Warning: Talk of stillborns, bullying, and incorrect fae facts. Angst with comfort?
This is less Roach x reader and more Roach as a changling. BUT HES A GOOD BOY In the future, I want to d the whole 'village bully ' reader thingy
·•—–٠✤٠—–•·
Roach liked you, you were nice to him.
·•—–٠✤٠—–•·
Roach was an oddball to the other fae. He rarely came to the woods, spending more time in the village. Yet they all knew why, and there was a silent respect for the hun in the air for the changeling. He was there to keep an eye on the village. Watch the change in language, culture, and religion. All the while, there to ensure there wasn't an attack in the making. That was where the respect lay. To risk one's neck for the sake of those he may not even like.
Over the years, he would appear as a traveler in different forms, wandering or selling. Staying long enough, normally a month, before reporting back. He would always trail back to the woods. Hands shoved in felt pockets as he walked to Price, or sometimes Ghost, to spread word. Their silent communications gave Roach deep comfort. Unlike the humans, who talked, talked, and talked. Roach may be the most human-looking and acting, but he hated the talking part. It had taken him years to learn the new human communication style. He much preferred the silly grunts or overly swirled language of the old days.
Things had changed, however, around the years you were born. He traded his traveling cloak for a pair of booties. As Roach, now Gary, took the place of a child of a young couple. He had reasoned it was time anyway to be retaught your silly math and writing system.
The couple would boast to the village about their baby, with hearts full of so much love, and Gary would see the wisp of pink coming from their chest.
He was the easiest baby, they told the village. Born without crying and always smiling. Yet their young son rarely spoke. They believed he struggled. In actuality, Roach's throat, tongue, and sections of the brain struggled to remold to better fit the current language; apparently, he was more out of touch with speaking than he thought. His delayed speech had reached the point where his little sister, two years his senior, started speaking before him. Many of his younger siblings spoke before or more than their oldest brother. Pulling on his arms, or riding his back as they babbled their way to school.
Gary, in nomadic terms, was picked on. He didnt speak to his peers or rarely did, instead preferring to use his hands to communicate. He could talk, strained a bit, but understandable. But why the hell would he? He hated those stupid years before you joined him in the schoolhouse. Humans were pestering, cruel little shits. If he didnt have a goal, a purpose for doing this, he likely would have scared those little brats away from him.
Then you joined. Shy-eyed, in a worn dress, and only with your grandmother. Your lunch pail is chipped and worn and clutched between your hands. You had a thin silver chain around your neck. Protection.
You were hesitant at first, whispering softly to him. He could see it in your eyes, how you had known something was off with him. He wasn’t sure how you knew; perhaps you had that feeling too buried in your bones. You were just as strange as he was. Talking about the sugar you'd leave out with your grandmother, and the dream catchers you'd weave. You were resilient in the face of the world that clawed at your skin.
But your Grandmother had known instantly. She has come down to walk back with you back to the house. But her eyes locked on his as you skipped to her. Grey, old eyes scanning Gary's many siblings hanging on his arms, chirping happily at their big brother. Those eyes. Full of such fierceness that he felt fear shoot through him. He - he needed to explain before she brought the iron out. What if she assumed his siblings were changelings too? What would happen to them? Humans could be brash, cruel things. Worse than the fae.
He snuck from bed that night, having to peel his little brother's arms from around him. His limbs carried him to the small house on the hill where you and your grandmother slept. Or, you just slept.
“What did you do with her child?” he hadn't even opened his mouth, just stood in the doorway. Golden eyes were watching the heavy silver ring that swung above the door. The naziatinb ripples that came from the iron hung in the door made his throat dry. “I had warded this town against your kind.” Grey, sharp, skeptical eyes bore into him. Venom tripping with every spiteful word. He had felt the ward for a long time, though he had never acted like a changeling. Never felt the whip of going against the warding.
“He passed away when moth- Mrs. Lauren had him.” He paused, allowing his heart to calm and his cracked voice to mend. He still thought of the small child. Barely a minute old but already too fragile for this cruel plane. “He was…so small,” he clicked, quickly clearing his throat. “We buried him…”He had nearly cried when holding the infant, forcing whatever magic Price had given him to strengthen the soul enough for its climb. He watched it wisps into the sky.
Her eyes had narrowed. “I wish to see him”
So he led the older lady, promising her a safe and timely return. She was smart, setting her expected demands, allowing for no loopholes. He had led her to a small clearing deeper into the forest. Where soon his human skin rippled and gave way to his true fae self.
Skin a dark brownish green. Two sets of large golden eyes, brushed with a wisp of golden red hair. Dragonflies like wing unfolding from the flats of his back as his body morphed to become slightly taller. Bones shifting, though he had a painless expression. Two slim antennas were poking through his hair as his ears seemed to shift and become pointy.
The walk was silent.
The grave sat there. A large, smooth grey stone is placed near the end of a rectangular patch of moss, with small sun-bleached pebbles surrounding it.
“I am not used to human customs…” he softly said, wings shifted deep to his side. “But we tried to make him comfortable…”
A white eyebrow raised as the woman peered closely. Small ‘gifts’ lay on the patch of moss, nearly covered by the fluffiness. Old dried flowers, smooth circular stones, shiny things of all sorts.
“You did well”
He felt a warm hand on his back.
·•—–٠✤٠—–•·
Gary enjoyed your presence, even if you didn't speak. Flitting around your kitchen, muttering about bad spices and all. All while he sat at your counter. Helping to sew the hem of a shirt. Eyes leading out the window ever so often to ensure all was calm.
"They'll give you gifts," your gran says, shaking her head. "Things from their realm. Little trinkets and gems—" geodes, sapphires and diamonds, raw gold and coral; "—and you must never accept them," a whittled deer made of sequoia under your pillow; crow bones buried in the garden."Because if you do, if you do, they'll never let you go."
"Why?" You asked, blinking at her.
"Because it's a courting ritual, and to accept means… well," her mouth twists in wry disdain. "Just don't."
—WARNINGS: 18+ | SMUT
fae shenanigans, mythological nonsense; unsafe sex, smut in random places, slight exhibition kink if you squint; Dom-ish Price, soft Price, pining Price; fae trickery (dubious consent on account of the trickery but not really); unreliable narrator; ahhhhhh, body horror (??????????)
