Patron Saint of Hit-and-Runs
Warnings: John Price x AMAB!Reader, dubcon, watersports, scent kink, religious Guilt, referenced child abuse, age difference, mutual pining, cnc, dead dove do not eat, coming of age Reader, Internalized Homophobia, situationships final boss, aromantic John Price, sweat kink, touch starved John Price, summer is always meant to end, is it better to speak or to die
Continuation of this tidbit
"It's June, darling." You tell Price, eyes laughing when you glance up at him above the rim of your sunglasses. "You will be young 'till September."
Easy for you to say that, John thinks, when you have no aching joints or the phantom of slimy film that can be never washed off your skin even if you scrub it until bloody.
You don't know much about Price and he knows even less about you.
Just a few things, really.
He meets you off duty — new neighbour that he did not plan on having, another lad in his periphery that works in the yard shirtless and smiles a little too wide when John stares for too long.
When you catch his eyes dipping down your torso to your happy trail, his lips wrapping around cigar as he gives you a short nod and it is not the smoke he is trying to taste when he takes another drag.
You smell like sunscreen and salt, somehow never burning in the sun and never peeling off in Johns' fingers with regret or dead skin.
You don't break and don't crumble under his touch — don't turn to stone when his palm grazes your inner thigh and the sweet heat pools in your lower abdomen — getting heavier the longer his thumb strokes thin skin there.
Promises things that John does not know nearly enough about.
But you stretch and melt, you let him press down between your shoulderblades so that your back would arch harder than he actually needs it to.
Show off, he hums into your ear, voice stroking your underbelly and drinking in the quiver of it.
John doesn't actually know how to explain the urge to see how much you'll let him do before you start cracking. Or before you push him away.
Maybe it's sick that he wants it to happen so badly, that the thought of you glaring at him makes his pants tighter, that the push of your hands on his shoulders makes something poisonous in him delirious with glee.
John has never been a bully, not really, not that he thinks he was.
But you huff and puff and all John wants to do is push and push and push, watching how you turn into roly-poly and bounce back in his arms, pulled right back by the steel rope of your spite and his meaty arms on your biceps — fingers sinking into the fat of them, squeezing tighter than necessary.
John isn't sure he likes that you seem to know it better than he understands this strange foreign impulse to be mean to you. Like you somehow stole the MRI scans to the inside of his head and now you use them like a map.
Tracking down things he doesn't want to discuss, picking them out one by one in the dark woods of his mind.
You are no expert soldier or amateur hunter — you are as civillian as one can get and John still loses to you every bloody time.
And you are not even trying, aren't you?
"You equate not winning with loosing, John." Your voice shines through the fog behind his eyelids and Price has to blink an additional embarassing time more than he had to when he was your age. Christ, he really isn't getting younger.
Has to make an effort to focus nowadays.
"Not winning is loosing." John doesn't want to argue, not when you can't know any better, not when you are not a soldier, not when you are more than twenty years younger.
But part of him still wants to be on top — it itches in his gums with a half vivid image of biting down on your nape and shaking you from side to side until you go quiet.
"Could settle for a draw." You shrug like it is that easy and John sends you a sideways glance, not yet willing to press down with the weighing authority and mounting displeasure.
You don't know what you are talking about.
Just too young to be wiser and too spoiled to see how much survival costs.
All you are is endless summer and laughter, sharp-sided seashells in palm and sweaty smooth skin.
What would you know about suffering at your twenty-something?
"You are a lot of fun, love." He shares wth you like it is a nice compliment and parts your knee.
Price soaks you through with his condescension, eyes crinking when you hiss and jerk away from his touch.
See? Just like he said — young. Emotional.
You don't know any better, he soothes the ravenous fire in his chest when you snap at his nose and the raging inferno inside of him wants to burn through you until you are blackened and cauterised in your rebellious outburst. Bleeding your sarcasm through the teeth so he can press on one and feel the give of your gums as it separates from your jaw.
A good lesson is a painful and you don't know enough to back off when its better to.
