carries you through the bed of thorns that you remember, and he hikes you farther into his arms until not even a single one thinks to touch you—no sharp drag. Your face gently rests on Simon’s head, the top of his scalp as your nose itches at the feeling of his hair.

You blink softly, holding on as he moves you back down after the threat is gone.

“What other monsters, Simon?” Your voice is tiny. “What’s out here with us?” He sighs, and you feel it.

But he doesn’t answer you.

“When I get you out,” Simon explains. “You don’t come back. You never come back.”

Your heart skips a beat. “And what about you? Do I just…” You trail off, licking your lips. “Do I just let you keep living like this?”

“Yes.”

“Simon,” his hands tighten on you in warning, but you continue without fear. “I want to help you. We know each other enough to care, don’t we?” You both make it back to the path and Simon clears off a rock with his foot before placing you down next to the large boulder from yesterday.

Simon turns to look around the area for your bag, glancing at you with thin lips. You grow more serious and ask him again, “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“It’s nothing that you need to know about,” you’re glared at, though it holds no true venom to it.

“I have been thrown from a horse,” you stand, pulling Simon’s jacket closer as you spot your lost shawl off in the bushes. “My practice insulted, and most certainly thought dead by now. Mr. Riley, I am not asking you for answers—” You set your jaw. “I am demanding them. So speak and be a good boy.”

Simon watches you, his face blank and his mouth slightly slackened. He doesn't answer you for a long time, as if put in a trace as his eyes flash with life for a moment. You hear him clear his throat at your last sentence, cheeks gaining a sheen of red that could be played off as a reaction to the cold.

His stomach flips.

“It’s your scent,” he says, low and even like a steady promise. You had already started to gather that, at least, so it wasn’t as much of a shock to you—but it was still strange. “It’s like a fuckin’ opium. Can’t get it out of my damn head.”

Simon speaks as he looks around as if to distract him from what he’s telling you. “Whenever I smell it, it’s like my head’s about to cave in, yeah? Like I can’t think of anything else.”

He leans over the small hill to where you fell, and he hones in on long three-fingered drag lines along the earth. Simon’s brows pull in, eyes fluttering from one tree to another, his ears twitch.

You don’t notice, sitting back on the rock and rubbing a hand on the back of your neck as the air changes.

“But why, Simon? I don’t understand what’s so important about that—besides what soap I use.” You mutter the last bit and groan. “This is hurting my head.”

“Stop talking.” The forest is dead. No bird wings flapping, no wind, even. No smells besides yours, which makes Simon back up a step.

Yet, no…no there was something else. It smelled like flesh rot and maggots; a church’s pews that had been laid with black fire.

You throw up a hand at the man’s comment. “Would you stop saying that to me—!”

A palm is placed on your lips and held there firmly, fingers digging into your cheeks. Simon’s eyes bore into you, far darker than they had been at any other time than when you’d been face-to-face with the wolf. You take in a swift breath, hand snapping up the wrist and gripping it in shock.

The snow begins falling again, flakes sitting in his hair as Simon puts his free finger to his lips and motions you to not speak again. Growing more and more nervous, you nod twice before the flesh is removed.

“Get your knife up.” It’s a deep rumble like a falling stone. Felt more than heard. “Stay behind me.”

You do so with a swift hand, knowing something else is going on just by how he keeps glancing at you and then at the trees. That's when you hear it—the low whispering like it’s almost speaking in tongues.

The same you had heard on short occasions when you’d been with Whistlejacket. And then far off into the woods, that shaping of bark.

It wasn’t a twig—you’d known that. You glance at Simon and he seems tensed for something to jump out at the two of you, his large shoulders hiding you from most of the view. One of your hands grabs onto his shirt, your un-shoed foot freezing but you don’t make a comment.

“Simon?” You whisper, and he holds out his hand to once more tell you to not speak.

The long shadows in between the trees darken, and that whispering choir infects your ears—what is it saying? You can’t make any sense of it…it jumbles and jumps like these flakes of snow as they fall to the ground.

