pushed 30 MDNI any pronouns 🐰🐰🐰 All of my ideas are up for adoption 100% of the time please god everyone write more you don’t need permission to be inspired
Ok I’m putting out a bounty on some fics I wanna reread
First one was a GhostSoap where Soap is dead and a spirit and haunts Ghost and it ends with Ghost opening a tea shop - SOLVED!! https://archiveofourown.org/works/64012711
Second one has Soap waking up early to eat breakfast with Ghost and Ghost sneaking up on him like a creep every morning
Now imagine a soulmate au where your soulmates name is written on you, right?
You've known the name "john price" long before you knew how to write your own, child fingers tracing the letters on your arm, reverent.
You tried finding him, of course you did, but as it happens john price is far too common of a name. You give up on your dreams eventually. life demands you to actually live it instead of waiting for the signal to go.
As it happens, on one of your nights out you stumble upon him.
John price. You had noticed him in the bar earlier, drawn to him in a way you couldn't explain, and now it's him approaching you. He nods at your exposed arm, body between you and the rest of the crowd, almost possessive. "You are my soulmate, yes?"
Your name rolls off his tongue like honey, has your soul thumping at the thought of the one.
John price is big, strong, and dangerously handsome. He smells like whiskey and smoke and expensive cologne that tells you the gold around his neck is real. He keeps glancing at your mark with a smile, awestruck the same as you.
"Can i see my name? I want...I want to feel it." You tug at his leather jacket impatiently.
"Ah, bad idea. I was...hurt. left a scar right next to it, looks quite gruesome." He frowns, redirecting your hand to his lips for a kiss. You understand, soulmarks are personal, add in insecurity about scars and...you decide not to push.
Still, when his hand slides low on your back, eyes lidded in desire, you follow him home.
God are you thankful john is your soulmate, you're not sure how you could enjoy another man after the night he gave you. Entire body sore and pleased, face-down on his bed.
That's the exact image nikolai sends price, your soulmark clear in the frame. Followed by the message "warmed it up for you, john ;)"
No thoughts just mer!reader who was born in captivity and doesn't really understand how to mate...
It's common knowledge that captive mers, especially ones kept in amusement parks, can experience deteriorated instincts. They lack social skills, hunting abilities, and most importantly reproductive success.
Meaning, when you're transferred into a mer sanctuary, it's expected for you to have trouble bonding. They place you with a formerly wild mer, id-tagged "ghost", as he's very forward. The hope, of course, that you'll be pupped come winter.
You clearly want ghost, you just...don't know what to do, it seems.
"What...surely not." Gaz, your main caretaker, whispers under his breath. Inside the tank, you chase ghost around, webbed hands grabbing at his face only for him to huff and turn away. At first it looks like some strange dominance display, but the longer he looks the more gaz realizes you're trying to kiss ghost.
Of course you learned your mating behaviors from humans. You probably saw enough PDA for it to imprint on you.
A quick consult with his supervisors, and gaz has you laid out in the shallow waters of the observation shelf. You blink up at him all docile, having grown up in similar positions during your husbandry work. You don't thrashi or growl like other mers, comfortable with you snout nudging Gaz's knee, licking at the wetsuit material.
"Okay, runt, let's help you out, yeah?" Gaz hums, signaling ghost over to slide onto the ledge like he would for an exam. "Ghost! Up here!"
It's easy getting you and ghost into the correct position, though it would be more natural for you both underwater. You chirp curiously up at ghost, completely oblivious with no instincts to guide you on how to feel about a mer lying on top and pinning your tail down.
"Okay, ghost, I'm sure you know what to do. Just let me–" gloved hands slip into ghosts slit, pulling his cocks out instead of waiting the extra time for them to emerge. Ghost grumbles a bit, knocking his head against gazs side before focusing back on you as gaz lines him up.
"Here we go." He smiles approvingly at the whine you let out on the first thrust. A bit shocked, a bit blissed out already. "Bet that feels real nice, eh?"
You squirm and chirp more, body wriggling under ghost. Clearly you want to participate, but every attempt to reach for ghosts face earns a corrective nip. Gaz, who had been too focused on ghosts cock rutting into you, didn't have time to react when you reached for him.
"What–! Hey! Mhhp–" a long, slippery tongue forces it's way inside of his mouth, thick and warm. To another mer, if kisses were at all normal, it would feel astonishingly tender. For gaz it feels like being face-fucked.
It shouldn't feel as good as it does, but he can't stop it, not when you decide to go deeper and he really has to focus on breathing through his nose.
Above the both of you, ghost rumbles approvingly. bracketing one arm around you and the other around gaz, he keeps what he now recognizes as two mates close together.
When ghost finally cums, gaz is mortified that the second cock is aimed directly at him. Milt splashing across his wetsuit.
He...really hopes no one saw that. He also may need a really cold shower before he does something he shouldn't.
Post-TBI!Johnny who turns to art to cope and convinces you to model for him because you’ve got an interesting face, hen. Interesting bones. Something in the slope of your shoulders and the set of your mouth that makes his fingers twitch for charcoal, makes him stare at you, want to see what’s buried beneath your skin.
It should make you uncomfortable
(Maybe it does. Maybe you should’ve listened to that thin little alarm trembling at the back of your skull, but hindsight has always been cruel like that, arriving only after the door has closed, after the lock has turned, after you’ve already mistaken hunger for reverence. And nobody has ever looked at you the way he’s looking now-)
Ach, dinnae look at me like that. It’s only art.
He lays it on thick-
Tells you he’s been stuck for months. That nothing’s moved him. That he’d started thinking there was something dead inside him until he saw you standing beneath the washed out lights of a corner shop, fumbling with your change.
Then there ye were.
So you agree.
Just once, you tell him. A few hours. Fully clothed.
