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myfictionaldreams · 4 months

Text

Safety Measures // Mafia!Stucky x Fem!Reader

Summary: It was the anniversary of Steve and Bucky saving you from your sadistic brother. Usually, it was a time of celebration for you, but this year, you couldn't help but feel paranoid and unsafe.

Extra reading: Last Hope for background context

A/N: Happy New Year, beautiful readers! I hope everyone is well and safe.

Requested by: @theatrelove3000 thank you so so much for the request and all your support with my writing. As always, you're the best!

Tags: 18+ readers only, smut, polyamory, ptsd, anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, discussion of past abuse, domestic fluff, dom/sub undertones, cock warming, subspace (kinda), hurt/comfort, new member of the family (yay!), puppy

Words: 4.8k

my masterlist 📚 AO3 Link

Insomnia was an issue you’d never had to deal with before. Not when you have two of the most powerful men of all of the East Coast tiring you out and wrapped around your body to make you feel safe and content.

However, as the seconds ticked by on the clock position on the nightstand next to the bed, you’d found that your body was willing to do anything but sleep. As midnight struck, any hope that had been inkling in your thoughts was diminished. There you were, half sprawled over Steve’s naked chest, his warmth burning through your skin, with Bucky spooning around your back, sandwiching you thoroughly between the two of them, legs crisscrossed between one another.

Even in the safe embrace, your heart continued to palpate painfully in your chest with such powerful thumps you were worried it would wake one of your lovers.

It was always this day. This date. Every year, that sprung fear through your soul, with the memories of your past returning to haunt you. Before Bucky. Before Steve or either of their safety and love, you’d been involved with your family business, reigned by your sadistic brother, Enzo, who was both hateful and abusive, causing you to live a life that was not worth living at all.

For countless years, you’d simply been floating through life, doing anything your brother demanded to benefit his gang. There was no hope, love, or light in your life until the men whose arms you were wrapped tightly in found you, saved you, and showed you what life was about. It hadn’t been an easy adjustment, especially with the violent and bloody end to your brother, but then readjusting to the newfound freedom had taken its toll. The anxiety from your past still haunts you to this very day.

In truth, in the first few years surrounding your brother's death anniversary, you’d celebrated the beginning of your new happiness and life. However, as you grew older and had to live through the dangers of being in the most infamous mafia gang in Brooklyn, your optimistic perspective became somewhat fragile with the realities of becoming close to losing everyone and everything you loved on multiple occasions.

So now, when this dark day loomed over your head once more, your anxiety rose along with the reminder of the horrors that you’d experience throughout your lifetime. Paranoia blossomed into something that was logically not plausible, frightened that somehow, Enzo would return and take you back to the hell hole he once kept you contained within.

These fears had been discussed with both Steve and Bucky on multiple occasions, as well as your friends, who promptly reminded you that nowhere was safer on earth than with all of them. There was 24/7 surveillance within the office and your home, guards patrolling, all armed and trained, as well as having the enhanced bodies of your boyfriends always at your side.

You were safe.

Safe.

And yet, still, there you lay. Wide awake, breaths shallow, trying to remain as quiet as possible so that you may listen to any sounds of intruders walking through your home. It is an impossible feat to do either way due to the pounding of your heartbeat without your ears, the repetitive thump and drum that increased in speed over the minutes. Your palms were becoming clammy where they were resting on Steve’s chest, a faint tremble beginning to throb through your limbs as well. You closed your fingers into a tight fist, attempting to cease the shaking whilst blowing out a long breath as the clock ticked to 00:01 am.

It was no use. You couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t just simply lay there and wait to be attacked or taken.

Carefully as you could, you attempted to climb out of your fierce hold, but due to your fragile state and the firm grip of Steve and Bucky, the movements stirred them both awake.

“Baby? Everything ok? Where are you going?” Steve asked, still half asleep but attempting to rouse himself more by rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Sorry”, you whisper into the darkness, “I just needed to use the bathroom”. The lie trembled from your lips as you clumsily searched the bedroom floor for some clothing to cover your naked body. From the smell of the shirt that you were now tugging over your head, you’d found Bucky’s t-shirt in the dark. As your eyes adjusted to remain in the darkness, you could see Bucky moving closer to Steve on the bed, his face resting on the blonde's chest, replacing where you’d been.

The sight had you smiling for a split second before a rustle of the wind against the windows drew your frightened attention back to reality. Stepping into the bathroom and shutting the door behind you, there was a stalling moment where the walls seemed to close around you. Strangling. Suffocation. The fears of your past squeezing closer.

“No”, you chastise yourself in a whisper barely audible as you take a single sweeping step towards the sink, running the cold water to splash it on your face. “Enzo is dead. Stop freaking out, you’re being ridiculous!”. Yes, you were having a conversation with yourself, but only because it was a coping mechanism before you completely lost your mind and had a panic attack.

“Get a hold of yourself!”, you continue the monologue whilst staring at your distressed reflection in the mirror. “You’re safe here in your home”. For some reason, your bottom lip began quivering with the rising emotions and the overwhelming urge to cry. Giving your body a thorough head-to-body shake and angrily wiping away the traitorous tears dripping down your cheeks, you also gave yourself stern talking.

“Either you get yourself together, or you embarrass yourself and wake up Steve and Bucky”. You wouldn’t, not when it was something as irrational as being frightened that your definitely deceased deranged brother would somehow return from the dead to steal you to a life of misery. You couldn’t stomach waking them from their slumber to see the sad puppy eyes they would give you as they told you all the things you already knew. You were safe with them; they’d never let anything bad happen.

Filling your lungs with air, you blew out a long, slow breath until your lungs were completely empty. “Right. One search of the house and back to bed”, you decided, needing to check the surroundings with the hopes it would ease your battle with anxiety and insomnia.

Upon leaving the ensuite bathroom, you were thankfully greeted by the sound of two distinctively soft snores from both men still lying together in bed. Tip-toeing past them and into the hallway, you made sure to keep the lights off with your eyes having adjusted to the darkness as you approached Steve’s office.

There were a few things that you needed from this room. Firstly, to check the security camera feeds from his laptop, showing every angle possible surrounding the house and inside the many rooms of the luxury property. The baseball bat was also hiding beneath the desk. It was one of many weapons stashed throughout your home, carefully placed by both Bucky and his bodyguard Natasha and even though a gun would be a swifter finale for any intruder, there were still more consequences if you were to shoot the firearm accidentally and hit the wrong target whereas, with a bat, you could still keep someone at arm's length and also not fatally wound a friend if they came knocking at the door.

Clutching the smooth bat in both of your trembling hands, you watched the screen, flicking between rooms and areas of the exterior of your home, not spotting a single leaf out of place. In fact, the only emotion that seemed to bloom through your chest was adoration as you stared at the bedroom video feed, noticing that Bucky was now the bigger spoon, wrapped thoroughly around Steve, whose hands were stretched out to your side of the bed, like in his unconscious state, he was still searching for you.

Guilt settled heavily in your stomach at the sight, and closed the laptop with a sigh. You knew this paranoia would fade by the time tomorrow came around. Still, it was completely illogical for you to react rationally today, so with a sigh that echoed around the office, you stood and began to search the property physically.

Holding the bat at arm's length, you peeked around corners first then swung before stepping out. You'd been trained to use all the weapons scattered throughout the house with Steve, Bucky, and Natasha, even with how to strike with a baseball bat effectively.

Every shift of shadows out of the corner of your eyes and every creak of the house naturally settling or knocking with the raging winds outside had your heart racing and senses going into full alert.

One check of the house turned into four full sweeps to ensure no one was there. It was also a slow and thorough check, so by the time you were stepping carefully through the kitchen, glancing out of the back window and into the dark abyss that was your back garden. The creak of footsteps echoed from upstairs; you’d become lost and disorientated on the search, and you had neglected to check the time.

05:03 am.

A sniffle and quiet cough followed the footsteps of the man who had decided to wake earlier than most. In a rush of adrenaline and the need to not be found with a baseball bat in hand like a crazy lady in the dark, you decided to hide the weapon in one of the kitchen cupboards and quickly pretended to be preparing coffee as the sleepy steps wandered down the carpeted stairs.

Placing two cups onto the kitchen counter, you almost held your breath in anticipation for the morning grumbly welcome by whoever had woken first. Steve and Bucky both like to be awake early, much to your usual pleas for them to stay in bed.

However, as the man walked into the kitchen, not a single word was shared as he stepped up close behind you, enveloping your body in a warm and metal arm, wrapping tightly around your waist and pulling you backwards until flush against a naked chest. Stubbled cheeks nuzzled into your neck as lips gently kissed the sensitive skin as you sighed, eyes closing and all tension diminishing into the floor at the feeling of finally being safe.

The two of you swayed on the spot, wrapped in the tight embrace, listening to the water in the coffee pot. One of your hand gripped onto the metal fingers, feeling the smooth material beginning to warm and match the temperature of your skin. The other hand lifted to rest on the back of his head, scratching his buzzed hair, earning a comforting moan from Bucky as he kissed your jaw.

“It’s a rare day when you’re awake before me”, Bucky whispers into the shell of your ear before kissing it. Goosebumps lined your body with the gruff tone of his early morning voice. He didn’t pester you any more about why you were awake at this time, but he did pinch the hem of your shirt. “Is it your plan to always wear my shirts so I must be topless?”

His words pulled a giggle from your lips, shaking your head as you poured the coffee into each cup. “I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

The two of you sat at the dining room table, coffee in one hand and in the other you held onto one another, admiring the night turn into the day with dawn breaking over the fences that lined the back garden. It was blissful and a welcomed distraction from the terrors beneath your surface.

Steve eventually joined, groaning about waking up alone as he kissed you, then Bucky on the back of the head. “Who knew the big grown mafia boss could be so needy?” Bucky quipped with a teasing smirk over the rip of his cup before taking another glug of the coffee.

“That’s a lot of sass for someone who will be going without any breakfast if he keeps it up”, Steve grumbles as he looks through the refrigerator to start preparing the three of you breakfast like he did on most mornings. Before Bucky could respond, Steve asked curiously, “Why is there a baseball bat in with the plates?”

Your eyes downcast to stare into your empty cup, shrugging your shoulders at the burning stares of your boyfriends. “I don’t know. Anyway, who wants a fresh coffee?”

Thankfully, nothing more was mentioned regarding the random appearance of the baseball bat as the three of you ate and prepared to head into the office. You were thankful for the distraction working in the gang gave you, especially on a stressful day like today. Although the paranoia and anxiety that had kept you awake still bubbled away beneath the surface.

On the car journey to work, even squished between Steve and Bucky in the back seats, their hands eagerly resting on the naked skin of your thighs, having pushed the dress up to have the contact. Even your bodyguard and best friend Sam, who was driving the vehicle, couldn’t ease the panic that came from every car horn that blared, the dangerously speeding vehicles that passed or just the erratic driving that was expected with other idiots on the road.

Every single disruption had you anticipating that the car you were in would be hit or stopped, and your brother would then arrive and drag you away. Of course, this didn’t happen, and as you came to work, another heavy sigh released from your body as you walked through the extensive security to get to the office.

New shipments of discreetly stolen goods had arrived, which was a welcome distraction for you, checking the quality and organising where and to whom it would be sold. This only lasted for an hour before the coldness began to creep in, and you made excuses to return to Steve and Bucky back in the office.

“You know you can talk to us, right?” Bucky reminds you carefully whilst pulling your chair closer to his. You couldn’t meet his intense stare as you shifted your body under his awaiting arm so you were cuddled close to his side.

“Yep”, you respond casually, leaning into his warmth.

Bucky’s face lowered to your ear as he stroked his fingers down your arm. “And you also know you’re safe with me. With Steve. In this building or home. I’d do anything to keep you safe, Doll”.

You smile politely at him, trying to ignore the guilt that, for some reason, passed over you as you reached to take his hand that was draped over your shoulders. “I know”.

Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed Bbcky checking his phone for the 15th time in an hour. Not that you’d been counting.

Finally, he seemed to receive the notification he’d been waiting for as he suddenly sprung up from his seat, pulling his leather jacket swiftly.

A frown settled over your features as you sat forward, “where are you going?”

Bucky glanced towards Steve first before addressing your question. “I’ve just got some errands to run, nothing special. I won’t be long, Sweetheart”.

He was leaving you. On a day when you needed him most so that you felt safe, he for some reason had to go.

You stood abruptly, pushing back your chair and taking urgent steps towards him whilst nervously playing with your fingers. “You’re going to leave me on my own!”

“Who am I? The milkman?” Sam joked from where he was standing near the door, and you instantly regretted the words, having not meant them that way. What’s worse is that Steve muttered something under his breath from his desk and now you were riddled with more guilt as Bucky’s sad eyes turned to you, his hands resting heavily on your shoulders.

“I won’t be long, and maybe you’ll get a surprise later.” He tried to bring a smile to your lips, but it was worthless as you were caught between staring at Sam and Steve, trying to find the words to apologise. Bucky breathed heavily through his nose at seeing you distraught, but then his phone pinged again, so with one last kiss to your temple, he made his way to the exit.

Turning to Sam whilst awkwardly rubbing your cheek to ease the burning of embarrassment under your skin, you attempted to apologise, but Steve cut off your sentence. “I’m sorr-”.

“Baby, come here”.

Turning towards the comforting voice, you saw that Steve’s full attention was now on you. He’d moved his seat away from his desk and opened his arm, a clear sign for you to approach, which you did with rushed steps before climbing into his warm, sturdy lap. Your knees rested on either side of his thighs as your fingers caded through the curling blonde hair at the nape of his neck which you were quick to bury your face into, breathing in his calming cologne.

“I’m sorry about the comment; I didn’t mean it like that. I know I’m not alone. My head is just all over the place and-”.

“Shh, I know, baby, you don’t need to explain yourself. I know you’d rather us both be around for you today”. There it was. The one small mention and reference made by someone else that this was a day that you hated. It’s not that it needed to be spoken about as it had been clear that both of your boyfriends had been trying their hardest to be there for you today by being at your side as much as possible, constantly checking in with your emotions and making sure you ate and drank enough.

But Steve saying it out loud seemed to make it all the more real, so as you clung to him with more desperation, his arms did just the same until it felt as if there wasn’t a single part of you that wasn’t currently being touched by his giant frame.

“I love you, Steve, so much”, you plead to him in a tired daze, finally feeling somewhat safe now that you were crowded into his body.

“I’d do anything for you, baby girl, you know that. I love you too. Try and get some sleep; it’ll make the day go faster”.

You wanted to and knew you could if you’d let your eyes drop close, but something still wasn’t sitting right like an itch that needed to be scratched.

“Could I please make one request… sir?” you say, nerves beginning to flicker through your chest at the intimacy of the request, already starting to switch into the role of the submissive mind, especially after the fragile state you’d been in all day.

Steve seemed to straighten his posture at using the name, and his lips kissed the top of your head a few times before he responded, “Anything”.

Lifting your head away from his neck and gazing into the endlessly intense blue eyes that always looked so kindly down at you, you asked, “Please can we touch everywhere? I just want to sit and be close”.

Steve tried not to smile at the innocence and the way you couldn’t even say the words, ‘Please can I cock warm you?’ which he knew was what you were asking. Reaching between your bodies, he began to undo his belt and zipper, “You know you don’t need to ask, Sweetheart. I want you to feel comfortable”.

You could never explain to someone why you loved the thought of cock warming so much. It seemed to settle both your nerves and put you into a relaxing state. Not at all times, though. Half the time, it would just turn you into a horny, wet mess that ended with you riding the cock until at least three orgasms. But other times, such as now, you just needed to be stretched and feel as close to Steve as possible.

Lifting higher onto your knees, you moved aside your underwear and lifted the front of your dress as you manoeuvred yourself to accommodate the toe-curling length that was Steve Rogers. Through your groaning sigh, you couldn’t hear Steve’s matching noise as he made sure you were comfortable with a steading arm around your hips before shuffling his seat closer to the desk and continuing with his work and talking to Sam about an email he’d just received.

You were asleep before hearing the end of the email being read out. Your head is resting on his shoulder, hands loosely holding onto the material of his crisp navy blue shirt. You were warm, full and safe.

Hours later, as the sun began to set and the day passed, you were still drowsy, much more relaxed than you had been in the morning. You’d wake up to Steve packing his belongings and Sam saying he’d warm the car for you and Steve.

As you gathered your disorientated thoughts and tried to sit up, you noticed that Steve was very much still thoroughly hard inside of your soaked cunt. Silently, you thanked whatever super serum had been injected into him during his time in the army. You clenched at the realisation, and Steve hummed in contentment at realising you were waking up.

“Let’s get you home. Bucky’s waiting there for us”, Steve informed quietly whilst cupping your cheek tenderly.

With the position you’d been sitting in, your legs were sore and tense, but Steve was more than happy to carry you down, even with his cock still inside. However, with the movements of his steps, it caused his length to ease in and out of your already sensitive cunt that by the time you’d made it to the car, you were clinging desperately to his shoulders as an orgasm rushed through you, pulsing between your legs.

Steve’s knees nearly buckled as he rested your frame against the side of the car, his face dropping to your neck as he breathed you in deeply. Your cunt continued to clench around his cock until he, too, joined you in euphoria with a deep grunt and a snap of his hips; warmth flooded your hole and began dripping out and onto the floor. Neither of you or his employees batted an eyelid as both of you came.

Once in the car, you were so distracted with cleaning each other up that the idiots in other vehicles that had panicked you on the way in, didn’t remotely phase you.

Wishing Sam a good night, you and Steve walked up to your front door, hand in hand. Steve opened the front door for you, letting you walk into the living room first, where you abruptly stopped, causing the blonde to nearly knock into you.

“I promise I tried to stop him, but he’s a feral little beast!” Bucky exclaimed from where he sat on the floor, surrounded by something that could only be described as chaos.

It seemed all of the decorative pillows had been utterly destroyed as the contents of the fluff covered all of the surfaces. Not only this, but there were half-eaten shoes, and the corners of the couches and coffee table seemed to have tiny bite marks gnawed into them.

“Bucky?! What did you do?” You couldn’t even comprehend where the mess began and ended as you looked at your dishevelled boyfriend sitting on the floor. Well, he was more lying down, reaching beneath one of the couches as he began to sit up and plastered a wide, toothy grin towards you.

“Surprise!” Bucky shouts with exhausted joy as Steve sighs with a shaky laugh from behind you.

“Surprise? What kind of a surprise is my home being destroyed?” you say, gobsmacked, staring longingly at your favourite cushions ripped to shreds.

As Bucky opened his mouth to explain, a tiny yap sounded from beneath the furniture where he’d just been reaching, and suddenly, a bundle of black fur was pounding for your ankles. It took you a second to drop to your knees and gasp, reaching for the puppy.

“Careful! His teeth are viscous”, Bucky warns, trying to reach forward to grab the animal, but you beat him to it and pull the pup into your lap.

“Oh my god, look at you! Aren’t you just the most beautiful little thing! Was it you that destroyed my lovely cushions? It was, wasn’t it? That’s okay. I forgive you. I’ll forgive you for everything. You're just so damn cute!” you couldn’t help but talk in a childishly high voice as you spoke to the adorable little puppy.

Thankfully, he didn’t bite you with his tiny sharp teeth and instead rolled onto his back on your legs, his paws resting in the air as he waited for a belly rub you happily gave him with carefully placed head kisses.

“You didn’t tell me you were getting a new guard dog! And what happened to the rule of not letting them into the house?” you asked Bucky as you continued to pet the pup.

Steve squatted down next to you, reaching to stroke the puppy behind his ears but then quickly retreating as the tiny sharp teeth nearly nipped his fingers. “He’s not going to be a guard dog; he’s going to be your dog”.

Your head spun with how fast you looked between your boyfriends as you screamed, “What?!”

“Yep! He’s all yours. He’s a Rottweiler and is eight weeks old. They’re known to be a protective breed and great guard dogs, so we will have him properly trained a couple of times a week for this, but we also want him to be yours”. As Bucky explained he knelt closer which earned the attention of your new puppy who watched him closely but continued to lick your fingers in between as you scratched the top of his head.

Steve rested a firm hand on your lower back as he continued, “We know how difficult today is, even with our reassurance that you are safe from Enzo”. Even just hearing his name, your whole body tightens and locks, almost forgetting to breathe until a certain puppy begins to wiggle and try and jump up your body to attempt to lick your face, having noticed the change in demeanour. “We wanted there to be someone around for you all the time, just with the chance that you could still feel safe if Bucky or I weren’t by your side. So, we are hoping this little rascal will be able to do this”, Steve says playfully, stroking along the puppy's back but quickly withdrawing when he nearly nipped again.

“Thank you. Both of you. I don’t even know where to begin with telling you how amazing this gift is”, you say brightly, glancing between the two men you loved most in the world.

“Don’t thank us; it’s the least we could do”, Steve mutters whilst leaning in to kiss your cheek and then standing up, beginning to grab handfuls of fluff from all the surfaces with an attempt at cleaning up the mess.

“I just want you to be happy”, Bucky whispers whilst kissing your other cheek, but then his gaze moves to the puppy, and a line forms between his brows as he frowns. “There will be some ground rules, though. No dog on the couch or in bed. We need boundaries”.

You nod your head in understanding but lean closer to whisper to the pup loud enough that Steve and Bucky could still hear. “Don’t listen to the grumpy old man. You can stay wherever you’d like!”

Bucky sighs whilst rolling his eyes and begins to help Steve with cleaning.

The three of you were sat in front of the TV watching a late-night film. The four of you were sitting on the couch as the puppy was resting in your lap, exhausted from all the playing you’d been doing and now resting as you tried to think of a name for the little guy.

“What about Winchester? That’s a good dog name, right?” you ask the boys, but mostly the dog, hoping he would react to one of the suggestions, but he hasn’t succeeded so far. You pondered some more whilst petting his little black ears. “Oh, what about Sargeant?! No… what about Rogers? No…”. You gave up trying to think of a name off the top of your head and began to scroll for suggestions online.

“Max? Brutus? Thor? Um, nope, these aren’t good. Chase? Ari? Bullet? Dodger? Bli-” Your suggestions stop as the puppy’s head tilts to look at you, seeming more awake. “What is it? Is it one of the names? Ari?” No response, “Bullet?” still no response. “Dodger?” his precious little tail began to wag as he yapped.

“Dodger? You like that name?” he barked again, attempting to climb higher up your body to lick your face as you laughed fondly.

“Dodger it is”, Steve announced from your side with a smile.

#steve rogers #bucky barnes #bucky #stucky #steve rogers smut #steve rogers x reader #stucky x reader #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes x reader #marvel smut #mafia au #mafia stucky #mafia steve rogers #mafia bucky #mine*

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munson-blurbs · 4 months

Text

Living After Midnight (Failed Rockstar!Eddie x Motel Worker!Reader)

♫ Summary: Being a perpetual people-pleaser meant that you were constantly putting others before yourself--particularly your parents and the eccentric guests who stayed at their motel. But when a surly and mysterious musician checked in indefinitely, he flipped your whole world on its head. (3.1k words)

♫ CW: slowburn, strangers-to-lovers, angst, drug use, parental conflict, poverty, eventual smut (18+ only, minors DNI)

♫ A/N: Thank you to my numerous beta readers, including but not limited to @the-unforgivenn, @lofaewrites, @lokis-army-77, and @corroded-hellfire, and to @hellfire--cult for the divider. I am forever indebted to y'all.

chapter one: room for one more

It was always the quiet nights, wasn't it? The ones where the only sounds came from cars barreling down Queens Boulevard and splashing through puddles left by an earlier rainstorm, or from the clock ticking on the wall.

The ones where your mind wandered until you’d thought yourself in circles, overanalyzing every last decision you had ever made.

The ones where you allowed your guard just down enough that the slightest oddity threw you off-balance—something or someone out of place.

It was during the quiet nights like that night where you should have expected the unexpected, because New York City never stayed still for long.

The evening’s sluggishness was normal; tourism always slowed in the springtime. The newest shows on Broadway were already months old, not to mention the warmer weather brought both an uptick in crime and pollen count. If out-of-towners were going to schlep to the East Coast, they’d prefer to see the cherry blossoms hours south in Washington, DC than to get mugged on the 1 train.

Business picked up in the winter months when people flocked from around the world to witness the Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, or Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve, even though they were several bus and subway transfers away. Outsiders to the tri-state area struggled to differentiate between boroughs; it was unfortunate for them, but you counted on it to keep business alive.

The only guests who consistently frequented your family’s motel were junkies looking for a place to shoot up away from the NYPD’s watchful gaze or affair-havers who were considerate enough not to sully their marriage beds—just their vows. You were in no position to judge; their money was what kept the lights on, but it was impossible not to compare your clientele to the suits who stayed at the Marriott down the street. They wouldn‘t even allow homeless folks to sit within twenty-five feet of the building, let alone stay under their roof.

You leaned on the desk, wood grain pinching your elbows. You tapped your pencil against your textbook as you read, its margins cluttered with notes about different types of parent-child attachment styles.

Sleep prickled at the corners of your eyes, blurring the words on the page in front of you. Focus.

Secure attachment occurs when—no, you’d already read this line. Twice.

“Dammit,” you muttered under your breath, gently slapping your cheeks in a futile attempt to stay awake. Taking a full course load instead of your usual part-time was your academic advisor’s ill-conceived idea, bolstered by the prospect of an earlier graduation. In your haste, you’d neglected to consider two important factors: all of your studying now had to be done during your night shifts, and graduating meant telling your parents a truth they were unready to hear.

They were so proud of the motel, regardless of its reputation. It might as well have been The Plaza from the way your dad boasted about it. The three of you shared an unspoken understanding that you worked the front desk because paying an actual employee would put them under. Maybe if finances weren’t so tight, you could have freely admitted that your future plans didn’t involve taking over the business.

Your eyelids fluttered shut as your head rested on your book, a small puddle of drool pooling atop Bowlby’s theories.

Ping ping ping ping!

Time slowly stretched out before you, your conscious brain clawing its way out of its hazy fog. It took a beat for you to recognize that the incessant noise came from someone repeatedly smacking the tiny bell that sat on the desk.

“Hey, hello?” an impatient voice called out, jolting you from your impromptu nap. You blinked away the residual sleepiness and took in the sight in front of you: a curly-haired man, likely not much older than you were, a cigarette that had been nearly smoked down to the filter tucked between his lips. He had a patched guitar case strapped to his back and clutched a black garbage bag filled with what you hoped was clothing.

“Sorry,” you grumbled, wiping the moisture from your chin. “Need a room?”

“Mhm.” You could practically hear his eye roll: no, I just stopped by in the middle of the night for a quick chat. Fancy a cup of tea and a scone?

He plopped the garbage bag on the ground; its soft landing and the way it wrinkled told you that whatever was inside was, thankfully, not a body.

You nodded and turned around to the wall of keys behind you. There was no shortage of rooms; the only occupied one was being rented by Phyllis, a sixty-year-old self-described ‘entertainer of gentleman’ who paid double her bill in exchange for your silence.

He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on the countertop, grinding it into the base for good measure. “How much per night?” he asked, digging into his pants pocket and pulling out a wallet held together with duct tape.

“Fifteen.”

The man breathed out, his bangs fanning over his forehead. “Jesus.” He fished two twenties and a five from the billfold and placed them in front of you. “This should cover me until Friday, yeah?”

Nodding, you folded the bills and tucked them into the register kept under the desk, only accessible by key because of a series of break-ins during the late ‘70s.

The man lit another cigarette as you pulled out the ledger and a pen. “Name and date here,” you said, pointing to the ‘check in’ column. He took a drag before scrawling his name on the line: Eddie Munson, 5-4-93.

“All right, you’ll be in…” you scanned the assortment of keys dangling from their hooks. The walls were thin, and this guy seemed decent enough, so you decided to spare him the theatrical sound effects of Phyllis’s room 10 endeavors. “…room 4. Make a right down the hallway, and it’ll be the second door. Can’t miss it if you try.”

Your attempt at humor fell flat, both of you too exhausted to laugh. You strode past it, clearing your throat as if dispelling the tension. When you placed the key in his calloused palm, you couldn’t help but notice that the base of each fingertip is a half-shade paler than the rest of his skin.

“Thanks.” Eddie mumbled. He tapped the cigarette above the ashtray, the gray flakes falling into a neat pile. His right bicep flexed underneath his denim jacket as he heaved the garbage bag over his shoulder, careful not to bang it against the guitar.

He scuttled out of the tiny room masquerading as a lobby, shoulders hunched from the weight of the bag and of the burdens he inevitably carried. No one shows up to a motel in the middle of the night without a story or two.

After years of greeting guests at the front desk, you liked to think you had a decent read on them. Eddie was quiet, maybe even introspective, but not necessarily shy. He was tired; no, more than that: he was worn down, like so many other people who had come through these doors.

Most importantly, Eddie didn’t seem like he'd be much trouble. He didn’t stumble in wasted and reeking of booze or fidgeting as he awaited a fix. He wasn’t shouting or poorly concealing a wandering eye or making lewd comments. He’d made pretty much no impression at all besides being a bit gruff, which was just fine with you. Your personality wasn't composed of rainbows and sunshine at this hour either.

You looked at the clock and sighed when it only read 2:17. It’s already tomorrow, you thought grimly. Just under four hours until you could walk ten feet to your room, curl up in your bed, and sleep until it was time for your afternoon class. After years of balancing school and work, you were in the last two weeks of your final semester, and then…what? You casually inform your parents that you were leaving the family business–essentially forcing them to close it–to pursue a career in social work?

That was sure to go over well.

To their knowledge, you were studying hotel management and hospitality in order to “improve the business.” That was why they’d relented when you’d asked to start taking classes, switching you over to the night shift to avoid having to hire a new employee.

What they didn’t know is that your school didn’t even offer that as a major. Nor were they aware of the acceptance letter into NYU’s Masters of Social Work program that was stashed inside your dresser drawer, hidden from sight. That was a conversation for another day when you found the strength to face their disappointment.

Chaos waited to strike until the end of your shift.

Just as you packed your book back into your bag, a familiar, skunky odor wafted past your nostrils.

Ignore it, you thought. Let it be Dad’s problem when he takes over in five minutes. But if you could smell it, so could any of the cops patrolling the boulevard. One more citation and the motel was in jeopardy of being permanently shut down, and you couldn’t take that risk.

With a frustrated sigh, you yanked open the desk drawer and reached in for a pen, instead pulling out an unopened box of crayons. A twenty-four pack of Crayola—the good kind. You plucked a waxy cornflower blue from its spot and scribbled Be back soon on a Post-It note, sticking it on the front of the desk. Grabbing the pepper spray canister from its spot next to the register, just in case, you started down the hall. Marijuana wasn’t Phyllis’s drug of choice, though it might have been one of her various gentleman suitors’, but the scent was too strong to be coming all the way from room 10.

Maybe this Eddie Munson was trouble, afterall.

You knocked on his door, firmly but without aggression. It certainly wasn’t the first time you interrupted someone’s buzz, and it wouldn’t be the last. You knew better than to go in guns a-blazing; it’s easier to catch flies with sugar than vinegar.

Eddie opened it after a moment, cracking it halfway and revealing a lit joint pinched between his plush lips. One forearm was perched on the doorframe, showing off faded ink of a litter of flying bats and a dragon-esque creature. He was clad in only navy blue boxer briefs, but his lack of attire was no surprise. Many guests were shameless, not bothering to cover the holes in their Fruit of the Loom tighty-whities and showcasing faded yellow stains on the crotch. What confused you was the elastic waistband proudly proclaiming ‘Calvin Klein’ that cut off the soft hair trailing from his belly button. It seemed absurd that he would have been lugging around any designer clothes in that trash bag, but there was no other possibility.

“Can I help you?” he asked, shaking his curly bangs out of his face. Half-lidded brown eyes scanned your form, trying to determine whether you were a narc or trying to bum some bud off of him. His window was cracked open enough to let in fresh air, which also meant that the acrid smell could easily be let out.

“You can’t smoke that here,” you reported matter-of-factly, just as you had a million times before. When he cocked a challenging brow, you continued. “Cigarettes are fine, but no weed. The police will come after us and you.”

He looked around the room, unbothered, and absentmindedly scratched at his bare chest. A demon’s head was sketched just above a sparse patch of hair. Under different circumstances, or maybe in another life altogether, you would’ve asked him about his tattoos; if they had some philosophical meaning or were the products of spur-of-the-moment decisions. You could have blathered on about the ideas you had for your own future tattoos, if you ever worked up the nerve to actually get one.

“You mean to tell me that with all of the skeevy shit that goes on around here, the cops are gonna waste their time on a little pot?” He scoffed and took another defiant pull, holding it for a few seconds before exhaling away from you.

I guess chivalry isn’t dead, you mused, stifling an eye roll. “No, but they’re always looking for an excuse to ‘investigate,’’' you threw air-quotes around the last word, “so they can bust us for more serious things, and that is the perfect one.” You gestured to the joint only to be met with an eye roll. “Look, you can either put it out, smoke it somewhere else, or you can leave. Full refund, but you can’t stay here.”

His stare locked onto your steely eyes and clenched jaw, only breaking when you’d straightened your posture to stand your ground. “Whatever,” he huffed, but he snuffed it out. A glimmer of a smile danced on his lips, disappearing nearly as quickly as it arrived. Despite its fleeting nature, it managed to thaw you enough so that your arms weren’t held quite so tight to your body, your expression less rigid. “Just trying to relax and get some sleep, like you were while you were supposed to be ‘working.’” It’s his turn to supply the air-quotes, both in mockery and as a gotcha. A teasing lilt elevated his voice, smoothing out the edge he’d greeted you with earlier.

“I wasn’t sleeping, just…resting my eyes,” you volleyed back, your smirk betraying any semblance of the tough façade you’d worn.

Eddie crossed his arms and walked over to the garbage bag of clothes. He rummaged through it for a moment before procuring a pair of gray sweatpants, stepping into them hurriedly as though he just remembered his minimal attire.

“Maybe if you chose more interesting reading material, you wouldn’t be sl—resting your eyes on the job,” he amended, gesturing to the textbook in your canvas tote bag. “Ever heard of Stephen King?”

“I live in a motel, not under a rock.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You live here?”

Shit. That wasn’t information you regularly divulged. Sure, this guy seemed harmless, but looks can be deceiving. Prime example: wearing designer underwear while using a trash bag in lieu of a suitcase.

It was too late to double back, so you nodded. “Yeah,” you admitted reluctantly. The sole of your sneaker dug into the old carpet.

Eddie looked like he wanted to say more, lips parted and eyes wide like there was a follow-up question sitting on the tip of his tongue. Before he could ask it, your gaze landed on the clock radio: six AM on the dot.

“I need to go,” you said hurriedly. Shame at your sudden shyness burned a hole in your belly. Eddie Munson was a guest; for all intents and purposes, he was a total stranger. There was no reason to be intimidated by him. “Good luck falling asleep,” you added with a weak smile.

The easy banter that had been building between you dissipated in an instant, taking his good mood with it. His goodbye was a sardonic salute, the mattress springs creaking wearily as soon as you closed the door behind you.

Sure enough, your dad was in the tiny lobby, assessing some peeling wallpaper. “Gotta fix that,” he mumbled to himself, thumbnail picking at it aimlessly. He turned around when he heard the door open and smiled when he saw you.

“Sorry, I was helping out a guest,” you rushed to explain, hoping he wasn't too anxious to find the desk left unattended.

The wrinkles in your dad’s forehead became more pronounced. “Is everything alright?” The phrase ‘helping out a guest’ could range from unclogging a toilet to calling the police for a domestic dispute.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” you reassured him quickly, flashing an exaggerated thumbs-up. “No law enforcement necessary. Didn’t even need to use the pepper spray.” You waved the canister in your palm before placing it back.

