Look at me. 👁️👁️ I need you to heed the tags. I am going to tag the hell out of this thing and if you don’t read the tags then you’re throwing yourself into a mixed bag of whatever the hell and that’s on you. The tags are there for your benefit. Not mine. You have been warned.
CW: Reader’s spiraling thoughts
Part: 1, 3
9:23pm April 30th, 2026
You stare out at the police cruiser, all white and black with tawny gold detailing bathed in the golden glow emitted by the arc sodium streetlight perched several feet above it, like a vehicle nestled proudly in a gameshow podium spotlight.
A voice then, darkly booming from the saturnine recesses at the back of your mind like thunder, a voice like one of those old carny barkers breaking the chokehold of mental silence that had stolen over you from your initial shock with all the tenebrific zeal of an adrenaline fueled night terror, sending a chill swimming up your spine as agile and deft as a barracuda cutting through turmultously churning waters.
'Tell her what we've got for her Johnny! For starters how about a ride in the back of a brand new, luxury, all wheel drive SUV, fit with your very own private, civil servant chauffeur. Along with a fine pair of matching, silver, cold-punched, steel link cuffs. And to top that off how about an all expenses paid one way ticket to Florida's finest penitentiary, where I'm told they still have a line down the block to get into the ever exclusive, by reservation only, make ya jump right out of your strapped in seat, electric chair!'
You shuddered to push the voice away, a fear so potent it became a physical thing that moved you, requiring effort to dispel. You confronted the sight before you again and forced yourself to grasp the realities of it to stop your mind from wandering back into the sideshow nightmare of your overactive imagination.
On both the driver and passenger sides, the outline of Florida was encompassed by a wreath of satin red rose heads. Black banners flanked Florida from the north and south embossed with the words 'Protect' and 'Serve' respectively in a golden script. A relatively simple design in and of itself that wasn't half bad, but it made you think of Christmas or Valentine's Day more than serving justice or fighting crime and felt far too regal to represent a growing township in central Florida.
With nothing to do but sit on your hands and listen far too intently to the muffled warble of their voices through the walls; Danny's animated and personable— no doubt in full on Jed mode, and the officers, one brawny and distinctively timbre and the other softer and slightly higher in pitch, your imagination refuses to settle into stagnation.
You see yourself busting through the plain glass window of your little back bedroom and screaming bloody murder, you see the offiers backing into view, guns drawn and trained at Danny's head. You see backup arrive instantaneously, four more cruisers and a swat van to boot flooding your dark neighborhood with righteous blue and white light as they barrel down your road.
You see yourself, pulled free of the house, a strong officer with steady hands lifting you bridal style safely through the jagged glass. He pulls you in, head rested on his chest, well padded with muscle. His face is a blank but it's a handsome blank, that much you can imagine and his arms feel sturdy and so supportive as he guides you away from the hectic chaos that's become them attempting to subdue and restrain Danny.
But that's where the pleasant bubble bursts as the tendrils of nightmare scenarios start seeping in, and your stomach takes an unexpected lurch. Best case scenario you see them order him to the ground, a command with which he complies and then they pounce on his prone body, practically trussing him up like an oven bound turkey before carting him off like an old tote bag into the back of a cruiser, never to be seen again.
Or worse even, they order him to the ground and he doesn't heed their warnings, and opts instead to charge the nearest officer with his knife. Would he succeed? You think it likely. How many could he realistically get before they shot him down like a rabid dog in the street? One, two maybe if he's quick. But the ending is always the same.
Danny lying face up in the grass. Face up because our daydreams are always of the most exorbitant caliber whether positive or negative in nature. Designed to either torment or exhilarate us to the grandest of extremes. And the most vividly gruesome picture you can paint for yourself is the image of Danny lying face up and dead in the grass beneath the brilliant light of a full moon.
You can see him in your minds eye. They've planted a 9mm right between his eyes and four more into his sternum and neck for good measure. The pools of blood flow endless— there's no saving him. The death is instantaneous— there's no saying goodbye. His eyes, infintismal in their shades of brown are wide open and glassy, all the malicious life and tainted love drained from them as the small trickle of blood from his head wound dips into the hollow of one orbital and down his face like a single final tear. Not even time for a song to bleed out to after all.
You try to swallow but it gets stuck in your throat and there's a hot, heavy weight all of a sudden right behind your eyes that you have to blink rapidly to clear. You cough to clear your throat as the door bursts open, scaring you shitless.
"Jesus fuck, Danny! What the hell?" You hiss at him in alarm, hoping to god he doesn't catch the slight tremble in your voice beneath the surprise.
"Put on your robe, quick." He says, already moving away from you and towards your closet and snatching back the doors by their round wooden handles. He flings the robe back at you even as he's already reaching up towards the clear plastic bin that held your small assortment of winter wear. And it was small— living in central Florida did not exactly demand the need for heavy insulated clothing. But you had a few odds and ends tucked away for the off occasional winter day— a nice warm coat, a pair of flip-top mittens, and a nice long wool scarf.
Of these, after Danny pulled the top off, he grabbed the latter from the bin and then threw it haphazardly onto your bed where it promptly landed half-skewed, bounced and then toppled over altogether, spilling the mittens and half of the coat out on top of them.
"Danny what the fuck is going on? I just put those up for the season." You ask even as you're already doing as he'd instructed, pulling the robe on overtop of your clothes as you stared at him in bewilderment. He shushed you and helped to pull the robe fully together in front of you before lashing the sash tight around your waist with a vicious tug.
"The cops are here and they're asking to see you. I've told them you're sick and sleeping but they've insisted. Answer questions as minimally as you can and let me do most of the talking. How's your sick voice? Can you do a sick voice?" You stare up at him, brows furrowed as you take in everything he's saying. You think about his question for just a second before you answer in your best imitation of a sick person.
“You mean like this?" You ask him, trying to give the words a throaty, nasally spin.
His lips thin and turn up to one side. "Ok, just nod or shake your head then. And let me do the talking." He says before taking the scarf he'd collected from your winter things and wrapping it over and over and over again around your neck and upper chest. It bunches and chokes up just beneath your chin and you scowl at him as you reach up to tug it down and adjust it, earning you a prompt slap to the back of the hand.
"That's meant to be there. It covers the marks on your neck and I've already told them that I've pulled all the stops to make sure you get better, so leave it." You grumble at him but he only spins you around and ushers you towards the door, stopping only right before the threshold to whisper just behind your ear.
"Oh. And I'm sure it goes without saying that I will not hesitate to kill both of these men right out there on your front porch in front of god and anyone else who may witness it for that matter should anything go awry. And after that I will have to kill them and Him if it comes down to it. Do you understand me?" Your heart freezes in your chest as your blood runs cold and pumps through it, but you give him a curt nod, untrusting of your voice suddenly.
"Excellent. It's almost over, doll. That I can promise you." He slips a covid mask on over your face as a finishing touch and then he's pushing you out of the room and towards the central part of the house. There you're greeted by the sight of two police officers stood just outside your front door in the luminescence cast by your moth flecked porchlight, a cautious but close enough distance away so as not to risk catching what you're apparently infected with.
"Here she is." Danny croons from behind you. "The poor things been in bed all day. Picked up what's been going around at work I think and I'm not taking any chances for it to fester into pneumonia." You only half pay attention to what he's saying, you're too busy staring at the pair huddled in your doorway, left wondering just what the requirements are these days to be recruited on as 'Roseville's Finest'.
The two officers before you could not be more opposites of each other if they tried. The one on the left was tall and strong. Apparent by the way he hardly fit in the frame of your front door. His uniform bunched tight at the forearms and shoulders. He looked more like a supersoldier or terminator than a regular run of the mill beat cop.
The one on the right on the other hand was a lean and lanky man with all the stature of a lawn gnome. It was like someone set a dachshund next to a cane corso. You were glad now for the covid mask, it was hard enough to stifle your laughter, let alone your smile.
Your eyes kept ping-ponging back and forth between them but after a moment you thought that might look a bit suspicious and so you forced yourself to quit it, settling your eyes on the stouter of the pair as you inhaled deeply. The thought of lying to the police had you a bit out of your own head and over analytical of any and everything you did.
"If we could make this quick officers? I'd really like to get her back to bed." Danny asks, full on Jed mode indeed as he huddles in close behind you and slips a protective arm around your waist.
"Of course." Says the dachshund, addressing Danny before turning his attention back to you.
"Sorry to show up on your doorstep like this at such a late hour, we'll make this brief. Ma'am, have you seen or heard from Joshua Dubois in the recent weeks?" And there it is, you knew this is what they came for, but by god here it is in the rotten flesh. One arm twitched as you felt the imaginary slap of cuffs lock down over your wrists. Snapping out of it, you shake your head no, prompting Danny to speak up.
"She'll probably be doing a lot of that in regards to your questions. It pains her to talk." The dachshund who had seemed to be sizing you up, pulled his eyes from you briefly to nod and acknowledge Danny before directing all of his attention back to you. From his side you can feel the cane corso's eyes boring into your very soul.
"You haven't heard from Mr. Dubois at all then? Not a text, or a call, or a letter in the mail even?" He asks as a follow up to which you shake your head for him again as Danny asks.
"What exactly is this all about officers? I'm sure you're aware but, she's had some trouble in the past with Mr. Dubois and the subject is a sensitive one." The dachshund nods in what appears to be sympathetic agreement with Danny's claim.
"Yes. We are very aware. That is in fact, the reason why we are here. You see, Joshua Dubois was found dead this morning in the parking garage of your previously shared workplace."
You take in a sharp inhale, one that was genuine in reaction. You had seen it up close and personal with your own eyes, hell he'd had his hands around your throat as it happened, but something about hearing it aloud from someone else's lips, from the mouth of a bonafide and fully laced police officer standing right outside your front door knocked all the wind out of you all over again.
The dachshund nods again in a kind of sympathetic understanding but the cane corso to his left only squints his eyes minutely, scrutinizing. You avoid making eye contact with him, opting instead to let your eyes drop to their shoes, what you're hoping looks like a contemplative, disturbed reaction.
"I'm sorry you had to find out like this, it's not the ideal way but we've got a body and no answers, it's up to us to ask the questions. Starting with anyone and everyone who he had trouble with in his past." He explains, diplomatically. And it does seem to be him doing all of the talking, the cane corso seems to be either retroactively silent or muzzled.
Danny, the elected mouth piece on your side of the board, addresses the officer again. "Was he murdered, officer?"
The question jars you and you have to fight to stop yourself from physically recoiling. Has he lost his god damn mind?
But to this question the officer doesn't even seem the slightest bit surprised to hear as he lifts his eyes off you again, letting them drift up and up to Danny, who had to have doubled the man in height. He smiles as he answers, a playful tug at the corner of his lips, which you clock as extremely odd given the morbid circumstances.
"Well, it's too early to tell. But we think it's likely. And that's all I can divulge at this time." He answers Danny like an old friend, or at the very least like a well worn in acquaintance, even going so far as to tip him a playful wink at the end.
Danny nods solemnly, a gesture of well toed respect. Like he's done this song and dance before and knows the lines that he is barred to cross.
And for the third time, driving his point home rather firmly. "So just to confirm, you have had no contact with Mr. Dubois, of any kind?" Your eyes rise up from the ground to his again, hoping that the eye contact will provide him the emphasis he's clearly searching for, and then you shake your head again, for the third time in response.
He nods good-naturedly, like that's what he thought the answer was going to be all along.
"Well, that's all we'll be needing from you tonight. If we have any more questions we'll drop by again or give you a call." The officer says, winding down his officer on duty persona right before Danny interjects.
"Before you go officer, is there any chance, any chance at all that this is the work of Roseville's Ghost?" Danny asks and you stiffen, your head turning just slightly in his direction on the axis of your neck as you hear the officer issue a hearty chuckle.
"Always on the job aren't ya, Jed? Even stuck at home taking care of the missus." Danny chuckles right along with him.
"What can I say officer? The reporter in me never rests." The officer nods, like he understands before asking him a follow up question that catches you from complete left field. "Off the record as per usual?"
Danny nods and tips him a wink, eyes shining. "Of course."
The officer nods and after a moments consideration, he answers.
"Well, it's still an ongoing investigation but… no. No, we don't think so. This one doesn't fit his MO. The victim well…" he hesitates, his eyes shifting back to you like he's just only now remembered where he was and the sensitive ears that were present.
"…let's just say the victim's cause of death is not consistent with those of the previous victims." He says, giving Danny a pointed look which Danny reciprocates with one more solid head nod to punctuate it.
"Got it. Thanks, officers." Jed says through that winning, charitable, golden retriever grin. But then officer dachshund gets this gleam in his eye and you were not prepared at all for what he said next.
"Since we're in the spirit of speaking off the record, Jed. You never mentioned you had a sweetheart." He says, looking at you with a new expression that hadn't touched his face the whole time he'd been in officer mode. Off the record, indeed.
"Well.." Danny says, pulling you somehow impossibly closer and bending down until his head dips and comes to rest on your shoulder, until you're quite literally cheek to cheek and his whole body eclipses your frame, until it's like you're wearing him like a human shroud.
"…we've been waiting for the right time to go public." He says as he tilts your head gently towards him with only the tip of one finger, hooked around your chin, pulling your bewildered eyes off the officers at your door to make direct eye contact with you. Those deep brown eyes that so clearly reflect his love and devotion gazing directly into yours.
"But we're getting very serious now, aren't we sweetheart?" Danny says, putting emphasis on the pet name deliberately. You only stare back at him, your cheeks heating as your embarrassment grows tenfold.
He would ham it up in front of the cops, but it's not just to sell the lie anymore, this is where the lies stop. This is where the curtain has dropped and the play ends as reality begins— Danny's reality; and yours too if you don't find a way to put the brakes on this runaway hell train soon.
Not now. Not here where the lie had a purpose, but soon. You reach forward and slip a palm up the side of Danny's cheek, cupping it gently as you stare into his eyes. You wonder if the cops can discern the difference between the loving gaze you're currently miming and the poignant hate that's swims in your irises from this angle, but you doubt it.
And your doubts are confirmed as officer dachshund makes a disgustingly sappy 'daaawww' noise and slips a hand up to his own chest to rest over where his heart would be beneath all that nylon and starched cotton. "Young love." He says dreamily to no one in particular.
Apparently having had enough of the pleasantries and cringe, and for the first time since the whole encounter had begun, the cane corso speaks up— not so muzzled as he had at first appeared. The deep, timbre of his voice puts you on pins and needles all over again and you pull your arm back down to your side as you turn to face the officers outside your door.
"If you remember anything, anything at all that you believe is relevant to the murder of Joshua Dubois give us a call."
Your eyes drift to where you had purposely kept them from straying as the brawny man seems to address you directly. When your eyes meet you find him looking to you and you alone as he offers up a buisness card with one outstretched hand to you and you specifically.
You look up at him, caught in the trance of his gaze as his deep blue eyes bore down over you, intense as they pin you in place. You can't even bring yourself to reach out the two inches required to take the aforementioned card out from between his fingers to end this whole damn debacle. Danny has to do it for you, all while assuring the officers that you'll do just that as he pulls you back from the door and further tucks you into his wings.
The cane corso's eyes never leave you, even as the other officer has already turned away as Danny begins the process of shutting and locking the door. His stare stays with you long after the cruiser pulls away from beneath the streetlight and out into the stygian curtain of night.
"Ok.." He says on a sigh and runs the fingers of one hand through his hair. Looking down at you as you pull the Covid mask from your face and the itchy, wool scarf that's been torquing down tighter and tighter around your throat with every passing minute of your chat with the friendly neighborhood paw patrol.
"This is fucked." You say, unsure of exactly who or what you were speaking to or about specifically. Every part of this was so fucked that the statement could easily apply to any and everything about the current situation.