Course, bonnie. Agrees too easily, bobbing his head, boyish grin sliding onto his face to ease your nerves. Whatever makes ye comfortable.
The studio is warmer than you expect. Old brick. Tall windows dripping with rain. Canvases stacked against every wall, most of them turned backward, their painted faces hidden from you. It smells of linseed oil and damp wood and (- the sharp stench of a cave where things lie nestled in the dark with sharp teeth and sharper claws, maw dripping with hunger for every unsuspecting little thing that crosses in front of it’s eyes, too close too see the danger until its dragging them across stone floor- )
(And you’ll think about those canvases later. About how each one had been carefully turned toward the wall before you arrived, how easy it had been to assume this was modesty instead of concealment. Artists are strange, you’d thought. Private about unfinished things. You hadn’t yet considered that there might be things Johnny didn’t want looking back at you.)
Johnny puts you in an oversized white shirt (‘s mine, Bonnie, but ye can borrow it- ), says the fabric catches shadow better. Leaves your own clothes folded on a chair near the door (- farther away than they need to be- ) and settles you on a low platform beneath the windows, your knees drawn loosely beneath you, one hand resting against your throat.
The first few minutes pass in silence.
Charcoal scratching.
Rain needling softly against the glass.
Johnny looking at you, baby blue traveling slowly, steadily, returning to the same places over and over- the soft inside of your wrist, the hollow beneath your throat, the place where the shirt slips away from one shoulder whenever you breathe too deeply.
You try to hold still, but your back starts to ache. Your fingers curl against your collarbone. Each time Johnny looks up, you remember you’re being watched and flinch, shoulders rising, knees pressing closer together, chin sinking protectively toward your chest, too stiff.
His charcoal stills.
You apologize.
Ach, dinnae apologize. He smiles when he says it, but something in his expression stays still. His mouth curves. The rest of him doesn’t.
Ye keep foldin’ in on yourself every time I look at ye. Ahm not goin’ tae eat ye.
It’s too perceptive and your laugh comes out smaller than you meant it to. Johnny’s gaze sharpens at the sound, charcoal held motionless between fingers stained black nearly to the knuckle. He sets the charcoal on the easel tray and walks toward you, wiping blackened fingertips against his trousers.
His hands settle on your shoulders and press them down, thumbs sweeping slowly along the tight muscles beside your neck, working circles into the ache until your head tips forward despite yourself.
(That should’ve frightened you too, perhaps, the ease with which he found the softest part of you and pressed his thumb into it. But cruelty rarely introduces itself as cruelty.)
Can feel ye fightin’ me, he murmurs.
You tell him you’re only nervous.
I know, hen.
His mouth brushes close to your ear when he says it- That’s the problem-
You’ve never done anything like this before. Never sat beneath someone’s attention and been expected to let them take whatever they saw.
Johnny hums.
- Got somethin’ that might help-
He leaves you there and crosses to a cabinet near the sink. The bottle he brings back is already open. Red wine, dark enough to look black where it gathers in the bottom of the glass.
He pours while you watch, the glass filling nearly to the widest part before he seems to remember himself and stops.
You tell him that’s more than a little.
Is it?
The dimples appear.
Scottish measure.
You laugh despite yourself, and that seems to please him. He passes you the glass, waits until your fingers close around the stem, then returns to the easel as though the matter is settled.
It’s sweeter than you expect.
Dark fruit and spice, something thick and jammy that clings to your tongue after you swallow. It warms your stomach on the way down and then sits there, a small red coal beneath your ribs, heavy in your stomach, spreading outward in a slow bloom that reaches your fingertips first.
Johnny starts drawing again once you drink, charcoal moving with renewed purpose, and each time you begin to tense beneath his gaze, he tips his chin toward the glass.
You obey because you don’t want to be difficult (- not after he told you that you were the first beautiful thing he’d wanted to draw in months. Pride and vanity always did come before the fall-)
The first glass disappears without you noticing.
Johnny refills it.
You watch the wine climb the crystal, a dark red tide swallowing the clean sides. He pours generously this time, his wrist turning until the glass is almost full.
Johnny-
Ye’re still wound tight.
He presses the glass back into your hand, cups the base and tips it toward your mouth, red wine spilling over your lower lip, a thin ribbon escaping the corner of your mouth to trail down your chin- Swallow, hen, that’s it, good girl- thumb catching the crimson streak on your chin, smearing it gently across your swollen mouth, bringing his thumb to his own lips and dragging his tongue slowly over the wine stained pad, his gaze still fixed on your (- tasting one thing and thinking of another entirely- )
The room softens, hard corners of the platform blurring, rain beyond the glass stretches into silver threads. Johnny’s face becomes something painted in oils- dark lashes, blue eyes, the warm cut of his mouth- each feature bleeding gently into the next whenever you look too quickly.
(You’ll try to remember how many times he filled the glass after that. You’ll count backward later and find nothing solid enough to hold. One glass becomes two only because you remember him pouring. Two becomes three because the bottle was lower when you finally noticed it again. Memory is unreliable even when sober; drunk, it becomes something else entirely)
Your thoughts begin losing their edges.
That’s the strangest part.
Not the warmth or the heaviness gathering behind your eyes, but the way one thought stops connecting cleanly to the next. You think you should check the time, but the idea floats away before you remember where you left your phone. You think you’re thirsty, although there’s still wine in your hand. You think Johnny has been staring too long, but then he smiles and the concern dissolves before it can settle into fear.
Your brain turns liquid. Loose.
Everything inside your skull has melted into something warm and buoyant, thoughts drifting past one another like pale shapes beneath dark water. You can see them. Almost touch them. But each time you reach for one, the motion sends it farther away.
The warmth moves deeper with each glass. Into your thighs. Your cheeks. The soft tissue behind your eyes.
Nothing has edges anymore. Johnny’s charcoal scratches from very far away, scraping down the back of your mind.