"Do you, John?" You snap finally, sun-kissed and annoyed like he isn't any different.
There is no reason to challenge him every step of the way, but the July burns through the two of you with endless 'i told you so', because John can't introduce you as anything other than "old friend" and you can never take him to meet your parents.
["How old of a friend can i be when I am twenty years younger?" You tease in the shade of some coffee shop, iced latte freezing the expanse of your palm curled around humid plastic cup.
"I told him I knew you all your life, not that you knew me all of mine." John parries, leaning over to sip on your drink and loudly cough it out to the side, already lamenting about sugar and caffeine and too much ice.
"You know me for barely a month." your fingers wipe the sweat off his brow and Price makes a non-committal sound, leaning in. Already not having it in him to even bother with the story.
"I experience things in dog years, sweet'eart." He finally says with eyes so honest your laughter spooks all nearby pigeons.]
You are nothing more than a fantasy — intoxicating holiday to shake him up so he has something to prove him right even when he isn't.
External validation that he is not needing, but willing to take if you decide to not give it up voluntarily.
Nothing like a little sweat and tears to earn something, make it so much sweeter.
John is nothing more than a good story to share over brunch and an ice-clinking glass of Aperol.
Summer is meant to come to an end.
Summer is meant to be a fantasy.
A way to forget about the rest of the year — again young and again giddy with the evening air you cannot get enough of in your lungs.
Warm sweet air and soft loveliness of cooling breeze, seeps through every crack and every seam. Makes even those parts of you alive that you thought were long buried.
Rot is the extension of living, John shares suddenly. Strangely at peace when you stare at him for a very long moment, his eyes the dark velvet of evening sky.
"You are summer, sweet'eart." John murmurs, fingers stroking your ankles, eyes dazed with softness that makes him look younger.
"Hot and annoying?" you ask, half joking, colourful straw of your soda fraying from how much you have chewed on it.
You don't really want to know what it is he thinks of you. You know what most people do.
"Beautiful." John says simply, looking you straight in the eyes. Like it is that easy. "You feel like it will last forever." He adds, a little too honest.
Maybe he really should have kept his mouth shut or busied it with something more productive than saying things he shouldn't.
"And it won't?" You ask, cheeks hot when he smiles like he expected it, like you are as young as he made you out to be.
Like you really don't know any better.
"Never does." Price says, squeezing your ankles and when he leans in to kiss you — you don't jerk away.
Hungry and desperate, you pull on his hair and bit his lip, drawing blood.
Stinging him like one of the big colourful jellyfish that flood the coast in June.
You hate him a little more when he huffs out a laughter and rolls over on top of you. Murmurs "good lad" and traitorous ened curls around your tail bone, spreading when his thigh presses between your legs — John's eyes almost dazed.
He is a creature of his desires and you are a creature of your need to idulge him. The quiet perversion of letting him get high on your docility — the scent of your sweat and taste of your skin — makes something hot roll in your abdomen.
The always defiant "make me" sitting on your tongue heavily, sweetness of your feigned defiance burning your hands and blistering your face because John is always up for a challenge.
John has made a carrier out of making people do what he wants them to do, what he knows they will, what he knows they thought of in the darkness of their bunk.
The shameful sick need to be good and to be useful no matter the cost, because maybe John is the creature of his desires, but you and the rest before you have always been the creatures of his.
If he has had to become god, you'd think that Price would become Bacchus.
You think, that he would drive people mad and set them free, you think he'd pour the wine down their throats and drag them so low that no one would come to get them. No one would come look for them.
They would never leave him, because he will become their everything.
John bounces you on his cock, his grip tight and arrogant around yours — purposefully overstimulation because you don't back down, trying to push him away instead.
You don't run from the hungry dog and you don't turn your back to it, leaving your six exposed.
"John, I-" You whine, digging your nails in his forearm. his bicep pressing down on your throat to keep you in place. "John, I need to go, get off me, Price, come on-" You finally choke out, thight cramping from how hard you are trying to hold it off and not make things embarassing.
