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justanotherwriter140 · 1 month

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Kung Fu Panda 4 - The Movie

The last really, really long discussion post (for now).

Major spoilers ahead!

This review is full of spoilers, so please refrain from reading through it until you've watched KFP4. I would highly suggest doing so, as I want everyone to form their own opinions without my influence. The movie has its flaws (some of which admittedly being a bit distracting), but it's a fun film that has things to offer.

Kung Fu Panda 4 is a fun movie (take that as you will) that takes its audience on an action-packed, surprisingly funny, yet relatively contained adventure on which Po doesn't really do much. It's an inconsequential, safe sequel that doesn't really hurt the franchise but adds close to nothing.

I had a good time watching the movie. It was obviously produced with its theater experience in mind and the action scenes especially reflected that priority. The humor was actually funny sometimes and I enjoyed Po and Zhen's dynamic. During the film, I was able to put most (most!) of my grievances aside and take the movie for what it is. I've discovered that the best way to watch KFP4 is with low expectations and an open mind.

I have a lot of things to say about KFP4, both complaints and compliments (though the former might be taking the forefront in this review), and I hope this review can help those of you who have seen the movie organize your thoughts. I've been having a lot of trouble with that specific aspect of things myself. Those who get it get it.

With that said, let's get into my full review of KFP4! I've been waiting for nearly 2 years to write this and I'm so excited to share every single thought.

I'm going to follow the format of my first discussion post and curate a bulleted list of my thoughts, followed by an analysis of each of these points. Keep in mind that everything I say is IMO and this is more of a rant post than anything else.

Here are my main points:

The Furious Five's role is comically minuscule in the context of the film. Their actions are inconsequential and add nothing to the plot (a confirmed last-minute add), and they have 30~ seconds of screen time. Shifu is also largely irrelevant.

Mr. Ping and Li's presence has little to no effect on the movie (though I won't complain too much because they were pretty fun to watch and this movie has bigger problems). In almost any scenario, I am adamantly against having characters present that don't add anything to the narrative; however, Mr. Ping is an exception. I love Mr. Ping. James Hong is a gem.

Zhen's screen time is not utilized well and her character is underdeveloped. She definitely wasn't annoying, but I didn't find her either compelling or funny enough to warrant the screen time she was given, especially considering it wasn't used to establish a backstory/strong motives. This makes me feel bad for the character because the movie kind of screwed her out of any substantial development.

The Chameleon, while complimented greatly by Viola Davis, is an underwhelming villain. Viola Davis is amazing in this film and I would suggest watching it for her performance if for nothing else, but the Chameleon is underwhelming considering the super cool concept behind the character.

The film feels very rushed. Apologies to those who disagree, but I think the pacing is atrocious and the final fight is anticlimactic. The movie felt like a word-vomit with no discernible intermissions that stops abruptly when the film ends.

I felt as though Po didn't change/grow as a person and the audience never had a chance to either bond with or relate to his character. His internal struggle is kept to a minimum and we don't spend a moment alone with him as an audience, which is disorienting and distracting. Watching the film felt like running into an old friend at the store who's too in a rush to have a real conversation.

The action scenes were strong with few exceptions. Creative art direction was utilized and I thought the martial arts choreography was entertaining and dynamic. I love the color palette of the film and many scenes were very impressive visually.

With my main points established, I do believe it's ranting time. Strap in, folks.

Let's start strong with the Furious Five: I'm gutted. Chagrined, despondent, crestfallen, etc.

The lack of the Furious Five negatively affects KFP4 so much, because not only does their absence hurt the atmospheric integrity of KFP as a franchise, it also forces KFP4 to bring in a slew of different characters—all while still noncommittally including the FF at the very end because I believe the marketing team required it—that clog up the cast a bit. It all goes to show how important strong, established side characters are.

The Furious Five are side characters, but the role of "side character" does not equate to being irrelevant, expendable, or exchangeable. I recognize that the Furious Five aren't super developed as characters beyond a handful of lines that allude to traits sprinkled sparingly among the members; however, I believe that the tiny bits of development we have been given have proved impactful in the past. Tigress's development in KFP2 is a prime example of how much narratively conscious changes (however small they may be) can positively affect these movies.

Because of limited runtimes, the Furious Five often operate as more of a singular unit than five individuals. Even so, I don't think discarding them is valid. They're so important to the KFP universe (to Po's universe!) and not having them with him feels so wrong. The Furious Five are fully integral to the heart of Kung Fu Panda, which is why I believe a lot of those who have seen the new movie have expressed something feeling "off" or something being missing.

I agree with this sentiment. To me, KFP4 didn't feel like a KFP movie. I don't need a Furious Five spin-off movie and I can be fully content with a KFP5 centered around Po's journey as an individual as was intended from the beginning, but he can't carry an entire movie on his back. As strong as he is in every sense of the word, he is only one character. He's the centerpiece of the franchise, but a centerpiece can only go so far without the rest of the design, so to speak.

For me, the Furious Five's absence is one of this film's biggest faults. It's huge and glaring. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, either, because the friends with whom I saw the film refused to talk about any other aspect of the movie after seeing it. Seeing them at the end was better than nothing, of course, but it was a disappointing culmination after eight years of waiting.

That all is to say I feel robbed. Despite all of this, though, I understand that there were reasons why the Furious Five weren't included in the movie. I don't believe the production team would exclude the Furious Five unless they weren't given a choice.

Shifu and Po's dynamic continues to be thoroughly delightful but their interactions are short and simplified. I would have loved to see more of them in this film, especially considering the extreme relevance of teacher-student relationships in KFP4. I (somewhat) digress, though, because the idea of Shifu having to live at the Jade Palace with only Po for an extended period of time is hilarious enough on its own. Maybe that's what the short film is about!

The comedy is odd but has some jokes that stand out. Po maintains a healthy relationship with his inner sass, which I think makes him more fun to watch and kind of eradicates the man-child verdict. Some jokes don't land, of course, but I genuinely thought KFP4 had some funny moments. Mr. Ping was consistently awesome and Po had some good lines sprinkled throughout the film.

As for Mr. Ping, he and Li Shan are the subjects of the film's B-plot as they follow Po to Juniper City out of shared concern for their son's safety. In my mind, they don't add anything to the story that couldn't have been brought about by other characters, but they had their moments of being entertaining. I enjoyed their silliness and thought they had a cute dynamic if nothing else.

Speaking of other characters, I want to discuss KFP4's deuteragonist and why I genuinely feel bad about the way her character was treated.

I want to let it be known that I'm still not on board with Po passing the Dragon Warrior torch to another character. While I agree that his arc is now calling for him to have a student, I disagree with the notion of him retiring from his DW role.

As I stated in my first discussion post:

Didn’t the initial significance and nuance of the title come from the fact that there is only one person who can be the Dragon Warrior, because the concept of the “Dragon Warrior” isn’t so much a title as it is Po himself? The universe (Oogway) must choose the Dragon Warrior because they are a singular being of legend. It is one person, and that person is Po. Wasn’t the point of the first film that the title ultimately doesn’t really matter because there is no “secret ingredient,” so to speak? The title doesn’t actually give Po anything. “It’s just you,” Po says, and that was the resolution.

When it comes to Zhen as a character, contrary to what I predicted I would think of her, I thought she was okay. While I was still a bit distracted by how out-of-place her design looks, I wasn't truly annoyed by her at any point and she and Po had some cute moments. Even so, I think their relationship could have been a bit more refined and developed.

While it's evident that Po and Zhen are meant to have a teacher-student/mentor-apprentice dynamic, I think their relationship feels half-baked. There were parallels that contradicted one another and ended up being confusing come the film's conclusion, and the nature of their relationship seems to vacillate depending on the scene. Additionally, the strength of their bond goes from zero to one hundred within thirty-ish minutes and left me with a bit of whiplash.

We're shown that Po and Zhen care about one another, but we're never shown why. They have a brief conversation during which they bond over being orphans, and Zhen says at one point, "You're actually a good guy," but that's it. This obvious lack of development is a bit disorienting because we're later led to believe that Zhen and Po care very deeply for one another when there's almost nothing to back it up.

A scene that sticks out to me when discussing this is when Zhen attack-hugs Po in a way that explicitly mirrors Tigress's hug from KFP2. This happens around the beginning of the third act, and while it had the potential to be an endearing moment, I think it fell flat.

The impact of Tigress's hug was brought on by her character's hardcore nature and reputation of being heartless, further strengthened with the knowledge that she was hugging Po (which was obviously way outside her comfort zone) as a show of companionship and fundamental understanding. Tigress hugged Po because he needed someone to recognize his strive for closure.

Zhen's hug had little to no impact because she had no reason to do it and it didn't indicate growth. She hugs Po because she's sorry for betraying him and doesn't want him to be killed by the Chameleon, but neither of these things are newly-established via this hug; we have already gathered by now that Zhen regrets betraying Po and doesn't want him to get hurt.

The hug is far from the movie's weakest point, but I think it's unnecessary given the context. I'm big on hugs in movies (an underutilized form of platonic affection, in my opinion), but it didn't fit here. I don't hate it, and I see it as an honest effort to bring emotionality to Po and Zhen's relationship, but it seems arbitrary.

Zhen and Po's relationship has a lot of potential and I'd be open to seeing more of them in the future, but I think some more thoughtful development needs to occur before I can humor it further. Even so, I can see myself featuring Zhen in some future post-KFP4 one-shots—sparingly, of course, because we have a lot of Furious Five content to compensate for.

Overall, they had a cute dynamic and some sweet moments but I'm not attached. I'm on board with Po having a student but I think their relationship needs a lot more development, something that this film unfortunately didn't give them time to either accomplish or earn.

Now, onto the Chameleon!

The concept of the Chameleon's character is admittedly super interesting. She's the deuteragonist's fastidious mother figure who feels that Zhen owes her a debt and as a result holds her to an impossible standard. That dynamic had the potential to be so interesting but I didn't think it was explored at all. There is no indication of Zhen having any internal conflict about fighting the Chameleon, no emotional complexity between them at all; it's disappointing because I think it would've added a bit of earnestness to the film.

Additionally, the idea of a shape-shifting villain is versatile. A shape-shifting villain gives those telling the story a lot of room to experiment with the protagonist and different ways in which the main character can be challenged and tested. It's yet another good idea utilized poorly. Just one idea: the Chameleon could have disguised herself as one (or several) of Po's family, friends, etc. and brought to fruition a new arc with his character (seeing as he arguably doesn't have one in this film), but she only disguises herself as Zhen very briefly in the movie.

