Hidden Likes

22F

[microsff]

I check the ticket. Overnight to Krakow. Sleeper, private compartment for two.

"Hurry up!" My fiancé leads the way.

"Wait, the train station is the other-"

"We're here."

It used to be an empty plot. Now it's full of small houses.

My fiancé grins and points to a sign: "Baba Yaga Travels"

[lumberjackloverboy-moved]

for my fellow psychotics who struggle with thinking someone is in their house, a method I’ve found that really works are these guys:

i put them on my front door and anytime it opens they ring. that way if i think someone has broken in or i see someone who isn’t there i can think back to if the bells have rung, and if they haven’t i can assure myself it’s not real. obviously it’s not fool proof, like if you are prone to auditory hallucinations, but it has really helped me calm down in time to avoid major psychotic breaks. it’s a real lifesaver

nonpsychotics encouraged to rb

[07x1x4x1]

Dead Flesh, Still Sweet | ML

Task Force 141 × fem!Reader [ Sugar ]

ㄨ SYNOPSIS: Six years after the worldwide collapse, the 141 survives on discipline and trade. Then a routine deal puts you right in front of them—collared, bruised, and eerily composed. They drive away. They try not to think about it. They fail.

.ᐟ CW: 18+ | zombie apocalypse au; dystopia; anarchy; slow burn; found family; eventual romance; violence; mutual pining; military/medical inaccuracies; horror/gore; smut; implied noncon/rape/abuse; hurt/comfort; angst; no use of Y/N; other tags to be added

⤷ ACT ONE

⌖ Chapter 1 ❝ THE KING OF RUBBISH ❞

⌖ Chapter 2 ❝ REDS AND CALCULATIONS ❞

⌖ Chapter 3 (in the works)

[07x1x4x1]

Dead Flesh, Still Sweet

Task Force 141 × fem!Reader [ Sugar ]

❝ Act One | Ch. 2; REDS & CALCULATIONS ❞

ㄨ SYNOPSIS: Six years after the worldwide collapse, the 141 survives on discipline and trade. Then a routine deal puts you right in front of them—collared, bruised, and eerily composed. They drive away. They try not to think about it. They fail.

.ᐟ CW: 18+ | zombie apocalypse au; dystopia; anarchy; slow burn; found family; eventual romance; violence; mutual pining; military/medical inaccuracies; horror/gore; smut; implied noncon/rape/abuse; hurt/comfort; angst; no use of Y/N; other tags to be added

⤷ [ ⨟ MASTERLIST ]

The negotiation takes an hour.

It shouldn't. The terms were agreed weeks ago through intermediaries—a runner Holt sends out, a wiry man with bad teeth and worse nerves who knows the roads between Ashworth and the 141's territory.

But Holt drags it out because Holt drags everything out, because he can. He likes having Price in his space. Likes the audience. Likes watching four disciplined men sit in his filthy kingdom and pretend they're not cataloguing every single sin in the room.

Price negotiates the way Price does everything. Measured and relentless, giving nothing away. He talks numbers and quantities. Ammunition calibres. Expiration dates on the antibiotics, because Holt tried to pass off expired tetracycline last time and Price has a memory like a fucking filing cabinet. And Fletcher hovers at the edge of the conversation, pencil scratching, confirming numbers with small nods when Holt glances his way.

The bookkeeper and the captain speak the same language—logistics, inventory, the mathematics of survival—and there's a moment, brief and strange, where Price and Fletcher lock eyes over a supply count and something passes between them that looks almost like professional respect.

But that brief flicker dies at once when Fletcher's gaze drifts back to you.

Holt half-listens. He drinks instead and interrupts to tell stories nobody asked for—about a raid on a convoy last month, about improvements to Ashworth's walls, about the expansion of the patrol zone. He tells these stories with his hand on you. Always on you.

You sit on the arm of the sofa for the first twenty minutes. Then Holt pulls you onto the sofa proper, tucked against his side with his arm heavy across your shoulders. Then, when he gets drunker, onto his lap. His hand rests on your thigh. Moves to your waist, then your hip, all while the leather collar sits snug against your throat and the leash trails across the sofa cushions like a dead snake.

You pour drinks when told. You sit when told. You shift position when his hands reposition you—a living doll being arranged by a child who hasn't learned that other humans have feelings, too.

At one point, Holt's talking about fuel reserves and his fingers drift up to your jaw, tilting your face toward the light so Price can see you in profile—the line of your nose, the shape of your mouth, the sweep of your lashes—like he's remembered mid-sentence that he has a beautiful thing and wants to make sure everyone else remembers too.

"Look at that bone structure," he says to Price, as if Price asked. "Proper breed, that is. Continental, I think."

And Price says, "Thirty boxes of 5.56, Dean. Not twenty."

Fletcher writes the number down without being asked. His eyes stay on you for two seconds longer than the notation requires, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.

Forty minutes into the negotiation, the back door bangs open.

Danny comes through first, dragging a man by the collar of his jacket—a thin man, outskirts-thin, all sharp angles and bad skin, mid-thirties maybe but looking fifty. Behind them, two more of Holt's enforcers, and between them a woman. Younger. Perhaps the man's wife, maybe his daughter—it's hard to tell in a world that ages people past recognition. She's crying. Not loudly. The quiet, hitching sobs of someone who's learned that loud crying gets you hit.

Holt doesn't stand, but he shifts you off his lap and onto the armrest—a repositioning, like moving a drink to make room on the table—and leans forward.

He makes a vague hand gesture. "What's this then?"

"Grayson." Danny shoves the man to his knees. The sound of bone hitting concrete is sharp and wet. "Caught the fucker hoardin’. Three tins of peaches, a bottle of iodine, and a blanket he didn't declare."

Three tins of peaches. A bottle of iodine. A blanket. In the world before, it would be but a strange shopping bag. Here, it's a capital offence.

Holt looks at the man on his knees. The grin doesn't change—it never changes—but something behind it recalibrates. The showman is still there, but underneath it the machine is working. Always calculating.

"Grayson." He says the name like he's tasting it. "You're on Fletcher's east block, yeah? Plot twelve?"

Fletcher is checking his ledger already. "Plot twelve. Family of three. Ration tier two. He's a scavenger—runs with Vincent's crew on the A40 route."

"Scavenger." Holt nods slowly, drags his teeth over his bottom lip. "So you find things. That's your job. You find things and you bring them back here and they go into the supply, and Fletcher counts them, and then your family gets fed. That's how it works, aye? That's the arrangement?"

Grayson doesn't answer. He's shaking; hands flat on the concrete, fingers spread, and he's shaking the way people shake when the adrenaline has gone past useful and into the territory where the body starts to betray itself.

"Three tins," Holt repeats. He's speaking to the room now. To his men, to the 141, to you—to everyone, because the audience is the point. "Three tins of peaches, an iodine bottle, and a blanket. Now, I'm a reasonable man. Ask anyone. I'm fucking reasonable," he looks at Danny directly, open his arms demonstratively, "Am I not reasonable, Danny?"