"Go where?" Price murmurs in your rear, his beard scratching the shell of it. "There's no rush, love, be good." His cock pushes even deeper in and the mounting pleasure is acute and molten hot, sweat dribbling down your back when he presses himself closer to you.
Thoroughly enjoying the heat. Entirely too happy to make you sweat and hiss at him.
Something at the back of John's mind raising it's big head when you call him disguisting, a tail that he does not have starting to wag. Is he, now?
But look at you, cumming, because of disguisting John.
If he is a pervert then what does it make you, sweetheart?
"Let me go before I piss myself and ruing your bloody floor, John!" You hiss, voice going higher when Price lets go of your cock to press his whole palm against your abdomen.
There is a split second of contemplating happening in his head, before the filthy curiousity, the "disguisting" part of him wins.
"So?" John hums in your ear, tone eerily calm when he fingers finally find where your bladder is suppsoed to be, pressing harder on the soft unguarded underbelly you should have kept safer.
"John, c'mon." Your protest slips into what sounds a lot like a whimper and Price can feel his skin tingling, something sick in him telling him to press harder on your abdomen.
How hard can he push you before you finally snap?
How much of "disguisting" John Price will you take before you'll finally push him away?
Reckon lad's going to taste good everywhere? suddenly crosses his mind, arousal so strong that shame burns through him immediately.
Sharpens the blade of his desire until it slides down to his groin, gutting him as it goes. Warm and sticky, his traitorous hunger coats him with sweat and blood he can never seem to wash off.
Could blame it on an accident, he thinks, licking the inside of your ear to distract you. Just so he can suddenly press down even harder and your control gives out — rips with a high-pitched "Price-", your tone so bloody panicked and oh.
Oh, maybe he is disguisting, because the fear in your voice goes straight to his head.
You are so tight around him it's maddening, but your legs kick in his grip and the only place the John can look is between your legs, hooking his chin over your shoulder to watch from the front seats.
Your urine is hot and golden, lighter than he expected — it runs down your stomach to your thighs and he should hate the anticipation bubbling in him.
He should not want to feel it on him that badly.
He shouldn't even think about something like that, but when the piss finally drips onto his thighs the blood rushes to his head so quickly that he sways for a moment, lightheaded.
"Fuckin' Christ, sweet'eart." Price groans, your walls tightening around him imediately and the sensation is blinding, sun exploding in his head when he ruts back into you, cumming so hard he can't hear a thing.
Doesn't remember sinking his teeth in your shoulder either.
Definitely will not admit to drooling for a whole half a minute even if you promised to execute him via firing squad first thing tomorrow morning.
"You arsehole." Your voice reverberates through his teeth and is it bad that he gets hotter when you are this angry with him? "John, you made me piss myself!"
It takes a mountain of effort to unclench his jaws from your shoulder, thin thread of spit still connecting his lips to the bite he has left.
Almost a tether, he thinks, fingers stroking wet skin on your abdomen mindlessly.
Fingers trembling because this felt good.
Because he wants to do it again to you.
"Doesn't smell like anythin'." He shares after a beat and you snap your head rightways so quicky to glare at him that your vertebrae pops.
Does he have the fucking gall to sound mildly disappointed too?
"I drink enough water." Your voice dips lower, grip on his wrists now painful and yeah, it is bad, because when you dig your nails into his skin Price catches himself contemplating if he can get you to hurt him some more. "What the fuck was that? I told you I'd ruin your bloody floor!"
"Could clean the floor." John awkwardly shrugs, dark creature from the back of his mind is entirely too satisfied.
It drinks in his pain and soaks up your anger, it wants to get his hand back on your belly and wants to suck his fingers clean.
But you glare at him and something in John's head flips the lights off.
Could push the fingers in his mouth too, passes like lightning through the dungeon that is his brain and John has to put an effort into not doing it immediately.
Where in the bloody hell is his impulse control?
"You made the bloody mess out of me too." You growl in his face and Price licks his lips, head so empty that it is the only justification he has for why he says it outloud in the first place.