Furthermore, the Chameleon completely relies on the powers of previous villains to pose any sort of threat to the main characters. She summons Po's former nemeses from the Spirit Realm (despite there being little logic in doing so considering Kai's literal evisceration) and takes their kung fu abilities for herself.

An excerpt from my first KFP4 discussion post that I think is relevant to the point I'm trying to make:

I don’t think it would be in the best interest of anyone if the past villains were to come back in any way that’s not a flashback (even then, I’m not sure I’d see the point). In all honesty, I thought that the whole point of the villains was that they died and stayed dead. They were defeated by Po once and for all as a testament to the idea of establishing Po's character growth and journey as a person through the bad things he’s able to overcome. It’d be highly contradictory to the messages of the other films if these villains were to suddenly come back.

While there was an honest effort made to portray the Chameleon as intimidating, I never felt as though any of the characters were endangered by either her or her army of lizard henchman. She's a visually appealing character (aside from her eyes, which I thought more resembled those of a gecko than a chameleon) and I greatly enjoyed Davis's performance, but overall I don't see the Chameleon as a notable villain.

The return of Tai Lung (had he been on his own) had the makings to be an excellent story, especially considering the importance of teacher-student dynamics in KFP4. To see him interacting with Shifu would have been incredible and could have led to further closure on Tai Lung's end (because I think that's kind of what the team was going for anyway), but it didn't happen.

It was nice to see Ian McShane reprise his role, but I wish Tai Lung's characterization had been more reminiscent of the way he was in the first film and more complimentary of his overall character arc. Tai Lung isn't a one-dimensional villain with a singular goal and motivation, and I couldn't help but feel as though the complexity of his character was simplified for the sake of KFP4's narrative.

Tai Lung's presence in KFP4 may be odd, but Shen and Kai's appearances are even more so. Kai, if I remember correctly, was fully obliterated by Po, reduced to literal particles on screen (which is kind of wild now that I think about it). Shen being in the Spirit Realm makes sense all things considered; however, Po and Li had no visible reaction to his presence, which seemed a bit unlikely considering Shen's deeds. This plot hole can likely be attributed to the fact that Shen and Kai's cameos (to my knowledge) were last-minute additions to the movie.

I have to talk about the pacing. I have to. I'm sorry, bear with me.

To me, the film's pacing is erratic and disconcerting. While I can appreciate a quick-moving narrative that doesn't dawdle on storylines that aren't interesting/important, KFP4 kind of flings itself too far in the opposite direction and ends up being frighteningly fast-paced. Once the credits began, I felt like I had been holding my breath for the entire movie.

KFP4 is confusing because while the runtime is standard for a KFP movie, it feels incredibly short. At the same time, the film's story moves at a breakneck speed and leaves little time for heart and development. These things culminate into a barreling boulder of a movie that simply doesn't have time to let its characters, story, or audience take a breath.

A fast pace is not inherently negative, but I don't think it worked in the favor of KFP4. The KFP franchise has always been very emotionally grounded (and just very grounded in general), so to see a film in which emotion/heart takes an aggressive backseat in comparison to action and comedy is jarring. While I think it's unreasonable for fans to expect the same emotional integrity as the original films to be present in the current and upcoming ones, I still think there's room for Po to grow and I felt as though the notion of him developing further was brushed aside in this film.

As for Po's growth, I felt it was nearly nonexistent. The previous trilogy wrapped up his character's journey beautifully and I know that KFP4 was bound to struggle with this particular aspect of making another KFP film; however, just because the strongest pillars of Po's character are established doesn't serve as a valid excuse to reverse his development and repeat what he learned in KFP3.

In KFP3, Po learned firsthand that he is capable of spreading wisdom and teaching kung fu. He also learns that he is constantly growing and that change is inevitable; there is always something more to learn.

"If you only do what you can do, you will never be more than you are now."

"I don't want to be anything more, I like who I am!"

In KFP4, Po pushes against this narrative despite fully accepting it in KFP3, actively reversing crucial parts of his character development achieved in the latter. KFP3 was non-ambiguously about learning to cope with change and responsibility, and I can't help but feel like KFP4 is simply copying this message while not adding anything to it.

Additionally, I felt that KFP4's Po generally felt less personal than he has in the past. In every KFP movie up to the franchise's most recent addition, I felt very connected to Po as an audience member. I felt like I was truly seeing the world of KFP through his eyes. I consider this to be one of the franchise's most impressive feats; it's incredibly difficult to build a universe around a character without making the audience feel limited to one perspective and one part of the world.

With KFP4, I felt both limited and disconnected. The world didn't feel as vast and all-encompassing as it has in the past and Po didn't seem fully like himself. This could be me nitpicking (as I'm prone to do), but I can't recall a single moment in the movie in which Po was alone on screen. Scenes like these are crucial for me because I see them as a meet-cute between the character and the audience, a moment for us to cross the bridge into their world in a way that's silent and intuitive. These little bonding moments are absolutely integral to feeling connected to a character.

Po's dream sequence in the first KFP movie is one of the best examples of this. It presents his aspirations, alludes to his way of life up to the point of the movie, and showcases his personality. During Po's dream sequence, the audience is quite literally inside Po's mind; we're there with him, seeing what he sees, subsequently feeling what he feels. Po is a dreamer at heart and makes the audience feel like dreamers, too.

In KFP4, I felt like I little to no point of reference when it comes to how Po was feeling. I didn't feel immersed in him and his world.

I know I've been very "doom and gloom" throughout this post, which is an exhausting mindset for everyone involved. I want to end my critique with something positive because I think some praise is deserved. Let's just say the movie could have been a lot worse, the details of which I'm sure you're all well aware.

The color palette of the movie is beautiful and somewhat reminiscent of the first film. While the animation style of KFP4 is far more simplistic than its predecessors, I was very impressed with its use of shadow and light. Po's many faces were also hysterical, props to those who helped make him as expressive as he is.

Additionally, the movie's action sequences were clearly thought out and discussed in great detail. The experimentation with camera angles was really fun to watch and I enjoyed the majority of the film's fight scenes. They were fun, bouncy, and entertaining, and quite likely reinstated audiences's love of watching a cuddly panda kick butt.

Congratulations, you've reached the end! Thank you so much to all of you who took the time to read this unnecessarily long and detailed review. As long as I help someone translate their conflicted feelings into coherent thoughts, I'll call it a win.

I want to reiterate that I don't hate Kung Fu Panda 4 and I had fun while watching the film. It has its flaws and there are a lot of aspects that I dislike, but the effort of the crew is obvious and I greatly admire and respect the hard work put into the film by those who worked on it. This does not at all excuse my issues with the movie, but it's worth saying.

As for the future of the series, I only hope that the next installment is more considerate of the franchise's origins and why Po's story is being told in the first place. I fully believe that another sequel could be good given a strong, passionate crew with a great understanding of the characters and world (and I wouldn't be averse to some previous directors returning, just to put it out there).

Thanks again to those who took the time to read this crazy excuse for a movie review. Feel free to either disagree with me or add things in the replies/reblogs, I'm always looking for more thoughts to think.

Until next time!

#kung fu panda 4 #kung fu panda #dreamworks animation #kfp #kfp 4 #movie review #i'll add the actual picture of the furious five's cameo when i can get ahold of one of decent quality #my time has come #it wasn't THAT bad #i didn't love it #but it is what it is #it's a tentative 6/10 all things considered #free the five #perhaps i treated kfp3 too harshly #don't get me wrong the movie had good qualities and i can tell a lot of work went into it #a lot of missed potential imo #a lot of characters done dirty #i didn't even mention the score but i thought it was just okay #i wasn't wowed #i know close to nothing about composing though so i should probably just not even go there #credits were the best part both cinematically and musically #i feel mean but i'm not going to be dishonest #bc obviously you all simply must know how i feel about the silly panda movie #a more detailed version of the grievances i have w the dragon warrior plot can be found in my og discussion post if anyone's interested #as well as my thoughts on bringing back old villains #might make some edits to this in the future but this is all i have to say for now

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emberglowfox · 9 months

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closing time

#you know situation's dire when sparks breaks out the color block sona vent art LOOOOOOOL #sparks speaks #vent #again to all my new-ish followers i do post stuff like this from time 2 time PLEASE block one of those tags if you don't want to see it #long post #edit: fine to rb idgas #ummm NEway. i go back to college in like a month and the thought of it makes me want to curl up and die. idk if i can do it again tbh lol #i dont know how i survived the first time #<- LYING he does. and it was by letting the dissociation he is currently bitching about swallow him completely #if i really committed and tried i could probably claw my way out of this. but there's really no point when i'll just fall back into it soon #the forgetting my entire life does suck though. it does suck.#its really cool learning you've lost the only thing you thought you couldn't lose.#anyways. i'm fine im chillin i just. needed to get this out #if youre reading this preciate you. drink water

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hailsatanacab · 8 months

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For the prompt ask game!

9. Sleep deprivation and/or 37. Secret Relationship and/or 40. Identity reveal/major secret reveal

(I selected a few so you can chose the one that resonates the most.)

For any DPxDC characters. <3

*emerges from a google docs, covered in blood and panting* i did it... it is done.

thank you for the prompt!! because i love a challenge, or because i can't stop myself, i went and did all of them!! for everyone!! everyone is sleep deprived and everyone is revealing secrets ^^'

Danny/Tim, mentioned Jazz/Jason

(๑•́ ₃ •̀๑) enjoy!! prompt ask game

kid napping

“Red Robin, sound off. Status?”

“All good here, Oracle. Everything okay?”

It’s been a slow night, never a good sign. Pent up energy itches under his skin and he stretches when he stands, preparing for whatever Oracle is going to throw his way. It’s going to be something, he can tell.

“Good.” Relief briefly colours her voice answers, before she becomes serious again, keys clacking away in the background. “There’s been a report from Agent A. It appears that one Timothy Drake has been kidnapped and is being ransomed for five million dollars and a helicopter. I’m tracing the call now.”

“A helicopter, too? Kidnappers these days, used to be they just wanted their money and that would be the end of it… a fucking helicopter, wow.” Red Hood scoffs, and Red Robin can’t help but join in the laughter over the comms.

“Doesn’t exactly sound like these are the brightest tools in the shed now, does it, Hood? Wonder what poor schmuck they’ve got instead.” Nightwing says, slightly out of breath.

The smile slips off Red Robin’s face and clammy, cold dread shivers down his spine. A stone settles in his stomach. He wets his lips and clears his throat. “Oracle, can you pull up the CCTV on my apartment near WE? Any closer to tracing the call?”