Danny rolls his buff shoulders, nods. "Aye, fuckin’ reasonable, boss."

Holt looks pleased, continues, "But if everyone takes three tins, Grayson—if everyone just fucking decides the rules don't apply to them—then the supply breaks down. And if the supply breaks down, people starve. And if people starve, they get desperate. And desperate people do stupid things. And I fucking hate stupidity. So, you see, Grayson, this isn't about peaches. This is about fucking order."

He says order the way Price says the calculation. The same weight. The same conviction. The same willingness to let the word carry the violence so the speaker doesn't have to.

"Danny," Holt says, almost disappointed, and pinches the bridge of his nose for effect.

Danny steps forward. He doesn't ask what. He knows what.

The first hit is open-handed—a slap that cracks across the kneeling man's face and sends his head snapping sideways. The second is a fist. The third breaks something; the sound is specific, a crunch that's either cartilage or bone, and blood sprays across the concrete in a pattern that Gaz will see when he closes his eyes tonight.

The woman screams. One of the enforcers clamps a beefy hand over her mouth.

Grayson doesn't scream. He takes it the way people take things in Ashworth—silently, on his knees, because screaming makes it worse and silence might, might, might make it stop sooner.

It doesn't stop sooner.

Danny works him over with the methodical efficiency of a man who does this regularly enough that it's become administrative. Face, ribs, kidneys. Not enough to kill—Holt doesn't waste labour—but enough to make a point that the outskirts will be discussing for weeks. Enough that Grayson will piss blood for days and flinch at sudden movements for months and never, ever keep a tin of peaches again.

Holt watches casually with his drink in his hand which you handed him unprompted. He glances at you once—a quick check, the way an owner checks a dog's reaction to thunder. You're staring straight ahead again, face blank, breathing steady. You've seen this before. The blankness isn't shock. It's Tuesday.

He glances at the 141.

Price hasn't moved. His expression hasn't changed. He's watching the beating the way he watches everything. Absorbing and filing it, giving nothing away. But his hand, resting on his thigh, has closed into a fist so tight the knuckles are white under the glove.

Soap has stopped breathing. He's standing by the door, and he's stopped breathing and the zippo is in his hand and his thumb is on the lid and he's pressing so hard the metal is cutting into his bare skin.

Gaz is looking at the woman. At the hand over her mouth. At the tears running over the enforcer's fingers. His dark eyes are very bright and very still and his floss stick has fallen from his mouth atop his tac vest and he hasn't noticed yet.

Ghost is looking at Holt.

Not at the beating. At Holt. At the man watching the beating with his drink and his grin and his casual cruelty. Who, for a split second, reminded him of his own dead father, and something behind Ghost's balaclava is doing the kind of mathematics that doesn't involve supply counts.

"Right," Holt concludes, after maybe two minutes that feel like twenty. "That'll do."

Danny steps back. His knuckles are split. He flexes his hand, wipes it on his trousers, spits on the floor, right next to the man he just beat. And Grayson is on the concrete, curled into himself, breathing in wet, ragged gasps. Blood pools under his face. The woman is released; she drops to her knees beside him, hands hovering, afraid to touch because touching might make it worse, not touching might make it worse, everything in this place is a calculation about what makes things worse.

"Get him to Briggs," Holt orders eventually. "And dock his family's rations for a month. Tier three."

Fletcher nods, makes a note. His handwriting doesn't waver.

Two of Holt's men drag Grayson out. The woman follows, stumbling. The door closes. The blood stays on the floor.

Holt turns back to Price and smiles like nothing happened.

"Now. Where were we? Thirty boxes of 5.56?"

The trade goes on and completes in silence.

Price counts every box. Checks every seal. Opens two at random. His movements are precise, mechanical, the discipline holding him upright the way rebar holds concrete. Fletcher shadows him with the ledger, ticking off items, and neither man speaks beyond the numbers.

Holt's men load the crates into the truck. The October light is fading—half three and already the shadows are stretching, the amber going grey. The temperature's dropping. Winter breathing down the valley.

Holt appears in the doorway, leather jacket on, your leash wrapped around his good hand. You stand beside him in the black dress and heels, arranged and still, the collar catching the last of the natural light in the room.

"Right then," Holt says, rubbing his hands together like a man proposing a night out. "You lot aren't driving back in the dark. Not with the bloody roads like they are and the fast ones getting bolder. Stay the night. I insist."

"We'll manage," Price says.

"Don't be daft, John. It's an hour's drive in daylight and you'd be doing it in the dark. I've got rooms. Proper rooms, beds, and walls that don't let the wind in. Hot water, even, if the boiler's behaving." He's already walking, the leash pulling you into step beside him, and there is something in the way he moves—expansive, proprietary, a man giving a tour of his estate—that makes it clear this isn't a suggestion. "Come on. Let me show you what Ashworth has to offer after dark."

Price looks at Soap. Soap looks at Gaz. Gaz looks at Ghost. Ghost looks at the back of Holt’s bald head, like he’s locked on a target.

"One drink," Price agrees. "Then we leave."

Holt walks them through the core and it’s different after dark.

The generators power strings of bare bulbs along the main corridors between buildings, casting everything in a harsh, yellow-white glare that makes the shadows sharper. People move between the structures—Holt's inner circle, the privileged three hundred, going about the business of evening in a settlement that has electricity and order and a man at the top who ensures both through spectacle and pain. There's music from somewhere, tinny and distorted. A speaker running off a car battery playing something that might have been pop once. Laughter. The clink of bottles.

Holt leads them through it like an excited tour guide. The leash is casual in his hand, and you walk beside him on those heels with the practiced gait of someone who has learned to match his pace exactly, to anticipate the turns, to be led without appearing to be dragged. Your face gives nothing away. Your eyes give nothing away. You are a woman walking through a settlement on a leash, and you have made this walk so many times that your body does it without consulting the rest of you.

They pass a building that's louder than the others. Warmer light spills from the windows—not the harsh white of the bulbs but something softer, redder. The music is coming from here. And the laughter. And something else—a low, heavy sweetness in the air that both Gaz and Ghost identify before they see the source.

Weed.

The smell is unmistakable and absurd. Somewhere in Ashworth—somewhere in a settlement where the outskirts children are malnourished and the medicine supply runs on expired antibiotics and people are beaten half to death for three tins of peaches—someone is growing cannabis. Enough of it that the smell saturates the air around this building like weather and manages to drown out the stench coming from The Pit. No skill for potatoes. No resources for agriculture that would actually feed two thousand people. But plenty for this.

"The Lounge," Holt announces, like he's unveiling an exclusive restaurant. "Best spot in Ashworth! My gift to the lads. A man works hard, a man deserves to relax. Don't you think, Price?"

He pushes the door open without waiting for an answer that wouldn't come anyway.

The interior is warm and dim and thick with smoke. Red-tinted light from fabric draped over the bulbs. Mattresses on the floor, some with sheets, some without. Relatively clean in comparison to the rest of everything outside the inner circle. A bar with actual bottles, actual glasses, and someone pouring drinks. Music, louder inside. And women.