"It's fine." He says, brushing the whole thing under the rug it seems as he pushes off the closed door and moves towards the kitchen. As he vacates the space, you rush forward and push your face up to the door, eye poised over the peep hole to get as descreet a view as possible of your front yard, certain that upon doing so the only sight you'd be greeted with was a sea of that same vast, deep blue of the bigger officer's eye, peering back in at you. But of course it isn't, it's dark but you can see enough to know the cruiser is gone and the bigger, stonier officer gone right along with it.
"How in the hell can you even say that? The cops were at my door Danny. Does that not alarm you in the slightest?" You ask as you pull yourself away from the peephole to better address the issue with him.
He'd made it to the kitchen and was now rummaging through your cupboards seemingly for something to eat and was so unalarmed in fact that he meritted it safe enough to change the subject entirely.
"How about soup and grilled cheese? This whole playing the role of the caring, concerned boyfriend nursing his sick, ailing girlfriend back to health has a surprising amount of appeal. Who says after the audience is gone we can't still play out our parts, hmm? Plus we really need to go grocery shopping soon. You're out of like everything." You just stand there, staring at him. How is he so nonchalant about this when your blood pressure is rising through the roof?
"They know." You say, half to yourself and half to Danny who finally seems to clock some of the spiking anxiety in your voice and takes the time to at least half-heartedly reassure you, even if he does it without looking at you, opting to still root through your ill store of provisions. "They don't know a thing."
You try; really, really try to step back for just a moment and see things the way he sees them. To see anything that's just happened and label it under that tried and true old moniker of 'not that big a deal'. It takes all of three seconds for the process to run its course and come up the same. You look down at the floor and bring just another bit of evidence that this whole thing was dead at the gate inadvertently into view.
"Oh yeah? They don't know a thing, huh? Well what about this Danny?" You ask, stepping out from around the bar so he can get a good hard look at the sneakers, still on your feet from coming in the door and out of the rain just a split second before they'd pull into your drive.
"Do sick people who have been in bed all day normally wear soaking wet shoes to bed with them? You think they missed that, hmm? And what about you? Asking them all those- those questions. What the fuck was that, Danny?"
He chooses to steam roll right over that first statement to get to the next. "You ever hear of a reporter that didn't ask too many questions?" He asks, letting that hang in the air to compound emphasis before responding as if you'd answered in his favor.
"Exactly. Just as you had your part to play, I had mine and being the nosey, pushy but personable reporter harassing the local fuzz for the latest scoop is just another part of mine. Honestly doll, they would have found it suspicious if I hadn't asked any questions, don't you think?" You breathe out a frustrated sigh because none of this was doing anything to help calm you down. You can tell he's trying, sort of, but his nonchalance is only inducing the panic, not quelling it.
"Danny." And that gets his attention enough to look at you, but apparently not enough to pull him off task.
"Chicken Noodle or Cheddar Broccoli?" He asks, holding up a can of each. You cup your face in your hands and let out an exasperated sigh that does nothing to vent your stress.
"Danny we need to talk about this." You say through the mask of your own fingers. He waits for you to emerge from them to give you a pointed look, and only after you'd given him your preferred choice does he finally address the issue.
"What do you suggest we do, doll?" He asks with the kind of gentle, mild curiosity one may utilize when deciding which pair of socks to put on in the morning.
You really weren't sure what you wanted to do, the necessary steps to take after killing a man who was trying to kill you was not exactly in your repertoire and you weren't even sure what exactly was going to come out of your mouth in answer to his question, until it did.
"We need to leave." And then the pair of you sat there in the afterbirth of that brilliant idea for a moment before Danny did something that surprised you entirely. He disagreed.
"No." Your brows furrowed at him as the simple word, one of the first a person ever hears and learns to understand in their young lives, hit your ears and at first did not compute.
"No?" You repeat, as automatic as a trained parrot.
"That's just not a good idea, babygirl. That's not going to pan out the way you think it will." He said as he popped the top off two cans of soup and pulled Kraft cheese singles out from one fridge door shelf.
"That's not a good idea?" You repeat, a well trained parrot indeed.
"Let's talk logistics." Danny says and then proceeds to lay in.
"What you're suggesting is that we skip town, yes? You and me out on the road with merely the clothes on our backs, a bag for each of us, the money from your safe perhaps, combined with mine and my car, the black one that is least likely to be recognized right away."
"You want to cut and run, somewhere north perhaps, Boston? Utah? Canada even.. on a hunch that the police have already linked, out of all the possible suspects— and with an active serial killer on the loose to boot, you, not only to the scene of the crime but as a prime suspect, solidified only by the fact that they showed up late at night at your door to ask you if you've had contact with him in the recent months and then leave. Am I getting all of that correct?" He asks as he takes his eyes off the soup he'd been carefully ladling into a pot with a wooden spoon for confirmation.
You stare at him, now silent as he lays it all out rather eloquently for you and something about that, something about the firm grasp he has on a situation you are absolutely floundering in leaves you speechless and so in turn you just nod at him.
"Well for starters babycakes, as I've previously mentioned, it is way too early to bail out of town. For one thing it will only draw eyes to you. You've explicitly told the Roseville PD that you have not had contact with Josh for several months now, which wasn't the wrong thing to do, don't get me wrong about that part. You did excellent. But.. if you leave now, it will only incur more questions."
"For one thing, they think you're sick. Which is a good enough cover for why you haven't been at work and only helps our alibi, placing you away from the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. Except that the only solid witness you have to corroborate that alibi is me, and now that they know that we're dating.." You open your mouth to speak up and correct that point but he just bulldozes right over it, continuing.
"..all my good standing as a reliable, unbiased witness is forefit. Not to mention the fact that if they come back to find you're not here and after they check in with your primary physician's office who will be doubtlessly clueless and unaware of your whereabouts, let alone the knowledge that you were even sick period, it's not gonna look good. It's not gonna look good at all, doll." All you can do is gape at him.
"Now let's discuss the angle you've proposed. You and me out on that open road, tossing our troubles and lives into the wind for a life on the run. You need a plan, you need to know where you are going and how you're going to get there. You need to consider what you're going to do when you get there and I don't just mean in the immediate future, I'm talking long term, end game. Can you make a living and sustain yourself on the run and for how long?"
"Five, ten, fifteen months into the future. Years and years of a new identity, a new life, a new name. No contact whatsoever with your old family or friends, not even an anonymous postcard in the mail."
"You'd need contingencies for if the police catch up with us. Are we surrendering? Are we running? Are we going out guns blazing? Don't get me wrong, doll. If we do this, we're doing this. I am with you until the end, full on Bonnie and Clyde style if that's what it comes down to, but that is something I think you aren't as prepared for all the realities of as you believe." He finishes, decimating your half cocked idea.
"Crust or no crust?" He asks, a kitchen knife in hand, poised to cut over the very edge of a steaming hot grilled cheese. You answer him in a soft, distant voice before he launches back in, right where he'd left off.
"Now.." He begins anew. "Let's consider the avenue you haven't perused just yet but I can see you eyeing up in the back of that beautiful brain of yours. Say you decide to reach out to the police, courtesy of the little business card Officer Tren so readily provided you with, and told them the god's honest. That it was self defense, that Josh approached you on your way into work this morning and tried to strangle you to death and it could have been you they had toe-tagged and carted off to county this morning instead of him."
"But that would raise the question of why.. Why lie about something like that, and to the police at that. When you lie to the police on an official report that's called perjury, which in the state of Florida is classified as a felony of the third degree. And while the fact that their visit may or may not be classified as an official report is something that could be easily debated, it's essentially a toss up."
"And as for whether or not you'd see any jail time for that, being a first time offender with a clean record and all, is also a pure toss up, depending on the judge you get and the mood of said judge. All of that could come out as a wash in the end, but in the end it still raises the question of why. Why would you lie about something like that? And one question raises many others and you'd more likely than not be pulled in for further questioning. Which is a whole other can of worms with a whole other can of possible outcomes depending on your fortitude and willingness to corporate with the police."
"I am not saying all of this to scare you, sweetheart. Truly, I'm not. I simply want you aware of all the possibilities and all their possible outcomes since you wanted to discuss them." He says and finally falls blessedly silent as he plates your soup and the grilled cheese he had labored over all the while he was explaining all of this at such length.
This left you with a lot to think about and no reassurances. You folded your arms on the bar top and sat, deep in retrospection. Every option seemed like the shittiest option. He pushed your plate, complete with full bowl of steaming hot soup and two sandwich halves towards you, nudging your arm with it.
"Eat." He says simply and digs in to his own meal. You both eat in relative silence, but eat you do. Shoveling spoonfuls of soup and bites of sandwich into your mouth passively until you're pulled from your thoughts by the clank of the spoon against the ceramic of your empty bowl.
He, apparently having been done awhile, stacks your bowls and plates and carries them to the sink where he fills one basin with hot, soapy water and makes quick work of the dishes the pair of you had made.
When he'd finished he turned away from the sink to find you still sat there in the same place at the bar and after rehanging up the dish towel he crossed the room towards you, a fact you didn't even realize until he'd made it there and the front of his chest was pressed up, warm and frustratingly familiar against your back. You tensed reflexively and then relaxed and upon relaxing he wrapped his arms around you and rested his chin on top of your head from behind, until once it again it was like you were wrapped up in him, an unsettlingly soothing position.
"I know this is hard for you and I know I haven't had the chance to really ease you into this as much as I would have liked but you're doing so well, doll. Honestly I am so surprised and so proud at how well you've taken all of this. You may not be able to see it but you are built for this. I knew it the second I laid eyes on you. I know you probably think I singled you out because I thought you were weak or an easy target but that couldn't be further from the truth. You have a resilience, a mental fortitude that rivals any victim I've encountered before." It was that word, that one word that made your eyes blink open from where they had been comfortably resting lid to lid, like a dusty switch being turned on after remaining shuttered and dormant for a long, long time. It was like stepping out of the dark.
"And I know right now this probably all seems like a terrible nightmare to you, but for me, it's a dream come true and soon, with time, I hope you'll see my vision too. Until then, I'll be right here with you every step of the way. I promise."
This was not the grand motivational, emotion-chocked speech that he must have thought it was to you. But it did snap you out of the daze of shock that had settled over you like a fog and made everything that had for so long now been lost in the mist once more crystal clear. So when he spun your stool around so you were facing him and he pulled you into his arms, you hugged him back, genuinely.
And at the squeeze of your arms around him something in the back of Danny's mind flagged. A sensor of the most ancient, primal variety. An instinct that he did not heed, but he felt all the same. Before he could decipher it for what it was it was drowned out in a tidal wave of affection and hope, hope that was ultimately false.
10:59pm April 30th, 2026
"You know what? I know exactly what you need, babygirl. Let's get lit, you and me. I grabbed a couple of joints back at my place earlier and doesn't a hit just sound lovely right about now? Then we can kick back and relax a little bit for once. Watch a movie, have some sex, see where the night takes us, yeah?" He asks and in familiar style does not wait to see what you'll say.
All of that at dinner to shoot down your plans and his brilliant alternative is to partake in recreational drug use, watch a movie and fuck nasty style on the couch again? You think not.
He hops up and strides down the hallway towards your back bedroom trusting that, just like the sun shall rise tomorrow, you will be there when he returns.But that was his mistake.
You weren't even aware of the notion growing within you until it was too late to advert it. Without even being actively aware you were doing it, your feet had stood you up from your place on the couch and walked you past the kitchen, through your little laundry nook and had stopped you two feet from your back door. It was barred and chained, but your fingers took care of the heavy work before your mind could even begin to grapple with the decision of doing so. The door cracked soundlessly and a soft, chilly breeze, brisk in breath, blew through the gap.
You took one solitary step towards the door, and then one became two, and then two blended in with all the rest after and before you knew it you were out the door, and down the steps, then out in the yard and then beyond it. And your steps became a jog and your jog became a run.
You slipped through your backyard as silent as a wraith, through the cold, tightly grown shrubbery that marked the divide between your property and the next and emerged from the front yard of the house behind yours. You crossed the lawn where grass gave way to concrete, which dropped off in turn to paved asphalt, and then you were running down the street.
Aware of nothing but the rush of mist down the blades of your forearms as they sliced through the night air. The pump of your legs as they carried you, seemingly boundless with energy through your neighboring streets. Your sneakers splashed down into puddles of rain colder than even the Arctic sea and your sinuses filled with air even more frigid than the rain.
You ran and ran and didn't stop, not even when your feet began to ache, not even when Danny's voice pierced the night air with the sound of your name, sending your heart into a burst of beats more rapid than a hummingbirds wings.
You felt an exhilaration you thought reserved only for those bungee jumping or standing at the summit of mountain peaks. The roar of rushing blood and the great woosh of air drawing in and out of your burning lungs dominated your ears. You weaved in and out of flourescent street light beams, materializing and vanising in and out of existence in intermittent flashes by way of pounding feet.
You had no thoughts, aware of nothing as for the very first time in your life instinct outweighed rational thought and you let it carry you as far as your legs would alot you to go.
Treemont Street had become Maple, Maple bled into Roosevelt Lane, Roosevelt Lane became First Ave and then after that you were lost. The street signs read foreign names that held as much meaning to you as ancient hieroglyphs, and still you didn't stop.
Your body finally gassed out and forced you to a halt somewhere in an alley between Neibolt Street and Rugsby Ave. You doubled over, body folded in half as your lungs heaved air in painful gasping draws. It felt like a lance had pierced them and was still firmly lodged there; if you put your hand to your ribs you could pinpoint exactly where it had run you through and you half expected to feel the pinprick tip poking out from between them, almost but not quite protruding the skin on the other side.
When you finally recovered some, you straightened up and took a cursory look around. The streets were empty and eerie. A fine mist hung in the air and your skin was wet for having raced through it. As much as you wanted to, you didn't linger.
You were vaguely aware of whereabout in the city you were. You had ran your way through the suburbs, past dark shuttered houses, beyond the small, trendy, uptown district with its bohemian boutiques and artisian bars still lively with what small circles made up Roseville's pulsing nightlife and were now somewhere seemingly behind the scenic downtown part of Roseville with its brick and mortar facades and heavy wrought iron street posts. You took a deep, centering breath and looked around again.
Vermillion Street, you had heard that one before, you thought, in passing somewhere. Vermillion Street bunted up against Sesame Road, a real missed opportunity in your opinion, Sesame Street was right there! Standing in the intersection of Vermillion and Sesame you took a real in-depth survey of your surroundings. John Tom's Hardware House and Ellie Marie's Habidashery and The Great Bernini Ice Cream Parlor, you were sensing a theme here. All buisnesses you had never been in and were completely unfamiliar with.
You knew with a kind of mild certainty that with this being somewhere near the heart of downtown Roseville, that had to mean that Main Street would have to intersect it somewhere and from there you could navigate your course, but where was it exactly? And how long would it take you to find it?
Enough time for Danny to play catchup? Was he out here with you even now? In the streets, waiting around every dark corner to corral you home again? It was a chance you didn't dare. Keeping The Great Bernini Ice Cream Parlor to your right, you headed up the street. Perhaps the park or maybe the courthouse would have a map of the city you could course correct by.
You passed streets with names you recognized but had no frame of reference for. You had heard Tommy at work talk about the sub shop on Renee Drive and here it was, but hadn't he also said that it was across town and that's why he always stopped by before work to get his sandwiches? Because he never had enough time on his lunch break to get there and back and eat.
You tried to triangulate the distance between here and work and home but after a few minutes of forced concentration and with half remembered mathematics equations from high school to go on, you gave up with a huff. You were lost and thank god for the soup and grilled cheese sandwich Danny had practically stuffed down your throat before you'd up and bolted. You were going to need every ounce of that energy to make it back home.