“Still on the trace, they’re using a jammer. Agent A is cooperating so they should phone back soon, which will help.” she reports, falling into silence as he finds the video feed.

“You know who it is?”

“I hope not.”

It’s tense, he taps his feet on the rooftop, fingers tightening over his grapple as he fights the urge to fly off the roof and check for himself. It better not be him. Please, dear God, don’t let it not be him.

“What are you thinking, Red Robin?” Batman growls through the comms. Red Robin can hear the wind under his words, whipping fast as he no doubt makes his way over to his position.

“I had a, uh, a friend coming over tonight. From behind, he… he could be mistaken for Tim Drake.”

The jokes fall silent, the comms growing serious as they pick up on his tone.

“Well, fuck.”

“Eloquent as always, Hood.”

“Shut up, bat-brat.”

“You were right, Red Robin, it looks like it was your… friend they caught, instead. About two hours before the call came in. I’m following their van now, I should have the destination soon. In the meantime, it looks like they’re heading towards the docks.”

Red Robin throws himself off the building, shooting his grapple as low as he dares to get the fastest swing he can.

They have Danny.

Worry gnaws at his gut even as gravity pulls it into his throat with another swing.

Danny is… And Red Robin means this in the nicest way possible, but Danny is fragile. They haven’t talked about it, but RR knows that Danny has health problems. Something plaguing him since he was young, that’s landed him in the hospital more than once. A weak heart, far too slow to be normal, possibly chronic fatigue—he’s always so tired, falling asleep anywhere he can.

Sometimes, he doesn’t even need to put his head down. Once, when they had gone to the corner store to get some popcorn to enjoy their movie (which Danny had explicitly and repeatedly promised he wouldn’t snore through this time), Danny had rested his head on Tim’s shoulder while they were waiting and he’d just… gone. On his feet, asleep, just like that.

He’d laughed, when Tim woke him up. Apologised. Said Tim made him feel safe enough to fall asleep just about anywhere and—

Red Robin grits his teeth and corrects his course as Oracle updates them with more precise coordinates.

Tim had carried him home that night, piggy-back for four blocks, but by the end of it, he wasn’t tired at all. And that’s another thing, Danny’s just so light. It’s concerning.

They never did watch that movie, but it’s a night that Tim can’t help remembering fondly all the same. They’d ended up rewatching some old sitcom that Danny’s seen countless times but Tim’s never really bothered with, Danny drifting off to sleep again and Tim eventually following him, because… sleep is easy with Danny.

It’s the same for him, he thinks. He can’t explain it, but he feels safe enough to sleep with Danny, too.

He needs to be alright.

“So… Is this friend just a friend? Or a friend friend?”

“A friend, Nightwing. Now hurry up.”

He’s not in the mood to play these games, not now. There’s a reason why none of them know about Danny, and this is one of them. His family, as much as he loves them, are just too damn nosey for their own good.

“You know that doesn’t answer my question at all.”

“Then why don’t you ask something intelligible, rather than continue with your childish antics?” Robin snarks, and for once, Red Robin has to agree with him. Or, rather, he’s grateful for the distraction that it gives him.

Tim has secrets. He’s sure that Danny does, too, and so far—aside from the standard background check he always runs on new friends and friend friends alike—he’s done very well to respect them. He just can’t say that his family would do the same.

They can be overwhelming, to say the least, and Tim has tried his best to protect Danny from that.

Only to fail to protect him in every other way that it counts.

“How long have you guys been ‘friends’?”

“Nightwing, save it, please.”

“What’s his name?”

He ignores him.

Red Robin lands on the building first, thank goodness. He wastes no time in finding a skylight that can be pried open fairly quietly, slipping inside without a second thought.

“Wait for backup, Red Robin, that is an order!” Batman says, when he lets them know he’s in.

“Negative, Batman. I’m getting him back.”

“Red Robin!”

He weaves silently through the desks on the second floor of the warehouse, always moving, always keeping a trained eye on the shadows around him.

When he reaches the stairs, he hears voices.

“Looks like three of them, armed. The-the hostage is tied to a chair in the middle of the room, he…” Red Robin takes a steadying breath. The person has a burlap sack over their head is slumped to the side, from where he is, Red Robin can’t see if his chest is moving. There’s blood on the floor. “He needs medical assistance. Another two on the northside entrance.”

The comms explode in admonitions, everyone pleading with him to stay where he is, to wait for help, but fuck that. With a tap, he switches them off and he can finally, just about make out the words of the kidnappers as he creeps down the first few steps.

“—shouldn’t he have woken up by now?”

“I don’t know, man, you’re the one that hit him! Do you think he’s—”

“No! I didn’t even hit him that hard, I swear!” the man cries, holding his hands up in surrender. “I just couldn’t take any more of his stupid jokes!”

If there was any doubt in Red Robin’s mind that they picked up Danny by mistake, it’s gone now. Yeah. If you get Danny, you get his stupid jokes, too.

He creeps closer.

There’s some storage crates between him and Danny, if he can get behind there without being seen then that leaves him in a good position for when whoever’s next in takes out the guys at the front. He can’t do anything without them gone first, not without risking them taking shots inside and endangering Danny.

The man that hit Danny circles round behind him and grabs at his hands.

“What are you even doing, Pat? Who gives a shit, leave him alone.”

“I’m just checking! I just gotta see!”

“Fuck’s sake, guys, who cares? We just gotta get our money, that’s it—”

“And our helicopter!”

“And our—”

“Shit, I can’t find a pulse! Shit, Frank, I killed him, I—”

Jason told him once that when the Pits overtook him, he used to see green. Instead of blacking out, he’d be swimming in that putrid Lazarus colour and he’d slip into that rage and bad things would happen.

He’s heard of people seeing red, too, but really, he thinks that’s more of a literary device.

Tim doesn’t see anything aside from his targets.

A barrage of birdarangs take the guns from the guys at the front, the three around Danny startling badly enough that the guy that kil—that’s behind Danny—stumbles, losing his footing.

Only one of them shoots.

Amateurs.

There’s a round of curses on the comms as the shots come through. Oracle must have turned them back on.

“Fucking hell—Nightwing and I are at the front, Red Robin, don’t worry about them.”

Red Robin’s barely listening.

He spins, kicking the largest guy in the stomach hard enough so that he doubles over, wheezing. Following through the movement, another kick lands on the side of his head and he’s down.

The second one, Frank, gets his wits about him and raises his gun, spraying wildly. He’s a shit shot, going wide in panic, and Red Robin simply ducks and rushes forward, keeping low. Tackling the guy, he grabs the gun off of him and uses it to smash him across the face, once, twice, three times, before he stops moving.

“Oracle, get police and paramedics on scene, now.” Batman says, the displeasure in his voice evident. “Red Robin, Robin and I are coming in from the top.”

Pat hasn’t even made it up off the floor yet, scrambling backwards, fear plain on his face.

Red Robin stands, breathing heavily, gun still in hand.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t mean to do it! Please—please, don’t, please!”

Red Robin doesn’t kill.

Well, no, Red Robin doesn’t normally kill.

No, that’s not quite right, either.

Red Robin has killed. Red Robin will more than likely kill again. Red Robin sees no problem with killing.

The gun is up, pointing towards the guy without any real thought about it.

Footsteps rush behind him, the familiar heavy footfalls of Batman and Robin, so he doesn’t bother turning around. The gun follows the guy as he keeps pulling himself backwards, snot and tears mingling down his face.

“Red Robin,” Batman says, softly.

It’s always weird hearing Batman’s voice like that. It’s not the first time, obviously—Batman can’t use his scary intimidating voice on victims or children, after all—but having it used on him is weird.

“Breathe.”

“He’s dead. They killed him.”

If hearing Batman’s voice was weird, Red Robin can’t even recognise his own.

Distantly, he realises he’s dissociating. There’s a tightness in his chest, it’s hard to breathe, a growing buzz drowns out any noise in his ears and he can’t think, he can’t—

A heavy hand squeezes his shoulder, jolting him out of his thoughts. Batman reaches around and gently removes the gun from his grip, and Tim feels the instant loss of it. He should have done it, why hadn’t he done it?

Robin takes care of the last man, his crying cut off by a swift kick to the head. Nightwing and Red Hood join them, zip-tying the men on the floor and starting to drag them back to the entrance of the warehouse one by one.

No one says a word.

Shrugging off Batman’s hand, Tim moves towards the chair.

Shaking, he takes a deep breath and removes the sack. The small part of him that was left hoping it wasn’t him, it couldn’t be him, please dear God let it not be him, shatters.

Even dead, he looks peaceful.

Tim’s seen death. He’s no stranger to it, he’s seen what it can do to a person. There’s some blood coagulating over his eyebrows, but otherwise, he looks peaceful. Is that comforting? That he didn’t suffer?

Danny’s head lolls to the side as the sack comes completely away, his hair flopping over his eyes. Tim’s been on at him to get a haircut lately, he thinks it’ll be nice tidied up a bit, just on the sides. It’ll get rid of that permanent bedhead. Help him with job interviews, he’s got to be thinking about that now that he’s in his last year of college.

It’s about the only thing that’ll hold him back, Tim thinks. Danny’s brilliant. Any employer would be a fool to turn him down because of his shaggy hair, but employers are stupid so it makes sense to put your best foot forward and—

Tim falls to his knees.

Fuck.

He’s dead, he’s really—Danny’s skin is horribly pale, cold to the touch. Gone is his bright, cheerful smile.

“Danny, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, I—”

He stops himself with a deep, shuddering breath. He can’t break down here, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

Instead, he tips forward to rest his head in Danny’s lap, arms curling around himself. They were too late. They got here as fast as they could and they were too late.

“Danny, I’m so sorry…” he whispers. “I… I love you, I love you, I’m sorry.”

Dimly, he can feel the others standing around them. Someone crouches down beside him, resting a comforting arm over his back, but he doesn’t turn his head to see who it is. He squeezes his grip on Danny’s legs tighter.

“Come on, baby bird. Let’s—”

They’re interrupted by a huge, honking snore as Danny jerks himself awake.

Tim’s head snaps up, staring at Danny with wide eyes.

“You were asleep?” Red Robin springs up, several different emotions rapidly flip flopping through him.

“Wha… What?” Danny heaves a yawn, blinking blearily down at him. “Sorry, I’m just… they were shit kidnappers, man, really boring. Honestly, worst abduction yet.”

“You were asleep? I thought you were dead!”