He beamed, leaning in and pressing a kiss to your scalp. “It’s times like this where I just know I’ll be leaving this place in good hands.”

You swallowed the bile that crept up your throat and feigned a smile when he pulled you in for a tight hug. The mingled scents of Irish Spring soap and drugstore aftershave tickled your nose, and tears stung along your lash line.

If only you knew, you thought, giving him one last squeeze before you headed to your room. Disappointed wouldn’t even begin to cover it.

Your parents would never say the word aloud; they’d look at each other and heave identical weighted sighs. Their lifelong goal of a long-standing family business would vanish in the blink of an eye. Dad would pretend there was a chance that they could afford a new hire, even going so far as to fumble through the years of financial statements before inevitably throwing in the towel; Mom would force a pained smile and hoarsely encourage you to follow your dreams, even at the expense of theirs.

You shook the thought away as you trudged towards your room, sneakered feet like sandbags below you. Dwelling on this scenario had you teetering on the brink of insanity, so you’d willed yourself to focus on something else. Anything else.

Like the motel’s newest guest and his smile. The way it softened the hard lines on his face, offering you a glimpse of how he wore happiness. Something about it made you want to see him happy again.

You can’t even figure out how to make yourself happy, you thought, peeling back the starchy sheets and finally crawling into bed, much less a stranger. For all you knew, he was just relaxed because his high was starting to kick in, and not from some warming presence you’d supplied.

The sun cracked pink through the sky, visible through the paper-thin curtains hanging on the window. You had become accustomed to this backwards routine, able to fall asleep while daylight broke. It took a few extra moments this time; you were anticipating marijuana-tinged fumes to float through the vents when Eddie ignored your instructions.

It was that flicker of a smile that had you almost certain he would spark up once you’d left. The smile of someone who so naturally flouted authority that he no longer bragged about it. Yet time ticked by without a hint of evidence that he was smoking again.

Which begged the question: if the smile didn’t signify defiance, what did it mean?

Eddie Munson is definitely trouble, you surmised just before you drifted off, but nothing you can’t handle.

taglist:

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#eddie munson #eddie stranger things #eddie x reader #eddie x you #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson smut #eddie munson angst #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfic #fanfic #eddie munson stranger things #stranger things #lam

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ghostboneswrites2 · 1 month

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Safer

Summary: After the fall of the prison and a brutal assault, Daryl cares for you.

NOTE (please read): A mutual requested this a while ago. Took a long while to write, and tbh I considered turning the req down given the premise and my firm stance on writing graphic SA which you can find here. However, they explained to me that they are a victim of a violent s*xual assault, and they expressed it would be healing in a way to have a story where they were cared for by their comfort character. After some consideration, I decided to go for it. I'm sure a lot of us have been victimized by people who couldn't control their urges, or those who lacked respect for our boundaries, bodies, and consent. Myself included. So, this story is for us, to those of us that can stomach it.

DISCLAIMER: There are no scenes of graphic SA, only the aftermath. While I will not be telling any descriptive scenarios of being assaulted, I do want to clearly express that this is a generally heavy story and it may not be suitable for all audiences. Please consume responsibly.

**I will not be tagging anyone on the taglist due to the content of this story**

18+MDNI || WARNINGS: non-graphic allusions to SA, violence, mild nudity descriptions, generally heavy content so I can't say it enough: TW!!!

Banners credited on my masterlist!!

Daryl's vision was blurred as he blinked himself to consciousness. It took him some time to gather his thoughts and recognize his surroundings. His wrists and ankles were bound together, his mouth gagged with a cloth that tasted of sweat and filth. He stared up at the treetops towering over him. It was dark outside, save for the dim light of a dying campfire a few feet away. He lifted his head from the forest floor and looked down past his feet. Lumps of sleeping bodies under raggedy blankets and torn sleeping bags rested around him. His heart raced as his memories crept back in; of you, screaming his name, of him fighting off the group of men who caught him off guard, of twigs snapping and a searing pain over the side of his head. Was that why his face felt so sticky? Was it dried blood?

His eyes strained in the fading light of ember and ash. Where were you? He noticed a crumpled form at the foot of a tree. Her breathing was shallow and her clothes were torn, pants not even pulled up over her bare behind. That much, he could see. His throat tightened. His eyes watered. What the hell had he let them do to you? How could he have let this happen? He had to get you out of there, and fast. If they hadn't killed him yet, that was surely on their agenda.

He began to squirm and writhe against his restraints. Whoever tied him up had experience. Just as hopelessness began to set in and cloud his judgement with fear -- real, genuine fear -- he noticed a reflection in the leaves. Just a few feet past his boots, a man was curled up on his side, snoring lightly in the calm breeze. His back was turned to Daryl, and behind him set a grungy backpack with a blade sticking out of the smallest pocket in the front. He glanced back to you, shivering on the ground, unsure if you were awake or unconscious or simply passed out from the exhaustion of prior events.

The sight of you in your disheveled mess was all her needed to kick him into gear. Carefully and hastily, he scooted himself down toward his only chance at redeeming his status as a loyal protector of the weak and vulnerable. Ideally, he'd be able to accomplish this in silence, but he was not in an ideal situation. His circumstances were heavy, laced in sweat and angst. The leaves beneath him rustled as his back slid across the ground, twigs snapping or moving to the side as he made his way closer to the large hunting knife. He'd pause between each scoot, studying the sleeping men around him for any sign of movement or wakefulness. When he'd decide the coast was clear enough, he'd resume. It felt like an eternity, but he made it there.

His core muscles strained as he sat himself up. He realized how sore he was. He must have taken a good beating. Seemed fitting, though. He was never one to go down without a fight. He left that sort of weakness in his past.

He guided his shaky, bound hands over to the bag. He slowly slid the knife out of the front pocket. His heart raged against his ribs. He didn't dare take a single breath until it was secured.

Slow. Slowness. Slowly. He repeated every variation of the word in his mind as he positioned the knife between his palms and dragged it back and forth until the rope finally severed. A silent breath of relief escaped him as he ripped the gag from his lips and worked on the rope tied around his ankles. When he was free, he stood and counted the sleeping bodies beneath him. Excluding you, there were four.

He considered waking you up and running for the hills, but he couldn't leave any loose ends. No, he thought of it like when your t-shirt has a loose thread. You could leave it to keep unraveling, or you could burn it at the base and extend the lifetime of your clothes. He decided he needed to burn this string before it could unravel any further.

Starting with the man closest to him -- the one who so graciously left his knife in plain sight for the archer -- he krept over and crouched down, plunching the blade into the base of his skull. Then, he moved on to the next, and the next one, and the one after that, until they were all a problem of the past. Until that pesky little thread could do no further damage to the rest of the shirt.

When the dirty work was behind him, he dropped the knife and rushed over to you. Your wrists were tied like his, but you were tied to the tree so you couldn't run. He eyed you over and gulped. With your pants not fully covering you and your shirt all ripped up, he could see the finger-shaped bruises littering your skin. There was blood on your inner thighs. Your lips were swollen and cut. His blood heated until it hit a boiling point. His hands trembled as they hovered over you. Touching you felt like a crime, but he had to wake you. He had to get you out of there.

"(Y/N)." He whispered as he laid a hand on your shoulder. You were shivering in the cool air, but a thin layer of sweat blanketed your exposed flesh. He gave you a gentle shake. "((Y/N), c'mon. We gotta go." He pleaded softly.

Your body jerked and you jolted awake. You gave him no chance to explain as you scrambled to your knees and cowered away against the tree.

"(Y/N) it's me. It's Daryl." He attempted his most soothing tone of voice. "C'mon, let me get ya cleaned up."

He outstretched his arm, offering you his hand. Without making eye contact you made a move to take it, but you were stopped by the restricting force of the rope that kept you anchored to the tree trunk. He moved quickly for the knife he tossed to the side earlier and returned with it. Without the pressure of remaining silent, he had your hands free in seconds.

He wasted no time helping you to your feet and averting his gaze as he slid your pants up where they belonged. He found he had a hard time keeping his mind straight and focused as your weeping filled the quiet campsite.

"Shh.." He cooed, keeping one hand on your upper back as he ushered you along with him to gather his things and yours. A smart man would have rummaged through the belongings of the ones he killed, too, but he wasn't concerned with making a smart call at that point. He was only worried about you.

"It's alright. C'mon. Let's get ya somewhere you can rest. It's alright. C'mon." He felt useless as ever, repeating the same generic words of comfort as you limped along beside him. He never urged you to up the pace, he didn't drag you along or have you carry your own bag. He felt like the least he could do was shoulder the weight of survival on behalf of you both. He couldn't get the image out of his mind of ou laying there,caked in blood, sweat, and bruises. A girl like you should have been caked in perfume and makeup. You hair should have been done up nice for a Sunday brunch, not matted with leaves and dirt. Your clothes should have been pristine and well fitting, unlike the filthy torn clothes that were beginning to hang off your frame like tender meat falling from the bone. You didn't deserve this. You didn't deserve any of it.

Eventually he found an acceptable spot that looked like it could have been a den for a hibernating bear. It was a big shrub by a little stream, perfectly indented to give you both enough room to crouch under its foliage. He gently set you down, dropping his bow and your bags beside him. He crouched down in front of you and scanned you, worry written articulately over his features.

Your eyes remained glued to the ground. Your nose was upturned in disgust but your eyes told a different story; one of pain and despair and mourning for the person you were before that night. Your frown was deep enough to leave a scar.

"(Y/N)..." He breathed. Your eyes slowly found their way to his and welled with tears all over again. Of all things you had -- meaning, being alive and away from those men -- there was nothing you were more grateful for than his blue eyes staring back at you. You hated the way he looked at you with defeat and pity, though. You hated that he had one more thing to worry about. Still, he was there, and he was welcome. "Let's get ya cleaned up, okay?"

You nodded once, if absentmindedly. Your thoughts were elsewhere. You couldn't pinpoint their location, though. They were scrambled, swarming all around you, like gnats you couldn't swat away.

He pulled an old shirt from his bag and leaned over to the stream, getting it nice and wet before wringing it out. He turned back to you and brought it up to your cheek, gently dabbing and swiping away at the dirt, grime, sweat, and blood. He moved on to your neck and hands, then he paused. You both looked down at your jeans. You knew it needed to be taken care of, and he did too, but the question was really about which one of you would be brave enough to work on the gruesome scene between your legs.

One look at your expression and he knew it couldn't be you. But, how could it be him? He couldn't put you in such a vulnerable position. No, not him.

That's when the lightbulb went off over his head. The stream, of course.

"Here." He offered you a hand. You took it slowly and he led you to your feet. "Wanna get in the water?" He asked. You stared down at the serene flowing water, trickling just before your feet. He cleared his throat. "I don't gotta look."

You almost could have laughed. After everything that had happened, Daryl seeing you bathe wasn't really a concern. Still, you had to maintain some shred of dignity, and washing those men off of you was a much needed stride toward leaving that horrid night in your past. So, you nodded, and he turned away to start a fire where you could warm up after rinsing off.

The button was busted off of your jeans. You guessed they couldn't waste their time with something as simple as undoing a button. You let out a shaky sigh and gritted your teeth. You moved to bend over and slide your jeans down, but a searing pain shot through your insides. You whimpered. "I can't." You barely managed.

"Huh?" He asked over his shoulder.

"I can't." You spoke up with a tremble. "I can't get them off. It hurts."

His throat tightened up. Had they really been so cruel to you?

"Ya want me to..." He trailed off.

"Please." You whispered and shut your eyes. He stood beside you and pulled your pants down to your ankles, kneeling down as he did so.

"Grab my shoulder." He instructed softly. You did. "Left leg." He said. You pulled it out. "Now the right."

With your jeans off, he stood up and looked down at your face, which you his from him, avoiding his gaze.

"Your -- Uh.." He glanced down at your underwear. You nodded, not needing to see what he meant. He followed the same process with those and turned away as soon as he was done. You cleared your throat.

"Can you help me sit?" You whispered. He sucked in a breath. It wasn't that you were annoying him. Anything but that, actually. He was glad to help you in any way you needed. It was the simple fact that you needed the help that was eating him alive. The thought that those guys could hurt you in this way, to this extent, was infuriating and heartbreaking.

He turned back to you and hovered behind you, placing a hand under each arm to support you while you lowered yourself down into the water. Once you were sitting on the creek bed, you adjusted yourself and sighed.

"Just, uh, watch for snakes, okay?" Was all he could say before turning his attention back to the fire finally.

Your frown deepened as you stared down at your bloodied thighs. A plop beside you startled you before realizing it was just the old shirt he was using to clean you up.

"Figured ya might need it." He mumbled.

You gripped the cloth in your hand and stared at it. Blood and filth stained it. Your lip quivered as you ran it over your inner thighs, scrubbing your own dried blood away and watching it disappear in the gentle current. You hissed and winced as you cleaned yourself where you were really injured.

When you were done, you peered over your shoulder, where Daryl stared at the small flame. He felt your eyes on him and he looked up at you.

"Need some clothes?" He asked.

"Please." You replied. He nodded once and rummaged through your bag. He could only find a semi-clean shirt, but no more pants. He pulled his own bag forward and searched for the new two-pack of boxers he'd scavenged awhile back.

"I, uh, didn't see no more pants, but... You can have those." He said, holding your shirt and the fresh boxers out to you.

"Thanks." You pressed your lips into a thin attempt at a friendly smile.

He turned away again so you could change your shirt, but you needed his help with the boxers, which he did without you needing to ask, and without a single peek at you.

He helped you back over to the den where you could warm up by the fire. You kept the blanket in your bag, so he made sure to wrap it around your shoulders while you sat.

"Ain't got no food." He broke the silence after a little while. You nodded.

"Not hungry anyways."

"Mm." He hummed. "Get some sleep. I'll keep watch."

----

By midday, you were on the move again, trailing right behind him as he stomped slowly over the underbrush so you could keep his pace. He'd stop every now and then, and though he didn't say it, you knew it was because he didn't want to overwork you.

By late afternoon, the sun was on the far end of the sky, casting an orange glow over the woods.

Daryl had barely been able to look at you, and you couldn't exactly claim any different. You two had taken a break again, sipping water and scanning around for any game or edible plants.

"I want ya to know.." He cleared his throat, shattering the thick silence that glazed over you both all day. "I want ya to know I didn't see it. None of it."

"I know you weren't looking." You deadpanned.

"Nah, not at the stream. I meant -- I didn't see none of it." He clarified. He had a sneaking suspicion the reason you couldn't bare to look at him might have been the possibility of him seeing what had happened to you. He, however, just hated seeing you look so broken, knowing had he been more vigilant yesterday, none of those guys would have been able to sneak up on him. You looked at him finally.

"I know. They hit you over the head 'cause you were fighting them."

"Mm." He nodded. "I just... I need to tell ya I'm sorry." His voice cracked as he looked down at his hands and back up to you. His leg was bouncing anxiously and his gums must have bled from how hard he chewed at them.

"Why?" You pushed your eyebrows together.

"I shoulda been lookin' out. Shoulda protected ya. Shoulda--"

"You were. You have been." You cut him off. "You've looked out for me every day since the prison. You've been protecting me since the quarry. You protect everyone. That wasn't your fault." You insisted. He just looked back down at his hands and sniffled, blinking back tears. He scolded himself for being the one to cry, when you were the one who got hurt. "Hey." You pressed on. "Listen to me. You got us out of there. You took care of them. You saved me. Then, you still took care of me. If we were still back there, they would have killed you and robbed you by now. And, if they hadn't killed me yet, I'd be wishing I was dead. I wouldn't be here without you. I would have never survived even before last night without you, and I wouldn't be sitting here telling you that today if it weren't for you."

He looked you in the eyes as you spoke every word. It was a great relief to him that you weren't angry with him -- that you didn't blame him. Still, he felt so uneasy.

"Can we camp here?" You asked suddenly. He shrugged.

"Yeah. We can." He agreed. His voice was still broken.

"Can I sit with you?" You asked. He looked confused but he still nodded, even if he was unsure what you meant.

Ignoring the aches all over your body, you crawled over to him and sat in front of him, between his legs, leaning your back against his torso. He was stiff, unused to being so close to someone, but he didn't resist. As you settled in and got comfortable, he rested his arms by your sides.

"You didn't fail me, Daryl. Nobody makes me feel safer."

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#tw: implied abuse #tw: implied sa #daryl dixon #daryl x reader #daryl x female reader #daryl x you #daryl x y/n

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zvaigzdelasas · 7 months

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Protesters demanding a cease-fire in the Israeli war in Gaza blocked a U.S. military supply ship leaving the Port of Oakland for hours Friday by locking themselves to the vessel. The protesters also blocked the entrance to Berth 20 where the container carrier Cape Orlando is moored. Protest groups say the ship is bound for Israel after being loaded with weapons and military equipment in Tacoma, Washington.

The protest was organized by the San Francisco-based Arab Resource Organizing Center. Police were at the scene of the protest which appeared to number about 200 people, many holding Palestinian flags and signs demanding an end to U.S. military aid to Israel[...]

Three Palestinian supporters were holding on to a rope ladder and refusing to let workers close a door to the military ship. A U.S. Coast Guard negotiator tried to convince them to get off the ship, but protestors refused..[...] Abushamala was one of many demonstrators that blocked a port entrance to the ship. She said she lost several relatives in the war. "One missile killed three generations. An uncle, their son, and their child," said Abushamala. "I'm enraged that our government is still sending aid, missiles to Israel."

Another Palestinian protestor, Noura Khouri, said she also lost a relative in a bombing last week. "It's literally impossible for any of us to sleep, to eat, to work, to carry on with our lives," said Khouri.

Some Jewish people also joined in the protest. "I'm here as a Jewish person, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. And I grew up hearing the stories of my grandmother surviving the Nazi's Holocaust, losing her entire family. And today, Israel is weaponizing my history, the history of my family that was killed, to kill Palestinian families in Gaza," said Alameda resident Anna Baltzer.

Just before 3 p.m., authorities removed the three protesters who held onto the rope ladder, and the ship made its way out of the port. Abushamala and other protestors were disappointed. They hope their action will have a lasting impact on lawmakers.

"No more U.S. military aid to Israel. It is within your power. Do not let the fear stop you," said Abushamala.[...]

According to a release from AROC, three protesters who climbed onto the vessel were detained by the U.S. Coast Guard -- the federal agency with jurisdiction on the water. As it is an ongoing investigation, Coast Guard Petty Officer Hunter Schnabel said Friday evening that he could not provide specifics but confirmed "multiple individuals are currently under investigation." The release from AROC called on "communities in cities around the country and across the world to be on alert for vessels carrying similar cargo."

3 Nov 23

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yeyinde · 7 months

Text

SEA FEVER | Sailor!John Price x Reader

When he invited you to see his ship, half of it was—admittedly—a euphemism. A thinly veiled come-on. A facsimile of romance. Who wouldn't, after all, want to drift out to the open ocean, making love—or some sad version of it—under the stars on a clear night? And he thinks that might be fine. Maybe it's all you want from him, anyway—just a night. A moment. A memory to keep. But John's always been greedy. The kind that wants, and wants. Once would never be enough, and he knows that if he sunk his teeth into you, a bite would never satiate his rapacious appetite, never quench the hunger. And since he can't make a meal out of a morsel, he'd rather starve.

tags: fluff, angst, unapologetic pining, obsession at first sight (but then love follows), blink and you'll miss it awful coping mechanisms (self-isolation, self-exile) and brief allusions to trauma (unresolved because this is about fucking the physical manifestation of the ocean, lads; it ain't about healing), egregious sea themes, a Newfie and his Newfie-isms, whirlwind romance; questionable sailing choices warnings: 18+ | allusions to smut but everything is brief and vague and more about the Feelings™ than the act, explicit male solo though but also very brief and about the Pining™. word count: 25k notes: unconventional leading man (haggard sea boy) romances local travesty (ambiguous, wishy-washy bartender) in a love affair no one asked for. That's what this is. Enjoy.

*Suggestive themes are signified by a sailor's knot above the paragraph for those who want to read this, but don't care much for smut. SFW will begin with an anchor and wave divider above it. NSFW & SFW shown below:

—PRICE

The storm off the coast of Newfoundland is stronger than he'd anticipated.

What starts as a bleak looking cloud on the horizon quickly churns the waters into a rough, sickly looking grey that rocks against his vessel without any respite. The cabin is in utter disarray within seconds of being battered by waves that seem to grow in size with each harrowing shade of charcoal blue the sky turns.

A few warnings from local trawlers in the area, ones quickly turning into the nearby harbour, and a firm reprimand by the Canadian Coast Guard when he radioed back and asked if anchoring was a feasible option (oh, sure, b'y, the man said, his thick Maritime twang hiding none of his derisive scorn. If ye wan'na meet y'r mak'r, it's a safe place to capsize, luh. We'll risk our arses in the morn' when y'need savin', we do. If there's anythin' left of ya that needs savin', anyhoo), he's quick to follow their example.

But, unfortunately, not quick enough.

The sudden squall tears through his hull with a vengeance, ripping the sails from their perch with a gust of wind that seems determined to play chicken with the efficiency of his ballast tanks (a pyrrhic victory for Captain and her unquenchable bloodlust for trying herself on just how far she can list before rocketing back upright). He knows with full certainty, and innate experience traversing through the Gulf Stream when he was younger and much more foolish, that the damage is nearly catastrophic. Nearly, of course, because while it clipped his sails, he has engines to bring him back, limping, to the coast the Guard directs him to.

"See there, y'er ten clicks away, b'y. Sending coordinates in a minute, now."

He's reminded of the warnings given by gnarled, old sailors who told him about the dangers of solo-sailing as he tries to be everything all at once to get his ship to the harbour they directed him to. Asking him, how can you be the captain, the navigator, and the watch all at the same time? When do you sleep? The answer, of course, is barely, but Price likes the freedom of being on his own. The isolation at sea isn't for everyone, but he takes to it with an ease that seems to defy all the gods of the ocean until he stands triumphant in his own domain, on his own ship.

Until now, that is.

Until he's battling with a handicap in the ocean.

But somehow—luck, maybe—he limps his way to the port where he finds fishermen helping latch the vessels to the marina in the harbour.

Shaded in a dreary grey, the port looks grimy and desolate from his cabin's porthole. A few wooden shacks on the beach are painted in faded primary colours and bear the quintessential marks of a seaside town—seashells, sailors knots (Carrick bend and Ashley stoppers), seahorses, and anchors. Without the dour grey of the downpour, he thinks it might be charming in a way. Quaint. There's a market to the west of him where stacks of lobster cages sit. Men in wellies and rubber dungarees shout orders amid the chaos of the storm, and he takes a moment to gather his things in a rucksack before he joins them on the deck.

This late at night, there isn't much anyone can do but hunker down and hope for the best. The men point him in the direction of the closest inn—the only one, another jokes—and he tries not to think about how badly damaged Captain will be in the morning. His own stupidity, of course; he knew there was a storm coming but he underestimated how vicious it would be.

With a nod of thanks, he sets off.

Brushing against the Eastern coast of Canada was meant to just be a simple drive-by back to Liverpool. Barely a stop, really. Just a scenic route so he could spend his thirty-ninth birthday over the sunken wreck of the Titanic before continuing on the nearly week-long journey across the Atlantic.

But instead, he celebrates it with a bottle of rum, and a ship on the verge of sinking—stuck, now, in Nova Scotia until he can find a mechanic to patch her up before he sets sail again.

He sends a quick text to Soap about the delay—stuck in Canada, fuckin' hurricanes—and tries not to dwell on the sudden ease in his guts at the prospect of not going home anytime soon.

(There are worse places he could be for his birthday, he thinks. Like Liverpool.)

The port he anchored his vessel to is a bottleneck between the last stretch of land for some hundreds of kilometres and the vast, ungiving ocean.

It isn't much to look at—just an empty boardwalk shaped like a horseshoe with most of the shops closed down for the season (or permanently, if the ramshackle state of them is anything to by), save for a grocer, an inn that takes up most of the middle section of the pier, a fisherman's village on the inlet with locals buying the wares from the lush waters filled to the brim with lobster and Atlantic salmon, a seafood restaurant, a cafe that moonlights as a pizza parlour in the evenings, and a pub—but it's enough for now. It's quaint, he thinks, even in its seasonal destitution.

The buildings are all painted in faded primary colours that are washed out in the heavy rain that falls from some coastal hurricane just touching down in Labrador.

It's one of those small seaside harbours that have seen better days. One with an economy wholly dependent on passing sailors just to survive, and he feels the despondency in the air like a thick, humid fog clinging to the skin of his neck. Fading signs. Peeling paint. There's damage to some of the buildings from a hurricane that must have swept through some several seasons ago, but the funds to repair are almost nonexistent, and so it sits. Festers. A broken reminder of how deadly the sea can be, even on land.

The herringbone pier creaks under his weight as he walks the sandy trek from the marina beside the village to the inn (no vacancy, it reads, with middle letters flickering ominously), and he grapples with the unease that fills him at being on solid land for the first time in months. A strange, unshaky gait, as if the cartilage in his aching knees turned to liquid while he was at sea.

It doesn't bother him too much—by the time he recalibrates to the weight of land pressing down on his soles, it'll be time to leave.

Maybe.

("It'll pass," the innkeeper sniffs when he asks about how long these things usually last. "Give 'er a week or so, and she'll blow right by. Might cause some floodin' in Halifax, but we're on the opposite end of 'er. Should be fine.")

It smells like rotten fish, blooming algae, and old frying oil—a typical thoroughfare for most of the harbours he's saddled up to in the years he's been traversing the open ocean. He breathes it in and finds himself already missing the potent loam that brims from the seawater at night. Salt, humus, brine, eelgrass; the ocean smells distinct in its rot. This, then, is a pale ersatz.

He's been here for a short, few hours already, and still can't seem to adjust to life on land. To the smells, the sounds, the people—not that there's too many of them around here. Price would be surprised if this town's population was higher than three hundred.

But it's stifling all the same.

And cold.

Being at the very tip of the Atlantic ocean, the weather is a near constant gloom. Grey, lacklustre skies smeared with thick, black clouds looming in the horizon like an omen. Salt-saturated air. It's a strange amalgamation between a chilling breeze from the sea and a dense wall of humidity even this late in September. It's uncomfortably thick under the veiled sun—a pale yellow hidden behind streaks of grey cloud cover.

The best description for this little place is dreary.

One he thinks might still be true even without the hurricane looming in the distance; a constant, inescapable chokehold within reach.

In the interior of the small fishing village, people chatter aimlessly about everything except the hurricane (but he supposes that with the frequency of them happening, there isn't much else to say about them except, ah, fuck, again?). He finds a modicum of comfort in their strange twang—a mangled bastardisation of Irish, Scottish, and something unique to the barren, eastern coast of Canada. It almost feels like home, strangely. Like someone dropped him in the Canadian version of Cork, Ireland.

The people he meets in passing as he drifts aimlessly between the shops, picking up something for dinner and a set of clean clothes, are friendly in an almost aggressive way.

Then, of course, there's you.

You weren't expected. A catastrophe in the making, one that he can see coming from a mile away. It's something he has a keen intuition for—being able to sense the kind of trouble that will make leaving harder than it has to be—and he knows better than to entertain this little fantasy, but there's something about you that makes him keep coming back.

Maybe it's the booze you ply him with; top of the shelf despite adding it to his tab under a bottom barrel price tag. Or the fact that no one has been able to replicate the perfect whisky sour he had down in Barbados, but—goddamn—you come very close.

Or maybe it's just exactly what it is:

Loneliness. Distraction.

He's a man always on the move. One who hasn't kissed land in months. And you're—

Well.

You're the prettiest thing he'd seen since a rainbow cast a glimmering ring on the horizon eighteen kilometres off the coast of the Philippines.

He isn't old. Not in the way that matters, but the sea has a way of chipping people apart; ageing them in ways that land just can't replicate. He's not yet forty, but sometimes he wakes up after barely missing a brutal storm in the middle of the ocean, and he feels like he's almost sixty. Battered body, bruised and broken; sunscorched. Salt-weathered.

You, though, make him feel his actual age. As if he's some young, dumb lad who ought to know better but doesn't care. Flippant in the way only the people in Liverpool can be. Young of heart. Dumb of mind.

And fuck—

Thinking about that place, those goddamn idiots in the pub who didn't know what quiet meant, makes him realise just how much he misses it. Not home. Never home. Home is the sea. The ocean. Home is this little place between land. A wild, untamed beast. The place where, when he was eighteen and smitten, he threw his heart down to the bottom of that unending chasm of midnight blue.

But you make him homesick, and he thinks he ought to resent you a little bit for it.

(He doesn't, of course; doesn't think he could ever hate you for making him feel even though he should because you make leaving harder than it's ever been, and he doesn't know what to do about that.)

It starts over a glass of whisky.

He's no stranger to being the foreigner, the tourist. Price is a tall man with broad shoulders and a permanent smear of sunburn across the bridge of his nose, no matter the season. With his unkempt beard of wry umber curls, his deep timbre that sounds more like the battered engine of a classic, American muscle car, a sea-weathered gaze, and his penchant for a stiff drink and an unfiltered cigar, he has a tendency to stand out.

(Or so he's been told.)

So, when you round the corner of the bar, brow ticking up in intrigue as he wanders in, sun-beaten and salt-slicked, he isn't surprised to hear you murmur:

"Not from around here, are you?"

Still. It makes him huff. "How'd you guess?"

Your other brow joins the first. "This town has a permanent population of maybe sixty people. I like to think I know every single one of them. You, however, I don't know."

"That so?"

You nod. "Yes, sir—"

And fuck. The way you speak, softly but with a rawness in your tone that's completely void of any false pleasantry, seems to notch somewhere in his ribcage, however dusted it is with barren white cobwebs.

"No. No sirs here," he finds himself saying, unprompted, and a little adrift from his usual character. He likes the importance that comes with being known as an authority figure; respected—the responsibility gives him something to do, and John has never really known how to be anything other than a leader, even when he shouldn't be.

(Especially when he shouldn't be.)

"Then what should I call you, stranger?"

He shrugs one shoulder in a lofty reply, but doesn't give you his name. Not right away, anyway—he also thinks he likes the mystery of being a stranger in a strange land—but you don't press. Your hands lift, palms facing him, in a mockery of surrender.

"Okay, stranger. What can I get for you?"

"Whisky," he says, a touch gruffer than he should be considering how nice you're being, but he's also never been the sort to care much about social niceties. "Neat. Bottle of spring water on the side."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you mouth the words back to yourself, a little smile clipping the corner of your lips. Bottle of water. It makes him huff again.

"Good business to mock your guests, is it?"

It's your turn to shrug. "Only when they don't give me their name."

You're quick in a way he doesn't expect. Snappy. Unpolished. But considering the way you walk around the bar, snatching up a bottle, and then a glass without even sparing a glance to see what's in your hands, it tells him you're familiar with this place. I know everyone, it screams.

It's an inference—but he's always been rather good at those as well—that you've been here a while. Maybe this place is home to you. Maybe it has always been.

Growing up in a dilapidated port town must have rubbed off on you in all the wrong ways. Waspish but still deferential to your elders. Quick with your words. Taking everything to the chin without a flinch.

You grew up around sailors. Around men who can't seem to stand still on land long enough to call any place home. And he almost pities you for it. Almost.

But he doesn't know you well enough to care.

So, he doesn't.

Motions, instead, to the cigar case he lays flat on the table after fishing it out of his front pocket with a small murmur to see if it's alright if he smokes inside. Places like these are so far behind on bylaws, he doubts anyone would blink if he smoked indoors, but it's better to be safe, he reasons, than to find himself on the curb nursing bloodied knuckles and a black eye.

(One too many nights down in Manila taught him well enough.)

You nod, then look around the empty pub. "Go ahead. I don't think anyone here will mind."

It makes bark out something that sounds too shorn around the edges, too frayed and unevenly cut, to be a laugh, but it still makes your lips quiver, pulling up in a smile.

"Glad you've got my back."

He leaves it open. An empty space for you to fill in, give him your name. A proper introduction.

Price isn't too surprised when you don't, and instead use two, well-practised fingers to slide his drink over to him, not spilling a drop. There's a flash of teeth. A mockery of a smile.

And then: "drink up. First one is on the house."

"Well, aren't you charming."

"It's just good business," you quip with a little more teeth. "Gotta stay above the competition."

It pulls another bark from his chest. The second in less than ten minutes. He can't remember the last time he laughed this much, however lumpish and unrefined it might be.

"It's working," he adds, tipping the glass in your direction. "Might come back for a round yet."

"Just don't be a stranger."

He should have been.

Living a large majority of his life floating aimlessly in the vast expanse of the open sea has given him several insights into who he is as a person, as a man, and what makes him tick. The situations he was forced into, almost all of them being life or death, make him acutely aware of himself in a way that only those who have trust pushed past the limits of their mettle know.

Price is good at spotting danger. Looming storms. Rogue waves. Reefs jutting out in the middle of the ocean.

And everything about you is dangerous.

He knows himself well enough to know that you're his kryptonite. His weakness. That those glossy eyes, your stubborn pride, your spitfire mouth, are all things pitted against him. All designed to make him suffer as much as possible.

You're more dangerous than running out of fuel near Australia. Almost getting capsized off the coast of Sri Lanka. Surviving a sudden hurricane in the waters around Mexico.

You—

You make him yearn. You make him want.

You make him think about things he swore off of when he was eighteen and set sail around the world all on his own.

For the first time since he left Liverpool in a boat he named Captain, Price thinks about home. Solid land beneath his feet.

Dangerous, indeed.

And despite everything warning him away, he goes back.

Blames it on a litany of things—all half-truths that are only marginally easy to swallow. Things like: it's been ages since he had a stiff drink, and this is the only pub in some ten kilometres, or so. The only licence he cared enough to renew is his boating permit, and he isn't even sure if his driver's licence from Hereford is valid anymore. Never bothered much to check.

He needs to get out, anyway. Has to find someone to fix the leak he'd sprung crossing the Labrador Strait. Needs to get more fuel. Enough to last him until he can get to Maine.

And where else is he going to find anyone in this town to do all of that if not at the pub?

It's practical. A necessity.

(And if he wears his nicest shirt that only barely smells sunbleached, then no one has to know.)

No one. Except you, that is.

You wave to him in what's quickly becoming known as your usual greeting. A slight widening of your eyes, as if you're surprised to see him. Then a small quirk of your lips that always accompanies the briefest flash of teeth. If you're not busy making a drink, you lift your hand up, fingers loosely curled over your palm. A lazy wave.

He echoes it all back with a sharp nod as he takes his seat at the bar. His usual, too, because despite having not been a marine since he was twenty-six, he still has the training he picked up ingrained in his marrow. Back to the corner. Exits in his periphery.

(Old habits die hard, he thinks, and feels his heart leap to the base of his throat when you grin at him from over the counter, wide and infectious—)

He needs a smoke. A stiff drink.

There's an ashtray laid out on the table in front of him, a coaster with an empty glass. You're quick to rectify that, sidling up to his spot with a bottle of whisky tucked between your palm and thumb, a bottle of water secured in your grasp by just your pinky looped around the nozzle.

"You should try my whisky sour," you murmur conversationally—like this is normal. Commonplace.

It is in a way, he notes. But there's something much too domestic about the way you take him in. Fluffing pillows. Resting a cool hand against a warm forehead. Sweetness bleeds into his teeth, makes them ache. He needs to rinse it away before he gets a cavity.

"Mm," he mumbles, fingers curling around the glass. The whisky is only slightly chilled—the way he mentioned he liked days ago—and he wonders if you took it out of the cool, let it sit on the shelf, waiting for him. He doesn't know how he feels about the idea of that. Of being waited for. Expected. "Not a fan of that nonsense."