A dozen, maybe more. Some on the mattresses, some at the bar, some standing in doorways that lead to back rooms. They're dressed the way you're dressed—or less. Clothes from the before, scavenged and maintained. Short dresses, lingerie, heels. Clean. Made-up, some of them, with cosmetics hoarded or traded for at prices that don't bear thinking about. They move through the smoke with a looseness that's chemical rather than comfortable, a languor in the limbs that says the weed isn't the only thing being distributed around here. Their eyes are glassy with the soft focus of women who've been given something to make the work easier to perform, or easier to forget.

Some of them are not women.

Soap sees it first because Soap looks at faces, and the face nearest the door belongs to a girl.

She's sitting on a mattress with her knees drawn up, wearing an oversized T-shirt that slides off one bony shoulder, and her face is young. Not young the way people use the word casually. Young. Fifteen. Sixteen at the outside. The soft unfinished quality of a jaw that hasn't fully set, the wide eyes of someone who hasn't learned to narrow them yet.

She's smoking a joint with the practised ease of someone who's been given joints regularly and recently, and she looks up at the 141 as they pass and smiles—a trained smile, an offering—and Soap's zippo stops dead in his hand.

There are others. Mixed in with the older women—the ones in their twenties and thirties who might have chosen this or might not, whose consent in a world without alternatives is a question nobody's asking—there are girls who are visibly, obviously, sickeningly young. Teenagers. Dressed the same, drugged the same, positioned the same, abused the same.

The women look at the 141 the way women in places like this look at men; assessing eyes, performing and calculating. Voices call out from the smoke, soft and coaxing, fake giggling.

"Hey, handsome—"

"Come sit down with me, love—"

"You look like you need to relax—"

One of them reaches for Gaz's arm as he passes, and he nearly startles.

Her fingers are thin, the nails bitten to nothing, and she's smiling in a way that doesn't reach her eyes because her eyes are somewhere else entirely—the same somewhere that yours go when Holt's hands are on you. Gaz steps sideways out of reach, and the woman's hand drops and her smile flickers and for a moment she looks confused, like a machine that's received an input it wasn't programmed for.

They look at you too. The women around here.

They look at you on Holt's leash in your black dress and heels, clean and kept and collared, and the looks are not kind. Resentment. Envy, maybe, though the word feels wrong when applied to a woman in a collar being paraded by a warlord. You're Holt's private stock. You sleep in an actual bed. You eat regularly. You have one man to endure instead of however many walk through that door on a given night.

In the economy of Ashworth's brutality, you have it good, and the women in this room know it, and they hate you for it in the way that trapped people hate anyone whose trap looks slightly more comfortable than theirs.

You don't see them. Or you do, but you've built the wall so high that what's on the other side of your eyes isn't processing the information. You walk through the smoke and the red light and the sounds of Ashworth's entertainment district with the blank, practised stride of a woman who is not here, has never been here, will not remember being here, because remembering would require acknowledging that this is the world now and that acknowledgement would crack something she can't afford to crack.

Holt is watching the 141 with the bright-eyed interest of a man running an experiment.

"Go on, then," he urges. "Pick one. On the house. Consider it a trade bonus." He tugs your leash, pulling you closer, his arm going around your waist, then his hand wanders more boldly, getting in a mood. "Not this one, obviously. This one's mine. But anything else you see—"

"We're fine," Price says.

His voice is level. Perfectly controlled. The voice of a man who's been trained to negotiate hostage situations and arms deals and the surrender terms of enemy combatants, all of which are less difficult than standing in a room full of drugged women and teenage girls and saying we're fine without reaching for his sidearm.

"Come on, Price. Live a little. Your Scottish lad looks tense." Holt nods at Soap, who is standing very still and staring at nothing with an expression that could be boredom if you didn't know what boredom looked like on Soap, and this isn't it. This is the opposite. This is a man containing something that would clear the room in a heartbeat if he let it out. "A night with one of these girls would sort him right out."

Girls.

Holt says it without flinching. Without irony nor shame. Without any indication that the word means something different than women and that the difference matters.

"We appreciate the hospitality," Price continues, and the word hospitality comes out of his mouth with a flatness that could cut glass, "but we've got a drive ahead. Early start."

Holt studies him. The grin is still there but something behind it is working, recalculating and adjusting. He looks at the four of them, standing in a row in this room full of smoke and abused flesh and red light, and not one of them has looked at a woman with anything other than the careful blankness of men trying very hard not to react to what they're seeing.

"Four men," Holt says, shaking his head. "Four fit, healthy blokes, and not one of you wants a go." He pulls you against his side, his hand finding your hip, the gesture simultaneously possessive and dismissive. "It's not natural, innit? Makes a man think you lot are hiding something."

"The only thing we're hiding is a schedule," Price counters. "The drink, Dean. Then we are leaving."

Holt holds the moment. Then the grin widens—the showman resurfacing, the experiment concluded, the data filed away.

"One drink." He nods once. "Let me make it a good one."

They have the drink at the bar in the Lounge, standing, not sitting, because sitting would mean staying. Price drinks water from a glass he watches being poured. Gaz doesn't drink at all. Soap takes a vodka and holds it without lifting it to his mouth, his hand white around the glass.

Ghost doesn't take anything. He stands at the edge of the group with his arms crossed and his eyes moving—the women, the doors, the back rooms, the girls—and his jaw under the balaclava is doing something that isn't clenching because clenching would be a tell, and Ghost doesn't give tells.

It's five minutes but feels like a fucking year.

They leave. Holt walks them back to the truck, you on the leash beside him, the October cold biting after the warmth of the Lounge. Goosebumps pebble on your skin and Holt rubs his hands along your arms to warm you up. To any outsider, it might look like he cares.

The stars are out—more stars than anyone saw before the collapse; the light pollution gone, the Milky Way visible in a way that would be beautiful if everything underneath it wasn't so ugly.

"Pleasure as always, Captain!" Holt calls as Price climbs into the truck, still rubbing and touching you. "Don't be a stranger, aye? And think about what I said—strength in numbers!"

He lifts the leash. Your arm rises with it in a wave, like a puppet on a string.

You're being led back toward the main building with Holt’s good hand groping your ass when you glance over your shoulder. One look. Half a second. And you make eye contact with Ghost across thirty metres of mud and dark and the distant glow of the burn pit.

Your face is composed. Blank. Perfect.

But your eyes.

Your eyes scream Help.

Ghost holds the look for one beat. Two. Then he gets in the truck and pulls the door shut.

Nobody speaks for seven miles.

The road unspools. The headlights cut through darkness that is total and absolute—no streetlights, no house lights, no light pollution, just the beams and the tarmac and the hedgerows pressing in on either side. A rotten shambler stands in a field to the left, two hundred metres out, swaying in the wind. It doesn't react. Too far, too slow. Just a shape in the dark. A biological process continuing past the point of meaning.

