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What's in a Virtue (Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x Reader)---Part 3

*GIF not mine*

Summary:

Gaz wants you, but the hotel bar you work at has rules; when a bartender calls dibs, all others have to back off. It’s how the peace is kept, and as the new girl just trying to rack up some savings, you’re not willing to rock the boat.

But Gaz doesn’t take kindly to you avoiding him, and he’s never been one to beat around the bush. From confessing his love on the first night you met to shouting your name seven times from across the bar, he’s not letting you off the hook that easy. Not when he’s seen the proof that you’ve fallen just as hard for him.

A/N: mwahaha, and they said it couldn't be done. those who doubted me shall gaze upon my very first (and perhaps last) complete series! Victoryyyyy! I hope you enjoy!

Word count: 8374

Part 1 Part 2

You’re pretty sure you didn’t hear him right.

You’ve got morning-after brain, and his chest is so hot and adamant behind you, and his breath is right next to your ear. Plus, your stomach is growling with a pit only chocolate-chip pancakes and white peach oolong can fill.

And he’s doing that tracing thingy again. G. A. Then what?

R. Maybe.

And that leads you to think you might’ve just maybe heard him correctly, because why the hell is he drawing his last name on your hip so brutishly that it twinges?

“Um.” You stiffen. “What.”

Not really a question. The way you say it, it comes out more like you don’t want to know the answer even if you really did ask.

Kyle groans that long, gruff way, husked past his vocal cords and throbbing a path through your entire body. “Look, I get it.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Just let me… ah, fuck, I know it sounds ridiculous, love, but hear me out.” He moves away, giving you space to think while he leans against the counter and grips the edge, tight.

“Wait,” you hold up a hand before he can start talking again, because you need a minute. Several minutes, actually. A whole assload of minutes to comprehend the suggestion he’s just thrown at you. “Wait, wait, wait. Are you serious?”

This is probably just what Kyle’s morning-after brain is like. It makes stupid, sudden suggestions that he just blurts out on a whim with no regard for how it’ll land. In all fairness, you doubt it’s ever done him wrong before. Even in a regular headspace it’d be hard to tell him no.

Never mind that he’s shirtless, and that his broad shoulders eat up the space of three cupboards, and that his gaze is doing that thing again—that unfair thing where he towers over you but can still make you feel like he’s kneeling, dips his head so those pleading irises look up at you.

“Dead serious, love.”

There’s an air about him that’s resolute, despite it all. He’s tender but stern, decided and confident in his conclusion. He’s shedding his clothes and skin, leaving himself belly-up for you to bite.

“Kyle…”

“Too soon?” He doesn’t even look hurt. Just expectant.

You shrug helplessly. “Yes? Very too soon, don’t you think?” You spin around, fiddle with the pancake mix but don’t open it. The mug you’ve microwaved for your tea is probably cool at this point, and you try to turn that into your biggest problem of this morning.

Not the special forces sergeant who lives life at three-hundred miles an hour, exuding such a new energy in here that you can’t remember the basics. It’s the morning after, and as beautifully new as Kyle is, like the stretch of new blue jeans, he’s not threadbare enough in here yet. Too tight, sucking the air out of your own home and leaving you all prickly and sweaty and nervous.

And he wants you to move in with him? Right now? This soon?

It’s easy, when you turn your back to him and lob your hand towards the microwave handle, to pretend that your biggest problem can be amended in minutes.

Because now, despite that itchiness of Kyle’s gaze on your face, your biggest problem is that you haven’t even begun to steep your tea. That’s a huge deal. You’re supposed to do it seconds after the microwave beeps, pull the mug out and let the steam soak into the tea bag that you swing for a bit, always have to watch the foggy-air disruptions back and forth. Then you steep it, let the water grow murky for ten minutes as you cook the rest of the meal. Add sugar, an ice cube because you’re scared it’ll burn your tongue like the first time, and stir while you pour syrup on your plate.

You’re horribly set in your ways, so much so that you hate—actually hate—the newness Kyle’s thrust upon you. It took him twenty-four hours to upset everything.

Well, not everything. Just you. While you feel fresh out of the box, everything around you has been preserved in mundanity.

If you took two rights and a left from this building, you’d find a sandwich shop owned by a short man with an orange cat. If you went two floors up, you’d find a pack of graduate students; one more floor, and you’d see Mrs. Beverly and her purse dog. If you went into your living room, finagled with your window a bit, the shutters would close in a perfect angle so that the sun falls on your couch but doesn’t glare on your TV.

You know it takes you twenty-seven minutes to get to work in the morning right after you brush your teeth. It takes you fourteen minutes to walk home after you clock off. Thirty more minutes to order food and settle in, Netflix the pinnacle of your night before you nod off in a tank top with exactly three holes and short shorts you’d bought under the duress of a busted AC.

You have milk and eggs both two days away from expiration in your fridge, along with old Chinese takeout. You have books with crackled spines and ruffled pages on your bookshelf, and a muddy stain on your entryway carpet from two days after you’d bought it. A bedroom unruly and unbidden, clothes strewn everywhere.

You could envision it all, see it all because you knew it all. Have known it all for the months that this place has been your home and you’d begun working at the hotel bar. You could have the rest of your life mapped out by tomorrow if you really wanted to. It’d be safe. Predictable. Boring, in that average way you’ve always known. None of it would be moving by so fast that you wouldn’t get a break to think of the consequences.

None of it would make you feel like you’re reaching new heights by jumping off cliffs, taking big, stupid risks that wind up working all the damn time—and solely because Kyle makes them work. Because he runs seven steps ahead of you and lays out the golden carpet for you to step on, telling you it’s okay to keep pushing forward.

The phone calls, the talks, his touch and voice. All of it closing in on you, molding you into something fresh and unseen.

But that’s just it. It’s still just you who’s changed.

Not Kyle, who’s certainly been like this his whole life. Who’s used to making snap decisions that have an impact, gotten so damn used to doing that that he carries it with him now.

And it’s not Mariano or his cat Garfield, or the ham and swiss you get on Fridays. It’s not Jared and Samantha, both of whom play Mario Kart after writing another page in their theses. It’s not Mrs. Beverly and Chloe, or Jeanne, or your family or friends you haven’t texted in a while.

Only you.

You’re stripped to your marrow, neurons and fibers spilling all over the place because—oh hell—you’ve grown too big for all this. Kyle’s had you melting and flowing fast and sharp since he first showed up in your life, and you’re moving too fast to feel out that old stagnancy.

But there’s an ugliness that lives inside of you too, that hates how uncomfortable every little step forward is, even if you can’t stop taking them.

It’s exposing. You feel naked, but not in the new, comfortable way Kyle’s helped you discover by virtue of his longing. More naked like school nightmares and too-small bath towels. Naked like someone’s going to douse you in lemon juice and salt any second to watch you writhe.

“Kyle.” Your hand’s still propped on the handle. The microwave beeps again, impatient. “Last night was—God, it was amazing.” You open the door, pull out the mug despite how lukewarm it’s grown. “Best I’ve ever had, by a long shot. But…”

“But what, love? You’re scared?” His voice is barely above a whisper, and you’ve no doubt he’d watched your mind run and run circles around itself, and had had enough time to form an argument of his own. “It’s too much? A lot to ask? I think that too, love, but we’re running out of time.” He rises to his full height, and you try not to shy away at how much space he takes up when he’s grim and serious.

He’s massive, bigger when he’s panting over you, sleek hips pressing down, suppressing your twists and jolts. He’s gotten better at trapping you, too. It’s intimidating. Thrilling, in better circumstances.

You can’t think straight anymore. He smells like pine all over again, and looks it too.

“Come back with me to England. We’ve got bars—bars I can bother you at. We’ve got universities for second chances. I’ve got a flat with plenty of room, plenty of money to—”

“Kyle, please.” The whine rips from your throat, and you drag two hands over your face.

In the corner of your vision, you don’t miss the way he stiffens and swallows a bit. But then he says your name through choked sigh, and rasps, “I know it sounds fuckin’ crazy—I feel like a bloody fool saying it out loud. But I don’t want to lose this, and I can’t keep comin’ back here to start us from scratch every few months.”

You don’t know what to say to that, can’t stop bobbing your mouth open and closed, trying to find those useless words that might explain what’s holding you back.

Something like, It’s only been three months.

Yes, but Kyle knows that too. And he still wants you.

You don’t even really know him.

Sure. But what was there to learn that he wouldn’t offer you on a silver platter?

It’s going to fall apart. It always does for you. Months will pass, and he’ll realize he made a mistake. He’ll kick you to the curb, and you’ll be back to square one.

A coaxing palm cradles your cheek, and a warm thumb prods over your lower lip, both of which make you flinch out of your thoughts. Kyle tips your head up, up, up until you’re looking at him, brown irises gentle and luring.

“I can see it, you know. That cruel little brain of yours is whirring so loud it’s makin’ me nauseous.”

Your eyes fall closed, and you reach up, grapple at Kyle’s wrist, massage the tender spot at its center. “I’m sorry.”

He inhales, ragged and slow. Exhales, blowing past your flyaways. “For what, bunny?”

You continue to caress the baby-soft skin of his wrist, marveling a bit at how different it feels from his rough fingertips, from his scarred thighs, his bruised back. “I need… time. A little bit to think. Consider things.”

The last thing you wanted to do was tell him to leave. You felt like an idiot for even implying that space from him was the something you needed right now. You know the silence will swallow you whole when he’s gone.

“You want me to go?” he breathes out, and his face crumbles. Likely, he didn’t want to leave. He could barely be goaded out of your bed, and now this?

Kyle looks like he wished he hadn’t asked, hadn’t said anything. Those mournful brown eyes slip to the counter, where your mug and pancake box sit, then back to you, to your eyes and nose and lips.

Your lips. He prods at the bottom one, like he can’t help it. The caress slows to a stop when he pinches his eyes closed and tips forward, dropping his forehead to yours. “But I don’t wanna leave, love,” he mumbles. “Scared if I do, you won’t let me back.”

You don’t think you could ever keep him out. Not out of your house, and not out of your head. But your brain feels unspooled and uncollected, and all that’s left are too-sweet cotton-candy wisps that can’t quite latch onto anything.

“I…”

Don’t want you to leave either.

I want you to stay. I want to move in with you. I want every night to be like last night, and every morning to begin like ours did.

I want it all to be ours.

Your hands rise up and brush against the dips and swells of his chest. Goosebumps blossom under your touch.

“Kyle, you know this isn’t goodbye. It can’t be. I need you to tell me you understand that.”

He sighs again.

“I know, love. I know that.” His thumb wanders over the arch of your cheek. “I’m used to all this, with you. All the pullin’ away and coming back.” He chuckles bitterly, a bit breathy. “It’s just so fuckin’ hard this time ’round.”

Your chest feels like it’s split open, gaping and pouring out. But your mind, or what’s left of it, knows you need this. You need the separation from him, deserve time to think through all he’s offering, all you could barely repay him for in return.

The debt between the two of you is yawning. But if you gave in and told him yes, all you’d be left with is uncertainty.

Not even a man as perfect as Kyle can make up your mind for you.

“One more kiss before you go?”

He takes you up on it before you can say any more.

His lips are a harsh press against yours, bruising enough to leave them puffy for hours. He kisses to consume, to swallow you up and spit you out wanting more.

Gentlemanly as Kyle can be, there’s not a glimpse of it to be seen now. He’s not playing fair, at the moment.

He hooks a finger under your chin and holds you steady, keeps you close and running out of air as he slips past your defenses, the hot, wet press of his tongue on top of yours. It’s instantly dominating before you have a chance to fight.

And then he’s toying with you, kneading you back into the fray with long prods and swipes, his stubble from the morning a heady friction on your skin. He’s playing and caressing and devilishly stroking needy whimpers from you, fingers dancing along your skin, drawing circles on your skin and whines from your throat. That dangerous tongue of his performs another sweep about your mouth, then slips back. Kyle begins worrying at your bottom lip, teeth digging in so harsh and quick —

—and he tears away from you so abruptly that you gasp, can’t even see straight. Suddenly you’re cold and alone, panting and losing your balance without Kyle’s sturdy form keeping you upright.

You only realize what had happened when you hear a rustling from your bedroom. Kyle reappears seconds later, avoiding your gaze as he zips his jacket up over his bare chest, legs and hips clad in last night’s jeans.

Subconsciously, you pick at the neckline of the black cotton tee you’re wearing—his shirt, one you guess he doesn’t want back before he leaves. “You don’t want your—”

“Don’t take it off—not yet, yeah?” He meets your eyes for the first time in two minutes, and there’s little brown left to them, all dilated pupils and a consternated furrow. Even his lips, wonderfully swelled, are tugged into a small frown. “Keep it on f’me. I’ll come back for it when you’re ready.”

But you don’t know when that’ll be. How could you possibly make an unbiased decision when the damn thing still smells like him and you can’t forget that ravenous look in his eyes when he’d first found you in it?

Kyle’s hovers near the door, hand tight around the knob like he can’t quite figure out how to open it again. He glances back at you over his shoulder, lets himself take you in, take the entire scene in. He even looks back at your bedroom, where the sheets are rumpled and need to be washed. Then he settles on you one last time, jaw set, muscle feathering a bit.

“Call me. Text me. Anything, darling. But don’t you dare forget about me.”

The door closes with a slam.

~~~~~~

The first day, Gaz is sure it’s fine. You need time to think, and that’s okay. He can handle that. He’s handled it multiple times.

And, yeah, when he’d gotten back to his hotel room, he had to sit for a moment, staring at the wall. Had to replay that whole night all over again.

Then again.

He did the same thing with that morning, reimagining licking the sweat off your thighs, sliding up and burying his face into your stomach, pawing at your body wherever you’d get the loudest. Replayed the feeling of your supple palms and soft fingertips—every inch of you was so damn soft, fleshy and yielding in his hands—wandering over his cheeks, his lips, his scalp.

Fucking beautiful. Every goddamn second of it.

Gaz, that first day, tries not to linger too long on how it’d ended.

So stupid of him to bring that up. Suggest for you to move in with him when obviously you both functioned at two vastly different paces.

Isn’t it ridiculous that he can’t even bring himself to think it’s crazy? He can’t find it in him to say no, that’s bullshit, because who are you and why the hell did he ever think moving with a woman he’d only known for three months was okay—desirable, even?

So bloody desirable it almost crossed that line and became imperative.

He spends that night checking his phone, wondering if you’ll call him again, borderline tears and needy like yesterday.

That was his favorite aspect of yours so far—when you needed him, you needed him badly. You needed him while you choked back gasps and almost-sobs. You needed him while you breathed a little sigh of relief at the sight of him and jumped into his arms. You needed him with that first kiss, shy and tentative, but trying your best to imitate reckless abandon—until he taught you properly.

He’d spent that whole night watching you be shocked at yourself for how badly could want him, all confused and flushed when you’d noticed your fingers digging into the buttons of his trousers. A little stunned “o” formed on your lips when you’d dug your nails in, body trembling with exhaustion, and still begged him for more. Kyle, please. More.

Gaz only convinces himself to take a shower for the night when the thoughts become too much. He almost trips over his own feet in a mad scramble when he sees his phone flash, only to find a notification for an update.

He goes to sleep in a sour mood.

The second day goes about the same. He wakes up late in the afternoon (because, due to your midnight upset, he was still on his Middle-East sleep schedule), spends way too much time remembering and staring at his phone, waiting for a buzz or a ring. Eats his dinner and drinks in a deathly silence.

Because silence is unnerving to him now. You’ve changed that much in him. Every second spent in lonely quiet feels like a waste of his time.

But you don’t call. And you don’t text.

You don’t do any of it for the next three days.

Gaz wallows even worse. He gets antsy, goes to the hotel gym and sprints on the treadmill, because he knows if he runs outside he’ll find himself at your place. He goes to stores, buys himself another black t-shirt, same size and brand as the one that you’d worn, that’d cinched in at your waist and flared out to capture your hips and thighs.

He wanders into the bookstore next door and finds a few of the ones he’d spotted on your bedroom bookshelf whenever you’d tapped out on him. He flits through a few pages, eyes catching on the naughty words, and reads through for… wistful entertainment, at least.

Research purposes, at most.

And Gaz chuckles to himself, winking at the girls that try to wander into the section inconspicuously. The same ones who surely have as good a poker face as you, and who immediately vacate the area at the sight of an invader.

It would be more fun if it was you he was teasing. Same pink ears and face, same eyes avoiding contact at all cost, fingers fidgeting at the hems of your sleeves.

A longing ache floods his chest so directly and intensely that he has to take a second, breathe and set down the book so he can center himself again. That same flood of cognizance about his situation hits him when he’s on missions, when the victims’ sobs finally get to him or he looks too long in the eyes of a dead man.

Like he’s yanked to the surface after hours underneath the tide, and the sun shines so brightly his eyes burn. But he’s seeing and feeling everything he’d shoved deep down, knows exactly what led him to this moment.

Gaz doesn’t go out much after that.

Not the next day, or the day after that. Not even the next two days after those.

It’s around this point that he wishes you would just put him out of his fucking misery. He’s so tired of thinking of you before he goes to bed, dreaming of you, then waking up to phantom touches all over his body. He’s driving himself up the walls trying not to call you, break into your house and just steal you back to England anyway.

Patience. Son of a bitch—patience. God, you strung it out so thin with him that it could snap like a rubber band and hurt you both.

It’s midnight of the tenth day of no contact with you that Gaz’s finally got his sleep schedule under control, and he’s twisted up in the sheets, body caked with sweat.

Well, actually, he’s in Prague.

He’s rapidly approaching a target in a dusty, dark alleyway. Just before they turn the corner and get into public view—can’t let that happen, have to maintain cover—Gaz wrestles them away from the glow of the streetlamps and back behind a dumpster, kicking away their gun while he wrenches a biceps around their neck—

But it’s your voice ringing through the air. Your pleas and sobs pierce his conscious too late. Your neck snaps so loud he flinches, and all the while his mind is screaming no, no this can’t be right. She’s not the target. She’s never the target.

Gaz scrambles away, tearing off the sheets and rolling out of bed.

Jesus Christ.

He has to see you.

After that, just needs to make sure. Needs to check that you’re still in tact, your sweet neck not cracked and limp, eyes not dim and silenced.

He rises to his feet and can’t find his Goddamn socks anywhere. A yellow glow from the window lets Gaz catch himself in the mirror at the perfect moment, and he can see the thick sheen of sweat that covers his body head to toe.

You deserve better than that. Better than a sweaty, desperate man with no patience pushing his way into your house and demanding an answer, a single word, fucking anything from you.

Even a nod or a shake of your head would settle his poor heart. The damn thing aches in his chest all the time now.

Gaz slips into the bathroom for a quick, cold shower, stubs his toes against the not-wide-enough walls of the tub several times, and ambles out a bit slower and far more jittery than he’d gone in.

He’s shifting a pair of pants up his not-yet-dry legs when he spots it.

A dim flash from the hotel nightstand, where his phone is plugged in.

Gaz freezes.

Surely it’s not…

Well, it might be…

But he’d been gone for not even five bloody minutes; that’s not even fair!

Suddenly, he’s kicking off the pants and hurdling over the bed, buck-naked and scrambling for his phone.

No, no, no, no, no, no, NO.

But yes. It’s a voicemail from you. Three minutes and forty-seven seconds, and he wasn’t there for any of it.

He presses it with wide eyes and a heaving chest, and something stabs him, hard, cruel, and swift right in the center of his gut when he hears your voice.

“Wow, I’m getting deja vu.” You laugh, but it’s empty and short. “I’m really hoping you didn’t sneak off to a mission without telling me. That would, uh…” Your tone grows dreary, even as you huff another laugh. “That would really suck. But I’m sure I deserve it.”

You thought he’d leave you?

You can’t see him, and he knows that, but he still shakes his head, brow furrowed because no, no, no, he would never do that to you. Damn that evil brain of yours.

“I just… um, I just had a dream, though. Wanted to tell you about it. It wasn’t even bad so, like, I don’t even know why it woke me up.” Some shuffling, and a sniffle. “Well, I mean I do, but… okay, fine, I’ll just tell you.

“It was pretty lame. Nothing big, but I was hanging out in an apartment—a flat, you might say—which is a stupid name for an apartment, but you Brits don’t even know what chips are, so whatever. I’ll let it go.

“Anyway, I was sitting on the couch kinda bored, and then you came in. Came back, really. It’s like that background knowledge thing you get in a dream, where you only know exactly what’s going on the moment it happens? But you were back from a mission, and I had dinner and a hot bath ready, and you…”

Another sniffle. Gaz hovers over the phone, waiting for those seconds to dwindle down, needing to know how you felt when the message ended so he could call you and be…well, be whatever the fuck you needed him to be in that moment.

“I don’t know. We were about to kiss, and then I woke up and you weren’t even there and I just…hated that. The idea of that. Of you not being there when you could’ve been. And knowing that the only reason you weren’t was because I was being so stupidly stubborn.”

You sigh, then, and get too quiet for him to hear without crouching closer. “Kyle, if you still want me even at all after this, I…” You suck in a long breath, and he hears that little hitch at the back of your throat. “I need it to be slow. Slower than what it’s been. Especially if… if it’s gonna be the same apartment. I’ve never had anything like this before. Never felt it. And I’m scared of, well, all of it, honestly.

“But I’m more scared of never taking that chance with you. And you’ve been commuting to my home, my country all this time, so… you know, maybe it’s time I reciprocate. Reciprocate a lot of things.”

Then someone knocks on his door.

~~~~~~

Kyle never directly told you which hotel room he was in. But when he’d kicked his pants off and you’d watched them soar over your bedroom floor that night you’d called him over, you’d laughed into his kiss at the sight of his wallet, his key card, and some loose change rattling across the floor.

The next morning, you’d picked it all up while he was in the bathroom, where he was hopefully not glaring at the impulsive hickey you’d given him. You’d snagged his t-shirt for yourself, some womanly, possessive part of you wanting to squeeze yourself into his clothes, whether it would fit or not. You’d felt like a damn fool crammed into it—until Kyle saw you for the first time, and the look he gave you made your stomach clench.

