Inspired by this lovely bit @silverlullabies gifted us.
Omega!reader who accepted a long time ago that their scent is disgusting because it reminds people of blood and gunpowder.
It might have been acceptable for an alpha but not for an omega. How would you ever be able to soothe your pups with this kind of violent scent? Nothing sweet or calming about you. You had to wear blockers from a young age because your scent was disturbing for others. When you entered the military you quickly learned that you could cause flashbacks with your scent and it had been used against prisoners more than once until you couldn't take it anymore. It left you broken in ways you didn't even fully understand, all you knew was that alphas either found you disgusting, disturbing or they were panicking, because all their instincts screamed 'wounded omega' once they got so much as a whiff of you.
You adapted. Scent blockers and suppressants, special mandatory leave once a year to go through a heat, so you could avoid long term affects on your health. Although you hoped secretly that your body would finally give up the craving for a mate and pups. You would never have that and you found it ridiculous to keep pretending otherwise.
So you grow cold. They call you ice princess. You don't object. You learn to use your scent like a weapon, a tool. Best decoy on the field to lure the enemy to the injured omega, only to find a deadly surprise. Easy to slip into shelters and hospitals. You are very specialised and the professional praise you get has to be enough to feed your twisted omega side.
When you join a mission with the 141 you don't expect it to be any different. You tell them they don't need to know your scent, but they insist, so they know what to prepare for and not get confused. Fair enough.
And of course you are not surprised by the looks of pity and sadness Gaz and Soap give you when they realise the reason why you use the thick patches and never participate in friendly scenting
What you are absolutely unprepared for is the way Ghost takes a deep breath, then another and then growls when Price calls him back. He doesn't move. Instead he grabs you, holds you close and presses his nose to your scent glands like an addict.
And you have no idea what to do because you can feel his length and a knot building, pressed against your hip. Hands that hold you but in a way that feels protective. And your brain screaming alpha alpha alpha at you.
cw: 18+ interrupted smut (safe word). Soapghostgaz. Dom!gaz. Sub!ghost. spanking. Dom drop. Implied "self"-harm/seeking punishment? Ghost withholding communication. Writing a threesome is hard :///
this is for the nonny that wanted one of the guys/reader seeking self-harm thru sex and idkkkk if I did it... goodly so I'm keeping ur ask in case I try again...
Simon lay stretched across both their laps. Head in Johnny's, hips and thighs settled over Kyle's, the rest of him draped between the two of them, boneless and theirs. Johnny hands cradled his skull, fingers threaded loose through damp hair, thumbs tracing slow circles at his temples. Simon's eyes were closed. His mouth was open. He'd stopped forming full words some time ago, the occasional broken pleas between moans.
Kyle's hand came down again, and Simon felt a jolt through his spine, a sob that cracked in his thraot, hips pressing up for more. His skin was flushed red and oversensitive. He was crying steadily now, tears running sideways across the bridge of his nose into Johnny's jeans.
It was the good kind. It had to be, Kyle knew that sound well by now, knew the particular pitch of Simon coming apart. So he kept going, unhurried, each strike timed just off enough to keep Simon guessing, one hand braced flat on Simon's lower back. Watching for his small tells, the flex and release of muscle, the way his fingers curled into the sheets and then went lax again.
"Good," Kyle murmured, and brought his hand down once more. "So good for me. Nearly there."
Simon groaned, a half-hearted attempt at holding back a whimper. His whole body shuddered with it.
Johnny stroked a thumb along his hairline, bent down to speak against his ear. "Doing so well, Si. Look at you." He could feel Simon's pulse going hard and fast against his palm, feel each breath catch when another landed.
Kyle's hand paused, resting flat. Kneading he's thumb over Simon's skin. Simon pushed back into it, seeking more.
Kyle brought his hand down again and Simon's crying broke open.
It was quieter, a choked, almost panicked thing swallowed down and dragging it's way out. His fingers went white-knuckled in the sheet.
"āsorry," he gasped, into Johnny's lap, barely audible. "'M sorry, I'm sorry, Iā"
"Nothing to be sorry for, love." Kyle said. But he could see the pain coiling through Simon a different kind. Bracing instead of just open. His hand stayed against Simon's ass a beat longer.
"NoāI know," Simon's voice shook, "I know I deserve..." He trailed off.
Kyle's hand stopped.
For a moment nothing in the room moved. Simon's breath hitched and stuttered against Johnny's thigh, and Johnny's hands went very still in Simon's hair, feeling the tension travel up through Simon's neck.
Kyle moved his hand slowly, resting on the back of Simon's thight. The focus that had been there a moment ago was gone. Johnny caught just the edge of the change, it looked closer to fear now. The look of a man realizing his hands might have done something he never meant them to.
"Red," Johnny said, before anyone else could speak. "No more."
Simon flinched at the word and shoved himself upright, off both their laps, trying to get his legs under him. "'M fine," he said, fast, thick, already reaching to swipe his face dry. "Don't needāI'm fine, we can keep going, justā"
Kyle's hands caught him before he made it further, one at his jaw, one at the side of his neck, refusing to let him get any further away.
Simon pulled against it. "Kyle. Kyleā"
Kyle didn't answer. His thumb moved along Simon's cheekbone, brushing at a track of tears that were still coming, and Simon went still for a second at the touch before starting to twist again, trying to duck out from under his hands.
"C'mon, don'tā" Simon's voice cracked. "Don't look at me like that, I said I'm fineā"
He got a shoulder free, tried to turn away, and then finally actually looked at Kyle. His eyes were wet, silently spilling over. Kyle wasn't saying anything at all. His brows furrowed in sadness, or maybe it was betrayal, Simon couldn't place. And he watched Simon with, almost pleading.
Simon stopped fighting.
His breath went out of him in a rush and he sagged forward, and Kyle caught him, pulled him in against his chest with both arms locked around him, face pressed into his hair. Simon's hands came up to fist in Kyle's shirt and he shook.
