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pfhwrittes · 3 days ago

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ichor tongue; salted wounds

simon ghost riley x fem!reader | warlord x servant | masterlist

Chapter Two: mouse

tw: non-con groping, dub-con, nudity, bathing, mouth kink, minor spit play

You stare at your palms the entire way to the bath house.

Indentations still plague your skin, nettling deep into the thick tissue where it saves the memory of the brush you clutched in your hands. Sturdy wood and bristles thick enough to shed long rotting skin. You attempt to recall the last time someone had ever got your hands to curl, either out of indignation or panic, yet nothing comes to mind; not much phases you these days.

Ghost is sure to change this, you think. The tips of his toes nip at your heels as you lead him through the palace, and you’re certain you feel his breath huffing on the back of your neck. He looms. Lowering clouds kissing the horizon, promising a flood, promising lightning and destruction. You’d feel the wrath of the sky if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s already fallen upon your city. You see it in the changing of banners in the corridors; pristine white and silver cloth like wispy clouds are now replaced with red and gold, and an unfamiliar crest—the symbol of barbarians, of your new leaders. The storm has come and passed, and you’re wading through the aftermath. Through the lingering destruction that lies at your feet.

There is a detached bath house that lies away from the palace, past the garden and just before a steep trail that leads down to a placid cove. The building winks in your periphery as it stands outside the windows while your feet carry you further down the corridor. It is one that’s saved for servants and soldiers. Anyone expendable. Anyone deemed not important. Communal, and with a single pool, it’s a great source of socialization where people sit among the curved stone, lathering each other’s backs, or diving into the depths of the water.

It is a place free from prying eyes. Free from judgement of the superiors, of the aristocrats, of the kings one step below the gods themselves.

Once, you attempted to use the same water as the others when rain had punished your city for a near week straight. Voices echoing off of the stone walls, wet skin glistening in the shrouded sunlight, they all fell silent the moment you entered. They questioned what you were doing there knowing full well you could not answer, only point in the water that they shared with one another, but refused to share with you.

I’d rather share water with a pig.

Caenis. That was the name of the servant who spat at you, sneering at the way your feet uncomfortably tapped at the marble floor knowing there was nothing you could do to spit back. No one has ever been kind to you since you lost your tongue and your parents, but no one has been quite as cruel as her. Pristine skin left unmarred, laying with soldiers to get favors, living as an underground princess beneath Emperor Shepherd’s very nose, she always gets her way.

But you do not take Ghost to the same place the servants bathe—to the very place where you were made a fool of—instead, you bring your new lord to the same chambers Emperor Shepherd used when he still drew breath. Private. Quiet. Held with the decorum expected to be given to a ruler.

It is a small room adorned with stone nestled far back in the palace, well away from foot traffic and echoing conversations. A round hole cuts deep into the floor with stairs to lead to the bottom, and a lipped ridge to sit on. It reaches deep enough to kiss your hips, and is wide enough for you to stretch your arms, but not much more. Private. Not meant for sharing. A hand lever pump that joins directly to the aquifer stands towards the back of the room, waiting to fill the carved tub to the brim. Grandiose, this bath is one of the single greatest wastes of drinking water, second only to the ever flowing fountains that peasants sneak sips out of when soldiers aren’t looking.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Ghost murmurs. Stepping around you, he marches to the side of the tub, curiously eyeing the craftsmanship. Engraved in the stone are various creatures of the sea. Clams, gulls, schools of fish and animals from ancient stories—krakens, ship eating squids, merpeople luring unsuspecting men to shore. “All this artistry for a man who starved his people.”

Now, it’ll be wasted on you. A wretched and unkind way to think, but it springs to mind. The blood that taints his skin. The scrapes on his arms. How many civilians did he cut down for this one spoil? For a bath soiled by another wretched man?

Ghost looks to you as if expecting an answer, but you instead direct him to a wooden table against the wall behind him that holds all of Emperor Shepherd’s old oils and soaps. There are countless ones with various scents, consistencies, and medicinal effects crafted by the best artisans. He only scoffs at them.

“Need me clean and smellin’ like a pansy?” he grumbles.

