Ghost x Hellcat!Reader | Dual POV | AO3
18+ | Dickheads Do Love | wc 18.5k (so far)
cw: trauma, alcohol, ptsd, explicit sexual content, depression, mild blood kink, mild spit kink, stalking, no one is healthy, everyone is a bisexual disaster, guns
What happens when a loaded weapon (Ghost) meets a wild animal (you).
01. Kill of the Night (Part One)
02. Kill of the Night (Part Two)
03. Curse Me Good
04. Imposter Syndrome
05. I Don't Want to Be Funny Anymore
06. Wolves (You Got Me)
07. Calling All Skeletons
08. So Contagious
loving never did me no good (so why am i lying now?) | simon x reader | +18
He calls, and you can't help but answer.
tldr: you and Simon have been separated for months by now, yet he refuses to take you off his emergency contact list. [ao3]
tags: explicit sexual content, fem!reader, depictions of physical injuries, emotional manipulation, forced caretaking, (dubious) consensual impregnation, not exactly breeding definitely babytrapping, simon calls himself "old man" meaning husband not in a fauxcest way
[Mar 12, 2.14 PM] (linked Google Calendar reminder)
[Mar 12, 2.14 PM] Please come sign
[Mar 12, 2.16 PM] Simon I'm so serious
[Mar 12, 4.43 PM] Stop having your shit sent here
[Mar 12, 4.44 PM] I've had to reschedule with the lawyer twice. Stop fucking bailing!!! And stop! Fucking! Having! Your shit sent here!!!
[Mar 13, 7.20 AM] I told the lawyer to send it to your email. Check it.
[Mar 13, 7.21 AM] Password $TWAT!5 i think
[Mar 15, 8.06 AM] simon for fucks sake i know you use your email check it
Divorce leaves you with an embarrassing amount of free time. Like many women on the other side of a relationship, you find yourself in desperate need of a hobby.
Call it perhaps naïve optimism, but decades of movie-induced psychosis had you somewhat convinced that after ending a marriage your life would fall into that frazzled chase towards the proverbial moving on. Your Bridget Jones-esque era, so to speak.
You're certain you've done all the steps. Bought a tape dispenser to pack your shared life into tidy cardboard boxes, called the notary, fixed the doorbell tag, endured the pity comments, drank the gifted celebration wine bottles (expensive), had the obligatory celebratory one-night stand (bad), and decided the backsplash had to go as it's only there because Simon liked it (he didn't. He positively did not care.)
You hate the backsplash tiles.
They'd been clearance stock from a hardware store, and when you'd seen the price, you had squealed so hard your husband had pretended to plug his good ear. His lips had thinned into that long-suffering line as your fingers curled around his elbow, tugging him towards the pallet. 'S ceramic crap, Simon had objected, tapping a nail against the PEI sticker. You'd rolled your eyes and had wanted to ask him exactly what he would know about tiling, but his hands had been already pulling the wallet out of his back pocket.
It took him two attempts and several YouTube tutorials he kept rewinding every ten seconds, but he got them up in the end. You sucked him off as repayment with your knees to the kitchen floor, tracing lazy circles across the white of his knuckles where they gripped the countertop.
They get stripped off in a manic yet satisfying fit of hysteria, and now instead of ignoring them, you ignore a sticky note over bare plaster reminding you to call the remodel company.
Hot pilates seems as good as any distraction, and your therapist's office sits between the studio and your house. It's convenient: you can waste an hour on some very pricey lies and then go shed the guilt along calories and sweat. You squirm on the love seat and nod along her words when it seems appropriate.
"I think it would help if it were a more... A cleaner cut," you stammer. Your tongue is dry but you've achieved what you think is the perfect interested-but-nonchalant posture and you don't want to risk it for the glass of water. "I still get all his stuff, you know. His medical records and his phone bills, it's... Confusing."
Your friends occupy every Thursday and Saturday night since last October. They sit criss-cross applesauce on the wood of your living room for movie night, swing by the day after potluck for their washed casserole bowl. You get passed from one hand to the other in the most absurd game of "who has it", a watchful eye forever on you and your spine of jello.
Around them, it's easy to forget you've lost the flock. You fall into step without thinking, borrowing their direction for a few hours. Let yourself be carried on the same current, trusting they know where they're going.
But when night comes, they rise up and rub their knees and the small of their backs and swipe open their phones. One texts her fiancé— leaving now, home in 15. The other traps the device between shoulder and cheek as she buttons her coat. Did you wash your teeth? Jaime, I'm going to check before your goodnight kiss.
Instagram fills your head with christenings and birthdays while you stack the dishes in the sink. The washer-dryer gets stuck on heavy duty. You take a shot in the dark.
[Mar 23, 11.06 P.M] [Attached image] ?
It makes you feel a little less pathetic that he answers immediately.
[Mar 23, 11.06 P.M] control lock on have to turn it off
[Mar 23, 11.15 P.M] nite pet
It should feel nice, that two can play the same game. You don't respond anyway.
The next morning, you check the mail before heading out for work. Wedged between letters and advertising flyers, you find another health record. This time there's a full STI panel in the summary.
[Mar 24, 7.03 AM] youre not funny
The call comes at 3 A.M.
Your car is on and out of the driveway before you've even fully realised what Price's voice is saying, streaming out of the speaker. They got the short end of the stick on the outskirts of northern Paris, and then had to get EVAC'd out of there because Simon almost bled out in a helo.
The team at Queen Elizabeth's Centre for Defence Medicine extracts two bullets from your ex-husband's side, nestled between his spleen and his pancreatic artery. A couple millimetres in a different direction, and you'd be getting a death notification instead of a call from the ICU.
You sit on the plastic benches just outside the OR block and stare at the linoleum until a woman timidly scooches over. She's waiting for her daughter, a ruptured appendix she tells you, and she cuts the biggest orange you've ever seen in slices to coax into your hands.
"Who are you waiting for?" She asks, and your eyes decide they no longer have the strength to contain the neurotic tears you've been holding in.
She pats your back awkwardly, a little maternal, and makes soft cooing sounds as you sob into your palms, pressing your nose and your mouth into your fingers.
You picture him lying there, on a steel anatomical table, the surgeon suctioning his blood into numbered plastic bags. You wonder if they've given him something for his head. His neck hurts, if he uses a pillow that's too thick. You hope they've found him a flat one.
For a moment, you imagine that he does die, and that you're relieved. You rub against the front of your throat when that makes your stomach turn until you feel sick.
The tears slip into your mouth, iodine and sweet juice.
"There, dear," the woman tuts, smoothing over your hair. "I'm sure everything will find its place."
You're not sure how to feel about it, that you couldn't answer her question.
The zipper of your bag leaves a red imprint like a scar across your cheek. You attempt to rub it away as the nurse leads you through the frigid corridor of the unit, shoes squeaking and cleaning agents stinging the lining of your nostrils. She makes you wear funny green covers for your shoes and hook a mask over your ears, showing you how to work the gel disinfectant into your hands.
Your bag slips off your shoulder as you peek through the gap, pushing the heavy door of the room open.
A wet laugh surges from you, completely involuntary, because Simon truly looks ridiculous. Sprawled out on a mattress somehow too small for him, cast leg propped on a metal sling, oxygen cannulas skewed over his top lip, away from where they're supposed to rest against his nose. They must've had trouble dressing him, because his gown is sagging down his arm, loosely tied behind his neck.
Half of it must be his own making given that he's leaning over the edge of the bed to smash his clunky fingers onto the screen of a beeping machine. He turns his head to look at you and you take a step back to rest against the doorpost. Your hands itch with the need to touch him, to check...
His chest heaves into a great sigh when he flops back against the pillows. "Sweetheart," he burrs, nodding his chin towards the equipment. "Giv'us a hand, yeah?"
You think about hitting him, but you're sure they'd throw you out.
He watches as you drag your feet towards the bed, letting your bag drop to the floor so you can inspect the monitor. His chin dips again with encouragement when your hand hovers on the side buttons, and the half-moons under his eyes have your heart give a pained squeeze.
"Simon," you start, hating how your voice turns wet. "Oh my God. Are you okay?"
Your ex-husband cocks his head to the side, like he's taking your measurements, and the line of his mouth softens. "None o'that," he tells you, patting the seat of the chair next to his head, "c'mon, you're breakin' my heart."
He lets you sniffle a little, stretching to the nightstand to offer you a tissue box as you start rubbing your eyes. You take one out of politeness, but there's really no need: they are so puffy and dry you'd be surprised if they'd manage to produce something. Still, you jam one end into your inner corner and hope at least to clear some crust from sleep.
"How long you been 'ere."
"Since four, maybe. What happened?"
Simon scans the room and you're sure he's fishing for a clock, but he winces when his eyelids flutter in the harsh lights and he covers one with a knuckle. "Ah, nothin'."
Some part of you must still have enough hope because you wait for him to offer up more. It never comes, predictably, and you wind your arms around yourself and drop your gaze as old resentment floods your mouth.
It makes him sigh again, a heavy noise that bleeds into a groan somewhere in the middle. "Not keepin' secrets, you wouldn't understand half o'it. Who called ya?"
"Price," you admit reluctantly, twisting the point of your shoe against the ground. You find the action immediately childish, so you stop by shifting in your chair and knocking your knees together. "I told you to take me off it."
The hand he had to his eye falls down over his barrel chest as it wavers up and down with his shallow breaths. There are scrapes there you didn't notice before, at the start of his wrists and up his forearms where the tactical jacket must've rolled up. He's more gauze than skin there, between the plasters and the IV dressings.
"Been busy."
"I've called the office. Says you didn't authorise it."
"Right," you scoff, primming your lips. Perhaps you don't make the best decisions in a panic. His team would've taken care of him, so there's no need for you to be here. What a clean cut you'll get if your hands keep trembling around the handle.
Your bag is halfway from the floor when his hand dangles off the bed, right in front of your face. His index hooks into the strings of the mask, nail scraping lightly against your temple, and then he's pulling it down until it rests on your chin. Your eyebrows knit together as you look up at him and his thumb smoothes over one of them, hair catching on the callouses.
He's staring at you with that complete impassivity that can only mean he's thinking very hard.
"You look nice."
Sometimes, it's easy to forget that out of the two of you he's the better butcher.
Taking him home isn't a planned thing, nor a welcomed one. He spends eleven days in the hospital and you manage to limit yourself to one other visit only, just to really assure your brain that he's out of death's grip so you can leave this whole thing behind and go back to dismantle what's left of your marriage.
It's sprung up on you. You ask him what's the prognosis and he clucks his tongue and rubs his nape until he feels like he's made you work enough for it.
They won't let him go back to his flat. The stitches on his side are still precarious and his broken leg hobbles him even with crutches, so for once in his life, it seems Simon isn't trusted to take care of himself. The medical team is still too concerned about the risk of infection and hemorrhage to leave him be without observation.
"I thought you said your spleen was fine." Your eyes squint while you help him arrange his lunch tray precariously on his knees. The dedicated support attached to the bed doesn't fit over the width of his thighs.
He sucks his teeth before using them to tear open the oil packet. "It is. Just nicked it."
The rest of his unit has been sent on action already, gone a day or two after his injury. It's protocol, but you stare at the way he tightens when he shifts wrong and think that he looks a bit like a toy someone has gotten tired of playing with.
He eats around his words, hunched over the food like a big animal of prey. He's not one to complain, but you catch the way his crooked nose twists when he gives the spare bed in the room a sideways glance. He tells you that some kid blew his fingers off like it's to spite him personally.