No one wastes a bullet on it tonight.

It’s Gaz who breaks first. His voice comes from the back seat, raw and tight.

"Price."

"Kyle."

"Those girls—"

"I know."

"Some of them were—"

"I know, Kyle."

Silence. 27 seconds of it.

"We can't leave her there."

"We can," Price objects flatly, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. "And we did."

"That's not what I—" Gaz stops. When he speaks again, the London is gone from his voice. What is left is something younger and more exposed, the voice of a man whose moral framework has just been hit by something it wasn't built to absorb. "We walked through a brothel full of drugged teenagers, Captain. We watched a man get beaten half to death for three tins of peaches. We sat in a room while a woman in a collar poured us vodka… And we're driving home."

"What's the alternative?"

"I don't know. But this isn't—"

"The alternative is we start a war. With a settlement of two thousand people. With no supply line, no backup, no exfil, and winter coming." Price's hands are tight on the wheel now. "We're four men, Kyle. Four. We don't get to fix the world. We barely get to fix the bloody fence."

Soap speaks without turning from the window.

"He killed her dog."

Nobody responds. Everyone knows Soap doesn't even like dogs, yet the sentence sits in the cab like something with weight and temperature.

"She's mapping the room." His voice is low. Rough like a rake on gravel. The flat Manchester in it like concrete.

Price glances in the rearview, surprised. "What?"

"Her eyes." Ghost taps one gloved finger against the corner of his right eye for emphasis. "Every time Holt wasn't lookin’ at her, she was cataloguing. Exits, weapons, guard positions." A pause. "She ain’t bloody broken. She's waitin’ for an opportunity she can't create on her own."

"Rope burns on her wrists," he continues, his tone unchanged—flat, clinical, a debrief rather than a plea. "Old ones underneath newer ones. She's tried before. At least twice. He keeps tying her up ‘cause she keeps tryin’."

Soap turns in his seat. His blue eyes are sharp and wide.

"So she's a fighter."

"She's a survivor. There's a difference." Ghost looks at Price in the rearview mirror and holds. "She had a farmhouse, a weapon, and a working knowledge of field medicine and botany. Alone. For however bloody long before Holt's men found ‘er. That's not a civilian, Captain. That's an asset."

The word is deliberate. Asset. The word that translates we should help her into something Price's operational brain can process without the emotional overhead.

The captain says nothing for a long time. The road unspools. Dead traffic lights swing in the wind.

"We don't do rescue missions," he says eventually, cutting through the tense silence. But he says it like a man testing the weight of something. Checking for cracks.

"No," Ghost agrees. "We don't."

Nothing else is said, but Price takes the long way home, and when they pass the junction that leads toward Ross-on-Wye—toward a ruined farmhouse where a woman once lived with a dog and a shotgun—he slows. Just for a moment.

Then he drives on.

The safehouse is dark when they arrive.

Soap is out of the truck before it fully stops and begins unloading the crates alone. He doesn't ask for help, and nobody offers because they know that Johnny needs the weight right now. Needs his hands full and his muscles burning and the physical reality of ammunition boxes and antibiotic cases to anchor him inside his own body, because what's happening inside his head is a room full of red light and smoke and a girl with a joint and a trained smile who couldn't have been older than fifteen.

He stacks the crates. He checks the perimeter wire. He resets the tripwires on the south approach. He does all of it in the dark, by touch, because the dark is better right now. The dark doesn't have faces in it.

Ghost goes upstairs. The door closes behind him.

Gaz sits on the porch with his rifle across his knees and his head in his hands and stays there for a long time.

Price makes tea and holds onto his routine.

Or tries to. He fills the kettle. Lights the burner. Sets it on the flame. Stands there with his hands braced on the counter and watches the water heat through the glass. The cigar sits beside him, unlit. He doesn't reach for it.

The kettle boils. He pours it. Drops the teabag in—reused, the third or fourth steeping, the water barely tinting brown. He wraps his hands around the mug. Stands there.

At midnight, the map comes out.

Not the old one—Price draws a new one. He sits at the kitchen table with a sheet of paper from the dwindling stationery supply and a pencil stub, and he draws Ashworth from memory. The perimeter wall. The gate. The main building. The generator housing. The brothel. The burn pit.

He's not planning anything, just looking. The way a man looks at a crossword he's told himself he's not going to solve, while his pen hovers over the grid.

Footsteps sound on the stairs. He doesn't look up, knows who it is by weight and rhythm.

Soap drops into the chair across from him. T-shirt and combat trousers, barefoot, hands still dirty from the crates. He smells like cold air, cellar, and gun oil. His eyes flicker to the spread map. Then up at Price.

"Can't sleep?" Price asks conversationally, not looking up.

"He killed her dog." Soap says it like it explains everything. Like it's the thesis statement of a paper he's been writing all day. "She had a dog and a house, and they killed the fuckin’ dog and took everything else."

Price takes a sip of tea that's barely tea. Grimaces.

"Johnny—"

"I'm no’ askin’ ye for a rescue mission." Soap's voice is steady and controlled now. He's had hours to work through the fire and come out the other side into something colder, harder, more useful. "I'm tellin’ ye what Ghost told ye. She's an asset. She knows plants, medicine, mapping. She survived alone. She's not broken. Not yet."

"And extracting her from a compound of two thousand—"

"Is doable." Soap leans forward. His blue eyes are bright in the lamplight. "It's doable, Price. We've done worse. Urzikstan. Al-Mazrah. We've gone into harder places with less intel and come oot clean."

"We had support then. Air support, logistics, exfil routes—"

"We had each other. Same as now."

Price finally looks at him. The lamp casts shadows across the captain's face, deepening the lines, ageing him past forty-eight into something geological. He looks tired—not the tiredness of a single long day, but the cumulative exhaustion of six years plus of impossible choices.

"If we do this," Price says slowly, "and it goes wrong—we lose the Ashworth supply line. Permanently. Holt's not the forgiving type."

"If we don't do this," Soap replies, leaning back in his seat, thick brows furrowing, "what are we?"

Price blinks.

"What are we, Price?" Soap's voice drops. Not angry but quiet. Serious in a way that Soap rarely is, the Glasgow softening into something that's almost gentle.

"Because we've been tellin’ ourselves we're the good ones. We don't take women as payment. We don't use the brothel. We don't trade in people. We come home clean and we tell ourselves that makes us different." His jaw works, he gestures with one hand. "But we just walked through a room full of drugged girls and we didn't do a fuckin’ thing. We watched a man get his face caved in for hidin’ food for his bairns and we didn't do a thing. We sat there while Holt put his hands all over her and we—" He stops. Swallows hard as his temper starts flaring. "We drove home and made tea and told ourselves it's the calculation."

The word lands like a slap.

Price stares at the map.

"She looked at us," Soap says, quieter now. "She looked at Ghost. And we left."

Silence. The farmhouse creaks in the wind. Outside, an owl calls—two notes, low and hollow. The only nightlife left that isn't trying to eat them.