—TAGS: Fluff, AU, mythology
—WORD COUNT: 8,5k
—Based on this ask
There's a thick forest at the edge of your town. It curves along the coastline, breaching the yawning maw of the inlet—the last safe haven before the open ocean—and can be found almost nowhere else in the entire world. A unique ecosystem comprising vaguely familiar flora and fauna. Brown and Black bears. Wolves. Sitka-black-tailed deer. Ravens. The waters that crest through the forest are full of salmon, steelhead, and river otters. On the coast of the inlet, you can find whales, sea lions, seals, orcas, and porpoises swimming offshore.
It's protected, in large part, by its sheer vastitude. Spanning a massive chunk of your home, it stretches far north with curling fingers cutting through the granite of the crumbling coast, and as deep south as its knobby knees can reach.
From above, it looks like a child curled on its side, knees tucked to its chest. It's this pose alone that makes others revere it as some sacred being, slumbering mindlessly until the day it cracks open its eyes, and awakens to the new world. A child god made of conifers, red cedar, spruce, fir, pine, birch, and hemlock. Mossy caves of granite and limestone. Thick colonies of moss, liverworts, plume moss, and common haircap.
The forest is linked to your town only by a small strip of land that juts out from a raging ravine with currents too dangerous, too deadly, to try and traverse. An archipelago all on its own, untouched by greedy, human, hands because of its placement.
It's insulated by the vast ocean on its front, and a series of insidious looking mountains ready to swallow wandering mountaineers whole if they get too close to the sleeping child. Protected and safe by anyone who might try to harm it.
You used to dream about the forest. A nightmare dredged up about whispers and calls. Lured close to the edge of the river where a man would hand you his heart—sap-stained, and charred; a brittle piece of Bristlecone pine that felt fragile and worn—and told you to come back for him. To wait for him.
You'd wake in a cold sweat each time, heart pounding so fast that it almost felt like you were dying.
(Maybe you were. Maybe you did.)
You don't know if you believe the stories told about people wandering into the gaping chasm of the forest and never coming out. It's not uncommon for people to get lost, after all. But it feels distinct and archaic. Old. Something about the way the wind howls sounds different from the other woodlands scattered around your home.
It sounds like a beckoning call. A mother calling their child home for dinner. Come to me, the Chinook bellows. Come home now, dear.
You never venture too close. You know all too well what happens to children who do.
His name is—was now, you suppose—Kyle, but no one called him that. To everyone in town, he was simply known as Gaz.
Newcomers to the isolated archipelago are a rarity—so much so that news of the new family's arrival sent waves through the community, making Gaz an instant star overnight, all without him even setting foot on the shores.
None of that mattered, though. He fit in with an ease that seems almost preternatural when you think about it, as if he was meant to be there. And maybe he was. Maybe the soft rolling valleys were destined to be his home where flowers bloomed in the spring, and Arctic tern trilled from the branches.
Gaz was unique, different.
He picked dandelions with the same intensity that picked fights with the bullies in the neighbouring town, the ones who tried to pick on the smaller kids in the community.
With his fists always covered in dandelion oil and bruises, face caught between a grimace and a grin, like he was never sure if he wanted to spit at their feet or tell a joke, he stood against the onslaught with an anger that seemed to crackle in the air like fireworks. Ready for battle. Thirsty for blood.
His anger never waned even when he turned back to the group, eyes cresting in satisfaction, and body trembling with adrenaline, and you could scent the rage in his smile, hear it in the soft words he muttered to the kids, telling them everything would be alright.
Gaz was everyone's friend. The person you told your deepest secrets to, the one you planned adventures with. He was a rock—always armed with snappy jokes to make you smile, and advice when you needed it.
He was everyone's friend—yours especially—but you can't remember if anyone was his best friend. He was polite. Distant.
It started in the summer. His hands were always cold, and he kept them shoved deep in his pockets, clenched tight around the latchkey his parents gave him.
He started to seem almost liquid then. Temporal. You'd reach for him, brushing your hands against his arms or shoulders just to assure yourself that he was really there.
You noticed that his eyes would list sideways, head tilted, slanting toward the forest. It looked to you as if he was listening to something. To some unheard noise or call that only he could hear.
When you asked about it, he'd always blink, surprised, as if you'd woken him up from a dream quite suddenly. Then, he'd smile, and shake his head.
"Don't worry about it," he'd say, shrugging. "Just the wind."
He'd bend down and pick a dandelion for you, holding it out between pudgy fingers with a grin that seemed to mimic the cresting moon.
"For you."
He picked them for three springs before he, too, became another victim of the endless forest. Another empty tomb in the overcrowded graveyard.
Missing, they said, but not forgotten.
You think about him often.
(Even more so when you, too, begin to hear your name echoing through the forest.)
Beware the woods, your grandma says. Especially when it calls your name.
(You never understood why something that sounds so comforting, so sweet, could ever be dangerous. It sounds like an old friend calling you over to play.
"Never go," she snaps, her hands lashing out to grip your arms tight. You feel her knobby fingers digging into your bones. "Never listen, and stay away—"
"You're hurting me, gran—"
Her rheumy eyes burn into yours. "Stay away—!"
(You wisely never speak about the whispers in your head, keeping them to yourself. A secret just for you.)
You leave town when you're old enough, when the hisses in your head grow too loud to ignore, and it feels as though they're scratching at your skull.
(Clawing at the walls.)
"Crazy weather, eh?" The first mate mutters nervously, eyes tilted upward as the sky darkens into an angry grey. "Came outta nowhere."
You leave, and you don't look back.
(But oh, how the forest screams.)
She calls you back several years later with a phone call. Your gran has passed.
You think you should mourn, but it's been so long since you thought of home, that you don't remember what she looks like anymore. The sound of her voice is a whisper in your head—the cadence gone, the tone flat.
But you don't cry, and you don't grieve—she's been dead for a long time now, after all. Ever since your mum went missing all those years ago, she's always seemed more of a ghost than a person. Living as if her body hadn't realised her heart was long dead.
You go back only because you think your mum would have wanted you to.