"Thought I'd get some R&R, at least," he grumbles, licking meat glaze off the knife. "Have to share wit' a wanker who can't keep the spoon still."
You know you shouldn't say it, but it comes out anyway.
"Do you, uhm..." Your brain tells you to backtrack, twisting your voice until it's all strangled. "Do you want to come stay at the house? I work, so it's not like we'd see eachother much and I can... Yeah, I can help you out."
It wins you a taste of the laser focus he's capable of. "Oh, pet," he croons, making your toes curl inside your shoes. "S'not a good idea, innit?"
You shrug your shoulders, prickly with vulnerability you've grown unused to. It feels a bit like rejection, and can't figure out why it hurts. The plastic covers of the meal gather into your palms, and you cringe when condensation dampens your skin.
Simon reaches for you when you try to move to the bin. His thumb and forefinger close around your wrist, feeling for your heartbeat.
"Don't want to take advantage," he adds, and you know him too well to ignore what swims in his eyes. You pretend not to see it.
"You'd do it for me."
He licks his lips, and the hesitant press around your wrist turns full, hand circling it completely. "Yeah," he agrees, "of course I would."
The fact that the divorce was your idea goes without saying.
It's unclear exactly which cog had stopped turning, but one day you'd woken up to the uncanny feeling that no time had passed since the day before. Simon had been somewhere in the other hemisphere, and you'd stumbled through the twenty-four-hour cycle of your life with an inexplicable anxiety.
You'd felt like one of those birds that smash again and again on a window they can't see, desperate for something beyond the glass.
Then Simon had come home, and time had resumed moving. It had scared you terribly.
You try to keep it from heading there, now. In the morning you leave for work and attempt to think of anything else other than where Simon will be once you return. At times you find him wandering the back garden, checking the tree roots' stability with the end of one crutch. Others he's at the kitchen table, typing clumsily on a laptop with Tesco-bought plastic glasses precariously perched on the tip of his nose. Most of the time he doesn't even bother putting them on correctly, with one arm going over the ear and not behind.
Taking care of something gives a direction to your life that's been missing. You like that he has to listen to you, now.
He doesn't object when you nag him about taking his meds and makes such deep, growling noises of appreciation for your cooking they go right down to your stomach.
His thank-yous come in service, always, so he fixes the wardrobe door that's been giving you trouble and checks all the lightbulbs of the house. You're reminded of how many things he sees that you don't: your car oil too low, loose window latch in the bathroom. The fact that your neighbour's garage has been broken into twice since Christmas.
He spends a Saturday afternoon replacing locks and tinkering with the security system. You're only informed when a new set of keys is delivered into your hand.
"You can't change stuff in my house without telling me," you try to admonish him, pretending to not be distracted by the rolled-up sleeves of his sweated t-shirt. "You know normal people just call someone for this, yeah?"
"Aye," he says around the cigarette dangling from his lower lip, "get ya a three-weeks wait and a half-arsed job. You need this done now."
This is what you've been missing: to not have to explain yourself. The few (try two) dates that you've been on since you and Simon split have failed for the same reason. You can't expect someone to know you when there's no history, but it's a hard adjustment coming from a long-term relationship.
There's no need to faff around with Simon. You don't have to explain why it's a grand thing, when you're late at the end of the work day and enter the house and tell him that your sister is pregnant. Due in September, after a third cycle of IUI.
He turns the toy you've picked up from the store on the way home in his hands. "You think 'bout it?" He asks, waits for the moment it takes for it to click in your head.
"What, about kids?"
Sometimes, you want to say, but it seems unfair to say it to him. Parenthood was always off the table, to your agreement as well. How does one raise a child when their father is across the globe half a year. The idea was shelved and replaced with something else, and for a while it had worked.
"Don't know," you're hesitant to respond, torturing the inside of your cheek. "Depends on who comes along, I guess."
He hums, stare never leaving your face. "Sounds about right."
Simon knows just when he has to push with you, and where. You're aware he lets you ramble so you're distracted when he tugs your feet into his lap, press his thumb into your socked arches. Because he knows you, you let him.
Your former uni roommate glowers at you over clementine martinis when you go out drinking. Your ex-husband has been stashed in your house for two whole weeks and you've yet to tell a single soul. It would've gone on longer, but after you'd called a rain check on your Thursday-Saturday meetups twice in a row, your friends were nearly committed to an intervention. You managed to de-escalate it down to drinks, hoping the alcohol would help, but perhaps a tête-à-tête hadn't been your brightest idea.
"It's just until the end of the month," you reiterate, sounding too much like you're justifying yourself.
There's no particular amount of affection that your inner circle holds for Simon, and you're quite sure it has decreased significantly since your separation. No need to fake appearances once a friend's insufferable partner is out of their life.
"I don't know, babe," she grimaces, stirring her drink with a straw. "It's kind of fresh, you don't even have the papers signed. I don't think it's the healthiest thing."
"It's practical. And, c'mon, what was I supposed to do? Leave him there? It's temporary and it's... It's fine, it's nothing."
"All I'm saying is, you don't make the smartest decisions around him," she points out. Not like you can get mad at her if she's right.
You swirl the words on your tongue while you drive back.
The lights are all off and you wander into the kitchen, pulling open the medicine cabinet to rummage around for a paracetamol. The weather is not quite hot enough for summer yet, but you feel stifled under your dress, fanning your face with your free hand to dampen the alcohol-fed licks of heat travelling up your spine.
A shadow shifts in the corner of your sight and you scramble, whirling around and pressing against the counter so fast you almost land on top of it.
Simon turns his head away to curl his lips in that nasty manner that means he's amused, standing a few feet away as if not entirely sure you won't bolt. Your palm slides away from your heart, and you award him a blank look.
"Fuckhead," you chastise him, low because the anger has already bled out of you. Quiet is not something he decides on anymore.
He gives you a canine smile and saunters closer, holding his arm out for you to see. "Patch's comin' off," he explains, picking the corner of the dressing with his nails to show you how loose it is, nodding his head towards the cabinet.
The help isn't offered nor does it need to be, because he angles towards you and waits until you reach behind your back for the disinfectant and the box of plasters. You murmur that you're sorry when the glue pulls at the straw hairs on his forearm, and he hums softly like he's conversing with an animal he thinks a bit dumb.
"I like the dress," he tells you after a while, and when you look up briefly, he's sizing the length of your body approvingly. Your hips shift in response, correcting your slouch as you clean the skin around the wound. "When 'ave you worn this?"
"I haven't," you swallow, hissing when your fingers fumble opening up the new dressing. "Got it after you."
The massive curve of his shoulders hunch, closing in, and you don't think he liked that so much, that there's an after you. You stick the plaster in place and prepare to bite the bullet.
"You smell good," he interrupts eagerly, and it almost makes you give in.
"Simon, can you sign the papers?"
His eyes are so weird. They shift like earth, at times, one moment the light, rich brown of soil, warmed by the sunlight. Now they deepen, the ground opening in layers, pulling you further by a magnetic core, bubbling in their tar pits.
"What papers, love?" He asks it along a deep breath, lips pulling at one corner, like you're revising some old shared joke and he's helping you set up the punchline.
"The divorce papers. I have them in the office, we can..."
Your mouth opens, and you curl your lips to wet them, squeeze some moisture out of your dry mouth. Your hand lets go of his arm, but he moves his behind you to rest on the counter so he can bend you in a more comfortable position for himself, shifting you until you face him directly. You have to tuck your shoulders inwards or you brush against the cupboard.
"You know wha' I think," he mumbles, swiping his nose over the crown of your head. "I think tha' yer a little drunk, pet, and you're not talkin' straight."
In a broader sense, you already knew this was going to happen, so it's not exactly shock that twists in your gut when his fingers hike the skirt of your dress up your thighs. They pinch the softness there as they go, mean enough that you squeak, and he chuckles with his mouth fitted to your ear.
You fear for his stitches when he hoists you up on the countertop, trying to swat his hands away, but he's clever and he hooks the gusset of your underwear in the crease of your pelvis. You've been wet since you noticed he was in the kitchen, and the groan that rumbles up his throat when he discovers it punches you in the solar plexus.
"Fuckin' knew it, I knew she missed me."
It seems like memory doesn't fail him, because his thumb traces the folds at the top before he caresses the length of your labia, finding the pool of slick at your opening and smearing it back up.
You can't help but clutch at his shoulders, digging into the muscle. The heel on your left foot bangs against the wood behind it and threatens to slip away, but when you try to spread your toes to keep it on, Simon gives your clit a good jiggle that has you doing the opposite.
"Speakin' a load of nonsense with a cunt leakin' for me," he huffs annoyedly, muffled against the spot on your neck he's lavishing. He doesn't warn you, just presses hard against your clit and plunges two thick fingers into you, bullying the rim apart until it stretches over the thick of his knuckles.
"Simon-!"
The gasp is out of you before you can reel it back, and he uses the opportunity of your open lips and cram his tongue into your mouth, with such an insistence you'd think there isn't enough space. You try to duck your head away a little, keep this from turning tender, but he palpates the hinges of your jaw and strokes quick little jabs against your front wall that make your lips slack.
You cum dizzyingly fast, moaning when you suck instinctively on his tongue the way you know he wants you to.
Simon grins like the cat who got the cream when he decides to let you breathe again, rubbing your cheek in a rough back-and-forth with his thumb. No more sounds seem willing to leave your body, so you're silent as he tugs your panties back in place, smoothing the dress over your legs.
Unsure of what else to say, you palm his side with a delicate touch. "Are you hurt?"
"No, darlin'," he's quick to respond, lowering his head so he can plant an insistent kiss over your mouth. "Feel fuckin' fantastic."
The following week, you celebrate your birthday. It falls on a Saturday, so you'll go out to that nice rooftop bar you've been meaning to try with your friends and you'll pretend it's all a surprise. But on Friday, Simon orders your favourite Indian and almost gets offended when you try to pay him back. It makes you so awkward that you let him stamp a peck to the side of your head before settling on the couch to watch a film.
When 9 PM comes, he taps your biceps with his fingers. "Pill," he clicks his tongue, and you're somehow shocked that he remembered.
The truth gets wedged in your throat on its way out. Admitting to it seems like dangling intimacy in front of his eyes that you're not ready to depart from.
"Yeah, sure," you hum, feigning severe interest in the movie. "In a minute."
"No, not in a minute. Now."
You think about getting up and swallowing an ibuprofen, just to get him off your trail. But why should he have that control over you?
"I'm, uh, not on it anymore." Hand reaching for a curry chip, you sniff and stuff it between your lips, deciding to focus on the spice burning the roof of your mouth instead of the intense look he gives your cheekbone. "Didn't really seem useful. Thought I'd take a break."
The rest of the evening is spent convincing yourself that you don't care about his opinion rather than worrying whether he thinks it's a bad thing.
You make your wish over chicken korma and pray he hasn't yet figured out how to read your mind.
By the time the last week of the month rolls in, you've half-forgotten Simon is supposed to leave eventually. If it's slipping from your mind, then he's buried the thought so deep it may as well not exist. Every time he leaves for a health check-up, you wring your hands and wait for him to come back and tell you that the time is up, that he doesn't need you anymore. What is supposed to bring you solace now fills you with dread.
Spring is drawing to an end and you feel a part of your life goes with it.
Over dinner he tells you that his medical downgrade will be lifted when May comes, and you're grateful that he pretends to ignore your fork clattering against the plate. You twirl it around your fingers, tapping the tabletop with the flat end of it.