Your head tilts to the side. Narrowed eyes reading him. Trying to sear through the layers that accumulated over the years, thick growths. Barnacles bunched around his body from stagnancy. He wonders what you think you see when you look at him.

Wonders, then, why he cares so much about what the answer might be.

John hides it all in a swallow. A gulp of whisky that never stops burning no matter how many times he washes his blues away with a swig of it. Lights a fire in his throat that catches and spreads through his chest, all the way down to his belly. Smoky. Ashes. He wheezes through the burn of it. Let it strip his insides, taking all the pollutants with it. The ones that build up whenever he catches sight of soft, coy smiles, and warm eyes.

Dangerous if left unchecked.

"You never know," you say, and he's already forgotten what you were talking about originally. Too many dips into the margins. Too much reading between the lines. "You might like it if you try."

And he knows, immediately, that he would. That he'd order whatever fancy drink you whipped up for him tonight with lemon and liquid cane sugar and a pinch of salt to cut the sweetness (your secret ingredient), and would do it for the rest of his life if he could. Would drink himself into cirrhosis just to see the way you smiled when you made it.

He swallows it. Chases it down with water. He's always been rather good at that—running. Avoiding the things that make his heart thud, and the back of his neck prickle.

So, he says: "nah, m'set in my ways."

And you smile, let him flee. "If you say so." Then, with eyes that drop to the three wrinkles in his collar, and the ambiguous stain on the breast pocket of his shirt, you add: "don't you look nice tonight. Who're you trying to impress?"

There's an itch under his skin. He paws at his pocket for his cigars. You meet him in the middle with a lighter in your hand, held out to him when he jabs the butt of one between his teeth. He needs the distraction. Needs nicotine to quell his nerves. Smoke-stained apathy. Just enough to soften the urge to do something ill-advised. To say something uncharacteristically flirty, like—

You. If you'll have me.

(And then desperately. With a quiver in his voice, and blood in his throat; if you'll let me. I'll be so good to you, so, so good—)

"Mechanic," he rumbles, words muffled and gruff from around the end of his cigar. The way the flames catch the softness around the ring of your irises makes him ache in all the wrong ways. "Boat mechanic, specifically. To help fix up Captain."

"Captain?" You echo, brows rising. He leans forward, pushes the tip into the fire; inhales to let it catch.

"M'ship," he rolls the word around a mouthful of smoke. "My first love."

"Ah," you say with a smile that tugs on the corners of your eyes. "She must be a thing of beauty, then."

His mouth is already forming the affirmation—yes, she is—and the question—why do you think that?—but you beat him to it with a softness that hints at more, that lays itself bare on the grimy, acetone bleached tabletop:

"To make a man like you so smitten."

And Jesus Christ.

What is he meant to say to that? How is supposed to respond with his heart in his throat, and pulse in his ears?

He's too old for this shite, he thinks. Then, not old enough. Not nearly old enough—

"Right," he grumbles, gruff and unfriendly, and everything that's meant to make you stay away for good, to look at him like the sorry sap of an empty man he is. But there's a tint in his words. A blood-drenched fluster.

You catch pieces of it, and smile behind the counter as you pour another drink.

"Anyway," he's grasping at anything with knotted hands, something to take the edge off of his nerves. To put distance between this, you and him, and all the things that will eventually come after it. "This mechanic. Know where I can find one?"

The derision that dances across your pretty face has heat blooming in his chest.

"Look around. This is basically a town hall meeting tonight."

He likes the way you ride sarcasm and sincerity so finely that he always seems to oscillate between believing your words or wondering if you're making a mockery of him. Most of the time, you seem to be—if only to get a rise out of him. To draw out his sense of humour, mordant and drier than a desert. One that pairs quite nicely with your own.

(Another tip to the scale he tries not to think about.)

So he doesn't. He huffs instead as he ashes his cigar, and reaches for the glass with his other hand.

"Well, ain't you funny."

You are, of course. Of course. He thinks about the things you say to him when he comes down for breakfast at noon and dinner well after the sun has set beyond the horizon, making a meal out of the lobster rolls you make for him in the kitchen, the tuna sandwiches. The garlic shrimp. The salmon and rice. Idle comments about the locals—or lack thereof—and their spotty reputation. The history of the town. Of your Province.

"You love it."

And God help him, he does. He does. He likes the way you drag snorts out from the depths of his chest, clearing out empty cobwebs, and filling the barren space with warmth. Or something like it. Everyone he's met so far always seems to want something from him, but you don't. You don't even make him pay for the extra heaping of lobster you pile on his plate even though he's heard you say it was an extra five dollars to a passing sailor.

He seems to be your exception, and he doesn't know why.

(Or maybe he does, but looking at it too closely fills him with dread. The kind he only feels when he finds out a storm cell is headed toward him. When he has to anchor down in a bay and settle the sickness in his guts as Captain is viciously thrown from side to side.

The morning after when he has to clean up the broken pieces and examine the extent of the damage, it's always filled with a sense of moroseness. Uncomfortable, in a way, like the aftermath of a vitriolic row, a devastating argument when he emerges with a sense of uncertainty, no longer quite sure he was justified in the things he said, the anger he felt. But too prideful to apologise. The awkwardness of navigating the ruins of calamity with a sense of regret that blooms alongside his lingering anger.)

So, he does what he does best:

"Not in your lifetime, love."

He runs.

Because lying has always come easier to him, hasn't it?

The mechanic is an old man with an accent thicker than his own.

He speaks entirely in regional colloquialisms that Price can't make sense of. Even when he makes it known that he has no idea what the fuck the man is on about, he just breathes out his nose, as if to say, what can't ye understand about me words? and continues in the same mishmash of something that might be English, but honestly—John doubts it very much.

Still. He's quick. He checks the hull, the mast. The engine. Checks off a list as he goes, muttering to himself (himself, because John stopped listening after the third, what? Come again? I can't understand you, mate that went entirely ignored save for a few, luh, buddy, I knows yer not stun but yer gettin' me right rotted, ye'are), and then slaps the side of Captain, nodding to himself.

Three weeks, he says, words stretched out and stressed, like he was speaking to a child. 'ave 'er all fix'd up in t'ree weeks, b'y.

Three weeks.

It's in line with the seasons, too. If he times it all just right, he could be eating jerk chicken, curry, and oxtail soup in Jamaica soon enough. It would be stupid to go against the Gulf Stream (something he knows from experience when he was younger and dumber and thought he knew better), but a short stint across the Atlantic to Bermuda would suffice. Then once he's finished, he could set sail to the Azores, and then to Gibraltar, or Portugal, back up to the UK.

Well, then.

It's set.

He hands the man a deposit, and tries not to think about the hourglass looming in the distance.

Or you.

(He always has to leave eventually. This, he knows, is no different.)

A routine forms. It's not terrible—not at first. Just an itch in the back of his head, talons raking across the inside of his skull, right behind his eyes.

It's fine, he reasons, taking his spot at the bar while you bat away grabbing hands reaching for free beer, more booze. In three weeks, this place will be a memory replayed in his mind when the stretch of ocean idles, and loneliness sets in. A soft comfort for him to break into pieces, into regrets and spots of unhinged laughter when the isolation in a wet, unfathomable desert sinks its maw into his psyche.

He'll resent himself, he's sure; curse the winds and the squalls that threaten to tear his boat into pieces. The idle sense of listlessness that comes with seafaring long distances.

He's done it enough times to know that between the inexorable sense of freedom and insignificance in the gaping maw of an untamable beast, he always hates himself a little bit for not taking someone with him.

Solo-sailing is ill-advised, but he's always been a stubborn bastard. Too prickly to be good company, too gruff to care.

Maybe he'll ring Gaz when gets close to Europe to see if he's up for a stint jaunting through the ocean to see the Caribbean with him. Or Soap if Gaz is still hunkering away with the military.

(You—

He doesn't think about that. Carves the thought out of his hand as quickly as it forms.)

But even so—

You're a constant on his mind. The first solid presence he's had in months, too.

Despite his cantankerous disposition—sometimes he finds himself snarling more than conversing; sometimes he has this urge in his blood to lash out, to push things away just to see how far they go—you navigate his mercurial temperament with ease. His shorn, gruff words bounce off of your skin and fall to the countertop where you pick them up between delicate fingers and throw them right back at him—all with a smile.

See, you seem to say. Nothing you can do will push me away so just shut up already and drink your fucking whisky, old man.

He doesn't know if he believes you. Or the phantom echo in his head.

"You're shedding," you murmur, drawing his attention back to you. At his raised brow, you lift your hand up in front of him, thumb and forefinger pinched together.

It's only when his vision steadies that he sees the single strand of hair wisping up from between the tips of your fingers. A coarse hair of dark brown with lightened tips.

His hand lifts to his beard, roaming over the wry curls peppered, unkempt, around the bottom half of his face. His moustache is overgrown, eclipsing the entirety of his lips. He feels the wetness from his whisky staining the ends.

You laugh when he pats along his cheek and jaw, as if he could find the missing follicle amid an unruly basin of knotting hair.

"Ah," he rasps. "Guess I'm in need of a shave."

It's not a priority anymore. Hasn't been since he left the Navy, or when he realised how troublesome it was to try and shave his face while crossing the Atlantic. It just stopped being something he cared much about.

But he feels the long ends catching on the rough patch of skin around his knuckles. Straggly and whitening at the tips.

"Maybe," you quip with a shrug, and he can't really place the note in your tone that tries to linger between feigned indifference, but misses the mark entirely.

You don't say anything else as you drop the fallen strand into the bin behind the counter, but as the night progresses, he catches your eyes straying toward him more often than usual, lingering on the expanse of his covered jaw. Something flashes in those depths—intrigue, maybe; curiosity—and John tries to convince himself it doesn't matter even as he pulls out money from his wallet at the crux of the evening when everyone has gone home, save for himself and you. The only two left in an empty pub.

It shakes him, somewhat. As if he's only realising just now how normal this has become. For him to wait for you. To walk you to the edge of the boardwalk, where a little cottage sits across a sandy embankment. Home, you told him once. The first night he kept pace with you just to keep the conversation going.

Never been anywhere else but here, you said, a touch wistful. Must be amazing, then. Going anywhere you like. Always at sea.

He swallows down something bitter at the memory. Something aching and acrid. Yeah, he murmured when the silence stretched on for too long and he saw the apology forming on your lips. Nice. It's—it's good, yeah.

The years have muted the resentment he felt toward his home. His father, in particular. He doesn't think he's ready to step back into Hereford—maybe not ever—but he might be ready to see the old bastard's grave. Drop a couple of flowers down.

The memories he has are embedded in thrown cast iron pots. Fist-sized holes in the wall. Sealed with bitterness, resentment.

He didn't know how to summarise all of that into something digestible for you. So, he didn't. Doesn't.

(Can't, maybe. Won't.)

You'd stopped aiming for personal and instead focused your attention on the things that made him snort. Made him laugh. He can't remember the last time he had a moment to breathe. Land makes him feel claustrophobic. Itches under his skin in a way that drums up the instinct to flee. Or fight.

But with you—

It's easy.

It awakens something in him, too. Something that has been there all along, maybe. Lingering on the periphery. One he tried hard to ignore as it raked down his skull, leaving false starts in his bones.

There's an attraction there, seeding in the gaps between your bodies. One that becomes harder to ignore as the days pass. And how could there not be, when you're pretty in a way that makes him flounder. That makes him want to bend you over the counter just to see what expressions he could pull out of you with a mere touch. The sounds—

Fuck. You'd sound so pretty, he thinks. Has thought. Many times in the sanctuary of his hotel room that stunk of algae and smoke. Images of you splayed out on the sheets, begging him for more—

His hand goes back to his jaw. Feeling the years of accumulated indifference beneath his fingers, and needing something—anything—to take the heat in his belly, the tremble of his hand, away. To keep the thoughts of you at bay, locked up tight for no one else to see. To know.

John doesn't walk you home that night, opting instead to duck into a drug mart beside the inn, hands burrowed in his pockets, eyes lidded. Narrowed, almost, as he takes in the rows of cheap plastic he'll inevitably find at sea.

He stands in the aisle for a moment, taking in the mix of English and French on the boxes, and trying to come up with reasons for why this is a good idea—outside of the way it felt to have you look at him with lowered lashes, flickering from his chin, to his jaw, to his cheek: imagining what might be under the bushel of thick, unruly hair.

It doesn't surprise him that he comes up empty. That his head is filled with nothing but the illicit image of you leaning over him—

Stupid.

He grabs the first box he sees, crumpling the cardboard from how tight he's clenching his fist.

It isn't the first time he's thought of you like that, but it is in your presence. With you staring at him, filling in the blanks his uninspired memory couldn't conjure up. Talking to him, too—bloody fucking hell.

All frayed whispers of: you alright, John? You sure? Well, if you say so.

There's anger writ across his brow, more so at himself for thinking these things, for feeling them in the first place, but as he stalks toward the counter, frown buried behind a mess of overgrown, unkempt hair, and eyes narrowed into pinched lines, he's sure he makes quite the sight. Must, if the little jump the skittish man behind the register gives when he drops the box with a growled how much? is to go by.

John's never been good at handling his anger. Trickle-down toxicity, maybe. He's sure some fancy therapist would be overjoyed to tell him all about it—about how he's never had a good role model when it comes to biting his tongue. Never had to, when his last name is enough to pass tests, climb ranks.

Mean and drunk, his dad was.

And Price—

Well. Sometimes he feels himself getting there, too.

But this. This. It feels different.

He's not nearly as angry as he is flustered, and like anything he isn't used to, he lashes out.

John is sure they don't tip at drug stores, but he conveniently forgets his change in place of an apology when he storms out of the shop, ignoring the hesitantly called, uh, sir…? as he goes.

It's fine, he thinks and tries not to let his mind wander into uncharted territory, musing about what you might have said. Might have done.

Swatted at him, undoubtedly. Said something scathing about him being a prick for no reason. Put him in his place, kept him there.

But he doesn't think about that at all.

John stands in front of the grimy mirror in his hotel room with a brand new razor in hand, staring at himself, and wonders if you'd shave it for him if he asked. If you'd keep him in line during the long stretch of the ocean where everything is an endless crawl of muted grey-green, and take him down to the bathroom in the boat, one that's barely big enough for himself to fit comfortably, and perch him on the toilet while you tended to the too-long wisps of curls growing over his cheeks.

The thought is an algae bloom in his chest. Ethereal, beautiful. But beneath the marvel of nature's potent splendour lurks a deadly danger—one toxic in its domesticity.

Still. He latches onto it. Curls his worn fingers around the edges, clinging to rotting driftwood.

He likes the way it fits in his chest. The shape of you moulding along the barren brackets of his ribs; slotting in like a puzzle piece. It's winsome. Dangerous. But he's always like a challenge.

Always liked the way some things were meant to hurt.

(And you—you look like you were made to ruin.)

Hair rains into the stained basin with each cut. Filling the chips in the porcelain, built up from years of carelessness and indelicate hands, until a light dust of burnt umber sits like a layer of snow across the surface, hiding the blemishes below.

Each inch shorn off seems to regress him in age until he's less an unkempt seafarer, a wild man who feasts on tuna and loses his mind in the middle of the sea, and more like the thirty-something-year-old who still has decades ahead of him to try and regain his footing.

The contrast is jarring.

He runs the back of his hand across clean skin and nearly startles at the feeling of something touching that part of his face that was hidden for so long.

He's reminded about something his dad used to say—nothing like a shave to make a man feel new again—and isn't sure how he likes the sour twist in his gut when he feels the truth in those words, however hollow and artificial they might be.

The face that stares back at him is different from the one who wore a military uniform all those years ago. Cheeks sunken in. Hollow. Thinner from months at sea. His complexion is darker, sunkissed and tinged slightly red. A permanent sunburn, maybe. He thinks about the woman from Ghana who warned him with a finger pressed softly against the apple of his full cheek about skin cancer. Melanoma.

Wear sunscreen, she stressed with a shake of her head that sent gorgeous locks of midnight black spilling over her bare shoulders. It reminded him of the deepest parts of the ocean that he crossed. Endless puddles that looked like little jars of ink across the vast expanse of the sea. You're too pale not to be wearing some every day.

(After he left—twinned hearts torn asunder—he found a bottle of sunscreen stuffed inside his rucksack. It was the only time he can remember crying in some twenty-odd years—)

That man feels almost as distant as the sea is to him now. A memory. A moment when he was willing to carve off the best parts of himself just to make room for the loneliness; the self-flagellation in the form of isolation. What he'd thought he deserved. Maybe still does.

He isn't sure what thoughts were rattling around inside his head at the time to make him leave the best pieces of himself with a woman who seemed too good to be true, but still wanted him, of all people, by her side. Those, too, feel far too distant to grasp.

His hand is worn down. Knuckles more scar tissue than skin. Welts lined the inside of his palms—thickened flesh made from grabbing the ends of rope too many times to count as it reeled out of his grasp, cutting deep and cauterising the wound all at the same time. He should have known better, maybe. But when his anchor was tumbling down into an abyss, unattached to its cleat in the middle of the ocean, time for thinking was negligible. Nonexistent, almost.

The accumulated scars—some from land, most from sea—discolour his skin until it's patches of ivory, pale pink, and mounted brown, all slightly hidden under a thin crop of wry topaz hair.

His nails are short and lined with boat oil. Dirt. The beds are yellowing from nicotine.

He scratches the rosy skin of his upper cheek where it meets the cut of patchwork mutton chops. His signature style when he was Captain. When he was responsible for more life than he knew what to do with or knew how to protect.

(The men he couldn't save always seem to stack higher than the ones he did.)

John sees fragments of his old self in the mirror. Pieces of an incomplete puzzle he thought he left scattered on the battlefield, and then tucked inside a box when he handed in his medals for a trawler (a trawler for a sailboat). The fit is tight. It sits uncomfortably over his new skin—scarred and sunkissed—and he gives himself a moment to wonder about where he'd be in life now had he stayed behind.

But a moment feels too long. Not long enough.

He brings the razor up to his cheek and cuts the rest of that man away.

He isn't him. Not anymore.

(Hasn't been for a long time.)

The skin of his cheeks sting from the bitter evening winds billowing off the icy Atlantic and he's reminded why he kept his beard overgrown and thick when he was out at sea.

November is a cruel month, he always found. Cold. Desolate. This close to the ocean, and he feels the chill deep in his bones, even though several layers of leather and fur. It's enough to make his teeth chatter.

The fur lining the collar of his Levi's jacket does little to stem the vicious onslaught, but he makes a point to bunch his shoulders closer to the bottom of his earlobes in an effort to salvage some heat. Not that there's much to spare.

But the walk from the inn to the pub is blessedly short, and the brief cold gives him enough time to clear his head. To think about turning back. Stopping whatever it is he thinks he's doing.

He isn't a young lad. Not anymore.

He knows this, of course. Knows it enough to feel the ache in his joints. In the raw scar tissue that is always a little tender in colder weather. Still. It wasn't enough to stop him from washing his clothes in the coin laundry of the inn. Buying fabric softener and forest-scented detergent from the grocer. A beanie (toque, he supposes, though he's never heard anyone out East use that word), some cologne—the expensive kind. Tom Ford, the lady at the cosmetic counter said. You look like you'd like this one best.

He didn't ask why. She didn't tell him.

It smells good, though. Like new leather, vanilla, and tobacco—a strange concept considering most of the time people couldn't stand the smell whenever he smoked, but maybe that's only in cigars and cigarettes.

There was a moment when he stood in the washroom, buttoning up his freshly laundered (and newly purchased) shirt when he felt like a fraud. A goddamn muppet.

This isn't him. He reeks of smoke, salt, and sun-dried sweat. He scrubs his clothes clean with extra shampoo inside the shower on his boat when they start to smell a little too pungent, even for him. He doesn't shave. Barely showers—

Who needs it when he can just anchor on a reef, or a distant, uninhabited island and take a dip in crystalline waters for a few hours?

He feels—

Stupid.

But he can't deny there's something a little invigorating about slipping a clean body inside clean clothes. Dressing up like some young lad taking his girl out to see a film, grab a burger to eat. Maybe bum around Liverpool until he had to go back to the barracks.

He bit his tongue until he tasted iron and slipped on his jacket. Pulled the beanie over his head. Sprayed some cologne on the sleeves. And then kept his head low to avoid anyone's eyes, even though no one in this town has really bothered to get to know him like you had.

John just feels a bit like a swindler. This isn't him.

Fancy shirts. Clean jeans. Boots. A new leather jacket. Cologne. Barefaced. It all feels like a hollow pastiche of some clichè role he's trying to fill. Leading man, or something stupid like that Soap might jostle him about.

Who're ye tryin'ta be, Cap? Tom Hardy, aye?

Fuck. Fuck. He should leave, just go back to his inn—

But the door is already opening. You're looking up, taking him in, and then—

Nothing. You offer a slight nod. No smile. No wave. And then you're looking away, eyes dropping back to the tabletop you're always cleaning despite the stains and the stickiness never going away.

He expected worse, maybe. His hand reaches up as he steps inside, feeling the uneven skin beneath his palm. Rugged craters. Knicks from the blade when he got too close to his skin. Scars, maybe. Patches of hair he missed.

He wonders what you thought when you saw it. Chiefly disappointed, perhaps, that whatever image you had in your head of him, all clean-shaven and dressed up, wasn't quite the same as reality. There's a sinking sense of disappointment in his guts, but it's almost minuscule compared to the relief of knowing that you don't care. Maybe it'll be enough to quash whatever has been rotting in the crevasse between you. Crush whatever idealistic notions of him you have in your head.

John would rather you were bitterly disappointed now than realise it after. Regret. A mistake. It's good. Fine.

It's only when he takes his usual seat does your head pops up again, eyes cutting across the counter to stare at him.

And—

Shit.

The way you look at him knocks the air from his lungs. The deep appraisal, the shock, the curiosity, and the—

"Wow," you whisper, eyes widening. He isn't sure what you think, but he knows that look in your eye; a keenness. Sees it sometime staring back at him in a cup of amber when you don't notice him looking. Shit. Shit.

He clears his throat, uncomfortable under the intensity of your stare, and tries to soothe his nerves as quickly as he can, patting down for his cigars left somewhere in his pocket. In one of his pockets. Fuck—

"Well," you breathe, and he dreads your words immediately, not quite ready to hear them without something in his veins to dull the pinballing emotions in his chest. "Don't you clean up nice. Didn't recognise you at first."

He grunts. "Yeah, yeah. Talkin' nonsense now, aren't you?"

"Nonsense?" You echo, tone subdued, now. Soft. Too soft. He hates the way it makes his chest feel like it's caving in. "What? A handsome man like you can't take a compliment? That's a surprise."

Handsome.

He feels his pulse in his throat. Heat under his collar. Something spreads across his skin at words, glueing itself down, uncomfortably tight—constricting, smothering—and he fights the urge to reach up to his neck, clawing at it until it's all gone. Peeled off in strips, taking with it jagged swaths of too-hot flesh.

Your words are painted with too much sincerity, and it drips over his skin—thick and oily—until he's stained in the offering they make. Drenched in the sudden realisation that this is far too much than he can handle.

That he needs.

The way you're looking at him—bare-faced honesty, scoured of anything other than a genuity that trickles into the gaps in his crumbling chest, sticky filament made of saccharine promises and a dizzying sense of open affection—makes him heave; chokes him on the embers of that tantalising what if you let echo in the recess of words.

It isn't grabbing, or taking what he wants. This is you lying flat on the table. His choice to reach for it. To curl his fingers around the bulk of it, feeling the heat in the palm of his hand.

And he wants. Oh, how he wants—

But it feels a little bit like a betrayal. Self-sabotage from within as his body turns against him. Feelings conspiring with his whims, the ones that force out their pleads between bloodied teeth; yearning as they rattle the cages of this forced prison. Lost in absentia.

He can't make sense of the tremors that follow, roaring through his chest in a deluge of innominated emotions that seem to shake the foundation he stands on. He reaches, but can't seem to grasp them. Temporal feelings without cause. Intangible. They slip through the gaps in his fingers. Slide off of his flesh as he was trying to catch mercury in the oil-slick palm of his hand.

John can't make sense of it. Why him? What's drawing you to him outside of carnal attraction? It's always been there—that magnetic pull: his marrow to yours.

But for the first time since he traded in medals for oars, he feels the pull back to shore. That unquenchable urge to dip his toes into the sand. To keep his feet firm on dry land.

The feeling of it itches in the palm of his hand.

And like most things, he doesn't understand, doesn't agree with, he feels the unrelenting urge to lash out against it. Push back. Carve out some semblance of distance between the thing he doesn't understand, and what it's making him feel.

And then he snaps. Bites back against the headiness admixing in the back of his head; noxious, dangerous. It's a discomfort. A slash of clarity that makes him all too aware of himself. Of you. This. Everything. It's too much.

So easily swayed by a pretty word. What a damn fool.

The snort he gives in response is a gnarled mess in his throat, all mangled up and shredded on the barbs of his sudden vexation. "Flatter all the poor sods like this, do you?"

It crackles in his chest. Smouldering embers. Dampened by the blood filling his lungs, choking him on what spills out of the shattered levee.

This isn't—

Isn't him. It isn't you.

He feels claws raking across the inside of his skull. Sharpened talons digging vengefully into the back of his sockets until it aches. Forcing him, maybe, to see the aftermath of his anger.

"No," you say, pulling back. Stepping away from him. Giving him space. Not enough, and entirely too much. A sad echo snakes through the crevasse. Glass breaking. Shattering. He thinks of self-sabotage. Tastes it in the back of his throat. "Just you."

It's mean, awful, when he huffs, asks: "yeah? Why bother?"

"Why not?" You volley back, and he can't quite place the look in your eye. Disappointment, maybe. Something tinged in regret. "Maybe I want to. Maybe I—"

You don't finish.

Good, he thinks. Good. Stay away. Far away.

And softer. Softer still—

It's for your own good. Better off this way. Don't turn around. You'll only end up hating what you see. Regretting what you find—

"Don't know what you're getting yourself into." His words are stagnant. Hollow. The consistency of ash between dry palms. He tries to swallow, but can't. Can't. Gives up instead, adds: "won't like what you find, either."

You hum and it hurts. "Maybe I might. Can't be all bad under there."

They're sharpened with an edge of sincerity he can't bring himself to acknowledge, not now; not yet, so he huffs instead, and brings a cigar to his lips just so he doesn't have to respond. Doesn't have to engage again. Can't, he thinks, with a cigar between his lips, stuffing his mouth full.

A pathetic escape. He's never been the type of man to retreat when it isn't the best option strategically. Or when he has no other choice, and too many men on the line.

But he can't—

(Knife to his chest, you walk away.

Blade against his tongue, he says nothing to call you back.)

A fissure sits at the zenith that once was a sense of ease, comfort. It leaks a coldness that shakes him to the core when it drifts over gaping wounds and milky-white bones.

(All of his own making, of course.)

In the midst of it all, he tries to convince himself that this is the right thing to do despite never being a man of altruism in his life, and the lie pools in his empty gut where it sloshes around in the shots of whisky you still pour for him even though he can he see the cruel lashes of his words striking over your expression when you look at him when you think he isn't watching you back.

Better this way, and he downs a shot just to ignore the merciless echo that asks, for who?

Both of you. Both.

Because despite what you might think, or whatever little fantasies you made up inside your head about him, he knows they aren't true. They aren't him.

A man who climbed ranks on the back of his last name. A borrowed legacy with no honour of his own. One who had no qualms about crossing lines that others couldn't until they blurred, until his morality was a sickly grey.

Until a prison cell in Siberia rewired the fibres in his head, and he was forced to reconcile the unignorable truth that stripped of his rank and the protection he offers there is barely any discernible difference between him and them. The enemy.

He thinks of Gaz, and the words he uttered become a portend for the calamity of a man who always seemed overly keen to take things too far.

It's them or us, he used to say. Them or us—even as he tossed an innocent man over the ledge to fall to his death. As he let a child watch him emasculate his father when he knew pride was all they had left, doing nothing in the end but creating another monster for him to hunt down at a later date. Threatened families. Threatened men. Women, children.

His punishment was nonexistent. Self-flagellation in the form of exile. He cast himself out to sea and pretended it was enough.

How is he supposed to pretend who is he isn't? How is he meant to touch you with blood writ in the lines of his palm?

Selfish. Mean. Cruel.

So, he lets it rot—just as he does with everything else.

There have been others, of course; but Price has always been attracted to older women. Laugh lines and crows feet; swatches of grey kissing their temples. A certain coldness to their touch. An unspoken understanding that everything that is, and will ever be, between them is temporal. Love was just a crutch. A fallacy uttered in the dark to soothe the rugged parts of themselves that worried they might never be enough.

He can handle women like that. Prefers them.

The youngest he's ever dated was a woman his own age, and he realised soon after that there was a disparity between he couldn't placate. One that left scars.

He's a mangled soul in a young man's body. Rough and callous and unwilling to compromise. He's more scar tissue than man, and what can he offer someone idealistic with inexperience and youth except a bitter tangle of hurt that cuts deep.

But you're an outlier, he finds. Only shades younger than himself, really, but it's not so much your age, but the way you carry yourself. Heart on your sleeve. Aching for love.

He can't give that to you.

The last time he tried, he ended up sneaking out on a woman in Ghana, leaving the pieces of him behind that dared to even try.

He can't offer you anything that isn't temporary.

And he thinks that might be fine. Maybe it's all you want from him, anyway—just a night. A moment. A memory to keep.

But John's always been greedy. The kind that wants, and wants. Once would never be enough, and he knows that if he sunk his teeth into you, a bite would never satiate his rapacious appetite, never quench the hunger.

And since he can't make a meal out of a morsel, he'd rather starve.

He thinks about leaving six times in three hours, but you carry on as if nothing has happened even though he catches weariness in your gaze whenever you look at him. His glass is filled but the conversations are bereft of their usual cheekiness. The gaps between are no longer filled with his scored laughter or your amused hums.

You spend more time away from him than you have since he first sat down. The deviation away from what quickly became a bruised touchstone, laden with clumsy fingerprints is jarring, but he can't claim to be upset by your distance when he was the one who caused the rift in the first place.

So, he drinks. He smokes his cigar. Tries to not think about why his hand itches in a way that he knows can only be sated by sliding his knuckles across the worn wood of the table, linking his fingers with yours. It's a stupid whim. He swallows it down with a shot of whisky that makes his stomach curdle. Seals it with an inhale of his cigar. Forgotten, now. Covered in ethanol and smoke.

But even with the crowbar in his hand, he can't stop himself from watching you. Eyes trailing along the paths you carve between old wooden chairs, and scowling men waving their hands at the staticky television set, upset by yet another bad call by the referee.

(He's always thought it was stereotypical to equate Canada with hockey, moose, bears, geese, and maple syrup but so far, he's seen nothing else play inside the pub—aside from a polar bear warning being issued out for northern Newfoundland—but sometimes, the shoe just fits.)

You sift through the throng carrying drinks in your hand and impish grin at the men you recognise. Words he can't hear, ones he isn't privy to, are spoken softly and reinforced with a small grin. Seeing it on your face, pointed away from him; meant only for another, is a white-hot dagger to guts, scraping across his delicate insides.

The flashes of anger are directed inward. Each stab is a reminder that they once were for him. That had he not gone and ruined a good thing, dangerous though it might be, you'd have been standing in front of him, curbing nonsensical requests over the bulk of his shoulder, unwilling to leave from your perch across from where he sat.

(Hindsight is a brutal, bitter mistress, but it has nothing at all on pride.)

He swallows it. Smokes. Pretends he's interested in the game that plays but it's just flashing colour on an oversaturated screen. A foreign language to his ears despite the words on the chyron flickering past in his mother tongue.

John thinks about packing it in for the night. Heading back to his empty hotel so he can think about you in peace—in vivid, fantastical images of equilibrium; comfort—and finds that might be for the best. For both of you. Some distance to soothe the ache he caused. To reacclimate back to strangers in a dilapidated pub. A sailor and bartender: ephemeral, the way it ought to be. The way it must.

With his dwindling pack of cigars slipped into his breast pocket beside the lighter he nicked from you ("people always seem to leave them behind in bars," you'd winked, handing him an ugly lighter in the shape of a bear with a pipe in his plastic mouth. "I picked out the one that made me think of you."), he finds himself at a loss for a reason to stay. All packed up. Ready to leave.

He raps his scarred knuckles on the table, a final farewell that he can feel heavily in his bones, filled with iron as they may be. Still. Still. It's for the best.

Whose, he still doesn't know. His own, undoubtedly, in that selfish sort of way that makes it feel selfless. Like it's the right thing to do even though he bloody well knows it isn't. Won't be. That he'll think about this moment in time when he's all alone at sea and cuss himself out as he readies for a squall.

John means to leave, but a man gets to you first.

The man makes a noise in the back of his throat. A complaint, maybe, but it's swallowed by the creak of the floorboards when he sways on his feet.

"Listen t'me, you—"

But you're not. You make a move to turn around, and he seems to realise you're not paying him any attention. Anger flickers over his slack face, and he's reaching for you with a clumsy paw before John has time to move. The moment he makes contact, fingers skating off the sleeve of your shirt, he's out of his chair, letting it clatter to the ground. The noise is swallowed by all the chaos. Murmurs, shouts. The music feels so out of place in this moment when he can feel his blood run hot, turning molten in his veins.

"Hey—!"

But your hand is gripping his wrist, pulling him off of you, before John can finish. Eyes narrowed, jaw set, you shake your head once before pointing to the door with your free hand.

"It's time for you to leave."

He pitches a fit. Petulant whinging that cuts through the noise. Vague insults hurtled at you, words of complaint that barely make you flinch.

John's rushing over before he can even think—thoughts all asunder, bouncing around his head in an unrefined mess of shorn noises and fervent anger—but you stop him with a jerk of your head. No, it says. I don't need you.

And you don't.

The swelling chaos dims and in the aftermath, he realises he's the only one standing. The only one hovering in your periphery as you shove a man twice your size away from the counter when he tries to swipe a bottle as he leaves.

Everyone is watching, wary, but there's an unspoken sense of understanding amongst them that makes him feel decidedly like an outsider, and wholly out of the loop.

Where he's from, if you see someone being harassed, you step in.

Things, apparently, are very different here.

He catches your eye when you turn back toward the interior after slamming the door shut, and there's a moment where he almost rushes to your side, checking you over for any marks that man might have left behind, but you're shaking your head before he can even lift his foot from the floorboards. As if you know. And maybe you do. Maybe you know him more than he knows himself. Maybe, maybe—

You give him another shake. No, it says, and the soft quirk of your lip echoes in his head, a soft: down boy that makes him bristle.

It's telling, of course, that he still heeds your wordless command. Hackles lowering, muscles unfurling from their rigid coil.

Your nod, then, is a soft purr that rolls through his guts like a marble. Good boy.

John feels leashed when he settles back into his chair. Anchored. All it takes is a nonverbal cue from you, and suddenly, he's tempered. Tamed.

As if to reinforce the thought, his hand strays to his chin, feeling the scarred, bare skin under his palm. All done because of a simple glance, a fleeting moment of curiosity from you.

He isn't sure how he likes the fit of it around his neck. Too tight, maybe. Dangerously claustrophobic. But it sits there, untouched. He has no desire to pull it off. To divorce the collar from his neck.

(Maybe, maybe, he thinks he could get used to the way it feels.)

As he settles in his chair, his eyes never stray from you, standing lax and unphased against the door, chatting idly to the patrons who murmur in tones too low for him to pick up over the rhythmic echo of the sea shanty and the slew of voices in the background, cheers from the hockey game that hasn't quite held his interest long enough for him to know the score. Nothing is amiss, it seems. As if bullying out men twice your size was a regular occurrence—not even newsworthy enough to pull gazes glued to the flashing television, or stop the minutiae of mindless conversations from happening in sparse passels around the pub.