“Not mutually exlusive, you know.” Danny says through another yawn. He rolls his neck around with an almighty crack and glances at everyone. “Didn’t think I’d warrant the whole Bat brigade, though…”

“The kidnappers thought they had Tim Drake.” Batman supplies, while Red Robin tries to work through the emotional whiplash.

“Ah, makes sense… wait.” Danny sits up suddenly, squinting at Red Robin. “Did you say you loved me?”

“No, of course not, why would I—”

“Tim? Is that—are you—are you Red Robin?”

“Everyone, hold the fuck up!” Red Hood shouts from the other side of the warehouse, having finished securing the perps to a streetlight outside. “Double R is dating Danny fucking Nightingale?”

Well, there goes his identity… Oh, who’s he kidding, Danny’s smart. There’s no way he could have salvaged that. This was not how he thought the night was going to go.

“Cranberry, is that you?” Danny twists in his chair, somehow delighted to see Red Hood rescuing him, too. “I thought I smelled you lurking about!”

“Shut it, you little shit. Since when were you dating this dweeb?”

“I’m sorry,” Red Robin pleads, hands in the air to try and slow down the onslaught of information and insults, “you two know each other?”

“Cranberry?” Nightwing echoes, looking as lost as Red Robin feels.

“Yeah, Cranberry—The Cranberries—zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie. Obviously. Also he’s wearing a big, fuck off red helmet.”

“Yeah, sure, makes sense.”

It’s about the only thing that does.

“And please don’t call my boyfriend a dweeb, Cranberry. Especially when he just said he loves me for the first time.”

“He only said it because he thought you were dead.”

“I am dead, so it counts.”

“Only half, so I’d say that puts you at a solid ‘like’. Tim’s—and savour this, Tim, because I’m only going to say it once—Tim’s intelligent, so I’m sure he’ll come to his senses soon.”

Danny just throws Red Hood such a shit-eating grin. A level of feral that Tim’s only seen before in Damian.

“That’s what I used to say about Jazz, too.”

Hood scoffs in offence, and to be honest, Tim’s not sure where he should go from here. What the hell is happening, how do they know each other?

“Come on, is anyone going to untie me or am I really meeting your family mafia-style?”

“Do it yourself, Slimer.” Red Hood laughs, crossing his arms.

“Ugh, you suck so much. I’ll fucking slime you, just you wait. Can’t believe Jazz even likes you, I preferred it when she was dating Johnny.”

And then, without Danny doing anything other than muttering obscenities at Red Hood, the ropes fall to the ground. In one swift motion, Danny stands up and stretches himself to his full height of 5’6.

“All of you need to explain, now.” commands Batman, and honestly, Red Robin’s very much on his side of it.

“I can’t believe it… Jason and Timmy are both in secret relationships? That’s… How come no one told me?” Poor Nightwing sounds the most shocked out of all of them. He turns to Damian and clasps onto both of his shoulders. “You’re not secretly dating, are you, D? Please tell me you’re not, please tell me you’re single, please?”

Of course, Robin just clicks his tongue and pushes his hands away. Really, Red Robin doesn’t think that Nightwing’s in any danger of that happening, he’d be surprised if anyone could stand Robin enough to actually date him.

He shakes his head and turns to Danny, who’s staring right back at him, worry clear on his face.

Fuck, he... He's alive. He's really alive.

Tim pulls him into a bone-crushing hug, fingers buried deep in his NASA shirt. Tucking his face into the crook of Danny's shoulder, he laughs wetly with the joy of it. He's alive. He hasn't lost him. He's safe.

“I’m sorry I haven’t told you before now, starshine, but…” Danny breaks the hug and softly pulls away from him to rise on his tiptoes to place a kiss his cheek. The skin burns cold where his lips touch. “I love you, too. Also, you’re gonna wanna sit down. This is going to be a lot.”

#dpxdc #dead tired #anger management #(barely but it's there haha)#dcxdp #hailsatanacrab🦀🦀writes #i'm sorry this has taken a while but also this week has kinda sucked and i'm still pissed off about that #so writing has been a nice little break from that!!!!#i hope you enjoy it!! i'm not fantastic with writing romance/ships so like... hope it's alright haha #also i feel kinda bad about not putting the whole phantom reveal too but like... we get that all that time haha #idk maybe i'll continue it #OH SHIT I FORGOT MY WRITING TAG HOLD ON #must admit - i do like that you can edit the tags now even though the new post maker sucks #anyway!!!!!!! i had this whole bit from danny's pov in the beginning where he just decided to go to sleep but realised that fucking sucked #it was so boring haha #so we got this instead!#hope the emotions came across - i feel like i have a tendency to just go cold and clinical when emotions happen #idk #oh! danny and tim met because danny's a part time barista and when tim ordered his monstrocity of a drink danny just winked and said #'ah the walking dead special coming right up!' and added another three espresso #jason and jazz met before they did though - and none of them knew they were dating the other's family #danny and jason have a bit of a rocky relationship - he's not good enough for jazz!! she deserves way better than some two-bit gangster!!#jason just thinks he's a cute overprotective brother - he really envies their relationship and wishes he could have something like that #he likes to rib danny and tbh danny is really warming up to him too - now that the gross stinky ecto is starting to filter out #(which is thanks to him and jazz - which jason does know about and is extremely grateful for)#(he really does love jazz and is a little bit jealous that tim told danny he loved him first)#(jason goes home that night and dips jazz into a kiss and whispers it into her skin over and over again)#(he loves her he loves her he loves her - and who the fuck is johnny?)#once tim gets over his shock he's doing good! of course he accepts danny there was never any question of that #he meets ellie and then introduces her to kon and the rest of the team and ellie decides she might like to do some superheroing for a bit

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cheeriochat · 17 days

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Wash time

#this is the plushie washing post for my dmc followers lol #i bought them unused second hand but like #they still need a wash #theyve been rolling around in my room for a bit so #i'll update once theyve been rinsed and when theyve out to dry #i still want a dante bean #i want all of them but i will have to settle for the ones I can get #sigh #devil may cry #dmc #vergil #nero #edit i noticed the typo end me now

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yeyinde · 1 year

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SEA, SWALLOW ME | Simon Riley x GN!Reader

No one wrenches you open, leaving you raw and exposed, like Simon. A wound that never heals. A sickness that never dissipates. You carry the weight of him between your ribs and thundering heart. A place of safekeeping, protecting this precious knot that gnarls inside of you from everything else out there that might want to hurt it. It thrums now, dizzy with the feeling of him so close to you.

》 WARNINGS: 18+ – MATURE, SMUT | GN!Reader: no use of pronouns, gendered language or anatomy; very soft smut; light breath play/choking but. It serves a narrative purpose.

》 WORD COUNT: 9,4k (of pure, unadulterated nonsense)

》 NOTES: UM. This was meant to subvert standard D/s | Predator/Prey dynamics for Ghost but became a mess of nonsensical metaphors instead.

As far as missions went, this was slated to be amongst the easiest assigned out to your group—a standard hostage rescue of a foreign diplomat.

It's a sequence you've played out many times over in basic training. The steps, drills, are already ingrained in your memory with minor changes to suit the situation unfolding in a place you'd never been before, and probably will never see again. Rudimentary. Boring, almost.

The chance of injury was minimal. The probability of death is even infinitesimal.

And yet—

He pulls you into an alcove in the safe house you've been holed up in for the last twelve hours, alternating between bouts of sleep, and pouring over each minute detail of your roles.

Price's voice cracked an hour ago.

It was Gaz who called it with a soft chuff. "Guess that means we're good to go, eh, cap?"

"Off with you, then," he groused, reaching for a bottle of water. "We'll head out in an hour. Be ready."

You meant to sneak away to the gym and exercise some of the anticipation pooling inside your veins—a physical outlet to exert the antsy feeling that made your fingers tap a soundless beat against your shaking thigh; a post-mission ritual to saturate your brain in those feel-good chemicals caused by the rush of adrenaline.

But you were stopped by a hand on your wrist. One that snaked through the tenebrous of the storage closet that housed the guns, weapons, and ammunition, all spread out on the walls with a bench in the middle.

Simon leans back against it, guns spread out on the surface behind him. The hand not curled around your wrist is pressed flat, bare, to the granite top, only inches away from the collection of knives he meticulously tends to before each assignment.

His sleeves are rolled up to his forearm, ink coloured in a hazy smear of yellow from the lamp spilling across the table in the corner. Your eyes are drawn there first—the shadows cast over the thick veins running along his forearms, hidden beneath the charcoal.

The other flexes around your wrist, rough skin scorching when it presses against yours. Seeing the bulk of his palm swallowing the entirety of your wrist and half of your hand has your mouth running dry.

There's something about him, about the fold of his massive frame condensing itself into a nook much too small for him to fit, that feeds into a part of your head that aches to fly. To scale mountains, to reach the summit. To be the first person to stand on top of the highest peak, and gaze down at the world shaded in blues, greens, and greys below.

Staring at Simon fills you with summit fever.

"Did I scare you?"

It's hard to rip your gaze away from him with so much of his flesh bared to you. He's usually dressed by now in his jacket and vest. Always prepared for the next slaughter. This—

This is new. Unusual.

You huff, rolling your eyes toward the domed ceiling, and struggle to stave off the influx of anxiety that gnarls inside of you. A break in the routine. It unsettles you. "Hardly."

He makes a low, starchy noise in his throat, muffled partially by the balaclava covering his mouth. "That so?"

He runs his thumb over your pulse, drawing your attention to the rapid thud of your heartbeat under his finger. It's a slow, meticulous circle, and his eyes dance with derision when you scoff, a touch embarrassed, and curl your fingers into a fist as if that would somehow stop the thundering in your chest.

"Whatever," you murmur, defensive. "I drank an espresso. It's just a natural, bodily reaction—"

His hand twitches again, fingers lifting from your skin as he slowly peels away from you. The chill against your flesh makes you shiver, already missing the intensity of his heat.

"If you say so," he volleys, settling his hand back on the table, palm cupping the thick ledge, fingers tucked under the surface. The motion makes his muscles quiver.

Goosebumps prickle along your flesh. Your throat runs dry.

"Got somethin' for you."

It's standard, benign—the words are flat considering the weight behind them, the potency. They're all he'll allow in this brief window of privacy when everyone else is busying themselves with their pre-mission rituals.

Price leans against the wall in the corner of the room, fingers curled into the straps of his tac-vest. His chin is dipped low, eyes fixed on the table a metre away where the files lay open, floorplans exposed. Despite the evenness of his brow, and the squared set of his shoulders, you can see the weight of everything circling in stormy blue.