Kyle held on, jaw tight, eyes shut now, one hand splayed flat between Simon's shoulder blades and the other cradling the back of his head.
Johnny got up without a word, found the blanket folded at the foot of the bed, and brought it back to drape round the both of them. Then he sat close again and reached out and put his hand over Kyle's where it rested against Simon's back.
"'M just sayin', ladsāit's been a while." Johnny announces this to the table with the easy confidence of a man stating a fact, tipping his pint glass towards his two companions like he's presenting evidence.
He's freshly showered, smelling like that cedar body wash he's been using since rehab, and his mohawk is styled the way he only bothers with when he's feeling good enough to exert the kind of effort that signals intent.
"Define 'a while,'" Kyle says mildly, not looking up from his phone beneath the table.
"Months, mate. Fuckinā months." Johnny takes a long drink and scans the pub with the lazy, appreciative gaze of a man on the hunt. "I'm dryin' up over here. Witherin' on the vine. 'S embarrassin'."
"That's one word for it," Simon mutters into his whisky.
Kyle's thumb pauses on his phone screen. He doesn't look at Simon, and Simon doesn't look at him, but the silence between them is loaded with a practiced, wordless exchange refined over months of navigating nights exactly like this one.
Because Johnny has not, in fact, gone months without getting laid.
Johnny had sex with his wife four days ago. Kyle knows this because you'd texted the group chatāthe one Johnny doesn't know exists, one labelled "Ops" on Kyle's phone and "X" on Simon'sāto let them know Johnny was having a good week.
Remembering things. Sleeping through the night without nightmares. Being present.
Four days ago. And now he's sitting in a pub in Hereford telling his mates he's been in a drought, and his eyes are doing that thing they do when a bad episode is ramping up; brighter than usual, slightly too wide, running hot with a manic energy that looks like confidence if you don't know what you're looking at.
But Kyle knows what he's looking at.
He glances at Simon. Simon gives the smallest nodāa millimetre of movement, barely perceptibleāand Kyle opens the Ops chat beneath the table.
Bad night. Swan. Come when you can.
Swan is the code. You'd all agreed on it together in the early days, back when the episodes were frequent and terrifying and no one knew the rules yet. Swan means he doesn't know you. Pub means to come find him. Home means they'll bring him to you immediately.
Your reply comes seconds later as if youāve been bracing for it, which you have. Just in case.
Omw. 20 min. How bad?
Kyle replies,
Flirty. Scanning the room. Hasn't clocked it yet.
Three dots, then: Dress up or down?
Kyle looks at Johnny, who is now leaning back in his chair with his arms spread wide, grinning across the room, radiating the particular Scottish charm that made him dangerous in pubs long before the injury and wedding.
Up. He's in a good mood.
Three dots appear again, longer this time, and one simple word follows because Kyle hesitated sending it.
Hornyā¦
Got it.
He puts his phone away and picks up his pint casually. "So what's your type again, Johnny? Since you're on the pull tonight."
Johnny snorts, mumbling into his glass. "Ye know my type."
"Mm. Remind me."
"Funny. Smart," he takes a sip of his drink, smacks his lips while his eyes keep scanning, āCan handle her drink. Someone who doesnae take my shite." He pauses, something flickering behind his eyesāa shadow, there and gone again, like a cloud passing over the sun. "Someone who laughs at maā jokes even when they're rubbish and rides me like itās our last day on bloody earth." He grins; baby blueās gleaming mischievously.
Simon turns away to roll his eyes while Kyle's chest tightens but smiles anyway. "High bloody standards for a man with that fuckass haircut."
"Fuck off, Garrick. This haircut is iconic."
Simon says nothing. He drinks his whisky, watches the door, waits.
You arrive in eighteen minutes.
You're wearing the deep green dressāthe one Johnny told you made you look like "somethin' oot of a Bond film" on your second anniversary, the one you now keep in the back of the wardrobe now specifically for nights like this. Your hair is done. You're wearing the perfume he bought you three Christmases ago that he won't remember buying right now.
You pause outside the pub, sit in your car for thirty seconds, and breathe.
This is the seventh time. You know because you keep count, not physically, but in your body. In the specific way your hands shake when Kyle's text comes through while he is out with Johnny and the practiced steadiness you layer over it like gauze over a wound.
The first time was the worst. Two months post-injury, Johnny still in a neck brace, waking up in the hospital and looking at you with polite confusion and asking the nurse who you were. You'd made it to the corridor before your legs gave out, and Simon had caught you with one strong arm and no words, holding you upright against the wall while Price talked to the doctors and Kyle distracted Johnny.
You'd learned the rules since then. The triggers and early tells. The protocols. You'd built a systemāyou and his brothers in more than arms, the lot of you holding Johnny's world together like scaffolding around a building that keeps forgetting its own foundations.
On good days, Johnny knows you; he knows the house, the wedding photos, the way you take your tea. On those days, he calls you by the nickname only he uses and reaches for you in his sleep and laughs at the same terrible jokes he's been telling for years.
On bad days, you're a stranger.
Tonight is a bad day, even though it had started good initially. And sometimes that happens, too.
You check your reflection one more time; smooth the dress, tuck your wedding ring into your jacket pocket, because he can't see it yet, not until the timing is right, and you saunter into the pub, hips swaying.
You spot them immediately. Corner booth, usual spot. Kyle is facing the door, which means he sees you first, and his expression does a complicated thingārelief and grief and a non-verbal "Go on then, you've got this,"ābefore he schools it into easy neutrality.
Simon is beside him, facing away from the door now, though you know he clocked you the moment you walked in, always does. He can feel a change in a room's atmosphere the way other people feel a draft, and your presence has become one of the things he's attuned to, though he'd rather be waterboarded again than admit it.
And Johnny.
Johnny is mid-sentence, gesticulating with his pint, lit up and alive and devastating, and he hasn't seen you yet.