Steam curls from the pasta between you. Simon decided to cook for once, and you'd come home just in time to bear the results. "Clean across 1500 meters", you'd said, enjoying having to evade his grabby hands, "and defeated by a timer."
Now he eats like he's still in a mess hall, elbow planted wide across the table, barely looking at his plate. He's always had that about him. This is mine, his posture says sometimes, come and take it.
"That's good," is what comes when you manage to metabolize it as the prongs skewer a limp maccheroni, and he watches your mouth open for it.
You're not sure if it's irritation or embarrassment that twinges at your nape when he snorts, tilting his head away so you're only allowed one side of his face, watching the way the line of his mouth bleeds into the scarred divot on his cheek. It turns his whole face into one long, pitying grin.
You've seen the place he's supposed to return to. A stuffy cubicle crammed into the side of a duplex, so narrow you weren't sure it was fit for rent. He hadn't seemed interested in decorating, because it had been lacking any furniture aside from the basics, all dull popcorn ceilings and vinyl plank floors. You'd found a pack of condoms in the hardboard sidetable digging for the things he'd sent you to retrieve; shame somersaults in your guts at the memory of throwing them away.
Another noodle makes it into your mouth, and you swallow it along with the image of him noticing just as he's about to fuck another woman. "Will you go back?"
"Back where?" Simon says, stealing the last piece of bread for himself.
You go to answer honestly, but you lose your bravado. "Field. Your team left," you reply stupidly, as if he possibly couldn't know, "a few days after your surgery."
"Aye, probably. Kind o' need-to-know stuff."
The chair creaks under your shifting weight as you adjust, curling a foot towards your chest so it rests flat on the seat.
"Have you packed anything yet?"
"Plenty o'time."
He says it like time is something he can afford to waste, like leaving is an inconvenience to be dealt with only when necessary. He clears the plates without asking, carrying the stack to the sink while you rinse the cutlery. Silence grows thick, cut only by scraping metal and rushing water.
When you wander to check the back door, he looks up from where he's polishing a knife. "What're you doin'."
"Making sure it's shut," you reply with your hand still on the handle. The door gives a good rattle as you try the latch, putting some of your weight into it. The door gives a good rattle as you try the latch, putting some of your weight into it. The lock clicks, firm in its place even when tested under a second, harder shake. His mouth twitches and it earns him a mean glance in response.
"Checked it half an hour ago."
"So?"
"So you're starting to sound like me."
You laugh, but the sound catches somewhere in your chest when you try to make it real. He shifts away from the sink, setting the knife on the rack, sighing when you don't offer anything else.
"Someone had a go at Ms. Cooke's place. Police came sniffin' round."
"What?" You gape, abandoning the door to move back towards the kitchen island. Your stomach goes tight and unpleasantly hollow, and you can't stop your hand from pressing over it, as if that alone could help it settle. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Was tellin' ya now." His shoulder sways in disinterest, like he's swatting away a fly, watching you with that unnerving patience he gets when he's already decided on something. "S'fine. We've got the alarm."
When the tidying up is done, you go upstairs and stew in your anxiety. The night seems to have an in on your thoughts, because every little noise acquires intent. Your shoulders jump as you undress when the boiler settles with a knock in the walls, and later your eyes wander from your paperback towards the dark glass of the window, wind worrying at the fence panels.
A car door slamming is what sends you out of bed, resigned that you can't bear it anymore. You stick your fingers in your mouth, gnawing at the nails, and take laps around the first floor to inspect the dark corners of your home, the phone flashlight gripped in your palm as a weapon.
By the time you descend the stairs, you're embarrassed by yourself. You find Simon exactly where you've left him, sunk in the edge of the sofa with a Stella hanging lazily off his hand. Blue-white flashes from an old football match ripple across his face. He doesn't turn, but greets you before your feet have even landed from the flight.
"Oi."
There's no rush for an answer on his part, yet he still sighs heavily when it doesn't come. His eyes studies you, moving over your face with a quiet attentiveness you've never learnt to evade. "Still thinkin' bout Cooke?"
Your expression must answer for you, because he rubs a thumb over the condensation on the bottle before he's speaking again.
"If they're worth half o' their salt, they'll have scoped the place already." His chin dips towards the window without looking away from you. "Not stupid 'nuff to try while I'm in the house."
You know, of course you do. You've spent months alone in this very same building, and haven't spent a night turning in your bed about it. For some reason, it doesn't stop your stomach from churning tonight.
"Need me to come up?"
You're not strong enough to pretend that his weight on the mattress is not a relief. The sheets have been kicked to the end of the bed, room too stuffy for them to be useful, and you anchor a hand to the edge of the bed to keep yourself from rolling in his direction, gravity wanting to move you towards the alcove of his body.
Somehow, Simon feels bigger than you remembered. His breath rumbles when he stretches lavishly with one arm over his head, knee popping as he hangs his foot over the bed's end. The sound reverberates through the fabric, pulsing where your skin meets the topper. It turns physical when a hand touches between your scapulae.
Makes you jolt, eyes darting over your shoulder, finding the humped line of his nose bridge. His arm is still over his head, and he stares up at the ceiling while using the opposite to drag his knuckles up and down your spine. You don't have time to ask what he's doing before he answers.
"Stiff as a board," he chuffs. The fat joint of his middle finger digs into a sore spot dead centre on your back, and you tilt backwards in protest. " 'am makin' you nervous."
"Always," you reply, and he chuckles like he thinks it's a joke.
"And here I was hopin' it was the break-ins."
You give a sharp jiggle of your shoulders to knock his hand away, still too touched by the fact that he's sharing your bed to reassure you to bed truly mad. You keep tight to your pillow so there's no chance that he sees you smiling when he snorts, and fall asleep with his fingers tracing patterns over your back.
His tug wakes you. Your eyes flutter open mid-motion, rolling with the pull until your face plants against his chest. His breath wafts in your mouth before Simon tucks you under his chin, seemingly more content to take long huffs of your hair than facing you directly.
You're probably the only one conscious out of the two, which is why you don't move away. You take the precious opportunity, wallowing in the instinctive comfort it offers.
It's his smell you realise you've missed. Saliva drips liquid-hot on the back of your tongue as you press your nose to his throat. Dried sweat sticks to the crook of the arm beneath your head and in the hollow between his shoulder and neck, catching the back of your nostrils with acridness. It makes you press your thighs together, too embarrassed to consider rubbing them like you want to.
The pleasant floatiness of half-sleep is ripped away from you when his hand fists the fat of your calf to drag your leg over his hip.
"Wot 's it, baby," Simon slurs against the top of your head, and you gulp down your doe instinct with his voice under your ear.
You have to work the words through the tightness of your vocal cords and pull back a little from him so you can speak. "Sorry," you start, "just woke up. Think I rolled over."
The hand on your calf travels up, palming the length of your leg. When it reaches your ass, he sinks his fingers there like the pyjama trousers between you are a problem.
"Yeah." He ignores you when that makes you whimper, slapping his palm over your cheek a couple of times. It's not a smack, more of a pat, like he's testing the solidness of you. He grabs it again, this time a little bruising. "Need some touchin', do ya."
The familiarity of it confuses you. Your brain is not sure, as his palm moves to your front and up your shirt, if he should be allowed to do this. He's your husband and he's in your bed, but he's not. He's your ex and he's plucking your nipple between two fingers until he can catch your panting in his mouth, but you can't help it when it makes you rub your pussy on the muscle of his thigh.
"Please." You convince yourself you're begging him to stop, head spinning, but Simon must hear something else in your voice because the pad of his thumb flattens against the peak of your breast, and he flexes his leg to give you something harder to grind against.
"Bloody hell. Alrigh'," he groans, a punched moan, and the forearm behind your head curls so he can weave his fingers into your hair. Prickles bloom at your nape when he pulls, forcing your chin back so he can kiss you. His spit slips into your mouth, syrupy. Waxy sugar over candied apples, stuck behind your teeth out of your tongue's reach.
Whenever you get shy and try to inch backwards, he forces you again on his leg, pressing you so hard to himself that the rubbing verges between pleasure and burning. You know you're obscenely wet because he drags two fingers over the crotch of your pants repeatedly, trying to feel the moisture that seeps into the fabric.
"Goin' to be nice to me, uhm?" He croons, pressing his forehead to yours. He's gotten you desperate enough that your hips continue working even when his palm leaves them in favour of guiding you to the tent of his joggers. The hot, thick shape of his forces whines out of you, tip of your noses bumping. "So sweet for your old man, yeah."
The fabric moves and he's in your hand, weighty enough that it makes your cunt clench at the memory.
He has a cock that makes you want to touch it. He makes you want to touch him. You've known this since the first time you've slept together: there's a deliciousness in circling your fingers around the shaft, feeling the soft give of the veins gorging, swelling with his arousal. It has you hot in the stomach, eager when you find the tip angry and leaking already, slipping between your fingers until they're slick. You stroke him from the upside of his length, trapping yourself between him and his belly so you can feel the coarse hair on his pelvis tickle the back of your hand.
You imagine he made less noise when they shot him. He tries to muffle it by smashing your mouths together, cupping your cheeks to keep you still when you struggle to breathe.
"Fuck, tha's it," he hisses, bouncing his thigh when it makes you sigh pathetic little oh's. "Good girl, stroking my cock so good. Makes you wet as rain, uh? Ahhhh, fuck-"
Your head spins again, and this time it's because he's easing you on your back. It takes the pressure away from your achy pussy, and you claw at the dark where he's supposed to be only to come up empty-handed.
"Simon-" you call, until the bedside lamp switches on. He's already taking his shirt over his head. His back casts broad shadows across the wall, shifting with his wingspan, muscles flexing at the bottom of his sternum where they disappear into the soft fold of fat over his lower stomach. The ink on his bicep jumps when he fists his length, so tight you're sure it must hurt.
You realise the light is less for you when his free hand yanks your shirt until it rests at your collarbone, baring your breasts. He sucks on his teeth and settles on his hunches between your spread thighs.
"Lemme see," he beckons with a nod, barrel chest heaving. You feel pinned by his gaze, like there's no place else for you to be, and the head of his cock bobs up and down when he resumes stroking it. "Play with yer tits."
You oblige, strumming your nipples until they perk and rosy, coaxing gentle ripples of pleasure that move your hips in jerky circles. Every attempt to close your legs is stopped by his free hand.
"Baby," you sob when you're at your wit's end. You must hit whatever nail he was laying right on the head, because the stoic line of his brow softens and he shuffles forward towards you.
"You poor thing." Simon lets go of himself, tip slapping against his belly right under the surgery scar, in favour of pulling down your bottoms and panties all in one. His thumbs hook under your knees, and you gape up open-mouthed as he guides them towards your chest. "Been a'bad husband, haven't I?"
Your sight blurs, and he notices and cooes. Precum beads and drips to land on your inner thigh. His fingers seem a bit apologetic as they nudge you apart, pushing inside your cunt to make you sigh.
You want to cum, and you tell him with your walls spasming around his knuckles, shivering from the warmth of the tears leaking from your eyes and the warmth of the wetness leaking from your pussy. He wipes the former away and gives you a third finger to stretch on.
"Gonna be good to you from now on," he promises as he rolls you on your front, detangling the clothes from your feet. Your arms attempt to push you back around but a rough palm on your spine holds you down against the mattress.
"I'm-"
The head of his cock slips over your entrance, too slick to gain enough friction, your skin pulsing when he uses his fingers to wipe some of your wetness away. Looking back, you choke on your spit as you watch him lick them clean.