Still, he offers you reprieve in distracting himself as you work on filling the tub. Ensuring that the metal plug is in place, you begin to pump water from the spigot, allowing it to gush and wet the stone at your feet. You are grateful it is not designed like a regular pump. It flows long after you’ve stopped working it, water still gushing from the pressure, spilling and babbling as if it were a waterfall. What should take you hundreds of pumps only takes you fifty before it’s full enough to bathe in.

Not bothering to wait for your direction, Ghost removes his chiton with a stiff grunt while his shoulders pop. Now that you no longer look at him in terror, you take note of all the wounds he’s gathered from the battle. There’s nothing of importance. Nothing that would take his life now or later when the wound goes bad and rotten. He shamelessly struts before you, flaccid cock swinging between his legs, broad shoulders swaying and knees groaning as he steps into the water, hissing at the way the frigidness kisses his skin, smoothing over each injury.

When you realize he hasn’t pointed out a preferred soap, you squeeze your eyes shut and breathe out your frustration before approaching the table yourself. Lavender. Lemongrass. Mint. Yes, mint will do. You grab the bar before you kneel at the ledge of the pool just next to Ghost, hands dipping in the water and lathering it as best as you can.

“I don’t think you’ll be able to clean me from there,” Ghost deadpans. Pausing, you turn your attention to him. His elbows are on the ledge, head tilting to the side to look at you. “I’m a big boy.” As if to prove his point, he stretches his legs just as he rolls his hips. You try not to let the distorted image of his cock through the water distract you. “Gonna be hard to reach all of me if you’re sittin’ pretty by that ledge.”

You freeze. Prey caught in the sights of a predator. If he wanted to, Ghost could gralloch you right here with his bare hands—nails digging through your navel, splitting you open, turning his bathwater pink. You clutch the bar of soap so tightly it nearly slips from your hands, and you opt to hold it against your stomach instead.

“C’mon then,” he urges, not impatient but rather intrigued. “In the water, little bird.”

Knowing better than to deny a powerful man his whims, you stand to your feet and pitifully trudge to the stairs. Ghost watches you like a vulture licks its beak over carrion, waiting to peck and tear flesh—to devour something rotten and whole. But you are a defiant creature to an extent. With no tongue to sing with, you hold onto what little power you have left. You do not shed your chiton before descending the stairs, cotton turning wispy in the algid water, hugging your body tight and tangling around your shins as you wade towards your relaxed warlord. The cold has your nipples hardening through the cloth, but you pay them no attention as you keep your chin high and your lips tight.

He’s chuckling by the time you’re standing in front of him. Thick fingers tap against the stone at his back as he watches you wordlessly begin to wash him up. You start with his hands. His knuckles are split like grapes that are too ripe, but he doesn’t hiss at the sting. Meaty palms nearly devour your own hands, fingers and all, and you try not to pay too much attention to the way he seems to linger against you as you swipe the grime out from beneath his fingernails.

Tendons pull taught in his forearms once you begin moving up. There are countless scars to trace. Deep ones that deform his skin, to lighter, silvery ones. Your knees knock against the sitting stone as you lean forward, reaching further along him, body bending at your hips.

“D’ya always make things so difficult for yourself?” Ghost questions. Pausing, you look at his face for further explanation, brows nearly furrowing, but he seems to be waiting for something. On someone. For you. When you don’t respond, he sighs—then, he grabs. Hands slicing through the water, fingers digging into your hips, he pulls you towards him until your legs are spread wide around his thighs, rump resting in his lap. You gasp at the sudden movement, and a smirk pulls at his scarred lips. “Better?”

Mind still spinning from the sudden movement, you attempt to distract yourself with your task only to realize that the soap has slipped from your hands. It floats along the surface, half buoyant and ready to sink, drifting further from your reach. You point at it, finger trembling too viciously to truly follow, but Ghost grabs your face. Thumb and forefinger digging into your cheeks, he turns your head towards him before releasing you.

“I don’t care ‘bout the soap, little bird,” he says. His fingers drift from your face, down your neck, and to your collarbones. You pray to the gods that he cannot feel the way your heart thunders in your body. “Don’t care ‘bout the bath either. Just wanna hear you sing.”