"I need to talk to Simon," Price says.

Soap nods. He doesn't push further. He knows that voice—the voice Price uses when the decision is forming and he's working out the shape of it. The captain's voice. The one that means the pen has touched the grid.

Soap stands. Pushes the chair back. Pauses in the doorway.

"He killed her dog, Price."

"I heard you, son."

"Just makin’ sure."

He leaves, goes upstairs. Price sits alone with the map and the cold tea and the quiet, and his eyes trace the western wall of Ashworth where the corrugated steel is older than the rest, where rain and neglect have had six years to do their work.

He's not planning anything.

But he doesn't fold the map either.

[biteofcherry]

Under the cut because unhinged horny 🫣

warnings: dub-con; breeding kink; breeding program; drugging; semi-dystopian universe; dark universe if we look at the details of non-consensual body monitoring; restraints; dirty talk; power imbalance

It's a Who is he? type of thot (so choose your own babe)

✨️ ✨️ ✨️

Falling asleep in your warm, safe bed, you didn't expect to wake up more drowsy than usually. The realisation of being somewhere completely else comes to you slowly, without an immediate alert.

The colors surrounding you are light, soothing, but some deep recognition in your brain still whispers that something is very wrong.

Female voices address you. They reassure and coo at you as they move around you. Your body is pleasantly heavy, pliant to their ministrations as they bathe you in warms, scented bath, shave you, then rub lotion into your skin.

As time passes, your mind starts getting clearer. Though your body remains somewhat softened. You can move, but each step is slower, each gesture lighter and lacking power. You can't fight when they drape a sheer robe around you and make you move across the space.

Words become more comprehensible, sentences make more sense, and the terrifying realisation finally settles in.

You've been chosen for breeding.

Your life approved to be taken into ownership and primal purposes.

You were nearing your forties, your fertility had to be much lower than that of younger females. Besides, your appearance or special talents weren't noticeable either.

Those atrocious practices are generally known, and unfortunately condoned, but you never imagined it would happen to you.

It was a comforting thought, really, to know you don't fit the profile of most wanted women for the breeding program.

"It has to be a mistake," you say as the door to another bright chamber opens and you're led inside.

There's more color among soothing creams, more personality and comfort to what you suspect os about to become a gilded cage to defile you in.

"No mistake, Miss." One of the women pats your hand. "He chose you. Out of all the profiles in the base, he decided on you."

"Lucky you," adds the younger woman, "he's one of the most eligible bachelors who's decided on a permanent, monogamous ownership."

You know how warped the society is, so it shouldn't surprise you the woman betrays envy for something that you see as entrapment.

"Be good to him." She adds, this time with a hint of compassionate advice.

"As you can see-" she makes a broad gesture inviting you to take a proper look at the room you're about to be locked in-

"Or he'll break you in first-" she points at the other side of the room.

"It can be very pleasant-"

There's a huge bed, with exquisite looking sheets and pillows; as well a scattering of fluffy rugs and bigger pillows around the floor in that area.

There's a tall, sturdy table - height perfect to place your ass on level with a man's hips - with a frame to which your legs could be cuffed, held up and spread, tilting your ass up for proper fucking.

Next, there's also a padded bench, over which you could be bent to be filled from behind. Constructed with a slope that would secure seed following gravity's pull deep into your womb, instead of dripping out.

White, open cabinets may provide a cosy, warm interior detail, but they're filled with toys and implements that would bring you pleasurable torment (and more orgasms than you'd dare to imagine).

"No, no," you shake your head, while in your mind flashes of depraved acts mix with despair.

Cold and hot waves wash over you rapidly. Dread chased by natural desire.

Having your fantasies in the safety of your home was one thing, but reality of what doom fell upon you was completely different. Though it appears that the base instincts of your body don't differentiate between, considering how heat pools low in your belly.

Or maybe it's the drugs they used on you.

"It's really a mistake. I'm unfit for it-"

"Quite the contrary."

A deep, velvety voice snaps your attention to the entrance.

Both the voice and the man it belongs to seem to dim the brightness of the room a bit, yet enhance its atmosphere at the same time.

You make half a step back as you take him in.

He's taller than you. Bigger all over. Definitely tronger. He wouldn't need any restraints, if he really wanted you pinned in place.

His blue eyes are focused on you, taking in your nude state. His gaze is not exactly soft, nor is it cruel. But it lacks the kind of newfound astonisment one might expect. It's rather possessiveness that was already installed. As if he saw you naked before.

The women courtsy to him then quickly leave the room. The door locks.

"It's not a mistake." The man slowly walks towards you. "I've made a conscious decision."

"I'm almost forty!" You blurt out.

"You still have regular periods, kitten." He calmly counters back.

It doesn't shock you that he knows it. With the whole construct of breeding programs, gynecologists' data is registered. So cycles and health issues are filtered through the system, and available to the men searching for a woman to own and breed.

"Doesn't mean I'm fertile," you argue.

Your breath hitches slightly as he stops right in front of you. He unties the sash on your gauzy robe then slides a hand onto your waist; a hot brand that rouses your body with sudden interest.

With a light, yet unyielding tug, he pulls you back when you try to inch away from him.

"No, I don't- Wait!" You pause, staring up at him as shocking realisation hits you.

"Your ovulation the past six months was exceptionally high rated." Corner of his mouth twitches in a smirk when you shift your gaze down in embarrassment.

"You get so wet and aroused for the entirety of the phase." His mouth lowers to the shell of your ear as he purrs in delight. "Especially a day or two before the egg is released. Then straight six days after."

Reports on general health and the fact your cycles were regular would come from visits to your gynecologist. But to know exactly how your phases looked?

Not even you pay so much attention to that!

To know about your wetness, spikes in arousal, exact days?

"I know that you're on day second into the phase." He hums, nudging your legs apart with his knee.

There would have to be some sort of constant monitoring of your body functions. Hour by hour. Like an attached device or... an implanted chip.

There aren't even any rumours about that kind of privacy breach!

You don't know if all supposedly fertile women have such implants, or if it's somehow installed during a regular visit to your doctor after you're claimed.

The hand on your waist moves across your back, his arm wrapping around you to hold you pressed to him.

His other hand drifts boldly between your thighs. Unapologetic. Like he has all the right to touch you as he wishes.

"Already nicely wet." His gaze holds yours as his fingers part your folds.

"It starts with your body's natural, eager preparation for cock and seed. Then it ignites those needy thoughts."

"No-" you gasp.

You plant your hands on his clothed chest, but your body still lacks any strength to really fight him off.

"It's because they gave me something!" You snarl, but it's followed by a choked moan when he pushes a thick finger in.

"The medication was only to transport you safely and prepare you without a fuss. It doesn't interfere with your natural responses."

"This-" he pumps his finger in and out of your pussy- "is all you, readying to be bred."

It's a small victory for you, that you manage to stifle a disapointed whine when he withdraws his finger.

But you feel the pulsing between your thigs. That growing craving for more. So much more. Deep and hard, and over and over again.