Simon cages you in, a fence of muscles over you, settling his elbows around your head when he punches his length into you. It's a bit stilted at first because he's not at the right angle, and it burns, paper-cut sharp. He soothes you with a kiss on your nape and gives you the rest of it.
You feel yourself open up for him, a caving space that wants for his shape. Your cunt gulps around his shaft, suctioning, pulling him further while you struggle to catch up, pressing your mouth to your forearm. "Ah, Simon, please-"
"S'okay," he says through gritted teeth, like he's telling you more than he's reassuring you. A hand fists your hair to have more of the back of your neck so he can bite you there when his hips start pumping. "I've got ya."
The train of your thoughts gets woozy after that, brain too winded in keeping conscious. The buzz at the base of your skull grows with each sound smack of his thighs against yours, skin prickling. You'll be red there tomorrow, and at the end of your spine where his abdomen chafes. His cock pistons deep behind your mons, sending direct waves to your redden clit as it rubs on the bed.
"My wife," Simon growls when his maw leaves your neck, pushing your head down when it tries to lift up. Your field of vision is entirely occupied by his bicep, jaw slack. He presses his nose into your cheek when you thump your forehead against his arm. "My fuckin' wife... Comin' on my fuckin' cock. Mine, my-"
"Fuck, please. Right there, ah, make me come," you keen, fucking yourself back, lifting your ass to meet his thrusts. You think you could cry when he balances on one arm to sneak the other under you, stroking his fingers on your clit. "Yes, Simon, yeah-!"
It's a full body spasm, a rolling tide, growing and growing until your throat is tightening around your pants and you're near silent, mouth open in teary sobs. The ring of your pussy draws so strict that he inhales like it stings before he's rocking hard against you, making your teeth clack together.
Once you're sated, his pace changes from rolling plunges to short stabs that makes you search for his fisted hand, so hard they make it for your lungs to expand. It loosens just a second, only to snake around yours, constricting like a noose.
You feel his cock throb, pulse against your rim, and you swipe your thumb over his knuckles. "Pull out," you try, voice smothered by his weight, "pull out. Baby-"
The sound is harsh when he shushes you, lips pressed right over your temple. His arms lock like a manacle, elbows digging in the mattress, mouth parted over your ear when he huffs like a bull.
"Givin' it to you," he warns, and something scampers in your guts. Your shoulders try to shift, but you're rendered near immobile under him. "Ya need it, yeah? Somethin' to fuss over. Yours and mine, pet. Uhm?"
Objecting is a useless attempt, because the only things that come out when you open your mouth are feeble moans and wheezing breaths. He must take your silence as a yes, and his cock pulls back all the way, right down to the head, before it's slamming inside in a few desperate thrusts.
They're a repetitive drumming, laden, heavy shoves that have the entire power of the muscles of his back and thighs. Your second orgasm comes like a tumble, catching you underfoot as he spills against your cervix, making you shiver with the viscous warmth of it.
He stays there for a while, nudging the back of your head with his nose while you both catch your breath. You pant against the mattress and wince when your pussy doesn't want to let him go, seizing up when his spent sloshes out of you as he slips out.
Simon gathers you up in his arms, pulling you astride his hips, letting you rest your cheek against his tacky pectoral. He tilts your chin up with two knuckles and kisses you until you gasp for air, just to make himself laugh.
"I love you, sweetheart," he smiles when you frown at him, sealing the words with another press of his lips.
You feel like the price is already paid. Whether by you or him, it seems unimportant.
Pregnancy doesn't agree with you, but you're so content you can hardly pay it any mind.
The feeling is self-inflicted, though, because people smile at you in the grocery store, eyeing the gentle curve of your belly, and your friends twist their fingers in your hair every night out, checking the quality of the locks. God, so the pregnancy glow is real! Why didn't I look like this? You know Simon agrees because he seems physically incapable of sharing your twenty inches radius without cupping some part of your body.
The first two months you could barely roll out of bed, and when you would, you'd have to sway towards the bathroom before nausea had you bent in half. Now on the cusp of your second trimester, the stubborn thing growing under your ribs seems happier to grant you the occasional uninterrupted walk.
You take your breakfast by skirting the trowels, tile cutters and floats strewn across your kitchen floor, pinching your nose when the sharp smell of grout catches in the back of your throat.
"Out," your husband commands, swatting your ass with a loud smack. You'd think that having done this once already would be helping him somehow, but he seems to be struggling more than the first time. There's no rush: you know he'll get it how he wants it in the end. "Shouldn't be breathin' this in. Go somewhere else."
You retreat with your tea and the morning post, humming along to the weather forecast intro while you sort through envelopes. Bills. A wedding invitation. A card from your godparents congratulating you on the pregnancy. Can the baby hear you yet? Does it recognise the sound of your voice and Simon's?
When you're in bed at night, it seems that it can— it lands such kicks when its father presses his mouth to your abdomen to make silly noises for the pleasure of making you laugh.
A yolk-yellow paper clip slips from the stack and lands on the table. It takes a second to recognise it: the medical records from the night Simon was shot.
You push it aside to continue parsing through the remaining letters, but curiosity has you going back. The excerpt from the surgical record is nothing new. Two entry wounds to the abdomen (LUQ), no major arterial damage, minor damage to the splenic capsule. Patient underwent emergency exploratory laparotomy. Then there are the files from his hospital stay, the billing from the RXs and the reports of his blood work. The last page is his discharge notes.
Discharge destination: patient's residential address. Advice and caretaking: no heavy lifting 3mos, no contact exercise 3mos, see therapy section for pharmacy. No home care required.
The date stares back at you until Simon curses from the kitchen. You smooth the corner flat and slide it back beneath the paper clip.
"Simon?"
"Pet, c'mere. Come tell me how ya like it," he calls. You leave the documents in the foyer. You have so little time for things like this, nowadays.
Best of luck explaining to the Lieutenant what fan fiction is, you dumb animal.
As a n00b here, it’s been super cool and encouraging to receive positive feedback and gain followers after my recent chapter for Murder for a Whiskey (18+). Please enjoy this little Hellcat!Snack, written on mobile as a big fat ‘aw shucks gee thanks guys.’
Today was a good day, you decided. You hadn't done anything to deserve it, but that didn't mean you couldn't let yourself have it anyway. Even if you were still at work. Still stuck behind the bar.
Your phone lights up on the bar by the register. You pick it up. Click it open. Smile. Then flip it facedown.
Across from you, the Lieutenant watches over the rim of his glass. You try not to notice. The place might as well be empty except for him, seated in his usual spot by your register. His jacket takes up the stool beside him like it's been instructed to guard the space between him and the rest of the Copperline’s patrons. There's half an inch of bourbon left in his glass and a wet ring beneath it you haven't bothered wiping away.
Your phone lights up again. Click. Smile. Down.
The Lieutenant shifts in his seat. He's been watching you for the last twenty minutes. Giving a shit or not giving a shit. Trying to collect every one of your grins that you usually reserved for him when it was just the two of you. Tonight, something else kept getting to you first.
"Wot's that, then?"
You glance up. "What's what?"
He nods towards your hand just as you flip the phone facedown again.
"That."
"My phone?"
"Not that. That."
He gestures towards your stupid grin. It widens as you press both palms on the bar.
"This?" you ask, pointing to yourself now, exaggerating your teeth. "This is called a good mood, Lieu. You should try it."
He scoffs, studying you for a second. No doubt deciding how much dignity he's willing to lose by asking the real question he wants the answer to. You busy yourself with a cleaning rag until he’s tallied his thoughts a few minutes later.
"Wot's 'is name then?" he asks, letting go of his drink to lean back in his seat. He waves his hand like he's ushering in a report as he continues: "Or hers. Theirs. Wah'eva."
Idiot.
"Why?" You grin, letting the question glisten on your teeth as you ask it: “Jealous?”
"Never," he says, as he spreads himself across the barstool. One arm stretches across the back of the empty one beside him. Makes himself bigger. Manspreads his knees. Rolls his shoulders back. Wrangles the shapes under his mask until they match his answer.
"Well, good." You pluck the same glass you've been polishing for several minutes. "Because there's like 20 of them."
"Twenty?"
You nod gravely. "At least."
His tuts. "Busy bird."
You can't help but laugh. His expression collapses into restraint, as though the number is a personal insult. You feed on it for a moment, enjoying the marrow of his misery before you've had your fill.
"Nah, it's not that. It's a stupid side project..." you start, setting the glass down before you polish a hole through it. It was easy to say, just hard to explain: "It’s a little writing thing online. S'not important."
"S'got you smilin' like that though, eh?" he gestures vaguely at your face again.
You open your mouth to dismiss him. Something that will shut the door on the conversation. But your phone lights up again. Your eyes drop automatically. The smile gets you before you can stop it. You turn it facedown.
"Well, yeah. I mean..." you trail off. Answering him is a trap. You know this. You know this. But constantly keeping who you are behind your teeth makes the bait of being known too tempting.
You look at your hands. "Writing's personal."
He says nothing.
"There's always some little piece of yourself in it," you continue. "Even if it's made up. You still build it out of something that comes from you."
The Lieutenant's posture changes. Only slightly. The arm draped across the empty stool lowers. Knees draw in. Leans forward. His indifference packs up as you speak, silently watching as you run a thumb along your phone case.
"So when people go out their way and like it...I don't know," you grimace, regretting the words before they even leave you: "It's like someone likes a piece of you."
His eyes stay on your face.
"Not real like, yknow. S'just like a little heart sticker or something."
Your phone lights up again, face down. He glances at it.
"Twenty-two heart stickers," he says.
"Twenty-two heart stickers for my brain-heart."
"Ah. Brain-heart," he nods. "Terminal."
"Hopefully."
You grin at each other and the little lines that gather at the edges of his eyes slap a sticker on your chest-heart too. It sits there for exactly three seconds.
Until he says, "Let me read it."
Your smile dies so violently it deserves a chalk outline.
"No."
He blinks. "No?"
"Fuck no." You snatch your phone off the bar and shove it into the pocket of your jeans. His eyes follow the movement.
"I'll find it," he muses. "You know I will. Nick your IP from yer 'ouse and-"
"You abso-fuckin-lutely will not," you snap.
"Wot's it about then?"
"Nothing."
"22 people like nothing?"
"They're very supportive, what can I say."
You pick up the same glass from before to signal an end, dropping it into the rack. Color races to your face. You don't have to look at him to know he's beaming. Not grinning like he's got one over on you. Beaming. Absolutely delighted to have found something that frightens you without hurting you.
"Fuck's sake, it's poetry innit?"
"As if," you scoff. You turn away and reach for a bottle that doesn't need to be moved. Behind you, you hear the leather of his seat creak.
"Something embarrassing though," he continues.
"Eat shit."
"Something romantic?"
You nearly drop the bottle. You close your eyes. Inhale. Turn around. He's grinning beneath the mask, like a man who heard the first tick of a safe unlocking.
"It's crime," you correct, crossing your arms.
"Romantic crime?"
"People die."
"Before or after they snog?"
Your phone vibrates in your pocket. His eyes drop immediately. You cover it with your hand.
"Number twenty three," he picks up his glass, casually rolling the melting ice around the bottom. "Don't see why twenty-fourths too much. I'm sittin' right 'ere after all."
"You wouldn't understand."
His gaze lifts. The joke is gone from his face. "Try me."
You could tell him the truth. Tell him that people online don't know you and that's why it's different. That they can like a piece you hand them without ever finding the rest. That you felt safe knowing they can press their hearts against your words and never notice the rot beneath your fingernails.
