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melit0n · 4 months

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Half-Starved

- Oneshot

- Obsessive! Ghost/Reader

- Word Count: 3.2K

- Warnings: Descriptions of gore, canabalism as a metaphor for love, mentions of past domestic abuse, stalking

- Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52474849

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley was born hungry.

Born with a relentless nagging feeling curled up right between his oesophagus and the squirming muscle of his stomach. From the very moment Simon opened his eyes, he was hungry for something he would never have. Left to starve in the gloom of the locked cupboard he was shoved into for not shutting up. He spent fifteen-odd years greedy for any drop of affection he could get. Anything he could grasp and hold onto, no matter how many bruises it would leave him with. No matter how long he would have to spend chained up like a bad dog in the corner of his room licking his wounds telling himself that it was worth it. That the blood was worth it. The pain was worth it.

Anything to be acknowledged.

Now, once again finding comfort in the gloom of his home, he is still hungry. Even more so. However, he didn’t like to be touched, because of him, but he still craved it. Maybe too much. He wanted, wants, to be held tight enough so he doesn’t break. Wants to be vulnerable. But he’s still afraid he’ll end up being a scared kid looking into the slit eyes of a snake again.

He blames his younger self for the predicament he’s found himself in, wants to sit down with him and shake him by the shoulders and ask why. Why he put himself through that for that long. But even so, he can’t blame the kid. He knows how hungry he is now; feels the scraping like dull claws against the soft spot between his liver and his spleen. He can only imagine what it was like for him as a kid. He’s blocked most of those memories out now, though.

He sits through the tugging, the pulling, through each dull meeting. Each dark night spent alone in his bunk. Each evening he spends licking wounds that just won't close.

Unfortunately, this issue, this dilemma, is a hard one to fix. A hard want to satiate. Being a 6’4 SAS agent with a heavy Manchester accent and an apparently unapproachable demeanour, most people tending to avoid him in the streets, makes it a bit hard to gain attention, let alone affection.

But then there’s you.

The first word that would come to his mind is kind.

Out of the blue, draped in moonlight and glimmering stars, you begin to appear everywhere. He doesn’t know if you’ve moved here recently, or if his brain has randomly decided to notice your presence, but you’re here. And there. And everywhere, really.

He sees you in the local corner shop, holding tightly onto the baggy sleeve of whoever you’ve brought along for your midnight excursion, brushing your hand, intently, against that of your work friends on the crowded train you both take every day into the city. You use physical affection as not only a way to show affection itself, platonic or romantic, he isn’t particularly good at guessing unless it’s incredibly obvious, but as a form of comfort and encouragement as well.

In less than a month into his leave, you’ve managed to become a staple in his civilian life. He sees you in the morning, always at the train station with breakfast and lunch in hand looking quizically around to see if you’ve missed your train like a doubtful deer. He knows you know you haven’t. You’re like him; you’ve got an obsession with time. While his is instilled by the harsh words of the military, yours is brought about by a tight work schedule. And maybe something else. He wonders what the something else is as you both board the already stuffed train, both standing in the same carriage full of warm, tired bodies.

He sees you in the afternoon as well, sitting outside on a park bench with a friend eating lunch. While you talk, you have a habit of taking tiny crumbs off of your sandwich, flicking them off to the ratty pigeons that flock around your feet like moths to a flame. You always have the same lunch; the same sandwich bread from the same corner shop with the same filing. You have a thing with regularity, routine, as well, it seems. Just like him.

Of course, he sees you in the evenings too. You both take the same train home, and almost always end up so close yet so far from each other on the carriage. Your work friend gets off at the stop two before yours and Simon’s; always leaving you with a pat on the shoulder and a closed eye smile, which you almost always return. You have a habit of doing a little jump when you get off the train which Simon finds quite cute. It’s almost as if you’re actually afraid of the gap.

Of the fall.

Either way, you part ways without knowing you’re parting from him, leaving him incomplete in an odd way, and head back to your home. Ghost has an impulse to follow you, in between curiosity at where you live and to make sure you’re safe, but Simon urges himself to head home. To sleep. You linger in his thoughts each time he walks back.

At first, he’s oddly amazed, a bit in awe, if he were honest, that you can give so much affection so easily, touch so easily, and receive it tenfold from the people around you.

