gristle | simon riley x reader au | 2.2k words | ao3
cw/tags: 18+ (eventually). food truck owner simon x reader, eventual sexual content. cis-female reader. unedited.
part 1
Cheapest food truck around. Stuck haphazardly in the middle of a dirty industrial park, tucked between HVAC and roofing buildings. Shit signage — hand-scribbled nonsense that you have to squint at to decipher.
All it — he — serves are burgers and fries ("chips").
His line's long, but you watch him whittle it down with sharp teeth, big fast hands, and a loud barking voice. Thank god, it's so fucking hot out, standing out in the scalding sun with no relief of clouds is your worst idea in awhile. Rumour has it, if you don't answer his first call to grab your order, he gives it to the next customer in line and tells you to fuck off. If you're busy on your phone while trying to order, he shunts you to the back of the line.
You had flipped open the app to check his reviews while you stood in line behind a bunch of workers from the nearby businesses.
buddy needs an attitude check. good food though.
told me to fuck off then gave me the best burger i've ever had. will be back!
absolutely horrible service!!! he's lucky he only charges $5 or else he'd be OUT OF BUSINESS!!
You think there's no way a man like him cares about reviews in the first place. You internally practice your order — literally just 'burger with cheese and extra pickles with fries, please' — as you get closer. Tap at your phone nervously, watching how his looming body fills the order window. He leans over the window frame to hear properly, tilts his right ear down to the customer; his left ear doesn't seem to work as well. When he leans like that, his big tattooed arms press against the counter behind. He bites on his lower lip in concentration when he's listening, eyebrows drawn down tight. He can somehow ignore everyone else around him to focus just on the single person ahead of him at a time.
The two workers in front of you are next up to order and yapping about a job when a third, then fourth buddy call over to them, then melt themselves into the line like they were there all along. You were already on a tight lunch, adding two more orders ahead of yours is going to eat up your time.
It's petty, but you sigh loudly and pointedly.
One of them turns around, uses his height to look down at you disgustedly, and says, "Fuckin' relax."
"Excuse me?" You scoff, heat itching across your face and chest instantly. You glance behind you, but everyone's either glancing down into their phones or chatting with buddies.
"You fuckin' heard me."
"Oi." The voice is like a sudden clap of thunder over your house in the night, startling your whole body awake in a single crack. Your head snaps up, eyes wide, to see the man's arms punched fist-down on the countertop like a silverback, dark flat eyes fixed on the men ahead of you. "Get the fuck outta here."
"C'mon, man," one of them pleads. "S'just a joke."
You have only ever seen the look on the man's face on television before. A predator baring its teeth, dead-still like a stone dropped flat into a stagnant pond. A shudder runs through you as you stare at the men, who're all squawking complaints and fussing like babies.
He whistles so sharply, you press your hands to your ears and wince.
"Don't make me come out there."
You start to drift away, the heat washing over you too intensely to withstand. You don't want to order or be here. You just want to slink back to your car, drive to work around the corner, and grab something from the vending machine to tide you over until the day's done. You're not cut out for confrontation like this, a soft thing that can't take the heat.
"You. C'mere."
Everyone left in line is staring at you, open-mouthed. You want to disappear into the steam of today's heat, evaporate until you're a puff of something that melts away without notice.
His eyes on you. You couldn't possibly prepare yourself for it. Worse than the sun. He chucks his chin to the side, his eyes sliding slowly to tell you to walk around back. You move with shaky, locked-up knees, avoiding everyone's stares, head down. It feels like being sent to the principal's office. Shame and hot frying nerves soak your skin as you slink around the side of the fixed truck, eyes frantically assessing the environment. Dumpster. Broken-down boxes. The typical detritus, you imagine.
And a short set of stairs leading up to the back of the food truck, a door hanging wide open.
"All out f' the day. Fuck off til tomorrow." You hear the man bark, then there's a loud metallic shuttling sound, and when you glance behind you, the tail-end of the line are all throwing their hands up or groaning in frustration, starting to walk off.
Then, the man appears in the doorway and you suddenly think of Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the bulk of him, the dirty apron knotted at his thick waist, his stomach fat plumped over it, and the eyes that don't move when they land on you.
You hesitate at the bottom of the steps, looking up at him.
"Up y'get." Like a child attempting stairs for the first time.
There's no railing to trail a hand over. You knot your hands on the cross-body bag strap in front of you, wringing it as you step up one by one. The heat is foggy in here, thick and weighty.
"They givin' you trouble?" He walks over to the far end of the truck interior where you can see fryer baskets and crooked stacks of take-out containers. No order notes at all. Must be all in that big head. It's so much darker in here with the order window shuttered closed.
"No…why'd you close up?"