You order a drink at the bar. Gin and tonic. You position yourself where his sightline will catch you naturallyānot too close, not too obvious, like setting a lure and waiting for the current to do its work.
It barely takes a minute.
His gaze sweeps the room, passes over you, and snaps back. You watch it happen in your peripherals; the double-take, the slight parting of his naturally pouty lips, the way his entire body reorients towards you like a compass needle finding north.
"Ho-ly shite," he breathes, still staring. "Lads. Lads. Two o'clock."
Kyle makes a show of looking when his arm is being nudged repeatedly. "Yeah? Which one?"
"TheāAre ye blind?" He scoffs, offended on your behalf. "Her. Right there. At the bar."
"She's alright." Kyle shrugs, and the casualness of it is Oscar-worthy.
"Alright? She's fuckin'ā" Johnny runs a hand over his mohawk, a nervous tell he's had since he was a teenager and will probably have until he's ninety. "She's fuckin' gorgeous is what she is."
Simon lifts his glass. Takes a slow drink, sets it down deliberately.
"Go talk to her then," he says with a shrug, and his voice is perfectly flat, perfectly controlled, and if anyone at this table could hear the hairline fracture running through those five words, they'd understand something that Simon has long decided to take to his next grave, because he's watched this happen too many times now.
He's watched Johnny fall in love with you for the first time seven more times after the real one, the first time, and each time, he involuntarily catalogues the way Johnny looks at youāstunned and reverent, immediately and irrevocably goneāand files it beside the thing he keeps locked in the deepest, most fortified room in his chest cavity.
He doesn't want you instead of Johnny. That's not what this is. It's worse than that, and quieter, and it has no name because he refuses to give it one.
What he wants is to be someone who could be loved the way you love Johnny; he wants to understand what it feels like to be chosen over seven times by a brain that can't hold onto anything else.
What he desperately wantsāis to stop fucking wanting.
"Go on," Simon says again, when Johnny hesitates. "Before someone else does."
Johnny grins wider and slides out of the booth.
And he approaches you with more confidence than caution along with a smile that could talk its way out of an international incident.
"A'right?" He leans against the bar beside you with all his bulk, leaving just enough space for plausible deniability, and you almost laugh because it's exactly how he did it the first timeāthe real first timeāat a pub in Edinburgh six years ago.
"A'right," you reply, letting the corner of your mouth lift.
"Johnny." He extends his hand. "John MacTavish."
You take it. His palm is warm and rough and so achingly familiar that you have to swallow hard against the lump that rises in your throat.
And you give him your name in return; no surname, because hearing his own last name come out of your mouth would raise questions you're not ready to choreograph around yet.
"Can I buy ye a drink?" he asks casually, nodding at your gin and tonic. "Or are ye waitin' for someone?"
"I might be."
"Oh, aye?" His eyebrows lift, and the grin sharpens. "Lucky bloke."
Your lips purse. "Who says it's a bloke?"
He barks a genuine laugh and the sound of it hits you right in the sternum because it's the same laugh, it's always the same laugh, whether he knows you or not.
"Fair enough. Can I buy ye a drink while ye wait for whoever's lucky enough to have ye, then?"
You hold his gaze, eyes crinkling in the corners as you suppress a smile before you cave in. "Go on."
Johnny buys you a cocktail, then a water, and you let him.
He tells you he's militaryā"Aye, the kind ye cannae ask aboot, sorry, love"āand that he's recently recovered from an injury he's vague about; he points at his two mates sitting in the corner booth who are "Absolutely shite wingmen, don't even look at āem." And he tells you that you have the best laugh he's ever heard, and he says it with such disarming sincerity that you almost believe he's saying it for the first time.
He might be. That's the thing. To him, he is.
You tell him you're aāand you pause here, every time, because this is the part where you have to build a version of yourself that's close enough to the truth that you won't trip over the details but far enough from reality that he won't start connecting dots prematurely. You tell him what you do, where you live, staying vague, and you make him laugh, and his hand finds the small of your back at some point and stays there, warm and heavy through the dress, and you let it because it belongs there.
At the booth, Kyle is watching with the practiced eye of a director monitoring a scene he's staged before. He tracks the beatsāthe body language closing in, the first touch, the moment Johnny leans down to hear you over the music and stays closeāand he nods to himself, satisfied with the outcome.
Simon is staring at the table. His glass is empty. He doesn't order another.
"He's doing well tonight," Kyle says quietly, because someone should break the silence, and Simon sure won't.
Simon nods, not lifting his eyes from the sticky surface. "He always does well with āer."
The sentence hangs between them. Kyle looks at Simon and sees something in the set of his Lieutenant's jaw that he files away and will never, ever mention aloud.
"You good, LT?"
"Fine."
He's not fine. Kyle knows, but he chooses not to push it.
Johnny drives you home after assuring you he only had two pints.
This is the part that always makes your chest tightenāthe navigation and logistics of getting him into his own house without it feeling like a trap. You give him directions, turn by turn, and he follows them cheerfully, one hand on the wheel of your car (his car, technically; the one you drove to the pub) and the other on your thigh, thumb tracing idle patterns on your skin.
"Nice neighbourhood," he remarks as you turn onto the street. His street. Your street.
"It's alright," you manage, and your voice is steady, which is a miracle.
He pulls into the driveway and kills the engine, and you watch his eyes move over the front of the house; over the garden you maintain together, the blue door he painted last spring during a particularly good month, the porch light that you left on tonight because you knew you'd be bringing him home.
"Lovely place," he says, and there's nothing in his voice but genuine appreciation, no recognition, no alarm, and the absence of it is a knife you've learned to hold without flinching.
"Come inside then," you tell him, and he grins genuinely. "Thought ye'd never ask."
The front door is where it starts getting tricky.
His boots are by the mat. Not a guest's bootsāhis boots, broken in and muddy, sitting beside a pair of your trainers in the easy domesticity of a shared household. Johnny glances down at them, and you see the first flicker; not quite recognition yet, just a stutter, a brief glitch in the narrative he's been building all evening.