The success of this will be shared amongst everyone, but the loss will be solely his own.

On the opposite side of the room, Soap picks over every centimetre of your weapons and tactical gear. Scouring every iota in an effort to make sure nothing will fail anyone.

Gaz, as the youngest, shoulders it all, and pours over the blueprints, committing each exit and entrance point to memory. He won't be caught unawares if a route is compromised. He'll get everyone out to safety.

By stark contrast, Ghost does nothing.

He doesn't look over the documents, but he doesn't need to. The blood vessels streaking through jaundiced white speak of a sleepless night staring at the photos of the men you're supposed to hunt down. The people you're supposed to rescue.

Before he slips on his gloves, you catch ink stains on his thumb and inside his forefinger. The thick scent of gunpowder and oil clings to him. His weapon is sleek: gunmetal grey and cleaned. Meticulous. His attention to detail is unyielding.

He did everything he was supposed to do last night when he didn't come and sneak into your room.

But he never does. Not before a mission.

You sometimes wonder if he likes to torture himself with the if only or the what if that lingers whenever you split apart, left to your devices and wholly dependent on yourself for survival. He keeps his distance. Doesn't want, nor need, the distraction.

Some might think it cruel that he avoids you like you're already caught in the clutch of the Reaper; skin shading a sickly grey as your blood rots from within. But you know him. You know Simon.

And when he hands you your gun, you can feel that it's already been loaded, and tended to. There's a fine sheen of oil glued to the tight folds of metal from where his meticulous cleaning couldn't reach.

Your tac-vest is packed with everything he deems necessary for your own survival (and even a few things he doesn't but you do).

He hands you a knife, too—one you know is from his personal collection. It fits into the palm of your hand like it was made for you, and you wonder—with a small smile blooming across your cheeks—how long he took looking over them before picking this one. A perfect fit.

"Thank you," you murmur, low and soft. No one is paying attention to you at all—there is no time to do so when you can feel the seconds ticking down. "I'll do my best not to get your pretty knife dirty."

He snorts. "Defeats the purpose, doesn't it? And it ain't mine."

"My knife, then."

You glance down at the smooth curve of the blade, sharpened to a deadly point, and twist it in your hand to stare at the handle. It's black. Two stems jut out from the hilt, extended a bit longer than the blade. It's triangular and pitched in the centre before tapering off to a sharp point. It's the length of your forearm. Longer than the tactical knives issued by the weapons branch in the SAS. Bound in leather. The stitches look much too similar to the ones he threaded through your gaping skin in Jakarta.

"Fairbairn-Sykes," you say, glancing up at him. "Thought they stopped using these?"

He rolls one massive shoulder. A man with his girth shrugging insouciantly is a strange sight. You almost expect to hear the distant roar of an avalanche.

"Much better'in the cheap ones they give you."

"Oh, yeah? Kinda hard to hide, though—"

"If you don't want it—"

Simon reaches for it, but you pull it close to your chest, grinning.

"You can't take my knife away."

He huffs, lowering his hand back to the table. His eyes are piercing. Heavy. "Then stop complainin' about it."

A fly buzzes by your ear. A bead of sweat drips down the nape of your neck. Something about the look in his dark, shadowed eyes sets your teeth on edge.

It wells on your tongue, then—soft words not meant to be uttered in a room saturated in contracted death—and the astringent flood strips your enamel until your teeth ache with the urge to let them out, or swallow them down. You wonder what he would say if you let them free. If they slipped from your tongue and filled the room with the stench of your poisonous wants, ones left to rot inside your chest, your throat.

The burn of them blisters your esophagus, leaving behind open wounds leaking infection into your bloodstream, into the vessels that run to your lungs, your heart.

The tremendous weight of them makes your knees quiver, struggling to stay afloat in the thick atmosphere that sits, oppressive and unignorable, between you.

It's all one-sided, of course—a hunger felt only by you. He doesn't acknowledge the gossamer of tension that bleeds into the room, wrapping tight around your neck like a phantom noose. To Simon, nothing is amiss; nothing is wrong—

And it isn't, you think. This spooling knot inside of you, wound tight into a ball, isn't wrong. It isn't bad to feel this way, but it's terrifying.

Being with Simon is a bit like climbing a mountain.

But there is scaling one in a harness, secured safe and sound with ropes and pitons, and then there is this:

A free solo up the side of a chossy.

The chalk on the tips of your fingers clumps together under the stickiness of your damp palm. One slip, and you'll be a wreck at the bottom before you can even try to hold on.

Jagged rock at the bottom gnashes its teeth together in anticipation, eagerly waiting its chance to grind your flesh into pulp, and offer your spilled blood to Thanatos.

Melodramatic, maybe, but something about Ghost brings out a sense of morbid sentimentality from within you. The feeling is a harsh juxtaposition to who the man really is.

A mythological being who lingers in the foreground like a psychopomp, but gives you whittled knives from his personal collection, carefully whet to a fine point, and cracks stupid jokes in a deadpan manner as if the world around you wasn't raining bullets and reeking of gun cotton.

Your gaze wavers, falls. There are a lot of things you are meant to say now, and many more that are forbidden. None of them brim through the humus that sticks to your throat. Disturbed dirt in a lonely graveyard.

A flurry of motion snags your attention. In the corner of the room, you catch sight of the fly sitting on top of an intricate web. It runs its hands together, waiting. Mischievous. A morsel of food is still tangled in white lace. It feasts without worry, unaware of its impending demise as its feet glue to the threads woven below, shaped like the cracked skulls in a catacomb.

As the fly feeds, the spider cocks its head up from a darkened crevasse, a multitude of eyes gleaming in the flushed light hanging overhead.

It waits.

Poor thing.

"Thanks," you say again, wrenching your eyes away from the opening maw of the ossuarium in the corner. The sight unnerves you.

It's not meant to be any more sincere than the first utterance of your gratitude, but you say it—if only to fill the stifling silence, and wonder if that carefully curated mask would shatter into pieces, revealing the bare-faced man (human: flesh, bone; vulnerable) beneath, if you uttered the words pulsing against your vocal cords like a pizzicato.

He levels you with a flat look as if he, too, hears the whine of c minor screaming in your chest.

"Hilt is new. Try not to get it dirty."

You fight a shiver. Force yourself to give some facsimile of a smile in response.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Lt."

(A liar.)

You tuck the pretty knife in a tawny leather sheath into your pocket.

"I'll take good care of it."

(A thief.)

Behind smeared grey, charcoal black, his eyes narrow. Pensive. Considering. Something rears, lurks. Hidden in shadows. Cut into brimstone. It's the same shade of death that only surfaces when he's on the battlefield—no longer Simon, but—

"See that you don't."

A ghost.

(Just warmer than most.)

Your eyes stray back to the corner of the room where the black spider prowls closer to the hapless fly struggling to be free.

Yeah, you think, a touch dazed. Your fingers tighten around the leather-bound hilt of the blade. Me, too.

You dirty his knife.

The chance for an injury is minor, but never zero. You find this out when someone grabs you from behind, knife pressed to your jugular. There is no fear, no terror.

Just—

Embarrassment. Stupid. You know better than to leave your six unchecked.

It ends with a paper-thin cut to your skin, and your knife buried in flesh.

The hilt is bloodied. Authentic leather stained red. Grotesque. Garish. You can't tear your eyes away from the droplets that stain the handle.

Plastic, usually. You know this because you looked it up. Polymer-covered wood.

The leather was handmade. Sewn with thick, black thread. Glued to the stripped wood.

Wrapped up pretty just for you.

(Just for you.)

And you ruined it like you promised you wouldn't.

(A liar. A thief.)

It makes you wince, and the burn in your chest hurts more than the sting in your neck. You thought you heard death and his fiddle this morning, but who knew his boney, rotted fingers would wrap around your wrists like it was the hilt of a conductor's baton.

Simon doesn't say anything, but there's a weight in his silence. A soundless ticking in the background as he watches, placid, as you make your way to him.

Nails bite into your palm until they're sticky with the blood that pools between your fingers. It's meant to be grounding. Replacing one hurt with another, but the biggest injury is the one to your pride, your ego. It's burned, blistered, and not even the swell of something you feel roiling through you at the sight of Simon, steady and sturdy—faultless despite the roaring that seems to echo around, the scream of the tide trying to pull you under—is able to quell the sting of humiliation.

Your hands are stained just like them. Scars mattered across soft tissue, and despite the way they spill over your flesh like Orion, you still feel the pull of torn flesh beneath your armour.

This—

This was an accident. Unfortunate. Unforgiving. It lingers between aching teeth, and tastes of raw wire.

You won't let the shame dip its talons into your pride despite the bruise forming on the side of your veneer.

Your chin lifts: defiant, almost. As if waiting for him to say something.

Anger, you think, is easier to wield than culpability.

There are a number of derisive, droll words he can pin you with, and your mind runs through the possibilities, the ones you heard barked out over the comms. Things like: rookie mistakes. Shoulda checked your six. How'd this happen? Thought you were better than this. Another scar to add to your collection, then? Better stop before you end up lookin' like me.

It surprises you, then, when he says none of them.

"Alright?"

His hand lifts, and a weight settles against your jaw, lifting your chin. It's barely a cat scratch, and doesn't even need stitches, but it stings something fierce when he stretches the skin around it. Pulling, tugging. You clench your teeth, swallowing back a wince.

He catches it, anyway.

Stupid.

You wait for the rest. For the or what? that traditionally follows a simple alright, but nothing comes.

His hand drifts, palm cups the side of your neck, and—

It's indescribable. A rush, maybe. A raw, pulsing wound throbbing inside your throat where his heavy, rough hand sits. A plinth. You can't lower your chin with it in the way. Stuck, you think, and then—

You shiver. It's instinctual. The curve of your neck is vulnerable; a sacred place. Animals protect their jugular, their soft bellies, from attack, and something primal in you tenses up. Waiting for the strike. For the snapping of jowls into your soft skin.

None come. Stupid. Of course—

"Jus'a little scratch."

His hand leaves almost quickly as it appeared, and you drift aimlessly, unconsciously, after it.

Snapped out of your strange reverie when Price calls out your name. Paperwork, probably. You've been hurt, and as a response—or a sneaky punishment—you have a mountain of forms to fill out, t's to cross, i's to dot.

The weight of Ghost's gaze on you is almost as heavy as the heft of his hand, and you linger for a moment in that strange, phantom noose, wondering what it would feel like if he held on just a little bit—

"Go on, then," his chin jerks toward Price. "Get cleaned up."