Like it comes every ovulation. As well with every period-related hormonal rollercoaster.

Just like the fucking bastard noticed.

"So, kitten, your breedability was never in question." He chuckles. "I find you very breedable. And I will love every fucking second of stretching you on my cock and filling that belly."

"I got so hard every time I thought of sinking myself to the root in your sweet cunt and spilling deep. I couldn'twait for all the formalities to be finished, so I could bring you here and breed you over and over again."

"But I chose you because you tick other boxes for me. Intelligence, reliability, soft heart."

He traces his wet finger around your breast before cupping it fully in his big palm. He squeezes and your nipple pebbles instantly.

Between your thighs, your clit pulses in sync. Your pussy clenches, even as your independence claws at your brain to stop it from being aroused by hos filthy words.

Indication that he had to have studied you to come to such conclusions scares you even more. Yet a part of you blooms knowing that someone noticed and appreciated these parts of you.

"And the kinks you get off to when you're dripping and aching to be filled-" his voice lowers and he pinches your bud- "I know the videos you watch then, what you read."

Your heart hammers in your chest. Terror and arousal mixing into a haze.

Not only he monitored your body, observed you, but also hacked into your phone and laptop, and learned the most private things about you.

"You may fight it verbally, but the truth is that's your deepest craving. To be fucked full. Obscenely. Until it takes and your belly rounds."

You shake your head, but no protest spill from your mouth. Because your breath is quickening, and you fear if you allowed words to roll on your tongue, it would come out as begging or moans.

"So until you surrender to it completely and admit you want me to breed you, I'm going to keep you restrained and open for my cock. Until you accept your role as mine to own and breed full."

Suddenly, he lifts you up into his arms. With a satisfied grunt at the feeling of your weight in his hands, but showing no extra strain in carrying you.

He places you on the raised table. With ease, he pushes you flat on your back. Keeps you down with one hand, while he grabs your wrist with the other and places it in a padded handcuff next to your head. He repeats the same with your other wrist.

You punch his chest and shoulders with your fists, to no avail. You fear that even when the medication wears off, you won't be able to fight him.

Or he'll already break you in, so you won't resist anymore.

Next, he cuffs your ankles to the frame above, slightly bending your legs and keeping them wide apart. In that position your pussy is on full display and your ass tilted perfectly to take a cock deep.

"I'm going to make your dreams come true," he says with a wicked smirk. "Fuck you mercilessly all through your ovulation, and beyond. Turn you into a mess. Fill you. Force you to take it. Train your holes to miss my cock every second it's not lodged deep inside you."

"You have a beautiful cunt, kitten." He praises, stroking your thighs. "And it's already so wet and puffy, just begging to be stretched open and flooded with cum."

He bends over you, placing one hand on the table. His other palm settles in the juncture of your thigh, thumb rubbing so close to where you're hot, wet, and clenching.

"And doing all of this to you? And having you grow with my child? Owning you completely?Kitten, that's making all my dreams come true."

--------------------------

Who is he?

[veltana]

I mean... It's the detail that he chose you specifically that makes me all 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠 in this whole fucked up thing! And it just has to be

[biteofcherry]

I can't help myself smuggling in those tiny details that mess with your mind and make us a little 🫠 for the awful things

And you know Steve wouldn't just pick anyone. He's thorough and searched for someone to fit ALL of his needs and expectations 😏

[biteofcherry]

Dom Ari coming to Ruby Garden later in the evening, due to previous business arrangements, only to be greeted by a pointed comment from another Master:

"Your sub is on the loose."

[rawme-price]

No thoughts just reader being hit with an aphrodisiac and the transport back to base and a safe location will take hours, right?

Which is how the team ends up cramped in the back of a van, knees knocking together and bodies tense from the way you've been...coping.

"Baby, please, hold on a bit, yeah?" Kyle grunts, sweating nervously on top of the general heat in the van. Of course the A/C is broken. He grabs your hips, trying to stop you from straddling his thigh and failing miserably "base is a few hours out, then I can help. Just...not here."

"Hours. Kyle." You hiss, wrenching his hands off to grind against his thigh and hissing through your teeth at the pleasure "fuckin. Hours. I'm not waiting."

"I know, I know baby—" he tries to soothe, already chubbing up at the desperate little whines you make, still fully in gear while you seek pleasure. You tuck your forehead against his neck, inhale the scent of him, strong after such a long op and easier to focus on amongst the smell of the others.

The others, who make no attempt at being polite while they watch. Soap is already rubbing himself through his pants and ghost looks moments off from pulling himself out. Price snorts at the half-effort gaz puts into pushing you off, head tilted back and breathing deep to try and control himself.

"Let the sergeants have some fun, garrick. Not like we haven't seen soap do worse."

"That's— that's different—" gaz tries to argue, knowing damn well it isn't. Not when you're holding gaz tight, hips working faster as you find a good spot against his harness to rut against. "Fuckin' hell–! ...okay. okay, yeah, c'mon baby—"

You're all too eager to climb into his lap properly, whining when he drags you hips away to undo various buckles. With a laugh, ghost leans in to help hold you still until gaz can shirk your pants down just enough to slip a hand into your underwear.

"Yeah? Feel good?" Gaz huffs at the way your entire body jerks, one hand circling around his wrist like a vice. No way in hell is he removing that hand until you're satisfied.

It's a testament to how well gaz knows you that he's able to have you on the brink in a few short minutes. Fat tears rolling down your face in anticipation. Your orgasm has you gasping, moaning loud and unashamed while you ride it out, entire body shaking. Gaz kisses you on the temple, lets you down to rest against his chest "there we go, that's what you needed, hm?"

....only for you to groan, hips moving again, much to the shock and excitement of the rest of the team.

Oh they're getting a show today.

[victusinveritas]

"Now I've shot so many Nazis, Daddy will have to buy me a sable coat." (From his Wikipedia article).

Neil Munro "Bunny" Roger

June 9, 1911-April 27, 1997.

Bunny Roger killed a bunch of Nazis and then invented Capri pants.

He was expelled from Oxford for his indiscrete gayness (discrete gayness being perfectly fine at Oxford and part of the curriculum until...today probably, at least like 1992?). Then, having been sent down to London, he started his own fashion business, and his first client was Vivien Leigh.

Bunny served in WWII, killing fascists in North Africa and Italy, and often wearing a mauve scarf in the field. Roger claimed that he had gone into a battle brandishing a rolled-up copy of VOGUE and commanding: "When in doubt, powder heavily!"

Roger was known in high society for his themed soirées; Diamond, Amethyst, and Flame Balls were held to celebrate his 60th, 70th, and 80th birthdays. He wore a curious plum colored catsuit with a feathered headdress at his 70th birthday ball in 1981. At his 80th, he made his entrance in a catsuit of scarlet sequins with a cape of orange organza, greeting his guests from behind a wall of fire. His parties were covered by the newspapers, including a New Year's Eve Fetish Ball where the proper upper class mixed with young guests in rubber S/M gear.