"Those areā" he starts, then stops, and shakes his head. "Those look like mine."
He lets out a short laugh, but there's an edge to it. A hesitation. His eyes move from the boots to you, narrowing playfully, but you can see the question forming underneath.
"Ye're not married, are ye?" He asks it like a joke, but his gaze drops to your left handāstill bare, ring safely tucked in your jacket pocketāand then sweeps back to the boots. "Because I'm no' that kind of bloke, love. I donāt do that."
"I'm not married," you lie, and it tastes like glass shards in your mouth.
"Good." The grin returns full force, satisfied, and he reaches for your waist again. "'Cause I'd hate to have to fight some poor bastard for ye."
He moves on, pulling you towards him, and you let out a breath you were holding. Then he pauses, looks down at his own left hand, still resting on your hip, and you watch his brow furrow.
"What theā" He lifts his hand, turning it in the dim hallway light. The gold band sits on his ring finger, catching the glow from the porch light through the glass panel in the door. He stares at it like it appeared there by magic, and you always wonder if he only notices it at this point, because some part in his brain does recognize the terrain subconsciously.
"When did Iā" He touches the ring with his other thumb, turning it as he mutters. "I don'tāWhy am I wearin' aā"
"Johnny," you say softly, and take his hand, folding your fingers over his. "Come to the bedroom with me."
He looks at the ring, then at you. The furrow deepens, but the panic hasn't arrived yetājust confusion surfacing, sitting like sediment at the bottom of a glass that hasn't been stirred yet.
"Aye," he says slowly, nodding. "Aye, alright."
The hallway is next.
You've learned to control the environmentācertain photos stay up because removing them would make the house feel wrong, and a wrong-feeling house agitates him in ways that are harder to manage than the photos themselves. The wedding portrait stays on the wall at the end of the corridor, but the hallway lighting is dim enough that it doesn't register unless he's looking for it.
He's not looking at anything but you; one hand finding your waist as you move through the darkened house, his mouth is close to your ear.
"Ye smell incredible," he murmurs, nose brushing through your hair. "Been thinkin' aboot this all night."
You chuckle softly with a knot in your chest. "Have you?"
"Since the second I saw ye in that pub." His grip tightens, pulling you back against him, and his lips find the side of your neck. "Couldn't think about anythin' else."
You lean into him; let him hold you and his hands wander over the fabric of your dress while his mouth traces a warm, open path along your throat.
"Bedroom?" you whisper.
"Christ, yes."
You lead him by the hand. Down the hall, past the closed door of the bathroom where his toothbrush sits in the holder beside yours and the spare room where Simon once slept on the floor for three days during a particularly bad episode because he refused to leave either of you alone to deal with it and refused a bed on top of it.
The bedroom.
You open the door and let him walk in first, which is a deliberate choiceāit lets you watch his face as the room registers. The king-sized bed you share. The nightstand with his book on it, dog-eared and half-read. Your wardrobe, open slightly, his fatigues visible on the shelf beside your clothes.
And on the dresser, in a simple frameāa photograph. Not the wedding portrait. A smaller, candid snapshot. Him and you, laughing at something you donāt even remember off-camera, his arm around your shoulders, your face turned into his chest. Kyle took it at a barbecue over eighteen months ago, back when things were still normal, back before the world broke.
And because his vigilance training is seared somewhere deeper into his brain, Johnny sees the photograph first.
He goes still. Not the easy stillness of before, but tighter and alert. The stillness of a soldier who's walked into a room and sensed that the intel doesn't match the terrain.
"Whatā" He drops your hand and crosses to the dresser to pick up the frame without asking. His brow furrows deeper while his thumb traces the edge of it.
"That's me," he says slowly.
Your stomach drops; you stay back, swallowing hard. "Yes."
"That'sā" He looks at you. Back at the photo, then back at you. His breathing changes, shallow and faster now, and you can see the confusion calcifying into something harder, edged with the beginning of panic.
"Why is there a fuckinā photo of me in yer house?"
"Johnnyā"
"Why are my fuckinā things here?" He's turning now, scanning the room with fresh eyes, and you watch the details hit him one by oneāthe boots downstairs, the book on the nightstand, the fatigues in the wardrobe. His toothbrush. His cologne on the bathroom shelf. The indent on his side of the bed.
"What the fuck is this?!" His voice pitches up and his chest is heaving, and you recognise the spiral; the moment the ground drops out from under him, and he can't find the edges of what is real. "Who the fuck are ye? WhatāWhy do ye haveā"
"Johnny." You step towards him, hands raised, palms open, the way you'd approach a wounded animal. The way the counsellor taught you. "Johnny, listen to my voice."
"Don't fuckin'ā" He backs away and bumps into the dresser, and the frame rattles, and his hands are shaking. "Tell me what's goin' on. Now!"
"You live here," you say carefully, evenly. "This is your house. Our house."
"No. No, I've got a flat, I've gotā"
Your expression drops to something pained yet soft. "You don't have a flat, sweetheart. You haven't had a flat in three years. You live here. With me."
He stares at you. His jaw is working, his fists are clenched at his sides, and his eyes are wild with the terror of a man whose own mind has suddenly become enemy territory.
"We're married, Johnny." You keep your voice steady and warm. You don't move closer yet, but you produce your own wedding band from your pocket and slip it on deliberately, matching his. "Three years. We got married at your mum's church in Glasgow, and you cried during the vows, and Kyle was your best man and he cried even harder."
Something flickers. Not memory, not quite yet, but a tremor, a fault line opening in the panic.
"Kyleā" he repeats, and his voice cracks on the name.
You nod enthusiastically. "Kyle Garrick. Gaz. Your best mate. He was at the pub tonight. So was Simon."
