Duck, Duck, Goose
Caleb x reader, fluff, no warnings, reader is described as having breasts and wearing panties, not really mc but not explicitly NOT mc? whatever makes you happy (2.8k)
<<<this is my first time posting a fic on the internet in over ten years, so if you're reading this be nice to me, okay?>>>
He doesn’t quite understand what it is yet, but the colonel is aware that you’ve been playing some kind of game with him. It’s silly and you haven’t bothered to explain the rules, but with how sweet you’re being and how rare it is for him to have two full weeks off that he can spend in your presence, he decides that not knowing what comes next is half the fun.
He’s sat on the couch, legs spread casually, scrolling through files and tidying up reports. You come behind him and ghost your hands from his shoulders to his neck. He hums contentedly, eyes closing gently. With a slow, feather-light touch, you drag your fingers up the back of his neck and onto his scalp. You let his thick, shiny hair slip through your fingers before repeating the motion and gently scratching his scalp. You feel him shiver. With a gentle tug at his roots, his head falls back against your stomach and he gazes up at you affectionately. His soft, easy smile reflects your own.
He opens his mouth to say something, but you beat him to it and lean down, planting a sweet kiss on his forehead, then his nose, then finally on his lips. He reaches up and caresses your cheek with the softest touch. You open your eyes and grin at him.
“Duck,” you say and release him.
“What?” He sits upright and turns to face you, but you’re already sauntering down the hall like nothing happened. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. That’s the third time today. He admires the view as you disappear around the corner and lets confusion settle over him. He’s intrigued. He wants to follow you, grab you, pin you against the wall, convince you to explain yourself. But he has to get these reports signed off so Liam will stop calling and interrupting his time off. He turns back to the tablet in his lap and sighs again. When you’re ready to explain yourself, he reasons, you will.
-
The next evening, Caleb hums to himself quietly as he floats around the kitchen making dinner. He heard the shower turn off a while ago but still hasn’t seen you come out from the bedroom. He steps away from the stove to call down the hallway.
“Do you want me to help you dry your hair?” He lingers, waiting for a response, but the sound of the stew he’s making bubbling too high in the pot calls him back to the stove. He reaches to turn the fire down but he’s not quite fast enough and it boils over, sizzling around the burner. “Dammit.” He moves the pot to another eye and reaches for the towel laid over the edge of the sink without looking. Instead, his fingers find the fabric of your sweater – his sweater, one he’d brought with him this time, not one he’d left behind. He turns to you, surprised you were able to sneak up on him so easily. His languid smile is infectious. He steps closer to you leaned against the counter, looking down the bridge of his nose with mischief in his eyes.
“I just bought that, you know.”
You smirk at him, something witty and sharp primed on your tongue, he can tell. Before you let it fly, he reaches around you to grab the towel off the sink, caging you in. You brace yourself against his solid core, palms flat, fingers splayed. He leans down and turns on the water with his other hand, turning you gently so your back rests against the edge of the counter. He squeezes the water out of the towel, close enough that his chest grazes yours with each breath.
“I planned to wear it on the train back to Skyhaven, since it’s so comfortable.” You nod, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth. “But I can’t do that if you’re gonna add it to your collection.” His hands slide to your waist, the towel forgotten in the sink. He slides one leg between yours, and you respond by slipping your fingers under the hem of his t-shirt. You feel the muscles in his abdomen pull taut under the warmth of your touch. With a slight pressure behind his knee and a resulting pressure blooming in your core, he pulls you against him, his lips grazing your ear. He murmurs, sweet and low, “So I’ll be taking it off of you later on.”
You can feel his lips curl into a smile. Your heart races at the implication, the promise of what’s to come. You love this back and forth with him. But he doesn’t know you have plans for later too, and came with the resolve to win this little game. You tilt your chin up, catching his eye, before leaning in and planting a lingering kiss on the side of his neck. You let your breath warm the skin there, before biting just enough to leave a red mark, but not enough to hurt. You swipe your tongue over the indentation for good measure. He lets out a rush of air and his shoulders slump, head dropping to your shoulder.
“You have to at least let me finish making dinner, okay? Spare me, I’m only a man,” he jokes weakly. You smile into the flushed skin above his pulse. Slowly and deliberately, you extract yourself from his heated embrace. He shakes his head, chuckling softly to himself as he finally wipes the mess on the stovetop. You place both hands on his shoulder and stretch up on your toes to lick a gentle line up the shell of his ear.