(And pretend it isn't because the silence in your head is suffocating. Without the whispers, it feels as if you're missing something. A part of yourself forever lost in the forest.
You wonder if anyone has found it by now.)
Nothing has changed since you turned your back on the town that raised you, the forest that stole from you.
It's the same buildings. The same market. The same roads. The same houses.
The people, too, seem largely unchanged by the years that have passed.
The friends from your childhood who stayed meet you at the graveyard, eyes filled with sympathy as they ask how you're doing.
She'll be missed, they lie sweetly to you. Everyone loved her.
She was a hermit, you want to scream. A woman driven mad by ghosts and fairytales and terror.
You nod, instead, and let them lead you around the town on a grand tour as if anything about this beautiful, haunting place had changed since you ran away.
It gets easier to force a smile when they ask if you're okay.
"Fine," you murmur and wonder if your voice even carries over the whispers. "Just—yeah. Fine."
North of the town is where the river separating the lonely forest carves a path, not at all dissimilar to an idyllic trough, through bedrock and sand, and flows into the sea.
The estuary is dangerous in high tide when the rapid ascent of water on the sandy shores hides the rip current that is known to form when the two bodies of water meet.
It's a dangerous place to get caught in.
This beach was impressed upon you as deadly from a young age, almost in equal—if not greater—measure than the rapacious forest across the river. You know the dangers of standing on the slippery bedrock.
But as the sun glows a burnt orange in the distance, and the endless ocean before you darkens into an almost unfathomable black, you can't help but find the view from the cliff's edge to be the most mesmerising thing you've ever seen.
It looks like a painting. A brush stroke of tigers eye in the centre of the cresting sun that gradually fades out into xanthous, and rings of hazy peach; the light of diminishing star smears coruscating rings of persimmons into the indigo water. The gradual fade into gradients as the waves lap closer to the shore is reminiscent of liquid sapphire and smelting amethyst.
The picturesque view is more befitting of a pastel postcard, an ethereal pastiche of the Ninth Wave—a moment of life imitating art, or—perhaps—the same view Ivan Aivazovsky stumbled upon when he set out to render the haunting beauty of the ocean in oil.
The cresting waves arch into curled petals of white before setting upon the sloping beach with frenzy. It's the roar of those hungry waves that seem to, if only for a moment, drown out everything in your head.
There are no whispers. No songs. No screams. Vengeful hissing can't climb to a higher decibel than the frothing waters slamming against jagged bedrock.
All is quiet—except the sea.
You lean into it. The closer you get to that precipice, the quieter everything in your head goes. Sounded sucked into the vacuum of the ocean. The endless song of the sea.
Another step. Another.
For a moment, you're free.
The forest doesn't scream for you. Your grandmother doesn't dig her teeth into your gyri, hands clawing at the space behind your eyes. You don't think of her, or your mother, or Gaz, or anyone else unfortunate enough to get consumed by this damnable place where fairy tales split the seams apart, and merge with reality.
It's peaceful.
You take another step—
A hand curls over your shoulder, tugging you back.
Anger pools, thick and acidic, on your tongue, but the flash of your ire, your vexation, is dashed by the sound the waves make when it slams into the spot you were just standing.
It slashes across the concrete as the stranger pulls you into his broad chest, heat nearly liquifying your spine.
He sucks in a breath. You feel his chest expand with it. When he breathes out, you taste gunpowder on your tongue.
"Gotta be more careful n'that, love."
You've had near-misses before. Flirted with the reaper. Ripped yourself from the jowls of death himself.
This isn't anything new.
And yet—
Your eyes drag up, meeting flat black boring down at you. His hood is pulled over his forehead, casting shadows down to his jaw.
"You—"
Your teeth sink into your tongue. Emotions lash through you like the flick of a bullwhip, shredding your skin until it's raw and oozing. The tail pulls away whenever you try to wrap your fingers around one of them—relief: you're not dead; embarrassment: how could you be so stupid; shame: saved by a stranger; and—
Visceral terror. Panic.
It bludgeons its fist down your throat, barbed knuckles clawing at the soft tissue of your esophagus until you taste blood on your tongue.
Panic tastes of ozone and leaks, thick and warm like molasse, down your throat.
"Hey," he murmurs, and the sound of his voice, his low timbre, is porous, calcined. The rough scratch scours through the haze of fear threading through your sternum. "C'mon on, now. Gotta breathe, yeah?"
It's his hands on your shoulder—hotter than grenade fire—and the thick scent of musk, of stale smoke and kerosene sweat, that break through the gossamer of your acrid panic. He spins you around to face him, eyes fixed on your face.
"That's it," he says, soft, soothing. "Keep breathin'. You ain't dead yet."
You come to yourself in pieces. The world bleeds with startling clarity around the blurred edges. Home, you think. Maybe.
Once upon a time.
You blink. Blink again.
The hand still on you—heavier, you find, than an anvil—lifts, his thumb brushing over the curve of your jaw, swiping over the sweat-stained skin.
You can't see his eyes through the shadows cast over his face. A stranger. You've never seen him before.
They didn't say anyone new moved to town.
"Who are you—?"
"You don't know?"
And then his hand is gone, taking all the heat in your body with him.
It lifts to his vest, thick fingers, gloved in yellow, curling over the butt of his cigar.
You must make a face. A grimace. A whisper of bemusement. Whatever it is, it makes his lips twitch under the shorn burnt umber of his beard.
"I'd share," he mutters, teething sinking into the hilt as he pats himself down for a lighter. "But I ain't got the time."
"Shouldn't be smoking in a provincial park, anyway."
The words are dragged out of you. Numbed, gritty.
It makes him snort. "Maybe—;" he cups his hand around the end, thumb striking the ignition of the lighter. He inhales, and the red circle at the tip illuminates the cerulean blue tucked away into the folds of his hood. The plume of smoke curls over him like a shroud. "But I doubt a cigar is gonna bring the whole forest down, mm? 'sides, we all have our vices, don't we?"
With that, he leaves you standing in the tendrils of smoke that billow out from his caustic mouth. No goodbye. No name. Nothing except the hum of his touch buzzing through your veins.
Your head is numb. Thoughts congealing into hardened clay.