From an obituary: "Beneath his mauve mannerisms, Bunny was stalwart, frank, dependable and undeceived; to onlookers a passing peacock, to intimates, a life enhancer and exemplary friend."

From another obituary:

He served valiantly in every way.

[shabbytigers]

happy 125th birthday to bunny roger

[victusinveritas]

Found this color photo:

And this in-memoriam piece.

[marzipanandminutiae]

(he did not precisely invent capri pants- Sonja de Lennart did, and they popularized them together)

[biteofcherry]

Dom Ari coming to Ruby Garden later in the evening, due to previous business arrangements, only to be greeted by a pointed comment from another Master:

"Your sub is on the loose."

[thezombieprostitute]

Andy never stood a chance. I wonder if Bucky and Curtis could keep an eye on her. There's two of them, increasing their odds.

But then Jack causes a distraction (which Domme is currently punishing him for) and Cheri is out and about.

[biteofcherry]

Curtis and Bucky's combined power might be just what is required to keep her in line in Ari's absence. Their Fawn is a bit mischievous too, which gives them bonus skills in foreseeing trouble, buuut it also means Fawn could provide distraction so Cherie is set free to cause chaos 🤭

Maybe Ari needs to install some sparkling shackle, so Cherie is tied to a narrow area in the club when he's not there? 🤣

Ari has the key, and the spare one is with Steve - you know there's no way anyone steals it from Steve.

[thezombieprostitute]

Not even Jack can steal that thing from Steve!

I could see Ari setting up a small "sunroom" for when he's running late. Decorated with sun catchers in front of gentle, rotating lights so Cheri can lay there and enjoy the rainbows.

[biteofcherry]

Exactly, Jack wouldn't be able to steal it from Steve!

Rainbows and sparkles should mesmerise and entertain Cherie enough that she's in a cute, sweet mode when Ari returns.

"Let me make you see the sparks now, Sir."

as she gets on her knees 🤭

[thezombieprostitute]

Letting her relax and shrug off the stress of the day. But it doesn't get perfect for her until Ari shows up. Then she's having a great night.

[monstersflashlight]

I know requests are closed, but would a short comfort be ok? it could be less than 100 words really, just smth fluffy with a possible centaur and his partner who weren't able to see each other for the holidays after several months distanced cause of her family. if not it's fine, just decided to take a shot in the dark 😅

Hi anon! Yeah sure, some short thing. Turned out to be a lot more emotional than expected, oopsie daisies. Enjoy!

Back home

Centaur x gn!reader || sfw, hurt comfort (kinda)

You are waiting impatiently at the door, you knew he was supposed to arrive ten minutes ago, but he said there was traffic and he couldn't get there faster. Your heart is beating so fast, it's like it wants to escape your body and find him before he arrives. It's been a lot harder than expected to be apart from him, even if you communicated during that time, the feel of him, the smell of him... You ached to touch him again, to have him close and be able to kiss him and hug him. You are aching to feel him again.

Just as you are about to scream in frustration because he should be there already, you see his big body galloping down the hall, his smile so big you feel choked up. There's tears building in your eyes as he approaches, a big bag in his hand as he finally, FINALLY, stands before you.

You try to say hi, but the only thing that comes out is a low whine as you feel a tear rolling down. His smile turns incredibly soft as he pulls you up, hugging you until you are breathless. But who cares about breathing when you are in his arms anyway? A few more tears escape and you feel his heart beating as fast as yours, almost like it's trying to sync with your own.

"I brought your fav snacks," he whispers against your ear, making you chuckle between tears. And just like that, you know everything will be okay.

Because he's there again, finally.

[monsterfuckerconfessions]

priest/(vampire/demon/other typically "unholy" creature) hunter whose preferred method of handling spirits is to literally fuck the sin out of them. is this anything or do i need t

.

[thezombieprostitute]

Leaving

A/N: Written for the June Jukebox Scribbles. Prompt:“Every night's another reason why I left it all”

Word Count: 220

A familiar voice calls your name making you look up from your book. You're surprised to see him in this part of town.

"Long time no see, Ransom," you greet. "Or do I have to call you 'Hugh' these days?"

"You never have to call me that," he's quick say. "We were friends for a very long time."

"Were we?" you raise an eyebrow.

"Fair," he rolls his eyes as he sits across from you. "I haven't seen you since you cut ties with your folks."

"That's by design."

"I suppose," he grumbles. "Do you ever miss the rich life?"

"Not really," you confess. "Every day I get to be myself and not what my parents want me to be. I don't have to perform for 'friends'. And I can sleep pretty well knowing that my life is real."

"Can't put a price on good sleep, I guess."

"Every night's another reason why I left it all," you nod. "No more crying myself to sleep. I don't have to wake up extra early to get my makeup and hair perfect. I can eat what I want, when I want. It's a good life."

Ransom looks uncomfortable for a minute before leaning in close.

"Do you think you could help me get that, too?"

"I'm sure we can work something out."

Tagging: @agustdboyoongie; @alicedopey; @alphabetically-deranged; @blobfishlol; @delicatebarness; @icefrozendeadlyqueen; @irishhappiness; @iwudbutnah; @kmc1989; @lokislady82; @peaches1958; @ronearoundblindly; @stellar-solar-flare; @thiquefunlover63;

[krirebr]

A Ransom who wants to go no contact is one of my favorite Ransoms of all. I'm happy this one has you to guide him through it.

[thezombieprostitute]

He just needed to make sure it was worth it, that we didn't have regrets. Now that he knows, he's fully invested.

[rawme-price]

No thoughts just reader being hit with an aphrodisiac and the transport back to base and a safe location will take hours, right?

Which is how the team ends up cramped in the back of a van, knees knocking together and bodies tense from the way you've been...coping.

"Baby, please, hold on a bit, yeah?" Kyle grunts, sweating nervously on top of the general heat in the van. Of course the A/C is broken. He grabs your hips, trying to stop you from straddling his thigh and failing miserably "base is a few hours out, then I can help. Just...not here."

"Hours. Kyle." You hiss, wrenching his hands off to grind against his thigh and hissing through your teeth at the pleasure "fuckin. Hours. I'm not waiting."

"I know, I know baby—" he tries to soothe, already chubbing up at the desperate little whines you make, still fully in gear while you seek pleasure. You tuck your forehead against his neck, inhale the scent of him, strong after such a long op and easier to focus on amongst the smell of the others.

The others, who make no attempt at being polite while they watch. Soap is already rubbing himself through his pants and ghost looks moments off from pulling himself out. Price snorts at the half-effort gaz puts into pushing you off, head tilted back and breathing deep to try and control himself.

"Let the sergeants have some fun, garrick. Not like we haven't seen soap do worse."

"That's— that's different—" gaz tries to argue, knowing damn well it isn't. Not when you're holding gaz tight, hips working faster as you find a good spot against his harness to rut against. "Fuckin' hell–! ...okay. okay, yeah, c'mon baby—"

You're all too eager to climb into his lap properly, whining when he drags you hips away to undo various buckles. With a laugh, ghost leans in to help hold you still until gaz can shirk your pants down just enough to slip a hand into your underwear.