"With your tongue, I fucking hope." Sarcasm in your tone is acidic and irritating, but John nods immediately and you no longer know what to say, other than, "John, what?".
"Ever been dropped as a baby?" You ask him suddenly and his fingers sink into your thigh.
"Yes, my mum liked her wine." Price says, tone dry and flips you over so he can climb on top of you.
Ever hungry and always a little mad, his body a furnace that you can never escape.
"Legs up." He orders and doesn't ask, voice coarse like the calloused pads of his fingers, trying to mask his belated embarassment. Practically defensive in a way he avoids to look you in the eyes.
Like this moment of unwanted vulnerability — the embarassment of having to share a sliver of his helplessness — feels like mockery. Like you are secretely laughing at him when he's not looking.
Like in your head there is a new version of him now — helpless and pathetic, the one he will never be able to kill because he cannot reach this deep.
His shoulders are tense well after dinner because John craves to be embraced and loathes being seen, refusing to confront what it is he is so ashamed of.
What is it that now manifests in his raw infernal hunger for tears and struggle?
What it is that now manifests in your own casual offer for him to hunt you down through the house and force you to take him. For hours on end until either you break with the choked out "red, John, red-" or he burns through every crooked, misaligned part of you to make you new.
Someone who no longer bursts at the seams with the bubbling "use me-use me-use me" because he empties you out and pressure washes the insides. Sews you back shut and lays you to rest while he is cleaning up the mess.
Slowly washes your legs — thoughtful and silent, his hands warm and trembling just a little bit.
A weakness for a weakness, right?
"You did good." John says and something pours inside of you — warm like Christmas cocoa, sweet like peaches he always brings you. "I'm proud of you, sweet'eart."
John kisses your forehead and lets you pull him in bed, rests his head on your chest, wrapps himself around and pretends to sleep so you'd card through his hair.
So you'd call him good in turn, so you'd say that he felt good, that you are okay and you aren't all broken from him. That you are going to make him tea when he wakes up from the nap.
He sleeps in short bursts, no more than three hours at most — tells you he doesn't want to mess up the sleep schedule of his. That it is always easier to ruin something than set it straight and he knows it better than most.
John likes to be held in his sleep, you note down in your head and know you won't ever tell it to anyone, because how can you? It would be, like to tell the name of God to someone.
It would, like to tell him that his trust never been worth the smallest of your fingers or one of your colourful nails on your right hand.
It would be, like this has always been nothing.
It would be, like to say "you were right" so he can finally rest every hope and every painfully earnest part of him in a box he keeps under his bed. So the traitorous 'maybe' won't come to him when your heart is thumping against his ear and your fingers card through his hair.
When your voice is calling him good.
It's impossible, you reason with yourself and doze off as soon as his shoulders drop from the defensive curl around his ears — his body sinking into yours with such relief you'd feel flattered if it wasn't for the fact that your arms stay wrapped around him throughout his whole nap.
Even if it's hot and makes you sweaty.
You never call him "captain" and he never says "i love you".
John peels peaches for you, because you cannot handle skins left on your fruit — cuts it in neat pieces and brings you the plate. He is sticky up to his elbows, skin itching, the juice caramelising on the hair of his forearms.
He tastes like the peaches he cut for you when you suck his fingers in your mouth. He tastes like sweat, like sun-warmed skin, like the season of never-happened.
Watches you, strangely silent, while you suck each of his digits clean. Pries your mouth open just to see if you'd let him drool.
"Naughty." Price mutters, shaking his head.
Makes you feel like a kid who made a mess all over, trying to help, embarassment warrying with stubborness behind your tense jaws.
But John slides his spit-soaked palm in your shorts before you start speaking, cuts off that exit like it never existed and wraps his fingers around your cock.
Slick and filthy, he drags his hand up and down, chooses the rhythm that he likes.
Hums in satisfaction when you grip on his shoulders and whine "John".
You are young. You don't know any better.
You don't actually like him, Price reasons in his head but still noses at your cheeks, rumbles "eyes on me" and drinks into the way a shiver rocks down your spine, through your whole body.