But it changed something for him. He feels it in his chest, his guts. Something dislodged from the cornice, falling down inside of him in an endless spiral. A sudden freefall.

He comes to the startling realisation when you look up at him as you pat someone on the shoulder, smiling softly—all forgiven in an instant, the crevasse sealed over in a thick bed of cobwebs—that he wants. Has wanted since he first lumbered into the pub and was met with a raised brow, and a cheeky wink. Not from around here, are you? and he was gone.

Lost in the swell of you.

Your mouth moulds around the words, pleading with him over the heads of everyone else, wait for me.

But John had no plans to go anywhere else.

"I'm okay," you tell him hours later, hands buried in your pockets, eyes gazing up at the midnight blue sky. "Seriously."

There's a multitude of things he wants to say. All threads of lingering, unresolved anger brought on by that man who put his hands on you. Who thought he could.

Maybe a little bit of it is directed at you, too, for not letting him rip that man into pieces even though he knows it's not your fault. Leashed, he thinks, and rubs absently at his bare neck.

"Yeah?" He murmurs, voice raw. Eroded down to bare scraps, scorched and pulsing with the poison of anger. He tries to clear it. Swallows down the acrid tang that coats the back of his throat even still, hours later.

Your head rolls toward him slowly, chin still held loftily up to the sky, and when your eyes meet, he thinks of rogue waves. Capsizing in the middle of endless azure, exposed to elements and predators. To the murky depths below in burnt sapphire.

He swallows again, but it's hard to get anything down when his heart is in the way.

"Yeah, John. I'm good."

Your words take the shape of a breath, gently ghosting over a scraped knee. It's not meant to convince, but rather soothe, and something about that, about the softness in your eyes and way you speak tenderly, cautiously, as if he might startle, makes him feel hot beneath his collar. Flustered. Foolish. A litany of things he ought not to feel, but does because it's you.

(Because it's always been you.)

"Right," he grouses, and tries to find his way out of the canyons inside your eyes.

It's hard to escape when everything looks the same, when it all beckons him deeper. Stay, stay, it whispers over artfully crafted gorges and deep ravines, a stunning beauty that makes nature feel like a paltry imitation of the carvings in your irises.

In the sandy shores of a small inlet nearly eclipsed by the sea, you turn to him fully, eyes smouldering embers catching in the flush of the full moon, and say, thank you, John.

He scratches at the collar around his neck, and thinks about throwing away the key.

"What for?" He says instead, brows knitted together—a perfect pastiche of a fisherman's knot. It's rough: words scraped from the thick of his throat, raw and pulsing and dusted in smoke, but you don't baulk at the artificial ire that oozes between his nicotine-stained teeth. No. You lean into it with a smile.

"Defending me. Trying to, anyway," you tack on with a small huff at his expense, a finger poking at his inflated pride. In jest, of course, but it still makes him frown. "I guess I just got so used to sticking up for myself that I forgot how nice it was to know someone is looking out for me, you know?"

"Should be expected."

There's a heat simmering beneath his tone. An underlying sense of anger that hadn't abated entirely yet, just began slumbering. Dormant, but still burning. Still hot enough to hurt.

"Maybe," you hum, and the blitheness in your tone makes him bristle. Hackles raising. "But it's probably for the best."

"Tell me how none of those fuckin'—" There's a snarl in the back of his throat. He swallows. "None of them standin' up for you is for the best, 'cause it looked pretty fuckin' cowardly to me."

"If they defend me every time something like that happens, then it'll only be worse when they're not around. Most nights, it's just me working. I gotta know how to take care of myself just fine—"

"—shouldn't bloody 'ave to—!"

"—and I need them to know it, too. That if they try anything like that, I'll kick them out. I won't go screaming for help just because they're being rude. I'll handle it on my own because I have to."

It quiets him. Not enough to quell the anger burning in his chest, or the urge to tear them into pieces for sitting back, watching you get disrespected while they throw peanuts at the television screen, and jeer about something as arbitrary as a fucking game, but he finds something akin to understanding. Common ground.

It makes sense, suddenly, even though it sets his teeth on edge and makes his knuckles itch.

"No one else will do it for me, y'know?"

"I will."

The words tumble out before he can make sense of them in his head. A disconnect between his mouth and his thoughts, eroded by the smoke leaking into his throat. The fire in his chest.

A mistake, maybe, because they're futile. Pointless. More so a whim of pride, a flash of possessiveness just to stroke the smouldering embers of the ego you bruised earlier with the tip of your finger.

(Or maybe they're the afterbirth of his righteousness; that insatiable beast he conceived into the world he swore he'd save—no matter what—only to realise somewhere after leaking madness into the fibres that he was making more monsters than he was culling.

A lingering remnant of when he bore the burden of the world on his shoulders during a botched pantomime of Atlas.)

You know it, too. "You won't be around all the time, John."

He tastes salt in the back of his throat. It burns when he swallows. When the words that tore through the seam of his lips dissolve into ash, into smoke.

Your hand on his shoulder is meant to be placating but it feels like a dagger to his gut.

"I can take care of myself. Been doin' it all my life, anyway."

He can't make sense of it. Can't understand how your words fill the hollow crevasses inside of him until he feels more like a mortal man than an untouchable mountain.

You bring him back down to the solidness of land, of the earth. An anchor.

John touches his neck again. "Yeah," he rasps. "I get it. Now, let's get you home."

He thinks about you.

A lot would be an understatement considering how many times he's taken you to bed, pulled you down into the sheets with him. Tangled limbs. Rushed breath. He thinks of you now, too, with heavy eyes and a little smile, beckoning him forward.

His own illicit sanctuary. A place in his head where he ruins you over, and over, and over again until there's a permanent stain on the tips of his fingers, the back of his throat. A constant reminder of you—the way you smell, sound, taste—

It's been a while since he had a moment like this, when he could relax, feel himself—already half-hard when he palms himself through his boxers—and just—

Lose himself. Body melting into the sheets. Tension bleeding together into one mass that pools in his lower belly, coalescing into a tight knot in his groin. It spools, pulls taut, when he runs the flat of his palm down the length of himself until he meets the soft flesh of his perineum.

It's easy to tilt his chin up, eyes gazing at the seashell colouring of the popcorn ceiling, stroking himself in slow, unhurried rolls of his hand, and thinking of you. Your hand on him. Your breath tickling his ear, spurring him on.

"Come on, John," you'd say in that voice made to bring him to his knees. "You can go faster than that, can't you?"

He responds instantly to the faint echo in his head, grunting at the pleasure that races down his spine. Tugging on that tightly wound knot until it trembles.

His hand around the length of him is replaced with yours. Tentative, exploratory strokes from frenulum to his thickened base; up, up, a teasing swipe of your thumb across his weeping slit but only enough to make his hips arch off the bed, and then you pull away, down. Down. Over and over again. He thinks of the way your breath would feel ghosting over his temple. The press of your chest when you leave over his shoulder.

John rocks into it, hips undulating with each pass of the hand that is too gnarled, too scarred to be yours; lost in the fantasy of your presence around him, on him, in him.

Maybe your other arm would be tucked under the nape of his neck, bracketing him into your body. A safety net. A security blanket. You'd toy with his cheek—twee and gentle; a ginger touch to offset the illicit press of your thumb into his frenulum. Lean over, too, perhaps, and press those inviting lips to his. A soft kiss. Barely a whisper. A brush.

His tongue rolls over his bottom lip, chasing the phantom taste of you that isn't there. He imagines you'd taste like the sea. Briny, but mild. Salted winter melon. A sweetness, too, beneath the tart tang of iodine, but one that was metallic—copper. Iron.

Pleasure knots in his groin—tighter, tighter, tighter—and even with each stroke a pale imitation of your warm flesh on him, he finds the spooling coil building in a quick crescendo of bliss to be somehow more potent than it ever was. A feverish heat at the mere thought of you.

It builds. Builds. And breaks—

Your name is a broken snarl in the back of his throat as he spills over himself in thick, molten ropes. Each pulse of his heart floods more liquid heat onto his hand (hot enough, maybe, to burn), and he leans into the sudden deluge of a chemical frenzy ripping through his synopses—all liquid euphoria, static endorphins, and a heady rush of dopamine that makes the edges of his vision blur just a touch when he blinks his tired, heavy, eyes open, staring back up at the off-white ceiling.

The surge and plummet of adrenaline leaves him feeling fatigued. A bone-deep torpor that comes swiftly in the simmering aftershocks of his pleasure.

He could close his eyes now and sleep—even with the mess on his hand, come cooling against his heated flesh, growing tacky and uncomfortably wet as it sat there. The idea is more appealing than standing up and washing himself down, and in his sudden languor, he haphazardly lifts his hand away from his still-throbbing cock softening against his damp thigh, and pats the mess on his hand against the extra pillow he doesn't use. It's hardly the cleanup he needs, and he knows washing the dry come from the coarse hair on his thighs and groin is going be a nuisance in the morning, but he can't muster the energy to open his lids past half-mast let alone stand and hobble his way into the washroom.

(And maybe he doesn't want to see himself in the mirror right now. Doesn't want to contend with the same routine of thinking of you, getting off to the thought alone, and then slinking into the tub for a quick rinse of his regrets. Not tonight, anyway—)

So, he stays in bed, laying there in his own filth, and still thinks of you. With his eyes closed tight, he doesn't have to face the reality of your absence. Of his dirty whim that sullied you in his head (over and over and over again—). His loneliness.

And it's nice to bask in the glow. To imagine you beside him still.

John's never been as delusional as now when he can taste the Caribbean sun on his tongue. Feel the salt on his skin. He smells sand. Feels it under his back as he lays down with you curled over him, hand tucked against his chest where it belongs. Dosing under the shaded pyre. You'll catch fish in the morning. He'll take you out to places you'd never been, all of them. Every single one. Until the world is shaded with your fingerprints.

He's never been much into lyricism, but you make him contemplate the dividing line between prose and poetry, and where he fits between the two. The bridge, he thinks. The gaps between words, the space between letters: heart and soul (and the tangibility of them both).

He wants to go there with you.

The vision of you laying with him in sand embeds itself in the weakened link of his splintering resolve, eroding the chain away until it breaks, and the next night finds him sitting in the same spot, drinking the same whiskey, but his thoughts are subsumed by you.

Without it keeping him at bay, he makes a terrible decision—one he wishes he could blame on whisky, but he's sober in a way he hasn't been in years—but when he looks up at you, twenty minutes past closing after everyone has stumbled out of the pub, something blooms in his veins.

It's white-hot—hotter than the sensation of being shot in the thigh by a stray bullet when he was still figuring himself out in a battlefield—and dredges up dormant feelings he hasn't made room for since he was twenty-seven and fell in love in Ghana.

It's cacoëthes.

(But maybe it's been heading forward this all along. Ever since he saw you tug around a man twice your size, and wanted to bruise his knuckles on this stranger's enamel. The one who dared touch you. Disrespect you.)

John makes the awful choice to kiss you.

It starts with a look.

The night ends later than usual—a hockey game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Ottawa Senators draws a big, rowdy crowd of nearly fifteen people ("truly record-breaking numbers," you quip with a grin) that bemusingly celebrate the Senators' victory and mourn the Penguin's loss at the same time ("it's a cultural thing—Sydney Crosby plays for the Penguin's," you tell him as if it explains everything)—and when he finally pockets his cigars, the sky outside is already dusted with crops of mauve as the hazy sun tries to blink through the thick clouds of gunmetal and charcoal.

You wave to the fishermen on the boardwalk as they prepare their empty lobster cages for the morning haul, and he tries to think of every reason why he shouldn't be standing with you right now, puffing away on one of his last few cigars.

There are multitudes, of course, all of them eagerly buoying to the surface, and just as viable as the last. Just as concrete. But that's the thing about desire, isn't it? Reasoning is skewed. Malleable. For each con that is squashed by the claws of fatigue, a pro subsumes in its stead. They add up. The scales tip. And all at once, he's no longer oscillating between no and here's why, but how come.

How come he can't give in, if only just once?

But once will never be enough. He knows this. He knows it, and yet—

When John happens to glance at you from the corner of his eye, he finds you turned to him already. Watching him.

Despite what the furious stutter in his chest at this bare appraisal would lead him to believe, this isn't anything new.

(Neither is his reaction. The blood rushing in his ears. The hiccup of his heartbeat.)

You've always unabashedly worn your curiosity like this. Open, bare. Letting it moulder on the very ledge of a cornice for all to see when they looked into your eyes. Liquid gems, molten coins. They've always gleamed with a sense of misplaced curiosity whenever they rested on him; seemingly lost in the labyrinth of your thoughts as you tried to unravel the reef knot that is John Price.

He supposes it's the novelty of a man washing up on shore in the middle of what's meant to be the most boring season of the year—your words, naturally. Nothing ever happens during hurricane season, you mentioned to him once. The maritime is quickly forgotten about until summer when stupid tourists head to Halifax or Peggy's Cove in droves.

Until him, that is.

(Until you, as well.)

But the look you grace him with right now is somehow on the precipice of being both foreign and familiar at the same time. A muddled sense of jamais vu that seems to wrap itself around his throat, pressing taut to his pulse. Mocking him. Confusing him. It's all a muddled mess of known and unknown and—

Want to know. Need to.

He knows this look. Knows it as intimately as he knows the hand he used to stroke himself, pretending it was you. Your touch. It's want. It's—

Desire.

Intrigue.

You stare at him—unabashedly, as always; lost in your perplexing keenness for him, for the man he is (and the one he definitely isn't)—and John sees that same, misplaced rapaciousness in the shaded valleys and unfathomably deep ravines. It's an almost visceral hunger that seems to eclipse everything else; colouring the topography of your gaze in its wake. The glittering scales of a meandering coelacanth.

Getting caught looking at him in such a way does little to embarrass you. If anything, having his eyes meet yours seems to subsume want with need, merging the two until all that gazes back at him from that prismatic abyss is desire crushed into diamonds from the absolute pressure that leaks from the black holes in the centre.

He's been warned before about sirens and sea monsters, but standing in front of him with the raging ocean as your backdrop, he finds he cares very little for portends after all.

John gives you every chance to pull away, to tell him this is a mistake, that you don't feel the same way, that you couldn't possibly do this, but you ignore all of them. Every single one until his hand is around your waist, the other cupping your jaw, and your breath is on his tongue.

You make the first move. He doesn't know why that surprises him—you have this way about you that reminds him of rogue waves: an untameable suddenness, brash in everything you do; untempered by man and their flimsy metal cups in the ocean—but when you curl your fingers into the Sherpa lapels of his jacket, and wrench him into your sphere, tidally locked in your pull, he finds himself adrift. Lost. The only thing keeping him steady is you. Your touch.

Your lips are searing when they bite into his, bruising and all-consuming. He likes the burn of it.

It's a kiss just as much as it is a slap to the mouth. A reprimand. How dare you keep me waiting? And somewhere deep in his chest, something unfurls. Something comes loose. Wants to apologise, wants to beg forgiveness, but the words are stifled by your lips sliding against his, your fingers touching the parts of his cheeks that haven't known the feeling of another since he was twenty and grew it out as long as he could get away with it in the military. You hold him. Anchor him in place as you take, as you badger his body into yours, trying to syphon all of the air from his feeble lungs.

He lets you, rocking with your demands the same way he would a sudden squall, his body a ship in the vast clutch of your ocean.

The tip of your nose slots into the corner of his own when you tilt your head into the kiss, tongue sliding, liquid, molten, against the seam of his mouth. Humid breath paints the skin under his eye until it's tacky with condensation, and he wants to feel your breath on him everywhere. Wants to touch the places your breath ghosted over with bare fingers to feel the remnants of what you left behind.

(He wants it to stain him. Leave a permanent mark for all to see. A sailor claimed by the sea, by rogue waves, and the embodiment of a pelagic calamity in the shape of you.)

His lips part just enough to let the tip of your tongue slide in, to touch his in a gentle kiss. A perfunctory greeting for what will, hopefully, become routine because he knows what you taste like now—seagrass, fennel and yew arils—and doesn't think he has the strength to let it go. A new addiction forms somewhere in the catastrophe of his hindbrain, the same place that yearns for nicotine and alcohol to blur the rugged edges of a childhood he can't quite manage to let go of. One that bled putrid blood into his adolescence, his adulthood. That makes running his first thought in the face of anything that has the capacity to heal. Or sacrifice himself for some greater good he could never really bring himself to believe in, despite the words he preached like a scratched record—we dirty our hands so theirs stays clean. A fallacy, of course, like many things in his life. A broken, fractured homunculi trying to navigate a world it wasn't made for.

But you soothe those parts, don't you? Palliative comfort in the shape of something that has the measure to hurt, to ruin.

—and fuck, does he want to be ruined by you—

You pull away from him as if you can taste his debauchery, his need, on your tongue and want to skewer him through the heart with it. The distance feels vacant and endless: a devastating bergschrund.

You blink at him, eyes heavy and full of promises, of wants. The sight of your red tongue brushing over your wet bottom lip nearly makes him ascend to some spectral plane of existence where nothing but the alluring sight of you lives in his consciousness, and it's only your hushed words—raw and tempered—that reign him in.

"Come back to my house, John."

It's not a question. He knows it in his bones. Just like he knows it could never be one—never—because doesn't have the willpower to say no. And you know this, of course. Have known it from the beginning when you peeled back the rotting layers, flaying his walls from his skin just to learn his name.

("It's Price," he growled out, words masticating between clenched teeth. "John Price.")

He wears his want in cinder and ash. Feels the fever under his skin. "Fuck—," he rasps, throat scorched. Brittle charcoal. The words taste like wood chips on his tongue. "What are we waitin' for then, love?"

The billowing sea breeze howls outside of your small house on the mouth of the inlet, an enchanting soundscape that seems to amplify the soft noises that spill from your lips at his touch.

You burn like the sun bearing down on the desert of the ocean, and he feels your scorching presence between the split of his shoulder blades, liquifying the knobs of his spine until it pools in the clefts of his back.

Boneless, broken, he loses all sense of himself as he ruts into you like a man who's never been touched before in his life—clumsy, selfish, and unpractised. Your pleasure is the equinox in the centre of his head, a reachable goal he strives for, but each shudder that leaves the column of your throat seems to shatter him into fragments. He wants, wants, wants: there's a war in his head, in his touch. Greedily, he learns your topography until it's ingrained in his marrow. Until he knows where each dip and fold, every scar and blemish, on your skin sits, waiting for the worship of his touch.

He yields to you. Offers himself up at your altar—yours for the taking—until his sacrifice is met in seasalt and bliss. It's by this flickering dawn that spills into your bedroom window, the one that faces parallel to the sea—always there, in the corner of his eye—where his resolve is laid to rest on a bier.

It burns on the pyre when your fingers thread through his hair, gripping tight as he falls into pieces in your arms, buried as deep inside of you as he can get. And it's here, safe in the bracket of your legs, spread wide to accommodate the staggering bulk of his body, he finds both nirvana and damnation—his own personal hell nestled in the crux of your thighs.

"Stay the night," you whisper to him, the command slurred on the tobacco that leaks from the burning tip of his cigar.

One down, he counts; two more to go. The sight of the dwindling pack seems to notch inside his aching ribs, bruised with the cuts you made into his marrow until a scar in the shape of your name formed, seems like a portend.

He stares at the brittle pieces of the tobacco leaves in the metal tin like they might divine the ancient wisdom of augers and the seers who gleaned hidden truths and hindsight in a teacup, but all he gets is the heady scent of nicotine for his search.

"Mm."

Your hands press against his naked back, feeling the taut muscles flex under your touch before they move around his midsection, fingers digging into the plush flesh of his belly—too much lobster rolls, he'd snarked when your teeth sunk into the softness put there by you; a fullness he hasn't felt since he was eighteen. You knead his skin, thumbing over the indents of your teeth, a perfect tattoo, before you hum in satisfaction, the sound of a cat eating its catch, that makes his spine thrum.

"Good," you husk into his shoulder blade, teeth peppering nips across his sun scorched skin. "'cause I'm not done with you yet, John."

He shudders. "Fuck, love—gonna send me into an early grave."

It draws a simmering chuckle from deep within your chest. Sparking embers. The heat thrills him.

"A lovely way to go," you murmur, hands drawing intricate webs over his torso, tangling through the coarse hair that gathers in dark swaths of brown across his body. "And I'll even give you a proper sea burial."

The thought alone strips his soul from this prison of bone and flesh. To be known so innately is a dangerous thing, he finds; so deceptively addicting, so achingly good, and he wants to run from it just as much as he wants to bask in the feeling.

His soul is hungering for something he's never tasted before—until now, until you—and that unquenchable devotion glues to the very essence of him; a tick burrowing into his skin until it rots.

He fucks you against the window running parallel to the sea instead. Unmaking himself in the clutch of you until your fingers thread him back into some semblance of a man with a soul made for the sea.

(A place he wants to go with you.)

The unread tobacco leaves in bone china end up spelling out the end in a red flash on his phone.

A voicemail is a cruel reminder of the looming deadline on the horizon.

Fixed 'er up fer ya, b'y. She'll be ready in a night or two. Right time for lobster, too, yeah? Anyhoo, call me when you get this.

What was once anticipatory now feels too much like being caught under a guillotine. He pretends his hands are not shaking when he calls the man back.

The man meets him by the harbour.

"Should take 'er out," he says, wiggling a tooth pick between his teeth. "You know 'er be'er than I do. Make sure she's good t'go, ya'know?"

He hums something that might sound like an assent to unpractised ears, but the false starts in his rib cage flares up, a deep ache that rattles through the scarred brackets and leaves the seam of his mouth in a muted snarl of discontent.

Ready to go, he thinks a touch cruelly in a shorn off form of self-harm. Just to make it hurt. Just to feel it agony ripping through the gaps between his bones.

Right. Right.

How is he supposed to leave when he left so much of himself inside of you?

"Come with me tomorrow. Want to show you something."

"Oh, yeah?" You murmur, brows bunching together in a way that makes his teeth ache. "And what's that?"

His thumb brushes your pulse. "Mm, 'bout time you met Captain."

Newfoundland lingers in the backdrop for most of the day, rising above the waters in a rocky formation of evergreen against dark blue.

You spend most of it leaning against the port, eyes wide in wonder at the absence of land, a mere pinprick in the vast sea, and he wonders if anyone has ever taken you out this far. Showed you something this haunting, this mesmerising.

(Selfishly, stupidly, he hopes he's the first.)

The sea is calm. Almost eerily so, but he basks in the gentle rolls of the waves, the serene waters. It's picturesque in a way, the sight of an old postcard with a basin of pure azure and molten yellow sun, haloed in soft rings of ocean.

As you fawn at the beauty around you, quiet in your musings, he grabs his fishing pole and sets out to catch dinner. John hasn't looked too deep into coastal fishing laws, but from your soft snort, he thinks it might just be on the side of illegal. Still. The coast guard isn't around, and he doesn't think you'll tell on him—at least not if he catches you a salmon and makes you an accomplice.

The day dwadles, sun fading into a stunning sunset.

He catches Atlantic Salmon, and spots a commercial lobster trawler in the distance. When he radios over, they offer a trade. Salmon for lobster. You laugh as the men toss over a cooler full of fat lobster for a wriggling salmon that nearly slips from his grasp.

It's in this exchange—and a day on the water—that he realises just how much he missed this. This. Being on the water. Dependant on no one but his own knowledge, his foresight. Always just on the side of illegal in coastal waters. Making trades, and bartering for dinner. It's peace. Or as close of an approximation a man like him might deserve.

A tried and true native of the land, raised on fish and crustaceans, you teach him the proper way to prepare lobster and Atlantic Salmon, sucking your teeth at his lack of spices in his threadbare cupboards. You make do, and he can't remember the last time he had something this good.

"Just wait," you huff. "When I have a full kitchen with proper seasonings, I'll make you something even better."

There's a tightness in his chest at the prospect of next time. "Can't wait."

It's a lie. Barefaced and ugly.

He offers beer instead. Brings out some of his hidden whisky.

"Not gonna be too drunk to get us back home, are you?"

Home. He is home. Has been since he kicked off from the marina, his hands curled around the leather steering wheel. The bumps of the waves against the hill.

He wonders what you think about all of this; his kingdom at sea is nothing special. Modest, in many ways. Sometimes the toilet in the washroom leaks. He only really has warm water on Tuesdays. Something with the tides, probably. Spiders have taken a permanent refuge in the closet adjacent to the kitchenette. He thinks he might have some exotic stowaway lurking somewhere, too. A mouse of some kind, maybe, from when he was in Madagascar for a brief interlude.

The boat is never still, always rolling with the waves. Rocking. He's grown used to the feeling of it. Much too accustomed to always moving, never being still, to ever feel any modicum of comfort on land.

Thinking about it, about returning back to the inn tonight when the water is this serene, and the moon is this sull, pitches something ugly in his chest. Reluctance. And maybe the urge to show off. To share.

"Want to spend the night?"

You make a comical picture with your fingers tugging desperately on the cork of a wine bottle you found under the sink, blinking at him owlishly as you process his request, and he smothers a laugh in his chest at the sight. He knows if he lets it out he'll never look at wine or owls without thinking about you, but maybe you're already ingrained in his head. Stuck there in places he can't reach, can't scrape out.

"What?" You ask, lightly. "Out here?"

"Why not? We're close to the Labrador Strait, too. Could drop anchor now. Head back in the morning."

"Is it—?" You stop yourself from finishing with a shake of your head, and a sheepish smile. "Nevermind. Yeah, um. Yeah, I'd—I'd really like that, actually."

Is it safe, he knows you were going to ask. The question would have made him roll his eyes, and bark out something that could have been a snort of derision or a condescending laugh. He was a bloody marine, he'd have griped. I know these waters better'n I know Liverpool.

But you didn't. You didn't ask.

The harshness of the nevermind sounded like a self-admonishment for even asking such a thing. It's possible he's reading too much between the lines, but he likes the implicit trust that bleeds through—a touch of hesitation stifled by the immediate certainty that John will keep you safe.

He likes the fit of it. The way it curls around his pride.

"C'mon," he murmurs. "I'll show you around."

"It's small," he grouses, a touch uncomfortable as you patter around the bedroom that's barely bigger than a linen closet. It smells like him, he reckons. All smoke, tobacco, and stale sweat. Nothing pretty—not like your sheets that smell of fresh pine resin, or your room the scent of cornflower.

The ship itself is considered a luxury on the ocean—old, but meticulously maintained—and its age bleeds through the panelled walls, and the clumsy decor. Built largely for dedicated seafarers, the cabin boasts two bedrooms (the captain's quarters being the largest, and the crewmates dorms still stained with rust from where the nails keeping the bunk beds in place during listing started to erode), a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a small space inside the helm that could be considered a small living room—squinting, of course, required. Still. It's home. It's—

The manifestation of his pride. His loneliness. His wants.

(The walls are drenched in his madness. Do you see his ghosts when you look around—)

"It's cosy," you volley back, barely paying him much attention as you prod at his bare-bones; his sanctuary. He pretends the words don't stroke his ego in the perfect way. "It must be quite the sight to wake up to a sunrise on the sea."

"Mm, it is."

It's unlike anything he'd ever seen before. A nearly endless roll of cerulean in all directions that almost blends seamlessly with the cyanic sky. Plumes of sea clouds. Birds swooping overhead.

Often, he finds curious sea creatures coming up from the depths to investigate his boat. Pods of playful dolphins arching through the waves. A mother whale and her calf, nearly the length of his sixty-foot sailer. Rays. The occasional shark when he's fishing, lured in by the struggles and the flash of blood in the water. The feeder fish congregate beneath his boat, picking at the barnacles growing or the smaller fish gathering there for safety. It becomes its own ecosystem after a while, drawing in Remoras, various sharks, tropical fish, and barracuda.

He mostly gets avian visitors resting on his hull. Great Albatrosses and Cormorants. The odd Pelican closer to shore. Mollymawks, Northern fulmar.

The open ocean is a vast desert. Sometimes he goes days without seeing any signs of life. It comes with a sense of peace that is indescribable—an awe deep-rooted in his bones, one tinged with fear of the yawning abyss that rolls out in all directions as he knows, without a doubt, that he is less than a mere pinprick in the sea. Humbling. Awe-inspiring. It all coalesces into an experience he can't put into words. One that he yearns for when he's on dry land.

One that he wants to show you. To share with you.

A silly whim, of course. Strangers don't traverse the pelagic zone together.

He shakes it off. Recalibrates. Tries to centre himself, and shuck the thoughts of waking up to a perpetual sunrise with you. The ochre crest of it illuminates a deep blue sea for miles and miles; bare from pollutants that seep into the aether near the coast. Lights that dim the coruscating beauty above.

But as much as he thinks sunrises and sunsets are a thing of beauty, he knows there's something else you'll like much more.

"C'mon," he rasps, words sticking to his dry throat. "Wanna show you somethin'."

You don't hesitate this time. "Lead the way, captain."

(And oh, how the coy honorific rumbles through his marrow.)

That something is the reason he became so addicted to the sea. It's a darkness unlike anything else he'd ever experienced before—a complete absence of light that usually pollutes the sky in the cities, one that people often think is escapable in the countryside away from bustling metropolises.

That has nothing on the ocean after dusk.

To describe the sensation would be pitch blackness. A black hole. Everything is swallowed up by it—complete antimatter—until the horizon and ocean merge together in an unfathomable pit of tenebrousness. It looks like spilled ink across a page, everywhere the eye turns is shrouded. Indescribable.

When he's in an inlet, or off the coast of an inhabited island, he used to turn the floodlights of his ship off just to see what he couldn't see, and it was endless. A vacuum. Terror drenched over him in almost equal measure to the absolute awe that rolled through his chest like a tsunami.

It was the infinite darkness of space mirrored on earth. An uncanny image. Pure nothingness.

There was more light when he closed his eyes than when he had them wide open. Phosphenes brighter than the world around him.

A harrowing, everpresent experience that notched false starts into the parentheses of his ribs, and made him ache when he wasn't surrounded by water.

He keeps only the navigation lights on when he leads you to the deck, and the sharp gasp he hears makes him burn, knowing exactly what you must be seeing. Feeling.

Even at the very tip of the ocean, barely with your toes in the vast abyss, the absence of light pollution gives way to a stunning artefact in the ancient sky. Nebulae clouds. Gleaming stars. In the distance, he spots the coruscating light of Mars, visible to the naked eye.

The moon sits in the equinox, casting out a blanket of light over the rhythmic swell of the still-black water. It paints the surface lily white.

He stands beside you, eyes greedily taking in every flickering emotion across your awe-slacked face. Each expression categorised and filed away. A preview to the experience going inside you as you gaze up at the night sky.

"John…" it's a hushed whisper, drenched in a reverence so thick, so palpable, he thinks he can reach out and catch the ghosts of your wonder on the tips of his fingers. "It's…"

You trail off, but he knows. He knows.

His hand brushes yours. "Beautiful, ain't it?"

Wordless, and maybe a little bit speechless, you nod, eyes still fixed on the indistinguishable horizon as your hands slip into his.

The stars are still caught in your eyes even after he leads you to a small sitting area with steps leading into the water. He warns you about sea lamprey and cookie cutter sharks when you try to dip your feet into the basin, laughing at the small squeak you give when you wrench your toes out of the water, drawing your knees tight to your chest.

Sharks hunt at night, he reminds you with the same cadence as a conman.

The sideward glance you give in response to his mirth spumes a strange effervescent feeling in the pit of his chest. Humour for the sake of it. He can easily imagine many nights like this with you, basking in the bloom of the ocean, the splashes in the distance, the steady rock of waves licking against the boat, and it's something that seems to syphon the breath from his lungs, knocking him offkilter for a moment. Skewing his perspective.

It's odd, he finds, to be so attune with someone so fast. To connect on a level that feels deeper than what it is. It jars him as it shatters through that ironclad resolve he wore around his heart.

"Why the sea?" You ask after a moment, thumb skating through the pebbles of condensation that gathers around your bottle.

The sight of your wet finger shouldn't be as enticing as it is, but the way you stroke the nozzle makes his stomach burn with a heat he hasn't felt in a while. It's gentle. Soft. He wonders if you'd be that tender with him—

The thought is shattered when you glance at him, eyes searching for an answer hidden in blooming blue. There's muted curiosity eked into the divot between your brow—unconsciously done—and he forces himself to turn away lest he reach out and soothe the wrinkle for you.

(You never know how much you furrow your brow around him. Price isn't sure if that's a portend, some archaic warning of the inevitable frustration you'll feel toward when all of this is over. When the hurricane season passes, and the waters are once again chartable—

Another thing he doesn't want to think about.)

He chews on the question for a moment, making a show of reaching for the—nearly empty—carton of cigars from his breast pocket (another run to Cuba is imminent, he reasons, and tries to convince himself he's not stalling). Deft, practised fingers pull one out, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as he measures just how much of himself he wants to give away to you.

(All of it. Every part—)

The paper absorbs the whisky staining his lips when he skewers it between his teeth, a futile effort to keep the hollowness between his lungs and ribs from aching. He thinks about blaming the curdling weight in his stomach on the thought of a ruined cigar—soaked tobacco won't draw as good as dry—but he knows himself better than that.

It's the suddenness of your query, maybe, but a part of him had been waiting for this very question from the onset of—this. You, him. Together. It seems to be one of those things that just comes up, doesn't it? An unavoidable collision into abject disappointment.

In all his past flings—calling any of them relationships feels juvenile for what it was: quick, ephemeral pleasure in a foreign land, always lasting just long enough to patch up his boat; he won't disrespect the partners he had by giving it more potency than it deserved—this had been the epoch. The moment when they realised he was never really in it. That his foot was already slipping over the ledge of his boat, head full of the places he'd go next. Always alone. Without company.

Some take it in stride. They know not to expect much in terms of commitment, or loyalty, from a man who reeks of the sea, and wobbles on land. They don't begrudge him the briefness of the affair, or the lack of a promise to write, or call, or see them again, some other time. When you pass through here next… always seems to be the sentiment at the cronis. The end of them. It never goes anywhere, but it's never finished, either—because it never really began, did it?

He rarely goes to the same place twice unless he needs to (Barbadian whisky, Cuban cigars, fish and chips in Liverpool for the holidays notwithstanding).

And despite how many times he's been asked this very same question, usually with less clothes on, he never really has an answer. Not one that's enough.

"Where else would I be?" He muses instead, blinking up at the indigo sky. It's an unforgiving nothingness up there, too, isn't it? "Workin' some job in an office? Military? Nah, would bore me too much. M'better off at sea."

"All alone?" You fill the gap he didn't realise he left empty. "Isn't that—"

He doesn't think he can bear to hear you say it—

"Yeah."

—so he doesn't let you.

His cigar tastes stale. Wet tobacco. Ashes. He draws in a deep hit on the next inhale but it curdles in his mouth, leaks poison into his bloodstream. He feels dizzy with it. Offkilter.

When he invited you to see his ship, half of it was—admittedly—a euphemism. A thinly veiled come on. A facsimile of romance. Who wouldn't, afterall, want to drift out to the open ocean, making love—or some sad version of it—under the stars on a clear night.

He'd take you to the spot where land was swallowed wholly by the horizon, until all you could see was the midnight blue ocean pressing down on all sides. Gentle waves rocking the ship. The stars coruscating in the indigo sky like glittering diamonds held up to the light. The murky haze of Juniper in the distance. A splash from a whale breaching the surface.

It would have been a nice evening. He'd have drinked whisky with you—smuggled out from his secret stash of the best kind you could find in the Caribbean—and taught you how to smoke a cigar.

You'd have laid down beneath the stars, head swimming with the buzz of alcohol. John would have leaned over you, charting the open awe in your gaze as you stared up at the heavens.