"Yeah? Feel good?" Gaz huffs at the way your entire body jerks, one hand circling around his wrist like a vice. No way in hell is he removing that hand until you're satisfied.

It's a testament to how well gaz knows you that he's able to have you on the brink in a few short minutes. Fat tears rolling down your face in anticipation. Your orgasm has you gasping, moaning loud and unashamed while you ride it out, entire body shaking. Gaz kisses you on the temple, lets you down to rest against his chest "there we go, that's what you needed, hm?"

....only for you to groan, hips moving again, much to the shock and excitement of the rest of the team.

Oh they're getting a show today.

[rawme-price]

Ghost doesn't do touch, everyone knows this.

Not that he directly says it, but even an SAS operative is hard-pressed to hide the subtle flinch of touch from his fellow teammates at all times. Skin always covered, always positioned away from people, it's an unspoken rule that no one touches ghost unless mandatory.

So why the hell does he let you, the new secretary, get away with it?

"Oh, sir! Hey, I needed an updated copy of that file–" you'll catch him in the hallway, hand on his bicep to get his attention before you lose him in the crowd. The strangest thing? Ghost actually stops and listens carefully. No tensing up or glaring at all.

Or when you happen to be next to him in line for dinner, you have no qualms bumping your shoulder into his side in lieu of greeting with full hands, already saying "hi, sir! Yknow, I was looking over those reports, and I really appreciate how you—"

It's an absolute mystery to the team. How you ghost is more than happy to be practically manhandled by you in crowded spaces or simply casually touched in conversation. There's only one logical explenation.

Ghost has a crush.

After that, it just becomes more obvious. How he angles himself closest to you in a group. How he subtly leans into your touch on certain days.

Curiously, gaz asks you about it one day. A casual water cooler ambush, designed to look purely coincidental when he interrogates "oh, you and ghost talk often, don't you?"

"Hm? Oh, ghost? Yeah! He's a great friend!" You smile, all wide and unassuming. of course you have no fucking clue, because ghost is damn difficult to read even to trained soldiers. You go on to smile to yourself, fidgeting with the manila folder held against your clipboard. "I'm honestly shocked he tolerates me so much, what with being just some secretary. But he's nice to talk to, yknow?"

...and it seems you are just as horribly enamoured by him. How the hell neither of you has figured it out is beyond the team.

They already have a betting pool going if you two will sort it out before or after next months ball.

[rawme-price]

Imagine reader being the only human in werewolf!141, or you are until you have to be turned on the field. A traumatic process you seem to handle...shockingly well.

The only problem? You have no clue what is and isn't socially acceptable for a werewolf to do.

The guys aren't exactly sure how to tell you that obsessively sniffing everyone's clothes is...weird. creepy. Because you being creepy is better than remembering the way you screamed during the transformation, right?

So they let you curl up in gazs hoodie, taking a sniff to mutter "woah, I like this. You smell so good, gaz."

It's worse when you decide to do it in public, still getting used to your new heightened senses. You don't hesitate to cuddle up to soap, astonished by how warm he feels, nose tucking into his neck. Cedar, cinnamon, gunpowder and his distinct musk all filling your nostrils.

Your instincts, too, are completely out of your control. You bark and whine and huff whenever they tell you to, even when it's considered...taboo to indulge in certain instincts publicly.

Like play-biting on ghosts arms whenever they are vaguely within range of your teeth, similar to how gaz sometimes acts, but you don't mind doing it in the middle of a meeting. Though you're wiggling happily with a phantom-tail common in most recent transformations, so ghost does nothing to stop you.

Truthfully, the team is glad you're so preoccupied in your new identity. Too distracted to notice the way they've been acting odd, sneaking off more often either alone or in pairs, coming back smelling odd which only makes you want to sniff them more. They've all agreed it's best to let you figure yourself out first, what with how disorienting a transformation can be, especially one as traumatic as yours.

Because really, who was going to be the one to tell you that by werewolf standards you've been violently flirting with the entire team?

Yeah...better to let that wait.

[rawme-price]

Price is so fucking stressed when he accidentally gets his younger partner pregnant.

Of course he should have predicted it, what with all the times he's filled you up under the supposed safety of that magic pill. When you miss your period and confirm it twice that you're pregnant, you both sit down and have a serious conversation about what that means for you.

Which ends with price obsessively researching pregnancy and at your every whim to make sure you get all the help he needs. He's got multiple files compiled with all the research He's done, and has pulled strings to make sure you have the best team assigned to your pregnancy.

"John. I am not sitting in bed all day I swear to god if you don't let me clean—" you also end up having to fight your husband for the ability to life the coffee table, because he's decided that your five weeks pregnant body can't handle it.

Yeah. Maybe you get a little cheeky with your "pregnancy cravings" and ask for specific restaurants on the other side of town so you can sneakily clean and lift boxes. So what? You're going crazy not rearranging the entire house!!

Price, of course, is the literal captain of a specialized task force. He falls for your tricks exactly twice before making ghost retrieve all your requests, not like his lieutenant does anything besides loom around forests when not on base.

Price just...needs to make sure you're okay all the time. For his own hearts sake.

He freaks out more than you do when your water breaks, having prepared and run drills for the exact situation, only focusing up when you snap at him.

In the end you deliver two health baby girls and price does cry when he holds you in his arms afterwards.

[rawme-price]

How do you think Price would react the next morning if he got drunk and hit reader like they were one of his soldiers?

Ohhh nonny I don't think price is surviving to the next morning if he hits you.

If he comes home well and truly drunk, pissed enough to be yelling at you over something, so far gone that he hits you? There will he a split second of clarity the moment after the hit, realizing the boundary he's crossed, before he doubles down and refuses to apologize.

He yells more, gets in your face and tears you down like he would a soldier after a fight. Until you're physically shaking and flinching away from him, making price feel like a real man. Like someone in control before he stomps off to sleep.

Which leaves you, terrified tucked behind the sofa you bought with john when you first moved in. You do the only thing you can think of, face already bruising, and call the number john gave you "only for emergencies. Doesn't matter what, he'll help you."

"...ello?" The voice that picks up is rough, grainy.

"I...I didn't know who to call...." you choke on a sob. Terrified. "I don't know what to do."

Which is how, two hours later you're drinking a milk-shake in some diner parking lot, legs dangling over the bed of ghosts truck while he makes phonecalls far away enough you can't hear anything. You don't know what to feel. You love john, of course you do he's the man of your dreams but...but you've never feared for your life like that before.

It's fine. You decide not to think about it. Simon will handle it, he assured you. He even promised not to kill john when you had panicked and begged him to be nice, explaining that john was just drunk and he's usually never like that—

Yeah. Simon said he'll just talk to price, set things straight.

He doesn't tell you that said talking to will happen in the middle of the woods with a baseball bat and duct tape.