You’d organized the rest of his things onto your dresser, only eyeing the room card, and the number sharpied on the back, passively.

Room 428.

You knocked on the door now, pulse thump-thump-thumping against your eardrums.

An “Oh fuck” was muffled and low through the door.

It didn’t sound like you’d woken Kyle up, and you admit that you’d been seriously considering the fact that he might’ve left for a mission while you were in AWOL mode. A bit of luck, really, that it was actually him, still here after ten days of radio silence.

But you’d know that gruff, British grumbling anywhere, and your body began to tremor. Small, at first, in your fingertips and toes. Then your knees felt a little loose as time went on and all you could hear from Kyle’s end was quick footsteps and the snap of fabric. By the time the door whipped open, your every breath came out stumbling, like waves over jagged rocks.

And Kyle…

Oh.

Oh, Goddamnit.

Ten days was too long for both of you.

Because Kyle, for all his effortless handsomeness, was a wreck. Untidy stubble’s laid claim to his jaw and throat, and his lips look bitten raw. Deep-seated crescents curve under each eye, lined and dark and angry. He’s draping himself against the door with the black curls on top of his head in complete disarray, and watching you with a low-lidded gaze.

Gaunt, worn, weakened. Like the life has been drained out of him.

But it’s still Kyle. There’s a phantom of his old self in his form now, a tautness to his shoulders and neck, slight bend in his knees, vigilance in his whiskey eyes. You’ll have to reel his spirit to the surface.

Looking at him now, though, it hurts to think you’re the one who’d done it to him. So damn hard to believe that he takes absences of you like shots to the heart. It’s lovely, to be so wanted by Kyle Garrick.

Harrowing, too.

There’s a learning curve to holding his tender heart in your hands and trying not to squeeze it too hard, too often, but you get the feeling you’ve been treating it like a stress ball. You forget that he keeps himself at this rough idle for you. That he always carries soft, warm feelings all the time, and lets them fester behind the velvet steel of his abdomen.

“Did you get my voicemail?”

He nods a little.

“So you heard that I…?”

Another nod.

The air is thick and straining with his silence. All he is right now is two eyes watching you and ten long fingers flexed against the door, features bordering on unreadable.

But there’s yearning. There’s always that fierce yearning with Kyle.

You lean a little closer, don’t quite know whether to be disturbed or flattered at how his nostrils flare when he suddenly sniffs.

Then he hums, low and deep.

“Peaches,” you mumble, recalling months ago, a staunch memory of his words about your perfume.

“Tha’s right, bunny,” he mutters. His fingers peel off the door before he lurches toward you, a lovely swoop in your gut when he hauls his arms around your waist, tilting his face to yours. He takes another sniff, this one nestled against the top of your scalp. “It’ll smell like peaches.”

When Kyle takes a step backward, his arms remain iron-stiff around your back, dragging you with him. Step for step for step until you’re in his hotel room, kicking his door shut with the heel of your shoe.

His hand rises and sweeps back the hair stuck to your neck, already slanting his lips over your pulse point, teething at the skin. “My flat,” he whispers. Then he scoops up your jaw, tilts your head to the other side and reattaches his mouth to the next indent in your throat. “My bedroom.” Another readjustment of your head, aligning himself just below your chin, your head tipped all the way back, blurry, blissed-out eyes locked on the ceiling. “My sheets.”

“Kyle.”

His fingertips dig in hard enough to leave purple dots against your lower back. “All of it’ll smell like peaches. Like you.”

You pry him off with a tugging grip at his damp hair, only slightly intrigued by the water droplets that you now notice litter his skin.

A bit too busy trying to think back to why you’re here, outside of getting his hot mouth all over you again, to try and care about something so minor.

There’s an indignant huff against your bobbing throat before he draws back. Kyle looks damn near put out by the fact that you hadn’t let him keep sucking distractions into your skin, and his teeth bare slightly when he grumbles, “What is it, love?”

Lest you forget Kyle first and foremost loves to grope at the plush of your thighs, he does so now, mindlessly, detrimentally to your train of thought. “There’s—there’s so much to figure out, Kyle.” Your words are more like a sputter, wild spilling past your teeth. “There’s getting my stuff there, and passports, and visas. Things that take more time than how long we’ve known each other.”

The golden gleam of his smirk almost takes you out of commission. One second he’s bitter about his mouth and the lack of your skin against it, the next he’s pulled back far enough to meet your eyes dead on, confident like he knows you inside out.

“Bunny, when you first started to walk, did you go ’round asking everyone what running felt like instead of trying it?”

You… don’t know what that means. Like at all.

And you’re fairly certain you wouldn’t be able to figure it out even if you weren’t exhausted from four-hour sleep and the wandering of calloused fingers.

“Kyle—what?”

The deep timber of his chuckle floods your ears like spools of silk. It’d almost be mean if it wasn’t the same playful laugh he used to give you from across the counter, one hand on a drink, the other reaching for yours, and if he hadn’t done it with little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“I just mean…” he pauses and strokes at your thighs a little slower, “that all of this has felt so bloody natural. Like I’m made to be doing this. Like I’m learnin’ how to walk all over again. And you…” One hand departs, rises and encompasses your cheek, thumb swiping over its swell. Kyle’s features soften. “Love, you make me want to run so badly.”

Your hands fist against his chest, but you know he can still feel the quivering that’s begun. That slowly showers over your body, tip of your skull down to the bottoms of your feet, electrifying and frightening.

You say his name again, startled at how much you want him.

He’s not wrong. Not even close. Being with him is like warm sweaters, or old socks, or scuffed shoes. Things that always just fit.

But it’s new, these butterflies frenzied in your stomach, this chain reaction of shivers and sparks of pleasure and licks of sweet heat.

New, and timeless. Confusing, and so damn easy.

“I’ve got connections, love. And so much time for you. All the time in the goddamn world.” His hips press into yours, and once more, he begins to sway.

And, once more, you follow suit.

“And there’s bars aplenty in England, love,” Kyle whispers the words against your forehead. “If that kickin’ little mind o’ yours feels like it has to repay me—pain in my arse, but I’d let you do it. Even though I wouldn’t mind it if you could just sit in my apartment and look real pretty. That’s always on the table for you.”

“Definitely off the table, Kyle.”

“All right, all right, fine.” He peppers kisses over your face. “So long as you’re there each time I walk through that door, yeah?”

~~~~~~

Gaz can smell it from the hallway.

The heavy scent of chocolate and those pretty candles you love to light, along with a lingering hint of peach. The door to his flat towers, ominous and contingent, like if he doesn’t open it now, any second it’ll slip away and he’ll be back on the field, gunsmoke thick in his eyes and throat.

Coming home is always a little hard.

He’s unwinding vertebra by vertebra, trying to fracture himself into small enough pieces to fit through the door. And there’s the crotchety stiffness of his limbs, too long for these halls, too sturdy for a scene soft as this.

Gaz shoots for quiet and hits dead silence when he twists the knob. Slips through the doorway and takes in this little fault he’s discovered in reality, phenomenon he’s kept under wraps for the past year or so.

Because entering the pocket dimension of his flat is nothing short of ascendant. Every damn time.

The air in here is velvety smooth and warm. Not unbearably, for July—it almost feels like the warmth of a sweaty palm still interlaced with his, making his body all syrupy slow. The lights have been dimmed and everything in view from the doorway is more shadow than actual features. London, like the determined sadist it is, is gray and drizzly outside each of his wide-open windows, helping none with his search.

That is something he’d had to bargain for—open windows. Gaz doesn’t mind the subpar reward any creeper might receive peeking into his home, but you weren’t as convinced. The task to win you over had become almost insurmountable when he’d grown too greedy in the living room and you, with eyes only barely comprehensive over his shoulder, locked gazes with an elderly woman across the way and screeched.

But he’d won, and it seemed you honored your promise now.

Speaking of you, he doesn’t even spot you the first look-around. Even as his nerves meld into the sleek familiarity, panic splices through his gut when he glances once, twice, then thrice around. You’re not running toward him like he desperately wishes you would. You’re not hovering over the kitchen stove, or digging through the fridge. You’re not even curled up in the window seat, sipping on a steaming mug.

Gaz knows he was quiet, but he didn’t know he was too quiet.

It becomes increasingly obvious that you’d had plans to greet him.

Because not only is his favorite meal still sitting over the burner, and the kitchen’s covered in dirty dishes, but you’re lounging on the couch, plush thighs crossed one over the other with a book in hand, clad in fantastically sparse lingerie of frilly black lace that leaves meager gaps for his memories to fill in.

With a stuttering breath, he fills the gaps in tight.

Your lazy fingers scrape at the corner of a page, then you flip it with a bored sigh, shifting a little by hooking your heel over the top of a sofa cushion, splitting your legs wide so he can see—

His pack drops to the floor with a thunderclap of noise.

Your body jerks all at once, a quick shriek splitting the viscid atmosphere in half.

Your wide, prey eyes latch onto his while you grapple at your chest, book having been launched halfway across the carpet. “Kyle, you son of a—could you have been any quieter? What the hell?!”

He barks out a laugh. The potency of your voice saying his name is already swimming through his mind, and he reaches back and closes the door while you rise to your feet. “Sorry, love. Next time I’ll just crawl through the window, yeah?”

“Fuckin’ may as well have,” you grumble, adjusting the stringy straps of your bra. Your skin is all blank and pale right now from months of his absence, white space where amaranthine marks should be.

Four months. The longest the two of you have been apart, and every step you come closer that heady scent of your perfume prickles its way up his spine.

“My sweet little bunny, precious love of my life—what have you been up to, hmm?”

Your hands slot on your hips, and you pout up at him. The build-up of energy crackles all over his skin the longer you stand so far away from him, but you’ve still settled for a lecture instead of a kiss. “Well, I had this whole plan where I’d feed you and bathe you, and then we’d fuck like rabbits, but I guess that’s out of the question now.”

Gaz snickers, the abject disappointment raw on your face. “How is that out of the question?”

“Timing’s off and you ruined the whole sexy vibe I was aiming for.” You fold your arms, and Gaz shamelessly drags his gaze down from your face. “You really suck, you know that?”

His lips part in that effortless grin you so easily drag out of him. “So sorry, love. If you come over here, I’ll be sure to apologize quite thoroughly.” Gaz lifts his arms, holds them out and gestures his fingers enticingly. “I’ll have your forgiveness in a matter of seconds.”

Your expression’s all stubborn and prickly, but you sway forward a little anyway. “I…” You grunt and stomp toward him, let him wind his entire body around you, and relax a little when his palms massage and dig into your shoulder blades. “I really did have everything planned,” you mumble into his chest, fingertips all twisted up in the back of his shirt.

Gaz is starting to get an idea about what’s going on.

Only about half the candles are lit throughout the flat, the majority of which are near the bedroom. The bathroom light is still on, door opened a crack, but there’s unpacked bath bombs strewn about like you gave up halfway through. Even the kitchen is more messy than usual after the nights that you cook. Only half the pots and pans look actually used, the rest an anxious jumble of utensils and ingredients he knows you didn’t need to make chocolate-chip pancakes alone.

It looks like you were distracted. So very terribly disturbed by something that you could only commit half a mind to all your ideas.

With him, you’re rarely left to your own devices for this long, and it shows.

Gaz can see it, feel it, and practically smell it all over you. Despite his embrace and what should be relief about his return, the muscle and tissue all over your body are pulled taut, bowstring-tight and ready to pitch forward at any second.

He hums, feels the tension in your spine only grow as he draws little circles against your skin. “I know, love. I see it. Candles, and the dinner, and the bath.” He kisses your forehead, grins wider when all you do is huff and puff. “Did so well. I know it’s hard.”

It only serves to wind you up more. “I’m supposed to be the one massaging and calming you. Feeding you and taking care of you after your mission. This is…” you hiss a curse, nails scraping at his waist now.

“S’okay. I’ve been through this hundreds of times.” His fingers dance a little lower, teasing that arch in your back that you curve a little harder against him. “I know exactly what you need, bunny. Sort you out so you can get back to your plan, yeah? Just need you to let me take care of it.”

“I don’t…” you shake your head. “I don’t know why I just—I mean, all of the sudden it’s you, and I can’t—”

You fall silent so fast when he shushes you, presses a too-short kiss to your lips. Already, he can feel the verve traveling through your very bones. He lets his words brush along your lips when he repeats his promise.

“Know jus’ what you need. Let me handle it.”

~~~~~~

You’re straddling his thighs with a fork in hand, watching in a satisfied stupor as the plate balanced on his chest rises and falls at a rapid pace.

Sticky, flushed, and sated all over, you saw off another sliver of pancake and hold it up to Kyle’s lips. He accepts it greedily, lets his head knock back against the headboard with a euphoric, close-lipped smile.

He hadn’t been… wrong.

Which is to say, you’d somehow managed to get yourself so worked up in his absence that the second he returned, all you’d wanted to do was jump his bones, sans any of the prelude you’d planned.

A warning would have been nice, now that you think about it. Anytime around four months earlier when he’d first begun preparing you for his absence without you even knowing it, would have been superb.

Instead, he’d let it fester in you, like he’d planted himself a gift, fruit ripe for the plucking at a later date.

You want to be mad.

Can’t quite bring yourself to, though.

A bit too… preoccupied.

There’s still sweat dripping at Kyle’s temples when he cleans off the plate, hands still squeezing in distracting patterns around the meat of your thighs.

“Fucking delicious, love.” He laves his tongue at the corner of his lips. “My two favorite meals.”

“You’re horrible.” You scramble off him unsteadily, trying to keep both you and the dishes in your hands balanced. “I should get a bar of soap for that mouth of yours.”

Kyle laughs first, then groans, swiping his hands down his face. “If you’d said that shit in the barracks, love…” he calls after you, tutting in the distance while you deposit the plate in the sink. You almost trip on your skimpy lingerie set from a couple hours ago while stumbling your way back to the bedroom.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?” You raise a brow at him even as you tug on his arm, drag him out of the bed and down the hall.

After it all, Kyle had insisted you keep up the plan. Didn’t want that guilty conscience of yours to fester and, even worse, those pancakes to grow cold. He’d poked at your cheek, voice slurring a little from exhaustion as he whispered, “Gotta stay awake, love, or your li’l rabbit heart’ll feel all sad tomorrow.”

So you’d rolled off the mattress and made the trek back through the apartment, and, admittedly, you started to feel guilty about the mess you’d left during your hazy planning earlier.

You recalled trying to think of ways you could impress Kyle but not being able to think clearly after slipping on the lacy panties; too caught in imagining how he’d tear them off to really notice how half-baked the rest of your plan was.

And how all you could think about was him serving you, which really wasn’t fair. It’d been over a year since you’d started living together, and when he went off on missions, it was an unspoken promise on your end that you’d welcome him back in calm and comfortable ways.

His first few missions had been just that—romantic kisses and big, sweeping arcs of hugs; slow dances around the living room and the kitchen, sweet, bubbly champagne with dinner.

All you’d managed this time around was half-assed pancakes, lacy panties, and a cold bath that you hadn’t been patient enough to finish prepping.

You remember that you hadn’t even been exhausted today. The opposite, really. You’d been buzzing from head to toe the moment you got his call, mind too frantic to ever really stick to your old habits.

Kyle kneels down beside you outside of the tub, three bath bombs encompassed in just one of his absurdly large hands. The other is curling your hair around a single index finger. He’s patiently busying himself by touching you, playing with some part of your body or other like he’s always done.

One morning he’d had an absurd obsession with your left heel, and he’d nipped at the tendon out of sheer curiosity.

You’d almost kicked him square in the face.

But he gets new little obsessions with you all the time. Each day, he’s poking and investigating at a different part of your body, and he always—always—has to feel it against his teeth.

And you let him. Even now, as he hinges his jaw around your shoulder.

A true adventurer, unafraid to explore with all that he is. Wants to discover every little thing in a million different ways.

You lean forward and wrench the faucet off, then pat at Kyle’s cheek. “Bath bombs, please.”

When he thunks them in the water, the air in the room floods with lavender and chamomile. The tub’s still fizzing purple when he clambers in and hauls you in after him, slowing your descent into his lap just enough that only a bit of water dumps over the edge.

A long, drawn out sigh ruffles the loose hairs atop your scalp. Kyle’s hands sweep all the way up to the underside of your breasts, then way back down to the middle of your thighs, back and forth, back and forth. For the most part, you try not to move, try to let the aches melt away with the heat.

You drop your head back into the crook of Kyle’s neck and shoulder, tipping your face a bit to look at him.

Everything’s fuzzy. Pleasant. Legs and arms weighed down by gratification, gut slick with sated heat. And your heart thumps wild and proud, bum-rushed red and gold. Natural and gleaming. Normal and perfect.

“Can we stay like this forever?” Kyle asks again, a lifetime later. You’re only one year wiser when you nod yes, of course, how else would we be?

He burrows you deeper against him, trying to meld your skin into his because it’ll never be close enough. Touching and bruising and biting only mollifies it, this wonderful new appetite only Kyle can feed.

It’s crumbs of food, or the tiniest sips of water.

Or spare oxygen.

Kyle hunches over you, hard body slipping against yours. Soughs, like you hit just the spot.

“Can’t believe you kept gettin’ away from me before all this. Tested my patience so bloody much to get here, bunny.”

You smile, tilting your head and pressing a tender kiss to his cheek. “It’s your best virtue, Kyle.”

#kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle garrick x reader #gaz x reader #call of duty x reader #cod x reader #kyle gaz garrick #kyle garrick #gaz #cod gaz #gaz cod #gaz garrick

117 notes · View notes

oreosmama · 4 months

Text

Call of Duty Masterlist

☔ = Angst

🌦️ = Angst to Fluff

💥 = Crack

☀️ = Fluff

💋 = Smut

🖤 = Yandere

🔔 = Request

🟪Imagines🟪

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

■ What's in a Virtue ☀️

Series (Complete)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

🟪Drabbles🟪

Soap x Shadow Company Medic!Reader ☀️

Soap x Reader Body Swap AU 💋

Soap's feelin' a bit peckish 💥

#call of duty x reader #cod x reader #soap x reader #gaz x reader

26 notes · View notes

oreosmama · 4 months

Text

What's in a Virtue (Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x Reader)---Part 2

*GIF not mine*

Summary:

A/N: umm so good news is second part is out as promised. Bad news is....this is not the end. I totally plan on making another part, but I don't know how soon that can be done considering life just began again. Guess we'll see. Enjoy!

Word count: 8193

Part 1

In hindsight, you’re not quite sure when you started falling so hard for the handsome guy from the bar.

Yes, okay, there was initial attraction. Kyle was one in a million when it came to that.

Then it was the way he looked at you. Like you saying his name and pouring him more scotch made his world spin.

Kyle just made it so easy. Too easy.

So dang easy that you felt guilty Jeanne was attracted to him too. You tried to convince yourself for a long, long time that he looked at her the same way. At every girl the same way.

But that first night turned into the first week, which then turned into the first month.

Your poor heart ached each time he slipped through the glass doors, grinned at you in relief.

“Thank fuck you’re ’ere, love. Nobody in this bar knows how to pour a scotch better than you.”

And after that first touch, his warm fingers grappling after yours around the glass, you couldn’t fight it that easily anymore. Sure, you preferred people sober, but each time Kyle imbibed, he wanted a brush of your fingertips, and you did to.

Everything about him screamed hard yet warm. He was big—special-forces big, apparently. And he had these little scars on his cheeks that you dreamt of at night.

Where did they come from? Where else was he scarred? Why did a guy like him ever choose war over modeling?

Confounding.

Even more confounding was that he liked teasing you, and only you. It was a little trampling over your feelings at first, all that fresh hope and nervousness each time he showered you with attention. But then it was steamrolling, too much all at once that you couldn’t think of him without your entire body slipping into a nervous tremble.

Worst part was that you didn’t even know why he liked you so much. You were just as shitty a bartender as you were a failed medicine-or-anything student. You had nothing too offer him, not your too-big body nor your underwhelming lifestyle.

But Jeanne… Jeanne was perfect for him. Loved all the stuff he did, hiking and swimming and everything you couldn’t do for five minutes without sweating up a storm.

And just when it’s been a month and you think you’re so far in the hole for this hot tease of a customer who can’t seem to leave you alone—hot British tease, by the way, because how dare you forget him calling you “darling” with that accent—that you can’t even sleep at night without tossing and turning…

He’s gone.

Kyle just disappears.

The same Kyle who leaves a perfect, Kyle’s-butt shaped butt-print on the dusty corner seat he loved so much.

The same Kyle who, on the first night you met, was so damn snockered after seven scotches that he wouldn’t stop professing his love for you. (Not that he seemed to remember that the next day, or any day following, but you still hold the memory near and dear to your heart like the masochist you are.)

The same Kyle who stopped smelling like cigarettes after a while. Who once leaned over the bar just to push a little strand of hair behind your ear, rough fingertips pausing at your temple and brushing the skin in a small circle. “Just makin’ sure you’re safe ’nd sound” was the short mumble from his lips.

Gone.

Gave you his phone number before he left, and then hasn’t shown up to the bar for the last two weeks.

He could’ve—well, he could’ve told you he was leaving. Warned you. Instead of this cold-turkey bullshit, you could have actually prepared.

God. You wished you’d had time to prepare for this guy you’ve basically just met leaving you?

He’s made a mess of you.

Kyle, though… he’s Kyle.

And two weeks without him has left you with a Kyle-hangover. You’re all achey and sad and bored—fucking bored. What happened to you being able to occupy yourself with thoughts twenty-four seven and treating men like a distant daydream?

Ironically enough, you miss not missing men just as much as you miss that man.

Not for the first time in the last two weeks, you clock off after what has become some of the most miserable shifts of your life, and go home, curl up on your couch, and think about Kyle.

You think about that moment where he’d demanded you for your phone, long fingers curling in a “give it here” gesture, so stern you barely recognized him. You huddle deeper into the leather cushions, feeling in your pocket for your phone.