Something shifts inside of you. The open of a proverbial floodgate.

It's instant:

The weight of his palm, the press of his fingers—you feel them against your skin, a phantom whisper. A breath.

There's something almost comforting about the danger of exposure, you think. About bearing your neck to the biggest predator around.

It's not an act of submission. You'd never submit to Ghost, much less anyone else, but—

There's a sense of vulnerability there. Trust.

(It's that unseen edge of danger: a spark of life in a world that's always shades of muted grey, and draped in the folds of calamity. Death sits only a hair's breadth away no matter where you go. So close, you can feel the ghastly chill on your skin; always cold. Always freezing. You can set fire to your flesh, but your teeth still chatter.

For the first time in years, the skin on your neck burns with feverish heat.)

(The warmth fades. You chase it, pressing your fingers flat to your pulse, but still feel the icy drift of the waiting Sheol against your skin.

Cold to the touch once more.)

His fingers ghost along the skin of your wrist, skimming over your pulse. It’s soft. Gentle. A light brush that has no other meaning or purpose except to gain your attention—

—and oh, doesn’t it just.

Simon doesn’t let it linger. He pulls his hand away when your chin jerks toward him, and slides them into the pockets of his trousers. Hidden away. Out of reach.

Your wrist burns.

"Could've just said hello."

His eyes are heavy under the hood of his sweatshirt and lined with the grease paint he couldn't scour off. Maybe he never even tried to. Glacier blue framed in ashen blonde. His eyes remind you of the sandstone cliffs that line the Corfu shore. Stark white. Deep blue.

They're weighed down with something—exhaustion, maybe. The last you'd heard of him, he was chasing after leads that might link you to Shepherd with Gaz (who sent a dry text in the early morning, between the keds and the dad jokes, I don't know how anyone could be scared of this Manc; and: does the man ever sleep, or is he fuelled on Tenzing and spite alone?). And now—

“C’mere.” He murmurs, eyes heavy and lidded, sparking with something sharp, acrid. Humour, you think, heart stuttering in your chest.

The word is uttered just as softly as the touch against your flesh, and the sound—the phantom memory of the featherlight brush—burns with the heat in his gaze, the warmth that seeps through the gloves, and into your skin. Bone deep. You can feel the burn of him congealing in your cartilage.

"Finally gonna do me in?"

It earns you a dry scoff, the barest hint of an eye roll. "If I wanted to, you wouldn't see me coming."

"You could have just said no, never," you mock, stifling down a grin. "Or—I wouldn't even think about hurting you—"

The rest of the words are cut off when he steps closer. Liquid agility: he moves quickly for a man cut from Everest, sifting through the shadows with no more than a soft thud of his heel clipping the linoleum. Ghost looms before you in a blink, head tilted down to gaze at you.

His hand lifts, knuckle grazing the swell of your cheek. It's softer than he has any right to be. A warm brush across cold skin. The Agulhas current colliding into the Somali. It ripples across your surface and rattles the rotting bones below. The empty husk of you trembles.

"No," he murmurs, words distant and warbled under the roaring in your ear. You watch a flicker of something tremble across his face. A frisson shuddering too fast for your sluggish, mortal eyes to discern.

You can't find the remnants of that ugly, gnarled thing that sometimes stares back at you when he's unaware. A beast hiding in a forgotten bivouac, creeping through the desolate ruins of a travesty that reek of upturned humus. A ghost disinterred from its slumber.

But when you stare at him, bare-faced and uncertain, you see a darkening edge in the cuts of blue: deep canyons and crevasse that warm when your reflection swims in the glossy curve, wide eyes and parted lips filling the tenebrous, the shadows.

The things, disentombed, are at rest. Clouded over by the shocked face that swims in endless pools of blue.

"Never."

"Oh," you murmur, honeyed sweet and viciously coy. "How sweet of you."

(It takes you a moment to realise he's mocking you.

Your heart still thunders like the words were true.)

Simon cleans the hilt of the knife for you, bare fingers scouring away the blood that stains the leather. He lets you watch as he works, content to lean against the wall in silence as he dabs a cloth in a petri dish filled with cleaning solution, and gently scours the stain from the hide.

The motions are gentle, and familiarity bleeds into each swipe. This isn't the first time he scrubbed away the rotting blood of a dead man, and some part of you aches, stupid, knowing that it won't be the last.

A testament to the age-old woes of an occupational hazard.

Watching him work, silent and unbothered by your intrusion ("of all the bloody gits, you're somehow the least annoying. For now;"), fills you with a strange sense of comfort. Of longing.

(Domesticity makes your teeth ache and your cheeks burn.)

His knuckles are bruised. He won't tell you how it happened. Doesn't say much outside of, it's done, already, so no sense in worryin' about it.

You suppose he's right. No sense in dwelling over what you can't change. But the sight of his hands—bruised, cracked and bloodied—makes your mouth dry, and your heart race.

There's something about his hands that captivate you.

You can't stop staring at them. The memory of what his molten flesh felt like against your icy skin sears into you. The weight of his palm on your neck. Steady, solid.

Something predatory had risen from within you, and cocked its head to the side, allowing him an ounce more of your flesh for him to take. To touch.

A bear will seek the warmest cave to slumber after gorging itself on flesh and bone. A moth will kill itself just to touch an open flame.

There's something alluring about heat. Flames. Fire.

(Ghost smells of cedar embers: pyrolysis.

You're cold enough to want to burn the tips of your fingers in the open flame. To immerse yourself in the fire that'll char your flesh, and blacken your bones. Hollowed marrow, now filled with charcoal and brimstone.)

Your knuckles twitch. You curl your fingers into fists by your side.

"Done," he says, sitting back in the chair, and shaking you from your reverie.

He turns to you, the knife perched in his upturned palm. The leather is dark, wet, but the blood is gone.

On the table, the water in the Petri dish is diluted pink.

You let yourself linger when you reach for the proffered knife, knuckles grazing the rough flesh of warm, bare palm. Greedily catching tendrils of heat on the tips of your fingers.

"Thanks."

His eyes brim with something you can't name. "Try to keep it clean, or you'll ruin the leather."

You want to say, no one told you to make it pretty for me in the first place, but you don't. You think, instead, of summit fever, of scaling walls. The view from the top of a mountain must be worth the risk, the danger. To see the curve of the earth, and pure blue of the horizon yawning for you. As close to god as a mortal can climb with their bare hands.

It hits you like a punch to the gut. The rock crumbling. The chossy wobbling. Your feet giving away, fingers scraping against the granite as you fall to the rocks below.

He waits, eyes narrowing in that same shade of pensive contemplation as before.

You're lingering too much. Touching him too openly. Greedily. You wonder why he lets you when you pull away, shamefaced and meek.

(How much of it, you wonder, is an act and how much of it is real. Subconscious submission. Meek and unassuming. It rears inside of you, a skittish animal. But you're not scared. Not of him. Never.

A sick joke. Mortal folly. Something inside of you wants to know you're alive, and so—

Roll over and he'll think you're prey.)

You manage a shaky smile, mind racing to the same tremulous crescendo as the arrhythmic drum of your heart.

You don't meet his gaze. Can't when there's a deluge of something—ugly and awful—roaring through you at the sight of his hands, and the scars that cover them. Some, you note, deep enough to knick bone. False starts. Your teeth ache at the sight. Stomach knotting. Churning.

Something vicious gnarls through the rotten entombment of your living heart.

Gaze lowered. Neck bared.

Hook, line—

"Got it, Lt."

He fractures his fingers in Medellín after chasing a man through the barrios. They're cracked on the concrete when he jumps from the roof and catches it on a metal rod sticking out from the ashlar.

Those same ones that tilted your jaw back, bones creaking under the strain of his grip.

Ghost doesn't flinch, of course—you don't even know they're broken until he asks for gauze and a splint at the safe house you're holed up in. You just see him swing that same hand out, catching the man by the throat when he tries to slip past. Steady. Solid. An expert killing machine, numbed to the pain, the carnage.

Simon holds him tight to the wall by his jugular, barking out coarse questions, demanding answers. His voice carries (who are you working for? Where are the others? Gimme a reason not to snap your neck right now—), and you watch it all unfold from your perch on the rafters beside the alcove.

Watching his six—supposed to be, anyway—but you can't stop staring at the way he dwarfs the other man. The curve of his fingers, long and thick, around his throat. It fits like a scarf. A neck brace.

Simon's so—

Massive. Undeniably so. And seeing it like this is mesmerising. Hypnotic, almost.

Whatever the man says is swallowed by the roaring in your ears; the rush of the wind whistling through the houses below.

He gasps something out, eyes wide, and whatever it is, it makes Simon nod.

Right, then. Target acquired.

The moment his jaw snaps shut, information unveiled, he barely has a chance to beg before Simon's hand twitches.

You hear the sharp snap from your perch above him, and barely have a moment to collect yourself before the man goes limp. Simon pulls away from him, a half step back, and without his support, he falls to the ground with a soft thud.

His hand falls to his side when the man falls, and it's then, in the fading ochre streaking through the concrete, you notice the drops of red staining his gloves. They catch in the light—a Rorschach of brutality and death—and you can't stop staring at them. At his hands.

A small thing, really. It's hardly anything noteworthy considering the litres of blood that saturate any of you on a particularly gruesome day, and yet something about the red smears on the back of his hands, staining the worn, faded white metacarpals catches your attention. Eyes glued to the way he shakes his big hand, as if throwing off the sting of split bones.

(Even with splintered fingers, he was still able to snap a grown man's neck. The thought shouldn't be as enticing as it is.)

Later that night, you sit on your knees between his broad thighs, and gingerly take his bruised hand into yours. The contrast is laughable—his palm alone swallows the entirety of yours up. A cantaloupe to a satsuma. The mental image makes a smile crack on the corner of your mouth, a little twitch.

He catches it. Always, always—

The hand that isn't several shades of indigo and burgundy lifts, settling on the curve of your jaw. Long, thick fingers splay out, stretching from the slope of your bone just below your ear, down to your chin. The entire expanse of your face cupped in his palm.

Simon is a big man. Massive.

(You sometimes forget that he's a direct descendant of Everest.)

Something inside of you gnarls, and tightens. There's always that thread of unease whenever he's juxtaposed to mortal men, to yourself; a lingering remnant, an atavistic fear for the beings that are bigger, broader than yourself. The primal instinct to run from the things that look like they could snap your bones into pieces with just their bare hands.

It's a small thing, considering, and always washed away by the surge of desire that pools in the space it once occupied.