He will never be anything more than a tasty gossip, a juice nugget to share with your giggling friends about the summer you fucked a captain.
He will never be someone in your life, just a story to tell. Just a memory of one holiday.
He's probably not even saved in your phone under anything. Just like the rest of your roster of other guys — vague descriptions, emoticons if they are lucky.
Episodes for you to scroll through when you get bored.
No hard feelings there, John says. He knows how these things work.
Which is why he drags you in a dark alleyway and forces your jaws open so he can lick into your mouth, thick thigh pressed between your legs because you really shouldn't get distracted when you are with John. Didn't you tell him that you want an adventure?
Well, he is an adventure alright, so keep your eyes on him, will you? He is doing his best over here.
John saves your contact under "Heart" in his phone. Says that it's short for "sweetheart".
"Almost a call sign." You joke and Price lets out a low noncommittal sound, neither agreement, nor denial. He is too busy rubbing sunscreen into your chest, meaty palms blatantly groping your pecs. Pinching the hardening nipples like he wants to knead you into nothing.
"Fittin' one." He says, finally taking his eyes off the glistening skin that his fingers want to squeeze again. "If you ever change yer mind 'bout military, you can use this one. Avoid gettin' anything from someone else that is too…creative."
"You just like that you'd be the one to give it to me." You muse and John shrugs half-heartedly, not even trying to fight the allegations.
Trying to be nonchalant now of all times.
"Although, would you be able to touch me like that if I'm your subordinate?" The question comes down on John's head like a sledgehammer, knocking all sense out of him.
Because for a moment the image of you bent over his desk, army pants around your ankles is so vivid that his vision goes dark around the edges.
Need to get my mind out of the gutter, he thinks, squeezing your chest again, thumbs circling your nipples slowly.
"Probably not." He finally says, voice cracking to the surprise of absolutely no one and risks a glance at your grinning lips.
"Then I'm gonna pass." Satisfaction laces your tone and John leans in, thick ridge of his cock pressing to your hip.
You are toying with matchsticks there.
"Could visit me at work then." He says before he thinks of the implications, plucking your left nipple, playing with the tip of it until he can feel your heart pounding against his palm.
"Yeah." You say and when your fingers find his hair Price goes down willingly. "I might stop by if you insist."
But John will never insist and you doubt that he never thought of how exactly he is going to introduce you to his lads.
He won't, to put it simply, because he has lived a life as one person and there isn't much in him left to become someone different.
Opening new doors lets in the draught and his joints ache as they are.
Pitiful, really, you would say if you already came up with a way to introduce him to someone in your life in a way that wouldn't warrant people poking at the comfortably soft walls of the bubble you two share.
It's easy right now, because nothing can tie you down. It's easy right now, because it is summer.
Because maybe you love yourself always a little bit more when the sun paints you golden and his eyes linger on the side of your face like he can't believe it.
The audacity of the world to bring things that much beautiful in his life, when he should have never been afforded anything than what he paid for in blood and tears.
Didn't have to bleed for you and therefore can't have you, John thinks, cracking open the watermelon you hauled to his house from somewhere. Didn't have to bleed for you and therefore you don't owe him.
Can't make you stay when your skin is so slick with the sunscreen there isn't a hook that he can catch on it to drag you into his life.
Your nose wrinkles when he breathes out smoke sideways and it still hits you, reminding him awfully of the bird Johnny has been looking at like she is the new stained glass in his favourite church. She too, kept staring at John, as if unsure why he even shares a name with her John.
To say honestly, Price wasn't too sure himself. Not when for the first time since retirement Soap was glowing like someone finally changed his burnt out lightbulb.
When his sergeant stopped being his sergeant but still was somehow in his orbit, stubbornly refusing to leave or drop his captain like a set of rusted weights.
He expected Johnny to dim and he didn't, because someone found him. Because out of them all Johnny has always wanted so badly to be found and to be taken in. To sleep not on the hardwood floors but in bed — nose tucked under someone's jaw.
So his mouth is always the closest thing to live beating pulse.