Yeah, you think sluggishly, eyes dropping to the drenched pavement where the ocean narrowly missed you. Swallowed you whole. We do.
(Yours is bad decisions that reek of napalm.
Men who scour your hands raw when you touch their coarse surface.)
You find him again in some desolate pub on the fringes of town a few days later. It looks like it's one strong gust of wind away from blowing down. Dilapidated. Rusted from the harsh salt of the ocean to the north.
He lifts his head when you slide into the empty chair on the left, but says nothing about your unexpected company.
Instead, his lips curl over the cigar sawed between his teeth. A grin, you think.
You wonder if he was expecting you.
(Wonder, then, with a touch of something warm gnarling in your belly, if you surprised him.)
The barkeep wanders past, brows lifting at you in question.
"Um, a vodka soda—"
The man, Price you learned from the locals with a great of digging, snorts.
"Ain't got none of that here, love. Two scotches. Neat." He leans over, thick fingers grasping the middle of the cigar, an inch away from the bristles on his upper lip, and pulls it away, ashing it in the tray in front of him. "And a bottle of spring water."
"Scotch?" You echo, leaning your elbow on the sticky counter. He reeks of smoke. Sweat. Blood. Gunpowder. You veer closer, soaking in the astringent tang of him. Everyone on this island smells of daffodils and cotton; clean and neat and innocent. He reeks of danger. Everything inside of you screams to stay away. "I don't drink scotch."
The cigar burns in the tray. He pulls back, shifting in the chair. His elbow rests on the counter, the other arm is slung over the back of his seat. The picture of appeasement, of a satiated tiger eying a little mouse sniffing past it. There's no immediate danger, and his posture is relaxed. Open. But his eyes—
Price turns to you, then. His legs are spread, knees notched apart, taking up more space than you offer him. A looming presence. Dominating. Confident. He's not doing it on purpose, you don't think, he's just—
Big.
His legs are too long. Thighs are too thick.
Something gnarls behind your ribs when you take in his bare face. It's different, smaller, without the bulky black hood thrown low on his brow. His hands bare, leaving him in only casual clothes that stretch taut around his broad body.
The beanie on his head, pulled low on his forehead, makes him look roguish, rough. The picturesque presentation of a bad boy down to the pelt-brown leather Levi jacket stretched taut around his broad shoulders.
He looks older, somehow, without the tenebrous of night shading him in dark indigo. Aged like a fine whisky. All burnt umber and ivory.
The charcoal colouring brightens the heavy blue of his eyes—crushed bluebonnets and powdered graphite; a black hole centre—and the frame of his brown lashes dusting over his clean cheeks makes something pool in your lower belly.
(You wonder if he'd taste of whisky sour.)
"Well," he murmurs, brow lifting. It makes the skin on his forehead crinkle. He has laugh lines cresting around the corners of his eyes. They stand out to you, now. Void of the shadows you're used to. "You do when I'm paying."
The scotch, the cigar, the dingy pub that reeks of stale cigarettes and is perfumed in a dusting of nicotine that films every surface coalesces into incipient vice.
His hand moves from where it's loosely curled around his glass, and rests, heavy and warm, on your thigh.
When he leans in, you taste calcine on his breath.
The acrid tang is a balm to the blisters in your raw esophagus. You meet him in the middle, smaller hands curling over the wool lapels of his jacket, tugging him into you.
"Never thanked you for saving me," you murmur, his beard grazing your lips. A tickle. A brush.
Price sucks in a deep breath, eyes liquifying into an intense azure. "No need to thank me, love. As much as I love the ocean, you don't belong there, do you? No," he adds, decisively. Sure. "You belong on land. The earth. You're wild, like the forest, aren't you?"
It's an out. An escape. An option to flee from the cosm that folds around you like a nebulous cloud.
You could take it. Back up, away. Walk out of this dingy pub on the wrong side of town, and forget the man who reeks of nicotine, smoke; who leaves ashes behind on your skin when he touches you.
The only one who stares at you from the unfathomable black of his eyes, lashes shrouded in tenebrous, and makes you falter. Makes your heart lurch, jumping to sit at the bottom of your throat.
You should pull away. Stay away from the man who leaks ethanol and nitroglycerine. From the man who smells of acrid smoke. Gunfire.
You should.
But your fingers tighten in the lapels of his jacket, pulling him closer. Closer.
The bridge of his nose is warm when it presses against your own.
His eyes spark, wildfires. A blazing forest.
"You said something about vices." His chest rumbles in response to your hushed words.
"So I did."
Smoke singes your nose when you brush your lips over his. Warm. Chapped. Dry. You taste ash. Humus. The bitter tang of dandelion oil.
"Got some time tonight?"
"Thought you said I shouldn't be smoking."
"We're not in a park, near flammable trees," your hand falls to his chest. His heart thuds beneath your palm. Thick, full. Your eyes lift to his, lidded and heavy. You gaze at him from under your lashes, coy. Demure. You wonder if he can see how eager you are beneath the sly cut of your lids. "Are we, Price?"
The use of his name makes his lips quirk. A small, secretive thing that you can't read.
"No, we're not." His hand slides down, curling over your knee. "Don't know what you're gettin' into, love."
"Oh, no?" You taunt, breathless. Even through all your layers, you still feel his searing heat on your skin. His eyes drop when your tongue lashes out, wetting your lower lip. "And what's that?"
A frisson shudders over his face. Lashes fluttering. He leans forward, resting the rim of his beanie on your forehead.
When his eyes slide open, all you see is arsenic white pooled around Prussian blue. "More than you could ever dream of."
Your trembling fingers curl into the lapels of his jacket. For leverage, maybe; or to hide the quiver in your joints from his widening eyes.
And so, you kiss him.
A messy punch to the mouth with your sun-blistered lips.
His mouth parts, wry curls flutter when he inhales sharply. And then—
He devours you.
It's messy. More sealed lips glueing together than it ever could be considered a proper kiss, but it feels more like a homecoming than stepping off the boat, and you tuck that inside your pounding chest.
(The whispers in your head seem to sing when his lips touch yours.)