Then, there’s annoyance, titering on the fine, chipped-away line of anger. Like a mantra, he asks why it’s fair someone can give, give and keep on giving, let alone receive something back, and he can’t? How can you hold someone so closely and not be afraid of a knife in your back?

Maybe that’s Ghost talking, he thinks.

Eventually, he falls off the fine line of annoyance and anger into the muddied trench that is jealousy. Jealous not only of you, how you can give and receive so easily, but of the people in your life who get to experience the affection that you give to any warm body that passes by you. Said people who don’t understand how precious and rare that experience is to others. To him. He wants to taste it. Badly.

Then, it morphs. Twists and turns like a dying thing, all red with chunks of fur sticking at odd angles, into attraction. Turning from a want to be held, a quiet plea to the void for you to keep him together for just a little bit longer, to a need. A need to kiss until both your lips are bloody and raw, bitten and chewed like a pomegranate, seeping your liquid life for him to drink as an elixir. He wants, needs, hungers to feel the comforting weight of your blood in the bottom of his stomach.

He’s seen the way you kiss, and God above he needs it. Needs you. He doesn’t care if it’s the fleeting, platonic kisses you gift to your friends on the cheek (he wants you to take a chunk out of his cheek. Wants you to chew on the fat like the gum you always have in your mouth), or if it’s the rough ones you give to the men you bring home. The ones that have them chasing your lips for more, which you always allow because you never stop giving.

Simon wants it. Ghost needs it.

Consequently, the dull scratching of the claws in between his liver and his spleen grows sharper. After years of the scratching, the pulling, the tugging, he’d thought his hunger pang’s talons had grown weary, but he feels them. He feels the sharp ache like a pistol’s bullet and it bloody hurts. Has him hunched over on his bed trying to claw out his stomach because, for the first time in years, it's hurting him.

And, for the first time in years, Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley decides to listen.

As more time passes, more time spent getting soaked outside your house in the rain waiting for you to come home because you’re oddly late for all the time he’s known you, it changes again. Writhes around in his stomach and the fat in his veins, to something much worse. Much more harmful, at least, to you. In all the pain of his hunger, he contemplates taking chunks out of you. Maybe that will satiate the creature that squirms in his bloody viscera, laying claim to all of his innards in an attempt to get him to feed for once in his life.

To allow him to know what it feels like to be full, instead of half-starved.

Zoning out during meetings easily turns to daydreaming of taking one of his hunting knives to your flesh. Cut strips of skin, like your his sacrificial lamb to slaughter and devour, and finally put those butchering skills he gained to work somewhere other than on the field. He promises he’ll be delicate. Promises he’ll be kind. He wouldn’t dare show you the bloodthirsty rage his opponents see on the field.

Oh, and he can just imagine how you’d cry when he’d do so. He hates hearing people cry. After all, he’s haunted by the echoing sobs of someone lost to him in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land. But you? He doesn’t mind one bit. It’s another piece of you for him to consume, another piece of you that you can offer to him, gift to him, to bring you two together.

He knows how much it takes to be vulnerable, so he wouldn’t even be able to describe what he’d do to taste your tears. To savour your salty sadness upon his tongue and be able to offer comfort. To lick your face dry and hold you in his arms; warm body against warm body just like he’s daydreamed about.

The more time that passes, the further he falls.

On slightly rarer occasions, ones where he’s alone in the quiet of his room for longer than a human should be, he thinks about feeding your own lovingly cooked gore to you. Get’s him more riled up than he’d like to admit.

He can see it as clear as a freshly painted watercolour; a candle-lit dinner. Warm lighting. He’s tried his hardest to cover up the smell of his cigarettes for you, a scent that clings to his walls like mould, with roses. The smell of whatever he’s cooked for you permeating the air.

Soup sounds good, doesn’t it, love?

It’s a macabre yet intimate fairytale that finds its way into his thoughts when all else is quiet. Leaves him tossing and turning in his bed because the scraping just won't stop. He swears he's bleeding out from the inside, and he’ll break his own kneecaps from how long he’s been on the floor at your feet begging you to make it stop. To stop the scratching, the itching, the nagging feeling. For you to clean and stitch up his wounds, new and old.