You take another sip.
Your tongue feels too large for your mouth.
The wine sits syrup thick in your veins, turning your body slow and porous. You can feel yourself dissolving from the inside, bones losing their hard white calcifications, thoughts melting down into something warm and red and viscous. Your mind becomes a glass overturned on its side, everything inside it pouring lazily toward the lowest point.
Johnny tells you to lift your chin and it takes you a moment to understand him.
Your head feels full of warm red water. Too heavy for your neck, too light to belong to your body. When you turn toward him, the studio follows a moment later, swaying gently around its fixed point. Your stomach seems to remain behind while the rest of you drifts forward.
Johnny smiles. Feelin’ better?
Mmm. Floaty.
The word leaves your mouth thick and childish. You hear yourself say it from somewhere above the platform and start laughing, embarrassed by the way your tongue seems to have grown too large for your teeth.
Floaty, he repeats. Aye, I can see that.
The glass slips sideways in your hand when you try to lift it again, wine cresting the rim, pouring over your fingers in a slow, dark sheet, slipping between your knuckles and tracing along the inside of your wrist. You make a startled little sound at the coldness that breaks apart into a thousand shards against the brick of the walls.
Johnny catches the stem before it can tumble from your loose fingers- careful, hen- and you try to straighten it but some how make it worse. Another red thread spills across your palm, and your laughter returns, thick and breathless, your head bowing beneath the weight of it.
Can’t hold it, you confess.
Johnny looks at your hand.
His smile doesn’t disappear, the warmth staying arranged across his face, but everything behind it grows watchful and still, his gaze following the wine as it crawls toward the soft bend of your elbow.
Aye, he murmurs. I can see that.
He takes the glass from you and places it beyond your reach.
Then he closes his hand around your wrist.
(There are moments when the body understands before the mind does. A pulse quickening beneath someone’s thumb. Fingers curling uselessly toward the palm. Some small animal instinct lifting its head inside you and finding every door already underwater. Yours tries to warn you now, but the wine has made a soft, red grave of your thoughts, and whatever is screaming has sunk too deep to be heard.)
Johnny raises your hand slowly, turns your wrist upward and studies the dark streaks shining there as though you’ve offered him something.
His tongue touches the center of your palm.
Tickles, you mumble, trying weakly to pull your hand back.
Johnny doesn’t let you, fingers tighten around your wrist, dragging his tongue between two of your fingers, gathering the wine with slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes lifted to your face the entire time, stubble scraping your skin, your head tipping drunkenly toward one shoulder while he follows the spill downward. His mouth moves over the heel of your hand, then the tender inside of your wrist, tongue tracing the dark path until it reaches the quick beat of your pulse.
Johnny, you breathe, his name breaking apart around another shy (nervous) giggle.
Shh.
His lips close over the fluttering place beneath your skin, sucking gently at the flesh, and the laughter catches strangely in your throat.
For a second, the floating stops.
Your eyes find his. There’s no boyish embarrassment there now. No artist’s wonder. Only concentration, calm and proprietary, as if he’s discovered the precise place where you’re weakest and is committing it to memory.
Then the room tips again.
The fear slips away before you can name it.
Johnny lifts his mouth from your wrist. A faint red stain shines across his lower lip, though you can’t tell whether it’s wine or the shape of his teeth pressed too hard against your skin.
Couldnae leave ye all messy, he murmurs.
You smile at him, heavy eyed and grateful.
(That smile will return to you later. Not his. Yours. The soft, trusting curve of your own mouth while he held your pulse between his teeth, already learning how much he could take, could take, could take before you’d realize something was missing- )
His hand slides behind your neck when your head lists toward one shoulder, catching you with a palm spanning the base of your skull, fingers sinking into the soft place beneath your hair, and the strength of him feels like a pillar rising from the black water at the exact moment your feet stop finding the bottom.
You lean into him, body pouring toward the nearest solid thing with the blind obedience of water finding a crack.
(That’s the part you’ll hate most afterward. Not the touch itself, but the relief. The soft, grateful sound your throat makes when he holds your head up for you. The way your body, stupid animal that it is, mistakes restraint for shelter because the room has become a dark and gently turning sea, and Johnny- Johnny, who tipped the bottle into your mouth, who stood on the shore and watched the red water climb over your face- feels like the only thing left that won’t move beneath your hands.)
Can barely hold yourself up, can ye?
There’s laughter curled inside his voice. Warmth too. Enough warmth to blunt the edge of it, enough tenderness painted over the words that you don’t see the teeth beneath until much later, when you’re sober enough to pick each moment apart and find where the sweetness spoiled.
You mumble that you’re fine, word coming loose and swollen, a soft little shape that collapses against his chest before it properly leaves your mouth.
Course ye are.
His thumb moves behind your ear, slow enough to feel fond, presses into the tender hollow there and draws a circle, then another, while your thoughts slosh heavily from one side of your skull to the other.
Jus’ need a wee bit of help holdin’ the pose.
He reaches past you.
Something drags from the shelves, whisper of fibres over unfinished wood, dry and soft, the sound stretching strangely inside your head, unspooling through the wine until it becomes the scrape of something moving beneath a bed, the hush of grass parting around a body.
When Johnny settles back into view, there’s a pale coil resting in one charcoal stained hand.
You stare at it.
The meaning is there- somewhere- can feel it beneath the surface, pressing upward through the wine. But your thoughts are no longer thoughts, drifting pieces of them, each one separating when you reach, each one slipping wetly through your fingers before you can force it into words.
What’s that for?
The question sounds very far away.
Johnny looks at the rope, then at you.
You.
He says it so easily that you blink up at him, chin hooked against the hard planes of his abdomen.
Then his grin breaks wide, dimples cutting deep enough to make the answer harmless again.
The pose, hen. It’s for the pose.