But when? When was it safe to go home again? Would it ever be? Could you afford to never go home again? But that was a preposterous thought. You couldn't avoid going home, it was your home. You had nothing with you save the clothes on your back. No purse, no wallet, no cash, no identification.
What the fuck were you thinking?
I wasn't thinking.
The voice rising out of your consciousness answered and it sounded so clear in your head it was almost audible and that made you jump, quickly moving away from the place where you'd lapsed as if to put distance between you and it.
You crossed the street and rounded a corner onto a new road that may as well have been the exact same one you just turned off of for all you recognized of it. The names of the businesses tacked up on their marquees were the only indication you had to reliably know you weren't running in circles.
There was an abrupt crash from the other side of the street up ahead. Your eyes snapped towards the source of the sound as you froze in place, heart once more thudding in your chest, seeming to climb up your throat with each succinct beat.
And then you felt naked all over again. Forget the fact that you had no purse and no cash; how about the fact that you had no weapon, no safeguard, nothing to defend yourself save your own fists and how much good would that do you?
You took one retreating step, eyes glued to the mouth of an alley halfway up the street that you designated as the source of the sound. One step once more became two and then you were running again, once more for no good reason at all and with no goal in mind as you rounded one corner and then two and then were doubly lost.
You crossed a train track and an overpass and that place in your side where you'd felt that imaginary lance pierce you after your earlier bout of sprinting had become an epicenter of sharp radiating pain. Waves that washed over and through you in time with your fluttering pulse.
Catching your breath the second time was a harder, slower process and you decided then and there that save for a chase, you would be running no more. But there was at least one silver lining, you actually recognized where you were.
Witcham Street was a road you'd been on once before, back when you'd first moved to Roseville. Upon settling into your new town you'd managed to snag a job interview at the place where you now worked off the back of a chance encounter with an old friend who gave you a tip that he was leaving town for a job opportunity somewhere else and the place he'd been at previously would be hiring to fill his position.
Since you worked in the same field you'd applied and been delighted to receive a call back. You got the job, even despite having arrived late because of a missed turn; where you ended up two blocks over from the building, on the very same Witcham Street that you now walked. Although back then at least you had a car to traverse by, now you had to walk the two blocks you'd miscalculated the first time on foot.
It took you fifteen minutes alone to walk those two blocks, but it was all worth it when the stout shitpile of brick that was your place of work came into blessed view and the smile on your face at the sight of it made your cheeks ache with the stretch. You had never been so happy to arrive at work.
But the smile faded into a look of stupefied awe as your eyes caught upon the distinctive yellow caution tape sectioning off the entrance to the parking garage as it billowed with belied life in the late night breeze. It was hard to believe you'd been standing here in this same place mere hours earlier on this same day, with all that had been crammed into those hours between that moment and this one, it felt like eons had passed.
Like all your decisions this night have been, you ducked under the caution tape for no real reason at all and went in. The garage was dark this time of night but there were a few overhead flourescents on in strategically spaced intervals so as to deter the homeless and the nefarious from loitering around where they shouldn't and to give the security cameras a little light to capture things by.
Your feet took you off the beaten path towards the southpaw entrance once again, past cameras that you knew would not catch you until you were standing at the farmost wall where in a crude semicircle, anchored off on either side from the nearly busted elevator, there was another barrier of bright yellow caution tape, this one as silent and as still as the dead as it cordoned off a section of tightly marked unholy ground.
You stopped on the outside of this grim perimeter, unwilling to trespass on the killing floor of which you became an unwilling participant and stared at that stretch of concrete for an undeterminable stretch of time replaying the incident over and over again as a kind of tribute, acknowledging all that took place. It seemed like the only right thing to do considering you had chosen to besmirch the truth and commit to the lie today.
The least you could do was remember all that had happened here in it's entirety one last time, and maybe that's the real reason you ran away, maybe you were always running here and you just never had realized it until now.
They had cleaned the space, probably scoured it from top to bottom trying to figure out exactly what had happened to Josh. You wondered what evidence you could have left behind in your haste, wondered what evidence you were leaving behind even now in returning to this place.
This was a bad idea.
Yes. You knew that, but it hadn't been so much an idea really as it had been an impulse and you were never really good with controlling those at the best of times in your life and this most certainly did not classify as the best of times.
When your mind ran out of reel, when it finally stopped replaying the sordid scene again and again you had to ask yourself what comes next.
What was left now that all had been done and acknowledged and laid to rest as best you knew how? You had to do what everyone does when the grief comes home to roost. You move on.
You turned away from it then for a final time. Starting for home you slipped back out into the misty night and tried to do just that.
You remembered someone or other always saying to you as a child 'tell a lie enough times and it will become true' and with as many times as you'd told the lie about you being sick, by the end of tonight you thought the odds were very likely that it would become a reality.
You figured it had to be well past midnight when you finally walked through your front door again.
Of all the many, many things that you'd dreamt could be waiting for you upon your return home an empty house was not one of them, and yet that's exactly the sight you were greeted with on arrival.
You push open the front door poised to flinch at the first signs of the no-holds-barred onslaught you were sure Danny would be launching into as soon as your feet crossed the threshold, but it never came. Instead, all was dark and quiet.
Unbelieving, you push further into the still silence. You test a lamp, wondering if the storm had possibly downed a line somewhere up the power stream and that maybe was the ultimate source of the darkness, but one switch was all it took to debunk the theory.
The lamp came on at once and doused the room in a spill of light, driving back the darkness. Your ears pricked, expecting any minute now to hear Danny start in from one corner of the house or another about all the ways you'd betrayed him and all the fun exciting methods he'd devised to punish you for it, but his voice never came.
You cleared the whole house, room by room. Everything was just as you'd left, nothing amiss. It was only when you'd come shuffling back into the kitchen with your soaked through sneakers squeaking on the linoleum the only sound to accompany you that you noticed the small, blinking red light on the mostly unused corner of the far kitchen counter.
Your eyes squinted in mild confusion as you focused in on it. It didn't alarm you, you knew exactly what it was, though you hadn't seen the little blinking light in ages. It was the answering machine that for the entirety of your time occupying this house sat like a squat, malign toad in the corner, hooked up and operational but that went mostly unused; this was after all the golden age of smartphones and when you'd moved in originally you'd been surprised to learn the place still had a serviced landline tacked onto and inseparable for whatever reason from your rent.
You hardly ever got any calls and you certainly didn't use it, why would you have? But there were a few people who had the number in case of absolute emergencies. It was only then that you remembered about Danny snapping your phone in half just earlier that same day and your heart sort of skipped a beat. What if something had happened? To Mom? Dad? Your brother?
That was all it took for you to cross the kitchen and stand before it. The little digital read out flashed up at you the number 3. Your heart took a leap into your throat and you had to swallow to force it back down into place as you picked up the receiver with shaky hands and hit PLAY. The clunky but sultry automated female voice of the machine informed you that you had three. new. messages. She then promoted the first and a real, genuine human on the other end of the line, one you immediately recognized, began to sound through the reciever.
Erin.
"Hey dork. What's up with your phone? You didn't seriously break another phone, did you? And have you heard from Marcy? Have you two been hanging out without me again? She ditched our dinner date plans and now she's not answering her phone either. I swear if you two ran off to Vegas like we always talked about without me then I'm kicking both your asses when you get back. Seriously, call me!" BEEP. "End of message."
Then a loud beep indicating the end of the message and that same sultry automated voice came back on to state the obvious before promoting message. number. two.
Mom.
"Honey? It's mom. What's going on down there? I've been trying your phone all day and it just keeps putting me right through to your voicemail like it's off or something. Your aunt called the resort in a huff and said something about trouble down there. You know they confiscated our phones at the start of the retreat, it's done wonders for your father and me. I think when we get back we'll be canceling our phone plan. You know what they say, in this new digital age everybody is expected to be available every minute of every day. It used to not be like that you know, back when I was a girl you cou— Oop. I— I heard a beep. Honey? Shoot. I think it cut me off. Honey? If you're still hearing this I'll call you soon or— or you call me. The resort I mean— call the resort and they'll patch me through. I love you! If you can still hear me I love y—" BEEP. "End of message."
"You have one. new. message." From the sultry robot lady and then a voice you didn't recognize for a change on the other end. A woman, middle aged and tired but maintaining her carefully curated professionalism as she starts in.
"Hello, this the Roseville Police Department. I'm calling today to officially inform you that Detective John Moore is requesting your presence down at the Roseville precinct at your earliest convenience. He has a few questions regarding an ongoing investigation. It is advised that you do not leave town and again to please come down to the station at your earliest convenience. Thank you." BEEP.
"End of message. You have no. new. messages. at this time." Then silence save for your own breathing as you stand at the kitchen counter, one hand clutching the counters edge like a lifeline, the other whiteknuckling the handset still held tightly up to your ear.
There's a ringing starting in your ears, growing in pitch and volume until it drowns out all else. Nothing but the ringing in your ears as your pulse spikes and the room around you spins and the world that had once been so steadfastly anchored beneath your feet becomes unmoored from its axis and drops away out from under you. You think you may be sick. You spin around to rush towards the bathroom or perhaps the sink when your eyes catch on something, something that should not have been.
Sitting front and center of the middle placemat on the bar top was a brand new but cheaply manufactured mobile phone— what one would call a burner, in a gleaming strip of moonlight. You walked over with hesitant, stuttering steps, queasiness momentarily forgotten.
Your eyes locked to it, trained and unblinking as if it could disappear in between one moment and the next. You reach out and put a hand over the smooth, compact device and pull it back again, frightful for a reason you cannot fathom. It's a cell phone, not a mimic. Get a grip.
Then it's sitting in the palm of your hand, the flat of your palm stiff and rigid, fingers uniform and tucked tight together, poised just as one does to offer an apple to a horse.
You breathe out a few succinct shaky breaths and flip the burner open. It lights up, sitting at ninety-nine percent battery and ready to go. The background looks simple and default. From here you get a little lost. No pictures, no open text threads, no call log. Why is this here? Where did it come from? Are you dreaming this? Wouldn't that be a relief.
You start flipping through random menus and categories when your eyes catch on a bit of text on screen and your fingers pause over the directional pad. There is one listed contact. It reads simply: Call Me.
You read it and reread it and, hanging on hard to that dream theory, you pressed the green call button.
It rang two consecutive times and connected on the second ring.
"Ohhh Doll. I'm so glad you called. I missed you so much." Danny's voice coos from the other end of the line. And the relief you hear is sincere, you can hear it in his voice. He means every delusional word. No dream.
"Danny, where are you?" You ask, attempting to jump straight over the bullshit to the heart of the issue.
"You went out so I went out. Maybe if you would have waited and taken a second to consult with me beforehand we could have done something together like a couple instead of making separate plans."
"Danny this is serious, the cops they're—"
"Looking for you? Yeah, I know. Don't worry I've got it all handled."
"Han— I'm sorry, handled? You. You have it handled?" You ask incredulously.
"Of course, don't I always? Now, let's backtrack for a second. How was your little night run, hmm? Don't think you're off the hook for that. You could have at least offered to let me tag along. I'm not mad per se, just disappointed. We could have had soooo much fun chasing each other around after dark— well, I'd be doing most of the chasing I'm sure, but still. It would have been good for us."
At some point you'd begun to pace, straddling the boundary between the kitchen and living room, where carpet transitions to linoleum back and forth. Waiting for him to stop talking, waiting— endlessly waiting, for him to stop toying with you for five minutes so you can stop feeling like your mind is on constant panic mode. Like you're always switched into damage control.
"But enough about us, we'll settle the score later. Did you meet any interesting characters out on your little adventure, hmm? Most would be worried about you running into Roseville's Ghost going out that late at night, but we both know you don't have to worry about that." He says, his voice oozing with teasing inflection.
"I like this. This is nice. We kinda jumped right over the talking stage you and me, well— mostly me. But that doesn't mean our relationship has to follow the traditional linear path, you know?"
"Life is ups and downs babe, we had our first little spat as a couple. It happens. What matters is us and—"
"WE ARE NOT A TOGETHER!!" You yell into the phone, finally snapping. The backbone you'd grown in the act of fleeing your captor in the middle of the night flexing its vertebrae. But as always Danny takes the punches and keeps on rolling through them.
"You're right doll. We aren't together. Right now we are physically not together. But—"
Danny emphasizes and then he stops talking long enough for a blood curdling scream to cut through the line, a distinctly female scream that tapered off into a chilling, wretched sob. And at that all of your supposed spine shriveled and died at the prospect of your defiance causing outward harm to others.
"DANNY STOP!" You scream once again into the reciever, hand gripping the little burner so hard it's plastic casing crinks in protest.
"—if you don't want little miss Marcy here to pay the price for your sudden rebellious streak I suggest you rectify that. And soon. I am a patient man, doll. But I don't know how much longer I can bear us to be apart."
"I swear to god, Danny. If you fucking hurt her—" you begin to threaten, but he cuts you off, per usual.
"She's not hurt, she's scared. Can you blame her, doll? Unlike you she hasn't gotten used to strange men slipping into her home in the middle of the night and tying her up for their own devices. Give her some time, she'll adjust." You have no words, no comebacks, not even the mind to plea with him. All you can think about is getting in the car and getting to Marcy.
"I didn't want this babygirl, you forced my hand. I wanted a nice, peaceful night in, just you and me. You are the one who insisted on spicing things up. But that's our little game, isn't it? You play hard to get, I play hard to get away from. That's classic us, babe."
"It would have been all too easy to kill my way back to you. I could have done that, you know? I had half a mind to. But then I thought 'what would my doll have me do?' and I knew you wouldn't approve. Don't you see, doll? Even after all this I'm still making sacrifices for you." He seems to be done ranting, as he pauses before reiterating the ultimate point of the conversation at hand.
"Now you can come to me quietly, like a good girl. Or not, and I'll be forced to kill as many people as it takes to get the resources I need to track you down, starting with poor little Marcy. The streets of Roseville will run red, that I can promise you. And there will be no place on this Earth you can hide from me then. Bodies upon bodies, babygirl. I will sever every last one of their lifelines, every last bloodline on this earth if that's what it takes to crawl back to you. The choice is yours."
When you next speak your voice is hard but complicit, sober of any and all gumption.
"Where are you?"
And when he next speaks, he sounds pleased, very pleased indeed. "At the fairgrounds, recreating precious memories. See you soon." And the line clicks.
gristle | simon riley x reader au | 1.3k words | ao3
mdni
navigate to: part 1
part 2
He scrapes stubble against smooth, rubbing against you like it'll reveal something underneath, almost like a cat with its scent glands, marking you. He holds your face still beneath his and does this quietly until your face is moving up with his, mirroring him, trying to find and bring his mouth to yours. Now, you actually are trying to kiss him, your lips finding purchase over his, neck tipped high and yet cupped so firmly by his hands.
His thumbs stroke down over your trachea, running along it to feel the ridges.
He doesn't let you kiss him yet; he teases you away from a full one, even though your mouth is opening to press the wet silk of your tongue against his. He seems to find this funny, especially when a tiny whine gets needled out of you after the third pass.
"Come on," you sigh against him.
"What's that, love?"
"Kiss me."
Oh, his eyes. Danger lurking brightly, luminescent under a filmy veil.
"You want me t' kiss you, hm?"
"Why am I here?" You suddenly break out, pushing at him to no success, feeling a pinch of embarrassment at your cheeks and and eyes and tits and cunt. He's barely left you space to slide off the stool. "I-I gotta go. I'm gonna be late for work."
"Mm, she doesn't like t' be teased, eh."
You don't want to put your hands on him, so you lock your forearm ups in a dukes-up position and push toward his body. "No! I don't." It surprises you by how raw it comes out.