Dipping between your breasts, his hands grab your chiton and then pull. Thread yanks apart, linen ripping down your sternum, bosom on full display as the remaining tatters slip down your arms. Another gasp from you has him humming with pride as you look down at yourself, hardened nipples dancing with each shuddering breath you exhale. No one has ever exposed you like this—so scandalously on display before your lord like a whore.

“This is what you wanted, yeah?” Ghosts questions. His hands are on your chest now, palms cupping both your breasts, swallowing them whole with the ever growing cavern in his eyes until he drifts up to view your befuddled face. Despite the water, he’s warm. Too warm. Sweltering against your skin, the mixture of hot and cold threatens to undo you. “Or are you really expectin’ me to believe that a pretty thing like you would waltz into my room to serve me so willingly? Watched me conquer your city, now you want me to do the same to you, is that it? C’mon, pretty bird. Sing.”

Ghost pinches you where you are soft and tender. The ripening bud of your nipple screams as he squeezes it between his finger and thumb, and it’s as if the sky is angry. Billowing clouds. Cracks of thunder and lightning rippling throughout your body. Your mouth opens enough for a squeak just as your body jolts, and he relents. Pauses. Eyes darkening, head tilting—Ghost looks at you with a fading smile and pursing brows.

Then, he demands; “Open your mouth.”

The softest part of you. Ripe flesh around a peach pit. Teeth like brittle sand dollars waiting to crumble. You obey. You always do.

Lips parting just enough to open, Ghost hooks his thumb into your mouth without warning where he finds purchase behind your bottom teeth, then pulls. Jaw wide open, you stare at him as he peers into your mouth, and you note when he sees it. You. How you were marred beyond recognition. Humming, his thumb dips lower into the space that would harbor the soft tissue beneath your tongue if it were still here. A phantom tells you that you feel it; him. Prodding beneath the wet muscle. A bitter memory of what you once had.

“I see.” He fits two fingers into your mouth and rides them along the ridges of your teeth. You feel him count each one. He presses against the edge. Each point. Enough for your jaw to ache. Nearly enough to draw blood. “You’re no bird. You’re a little mouse, yeah?”

Soft palate now. Dragging forward. Hard palate. Incisors. Then, cheek. Hook and drag, saliva gathering on the tips of his fingers, running over the smooth skin and the indentations left from your teeth.

“I’d ask who did this, but I have a feelin’ I already know. It was that bastard Shepherd, yeah?” Ghost questions with a hum. With his fingers still in your mouth, you nod. “Dirty cunt. This isn’t fresh either.”

He pushes further towards the back of your throat where the mangled remnants of your tongue lie. A branch cut too short on a tree, too much scar tissue and no reach. The nub pushes against the back of your throat as you swallow, skin melting beneath Ghost’s gaze.

This is the most bare you’ve ever been in front of someone. Breasts spilling from ripped cotton, mouth open, lips wrapping around a stranger’s fingers as he pokes and prods at your greatest source of shame—of the hellfire and scorn wrought upon you that still lingers as embers and the smouldering remains of your past.

Eventually, Ghost retrieves his fingers from your mouth, pulling them out slow and steady, prodding at your front teeth before his own lips part. Then, they’re in his mouth. Tongue lapping at your saliva, humming content at the flavor you can no longer taste—a sapor long forgotten. A shaky exhale fans across his face as you watch his eyes dilate. He has kind eyes, you think. A stark difference from the ruggedness strewn across his body, scars like mountains, bruises like valleys. They are soft. Warm like the rocks you sunbathe on after cleaning yourself with the brine of the ocean. Warm like the heated iron used to cauterize your tongue.

“This city was bequeathed to me,” Ghost says, fingers popping free from his mouth before placing his hands on your hips. His thumbs wander. Rubbing, repetitive and soft against your waist, sending water singing around your bodies. “Everythin’ here belongs to me. Includin’ you.”

Perhaps in another life his words would make your stomach churn, but the prospect of being owned by yet another ruler does not phase you. It’s something you require, now. Someone to take care of. Someone to serve. His words prompt you to nod, but his fingers squeeze against you and you freeze—a rabbit ensnared, a doe catching scent on the wind, a little girl kneeling before a man playing god.

