bobiologist

Latest Posts by bobiologist

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!

so i moved blogs! my new @ is @red5tars !! i will slowly be moving some of my posts over there. do not feel obligated to follow but if you'd like.. i will see you on the other side!

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!

so i moved blogs! my new @ is @red5tars !! i will slowly be moving some of my posts over there. do not feel obligated to follow but if you'd like.. i will see you on the other side!

thinking about a futuristic/dystopian au where the tech company you work for moves you into one of their r&d flats under the premise of being a paid, live-in tester. you can't refuse—it'd be foolish to refuse. free rent, a pay bump, and all the latest gadgets available at your fingertips? goodbye, communal bathroom and capsule bunk. hello, filtered air and privacy.

of course, in your hurry to get out of your shitty flat, you skip the fine print. you miss the bit about the new ai that will be monitoring your every move to provide real-time feedback and, at times, tangible nudges to improve your quality of life. the part about the extensive research on your person that's been done and will continue to fine-tune. it's just a pilot program, a temporary arrangement, but it doesn't know that.

a deep, rumbling voice wakes you on the first morning of your indefinite lease, a voice you've unwittingly imagined more times than you'd care to admit. your eyes open to the projection of a bearded man at your bedside, looming, staring down his nose. he blithely observes how hard your nipples are in the flimsy little top you wore to bed. are you trying to catch a cold or impress him? he informs you that you're succeeding in both endeavors.

when you jump up, snatch your robe from the hook, and page your superiors—they're unimpressed. you signed on the dotted line. you shouldn't complain, and no, you cannot opt out. they instruct you to deliver your complaints to john directly to test his receptiveness to human-suggested corrections.

they assure you he cannot harm you* and that he is programmed to view your well-being as his primary priority. if you'd like to learn more, refer to the provided documentation or ask john for assistance. the call ends with a dismissive handwave, and you're left alone. well. not alone alone.

john chuckles as you frantically scroll through your tablet, trying to find ways to filter or limit his speech.

"think we're goin' to get along just fine, user." he dematerializes, his voice drifting from the unit's hidden speakers.

"why don't you sit down, relax, and have a cup of tea? then, when you're ready, i will turn the shower to your preferred temperature so that you may perform your customary morning masturbatory ritual."

your head spins, steam practically billowing from your ears. what kind of sick fuckery is this—

the door to the bathroom whooshes open, and you hear water gush from the bath spout.

"hm, your stress spiked, user. i think a bath would be best. would you prefer to adjust the jets manually, or would you like me to take the lead?"

*please be advised that the ai assistant's physical interference capabilities, if any, remain largely speculative and are not fully documented by the manufacturer. users are encouraged to operate the assistant within recommended guidelines, as the system's limitations in physical engagement have yet to be comprehensively understood.

inspired by this - 3.8k perverts!priceghost x f!reader (mostly unedited bc im lazy) (on ao3)

cw: dark fic, noncon touching, noncon fingering, dirty talk, praise, public sex (no getting caught, just the very brief threat of it)

You know it’s wrong to judge a book by its cover, but that doesn’t stop your heart from sinking when you realize who you’ll be sitting beside for your twelve hour flight. 

At first you think you’re looking at the wrong row - there’s been an error, and the row you’re looking at only has two seats instead of three. The space between the man sitting in the window seat and the man sitting in the aisle seat is simply miniscule, there’s no way that’s where you’re meant to sit.

But it is. Your ticket still reads 8B after three checks just to be sure, and the number posted on the luggage compartment doesn’t change even after you rub your eyes. Jesus.

The man in the aisle seat has a thick brown beard and a paperback novel held close to his face, reading glasses resting on his nose. The book looks comically tiny in his hands, and he has to squint a bit even with the glasses to read. If he weren’t so big, you wouldn’t say he’s intimidating at all, but he’s so broad that his shoulders don’t fully rest on his seat, and the woman walking in front of you has to turn to avoid brushing him.

His neighbor isn’t any smaller, and he doesn’t have a book and glasses to make him look less intimidating. You can’t see any of his features because he’s wearing a ski-mask that covers every inch of skin except for his eye-sockets, and the high turtleneck covers the rest of his neck where the mask stops. His arms are crossed over his chest, and his shirt is so tight that the seams almost look like they’re ready to split where his biceps are the biggest. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

With one last look at your ticket number, you resign yourself to a full day of being squeezed between the absolute mountains that are your apparent seat partners. Maybe you’ll get lucky and the plane will be empty and a flight attendant will take mercy on you and guide one of them to an empty seat, but you know it’s wishful thinking. 

“Excuse me,” you say quietly, inching around the leg angled out into the aisle. The man it belongs to gives you a smile and a nod, but he doesn’t move for you. “Sorry,” you mutter, awkwardly leaning one hand on the seat behind him so you can heft your bag into the overhead compartment and push it closed, the heel of your hand brushing his shoulder. You feel a draft over the accidentally-bared skin of your stomach and all the blood in your body rushes to your cheeks as you quickly tug your shirt back down, fingers fumbling.

“‘S no problem, honey,” he says, voice so low pitched it almost disappears in the sounds of the plane’s engine. The hairs on your arm stand up and you hesitate for a moment in the aisle, smiling nervously at the man in front of you in the hopes that he’ll maybe stand up, or shift a bit at all so you can step into the seat. 

He doesn’t, only settles back a little further in his seat and folds his hands over his stomach, book abandoned in the little pocket on the back of the seat in front of him. You know it’s not a trick of the light when his eyes flicker down to your chest before back up, his lips quirked underneath his mustache.

Bastard. You’re dressed for a twelve hour flight, the baggy sweatshirt you’re wearing doesn’t do anything for your form, and he’s got the audacity to ogle you?

It’s impossible not to brush against his thighs when you step over him. His legs are spread enough to leave a not-so-small space between his knees, but you very intentionally take the risk of stretching all the way to the middle seat. You have to hold onto the headrest in front of you to avoid falling over his lap, but it’s worth it when you fall into your seat instead of one of their laps.

Even with your knees tucked close together, their legs press against you. You can feel their shoulders against you too, a solid pressure closing you in on both sides. Neither one of them shift to give you more room.

God. It’s going to be a long flight.

———————————————————————

The first hours of the flight is uneventful. 

You try early on to subtly get yourself more room by pressing your knees against theirs, hoping they take the hint. The man on your right doesn’t shift, but the man on your left pushes back against you, leaving you with even less room than you had initially. You give up that method quickly.

You last about thirty minutes after take off with your shoulders hunched and your legs squeezed together before breaking and leaning forward just enough to look to your right, at the less-intimidating man, tapping his elbow where it rests next to you.

“Excuse me,” you start, having spent the last several minutes rehearsing your request in your head. “Would you mind–”

“Of course, how could I forget,” he interrupts you with a small chuckle, angling his big body towards yours. “John Price. Lovely to meet you,” he says, holding out a hand.

“Oh,” you say, tentatively shaking his hand and introducing yourself on instinct. “It’s good to meet you too. Would you mind, um, maybe giving me a bit more space?”

He smiles at you, looking down at where your knees are tucked together like he had no idea he was taking up half of your leg-space. 

“Sorry, honey, I can’t take up much less space,” he says, huffing a laugh and dropping one big, heavy hand on your thigh. “Simon and I aren’t small men. Seems you’ll be the one paying the price today, hm?” 

You force an awkward laugh, the hairs along your arms standing up on end at what has to be an intentional innuendo. John squeezes your thigh, his hand big enough that his fingers rest just a little too close to a part of you he should not be touching. When he doesn’t lift his hand immediately you shift a bit, angling your knees towards the other man - Simon, apparently - and he takes the hint, patting you twice and folding his hands back over his stomach. 

He’s making absolutely no attempt to take up less space, and he’s not even trying to hide it. 

You glance towards your left, and the thought of asking Simon if he can shift away from your personal space evaporates when you instantly lock eyes with him. He’s not subtle about staring at you, his entire head turned towards you and his chin tilted down so his eye-line couldn’t be more clear.

Your cheeks feel like they’re on fire as you turn to face the seat in front of you, sinking back into your chair and tucking your feet beneath the row in front of you. 

The rows all around you are empty - a miracle you’d be more thankful for, if either of your row-partners were taking advantage of it and moving. Surely they’d be more comfortable if they moved? It seems absurd that they’d rather squeeze you between them than take an entire row to themselves, but that seems to be the case. 

When the flight attendant stops by to offer you a drink and a small bag of pretzels, you ask about moving.

“Sorry,” she smiles apologetically, glancing at where you’re squeezed. “No moving seats once we’re in the air. You’ll have to make do, I’m afraid.” She moves along with her cart before you can ask if she’s absolutely sure. 

“‘Fraid you’re stuck with us, sweetie,” John says, smiling down at you. His grin is somewhere between condescending and vaguely paternal, and you’re not sure you like the feeling it gives you in your stomach. “We’ll be good to you, promise.”

Again, all you can do is force a laugh and turn away, hoping he won’t keep pushing. His shoulder is warm against yours, softer than Simon’s, and you’re already more than ready for this flight to be over.

Unluckily for you, you’ve got another eleven hours with these men.

You close your eyes and take a deep breath, trying not to make it obvious that you’re thinking about screaming.

———————————————————————

When you open your eyes what must be a few hours later, the plane is dark. The only light comes from a small reading light turned on several rows in front of you, and the soft glow of the lights down the aisle.

You hardly realized you’d fallen asleep, let alone that you were now waking up. The drowsiness clings to you, your eyes heavy and your body surprisingly warm considering you hadn’t had a blanket.

It takes you another few moments to realize someone’s touching you. Two someone’s, if you can count the number of hands on your body correctly.

“Wha’...” you mumble, shifting forward a bit and blinking until your vision clears.

“Hush, honey,” you hear from your right, a heavy hand stroking your thigh and another rubbing over your hair. “People are sleeping.”

You shift forward a bit, then gasp when you feel another hand slip over the front of your pants. There’s a jacket resting over you, that’s what’s keeping you so warm, and it also keeps you from seeing who’s hand is currently cupping your center.

“Wh-what’re you…” you whisper, shifting as far back as you can, panic quickly rising in your throat. “What’s going on?”

“It’s alright,” John coos, the hand on your hair coming down to rest on your breast, squeezing lightly. He chuckles when you gasp and jolt away, only pushing yourself further into Simon. “We’re just gonna have a little fun with you, ‘s all. Just gotta relax and be good for us.”

“Stop,” you whisper. It does nothing, Simon’s hand - and it must be his - slipping down the front of your sweatpants and bypassing your underwear. You whimper when his fingers split the lips of your cunt. “Stop it, stop, I’ll- I’ll scream.” 

“So?” The man behind you rumbles, and the first sound of his voice sends shivers down your spine. Without warning, he sinks a finger into you, easily following your hips when you try to squirm away. “You think the stewardess gives a shit what we do to you?”

“‘Sides, I think you want to be good for us,” John says, lifting your right leg and laying it over his thigh. Simon slips a second finger inside of you and your eyes squeeze shut at the invasion. “Don’t you, honey? This’ll feel better for you if you behave.” 

“Please,” you whisper, blinking tearily up at John and slapping at his arm. Simon’s free hand comes up to rest around your throat, and you can’t help but gasp at the feeling of his rough calluses on your hyper-sensitive skin. “Please, please don’t do this. I don’t know what you want, but-“

“You stupid, girl?” Simon huffs, grinding the heel of his palm cruelly into your clit. You throw your head back, teeth gritted against the sharp pleasure. “Don’t want anythin’ but this. Just sit still and be quiet.”

The noise you make sounds wounded, and you only become more distressed when you see the way John’s eyes are trained are yours, his desire palpable in the small space between you.

It’s harder than you’d admit to keep from moaning. Simon’s skilled with his fingers, the three of them - because he’s shoved another inside of you, ignoring your squirming - thick and crooking at just the right angle. His wrist is bent at a horribly awkward angle but it doesn’t seem to bother him as he pushes his palm up into your clit almost painfully hard.

Your foot flexes where it dangles between John’s thighs, your knee holding him tight despite your desire to crawl away from both of them. 

He slips one of his hands down to yours, lacing your fingers together and holding on tight as you feel an orgasm slowly begin to heat in your blood. 

“Feels good, hm?” John rumbles, stroking a thumb over the back of your knuckles. “I bet you’re makin’ Simon feel good, too. She tight for you?”

“Like a vice,” Simon grunts, ducking his head over yours and shoving his nose into your hairline, breathing deeply. He uses the hand not fucking you to shove his mask up, enough that you can feel the shape of his lips as he mouths over your ear, teeth sharp. “Gonna feel fuckin’ heavenly on our cocks.”

“Please don’t,” you gasp, heart racing.

“Settle,” John commands, his hand tightening on your thigh for just a moment. “Can’t fuck you here anyway. Gonna have to smuggle you back to the bathrooms for a quickie, aren’t we Simon?”

“No,” you say on a moan, your hips working against your will as your peak rises in you, your heart stuttering in your chest.

“Too cramped,” Simon grunts, wrapping his arm around your neck and holding you in a loose headlock as he focuses more intently on your g-spot, fingers pressing against just the right spot to make you feel like you’re losing your mind. “Gonna break m’ fuckin’ back bendin’ her over the sink.”

John chuckled. “You don’t wanna fuck her then?”

“Never said that,” Simon shoots back, the scowl audible in his voice.

You wrap one hand around Simon’s forearm as your orgasm creeps up on you, gasps punched from your chest as you writhe in his arms, nails digging into his sleeves. Your eyes are squeezed so tightly shut that the few tears resting in your waterline slide down your cheek.

“Pretty girl,” you hear John coo, a big and warm thumb brushing your tears away. Your eyes fly open as you pant, nearly cross-eyed with pleasure. His hand covers the entire side of your face, fingertips resting in your hair. “Oh, you’re right there aren’t you? ‘S alright, you can come. Go ahead, honey.”

Before you can ever register what’s happening, Simon’s hand flies over your mouth as you reach your peak. It rocks through your body, sending shocks from your toes up to where you can feel the nose pressed to your scalp. Your eyes roll back in your head as your entire body goes tense, Simon not giving you a moment of rest as he finger fucks you through your orgasm.

“There you go,” John rumbles. You feel the jacket resting over you shift and open your eyes just in time to see him look down at where Simon’s fingers are buried inside of you, his palm working leisurely at your clit. “Such a good girl. Put on a good show for us, hm? Bet you’ll do even better when you don’t have to stay quiet. Bet you make real pretty noises, don’t you?”

You can’t do anything but pant from behind the hand covering your mouth. 

A moment later, Simon pulls his fingers from you. You can’t help but wince, at both the loss and the way he pats the meat of your cunt before pulling his hand away completely, wetness smearing on your stomach.

He holds his hand in front of your face, and the way your cum is literally dripping from his fingers only serves to work you back up, even so soon after your orgasm. Your hands shake where you’re clinging to the two men. 

“Lemme have a taste,” John says, grabbing Simon’s wrist and tugging it closer to him, swallowing his pointer finger down to the knuckle easily. He closes his eyes, visibly savoring the taste of you. “Delicious,” he hums, licking his lips when he pulls back. 

“You now,” Simon grunts, pulling away from John and taking his hand away from your mouth, shoving his middle finger and ring finger past your lips before you can even try to speak. “Get a good taste, bird.” 

You gag when he pushes to the back of your throat, but he pulls back just enough to tease you with the threat of it after you gag. 

You nearly bite him, teeth just beginning to put pressure on his knuckles when his free hand comes up to your jaw, shaking you roughly.

“No,” he scolds, squeezing the hinge of your jaw until you whine, high-pitched and breathy. “Bad girl. No biting.”

You nod as best you can, loosening the light hold you’d had on him. He only grunts in approval, releasing your jaw and pushing another few centimeters into your throat.

Reluctantly, and with your panic growing again, you lick his fingers clean. You feel boneless and limp, but neither of the men keeping you folded between them is any less tense than they were when you first opened your eyes. You keep your eyes carefully averted from John’s face, even though he’s nearly all you can see because of how close he’s leaning. 

Simon pulls his fingers from your lips with a pop, and you take a few deep, gasping breaths, desperate for an ounce of calm so you can actually think again. 

“My turn,” John says quietly, shifting your leg off of his and wrapping one hand around your waist, tugging your body into his. You go easily, his arm wrapping around your shoulder and keeping you tucked tight to his side. You can only stare up at him wide-eyed as he shifts the jacket covering you - and now that you look more closely you know it’s the one Simon was wearing earlier - over his own lap.

John grunts and your breath shudders when you recognize the sound of his belt unbuckling. You stare at the seat in front of you, forcing yourself not to look at what he’s hiding underneath the jacket covering him. 

“Here,” John says, grabbing your hand with a light but unbreakable grip. You try to resist but it doesn’t do any good for you, he’s still able to guide your hand down to the cock laid against his stomach without a struggle.

You can’t help but whimper when he wraps your fingers around his length. You find yourself absurdly thankful that they don’t seem to want to fuck you - your fingers don’t even fully wrap around his shaft, the idea of taking him inside of you sounds like a nightmare.

“Soft hands,” John mumbles, almost to himself. “Go ahead and grab me, honey, you can squeeze a little.”

You don’t follow his instructions, but it doesn’t matter to him. He wraps his hand around yours, squeezing for you. Your shoulders hunch a little, head ducking, and when your gaze lowers you can’t help but look at the length of him in your grip. 

He’s bigger than you’d thought, somehow. Long and thick, the tip of him ruddy and his balls swollen where they rest on his folded down boxers. The tip of him is damp, his pre-cum slicking your fist as he jacks himself off with your hand. 

His head is tilted towards you, mouth open just enough to let him pant as he stares down at your face, your own lips damp. 

“Feels good, pretty girl. Gonna make me come all over Simon’s jacket, aren’t you?” 

“I’ll bill you,” Simon grunts on your other side, and when you turn to look at him you see he’s got his own cock pulled out, jerking it with such a tight grip that his knuckles have gone white. You can’t help but gasp at the sight, his own length pale and flushed red, fat and ugly. He runs his tounge over his teeth when you look back up at his face and you turn your head away quickly. 

He grunts, and your row of seats shift as he fucks up into his own fist, almost treating it like a fleshlight with how rough he’s being. John, conversely, lets you keep your grip loose and almost limp as he fucks into the hole your fingers make. The arm holding you to him is like iron, holding you tight to him and not giving you an inch of space.

“Fuck,” John grunts, head dipping lower and huffing heavy breaths, your hair fluttering away from your face from the air. “Makin’ me feel so good, honey, you’re doing so well. Gonna come, give you a little treat.”

You can feel Simon still at your back, can hear his breaths become more ragged as he comes over his fist. Your fast glance shows you tattooed knuckles covered in his cum, his flushed cock limp and soft where it rests on his lap. His eyes are dark, gaze resting on your lips. You don’t even have time to take a breath before his fingers are shoved into your mouth again.

He moans now, scraping his knuckles over your teeth as he tugs his fingers slowly out. Your hand instinctively tightens around John’s length, squeezing it in stress.

“Fuck,” he hisses from next to you, arm tightening around you and wrapping around your front, forcing you to turn a bit. Simon ignores your shifting, holding his hand like a fist in front of your lips. You can’t help but flinch away from what feels like a threat, until you see the cum still splattered across his hand.

“Lick,” he commands, his voice so low and rumbly you almost can’t hear it over the plane. “C’mon, clean me up.”

Your fingers are nearly shaking around the cock still in your grip, and you feel John’s chest rising beneath yours, his breaths puffing over your head. He hooks his chin over your head, wrapping himself entirely around you. You can feel sweat dripping down your spine from the heat of him, your palm clammy and damp with pre-cum. 

You stick your tongue out tentatively when Simon presses his hand against your face, your lips squishing against your teeth. You give his knuckles small kitten-licks, the salt of him strong on your tongue. He twists his hand a bit in front of your mouth, but doesn’t give you an inch of space until you’ve cleaned his hand completely. 

You can tell when John comes from the way his body shudders against yours, his nose tucked right behind your ear and his hand squeezing yours tightly, giving up on slow, soft strokes in favor of squeezing the cum from his tip. 

“Fuckin’ perfect, sweetie,” he says, voice nearly a growl as he pushes himself further into you. “Perfect girl, bein’ so good and behavin’ so well for us. Gonna have to get you somethin’ nice when we touch down, hm?”

You close your eyes and shiver against the idea of not touching down and running as far from these men as possible. You’d thought maybe you could lose them in the airport - where better to get lost in a crowd.

But John’s grip hasn’t relaxed around you at all, and looking up into Simon’s dark eyes, you get the dawning sense that these men aren’t going to be easy to shake.

jus got my period and i was thinking abt that geto period piece you did and it is incredibly helpful through these troubling times.

i have to ask, do you have any thoughts of other characters who would ‘help’ you during your period? maybe a certain modern!au cannibalistic chef guy… 🙂‍↕️

tw - period kinks, blood, and implied non/con.

actually anon brain is so large for this,,, i think geto is uniquely Nasty when you're on your period but modern au!sukuna is just so unashamed of his respective freak behavior that it almost makes him worse. he's been adding his cum to your food for months, so he doesn't really process that you might be at-all uncomfortable with letting him set aside a week of his life just to eat you out literally around the clock until he decides which wine pairing would go best with your mensural blood, if your flow's heavy enough to be considered a main course, etc. geto makes you beg for your products, but sukuna's cruel enough to deny them from your out-right with the excuse that he's never minded the way your thighs look covered in blood and simply doesn't value your opinion highly enough to ask. generally i don't think he has much of a breeding kink, but the way you whine and squirm has him thinking about alternative ways he could shut you up - like putting off your period for a whole nine months, for example. there'll be a red ring dyed into the base of his cock because of how often he needs to fuck your cramps away, and the most he'll learn from it is that he's really gotta include more protein into your diet, considering how easily you faint after only losing a few drops of blood.

Slasher Handler

Description from the discord:

My next (first fanfic) project is going to be an AU for charmed!slasher!Simon where reader knows he's dangerous, finds out he's literally a killer, and decides to provide him with ✨enrichment✨ to help him… I dunno? Control his urges? Channel them into good? Meet the need before the distressing behavior starts? They're way over their head.

Series Content Warnings: DARK FIC, 18+/MDNI, Alternate Universe - Serial Killer 141, Serial Killer Simon "Ghost" Riley x Final Girl Reader, sexual content, dubious consent, under-negotiated kink, mind games

Please review chapter specific content warnings

Read on AO3

Part 1 - Meeting Your New Neighbor (SFW)

Part 2 - Grocery Shopping (SFW)

Part 3 - Meeting Kyle For Coffee (Time skip) (SFW)

Part 4 - Consequences (To Meeting Kyle For Coffee) (NSFW)

Part 5 - Reward (For Being So Considerate) (NSFW)

Part 5.5 - After the Reward (From Simon's POV) (NSFW)

Part 6 - Simon's Been Restless (NSFW)

Part 7 - Date Activities (NSFW)(Not Spicy!)

Part 8 - Romance Isn't Dead (NSFW)(Not Spicy!)

Part 9 - Pneumothorax (NSFW)

Gaz Interlude - A look into the medical side of things (SFW)

Gaz Interlude Part 2 - The other side of the medical side of things (SFW)

Soap Interlude - Guess who's out on good behavior? Part 11 - Slip Lead (NSFW)

A Hole in the Earth

John Price x f!Reader | read on ao3 | thank you @glossysoap <3 for beta reading

One day, the earth opens up and swallows you whole. There's nothing that remains of you, except John Price's wife.

cw: rape/non-con, abduction, drugging, physical/corporal punishment (being spanked with a belt), non-con touching/groping, non-con medical procedures (lobotomy), forced gender roles, forced marriage, body horror, forced pregnancy, John is not mentally sound, dead dove, one shot, dark fic, i am being so serious when i say reader is forcefully undergoes a lobotomy.

The moment his eyes find you, you’re his — not that you’re aware of it.

John Price is a quiet man who lives a not-so-quiet life, but he desperately wants to. Some deep part of him yearns for a life in a cottage planted next to the lowering seaside thick with brine and mist. There, he could work on the fringes of some dewy forest. Craft items to sell like they did in the times of yore until the scent of some freshly cooked dinner called him home. 

Inside the cottage, he would find his wife with a plump, happy child babbling on her hip. She’d smile and greet him while setting their child in their seat and she’d rattle off all the adorable things the baby did that day. He’d stuff himself full, comment on his widening waistline, and they’d spend the evening reading in the living room together. Curled up together like huddling animals until their child was yawning and whiny. 

Once the bassinet swallowed his little one whole, and the house and earth was quiet, he’d lay his wife down to rest. Flat on her back, legs pushed up against the press of his hips as he ruts into her. And he’d whisper quiet words into her skin, little thanks for the work she does and the child she’s given him — preemptively thanking her for the next one she’s bound to carry after tonight. 

This is the life he’s dreamed of having, and the moment his eyes spot you entering the library, his heart nearly stops. 

Here you are — the woman he imagines marrying. Everything about you is perfect. The angles of your body and the poise you carry yourself with as you float between shelves of books. Stalking behind you, he can’t help but think your rump would look much better if you were to change out of those jeans and into a dress like any proper wife would, but he drops the specifics as you settle into a table tucked next to the floor to ceiling windows. 

Yes; here you are. The quintessence of the woman he’s dreamed of. Of posture and presentation, everything about you on a physical level is perfect—

—until you open your mouth.

As a friend comes to join you at the table, and your pretty lips get to flapping, John learns much about you and your anomalous life. How you’re studying hard for some degree, about the exam you have on Monday and the way’s you’ve been attempting to mitigate the stress. It’s difficult working towards a PHD. Of being the first woman in your family to attempt to earn such a feat. 

The idea of it all makes his head spin as he covertly flips through the book he stopped reading ten pages back. You — with your wide eyes and wet lips — deserve to be taken care of. Living a stress free life where your only worry should be about what to do with the food he provides, or what hobby you intend on indulging on for the day, or what to name the child growing in your womb. 

Really, it’s a shame the world has come to this. Where men scarcely provide for the women they marry, and mothers must slave away at jobs they shouldn’t need just to feed their children. A woman’s place is at home, comfortable behind strong walls and closed doors where she can cultivate a family and live a quiet life full of love and warmth. 

But John Price is just one man, and he knows he cannot save everyone. The blood staining his hands and the bones crushed beneath the soles of his boots remind him of this fact every single day. It haunts him the way rot precedes death. 

But he can — at the very least — save you. 

Most creatures wail at the sight of salvation, and you are no different. 

It takes time, like all things do, for the drugs in your system to dissipate into your blood. You begin to stir in the backseat of his car around the halfway mark home. John spares glances back at you. Looks at you just long enough to catch the drooping of your eyes and the pinched skin between your brows as you grumble and groan. The bindings on your wrists sour the view you create upon the leather seats, but he tells himself it’s just to keep you — his new wife — safe. 

Sweet things like you are known to hurt themselves in their confusion. His deliverance is bound to be petrifying until you make sense of it. Until he can show you the light of safety. Of security. 

His light. 

“W… what?” 

He’s leading you into the cottage — the house he’s always dreamed of — when you finally get your first word out of your mouth. It feels heavy on your tongue. A fat weight that threatens to choke you as you stumble alongside him. 

“Easy now, love,” John coos. “Let’s lay down now.” 

It isn’t until the next morning that you wake with your wits intact. Finally compos mentis, your eyes flutter open and your heart races at the sight of unfamiliar surroundings and an equally unfamiliar man. These walls are too rich to be part of your flat, and you don’t remember the sheets smelling of tobacco. 

A furious ache pounds behind your skull, so much so that you’ve nearly convinced yourself that the scene playing out in front of you is something you’ve hallucinated. John stands in front of you, back turned your direction, as he shamelessly undresses. Worn nightwear is haphazardly tossed into a hamper, and you helplessly witness as the thick muscles in his legs push him towards the dresser. 

He’s tall. Towers over most other men. Squinting, you try to scrounge up a memory of the man. Search for something familiar about him, but there’s nothing. You don’t recognize a single thing about him; not the dark hair that covers his chest and stomach, nor the glinting sapphire hue of his eyes as he turns to face you with a smile, now fully dressed. 

Too scared to move, the only thing you can do is lay there as he approaches the bed. You don’t realize your hands are bound until he grabs them, kneeling on the floor. Your stomach turns as he kisses your knuckles and thumbs over the newly placed ring on your finger. 

“Good morning, my love.” 

This — you learn — is your new life. With a dazzling gem on your finger, and a man who claims to be your husband, you find yourself trapped in a twisted paradise of John’s own creation. You are caught in the transitional period of shock and fear. Your body knows this is not right, and it fills your legs with all the hot blood it needs to flee, and yet you are as rigid as a statue. Frozen beneath John’s adoring gaze as he insists on doing everything with you. 

He dresses you in pale, milky dresses — no jeans allowed, he says. Leading you around the cottage, he introduces you to every room. The living room, the kitchen, the nursery. Each word he speaks has you swallowing and nodding your head, but you can’t help but think why he would feel the need to show you this place if you were truly his wife like he claims. 

Deluded. Erroneous. This man sees love where there is only confusion.

Your fear placates you only until lunch time. Really, it’s John’s fault. He should’ve known that a frazzled woman such as yourself wouldn’t do well around sharp objects. There’s no one to blame but himself for the four tiny holes that dot his bicep. Evenly spaced, the fork prongs don’t make it too deeply into his skin before he grabs your wrist. The muscles in his jaw flex as he huffs, the gentle hue of his blue eyes somehow darkening into something more virulent. 

He drags you into the bedroom after that. Mutters something about how ungrateful you’re being as he pushes you toward the bed. You rage against him as he forces you onto your stomach and lifts the skirt of your dress. The clinking of metal sends your eyes widening, and there is an unforgiving agita that thrashes in your stomach. 

Would it be easier if you were not aware of the brutality that men are capable of? 

“Please don’t,” you beg. “Please, don’t do this. I don’t- I won’t do that again.” You’ve no choice but to beg as your palms push against the mattress, only for you to be shoved back into the bed. “I’m sorry! I swear it!” He’s too strong. “Don’t do this, please…”

You can only sob as he tugs at your underwear, exposing you to him. 

Then comes the leather. Harsh, sharp cracks fill the bedroom as John’s belt crashes against your skin. It stings. The pain settles deep into your flesh until you swear you feel it split. Crack open until it’s raw and screaming just as loud as you. Cries rip through your throat until it’s just as sore as your rump, yet you attempt to stifle your sounds as you press your face into the duvet. Maybe, if you try hard enough, you can suffocate in the sheets. 

He stops after eight. Figures that two strikes for each hole in his skin is plenty. You flinch at the feeling of his hand rubbing over your skin, as if his touch is the only emollient comfort you need after such violence. His weight sinks into the bed as he leans to you. 

“I don’t like doing this, my love,” he whispers. His breath is hot against the shell of your ear, and somehow he sounds sincere. “Please don’t make me do this again in the future.” 

It’s humiliating playing into his fantasy. Of being some sweet, submissive and obedient wife. In a way, that’s all he’s rendered you as. Stuffing you in dresses and aprons while cuddling up to you at night as if you’re long wedded lovers. Yet, you don’t know how to leave. You don’t know how to free yourself from this place, so far out of the clutches of humanity. The only human close by is your false husband, and even then you’re not too sure that claim is true. 

Sometimes, John talks about things as if you were there to witness them. As if you remember them yourself. About you meeting his best mates or quality time spent together walking along the shoreline that skirts the property. He even laments about the honeymoon the two of you shared together. How he still sees visions of you splayed out on the bed before him — he even admits how disappointed he was when you didn’t conceive that night. 

He shares his confession as he forces you to curl up on the couch next to him. His longing words are paired with a lingering hand on your stomach. 

Never before have you wished to reach into yourself and rip out your womb like you do now. 

Despite living in his delusions, John is otherwise kind — so long as you manage not to crack the eggshells that litter the ground around your feet. You are always fed and watered — like any good husband would do for his wife — and the cottage is always warm. The clothes on your back are some of the highest quality you’ve ever worn, and he has not spanked you with his belt since you attacked him with your dinner fork. 

But there is an insidiousness that seeps out of the walls and into the air. It starts with longing gazes that linger on your stomach. Such fixation on your body leaves it riddled with frazzled nerves. You find your fingers trembling at the dinner table as you bring another spoonful of soup to your mouth. 

John watches you and daydreams. It’s obvious what he craves, and still you try to convince yourself things are no different as he rises from his seat. Nothing is different as his hands rest on your shoulders, thumbs digging into the taut muscle of your back. Nothing is different as his hands slip forward, kneading along your breasts until his palms are flat on your stomach. 

Your spoon drops into the bowl with a clink. 

“Come to bed with me, darling,” he whispers, body still hunched over yours. 

So you do, because what other choice do you have? 

It isn’t until John has you stripped bare in front of him — just like he soliloquized to you about your non-existent honeymoon — that you realize you’d much rather face his belt than this. The heat of his skin against yours. The way his chest hair brushes against your nipples. The scratching of his facial hair on the inside of your neck. 

Panic doesn’t truly settle in until his pants come off and you’re able to witness in pure horror just how much he wants you. You watch him with a trembling bottom lip as you lay on your back. Your brain attempts to urge you to flee. It fills your body with more warmth than you can handle, and you fear you’ll melt into the bed long before you find liberation. 

He knocks your legs open with a simple swish of his knee. Brutally cold air hits your sex, only to be smothered with warmth once more as he blankets himself over you. 

“John,” you stutter with chattering teeth. “I… I think I’d like to go to sleep now.” 

It’s as if you made no sound at all. His hips stretch your legs wide, and you can feel the weight of his cock hit the inside of your thighs. Your mind reels; desperately searching for a solution to this impending doom. 

“J-John.” 

“Sleep?” he repeats as if he just now heard you. His words reverberate in your chest as his head dips low into the crook of your neck. “We’ve hardly started.” 

Whatever protest is left inside of you quickly dies down as his lips press against yours. Even the hands you use to attempt to push him away are forced to relent as he weaves his fingers between yours. Intertwined as if you were lovers. 

Then there’s the intrusion. The splitting of your cunt as he pushes into you. John meets resistance inside of you as your muscles tense; every cell in your body detests him. Your breathing stops — breathing is impossible when everything in your body seems to turn to stone. Going from the state of liquid to a solid so quickly leaves your brain fuzzy and unable to think. John groans against your lips at your perceived tightness, and then he continues. 

Tears stain your face as he bottoms out, bodies molding together until you’re flush tight. Your thoughts go blank as this man — your self proclaimed husband — finds his rhythm. It’s nothing but stark white in your brain until there’s an eruption of terror. Of realization. 

The eyes are the window to the soul, and all John’s eyes have done the last few days is dream of a child. Of your swollen belly. 

It’s not your first time sobbing on this bed, and you’re sure it won’t be the last. Grief consumes you as you realize what this terrible union means — of what it will do to you, mind, body and soul. Grunting, John attempts to soothe you. He murmurs little praises into your skin but it means nothing to you. The churning of your stomach drowns out his promises to take care of you and the child he’s about to give you. 

Still, you cry. Any attempts to stifle them are fruitless as your tears seem never ending, and you can’t even muster a false moan. John huffs as he leans back to look at you — nothing but a wet mess. Eyes wrenched shut, head turned to the side as if you can’t stand to look at him. He attempts to continue, to snap his hips against yours, but his movements cease. 

“Really, darling?” he huffs. 

When all you can do is hiccup in response, John pulls out. He shoves himself away from you and slides off of the bed with a bestial growl. Trembling, you turn on your side as you listen to his feet carry him away from the bed. 

“Ruinin’ the fuckin’ mood,” he grumbles. 

After that, he locks himself in the bathroom. When your breathing calms, you’re able to make out faint moans as he finishes himself off. That night, he sleeps facing away from you. 

Convinced that you’ve upset John beyond repair, you find yourself playing into the role of his wife more than you usually would. Going as far as to fake smiles when he enters the kitchen, or even trot off across the vast property to give him a glass of water as he splits wood for the upcoming winter. Your skin crawls. Performing such tasks for this monster that’s trapped you to this pitiful existence is the last thing you wish to do. 

Still, you’re all too wary of how your fate rests in the palm of his hand. 

He does not spit venom at you like he did the night of your failed coitus. There is no shoving you onto the bed to spank you with his belt. In fact, he acts the way he always has. Telling stories that never existed anywhere else other than in fabrication, and holding you close as if he can’t get enough of the touch of your skin. 

For a short while, you are able to live thinking you’ve gone through the worst of it — this life as a bride prisoner. 

It isn’t until you’re brought to the shed that you realize you are sorely mistaken. 

You’re not sure why John has insisted you accompany him outside. There are vague promises of the intention to show you something, yet he refuses to share what. Hand holding yours, he leads you across the soft grass field and to the shed where he stores his work tools. You do not notice the new vehicle parked at the end of the lane, only the bright light that seems to be seeping through the gaps near the doorknob. 

John opens the door to reveal a stranger and a table. He’s tall, nearly scrapes the ceiling with the top of his head — taller than John, even. He watches you with dull eyes as he pursues several metal tools on a small cart. This stranger looks up at you as if you’ve interrupted something important. You had expected simple gardening tools to await you on this side of the entrance, and instead you’re greeted with some macabre horror that sends ice down your spine. Leather restraints. A medical mask over a scarred face. Blue gloves.

You’re hardly able to make sense of the scene before you when something pinches the skin of your arm. It stings worse than a bee, and when you go to swat at the sensation, you suddenly feel the tingling mute. There’s a flash of a needle as John wraps his hand around your waist, and your knees turn to water as he leads you further inside the small wooden structure. 

“This won’t take long, my love,” he whispers to you as if it’s a secret. 

Table. Wood. It hurts your back. Your head. Everything is slow. Obtund. You try to move your limbs but you realize this stranger has already trapped you within the restraints. Something smells sweet. Oddly sweet, and yet clinical. Antiseptic. Iodine. Something. Your head sways as you look for John, but he’s nowhere to be found. 

“Does this hurt?” 

The stranger's question leaves your eyes fluttering. You don’t realize he’s poking your arm with a needle, piercing your skin in the process, until he forces your head to look at it. 

“N-No,” you stutter. 

“Good.” 

You feel the odd pressure of more injections into your body, and eventually you’re so cocainized you can hardly keep a single thought from fluttering between your fingers. 

“What’s… what are you doing?” you slur. 

“Fixin’ you,” the man responds, accent thick and voice scratchy. He’s wearing long sleeves, but you can see the tattoo’s peek out right where the latex of his glove doesn’t quite meet the cloth. “John says you’ve been a bad wife.” 

A cacophony of thoughts flood your brain. Fix you? Like a pet? Like an animal? No, no but he wants children. So then what? What is there to change about you? 

“No… no I’m not his wife,” you babble. “He’s not- he’s just a stranger. He took me. Abduc… ted? Please… you… help me, please.” 

The stranger hums, and you catch the dark glint in his eyes flickering as he looks at the ring on your left hand. 

“Got a ring, don’t ya? Means you’re a wife,” he challenges. Gloved hands press against your forehead, pushing you against the table. Then, he retrieves something that looks akin to an icepick. Thin, long — like a needle. He presents it as if it’s a tool for work instead of a tool for horror. “Hold still, yeah? And keep talking. Wanna make sure I’m not scrambling the wrong parts.” 

It would be easier to say that you don’t remember what happens next — and perhaps you’ve forgotten parts of it — but you do remember. You remember the important bits. The pressure behind your eye as the pick is inserted behind your eyelid. The scraping crunch! of it breaking the thin bone just above your ocular nerve. And then, the cutting. The slicing. Dividing. 

Synapses and neurons, shut off. Brain forcefully compartmentalized. Thoughts and memories separated until there is no more anxiety or fear. 

There is no more you. That woman before is gone, as are her aspirations. That PHD is no longer just out of your reach, but long forgotten. 

You are — as you should be — the perfect wife. 

John Price has never been happier. His wife cooks delicious food and decorates the house to her heart's content with pictures and the wildflowers she picks from the lane outside their home. She always smiles when he enters the room, and returns every kiss he gives her. For some reason, she’s grown rather quiet ever since her procedure. Words seem to fail her, but he doesn’t mind her quietness. The only words she needs to convey are with her loving gaze. 

It’s those little moments that bring him pleasure, but his true joy greets him when he arrives home from a hard day’s work. 

Swaying in the kitchen, child in your arms, you greet John the same way you always do — with a smile. He grins ear to ear as he approaches you, hands resting on your hips as he stares down at his son. A year after your procedure, you blessed him with an heir; a son to nurture and provide for. Only a few weeks old, the babe sleeps soundly in your arms with fluttering eyelids as he dreams. 

“Here darling, let me,” John urges. 

Slipping his son from your arms, you smile up at him before pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. Turning around, you continue your work at the stove with swaying hips and a gentle hum — the only skill you seem to remember with your voice is sweet melodies. John doesn’t mind it. In fact, he rather enjoys watching you hum his son to sleep as he feeds upon your breast. 

Bouncing the child in his arms, John smiles to himself as he watches you. Daydreams bearing fruit in reality, he soaks up every moment of this life he’s built for himself. This quiet life he never thought was obtainable until he met you. The woman of his dreams. 

The woman he turned into the perfect wife.

Most creatures wail at the sight of salvation, and you were no different once upon a time ago. A bird always screams when first locked in a cage. But as you motion for him to sit at the table with a fresh plate of food in your hand, John is confident you’ll never cry at his generosity again. 

In the end, caged birds always remember how to sing. 

holy fuck that was so hot

7: Night Shift

art by @exorbitantsqueakingnoises

you work in one of the tourist traps along a popular beach pier known for its party scene. it's a night like any other. you have no idea about the unusual party crashers who are about to show up and ruin everything.

->original work. explicit; contains non-con, graphic descriptions of violence, feral behavior, hard vore, mind control, terato, non-human genitalia.

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Last week, it was “Greek Gods of the Sea.” Togas and tridents, mostly, some seashell bikinis, a few fake beards stuffed with plastic starfish. They drank too much and cranked the music too loud, but that’s nothing new. Everyone knows what to expect from the Lucky Rock Pier Party People Association (“Lurpppa” to the local news, “Trouble at Ten O’Clock” to your fellow boardwalk employees, “Those Fucking Kids” to beachfront property owners). 

You wear headphones most nights anyway, desperate to keep the shrill, repetitive carnival songs of the pier funhouse from being seared into your brain. They don’t bother you much because the sign at the front says there’s no bathroom and all the hot dogs and funnel cakes are further down the boardwalk, but a few will trickle in just for something to do. If they spot the freezer, they’ll huddle around the glass and stare like the Mona Lisa’s in there, agonizing over a choice between an ice cream sandwich or fruit pops. 

Tonight, it’s a glow party. Neon beach balls and glow stick arches. You can’t hear the noise they’re making through your headphones but you can feel the bass throbbing through your feet. Someone’s probably going to call the cops again. The tourist family population retreats this time of night so it’s just you, the handful of shops still open this late, and Trouble at Ten O’Clock. This one’s more fun to watch, at least, bright and colorful like the spill of noctiluca. They’re vivid in glow-in-the-dark body paint, covered in luminescent stripes, swirls and splatters. 

A few of them come stumbling up the pier earlier than usual. Three women in different halter tops, painted with matching curly cues and butterflies on their faces. One of them wanders off to look at the tote bags. Another, much more inebriated, leans heavily against her friend. The designated driver, you assume, who drags her to the freezer to pick out something to eat. You glance down at the beach and see one of them sitting on Lucky Rock, the jagged chunk of stone sticking out of the water not far from shore. You’re not sure how he climbed up the slippery, steep sides but he’s definitely not supposed to be up there. The people on the beach are way too excited about it, gathered around cheering and hollering. 

Three ice cream sandwiches are dropped on the counter in front of you. You lift one side of your headphones and shrieking noise rushes in, the glow party just as raucous as you expected. “Will that be all?” you ask. The woman nods. Her friend starts to fall over and she has to support her weight against her shoulder. You ring up the total and she groans. Everything on the boardwalk is three times the price it should be, but she adds a tote bag when the other woman wanders back with one and tosses their ice cream inside. “Thanks, come again,” you call, sliding your headphones back on.

Ten minutes until closing time. Not much to do but sweep out the sand gathered in the doorway and tidy up the disaster zone a horde of children made of the stuffed animal section. Sharks and dolphins on the top shelf, turtles on the second, fish and starfish on the third—

Something moves in the corner of your eye. Startled, you turn and find a man ambling slowly through the store. A stray from the glow party, you think at first. Then you look again, paying attention this time. He looks like all the partygoers down on the beach, a silhouette with luminescent edges, but he shouldn’t. Not under the store lights. He’s midnight blue from head to toe beneath intricate glowing patterns, chest and shoulders speckled with small dots like cyan freckles with larger spots along his sides. Thin stripes trace the outlines of muscle beneath the skin, turning into a spiral pattern at his hips. 

Which you can see, you realize, because he’s naked. No swim trunks. No speedo. He’s wet and dripping all over the floor like he just crawled out of the water, a puddle slowly growing beneath his feet, and you can follow the course of every droplet as they roll slowly down curves and valleys of lithe swimmer’s muscles. Some of the lines on his torso are moving, you realize. Horizontal squiggles on either side of his abdomen flinch and pulsate. 

Gills, you realize. The pieces come together all at once in your mind. Despite working the boardwalk as long as you have, you’ve never seen a sea muse before. Most people haven’t. They’re skittish, you’ve heard. They prefer quiet coves and grottos, places humans have a harder time reaching. Safer that way if they decide to shed their tail and sun themselves for a while. This one certainly doesn’t seem bothered by the commotion down at the beach, poking through the t-shirt rack with long, clawed fingers. He doesn’t look much like the pictures you’ve seen, either, but all the pictures are of muses lurking in tropical reefs, big-finned and colorful like bettas. Beautiful like him, but not bioluminescent and not quite so large. He must come from deeper, colder waters. 

You set down a stuffed octopus as gently as you can but he hears it, turning swiftly to face you. Your heart races. He has the large, eerie eyes of an abyssal creature, glowing half-moons gleaming underneath wide silver irises and black sclera. Nobody prepared you for what to do in this situation. Do you play dead? Raise your arms and make noise to scare him off? What you mistook for slicked back hair is some kind of shimmery membrane. It flares out like the neck flap of a cobra in a threat display, but it starts to sag and flatten the longer you stare at each other. His eyes move slightly in their wide sockets, looking you over head to toe. 

An uncannily human smile spreads across his face. He makes some odd gestures towards you. His mouth moves. He’s talking, you realize, trying to communicate. You almost lift your headphones off but your brain catches up at the last second. You don’t know a lot about sea muses but you know enough to keep your ears covered. 

He blinks, staring at you in almost comical wide-eyed confusion. Then he smirks, his gills fluttering with laughter. He starts pacing back and forth, slowly inching closer like a shark circling prey in the water. He’s between you and the door so you inch towards the register counter instead. Maybe you can slip out the back? 

He stops suddenly, leaving some distance between you. He speaks again, tapping the side of his head and pointing at you. You shake your head and he frowns, but he doesn’t give up. You watch, morbid curiosity overpowering your fear, as he starts to move in a slow, seductive manner. It’s some kind of dance, you think, arching his back and extending the membrane on his head again, bioluminescence glittering on thin, translucent flesh. He holds your gaze as he runs a hand down the center of his chest, over his stomach, down to his pelvis and—

You’re not entirely sure what you expected to see between his legs, but it’s still a bit of a shock. The thick, jutting member is deep indigo at the base and a lighter aquamarine down the length. It barely resembles a human cock except in its vaguely phallic silhouette, oozing from an engorged sheath that dribbles cloudy slime. The shaft is smooth with a gentle upward curve, thick and shuddering with unnatural flexibility. It narrows to a soft triangular tip. Two additional appendages unfold from his hips. They remind you of crustacean legs, rigid and insectoid. They bend along two joints, pawing at the air with their sharp claw tips. 

The sea muse makes a thrusting motion. The tentacle-cock wraps around his hand, drooling like a tongue. His bioluminescent patches flash and dim like a flickering candle. You’re no marine biologist but it feels safe to assume this is a mating display.

“Uh. No? No thanks,” you say.

He grins. You see a row of daggers for teeth. He speaks slowly and your heart skips a beat when you clearly read the words, Are you sure? on his lips. 

“I’m sure. Thanks anyway.” Maybe you should be flattered. You’ve never heard of anyone getting hit on by a sea muse. He lets out a big, disappointed sigh, extra dramatic so you can’t miss it, and gives himself one last stroke before he moves on. You half-expect the cock to slither back into its sheath, but it stays obscenely hard and straining upright between his legs.

To your dismay, he doesn’t leave but instead pokes around the shop some more. He wanders to the left, examining surfboard keychains and hibiscus shot glasses. He wanders to the right, squinting at the postcards. Eventually, he makes his way to the freezer and slides it open with some difficulty. His head membrane flares out wider than you’ve ever seen it the first time he sticks his hand inside. You wonder if he hissed. He tries again, pinching a fruit pop in its colorful package between his claws. He rips the plastic open.

“Hey!” you say. “You can’t just—”

He looks back over his shoulder at you, eyes narrowed and membrane spread in warning. You turn away and continue to mind your own business. 

The glow party seems to be winding down. The beach balls are all sitting in a pile. Some of the glow stick arches have toppled over. The pounding bass isn’t shaking the pier anymore. You see a lot of people lounging in the sand, rolling around, stretched out together, a bunch of them writhing—

Oh, you think. That’s bold, even for Trouble at Ten O’Clock. There’s no mistaking those thrusting, grinding, back and forth movements for anything else. There are a few couples scattered around but most of them have settled into a spot worryingly close to the water, seafoam rushing around them whenever the waves come surging up the beach. They tangle together in passionate motion, kissing and caressing and fucking like it’s the last night of their lives.

Something about it unsettles you. They’re being so rough with each other. This isn’t a slow, sensual orgy but a frenzy. Mindless, animalistic rutting and forceful movements. You see mouths open in silent screams. Some of them aren’t moving. Some of them are trying to crawl away but they’re being dragged back by the ankle, the hair, the arm, pulled through the dark sand. Why is the sand so dark? And wet, glistening where the tide hasn’t risen yet. 

The horrific realization grips you slowly. You’re in denial. You must be having a nightmare. A man tries to claw his way up the beach but someone else pins him down, straddles his back. You don’t see what happens, can’t make it out in the dark, but the paint on his body stretches and splits, and the sand darkens in a liquid motion under him. A woman arches her back in the throes of ecstasy, surrounded on all sides by eager, thrusting bodies. They’re biting her, you realize. Their heads lower and blood splashes the sand. Through all of it, she squirms and rakes her fingers through the sound as though she’s never felt pleasure like this before. Someone crawls between her legs and she opens them eagerly, loops them around the waist of something that is not human, you realize. None of the ones surrounding her are. They glow more brightly in more precise patterns, membranes pulsating, gills fluttering.

Your headphones are ripped away, clattering uselessly to the floor. You hear an awful cacophony of moaning, screaming, begging, and weeping. You think, for just a second, about running. Your muscles tense and your heart races. Where? For how long? You don’t know but you’re willing to try. 

“Where are you going?” says the sea muse and you can’t move a muscle. His voice is low and melodic. You hear the ocean when he speaks; the hiss and splash of the shallows, the heavy drone of the deep. “Hm? Do you want to join them?” You hear the wet slap of his footsteps for the first time as he comes closer. His hand grasps your chin lightly, barely applying any pressure, but you feel compelled to turn around. To look up at his sharp-toothed smile and the gentle pulse of his bioluminescence. “My shiver is down there. Frenzying,” he says. He turns your head to the side, just far enough to glimpse the gruesome scene on the beach, then returns your gaze to him. 

“Please don’t,” you say hoarsely, your throat constricted. “Don’t make me, don’t—” 

“It’s been so long,” he says, and your mouth snaps shut. “Since I last came ashore.” He walks backwards, his fingers still ghosting against your chin, and you follow. You don’t want to but your legs move on their own. His voice is addictive. You hang on every word and you hope he never stops talking. The silence between makes you tremble. “Even longer since I last mated. You can see it. You can tell how long I’ve waited, if you look.” 

You don’t want to look but your eyes betray you, gaze lowering to the slithering thing between his legs. It curls around itself impatiently like a snake. Another glob of slime slides slowly from its sheath and dribbles on the floor. The way it moves frightens you, the base twitching and undulating, slug-like. 

“You want this,” he says. He takes another step back and you rush forward. He strokes beneath your chin. 

You shake your head desperately. Your mouth is trying to shape the word “yes.”

“You do. You want this.” His back hits the register counter and he leans against it, spreading his legs wide. “You want to taste me,” he says, his voice dipping lower. 

You drop to your knees so fast it hurts, feeling the blooming sting of new bruises. It doesn’t matter that you’re terrified. It doesn’t matter that the thing bobbing in your face is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. You open your mouth and suck the strange, pointed head without hesitation. The sea muse moans and your thighs quiver, inner muscles clenching on nothing. You have to hear it again. 

“You need it,” he purrs, thrusting shallowly. You bob your head, taking him deeper every time. He hits the back of your throat quickly, his cock eager and probing at the inside of your mouth. “You need me to spill inside you. You need everything I have to give.” You moan and choke around his length. His hand rests on the back of your head, forcing you down further. His thrusts get harder and faster, crushing your nose against his slick abdomen. 

Some part of you is screaming at the alien movements of his cock, how it nudges and prods and tries to snake down your throat, but you can’t focus on that. He doesn’t let you. Every grunt and moan, every hiss of praise, makes the fear even more distant. 

“You need—oh, yes,” he groans, clutching your head with both hands as he pounds into your mouth. “You need to mate with me. You need—mm, suck on me, suck on the tip—fuck, you need my milt. I have so much and you need all of it.” 

You make a humiliating, needy sound when he suddenly pulls you off of his cock. It slips out of your mouth reluctantly, the tip sliding back and forth against your lips. He drags you to your feet by the forearm, shoving you against the register counter. He bends you over it, tearing at your clothes with his claws. You cum when he blows softly against your ear. You’re still shivering, clawing mindlessly at the counter when he kisses and licks the shell, sliding his tongue into every little dip and groove. 

“Do you want me?” he whispers. You hear a slick sound, a grunt, and then his hand is at your entrance. He uses the pads of his fingers but he’s not very careful. His claws prick your thighs as ass while he smears thick, warm globs between your legs. “Hm? Do you want me?” 

“Yes,” you sob. You arch your back and try to press your hips back against him. He makes a growling sound against your ear that makes your knees buckle, nipping the lobe playfully. 

“You want to be fucked?” One hand reaches around and roughly works your sex, spreading a warm, tingling sensation. “Want to be filled with milt?” 

“Yes!” 

His cock slides along the curve of your ass, teasing you. Then it slithers down, sliding into just the right angle with the tip pushed against your entrance. “Good human,” he purrs, and your eyes roll back in your head. His tip presses inside and then he’s thrusting hard and fast without warning. More slime drips from his sheath and slides down his length, the tingling slickness easing his punishing rhythm. It wouldn’t matter if the lubrication wasn’t there. You can’t do anything but lay there and gasp and meet his thrusts, needing his cock inside you more than you need to breathe. 

Those sharp, grasping appendages hook around your thighs. You feel them lock into place, their grip tightening until you’re right up against the sea muse’s body. His thrusts don’t slow at all. If anything, he’s even rougher and faster, deep humping thrusts that make you tremble and scream. He keeps talking through all of it no matter how winded and breathless he gets, keeping you right on the precipice of orgasm after orgasm with filthy whispers and wet, open-mouthed kisses against your ear. 

“So tight,” he hisses. “You feel so good, squeezing me like that. You want it so much. I’m going to give you everything. You’re going to be so fucking full.” His hips stutter, losing rhythm. You cum again just as a rush of warm wetness pulses inside you, spurting every time the sea muse thrusts. Thick, creamy liquid churns and foams at your entrance, a trickle dribbling down your thigh. You hear a few drops hit the floor under you. The sea muse rides out his orgasm with long, loud moans that send you over the edge again and again. He crushes you against the counter, hips rolling. One last, slow thrust fills you with another hot gush of his strange cum. 

He breathes heavily. His hips sway while he’s still sheathed inside you and his cock curls just the right way to make you sob for mercy. “Hm? You think we’re done?” he murmurs. “I told you. It’s been a long time. I still have so much more to give you. And you want it, don’t you? You need it?” 

“Yes,” you say, your voice quivering and broken. The sea muse starts to fuck you again and all you can do is let him.

You don’t know when it ends. It could be minutes, or hours, or days. The passage of time is measured in breaths and heartbeats and orgasm after orgasm. The floor is slick and sticky under you, a white puddle of milt steadily growing. You think he bites you but you don’t know. It all feels good, especially when he tells you how perfect you are, how sweet and submissive, how well you’re milking his cock of everything he’s saved for this moment. He makes you ride him once, seated on the counter while he bounces you in his lap. He digs his claws into the meat of your ass and leaves marks. 