Girl…Girl…Listen

You flinch—free hand releasing Simon and coming up to your head to grasp at it as a bad headache starts to form. The man ahead of you, for whatever reason, seems to not be affected by this.

He stands rod-straight and you see his fingers curling into fists, the knuckles going white and facing deep into the open forest—wound up and tight. You try to speak but it all goes like metal on metal behind your skull. The whispers come into focus before the light is swallowed by a shade of gray.

It is a void of all else; you have forgotten what your heart feels like as it pounds in your ribcage.

I can show you the sound of your soul tearing in two.

You gasp and then the screaming starts.

Dropping your knife you fall to your knees, your fingers both dig into your scalp and draw blood from the sheer volume of voices inside of your head—yelling in tones accumulated by victims and imprisoned specs of being. Old, young, middle-aged, yet still the rattle of diseased bones going through osteonecrosis; clacking of baby’s teeth.

You’re screaming with them.

Simon’s panicked face comes into view, grasping at your hands and trying to move them away from your flesh. He’s calling to you, loudly and in an ordering tone, but you can’t hear it.

The screaming, oh, the screaming. This is what Hell sounds like.

Something in you is ripping, and you plead for it to end as Simon begins looking around the space, standing and bringing you with him as he keeps you to his chest; you feel his heart hammering twice as fast—hands grasping at your clothes and pressing you into him with all his might. He’s growling and snarling, trying to find what’s hurting you so he can help.

The reverberation of his challenge is felt in the vibrations of his throat as you scream again. Simon flinches, cursing, and you feel the poke of claws on your spine as the scent of your fear enters the air—your suffering.

Your body is shaking; quivering, and in the state of here and there reality begins to blur like a musty window, like mud on a cup. In Simon’s grip, you’re entirely slackened, coughing and choking down saliva.

But then it all stops.

You gasp so loudly that your busted vocal cords finally snap, blood is expelled from your mouth and it ends up all over Simon’s neck, staining his clothes and splattering onto his cheek. Trying to force down breaths, you push at the man’s abdomen—begging to be released weakly.

Your legs don’t work beyond the shaking.

Watching you with wide eyes and panting breath, Simon’s canines had gone sharp, claws on your spine fully out; he’d even grown taller, your feet only brushing the ground as pale skin began to gain pigment along his neck.

He lets you down just as you vomit all over the snowy grass, sputtering and letting vile tears make lines down to your chin.

“What in the bloody hell..?” Simon breathes arms still around your waist. Your ears are ringing, high-pitched, and reverberating in your skull. “Fuck!”

Whispered laughter makes you whimper through a sob.

Simon can’t get the smell out of his nose—the maggots, the black fire. He knows what this is, what game it plays.

It wants a show.

Oh, you never should have come here. This forest…it wasn’t just a place of black trees and buried deeds; of monsters.

It was a prison. And these lesser beasts were the wardens.

The shadows grow closer, and Simon, as a wailing breeze picks up from the South, covers you with his changing body; hiding a breathless gasp on his lips as muscles tear and ears elongate.

Pain encompasses him, making him bury his face into your neck and grunt out garbled curses as his teeth morph and shatter to re-form. You shake, shell-shocked, from under him, feeling the brushing of fur and the tear of fabric before you’re encased in a canopy of shaggy blackness and snapping jaws. The arms around your waist broaden and elongate, bones snapping.

You’re both panting now, breathing hard and in pain unimaginable. The glint of your blade is far off into the side of your fluttering eyes.

A figure forms from those wisps of shadow—those thrown-away memories of death and the recollection of ancient cities burning back to before the creation of metal machines or the wheel. Formed before oceans or continents and ultimately trapped here in ages long past when these trees were saplings.

You felt it under fur and muscle just as the Ghost did atop you as your shield, his eyes now shining with rage and horror.

This being was not old. It wasn’t even ancient.