His blue eyes widen and flicker to meet yours. "Simonā¦"
"Ghost. Your Lieutenant. Tall, angry, won't take his mask off. He's probably sitting in his car outside right now making sure you got home safe, because that's what he does."
Johnny's breathing is ragged. His eyes are darting around the room, and you can see him trying to force the pieces together, grasping for edges that won't line up.
"I don'tā" His voice breaks. "I don't remember."
Your heart breaks all over again; hands clenching and unclenching at your sides while you suppress the reflex to reach for him.
"I know."
"Why don't I remember?"
You sigh and your shoulders drop with it. "Because you were hurt. On a mission, ten months ago. You were shot, Johnny. In the head."
His hand moves before he's conscious of itāfingers lifting to his temple, searching, and you watch the exact moment they find it. The ridge of scar tissue above his left ear and temple, healed but tight, a furrow carved into the skin where the bullet grazed bone instead of passing through it.
He should be dead. The doctors said so. Kyle said so. Simon said so, once, in the kitchen at one a.m., in a voice so flat it sounded like a weather report. He should be dead. The bullet was two millimetres from killing him.
Two millimetres. The width of a pencil lead. The margin between a funeral and a life that keeps resetting.
Johnny's fingers trace the scar slowly, mapping the terrain of a wound he doesn't remember receiving. His face goes blank, not calm, but emptied, like the shock has pushed everything else out to make room for this one impossible fact.
"I was shot in the head," he repeats, toneless.
"By a man named Makarov. On a mission in," you sigh again, rubbing both hands over your face before regaining some composure. "It doesn't matter where. What matters is you survived, Johnny. You're hereā¦ With me."
"I don'tā" His fingers press harder against the scar, like he's trying to push through it into the memory underneath. "I can't feelāIt doesn't hurt."
"It pulls sometimes. When you're tired, or when the weather changes. You rub at it without realising. And then you ask me to put Bepanthen on it for you."
He drops his hand. Stares at it like it belongs to someone else.
A sound comes out of him that you've heard before and will never get used toāa small, gutted noise from deep in his throat, barely human, like something being torn at the root.
His gaze lifts. "I forget you?"
"Sometimes." Your voice is steady, but your eyes are not. "But you always come back. Every time, Johnny. You always come back."
He's staring at you with an expression that is no longer panic but something rawer, more exposed. The look of a man standing in the wreckage of a life he can't remember building and trying to find anything solid enough to hold on to.
"Come here," you say softly, finally, and you open your arms to him.
And Johnny doesnāt hesitate. He crosses the room in two strides and crashes into you.
His arms wrap around you so tightly it hurts, his face burying into the crook of your neck, and the ragged, broken sound he makes fills the bedroom and settles into the walls like a stain that will never come out.
You hold him like always. One hand on the back of his head, fingers carding through the short hair at the nape of his neck, the other arm banded around his broad back. You press your lips to his temple and breathe him in; cedar and sweat and the faint antiseptic undertone that hasn't fully left his skin since the hospital.
"It's okay," you murmur into his hair. "I'm here. I've got you."
"'M sorryā" He's shaking in your embrace. "I'm so fuckin' sorry, I didn'tāI didnae know."
"You don't have to be sorry."
"I was chattin' ye up like someālike ye were some randomā"
"I know." You pull back just enough to take his face in your hands, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones. His eyes are red and wet and searching yours desperately, looking for the anchor he can feel but can't see.
"You chat me up every time," you tell him, and you let yourself smile wetly because he needs to see it, needs to see that this isn't a tragedy to youāit's a Tuesday. It's the life you chose, and you'd choose it again. Every day for the rest of your shared life. "Same lines, same moves. You always lead with buying me a drink."
A wet, startled laugh punches out of him. "Aye?"
"Every time. Kyle says your material is tragic."
"Kyle can fuck off." He sniffs hard, blinking, and his hands are still gripping the fabric of your dress at your hips like he's afraid you'll evaporate. "Do IāDo I at least have good chat?"
You snort. "The worst."
His eyes widen comically. "The worst?"
"Absolutely appalling. I fall for it every time."
He laughs again, and this time it's closer to real and his forehead drops against yours as you breathe the same air, and the room settles around you like a held breath being released.
"Ye married me," he whispers, like he's testing the shape of it. "Ye actually married me."
You nod again, nuzzling your forehead against his. "Voluntarily and everything."
"Yer off yer heid."
"Probably," you brush your nose against his tenderly, "but you're stuck with me, MacTavish."
His hands slide from your hips to your waist, pulling you closer, and when his mouth finds yours, the kiss is tentative at first; careful and questioning, the kiss of a man who isn't sure what he's allowed to take yet.
You answer by threading your fingers into his mohawk, pulling him deeper, and kissing him back with every ounce of the love you've been carrying all evening behind the heavy mask of a stranger.
He groans into your mouth; his hands tighten on your waist, and the tentativeness dissolves into urgency, warm and achingly familiar.
"Tell me what ye like," he murmurs against your lips, and the earnestness in his voiceāthe genuine desire to get it right and learn you, not knowing he already hasāmakes your heart crack along an old fault line.
"I'll show you," you whisper. "I'll show you everything."
You undress him slowly.
The henley first, peeled over his head, and your hands trace the landscape of him; the scars he doesn't remember getting, the ink he doesn't remember sitting for, the topography of muscle and damage that your fingers have memorised over years of exactly this. Touching and mapping him; loving the body that keeps forgetting it's loved.
He watches you with wonder, his chest rising and falling unevenly. You trace each scar you find and when your fingers reach his jaw, you let your thumb drift up to his temple, brushing feather-light over the ridge of scar tissue there.
He flinches. Not from pain but from the strangeness of being touched somewhere he didn't know existed until twenty minutes ago.
"Does that bother you?" you ask, pulling your hand back.
"No." He catches your wrist and guides your fingers back. "Do it again."
You trace the scar slowly, gently, and his eyes flutter closed, and for a moment his face is so open and so unguarded that you have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep yourself together.