He's big.

(You've always had a fondness for heights.)

"Does it hurt?"

If it does, he'll never admit to it; but you murmur the words, anyway—if only to feel the power in his hands when you move your jaw under his palm; the gentle resistance that meets you when you lower your chin, and hit the warmth of his skin.

"No," he says, and you fight back a smirk. "Are you finished yet?"

His question pulls your attention back to his swelling hand, skin already turning glossy from the tumescence of inflammation. Irritated. Pulpy. The knuckles are split in the valleys; a deep divot of plum red.

He has pretty hands, you think.

Peached-tinged ivory dusted in a fine layer of coarse, flaxen hair, and broken into streams of scars and welts in a mosaic on his rough skin. Thick veins in ballpoint blue run from his knuckles to his forearms; all intersecting rivers that cross and meld into a confluence near the bend of his elbow.

It's layered with fading charcoal ink pushed beneath his dermis.

The slide of his palm is rough with a patchwork of scars that cut through his life line. Jagged little marks from the sharp end of a knife. Pockmarks from cigarettes.

You like the way they feel on your skin. The weight behind them, the heat. The way they bend, and contort. Curling around the butt of a cigarette as he snipes game plans back and forth with Soap. Then the hilt of a rifle when he steadies it on concrete; playing God with gunmetal.

The way they curl into loose fists by his sides when he's displeased, tense and ready for the impending alternation.

How soft they are, then, when he slides the back of his hand against yours. Touches the small of your back, fingers curving around your waist when he pulls you close.

The way he sometimes holds your face between his palms.

You cover them up with the starchy gauze before lifting your chin to catch his gaze once again.

His eyes are stagnant seas.

You might think it's tranquillity that keeps the midnight blue surface from succumbing to the pull of the moon, and the tides; but that would be a fallacy. A death sentence.

There's nothing calm in those depths. Below the thin film sits an endless abyss torn up by currents that carry the same inescapable grasp as the churning hydrology of a waterfall. It'll snatch you the moment you plunge into the blue, ripped through the water until it suctions you into a crevasse.

But—

You hold his gaze as you lift your chin up, notching it higher until his hand slides down your jaw, palm now resting on the side of your neck.

—You've never been afraid of drowning.

"That's good," you murmur, tilting your head to the side until your neck is cupped in the palm of his hand. Algae blooms in those unfathomable depths when your pulse thuds against his thumb. "'Cause I was kinda thinking it would be nice to get your hands around my neck one of these days."

His hand twitches against your pulse.

The usual caustic, derisive barbs and brackish quips are bereft from his hidden lips. You might mistake him as unbothered. Uninterested. But you've always been good at scraping off the veneer people tend to wrap themselves in, burrowing under their dermis, and the flash in those murky eyes—widened slightly at your words until it's a pretty polynya: icy white around a puddle of midnight blue—gives him away.

His thumb slides down the column of your neck until it's pressed tight to the little jut of your jugular poking through thin, delicate skin. Ashen lashes flutter when you swallow against the soft press of his fingers; eyes flickering down, liquifying, as he takes in the way your muscles tense in his hand.

He could close the entirety of his palm around the convex curve of your throat, and—if he really wanted to—his thumb and middle finger might meet in the back, nestled just above your spine.

There's a heat simmering in your veins, stroked by the flex of his fingers as he mulls over what you're asking him for. The smooth, almost pensive way he brushes his thumb over your neck; an unconscious action, you think, with the way his lids dip, cresting over liquid black.

His silence doesn't last long. Whatever conclusions he draws in that brief lull are tucked away, hidden from view, when he shifts in the old wicker chair.

He leans forward a little—enough, you note, to hide the growing bulge in his slacks—and lifts his heavy gaze back to yours.

"That so, pet?"

It's rare you ever find Simon speechless, but you've known him long enough to know how to catch him off-guard.

You swallow when his fingers thread through the loose hair along the curve of your ear, scratching his short nails along the skin of your skull. His thumb presses against the spot below your eye, lower lashes spilling over the tip of his finger when you blink up at him, eyes lidded with the weight of your want. Despite the languid, almost kittenish, way you tilt your chin until it's plinthed into his warm palm, your eyes are razors. Sharpened on the whetstone of your conviction.

"Yes," you breathe. Your tongue runs across your bottom lip, as if chasing the words from lingering in the seam of your teeth. "That's so, Lt."

His fingers twitch at your words, eyes narrowing into those same contemplative slits as before. Then slowly, deliberately, he drags his hand down to rest once more over your jugular.

—sinker.

Your nails dig into the hard flesh of his bicep until the skin breaks: crescent moons pool beneath the tips of your fingers. Red, raw.

It makes him suck in a slow breath, the sound heavy in your ear.

"Keep that up," he rasps, a livewire pressing into your naked chest. "And I'll have to do somethin' about it, pet."

It's not an empty threat. You know Simon enough by now to know he never says anything he doesn't mean. But you still toss your head back, laughter slipping from your blood-red lips. High, you think, on the thrill of him.

"Yeah? Promises, promises, Lt—"

A flash in liquid black. Napalm embers.

One hand lifts, leaving the back of your knee. You know what's coming. Asked him for it, even, but it still takes you by surprise when his massive hand slips between your chin and neck, fingers curling until he has a perfect grip of your throat in his palm. Your head is forced back, pulse beats against his thumb; a frightened bird struggling in the grip of a predator.

He isn't squeezing—not yet—but the hold he has on you is firm.

You meet his stare, quivering in his arms.

"Lay back."

A slight pressure. You gasp. He feels the inhale under his hand, the thick swallow you take when he begins to push you down slowly. It makes him groan again when you lock up around his cock, tight and throbbing like the pulse under his fingers.

"That's it." He holds you against the pillow. You don't test his grip, but you know it's ironclad. You're shackled to the bed. At his mercy.

Tears burn your eyes. It's not fear, panic. The moisture leaking into the crease of your eyelids is involuntary. You want to tell him this, to let him know you want this, want his hand on your vulnerable neck.

You gasp quietly, the air barely slipping past the curl of his fingers—naked, warm, rough—on your skin.

"Simon—"

"Relax," his voice is liquid sin; velvet draped over a kindling fire. The crackle floods you until you're panting, breathless. "C'mon…you can take it."

Your fingers unfurl from his biceps, tips soothing along the irritated flesh, ghosting over scars—bullets, fire, knives, cigarettes: his flesh is a mosaic of history you're barred to ever uncover—but the way his muscles coil under the softness of your hands makes your chest lurch.

You trail them down until you reach the thick forearm bent over your sweat-slicked chest, nails catching on the throbbing veins until you hear the rasp of his breath under the mask.

Your palm is tiny, almost fragile, in comparison to his wrist. Wrapping your fingers around the thick of him is like holding onto the end of a bat. Your hands can only cup the width; a perfect crescent.

It's that—the immense power, the strength of him, buzzing under his storied skin that makes your belly burn with the fever of your want. He's so—

Massive.

Strong.

You can feel it, now. Fingers brush over the veins on the back of his hand, a seal around your throat, and you know that he's holding back. Has to. He could snap your neck with an ease that should terrify you. You've watched these same hands throw knives into men's throats. Watched them wrap around their necks, crushing the bones until the struggling ceased with a gut-wrenching snap, and they fell, limp, to the floor.

His eyes flutter when you swallow, when your small, delicate throat works under his clutch.

He has the capacity to ruin:

Simon—Ghost—can break your neck without a flinch.

And yet—

You meet his eyes, lips trembling, and then you slowly tip your head back.

Submission. You give yourself to him wholly.

(A toil—

come closer, pretty thing.)

Simon's breath stutters in his chest, his hand tenses. Eyes widened. The whites are stained with tendrils of red.

His next breath is a snarl that bludgeons into your core. He leans down, cock jarring something inside of you that has the cosmos burning into your retinas.

When he speaks, his words are raw. Scoured with sandpaper. It's almost animalistic when he growls your name, adds:

"So good for me, pet."

He matches the praise with a sharp jerk of his hips, sinking in deep until you can feel him throbbing in your sternum.

When you clench, spasming around him, his fingers flex.

It starts slow.

He readjusts his grip until you're a perfect fit in the palm of his hand. A little bird begging for respite in the claw of a hungry lion.

Ghost has never been a man of mercy.

(And you'd long learned to stop trying to barter with a hurricane.)

There is no rhythm to the way he fucks you. An interrogation expert, skilled in torture, he keeps you on the edge the whole time. Left to do nothing but cling to him, and take it. All of it. Whatever he wants to give you.

You suck in a breath, but it is stopped when his hand squeezes. Tighter, now. The air in your lungs is compressed, forced out until they're empty.

His pulse beats against your throat. His heat is an inferno, a fever; he presses into you until you're panting, head soporific and gummy under the intense blaze of his body. Hard, firm: there is no give when you notch your knees to his ribs, pressing your caps into his flesh. He's unmovable. Unshakeable.

Liquid pleasure spumes from that unfathomably deep place he batters into with his cock, and the tips of his fingers as he burrows both into your flesh.

It's too much—

His hand drops from your knee, resting on the pillow beside your head. It brings him closer—now, almost chest to chest—and smothers the air from your lungs completely. His eyes, however, steal the last wisp of your breath away.

Standing on the edge of a singularity, gazing into the event horizon. Black holes ready to swallow you whole.

Bereft of oxygen, you begin to crumble in his hold.

"That's it," he rasps, fingers tightening. "Fuck—you're so tight—gonna strangle me, pet—"

Your breath is clinched by the palm of his hand. Futile gasps, hiccups, spill from your lips as he shifts inside of you, bracing his knees on the bed, and driving forward until you see stars. Until you claw at his wrist, back arching like a bow.

The cosmos tastes of gunfire. Smoke. The heavy scent clogs your throat until you're choking on the embers that seep from his skin.

"I'm not done with you, pet." His timbre pitches, low and sultry; a rough graze. A scraped knee. "I could do this for days."

It makes you whimper. Makes you thrash. He means it, too. Always. Always. He'll hold you down until you're drowning in it.

Your head swims. Hypoxia bleeds into your eyes.

"Simon…" you whimper when his hips slot into yours. "Simon. I'm—"

The words are swallowed down when he ruts into you again, driven mad by the clutch of your body, and the vulnerable way you look at him. His head drops, moussed hair tickling your nose.

"Fuck, pet—," it's chiselled out of him. A warning, perhaps. Don't. Don't say any more. Don't—

His voice is polar when it drifts over you. The chill alone freezes the words in your throat.