Maybe you would have tried to ask a question, or marvel at the wonders of the world that might have only ever been seen by you. The first person to take in this view in all of history. Considering the vastitude of the ocean, it would be a real possibility. The very first. He'd give that to you. The first, the last, the only. All yours.

In return, he'd steal a kiss. Swallowing the question from your lips with a slow, sensual roll of his tongue grazing yours. All coy and soft. Saccharine. You'd taste of whisky. He'd drink you down in several mouthfuls, unable to get enough, until you were keening into the night, begging for more. More, John, more.

It blankets his thoughts, and the regret he feels at the loss is potent. Fragments of a good night flash before him—your fingers curling around the quilt he laid out on the deck, digging those talons into the meat of his shoulder until it breaks skin: a permanent scar. A jagged, silver meteor across milky flesh; he'd catch a glimpse in the mirror and think of you. Whisper-soft kisses. Your body opening up for him, eager and needy, calling out in a siren's song for more.

(Who is he to deny you when you beg so prettily?)

Instead it metastasises inside of him. Malignant and pestiferous. Leaks rot into his bloodstream until all he can taste is the petrified residuum of regret, bitter and acrid.

Some selfish part wanted something nice for himself. A respite from the eventual end careening toward him at a speed he can't avoid.

The ruined tatters of it simmers in the air. A noxious miasma that seems to shake something inside of you loose. Maybe you see it, too. The loss. The end. The eventuality of a bitter, and quick, conclusion.

You're quiet even as realisation darkens across your brow. Flattens the awe in your eyes with the cold douse of water to a burning flame. Clumped ash piles around a damp campfire.

The flames were not smothered slowly, gently, like they should have been, like he wanted them to. No. No. They were snuffed out in a quick end. Brutal and unforgivable.

And you say: "oh."

As if you get it, but you don't. You don't because you think about forever when you look at him. It's not your fault, though—never. Because he hasn't said a word about leaving even though it stuck to his teeth, tarry and vile. A resinous stain he chews everyday, blackening his teeth until they rot.

But he's a coward. A fool. The taste of you is sweet enough to drown out the bitterness on his tongue, and maybe he's using your kindness a bit too much—no. No. Not maybe. Certainly. Definitely. He's using the cloying taste of you as a buffer to everything weeping from the cesspit inside of his chest.

Then: "oh."

It's almost prophetic in a way. Cyclical in its heartache.

He wants to apologise, but he isn't sure where to start. How does he say sorry for something of this magnitude?

He doesn't. He can't.

John lets it necrotise instead.

"Well," you say after a moment of silence. "When are you—?"

You don't finish. Can't, maybe, and he doesn't begrudge you the inability to utter that succinct finality. Not when he doesn't think he could, either.

So, he says, "soon."

But you ask: "how soon?"

And he's reminded, quite vividly, of packing his things in the back of his nineteen ninety-five forest green Tata Estate when he was just shy of eighteen. His dad fuming on the porch.

You're nothing without me, he'd spat.

He was right, of course. Despite everything he tried, the only place that ever gave him a chance was the military solely for the thinly concealed awe that leaked in whenever he uttered his last name.

But there was freedom in leaving. In skirting around the army for a place in the Royal British Navy—separate from the shadow of his father, his grandfather, but still riding on their coattails. John quickly found sanctuary at sea. At the unignorable distance put between himself and all the terrible memories in Hereford.

In the middle of the ocean, that bastard's shadow couldn't reach him.

And now—

Nothing does.

How soon, you ask, but the real question should be: how dare you.

"Mm, a day, maybe—if the weather holds."

And it will. He's checked the forecast meticulously. Radioed in and asked about that pesky hurricane that seemed to fizzle out without much fanfare afterall. All the answers he got were the same. Perfect window, they say, is between dawn and mid-morning. There's gonna be some heavy winds on the coast, but if you set sail early enough, you'll miss it entirely.

"Ah," you murmur, and there's just the faintest echo of your realisation at uncovering yet another one of his half-truths. You know he'll be gone the moment he drops you off on the harbour. "Okay."

John doesn't mean to put all of this on you so quickly. Everything just spiralled, spun, until it was a big, tangled mess beneath his feet. Time a mere whisper in the wind. His absence is a glaring black hole that you can't avoid.

It's all pithy excuses that do little to assuage the weight of everything he'd done, but you take it right on the chin like he knew you would. A sharp nod. The barest hint of a frown.

That is the only thing you can do, isn't it? Swallow it whole and try not to choke on it because no promises have ever been uttered between him or you. Nothing to substantiate this growing, cancerous lump of emotions that feel too fast and too slow, and too—

Dangerous. Perfect.

In his silence, a crater forms again, and he's reminded how much he prefers the sea to people; gyres to love. The brittle embrace of his cabin to the warm arms of a lover.

He was made for the ocean. Meant to sink into algae blooms, and discover reefs untouched. To battle waves bigger, more meaningful than himself, and find sustenance on crated bartletts and scored tuna.

But—

But.

His hands curl around your waist, pulling you back into the broad expanse of his sun warmed chest. The heat of him liquifies your spine, and you melt, readily, into him with what might be a sigh.

It's all so quick, isn't it? And yet, he can think of nothing else except the almost perfect torture of waking up beside you each morning. Of suffusing his atoms to yours.

"Come with me," he murmurs into your hairline, breathing in the scent of you. Loam. Pine resin. Soft and earthy. And that's what you are, aren't you? Made for the land. The earth. Gaia. Terra. Can he really take you from this place and expect you to live like him on the sea?

You don't answer. He feels the disappointment like a searing knife to his gut, but he understands. Gets it. This isn't the sort of proposal a sane person would make to someone they've known for only a few, short months.

He wonders if you think he's only saying it to get into your pants. He probably isn't the first—and definitely wouldn't be the last—to make a litany of false promises just to taste you on his tongue, but he means it. Means it with every fibre of his body. Captain is roomy. Has always been too big for one person—too lonely. But it's a heavy question. A big ask. One that he selfishly presses into your hands as he litters your neck with kisses sharpened with the edge of his teeth. Leaving his mark on your skin. A semi-permanent stain only he knows is there.

It's easy to pretend this won't be the last time when he lays you out on the sheets, fingers digging into your skin as if he was trying to crawl inside of you—and maybe he is. Maybe he wants to. Maybe he could stay suffused to your ribcage for the rest of his life, waking up and falling asleep to the sound of your beating heart, and die a happy man. For once in his life, something that belongs to him that isn't shadowed by ghosts or regret.

(Something he will never, could never, deserve.)

There's something heart achingly desperate about the way he clings to you. Folds himself over you, murmuring promises and pleas into the bruised skin of your neck. Soft murmurations easily swallowed by the sounds you make as he ruts into you at a maddening pace. All clumsy and unrefined because he refuses to let go of you. Refuses to unglue his skin from yours, his teeth from your neck.

He's never had it like this—drenched in sweat, pinned in place over top of you like a weighted blanket; sloppy, messy—but he feels the curl of addiction setting in when he feels the hiccups you make when he pushes in just so. When your flesh dents under the tips of his fingers, and he feels your bones in his grip. Each moan, every tremble and quiver somehow magnified in the small cabin that's much too big for one person.

John wants to take you to this reef he stumbled onto off the Azores. Wants to walk on the sandy atoll, and fuck you under the stars. The first—and only—people on earth to feel the white sand under their skin, to whisper into the inky black of night.

You'd like it there, he thinks. This lonely, isolated patch of land just barely rising out above the ocean. Filled to the brim with tropical fish, and hammerheads. Sea turtles. Orcas chasing seals in the distance.

He presses his lips to your hairline, and breathes life into this little picture of you on the shore, whispering promises wrapped in desperation, devotion, into your skin.

"John," you gasp, and he's not sure if it's a reprimand—please, please, please shut up, stop talking about that because you know I can't, I can't—or a plea—take me, bring me there, please—but he doesn't stop. Can't. He's too invested in this picturesque fantasy, the same one he dreamed about when he fucked his fist to the thought of you. "John, please—"

His veins are filled with blood-red wine. A sudden potent cocktail that makes him dizzy. Drunk on the wisps of ethanol that burrow deeper into his body until it floods his atrium.

John wants to lean into it. Relish in the white-hot heat of it all. Wants to drag you down into the sand, into the unending sea, and stay there forever, just at the cusp of where land meets water. Your own kingdom in the domain of Poseidon. Children of Phorcys. Pontus.

You grip him tight, and he thinks like this he could pretend it's not the last time. That when your body shudders beneath him, it's not out of sorrow or finality.

"John," you say, but he can't bear it. He kisses you instead. Drows in the taste of you until his head spins. Spins, spins—

He wakes up in a tangle of limbs. Your arm strewn across his broad chest, anchoring him to the bed below. Your head nestled in the crux of his armpit, nose pressed tight to the swell of his ribcage. Mouth open, he notes, drooling into wry curls that blanket his torso in swaths of dark umber.

With you very much cocooned to his side, thigh trapping his pelvis down, he feels the sharp sting of claustrophobia raking talons over the bone encasing his eyes. He's buried under you—your body the soft swell of tumulus—and for a moment he nearly forgets himself. Nearly bolts from the bed, your arms. The room. Running, running—it reminds him too much of being a captive. Tied down. Restrained. Unable to move of his own free will—

But you mumble something in your sleep, the words lost to the blood rushing in his ears, and he finds the pieces of himself he'd lost. Lulled, almost to the point of complacency, by your breaths ghosting across the thick, coarse hair on his chest. Rhythmic. Calming.

He leans into it. Buries himself deeper.

You smell of sweat, sex. Fennel. He burrows his nose into your crown, breathes in the scent of you until his lungs burn. He wants them to scar over with just the thick scent of you. To leave a mark so deep, so permanent, that each time he inhales, all he can taste in the back of his throat is the lingering residuum of you.

There's this earthiness to you that feels like digging his feet into sand, and he wants to slink deeper into the embrace, into you, but there's a lingering forethought in his head that he ought to get up. That this moment of brief comfort will come at a cost, with its teeth bared and wrapped around his bones, and it's a price he can't afford to pay.

There's an almost cognitive dissonance between what his body wants, and what he needs to do.

It takes most of his willpower to divorce himself from your clutch, but he does. Slowly. Reluctantly. With his fingers leadened with torpor.

Regret is the feeling of cold wood under his feet. His arms relieved from the weight of you. Fix it, something inside his chest screams, but he can't. Can't.

He doesn't look back when he leaves the small bedroom that smells of you. Not that it matters.

In the separation, he finds he cut a little too much off from himself, leaving more of himself with you than he intended.

John doesn't expect much. Hasn't, really, since he set sail with his compass pointed away from home, and threw each sorrowful piece of himself into the reefs he encountered along the way.

It's the same when he gathers everything together in the morning, running through a mental checklist of what needs to be done before he sets off into the mid-Atlantic, hopeful to reach Bermuda within four, maybe five days. From there, it would be nearly fifteen days before he reached the Azores, some nine thousand and twenty nautical miles between the destinations.

He expects the winds this time of year to be between zero to twenty three knots. Waves, at most, around four to nine metres. He can keep up with it all, he's sure, but he's feeling less inclined to make the trip solo, and thinks, as he trawls back to shore with you sleeping in the cabin still, if he might pick up a small crew in Carolina before setting off. Or maybe he'll take solitude until he heads into the Azores. He isn't sure. The only thing he is certain of is that, for the first time in years, he doesn't want to be alone at sea.

An oddity, of course. John always wants to be alone.

(Until you—)

The notion is tucked away into the space inside his head where all the things he doesn't want to think about go to moulder. To rot. The idea that he's more gangrenous parts than man sits idly behind his teeth, a fleeting whim, but that, too, is shoved aside. Buried.

—like the weight of you on him. His own personal grave, a tumulus—

Another limb severed at artery. Left to bleed. To rot. He considers leaving it out, making it hurt. Salt to the wound he has no intention of healing.

He cauterises it instead, and uses the flame to spark up his last cigar for the occasion.

(There's nothing worth celebrating, but he thinks he's due a belated birthday gift to himself.)

The brackish waters in the inlet are muddied with loess, and he considers taking the longer arc into the harbour to avoid the sudden swelling of waves lapping at the sides of his vessel. Pure pride, of course. He's not a captain of a dirty ship—an oxymoron at best and a idling thought that takes the shape of stalling for time—but he trudges forward in spite of the twitch in his knuckles, the urge to notch his wheel just everso slightly to the right.

It passes, and Newfoundland curves out of the waters in a splotch of green against dour grey. Another overcast morning. The inlet, he'd heard on the radio, is dense with fog trickling down from the rolling hills in the background of this rugged landscape.

Fog on the ocean isn't rare. With a simple flip of a switch, he changes his visualisation from naked sight to sonar, and leans back on the balls of his feet, blinking restlessly into the thick plumes of smokey-white.

The cabin door rattles when you open it—the only indicator that you're awake—and the sound sits heavy across his shoulders. A noise he thinks he could get used to hearing.

"Give'er a shake," he calls, voice ashen, thick from sleep. He hasn't spoken a word since he radioed in to let them know he was moving down the channel. That was nearly two hours ago.

You appear in his periphery, wrapped up in a shawl he keeps at the end of the bed. One he thinks he picked up when he was working on a shipping vessel in Pacific, just after he'd split from the navy, and was docked for a week in Taiwan because of bad weather.

It looks good on you. The colours accentuate your features in a way that makes it difficult to focus on the black screen of the sonar, but you make it easier for him when you pad closer to where he stands, yawning around a good morning as you fic yourself to his side, reaching for him.

You curl against him as he steers into the estuary, one arm tucked around the small of his back, and the other above his groin in a sideways hug. A small shiver wracks through your frame when the chill from the frigid waters sneaks in through the open companionway of the helm, and you burrow deeper into his side, nose nuzzling against his bicep to keep warm. The weight of you is comforting. Steady.

It's a clumsy dance to free his arm, but he does it somehow without dislodging you in the process, and lifts his arm, steering with one hand through the maw of the Labrador Strait, before he quickly loops it around your neck, keeping you tight to his side. You fall into him in a hurry—maybe from desperation to keep the bitter cold at bay or for some strained, final moments of closeness before he leaves the docks, and you.

The silence is heavy. A potent cocktail of shaky uncertainty admixing with all the regret he feels for not acting on his impulsive feelings sooner. It sits low, thick, in his guts, and vacillates between mocking him for what could have been weeks of satiating himself on the fill of you, and taunting him for starting this in the first place.

Especially when he knew exactly how it was always meant to end.

And in a rather vicious moment of cruelty, that particular ending bobs up from the brackish waters with its stark brown oak pillars cutting through the dense fog. He doesn't need sonar to see the pier in the distance. Three clicks to the west.

His throat pinches tight at the sight of it—rather irritatingly unassuming in its lacklustre beginnings, but a garish knife to chest all the same. It constricts. He tries to swallow but can't get the weight around his neck to receed.

He takes his hand off the wheel, scratching at the raw skin along the column of his neck.

His jostling seems to wake you from your sleepy stare out the window. You clear your throat. He tenses. Guts wringings themselves into a frenzied coil. Don't, he wants to say. Don't speak. Don't say anything—

"Listen, Price," you start clumsily, cautiously. And despite knowing where this is going—some apology for why you can't go with him, for why you're saying no—he makes a noise to dissuade you from continuing. He gets it. He does. It's a big ask to have someone give up several months of their life to traverse the open ocean with a stranger.

"I know. S'alright, love. I'll—" the words are bitten through when he realises where they're headed. The offer to call. Or write. Things he knows he won't ever get around to doing, but the loose attempt to placate is better than hearing whatever you might say. A selfish need to keep the silence.

"No, listen," you stress with a huff. He hears the eye roll in your tone, and fights back a scoff at the image. "You're stubborn, you know?"

It's nothing he's never heard before but it still makes him laugh—some broken, ugly thing in the base of his throat. Clawing up his oesophagus.

After a moment of silence, you nuzzle your cheek against his peck, pressing a soft kiss to the edge of his heart.

"I'm not a sailor, and this is probably the craziest thing I've ever done in my whole life, but—" his heart leaps, banging against the cage of his ribs, still scarred with your name.

"—love—"

"—I don't want to just write you. Or—or wait for a phone call. I don't want to—"

He hears the click in your throat when you swallow. Feels the herringbone floor open up beneath his feet, plunging his aching heart into the empty maw of his stomach. Still. Through the blooming sense of hope tangling vines around his falling heart, he reaches for the water bottle on the console, wordlessly passing it to you to drink.

You sniff, and it's an ugly, wet noise that sends a shudder through his being. A sound he could hear, happily, for the rest of his life.

(Sappy, tragic fool—)

"How long do I have to pack?"

If he'd been a lesser man—or maybe a better one; a good one—he would have crumbled. But he's too grizzled to take his eyes off the shoreline, and maybe—just maybe—too fucking scared to. He doesn't want to look down and find this whole thing has been some horrific joke. Doesn't want to see the derision in your eyes as you ask him why you'd ever pick him, a stranger, over the sanctuary of land. Your home, even.

But he doesn't doubt you.

It's an odd juxtaposition, John finds, but he's always been the sort to work in strings of abstract hypocrisy, hadn't he? Implicit trust in the men around him, but not enough to ever let go of the urge so just do everything on his own. To shoulder the burdens a man like him was seemingly built to carry.

(And made to crack under the weight of them; a thousand fissures that were small enough to go unnoticed—until Gaz grabbed him by the lapels, shoving him against an iron door just to keep him from throwing an innocent man to his death for no other reason than his notched sense of safety—but big enough to leak a caustic ugliness into the word that threatened make the men around him bonesick.)

But he isn't thinking about that right now. Or, rather, he shouldn't be—

Because he believes you. He just believes in himself less.

So, he has to ask. Has to. "Are you sure? Hard to change your mind when you're in the middle of the bloody ocean, love."

The exasperated huff let out into his bicep seems to be the only answer he'll get from you on that particular topic, but it's not enough. Despite the miffed squeeze you give when he pulls his arm back, resting his hand against your cheek to pull your face back far enough to peer into your eyes, you go along with his demands, soft as they are. Maybe the way his thumb brushes along the curve of your cheekbone quells the stubbornness that brims at having your choice picked apart until it was nothing but bones. All just to satisfy his own internal dilemma.

Or a mockery of one, anyway.

"You gotta be sure," he says, and winces when it comes out rougher than he intended. "This is a big leap. It isn't go to fuckin' Tesco's on a Sunday—"

"First of all," you mumble, eyes narrowing up at him. "We don't even have Tesco's in Canada so that comparison is useless to me. Second of all—" and suddenly, all of that bravado falters. Shakes. You glance away from him—in askance, maybe, at your stutter, at his inability to take something someone tells him at face value.

"Love—"

There's a fire in your eyes when you turn back to him. A defiant tilt to your chin when it lifts. Sure, and firm, and a little bit proud—drenched in the same shade of stubbornness as himself—and the sight is an electrical shock to his system. A jolt to his chest. One that hangs, heavy, around the nape of his neck, the drape of his shoulders.

"I'm sure," is all you say.

And it's enough. Inexplicably, overwhelmingly—enough.

"Now, how long until we set off? I just need to get some stuff in order before we leave, but I can hurry it as much as—"

It goes against every rule in the book to take his eyes off the horizon and his hands off the wheel, especially this close to shore, but he needs—he needs to touch you. To know. To feel the commitment under your skin like an electric hum.

"However long you need, love, fuck—" his lips are on yours, stifling the rest of what he meant to say in the taste of you. "Whatever you want, whatever you need—" he makes promises he might not be able to keep, but he thinks if he could, he'd steal the stars and the moon, and let you wear them like pretty gems.

It'll never come to fruition because all he can really give you is a boat and a broken man who is only good at sailing the seas to escape everything that might get too close. None of it seems to matter. Not to you. Never to you. Every wall he's thrown up has been meticulously chipped down, and this, he finds, is no different.

You lean into him, heedless of the war in his mind, and breathe in deep. Inhaling the scent of stale tobacco, sex, and sour sweat. There's something facetious about the way you hum into the kiss, nails scratching along his crown, as if you're not committing nearly a year of your life to a man you watched crumble at the altar of your feet just for a sip of you.

"I've always wanted to go to Spain."

He groans a little into the kiss. Can't help the noises that spill out when you start mapping whimsical plans into something concrete. Something tangible.

(Permanent, if you'll let him.)

"We'll go. Spain, Portugal, Liverpool, Italy, Cuba, Jamaica, Fiji—" he names each place between a searing kiss and keeps one eye open, listed toward the horizon. He says it all in a hush, caught on the tendrils of desperation. Urgency. There's a quiver in his voice. Blood in his throat. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Just name it, love."

And you just smile like you know he will. That those words, caked in some amalgamation of earnestness and madness, are a promise. An oath.

"Anywhere," he swears again, brassbound in certainty, tangled in seagrass.

Your name scars the brackets of his breastbone. Notched into marrow. He feels it heavy in his ribs when he pulls you closer, wanting nothing more than to sink into you until your veins are filled with him.

Anywhere, he thinks, hushed in its reverence as the levee keeping everything he let rot cracks in your hands. Always.

YOU—

There's a certain dreariness that comes from living by the ocean, one that's often difficult to put into words or explain to someone who hasn't spent their entire youth being told, never turn your back on it. Never trust it.

(It, of course, because somewhere along the line, the sea stops being a place, a thing, an artefact, and becomes an entity all on its own. A living, breathing manifestation with its primordial history, its own mythology, all so distinct from anything someone on land could ever dream up.)

Because despite what you might wish, the sea will never be your friend. It's incapable of distinguishing the difference between affection and malice, and shows its love by dragging you to the darkest depths imaginable until your lungs fill with its briny breath and your drops to the floor, a human-sized whalefall.

The ocean loves you in the worst way.

It wants to make a tomb of you. A graveyard of algae covered bones. Bloated and unrecognisable. Picked apart until nothing remains but the ghost of you treading its pool.

In spite of this, the ocean doesn't scare you as much as it should. It's a constant in your life. Permanent. Careless guard your iron shackles.

(And maybe it's a little bit deeper than that because you never really understood the difference between obsession, devotion, and fear when they all make you feel the same.)

And being so far out from the rest of the people who live along the very same coast—well. That, too, is hard to simplify.

Life by an unpopular harbour isn't as busy as someone might assume. With its deadened boardwalks, gimmicky shops, and lack of personality to draw a crowd or any would-be tourists, it stagnantes. The place begins to look like a tchotchke. A painting on a faded, sunbleached postcard rather than a cohesive ecosystem. The cogs are rusted and broken, and the delineation between them and the people begins to blur.

And maybe that's because time feels slower in this liminal space perched between the sea and the swell of a bucolic dreamland, as if it's drenched in molasses. Bound with a ball and chain. Boring simplicity, perhaps.

Sloughing along is the most apt descriptor you think of to describe how your tarry-thick time is spent.

Work life balance loses its meaning when you feel the same at home as you do behind a counter. Listless. Lacklustre. It's hard to find inspiration when you've been to every nook and cranny in the valley. When all secrets have been exposed thrice over, and gossip is as stale as the bread Lucy always brings to the potluck each year.

It's fine, of course.

Work. Home. Work. Sometimes, you'll drive down to Halifax. Maybe stop at Shoppers Drug Mart and squint at the overpriced brands on the too-white walls. But something brand name at Marshalls for more than you can afford to placate that gnawing sense of unease that comes with realising your life can be summed up in three paragraphs or less.

Age does that, you find. Because when you're stuck in a place that never changes, when the ghost of your childhood runs along the same trails you take as an adult and feels more bitter than nostalgic, growing older starts to feel like a taunt. A jeer.

Burdened by the encompassing emptiness of time.

Somewhere along the line—or maybe from the very beginning—you start to stagnante, too. The overwhelming, unignorable feeling of growth weighing you down forms; barnacles clinging to your skin, softening your flesh as they burrow deep, deep, until striking bone.

You're fine, you think.

Until him.

Until a man shows up, hiding kindness behind a surly disposition, and offers you nothing but gruff company. Terrible jokes. Cloying sweetness drenched in nicotine and dusted in ash.

John Price makes you consider your love of the ocean in a new, tangible way.

There have been others, of course. People before John who have offered to pull you away from this anaemic corner of the world, making promises of taking you somewhere else. Or ones who offered to stay. To join you in this dreary town. An accumulation of hydrozoan floating aimlessly down this solitary stretch of ocean.

They've all come and gone, and your answer has remained unchanged. Fixed. No. And if you're being kind—no, thank you.

Because, really—

When you can't tell the difference between fear and devotion, how are you supposed to know if the ocean fills you with reverence or dread?

So, you stay.

This place might be drenched in tar, forgotten by the masses in favour of the bigger, prettier cities that share the same oceanic view, but it's home. And your roots run deep (but your shackles are even deeper).

It's odd, too, isn't it? That home feels less like a sanctuary and more like an obligation. A pact you have to keep. So, you do. And maybe you resent this place a little bit each year, but it's easy to forget all about that when John fits inside the spaces of your ribs that you didn't know were empty to begin with.

It's good. Good—

—but this is better:

You wake up to the sound of the naked ocean, unencumbered by the shore. It's quieter than you expected it to be, but you suppose without land to get in its way, there's little reason to roar.

The change in noise—and sometimes, the absolute absence of any at all—is the biggest shift you have to adjust to, but four days into your journey traversing the untamable Atlantic, the sea teaches you things you didn't know about yourself. That maybe there's a certain sort of madness that comes from being so far away from anything remotely resembling land. And a lethargy that's hard to tie down into something concrete. An abstract sense of disillusion, maybe. Bone-deep torpor.

Something, too, that feels a bit like an atavistic fear of the yawning abyss that never seems to end. It's one thing to stand on land, solid ground, and admire it from afar, or to hug the coast on a cruise ship. Seeing it like this, in all its pelagic glory, is somehow sickening in its terrifying splendour and incredible enough to snake existential dread along the curve of your fragile insides.

There's awe, as well, but in more muted shades of tyrrhenian.

Still. You take to the barren sea like a once captive orca who forgot what freedom tastes like beneath its curled dorsal fin. It's exhilarating. And in equal measures, a true shove against your mettle. Your resolve. There's no help so far out to sea. No one to depend on but yourself and this enigmatic man who brushes his lips across your forehead when he thinks you're asleep, and then snarls at the ocean in the morning about not having any cigars as if he knows nothing at all about tenderness.

It's a comfort you cling to. Embrace until your fingers ache.

John mutters something under his breath about needing sleep. Whisky. A cigar. A good fuck in a better goddamn bed—and in no particular order, he gripes when you poke his back with your index finger.

"Thank fuck," he rasps around a cigarette—a shitty fuckin' imitation—and pinches your side when he draws you close. Payback for the jab but it just makes you giggle. "Bermuda is only nine hours away."

"Nine hours," you breathe, surprised. Nine hours. It feels inconsequential. Brief. And maybe that's because time feels different out here. Inconsequential outside of where the sun sat. The only thing that matters about it is its position, and your internal clock begins to shift, turning into a sundial. To hear a length of time outside of morning, midday, noon, afternoon, evening, and night is strange.

John's gaze flickers over to you hiding something that feels a bit like an appraisal as those burning sapphires run over the length of your expression, catching every twitch.

His chest rumbles under your hand after a moment. "Excited for land, then?"

Land. You consider it—his question, and, of course, the weight of it. The way it feels. Tastes.

It's only been a sliver into your journey, barely anything at all in comparison to the kilometres left to go, but the sea feels as comforting as it does terrifying. The darker patches of blue signifying a depth so unfathomable that you feel breathless thinking about it. About the unquantifiable pressure, some metric tonnes of atmosphere pressing down on those pretty pools of navy.

In comparison, Captain feels fragile. Delicate. Brittle bones of wood and plastic and foam contending with the vastitude of the sea that sprawls out in every direction. On a map right now, you'd be invisible. The tip of a pen would be too wide to accurately pinpoint your exact location. That massive gap, bigger than the whole of your country, sometimes gives you nightmares. And some nights, the boat lists as it bobs with the rolling waves that never end, dipping down much too low for your mind to ever feel comfortable with.

The terror is almost equally as present as the awe. Both one-in-the same, almost. And it reminds you of your love for the sea. Where the lines between fear and devotion blur. It doesn't surprise you, then, that some mornings you wake up with something that curls around your head, and feels like divine euphoria, and others—

You can't stop thinking about every shipwreck movie you'd ever seen, especially when you know you'd passed over the same channel the Titanic sank in, that your bare feet stood right over top of a graveyard at a depth that hurts your head a little bit to even think about.

But—

Land.

John said you'd be missing it in due time the first hour into your trip, when you were still buzzing with the adrenaline of cacoëthes and watched the shoreline get swallowed whole by blue.

In fact, he'd expected it. Seemed to keep himself at a measurable distance, as if waiting for you to turn to him and command that he bring you back home.

A silly thought, in hindsight.

You're shackled to the sea just as much as you are to him—maybe with a bit more willingness added in. The sea feels like home in spite of the endless dreams of capsizing in the frigid waters.

And really.

You can't imagine being anywhere else but here. With him.

"I'm excited to see Bermuda," you confess, nuzzling your cheek into the warm Sherpa of his jacket. "But more so because I've never been anywhere outside of my own Country. But I like this better. I like being on Captain with you. It's—"

There's a weight in your chest. One that's almost equally composited into the ashen blue of his eyes when they flicker to you, clinging to each word. Each sentiment that spills from your sun chapped lips.

"It's home, y'know?"

John goes quiet for a moment. Far quieter than you ever expected a man like him to be capable of—someone who got road rage out in the middle of an empty sea, and screamed himself hoarse whenever he had to talk to the absolute fuckin' muppets of the coast guard or passing ships your eyes weren't good enough to see through Fata Morgana—and it almost humbles you in a strange way. Makes you consider the stunning realisation that you've only chipped the surface of his rough, wonderful, insufferable man. In that, a keen sense of wonder brims, bringing with it an insatiable curiosity. You want to strip him down to nothing but bones, and crack them open like the claws of Snow Crab, sipping from the nectar that is his marrow. His essence. You want to map him out in greater depths than you ever dream of doing to the sea.

His fingers spasm on your hip in a strange clench and release rhythm that makes you wonder if he's holding himself back for some reason you can't ascertain, but eventually, he breaks. His hand tightens, and pulls you closer to him. You feel his nose press against your hairline. Hear the sharp inhale as he breathes you in until his chest expands under your hand. Wide and broad, and filled with the scent of you.

"Yeah," he rasps, humid breath fluttering across your skin. "It is. For however long you want it—"

"Forever." You catch smouldering blue just before it's eclipsed by endless black. "If you'll let me."

"Fuckin'—Christ—"

With his words mangled in his throat, they sound more like an animalistic snarl than anything that resembles something human. The force of it seems to rattle through your flesh, dredging against bone like an anchor on the muddy sea floor until it catches.

"Forever it is, then." It's a promise. An oath. And maybe a little bit of a threat, too, in the way only John can make something so romantic sound so gruff, and when he speaks again, you smell cinder and taste the ash in the back of his throat. Sealed in charcoal and salt.

"I guess you're stuck with me, then," you tease, smiling when he huffs in a facsimile of exasperation, but you catch the softening in the corners of his eyes, and the low purr of happiness that rumbles out from his broad chest.

"Can think of worse places to be."

"Like London?" You quip, echoing his words, and there's something heavy in his eyes, something that blankets around the unease that never really goes away even as you acclimate to the sensation of being landless. Adrift. It's something deeper than devotion. A black hole you could fall into.

"Yeah, exactly." He murmurs. You taste salt on his tongue when he kisses you, and wonder how you could ever dream of being anywhere else that wasn't with him.

Home, you find, is where his heart beats next to yours.

#im so ready for bed after this #john price x reader #sailor price #kinda #like um ig hes retired #ish #captain john price x reader #price x reader #i set out to make this as unapolgetically maritimes as possible and failed #we have one (1) Newfie u can't understand and NO ONE at any point offers to go on a Timmies run for ice caps and double doubles #blasphemous #also ur from Nova Scotia (NOT HRM) but that really doesn't matter much tbh i just wanted the “this is supposed to be Lunenburg Lite” vibes #aka Chéticamp #but much more depressing

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sevencolorsatlast · 6 months

Text

Archons Reacting To Their Creator Singing Pt. 2

Part 1 [Venti, Zhongli, Ei and Nahida] || Part 2 [Furina] (You're Here!)

Author's Note: 4.2 Update Spoilers! You've been warned! Song used: "Curses" by The Crane Wives. No beta, we die like my heart while playing this quest.

Update: I changed the verse weeee. Also corrected a couple of mistakes.

Content Warning(s): None.

Other Notes: Default SAGAU / GN!Reader / Drabble / 800+ Words / Ao3 Link

[ Furina ]

"There's still cobwebs in the corners

And the backyard's full of bones

Won't you stay with me, my darling

When this house don't feel like home?"

You came down from the heavens weeks ago, knowing Fontaine is in danger but kept your head low and disguised yourself as a Fontainian to seek solutions to their prophecy. No one suspected you aside from the Vision wielders and a few Guardes who eventually left you alone since you seem to be harmless. You also manage to avoid any unpleasant encounters with your followers while roaming around the city.

Visiting Focalors in the opera house when no one was around was... rather an eventful one; she hopes you do not intervene with her plans to save her beloved people. You tried to reason with her: you are her god — you can forgive her and her people but she says it is her duty as Hydro Archon as prophecies cannot be changed. To pursue "justice", so to speak, is via the death of her and her throne.

You no longer attempt to pursue the topic which Focalors tacitly appreciates. Instead, you promised to look after her "human" self... Furina.

She smiles ever so graciously, knowing that such a divine being like you would keep Furina safe and sound - even after she meets her fate. You ask if you can hug Focalors, she happily accepts as this will be your first and last meeting her. You give most of your strength to hug her and you pull away, saying your tearful goodbye.

Everything went down according to her plan; watching scenes unfolding right before your eyes. Furina's trial was heart wrenching to watch, you want to jump and defend her... but this was all part of her "divine" self's plan. You shouldn't interfere, you reminded yourself, you clench your fists as the last puzzle of the prophecy reveals itself in front of you and the rest of the audience.

After the flooding in Fontaine died down and you let weeks pass by to let the country recover, you sought out Neuvillette. He is surprised to see you, easily seeing through your disguise. He bows before you and airs his concerns about Furina who had moved away from Palais Mermonia. You gently grab his hand and hold it in-between yours, telling him to stand up. You reassure that you'll be discreetly visiting Furina and the Hydro Sovereign gives you the address on where she currently lives.

During sunset, you found Furina cooped up in her new home. You knock and it took her a while before peeking through the small gap of the door. To put it lightly, her place is in disarray even when the gap of her door is small — her things are littered on the floor and she... doesn't look too good. She is far from well-presented and she looks like a ghost.

You can tell her eyes are red from crying and lack of sleep is evident on her unusually pale face. Her once kept hair's a mess and her clothes aren't well-presented like they usually do. Her hat is also nowhere to be found, it must've been included in the pile of mess scattered about her floorboards.

She weakly asks who you are and tells you that she doesn't accept visitors. You look around, making sure no one is around to see your transformation. Once you know the coast is clear, you transform into your normal self; soft glow emanating from your skin.

Once you are done dusting off your robes, Furina suddenly pulls you into her home and slams the door behind her - stuttering "Your Grace" under her breath and muttering how she's embarrassed that she's in a mess.

You turn around to speak and, instead, you are met with a tight hug from Furina. She buries her head into your shoulder and clutching onto your robes.

She doesn't understand why you hadn't come down from the heavens sooner... and you tell her Focalors wanted to do her part while you witnessed everything. She remained silent for a while before letting out a few sobs. You finally let your arms wrap around her; like a parent hugging their long-lost child.