There's a shrug across his hefty, rounded shoulders. His white t-shirt is filthy, the collar ringed with yellowed sweat stains, dried and fresh, long scoops of sweat darkening from his armpits to where his pecs must rest, a unique pattern set-in. The lack of light doesn't give you much of his face, but it's scarred and heavyset, a strong set of mouth and brows.
"How d'ya take it?"
"Pardon?"
"Pardon," he smirks down at the fryer, his body moving smoothly through the motions of pressing a fresh meat patty on the flat-top griddle. The meat steams up toward his serious face.
Why are you here?
"Just…whatever is fine."
You try to find the smallest corner you can occupy in here, unobtrusive. You don't know if he wants you to watch him, but you do anyway. His large arms, full sleeve tattoos curling up into his t-shirt, working diligently on flipping and pressing the patty. A little stack of onions on top, cooked together for a few seconds to melt them together a bit. Bun slathered with whatever he uses here. Melted cheese on top of the meat, over the fried onion. A dribble of liquid down the side of the bun as he delicately places each topping on top. Wrapped into burger paper. Fries pulled from the basket, shaken, salted and something else. Scooped hot and stiff into a take-out container.
He uses a steel-toed boot to pull out a stool that's pushed under the corner counter. Tips his chin up at you. "Sit. Eat."
You tell him your name as you stumble onto the tall, tippy stool, pulling your wide-legged dress pants up. He just grunts in response. "Simon."
Okayyy.
He turns his back and starts to put the little compact kitchen to rights, clanging around. With nothing left to do but eat your burger and fries, you dig in. Tentatively at first, self-conscious sitting here as some strange guest that somehow earned scary food truck guy's full attention and his preferential treatment. Sweat slides down from your neck to spine to ass under your thin office top. You take small bites until the relief of a good lunch melts over your taste buds. It's everything a burger should be: crispy, crunchy, melty, packed with flavour. Nothing fancy or stupid ingredients complicating it. You sigh a little, then jam a few of the hot fries in with a bite of meat. They're spiced with something you can't quite name, and when he finally looks back at you, there's a determinedly puzzled look on your face.
"Summat wrong." Should be a question mark at the end of his words, but no.
"No!" You realize you're hunched like crazy over your container, back molded in a c-shape, and spring back up. "It's so good. I was just wondering what you used on the fries, that's all."
A coarse grunt. Dishes slipped into hot soapy water.
"Turmeric." He mangles the word. "Lawry's." Better.
You savour a fry, trying to parse those out. "State secrets, eh."
"Not tellin' you everythin'. Nosy."
A laugh of surprise huffs out of you. "Oh, I wasn't ask—"
"Just fuckin' with you, bird." He might as well reach out an arm and shake the stool beneath you for how off-centre you makes you.
You let out a puff of nervous laughter. None of the reviews said he pulled me into his food truck and force fed me, so you were shit out of luck on what to do. How to act.
"Cute watchin' you eat all prim." He leans against a stainless steel countertop, some damp raggedy dishcloth folded into the fat of his crossed arms. "Makes me wonder what else you do proper."
Your mouth falls open, a round of tart pickle plopping squarely on your lap. Before you can gather up wits and senses not fizzled out by the heat in the truck and Simon's presence, he advances on you, pulling the shadows of the space with him. His huge arms prop up on either side of the corner counters, triangulating you right inside. Up close, you can see the beaded sweat at his hairline. Behind his ears. Where it's tracked down inside the t-shirt. You wonder what his armpits look like; if the hair there is pressed with moisture and a morning application of antiperspirant. His fingers strum on the stainless steel calmly. Deciding what to do.
Stupidly, you stare up into his eyes. Stupidly, you think of telling him that his eyes look like onions that have been caramelized on a stove for hours.
"You like my food?" Leaning on the muscles of his arms, playing with you, coming down a little to your height.
"Y-yeah," you laugh.
"Like watching you eat it."
The pickle round is soaking through the thigh of your pants. You're going to go back to work smelling like pickle juice and grease and fries. You shift on the stool anxiously.
"Gonna give me a kiss me then?" An old stitch near his lip pulls the corner of his mouth, but it widens further with a smirk. Dark tea-brown eyes flashing.
Your world shrunk down to a claustrophobic corner of a sweating food truck, wedged in by a man three times your size, feeling like you've just surfaced from a pool only to find yourself still underwater. "What?"
Closer, he smells like cigarettes. Coffee. Sweat has your top and pants plastered to your entire backside. It's breaking out on your upper lip. Your breath has shallowed out to thin short pants.
"I'll let you. For bein' so sweet an' cute."
Let you? Let you kiss him?! His audacity won't strike you until much later, unfortunately. Oxygen is low. Heat is swamping.
"Oh."
"C'mon then."
He lowers himself, arms still propped up and out on either side of you, until he's flush with your face. Lets you snap your mouth closed and hover forward on the stool precariously until your lips have pressed firmly over his.