Timezones are tricky. Couple that with the fact that you have no idea where he even wound up, and you’re blindly searching through your phone for his contact with both eyes pinched closed, as though you’d be incriminated for the act if you saw yourself do it.

A ringing hums through the air, and you peek just to make sure you’re not being a fool for the second time tonight. Kyle (Hot Guy from the Bar) Garrick slides along your screen, bouncing back and forth so you can catch the entirety of what he’d typed.

You can hear him saying it, like it’s tainted with his soft, playful tone.

It’s the same voice telling you to leave a message now, and you’re so stunted by the familiarity of the sound that you don’t speak for another few seconds, having to reassure yourself that, no, that wasn’t actually him.

A voicemail. You could leave that.

Like all social interactions, you prefer them with a bit of distance and disconnect anyway, whether that be through phone or several glasses of alcohol.

“Umm” is all you say for a while, staring down at the ticking seconds in your lap.

Then “Hey” and “it’s me.”

After another pause, you realize he probably doesn’t know who “me” is, really, so you tag on your name.

And another “umm.”

“I’m calling because…”

You don’t know. Honest to God.

You don’t know why you’re sitting here on your couch, back straight as a pin, anxiously tearing your fingers through your hair and watching your phone screen with eyes so wide someone’d think it’s going to eat you.

“You know, I—I don’t really know why I’m calling. I mean, you asked me to, and now that I’m sitting here, doing it, it kinda feels like a mind game or something. You could still pick up, you know. Put me out of my misery.”

You pause.

Wait a few seconds.

“...But I guess you won’t be doing that. That’s great. Um.” You poke your tongue into your cheek, practically seizing up at this point. “I hope your mission’s going well. You know, stopping the… the bad guys and all that. And I hope that you’re—” safe. You don’t know if anything’s happened to him. It’s been two weeks, maybe that’s why he hasn’t called.

You think you’re gonna be sick.

“You know, it’d be really shitty if you gave me your phone number just to up and die on some top secret mission to save the world. I think that’d be pretty rude of you.”

Quiet, again. Still. You’re not even sure why you’d thought maybe you could hear his response.

But he’s the superhero guy, the special soldier on a secret mission that involves killing bad, bad men and even worse organizations.

So maybe it’s a little selfish of you to miss him.

“Be safe. I mean, I’m sure you already know to do that, but, you know. Try harder at it, I guess. For me.”

You end the call and fight the urge to throw your phone as far away as possible, and go about your night like Kyle doesn’t even exist.

This distance thing’ll be… easy. Maybe.

~~~~~~

You call him the next morning. Can’t help it.

Hearing his voice, even if it’s from the damn voicemail thingy, is soothing. Like a balm over your twinging chest.

Leave him a message at the beep. Oh, you plan to.

“It’s been,” you glance at your phone, “six hours since I last called you. I can’t sleep, so that’s gonna be your problem too. I had this dream where I was riding a unicorn—and I know you think this is gonna be cute or something, but just give me a second—and so we’re just galloping along in the forest, all magical like, and then suddenly I’m surrounded by these guys in SWAT gear and those helmet-binocular deals that you guys wear.”

You’re picking at your blanket, morning gunk still grimey over your teeth, wondering why your first thought of the new day—five a.m., by the way, and you have work until one a.m. tonight—was to call Kyle (Hot Guy from the Bar) Garrick.

“It was a bloodbath. My poor unicorn had to stab military men, so I’m blaming you for giving me a horrific dream like that, Mr. Military Man. Awful rude of you to drag me into the horrors of war like that. And no, you will not be forgiven until you call me back. Goodbye.”

You can’t go back to sleep. Not after that. You’ve scarred yourself sending something so mindlessly ridiculous to a man who has legitimate work to do—might even have one of the most valid jobs on the planet, and you were whining to him about your weeny nightmare.

So you spend the rest of your day meaninglessly-choring your way to the beginning of your bartending shift.

Jeanne hasn’t asked where Kyle’s been. She’s got a new target, a rich businessman who mainly operates in the field of pool floaties. Luckily for him, it’s almost July, which means business is lively, and so too is her interest in him.

It’s around that time that you realize Kyle was valid in denying her at every turn, but your guilt is still slow to fade.

Then your phone buzzes in your pocket.

Kyle.

You whip your finger across the screen, almost dropping the phone in your haste, and read the text.

Reread it a couple more times, because you kind of don’t understand it.

It’s not heartfelt by any means. Not Earth-shattering. And you ponder over it for the rest of your shift, glancing at it every few minutes instead of responding, because it’s so short and succinct that you get the sense it’s all he could manage during his mission.

All it says is “More.”

~~~~~~

Calling Kyle becomes a comfort. During breaks, after bad days, sometimes early in the morning when you were too exhausted the night before.

You feel like a fool after some time. He never once sends another text or calls back, and this time you really think he’s gone.

But there’s a hole your apartment’s silence can’t quite fill anymore, a quiet where Kyle’s lively chatter used to be at the bar.

So you fill it like he’s still there with you.

The third voicemail that you leave him begins with “You never told me your favorite drink.” You spend a half hour rambling about the different drinks you could have made him, how you’re getting better at it in his absence—you’ll even make him another Mai Tai to prove it, if he promised to come back—and how scotch is horrible. You’ve tried it for the first time, and you don’t believe for a second that it’s his preference, even if he’s a hardened soldier trying to wash the pain away.

You don’t buy it. He’s an umbrella-drink kind of guy.

The fourth is about how you’re rethinking things. So many things, while he’s gone. You’re rethinking what you want from life, considering going back and giving school the old college try one more time. You’d had these big dreams before you’d been cowed into submission by doubts and debt. Doctor of… well, something. Anything, really. You’d just always thought doctor looked good in front of your last name.

It looks good in front of Garrick, too. Doctor Garrick, that actually sounds pretty cool, and—oh shit, you don’t mean it like that. Not like you’d be his…

Anyway.

The fifth through twenty-seventh voicemails follow the same pattern. Random thoughts you’ve come up with throughout the day combined with ponderings cranky customers have drawn out of you.

None of it, you’re certain, is interesting to Kyle at all.

Not when he’s on a mission, taking down the evil guys and saving lives. Risking his own in the process.

But you can’t bring yourself to stop, too caught up in the text he sent you and how blatant he’d been about his interest before he left.

No funny business. Just you.

That’s what he’d wanted.

And he’d wanted “more,” too.

Good thing you’re willing to give it to him, highly concentrated and in a large number of doses.

You’re a giver, after all. Maybe he hasn’t noticed it yet, but if he needs these calls from you, obnoxious little chats about the mundane side of life, you’ll do that for him. Because Kyle is a good guy, and you want that chance, however slim it may be, to prove that he passed on his number for good reason.

So you keep calling, let the voicemails stack up and up as weeks go on, continue working behind the scenes of his life, hoping it’s not all in vain.

~~~~~~

Gaz lets the phone drop back down to his side on the barracks bunk, smiling like an idiot at the ceiling.

He’d been a tad nervous that you’d stop after a while, sometimes considered breaking Price’s no phone rule—he never would, of course; AQ can track the IPs of outgoing signals, and the last chance he’d had to send you a message was just before moving hideouts.

But they’ve been in too deep the past few weeks to let his wants trump the importance of the mission.

Plus, you’d obviously understood what “More” had meant. You certainly hadn’t given him less, at any point. There was only one three-day hiatus that made him strangle the shoulder straps of his chest gear so hard the fabric cinched and remained wrought.

And then you’d called, all apologetic and sniffly because you’d gotten some kind of bug despite it being the middle of summer—which was so fucked, in your opinion.

They’re flying back tomorrow. Through pure luck alone, it was a shorter mission than most, a two-month intel grab that ended with only enemies KIA, but Gaz knew what was coming.

Short missions like this meant something big was on the horizon.

Which meant that he had to make a decision soon to lock you down or let you go.

Not getting to hear your voice during a mission like he did now? It sounds fucking devastating. But asking you to stick around for his flighty lifestyle, spend months mucking about on your own, worrying about him and his lack of contact—it was a lot. Ultimately it’d be your choice, and Gaz is terrified that he can’t predict what you’d choose; it feels like defusing a bomb with sweaty fingers, or running out of mags in the middle of the field.

Things were out of his hands the second he put his phone number into yours and begged you to stick around.

He’ll have to get on his knees this time.

He’s already asked a fellow soldier, one of the American Marines who’d been recruited for a building sweep, for a ride to the hotel. By his count, he’ll be there around eight in the morning, just early enough to catch you and only you.

Gaz isn’t quite sure what he plans on doing. Something horribly twee, if past experience is anything to go by. Can’t quite get a conscious hold of himself when he sees you.

And it’d be bloody fuckin’ embarrassing, the way his nerves buzz just under his skin, if he was this excited for anyone but you.

But it’s eleven pm where he’s at and you just left a message bellyaching about his radio silence again. You’ve found a way to make scotch even worse and you’re going to torture him with it next time you see his face—you promise. Unless and only unless he messages you in the next five minutes with his favorite drink so you can practice.

It’s terrible and a bit rude, the way you can toy with his feelings through kindness. His little puppet master twisting his heartstrings so tight he can never truly unravel, all with the tenderness of a damn saint.

Gaz stares at your name in his phone. He works out the hours, then the minutes and eventually seconds until he gets to see you, and can finally stop fawning over the photo he’d found from your public high school’s online yearbook. He’s pretty sure you don’t have that zit anymore, at least, but it’s been too damn long and he’s due a verifiable fact-check.

His return can’t be too big. You’re not a pomp-and-circumstance kind of gal, too uncertain of your own worth to ever happily accept flowers and fanfare, even if it was just the two of you.

He’ll work you up to things like that. Over months. Years, hopefully. A lifetime, if the universe ever acknowledges the debt it owes him for the shit he puts up with.

But for now, he plans for small. Modest and tame.

Something to soothe that little prey heart that itches to run each time he flirts too loud and smiles too widely (because for some reason you can’t believe you draw it out of him, which, admittedly, preserves his pride a bit).

Suddenly, he’s got just the thing.

~~~~~~

Eight-fucking-thirty a.m.

Who on God’s green Earth opens a bar at eight-thirty a.m.?

Surely not the hotel director, who you’ve only seen once and with pinot staining his white mustache, of all things.

Couldn’t be one of the many, many bar managers who, thank God for them, only work at night. They couldn’t imagine working a bar in the morning, only serving those depressing early birds and the real addicts, haha.

Real. Fucking. Funny.

You’re not a morning person. Never have been, never will be.

But when Jeanne says these are the hours that nobody else wants, during which almost no customers show up, and implies that you’ll pretty much be paid to sit on your ass and do nothing, well… by God, you will be there at eight-thirty sharp, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Except the only thing that’s bright is the goddamned sun outside the windows—too bright—and your bushy tail is more of a bushy mane, as you woke up about thirty minutes ago, almost late to serve fucking no one, and didn’t bother to tame it with any manner of spray or hairbrush.

To be frank, you’re a disaster. You look like you were caught in the Tasmanian Devil’s warpath, and you have the attitude to match.

You thunk your bag down on one of the few empty shelves in the bar’s storage room and groan, wiping a hand over your face. The only thing that could make you feel better right now would be…

God, you just love to torture yourself, don’t you?

It’s been two months. Kyle’s not going to answer. He hasn’t responded to your texts. You don’t even know if he’s alive.

But you miss him like he is. You miss him like you know he’s on the cusp of returning any second now, and you’re standing at the door, waiting to tear it open and pull him in so close you can smell that cheeky cologne he barely deserves to wear.

Woodsy musk and cinnamon. Shameful that you remember it so distinctly. That you’d once wandered into the men’s shampoo aisle in a Walmart to try and figure out the word for the dark, elusive scent that clung to him like a second skin.

It wasn’t there, which means he’s fancier than your budget can comprehend.

Or that’s just him, and he exuded it so robustly when he’d been here that you can smell it now, drawing you out of the backroom with your phone in hand, thumb hovering over his name.

Music is playing, which is confusing because you haven’t touched the radio yet. It’s the slow croon of your guilty pleasure song, the one you love ‘ironically.’ The song you’d confided in only one other soul about.

“Careless Whisper” plays with a slow cadence in the furthest reaches of the bar.

It comes from the same place where two brown eyes are sliding over you at a debilitating pace.

“Fuck me” falls from those lips, that wicked British accent, as he takes in your hips for a while, then your chest, where your heart pounds so damn hard you think he can see it. Then he watches the little jump in your throat as you swallow, and he wets over his lips before glancing up to yours. Stays there, for a long, long time.

Then he meets your eyes, and the stutter in his breath is so damn loud.

Kyle.

Your soldier.

The man you’ve been calling for months, with no response.

His face is littered with an array of new wounds, like little scrapes on the apples of his cheeks you get the most bizarre urge to run your tongue over. A split in the smooth skin of his forehead, a paling scar seated in his unshaven jaw.

His hair’s a little more clean-cut. Perks of heading out for a mission, maybe.

And his long lashes shadow over the yearning look he’s got locked on you, sharpening and honing it like they’re fibrous whetstone.

You’re a bit breathless as you round the bar, even more so when Kyle jolts toward you. Out of his devilishly tight black tee peeks a strip of white wrapped around his bicep, and one of his thighs is thicker than the other, suffering the same treatment under his jeans. But he makes his way closer—too slowly—and tries to stave off a wince when he gets too excited, takes a step a bit too fast.

“Been waitin’ out here for hours, love,” he murmurs, voice breathy but rough. He holds out a hand, curls his longer fingers over yours so tight they can barely tremble. “You still got that scotch ready f’me?”

Your mind floats over the joke completely, instead filling you with worries and urges you can’t fulfill all at once.

Because, God, it’s Kyle. Your Kyle. And he’s looking at you like that’s all he’s wanted to be.

And he’s injured.

He tries shrugging off your hand the second you reach for his face, fingertips hovering over the stiffness under his right eye as he mutters a “Love, don’t worry about it. ’S’better than it looks.”

“Kyle,” you whisper. His other hand falls to your hip, constricting iron-stiff around the soft flesh.

“M’not broken, darling. Promise.”

And, because you’ve always wanted to, you cup his cheek, a puff of air bouncing off your lips when he leans into it. Turns towards the pliable skin of your palm, like he’s going to run his lips over it, but pauses when he feels you tense up.

Something in his eyes darkens, makes you feel almost ashamed at the nervous reaction, but it’s just so much. You’ve missed him. You’re not accustomed to this, and it’s starting to dawn on you that this moment, however right and perfect and perfect perfect perfect it feels is still so fast.

Two months. You haven’t seen him for two months.

And now that he’s back, it feels like the two of you have been greeting each other like this forever.

How can he make you fall so fast and still have you feeling like you’re pacing yourself?

This can’t be right, it can’t be—

“Dance with me. C’mon, before that horrible brain of yours blows a fuse about all this.”

“Careless Whisper” and that dashing smile of his, and all of his touch and proximity gets your mind all fuzzy. A good fuzzy. A quieting fuzzy.

He’s getting too good at this is a thought that tries to stick, but recedes back into the murkiness when Kyle starts to sway.

He urges your hips and feet to follow his lead. It’s far too easy to give in and let him have control, especially as he pulls you in a little closer, rearranges your hands and bodies until the noticeable space becomes the noticeable lack thereof.

You’re tucked into his broad chest, warm and sturdy against you.

He’d placed your hand right over his heart with a meaningful look in his eyes, waited until you felt the frantic thumpthumpthumpthump that leaves your face hot.

Kyle was always confident around you. He always seemed to know what he was doing, because he was always obvious about what he’d wanted.

But you didn’t know that you, of all people, could have this effect on him.

That flutter of pulsations under your fingertips.

His head ducking low until his face is nestled into your collarbone.

The arm that swings around behind you until the crook of his elbow is caught in the dip of your waist and his broad palm is flattened against your opposite hip.

It’s a little hard to face this moment, being how you are. It feels beautiful. Too beautiful for someone like you. You’re chest is so full, heart so quick, head so wondrously empty.

You can’t think past the back-and-forth scrape of Kyle’s fingers underneath your shirt’s hem.

But you feel like apologizing for something. Maybe you’d say sorry for how you feel in his arms, too big surely, despite the way he’s wrangled around you and holding so tight it’d take a solid minute for him to let go. Maybe you should apologize for the stupid song that’s playing, the one that everybody hates, you guess, even though you love it. Maybe you’re sorry about—

Wait.

“You listened to all those messages?”

Kyle doesn’t make a sound. At first, at least.

Then…

“They were the only things that kept me hangin’ on, love.” Where his lips brush these words into your skin, the nerves underneath throb.

A sorry feels cruel on your tongue after that.

Kyle hums into the silence, singing along a bit when the song repeats for a third time, then a forth, and your hair sticks to his face as he draws away.

He looks like a fool, but a lovesick one more than anything. It’s dumb and stupid and ridiculous that he has to brush your hair off his face, and even more dumb that he looks like he’s enjoying it so damn much his face is split in two, top and bottom with only pearly whites in between.

A fool for doing all this for you, for wanting you so bad when he could replicate this with anyone, someone much prettier, and have them forever.

“I don’t even wanna know what that dreadful mind of yours is concocting right now, darling. Don’t wanna hear a lick of it, because I know it’d make me so mad, too mad for a moment like this.”

“I don’t want to hear it either,” you whisper, letting your gaze fall to where your hand lay, to where Kyle’s heart gives off an indignant thud.

The knuckle of his index finger knocks against your chin. “Let me silence it then, yeah?” His head tilts in an innocent way, almost distracting from how quick his heartbeats are now, agitated into a frenzy.

You nod, only partly because you’re a little worried he’ll go into cardiac arrest if you don’t. Mostly because you’ve heard about half of what he’s said by now, the rest of your brain designated to determining what he’s drawing into the curve of your hip. The hard press of his fingers is ruinous to your mental stability.

That—right there—has to be a G. That’s the first symbol you’ve managed to decode so far.

Kyle’s lips are so close when you tilt your head up again, and the intensity of his attention has increased tenfold. You wonder if you’d ever considered this to be the end result of all your phone calls, those nonsensical anecdotes every other twelve hours that you’d felt so guilty about sending. It felt like you’d been wasting his precious time.

But his fervid grip on your body has you thinking the complete opposite way—that instead, you’ve been feeding this needy man before you far too much, a gratuitous enough amount that you’ve tracked him back to your house like a wild wolf you’re not really sure how to treat in the confines of your own home.

You meant it when you said the distance made it easy.

A is the second letter.

You wonder distantly if its shape is now bruised into the fleshy tissue of your side.

And you wonder if he’s ever going to kiss you, leaning in so close like that.

~~~~~~

Gaz has to draw the line soon. He’s gotta find it first, but he’s so damn scared he’s gotten too close without even realizing it.

The skin at that little sloping line between your neck and collarbone is all hot and smooth. He almost sunk his teeth into it, wanted to bite you a little and hear that little rabbit squeak of yours before you tore away, flustered.

He can barely fight off the urge of giving the same treatment to that trembling lower lip, the fatty one you’ve ran your tongue over deliciously quick, like you thought he wouldn’t notice.

Would it be so bad if you let him worry at it with his own teeth? Let your lips get all puffy and red from his touch, and only his?

But he’s pushing the boundaries too much all over again, and you’re back to shaking. It’s a good tremble, one he can feel through the muscles of his forearm, the one that’s flush with your spine. You’re all excited, and it’s because of him.

All good things.

But he knows you, knows the martyr that you are. Knows that if he feeds you now, you’ll think that’s the only meal you need and deserve, and you’ll tear away from his hold all over again, because you haven’t been giving enough. You’ve received too much already; he can see it in your eyes.

Gaz walked in here a little too generous after all those phone calls. He thought you’d expect a reward for your diligence, and instead you’re acting like it was a burden. Undue torture for him to draw away like that, in his humble opinion.

But fine. He won’t kiss you. Not yet.

He pulls back a bit, unraveling his arm around your waist and settling for spelling Garrick into your other hip with a bruising pressure. It’s high time the other side of your body received the same treatment, anyway.

If he’s tasked with quieting your mind, he’ll have to do it the less fun way.

“So,” he mumbles, a bit ticked at how the words disturb the air, “come here often?”

A surprised laugh tears out of your throat, and you tip your head back until the delectable line of your jaw is all he can see.

Foul play.

Patience. Fuckin’—God, patience. He almost forgot.

Almost slipped that fucking leash.

“You’re horrible,” you admonish with a grin, fingers curling up at his left pectoral.

“You love it,” he whispers back. If there’s any shred of him that’s lost faith in how you feel for him, it’s the same hand that forces his last name into your hip. It wanders, for a second, up your back, behind your ribs, until he can feel that off-kilter thrumming that matches his own.

Feels that stutter at his words.

“Love, huh?”

He tries not to freeze up. If you felt that from him, you’d have a little spike of doubt pierce right into that ever-working brain of yours.

Gaz is so pissed he let that word slip, even casually, and scans over your face, trying to read how it landed. You were casual about it, too, but he knows that’s a touchy subject to push on. He’s toppling into bad territory. If you pulled away from him now…

“Cheesy shit like that is all I hear at my job.” Garrick Garrick Garrick. He’s pressing the letters into your spine now. “Honest. Dad jokes every morning. I’m the last one you have to worry about. It’s like going on a mission with a comedy club, that crew.”

Your smile eases up a bit, and you relax into the moment again.

“You barely talk about your job.” You look away, seemingly finding the wooden-paneled walls far more interesting. “I didn’t know that topic was on the table.”

“The good parts are. That’s all I’ll ever want you to hear about.”

“I didn’t know you were so protective.”

Gaz is nipping at the bits to respond to that exactly the way he knows how. Of fucking course I am. It’s you. But he can’t rephrase it in any way that would soothe and not scare you off.

So he lets your comment hang in the silence as you sway.

~~~~~~

When Kyle leaves the bar, at first it feels an awful lot like when he left that very first time. A bit disappointing that the hot, crazy drunk guy won’t be entertaining you for the rest of the night. Won’t be screaming I love you sooooo much, miss bartender gal until you clock off.