It was primordial.

Your eyes look up slowly from behind the curtain of obsidian, arms shaking as they twist into the Ghost’s lengthy forearms still anchored to your waist. His snout slips past your right ear, digging you into him as a low snarl emanates from the back of his throat.

It stands on two legs, and has two arms—you could mistake it for a human at a far-off distance. But its body is malnourished, nothing but thin, twisting, skin over bone as if devouring maggots live under that barrier. Your terror increases the longer you look at it, snow hitting your eyes not even making you blink.

This being was a very stain upon reality as if the body it takes is a rip in time itself—a ripple of disease and an unforgivable sin.

Look at me.

You are looking.

Looking at a featureless face and the large black hole that takes the place of nose, mouth, and eyes—unending and limitless as if what had once been there had been ripped through and replaced with eternity. The shadows writhe to make an imitation of wings on its back, a leaking circle above its head, and the slash of fleshy, pulsing horns that secrete blood down to the snow.

Fingers that shake and twitch as if in the throes of death. Its arms are melting like gray wax. An appendage slowly leaks out from the void of its face, forming a hand holding something like rope, and then a long, blackened arm deeper than a moonless night. It turns over and the intestines, not ropes, are dropped from its grip. Long and viscera-coated; flies dig themselves out from the tubes and you have to stop yourself from heaving again as they flinch and quiver.

As if the owner was still alive.

The hand splays itself, waiting for another’s palm to slip over and grasp it. An invitation as it’s clicking body takes a stumbling step forward.

It’s calling to you.

Look at the face of God.

The Ghost roars and you snap your vision away, burying your face into his neck to shake the image from your brain.

You don’t know what to do—what to think. But you knew you had to run.

“Simon,” you gasp out, and the Thing laughs through muttering generations as sigils flare to life on its skin, words and powers that have no meaning to living souls. “Simon!”

A panting maw shifts to you and the threat of violence is still in the air. Large human-ish hands tighten as blood drips off your chin.

“Run.” Your hand scoops back up your blade, and not seconds later the wind is making your clothes ripple all around you as you’re lifted and carried away. Arms around the Ghost’s neck, you breathe shakily, your head still pounding something awful as the Primordial watches Simon’s rapid dash—far faster than any dog or horse.

It tilts its blood-slick head, and, for some inner intuition…you know it’s smiling.

The beast below you keeps you tight to him, one hand pressing on the small of your back and the other under your knees, not at all slowed by your weight; he can smell your fear and it makes him enraged.

The Ghost’s eyes are small when you press your face into his cheek, but they flicker to you as you send your bone-deep distress his way. He lets loose a low whine in between pants of breath.

“S-Simon, what was that—”

There’s a glimpse of that monster from over his shoulder and you startle, head popping back up to stare fully as you pass trees at an alarming rate. But when you blink the maggot body is gone. Looking behind, you see it again as the Ghost runs faster, taking a sharp right and you once more get the view blocked by a large stone.

Everywhere you look, that blackened halo shows up, hands grasping the side of a tree or watching from a river—its third hand outstretched. Whispering still dances in the shell of your ears, and in your heart, it feels like a string is being plucked; stitches undone from a tapestry.

Until it ends up right in front of Simon in a blink of a second.

All he can do is roar and twist himself, curl around you as his claws kick up snow and dark earth before there’s a sudden sweep of power that ricochets through the trees. It breaks down trunks and makes the world scream, and you, trapped under the body that does anything to protect you, hit the ground hard.

You think perhaps you flew through the air at first because you seem to remember the sensation of flying before the ground came up to meet you.

Yelling Simon’s name, you shatter and slide, clothes ripping more, and other shoe gone to the wind. Flesh peels and tears, cheek skinned on harsh material.

And the whispers laugh, and giggle, and speak in a million voices of the damned.

Look at me.

You cough and stagger upward, stumbling with twigs in your thighs before backing up and immediately looking for Simon while keeping this monster at the edge of your vision. This was more than fear—more than terror. You can’t describe a feeling like this; can’t put it into words or thought.