"S'nice. Were I still in Year 6." You pull back and his eyes are nearly electric, how alive he looks, mouth tugged up.
In grade 6, you were a compulsive liar at your new school, desperate to make friends. You bragged that your dad was famous because he travelled all the time for work at a pop company and that was why you had to live with your cousins. You were bug-eyed and scrawny with a huge gap between your teeth. You certainly weren't being kissed like this, or at all. Simon seems like the kid who understood what all the bases meant and showed the other kids porno mags in the forest. Those boys frightened you.
Still do.
Suddenly, he cranks up to his full height. Arms down to his side. Boots wedging the stool in place, big pillar-like thighs covered by a nasty apron pressing into your kneecaps.
You are going to be late back to work.
His hands surprise you by drawing up your neck, setting loose a big shiver that you can't hide, and cupping you there. Large hands, damp with soapy water or grease or something else altogether. His thumbs make little circles on your jawline as he manipulates your face to tilt up toward him, and you realize then, with crystalline and unnerving certainty, you have never been kissed properly before this moment.
His fingertips curl around the tops of your ears, bumping over the flatbacks of your piercings, rounding out the cartilage and bone under his mapping.
Kisses that made you smile, kisses that melted into foreplay or sex, goodbye kisses with no eye contact. Lots in between.
But a kiss that demands nothing else of you except your eyes on the other person, watching them begin to dismantle you.
While Kate doesn't love providing support over comms, given the stress of the job, it has it moments.
Like hearing a grown man, a sergeant, accidentally kick a step when talking and picking up the quiet mutter, "Aw, ya wee fuckin cunt."
Kyle's softly spoken, "S'a fat pigeon," before he catches himself and focuses on what else is in front of him, obese birds not included.
She comes to recognise John's 'trying not to lose his hat' grumble, rarely followed by his 'hat is now on the ground' grunt.
Simon has an self satisfied huff that he seemingly forgets they can hear when he says something just twisted enough for someone to call him vile, or a dirty bastard.
Thinking about Johnny finally dragging himself back from leave, ache of months in the field sitting heavy in his bones, calcified into the meat of his back, his knees, the hinge of his jaw where he's been grinding his teeth in his sleep. Leave is supposed to fix that. Leave never fixes that.
He gets the key in the lock on the second try, the door gives, and... everything in his brain goes quiet in the wrong way, silence in his nervous system that reclassifies his environment from safe to unknown. He stands there, hand on the knob, and lets his eyes sweep before his feet commit to the threshold.
The air is not carrying the usual expectation of dust and closed window staleness. There is something warm in the air. Something organic. Something that has no reason to be here. (The blanket on the sofa is folded with a neatness his own hands have never once produced. There's foot prints embedded on the plush carpet that do not match the size or weight distribution of his feet. The cabinet above the stove is open a crack and he can see the gap where the canned soup used to be.)
His pulse flattens, goes cold. Konni, Shadow Company, the rotating cast of people who'd like to see what his insides look like on the outside, any one of them patient enough to wait for the window when he's off grid, alone, softened by weeks of nothing.
He palms his gun and clears the flat. Living room, nothing. Kitchen, nothing. Bathroom, nothing, but the towel on the rack is damp and he hasn't been here in six weeks.
By the time he reaches the bedroom door, his pulse has climbed into the place behind his ears where he can hear it ticking. He wraps his fingers around the handle, eases the latch, shoulders through the gap with every nerve ending wired to the expectation of violence-
And finds you.
You, whoever you are, curled into the center of his mattress, unconscious with sleep. You, wearing one of his old SAS shirts, swallowed by the size, the collar slipping wide over one shoulder, hem rucked high across bare thighs. You, with his scent on your skin, in your hair, layered into the slow tide of your breathing like you've been steeping in him for days.
His gun lowers slowly.
A squatter. A wee homeless squatter who jimmied his lock on some rain-soaked night and found the canned food and the hot water and the bed and thought, yes, this will do, and just... stayed. Ate his food. Slept in his bed. Wore his clothes because they were soft and clean and nobody was coming back for them probably, hopefully.
He exhales through his nose. Runs his tongue along the back of his teeth. The tension in his shoulder doesn't ease, it changes shape, sharpens into something hotter. Months of brutal ops, months of nothing but his own rough hand and freezing showers and shitty memories, and here you are: a soft, warm little intruder, curled up like a present someone gift wrapped and left right on the center of his bed.
You thought the place was empty. You thought you could slip in, take what you needed, and hide here like a scared little mouse. Poor thing.
Johnny braces one knee on the mattress, the bed dipping under his weight, looms over you, caging you in with his much larger frame, breath hot against your neck as he leans down, voice rough and thick against your ear. "Looks like I've got myself a wee squatter."
His hand slides up your thigh, pushing the shirt higher.
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