"Sounds aboot right," he murmurs, half to himself. "Hero and an eejit."
You push him back onto the bed, your marital bed, and he goes willingly, pulling you with him until you're straddling his lap, the skirt of your dress riding up around your thighs. His hands grip your hips, and he looks up at you with those bright blue eyesāburning with more than just lust.
"Christ, yer beautiful," he breathes. "D'ye know that?"
"You tell me." You lean down and press your mouth to the hinge of his stubbled jaw. "Every time."
"Good," he murmurs. "'S important ye hear it."
You kiss down his neck, his hairy chest, tracing the lines of his tattoos with your tongue and flicking one of his nipples. He groans and his hips roll up against you, the hard line of his fat cock pressing against your inner thigh through his jeans, and his fingers dig into the meat of your hips.
"Fuck. Ye don't have toā" You shake your head with a smile, shushing him. "I want to. Always do. I love sucking you off."
Johnny grins wolfishly. "I can see why I married ye."
And he groans with delight as you slide off his lap to kneel between his legs while the look on his face makes your eyes sting again, though youāve become good at blinking it away. You undo his belt carefully, his button, his zipper, and free him from his briefs, and his cock springs up thick and hard.
You know this cock well; know the weight of it on your tongue, the exact pressure to stroke it that makes his abs clench, the spot beneath the mushroomy head where he's most sensitive. You know that he likes it slow at first and messy by the end, that he'll try to be polite about it until he can't, that his hand will find the back of your head and his hips will stutter and he'll warn you in a voice that's already gone before he comes down your throat in needy pulses.
You take him in your mouth, and the relieved, guttural sound he makes fills the room.
His eyes squeeze shut; his chest heaves. "Oh Christāoh fuckā!"
You work him slowly. Tongue flat against the underside of his shaft, lips tight around the flushed tip, one hand wrapped around the base. You hollow your cheeks and take him deeper, and his hand flies to the back of your headānot pushing but needing to touch youāand his thighs tense on either side of your shoulders.
Johnny babbles through it, always does when you give him oral; accent thickening with random gibberish and praise.
You pull off with a slick pop and look up at him through your lashes, stroking him slowly from root to cockhead before you duck lower, and you lick a long, slow stripe over his balls, tonguing along the seam until you feel the exact moment his brain short-circuits.
"Holy shiteāoh my Godānghhā" He grits his teeth, his eyes squeeze shut, and John MacTavish whines when you take one into your mouth gently, sucking softly, while his entire body arches off the mattress. His hand fists in the sheets; another sound comes out of him that is less word than sensation, more guttural and ecstatic.
"How did yeāNobody doesāHow do ye knowā"
You release him and press a kiss to his inner thigh, looking up at him with eyes that are bright and wet, but steadier.
"Because I'm your wife, Johnny."
The words land. You watch them hit; watch his expression cycle through shock and confusion and then something that isn't memory but is adjacent to it, deeper than recall, carved into the bedrock beneath the damaged circuitry.
Recognition.
"My wife," he repeats, and his voice is thick and full of awe.
You kiss his hip, nodding. "Your wife."
"Christ Almighty." His hand comes up to cover his mouth, and his eyes are shining as he pulls it back just enough to stare at his wedding ring again. "Oh my God, ye're my wife."
"I am."
"And yeāye knowāye know exactly what Iā"
"Everything." You crawl back up his body and straddle him again, cupping his face, pressing your forehead to his. "I know everything, Johnny. Every filthy, unhinged, ridiculous thing you're into, because you've spent years showing me, and I love it, and I love you, and you don't have to hold back."
And then Johnny kisses you hard and desperately; his hands suddenly everywhere at onceāyour hair, your waist, tugging at your dress, pulling it over your head with shaking fingers. He gets it off and throws it somewhere and then his hands are on your bare skin and the sound he makes is reverent.
"Ye're notāThis isn'tā"
"This isn't a hookup," you finish for him. "This is us. And I want all of it."
The dam breaks open behind his eyes, not quite memory, but permission, and the shift is seismic. His grip and breathing changes. The careful, polite restraint of a man on a first date incinerates, and what replaces it is raw, hungry, and known.
He flips you onto your back in one fluid motion, and the strength of it, the ease, makes you gasp. He's between your thighs before you can draw your next breath, yanking your underwear down your legs and tossing them over his shoulder, and then his mouth is on you without preamble, just his tongue on your clit, furious with intent.
Your head tips back with a shameless moan as he sucks and laps at your cunt.
"Tell me," he growls against you, the vibration making your hips buck. "Tell me what ye like, tell me everything, I wanna knowāI wanna know every fuckin' thingā"
"Your fingersāTwoāHah, yes! Yes, like thatā"
He drives two thick fingers into you, curls them, and your spine lifts off the bed. He reads you like a detonation sequence; adapting to your needs, adjusting pressure and angle and rhythm with the same tactical precision he brought to every mission, and within minutes you're shaking apart under his mouth, your hands fisted in his mohawk, his name tearing out of you on a scream.
And he doesn't let up but works you through the orgasm, licking you through the aftershocks, and when you drag him up by the shoulders and pull him over your body like a weighted blanket, his chin is slick and his eyes are blazing and the grin on his face is the most Johnny thing you've seen all night.
"Good?" he asks, like he genuinely needs the feedback.
Your hand curls around his nape as you pull him down, breathing against his lips. "Get inside me. Now."
"Fuck. Yes, ma'am."
He lines himself up, drags his cock through your drenched cunt and pushes in, slow at first, until your breath catches at the stretch and fullness, the feeling of home that hits you every time no matter how many times you do this, and he is fully sheathed inside.
Johnny cusses under his breath, his voice strained, and his arms braced on either side of your head; his face close enough that you can see every flicker of sensation crossing his features whenever you squeeze and clench around him.
"Move," you breathe. "Don't hold back. You never hold back with me."