He’s utterly enamoured with the thought. The idea of being that close to another human being. To be able to physically intertwine each other’s atoms through mutual consumption. To be sewn into the quantum patterns of your being. For you to feed him a proper meal like his parents never could.

He remembers being taught in his History class, the one with the old hag of a teacher who, with her droning words alone, convinced him not to take it for GCSEs, that in ancient times people used to eat each other as well. They did this so that in life, and eventually in death, the two of them would share an utterly unique bond, as well as each other's attributes.

He only really remembers that because his mates laughed at the idea of aristocratic Victorians eating mummies like it was a five-star meal for weeks after that lesson.

Even so, Ghost decides he could die happy on the field knowing that a part of you rested within him. That even when he was dead and gone, probably much earlier than he should be, you two would still be connected. He would have a piece of you, and you him.

And you, him. Mutual consumption. He doesn’t mind extra scars, extra wounds, because he knows you’ll lick them clean for him. Knows you wash them, stitch them up and check on them so they heal properly.

In the end, that is the intimacy he dreams of. The affection he wants from you.

His body is yours, as yours is his. Let him be yours. Let him feed. Let him fulfil you.

The idea leaves him with a small smirk on his face that Soap nudges him in the ribs for with a prodding grin of his own.

So, he makes a decision. For once, Simon and Ghost agree on something and work together as one instead of turning the other off for the greater good.

The decision? To feed. To finally know what it is like to be full instead of half-starved.

The scraping, the nagging, only grows stronger.

He makes it a point to bump into you as much as he can before his next mission.

Anywhere is a dinner table to him. On the crowded train, brushing his calloused hand against yours to ease the hunger for even a second. In the artificial lighting of the run-down corner shop, grabbing that bag of snacks that are just out of reach for you. Anything. Anything will do. But it only temporarily satiates the pang, doesn’t satisfy it. He just gets hungrier and hungrier and hungrier.

He knows you’ve begun to notice him. You’re getting hungry too. He just hopes it’s in the same way he hungers for you. He hopes you’re hungry for him, and him alone.

At first, you attempt to offer him platonic comfort, which, God above, tastes so sweet. You offer soft touches on his shoulder. You gift your fingers intertwining with his as you cross the street to his home because he’s gone off on another bender trying to stop turning over in his bed and seeing the inside of a coffin that he has to dig his way out of again.

‘N you’re just some poor night owl who’s trying to be kind.

It becomes a routine. Both for you and him. You know he’ll come out of the pub at quarter to one and you know he’s expecting you. You’ll walk the same walk to his home, fumbling with his keys as he looks at you with the softest eyes you’ve ever seen on a man, hands intertwined. You’ll still carry him home and close the door softly with your foot as you lay him on his couch and get him a glass of water and whatever painkiller he has lying around. You’ll still stay as he chats, drunkenly, to you. You’ll take care of him and he’ll be whole again, for just a moment.

At least until the morning comes, anyways.

He hungers for your touch the same way water hungers for the cavities of people’s lungs. Hungers for your skin like he hungers for the nicotine in his cigarettes. Hungers and begs and pleads until you both fall like Icarus; wax melting and dripping off your backs as you try and crawl your way back to the sun, back to the light, while he drags you down into the depths of the deep blue.

It's almost poetic.

In the midst of your drowning, the front door opening startles you out of your stupor. You do that a lot, Simon notes. You’ll black out and stare at a wall for hours, whether it be to awkward silence or a piece of music. He doesn’t question it, verbally, at least. From how easily you dissociate, he’d say it's something you picked up a long time ago. He’ll find out when, eventually.

Carefully, you get up from the couch, approaching him as he walks over to the kitchen counter. The blue plastic bag he has rustles loudly in the spotless kitchen.

“What’s that?” You ask, gently, placing a hand on his shoulder to get a better look.

Please give me more.

He lets out a knowing grunt and pulls out two round, red fruits. At first, you mistake them for apples, but the star-shaped top throws you off.

“Pomegranates?”

He nods, looking into your eyes for some sort of approval.

Gingerly, you take one of the pomegranates out of his hand, his fingers twitching as the pads of your digits brush against his. Your eyes dart back and forth between him and the fruit as you do so, careful to earn his compliance as you inspect the fruit.