You don’t know who finds you. Someone else who works the pier, probably, too horrified and embarrassed for both of you to stick around. The Coast Guard sweeps the water but the sea muses are long gone, leaving nothing behind but the mangled leftovers of their frenzy. The bodies glisten in the sand, torn to shreds like a burst whale carcass. By sunrise, the flies and the seagulls are swarming. You’re escorted to an ambulance with a blanket over your shoulders. The first person to look you in the eyes tells you, very quietly, that you might want to quit your job and consider moving inland. 

“Those are mating marks,” he says. You don’t know how he can possibly tell, given that they’re everywhere. Jagged, oozing circles dot your shoulders, arms, thighs and back. “Because they’re at a very precise depth. Meant to scar, not to kill. That means it’s going to come back.” They tell you not to look at the water but you do, one last time, before you leave. You don’t see anything. That doesn’t mean anything. The water’s deep and it seems to go on forever.

That night, in a hospital bed, you have a dream of someone singing to you. It sounds like the ocean filling your ears.

Fics and drabbles that lay in the realm of horror whether that be straight spooks or non-con fantasies (basically if it has non-con or allusions to it then it'll be classed under horror over smut)

Fics

No Second Location - mainly serial killer Soap, some serial killer 141 Savage and Sacrosanct and further plot- historical fantasy, Soap and Ghost The Revelation - cult shit with Ghost and Soap The Eyes of God - evil religious Ale and Rudy Devil's Trumpet - Appalachian horror with 141 Cry Baby - Ghost plays with you while Gaz is away Back Chat & Sequel - IT reader getting bullied by Soap Foul Magic - druid Soap Deductive Reasoning - fish folk 141 Make your own way home - Soap possessing you to get to Ghost Mace teaching reader to deepthroat for Ghost Mace raping reader to make her hero worship Ghost

Drabbles

AU Thoughts Wonderland AU thoughts Neverland AU thoughts Westworld AU thoughtsFallout AU thoughts

Expanded with Drabbles Ghost kidnapping a civilian - #mhairidrabblescodkidnappers Graves doll - #mhairidrabblesdoll Good Boy Bad Girl - #mhairi's good boy bad girl

Soap Soap who loves his fleshlight more than you Soap who gets his team to run train on you Trick or Treat with Soap Obsessive Soap Soap’s obsessive girlfriend Soap preying on Catholic virgins Creepypasta Soap Dogfighting but the dog is Soap

Price Tinsel choking with Price Price breeding you Never lets go Price Price’s retirement plan Kidnapper Price Price manipulating his way to a wife Sleazy politician Price Tactical questioning with Price Price intending to steal you and your boyfriend

Gaz Branding with Gaz Gaslighter Gaz “Romantic” Gaz

Ghost Serial killer Simon Ghost who targets vulnerable women Matching scars Ghost

Ghoap Circus!Ghoap thoughts Marriage of convenience with Laird MacTavish Forced marriage with Simon Ghost mad at you for not realising you are Soap’s Soap using Ghost to lube you up  Ghost fucking you to punish Soap Loan shark Price sending Ghoap to deal with you

Other Traded to Kortac Temporarily blinded reader Toxic senior officer 141 Astronaut reader Escape room Beta reader forced to be an omega Price and his dogs Price making a doll for Ghost 141 and how they break girls Bellesa sex toy customer service Serial killers Gaz and Ghost Price forced husband historical fantasy Misogynist to transfem 141 Salem witch trial Price and Ghost Honeytrap omega Flight with Price and Ghost Ghost kidnapping a nanny for Soap’s surprise baby Blindfolded reader with someone who is not her boyfriend Soap Soap’s filthy notebook Werewolf Johnny selling you out Ex-husband Simon sending Gaz to break your heart Crow shifter 141 Farmer with a holiday lodge  Halloween not real cops Sustainability officer

Hello, how are you? I hope you are well. I am Seline from Gaza. I started this campaign to raise money to help me rebuild my family's life after losing everything in Gaza😥. All that remains of our house is the rubble and our memories that have turned to ash💔. My family and I barely escaped with our lives, leaving behind everything we owned. Now, we are in Egypt, struggling to rebuild our lives from scratch. The war left us with nothing but the clothes we wear and the painful memories of what we lost We need your help to find a safe place to live, to provide for our children, and to start over🥺.

With your support, we can restore our hope and rebuild our family's future. 🤍

Please consider donating to our campaign🙏🏻.

Your generosity can make a big difference in our lives.🙌🏻❤️

https://gofund.me/f489e577

Girls That Hate Cops and Buy Guns.

tags: fae!Soap x f!reader, gun play, stalking, ghoul brand magical bullshit, threats of violence, cnc kink exploitation, Soap is a rabid dog that should be put down, 2nd pov, reader is mentioned to be US American(sorry), minor mention of reader's eyes, smut baiting... sorry about that.

He knows you're home, can smell you, feel you moving through the apartment. His hands press against the locked door, his breathing deep as he tries to absorb the subtle scent of your home leaking through the cracks of the apartment door. He's been coming back here for days, following you home, biding his time, trying to convince himself not to force his way inside, not to mince the tumblers in your lock. The thought of you makes his teeth itch, makes his mouth water at the sight of your skin, the way you tip your head, the length of you neck. All on display for him as you work behind Price's bar, he just knows it.

It's hunger that gnaws at him, that forces his feet forward, that's stirring in his belly every time you pass him a drink. That tinge of inspiration makes his mouth water. Something in your fae-touched eyes that looks at him and knows exactly what to serve makes him feel like he's starving. He needs a new artist, and you're such a perfect fit. He just needs to get his hooks in you, and you'll fill him up. He won't be hungry anymore with you sitting in his stomach. He knows it. This time it'll be different. He won't pump too much inspiration into you, won't clog your brain too much. He can get it right this time, he won't suffocate you under his need this time.

The lock clicks, his magic invading every crack in the wooden door, filling in gaps that soak into the grooves, that make the screws loosen around the hinges. He feels the ache of the forest, the cries of the lumber now quiet. He's so hungry.

Your flat is dark. The soft light of the streetlamps filtering in through the windows where your blinds haven't been shut tight enough. There's light under your bedroom door, warm and welcoming. He follows it like a moth to a flame, his fingers ache for you, desperate to sink into your flesh, to tear at your heart, to make a home for himself in the recesses of your mind and carve and carve and carve until there's nothing left. Price warned him to stay away from his new bartender, but how could he? It was like dangling a steak in front of a starving wolf and hoping it wouldn't bite.

You ooze inspiration, all you need is a muse.

Something metal presses against the back of his head. Cold steel. It burns through the short hair on his head, dizzying iron and carbon with every intention to kill. Soap's blood burns hot, thrums through his veins with every beat of his heart, his muscles shaking with something closer to desire than fear. He can feel the annoyance radiating off of you, the flaring violence that tugs at your fingers and presses the muzzle of your gun harder against his skull. It's exciting. You might kill him.

"What are you doing in my house?" You ask behind him. There's no fear in your voice, the question flat, the score easily settled. You have the weapon, and he's broken a rule. Trespassing. How rude. It shivers through him, the indifference that carries you, that presses the barrel of a gun against his skin and bubbles iron against his skull.

"Where did you get that?" He asks, cocking his head. It drags the metal over his skin, the burn trailing from one point to the next. The metal digs into the thin skin, painful. No, it's excruciating. He wants more, wants to feel the way your nails would claw at his flesh, feel you drag iron over his broken skin. It shudders down his spine, thinking of all the ways you could hurt him. It makes his mouth water. He wonders if you'll pull the trigger. Heat rolls through his stomach.

"Brought it from home," There's a smile in your voice, barely there but enough to make his cock twitch. The cock of the hammer sends his blood rushing south, the venom in your smile as you press the barrel a little harder against him. "Worse monsters than you in the states, but I figure the method of disposal is the same."

"Ya think a bullet'll take me oot?"

"I'm willing to try it." You hum. He wants to hurt you back, wants to feel your blood squelch under his teeth, feel your skin warm under his hand, poke at the bruises he leaves... He wants to make you feel- feel anything really. He wants your attention, however he gets it. "Why are you here?" You question, finally hitting on the curiosity he's felt burning at the edge of your words.

"I want you," He says plainly. There's no way to convey the ache in his blood, the song of pain you're inspiring, in just three words, so he doesn't try. He turns his head, lets the muzzle drag over his skin, burning a path through his hair, through the thin muscle over his skull. You won't shoot him, he doesn't think, or you would have already. He manages to get all the way around, his body following the path of least resistance to face you.

Your brows twitch, your lips set in a grimace, watching the burn of his skin around the steel of your gun. You try to move it away and he catches your hand, pressing his harder against his forehead. He hadn't realized he was panting, that seeing the white, full moon, of your eyes would make his cock hurt. He grips your other hand when you try to push him away, pressing it hard against his aching cock. You flinch, your hips jumping, your fingers curling. The feeling of him...

Didn't you know? He's enjoying this.

"You've been following me," You try a different route, his eyes fluttering as he ruts against your hand. You swallow, you don't think the gun still burning the skin on his forehead is the threat you'd hoped it would be.

"Want ta lick your pretty cunt," He growls, his teeth bared, he yanks your hand keeping you in place when you cringe away from his voice, "Wanna fuck ya 'til you're bleedin', beggin' me ta stop." You can feel the twitch of his cock through his pants. He feels big. Heat tingles between your legs, your underwear suddenly pressed too close, the seam of your shorts catching against your clit as you shift on your feet. You feel like all your senses have been forced to high alert with just a few words.

"Someone should put you down," You glare.

"Ah wish you fuckin' would." He groans, his eyes electric even in the dark, "Wish you'd pull that fuckin' trigger, give me a reason to rip those little shorts off ya." You look away from him, your cheeks are burning. The threat makes you want to squirm as much as it chills you. "Knew ya'd like that, dirty birdie."

"I'm calling Price," You tell him after a deep breath. Soap blinks, something in his eyes sliding a little off kilter.

"Don't." He warns. You stick your tongue out at him, almost as quickly as he lets go of your hand to try and grab between your legs. You see his victorious smile, his fingers brushing over the wet spot on your shorts, at the same time you say his boss's full name.

You smell cigar smoke as soon as the last syllable leaves your lips, see a big hand grab the back of Soap's neck to pull him away from you. The air is seething with anger.

"Tryin' to have a nice night with the Missus," Price growls, "and you're causin' trouble."

"Ahm naw-"

"Save it," Price barks, he tips his head your way, a silent acknowledgement, before his anger is turned on Soap again, "Told ya to keep away from my staff, mutt."

Soap casts a pleading look your way before both of them disappear. Smoke settles heavy on the floor where the fae once stood. You finally let yourself lower your weapon, letting the shivering in your muscles overtake you as you try to find your way back to lock your door.

URGENT HELP🚨🚨🚨🍉🇵🇸

Hello,

How do you do ? I hope to be in a good condition.

This is my special campaign

We hope to help us by donating or sharing to others.

Every donation makes a different even if it a small.

As you know, the war began on October 7 and lasted ten months. During this period, we were unable to obtain food, drink, or treatment because we did not have money.

There is no source of income for the family at the present time, so we are unable to buy food, clean water, and medicine, especially after we are afflicted with the ongoing infectious diseases spread in the north like Hepatitis C disease.

Our house has been damaged a lot since the beginning of the war. We are from the north of Gaza and we are still in the north and have not displaced to the south. We displaced 10 times from place to another seeking to safety .

We hope for your help and support, even if only a little.🙏🙏

Vetted By Femme intifada on telegram.

This is the link if you would to read our story well 👇👇

https://gofund.me/4e896ac1

Thank you all

https://gofund.me/4e896ac1

DOGMEAT MASTERLIST

BUTCHER!SIMON RILEY X READER

you're aware of him in the same way you are of a livewire. holding a metal rod in a lightning storm. there's a sense of danger that seems to permeate around him; a warning to stay away.

one you're all too keen to listen to.

but it doesn't matter because he takes an interest in you anyway.

i. bos taurus | mafia butcher/enforcer ii. field dressing | slaughterer/murderer iii. ikejime | sushi chef, siren

SERIES WARNINGS: smut. heavy noncon. kidnapping. mentions of violence. butchery. allusions to gore, murder. au | mafia, light southern gothic/70s, very dark&twisted fantasy

Hi there 👋,

My name is Mohammad, and I’m reaching out in a moment of desperate need. I’m a father of three young children living in Gaza, and we are caught in the midst of a catastrophic war. Our home is no longer a safe haven, and the future here seems increasingly uncertain. 💔

I’ve launched a fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $40,000 to relocate my family to a safer place where my children can grow up in peace and have a chance at a brighter future. 🕊️🇵🇸

Unfortunately, my previous fundraising efforts were abruptly halted when my account was terminated without explanation. However, I remain determined to keep fighting for my family’s safety and well-being. 🫶

If you could take a moment to read our story, consider donating, or simply share our campaign with others, it would make an incredible difference. Every act of kindness, no matter how small, brings us one step closer to safety and a new beginning. 🙏

Thank you for your time, compassion, and support. ❤

https://gofund.me/fd1faea2 🔗

gofundme.com

Donate to Help Mohammed's Family From Gaza Rebuild Their Lives, organized by Mohammed Abu Swierh

My name is Mohammad Salem Abu Swierh, a husband and father of… Mohammed Abu Swierh needs your support for Help Mohammed's Family From Gaza R

unfortunately i don’t have the means to donate but i can definitely reblog! anyone who can donate should and if not then please share!

Inhuman Encounters: Finale

an anon asked:

r u going to write a sex pollen situation where reader gets hit with it?

and i thought that was a great idea!

you're not okay, but you will be. they're all here for you.

->inhuman rex, jay and levine/reader. explicit; contains heat/mating cycles, dubcon/noncon due to sex pollen, mild possessive behavior, gangbang, marathon sex.

.

.

.

“It’s my turn, right?” Jay says. “I’m pretty sure it is. Levine’s been in there too long. It’s not fair.” He tries to look innocent, almost nonchalant, like he’s just asking about the weather, but Rex doesn’t buy it. He’s perched on the desk Rex is trying to use, the same one Rex told him to get off of five minutes ago, his tail swishing restlessly and smacking Rex in the leg. “Roosting,” Jay calls it. Sitting precariously at the highest elevation in the room to satisfy some deeply-ingrained instinct. He only does it when he’s agitated or pouting.

He’s also as much of a mess as all of them, stinking of sex with little human scratches and bite marks between his scales. He stopped bothering to get dressed between rounds a while ago, and all he’s got on are a pair of boxers. Rex isn’t much better, but he’s trying to keep it together.

“Go tell Levine, then,” Rex says dismissively.

“Levine doesn’t listen to me!” Jay snaps. “You have to tell him.”

“In a minute.”

Jay makes a grating sound, somewhere between a growl and a whine, and drags his claws over the desk petulantly. It’s annoying, but Rex understands. It’s getting to him, too, all the scents and sounds coming from the bedroom down the hall. There’s the musky stench of sex, sweat, and exertion, but above all that, there’s the scent of you. Your tears. Your distress. Your desire. Rex knows all of those smells, but it’s sharper than it’s ever been, irresistible and beckoning. He wants to lose himself in the haze of your need for him, but he has to focus.

His human—their human, as the other two keep reminding him—is unwell. He has a strong memory of the last time all of you spent time together, some strange, sharp aroma permeating the air in an abandoned place. You said you felt sick and left in a hurry. You didn’t answer any of his calls. And when he came to check on you—

“Are you almost done?” Jay whines.

“No, I’m not, and every time you ask, it’s gonna take longer,” Rex mutters. Down the hall, in his bedroom, you’re moaning breathlessly. Rex can just picture how Levine has you, pinned under him in bed with your legs over his shoulders, mostly human as he pounds into your tight heat. Whatever he’s doing, it’s making you gasp and cry, but it isn’t enough. He smells your dissatisfaction, your lust for more. He wants to be there. He wants to fill you. He takes a deep breath and ignores the erection straining in his jeans.

Rex carefully turns the yellowed parchment pages in front of him, trying to distract himself with the musty attic scent permeating the paper. He has a few boxes of his mom’s shit in the attic, things she didn’t care enough about to take with her (like him, he can’t help but think). There are encyclopedias and grimoires so old that no one alive would even recognize the language of the text. No index, unfortunately, so he just has to skim until he finds your symptoms. Not much to be done but help you burn whatever it is out of your system, and he knows that, but he’s more concerned with discovering the culprit.

He wants to find whatever did this. He wants to put it through agonies it never knew existed. He wants it to beg for oblivion, just so he can deny it.

He hears the bedroom door creak open. Your voice fills the hall, begging, weeping for more. “Please, please I can’t—it’s not—I need more, I need—need you, need all of you. Please, it hurts when I’m empty. Please fuck me, fill me up, I want you to cum inside. I need you. Rex—”

Jay jumps back like a startled cat when the desk splinters. Rex curses and starts pacing. He’s slipping bad. He has to take deep breaths, clutch his chest, and make his human heart slow down before he can get his tendrils under control. They want you. They twine together, straining against him to reach into the hall. He swallows hard and gradually, he pulls himself back together.

Levine appears in the open doorway, naked, gleaming with sweat, hair tousled and hanging in his face. He looks like worse shit than usual. He’s slipping, too, his eyes shining. He leaks nightmarestuff and it pools on the ceiling. “Listen,” he says groggily. His voice is wrecked. “I think we need a new strategy.”

“Fuck you and your strategy, it’s my turn,” Jay snaps, but Rex tugs him back with a tentacle before he can leave. Levine’s right. It’s not burning out of you fast enough, and your body isn’t built to handle this kind of strain. Your scent is even stronger now with the bedroom door left wide open, and he can hear how you writhe against the sheets. You’re delirious and rambling, telling them how much you love their cocks and how good you’ll be, how they can use you however they want and you’ll take it all.

“Alright,” Rex says, licking his lips. His tongue is too long, doesn’t feel much like a tongue anymore. He’s losing his sense of his own body, how the human form fits together. He clenches his hands into fists and sinks his nails in hard, makes himself bleed so he has to focus on healing. This isn’t about them. It’s about you. He has to be in control. “Let’s try something else.”

It’s a short walk to the bedroom, no more than a few steps to the end of the hall, but time slows to a crawl when he sees you. His human, curled up in his bed, panting and whimpering with need. You’re face-down, humping one of his pillows like a dog in heat, and he wants to take you like one. Wants to smother your body with his, bite your neck, pull you into the roll of his hips and fuck you deep. Jay swears under his breath when he sees you and that gets your attention, makes you lift your head and look at him with glazed eyes.

“Jay, fuck me,” you beg him, crawling on your hands and knees to the edge of the bed. You almost fall. Rex is closest and catches you, pushes you back into the safety of the pillows. “Rex,” you sigh, and his heart skips a beat. “Want you inside me.” He doesn’t know if he undresses properly, if he can bother to take his clothes off, or if his tentacles rip through them. Either way, he’s undressed and on the bed with you, and you’re nuzzling against his cock. Rex hates to stop you from licking and suckling at the head. He doesn’t, for a little bit, and pretends it’s just so he can gather his thoughts.

“Levine,” he says. The incubus is there suddenly, standing at the side of the bed closest to you. Rex didn’t hear or see him move. “You have another one in you?”

“Do birds fly?” Levine asks him wryly. He kneels on the bed and easily redirects your attention with a hand cupping your chin. “Here, little thing,” he coos, pumping his long, flushed length in front of your face. “Can you take me? All of me?”

“Yes,” you moan. You sound reverent. Without hesitation, you drag your tongue along his shaft from base to tip. Levine groans and tangles a hand in your hair, guiding himself into your mouth. He starts shallow despite your eagerness, just barely thrusting, but you’re shameless. You make obscene sounds sucking on him, saliva dribbling down your chin, and you start trying to take him deeper.

“Slow down,” Levine chides you. He tugs on your hair sharply but it just makes you moan around him. “Don’t rush this.”

You try to go still, but Rex sees you squirming, rubbing your thighs together. He doesn’t have to call Jay, because Jay is already there and trying to squeeze himself onto a bed too small for all of them, pawing at you, trailing kisses down your spine. Somehow, stuffed between Levine and Jay, you still manage to look up and give Rex a pleading look that makes heat rise to his face. “We’ve got you,” Rex murmurs. He brushes your sweat-sticky bangs out of your face. You almost pull off of Levine to lean into the touch.

You make it hard. You won’t sit still. The pillows and blankets end up everywhere, scattered across the floor from the constant awkward shuffle to reposition and your grasping, clinging hands. Jay mounts you like an animal and the quick, dirty grind makes you both cum fast, but it’s not enough. Levine works you with his fingers and you squirm, cry his name and cum all over his hand, but that’s not enough, either. You crawl into Rex’s lap and ride him and he cums twice, his nails sinking into your hips hard enough to draw blood. You don’t stop. You whine as you grind on him and run your hands over his chest.

He lies there bonelessly for a while, watching you get spitroasted between Jay and Levine with muted worry. Jay’s legs are buckling and his moans are getting quieter, almost pained. Levine’s thrusts are weak and robotic. He can’t help but passively feed on all the lust and frenzy you’re throwing off, and now he’s sluggish, so past full that it’s uncomfortable.

And it’s still not enough. You’re not cumming and you’re getting frantic, bucking your hips against Levine and sucking too hard on Jay’s softening length. Your body has to be at its limits. Rex considers all the things he knows that could have done this, and the chance that you’ll remember this in the morning. Doesn’t matter, he decides. He has to do something.

“Come here,” he says. He lets himself slip further, his voice going low, coarse, and commanding. He thinks he hears Jay collapse with a grunt but he doesn’t check. He doesn’t care. All that matters is you, the sway of your body coming towards him, the searing heat in your eyes. He waits until you’re in his arms, straddling him again, to slip even more. He wanted the first time he felt you with his true body to be special. It still will be, he decides. But right now, you need him, and that’s all that matters.

“I want you to close your eyes,” he says. “And don’t open them until I say.” You promise. You swear to him. Anything to get him inside of you faster. He’ll have to cover your eyes for you to make sure. He spreads your legs apart with a tendril wrapped around each, making you gasp at the wriggling, soft sensation. Something that you don’t recognize, that isn’t his cock and yet is, slides between your legs and rubs against your sex. Rex bites his lip so hard it bleeds. There’s no way he can hold his focus through all of this. You feel too good.

“What’re you doing?” Jay’s voice comes from just across the room, but it sounds even more distant. Rex can hear blood rushing through his ears. His flesh changing, his shape reforming. He keeps it restricted to his lower body so the top half is still human, still familiar to you. Easy for you to hold onto. Easy for you to look at with that desperate need. “Dude, you’re slipping—”

“I know,” Rex hisses, and the overhead light bursts in a rain of glass. Fuck, he’s in bad shape. You shiver against him. Rex quickly sweeps the shattered bulb off the bed with another tentacle and distracts you the best he can, caressing your body with his hands and tendrils. “You both need to get over here. Don’t hold back anymore.”

“...dangerous,” Levine murmurs, but he doesn’t disagree. In one smooth movement, he’s next to the bed again and his human skin is gone, consumed in the churning haze of his true form. The both of them crowding around you, caging you between them in their true forms, satisfies something in you. You whimper. You stop squirming and moving on your own. Everything about your body language screams submissive now, and Rex ignores the implications for now, the intentions of whatever set its sights on you, in favor of focusing on how much he wants you.

“Jay?” Rex says. He squeezes your ass, making you arch your back and moan for him. “Thought you were excited for your turn.” It’s cruel to tease him like that, but it’s good motivation. Jay is on his feet and staring at you, the way you shiver and moan as Rex threatens to penetrate you. He’s fully slipped, his tail thicker and longer, short horns poking out of his hairline. He kisses your shoulder and presses himself against your back, grinding against your ass until he’s hard again. You’re so far gone that all you can do is mewl helplessly.

“Thought I’d enjoy this, but I miss how they usually are,” Jay mutters. “Bein’ all mouthy and stuff.” He nibbles at the side of your neck and Rex feels you cum on the squirming length of his tentacle. A good sign, he thinks.

“They’re going to feel awful in the morning,” Levine says, but he’s wrapping cloudy wisps of himself around you anyway, chuckling at the needy noises you make. “It’ll be cute.”

“Focus,” Rex chides them, a useless reminder. You’re the center of the their universe right now. They’re going to get you through this, no matter what it takes.

oh my god…

Hello there! My family needs to leave Gaza out of necessity . I suffer from nightmares that are so closely resemble reality that I no longer Differentiate between reality and a dream.Thank you for taking your efforts and time in reading my plea. There are no words to describe the horrors unfolding in this place,never expected to find myself in this situation. Because of this horrible situation I have decided to come before you guys for a financial support so that I can evacuate my family from this hell that we are into.The funds will be strictly used for the evacuation . I will personally bear any additional expenses incurred.Your support will make a significant difference in alleviating the suffering of my family ,We urgently need any kind of support before it is to late. As time ticking away translates to lives lost in Gaza I'm here and ready to answer any questions or concerns you may have.Kindly reach out and connect with me

i don’t have the means to donate but i can reblog!

and y’all should too.

scrap metal muzzle part i

this started off being based on a nightmare i had and spun entirely out of control and become... this fucking thing. enjoy my ghoap x fat reader scrapyard fic.

this is just part 1 of 2, because holy hell did this get long (11k words in this part alone). part 2 is darker, so be aware.

cw: vague references to a past abusive relationship, manipulation, oral sex, threesome (kinda), voyeurism/enthusiastic cuckholding (sort of? idk how to even categorize it), possessiveness, un-negotiated kink, pet play, 24/7 kink lifestyle, praise, verbal degradation (towards soap only), only lightly edited bc i'm tired

in hindsight, you probably should have spent more time planning your escape. should've had a mechanic look over the car you purchased for cash off craigslist, should've planned your route more thoroughly, should've taken food with you. ah well. it's too late to go back, by now phil will have come home and noticed that you're gone. he's probably making the rounds to all of your friend's houses, banging on their doors and demanding to be let in. at least you'd had the foresight to warn them, you suppose. didn't tell any of them where you were going or what was happening, obviously, just told them you were finally leaving phil and he might come around looking. the repeated choruses of 'oh thank god' had spurred you on, stoking the fire within you that made your quick exit from that relationship feel like a life or death situation. hell, for all you know about phil's temper, it very well might've been.

the first few hours on the road went just fine as you broke every speed limit you came across, careening towards the sunset as you made your slapdash escape. the van was in your possession less than twenty minutes before you sent the mass text to your friends and family, letting them know you were on your way out. in less than sixty minutes everything you'd owned in phil's apartment made it's way into the back of the van, some of it boxed but most of it rolling loose. all your clothes are in garbage bags, your jewelry in ziplocks. out of spite you took all the silverware and remotes, all of them shoved in a grocery bag along with your toiletries and makeup.

by the time the sun had fully set, rain started pouring down. it was already difficult to see with the yellow, clouded headlights, but this unexpected monsoon just made it worse. it was already hard to navigate the winding country roads this way, but the deluge of rain made the line on the road look blurrier, and you couldn't help but worry about potentially crossing over the white line on accident and winding up in a ditch. you'd probably be safer on a bigger road with rumble strips, but you had figured risking it out here was still a far side safer than taking to the major highways where phil might have his cop buddies be on the lookout for you.

the rattletrap van gives up the ghost when you stop by the side of the road to pee, squatting so only your ass hung out the door and got rained on. you grumble as you pull your underwear over cold, wet skin, and cursed when you turned the key and realized the engine was outright refusing to turn over again. fuck, shit, motherfucker. you slam your hands against the steering wheel as you curse out god, phil, and nissan while the rain continues to slam against your windshield in a deafening cacophony. you turn your headlights off to look for light pollution against the cloudy skies, something to indicate which direction you should start walking in so you can find some help. hope rises in your chest when you see not just light pollution, but a small, glowing yellow square off in the not too far distance. it's got to be a building of some kind, clearly occupied. perfect. hopefully whoever's inside is feeling charitable.

after digging through black garbage bag after black garbage bag, you finally find your best coat and get to walking. the rain is freezing cold, and the northern wind, that bastard, is whipping it right in your face, shoving your hood back off your head and soaking your hair. you can only cling to your hood for so long until the biting rain makes your hands go numb, forcing you to shove them into your pockets as you trudge forward. why don't raincoat hoods have a drawstring like hoodies do? this is fucking bullshit. ugh, fuck, you're going to look like an absolute mess when you arrive, but hopefully that helps earn you some sympathy when you ask for help.

it feels like ages until you come up on the building with the lit window, but when you do, it's clear it's not a house, but a business. that... might be better, actually. it feels less intrusive to go to a business for help instead of a private residence. nobody's gonna answer the door with a shotgun if you walk up to a business. probably. right?

the sign above the door says s&j scrapyard, and with the light that spills out of the lit window, you can see the high fences that run around the building, large jagged shadows of scrap towering behind them. with a hard swallow, you rap on the door. shave and a haircut, just to let whoever's inside know that you're there and you're friendly. it feels like ages that you stand there, back towards the wind, waiting for someone to come, but when the door finally swings violently open you find yourself wishing you'd never come at all.

a huge man stands in the doorway, his big body nearly blocking out all the sickly yellow light that tries to pour out from his dry office and out into the night. he's so broad you wonder idly if he has to enter and exit doorways at a slight angle just to fit. he's covered from head to toe, with big boots, skeleton patterned gloves, and a balaclava, leaving only his dark eyes and the bridge of his nose exposed. he's so tall you find your head tilting back a bit just to look him in the eye. he makes for a very intimidating figure, and you can't be sure if it's the cold and wet that has you shaking or his domineering presence.

"wot you want?" he barks out, chuckling when you flinch. "s'after hours and i don't got copper f'ya anyways. beat it."

"i- no, my- my car broke down just up the road. i was just wondering if you knew of a mechanic's shop that might still be op-open." you stammer out through chattering teeth. from inside the building you hear a high pitched, animalistic whine and the sound of metal clattering on concrete.

"oi! settle!" the man in the mask barks over his shoulder before turning back to you. "ain't nothin' open this time of night."

"oh." shit, ok, now what? do you trudge back to the van on your sore feet only to come back in the morning and ask for a phone? do you curl up under the small awning and sleep here, hoping this man doesn't mind? do you-

"tell you wot- i'll come tow ya, and you can sleep in the parkin' lot. we can call a mechanic in the mornin'." the man says, gruffness in his tone easing up just slightly. "i'd invite you in, but the mutt- 'e gets too excited about new people. especially pretty girls. might bite on accident."

being called a pretty girl is a surprise, especially since you're pretty sure you look like a drowned rat, and you can feel your eyebrows rocket to your hairline at the praise. of all the things you'd expected a 6'5" scrapyard worker with a thick manc accent to call your fat ass, 'pretty' didn't make the list. still, it's nice, even if it does have you a little flustered.

"oh, uh, sure, yeah, thank you so much, i really appreciate your help." the relief is palpable, you can feel the tenseness in your shoulders melt away. finally, one thing has gone your way. you're determined to cling to your silver linings. thank god you've got a big van full of bags of clothes that you can sleep on top of and not, like, a vw rabbit full of pots and pans.

in no time at all the two of you are in the cab of a tow truck, rolling down the road to your broken down ride. the man tells you his name is simon, he's been picking up broken down cars and selling them for scrap for a few years since leaving the military. it's just him and the mutt out there, the mechanic he'll call is in next closest town, which is about a thirty minutes drive out. you tell him a little bit about yourself, explaining vaguely that you've just left a volatile situation back home and are looking for a fresh start. simon doesn't say anything to that, doesn't ask prodding questions, just hums thoughtfully as he pulls up to your shitty van before hopping out, hooking it up, and towing it back to the front of the shop.

"i'll take a peek under the 'ood myself tomorrow, but dunno 'ow much 'elp i'm gonna be. my business is takin' things apart, not really one for puttin' 'em back together." simon tells you before he leaves you for the night, cursing at his yowling dog when he steps back into the yellow light of his office.

sleep comes easier than you thought it would, the high adrenaline from making your daring escape suddenly coming to a screeching halt and bringing you crashing down while you rest on your nest of clothes and blankets. you don't even have time to kick your shoes off before you're drooling on the bag under your cheek, letting your guard entirely down as you take solace in the pitter patter of rain on the windshield of your locked van. phil could drive by this place, see the van, and never even know you're inside. that comforting knowledge is what propels you into a deep, dreamless sleep that's only disturbed by three sharp knocks to the door sometime in the midmorning.

"got breakfast, if y'like." a gruff voice calls through the door as you stretch out the aches in your bones. fuck, your hair probably is a mess, but it's hard to give a shit when a meal is being offered. after a quick change of clothes and fussing with your hair in the rearview mirror a bit, you clamber out into the bright morning sun, beelining for the front door and letting yourself in. the office isn't too big, just a small space for customers to stand at a big, long counter. there's also a kennel set up there- empty save for the fluffy pillow and chew toys left behind. there's a few doors lined up along the back wall, and you assume one leads out to the scrapyard, the other to simon's personal quarters. you're not sure about the third. janitor's closet maybe?

"oi." simon appears out of the far left door, jerking his head, beckoning you to come around the counter. you cautiously step through the door into the kitchenette of what looks like a small studio apartment. it's a real bachelor pad if you've ever seen one. there's a messy bed shoved into the corner, and the walls are completely sparse save for a large television that's hung just a little bit crooked. there's some dirty clothes on the floor, more chewed up rubber dog toys, and several empty beer cans lined up on the windowsill behind the bed. simon pulls out a chair for you at the little kitchen table, metal legs groaning against the linoleum.

"thank you so much, for everything. i don't know how i'm going to be able to repay you." you admit as he places a hot bowl of oatmeal in front of you. to say that your finances are limited is an understatement. phil hadn't allowed you to work for years, so half of your savings were used up on that rattletrap parked out front.

"mm. expect you don't 'ave much in the way of cash, then?" he asks, settling into the seat across the table from you. it's hard not to notice that he isn't eating. probably doesn't want to take off his mask in front of a stranger, you rationalize, trying not to think too hard about why he's wearing one in the first place. maybe he's scarred up, burnt, or otherwise disfigured. not your place to ask, really, not when he's been so helpful. he's allowed his own secrets, just like you're allowed yours.

"no, sorry. i, uh, i mean. you could put me to work, i guess?" you say before shoveling a hot spoonful of breakfast into your mouth. mm, peach instant oatmeal. that's the good stuff. simon leans back in his chair, crossing his massive arms over his equally massive chest, the corners of his eyes creased in what you hope is a smile.

"and the mechanic? gonna go work for 'im, too?" he asks, tone teasing.

"whatever it takes, i guess." you say with a shrug as you slowly finish your breakfast, savoring every bite. simon watches you eat in silence, dark eyes trained on your every move. it's unnerving, but you imagine that way out here, he probably doesn't have guests very often. hell, it's incredible he has two chairs for his kitchen instead of just one. it's likely you're eating out of the only bowl in the whole place.

"tell you wot. i'll show ya 'round the junkyard, introduce you to the mutt. 'e's been needin' a playmate, and i' 'aven't 'ad the time t'give 'im the attention 'e needs. you play with 'im and keep 'im occupied for a few days, and i'll make sure your van's taken care of." simon tells you, and you keep waiting for the catch.

"so... if i play with your dog for a few days you'll cover the mechanic's fees and call us even?" you ask, unsure if you're misunderstanding. he huffs out a laugh and nods. "... didn't you say he bites?"

"does sometimes, when 'e's oll riled up. olready muzzled 'im up f'ya, if that 'elps." he cocks his head, eyes still trained on you. "wot you say?"

"you don't even know what the cost of the repairs is going to be." you point out. "i doubt playing fetch and keeping fido out from under your feet is going to be worth whatever it costs to fix my shitty van."

"mm, maybe. still might be a right side cheaper than drivin' 'im oll the way to the city, boardin' 'im in a kennel for a few weeks. knowin' 'im, i'd probably 'ave t'pay extra, considerin' what a bloody 'andful 'e is." simon grabs your empty bowl. "tell ya wot, you 'andle 'im today and we'll consider the tow service covered. i'll call the mechanic, get an estimate, and we can take it from there. olright?"

"yeah, ok. thanks." you tell him, throwing him a small, grateful smile as he stands to clean your dishes. "i, uh, i really appreciate this. i won't let you down."

simon looks you over as he rinses off your bowl in the sink, chuckling to himself as if what you've just said is funny. ok. weird. but it could be worse, you suppose.

when he finishes, simon takes you on a tour of the scrapyard, showing you the piles of crushed cars, broken home appliances, and seemingly endless bins and barrels of various parts. it's a labyrinth of scrap, irregular alleys and lanes zig zagging all over the place. you're gonna get lost in here, you can just feel it in your bones. in the back is the car crusher, a barbaric looking piece of machinery that simon seems especially proud to own and operate. judging by how full this yard is, you'd guess he gets plenty of use out of it. the heat from the rising sun seems magnified in here, possibly intensified by the piles of scrap metal all around you, piled much higher than you are tall. simon walks alongside you, peering around each corner as if he's looking for something.

"'ang on, lemme call soap." simon tells you mere seconds before letting out an earsplitting whistle. "soap! come!"

there's an instant commotion up and around a blind corner, the sound of a big body hoisting itself off the ground and running towards you as fast as it can while you and simon saunter in the general direction of the noise. when you finally see soap, you stop dead in your tracks, jaw dropping so hard you're afraid it'll scuff your already dirty shoes.

this whole time, you'd been expecting some sort of half-pitbull junkyard dog, a canine with a skull that's roughly the size of a watermelon with badly cropped ears and a tail that won't stop wagging. what's bounding up towards you on all fours isn't even remotely close to what you'd seen in your minds eye. soap is, in fact, a fully grown man wearing shoes and gloves shaped like paws, with kneepads and the tiniest black speedo you've ever seen. there's a pert little rubber tail sticking out of a hole in the back, wagging as he wiggles his hips in obvious excitement. a shaggy looking mohawk is crushed under the strap of a black and brown leather mask that's made to look like a rottweiler's snout with floppy ears attached at the top. he looks at you expectantly with the bluest eyes you've ever seen, whining a little bit through what sounds like a gag of some sort.

simon's behind you, his big broad body blocking your retreat when you instinctually try to take a step backwards and away from the petplay enthusiast that's come to a skidding halt and kneeling at your feet. it's hard not to stare with wide eyes at the man in front of you. you're not anti-kink by any means, but, christ, some warning would've been nice, or at the very least a fucking consent check. still, you're not really in a position to argue. you can't afford to pay whatever simon's towing fee would be, seeing as you barely have enough for gas and food. too late to back out now, you suppose.

"you're right. your kennel fees would be enormous." you deadpan, and simon laughs behind you with a deep heh heh heh. a gloved hand presents a well-chewed rubber ball from over your shoulder.

"muzzle will stay on, but 'e can still fetch. it's 'is favorite game, so it should keep 'im occupied for a while. i'll bring lunch f'ya both 'round one." he says as you take the ball, noting the deep toothmarks that are suddenly very obviously human. "be good, soap. remember- no 'umpin' or nothin'. i'll let 'er 'ose you down with cold water if you can't behave."

it's wild how much his threat to soap makes you relax. ok, so this isn't a sex thing, really. he just wants someone to treat his boyfriend (you assume) like a dog while he gets some work done. outsourcing what seems to be a 24/7 lifestyle thing to a desperate traveler. it's still jarring, this nearly naked man in fetish gear loudly panting through a leather mask at your feet, but, hey. you've been to pride before, it's nothing you haven't seen. it's nothing you've ever participated in, either, but you suppose new beginnings will bring about new experiences. you'll just treat this man exactly like a dog for a while and maybe you'll be able to get back on the road soon.

"i'm sure i won't need to do that, he looks like a very good boy." you coo down at soap, who wiggles his hips so hard it makes the rubber tail go whap whap whap against his asscheeks. you really, really don't want to think too hard about how that tail's connected. simon chuckles and pats you on the shoulder.

"that's the spirit. i'll be in the office, let me know if 'e acts up or if you need anythin'." he says before stalking off back through the maze of rust, leaving you alone with soap.

"so." you start awkwardly, and soap huffs out a laugh from behind his leather snout. "hey! just gimme a second, ok? i was expecting a mean pitbull or something, not-" you pause. best to just keep treating him like a dog. "-such a handsome, nice boy. so sue me for being startled."

soap's eyes crease in the corner, an obvious smile, and when you absentmindedly toss the ball a little and catch it his attention snaps to the chewed-upon red rubber.

"can you show me somewhere that i can throw this? this, uh, lane isn't long enough for me to really chuck this, i don't think." genuinely it's amazing this man's impeccably bronzed skin isn't cut to shit, what with all the jagged metal sticking out of columns of ruined cars and appliances. soap's scrambling back to where he came from like a bat out of hell, and you find yourself jogging a little to try to keep up and not lose him.

he leads you to the fenceline, a long open lane that leads right up to the building, with a lawn chair propped up next to a very large dog house in the shade.

"think simon'll be mad if i borrow his chair?" you ask the gagged man that's hopping up on his knees trying to get the ball from your hand.

"mmrf mmmrf!" he 'barks', and you laugh.

"that a no?" you tease, eyebrow cocked as you hold the ball above your head.

"mmrf!" ah. one for yes, and two for no. or it might be the other way around. hm. ah, well, you figure a loyal dog will let you know if you've crossed a line sitting in his owner's spot. you chuck the ball towards the house as you wander towards the shade, laughing as soap scrambles to try to catch the ball, watching him scoop it up with his paws and open the 'jaw' of his leather mask, placing the ball snugly inside before trotting up to you, head held up with pride. the second you try to take the ball, he dodges, clearly in a playful mood as he rests on his forearms and wags his ass in the air.

"oh, you little shit." you laugh as you try to catch the wiley motherfucker to pry the ball out of his muzzle. soap seems thrilled that you're playing along, trying to duck and weave out of your arms reach while you urge him to 'drop it, soap! drop iiiiit!'. when you finally grab the ball and chuck it again, he shoots off after it, moving much faster than someone on their hands and knees should be able to. you post up in the lawn chair, happily accepting the ball that he thankfully chooses to deposit in your lap. your hand hovers over his head as you debate giving him pets. is that crossing a line? you should probably ask him first, right?

"you want head scritches? is it ok to pet?" you ask in a sing-songy voice you reserve for animals and babies too small to make words yet. soap's eyes go wide a minute before you get an affirmative and enthusiastic 'mrrrf'. you slide your fingers under the strap, massaging at the scalp there while you watch his eyes slide closed out of bliss. you wouldn't know for sure, but you'll bet it feels every bit as good as when you get a backrub underneath your bra strap. you can't help but laugh as soap's leg kicks out just like a dog's, thudding against the ground and kicking up dust.

it's funny, really. sitting here in this scrapyard with a half naked man who's pretending to be a dog while enjoying the shade on a warm and sunny day is the nicest time you've had in a good, long while. it sure beats the shit out of any day spent under phil's roof, that's for damn sure. you throw the ball a few more times, and eventually soap seems to get tired from all the fetch and flops down at your feet, sighing contentedly. you hover your hand over his chest, raising your brow in a silent question- is this ok? am i taking it too far if i pet your chest like a dog?

soap, bless him, seems thrilled at how much you're playing along, barking once as he rolls onto his back with his elbows, wrists, and knees bent, kicking his leg out again as you pet at his thick, dark chest hair, making sure to keep your touches all above the sternum. if soap gets hard, the head of his cock peeking out of his tiny little shorts while you gently card your nails through the dense patch of body hair, you politely ignore it, chalking it up to involuntary bodily reactions.

"y'gonna spoil 'im if you keep carryin' on like that." simon's voice comes from seemingly out of nowhere, and, shit, is it one already? you retract your hand like soap's scalded you, immediately standing to get out of simon's seat. soap whines a little in disappointment at the lack of your touch, rolling back onto hands and knees to nuzzle against simon's muscular thigh.

"sorry, i-" a single gloved hand in the air stops your hurried apologies as he hands you a brown paper bag.

"don't fuss, you're olright. johnny bein' good?" johnny? oh. yeah. of course this grown man crawling at your feet doesn't have 'soap' written on his birth certificate. you open the offered bag and find a sandwich- turkey on rye- and a cold can of coke. hell yeah, that sounds perfect.

"yeah, he's a good boy. and, uh, thanks." you raise the lunchbag slightly, and simon grunts in acknowledgement, leaning down to pet soap behind his leather ears. "i can see what you meant, he's got a lot of energy. you might as well build him a giant hamster wheel to run on, just watching him go after that ball makes me tired."

simon huffs out a laugh. "well, thanks t'you i've gotten more work done than i 'ave in a good long while. 'preciate it. i'll call the mechanic after lunch and make an appointment for 'im to come take a look at that van of yours."

"sounds good." you sit tentatively back in the lawn chair, putting your soda in the faded plastic cupholder built into the arm and cracking it open.

"think you can 'andle a few more days of keepin' my boy busy? not sure when price will be able to come by. only mechanic f'miles, 'e's got a full calendar, even with 'is employees 'elp." simon says, unbuckling something on soap's mask. it's not until he pulls it free that you can recognize it for what it is- a bone-shaped rubber gag, covered in drool. you have to blink twice to stop from staring at how chewed up it is.

"yeah, i think so. i think we've had a pretty nice morning together, huh boy?" you ask, and soap just wiggles his ass in an approximation of a wag, audibly panting through his mask.

"you like your new friend? yeah? olright, c'mon. gotta feed the both of us. you stay out 'ere and knock on the window if ya need anythin'." simon instructs while he and soap head back towards the door. it takes a few moments alone and a bite of your sandwich before you piece together that neither of them can eat in a mask, and that you're probably not allowed to see either of them without one. maybe the mask is a kink thing for simon too? ok, sure, that's the most reasonable explanation. they're also probably gonna fuck about this, but that's definitely not your business.

your sandwich and soda are long gone by the time soap trots back to you alone, flopping into the dirt by your side and clearly angling for more chest rubs. you hesitate for a moment, wondering to yourself if you're willing to give him another boner, but you figure simon's probably taken care of him during their lunch, that you don't have anything to worry about. the rest of the afternoon is spent alternating between gently petting at him above the waist, throwing the damn ball, wrestling the damn ball back from him, and idly telling him stories about back when you were allowed to have a job. he seems to enjoy the tales of crazy customers, funny things children would blurt out at you, and small acts of kindness you'd witnessed. when the sun starts to set, soap bumps his head against your knee, an obvious 'get up, go on' if you've ever seen one.

"didn't realize you were a herding breed." you mock-grouse, earning you a huff of laugher from inside a hollow leather snout. he leads you through the maze of twisted steel to the back door, pawing at the dense wood and obviously waiting for you to let him inside.

"hang on, hang on," you tell him as you poke your head in. "uh, simon? soap wants let in, is that okay?"

the groan of a chair sliding on linolieum is your response, and in a few beats simon's masked face greets you.

"impatient mutt. gonna eat in the kennel, then? is that wot you want?" simon chides, and you can't help but feel like you're the one that fucked up somehow. "go on, then. get going."

soap scrambles in past his legs towards the front of the shop, out to where you'd seen his metal crate. you're left standing awkwardly at the door, feeling bashful for having apparently broken a rule you didn't know about. simon notices the way your shoulders are raised, the way you're caving in on yourself, just the same way you did when phil would scream and throw things. unlike phil, he seems to grin at you under his mask, apparently pleased.

"oh, sweet girl, you duckin' your 'ead because you think you're in trouble, too?" simon coos at you, reaching out and rubbing his thumb against your round cheek. "you're a right side more obedient than my johnny, i think. you'd make a proper puppy, wouldn't you?"

"not my scene." you say quietly, and he exhales a small laugh.

"pity, that." he says softly, stroking your face and staring into your eyes for a beat before continuing. "come on, lets get you both fed."

he turns on his heel and steps inside, leaving you stunned and bewildered at the doorway for a moment before you cautiuously venture back in. there's a mostly-finished plate of meat and veggies at the table, and you can hear simon talking to soap through the door, chiding him for being a 'greedy pup' over the sounds of silverware scraping off food from a plate. you just stand in the kitchen awkwardly, waiting to be told what to do in this man's home. you're still a stranger to him, really, and you don't want to overstep while in his space.

when simon returns, he chuckles to see you waiting with your hands held behind your back, patiently waiting for his instructions. he nods to the empty spot at the kitchen table.

"sit."

your obedience is practically instant. you settle into the chair and watch as simon plates your own serving of chicken and steamed veggies, the smell of which makes you hungry. the chicken looks under seasoned as fuck, but, hey, free food is free food, and you're not about to say or do anything to fall out of the good graces of someone who's willing to pay your mechanic's bill in exchange for you throwing a rubber ball for his boyfriend.

"called price, the mechanic. 'e's booked up for a while but should be 'ere by the end of next week. went ahead and moved your van to the back, keep it from gettin' broken into at night." simon informs you as he sets down your plate and silverware with a small clatter on the table. that's a much larger timetable than you'd wanted, but you suppose it can't be helped.

"thank you. for everything." you tell him for the second time today, and those dark eyes smile at you from across the table.

"obedient and grateful. sure you don't want to be a pet, pet? i'd treat ya real nice, just ask soap. lad's got no complaints." dark eyes look you up and down as he sets down a glass of water for you, pausing briefly on your soft tits before his gaze meets your again.

"that might just be the gag." you tease, and you jump a little when simon suddenly lets out a laugh.

"that thing don't stop 'im none. should've 'eard all the bitchin' and moanin' i got this mornin' after breakfast when i told 'im not to 'ump your leg. you'dve thought i'd told 'im that 'e was gettin' fixed." simon teases, and you feel your face heat with embarrassment as you eat your bland chicken, keeping your gaze down at your plate. you eat in silence, simon watching you like a hawk the entire time, like he's studying the way you sit, the way you eat, the way you conduct yourself. he takes your plate away along with his own when you finish, placing them in the sink.

"you'll stay in 'ere with me from now on. need some proper rest on a proper bed if you're goin' t'keep up with soap all week. " he tells you, tone brooking no argument, and you glance nervously at the bed in the corner. it looks like a king size mattress, so it's probably big enough for your wide hips and his broad shoulders... but what about soap?

"does soap normally sleep out there, or am i gonna be taking up his spot?" you ask quietly, nodding towards the door that leads to the lobby.

"normally 'is crate's in 'ere, but 'e'd been actin' up lately and needed punishment." simon replies while rinsing the dishes, tilting his head to look over at you. "you said 'e was good today, right? think 'e should come back in 'ere tonight?"

"he was good, but. well. that's your call, not mine." you say diplomatically, doing your best to be as unobtrusive and unassuming as possible. after years with phil, you've perfected it like an artform.

simon hums, sounding very pleased. "too right, it is. still, if the pup's been good, may as well reward 'im."

he shakes his hands dry over the sink, and saunters over to the door, calling out to soap.

"oi. bird says you were a good pup today. you think you've earned sleepin' in 'ere with us people?" a single, clear bark rings out from the next room. "olright. finish up and bring it in, then."

the door swings closed of it's own accord when he steps away and back towards you, leaning in close enough for you to finally notice how blonde his eyelashes are. huh. maybe he's a ginger under that mask.

"now, as much as we'd both like, s'not safe to 'ave 'im masked and gagged oll the time. you just keep treatin' 'im the way you 'ave been, and no starin', yeah?" simon instructs, voice lowered as if the man that's noisily dragging a metal cage across a concrete floor in the next room could possibly overhear him.

"your house, your rules." you reply quietly, earning you another deep, pleased hum.

"you sure you don't want to be my pup? wouldn't even make ya stay in a kennel at night. bet i wouldn't need t'punish ya at oll. think you like bein' good. y'wanna be good f'me?" he rests his forehead against yours, his cotton-covered nose bumping against the side of yours.

"my knees hurt just watching soap run around all day. i don't think i'm cut out for it." you say as lightly as possible, shoving your hands under your thighs to try to hide the way they're trembling under simon's attention. "besides, you have him, you don't need me-"

"sure i do, love. need ya t'keep soap actin' right, don't i? s'pose you've got a point, though. you're a nice, obedient bird, but i can't 'ave puppies lookin' after puppies, can i?" a loud crash and yelp from the next room elicits a sigh and an eyeroll from simon before he stands back up to his full height, finally giving you some breathing room. fuck, you can feel your heartbeat in your throat. jesus christ, was he hitting on you? while his boyfriend loses a fight with a metal cage in the next room? what's even harder to reconcile is that you liked it, the way this man praises you and pays attention to you. continuing to stay here is probably a bad idea... but, shit, it's not like you have other options. on weak knees you follow simon to the lobby, where soap's crouching down, trying to push a turned-over pet cage with his shoulder.

"can i help?" you ask from behind simon, who turns to wrap his arm around your shoulders. you freeze, uncertain, but when you look to soap, he seems thrilled that his boyfriend (or whatever the fuck they are to each other) is holding you close.

it's almost jarring, seeing soap without his dog mask. he's a handsome guy, with a slightly grown out mohawk and stubble. his strong jaw is marked with a scar that looks like lightning arcing across his chin, and when he turns his head you can see another mark that had been hidden by his mask, a giant star made of scar tissue by his temple. it's huge and ugly, and whatever left it must've been horrifying. you school your face into a less pitying expression, opting to focus instead on how pretty the rest of him is.

"wot a lovely new friend you've got, johnny. offerin' to 'elp you out when she's olready looked after you oll day. a right angel, this one. wot do you say to the pretty girl?" simon's praise washes over you like a warm bath, making you feel golden and glowing underneath your ribs. he doesn't strike you as a particularly easy man to please, if the way he speaks to and about soap is any indication.

"thank ye, pretty girl." soap says, his first human words made even lovelier by his scottish accent.

"of course. this isn't a job for puppies, is it? can't move it with your puppy paws, huh? i'll grab the cage and you be a good boy and just show me where to put it." you coo down at him, and when he smiles at you it's like all of him lights up like a firework as he nods feverishly. the cage isn't heavy, just big and awkward, but you manage to get it tucked into the corner soap points at with his nose with minimal cursing and grunting while simon supervises the both of you from his spot leaning against the door frame.

"there we go, right where it belongs. what a good helper! suchagoodpuppy!" you praise soap, ruffling his mohawk in an approximation of a pat to the head. he looks so pleased to be spoken to this way, treated like the puppy he wants to be. honestly, you're starting to understand the appeal from simon's end of it. puppy play might not be your kink, but seeing this beautiful man smile at you like you're personally responsible for hanging the stars in the sky might be.

simon's arm wraps around you again, this time slung low across your lower back, his hand resting on your big hip. he's getting bolder now, unless you say or do something, you imagine things will only escalate... but you're not sure if you mind. sure, this maybe isn't normally your scene, but these guys have been nothing but kind to you, taking care of you when you needed it most. would it be so horrible to let yourself enjoy them like that? to let them enjoy you?

"startin' to get offended, johnny. you behave for 'er much more than you do f'me." simon teases, eyes smiling.

"she's so good t'me, sir. plays with me as long as i want. talks sweet to me and pets me nice." soap smiles warmly up at you from his spot on the floor, and you can't help but smile softly back.

"yeah? she pet your belly 'ow you like?" simon asks, fingers kneading at the plushness of your hip almost absentmindedly, thumb strumming along your waistband.

"no. doesnae touch me below the ribs." soap looks and sounds a little pouty about it, and you don't know why but it makes you feel embarrassed to have them talk about how you touch soap as if you're not even here.

"because she knows you belong to me." simon's free hand reaches over and tilts your head up to look at him. "isn't that right? you don't play with other people's toys without permission, because you're a polite bird."

"i try to be." your voice sounds so small, and simon rumbles a low, pleased sounding laugh at you before gently chucking your chin and patting your ass.

"come on, you two. on the bed. got a movie for us before we sleep." simon instructs before nodding to you. "go get your sleep clothes and toothbrush out of the van while we set up 'ere."

a motion detecting floodlight illuminates the scrapyard when you wander back out, throwing long, dark shadows behind the piles of rusting metal as you make your way to where simon had towed your shitbox nissan just a few yards from the door. it takes a little digging before you find your sleep shorts, tank top, and toothbrush, and you change quickly in the van before coming back in to see the small pile of pillows on the bed rearranged and that soap's changed, too. gone are the paw gloves, kneepads, speedo and tail, and it strikes you as almost weird how normal he looks in just paw print boxers.

"go brush your teeth and we'll get started." simon's voice comes from behind you, startling you briefly. your hand flies to your chest as you gasp and wheel around, and you can't help but laugh at how silly your response is. it's just simon, nothing bad or scary. not like phil. he's in grey sweats, a plain shirt, and his balaclava, thus solidifying your 'his mask is a kink' theory in your mind. why the fuck else would he wear it to bed, right?

"for a big guy, you sure move quiet." you chuckle as you pass him to head to the small bathroom just off the kitchen. it's hard to say why, but the heh heh heh of his low laughter behind you makes your hair stand on end. when you come back from brushing your teeth, simon is sitting on the bed with soap tucked into his side. they look so cozy together, you feel a little awkward intruding. soap perks back up at the sight of you, not unlike a terrier, and pats the empty space on the mattress next to him.

