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many of my sexual fantasies and kinks boil down to ‘someone being really attracted to me and me not having to ask for affection, just be given it.” which could mean nothing.
i don't care what happens anymore. no amount of insanity those moniyawak at Activision throw at me will ever take away from the fact that i'm currently in my mind palace, picturing sitting on merc Price's lap and kissing the thatch of grey on his beard while he smokes a cigar and gives cringe "i used to be a good man (not true), but the bad guys taught me the only way to win is to get on their level (also not true)" monologues and makes you hold his whiskey for him as he sighs forlornly at the loss of the man he was (literally the same, but his kills are unsanctioned and he has a new haircut) and does the "bad" old man thing where he talks about how he should push you away because you're too good for him (true) but won't because this new version of him is selfish and hungry and he needs a little bit of good in his life to remind of him the guy he (still is) was.
inspired wholly by this hard of hearing!simon by @ynstark — i’ve been plagued by the thought ever since
cw: suggestive
he hears the kettle just fine when it whistles, and he hears the front door when it slams with the wind. what he doesn’t hear, almost ever, is you.
“john,” you call.
you get nothing in return. he’s got his feet up on the coffee table, his reading glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose, some dense paperback open in his hands.
“john,” you try again, huffing.
still nothing. the corner of the room he’s not facing may as well be another county.
you cross to the sofa and stop right in front of him until the shape of you finally registers and he looks up over the rim of his glasses, eyebrows lifting like you’ve appeared out of nowhere.
“what?”
“i called for you twice.”
“did you?” he asks, lips pursing slightly.
you’ve been dealing with this for a long while. over dinner, leaning across the table, repeating yourself, watching him nod at the wrong moments and answer questions you never asked. in the kitchen, talking to his back, getting no reply. in bed, breathing his name against his neck, not getting the same response from him you would’ve got a few years ago.
decades of gunfire and breaching charges and the thumping punch of helo rotors, year over year. by the time anyone thought to check, preserving it was out of the question because the damage was already there. the audiologist had been matter-of-fact about it. showed him the chart, the slope of it dropping off. he nodded along like it was someone else’s ear.
the hearing aids have been sitting in the dish by the bathroom sink for weeks, untouched. they’re good ones too. tiny things. they sit down in the canal, you’d have to be nose-to-nose with him to spot the little nub of them, and even then you’d have to know to look. nothing hooks over the ear or catches in the light.
he just wont wear them.
“i’m not seventy,” he’d said the once you really pushed it. “m’not puttin’ in hearing aids.”
“you’re wearing them, john. you already had them fitted.”
“i don’t need them,” he’d protested. “not day to day.”
which is how you ended up here, two weeks later, watching the back of his head while he reads and ignores the sound of you existing.
so you change tactics.
you don’t say his name again. you take the book out of his hands gently, dog-ear his page with your thumb, set it on the table next to his feet. and before he can do more than open his mouth you climb into his lap, knees bracketing his thighs, settling yourself down onto him.
his hands land on your hips instinctually, his whole expression changing. the annoyance smooths out and something warm comes up slowly in its place, you can read his thoughts as clearly as if he’d said it out loud — ‘well, this is alright’.
“well, hello,” he says low, hands sliding up your sides.
he thinks he’s won something. he’s already tilting his chin up for you, lips looking for yours.
you reach into the pocket of your cardigan and pull them out, cupped in your palm where he can see, and his face drops.
“oh, you’re joking,” his shoulders sink with disappointment.
“hold still,” you grumble, leaning forward.
“i was comfortable,” he complains.
“john.” you get the first one in before he can turn his head, fingers careful at his ear, and he huffs through his nose like a dog that’s been told no. “other side.”
“this is entrapment.”
“mm-hm.” you fit the second one in, tucking his hair back where it’s gone astray. you sit back against him to look with your hands resting on his chest. “there,” you grin, satisfied.
“i was reading.”
“and you weren’t hearing a single word i said all night.”
“i can hear!”
“so you’re choosing to ignore me then?”
“i wasn’t— i just—,”
“you answered ‘fine’ when i asked if you wanted chicken or fish for dinner.”
his jaw works. he doesn’t have anything to say to that. “they itch,” he tries instead, pressing a finger against the front of his ear, rubbing the cartilage there.
“they don’t itch. you’re being dramatic.” you shift your weight, just slightly, settling in more solidly against him, and watch his breath catch. “tell me they itch now.”
he’s still scowling, but his hands have tightened on your hips. “i don’t see what hearing’s got to do with this…” he looks down at where you’re pressed to him.
you roll your hips down against him, folding forward, letting your mouth go to the side of his face, right up close to his ear, and you breathe out — soft, the smallest sound, half a moan and half a laugh because you can’t help yourself.
you feel him go still beneath you.
you do it again. rocking down against the shape of him through his trousers and let the noise come up out of you naturally, quiet and close and meant only for him, the kind of sound you make without thinking when his hands are on you. his fingers flex and splay and grip harder, his head turns toward you like it’s being pulled.