He kneels beside you and takes your wrist, winding the rope around your skin once, then twice, explaining tension and composition and the body’s instinct to protect itself when it tires.
Always curls inward, he murmurs, thumb smoothing the inside of your wrist. Always tries tae hide the soft parts.
You watch his fingers move.
Over.
Under.
Through.
Cream colored rope, the shade of old lace or clean bone, pretty where it crosses your skin, fibres blurring at the edges when your eyes lose focus, becoming something delicate, ornamental. A bracelet. A ribbon. (Gift-wrapped and hand delivered-)
Johnny-
Too tight?
You don’t know.
You should know. The answer ought to exist inside your own head, but your body has gone dim and distant, a house seen through fogged glass. There’s pressure around your wrist. Heat beneath it. A pulse knocking weakly against the rope like someone trapped behind a wall.
Johnny slides one finger under the knot, fingertip stroking over your pulse while he looks up at you, eyes bright and attentive.
Wouldnae hurt ye.
You nod because he sounds so certain and rational thought is a stone tied to your ankle asking you to climb through red waters.
He binds the other wrist before you understand that the first one is finished. Lifts both arms above your head, and your body follows with a slow, boneless obedience that makes him smile. The stretch pulls through your shoulders, arches your back, tits pushing at the fabric of his shirt, body bent sharp enough to split the soft haze for half a second, and a whimper escapes before you can swallow it.
Shh. Easy, bonnie.
His hand slides down your arms, your sides, soothing the hurt he created, and the wine rushes back into the space pain briefly cleared. Warm. Heavy. Merciful.
He secures the rope to an iron ring sunk into the studio floor.
You hadn’t noticed the rings before.
There’s one near either side of the platform, black metal half hidden beneath old paint and dust. More beside the mattress in the shadowed corner, arranged at careful distances from one another.
The pattern should mean something.
(It does mean something.)
Your gaze catches on them and then drifts helplessly away.
(Fear needs a body that answers when called, and yours has become warm wax beneath his hands, softening wherever he presses, cooling around whatever shape he leaves behind.)
Your legs are next.
He cups one ankle and draws it outward. Then the other. Your heels drag over the platform with a soft rasp, your knees falling apart beneath the loose white shirt. The fabric slips higher along your thighs, and the first clean spark of alarm pierces the drunken fog when you try to close them again.
Johnny feels the resistance and his hands stop on your thighs, heat from his palms sinking into you until you can feel his fingerprints burning their marks into your bones.
Easy.
The word is quiet. Almost kind.
You shake your head, but the motion tips the ceiling sideways. The windows pour rain upward. Johnny’s face splits into two softened versions of itself, then swims back together as nausea rolls lazily beneath your ribs.
I don’t-
The sentence knots behind your teeth.
Don’t what?
The words are all there, drifting separately through the dark, but you can’t gather them into the same mouthful.
Johnny leans closer- what was that, doe- gives you every appearance of listening, eyebrows drawn with concern, mouth softened at the corners.
You try again.
Your tongue feels soaked through. Heavy as nebula, the sounds smearing against one another until even you can’t tell what you meant to say.
Johnny waits, watches the effort drain out of your face and only then strokes both hands down your thighs.
Thought so.
The ropes tighten around your wrists. Your ankles. A careful loop above your knee when your leg keeps listing inward, another where the position pleases him but your body won’t hold it on its own.
His hands guide the white shirt higher whenever it catches beneath you.
It’ll wrinkle, hen-
A little farther-
Hold still-
The fabric gathers in pale folds until it rests beneath the curve of your breasts, baring the plane of your stomach, the flare of your hips, your soft, silky cunt he has spread open for himself. His thumbs stroke once along the crease where thigh meets hip, pressing into the give of flesh (- as though he is already imagining how it will feel when he is between them- )
He looks at what he has done and the boyish grin is gone. What remains is quieter. Hungrier. His eyes move over you like he is deciding which part to taste first.
There we are, he murmurs. Much better.
You drift.
Fear is still there, but it has risen above you now, trapped on the other side of the wine. You can see its shadow crossing the surface while you float beneath it, black and frantic and distorted by the red water between you. Your shoulders ache. Your wrists burn dully where the rope takes your weight. Your legs are held apart by pale fibres and Johnny’s careful arrangement, but the body enduring it feels impossibly far away.
A figure at the bottom of a lake.
A pale thing laid open in the silt.
You’re near the ceiling. You’re inside the rain crawling down the glass. You’re suspended somewhere behind your own eyes, watching a woman in a white shirt test the ropes with small, weak movements she won’t remember making.
She looks frightened.
You wonder why she doesn’t leave.
(Drunkenness makes a cruelty of distance. It lets you watch yourself suffer without understanding that you’re the one inside the body. Lets the mind climb out through a crack in the skull and hover somewhere clean while the flesh remains below, warm and obedient and available. It feels almost like escape until you realize Johnny can still touch what you’ve left behind.)
Christ.
The reverence in his voice draws your gaze back to him.
He’s looking at you, eyes moving slowly over your arms lifted and secured, your knees drawn apart, the shirt bunched high where his hands kept moving it, pausing at each point of strain as if pain is another line he’s finally managed to place correctly.
Something in his face has gone still, colder than lust. The deep and emptied devotion of a man standing before an altar built for a god that cannot refuse him now.
There ye are, he whispers, as if you’d been hidden from him, as if the rope has finally uncovered something true.
Then he crosses to the studio door and you follow him with your eyes slowly, the room dragging several seconds behind his body.
Johnny turns the lock and the click enters your head like a stone dropped into deep water. He slides the bolt into place and the sound travels down through the wine and settles somewhere beneath your heart, where the part of you that still understands begins, very quietly, to drown.
Then his hip catches the corner of a canvas on the way back.