To calm her down, you sing a song you know from the depths of your heart; the one that is ingrained to the forefronts of your mind even as a child. You alternate between singing and humming while gently running your hand up and down on Furina's back.

Her sobs subside as the last lyric of the song leaves your lips. She wipes her tears away with her hands and regains her composure. She pulls her head away from your shoulder, her eyes yet to look at your direction.

"My apologies for seeing me in such a state, Your Grace." She says, her voice slightly above a whisper, "And ...That's a wonderful song you've sung. I... appreciate it..."

She sniffles; it reminded you when you were a kid. You smile at the fond memory.

"The song was sung to calm me down by my caretakers." You say, "I suppose it still holds its charm."

She lets out a weak chuckle and meets your eyes, "I... Thank you, Your Grace."

"For what?" You inquired despite knowing the answer. She pulls you into another hug, you could've sworn you had seen her genuinely smiling for the first time.

"For being here with me." She says, a small spark of joy coming from her voice, "For seeing the 'real' me."

As she hums your song, you hold each other close until the sun finally sets from the horizon.

#genshin impact #genshin impact sagau #genshin impact spoilers #genshin sagau #sagau #sagau x reader #furina #furina sagau #neuvillette #neuvillette sagau #focalors #focalors sagau #once again i've used the word 'eyes' like i did with the previous archons lezgoooo #seven's tag #500

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hotchnisslvr · 26 days

Text

for her, i’d endure

pairing: emily prentiss x reader

rating: t

word count: 7.6k

genre: angst, hurt/comfort

warnings: torture, descriptions of blood/injuries, drugs

summary: When you and Emily are kidnapped by The Chameleon, an elusive unsub that team had been tracking for years, you’re forced to watch her endure torture at his hands. In the hospital, you reel from your own injuries and the guilt of not being able to stop anything from happening to her. Angst and hurt/comfort with a happy end.

It’s hard to keep them open from the pain it causes you to try. You can’t help the slow drowsy blinking that follows. If they’re closed it doesn’t hurt as bad. Maybe this is a dream. Yeah, a dream. Just close your eyes and go to sleep, you tell yourself. You’ll feel fine in the morning.

Someone harshly whispers your name. You stir, but ignore it. Closing your eyes, you murmur something that isn’t quite a response, and try to welcome the darkness to take over. You just want to sleep whatever this is off…you try to at least. The harsh rasping whisper returns. There’s your name two, three times.

“Huh?” is all you can muster as you crack your eyes open once more. There’s a fluorescent light somewhere to your left, casting strange shadows over your field of vision. Your eyes burn. You want to close them again.

“Yes, that’s it!” cries the whisperer, “stay with me!” There’s an urgency in their voice, and as you take a few measured breaths, you gain more and more control over your senses. “Are you hurt?”

Emily. That’s Emily’s voice.

“My head,” you complain about the throbbing in your temples. “I think I hit my head.” You move to touch the side of your skull to assess the damage when your wrists don’t follow through with the command from your brain.

“What the—” There’s a sudden clarity that takes over as you hear the clatter of metal against metal. Your wrists are bound behind your back. You kick your legs out, or at least you try to. They’re bound too with zip ties to the legs of a metal chair that’s bolted to the floor.

“Don’t panic.”

“Emily?”

Fingers brush against yours from behind your back and you cling to them, though it’s awkward as you try to reach them. You’d know the feel of her hands anywhere. He’s got you and her back to back.

“I’m here,” she says soothingly, despite the edge in her voice.

“What happened?” you ask as your field of vision begins to clear and the picture of where you’re being held begins to form. It's dark save the fluorescent light you noticed earlier. There’s a few panels in the ceiling still flickering to life, though most are dark. Wires and cables hang haphazardly from the ceiling and water drips from a cracked pipe that stretches over the width of the room. The floor beneath your feet is concrete. You can’t see a door and the only windows are two small rectangles high near the ceiling. You’re underground. “Where are we?”

“The Chameleon,” Emily says after a short while.

Your heart skips a beat and you have to take a few measured breaths to keep the panic from creeping in. “You’re sure?”

The Chameleon, nicknamed such by the local media, is a serial killer that you and the team had been chasing across the East Coast for the last two years.You and the team didn’t care much for these nicknames as they often sensationalize the killer and detract from the victims, but it the name was fitting due to his nature to blend in to every environment he’s been a part of. This is largely due to how he is able to gain his victims' trust. Some of his known ruses include posing as law enforcement, a member of the clergy, other first responders, caretaker for a “lost” elderly patient, and more. He’d feign a scenario that caused the victims to unlock their doors, stop their cars, or otherwise pull their focus under the guise of safety. Once their guard was down, that was all he needed to ensnare them in his trap. Victims were initially blitz attacked, as evident by the bruising to their heads and faces, but as he evolved he began to dose them with heavy sedatives before taking them to a secondary location where he’d hold them for twenty four hours. During this time, he tortured his victims indiscriminately; sometimes cutting, sometimes burning, sometimes removing pieces of them or utilizing a combination of all three before ultimately succumbing to his need to kill. He favored a knife, often slitting the throats of his victims once he’d grown tired of playing with them. Despite his ability to blend in and kidnap his victims undetected, everything else originally pointed to someone just starting out, unsure of their preferences. However, this unsub evolved quickly. Victimology stopped differing and he’d settled on a pattern for women in their thirties, dark features, and often in roles that provided some sort of power. Though methods of torture varied, the rotation or combination of torture implicated states similar enough to create a pattern. He stuck to the routine, though. One woman every three months for the last two years. That was until recently. Now, a woman had been going missing weekly, suggesting a major deviation. Something had changed for this unsub, increasing his need to kill quicker and more often. Emily fits the victimology, but taking you too? It didn’t make sense? He’d never taken in pairs before.

“Fuck,” you mutter. You pull at the cuffs around your wrists, but they’re clamped too tightly. They don’t budge. “How long was I out?” you ask.

“Hours,” Emily responds. She sounds tired. “I don’t know how many.”

You blindly reach for her fingers again, this time with your other hand. When you brush against them, they’re slick with something.

“Emily?” you ask, concern edging into your voice. “What’s he done to you?”

“Cutting,” Emily answers clinically. “Left arm, chest, and right leg. They’re superficial.”

Red clouds your vision knowing he’d hurt the woman you love, and that you’d not been conscious enough to at least try to do anything about it. When you get your hands around this bastard’s neck…you yank hard against your restraints and hiss when all it does is cause the metal to dig deeper into your wrists.

“Baby, stop,” Emily whispers, keeping her voice low in case The Chameleon can hear. “We’ve been closing in on this guy. We just have to hope the team recognizes we’re gone before…” her voice trails off as a door opens.

Your heart stops and then starts, it’s usually steady beat now pumping erratically against your chest. You remind yourself to breathe, to take measured breaths to slow your heart and fight off the instinct to panic. The body’s natural inclination for self-preservation is astounding, but you couldn’t just think about yourself right now. You needed to be alert and look for anyway to wriggle into this guy’s psyche, anything to keep him from hurting Emily any further.

There’s a metallic clank as whatever door that’s out of your eye line slams shut. Heavy footsteps echo in the space and you count. Twenty four. There’s twenty four steps. You can’t fight the way your body tenses as a silhouette begins to emerge from the shadows. As the figure comes into focus, your eyes widen in surprise.

“Surprised to see me?” the man says, a twisted smile curving on his

“You know him?” Emily asks as she attempts to crane her neck to look at him.

You take in the man before you: white, mid-30s, average build, dark curly hair, and blue eyes wild with evil intent. You don’t know his name, but you've seen him before. You all had. Your mind flashes to each body dump where the team had investigated and gathered initial evidence to further flesh out the profile. You close your eyes and let your mind’s eye expand your field of vision to include the gathering crowd of onlookers. As you mentally guide yourself through each crime scene, you can clearly see him.

“You were there the whole time,” you say with a surprisingly level of calm as you open your eyes and meet his gaze directly.

He extends his arms to either side, a look-at-all-i-have-accomplished gesture, though there’s no audience save the two of you to take in his performance. “What can I say?” he says. “The media named me for my ability to blend in anywhere I go. I like the nickname, I do.” He points his finger at you as he begins to circle around you and Emily like you’re an injured seal in shark infested waters. “Though you profilers don’t like when these major news outlets do that. It sensationalizes the killer while taking away from victims.” He stops in front of you and bends at the waist to look you in the eye. You muster as much contempt into your gaze as possible.

“Good,” he snarls. “Those sluts aren’t worth remembering anyway. Any thoughts on that, agent?”

You nod. “Yeah, actually, I think I’m pretty tired of listening to you whine about your mommy issues.” A fire ignites in his eyes as you say this. You smirk. “Ooo, that did something. Did that strike a nerve?”

His lip curls as he takes a shuddering breath.

“I think I did, didn’t I?”

His knuckles collide with your face and there’s an explosion of stars behind your eyes as you feel your lip split in two. Emily calls your name and curses the unsub’s. There’s a buzzing in your ears as you blink the fog away. You sit up as best as you can and spit blood onto the floor. If his attention is on you, it’s not on Emily.

“Is that the best you can do?” you say, leveling your gaze back on The Chameleon. “You had to hit me from behind the first time. Are you scared to face a woman head on? Too much of a coward to face them? Or are you just too weak?” You incline your head toward your lap. “After all, you’ve got us tied up. Untie me and we’ll see just how well you do one on one.”

The Chameleon seethes, nostrils flaring as his rage blossoms. “You know nothing!” he bites.

“We know, everything.” You answer. He may not have been on the team’s radar, but you’ve seen this type before; a man that’s been forced into a submissive role and emasculated his entire life finally snaps and turns the tables on innocent women to make up for the lack of care he missed out on from a mother figure his entire life. He blames them because he can’t take his anger out on the person he wants to most. Mommy.

“Do you?” he sneers and you don’t flinch away from his hot breath on your neck.

“You’re easier to read than a children’s nursery rhyme,” you taunt.

The Chameleon snarls and this time his knuckles collide with the center of your face and there’s a sickening crunch. Blood pours from your broken nose onto the front of your shirt.

“Enough!” Emily shouts. “She’s not the one you want.”

You blink through the haze and blaring pain. Emily’s name is garbled as you try to say it, but there’s too much blood in your mouth. Just like the flickering gaze of a reptile, his eyes shift instantly to her. The desire that alights his face makes you want to throw up. She’s the one that fits the victimology. She’s the surrogate, the object of desire in his twisted fantasy.

“I think,” he says slowly, and you’re surprised you don’t see a serpentine tongue flicker between his lips. “That this next part will be more fun with an audience.”

Your vision shifts in and out of focus as you follow his movements. He shuffles just out of view of your peripheral vision and trying to force your eyes to see farther than they can exacerbates the splitting pain in your skull and face. Everything throbs. You can hardly see straight.

He returns with a syringe in hand. He holds it up for you to see. “Maybe I am weak,” he says bitterly. “But I’m the one in control and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He pushes the syringe into your arm and a slow, metallic heat creeps through your veins. Your limbs quickly grow heavy and your senses begin to dull.

Behind you, Emily pulls at her restraints. “Hey! What are you giving her? Leave her alone. You don’t want her, you want me.”

A choked laugh escapes the unsub as he cuts the zip ties at your ankles. You want to kick out at him and knock that smug look off of his face but the signals from your brain are cut off. Your body won’t follow the command your mind is ordering due to the drugs scrambling your system. Your eyelids are heavy. You want to close them. The unsub recognizes this and slaps at your face. “No, no. You can’t close your eyes, now. You’ve got a show to watch.” His lips twist into a sickeningly delighted smile. He slips a key from his pocket and undoes both sets of cuffs keeping you bound to the chair. You slump forward against him and he catches your weight easily. He wraps his arms around your waist and grunts as he hoists you over his shoulder. There’s static coursing through your limbs and despite every wish and desire to lift even a finger, your limbs don’t cooperate.

You slide off of him like rain down a windowpane, though instead of coming to a gentle stop you hit the ground like a stone thrown into a pond; all of your weight crashing down. Your head rattles against the wall and stars explode across your vision once more.

Emily calls your name and you try to focus on that. You blink and her form comes into focus. She’s bound in the same manner that you were in a chair exactly like yours. There’s blood staining her clothes, her blouse cut to ribbons and her pant leg tattered from where he slit it open with a knife; the same knife he used to cut into skin. Blood drips onto the floor.

She smiles at you and her gaze is so tender as her eyes meet yours. “Whatever he does to me, it is not your fault.” She’s soothing you. She’s about to endure more torture and she’s trying to comfort you.

You want to speak, to tell her you’re sorry, that you love her. You want to stand, to untie her and take her to safety. Most of all you want to put that unsub in the ground. A single tear leaks from your eye as The Chameleon wheels a tray table near Emily. The soft eyes she reserved for you steel upon seeing him.

He picks up a scalpel, his fingers gentle as he curls them around it; a stark contrast to the violence he inflicts with it. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

Emily licks her lips and raises her chin to look him in the eye, defiant in the face of danger. “I’ve already come back from the dead once before. At least if you’re successful, I know whose ass I’m haunting first.” She narrows her brown eyes to slits. “Come on, lizard boy. Let’s dance.”

•

Tears leak down your cheeks as you’re forced to watch what he does to her. She continues to taunt him, but her voice has grown weak. She’s losing too much blood.

“I wonder,” Emily says, her breathing labored. She lifts her gaze to meet the unsub’s. “You love that knife.” She inclines her chin toward the blade in his hand and his fingers twitch. “Tell me, is it because you can’t get up? Are our mommy issues too severe?”

A wild scream tears from his throat as he backhands her. A sharp grunt of pain leaves her lips but no scream. She sheds no tears for him. She’ll show no fear to him and allow him to feed off of her emotions like he did with his other victims, but he knows she must be feeling the weight of the torture, of the exhaustion settling in.

Her voice is tired, but her words are dagger tipped. “You’re not a man,” she spits blood on the ground, her teeth stained with it as she bares them at him. “You’re just a coward, a little boy missing mommy’s hand to guide him through your pathetic, wayward life.” Each word is sharp and articulated, a needle digging a little deeper and deeper into his flesh with each cutting syllable.

“Enough!” he bellows, spittle flying from his mouth as he lifts his arm. In one swift downward motion, he plunges the scalpel into her thigh.

She screams, her voice ragged and raw. A panicked sound bubbles in your throat, but the drugs overpower your ability to call out to her. Your fingers twitch as you try to summon any amount of strength to them, but to no avail. You can’t move them anymore that. You try to wiggle your toes and only feel a tinge of movement from them. Tears leak down your cheeks and drip off of your chin. The tear stains left behind are cold overtop of the dried blood smeared across your face from your broken nose, still throbbing with pain.

Emily sits hunched over, her shoulders heave with shuddering breaths. She’s breathing. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive. The thought plays on repeat in your mind. If she dies, there is no place this slimy, spineless creature can hide where you wouldn’t be able to find him.

A strangled moan rumbles from behind your lips as The Chameleon approaches Emily. There’s a smirk on his lips as he brushes his fingers along her jawline. Just as quickly as the smirk appears, it dissipates as he shoves her face away from him, disgust twisting his features.

“I think I’ve had enough of you,” he grits through clenched teeth. “You’re all the same. There is no place for women like you. I’m doing the world a favor by getting rid of you.” He picks up another knife off the tray table and moves to stand behind Emily, knife poised beneath her throat. His shifting eyes fall on you and his smile returns. “I hope you’ve enjoyed the show.”

You feel your brow pinch as a wash of emotion floods through you. Your hand twitches and you manage to ball it into a fist, but you can’t force much more than that.

“Emi—” your tongue lolls inside your mouth and you can’t get her name out but it’s enough to get her attention. Her wavering brown eyes fall on yours and you hope she can feel your full apology and profession of love in your eyes as you await the inevitable.

“I love you,” she mouths and a sob shudders free from your own.

A single gunshot cracks through the air like a whip.

As the unsub slumps to the ground, Derek’s hulking frame comes into view. “He’s down!” He calls as he holsters his weapon and rushes to Emily. His hand moves to the knife in her leg.

“Don’t!” Emily warns. “Let the medics handle it. The keys to the cuffs are in his pocket.”

As Derek squats beside the unsub Hotch and Spencer clamber down the stairs, spilling into the room.

“We need medics,” Derek says to them, eyes filled with concern. “We need them now.”

“Copy that,” Spencer states as he presses against his earpiece and relays the information.

Hotch holsters his gun and rushes to your side. Crouching down, his hands smooth your hair back from your face to inspect the damage.

“Can you hear me?” he says. You blink heavily as his face comes in and out of focus. He repeats the question and says your name. He’s asking you to talk to him, but you can’t.

“He injected her with something,” Emily says weakly as Derek works to uncuff her. “A sedative or a paralytic, I don’t know. She can’t move. She can’t, she can’t—” Emily’s eyes flutter and roll back in her head. Your eyes widen as she slumps forward. Derek catches her before she can face plant the concrete and risk dislodging the scalpel sticking out of her thigh before the medics can do their job to ensure she’s not at risk of bleeding out, if she wasn’t already.

Your hand twitches, fingers jerking against your palm as a sound of desperation eeks past your still lips. Hotch presses his hand into yours and squeezes. His hard eyes meet yours and there’s pain and understanding in them. He’s born witness to seeing the love of his life killed by an unsub. It was something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. He had to hope that Emily would survive what she’d endured here tonight. He squeezes all of that hope into your palm as the medics crash down the steps, backboards and kits at the ready.

“She’ll be okay,” Hotch promises, though there’s a hint of doubt on the edge of his words. “You’ll be okay.”

As the medics make way and his hand slips free from yours, you can only hope and pray that what he says is true.

•

A gentle beeping is the first thing you hear as your senses slowly creep back to life. The sound is soft, but each punctuated tone sends a pulse of pain to the space behind your eyes.

Your eyes crack open and you squeeze them shut again as the bright white of the fluorescent lighting blinds you.

“Shit,” you hiss. Your voice is hoarse.

“Hey, you!” greets a female voice. Penelope’s voice.

“Too bright,” you grumble.

“Oh! Hold on!” Her heels click against the tile of the hospital floor, a switch flicks, and the light behind your eyelids darkens. You feel the relief immediately though the bruising around your eyes and throbbing pain reverberating through your nose and cheeks starts to overwhelm your senses as you become more alert.

You crack one eye and Penelope’s bright face comes into view. Her pink cat eared headband matches her glasses frames and lipstick. Her smile reaches her eyes and that only just eases some of the anxiety that floods your system, the only other thing you’re able to feel besides the pain. If Emily was dead, Penelope wouldn’t be able to look you in the eye right now.

“I need to see her,” you say, sitting up and immediately regretting it. The room spins and your hand flies to your head, fingers pressed against your temple in a poor attempt to stop the whirling sensation.

“Sweetie, oh my God, don’t—” she stands up and crosses the room, but you’re already pushing the sheets back.

You curse as you rip the IV from your arm, the tape holding it in place ripping out the hairs on your arm. Garcia tries to take hold of your hands, but you bury them inside the folds of the hospital gown as your fingers feel for the numerous electrodes tacked to your chest. Hooking the tips of your fingers around the wire once you find a place to bunch them together, one swift tug is all it takes to dislodge them. The machine beside the bed flat lines as it no longer receives your heart rate.

“Honey please don’t make me—” Her face scrunches as you move to stand. She sticks her arms out to block you from doing so “Oh, you’re going to make me, ok— Derek! Hotch!”

Her shouts are like a drill through your skull. You blink and black spots your vision as it blurs. The pain in your face is so intense, but you have to push through it. If Emily could endure what she did, you can push through this to get to wherever the hell they were keeping her in this goddamn hospital.

Hotch and Derek burst into the room, eyes frantic and scanning the scene. Morgan swiftly cuts through the space, swerving in front of Penelope and taking you by the arms. Garcia may have hesitated to stop you in your tracks but Derek has no reservations whatsoever.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asks sternly.

Two nurses rush into the room and Hotch placates them with a gesture implying things are under control . He says something to them in a low voice and they glance your way once before nodding and leaving the space.

“I need to see her,” you say as you push against Derek, but in your current state you may as well be trying to push the Leaning Tower of Pisa upright.

His grip around your wrists is firm, but gentle; his hands placed just above the bandages from where the cuffs had bitten into your skin.

“She’s not awake yet,” Derek says. His features soften as he looks into your panic filled eyes. “She’s stable. She’ll be okay, and I promise you that the minute she wakes up I will take you to see her.”

“But Derek—”

He clicks his tongue. “No buts. You’re no use to her if you’re not well. You nearly overdosed on the drugs that man gave you. He broke your nose so badly, they had to re-break it to set it correctly. You have a concussion. Are you hearing me? You need to get your ass back in that bed.”

“Honey, listen to him.” Garcia adds, her voice equal parts soothing and concerned. “You can barely stand.”

You squeeze your eyes shut as hot tears well in your eyes. They slip down your cheeks and seep into the medical tape plastered to your face and nose. You draw in a shuddering breath as Derek guides you back into the bed. He presses a warm hand to your shoulder before stepping back and putting an arm around Garcia.

“Come on, mama, let’s go get a coffee while the nurses get her hooked back in.”

Penelope’s mouth drops into an o-shape as if she’s about to protest.

“I’ll stay with her,” Hotch assures her. “Go. I’ll call if anything changes.” That comforts her enough to let Derek steer her out of the room and into the hallway.

As the sound of their footsteps fade away, Hotch exhales a heavy sigh. The heels of his loafers click against the tile as he crosses the room and takes the chair Penelope had been occupying at your bedside.

“How are you feeling?” he asks as he reaches over and presses the call button to summon the nurses.

“Like someone cracked me in the face with a sledgehammer.”

A hint of a smile passes over your supervisor’s lips and a ghost of a laugh passes your own. You wince as the motion sends a new wave of pain rippling throughout your face.

“How bad is it?” you ask.

“The doctors say it should heal fine. They’re baffled that the break didn’t do any damage to your septum. The bruising will take time but you won’t need surgery so—”

You lift your eyes to meet his. “Not me, Hotch.”

His lips press into a firm line. “She lost a lot of blood,” he says after a moment. “In total, he cut her about fifteen times before stabbing her. She was right to tell Morgan not to pull the scalpel out. It was dangerously close to her femoral artery. The unsub was either incredibly calculated in avoiding it or it was dumb luck that saved her.”

Your brow pinches as his words sink in. “What was his name?”

Hotch’s chin dips in response to your question. “Carson Peters. He was a Vet Tech on the perimeter of the geographic profile. We never even interviewed him.”

“The whole time we never knew his name,” you breathe.

“If I know Emily, I’m sure she came up with a few,” Hotch remarks, trying to lighten the mood.

Your lips twitch, but a smile doesn’t take shape. There is an entire slew of names you’d wanted to hurl at the unsub, to say anything that would have taken his attention off of Emily for even a second but you couldn’t because of the drugs he’d pumped into you. You squeeze your eyes shut as an image of him cutting Emily flashes through your mind.

Hotch says your name. You hear the deep tenor of his voice, but it’s as though you’re underwater. Emily’s cries of anguish echo in your ears.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper as a tear leaks from the corner of your eyes. “Emily, I’m sorry.”

A firm hand slips into yours and you gasp, flinching from the contact. The image distorts and vanishes. You open your eyes and take a deep breath, dropping your gaze onto the hand in yours. You lift your eyes to meet Hotch’s hard stare. His fingers squeeze around yours and he nods.

“You’re safe,” he assures you. “Carson Peters is dead. He can’t hurt you, Emily, or anyone else ever again.”

Your fingers twitch around his as you blink back the onslaught of tears that want to pour out of you. “I couldn’t do anything.”

Hotch’s features soften. “I know.”

“I couldn’t stop him.”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

You swallow the growing lump in your throat. Hotch squeezes your hand again, intentionally doing so to keep your mind from wandering. He’s keeping you grounded.

Your voice cracks when you speak. “I felt so helpless.”

“I know,” Hotch states as he levels his gaze on hours. His brown eyes waver as he speaks. “Witnessing a loved one’s abuse and not being able to do anything about it is a torture all its own. In our positions we have the authority to do something about it and in most cases, we can. When we can’t,” he pauses and takes a deep breath. “It’s natural to play it over and over again, to wonder where you went wrong, to think that somewhere along the line you could’ve done something, anything, to change the outcome.” His brow lifts toward his hairline. “We will kill ourselves ruminating on the what ifs and what could have beens.”

We. He’s not just talking about you anymore. He’s talking about his past when the unsub George Foyet killed his wife, Haley. You’d joined the team several years after her murder, but you’d been briefed fully on the case. It was well known to everyone in the BAU.

It’s your turn to squeeze his hand and you realize how out of the ordinary this exchange is. You’re as close to Hotch as anyone else on the team, but he’s not usually the touchy-feely type; the occasional half hug or handshake sure, but this level of vulnerability is uncommon.

A nurse walks into the room and Hotch stands to greet her. He shakes her hand and introduces himself formally; name, rank, and title. Establishing credibility for what, you wonder. He speaks in low tones and after a moment the nurse looks at you before looking back at him. She nods her head and he thanks her before she exits the room.

“What was that about?” you ask.

“A favor,” he answers as the nurse guides a wheelchair into the room.

“Five minutes,” the nurse says, aiming a pointed look at Hotch.

“Understood.”

The nurse leaves and Hotch pushes the chair up to the edge of the bed. He slips a hand behind your back to help stabilize you as he extends his other hand for you to grab hold of.

“Where are we going?” you ask as you take the proffered hand. You groan as you sit up and your head spins. You swear you can feel every bone in your face throbbing as pain threatens to split you in two.

“To see Emily.”

Your heart swells. You look at Hotch, eyes widening. “I thought—”

“I told the nurse you’d stay put and allow them to do their jobs and help you if you were allowed to see her. Hence, the five minutes.”

“Five minutes,” you repeat, nodding your head.

Hotch smiles reassuringly. “Five minutes.”

Slowly, Hotch assists with the transition from bed to chair. The shift exhausts you and it sinks in just how weak you are. However, the prospect of seeing Emily keeps you alert enough to push through.

The trip to Emily’s hospital room is short. She’s two right turns and one long hallway away from yours. The door to her room is cracked when you arrive and JJ opens it as Hotch reaches for the door.

“Sweetie!” JJ smiles brightly at you, though her eyes are tired. She leans down to pull you in a gentle hug, minding your face as she does so.

Her eyes flit between you and Hotch. “She’s in and out of consciousness. They’ve got her on some pretty strong painkillers, but she’s going to be alright.”

“Are you ready?” Hotch asks.

Your heart hammers in your ears, but you nod your head and whisper, “Yes.”

JJ steps out of the way so Hotch can wheel you inside the room. You raise your chin to peer over the threshold and whimper upon seeing Emily, hand moving to cover your trembling lips. She lies still beneath the sheets, which are pulled up over her lap. Her arms sit atop the sheet, her left arm bandaged from above the elbow to her wrist. Bandages peek out from beneath her hospital gown. An oxygen cannula is fitted under her nose and butterfly bandages hold close the split in her eyebrow. Hotch puts the brake in place after wheeling you right up to her bedside. He places a gentle hand on your shoulder. “JJ and I will be right outside. Five minutes,” he says.

Your eyes don’t leave Emily. “I understand.”

When the door clicks shut you let the floodgates open. You take Emily’s hand in yours, minding the IV jutting out from it, and cradle it to your cheek. “I’m so sorry,” you sob. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t do anything to stop what he was doing to you.”

You blink away the stars that dot your vision as each sob sends an intense wave of pain through the break in your nose and bruising under your eyes.

Emily’s thumb sweeps slowly across your cheek. You take a shuddering breath and swallow your tears as you turn your attention to her. Her eyes crack open and a small smile ghosts her lips.

You gasp and choke back a sob. The smile that splits your face sends a burst of pain through your bones, but you don’t care. It doesn’t matter. You’d feel this pain and all that she endured to see her warm, brown eyes on yours like they are now. Her smile, despite the pain meds dulling her senses, reaches her eyes and they’re so bright. As you look into them, for a moment you’re no longer in the hospital. You’re on a bench overlooking the Potomac and the sun is setting; its golden rays falling over Emily’s face and her eyes changed from brown to liquid gold. It was then you knew you’d never love looking into someone’s eyes as much as you loved looking into hers, that you’d never love anyone as much as you loved her.

You blink once and you’re back in the hospital. “I’m so sorry,” you blubber and clutch her hand to your chest. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”

Her voice is hoarse when she speaks, but the way she says your name is as soothing as ever. She shushes you and presses her fingers into your skin as she grips your hand. “Shh, baby, honey, look at me.”

You swallow and try your best to still your quivering lip as you raise your eyes to hers. Hers are focused as she looks at you. Her perfectly manicured eyebrows arch toward her hairline as she inclines her head toward you. “There is nothing that you could’ve done that would’ve prevented this, and that is okay.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and shake your head in refusal.

“Hey,” Emily says, pulling you back in. “Look at me.”

You sniff and take a deep breath as you open your eyes. “If anything,” she adds. “Your being there saved my life. He drew out the torture because he had an audience. If you hadn’t been there, there’s a chance he would’ve killed me before the team got to him. Do you understand?”

Your gut response tells you that she’s right, and you have to fight the part of your brain that’s telling you otherwise.

Her hand slips out of yours and reaches to cup your face, keeping her palm along your jawline to avoid your injuries.

She smiles and gestures to herself with her other hand. “Most of this is superficial anyway. The knife he jammed into my thigh will scar and take a while to heal, but that’s the worst that was done to me. I was,” she presses her lips together as tears glisten in her eyes. “I was so worried about you.”

Something between a laugh and a sob escapes your lips. “We make quite a pair, don’t we?”

Emily laughs in turn, the sound enough to make your heart swell three times over. “At least we’ll be able to spend our recovery together,” she says hopefully.

You smirk and tilt your head, considering. “My place or yours?”

Just then the door creaks open and Hotch steps inside. He smiles. “Sorry to cut the reunion short, but if I don’t get you back, I think the charge nurse will have my gun and badge.”

You all share a laugh. As he fixes the brake on the wheelchair, Emily tugs your hand toward her mouth and places a soft kiss to the backs of your knuckles. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

You smile and nod as the tight feeling in your chest from before ebbs away. “Okay.”

As Hotch exits the room with you in tow, JJ hands you two cups of coffee. “For you and your watchdog,” she says with a nod towards Hotch.

You thank her and as Hotch pushes you back towards your room, you finally feel like things will be okay.

•

Two weeks later, you’re still on medical leave, but you feel as though you're getting back to normal. You’d been released from the hospital first and a few days later, Emily. Her apartment was bigger, so you’d gone to yours and with help from Penelope packed a bag. It was easier for you two to be in the same place knowing how often the team would be checking in.

Garcia had stayed over with you, helping you keep track of the medications the doctors had prescribed. She helped take care of Sergio too. The little guy had been all too happy to see you, weaving in between your legs and rubbing his furry head against your calves. When Emily returned home a few days later he couldn’t stop meowing. When she rested, he’d fall asleep beside her or curled up in her lap.

Just as expected, members of the team had been through in pairs, on their own, or as a whole. Penelope stopped in daily with coffees and pastries from the shop next to Emily’s building. Derek came by every other day, occasionally with Savannah when her work schedule allowed. She’d checked Emily’s wounds a few times from your insisting as you were worried about infection. Savannah assured you each time that Emily was and would continue to be fine so long as she kept up with changing her bandages and taking the antibiotics she’d been prescribed. Hotch had only visited once, which was unnecessary but still so kind of him. You knew he often stayed late working to ensure everyone else could go home on time. He did this all while balancing his responsibility as a father and the fact that he sacrificed a little bit more of his personal time just to check in on you two meant so much. Rossi had sent homemade Italian with Penelope or Derek. This week you’d been given enough carbonara to feed an army.

You’re fixing two bowls now for you and Emily, a late dinner as you’d both fallen asleep around 3pm and napped until 7pm no thanks to the pain medicines that kept you two on relatively similar sleep schedules. You shred some parmesan and sprinkle it over the top before sticking a fork into each.

“I’ve got dinner!” you call as you make your way back to the bedroom.

“Thank god, I’m starving.” You push open the door with your hip and place the bowls on Emily’s bedside table.

You lean down and kiss her, wincing slightly. The bruising around your eyes and cheekbones has gone down dramatically, but your nose was still bound and held in place by a splint and medical tape. The doctors say in about a week or so, it should be healed completely but to still exercise caution with day to day activities.

Emily rests on top of the covers. Her hair is up and out of her face in a loose ponytail, pieces of which had fallen out while sleeping and now stick to and around her face in various places. You try your best to smooth them down before cupping her chin in your hand. You smile and stroke your fingers along the smooth skin of her jaw before dropping your hands to pull the throw blanket down off of her waist, exposing her legs, bare except for the plaid pajama shorts she wears and bandages wrapped around her thigh.

She shivers in response to the air against her legs. “Sheesh, give a girl some warning!” she protests and you throw her a cheeky grin.

You open the bedside drawer and retrieve the supplies to clean and dress her wound. “We should finish the rest of that movie,” you suggest as you climb onto the bed to kneel beside her. Using a small pair of scissors, you carefully snip away the bandages to reveal the square gauze pad covering the wound. “I want to know how it ends and we keep falling asleep.”

Emily snorts. “That’ll happen when we both take narcotics before bed thinking we’ll make it to the end.”

“Yeah, but,” you remove the gauze and inspect the incision, searching for any signs of infection around the twelve carefully placed stitches. As you squeeze a bit of the antibacterial ointment onto your finger and gently rub it over the spiky black threads of the sutures, you can’t help but think of how much it resembles the caterpillars that used to invade the trees in your backyard as a kid, a story Emily did not care for your retelling when you first did this. “It shouldn’t be so hard to make it through a two hour movie.”

“I still can’t believe you’ve never seen The Parent Trap,” Emily says, bristling as your fingers rub over a particularly sensitive area.

You apologize as you lay a fresh gauze pad over the wound. Your fingers move quickly as you unroll and wind a new roll of bandages to keep the gauze in place. When you finish, you wipe your hands off and gently massage the skin around her thigh knowing it helps to stimulate blood flow to the area.

Emily moans in response to the treatment. Her head lolls to the side and she peeks at you from behind long lashes. “I can’t wait to show you how grateful I am for your incredible nursing skills.”

You arch a brow at her as a smile quirks at the corner of your mouth. “Down girl,” you tease playfully.

Emily bends her opposite leg, raising her heel to curve around your body. She pokes her toes up under your tee shirt and your back stiffens as they touch your skin. You reach behind your back and grab her by the ankle, chastising her as you laugh and place it back on the mattress. “Emily!”

“What??” she asks, laughter tumbling from her full lips.

“We’ve not been cleared yet for that!”

She pouts in response and you clamber over her, carefully, so as not to disturb the injuries of her leg. You straddle her waist and lean down to place a soft kiss along the curve of her jaw. “Trust me, I want to get back to that as much as you do.” Your eyes drop to the swell of her breasts, her nipples poking through the thin fabric of her camisole. “But you and I both know neither one of us are capable of having gentle sex, and I don’t think our doctors would be happy if we did anything to make this take any longer than it already is.”

Emily groans in frustration. “Stupid doctors and their stupid orders.”

You laugh as you lean down to grab your dinners off her nightstand. Carefully, you lift your leg and roll over her body to your side of the bed; passing Emily her bowl as you do so. You reach down and pull the throw blanket up over both of you as you snuggle into the uninjured half of her body. She turns and places a kiss on your temple as she grabs the remote and clicks on the tv.

As she twirls pasta around on her fork, she turns to you and smiles. “I’m glad you’re here with me,” she says, eyes twinkling.

You smile in turn. “I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than with you here, right now, at this moment in time.”

“I love you,” she says.