But the Lieutenant would suck them clean and spit them out. That's what made him dangerous.
You fold your arms.
"You won't like it."
His brow draws together, earnestly. "I will."
"You don't know that."
"I know you wrote it."
"That's not an answer."
"It is to me."
You stare at him until your eyes sting. He shifts, as if suddenly uncomfortable with the sincerity and adds: "Besides, if it's shite, I'll lie."
Laughter escapes you, through the words: "Fuck off."
You shake your head, turning to the register to deposit your phone out of sight.
"Never," the Lieutenant repeats with a grin.
With your back towards him, you watch him in the mirror, drumming his fingers against the bar in thought. His eyes move to the glass in front of him. The bourbon. The ice. Then up to your face in the reflection. Something shifts. You see the thought arrive in his head. He stops drumming.
"Does he wear a mask?"
Fuck. You don't know how to react, so you don't. You stay still. And that is your mistake.
His mouth becomes a scythe.
You busy yourself with the register, pressing a button that does nothing. The drawer stays shut.
“Av an accent?” He asks from over your shoulder.
You press the button again.
“A ten inch cock?”
You try to roll your eyes louder than you laugh.
“Oh please,” you say. His smug little amber eyes are expecting you as you turn towards him. “You use metric. Ten centimeters.”
He scoffs: “Yeah, wide.”
Laughter breaks you open. When people volleyed with you, they were usually the ones that dropped their jaws. Not you. Why was he funnier than you? You pinch at the brow of his mask, tugging the fabric over his eyes. He huffs, swatting at your hand before eagerly adjusting it back.
“Idiot boy,” you grin, plucking his glass while he’s distracted. You swig the dregs of his whiskey before he has it back in place. It’s mainly spit by now anyway. On instinct, you tap on the empty glass when he sees it, asking: “Another?”
”Go on then…” he says, nodding towards the rack you’re already heading towards. You swear he mumbles ‘good girl’ as you pour another round. This time a double. For him and you. You slide it into his open palm. His fingers wrap around yours when you do, pressing your touch against the glass.
“Does he get her?” He asks softly.
Hand-heart. You try to hide your smile.
No.
Idiot girl. Don’t assume.
You pull your hand away, but he holds it in place, sliding his fingers between yours.
“Get who?” You ask. His glove swallows your hand whole.
“The killer,” he answers. He suddenly pulls away, taking the glass and letting your hand drop to the bar top.
“You mean murderer,” you correct. You don’t hide the annoyance in your voice. Why touch you at all? Now your hand is dirty from his stupid gloves. You go to wipe it on your shirt, then you pause. You smile. You understand.
“There’s a difference between the two, y’know. A killer and a murderer,” you say, finding his eyes with as much honesty as the bar would allow. Sincerity was best served in streetlight, but a smile would have to do: “Just because you’re one, doesn’t mean you’re the other.”
There’s a few beats of silence where he looks at you but doesn’t see. Where he converses with the ghosts you’ll never know.
“I like that,” he mumbles. He slowly reaches towards you, extending two fingers to tap you on the forehead with a fresh grin. “Twenty five.”
over the dead sea, keeping you company.
simon ghost riley; smoke breaks with simon riley
he can hold his world between his palms.
a desire, really, mundane effects of being overly human for the past few days has him softened, edible in a sense. you can mold him into any shape you like, break his ribs a little, tear off his limbs. worship. vengeance. love. it's the latter one you'd believe, which lets him be an open book to you, with ink faded along time, unable to read except the few pages where the ink still remains strong.
the smell of cigarettes, an odor you have come to hate yet make peace with, it's stagnant in the air around you– you think it would have been better if you could start a coughing fit, fist over your mouth, making a dramatic face as you cough your lungs out. pulverise your sanity for this man, who's beside you, in his human skin even if he's something vile inside.
something that has made him believe that he's all rot and not enough flesh, decaying nerves and organic matter scattering his vicinty. the pungent smell of flesh, dead hangs in the air as he enters the room, you would have believed the same if the smell of earth and rot made you uncomfortable, made the insides of your stomach churn with bile and a strange auction of helplessness.
but you're as deranged as him.
or so you'd like to believe.
"stop smoking" you grumble, fingers wrapping around the small butt of the cigarette, a failed attempt to pull it off his lips. you would have pressed yours to his, maybe get him addicted to the stupid cheap flavour of your chapstick, or your own taste. you haven't reached there yet, it's a big cleft between you two and you don't think you'd ever cover it up.
fingers prodding at old wounds, salt being rubbed against the open gashes over his corroded skin. regret and formaldehyde sticks like sap over his being and he smells too strong of rage. fingers prodding at his wounds, eyes up at his, lips in a quirky smirk as his fingers wrap around your wrist to get you off. it's a mere thought, poignant wanton want of wanting him to snap it, the pain would be closer and much more rewarding that this fluttering ache between your heart.
"limits sergeant" he grunts, fingers digging into your skin, it will bruise, leaving an ache similar to the one between your chest, under your ribs, inside the small piece of flesh that accelerates its own speed each time he's near. it's very similar to your first meeting with him, annoyance lacing some kind of respect– a gun to your head as he tells you that you lose.
he's mean, because he thinks being mean makes him look stronger.
and perhaps, in a sense the world does see him as a monster more than human, eyes void of any emotions staring back at you all those months ago, something tangled inside your heart, a thought of being broken by him even if it may hurt you.
he's not a good man, and you're clearly not chasing good here.
you think you have known him life long, acrid need to be correct always.
you have known him. the cold kisses your skin, cheeks tinted pinks and lips turning down in a pout. he's not looking at you when his fingers unwind against your wrist and let your limb drop. the cigarette now crushed between his teeth, an annoyed downturn of his lips, clear displeasure on being touched by you.
a failed attempt.
as always.
a great star always needs to collaspe.
if life wasn't cruel to him, he would have been a better man if not this. whatever mangled being he has made himself into. it's cruel, in the way where you'd pity a dying wolf. it's cruel in the way you'd hold his face between your palms and tell him it's okay, but you can't.
the scant need to hold him against you is physically and metaphorically impossible in this world you both have built around yourself.
because at the end of the day, you're a replacement, some cheap plaster he's using to keep his heart intact. death has been an old friend, and it has taken him away in bits and bobs, chipped at the demons inside his head and ate him whole. it feasts on his grief and rage, his want to be more human than a monster that he claimed himself to be.
simon riley is a dying star, albeit failed.
he's the test subject of god, the experimental way of twisting a human just to have fun and see how long it takes from them to break, and simon does break, over and over again until it's all bones and bile for him and not much flesh to hold his heart. until his ribs crack underneath the rot and insect gnats eat him up wholly.
you're here, but you really can't stick around. can't hold him, can't wish to because this star will burn you and you're already fading.
"it's bad for you," you mumble, voice soft, too tender for the war hardened soldier military has made you into. simon gives you a look, something borderlining on ignorance, mock ignorance– he does this often, when he wants you away but not really. "lived long enough to know it won't woman" he grunts.
woman, the words echo inside your skull, more like an insult than a term of recognition.
woman, girl, child–
you're everything but those you'd think, in your head you're a vessel. silent. still. abandoned in the way women are. you could have named a few more, few more things that crawled under your skin.
the first time you blow john 'soap' mactavish it's in the dingy bathroom in the pub just down the road from credenhill with more than a few drinks in your system.
it's not the first time you've been in this bathroom with him. not the first time his mouth has been on yours tasting of beer and terrible decisions. he's not someone you should be doing this with. not a teammate. you're pretty sure there's rules against it.
and even if there's not, there's a million reasons you shouldn't be getting involved with someone you walk into gunfire with.
but after one drink his eyes look even prettier than usual.
after two, you can't help but imagine his bicep tucked under your chin whilst he fucks you.
and three? three leads you here, to the cramped bathroom with cracked tiles and a singular bare bulb swinging from the ceiling.
the last time it was you perched precariously on the edge of the porcelain sink with johnny's fingers buried inside of you, his mouth on your neck, his free hand cradling the back of your head like you were something more than just a drunken hook up.
but this time it's you doing the giving; sinking to your knees, tiles cold and uncomfortable even through the thick denim of your jeans. his hands cup your jaw, thumbs brushing over your cheekbones.
as you pull his belt undone you wonder - does he like it slow? sloppy? messy? does he want you to use your hands as well?
you get his belt open. then the button and zipper. shove his jeans and black boxers down just far enough.
and there… it is.
inked in simple black letters, just above his pubic bone, nestled under the hair of his happy trail.
worship
you freeze for half a second, fingers still hooked in his boxers, staring at the word. johnny freezes above you, thumbs stilling on your cheeks
you glance up. he’s watching you with a particular look he gets sometimes - the one that sits somewhere between challenge and shame. the one that makes you wonder how many times he's spoken through the wall of a confessional just to go out and do something that would make the priest's heart stop in his chest.
you drag your thumb over the letters, feel his breath hitch.
"didn't know you had this." you murmur.
johnny swallows audibly. "aye." a beat, "you know what they say, love. prayer's best done on your knees."
you lean forward and press an open mouthed kiss to the word; feel his cock twitch against your cheek. when you glance up at him again his eyes are on you, jaw slack.
"well then," you say quietly, wrapping a hand around the base of him. "guess i'd better get to it."
you drag your tongue over the throbbing vein on the underside of his cock; press a kiss to the spot underneath his head that makes his thighs tremble. one of his hands shifts to your hair - not pushing, just holding - the other dropping down to his side loosely. as you take him into your mouth properly, johnny's breath leaves him all at once.
you keep it slow, at first. wet. the kind of messy that leaves his skin shining and your mouth swollen. every time you flick your tongue against him, or hollow your cheeks, he makes a quiet, wrecked sound that doesn't quite make it all the way out of his throat.
like he's trying not to be loud. trying not to enjoy this. like maybe the bare bulb or the cracked tiles or the people on the other side of the door might report him to someone higher than command.
you glance up once. his head is tipped back, throat working visibly, eyes shut tight. there's a tiny crease between his brows. you can almost see the war happening in his head - the part of him that wants to fuck into your mouth and the part of him that still thinks about sunday school and the weight of a rosary and the fact that he’s got a teammate on their knees in a pub toilet with his cock halfway down their throat.
“fuck -” the word is cut off with a hiss of breath. he tries again, quieter. “you’re… christ. you’re good at that.”
you hum around him and his hips stutter forward before he forces them still. the hand in your hair tightens - not rough. desperate.
you take him deeper. angle your head and let your throat open, sinking down him until your nose touches the tattoo and johnny can't think of anything other than the way your throat flutters around him and the way he feels like he's going to burst at the seams.
he lasts less than another minute. his thighs start to shake and the quiet, suppressed noises turn into something almost feral. when he comes it's with your name half formed on his tongue like a prayer (or a curse) and his free hand slapped across his mouth to try and keep the rest of it in.
you stay on your knees until his breathing evens out. until the hand in your hair turns gentle again, thumb stroking once behind your ear like a wordless apology.
you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and stand, knees cracking.
johnny tucks himself away with slightly unsteady hands. doesn’t look at you while he does up his belt. when he finally does meet your eyes there’s colour high on his cheekbones and something complicated and guilty sitting right behind the usual blue.