Simon's arms are coming up and his hands are now cupping your face, which would look romantic but for his thick, scuffed elbows resting on your shoulders, nearly weighing you down. He probably looks like he's going to pop your head clean off the rest of your body. "Sweet girl like you. Too soft for those games, eh."
"No." Defensive. Too defensive.
He gives you a humiliatingly knowing smile, almost a mercy. "Yeah. Too soft. Maybe you just wanna feel good, huh." No question mark in the gravelling, thick voice.
You don't answer, you can't, but your thighs squeeze together and he knows.
Gently and slowly, he takes your cross-body bag off, setting it on the counter. Your only barrier. A loud skidding sound and he's dragging the stool away and chucking it behind him, clanging onto the grease-marked floor. "Shut the door."
You pull it closed, or try, but it's got a funny sticking latch that you can't figure out and the longer it takes you, the more embarrassed and inflamed you feel. Then, there's a dark rumble of a chuckle at the back of your neck — god he's so quiet, how the fuck did he get closer in this already-cramped space without you noticing? — and he reaches over you, the curve and sanctuary of his armpit resting on your shoulder damply as he pulls the latch and twists it funny. Cranks it once to test it. You turn your head slightly, and the wave of him pouring off his skin and t-shirt is thicker than the humidity.
You're the type who has sex almost exclusively after showers, and your cunt is throbbing at the acridity of him, that nose-crinkling density of smoke and sweat and grease. He doesn't smell like sex, but he smells like how sex with him might feel. Harsh and staggering and obliterative of anything else but.
"You smellin' me, love?" Fuck, his voice is right there, pressed into the hollow of your ear. He's not touching you anywhere else, but his fingers might as well be in your cunt. A cold shiver runs over you, setting goosebumps across your bare flesh.
You turn your face, shamed, back to the door, staring blankly at some certificate taped up shoddily. Simon Riley, it says his full name. You're not sure it suits him.
His arm presses down harder, and then the other one is doing the same on the other side, until he's got you in some strange MMA-like hold, chin propped closer to the crown of your head than your shoulder. You almost laugh, and then his hands land on the door. Your head, between his locked arms. A dark laugh heating your neck.
A gasp slips out of you when he breaks up your soft summer flats with his steel-toed boots, widening your stance. Then, a heavy knee and thigh are braced between your legs, and all of a sudden, you are pressed against the door. Forehead under the certificate.
"Think she wants t' feel good. Wants me t' take care o' her."
A moan as diaphanous as late summer steam pours out of you, like a teakettle announcing itself.
"Ohhh," he breathes out, ghosting your crown. "I'll take such good care of you," he croons, and then he begins to rock his thigh up until it hits your cunt squarely. Your head punches back, nowhere else to go. Trapped in this cage and rutting against it like an animal desperate for any sort of substance.
"That feel good, love?" He repositions slightly, raises his leg higher until you're lifting off the floor, the slippery soles of your flats scraping gently. As you lose your balance, your tits push out to overcorrect your tipping. "Where you gonna hold on?"
There's nowhere else. You hook your arms up until your fingers curl around the meat of his forearms, holding on tight. Hysterically, you think that it looks like his arms are next going to come down on you like a rollercoaster restraint, the steel band that cages you in and keeps you from falling out.
He shifts his leg back and forth, holding you up. A fucking thigh for a seat.
"There you go."
You breathe out a whining sound.
"Nah, don't be embarrassed. I got you. Y'wanna feel good, use me, love."
It's not the rough texture of his jeans against the thin fabric of your pants. It's not the breadth of him pressing everywhere, nearly hitting every spot under you. It's not his thick, tattooed arms banded on either side of your head, your fingers gripping for dear life.
It's his voice, telling you that. It's his smell, drenching your back, dripping down, way deep down.
It's not embarrassment that stills you. It's the wanting. The sheer intensity of it engulfing you out of the blue.
Your fingernails bite down into his skin and he groans coarsely and that's when you start rocking. A slow measure, testing it out, unsure. He can't see your face. All he knows is your first name. These are the things you hold onto as you start to keen, clamping and unclamping your dangling legs around his, still uncertain that he's got you.
Your hips begin grinding faster, deeper, rocking your clit downward to find the friction, and he works with you now, shifting his thigh exactly so it resists where you need it to, the hard grip of denim making you moan even through two layers of cotton.
"Oh my god."
Despite the strangeness and newness, you are bolting to your orgasm like a wild horse that's been penned in, frantic for the exit, for release.
His stocky arms are holding you up. Damp with exertion, marked up from your fingernails, but steady. His breath is hard and laborious behind you, nearly against you, so fucking close.
"'m taking such good care of you, huh?"
You squeeze your inner thighs and eyes at the same time, clenching everything down to ride him, sweat running through your hair now, down your nape. "Oh, fuck. Oh my god."
"Nah, lemme hear you." And then he bumps his thigh up abruptly, jolting the start of the orgasm through you, as your fingers nearly pry off his arm, so slippery now.
It's a sobbing, breaching orgasm, rushing and hitching out of you, and it feels like you're on a fucking rocking horse, grinding yourself to a screeching finish. You feel a nail break skin but you can't stop the sounds, the words, the onslaught of everything pouring up and out of you —
— under your sounds, his own — sweet thing, s'good, that's fuckin lovely now, feelin' that pretty cunt on me — until you're drenched in tears or sweat or him.
The flat hand thing is so correct, and I’ve thought about this clip like four times a week since i saw it like ten years ago. That is NOT a noise she intended to make
⊱⋆ ━ You were not meant to exist in his world: yet he tore open the veil to bring you through. A devotion that transcends death, creation, and divinity itself. He calls you his heaven, though he built you from ruin. ━ ⋆ ⊰
❥Pairings: Alpha!Philip Graves x fem!Reader
❥Warnings / Themes in this story: Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics/Omegaverse, DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT. THIS IS A DARK WORK OF FICTION. You are responsible for the content you consume. this work contains many things that some readers may find disturbing (This work is *dark fiction*, not romanticized morality.). Coerced non-con, non-con, dubious non-con, abduction / captivity, bodily & mental autonomy manipulation (magic, drugs, bioengineering, pheromones, magical serums), yandere / obsessive themes, age gap (20sF × 40sM), misogyny / power imbalance, emotional manipulation & trauma, unhealthy relationships, Stockholm Syndrome(later in thé story), corrupted soulmates, predestination vs. autonomy, horror/grotesque imagery (blood, injury, bodily changes), control / claiming of mind / body / soul, breeding/knotting, nipple sucking, fingering, marking(MF chews on you), creampies, pregnancy(future chapters), Omega nesting, disturbed longing / obsessive desire, gothic / dark religious themes and metaphors, cannibalism as metaphor?, strong language, angst & some fluff. more will be added as the story develops but I think I’ve got the majority of them for now.
❥Whispers from the author: some of the dividers belong to @/uzmacchiato ! I have reblogged the other accounts !! I got the pictures from Pinterest !! Mention and use of a feminine reader and feminine body parts although anyone and everyone can read if you ignore those. all characters portrayed in my fanfics are always 18 years old and up. I hope you enjoy my first ever series !! Posts will be irregular, I apologise. Through each chapter, I will leave the warnings present in that chapter uncrossed so you know what to expect. If I have missed any, PLEASE LET ME KNOW !! This is a DARK fanfiction !! More chapters may be added, for as of right now: it’s only these. But the story isn’t completely written yet so.
f!reader, smut mdni, PIV, blood, mentions of violence, size kink.
You only notice it because your hand slips.
It had been curled at the back of his neck, fingers buried in his hair beneath the edge of his mask, holding on until your knuckles went bloodless because there is nothing else to do when Simon Riley is above you like this; one forearm braced beside your head, your knees spread and pulled back to your chest, his weight pressing you into the mattress with his hips grinding slow and mean like he has all the time in the world to ruin you.
You’re boneless under him - open-mouthed, shaking, letting him take you apart more and more with each of those deep, deliberate strokes that make your thoughts scatter into useless little pieces.
All is perfect until your hand slips, and you feel your thumb drag over something tacky.
You blink up at him through the haze, thinking maybe you’re imaging things - but then you see it. There, smeared dark along the thick column of his neck, just under his jaw.
Blood.
Your mouth moves before your brain catches up. “Simon—”
He stops, buried balls deep inside you. His eyes lift to yours from beneath the black smear of his paint. Brown eyes gone flat and dangerous.
“What?”
Your fingers swipe at his throat, and then pull back to show him your now candied fingertips. “You’re bleeding.”
For a second, he just stares at you.
Then his mouth shifts beneath the mask. “S’not mine.”
The room seems to go airless around you. For a moment, your brain does not know what to do with the words.
Not mine.
They land somewhere distant - muffled by euphoria and the heat of him still seated inside you. They should mean something immediately - they should send you upright, sober you, sharpen you. But you’re too gone beneath him, too pliant and overheated and pinned, your thighs trembling around his waist while he stays buried deep enough that every breath you take has to move around him.
So you just stare at him.
At the dark paint around his eyes, at the blood smear, at the shape of his shoulders above you. You stare long enough that the unusual details begin arranging themselves in whatever clear space you’ve got left in your mind.
His gloves, first.
They’re clean. Fresh black tactical gloves, one of them still gripping your hip as he stares down at you in pause. You can’t shake the feeling that they’re different - you know his kit. You know the worn seams, the scuffs, the little frays on the knuckles from use. These aren’t the pair he wore earlier.
Your gaze flicks lower.
His shirt, too.
Not the one from briefing. Not the one with the faded shoulder seam and the dust at the collar. This one is clean, dark, newly pulled on in a hurry. You catch a faint whiff of barracks detergent and bathroom soap with every move he makes.
He cleaned up.
The thought comes through the haze in pieces.
Simon cleaned himself up before he came here but somehow, he missed this. One dark smear beneath his jaw.
You swallow. Your voice comes out thin. “What happened?”
Simon watches your mouth form the words.
Your breathing sounds too loud now, while his somehow stays perfectly even - like he isn’t pressed into you to the hilt - like he isn’t the reason your thighs are shaking around his waist. Like he didn’t come to your room with another persons blood still drying in the place he forgot to wash. He lowers himself closer and the mattress dips beneath the weight of him.
His masked mouth brushes the corner of yours, not quite kissing you but just hovering there - dragging the rough fabric against your skin as he speaks.
“What happened was,” he pauses. “Graves opened his fuckin’ mouth.”
A cold thread winds through the heat in your stomach.
You go still beneath him, even though your cunt is still fluttering helplessly around the thick of him. The name alone does something ugly to the room. Sours the air. Pulls the world back in around the two of you.
“What—” you have to stop to breathe. Your nails dig into his shoulder. “What did he say?”
Simon’s hand slides slowly from your hip.
His palm moves over your waist, up your ribs, dragging goosebumps in its wake. He maps you like he already knows every reaction he is about to get - like he can feel the exact second your pulse jumps. His gloved fingers skim the base of your throat and settle there.
Thumb resting over your pulse. Counting it.
“He said he’d wondered what you sounded like when you begged.”
Your breath locks. You blink at him, stupidly.
For a second, you can’t reconcile the sentence with the room you’re in. With Simon above you. With Graves’s name in Simon’s mouth and blood under Simon’s jaw and your own pulse hammering against his thumb like it wants to betray you.
But Simon says it like he has had the words sitting behind his teeth for hours. Like he has been waiting to put them somewhere. Like he needs you to understand exactly what happened to the man who said them.
“He said,” Simon continues, each word dragged low through his teeth, “that a mouth like yours would be wasted on 141.”
Your nails bite into his shoulder.
“I-I—“ you whimper. “Si—“
His hips move before you can say anything else.
A slow, devastating thrust that punches the air out of you and leaves the rest of his name caught uselessly in your throat. He watches you take it. Watches your face twist. Watches the thought you were trying to form scatter completely.
“That Price needs to put you in your place,” he hisses through his teeth. “That he’d have had you on your knees by now.”
Your stomach twists.
You shake your head, but you don’t even know what you’re denying. Graves. Simon. The heat blooming under your skin. The fact that the words should disgust you cleanly, but Simon’s voice saying them like a death sentence makes something dark and shameful coil inside you.
He pulls out just to thrust in again.
Harder this time - hard enough to break the breath right out of you. Enough to make the headboard creak traitorously behind you. Enough to make your thighs tighten around his waist before you can stop them.
Simon feels it.
“Then he looked at me,” he says, voice dropping into something ruined and vicious, “and asked if I’d taught you to take orders.”
Your heart slams so hard you feel it in your throat, pulsing viscously under his palm. The room narrows to three things - Simon’s eyes, the blood on his neck, and the place where he is still holding you down.
There is blood on him.
Someone else’s blood.
Graves’s blood.
The realization comes slowly at first, then all at once.
You see it too clearly: Simon standing there silent while Graves ran his mouth. Simon listening. The moment the Ghost stops being a man in a room and becomes a consequence. You see the gloves he must have taken off. The blood on the old pair. The careful cleanup after. The way he must have washed his hands, changed, checked himself in the mirror, decided he was clean enough to come to you.
Clean enough. Except for the one place he missed.
Simon watches the realization move across your face.
“Oh God.” You force the words out. “What did you do?”
Your voice is barely a whisper.
His answer is immediate. “I hit him.”
The answer is too simple, too small for the blood under his jaw and the hell in his eyes and that is only because you know Simon.
You know the careful economy of him - the terrifying restraint. The discipline carved into his bones so deep it has become part of his breathing. Simon does not hit men because he is angry. He does not waste movement. He does not lose control unless something in him has already decided the consequence is worth it.
He ends things because he has weighed the cost and found it acceptable.
Your fingers curl tighter in his shirt. “How bad?”
For the first time, something almost like satisfaction passes through his eyes.
His hips roll in one slow, merciless stroke and your back arches before you can stop it. You spread your legs and take him deeper; helplessly, embarrassingly, betraying every sensible thought trying to form in your head.
“How—“ you try to ask again, but the question fractures halfway through another thrust.
Simon lowers his mouth to your ear. “Bad enough Price had to pull me off him.”
Your stomach flips in something stupid. Fear should come first.
It doesn’t.
It should be horror. Concern. Anger. Maybe all three. You should shove at his chest. Demand to know if he’s lost his fucking mind. Tell him he can’t do that, can’t put his hands on Graves over his disgusting mouth and a half-formed threat. Can’t turn command into a blood sport. Can’t risk his place, his rank, Price’s trust, your trust, just because another man said something deserving yet ultimately meaningless.
But what blooms under your ribs is not sensible enough to be outrage - it is hot. It is fucking shameful.
It is dark and possessive and awful in the exact shape of him.
Because he heard another man talk about you. Heard Graves put his hands on you in theory. Heard him degrade you, heard him imagine you on your knees, your mouth, your begging, and decided violence was the only answer he trusted.
Your body betrays you before your pride can stop it - a tight little clench around him.
Simon feels it. Of course he does.
He stills above you, and somehow that is worse than movement. He’s pressed to the hilt again, the pressure of him so intense now it leaves your breath caught uselessly behind your teeth. His eyes narrow in something that sees the betrayal before you can hide it.
Your face burns.
“No,” you whisper, before he even says anything.
His mouth shifts beneath the mask. “Oh.”
The sound is low. Cruel in its understanding.
Your pulse kicks under his thumb. “Simon—”
“There she is.”
Your breath stutters, caught somewhere between a moan and a denial, and you hate that he hears both. Hate that he can read you so easily. Hate that your body has already answered him before your pride can even get its feet under it.
Simon looks down at the place where your legs have tightened, then slowly back up to your face. It’s a deliberate act; he is taking inventory of every betrayal.
“You liked that.” He croons.
You shake your head, but it’s weak. Useless. Barely more than the brush of your hair against the pillow.
“N-no.”
His thumb presses against your throat, not hard, just enough to feel the wild little flutter of your pulse.