You taste bark on your tongue when it slips over his. Loam. Moss. Something earthy and rich. His beard scratches your chin, your lips, but you pull him closer, hungry for more—for the taste of wilderness on his tongue, for the respite from the whispers, the screams. Like the ocean, he, too, is a vacuum, swallowing everything whole until just you remain, stripped down to nothing but sensation and want. Bare, raw.
Your teeth ache when you pull away, fingers curling into the coarse hair along his chin. The whips of his wry curls scratch your palm.
You never want to let go.
Price's eyes are noctilucent clouds; a storm over a rainforest. He'll ruin you. Devour. Destroy. Take, and take, and take until there is nothing left.
Your lips tremble when you speak, words tremulous with your desire, your eagerness, when they slip past your bruised mouth.
"I can think of a few that are better than smoking."
Price shudders.
"Where did you go?" Your friend asks, eyes swinging from the cards spread out in front of him—the Idiot, Solitaire—to you. They burn into the side of your face, the same place Price touched with bare knuckles, and said you belong to the forest, don't you? "Missed dinner."
You ate Doro Wat in a small shop after Price fucked you stupid in the dingy bathroom of the pub, face scraping against the waterlogged wallpaper that chipped with each brutal thrust of his hips.
Like that, hmm? Can barely take me, love, but you're so fuckin' greedy for it, ain't you?
You're sure the barkeep heard your moans as they bounced off the jaundiced walls.
(You still hear him hissing in your ear. Still feel him splitting you apart.)
You try not to shiver.
"Ate already," you shrug, bundling your sleep clothes tight in your trembling hands. When you stand, his eyes follow you. "So. Um—"
"You okay?"
"Yeah," you say, shifting on the balls of your feet. "I've—" You think of his eyes, gyre white, and wonder if this is what it feels like to get swallowed by the sea. "I've never been better."
"Good," he says, smiling. "I worry about you, you know?"
You nod. "Yeah," you say. "Me, too."
You break apart in the shower, falling into pieces as you make yourself finish, thinking about nothing but the phantom stretch of his cock seated deep inside of you, the taste of his come pooling on your tongue.
It balms the residual burn in your esophagus, and you know, then, when you throb, still wanting his touch on your skin, that you've always been terrible at telling yourself no.
It can't happen. It can't.
There's a strange magnetism about him—an uncanny sense of mystery and familiarity sutured together.
It feels a little bit like staring at the looming maw, the event horizon, of a black hole. Unfathomable black. No way out.
There's something that feels a bit like forewarning inside your chest when he brushes against you, and presses his lips on the skin behind your ear—a secret place only he knows, where only his fingerprints have ever been. You feel his touch even when he's gone. Haunted by the memory of his rough hands and rasping tenor.
Running would make sense, you think, watching the ferries come and go. You have enough money for a ticket, and you've yet to even unpack your bag.
You don't know who he is, but you've given him everything. All of it. There's nothing left inside of you to hand over, but he keeps looking at you as if he's waiting for more.
"Waiting for a ride?"
You glance back at the operator with a divot between your brow and cotton inside your ears.
You want to say yes, but you shake your head instead.
"No." I can't leave. "Just enjoying the view."
You find birch branches stripped of leaves, juniper berries, maple leaves, spindles of dogwood, bushels of fir, and bouquets of bog rosemary, northern bluebell, fireweed, and wintergreen on your doorstep each morning, laid gently against the old welcome mat.
You should toss them out, and throw them away. How does he know where you live, anyway? It would make the most sense; be the wisest decision.
Instead, you tuck them inside your notebook, pressing them against the pages where they'll be safe.
(You try not to think too much about why they never die.)
It happens again. And again. Again—
It becomes a ritual for the few months you're back in town. The leaves, twigs, petals, pines, and seeds all show up at your door each morning and come nightfall, you're drawn to him like a moth to a flame.
He finds the nastiest looking pub in the city, and you find him there after dark.
He sits, smokes a cigar. Orders two scotches, and a bottle of spring water. Teaches you how to drink it properly—none of that sugary cocktail shite; just pure whisky, love, as it should be—and lets you puff on the damp end of his cigar, eyes gleaming in the soft yellow light above as he takes in the way your lips curl over the wet tip.
He stares at you like he's indulging you.
Like he knows.
And maybe, he does.
Maybe he sees the way your jaw works, tongue lashing over the tip just to chase his taste. The heat in your cheeks, your eyes, as you gaze at him, open and raw and wanting. The way you list toward him. Eager for it. For him. His touch, his smell.
He must, you think, but he's a right bastard.
He doesn't give it until the end of the evening, when everyone has gone home. When it's just you and him and the barkeep that glowers at you something ugly when you stand on shaky legs, and whisper you're going to the washroom.
Your fingers curl over the chipped porcelain, back arched as you stare at the face in the mirror.
You can't remember if it's you.
Whisky has polluted your synapses. The thick scent of smoke, the tobacco from the cigar, has congealed into resin over that little bundle of axons and nerves that control your impulse, logic.
Stupid.
You stare at the thing in the mirror, and wonder if the basal want on your face was so apparent to him as it is to you. If he saw the dark gleam of hunger, greed, impatience, swimming in your ink-smudged depths.
The door rattles. Clicks.
The squeak of the hinges is the only warning you get before Price is there, liquified in the doorway and clouded in smoke.
His hand curls over the worn, peeling frame. Eyes dance with the same hunger, same want, as the ones that flicker across the surface of the mirror.
"Couldn't wait for me, eh, love?" He breathes, his chest expands with his exhale. Scenting you, you think. You wonder if he can smell the slick pooling in your panties. The desperation brimming in your veins. "Wanted it that bad, huh?"
He moves. A mountain of a man now filling up the entirety of your gaze until all you see is him.
You used to want to climb mountains. In training, they always warned of summit fever. Of that little part of your head that just wanted it to be over, to reach the very top of the precipice. Impatient, it couldn't wait. It made you spring up, and climb higher and higher before you were ready, prepared.
You think of it now when your hands lift, curling over his broad shoulders.
("Summit fever will get you killed," they say.)
"Just shut up and fuck me, Price."
His eyes flash. "Greedy little thing, aren't you?"
You are. Painfully so.
It etches in your ribs like a sickness, festering in your mouldering bones. Rotting you from the inside out.
