Your sunglasses do nothing to conceal your staring. (18+)
Neither does the book in your hand, neglected a few minutes ago, based on the way you haven't flipped a page no matter how many times you try to focus back on it.
Kyle continues to pretend it isn't obvious. Giving you quick smiles from where you're sat at the shore, legs restless, shifting to lay straight and then bend and then squeezed together.
Perhaps you're still sore from this morning, where he'd lapped at your cunt to wake you. Slow and reverent and teasing until you begged to come, a request he was happy to indulge.
He slips under the water again, letting it rush over him, trying to calm his cock at the memory; at the sight of you in that wet, tight bikini; or just the thought of your blissed smile alone.
You're still staring when he surfaces, until he meets your gaze, burning even from meters away and you avert your eyes shyly. Almost as if you're just a random girl caught ogling at her crush and not the man you married four days ago.
By the time he collapses back onto his towel, limbs a little tired from the crashing waves, you've finally put your book down behind you. He fights the sunlight and squints to watch as you sit back on your legs, turned toward him, your brows just slightly furrowed, lips wet.
He reaches his hand toward you and finds your knee, squeezing it with wet fingers. "You okay, babe?"
"Mhm," you lean forward, your shadow touching him before your lips do. You're slow with it, tasting of mint and lime, parting from him just as he starts to get breathless.
Your gaze is fixed on his body. Trailing upwards, carefully, as though assessing every ridge and dip and–
You drop down quickly, as though trying to act before your doubts stop you, and lick a stripe straight across his abs, taking the water droplets still clinging to him with you.
His mouth parts, surprise choking him, his hand instinctively curling into your hair. There's a second of shifting, a hand planted at the other side of his body as you make yourself more comfortable and do it again.
"Jesus– Fuck–" His head tips back against the towel, neck straining as his fingers tighten over your scalp. You hum against his stomach and he can feel your smile there, the defiance and desire and ambition.
Fuck, it would almost make him proud if it didn't mean he was three seconds away from blowing his load right there in his swim trunks.
The next time your lips touch his skin he lifts you by the grip in your hair, gentle even then, coaxing you to meet his mouth again—obeying without hesitation, preening even more than you had before.
"Pretty fuckin' girl," he groans, slipping his tongue further.
"Taste s'good," you pant.
"Yeah?" Kyle smirks, his other hand reaching under one of your thighs, hoisting you up so you straddle his abs. "What do I taste like, baby?"
He guides you to grind down against him and you moan. "Salty–"
"Tha' right?"
You nod fervently, your hips settling into an uncoordinated rhythm against the hard muscle. He's burning underneath you, desperate to feel your core and the wetness gathered there.
It's a little clumsy as he tugs on the closest string he finds, yanking it when it doesn't give out under his touch the first time. His thumb rubs over your hip there before he's pushing as much of the damp fabric away from your cunt.
He's pleased to find you're burning too.
Gasping as the friction intensifies, brows pinched tight as he detaches his lips and kisses along your jaw, and neck, moving you as you see fit. Bringing your mouth close to his ear just so he can hear your breathy little,
"Mm, feels good. So good, Kyle– All mine..."
"All yours, baby," he coos, and when you sigh again he can't help it. His hands drop to his own trunks, hips lifting, taking you with him as he shuffles them the few inches down his thighs so his cock springs free.
It slaps against your ass, heavy and aching, and your eyes widen.
"Gonna take what's yours?"
You're quick to move down, searching behind you blindly, scratching until you find him. Curling your fingers around the base as you steady yourself, too lost to tease as you sink down on the tip.
Kyle swears under his breath, hands coming to steady at your hips as he usually does, usually guiding you to sink down, but you do it without warning. Burying yourself into the hilt, clenching around him fiercely, so tight and wet and hot Kyle thinks he might actually die here.
On his honeymoon. On a beach. Shadowed by his wife as she rides him like there's no tomorrow. Not the worst way he could go.
Your knees tighten around his waist, the sun above your head like a halo.
"Kyle," you breathe, dropping down onto his lap with increasing urgency.
"I know, baby," his thumb reaches between you for your clit as soon as you settle into a comfortable rhythm. Already swollen from earlier, he works firm circles into it, muscle memory taking over as he tries not to ruin this by coming so quick. "Been the best for me, yeah, you have. Wearing that pretty ring, sittin' here like eye candy. Knowin' you're only for me."
You keen and he's dragging you down to kiss you, drowning in your sweet KyleKyleKyle as your orgasm tears through you, a little painful but mostly delicious. Arching your back, trying to grind into and escape his touch at your cunt at the same time.
You collapse into his chest, breathing hard, he digs his heels into the blanket and thrusts up—short and sharp as his own high curls through him fast.
He has half the mind to pull out, come coating your bellies, heaving and flexing with the strain.
Kyle murmurs your name, catching his breath as the surroundings come back to him, your own sticky against his collarbone. He's selfish when he tightens his arm around you, proven by your whine about it being too hot, but he keeps you there, completely and utterly blissed.
"You're perfect-"
He's interrupted by smashing glasses.
Just as you look up from the crook of his neck, he strains to look back, met with a waitress covering her eyes, now empty tray in hand as she slowly backs away.
"I'm so sorry!"
She runs off down the path between the greenery and he's biting his lip to stifle his laugh—made harder when he sees your surprise.
You smack his chest lightly, "don't laugh!"
But you're already halfway there, spurred by his amusement. Your grin even brighter, squealing when he sits up with you still in his lap, licking a stripe up your neck.
"How much do you think she watched?"
"Kyle!"
"I'm joking," he laughs, taking to nibbling at your earlobe, hands firmly clasped at your ass. Delighted by your moan when he squeezes. "Can we ask her to bring a drink that tastes as good as you?"
five times Neighbor!Simon helped without you asking + the one time you came to him for help
content(s): afab reader, creepy behavior (not from Simon or Reader)
word count: 2.9k+
MDNI! Minors and ageless blogs will be blocked!
Neighbor!Simon, who helps you without being asked. You've always been pretty independent, but the big guy can't help himself when it comes to you, his stubborn neighbor.
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A snowstorm hit overnight and Simon was up early as usual, not by choice but rather out of habit. The sun was barely up and the snow had stopped, but there was a blanket over the neighborhood now. It almost seemed to glow a pale shade of blue from what little light there was outside. The path to his door was covered, so was his car... And looking over to the left, he could see the same was the case for you.
Knowing that you wouldn't be up for some time, Simon decided to help you out. He bundled up in a thick parka, a snow balaclava, and a pair of his best gloves. Once his boots were on, he headed outside and got right to work, starting with the path to your door.
About an hour later, your car was dug out from the snow and he just finished with his own side of the semi-detached house. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, looking skyward as a few flakes started to fall again... That's when he heard a familiar voice.
"Oi, Simon!" It was you, clad in your thick winter pajamas and a pair of fluffy slippers, waving at him. "You didn't have to...!"
"I wanted to," he called back as he leaned the snow shovel against the house. "I could come over and shovel it all back into place if it's that much of an issue, though."
You snorted softly and shook your head, and Simon didn't miss the smile that you tried to repress.
"Well, thank you, Si... Come here, I'll start us a pot of coffee," you offered, opening your door wider. "Hurry, I don't want a draft to come in."
Simon, knowing there was no point in saying no, made his way around the hedge that divided your doors and headed into your place.
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"Fuck me...!" Your muffled voice caught Simon's attention. He was just walking back from a trip to the store when he noticed you sitting in your car.
The problem became evident when he saw you try to start it... Only for it to not start after it sputtered pathetically a few times. He already knew your car had some issues, and he also knew that you kept putting off bringing it to the shop. After putting his shopping bags inside, he came back out with a jump starter and went to your car.
You were still out there, trying (and failing) to start the car. Your head rested against the steering wheel in defeat, and you didn't even notice Simon pulling his car around.
"Hey neighbor," Simon said when you seemed to have given up. "Need a jump?"
He got out of the car with the jump starter and finally got a good look at you. A cute blue dress that stopped just below the knee, black boots, and your hair and makeup were done up in a way he never saw before. You were wearing a gold chain with a small heart dangling from it, and his eyes lingered on it for a moment. You looked ready to go out and have fun, and yet you were stuck in your driveway. All dolled up with somewhere to go, but unable to actually go… It’s a tragedy of epic proportions.
"God, yes...Thank you." You sighed heavily and watched as Simon hooked your car up.
"You've gotta look into a jump starter," he said gruffly. "Better yet, actually make a bloody appointment for your car."
"Sorry, but with what money?" You asked half-jokingly. "You've seen the prices, what am I supposed to do if my car needs a little more than some light maintenance? Hell, even 'light maintenance' could get expensive..."
"I could pay." He suggested after your car finally started.
"Thank you... And no, Simon." You relaxed a bit and pulled out of your parking spot. "I couldn't ask you to do that."
"I'm offering, love." He said, and you could tell that he meant it. This man was more than ready to shell out whatever amount you needed, he had the paycheck to do it.
He muttered something about you being stubborn as you drove off.
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Seemingly out of the blue, the worst heatwave your area had seen in years hit. Simon couldn't handle the heat well, but when he saw how almost all of your flowers withered up as a result of the heat... Well, that just made the heatwave even more unbearable. Not only was it an eyesore to see in your shared backyard, but your reaction to the devastation was worse.
"I spent all spring planting these!" You had complained to him, gesturing to the wilted flora. "All spring, hours of planting… For nothing!"
The flowers certainly looked dead, but some research told Simon that they could probably be saved. After a trip to the nearest garden center, he took to the backyard and busied himself in fixing what the heat ruined.
You found him back there, kneeling in the dirt without a shirt on. His pale, scarred skin was starting to take on a pinkish hue in the brutal summer sun. Sweat beaded on his brow and clung to his short, pale blonde hair. And for a while, you just stood there on the back porch... Watching as Simon worked tirelessly in the garden. He set up something to shield the flowers from the sun, and now he was carefully watering the dry soil.
When Simon finished up, you came outside with a glass of lemonade for him, condensation already formed on the glass. Your eyes were on every part of him but his face, but he ignored it as he drank the contents glass in one go. To be fair, the short sundress that you were wearing was just as distracting and his eyes felt like wandering a bit.
"Thank you, Simon... Really, you–"
"I didn't 'ave to, I know," he said before you could finish. "I got bored, and I wanted to."
"Fine, okay... Now come inside, you're gonna burn up out here." You insisted, waving him inside. "I made too much lemonade, you could help me finish it."
You ended up adding some vodka to the remainder of the lemonade and had a drunken movie marathon with Simon, cackling and pointing out the terrible acting until the wee hours of the morning. You sent him off to his side of the house with a kiss on the cheek.
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After a particularly annoying deployment and a mission that had him screaming orders until his voice was gone, Simon came home to find you bringing some groceries inside... A lot of groceries. You must've gone out and done enough shopping for the next two weeks, your back seats were down and your car was filled from front to back with bags and boxes.
After he decided that his muscles could stand to lift a bit more, Simon lumbered over and started unloading while you were inside. When you came back out, you yelped in surprise before realizing who was taking your stuff out. The masked man was not a thief, just your hulking six-foot-whatever neighbor being helpful again.
"Oh goddammit, Riley! You scared the shit out of me!" You said, a laugh escaping you. "Jesus, that mask... Did you seriously drive home in it?" You rarely saw him in the skull mask, he only showed it to you after he mentioned it offhandedly during one of your movie nights.
"One of my mates drove me back," he explained, taking two armfuls of groceries. "But yeah... Wore this the whole drive."
"I don't think I'd be able to focus if my passenger looked like the grim reaper... But that's just me," you joked as you followed him inside with a few more bags. "And your voice sounds... Pony."
Simon gave you a withering side-eye, but he was absolutely grinning under the balaclava. "... Pony?"
"Mmhm... You know... A little hoarse...?" You grinned at your own stupid joke, gently bumping your hip against Simon's as you passed him. "Sorry, I spent too much time with the couple down the road... Goddamn dad jokes. Speaking of which, some shit went down between them and the new neighbors while you were gone."
"Oh? Fill me in," Simon muttered as he helped put some things away. “I gotta hear this shite.”
"I will... But only if you help me with this soup recipe I've been dying to try."
Well... Soup is good for a sore throat... How could Simon say no?
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Flu season was a bitch, but thankfully Simon's immune system is stronger than anything that could attack it. You, on the other hand... You were suffering. You were holed up on your side of the semi-detached house, not coming outside for anything or anyone.
Simon only found out after texting you one night, having not seen you for two whole days... And the intense coughing fits that he could hear through the wall weren't comforting him.
si: You alive over there?
Not even a minute later, you texted back:
🖤: im fine, just running a fever... turns out that it wasn't allergies, just gotta wait it out and stay inside for a few days 💪
si: Did the doc give you a prescription?
🖤: yeah, but I don't think I need it, looked it up and it said I could probably heal naturally... tea with honey and lemon and some painkillers for the headaches are enough, i'll survive lol
si: Pick your prescription up.
You responded with some stupid gif that just said "nuh-uh" and Simon could hear you cackle through the wall... Which was followed by another coughing fit and a pathetic wheeze/whine.