“we should -” he starts, then stops. clears his throat gently. “table.”
you both wash your hands in the cracked sink like that somehow undoes what just happened. johnny holds the door open for you on the way out.
no one looks twice at you. all the other punters too busy with their drinks and stories.
you slide back into the booth. the others are mid-argument about something that happened on the last training exercise. ghost glances up once, eyes flickering to you, then johnny, then back to his pint again. price frowns. gaz rolls his eyes.
no one says anything.
johnny sits down beside you. close enough that his thigh presses against yours under the table.
he doesn’t move away.
you take a long drink from whatever is left in your glass.
johnny’s knee bumps yours once. deliberate.
when you glance at him he’s already looking at the football playing on television above the bar, jaw tense, ears still faintly pink.
and his hand in his pocket, fiddling with the cross you know he keeps in there.
I'm one step away from a nervous breakdown and one step away from finishing my GhostRoach fanfic that I've been talking about a lot lately. I finished it, but I'm currently proofreading and formatting it. I'm also waiting for my beta to review it… Here's another illustration for this work (I'll clean this up later so I can post the images in one post, so is this VIP???)
Chapter: Curse Me Good | AO3 | M.LIST
ghost x hellcat!you | multi-POV | 18+ | 6.7k wc |
series cw: trauma, alcohol, ptsd, explicit sexual content, depression, mild blood kink, mild spit kink, stalking, no one is healthy, everyone is a bisexual disaster, guns
What happens when a loaded weapon meets a wild animal.
part one. part two. part three.
[9-29 06:43AM]
When walking east, the cabin you live in is 3.25 kilometers from the Copperline. There are fourteen structures along the path that face the lake. Six are family residences that average 3.2 civilian occupants. Five are single occupant cabins utilized as solitary hunting bases. Three are unoccupied or unspecified.
Your cabin is the fifteenth.
A two story timber cabin constructed with cedar shingle exterior and exposed timber framing. The structure sits on a raised stone foundation along the shoreline of the fresh water lake. The roof, a steep A-frame with extended side overhangs, supports its primary architectural feature: a full height glass facade that dominates the lake-facing wall. Its estimated footprint is approximately 12 to 14 meters wide and 9 to 11 meters in depth. A timber deck spans the lower level made of pressure-treated lumber with timber railing. Located at the center of the deck is a primary staircase with 14 observed steps that leads to a dock at the shoreline.
It is not cared for well.
There are 7 points of exit: central sliding doors (deck), secondary deck door, possible rear street-side door, and windows for emergency egress.
There are 4 points of compromise: large glass windows that provide minimal concealment for occupants, a single staircase choke point, an exposed dock entry route, and a tree line that allows for concealed observation within 10 to 12 meters of the structure.
As the sun rises, it paints the interior gold, making the place look less like a structure and more like a sanctuary. When you wake on the couch, tilting your head back to bask in the morning light, the glow holds you both in silence.
Good morning.
*
[9-29 10:45AM]
“Oh, so I’m not allowed to text my ex, but you can fuck a guy with no face?”
“Tara, that’s different,” you say, half listening, half cursing the state of the speedrack. Whoever closed last night did a shit-fucking job. Garnishes left out, bottle pourers uncovered and sticky with sour mix. You silently mouth who the fuck before catching yourself. It was you. You did a shit-fucking job.
“Different because he has a face?” Tara asks.
“Different because Ethan was an asshole to you,” you say, flipping the rag from your shoulder to clean each bottle, returning them to the rack one by one.
“And that guy wasn’t an asshole?”
You shoot a look over your shoulder as she leans against the back bar. She almost looks her age with her hair pulled back and her pink rimmed glasses on. They’d be swapped shortly for contacts before the lunch crowd.
“Does it matter?” you ask.
She scrunches her face in thought. “Shouldn’t it matter?”
You press your tongue against the wound in your mouth from the night before. You return to work. “Clean something. Please. Patrice’ll be in soon. I can hear her already–”
“Time to lean, time to clean,” Tara imitates, pushing herself off the bar with a sigh. She drags her feet into the back as if she’s dying.
You work in silence, cleaning up your own mess, before slamming the last bottle into the rack.
“Fuck ‘em mean, hope they’re clean,” you say to the empty stools. They’re flipped upside down on the bartop, with their legs spread above their head. Mocking you.
Tara was wrong. Assholes didn’t matter when you were an asshole, too.
You stock glasses, fill ice wells, and purge the lines of yesterday’s foam. Tara cuts her cuticles and two limes. She wins rock-paper–shoot and gets to dictate the playlist. You count dimes at the register to Sabrina Carpenter.
Eventually, you hear the familiar shoulder-check thunk, then the scrape on the floor. The front door sticks before it opens after years of lake damp air. On instinct, your eyes shoot up to check the large amber mirror that sits behind the bar.
It’s the first regular.
Tara waves as if signalling the usual characters to their places. Her hair is pulled back in a clip and she claims the first couple of rounds. Lunch begins.
Two more. Then three. You pay the mirror at each thunk of the door, before retreating to the back register of the bar. You’re happy to let Tara work, even though you only get paid in tips. You haven’t conjured enough small talk to sell just yet. And you like hearing Patrice hum in the kitchen before the orders get hectic.
You help by pouring soft drinks and sliding beers. You smile and disengage, reminded of your mouth wound every time you fake it too long. You fill the time by drawing on receipt paper at the register. The pen steals your time until you’re summoned; which Tara does just a few seconds-hours-minutes later as she peeks over your shoulder at your drawing.
“Is it like some kind of cultural thing?” She asks, before looking at herself in the mirror’s reflection.
You scrunch your face in confusion, resisting the urge to flip it over. It’s not like it was any good. “What? It’s just a bunch of—”
“Not you,” she corrects. “Him.” She points over her shoulder into the dining room, her eyes still on her own reflection as she inspects her make up. “Sasha Colby once judged this queen wearing the wildest Hot Topic head piece I’ve ever seen and instead of being rude she said, Is it a cultural thing? And I just love that so I stole it and—”
You look up, wondering what the hell she’s talking about.
When the fuck did he get here?
In the darkest corner in the booth farthest from the bar sits the Lieutenant. Hood up. Mask on. Menu in hand.
“It’s some kind of stupid thing,” you say.
He looks worse in the daylight. Like some statue whose features had been stripped from years of bad weather. He’s shoved himself in six different shades of black between the jackets and jeans, hood and mask. His gloves clutch at the menu like two tactical clamps. His head is tilted down to read, but his eyes stick to the door.
“He looks lonely,” Tara says to you.
“He looks stupid,” you say.
She grins, before turning around to shout, “Hey!” while waving at him from her toes. “You look lonely!”
“And stupid,” you say louder, turning with your arms crossed. Leaning with your back against the register.
You think he glances at you, but he’s unreadable from this distance - especially with the mask. You wonder if he always sits with his shoulders hunched like that, as if the world pressed at his back. But that can’t be true. He’d been so much broader when you were raking your nails over him the night before.
“Grab a seat if ya wanna eat!” Tara continues, plucking a menu and waving that too, “Specials are on the back!”
He stays still, not acknowledging her. Drops the menu on the table and goes back to looking at the door. Watching or waiting or whatever.
You return to your drawing. Trying not to think about the kind of company that he prefers to keep. The people in your town weren’t exactly a tender lot. Lots of hunters and ex husbands, service-outcasts, gun enthusiasts and cops.
Ugly fucking cops.
You crumple the drawing and shove it in your pocket.
“Havin’ a smoke,” you say, avoiding eye contact with Tara. You slip past her before she responds with her usual script. You know it’s bad for you. You know that it’s early. You know you can just drink instead. You ignore them, opting to disappear through the kitchen doors — where Patrice is waiting with a smile.
“Who’s stupid now?” she asks, wiping her hands on the front of her apron before leaning over the expo table. It’s a pink number with flowers that her son gifted her for Christmas. She matches her lipstick to it, regardless that no one sees her from the kitchen line.
“Havin’ a smoke,” you repeat, rifling through the coatrack. Your heads down as you fish through the pockets of your jacket, avoiding her eyes as well. According to the lilt in her voice, she already knows.
“Y’mean havin’ a bloke?” She slaps a poor British accent on the last word making herself laugh.
“Porque no los dos?” you ask, tipping your head over your shoulder to smile at her, cigarette already perched between your lips. She laughs as you push through the door, the cold air licking at your fingers. Then stop.
Jacket?
You roll your eyes, grab your jacket, and slip out into the back lot. When the door slams behind you and the cold takes you under, you still. You breathe.
You loved the back lot. Inside, everything was noise - glass on wood, radio greatest hits, voices stacked atop each other needing things from you. Out here, it all fell away. No one followed you here. A little piece of something unclaimed and unbothered. Something just yours. Somewhere to be alone.
You kick down the steps, knees creaking as you lower yourself down to sit, shoulders loosening, the tension draining out of your spine inch by inch.
And then you stop again.
There, on the top step, right where you’re about to sit—
The lighter.
You know it immediately. Cheap and covered in skulls. The same one the Lieutenant had kicked from your hand the night before. Standing up right. Deliberately placed.
You stare at it.
Stupid thing.
You glance at the treeline, half-expecting to see him, but there’s nothing. Shadows and branches. You stare at it again before leaning forward, picking it up slowly, turning it over in your hands. You should have felt uneasy. Someone had been here. Someone had been in your space without you knowing. Without your consent. Your space had been changed. You weren’t alone.
Your thumb flicks the wheel once, the flame sparking to life before you realize what you’d done. You watch it for a second, the small, steady burn, then snap it shut.
A faint smile pulls at the corner of your lips.
You walk back inside without lighting your cigarette.
The door thuds shut behind you, and the noise rushes back in like it’s been waiting for you: laughter, stainless steel appliances, the drag of other people's conversations over Tara’s radio hitlist. You hang your coat on the same hook, fingering your smoke back into a pocket, but the lighter stays in your hand.
“Well that was a quick one,” Patrice says, materializing from the walk-in. Her arms are full of raw vegetables as she shimmies past you, still smiling: “You’ll quit in no time.”
You press your tongue against your cheek. The little pain drowns her out.
You pull yourself together before returning to the bar. Fix hair, fill bra, hike pants. But the Lieutenant’s not in his seat by the door when you push through the kitchen doors and maybe he’s gone because it’s not like you’re looking for him. Then you see him.
He’s sitting in Jake’s seat.
Right there, at the corner of the bar by your register. One elbow resting easy, body angled just enough to watch the room without looking like he’s watching at all.
You smooth something invisible off the front of your shirt and step towards him. You set the lighter down in front of him with a deliberate clink on the bartop. There’s dirt in the seams from where it should’ve stayed in the woods.
“Shouldn’t leave your shit around,” you say, leaning back against the register. “And stop going back there. The owners don’t like it.”
The Lieutenant turns towards you, body first then eyes, dragging it out as if he’ll miss something in the dining room. He stares through you as if seeing nothing. Present, but gone, making you wonder if he heard you. If he was in front of you at all.
You scoff. And something in him switches on.
“Hellcat,” he states, as if it serves as a greeting. It’s not like he knew your real name anyway. You hadn’t offered it and he hadn’t asked. He scoops the lighter, with his weathered glove before perching it upright again. His eyes shoot to yours, “Lighten up.”
You squint, then cock your head. Should you kill him? Should you laugh? You cross your arms and measure your response. “...is that some kind of joke?”
He keeps his eyes on yours as if expecting something.
“No,” he says evenly, “It’s a lighter.”
You stare at him. Locked in some kind of contest where you try to keep your face as still as possible. Hyper aware of the tightness in your lips that keeps trying to betray you by making you smile. It makes the inside of your cheek hurt. You taste copper.
“You’re in Jake’s seat,” you say, pushing off the register. You place a sponsored coaster in the seat to his right, setting a place for him at the unclaimed spot. Napkin next. If he orders food, it will raise your tip percentage.