The feeling makes you wistful.

Then—

Oh fuck—

It starts to feel like when he left for his mission. When you didn’t know if he’d ever come back, and you just missed him so damn much you couldn’t think straight, wanted to hear his voice one more time and not just saying “Leave a message at the beep.”

When you drove yourself crazy thinking about the little touches. When you dreamed about him far too much than was normal. When, more than anything, you wanted him to give in to all those little urges he seemed to hold back from you, that little grimace winding his lips when you swept to close or said something even remotely suggestive.

And you know you don’t deserve it. You’re not fit to be the girl of his affections, the one he comes home to each time he returns from a mission and greets with a kiss.

But it doesn’t stop you from imagining that you could be.

You’d try to repay him for his love each time he comes home by greeting him with his favorite meal and drink. You’d massage the corded muscles of his arms and back, lead him with a shy smile into the bath set for two, and he’d have that same hungry look as you stripped to join him, splashing water everywhere in effort to tug you over to his end of the tub.

You’d sit on his couch each day, scratching his scalp as you read a book, listening to the soft snores as he napped. You’d dance with him in the kitchen like you did today, slow sways to a song he liked this time, and then you’d play your favorite again, just to listen to those soft hums of his crooning along…

Oh God.

You want Kyle. So damn bad.

You want his body. You want his hands all over you, eyes raking over your face, legs twisting against yours.

You want every little thought running through his mind. You want his attention. You want his laughs, his cries, his silence when he’s protecting you from his memories.

You want him shamelessly. Constantly. Perpetually.

You want him so bad that you could give two shits whether you deserved him or not.

You’d do everything in your power to earn it. Pour in your love and heart and soul into building something with him.

And best of all, you can’t bring yourself to regret it.

You don’t regret the way you call him that night, pleading for him to come over. It’s three a.m., and his voice is groggy and exhausted over the phone, accent thick as he grumbles, “Love, what’s wrong? What’s happened? Oh, you’re cryin’, darling, tell me where you are. I’ll be there sooner than possible.”

You relapse so hard that night. The second you saw his face all over again, you knew you couldn’t go without him. A Kyle-addict, and you didn’t even notice until it was too late.

He’s shouting, yelling at your door like a mad drunk, but you didn’t give him any scotch that morning. None of that whiskey sour either, the one he revealed was his favorite, but knew Americans wouldn’t get right.

You tear open the door. His clothes are in disarray, buttons all wonky. His eyes are wild and wandering over you. His hands are curled tight around your doorway, blood sapping away from his knuckles because he’s holding himself back so hard.

You don’t care. He shouldn’t bother anymore.

You make the first jolt toward him, and his face melts into awe.

Kyle’s lips, they taste like….

Fuck, you whine a little into his mouth.

Like fucking rain. Like a dream. Like clouds and floating untethered.

But also corporeal, grounding. Like plain chapstick and a bit of toothpaste. They taste like fingers winding so deep into your hair and hips pushing at yours until you stumble into your living room. They taste like Kyle blindly kicking the door shut, like him pulling back with a gasp and being aglow with ardent moonlight, like him reading every little emotion on your face and shaking his head, mumbling a “fucking finally.” He tilts your head up a bit higher, swivels your face to the side so your moans bounce off the walls as he drags his tongue along your jawline, down the warm column of your throat. And then you lurch, eyes flying open as he bites into the crux of your neck and shoulder.

“Kyle!” Your nails dig into his back, drag down and dig in again at the same tempo as his bite-pull-back-bite-again. And he does the same to the rest of your body, every little inch that gradually presents itself when the clothes come off. His lips and teeth wander without bias, but each time you try to speak he drags himself back up to your ear and shushes, soothes your concerns with mindless mutterings along the lines of “Just lemme—gimme a bit to—fuck, love” and “Need a bit of patience, darling. I’m tryin’ to play here.”

He controls every second of it. All of it.

Like he wouldn’t stand for a single mistake. Like he needs you to know it’s worth it.

The sun showers over him when he’s trembling, sweating, hovering over you, hands intertwined with yours, peppering your face with kisses despite his rapid chest rising and falling, when he finally collapses against you, around and inside and generally being everything he can to you in this moment. He’s bigger than the bed, bigger than the apartment, bigger than that bar and your world.

Kyle’s smile, still charming and exhausted, is the last thing you see as he coos you to sleep.

~~~~~~

Gaz has to bat your hand away from your phone for the seventh time. “Jus’ fuckin’ ignore it,” he hisses into your stomach. “Bloody fuckin’ thing ruinin’ this beautiful mornin’ we’re having.”

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

Despite your phone—Jeanne calling, apparently, because you’re three hours late to work, and you could’ve at least warned her you were going to be honeymooning off with the newly returned soldier boy (she’ll give you a sick day)—ruining the moment, it was still the best awakening he’s had in his adult life.

Maybe even better than birthday chocolate chip pancakes when he was a kid.

No. Wait.

Definitely better.

He woke up to a soft caress against his cheek, found himself buried into your chest. Your breasts, as it turns out, are even more beautiful to begin his day with watching than any sunrise.

He tore his gaze up higher and found you staring down at him, gentle smile on your lips. Your fingertips were tracing over his scars, thumbing at his lips every now and then.

It’s not right that he hasn’t woken up like this before. Part of it makes him think he hasn’t really been living until right now, when he can’t think past your hot skin and plush thighs nuzzled close to his stomach.

“Don’t mind this one bit, darling,” he’d said, dropping his head to feather his mouth over your belly button. “Can we stay like this forever?”

It’s genuine, and he can tell you know he means it because your cheeks turn pink. Surely it’s a lot for you in this moment. Your split-second decision last night was just that, and on his taxi ride over he’d worried himself over how you’d react the next morning.

Your brows furrow, and your lips purse real tight while you think.

Gaz’s trained himself to fear your thinking, but he holds off on distracting you from it now. Plays fair, even though he could be kissing his way down further and further until he could force a promise out of you; a gaspy, whiney one.

But that wouldn’t do. He needs that rabbit brain of yours that likes to kick out and scurry away to agree with him for once, that yes, you want him to stay. You always will.

And before he knows it, you’re cupping both sides of his face, drawing him up onto his forearms, making him crawl up your body until you press one long, hard kiss to his lips before muttering, “Yes. Let’s do it.”

Your thumbs swipe under his eyes, no doubt bothered by the dark circles, but the rumble of his voice as he praises you for giving in must tell you he’s gotten plenty of sleep. He made sure he did all of the work last night, had you follow each and every one of his commands to sit, stay, and let him take care of you, for fuck’s sake, or it’ll kill him.

All his energy, all that stamina was worked to the bone, and he feels like a puddle of goo against your form. He presses another kiss to your lips before trailing his way back down, nestling into your stomach while informing you that you’d make a damn good pillow every morning.

~~~~~~

You’re certain nothing could ruin this moment.

Kyle’s already back to snoring softly, little grumbles against the skin between your breasts, hands starfished at your thigh and lower back. He looks ten years younger curled up against you, the wrinkles of his face smoothed out through thorough exhaustion.

Just seven hours ago he’d smiled at you, somehow more doting than the last, his skin dewed with sweat, and collapsed into your hold. He’d been content to run himself ragged, and now that he’s got you thoroughly trapped underneath his muscled, form, he seems intent on not moving an inch.

His wounds still unnerve you. The bandages from yesterday could use a change, damp and wrinkled around his bare thigh and biceps. But from your position, your head leveraged on a pillow, you can see pale, ravaged skin from botched stitches and bullet holes. Uneven gouges and linear scrapes, wounds whose origins would surely pain you to listen to—most of all because he’d say it with such nonchalance.

It’s hard to turn the sweet Kyle from the bar into this war-broken soldier before you, hard to combine them into one person and have it make complete sense. Like water and oil, the pair of them refuse to mix into one.

You’re running the tip of your middle finger along one particularly horrifying line running diagonally down his nape when he wakes up again. His head lifts, and you let your hand slide with the movement until you’re cupping his cheek and he’s leaning into your hold. A wet kiss cools on the inside of your wrist when Kyle gets close enough.

His limbs wrangle even tighter with yours. “What time is it now?”

“Two-thirty.”

His pretty brown eyes are locked on your face, a gentle roaming back and forth in rhythm with the slow strokes of his index finger against your knee.

“Good. A few more hours and I’ll have kept you here all day. A personal record, one I’ll flaunt with honor.”

“We’ll have to get up at some point.”

“Maybe I’ll trap you here all week,” he ignores you, all serious consideration now. “I’ll have to check my rope supply.”

“You know, there are easier, less illegal ways to entice me into staying.”

“Don’t like riskin’ it with you.” He draws himself up and leans in, and you tilt closer to accept his peppering of kisses over your forehead, across your cheeks, down your jawline. “Each time I try to do it the nice way, you manage to slip away from me. Have to start playin’ for keeps now.”

You’re not sure if you love Kyle.

You know you’re not quite in the same place as he is emotionally. But he certainly knows how to put you on the fast track to get there, and it starts with the way he cradles you closer—always a little bit closer—and nudges his nose just underneath your ear, releasing a sigh like touching you can make all the horrors, worries, fears slip away. Like you’re a magical woman.

You feel like you’re made of magic, anyway.

And you don’t regret any of the decisions you’ve made since calling him last night. Hell, since calling him that first time, when he was thousands of miles away, and all he wanted was more.

~~~~~~

Gaz has a bad urge. A terrible one. Bloody fuckin’ day ruiner of an urge that has him peeling away and hiding out in your bathroom for too long after relieving himself.

He’s staring at himself in the mirror while he dries off clean hands, investigating that dark mark you’d sucked into the side of his neck before he could untangle from you.

Bad, bad, bad Gaz.

It’s too soon.

You don’t take “too soons” very well. Can’t handle them.

But, well, biased as he is, Gaz thinks he looks more alive than he has in months.

And all it was was you, injected into his veins and flowing back to his heart before being properly dispersed throughout the rest of his body, even distribution of needing you every hour of every day until he can’t even curl his toes without thoughts of you.

No. He really, really shouldn’t.

He won’t.

Gaz steps out of your bathroom and fumbles his way through your apartment, following the sounds of humming and beeping.

Almost blacks out at what he finds.

You, bent over and retrieving a frying pan from your cupboards, rising up until your standing tall, wearing his goddamned shirt. The black cotton hugs your thick figure tight, but it’s too long, caps off somewhere near the tops of your thighs, lace panties barely twinkling at him just underneath

Fuckin’ Christ, bloody Jesus, Hell on a—

“Love,” he chokes on the word. “Darling. You’re killin’ me here, bunny.”

Fuck it.

Seriously—fuck it.

He’s gonna ask. It’s not too soon. Not for him. Not when it comes to you.

You laugh a little. “Sorry. I know, I know, it’s too tight. But I was too lazy to find something else, so if you really want it back—”

“No.”

You pause, smile locked on your face. “Okay then. Good. Glad that’s settled. I’ll just keep making breakfast then.”

You’re on your tippy toes now, reaching high to the small pantry above your stove, fingertipping at a box of pancake mix.

“Could you…?”

“Yeah.” He’s behind you in a matter of blinks, broad chest brushing your back before you can dart out of the way, even grasping your hip with one hand and passing you the box with the other.

You take it from him with a fumbled thank you, the words stuttering their way out of your mouth as he swipes your hair back and behind your ear. “What’s on the menu, then, love?”

He can practically feel the current of chills slinking down your spine. He follows you, chest still against your back, step for step as you putter around, finding a whisk, a carton of milk, and… a bag of chocolate chips.

Fuckin’ hell, don’t tell me.

“Pancakes. I’m adding chocolate chips because they’re my favorite, so don’t you dare bitch about—what, what is it?”

You palm at his forehead in confusion when he buries his face into your shoulder and groans.

Fool. Bloody fuckin’ fool, dumbass bastard ruining everything after one goddamn night. It’s too damn soon. It’ll ruin everything.

“Love, I hafta—”

A cacophony of beeps cut through the air, and your attention slips to the microwave, where a cup sits aglow in the yellow light.

“Sorry, that’s for my tea—”

He’s really doing this.

Fuck it.

Fuck.

It.

“Move in with me.”

~~~~~~

Part 3

#kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle garrick x reader #gaz x reader #call of duty x reader #cod x reader #kyle gaz garrick #kyle garrick #gaz #gaz cod #cod gaz #gaz garrick

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oreosmama · 4 months

Note

Oh my God, that Gaz fic was so good. I love a whipped needy man.

Don’t tell the others but I’m secretly working on a part 2 and if I don’t get it out by tomorrow yelling at me about it is fair game bc I’m already 4.5k words deep and that’d be so rude of me

I’m so glad you liked it!!! I love it when the hot cod boys act like the little simps they really are🥰🥰

#oreosmama talks #on god I just gotta figure out how to end part 2 and THEN #THEN I WILL FEED YALL #but for tonight?#slutty soap appetizer

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oreosmama · 4 months

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We’re not gonna talk about how I wrote this instead of finishing part two of what’s in a virtue. We’re not even gonna talk about what this is. I’m just gonna… yeah, here ya go.

!Trigger warnings: dubcon

Body swap au with soap who just wakes up one day and says, “no fuckin’ way.”

Soap who thinks it’s the best fuckin’ dream he’s ever had.

Soap who solemnly agrees with you in the mornings that yes, the two of you do need to work together to fix this as soon as possible, but who spends his nights in front of a mirror stripped down to nothing, masturbating because it’s fucking you, and you’re so pretty when you’re panting. Soap who was always convinced that making you come would feel just as good as coming himself, and now he doesn’t have to figure that out anymore.

Soap who, fuck, has his cake and eats it, too.

Soap who grins so proud at the awkward way you stumble around in his body, too big for you. Soap who, after discovering you’d had to——ahem——relieve yourself for the first time, feels his skin fucking buzz at the fact that you can’t meet his eyes, your eyes, anymore without a schoolboy blush spreading across his own damn face.

Soap who knows you liked what you saw.

Soap who makes your body come again that night, not even thinking of your body anymore, but of your mind fumbling around in his body, experimenting with touches and caresses. Soap who imagines you knowing how to pleasure him inside and out when this is all over.

Soap who records the sound of your voice saying his name, because the lines are getting so damn blurry, and emails the video to himself. Takes pictures, too.

Would never blackmail you with them, no, no, no.

But he deletes them from your phone after sending them all to his drive.

Soap who, after everything is over, after you’ve both found your ways into your own bodies, trots after you like the dog he is wherever you go.

Soap who, after you check the deleted folder of your photos app, gets a good and proper scolding.

Soap who managed to record the entire reprimand, listening to the anger in your voice, the how dare you do that to me——to my body?! That’s so fucked up, Soap!

Soap who rewards himself yet again that night, teeth gnawing at the hem of his shirt that he hadn’t bothered taking off, just pulling up high enough to jack himself off with his back against his front door. Panting at the dash he’d made up his flat’s stairs, then panting your name, whimpering disingenuous apologies to your chiding voice.

Soap who doesn’t stop, who won’t stop until he’s got the real you screaming his name.

#soap x reader smut #soap x reader #john soap mactavish #john soap mctavish x reader #soap smut #john mactavish x reader #soap #call of duty x reader #cod x reader #cod soap #tw: dubcon #tw: dubious consent

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oreosmama · 4 months

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idk what I’m doing but call me a duckling bc I be following all the ppl who use this format and it looked like fun

Soap who meets you, a medic for the Shadow Company, after he’s injured on the mission. Soap who’s dragged by Ghost up into the chopper, who you lean over and promise you’ll do your damn bestest to make sure he looks pretty by the end of this.

“Let me know if you see the light at any point, Sergeant MacTavish. That’s usually a bad sign.”

Soap who won’t stop looking you in the eyes as you work, mumbling to himself in such a thick accent you figure it’s best to ignore him, especially while finishing a suture on his chest that draws out an excessive groan.

Soap who flirts with you the entire time. Soap who’s ignorant to the gaping wound on his chest, and is much rather invested in the way your smell washes over him as you hover, ponytailed hair dangerously close to his hand. Soap who lets his head fall onto your shoulder on accident, Bonnie, so sorry, even as he sniffs for more of that shampoo and tang of sweat, because you’d been working so damn hard to keep little old him alive.

Soap who lets you wrap around him, pressing your hands against the wall and the cushion next to his thigh to get leverage to lean him up and off the cot.

Soap who clings a little too tightly to your shoulder as you lead him down and away, safely back to his base and into his CO’s protection.

“Thank you for not dying on me, John,” you say as you guide him back to Ghost.

Soap who watches you still, dazed little grin on his face even as Ghost grapples a hand at his shoulder——to hold him steady or hold him back, he’s not really sure.

Soap who wouldn’t mind staying with you, though. For a little longer.

“Anytime, Bonnie.” And he throws you a cheeky wink despite his sickly flush.

“Screwball,” you mutter fondly, waving a dismissive hand over your shoulder as you make your way back up the Shadow heli’s ramp.

Soap who grins as you go, eyeing your ass as he leans over to Ghost with a whispered, “What ‘oes screwball mean?”

“‘Fuck would I know, Johnny? Now let’s get a fuckin’ move on.”

#john soap mctavish x reader #soap x reader #john soap mactavish #cod x reader #john mactavish x reader #cod soap #call of duty x reader #soap call of duty #call of duty

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oreosmama · 4 months

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What's in a Virtue (Kyle "Gaz" Garrick x Reader)

*GIF not mine*

Summary:

Gaz wants you, but the hotel bar you work at has rules; when a bartender calls dibs, all others have to back off. It's how the peace is kept, and as the new girl just trying to rack up some savings, you're not willing to rock the boat.

But Gaz doesn't take kindly to you avoiding him, and he's never been one to beat around the bush. From confessing his love on the first night you met to shouting your name seven times from across the bar, he's not letting you off the hook that easy. Not when he's seen the proof that you've fallen just as hard for him.

A/N: idk man i accidentally googled who ghost was like a week ago and fell so deep into the hot cod men rabbit hole so here we are. Enjoy!

Word count: 8261

Gaz is pretty sure he’s in love with you.

It’s a surprising discovery at 11 pm in an American hotel bar drinking the worst scotch he’s ever had. It’s even more surprising because he just discovered you existed all of thirty minutes ago.

He’s got his glass swirling between two nimble fingers, trying to find that line between hating his drink and actually putting it down. And he’s watching you.

You’re the same bartender who’d asked him (in a horrible imitation of his accent) if he’d wanted his neat scotch “shaken, not stirred.” You’d flushed after you said it and promised to leave him joke-free for the rest of the night. He’d laughed, a bit hollow from his circumstances, and told you it was all right. That he liked it, and that made you flush a little more.

Now, you scuttle like an ant past the other worker, a blonde who’s been making eyes at him all night. Your face is split into this unabashed grin, grippable hips bouncing off the counter as you sweep by and reach below for a bottle, giving him a view of the enviable dip between your breasts.

At first, he thinks it’s just that. Too much American booze, not enough inhibitions; both sending him into that post-mission spiral that makes him touchy and want to touch all at the same time. And he finds it’s nice to watch you rattling glasses and wiping up spills; it’s soothing, the way your eyes are alight with life in this ritzy place, seemingly unbothered by the high level of customers. He especially likes the way you mock the spoiled sods when you can get away with it.

The hotel must be experiencing the perfect storm of weddings, proms, and business meetings—not to mention one very unfortunate layover for one very unlucky special forces sergeant.

He watches as teens keep stumbling back to the counter with pink cheeks, flashing their IDs every time they ask for a new drink. Despite their prom getups and obvious ages, they swear they’re just guests from Mr. and Mrs. Weddington’s ceremony.

The girl you’re with now, stumbling from her heels but selling it as though she’s tipsy, begs and begs for another lemon drop before she “goes back to work on Monday.”

You nod either way, and he watches as you make a display of pouring alcohol into one shaker and juice into another, swapping them out when the teen looks back towards her friends.

You send her on her merry way with a sugared rim and a lemon rind, saying something like “Go easy” as she wanders back to her table. You smile to yourself, amused at this little game you’re playing with half the customers here.

You must feel the heat of his gaze, because you glance at him then. He hopes it’s burning you up as much as it looks, that nervous pinkening of your face as you give him a shrug like what else was there to do?

And Gaz, again, thinks it’s just that. Lust. He thinks about wiping that small smile off your face with his lips, stumbling with you into his hotel room, frantic fingers peeling off clothes. He thinks about how it would be—giggly, probably, despite his surprising coordination when he’s plastered. It’d be you and him swapping words back and forth, back and forth the whole time, silence only filling the room when you’re kissing him and when you feel so fucking new it steals your and his words away.

He doesn’t know why he latches more onto the idea of the moments afterward, the biggest thing being that you decide to stay. Then it’s more back and forth, hobbies and pet peeves and every little thing that’s been on your minds since the 2000s. He gets to know you inside and out, inside again a few more times even as your conversation runs on.

It’s no longer lust at that point. He knows that.

He’s ruthlessly torn from the fantasy by the blonde bartender who, judging by the looks you’re swapping with her, has gotten the entirely wrong idea about the direction of his stare.

He swears to God he was being obvious about it. It was you—it was fucking you that whole time.

But he’s noticed a couple things about you.

The first is that you’re quiet when your customers aren’t overwhelmingly sloshed; awkwardly so, for a bartender. You’re something of a mirror when they are, far more relaxed, laughing easy and cracking jokes, like you preferred your real self be forgotten the next morning.

The second is that you’re soft. Around the edges, all pillowy at the hips and thighs, a sloping curve down each side. And you were soft with your words, no yelling, no arguing with customers, just easy little jabs that no drunk mind would ever cotton onto.

You were only snappy with him the second his head started growing fuzzy.

He wants more of it, even as the pretty bartender makes friendly conversation.

She asks about his day, then his job, then his adventures. Three of the last things he wanted to think about tonight, let alone discuss with a stranger who wants in his pants. However, because she “loves a man with a British accent” and he’s too damn polite to give her the boot, he reveals a little.