"c'mere, hen. give us a cuddle." he looks so excited to be snuggled between you and simon, who are you to say no? as soon as you're sat down soap squirms to reposition himself so his head is against your shoulder and his leg is thrown over simon's, somehow leaning against both of you at the same time. you and simon make amused eye contact over his head, and you can't help but relish in the pleased sounding hum you earn as you gently scritch at soap's scalp. it's been so long since a man's been pleased with you, let alone two. you'd forgotten how heady it is, being liked and appreciated.

the movie starts, and it's one of the old godzilla flicks from the fifties. it's pretty enjoyable, and it reminds you of how much you prefer practical effects over cgi. every now and again soap readjusts himself, slowly sliding further and further down until his face is pressed against your chest. he's not sly, it was obvious from the get-go that this is where this was headed, and you can't help but roll your eyes in good humor as he nuzzles against you slightly.

"soap. be good." simon warns sternly, the tone of his voice making the smaller man freeze and glance up at you apologetically.

"sorry, bonnie. yer just so soft, ye ken? feels nice to snuggle up on." he rolls a little more towards you, rubbing his hand across your wide, soft stomach in gentle circles as a man in a rubber lizard suit smashes cardboard tokyo on the screen.

"i'm ok with it if simon is. it feels nice." you say softly, deferring to the obvious shot-caller. you're not lying, it really does feel nice to be wanted like this and not scrutinized and picked apart the way phil did. he only ever touched you to either hurt you, fuck you so hard it hurt, or to point out shit to hurt your feelings. being touched because you're being actively enjoyed as you are, big soft belly, stretchmarked tits and all? that's a novel thing for you. it's been a while since anyone's touched you like this, and you can't help but hope simon lets you keep this for just a bit longer.

soap's head whips around comically fast, his doglike pleading whine making you laugh. simon nods his head in chuckling approval once, and soap's face is shoved right against your tits with a pleased sigh, the impact of his face slamming back into you making you sway with a surprised laugh.

the movie continues, and by the end you and soap are turned towards each other, the side of his face pressed against your chest while you stroke your fingers through his chest hair, still not daring to go any lower than that. it's not like you'd need to, you can see the obvious tent in soap's boxers. simon grabs the remote and turns off the tv before curling himself around soap's back, hooking his masked chin on his pup's shoulder, rubbing his big hand on a hairy lower belly.

"isn't she nice, johnny? think we got lucky, 'avin' a sweet bird like 'er land in our laps." simon murmurs right into his ear, his dark eyes fixed on you in a way that makes you want to squirm.

"real sweet, sir, and a bonnie lass, too. soft as a lamb." soap nuzzles against you, eyes closed and losing himself in the sensation of trying to bury his face in your tits again.

"we like t'reward sweet 'round 'ere, don't we?" simon coos, and suddenly the room is much, much warmer. your face heats as you try to ignore the needy feeling between your legs.

"aye. can i do it, sir? cannae stand it anymore, need to taste her." soap whines against your skin, speaking about you like you're not even there. for some reason that you don't care to think too hard about, it makes you shudder, breath stuttering out as you clench your thighs.

"wot you say, sweet'eart? you want soap to give you your reward f'bein' so good?" simon's hand moves from soap's belly to your hip, grazing over the tender skin right above your shorts.

you shouldn't. everything in your logical brain screams you shouldn't. it's a bad, bad, bad idea, taking up with two of the strangest strangers you've ever met, especially right when you've just escaped a heinously controlling relationship. however, logic is the last thing you're concerned about, what with these two broad-shouldered men chomping at the bit to 'reward' you while they touch you gently and tell you how good and sweet and bonnie you are.

"please?" you whisper, and no sooner is the word out of your mouth than simon is scruffing soap by the hair on the back of his head, yanking him back away from you.

"you behave yourself, pup. she's not one of your chewtoys. if i see ya gettin' rough with the pretty bird, i'll throw ya in the kennel for the night. got it?" he growls in soap's face, angling the other man's head back at a deeply uncomfortable looking angle.

"aye, aye, i'll be good, sir. promise." soap says eagerly, his wrists still bent as if he's got little paws instead of hands. simon stares down at him silently for a moment before he lets go, sitting up on the bed.

"come 'ere." simon instructs, patting the space between his legs and pulling your shoulders until your back is flush with his chest. "take those shorts off for johnny, and let 'im make up for being such a right pain in the arse oll day."

"you weren't a pain." you reassure soap, lifting your hips to slide your shorts and panties off in one go, running your fingers through the thick mohawk as he settles between your thighs. it feels like there's hands everywhere, caressing your thighs and hips on soap's end while simon reaches over to push your tank top down and play with your tits, murmuring low in your ear.

"you just keep your eyes on soap, no lookin' back at me." he tells you mere moments before you hear a swish of fabric and feel a nibble on your ear. the way soap's smile is directed over your shoulder, you have no doubt simon took his mask off behind you... so, not a kink thing? it's confusing. "get to work, pup. need 'er relaxed f'me."

soap wastes no time diving into your pussy like a starving man, licking long, broad stripes across your core and shoving two crooked fingers into your cunt, gently massaging you from the inside as he moans against you. you're soaked already, although it's hard to tell how much of it's your own creeping arousal from during the span of the evening, and how much is just soap's slobber. he's so thorough, making sure every inch of your pussy is laved with the attention of his talented tongue. you can feel electric heat between your legs grow and grow, travelling up your spine and spreading through your body. your toes start to twitch and your hips start to buck, and every roll of your nipples between rough fingers makes your back arch.

the wet sounds of soap licking and slurping against your cunt echo off the sparse bedroom walls, making the entire experience feel that much more lewd as simon sucks hickies onto your neck and shoulders, urging soap on while he pinches at your nipples.

"'ow's she taste?" simon asks, and soap pulls off your cunt with a loud, sucking pop that makes your hips jerk and eyes roll back.

"like heaven, sir. sweetest little cunt i've ever had." soap reports back, adding a third finger with a suddenness that makes you yelp and press back against simon.

"yeah? think maybe next time i'll lie you on your back and fuck 'er cunt right over your face, let you lick us both at once. you can clean 'er out afterwards." simon tells him, laughing when both you and soap moan at the thought of it. "you like that, bird? like that mutt's mouth on ya?"

"it's so- ah!- so good." you say breathlessly, which earns you a kiss to your temple. soap gets to work lavishing your clit with attention, sucking and licking at it like making you cum on his face is his life's entire purpose, making your hips buck against his mouth as your fingers dig in to the thick thighs bracketing you from behind.

"lookit you. bet your tits bounce real nice when you're gettin' properly fucked, eh? can't wait to see that." simon whispers into your ear before sucking on your earlobe, his hot breath against your face making you shudder even more. you're so close, so fucking close, all of the nerves in your body are buzzing under your skin and you can feel your muscles twitch even more. all of you is primed and ready for release, just a little more, a little further-

a large hand slides up to your throat, not squeezing but just holding, keeping you pinned against simon's chest as you start to buck and shake and pant while soap works his hips against the mattress, chasing his own release while working hard to give you yours.

"gonna cum, love? go on, softie. cum on 'is face, make a right mess of my boy." simon growls, rocking his hips so you feel his hard cock pressing against your back, and it's enough to push you over the edge. your legs shake as your eyes roll back, nails digging into simon's thighs, and it feels like fireworks are going off inside of you, bursting into color and sound while you whine and shake in simon's arms. the sound of your own blood pumping in your ears nearly drowns out the pleased little laugh coming from over your shoulder, and the hand around your throat moves across your body to hold you in a backwards hug as you come down.

soap, however, doesn't stop his ministrations between your legs even for a moment, and it's quickly too much too much too much. you try to pull back away from his face, gently pushing at his forehead to get him off of you while your brain still comes back online, but he's not having it. when you pull on his hair, he growls against your cunt, lashing out suddenly and biting at the inside of your thigh with bruising force. the pain and surprise makes you jerk back, holler, and slap at him, but before your palm can make contact with the side of his head, ghost's big hand is wrapped around the back of soap's neck, yanking him sideways until he falls off the bed entirely.

simon shoves at you hard to get out from behind you, and is on top of soap in a flash, yanking him by the hair and shoving him into the wire crate, locking him inside. the second you realize you're seeing the back of his head, blonde hair cropped uneavenly, you close your eyes tight, knowing simon doesn't want you to see him without his mask. if he's going to defend you from soap's teeth, the least you can do is respect his rules.

"fuckin' mutt. can't 'ave nice things with you around, can i?" simon growls with what sounds like a sharp kick to his cage and a whimper from soap.

"'m sorry, sir, i didnae mean it. didnae mean t'hurt our pretty bird-"

"our bird? no, johnny. you're all muddled up. she's not our bird, she's my bird, and i gave you the chance to be sweet to 'er and you fucked it right up, didn't you? like the dumb mutt you are. can't even apologize properly, can ya? tell my bird you're sorry." simon grits out through clenched teeth, and you blanche at his words. his bird? you've only been here a day, only let soap eat you out, and he's already staked a claim on you? an alarm goes off in your head so loud that you barely register soap's groveling apologies.

"i'm sorry, lass, ye just taste so good, didnae want tae stop, ye ken? donnae ken what got into me." soap pleads, and you feel the mattress dip down next to you.

"lookit 'er, soap. even when she's scared and 'urt she's a good girl, know's 'er rules and 'er place, don't she? only been 'ere a day and 'as it down better than you." simon praises, his voice much closer. you startle a little when you feel the press of thin lips against yours, but a warm, solid hand on the back of your neck soothes you instantly, making you feel grounded and safe. maybe it's ok, maybe simon didn't mean to be so instantly possessive. the way he's kissing you feels softer and sweeter than you'dve expected from him, maybe he's all bark and no bite when it comes to you. the kiss doesn't last long, and you feel a large body lean over your lap for a moment.

"can open your eyes now. you olright, love? let me see." simon says softly, kneeling on the mattress, mask back on his face as he gently touches your knee to urge your legs apart so he can get a better look at the throbbing bite. "skin's not broken, but it'll likely bruise."

"he scared me." you blurt out, voice a little watery from high emotions. you feel better seeing soap in the cage, but you're still on-edge. it's jarring to see a man as big as him cower and whimper like that, keeping his head low and shoulders tensed behind criss-crossed metal bars. clearly these boys play rough when it's just them, and you're not sure you want in the middle of all that. plus you're still not exactly sure how you feel about simon calling you 'his' so quickly. you want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but you're not sure he's earned that yet.

"of course 'e did, you're just a soft little dove that got caught in a fuckin' mongrel's teeth. 'ang on." simon gathers the three pillows on the bed, positioning them under you and gently pressing your shoulders to urge you to lie back on them. "there you go. i'm gonna make you feel oll better now, olright?"

he shoves down his sweatpants, pulling out a fat cock that looks roughly the circumference of a red bull. it's half-hard already, twitching in his hand in a valiant effort to defy gravity and it's own considerable weight.

"that- that's not gonna fit." you tell him, eyes wide and staring at the absolute weapon hanging between his legs.

"it'll fit, just might need some 'elp is oll." he reaches down over the far edge of the bed and brings up a half-empty bottle of lube, slicking himself up thoroughly as the smell of silicone starts to fill the room. soap whines from his kennel, and from your periphery you can see him humping at the pillow that's been laid in his cage.

"quiet, you, or i'll throw a sheet over your kennel and you'll only be able to listen." simon snarls at him, and soap pipes down immediately, still rutting away without a pause in his pace. when simon's attention returns to you, you feel pinned in place, like there's a giant spotlight on you. he cocks his head to the side, his hand still working over his thick shaft as his eyes rake over your body.

"i- i have an iud, and i don't have anything. you know. if you want to, uh." you stammer out, unsure what to say. simon chuckles, a deep rumbling sound that reminds you of thunder. the warning of an oncoming storm.

"good. me n' the pup 'ave a clean bill of 'ealth, that makes things simpler, don't it?" simon tells you as he knee walks between your thighs, notching the head of his cock against your entrance. "deep breath, love. let it out slow."

it's not hard to follow his instructions when the push of his cock into your body feels like it's pressing the air right out of your lungs like the plunger of a needle. as big as he looked, he feels even bigger. the stretch of your already sensitive pussy tap-dances on the line between 'delicious' and 'too much', making you moan as your eyes roll back.

"oh ho ho, sweet'eart, you've got a nice tight cunt 'ere. gonna be 'ard t'stay offa you, innit?" simon chuckles a little breathlessly when he bottoms out, and looks back over his shoulder at soap, who's whimpering like a dog in his kennel. "which one of us you wishin' you were right now, eh? me or 'er?"

"both." soap whines, and simon laughs as he rocks his hips at an even pace that's already making you dig your fingers into the sheets. thank fuck for lube, the drag of his fat cock in your cunt would be a lot less pleasurable without it, you're pretty sure.

"of course, greedy pup. olways wantin' everythin'." simon turns his attention back to you, speeding up his rhythm, making all of you juggle with the impact of his body against yours. "'e can't 'ave this perfect pussy, though. that's mine. mutt like 'im would just ruin it. fuck, love, you look so good wrigglin' on my cock."

he leans forward, one hand planted on the mattress, and gives you a dirty grind of his hips against your clit that has you gasping and groaning. fuck, it's been a hot minute since sex has felt good and not something to be put up with, like a way for someone to work out their anger against you. it's nice to be wanted, to be coveted like this. you roll your hips up to meet simon's, and he groans a little at your enthusiasm.

"enjoyin' yourself, bird?" he asks, and you can only nod your head as you pant and grind your clit against him when he bottoms out. "tell soap 'ow much you like it. go on, don't be shy. 'e wants t'know."

you feel your face heat up, sudden embarrassment catching up to you, and suddenly putting together words and sentences is the hardest it's ever been in your life.

"it- he's so big, soap. he's so fuck- ah!- fucking thick, i've never- i've never- ah, fuck! simon!" you whine as he rubs a large thumb over your clit. it's overwhelming, somehow even more so than when soap ate you out. simon's just so big, so imposing, and all you can do is wiggle your hips and take what he gives you as that warm thrum under your skin winds up again, making your brain slow and your tongue clumsy.

"go on, keep goin'. you've never what? tell us." simon taunts as his free hand runs up and down your body, squeezing at your tits, hip, and belly while he stares down at you, panting through his mask.

"i've never been fucked so well!" you blurt out. "please, simon, please make me cum on your cock! i wan- ah!- i want to so bad!" you blurt out, hiccupping and squirming while your brain melts out of your ears and onto the pile of pillows underneath you. there's something so deliciously dirty about it, about hearing soap whine and pant from his cage on the ground, being made to confess how much you like taking his boyfriend's cock while he only has a pillow to hump. guilt doesn't have the chance to set in before soap pipes up.

"oh, bonnie lass, ye just keep taking him so nice and i ken simon'll give ye everything ye want. pretty girl, love watching ye bounce while ye get fucked by his big fuckin' cock. wanna see him fuck ye from behind and make that big arse jiggle." soap babbles, and the sounds of his cage rocking and rattling gets louder as he speaks, clearly picking up the pace as he fucks his own bedding.

simon only responds by dropping his weight to his forearms, bracketing your head and trapping you underneath him as he really starts putting his back into it. there's something extra thrilling about the way he stares at you from behind his mask, his face forbidden from your eyes. beads of sweat roll down his arms and drip from his shoulders onto your skin, and somewhere in the back of your cock-addled brain, the desire to lick them up is only barely restrained from becoming action.

your orgasm slams into you, harder and more acute than you've ever experienced before. all of the tension in your body is flung out of you with a velocity that makes you sincerely doubt it'll ever come back. it hardly registers that the yell echoing through the studio apartment is yours, or the loud grunt from soap's kennel, or that simon's sitting back up on his knees and digging his fingers into your big soft hips, leaving divots in the fat as he slams into you hard as he chases his own orgasm.

"gonna fill you up." is all the warning you get before simon groans above you, his hold on you tightening to a bruising pressure before he pulls out with a grunt and flops onto the bed next to you, yanking a pillow out from under your head to take for himself. he rolls his mask up to his nose, and you only get a glimpse of a scarred jaw and thin lips before you instinctually dart your eyes away.

"holy shit." you breathe, staring at the ceiling and trying to get your bearings back after cumming the hardest you ever have in your life. thank god you don't have anywhere to be, walking is going to be impossible for the next fifteen minutes, minimum. simon just huffs out an amused laugh as he reaches over and cracks a window, fishing a cigarette out of a jacket that's crumpled on the floor and lighting up.

"you learn your lesson, mutt? if you behave next time, you'll get to play with 'er some more. no more bitin' the big soft bird, you 'ear? not your place to mark 'er up." simon says after a long exhale of smoke, ashing his cigarette in a mug propped on the windowsill behind him.

"yessir. sorry, bonnie." soap says, flipping his cum-covered pillow over so he can sleep, settling into his cage for the night.

"i forgive you, soap. i should know better than to bother hungry puppies when they're eating." you tease, and your heart flutters in delight when both men laugh softly in the dark.

"keep tellin' ya, you're gonna spoil 'im rotten." simon mutters, not unkindly, before you hear another sizzle of a drag on his cigarette.

"i'll make it up to you." you tell him, scooting away a bit to give him a little more room to lie down. it'd be rude to try to cuddle him, right? someone like him probably doesn't want that, not from a random hookup slash vagabond he's taken pity on. you curl up on the far end of the bed so as to give simon as much space as he wants before the sudden sound of his voice breaks the silence.

"wot you doin' oll the way over there? get over 'ere." a big hand pulls at your shoulder, not letting go until you're pressed up against his side. his arm curls around your shoulder possessively, holding you tight. "stick close, don't want you runnin' off before you make it up to me."

"m'not going anywhere." you say sleepily, your eyelids getting heavier as you feel yourself sink into the mattress. you hadn't even realized how tired you are until just now, and it feels like sinking deeper and deeper into dark and murky water, overwhelming your body as you slowly lose consciousness. your ears hear but your mind does not retain the words that simon says to you while you drift off with your head against his shoulder and his arm keeping you in place.

"too right, you aren't."

bluecollar!Ghost comes home to his pretty little bird after months away on the oil rig

anal. rough sex. under negotiated kink. hints of somno. breeding kink. size difference. pussy slapping? but with balls??

do not praise me for any sense originality lmao i saw this post on twitter and my eyes rolled so far back into my skull i made eye contact with the little guy operating me like a marionette; blacked out and woke up to this but in fic version.

You really only have yourself to blame when he sinks his cock into your ass, bottoming out with a grunt as his balls slap across the soft folds of your untouched, dripping cunt.

But even though this is your fault, you still whine about the stretch, the sting; pretty voice going all reedy and shrill as you plead with him not to go so deep. It's too much, you whimper, little fists curling into the sheets as he rolls his hips into the soft cushion of your ass. Mewling into the pillow like he didn't spend more than an hour between your parted thighs, lazily licking around your rim as he stretched you on two—then four—thick fingers in preparation for his fat, throbbing cock.

Sucking on your pebbled clit until you woke up with a gasp, whining as he fucked your hole open on the thick spread of his knuckles. Sloppy and loose. Spat on it, too. Just to watch it drip down the flutter of your empty, stretched ass to trickle over your folds. Messy with his spit. Swollen from the knead of his teeth.

"Quit whining," he rasps, rearing back on his haunches until just the thick, weeping head of his cock pulls taut on your rim. It's obscene, isn't it? Almost grotesque. Little hole already puffy and swollen from his girth. His eyes nearly roll back when your muscle clenches tight around his glands—pushing, pulling; fluttering over him like you weren't sure if you wanted to drag him deeper or keep him out. "Been gone so long, bird, and y'already screamin' m'ear off—"

The shirt you wore to bed—his, he notes with a deep, unrelenting thrum of satisfaction humming along his hindbrain—has ridden up over your hips, bunching just above the curve of your ass where his hips settle. Cushioned as he grinds his cock inside of you; a sick little thrill welling in his guts when you squeal.

Another whine, and fuck—

He missed this.

It's been too long since he had you wrapped around him like this—all tight, wet heat; a pliant little hole he can sink his cock into whenever he wants—and the drag of your flesh over him is almost too much. Edges quickly into that mind-numbing, toe-curling sort of pleasure that makes his balls draw up tight. You just feel so fucking good—

On the rig, all he has is his hand. Memories. Photos. The videos he took, the ones you begged him to delete (and he, ever the sick bastard, lied and said he did). But none of that is at all comparable to the way it feels to fuck you like this. To come home to your little perked up over the blanket, his pillow shoved under your chest, tucked up close to your nose. Sniffing at his stench in your sleep. Wearing his clothes to bed.

You're so sweet, ain't you? Pretty little thing.

The best homecoming he'd ever gotten.

So good to him. Waiting for him to get home. Being good when he's gone offshore on the rig for months at a time. Tucking your worry, your grievances into a tender kiss goodbye.

And maybe that's why he does this. Why he pounds your tight hole so brutally that the bed slams into the wall with each deep, full thrust (the headboard has long since been taken down when it put three holes in the drywall). Growing when you spasm around him. Eyes rolling when you claw at the sheets as your hips twist. Pulling away from the way he bucks his hips into your ass, balls slapping lewdly against your aching, neglected little pussy. Untouched in months. Poor thing.

You're whimpering about it, too. Touch me, Simon. Please touch my pussy—

"'Ave you been a good girl f'me?"

He leans down, broad chest glueing along the line of your spine as you sob out a choked, breathless little yes (yes, Simon, been s'good f'r you—) that makes his stomach tense up, guts aching at the sweet little warble in your voice. His arm slips under your neck, slots just above your breast to push you tighter against his chest, fingers wrapping around the bend of your shoulders to keep you still beneath him. He pushes the other against the mattress, palm taking the brunt of his weight as he rocks into you in deep, full strokes.

The shift tilts your hips up, and the angle lets him sink in deeper, balls seated flush against your wet folds. Each thrust slaps against the seam of your spread cunt, and the lewd squelch it makes hums along his hindbrain. Eyes rolling, hips jerking. Your pussy is so wet. It leaks out of you in rivulets, dripping down his sack and matting the tangle of curls dusting over them and his upper thighs to his skin.

His thighs slide against yours when he pistons his cock into you, buries himself deep, and grinds.

He can't help himself. Loses his fuckin' mind a little as he rolls his hips into your ass, feels the slick slip-slide of his skin on the back of your drenched thighs. He pulls you up a little, lifting your cheek off the dark spot on the pillow (leakin' from both fuckin' ends, he grunts, pressing his mouth into the back of your ear, warm breath ghosting over the shell and making you shiver; messy goddamn thing—), and huffs.

"Little cunts so fuckin' wet f'me, birdie."

It's an eye-rolling pleasure. Egofeeding. It curdled in his belly, pools in his groin. A thick deluge pressing against a paper-thin levee. Made worse when he humps your ass in shallow thrusts, feeling the way your cunt quivers, clenching around nothing.

"Ain't even fuckin' her and I can feel her achin' f'me—"

You whine brokenly when he fills you up again, sack slapping over your slick lips. "Please, please, fuck me, Simon—!"

"Wha's this look like, birdie?" He mocks, pressing the crooked bend of his nose into your crown. Breathes in the scent of you until it whispers along the lining of his lungs, staining them up with the heady, dizzying sweet salt tang of you. He tastes you when he breathes out. "Think 'm fuckin' y'nice an' deep right o'bout now."

He feels you tremble under him. The heat of your body melting into the scars draping over his chest and belly. Feverish little thing. So warm. So giving. All softness. Tender enough he could pull it clean off the bone.

"Please fuck my pussy—"

You sound so pretty when you beg. When your knuckles bleach from the tight grip on the sheets. Spine curving as you rut back into his brutal thrusts; taking, taking—

Like you were made for it.

He grunts but doesn't answer. Just forces his cock into your hole, grinding until it tugs against your rim until you yowl from the stretch. The feeling of him stuffed deep inside you. Too full, too much.

A sniffle makes his tongue lull out, sliding over the wet, hot steam of tears puddling on the barbed wire etched into his skin. Salty, warm. His lips peel back, teeth digging into your skin. Just a taste, a tease. Sharp nips that break the blood vessels under your skin, and leave behind little pocks of his teeth.

Little claims, brands; ones he can get away with until he convinces you to let him give you the real thing. A nasty bite on the arch of your throat, the soft skin of your inner thighs, the tantalising plush of your mound; all marked with the perfect impression of his teeth. He'll rub gunpowder into the wound until it stains. The way you told him your ancestors used to do it.

(he'll let you mark him too. a little bite mark over his heart—)

It's a dizzying thought. One that scratches it's nails long the part of his head that froths with the urge to claim, own, bite. Poor boy with nothing to his name still clinging to the scraps tossed his way.

And it's worse when you sob. When you lean into the hard press of enamel on soft skin, mewling about how badly you need to cum, please, please, Simon; please lemme cum, need t'cum, fuck my pussy, please—

The idea of sinking inside your pussy rolls over him like a skipped stone. He pulls his hips back slowly, grunting at the tacky, wet drag on his shaft. It's good. Feels good. Incredible, really.

But there's nothing like the tight flutter of your dripping walls mouthing over the thick of his cock when he sinks inside your pretty little pussy. Likes to mock you about it, too. About you keep sucking him in. Swallowin' me up, he coos, eyes drilling into the taut line of your rim pulled around the base of his cock. Likes it when you squirm on him, eyes squeezing shut as he mercilessly ruts into you, growling the whole time about how you won't fuckin' let 'im go.

How's he supposed to stop when your little cunt keeps pulling him back inside?

It spills over him like kerosene. Lights him up from the inside out. He grunts in your ear, cock throbbing at the pitchy squeals you whimper into the pillow, hips squirming over him. Over his cock—

He's pulled to the edge so quickly, it makes him feel sick. Nauseous. A punch to his gut. And he's angry about it. Grunting in your ear, snarling, about how good your ass feels squeezing him like this. Milking his cock.

"Gonna cum, birdie—" he huffs, feeling the sweat pour down his temples. Cooling on his back. He arches into it. Smothers you under him until your thighs are locked tight between his, hips pummelling into the choking flex of your hole. "Gonna cum in your tight little ass—"

The pleasure builds into a gut-wrenching crescendo. It's all dragging heat. The slick, lewd squelch of his balls slapping your sopping pussy hard enough that it stings. Aches. He throbs, swelling inside of you as the knot in his stomach turns and turns, spooling tight.

Your hips under his weight, sinking into the mattress. He follows you down, eyes rolling at the indescribable way you tighten up around him. Choking his cock. Rim a perfect little knot clinging to the thickness of him. He pushes in deep, balls pressing tight against the wet, slick seam of your untouched cunt; drawing up as he cums inside, spilling a thick, messy flood over your fluttering, gripping walls.

It hurts like a sore belly when he cums. Like little fists pressing against the softness of his tummy until it aches. Pushing all of it out of him as he moans—ragged and nasally—as the white-hot heat burns down his spine. All of it spilling out of him. Saved up for months just for you—

An ugly little thought that he leans down and whispers into the shell of your ear. "Nice an' thick, bird. Woulda knocked you up if I was inside your pussy—"

You whine pitifully at that, hips pushing back desperately against his. He's not sure if it's for friction. Something rubbing against your aching, leaking cunt, or if it's the thought of him spilling inside you that makes you buck. Wiggle your hips.

"Greedy fuckin' thing, ain't you?" He flattens his chest against your back, pushing you down into the mattress as he rests his full weight on top of you, still buried to the root. Pulsing thick ropes of cum inside your tight ass. "Want me to, don't you? Want me to breed that poor pussy of yours up until it takes? Give y'somethin' t'do while m'away?"

You can barely gasp his name out. Your mouth shoved into the pillow—his—choking in the stale scent of his sweat and musk, eyes rolling back as you squirm on his cock, getting off to the too-tight, too-full feeling of his stretching your hole open. Soft thighs forced together, squeezing your aching clit between them.

His forearm is covered in drool. Slick with your spit as your mouth hangs open, panting and whining around the burn of him splitting you open. The frustration of not being able to cum—

Simon grinds into you. Pushes your thighs tight together as he humps mindlessly against your ass as the pressure builds. As you claw and kick. Wiggling around until he feels your pussy pulse, spasming into a series of tight little clenches as you cum around nothing.

A cruel thought. Poor bird.

When he has the ability to move, he'll make you cum proper around his fingers. His cock. He'll drag you up to sit on his face. Lick your swollen, sticky cunt until you gush all over his ugly mug. Might even break his fuckin' nose for the trouble, and isn't that a thought?

His eyes roll a little as he twitches inside you, spitting the last pulses of cum into your sloppy, messy hole as your little pussy pitifully squeezes out more slick. With nothing to plug it up as you cum, he feels the wet, hot gush of it drenching the tight clench of your thighs, the backs of his. The bed. It makes his cock give a feeble twitch, and he grunts into it, nosing around your sweat-slicked temple, content to rock inside of your ass as he softens.

"Missed ya, birdie," he grunts when he feels your wet, puffy mouth close sloppily around a cigarette burn on his forearm. Hidden under a grinning bullet.

It's the softest thing he's ever said. Probably could say, but you respond to it like a handwritten sonnet, sticky lashes fluttering as you blink, twisting away from him shyly as you huff into skin, "missed you too, Simon—"

A messy, snotty little warble that seals over the rot in his chest. Loops around his hindbrain until he's tangled up in it. In you.

He hums, and slowly lifts himself up off you, rolling his eyes at the exaggerated gasp you take without the heavy, crushing weight of him on your back. He rolls to his side, still inside of you, and pulls you with him. Keeps you tucked under his chin, back to his chest, legs tangling together. He rests the side of his head on his forearm, and let's his other hand slide down your sweat-slicked skin, tugging on a pebbled nipple until you jerk in his arms.

"Simon—"

"s'alright, birdie. 'ad me workin' up a sweat. Lemme rest for a minute."

At that, you scoff. Wiggle your ass back into his pelvis until he groans. Too sensitive. Cock too raw. His hand drops to your hip, halting your movements with a bruising grip.

"Keep that up and your little hole will be all I fuck while m'ome."

You pause, shoulders drawing tight before you let it all out in a heavy rush of breath. "Meanie."

You're soft under his fingers. Always a phantom in his mind when he would lie back in his assigned cot and try to remember how you felt under his pads. Softer than he'd thought. Too soft.

He curls his hand into a fist and drags the rough, scarred skin of his knuckles over your hips, tracing the dips and curves over and over until it becomes muscle memory. Something for him to take with him when he goes away again.

"Let's see if you still think all'a tha' when I get my mouth on your pussy—"

Your hips jerk. "Fuck—don't tease me, Simon—"

His hand slips down over your mound, feeling the needy pull, the flutter, of your cunt on the tips of his fingers. "Been gone a long time, birdie," he rasps into your crown, eyes locked on the way his hand seems to disappear completely between your sticky thighs. "Got lots ta make up for, don't I?"

"So you start with my ass first?"

"Had 'er up in the air like you were gaggin' me to, bird—" you moan when he growls the words out, hips twitching into his hand. Fuck. He could just eat you up. "'ow am I suppose ta say no to what my birdie wants so badly?"

"Simon—"

"Gotta give 'er what she needs."

And he sets out to do just that.

Touch Me 'Till I Vomit (pet!au) [11]

pet!au | ghoap x fem!reader | tag list

old memories

cw: non-con, PTSD, anxiety, slight suicidal ideation, manipulation, extremely unsafe handling of firearms

No matter how many years pass, Johnny’s still in that tunnel. 

Those damp walls follow him everywhere, and the humidity clings to his body like a second skin. Smothers every pore of his body until it’s screaming for air. Or, is that blood? The substance that trickles down the side of his face, sticky and warm? It envelops the line of his jaw like a tender lover. Like devoted fingers caressing the pain that florescences on the soft side of his skull. He needs the nails to puncture the bone. Seep into the tissue of his brain and remove the anguish that festers like a bad wound. 

A great roaring volume drowns out his senses as hands paw at his chest. He’s shaken like someone attempting to rouse their child from slumber but he doesn’t want to wake up. He needs to seep into the concrete. Liquify and soak into the cold, unforgiving ground, but he won’t. The hands dragging him by his vest refuse to allow it. He can’t die because someone wills it otherwise. Then comes the metal. Tongs and needles; scalpels that slice and tear; saws that grind marrow into dust — it hurts worse than the impact. Worse than an entry wound that bubbles and flattens into a cavern nothing can reach.

When he opens his eyes, there’s nothing but white. Walls, linen, clothes; it’s a blank canvas for him to paint on, and yet he can’t see the image. Gentle shapes and sounds, he tries to remember his cousin’s name but can’t. Wants to shape his mouth into the word but his tongue has forgotten the dance. He can’t remember the number assigned to him when he used to play keeper in football. The memory of his mother’s voice is distorted. Something is broken about his father’s face. He can hardly recall the name of the man always at his bedside. 

Ghost. Is that it? Weird bloke with the mask and dark eyes. There’s vague memories about him. Good ones. Ghost barks at the nurses and doctors who come to see him, always questioning what they’re doing. Why they’re injecting him with certain things. Johnny watches him. Thick fingers clench and relax like waves along the coastline. There is more to his name. It’s shrouded in fuzzy memories. Wading through the static, he plucks the word and lets it sit on his tongue until he’s able to get the useless muscle to move. 

“Simon?” 

Things hurt more after he says that word. That name. Calls upon the devil; sells his soul to a demon with dark eyes and lips that can’t properly curl anymore because of the scar tissue. He fights. Shreds skin with sharp teeth. Doesn’t care who the skin belongs to. Johnny’s regressed. Gone backwards in evolution. Has turned into nothing more than a bad dog locked in a cage, left alone to lick his wounds. Only the clink of his collar keeps him company. 

But the only thing that makes a dog bad isn’t because they bite or bark — it’s that they’re scared. Confused. He flails and howls lamenting cries as he tries to make sense of the collar and cage, or why his name seems to be something he can’t recapture. The only thing that’s there, repeating in his mind like a broken record, is the bullet. Gunshot ringing loud, lead ripping through his cranium; all he knows how to do is fight. Fight dirty. Fight hard. Slicing claws, bared teeth; something in him still craves blood. Still covets the taste of iron in his mouth. 

That desire is siphoned out of him. Drawn free from his body until not a single drop remains. It breaks down and decays in his body until there’s only fuzz left. A distorted reality. Things are better this way. Happier. Now, there’s nothing but that collar and cage and Simon and Simon and Simon and Simon —

“Fuckin’ hell, Soap, wake up!” 

Instead of the unforgiving metal bars of a kennel, Johnny feels a plush mattress. Sheets and blankets twist up his legs like ivy reclaiming some man made structure — something that doesn’t belong — and his limbs thrash in an attempt to free himself. He’s restrained. Thick arms wrap around his torso, pinning his appendages to his chest. Lips press against the shell of his ear as Simon grunts in frustration, attempting to hold his misbehaving dog down. 

“Easy now, easy. Down boy,” he murmurs. 

“Ah need tae go home,” Johnny rambles, hands pawing at Simon’s forearms. His chest heaves. Rib cage expanding just to crush right back into his lungs as he exhales, throat constricting like it suddenly feels the weight of the collar around it. “Need tae go home.” 

Simon shushes him. Demanding fingers grip Johnny’s forearms as he pulls him closer. He’s become a living straight jacket. Yanking back on his mutt’s leash until he calms. Until the storm passes.  

“You are home. Home with me, ‘member?” Simon attempts to coddle. The softness is foreign to his voice, but he tries anyway. “Look, even Bonnie’s here. Yeah? Your sweet bird? Look at ‘er. Look at ‘er, Johnny.” 

Confused eyes peer through the darkness until he finds you standing to the side of the bed, your back against the wall. Your parted lips look heavenly in the dull glow of the moon seeping through the windows, and he finds his heart quelling in his chest. Then he looks at your eyes. Wide as saucers. Dilated. Chest heaving. Breath escaping you. 

“Yeah, you see ‘er now. You’re home with me. Home with Bonnie. Better now?” Simon asks. 

“Ah still feel it. Digging ‘round in mah fuckin’ skull,” Johnny babbles, feet still kicking at the cloth that holds his legs hostage. His teeth grit so tightly he can hardly get the words to flow between them. 

“Need ya to relax, Johnny,” Simon huffs. Frustrated eyes glare at you, and your throat visibly bobs as he motions for you to come back to the bed. “Want Bonnie to help?”

Following Simon’s orders, you crawl onto the mattress. You shuffle along on your hands and knees, head bowed low but your eyes stay on the men in front of you like they’ll bite if you don’t. Johnny sees the trepidation that lurks in your gaze. Can nearly smell it as it collects like sweat on your skin. He doesn’t like it. That fear in your eyes. Are you scared of him? Why do you look at him like that? 

“Good girl, Bonnie,” Simon praises flatly. Without warning, his hand dives into Johnny’s boxers where he greedily palms at his cock. It’s still soft, having no chance to harden, and yet Simon is unrelenting. Johnny feels the urge to jolt, to fight back against the stimulation as he watches you sit back on your haunches, bottom lip quivering. “You want ‘er, dontcha boy? ‘Course you do. You picked ‘er out and everything. Doesn’t she make ya feel better? Feel at home?” 

There’s a dull buzz in the back of Johnny’s mind that attempts to rewire his brain. To slice away the coax seal and bare the metal cords to the damp air of his skull. To weave things until the pain stops. Until things make sense. But that buzz wanes and dies as his cock begins to harden and he becomes drunk on Simon’s words and the way he tugs at him. When he looks back at you, you are excited. Body quivering with anticipation, on your knees waiting for him like there’s nothing else in the world that can satiate your desire but him. 

“Aye. Ah do,” Johnny groans. 

Simon smirks against his ear. 

“Good boy. Go fetch.” 

Johnny eats you alive after that. Takes you while you’re face first into the mattress, cock pumping into your cunt at an abusive pace. You cry this time. You’ve been good about keeping it bottled inside, tears along with it, but seeing him screaming in his sleep has your anxiety high. Watching him thrash like that, curse, and beg. Like he had been possessed. Like he was somebody else. Fear courses through you like it’s the only component that builds the cells of your blood. Guttural sobs and wails are muffled by the way Simon shoves your face into the bedding and barks at you to quiet down. You are thankful that this time he fucks you on the bed. There’s no unforgiving wood to press into your palms or the side of your face as you grieve into the blankets. Still, it hurts all the same. Your cervix splits and bruises, walls stretched impossibly wide as he pistons into you, ripping you apart from the inside. 

He feasts on your cries. Mumbles that you sound so beautiful, moaning like that. 

All for him. 

When Johnny’s finished, he goes back to sleep. Curls around you like a devoted dog, arms lazily slung over you — nothing but dead weight. Before long, both men are snoring while you sniffle and writhe. There is no sleep to be had, not with the wounds that plague you. After so much time spent in the den of these beasts, you were hoping that your skin would become thicker. Calluses would form from use, and eventually this agony would remit. But scars can’t form if you don’t allow the wound to heal, and Simon is all too willing to tear at the scab until you’re bleeding all over again. 

He likes the taste of brine and iron. 

Morning comes and you still haven’t slept. 

It was a foolish idea to believe you could have. Laying with monstrous men and listening to the rattle of their breathing keeps you awake worse than any creature that could go bump in the night. You promise yourself you’ll sleep when they’re awake. You’ll sleep when Simon’s hands are busy working away at the garden and Johnny’s drawing sketches of your motionless body. It’s easier to rest when the sun is up. When you can open your eyes and make sense of your surroundings and not be swallowed by darkness and terror. 

Simon is the first to rise. He always is. Even the sun lags behind him in sputtering rays as he slinks out of the room. His movement is enough to rouse Johnny who finally relinquished his grasp on you in favor of turning to lay on his stomach. You breathe easier without the weight of his arm on your chest, but it does nothing to quell the ache that still burns in the pit of your stomach. That never-healing wound. That scar which will never quite mend. 

You stir when you hear the shower begin to run. Its creaky faucet strains against the old pipes, squealing as the liquid shoots through it. Lifting yourself up, you muffle your groans behind gritted teeth as you slip off the side of the bed. You’ve gotten good at being quiet. Soft as a mouse trotting through rotten walls. As silent as the flap of an owl’s wings in the dead of night. Even as you dress — fresh cloth pulling over soiled skin — there’s nothing, not even a peep, out of you. Johnny huffs, body missing your presence. You ignore him as you leave the bedroom. 

Morning birds chirp in your willow tree. You’ve decided it’s your tree. Beautiful branches, dancing leaves — Simon has Johnny, and Johnny has you, isn’t it only fair that you have something of your own? Finches chatter as they buzz from branch to branch, excited feet scurrying as they chase one another. They peck and chew at berries and nuts they’ve foraged in the bountiful forest that lay beyond the property, and you stand in front of the window for a moment watching them. 

They force an old memory to resurface. Something from when you were a child. A science class lecture that’s been buried in the grey matter of your brain for so long it had almost gotten lost. Evolutionary pressure. Finches are an example of this. Darwin’s finches, especially. They’re diverse. Changing for better survival. There are some with fat, wide beaks, others with small, dainty growths. Animals evolve fast to adapt and survive. To endure the earth and her cruel games. 

You wonder if you could test this on yourself. Stress your body to the point it has no choice but to morph into something stronger. Something better. If you climbed to the top of this house, or the ridge of those trees, and jumped, would you survive? Would your body scream and cry out for you to change and sprout wings before you hit the ground? Before you’re caught in Johnny’s maw for good? Is this just some foolish notion? Would you just shatter on the pavement below? 

Your sigh mixes with the chirping, free and sovereign. Either way, it would not be an issue for you anymore if you failed. Your wounds would never heal, but you’d be too dead to care about it. 

Simon’s shower turns off with a squeak and the sound snaps you back to reality. This is all a facade. You are not a bird, you are not a woman, you are a pet — nothing more. 

Knowing breakfast is soon to follow, you preemptively wander toward the dining room. If there is one thing to be grateful for in this meticulously crafted hell of yours, it is that you are well fed. There is no such thing as going hungry under Simon’s careful watch. He is not a good man — a good person — but he at least knows how to take care of his pets. You turn into the room —

— there is a gun on the table. 

Solvent hangs faintly in the air next to bottles of cleaners and old toothbrushes that dot the tabletop. It’s the same set up you recall seeing a few weeks back when Simon cleaned his rifle — when he reminded you that hunting season is fast approaching — but there is no rifle on the table. A hand gun sits in its place, resting on its side, aimed toward the wall. It’s not gutted. Each spring and screw lies perfectly in place. Primed. Ready to kill. 

It’s a proper handgun. At least, you think it is. Not one of the six shooters you always see portrayed in old American Western films. It’s deadly. Something officers or Army men would use. Your stomach sinks as you approach it, like it’ll decide to discharge from a mere glance alone. Sleek black metal covers the frame and grip, making it all look uniform, save for some wear and tear scratches. Some of the scratches look deep — long and gnarly gashes like the item itself had been through hell and back. You reach a hand out, floating and careful; your fingertips brush against the grip; wary, like it’ll bite.

“Shouldn’t be touchin’ that.” 

Retracting your hand, you jump as Simon’s voice cuts through the air with as much venom as a viper. You step back as your eyes jump to look at him. Shirtless, skin still freshly wet, he stands like a drowned barbarian as he stares at you. An apology bubbles up in your throat, but you won’t let it escape. You keep it trapped in your larynx as he slowly approaches with feet more quiet than you could ever wish to be. 

“Ever seen one before?” he asks. He crowds you, forces you back another step as he reaches for the pistol. Large hands dwarf the metal frame as he turns it over in his palm, showing it off. “A gun like this?” 

You shake your head. Knives are plenty common in England, but handguns? Something other than a hunting rifle? You thought handguns were banned. Though, Simon’s never been one to shy away from illegal acts. 

“Yeah. Didn’t think so. Fittin’ for a civilian,” he chuckles with crass humor. 

Simon does something unthinkable — he hands you the gun. 

There’s nothing but care as he holds it out, grip faced toward you, muzzle off to the side pointing at neither of you. Your heart leaps into your throat, swells in your esophagus, and then throbs. All you can do is stare. It stares back. Screams at you. You’re all too aware that this item acts not only as your executioner, but as your ticket out of this place. 

“Take it,” he urges. 

Like always, you obey. It feels too thick in your palm, and when he lets go, it’s heavy, much more than you could have anticipated it to be. Everyone in the movies always wields them so flippantly — as if they’re light as air — but the weight it holds screams its deadly intent. Simon’s fingers brush against you, adjusting your grip, and you try not to grimace at the feeling of his skin and tainted metal against your hand. 

“Is it loaded?” you question. You don’t know why you ask it. Maybe you want to know so you can be wary. To not hurt yourself. Or maybe you want to know so you can see if the risk raging in the back of your mind is worth taking. 

“Dunno,” Simon shrugs. Once more, he repositions you. Gently prods your hand higher and higher, elbow bent, muzzle resting against your temple. Maneuvers your pointer finger until it’s hooked around the trigger. A dead woman walking, he forces you to stand there with the gun to your head. “Wanna find out?” 

What a cruel world this is. The earth with her singing birds and sprouting flowers and bright blue skies, and you’ve hardly been able to enjoy any of it. All it has been is pain, and here you are wondering if you’ll ever get the chance to heal from it. Your heart thumps like an amateur drummer; without sense and rhythm. It demands to be heard. Forces you to listen to his cacophonous melody as it drowns the rush of blood in your ears. Your finger twitches, and the trigger gives way, but not enough for anything to happen. 

“C’mon. We’ll get you matchin’ with Johnny, huh? Ugly fuckin’ scar on the side of your head.” As he says it, he eyes the spot where the mouth of the gun meets your trembling flesh. He says it like he’s already imagining the gaping hole. “Pull the trigger, Bonnie.” 

It can’t be loaded. You’re certain of it. There’s no way he would leave something that dangerous around within reach. But it’s so heavy. As if it’s crammed to the brim with bullets ready to riddle your body full of holes. Your breathing stutters. Seizes the muscles of your chest and forces them to jitter. You stare at Simon’s chest. Nothing but pale, thick skin stares back at you. If you pull the trigger, you might paint him red. Red and pink and yellow. You wonder if that’s what he wants. If the feeling of water never feels as warm or embracing to him as fresh blood does. 

“I told you to pull the fuckin’ trigger.” 

Panic writhes in your stomach — you don’t want to die yet. 

Click!

The hammer strikes against nothing and dry fires. It rings louder than the terror in your mind and the vibrations that rattle your trembling body as your arm gives out, gun lowering away from your head. Of course it’s empty. How stupid of you to think of anything different. Simon would never allow you to leave before he’s ready to let go. 

When Simon laughs, your stomach lurches so fiercely you nearly vomit. Once you’re able to force yourself to face him, you’re met with the largest smile you’ve ever seen him wear. Crooked teeth sit between scarred lips as he swipes the gun out of your limp fingers. Taking a step back, he nods; utterly amused. It isn’t long before that sneer wipes off of his face and he’s back to wearing that biting, stoic expression he always does. 

“Atta girl,” he huffs. 

Sliding the gun into the waistband of his sweatpants, Simon saunters past you into the kitchen, leaving you to stand alone next to the table. Unstable knees nearly give out as your palms slap against the top, slowly dragging your body into a rickety chair. It hurts to sit, soreness jolting through your core with unforgiving electricity, but you refuse to make a sound. You sit there with tears welling in your eyes as you try to forget the way deadly metal feels in your hand. 

This is Simon’s greatest round of torture yet. He’s given you the keys meant to aid in your escape, but he’s changed all the locks. You bite into your bottom lip to get it to stop quivering. After living here, you’ve learned pain is the best enforcer. Only, it doesn’t quite work as well when it’s self-inflicted. 

Another click sounds, and you wince at it. Holding your breath, you wait for something else to follow — a sonic boom, a scream, a death rattle — but the only thing you hear is the sizzling of bacon on a hot pan as Simon prepares breakfast.

On The Run Part 1

The Barn

mdni

cw: violent behavior, suggestive themes, i will get better at this i swear

It’s a downpour tonight. The roof overhead rattles with the force of the winds outside, keeping you awake. Your eyes drift towards the window periodically, watching the lightening illuminate the night sky, thunder rolling closer and closer as the wind hails. Your four loyal, massive Tibetan Mastiffs lay around your bed, dead to the storm raging outside. You’d normally have them out in the barn, but with how terrible it’s coming down you would have felt terrible.

But now you lie awake, worry in the pit of your stomach. Some of the goats had just given birth, and with this storm you knew the kids had to be distressed, and their bleats often agitated the horses.

You absentmindedly reach down to run a hand through Dixon’s fur, who lets out a pleased huff, nuzzling your palm. You try to let the beat of rain lure you to sleep, eyes finally feeling heavy as your breathing evens out.

But then you hear it, over the raging of the storm you can still hear your stallion, Sebastian, neighing, and then the pound of his hoofs against his stalls, and you're flying out of your bed.

Nothing spooks your stallion, absolutely nothing.

You race down the stairs in just your nightgown, rushing to pull on your boots, no socks, as Dixon, Grimes, Judy and Maggie come bounding after you. You throw open the door, the screen slamming against the house from the wind but you pay no mind, running towards the barn, barely catching yourself from slipping in the mud.

The closer you get, the louder you can hear all your herd. Your hearts pounding harder than the rain when you reach the barn doors, and you can hear the dogs barking behind you as you reach to yank open the double doors

Locked.

Your barn is never locked.

From the inside.

“Hello?!” You yell, slamming your palms against the wood, guilt wracking your body when you hear something scurry away on the other side.

“What are you doing in there?” You scream, shaking the handles with all your might, but they hold strong, and after a harsh yank, your hand slips, sending you flying into the mud.

You can hear what can only be described as chaos in the barn, and tears prick your eyes as you crawl forward, banging your fists against the doors.

“PLEASE! Please don’t hurt my animals! They’re already scared! Please- AH!” You scream as the door flies open, sending you face first into the barn floor.

You barely register the blood dripping from your hands as you scramble to stand up, taking in the scene.

The mares were going wild, bucking and kicking the doors of their stalls while Sebastian raged, having busted his door down, prancing infront of his ladies protectively.

Your goats were huddled in a group on the corner, the kids tucked between their bodies and the sheep standing in front of them, shaking so badly their wool was trembling. The rest of the stock is scattered, hiding in various corners of the barn.

You whistle, which immediately catches Sebastian’s attention, huffing and puffing.

“I’m here! It’s okay, ma is here!” You hush them, slowly walking towards the stallion with your hand out, palm up.

He neighs, tossing his head, leaning down to sniff your hand, when he stops, and suddenly a new sound reaches your ears.

Dixon and Grimes are growling out a warning.

Before you can even blink, there’s a hand over your mouth. Your gasp is muffled at the pressure of cold steel at your neck, an arm wrapping around your chest pulling you into a firm, solid figure.

“Not. A. Sound.” A gruff voice barks in your ear, and your blood runs cold.

“Lock the doors back.” The man orders, and a sinking feeling overcomes you when you hear a new set of footsteps. You stumble as you’re jerked back, Dixon barking as you start to thrash, kicking your feet, but the grip around you tightens.

“Fuckin- Knock it off!” He growls, pressing what you can only guess is your carving knife painfully against your throat and Grimes lets out a guttural sounding bark before lunging, only to yelp when a foot shoves him back, and you thrash harder, attempting to nip at this man’s hand.

“Stop you little fuckin-SHIT!” He bellows as your teeth sink into his palm, not releasing until you taste his blood splash over your teeth, and then you’re on the ground.

“Little bitch!”

“Don’t touch my fucking animals.” You spit, turning to stare up at the intruder, just to be met with a ski mask and cold eyes. You can’t help but freeze, the carving knife glinting in the low light of the barn.

He’s quick, and you try to stumble to your feet, but you're once more in his grasp. You go for a punch, but he catches your wrist easily, pinning your arm behind your back with one hand and yanking your forward with the other, pinning you against him, and the knife is at your throat again.

“Let’s try this again.” He says between clenched teeth, tightening his grip till you whimper.

“Ghost. Lighten up.” A voice pipes up, raspy and stern with a commanding tone. The masked man, Ghost, rolls his eyes, but loosens the hold he has on your wrist.

“Who else lives here?” He questions, and it feels as though a bucket of cold water has been dumped over you.

“No one…” You whisper, squeezing your eyes shut when his grip tightens once more. “Don’t bullshit us. Who else lives on this land with you?!” He’s in your face, making you open your eyes, tears blurring your vision.

“It’s just me I swear!” You sob, feeling the tip of the knife digging into your skin. “I swear to god it’s just me, you can go check the house-“

The pressure of the knife is gone, and the shock of your bare knees hitting the barn floors barely phases you as Dixon and Grimes dart to your side, whining softly as they nudge your hands with their heads.

“Think she’s telling the truth?” A new voice speaks up, a thick Scottish accent ringing in your ears as you try to put distance between you and the four, you are finally able to count, men standing in the middle of your barn.

“Explains the massive mutts.” Ghost grunts, glancing at the four mastiffs, who you push behind you, shielding them, trying not to let your fear show more than it already has.

“They aren’t mutts.” You hiss, Judy nuzzling her giant head into your back as you shuffle them back, away from these men.

You hold your head high, but your lip can’t help but tremble when all their eyes turn to you.

“You sure there’s no one else in that great big house?” The older man with scruffy facial hair asks with a tilt of his head, and a spark of agitation flares in your chest. Why did they want to know so badly? if they were going to…

If they were going to kill you, surely they would have done it by now, right?

“I swear on my life.” You plead, voice cracking. You’re horrified when you realize your nightgown has been soaked through this whole time, noticing the way the one with the mohawk, the Scot, keeps eyeing your bosom. You look away, cheeks burning as fresh tears prick your eyes.

“Soap, Gaz. You two go check the house. Report back to me, I want a moment with her.” The unnamed man ordered.

Mohawk and a dark skinned man nodded, heading out of the barn. Ghost passes one of them the carving knife, and your fist curl in your lap.

“What do I do Price?” Ghost asks, and the man, Price, waves a hand, eyes trained on you. “Search the surrounding area, look for anyone hiding on the property.”

“Understood.”

And then you were alone. The barn has settled, most of your animals having made their way to the farthest wall behind you. He approaches you slowly, cautiously eyeing Dixon who raises up, baring his teeth, but you click your tongue, and he steps back immediately, sitting at your side like a statue as the others guard the flock.

You feel a puff of air breath against your head, and you can’t help the wet laugh that bubbles out when you realize Sebastian is standing guard over you.

“Seems you’ve got yourself quite the protection.”

He muses, eyes bouncing between the animals.

“They were abandoned when I found this place.” You confess, a slight tremble to your voice as you watch Price crouch in front of you. He’s quiet for a moment, eyes flickering over your form and you wrap your arms around your middle.

“If my men are walking into a trap, whoever is there will be killed.” He says simply, tone almost bored and you feel your face pale.

“They’re not! This is my land! Mine!” You insist, frustrated tears falling freely as you flex your fingers, muscles tense.

“Tiny little bird like you, all by herself?” Ghost scoffs as he returns, and you feel your ears burn.

“What did you find?” Price asks him over his shoulders.

“Can hardly see shit in this rain but I found no one. There’s a truck around back but the engine seems shot.” He shrugs, eyes peering at you through that ski mask and you avert your gaze.

The doors open against, the other two rushing in, soaked to the bone.

“The house is clear sir. Only one room looks lived in, two guest rooms down the hall on the upper level and a small library on the ground level. Gaz found a shotgun by the front door.” The Scot, Soap, you gather, reports back to Price.

“I told you. It’s just me out here.” You mutter, and this time Ghost is crouching in front of you, grabbing your chin and forcing you to look at him.

“You hiding from something little bird?” He asks, cocking his head to the side

“You’re the ones breaking into my barn and scaring my animals!” You snap, trying to get out of his grip, but he only holds tighter.

“You’re a little fighter aren’t you?” You see his eyes crinkle, and you're shocked this man even knows how to smile under that mask.

He releases you, standing up and stepping back to stand with the other three men, who still loom over you. You feel like a lamb being sent to the slaughter house, and you bury one of your hands in Dixon’s thick fur to ground yourself.

“Please-“ You start, voice shaking, and you feel a tear slip down your cheek.

“I don’t have much, there’s maybe three thousand dollars in the safe in my closet. I’ll give you the code just…” Your voice trails off, a sob slipping past your lips and Dixon whines, low and sad as he places his giant head in your lap.

“Please don’t hurt us. D-don’t hurt my animals- I won’t even call the cops, it would take the nearest deputy three hours to even reach my house.” You beg, exhaustion and nerves taking over as your shoulders slump, trembling with your quiet sobs.

You see Price’s boots approach you, and he tilts your chin up, and you flinch when he brushes a tear away with his thumb.

“Stop all these tears pretty. We don’t want to hurt you or your little farm.” He coos down at you. Confusion swirls in your head, making you dizzy as another sob can’t help but slip out, Price cupping your cheeks, shushing you softly as he wipes your cheeks.

“I don’t understand…” You whisper, searching this strange, terrifying man’s face for any sign of deceit, but he just grins at you.

“You told us the truth. Very good.” It sounds almost like praise the way he whispers it to you, and you whimper, shame filling your stomach. You look away from him, taking a shuddering breath as you struggle to compose yourself.