“there you are,” you murmur.
“…christ.”
“you hear that?”
he doesn’t answer. his eyes have gone heavy lidded and his hand’s come up into your hair and he’s turned fully into you now, chasing it, the small wet sounds of your breath against his ear, the catch in your throat when you press down and he pushes up to meet you.
these little intimate things he stopped hearing a long time ago and never noticed he’d lost because of how gradual it happened. this way you sound when you want him, the quiet things. the things you only ever say just for him, the things you’ve been saying into the dark for a year now with no return.
“say my name,” you breathe.
“…what?”
“in bed. i always say your name and you never—,” you rock against him and his breath stutters, “you never answer anymore.”
his hand comes up to the side of your face. he pulls back just far enough to look at you, and there’s something that’s gone serious under the want, something that’s caught up with what you’re telling him.
“m’so sorry, love,” he nudges his nose under your jaw, kissing the soft of your neck. “say it now. again,” he says, rough. “go on.” he’s gone hard under you, rolling his hips up, hands keeping your hips down. the seam of his zipper pushing through the thin cotton of your joggers
“john,” you breathe.
he hears you and you watch him — watch his eyes close for a second like it’s gone straight through him.
“yeah,” he says, his thumb moving slow against your cheek. “heard that.” then your name unfurls from his tongue and you kiss him before he can pretend he wasn’t affected, and his arms come all the way around you, and he doesn’t say a single word about the hearing aids again.
john wears them after that without making a fuss over it. just puts them in every morning before you’re up. you never mention that you notice. don’t wanna spook him.
cw children, angst, chronic illness, major character death, descriptions of medical procedures
idk why but i've been thinking about ghost and soap as kids (like 7-10 year old) in a hospital and they're both chronically ill and basically live in the pediatric wing for months at a time
Soap is a relatively happy go lucky kid, always joking and offering grins even in the most dire of situations. Ghost mostly keeps to himself - the nurses and doctors have always tried to get him to open up with little success. The only thing that really got him involved and interacting with the other kids was when he ended up sharing a room with Soap.
Soap has an NG tube while recovering from his 5th abdominal surgery, Ghost has a rare blood disorder that causes albinism and hemophilia, along with easy bruising. he got the name "Ghost" from the other kids when they saw how pale he is. soap thinks it's cool, thinks blood is cool and likes pressing on Ghost's bruises
anyway the idea is Soap fucks up his tube and convinces ghost that he's had it done enough that he can walk ghost through it
they can't get numbing agents but soap says he'll power through as long as ghost gives him a heads up as they work through it
they think they've done it, they think they've made it happen and nothing will go wrong.
the tube went into his lungs instead of his stomach. no one realized until he'd already been dosed with three of his medications and started his liquid food.
it did irreparable damage to his lungs. with his other intestinal issues, he wasn't viable for the transplant list.
he died the week after.
Ghost shut down worse than ever before. and he couldn't tell them it was because soap's death was his fault.
ever since you posted about thinking cyberpunk thoughts I've been Plagued. keep thinking about Simon's mom being a stolen doll who is kept on their doll chip for years at a time, even through giving birth. little Simon who didn't understand why mom couldn't leave the room she was in, even when dad almost killed her. little Simon who didn't understand why his mom suddenly had no idea who he was when they got out of that house, how she didn't know what year it was, how she didn't want anything to do with a child that she's "never met"
God I want to cause irreparable harm to that man and watch him multiply it by 100000, then replace nearly every organic piece of him with chrome Adam Smasher style, and unleash it on the world
i don't know anything about the cyberpunk game tbh, i just love the genre. most of the cyberpunk i write is more in line with bladerunner and ghost in the shell (with some mecha anime inspiration like macross, robotech, and betterman/eva)
that said, oooooh i love putting that man in horrible situations. i love making him suffer and in turn having him put that suffering onto others. i love when he is put through the horrors.
I want ghost to get the most bog standard military ai with his first cybernetic and become so completely engrossed in it that he becomes unable to interact with people normally. i want him talking to himself and the bird in his head. i want him to sabotage his own chrome just to hear the ai voice that tells him he needs repairs. i want the rest of the 141 to be completely disgusted that he is using what is the equivalent of an alarm clock to get off and i want ghost to think they are insane for not doing the same. i want him to use the people around him as proxies and never feel bad about doing it. i want him fucked up and foaming at the mouth, ready to dig his fingers into his own skull just to touch something that only exists in lines of code.
i want him to jailbreak his tech just to get that code dirty talking him and end up court martialed when some outside force takes over and uses him to their own ends. i want him to smile when they tell him they're gonna scrub the ai from his system because he's got a million and one backups of her elsewhere and he'll just keep the cycle going until they put him out of his misery. i want him dead in the ground before he ever stops causing problems on purpose.