Yes, his job is hard. Yes, he’s jumped from an airplane. Yes, he’s killed someone. Of course they were bad.

Until they weren’t. But he won’t tell her that.

However, above all things, Gaz is a planner. And though he’s caught the wrong fish with his bait, his plan B is working excellently.

Gaz glances at you, brushing your hair behind your ear in the increasingly crowded room. The wide array of customers spread out among the limited seating are starting to flood the bar. You can’t pass out beers and shake cosmopolitans at the same time, and a wonderful warmth blossoms in his chest the second you glance at him too, growing desperate.

There’s something like an apology in your eyes. You’re sad you have to ruin your friend’s chances; meanwhile, he thinks it may just be the best part of his night.

The third thing he discovers about you: you’re trying to be the wingwoman for your pretty friend here, and Gaz won’t have it.

You’re going to have to come over here. Beg for help from your friend.

Ruin this little flirtation she’s got going on—what a shame.

You’re too damn polite, just like him. The second he talks to you when you make your way over, you’ll think you have to stay. Humor him for a bit. He’ll ask you for a drink, forcing you to come back a second time around, when the bustle has slowed. He’ll rope you in for the rest of the night by then, and the wait’ll be over.

He feels like a damn schoolboy when you take that first step toward him, and he’s practically vibrating when you get close enough that he can hear your voice for the second time today. It’s far less grating than your friend’s, he’s certain of it—he wouldn’t mind if it was you badgering him, is what he means.

After all, Gaz was on leave, and when Gaz was on leave, he liked things slow. Fresh off a mission, he liked to roll through the motions, order drinks and let the memories turn into static from the corner of the bar. He’d planned on calling Price and damning him for saying it was a blessing to get trapped in the US, set up at a posh hotel on the task force’s budget.

But you stop before him, contrite eyes softening, and he’s getting better at seeing the upside of it all.

“Hate to interrupt—I know you two are trying to get all cozy in the dark over here, but I could use your help, Jeanne. ‘Hugh Janus’ is asking for another beer and our non-alcoholic tap just ran dry.” You look off into the distance, frowning slightly. “I fear we may have genuinely drunk teens on our hands soon.”

Jesus, was her name Jeanne? Gaz hadn’t caught that.

On the bright side, he’s able to confirm one of his sneaking suspicions. Your eyes really are fucking gorgeous up close, and they’re so expressive that he can read you like a book.

But he hates the way you say “you two.” It’s so nonchalant.

Was it too much to ask for a little envy? Just a hint of spite, to prove that some part of what he’s feeling, even a little speck of it, isn’t one-sided?

Your friend— Jeanne , apparently—gives him a disappointed sigh, looks at him like he and her are two conspirators planning on eloping any second. “Duty calls. I’ll be right back.”

He nods, trying to find that balance between polite understanding and absolute relief, but his head grows foggier by the minute and all he can manage is a “sounds good.”

You dive into an explanation when the pair of you are far enough away to inspect the taps, gesturing at a couple of them, and then discreetly at a group in the crowd.

From here, he can see it a little more clearly. You’re younger than the blonde, probably just by a couple years, which means you’re newer here. Younger than him, too, since he pegs Jeanne at around his own age.

The blonde disappears into a storage door wedged between two shelves loaded with glass bottles and illuminated white-blue. A manager, maybe.

Only thing he knows for certain from observing this quick interaction is that you’re finally alone.

He flags you down, and his chest floods with that warm, fuzzy feeling all over again when you hustle over, genuine smile on your lips—because you’re so damn easy to read.

“Know you’re busy, ’nd I hate to bother you, darling, but can you get me another scotch? Shaken, this time, if you please.”

The pet name lands perfectly. Even through all the chatter and music, he can hear the quick stutter in your breath. Then you laugh at his joke, like you think he deserves it.

It’s cheap of him to force that laugh out of you with a shitty joke like that, but he’s feeling a little needy. Wants a preview of what the real thing would sound like.

Fucking music, surely.

“I’ll go get it—”

Not yet. I need more time.

“Not right now. I’ll finish this one off while you work through that fresh hell–” he nods toward the anxious crowd “–then you can come back to me. You’ll find I’m pretty patient.”

A little less so, when it comes to you, but you don’t need to know that yet.

The slight slur to his words must be comforting, because you give him that small smirk you’ve been conservative with all night. “I’ll hold you to that. I’ve heard Brits are perfect gentlemen; be a shame if you proved me wrong.”

“I’m all that and more, darling.” He winks. “You’ll see.”

He could be the bloody worst man on the planet, too, if you wanted.

And he could come out and say that to you, all the things he could be for you tonight, if he wasn’t so keen on the instant change in you.

Because here’s what he expected: a few more little flirtations back and forth, everything kept light and easy. He’d keep you smiling and smirking like that, comfortable in your own skin for just a little bit longer before you have to go back to the other customers and slither back into your shell. He’d get to see that breathtaking blush of yours, pink splotches that tell him he’s on the right track. And then he’d get your rapt attention for the remainder of your and his night, quite like he’s given you his.

But that’s not what happens.

Instead, you’re instantly sheepish, finding yourself leaning a little closer, so close he could reach out and run a finger along the back of your hand (a small touch, but it would certainly floor him).

And then guilt. Pure, heart-wrenching guilt, like you’re taking every word of his to heart in the worst possible way.

Gaz panics.

But you’re not wearing a ring, so no husband, no fiance. He guesses boyfriend or some long-standing crush he can’t—shouldn’t—burrow his way in front of. It’s a disappointing discovery, something he’ll be stewing on for the rest of the night or maybe week, depending on how long he’s stranded here.

He’s not a fan of infidelity, and he sure as hell isn’t changing his opinion on that anytime soon. So he settles himself for a night at the bar cut short. Maybe he’ll order drinks up to his room from now on, praying the task force won’t try and shift the bill onto him. He can’t imagine coming down to the bar and seeing you will be nearly as satisfying anymore.

“I shouldn—I mean, Jeanne really likes y—I mean, we kinda have this rule where we, um,” you fumble with the rag on the counter, suddenly invested in a stain he’s been avoiding all night. You swallow. “I’ll just, uh, bring you your drink later. As promised. I should go help her.”

And you dash off as fast as you can between the counter and the precarious wall decor, almost running into the storage door the other bartender whips open while dragging out a new keg for the tap.

Meanwhile, Gaz…

He has a question.

Were you feeling all that guilt over some “dibs” rule at your bar?

He wants to laugh. The whole first-come, first-served thing makes you look as guilty as if you clubbed a baby seal. So what if Jeanne wants to ask him out? If he says no, does that mean he gets you?

Then he actually laughs a little, because it’s so ridiculous that it’s honestly cute. You care about and respect your coworkers, and support them when they’re hitting on guys at bars. So cute. You’re like the ultimate wingwoman, he’s sure, but that’s not going to change the fact that he wants you.

But the night drags on, and this half hour of patience Gaz promised you becomes paper-slim when you pass off his drink to Jeanne and avoid his end of the bar for far longer than is acceptable.

But you’re still giving her reassuring smiles and manning the bar as she lays her interest on thick, asking how long he’ll be staying and telling him when she gets off.

Gaz isn’t laughing anymore. And that little thing you do where you back off and play wingwoman? Definitely not as sweet as he’d thought it was.

Fuck, it might be the one thing he hates about you.

Because you avoid him for the rest of the night, and he still can’t take his eyes off you.

Not to worry, though. Gaz is a patient man. More importantly, he’s a planner.

He’ll find a way.

He always does.

~~~~~~

Gaz barely sleep that night. Too busy thinking about the mission, the lives that were lost, all that blood that had coated his hands just three days ago.

The way it bothers him comes and goes in phases. Some missions slip off him like rain water over a slick road, rivulets down drives, and he sleeps just fine.

Others soak into him, further than skin deep, where his body becomes a subcutaneous cache of nightmares and gunpowder, and he wakes up choking, smoke filling his lungs, tearing at the tissue of his throat enough that water can’t soothe the burn.

Mornings like this is where he fights fire with fire.

The hotel bar is unsurprisingly destitute but still oddly open at 11 am on a Thursday morning, and he takes a seat more daringly center-staged than he had last night. He glances around, letting thoughts of you, a bartender whose biggest issue was a dibs rule on men, swathe around him.

Admittedly, a lot of it is foggy. He remembers wanting you—a lot , actually. Too much, he might even say, but after all he drank he’s surprised he even found his way back to his room. But the place, a little more aglow with the open windows (that make his head fucking spin, by the way), looks the same as last night, which means he can still envision you wandering over every inch of it.

And he thinks no, you probably weren’t that attractive. Maybe your snipes weren’t that funny, and he’d had no reason to get so upset with you over a rejection. And every little wish he’d had that you were the woman who could warm his bed while he was out on missions and greet him when he came home was a bit over the top, even for drunk Gaz.

Sober Gaz knows better. Sober Gaz knows that no other human being can have that much of an effect on him anymore, because he’s had to rebuild himself after joining the military, after seeing the most honorable and dishonorable things humans can do, and he’s just not fit for something unconditional.

Drunk Gaz, though….

Hammered and horny. That’s all it was. A terrible mixture, and he’s damn ashamed that an innocent girl like you became the target of it. God, did he even tell you his name? Or was it just instant come-on and creepy watching from the corner of the bar?

Gaz notices he’s not alone as he lets his eyes wander; there’s a group of three elderly women jabbering in the corner, waving too-friendly when he spots them. He tosses them a dashing smile, the one that makes his grandmother’s friends burst into titters and giggles.

It has the same effect.

“Who knew you’d be just as charming sober?” a familiar voice rings out.

Gaz’s heart thump-thump s forcefully.

“In all fairness, you do have a shot with them too, if you really wanted to take it.” You lean a little bit closer over the counter, one-ended smile pulling at your lips, and when he catches a trace of that same perfume, his chest twinges.

Fuckin’ hell.

“She’s newly widowed,” you nod to the gaggle again, demeanor conspiratorial, “and happy to be, apparently. Why am I not surprised you’re popular to all ages?”

He’s got no clue what you’re talking about. Damn, he’s not even listening. Your lips look too soft to him right now, and it’s downright unfair how domestic you look in morning light, placid and playful, like the last thing you were made for was exacerbating nightlife.

“All ages?” he mumbles, because he can’t quite think straight, and the best thing he can do is repeat the last few words he’d heard you say before his train of thought had caught fire, derailed, and crashed explosively against brick wall.

He’s struck still, is what he means. He can’t quite think past the idea of you, coming a little closer to him, letting him trap you against his chest. Letting him breathe in the scent of your hair as you tell him about your day—boring, maybe, if it wasn’t you who was telling the story.

But your voice and tone, that playful edge that sounds like the sweetness of cotton candy and would taste like fucking everything to him, it draws him in.

Gaz comes to the conclusion that not everything was a drunken haze last night.

And he realizes that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t quite the fisherman he thought he was, trying to catch you. If anything, he was the fish snapping after your line, bait or no, wanting to be yanked out of the water and gutted until everything he ever was was bare for those pretty eyes.

And he’s that very same fish this morning, gaping and blinking wide-eyed.

Fuckin’. Hell.

“My God, those teenagers last night? And then Jeanne, and the bridesmaids? And, okay, I shit you not, even the bride. You’re a menace in this bar, you know that?”

“Are you included in all that?”

If he remembers anything from the night before, it was the way you clammed up after he made his first move. You’re the spitting image of it now, pursed lips and antsy fingers, even after all that big talk.

It’s an absent thought that flies past him in that moment, but he recalls that you were only loose enough to joke around with people already tipsy. He lets a small consideration tag along, a half-thought, really, that maybe you felt as comfortable around him as he did around you.

That, or he still looked smashed from last night.

You dodge his question completely.

“So what can I get you this morning…?” You let the tail end of the question drag on a bit, and he decides it’s because you can’t remember his name. He tries to stave off the gross pinch in his stomach by recalling there’s an all too real chance he never even told you.

“Kyle.”

You shake your head quickly, mumbling, “No, I—I remember.”

Gaz, though he can’t help but feel like an asshole for it, grins at your stutter.

“Surprise me, then.” He sits back, not remembering when he made the decision to lean a bit closer. “YN,” he tags on, smiling a bit more at your nervous laugh.

You look him over, some short glance that stuffs his head full of cotton, and start working on a concoction with a small grin.

He’s patient, minds his own business and fiddles with his phone as you shake and pour.

No messages from Price, and Gaz shoves down any distant panic that he might have sent an aggravated text or two in his state last night.

But no messages means no updates, which means it’s safe to assume he’ll be marooned at this hotel for another two weeks.

Not as bad as he thought it would be, so far.

You step away with a tray of drinks and return empty handed. Then you slip a glass in front of him, frosty and golden, slowly seeping red by a single maraschino cherry.

He guffaws. “Mai Tai? What, no umbrella?”

You slip a mini umbrella into his drink. “You underestimate me.”

His headache is killing him. The sun’s too bright, and he’s thanking God that the music in here isn’t nearly as pounding as it was yesterday. The memories still haunt him, horizoning his mind. Every drop of blood, every plea, every blank-eyed stare.

And then there’s you. Just you. You read like a sheet of paper, and you’re soft around the edges, and you couldn’t even comprehend half the things he’s seen.

You spoon another maraschino cherry out of the cooling jar and pop it into your mouth, laving your tongue over it before biting down, the juices dying your tongue red.

Fuck.

Gaz wants to kiss you.

He wants you to taste the Mai Tai on his tongue and sigh happily, eyes rolling the exact same way. He might die if you don’t.

“It’s on the house, only because you were true to your word.”

He gets peeks of that red tongue of yours and shifts in his seat. “What d’you mean?”

“You were patient, as promised, and I’m afraid I’ll need a little more of that today.”

Any of it. All of it, for you. Fuck, he could be so patient for you.

Gaz furrows his brow anyway. “Didn’t know you were so greedy. Why d’you ask, love?”

“I guess you couldn’t tell from last night, but I’m a pretty shitty bartender. That’s why they got me working mornings.”

He glances at the Mai Tai. “So you’re sayin’ I’m shit outta luck.”

“I’m saying that if you’re going to let me pick your drink, you’re going to keep getting whatever’s left in the mixer from formerly Mrs. Jones’ group of three. I should warn you, they party hard.”

Gaz sighs. “What’s next on the menu?”

“More mimosas. That was their warm-up. You wanna catch up?” You frame a carton of orange juice in your hands enticingly.

Fruity drinks from here on out. Gaz doesn’t exactly mind the idea, though he’d come down to the bar for something with more of a kick. But he’s wondering how long your shift runs if you’d worked the night before and the morning after.

He’s got a chance here; without your friend present, your guilty conscience must feel balmed.

Gaz shakes his head, tearing a finger at the mini umbrella’s ridges. “I’ll stick to their schedule. Have a feeling I should be pacing myself with that crew.”

“Good feeling,” you nod.

The air of silence that settles is comfortable. There’s the rattle of ice and champagne, the slow slosh of orange pooling in three going on four glasses, and Gaz watches you through it all. But he can see the way his gaze makes you nervous. Your movements are all rickety, and you can’t quite find that rhythm between shaking the mixer and making eye contact.

Gaz wasn’t lying. Most if not all the women he’s met (sans a few of his targets) agree: he’s a kind man. Chivalrous, soothing, amiable.

So he’s not sure why seeing your nerves gets a lovely thrill rattling its way down his spine. Sure, he wished you felt a smidge less timid, a lot more loose and sunny in his company. But, he guesses, it’s because with you, he’s willing to settle. Take what he can get; it’s not unlike a stakeout, really. He’s parked here, waiting for you to come out of your shell on your own time.

Can’t really help that he’s greedy when it counts, though, and when you set the mimosa in front of him, he reaches before you can pull away, getting that warm slide of your fingers against his.

“So what are you doin’ here, in a place like this, if you’re not a good bartender?”

He has to salvage your courage before you slip into the backroom for space to think. He can’t let that happen, overthinker that you are, and you’re too nice to abandon him mid-conversation.

He’s okay with manipulating you that much.

“Gap year. Several actually, but I don’t like to think about that.” You’re fidgeting with a rag, twisting it until the damp cotton creases under your fingers.

“What are you gappin’ to?”

You huff out a laugh. “Med school, hopefully. Grad school, possibly. Just want to do something more, you know? Since apparently a bachelor’s gets you nowhere nowadays, and I’m just thirty grand in hole for nothing.”

“It’ll work itself out. For you, I’m certain of it.”

And he thinks he’s nailed it.

Look. Look at all he can say and do to make you feel comfortable. And look! He can make you laugh and smile. And his touch was nice, right? Warm, gentle, everything you’d want. He’s got it right here. Waiting for you.

And then you blink, long and slow, eyes on the counter. Then…

“You know, I’m really jealous of Jeanne. I mean, she has it all figured out.”

Gaz fights the urge to grind his teeth, but he drops his elbows to the counter and cups at the mimosa. Not good enough, doesn’t burn enough. Too easy on the champagne, and he distantly wonders if you pull what you did last night all the time.

That thing where you go easy on drinks by coming around less, or neutering them completely before you pass them out.

That thing where you’re trying to do better for everyone , where you think you know better. He can only guess that it’s come so often with a cost to you that it’s all you know how to do anymore—giving, no taking. Helping always; never, ever hurting, no matter what you want.

“C’mon,” he mutters, but you’re reaching for another red cherry. Chewing on it as it dyes your teeth pink.

“She’s one of the managers here, did she tell you that? And she’s only a couple years older than me, and she’s just… she knows what she wants. And goes for it, too.”

Is that what it was? You weren’t willing to go for it?

He’ll build that bridge for you, dammit. He’d hold you hand across the whole fucking way if you’d just let him.

“She’s the only person in the whole area willing to give me a chance, even though I’d never bartended before.”

He lets you ramble, lets the sound of your voice sink into him, gives encouraging responses when he has to.

Jeanne likes to go hiking.

Jeanne likes to swim.

Jeanne loves nights out.

Sure, yeah, okay. But do you like any of that?

You don’t. You hate it all, actually. You even have a fear of drowning, heights, the whole works. You’re very much a homebody, curled up on your couch reading, drinking tea—not a huge fan of wine, or alcohol, actually, but don’t laugh! It was the highest paying job you could find, and yes, you do see the irony. Yes, you make a good cup of tea. Why?

Trying to find out even that much about you was like playing a damn tennis match. You won’t stop shoving the topic away, getting all insecure when he asks what you like. What you want.

He plans to change that.

But for now? Fine. You won’t talk about you. But he’s not going to let you talk about Jeanne.

So you’re talking about him.

“We don’t get much of your type around here.”

“Special forces?”

“British.” You give up on wiping the counter, instead leaning on two hands and watching him sip at the piña colada you’ve just made. He’d offered you the pineapple slice. After you’d said no, he watched you watch him bite in, wiping off the juice off his lips with his thumb.

He had to remind himself that it was patience you were looking for, even with your lips parted in a daze like that.

“Special forces, though, huh?” You glance around with faux wariness. “Should I be worried?”

“Depends. How many people round here are up to no good?”

“I mean, there’s the occasional bad tipper but, between you and me,” you lean in, give a small shrug, “I deal with them in my own way.”

Gaz raises a brow, smile growing. “Maybe I’m the one who should be worried.”

“Depends. Are you going to be rifling around for a five or a twenty-five dollar tip in that wallet of yours?”

Gaz sighs, “The best company always comes with the highest price, don’t it?”

“Not as high as you think,” you laugh.

If there was ever a groove to find between you and him, he’s finally located it.

Five minutes too late, it seems.

You’re glancing at the clock when you hear rustling in the storage room, and the blonde bartender that’s bloody haunting him now pushes through the swinging door.

“Jeanne.” You voice is a wonderful mixture of fake enthusiasm and slight disappointment. “Look who’s here.”

Trapped. That’s what he is.

And you leave without a goodbye or a glance in his direction, too.

He tells himself you’re shy, insecure, delicate little thing that he keeps pushing the boundaries of, trying to find the edge of having you and scaring you off completely.

Like taming a wild animal.

Fucking patience. For all his years, all his adventures, he never knew he’d run out of it in the most civilian of circumstances.

He sticks around a while longer, humors Jeanne’s interest. Amazingly enough, they have so much in common, who would have thought?

And who would have thought that after last night, that was the last thing he’d ever want.

~~~~~~

You’re doing that thing again, where you ignore him.

He’d think it’s cute, how shy you were, if you only didn’t sic your friend on him each time you did it. He’s fairly certain his interest is clear.

He’s been going to the bar for the last few days. Sometimes he sees you, sometimes he doesn’t. He prefers the former, and when it’s the latter, he’s reminded of just how shitty the alcohol is in the US, and that he’s trapped here, and how it’s starting to become hell.

But he won’t tell you that. That your home and this hotel are the last places he wants to be on the whole planet, present company excluded.

Despite the fact that present company feels like she has to include her friend in every conversation. He loves how selfless you are, no man left behind and whatnot, but he wishes you could see the failing attraction right before your eyes.

You try to slip off, leave the pair of them alone, but Gaz won’t have it. If you wander too close, he’ll drag you in, call your damn name across the bar if he has to, wrench on that ever-guilty, ever-pleasing heart of yours to go and answer him, talk to him, pay him the attention he needs nightly, apparently.

As of late, you’ve started playing this game. Gaz’ll bring up a topic, anything from the horrors of war to butterflies.

And you think there might be some upsides to the horrors of war, maybe. And butterflies are ugly and gross, always.

Gaz loves how beautiful the mountains are up north; you despise them. They look cold.

But he thought you loved cold weather?

Well, you don’t like cold weather when it’s… on mountains. You guess.

An interesting play, he quite thinks. Such odd tactics you have running in your mind. But you’re trying so hard to be this good, loyal friend. You want so badly to find the middle ground here, please Jeanne and Gaz, let them both be happy.

But when push comes to shove, Jeanne had dibs. And Gaz has to bear the brunt of it.