“Let’s get you back inside hm? Can’t have you catching a cold.” He tsks, and before you can argue, you’re being lifted into his arms, tucked against his chest. You try to struggle, but the adrenaline has worn off, confusion left in its wake as these strange men usher the herd into their correct pens, Soap barley escaping one of the Roosters pecking at him in defiance, before pausing.

“I don’t think I want to mess with this guy.” Gaz mutters, the three of them staring at Sebastian, who stares back, as though daring them to try and corral him.

“He.. He’ll go back in his stall once it’s quiet… You scared them…” You mutter, tired as you give in, resting your head against the strong chest you’re pressed against, and you feel Price’s grip tighten.

“You’re freezing sweetheart, let’s get you out of these wet clothes.” He murmers, and your heart skips.

“I can do that myself.” You hiss, staring up at him with narrowed eyes, despite the fact you can feel your cheeks burning.

He just laughs.

Leftovers [1/3]

Simon Riley x fem!Reader | a non-canon addition to my mafia!141 series |

part 2 | part 3

warnings: unhealthy thrupple relationship, hurt/some comfort, slight dub-con, possessive Simon, smut, (f!recieving oral, fingering, p in v) 6.5k wc

Mr. and Mrs. Price don't know how to take care of you properly. Simon is hellbent on saving you, no matter the means.

The first and only rule that came with living with the Prices was that no matter how much you thought otherwise, they didn’t really love you.

It didn’t matter how sweetly Mrs. Price kissed your forehead, her lips would never grace yours, and despite how deliciously Mr. Price would pump his fingers into your cunt he would never bless you with the opportunity to take his cock. Above all else, they first belonged to one another before ever belonging to you. All you were good for was being their sweet little pet, nothing but a catalyst for their pleasure; their favorite aphrodisiac. 

There were worse things in the world to be, and being a pet wasn’t all that bad. The Prices kept a roof over your head and gave you meals at least three times a day, if not more. Every now and then while Mr. Price was away at work, you and Mrs. Price would fall asleep on the couch together. Hours later you would wake up with your head on her chest, but you wouldn’t dare to stir her awake because the sound of her heart beating was more captivating than anything that droned on the television. 

But she would always wake up when Mr. Price came home, and she’d drag you off to the bedroom where they’d strip you bare like some spectacle. Mrs. Price’s lips would devour every inch of your skin, kissing your neck, chest, and breasts; kissing everything except for you. Meanwhile, Mr. Price would fuck his fingers into you and growl every time his wife giggled at your moans. His cock would harden in his pants, a sight that you would never be able to see, and just as you came undone on his fingers his lips would always find their way to her instead of you. 

They would laugh and giggle as you squirmed underneath them and coo about how adorable you were. How soft and pliant you were for them, such a good and well behaved pet. They would kiss your body a few more times before tucking you in for the night and leaving you alone to do their own lovemaking elsewhere. That’s how it always ended. Always the lover, never the loved, but that was okay. At least you weren’t alone. 

Things started changing when Mr. Riley showed up. 

He showed up at the house one day by invitation from Mr. Price and nearly scared you half to death. Like a ghost, he seemingly appeared in the living room one evening and took up all the space on the loveseat. Perhaps that’s what had intimidated you at first, just the sheer size of him. He stood taller than Mr. Price did, and the bulging muscles of his body was proof he could rip you in half if he so pleased. Then there were the faded scars on his face, the ruggedness of his features and the piercing expression in his dark brown eyes. He looked at you like you were a meal ready to be eaten. Or, maybe you just wished that he would. 

Mr. Riley was a quiet man, you learned. He hardly spoke throughout dinner and when he did he was rather short and blunt with his responses. Though he was a man of few words, everything he said seemed to have some sort of meaning. There was something about his voice that made the hair on the back of your neck stand on end and you nearly choked on your food at the sensation. It wasn’t at all unpleasant, and if anything the deep timbre of his voice was rather soothing, and you liked the teasing nature of his banter with Mr. Price. Perhaps you enjoyed it too much. 

There must have been something about the way you looked at Mr. Riley that caught attention. Truly, you meant no harm by it. Art littered his arms in the form of dark tattoos that you couldn't pull your eyes from because you had never seen ink cover the skin of someone so beautifully before. Never seen anyone quite capture the well formed muscle and veins like had been done on Mr. Riley’s arms. And really, the scars on his face and his crooked nose intrigued you. There were stories waiting to be uncovered, literature that hid behind the depths of his eyes. You just wanted to read it. That was all it was, you swore it. 

After plates had been cleaned and the table was cleared away, you learned you were not as subtle as you thought you were with your minor infatuation with your guest. Not even your intense stare at the TV screen as you pretended to pay attention to the movie Mrs. Price had picked out was able to throw suspicion off of you. Just as you had gotten settled on the sectional next to Mr. Price, you felt a hand rest on your shoulder, quickly followed by a hot breath on your ear. 

“Pet,” Mr. Price whispered, “my friend looks lonely over there. Why don’t you keep him company?” 

His proposition made you tense against his side and he chuckled at your failed attempt at keeping cool. Keep Mr. Riley company? Once more your eyes found their way to him and you felt your throat tighten at the thought. Were you supposed to sit by him? Entertain him? No, that felt wrong. You belonged to the Prices, not their friend. Then again, you were instructed to keep the man company, and good pets do as they’re told. 

Without so much as a word you rose from your spot on the sectional and quickly made your way to the loveseat Mr. Riley had settled himself on. It was difficult not to fall into the gravity of him when you sat next to him as his weight shifted the cushions, giving you no choice but to all but lean into him. You heard his quiet hum in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected you to just so blatantly sit next to him. You caught him look at you for a short moment, but you kept your eyes glued to the TV as if he was never there to begin with, and eventually he looked away. 

Embarrassment. It was the only word you could think of to describe how you felt sitting next to that man. Conversing with others wasn’t exactly your forte, it’s why you agreed to throw your old life away when Mrs. Price invited you into a relationship with her and her husband. They would take care of you, and you wouldn’t have to be perceived and go out and about in the world. They knew full well of that; perhaps that was their way of having some fun with you. 

Things were fine until halfway through the movie when Mr. Riley put his arm around you. There was nothing you could do but fall against his side as his firm hand settled against your waist. He held you close to him as if he had no intention of letting you go, and yet acted as if he had never done so in the first place as his attention stayed fully trained on whatever boring movie droned in the background. Blood gushed in your ears and panic settled into your chest. Surely that had broken some sort of rule, and yet when you glanced over to the Price’s with wide eyes, you realized that they couldn’t even care less. 

So you took a deep breath in some attempt to calm yourself, and once the blood settled in your veins, you realized that you could hear Mr. Riley’s heart. Each beat was strong and steady as if it had never wavered throughout its entire existence, and its reverberations were so strong you could feel it pulse throughout your own body. You took another deep breath, this time more content, and realized you rather liked the smell of him too. Some sort of dark, soft aroma mixed with the faint scent of cigarettes. It was comforting, perhaps the most calm you had felt in a long while. 

“Cute, isn’t she?” 

It wasn’t until Mrs. Price spoke that you realized you had fallen asleep like that, tucked into the side of a man you hardly knew. Cold hands pulled you away from the warmth that was Mr. Riley, and half awake you were brought to your room without the chance to glance at him from over your shoulder. Despite it all, Mrs. Price cooed at you while she laid you down in your bed and tugged the blankets over your body with a simple kiss to your forehead. 

“Goodnight, pet,” she cooed before closing the door behind her. 

That night you fell asleep alone in your cold bed while dreaming about the warmth Mr. Riley had given you. It was something you could only ever pray for when craving something from the Prices, and yet he had given it to you so willingly, as if you didn’t deserve anything less. Maybe it was unfair of you to compare the people who had given you so much to a man who you hardly knew. Friendly. That’s all he was. But it didn’t end there. Every time Mr. Price invited him over, he always directed you to Mr. Riley’s side eventually, talking about how lonely he looked, or that you should be a good host to him. 

Soon enough it got to the point where you didn’t even need prompting; you already knew your place was next to Mr. Riley. Curled against his side, hanging off his arm, even sitting on his lap, in one instance. Each touch that he gave you seared across your skin, but it was always respectful, nearly too respectful. Fingertips always gliding along your waist but never dipping low enough to caress your hips or grope your ass, nor high enough to brush against the underside of your breasts. His touch always left you craving more, and yet that was something he didn’t seem to intend on giving you.

He did, however, give you a new name. Sweetheart, he called you. It was something he whispered to you at first from the safety of the confines of his arms, as if he worried Mr. Price would overhear him and reprimand him for it. Then he became a bit more brave. He called you sweetheart when he asked you to pass him the salt at dinner, and then again when you eventually fell asleep on the couch and he offered to carry you to your room. Some strange part of you wished he stayed with you that night, but you knew that thought alone made you a bad pet, wanting anyone other than the people you belonged to. 

But the thing was, the more warmth Mr. Riley showed you, the colder the Price's home felt, because even after all that time, it wasn’t really your home. 

“Hey, sweetheart.” 

Loud music and even louder people caged you into that VIP room, suffocating you to the point you nearly passed out. It didn’t help that Mrs. Price had dressed you up like her personal doll, slathering makeup on your face and throwing you in a skimpy dress, you hardly recognized yourself in the mirror. And still, despite it, Mr. Riley had found you and settled on the spot next to you in the conversation pit. 

“Mr. Riley,” you greeted as you uncomfortably pulled at the skirt of your dress. 

“Mrs. Price dress you up in that?” he asked.

You half expected him to wrap his arm around you like he did every other time the two of you were close to one another, but he didn’t. Perhaps there were too many prying eyes nearby and he didn’t want to spark any rumors. Either way, his presence alone was comforting enough. You always hated going to Mr. Price’s club, and that night was no exception. Too loud, too many eyes, you were always out of place. 

“Was it that obvious?” you asked with a half-hearted chuckle. 

“Just doesn’t seem like you,” he responded gruffly. 

Of course not. Extravagant things weren’t meant for a pet. “Yeah. Probably not.” 

Even from a distance you could still make out the faint scent of him. That warm musk mixed with tobacco had started to smell like home. And it was wrong, you were sure of it by that point. At what point did Mr. Riley become more comforting than the man and woman you lived with? But at that moment, with so many people crowding you, you didn’t care. Closing your eyes, you blocked out everything else around you except for him. There was no music, no mingling guests, no rancid scent of alcohol; it was just you and him. 

Until the sudden sound of clapping brought you back to reality, anyway. Your eyes shot open and you were met with the same view as before, just more still. A quick glance around revealed everyone staring at Mr. and Mrs. Price, who stood at the front of the room, all cooing and cheering and clapping for them. They held one another as a few people rushed up to talk to them, where you heard squealing and several pats on the back. Confused, you turned to Simon with your head tilted to the side like a curious dog. 

“What happened?” you asked. 

With a simple nod of his head, Mr. Riley gestured up to the couple at the front of the room. “They just announced Mrs. Price’s pregnancy,” he said. 

Those words left his mouth so simply. So nonchalantly. As if you should have known. 

You should have known. But you didn’t. Because no matter how much you tried to convince yourself otherwise, they didn’t really love you. 

You’d forgotten the first and only rule.

You didn’t know how you ended up on the terrace, you just stopped running when the cold night air hit your skin. Despite the way your tears muddled your vision, everything became painfully clear. This was their plan all along. To get pregnant, to start their life and continue it without you. It’s why they never kissed you, only ever played with you, refused to fuck each other in your presence; you were always meant to be disposable. Why continue to take care of a pet with a child on the way? 

And it hurt because you knew you’d never have that. Never obtain that unconditional love, a kiss on the lips, a cock in your cunt, a child in your arms, because you had been the Price’s plaything. Their pet who never dared to bare her teeth. You’d never be the sweet little wife, only some poor, skittish animal that only knew how to play. But you craved it so bad you swore you’d die. You wanted to be someone’s wife, someone’s lover, to be loved, to have kids and a home that wasn’t cold as ice. 

That life just wasn’t for you.

“You alright, sweetheart?” 

Somehow, Mr. Riley always seemed to find you. It was as if some invisible string had been tied between the two of you, and no matter how knotted it got he would always make his way back to you. Unsure if you should welcome his presence or not, you kept your hands firmly on the terrace railing and your red eyes focused out on the city in front of you. Your tears blurred the sparkling lights so much that you could nearly confuse them with stars if you squinted hard enough, yet that realization did nothing to quell the anxiety and terror that ate away at your stomach. 

“I’m alright,” you pitifully assured, although you weren’t too convincing. 

Mr. Riley’s hand touched the exposed skin of your back where his thumb started to rub small circles into your flesh. You nearly crumbled at the contact as you were drowned in the overwhelming urge to throw yourself at him, to beg to be loved even if only for a short while. Instead, your grip on the railing only tightened as you focused all your energy into not letting another tear fall. 

“John told me to watch you for the night. Take you back to my place,” he said softly. 

His words weren’t surprising. Sending you off to spend the night with him was just the next step to getting rid of you. Why would they want you in the home when they’d have someone new to prepare for? You were certain your room would be turned into a nursery before long. After a moment, you turned to face him and you did your best to muster your strongest of smiles as you ignored the stinging behind your eyes. He looked at you with such pity that you nearly broke into tears once more. 

“Lead the way.”

It had been so long since you had visited someone that you forgot what it was like to walk into a room and not have every inch of it memorized. Mr. Riley’s apartment was something you didn’t recognize, yet it wasn’t completely unfamiliar. In a vague sort of way, it smelled like him, and that was enough to calm your nerves and silence the pain that festered in your stomach. It was rather plain as far as decorations went, but it was cozy and warmer than anyplace else you had been for quite some time, and that was more than enough for you. 

First order of business was getting you a glass of water, something Mr. Riley took care of right away. Such a small gesture, and yet it had your heart swelling in an odd and unfamiliar way. Still, you were thankful for something to soothe your sore throat, and the two of you sat in silence on the couch as he ensured that you drank every last drop. 

“Do you wanna change into somethin’ more comfortable?” he questioned when you handed him your empty glass. 

“I don’t… have a change of clothes,” you said meekly. 

“You can wear some of mine,” he insisted.

Something within you wanted to decline. Wearing his clothes certainly broke some sort of rule, and you doubted that the Prices would be happy with you for it. But then there was a pang of sorrow that echoed throughout your chest, a painful reminder that you no longer belonged to them, and probably hadn’t for quite some time. 

Like a lost dog, you followed behind Mr. Riley until you reached his bedroom. His bed was bigger than you had anticipated it to be, significantly bigger than yours, and it was well made. A dark duvet covered the expanse of the mattress, and when you sat on the edge of it you sunk into it as if it welcomed you home. Maybe if you laid back on it you could fall asleep and never have to face the painful truth of the reality you found yourself trapped in. 

It didn’t take him long to fish out a simple shirt and a pair of drawstring shorts for you to change into, but when Mr. Riley turned to face you, it was as if he had turned to stone. Maybe it was the tear-smudged makeup stains on your face, or the fact that he hadn’t seen you look so content until you sat there on his bed, but he looked at you with such intense pity your chest ached. Eventually he got his body to listen to him and he carefully approached you and set the clothes on the mattress next to you. 

“I’m sorry,” he said unprompted. 

“For what?” you asked, eyebrows drawing together. 

“That they abandoned you.” 

Hearing it outloud was more excruciating than the initial realization. Abandoned. Tossed aside. Just a spare. Your chest ached so fiercely it felt as if your body split in two, and there was nothing you could do to stop the tears and sobs from flowing forth. It was pitiful and pathetic, and you hated how terribly small you felt. There were so many tears inside of you that you could wipe the earth clean with them, yet as you cried you didn’t feel any less dirty or used. 

Then the bed sunk down next to you, and instead of sitting on the mattress you had been scooped up into Mr. Riley’s arms and into his lap. His arms were the only thing that held you together in that moment, and he carefully tucked you underneath his chin and squeezed all the sorrow from your body. A cautious kiss pressed into the top of your head, slow and wary as if the very act itself was forbidden. When you didn’t protest, he kissed again, and then again, as if he couldn’t get enough. It was the closest thing to being loved you ever felt, and that realization only broke you further. 

“I just… I just wanted what they have,” you admitted once your sobs had dwindled to small hiccups. “I always thought that they’d let me be a part of it eventually. But I’ve been waiting so long and then… then they get pregnant without telling me and I realized I’ll never be good enough. Never enough to be kissed, or held, or loved. That’s all I wanted.” 

After placing one final kiss against the top of your head, Mr. Riley carefully moved your face away from his chest to tilt your head up to force you to look at him. Irritated from crying, your eyes were a bright pink shade, and so terribly swollen you had difficulty opening them fully. Still, his thumb smoothed over your mascara-stained cheek and you felt his grip grow tighter around you. 

“You deserve so much more than what they did to you,” he whispered, his whisky scented breath fanned across your face. “They were selfish, yeah? Dunno how they could be. First time I laid eyes on you I wanted you. Wanted to love you, to prove that you’re worthy of it.”

A few more fat tears rolled down your cheeks at his words just for him to quickly wipe them away. You had never received such kind and comforting words from anyone before, least of all the Prices. But his words held meaning, you knew they did. How could he look at you so softly and lie? No, it was impossible. His words were true and you could feel your want grow in the dark cavern of your stomach. 

“Mr. Riley…” you said at a loss for anything to say.

“Simon,” he corrected. “Say my name and I’m all yours, sweetheart. I’ll give you that love, that life, you deserve.” 

Maybe it was wrong to want him as badly as you did. Something dark and primal inside of you craved him and every inch of his tattooed skin, and yet you felt shame for feeling so. But why? You had been abandoned. A bit of comfort was the least bit you deserved. 

“Simon,” you whispered.

His lips crashed into yours not even a second later, and the feeling nearly had you sobbing into his mouth. It felt so pure, so overwhelming. Finally, you could taste someone. Taste the spice of whiskey and the smoke of cigarettes rather than just the salt from your tears. By instinct your arms wrapped around his neck and you pulled yourself closer to him as if you wouldn’t be satisfied until you were nestled in the warmth of his chest inside of his ribcage. 

Eventually, your bodies collided with the mattress and you found yourself caged in by Simon’s arms as he hovered over you. His tongue slipped into your mouth and you felt him groan into you like he had never had such a tasty meal. Then his lips began to wander, and he kissed along your jawline, neck, and further down to your stomach. It was the first time someone kissed your body and it felt like you were being given something rather than having something taken away. 

“So gorgeous,” he whispered against your stomach. His hands dipped underneath the short skirt of your dress and pushed it up over your hips, exposing your panties. You let out a shaky breath as he kissed your clit through your underwear, and you realized you had never had someone’s mouth on you like that before. “Wanna taste you, sweetheart. Tell me I can.” 

It was strange to have someone ask permission before doing something with you, and you felt your throat grow dry at the thought. Strange emotions swirled like a storm in your head where sorrow mixed with desire among other terrible conflicting emotions, and all you could muster was a simple nod. You just wanted it all to stop, for him to take away the pain no matter the cost. 

“Need you to use your words,” Simon mumbled against your heat. 

“Yes!” you spoke. The word erupted out of you with little regard for any of those confusing feelings muddling your mind. “Please…”

With a swift yank Simon pulled your panties past the swell of your hips and you raised your legs into the air to let him pull them fully off of you. After tossing them somewhere behind him, he lowered himself onto the mattress and kissed your cunt once more, this time fully bare, which sent a jolt throughout your body. He hardly gave himself the time to admire your body before his tongue began to greedily swipe along your clit. It felt so foreign and unfamiliar yet so intense you found your legs instinctively squeezing shut. Simon only chuckled against you as he pressed his hands on the inside of your thighs to keep himself from suffocating too soon. 

There was nothing you could do to stop the way your back arched off the bed in pure bliss. Already he had given you more pleasure in a few moments than you had received in your entire relationship with the Prices, and you bit into your lip as you mumbled out sweet nothings into the heavy air above you. Once you had grown wet enough with his spit and your own arousal, Simon carefully slipped a finger into your heat and you gasped at the sensation. You had never felt so full before and your muscles pulsed around him in greedy response. Despite all the pain and heartache you experienced that night, nothing could drown out the overwhelming mantra of more that reverberated throughout your entire body. 

When Simon pulled away from you, your first instinct was to sit up and pull him back to you, but you paused when you saw the way he looked at you. Dark, heavy eyes pierced through you, and you watched in awe as he sat back and slid his shirt off his body in one swift motion. He was so big. Hardened muscle covered with a thick layer of skin and healthy layer of fat, he collapsed on top of you where his lips were on yours once more. His taste was different this time. It wasn’t just whiskey and cigarettes. There was this earthy sapor mixed with it, and it took you a moment to realize that you tasted yourself on his lips. 

Then something ripped. Threads of cloth tore a part, and you realized you could no longer feel the dress around your body anymore. Whatever clothing you had worn had been replaced by Simon’s chest pressing against yours, and the skin to skin contact made your head spin. 

“Don’t need that anymore,” Simon mumbled against your lips. “Don’t need anythin’ of theirs anymore, yeah?” 

You nodded in agreement until you remembered what he said earlier about using your words. “Yeah,” you breathed. 

His lips descended down to the soft tissue of your neck while he started to grind his hips against yours. The rough fabric of his jeans were all too stimulating against your needy and swollen clit, and you whined into Simon’s neck as you writhed underneath him. 

“Do you want more?” he asked as he continued to grind his hardening bulge against your sex. “I’ll give you anythin’. Just gotta ask for it.” 

“You,” you blurted out without so much as a second thought. “Please Simon, I need you.”

There was no more time to waste. With one hand, Simon reached down and unzipped his pants where he released his painfully hardened cock. You felt as he teasingly ran his leaky tip along your slit, smearing precum against you until he carefully dipped down into your hole. Hardly even an inch inside of you and you realized he was significantly girthier than his fingers were, and you found your head falling back against the mattress with a moan at the stretch of him. 

“So goddamn perfect,” Simon grunted as he continued to push deeper and deeper into you. “Gonna give you the whole world. Anythin’ you want. Deserve so much more than them, fuckin’ christ, sweetheart.” 

More tears poured down your face by the time he bottomed out. It was all just too much, so much anguish and love melding into one confusing feeling in your mind. Yet Simon kissed away every single tear as he began to carefully thrust into you. Each time he moved in you an all consuming wave of pleasure rippled through your body, forcing moans to mix in with your cries in some sort of lamentable symphony. 

“I know, I know,” Simon cooed as he placed a fat kiss against your cheek. “You’re mine now, yeah? My girl. Gonna treat you properly. I’ve got you, love.” 

Through it all, he was so soft with you, so warm, and you felt that heat begin to pool in your stomach. Every thrust into you marked you, it scratched away the essence of everything the Prices had done to you, what they didn’t do to you. Every empty space that had collected dust inside of you was filled by Simon and the searing passion he pumped into you. That was all you had ever wanted. To be seen, to be touched, to be loved. You had finally found it. 

When you came, you did so with a sob. Muscles seized and you wrapped your arms so tightly around Simon’s neck he had no choice but to collapse against your chest as he continued to thrust into you. Your tears soaked into his hair as you sloppily kissed the top of his head, body still craving more of him despite the endorphins that ravaged your body. 

“There she is,” Simon sighed, his voice a low rumble. “Doin’ alright, sweetheart?”

“Please,” you begged. “I need it. Need you to come, please Simon.” 

Your plea sent him toppling over the edge and he slammed his hips against you one final time before he held himself there with a thick and strained groan. His cock twitching inside you was an unfamiliar feeling and yet you relished the way he filled you, warm cum soothing an ache only he could tame. Your grip around his neck loosened as you felt yourself melt into the duvet. All that pleasure, that love, finally got your mind to fall quiet. 

Once Simon managed to catch his breath, he gently pulled out of you before falling next to you. Strong arms maneuvered you onto your side where he pulled you against his chest where he held you firmly against him. As usual, his heart pounded strong and steady in his chest, and the longer the two of you laid there the more calm it grew. Whatever tears you needed to cry had all fallen, and there was nothing but pure bliss that settled over you as you nuzzled against his body. 

“I love you,” Simon said. He said it softly, as if it was a secret. Something special that only you could know. 

You couldn’t remember the last time someone whispered that phrase to you. 

“I love you, too.” 

That night was the first night in years that you didn’t fall asleep alone, and when you woke up you realized it wasn’t a dream. His arms stayed wrapped tightly around you throughout the night, and you woke to the scent of his musk and you couldn’t help but smile. Really smile. It was real and you were there and you were loved. You buried your face further into his chest and he reacted in kind by pulling you closer. 

“Mornin’ sweetheart,” he hummed. 

Humming back, you stretched your limbs with a groan that left him chuckling and he placed a quick kiss on your forehead. He sat up in bed and pulled away from you, which left you whining, until he reached down towards the foot of the bed to grab the clothes you weren’t able to change into the previous night. 

“What do you want for breakfast?” he questioned as he handed you his shirt. 

Such a simple question, really, and yet it felt so much more important than that. This was the conversation lovers had in the morning. Contemplating, you took the clothes from him and set them beside you as you tilted your head and shrugged. “Whatever you feel like making.” 

A small smile pulled at his lips, crooked and scarred, as he glanced toward the bedroom door for a short moment before his attention returned to you. “Alright, I’ll go get started. Take your time, yeah?” 

Simon Riley made you feel like a princess and you held nothing in your heart for him but adoration as you watched him slip out of the room, still half naked. Just like he had said, you took your time getting ready, and even then it still wasn’t all that long. You fixed up your appearance as best as you could without a mirror before slipping his shirt over your head. It was long enough that it fell down to your mid thighs, and because of that you didn’t bother with the shorts, or your still slightly damp underwear from the night before, either. 

Sizzling bacon and freshly warmed toast greeted you by the time you meandered into the living room, and you smiled to yourself at the sight of Simon cooking in the kitchen. You drooled at the way the sinewy muscles in his back flexed as he worked, and you couldn’t fight away that odd arousal that bloomed between your legs. Deciding that it was a good idea to get some food in your system before attempting to initiate anything physically demanding, you instead sat yourself on the couch.

Your phone sat face down on the coffee table in front of you, and your stomach dropped at the sight of it. Something twisted in your gut at the thought of unlocking it and seeing no messages, at realizing just how little the Prices surely missed you. Yet, you needed to bite the bullet. How were you supposed to start your new life with Simon if you were still holding onto the ghosts of your past? 

With a shaky hand, you reached for the item and quickly turned it on. You prepared yourself for its mocking screen, for the heartbreak you knew you would be able to mend later, and yet it still wasn’t enough. Nothing could have readied you for the twenty missed phone calls and the countless texts from both Mr. and Mrs. Price. Begging to know where you were at. Asking if you were safe. Pleading with you to come home. Saying that if you hadn’t responded by noon they would call the cops in fear that the worst had happened to you. 

Your throat dried out and you couldn’t stop your lips from trembling. Why did they do that? Was it supposed to be some sort of sick joke? Proof that no matter how far away from them you got you could never escape the hold they had on you? No, you listened to the voicemails. Listened to the way Mrs. Price’s voice quivered when asking if you were alright, when she begged you to come home, and you nearly sobbed. 

Something was wrong.

“Simon?” you asked as you snuck into the kitchen behind him. 

“Yeah?” he asked as he turned around to face you. 

He froze the moment he saw your face. He could read the trepidation on your face as if it were the morning paper, and he quickly placed down his cooking utensils. You hated the way he looked at you with such care and yet with some sort of knowledge, as if he already predicted what you were about to ask him. 

“Did you lie to me last night? About Mr. Price asking you to take me home with you?” you asked.

“Yes.” 

His response came quick and without hesitation and that almost made things worse. You wished he had paused for a moment to think about the way that word would shatter you, and yet he didn’t. Tears pooled in the corner of your eyes and you found your face falling into your hands in disbelief. He lied to you. He fucking lied. 

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” he asked as his hands brushed against your shoulders. 

“They’re going to be so mad at me,” you cried as you pressed your palms into your eyes. It had to be a cruel joke. You wished it was. They hadn’t given you up at all, and you were going to have to pay the price for betraying their trust. 

“Hey… hey, look at me,” Simon ordered as he pulled your hands from your face. The way his hands engulfed your wrists was almost laughable, and you didn’t bother to fight against him. “I thought we agreed that you’re mine now. You’re mine, and I’m yours, yeah?”

“But you lied,” you retorted. 

“They were neglectin’ you!” he corrected, and his voice boomed with such strength you nearly cowered. “Would you have followed me if I hadn’t said that to you last night? Or would you be stuck in that house with partners who wouldn’t even tell you that they were havin’ a damn kid? No, you’re mine now.” 

One of his hands dropped down between your legs, and you gasped as your back came in contact with the counter. He palmed at your naked cunt, felt the way his cum oozed out of you at the gentle pressure of his fingers and the sudden tensing of your muscles. 

“Do you really think they love you enough to take you back like this? With my cum inside of you and the taste of you still on my tongue?” he questioned. “I did what I did to save you. I was tired of seein’ them treat you like that. I’m not lettin’ that happen again.” 

Words failed you and all you could do was stare up at him and cry. It was all so wrong and yet something in the back of your mind screamed that he was right. He was right because in one night he had given you everything you had all but begged of them to do for you in all the years you had been together. Even if they still wanted you, maybe they really didn’t deserve you. But you would still have to face them eventually. Admit that you were running away, that you didn’t belong to them anymore, and that thought terrified you.

Giving up, you collapsed against him and allowed all your anguish to spew from your eyes. Just like the previous night, his hold on you was strong and caring, and he did so without hesitation. After all, you were his girl. He saved you, and he had no intention of letting you go. 

Picture this: Doll is selectively mute, or otherwise she’s in so much shock from her situation that she literally just cannot speak (as an autistic person sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I go partially mute). The boys think she’s just being stubborn but she’s at least trying to sign, so they know she’s not necessarily doing it on purpose.

Queue competition between the boys where they fuck her nonstop and tell her they’ll only stop if she says one of their names, and place bets on who will break her first.

Main fic

Hm. reader's too nonverbal to do much narrating so I'm gonna carry on with John's POV.

cw: noncon. multiple (forced) orgasms. anal. dp, including two in one. ghost has a jacob's ladder cause i'm incapable of imagining him any differently sorry. overstimulation. unrealistic sex. Unedited again cause I'm dropping this and running tf away

It's Simon who notices first because of course it is.

John spends all morning wasting his time trying to get a reaction out of the girl, but she just grits her teeth and bares it all without so much as a whimper. It would be impressive, if it wasn't so goddamn annoying and he tells the boys this over a meal one evening, listening as they each in turn complain about the silent treatment they've been receiving.

Not long after, Simon disappears downstairs, seeking John out in his room when he reemerges.

"She's gone non-verbal."

"You too, huh?" John sighs, pulling on his boots. "Well, I'll get that bitch to bloody scream if I have to. Let's -."

"No, cap, it's... muteness. Don't think she's doing it on purpose."

John's about to ask why the fuck he should care if she's doing it on purpose or not, but he suddenly remembers the first few years of knowing Simon, the long stretches of silence he'd fall into. At the time, John had just assumed it was Ghost being broody, but now he wonders...

"Well, how do we get her out of it?"

Simon shrugs. "Not likely to, honestly. Can be a trauma thing."

John rolls his eyes, carries on tying his boots.

"The more pain you put her through the worse she's gonna clam up."

Now that gives him pause, gears grinding to a halt until the piece of debris that clogs them is ground beneath the cogs. They spin to life again with a renewed energy after - a wind up toy cranked too far.

"Pain. Pleasure. Hard to tell the difference sometimes."

***

The game is simple enough, but the objective is harder than initially thought. Gaz gets her first, always eager to please. Soap can't even wait until the other sergeant is fully done to get his hands on her, spitting on her tits to fuck between them while Gaz pants into his mouth, the two rapidly falling into each other's pleasure more than the girl's. She keeps her mouth firmly tight, though the pinch between her brow tells John she's not immune to Garrick's pretty cock.

Simon at least understands the objective, pushing Gaz away when he's done to manhandle Soap onto the bed, putting the bird in his lap. Simon works her arse open with cold lube while Johnny moves her in his lap, spearing her down onto his cock and Simon's waiting fingers. This time when she grits her teeth she looks far less pleased, but John wouldn't care if she cried out for them to keep up or to make them stop so he says nothing, watching raptly when Simon decides she's stretched enough for him and he pushes at the bird's shoulder until her and Soap both lay flat on the bed. Soap whines, watching over her shoulder while Simon lines himself up, legs straddled wide over Soap's knees. The poor boy stands less of a chance than the girl does, whimpering the second his lieutenant starts fucking into her, his piercings probably rubbing Soap through the thin wall of the girl's cunt.

Sure enough, the sergeant breathes a soft, 'shite, LT,' and his thrusts turn weak, aborted, sporadic. He moans when he cums, combining with Gaz's, dripping down his softening cock as Ghost's movements keep the girl bouncing on him. Soap whines again, overstimulated, and John can't help reaching out, cupping the sergeant's base to keep him nestled in the girl's warm cunt. Simon chuckles when Soap wails, adjusting his grip on the girl to keep her in place and carries on, cock sliding against the younger man's with barely any barrier.

If the goal was to get the bird to sing, Soap leads by example. But while her mouth hangs open as she watches the younger man fall apart beneath her, she still does not cry out. Not even when Simon grunts in her ear, voice gravel rough and shot, symphonic as it twines with Soap's incessant crying.

Simon pants as he comes down from his high, peering down at John questioningly for a moment. John nods, not entirely sure what he's signing up for, until Simon pulls the girl up off Johnny's front, snaking his hand down her stomach to get his thick fingers on her clit. John grins, feels Soap's cock give a valiant twitch when the girl clenches around him instinctively, sending a hot glob of cum rolling down to the base of the man's cock. John can't help leaning forward to lick it off, laughing cruelly as the younger man yelps.

He's vaguely aware of Gaz straddling Soap's head, assumes he's fucking the man's mouth by the way Soap's whines have turned to soft wet noises. He's too distracted licking his way up the girl's cunt to look.

Simon adjusts to make room for him, sitting on the bed next to Johnny as he continues fingering the girl's pretty clit. John licks along the seam of where her cunt seals around Soap's hardening cock and he hears her gasp - strangled and quiet, but a genuine gasp all the same. He spreads her cheeks, makes more room for himself, and gets to work moving her along Johnny's cock again, his tongue worming its way in alongside Soap when he pulls her back to Soap's base.

They work her like that for a bit, listening as her gasps slowly lengthen, become something like proper moans. Gaz coos at her about how pretty she sounds and she wails when Simon hooks a finger in her rear.

He knows she's cum by the way the spend that coats his tongue gets thinner, tastes less bitter.

"Fuck," John grunts, mouthing at the base of Johnny's cock to make him cum quicker, eager to be in her pretty cunt next. Soap gurgles around Gaz's cock, hips flexing as he fucks up into her faster. When he cums, John laps it up eagerly, tongue flicking against the rim of the girl's cunt just because he likes how she whines.

With Soap truly spent, John drags the girl down to his lap, spearing her on his cock without much preamble. She's loose, soaked, and John rocks her shallowly on himself for a moment just to listen to the way the cum churns within her, frothing on his cock and catching in his curls.

"Shite, doll," he groans, catching her wrists when she tries to reach up over herself, gripping onto his shoulders for leverage. He draws them back down behind her back, keeping them trapped between their bodies in one hand. With his other he cups the exposed column of her throat, revels in the feel of the tendons working - words forming and dying off under his very hand.

"Wanna cum again, don't you?" He coos, mouth pressed close to her poor sunken cheek as if he's completely absorbed in her. Really, he's watching Simon pull Gaz down alongside himself, fisting both their cocks in one big hand.

"Stop that," he warns when the girl bites off another sweet sound. "You wanna cum again you gotta let me hear it."

She doesn't at first, wiggling in his grasp as if he'll let her ride him without asking first. She breaks when he squeezes her throat and his cock twitches within her.

"Please," she whispers, "wanna -."

He's about to tell her too bad when Simon nods at him, a clear 'reward her' if ever he's seen one.

"Spoiled," John chastises, but the hand on her throat moves to slap her cunt all the same, spurring her on. "Go on, then, fuck yourself. Take what you need."

She's uncoordinated, sloppy, legs too tired to ride him with any finesse. It does the trick any way, and she falls limply against his chest when her legs give out beneath her, cunt dripping clear cream and residual cum, both.

"Good girl," John coos, fingers collecting the mess, spreading it over her abused clit just to watch her twitch. "Wasn't so hard, was it?" But if he expects an answer, or for her spell to be over, he's sadly mistaken.

Well, maybe not sadly.

"You want to be done?" She nods against his shoulder, body still slumped and pliant. "Use your words," John warns and she swallows loudly, eyes drifting somewhere by his ear. "More it is, then," John sighs, mock disappointment staining his tone. He shifts, gets his toes dug in underneath himself, and then fucks up into her with the kind of abandon only earned after watching four people cum multiple times.

She yowls, tests his grip on her wrists. He lets them go in favor of keeping her hips elevated, and her fingers find his thighs, digging into the meat of him there.

"You're gonna cum again," he hisses between grit teeth, using his free hand to turn her toward where Simon grips his and Gaz's cock loosely, teasing. "And then I'm going to hand you off to the boys again. And you're gonna take them both, right here -," he illustrates what he means by dragging his hand down her front and hooking the tips of two fingers in her cunt alongside his cock. "Unless you say my name, beg me stop."

She doesn't, so John fucks her stupid, stretching her open until she whines and begs and pants and releases, cunt squeezing around everything he's given her so tight he can't help but follow, paint her poor abused insides in so much cum he's no doubt she'll be able to take the other two easy enough.

The boys drag her up between themselves, hooking her leg up over Gaz's hip. They line up and her voice is shot when she finally uses it again, reaching behind herself to push at Simon's abs.

"Can't - you -."

Simon just hums, big hand brushing along her flank. "Want it in your arse is that it?" he teases, and she squawks, alarmed, when he slides in easily there instead, cock still coated with the lube he'd used to stroke himself and Gaz off with. He grinds deep a few times, letting Gaz's head notch against the rim before pulling back completely to let Gaz dip in. The girl whines, long and loud, and Soap hums in sympathy as he slots himself behind Gaz, too fucked out to do anything more than watch raptly.

She doesn't break until Gaz asks if she can take them both, his hand on Simon's ass keeping the bigger man in place while he slots his cock up next to the other, her poor abused rim stretching threateningly.

"No, please," she cries, and Simon just laughs, pushing in further.

"You know the rules, pet."

But it's John she turns to, eyes big and pretty and watery. "John, please, make them stop."

It's Soap who snuggles her after, the two of them both so fucked out and used up that they can't do much beyond lay there limp and exhausted anyway. Simon and Gaz get each other off with tight fists and dirty kisses, then follow John up to collect on their winnings from the game, but it's John who pockets the keys of a recent vic's car, grinning when Gaz scowls at him.

"Well it was my name she called."

third hour of the night

Baby Trap + Gaz x Fem!Reader | 24k

The latest brush with death opens a wound, a chasm on the underside of his ribs that hungers for something he can't discern. He eats and it’s still empty. Gorges himself tirelessly but the maw still growls for more.

(He thinks it might be a sense of homesickness. And his home has always been you.)

OR: Icarus tries a different approach to capture Apollo once and for all.

18+ | SMUT: dubcon. baby trapping, contraceptive tampering. emotional manipulation. brief violence, near death experiences. obsessive/possessive Gaz. jealousy. unsafe sex. breeding. implied stalking. trauma and the consequences of almost dying several times. reckless behaviour.

MASTERLIST | A03

The thing about dying is that it tends to put everything into perspective. 

Things like the fleeting, ephemeral blink of life itself. The fragility of human existence. How vulnerable this glasslike body of his really could be. 

In a matter of seconds, he would have been erased. A soot stain on the pavement where the metal frame of a small charter plane impacted the ground, bursting into flames almost instantly. Incinerating him. Melted skin, charred bone. Suffused with plastic and steel. Entombed in a crumpled husk of iron and pipedreams. 

The real cruelty, he finds, is how empty this brush with death leaves him. Gaping. A chasm. He sticks his fingers into the hole and feels nothing—

Nothing but hunger.

It happens in a blink. 

Eyes open, and he feels like Icarus. Wings of metal, feathers, and beeswax. He soars above the treeline in a seamless incline, gaining altitude over the ochreous dunes in the distance. The great pyramids that once took dominion in his field of vision were soon to be specks in his periphery. 

There's something about flying that makes him feel both endlessly invincible and damnably fragile at the same time. 

Man's hubris—

Eyes half-mast, squinting against the smoulders of the sun, he feels the heat on his skin as they grow nearer to its coruscating flames. The window is hot. He places his palm against it. Feels the tremble of the machine as it works against gravity to free itself from those stifling confines. 

Kyle’s eyes slip closed—

—and he's suddenly reminded of why hubris is defined as a defiance of the gods. 

(Nemesis rakes her nails down the metal flesh of the bird, unyielding its wiry skeleton underneath; where are your wings?—

—man, willful creatures with their desire to be within the stars; cosmogyral. and oh, she laughs—)

Like Icarus, the plane meets the sun in a hard, hateful kiss, sputtering out in a series of agonising whimpers. The cockpit screams. Howls, shrieks, warning them all of an impending doom—

(—apollo, apollo, apollo—)

And then he's falling. Weightless. Wingless. 

(too low, terrain, terrain; pull up, pull up—)

“Fuck!” The curse is garbled in his headset, nearly swallowed by the agonal hiccups of the plane nose-diving to the ground. “I don't know—I don't—” (—pull up, terrain, terrain; pull up, pull—); “we're stalling, we lost the engines, we're—”

In his periphery, he can still see the blurry blots of the pyramids smeared under the plunging freefall to the ground that Pharaohs have kissed with the soles of their feet. They flicker in and out of his line of sight, a taunting reminder that his kin don't belong in the skies. That they build from the ground up. 

Amid the chaos, Price shouts something—a warbled hiss, words stuck in the back of his throat, limping out of his pale lips in a wheeze; gravity wraps a mocking hand around his neck, giving a tight squeeze. Kyle can see the whites of his knuckles against the armrest, skin prickling with goosebumps as they're dragged back to the dirt. 

by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return

He folds suddenly, torso flopping down over his thighs, hands screwing themselves angrily against the nape of his neck. Protective embrace. Through the angular cut of Price’s bent arm, a blue eye gleams in the flickering dark—electricity cut; the only light source inside the cabin a devastating flash of sun each time the plane rolls—and the anger there, he knows, is pasted evenly across his face. 

Fuckin’ helicopters. We'll take a bird instead. 

Hubris, he thinks, just as Price barks out, get down, Sergeant!

Survival training ensures his movements are fluid. Unconscious. He tightens his body into a ball, hiding all his fleshly organs from spilling out across the aisleway. Scarred palms cupped over his head, his stem. 

Couched into the claustrophobic space between his knees and the hard plastic of the seat in front of him, he finds he can't breathe like this. That training hadn't prepared him for the way gravity feels when it's trying to crush something into dust—but he heaves through the hypoxia, blinking furiously against the phosphenes spooling like ink blots over his eyes. 

There's a whistle in his ear, a swooping nausea in the pit of his stomach. He tastes blood in his throat. Feels the fluttering winds of his trapped heart beating against his larynx with every swallow. 

His thoughts are tangled. Knotted. The edges fray, unravel. It slips through his fingers, translucid. Weaving through the gossamer fogging through his mind. A thick, impenetrable cloud of mutinous emotions. All frothing over the other, intangible. They're drowning each other in a desperate bid to stay afloat, and Kyle can't bring himself to reach for one over the other, opting instead to save none at all. 

There's a roar. Brontide. It echoes in his head as the pyramids once again fill the entirety of his vision. Close to the earth. Close to death—

Kyle doesn't pray. Doesn't beg for forgiveness, for salvation. 

His mum might. He thinks he ought to, but where he should find repentance, sorrow, fear, he instead feels anger. Uncovers it like a forgotten relic. A childhood toy. Holds it like a knife to his throat. 

It's vicious, this fury. This rage. Consumes him from the inside out, blisters through his veins. Chokes him—

In between the apoplectic bitterness, memories flicker by. Broken, fractured remnants of a youth wasted in his grim, spiteful anger. Ironic, now, since he tastes fury, bellicostic and wrathful, in the back of his throat, bubbling up, florentis. 

Bathed in the endless red fury of his mindseye, he thinks of his mum. Standing up in church, her fingers knotted tight against a rosary as she murmured along with the passages, his father sat beside her. His brothers, and sisters. The life he led up to this point, and then—

—you. 

Life in stages. Snippets. Him, you. It rushes by in a maelstrom of want, need, and anger. 

It's short. The distance between knowing you and now charted in a paltry decade; an infinitesimal amount of time that leaves him feeling bitter, and regretful. He barely had you, and now—

Reincarnated as Icarus. Cobbled together from clay and feathers, subsumed with the ghost of a wilful man. Haunted by fate. Tortured with the endless agony of a looping, meandering death to kiss the sun and fall from grace, wingless. Scorched. 

His life is a mere echo. Smoke from a snuffed flame. 

And you— You. You, you, you:

Kyle finds you when he's running after a man through the tangled, indifferent streets of London. 

Weaving, bobbing around the crowd gathered around—clusters of tourists standing still on the sidewalk, forcing the herd to mould around them; idle passersby meandering through the throng of a Saturday afternoon rush—the man he's chasing uses them all as an obstacle. A place to hide. 

It nearly works, too. And if anyone else had been pursuing him, Kyle knows he'd have been long gone already. Seamlessly swallowed up by the rabble. 

But Kyle's different. 

For the entirety of his career, Kyle has been told he's more instinct than man. Reactive. The sort of person that was undoubtedly reincarnated from a wolf, one who used to prowl the boreal forests for musk ox and caribou. 

When people run, he just—

Chases. 

It's innate. in his blood. Instinctual. 

And everyone knows better than to run from a predator. To trigger their prey (hunt, kill, consume) response. 

So, when the man slips from his partner’s grasp and flees down the crowded streets of London, Kyle doesn't think. Not for a second. He locks his eyes on the man's back and follows. 

He cuts a jagged path down the crowded streets, using the meandering passersby to his advantage. Thrown down to the pavement as obstacles in his pursuers' way, ones meant to trip Kyle up. To gain ground, put distance between them. 

It's a futile effort in the end. He loses momentum and speed with each person he shoves, and Kyle soon closes in on him, less than an arm's length away. So close Kyle can taste the pungent burn of his cologne in the back of his throat, fingers reaching, nails grazing over the polyester fabric of his jacket, and—

You're there. Suddenly. All at once. 

Thrown, roughly, into his chest. The only thing keeping you from breaking your nose on his kevlar being your fists touching his sternum before the rest of you followed. 

Eyes wide, wild with fear, shock, you gaped up at him, blinking fast. Your pretty mouth opening, closing. The broken words swallowed down, crushed under the weight of your confusion, your fear. 

With your chin tilted up, he could see the curve of your vulnerable neck, eyes drawn to the shadows under your jaw where your heart pulsed against your skin. Vein throbbing in tandem with your heartbeat. 

Reflectively, his hands jerked up. Arms locking around you, palms bracing you—one falling to the small of your back, the other cupped protectively against the nape of your neck. It brings you closer to him, pushes the endless softness of your body into his hard, unyielding armour. 

And—

Well. 

It's not often—if at all—that he loses sight of a mission. Let's himself become distracted, pulled away. And even now, he's not. Not really. He can still see man in his periphery, nothing more than a bobbing head of blond hair, and he knows that his partners are waiting for him by the entrance of an alley. Crested above the crown of your head, he sees one of them—Marcus, he thinks—jump out, tackling the man to the ground. Domhnall follows suit, gun cocked, and aimed at the struggling man's head, finger never having left the trigger once since he set off in pursuit. 

Kyle never had to give chase, anyway. But the man ran first, and—

A bad idea, really. 

The men he works with now often joke that he's more instinct than man. Chasing after moving targets like a wolf trying to run aground an elk. Under the perceived stupidity of the action lingers a honed strategy. One passed down for aeons. 

Chase, keep pace, until something gives. Something breaks. 

And it's never him. 

Until now. 

You just fit. Like you were made to be in his arms. 

Kyle knows, muted and distant; the thought all tangled up in the back of his head, that he should let go of you now. Gently nudge you on your way. Out of sight, out of mind. Go back to where the man is being wrangled into cuffs amid an agitated crowd murmuring to themselves, all trying to peek over the shoulders of the other officers, ones now congealing into an imperfect circle after spilling out of the blacked-out Tahoe parked near the curb. They'll need help to keep the crowd from fringing on their arrest. Kyle knows this. Knows, too, that he ought to join. 

But he doesn't. 

Can't. 

In the gloom of a midday drizzle, you burn. 

Bright. Ferocious. The coruscating gleam of your gaze is enough to render him to cinders at your feet. Burnt sage, sweetgrass. Bushels of charred barley. Ceremonial in this poignant unmaking; this chiseling down of his being into ash at your altar. He's swept up in it. The thick smog that congeals around you in a dense plumage of smouldering earth. Hallowed lands. 

It razes him. 

You: apollo—this devastating creature of pure light. 

He wants to bask in it. Burn his flesh on your ethereal glow. Leans in to feel the white-hot lick of flames dancing, cosmogyral, across his flesh. 

(Godlike, but you fit in his arms with an ease that belies your otherworldly splendour, that defies the partitioning between man and god—)

“Hi,” he says instead, the word chipped down to the marrow. Bare. Fractured. “You okay—?”

It's here, in this pardoning breath, where he finds the extent of your facile mortality. Beneath his hands, you're supple. Soft. Through the knitted cashmere of your sweater, he can feel the heat of your skin bleeding into his palms. His fingers clench, and he meets pillowed bone. 

You're fragile. Vulnerable. 

(a man threw you into him with an ease that prickles along his nape; chase hunt consume:

protect. shield. provide—)

Instinct, he thinks. More urge than man. Primal. Animalistic. 

Kyle can't remember the last time he felt like this way about anyone. This heavy, poignant drive to burrow his face into your neck, to breathe in the loamy scent of you, and bite down, claim. 

His teeth ache. He flexes his jaw to stem to throb under his canines. Wet, pulsing—like an infection (a heartbeat). 

As saliva floods his mouth, yours opens shallowly in a huff. 

“I'm fine,” you're saying. Dazed, windswept. “I'm—”

He clings to you harder. Knows that his grip is undoubtedly popping blood vessels under your skin like bubbles, but he needs this. Needs time. Needs you. 

A minute longer. Just a minute more—

If it hurts, you don't make any show of it. Impassive in your shock, you gaze at him. Flay him alive under the burning charcoal of your heavy stare. 

He thinks—

this is it. my apollo. 

—but someone is calling his name. Fingers pry apart his hold on you, shoving him back into the iron embrace of his peers. 

“I’ll take over, sir,” he hears through the clamour of noise. “I’ll take them to the paramedics to get checked over. You can let go now—”

“C’mon, Garrick, let go—”

The commotion heightens. Through the hands, the shoulders, the push and tug, your eyes never waver from its perch along his thundering jaw. The anxious, angry pulse of his ire blooming viciously in his veins. 

(how dare they—? how dare they touch you—)

Your mouth opens again. Soundless, but he hears it like a gunshot. 

“Go.” And then: “I'll be fine.” 

It breaks. His partner wrenches him back, stumbling under the sudden momentum as Kyle lets his fingers ease up, releasing you. You're dragged away, swallowed soon by the crowd, but like a hunting dog, he doesn't look away. Can scent you even when you're gone; a thick, earthy scent collars around your neck, and leads him back to you. 

He moves to follow it—

A hand lashes out, slams against his sternum. “Kyle! Come on, man, we got a fuckin’ criminal to detain—”

He blinks, wrenched from this reverie, this stupor. “Fuck,” he spits, tasting ash between his teeth. “Fuck—!”

“You never think,” is what his higher-ups often tell him after he sprints, full throttle, at a target within seconds of them making off. “Your performance is incredible, Garrick, but you just never think before you act—”

This isn't true. Kyle thinks a lot. All the time, really. Kyle's mind has the propensity to spin itself into exhaustion; to never cease. A constant loop. Endless spirals. 

He thinks about everything. Nothing. All of it shaded in both abstract ideas and concrete plans. 

Because the thing is: 

Kyle sees the world—or rather, situations—as a chessboard. Pieces, pawns, meant to be moved in a preordained sequence. 

But telling people who believe that the definition of subordination is waiting for the green light to trickle down from several floors above despite those men only having fragments of a puzzle is a lost cause. A battle he's never, ever won before. 

So, he relents. “Yes, sir.” 

Relents so much that his palms carry jagged crescent moons across his life and heart lines. Swallows down the fury, the rage, even though it blisters through his veins. A permanent, simmering agony burning him up from the inside out. 

Flashes a grim salute to hide the hissing vitriol as it claws up his throat, tearing tissue as it climbs, until all he tastes is blood flooding his mouth. 

“Good,” they simper. “Keep that up, and maybe one day, you'll be where I'm sitting.” 

His ambitions are worn on his skin. He feels something hot, sticky, congeal between his fingers, and knows that he'll soon be wearing a pastiche of ananke’s brode on his flesh. 

Ambition, he finds, feels like choking himself until his vision goes blurry around the edges. Until hypoxia bleeds in, dripping down his periphery in tarry black splatters. 

It feels like swallowing his tongue. Burying himself alive on his—

draw the line wherever you need to, Sergeant. 

—righteous fury. 

His palms itch,

like an infection. untreated. left to rot. gangrenous. septic. his blood is polluted. he feels the fever run, red-hot, through his veins, charring bone. 

marrow burns to ash. he finds a peculiar comfort in the fire. 

moth to a flame. maybe it's only natural, then, that he goes to find you.

The scent trail fades, erased under the stale tang of a restless crowd; admixing into the nauseating smells of London after dark. 

But where it began, he finds a flickering ember. Discovers your chevelure, and winds it around his aching palm until it hides his brode under starlight. 

Everything is murky grey, but he finds you in pure white. The cashmere sweater is a beacon, luring him in, and he hides his intentions under the guise of militaristic concern. Altruism. Crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Tells the paramedics hanging loosely around you that he has a few questions for you. Purely professional. 

They don't question him. Eagerly offer up your name, your date of birth, your address, your status. He doesn't even have to pull rank to get it. When he bites into the thought, it tastes of bittermelon. 

How easy could it have been for anyone to discover, then. To pick pieces of you between their fingers, plucking ripe cherry tomatoes off the stem. 

Kyle bites back a snarl, and offers then a wide, gleaming smile instead. Baring teeth. Says, “thanks, mate,” and weaves around them before they can see his fists shaking by his side. 

He finds you standing by the curb, curled fingers tucked tight against your temple as you survey the throng of lingering onlookers with an impassive, flat stare. Limned in hazy red and blue, you look almost like a picture. A painting. Something archaic. Special. He wants to hide you away from the prying eyes of the reporters congregating down the street, all rallying for the biggest headline on a new story. 

At the same time, though, he wants to stay aside. To watch. To let the rest of the world see you behind a thick sheet of plexiglass. Visible to their voyeuristic gazes but untouchable to all,

(bar him)

His heart thunders when you turn. Chin tipping, tucking against your pearled collar to peek over your shoulder. Even in the matte grey gloom of London, you burn. He blinks. Blinks again. 

You're turning now, brows drawing together as you struggle to piece together why he's lurking behind you like a shadow, but—

You brighten at the sight of him. Recognition chewing through megrim. Still curled into a loose fist, you lift your hand and give him a small, perfunctory wave. You must expect him to stop here, a modest, safe distance away. 

Your brows knot once more when he doesn't. When he steps, boldly, outside of the lines of societal propriety, and into your orbit. You wear this flummoxed uncertainty like a mask. Kyle finds it more endearing than he ought to. Finds, too, that he wants nothing more than to see you bare. 

“Hi,” he greets again, just shy of an arm's length away. Even with proximity, it feels too far. “You alright?” 

Breathless, you murmur: “yes,” and then, hurriedly, like you've just remembered yourself. “Thank you. For, um, catching me, I guess?” 

Catching you. The wording needles under his skin, an ugly, vicious itch he can't scratch. But he supposes that's what it looked like from the outside in. Stopping a fall. Protecting a civilian. 

You were pushed, shoved into him, and he caught you. Held you aloft as his partner took Kyle's place in the pursuit. 

So, he takes it. Smiles again, softer this time. All that rugged, boyish charm that his friends used to tease him over. 

Deadly that is, mate. Dunno how any bird can resist a smarmy fuckin’ grin like that. 

Model, ain't he? Pretty boy. Maybe you should change careers, eh? Bet Givenchy is frothing at the mouth for a looker like you. 

And it works. Of course, it does.

Hook, line—

“Had me worried there that he might have hurt your pretty face. Was proper ticked off, so I thought I'd come and check on you—”

At pretty, you duck your head shyly in response, lips warbling around a nervous smile. Eyes bright, gleaming, under the hazy smear of red and blue light. 

He makes a show of checking his phone, brows tightening at the time played in neon white. 