A crutch in the searing heat of skin, sweat, and sin. The feeling of him taking you apart, breaking you down into atoms and molecules that bubble in the lining of your head becomes so commonplace, so often forget who you are when you're pushed up against a wall, being filled to the brim by him.
He leaves madness behind when he goes, and the world that divides fantasy from reality begins to crack, to splinter.
You hear his voice in your head late at night when the wind blows through the window, carrying the scent of the forest.
"Come home," he rasps in your ear.
The scratch of his beard seems to scrape against the little thread keeping you tied down to reality. It's frayed and worn by his hands. You wonder when he'll sink his teeth in the silk, and snap the line. Untethering you from your binds.
Come home to me. Come back to where you belong—
Price takes you out to dinner three months after this—whatever it is—starts. After your house becomes more of a garden, writ with the wild remnants of the forest, after each passing day. Full of bushes, and branches. Twigs and precious gems. He gives you raw gold, and open geodes full of amethyst, and sapphire. Canopy leaves, and bark from the trees.
He leaves a whittled deer made from the red wood of a giant sequoia, and the likeness of the little fawn makes you believe that one day, it'll come to life in your living room.
(You leave a dish of water near the doorway—just in case—and wonder if you're becoming just as mad as your gran.)
He shows up at your doorstep, the bleached antlers of a great pronghorn in his hands. It's decorated with vines and moss weaved over the ivory in intricate braids and knots that you can't even begin to unravel. You marvel at the gift as he tells you he's taking you out for dinner.
There is no discussion. He doesn't ask, he just—
Does.
"Found a spot," he says, arms crossed over his broad chest. The cable-knit sweater pulls, stretched taut over his bulk. "Think you'd like it."
You don't know what to say. The antlers feel heavier in your hands, and warm to the touch. You try not to shiver when you set it down beside the little fawn.
"Oh," you say, but know you've never turned him down yet. It's all—
So much.
Your home is slowly becoming one with nature, with vines growing on the walls in great blooms of wisteria and lilac; the old floor boards under your feet shudder and creak as little saplings sprout through the cracks. You wake up at night and taste earth in your throat, feel the grass beneath your fingers. The breeze in your hair. The call of an arctic tern.
You dream of running through the forest. Of being chased. You breathe and feel the little seeds inside of your lungs start to take root. Soon you'll bloom with dandelions.
"Okay," you say, and wonder if the madness rummaging around your head will turn into a beautiful sequoia in the end. "Let's go."
The tavern is busy on a weeknight, crowded with a swell of mainlanders who'd ventured out for a camping trip over the long weekend.
You sit with your back straight, and listen to him talk about a hike he wants to take with you in the morning. Through the woods, he says, and you don't ask which one. You know. You know.
(It's time. It's time.)
There are alarm bells ringing in your head, but they're drowned out by the crooning whispers.
But the line is only frayed and worn, and despite the lure in his voice, the itch in your head to say yes, you hesitate. Falter.
The woods are dangerous.
You don't want to go.
He seems to sense it. His brows knot together.
"You want to, don't you?"
You fiddle with your napkin and try not to meet his arsenic stare. "It's… dangerous."
"I'll keep you safe."
"It's probably time for me to leave, anyway."
The air in the room turns frigid all at once. You think you can see white plumes of condensation when you shakily breathe out, teeth chattering.
"Price—"
"Didn't wanna do this, love," he says, voice hushed. Barely a whisper. His eyes are lavascapes. "But you ain't givin' me much of a choice, are you?"
"What—?"
The words die on your tongue when movement flashes in the corner of your eye. A man weaves, liquid, through the mindless crowd, cutting a path like the parting red sea.
His eyes are honeycombs. In his hand, he holds a limp dandelion.
It takes you a moment to make out the strange man who looms in the background. A splash of colour among sfumato.
It's Gaz.
The childish swell of his cheeks has sunken into angled, sharp bone. Slender fingers twirl the flower around, around, around—
It's hypnotic. You stare, horrified and awed—a strange amalgam of emotions that slip down your spine: worry, elation, panic, comfort—as his pink lips part into an easy, familiar grin. The cresting sun breaching the horizon. Eyes slanting in playful derision.
He looks like he's torn between telling a joke and spitting vitriol. Making you laugh, and then making you cry.
It buzzes in the air, electrified fingers dancing down your spine, and then just as quickly as the boy who disappeared reemerges into the land of the living, into this bastardised reality, he gives one last sharp, fanged grin, a mordant wink, and then he's gone.
He slips through the door, and without hesitating, you give chase.
Price says nothing when you go. Or maybe he does, but you can't hear anything except the rustling of leaves in your head.
Gaz, it whispers. Gaz, Gaz, Gaz.
(It's time for the lost little boy to come home.)
The rocks sit in a zigzag pattern through the frothing waters, a deceptive bridge that connects the valley to the coast. You feel the tremulous rattle of the water slicing against the hollow cavern beneath your feet. A ledge chiselled from the blunt erosion of the rapid currents below. One day, they say, the granite shelf will give and a massive hole filled with howling water will fill it.
Try not to be the idiot standing on the ledge.
You feel the power of the currents even on the peat-covered edge.
The water in front of you is deceptive. A calm, rolling surface at the shoreline almost seems to beckon you inside. Come take a dip in the cool waters. Grow fins and gills and chase the river otters through the currents. Feast on the wily salmon, and see if your feet can touch the sandy streambed.
But the river's fatality is nearly assured. No one has survived a dip in these waters that act as a serrated knife, carving chasms and channels through the granite below. The currents will rip into you, pulling you until your body is crushed against the wall, or into an unsearchable cave.
One slip, you think. Just one.
But—
The man in the bar flickers through your mind. His honeycomb eyes, fanged grin. Ethereal in his beauty like a painting of a god in oil and raw canvas. Carved likeness of a Stygian prince.
It was Kyle. It was Gaz. You know it. Know it deep within your bones, your marrow.
Taking the first step to the jutting slate that peaks just a few precious inches from the raging waters is easier, then, when you think of the boy who plucked a dandelion from the earth, and tucked it behind your ear. It makes the risk less daunting when it's for him.
For his parents who sunk into themselves, into the crater his absence left behind. A deep depression into the earth that swallowed them whole.