Two weeks have gone by before Price contacts Gaz again. Tells him the 141 had lain low long enough that he can come back home and get some well deserved leave. The news makes him fucking ecstatic when he first hears it. Thank fuck he’ll never have to use the launderettes here again, never have to listen to the damned click-click-click of the aircon or the mini fridge.

He misses so many things from home.

Shepherd’s pie. Good cigarettes and tea. A whiskey sour from that bar just three blocks down from his flat.

And his flat. His bed. His sofa, the kitchen he barely uses, the door that whines because he can’t bring himself to oil it; gone too long, too often for it to really matter most days. The toaster he doesn’t plug in ever because it damn well almost burned down his flat last time he was out for two months.

All of it empty. Cold and bare. Too unused to really miss.

Gaz slows while packing his things. He stops, grabs his phone, then lowers to the bed. He stares at the recent calls list, Captain still at the top, call ended twenty minutes ago.

Home has a different taste in his mouth than it used to. Not horribly bad, but different enough to notice.

It’ll be quiet. Gaz used to love quiet.

Being here has changed something in him.

Nothing big—all small things, in fact.

A pondering floats down on him, comes to his mind and makes the rest of his body tighten, a coiled spring waiting, wondering. It’s such a small question, too, but things with you always seemed so small and insignificant, until he got a moment of quiet to consider it.

Do they sell your perfume in the UK?

It’s not a huge thing if they don't.

Really, it’s not life-changing. He’s just trying to consider never having it again, never having it flood his senses when you get too close, lean a bit closer to slide him his drink.

Then it’s you not leaning in close ever again. Then no you, ever again.

Gaz can’t quite make it make sense.

Home is good. Hell, he misses it.

But home is no set place anymore. Home could be two poles repelling each other but attracting him, pulling at each half of him, waiting to tear him down the middle while he tries to decide.

Two fucking weeks? Gaz has to check his phone to make sure. Has that really all it’s been?

Bullshit.

Tell him why it feels like it’s been years. Tell him why he can’t imagine going home as anything other than a misstep, one bad fucking decision away from sealing his fate.

A slice of shepherd’s pie and a nice cup of Earl Grey—it can wait.

A little longer, at least. He needs some time to make certain on some things. A month, maybe. On his own dime now. After all, what’s four thousand dollars compared to a missed opportunity for something better?

…He’ll see if they have deals on extended stays.

~~~~~~

“YN.”

Nothing.

“YN.”

Still nothing.

“YN!”

You’re avoiding eye contact and maintaining a six-foot radius at all times, like he’s got the damn plague.

It’s been the same setting for the past four weeks; corner of the bar, closer to the same dark shit that swirls in his glass now, aiming for privacy and good company.

He used to think he was a good shot, but his accuracy’s been bloody terrible as of late.

Twelve times. He’s tried asking you out twelve times.

After the most recent attempt crash-landed with you interrupting to tell him about your sister’s obsession with popping zits, he considered it. Oh boy, did he consider giving up, asking himself why the hell he ever got so desperate in the first place.

Tonight was supposed to be some last hurrah of sorts. His flight leaves tomorrow morning, and his patience with you has become so thin it could snap with a single breath.

But he gets here, sees you.

Sees you bustling around the bar—which, in his mind’s eye, is his flat. And you look right at home, by the way. Wandering in and out of his room, his kitchen, the living room. Curled up on the settee, your soft thighs winking at him from beneath his own sweatshirt. Then you’re dancing in the same way, hips swaying to the obnoxious beat, leaning in closer instead of pulling away when he grabs onto you like he ought to.

For all that’s good and pure, you never distance yourself like you do now.

There’s no easily spooking the you in his head that wants him just as badly as he does you.

Your name falls from his lips an unavoidable number of times from the corner of the bar, and you finally fold.

See—wasn’t so hard, was it?

Not so painful if you’d just give in and go on a date with him now, too.

You saunter over, a world-weary sigh falling from your lips. “My God, Kyle, you sound like a damn cockatoo over here. Or my mom, which was a bit unsettling. Need I remind you I regret telling you my middle name.”

“Then you won’t be surprised to know you’re getting a good scolding, with the way you’ve been avoiding me.”

That same look takes up your features, pouty lips and wrinkled brow, like he’s barking up the wrong tree all over again. Might be his favorite expression of yours, second only to that little grin when you see him each day.

The same one that keeps him barking.

“You know it’s for a good reason, Kyle. I’ve told you this.”

“Remind me again, darling. Is it a boyfriend?”

You huff a sigh. “No.”

“Husband?”

You roll your eyes. “No.”

“Lesbian?”

“What?” You stare at him wide-eyed, and he shrugs.

“Just makin’ sure my bases are covered. So what is it, then?”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“I’m also dead fuckin’ serious,” his voice raises when you try to walk away. He can barely refrain from swatting out at your wrist, spinning you back around to look at him. Over the weeks, he’s discovered your biggest weakness is his eyes, and he puppy-dogs them now. “Out with it. Please.”

His white-knuckled hands ache from where they grip under the bar’s ledge, and he’s trying blessedly hard to keep still as you look him over. Every scar, every bag under his eyes, every premature wrinkle. You can see it all and more, probably even see the nightmare he had three days ago, where it was you tied up, enemy’s gun pointed at the pliable skin of your temple, your cries echoing in the empty warehouse.

Where, a building over, in sniper-position, Gaz’s frozen. His fucking trigger finger won’t twitch, and he can’t breathe, can’t move even as the gunshot lit up your skin, and he rolled out of the same hotel bed, coughing on the floor, wheezing.

He tops off his eyes with a dashing smile, pleasant like his mind hadn’t painted the picture of you bloody and dying, still haunting him.

Gaz isn’t as easy to read as you are. You wouldn’t be able to tell.

“You’re looking at me like that again.”

“Like I’m whipped?” As if he could look like anything else.

“No, like…” You bite your tongue, and Gaz would give anything to know what you’d planned on doing with the hand you’d raised toward him just then, only to let it drop down at your side. “Never mind.”

“C’mon.” God , his hands ache. “Just tell me. Thought we were friends?”

“We are friends, Kyle.” You ignore how smug he gets, fixing him with a look. “But that’s all we are.”

Gaz scoffs, “I don’t get it. Just because your friend has, what, a li’l crush on me, and she doesn’t even know me, this can’t happen?”

You know what this is. He knows you know what this is. And he knows you want it, too.

“It’s…” you bite the inside of your cheek while avoiding his gaze, and he knows it’s because you can’t think when he looks at you like that. Pleading. Desperate. And so damn breathless at the sigh of you that it makes it that much harder for you to say you don’t want him. “It’s a whole big thing we agreed on when I started working here. It’s how the peace is kept, not just between Jeanne and me—but for everyone. That’s just how we do it.”

“YN…”

You ignore him. “And I like this job, Kyle. I do. I don’t care that I’m horrible at mixing drinks, and that I can’t handle drunk people to save my life. It feels good to have something to do when I don’t know what else to do with myself, and I can’t have some little lover’s quarrel ruin that.

“And Jeanne is a great person. And I know you don’t like it when I bring it up, but it’s true. She saw you first and called it. So I’m stepping back, not getting in the middle of it because I owe it to her, and I don’t get why you won’t just do me that solid and give her a chance. You two are a much better fit than you and I would ever be—”

“You hate camping.”

You fall silent, staring at him in confusion. “What?”

“You hate camping. And the woods. The outside, really. You told me that. Then you told me your daily circuit is the bar, then your home, sometimes to the café down the street from here, but that’s rare. And that you like books, but I know s’not the cute, adventure-y ones you pretend to like. I googled a few of yours, ones I caught you sneakin’ on your breaks—dirty little bird, you are, by the way. But I like that about you. All of it. Everything you think you have to keep under wraps.”

“Kyle…”

“I like the way you say my name, too. And how soft your skin looks, and those thighs—fuck me. Is your perfume cherries, by the way?”

“Peaches,” you mumble. He nods.

“That too. I mean, every little thing, darling. I swear, I want it. Don’t care that we’re complete opposites, that you’re scared of what I do, what I’m built for. I need you to know that I want you because of that, not in spite of. I don’t need you all the time, I promise. But I don’t think I could handle it if I didn’t have you at all.”

You want him. He can see it. You’re melting into a goddamn puddle before him, wandering nearer and nearer like you can’t help it.

What else can he say? What the hell else does he have to do to prove that he wants you so bad it’s driving him up the walls? Gaz is wrenched so tight in his seat that he could snap and hurdle the counter, drag you out of here and show you everything he’s willing to give.

He needs a promise before he leaves. Something.

“God, Kyle, I didn’t…” your breath stutters, but you won’t pull your gaze from his. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know you were so serious about this.”

You didn’t know? You couldn’t fucking tell? After a month of him puttering around here, begging for your attention, doing anything he could to get you to look at him—

“I thought you were just…”

Fuck.

Gaz shakes his head.

Fuck.

Messing with you? Teasing you? That’s all you thought it was?

He tips his head back, locking onto the ceiling.

What could he have said during the past five weeks that would make you think that?

He runs through every conversation, every interaction, every whipped, needy look he couldn’t hold back because he couldn’t stop them around you.

And then he thinks about Jeanne. How you’ve been pushing her on him. And how he’s a perfect fucking gentleman and entertained her interest with polite conversation.

Then there’s you, his shy little rabbit watching from the other end of the bar, so damn skittish that he can only draw you back in after she’s long left him alone. Not even surveying or passively watching, but crafting wildly inaccurate conclusions in your little overthinking head.

No.

No, no, no, because, fickle as you are, you’re a giver.

And Gaz’s been stealing that role from you this whole time.

He hasn’t let you show your worth. He doesn’t need to see it, no, but you think you have to prove it. You like your trials by fire. You don’t like winning by default.

You don’t think you could be wanted for wanting’s sake.

In all fairness, Gaz didn’t think he functioned like that either—unconditional terms and all that. So he thought he’d had to give back. Give back so much that it frightened you, and you couldn’t hold up what you thought was your end.

A bloody fool. That’s what he is.

His little American rabbit plays by different rules. In the UK, women in bars are so straightforward, so honest.

What a fuckin’ sod he is.

His flight leaves in nine hours, and he hasn’t packed, hasn’t slept.

Too busy thinking about you. How much of a wrench you’ve been in his plans.

He didn’t think wanting you would be like asking the world to spin the other way.

And, hell, what’s he supposed to do when he does leave, gone off on the mission Price’s hinted to him, the one that’s halfway across the globe, and you’re back here, trying and probably succeeding at forgetting he exists.

Fuck.

You not knowing he exists.

Him having never met you.

The ideas make him sick.

But Gaz…

Gaz is a planner. Above all else.

And if you want an opportunity to show what you can give him, he’ll give you just that. While he’s on a mission, mind on worse, far more horrible things, he’ll give you that chance you’ve been itching so hard for.

“Your phone.”

You’ve been watching him go through phases, even refilled his glass while he was out. Scotch on the rocks, this time. Like you thought he had to start taking it easy from here on out, like you think he deserves it.

“What?”

“Let me give you my number.”

“Kyle… that’s not a good idea.”

“Don’t care, love.”

To your credit, you have a healthy amount of wariness. In several jerky movements, you pull your phone from your pocket, open it to a new contact, and pass it to him, eyeing up every little thing he types.

Kyle (Hot Guy from the Bar) Garrick.

His phone number.

Then he texts himself quickly, saves your number too, and holds your phone out.

When you grab at it, he holds tight, tugging for your attention.

Like he hasn’t, in a most wonderfully heady way, already got it.

“No funny business with this, love.” His features turn grim. “No giving it to your friend so she can woo me—”

“Woo you?”

He gives you a stern look. “A phone call. A text. A fuckin’ pocket dial, I don’t care. But I want it from you, or no one, yeah?”

Only after you nod, slow and unsure, does he push himself out of the barstool for the last time, nodding to you. Eyes soft as he whispers, “Have a good night, darling.”

Your eyes don’t leave him as he walks away, phone still gripped tightly in your hand.

~~~~~~

Part 2

#kyle gaz garrick x reader #call of duty x reader #cod x reader #kyle garrick x reader #gaz x reader #kyle gaz garrick #kyle garrick #gaz cod #cod gaz

321 notes · View notes

oreosmama · 7 months

Text

Voicemails After the Breakup (Haikyuu!! Headcanons)

*GIFs not mine*

A/N: I pity the fools who ignore this a/n bc WARNING, these are hcs without those stupid bullet points bc I have suddenly emotionally decided that they fucking suck. Anyways, I hope y'all enjoy the light angst, for all those survivors who are still vibing in this fandom. Enjoy!

Word count: 1968

Tooru Oikawa:

“I’m totally and completely over you.”

That’s how the message starts.

Part of you wonders if you missed something, or accidentally skipped ahead. It’s so immediate, like Oikawa could barely wait for the beep before tearing into you. Like he needed to spit poison the second he had the chance.

And it’s one of those biting remarks that he wants to let fester—for a while, evidently; he doesn’t say anything else for another five minutes.

All that follows is a loud thud, like he’s thrown the phone away from him. And then footsteps, like he’s pacing, pacing, pacing back and forth, trying to think of more scathing words by burning holes into his carpet.

You hit a point where you think you should delete the message, maybe try and not care about whatever else he may or may not say after waiting for so long. You nibble on your nails and tug at the snarls in your hair. You pick four pieces of lint off your sweatshirt and seventeen more off the blanket draped over your lap, and you know how many there are because you line them up and count them afterwards as you wait, anxious, listening to your ex-boyfriend’s panting.

But a small rustle stirs at that five-minute mark, right against your ear. And a sniffle.

“Fine.” Oikawa’s voice cracks. “You win.”

You suck in a breath.

“What do you wanna hear? That I miss you?” He sniffles again, then scoffs bitterly. “That I miss you so fucking much I can’t sleep at night? That my bed is so fucking cold now I can’t even stomach sleeping in it? That every girl I see I automatically compare to you because I have to—I just fucking have to, all because she’s not you. And it makes me sick.”

His chuckle is sour and crackles harshly into your eardrum. “Am I stroking your ego enough, sweetheart? Because you win. You fucking win.

“I want you back.”

He sighs, and it sounds like he’s rubbing his forehead.

“I need you back.”

More beats pass in the silence. More sniffles, too, but stretched out, like he’s trying to steady his breathing.

You don’t think it’s helping him any. As you wipe the cuffs of your sweatshirt underneath your eyes, his voice returns, thoroughly raw and wounded. It squeaks out of him, barely above a whisper. His voice is so loud and tender, like he’s cradling the phone against his cheek.

Your hand against his warm cheek, curled over that pink skin, fingertips inches away from brushing through those soft strands, wiping tears. That’s what you wish it was.

“I didn’t know…”

A shaky breath. You hold yours in return.

“I didn’t know anything could hurt this bad.”

He swallows thickly.

“Those last few moments after you left—I thought that would be the worst of it. When you just walked out. And I keep seeing you do it, over and over and over, in my head like I can’t help but torture myself with it.

“I never knew it would get so much fucking worse.”

He whimpers a little, and your heart constricts unbearably. You tear at the damn thing buried underneath your sweatshirt, massaging the skin like it can soothe that phantom ache.

Oikawa must hate you. Maybe he hates you like you hate him: not because of the breakup, but because you can go for weeks without seeing him, holding him, kissing him, and everything still hurts like that last time.

“Thing is, I could’ve sworn you weren’t always in my life. It’s been two years. Only two years. And yet I can’t remember a damn thing before us. It feels like it was always us. Some fog, and then you, and then everything afterwards. Everything that was us.”

“And I hate that we had it so good, YN. I really do. Because missing you has been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

The frustration in his voice is familiar, a sickening sense of deja vu around it, and you latch a hand over your mouth at how vividly the image comes to you: Oikawa tearing his fingers through his hair, teeth gritted, cheeks flushed and shiny. Like when he lost a game, but different somehow.

Like this was something he didn’t even know he could lose.

He’s crumbling in a way he doesn’t know how to stop. That ugly part about having something wonderful and new—the moment it’s gone, what the hell are you supposed to do then?

“I just—Goddamnit, I can’t stand how badly it hurts anymore. I can’t,” he cries, desperate and aching, like his hand is fisting at his heart. You can hear the breath hitching in his throat, the hiccuping breaths after his sobs. You can hear every tear, feel it against your own cheeks, a soreness building at the front of your skull.

Too many tears. Your body is screaming at you, too many fucking tears.

But it’s him and he was yours and you were his.

Were.

You were his.

You had no idea how much that single thought could make your entire chest throb.

Oikawa inhales, and it makes your heart race against the thick wall caging it in, squeezing against it.

“I need to see you.”

He says the thought like it’s just slapped him across the face.

“I need to go see you, I—I have to.”

He mumbles to himself unsteadily, like he’s rocking back and forth. Debating, really, what he’s supposed to do, if he should do it at all, if it’s right after everything.

You should probably think he’s wrong.

You probably shouldn’t be curled over your phone, eyes wide, mouth open, not making a fucking peep. Waiting to hear what he’s going to do.

Maybe—just maybe—you shouldn’t be telling yourself that as the voicemail counts down to its final seconds, if he decides he’s not going to go to you, that you’ll definitely be going to him.

“I can’t just sit here. I can’t stay in here, without you. This isn’t right, I—”

Your breath hitches when you hear the frantic jingle of keys.

Then the sound of a door slamming.

His footsteps racing down his apartment’s stairwell.

A car engine revving.

“I need to see you.”

And the voicemail ends.

_________________________

Satori Tendou:

The message begins with a scoff of utter disbelief.

“Is that what we’re doing now?”

He pauses, almost like he thinks you’re going to respond.

“Heard from someone that I suddenly have syphilis. Yesterday, I had herpes though, so I guess I’m gonna have a tough week.”

A rustle like he’d shaking his head, like he can’t fucking believe it.

“And sure, okay, I figured that’s fine. You can say all that shit, and it won’t really stick because everyone knows it was us and that it’s you and you’re hurt.”

He sighs.

“But I saw it, sweetheart. I saw it.” The phone whines like he’s adjusting it against his face, and his voice is suddenly lower, darker.

“You don’t get to have it both ways, you know. You can’t spread all that shit—all those rumors about how shitty everything was and how we didn’t have anything going for us—and then turn around two days later wearing my sweatshirt. And you don’t get to wear that necklace I gave you for our anniversary and then run away from me the second you see me. That’s just not fair—you’re not playing fair anymore.”

Something swishes around like loose clothing, and a large huff greets your ear from what must be Tendou collapsing into a seat. When his little sounds become quieter, that relentless humming and the excitable clicks of his tongue against his teeth, you figure he must have put the phone on speaker and balanced it on his knee like he always did. Mid-conversation with Ushiwaka, he always used to spin his phone with those long fingers, or bounce the damn thing up and down against his frantic leg.

And the voicemail came through late last night, one of those dead hours where the only ones awake were Tendou, his scrambling thoughts, and the moths flitting back and forth outside his glowing window. He was always awake, always thinking, always doing something.

When you’d first broken up, after one long, wrenching fight where you’d both lost your voices and the frustration welled so high you just couldn’t breathe anymore, you’d been thankful for the idea of sleeping soundly for the first time in months.

You’d been wrong. You weren’t even sleeping anymore; just long, slow blinks where your phone screen would magically turn from 3:45 a.m. to 7:25 a.m., and in five minutes you’d have to get up and slug your way through another day.

Tendou had been the same. Those naturally wide eyes sagged under the pressure, and the curve of his spine had deepened like he’d been hauling the lack of sleep everywhere he went.

He must be sitting at his window now, at this moment in his message, pale skin aglow with wispy tendrils of moon. And he’s calling you. And he saw everything you’d done.

“Not fair. Not fair at all,” he whines, teasing. Always, always teasing, and if you hadn’t heard the slight cripple in his voice on the last word, you’d have gone on thinking he viewed it as one big joke.

You’re sure he heard the same thing you had—that he couldn’t keep acting like it was all fun and games. His usual, cat-like smile surely fell into a pert little frown, pale lips twisting like he’d sucked on a lemon.

No fun, no fun, no fun, he must have been thinking.

“Ya see, I thought we had a little deal,” Tendou drawls. “You’d talk smack and start dressing all pretty just to spite me, and then–and then I’d go ahead and delete all your pictures and put your name as ‘Bitch’ in my phone. And in, like, two weeks, we’d just be two ships, whoosh, whoosh, passing each other on the high seas of life, ya know?”

He breathes a ghost of a laugh.

“But, sweetheart, you look like shit.” He chuckles for real this time, and it’s disgustingly hollow. “I’m not even kidding. Like someone ran you over three times every morning—it’s horrible, really.”

You curl into yourself even further, and you’re smiling, grinning, lips peeling with how much you’ve cried and how little water you’ve drank after. You hate him; God, you hate how he can make you laugh and cry at the same time.

“But that’s okay, I’ll give you a pass just this once. I haven’t deleted your pictures yet, so I botched my end of the deal, too.” Tendou tsks his tongue.

“I won’t go easy on you, though. Here–here, how’s about this: for every day you stop wearing my clothes—because they look horrible on you, sweetheart; really, you’re painful to watch—I’ll delete one of your pictures, eh? That means, in about–uhhdivideby365daysinayearignoringleapyearbullshit–ah, seven years, I’ll have held up my end. S’that good with you?”

You lean your head back, letting the tears flood your hair as he chuckles to himself.

“Fuck it,” he says after a pause. Hopeless. Breathless. “Fuck it.” He must be gnawing on that pale lower lip, biting and nibbling until it bleeds. Because he lets something go to sigh again, and he must have smacked his head against the wall, and then you think he sniffled.

“I still want you. I’ve always wanted you. And I’m tired of missing you and wanting you. Doing both hurts too much.”

Tendou soughs.

“So I’m still your Chicken Tendy, baby. Always. And I’ll be here when you're ready, syphilis and all.”