“Doesn’t seem to need it,” he says. You can feel his eyes on you.
You look back at him, considering if it’s worth arguing over, before returning to set down cutlery, “Yeah, well. You should move. He insists on that shit.”
“Insists,” he repeats as if discovering the word for the first time.
You place a steak knife. “He tips well.”
“Well,” he says, shifting in his seat to fully take it up, “My tip’s bigga.”
You don’t laugh, alright? And you don’t smile when he taps the bartop, indicating where his place setting should go: right in front of where he's already seated. You flick the lighter, sending it into his chest. It hits him with a soft pap, then skitters on the bar floor.
“What’re y’drinkin?” you ask. The question comes out without thinking. You’re paid to be a doll with a draw string at your job, after all.
“Same as last,” he says, as he gingerly reaches towards the coaster to slide it in front of himself. He watches you as if you’ll say no, then adds: “And a pint of lager.”
Right, you think. Waiting for someone.
Muscle memory moves you. Second coaster at the seat beside him. Glass, tap, pour, place the beer. Glass, rack, pour, place the bourbon-whiskey. It doesn’t mean anything to you when you set the rocks glass in front of the Lieutenant, but it must to him because he hums and nods in approval.
People like being remembered.
You retreat to your register, pressing the touch screen to close Jake’s tab and open one for…fuck, what was his name? Lieutenant…Rocky? Rudy? It was some fuckin’ dog name you didn’t care about remembering. You punch “LIEU” for Lieutenant into the system. Good enough.
“Anything from the kitchen?” you ask, turning back to him. A little bourbon is gone and he’s adjusting the mask back down his chin. Maybe he’s butt-ugly under there. Absolutely deformed. You can respect that you’d want to hide that too.
“Meat,” he states, like it’s a normal order and not something a sociopath would say after pretending to look at a menu for the past 30 minutes. Your face says what the fuck. He continues, rushing through his response with a frustrated wave, “Protein, scran, ah dun’ fuckin’ know. Wah'eva's good."
“And your friend?” you ask, nodding towards the second seat, now set with a cold beer. “Getting something started or waiting til they get here?”
He considers you, eyes tightening like he’s working something out before answering: “Meat as well.”
“...right,” you state, hesitating before turning to the register to punch in what ever the fuck meat might mean. It’s tempting to upcharge him to something expensive; a 15% tip on two surf-and-turf dinners with booze would cover at least one of the dinners you had to scrounge for this week. You feel dishonest over the math and punch in two steak-bite plates instead.
“Meat,” Tara says, appearing at your side to pull a bottle of Rumplemintz from the wall. “Stupid meat.”
You laugh. The ticket spits. And just like that, the conversation with the Lieutenant is over. Your script has been delivered. Small talk offers only. You acknowledge him with a soft, customer service smile and retreat, pen in hand, back to your register until called.
Eyes, face, lines, skulls. You draw as the bar hums around you. People clinking, their glasses speaking. You glance into the mirror in intervals as you wait for that feeling - the one the Copperline taught you over the years. The feeling of eyes on your back. The snap of fingers or the lean-in voice that wants you to turn around.
Regulars like Jake had conditioned you into it. Trained you with the constant pull of performance while not-so-silently promising more tip money if you laughed at their jokes. If you turned when they tapped at the bar. If you danced. You got used to checking, over and over. Automatic. Like blinking.
You do it now. Catching the regular’s snapping at Tara for another round. Catching the skidding silhouette of a car in the lot. Catching the Lieutenant’s…nothing. You tilt your head. Nothing-nothing. He’s still as a post, fingertips pressed against his glass doing nothing. Dead eyes on his own reflection in the mirror. No focus point. Nothing.
Weird.
You’re the one looking now. And you shouldn’t be (you weirdo). You turn away. Adjust bottles that don’t need adjusting. Wipe a spot that’s already clean. You don’t look again until you do. You want him to reach into his pocket and pull out his phone. Scroll or check the time. Act like a normal person sitting alone at a bar who’s waiting for someone who’s late, but he doesn’t. He nothings.
Thunk.
The door bangs open. The McGuires. Regulars that are loud and familiar and immediate as they walk into the bar. You’d puked in their backyard on your way home more times than you could count. They never knew.
“Christ,” you say, turning from the mirror with a familiar smile to gesture at the door. “You guys live here or something?”
They laugh. (They always laugh.) You fall into it without thinking - grabbing glasses, pouring before they finish ordering, suggesting a side, a second round, something to pad the tab. Easy money, easy rhythm.
“Expo!” Patrice calls, her voice rings like a bell.
Oh. Right. Meat.
You move to the window to grab both plates, enjoying the way the heat bleeds through the bottom against your palms. It feels like real food, compared to the cold take-home containers you pick from during your shifts. This steamed, each piece of meat seared by the kiss of the grill with a soft pink inside, carrying the mean smell of salt and char and browned garlic butter. You set the first plate down in front of him, then the second, ceramic clicking against the wood. It’s only then that he moves, lifting his head to look at you with a short nod.
“Meat,” you say, imitating his accent for the first syllable. “Good luck eatin’ without a mouth, Lieu.” You bring your palms to the front of your face, pulling them apart toward either side of your head, signaling ‘mask’, before turning away. Back to your register. Picking up your pen. Minding your business.
You know yourself too well. You don’t need answers as to what lies under his mask. Don’t need to know about his lips or his teeth or his jaw. It’s better to press your heel down on the thought while it's a small seed without roots. God forbid there's a crooked smile under there. You bite the inside of your cheek again.
Sketch. Pour beer. Shade. Pour wine. Scribble. Pour bourbon. The back and forth rhythm of the shift takes hold, allowing you to take rounds and tips. Pacing the same length back and forth and greeting the same faces. You tell yourself to forget the Lieutenant at your back who doesn’t look at you, even when it’s your job to look at him. Just to check on him. To wonder.
He eats like a savage. Uses his hands to shovel his food into the void (where his lips would be), covering his already dirty gloves in grease and blood. Hides his face with his hood up, hunching over his plate like a snarling dog. You think about stealing a piece of meat just to see if he’d bite at your finger tips. Or if he’d lick them clean.
Tara’s laughter spills behind the bar, shaking her head and waving at the air between her and an older customer. Of the four rum-and-cokes he ordered, he was pushing one back to her, pressuring her to take it.
“I couldn’t!” she squeals, making a show of picking up the glass and bringing it to her lips. “This is too kind, babes. You’re gonna get me in trouble!” She strings them along with little coos and laughter before taking a sip, then scrunches her nose. “Phew! Give whoever poured this a big tip, am I right? Such a strong pour.”
First drink of the night.
You both prefer money over the free drinks people tip you, but it’s not like you can say no. Saying no meant no tip. No tip, no income. Learning to say yes to things you didn’t want was a skill that took years to learn. Fortunately, it got easier every time.
You got easier.
You do your rounds, one by one like an assembly line, collecting plates, closing people out, refilling drinks, checking each patron before you retreat. Not hard, since you only have four parties: two are in their cups, the third an-early-bird-dinner and the fourth…
Two empty plates sit at Jake’s seat, neatly stacked and wiped clean. Beer glass empty, rocks glass gone. The Lieutenant isn’t there. Just an empty setting with a credit card pressed on the bar top.
“Huh.”
You’re not disappointed that he’s gone, alright? You’re relieved. Nothing new will slide into the empty seat after him. Which is good, because it’ll be someone you don’t want to watch. Instead of this random fucking bloke named – you pluck his card between two fingers and read it - “Kate Laswell?”
You stare at the name, thumbing each letter in silence.
Of course.
You press the card back on the counter. Laugh.
Of course there was a woman somewhere. There almost always was with these military types. Always someone waiting with one of their shirts, hoping the scent would bring them home. Parts of you wish you were a better person. But at least you were better than her last night.
“Havin’ a smoke,” you say to Tara.
Outside, the sun slips behind the trees and the night bites through your shirt. The woods beyond the lot stand black and crowded, all bare branches. You wrap your arms around yourself to shield the cold, but immediately lock up and groan.
“Fuck, dude,” you say, trudging down the steps, hands flying in frustration. “Come on. Are you actually fucking stupid or something?”
The Lieutenant is there. Of course he’s there. Standing just beyond the yellow smear of light, half in it, half out. He leans against the wall, rocks glass in one hand, a flip-phone in the other, both swallowed in his gloves. His hoods up, but you catch the sliver of his jaw from the side. Pale. Stubbled. White guy action figure type of chin you want to chew.
“The owners do not want people back here,” you state. The pressure rises in your chest.
He clips his phone closed. It’s an old one. A burner. The kind you’ve seen passed around by men who didn’t want their bosses, dealers, parole officers, or wives knowing where they were. He tucks it inside his jacket pocket. Takes a sip of his bourbon.
“And you shouldn’t be drinking back here either,” you add immediately.
You can’t tell if he’s smoking. He isn’t looking at you. His breath comes out in pale clouds, rolling slowly in the cold.
“And I mean it, Lieu,” you continue, kicking down the steps, slamming your heels, “Don’t leave your shit here. Someone will take Kate’s card right off the bar and max it out.”
He looks at you. Or you think he does. It’s impossible to tell where his eyes settle with the mask in the dark..
“I don’t want to deal with bank calls or fraud alerts from angry-military-wives or whatever comes with you people so just-” you claw at your pockets, retrieving your pack of cigarettes, “Handle your shit.”
He says nothing, standing there with his secrets tucked in his jacket and his face hidden behind fabric. Doesn’t deny or explain. Barely acknowledges that you spoke outside of a single, slow nod, like that’s supposed to cover all of it. You wait anyway. Like an idiot. Waiting for him to answer or argue or give you something to push against.
He doesn’t.
“Great talk,” you spit, settling on one of the steps, looking towards the treeline. You actively focus on ignoring the little live wire in you that sparks. The part of you that wants to fight.
You pull a smoke from the pack and set it between your lips, then start digging for your lighter. Front pocket. No. Back pocket. No. Front pocket. Your hands turn sharp with frustration, making your movements look more desperate than you want it to and –where the fuck? How the fuck do you keep doing this? Y’can’t even handle your own shit and…
He whistles. Your head snaps up before you can stop it. Hate that. You glare. He holds one hand out toward you from where he is at the wall, palm up, two gloved fingers curling in a slow gimme gesture.
“Oh fuck off,” you hiss, words shaping around the cigarette lodged at the side of your lips, “What? You need something from me? I’m on break.”
You roll your eyes and return to checking around your seat. Maybe it fell out of your pocket. At the edge of your vision, he paws his mask back down his face. Takes a step closer. Clears his throat.
“Need you to get a jacket,” the Lieutenant says. He towers over you like this when you’re sitting, reminding you how small you are. How cold. He points at your cigarette, then curls his fingers with another gimme gesture. You do as he asks, dropping the smoke in his palm. He places it in his mouth, bobbing from the mask as he produces a lighter (the lighter).
Tchk.
It flares to life with the bite of his thumb. He takes a deep pull to ensure it takes, causing the tip to burn cherry red, then exhales a plume of smoke. He offers it back to you, perched between two fingers. You think he’s kind as you reach for it but he nicks away. Chuckling. He brings it to his ‘mouth’ for another drag.
“Shouldn’t smoke with a mouth injury,” he states. White clouds roll from his mask as he speaks.
“Oh double fuck off,” you spit, eyes like daggers, resisting the urge to crumple your pack and throw it at him, “You gave it to me.”