It made your body shake just by it being here, made you want to turn your blade—which you’d held onto, miraculously—on yourself to end it.

Simon was the only thing to stop you, and you kept backing up, feet knocking over roots and stone. You find his limp body far to the right, wisps of shadow leaking out. You yell, glancing at the Thing as it limps to you with failing legs.

“Simon, get up!” You can’t get to him without taking your eyes off the Primordial—can’t risk that faster-than-light movement as if it wasn’t falling apart just by standing. Its third-hand dribbles black liquid from its fingertips; pooling it in its palm. Closer now. “Simon, fucking get back up!”

You can’t leave him here, but the instinct to run was infecting you just as much as your care for him. The more you looked the harder it was to turn away, mind slipping from you. But you can’t move your eyes from it either.

What was this? This temptation and possession? Oh, God, it was sucking you in.

The great blackened beast does not stir and you grasp your blade until your knuckles ache.

This headache was ripping your brain apart, and you gasped and gripped your head again, noises of agony escaping your lips.

It laughs, but the action makes it sound like an entire world is on fire.

Groaning in suffering and wrenching your eyes closed, you send your palm into your skull; hitting it over and over again.

“Get out of my head!”

Your voice echoes off the trees, breaking and desperate. Shaking your head back and forth, you growl and whine like a dog with a knife through its stomach—intestines in your body bunching and turning in knots.

The presence gripping your mind leaves.

Immediately, you sag to the ground; knees slamming into the earth. Eyes still closed but able to think again, you take a breath, cold sweat falling quickly down your temples to mix with congealed blood and bile.

Knife-hand burning from all of the force you’d exerted, you loosen it and sag forward to take a deep breath.

A hand lightly captures your chin, and you sigh out easily, leaning your weight into the grip as a thumb caresses your cheek.

“Simon,” you open your buggy eyes in relief but only see a void.

You freeze, comfort immediately turning to pure horror. Black sludge drips down your neck, staining your shirt and burning as it absorbs into your flesh.

Its head tilts, and that blackened limb levels your face with the nothingness behind the vale of its ripped-open flesh. There’s a jumbled twitching and horns that make the tight skull dance like it's on a string.

There’s a brush against your mind and the fingers dig into your flesh; pushing and breaking the skin. You can’t move. You can’t look away.

Its face moves closer, demented elbow bending as your neck is dragged forward to meet it. Infinity rolls out behind your quivering eyes.

Don’t worry, it breathes, though you don’t know how because you can’t see its chest moving. God sees you.

Your throat closes, and the black dig of its hand leaks into your open flesh, tendrils of infection that move like worms into your being and up your veins; maggots, flies.

You start choking on air, your spine arching and your hands jerking around, tensing up closer to your chest. There’s foam at the corners of your mouth, eyes still stuck open into the bleak reality of your future.

You smell rot. You smell like rot.

Simon, you think of him—of his actions in the city and the way he always came to you to fix his clothes. You wondered then, in a moment of numb hysterics and revelation, that if he liked your scent so much then he must have stuck around you because of it. To feel your presence and bask in your company. Recalling moments of soft words and looks you could not decipher before.

Surely he could feel when he was going to change, he could have slipped out of his clothes and left them somewhere.

The question that you think of in the small moment before your hand twitches over your blade is like a spark of light.

Was he purposefully wearing them because he wanted you to fix them for him later?

A sniffing nose can almost be heard in the clutch of your neck, and the whispers dim. One shoulder shaking and spasming, you’re able to push back just a small bit.

Brown eyes and ivory fangs. A deep voice that you can feel against your heart. Blood runs from your nose, down your face, and splatters to your bent knees. It bleeds down your throat; your chest and your shirt. Bathing in it, mixing with black damnation.

The grip on your lower face tightens, fingers drilling deeper until muscle tears and snaps.