She deserved that one, he thought as he put on his hoodie and gloves.
Simon didn't dignify you with another response. Instead, he drove to the pharmacy for your prescription and picked it up himself. Then, he stopped by your favorite deli to grab a quart of your favorite soup, some orange juice, and cough drops for your poor throat.
He banged on your door a couple of times when he got back and left the bags on the porch before going back over to his door. When you came out seconds later, a plush throw blanket draped around you like a cape, he waved his gloved fingers at you.
"Special delivery for a stubborn woman," he called over the hedge. "I don't know how you survived this long if this is how you handle being sick."
"Hey... I told you I have tea and painkillers," you protested, your voice raspier than usual. "But thanks, Si... Really, thank you."
"You can thank me by getting better soon... Got a deployment coming up, and we still have to finish watching that stupid baking show together."
"We could just watch it at the same time and stay on call–"
"No, it's not the same," Simon insisted impatiently before waving you off. "Now go on, get in there and get better. Take your fucking meds."
Miraculously, you did end up getting better a couple of days before he had to go. Together, you watched the last few episodes on his couch.
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Simon looked out for you however he could. At first, it was just because you were a woman living alone, or just the woman he shared a wall with. Maybe it's because he's a little old-fashioned, or maybe it's because he mentally swore to protect any woman after he couldn't protect his own mother.
But after a while, he genuinely did want to help you because it’s you. You’re funny, too stubborn for your own good, quick as a whip, independent as hell... He had to back off a few times when you were truly adamant on doing something on your own. You never asked him for help, even if you needed it, and he took any opportunity to help you when you'd allow it. Truthfully, you were the one person outside of his job that he grew attached to like this... And probably the only person he felt anything deeper for.
Simon went for daily runs when the weather allowed, and sometimes you'd go for a run a little later in the morning. You'd be waiting at the semi with something light for him to eat and a cup of coffee when he got back, and he did the same for you when you returned. Normally, he got back at 7:30 am or so. You would always come back closer to noon.
So when it was going on 2 pm and you still hadn't returned, Simon was getting antsy. He texted you, but realized you rarely looked at your phone when you were on a run. Tired of peeking out of the window every few minutes, he took to pacing to and from his front door like a caged lion. The only other time you were late was when your mom was in town and you warned Simon beforehand. Hell, if you stopped to see someone you would've shot him a text or called. This was abnormal.
Simon started to consider phoning Price or Gaz to see if either was in the area, give them a description of you so they could keep their eyes peeled. Hell, he’d find a way to get Johnny in on it if he wasn’t in fucking Scotland. But then, your voice rang out from down the sidewalk.
"Babe...! Hey, babe!" You yelled out to him, waving a hand. "I'm back!"
Babe...? You had a lot of nicknames for each other, but 'babe' wasn't one of them. Simon looked at you, and there was a look on your face that he never saw before... And he decided that he never wanted to see it again. It was distress, and the reason for that look could be seen just over your shoulder.
A man who Simon had never seen before was following you, and it looked like he was about to say something but stopped when he saw Simon. When you sped the rest of the way over to Simon, he held his arms out to catch you. His eyes never left the man, even as you clung to him... He could feel you shaking like a leaf, heard the fear in your voice as you whispered to him... And he fucking hated it. Hated that you felt unsafe, hated the man that made you feel this way.
I should tear this bastard a new fucking asshole… If looks could kill, the creep would be vaporized on the spot.
"Si... I've been trying to lose him this whole time... He won't stop," you whispered into his ear before pulling back to look at him. You didn't ask him, not outright, but your eyes begged for help.
Simon gave the man one last glower before he smiled and gently pressed a kiss to your forehead. "Hey, love... I was wondering where you were," he said, loud enough that the creep could hear. "How was the run?"
Your tight smile relaxed a bit as you looked up at him, a shaky exhale leaving you. Instead of answering right away, you tilted your head up to peck Simon on the lips. The simple gesture made his heart leap in his chest and his eyes fluttered shut for a moment... It's not like he hadn't thought of it before, and he wished it was under better circumstances.
"It was fine, but I'm kinda tired now..." You glanced back and saw that the man decided to cross to the other sidewalk. Simon could feel your muscles relax as you turned back to kiss him again, whispering against his lips, "Fuck... Thank you, Si."
"D'you need me to follow him? Report him? Did he–" His words were disrupted yet another kiss, and he almost kissed back but held off, convinced it was just because you thought the guy was still there. "Hey, he's gone..." Simon's face felt like it was on fire... A man like him, reduced to blushing like a schoolboy.
"S-shit, sorry... Uh, we could file a report, sure," you murmured as you leaned back a bit. "And sorry about... That..."
"It's alright. I didn't mind," he reassured you as he gently guided you to his door. "Hell, I think you should've gone harder with the kiss... Really sell it to that fucking weirdo."
A surprised chuckle bubbled out of you and Simon felt a stab of pride to be the one to comfort you. He felt pretty proud of you too, because even though you didn't ask for help verbally... You, the self-reliant woman that you were, still came to him for help.
"You think so?" You asked once you were both inside. "That might be the last I see of that guy, but just in case I have to deal with another... I don’t know, it’s been a while since I really kissed someone, so maybe you could help me…" You trailed off, and Simon pulled you against him again as soon as the door closed.
"Help you...? What're you asking me, love?"
You answered him by pulling him back into a kiss... One that was less chaste than the previous ones, and he kissed back like his life depended on it.
The team has been trying to help Simon get better at flirting.
It started off with Johnny noticing how Simon’s gaze often lingered on you, the newest truck loader.
Then he blabbered it off to the entire team. So yeah— Simon may have banged his head against the wall in his quarters and slept that night thinking about choking Johnny.
But here he was, after a long day of being convinced to talk to you.
You had just finished unloading the last truck of the day and what better time to talk to you than now?
“You gotta be confident and bold with your words, L.T.” Kyle’s words.
“No, you have t’ be funny. Make ‘em laugh.” Johnny’s words.
“If all things fail, just ask ‘em for coffee.” John’s words.
Simon took in a deep breath and smiled (the best he could. He doesn’t smile often). You didn’t even catch it either; he was wearing his damn balaclava. “You just started working, yeah?” he asks, stuffing his hands into his vest. Confident, check.
You took off your gloves and patted your sweaty forehead with your arm, “mhm! About two-ish months ago,” you tell the older man, giving him a polite smile.
A quiet hum fell from Simon’s lips as he rocks on his heels a bit, “Once saw y’ trippin’ over a box,” Simon says bluntly. Funny, check.
You stared at him, blinking twice and half expecting him to finish his sentence.
He didn’t.
Instead, the two of you had a staring contest while Simon’s face burned behind the balaclava.
“You can trip on me,” Simon suddenly adds. Funny and bold… check?
Your brows knitted a bit, “what…?” you ask with an awkward laugh.
Fuck.
This wasn’t going how he imagined it to go. He imagined him coolly leaning against a wall or something while complimenting you.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Do you have coffee?” Simon changes the topic, his entire face blowing up with steam.
Off to the side, John stared at his teammate with a heavy sigh and rubbed his temple. “Bloody idiot asked for coffee,” he mumbles.
Kyle shrugs a bit, “T’ be fair, you did say to ask for coffee,” he says, defending his lieutenant.
“Implying to ask for a coffee date,” John replies bluntly. “Fuckin’ disaster of a man.”
You're pretty sure the couple next door is keeping someone locked in their basement, but that's Johnny and Simon's business, not yours.
Part 14: A secret about conviction
𓉸 Ghoap/Reader | Neighbor AU | Masterlist | AO3 𓉸
cw: dubcon, manipulation, coercion, implied kidnapping and imprisonment, implied noncon, drugging?
You have a phone call to make.
It’s been a full twenty-four hours since Detective Bennett left that voicemail, but you haven’t figured out what to do with the opportunity presented before you. He may only be reaching out because he wants more information regarding Allen-Alvin and the recent missing person’s case, but it’s a door cracked open and you haven’t decided whether to dart through it or not.
One year ago, a woman named Roxanne Miller went missing. Without any close friends or family, it took two weeks for someone to finally notice her disappearance and report it to the police. There were no tearful pleas on the news for her return or adamant demands to keep her case active in hopes she’d be found one day. It was a quiet vanishing. Once the case went cold, it would be easy to assume that it would stay cold. Cold, dead, buried in the ground, forgotten by everyone except Johnny, Simon, Detective Bennett, and you.
You’re at the advantage over everyone right now. You know there’s new interest in her case, and you know where that interest needs to be directed towards for the culprits to be brought to justice. That advantage won’t last forever, though, because Detective Bennett’s not likely to give up trying to reach you, so if you continue to ignore him, he may just show up at your doorstep, searching for answers. If he lets it slip that he’s looking into Roxanne’s disappearance, then the watchful sentry above your front door will report back to your neighbors and your secret weapon will be ripped away.
So again, you have a phone call to make and a meeting to schedule and a plan to formulate for what you’re actually going to do at said meeting. Your first instinct is to walk in and out of the police station without speaking a word about Johnny or Simon or Roxanne, clinging to the safest option where you don’t risk incurring the wrath of your neighbors or implicating yourself in crimes of complicity. And maybe, just maybe, it would prove something to your neighbors. Show them that you’re worth having around with a gesture that demonstrates your loyalty and proper temperament.
But that’s what you’ve been doing all along, isn’t it? Not talking to the police, silence with a smile, all your secret keeping—passive, gutless inaction has only gotten you so far. It’s not enough anymore, not when there’s an empty, ravenous basement waiting to consume its next victim and not when your own gluttonous desires include more than just survival and freedom.
So if staying quiet’s not going to cut it, what option does that leave you? Sinking a metaphorical knife in your neighbors’ broad backs, striking first before they get bored of you? Ratting them out to save yourself because if you can’t have them, the police can? Some secret third option that you’ve yet to discover? Leaves you with a headache, that’s what.
To remedy your throbbing temples, you lie on the sofa in your living room, staring at the whirling ceiling fan above you. Scratchy, pilling fabric rubs against your skin as you shift your position. It’s not the soft, worn-in leather of your neighbors’ couch, cool to the touch against the back of your thighs.
And when you turn your head to the side, there’s no one sitting across from you, staring you down like you’re the most amusing thing in the world. Johnny and Simon are instead out in their front yard again this morning, having resumed the removal of their dead shrub. Even from inside, you can still hear the rhythmic sound of shovels striking into dirt. Schick. Schick. Schick. You wonder if this was ever the last thing one of their pets heard before crossing over the rainbow bridge.
Bringing your phone up to eye level, you consider calling Detective Bennett now while your neighbors are busy. You put in his number, but your finger hovers over the call button. A nagging at the back of your skull warns that if you want to keep the conversation private, you’d best not make the call inside your home where unseen eyes and ears could be lurking in the walls.
It’s a new day, so another coffee run wouldn’t seem suspicious, right? Maybe this could be your new routine, and then Johnny and Simon won’t think anything of it when you one day leave the house and take a secret detour to the police station. And you could randomly alternate between the coffee shops at Somerset and Terrace so if your neighbors show up at one location, you could claim to have been at the other.
So focused on strategy and subterfuge, you fail to notice that the distant gravedigging ASMR has stopped. It only comes to your attention when the sound is replaced by a loud knocking on your front door. Scrambling off of the couch, you fly to the entryway because that’s likely either your neighbors or the police, and you don’t want to keep either waiting.
When you open the door, you’re actually relieved it’s Johnny and Simon instead of the alternative, though you do catastrophize a scenario where your neighbors were able to sense your scheming through dark powers and mind reading. There’s no deviance that you can detect in their countenance, though, or no more than the usual amount, at any rate.
“Hi there, neighbor,” Johnny greets, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. “We’re goin’ out to get a new shrub.”
You blink owlishly, unsure of why they felt the need to announce this to you.
“We means you too,” Simon dictates. Confused blinking persists.
“Oh. Okay,” you respond. “Um. Why me too, though?”
Johnny tilts his head. “Who else would we bring along?”
You can’t argue with that logic. You can’t argue at all, really.
“I’ll get my shoes.”
...
...
...
Your neighbors’ nursery of choice is on the other side of town. The car ride over is fraught with anxiety between Simon’s questionable driving maneuvers and the chance that this was all a ruse to take you to their favorite camping grounds instead. But you arrive at the garden center physically unharmed. The first thing you notice when stepping out of the car is how strong the sun is today. You commit to memory the feeling of unfiltered warmth on your skin, lest you one day never get to experience it again, all while trailing behind your neighbors as Simon pushes a cart around and Johnny walks beside him.
There’s an array of shovels for sale under a covered area in the middle of the nursery. They hang off of a rack all lined in a row, ordered by length and grouped by the shape of the head. One of them catches your eye by the brand name engraved on the handle. You recognize it from the shovels your neighbors were using yesterday and pause to take a closer look.
“Got somethin’ to bury?” Simon queries, stopping when you do and leaning on the handle of the cart.
“No, but...” You reach out and poke the shovel until it clanks against the one behind it. “...this is the same as yours, right?”