I’ll take anything you give. Just please give me more.

They’re a deep red, almost crimson, and the shine reflects your face on its vermilion skin.

“Chopping board,” He pauses, “please?”

Nodding absent-mindedly, you place the fruit back into his cupped hands.

You open the drawer behind the both of you and pull out an old chopping board, red soaked and stained into the wood that Ghost just can’t seem to get out. You place it on the counter next to the pomegranates, along with a clean bowl he didn’t even hear you grab, and then find your way to the knife block. Hearing the subtle shink of a blade against wood, Ghost turns and scrutinizes you as you try to remember which knife is the fruit knife. Choosing the shortest one, you hold it by the handle, facing downwards just like Simon taught you, and place it on top of the chopping board with stitched-up hands and missing fingers from all the times he’s begged for more. From all the times you’ve said you have nothing more to give, but he knows you always have more.

I’ll take even the spare and broken bits. Just look at me. Touch me. Let me be full.

You watch, intently, as he delicately cuts the top of the pomegranate off, slicing through the thick skin. Gently, he peels the layers of the pomegranate back, kissing each one with the tips of his fingers, letting it stain them something beautifully violent. He reveals the soft viscera inside, glancing back over to you again and again. Looking for something in your eyes you’re not sure you can give. He cuts it into quarters, continuously surprising you how utterly gentle he is with it, but not down to the skin. Leaving it in a fileted star-like shape, he turns it upside down on the bowl, and, using his hand, slowly shakes the seeds off of the fruit into the bowl.

Once he’s finished, sure he’s got all of the seeds off, he sets the empty corpse aside and just…stares at the bowl of red.

The silence is deafening. You want to fill it.

Simon takes a bloody scoop of the red viscera with his right hand, letting the pinkish juice dribble down his hand, his forearm, and drip onto the immaculately clean counter.

The kitchen smells like bleach. It makes the back of your throat itch.

He offers his hand out towards you, like an olive branch, like some lurid type of eucharist, and, like the obedient dog you are, you feast.

“I love you.” He mumbles, fondly watching the muscle of your tongue dart out to catch the pinkish juice dribbling from your frothing maw.

Be full. Let me fill you, and in turn, you fill me. Feed on me until there is nothing left. Let us decompose, intertwined. Please. Just say you love me, too.

You’re eating, and you begin to repeat it, but Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley taught you well not to speak with your mouth full.

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Note- If anybody believes this needs the Dead Dove: Do Not Eat tag, please let me know. I've seen much more horrific works without the tag, but I'm mildly worried this is inching into the category.

I've spend the past week hearing Abbey by Mitski at every turn, so I wrote this out in an hour or two. I think if I heard that song or saw something about bloody pomegranates one more time I think I would've started chewing the flesh off of my own bones. Canabalism as a metaphor for love is a incredibly profound, and, in some ways, poetic literature device for the sheer destruction a toxic relationship can cause, so, I wanted to try my hand at it! And also to stop myself from clawing my face off from hearing anything about this canabalism metaphor from literally everywhere on the internet.

I apologise for this being description and inner monologue heavy. I wanted to focus on the horror aspects in this rather than the romance aspects, so I'm sorry if you didn't get what you came here for.

Do tell if this feels too out of character for Ghost. It was originally written for König, but I changed it last minute. Thank you for sitting down and reading my work! It means a lot <3

I'll leave it up to you if the metaphor is really a metaphor in the end.

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matchingbatbites · 1 year

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Part 1

Steve visits Eddie often. He loves being around the other man, loves how kind Eddie is, how funny he is for someone who rules the dead. He seems to love making Steve laugh and is always cracking jokes that send the goddess into giggles.

Honestly, Steve spends more time than he should in the Underworld, but Eddie has so many duties to tend to, it makes more sense for Steve to come to him than the other way around.

It’s nearly a year since he met Eddie that his joy is brought to an end. Steve is summoned to Olympus, is told that his visits are sending the world into chaos.

He didn’t know that traveling to the Underworld would cut the human world off from his magic, that the plants that bloomed with his presence would die off when the connection is severed.