“Duck.”
His ears darken and he feels his face get warm. He turns to you, mouth poised to tease or question or beg for mercy, but you’re already around the island, heading in the direction of the living room. “Wait, come on!” But you’re gone once again, grinning to yourself. The pot on the stove bubbles angrily and he stares at the liquid, watching it rise to the edge and contemplates a metaphor. He grumbles about calling you when the stew is done and goes back to stirring with a much tighter grip.
-
Two days later, the colonel is at his wit’s end. He’s been in your home for less than a week yet feels that he can’t quite settle in, not with you and this odd little game you’re playing keeping him on his toes and almost painfully on edge.
He tried, the night of the Stew Incident, to initiate with you. Calm and intentional touches while you ate on the couch and watched a movie, flirting while you did the dishes together, even carrying you to bed with just his robotic arm, a display of strength he knew made you melt for him.
But when he dropped you on the mattress and crawled on top of you, his lips brushing your neck, whispering sweetly about how badly he missed you, wanted you, needed you, you decided then would be the best time to discuss… groceries.
He tried to distract you, to turn the conversation back to the matter at hand, but you’d giggled and called him an animal, eventually huffed that he wasn’t even listening to you, and finally pushed him off. He would never force himself on you, not really, he loved you too much to try, but he did consider holding you down, just to reorient your focus.
He didn’t do it. He sighed and dutifully followed along as you meandered through a shopping list and asked him to remember it. He held you tightly to his side and tried to quiet the burning in stomach, the restless weight between his thighs. When you’d finally talked yourself to sleep, he reached for his phone on the night stand and typed up the list you’d come up with. He closed his eyes but couldn’t sleep.
The next day, he glared at the fluttering hem of your sundress while you pranced around the grocery store. He leaned heavily on the cart and his brow twitched every time you bent over to look at something, the contrasting color of your dainty little panties winking at him. It was clear then, that you knew exactly what you were doing to him. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. When you presented him with two options of soy sauce, arms extended, elbows pressing your breasts forward, testing the limits of the dress’s low neckline, he practically growled in response, completely fixated on you. You just giggled at him, dropping one bottle in the cart and reaching up to smooth the tense line between his brows. He melted into your touch.
“You’re in big trouble when we get home,” he murmured. Your face flushed, mouth forming an adorable little ring, and he thought he finally had you then. But when you returned home and unpacked everything, you complained of a stomachache and ran to the bathroom, where you hid for forty-five minutes. He knew whatever leverage he thought he had in the store was lost. When you emerged, you were appalled by the apparent disarray of the apartment and pushed a broom into his hands before turning to the living room with a rag and dusting every imaginable surface, twice.
If that wasn’t maddening enough, twice while you bossed him around cleaning the apartment, you’d sidled up next to him, touched his arms, his chest, his neck, told him softly, and oh, so sweetly, how strong and capable he was, how grateful you were that he always took such good care of you, how happy you were that you got to spend this time together. When you’d softened him just enough that he would reach back, or turn to kiss you, you’d get this infuriating grin on your face before dodging him and giggling that stupid word again, ‘Duck!’ and fleeing to some other pointlessly involved task.
Several hours later, when you both collapsed on the couch, exhausted and half-asleep, he told himself that he wouldn’t crack, that whatever tricks you were trying to pull wouldn’t break him. Then your breathing slowed and your hand slipped innocently from his chest to his crotch and he groaned so loud he thought he might have woken you. But he couldn’t be that lucky.
Now, this morning, Caleb decides that he’s had enough. He wakes you up early, suggests a picnic date away from the city and doesn’t take no for an answer. He packs away a full menu without your input, chooses the wine without asking, even plucks an outfit from your closet for you to match his own. He decides to take the motorbike for the opportunity to have your arms wrapped around him with no escape. He carries everything to what he deems the perfect spot at the top of a graceful hill in the shade of a giant tree with sweeping branches, and lays it all out on a blanket beautifully. He doesn’t let you lift a finger.
With the food mostly gone and the second bottle of wine open nearby, you crawl into his lap, straddling him. He lays back on the blanket, hands tucked beneath his head, and grins at you. His plan is working: you haven’t done anything mischievous all day because he hasn’t afforded you the opportunity. He gets to enjoy your company without any potential distractions. He feels like he’s finally on vacation; his best girl in his lap, the sun shining down on you both, the open sky above you, and no one around for miles.