"Donāt hold back," Johnny repeats and groans breathlessly, head hanging with the resigned realization that this will have a quick end, before he nods and folds your legs up, draping them over his shoulders. "Ayeā¦ I can do that."
And then his hips drive forward in a thrust that knocks the headboard against the wall, and the sound that punches out of both of you is obscene. He sets a relentless pace, hard and deep, fucking you the way you asked him toāwith everything and nothing held in reserveāand the slap of skin on skin fills the bedroom along with your cries and his grunts and the rhythmic bang of the headboard.
"This what ye like?" he pants, one hand gripping the wooden frame for leverage. "This how I fuck ma wife?"
"Yes!" you cry out. "God, yes, pleaseāHarder!"
"Harder she saysāFuckin' hell!" He adjusts your right leg over his shoulder, canting your hip up even further, and the change in angle makes you see stars, his cock massaging that spot inside you that makes your pussy tighten and your vision white out. "Look at ye takin' it. Fuckinā look at ye. Yer a fuckin' dream, ye know that?"
"Johnny, 'm close," you mewl while your nails dig into his flexing biceps.
"Aye, I can fuckinā feel it." His hand slides between your bodies, thumb rubbing your clit with unerring accuracy while a beads of sweat run down his chest, disappearing into the coarse hair. "C'mon, love. Gimme it, lemme feel ye."
And when he makes you tip over and your inner walls convulse around his cock in rhythmic, desperate pulses, Johnny follows you over the edge barely three thrusts later with a guttural moan and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder as he buries himself to the hilt, spilling his load inside you.
He collapses over you, trembling, his face pressed into your neck while your legs slide off his shoulders with a satisfied sigh, and you hold him through the aftershocks the way you always did in nights like this one; a hand in his hair, the other on his sweat-slick back, feeling his heart pound against your chest.
For a long time, neither of you moves as the room settles. Your breathing evens out, syncs up, falls into the rhythm of two people who've been sharing a bed long enough that their bodies know how to find each other even in the dark.
"Hey," Johnny says eventually, muffled against your neck.
You smile despite everything, eyes welling up with tears. "Hey."
"I love ye."
You press your lips to his temple and whisper, "I love you too."
"D'ye thinkā" He lifts his head; his eyes are glossy and he suddenly looks unbearably young. "D'ye think I'll remember this tomorrow?"
The question sits between you, heavy and terrible but honest. You swallow hard, consider lying, but choosing not to.
"I don't know. Sometimes you do, other times you donāt," you say truthfully, because you promised yourself early on that you'd never lie to him about this. "But if you don't, I'll remember for both of us."
A tear slips down his face. Then another. He wipes them roughly with the back of his hand and lets out a wet, shaky laugh.
"And then ye'll justā¦ What, fall in love with me again?"
"Johnny." You take his face in your hands and hold his gaze. "I've never stopped."
He makes a choked sound and kisses you again, slower this time, tasting of salt and beer.
He falls asleep with his head on your chest and his arms around your waist, and you stay awake longer than necessary, fingers carding through his short hair, listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing.
Outside, across the street, a black truck sits with its engine off.
Simon Riley watches the bedroom light go on through the upstairs window, and he watches it stay on for a long time before itās switched off again.
And then he sits in the dark, in the quiet, and he wonders.
Not about what is happening inside. Not about them, specifically.
About the shape of a life where someone waits for you; where someone takes a phone call at nine p.m. on a Friday and puts on the green dress and drives to a pub and falls in love with you again because you asked her to, even though you didn't know you were asking.
He wonders what it would feel like to walk into a room and have someone's entire body reorient towards you; to be the answer to a question someone didn't know they were carrying.
And Simon wonders if he's capable of that. If the thing inside him that was broken long before any mission, long before any scar, is the kind of broken that someone could love around, the way you love around Johnny's.
He wonders, and he doesn't find an answerāsomehow never doesāand after a while, he starts the car and drives home to an empty flat.
And he locks the door behind him and sits in the silence that he chose, keeps choosing, and has never learned to want.
I've read so much about girly!Reader x 141!boys. Feminine!Reader x 141!boys. Skinny!Reader x 141!boys. Fat!Reader x 141!boys. BUT WHAT ABOUT STRONG READER?! WHERE ARE THE BADASS READERS?! WHERE???
And since I couldn't find any, I wrote it myself!
And I don't mean strong in the "I can carry the groceries by myself" way or "I can lift my own sofa to clean underneath." I mean Reader who wakes up at the gym, with pre-workout in her water bottle and plates beside her.
Reader who looks Johnny up and down and asks him to be her weight on the bench press. (And he obviously accepts.)
Or Reader who, when Kyle gets shot in the leg on a mission, doesn't hesitate to pick him up like a beautiful princess in her strong arms, and carry him to a safe spot.
Just imagine Reader and Ghost arm wrestling in a dirty bar, with a mountain of money betting that Ghost would beat her. Only for his arm to hit the table and for her to win enough cash to make it rain on Johnny, who obviously danced like a stripper getting tipped.
Or when Reader asked the Captain how much he weighed. At first, he thought nothing of itāuntil he found her doing hip thrusts with more than double his weight, staring at him like she was about to devour him next.