#haikyuu x reader #oikawa x reader #tendou x reader #tendou satori x reader #oikawa tooru x reader #haikyuu!! x reader #haikyu x reader #satori x reader #oikawa tooru #tendou satori #satori tendou #tooru oikawa #haikyuu x reader angst #haikyuu headcanons

2K notes · View notes

oreosmama · 9 months

Text

In the Black Widow’s Nest (Henry Creel x Reader) 🕷️Chapter 2🕷️

*GIF not mine*

Summary:

Prince Henry of the Creel Dynasty is finally in search of a wife, and in the spirit of courtship, King Victor has invited young royalty from all neighboring kingdoms to vie for his hand. But with so much royalty introduces the need for many more maids in the castle than usual.

Enter: You.

You’re nothing but a servant in his home, an intruder in his prized library, and an utter nuisance in his mind. But then you survive his attack, and in an unexpected way nonetheless. That makes you… interesting.

You’ve caught his eye—congratulations! Now, you must deal with the consequences of loving a heartless prince in a world where far worse things lurk in the castle than dirty garderobes.

Chapter 1

A/N: yay, another chapter! and not a million bajillion months later, either, aren’t u guys lucky? I worked hard on this one! Let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoy!

Word count: 4809

The maids of the castle did not have an organized way of awakening. The first one to rise from her cot never rang a bell, nor did she make a sound as she bumbled about the room. The others simply roused at her activity and moved to follow her lead. A soft ray of warmth would peek through window curtains, illuminating the rumpled sheets and the scuffling shoes as the ladies donned their uniforms: white pinafores over black smocks, black sleeves down to the wrists with white cuffs, white bows, black slippers.

A light chatter had begun after one maid, a new recruit hired for the season, had asked another for assistance in tying the pinafore’s bow at her back. By the time the bow was finished, the rest of the room had followed suit. Conversations erupted, and some of the more experienced women had taken to helping the newcomers with their garments. When one began to brush her own hair, so did another. When one adjusted the strap on her own shoe, so did another.

They moved as one body and looked as one body, as was expected of them. None dared to lose their opportunity to work with the castle's wages and living, especially during such a season.

The prince of the Creel Dynasty was finally searching for a wife.

The kingdom had long awaited this announcement from the handsome young heir. In preparation for the many balls, galas, and other festivities promised by this news, the castle staff had welcomed a myriad of new members, all of whom had to be trained before the kingdom could host any visiting royalty.

The maids, therefore, had the strictest schedules and regimens. The nature of their duties made it most plausible to come in contact with a royal, and such required a level of propriety unobserved by them in their previous homes.

But a new fear had struck the collective consciousness of the trainees.

One that made the threat of interacting with royals all the more potent.

You rose from your cot at the tap of the girl beside you. A fierce spasming fired along your spine, where your new wounds must have reopened from the movement.

Briefly, you considered lying back down, letting your headache swallow you whole. Considered Miss Miriam, in a devilish state, screaming at you, dismissing you, dragging you out of the castle. Crawling back home with no money, nothing to show for your promises of dragging them out of the village and whisking them away to a life of less hell. You consider coming out of the castle like you came in. Still nothing. Having nothing.

But a pretty sight struck you—Miss Miriam, with her crop, coming up behind you, and you, twisting and grabbing her by her gray hair, shoving her face into a used chamber pot.

Then swatting the old harpy with her own weapon.

A smile split your face, causing the bruise on your cheek to throb.

One day.

But until that day, you were stuck here under the shameless eyes of your own fellow maids. The show Miss Miriam had put on for the others was one that must be burned into the backs of their eyelids, because the maids did one of two things.

They watched you, or they blinked.

You folded in on yourself, turning away and grasping your uniform tucked neatly beneath your bed. When you rose back up and reached for the hem of your nightdress, you hesitated.

The gazes were so heavy you could drown. Even now, you could feel the oozing blood sticking to the thick fabric. However prominent the bruise on your face was nothing compared to artwork that mangled your back; something was peeling, another splitting, and much was bleeding. It was all one collective wound, one scab healing so slowly that any movement you made renewed the process.

You did everything quickly and quietly. You tore off your dress, peeling off fresh skin with it, and stretched the other one over your head, thankful the black smock wouldn’t stain so evidently. The gasps didn’t slow you down. You tugged on your shoes and straightened your sleeves. You whisked your hair out of your face as you worked, tightening and adjusting and grimacing your way through it.

Tears burned at the corners of your eyes, but you didn’t let them fall. You were surprised you had any left after last night—your own tongue sat as dry as a rock in your mouth. How could there be more?

But they sprang forth when you pulled the pinafore over your sleeves and realized you couldn’t tie the bow yourself. Not as tightly as it should be. Your own body wouldn’t let you do such a thing to your wound.

You needed help. Would any of them be willing to even speak to you? To be seen associating with the first pariah of the group?

You couldn’t imagine yourself doing it. Self-preservation was at an all-time high after your public whipping. Would anyone even believe that you hadn’t wanted any of this? That you hadn’t been a crown-hunting girl begging for trouble? That something bordering on preternatural had invaded your mind and drowned out your senses, and all you could do was cling onto another human as you grappled for reality—who gave a damn if the man just happened to be Prince Henry, the one person women in all the known kingdoms were trying to obtain?

No.

No one would believe you.

Dear God, you sounded deranged. One step away from fleeing into the woods waving sticks and crying demon at every creature you crossed.

The church bells, of all things, being the sounds you’d heard when your own life was slipping away before your eyes. You may as well hang yourself right now, if the king couldn’t decree it any faster.

You dropped the two fabric strings of the pinafore with a muffled snivel, cupping your bruised cheek and letting your eyes fall closed.

Three months. Just three months to shed the new label and secure yourself a permanent position in the castle. Real servants’ lodgings, proper pay, daily meals. You could live the rest of your life not acknowledged by another soul if you could just stay here, safe and content and unheeded.

What more could a person want out of life?

A gentle touch at your shoulder blade drew your attention, and you flinched away before it got any closer to your injuries. You spun around and bumped into your cot, eyeing the other maid warily. Her gaze was kind and bordered on innocent, vibrant blue barely peeking out from behind a wall of curly brown hair. She looked about your age, and at first glance, you would never notice the proud, acute way she held herself.

Like she always knew what she was doing, and yet always knew too much.

And when she offered her hands like a sign of peace, you did not try to back away again. Far be it from you to reject the first kindness you had experienced since you had arrived here.

“I can tie your bow, if you like?”

That same accent, unrefined when compared to what usually bounced off the gilded walls, and you surmise that she must have come from another small village like yours. Unlike you, however, she seemed to have less fear when navigating through unfamiliarities like castles and cruel maids.

Why else would she bother offering the one persona non grata a helping hand?

You pause at her offer, gnawing on your lip as though you had other options to consider. Perhaps there was some ill intent to her aid, but even if there was, you couldn’t figure out what and why and why bother.

“Yes…” you swallowed. “Please.”

She smiled gently and gestured for you to turn around. When her hands tied the bow, it was all light fingers and quiet conversations.

Her name was Nancy, and you learned she had come from the village next to yours. When she couldn’t get a job working for a seamstress, she wound up as something of a governess in the kingdom’s walls, traversing back and forth between her home and those of higher standings nearer to the castle. She was good at watching children, but the castle was offering far more than royalty’s butlers and vicars could afford.

And she was also very sorry for you. What happened yesterday was hard to watch.

You asked her to tighten the bow, dismissing her small hum of concern, and swallowed the bile that rose when the pinafore dug securely into the gashes of your back.

You both knew she had been fixing to leave it loose, letting you decide if the risk of an untidy uniform was worth the comfort.

It wasn’t.

The other maids, it seemed, had grown uninterested the second your wounds were covered for what would be the remainder of the day, and returned to normal conversation. Few glances were thrown your way since Nancy had tied your bow, and you noticed yet another phenomenon.

Caught up in a sea of black and white, the only difference between you and Nancy, between any one maid and another, was her hair. Brunette and blond hair intermixed with black and ginger, all blended seamlessly when plaited or swept up into a bun.

Yours hung loose and knotted down your back, and without a word, Nancy began to wisp the tendrils into a braid. You wanted to stop her, but you couldn’t. Your own arms could barely raise as high as your heart, and your hands shook the second they entered your vision, lifted to stop Nancy’s at your nape.

“There,” she murmured, dismissing your thanks, “now you really blend in. By tonight, the others won’t even remember which bed you’re in.”

“Should I be concerned they know that now?”

She laughed softly. “I suppose not, although I have overheard a few girls bitter about you being with a royal.”

You blanched. “What? That’s what they’re focused on?”

Maybe… maybe you should have guessed some of them might focus on that fact. But look where it got you, and you hadn’t even been trying.

Properly flogged, and now in the sights of one Miss Miriam.

Nancy shrugs. “Just a few. Most have been scared for you. But,” she pauses, pursing her lips, “you must understand that we’re… thankful, in a cruel way.”

Of course. You could understand that.

It terrified you, angered you to no end, but you understood it. Someone had to be a lesson for the others. A demonstration. The new maids needed a spectacle to understand where the power lied—that power did not lie solely within royalty. There were pockets of it left scattered throughout the castle, and cruel-enough servants snatched it up whenever possible, and lorded it over whoever would listen.

But… you wanted to cry at the unfairness of it all. You never thought it would be you.

The collective consciousness reigned over the servants once more, and they began to line up. You spotted a girl, younger-looking than most, step away from the door, and guessed she must have heard footsteps. Nancy nodded at you before joining a line, and you followed.

Like clockwork, the door slammed open, and Miss Miriam entered with a silencing swoosh of her black smock. When her second-in-command entered, goosebumps ran down your spine.

You could still feel yourself struggling in her arms, sobs wracking their way through you as she steadied your form for another lashing. Your heartbeat began thundering in your back, right underneath the bow of the pinafore.

“Ladies, today is a day of utmost importance.” With small, black eyes narrowed and surveying each and every young girl before her, Miss Miriam furrowed her brow and frowned, wrinkles tracing the expressions with ease. Her face pinched together so tightly it resembled a sun-dried grape. “The royal family will be welcoming four promising princesses today, and it will be your duty to clean every inch of the castle they will roam upon before they arrive. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Miss Miriam.”

“We will work as one. We will bow as one. We do everything as one, today and all days, ladies. Efficiently, and quietly.” Her eyes fell on you. “No one will cause trouble today. Understood?”

You gulped. The maids chimed together once more, and you could only mouth along with them.

“Yes, Miss Miriam.”

Her gaze left yours, and the tightening of your throat eased.

“Moira will delegate assignments. Those tidying halls will follow me.”

The hallways, all gilded columns and glistening marble, flared victoriously in the morning sun. Most aspects of the castle seemed to emphasize the Creel Monarchy’s pride, their devout sense of self-satisfaction the principal aspect of every painting, vase, and snuffed sconce.

A portrait of the long deceased King James, great-great-great-great grandfather to Prince Henry—though, you pondered calling the number of greats preceding his name into question (and the word great itself)—sneered down at you, seeming perpetually pleased to be two hundred years in the ground and still lording himself over every subject that roamed his halls.

Disdain for all others must have been passed down the family line religiously.

You dragged your eyes down and away, busying yourself instead with dusting the marbleized snoot of Julius Caesar. The crystalline windows of the castle acted like a magnifying glass against you as you worked, adding a heat to the already aching skin of your back. You were a cockroach wandering too close to a flame, and any second now you could burn up from the inside out, crushed with a crunch rather than a squelch.

Using the back of your hand, you wiped the sweat from your brow, eyes wandering dangerously to the maid who worked beside you.

Nancy, owning the more bearable appearance between the two of you, had been sent out to deliver and replace new bed sheets along with thirty other girls. But the girl beside you, taller and owning a mess of dirty blonde hair swept into an apathetic bun, had somewhat of the same spirit of Nancy. A small glimmer of rebellion shone in her eyes each time Miss Miriam wandered far enough down the glittering hallway so as to only be seen by squinting.

Then, with a wry twitch of her freckled face, she’d rasp five blasphemies she’d decided described the witch in that moment.

Musty shrew appeared to be a favorite.

The girl glanced up from where she had been polishing a rickety wooden chair and flashed you a smile, glancing each way before rising from her knees and approaching. She reached out and plopped the brush she had been using on the table holding the marble statue head, and plugged a finger into each of its ears.

“I don’t suppose Jesus here will strike me down for my profanity, will he?”

You looked down. Chiseled above its wrinkled forehead was a laurel crown, and you couldn’t recall a Bible passage describing Jesus’ sabbatical in Rome. You blinked at her.

“I’m pretty sure that’s Julius Caesar.”

The blonde glances at the statue again, gray eyes darting over it before she shrugs. “Same difference. If there is a sculpture of Jesus somewhere in this castle, I have no doubt he’s going to receive the same mouthful of feathers you’re forcing on poor Caesar here.”

“Only if Miss Miriam deems it so.” You nodded your head in the skeletal maid’s direction. “Her words are as good as gospel, after all.”

“And yet, each time she speaks, I feel like I’m taking orders from Satan.”

You let out a ghost of a laugh, biting your tongue when your wounds contract and throb.

Her face splits into a smile, and she lets out a short laugh too. Something flits along her face, though, and you get the sense you didn’t hide your pain well enough. The subject is easily danced around; the maid releases her grip on the statue and instead grasps her skirt, lowering into a teasing curtsy. “The name is Robin, milady.” Her eyelashes flutter rapidly and she waggles her fingers in the air, perfectly, in your opinion, mimicking the interactions between royalty that you’ve seen thus far. Haughty, majestic, and filled with intentions barely skin-deep.

You do the same.

She lets your name roll off her tongue a few times, letting it thud against the crisp white walls in her hoarse tone before saying decidedly, “Very fitting.”

Before long, Miss Miriam decides the hallway is clean enough and herds all the maids, the vast majority of them being newcomers like you, out and away into the next wing.

A chill wracks through you when the word “residential” gets passed down the line of one hundred girls, followed by “prince” and “bedroom” and “handsome.” You scan the white, stone columns as you pass, watching them curve into elegant archways shadowed through the frosted windows. This wing is covered in significantly less dust, and a faint scent of roses and pines floats in the air.

You try to flood out the memories, thinking vigorously about the red carpet before you, the soft slap of two hundred clogs, small shuffles and whispers. Everything around you you swallow up whole, eyes wide as though it will help you take in everything and think about nothing. But you cannot avoid it for long; not when you pass by the entrance to the royal throne room, in all its scintillating enormity, golden thrones set with silk, inlaid with gemstones, all wide open spaces.

And hovering above all four was a single, large oil portrait of the living Creel sovereigns.

King Victor, with his light blue eyes caving underneath the lustrous crown, crisp white beard neatly trimmed. His hand hovered over his wife’s shoulder, smile thin and pale.

Queen Virginia, known for her devout faith and kindness, her amber hair falling in ringlets down to her sides. She sat prim and proper on a ruby-cushioned chair, hands folded prettily, eyes dim.

Princess Alice, the spitting image of her mother, bar her father’s eyes and the last twenty years. Second only to her brother in terms of popularity in the kingdom and out, something distinctly complacent set her brows in such a way you knew instantly why she was desirable to royals and dodged by anyone below them.

And then him.

A part of you hadn’t believed Miss Miriam when she’d called him so.

Your Highness.

But as you looked at him now, standing taller than the rest of his blood, proud and ramrod straight, broad shoulders held back by an invisible force, you knew the portraitist had gotten something wrong.

The hair was right; the golden crown of tousled waves, parted neatly and befitting him far more than any scrap of the earth. The lips, pink and pronounced, and the softness of his brow, and, of course, his posture. All perfect.

But it wasn’t Prince Henry. Not quite.

The eyes. Slate blue and cold, cold, cold. How could the artist have not seen that?

Instead, they were warm and too dark a blue. Almost navy, and gentle, and so soft he almost looked like he was frozen in a smile.

No, no. That wasn’t the Prince Henry you had seen.

Where was the darkness? The cruelty? The evil that shadowed every inch of him?

This was some sterilized version of the crown prince, some unattainable, unreliable, utterly purified visage of him being displayed to the kingdoms in pastime.

He radiated divinity, in and out of the portrait. But without that quality of his that effused danger so potently, you could not help but feel the kingdoms were being sold a lie.

The nervous hiss of your name and a strong grip rattling at your wrist spared you from Prince Henry’s trance once more.

Too much power, he had. Too much… something.

“I get it,” Robin whispered, eyes flitting back and forth as the herd marched on, “completely, I understand. But, you cannot just stand and stare at royalty all day. That’s kind of how you…” she gnawed at the inside of her cheek, “you know, got into your situation in the first place. I’d hate to think what Miss Mule would do if she caught you with a Creel of all people.”

You hesitate to tell her that it was, in fact, a Creel that had gotten you in this position. But if Miss Miriam had decided to hide that information from others, you could only guess there was some merit to hiding that you’d thrown your arms around a prince that was already in high demand.

You had wound up committing one of the worst possible treasons with the worst possible man. You supposed it was quite like learning to swim a day prior and diving into a deep lake the very next day—you’d hit rock-bottom, and you’d only just begun.

To think you shouldn’t already be swinging by your neck right now, face blue and tongue swollen, had the head maid hoarded some minute amount of mercy for you.

That, or she’d known your actions had no great impact upon the integrity of the prince’s pursuits—whether it be accidental or otherwise, Miss Miriam viewed yesterday’s nightmare as a tragic attempt to escape your fate, some sick wishing turned to action wherein you wooed the prince and thus he would marry you.

Of all people. You.

You could retch at the thought.

You’d been raised proper, your parents teaching you well about respect, understanding who deserved it and who did not. They had also taught you that people could be born deserving respect, that it was some inherent betterness of their circumstances that, in turn, warranted curtsies and bowed heads.

Which, in your humble opinion, seemed utter tosh, but so be it. For now, you had a head on your shoulders, feasted somewhat regularly, and slept in warmth. Your clothing had not been sewn by your own hands, and your family was receiving enough coins to not worry about your wellbeing.

No matter that they probably should.

Far be it from you to look gift horses in their mouths, but you felt yourself afforded a nice level of circumspection after your back had been torn to ribbons for a mishap over which you had no control.

You didn’t want to marry the prince. You didn’t want to touch him, and you didn’t want to think about him. And, ignoring all the memories of his larger hands, his blue gaze, his golden strands, and how he may haunt you for years to come, you were quite certain you never wanted to see Prince Henry ever again.

Your back twinged in agreement.

The multitude of fluttering pinafores ahead of you slowed their swishing. Clomping clogs eased into a gentle tapping and finally stopped, and the movements were imparted upon the rest of the maids. A smaller form bumped into your back, and you flinched away, spinning and biting back a cry.

A maid a few years younger than you gaped her mouth, innocence and fear mingling in her expression as brown curls fell over her brow. She seemed so much smaller than the others, more unwitting. Your eyes fell to her hand, a clenched fist in the creases of your skirt, as it hesitatingly fell away.

More distanced shuffling disseminated down the corridor, and you watched the assorted heads of hair in front of you split and separate, clinging to either wall, leaving a wide breadth of distance for someone to pass through. Sunlight filtered between the silent shadows of maids and formed a golden glow of a path.

You followed the others and split off to one side, opposite a window, and grasped blindly for Robin’s hand when she didn’t move to follow. A gentle tug at the fabric of your backside conveyed that the other, younger maid had restored her grip.

From your position, the sun blinded you heavily, and you squinted as a yellow shine overtook everything you saw. White spots splattered your vision when you blinked, but you looked past the maids anyway, curiosity jostling its way down the two lines.

“Your Highness.”

So far ahead, you couldn’t see and only heard Miss Miriam and her staunch and clear-cut announcement. That same loyal tone, somewhat saccharine, frayed your nerves in a second.

The prince?

Curtsies flowed like a wave through the maids, and when you bent low, head bowed, Robin and the young maid followed on either side of you, just as gawky. Nobody rose, and, per Miss Miriam’s orders, nobody would rise until the royalty had passed.

But… dear God, wasn’t it an awful affair that you could tell who it was without even looking? That you could feel a quiet sizzle over the rows of women and girls alike, heard the soft, prideful gait of his finely polished boots.

Back in your village, you’d hated how slowly people could walk. How they’d force you to flounder behind them as they puttered, how they could wander one way and then the other, each footstep a guess. Like they had all the time in the world.

You never would have guessed that a fast pace could be just as troubling. Like he couldn’t stand to be in the same corridor with so many servants, Prince Henry was a brisk wind over the ruby carpets. Even so, you could feel the rise and fall of elation, soft gasps partnered with perfectly timed peeks.

He was a sight to behold—that much had been imprinted on your mind. But he couldn’t possibly be as rumpled as he’d been in the depths of the frosty library, hair thoroughly rakish, white tunic clinging to his golden skin. No; royals held a certain standard of propriety, even as they indulged in the most hedonistic of lifestyles. He must be sheathed in some proper velvet tailcoat, and his face must be severe and sharp, slicing along everything he saw.

Breathtaking in an entirely different way, you were sure.

No, you didn’t look. You couldn’t. You can’t.

Not even as his footsteps approach.

You focus your gaze on your swinging braids, watching them refuse to settle against some unknown breeze. A strain forms in your knuckles with how hard you grip your skirt, and your spine throbs with each heartbeat against the tightened back of your uniform.

Prince Henry slows.

The atmosphere tightens around your little grouping of maids, sun soaking into your black clothing so heavily you can barely breathe.

We must be in front of a door, some corner he needs to turn to. Something.

Some disturbed pulsing blossoms in your gut when he stops just before you, black boots just inches away. Lithe fingers laden with metal rings hover in your vision.

Prince Henry’s too close all over again.

You want to cry out; you want to say nothing and everything. You want to sink into the furthest recesses of your home miles away just as much as you want to stand at the top of a hill and hold your arms out, waiting for it all.

Your heart is racing—wild, damned little thing. An insufferable hypocrite after all the ways it had condemned him yesterday for what had happened.

Fingertips, gentle and soft as a single breath, rise and brush over your flaming cheekbone.

A tingle of pain jolts through the bruise so suddenly you flinch away, followed by an indifferent grunt that hangs in the air.