You lean down and kiss him, soft but intent. One of his hands drifts to rest on your hip while the other dips under your hair and brushes the back of your neck. You sigh into the kiss, lips parting, leaning your weight against his chest. He moans when you pull away just slightly and smile at him.
“We should spend every day like this,” he whispers with hooded eyes and flushed cheeks.
A wide smile takes over your face. You stay like that while the sun drifts by overhead, smiling, kissing each other, trading sweet nothings and tender touches. Then your eyes squint a little, and your brows slide down. He knows that look. Something shifts and your light, airy grin turns devilish.
“Uh-uh, no way, quit scheming,” he warns. You shake your head and lean close, your lips brushing his.
“Not scheming,” you murmur, and it’s the truth, because you already have a plan in place. You place a gentle kiss on his chin.
“Duck.” He groans, eye sliding shut. You kiss his cheeks one at a time.
“Duck.” He lets his hands fall to his sides, resigned to your whims. A longsuffering sigh leaves him unconsciously. You can’t help but laugh. You kiss his nose, then his shuttered eyelids, then his forehead.
With graceful, languid movements, you bring one leg to the side of him, so you’re kneeling on the blanket. Your hands slide down his chest. His fingers flex, absently reaching for you, before giving up and accepting his fate.
You tap his nose and he turns his head just slightly to look at you. You stand and move toward the other end of the blanket where the wine and picnic basket sit. He sits up on his elbows, watching you curiously, daring to hope that you might be done toying with him.
You’re not.
You turn and shamelessly admire his lengthy form. His skin tingles under the heat of your gaze. You lift the hem of your sweater and drag it over your head, the thin t-shirt underneath nearly see-through in the sunlight.
“What are you doing to me?” He pleads, reaching toward you, fingers barely grazing your ankle. You jump back, staring him down now, like a predator.
“Goose,” you reply.
“What?”
“Goose.”
With that you turn and bolt down the hill without looking back. Caleb stares for a moment, bewildered, before he finally processes what you said.
“Oh wow,” he chuckles to himself, getting to his feet in no rush at all. “So that’s the game.” He shakes his head, watching you get further and further away. He stretches his legs, one at a time. He peels his sweater up over his head and drops it on the blanket without looking, eyes glued to your shrinking form.
“Goose, huh?” He takes off in a flash.
Your training as a hunter has kept you in great shape with high endurance. But Caleb’s enhancements and longer stride bring him straight to your heels in no time. You’re panting, hair flying behind you, legs pumping harder and harder. Your heart is racing, the wind roaring in your ears. You feel his fingers brush the ends of your hair, and laughter escapes you, wild and free.
You risk it to turn your head back and glance at him. He hasn’t even broken a sweat. He’s wearing a confident smirk that stirs something in your belly. You push harder, knowing it’s only a matter of moments before he catches you.
A long, steady arm reaches around your waist and snatches you backwards, your momentum and the collision knocking you both off balance. You shriek, clinging to his arm. He turns slightly so you fall on top of him and uses his Evol to break your fall just before you hit the ground.
Before you can get your bearings, he rolls on top of you, pinning both of your wrists beside your head. His cheeks are flushed, and his hair windblown, but his eyes are as clear and bright as ever. Your chest heaves, brushing his with every breath. More breathless giggles tumble out of you as you lay there in the grass, helpless beneath him. You crane upwards and kiss him abruptly.
“You caught me.” You both laugh. You squirm but he doesn’t release your hands. “Come on, Caleb, you win! You can let me go now.” You whine, fighting his grip, fingers aching to touch him. He merely shakes his head.
He dips down and drags his tongue up the side of your neck until his lips meet the shell of your ear. You shiver, expecting the Colonel to take the driver’s seat and give you exactly what you deserve for teasing him so relentlessly these past few days. Your eyes flutter shut when he hums softly in your ear. The grip on your wrists relaxes. One of his legs slides between yours, spreading them. Your heart races with anticipation.
“Duck.”
You freeze. Your eyes fly open but he’s already up and gone, racing back in the direction of your picnic, his laughter carried by the wind. You scramble to your feet and take off after him.
“Wait! Caleb, stop! That’s not even how you play!”