This blurb wasn't made in any way to criticize a specific body type. Or criticize anyone's writing. Everyone writes what they want, and I want to write about a gym rat who lifts enough weight to have biceps the size of melons.
cw: none? but i didnāt proofread so be warned lolz
viking!ghost who is believed to be killed in battle but really washes upon shore to some new coastline with people who speak a language heās never heard before (he chalks it up to swimming in and out of consciousness)
viking!ghost who awakes violently, realizing heās nowhere near home, thrashing and cursing anyone who tries (and fails) to console him and usher him back to bed
viking!ghost who finally shuts up when you, tiny thing beneath him, pick up a stick and promptly begin beating him with it, shouting what he can only imagine to be curses with weight behind them only a women could muster
viking!ghost whoās so taken away by your raw beauty, and quite annoyed (and impressed) that your swings are actually stinging his skin, lets himself fall back into bed, only grabbing the stick after he lets you get a few more swings in. you canāt blame him heās quite enthralled by your passion
viking!ghost who begrudgingly resigns himself to trying his best to acclimate while he gets over nasty pneumonia and frostbite. he hasnāt quite shaken being seen without his covering, but itās a strange type of freedom, that these people knew not of his past. it was dangerous for bimn to feel like a new man in this new place, with fiery little you sporadically making appearances
viking!ghost wonāt admit to himself that he purposefully acts difficult with others in hopes youād be tasked with his care more often. it works.
viking!ghost whoās picked up some of your language. āyour.. name?ā he tries in your tongue one night. you pause, heās deeply satisfied when he sees recognition flicker across your face. you scowl and raise your eyebrow at him. āy/nā. he tells you his name. his real name. and when you stare at him and you frown a little less, he thinks heās never seen someone more beautiful. he vaguely notes that you must be the kind of women that inspire heroes.
viking!ghost who after that interaction has a sudden urge to be useful. to prove himself to you. the language was just the start. he stops being a pain, taking whatever is offered and resting when told. he slowly gets better, starts helping around your community. he sees you watch him as he picks fruit with the older adults and children. in the coming weeks heās stronger, chopping wood and hunting with your best.
viking!ghost who tells himself heās just repaying a debt. your people used valuable resources on saving him, it was only the honorable thing to do. never mind the beautiful woman who nursed him to health and wonāt give him the time of day. it has nothing to do with that.
viking!ghost who finally catches you at a celebration to usher in spring, the entire village buzzing with excitement at warming weather. the women you are with, aunts heās come to learn, shove you towards him, giggling while they scamper off.
viking!ghost who canāt help but smile, scars stretching when you say his name curtly. āy/n. spring,ā he dumbly points around, trying his best with what words heās been able to learn. you smile. it outshines the sun. āspring.ā you nod.
viking!ghost who trails you around the rest of the night. you let him. he sees a new side of you, carefree, engaging in traditions, joyous. towards the end of the night heās drank something thatās made him feel light in a way he never has, and he tries his luck one more time.
viking!ghost whoās surprised when you beat him to the punch. well, kind of. you sit next to him suddenly, head titled. āyou. whyā¦ stay?ā heās shocked hearing his language for the first time in months. he wonders where youāve learned it from he sits for a moment. heās not sure how to answer. when he fails to respond, you hum and offer him a piece of fruit. you donāt ask again, you just sit with him in silence. he relishes in it.
viking!ghost who keeps putting off figuring out a way back home. itās summer now, he can carry simple conversation, heās found a routine. youāve warmed to him greatly, how could you not when he works so hard and gets you fruit from high up in the trees? you donāt want to talk about how you feel when heās kind to the children who swarm him as if heās an oddity.
viking!ghost who knows he faces a choice sooner than later. he had loyalties back home, no matter how it heart sunk at the thought of leaving you. he wonāt allow himself to confront the startling truth of how much this place feels of a home heās never truly known. how you feel like home.
viking!ghost who doesnāt have to make the decision in the end. his men have plans of pillage, and theyāve landed their sights on your little villageā¦
Price was making lunch when he noticed his three-year-old daughter standing perfectly still in the hallway.
Hands at her sides, eyebrows knitted together, tiny lips pursed.She hadn't moved in nearly thirty seconds.He lowered the knife: "...Love?"
Nothing.
"...What happened?"
She just looked at him,thinking -> processing.
Price crouched down: "...Are you...constipated?"
The toddler's face immediately scrunched up:"NO!"
She stomped one foot.Angry toddler grumbling followed.Price held up his hands:"Right, not constipation."
His seven-year-old walked by without even looking up from his book: "She can't decide if she wants her pink socks or her blue socks."
"..."
Price looked back at his daughter: "...That's the face for socks?"
His son nodded:"Yeah."
Simon Riley - House Riley
Simon had learned his daughters had approximately twelve facial expressions.
He only understood three.
Today...
The four-year-old stood in the doorway;Frowning, eyes narrowed, looking...deeply offended.Simon paused his bottle-feeding of one of the twins: "...What's happened?"
Silence.
"...Did your sister hit you?"
Head shake.
"...Hungry?"
Head shake.
"...Toilet?"
Head shake.
He frowned.
"...Constipated?"
Instant explosion.
"I'M NOT CONSTIPATED!"
The three-year-old wandered over: "She wanted the purple cup."
"..."
Simon slowly looked at the purple cup:"...That's it?"
The younger sister nodded: "She got green."
"...Right."
Apparently green was an international offense.
John MacTavish - House Mactavish
Soap knew something was wrong because his two-year-old froze mid-run.
Just...
Stopped.
Tiny face twisting into deep concentration,Soap leaned over the couch.
"...Buddy?"
Nothing.
"...You alright?"
Nothing.
"...Ye look like yer trying tae solve taxes."
Still nothing.
"...Constipated?"
The toddler let out the loudest offended squeal known to mankind.His twin daughters burst into laughter: "Daddy!"
"He dropped his cracker!"
Soap blinked: "...He's grieving?"
The girls nodded seriously: "A really good cracker."
"...Understood."
Kyle Garrick - House Garrick
Kyle spotted his daughter standing in front of the television.
Motionless & tiny pout.
Brows furrowed.
"...Princess?"
No answer.
"...What's wrong?"
She stared into space.
"...Are you constipated?"
She gasped dramatically.
The four-year-old immediately yelled from the sofa-
"She wanted Bluey!"
Kyle looked at the remote:"...We're on Bluey."
"Yeah."
"...But it's the credits."
Kyle sighed: "...Right."
National emergency.
Alejandro Vargas - House Vargas
Alejandro found his two-year-old son staring at the wall.
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