Johnny purrs 'Ah'll see ye, hen" with such affection they all cannot help but taunt him for this vulnerability — this ridiculous softness that has eyes too big and bites him when he comes home too late, because they have to go to churches together in the morning. Separately, of course, but still.
A morning kiss is a morning kiss and the lad evidently will perish immediately if he doesn't get his, confirming for another day that he is allowed to get better because there is always someone that wants him to.
"That sounds nice." You comment, slurping out the skinless peach from his hands and Price goes for half a shrug, mindful not to jerk his hand away from your mouth. "Are they tying the knot any time soon?"
John doesn't know about that, but the chances that Soap will let his bird go are sinking down to zero with every day she chooses to stay with him. Might need to put him down if she actually decides to move on. Would be more humane.
"Would you like to get married at some point?" You ask casually, like he has as much time as you do. In fifteen years you will be forty. In fifteen years he will be senior citizen.
"No." John says and doesn't know what to do with the relief of this realisation. "I'd prefer to not get married at all. Not sure I'm cut out for that."
"I'd like to try to be married, but I'm pretty sure I am not gonna like it very much." You share conspiratorially and the laughter in his chest is warm and fond.
"Is that so?" He hums pushing another piece of peach past your lips and you nod quickly, still chewing. "Why?"
Price does want to know why, he realises suddenly because you are young and you are lovely and you'd probably make some bloke or whoever else you like really happy if you agreed.
"Don't like getting limited." You say like it explains everything, the reason at the core of it so childish, so selfish that John smiles, thumb wiping off the corner of your mouth. Greedy thing.
You really are like summer, aren't you? Petulant like June, blazing like July and absolutely merciless in your decisiveness like August.
Good things should always come to end and you are the best there is.
"I like you." John says, slowly nodding, the knot in his stomach tightening because that's how it always goes and then he is left alone with a handful of accusations and an acid at the back of his throat. "Just not sure I love anyone, really. Never came easy to me." He shares, like you can undestand when for years no one had.
He's just heartless, there's nothing else to it.
"That's fine." You say, for some reason more relaxed than before, tension bleeding out of you — your eyes softening. "Thank you for telling me. I like you too, is that fine?"
John nods slowly again, unsure whether there are any eggshells around him to step on — an emotional minefield that always turned him into wrung out rug that felt rather uncomfortable than anything of the fabled butterflies in the stomach.
"Aye." He looks back at you, stinging behind his eyes forcing his jaw into a stubborn set. "That's fine by me."
You don't ask him much after that, always with senses so keen when it comes to John Price and the dungeon he calls his head. Somehow knowing things he doesn't.
"So you have never been in love." You say and don't ask, sitting next to him in his backyard later that evening. "I'm not judging or anything, just wanted to ask."
It has always felt like a tricky question where the only answer is to lie and be normal, but the worst thing that can happen is that you are going to leave with August, when the sun leaves the suburbs and leaves him greying and cold.
"Yes." Price still says, heavy molten ache stretching out in his belly when you lick his fingers clean. "Didn't want to."
Would it be a bad time to ask you whether you'd like John to fuck you into the grass with neighbours potentially hearing your gurgling whimpers? Probably, if they call the police and he'd have to explain things.
"Okay." You nod again and get up, your joints popping when you stretch your arms above your head and John exercises all of his will not to lean in and lick a stripe up your happy trail. "Race you to the bathroom? You catch me — you do what you want till dinner." You offer him semi-casually, cheeky thing because John will absolutely do even if it makes his hip ache later.
Though maybe that's what you are counting on, he thinks, eyes half-lidded and hungry when you glance back at him with anticipation. A reason to kiss it all better.
The sun sets down behind him and in the golden light of it — you are the most beautiful thing he has never had to bleed for.
John licks his lips, slowly getting up the steps.
Maybe, if he rides you ragged tonight you won't have the energy to leave him in the morning. Maybe, that way he can keep you by his side all September.
And, who knows, by the time it gets colder he will be the warmest thing in your life.
Maybe you won't be able to leave by then.
Maybe you wouldn't want to.