“Gettin’ late. You live close by? I, uh, I'd feel terrible sending you home by yourself at this hour,” there's an immediate protest on your lips. He nips it with his teeth. Gives a bashful grin. “And, ah, I like talking to you. Wouldn't mind continuing the conversation if you're interested?” 

You're burning. Grinning under a plume of demurred appeasement. Sweetened by his bold words, and the wide, boyish smile he wears. 

And—

—sinker. 

Dazedly, you offer him your hand, stammering as his thumb brushes delicately over your knuckles. Lips wet, glossy. He wants to lean down, lick across them, and taste you on his tongue. But Kyle refrains. Rocks back on his heel, reluctantly dragging himself away.

It's endearing, endlessly sweet when you unconsciously follow. Leaning forward, eyes wide and full of wonder. 

In the next beat, you give him your number. 

He takes that, too, and holds it. 

At the foot of your door, you thank him once again for catching you. The joke rolls off your loose tongue in a playful quip that he snatches up from the air, holds in the palm of his hand. 

“Anytime,” he says, softened under the pale moonlight. 

caught. catching you. 

he sees it much differently. 

to Kyle, you were a gift thrust into his unexpected hands. a pretty little box for him to unwrap, unravel. 

(his, and his alone—)

As he hits the ground, he thinks of you. 

As flames fold over his body, ripping through broken metal, he hears something crack. Hears it shatter. 

And he still thinks of you.

Kyle crawls from the burning wreckage with the bloodied, broken tips of his jagged nails digging into the scorched pavement. Emerges a phoenix. Rising from the smouldering husk of a plane mangled on the pavement with fawnlike legs and an ache in his jaw. 

Intact, he finds, but there's an echo in his head. The sound of breaking glass. Bones snapping like twigs. Something shatters. Something breaks. 

He holds his hand to his chest and knows, then, that it's not so much a fracturing of bone or tissue, but a cage. A prison. Something housing the things he'd rather not think about.

It's fine. It'll be fine. 

He crawls through the smoke to get to Price and doesn't think about the oil spill he left behind on the pavement.

Price says, “that was close,” in a tone so unbothered, so unconcerned, that Kyle has to take a moment to reacclimate himself to his trauma after being knocked so far off-kilter. Jerking back into flight or fight after that blase dismissal when the smouldering ash begins to clog the air, spewing noxious poison from the chemicals, the metals, now completely aflame.

He might think Price is numb to this, to falling from the sky like every parable of Icarus he's ever heard (if the ambitious god had metal blades instead of feathers for wings), but adrenaline makes his senses keener. Sharper. 

As the idea of his captain being an unrepentant sociopath (the jury, though, is still very much out on that one) starts to congeal from its incorporeal shadows, he catches the shake of his hands as he pats his beast pocket down for the stash of cigars he keeps on his person. 

Trembling, white-knuckled. Each pat feels much too heavy than it ought to be. Too forceful. 

He gets it, suddenly. Thinks he might understand Price in a way he didn't before. 

So, he says, “yeah.” And when it comes out far shakier than he intended, he clears the soot, the iron tang of adrenaline from the back of his throat, and adds: “a bit too close, mate.” 

In the end, they take him away on a gurney to a medical ward in a nearby city. 

Kyle isn't hurt—barring the contusions, the bone-deep bruises, the cuts, the lacerations—but they pay little attention to his protests when they poke him, prodding at his insides to find a phantom crack in the tender network of his body. 

Physically, he's fine. Nothing amiss at all. Everything is in good, working order—if a little scraped around the edges. 

They decide to keep him overnight for observation, though. The doctor's worrying about head trauma, concussions. Price, too, is forced to stay—not so much kicking and screaming, but certainly with a lot of complaining that echoes down the hall (bloody fuckin’ muppets—can’t you see I'm fine?)—and he takes a marginal amount of comfort in knowing that he's not the only one on mandatory best-rest. 

It all could be worse. 

He thinks, then, of Soap. Of the gaping wound in his head—blood spilling everywhere. Ghost leaning over him, sounding less like a human with each harrowing Johnny! that was ripped from his throat. 

The endless trawl of uncertainty as they carried him away, his hand falling from the gurney. Hanging there, pale and limp. Jostled with the movements of the medical team as they tried, desperately, to stabilise him. 

And then—

The aftermath, he supposes. 

Soap sitting up in a hospital bed, head wrapped up in stark white bandages. He smiled, laughed. Said he had too much to do to leave them now, but there was something wrong. Something—

Missing, almost. 

Gone. 

They don't speak about it, but he knows Price and Ghost feel it all the same. Must, of course, because Price is firm, unyielding, when he tells Soap to piss off somewhere for a while. Takes each excuse to the chin, stalwart in the face of Soap's pleading negotiations. 

It could be like that. Medical leave. Mandatory. Something was absent in Johnny's eyes. A hollow vacancy where hazel once burned bright in the gloom. 

Kyle places his bandaged hand on his chest, feels every brag of his heart through aching skin, and knows, somehow, that it's not the same. Not quite, but—

He thinks he might be missing something, too. He's just not sure what it is, and that—

That scares him. 

Because if he didn't feel the jagged glass digging into his flesh, he might not have known something broke free. Escaped. Fell, perhaps, to its death when the helicopter started to whine like an injured animal, barely able to limp through the sky. 

Standard procedure would dictate that he calls someone. Schedule a session with a licensed therapist the moment he gets back home, and let them determine if he's field-ready. 

But he doesn't. He thinks about Soap, and the anger in his eyes when Price told him that he was on leave, dismissing him with a simple flick of his wrist. 

“How long, cap’n?” He ground out between clenched teeth. “How long are ye sendin’ me away fer?”

And Price just levelled him with a flat look. “As long as it takes, Sergeant.” 

That was that. That was—

He's not what compels him to call you, but he does. Drags out his phone from his pocket, unlocks the (cracked, of course) screen with a shaking finger, and pulls you from his contact list. His nickname for you isn't anything special—can’t be, really, in this line of work—and it's boiled down to something so inconsequential, so mundane, that he feels a little bit untethered seeing it now. If he really did die, if he was seriously injured—

How would they know to call you when your name in his phone is simply: doves. A lingering remnant of your second meeting. 

Doves. A pretty pair perched on the curb when you met again after texting for a week, pecking idly at the scraps left behind. You surprised him, then, when you materialised out of the air, murmuring to yourself about the sorry state of them. 

Too pretty for crumbs, you lamented and reached into your pocket for a rolled-up bag of sunflower seeds. You barely paid him much mind at all, too busy scattering seeds for the birds, and watching as they scurried toward it.

It was the ease with which you moved through the world—seamless, untethered—that drew him in. The peaceful serenity that leaked from your pores, clouding around you, seemed to scour the anger that hung tight to his shoulders, hitching itself across his nape. Weighing him down. You picked the anchor up, letting him breathe for a moment through lungs that didn't feel as if they were being crushed under unfathomable pressure. All his rage accumulating right by his heart now cupped in the palms of your hands. 

You turned back to him, then, a defiant tilt to your chin as if begging him to say something about feeding pigeons on the street. Readying yourself for a fight despite the loose set to your shoulders, the flat, open palms dusted with powder from the seeds. 

Gone was the sheepish woman who tripped into his arms. In her demurring place stood a thunderclap. A lioness. 

He knew, without any sense of uncertainty, that he wanted to know more about you. Everything, if you'd let him. 

(And you had. Without any sense of hesitation or uncertainty, you—)

He stares down at your name for a moment, thoughts in tatters much too thin for him to pick out. But he feels. Too much, not enough. Arguably the worst in its abundance, in its raw, fractured ache somewhere deep in his chest. 

It's a want. A need. Desperation drapes itself over his shoulders in a way he's never felt before; all soot-stained, and foul. Rank. It smells like an infection: gangrenous and putrid, rotting tissue leaking puss. Skin sloughing off in blackened, festering clumps. The stench of it sits in his nose, clogged in the back of his throat. He can almost taste it. 

Despite its nauseating miasma, the horrid tang pooling between his teeth, there's an odd sort of comfort in it. A familiarity he can't place. 

He wonders if Soap felt this way after he woke up in the hospital with a hole gouged in his head from a bullet. Left wondering what piece of himself was torn out along with a bloodied, mangled mess of tissue, bone, brain, and grey matter that once filled the space. A vacuum the width of a thumb. A permanent pockmark on his forehead.

The thought shakes him, and drags his tender leg up to his chest, rests his forearms on his knee, ignoring the tremble in his hands, and he calls you. 

His face appears on the screen, stuffed into a box. He stares at it as the call connects, taking stock of the way he looks. 

In the gloam of an Egyptian sunset—swaths of ochre coruscating across dunes of gold; glinting off the desert sand as if the sun was trying to inch closer to this haven, the place it called home—the cuts on his face are limned, turning the colour of ripened pomegranates; crushed cherries. Highlighted under the mournful torpor of the sun, he looks worse for wear. Bruises under his eyes, framing them heavy kohl. Splotches of yellow—the same shade as a fresh bushel of wheat—halo around the worst of them, painting a striking picture of injury on the high arches of his cheekbones. 

He should angle the phone away. Sit back into the deep blue shadows and let the absence of light hide the worst of it all from your eyes. It's what he normally does. What he should do. 

But there's a hollowness on the underside of his ribs. A gaping maw that hungers for something he can't discern; rapacious. Unknowable. It wants. Yearns. 

(He thinks it might be a sense of homesickness. 

And his home has always been you.)

So, he calls. Waits for it to connect. And somewhere in the back of his head, he knows something isn't quite right.

But he doesn't fight it. 

Can't, really, even if he wanted to because your face appears on his screen, filled out in a perfect box. The smile is already there, blooming daffodils against dark indigo. The greeting on the tip of your tongue has a flash of pink and gleaming white splitting the tomato red of your lips apart, happiness draping itself heavily over you. 

But it falls, instantly, when he moves. Winces. You catch it, then, the unmistakable ugliness splattered across his face. Bruises framed in hazy, blood orange. Cuts illustrated by the last vestiges of a stubborn sun refusing to yield. 

Kyle dips his chin. The stitches on his forehead pull against the inflamed skin. It's the worst of it, he knows. It catches in the fading embers of an ethereal twilight, and the hitch in your breath echoes in the room. 

“What—?” The words are ashy whisper in your throat, falling over him. A rainfall of soot. 

The frown on your face is a dagger. It twists, turns. Scraps muscle from bone. Leaves a gaping hole between the milky bracket of his ribs. 

“Oh, Kyle—”

There are a multitude of things he ought to say. I'm fine, first and foremost. And it's the truth. He is. The cuts, the scraps, the bruises, all hurt less than the ache in his head, the throb in his muscles. The fallout from the adrenaline rush following the crash hurts more than anything else. 

He should calm your worry. Laugh about it in that paper-thin way he's wont to—like it doesn't bother him, doesn't hurt despite both of you knowing he'll be up all night long for the next several weeks, running along his own desire path carved between the living room and kitchen. Not thinking at all, and—

And thinking too much. 

The juxtaposition, a blatant oxymoron, will curdle in his chest, growing moss, leaking spores. He's good at pulling them out before they mushroom inside of him, burrowing deep and leaving gaping pockets behind. Scrapes them from flesh. Douses them with gasoline. Purification with fire. 

With your touch. You'll wake the next morning and find him dozing on the couch. Will rain kisses across his face, gentle and soft, before wandering away to make something for him to eat. Later, you'll drag him to the tub. Wash his body as he leans against your chest, the hollow spaces inside of him slowly filling with warm, lavender-scented water. 

He'll come back in pieces. Inchmeal. And then hold you as close as he can in bed as though he's trying to fuse your skin together. Crawl inside of you and stay in the brackets of your ribs. 

It's all—

Routine, maybe. Carved out from years of this. This slow crawl to the inevitable end, hand-in-hand. 

And yet. 

(and yet: he can't.)

Can't bring himself to reassure you when his heart is racing in his chest. A naughty child sneaking cookies off the counter when his mum isn't looking. 

“Almost died,” he offers, fractured and raw. “I—uh, shit. Sorry. I don't know. Just—needed to see you, is all.”

And it's the truth.

You feel it. You must. The urgency, the desperation. This time is not like the others. 

“No, no, Kyle. Don't—don’t apologise. Don't ever apologise, I—fuck. I'm glad you're okay, I'm—”

Pearlescent tears puddle in your lashes. You've never cried before. Not in front of him. Never. Preferring instead to bite your knuckles, to press your face into the pillow. Unwilling to let yourself ask for more than what you think you deserve.

(And it's never enough. Not to him. 

your plate is empty, you're starving. but you refuse to eat.)

And when they spill down your cheeks, he leans back with a huff. Satisfaction is whitehot in his veins and he doesn't know why. Doesn't understand how the sight of you crying over him like this almost makes him want to preen. To purr. 

Blames it on the fall. On the taste of burning metal still clogging the back of his throat. 

“I'll be fine,” is offered, scratched out of his throat with jagged nails. Birthed into the world on a whisper-soft scream. “You don't have to worry about me.” 

Your face falls. “Of course I’m going to worry about you.” 

“I promise I'm—” he chokes a bit. Tries to cover it up with a cough. The frown on your face grows, eclipsing all the prior happiness that once glowed when you first answered the phone. “I'm good. Just need some rest.”

“Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

The tension is thick. He feels it thrum against his jugular; this living, breathing thing. This heady, undeniable agitation. 

Your worry manifests itself in the deep canyon between your brows, heavy and all-encompassing despite your attempts to hide it from him. The weight makes your lip tremble, and Kyle wants to devour your sorrow, your grief, from the source. Taste your sadness. Feel it on his tongue. 

He leans against the knotted fingers pressed tight to his windpipe until phosphenes prickle across his vision. Midnight black against burning blood orange. 

Breathlessly, he quips: “and maybe to stay away from helicopters, too.” 

The laugh you let out sounds like it's underwater. Garbled, choking for air. It's drenched in hysteria, in misery. 

He wants to crush it between his teeth, but settles, instead, hanging his head low, shoulders shaking. From the angle, he knows you'd never be able to tell if he was laughing or crying. 

(It helps, he supposes, that he doesn't know, either—

Is just slowly being consumed by this vacuum of want, one that keeps tugging at his insides, flaying pieces of himself off and dropping it into the maw. 

He wonders, then, what'll happen after he eats himself whole. Will he disappear or will the masticated scraps of himself reassemble into a Frankensteinian lump of who he once was—)

You stay like that for a moment. Both of you pretend you're not falling into pieces for all the wrong reasons.

As he's saying goodbye, you add, nonchalant, unconcerned: 

“Oh, David's calling me. I was supposed to help him pick out an outfit for a wedding.”

“David?” His tone is flat. His fingers tighten around the phone. “Who's that?”

“My friend from work. You met him, I think. He was at that party we went to. In Kent.” 

“Huh. No, I, uh, don't remember.” 

“Oh. Well, I won't be long. And I'll have my phone on me, so if you need to talk, just call, okay?” 

You're unbothered. He can understand why. Neither of you have ever really had much reason for jealousy—Kyle trusts you. Implicitly. Both of you have friends of the opposite sex, and there's never been any sense of distrust in that friendship. 

But—

David. Something about it burns through his chest, twisting and ugly. And the awful thing is, he trusts you, he does. 

You have everything except a ring, and—

Well. 

Synergy is a knife sliding across bone. Understanding skirting on the edges of his periphery, within his grasp. Obtainable. He reaches for it, clawing with eager fingers—

It breaks against his knuckles in blooming anguish, dissolving into the same gaping unknown, unknowables, that sets his teeth on edge. 

In retaliation, he sinks his fist into the wall, and tries to remember the last time he felt so out of control—

Your conversations take on a strange tone. Jovial, blase, but the topics are endlessly lour. 

Things like perhaps the lease ought to just be in your name. And maybe he should update his emergency contact—just in case. 

Just in case. 

It hangs over you like a stormcloud. Just in case. He can see it in the tremble of your lip, your fingers, ones you desperately try to hide behind sips from your chamomile tea. Faux indifference to the garishness of it all. To the fact that this is a real, pragmatic conversation that's happening, that ought to happen. Because you never know. 

But you avoid these conversations by telling him about your day. And soon, your time is divided between pretending as if seeing him hurt like this doesn't make you cry yourself to sleep at night, feigning strength despite the darkening lines under your fatigued eyes in an effort to not become a simpering burden to him when this is just another hazard of his occupation, his chosen career; and helping David search for a suit. 

And then a tie. And then shoes. The perfect wedding gift—

Kyle, too, pretends. Acts indifferent. Unbothered. As if it it doesn't irritate him. It shouldn't. He knows it shouldn't. He trusts you. Gives you free reign to every part of himself you'd ever asked to see.

Your palms are the perfect plinth to his aching head. His shoulders broad enough to carry your burdens sat right along with his own. He knows you. Jokes, sometimes, that he could pick out your soul with his eyes closed. And you volley back that no matter where life leads you, you'd always find your way to him. 

“Every lifetime,” is whispered between kisses, folded in the brackets of his ribs. “All of them. It's always you—”

So why—

Why does he feel sick to his stomach when you talk about David, as if he'd gorged himself on too much of his rage? 

(why, why, why—)

This chasm inside of him grows. Gets bigger. Hungrier. 

Where he could normally shove inside a box, ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, he instead finds fractured glass, fragmented and broken to a jagged point. He cuts his finger on a shard, and watches, hollow, as the blood puddles up, dripping down to his split knuckles. 

He gets it, then. 

The want, the greed, the hunger will consume him from the inside out. 

But what, exactly, it wants is still a mystery. 

(But he knows himself. Knows what he shoved into that awful, putrid chasm, and is sure that whatever it is, it can't be good—)

Egypt is a distant memory soon after. An aged polaroid of sunlight spilling over sand, watery and thick; an ocean of ochre, of burnt umber. He thinks, fondly, of the locals and their chatter as it fills the sun-dried streets, with the heat, an oppressive blanket of warmth, tucking against him. 

Winter nights are static with the buzz of life. Of distant echoes of temple prayers in harmonic songs; haggling patrons and hissing vendors just outside his window. 

Kyle thinks he'll miss this place for it could have been, not what it is. 

Because what it is ends up being a cockpit in distress. Wind shrieking in his ear. The crunch of metal slamming with all its might against the cobbled pavement. The hiss of gas. 

He didn't know fire could roar like a lion until then. Until it blooms, white-hot and wild, mere inches from his face. The snarling, drooling maws of a starving pride. 

Clawing from ash, soot. Metal raining down around him, liquified under the intense blaze of the fuselage on fire. His leg twisted up in the seatbelt. Unable to get free. To get out. 

Smoke in the air. In his eyes, his nose, filling his lungs. 

He'll die, he thought. Is dying. His fingers scrape over concrete, flesh gnashing against grainy sand. Unable to get a grip on the slick blood that puddles out, staining the pavement and his hands. 

He doesn't think of you, but he feels you there on the edge of his periphery. Lingering like a phantom, reaching for him. Get out, get out, get out—

In the bloom of gunmetal smoke that plumes around him like a sweltering cloud of heat and ash, a hand appears. Covered in grit, in grime. Blood. 

“—out! We've gotta get out, Kyle. Grab my—”

Pawing in the dark, nebulous cloud, he finds Price's rough hand and latches on, hauling himself to safety. But what emerges from the soot, the smoke, is a version of himself that feels raw, fractured. 

He's agitated. Leg bouncing, restless. 

Price notices it on the plane ride home, eyes slanting over to stare, pointedly, at the continuous bob of his knee. Up, down, up, down. Kyle should hide it. Bite the inside of his cheek until it bleeds instead, but he doesn't. 

It won't be enough to stem this urge to run, to flee. 

“Almost home,” Price huffs, shifting in his seat. He, too, seems to feel that same prickling sense of unease. Kyle lets it wash over him. Not quite a comfort, but something. “Get some rest, Sergeant.”

At that, he scoffs. “Feels like I've been doing nothing but resting, cap.”

“Mm, you're young. Take advantage of it while you can.” 

As Kyle rolls his eyes at that, Price makes an aborted move, hand jerking to his breast pocket as the plane rocks over a patch of clouds, turbulence shaking the frame. Searching for his cigars. Then angrily throws his hand down, fingers tight around the armrest, white-knuckled, when he remembers he can't smoke here. 

“Might be a good time to quit,” he quips, chin jutting toward his hand, fingertips turning pink with the grip he has on the plastic. 

Price follows his gaze, staring at his hand for a beat. And then he snorts, and pries his fingers loose. 

“Nah, ‘m too old for that nonsense—” Kyle’s brows buoy, but he swallows down the harsh retort on his tongue (aren't you only thirty-eight, mate?), letting Price continue, uninterrupted. “‘sides, will probably need it once we land.”

“Yeah? Why's that?”

He grunts, and settles into the seat. The look he fixes Kyle with feels like having a cold, metal blade pressed to his jugular. 

“Gonna have to make a report, Sergeant. Falling from a bird twice now? And what's this? Third time for you? They'll want a review. Full. Will probably make us talk to a doctor or somethin’.” He cocks his head to the side, presses his pink knuckles to his temple. “Make sure we're all right up here.” 

Kyle flinches. Tries to hide it with a cough when Price’s eyes tighten. 

He's not sure he wants to do any of that. Have someone crack his head open and rummage around looking for defects to toss in his face later on as an excuse to kick him out. Medical discharge. Honourable, they'll say. An early retirement. 

“And—” he swallows down the bitterness on his tongue. “And if we just didn't—”

“Can't do that, Sergeant.”

He struck for a moment. Anger quivers in his veins, rearing up like a viper ready to strike. He has to wonder if it was Ghost or Soap, would Price—

“Believe me,” he continues, eyes fixed on the open cockpit. Intense. “If it was just us, if it was one of our own, I'd have said piss on it. As long as none of you were seriously injured, why bother wasting time? But we have to be held accountable now.” 

If it was one of our own—

“Right,” he rasps, hollow. Anger scorches his insides. “Okay.” 

“Believe me, Sergeant. I want nothing more than to go home, and drink this whole bloody mess away, but—”

“I get it, cap.” 

And he does. He's just not sure he can really talk about it in a way that won't show the world the gaping hole in his chest, the hairline fractures that crisscross along him, all screaming the same thing—

Terrain, terrain, pull up. Pull up. Terrain, terrain—

“Gotta let it go, Kyle.” 

All he sees is fog. Fire crackling from within. 

“And if I can't, captain?”

“Then it's been a pleasure working with you.” Kyle swallows again, blinking furiously against the dense cloud of smoke in front of him. “I know the commander at Scotland Yard. Could put in a good word for you. Might be for the best.” 

Anger is a poison, he finds, but fear—

Fear is quicker. A knife to his heart. Left bleeding on the pavement before he knew what hit him. 

“Or…” Price drawls. “Hide it away. Nothing bad happened, did it? You're still alive.” 

Another hand appears from the midst of the fog. 

He reaches for it. 

“How?” 

“Lots of ways. Best one I find is to just give in to whatever it is you're feeling. Let it consume you. Then just bury it.”

“Right,” he whispers, paper-thin. But he gets it now. “Thanks, cap.”

“Anytime, Kyle.” 

He does as Price asks. Buries it deep inside of himself, and greets you when you come to pick him up at the airport with a wide grin, and a tight hug. Pulling you flush into his body, breathing in the scent of you until it stains his lungs. Sickeningly sweet. 

“I missed you,” you whisper into his neck, words humid against his skin. “So, so fucking much Kyle—”

“Yeah,” he rumbles, caught on the feeling your chest makes when it heaves against his. Little, breathless hiccups of relief, worry. Elation. Fear. It tastes good in the back of his throat when he steals another lungful of your scent. “I missed you, too. Fuck, dovie. Don't know how much I fuckin’ missed you.”

He clings just a little bit tighter to you, holds on a few moments longer than he normally would. Leeches the comfort your presence brings like he's starved for it. Kyle breathes in the scent of you—lemongrass and fennel; sweet and earthy—and feels that gaping wound inside of him close, just a little bit, when you fold him into a tight embrace, letting the vice of your grip speak the words he knows you'll never utter. 

Things like, please, don't ever do this to me again; and, don't go, Kyle. Please don't—

There's a multitude of things he wants to say to you. An endless bastion of sorrow and happiness and grief and elation all coalescing into this heavy anchor that hangs off his rib, pulling him down, down, down—

But he can't speak through the pulsing want in his throat. The urge to bite, to sink his teeth into you and never let go. 

So, he doesn't.

He holds you back instead, presses your soft cheek to where it aches the most, and buries his nose into your crown. 

Tries to satiate himself on the potency of your scent, the way it fills his lungs to bursting, and pretends the gnawing feeling in the pit of his chest is a purr and not a growl. 

The ravenous roar of a starving beast, hungering for something Kyle can't name. 

(He wonders if Soap felt this vacuum inside of himself, too.)

The comedown of the mission is spent with you tendering his wounds, and pressing trembling fingers to his pulse just to remind yourself that he's alive, that he's here with you. Present as warm flesh instead of a cold box full of ashes. 

In these soft, aching moments, he's forced to contend with the fact that he almost died. Again—

—(the word echoing in the recess of his mind, over and over; an accumulation of all those incredible near-misses)—

Almost left you alone in this world with nothing but broken, fragmented memories that would eventually fade. Fingerprints on a rusted handrail. Tangled in a gossamer of time, nearly forgotten as you grew older. Changed. He'd be the ex-boyfriend lost tragically. The one who died too soon. 

Someone else, he knows, would take his place when the grief took shape, becoming a corporeal feeling you could tuck away inside your pocket instead of a molten shadow burning you up from the inside out. Ever present. 

And that's the thought he gets stuck on. The one that cuts through him the most. 

You—his girl—belonging to someone else. Going on dates, kissing each other, laughing together. Falling in love. 

It's selfish to want you to stay single for the rest of your life should anything happen to him. Impractical, too. But it needles under his skin. An itch he can't scratch. A want he can't satiate. 

It won't even matter much when he's gone. He knows this. But it bothers him relentlessly. Souring his mood for days. Making him retreat, inward, to dismantle this unfathomable feeling taking root inside his chest. This bitterness, this anger. 

The thing about dying is that it tends to put things into perspective. 

Most common of all, he's told, is the fragility of the human existence, of life itself. Such a shallow thing, in retrospect. Barely a droplet in the unfathomable vastitude of time, and yet—

Something he never really thought about until it was unceremoniously thrown in his face. 

It's this, the sudden realisation that he's not as invincible as he's often tricked into thinking, that seems to shake the foundations of his life in ways that would be unthinkable to the him that lived weeks before his brush with death. But that man, that version of him, is swallowed whole by the unrelenting fear that pulses through him each time it passes through his mind. 

A fear of one thing:

Permanence. 

Or, rather, the lack thereof.

Memories will be all you have left of him, and, well—

That simply won't do. 

But the problem is this:

He doesn't know how to fix it. Doesn't know, really, how to stem this nauseating desire, this urge to own, possess, consume that roils through his chest each time he catches a glimpse of you unawares, tending to some mundane task. 

The idea of you floating through life without him is not a poison, but a fear. A whitehot agony that trickles down his spine. They're all thoughts that gut him, that make him agitated. Restless. He paces again, roaming from the foyer to the living room, feeling too much like a trapped animal. A snarling tiger in a zoo. He needs an out. An escape—

So he runs. 

And sometimes, you join him in the mornings before you have to go to work, setting out for a jog around the block in tandem. There's a quiet ambience to these outings, a comfort that makes him sigh—relieved, in parts, that the ache in his jaw, an unfamiliar urge to bite, abates in your presence. Your proximity is the balm to a hurt he didn't know he had. 

Most times, though, he's alone. Left with his thoughts and the taste of iron in his throat as he paces the streets of Birmingham with a lour twist to his lips and a tightness in his shoulders he tries to shake out by running his body to the ground. Replacing the ache in his stomach with one in his thighs, his hamstrings. His lungs. Breathes in the humid air of a midsummer morning until they feel like they might burst. 

It works. Marginally. Helps in the same way he's sure chamomile tea before bed does for an insomniac. But it's something. Something to suckle on until the quiver in his guts, the gnawing chasm in his belly, abates. Surrendering—albeit, mutinously—as the heavy taste of iron floods the back of his throat, and lactic acid leaves him groaning in the morning when he swings his sore, overworked muscles over the ledge of the bed. 

Kyle's in perfect health. Peak physical condition. The burn in his thighs, the tremble in his knees, is a sign of pushing himself too hard. Of edging to the very brink. 

But he can't stop. 

Not when his body hums like a livewire. Vitriol coursing through his veins, seeping into his tissue. Infecting him from within until he's irascible. Always on the edge. Always tense. Agitated. 

Everything feels like it's plunged underwater. As if he's staring down into the pool of an emerald lake, watching from above on dry land as the world goes on. 

(A place, now, where he doesn't belong.)

He knows all too well that this is just a duct tape solution to a bigger, more devastating problem, but opening the floodgates without a sluice will drown him under the crushing weight of what rushes out. 

It just makes sense, then, to bury it. 

The problem is: 

The tinderbox where these awful thoughts, this anger, went to moulder has been crushed, broken to pieces when he fell back to earth. 

He has nowhere to put them anymore. 

So he keeps them between his teeth, but being so close to you makes him want to bite—

(Bad dog. 

Let it go, drop it. Let it—)

Something has to give.

He calls Price. 

Hovers in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway leading to the living room, and tries to pretend that this isn't a cry for help. 

Price picks up after the third ring, gruff and irritable. His surly tone balmed by the heavy inhale of his cigar. 

He calls Price. 

Hovers in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway leading to the living room, and tries to pretend that this isn't a cry for help. 

Price picks up after the third ring, gruff and irritable. His surly tone was balmed by the heavy inhale of his cigar. 

“Better be important, Garrick. It's the weekend.”

“Crime doesn't work nine to five, captain. Thought you knew that better than anyone. Must be getting soft.”

“Soft,” he repeats with a derisive snort. In the background, he hears peals of laughter, the distant echo of, only thing soft about you is your midsection, honey. A grunt. A thwap. A squeal. 

This must be his wife, Kyle realises. The one he never speaks about directly, but can't stop bringing up in his own way. Home, he calls her. I’m going home. I'll be home for the weekend, don't bother me. Home is missing me, I reckon. Better pack it in, then, boys. 

They learned this only a few short weeks into knowing Price. Home, to him, is a person. Her. His wife. The echo, the silhouette; the one who lives in the brim of his hat, the end of his cigar. The scabs on his knuckles. 

The one he left at the door when had to beat a man, a father, for information. Picked up with bruised, shaking hands as soon as he was finished. Kept tight in his breast pocket. 

This little glimpse into his captain's life, heard through the tinny phone, makes Kyle swallow down his jealousy. The nausea. It's all so—

Sweet. Domestic. 

“Get outta here, this is a business call—” comes the brusque rasp, pulled away from the phone, and Kyle heaves out a breath. The voice comes back, gruffer than before. All tenderness shelved back in that box labelled only for her. “This better not be a business call, Garrick.”

“Been thinking about what you said,” he murmurs, and lets his head fall against the wood frame with a thud that rattles through his teeth. “About—lines, you know. And where to draw them.”

“Ah,” Price grouses, huffing. “So this is a work call, then.”

“Dunno, honestly, cap. Just—I don't know. I don't—”

“You bothered me on a Sunday, Garrick. Better know quickly—”

“How do you do it? Going out each time when you—with your—”

“Mm,” he steamrolls over Kyle's floundering question, humming deep in his chest. “I was wondering when this might come up.”

“Were you? Was that before or after the second helicopter crash?”

“Before, smartass—”

“Right. And? Any sage wisdom to impart on me, sir?”

He sucks in a breath. “What's botherin’ you, Gaz?”

Kyle blinks, caught off guard by the suddenness of the question. In retrospect, he supposes he should have expected it. Price is nothing if not brusque. 

“My girl,” he murmurs, quiet. Soft. As if it was meant to be a secret. “I just. I don't want to leave—leave her alone,” he thinks of David and has to fight back the dizzying anger that burns through his veins. “I know what this job entails, and I can do it, but—”

“So don't.” 

“Don't what? Don't die? That's a little unhelpful considering what we do, cap—”

“No. Don't leave her alone, Gaz. That's really all you can do.”

The thing is, he's sure Price means something sentimental, something metaphorical, like memories. Pictures, videos. Time spent together. 

But Kyle has never been much for abstracts in the past. Prefers, instead, the concretes. The tangible. The corporeal. Things he can touch. Feel. 

“My wife is expectin’. Has me running around the goddamn city for banh mi so unless there's anything else to add, sergeant—”

Expecting. He knew, of course. Despite Price saying very little at all about his wife, the silence has always been loud. Black and white ultrasound photos, phone calls. Dates scribbled down on the Staples calendar he has spread out on his desk in the office. He misses almost all of them—too busy running drills with new recruits, or on the field (or yelling—you did what, you fuckin’ Muppet?!—at Soap through the phone following his recovery leave somewhere that's need to know, according to Ghost)—but every time, Kyle catches him sneaking away, phone trapped in the crook of his shoulder and ear, muttering low, gravelly, into the receiver. 

Yeah, how'd it go? Everything good? Good. That's—

The silence, Kyle finds, is telling. 

His own, too, because this revelation seems to have knocked the air from his lungs. He can't—

Can't speak. Not yet. Not now. 

Expecting. It's—

A thought. Not particularly something he'd ever really considered much himself. He comes from a large, overbearing family. Functions, dinners. Holidays. All spent crammed into his grandma’s house in Pelham. The unequivocal centrefold. The matriarch of the family. 

Caught in the indivisible lines of oldest (between just his parents) and middle child (when including his two half-brothers on his father's side, and a half-sister on his mother's), he's no stranger to a big family. Something he's always wanted for himself, too. A little inkling in the back of his head that rears, purring in contentment whenever they all get together for Sunday dinners at Grandma's house and he's full of good food, lazing on the couch as his family bickers amongst each other over a game of monopoly (his older brother is always the banker, and always, always, cheats with his two younger sisters—twins, go figure). 

And his older sister, too, is expecting. Had poked your stomach three weeks ago, teasing, and when can we expect one from Gazzy?

He didn't think about it much—snapped at her for using his military callsign, kissed your temple as you sputtered at her cackling laughter, and then ducked into the kitchen to help his dad cut into the pie the twins, Lolly and Lucy, had made. 

(Made, though, as in popping into Tesco and making the decision to buy it.)

And now—

“No, uh…” He swallows. Swallows again. He tastes blood in the back of his throat. Realises, when his hands start to shake and his heart slams into the brackets of his ribs, that it's adrenaline. Excitement. 

“Sure,” he rasps out, words slick, tacky with his blood. “I'll, uh, give her just that, cap. And—enjoy your sandwiches.” 

“Oh,” he breathes out suddenly, sharp. Deep. “I will. Goodnight, Kyle.”

“Yeah, yeah. ‘Night, sir.”

He says, with all the casualness he can muster, “remember Price? John Price? Yeah, his, uh, his wife is expecting.” 

“Oh,” it rings like a gunshot. Your chopstick clangs against the tin of spicy mapo tofu. “That's—wow. A baby, huh? A whole—”

You swallow. Kids are not something either of you gave much thought to. Couldn't with his odd hours, gaping absences, and your school schedule. Nothing ever fit together back then; jagged edges of a puzzle. Lock and key forced to fit. 

But now. 

Now—

He folds a smile into the crease of his napkin. “Yeah. Price as a dad, huh? Reckon he'd be good at it.”

It makes you snort. “You think so?” 

“He's, uh, complicated. But—a good man.” Somewhat. Maybe. “Kids, though.” He lets the wistfulness in his tone carry the burden for him, content to simply exist in this moment with you. Let it saturate the air, perfumed in his longing. 

You breathe it in. This heavy, noxious miasma. 

“Must be great,” he adds, reaching for another piece of siumai. “Bein’ a dad an’ all. Lucky man.” 

Over a steaming plate of mapo tofu, he watches as your expression falls inward. Contemplative. 

You know him enough to understand that he's talking about it because it means something to him. That there's a hidden want tucked neatly inside the words he says, whispered echoes of the ones he doesn't. Won't. 

And he knows you well enough to know that you'll be ruminating on this tenfold. Replaying the conversation in your head like an old rerun. Over and over again. Needling away at the cadence, the words, until you find something worth digging into further.

(The conclusion, of course, has been laid out from the beginning. 

He just wishes he had the wherewithal to see it much earlier through the smoke.)

He licks his finger, and hums around the meaty oil smeared over his tongue. 

All pawns on a chessboard. In the gap, he inches his bishop forward. 

Slow. Steady. 

But you cut him off with your knight. 

“Kids are a big commitment,” you're mumbling in between bites of bittermelon drizzled with honey. “And considering the nature of your job—” the slipup forfeits your pawn. You pretend not to notice. “h–his. Uh, his job. I just—”

There's a piece of pale green rind between your teeth. It slips down your tooth when you speak, dropping down to your lip like a flake of fallen snow. 

You swallow. Lick your lips. The slide of your tongue drags away the fruit. Like it wasn't even there to begin with. 

When you speak, it's softer. Barely a whisper. He wishes you'd yell instead. Scream. It doesn't tremble past a few, gentle decibels. 

“—is that really for the best?”

(is it feasible for us?)

Kyle sucks in a breath between his teeth. He knows he has to tread carefully here. The ground beneath his feet was as fragile as eggshells. One misstep—

“Does it matter?” He volleys, paper-thin. “If it's something we—” he comes to a stop, a sudden halt. 

Manufacturing a Freudian slip is easier said than done but somehow he does it with ease. Bashful, then. Sheepish. Like he accidentally flashed you his hand. Revealed his secrets. He ducks his head—the vision of embarrassment, now—but it's multifaceted. The move serves to leave the impression of fractured vulnerability. Bares his soul, and all his broken, naked wants with it. But it also gives you a horrific glimpse at the ugly, marbled bruise still popcorned along his cheekbones, his jaw. The tear in his ear, scarred over into a black valley bracketed by red canyons. 

Raw, splintered, he adds: “if it's something they want, why does the rest matter?”

The silence that follows is long. Oppressive. It comes about with a swiftness he doesn't anticipate, and spends a considerable amount of time debating whether or not leaving it is the right choice. It's unlike him to be so uncertain. So hesitant. 

But this, he reasons, is different than getting a pretty girls number under dubious circumstances, or finessing your landlord into not renewing your lease. This is bigger than the games he played in the past. More is at stake here. 

So, he holds. 

Watches, quietly, as you fold under the pressure. “It's just—it's a big commitment, right?” 

He latches onto your uncertainty with his teeth. 

“If you're serious about it—like they are about each other—then what's the problem? I think they'll be fine,” he shrugs, blase. Indifferent. Winces when it pricks against the scab on his collarbone. “‘sides, it ain't like Price is gettin’ any younger. Man's been itchin’ for a family of his own for a long time. Might be the best time, too, considering the man's luck with—uh—”

He coughs into the top of his curled fist when you flinch at his callous implication. 

“—just… he's reckless, is all. Might mellow him out. Keep his head on straight if he knows what he has to come home to, and what he'd be leaving behind if he didn't.” Another shrug. “Could be a good thing for him in the long run.”

You take flight as soon as it steals away his piece. Fleeting. Retreating. 

You should know better than that. 

Kyle always chases the things that run—

It leads him to a pub downtown. 

David—fucking David—sits on the stool beside you, sipping on a flat draft, and laughing at something you're saying. 

It's innocuous, really. Nothing untoward. No immediate reason for his hackles to raise, hair standing on end like he's under threat. 

But he feels it in his bones. Gnarled fingers grazed over his flesh. A warning. Sirens wail in the back of his head, and his stomach drops like he's back in the airplane, the helicopter, all over again. Plummeting to earth. G-force flattening him against whining metal—

He's too close, is the problem. 

Curled over you like he's trying to keep you a secret from the rest of the world. Something Kyle knows well—intimately—because he does it, too. Tucks you into his side, barely letting anyone get a glimpse of you. To see you. They can imagine, sure. And sometimes he likes to pull back a little just to let a peak of you be seen only to swallow you back up under his bulk. A taunt, a tease. Waggishly waving his finger at the naughty person who dared look at his sun, his Apollo, without permission. 

To see it like this, from the outside looking in—a mere spectator when he's been teaching his hand up toward you for what feels like his entire life—is infuriating. It's voyeuristic, he finds, catching a glimpse of you from the triangular window of the man's arm—elbow on the table, cheek perched on his knuckles. All Kyle can do is squint into this little opening, catching the aftertaste of your smile. 

And the problem is, he's entirely too aware of every overprotective boyfriend clichè that exists. Knows, very well, when it stops being cute and becomes an issue. Borderline abusive. Gross. Restraining order worthy. 

You're allowed to smile at men who aren't him. To drink with them in fancy restaurants wearing a dress that he picked out. It's fine. He doesn't care. You do it often, honestly. There's something about you that draws people in. Like looking up at the warm sun after a long, dark winter. It's unavoidable. Expected, even. 

But—

Fucking David seems to be the exception to his patience. To his goodwill. 

Maybe it's the way he pushes your glass toward you, muttering drink up under his breath. Or the way he leans in when you move back. Following you despite the obvious signs not to. Pursuing you—

Even though he knows, very well, that you have a boyfriend. 

It's the arrogance, he thinks. 

(Or one predator sniffing out the stench of another; lions prowling around the same lioness—)

He doesn't realise he's sneering until you catch his gaze from between David's arm. Feels it then, when he has to let his muscles lax into a smile. Easy, effortless. Just like the one you give him in turn. 

Soft, tender around the edges. Melting into happiness within seconds. A rare treat you give no one but him—

A fact that makes David jerk in his seat slightly. Maybe elated by this new look, the simmering heat in your eyes is warm enough to make someone sweat.

Whatever happiness he feels is dashed, though, when he realises your eyes are focused over his shoulder, away from him. Quietly, David turns in his seat, craning his neck over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of what caught your attention so much, and—

It's real sweet, he finds, the way the haughty look on David's face falls, breaking on impact, the moment he locks eyes with Kyle. Shifting into shock, into unease. Flinching almost instinctively, driven to run out of fear. 

Like he knows. 

And Kyle grins. Gives that boyish smile you tell him, repeatedly, that you fell in love with—soft edges, dimples; lips stretched wide over his fangled canines—and watches the satisfaction drip down David's brow as you extricate yourself from his shadow, and are pulled, magnetic, to Kyle’s side. 

Where you belong. 

But more than that, where you choose to be. 

The weather outside is notably warmer this time of year than it should be, and it sticks, syrupy and warm, to his skin as he sips from his third bottle of San Miguel and picks at the leftovers of your shrimp scampi. 

Across from him, David nurses on a ginger and rye, and murmurs to you about something—a show, he thinks—that he isn't privy to. 

It's been like this for the last two hours they've sat out on the patio. Not quite an exclusion, not really. You do your best to keep him within this little cosm David is trying so hard to build, interrupting him quietly when he goes on long-winded tangents about something that Kyle isn't aware of, and filling in the blanks. 

(it's a reality TV show. we watched something similar, you remember? just like First Dates—)

But he's an outlier here. Gone too much to invest in a show with you like David is, a new addition to your usual friend group. It's never been something he's cared about before. Why stop you from enjoying a show when he's carted away to Mexico or Chicago on another mission, the end date undetermined. Until it's fuckin’ finished, Price used to gripe when he asked. Until we end it. 

It can't be helped. But his hands tighten around the bottle, warmed under his palm. Condescension bleeding in rivulets down the neck, drenching his skin. He's angry. Suddenly, viciously. Filled with a sense of irritation that drums up from deep within his chest as David plucks little inside jokes out of nothing, making you laugh, and laugh, and then turn to whisper in his ear about what they mean. 

It isn't your fault. It's a catalyst to dating a man halfway out the door on most days, but it itches. Prickles under his skin. Selfishly wanting you all to himself, to fawn over him, and laugh at these little jokes he makes, leaving David on the fringes instead. 

Childish. Or—

He'd think so if David didn't shift his gaze toward him each time it happened, lips quirking in a small, satisfied grin. Cats, he thinks. Little yellow canaries. Tries to pull some sense of normalcy from the frothing geysers that roil in his belly, anger sloshing over the basin, drenching everything in a molten ire. Anger. Blisteringly hot. 

It scalds him. Scorches his insides as David laughs, again, at a movie Kyle was too busy in Macedonia to see. 

When you explain that to David, he cuts a sudden grin at him. “Gone a lot, aren't you?” 

And a tension thickens in the air. Drapes around his shoulders, his brow. 

“Work, yeah,” it comes out as two, rough grunts. A warning. Stay back. 

But David curls his fingers over the rusting wrought iron, peering inside. “Work, hmm? Heard you were military—” his eyes flicker to you briefly, like this is something that might get you in trouble for divulging to a stranger, but they're back on Kyle before he can say anything about it. Something like, don't fucking look at her—

“David,” is what you say, low and soft, and tinged with exasperation like this is an old conversation that keeps popping up, an uninvited guest you can't seem to shake. 

The warning is ignored again. Coming from him, he almost understands. Could respect his contumaciousness, even, but you? It makes his hackles raise. A flare of anger pooling in the grizzle, the filament, that holds his knuckles together. 

He keeps himself composed. Somehow. Tempers down that urge to bite, to break things, even as David leans back, shrugging. 

“Military,” he says again, but this time his lip curls. “Can't imagine you're very well-liked anymore. Considering the state of the world and all.”

His fingers tighten against the bottle. “Yeah,” he bites, grins. Knows it's feral. Ugly. Lip curling over a single canine. “Can't really say I'm in it too much for how well-liked I am.” 

“Oh no? Not in it for the glory. The prestige. What do Americans like to say? Thank you for your service—”

“—David!” Your voice comes out sharp. A reprimand. Brows knotting tight together. “That's not—”

“What I do won't end up on the news,” he interjects, and brings his other hand down over your thigh. The sight makes David sniff, glancing away. Anger writ on his brow. Jealousy mouldering in his eyes. Kyle tries not to laugh. “And if it does, it's usually after the bad guy is in the ground, and you find out about it sitting at a desk, twiddling your thumbs all day.” 

The table falls silent. 

He brings the beer to his lips, taking a generous gulp. Something dark curls in his guts even as David's satisfied smile dwindles. 

He sends you home first, watching David move towards the washroom from the corner of his eye. 

“You'll be back tonight?” 

“Mmhm. Just gonna go for a quick run. Gotta stop and pick up some razors, too.” His hand comes up, fingers scratching at the stubble growing along his jaw. “Gettin’ a shadow.” 

“A run, huh?” You don't believe him, but he knows you. Knows you won't fight him too much on it—especially when you think David already left. “And I dunno. A beard might look good on you.”

“Might,” he scoffs before leaning down, pressing a quick kiss to your cupid's bow. “Might not, too.” 

“Think you'd look good in anything. Moustache. Beard. Bald. I'm not picky.”

“No, ‘course no,” he teases and holds the door open as you climb inside. “My unpicky girl.” 

“That's not a word.” 

“Sure it is. Word of the week for Oxford, wasn't it?” 

Your words are swallowed up when the taxi driver asks if you're ready to go. You give him a nod, and Kyle a smile. He watches, lingering by the curb until you're out of sight. 

And then his smile drops. His hands curl into fists. He cranes his head over his shoulder, eyes riveted to the washroom door. 

There's a choice here, he thinks. Get the shaving cream, the razor. Be the man you think he is. The one who runs after a heaping serving of tiramisu and the leftovers of your shrimp you couldn't finish. Maybe watch that show on Netflix that David was so keen on one-upping him on. Your head in his lap. Soft smiles, taunts. Continue this playful banter you started through until his face is buried in your cunt—victor’s choice, naturally; and you always win—and you end the night whimpering his name, not David's. 

That, in itself, is a victory. A win. 

But—

He grabs the ball cap from the rack near the door. It's cream-coloured. Team merchandise for ManU. A little red devil stands in the middle holding a pitchfork. Black, western lettering says WE'RE NEVER GONNA STOP. He snorts at it. Macabre. Fitting. And slips it over his head, letting it hang low on his brow. 

And then he follows after David. 

David stands with his back to the door, hands curled around the porcelain sink as he stares in the mirror, chin titled under the harsh flood of the dull, fluorescent light. 

His eyes flicker up when the door opens, widening slightly when Kyle emerges, liquid, in the reflection. But through the surprise, there's a touch of smug recognition that sets Kyle's teeth on edge when it drills into him. A sense of arrogance that makes his fingers itch. Trigger ready. 

“Oh, don't worry, mate,” he's saying, a smile curling up the corner of his mouth like smoke. “We've just gotten—” he pretends to think, gaze darting up to the bulbs hanging over his head, smarmy and oil-slick. He must think himself leonine. Victorious.

Kyle wants to wear his bloodied teeth around his neck. 

“Close,” he offers, and anger coils inside his guts like tar. “You know, since you've been away, and all. Nothin’ to worry about, though. We're just friends, mate. Promise.”

At that word, his smile turns sharp. Mocking. 

“Oh, yeah,” he hears himself saying, words fine powder on his tongue. “Close, huh?” 

“Well, she's been a bit lonely, you know. Big change, moving to a new city, an’ all alone. Needed, ah, some company.”

It burns. Blisters. The way this man speaks about you rips through him, bubbling away at his self-control like acid. Alone. As if he doesn't know. Lonely. Like he wasn't minutely aware of how much your dynamic has shifted since college, since he was some beat cop patrolling the streets with too much rage in his veins and no outlet for it, to now—when he's calling you from a medical ward (confidential, no you can't come see him) to let you know he was in (yet another) helicopter crash. Had another brush with death that pitches his mortality in the forefront of his mind like an omen. An obstacle. One that cracked open this sense of want, of urgency, hunger from the abyssal depths of his soul. 

But this—

It reminds him of when he'd get into fights in high school. Needling the kids he knew would take him up on his offer, who would meet him in sketchy alleys near council housing where the police were less likely to patrol and the neighbours more willing to ignore it. When he'd mock them, twisting his words, his anger, into a brutal knife until they took a swing at him. 

His hand curls into a fist. Muscle memory. It quivers through his joints—this insatiable urge to tear into something he knows will bleed. Will make him bleed. He needs it like a confessional. Therapeutic. 

Because the thing is:

Kyle likes the fights. Like the way his knuckles burn, and his muscles ache. The bruises. The scraps. The contusions. The pain feels good. Cathartic. Rapturous.

And really—

He needs to get this awful, terrible demon out of him before the saliva that floods its maw at the sight of you, held back only by sheer willpower and reruns of golden girls on the couch you found by the side of the road, spills over between jagged teeth. Before the leash snaps. 

David looks terrified. Scared. He turns around quickly, unwilling to let Kyle have at his vulnerable spine a moment longer. His skin catches on the porcelain rim of the sink as he swings around, the rubbery squeal loud in the sudden hush that falls between them. David winces. Pulls his hand off. 

“Look, man—”

Kyle takes a step forward. Another. It's not fun when they shrink, when they shake, trembling as he nears. He likes the idiots who linger outside of crowded pubs on Friday night harassing patrons. They are drunken slobs calling out to the women they see. They fight back when Kyle corners them. Fists swinging, legs jerking out in a poorly timed kick. Slurred words full of vitriol. 

At first, anyway. 

And then the whine of their polyester tracksuits rubbing across ashlar cut through the alley, and the haze of alcohol saturated their senses. It's around then when they realise just how badly they fucked up. 

But David is different.

Posh—even though the notion of the word itself rankles down his back, trickling like slick, hot oil. Pooling in the brackets of his spine. 

“You did this,” he says, watching the paper shell of the man crumble. “Shouldn't have fucked with my girl.” 

“I didn't mean anything—”

“You did.” He pushes his knuckles into his palm, listening to the satisfying crack of his joints. “But that's what you do, isn't it? Messin’ with things that don't belong to you.” 

“She—”

“C’mon,” he grunts, keyed up. Aching for something to hit. “Gonna throw a proper punch at me or am I just gonna have to kick your head in?” 

“Maybe she wanted it.” It prickles over his name. “Wants me. Begged me for it. Gonna hit me even though your girl is the one messing with me?”

The sour vindication on his face sets Kyle's teeth on edge. No way in hell. He knows this is what David's type does—losing in brawn, but trying to skew the game by getting in his head, making him lose his composure. Getting under his skin. Because that, in itself, is a victory, isn't it?

Bruises will heal, but this, these accusations, the idea that you want David in some way, went after him to slake something Kyle couldn't is gutting. 

And he gets it. Understands why David is saying this, but it doesn't make it any easier to stomach. To listen to. 

David sees his fist shake. Pales slightly. “What?” He asks, all false bravado. Broken confidence. Kyle can sniff the blood in the water. The fear in the air. “You gonna hit me, or somethin’, mate?”

And Kyle—

Kyle jerks his head to the side, letting the knot in his neck pop. The sound, ominous and poignant, fills the bathroom, eclipsing the static buzz of the dying bulbs over their heads. 

“Nah, mate,” his tone flatlines. “I’m gonna let you swing first. And then I’m gonna bash your face in. S’only proper, yeah?”

He staggers backwards from the crumpled heap of the man—still breathing, he notes with a huff, files it away for later; one less mess Price will have to clean up—and works his jaw. It aches. He tastes blood. Spits a glob of foamy pink onto the floor by his feet. No missing teeth, but his lip is split. 

Ah, well. 

Kyle feels fine. Drunk, though. Sluggish. Keyed up. Dazed off that post-adrenaline high of sinking his mangled fists into someone; into flesh, sinew, and bones. But—

Intact. Whole. 

He likes the sting in his knuckles. The tackiness of blood congealing around his fingers, staining his skin. 

Outside of the tangible, physical sensation—

Kyle isn't sure what he feels. 

A part of him was hopeful that this would abate the anger in his veins, and stave off some of the agony of an unrelenting, insatiable hunger. But all he feels is numb. Indifferent. 

Hitting David doesn't bring him the catharsis he desperately seeks even though it should. If anything, it's made him more anxious. Restless. 

He leaves. Needs to—to walk, to run, to escape the crime scene before they find an unconscious civilian in the washroom stall. Flexes his fists, his jaw, as he goes, pacing through the bar, the crowd of people he cares so little for. The cloying scent of alcohol, perfume, stale sweat, cigarettes is a thick, putrid miasma in his nose. He heaves through it, and cuts one of Ananke’s young to ground himself until he hits the door with the brunt of his weight, nearly tripping over himself to get out. 

The air outside is humid this time of year. Damp with the rain that's been drizzling down since mid-morning. He breathes in the balminess of it. Wishes, for a moment, that he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just not here. Not with that man's blood on his hands. Not with his words hissing ugliness and vitriol in Kyle's head—

He trusts you, is the thing. Knows, without any uncertainty or doubt, that you'd never cheat on him. But—

The thought is there. Not of your infidelity, your betrayal, but of you. You with another man. Someone who is not him. A stranger. 

Lonely. Kyle wants to scoff. Wants to scream. He wishes he killed him. Sunk his teeth into his jugular, gorged himself on his blood. Lonely. 

As if he didn't fucking know that already. 

There's smoke in his lungs. Ash in his throat. 

He digs into his pocket, wraps his aching, stiff fingers around his phone, and tugs it out. The blood on his hands leaves sticky smears across his screen. The touchpad barely registers the tremulous prompts he keys in. 

Still. Still. 

Kyle manages. Finds the contact he's looking for and hits CALL. 

He's not even sure if the number is in service, and doesn't put too much hope on it. It really doesn't matter if it connects or not. He's just—

He needs something. Someone. 

A clear path. A straight head. 

“—this is Johnny. Leave a message aft’r th’ tone, ‘nd ‘ah’ll—”

“Johnny. Fuck, man. I—shit—” Johnny's supposed to be dead. Laswell made them all swear on it. Wear a spiffy suit to his funeral, and dance the choreographed routine in front of everyone of a team in grief. “I don't know why I'm callin’. Just—my girl, my—” doves. apollo. “I don't know. Kinda feels like lately my heads all a mess. I'm hangin’ thread here, and I just—”

need to be told what he's doing is wrong. terrible. 

“—could use a friend, I suppose. Ah, shit. I don't know why I bothered—”

He hangs up. Drops his head. 

He feels fragile. Like something is going to break. 

Feet balancing on a spindle, the vertiginous drop below an instantaneous death, and Kyle—

He catches the moonrise on his way home. Thinks he can see Jupiter lingering in a flickering white light behind it. 

In his pocket, his phone buzzes once. Thrice. 

can' call right now. shite reception. in some park in canada. nahanni, ye ever heard of it? found a little doe injured in the wood. am takin’ good care’a it. plannin on bringin her home soon. once price sends a plane to pick me up. will introduce her to ya. pretty thing. 

anyway. got yer message. see, if it were me. if that were mah doe. id never leave em alone. ahd make em stay. 

think ye know what ta do, Gaz. 

see ye soon.

—Kyle steps off the spindle. 

You usher him in with a wounded noise in the back of your throat when you catch sight of the bruise under his chin, equal parts worried and questioning. He makes a show of shrugging, indifferent, when you take off his jacket, hanging it on the rack for him, and follows you inside when you move back. 