It happens slowly from where you’re floating. The frame tips away from the wall, knocks against the one beside it, and then the whole uneven stack begins to slide. Wood scraping brick. Canvas whispering against canvas. Johnny swears beneath his breath and reaches for them, but they have already fallen face up across the floor.
And…
There you are.
Your face.
You blink at it, wondering for a syrupy moment whether it’s the sketch he’s just made, though the woman in the painting is wearing your green coat from last autumn. Her hair is damp, cheek tucked into the collar against the rain. She’s standing beneath the yellow shelter at the bus stop near your work, eyes lowered toward the phone cupped between her hands.
Another canvas has you carrying groceries against your chest. The paper bag splitting at the bottom, oranges bright through the tear, your mouth caught open in a laugh you don’t remember giving him.
Another-
you behind the steamed glass of the little cafe on Bell Street, both hands curled around a mug. There are Christmas lights reflected over your face. Red and gold smears threaded through your hair like something festive and burning.
That’s me, you say.
Or think you say.
(There’s a truth arranged across the floor in front of you, patient and chronological. Months of it. Seasons of it. Proof painted in oils and hidden with its face toward the wall, waiting for the moment when you could no longer count backward clearly enough to understand what you were seeing. But your brain has become a red tide inside your skull, and recognition is a small animal trying to swim through it. You watch its paws break the surface once. Then it sinks.)
When did you- ?
The question dissolves halfway out.
Johnny crouches and turns the first canvas over, handles them gently. (More gently than he’s handled you.) Checks the corners for damage, thumb brushing dust from your painted cheek before he hides it against the wall again.
Clumsy bastard, he mutters.
You stare at the remaining portrait. The one at the corner shop. Washed out lights. Coins scattered across your palm. Your face turned slightly to the side as if someone has just called your name.
- The moment he told you about-
- The first time he saw you-
Except the painting of you at the summer festival last year is underneath it.
Your eyebrows pull together and the thought almost forms.
Johnny looks over his shoulder and sees you struggling there and his expression softens.
Dinnae hurt yourself, hen.
He rises, steps over the paintings and comes back to you. One blackened fingertip presses between your brows, smoothing the crease away as though confusion is another flaw in the pose.
Ye’re thinkin’ too hard.
You try to tell him there are paintings of you. You try to ask how long.
You try to but the words leave your mouth sodden and misshapen, each syllable dragging another behind it until the sentence reaches him as little more than a murmur, the beginning falling away before you reach the end.
Johnny understands anyway. (He always seems to understand you when it suits him.)
He watches your mouth with that same fond concentration he wore while sketching (the patient attention of a man waiting for something soft to finish struggling) then glances toward the canvases he hasn’t managed to turn over.
Did tell ye I’d been stuck for months.
The dimples sink deep.
Never said how long I’ve been working since then.
You look back at the paintings.
The woman beneath the bus shelter has your green coat buttoned neatly with a button that broke last September. The woman at the cafe is holding the chipped blue mug they stopped using sometime around Christmas. Another version of you is walking beneath trees still fat with summer leaves, bare legs flashing beneath a dress buried now at the bottom of your wardrobe.
Your mind touches the sequence and recoils, but there’s nowhere for the thought to go. The wine has flooded every corridor inside your skull, filled every room up to the ceiling. Understanding swims toward you through it- slow, pale, terrible- but each time it comes close enough to recognize, the current rolls you gently away.
Something cold opens inside you, but the wine pours into it before it can become fear. It fills every clean edge, rounds everything off, turns horror into a distant pressure beneath the sternum. Johnny strokes your cheek and waits until your eyes lose focus again.
(He hadn’t found you beneath the lights of the corner shop tonight. Not in the way he’d made it sound, not like lightning or providence or some dead part of him suddenly shocked back into motion. He’d already known which bus carried you home. Which cafe you preferred. What store you used. He’d watched summer soften into autumn around you, watched autumn die into winter, and called it inspiration because obsession sounds beautiful when an artist says it.)
Johnny collects the last canvas and turns it toward the wall and your painted face disappears.
There, he murmurs. Nothin’ tae worry about.
He comes back to you slowly, hands settling on your thighs, hot enough to feel like brands through the wine heavy numbness, heat sinking in around the breadth of his palms and the effortless weight keeping you where he put you.
You shake your head.
Or perhaps it only falls weakly to one side.
Johnny’s mouth brushes your trembling knee, almost gentle, while his thumbs draw slow circles against your skin.
Easy, hen.
You try to tell him you want to go home but all that emerges is a broken little breath.
He lifts his head and watches you struggle to assemble the words, patient until the last of them dissolves behind your teeth. Then he smiles tender enough to make it seem as though he’s forgiving you for being afraid.
(And somewhere above the wine, the small surviving part of you finally understands why the paintings were turned toward the wall.)
Johnny reaches back without looking and the amber lamp beside the platform clicks off.
Darkness folds over the studio, warm and absolute, and his hands tighten around your thighs when the ropes instinctively draw taut.
Now, he murmurs against your skin, hold the pose for me, hen.
GhostSoap fics where it covers Ghost’s internal monologue: Oi could nevah subject Jawny ta moy twisted bramble patch ovva soul… much less moy big evil tallywhacker… Oi ought ta le’im be…
GhostSoap fics where it doesn’t cover Ghost’s internal monologue: Jawny your croime is cock. The sentence is cock. Bend ovah loike a good chap
Pornstar!Simon who’s been told he can’t fuck you anymore because the way you sound when he’s inside you makes every other costar you’ve had in the past look bad.
The Director pulling him aside with the footage still looping on the monitor, voice low, telling him it was obvious your moans dripping out wet and broken were real in a way you’ve never given the cameras before, obvious now that every gasp and whimper you’d faked with the others was thin and breathy and hollow compared to this and your former costars were bound to complain.