“But unlike Shepherd, I take care of my things. I don’t go destroyin’ things that could be easily fixed or corrected. And you—” Ghost pulls you closer, body dragging across his lap and chiton bleeding around you in the bath, forcing your hands to brace against his shoulders to steady yourself as water sloshes around you “—might just be my favorite possession yet.”

For the first time you can recall, something besides fear or contempt swells in your chest. It is not pride, nor flattery, but something deeper. A beast with its maw opened wide, waiting to swallow something—but what? You? Unsure of what to do—here, in your city’s usurper's lap—you nod. You cannot name if it’s because you are saying you understand him, or if you’re agreeing with him.

You tell yourself it’s the latter, but each beat of your heart strangely sounds like yes please, let me be something, anything more than this, something of importance, let me be useful, please let me mean something.

Either way, Ghost chuckles before he taps your hips, legs stretching out behind you. The added buoyancy of the water allows him to move you easier, weightlessness taking over your body as if you’re caught in some sort of dream.

“C’mon, little mouse,” he prompts. “No prized possession of mine will walk ‘round wearin’ rags like these. I like to rip through somethin’ of substance before I eat.”

follow @mother-ilia to be notified of updates | get early access to chapters here

*full story is currently up for early access, updates will be posted every sunday night (may be a different day depending on time zones)

#elmo on fire dot gif #YEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #sr

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pfhwrittes · 3 days ago

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a scene can start wherever you want it to

writing isn't real life. You don't need to set up a character walking into a room or two characters greeting each other and talking about the weather or what-have-you in order to lead into the conversation you actually want them to have. just start at the conversation.

hell, start in the middle of the conversation. you could even start at the end and then have one of them leave and the other one left behind to reflect back on what just happened.

writing gets easier when you open yourself up to writing the parts that are interesting, to starting where it's easy instead of where you think you should start.

if it ends up not working? that's okay. you tried it, and sometimes just getting something out of your head is a necessary first step to getting the words right

#writing advice #if you’ve read my stuff you know i’m a big fan of just… putting the audience in the middle of a scene #do i explain? sometimes #take my hand we’re experiencing emotions

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pfhwrittes · 4 days ago

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As Your Skin Gives

ghoap x fem!reader | pet!au | masterlist

Chapter Nine: savior

tw: non-con

That night, you sleep in the kennel.

It’s supposed to be Simon’s punishment for you—an unfortunate comeuppance for hurting his boy the way you did—denying you the warm bed he so benevolently gave you like any good owner would. Johnny’s blood still stains you. His swirling fingerprints burn into the dips of your hips as they dry a dull brown. This evidence of your transgression further taints you—as if the seed burrowing into your womb isn’t enough. As if you haven’t been ruined well past the point of fixing.

Johnny and Simon hold one another like lovers. Watching them from between the bars of your kennel, you realize you don’t think you’ve ever heard either of them speak so softly. Wolves and rabid dogs are always so vicious to humans that you often forget just how soft they can be with members of their pack. Tangled limbs, lips smacking against skin, gentle whispers—they sleep soundly while you nurse scrapes and bruises. Licking your wounds, you wonder if you’ve also become more dog than human; if they’ve forced this transformation on you after giving you no other way to survive. Evolving just to better take their beatings.

In reality, the thin padding and stiff bars that make up your bed are more comforting than either of them have ever been, and you sleep as well as your body aches allow you to. Come morning, it hurts worse. Battered knees scraped from the hardwood floor, achy hips and lower back, a throbbing pain in the side of your face. Nothing beats the wound in the pit of you. The bleeding that taints the insides of your thighs. The screaming of your cervix. Johnny chewed you up from the inside out and slept like a log afterwards.

Why wouldn’t he? He got what he wanted from you.

Heavy feet hit the ground, stirring your eyes until they open, and you see Simon’s figure towering over you. Johnny lays behind him on the bed, toned and scarred back gently rising and falling with each of his sleeping breaths. Your vision becomes obscured as Simon kneels, fingers lazily undoing the lock on your kennel before swinging the door open. His lips pull into a bitter line as he stares at you, virulent eyes still unimpressed with your actions last night.