“Not as much as I love you,” you answer.

“Impossible,” Emily promises.

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jarofstyles · 3 months

Text

Golden

Hello and welcome to Verboten (BFF!Dadrry) part 10!

I hope you enjoy this fluffy smutty piece because the next few will be... interesting ;)

Check out our Patreon for early access and 100+ exclusive writings.

Verboten Masterlist

WC- 2.5k

Warnings- mentions of anxiety, smut, breeding kink, age gap, daddy kink

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Y/N did not want to leave Italy.

She had fallen in love with the people, the food, the weather, the culture- and Harry.

That was pretty clear at this point.

His hand held her thigh under the table as they dined outside under the covered balcony, the sea air ruffling the hair that had escaped her pearly claw clip. They only had 2 days left and while she had been trying to focus on the time they had left, it was only more daunting to realize they had to come home and deal with their relationship. Telling the people who needed to know.

Lia.

Y/N had felt an awful pit in her stomach as she answered Lia’s messages every so often, thankfully her best friend being distracted by her own girlfriend to worry too much about texting her best friend. For once, she was relieved for the lack of bros over hoes.

She was galavanting across the Italian coast with her best friend’s father. Sucking him off on the yacht he had chartered, clinging to his body in the salty water, letting him kiss away tears from laughing too hard and one too many drinks. His hands had almost constantly been on her and she had welcomed, no, encouraged each and every bit of it.

Her teeth marked Harry’s golden skin, the Italian summer sun having left its mark on him in a delicious way that had Y/N almost feral. Her nails, that he had paid for being redone just a few days ago, leaving scratch marks on his back and also soothing him to sleep on a rocking boat yesterday while he had rested his head in her lap as she read.

They weren’t just having sex. They were in love. This was a relationship, something that would be seen as the ultimate betrayal. But Y/N wasn’t going to give it up.

Her whole life, she had been the one to give things up for people. She always tried to take care of everyone around her, her family, her friends, even strangers. She’d been the constant shoulder to cry one and the one ready to brave the world and her own fears for other people. So when Harry gave her a little taste of how good it felt to be taken care of, she fell in love with it. Albeit guiltily, she was letting him do the things he wanted for her- and she’d never seen him shine like this.

Harry had always liked taking care of people, but he was far more selective. He had a big heart, yes, but it had stayed particularly guarded. With the money he had, the people he’d met, it had been an early lesson for him to know that yes, he could help but he had to cherry pick the people who would be actually deserving. Y/N clicked all those boxes. She provided him with a level of comfort, pleasure and affection that he’d always dreamt of. She allowed him to spoil her more and more each day, but he was eager to do more. As many times as he could admit his adoration for her, he wanted her dripping with diamonds and the things she wanted to wear, never to worry about a thing again. She’d worked hard in her life and god damn it, she fucking deserved it. She said thank you, smothering him with kisses with every surprise he had given her, every little fucking thing, and it made him feel so good it was ridiculous. From a cute pen he’d seen in a market stall to the yacht surprise, each little thing garnered a excited, sweet reaction from her. So he wanted to do more.

“I know that we only have our two days left…” He stroked over her thigh, pads of his fingertips tracing the bend of her knee and back up. “But we’re going to come back. I promise. I’ve got the house here and I can work remote…” His face was soft, understanding that she didn’t want to go back home. It was such a welcome relief being here, so needed and refreshing that all it could possibly do is strengthen their foundation.

“I know.” She replied, placing her silverware down before taking a sip of her drink. “It’s just… I know that it’s probably going to be ugly for a while back home. Just as a general rule. I don’t want to hide at all, I’m not ashamed of being with you but I know there’s going to be a lot of blowback.” Y/N tried to explain it without it seemingly like she was backing out of their relationship. That wasn’t the case at all. “I know I’m going to lose some friends over this. And maybe I do deserve it. Maybe I shouldn’t have made a move on you, but it felt right. I needed to do it, and I don’t regret it at all. It’s necessary growth for us, and I can understand that but I just feel… anxious, I guess. To see who chooses to stay and who chooses to go.”

That was something Harry hadn’t really thought about, and as awful as he felt about it- he was more relieved that she said she didn’t regret it. Of course he didn’t want any blowback at all. “It’s tough, isn’t it my love?” He sighed sadly, gently grabbing her hand and bringing it up to his mouth. His lips pressed against her knuckles, the subtle sound of them disconnecting making her smile. “I know. It’s a risk, and I’m going to upset my daughter but you know… I want to be happy. I deserve love, and so do you. You’re of age, we’ve discussed a lot, it isn’t like we’re throwing this in anyone’s face to upset them. If our happiness matters so little to everyone ese, perhaps it wasn’t a good fit for them regardless.”

The only person’s reaction either of them really cared about was Lia’s. Harry was prepared to catch the brunt of her explosive temper. He was a grown man and he had been divorced for a bit. He understood that his choice in romantic partner was going to upset her, and he didn’t blame her. Neither of them could, because they both were rational and knew that it was a fucked up situation. He just hoped that they could work through it. He’d tried to pick Y/N’s brain about it but she seemed to understand her fate in this.

Lia wasn’t going to forgive easily, nor would their friendship ever be the same, but she was hoping that with time, they could mend what was inevitably about to be smashed up. Make a mosaic out of the pieces that were bound to shatter. Harry meant so much to her already and she couldn’t give up the chance of having a lifetime sort of love. Her romantic heart couldn’t handle it.

“You know…” Her lips tilted up. “I have always been a romantic. I always wanted love but I pretended I didn’t. I thought… maybe it would help me avoid being hurt. I’ve been afraid of having my heart broken for so long, I never was able to properly hand my heart over to anyone. They could maybe touch it, but it was under lockdown. It was really weird when…” She licked the wine from her lip, looking at his slight sunburned nose as she found her words. “It was really weird for me when I found myself wanting to hand it over to you. Like I knew you’d keep it safe. I’m still adjusting, I’m still learning but I feel so safe with you, it’s hard not to just give in.”

That was music to his ears. His smile was brighter than the sun when she finished, his hand placing hers on his cheek as he pressed tiny kisses to her inner wrist. It was hard not to pull her into his lap, but he had to keep some decorum in this situation. His girl felt safe enough to hand him her heart, and that boost it gave him almost sent his own beating chest to the moon. “It’s safe with me. Always. I won’t let anything happen to it, not from my end.” He couldn’t promise nothing else in life wouldn't hurt her- but he would be damned if he didn't try.

—--

“Go ahead, baby. You can have what you want.” His hot palms held the backside of her thighs as she lifted the sundress over her body, breasts spilling out as it was tossed onto floor. Harry’s cock was thick in his palm, wet from her saliva as she had gotten on her knees for him as soon as they’d entered the living room of the villa. Sucking with fervor, the younger girl had gotten him slick with her spit before he pulled her up to let her climb into his lap.

“I want you.” Y/N whispered, hand going between them to angle his cock against her properly. Harry’s groan was motivation as she slipped down, only taking a bit at a time as she shakily exhaled her whine. “I want you to take me, and keep me. I want to be your girl, Daddy. Please.” Her hands held his shoulders, keeping steady as her cunt sunk down on his length. “Want t’be your girl and I want you to come home from work and love on me, want you to text me to be naked in your room for you, want to make you dinner- I just want to make you happy.”

Harry was nearly speechless as her whiny demands, her true heart showing as she squeezed his shoulders and finally got seated fully on his cock. “Y-yeah? S’what my girl really wants?” It was like the world had answered his prayers. He was buried inside of her hot cunt, her mouth saying all the words he’s been itching to hear for a long while now. “Want to give that t’you. Should just live with me, hm?” He cooed. “Move right into my bed so you’re always there for me, and m’always there for you. I belong to you just as much.” His head rested against the couch, gently helping her lift up and slide back down slowly on his cock. Finding her pace, he wasn’t going to complain.

“I-Should I?” She asked, eyes wide and hazy as she sunk fully back down, full to the brim with his cock in her tummy. “You’d want that?” It wasn’t probably the place to have this discussion but hey- he wasn’t going to deny it anymore. The idea of her going home to her place when his own place was empty sans himself, when she made it feel like a real home? He wanted her there. Possessive, needy, perhaps he was, but he really did want her there. It was moving quickly but it felt like maybe he needed it. No more waiting.

“Mhm. You’re with me a lot but… Stay with me all the time, baby. Want my girl around, want to live with you.. Never want t’see you leave.” His lips connected with hers as she began to grind slowly on his cock, his hands sliding up to cup each side of her ass. Her kiss back was just as messy as her cunt, the feeling of being full making it hard to focus on anything but how good she felt and the feelings swarming her at the idea of moving in. “Move all your things in… Let daddy buy you more pretty things for your closet. Let me clean it out… let Daddy take care of you, find you a job you really like.” Harry knew he was pathetically whipped for this woman, but he had no intention of hiding that from her. Y/N deserved to know how loved she was.

“Y-Yeah, please. I want to be with you all the time.” Her nails dug into his skin a little as she bounced a few times on his prick, making them both moan. “Just want to be your girl, Daddy. Want to be yours in every way, want to smell like you, sleep in your bed, I want to- I want you.” Her confirmation was everything to him, sitting him up as he beamed. His strength was used as an advantage, turning them over so she was laid on the couch and he could look down at her.

“Good. You are- you’re Daddy’s perfect fucking girl, and m’gonna spoil you rotten.” He spread her legs open, looking at the mess where they connected. Her poor cunt was still swollen from this morning but she took it like a camp, shuddering when his thumb brushed her clit. “God, handing yourself over to me… Love it so much. M’gonna take such good care of you, baby.” His promise was true. Her hand clutched over her breast, nodding up at him as her body tightened up slightly. The stimulation and new angle made it hard for her to breathe in the best of ways.

His thrusts were deep and full of promise. Groaning through his teeth as he watched her underneath him, watching her face twist with pleasure and her stomach jump with his thrusts, he knew he didn’t ever want to see a body other than hers under him again. “S’my perfect girl. Going to wake up to you every day and see that perfect face, make you just as addicted to me as I am to you and this perfect body. You’ve ruined me.” Y/N had made him a man on his knees, weak for a woman when he swore he wouldn’t again. Only this time, it was worse, and he didn’t fucking care. He’d give it all up for her. “M’keeping you. Y’know that, baby? You belong to me, and m’gonna give you everything you’ve ever wanted…” one of hus hands fell down to her stomach. “Remember what we talked about? Hm? What did you want daddy to give you- What did you beg for?”

Y/N got even more wet, mewling at the pressure on her stomach as she remembered exactly what it was. “A baby- I want you to give me a baby, Daddy.” She whimpered. “Y-You said, you said you’d get me pregnant and I want it. I want it, I want you to breed me and keep me full and- oh, fuck.” Y/N’s begging was cut off with his deep thrusts gaining speed. He’d lifted her just a bit, abandoning her clit to pull her lower body up just a bit with his hands. Her eyes watered, feeling his cock punch right against the spot she had desperately needed with the adjustment, hands flailing to grab on to the couch as she got fucked.

Harry liked the sound of that. Far too much.

“I’ll give it to you, baby. I’ll give you the pretty house, pretty ring, pretty babies in you… You’re driving me mad. God, I fucking love you. Stay with me, forever.” His face was beaded with sweat as he fucked into her deep, imagining those very things. She agreed to the house, moving in with him. He was sure that would be the direction they were going in. He wouldn’t let her go.

Regardless of how much it could cost him.

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starboyshoyo · 1 year

Text

The Summer After Graduation

Characters: Kalim Al-Asim, Deuce Spade, Trey Clover, Epel Felmier x fem!reader (separately)

Fandom: Twisted Wonderland

Genre: Fluff, domestic

Warnings: suggestive jokes, nothing inappropriate.

It’s the summer after graduation and the beginning of the rest of your life. After moving to your boyfriend’s hometown and living with his family, you begin to realize that there may be a future in Twisted Wonderland for you after all.

Part One (HERE) || Part Two (Malleus, Silver, Sebek)

Four years have passed since the Dark Mirror beckoned you forth. Your time at Night Raven College and as the Ramshackle prefect have come to an end. You and your high school sweetheart have made the decision to move back to their hometown and build a new life together, starting with the summer after graduation…

Kalim Al-Asim

‘The Asims are a generous family that love and cherish their son and future daughter-in-law. In tradition with our past, you and your lover will spend the summer at Port Ormos, a seaside village off the coast of the Land of Scalding Sands. Don’t worry about transport or living situation- it will all be taken care of for you. We love you, Kalim, and we’re so proud of you for graduating!’

That’s what the letter from Kalim’s mother and father to him read. Right after graduating from NRC, you and your boyfriend were swept up in a gaggle of servants and guards. Jamil had packed all of your belongings already, and a bashful Kalim informed you that you were on your way to something he referred to as the ‘Asim pre-honeymoon vacation.’ It’s a tradition in my family for newlyweds to spend some time together at the village, he laughed. I guess they were just super excited to know I had someone as wonderful as you by my side, and got a little hasty! I hope you don’t mind.

With that, you were off through the magic mirror and on your way to your new summer home.

Kalim’s parents weren’t kidding when they said everything would be taken care of. Not only had servants transported all of your things neatly and carefully to the Asims’ manor overlooking the town, but a parade and festival had been thrown in honor of your arrival. Why, you might ask? Because the Asims owned the entirety of Port Ormos. You knew they were wealthy, but this was a whole other level.

Immediately upon arrival, Kalim was dragging you into various shops and restaurants around town. Each time you walked through a door, you would be greeted warmly by eager staff and ushered in to have a look at their finest goods. Point to any one you like, and an attendant will be by your side, packing it into a bag for you or loading it up to carry it back to the manor. Only the best for Lady Asim, you hear managers whisper to their employees.

In fact, it seemed like everyone in the harbor town treated you like you were part of the Asim family already, even though you were an ordinary student at Night Raven College not even a week ago. For the duration of the trip, you would take on the family name and honored titles. You don’t miss the happy, flustered grin that Kalim gives you every time someone calls you Miss Asim or Lady Asim. You’ve even caught him browsing jewelry shops for rings on more than one occasion… What could he be planning?

Jamil, as usual, had been chosen to accompany you and Kalim on this trip. However, he wasn’t staying with you two in the manor- he and his own family had been given a beachfront home to stay in. While Jamil did check on you and Kalim from time to time, he mostly gave you your space, and for good reason. His eyes were still scarred from the time he walked in on you two in the dressing room… He’ll stay in his own home, thank you very much.

Mornings in the harbor town with your boyfriend are much like those in Scarabia dorm, but with a lot more privacy. Kalim likes to sleep in late, and get up whenever he feels like it. So you two will be cuddled up in bed together for a while, even after waking up. If you do try to leave early you’ll be met with arms looped around your waist, and a sleepy Kalim mumbling in your ear, five more minutes? By the time you manage to roll out of bed, it’ll be noon.

Your room in the mansion is just as luxurious as you could expect from the Asim family- a king-size bed with crisp white sheets, sheer curtains, and a gorgeous view of the sprawling port town far below. Breakfast consists of light sandwiches and wraps to start off your day, plus fresh-squeezed fruit juices or coffees to compliment the meal. It’s all cooked by Jamil of course, and brought up to your rooms by him as well. The Al-Asims weren’t taking a risk with the food prepared for you or Kalim- they would never forgive themselves if the newest member of their family were to get sick.

Kalim is a very spontaneous person, one of the reasons you love him so much. Every day he’ll think of something new and fun for you to do. The world is his oyster, and you’re the pearl! You could stroll along the docks, holding hands and greeting every sailor along the way, or browse the street markets for artisan goods. Any time you stop to look at something for more than a few seconds, Kalim will drape himself over you and join you in ogling it over your shoulder. Anything fascinating to you is interesting to him too! There won’t be a boring day anywhere in your summer.

When your time in Port Ormos comes to a close, you can’t help but feel a little sad. You and Kalim will spend one final day around town, enjoying your time together. Another festival is held in your honor- this time, in the evening- and Kalim will bring you out onto the balcony of your room to watch fireworks being launched into the sky.

When the first round of sparks explode high above your head, you’ll notice he has a ring box in his hand. He even might trip a little as he gets down on one knee, he’s so hasty in trying to get everything right.

I know this was supposed to be just a little taste of what life together is supposed to be like, but I want this every day with you, for the rest of my life! You bring me so much happiness and my family just adores you, too- not to mention, we’ll get to come back here! So please… won’t you marry me?”

Deuce Spade

Moving into Deuce’s childhood apartment after graduation was a quiet but well-managed affair. You didn’t have much to transport anyways. However, formal introductions would have to be made when you arrive in the Kingdom of Hearts- you had never met Deuce’s mother before. You already knew what a generous and kind person she would be, though. Deuce spoke highly of her at all times. Her greetings to you are warm, and Deuce’s cheeks are dusted with pink. He looked as if his heart was going to explode- The two people he loved most in the world were finally meeting! Everything was all coming together now.

Deuce’s family’s apartment is cozy and well-kept. The shelves are dusted and everything seems so homey. Looking down the hallways, you notice small, faded marks low on the wall- crayon scribbles. Frayed edges of carpets and photos on the walls make it clear- your boyfriend had been raised in such a loving environment. It’s not very big, Deuce tells you with an embarrassed look, but it’s the best we can do at the moment. I promise we’ll get a bigger home in the future. You look back at him with love in your eyes. It’s perfect, Deuce. Just take things one day at a time- little steps.

Though Deuce tried his best in school, he wasn’t able to make it onto the honor roll. Still, the moment his mother saw his diploma from Night Raven College, she gasped and pulled him into a tight hug. His diploma and graduation photo were framed and hung on the wall- and with your permission, Deuce’s mother would frame and hang yours as well, right next to his. You and Deucey are first in our family to graduate, she would tell you proudly, admiring the papers on the wall. I’m so proud. Thank you for looking after him…

Well, you could say the same back to her.

Within just a few days of returning home, Deuce had to start work. He had been hired in a mechanic’s shop halfway across town, and was gone on long shifts for most of the day. He’s not around much, but when he is, he tries his best to spend time with you. No matter what he’ll kiss you good morning and good night, even if you’re asleep when he leaves or arrives home. On his rare days off, he’ll make sure to take you on a date, even if it’s just eating a meal together in the park on a picnic blanket. He’ll bring you small gifts from the shops around town, from extra tips he’s collected over time. You will never feel unloved under his watch.

During the day while Deuce is out working, you help his mother around the apartment. She’s perpetually cheerful when her son is around but sometimes, when it’s just the two of you at home, you’ll notice her having to sit down often and rub aching joints. The poor woman has worked herself to the bone trying to care for Deuce by herself all those years. When you ask her about it, she’ll confide in you- I haven’t told Deuce about this, she says with a rueful smile. I don’t want to worry him. But I’m so happy my little Deucey found someone so lovely and kind. I’d be proud to call you my daughter.

After that conversation, you write a letter to Riddle Rosehearts- an old friend of yours who is studying to become a magical doctor. He agrees to have a look at Ms. Spade, and give her a trial medicine he’s been working on, free of charge- hopefully it will help with the pain. Deuce’s mother tries to protest- There’s no way I can accept such generosity! But in the end, she caves. She’s not quite ready to tell Deuce yet, but that’s alright. It’s just like you told him; things might take a while- we’ll start with little steps.

Trey Clover

Living with your boyfriend’s family is hard work, but rewarding. Trey is expected to inherit the Clover family bakery when he gets older, and he works tirelessly to keep business up and running. His parents had doubts about you moving in at first- since the Rose Kingdom is on an island, they weren’t able to meet you previously. But with a bit of hard work and effort, they’re willing to look past your inexperience and see you for the wonderful person their son has come to love.

During the day, when Trey is busy with work, his mother or father will help teach you the basics of running the shop- how to work the ovens and give orders to the employees, as well as use more advanced equipment they use to make the delectable treats they sell. Don’t mind the little ones when they ask for a sweet, Trey’s father tells you, sending a disapproving glance at his two younger children. Chances are they’ve already stolen one or ten from the back counter when you weren’t watching.

Speaking of Trey’s younger siblings, they absolutely love you. His little brother has a bit of a puppy crush on you and will hang around the bakery when you’re working there. He’ll often have a little gift in his hand when he returns from playing outside. Look, I found this flower on the trail near the stables!

Trey’s younger sister is just as adoring of you as her brother, but in a different way. She’s so used to roughhousing with two boys, and is super excited to have a sister around now! She’ll chat your ear off about anything and everything, and is always willing to help you out if you don’t know what to do with certain ingredients or bakery customs.

Though Trey works long hours, the Clovers live above their bakery shop and he never has to deal with long travel times. That leaves him with a decent amount of time to spend with you. He’ll often ask you to accompany him on strolls around the village, where he goes out of his way to help neighbors. You learn that Trey has a bit of a reputation as a heartthrob in the small community where they live- they’re so excited to know someone has finally won his affections! The town’s golden boy is growing up so fast…

At home above the shop, you and Trey are mostly left alone to your devices. His parents trust you enough not to monitor your every move- but Trey’s father has one rule. You two sleep in separate rooms, and no closing the door when you’re in the bedroom together! We have enough little sprogs running around underfoot already. You have to promise him that no funny business will be going on in the home. (Well, at least for now- but don’t tell him that!)

Epel Felmier

Having visited Harveston once before, the trip to Epel’s home village was like returning home after a long vacation. Epel’s grandmother, Marja, welcomes you back as kindly as ever, all the while nagging Epel for not visiting home more often! You should think about your lonely old granny from time to time, Epel. You aren’t in the village for long, though- for the summer, you would be visiting an entirely new place- a town a few hours south of Harveston, where the rest of Epel’s extended family resided.

Epel’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and more have yet to hear about you. When you first step into the large farmhouse where the family has gathered, you’re immediately swarmed by dozens of blue-eyed, lavender-haired relatives, all gushing- Epel! Who is this young lady, and why didn’t you tell us about her before? She’s so cute! How did that sailor-mouth of yours manage to snag you someone so lovely?

Epel might be a little sour over their comments. He gets a bit possessive at times- he wants your attention on him as much as possible, and there are so many people to compete with! I’m not rough all the time, y’know! I can be a gentleman when I want to be. Now hands off’a her, she’s mine. He’ll ease up a bit when you remind him to overstep.

It’s a bit impressive how similar all of Epel’s relatives look. They’re all a bit on the short side, with the same hair and eyes. Small differences are evident in separate branches of the family, but overall they look very put together. You might feel like a bit of an outsider at first, but don’t worry! The feeling won’t last for long. It’s hard to feel lonely among such a boisterous crowd.

During the warm months, the apple orchard is still in full capacity. While most of the apples aren’t ripe yet, a small sect of trees, the summer orchard, is ready for harvest. Everyone in the family pitches in to pick apples. Though you’re not as practiced, you join in on the fun! At least, you try until Epel’s youngest cousins grab your hands and pull you away to play with them. Marja tells you not to worry about work- they can handle it. Go have some fun!

Epel glares at his cousins as they retreat, dragging you in tow. Marja pokes him in the back with a smile on her face. Go on, boy, she tells her grandson. You can have the day off- spend some time with your lady love before those little rascals steal her away. She pauses. I wouldn’t mind having a granddaughter in law before I leave this earth.

Red to the tips of his ears, Epel scurries after the children to find you. He joins you laying in the grass watching the kids nearby and mumbles in your ear- Y’know… I’ve been thinking- maybe it’s not a bad idea to get hitched after all.

A/N: The Kalim favoritism is so obvious here…

Comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated!

#twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland headcanons #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #twst wonderland #twst #kalim al asim x reader #kalim al asim #kalim x reader #deuce spade x reader #deuce x reader #deuce spade #trey clover x reader #trey clover #epel felmier x reader #epel x reader #epel felmier

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yuri-is-online · 3 months

Text

Traditional fantasy isekai au where:

Yuu is isekaid to Twisted Wonderland as a child, in a setting that's hundreds of years before the main game, and is adopted by a family there. Maybe Grim is a normal cat that came with them and gained the ability to talk and do magic out of a desire to protect his best friend. They grow up and train as a soldier of some sort out of gratitude to their adoptive parents to protect them, eventually leaving their place with Grim in search of adventure depending on where they landed:

City of Flowers! Yuu who was raised by the people who lived in the Court of Miracles and wants to get a job with the city guard to help fight for the rights of their adoptive home. They're helped by a friend they made as a child, the son of well respected parents who came to heavily rely on Yuu after the loss of his younger brother. Now a well respected legal student with his eye on a judge's seat, Rollo is hiding a deadly secret: he is a powerful mage and you are one of the only people who knows. He's also desperately in love with you and at real risk of going insane if something bad happens to the one good thing he has left in his life.

Land of Dawning! Yuu who hunts monsters along the coast line and finds a badly beaten merfolk on the beach and patches him up without a single thought. The man scolds them when he wakes, wondering why Yuu is so unafraid of what he could do to them now that he's awake only to be met with a shrug and a warning that poachers much less kind than Yuu are in the area who see non typical mer such as himself as monsters. Yuu happens to have a bounty for them. Oya? Jade says he's quite aware of that and what's more, they have his brother and a dear friend. Won't you continue to assist this poor, unfortunate soul in rescuing the only family he has left in this world? He doesn't have anything to pay you with. Something about his attitude makes you roll your eyes but so long as you don't have to split the bounty four ways you say you'll help. Pleasure doing business with you he says, and you both go to sleep that night confident you won't get attached to the other at all by the time the job's done.

Clock Town! Yuu who used to be picked on for not having any magic by the delinquent gangs only to find themselves in a party with one of the worst of the worst torn between being hurt Deuce doesn't remember making fun of them or impressed with how determined he is to turn his life around vs Deuce who absolutely remembers but has no idea how to appropriately apologize so he just makes it his mission to bring you home from every mission unscathed, even if it's at the cost of his own health. He swears he'll say it eventually, he just needs to find a way to not make an ass of himself by saying something stupid like he loves you.

Farm Kid! Yuu who gets recruited by Ace for his party because he literally can't get anyone other than you and Deuce and ends up being the glue that holds it together. Ace is dumbfounded as he watches you successfully recruit Jack, Epel, Ortho, and even Sebek without much trouble and hates himself for ever thinking about abandoning you as soon as he got better party members. Yuu who knows that's what he wanted to do from the start and resigns themselves to him leaving when Riddle makes his offer only for Ace to stay with Ramshackle Party because he's "too busy looking after them" to be a card soldier, hiding the burns on his hands from when he punched the Arch Mage for insulting you. He can surpass Riddle's party on his own any day.

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #jade leech x reader #decue spade x reader #twst x reader #rollo flamme x reader #writing is slow have some thoughts to indulge with #meh might come up with more later #fantasy au #you can send asks about this if you wish ill just be a bit slow to answer them

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spacebarbarianweird · 2 months

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Seeing as we've had so many beautiful body positive Tav fics recently, and you've been piece by piece making me feel better about different parts of myself, can I request big/soft tummied Tav? It's taken me all my life to love my squishy, stretchmarked tum and I feel like after decades of being forced to bring back pretty marks that Astarion would secretly ADORE the comfort a chubby Tav brings 🥹🥹🥹

Ok, this one is going to be a bit self-indulged coz I am also "soft tummied" and have been trying to lose weight for years XD

Masterlist

Headcanons

You aren't particularly fat or overweight - but you are pretty curvy for a half-elf.

If you were raised by humans, it wouldn't probably bother you.

But you were born among elves and raised as one of them, in their culture and their faith.

Your mother almost died at childbirth (a half-elf pregnancy is often a death sentence for an elven woman), and your appearance was often mocked.

Too tall, too curvy, ugly protruding ears that look like they've been burnt and mutilated.

You left your home at the age of 25, looking for a place to belong.

Unfortunately, half-elves are not welcome anywhere, and the only chance to live a normal life is to disappear into the melting pot of the cities of the Sword Coast.

It is still difficult for you since you have a lot of insecurities due to your appearance.

You think no one would even want to love you and sleep with you.

So, Astarion's sweet words make you cautious.

You suspect he wants something from you, but you let your guard down.

Dating Astarion boosts your self-esteem.

He makes you feel wanted and desired.

In his eyes, you are the most gorgeous person in the world.

Maybe the fault is your blood or the fact you are the first person, who treats him well.

But he means it when he says you are beautiful.

Astarion loves sleeping with his head on your stomach. It feels like a pillow to him.

Or hugging your thighs when you cuddle.

A bigger body comes with bigger breasts, which Astarion can't get enough of.

As his vampiric strength return, he can easily carry you around as if you were weightless.

His compliments aren't fake - he loves you and your body.

You are an incredible source of warmth and softness for him and he won't trade it for anything.

Tag list

@tugoslovenka @marcynomercy @wintersire @vixstarria @not-so-lost-after-all @ashiro20 @theearthsfinalconfession @herstxrgirl @starlight-ipomoea @micropoe10 @astarion-imagine-archive @veillsar @elora-the-slutty-songstress @fayeriess @lumienyx @tallymonster @caitlincat-95 @tragedybunny @valeprati @lynnlovesthestars @marina-and-the-memes @waking-electric @ayselluna @connorsui @asterordinary @darkarchangel96 @locallegume @brainfullofhotsauce @coffeeanddonutscafe @my-queen-rhaenyra-targaryen @queenofthespacesquids

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diaryofanidiot · 9 months

Text

The Experiments

Simon "Ghost" Riley x Fem! Reader

Chapter list: Prologue, 1, 2, <3> , 4, 5

Cw: Swearing; torture; blood; medical experiments; panic attacks; malnourishment

Summary: For over a year, Y/N was held in a soviet experimentation facility. Forced to fight and claw her way to live, she managed to stay alive. When the 141 rescues her, they get way more intel than bargained for.

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Chapter Three

Sweat made the hospital gown irritatingly stick to my skin as I tried to get comfortable in the cot. They had left me restrained during the night, making it harder to sleep as I looked restlessly around the medical bay.

The occasional night shift nurse or guard would pass by, but other than that, I received no reprive from the torment that was my own mind.

Ghost was no longer nearby on what I assumed had been a guard duty of sorts. He must've left during the measly few hours of sleep that I had managed. With a huff, I tapped my finger to the call button and waited.

Within the minute, a nurse appeared with a friendly smile. For the night shift, she still certainly kept her bedside manner in check.

She brought over a chart with various illustrations of what I could possibly need, and I pointed to the bathroom. The kind nurse smiled with an "of course." and went to retrieve a guard to undo my restraints and help me into my wheelchair.

I don't know when I began scheming. All I knew was that if I didn't get out of this confined space and into some fresh air, I might actually snap. Sure, Soap or maybe even Gaz, if he had truly forgiven me for the hand incident, might be kind enough to take me for some in the morning.

Despite that fact that slipped my brain, my entire extended time of washing my hands was filled with thoughts of escape.

As the guard wheeled me back, I managed to slip my hand into his jacket pocket and nab the key undetected. I don't think he expected it with the friendly smile I had sacrificed to him.

Once I was back in my cot and the guard fastened my restraints, I feigned soreness in my dominant wrist.

"Too tight?" He asked me. I gave him a pitiful look before I saw the gears crank in his brain. "I suppose keeping this one loose won't do any harm. Just don't snitch. If you even can." He snickered and put a playful finger to his lips as he allowed me more wiggle room with that arm. He was kind. I hated to pull the wool over his eyes.

Once I was left alone to rest once more, I couldn't help the slight smirk on my face despite the nerves in my stomach as I maneuvered the key to the lock. It took a while of fumbling, but soon it went in, and I was able to nudge it until it clicked open.

My eyes shot up and looked around, checking my surroundings before unlocking my other hand and then my ankles. I leaned over on my cot to pull my wheelchair next to the bed. Now for the difficult part.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed while using my arms to keep balance as I lowered myself into the chair. It was excruciating on my body, but I had already decided that the ends justified the means.

Once I was seated comfortable, I glanced at the IV in my arm. There was no way I could take the bulky stand holding the drip bag with me, so I did what any not so sane person would've done and removed the needle on my own. I already had multiple infected wounds. What was the risk of one more?

Determination flooded my bones as I peered around to make sure the coast was clear. Despite my inner fire I couldn't help but jump at every sound while I maneuvered the unfamiliar place.

When I finally reached the steel door entrance of the medical building, I released a breath I didn't realize I was holding and struggled to open the door; while simultaneously fitting my wheel chair through.

It didn't matter in the end as the door opened by a force not of my own. My gaze shot upward to see an all too familiar mask staring down at me, the night sky not even providing enough light to see his eyes through the skull.

"What do you think you're doing?"

He understood my motives. I didn't know why at this exact moment. Yet, here we were. He matched my pace as he allowed me to wheel my way around the compound and revel in the fresh air.

I occasionally peeked a glance at him. He seemed so stoic but the kindness in the action showed me he was a bit more than that.

"Don't do that." He broke the silence. "I can see the damn gratitude in your face. You're still getting reprimanded when we're done here."

I broke my eyes away suddenly. He could try to play the mean guy all he wanted, but this was the biggest act of kindness I had received in so long. He would get my gratitude whether he liked it or not.

The moon was a small crescent tonight, and a cool breeze blew past occasionally. Crickets chirped, and the occasional glow of a firefly caught my attention. Just the sight if it made everything that I went through. No. That I survived feel worth it.

I had been advised to wait to speak during my physical therapy sessions but I had to communicate. Even just a little.

"You-" I coughed as I got too eager to speak. His eyes were on me now as we paused our stroll. "Saved me." I managed. He handed me a water and I sipped it gratefully.

"Didn't even know you were there. Was just doing my job." He insisted matter-of-factly. "You're welcome, though. If that's what you really want. Nothing is owed."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes once he looked away and continued our walk. Didn't he realize I owed everything to him and his team? Eventually, his hand grabbed the back of my wheelchair, halting my movements.

"We need to get you back where you belong. Cmon." He looked at me expectantly. I got the feeling that if i didn't wheel myself back that he would do it for me. With a look of dejection, I let him walk me back to that horrible place known as the medbay.

"Don't look so sad. I was told you'll only be there for a few weeks." He looked forward as he spoke. "After that, you'll only need to go in for a few checkups."

I had more questions but no way to speak them. It was frustrating, to say the least, but I couldn't help myself from trusting him.

Ghost was right. After the first two weeks, many of my injuries had healed substantially. The infections were now gone, and the sores on my neck were toward the end stages of healing.

The time spent there was agonizing, switching between physical therapy, speech therapy, and the constant check-in from the doctors and nurses.

Soap visited when Ghost couldn't watch over me. His company was nice enough to help pass the time. He was more chatty than the latter which I appreciated. Even Gaz began to visit again. He had truly forgiven me, which I couldn't lie that I had my doubts of, and his hand had healed up.

There was the occasional day or two when none of the trio would visit me. I had been told they were still cleaning up messes near the place I was rescued. Part of me wondered if they were searching for others like me. Other bioengineered weapons that is.

But my favorite time of day was the pre "lights out" walks that Ghost would occasionally take me on before retiring for the night. While he didn't speak much, he seemed to understand that they helped substantially. I liked to think that he enjoyed them as well. He certainly at least seemed less tense.

That is, until my voice began to come back to me. It was scratchy at first and hurt my throat for a bit, but soon, something phenomenal happened. I recognized it. I finally had my own voice back.

I might've abused the happiness it gave me by never shutting up...

"You really like the sound of your own voice, don't ya?" Gaz interrupted. I paused before realizing I was rambling to him.

"...am I really talking that much?"

"Well," He smiled in amusement. "I just spent the last Twenty minutes sitting here listening to you go on about the things you've observed during your stay in the medbay."

I looked away, apologizing. He laughed and shook his head.

"Nah, you're getting discharged today. You have a right to be excited."

"Just glad you guys got back in time." I smiled. The rest of the 141 walked in shortly after.