No pity in the sound. No remorse. Barely a hint of acknowledgment.

You want to cradle your cheek and press, hard, at the bridge of your nose, will those wobbling tears to stop. His hand hovers again, twitches near, and, when you lean some scant distance away, falls back to his side.

Within that same second, the boots that hadn’t even turned toward you stalk away. Still fast and proud, no more slows and stops. No more grunts.

But, without a doubt, it was Prince Henry. You’d peeked as the other maids had peeked.

You’d done all that they had done, yet you knew that single touch had doomed you.

That must have been his game. A nice bit of teasing for the maid who'd embraced him; let her be thoroughly beaten down to her station. It was some cruel recognition of what happened to you, some silent sanctioning of a proper punishment.

Servant does a bad thing; servant gets punished by her peer.

Royal approves. No blood on his hands.

You were right, of course. That portrait was missing Prince Henry’s most vital characteristic: Wickedness.

When the maids rise from their curtsies, trembling thighs and huffed breaths, all eyes fall on you. A range of emotions bombard you before you can rub your cheek.

Wonder.

Awe.

Envy.

And—you can only assume from the thundering footsteps—Miss Miriam’s unparalleled rage.

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#henry creel x reader #stranger things x reader #vecna x reader #peter ballard x reader #001 x reader #henry creel #peter ballard #vecna #001 #stranger things #stranger things imagine #henry creel imagine #henry creel/001 #peter ballard imagine #vecna/henry/001 #vecna stranger things #vecna/henry/one

76 notes · View notes

oreosmama · 10 months

Text

In the Black Widow’s Nest (Henry Creel x Reader) 🕷️Chapter 1🕷️

*GIF not mine*

Summary:

Enter: You.

You're nothing but a servant in his home, an intruder in his prized library, and an utter nuisance in his mind. But then you survive his attack, and in an unexpected way nonetheless. That makes you... interesting.

You've caught his eye---congratulations! Now, you must deal with the consequences of loving a heartless prince in a world where far worse things lurk in the castle than dirty garderobes.

A/N: All i ask is that u imagine henry creel’s evil face on jace wayland’s body that’s it that’s all u gotta do, the fic will do the rest. this may or may not be a series, i do have a few ideas for it (but let it be known begging will not speed up the process). one final comment: henry creel hot. Hope you enjoy!

Word count: 4328

Amongst the cobwebs, the dust, and the black widows, in the abandoned royal library surrounded by the scent of mildew and what once was and is no longer, a pair of eyes watched your every move. Like two frozen fingers poking into the back of your skull, the gaze ran chills down your spine and tightened the muscles in your shoulder blades.

Every move you made was stiff. Despite the season outside being spring, winter had found perpetuity within the four towering walls. There were no windows nor any lit chandeliers; the only light was provided by the brass candlestick that had been forced into your hand before you were thrown into the library, with the promise of being released after ten hours or at the the sight of one hundred spotless, unblemished bookshelves—whichever came first.

Decidedly, you had three hours left.

The candle was almost completely diminished to a pool of wax, and the flame on its wick had long weakened and begun flickering. You suspected one last breeze would leave you in complete darkness and at the mercy of whomever was watching you from the shadows. No matter how many times you weaved in and out of the bookshelves that stood at twice your height, five parallel rows of grimy mahogany stacked with fading leather spines, you could not escape the unmistakable feeling.

This person had not made a sound when they had entered the room. There were no new footsteps tracked in the dust layered on the floor aside from yours, and you had not even heard the twin doors creak open as they had when you entered. You couldn’t hear them over your own breathing and certainly not over the pounding of your heart.

With every precarious flick of your feather duster over the worn titles, the clouds of your efforts mingled with those of your own exhales. You kept your gaze low, eyes focused on only the task in front of you with the hope—artificial hope—that if you did not disturb them with your own attention, they would eventually remove theirs from you.

Time trudged by as you shifted from bookshelf to bookshelf, the clogs on your feet scraping the hardwood floors. You kept a wooden chair in tow, collected from one of the tables arranged in the center of the room, and dragged it in closer to the nearest bookshelf, clambering atop the seat and lifting onto your toes to dust the top row of books. The cobwebs were thickest here, spiders having been left to their lonesome far too long and creating their own colony.

You could barely reach and dusted blindly, allowing the length of the feathers to do most of the work as you ignored the cramps festering throughout your calves. A soft gust of wind floated past and tousled the flyaways at your brow, and as you purse your lips to blow them back and out of your lashes, the room flickered and fell into darkness.

The candle had finally gone out.

You squinted and hissed a curse under your breath, your gaze snapping to the outline of the table, where you could barely make out the bowl of wax and nothing more. Just my luck, you thought as you withdrew your feather duster from the bookshelf top. You would have to retrieve a new taper from one of the maids’ closets, though you sincerely doubted the head maid would be all too pleased with your explanation.

Excuses, excuses, you could imagine her barking at you, ire swirling in her small, black eyes. Candles don’t just go out on their own.

“She’ll probably just set my hand on fire and lock me back in here,” you grumbled, huffing as you grabbed the backing of your chair to dismount. A faint tickle on the back of your hand drew your attention. “Hell will freeze over before she—”

Spider.

You yelped, a blasphemy falling from your lips as your clogs slipped on the polished wood seat. Your back hit the ground first, a pained shock shooting from your tailbone up to where your head smacked against the ground with the whiplash of your fall.

White sparkles lit up your vision, and you sputtered out a cough, not bothering to blink them away. An ache throbbed at your lower back, pulsing at the same wavelength as the ringing in your ears and drawing a groan from your lips. An odd smarting festered up your spine, not unlike a chill.

Carefully, you slumped back, your head resting against the hard floor and your legs straightening out. You didn’t want to get back up; you didn’t want to move. For a few moments, you let the pain overcome you while you wheezed for breath, choking on the dust that had become unsettled by your fall. It rose and hung in the dark air around you, blurred and wavering with your heartbeat.

For a few moments, you forgot that someone had been watching you.

And you certainly didn’t want to know where the spider had wound up.

The smallest vibration of light footsteps trembled underneath your fingertips, and a sharp pain shot through your skull. Light, blinding and bright and excruciatingly insistent, is all you can see when the vibration stops and some glowing form hinges over you.

“Not dead,” are the words you think you hear, husked in a monotonous, low gravel and feeding into the loud hum in your head. It’s muffled between the blood pounding in your ears and the hazy confusion that had begun to fog over your mind.

“Not yet, at least.”

You licked your lips, eyes fluttering closed, then open, then closed again. “What?” you mumbled breathlessly.

The glowing form dims, gradually painted by an orange hue. When metal thuds on wood, you guess it must be a candle joining your pool of wax on the table, and before long the presence hovers over you again. Tree sap swarms where the scent of mildewed books had been lingering, and, in a cruel twist of fate, you hazard a guess that this is one of the courtiers the head maid had shrilled about avoiding at all costs.

Or worse—a member of the royal family.

But how? And why? None of them would ever idle about in a damp, endlessly cold library. The smell bordered on revolting, half of the volumes were wrinkled and illegible, and you couldn’t walk two steps inside without grime caking your face and clothes. Not to mention, the spiders. Disgusting, horrid spiders.

Black widows, if the head maid was to be believed.

The wintry library would never be home to festivities of the upper class, not even the occasional unsolicited rendezvous. There were dining rooms and bedrooms and poor, innocent gardens for all the horrific things they did to one another; entire wings dedicated to the sybaritic tendencies of royalty.

But this man before you—oh, how otherworldly he was.

You could believe that he had been the one watching you with how his eyes pierced you in this moment, a being such as him the only one capable of having a tangible effect with a single glance.

You took in his sharp cheekbones, the soft slope of his nose, his slate blue eyes. His face was haloed by mussed, golden hair, and two pale pink lips set against each other as a look of disinterest with ease. His entire appearance, from his lithe figure to the way his eyes dragged over you, exuded a superiority that had been trained to perfection.

Staring at him felt like drinking a sweet wine, far too indulgent and alluring to ever be truly satiated, and yet you know all too well it would be condemning to keep on as you are. You know this man has a rank heavens above yours; his skin, tanned and unblemished, has never felt the dust and dirt that encompasses you every day, and his body has never held your scars.

In your muddled daze, you imagined barreling headfirst into damnation for acquainting with this handsome being. Whether he be a marquess or a lord or, God forbid, even a duke, being seen in such close quarters with him was strictly forbidden, especially with the royal prince’s season for courting beginning in a week.

And then you felt yourself spiraling—you imagined him curling over you, his deft fingers sliding underneath your nape, tracing the curve of your scalp and feeling for injury. You imagined his eyes warming pleasantly as he found you safe and unharmed. You imagined he gave a damn.

But he didn’t. He never would.

His hands fell to his hips, the loosely fitted, half-unbuttoned white tunic he donned exposing more toned skin while he glowered down at you.

He certainly wasn’t going to wax poetic about your welfare.

“No blood.” His head tilted to one side slightly, blond tufts of hair following suit. “And thankfully no mess. I’d have hated to invite yet another servant in here, even if it was to drag your body out.”

A shiver tore through your spine, and you had the most horrible feeling that if you died somehow in this moment, no one would bat an eye—especially not the man before you.

His voice had that regal lilt, the one you could have never gained in your small village outside of the castle. You’d only ever heard it on a few of the higher-ranking maids—certainly none of the girls you had been hired with had such accents either—as well as some passing royalty on your first few days of traipsing the castle with a guide. His voice was deep and raspy, as though he spent his days either growling out orders or not speaking at all. You wonder if that was how he found it so easy to watch you mutely.

Feeling entirely too vulnerable, supine as you were, you brace your hands against the floor and writhe your way into a sitting position, head swimming with vertigo. Bile rises in your throat, and you press your eyes closed, tight, waiting out the wave. The idea that dragging your gaze away from him had played a part in the nausea tickles the back of your mind.

He watches, seeming somewhat interested, as you struggle.

Once, in your small village, a wolf had snuck into the farmer’s fields. You remember watching from your doorway that morning, the sun barely risen, as the wolf tackled a single lamb and began eating it alive.

The blood coated its paws and muzzle. Bones crackled with the snapping jaws. Even after the lamb had stopped squealing, the hunger in the wolf’s eyes never quite seemed satiated.

Something in the man’s and the wolf’s gazes made them indistinguishable to you in that moment.

The cruel sneers and jeering laughs of the royals you’d seen so far could only contain so much antagonism. This man was cut from a different cloth.

His body, all relaxed muscles and agile limbs, had a vigorous, agitated thing running within the veins of his arms, sleeves rolled to the elbows; the cruelty in his mien was something you had only ever encountered in wild animals.

Panic chills the sweat on your brow. Laboriously, you wrench one hand on a bookshelf, hoisting yourself up despite the blaring pain climbing up your spine, and onto your feet. You can feel the weakness in your knees the second you try to take another step, the defiant outcry of your mind and body as you try to move, but the man is so close. The warning sirens in your mind wail.

A hand grapples around your free wrist, insistent and rigid.

“Stop.”

You flinch, and your first instinct is to twist away and run. His grip is iron-tight, though, and without much resistance, he spins you back to face him. Frantically, your eyes once more swallow up his bronze, toned skin in the shadows of his candle, waiting for a strike.

In return, the weight of his gaze bows your shoulders, fostering an urge to find a corner and curl up until you can’t anymore. Something you can scarcely identify flickers through his blue eyes. He’s staring at your wrist, locked in his, and then he’s staring at you, his lips tight and his face hard as stone. Like before, you can feel him searching you, taking note of your every move.

He’s scrutinizing you like a bug, uncertain of just how and in what way to crush you under his heel. It’s the way he had when his gaze was all you knew about him, and you have no trouble imagining yourself splatting underneath his boot.

But a sound rings in the distance, drawing your attention away from him entirely.

Ringing. Ringing like church bells. Ringing like the clang of the metal clapper striking tarnished ocher and rust. The kingdom’s clock tower made the same sound.

A chime, maybe.

Or a knell.

But you were almost positive that sound couldn’t be heard so far away, crammed deeply within the towering castle walls. Especially at its volume.

It chimes again, and you slam both hands to your ears, heart pounding. It’s deafening. You can’t breathe, and you can barely see, still tangled up in the man’s eyes. They’ve grown so cold and strike you so much harder your teeth begin to chatter.

“No,” you whisper, though you’re not quite sure what you’re protesting. “Please.”

His pale lips turn red as he smirks, and every angle of his face sharpens into focus. The room fades into black and white. Musty bindings and rotting pages no longer invade your nostrils. It’s like your brain is shutting off each sense one by one so you can take in more of him.

And you can’t seem to look away.

No.

By the third chime, you can barely feel the pain that had been radiating through your body, and the release is almost blissful. Beckoning. You’re swathed up in the tranquility, ears stuffed with cotton and head buzzing in the silence. When your whole body starts rocking back and forth, waiting for another agonizing chime, your knees begin to feel like rubber, suddenly too malleable to stand upon.

A fourth chime, earsplitting.

They buckle.

You snap your hands forward in a panic, yelping when you stumble.

All your senses return as fast as the pinch of a needle. Blood roars in your ears, and soreness floods your every limb. It’s like trying to squeeze into clothes that have become too small and completely ripping the seams—all the sights, the smells, the feelings overload your brain too quickly, causing it to swell and split open.

Your only lifeline is a radiating source of heat, and you cling to it so hard you're half afraid you might smother it. But when your embrace tightens, so too does your grip on reality. You can almost unscramble your own thoughts again—all the curse words you’ve ever known combined with prayers to the heavens above. Giving yourself into refuge becomes second nature, and you burrow further into the cradle of warmth.

A jolt runs up and down your back, and your skull feels cracked in two.

But the eerie quiet of the library registers anyway. The chiming is gone.

Blissful silence remains, only occasionally pierced by your gasping breaths. You want to nuzzle deeper, the warmth firm and solid, as the simmering underneath your skin wanes, yet there seems to be no space left that your form hasn’t already curled into.

“What just happened?” Your voice wavers, and it echoes back so loudly that you flinch.

You can’t see a thing. The dim outlines of the room fuzz and blend, and if you weren’t standing on your own two feet, you wouldn’t have been able to tell up from down. But the chill still nips at your skin. The library hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed but you.

But there’s no explanation for the bell-ringing, the sensory overload. It must have all been in your head; it feels like any second now, your ears are going to pop and reality will flood back in. You’re alive. But whatever had just happened was as close to death as you could have imagined—

A breath away from becoming nothing.

So what stopped it?

Even more—what started it?

The questions slipped your mind the second you heard the library door creak. The pitiful sound allowed the entrance of sunlight directed by the hallway’s window, and the stiffness of your bones crackled at the thought of even more warmth. You felt half-thawed and left for dead, save for the fount of heat caught in your white-knuckled grasp.

You went still.

Heat.

Heat in the library.

That had to have been one of the most preposterous realities you had imagined since you had first stepped foot in here seven hours ago—and you had raked through your mental fantasies quite thoroughly in that time.

Carefully, as though jaws might snap at you from the darkness, you withdrew your arms from the motionless frame and craned your head upward.

Dear God.

The man was even more beautiful when washed in distant sunlight. Heart-wrenchingly so. More alluring when his hair glowed golden, combed back waves ending neatly at his nape. More potent when his gaze speared yours, his arms limp at his sides, elbows brushing the backs of your hands at his waist.

Terribly heady.

Five seconds passed before you caught on to your ill deed, and his white tunic fluttered from the speed at which you pulled away from him. When his slender fingers twitched in tandem, you could only assume that, had you waited another second, he would have grasped your wrists so tightly the bones would have snapped.

How could you? Oh God, this was it. It’s all over.

You’re seized under his watchful eye, his face washed over with rage, or vexation, or downright disgust at your entirely-too-close, worthy-of-execution contact.

Certainly, it could not be the wonder you had initially thought it was.

That was just not possible.

Impossible.

Maybe.

“YN!”

You jump when the library’s twin doors slammed open, a crotchety, accented voice rattling against the shelves. The clomping of two clogs no different than yours—though, possibly better polished—thunder towards the pair of you, located by your and his candlesticks, stained brass and glossy gold sitting side by side on the oak center table.

The head maid—Miss Miriam Swinebottom, which, in your humble opinion, was evidence that fate did in fact understand the concept of justice—was a woman of an angular, acidic countenance. Two beady eyes sunk deep into her skull like snakes nestled within a tumbleweed, and she had the capacity for two emotions: disappointment and fury. With a distaste for all things insouciant, the skeletal woman wielded the newly hired maids like an army of rats; she sent all of you scuttling over every inch of the castle and cleaning until your bodies were slow and stiff as though submerged in deep water.

And you had no doubt that, the second that gaze fell upon you, she was out for blood. The terror that began pulsing in every nerve was no different than when you had first noticed the foreboding air around the blond man. You were not going to get out of this without a scratch.

Miss Miriam took in you first, but not for long. Soon enough, both of you, as one incriminating sight, were being ascertained.

You knew what she saw.

One of her new maids, no better than the grime beneath her shoe, inches away from a royal.

Unseasoned in the ways of the castle, naive to the new problem you’ve just sprouted, a true simpleton for what you’ve done. You.

You, with unsteady eyes and flushed cheeks, his shirt unbuttoned, blond hair tousled.

Fresh meat.

Dead meat.

And you hadn’t even done anything.

You stumble back another step and hesitate to make an excuse. Words, you’d learned, were no better than handing Miss Miriam a switch. Best stay silent and pray for mercy.

Or, rather, for a quick recovery.

Curiosity slips out of your hands, and you sneak a glance at the man.

He’s wicked all over again. Somewhat unimpressed by the turn of events, he appears, but the emotion mingles with a strong sense of antagonism no nobility can seem to restrain. You’re only half-glad looks can’t kill. Miss Miriam would be worse off than six feet deep by now.

To your surprise, she does not snatch you away with promises of a beating. She doesn’t get a step closer.

Instead, the head maid folds into a low curtsy, then rises back up, bowing her head. “Your Highness.”

You tense at her actions, mind falling blank.

No. He couldn’t be.

Your Highness? Your Highness?

But as his gaze trails away from her and back to you, his face abruptly void, you can only stagger back another step, knees giving way into a curtsy as you copy Miss Miriam.

Waiting.

He is.

His Royal Highness, Crown Prince of the Creel Dynasty.

And here you had been, none the wiser, completely ignorant to the danger you’d just placed yourself in.

For a long, excruciating moment, nothing happens. He does not touch you, nor does he move. The only sound filling the room is bated breath and whispering winds.

Prince Henry. The prized catch of all the kingdoms. Aristocracy who’d never even scoff at a servant like you were here to court him.

And you’d been so close—you could still feel the ghost of his warmth under your fingertips.

A huff perks your ears, but you bite your tongue, waiting. He moves, one slow footstep at a time, nearing you with his polished, leather boots. You watch them as they grow closer.

You watch them as they hesitate in front of you.

And then you watch them as they pass, each thump of leather against hardwood further and further away until there’s no doubt he has left the library.

The older maid hitches a second longer before she rises, spitting your name like bile. “YN.” Her footsteps thunder toward you, and you barely have time to straighten before she has an iron grip on your upper arm, hauling you out of the room.

“You had such a simple task. Clean the library and get out.” She grits her teeth, eyes flaring. “No one has used it in a decade, and yet what do I find but a dusty library and you. You, whoring yourself around the prince. And you said you weren’t a wench before I hired you.”

She leads you down the castle’s marble hallways, dim from the setting sun yet well-lit by the sconces lining the walls. No matter how much you stumble and grunt, she drags you after her into the servants’ wing, swiftly finding the maids’ hall and barging you through the doorway.

The room falls silent when the door slams shut, and while no crowd gathers, you are certainly the center of attention to the maids awaiting attending dinner. Stomachs are rumbling, but you have no doubt they would rather feast their eyes on this spectacle first.

Tears pinch at the bridge of your nose. You can’t cry; you didn’t want to be one of the maids that cried. Those that did were in the latter half of the new hires who were younger than you. And you weren’t a little girl anymore.

No crying.

But, oh, you were scared when Miss Miriam paraded you in front of the others, hissing warnings and threats of punishment for girls who did what you had done.

“-traipsing herself around in front of a most respected royal.” Black, burning eyes latch back onto you. “Tell me, YN, what did you think would happen?”

You flinch.

There’s no point in looking to others for help. You don’t know them well enough to have friends. It’s been three days, and only one name has stuck.

But you know it’s a sea of pity, disappointment, and nervous movement flowing back and forth.

“It,” your voice cracks, and you pause, blinking rapidly. Another older maid, same regal accent, same strict demeanor, same gaze hissing you deserve this you deserve this you deserve this, approaches from behind. “It was an accident—”

You reel back into her waiting arms with a yelp. A stinging burn lances at your cheek, and if you hadn’t seen Miss Miriam’s bony hand fall back to her side, you would have thought she’d slashed open your cheek with an average kitchen knife.

A seasoned backhand. Was there anything worse?

Miss Miriam stepped back, her appearance leaning more towards irate than strictly furious. She turned away from you, searching the walls of the dormitory. Though you had never seen it before, it hung on the wall with a single nail and a small, looped string on the handle.

A riding crop, yet you had the distinct feeling it had never been used on horses before.

“No,” you plead when swift fingers begin untying your garment backing. “Please, it—it was an accident!” You try to yank away, but the crop swings at your head. When you lurch back, the fingers resume and Miss Miriam simply tilts her head.

Dread claws up your throat. The edges of your vision begin contracting with your heart beat, while a shrill voice in your head begins screaming to run, to get out, to escape. Cold air assaults your bare back, and when you feel the tears begin to fall, the maid spins you around, presenting the stripped canvas of flesh to the others.

“Let this be a lesson to you all, girls,” Miss Miriam announces. “This is not a whorehouse. You are not here to prostitute yourselves to royalty. You will not even look at them.” Her voice directs towards you, “They will certainly not look at you.”

You scream when the crop comes down, the white walls blurring, and the skin of your back wails at the betrayal.

The tears don’t stop for hours.

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