They moved last year after laying down a bouquet of flowers at the mouth of the forest.
You toe your shoes off, leaving them at the embankment, and then you leap. The perch is slick with waterlogged moss, slimy. It wobbles under you, but you catch yourself, stabilising. Steady. You huff. One down, four more to go.
Up close, they look so far apart. A chasm between each rock. An endless abyss that will rip you into pieces.
Still. Still. You have to find him. Have to.
You step, toes sliding in the algae. The rock beneath is stained green. It wobbles again when you bring your other foot down on top of it. The loud clack of rock scraping against rock is heard, unmuffled by the roaring water that tugs on the stone. You feel the push against your feet.
Two more. Two more.
You take another step, and then—
You fall—
The world drips into focus, a steady trickle of cognisance that paints the world in shades of greens and browns. An eagle soars above the canopy, their shadow swooping through the thick tangle of conifers reaching to the heavens.
The bed of moss beneath you is damp—lush with dew and softer than your mattress at home. You sink into the ground when you breathe, caught in an embrace. The vines curl over your wrists, your ankles, as if refusing to let go.
It should scare you—and maybe it does—but there's something against your head, fingers digging into your temples, and you feel nothing except a warm serenity leaking in. Thought spool into liquid gold, threads that weave together in a knotted clump. Indistinguishable from each other, and unreachable when they slip deeper into the honeyed-thick fog that curls around your mind. A temper from logic, from fear. Anything that isn't pure, artificial comfort is filtered through and cast aside.
You don't know why you're here.
One moment, you felt the coils of the raging currents sinking its claws into your flesh, pulling you under the deep waters, and then—
Heat on your face. The sun's desperate attempt to filter through the corded canopy and touch the forest floor. The shrill call of an eagle on the prowl. The tender caress of the moss below cushions your body.
You should be underwater. Pressed tight against the side of the rocks until you were swept downstream and spat out in the inlet, waterlogged and dead.
You draw humid air into your lungs until it swells against your ribcage. The steady thud of your heart tells you that somehow, somehow, you're alive. An empty brag—thud, thud; thud, thud—that seems to call out to the birds in the emergent layer, the ones nestled in their branches as they watch your feeble attempt to reconcile how you survived.
It's strange, you think, but the soporific warmth coursing through your veins does not let you panic.
You are—
"Foolish."
The warmth turns molten. You try to sit up, but the vines tighten around your limbs. If you weren't so vulnerable, you think it would almost feel like a hug.
The soft crunch of the moss tells you the voice—the man—is moving forward, toward you. You want to scream, but your tongue is thick, and your mouth is numb.
"What you did there was stupid," he says, and the forest around you seems to come alive in his anger. Pulsing. The branches sway and the leaves rattle without any wind. The trees bend down, coming inward. You hear the scream of a fox in the distance. The chuff of an agitated brown bear.
Primordial signs tell you to run.
But you're trapped.
Price steps closer, falling to his knees beside you. You can see him now, and suddenly you wish you'd been swallowed by the waves.
His face is writ with anger, brows tightening together in displeasure.
He seems imbued with the forest. One with the lush green that swells around you. Burnt umber and icy blue. Ethereal, unnatural. Something in your hindbrain tells you to run from that man that looks as if he could swallow you whole.
"Tryin' t'die on me, hmm?"
His hand lifts, and you feel his warm knuckles graze your temple. Soft, gentle, despite the ire in his eyes, and the irritation clenched in his jaw.
"Gonna hav'ta try harder than that, love."
You weren't trying very hard at all, you think, dazed, dizzy. You weren't trying at all.
"You're mine," his eyes flash, and you feel the press of gravity against your skin, pulling you down to the soft earth. Your fingers twitch. The fog inside your head clears.
Blinking up at him, you catch the scattering supernovae echoing in the corners of his eyes; galaxies of pine and cedar, humus and tussock. They bloom from the black hole in the centre, surrounded by sapphire blue. He's not human, you think, but it doesn't surprise you because you already knew. Have known, really—ever since you asked around for his name and watched the same strange fog seep into their eyes as they struggled to remember a man they claimed to know.
Ever since you found bushels of figs on your doorstep.
A crown of pine needles and crow feathers.
Price leans over you, brows knotted together like the gnarled, weaving trunk of a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine.
There's a forest fire in his eyes. "You're mine, aren't you?"
You think about the trinkets left on your doorstep. The whispers, the screams.
"Did you ever give me a choice?"
The tension in his brow snaps taut. Agony frissons through the spaced canyons; whet from ire and slick from sorrow. He bends down, and shakes his head.
"I've always given you a choice," his words are smouldering logs, crackling with his pain. "I've always told you to go, but you couldn't stay away, could you?"
Price takes you on the mossy forest floor, fingers digging into the peat as you sink, down, down, down—
His hand under your head, cradling the back of your skull, keeps you from getting swallowed by the grass knoll that breathes and trill against your spine.
Fire licks in the crevasses of his eyes, molten desperation you can't ignore. He rages above you, quivering in the fading glow of the sunset struggling to slip through the canopy. No longer a man but a myth. He hangs over you with his canines bared, and flashes of anger and sorrow scorch the path his teeth leave behind on your skin.
You're becoming unmoored. Each touch, and brush; each sweep of his tongue soothing the indents of his razor-sharp teeth all seem to loosen the ties that thread through your soul, anchoring you to the world that stands in full bloom before you.
The forest shudders with his frantic pace; each piston of his hips leaks his fervent anguish and makes the trees croon, and creak as they bow their foliage in sorrow. His pain lashes through their roots, and rent the air in two. A fox mourns his loss in the distance. A wolf yowls in agony. His brethren lifting their muzzle to the sleepy moon, and howling out the melody of their despair.
It's too much, too much, and you fall into pieces in his hands, shivering beneath him as the woods around you tremble and quake. It's a mesmerising dance.
He finishes with a grunt that makes the world shudder anew, spending himself as deep inside of you as he can, as if he could overwrite your empty spaces with himself. Fill you to the brim until you are bursting with him, with life. Tulips for your eyes. Furze for veins. Moss for hair. Peat soil for blood.
When he speaks, the world falls silent.
"You don't know it yet, but you will. You've always been mine. Always belonged to the forest, to the earth. To me."
Despite his words, he lets you go.
And you run, run, run—
Your toes dig into the wet soil near the stream. The desperate catapult across the ravine halted at the very last moment, leaving you winded and shaking. Hands clenched into tight balls by your side. Quivering with fear, with the adrenaline rush still roaring in your veins.
You don't know what you're doing.
The whispers in your head go silent.
The absence of sound makes you mourn, and you think about his agony. The pain when he took you, the resignation when he let you go.
You think of him, and you know.
I've always told you to go, but you couldn't stay away, could you?
You scent napalm in the air, cloying despite the acrid burn that scalds your lungs when you breathe in deep, holding it there.
You think of the chest inside your closet. The pieces of yourself you left behind. The way he fits you like a puzzle, like he was made for you. Designed with your rough edges in mind. Softening your hard lines; scouring your gritty surface it was smooth and shiny like fire Opal and precious gems.
Ever since you felt his hand on your shoulder, you haven't been able to let go.
(You don't even think you ever really tried.)
Come to me, the forest says, honey in your ears. It sounds like the rapid beat of a million birds' wings, ready to take flight. Pulsing and alive and full of wonder, childish glee.
The earth blooms in your chest. You feel the soft, tender caress of the leaves against your skin, the moss sinking between your toes. Clinging to your flesh, desperate to get inside, and take refuge in your heart. Come home to us.
Your grandmother warned you to stay out of the forest, that it was dangerous. Deadly. Wrong. But how can it ever harm you when it touches you so sweetly?
The branches curl around your ankles as you walk, leading you, guiding you, to the place where you belong. The forest opens around you, spreads apart and makes room for you to pass, touching you as you go, taking little pieces of you. Strands of your hair, the salt from your tears. Pieces of clothes. Parts of your soul.
You pluck your heart out of your chest, and leave it beneath a gnarled sequoia. She will protect it forever.
Moss grows inside of the empty space. A tern makes a nest inside of it, filling it with a bed of pine needles, and twigs from the junipers. You feel a mouse make a home in your rib cage, burrowing between your bones. You place your hand over your side, and feel her nuzzle against your palm.
"You're safe now," you say. "We're almost home."
It's Gaz who greets you with a crown made of sugi. When he cups your face, you feel raging rivers and streams in his palms, and now that you are home.
"Missed you, dandelion," he breathes, and his voice turns into a Chinook that crests over the mountains. "But there's someone who wants to see you."
His hands slide down to your wrists, and you feel the sun grazing your skin when he spins you around, around, around—
"Now," he leans down, pressing his lips to the shell of your ear. You hear the Falcons nesting in his chest, and smell pine in his breath. "He's been an impatient bastard, you know? Just moping about ever since you left—"
A scoff. You lift your head and feel the swell of the earth beneath your feet. Dizzying. Wanting.
He waits for you in the thicket, eyes made of sapphire and stone. When he breathes, the forest swells with his breath, and you taste loam when you swallow.
"A sorry sap, thinkin' you were runnin' away, and all. But you won't, will you?" Gaz pushes you forward, and his laughter rings in your ears. "Not anymore."
Price meets you in the middle, his eyes sparkling embers. A baptism in fire. You feel the heat on your skin, and shiver.
You used to be afraid of forest fires, but you know, now, that sometimes trees need to burn before they can truly grow.
Lodgepole roots bud under his skin, rippling veins across a ravine. He rests his hand against your cheek, thumb brushing the dawn redwood needles that bloom under your skin.
"Welcome home."
"They'll give you gifts," your gran says, shaking her head. "Things from their realm. Little trinkets and gems—" geodes, sapphires and diamonds, raw gold and coral; "—and you must never accept them," a whittled deer made of sequoia under your pillow; crow bones buried in the garden."Because if you do, if you do, they'll never let you go."
"Why?" You asked, blinking at her.
"Because it's a courting ritual, and to accept means… well," her mouth twists in wry disdain. "Just don't."
You don't tell her that you already have. You don't mention the sticks and precious stones that always ended up on your windowsill. The whispers of the forest calling your name.
You nod sagely instead, fingers tightening around the sap stained heart chiselled from Bristlecone Pine. The charred ends are warm in your palm. You feel it pulse.
Will you accept this? My heart? Will you keep it safe for me?
"I will."
This was meant to be light and fluffy and smutty but now it's. This. And um. Oops.
I hope you enjoyed it!
JOHN PRICE MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION
PART THREE OF COD X MYTHOLOGY ⁞ SOAP ● DRAGON PRICE
Y'all i am desperately looking for a fic so here's a really bad description of it
Fae!PricexWitch!Reader, Far is constantly trying to get to reader who has far too many protection spells, which doesn't allow him to do much. Gaz finds Reader with Price and taps them on the forehead which activates the security spells and forces them out, Reader struggles with the fae magic in their brain and in a fit of desperation, opens the door and basically shoves it into Price
So uh, anyone know what i'm talking abt? I just really wanna reread it
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On a global scale, regional market dynamics also influence FAE pricing. Different regions have varying levels of production capacity, import/export dynamics, and regulatory frameworks that contribute to price differentials. For instance, regions with abundant palm oil production may see lower FAE prices compared to areas reliant on imported feedstocks. Moreover, currency exchange rates and trade tariffs can further complicate pricing strategies for manufacturers and distributors operating across international borders.
In recent years, sustainability concerns have increasingly shaped the FAE market landscape. Consumers and businesses alike are prioritizing products derived from sustainable raw materials and processes, prompting manufacturers to invest in renewable feedstocks and cleaner production technologies. These shifts towards sustainability can impact FAE pricing by altering supply chain costs and influencing consumer preferences for environmentally friendly products.
Looking ahead, the Fatty Alcohol Ethoxylates market is expected to continue evolving in response to these multifaceted factors. Industry participants must navigate a complex web of raw material costs, regulatory pressures, market demand fluctuations, and sustainability imperatives to effectively manage pricing strategies. As global economies recover from recent disruptions and industries innovate towards greener solutions, the pricing dynamics of FAE will likely remain dynamic, requiring agile responses from all stakeholders in the supply chain.
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