“Liar.”
Your mouth opens but nothing comes out. You can’t find a single defence, a single outrage. No clever thing you can throw between you and the truth and it is all because he is still inside you. Still wearing fresh gloves like he thought that would be enough to keep you from knowing. Still carrying that one missed smear of Graves’s blood under his jaw like a secret he failed to bury properly.
And now he has caught you reacting to it.
Caught the hitch in your breath. The clench of your cunt. The heat climbing up your neck. The way your whole body went soft and greedy around him the second you understood what he had done.
Simon’s eyes go darker. Hungry in a way that feels worse than anger.
“You should be pissed at me,” he murmurs.
His hips pull back an inch - just enough to make you feel the loss before he sinks back in, slow and devastating, until your hands shift to grab at his shoulders because there is no dignity left in you. No clean line of thought. No clever answer.
“You should be callin’ me reckless.”
Another thrust. Your eyes squeeze shut.
His hand leaves your throat and for half a second, you think he is letting you breathe. That is until both of his hands find your own wrists and pin them firmly above your head.
Your eyes snap open to meet his, expecting full satisfaction, but what you see is worse.
It’s all of him - the width of his shoulders blotting out the dim light, the black of his mask, the hard set of his jaw beneath it, the blood under his neck, those steady eyes watching you like he has already decided exactly how much of you he is going to take apart before he is finished.
“You should be asking what the fuck I was thinkin’,” he says, and you can almost hear the grin in it.
You swallow. “You can’t—”
He moves again, and the words break apart in your mouth.
Your back arches and your fingers curl helplessly against his grip. Your knees shift higher around his ribs, dragging him closer instead of pushing him away, because apparently your body has no interest in helping you survive this with any pride intact.
Simon’s eyes drop to your mouth, then back up to the glass in yours.
“I can’t what?” He murmurs.
You try.
You really do.
You drag the sentence up through the wreckage of yourself, but he is too deep, too thick, too much. The stretch of him keeps interrupting every thought before it can become language.
“You can’t just—” your breath catches on a thrust. “You can’t hit him because he—”
“Because he talked about fucking you?” Your whole body jolts. His eyes burn into yours. “If that’s what you mean, say it proper. Like you fuckin’ believe it.”
You can’t.
Your mouth parts, but all that comes out is a broken little sound when he grinds deeper, cockhead bullying your walls slow enough to make you feel every inch of him, cruel enough to leave you trembling closer to the edge. Any sensible thought is drowned out by the wave of bliss washing over you.
Simon makes a low sound. A rough breath leaves him.
“Too far gone to scold me now?”
You glare at him, or try to. It doesn’t land.
And it didn’t stand a chance, either. Not like this - not with your lips parted and your eyes glassy and cunt stretched pathetically around him. Not with your wrists trapped above your head and your hips still trying to meet him every time he gives you another devastating inch.
“I’m, mmff—serious,” you whisper.
“So am I.”
“Simon—”
“No.” His voice cuts low through the room. “You don’t get to say my name like that while you’re grippin’ me tighter for it.”
Your breath leaves you in a gasp.
He feels the way you clench again, and you see it hit him. See the slight flare of his nostrils beneath the mask. The way his eyes flutter for just a second. The way something brutal and possessive moves through him before he can smooth it down.
“Mhm. Yeah.” His voice drops into something rougher. “Fuckin’ problem, you are.”
Your face burns hotter.
You want to deny it - you want to shove at his chest and tell him he’s wrong. Tell him it’s just your body. Just the position. Just the fact that he has you pinned and overstimulated and too cockdrunk to think straight.
But it’s useless because Simon would know it’s a lie.
He moves again, slow and deep, and the denial dies somewhere behind your teeth.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Nothing clever now?”
“Mmff.” Your nails dig into your own palms where he holds your wrists down. “Shut up.”
His eyes flash. “There she is.”
“I mean it.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
He gives you another measured thrust, and your voice breaks around a gasp. Simon watches it happen with only the most intent focus.
“Try that again.”
You hate him a little. You want him too much for it to matter.
“You’re—” you inhale sharply when he pulls out almost all the way and then back presses in hard enough to make the mattress shift beneath you. “You’re going to get yourself benched.”
“Probably.”
“Price is going to—”
“Already did.”
You blink up at him, breathless and stupid. “What?”
His thumb drags once along the inside of your wrist.
“Read me the riot act.”
Your nerves jump at that. “And you came here?”
“Yes.”
Something in your chest tightens. “Why?”
Simon looks at you for a long second and the room almost seems to shrink around his silence. Your head swims with all of it; the blood under his jaw, the fresh gloves, the heat of him still locked between your thighs.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quieter. “Because I had to see you.”
God. You think he’s lost his mind.
“Simon—“ your back arches and his mouth falls to your neck. “That’s not—this isn’t—“
He lowers himself closer to you, folding you deeper into the mattress.
“You think I lost it because he insulted you?” You don’t answer. His thumb strokes once over the pulse flying at your wrist. “No, sweet’eart.”
His hips move again, slow enough to be cruel, deep enough to make your eyes flutter.
“I lost it because he thought about touching what’s mine.”
The words hit you low and you make a sound you do not mean to make. Your cunt pulses at the word. Mine. A catastrophic vulnerability to a word you will never ever tire of hearing him say.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “That’s what you like, yeah?”
You squirm under him, helpless. “Simon—”
“He said your name like he had a right to it.” His voice roughens. “Like he’d survive putting his hands on you.” The next thrust punches a feral moan out of you, and the pace turns to something almost vicious. “I had to let him know what mine felt like first.”
You moan, eyes shut. Helpless and needy as a whore.
He pauses again. One hand leaves your wrists and grips your jaw. “Look at me.”
You do.
“Another man touches you like this,” he whispers, a lethal rasp through his teeth, “and I’ll break every finger he owns.”
You shiver. His eyes flick down over your face, your mouth, the wrecked shape of you beneath him.
“And if he talks about you like that again?”
You barely manage the whisper. “What?”
Simon presses his forehead to yours. “I won’t stop at his face.”
For a long second, neither of you moves. Then he rolls his hips, and the whole world narrows back down to him - his body over yours, his hand at your jaw, Graves’s blood drying on his neck, and the awful, devastating tenderness in the way Simon kisses you like he is still trying not to become the worst version of himself.
One of your hands slip out from under his to touch the smear of blood again. Simon catches it and pins it back beside your head.
“Leave it.”
Your breath trembles. “Why?”
His eyes darken. “Because I want you to remember what happens when a man forgets who you belong to.”
And in the back of your mind, you think maybe you should argue. Maybe you should tell him you don’t belong to anyone or that this is crazy or that he’s going to get you both transferred - but then he does what he always does and starts fucking you deep and hard and mean - and your body reacts before your pride can save you.
Simon huffs a quiet, humorless breath. “That’s what I thought.”
Then he kisses you - filthy, possessive, furious, and fucks you like Graves is still in the room and Simon needs the whole world to understand it.
You’re Simon’s for as long as you’re both breathing.
You get injected with an unknown toxin and now your loyal teammates are determined to help ease your suffering.
— pairing: Task Force 141 × fem!141!Reader
— cw: 18+ | sex pollen; dubcon/fuck or die; dd:dne; medical & military inaccuracies; pining; hurt/comfort; angst; fluff; cum and orgasms as the antidote; wc: 12k+
author's note: This has been in my drafts for two years 💀 And she would've said yes to all of them.
"We need some answers, Kate. Now." Captain Price's voice booms inside the spacious briefing room.
He's practically pacing in front of the desk like some anxious K-9, arms folded over his plate carrier as he keeps his sharp eyes trained on Laswell and the two scientists sitting behind their laptops, staring at their respective screens.
Meanwhile, the rest of his team is still as geared up as their Captain—all waiting for orders or further instructions, scattered around the room and listening with bated breath while Price grows more agitated with each shaky exhale he can hear coming from you.
You're currently sitting on one of the tables, boot-clad feet dangling off the edge as you stare at the ceiling, right into the fluorescent lights above, ignoring the way your eyes begin to sting from their brightness.
You've been putting on a brave face since getting stabbed with the needle a few hours ago and you've kept the façade up since hopping off the helo back on base, but it's getting harder to mask the panic rising inside you as your body starts to feel funny.
You swipe the back of your gloved hand over your sweaty forehead, catching the cold perspiration on your feverish skin with the rough fabric, and out of your peripherals, you notice the way your teammates' heads snap in your direction—different-coloured pairs of eyes assessing you with worry, concern, and a hint of curiosity.
Soap and Gaz are standing to your left and right respectively, sneaking glances at you whenever you shift on your spot, while the Lieutenant is still as a marble statue a little offside, arms crossed over his bulky tac vest.
Laswell begins to explain calmly, clutching a thick folder to her chest.
"We're still waiting on anything concrete, John, but the research papers your team managed to extract have offered a great insight on that—whatever that bioweapon is."
Bioweapon.
Your eyes widen as you sit up straight, the word making your heart race and your skin crawl with fear. Both Soap and Gaz take a step closer—two strong pairs of arms outstretched and ready to catch you if you faint.
"Easy there, John—" Laswell says firmly, unbothered by his tone as she takes a step towards the captain and gestures at the two scientists watching the scene unfold with wide eyes from behind their laptops.
"They said she won't die. The amount of injection was too low… apparently."
Apparently?!
You inhale sharply and open your mouth to announce your imminent panic, but you're interrupted when one of the scientists speaks up first.
"That is correct, sir. She won't die."
Professor Doctor Boswel, as the name badge on his white lab coat states, chimes in. Price stops pacing at once, though his sharp eyes scream you better start explaining now, or one of you will be made responsible for this.
"Bringing the syringe back to base was the decisive factor. Our team at the lab is still working to decipher and translate the medical reports and research papers your team recovered, but we can confirm that this bioweapon is most likely a toxin."
A low murmur of various curses goes through the briefing room as you try to ignore the odd tingles in your limbs—like they're going numb from sitting in a bad position for too long—and process the doctor's words instead.
"You're saying I've been poisoned, doc?" You butt in crudely, letting out a humourless laugh as you begin fidgeting with your hands, clenching and unclenching them to get rid of those tingles while a cold drop of sweat trickles down your left temple and is swiftly wiped away by Soap's gloved thumb.
"Fuckin’ hell, lass. Ye dinnae look too good," Soap mutters under his breath, exchanging a concerned glance with Gaz, who then looks to the captain for guidance with a serious frown.
When Gaz turns around abruptly, you get a whiff of his scent, and you're ashamed to admit to yourself that you inhale it deeply—musk and sweat and gunpowder smoke, a hint of his fancy body wash lingering underneath all the grime. A perfect concoction of what is entirely Gaz.
It's intoxicating. Mouth-watering.
And absolutely inappropriate, because he's one of your best friends and a comrade.
What the hell is happening?
Of all the injuries and wounds you've already acquired during missions and deployments, this must be the fucking worst. You'd rather get shot or stabbed than sit here, feel strange as hell and be ogled like a failed science experiment.
Price's eyes flicker to Ghost, who hasn't said a word since sitting you down on the table with a gruff order to stay seated, and then to his three sergeants, lingering on you heavily before he turns back.
"What kind of bloody toxin?"
"It seems to be some sort of aphrodisiac, but… uh, well—about fifty times worse than that."
The other scientist, Professor Doctor Adebayo, answers tentatively, as if explaining it out loud makes him uncomfortable.
"The reports say it turns men—"
Dr. Adebayo hesitates, clearing his throat and looking between Laswell and Captain Price, until the latter lets out an exasperated sigh.
"Turns them what, doc?"
It's Laswell who says it eventually, "Turns them aggressive, John. Feral with lust, as ridiculous as that might sound."
The CIA agent finally looks in your direction before approaching you slowly while Dr. Adebayo seems to heave a sigh of relief as soon as she takes over.
"A high dose of it can be used to lower one's inhibition levels to a point where even the most honourable man would resort to sexual assault to ease his urges."
Her factual yet grim explanation makes the tension inside the briefing room spike tenfold. Every man present tenses up, visibly uncomfortable—Ghost especially, who's practically vibrating with strain.
Using a toxin like that—a bioweapon—on soldiers in the field could lead to even more and worse war crimes, and everyone here is aware of that.
"Wait—what? What the fuck?" Gaz utters, bristling next to you while you grip the edge of the table, gritting your teeth as the tingles intensify and wreck through your body in waves that leave you shuddering with each one.
"'Scuse me, what now?" You scoff. "Does that mean I'm gonna turn into a fuckin' nympho any second?"
Multiple pairs of eyes snap towards you at your choice of words. Some look intense and laced with worry. Price scolds you with one glance. Others look mildly amused—the latter being Soap, who lets out a snort but tries to cover it up with a fake cough into his fist.
Laswell surveys you intently, though her voice softens when she addresses you directly.
"How are you feeling, Sergeant? Are you in pain? Nauseous?"
A beat of silence follows. Your eyes flutter briefly as you meet Kate's blue gaze, and you exhale a long breath through your nostrils before you answer curtly.
"I feel weird."
You feel like you're about to get your period, but you keep that information to yourself for now and try not to wrap your arms around yourself self-soothingly.
Your lower abdomen is starting to tighten and cramp. Your gut twists like you just chugged a steaming bowl of soup and your limbs keep tingling—from your toes to your fingertips, and up to the tip of your nose. Tiny vibrations along with hot and cold flushes that make you quake and squirm in your seat on the table.
Kate squints at you, though she doesn't press further.
"What kind of effect will this stuff have on her?" Price enquires gruffly, more level-headed this time, his gaze shifting from the two scientists over to you and then back.
Meanwhile, as you crank your sore neck from left to right to get a good crack in, your eyes catch sight of Soap's muscular forearms and—to your horror—they linger.
The sleeves of his combat fatigues are rolled up to his elbows, exposing dark coarse hair and thick veins and that damn SAS insignia tattoo.
You want to trace the black lines with your tongue and imagine the salt of his skin on your parched taste buds.
And your eyes widen when a sudden rush of mind-numbing, pulsating heat makes you squeeze your thighs together as you clench your jaw to keep the lewd sound bubbling up in your throat from escaping.
Soap shoots you a quizzical look, one eyebrow raising as you avert your eyes from him swiftly, heat crawling up your neck and prickling beneath your skin.
"Fuck," you breathe, doubling over with a groan as the muscles in your thighs and lower abdomen begin to cramp up painfully while you can practically feel your pussy start convulsing around nothing, leaking with arousal and soaking into your underwear.
In a matter of seconds, your team—Ghost included, like a solid wall of quiet reassurance—are by your side, keeping you upright, asking questions, though their deep, accented voices are muffled as your quickening heartbeat begins to thud in your ears.
Their every touch seems to burn through the thick layers of your kit.
"Kate—Kate," Price is by her side in a few long strides, ducking his head to get on eye-level with her as he points at the two scientists accusingly, though Kate is already on her smartphone, contacting the lab again.
Price huffs like an angry bull trying to protect his herd as he turns his attention back to Dr. Boswel and Dr. Adebayo, who seem to be in a frenzied discussion, watching the way you're cramping and writhing.
"What the fuck is happening to her?" He barks at them, demanding an answer yesterday.
"It's—it's the toxin," Dr. Boswel stammers obviously, blinking up at Captain Price from behind his glasses. "She didn't get the full dose, but it's still—" He pauses, eyes flickering nervously under the captain's glare. "—bad."
Another gut-wrenching moan from you echoes through the briefing room as you squirm in Gaz's embrace, and Price must restrain himself from directing his wrath towards the two men in front of him—it's not their fault, after all.
It's his.
"Oxytocin might help… neutralize the toxin in her body," Dr. Adebayo remarks, clicking his pen nervously as he stares at his laptop screen before meeting Dr. Boswel's eyes, who is waiting for an elucidation.