"(Y/n)!" Soap called, a giant grin on his face. Ghost and Price trailed close behind. "How ya feeling, lass?"

He placed his hand on my head, ruffling my hair. "You ready to go?"

"Yes. Please." I said, my tone filled with relief. Gaz handed me my crutches, which I had upgraded to a few days ago.

Once I was discharged and the proper paperwork was filed, I was led to a new building. One with proper rooms and facilities.

"You understand, (y/n), now that your voice is back, We are going to need you to answer some questions?" Price asked. I wasn't as close to him as I was to the other's, considering he didn't visit nearly as often. He was kind to me, though.

I nodded. "I'll do what I can. If there are others like me out there... I want to do what I can to help."

The Captain smiled at me with a hint of admiration. "Atta girl. Here you are."

They had led me to a room. It was mostly bare aside from some essential furniture. Like an actual bed, a desk, a dresser, and a trunk.

It mightve been bare... but oh how I missed privacy.

"There's some clothes in the dresser. May not be your style, but it's what's on hand." Soap spoke, pointing toward it before facing me. "Better than that hospital gown, I assume?"

I nodded eagerly before feeling a firm hand pat my back. Ghost.

"Get settled in. I'll come get you in a short while and you can give us some answers."

I watched as they took their leave, closing the door behind them. I was practically giddy at the newfound freedom as I limped over to the dresser and opened it. Plain black shirts and cargo pants were folded military style.

Part of me wondered who prepped it for me. No matter. Getting dressed on my own was an entirely new hurdle that my physical therapist hadn't addressed yet, but with the help of the bed to sit on, I managed.

I set my crutches aside and flopped back onto the mattress. Finally, my ears were greeted with... nothing. No beeping monitors, no footsteps that raised my anxiety, not the mumbled voices of nurses and doctors. My nose was given the same reprive. No smell of hand sanitizer or cleaning products. Surprisingly, less sterile smelled... better.

I don't know how long I had stayed there with my eyes closed. It felt good not to be so overwhelmed.

All good things must come to an end.

A knock at my door and the clicking of the latch made my eyes open. Ghost, despite being so large, moved quietly. I never heard him approaching.

"Ready to give us some answers?"

A/n: Once again, thank you all for the love this fic has received. All your comments and reviews have done nothing but make me smile <3 I hope you enjoy this chapter. I'm gonna be making a separate post for taglist add requests soon. I'll link it to the fic once it's up as it's getting a bit chaotic 😅 if I missed you, then feel free to ask again. I've gotten a lot of replies asking to be added

Taglist: @warenai @linoskitten11 @jamesrifftapes @justmare @hk-4ever @thriving-n-jiving @katelouis98 @tayaisback @josieguts @btszn @lemmyyy0606 @msecho19 @cory-viv @cybercl0ne @randomhumans-blog @vinithechocolatevampire @embermdk @itsryuken @neothewitch @undercover-smutlover @noeltako @y2cade @ghostindeath @soundsfunbutno @untoldshortsofthefandoms @emily-roberts @x4vern1a @theimaginaryheir @bitchoftoji @stunkbiggu @mysteriouslydeafeningwerewolf @theredviolets @v1naco @berryjuicyy @serenitysmind @mundane-frogola @sushiumex @thorninspaceandtime @tooruen @hotchlover

#cod mw2 #cod mwii #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley #captain john price #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick

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spoilers-ahead · 10 months

Text

okay!! now that it’s not 2am for me, i’m going to post my selkie!jason todd hc’s straight up au apparently!

(uh. this was supposed to just be a list of hc’s but i got slightly,,,, carried away)

his selkie skin looks like an oversized red hoodie in his human form, and is just warm enough to help him survive new england winters.

when the summer heat becomes unbearable, he slings the hoodie around his waist

alternatively, he just coasts it out underwater. perks of living in a coastal city!

willis todd was a selkie. he used to tell jason stories of what it was like to swim through the big, wide ocean. of how freeing it felt. how different it is, from the smoggy, heavy air of gotham --- different, but both theirs, in their own right.

but to be honest, jason doesn’t remember much about the stories he was told, or really, anything about willis --- he had been in and out of blackgate for most of jason’s life, working for two-face to try and make ends meet, before dying.

what jason mostly remembers, are the warnings. don’t let anybody know you’re a selkie. don’t let anybody find your skin. they will find it, and they will use it to control you. even decades later, jason would still remember those warnings.

catherine is the one who teaches him how to swim, who helps him trial-and-error his way into putting his skin on, and learn how to make the transition seamless.

after she dies, jason spends three months as a seal, to just... exist. forget.

although jason technically lives on the streets, whenever he can;t find food, whenever he can’t find somewhere warm to sleep, whenever just being human becomes too unbearable, he spends the night as a seal. he ends up spending more time in the ocean, than on land.

that’s not to say he’s very good at being a seal --- he barely knows how to swim, has to learn how to fish the hard way.

when bruce finds jason stealing his car tires, he marvels over how nice jason’s hoodie is, soft and fluffy even after all of jason’s time on the streets, especially given the condition jason is in, ribs showing from malnutrition, and the worn and raggedy shape of the rest of his stuff.

jason is skittish when he goes to live in the manor, even after a few weeks. he always adopts an expression particularly similar to a cornered wild animal around alfred in particular, alfred, who keeps on trying to take his hoodie away, purportedly to wash it.

alfred eventually gives up on trying to force jason to wash it --- he figures that as jason becomes more comfortable living at the manor, he’ll wind up telling them why he’s so protective over that hoodie, and they can work something out then.

whenever wayne manor overwhelms jason with how big and how decadently expensive all the decor is, jason runs away, run to the ocean.

jason doesn’t actually end up telling alfred and bruce that he’s a selkie --- bruce just has a ridiculous amount of motion alarms, which are triggered every time jason ran off. he had followed jason the third night, and saw him transform.

bruce doesn’t tell jason that he knows, assuming that jason kept this a secret because he didn’t fully trust either of them. he would later learn that he was right in this assumption (a rare win for bruce in terms of emotional awareness)

except jason doesn’t fully trust either of them, even after a few months. bruce impulsively decides to do a few things --- a) tell jason about batman and robin and his crime-fighting secret identity, and b) tell jason he already knows about him being a selkie.

jason is absolutely bamboozled by the fact that bruce knows, and yet hasn’t tried to take his hoodie to control him, or to stop him from playing in the ocean for a few hours.

in fact, (under alfred’s encouragement) bruce offers to take him to the ocean during the day, so he can get “a proper night’s rest that a growing young boy such as himself would need”

jason remembers what his father told him, to never trust anyone, never let his guard down. but bruce has known about jason being a selkie for so long, and he didn’t take his hoodie or try anything. of course he can trust bruce.

and when he tries on the robin costume for the first time, it fits perfectly. just like his hoodie, his second skin. it fits just like magic.

oh, it’s a little loose in some places, the legacy of dick fucking grayson a little heavy sometimes, but he’ll grow into it. he’ll make himself, if he has to.

also, jason finds the fact that even though he’s a friggin’ selkie, his callsign is a bird (a robin, no less) incredibly ironic and funny

being a selkie is actually so useful for vigilantehood. the amount of people who talk freely, openly, and loudly about their drug smuggling plans near the ports is quite frankly, ridiculous.

honestly, towards the end of his robin years, jason remains genuinely surprised nobody catches on to him or his tactics yet. bruce is very proud.

even though jason is safe, has been safe for three years, and trusts bruce with his life, his skin, and everything, old habits are hard to break. so he has his hoodie on when he goes to find sheila.

and anyways, he wants to see if sheila is a selkie too. he’s taking biology right now, and they’re learning about punnett squares. jason’s never met another selkie before, other than willis who he barely remembers. there’s a possibility that sheila knows something, anything, so he has to try.

sheila gets a glint in her eyes when jason mentions that he’s a selkie, tells him that while she’s not one herself, she’s familiar with the myth. she has long suspected that willis was a selkie, she tells him, and she’s glad to have confirmation.

jason positively vibrates with excitement, can’t wait to ask, to pester his mother (mother!) with questions upon questions until.

until.

sheila doesn’t do anything after she gives him to the joker. she just smokes and smokes. and she doesn’t tell the joker about his hoodie, despite how it would have been much easier for the joker to destroy him that way. much more painful too.

small mercies, he supposes, in between hacking coughs that brings blood bubbling up his lips.

after he dies, his hoodie is ripped and in tatters from the crowbar, with burns along the edges from the bomb. bruce has to carefully peel it off his body.

when jason was alive, his magic kept the hoodie in perfect condition, always. even when the rest of him was covered head-to-toe in mud, or dripping sludge from the nasty gotham sewers.

bruce stares at the same hoodie, blood-soaked and mangled, so incredibly dissonant from how he remembered it on jason, when he was bright, whole, and alive.

he can’t stand it. the hoodie that was so precious to jason, that was jason, at the core of him, in this state. dirty and ripped and devoid of the magic jason had exuded.

in a moment of desperation, late at night, bruce asks alfred to teach him how to sew. he doesn’t dare to practice on jason’s beloved hoodie --- instead, he starts with the suits in his closet, grabbing the first one he sees, regardless of price. rips a hole and sews it back together over and over until he perfects his technique.

and then he washes the fabric gently, using baby fabric cleanser and scrubbing for hours upon hours until the last traces of the deep-set brown stain from jason’s blood washes down the drain.

he painstakingly sews the scraps of fabric back together with a red thread, carefully sourced to match the hoodie to try and make it flow seamlessly like it used to.

it doesn’t work, not exactly. despite his best efforts, the creases bruce had carefully sewn together are prominent and thick like scars, littering the soft fabric.

so he gives up. he hangs it over the grandfather clock entrance to the cave in his study. brings it with him every time he visits jason’s grave, because he doesn’t ever want to keep jason’s hoodie away from him, but he also can’t bear for it to get ruined.

dick visits him. a rare occurrence, these days.

dick yells at him, as he is wont to do.

these days, it feels like they spend more time angry at each other than not. dick says that this isn’t right. isn’t fair to anybody, not to alfred, not to himself, definitely not to jason. he rants, jason deserves to be remembered as he was in life, not frozen in death.

perhaps he is right. bruce is not unaware of the state of violent, cutting stasis he is in, this putrefaction of his life. and he is certainly not unaware of how it is affecting the people around him. dick. alfred. the neighbor’s kid, the one who wants to be robin.

bruce tries. not for himself, but for tim. for alfred, for dick. even for stephanie brown, who sometimes, when she smirks just right, or says something with just the right twang, he swears he can see jason in her.

he still can’t bear to put the hoodie away, because jason deserved better than to be forgotten, so he folds it gently and places it in his closet instead.

he also can’t bear to look at it for very long, so he forces himself to every single day.

it’s different from the glass case that houses robin’s tattered suit in the cave --- that, is a reminder of how he failed robin. this, this is salt in a constant, stabbing, festering would, reminding him of how he failed his son.

it was stephanie, that eventually helped him figure out what to do with the hoodie. when she was young, young enough to cry at ripped pants and skinned knees, young enough that her mother hadn’t touched the drugs yet, her mother would dry up her tears, give her a hug and a kiss on the forehead, before patching her pants up.

what not many people know, is that before crystal brown set her mind on becoming a nurse, she wanted to be an artist, first. and so she grabs her old set of embroidery needles, and stitched little designs. dogs and cats. stars and planets. tools and gadgets.

bruce doesn’t react, doesn’t even move, even as stephanie finishes her story. she hangs there awkwardly for a second, stares up at jason’s suit, waiting for him to respond, before shuffling towards the exit of the cave.

thank you, spoiler, bruce manages to croak out.

ah, yeah, she says, shrugging lightly while slouching in on herself, any time, boss. she walks out, and bruce watches her go from the reflection on the darkened computer.

that night, he takes out jason’s hoodie, smooths it out, grabs his threads, and stitches.

he stitches on constellations, argo navis, for jason’s namesake in the greek myths he had loved so much. a tiny seal, playing with beach balls. little books, with quotes on the sides. a robin, big and bold.

he tries to make it as true to jason as possible, not just in death and in bruce’s memories, but as he was in life.

jason wakes up abruptly.

he wakes up in a coffin, cold, alone, and with a gaping hole in his chest. getting dipped in the lazarus pit only made it worse, only made him all the more aware of what he was missing, all the more conscious of it.

he doesn’t bother trying to learn how to swim with two arms and two legs, instead of two fins and a tail. it doesn’t feel the same. it only reminds him of what he’s lost.

sometimes, on sleepless nights that happen more often than not, he wonders what would have happened if he still had a hoodie, still could swim.

if he still was robin.

and he doesn’t have access to the cave anymore, or to the titan’s tower, or the watchtower, and his memory of the past is still patchy and shitty in some places.

so in a burst of impulsivity fueled by the person he no longer is, he prints out photos of robin’s costume from the internet and recreates it on his own.

if his skin is gone, then fine. fine! he’s perfectly perfunctorily aware that nothing about this resurrection of his is natural. if he doesn’t think too much about it, he’ll be alright. his hoodie, his skin, that was something he was born with, a birthright that died with him.

but robin, robin was something that he helped shape. robin was something that he worked for, changed himself for.

and the makeshift robin suit --- it doesn’t fit him, not anymore. no, it feels wrong, like a child playing with their parent’s suit. or --- he realizes, perhaps more accurately, like an adult realizing they no longer fit in their favorite clothes.

and --- and --- what was the point of it all? what was the point, of trying to make bruce proud of him, of getting dick’s approval, of trying to futilely save people over and over again from the same gallery of supervillains who keep on escaping from prison?!

and what was the point of carving out a space for himself if the joker was just going to beat him out of it, and if tim drake was going to insert himself in the hole he left behind?

and then the next thing he knows he’s in titan’s tower hitting tim drake over and over again because who let him? who let him take jason’s role as a son, as a brother, as a hero? how dare he?

but when he’s slit tim’s throat and torn the ‘R’ off his chest, jason doesn’t feel any better. the robin suit still doesn’t fit. his hoodie’s still gone.

he’s starting to think it never will, not again.

sometimes, when he gets tired enough to let his mind wander, he wonders what happened to his suit.

he’s pretty sure he died with it, so either the hoodie is with the joker, batman, or... gone entirely. (it’s not like they found willis’ skin after he died. maybe selkie skins just disappear in a cloud of sea foam once they die, or some little mermaid shit like that)

it’s a cold comfort, that nobody can manipulate him now. nobody can control him --- not even batman.

(bruce had thought about it. when he first had his suspicious regarding who the red hood was, before he knew there was any trace of the son he once had left. he thought about using the hoodie, using jason’s selkie skin to coerce him, at least to stop murdering people, to stop hurting their family.)

(he would never go that far, in retrospect, or at least, he doesn’t think he could ever. to do that to jason, betray his trust so thoroughly and completely... but it would be a lie to say that he didn’t consider it.)

bruce reflects on this as jason reveals himself, the joker tied up at his feet with a gun pressed to his head, and venom spitting from his son’s mouth.

but when he lifts the batarang to hit jason’s gun, or wrist, or anything that’ll force him to drop the gun, he realizes that his hands are shaking.

and when he throws the batarang, he knows a millisecond after he’s let go, that he’s miscalculated the ricochet.

so when jason escapes that night, bruce knows he’s fucked up.

jason goes off the maps, completely. bruce doesn’t know where he is, if he’s safe, if he even made it out of the explosion that night.

it takes weeks. weeks for bruce to track jason down, from meticulously documenting the dropped threads of where the red hood was pulling strings in the gotham underworld behind the scenes, to tracking security cameras with facial recognition.

once bruce manages find where he’s staying, make sure he’s safe, he knows what he wants to do. and, he knows what he needs to do.

jason gets a package in the mail, five weeks after his disasterous meeting with batman and the joker. unmarked, unsigned, no return address.

when jason opens the box gingerly and carefully, he holds on to his skin for the first time in years. and then, and then, and then --- something right slots into place. his fingers brushed gently over the tiny spotted seal he knows he used to look like, the books he remembered ranting to bruce about for hours on end.

the robin, on the top left, over his heart, big enough to have changed him, yet small enough to not define him.

it’s not perfect. it doesn’t even fix anything, not entirely. he still fights with bruce most times he sees him, tries to punch dick in the face, steadfastly ignores tim and steph the entire time.

but it’s something. it’s something, and the next time nightwing, batman, spoiler, and robin fight a gang on the docks, the red hood gives them a helping hand before jumping back into the ocean and swimming away.

fin!

wow this got long

#jason todd #bruce wayne #alfred pennyworth #batfam #selkie!jason #dick grayson #stephanie brown #tim drake #catherine todd #willis todd #that one selkie!jason au #i swear i will turn this into an actual fic one day #anyways about the using embroidery to fix ripped clothes thing all i can say is WATCH HI MOM #it's SUCH a good movie and i guarantee it will DEVASTATE you in ALL your little mommy issues glory #like you think the batfamily comics/fanfics have an amazing nuanced complicated take on the parent-child dynamic?#this movie will BLOW your fucking SOCKS off. and best part of all: you can watch it WITH said parent #and it won't be as horrible of an experience as showing them encanto/turning red/eeaao!#in fact your parent will probably like the movie too and be reminded of THEIR own mommy issues :D #admittedly it's slightly different from the examples i listed above bc it's more abt what it's like to never reach ur parent's expectation #rather than an exploration of complicated parenting but it's still very relatable and very very good #the best part is you can find it all for free on youtube. also note that i mean the recent chinese movie not the old 70s movie #asteria's fics #i'm never writing a fucking flash fic on TUMBLR of all text editors again #shouldve written this out on a google doc first but i genuinely did not think this would get so long T.T #you can probably tell from the first three (3) bullet points that this was supposed to be a hc list before... it stopped being a hc list #guys i started writing this at 12 PM #IT'S NOW 9 AWOGEJAWOIG #my writing

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feyhunter78 · 11 months

Text

Pink Pastels Pt 18

Description: Miguel deals with Todd, and has a late night visitor—you.

Pt 19

The purr of car engines overhead, the slight rattling of the bridge, the coos of pigeons and the soft lapping of the waves fills Miguel's ears as he stares down at the waterlogged corpse at his feet.

“Lyla, how many people know about this?”

“About the mauled body of your new girlfriend's ex-boyfriend?” Lyla smirks, her heart shaped sunglasses low on her nose as she observes the scene.

Miguel sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, “Lyla, please just answer my question.”

“Just a few displaced people along the river, the Swedish shipping vessel that reported the sighting, and the Coast Guard has the call record, but since you got lucky with the currents and since I made a few more urgent calls to the Coast Guard, they haven't set eyes on him yet.” She tells him, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Thank you.” He says as he zips up the body bag and tosses it over his shoulder.

“So, what are you going to do with him?” She asks, flickering in and out of his masked vision.

“Acid.”

“Acid? Lame.” Lyla huffs.

He snorts. “It's quick, efficient, and less likely to leave a trace.”

“Yeah, but wasn't he like a total dick to y/n?”

He grunts in response as he swings through the city until he finds the disposal grounds of Janson Inc, the manufacturing company you mentioned Todd works for.

“I mean, I thought you'd go way more psycho than you did.” She says, laughter on the horizon of her tone.

“Lyla” He warns, as he heaves the body bag containing Todd into the acid, watching with no small amount of satisfaction as the fabric, flesh, and bone dissolve.

“Ok, ok, I'm just saying, I think I know you pretty well and-”

“I want him forgotten, I want y/n to forget about him.”

Lyla says nothing for a moment, then sighs heavily. “Miguel…you know it doesn't work like that. You might have been able to easily replace this universe's version of you, but that doesn't mean you can just as easily replace Todd.”

Miguel turns from the acid, the surrounding area bathed in a sickly green glow. “I know.”

“And you know y/n's different from Ana, Xina, Dana, and even Tempest, she cares about you, about Gabi. She really cares about Gabi. She's not just going to jump you now that her ex-boyfriend is gone. She's going to weigh the consequences.”

A smirk tugs at his lips, and for a moment his mind supplies him with the memory of you begging for him, his name on your lips like a fervent plea as you fall apart on his thigh. Of the way your eyes linger on his lips, how you reached for him in the doorway of your apartment.

He grunts in response. He knows you, better than you know he does, better than Todd did, perhaps better than anyone else in the world. You'll weigh the consequences, but that doesn't mean he can't try to lighten the load.

“Okay, Mr. Stupid and Silent, don't believe me. It's your funeral.” Lyla huffs before her form flickers out, and he's left alone in the dark.

Miguel unlocks the door to his apartment and silently pads through the quiet space.

Gabi's asleep, he knows this. You're asleep, he knows this. He should also be asleep, but he's filled with a nameless emotion--an anxious energy raging against the edges of sleep that are threatening to creep in on him.

He sits at his desk, flipping through security feeds, ensuring there's no record of him. He's clean, there's no trace of him or Todd.

He was smart, made sure no one would see when he broke into Todd's apartment and knocked him out.

No one noticed as he carried Todd's unconscious body to an abandoned warehouse, and no one heard Todd's screams as he tore into him, leaving him a mangled mess that Miguel finally dangled him off the bridge.

He watched unflinching as Todd plummeted. The sound of Todd's body slamming into the water echoed off the banks, and Miguel waited until he sank to return to his apartment.

No one would ever know. He got away clean.

“Hey Boss? Y/N's here.” Lyla says, her words hitting him a millisecond before he hears your soft knocking on his door.

He bolts up, running a hand through his hair and checking his appearance in the hall mirror before he swings open the door to see you. Perfect, perfect you.

Your hair is loose, hanging free, and you're clad in fuzzy socks and an oversized sweatshirt.

Are you wearing pants under that? Shorts? Is this a seduction tactic? Because it's working.

“Hey, I'm sorry, I know it's late, but I just...” You wave your hands helplessly, your nails are pink, a pretty pearlescent pink.

He reaches out to catch one of your hands in one of his, squeezing it slightly. “Don't apologize, I’m more than willing to help, whatever it is.”

You give him an embarrassed smile. “Okay, so, it's a new apartment and I swear I keep hearing all these noises, and I know it’s childish but...would you come and take a look? Make sure there's nothing there?”

He's in love with you, fully, completely, unreservedly.

“Of course, y/n, I felt the same way when I moved in. The building is a bit older, there are lots of creaks and groans.”

He follows you to your apartment as he says this, and you look back at him in surprise. “You were scared?”

He chuckles sheepishly. “Actually, Gabi was, I just wanted to make you feel better.”

You smile and duck your head. “I appreciate the effort."

You hold the door open for him, then stand in your lit kitchen, your arms wrapped around yourself. Your bare thighs are exposed by the rising fabric of your sweatshirt, and he averts his eyes.

He strangles his desire to sink to his knees and grip the soft flesh of your thighs, to wrench them apart and bury his face between them. To watch you come apart on his tongue as the sounds of your pleas and moans fill the air.

“I feel like I heard something near the balcony. You say, tearing him from his thoughts.

“I’ll go check.” He tells you, making his way towards your balcony, his senses on high alert even though he knows there's nothing.

It's an older building, Gabi was scared when they first moved in, that much is true. But there's nothing to be scared of, he's ensured that. In fact, this building, this block might be the safest in all of Nueva York.

Miguel throws open your balcony door and makes a show of checking every inch. He's rewarded by your soft laugh.

“All clear?” You take a half step forward, a smile playing at your lips, the lingering traces of sleep still gracing your expression.

“All clear. Anywhere else you want me to check?”

You nod towards your bedroom. “I swear I heard shuffling in my bathroom.”

He waits at your door, looking back at you. “Through here?”

You breeze past him and sit cross-legged on the edge of your bed. “The door on the left.”

He pushes the door open and flicks on the light. He's seen this room already, through your necklace, but standing there, on your plush, pastel purple bath mat, looking into your mirror, the mirror he's admired your bare body in, sends him into a tailspin.

“You see anything?” You call softly.

He shakes his head. “Nothing, no monsters lurking in between your towels.

“I didn't think there were monsters." You mumble, padding over to him, your scent hitting him like a freight train.

Has it always been this strong, or was it because he's in your home and everything around him screams y/n?

He inhales deeply, his fingers curling around the edge of your sink, his eyes closed as he fights to calm himself.

“Miguel? Are you okay?” You ask, placing a hand on his bicep.

He pulls you forward, pressing your back against the sink, his arms on either side caging you in.

You look up at him with an adorable expression of surprise, as if you hadn't seen his agility when he was disguised as Spiderman. “Miguel?”

He steels himself, even as he feels the plaster of your sink give beneath his fingers. He'll fix that later.

“Pancakes or French Toast?”

“I'm sorry?” You ask stunned.

“For breakfast, cariño, which would you prefer?” He forces the words out, prays they're smooth and unassuming.

You smile up at him, and he feels his stomach flip. It's a childish thing, for a small smile to affect him this way.

“Oh, pancakes please, and I can help you cook if you need.”

You're so sweet.

“No, no, mi vida, I'm cooking. All you need to do is keep me company.”

Your eyes follow the movement of his lips, and his nostrils flare when he smells the arousal wafting off you.

“Are you sure? I really don't mind.” You insist, palms resting against his chest.

He leans down and presses a fleeting kiss to your forehead. “I'm sure, now goodnight y/n.”

Then he leaves you there and heads back to his apartment, his head spinning, your scent still lingering around him.

Taglist: @miggyoharaswife, @badbishsblog, @imisshim2much, @wanderlustingcastaway, @lynn-9703, @sleepyamaya, @erensbbg, @sweetea85, @ilovemiguelohara, @natthernandez, @stxrrielle, @ihateuguys, @jenniferdixon05207, @blep-23, @luvisaaxoxo, @minimari415, @emerald-09, @violet-19999, @kenchosaikuo, @groovycass, @youcantseem3, @lovefks, @nightshxdex, @dusstory, @aesniri, @munsonssecretblog, @kirke-is-my-name, @starbearieee, @chatoicboy, @act1839, @needsleep3000, @totally-not-georgia, @witchy-lizard, @cxmeiloorun7, @justrandomlolidk, @chimpkinnuggies, @alicefallsintotherabbithole, @loser-alert, @wwwellacom, @ryantryan6969, @lollipopin, @youcantseem3, @a-cult-leader, @verexi, @purpleskiesandroses, @they2luv1naia, @sophiaj650, @idolautism, @rheannajrs, @merakiq, @rexs-wife, @sukaretto-n, @twilight-loveer, @f1shb0nez, @callsign-blue, @marcelineormars

#meg's writing #miguel's pastels #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x y/n #miguel ohara x reader #miguel ohara x you #miguel ohara x y/n #spiderman 2099 x reader #miguel o'hara imagine

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greythemed · 10 months

Text

𓂃 ♥︎ⴰ bloodhounds . kim gun-woo

˚ TITLE 𓂃 ♥︎ⴰ lovesick ˚ WORD COUNT 𓂃 ♥︎ⴰ 1936

he looked unreal, all tanned with his beautiful eyes half closed as he looked down, full lips unconsciously forming a pout. his chest was bronzed and openly displayed for anyone with two eyes and a drooling mouth.

you wanted to eat him alive.

it was supposed to be a peaceful morning at your parents' beach house on the coast but, apparently, your boyfriend chose violence that day. with sleepy eyes and a drowsy appearance, you immediately realized that you accidentally fell asleep while trying to get tanned by the summer sun in the morning. luckily, the book you were reading fell from your grip at some point and didn't leave a funny mark on your stomach for woo-jin to laugh about later.

how can one person be so beautiful, inside and out? was he even real, or will you inevitably wake up to find the space beside you empty, his presence fading with your dreams?

you get goosebumps just imagining it.

feeling your eyes on him, gun-woo looked up from his drawing, a big smile forming on his pink lips.

"you look like shit, babe".

oh wow, what a day to feel loved.

"fuck off". you grumbled while sitting up and picking the book from the floor next to you, gun-woo's eyes never leaving your bikini form. "what took you so long to get here?". you asked him pouty.

"your mother asked me to move the sofa three times so she could do her pilates session in the living room". gun-woo couldn't help but laugh at his answer, never imagining he'd be in this position someday.

it was your first family trip as a couple, and also the first time gun-woo went on a plane and traveled since his school's excursion in 9th grade to say the best. you were happy to see him happy. it was thrilling to see the man in another setting, different from the usual gym clothes or café outings you guys first got to know each other. you considered yourself a good girlfriend, providing these opportunities for both of you while so young, even if gun-woo was paying for basically everything other than the house you were staying. you were a good girlfriend, right?

so why the living hell was he acting so mean towards you?

"i'm sorry about that". you grimaced embarrassingly because of your mother. "just because you have an insane amount of muscle she thinks you're her personal guard". gun-woo laughs. that bright innocent smile that makes his eyes disappear.

fuck you kim geun-woo for being so mean.

"my mom used to say we should never neglect help from others, including offering help in the first place". he tells you with innocence, a sudden wave of sympathy running through his veins strong enough to make him vocalize his thoughts. you were too accustomed with this side of him, being together for almost 6 months. “she also used to say that we always must look for the best in people”.

he was too pure. so why could you only think other things like what was this man saying? and why wasn't he kissing your mouth right now?

you embarrassingly found yourself in this predicament more times than you could count with your boyfriend.

the sound of his voice didn't shake you out of your sleepy daze, looking up at him with eyes full of love and wonder. like a lovesick puppy whose brain didn't seem to register the spoken words, too caught up in its own reverie.

when he didn't get the reply he was hoping for, gun-woo finally put down the pen and paper and leaned closer to you, your knees now touching and you almost choked on your saliva.

you loved him too much. and he was so hot.

“y/n?” he asked softly, placing a hand on top of your lap, the feel of his surprisingly cold hands against your warm skin almost making you shiver.

"i was so worried when i woke up and didn't see you, figured you'd be reading here". his smile continued to be nothing other than soothing, comforting, and exclusive.

exclusive for you and only you.

"woo-jin tried facetiming early this morning but i was still sleeping, i kind of feel bad for him not being able to come this time". he rambles. "and i also feel bad for sleeping so late, i hope your parents don't mind it. yesterday was a good day".

of course it was a good day. it was gun-woo's first ever private flight and you couldn't put your mind around the fact that this man's whole life was a huge unfair exposure to only the bad in life. you wanted to cry suddenly. cry for everything cruel that happened to him. cry for his still pure but poorly scarred heart. cry for his smiles and goodmorning pecks. cry for his fucking six-pack and spy reflexes.

cry because he was yours. exclusively.

without saying a word, you gently pulled his hands away before wrapping yours around his shoulders in a much-needed hug, the love you felt for him overwhelming all your senses. his arms found their place around your waist immediately, pulling his body closer and pouring all his love into you in return.

it was his fault for dating such a crybaby and he knew it, because the second he touched your waist and ribs, the boxer knew you were about to cry because of your uneaving breathing.

gun-woo hesitated for a second, giving your body another squeeze before finally speaking.

"are you okay, princess?" his voice was calm as he gently stroked your hair, knowing damn well you got emotional in the mornings sometimes. his 'bedroom voice' - that's what you called, don't judge - was enough to make your eyes sting, causing you to snuggle closer to his neck with a nod.

"'m okay".

you loved his bedroom voice - again, don’t judge the name you came up with -, it was special for you. it held something ethereal in the fact that he dropped a few octaves to talk to you and only you. the intimacy he could bring only by speaking more calmly to you, everywhere you both were together and tangled in each other's arms like right now.

everything was different. the setting, the weather, the clothes - it made you realize for the very first time in the six months of your relationship that dating itself shouldn't be overwhelming, tiring, or burdensome.

dating should feel like the books you grew up reading and the movies you grew up watching. anything other than that, it didn't belong to you in the first place.

you felt so comfortable in his embrace like you were floating on a fluffy cloud as the sun was slowly disappearing, so warm and safe. it was just the best, being with the man you loved, and nothing could come close to how you were feeling in his presence, surrounded by his unconditional love and care.

fuck, you were sounding like a corny teenager and it was embarrassing.

"y/n, you're going to tell me what's on your mind, aren't you?". the sound of his concern was evident in his voice, reminding you that - even if this man's thighs were the size of your head -, he still was worried and soft on the inside type of boyfriend.

you were his first girlfriend. gun-woo didn't know how to do things usually.

without missing a beat, you looked him in the eye for the question.

"i love you, gunwoo-ya". you started to pour your eyes out for no reason. you blamed the hormones, your mom would blame the weather and woo-jin would blame the books you read but you didn't care.

the corners of his mouth turned up in response, a soft, sincere smile stretching across his face because he was also just that: a lovesick puppy.

"i l-love you too". gun-woo wasn't expecting that, you could tell. he was too nonchalant for his own good sometimes.

like who the fuck wears pink bright shorts at his parents-in-law’s beach house? WITH NO SHIRT ON.

his eyes were full of love as he looked at you, the sun making the already beautiful landscape even more dazzling as time seemed to stop once more, everything but him disappearing at that moment. not being able to wait any longer, gun-woo then leaned his head up, pouty lips brushing yours teasingly for a moment before connecting in a proper kiss.

his touch was soft and tender, brushing against your mouth as he had so many times before, your tongue darting out to meet his briefly as his arms around your waist pulled you even closer. the sudden change in height since you got up from the bench was a different angle for both of you.

a silent moan escaped your lips as your barely clothed breast brushed against his, giving your boyfriend the perfect opportunity to slip his tongue properly inside your mouth for another taste.

his hands squeezed your sides lightly, applying just the right amount of pressure to feel good, and just as you were about to pull him even closer to deepen the kiss, he slowly pulled back, making you want his lips more.

a smile appeared on his face at that, the smugness behind it pouting in response. you straddled him so your faces were on the same level and suddenly the boxer went exe.error404

"jagi, your mom-". he spoke, his hot breath hitting your face with each exhale. you smirked at him.

he was so mean.

"how can you act innocent right after sucking my mouth dry a second ago, you monster?".

"b-but-". oh no. his cheeks were red, wide eyes searching for one of your parents to pop up from nowhere suddenly, hands finding no safe spot to grip at your sides, finally opting to put them in your waist, almost engulfing its whole circumference because of the size of his hands.

when a few moments passed and you still remained in the same state, he finally relented and sealed your lips once more in a quick kiss, one of his hands moving up from your waist to gently caress your swollen lower lip afterward.

“is that what you've been thinking about all this time, baby?". he asked embarrassingly, eyes avoiding your brown ones for all that was worth.

you nodded, your eyes roaming all over his face before reaching out to move some of the hair away from his eyes, gathering his attention.

"sorry, but yes". you pouted, a small smile starting to appear on the boxer's mouth. you could tell he was embarrassed to hear you confess he occupies your mind 24/7 as if he didn’t know that yet. "and that you are so irritably sexy".

not even one second after, gun-woo's hand is covering your mouth with his eyes wide open and a laugh escapes your lips. he instantly mouths for you to be careful.

"i didn't even say anything wrong!". you defend, automatically tracing his scar on the right side of his face like you are already used to, brushing his hair at the end.

"you want sexy time, i know you!". he whisper-shouts, now completely avoiding your gaze. you laughed.

"sorry". you were not. "it's not my fault you're wearing pink shorts! you can't do this to me, you're mean!". you whined on his lap.

"you were crying seconds ago, what happened?!". it was his turn to pout, looking genuinely confused at your change of emotions. "woojin-hyung said you were crazy when you guys first met".

"aish- that old f-". gun-woo covered your mouth again, warning you. "he's lucky he didn't make it here".

this one is for my crybaby girlies i got you don't worry, gun-woo is here to wipe your tears and fuck your brains out - in a loving way. loved imagining beach!gunwoo a little too much.

#this was supposed to be longer im sorryyyy #hope you enjoyed anyways!!#woo do hwan #kim geun woo x reader #kim gun woo #bloodhounds fanfic #bloodhounds #bloodhounds x reader #bloodhounds netflix #bloodhounds kdrama

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