“Up,” he orders bluntly.

Disobeying him is not a choice, so you crawl. Fatigued arms push your body off the floor while your hands and knees shake as you pull yourself out from the bars that held you captive all night—he watches you squirm. Takes joy in the way you wince as you push yourself to your feet. He does not offer you help, nor does he bark at you to go faster, he is just there. Some malevolent being that gets off on the way you stand, doubled over with your hands resting on your stomach because maybe if you can hold the aching parts of you together, then you can prevent the throe from killing you.

“Bathroom. Go on,” he says, pointing toward the door.

Trudging out of the bedroom feels like a funeral procession with Simon looming behind you the way he does. Stalking. Pushing you around as if you’re some toy. A dog. Bonnie. Anything but yourself. Forever called by the wrong name instead of the one your parents gave you, the one your mother always whispered to you in the night when the nightmares came to haunt you.

Simon runs the bath and motions for you to get in while it’s filling up. Frigid tile cools your feverish skin, and for a fleeting moment it feels emollient against your aches and bruises before it bites. Such little reprieve. It’s a fleeting sense of comfort that dissipates the moment he begins to clean you up, rough hands scrubbing away dried blood and sour sweat. You flinch when his fingers run between your thighs, cunt terribly swollen and throbbing with each beat of your heart. He huffs, annoyed with your pain—as if the events of last night shouldn’t have hurt you at all—and he continues despite it.

He presses between your labia, clearing out the stale blood and congealed cum. Each swipe leaves you cleaner, yet you’ve never felt more squalid. There’s a taint that runs bone deep inside of you—you’d have to destroy yourself to get rid of it. Lay your bones out to bleach in the sun and to be picked clean by the birds who mock you from the window; maybe then you’d finally be free from this filth.

Next, it’s your hands. You recall his promise to you as he scrubs the grime off of your palms; how he would break every bone in your body if you ever hurt Johnny again. He’s thinking of it too—you’re certain of it. There’s too much time he spends languidly cleansing something that was hardly filthy to begin with. He wants to. He has to. Craves feeling the fracture of your fingers in the meat of his hand. You wonder if there will ever come a time where you’re no longer Johnny’s toy, but Simon’s punching bag. Something to bend and squeal for him when his scorn swells too large for him to hide and the poor mutt has grown too bored with you to care.

“No more accidents,” he says. Dark eyes scan your face as he drops your hand, arm lifelessly falling into the water behind it. When you swallow, the collar around your throat only seems to grow tighter.

“No more accidents,” you repeat.

You hardly see much of Johnny once you’re finished with your bath. He stays hidden behind closed doors with Simon in the darkened bedroom well out of sight. Limp and lifeless, he lays on his stomach with a pack of ice resting on the back of his neck. The skin beneath it reddens into a dusty pink, skin freezing beneath its algid presence. It’s the last you’re allowed to view of him before you’re done dressing and Simon locks you out of the room.

You look this manna in the face and take it, making sure to hold it close as you curl up on the old sofa in the living room. There is a stain on the floor that is not visible to the naked eye, but you feel its presence linger. It’s acrid. Seeps into your skin until it strangles you worse than your collar. Worse than a deadly pair of hands. You stare at that spot where you were defiled—where football announcers and crowds cheered, egging on your abusers as you were torn to shreds; devoured, blood and all.

This is dead air. A rot that needs to be expunged.

A creak accompanies the window as you open it, airing out the room and all its sins. A summer storm looms in the distance as caliginous clouds gather overhead, skirting so low they nearly brush against the towering treetops of the woods you’ve found yourself trapped in for these countless weeks. Wind tugs at the loose branches and thin leaves of the willow tree in the garden, and you notice your bouquet has wilted in its shade. Shriveled stems. Curled petals like flies rotting in a forgotten home. The beautiful flowers have been dead for quite some time. Would it have been better to bring them inside? To keep nourishing them?

You shake your head.

No. It wouldn’t have been.