"You like this, don't you?" Detached. Distant. He can't let himself feel the quiver in your voice, the ache in your throat. If he lets himself have this, even a meagre amount of it—

You don't think he'll be able to let go.

The words are tucked back into the pocket carved out in your ribs just for them. They'll sit until he's ready, until the storm in his Rorschach eyes dissipates—if, of course, it ever does. You'll wait for however long that might be, even if it lasts a lifetime.

(closer, now—)

Your fingers spray wide over his skin, soothing and gentle—calm pets over a ruffled plumage—until you feel the tension bleed from his coiled muscles; softening back into the pliancy you've come to expect from him.

He'll run if you're not careful. Flee. Disentangle himself from the weaved knots spooling between the fibrils of your bodies, atoms merging and moulding together in a joined entity. Severe himself even if it means losing limbs.

You think of old dogs, strays. The ones that weave through the villages with matted fur, and battle scars; the wizened, grizzled muzzles from a short lifetime on the run. Wild, feral. Touches that don't cause hurt are bewilderingly foreign—the idea of a hand that doesn't maim, doesn't break is as unfamiliar to them as living inside of a home.

The only way to gain their trust is patience. Perseverance.

And so, you pull back. Let him breathe.

"I love it, Simon."

The breathy utterance falling from your lips makes him twitch deep inside of you, a groan spilling out of the cage of his chest when he feels the vibrations of his given name against his naked palm.

"Fuckin' hell, pet—," you might call it a snarl, a growl; a mangled curse in your likeness dipped in the palpable ache of his pleasure.

He says nothing more. A man of little words and heavy actions, he shows you what he won't say, what he can't.

His cock hits something deep inside that makes you see white; a nebula of bliss pooling deep inside of you until you're spasming over the absurd thickness of him.

Ghost holds it for a moment, and it's that—the midnight hour pooling in black, covered in grease paint, and clothed under a thick balaclava—that, the subtle way he takes, takes, that makes you all too aware of who is fucking you right now.

You're not fucking Simon. It's Ghost. Deadly. Dangerous. His eyes gleam in the light; dark and empty. Black holes pulling you in.

He drags you to the edge until your eyes cross—hazy and unfocused, slipping into that blurred realm of semi-consciousness—and it's when you begin to slip down that precipice, head numbed and full of him, he pulls back.

His cock bludgeons into you, seated deep, and when the head kisses the deepest part of you, grinding sharp, and intense, his grip on your neck eases.

Air floods your lungs so quickly it hurts.

His name rushes out of you on the deep exhale, a wrecked, aching plea. It sounds like a hymn when you breathe it out, and the reverence of it makes him shudder. Makes his hand clench, and his cock throb.

You feel it all. The deep twitch inside of you. The spasm of his knuckles. The way the air clicks in his throat, catching in his larynx. A thick swallow. Another spasm. You take it all. Everything.

His hand lifts from your thigh, reaching down to snag both of your wrists in the wide expanse of his palm. He drags them up, arched high above your head on the pillow stained with your sweat. The brassbound grip of his hold, locking you tight in the cup of his hand when he presses them into the pillow steals the last vestiges of air from your lungs.

The hold on your neck eases. His long, thick fingers brush over the smooth column of your throat. You suck in a deep breath, letting it fill the vacancy of your lungs, and take the rich, dewy scent of him in until it clots to the fibrils inside.

Filled, you think, to the brim with him.

He smells of chemise, tonyon, and dried hawthorn. Wet chaparral after a wildfire scorched the thicket to cinder and ash.

With him perched above you, now drenched in the fullness of him—his smell, his touch, the way he sounds when he fits deep inside of you—you find the once unutterable words again.

They've been buoying up and down for months now, maybe even years. Always left to rot in their esophageal prison, but as your airways open up, as this moment of utter vulnerability and underlying trust brims inside of you, hotter than the bliss burning through your core, they slip out, tangled up in the way you breathe his name.

The orison rings with the palpable weight of your wants, oiled in the gossamer of your pleasure. It lingers in the scant space between you.

Simon shudders as it tickles against his skin. A featherlight whisper over naked flesh stained with the brine of sex.

You gaze up at him, burning the sight of him arched above you like the fruition of your yearning carved in flesh and bone, and a part of you selfishly hopes the barbed hooks of those words you're barred from saying sink into his pale flesh. Piercing deep enough to sink into his bloodstream.

Infectious. Incurable.

It's dark, and awful, and full of that ugly longing that makes your teeth ache to mark him up for the world to see, to know, that he's been conquered, claimed. Stupid. Silly. Infantile. You can't own a person, can't chain them to you through ichor and offerings, and yet—

Ghost groans when your teeth find purchase in the meat of his shoulder, a rough noise that rattles through your empty bones, and fills the barren space where humanity once beat.

—You spill his blood on the altar. A sacrificial offering. Yours to keep.

"Fuck," he rasps, the word sticking to the side of his raw throat. "Tryin'a give me a new scar, pet? Don't got enough already?"

Despite the weight of the words, they're uttered with a caveat that's almost indiscernible had you not the wherewithal to know him as intimately as you do. Equivalency bleeds in the vowels.

It comes as no great surprise, then, when he huffs in your ear, dips his chin, and then sinks his teeth into your pulse point, just above the place where his thumb rests.

(Matching offerings. A tangled web.)

The sharp sting condenses into a blistering pleasure: a damnable bliss. It's the victory of your acquisition, the satisfaction of your merger. Your release bludgeons into you—a mix of euphoria and pain—and the world around you wobbles, narrows. There's a pinpoint where only the hazy shadow of ashen hair fills your periphery. The dark silhouette of a man you itch to pry open and burrow inside.

A muted noise spills from the back of your throat. His name, maybe (Simon, Simon, Simon), but it's swallowed by his wet groan—blood-drenched and bitter.

Maybe it's the bitter tang of you on his tongue, or the dribble of red on the corners of your mouth, caught when he flickers his gaze up to your own, catching the smear of his blood staining your lips, but he shudders above you. Rumbling like an earthquake. The clash of plates grinding together. It splits you down the middle, and shakes the chill from your bones until you're a molten mess of liquified limbs: polymer bones, bubbling blood.

You melt into the mattress below with a hymn of his name—a blasphemous orison that has no place amongst the debauchery of sex-soaked sheets, and blood-stained teeth, but fits like a second skin when it brushes past your lips.

Simon follows. He says your name—a rough and gritty howl in the back of his throat—and then he's burying himself so deep inside of you that something breaks apart, gives, and the consuming hole, the vacuum he wrought, is filled with him. Him, him. A void. A cenote.

A gaping chasm of rot, need. Unquenchable.

"Fuck—" he snarls like a beast, the words crushing your ribcage, and leaking brimstone in your empty marrow. "Feels so fuckin' good, pet—"

There's something alluringly victorious about catching the biggest predator in the pen. A man made of death now bowing at the knees with just a flash of vulnerability; the slightest tilt of your delicate neck.

A string coils around your finger, pulling taut when you tug.

Bones ache when you move. Muscles scream when you swallow. Still, you lean forward, and syphon the heat from his skin, the blood from his veins.

Your spoils to keep, wrapped up prettily inside a diaphanous web.

Your nails rake across his flesh when you pull him close, curling around him in a spooled knot. When you grin, you feel the thick film of blood on your teeth. Vicious, victorious. "We match now, Simon."

He might run.

But you've always been good at running: a long-distance sprinter in perpetual motion.

(You'll catch up, no matter where he goes.)

And when he breathes your name through the wet fabric of his mask, trembling with his release, you know that some things are worth chasing after.

"You, uh… got anything to tell me?"

Gaz can't keep his eyes from straying to the moulted bruise on your neck—a startling smear of charcoal, flaxen, and indigo, broken in a perfect crescent of teeth—and each glance feels like a physical touch to your sensitive, inflamed skin.

It's childish. Immature.

(You wear it proudly, flaunting your win to the world.)

"Not really," you shrug, body buzzing with heat. It simmers in your veins now. Syphoned warmth that spools in your bloodstream, leaks from your marrow. "Just tamed a stray over the weekend. You know how it is."

There's a strange cut in melted brown. A look you're much too familiar with. One might mistake it as condemnation, scorn, but you know Gaz. The quirk of his lips gives him away.

"A stray, huh?" He intones contemplatively, timbre breezy, light, as he was mentioning the weather in Birmingham. Light drizzle, should clear up in the aft'. "Don't come aggin' to me when this backfires on you, yeah? Some never learn to stop biting."

Gaz pointedly looks out toward the table where Ghost and Price pour over another set of documents—shoulders drawn tight as they toss ideas and plans back and forth—before turning back to you.

"But I guess you know all about that already."

The barb in his tone—equal parts admonishing, and scathingly facetious—prickles against your skin. You offer a small smile, a languid shrug, and let your gaze drift, dragged back to Ghost.

His hands are wrapped in white, his mask pulled over his neck, hiding your mark from the world. Another scar on top of a storied history of others, but far kinder than anything else he'd ever received.

It prickles in your gums when you see him, and makes heat fill your chest when his eyes list to you, to Gaz, as if he can feel your stare, even when you're tucked away in a hidden crevasse, watching, waiting.

He won't come closer. Not when everyone else is around, but you catch the hunger in his gaze when you tilt your chin, exposing the soft, vulnerable curve of your neck, baring the bruise for him to see. It's rough, abrading. His eyes scrape over the varicoloured smear with a rapacious greediness that burrows under your skin.

"I'm learning," you murmur, words muted, heavy with something that tastes like triumph when it slips out. "Baby steps, right?"

Ghost turns away first, tearing his gaze from the bruise on your neck, muscles tensing as he ducks his head, and forces his attention back to Price.

In the corner of the room, a spider reaps the spoils of its fruit: a webbed sarcophagus around an exhausted fly that has long since given up on the struggle to get free.

It opens its maw, fangs glinting in the jaundiced light.

Vicious, victorious: it feasts.

(You drag your tongue over your warm lips, and feel the stirrings of hunger gnarl inside you once more.)

#simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x you #simon riley x you #i'll come back in the AM and edit it when my eyes aren't sick of reading about purgatory and spiders and prey #HAHHH dunno what this is #what mythological fable was used in the making of this #who knows #i got my hands on Yorgos' scripts and i've been Inspired #this is probs as close to my unedited nonsensical and barely english notes as we'll ever get but #kindaaaaa okay with how it turned out #i'm def not proud #but like #it's finally 18 and can GTFO y'know??#simon riley #cod simon riley

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