"The hormone," Dr. Adebayo clears his throat again, clearly uncomfortable, "—not the drug." He clarifies, clicking his pen a few more times.
Laswell lowers her phone and shares a look with Price, holding an entire conversation with one long, meaningful glance, the one learned and perfected over more than a decade of working together, when Gaz's voice breaks through the chaos, calling for attention.
"Cap'n! What do we do?!"
You're not brought back to the barracks but Captain Price's private quarters.
Your squad makes sure to keep you out of sight in your condition; away from prying eyes while Ghost sneaks through the shadows with your quivering form cradled against his chest, carrying you bridal style like you're something fragile, something vulnerable he must protect.
Once safely inside the captain's flat, the curtains are drawn before your heavy gear is stripped from you, all while you don't even bother paying attention to who is grabbing or holding you at this point.
All that matters is someone touching you.
Your brain is mush, reduced to your most simple and carnal desires. No shame nor worry about the needy noises you're making whenever one of their big, strong hands strips another layer of clothing.
"Shit, I think she has a fever," Gaz mutters, cupping your face with both hands as he investigates your hazy, unfocused eyes while you let out another pathetic whimper. "She's completely out of it."
"Get her into the guest bedroom. Down the hall, first door on the left," Price orders gruffly, trying to keep his eyes from wandering up and down the length of your trembling, half-naked body.
"I'll call the senior consultant."
Ghost grumbles a low curse under his breath when your hand brushes over the front of his crotch—by accident or voluntarily this time, he doesn't dare imagine—and leaves the guest bedroom while Gaz and Soap manoeuvre you onto the king-sized bed.
Meanwhile, you don't care about the effect your uncharacteristic behaviour has on your teammates and superiors.
Whenever they try to make you drink or take an easy bite of food—whether it's a chewy protein bar or an overripe banana, because Price has no proper groceries at his place—you twist in whoever's embrace you're in, turning your scrunched-up face away like a petulant toddler.
"I don't wanna," you whine and hiccup, protesting each time Gaz tries to lift the rim of the water bottle to your lips, your speech now slightly slurred, glossy eyes averting their gaze as you breathe shallowly, squirming while Soap keeps you propped up with your back resting against his chest on the bed.
Gaz, who has been trying again to make you drink a sip of water for the past twenty minutes, looks back at his Lieutenant and Captain helplessly.
"Doc said we need to keep her hydrated," Price announces, rubbing his bare hand over his tired face. "Keep flushing that bloody poison outta her system and—"
Suddenly, Ghost's deep, gravelly voice interrupts the captain's speech with a harsh bite to it. "Johnny."
Soap, who has been trying his best to ignore the way you keep grinding your arse against his crotch in this position, ducks his head at the sharp and sudden warning.
"What? 'M not doin' anythin'," he grunts before sucking in a sharp breath as his cock keeps stirring and twitching in his combat trousers, "Fuck, lass, please—"
Soap tries to keep you from moving; his ungloved hands get a firm hold of your hips, but you're practically panting and mewling in his lap, making it harder for him not to crumble under the pressure building up in his dick.
Then Gaz is swift to pluck you out of the Scot's embrace with a disdainful frown, like you're some toy that was stolen from him.
"Don't be a fuckin' perv, Soap," Gaz snaps, cradling you into his arms, where you immediately begin pawing at his black compression shirt, determined to get your palms under it and on his bare skin.
"She can't consent!"
It's Price who approaches the bed then, while Ghost stays leaning against the doorframe, keeping a keen eye on the situation.
"Enough! Both of you," Price barks, eyes flashing before his shoulders drop with a rough sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Doc said it might help if—"
John stops mid-sentence, clenching his strong jaw. He can't believe what he is about to say, and he crosses his arms over his chest again, feigning control while he internally braces himself for his next words.
"Those doctors said it might help if she… climaxes."
His words hang in the air like a thick fog that no one can quite see through nor think in, and everyone seems to be holding their breath while you finally manage to tug Gaz's shirt out of his waistband, making him cuss under his breath when you go on to lick a long, wet stripe over his exposed abs like some feral lioness, utterly hungry for a taste.
"Shit—Babygirl, no, d-don't—" Gaz stammers helplessly while a rush of heat goes straight to his neck and cock simultaneously, overwhelmingly so.
He pushes you away by your shoulders—and hates himself for how reluctant he is at it—and he winces when your blunt nails claw into his bulging biceps, digging into his skin even through his shirt with another whimper.
"Please, Kyle… Let me—" you mewl, batting your eyelashes up at him. "It—It fuckin’ hurts."
Soap pushes his fists into his eye sockets, heaving a deep breath that turns into a frustrated groan. "Steamin' Jesus, lass, ye’re fuckin’ killin' us here."
"Take a bloody walk, MacTavish," Price orders, pointing his thumb at the door over his shoulder, and while Soap climbs off the mattress, grumbling to himself with an obvious erection pressing against the seam of his zipper, Price addresses Gaz.
"And you, Garrick, take—" He hesitates again, balling his hands into fists at his sides, trying to keep his own body in check at the sight and sounds of you, before he nudges his chin towards the door of the bathroom.
"Take her to the shower to get the fever down and… help her."
The captain's last words are nothing more than a strained grumble.
Gaz gapes at his superior. Soap freezes in his steps at the end of the bed, openly gawking and blinking like he didn't just hear right. Ghost visibly stiffens and shifts his stance, still leaning against the doorframe of the guest bedroom. No one can see the way he grits his teeth so hard he might chip a tooth behind his balaclava.
"But sir—"
Price shakes his head; brows set in a stern frown as he holds Gaz's widened gaze.
"She'd want you to take care of her if she could actually consent to it. And that's an order, Sergeant."
Ghost wants to disagree, but keeps his mouth shut and exhales a sharp huff of contempt instead.
The rest of the men try to distract themselves around Captain Price's flat while Gaz takes you to the en-suite bathroom like he was ordered to.
Not asked, ordered to.
He keeps repeating that in his head as he walks you towards the bathroom door with his arm around your waist, your body listing into his side like you've forgotten how to hold yourself upright. His jaw is set so tight his molars ache.
He's been ordered to do a lot of things in his career. Clear rooms. Hold positions under fire. Drag wounded men through mud while rounds cracked overhead. He's followed every order without hesitation, because that's what good soldiers do—they trust the chain of command and they execute.
This doesn't feel like any of those things.
He keeps the bathroom door unlocked—just in case you faint and he needs help—and lets out a huff when you fling yourself into his body suddenly and the air is knocked from his lungs.
"Easy," he pleads with you while his head dips down, and he inhales your familiar scent before he can stop himself. Sweat and the remnants of whatever lotion you put on this morning underneath your gear before the mission, something warm and sweet that he's caught whiffs of a hundred times before in passing and never let himself think about for longer than a second.
"Easy there, love," he tries again, his trembling hands wrapping around your midriff tentatively.
Gaz hates these circumstances. Hates how the mission ended in such a bloody mess. Hates how excited he is to undress you to your underwear, and he despises that this is how he'll get to have you for the first time.
This is not how he'd imagined it.
He never imagined it. Not in any concrete, detailed way. Not like he'd planned it in his head, step by step—the restaurant he'd take you to first, somewhere nice but not so nice you'd take the piss out of him for it. The way he'd tell you after the second drink, maybe the third, that he'd been thinking about you. Casually. Like it hadn't been eating him alive for months.
He hadn't planned any of that.
Fucking liar.
You make a sound against his chest, somewhere between a sob and a moan, and your fingers twist into the wet fabric of his compression shirt, tugging weakly.
"Kyle… Kyle, I need—"
"I know," he murmurs, and his voice comes out rougher than he intends. "I know, love. C'mon."
He manoeuvres you towards the shower, reaching past you to turn the dial to lukewarm. The water sputters, then hisses to life against the tile, and steam begins to curl at the edges of the glass.
You're still in your underwear—plain, standard issue, nothing designed to be sexy—and it doesn't matter, because the sight of you trembling and desperate in front of him with water beginning to mist across your skin is doing things to his head that no amount of mental discipline can counter.
He starts to dismantle his assault rifle in his head.
You stumble into the shower cabin and he follows, still fully clothed. The water hits his chest and soaks through his compression shirt in seconds, plastering the fabric to his skin, and the cold shock of it helps. Briefly.
Bolt. Firing pin. Cam pin.
"C'mon, Babygirl," he coos at you as he turns your quivering body in his embrace until your back is flush against his chest. One arm wraps tightly below your breasts, forearm pushing up against the swell of them through the soaked fabric of your bra, and he tries, and fails miserably, not to take a long look over your shoulder.
Buffer tube. Buffer spring. Buffer.
You melt against his body and his cock throbs in his combat trousers, straining against his briefs uncomfortably. The water is doing nothing for the heat radiating off your skin. If anything, you're burning hotter, pressing back into him with small, involuntary rolls of your hips that make his breath stutter.
Lower receiver. Trigger assembly. Trigger—
"Please," you whimper, and his entire train of thought derails.
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, exposing the column of your throat, and he can see the way your pulse hammers beneath the surface, rapid and frantic. Your hips buck against his hand when he finally—finally—lets it trail down over your lower belly, his calloused fingers dragging across the wet skin, feeling the muscles jump and twitch beneath his touch.
"Yes—yes—yes—" you chant breathlessly, and your hips cant forward, chasing his hand with a desperation that makes something crack open in his chest.
Fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck.
He cups your pussy through your knickers and the heat of you against his palm nearly makes his knees buckle. He can feel you through the thin, soaked fabric and he's not sure if the wetness is from the shower stream or if it's all you.
His chest is heaving when he finally gathers enough courage to dip his long fingers beneath the waistband of your underwear. His jaw clenches and his mind grasps desperately for the drills again—clear left, clear right, move to the next room, check your corners—anything to stay anchored while you let out a moan that echoes off the tile walls and punches straight through him.
You're so wet, so swollen, it's obscene. His fingers slide through your folds with zero resistance and the groan that rips from deep within his chest is involuntary, guttural, ashamed. He can feel your arousal ooze from your entrance, slick and hot, and he can already tell how tight you'd feel clenching around his fingers, how you'd—
No. He's not going there.
"Fuck," he curses under his breath, more to himself than to you. "I'm only doin' this for you, Babygirl. This is only about you."
He says it like a prayer. Like if he repeats it enough, it'll be true.
His fingers press on your clit, pulsing and twitching already, and he starts rubbing small, firm circles over it, adjusting the pressure when your breath hitches or your thighs clamp around his wrist. He reads your body like he reads a room. Methodically, attentive, and cataloguing every reaction.
You writhe and squirm in his tight grip, your nails digging into the arm he has banded around your ribs, and every sound you make, every whimper, and stuttered gasp of his name, chips away at the wall he's trying to keep standing between following an order and wanting this.
"M-more, Kyle, please!"
Gaz curses himself, but he gives you more.
Two fingers pressing into you, slow and careful despite every instinct screaming at him to give you what you're begging for. You clench around him immediately, hot and tight and silky, and his cock kicks in his trousers so hard he must bite the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning.
He curls his fingers, searching for the spot that makes your thighs shake, and when he finds it, you keen so loudly the sound bounces off every hard surface in the small bathroom.
"That's it," he murmurs against your temple, his lips brushing your skin without quite kissing. "That's it, love. Let go for me."
He's not sure when he started talking to you like this. Somewhere between the first touch and the second, the clinical detachment he'd been clinging to crumbled and something else took its place—something tender and fierce and terrifyingly honest.
Your first orgasm hits you hard enough to make your entire body seize in his arms, your back arching away from his chest as a strangled cry tears from your throat. He holds you through it, fingers still working, still pressing and giving, because even as the tremors wrack through you and your legs give out, he can feel your body already winding up again, the toxin refusing to let you rest.
"Shh, shh, I've got you," he breathes, adjusting his grip to take your full weight when your knees buckle entirely. "I've got you."
You cum again two minutes later, and then again after that, and again, and Gaz loses count somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, when his fingers are cramping and his arm is trembling from holding you upright and the water has long since turned cold.
Each time, he thinks it'll be enough, and each time, your body coils tight again within minutes, the toxin driving you right back to the edge with a cruelty that makes him want to put his fist through the tile.
He doesn’t want to imagine what a full dose would have done to you. To anyone.
When you tell him that you're hurting—repeatedly, begging him to make you cum in that desperate, broken tone of yours—the young Sergeant is sure something dies inside him on the spot.
"Kyle—Kyle, I need more, I need you to—please—Fuck, please!"
He knows what you're asking for. You're grinding back against his cock, which has been rock-hard and aching for what feels like hours, and every roll of your hips sends a jolt of white-hot arousal through him that he must physically brace against.
"I can't," he grits out, and it takes everything in him. "Christ. I can't do that to you. Not like this."
"Please—"
"No, Babygirl." His voice cracks on the word, and he presses his forehead against the back of your head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Not like this."
He drops to his knees instead.
The tile is hard and unforgiving under his kneecaps and the now cold water from the shower hits the back of his neck, but he barely registers any of it as he turns you to face him and hooks one of your legs over his shoulder.
He looks up at you once—your hazy, unfocused eyes, the way your chest heaves, the water running in rivulets down your body—and then he leans forward and drags his tongue through your folds in one long, broad stroke.
The sound you make is devastating.
Your hands fly to his head, fingers scrabbling for purchase on his wet hair, and your hips jerk forward so violently he must grip your thigh to keep you steady. He groans against you, he can't help it, and the vibration makes you cry out again, blunt nails raking over his scalp.
Gaz eats you like he's starving for it, because the truth he can't say out loud is that he is.
He's thought about this. Dreamed about it. Wanked to the idea of it in the dark of his bunk with his fist shoved against his mouth to keep quiet. And now he's here, on his knees in his Captain's shower with cold water running down his back and your taste flooding his mouth, and it's everything and nothing like what he imagined because you're not choosing this—you're not choosing him—and that knowledge sits in his chest like a brick.
But he doesn't stop.
Gaz licks and sucks and fucks you with his tongue until his jaw aches and your thighs are shaking so badly you can barely stand, even with his hands gripping your hips. He makes you cum on his mouth twice, then thrice, pressing his face into you each time your body locks up, working you through it with relentless, single-minded focus because if he stops to think about what this means, about what happens after, he'll fall apart.
When he finally pulls back, his lips are swollen, his chin is slick and his cock is so hard it genuinely hurts. You're still whimpering, still reaching for him, still not done, and the toxin is still pumping through your veins with no sign of stopping.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and exhales a shaky breath, pressing his forehead against your hip.
"I need—" His voice is wrecked. He swallows hard, then tries again. "I need a minute."
Not because he's tired, or his fingers are cramped and his jaw is sore and his knees are bruised from the tile. No.
But if he stays on his knees in front of you for one more second, he's going to give you what you're begging for, and he will never forgive himself for it.
He stands on unsteady legs, turns the shower off, and reaches for the towel hanging on the rack outside the cabin. His hands are shaking as he wraps it around, and you cling to it loosely, swaying on your feet.
"C'mon," he says, guiding you towards the door with one hand on the small of your back. His voice has steadied, but his eyes haven't. "Let's get you dried off."
You're protesting. He's cursing under his breath. There's shuffling, a stumble, and then he grabs the door handle and swings it open—
And Soap nearly falls backwards into the bathroom.
"Soap!"
The Scotsman catches himself on the doorway, one hand gripping the frame as he glances over his shoulder with a look that's not even remotely sheepish enough for a man who was clearly pressing his ear to the door thirty seconds ago.
Gaz is still wearing his clothes, though they're completely drenched—his compression shirt is a second skin, his combat trousers heavy with water, boots squelching on the tile. He's holding you by the forearm as you stand next to him, loose towel wrapped around your body, still trembling, still making those small, desperate sounds in the back of your throat.