Your fingers tighten along the hilt once more.

It clicks at you as its bones break in its throat, corpse-like body’s flesh opening to let unearthly tendrils of blackness leak out like it was a cup of wine only holding something until it can be drank down.

The corpse shivers with pleasure. My Vessel shall please Him. Let your soul join His choir.

Your throat feels like it’s being slit, your very essence being corrupted. It’s hot, burning—it all gets brighter, like a fire and a pit of ice. A beast at the very center of Hell; three faces and bat-like wings under every chin. Great and terrible—beautiful and disgusting.

A slobbering, wordless being punished just as all sinners for eternity unending.

You throw up black blood, and as the concerning amount of gore floods you, your mind flashes one last time.

You blink softly, holding on as he moves you back down after the threat is gone.

Simon, you plead, Simon, oh, my Simon.

Your hand seizes over the blade and in a brief second of fading thought—mind flickering between screaming souls and black fur stuck in your ears as blockers—you force your watering eyes to blink.

And when you blink you bring the silver blade up…and then stab it directly into the oblivion of a starless sky.

It rips its fingers out of your skin, screeching louder than a mountain being split in two. You do as well, arm jerking out of the gaping face and bringing the smoking limb to your chest. It was like you’d just put your arm into an oven—your sleeve was on fire before you fell backward and shoved it into the snow, yelling and screaming in pain.

It mirrors.

Third-hand snapping and waving as it whips its head back and forth, its halo quivers and melts atop of it like black fire; sigils glowing brighter. Smoke comes out of its face, wings jerking up and down.

You notice none of it—mind fading fast with maggots still in your flesh. Worms. Parasites. You can feel them moving, up and down and to the sides of your ripped jaw, to your burning arm.

Infected.

All you can do is lay there and vomit them out—black writhing blood mixed with crimson. You feel empty inside, void of something important. Cut in half.

The Thing backs up and as it does it begins to bend in on itself, body splintering like a wet piece of paper before it begins to stretch back out. Reality shifts, time warps as you blankly watch through leaking eyes that hold burst veins.

Its legs break backward as its rib cage pushed in, but before it can entirely be sucked away, it points at you.

You will never forget how it speaks. It’s a wail—a brand of unholy tongues and a world lost to distant memory. A clanging of war bells and dark deals signed in a night of eclipses and the hidden homes of shadow. But you know what it says to you.

I know the sound of your soul and I mark it as mine in Hell!

Something snaps in your chest, and you flinch wildly, bending over yourself and shrieking.

And then there’s a strike of wind and a roar of rage, and the being gets sucked into itself without another word.

You pant, slamming back down to the ground and laying limp—quiet. Dead to all else besides the agony you can now express. With one last wheezing breath, your eyes flutter closed and you pass off into a blessing of unconsciousness.

—

The Ghost’s nose sniffs the air, eyes tight and small, head roving from where his back is large in front of you. You see his tail lightly swish, feet lifting and settling back down to the floor.

Simon seems confused, one leg limping more than the other and leaning heavily to one side; he shakes his large head and his ears slap as he does.

It’s deep night now, and you slowly, weakly, push yourself to stand up. You’d been out the entire day.

Your blood is all over the snow, and as you stumble to your feet, you can’t speak beyond a slurred gargle from your ripped-open jaw.

How have you not bled out yet?

“S–Sim…” A black head snaps to you, but there’s nothing familiar in those eyes.

They shine in the moonlight and those ivory teeth glint. Ears swiveled forward with sharp tips and tiny whispers of tufts. Long arms that scrape the ground in front of a bent spine.

He doesn’t blink.

Stumbling, one leg giving out, your only option is to breathe through your mouth in shallow gasps.

The Ghost’s nose twitches, but otherwise he is deathly frozen. Too frozen.

Like he can’t recognize your scent.

Infected.

Your burst eyes widen, but it’s already too late.

An open maw bites down on your throat with a tearing of flesh before your neck fully snaps.

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