“That’s the one,” Johnny confirms. He walks up behind you, engulfing you as he reaches around and pulls the shovel off the hook, his head nestled against yours. “We’ll get one for ye. Our treat.”
It takes a moment to react because you weren’t fully listening, too distracted by the proximity of his mouth to your neck, the closest he’s been since they both kissed you. (Now five days ago when they last showed you any kind of affection, any shred of warmth or intimacy. You had hoped yesterday that they’d kiss you goodbye, would have settled even for a tap on the ass on the way out, but you left their home with nothing, nothing at all.) Your brain does eventually kick in and think to decline a matching shovel, though.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that. You already got me that knife last time, and I haven’t even used that, so...” you fruitlessly reason.
“We never taught you how to handle that knife properly,” Simon states, taking the shovel from Johnny and putting it in the cart.
Your face wrinkles in confusion. “It’s not just...” You pantomime a few concise thrusting motions with an imaginary knife. “Stab-stab?”
“It’s mostly that,” Johnny laughs before sauntering over to you again. “But you gotta know where to stab.” While standing in front of you, he wraps a hand around your wrist and moves your fist towards his chest.
“And when to stab.”
A firm yank suddenly drags you forward until you stumble into him, your pretend knife driving straight into his heart. The rest of you presses against him as well.
“And who to stab,” Simon adds, voice stern and steady like he’s issuing a directive. Johnny winks while you stare at him, wide-eyed and stock-still.
“Aye, that’s the most important part,” he notes.
It’s unsettlingly intimate. You swear you can feel his heartbeat against your fist. You remain paralyzed until Johnny slips his other arm around your waist, giving a quick squeeze before spinning you around and nudging you towards his partner.
“Go on, hen. Give it a try on Simon.”
With small, reluctant steps, you shuffle over to Simon, whose smirk hasn’t faltered since you first wielded your simulated knife. Your neighbor’s size has always intimidated you, but he seems twice as large right now while up close, about to fake-stab him. You raise your clenched fist, eyes scanning his chest, searching for approximately where his heart would be, but hesitate to land a blow, too worried about missing, about disappointing.
“Not gonna get anythin’ done by staring,” Simon instructs. Your eyes snap up to meet his, and as if on command, you follow through without thinking, stabbing him with your not-knife in the chest. It’s a stronger jab than you meant, but it makes no noticeable impact to the thick wall of mass and muscle that is Simon. His smirk grows sharper, twists into a smile. “That’s it. Good.”
The praise drips down onto you. Buzzes in your veins, gives you a rush of adrenaline. You hold your hand there for a moment too long, reveling in the high until you have the sense to be mortified by your reaction.
“O-okay. Got it...” you stammer, hastily breaking contact and stepping back. “Where, when, who. I’ll remember that.” Johnny and Simon exchange a look of what you deduce is pride. But with the lesson over, they resume their plant shopping. You take to following behind them again, hand still clenched tightly around an invisible hilt.
You wonder if you could actually do it. There’s something so final about crossing that line, drawing a blade and striking. Once your weapon makes contact, there’s no turning back. You can’t undo a slice to the flesh, can’t force blood to return to the source. But when backed into a corner with your neighbors flanking you from the left and the cops positioned on the right and the basement door against your back, who knows what you’re capable of?
You have time to contemplate all that while Johnny and Simon inspect dozens of shrubs, searching for the best of the lot. Discerning eyes and high standards keep them from grabbing just any old shrub. This one’s drooping already from not enough water, this one doesn’t have enough new growth coming in. But after much debate, they finally select a nice, lush boxwood and pop it into their cart. And now that they’ve got what they came for, you hope they’ll take you straight home and not out to the woods to christen your new shovel.
But before you can take even two steps towards the exit, you hear a tapping that’s getting louder. Then a shout.
“Someone grab her, please!”
A small, fluffy white dog zooms between the rows of plants and shoots by you like a rocket, free and on the move, leash flailing wildly behind her. The dog’s too quick for you to react, but not quicker than Simon, who snatches her right off the ground once she passes by him. The pooch fidgets and squirms in his arms but can’t escape. A young woman jogs towards you all, flustered and out of breath and presumably the dog’s owner.
“Thank you so much. I didn’t have a good grip on her leash and something startled her, so she just took off,” she explains sheepishly, taking the dog from Simon.
“Lucky for you, we’ve got a knack for catching runaways,” Johnny replies, reaching out and ruffling the top of the dog’s head. He smiles, alluring and brilliant, and you can see the change in the woman’s posture, can clock when she realizes just how handsome your neighbors are as she tucks her hair behind her ear and returns the smile sweetly.
Ignored and awkwardly standing to the side, all you can do is watch. Is this how it starts? A chance meeting with a stranger, Johnny being his charming self, making casual small talk while Simon plays the strong, silent type, both of them evaluating their new acquaintance's appearance and disposition. And then if the appraisal goes well, some time later at a calculated, premeditated moment, this person has a last taste of freedom and vanishes.
You don’t want this woman to meet such a fate. You tell yourself that it’s altruism and a sense of decency that compels this wish, but you know that’s not the whole truth. Your neighbors’ affection is scarce. Finite. You don’t want to share.
You’re not the only one who’s upset that attention has been diverted away from them, though. The woman’s dog has also had enough, letting out two sharp barks and wiggling around in her arms.
“Oh no, don’t you start that,” her owner scolds, shifting her hold on the little furball. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one day, Roxie.”
The name sets you on edge. The hairs on the back of your neck rise as soon as you hear it.
“Roxie, huh?” Johnny comments with an amused chuckle. Baneful sentiment creeps across his face. “We had a Roxie once.”
“She was always tryin’ to escape too,” Simon adds. The same ill-boding fondness haunts his countenance.
If there were any lingering doubts that your neighbors had something to do with Roxanne Miller’s disappearance, this drives a nail in the coffin of that uncertainty. And really you were already convinced of the matter, but it’s different to hear it straight from their mouths. A wave of nausea overtakes you. Sweat beads on your forehead under the heat of the sun that suddenly feels unbearable. You begin to shuffle off to the side, seeking out the cover of a nearby awning, but Simon seizes you by the arm.
“Where you runnin’ off to, neighbor?”
You’re lightly jostled by his grasp which doesn’t help your stomach at all, and you suppress a grimace with a clumsily stitched together smile.
“I was going to go stand in the shade,” you explain. “It’s a little hot.”
Johnny moves in front of you, blocking the oppressing sun, and grabs hold of your face with an unexpected gentleness. “Yer not lookin’ too good, hen. We’ll check out and take you home.”
The woman with the dog, now realizing that you weren’t just some random person lurking nearby, offers one last thank you to your neighbors and makes herself scarce. You hope for her sake and your own that you never see her again.
When you’re back at the car, Simon mixes an electrolyte packet into their water bottle and makes you drink from it. A bit of water dribbles out the corner of your mouth as you gulp it down, and Johnny wipes it off with his thumb, licking his finger pad afterward. You want to soak up the attention fully, but you can’t help but bitterly wonder if they would dote on their new acquaintance or any of their other pets like this. When Roxie was in their care, did they rub lotion on her neck where the collar chafed her skin? Did they make sure she had a balanced diet that accounted for her new life without sun? Were their hands once loving and tender, even if the same hands eventually choked the life out of her?
On the drive home, you rest your head against the car window, staring aimlessly at the world outside passing you by. Simon drives with marginally more caution, perhaps his way of accommodating you, and Johnny carries the conversation for the three of you since you’re not feeling very chatty at the moment. There’s a lull, though, and when that happens, you venture to pose a question.
“Do you ever miss them?” you ask, voice small and wavering. “Roxie and the others.” Saying her name out loud burns your tongue like a curse, skirting the line between the usual charade and an actual discussion about the people they kidnap and murder and bury in lonely graves.
If it bothers your neighbors the same way, they don’t show it. Johnny turns to face you from the passenger’s seat, lips curving into an earnest but knowing smile.
“‘Course we do. Each and every one of them,” he claims.
A pause. Silence other than the hum of the car engine.
“Would you miss me?”
It hurts when it slips out of you, sounding wounded and desperate. Instincts urge you to take it back and hide it away, but you don’t.
Simon meets your gaze through the rearview mirror. “You plannin’ on going somewhere?”
There’s a warning and a threat in the marrow of his words. It answers and doesn’t answer your question, but as unsatisfying as that is, you’re too worn down to press the matter further. You glance between him and Johnny.
“No. I don’t know why I asked that. Sorry.”
It’s not even your real question. What you really want to know is would they miss you more? Are you special and different from the rest or are you just another Roxie, fifth in a line that continues long after you’re gone?
You fretfully brush your thumb back and forth over the car’s leather trim. You’re reminded of your neighbors’ couch at first, but then you think of your knife’s leather sheath. Your fingers slowly curl around the hilt of an imaginary weapon once again. A scar could be something to remember you by, a permanent, irreversible etching on their skin. With so many already littering their bodies, how mad could they be if you added one more?
But is it really a pound of flesh you seek? Maybe all you want is to have carved out even a sliver of their hearts, to hoard a piece for yourself that you get to keep and carry with you to the next life. So when someone speaks your name in the future, Johnny and Simon won’t just miss you—they’ll mourn you.
Where, when, who. The who is the most important part. Who are you willing to hurt to obtain your true, secret desires that you keep locked up deep within you?
In answering that question, the seed of an awful idea sprouts. An idea that is more likely to backfire spectacularly or do nothing at all or mean nothing at all to your neighbors. But it would be significant to you, it would be the change you’ve been searching for, even if it’s the last thing you do in this life. The walls are closing in, and there are familiar pipes running along them. You can’t delay the inevitable any longer. It’s time to draw first blood with your own two hands.
In the backseat of your neighbors’ car, you determine the who. At the coffee shop on Somerset, you call Detective Bennett and arrange the when and the where.
Lately, you’ve been thinking about having a baby.
Or: the fertility clinic au
Part 2
masterlist
You walk around town like it’s written on your forehead that you’re about to let some strange man get you pregnant.
It might as well be a scarlet letter pinned to your breast. A sign taped to the back of your shirt. Kick me. I’m letting some guy knock me up. Or better yet, I’m with stupid, with the arrow pointed up at you.
Obviously that’s not true. You’ve done a good job at keeping this under wraps for the most part, not even your closest friends hearing about the man that propositioned you in the fertility clinic waiting room. You might've had half a mind to call one of them about it on the drive home, but by then you’d already filed it away as future gossip material, imagining bringing it up at drinks to the shock and delight of your friends.
Then night falls, and you grow weak.
You wake up with post-text message clarity the next morning, but there’s little you can do to backtrack now. You gave the man your name and number. You spoke to him on the phone about it, albeit briefly. Sure you could call John again and tell him that you thought it over a little more and decided against it, but then—
“It’s gonna cost four thousand dollars.”
Your coworker lets out a hissed breath, wincing. “That’s not cheap.”
It’s a pea-soupy summer morning, all hot and humid with the sky tinted a yellowish colour from forest fires up in the country, the hazy light seeping in through the windows in the office kitchen. Not a cloud in sight. You wouldn't call it a particularly pleasant morning, with the weather as overcast as your mood, but it could always be worse.
She’s the first person outside of a few close friends that you’ve told about going to the clinic at all, but she reacts exactly as you thought she would. It’s both affirming and annoying; it’s not so bad hearing from someone else that four thousand dollars is a bit pricey for a single person, but part of you wishes she’d try to convince you to go through with it. You need someone to push you in a direction—in any direction.
You nod, mouth screwed into a grimace. “And that’s only for a single try. I think she said it would be closer to, like, twelve thousand dollars altogether.”
“So are you gonna do it? Or are you gonna keep looking around?”
“I have another appointment next week,” you half-answer, getting cagey all of a sudden.
The truth is, that appointment isn’t the only thing you’ve got on the books. There’s another dot in your calendar for a few days before, one that seems to glow ominously when you stare at the date as it slowly approaches, lumbering forward one ground-shaking step at a time.
You wonder how long you can go without telling anyone. Theoretically, you could keep up this ruse for the rest of your life, pretend you always went through with the treatment. Lie through your teeth when your friends ask you if you know anything about the donor. No, they didn’t tell me anything, I just picked a profile with a good medical record and family history.
Don’t think about how you live in the same city. Don’t think about the likelihood of running into him around town with the baby in tow.
You shake your head. Those are concerns that you can foist off onto a future version of you. All the current you needs to worry about is making this all a reality.
You don’t know what to wear out to dinner with him. It’s both a date and not, more of a prelude to the later events of the night. Part of you wonders if you should just text him your address and tell him to skip the preamble and come on over.
The only reason you don’t is because a little voice at the back of your mind insists that you at least do your due diligence and screen him a little more over dinner. You can always back out at the last minute if a few too many red flags pop up.
(You tell yourself that as if a strange man offering to knock you up within five minutes of meeting weren’t a big enough red flag on its own.)
John meets you at the restaurant looking every bit as handsome as the day you met him, once again nearly taking your breath away. A little more buttoned up this time though, actually quite dashing in a proper dress shirt and suit jacket, even his shoes polished.
You have a second to think about calling it off. A second to consider turning tail and getting as far away as possible. Maybe, with enough time, you could scrape together the money for IUI. You could wait a year, or take out a loan with your bank, or pray for a decent enough raise to manage it on your own.
But then, as the time before, he turns his head and locks eyes with you.
It would probably be a good idea to take a picture of him, maybe even a picture of his ID, and send it over to one or two of your friends, on the off chance that he turns out to be a dangerous man, but you don’t need to be inundated by a barrage of text messages and phone calls from your friends trying to talk you out of it. You’ve made up your mind.
Walnut and burgundy furnishings decorate the large room, and the amber glow of candlelight and antique wall sconces saturates the restaurant in a dark, sensual bloom. A server guides John and you to a table right in the middle of the room, a better table than you might’ve hoped to get on your own. You eye him sideways when he pulls your chair out for you.
His demeanour is so relaxed that if you didn’t already know the purpose of this dinner, you could be forgiven for assuming that you were out on a real date. John certainly acts the part.
“You know, we didn’t have to do this,” you start awkwardly, eyes gliding over the room to look at all the other well-dressed patrons, some presumably out on actual dates.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I was taught that dinner comes before the rest of the evening.”
“I just mean you didn’t have to. I would’ve been fine just…” getting right down to business, you leave unsaid, hoping that he doesn’t make you spell it out.
“We’re two civilized adults. I thought we might get to know each other first.”
“Well, what do you want to know about me?”
“This is as much for me as it is for you—don’t you want to know anything about the father of your children?”
You wish he’d keep his voice down. He isn’t wrong though; it would be a good idea for you to take his candidature more seriously, actually ask him questions about himself and his parentage. He already emailed you a recent STI panel and bloodwork results, both done through the fertility clinic back when he was still keen on donating, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn a little more about him.
“Alright. How old are you?”
“Forty-six.”
You nod, pleased with yourself for guessing it right. “What do you do for work?”
“Just some work for the government,” he says, brushing the question off. “What else?”
That piques your interest though. “Oh, come on. What are you, M16 or something?”
“No, nothing like that,” John laughs, genuinely amused enough for you to believe him.
You roll your eyes when he doesn’t elaborate any further though. “Fine, leave me in the dark. Anything else you want to know about me?”
“Where are you in your cycle?” he asks, blunt as a hammer.
A classic spit take moment. It’s a good thing you haven’t ordered a drink yet.
“I think it’s, uh…it’s coming soon actually. Um. Next week or so.”
He chews on that for a second, mulling over the timing. “That’s fine. We should still be able to make it work.”
There he goes again, making comments that leave you fish-mouthed and stunned, jaw slack with disbelief. Never able to conjure up a good enough retort.
When the server comes by to take your drink orders, both of you still deliberating over your food, John orders a beer for himself and a mocktail for you, not even bothering to consult you about it.
“No alcohol,” he reminds you before you have a chance to ask.
To be fair, the spicy blackberry-basil concoction that the server comes back with a few minutes later is a refreshing burst of fruit and fresh herbs, but that doesn’t excuse the overstep. You ignore it only because you know there’s no use getting worked up when you’ve already made your mind up. It’s a peccadillo in the grand scheme of things considering what he’s doing for you.
Conversation flows surprisingly well over dinner, but at the back of your mind, you can’t stop thinking about how at the end of the night, he’s going to take you home and fuck you. It creeps back in whenever you let your guard down for a split second.
So, do you have any hobbies? (In three hours, this man is going to strip you naked and have sex with you)
Do you have any siblings? Any twins running in the family? (In two hours, this man is going to climb on top of you and fuck you until he puts a baby in you)
It’s a lot to keep in your head at the same time.
“How long have you been thinking about doing this?” John asks apropos of nothing, the earlier thread of your conversation evaporating on the spot.
“I mean, I’ve wanted to have kids for a long time, but actually planning to have them…maybe a couple months?”
“Why now? Why not wait a little longer? Wait for someone to start a family with?”
You’re not sure why he’d ask you that, why it would matter. It’s none of his business, quite frankly. You almost want to tell him that, let yourself get righteous, get angry, but you find you can’t fully commit to the anger. It wouldn’t change anything. You aren’t being forced to answer him.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I’m not much of a family man myself. ‘Least not when I was younger, when it counted. Never had the time nor the inclination. Work took me all over—it just wouldn’t have been fair if I had a wife or kids waiting around for me. But since it didn’t seem like having a family was in the cards for me, I thought it would be a waste of good genetics.”
“Oh.” It’s arrogant, but it’s as good an answer as any.
He waits a beat then lifts an eyebrow when you don’t reciprocate. “So? Why didn’t you wait?”
“I did try, but there wasn’t much out there, and I wanted a baby more than I wanted to be with someone, so…”
Leave him to fill in the blanks. He met you at the culmination of that longing after all, even changed the course of it, disrupted your plans to place himself at the centre of them.
At the centre for a time, you remind yourself. Not forever.
After that, he keeps the conversation light, only delving into superficial topics to help pass the time. You excuse yourself after finishing your meal to go to the bathroom, and come back to two coffees laid out on the table with sugar and cream in pretty porcelain cups laid out between them. John must have ordered for you again in your absence. Good thing you like coffee.
The bill is also there, discretely tucked under John’s napkin, and that makes your stomach flip, realizing that only a coffee now sits between you and the end of this night.
Then, at a certain point, when all that’s left in your cup is the dregs, sugar spoon bone dry on your plate, John gives you a look from across the table that says it’s time for you both to go.
Well, here we go, you think a little hysterically as you push back your chair to stand, nearly jumping out of your skin when his hand comes down on your back.
At your car, you sway back and forth on your heels. “You can, uh…follow behind me, if that works.”
“Why don’t you give me your address and I’ll meet you there?”
You bite your lip, pretending to deliberate, then acquiesce.
Let him think he’s pulling one on you. You’re bringing him home instead of the other way around because you don’t want to have any memory of a man’s bed when you think about your pregnancy journey. If it’s going to be you alone, then it should be about you alone. Your decision to go out and pick a man to father your baby.
His participation will be a short blip in your life. A minor footnote. You’ll remember it in bursts throughout the rest of your life: staring at a carton of cream in the dairy aisle of the local grocery store; garden spade buried hilt-deep in a plot of soil, blue bigleaf hydrangea in a pot beside you, sweat dripping down the bow of your lips; your baby’s face, for the rest of your natural life.
In your foyer, his hands glide around your hips, pulling you into his chest, and you realize abruptly that ‘short’ might not have been the most accurate interpretation of what’s about to happen.
(Honey, you’ve got a storm coming)
“This off first,” John rasps, pulling the bottom of your shirt up and over your head, blinding you for a split second before he yanks it over your arms.
“Getting right to it, huh?” you joke nervously.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks, staring down at you assessingly, as if staring into your soul. That cuts the humour from the moment. Vacuums it from the room, leaving behind only the crackling, blistering heat of his gaze and his intentions.
“Yes,” you whisper. Neither of you mention the tremble in your voice and how unsure you sound.
It doesn’t stop him from undressing you though. Bra pulled down under your breasts, pushing your tits up into his face like an invitation, one he accepts without question, pulling your nipples into his mouth one by one, hands on your hips to hold you in place when you try to squirm away. Not that it’s bad—it’s amazingly good after all, toe-curlingly good to have a man run his tongue over your areolas and suck each sensitive nipple to a stiff peak, until you’re on the verge of coming—but it’s a lot, a lot that you have to wrap your head around, your bra pinched off shortly after that and underwear next.
Your touch is hesitant at first, fingers barely gliding down his arms and fisting in the fabric of his shirt to jerk it up, but he makes it easy for you to get lost in it, your nerves fizzling out in the heat and fervor.
You don’t even notice that John has walked you backwards into the bedroom until he pushes you down onto the bed, the mattress bouncing under you. “One second, love—need to get all of this off myself.”
You watch transfixed as the suit jacket comes off first, shrugged off and discarded. He undoes only a few buttons before wrenching it over his head, eyes on you the whole time, his stare never breaking. Scalding hot.
That’s how you know that despite all his lofty words, this isn’t some favour he’s doing you. He wants this just as badly—wants it with a vigour that you don’t even know if you’ll be able to handle, aware that you are just flesh and blood. There’s a prickle at the back of your mind, a whisper reminding you that nobody knows that he’s here, that he’s a hot-blooded man about to slake his lust with your body.
Then he slides the elastic waistband of his boxers down his thighs and your mind goes blank when you see the flushed, heavy shaft droop between his legs.
The two of you work together to shove a pillow under your hips, John fetching it from the top of the bed and you lifting your hips to give him easier access. You don’t have to ask why.
Nestled between your thighs, John looks up at you with heavy-lidded eyes and says, “Let’s get you all softened up to start, alright, love?”
The first touch of his lips to your sex sends a lightning bolt up your spine, and then it’s practically an open mouth kiss. Tongue running up the seam of your lips, pushing into the clenched hole at the centre, the bristles of his beard scraping up the insides of your thighs and the thin skin of your labia.
It’s good, but it’s taking too long and your heart is a rabbiting mess and you can barely think or see straight, so you tangle your fingers in his hair and try to push his head away. “That’s okay, John, I just wanna—oh fuck, can you please just put it in?”
“No, baby, it’s good if you come first,” he murmurs. “Helps it take.”
That floods your system with a frenetic, crazed exhilaration. Baby fever bubbling and boiling, frothing spilling over the top like a pot left on the stovetop for too long.
You gasp when he tucks a couple fingers into your hole to stretch you out, a perfunctory, almost clinical motion. Just enough to loosen you up for him, unmindful of the way you squirm and whine, rolling your hips to get him to go faster. He does not.
It doesn’t take much effort on his part after that to get you to come, too worked up and wound up, core squeezing his fingers like a vice until he gives your clit a suck and you squeal, oh, too much, breath ripping through your chest.
They’re wet when he pulls them out, and he dries them off by rubbing them on your belly.
The shadow of his body draws over yours as he climbs on top of you. It’s as physical as it is visual though, John’s hands always on some part of your body, dragging up your legs and over your arms, fingers spreading over your belly before he runs a hand up between your breasts and over your throat, lingering there just long enough to close around your throat and hold for a second, then skating up to cup your jaw.
And then he’s all big body on top of you, coaxing your legs around his hips, one hand squishing your cheeks when he bends down to kiss you. You can taste yourself on his lips, the tongue pushing into your mouth musky with the flavour of your cum. You’d protest if you could, but you can’t, his mouth slanted over yours and demanding.
“C’mere,” he mumbles against your lips when he draws you in for another kiss, sawing his cock up and down between your folds, coating his length with your juices, until it’s there suddenly, breaching you.
You have to grab him, loop your arms around his shoulders and squeeze to ground yourself. It’s a lot to take in. He’s a lot to take in.
“I know, love, I know,” John murmurs soothingly. “Deep breaths, okay?”
You listen to him, letting a shaky breath out. It helps you relax. Barely, but enough to ease the strain a bit.
He nuzzles his nose into your temple, his breath fanning out against your ear. “A little more, love, alright? You gonna be brave for me?”
“Oh—just get on with it,” you gasp when he eases in another inch, and John laughs in your ear.
It feels genuinely romantic like this. Your arms wrapped around his neck and his hips slowly rocking into you, whispering sweet nothings like, there we go, you’ve got it, that feel good, love? When he fits his hand around the back of your neck and lifts your head up for a kiss, you swear you see stars.
The kiss is too much. Too intimate. You wish you would’ve set that boundary ahead of time. It feels pointless now, trapped under the heavy weight of his body and impaled on his member, sucked into it, lips slotting and melting over each other, his tongue running over yours. He’s a good kisser at least, practiced from a lifetime of it. No awkward schoolboy tonguing.
Too good. You wonder distantly how many other women he’s slept with (probably more than you have any business knowing). If he’s ever gotten anyone else pregnant. Your nails dig into his back instinctively at the thought and he gasps a wet and guttural sound, hips bucking harder.
He gets rough enough to loosen a bolt of fear in your chest. All of a sudden, it becomes bright and clear in your mind. There’s a grunting, sweating man over you, all two hundred plus pounds of him laid out on top of you, with no protection between you. Raw cock plunging into your pussy. You can barely get a full breath in.
“Fuck, I’m close,” John grunts, and your eyes flick down instinctively, trying to see past the dense mass of hair on his chest towards the length of his cock sliding into you. He’s pressed too close though. When he catches you looking away from him, he clamps his hand around your face again, forcing your gaze back up. “No, none of that. Eyes on me.”
You think you must gasp. Some horrified sound must escape you because you can feel the aftereffect of it, the big hollow where it used to be.
His other arm wedges under your back to pull you closer to him, thighs spreading to brace his weight against the mattress before driving into you harder, deeper, the big, concentrated energy of him inescapable.
You can sense it the second before he’s about to come, his eyebrows digging in and his jaw going tight, the vein in his forehead prominent.
“Christ, you’re gonna take it, aren’t you?” he snarls. “All this fucking cum.”
On the next stroke in, you dig an ankle into the muscle of his ass and squeeze your inner muscles around his length, grinning hazily to yourself when that makes him shout.
And then, oh, he surges in and you feel it, hear it, sense it all around you, his fingers from the hand wedged under your back digging hard into the side of your breast. Hips forcefully pumping into you and pushing his cum in deep, your own orgasm lost somewhere in there, a small, forgettable part of it all.
Eventually, he stops moving over you, letting his cock slip out of you on the next stroke out. You hiss when he does, clenching up involuntarily. With nothing plugging it inside though, his cum leaks out, dripping down the crack of your ass and onto the pillow under your hips.
John’s hot breath fans over your face as he pants, slowly winding down as well, the red flush in his cheeks still stark, though gradually fading. It’s only in the cooldown that you realize how claustrophobic it is being trapped under him, the sheer weight and heat of his body flush with yours becoming more and more uncomfortable, almost unbearably so.
When he slumps off to one side, you can finally breathe again, the air rushing into your lungs. There’s sweat in your skin and tears in the corners of your eyes, everything tacky and humid, the frantic beat of your heart only beginning to slow down. The stiffness in your shoulders only dawns on you after a few minutes like that, and you push yourself up onto your elbows just to try to work some of it out.
“No, don’t get up, love. We’re just gonna lie here for a bit,” he instructs, pushing your shoulder back down. “Better chance of my boys getting the job done if we keep it all in you.”
Of course he just wants to make sure that it takes. That way, you don’t have to do this again. “Oh yeah. I, uh, I didn’t think about that.”
He doesn’t just mean lie there, of course, though your body would like nothing more than to sink into the plush embrace of sleep. Instead he means keeping your hips propped up on the pillow now saturated with cum, and curling you into his side, separating your thighs again to palm your cunt, sliding his fingers through the wet.
It’s a goopy, sticky mess that John plunges his fingers into, pushing it back up inside of you and shushing you when you whimper, a little gaped from his cock but sore to the touch.
For much longer than you anticipated, he lies there on his side beside you and keeps two fingers pushed up inside you, blocking any cum from leaking out.
“How long do we have to do this for?” you ask, voice all high and tight in your throat.
John hums, unconcerned. “Ten, fifteen minutes.”
True to his word, he keeps you there for the full fifteen minutes. Only the sound of your breathing fills the room, quiet otherwise aside from the enormously large weight of his presence, too familiar now with the private corners of your world.
He doesn’t warn you before idly circling your clit with thumb. You jerk, nearly biting through your lip. “John!”
“Relax, honey, I’m just making you come again.”
“I know that, John—ah, ah, ah—”
A leg hooks over yours, his thigh heavy enough to keep you pinned without even much strength behind it. His fingers don’t so much as twitch inside of you, buried to the fattest knuckle while his thumb circles the tight bud of your clit over and over again until you—
You haven’t finished the thought by the time he draws his fingers out, pearlescent strings of cum webbed between them. He hums approvingly when he sees that, pulling your thighs further apart to admire his work. “Gorgeous. That ought to do it for now.”
Your heart skips a beat and you stare up at him, exhausted, the sweat on the back of your neck now cold.
Post-TBI!Johnny who turns to art to cope and convinces you to model for him because you’ve got an interesting face, hen. Interesting bones. Something in the slope of your shoulders and the set of your mouth that makes his fingers twitch for charcoal, makes him stare at you, want to see what’s buried beneath your skin.
It should make you uncomfortable
(Maybe it does. Maybe you should’ve listened to that thin little alarm trembling at the back of your skull, but hindsight has always been cruel like that, arriving only after the door has closed, after the lock has turned, after you’ve already mistaken hunger for reverence. And nobody has ever looked at you the way he’s looking now-)
Ach, dinnae look at me like that. It’s only art.
He lays it on thick-
Tells you he’s been stuck for months. That nothing’s moved him. That he’d started thinking there was something dead inside him until he saw you standing beneath the washed out lights of a corner shop, fumbling with your change.
Then there ye were.
So you agree.
Just once, you tell him. A few hours. Fully clothed.
Course, bonnie. Agrees too easily, bobbing his head, boyish grin sliding onto his face to ease your nerves. Whatever makes ye comfortable.
The studio is warmer than you expect. Old brick. Tall windows dripping with rain. Canvases stacked against every wall, most of them turned backward, their painted faces hidden from you. It smells of linseed oil and damp wood and (- the sharp stench of a cave where things lie nestled in the dark with sharp teeth and sharper claws, maw dripping with hunger for every unsuspecting little thing that crosses in front of it’s eyes, too close too see the danger until its dragging them across stone floor- )
(And you’ll think about those canvases later. About how each one had been carefully turned toward the wall before you arrived, how easy it had been to assume this was modesty instead of concealment. Artists are strange, you’d thought. Private about unfinished things. You hadn’t yet considered that there might be things Johnny didn’t want looking back at you.)
Johnny puts you in an oversized white shirt (‘s mine, Bonnie, but ye can borrow it- ), says the fabric catches shadow better. Leaves your own clothes folded on a chair near the door (- farther away than they need to be- ) and settles you on a low platform beneath the windows, your knees drawn loosely beneath you, one hand resting against your throat.
The first few minutes pass in silence.
Charcoal scratching.
Rain needling softly against the glass.
Johnny looking at you, baby blue traveling slowly, steadily, returning to the same places over and over- the soft inside of your wrist, the hollow beneath your throat, the place where the shirt slips away from one shoulder whenever you breathe too deeply.
You try to hold still, but your back starts to ache. Your fingers curl against your collarbone. Each time Johnny looks up, you remember you’re being watched and flinch, shoulders rising, knees pressing closer together, chin sinking protectively toward your chest, too stiff.
His charcoal stills.
You apologize.
Ach, dinnae apologize. He smiles when he says it, but something in his expression stays still. His mouth curves. The rest of him doesn’t.
Ye keep foldin’ in on yourself every time I look at ye. Ahm not goin’ tae eat ye.
It’s too perceptive and your laugh comes out smaller than you meant it to. Johnny’s gaze sharpens at the sound, charcoal held motionless between fingers stained black nearly to the knuckle. He sets the charcoal on the easel tray and walks toward you, wiping blackened fingertips against his trousers.
His hands settle on your shoulders and press them down, thumbs sweeping slowly along the tight muscles beside your neck, working circles into the ache until your head tips forward despite yourself.
(That should’ve frightened you too, perhaps, the ease with which he found the softest part of you and pressed his thumb into it. But cruelty rarely introduces itself as cruelty.)
Can feel ye fightin’ me, he murmurs.
You tell him you’re only nervous.
I know, hen.
His mouth brushes close to your ear when he says it- That’s the problem-
You’ve never done anything like this before. Never sat beneath someone’s attention and been expected to let them take whatever they saw.
Johnny hums.
- Got somethin’ that might help-
He leaves you there and crosses to a cabinet near the sink. The bottle he brings back is already open. Red wine, dark enough to look black where it gathers in the bottom of the glass.
He pours while you watch, the glass filling nearly to the widest part before he seems to remember himself and stops.
You tell him that’s more than a little.
Is it?
The dimples appear.
Scottish measure.
You laugh despite yourself, and that seems to please him. He passes you the glass, waits until your fingers close around the stem, then returns to the easel as though the matter is settled.
It’s sweeter than you expect.
Dark fruit and spice, something thick and jammy that clings to your tongue after you swallow. It warms your stomach on the way down and then sits there, a small red coal beneath your ribs, heavy in your stomach, spreading outward in a slow bloom that reaches your fingertips first.
Johnny starts drawing again once you drink, charcoal moving with renewed purpose, and each time you begin to tense beneath his gaze, he tips his chin toward the glass.
You obey because you don’t want to be difficult (- not after he told you that you were the first beautiful thing he’d wanted to draw in months. Pride and vanity always did come before the fall-)
The first glass disappears without you noticing.
Johnny refills it.
You watch the wine climb the crystal, a dark red tide swallowing the clean sides. He pours generously this time, his wrist turning until the glass is almost full.
Johnny-
Ye’re still wound tight.
He presses the glass back into your hand, cups the base and tips it toward your mouth, red wine spilling over your lower lip, a thin ribbon escaping the corner of your mouth to trail down your chin- Swallow, hen, that’s it, good girl- thumb catching the crimson streak on your chin, smearing it gently across your swollen mouth, bringing his thumb to his own lips and dragging his tongue slowly over the wine stained pad, his gaze still fixed on your (- tasting one thing and thinking of another entirely- )
The room softens, hard corners of the platform blurring, rain beyond the glass stretches into silver threads. Johnny’s face becomes something painted in oils- dark lashes, blue eyes, the warm cut of his mouth- each feature bleeding gently into the next whenever you look too quickly.
(You’ll try to remember how many times he filled the glass after that. You’ll count backward later and find nothing solid enough to hold. One glass becomes two only because you remember him pouring. Two becomes three because the bottle was lower when you finally noticed it again. Memory is unreliable even when sober; drunk, it becomes something else entirely)
Your thoughts begin losing their edges.
That’s the strangest part.
Not the warmth or the heaviness gathering behind your eyes, but the way one thought stops connecting cleanly to the next. You think you should check the time, but the idea floats away before you remember where you left your phone. You think you’re thirsty, although there’s still wine in your hand. You think Johnny has been staring too long, but then he smiles and the concern dissolves before it can settle into fear.
Your brain turns liquid. Loose.
Everything inside your skull has melted into something warm and buoyant, thoughts drifting past one another like pale shapes beneath dark water. You can see them. Almost touch them. But each time you reach for one, the motion sends it farther away.
The warmth moves deeper with each glass. Into your thighs. Your cheeks. The soft tissue behind your eyes.
Nothing has edges anymore. Johnny’s charcoal scratches from very far away, scraping down the back of your mind.
You take another sip.
Your tongue feels too large for your mouth.
The wine sits syrup thick in your veins, turning your body slow and porous. You can feel yourself dissolving from the inside, bones losing their hard white calcifications, thoughts melting down into something warm and red and viscous. Your mind becomes a glass overturned on its side, everything inside it pouring lazily toward the lowest point.
Johnny tells you to lift your chin and it takes you a moment to understand him.
Your head feels full of warm red water. Too heavy for your neck, too light to belong to your body. When you turn toward him, the studio follows a moment later, swaying gently around its fixed point. Your stomach seems to remain behind while the rest of you drifts forward.
Johnny smiles. Feelin’ better?
Mmm. Floaty.
The word leaves your mouth thick and childish. You hear yourself say it from somewhere above the platform and start laughing, embarrassed by the way your tongue seems to have grown too large for your teeth.
Floaty, he repeats. Aye, I can see that.
The glass slips sideways in your hand when you try to lift it again, wine cresting the rim, pouring over your fingers in a slow, dark sheet, slipping between your knuckles and tracing along the inside of your wrist. You make a startled little sound at the coldness that breaks apart into a thousand shards against the brick of the walls.
Johnny catches the stem before it can tumble from your loose fingers- careful, hen- and you try to straighten it but some how make it worse. Another red thread spills across your palm, and your laughter returns, thick and breathless, your head bowing beneath the weight of it.
Can’t hold it, you confess.
Johnny looks at your hand.
His smile doesn’t disappear, the warmth staying arranged across his face, but everything behind it grows watchful and still, his gaze following the wine as it crawls toward the soft bend of your elbow.
Aye, he murmurs. I can see that.
He takes the glass from you and places it beyond your reach.
Then he closes his hand around your wrist.
(There are moments when the body understands before the mind does. A pulse quickening beneath someone’s thumb. Fingers curling uselessly toward the palm. Some small animal instinct lifting its head inside you and finding every door already underwater. Yours tries to warn you now, but the wine has made a soft, red grave of your thoughts, and whatever is screaming has sunk too deep to be heard.)
Johnny raises your hand slowly, turns your wrist upward and studies the dark streaks shining there as though you’ve offered him something.
His tongue touches the center of your palm.
Tickles, you mumble, trying weakly to pull your hand back.
Johnny doesn’t let you, fingers tighten around your wrist, dragging his tongue between two of your fingers, gathering the wine with slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes lifted to your face the entire time, stubble scraping your skin, your head tipping drunkenly toward one shoulder while he follows the spill downward. His mouth moves over the heel of your hand, then the tender inside of your wrist, tongue tracing the dark path until it reaches the quick beat of your pulse.
Johnny, you breathe, his name breaking apart around another shy (nervous) giggle.
Shh.
His lips close over the fluttering place beneath your skin, sucking gently at the flesh, and the laughter catches strangely in your throat.
For a second, the floating stops.
Your eyes find his. There’s no boyish embarrassment there now. No artist’s wonder. Only concentration, calm and proprietary, as if he’s discovered the precise place where you’re weakest and is committing it to memory.
Then the room tips again.
The fear slips away before you can name it.
Johnny lifts his mouth from your wrist. A faint red stain shines across his lower lip, though you can’t tell whether it’s wine or the shape of his teeth pressed too hard against your skin.
Couldnae leave ye all messy, he murmurs.
You smile at him, heavy eyed and grateful.
(That smile will return to you later. Not his. Yours. The soft, trusting curve of your own mouth while he held your pulse between his teeth, already learning how much he could take, could take, could take before you’d realize something was missing- )
His hand slides behind your neck when your head lists toward one shoulder, catching you with a palm spanning the base of your skull, fingers sinking into the soft place beneath your hair, and the strength of him feels like a pillar rising from the black water at the exact moment your feet stop finding the bottom.
You lean into him, body pouring toward the nearest solid thing with the blind obedience of water finding a crack.
(That’s the part you’ll hate most afterward. Not the touch itself, but the relief. The soft, grateful sound your throat makes when he holds your head up for you. The way your body, stupid animal that it is, mistakes restraint for shelter because the room has become a dark and gently turning sea, and Johnny- Johnny, who tipped the bottle into your mouth, who stood on the shore and watched the red water climb over your face- feels like the only thing left that won’t move beneath your hands.)
Can barely hold yourself up, can ye?
There’s laughter curled inside his voice. Warmth too. Enough warmth to blunt the edge of it, enough tenderness painted over the words that you don’t see the teeth beneath until much later, when you’re sober enough to pick each moment apart and find where the sweetness spoiled.
You mumble that you’re fine, word coming loose and swollen, a soft little shape that collapses against his chest before it properly leaves your mouth.
Course ye are.
His thumb moves behind your ear, slow enough to feel fond, presses into the tender hollow there and draws a circle, then another, while your thoughts slosh heavily from one side of your skull to the other.
Jus’ need a wee bit of help holdin’ the pose.
He reaches past you.
Something drags from the shelves, whisper of fibres over unfinished wood, dry and soft, the sound stretching strangely inside your head, unspooling through the wine until it becomes the scrape of something moving beneath a bed, the hush of grass parting around a body.
When Johnny settles back into view, there’s a pale coil resting in one charcoal stained hand.
You stare at it.
The meaning is there- somewhere- can feel it beneath the surface, pressing upward through the wine. But your thoughts are no longer thoughts, drifting pieces of them, each one separating when you reach, each one slipping wetly through your fingers before you can force it into words.
What’s that for?
The question sounds very far away.
Johnny looks at the rope, then at you.
You.
He says it so easily that you blink up at him, chin hooked against the hard planes of his abdomen.
Then his grin breaks wide, dimples cutting deep enough to make the answer harmless again.
The pose, hen. It’s for the pose.
He kneels beside you and takes your wrist, winding the rope around your skin once, then twice, explaining tension and composition and the body’s instinct to protect itself when it tires.
Always curls inward, he murmurs, thumb smoothing the inside of your wrist. Always tries tae hide the soft parts.
You watch his fingers move.
Over.
Under.
Through.
Cream colored rope, the shade of old lace or clean bone, pretty where it crosses your skin, fibres blurring at the edges when your eyes lose focus, becoming something delicate, ornamental. A bracelet. A ribbon. (Gift-wrapped and hand delivered-)
Johnny-
Too tight?
You don’t know.
You should know. The answer ought to exist inside your own head, but your body has gone dim and distant, a house seen through fogged glass. There’s pressure around your wrist. Heat beneath it. A pulse knocking weakly against the rope like someone trapped behind a wall.
Johnny slides one finger under the knot, fingertip stroking over your pulse while he looks up at you, eyes bright and attentive.
Wouldnae hurt ye.
You nod because he sounds so certain and rational thought is a stone tied to your ankle asking you to climb through red waters.
He binds the other wrist before you understand that the first one is finished. Lifts both arms above your head, and your body follows with a slow, boneless obedience that makes him smile. The stretch pulls through your shoulders, arches your back, tits pushing at the fabric of his shirt, body bent sharp enough to split the soft haze for half a second, and a whimper escapes before you can swallow it.
Shh. Easy, bonnie.
His hand slides down your arms, your sides, soothing the hurt he created, and the wine rushes back into the space pain briefly cleared. Warm. Heavy. Merciful.
He secures the rope to an iron ring sunk into the studio floor.
You hadn’t noticed the rings before.
There’s one near either side of the platform, black metal half hidden beneath old paint and dust. More beside the mattress in the shadowed corner, arranged at careful distances from one another.
The pattern should mean something.
(It does mean something.)
Your gaze catches on them and then drifts helplessly away.
(Fear needs a body that answers when called, and yours has become warm wax beneath his hands, softening wherever he presses, cooling around whatever shape he leaves behind.)
Your legs are next.
He cups one ankle and draws it outward. Then the other. Your heels drag over the platform with a soft rasp, your knees falling apart beneath the loose white shirt. The fabric slips higher along your thighs, and the first clean spark of alarm pierces the drunken fog when you try to close them again.
Johnny feels the resistance and his hands stop on your thighs, heat from his palms sinking into you until you can feel his fingerprints burning their marks into your bones.
Easy.
The word is quiet. Almost kind.
You shake your head, but the motion tips the ceiling sideways. The windows pour rain upward. Johnny’s face splits into two softened versions of itself, then swims back together as nausea rolls lazily beneath your ribs.
I don’t-
The sentence knots behind your teeth.
Don’t what?
The words are all there, drifting separately through the dark, but you can’t gather them into the same mouthful.
Johnny leans closer- what was that, doe- gives you every appearance of listening, eyebrows drawn with concern, mouth softened at the corners.
You try again.
Your tongue feels soaked through. Heavy as nebula, the sounds smearing against one another until even you can’t tell what you meant to say.
Johnny waits, watches the effort drain out of your face and only then strokes both hands down your thighs.
Thought so.
The ropes tighten around your wrists. Your ankles. A careful loop above your knee when your leg keeps listing inward, another where the position pleases him but your body won’t hold it on its own.
His hands guide the white shirt higher whenever it catches beneath you.
It’ll wrinkle, hen-
A little farther-
Hold still-
The fabric gathers in pale folds until it rests beneath the curve of your breasts, baring the plane of your stomach, the flare of your hips, your soft, silky cunt he has spread open for himself. His thumbs stroke once along the crease where thigh meets hip, pressing into the give of flesh (- as though he is already imagining how it will feel when he is between them- )
He looks at what he has done and the boyish grin is gone. What remains is quieter. Hungrier. His eyes move over you like he is deciding which part to taste first.
There we are, he murmurs. Much better.
You drift.
Fear is still there, but it has risen above you now, trapped on the other side of the wine. You can see its shadow crossing the surface while you float beneath it, black and frantic and distorted by the red water between you. Your shoulders ache. Your wrists burn dully where the rope takes your weight. Your legs are held apart by pale fibres and Johnny’s careful arrangement, but the body enduring it feels impossibly far away.
A figure at the bottom of a lake.
A pale thing laid open in the silt.
You’re near the ceiling. You’re inside the rain crawling down the glass. You’re suspended somewhere behind your own eyes, watching a woman in a white shirt test the ropes with small, weak movements she won’t remember making.
She looks frightened.
You wonder why she doesn’t leave.
(Drunkenness makes a cruelty of distance. It lets you watch yourself suffer without understanding that you’re the one inside the body. Lets the mind climb out through a crack in the skull and hover somewhere clean while the flesh remains below, warm and obedient and available. It feels almost like escape until you realize Johnny can still touch what you’ve left behind.)
Christ.
The reverence in his voice draws your gaze back to him.
He’s looking at you, eyes moving slowly over your arms lifted and secured, your knees drawn apart, the shirt bunched high where his hands kept moving it, pausing at each point of strain as if pain is another line he’s finally managed to place correctly.
Something in his face has gone still, colder than lust. The deep and emptied devotion of a man standing before an altar built for a god that cannot refuse him now.
There ye are, he whispers, as if you’d been hidden from him, as if the rope has finally uncovered something true.
Then he crosses to the studio door and you follow him with your eyes slowly, the room dragging several seconds behind his body.
Johnny turns the lock and the click enters your head like a stone dropped into deep water. He slides the bolt into place and the sound travels down through the wine and settles somewhere beneath your heart, where the part of you that still understands begins, very quietly, to drown.
Then his hip catches the corner of a canvas on the way back.
It happens slowly from where you’re floating. The frame tips away from the wall, knocks against the one beside it, and then the whole uneven stack begins to slide. Wood scraping brick. Canvas whispering against canvas. Johnny swears beneath his breath and reaches for them, but they have already fallen face up across the floor.
And…
There you are.
Your face.
You blink at it, wondering for a syrupy moment whether it’s the sketch he’s just made, though the woman in the painting is wearing your green coat from last autumn. Her hair is damp, cheek tucked into the collar against the rain. She’s standing beneath the yellow shelter at the bus stop near your work, eyes lowered toward the phone cupped between her hands.
Another canvas has you carrying groceries against your chest. The paper bag splitting at the bottom, oranges bright through the tear, your mouth caught open in a laugh you don’t remember giving him.
Another-
you behind the steamed glass of the little cafe on Bell Street, both hands curled around a mug. There are Christmas lights reflected over your face. Red and gold smears threaded through your hair like something festive and burning.
That’s me, you say.
Or think you say.
(There’s a truth arranged across the floor in front of you, patient and chronological. Months of it. Seasons of it. Proof painted in oils and hidden with its face toward the wall, waiting for the moment when you could no longer count backward clearly enough to understand what you were seeing. But your brain has become a red tide inside your skull, and recognition is a small animal trying to swim through it. You watch its paws break the surface once. Then it sinks.)
When did you- ?
The question dissolves halfway out.
Johnny crouches and turns the first canvas over, handles them gently. (More gently than he’s handled you.) Checks the corners for damage, thumb brushing dust from your painted cheek before he hides it against the wall again.
Clumsy bastard, he mutters.
You stare at the remaining portrait. The one at the corner shop. Washed out lights. Coins scattered across your palm. Your face turned slightly to the side as if someone has just called your name.
- The moment he told you about-
- The first time he saw you-
Except the painting of you at the summer festival last year is underneath it.
Your eyebrows pull together and the thought almost forms.
Johnny looks over his shoulder and sees you struggling there and his expression softens.
Dinnae hurt yourself, hen.
He rises, steps over the paintings and comes back to you. One blackened fingertip presses between your brows, smoothing the crease away as though confusion is another flaw in the pose.
Ye’re thinkin’ too hard.
You try to tell him there are paintings of you. You try to ask how long.
You try to but the words leave your mouth sodden and misshapen, each syllable dragging another behind it until the sentence reaches him as little more than a murmur, the beginning falling away before you reach the end.
Johnny understands anyway. (He always seems to understand you when it suits him.)
He watches your mouth with that same fond concentration he wore while sketching (the patient attention of a man waiting for something soft to finish struggling) then glances toward the canvases he hasn’t managed to turn over.
Did tell ye I’d been stuck for months.
The dimples sink deep.
Never said how long I’ve been working since then.
You look back at the paintings.
The woman beneath the bus shelter has your green coat buttoned neatly with a button that broke last September. The woman at the cafe is holding the chipped blue mug they stopped using sometime around Christmas. Another version of you is walking beneath trees still fat with summer leaves, bare legs flashing beneath a dress buried now at the bottom of your wardrobe.
Your mind touches the sequence and recoils, but there’s nowhere for the thought to go. The wine has flooded every corridor inside your skull, filled every room up to the ceiling. Understanding swims toward you through it- slow, pale, terrible- but each time it comes close enough to recognize, the current rolls you gently away.
Something cold opens inside you, but the wine pours into it before it can become fear. It fills every clean edge, rounds everything off, turns horror into a distant pressure beneath the sternum. Johnny strokes your cheek and waits until your eyes lose focus again.
(He hadn’t found you beneath the lights of the corner shop tonight. Not in the way he’d made it sound, not like lightning or providence or some dead part of him suddenly shocked back into motion. He’d already known which bus carried you home. Which cafe you preferred. What store you used. He’d watched summer soften into autumn around you, watched autumn die into winter, and called it inspiration because obsession sounds beautiful when an artist says it.)
Johnny collects the last canvas and turns it toward the wall and your painted face disappears.
There, he murmurs. Nothin’ tae worry about.
He comes back to you slowly, hands settling on your thighs, hot enough to feel like brands through the wine heavy numbness, heat sinking in around the breadth of his palms and the effortless weight keeping you where he put you.
You shake your head.
Or perhaps it only falls weakly to one side.
Johnny’s mouth brushes your trembling knee, almost gentle, while his thumbs draw slow circles against your skin.
Easy, hen.
You try to tell him you want to go home but all that emerges is a broken little breath.
He lifts his head and watches you struggle to assemble the words, patient until the last of them dissolves behind your teeth. Then he smiles tender enough to make it seem as though he’s forgiving you for being afraid.
(And somewhere above the wine, the small surviving part of you finally understands why the paintings were turned toward the wall.)
Johnny reaches back without looking and the amber lamp beside the platform clicks off.
Darkness folds over the studio, warm and absolute, and his hands tighten around your thighs when the ropes instinctively draw taut.
Now, he murmurs against your skin, hold the pose for me, hen.
cw:afab!reader, references to depression/medication, soft!simon. 2k words
“can we book in sex on friday evening?” your voice cuts through the silence of your shared lounge - almost hesitant.
not hesitant like you're expecting to be rejected, hesitant in the way someone is when they feel out of practice. when somewhere along the way they lost all their powers of seduction.
simon looks up over the page of the book he's reading - eyebrows furrowed before they relax, like he's trying to make sure you're not asking out of some misplaced sense of obligation.
“friday works.” he confirms, “be back late so you'll… have some time to yourself first. to do your… preparations.”
preparations.
the polite way to say you'll either watch or listen to or read some porn in the bath before he gets home to try and kick start your body and brain into getting onto the same page about wanting to fuck.
you snort softly at the phrasing before nodding, "okay. just let me know when you're on your way home."
quiet settles over the two of you again, peaceful, yours.
then simon clears his throat.
"the new meds seem to be helpin'." he says quietly. "yer smilin' more. s'nice."
you nod, once. "they are." you confirm quietly. there's a beat of silence and then, "… sorry they've broken my fanny."
simon just shakes his head, brown eyes meeting yours. "not broken. an' don't be sorry. rather have you 'appy than horny. only one of those is important to me. an' it's not the availability of yer cunt."
your ears get hot at the bluntness, but your chest tightens with relief at his words. but still. there's a twinge of guilt in your stomach, like you're somehow not keeping up your end of the bargain you made when you decided to be each other's.
"i know. you always say that. but…"
"no buts." he cuts you off firmly, no room for argument. "no ifs. no fuckin' anythin'. i love you. i love yer smile and yer laugh. an' yeah, i love fuckin' you. but i'd rather you were smilin' at my bad fuckin' jokes again than drippin' all over the house."
Si ❤️: 10 mins off
Si ❤️: don't rush. take your time
Si ❤️: gonna shower in the en suite. you'll take one whiff of me and absolutely change your mind
Si ❤️: (which would be fine. no pressure. didn't think before i sent that.)
the messages overlay the porn playing on your phone screen one by one.
you don't pause the video right away - let yourself stay in the little bubble of horny you're trying to build. the bathwater is going lukewarm around you, but your skin feels warmer now from the small spark of anticipation that's beginning to grow in your stomach.
you can't help but feel a small twinge of grief that six months ago this same activity would have had you throwing yourself at simon - that six months ago you didn't even need to prepare to have sex with your husband. that it felt like the most natural thing in the world, not something you had to manufacture.
but then you remember his words "yer smilin' more. s'nice." and the grief fades, replaced with a pang of fondness so strong it almost hurts.
you let your eyes focus on the video again, letting the sounds of soft moans and the wet noise of skin on skin filter through your headphones; try and remember that the joy you see on the amateur couple's can be yours too.
you pause the video, typing back a quick message.
just getting out. haven't changed my mind. x
you dry off quickly, clean your teeth, slip into one of simon's old t-shirts; the black colour long faded to grey, band logo once printed on it lost to the passage of time. there's a hole in the hem and it's stretched out around the collar.
but it makes you feel safe, and that's what you need right now. not lace bodysuits and stockings. by the time you've padded into the bedroom you can hear the shower running - see that today's clothes didn't even make it to the washing basket in the bedroom, instead left in the one downstairs.
you wrinkle your nose - you know that means you're probably going to need to get the stain remover out later. but you appreciate that simon hasn't brought the smell of whatever it is up into your room. you light a few candles as you hear the shower switch off, pull the curtains and turn off the big light; leaving the room in a soft glow of the candles and bedside lamp.
little things you've learned make you feel more relaxed.
you're just settling on the edge of the bed as the en suite door opens - knees tucked up under your chin, heart beating a little faster than normal. simon appears, towel slung low on his hips, water still dripping down from his blonde hair and onto the scarred plain of his chest. his eyes find yours immediately, soft in the way they only ever are when he's looking at you.
"hi." you say softly, lips pricking up at the corners as you look at him.
fuck. it really does help the situation that he looks like that.
he crosses the room in two strides, one hand reaching to cup the back of your head as he leans down to kiss you - soft, slow; the kind of kiss that's a hello and isn't an expectation. his hand strokes up your bare thigh slowly; fingers pausing at the hem of your - his - t-shirt, stopping short of pushing it any higher. "hey dove," he replies softly. "missed this smile."
your smile. that's what he missed about this situation. that specific, soft, wanting smile that you only ever give him when you're about to get him in bed.
and it's that that has you pulling him down on top of you.
your t-shirt gets pulled off with careful hands; his towel lost somewhere to the floor. he ends up hovering over you, pressing kisses down your jaw, your throat, takes his time. his thumbs stroke an almost soothing pattern across your ribs as his lips trail lower - but when he reaches your stomach he pauses.
"tell me somethin'." he murmurs, "what were you watchin' in the bath?"
your face heats immediately, throat drying out as you stare down at him with an expression of absolute horror.
he just hooks your legs over his shoulders, presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh, looks up at you expectantly.
"just… soft stuff." you manage to murmur back. "couple in their bed. they… they looked like they were enjoying it. not… faking it."
he presses a kiss higher up your thigh, then another, before his breath is ghosting over your core. his tongue traces a slow line from slit to clit; gentle, soft, curling through soft heat like he's not in any kind of rush.
your hips twitch.
simon hums against you, an almost approving noise; like he's proud you actually answered. "yeah? what were they doin'?" he flicks his tongue against you again - more targeted this time. you gasp slightly as he settles in, one arm slung across your hips, fingers tracing over skin. every motion he makes is purposeful - circling your clit, dropping down down to dip inside you, tracing every inch of you with his tongue in lazy strokes.
your fingers thread through his still damp hair, nails scratching over his scalp in the way you know he likes. "they were taking it slow." you breathe. "she was on her back like this. he kept… talking to her. telling her how good she felt."
"slow." simon repeats, "like this?" his lips wrap around your clit, sucking gently before soothing it with broader strokes. your fingers tighten in his hair enough that he groans - all enjoyment and no pain. "you liked hearin' how much he wanted 'er?"
"yes-" the word breaks into a low moan as he slides two fingers inside of you, curling them perfectly against the spot he knows so well; mouth still focussed on your clit. "fuck, si…"
he doesn't speed up. just keeps a steady, slow rhythm - eyes flicking up to watch your face. he pulls away enough to murmur gently, "i want you dove - all the fuckin' time. everything you do is so fuckin' sexy i feel like i'm goin' insane." a soft kiss to your clit, "'m sorry if i stopped tellin' you." another kiss, "jus'… don't want you to ever feel like you 'ave to jus' cause i'd live inside you if i could."
your eyes burn, hands dropping to brush your thumbs over his cheekbones. "i know si. i promise."
he nods once, satisfied that you're not lying to make him feel better by the wet shine in your eyes. he drags the flat of his tongue over your clit again. "was she makin' the same little sounds you make? the ones that make me fuckin' melt?"
you nod, hips rolling under his mouth; the combination of his mouth and hands and the gentle questioning pulling you under. the porn in the bath feels distant now - a distant second to the real thing: simon riley between your legs, focused solely on you, coaxing your body to the edge with nothing but patience.
when you come its with a soft, shuddering cry - the same noise he loves so much - pleasure rolling through you in warm waves as simon works you through it. he waits until your fingers are limp in his hair before pulling back entirely, then kisses his way beck up your body until he's braced over you again, propped on one elbow so he doesn't squish you under his bulk.
"still good?" he murmurs. his cock is hot and hard against your thigh; twitching against you as he presses a kiss against your neck - but he doesn't push forward, doesn't press. just rests his forehead against yours.
“yeah,” you whisper, reaching between you to stroke him gently. “i want you, si. want this.”
he kisses you again, tasting like you, and lines himself up. he presses in -slow, perfect - eyes locked on yours the whole time. your fingers trace the scars on his jaw, eyes widening as he bottoms out; filling you in a way that's so achingly familiar now. he pulls back, pushes in again; soft, shallow rolls of his hips.
you brush your nose against his. "you don't have to be so careful with me, si."
"i want to." he replies simply. "been thinkin' about this since you brought it up. about makin' you feel good."
you, not him.
you thighs slide to wrap around his waist on the next thrust, taking hip deeper just by the nature of the position and he groans - a wrecked noise that carves itself into your memory.
"this alrigh'?" he murmurs against your neck, hips snapping just a little harder; thumb sliding into the space between your bodies to rub gentle patterns against your clit.
you nod, jaw going slack as you feel heat flood your stomach again. "yeah. s'perfect." you manage to murmur back.
he presses a kiss against the corner of your mouth, keeping up that same steady rhythm. "i love you. i love you when you're happy, an' i love you when you're sad. i love you when you're horny and climbin' me like a tree an' when all you want t' do is watch greys anatomy on repeat an' eat little moons. nothin', fuckin nothin', matters to me as much as you do."
you bury your face in his neck, cheeks hot, eyes burning, "i love you too."
your second orgasm is like sinking into warm water; nerves lighting up hot one by one, teeth sinking into the curve of his his shoulder with a whimper of his name. he follows immediately after, the pulse of your cunt around him dragging him over the edge, face buried in your hair as he breathes you in.
he doesn't pull out right away - just holds you, fingers stroking over sweat damp skin, pressing lazy kisses to your temple.
"still smilin' down there?" he murmurs softly.
you huff out a soft laugh, body and brain soft with satisfaction. "yeah, si. still smilin'."
"good." he kisses the top of your head. "that's all i need, dove."
You don’t even need to threaten him with a bad time, Simon already feels like the scum of the earth the moment he recognizes that your morning sickness turned all day long sickness isn’t going to be a quickly fleeting symptom of your pregnancy
He wants to support you, be there for you, show you that he’s in this with you one hundred percent, but he’s not entirely sure on how to put a smile on the face of the woman he loves when she’s spending more time staring down the loo than she is looking at him these days
He doesn’t think it entirely helped his case when his idea of solidarity upon watching you yack for the twelfth time that day, was to try and make himself throw up alongside you
Certainly didn’t help when he’d joked that your latest pregnancy craving is what got him gagging in the first place, a delectable assortment of pickles dipped in only the finest of apple sauces
He at least knows to bite his tongue and avoid repeating the OBGYN’s recommendations on swapping junk food out for more nutritious alternatives, when hot cheetos seem to be the only thing your stomach will tolerate… up until those are fighting back as well and climbing back up your throat like the rest of the food in the kitchen
“Why is bloody tea the only thing your child is letting me consume?” You grumbled unhappily, still sending him a thankful smile as he swapped your empty cup out for a new steaming one, pressing a soft kiss against your temple in the process. “Bad enough I already feel like I have to pee every two minutes, now I actually do.”
“He knows his mum’s got to stay hydrated. Besides, he’s a proper Brit already, feignin’ for a cuppa like his dad.” Simon replied factually, corner of his mouth twitching at the idea of one day preparing three cups instead of just two.
“First off, she is only half British, thanks.” You corrected playfully, still insisting to him that it might be a girl causing you all these tummy troubles, the gender still being a secret to you both. “And I’m pretty sure we were still in Scotland when we made her, so she shouldn’t be craving something like fish and chips or haggis?”
Which country you were actually in when Simon finally knocked you up was still up for debate; a month long honeymoon exploring the UK together and going at it like rabbits leaves some room for debate on where you were when it actually happened. Simon thinks it was that time he had you on your back in the bed of the rental truck in Cork, whereas you insist it must’ve been that one hotel balcony in Edinburgh.
Regardless, Simon can already notice the way your breath is catching at your last words.
”Love, are you sure you want to talk about things like haggis when you-”
You’re already sprinting for the bathroom, any remnants of food left in your stomach coming up at the mere mention of more. Simon’s only steps behind you, ready to hold your hair back need be, or to rub a soothing hand along your back. It’s going to be long first trimester, full of dry heaving and puke buckets littered around the flat and the most bizarre food cravings he’s ever heard of and late night runs to the shop for more tea bags… and he can’t help but to love every minute of it with you.
simon and john competing to see who can make you cum more. the competition falls apart anyway when they both realize that they want to do the same thing to you—they want to corrupt you. thinking about choking on simon’s cock while john fucks his into you. thinking about simon wrapping his hand around your throat to feel himself; about john pressing down on your stomach to map out how deep he’s reaching; about how these stimulations push you to squirt with a muffled keen. thinking about simon’s mean and surprised laughter, and john’s patronizing croon at that; about john saying oh baby, look at you making a mess in front of our guest, huh? thinking about simon reaching forward to swipe at the mess on your cunt before bringing his thumb in his mouth and sucking on the juices with a guttural moan like that was something so delicious and, well, john can’t blame him because everything that makes up who your are is just so delightful. a gift, this precious girl of his is.
No thoughts just mer!reader who was born in captivity and doesn't really understand how to mate...
It's common knowledge that captive mers, especially ones kept in amusement parks, can experience deteriorated instincts. They lack social skills, hunting abilities, and most importantly reproductive success.
Meaning, when you're transferred into a mer sanctuary, it's expected for you to have trouble bonding. They place you with a formerly wild mer, id-tagged "ghost", as he's very forward. The hope, of course, that you'll be pupped come winter.
You clearly want ghost, you just...don't know what to do, it seems.
"What...surely not." Gaz, your main caretaker, whispers under his breath. Inside the tank, you chase ghost around, webbed hands grabbing at his face only for him to huff and turn away. At first it looks like some strange dominance display, but the longer he looks the more gaz realizes you're trying to kiss ghost.
Of course you learned your mating behaviors from humans. You probably saw enough PDA for it to imprint on you.
A quick consult with his supervisors, and gaz has you laid out in the shallow waters of the observation shelf. You blink up at him all docile, having grown up in similar positions during your husbandry work. You don't thrashi or growl like other mers, comfortable with you snout nudging Gaz's knee, licking at the wetsuit material.
"Okay, runt, let's help you out, yeah?" Gaz hums, signaling ghost over to slide onto the ledge like he would for an exam. "Ghost! Up here!"
It's easy getting you and ghost into the correct position, though it would be more natural for you both underwater. You chirp curiously up at ghost, completely oblivious with no instincts to guide you on how to feel about a mer lying on top and pinning your tail down.
"Okay, ghost, I'm sure you know what to do. Just let me–" gloved hands slip into ghosts slit, pulling his cocks out instead of waiting the extra time for them to emerge. Ghost grumbles a bit, knocking his head against gazs side before focusing back on you as gaz lines him up.
"Here we go." He smiles approvingly at the whine you let out on the first thrust. A bit shocked, a bit blissed out already. "Bet that feels real nice, eh?"
You squirm and chirp more, body wriggling under ghost. Clearly you want to participate, but every attempt to reach for ghosts face earns a corrective nip. Gaz, who had been too focused on ghosts cock rutting into you, didn't have time to react when you reached for him.
"What–! Hey! Mhhp–" a long, slippery tongue forces it's way inside of his mouth, thick and warm. To another mer, if kisses were at all normal, it would feel astonishingly tender. For gaz it feels like being face-fucked.
It shouldn't feel as good as it does, but he can't stop it, not when you decide to go deeper and he really has to focus on breathing through his nose.
Above the both of you, ghost rumbles approvingly. bracketing one arm around you and the other around gaz, he keeps what he now recognizes as two mates close together.
When ghost finally cums, gaz is mortified that the second cock is aimed directly at him. Milt splashing across his wetsuit.
He...really hopes no one saw that. He also may need a really cold shower before he does something he shouldn't.
Thinking about ghost who would literally eat anything and picky eater!reader...
Of course, ghost first realized how bad your eating habits are while out getting dinner with you. Yes, dinner, a small payback-maybe-date after he rescued you from your broken down car at 3am.
"Uhm...I'll just have the chicken tenders. From the kids menu, please." You refuse to make eye contact with the waiter or ghost, stomach twisting that none of the more adult options were anything you liked.
You braces for the comments from ghost, having heard plenty from his teammates. Gaz snorting about what he's dubbed "your one vegetable a month" whenever he sees the only sub you eat lettuce with. Soap, too, makes comments about how you should try home-cooked meals instead of your store bought meals. Even price has chuckled about "dessert for lunch again, love?" When literally all you could stomach that week was sweets.
When you doesn't comment, you stubbornly stay staring at your hands "I know it's embarrassing eating with me...sorry."
"Wot? Yer eating, aren't you?" Ghost raises his brow at you, shoveling another giant onion ring into his mouth. "Not my fuckin' issue. If you don't want it, give it to me."
And...really you should have expected this.
Ghost, the man who lived on literal scraps in his childhood, who ate everything he was given because he had no choice. Of course he wouldn't care what you eat, so long as you eat.
"Oh...uhm." You're not sure what to say. You're used to always feeling some level of embarrassment about your diet. "Thank...you."
One dinner turns to two, turns to shared lunches and weekend brunches. You gravitate towards ghost because he doesn't care about your eating habits. If you order something and find it tastes different than expected, ghost will happily devour your dish while you ask about crisps.
You realize you've never been able to eat freely with another person before. It's...really nice.
Tags: cumming in pants, meet-cute, lap dances, love at first sight
—————————————————————————
Quite possibly the funniest memory of the taskforce happened on Ghost’s 32nd Birthday.
Ghost was adamant not to celebrate it, eager to spend the night in the base’s gym, beating the punching bag to a pulp. His friends, however, had a much different plan.
One thing led to another, they were three bottles deep at the strip club, and Soap had insisted on spending an absurd amount of money to buy Simon a private dance with the club’s most popular stripper.
Enter you, towering in 6 inch heels, bare skin painted with body glitter and spilt liquor, all but naked except for the tiny g-string hugging your covetable hips.
Simon had barely downed a single beer all night, too outraged at his friends to get into the birthday spirit.
He’d been nearly at his wits’ end with Soap’s antics, but the second you’d strutted in, bare tits exposed and covered in hot pink glitter, his words had died on his tongue.
The boys had hooted and hollered as you hauled a silent (and completely stiff) Simon Riley from his chair and yanked him across the club by his shirt collar.
Their laughing had drowned in the music. Unbeknownst to him, they’d huddled around the crack in the door, choking on their laughter as you cranked up the music.
You’d rubbed your ass against his hips. Pulled his hands off the arm rests to grope at your tits. Toyed with the edge of that tiny pair of panties until he could see the neat little patch of hair hidden just underneath the scant fabric.
All the while, Simon had been ramrod straight in his chair. Unspeaking. Unmoving. Unblinking. Completely and utterly expressionless.
To the 141, it was downright hilarious, watching a pretty thing like you vigorously shake your ass up and down the human equivalent of a brick wall.
To Simon…well, it’s a much different story.
His nails were dug into the chair so deep the leather threatened to break. His heart was beating 500 times a minute. Beneath the mask, he was soaked in sweat, trying valiantly not to huff down the scent of your sweet perfume.
He knew you could feel how hard he was. Knew you could feel the way he twitched at your every touch, too. And yet…you just didn’t care.
He could hear all three of them laughing too hard to breathe behind the scant cover of the door. But when you pulled his hands off of the chair and gave him a wicked smile, before slowly guiding his limp fist into the slick gusset of your panties…
He couldn’t stop himself from cumming in his jeans right then and there. Wide-eyed and breathless, he’d choked down a groan by clearing his throat. Agitated, he’d glanced at your face while the chemical bliss exploded behind his eyes.
He’d expected you to be enraged, to go storming out the door, yelling for security.
But when he looked up at you, he was blinded by the sheer hunger in your eye—by the way you couldn’t stop grinding yourself up against him even then, long after the music had stopped.
Needless to say, the 141 barely remember a single flicker of that night beyond the hilarious image of their stock-still, skull-faced beanstalk with a lap full of overeager stripper.
Simon, on the other hand…he remembers it all.
Especially, he remembers the lipstick-stained napkin you’d tucked into the pocket of his cum stained jeans.
That, and the ten digits you’d scrawled thereon before biting your goodbyes into the crook of his reddened neck.
Johnny grabbed your arm right as he threw the grenade. Dragging you around the corner so the blast wouldn't hit you. But still covering you with his whole body anyway.
After the explosion you glanced up, confused to see the eager grin on his face. Out of breath and excited as he took your hand in his. Sliding the grenade pin onto your finger.
"Marry me..."
You giggled. Tilting your hand so the oversized ring clinked against the gold already adorning your finger.
"We're already married, baby."
He cursed softly. Cupping your cheeks to kiss you gently.
simon riley and his spouse don't wear wedding rings.
work makes it risky for him. you simply don't want anything between your skin and his when he entwines his fingers with yours.
instead, you get matching tattoos. small, black hearts on the inside of your ankles, and identical ones tucked behind his ears - hidden by the mask at work, and by tufts of blonde hair when he's at home.
no dates. no names. nothing that would obviously link the two of you.
now he’s got you folded in a mean mating press - knees crushed to your chest, legs hooked over his shoulders, cock buried as deep as it can go. every thrust makes you whimper, nails biting into his biceps, his breath hot as it fans over your neck. your ankles press against the sides of his head; the hearts tattooed there lining up perfectly with the ones behind his ears - permanent reminders of your favourite position to be in together.
genuinely cannot get the wording right on this but
john price on the run after killing shepherd ends up in some nowhere swamp town that's barely staying above the income line and falls in love in between the aisles of the smallest grocery store he's ever been in.
the man can't help it, the soft rounded vowels and lilt of consonants as you ask him, "darlin', you even know how to cook those?" he shouldn't, you picked him out too quickly as an outsider, it's a liability if anyone else came through asking about him, but you tip your head and your brows draw together and your teeth worry your lip and he can't reach for the gun. especially not when you lean down and give him a look down your shirt as you sort through his shopping basket.
harder still when you invite him back to your place for dinner, no questions asked about where he's from or how he got here, nothing about where he's going after this, just a hot meal that sticks to his bones and a cold drink that tastes closer to piss than beer, but makes his head swim as almost pleasantly as watching you press the can to the sweat on your neck.
sure, this may have started as a quick pit stop to refill his rations, but the longer he looks around your little house the more he thinks it looks like home.
Johnny's never had Dairy Queen. You're going to fix that.
[soap x reader; nsfw 18+, explicit sexual content, afab!reader, sticky situations, car sex, oral, squirting, short drabble
'blizzard' prompt from @beebymoonlight + one-word prompt masterlist]
"They didn't do the thing!" You whine as the two of you leave the store.
"Do wha'?"
"They didn't flip it! That's the whole point!"
Summer sun hits your face the moment Johnny pushes the door open, heat thick enough to choke on. In your hand, a blue cup of Mocha Mudpie beckons—unflipped, uninitiated.
Johnny gives you a weird look as you head towards the car, his own cup of Peanut Butter Cookie Dough slowly sweating beads of water.
"Why would they dae that?"
The car, even when parked in the shady corner of the small lot, is stuffy when you hop in. Should've left it running.
"'Cause they're supposed to! And if it falls out, then it's free."
You flip it.
It stays.
"See? They could've totally flipped it—fuck!"
You should have just let it go while you had the chance.
The blizzard is all over you now—somehow splattering over your chest, the front of your tank top, and all over your lap. You tighten your legs to keep the cold creaminess from dripping deeper into your thighs.
"Napkins—fuck, Johnny, napkins!"
Flailing your free hand, you motion at Johnny for help. He doesn't answer. You look up.
He's stiff. Eyes trained, locked in on the trail of ice cream dripping down your chest. They flicker down, landing on the melting mess pooling between your thighs. A look emerging on his face.
(You've seen it a few times, the same one that takes over whenever there's wires for him to cut.)
Your voice finds itself with an embarrassing tremble.
"Johnny?"
He snaps out of the haze, a jolt that’s barely there.
"Fuck, bonnie—sorry, dinnae mean to stare, s'just," His eyes glaze over again the moment they land back on your sticky body. "Here, let me jus—"
—do you remember how you ended up in the back seat?
No.
Or how Johnny ended up between your legs?
Also no.
It's okay, though, at least that's what he keeps telling you while nose-deep in your sticky cunt.
"S'alright, bonnie, mmph," his lashes tickle your thighs. "Gotta clean ye up s'more—"
It's what he said thirty minutes ago, when he first started lapping at the coffee flavored ice cream on your chest and sucking your sugary nipples. Twenty, when he threw your legs up, shoved your thighs open, and attached his hot mouth onto your clit.
Ten, when he slid thick fingers inside your pussy and fucked it hard until creamy slick covered his hands and your body shook with how hard you came.
Gotta make sure ta clean yer cunt, bonnie.
Filthy, filthy sounds keep echoing through the car. The squeak of leather peeling from your sweaty skin, the crinkling of his pants as he grinds against the seat. The moans you're trying so hard to hold back, each slurp Johnny makes as his tongue dips into your pulsing hole and drags up your clit.
(You really shouldn't be doing this in broad daylight.
You really, really shouldn't, really—)
"Cunt's sweeter than the fuckin' dessert, fuck, bon—"
You're feeling too much.
It's hot—too hot. Hair clinging to your neck and face. Wet leather sticking to you in weird places. Your body feels like it's on the verge of going numb.
Oh, but it's so, so good.
"Fuck, Johnny, haah," you paw at his shirt, head lolling. His fingers are hitting that spot again; it's driving you insane. "G-gonna cum again—mmh!"
His tongue flutters over your clit, tracing flat circles as your body overflows with blinding pleasure once more. Your thighs shudder, closing in on his head—it doesn't deter him though, no. If anything, Johnny fucks you even harder. Stretches you even further as his fingers rub and curl inside of you.
"Cream on me, bon, c'mon—"
"Oh, fu—aah!"
It hits you hard—your body convulsing as your orgasm breaks. Something throbs inside of you, a pressure welling up from deep inside your pussy, wet and hot. Too much, too much!
But there's not much you can do than let it take over you, with how uncontrollably you're trembling, the aftershocks of bliss still going strong.
When you finally come to, it's from the feeling of something wet against your aching cunt.
"Made another mess," Johnny tuts. He's staring up at you, face wet, tongue already lapping up your sweet juices.