"The fuck, mate? Did you eavesdrop on us?"
Soap shrugs as he straightens up, adjusting his stance in a way that's clearly meant to disguise the state of his trousers. "Was jus' checkin' on ye."
"Checking on—" Gaz's jaw works, nostrils flaring. He wants to snap, wants to shove Soap back into the hallway and slam the door, but he's running on fumes and you're leaning into him again, your face pressed against his soaked chest, mumbling incoherently.
"She needs—" Gaz starts, then stops. Looks down at you, back up at Soap. Something heavy passes between the two men, unspoken but understood.
"She needs more than I can give her right now," he finishes quietly, and the admission costs him more than any of them will ever know.
Soap's expression shifts. The boyish smirk drops, replaced by something sobered, and he gives Gaz a short nod—the kind they exchange in the field when one of them is spent and the other takes point.
"A'right," Soap answers, surprisingly steady, rolling his broad shoulders. "Ah’ve got 'er."
Gaz transfers you into Soap's waiting arms with a gentleness that borders on reverent—one hand on the back of your head, the other guiding your shoulders—and he doesn't let go until he's sure Soap has you secure.
Then he walks past them both, water dripping from every inch of him, and doesn't look back.
He makes it to the kitchen before his hands start shaking badly enough that he has to brace them flat on the counter. He stands there, head bowed, water pooling on the linoleum beneath him, and breathes.
Ghost is leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, and he doesn't say a word.
There is no need to.
Soap carries you back to the bed like you weigh nothing to him; one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the towel slipping loose and neither of you caring, and he lays you down with a surprising gentleness that contradicts every tightly coiled muscle in his body.
He's been hard since the briefing room, balls throbbing uncomfortably. Over two hours of it. The kind of persistent, throbbing ache that sits low in his gut and pulses in time with his heartbeat, and he's been dealing with it the way he deals with most discomfort.
By ignoring it aggressively and hoping it fucks off on its own.
It has not fucked off unfortunately. Truth be told, he’d be worried about himself if it did.
"Right then," he mutters, kneeling on the mattress beside you as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders again like he's about to breach a door. "Let's sort ye out, hen."
And that's the thing about Johnny MacTavish—he doesn't agonise. Not the way Gaz does, all quiet guilt and moral calculus. Soap's moral framework is simpler, blunter, built from different materials. You're his teammate, you're hurting, and he can help. Everything else is noise.
That doesn't mean he's unaffected; doesn't mean his hands aren't shaking when he settles between your legs and pushes the towel fully away from your body, or that his breath doesn't hitch hard enough to hear when he gets his first proper look at you fully naked, spread out on the white sheets with your chest heaving and your thighs trembling and your eyes half-lidded, glassy, barely tracking him.
Christ, you're beautiful.
He's thought about this. Fuck. Of course he has. He's not a bloody monk, and you're you.
He's thought about it in the gym when you spot him on the bench press and your face hovers above his, upside down and grinning. He's thought about it on long transports when you fall asleep against his shoulder and he stays perfectly still for hours so you won't wake up. Or when you laugh at his shite jokes that no one else finds funny, when you steal chips off his plate in the mess, when you call him Johnny instead of Soap and don't even notice you've done it.
He's thought about it a lot.
But not like this.
"You with me?" he asks, tapping your cheek lightly with two fingers. Your eyes roll towards him, struggling to focus, and you make a sound that's part whimper, part plea.
Close enough.
"A'right, sweetheart. I've got ye."
He doesn't ease into it the way Gaz did. Where Gaz was methodical, with careful touches, measured pressure, and constant checking, Soap is instinct. He reads you through vibration and sound, adjusts on the fly, follows the frequency of your moans like he's tuning into a signal.
He dips his head between your thighs and licks into you without preamble, broad and hot and greedy, and the noise that tears out of you rattles something loose in his chest.
"Fuck—tha's it," he groans against you, the vibration making your hips jolt, and his big hands grip the backs of your thighs to keep you spread open and steady. "Tha's my bonnie girl."
He's not quiet about it, either. Soap eats pussy the way he does most things. With enthusiasm, commitment, and absolutely zero self-consciousness. Wet, filthy sounds fill the bedroom, punctuated by his own groans and your increasingly incoherent cries, and he doesn't give a single shit that the door is open, and his team can hear every obscene noise he's wringing out of you.
Let them hear.
His tongue works over your clit in fast, tight circles, then broad, flat strokes, alternating rhythm and pressure every time he feels your thighs start to shake. When you try to close your legs, he pins them open with his forearms. When you try to squirm away—overstimulated, oversensitive, too much and not enough at the same time—he follows relentlessly, dragging you back by the hips with a growl that rumbles against your soaked flesh.
"Nuh-uh. Stay still f'me."
He makes you cum with his mouth in under five minutes and then doesn't stop.
Your fingers twist into the sheets, into his mohawk, clawing at his scalp as your back arches off the mattress and a wrecked sob punches out of your lungs. Soap groans in response, the sound reverential, like your pleasure is a hymn and he's on his knees in church.
He keeps going. Lapping at you through the aftershocks, sucking your clit between his lips until you're keening, pressing his tongue inside you just to feel you clench around it, and when you cum again with his name breaking apart on your lips—Johnny, Johnny, fuck yes, Johnny—he nearly blacks out from how hard his cock throbs in response.
His hips have started moving on their own. Small, involuntary rolls against the mattress, his aching cock grinding against the sheets through his combat trousers, and he knows he should fucking stop, should pull his hips back, should focus on you and not the desperate friction building between his body and the bed.
But he doesn't stop.
He is physically incapable.
You taste like honey and salt and something almost medicinal underneath—the toxin, probably, working its way out of your system through your sweat and your slick—and he's drunk on it. Drunk on the way you say his name, how your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, drunk on the wet sounds of his tongue on your cunt and the way you keep pulling his face closer, harder, more.
"God—fuck—lass, ye taste so fuckin' good—"
He's rutting against the mattress in earnest now, his hips snapping in sharp, desperate little thrusts, and the friction is nowhere near enough and exactly too much at the same time.
The sheets are going to be ruined. He doesn't care. Can't. He’s a weak man, and his entire world has narrowed to the taste of you on his tongue and the ache in his junk and the way your body keeps arching into him like he's the only thing keeping you alive.
"Please—please, Johnny, I need—I can't—"
"I know, hen, I know—" he pants against your inner thigh, pressing a biting kiss there that makes you yelp, "—jus' one more, c'mon, give me one more, aye?"
He flickers his tongue, seals his mouth over your clit and sucks, hard, and you shatter. Your thighs clamp around his head, your hands fist in his hair so tightly it stings, and the scream that rips from your throat is ragged and raw and so fucking beautiful that he comes.
Inside his combat pants.
His hips stutter against the mattress and a guttural, muffled groan vibrates against your pussy as his cock pulses and spills, hot and wet, soaking through his briefs and into his trousers. His arms shake, his vision whites out for a second, and he has to press his forehead against your inner thigh and just breathe through it, chest heaving, while you whimper above him, still trembling from your own orgasm.
He pulls back slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the reality of what just happened settles over him like a cloth soaked in ice water. He stares down at himself, at the damp patch darkening the front of his trousers, and lets out a long, defeated exhale.
"MacTavish."
Ghost's voice comes from the doorway; flat and sharp, dripping with contempt.
Soap closes his eyes, disappointed in himself, exhaling through his nose. "Aye. I know."
"You know?" Price's voice joins Ghost's, closer, much heavier. The captain is standing just inside the bedroom now, arms folded, jaw set. He looks at Soap the way a father looks at a teenage son caught doing something monumentally stupid.
"Get yourself sorted. Now."
Soap doesn't argue. He climbs off the bed on unsteady legs, not meeting anyone's eyes, and adjusts his trousers with a grimace as he shuffles past Ghost in the doorway.
Ghost doesn't move to let him pass. Makes him squeeze by, shoulder to shoulder, just to make it uncomfortable.
"Disgusting," Ghost mutters, low enough that only Soap hears it.
"Fuck off, LT," Soap mutters back, and there's no heat in it. Just shame.
You don't notice the shift at first.
One moment there are hands and mouths on you, voices and pressure and friction. The next, everything is quieter. Stiller. The mattress dips on one side and stays dipped, a solid weight settling beside you but not on you, not against you, not close enough to touch.
You whine at the loss of contact, of heat, of anything, and reach blindly for whoever is there.
A large hand catches your wrist. Gentle and firm, holding it in place.
"Don't."
One word. Low and gravelly, scraped raw like it was dragged over broken glass and wire mesh on its way out of his throat.
Ghost.
He's sitting on the edge of the bed with his back straight and his boots still on, because taking his boots off would mean he's staying, and staying would mean—he doesn't finish the thought.
Price asked him to sit with you while Gaz and Soap pulled themselves together. Asked this time, not ordered, because Price knows that ordering Ghost to do something he doesn't want to do is about as effective as ordering the tide to turn. Ghost agreed with a single nod, and now here he is, and every muscle in his body is locked so tight he might snap a tendon.
You're lying on your side, curled in on yourself, wearing nothing but your sodden underwear again and the ghost of everyone else's touch on your skin. The towel is long gone. Your body is still trembling, still feverish, still caught in the grip of the toxin, and the soft, pained sounds you keep making are doing things to him that he absolutely cannot allow.
He's hard. Has been since you doubled over and moaned and he had to watch your body betray you in front of everyone. His cock is straining against his trousers, thick and heavy and insistent.
Ghost pretends it isn’t. He's very good at pretending things don't exist.
"Simon…"
His jaw clenches beneath the balaclava. You rarely use his first name—none of them do—and hearing it now, in that voice, breathy and desperate and small, is a kind of cruelty he wasn't prepared for.
"You need to drink something," he murmurs, and reaches for the water bottle on the nightstand without looking at you.
"Don't want—"
"Wasn't bloody askin’."
He unscrews the cap and turns to you, and the mistake—the critical, tactical, unforgivable mistake—is that he looks at your face next.
Your eyes are glassy and wet, your lips parted around shallow little breaths, and you're looking up at him like he's the only solid thing in a world that's been spinning for hours.
Not with lust—not the way you looked at Gaz and Soap—but with something quieter. Something that reaches past the toxin and grabs hold of something deeper.
Trust.
You trust him. Even now, reduced to your basest instincts, your intoxicated, unhinged brain still recognises him as safe.
Something fractures behind his ribs, and he shuts it down immediately, brutally, the way he shuts down everything that threatens to breach the walls.
"Sit up," he orders, and his voice is soft yet steady even if the rest of him isn't. He slides one hand behind your head—just his palm, just enough to support your neck—and lifts the bottle to your lips.
You drink. Slowly, reluctantly, with small sips that dribble down your chin, but you drink. He holds the bottle still and watches the column of your throat move with each swallow, and when a drop of water runs from the corner of your mouth and trails down your neck, dark eyes track it all the way to your collarbone before catching himself and looking away.
"More," he says curtly, bringing the bottle back.
You manage a few more sips before turning your head away with a pitiful sound, and he lets you, setting the bottle aside. His hand lingers on the back of your head a moment too long—his thumb brushing once against the nape of your neck—before he pulls it back like he's been burned.
You reach for him again. Fingers closing around the fabric of his sleeve, tugging weakly.
"Stay. Please. Don't—Don't go."
"'M not goin’ anywhere." The words come out before he can vet them, gruff and low, and he immediately resents himself for saying them so quickly, so easily, like a confession slipped out under duress.
He lets you hold onto his sleeve. That much he can allow. That much won't cross a line he cannot uncross.
You shift closer, seeking warmth, and your body curls towards him until your forehead is pressed against his thigh. He goes completely rigid, every muscle locking and nerve firing, and his hands hover in the air on either side of you, not touching, not pulling away, suspended in the unbearable middle ground of a man who wants desperately but won't take.
Another small whimper from you. Not desire this time but pain. The cramps rolling through your body in waves, the toxin still doing its vicious work even after everything Gaz and Soap wrung from you. You're shaking, and not just from arousal. You're exhausted. Dehydrated. Your body is at war with itself.
Ghost is not a gentle man. He knows this about himself the way he knows his blood type and his boot size. It's a fact, unalterable, built into the architecture. He doesn't comfort. He doesn't soothe. He handles.
But.
His hand comes down on the back of your head, and it stays.
Heavy and warm through the leather of his glove. Not stroking just resting, a solid weight against your skull, and you let out a breath that sounds like it's been trapped in your lungs for hours.
You stop shaking. Not entirely. The tremors are still there, running through you in small aftershocks, but the worst of it eases under the steady pressure of his palm, like he's an anchor and you've been drifting.
"Ghost?" Your voice is small, barely a whisper.
"Yeah."
"It hurts."
He closes his eyes behind the mask. His hand presses down just slightly—a fraction more weight, a fraction more warmth—and his throat works around words that don't come.
He knows it hurts. He knows Gaz and Soap's efforts weren't enough. He knows what the doctors said—what Price said—and he knows what would fix it, and he can't.
Not because he doesn't want to. Because he wants it too fucking much.
Simon Riley is not a man who trusts himself with things he wants.
Wanting, in his experience, is the first step towards destroying, and he has destroyed enough for one lifetime. Touching you now the way his body is screaming at him to would not be careful or measured or controlled or gentle.
It would be all consuming, and he would take too much, and he would never be able to look you in the eyes again.
So he sits on the edge of the bed with his boots on and his cock aching and his hand on the back of your head, and he holds himself perfectly, agonisingly still. Just a solid shadow in a bedroom.
You press your face harder against his thigh and he lets you. Your fingers tighten on his sleeve and he lets you. Your breath evens out incrementally but still too fast, still too shallow, though calmer now, and he lets that happen too, guarding it like a perimeter, daring anything to disturb it.
He doesn't know how long you stay like that. Long enough for the light under the curtains to shift and for his leg to go numb beneath the pressure of your head. Long enough for Gaz to appear in the doorway, freshly changed into borrowed civvies, and stop dead at the sight of them.
Ghost meets his eyes over the top of your head. His expression is unreadable behind the mask, but his hand doesn't move from your hair, and that says more than his face ever could.
Gaz nods once and backs out without a word.
In the kitchen, Price is pouring two fingers of whisky into a tumbler and staring at the far wall like it owes him money. Soap is sitting at the table in a pair of Price's joggers, his soiled trousers balled up in a plastic bag at his feet, looking like a scolded dog.
"She's calmer," Gaz says quietly as he enters, and both men look up. "Ghost's with her."
Price takes a long drink. Sets the glass down. Rubs a hand over his beard.
"It's not enough, is it."
It's not a question and Gaz doesn't answer it.
"She's still in pain. She keeps—" He stops and swallows thickly. "She keeps asking. Saying she’s in pain."
The captain stares at the whisky in his glass. The silence stretches, tense and heavy, pressing in on the walls of the small kitchen.
"She needs more than fingers and a mouth," Soap says bluntly, because someone fucking has to, and delicacy has never been his strong suit. Gaz shoots him a look, but Soap holds it, unapologetic.
"He's right," Price agrees suddenly, and the words taste like bile. He pushes away from the counter and stands to his full height, shoulders squared, and for a moment he looks every inch the officer. Burdened, resolute, carrying a decision he'll second-guess for the rest of his life.
"Gentlemen's agreement," he says. His voice is low, steady, absolute. "What happens tonight stays in this flat. No one treats her differently when this is over. No one brings it up unless she does. No one holds it over anyone, including himself."
He looks at each of them in turn—Gaz, then Soap—and holds until he gets a nod from both.
"And we tell Ghost."
Ghost doesn't agree.
He listens to the terms of the gentlemen's agreement from the doorway of the kitchen, arms crossed, stance wide, radiating the kind of stillness that makes lesser men instinctively check their exits. When Price finishes, Ghost holds the silence for a long, loaded beat.