Said it made the lads before him look like they couldn’t even get you properly wet, let alone fuck the sense out of you. Said pairing you with Ghost again was asking for trouble. Too risky. Too fuckin’ real.
Swinging the monitor around to show Ghost the way he had angled his hips so the camera caught his cock stretching your silky cunt half an hour before, thick enough that your walls flutter around him without any acting, slick spilling out around the base every time he bottomed out.
Your fingers scrabbling along the bed every time he ground himself down, too fucked out to really run from the pleasure the way you wanted to, body shaking brain reduced to static goo.
You having a hard time remembering the scripted words you were given, eyes rolling in your sockets, little whimpers and moans punched out “hn-hn-hn-“ every time his hips met yours and the head of his cock kissed your cervix.
Ghost cooing down at you when you miss your cue for the third time, hand pinning your wrists above your head while the other kept your thigh shoved wide, voiced amused when he asks “wha’s amatter? Cat got your tongue, dove?”
Ruined any possibility of you answering when he fucked you deep, making your cunt visibly pulse around him on the monitor, arousal drooling down his balls.
You tried. You really did. You mouth opened, some broken attempt at the first word, but it dissolved into another punched out moan the second he angled just right, letting the camera see the way your eyes rolled in their sockets.
His thumb stroking once over your clit, almost gentle, almost fond. “Tha’s it,” he murmured, “take it. Fuckin’ take it.”
Another missed cue. Another low, rough chuckle. He didn’t really give you room to think. Just kept you pinned and full and dripping while the cameras roled and the script stayed forgotten on the floor somewhere behind the lights.
The director was still talking but Ghost wasn’t listening, instead, just reached over and rewound the tape instead. Watched the part where you tried to speak again. Watched the way your body gave out for him and only him. Watched his own hand on the screen, thumb stroking your clit.
He hit play once more. Let it loop. Thumb hovering over the button, already deciding he didn’t give a fuck what the director had to say about it, he was gonna fuck you again no matter what.
Ghost didn’t even turn this time. Still, Gaz piped up, “Moskie on you.” That, more than the swat, had Ghost’s shoulders creeping up.
There hadn’t been a mosquito, of course. At least, not on Ghost. For one thing, it would have had to bite through an inch of sodden fabric anywhere it landed. For another, its brethren had found several tasty spots on Kyle already, who had unwisely rolled up his sleeves. There was no point in rolling them back down now. He’d still take being a bug buffet over being sous-vided in his own sweat and the damp of the muggy forest they’d been dropped in.
He didn’t quite know how Ghost was still upright in the wet mask. The man had been waterboarded before, Kyle supposed.
There was also his clear delight of getting to wield the machete. That, along with the general level of spite that kept Ghost upright under all manner of conditions, was one hell of a selling point. One that kept him out of the Jeep with Price and down in the brush with Kyle for their return to exfil. Why Kyle himself had accompanied the lieutenant rather than calling shotgun ahead of Soap…
Thwack.
It didn’t really matter.
Ghost paused in his hacking at the innocent trees. Looked back over his shoulder with one narrowed eye. Gaz held up his hands in surrender.
“Moskie on you, sir. Swear down.”
The answering grunt was barely audible over the sound of the wildlife around them. Mosquito whines included. Adjusting his grip on the machete, Ghost turned back around and kept brutalizing the underbrush. Gaz kept trudging through the path he cleared.
It was downright unethical to unleash Ghost on this forest. Not more than anything else they did, but enough to give Kyle a giggle or two. The masked menace would get a reputation among the chattering birds above to match his notoriety among his fellow humans. Maybe that was why Kyle had joined him there. Yes, field experience under a different commander than Price, yes, exposure to more environments, yes, a decent workout, but at the end of the day it was Ghost’s presence that had made his hand go up. Watching the hulking shadow carve his place in the world was always a treat. For someone who wanted to loom large, it was a masterclass. Making Captain was Gaz’s ultimate goal - he’d never not be a disciple of John Price - but he wouldn’t pass up catching a guest lecture in being pants-pissingly intimidating.
He’d been scared of Ghost once. Still was, in bursts. The correct response to someone exploding into red mist was not a low chuckle and accented quip. But honestly, after seeing the sides of The Ghost only shown to his team, it blunted some of the teeth on the legend. Some of them.
Thwack.
Enough of them.
This time, Ghost turned right around and levelled the machete at Gaz. “Whot’re you after?” he growled. Gaz raised his hands again.
“Forest’s full of them, sir. I’m just watching your six.”
He’d seen livelier eyes in severed heads. Ghost turned the machete blade-down and raised it high.
Resisting the instinct to step back made some part of Gaz rather proud of himself. The more mammalian parts, the ones designed to keep him safe from things like Ghost, were less enthused.
One brown eye closed like Ghost was lining up a shot. “You ever think about partin’ your ‘air on the left?” he mused, dinking the blade just-so on the top of Kyle’s head. “Could do you here.”
Kyle bit the inside of his lower lip. “Done much barbering?”
“Post-mortem.” Whatever the fuck that meant. Ghost huffed like a bull - thick fucking slab of beef that he was, appropriate - and turned the machete, bringing the flat of it down on Gaz’s head. It made a metallic thonk.
“Agh, bloody-“ Gaz hissed, finally ducking away from further attack and scurrying back a few steps. Bringing a hand up to grope at the top of his head, his fingers only met sweat and a sore patch.
The hardshell mask shifted in a way that meant Ghost was grinning under it. “‘Bloody’ could be arranged.”
A mosquito took advantage of their slowed progress to land on Gaz’s forearm. This time, he couldn’t arrest his flinch as Ghost brought the machete down. It slapped the bug dead with the flat of the blade.
He's not fine. Kyle's paid for them to have a very nice day at the spa, and he's panicking. There's soothing music playing from hidden speakers that may as well be claxons and gunfire, as far as he's concerned.