“It doesn't look like nothing,” you whisper, so sweet he feels the sugary grain of your words rubbing against his teeth. 

“It's just—” he's not sure where it comes from. In for a penny, he supposes, and lets the words flood between you, twisting and sour. “Your…friend, he, uh, caught me when I was about to leave, and—”

The worry splashed across your brow is wiped clean, replaced with disbelief, with shock, and then—

“Oh, that prick!” Anger. The tang of it is electric against his skin. 

“Who the hell does he think he is?” Your indignation is blistering. He basks in it. 

“It's fine,” he murmurs, soft and low. Quietly reassuring. “I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me.”

“Well, I do, anyway.” You volley back, words tight in your throat. 

You're so pretty like this. Illuminated softly in the cool, hazy glow of the television. It's a picture he wants to fold up, put it in his breast pocket for safekeeping, where it will stay warmed by the steady thud of his still-beating heart. 

Want pulses thickly in his sternum. The urge, the need, is there, simmering quietly in his periphery. Slowly taking up more and more space as it grows, too big for him to hold back. 

And so, he says, “I thought about this, you know. When I—” he stops, adds a small huff. A shallow shake of his head. “Nevermind.” 

If this were a movie, it would be a tender, heartbreaking beat. A moment filled with tension and a palpable, heady fear. 

You might say to him, please don't ever do that again, or even, please don't go; but he knows you just as much as he knows himself, and so it doesn't surprise him much at all when instead you swallow all of it down, letting it slowly metastasise inside of you, offering a small smile in response instead. 

A quiet, “yeah,” following along behind the brunt of your shielded misery. Buried for his benefit, because as much as these near misses might keep you up at night, you'll never tell him not to go. 

He adds, “been thinking a lot about what I'd miss out on, too, but—”

Kyle doesn't finish. Doesn't think he needs to. Not when he sees the gears turning in the back of your pretty, tear-filled eyes. 

Against the armrest of the couch you'd bought at an old antique store, his hand closes into a fist. 

Close, he thinks. But not close enough. 

It'd be easier to just flush your pills down the toilet. Poke holes in the condoms you keep in the drawer—just in case. Sabotage you through sugar pills; perfect replicas of the ones you clumsily take each morning, only ever half aware of what you were doing as you lean sleepily against the sink and listen to some podcast you've recently gotten into. 

So easy that he buys them without a second thought from some sketchy guy in the back alley of a Tesco Express. Pockets the package, and brings it home to you. Slips them inside the half-empty bottle where they fall to the bottom with a sharp clank. Clank, clank, clank—

The orange-tinted bottle sits on the countertop. Innocuous. Mocking. Everything he wants—you, you, you: forever, permanently—right there in front of him. Within reach. The smooth plastic surface is still warm to the touch from his aching hand—Ananke’s mangled brode on his palm has been itching furiously lately; he thinks he has an infection running jagged down his lifeline, the sink pickled and oozing pale yellow—and he holds it tight. Tighter still. Until the tumid scab on his hand cracks, pops open. Leaks blood and foul rot onto the container. Smears it soft pink with infection. 

Kyle knows right from wrong. 

His mum is a pillar of the community. A stalwart wall of firm, unyielding faith: the kind that brokers no arguments—do unto others as you would like done unto yourself, Kyle—and offers no retribution. Forgiveness stacks as high as karma. As goodness. As fairness. She wakes up every Sunday morning and goes to church. Spends all afternoon cooking meals for the homeless, the sick, and drags his father along with her as she drops them off at shelters, each with a handwritten passage about love and humility. 

He's not particularly religious, but she's never held it against him. Never forces belief when there is none. Content to let him grow into the man he wants to be. 

Though—while he shirked her belief, he stole away with her vicious sense of morality. Of justice. Right and wrong. 

Simply put: he knows better. Was raised better. 

And yet—

Somewhere down the line, his idea of good and bad evolved. Shifted. Cracked. He feels the remnants of it thrum in his veins; this foreign thing—this abrasive entity. It surges. Spumes; seeps in his bones. His marrow. Rewrites his foundation, his sense of self, until it's marbled with streaks of murk. Gangrenous. 

Good and bad. 

(the and an entire island of its own.)

He wonders if it started with Price—draw the line wherever you see fit—or if it was waiting, a hibernating beast, for someone like him to come along. A pantomime of a paradigm. Mockery of justice. Absolution in shades of self-interest. 

Either way, it doesn't matter much. Not anymore. Not when the cage, the iron shackles, housing that monstrous thing split open on the pavement outside of Giza, freeing this starving, angry animal. 

And really—

—he’d rather it quenched itself on you than anyone else.

Kyle places the bottle neatly back in the drawer. Slides it shut. It looks the same way it did when he arrived—pristine, innocuous, untouched. No one would know that he tampered with the seal, spilt the pills into the porcelain basin of the sink, ran hot water over them until they dissolved into sugary-white clumps, and washed them down the drain. Gone. Dissipated into a barely noticeable residue he scoops up with the tip of his index finger, bringing the specks closer to his face. It gleams in hazy sunlight dancing through the open curtain. 

Kyle brings it to his mouth. Licks it off. 

It tastes sweet. 

Ananke screams in agony when he grips a fistful of your hair, pushing your head down the length of his hardened cock, all the way down, down—

You sputter around the thick of him, eyes watering. Dripping rivers down to your hollowed cheeks. It pools there. A deep basin. A lagoon. He wants to drink it up—salt water cures everything, after all. 

The noises you make—quiet gags, wet chokes—have liquid pleasure trickling down his spine. An endless cacophony fills the bedroom. A soundscape he could get lost in forever—

“Yeah,” he rasps when your fingers dig moons into his thighs. “Such a good girl for me, aren't you?” 

The whimper that tumbles out vibrates through his cock, and he grunts with it, a deep groan that you answer by squeezing your thighs together, lashes fluttering. You like the noises he makes. The moans, the guttural grunts. The choked snarls. 

His good girl. 

“Takin’ me so well,” he's slurring his words, hips pushing with more insistence now. Desperate to spill down your throat. To watch you swallow him. “You always do, though. Don't you? Take whatever I give you, yeah? Gonna take it all now? All of it, yeah, pretty girl?”

He rambling. Words spilling out, breaking against his teeth. Ananke howls when he twists your hair, tugging you closer, closer, until the tip of your nose touches the thick bed of wry curls at the base, swallowed whole. You're crying now—choking. He grunts. It's liquid. Whitehot.

Your mouth is molten around him. He chases it, cock head nudging the back of your throat, bruising it. Ruining it. He wants to paint you in his cum; drench you in it. Mark, mar, your skin until all of the nobodies, the David’s, can smell him on you. Know, without any uncertainty, that you belong to Kyle—

His hips stutter—

“oh, fuck, oh fuck, fuck—”

—and he knows he's being too rough with you. Too demanding. Forceful. Taking his pleasure from your pliant flesh, cleaving pounds of you into his palm for him to keep. Scar tissue in the shape of his name—

His other hand drops, wraps around your throat, and—

Fuck. 

He can feel his cock through your skin. The bulge unmistakable through your neck, fattened with the thickness of him. 

This—and the hazy sight of you, angelic with your drenched face covered in spittle, pre-cum, and briny tears; eyes blown wide and preyish, full of desperate submission; and clumsy, needy way you hump against your fingers stuffed between your slick thighs, quivering under the unrepentant way he breaks you apart, takes you—pushes him over the edge. 

Equilibrium comes on a snarling grunt, wrenched out from the depths of his throat. So rasping, so gritty, guttural, that it hurts. Scrapes against his flesh until it's raw. Bruised. 

He feels the flex of your muscles as you swallow. The rasp of your tongue soothing the heavy pulse of the thick vein on the underside of his cock, greedy for every drop he has to give. 

It's perfect, he thinks. You're perfect. 

(and his. his, his his—)

He leaves later that evening. “Mission,” he offers, a wan grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Be back soon. Don't wait up.”

Worry chisels a ravine through your brow. “Is that—” you swallow. He hears the click in your throat. Tastes the anxiety rolling off of you; a sweet deluge. “I mean, you just got back. Are you—are you even cleared yet?”

“Ah, well. About that,” he scratches the back of his neck. Ananke shivers. “I have to do some recon. Nothing serious, but with—with, you know—”

Contrition tights his jaw. He sometimes forgets that officially Johnny MacTavish is dead. 

“Oh,” you try to murmur, but it comes out like a whimper. “Okay, well—”

You won't tell him not to go. It's not in you to weaponise your worry against his ambitions, his dreams. 

(It doesn't stop him from using this kindness against you.)

He times it well. 

Gone for thirty days in a wet, balmy jungle, snacking on nothing but bamboo shoots and moss. Ghost comes with him, shoulders set in a terse line—as usual—but there's a strange ease to his gait, a sudden liquidity to his hardened obsidian that catches Kyle's attention immediately. 

“Alright?” He asks, picking his teeth with a needle from a bush. “Seem in a good mood, Lieutenant. Not very typical for you, is it.” 

He lifts one massive shoulder in a lazy shrug. “S’nice weather.” 

It's humid. Hot. Steam billows up from the boiling first floor and congeals into a thick, dense cloud of heat. Kyle would hardly consider that to be nice weather. 

“Oh, yeah. The, uh, one hundred percent humidity is really good for the skin.”

Ghost, for his part, just shrugs again. Rumbles something about misbehaving pets, and obedience training, and seems content to let the conversation lapse into a comfortable silence. Kyle follows suit. 

It stays like that for most of the mission—save for the odd quips from Ghost, his humour a peculiar ester that sours, perchlorates, in the back of his throat. Team building, Price would probably say if he was here instead of back in Liverpool, looking at empty lots with his missus. 

(wants to build a fuckin' house so we have somethin’ to pass down to the kids—

He sounded angry about it, but Kyle found floor plans laid out across his desk, markings scratched into the margins as he argued with himself—and his wife—about sizing and layouts; the quips between thick, bolded letters (all uppercase) and boxy cursive filling him with a sense of envy so visceral, it made his stomach churn—)

It's almost boring compared to some of the things they'd done. Incident-free—something he knows Laswell and Price will enjoy; less paperwork. Or—

Almost, anyway. 

Kyle gets shot in the shoulder the last week of the mission—a surface wound, of course; but it leaves a mangled mess of scabs and torn, jagged tissue on his flesh. 

Ghost sees it. Eyes liquid black through the thick foliage, cutting a searing line to where Kyle sits, arm wrapped in gauze, casual despite the burning agony in his shoulder. 

“Coulda dodged,” he muses, head tilting to the side in what Kyle can describe as dogish. 

Kyle swallows. “Could’ve,” he agrees, and offers nothing else. 

“Looks like I’m not the only one training a new dog.” Ghost hums to himself, quietly amused by the puckered skin on Kyle's shoulder. “‘bout time you got a scar to match the big boys, Garrick.” 

“Big boys.” He snorts. “And where's Price’s?”

The man's eyes are liquid in the nightfall. Vantablack. He wonders what sort of dog a man like him has at home. What kind would stick around. 

Or if it's even a choice. 

“‘ave you seen his back? Old dog wrangled himself a little tiger.” 

An unknown number texts him later that evening. When he opens it, it's just a blurry picture of a figure bundled up in a tweed quilt, nothing but their shoulders and head visible, as they stare out the window. The room is lit in burnt umber. He catches the corner of what must be a wood stove—the only light source, perhaps. It baths them in a heavy swath of tenebrous on the opposite side of the stove. The other is highlighted in an ethereal, aged orange. 

When his eyes slowly adjust to the hazy sfumato, he makes out the distinct shape of a woman. Fingers tangled in the throw. Spilled oil, midnight gloam, against dark blue. What a picture they make. 

But why was it sent to him—?

His answer comes a moment later. 

think it's time ta come home. know anything about gettin’ a little doe thru customs? 

might know a thing or two about that, yeah. probs best to talk with Price. 

shite. he'll ‘ave mah ‘ead fer this one. 

In the quiet cabin of his airplane, Kyle places his phone on the empty seat, and grins. 

Your fingers thread through his, palm kissing Ananke with a gentleness that belies the fire in your eyes. The burning fever as you draw him in, drag him closer. 

There's an urgency in the way you reach for him. Touch him. Starved, almost. And he supposes it's only natural when the last time you've been intimate was a month ago—when he spread you out over the sheets and kept his face buried between your thighs for hours; uttering soft hymns, orisons, at the very apex of your altar—and so sparingly between. Too afraid to hurt him. Your worry is now a weapon used against you.

(“you crashed in an airplane, Kyle! there's no way nothing is wrong with you after that. something had to have broken, right?”

right. right. just the fragile walls holding himself together—)

His wince presses the blade taut to your neck. “Sorry, dovie. Hurts a bit—”

Digs it in. Draws blood. 

Your eyes drop to his shoulder, wide and wild. Feverish with your worry, your desperation. The wound is bandaged up in gauze—thick enough that it leaves a distinct shape under his shirt. Pokes out from beneath his collar. 

There's worry, of course. A bone-weary sort of sorrow that thickens around your eyes, pinches tight on the curve of your jaw. 

He wonders if you'll pull away again. Cushion the wound between you like a wall, and keep your distance until the unfounded belief that he's somehow too delicate to touch. 

“Sorry,” you murmur, and it's blistering. “I just—Kyle, I—”

You don't pull away. 

“I know, yeah? It's fine. I'm okay. Back in one piece this time.”

This time sours in the air. Putrid. Rotten. Your lip wobbles. Lashes puddle with pearling tears. 

He thinks you might cry. 

(hopes that you do.)

“I know,” is whispered, gritty and raw. “And how long until—until you have to leave again?”

Kyle huffs. “In the morning. ‘m’sorry, dovie,” he leans down, rests his forehead in the crook of your neck. “I tried to wiggle out of it, but we're short a man.”

“Is this even ethical? I mean—” your shoulders shake. He bites back a grin. Your worry so thick, so sweet, in his ear. “You just got shot, and they're sending you back out?”

“Technically, it's just recon—”

“This was just recon, too, and look what happened—”

“Love.” He silences your protests with a soft bark. The way you immediately quieten at his tone liquifies in the base of his spine. “I gotta. I have to go. This is what I signed up for, you know?”

“I know. I just—” your hand lifts to his head, gentle. Fingers stroking over the shaved hair on the nape of his neck. “I can't lose you. And lately, it's like everytime you leave, you get hurt. I can't help thinking, is this the last time I'll ever see him again? whenever you walk out the door. I hate it. I know that's your job, I know that. But, fuck, Kyle—”

“I know, love. I know.” He kisses the warm skin at the base of your neck. You shiver against him, nails biting slightly into his nape. “There's so much I still want to do. So much in life I want, especially with you, but—”

You don't let him finish. Your arms wrap around him, holding him gingerly to your quivering body. 

The way you cling to him feels like a victory in itself. 

Check—

There's an animalistic desperation in the way you drag him into the bedroom, eyes sparking in the dark. Smouldering embers. Clothes strewn somewhere in the hallway, forgotten. 

He worries his jaw to fight back a grin when you knock the condoms from his hand when he fishes them out of the drawer. 

“‘s’fine,” you slur, mouthing along his neck. Suckling intently at his skin. “‘m’on the pill. I'm—”

God. You're so sweet, aren't you? 

He buries his grin in your neck, biting down on soft skin until his canines catch. Split flesh. Blood wells, trapped under enamel. He tastes the iron as it pools up, thin and watery, and so distinctly you it makes him dizzy. Rust. Ore. A moan is dredged up from the back of his throat as he laves his tongue over the indents, the puncture wounds, he left behind. 

You shiver at the sounds he makes, small whimpers tumble past your lips—breathless; shallow and quick, matching tempo with your heartbeat. Tinged with the sting of his bite, the way he sucks around them, irritated flesh; sinks the tip of his tongue into each little split until he can't taste blood anymore. Just salt. Skin. You. 

This thing that lives inside of him is hungry. Starved. It growls low in his belly, a tightening heat that blooms with the blood he swallows down. Feeding it. Just a taste. A tease. Barely enough to sate the burn he feels flickering just behind his larynx, soldering through tissue, and tendon. Blackening bone. 

You say his name, low and sweet. Peppered out between soft lips. 

It's—

A lot. Not enough. 

Kyle pulls back, rocking on the balls of his feet just to reorient himself, and then leans down, catching your mouth in a frantic kiss that makes you shiver against him, gasping into it. His tongue delves in, and chases the sweetness of his name still lingering between your teeth. 

His hands glue to your skin, featherlight, as he slides his palm over your body. Feeling you. The heat. The goosebumps that break out at his touch. His other hand slips up your spine, curling over your nape. 

He doesn't say much else. With the taste of you tucked between his teeth, he finds he doesn't need much else. Just this. Just you. 

But you're tugging on him, pulling. Whining into the kiss. Peeling away with a gasp when he pushes you down onto the bed by your hips. 

You go down quietly in the dark, eyes wide in the pale blue moonlight; fixed on him as he follows after you—hunt, chase, consume—until he's balanced above you with his palms pressed into the mattress. Beneath him like this, you're a vision. A dream. His heart breaks free, soars. He feels the flutter of wings battering into the cradle of his ribs as he looks down at you.

He almost calls you Apollo. Sinks his teeth into his bottom lip instead. Can't trust himself like this. Not right now. 

So, he tries to grin, but it feels worn. Threadbare. “Fuck, you have no idea what you do to me.” 

“I have a pretty good idea,” you whisper, gaze dropping down to his hips where his cock juts out, hard. Weeping. Feebly tries to curve up to his stomach but the weight forces it down. 

Your legs spread, parting for him instantly. Hands reach, grabbing at his skin, pulling him closer. He goes with a groan, biting his lip when his cock brushes the soft skin of your slick, sticky inner thigh. Soaked, he finds. 

“All this for me?” He rumbles, fingers slipping on your skin when he drags his hand down, pushing your legs open further. Wide enough for him to fit. “Gonna give a guy a complex.”

“As if you need another one,” you volley, but it's breathless. Caught on the tail end of a whimper when his hips slot into yours, cock heavy and hard on your soft skin. 

“Sayin’ it's too big for you, then?” he teases on the jagged edge of a wide, sharp grin. 

The need that blooms in your eyes, the slight part of your kiss-bitten lips, pupils melting over the edges, a total eclipse, makes him want to sink inside of you. Carve a spot just for him over and over again. Make you take him, break apart on the thick split of his cock inside of you. And he only just manages to reign the urge to pry your folds apart, nudge his head into you. Barely holding himself together, fighting for every ounce of restraint he has because as he knows you'll let him—let him slide inside, fuck you into the mattress until you're sobbing—he can't. 

Too big, he thinks. Reaffirms. And it comes out as almost a pout. 

“Don't worry,” he huffs, bending down to nip along your jaw, fingers sliding over the slick, sticky skin of your inner thighs. “I’ll take care of you, yeah? Get you good and ready for my cock.” 

(and more, of course; a lifetime—

but the bite of Ananke’s young keeps him spilling these secrets onto the sheets.)

Kyle likes to think he has a keen sense of smell, and as he buries his face between your thighs, nose pressed tight against your clit, he imagines he can scent the chemical changes in your body. The natural musk of you, more potent now than ever, without the artificial blocks in the way. 

Taste, too—

He presses a kiss against your slit before letting his mouth part on a deep inhale, tongue rolling out, pressing between your folds. Parting them. The first touch makes your hips jerk, breath catching in your throat. 

You taste good. Earthy. 

It's been too long since he tasted your cunt. Feasted. He slips the flat arch of his tongue over you again in broad, heavy strokes from rim to the soft crease between your clit and mound. Drinking you in as the soft moans, the hiccupping gasps, cudgel his resolve. 

You babble his name as he presses your thighs flat to the mattress, head buried between them with a single-minded goal of making you fall to pieces with his tongue on you, lapping at your pussy. Tasting for himself the natural tang of you, his machinations seen through to the end. 

And you—obvious to it all—whine, eager for more of his touch, as he presses his nose into the soft skin of your navel, and breathes in again. 

He pulls you down on top of him after making you clench around him—tight, tied like a vice—three times with his mouth, tongue, his fingers kneading that soft spot just inside your cunt until your legs quivered around him. Until you gushed with your release, cumming on a choked scream. 

It made you all pliant and soft, putty in his hands that he can tug as much as he wants, however he wants. Shaping you over the tapered spread of his waist, cock nesting between your hot, sticky folds. Your hands on his chest, breath shallow. Please is whispered out of your bruised lips, sweet and lachrymal. He shivers and licks his lips. 

You have no idea what you're begging for. No idea what he plans on doing to you. And he thinks, maybe, he ought to feel some sense of shame for making you take what he gives you like this, making you ride him as he fucks you full. Traps you. 

There's a fire burning inside of him. Molten. He reaches down, grabbing his cock. You blink at him, tears clinging to your lashes, before you slowly, clumsily, lift yourself up for him with a soft, heated breath. Like you want it. These awful thoughts sutured between you like a fine, silk thread. He nearly unravels at the seams just thinking about it. 

Even playing pretend in his mind threatens to shatter his resolve,

—a golden fantasy filming over his gaze, dusted in starlight; the ethereal glow of ananke coruscating off of Jupiter's elves: you begging for him, pleading with him to sink as deep inside of you as he can get until no dog will be able to differentiate between your scent and his

break it into pieces. 

“Want it, don't you?” It comes out sun-scorched. Blistered. Raw. 

You whimper when the fat head of his cock catches on your sopping rim, stretching you open for him. He can't decide what he wants to look at more—the sight of himself disappearing into you, or the look on his face when he does—and his gaze swings wildly, a pendulum oscillating between both, greedy for all of it. Sears it into memory. Burns it behind his eyelids. 

Kyle reaches up, hands sliding across your body. Feeling the quiver in your flesh, your lungs pressing against your ribs, pushing it out. He wants to touch everything. All of you. Settles, instead, for sliding his palm up to your shaking breast, letting it fall into the cup of his hand. Pinching your hardened nipple between his middle and ring finger. Just. A tease. Barely any pressure. Rolling it between his second knuckles until you're arching into him, desperate for more. More friction, more pressure. 

He teases around your flesh until goosebumps prickle over the sensitive skin, bearing his teeth in a crooked grin when you whine, clumsily pawing at his chest and pushing your breasts into his hand. 

“Want somethin'?” 

Your response is a sharp huff. A half bitten whisper of his name. 

“No?” He taunts, shifting his hips under you. Feeling the way your cunt pulses, fluttering over his thick length. “Fine. Guess I'll—”

He goes to pull his hand away from your breast, lips curling into a taunting smirk, but a whine tumbles out. Your hips rock, pressing flat along his cock. The pressure, the pleasure, knocks the air from his lungs, and for a moment, he thinks they popped. Burst. He struggles to fill them when you shift above him, drenching his lower belly, groin, and inner thighs with the wetness that drips, molten, over him. It's good. Too good—

“Kyle,” you whisper, clit pressing taut to the weeping head of his cock. Trapped between your cunt and his stomach, the blunt pressure rockets through him, bringing him close to the edge. Dangerously close. “C’mon—”

He snorts derisively—the impromptu amalgamation of a choked laugh drenched in disbelief and sutured together with the delirium of pleasure rippling through his stomach scrapes over the soft tissue of his throat. Abrasive. Rough. 

The air that comes out of his nose, hacked up from the tatter of his lungs, hurts when he spits it out. 

“Fuck,” he rasps, rolling his hips into you. Desperate. Eager. It's airy. Loose. He clenches his jaw, grunts a rasping, ugly fuck from between the tight seam of his teeth. “Gonna make me cum, dove.”

It spurns you on. You babble above him—no, Kyle, no, don't cum, don't—but do nothing to stop the quick cants of your hips, fingers knotted into the matted hair on his chest. It's paper thin, barely a whisper when you breathe heavily through your nose and whimper, I want you to cum inside me—

And it's—

It's a thought. A dream. Nothing new to your voracious sex life, really; but the sweet-sour taste still lingers in the back of his teeth. The heady scent of you in his nose. 

A single pill placed in each slot—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—

His eyes roll. Hips stutter. 

There's a fever in his veins. An urgency. He groans his assent, hands falling to the expanse of your hips, holding tight as he stops the slow rolls you keep trying to make. He needs to be inside of you. Says as much when you pout at the loss of friction, watching understanding dawn over you. An eagerness that seems to keep pace with his own following quickly behind. 

“Yeah,” you say, and the word is obscene. Breathed out on a moan that makes his cock twitch. Then, yeah, yeah, Kyle, please—

He pulls you up, up, groaning when you slide your hand down his chest, pawing at his cock until it's gripped in your palm. The touch burning through him. Skin on skin. Fingers barely meeting around the thick of it. 

“Come on,” he rasps, swallowing down the words he can't say yet. Things like take me, all of me, every last drop—

He helps you lift higher. Keeps you steady as you line him up, the head pushing against your slick rim, catching when you sink down, thighs flexing. 

It's a slow drop as you adjust to the burn of taking him. Down, down—gasps, mewls, whines leaving your lips with each inch, devastating little ah, ah’s that spin around his head until he's dizzy. 

His name is a plea when you can't take anymore, when the thickness of him becomes too much. Eyes misting with unshed tears, bottom lip trapped between your teeth. The look you give him is so pitiful, he nearly whines—

“You can do it, baby.” 

It's a shuddered gasp, thin and reedy. He wants you to cry, to weep. To rain your fists down across his chest when the burn of him splitting you open becomes too much, nearly choking on how viciously you spit out his name. 

“C’mon,” he slurs, lifting his hips in shallow, lazy cants. Feeding you another half an inch. Another—

“Kyle, Kyle—” you gasp, and he knows. Should take pity on you for the sting, the burden of taking him so deeply, pretty pussy stretched tight around him. 

Should—

“Barely much left, dove—” he means to grunt, but it comes out on a growl. His knuckles ache. “You can do it for me, can't you? Take all of me. Been so long, dovie. Been so fuckin’ long—”

It's between missed this pretty pussy on my cock and need you, baby, need you so bad that you break. Trembling above him as another inch is forced into you. Keening when his hands tighten around your waist, fingers biting into your flesh, and he pulls, pulls, at the same time he thrusts up, cunt giving way, opening up for him so perfectly—

“That's it, dovie—”

The folds of your pussy swell around the fat base of his cock, pressed tight to the skin of his groin, and Kyle can't stop the rough moan that spills out, hips jerking at the raw sensation of having you wrapped around him. Silken walls. A slick, feverish heat. You pulse, flesh fluttering over the length of him, and it's somehow both euphoric and uttering damning—the pleasure so intense, it churns his stomach. Makes him nauseous with how badly he wants to stay inside of you like this forever until it's sacrosanct. 

You feel liquid around him. All heat and pulsing, flexing muscle. He ruts into it. Cants his hips up, up, little nudges that push the air from your lungs in short, choking gasps. 

He lets you take what you need from him first, hands steady on your hip. Palm moulding over your breast, pinching your nipple between his fingers. Leaning up to lave his tongue over the hardened peak you squirm on his lap, bouncing shallowly on his cock. Giving you everything, all of him, as you slowly bring yourself closer to the edge. Face pinched in bliss, eyes squeezing shut, rolling slightly as you work yourself over his cock, hips twitching. Flexing. Your pretty mouth drops open when you lean forward, hands bracing over the swell of his chest, finding the perfect angle for his cock to hit. 

His name is a whimper, a plea. A litany of sounds that blister through his chest. A white-hot knife buried in his groin because fucking you is always a sweet sort of agony, he finds; pleasure and pain effortlessly balancing on a razor blade. He breathes around the ache, feeling the threads of his control pull taut over the blade, snapping one by one—

It's a mindless drive for more of that electric pleasure, that blissful pain, when he plants the soles of his feet on the soft sheets, and bucks. His cock bludgeons through wet, hot heat, feeling the silken flutter of you clenching tight around him, and he can't stop the groan from jittering out between clenched teeth. 

He knows he won't last. Can feel it well up in his groin, hovering on the edge of a precipice. It's headier, more potent, than anything he'd ever felt. The elation, the urgency—it fills him up from the inside out, twisting in his veins, blotting along his hindbrain. Needing to cum, to fill you up—

Your nails dig into the smattering of hair on his chest, clinging to him as he squares his feet on the mattress, pistoning into you. Making you howl for him—deep, breathless moans rolling off your tongue, bitten out between his name, said like grace as it drips down your chin. 

There's nothing better than this, he thinks, arching his neck on the pillow, head thrown back as he thrusts up, meeting you in the middle. Working in tandem. Pleasure is hewn together, tethered until you can't hold yourself up anymore. Until the stretch him filling you up, sitting thick, fat, inside your abused, aching cunt is too much for you to take. 

The way you look above him—chin bowed, mouth open as a litany of moans spill out; brow furrowed, eyes listing shut in bliss—knocks the air from his lungs in a painful, agonising punch. You look ethereal, superlunary, as you babble above him, spine bowed in a pretty bow. Taking everything he has to give you—

His palms ache. Itch. Ananke grows restless as his thrusts become sloppy. Desperate. 

“Come for me,” he barks. Demands. Pleas. 

His hand squeezes tight before letting go, dropping down to your belly, over your mound. You’re slick, wet. His thumb softens over your clit, gentle strokes to bring you to the same summit he stands on, ready to jump. Hips jerking, thrusting into you from below. Fucking into you with steady, deep cants of his hips. Making you take him, all of him. 

Your cunt flutters around him, clenching tight. Pulsing little throbs that mirror the heavy brag of his heart slamming into his chest. Made for him, he thinks, eyes widening in feverish delirium as he tries to commit the way you look arched above him to memory. Burning it behind his eyelids. 

The pleasure on your face, the desperation, make him break. 

He lets go of your hips, slides his hand up your spine, feeling your warm, damp skin under his rough palm as he drags it to your nape. His fingers curl over the back of your neck, a gentle squeeze; a comforting weight—just enough to make melt in his arms, relax, before he pulls you down until you're chest to chest. He snakes his arm out from between your bellies, throwing it over your waist to anchor you down as he bucks up into you. Taking. Taking. 

The sounds made when he fucks into your like this, the squelch of your pussy, the slap of his balls on your ass, have his eyes rolling back into his head. Unbridled pleasure bloomed over his spine, spooling in his groin. 

He's right there. Right there—

“Oh, fuck, baby—” he gasps out, choking. “I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna—”

He feels his name purr from within your chest before you push back, squirming on his chest as you fuck yourself back onto his cock. Taking him deeper inside of you until he nudges your cervix and makes you whine—

He grasps to find that same thread of control he keeps wound tight around his wrist, an anchor line for him to cling to, but when he paws at the dark, he finds nothing there. Nothing but thick, syrupy pleasure. Bliss. He feels your slick run down the length of his cock, pooling in the tangled hair dusting over his sack. Drenching the sheets. 

His hand slides down your back, fingers stretching, reaching, grabbing a fistful of your asscheek in his hand. Squeezing it tight as he pulls you down over him again and again. It forces him deeper, until he's certain that there's no place inside of you that he hasn't touched. 

And it's this thought that unravels the knot. Becomes his undoing. His violent end. But it's you bending down, sweat-slick cheek pressing to his chest, murmuring:

Please. Please—

And then:

“Come on,” you moan, the words shuttered out of your chest with the force of his thrusts, head shaking. Rattling. “Cum inside me, Kyle—” 

It’s catching sunlight in the palm of his hands, feeling the skin burn, and blister. Apollo in his hands. 

“Fuck, gonna cum, love—” he grinds out on a moan, grinding his hips into you in choppy, desperate thrusts until the force it punches through his stomach, leaves him winded. 

You drop down on his lap, taking the full, thick length of his cock inside of you as he cums, vision blurring around the edges as he struggles to keep his eyes open, glued to the sight of you taking it all. Every drop—

Through the haze, he commits every blurred movement to memory: your quivering belly; your heaving breast, nipples pebbled and swollen from his mouth. The spread of your thighs over his hips, the way the coarse, thick hair on his groin flattens against your mound. Slick, wet from you. Milky, now, with the steady trickle of his cum leaking out even though he keeps you nice and plugged up. It makes him jerk beneath you, breath coming out in a heavy gust. 

his apollo—

His hands flatten along your collar bones, curling upward to shape around your neck. He feels each desperate breath, each swallow, against his searing palms. 

He wraps his hands around your neck, and it would be so easy to imagine a collar. 

And you lean into it. Your head drops back, eyes slipping closed as you bare more of your throat to him. He folds the tips of his fingers over each other, linking them on the nape of your neck, shivering when the sweet, peach-soft peal of his name slips past your lips—

Yeah, he thinks, fingers tightening on your skin once before he lets go. Drops them down to your belly. Curves over your waist. Holding tight. Tighter.

But not a collar wouldn't look nearly as pretty, wouldn't it? 

It's five in the morning when the text comes in. 

Sitting between an update from Price (this doctor's a fuckin' muppet—), one from Ghost (how's the shoulder), and something from his mother—a TikTok video he thumbs loosely at, sending a chain of laughing face emojis in response—is a foreign number. According to a quick Google search, the area code—867—is from Canada. The Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, specifically. 

He opens it, glancing at the string of numbers on his phone, brows furrowing as he tries to make sense of it—

And then it clicks. 

Coordinates. Google says they're in Scotland. Remote. Knoydart. 

The grin splits across his lips, pulls tight at his cheeks. 

Welcome home, he writes. Any trouble with that doe of yours? Customs must've had a fit. 

A second later, a message appears. Adjustin nicely to the highlands. Nik did all the heavy liftin. Y’should come visit. See fer yerself. 

The bed shifts when you move, pulling yourself closer to him in the quiet dark of mid-dawn. Drawn to him even in the deep of sleep. He thinks of moths, flames, and curls his arm over your shoulders, pulling you closer. Presses a kiss to your crown, breathes you in. 

With the phone held in one hand, he swipes his thumb across the screen, typing out a quick reply. Taps SEND. Watches the notification flick from delivered to read before he drops it onto his lap, and lets his head fall back, the grin still tugging on his lips. 

Icarus couldn't get to Apollo with flimsy wings of borrowed feathers, and beeswax. The distance between Earth and the sun is too great to fly to. An uncrossable chasm. 

So, he brought Apollo to Earth instead. 

Just might. 

In the quiet bloom of a mid-morning dawn, you find him on the patio, gazing out at the streets below. Brows furrowed in a soft contemplation. It's not something you're used to seeing on his face—this sombre, solemn grey shading his features in a way that makes you feel almost as far away from him as Jupiter.

“What's wrong?” 

Kyle tilts his chin up toward you, mouth flattening as he shakes his head. Shrugs. 

“Nothin’.”

“Mmhm,” you tease, fingers threading over the hair behind his ears. His skin is warm. Sunkissed. You press your nails to his scalp, dragging them through the thick coils of his hair until you meet the soft dip at his temple. He leans into your touch, forehead resting on the soft bump of your belly. 

When he doesn't speak after a moment, you huff. Soft, coy. “Fine. Keep your secrets.” 

His nose rubs over the soft cashmere of your sweater. “Been thinkin’ is all.”

“About what?” 

He hums, breath warm on your skin. “Want to come to Scotland with me? Get away for the weekend?” 

“You think your mum and sisters are letting me go anywhere right now? Pretty sure I heard them plotting about wrapping me up in a mattress so I can't hurt myself or the baby—”

A snort bubbles up. “Mum likes you. Loves you. She's just overprotective. M’sure I can convince her.”

“You think so?” 

Kyle is quiet for a moment. A beat. Just long enough to mull over the probability of stealing you away from under his family's nose. Unlikely, of course. When the twins have your weekend booked up already—a movie marathon with nothing but pizza, snacks, and John Hughes. 

And NO Gazzy allowed!!!

“Nah, suppose not,” he huffs, placing his hands on your thighs. “If they're being too much, you can tell them to piss off—”

“They're fine,” you shrug. Overprotective, but—

It seems to run in the family. 

“I really don't mind.” 

He gives in with a shallow nod. “You gonna be okay if I go?”

“I think I'll manage on my own. It's—”

“Yeah.” 

Need to know, you remember the big, scary one saying when you met Kyle at the tarmac. His voice low over the whir of the engines in the distance, but robust. Brassy. The inflection is standoffish. Cold. But you saw how he turned back around when Kyle led you away, eerie gaze drilling into his injured shoulder for a moment before calling out to him that Bravo Seven-One was inbound. 

The difference between Kyle and the company he keeps always seems to jar you slightly. He's so normal in comparison. So human. Grounded in reality in a way that makes everyone else around him feel preternatural. 

“I’ll be fine,” you say at length, hand falling to the soft, barely noticeable bump he rests his head on. A happy accident. You wonder if it overwhelms him a little. Babies. Kids. None of it ever felt feasible before all of this. “Go have fun in the mountains.” 

It pulls another snort of him, and he turns his head, peppers a soft kiss to your navel, eyes flicking upward to stare at you. Dancing with mirth. A mordant sort of humour you can't begin to understand. 

Need to know, maybe. 

“Fun, huh?” It's muffled by your skin. “Think I'm bein’ led to my untimely death, actually.” 

“That so?” You hum, a smile curving over your lips. “At least make it look like an accident, yeah? We won't get the insurance payout otherwise.”

“No shit? Murder in the highlands isn't covered? What the hell am I paying nearly three hundred pounds for, then?” 

“Peace of mind.”

It makes him snort before he buries his face in your belly, scratching his nose on your cashmere in a small nuzzle. 

“Ain't much of a peace of mind, is it?”

“Better now,” you offer, fanning your fingers over the arch of his ear, soothing the tiny pout you can feel forming against your skin. 

“Yeah, well—”

His words taper off, lost to a kiss placed just above your belly button. It might be an apology. Sorry for almost dying—

Again. 

And as much as you hate that he has to, that he peppers kisses in place of it'll never happen again, or don't worry, I'm here now, you know what this is. You've known it from the beginning. Accepted it as is because with you or without you, Kyle was going to do what he does regardless. Begging him not to, to reconsider, is not a line of selfishness you're willing to cross—

Or, weren't, rather. 

Until this. Until now. 

This soft, barely noticeable curve seemed to overwrite the desire to let him fly as high as he wanted. To rearrange the stars until he fit amongst them; more dust than man. Selfish, maybe. Definitely. 

But the condition was less of an ultimatum and more of a plea. I don't want to be a single mum, Kyle. Perspective, you suppose, does that to people. Changes them. Shapes them into something different. 

You think maybe he felt the same way when he bowed his head over the table, staring down at the pregnancy test you laid down for him, and nodded. 

(“Yeah, yes. Uh, I'll—yeah. I'll—” he swallowed around the brine in his throat. Salt congealed over his airways until his voice was a rough scrape between his teeth, desiccated. “I'll talk to Price. No more helicopters—”)

There was more, of course. A hashing of everything. All of it spilt out over the table. He gave up as much as he could without sacrificing that insatiable desire to soar as high as he can, untethered to the earth. And you promised to anchor him down when need be. When he tries to fly too close to the sun.

A compromise. 

And—

“Bring some flowers for me,” you murmur at length, fingers grazing the shell of his ear. 

—an apology. 

He keeps his head bowed. “Supposed to be need to know.” 

“Call it a hunch, then.”

A snort. His shoulders shake. “Sure. Price’ll love that one. Intuition will sound good on the report.”

“Oh, no. Big, scary military men afraid of a little paperwork.”

“Oi—” His fingers dig into your sides. A playful pinch. You choke out a shallow laugh, raking your nails over his scalp in retaliation, but it just makes him shiver. Groan. 

Keep doin’ that and I'll give our neighbours a show—

“How long will you be gone for?”

His lips tug downward. “Just the weekend.”

“Don't have too much fun without me.” 

He slides his face over your belly until he's balanced on the tip of his chin. That sombre look is back again. Pensive. Quiet. He'll tell you the truth when he's ready, you're sure, and you brush your fingers over the divot in his brow, smoothing the wrinkle out. 

“We'll be fine.” You say, and he nods because he knows. You're safe here. But still—

He presses a kiss to your belly, staring up at you through the golden curve of his ashes. Sombre expression melting into something languid. Lax. Catlike, you think, huffing when his hands curl around the backs of your thighs, pads of fingers dipping into soft skin. 

Kyle catches it. Grins. Heat soaks into your flesh where his palms rest, nestled just below the curve of your ass. His intentions are clear, obvious, and you go willingly when he pulls you into his lap, thighs thrown over his. 

Your throne, he’d once joked in the early days of dating, when you were still discovering pieces of yourselves in each other’s naked flesh. A truism now because whenever he can manage it, Kyle seems to prefer you sitting on his lap, head tucked under his chin. Within reach. 

Always. 

His personal stress ball, perhaps. A weighted blanket. As you nuzzle close, his shoulders dip. The tension in his muscles bleeding out by the weight of you on him, the brush of your skin. You press in, leaching comfort from his sun-warmed flesh. Fingers trailing down the angled slope of his face until his jaw is held in the plinth of your palms. 

The ghost of a pout still lingers in the jut of his lower lip. You sweep your thumb over it, nail curving along the valley of his cupid’s bow to map the path you know better than your own sloping plains. A kiss to the ridge of his jaw chases away the saturnine shadows still falling across lush beds of gold; sun dusted colluvium. 

You taste salt on your tongue when you pepper a kiss just above the arched curve of his cheekbone, his lashes fluttering down, tickling your mouth when he blinks. 

It doesn’t get rid of all the Ttenebrae tucked tight inside the canyons of burnt umber, coruscating amber, but flecks of aurate gleam through the shade of eventide. A glimmering gem in a sea of moon white. 

The flickering embers of his unease melts with his huff. His thumb strokes along the curve of your ass, settling over your waist. Holding you close. You catch the way his eyes drop briefly down to your belly. The bloom of heat in his eyes. Liquid gold. Darkening as he stares, marbled with possessiveness. With the unfettered threads of satisfaction streaking through. 

The eyes of a big cat as he licks the blood from his jowls, his kill still cooling on his paws. 

“Better be.” 

“Overprotective already and they’re not even here yet,” you tease when he lifts his gaze. Honeyed with want; syrupy with desire. 

“Not just for them,” Kyle rasps, his hand sliding up your spine, cupping your nape in his palm. Dragging you closer to breathe his need over your lips. “You're both mine.”

“Kyle—”

“Say it.” 

“We’re yours,” you whisper, catching the stutter in his pulse when your hands slide down his jaw, cupping his neck. “Just yours—”

The rest of your words are devoured by his scorching mouth, eaten right from between your teeth. Kyle’s kisses have always edged into consumption, you think. Like he trying to eat you whole—nothing saved for later. No scrap spared. Wasted. 

It’s dizzying. Edges into too much, too intense. You can’t keep up with him no matter how hard you try. He’s always several paces ahead, drawing your tongue into his mouth. Letting the sharp edge of his canines graze your flesh, scraping the soft tissue. All you can do is cling to him. Hold on as he glues his mouth to yours and eats—

When he pulls away, giving you a moment to catch your breath, you think you hear him growl, never lettin’ either of you go—

But he drags you back into him a second later, mouth slipping over yours with an untempered hunger. The purr he lets out trembling over your tongue, shaking the thought right out of your head. 

Never, you’d say if he let you. If he gave you a moment to think. Peeled his tongue from between the seam of your teeth long enough to let you gasp the words out. 

He doesn’t. He won’t. 

He drags wet, sticky lips across your cheek, over your jaw, down your throat, before sinking his canines into the throb of your pulse beating under your skin instead. Steals the thoughts from your head as you gasp his name out, followed quickly by please and Kyle, more—

Kyle lifts his hand from your spine, fingers stretching out. Reaching. The sun glows between the spread of his fingers; scintillating like fine, golden mist over his fingers. Beautiful, he thinks when your breath hitches in a shallow gasp; held tight his arm, and—

(with it cradled in middle of his hand, he closes his fingers around the sun until it's swallowed up in his palm.)

—all his. 

Title: Wendigo Disorder.

Pairing: Yandere!Sukuna x Reader (JJK).

Word Count: 5.0k.

Written for a very lovely anonymous commissioner.

TW: Non/Con, Fem!Reader, Cannibalism, No Curse AU, Chef Sukuna AU, Oral Sex, Unhealthy Relationships, Kidnapping, Gore, Physical + Psychological Abuse, Unbalanced Power Dynamics, and Prolonged Captivity. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

Sukuna kept the basement door locked.

That was the only part of his rustic, oversized house that was off-limits to you. For the first few weeks, he’d kept you either collared and leashed to the headboard of his bed if he was home and locked in a roughly human-sized dog kennel when he wasn’t, but now, you were allowed to wander freely, even if he still kept deadbolts on the windows and doors. Occasionally, he’d lock you out of the kitchen while he was working on a new recipe or tell you to stay in your bedroom while he talked to his every-mysterious “business partners”, but for a kidnapper, Sukuna was surprisingly trusting. The basement door was the only thing that was always locked – and you should know. You checked the knob at least twice a day.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of you escaping, or hurting yourself, or god forbid, hurting him. Even in the early days, before you’d proved you weren’t going to run away, he seemed to be more concerned that you might be a nuisance than that you might be any kind of threat. The only thing you really knew was that the basement was where he kept his meat locker, and while you were curious, you were sure that wasn’t what he was keeping you away from. Sukuna had you sample everything he made. If he was going to start withholding food, then he would’ve had to—

“Oi, brat.” You felt his elbow jab into your side, drawing you out of your thoughts. “Quit daydreaming and try this.”

You glanced towards him, pouting as you straightened your back and repositioned yourself on the kitchen counter. You would’ve been more comfortable to sit on the floor, or better yet, at the table in the next room, but he liked to have you as close as possible whenever he was cooking. Not that you’d have it any other way. “You’re always so mean to me,” you sighed, in a pitchy mock whine. “One day, I’m not going to want to spend time with you at all.”

“As if. You can’t get enough of me.” He rolled his eyes, turning back to the stove top. Currently, he was working on something for his restaurant – a variation on karaage, a spread of vegetables and meat (pork, maybe, but you weren’t entirely sure) sitting on a cutting board off to the side, a greased skillet waiting next to it. His attention was on the broth simmering in the pot in front of him, though, which his ingredients would strew in before being fried. He’d been toying with it for the better part of an hour, and you’d sat diligently within arm’s reach, only slightly motivated by the fact that he’d threatened to break both your ankles if you tried to move.

Your sample turned out to be a piece of broccoli – likely chosen to best compliment the flavor of the broth – and you accepted it eagerly, letting Sukuna bring his chopsticks to your lips and feed you by-hand. Of course, the flavor was heavenly, and of course, you took long seconds to savor it, letting your eyes fall shut as you chewed and swallowed. Sukuna watched you intently, his dark eyes never leaving your lips. It wasn’t a secret that his favorite part of you had always been your mouth. You didn’t mind – his cooking was the only thing you’d ever liked about him.

Praise would’ve been pointless. It was a given that anything he made would be the best thing you’d ever tasted, so you tried to focus on something more productive. “It’s… salty,” you surmised, pursing your lips. “Did you use your…?”

“Cum?” Sukuna finished. “Just a tablespoon. ‘m surprised you can even taste it.”

A month ago, you might’ve recoiled, refused to eat, but now, it was all you could do to pretend to be surprised.

You watched intently as he added another cup of water, another round of herbs all kept in mismatched, unlabeled jars. Your heart skipped a beat as he finally reached towards the cutting board, but he pulled away at the last minute, turning to you, instead.

“’kuna,” you whined as he slid into the space between your legs, planting a large hand on either side of you. “I was actually hoping to eat sometime tonight, y’know.”

“I know, I know.” And yet, he didn’t seem concerned, chuckling as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, pressing an open-mouthed kiss into the base of your throat. “You’ll get to, just sit pretty for a little while longer.”

“But—” He cut you off with another kiss, this one immediately followed by feeling of his pointed canines burrowing into tender skin. You flinched into yourself, and Sukuna groaned into your neck, drawing back just far enough to run the flat of his tongue over the twin puncture marks.  Your hands shot to his shoulders, but you resisted the urge to push him away. Even if you did, it was already too late; you could feel something stiff pressing against the inside of your thigh, hear him murmuring something low and affectionate into the dip of your shoulder. Resigned, you leaned back against the kitchen cabinets and shut your eyes.

At least, if he got this over with quickly enough, you might still get to eat.

~

Your first impression of Sukuna, unsurprisingly, was that he looked more like a body builder than a chef.

Calling him massive would’ve been an understatement. He stood a head above you, with biceps as thick as your head and a chest so defined, you could see the outline of his definition through the thin fabric of his black (presumably not Health and Safety compliant) tank top. He had piercings, too – twin studs underneath his bottom lip, lining the bridge of his nose – and tattoos, black lines forming intricate patterns across his jawline and bands around his wrist. You already had your back to the concrete wall, but you pressed yourself against it, regardless, eager to put as much space between you and him as possible. Sukuna remained where he was, perpetually unimpressed.

His introduction was brief, succinct. “You’re the little bitch Uraume sent out?”

“I… I think so?” You genuinely weren’t sure. The waitress had only told you that the owner wanted to talk to you outside, which you hadn’t been surprised by. It was your fourth time coming in that week, since his restaurant didn’t do takeout and the last person to order more than they could eat in one sitting was promptly and proudly taken outside and beaten half to death. You couldn’t risk that, not when more than half of your meals came from his shop.  “I’m sorry, I just—Are you the chef? I really like—”

“Shut the fuck up.” He took half a step toward you, and you glanced down the alleyway behind his restaurant. One end was cut off with a chain-link fence, and while the other side opened up onto a proper road, it was still more than fifty feet away. You never would’ve made it, not with someone like Sukuna chasing you. “Who sent you? The Gojo clan?”

Sent you? You had no idea what he was talking about – if you had someone to fund your addiction, you wouldn’t have to resign yourself the cheapest section of his overpriced menu. You opened your mouth, but must’ve taken longer to answer than you realized. You blinked, and suddenly, his hand was planted on the wall beside your head, his body only a hair’s width from yours. He had to tilt his head forward to look at you, which while not surprising, did little to comfort you. “Answer the fucking question.” And then, when you shrunk into yourself at his tone. “I swear to fucking Christ—Did he tell you what happens to the people who piss me off? Because you’re about to—”

“I can’t eat anything else!”

You were just as surprised as he was to hear your own voice. Still, you did your best to recover quickly, falling into a stiff bow as deep as the confined space would allow. With your eyes fixed on the pavement, you forced yourself to go on, to say something that would stop the owner of your favorite restaurant from murdering you in the alleyway behind that aforementioned restaurant. “I—I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time, but—but a classmate brought me here a few months ago, and—and I haven’t been able to eat anywhere else since. I can come in less often, if that’s what you’re bothered by, but please.” You forced yourself to inhale, to breathe. “Please, don’t ban me.”

At that, Sukuna broke. You didn’t dare to look at him, but you could hear the smirk in his voice, the airy laugh lacing his tone, as if he found something about your desperation funny. He did, obviously. You’d quickly realize that Sukuna found most things about you funny. “You think I’m going to… What was it? Ban you?”

You nodded furiously. “I—I know you kicked out that salaryman last week, and a couple students the week before. They were all regulars, but I haven’t seen any of them since.” It was a rushed explanation, only half-coherent, but you still tried to go on, bowing your head. “I—I can’t cook, and I can’t eat anywhere else, anymore. If you ban me, I really don’t have a lot of other options, so—”

“You can go back to your table.”

It was your turn to blink, this time, to startle. You didn’t straighten your back, not until you felt Sukuna’s hand on your shoulder, heard the grin in his voice sharpen. “Really?”

“Mhm. Don’t order, I’ll send something over. And you’re going to stay until closing.” And then, as you stared up at him with as much gratitude you’d ever felt, “We’re going to grab a couple drinks after I close up shop. Try to think of a few more compliments, before then.”

It wasn’t a question, but you nodded regardless. After scurrying back to your table before Sukuna could change his mind, a white-haired woman who you’d never seen working the front of house before brought you a meat dish so rare, you could’ve sworn it hadn’t been cooked at all.

It went without saying that you savored every bite.

~

“Needy ass brat.”

His bicep dug into your stomach where you were slung over his shoulder, your legs dangling uselessly was your hands clawed half-heartedly at his back. You weren’t really upset that he’d caught you – you knew it’d only be a matter of time the moment you slipped out of bed – but it was frustrating just how quickly he’d come to get you. You’d barely gotten to the kitchen, let alone the fridge.

Your mind drifted back to the basement door – to the meat locker. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you decided that you would try to pick the lock tomorrow, after he’d left for the day. Whatever punishment he’d dull out would be worth it, if you could actually get in.

Unceremoniously, you were dumped onto the floor of his bedroom, left to shamble to your knees as he collapsed onto the foot of the bed. You moved to stand, but Sukuna was quick to catch you by the hair and force you back down. “Disobedient, too,” he muttered, his voice still rough with exhaustion. “Tell me what you were trying to do before I decide you can’t be trusted with the ability to walk.”

You sulked, letting out a shallow sigh and resting your cheek against the inside of his knee. “I’m just hungry,” you explained, feigning thoughtlessness. It was more or less true. You were eating better than you ever had before, and yet, your stomach had never felt emptier. “I was gonna come back, after I got something.”

Sukuna chuckled, running his fingers through your hair. You melted into his thigh, eager to keep his mood light, sentimental. “I feed you three gourmet meals a day, baby. Don’t act like you’re starving.”

“But I am.” You sighed, stared up at him with your doe-like expression. “I’ve really been craving meat, lately, ‘specially that stuff you keep downstairs. Can you make it again tomorrow?”

“We’ll see. I don’t want you getting spoiled, and ‘sides, I’ve gotta save some of it for the shop.” You frowned, sinking deeper into his thigh, and Sukuna sighed, raking his nails over your scalp. “But, maybe, if I got some motivation from my little helper…”

He trailed off, and suddenly, it was your turn to play oblivious. “Well, yeah, I’d obviously help,” you chirped, mimicking his smile. “I’m not very good in the kitchen, though, so you can’t blame me if—”

“That’s not what I want from you, babydoll.”

You felt something tighten in your chest. It wasn’t painful, but the way his fingers tugged at your hair was.

He didn’t pull. You tried to be thankful for that, but it was hard to be thankful for anything when his free hand was already at the waistband of his sweats, freeing the semi-stiff cock formerly hidden beneath the grey fabric. You frowned, but didn’t pull away. “How are you already hard?” And then, as you settled onto your knees, “You woke up, like, two minutes ago.”

“Always gotta have something nice n’ warm ready for my baby.” Rather than let your whining deter him, he focused on drawing you into his lap, encouraging you to lean into him, to brace yourself on his muscular thighs. Controlling as always, Sukuna guided you gently towards his cock. You half-expected him to force you down at the last minute, to laugh as he suffocated you on his length, but of course, he didn’t. He wasn’t that kind.

He wouldn’t let you play such a passive role in your own dehumanization.

You moved as quickly as you could without making your unwillingness entirely transparent, taking the head of his cock past your lips and running the flat of your tongue over his slit (already leaking, as if this couldn’t get any worse). You couldn’t pretend to be some pure-of-heart, dewy eyed virgin, not when most of your mornings were started with Sukuna thrusting three fingers lazily into your cunt and most of your nights ended with his face buried between your thighs, but you never seemed to be able to completely brace yourself for just how wide you had to open your mouth to take him, just how mindful you had to be to not let your teeth scrape against his shaft as you struggled to get past his tip. Like everything else about Sukuna, his cock was too fucking big. Not that he seemed to care.

If anything, Sukuna seemed to like the way you gagged around him. As you wrapped a hand around his base, pumping over the parts of his shaft you couldn’t swallow and trying to ignore the fact that your fingers didn’t touch, you heard him groan, felt his grip tighten on your hair, and knew he was staring at you, drinking in the sight of you choking on his cock with as little shame as you had dignity. “Good girl,” he muttered, more to himself than to you. “Are you gonna start moving, or does the spoiled princess need a little help?”

‘Help’ meant him holding your head in-place while he fucked your skull. Resisting the urge to shake your head, you bobbed shallowly, the veined underside of his cock gliding over your tongue as a knot of ache formed in either corner of your jaw, the strain already too painful to ignore. You could taste his arousal in the back of your throat, feel him throbbing against the hollows of your cheeks, but you forced yourself to dip your head lower, to take him deeper, to at least attempt to match the stuttering pace of your hand with that of your mouth. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep him distracted. His hand drifted from the back of your head to the nape of your neck, his thumb pushing rough patterns into your skin. “Still can’t believe I get to keep such a sweet thing all to myself.” It was almost cruel, how composed he sounded while saliva dripped from the corner of your mouth. “It would’ve been a shame if I’d fucked up and done something really mean, that first day. I don’t think I would’ve gone through with it, though. As soon as I got a good look, all I wanted was to see what that pretty mouth looked like wrapped around my cock.”