Zeus bans him from visiting Hades, and Steve ignores the smug look on Ares’ face, the pitying looks from Hera and Aphrodite. Not all of the gods are here to witness his humiliation, but there are enough to make him flush with shame, to have him leaving as soon as he's able to.

Aphrodite catches him before he gets too far, her hair and robes both immaculate even as tears stream down her face. “Ares told them where you were going. I tried to stop him, but he’s… bitter. Jealous.”

She takes his hand, holds it between her own. “I can tell that your feelings are true, and that Hades feels the same for you. I wish I could help you, Persephone. You both deserve happiness.”

And like a stroke of lightning, Steve knows what must be done.

He thanks her and leaves Olympus, finds the nearest gate and descends into the Underworld. Cerberus is given three loving pets as Steve passes by, heading to the garden behind Eddie’s home.

The plants have been thriving thanks to Steve’s frequent visits, the flowers are in full bloom and the plants that can fruit are full and heavy with produce. He plucks a pomegranate from its branch, and stares at it as he remembers.

The goddess had found Eddie eating one on his third or fourth visit, and the older had stopped him when he’d gone to grab a few of the seeds for himself.

“You can’t eat anything grown in this realm. You’ll be stuck here if you do.”

Eddie had looked almost sad as he’d said it, and Steve had tipped his head to the side.

“Are you saying you don’t want me around?”

“No! I mean, I would-” Eddie stopped himself, took a breath. “You don’t belong down here. This place is far too dark, too bleak. It doesn’t deserve you.”

And Steve could read between the lines, could hear what Eddie wasn’t saying. He had ignored it at the time, let Eddie be right, but now? Now Steve knows that Eddie is the only one who deserves him.

Call him selfish, but no one has ever treated Steve the way Eddie does, has cared for him so, and he wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his days in the Underworld, side by side with the man he loves.

He tears open the pomegranate as a voice comes from the house.

“Steve? I didn’t realize you were here.”

Steve turns to face him, and Eddie’s eyes drop to Steve’s hands, dripping with red as he holds the fruit in his hands. His face pales and his eyes jump back to Steve’s.

“What are you doing?” he asks, taking a cautious step forward.

“Do you love me?” Steve asks in return. Just seeing Eddie has firmed his decision, and he stands, unwavering as he watches the other man pause at the question.

“I do. More than anything.” Eddie seems nervous, but his voice is steady, and Steve knows he's telling the truth.

“If I asked it, would you let me stay? Let me stand by your side for the rest of time itself?”

Eddie steps closer, now in arms reach. “I would. I would not turn you away, even if it meant my life.”

Steve’s eyes don’t waver from Eddie’s as he scrapes a handful of seeds from the fruit and shoves them in his mouth.

The juice is tart at first, but is followed by a delicious sweetness, something that reminds Steve of Eddie himself, and as he swallows, Steve can feel the shift within him.

Hands grab his face and the fruit falls to the ground as Steve grabs Eddie in return, both meeting in a desperate kiss. Magic flows between them, invisible threads tying them together in a bond so concrete, even the Fates themselves could not cut them.

They pull back after a moment, and Steve’s eyes drop to the red smear across Eddie’s mouth, something that is surely mirrored across his own.

“My wonderful little goddess,” Eddie mutters, awestruck as he places another kiss to Steve’s lips, more tender than the last.

“You're stuck with me now,” the goddess responds, sending them both into giggles, and yeah. It feels good to be selfish.

(Later, Steve will cut a deal with the rest of the gods. He will come back for half a year at a time and tend to his duties, leaving his beloved twin Demeter in charge while he’s gone, in exchange for Zeus’ blessing to have children. Zeus will have no choice but to agree.)

Tagging @stardustonpages because they respectfully asked for more <3

#Im not specifying other gods but i did have characters in mind while writing them #The only thing ill confirm is that Robin is Demeter #Dustin is Zagreus and Max is Melinoe #I’m not joking when I say I think they grow them in the garden in the Underworld #They just grow two babies like plants and they’re fucking cherished #They come into the world screaming and covered in dirt #and Hades and Persephone experience love at first sight all over again but different #hades and persephone au #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #steve x eddie #stranger things #joey writes #listen i know i posted the first part yesterday #but yall #the muses have me tight in their grip #ficlet

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