“An’ stop fuckin’ with it,” he continues.
“I don’t fuck with it.”
“Won’t heal if you keep fuckin’ with it. Rot ya mouth,” he says casually, leaving you at the steps to lean back against the wall. He ashes the cigarette with a flick of his thumb, “An’ good luck bitchin’ wit’ no mouth.”
“Yeah?” You’re standing now, challenging, arms crossed to contain the boiling in your chest.
“Yeah.”
“Anything else?”
He lifts his glass, shaking it towards you, “Another.”
“Fuck you.” You snatch the glass from him with a snarl, hard enough that bourbon sloshes over the rim and spills across your knuckles. Before you can think better of it, you suck the liquor from your skin. It’s too expensive to waste: Old Turkey Rare Breed at $14 a glass. You pull it against your chest as you settle back down on the steps, keeping your eyes pinned on him, “I’m on break.”
The Lieutenant laughs.
“Not for long,” he levels. He steps towards the front lot, then pauses at the edge of the light: “Not without a jacket.”
He disappears into the dark.
Fuck him. You scoff, taking a sip of his drink after he’s gone. The smell of it brings you back to last night, when it was pumped down your throat in the passenger seat. It warms your lips, your cheeks, then your throat. Grease smears along the sides. Blood too, from his meal, stuck near the base from his gloves.
“Filthy boy,” you hiss and swig. Your fingertips worry at the marks on the glass. How dirty were his gloves last night when he touched you? Or… had he touched you? You take another sip. You don’t remember all of it. Not cleanly anyway. You remember his truck and the brass bullets on the floor. His mask in your teeth and the blood in your mouth. But he didn’t tear at you. You know that. He didn’t claw at your tits. Didn’t rip some wet part of you open. Didn’t take anything you didn’t offer first.
He just held you. (You sip again). He hurt you, then he held you. Then he let you go.
You down the rest and welcome the burn.
It’s a stubborn ten minutes before you pour yourself back inside, empty glass in hand, slipping past Patrice and Tara to return to the bar. The Lieutenant’s back from wherever the hell he went. Back in Jake’s seat at the end of your bar. Back to doing nothing with nothing in front of him. Did he notice how long you lasted outside with out a stupid fucking jacket?
You decide to work the bar with Tara. Really work this time, checking on each customer with a custom charisma that lets you earn your keep. You fill your hands with their orders and your head with their noise and suddenly you have use. You make jokes where they fit and smile with your teeth when someone tips well enough to deserve them. It’s another ten minutes before you make it down the line, grinning with a bottle of Rare Breed in hand for the Lieutenant.
“Don’t cover this one in blood,” you say, setting a new glass before him on the bar. You grin with all the spite and anger from the back lot crackling under your skin. You want a reaction. You want—
“Wasn’t his,” he whispers, his eyes dropping from the mirror to his gloves, “They said tha’ mattered but it don’t matter…”
You cock your head in confusion. You can barely hear him. Barely recognize the words or how he says them beneath his mask. You know they aren’t meant for you, but you take them anyway.
“Doesn’t matter,” you correct, pushing the glass into his hand. You wait for his eyes to drift up to yours, but he stays lost in his palms. So you continue to run your mouth. “Who actually wants to matter, anyway?” You flick the rim. “Can you imagine that? Mattering to someone? Must be so fuckin’ awkward.”
He scoffs, shaking his head, looking at you with something unreadable in his eyes. Fucking mask. You know the little lines gathering at the corner of his eyes mean something. You hate not knowing what.
”Where’zee then?” The Lieutenant asks, picking the glass up and gesturing to the rest of the bar. The volume is back up on his accent. His shoulders seem to swell with it, filling out his jacket, making him look broader than he already is.
“What?”
“Yer boyfriend,” he states, “The one who insists.”
Jake. You scrunch your face in revulsion. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“No?” He asks mockingly, cocking his head with a malicious ignorance. “Thought we were makin’ assumptions today.”
“There’s no we,” you state.
“No ‘he’ either, it seems,” he says, cheers-ing the empty seat beside him before bringing the glass to his face. He pauses, as if remembering the mask and adds: “No ‘she’ neither.”
“What, y’disappointed he didn’t show?” You ask. You’re idling when you know you should be leaving, pressing your palms against the bar. “Ya lookin’ for a fight or something?”
“Always,” he says. You believe him.
You bite back a grin. “I’ll fight you, Lieu.”
“Nah,” he chuckles, brushing you off with a lazy gesture. You remember how his low laughter felt when it rumbled inside of you.
“I could,” you assure him, crossing your arms. You mean it. He doesn’t know you. (You’d lose, of course, but—)
He nods. “Sure ya could, Hellcat.”
“I should.”
“Y’should,” he agrees softly. His eyes scour your features before they tick back to your own. He places his drink on the bar top then leans forward wolfishly, “But y’won’t.”
“An why’s that?” You can’t help it. You’re leaning on your palms, chin up, challenging him to say what they all say. (‘Because you like me.’ ‘Because I’m great in bed.’ ‘Because I’d kill you.’)
“Cause y’fockin’ hate me.”
Laughter bursts out of you before you can stop it. Not a bar-one, a real one. Sharp and sudden with your head tipping back and your neck exposed. You feel the eyes of the bar on you and quickly correct yourself, tucking your shitty grin between your teeth. The wound in your mouth is on fire.
“Not enough, apparently,” you say.
“Or not at all…” he ventures, placing the words gently between the two of you as if testing the weight of them. With his amber eyes and those little lines all pointed at you. Watching you. Wanting you?
No. Not wanting you. (You remind yourself.) Wanting you to want him. (You should know the difference by now. Idiot girl.) You taste blood.
You grin and cautiously pluck his glass from his grip. There’s already grime from his gloves on the edge. His eyes follow. You bring it close, then spit directly into it.
“Get fucked, Lieu,” you say, placing it back before sucking the residue from your thumb.
His gaze stays on yours. For one second. Two. Then he picks it up. His other hand rises to the edge of his mask, hooking one gloved finger beneath the black fabric. He rucks it up just enough to bring the glass to his lips. He drinks. A large swallow of bourbon, ice and you. His jacket obscures how his throat takes you down, but his mask stays over his lips to give you a brief, brutal glimpse of his face.
Stubble and scars stretch over a hard chin. The narrow stripe of his lower lip and the fresh wounds that split it. The carved and wicked thing that counted as the corner of his mouth. Real skin where myth could have been but he made himself human. He keeps his eyes pinned on yours the entire time.
He places it down, then pulls down the mask before sliding it back towards you, “Another.”
You scoff or laugh or hum, shaking your head where words should go. He watches you, waiting with his gloves cupping his glass. After a moment, he asks: “You walkin’ home tonight?”
“If this is about a jacket—“ you start.
“No,” he shakes his head. Pauses, then starts again, “Lemme give you a ride home.”
“Why?” (You know damn well why.)
“Wot, y’think it’s safer to walk home alone in the dark?”
“Safer than showing a stranger who’s got my blood on his mask where I live?”
He stares at you in silence, probably letting you hear how bitchy you sound. He’s unreadable when he answers you: “Six and a half minute drive.”
The words hang between you.
The front door swings open before you decide what to do with them. Cold air rushes in with a half dozen voices. Tara shepherds them to their places with: “Anywhere you like!”
It’s the sounds of a paycheck.
The bourbon sits between his gloves. You reach out and tap the side of his glass with your knuckle. “If something happens,” you say, almost apologetically, “I’d deserve it.”
Your eyes catch his one last time before you push away from the bar and throw yourself back into the shift.
_
The rush swallows you whole. Tickets multiply faster than Tara can stab them on the rail. Extra sides of ranch. Shaken not stirred. Wings but only flats. A birthday group. Some argument about the pool table. Smile. Swipe. Change. Next. Smile. Swipe. Change.
The rhythm of it gets you by the wrist. By the time the crowd thins, you’ve convinced it’s been hours. And maybe it has. Because when you finally return to your side, wiping down the stretch of bar where the Lieutenant had been sitting, he’s gone. The seat is empty. And the whiskey glass is gone too.
In place sits a tidy stack of cash. Crisp enough to fight each other as you count them. It’s enough to pay for the meal twice over. Tucked within the stack is a piece of torn receipt paper with scribbled letters you don’t understand.
SOZ
SR
LOO
The center letters are struck through so hard the paper almost tears. Under it all, a crude little drawing of a skull. You stare at it longer than you mean to, letting your thumb run along the ink. You fold the note once, then slip it into your pocket.
Closing comes slowly. The kitchen closes. Stools go upside down and the lights dim one row at a time. Tara makes you count the tip pool because she hates the feel of new bills on her hands.
“Check-in with me when you’re home,” she says as always, when she leaves thirty minutes before her shift ends.
“Never,” you answer as always, when you stay thirty minutes after your shift ends. You pour yourself a drink. And so what if it’s Rare Breed again. (There’s a sweet spot with it, you’ve learned, that keeps you warm for the walk home.)
“I’m serious,” Tara says abruptly, peering through the mountainous layers of her pink winter coat. She breaks your usual pattern, idling near the door with her hand on the lock. “Humor me. I’ve got a bad vibe.”
“Try changing the batteries,” you offer with a smile. She frowns. She knows you too well to let you avoid her (and she doesn’t get the joke).
“Be for real, Hellcat,” she says, emphasizing the name with a devious smile. It leaves no room for you to run away from who she’s talking about. You hide your embarrassment by taking a sip. She continues: “That’s the second day in a row he hasn’t asked for your number. Or asked for your name. Why do you think that is?”
“Because he’s taken,” you answer into your cup.
“No,” she corrects, “Because he might already have it.” She pulls her hood up, her face disappears behind a porthole of white fur. “His friend, that hot one from the other night, doesn’t have volume control when he’s drunk. They’re not like the grunts around here.”
“You mean they’re British?”
“I mean they’re the real deal. Dangerous. And like, let’s be real,” she says, fussing with the fur lining in her face. “That’s really hot. So maybe you should consider asking for his number next time. And text me when you’re home. Especially if he’s in the lot tonight waiting for you again…you know what? Just give me your phone, I’ll set the automatic check-in text. Gimme.”
It’s another five minutes of Tara before you’re left to close. Another thirty for you to finish your whiskey. You snug the fuck up, zipping and snapping and clasping before the whiskey steals the use of your fingers. The winter gear makes you eight years old again, packaged by your Mother for a snow day. It’s a relief no one sees you like this. (You vulnerable, waddling Stay-Puff Man, you.)
“Unless he’s in the lot tonight waiting for you…” you say in Tara’s accent.
You set the alarm. Dead bolt the door. Trot through the kitchen and slip out to the back, avoiding the front lot all together. It was too good of a day to give a shit. With a take home of $92, you wouldn’t have to ration your meals this week. You greet the cold night with a grin, slipping your hand into your jacket to celebrate your earnings. Finding a filthy little skull lighter tucked in the front pocket.
Ghost x Reader | Dual POV | AO3
18+ | Dickheads In Love | wc 18.5k
cw: trauma, alcohol, ptsd, explicit sexual content, depression, abuse, mild blood kink
What happens when a loaded weapon (Ghost) meets a wild animal (you).
01. Kill of the Night (Part One)
02. Kill of the Night (Part Two)
03. Curse Me Good
04. Imposter Syndrome
05. I Don't Want to Be Funny Anymore
06. Wolves (You Got Me)
07. Calling All Skeletons
08. So Contagious
bring back divas and bring back bra and panty matches, then put great googly moogly simon riley against thunder thighs john price.. i wanna see something