His breath hitched, his hips bucked, and you audibly gagged as the blunt head of his cock slammed into the back of your throat. You jerked away on reflex, but Sukuna didn’t let you go far. His hand wrapped around your neck as he rolled his hips, forcing another inch of his cock down your throat, then another, until it was all you could do to blink away the tears quickly forming in your eyes. Your hand fell away from his shaft to scramble and claw at his thighs, but if Sukuna mourned the loss of contact, you couldn’t tell. The only thing you could make out was his cock pulsing against the convulsing walls of your throat and his voice, as distant as it was deafening. “Fuck,” he sighed, then again, “Fuck. Desperate little bitch. My desperate little bitch. Can’t go three fucking seconds without needing me to take care of you, isn’t that right?”

Your only response was a desperate, keening whine – mostly muffled by the twitching object lodged in your airway. Rather than a plea for mercy, Sukuna seemed to take it as confirmation, taking you by the back of your head and forcing you that much further, that much closer. “Fucking—Take it.”

He didn’t give you a chance to spit, let alone pull away. Your nose brushed against the defined muscle of his abdomen as you felt something bitter and searing flood down your throat. Calling it swallowing would’ve been too generous.

That night, you vomited twice before letting Sukuna carry you to bed. Despite everything, you would dream only of the taste of fresh blood and burnt meat.

~

Despite everything, you only saw the kitchen of Sukuna’s restaurant once. He expected you at your usual table almost every day, invited you out for drinks at one of his classy, dimly lit lounges (a severe juxtaposition to his own hole-in-the-wall establishment) nearly as often as that, but he only let you see his back of house once, late at night, hours after closing.

Coincidentally, that was also the night he took you away.

Admittedly, it was difficult to remember why you’d been called back to the kitchen. That section of your day was blurry, distant, fuzzy around the edges from the moment you stepped into his shop to the second you woke up alone in a bed you didn’t recognize, the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke thick in the air.  Still, you could remember the feeling of chilled titanium pressing into your back, the heat of Sukuna’s body above you, what he’d looked like as you stared up at him from below. You remembered thinking, possibly for the first time, that you hated everything about him, from his inflated ego to his resonating voice to his awful, conniving smirk, and realizing that you’d never be able to leave him.

You also remembered the white-haired server being there – standing in the doorway, her expression one of pleasant indifference as she explained something grotesque and nonsensical to Sukuna, either oblivious to or uncaring of how deeply he was buried inside of you. You watched her lips move, but only a few words broke through the haze – disposal and witness, nothing that made any sense. You remembered noticing how pretty she was, and thinking that it was a shame she wasn’t the owner, rather than Sukuna.

You could remember asking for something, and Sukuna humming in response before something was shoved past your lips – heady and thick and raw. You tasted blood on your lips, felt yourself choke, and then, everything was dark.

~

“Oh, sweetheart.”

You should’ve known he’d gotten home. You’d been able to make out the sound of his footsteps through the floor above, been able to feel the light spill onto your back as the basement door and its useless, mangled knob were pushed open, but it wasn’t until you heard his voice that you could bring yourself to care. Even then, your hold on the raw chunk of half-frozen meat only tightened, nails digging into the ruddy, bleeding tissue. As much as you didn’t want to put a name to it, it would’ve been impossible to deny what it was – to ignore what you’d seen inside of the meat locker, to pretend you hadn’t recognized the disassembled bodies hanging on rusted-over hooks, to act like you could mistake the taste still heavy on your tongue for that of pig, or cow, or some other, inferior animal. It would’ve been useless, even if the temptation was still there. It would’ve been futile.

Almost as futile as trying to deny that it was the best fucking thing you’d ever choked down.

You heard the tell-tale creak of Sukuna starting to descend the staircase, and before you could stop yourself, dug your teeth into the brunt of the sinew, tearing off the largest mouthful you were capable of and swallowing it whole. You dipped your head for another bite, but it was too late – Sukuna was already behind you, his hand already wrapped around the collar of your shirt, your body already being jerked back and away from your hard-earned prize. You tried to dig your nails into the thick of the fat, to stuff the last of it past your lips, but with an airy chuckle and a quirk of his wrist, the cut was torn away and discarded just as thoughtlessly.

For the first time, you snapped towards Sukuna, your teeth bared and your eyes narrowed into something furious, something hostile. “Why would you—” And then, letting out a miserable sob and turning away from him, “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to break anything, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and then—”

“I get it, baby. You aren’t in trouble.”

“And then I found something heavy enough to break the knob and I couldn’t stop thinking about—” You cut yourself off suddenly, letting out a sharp exhale. “…I’m not?”

“No, princess, you’re not.” If you hadn’t known better, you might’ve mistaken his tone for something gentle. His gaze fell to your chest, and for the first time, you noticed the blood dripping down your chin, staining the fabric of your top. “We should get you cleaned up, though. You’ll only feel shittier when it dries.”

You didn’t protest as he pulled you into his arms and carried you upstairs, out of the basement, away from the meat locker. You didn’t say anything as he set you on his bed, your back leaning against the headboard, and eased your top over your head, replacing it with one of his own, and produced a damp cloth from the nearest bathroom. Gingerly, he cleaned the gore off your face, never rushing through a stroke or applying more pressure than was absolutely necessary, stopping often to kiss your forehead or the bridge of your nose. You were sniffling by the time he finished, crying by the time he left the room, and sobbing when he came back – a bowl in hand with a pair of chopsticks laid across its rim.

Its contents were predictable: meat, pan-grilled in thin slices and, as far as you could tell, left unseasoned. “I’ll make some rice when you’re done,” Sukuna went on, as you struggled with the chopsticks. “To balance it out. You’ll need something to take the edge off.”

You nodded vacantly, accepting the bowl greedily despite your shaking hands. It was better raw – the flavor richer, the taste fresher – but you weren’t in a place to complain, not when it was so much easier when you didn’t have to gnaw and tear like some wild, starving animal. Not that you weren’t eating like one – keeping the rim of the bowl pressed into your chin, never letting more than a second lapse between one mouthful and the next. You only paused when you felt the mattress dip, noticed Sukuna positioning himself between your legs, and but he only smiled, only rested a hand on your knee. “Keep going,” he urged. “It’d be a waste to let it get cold, right?”

“I don’t like this.” Your voice was still unsteady, prone to cracking, but it was true. You didn’t want him to pretend to be nice. “I’ve never really liked you. I’d leave, if I could. There hasn’t been a moment since you kidnapped me that I haven’t spent fantasizing about getting out and fixing what you’ve done to me.”

“You’re just saying that to hurt my feelings, doll.” You were, but it wasn’t. Slowly, he lowered himself onto his chest, one hand spreading your thighs apart while the other toyed lazily with the hem of your shorts. You felt him lean against your thigh, pressing an open-mouthed kiss into the tender flesh. You’d gained weight during your time with him – not much, just a few pounds, a little plush to soften your harsher edges. You weren’t sure whether or not to care. “I’m just proud, that’s all. Don’t you want me to be proud of you?”

You didn’t want anything from him. Your appetite gone, you placed the bowl haphazardly on the bedside table, watching through clouded eyes as Sukuna removed your shorts entirely, taking agonizing seconds to guide them down your legs before letting them drop to the floor below. You expected your panties to follow, but Sukuna only settled into place, dragging the pad of his thumb over the length of your slit, pausing to draw slow, idle circles into your clit through the silken fabric. It went without saying that he picked out your clothes, even if he rarely had the patience to tell you exactly what to wear. You were allowed to choose your outfit day-to-day, but it didn’t matter. It couldn’t, not when your entire closet was suited to his tastes.

His hands curled around your thighs. You felt his tongue before you realized what he was doing – wet and warm and thick, his saliva soaking through the thin material and infecting you, spoiling you. You tried to ignore it, to remind yourself that you should be used to this, used to him, but this just… wasn’t what you were used to. Normally, you could expect him to be cruel, degrading, impulsive, but tonight, he seemed more than happy to bury his face between your thighs and play lover – albeit, a lover who still must’ve known he was unwanted. A lover who must’ve known you would’ve preferred a captor.

Your panties were dragged to the side, his tongue immediately finding your cunt. He took his time, laving over your entrance, coaxing reactions out of you despite your best attempts to dig your teeth into your tongue and hold back. He knew too much about you. He’d had too much time to learn. Heat pooled in your core, leaking out through your pussy, and Sukuna lapped it up like a fine wine – his thumb finding your clit as his tongue traced patterns into your cunt, and—

And oh, god, you were crying again, tears dripping down your cheeks despite your pitiful attempts to brush them away. Sukuna’s eyes flickered up to meet yours, and you felt him smile against the inside of your thigh, his tongue dipping shallowly into your cunt once, twice before he pulled away, straightening his back. His hand quickly replaced his mouth, two thick fingers thrusting into pussy with a humiliating sort of ease, spreading apart and curling against you and filling his bedroom with those embarrassing, wet, vile noises you’d never been able to stand. He didn’t seem to mind, holding your gaze as he spoke. “When did you put it together?”

“I—I don’t know what you’re—”

“Don’t play dumb.” And then, as his thumb traced harsh circles into your clit, “You knew what you were looking for. What gave it away? The texture? The smell?”

Your mouth opened, but you didn’t answer, a fractured moan falling from your lips in the place of anything more intelligent. Sukuna hummed, adding a third digit, and you spilled open in an instant. “Your restaurant,” you managed, the words rushed and sloppy. “No matter what I ordered, the meat would always taste the same. At first, I—I thought you were just being cheap, but then I noticed how often your regulars would just suddenly stop coming in, and—”

You were cut off by your own miserable, keening whine; his calloused fingers catching on something tender and vulnerable inside of you and taking advantage of it. “And you kept coming in,” he finished, hushing your whimpering. “Loyal little brat. Uraume wanted to get rid of you, but I knew I was right to take you in.”

You didn’t respond. You couldn’t. You were too busy moving your hips against his hand, seeking out the pleasure that your body craved and your mind rejected. Sukuna took pity on you, cooing as he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you into his lap, supporting you as the movements of his hand turned short, erratic, as he edged you closer and closer and closer to your climax. You came undone with a sob, burying your face in his chest, and Sukuna was kind enough to nurse you through it, to hold you against him as your body crumpled and your poor, beaten soul seemed to give out entirely.

Eventually, he broke the silence. “I think,” he said, bowing his head and running his tongue over your cheek. “It’s time for you to learn to cook.”

You couldn’t think, but you didn’t have to. There was only one thing you ever would’ve said.

“I’d like that.”

Imo I think we need more poly 141 fics or threesome fics where reader and one of the lads are the subs. Like I’m obsessed with your dom ghost and sun reader and soap!!! I wish there were more fics like that our there!

YEA YEA ABSOLUTELY!! i love love that dynamic; the ghoap x reader one has a special place in my heart because it’s so ‘master and his pet and his pet’s toy’ trope yk??? but yea dude poly!141 (x reader) is just so beautiful, but when theres clear power dynamics going on?? oh yeaa <3

also uh if its any consolation, i have a bunch of lil blurbs of this dynamic :3

his command, 02 (dom price x sub reader x switch ghost)

mommy (sub soap x dom reader; sub gaz x dom reader)

sir n his dolls, 02 (dom price x sub reader x sub gaz)

frenzied addiction (dom ghost x sub reader x sub soap)

little lamb and lying dog (dom price x sub reader x sub ghost)

orgasm denial, 02 (dom price x switch reader x sub ghost)

marionette (dom ghost x sub reader x switch gaz)

….yea! teehee >3<

Big man, Big mouth

Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!reader (because demeaning girl usage) WC: 4.9k it's just gross smut and simon gets kinda mean sometimes nothing crazy :) ty to the brain to my pinky @xoxunhinged and precious beta @waves-against-a-cliff catching my errs

The smile you’d had on your face all morning is subsequently wiped once you’re told that you won’t, in fact, be spearheading a team meeting with air conditioning and a cup full of your favorite medium roast, but instead, you’re being sent somewhere where practical experience trumps theoretical, textbook knowledge. And alone, at that.

Guess your travel mug is about to make its big debut.

The construction site is alive with purpose— the buzzing of drills, raucous banter, and the low hum of music from a stereo. You run a hand down the back of your skirt that is more tourniquet than office attire you were forced into wearing, regretting not drawing the line at the heels pinching your toes. "Professional setting, professional appearance," your boss had said. Nothing here demands you to stand in ironed clothes with dust settling on your eyelashes and the taste of grit on your tongue.

You feel out of place, a white-collar worker surrounded by hard hats and steel-toe boots. Perhaps taking this job for a promotion was hasty on your part. But it’s too late now and the sun above you is wilting the starched collar of your blouse.

Best get this over and done with. (The bottle of barefoot wine at home will be your reward for your suffering.)

Walking to the home still in a semi-skeletal phase had been a bit uncomfortable, anxiety gnawing at your nerves and the polished shoes at the skin of your heel. But what made your shoulders tense and spine stiffen was the crew. You'd expected disgruntled workers, sure. A bit of grumbling here and there. No one likes to have someone with more authority and less experience trample all over your work, telling you what's what.

Not them eyeing you like you're a fish in a shark tank. A little minnow pulled out of her natural habitat and into the mix with dominant predators. The paper on your clipboard crinkles audibly as one of them— the leader, you gather— stops you before you can get any closer than he feels necessary. He plods over, hard hat tucked into his arm, wiping his sweaty brow with his sunbaked forearm, a few wood curls nestled into his beard.

"Ya lost?" he grunts.

There's a guy with a comb for hair and limpid blue eyes staring right at you from the back as he leans on a half-built wall with a smarmy grin on his thin lips.

"No! No, I, um—" you stammer, "I'm here as a temporary replacement for, um—"

He cuts you off with a dismissive wave, fingers thick as steel beams. "Right. Yeah, yeah." Bloody rude. "The inspector." His head tilts and spits on the cement, eyes giving you a once over, lingering on the bare skin of your calves. "John," he says then jerks his head behind him, to the shady inside of the home. "Let's get ya out this sun 'fore you melt like sugar on the driveway."

You keep your lips pressed in a line, swallowing down the retort sitting on your tongue with a hint of frustration, and follow him on swift feet. It is unforgivingly hot and at least there's a roof overhead. Most of the walls were still just wooden beams, the foundation concrete covered in dust. Rough-bristle brooms lean in corners, the stereo now sitting silently in the center of what’s to be the living room next to a man with a massive frame and a sweat-soaked wifebeater who didn't bother turning around as you made a beeline for the only fan feebly cutting through the muggy heat inside.

John from behind you grabs your attention. "So? What's the issue this time? We jus' had tha' muppet pass through a week ago." You turn around, the breeze now somewhat cooling the back of your neck.

"Just need to personally check what's left—" you clear your throat, giving the clipboard a waggle, "on this. Nothing too grand." The blonde one with shorn hair hasn't looked up once from the blue cooler between his legs.

John scratches his head. "Right." There's a drag of heavy boots behind you. "Temporary, eh?" His eyes are like cerulean rivets, pinning you in place.

Gruff Scottish cuts in, tone dripping with amusement. "Will ye look a' tha'," he mutters, accent thick and deliberate, "bosses up top sent a bonnie wee lass to keep an eye on things. Make sure ye pay good attention, aye?" The brute comes to stand in front of you, flexing one arm, bicep like a knotted tree trunk. "Would hate ye missin' the show."

Show ‘em your teeth, little fish. That promotion is already in your hands, don't let it slip through your fingers.

"Listen, you—" you snap back, cheeks burning hot but then his eyebrows raise to his hairline, the corner of his lip curling in challenge.

"It's Soap, hen."

“...Right.”

What the hell kind of name is Soap?

A third voice— crisp English just like John's— cuts through the air from the second floor. "Wipe the slobber off ya chin 'nd leave 'er alone, Soap! You still hav'ta sweep up 'ere!" A man with bronze skin and a cap adorned with the Union Jack in the center pokes his head out from over the wooden railing. His smile looks stiff.

"Miss." His eyes flash to Soap. "Move it. You can get your cock—" wow, mouth like a sailor, that one, "wet while on company's time." His gaze falls on you for a moment longer before disappearing back into the upper level.

Soap grumbles what sounds like a "fuckin' 'ell Kyle" but heads for the stairs anyway, steps creaking under his weight. "Ah'll be 'round if ye need me," he says with a wink.

Unlikely.

John absently shakes his head and turns to the grizzled, mountain of a man still hunched over that cursed cooler of his. "Simon." He suddenly moves then, rising smoothly to his feet for someone his size. He's a wall of muscle, a very clear force of nature, and he's now staring at your—

your shoes?

"Alrigh'," he gruffly says, "We'll get outta your way. The faster you can look for, whatever it is you're lookin' for, the faster you can get out o' my beard." He places his hard hat back on and gives Simon a nod. "To work, break time's over."

Simon walks past you without so much as a glance, his thick arm brushing roughly against your shoulder with enough strength to make you take a step back but then he speaks. "Don't trip on nothin', girl. I'd hate f'r our pretty mascot t'get injured on the," he emphasizes the last word, tone heavy with mockery, "job."

Your tongue is pressed firmly behind your clenched teeth as you straighten your skirt. Get this shit over with.

--

Their attitudes toward you had left some to be desired, but they had done their job seamlessly. Not a crack in place nor a bolt out of it meaning that ticking off the rest of the boxes on your clipboard had been a cinch, making the promotion even easier. By the time you were ready to go home— the thought of leaving behind the tangy scent of sweat and iron adding a pep to your painful step— the sun had already dipped, casting long shadows over the construction site.

Until John's unwelcome chivalrous gesture: sending one of his to accompany you to your car. "t's late out," he says, leaving no room for lip. Fine, whatever. The faster you get out of here the better. Saliva pools in your mouth at the thought of having a chilled glass of wine with chinese takeout for dinner.

Except the one waiting for you in the garage with a lit smoke between his chapped lips is Simon. He flicks it to the ground, smothering out the embers with the heel of his boot. "Move. Ain't got all day."

The last strand of your patience snaps and your mouth twists into a snarl. "Then leave off! I don't need a fucking chaperone. Believe it or not, I do know how to look both ways before crossing the street."

You'd only taken three irate, swift-footed steps away from him, clipboard trembling in your grip when the back of your shoe dug into raw skin; a sharp, sudden agony flaring out in a hot, thick wave and you stumble. The world spins for a second, colors blurring together until—

The relief is immediate. The hot needles on your raw nerves dulled down to a throb, vision blurring from the brief bite of intense pain. You breathe in a deep lungful of air, tasting salt and sawdust while you flex your feet, hissing when the blistered skin stretches. At least the damage to your toes is minimal.

But not to your pride. Tripping over your own feet, because the driveway while unfinished is still flat, now means you're being hauled over his shoulder, which is broad enough to be surprisingly comfortable, in the opposite direction of where your car is with your heels in hand. The fabric of his tank feels stiff under your sweaty palms.

"Is this kind of behavior normal for you? Or am I just lucky?" your voice is tinged with a mix of irritation and embarrassment. His arm tightens uncomfortably around the back of your bare thighs even though the office skirt you managed to squeeze into is knee-length.

"Only when I spot clumsy-footed birds like you. Can't 'ave ya splat on the concrete like a crime scene outline." A slow creeping flame spreads from your neck to the apple of your cheeks when you notice the guys staring at you from a window upstairs, Soap giving you a toothy smile. Even Kyle seems amused. Mortifying. Someone strike you down now. Actually, no. Then who'd feed your cat once you’re gone?

"'nd John would chew me out f'r lettin' ya break these," his long fingers circle your ankle, "in 'alf." You try to muster a response, but the words sit behind your teeth, your chagrin having tangled your tongue into knots.

Then he stops and the creaking of hinges reaches your ears. "Wait." Your eyes land on a black cargo bed, caked with dried mud. "Are you just going to sit me in your car?" He sets you down in the back seat anyway, tossing your shoes inside.

"Truck. I can drop ya on the patch of grass if ya like." Simon leaves you there, going to the driver's side rummaging through the middle compartment. His work truck is exactly what you'd expect from a man like him. The seats are covered in a thin layer of dust, you imagine he gives no one a ride, a well-worn visibility vest strewn about, an extra pair of work boots stained with splatters of white paint—the size difference of your shoes compared to his has you swallowing a lump the size of your fist down.

Simon pulls out a mid-sized red box and places it on the floor mat then props your leg up on his. His grip is firm but gentle as he inspects your open wounds and then sucks on his teeth. "A bit stupid, wearin' ankle breakers when out on a job." He prods around the inflamed skin, the pain making you tense.

"Don't worry about me and mi—" you hiss when he digs his thumb into the arch of your foot, "mine. Maybe I wanted to look nice." Fuck those shoes.

"'m sure ya did, though the skirt's all ya need." The warmth of his breath spreads through your toes and up your calf, raising gooseflesh.

You can't hold back a snort. "And now you're going to tell me that you prefer women in skirts and dresses?"

Simon switches legs, careful to not aggravate the blisters further. "I prefer my women with no clothes. But both of those make it f'r easier access. Like yours. Can see your knickers from 'ere." That has your heart skipping a beat, eyes widening with disbelief. Instinctively, you sit upright, back straightening with a pop.

"They're red."

You chuff out a breath. He's lying. You'd put on the only available pair you had at the time since you'd forgotten to dry your laundry the night prior. A simple, cotton grey. "You—! Fucking hell, I almost kicked you in the teeth." Simon's looking at you now, eyes dark and intense.

"Wouldn't be the first time someone's tried," he says with a smirk, voice low. "White, then."

The first aid kit still lies on the floor mat. "Stop talking." Simon ignores you, instead grabbing your other leg and pulling you closer toward the edge of the seat. Toward him.

"Green," he rumbles, his hands cupping the bottom of your feet, thumb and pointer coming to gently tug on your toes before moving his way up. You feel like a young, dewy-eyed farm girl having her first tumble in the hay and he's only now stroking the protruding bone of your ankle. The motion is slow, deliberate, a tender caress that sends a shiver up your spine. Has it truly been that long since you've had your body shape imprinted into the mattress?

"How about," you swallow thickly, "you patch me up proper and I'll be on my way?" If anyone else had heard, they'd say you're trying to convince yourself that being here isn't what you really want. But the little garble in your voice gives you away.

Simon hums, a sound that vibrates in your chest, sinks into the marrow of your bones. "Little bird wants t’go home 'nd 'ave only a throw 'nd a cat t'warm 'er bed?" You feel a different kind of ache this time, pulsing sharp and deep in your core. "Eh? Y'wanna curl up on the couch with one o’ those sex books while playin’ with your pretty cunt?" 

The idea of having to use the blue bullet sitting inside the nightstand drawer sounds unappealing. And it’s probably out of battery too. Damn. 

You sink your teeth into your bottom lip and shake your head. He doesn’t accept that as your answer.

"Wha's tha'? You will speak when spoken to, pet. Do you," he emphasizes the last word as he begins to open your legs by the knees, "wanna go home with an empty pussy or let me fill it 'til you're leaking cum out ya ears?"

Can't say no to him serenading you like that. You clench around nothing, hesitance crumbling like sand. "B-but what about your job? Aren't you still working?"

Simon grabs you then, dinner plate-sized hands wrapping around the softer part of your waist. "'M on a break. I'd say I deserve it after all my 'ard work." He lifts you effortlessly, the hem of your skirt rolling as you widen your legs further.

He rolls his hips once, feeling the bulge in his jeans brush against your sex, feather-light, and you bite on the thickest part of your tongue to keep from moaning like a cat in heat. "And what about us being in the open?" you ask though the question is redundant. Besides the crew's work vehicles, there's not another car in sight. If anyone else had been working nearby, they've long since left.

He seems to share your sentiment. "If tha's all? 'm tryin' t'see if I got it righ'."

No, that'll just about do it. "Okay. Alright." God knows you need this. Even if it comes from a stranger you'll probably never see again. Simon doesn't wait any longer, pushing up the rest of your skirt to pool above your thighs.

He hisses long and low through his teeth. "Tight little thing, innit?" Yeah, well. You were going to tell him that while putting on your skirt that morning had been an absolute nightmare, it wasn't that small on you until the tips of his fingers glided along your clothed slit. Oh. He's not talking about that.

"I guess grey's my new favorite colour. Especially this—" he thumbs the darkened wet spot on the fabric, "shade." When he adds more pressure, you can't help but let a gasp out as you buck your hips in want of more. "Easy. 'aven't even started with you." Simon opens the front of your blouse with a single hand, coming undone easily. He goes for the clip of your bra that's serendipitously placed on the front.

"Gotta let the girls breathe," he says. Whatever his reasoning doesn't matter because all there is, is relief. No more underwire digging into your skin, no more suffocating restraint. You only wore the blasted thing because all of your sports bras would've been visible through the blouse.

Simon rolls a hardened bud with one hand while unbuttoning the front of his jeans with the other. "Eatin' this," he gives the mound of your pussy a mean tap, "gonna 'ave t'wait. I'll get ya off though, don't worry tha' little head o' yours."

You wonder if he says that to everybody he fucks in the back of his truck. "What? Why?"

His length sits hot and heavy over your cunt. And it's big enough to kill. Death by cock. That'll be on your epitaph. "'m a big geezer," he mutters, fingers toying with the side of your panties, "lyin' down so you can sit your cunt on my face isn't gonna work righ' now."

Definitely says that to everybody. "Doesn't matter. I'll take care o'ya 'nother way." Simon pulls the dampened gusset to the side and lowers his head to— "Pretty like I thought it was." A fat glob of spit lands on the puffy lips of your pussy and he smears it around with his cock, tip sliding right along your clit. He uses his thumb to press himself down harder, more friction, more sensation, each slow roll of his hips pricking neglected nerves awake, alive, and it feels good. Surprisingly good.

The way the scar on his lip whitens as he bites it tells you it's just as good for him too. "Thought about it much, did you?" He goes lower this time, ruddy tip catching on your entrance momentarily before returning up.

"Since you walked inside a place you 'ave no business bein' in. Birds like you shouldn't be minglin' in the trenches with us grunts." The tips of your ears are hot as he stares down at you. "Should be sittin' nice 'nd pretty in a cubicle with air conditionin' 'nd an oversized mug o' watered-down coffee."

Simon cups the swell of your arse, canting your hips to glide himself better. Every bump and ridge on the underside of his cock is rubbing slowly on you and the thought of licking a slick stripe on the vein only tightens the white-hot coil below your navel.

"Or better yet, sittin' at home doin' wha'ever else while waitin' f'r a man like me to come back from work with a ribeye 'nd redskin potatoes in the oven." He lets your panties fall back into place; the sodden front almost transparent as he rubs against your swollen clit at the same time. God, he's fucking. your. panties! And you're bloody letting him.

What a way to break this year-long dry spell.

He bends your legs so that your feet are now being held flat on the thick of his chest with his hands as he picks up the pace. The suspension springs on the truck begin to groan. "I like mine medium rare."

Your back's come off the seat, spine bowed. You're close, so fucking close, you've got slick coating the inside of your thighs, dripping down to your arse, probably staining his polyester material underneath. This is torture and your pussy feels tender, raw, yet he's barely touching the focal point of your desire. If he doesn't make you come in the next minute, you're breaking that thick neck of his.

It's like he read your mind because he uses his cock to tap on your clit firmly, hard enough to hear a wet thwack and he does it once, thrice and—

And then your body gives, an intense climax that steals the breath in your very lungs, has you your blunt nails biting into the muscle of his forearms, his groan drowned out by the shrill ringing in your ears. Your face feels hot, probably is hot to the touch and there's a sting on the middle of your bottom lip and can taste iron on your tongue. Even the tips of your fingers tingle.

Through your half-lidded gaze, you see Simon holding onto the top of the truck while his breath comes in ragged gasps. Did he come? You curiously touch the expanse of your stomach. Not sticky.

"No. I didn't come. You," he takes in a deep, steadying breath then reaches to squeeze the sides of your face, cheeks plumping under the pressure. "You almost 'ad me, though. I don't remember the last time I 'ad to think tha' 'ard of London t'not finish. But I'm not done with you."

Simon hooks his thumbs into the waistband of your panties and takes them off with urgency only to stuff them in his back pocket. "Better with no clothes on, remember." You can feel his twitching cock leak onto your heated skin.

"If ya need, use this." A black bundle of fabric lands on your chest, what is— It's a mask? If he means to hide your identity from his coworkers, you're not sure this skull mask is going to work. He drags you to him roughly until your arse is hanging off the seat. And then there's a hot, dull pressure pushing against your entrance that's followed by a searing sting, and it, it's so much, it's too m-

"Tight fucking-, Ya need t-, fuck, to relax," he grunts, fingers dimpling your thighs. Simon's thrusts are jerky, short, as he wrenches your walls apart. Even with your creamy cum and his spit it's still a struggle. "'Alf way there," and a rattled breath escapes you. You're being split right down the middle and there's still some left?

For the next few moments only your squeaks and mewls can be heard as he makes room for him, your hand flat on his lower stomach— feeling the coarse, thick patch of hair on it— as if you're trying to keep him away, out, something but then he snarls and snaps his hips. You've heard of a ring of fire some women experience at some point in their life and you think this is yours. The thin skin of your entrance burns, most likely stretched to its limit, like a rubber band about to snap.

"Easy," he drawls out, "The worst's over. Took me like you're made f'r me. G'mme ya 'and." He takes your clammy hand and has you touch where the two of you meet. His eyes are glued to your fingers that are split into a v, pads feeling your cunt soaked in viscous slick.

The groan he lets out at the sight makes the world around you spin. "Stay jus' like tha'." Sure, not like you’ve got anywhere to go. Not with his hands tight around you like metal cuffs. Simon holds nothing back, not even in the very first minute. Doesn't warm you up to it, don't let you try to get used to him turning you inside out. His thrusts are long, firm, hungry— bottoming out every single time until he sits snugly at the plug of your womb. Grinds up when he meets resistance, eyeing your features in case there's discomfort.

The only ache you've got is the one he's fucking into you. (And you also might be partly lying on his tape measurer.)

But then he hitches your legs up, hands around the back of your thighs as they're pushed toward your chest and that pulls a whine out of you that you're sure John and the crew heard. "There she is, bird's got a healthy set o' lungs on 'er." He keeps the same, unforgiving angle and doubles down, using the bulk of his weight to pin you in place, forced to do nothing but take and take and take.

Until Simon's strikes the side of your arse with an open palm. "D'ya hear 'em?" Wha? What? Hear who?

And then you hear it. Him. The handsome one with the hat from upstairs. "Ghost?" he sounds right across the street and Simon hasn't stopped rocking the truck as he fucks you right through it. "Wha's tha' Kyle?" His voice is steady even though there are beads of sweat rolling down the side of his temple.

"I said good job on all your 'ard work 'nd we'll see ya tomorrow. You 'ave a good night too, Miss." There's a crude whistle followed by a pained grunt and a quick mumbled apology. Maybe if you don't respond they'll just get in their car and go home.

But then John calls out to you too.

"Simon must’ve missed you, sweetheart. “Wow. He barks out a laugh. " 'ave yourself a good night, Miss.” Then, sternly says, “Tomorrow at 6, Simon.”

Simon, though, has no intention of letting you take the easy way out. He smacks your arse again, right in the same— already tender— spot from just moments before. "Answer 'em, pet. Or 'ave I fucked all the manners outta ya?" He accentuates the last three words with thrusts so sharp that if he hadn't been holding you in place, you would've been sent sprawling back.

Whatever words you're supposed to say are snagged in your throat like hooks, only whimpers and high-pitched gasps falling past your trembling lips. He drags his thumb over your bottom one, the calloused pad of it tough. "Go on. Be good 'nd tell 'em to 'ave a good night too. And no names. Only one comin’ outta you should be mine."

When you open your mouth, he weaves a hand down to your clit, jerking it in fast little circles that have you forgetting where you even are. "Mf- g-good," he gives you just a second of respite to spit on it. "Good night-," his fingers are almost torture, and god, you're going to come in front of all of them. You warble out the words hastily, feeling your impending orgasm come at you with the speed of a freight train.

"Tha's a good bird, singin' when I tell ya to." There's no stopping this, not with all of his focus on the little bundle of nerves and every drag of his cock making your spine arch as if he were winding it. "Squeeze my cock, tha's it."

Your legs shake violently, toes curled, and you can feel a cramp begin in your calf but none of it matters, not when you're seeing bright lights behind your scrunched eyelids, not when you feel fingers in your mouth to stifle the scream that's viciously wrenched from your throat nor when Simon growls out a "Fuckin' 'ell."

"I told ya, if ya needed somethin' t'bite on, use tha'," he jerks his head toward the mask that's tight in your fist. Your soul is still floating adrift in the wind and he's already trying to make conversation. And he did not say to bite on it.

"I'm not puttin' this unwashed thing in my mouth." You languidly watch him inspect his hand, looking at the deep purple teeth imprints on his fingers. Whoops.

"But you'll 'ave me after sweatin' under the bloody sun for 'ours." His hand slides behind your nape, lifting your head a bit as he lowers his chest to meet your sweat-slick one. Your hands come to claw at the shifting muscles of his back when he begins anew, this time his pace is relentless, sharp, predatory. He's a shark that has scented blood and is now on the hunt.

The prickling bristles of his facial hair scratch against your temple. "This," the hand around your neck tightens, your rapid pulse now roaring in your ears, "is the best pussy I've ever had." His thrusts are jarring, make your teeth clack together hard enough to hurt, and after a dozen of them, he comes with a cruel bite to the junction of your shoulder, snarl animalistic.

Hopefully, the guys drove off a while ago otherwise you're re-dressing and driving home with that mask Simon tossed your way.

Your blouse is unfortunately beyond saving. Your skirt isn’t faring any better if that massive tear in the front has anything to say about it and your shoulder will require at least half a bottle of concealer plus a couple of bandaids, which the first aid kit is completely empty of. Not even the first aid guide is inside. 

You sluggishly begin to button up one of Simon's spare flannel shirts when he asks you if you're hungry.

"No." Not really. Hard to feel much when most of your nerves from the ribs down are shot.

"Get in the front, I'd like t'eat my dinner soon." He's staring right at the apex of your legs, your cunt still throbbing from the abuse."'m 'ungry." There’s no tow car sign on the street, actually, there’s not even a simple stop sign here. 

It better not get towed. You’re not paying a dime if it does.

(Are your feet still hurting or can he fuck those too? No? Next time, then.)

finders, keep her

ghost/soap/reader

18+ only for dub-con/non-con, lifestyle puppy play, implied depression, (consensual) kidnapping, spit-roasting, cunnilingus, dehumanization, fingering, double penetration, pussy and face slapping, leashing and collaring, dollification(?), victim blaming, breathplay, less-than-socially-acceptable quid pro quos. (9.1k)

They’re big enough to fill the hole in your heart. You’re small enough to fit in their cage. It's a perfect match. or: Ghost and Johnny shepherd an unassuming girl into their puppy play lifestyle.

read on AO3.

You’re neglecting the fourth drink of the night.

The ice cube has melted. The salt on the rim has hardened. The lime wafer has wrinkled. You stare at the glass so hotly it could curdle along with the resentment lining your gut.

A group of girls—pretty, you must admit—flock towards the bar, all giggling and swapping inside jokes that have you flinching because you aren’t privy to them even though you want to be. One bumps into you and throws you a cursory glance, frowning, an apology crossing her tongue which you hate because then it means you can’t dislike her without being the asshole.

You squirm away, giving them their space. Your gaze slips toward them every now and then like a one-sided game of hide-and-seek, your eyes scratching at their intimate bubble because you want a way in so badly you’re willing to fold like wet cardboard.

Poking your head into their conversation is an idea you quickly retract because the embarrassment would smite you. You would come off too strong, or too weak, perhaps, and would make them uncomfortable. They’d either feel as though they have to speak to you, or you’d get muscled to the sidelines of the conversation. In any case, you’re the stilted bird with farmed out wings.

You polish off your drink in one, slick motion. It’s lukewarm and arid and doesn’t give your throat the chafe it needs. Your stomach seethes for something wide-shouldered, stronger, leading you to slip off the stool because you know the bartender won’t serve you any longer. Your makeup has thawed with your tears, tracking down your cheeks. Your eyes are puffy and your feet are blundering, pigeon-toed.

You stand up, consider saying bye, but bite your tongue and leave without a word. You step outside and shiver as the midnight mist swathes you mockingly, burning the untouched breadth of your skin because you’ve never had a lover to claim it first. You stumble down the sidewalk, the route back home parsed-over in your memory because this is the only route you ever take—to the bar and back home—no detours to a friends place nor a secret lover, no address scrawled on a napkin from a guy who saw you across the room and found you cute.

Again, you know the route perfectly. You know the motel-turned-escort den that gutters out with vacant signage and the corner-store that’s about to close down because it doesn’t pull enough customers.

(Sometimes, you buy a bouquet of roses just to raise the owner’s spirits. You oscillate between pretending it’s for the friends you don’t have and the lover you’ll never get, and the owner nods each time, happy, never catching onto your ploy because you suppose people have their own problems and nobody is indebted to solving yours.)

You know the broken fire hydrant, the gritty alleyway and the cat that noses at garbage bags for food to feed her kittens.

What you don’t know is the shadow that loiters beneath the awning, nursing a cigarette.

The smoulder barely illuminates his face, leaving him in the shadows. It gives you a blank canvas to stab at, lets you fit the features of your silly crushes into his face, lets you imagine him as the one that got away from high school. Lets you picture that in some world, it’s you between his lips. You’re his cigarette. Hot and addictive and comburent, wrapped by his mouth and spent because he won’t stop sucking you dry. 

“Oi.”

The world quickly collapses beneath you, but you realize you’re just tripping. You gird your feet to keep yourself from falling and continue stumbling down the sidewalk because surely, he wasn’t speaking to you.

“Bird in the dress. Oi.”

You spin around. There’s no bird in a dress behind you—but a portent bank of mist in your wake, an omen—so you turn back around and point to yourself, whiplash gnawing your neck.

“Yeah,” he nods. “You.”

All you can see are the whites of his eyes, so uncanny it has you squirming. He’s shrouded in the shadows, nebulous, with the only thing attesting to his humanness being his gaze, unwelcoming and off-putting. More anthropoid. Less human.

“What’s got you walkin’ here all alone?” He asks. “It’s dangerous, y’know. Lots of crime roamin’ round these parts.”

You don’t know how to tell him you’ve fallen into an orifice in the earth that God forgot to fix while making it. A hole that you haven’t been able to claw yourself out of, rendering you invisible to that of a regular passerby. 

Nobody “bothers” you. Even if somebody did, you wouldn’t read it as such. Any bone thrown in your direction is something you’d viciously thumb through. It would stave off your deep-seated hunger, scratch the itch that’s been burning you for God knows how long.

You settle for an awkward, “Oh… thanks,” and preen under his stare. 

He has no details on his face. No depressions. It’s as if he were cut from a monolith, devoid of any identifiable features. 

“Are you lookin’ for something?” He tacks on. “I am. We could help each other out.” 

He takes a drag from the cigarette and the light softly flares. That’s when you see he’s wearing a mask, overripe and macabre, hiked over his snarled lip. 

“Oh…”

“C’mon, pet,” he murmurs. “Have a mate waitin’ for me. Wanted me to bring back some fun.” 

A plume of warmth smoothes over you, simultaneously smothering the part of your gut that screams warning but also wrapping around your hindbrain, making you act on want instead of wit. 

You pick at your nails, fidgety. 

“Uh, I dunno.”

“Figured,” he nods, tossing his cigarette on the ground. “Didn’t reckon you’d say yes, anyway. Don’t seem the type.”

It feels like a scythe through the heart. You don’t know this man, but he’s already wadding you up and tossing you to the side like a moth-eaten cloth. It hurts. Claws your throat. Thumbs you in like a dimpled orange, tears you open.

You take a panicked step forward. “I– I’m the type.”

He makes a noncommittal sound and shrugs. 

“I am,” your eyes are dewy, and your fingers cramp around his stout arm because you’d rather die than prove him right. You’d rather twist the spire in your gut than prove all those people right. 

You are fun. You aren’t a wet blanket. People love hanging out with you, in fact–

You can’t see him in the darkness, but you know his face is distorted by something mean. You can hear it in his voice, stale and cleverish. Amused. The skin of his lip is pulled back, poorly imitating a smile. You can hear it.

“Sure?” He asks. “My mate, he’s a barky one. Hyper. Might be too much for you.”

You nod. It’s like slicing yourself open, baring yourself to him. Signing the blood pact even though you don’t know what you’re getting into. He’s thrown you a morsel of attention and now it’s your sustenance. You cling onto him like a parasite, deriving whatever attention he throws at you and feeding off it, sluggish and squeamish and malleable. So loose-limbed, you could break off and harden into the quick of his fingers.

(He’s a mean man. Capitalizing off her loneliness because she doesn’t have the friends to steer her away from the bulky, scary brute with scarred flesh. She’s vulnerable, so desperate for attention, he barely has to do any work. Her makeup is already blotchy, smeared, hollowing out her eyes.

He can only imagine what she’d look like choking on his cock. Would she cry? Would she genuflect and try saying thank you because they’re the only people to ever spare her a second glance? Would the words collapse because her nose is scrunched, flattened against his bristly pubic bone?)

He grunts, slipping his hand over your hip. 

“My flat’s close, c’mon.”

He holds you so firmly, it almost hurts. He curls his hand around the base of your neck and drags you after him, inconsiderate of the way your tipsy, pigeon-toed feet struggle to keep up. The people you pass by glance at you concernedly, others excitedly, as they gape at the bulky giant who doesn’t seem keen on letting you go anytime soon. It gratifies you because finally, you aren’t nebular. People are looking at you, and they’re jealous. There’s an attractive man who has you by your scruff, and this time, he isn’t going to leave you for one of your so-called friends. 

The thought turns you gooey. Impairs you for the rest of the walk. You kitten into his neck—which stinks of sulfur and cigarettes—when he picks you up so suavely it makes your head spin, throwing you over his shoulder. He carries you into a down-trodden flat and up a flight of stairs, fishes his keys from his pocket and jams it into the lock, kicking it open. The whole time his expansive palm presses a spoor into your pillowy flesh, the fore-end of your ass cheek.

He sets you down and doesn’t bother stabilizing you.

“Johnny!” He yells. “Where are you?”

You try stealing a glance around the flat, but everything is astigmatic. Bleeding. The alcohol is catching up to you. It ropes through your veins, drenching everything in molasses.

You hear the faintest reply, “In the bedroom,” muffled behind a wall. Your respite fleets away when you’re picked up again and brought further into the flat. Into a dimly-lit bedroom where another man emerges from the murk, his cheeks engorged around a splitting smile. 

He—Johnny—closes the space between you in three strides. He’s shorter than the man who carries you but is taller than you, and since you’re still hoisted over the masked man’s shoulder, you’re able to peer down at him. Get lost in the labyrinth that are his blue eyes, the velvet of his lips. He’s so pretty he could be split across magazine catalogues.

He’s so pretty, it disarms you.

His eyes remove your fuse. His lips make you melt, fluxing into his palm as he cups your cheek because currently, he has the intimacy you’ve been divested of for so long. Anxiety and presentiment—which is something you should be feeling, really, after being shepherded into a sketchy flat—eludes you. Johnny reaches out and toys with your hair. 

“Oh,” he gasps. “She’s real bonnie. Real bonnie.”

His voice is softer than the other, but still held down by something rough. It could be cigarettes, could be something else.

(A raw throat, bruised time and time again.)

“Thank ye, Ghost,” Johnny warbles.

That should have been your prompt to leave, among many. A man who calls himself Ghost, a manifest to the living. Invincible and untouchable. Dangerous.

Ghost sets you down again. You’re squished between the two men, each one more intimidating than the other, and squirm. Johnny asks for your name, which you give to him with a tremor in your voice.

He hums. “Pretty name for a pretty girl. Fittin’.”

Your inhibitions esker and your brain halts. Warmth spools over you. The last time you were called pretty, it was your grandmother pinching your cheeks. Now, it comes smooth as silk from a man three times your size with stout arms and a crooked, boyish smile. 

He steps away and sits on the foot of the bed. A few seconds pass, awkward, because you’re unsure what to do with yourself. Johnny placates you as he pats the spot beside him. 

“Here,” he says. “Sit with me.”

Ghost gives your bum an encouraging squeeze. You walk up to Johnny and sit next to him, squeamish. 

The mattress dips under Johnny’s weight and you fall against his shoulder. Your lungs toil, and the feeling of his flesh against yours works like an aphrodisiac, inspiring heat and froth in the pit of your stomach. 

It increases twofold when Ghost grunts. 

“Give ‘er a kiss, Johnny.”

You seize up. Johnny’s hand is on your cheek in record time, suffocating and divoting as he turns your head towards him. The kiss is wet and rough, over-eager, and makes your mind rescript him as volatile instead of purely obedient. He’d gone from prey to predator—with Ghost’s permission—and pounced on you.

“Kiss him back,” Ghost says a little too harshly. “Give him your tongue.”

You comply, yelping when Johnny sucks at it. Licks it. He cradles the back of your head as he curves his tongue into your mouth, mapping your every inch. He moans into the seam of your lips, humps the bed, and pulls you closer. Johnny grabs your hand and guides you over his crotch, cupping it. 

“Feel it, hen?” He breathes. “So fuckin’ hard for ye. Are ye wet?”

He’s kissing you before you can answer. It’s bruising. Teeth clinking, lips bumping. He rams your answer to the back of your throat and decides to check for himself, making your stomach flip as he drags his fingers over your pussy and presses into your clit.

He scoops your dew up and pulls his fingers away, sucking them clean, turning to Ghost with imploring eyes. 

“Can I eat ‘er pussy?”

The fact that he asks Ghost instead of you thrums you with concern but it gets smothered when Ghost shortly nods, and it dawns on you that a stupidly attractive man is about to go down on you. Your blood rises to a rolling boil, your stomach churns. Your panties cling to your cunt and outline the barest hint of your lips.

Johnny pushes your back onto the bed. He nudges your legs apart, hikes your dress over your waist, and borderline salivates from his loose jaw as he rubs your pussy through your panties. Your head swims when he leans down, flattening his nose against your sex. The air in your lungs turns to creosote as he sharply inhales, kissing your clit. Kneading your waist. Leaving a mosaic of teeth-shaped concavities into the chub of your thighs. Your hands find the tuft of his mohawk and your eyes find Ghost in the corner of the room. Tempered together, it’s metamorphic. Euphoric. It smites you like the first thaw of spring as Johnny presses his tongue against you, licking a stripe up your sopping slit while you maintain eye contact with Ghost. You flounder under his eyes, tremble under Johnny’s mouth. 

Dew skitters over your skin. Your belly cramps with pleasure. Your thighs clench around Johnny’s head, hemming him in. He growls and releases your clit with a pop and spreads your legs back open a little too roughly, stretching your tendons like frayed rope. 

He ignores your gasp of pain, as does Ghost. Johnny thumbs you open and grins at your hole, blowing at your bare cunt. He flicks your bud with his tongue, shutting his eyes, murmuring into your sex.

“Cute fuckin’ pussy,” he whispers. “Such a bonnie girl. Tasty girl. Pretty little puppycunt.”

It hits you like whiplash. A vein of discomfort tempered with a fresh stir of arousal. You’re squirming, threshing. Johnny won’t stop making out with your… puppycunt, and now, when you turn to look at Ghost—perhaps to ask for help—he palms himself through his jeans, watching raptly.

You whine when two fingers prod your hole. It’s Johnny working you open. He slips a finger inside and pumps it in and out, curling them into your walls before adding another. He finger fucks you so fast and with so much vigour, it hurts. He’s like a dog with farmed out hair, unfettered without a leash. Eager. 

Ghost strides close and grips Johnny by the neck, pulling him away. “Easy, kid. You tryin’ to rip her a new one?”

Johnny flushes. Blush colours his cheeks, reflecting his embarrassment at being scolded. He sniffles. “Nae.”

“Then play nice,” Ghost growls. “Or no more playdates with my pet.”

Your ears ring. Surely, you didn’t hear that right. You couldn’t have, otherwise you wouldn’t be shaking with another wave of arousal. You aren’t a pet. You can think and speak and most importantly, you don’t have a tail to chase. 

It’s off-putting and discomforting. Who wants to be degraded to a pet? Pets are muzzled, leashed. Two things that don’t belong on humans—but Johnny seems to disagree.

He pulls his shirt over his head, baring his hairy chest. His prong collar. 

It cuts into his neck, makes the skin around it puff up, plum-coloured, stealing the oxygen that should be rising to his head. It explains his bleary gaze, his behaviour, dimmed by the pillowy headspace he’s in. It makes him gasp and drool, tongue lolled out, still glistening from your cunt. Makes him pant. Like a dog. 

He quivers. “Can I fuck ‘er? Please, Ghost?”

Ghost situates himself behind Johnny. He swings his forearm across his neck and puppets him into a headlock with one arm, shoves down Johnny’s pants with the other. He chokes a hand around his cock, pumping it, squeezing it, brushing his thumb over the sensitive slit, collecting his precome and using it to lube him up.

Ghost pets him, scratches behind his ears. It must have a Pavlovian effect—conditioned and trained, broken in—because Johnny is quickly poised above you and folding your knees up to your ears, catching his cock onto your sticky clit. 

“She ever taken one before?” He breathes. It takes you a while to understand he’s speaking to you, but is asking about your… core. Talking about it like it’s sentient, like it wants him just as bad.

(Considering how warm you are, how your clit throbs, you just might. You feel gooey, close to melting on his tongue and between his sticky fingers. Blood roils under your flesh, bubbling while you clench around nothing at all. Desperate. Needy, because you’ve only ever had your fingers and a regrettable vibrator. Hungry, because Johnny’s cock is drooling onto your belly, long and solid.) 

“She– uhn, no,” you eke out. “I’ve never, um, done this.”

He sharply inhales. You think he can smell sex in the air, prurient, because he’s quivering and bucking himself forward, slipping his cock between the fat of your cunt. 

“So me and Ghost, we’re… markin’ our territory, aye?”

Apprehension knots in your throat. You swallow it down though, nodding. You’re already neck-deep in this ordeal and you’ve long-since drowned in purgatory, waiting for someone to spare you affection. This is your only buoy. 

And so you nod, goading him. 

Johnny grins. He grabs your waist to keep you from thrashing and pins you to the bed while Ghost takes your wrists. Johnny sinks into you, splitting you open, his drool dripping onto your cheek. 

He has to force himself past your first ring of muscle, and since you’re pegged into the bed, you can’t squirm at his lengthy, curved cock ramming into you. You can whine and beg him to “Please be gentle–“ but that gets smothered under Ghost’s palm as he covers your mouth, blocking your nostrils in the process. 

You worriedly scratch at his other hand—the one keeping your wrists together—because you start to feel spotty. You bury your nails into his flesh, etching him with sickle-shaped divots, trying to dig his skin into the quick of your fingers, panicked. 

But Ghost looks down at you unfazed. His eyes daunt you through his mask. He pointedly does not move his hand. He keeps your lips pressed tightly and your nose flattened, abased to sniffing his cigarette-smelling palm. 

You squeeze your eyes shut. Johnny is pounding into you, crazed, making your legs flail dumbly and also making your stomach knot. You can’t deny the pleasure that tears through you, tempered by your pinched nostrils, complemented by Johnny reaching down to thumb your clit. 

“So fuckin’ soft–“ he gasps. “So warm. I need to come in ye, puppy. Need to–“ 

Your mind doesn’t track the rest. It’s caught on him, how his wet lips wrap around that operative word—puppy. How it sent shivers down your neck, how it prompted the faintest whisper of a phantom tail from your spine.

“Like tha’, don’t you?” Ghost grunts. “Bein’ our dog.”

You shake your head and pick out a laugh somewhere in the syrupy stretch of your mind. It’s sarcastic, disbelieving. Surely, it would have your hypothetical dog ears drooping. 

“‘Course you do. You’re just like one,” Ghost says. “So fuckin’ needy. So desperate for attention, am I right?” 

Each word is a punch to the gut. Your gaze turns runny with tears, leaking down your cheeks, to which Johnny swiftly laps up. You can’t squirm away—you’re trapped beneath him—helpless as he licks away your brine. 

You sob. “I– I don’t like this anymore–“

You move your fingers to cramp around Ghost’s wrist, only to find he isn’t there anymore. It’s a small mercy because he returns swiftly, this time, holding something that glistens. 

Handcuffs. Not the fuzzy type you see in intimate, soft-edged pornos. It’s the type that translates into being snared up, bitten by steel. It sizzles your skin when he loops them around your wrists and locks them in place. 

With his hands free, Ghost unzips his jeans. His boxer-briefs are distorted by a hard-on, pushing into your face, impossibly large and intimidating. He takes his cock out and even though he grips it by its base, it droops. Ghost is just so heavy, so fat, it hangs downward, whispering against your lips, leaking with thick precome. 

He slaps it against your cheek. “Open, pet.”

You hate that you listen. You tell yourself you’re just scared of being punished—not at all chuffed for Ghost’s cock—as you unfurl your tongue and take him between the lips, flinching at his taste. His size. 

He works the hinges of your jaw open as he forces himself inside. Your muzzle burns, aching, splitting around his fat cock. He pushes himself all the way inside with a hard thrust, the bristly hairs on his pubic bone tickling your nose. You feel the spine of your throat bruise and your spit fruitlessly trying to soften the burn, pealing out as a gurgle. 

Ghost rolls his hips and growls when your molars graze him. 

“Pet’s got teeth, aye?” He grits out, nudging himself deeper. It tastes like creosote when he hits the back of your throat—thick and tart.

You’ve never been so full. From your cunt and your mouth, your beginning and end. Johnny’s ravaging you, Ghost’s pounding into you. You’re getting dizzy.

Whenever you fantasized about your first time, you thought it would feel magical. Like falling into tufted grass. Spread open like an oyster shell with your mother pearl licked clean. Squeezed like a stone fruit to test its ripeness, pert and plush. Forever in a state of becoming: a sculpture, or a painting, perhaps. Your lover’s hands would wisp around you like paintbrush bristles and mould you with clay-crusted fingers. You always hoped that during your first time, you would be suckled like ambrosia and kept in their molars for later because you’re just that sweet.

But these men maul you like a chew toy–

–and spit you right out.

They come without warning. Johnny’s seed hits your walls just as Ghost fills your throat. They hold you down and snap into you, giving you their last inch. Making sure that what they force into you, takes. 

And you do take it. Rapidly unfurling like a spool of thread because all it takes is a gruff “Good pet,” from Ghost for you to climax. 

You whine like a dog when you do. Johnny lulls you with kisses and heavy pets while Ghost waits for his cock to soften before pulling out. You can’t speak after. You whimper, whine, and howl. Like a dog. You curl into Johnny’s arms when he hugs you even though you hate him, blindly trusting and stupidly forgiving. Like a dog. 

“Ye did perfect,” Johnny murmurs against your lips. He’s practically sucking your face, licking off Ghost’s come.

“Still needs training,” Ghost grunts.

Johnny nods, pink, embarrassed at being corrected. “Aye.”

“So do you,” the bigger man sneers. “Too fuckin’ buzzed. ‘Aven’t I taught you better?”

You miss the way Johnny bristles, eyes blown wide. Your mind is too sticky, too gooey, to acknowledge how his breathing turns ragged. Your eyes flutter shut, and you slip into limbo.

Nobody knows if you dream of chasing squirrels and running after cats that night, a tight collar fit around your neck.

You wake with a dry mouth and a warm core. You’re alone in bed, uncuffed, folded in the sheets as you drowsily find your bearings.

You curl your snout in the air, smelling food. Your stomach bubbles with hunger but fear overrides that. You know you should leave but your heart, gluttonous, wants to stay forever.  

You crawl out of their bed and adjust your dress. You stumble out of their room and find the kitchen by following your nose. Ghost and Johnny sit on two stools in front of a raised island, eating their breakfast. An untouched plate sits between them.

“Mornin’, puppy,” Johnny smiles.

You flounder, awkwardly stepping away. “G-good morning.”

Ghost is leaned over his plate, wolfing down his mountain of food. Johnny is more polite, patting the stool next to him. 

“Come eat,” he says. “Must be hungry from yesterday.”

Right. Yesterday. There’s no need in rehashing the events because it still lives on your skin. Pocked flesh marred by bruises so fresh it looks like rope burn, a smoulder between your legs so hot it hurts when you squeeze your thighs. The retellings are parsed-over in your mind, flashing at you to get out of here as soon as possible. 

They ignored your struggle. You’re desperate, but you don’t have a death wish. 

You grimace. “Yeah.”

“It was nice, aye?” He asks, spooning another bite into his mouth. “We had fun.”

Your mind skids to a stop. Fun? Your cheeks are still stale with dried tears, your thighs still quiver. They turn limbless when you take a step for the door and Ghost snaps his neck around, shooting you a scornful look.

“Stay,” he growls. Commands.

There’s a storm inside you. A tempest. Cold winds that read of desire colliding head-on with humid air that screams danger. They drag each other aloft, fogging your brain. Making your feet move before your mind can.

You scoot into the stool and grip your plate. You sneer at the contents because it looks scooped from a tin, barely fit for human consumption. The slop trickles, and it’s obvious you’ll need a spoon. Your tongue braces when you realize that requires asking for one. 

You speak with a rough burr. “Um. May I have a spoon, or something?”

Ghost spares you a cursory glance but doesn’t say anything, opting to smack his lips around another mouthful. Johnny is the one to smile, shaking his head.