"Simon. Babes. We don't have to go in if you don't want to."
"I want to." He doesn't.
"We're just starting in the sauna," Kyle reminds him, like they're not gonna be starkers in a room with other people. "Just 10 minutes. Then a rinse and into the thermal pools, yeah?"
Simon nods. He does remember. And he does like the sound of it. The heat on his muscles, seeing his boyfriend getting slick with sweat. The promised relaxation of a nice float in cool water. But after...
"Don't want that little old lady to beat on me," he mumbles.
"Then you have to relax," Kyle reminds him. "Otherwise the only way you'll feel the massage later is if she beats on you. And didn't you feel better afterward, last time?"
He had felt better. Thoroughly cowed and oddly aroused, but better. Still, he says, "I don't want the mud."
"Simon. You love the mud."
Fuckin' 'ell, he does. He always feels so nice afterward. "I don't want the cucumbers."
"Then tell the therapist you don't want them to cover your eyes." Kyle has the patience of a saint. Probably because he is looking forward to the hot stones and pampering instead of approaching it with nothing but dread.
Reader wears their binder for too long and gets punished? I would kill for you to write this prompt it's been buzzing in my head for so long :)
Soap had already warned you the first time in the showers when you peeled off your binder to reveal the dark bruises against your ribs- he’d been ready to tear someone’s head off thinking they’d hurt you! When you explained that it just happens sometimes when you wore your binder too long- he’d zeroed back in on you. It was a little scary, having all that anger suddenly staring you down like the barrel of a gun.
He hadn’t done anything more than grab you gently by the shoulder, and murmur out a quiet “ye do that again, n you’ll regret it, ye ken? No more than eight hours a day.”
It was.. oddly threatening in a way that made your little cock throb. You brushed it off though, laughing off the man’s worry and showering off pretending that your cunt wasn’t just wet because of the water. (Ha)
A few weeks later, you’d forgotten all about it. It was after training, and you’d been laid up in your room- but you felt nearly sick from the pain. You hated taking off your binder- you hated the way your chest made your shirt fall weird, you hated the way it felt to feel them bounce when you moved- but you couldn’t really take it anymore. So you’d ripped off your binder, hissing slightly at the bruises that had made their way into your skin again- when a sharp knock rang from through out the door.
“Hold on!” You scrambled to shout- but Soap had apparently decided not to care as he pushed the door open anyways- you could’ve sworn you’d locked it-!
“Mate, I need you to rework these documents-“ he started, only to stop dead at the sight of you turned away in embarrassment- but he could see the dark green bruise against your left ribs peeking out anyways. It was gone in an instant as you shucked your shirt on- but he’d seen it.
“Jesus Soap! You fuckin ass, I- you’re supposed to wait when you knock- and- how did you even come in, the door was locked!” You snapped, but your irritation falls away at the look on his face. His eyes are dark, totally blank like he was mentally somewhere else. That wired blue stare is still stuck on your chest, on the way your nipples peak through the shirt.
And suddenly you’re being pinned to the bed, hissing in pain as he pins your arms above your head with one hand and rips your shirt right back up again with the other.
“SOAP-!” You snarl, only to gasp as he lightly grabs your jaw. Huh. That was softer than you thought it would be, his grip not painful like the wrath of his gaze would make you believe.
“Fuck did I tell you, boy? Look at you! What if you broke a rib during an op cause of this? Or while you’re asleep!“ Johnny snaps, shaking your head gently as if in a mock punishment. You growl and snap your teeth, kicking his side roughly and making him twitch against you.
“I- that wouldn’t happen! It’s fine Soap- you’re being a fucking baby!” Your argument is hollow, and Soap’s angry stare sharpens. His jaw ticks, breathing heavily before you’re suddenly being flipped onto your stomach, pants being ripped down as stitches popped at the force. You try to fight it as your bare ass is tugged into Soap’s lap, before a single hand on your back- thick and long fingers barely touching your ribs has you hissing and finally settling into sheets.
His grip slides up immediately to grip your nape instead, ignoring your attempts to claw at him and push your body up with shaky hands.
“Ye think I’m being a fuckin baby? Fine then- let’s see whose the goddamn baby after I teach you a fucking lesson,” is all Soap warns you with, and you open your mouth to argue again-
Only to have the first harsh spank suddenly make contact with your poor ass. You seize up instantly, tears pricking at your eyes as your ribs ached from the intense movement. Holy fucking shit, that hurt!
“Don’ fuckin struggle, ye daft mutt! Take it like the big tough lad you say you are- or promise to never wear that stupid fucking thing for longer than 8 hours,” the sergeant snarled down at you. You snarl back something incoherent, only to let out a sharp cry as the second spank rains down on your ass- then the third, then the fourth all at once. Every single one hurts more than the last, switching between cheeks as if to ensure you’re feeling every bit of the sharp sting.
“Fuck- Soap! You don’t- shit! You don’t get it- I can’t just- I still have to work- I can’t walk around without a binder on!” You snap through clenched teeth, trying desperately to kick only to have a fifth spank land- this one dangerously low and close to your throbbing cunt.
“Ye can- ye don’t want to. Nae, ye just want to fuckin- piss me off!” Johnny snarls, two more spanks to your shaking thighs as you bite back tears. A final spank to your throbbing cunt has you finally relenting, a shout escaping your throat. Shame and embarrassment and a deep lingering neediness in your throbbing cock push you to finally speak, fearful that he might notice how wet you really are right now.
“Fuck! Fine- I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Johnny please!” You yowl, but that doesn’t seem to be good enough. Your nape is squeezed tighter, your poor wet hole slapped roughly two more times. Every sharp contact makes your core squeeze, makes your head spin. Your ribs fucking hurt- your ass hurts, your fuckin pussy hurts!