And then: "No."
Price doesn't flinch. "No to which part?"
"All of it. My part." Ghost's voice is flat and final, stripped of everything except the decision itself. "I'll stay with her. I won't fuck her."
Soap opens his mouth—probably to say something spectacularly unhelpful—and Gaz kicks him under the table without looking.
Price studies his Lieutenant for a moment. Then he nods once, heavy with an understanding that doesn't need to be spoken.
"Fair enough." He rolls his sleeves up to his forearms. The mechanical motion of a man preparing for something he cannot delegate. "I'll go first."
No one dares to argue.
Unlike Soap, Price closes the guest bedroom door behind him and stands there for a moment with his hand still on the knob, just breathing. It smells of sex and pheromones, but wrong.
The room is dim. Someone turned off the overhead and left only the bedside lamp, casting everything in low amber light that softens the edges of the furniture and the shape of you on the bed. You're curled on your side, knees drawn up, one hand clutching the pillow beneath your head. The sheets are wrecked; damp and twisted, pulled loose from two corners, and your skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat.
You look small.
That's the thing that hits him first and hits him hardest.
You're one of his soldiers. He's seen you clear buildings, haul wounded men twice your size to extraction, take a round to the vest and get back up swearing. You are not small. You have never been small or fragile.
But you look it now, trembling and fever-damp and reduced to a version of yourself that he never should have had to witness, and the weight of that sits on his shoulders like a ruck full of stones.
He crosses the room in a few strides and sits on the edge of the mattress. The frame groans under his weight.
"Sergeant."
You stir, your head lifting, and your eyes find his face. They're glassy and unfocused, but there's a flicker of recognition—Captain—before it's swallowed by the next wave rolling through your body. You let out a sound that's half sob, half moan, your thighs pressing together, and your hand reaches out blindly until your fingers catch the fabric of his shirt.
"It hurts," you whisper. "Still hurts. Why does it still—"
"I know." He catches your wrist, holds it. His thumb presses against your pulse point to check, and it’s rapid, thready, way too fast for simply lying on a bed. "I'm going to help you."
He says it the way he says we're moving on that compound at 0300 or I need eyes on that ridgeline. Leaving no room for ambiguity, because if he allows ambiguity into this room, he'll start thinking about what he's doing, and if he starts thinking, he'll stop, and if he stops.
You'll keep hurting. Under his command.
He stands long enough to strip his shirt over his head and remove his belt, and then he's back on the bed, propped against the headboard with you between his legs, your back against his bare chest; coarse salt and pepper hair rasping against your tacky skin. One arm wraps around your midsection, heavy and secure, anchoring you.
"Easy," he murmurs against the top of your head. "I've got you, love."
His free hand trails down your stomach, and your muscles jump and twitch beneath his rough palm. He catalogues every reaction. The hitch in your breathing, the way your hips tilt up to meet him, the small, desperate noise you make when his fingers dip below your navel. The same way he catalogues threat patterns and exit routes.
This is a mission. He is completing the objective. He is taking care of his wounded soldier.
He keeps telling himself that as he peels your underwear down your thighs and off, tossing them aside. As he runs his hand up the inside of your thigh and feels you shake. As he finally cups you and discovers just how wet and swollen you are, dripping on his fingers, he has to close his eyes and clench his jaw against the visceral punch of arousal that knocks through him.
This is the job. You gave the order. See it through.
He works you with his fingers first, because he needs to know what you can take. Two thick fingers pressing into you slowly, carefully, and the sounds you make guts him.
"That's it." His voice is lower now, rougher. "There you go, sweetheart."
He doesn't call his soldiers sweetheart. He has never, in twenty-odd years of service, called anyone under his command sweetheart. The word falls out of him like a loose round, and he can't take it back.
Your sopping hole clenches around his fingers and his cock, already hard and straining against the front of his trousers, jerks so violently he must bite back a groan. He curls his fingers inside you, finds the swollen spot that makes your spine arch and your breath stutter, and works it with a patient, devastating precision.
You cum and gush on his fingers with a broken cry, your body locking up in his arms, and the aftershocks roll through you in long, shuddering waves that he holds you through without a word.
It's still not enough. He knows it won't be for a while longer.
Price reaches for the condom on the nightstand—Gaz found them in Price's bathroom cabinet, a half-empty box, almost expired, shoved behind the toiletries like an afterthought—and tears the foil with his teeth while you keen and squirm against him, already spiralling back up.
He undoes his trousers and pushes them down just enough to free himself, because keeping them on feels like maintaining some essential boundary, some last scrap of separation between Captain Price doing what needs to be done and John wanting what he shouldn't want.
Rolling the condom on is a particular exercise in self-control. His cock is thick, flushed dark when his foreskin slides back, weeping pre at the tip, and every brush of his own fingers against the oversensitive skin makes his abs clench.
He lifts you with ease, one hand on your hip, the other gripping himself, and positions you above his lap.
"Sergeant," he grunts through gritted teeth, "look at me."
Your head lolls back against his shoulder, eyes half-open, and you meet his gaze as best you can. He searches for something in your expression—recognition, maybe awareness, you—and finds enough of it to quiet the loudest of the voices screaming in his head.
"If it's too much, y’tell me. That's a bloody order."
You nod hazily. He doesn't know if you actually processed the words, but he needed to say them. Needed that on the record, if only between himself and God.
He lowers you onto him slowly.
The sound that comes out of him is not one he's ever made before.
You're scorching hot and soaked. Your body takes him inch by inch, clenching and fluttering around him as gravity and his guiding hand ease you down, and by the time you're fully seated in his lap, he's seeing stars and his fingers have left dents in the flesh of your hip.
"Fuck," he breathes, and the word is ragged at the edges, torn from somewhere deeper than his chest.
You moan shamelessly, and the relief in the sound nearly undoes him. Like something that's been wound unbearably tight has finally been given slack. Your body relaxes against his, tension draining from your muscles for the first time in hours, and the change is so visible, so immediate, that it almost justifies this.
Almost.
He starts to move. Rolling his hips up into you, slow and deep, both hands gripping your waist to control the pace. He keeps it measured; long and deliberate strokes that drag against your inner walls and make you whimper with each one, because if he lets himself go, if he fucks you the way his body is begging him to, he'll lose himself entirely.
And he hates—Christ, he hates—how fucking good you feel.
He hates the way you fit around him like you were made for it, and the way your head falls back against his shoulder, how your lips part and you breathe his name—not his rank, not Captain, but John—and the sound of it rushes through him hot and electric and wrong. Hates the wet, obscene sound of your body taking him repeatedly; that his hips are moving faster now, snapping up into you with a force that makes the headboard knock against the wall.
Hates that he doesn't want to stop.
Your eyes squeeze shut, your head tips back as you cry out. "John—John—oh god—"
His arm tightens around your ribs, crushing you back against his chest, and his mouth finds the curve of your shoulder—not kissing, just pressing there, teeth grazing skin, breathing you in. His other hand slides down between your thighs and rubs tight circles on your clit in counterpoint to each thrust, and you come apart so violently in his arms that he has to hold you through it with every ounce of strength he has.
You clench around him like a vice and he follows you over the edge with a bitten-off groan, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing deep inside you as the orgasm tears through him with a ferocity that whites out his vision.
For a few suspended seconds, there's nothing left. No rank, no mission, no guilt. Just the pounding of his heart and the aftershocks rippling through both your bodies and the impossible, terrible warmth of you around him.
Then reality seeps back in, cold and unforgiving, and Captain John Price opens his eyes and begins the long process of hating himself for every second of the last twenty minutes.
He pulls out carefully, disposes of the condom, and fixes his trousers. When he leans you back against the pillows, your eyes are already glazing over again, your body winding up for more, and the sight of it makes something weary and furious crack behind his chest cavity
He cups your jaw, tilting your face up. "Stay with me, Sergeant. Stay with me."
You whimper, and your hips shift restlessly against the sheets.
Price stands and walks to the door on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
"Garrick. You're up."
Gaz and Soap take you in turns after that, and it's different this time.
Where the first round was clinical in its own way—Gaz with his careful guilt, Soap with his missionary zeal, Price bearing the weight of command—this his round is rawer.
The boundaries have been breached, and the gentlemen's agreement hangs over the room like a ceasefire that everyone knows is temporary.
Gaz is gentler than Price was. He lays you on your back and settles between your thighs with a tenderness that borders on devotion, pressing his forehead against yours as he pushes inside you.
He goes slow and gentle, and whispers things against your temple that no one else can hear, private things meant only for the space between your mouth and his.
"I've got you," he murmurs repeatedly. "I've got you, Babygirl, I'm right here. I will be here."
He comes inside the condom with a shudder and your name bitten into the skin of your shoulder, and when he pulls out and rolls onto his back beside you, he stares at the ceiling for a long time without blinking, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
Soap goes after. He's not gentle—can't be, doesn't know how to be, not with the way you claw at his back and wrap your legs around his waist and beg him harder, please, harder—but he's present.
He hooks your knee over his broad shoulders and fucks you deep, watching your face with a focused intensity that's almost clinical in its own right, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, adjusting angle and depth and rhythm like he's zeroing a scope.
"Tha's it, sweetheart, take it—fuck, yer so—fuck—"
The condoms run out after Soap's first round.
Gaz discovers this when he reaches for the box on the nightstand and finds it empty, and the look on his face—the quiet oh, shit—would be funny in any other context.
"Cap'n," he calls, voice strained. "We've got a problem."
Price, who has been standing in the hallway staring at nothing, appears in the doorway. Gaz holds up the empty box. Price closes his eyes.
"Then pull out," the captain says flatly. "That's an order."
It should be simple, and it’s anything but.
Gaz tries. He genuinely, sincerely tries, but you're clenching around him so tightly and making those sounds, those desperate and wrecked, grateful sounds, and when your orgasm hits and your walls contract around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses, his hips stutter and he buries himself to the hilt and spills inside you with a choked groan before his brain even registers what his body has done.
"Shit—shit, I'm sorry, I—fuck—"
He pulls out too late, watches his cum leak from you onto the sheets, and drops his head against your sternum with a devastated exhale.
Soap doesn't even pretend he's going to manage it.
"'M not gonna be able to pull out," he announces with a frankness that makes Gaz want to strangle him. "Jus' bein' honest, Cap."
"You'll pull out or I'll pull you out myself, MacTavish."
And yet Soap does not, in fact, pull out in time.
Price has to physically haul him back by the shoulder, and even then, Soap's cock jerks and pulses as it slips free, painting your inner thighs and lower belly with hot, thick ropes of cum while the Scotsman lets out a string of Gaelic curses that would make his mother disown him.
The room smells like multiple people fucking and sweating and something medicinal—the toxin, working its way out of your pores at last—and you're finally, finally, starting to slow down.
The desperate edge has dulled. Your whimpers are quieter now, tired rather than urgent, and your body has stopped arching off the bed every few minutes.
You're still reaching, though. Still searching for contact, for warmth, for a body against yours.
Ghost enters the room without being asked.
He's stripped down to his black t-shirt and trousers. The balaclava is still on, but his gloves are off, and the sight of his bare, scarred hands is somehow more intimate than anything else that's happened in this room tonight.
He doesn't look at the other men or acknowledge the state of the sheets or the smell or the heavy, post-coital guilt saturating the air.
He simply moves to the bed, sits down, and gathers you against his chest with a practised efficiency that suggests he's been rehearsing this moment in his head for the last two hours.
You go willingly. Boneless, exhausted, trembling with the last dregs of the toxin and the cumulative aftermath of more orgasms than your body was designed to handle in one night. Your face presses into the crook of his neck, your fingers curl loosely in the front of his shirt, and you let out a breath that sounds like surrender.
Ghost pulls the duvet up over both of you. One arm settles around your back securely. His other hand comes up to cradle the back of your head, fingers curling into your hair, and he holds you against him like he's shielding you from blast radius.
"Go to sleep," he says quietly. An order and a request and a plea all compressed into three words.
You make a small, incoherent sound against his throat.
"I know." His hand moves over your hair, slowly and gentle. "Sleep."
Price watches from the doorway for a moment. Then he pulls the door halfway closed and leaves the Lieutenant to his vigil.
In the kitchen, the captain pours himself another whisky—three fingers this time—and drinks it standing up, staring at the drawn curtains. Gaz is in the shower. Soap is sprawled on the sofa in the living room, one arm over his eyes, dead to the world.
Price's phone buzzes. Laswell.
How is she?
He stares at the screen for a long time. Types and deletes three different responses before finally settling on one.
Handled. Debrief in the morning.
He sets the phone face-down on the counter and finishes his drink.
Hours later, you wake up slowly, like surfacing from deep water.
The first thing you register is warmth. A wall of it, solid and breathing, pressed against your back. An arm draped over your waist, heavy with sleep. Fingers loosely tangled in yours against your sternum.
The second thing you register is that you are naked, sore in places you don't want to think about, and your mouth tastes like the inside of a boot.
The third thing is the balaclava.
You can feel it, the knitted fabric against the back of your neck, and the slow, even exhale of breath warming your skin through the cloth. The chest behind you rises and falls in the deep, steady rhythm of genuine sleep, which means the Lieutenant trusts this room enough to have let himself go under.
Which means something, though you're too foggy to figure out what.
You shift slightly, testing your body. Everything aches. Your thighs, your hips, your abs, your jaw for some reason, and there's a deep, bone-level exhaustion settled into your muscles that reminds you of the tail end of a bad flu.
The cramps are gone, though. The tingling, the feverish heat, the desperate, clawing need—all of it has receded, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out emptiness.
And memory. Fragments of it. Arriving in pieces like delayed radio transmissions.
Kyle's hands shaking as he touched you. I'm only doin' this for you, babygirl. Johnny's mouth on you, hot and relentless. The sound he made against your thighs.
The shower. The water. Voices.
John.
Your eyes open wide and your body goes rigid, and the arm around your waist tightens reflexively. Ghost pulling you closer in his sleep, an unconscious response to a perceived threat, even though the threat is just you waking up and remembering.
You lie very still.
The flat is quiet. Early morning light edges around the curtains, pale and grey, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear the muffled sounds of the base waking up—vehicles, a distant shout, the rhythmic thud of boots on tarmac.
You don't move, don't speak. You stare at the wall and breathe and try to organise the wreckage in your head into something you can process.
Behind you, Ghost's breathing changes. Shifts from deep and even to something shallower, more aware. His arm tenses around you, a brief contraction of muscle, there and gone, and you know the exact moment he wakes up, because his entire body goes perfectly, absolutely still.
Neither of you says a word.
His hand is still tangled with yours against your bare chest. His thumb rests against your knuckle. But he doesn't pull away.
The silence stretches. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Heavy. Full of things that need to be said and won't be. Not now, certainly not yet, and maybe not ever. And there is a fragile, terrified understanding that what happened in this room changed the molecular structure of something that can never be unchanged.
Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably two minutes, Ghost speaks.
"How do you feel?"
You consider the question. Really consider it, not the reflexive I'm fine that sits on your tongue out of habit.
"Like shit," you answer honestly. Your voice is wrecked, raspy, and it hurts to talk.
Then, so quietly you almost miss it, he answers, "Yeah."
His thumb moves once. A single, slow stroke across your knuckle.
Then he lets go of your hand, carefully disentangles himself from around you, and gets up without another word. You hear his boots being pulled back on. The soft click of the door.
You lie in the bed that smells like all four of them and none of yourself, and you stare at the wall, and you breathe.
Pleased to report that after a day of this i am not longer craving caper brine and my mouth is not dry as usual. There's some good suggestions in the notes too that I want to try.
-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)
-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt
gracieabrams
titsay
2087
dailybridgerton
areudirty
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