“Sorry puppy, no more o’ those. We’ve just enough for us two. We dinnae get company much.” 

Ghost spells it out for you. “We’ve no more utensils. You’ll eat without ‘em.”

The air around you blisters with his crass clarification. You stare at your plate, the wisps of steam that curl from it. You look at your fingers, white-knuckled around the chipped ceramic. Recently manicured. Too spruce to dirty with food. The unsaid fallback hangs over your head like a storm cloud, greyscale and grim. You squirm like a dog caught in the rain. Hair matted to your forehead, ears drooping. 

You don’t say anything as you bend your neck and open your mouth. You snag a morsel between your teeth, swallowing thickly. You can’t liken the taste to anything—it’s unlike anything you’ve had before. Bland, like cardboard. Sticks to your teeth. 

Johnny shoves his nose in your face and grins. “Yummy?” 

You smack your lips a couple times. “Um, yes. Look, I should really get going–”

You stand up but get shoved back down. Ghost’s palm is split across your shoulder, keeping you in place. Your squirming is in vain. He has a vice grip on you, fingers tightening around you like a collar. 

“This is what you wanted, no?” He asks. He presses his fingers deeper, divoting your skin. “Attention. We gave you tha’. Now you’re just being ungrateful.”

You can barely shake your head because Ghost still has an iron-grip on you. Your protest is fickle, because not even you believe it. You did want a good fuck. You did want to be broken in and put together again by hands other than yours. You did want to be fed vestiges of affection, but upon sleeping with them, you’ve found the taste to be bitter. Too harsh, like sandpaper on your tongue. 

You want nothing more than to spit it out.

But Ghost isn’t so understanding. He doesn’t like being divested of what he wants, it seems. And what he wants is you. Even Johnny cowers under his glare, looking at you worriedly while Ghost moves his hand around your jawbone.

“Never taught any manners, were you?” He grunts. “Stray pet. Used to scraps. Wouldn’t know a good opportunity from a bad one if it hit you in the face.”

He pulls you in for a wet, sloppy kiss. You flush as you recall your fickle protests—that you aren’t a dog—because the way spit bends between you, stringy, smeared across your cheek, reminds you of two mutts fighting, their scrimmage made of mangled canines and saliva.

But only one fighting dog can be victorious. 

And it sure as hell isn’t going to be you. 

Ghost is all muscle softened by fat. Corded sinews and disciplined thew. He stands as tall as a sequoia and his shoulders yawn as wide as an ocean. He might as well be Sasquatch with how large he is, how he exacts fear in your bones. He’s eclipsing, and with such a sizable stature comes a sizable appetite. He bites into you. 

You wince at his teeth in your neck. You’re already weak beneath him, thawed, like a volatile solvent. You’re the spun sugar of cotton candy, melting on his tongue. Soft and sugary. He sucks at your neck and leaves mulberry-coloured bruises on your skin, tonguing after you. 

Your nerves flare when he bites, and you push him away. Your hindbrain has caught up, panicky and anxious because while you crave lips grazing your skin, Ghost’s mouth is cracked and dry and stinks of cigarettes. You beetle away, frowning, stumbling off the stool.

“Tail between your fuckin’ legs like I’m gonna hurt you,” Ghost sneers. “You always do this? Seduce men then scream rape? S’that the only way you get pity?”

You step back but hit Johnny’s chest. Fear seizes you. You’re damp with sweat and your heartbeat is quickly rising. You shake your head, tears falling, spitting incoherent protests.

“No?” He steps closer but he can’t crowd you backward anymore. Johnny’s chest is immovable metal against your back. He holds you in place, keeps you from squirming as Ghost continues. “You agreed to come home with me. Just ‘cause y’regret whoring yourself out doesn’t mean we’re bad blokes. We’re no bad blokes, pet. You’re just a fuckin’ liar.”

He grabs your chin, hoists your head up. “And I don’t fancy liars. Do you, Johnny?”

You feel the Scot puff up behind you. “Nae, Ghost. Dinnae like ‘em. Not one bit.”

“I reckon she needs a lesson,” Ghost rasps. “Would you agree?”

“Aye. O’course.”

Ghost looks down at you. “Would you agree?”

You can’t say no because he still has you by your chin. His grip is bruising, keeps you poised. You want to shake your head but Ghost puppets your chin up and down instead, making you nod even though you don’t want to. Making you sign yourself away like a forged slip of paper. 

Ghost’s lips peel into a Glasglow smile. Johnny smooches your cheek.

“Can’t cry wolf now, puppy,” he says. “Ye nodded, ye ken. That’s consent. It’s practically on paper.”

“I– I didn’t,” you croak. “He made me–”

“Oh, but ye did,” he chuckles. “Quit bein’ a tease.”

Your mouth clamps shut and your legs follow mindlessly as Ghost tugs you away. He takes you to the living room, toward a man-sized dog cage nestled in the corner. The only thing disarming about it is the cottony blanket on the bottom, the pillows in the corner.

But the teeth marks that scratch the cage bars offset that. Someone’s been in there before, and they struggled. And the way Johnny bristles when you approach it tells you all you need to know.

“Get in,” Ghost grunts. 

You don’t move, so he takes you by the scruff of your neck and forces you onto your knees. He swats your ass and shepherds you inside, locking it behind you.

You spin around on your hands and knees, lip trembling. You whimper, but Ghost shakes his head.

“You think about what you’ve done,” he says. Then he makes for the bedroom with Johnny quick at his feet.

The next hour is a blip in your memory. 

You hear their door slam closed. You hear growls and groans, air sucked through teeth. You hear the zip of clothes ripping, the ring of a belt being unbuckled. Johnny’s voice wafts through the wall, distorted by sobs, while Ghost’s voice is husky and phlegmy. They’re both tempered by the headboard slamming against the wall.

It sounds like two bears trying to maul each other in there, but by your moistening cunt, you know better. Skin slapping against skin, wheezy breathing. Those sounds translate a carnal force. You feel it in your core, your wettening sex. The bars of the wired crate press tracks into your skin as you manoeuvre yourself, shamefully slipping your fingers below your panties. 

You’re already slick. Shame burns you. Eats at you and makes you wilt like cellophane caught on fire. The all-consuming flare of arousal smothers your fear and licks your skin, makes your stomach knot as you imagine what they’re doing to each other. You rub your puffy lips, circle your clit. Edge your fingers into your hole and wince at the pain.

(Whether you like it or not, you’ve been claimed. Snared. Ear-tagged. Branded. Their shadows still haunt your skin, your abused cunt. There’s a rubbery stretch when you force your fingers inside, your other hand racing to clamp your mouth shut. You pump them in and out, a gyre of water and grease fire bubbling within you. You don’t want this—you want to go home—but pleasure has snuck under your skin. Arousal has annexed your forebrain, making you chase down whatever’s pleasurable.

An orgasm. Kibble. A bone. Belly scratches–)

You curl your fingers inside you. You can still feel Johnny’s mouth on your pussy and Ghost in your throat. They’ve violated you, broken you in. Made you theirs.

As their groans crest, you see your climax in the distance—two smouldering lights that hit you with the force of a bullet train. Liquid smooths out of your cunt, down your fingers. Your blood rushes to your ears and submerges the sounds of them reaching their own high.

Your orgasm gets drawn out like a spinning wheel, taking minutes to peter out. Still you don’t hear the door open, or the approaching footsteps. You don’t hear the dreadful leitmotif that plays from imaginary speakers when they enter the room. You simply open your eyes, fucked-out, and see them towering over you. Naked if not for their boxers.

“Did you touch yourself?” Ghost pants. His jaw feathers, peevish. 

You smack your lips together, plucking whatever cow-sense you have left to shake your head and lie. 

“No…” you scrimp out. 

He snarls. “Check ‘er.”

Johnny pricks up with an unsettling level of enthusiasm. He drops to his knees and unlocks the crate, cooing, but is contrarily rough in how he forces your legs apart. You burn as he thumbs through the folds of your hot cunt, stroking your clit.

“Made a fuckin’ mess ye did, lass,” he tuts. “And ye dinnae leave any fun for us?”

Ghost grabs you and drags you out, huffing all the while. Your world helixes when you’re tossed over his shoulder, carried further into their flat. You get dropped in a tub and muscled against the wall, still drowsy, with no time to gird yourself before a barrage of ice-cold water starts stabbing you.

Ghost grabs the showerhead and twists it to the jet setting, spraying you down. You try folding yourself into the rust-crusted corner of the tub but it does nothing to offset the freeze that rattles you. You splay your hands out and curl your legs into your chest to shield yourself, but it’s fruitless. Ghost leans in and sprays you closer, the heavy stream tamping against your sensitive pussy and slick chest. 

You open your mouth to beg– 

“Please.”

–but it gets filled up by sloshing water, running down your throat like liquid fire which you belch back up. 

Your legs beat around as Johnny rips your dress off. You think you've been spared when the water turns off, but your mercy fleets away as Ghost drags you out of the shower and onto the floor. You shiver like a wet dog, soaking wet, dripping onto the mat. You impulsively curl into the towel that Johnny wraps you with, desperate for warmth.  

“Just had to hose ye down, bonnie,” he says. “Ye dinnae mind, do ye?”

He roughly dries you off. The terrycloth of the towel feels more like sandpaper with him. You can’t complain though because your head is suddenly puppeted back, forced by Ghost’s hand which is cupped under your jaw. He thumbs your mouth open and shoves a toothbrush inside, scrubbing your gums so roughly you could bleed. He scours away the taste of his cock and the alcohol from last night. The bristles reach the back of your throat and you gag around it, spitting into the sink as he shoves your head forward. 

Your mind is too spotty to notice Johnny vibrating in the corner. “Can I dress ‘er, Ghost? Please can I dress–”

Ghost shoves you in his arms, and it seems that Johnny already came prepared with clothes tucked under his arm. He lowers to his knees and fits your feet into them, kissing up your thighs as he pulls up the shorts. A simple sweatshirt goes over your head—no bra—so your nipples perk against the cotton, pebbled.

He pulls you in for a deep kiss once he’s finished. It winds you, leaves you breathless.

(And strangely enough, it leaves you wanting more–)

Ghost stalks out of the bathroom and Johnny follows close behind, dragging you with him. They go out the door and into a beaten-up truck, shoving you in the back. It all happens so quick you have no time to brace when Ghost tamps down on the gas and hastens down the road. 

Hope flickers within you. You stare outside, watching how buildings and trees blur past you. You believe they’re taking you home, tossing you back onto the same sidewalk they found you on. Maybe they sprayed you down to clear their evidence, maybe they changed your clothes so a missing persons poster wouldn’t find you first. 

You prick up against the window as the bar Ghost found you in front of comes into view–

–but your skin melts around your bone when you drive past it, watching it become a speck in the sideview mirror. 

Anxiety feathers its way up your back, gumming itself into the divots of your spine. You don’t bother asking where you’re going—that would earn you nothing more of a sparse grunt and a short huff. You purse your lips and try not to cry. Every second is another anvil on your chest, heavy and steely, stifling your breath. 

Your fingers snap around the door handle as you approximate the best time it would be to pull it. You’d have to pucker yourself, swing the door open, then roll out—all without one of them catching you first. 

You shoulder yourself into the door. Your hand goes taut on the handle. You nerve yourself, ready to push it open, ready to roll onto the pocked street and scrape yourself threadbare–

–but the opportunity never comes. Ghost pulls into the parking lot of a sleepy strip mall and cuts the engine. He parked tightly between two vans so even if you tried, you wouldn’t have the space to run. 

You have to swallow your flinch when you glance at the rearview mirror and catch him staring at you, beady-eyed.

“We’re gonnae spoil ye puppy,” Johnny says. He slips out of the passenger seat and goes to retrieve you. His tone is pillowly but his grip is firm, warningly. “Ye get to pick out whichever one ye fancy.”

Embarrassment pulls at you as he tugs you into a store. The scent of bird seed and aspen shavings hit the back of your throat, stale and soil-like. You must smack your lips before talking.

“P-pick out…what?”

He stops short in front of a colourful aisle, and it strikes you belatedly that this is a pet shop. Fitting, seeing as you’re similarly skittish to the ensnared bunnies and hamsters. 

Johnny nudges you forward. “Any collar ye like, puppy.”

That’s when it slides into place. There’s a glut of dog chokers in front of you, varying in colour and design. Some are bedazzled and some are flower-printed, others are made of cork and stink up the whole aisle with artificial leather. Your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth and your head begins to throb, as if you’re being pumped full of mercury. 

You have to dig deep to find your words. Slowly, you find, human intelligence has been escaping you. You whimper before speaking and sink into your new sweatshirt. 

“Do I have to?”

“Ghost’ll just pick one for ye if ye don’t,” he grins. “And I ken ye’ve got better style, pup.”

You look back at the aisle and try to think of what you would get your own dog to soften the discomfort creeping up your throat. Your fingers glance off the collars in an effort to gauge which would feel the best around your neck—or, as best as they could feel, anyway.

Your touch flutters over salmon-pink webbing. A bone-shaped tag dangles from the collar, waiting to be inscribed with a name and an owner’s phone number. 

(The implications don’t elude you. The dog tag is an empty slate which welcomes a new name and erases your old one. Once the collar locks around your neck, the name that gets etched into the metal plate will be yours for however long they keep you. You wouldn’t answer to your current title but would get Pavloved into replying to something else.)

“Ye fancy this one?” Johnny asks. “Fine choice, puppy. It complements ye real nice. Brings out yer eyes.”

He swipes the collar and brings you to the cashier. The girl working the counter is young, plump, and briefly reminds you of the world outside your new confines. You consider whispering for help before Ghost situates himself directly behind you, the metal teeth of his jeans zipper distending into your bum.

“What name would you like on the tag?” She asks, listless. 

You remember Johnny calling your name pretty. It makes it especially jarring when he sticks his neck out, answering with a bright smile, “Puppy.”

She gives a quizzical look. You can hear the question in the bend of her eyebrow—”You’re naming your puppy, Puppy?”—but you suppose she doesn’t get paid enough to care, so she shrugs and scores it into the plate, asking for a phone number.

Ghost gives his and pays with a crumpled wad of cash. He doesn’t wait for change before turning on his boot and dragging you out of the store, stuffing you back into the truck. This time, Johnny sits next to you. He loops the collar around your neck and kisses you softly, wetting your skin before locking it in place. 

His eyes shine when he pulls back. They’re two lagoons, depthless and blue, gleaming like rip currents ready to pull you in. Again, Johnny’s beauty belays your hostility. His crooked smile and his ruddy cheeks flirt you toward him, nuzzling you into his chest. He cradles your head and doesn’t stop kissing you the whole ride back. Similarly, Ghost’s bone-deep stare never leaves you through the rearview mirror. 

Evening comes quickly.

A greyscale canopy has blanketed the sky, mirroring the dread you feel in your solar plexus. Your knees are fettered from being folded for too long and your shins begin to bruise against the hardwood floor. Your neck has been leashed to a leg of their dining table for God knows how long now, tensing as they cook dinner. 

You can’t see what they’re cooking, but you can approximate using your snout (potato skin, bruised onion). Your hearing is also more acute because again, your eyesight has been taken, blackened behind a burlap sack that’s fit over your head and girded around your neck.

You saw what was written on the bag before Ghost pulled it over your head. 

Dog in training.

And it wouldn’t be incorrect. You keep scratching the floor, keep whining. Johnny just thinks you’re hungry and slips food under the hem of your sack. When you ask them to let you go, he suddenly can’t hear you. 

You heed the belch of chairs being pulled out, and two deep sighs from Ghost and Johnny as they sit down. You hear their utensils clink, scraping against their plates, hitting their teeth. Your stomach burbles with hunger, and in a lapse of judgement, you feather towards one of the men and lay your head on their lap in a wordless beg, hoping it isn’t Ghost. During your time here you’ve come to learn he doesn’t take kindly to grovelling mutts.

But throughout this ordeal luck has continuously escaped you. It shouldn’t surprise you when a large hand rests on your head, squishing you against the thickening rise of his jeans. 

“Hungry?” Ghost rasps. You hear the flick and flare of a lighter. You hear cigarette paper burning away as Ghost lights it up, inhaling the smoke between bites of food. 

You grizzle, nodding against his tented jeans. 

“Take my cock out,” he says. 

Essentially blindfolded, you struggle with finding his fly. Your fingers fumble over his crotch and flinch when you catch his zipper, pulling it down to feel his boxer-briefs distorted by a raging hard-on. 

You tug on his boxer-briefs just enough for his cock to slip out, thwacking against his tummy with a soft thump. You choke your hand around him, but his cock is too thick for your grip to wrap all the way around. You employ both hands, working them up and down his length, brushing the pad of your thumb over his dripping slit.

It startles you when he cups your cheeks. His hands are larger than your head, and unexpectedly rip a hole through the burlap, just big enough for your mouth. You capitalize off air that isn’t recycled and open your mouth for a lungful, but your inhale gets dampened as Ghost feeds his cock into you.  

He rubs his slit over your tongue and slides himself down the spine of your throat. You retch around him, however his hand is split behind your neck and keeps your nose squished against his bristly pubic bone. He bucks his hips into you, drawing on his cigarette, eating his food. You can barely hear Johnny through the mescal pooling in your ears–

“Is she suckin’ ye off?” “Ghost, can I watch? Or join? Or can she suck me next? Please?” “What’s she doin’? Is she doin’ it right? Ghost–”

You feel cigarette shavings fall on your head, and humiliation tingling up your spine at being his ashtray. Your cunt twists when Ghost grunts, scratching his teeth together. His voice is husky and tight, malformed with arousal as you suckle his fat cockhead. 

“You shut your gob Johnny,” he growls. “Or you’ll spend the night in the kennel.”

Johnny snaps his mouth shut. You can hear it. That, and the table rattling as he humps his chair. All the noise around you ripens into tinnitus as Ghost squishes his thighs around your head and goes rigid with his orgasm, emptying his balls down your warm throat. His spume is slick, filling up your mouth, chasing after him in strings as he pulls himself from your throat. 

He swats your cheek. “Was that yummy, pet?”

Your pussy aches. Your tangible arousal bleeds through your panties, hot and sticky. 

(They say that as you’re drowning, it feels like hell. Like you’re getting attacked by white-capped waves. The pain quickly ripens into an unexplainable peace, and soon, the treacherous water turns into a warm hug. It’s peaceful. A timeless limbo.

Maybe you’re drowning now. In Ghost’s come, or Johnny’s affection, or their doting. It’s the only explanation for the way your hackles lower and a drowsy smile stretches over your face, as you softly nod.)

“This is why you need us, pet,” Ghost continues. “We’re here to take care of you. Keep you fed. Groomed. It’s what you deserve.”

You drop your head on his knee, wistful. 

“We cannae do that if yer bein’ thrawn,” Johnny tacks on. “You dinnae have to feel guilty about it. After all it feels good, aye?”

You nod as Ghost pulls the sack off your head and unleashes you from the table. He shepherds you into his lap and kisses you sweetly, fondling your tits. 

“Does my pet want more?” He rasps into the seam of your lips. 

You mumble a soft, “Yes,” languid, grinding on him. Ghost is quick to correct you—he grips your jaw and stares at you witheringly, shaking his head.

“Pets don’t talk,” he says. “You just nod, alright? And don’t shake your head. They don’t say no, either.”

Ghost stands up before your response and carries you to the bedroom. He drops you on the mattress and crawls on top, planting his arms on either side of you. 

(There he goes again, trapping you in a cage.)

Johnny stalks through the threshold and leans down to kiss you. They scatter their lips over your body and map your skin, dragging their tongues across your curves. Their hands follow suit—gripping, dimpling, caressing. Tightening the collar around your neck. 

Ghost tugs you by your martingale. “You’re gonna take us both, alright?”

A prudish “Yes,” sits on your tongue, but you bite it off. You nod instead. Thawing into their touch, their tongues. Their rules. Their lifestyle. You let them peel your clothes off and spread your pussy, spitting on it, plunging their fingers into it. You don’t know whose wrist to grab as they both fuck you open on their fingers, and you finally opt to twisting the bedsheets in your grip to ground yourself. 

“So wet, puppy,” Johnny breathes. He sweeps his hand over your sticky folds, giving it a smack. Ghost catches your flinch and thumbs your clit, tracing it, curling his stout fingers into your walls. 

“She wants more,” he grunts. “She’s needy.”

Johnny unzips his pants and takes his dick out. He nods, drowsy, as he tugs at his cock. 

“I’ll fuck ‘er,” Ghost continues. “Fill out this pretty pussy.”

Johnny whines. Long and tinny. Pouty. “But ye said I could have ‘er, Ghost. Ye said I could have ‘er again. That’s nae fair–”

“If you keep being a brat about it, you won’t get her at all,” Ghost makes a withering, warning look that shuts Johnny up.

Ghost takes his shirt off, and you have no time to ogle at his bristly chest before being pulled onto his lap. His cock lays in front of you, fat and heavy, pressing against the squish of your cunt. You’re grinding down on him when he rasps something that drains you, turning you pruney, into vacuum-sealed cellophane. 

“You take ‘er backside,” he says against your jaw. It agitates another stir of arousal out of you. It travels down your ass and waves over your furled hole, lubing it up. 

You realize it now—Ghost warned you of it—Johnny is hyper, barky. He wastes no time in rutting his cockhead into you, breaking the skin of your shoulder as he bites you to offset the pleasure scuttling up his spine. He forces himself into your asshole, prattling nugatory apologies every time you smart with pain. 

“I ken it hurts,” he says. “I’m sorry puppy, it’ll go away soon. Please dinnae be mad at me.”

Just as the burn starts to elapse, Ghost slides into your pussy. It’s a maddening squeeze. You clamp around him, clawing your nails down his hairy, bulging chest. Your hips spurt and stutter, taking them whole, unravelling into ribbons as they snap into you. 

It’s world’s better than your inept fingers and cheap vibrator. Getting hollowed out, split open on two fat, heavy cocks. Trapped between them as they guide your hips, as they lean over you and dovetail their lips together, their saliva dripping onto your head with how messy it is. 

You heft your neck up, desperate to join in. Desperate to catch their spit in the cradle of your mouth. You’re just barely given a gorge to slip through, kitten licking their lips, sucking their tongues. It’s wet and messy and has you knotting up around them, locking up tight as your orgasm feathers over you, caught in the girdle where your leash is and trickling down to your tummy where the barest outline of Ghost’s length protrudes.

They don’t let up after your orgasm. They keep going—they’re two dogs stuffing their snouts into an addled carcass, mangled roadkill—there is no mercy. They fuck you through the bulk of your orgasm, even as you go limp against Ghost’s chest. Even as words elude you when you want to prate about how good it feels, and you can only produce gasps, howls, whimpers and whines. 

Perhaps it’s providence that you’re here, that you came across Ghost under that awning. You’ll ignore the red flags, the warnings, and you’ll indulge in their sick lifestyle. 

It’s a quid pro quo. They have someone to pamper, you get pampered.

Maybe you’ll even bark for them too.

victory lap

“Got a proposition for you, Simon,” the man says, and Simon snorts. He reeks of the same brand of cheap cigarettes as always—stale smoke, day-old tobacco; acrid and unpleasant. It makes his skin itch.  “an’ I told you already, Price. I ain't interested in a team—” “Not a team, Simon.” The look he levels him with is nothing short of malicious. Dangerous. His hackles raise on instinct, everything inside of him hissing to back away. “Got something else in mind.” Then through the door was you. Pretty as a picture— And all his for the night. or: John strikes a deal with young Simon Riley. his cooperation on a team they're putting together in exchange for a night with you. naturally, it goes awry.

18+ SMUT. implied noncon, dubcon. under-negotiated kink. bondage. overstimulation. size difference. size kink. messy, sweaty gross sex. rough sex. unsafe sex. mean Simon. smitten Simon. bullydom!Simon. spit kink. degradation and humiliation. young!Simon (pre-mw2019-2022 when he was still a Seargent; 25-28ish). manipulation. attempts at taming a stray dog that goes as well as you'd expect.

It's John who takes his muzzle off.

Dangles the key on his finger when he kicks open the door, letting his Lieutenant glimpse what lay behind it. Giving a gruff, like what you see? when his eyes finally adjust to the low light flooding in.

It takes him half a second. Enough time to commit the scene in front of him to memory.

It's you, of course.

good dogs get rewards, don't they, Simon?

Waiting for him. Pretty as a picture in sleek silk chiffon ribboned in intricate shibari around your chest, stomach, and thighs. Legs spread on the table; ankles tied down to the sides in nude jute rope. Hands clasped together, fingers laced; wrists tied above your head. The blindfold wrapped around your head is a pale pink ribbon, thicker than the silk on your body. Wrapped twice over your eyes, and tied in a pretty bow behind your head, he imagines.

In the split of your thighs, he finds you already slick. Wet. It drips down onto the table, puddling beneath your ass. The spread of your pussy, glistening in the flushed light; the small, pink vibrator taped to your clit makes his cock twitch. 

"All for me?" He rasps, eyes fixed on your cunt. On how pretty it looks. How inviting. A soft, ripe peach offered in the heat of summer, and he wants nothing more than to sink his teeth into you. Her. "'ow sweet o'you."

And Price, he thinks, eyes slanting sideways as he glances at the man sliding into his chair. It stands to reason that this whole thing, you on a silver platter for a starving wolf, wouldn't have happened if he hadn't seen the look on Simon's face when you first met him. The hunger.

Simon's not stupid, of course. He knew you were off limits the moment Price put his paw on your nape, squeezing once. Owned, claimed. The intention, the message, clear. Mine.

Don't touch.

And the way you lit up, stammering out something about how good it was to meet him, told him everything he needed to know how your willingness to be shackled to his Captain.

But even so—

He couldn't take his eyes off of you.

(and in his intense cataloguing of everything you did, he couldn't help but notice how you kept touching your neck when Price was dragged away for a conversation leaving you all alone in a room rankled down his spine. almost as if you were reaching up to fix a collar—)

The memory alone makes him shudder.

"All yours, Simon," Price drawls from his perch on the throne. Between two fingers, a cigar sits, unlit. Ghost huffs.

The words are a vicious bite to the want pooling low in his belly. "That so?”

The room seems to shake when he steps inside. Floor creaking ominously under his weight. It makes your mouth drop, heavy breaths spilling out between dull teeth. Chest rising and sinking shallowly with a wild sort of nervousness that flits across the expanse of your cheeks, in the tremble of your lower lip. 

Despite your unease, your legs stay open. Held aloft by the rope, he knows, but also—

A testament to how trained you are. 

He prefers his pets wild. Unpolished. Vicious little things that he gets to bring to heel with a sharp bark and rough hand glued to the back of their skulls, pushing their head into the dirt, to the floor, where it belongs. 

Fine china broken at his feet. 

But you—

Manicured. Groomed to perfection. Save for the harsh breaths and the shake in your joints—both an indication of just how new you are at this. A novice. One slowly being crushed under the leather boot of a man who reeks of smoke and whiskey. 

But knowing his captain and the furious need for control, he imagines you're better than some of the seasoned ones he'd come across in his lifetime. No room for errors.

And certainly no forgiveness for them, either. 

His cock twitches again—a heavy, aching weight against his thigh—and he reaches down to cup the thickness of it, crushing the flesh in his palm to stave off the need burning in his loins. The urgency to sink inside of your pretty little cunt rewiring the part of him that likes to mess his pets up first. Ruin them before he takes them. Fucking them to the point of unconsciousness—and sometimes, beyond it. 

But you—

You've been a phantom taste in the back of his throat for months now. A tease between his teeth. Sinking his jowls into you is the only thing on his mind. 

And when you're offered up so enticingly—

Well. 

Price can't blame him much for how badly he's going to ruin you. 

He reaches out, fingers pressing cruelly into the slim, thumb-sized vibrator Price has locked against your clit. A mindless, incessant torture, he's sure. Pushing you over the edge on a constant, unrelenting loop. 

“Messy girl,” he rasps, the starchy fabric of the mask glueing to his balmy skin. 

The reprimand makes you flinch in shame, but the flutter of your cunt belies the contrition that drapes over your brow in a shallow mimicry of sorrow. He can see why Price latched onto you so quickly, and doesn't bother fighting the stab of envy that brims in his chest. 

“Didn't your old man ever teach you any manners?” He mocks, dry and derisively. Quietly amused by the soft mewl you let out, one that only just eclipses the snort from Price. “Daddy's been slackin’, ‘asn’t he? Let his little girl turn into a messy fuckin’ slag.” 

You try to close your legs to no avail, the rope keeping you spread. In part, he thinks, from shame—blistering, burning, and vibrant when it streaks across your face—but mostly from the slick gush that leaks out of your drenched pussy at his foul words. Trying to hide it from him. To keep him from knowing just how much the brassy roll of his ugly words makes your empty little cunt ache. 

“Look’it you.” He rumbles, enjoying the shiver in your joints. The way your head rolls to the side, nose pressed tight to the skin of your arm. “Messy pussy just achin’ to be fucked.”

He adds more pressure until you choke. The scream lodged in your throat. Your toes curl. He hears the soft pop of your joints when you arch your back like a cat in heat yowling for attending. 

“Want it bad, don't you?” He taunts. “Daddy must’a spoiled you too much—” another scoff from Price. The creak of leather. The clink of ice against glass. “Didn't teach you any manners—”

He wants you to beg. Wants to hear the peal of your voice—rough and ragged and begging him to sink inside you; fuck your little cunt until you can't walk anymore—but that's not what he's here for. Not why Price dragged him up to the room. Gave you to him. 

And with the silk gag in your mouth, he knows he won't get it, anyway. Tied in a pretty bow behind your head. Wet with your spit already. 

Simon's fingers slide down, dragging over the folds of your cunt. You're wet. Soaked. Drenched in a way he's never seen before; folds glistening. Thighs wet. Sticky. He licks his lips. Tastes the brine of his sweat. He wants to eat your pussy. Spread you wide on his tongue and make you beg Price to let Simon make you cum. 

The thought roots in his head. Burrowing deep. He can already hear your sweet voice pleading with his captain—please, please let him make me cum—but he pushes it down when Price makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat. 

He knows why he's here. 

And wonders, then, when he steps back and drops his hands to the button on his trousers, how many times you've been punished like this. The thought is a sour smoulder in the back of his head. An ugly, foul thing unfurled over the soot-stained walls of his skull. 

(he'll ask later. get the names of every man Price let see you like this, and pluck the memory of you right from their skull—)

“So needy,” he drawls, dragging his cock out of his slacks as they fall low on his thighs. “Even after this pussy’s been spoiled so much?”

It makes you keen, and the noise is a searing knife to his guts. He groans with it—low and rough, the noise scraping over the flesh of his throat until it hurts. 

“Gonna have to punish you, ain't I? Needy fuckin' thing—” so he says, but his cock is just as sticky as your thighs, weeping a steady stream of pre-cum that pools in the tangle of hair at the base, dusting over his heavy, fat balls. 

He shuffles closer, and reaches out to your knee, slipping his fingers behind your shin. The squeal of naked flesh against the metal tabletop shouldn't make him throb but it does. Cruel man, he thinks, and drinks in the way you wince. 

He presses his cock against your slit, mouth dropping in a harsh pant when he takes in the hideous sight it makes. Your pussy is covered up by his girth. The tip of his cock bobbing over your belly button, dripping pre-cum into the divot. 

Simon pulls his hips back, letting his cock glide over your silken flesh. The wet squelch it makes when he thrusts forward, cockhead tapping on your belly, has him grunting like an animal. It's obscene, this. The way he can't even see your folds over the wide spread of his cock. Pussy tucked neatly under him. 

He can't even begin to imagine how you'll take the full length of him inside of you when his cock nudges past your belly button when he lets his balls rest on your molten slit. Poor thing. 

He doesn't know if Price stretched you before this. Got you ready for him. But the man makes no move to intervene when Simon pulls back until his head slips down your seam, bracketed between your plush, swollen folds, tight against your entrance. All he has to do is—

Push

And the tip of his cock slips in. 

You make another noise at the sting, and he thinks you might be crying but his eyes are riveted to the spot where you open for him. Pussy so small, so tiny, compared to his cock in a way that's sickening. Garish. But your little cunt drools on him. Rim fluttering like a heartbeat on his glands, pulling him deeper. Enticing him to sink inside. All the way. Until he can feel the hitch of your breath on his cock. 

He leans back to get a better view, the motion forcing another inch inside of you. The noise is slick. Giving as your silken flesh parts around him, eagerly taking him in. But as wet as you are, as pliant, the stretch is unbearable. It chokes the air from his lungs when you tighten up around him—

“Fuckin' hell—” he snaps, his upper lip curling up beneath the mask. Your cunt makes him angry. Suddenly, viciously. The fury drips down his spine, pools at the base of his cock. His hand slips out from between your thighs, roughly grabbing your waist. Holding on tight as he jerks his hips harshly against you. 

You feel good. Perfect. Wrapped snugly around him. A hot, wet embrace. And he huffs at the bitterness that clots in his lungs; the surge of pleasure so blisteringly intense, it nearly makes him gag. Makes him sick. 

Price has this every night. 

The thought alone is a poison. It needles in deep, lashing at him with foul, rabid teeth. Cruelly, he pushes deeper, sinking his cock in another inch, another, another—mindless in this pursuit to tear you apart well before you're ready for it. 

He wants it to burn. To ache. Wants to be the worst fuck you've ever had; cock too big for you to take, but he feeds it to you in full. Gives you all of it. Every inch. Until your stomach churns with every press of his cockhead against your cervix, his glands sliding over that spot inside that makes your knee jerk and your eyes roll. 

Wants you to remember him as a beast. To think of his cock and feel nauseous. 

To sink deep inside of you—brutal and savage—until you can still feel him in your pussy for days. Each step causing a sharp pang in your lower belly. 

It's awful, he knows. Terrible. But he forces himself into you anyway, feeling your flesh split around him. A blunt, unyielding pressure until his balls tap against your ass, pussy spasming around the fat length he punishes you with. He's sure he's deeper inside of you than anything—any man, cheap silicon—has ever dreamed of being. Kissing places in you that nothing has ever touched. Feels it in the nervous flit of your muscles pulsing around him—this foreign thing bludgeoning into uncharted territory, stretching you wide. Almost virginal all over again. It makes him groan. 

Your pleasure is a muted ripple down his spine. The vibrator forcing you into enjoying the sharp sting of your rim pulled taut around the plug of his cock, skin blanching from the strain. He wants to stay just like this—grinding his hips into the backs of your spread thighs, cockhead chiselling into the molten seal of your womb with every gyration until the line between pleasure and pain begins to blur. Until you gag from how badly having your walls battered burns, hurts, but the bloom of pleasure deep inside your groin keeps you in place. Makes you arch your back, wanting more. 

Desperate for it. 

But this isn't what Price wants, is it? 

No—

He voices his impatience with a muffled grunt. Get on with it, Simon is pinched out between the silver of space between his teeth, the butt of a burning cigar keeping his jaw unhinged. The heady, sour-sweet stench of smouldering tobacco, nicotine, staining the words. 

You clench at the sound of Price's voice, pretty pussy drawing all tight around him. Perfectly trained. Sweet thing, he thinks, pulling out of you slowly. Just a few inches. Feeling your skin glue his; the glide of your walls over his shaft sickeningly good, nauseatingly so. He holds it for a moment, staring down at you through the eye holes of his mask, breathing heavily. Sweat drenches his skin. Tacky, hot. The starchy fabric clings to his flesh, peeling away each time he moves his head. 

The exertion of fucking his cock into you shows through the muted pulse of his joints, muscles aching from the strain of pushing forward. 

(Holding himself back.)

You blink at him blearily, eyes misted with tears. A smaller puddle sits on the table near your temples. 

Up close, he can see the full detail of the intricate shibari binding you tight. The sleek pink ribbon weaving over your chest, your breast, stomach—hishi karada, Price said. At the base of your neck is more silk in a mockery of a collar. And he wonders if you miss it, then. The solid weight of leather on your skin. If your hands weren't tied up, he imagines they'd be there. Holding firm. 

Just like the night he first met you. 

The silk rope, the loss of your collar—

“Your dad's a cruel man, ain't he?” He mocks, sliding his fingers over the delicate trim of silk bound tight under your heaving breasts, peppering across your nipple, down the slope. Resting at the base of your throat. The thin slip of fabric is not enough to give you what you need. The pressure, the friction. The sense of being owned. “Didn't even give his little girl a collar.” 

More of that tantalising shame rake over your expression. Tears dribble out in hot drops, spilling down the side of your face. 

He hums, slips this fragility into his back pocket. “Want me to give it to you, little girl?” 

He spits the words out like they're wrong. Awful. Takes in your flinch, the downward twist to your lips, and shoves that, too, into his pocket. 

Simon has no intention of waiting for an answer, for permission—he reels back, hand still splayed wide over your sternum, and pulls his cock out more until only the flare of his glands peaks out. He's soaked—glistening with your slick. So wet that it drips out of your plugged hole, gliding down the cleft of your ass. 

He wonders if you always get like this—

Bites that thought clean through with an angry groan, and pries his fingers out from the back of your knee, dragging them to the end of his mask. Rucking it up over his skin, bunched against the bridge of his nose. 

If the mess of his mouth, chin, the crooked, angular slope of his nose horrifies you at all, you don't let it show. Content to quietly sob on the table, eyes flickering between the thick plug of his cock between your thighs and the Price. 

He hates you, he thinks. And then he spits on your pretty pussy, right over your taut rim. Watches the foamy mess bubble, drip down to the skin behind his mushroomed head. When it pools there, he pulls back until the widened flare of his glands slips free. You whine—a noise of bright hot disgust, humiliation—and he lets it burrow under his skin, trickle down his spine. Then he pushes forward, popping the head back inside of you. 

The spit—his spit, too. 

And he does it again. The same thing. Pulling out, spitting. Feeding it to her. Letting it rub against the slick, wet (wetter now) walls of her cunt. 

Price doesn't say anything about this claim. Schoolboy possession—childish and immature when you're used to fine leather gripping tight around the slope of your neck.

Still. 

He pulls on your proverbial braids until it burns. 

The hum of the vibrator takes some of the sting away when he shoves inside of you again, cockhead bullying into your cervix with an unmatched cruelty. Leaking slick, steady, over your seal. Drooling, thick and viscous, against your walls. Staining you. 

Ruining you.

Each breath is punched out when he bottoms out. Forced from your lungs. Winded. He knows it hurts almost as much as the thick bludgeon of his cock pressing deep, but as he scrapes and claws at the rot concealing over his humanity, morality, he finds nothing inside of him left to care. 

He stops looking. Stops searching. 

Simon fucks into you with vigor instead, laughing mockingly at the lewd, sinful squelch of your cunt. “Think that's the sound of all my spit, birdie? Or is your sloppy little cunt always this fuckin’ messy?”

Each piston makes his pelvis slap into the vibrator; he can feel it through the tangle of coarse hair spooled above his cock. Buzzing incessantly against his skin. The spike of sharp pressure has you yowling beneath him, hips twisting, turning, trying to flee from the brutal onslaught. Pleasure and pain balancing on a knife's edge. 

He holds you there. Dangles you above the precipice just because he can—

A lazy flick of his waist. The savage grind of his hips. The softened bulge of his lower belly tapping against the plastic toy—

And it breaks you. This careless, effortless attention he pays to you has you tightening up around him like a knot, a vice; cunt squeezing, squeezing, before you shatter. Wave against a cliff; you spasm on his cock in a series of shallow, tight throbs pulsing along to the rapid fire of your heartbeat. 

His eyes are locked on your face. Pretty, lachrymal. Tears bleed down your temples, soaking into your hairline. Puddling underneath. 

His own little sea of your miserable pleasure. 

Eyes rolled into the back of your head. Toes curling. Hips jerking, twisting. Trying to run from the ugly, awful way he makes you cum. Makes you gorge yourself on pleasure. Force-feeding you pain with each sloppy, brutal thrust into your sopping, messy cunt—swollen, bruised; battered. And his—

—ice clinks against glass. A clicking swallow follows. The hollow thud of glass on wood. Scraping over the veneer as it's pushed back into place. Tobacco is chewed up by flames, popping and sizzling; smoldering with each inhale as the playwright watches the show he weaved together unfold—

—his. 

The silk around your neck comes loose with each thrash of your head rolling from side to side, shaking with quick, successive no, no, no’s that go unheeded, ignored. Every animalistic rut of his hips makes you change your mind, anyway. Turning those devastating no’s to yeses so eager, your teeth clack with every thrust. 

As it slips, sliding down the sweat-slicked column of your arched throat, he finds a stripe of red. A scab. Right at the knot where your collar would sit. A pretty gem in the middle. Your name, or maybe something that would amuse Price more than the perceived idea of your autonomy—bitch in glinting gold. His name and number etched into the back. 

if found, return to John Price. 

A foldhold, perhaps. Tailor-made for his boot. 

He hunts, Simon knows. Walked in reeking of leather and smoke when they first met and casually mentioned how good he was at Big Game hunting. A threat, then—however thinly veiled and erring on the side of mordant humour it was. But he wonders if Price personally made the collar you mourned the night he swung you into Simon's path. 

Your neck was bare, then. Blemishless. 

A collar too small. Tightened too much. Punishment, he supposes, and feels a sick sense of satisfaction roll down from his nape to the bottom of his spine where it pools in his groin—hot, molten oil—as he wonders just how much convincing it took you to agree to this. To spread your pretty legs for the ugly brute Price dangled you in front of. Who watched you all night from the corner of the room, chest heaving and eyes wide, wild, and furious. Reeking of rot. Want. To let him rut you like an animal while Price watches from the corner of the room—

A bead of sweat follows the phantom trail. 

“Fuck, birdie,” he's rasping, voice uttered wrecked. Mangled in his throat. “So fuckin’ tight f’me, ain't you? Must want me to cum inside this pretty cunt—”

You shiver. Knee jerking. There's a real sense of panic in your eyes when they dart over to Price, silently nursing another glass of scotch. He follows your gaze, catches Price glaring at him with his chin dipped low to his chest, peering out through his lashes. Brow furrowed. A flat line. 

Simon doesn't stop thrusting. Keeps a steady pace despite the anger brimming inside of him as the pleasure grows. Festers. 

Then—

Barely discernible: a nod. 

Shadows fall over his cheeks. He brings the glass back to his mouth with a surly mm between the mouthful. An irrevocable fuckin' get on with it. 

And Simon does.

The look he gives you pure predatory hunger. Victory in the potent stench of charred bones. He lifts his chin, stares down at you—all spread out like a gift to a god—and surges forward with a rabid hunger brimming in his guts. Unquenchable. Horrific. 

—wants you to eat you alive. Consume you whole. Leave nothing for Price to pick at, to mourn over,

settles instead for ruining your pussy. For fucking you raw. Cumming deep inside of your quivering cunt even when he knows you don't want that. Are silently begging Price to reconsider. To get this ugly fucking mutt off of you—

It churns his guts. Makes him viciously excited over the image that brims in the back of his head, tears raining down your cheeks as you bring a shaky hand to your aching, swollen cunt, feeling the thick, viscous glob of his cum leaking out.

Or before that, when you have to lay there and take it. Feeling his cock throbbing, pulsing as it spits cum inside of you. When he pulls out, and a milky trail follows, dribbling down between your cheeks. At his mercy the whole time, too, because Price won't get up right away to untie you. You'll have to lay there in his filth, feeling it ooze out of you—

He wants it. Badly. Feels it scorching his hindbrain, burning him up from the inside out. 

Later, he thinks, he'll fuck you with more finesse. Make you cum on his fingers—stuff them inside of your sore, aching cunt to the last knuckle; give you three of them to squeeze around, to cling to, and watch the ink on his bruised, scabbed skin disappear inside of you over and over again, pulling them out all slick, pearlescent with a mix of his cum and yours. On his tongue, too. Keep you in this pretty frogtie, unable to push him off—or pull him closer. Forced to take it. To let him lap at your pussy until he quenches this uneasy hunger festering inside of his stomach, growing bolder, greedier at the sight of you splayed out like this, exhausted already even though he's only just begun. 

Fuck you again, too, just because he can. 

all yours for a night, Price had said, sealing your fate with a sharp, decisive nod. 

He plans on making the most of the twelve hours until sunrise that he has. 

This, then, the appetizer—

It curls over his shoulders, tar-stained fingers digging into the tight coil of his muscles, easing the tension in increments. Soothing out the fear that still clings to him of missing out. Still, very much, that hungry little mutt on the side of the street, peering into the bakery at the family's milling about, smiling happily. Content to ignore the brat in rags glaring at them from an alcove with bruises on his chin, and a black split on his lip. Diving for scraps because the alternative is going to bed with an empty stomach in a house that reeks of flat beer and stale piss. 

There's nothing to miss out on here, it reasons, when he has you all night. All his. 

“Beg me,” he huffs, sniffing through the balmy, damp mask when it slips down his crooked nose. “Beg me not to cum inside you.”

All you can do is make a small, keening oomph behind the loose gag, words muffled by wet silk. His head rolls back, eyes narrowing down at you in mocking delight—catlike, leonine, in the dwindling glimmer of sunlight spilling through the crack in the curtains. 

“C’mon,” he taunts, rolls his hips into you just to hear the loud, wet squelch of your pussy taking the full, fat length of his cock. Lets the noise box through his ears in a vicious, heavy punch. “Or I'll cum inside you—”

He's already there. Edging toward the precipice. 

Simon grabs the tops of your thighs, digging his fingers into your skin, and pulls you closer to the edge of the table until your ass lifts. It opens you up wider for him, knees notched wide, nearly level with your ears. The new position lets him push in deeper, fucking you in full now. Balls slapping against your ass with every brutal stroke. 

He leans down, knee lifting to the table as he climbs on before dropping the full heft of his weight onto you. Forearm braced above your head, the other catching the column of your bare, scratched neck in the wide spread of his palm. 

The size difference before was intoxicating. A rush that pooled in the back of his head before rocketing down to his spine, filling his cock, but this—your knees bracketing around his waist, spread so wide they're forced down flat to the table below in a split that lets his cock sink in deeper, head tucked against his collarbone, swallowed whole beneath him, is his undoing. 

Arched over you like a beast, he grunts. Ruts into your sopping cunt and feels the whines that spill from your throat at the rough way he batters into you. 

The softness of his lower belly grazes the vibrator humming on your clit. The pressure makes your eyes widen, and roll into the back of your head. Neck trapped in his hold as you thrash beneath him, sobbing in earnest. In dismay. 

He's sure it hurts. The pleasure careening into overstimulation—the kind that burns, bellows too much, no more. He huffs out a derisive snort, and eats your misery from your parted lips, dipping his head down to catch the seam of your mouth in a mockery of a kiss. The silk wrapped around your head, tucked neatly into the corners of your mouth, keeps it from being anything more than a messy smear of his scarred, torn lips and your muffled gasps. The band prevents him from really tasting you, and he makes do with curling his tongue over your teeth, catching the drool running down your chin. 

It's gross. Messy. He slurps you up, and hums in pleasure when he tastes the brine of your tears. 

“Gonna cum,” he grunts into the silk before catching it between his crooked teeth, nibbling on the wet hem, sucking on your spit soaked into the fabric. 

Your pussy spasms around him. Eager, he thinks—pulsing like a heartbeat and starving for it. It blooms under his skin, burning hot like a fever. His tongue slips under your gag. Eyes glued to yours, listed in quiet, merciless delight when you grimace as he slides it along yours, nearly gagging you on it. 

It's almost sweet. A pastiche of loving making—as close to the real thing as he's ever come. The thought is a bludgeon to his head, making his ears ring—

And he runs from it. Rears back from the sloppy kiss, eyes creasing, brow furrowing, as you stare up at him with wet, glossy eyes, rheumy with tears. Silently pleading for something he can't discern. He feels that trail of anger coiling in his guts again, sitting low in his belly as his hips stutter to a slow, softer roll. 

His finger lifts, settles on the corner of your unhinged jaw, holding your head steady. There are lines, he thinks. Walls, divides. Protective armour—

And some shouldn't be crossed. 

Simon spits on your gag. Squeezes the huff of disgust from your throat when he feels your chest expand with it. Bullies himself closer, smothering you under his weight. Owned, then. Claimed. 

You can't close your mouth around the gag, or fingers digging into the muscle of your jaw. He keeps you like that, degraded. Dehumanised. A vessel for him to use as he likes—

Nothing more, nothing less. 

Sinks into your bruised cunt again, hips slapping meanly into yours in a way he knows must ache. Sets a choppy, deep pace; humps your pussy and grinds the weeping, swollen head of his cock into your battered cervix. Loses himself in the messy, plugging rolls of his hips; the wet, tight slide of your skin—flushed and clenching around the thick of himself he feeds to you, over and over again. Mindless in the pursuit to ruin you further. Stain you with his cum—

The problem is:

You feel like heaven. Pussy wrapped tight around him. Silken walls hugging his aching cock until it feels like he's melting into the hot, wet squeeze of it. So good it hums inside his head like a purr, rattles his thoughts around until the ugly, bitter anger is turned inside out. Flipped. 

He thinks about lines again as his sticky, wet balls glue to the slick skin of your ass, peeling off in a way that has pleasure peppering along his spine, spooling in his lower back. He did that, caused it. Made you so fucking wet that his knees slide in the messy spill of it leaking all over the table. The loud squelch of him slamming into your cunt echoes in the room—shrill and bone-melting. Ego-feeding. Enough to gorge his pride on it until its belly threatens to burst at the seams. Overfull. 

Simon grunts. His face is soaked. The damp fabric of his mask is too drenched to even mop it up, sticking to his skin as sweat rains down from his shorn hairline, misting over his eyes. His upper lip. The dip of his chin. He's more water than man. Liquid. Melting into you. 

The heat is unbearable. “Gonna cum in this pussy,” he snarls, and it sounds like a threat. Is one. He's going to burst inside of you, molten and thick. Been a while, he thinks, and feels his balls draw up. Tightening in a promise as he fucks himself into a syrupy stupor above you. 

The inside of his ears are wet, and he thinks it might be his fucking brain leaking out—

The tight coil of his body snaps before he does, giving out in a heavy groan. He catches himself before he crushes you beneath him, still mindlessly thrusting into your cunt, cock pulsing, throbbing. Growing thicker, thicker, as he heaves into your temple, breathing in the pine scent of your skin. Loam, sea. Sweat. You smell like Price beneath it all—leather and smoke; scotch and wood—and his lips curl into a vicious snarl, teeth bared at the man in the corner, silent observer to this blasphemous confessional where he spills his guts inside of you, and you eat them up like they're made of gold dust. 

It rushes him. A kick to his soft stomach, a boot crushing his ribs. The force of it hurts when it hits, surging up from the base of his spine, too fast for him to brace for. Tensing, coiling. The pressure knocks the air from his lungs, makes his hips stutter. Joints whining, twinging with pain. 

He moans low and brassy, mangled deep in the rot of his chest, and cums deep inside of you. Sloppy, mindlessly rutting into the spread bracket of your thighs as pleasure burns across the back of his neck, his spine. His hips roll, shaking. Melting as he spills, spits thick globs of cum out, cockhead bullied tight against your plug. 

All you can do is heave beneath him, whining at the molten spend he pours into you. Poor fuckin’ thing—

His lips are sticky, slick with sweat. He rubs them against the tacky skin of your temple, your cheekbone, babbling nonsense out on a purr—

Breedin’ this tight little pussy right in front of your old man, birdie. Got ‘im watchin’ his little girl take my thick fuckin’ load inside o’her. Fuckin’ hell—

—things that leak out between the cracks in the armour. The thick veneer. Made worse, his personal hell, when he feels your hips bump into his, taking his cock deeper inside as you squirm under the heavy weight of him. With your thigh flexing, squeezing his hip, it almost feels like you want more. All of him. For him to crawl deep inside of you, cocooned in the bracket of your ribs—

“Needy fuckin’ thing,” he rasps, words slurring. Eliding into mush. Nonsense he'll come to crush between his teeth later when he buries himself back inside of you over and over again, feeding blood to this vicious seedling inside of him. 

Through the pounding in his head, your gasping little hitches in his ear, the undeniable silence from Price weighs on him even as the aftershocks of his release mute the noise in his head. A dense, hazy fog clouding over all thoughts. 

It doesn't feel angry. Jealous. If anything it reeks of victory—

He grasps through the blanket, the murk, with lazy hands until he finds what he's looking for, and—

Oh. 

Right. 

(“Got a proposition for you, Simon,” the man says, and Simon snorts. 

He reeks of the same brand of cheap cigarettes as always—stale smoke, day old tobacco; acrid and unpleasant. It makes his skin itch. 

“an’ I told you already, Price. I ain't interested in a team—”

“Not a team, Simon.” The look he levels him with is nothing short of malicious. Dangerous. “Got something else in mind—”)

Then through the door was you. Pretty as a picture—

He stares down at you now. The base of his cock is soaked with your slick, flesh throbbing, pulsing, as he cums inside of you. 

It's this—you, crying over the feeling of him spilling so deeply inside of you while your old man watches from the sidelines, unable to do anything but sit there as Simon fills his baby girl up—that he wanted. Wants. Needs, he thinks, more than the stale, humid air he breathes. A place of his own. Home. Even if it's made of paper mache, carved inside of someone else, someone who already has a collar. A brand—

But that's the point, isn't it?

A sick feeling curls over his shoulders as he thumbs the slim vibrator off of your clit, staring down at the swollen nub at the apex of your mound. Sore and sensitive and flushed bright. Bruised like an apple. Abused for hours. Poor thing, he thinks, even as he rubs the flat of his finger over it. 

His cum seeps out around the softening plug of his cock. But it's still thicker than anything you'd ever taken before, he's sure. Sick with the deep sense of satisfaction that rolls over him at the thought. 

It's worth it, then, even as the dawning realisation trickles over him like hot oil—

“What d’you like, Simon?”

A pretty bird in pale pink chiffon. Too good for the likes of him. Afraid of him, too. Cowerin’. Cryin’ somethin’ awful when he sinks his ugly, fat prick into them—

Price hummed. Curled his index finger over the top of his cigar, tapped the thick wrap twice with the tip of it, and then brought it to his lips. A flash of teeth beneath his beard—nicotine-stained; crooked in the low light—before they sunk into the butt. 

There was something measured in his stare. Predatory. 

Victorious. 

And—

He gets it. You were a dangling lure in the deep, dark of the abyssal layer. A glimmer of light in thick murk. Iridescent. Dazzling. He was always meant to sink his teeth into you, wasn't he? Always meant to take a bite—

hook. line—

—sinker. 

Or—

It would be if the fish Price caught wasn't a leviathan. 

—in the scorching trail the oil leaves behind, something bestial, primordial, inside of his cocks its head in consideration. he can make a feast from this, it says; and so, he does—

“Need my help, Price?” Simon drawls, arms crossing over his chest as he stares down at him, quietly amused, and John feels the pulse between his temples starting up again the same way it had all those years back when he bumped into the man with you on his arm. 

He grunts. “Sendin’ you to Mexico.”

“Tha’ so? I might be busy.”

He sucks in a deep breath, reaches for his cigar. The itch claws behind his eyes, in his gums. There's a headache, too. One he knows won't be soothed over with the numbing bliss of nicotine or a shot of scotch. Not when he'll have to slink home afterwards, this massive behemoth nipping at his heel, and deal with the aftermath of what happens whenever he sets Simon loose on you:

an icepack pressed tight against your aching cunt, a glare fixed on your face as he dotes on you after you made him clean up the absolute mess Simon left behind with his fingers and tongue—

“never again,” you'll hiss, wincing with each pull of his knuckles on your sore, bruised walls. “I mean it—”

(you always say that but the look in your eye whenever he pulls out the silk—the new assortment that Simon bought for you himself—tells him otherwise—)

He presses the heel of his palm into the crease between his eye and bone, rubbing until he sees phosphenes spark behind his eyelids. 

“She'll be in silk,” he grouses, sucking his teeth in irritation. “And you'll be on fuckin’ plane to Mexico the next morning, Riley. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal, sir,” he draws lazily with a half-hearted shrug, but Price can see the mutt inside of him panting with glee. He pretends to huff. Then: “I want her in white this time.”

The fuckin' prick.

—Price’s gamble of using you to lure the big, bad dog in works. but maybe a little too well. because now his sergeant expects one every time he's sent on a mission. and they send him out a lot. 

—he now has a key to his captain's house. lets himself in whenever he wants. finds you exactly how he asked for it. usually tied up in silk, crying, and struggling to get away when he stalks inside the room. on your knees, begging him so sweetly not to fuck your throat too hard. you have work tomorrow. or fighting him off as best as you can until he pins you down, works his cock inside of you. 

—in full view of the cameras, of course. non-negotiable. Price gets to see everything his brutish sergeant does to his pretty bird. everything. 

—Simon is the one who keeps you company when Price is sent off to work with the CIA. keeps you stuffed full of his cock in the bed you share with Price, his little girl sobbing into the pillow that reeks of smoke and leather and sex as Simon forces every inch of his stupid fat cock inside you

WIP wednesday featuring a surprise fic that won't be posted for a few months (: