thinking of making this my fanfic page so I dont overwhelm my main account! this will be my pinned post until I make a proper intro <3
For now: I do not give my consent to feed any of my work into ANY generative AI platforms. LLMs are not only an environmental hazard that blatantly steals natural resources like air and fresh water from us--targetting Black and Brown and poor communities, they are also theft of human thought and creativity. Please reconsider using generative AI tools; your character roleplay AI chatbot is not more important than the health of your brain and the health of our environment.
ghost x reader | network installation tech!Simon au
Mr. Riley is the man assigned to your wifi installation. RILEY (in all caps) is the name you receive from the company's automated text updates, and you impulsively tidy the living room you already cleaned in anticipation of his arrival. You were worried about being home alone for the install--your roommate usually is able to stay with you, but is conveniently unavailable--but when he walks in and sees your shoes neatly tucked into the shoe rack by the front door, he slips his own off before getting to work.
Mr. Riley doesn't talk too much, but likes to hum while he works. Some tune you can't discern grumbles low from him, barely audible over the power drill hissing into drywall. God, his arms are huge while he holds it, too. You're trying not to ogle, to leer, to gape. But under the thin white tee shirt he sports, internet company logo fading, his muscles flex and relax like water churning.
Mr. Riley insists that you call him Simon after he catches you checking him out. It's cute that you stand there in your small kitchen, just across from the equally small living area, holding a glass of water and not bringing it anywhere near your lips. Oh, you're so cute.
The job is done in under an hour, and Mr. Riley is walking you through the initialization. Voice much softer than it was when he was on the phone earlier (having practically barked at the poor sap who pissed him off), he tells you which app to download for live updates, and shows you his tidy cable management.
Mr. Riley is even polite when be bends you over the couch, your arms braced in front of you and clinging to the arm rest as his hips slam into your wet heat. His thumbs are massaging small circles into your hips as he thrusts, and salty tears join the drool stain you've made. He calls you cute, and lovely, and even forgets to speak for a while. So caught up in how you sigh and whine so pretty beneath him.
Mr. Riley insists on finishing with you on your back, tongue taking your mouth just as cock takes every inch of your fluttering cunt. Coming on him makes his eyes roll back, and he sucks on your tongue as you struggle to gulp down air.
Mr. Riley gives you his personal cell number, insisting that you call him if you have any trouble with your internet. Those dipshits in Customer Service will send out any tech, but you need special care. Mr. Riley slips his shoes on before he leaves, thumb swiping at a drop of his cum he must have missed while cleaning up your messy cunt with his tongue. After all, Mr. Riley is a good and thorough worker.
Ghost is ugly, it's a fact he's learned to live with. It'd never truly been an insecurity...until now.
You find ghost stood in the bathroom of your apartment, the one that you practically share at this point, staring at the mirror. He's got that subtle scrunch to his nose that would be a pinched expression on anyone else.
"Si, what're you doing, baby?" You ask, wrapping your arm around his side, leaning into his space. Your eyes drift down to his hand, holding various pamphlets. "What's this?"
Simon holds the pamphlets up for you, and a quick glance has you frowning. Reconstructive surgery. Worn at the edges, as if stored in a bag for a long time, something he got years ago. Still, he asks "would you...would you prefer if I got my face...fixed?"
"Simon..." you whisper, shocked. Ghost trails a hand over his face, fingertips dipping into the grooves of scars and catching over bits that never healed right. They pause over the gash that tore a hole straight through his cheek.
"I can't eat right, and I see the way people...People look at us." He whispers to you. You should have seen this coming after last night.
Your anniversary dinner, two whole years. It was a fancy restaurant, and you wanted to strangle the waiter for how he looked at your simon just trying to enjoy the meal. A cloth placed under his mouth, hunched over the plate to avoid making a mess. He's always been messy, unable to eat cleanly with all the injuries to his face.
The other patrons stared, and you ended up calling the night short in pure rage. Now, simon thinks it's his fault.
"I would never forgive you if you did," you finally whisper, grab his jaw and pull his face away from the mirror. Simon looks shocked by your answer, so you thumb over the divot in his lip, smiling "you are as beautiful as the day i met you. I love how you look, and I'm sorry that I made you doubt it."
"I don't look normal..." ghost tries to counter, but he melts into the palm of your hand like a stray dog finally feeling kindness.
"I don't want normal, I want you, si. I always want you," finally, you pull him into a kiss. Slow, deep, reverent. There in the same bathroom you cut his hair in, the same one he helped you shower in. The grout surely still has flecks of his blood in them from bad nights, but you don't fear the rot.
You toss the pamphlets out, wish you could burn them where they sat.
Instead, you pull ghost into bed and promise to show him you feel no amount of disgust or shame for any part of him.
you know that trope where it’s princess + knight, but they’ve both been captured by the bad guys and the princess is now gripped by the jaw by the villain, receiving a thin cut to her cheek while remaining completely still with a defiant look in her eyes even as a droplet of blood begins to trickle out of the wound, all while 3 people AT THE VERY LEAST need to have their hands locked on the knight because he’s thrashing around like a wild animal, trying so so so desperately, violently, to get to her?
kyle being your dentist and noticing your thighs shuttering while he finishes with your routine check-up. you can't see his smirk behind his mask. you also can't see his expressions because your eyes are shut. the overhead light is angled away from your eyelids, the usual harsh fluorescence softened as it reflected against the eggshell walls. your nails are digging into the arm rests. you think you're being discreet. you really do.
but Kyle knows better. the tools gently gliding over your gums send shivers throughout your body. and every "beautiful" and "such a good job" that he murmurs only makes it harder to stay still.
when he gently cups your chin, massaging your jaw and temple, you sigh.
"Perfect," he grins, teeth bared to his surgical mask. you see his eyes crinkle, and the praise melts you. six months is far too long for you to wait. Kyle might have to fabricate some issue that requires a follow-up, impossibly eager to get you back in his chair and sighing pretty under his touch.
All of the graphics used for this set came from a Canva user called Rorylove!! All of her graphics are super duper adorable and I had to just make a set using them!!
graphics are not my own; I find most assets through pinterest or canva! credit isn't required to use but is appreciated along with liking and reblogging!
💌 this is a gift for @lumilily for their donation to the Anishinabek Nation 7th Generation Charity | if you would like your own gifted fic, you can find all the information on this post or you can go to @charitywriters for more!
prompt: wholesome/fluffy ghost x reader finding and taking in a stray cat together, with ghost having "dad who didn't want a cat but ends up loving it the most" energy
There is a cat under the neighbor's car and it is — screaming.
A thin, furious sound; a complaint for Mother Nature and the rain she’s bestowed upon the city for the better part of three days.
You crouch down on the wet pavement in front of your building and peer into the dark undercarriage, you find two yellow eyes glaring back.
"Leave it," Simon says above you, holding the groceries in one hand and the umbrella over you in the other.
"It's soaked,” you protest without looking back at him.
"It lives outside, it’s used to it."
"It's a kitten, Si," you complain.
"Kittens live outside too."
You extend a careful hand under the car and the screaming stops, which you choose to interpret as encouragement. "Hi," you say sweetly to the curled-up-black-mass. "Hello. You are very loud, did you know?"
You stretch out your index finger to gently pet it’s cheek and the kitten bites you — not hard — just a test bite, checking if your finger is food, probably. Then just as quickly, it stalks out from under the car and you learn he’s orange, drenched and too skinny for your liking.
It walks directly past your outstretched hand to sit beneath Simon, right in the space between his bulky boots, its probably ten weeks or so.
"No," Simon says to the cat.
The cat looks up at him and screams again.
“We can’t leave him in the rain. He’s so skinny, Si. Look at him, let’s at least feed him. We just bought plenty tuna.”
“Yeah, and it’s for me,” he grumbles.
——
You do everything on your own that first night while Simon remains at a distance with his arms crossed, providing pessimistic commentary.
"Cats are unpredictable," he says while you dry between the kitten's ears.
"He's been rained on for days, the fleas have drowned," you turn the kitten over and start to dry his belly, finding confirmation there that he is, in fact, a boy.
"They scratch furniture," he continues later from the sofa while you crank open a can of tuna in the kitchen. "Piss in shoes, bring in dead things," he lists. "We’re not keepin’ this cat."
"Nobody said we were," you sing-song through the doorway, scratching at the kitten's chin, cooing at him where he’s sat on the countertop.
"Puttin’ it on the record, s’all.”
The kitten eats some tuna from your hand and drinks some water out of the saucer you place on the floor. After, he ignores the box you lined with blankets completely, and opts to fall asleep in the middle of the living room floor, just in front of Simon’s socked feet.
——
In the morning you make a list — litter, cat food, flea treatment to ease Simon’s mind — and leave the two of them alone together.
——
The kitten follows him around immediately and everywhere, at a peppy rolling trot. The kitchen, down the hallway, he shuts the bathroom door just to find a paw under it seconds later, sweeping side to side.
When he comes out the kitten falls in at his heel again.
"You've got the whole flat," Simon tells him.
The kitten looks up at him, wide-eyed, and says nothing, which is somehow worse than the screaming, Simon thinks.
He starts the kettle on the stove and the kitten jumps — scrabbles, mostly, all back legs — onto the counter and sits down next to him.
"No," Simon says. "Off."
The kitten stares at him.
"Y’not meant to be up here, mate. Counters are for food."
Simon picks him up one-handed and sets him on the floor.
The kitten is back on the counter before the kettle boils. Simon sets him down again.
By the third try, the kitten nearly sticks the landing, wobbles, and headbutts Simon's forearm, and Simon stands there and has a quiet think.
"Well,” he slides the kitten away with his hand. “Not near the hob, then," he decides. "Gotta draw the line somewhere, yeah?"
By the time your home, they're both in the front room — Simon on the sofa, the kitten on the armrest, both facing the telly.
"Checked. Shelter’s open Monday," he says before you've even got your shoes off.
You look at the bag of litter in your arms, then at the cat right at Simon's side.
"Right," you say, rolling your eyes. "Monday."
——
To your surprise, Monday comes and goes without a complaint. When you return from work and find the two of them on the couch again, you choose very deliberately not to ask.
Tuesday there's a proper bowl on the floor in the kitchen, stainless steel and weighted, because ‘the saucer kept sliding’.
Wednesday you come home to a litter box with a hood on it, tucked behind the bathroom door.
Thursday it's a scratching post — sisal, with a platform bed on top — and a small mouse toy, already disemboweled in the hallway.
You… did not buy any of it.
The kitten has started to become a resident. He has routines now: he sits in the counter's approved quadrant while Simon cooks, supervising. He does laps of the flat at three AM like a lunatic and sleeps until ten like the king of this place.
Two weeks later, he is, visibly, day by day, less kitten and more cat.
You're both on the sofa, your feet in Simon's lap, nose in a book, some film on in the background that you’re not sure Simon is even half-watching because there is an awful lot of shifting going on behind your novel. Then a small rhythmic thump against your ankle. Then another.
Thump. Thump-thump. ThumpThumpThump.
You lower the book.
Simon has pulled the string of his hoodie out to dangle over the armrest, swinging it side-to-side, round-and-round, and the cat is up on his back legs boxing at it, every lunge sending an orange ball airborne, ricocheting off your shins.
“Really?” you ask fondly.
“‘e started it,” Simon says, eyes still on the cat.
He flicks the string and the cat leaps, misses, and slides halfway down the armrest with a scrabble; Simon catches him around the middle with one hand and sets him back up top.
The kitten catches the string at last — teeth and claws sunk in, back feet kicking, growling at it like prey. Simon lets him keep it, the corner of his mouth tugging sideways, satisfied; charmed, even.
You watch them over the top of your book — your enormous, cat-hating man, losing a tug-of-war to one.
“Should probably name him,” you try, hiding your grin, pushing your feet under his thighs.
“Been callin’ ‘im Nigel,” he says, not looking over. “Decided that’s what ‘e wants t’be called.”
You sit up so fast you lose your page. You furrow your brows. “Nigel?!” you complain. “We’re not calling him Nigel!”
“S’too late, love,” he grins down at Nigel. “Look at ‘im and tell me tha’ s’not a Nigel.” He nudges his foot under the cat and he climbs up his leg right away, as if the trick has been practiced.
The pair turn and look at you at the same time, heads tilted exactly the same.
You tilt yours back, the corner of your mouth twitching up.
Usually, when life feels too chaotic, you know you can hide at your aunt's flat to slow down and make sense of it all. You need that steadiness, now more than ever, and find an unexpected connection with her neighbor, Simon.
Read on AO3 / Tip Jar
CW: 18+/MDNI, Black!OC Character, slow-burn, pregnancy fic, single-mom reader, non-graphic allusions to domestic violence, this ghost has hazel eyes if you're wondering, meddling auntie types
9 Weeks - Simon
Even before they’re introduced, he knows who Necie is. B’s niece, civilian, no combat experience. Not a threat, but his brain short circuits to find her behind the door instead of her aunt. Her high cheekbones and full lips are pretty, golden brown skin glowing in the dim, warm light of the entryway. Her locs are pulled back in a practical style, so it’s easy to see her jaw clenching, the way she swallows as she takes in the size of him.
They stand there, blinking at each other. Then B commands him inside, so he steps forward and watches Necie’s hands clench as she takes a step back.
She’s wary of him, and the knowledge is satisfying, even as it makes him frown. He knows what he looks like, almost half a meter taller than Mrs. B, knows a woman shouldn’t relax in the presence of a strange man. But there’s a hunted look around her eyes, an economy of movement that feels all too familiar. Her aunt tells him to stay after he’s retrieved her groceries, so he does, but he’s careful to give Necie space, to follow B’s lead, doesn’t speak unless spoken to.
Dinner makes him feel a guilty kind of thrill. Every time he looks at Necie, she shivers, looking at the shape of his arms, the tattoos and scars that had earned a lot of comments the first time he’d met her aunt. She knows danger when she sees it, but she trusts her aunt’s judgment enough to keep her thoughts to herself. Still, there’s a stubborn set to her mouth as she watches him eat the food she’s prepared. He’s failed to fold himself small enough for comfort, but there’s a smile there when he scrapes his plate and goes for seconds. Eventually, she starts arguing against something that her aunt says, and she doesn’t include him, but she begins to relax. He focuses on eating, lets B’s voice wash over him as the scotch bonnet starts to make him sweat.
For all that he focuses on the food, on not being threatening, he miscalculates, at the end of the meal. She flinches when he reaches to take her plate, and he pauses for a moment, arm extended. But watching B harass him means she’s surprised, not nervous. She meets his eyes with zero hesitation.
She’s not afraid of him.
By the time he’s done washing up, Necie’s relaxed and B’s navigated to her show. Tension rolls back in when he settles on his side of the couch, then slowly winds down as the host prattles on. Simon watches her looking at him from his periphery while scrolling through articles on his phone.
When she eventually gets up to take a call, B turns to him with an arched eyebrow. “Well?”
Simon narrows his eyes back. “Well?”
“She’s a good girl,” B says. “Smart, and she can cook. You should take her out, see how you get along.”
“She’s in a relationship,” Simon points out. “You told me that.”
“She’s in a situationship,” she corrects, with air quotes. “She needs a real man. Even if it’s just for a night.”
Simon snorts. She’s been on him to “find a good woman and settle down” almost since they met. Three months of silence had almost convinced him that she was done trying to set him up with anyone. But perhaps it was just that he’d been gone just as often as he’d been home.
“She don’t seem interested,” he dismisses. “Don’t need me sniffin’ after ‘er. She’s ‘ere because she feels safe.”
“Because she doesn’t feel safe at home,” B counters.
“She won’t feel safe if’n you throw a man at ‘er,” he mutters.
“Don’t be stubborn,” she says back, as he hears Necie emerging from a room down the hall. “She’s got enough of that for both of you.”
It doesn’t look like there’s much stubbornness left in her, when she returns to her seat. The willful woman trading barbs with her aunt has been replaced by a chastened, subdued version of herself. Necie sits, withdrawn into herself through the next episode of Feud, staring into the middle distance.
He gets caught in the pout of her lips, again. She’s not frowning, really, but the way she bites her lip in thought makes her mouth look more plush. Now that she’s not paying him any mind, he lets himself watch her openly. The stillness he noted earlier is back, and there’s the slightest pinch of her brow. Who called, to make her retreat so thoroughly. He wonders if B’s obvious contempt for the man in her life is well founded.
When Necie wraps her arms around herself, he wants to drape the throw over her shoulders.
B catches him looking and smirks.
“Should call it a night,” he says, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees. Necie’s shoulders tighten, just a hair. He looks away before her eyes can catch his. “Leavin’ in the afternoon, ’ll stop by before I go.”
Necie surprises him by speaking up. “Do you… I can pack some of the stew.”
She’s up and out of the room before he can catch her eyes. Simon ignores B’s waggling eyebrows and stands to get his jacket and shoes. He keeps his back to the room until he can hear Necie approaching, then turns to face her. With barely there half-smile, she passes him a tall deli container filled to the brim with stew and rice.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah,” she says, looking away. “Have a, uh, safe trip, tomorrow.”
He takes the couple of steps down the hall to put the food in his fridge before heading back out to do his rounds of the building. The loose treads on the stairs he notes as he descends to the basement, where he checks the laundry room for broken machines. Then up, seven flights, to the roof. One of the girls from the 4th floor hastily pinches out her joint when she sees him, but he pays her no mind, just walks his circuit and descends back down the stairs to his own flat.
The television is still audible through the wall, just barely, and he listens as horns signal the next round of surveys. It’s comforting as he drifts through the front room and kitchen, checking windows and locks the way he did in B’s apartment after dinner. He can’t hear as much in his bedroom, the home gym he barely uses, so he heads back to the front room to sit at his table and check the knives he keeps in the house.
The show ends, eventually, and as B turns off the television everything goes quiet in the next apartment. Simon imagines her shuffling through her evening routine, finds himself musing about how Necie fits in. Does she stay often enough to have her own things in the bathroom, in the guest closet? It’s probably hard for her to find space where Mrs. B keeps her odds and ends, in that room that smells like patchouli and dried hibiscus. But maybe she sleeps well there, sheds her defenses enough to relax, if this is where she runs to be safe.
Away from a man, he thinks, testing the sharpness of a blade on the tip of his thumb. Would she feel safer, he wonders, knowing that a killer is right next door? Does she know he has a key? That he knows the window to the room she’s sleeping in isn’t as secure as he would like? Has she ever questioned the extra set of keys by the door, his keys, that her aunt has been here, in his kitchen, that Simon would protect B with his life?
It’s easy to imagine Necie at his small table, here, curled in on herself. And Simon decides that he would protect her, too, if she lets him. She slots into place in his mind, a part of B’s household, his responsibility, easy as breathing.
That drive to keep them safe, along with the fact that he’s still restless from the last mission, has him on the fire escape in the dark hours of the morning. He’s just lit a second cigarette when he hears the scrape of a window, sees Necie’s startled face. She visibly decides not to retreat, settles herself small right next to the open window. When Simon leaves her be, she gets lost in her book with an ease that makes a part of him hum, content.
He’ll have to leave B more money, he decides. For groceries and delivery services, but also… just in case.