“Oh, are you? Or are you just saying that so I won’t notice how hard you are right now?” Johnny seethes. “Stupid dog. Swear you won’t do it again.”
“I can’t-!” slap! It’s agonizing, your back arches and more throbbing pain shoots through your ribs. Everything is overwhelming, every sensation at a 100. You can barely see through your tears, your hoarse throat barely able to get the words out.
“I swear! I swear, I swear, I swear!” You howl, clawing at the sheets. Johnny finally relents, dipping his fingers into your cunt just to lube up his digits. Working you into a quick, harsh release as he pumped your t dick- it’s so mean, the whole thing is! By the time you finally come down from your high, the man is pressing kisses to the top of your head.
“Aye, tha’s better. Jus’ needed a little correction, huh? Won’t let this happen again, will you?” He murmurs, fingers brushing over the bruises like he’s trying not to rub it till it’s better. You sniffle through your tears, nodding your head pitifully.
Yknow how Barry Sloan, and by extension price, is always moving?? Like rocking in place or shifting in his chair....anyways cockwarming with nik would be torture for him >:] make that old man sit still and sob hehe
– rommy
@rawme-price ROMMY. I need you to know I've been thinking about this since you sent it xhejxnfcneicneidnjedn
cw: 18+ smut. nikprice. cockwarming. penetrative sex. John Price melting bc of his big Russian husband 😩
Nik’s arms are firm around Price’s waist, bare chest warm against his back. His breath ghosts along the curve of John’s neck. He's content with his husband in his arms. Finally glad to have the captain back after so many weeks.
John, on the other hand, is suffering.
He’s seated in Nik’s lap, buried to the hilt, and they haven’t moved in what feels like hours. Though the clock insists it’s been ten minutes. Ten agonizing, perfect, torturous minutes.
Every instinct in John’s body is screaming to do something. Rock his hips, shift his weight, grind down. He’s sweating. His thighs twitch, trying to find leverage, but Nik's large hands stay firm where they rest, one on his hip, the other low on his belly, keeping him there.
"You are doing so well," Nik murmurs, lips brushing the shell of his ear. "Such discipline, kapitan. Almost makes me believe you're going to make it."
John huffs through his nose, eyes squeezed shut. He tries to focus on breathing. On the way Nik's cock feels inside him, filling and stretching and there without movement. It should be unbearable. It is unbearable. But it's also grounding in a way John can't quite explain. Every nerve in him is lit.
And Nik’s stillness is infuriating.
"You fuckin' sadist," he grits out.
Nik chuckles. "Only because you like it."
John's hands tighten where they grip Nik’s forearms, his fingers digging into muscle like it might grant him mercy.
But there’s no mercy here.
Only Nik, holding him still. Until he sobs. Until he melts down into the kind of mess he never lets anyone else see, restless mind unraveled, twitching hands stilled by the steady thrum of devotion beneath him.
John finally slumps back, body gone quiet in Nik’s hold. He leans back fully now, weight surrendered, head tilted to rest on Nik’s shoulder. His chest heaves with each breath, slick with sweat.
And then, finally, “Please… please, Nik…”
Nik’s kiss is immediate, soft against his temple, followed by another lower, brushing his cheekbone.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “I always have you, John.”
Then he moves, barely, just the shallow grind of his hips upward. Not enough to fuck in the way John wants, but enough to to make John’s breath hitch, make his spine arch in that helpless, beautiful way. Nik rocks, letting every inch drag deep inside, slow and aching.
One hand slides up to John’s chest, splaying wide over his sternum. The other slips lower, callused palm wrapping around him.
And all the while, Nik whispers in Russian, velvet-dark filth just for him.
“Moy kapitan,” he breathes, voice thick.
"My beloved man. I’ll fuck you like you deserve for the rest of my life."
"You feel that? So deep. So tight…"
Price can’t respond. His mouth is open, head tipped back, gasping through every stroke. His hips try to chase more friction, but Nik keeps the pace maddeningly slow, rocking just enough to keep him on the edge.
“I ache under you. John,” Nik groans. “Ves’ moy. You know that, don’t you?”
A wrecked sound claws out of John's throat. One of his hands reaches back, fingers tangling into Nik’s hair, the other still gripping his arm. He’s flushed to the ears, red across his chest, legs trembling, every breath a soft, broken plea.
“Please—Nik—I—fuck—”
Nik shushes him gently, kisses the side of his neck, and strokes him faster now. Hips still moving.
“Let go,” he whispers, low and thick. “Cum for me, kapitan.”
And John cums with a cry. His whole body locks up, every muscle drawn tight as lightning courses through him. Nik holds him through it, still whispering sweet, filthy nothings in his year.
When he finally softens and slumps, trembling, blinking through the haze, Nik kisses his jaw, his shoulder, and says in quiet English, “Beautiful fucking man. Mine.”
Rommy, I beg!! The boys!! What weird ways do they court their omega?? Mostly Ghost because I think he’d be the most odd.
Ohhhh ghost courting his omega is....a danger to anyone involved.... <:0
Others give favourite snacks or drinks as courting gifts. Something small to show they can feed you and know you well enough to follow your preferences.
The first courting gift ghost gives you is multiple coolers full of deer meat. That he personally hunted and butchered, of course. The heart, you notice, already has a bite taken from it...
Others try to show-off to gain affection, usually in competition with others. Arm wrestling is popular, but on base sparring is a go-to. That, or drinking games.
Ghost....isn't allowed to do that after he "accidentally" put that one lieutenant trying to court you in the hospital. Now? You get USB drives full of his favourite bodycam clips from ops. Usually of his brutal hand-to-hand combat and guerilla warfare, but he once got you a 13 hour video of him sniping for you to "fall asleep to, lovie."
All that is to say, anytime you express dislike towards someone you need to quietly assure ghost you don't want them hurt in any way.