Johnny does not join you for dinner—it is just you and Simon. Head lowered, you eat your meal quietly so as to not rouse the beast sitting across from you, but you already have. Each bite he shovels into his mouth is accompanied by an unwavering gaze, eyes like shadow boring through you, as if each chomp of his maw is meant for you and not his food. It is a miracle that he allows you to leave the dining room without a chunk of flesh missing.

Rain begins just as the gloam settles and smothers the thick foliage of the forest in bitter penumbra. You watch as droplets tap against the window and as you focus on your reflection in the glass, you pretend as if the streams of water are the tears you cannot afford to sob. Simon calling your name—fake name, terrible name, wretched name—drowns out the pitter patter of drops like nails on a chalkboard, and your shoulders involuntarily hunch at the clamor. It’s firm. Cutting. You turn as his monstrous feet stomp down the hallway, and when he enters the room he stares through you.

“Bed time, Bonnie,” he urges.

Johnny’s hiding his face from the lamp on the nightstand. Nose nuzzling underneath his arm, face buried into his pillow—he looks like a corpse. Motionless. His body hardly shifts with his breaths and the smallest sense of pity flickers through you. There was so much blood last night. It covered you like a wool blanket.

How badly did you hurt him? Why are you finding yourself caring?

Laying next to him feels like lowering yourself into a grave. Blankets cover your form like tightly packed dirt holding your casket down, and you stay frozen well after Simon kills the light. But your heart doesn’t. It thrashes and squirms in your chest, attempting to break out of its confinement and run. To do the very thing you are not strong enough to do.

You are a good person. At least, that’s what you’ve been told. A kind smile and a heart of gold—maybe that’s why you’re in this mess. Too polite to call out the creep lurking in the corner at the pub, that hunter tracking down fresh meat just by scent alone. He’s ripped out that heart and smelted the metal down into the chains that bind you to the mutt that rests next to you.

If you were a bad person, perhaps you’d still be living.

In the morning, after Simon has gone to work and the sun has risen just high enough to dance across his skin, Johnny wakes. It comes slow like a gentle drip from a faucet. Trickling. His eyes flutter open where they’re met with the view of your face. Slightly chapped lips and a light abrasion on your cheek etch and scratch out the kinder features of your skin.

His touch is light but your sleep is lighter; a fragile thing that easily shatters at a mere glance. Bleary vision slowly fills with his face as he thumbs over your cheek. You try not to flinch at the sting. He whispers a good morning to you, but you stay silent as you study him. Bloodshot eyes contrast dramatically against his crystalline irises, but there is no mark on his nose. Not a hint of discoloration or scratch—no memory of your transgression except for in your own skin.

“I’m not mad at you,” Johnny whispers. “For hitting me. I know it was an accident.”

You swallow. It’s not surprising that Johnny isn’t mad. He never seemed mad or upset at anything since you’ve known him, and you don’t think he’s capable of it. Always kind despite his bite. Always looking at you with soft eyes and pouting lips. You are glad. Rage is better suited for Simon, the monster who can’t seem to stand being near you.

“I was worried about you,” you whisper back. It’s only half a lie. Curious is perhaps a better replacement for worried. Confused as to why he had spent the entire day rotting away.

“No need to worry. Just had a migraine. I get them sometimes. It wasn’t because of you, I promise. I’ve been hit harder than that,” he chuckles.

A gentle simper pulls at your lips, but it hurts. Achy, unused muscles contort the raw skin of your cheek, and it vanishes just as soon as it appears. You study him, scrutinize every detail of his face until you land back on that small keloid by his temple. It’s magnetic, the way it pulls you in. Fingers gracing against the puffy scar, you trace it as if you can read the story in the damaged cells.

“I guess you have.” It’s supposed to be humorous, but it falls flatly out of your mouth.

His eyes widen. Dilate until that oceanic blue is swallowed up by the void of his pupils. He leans into your touch, trying to soak up all the affection that isn’t there, and he moves closer. Hot breath fans across your face and you find yourself stiffening—a prey being stalked by a predator.

“I wasn’t hit here,” he admits. “I was shot.”

“Shot?” you repeat.

He nods, face nuzzling closer to yours. His admittance puts a pit in your stomach. Something with twisting roots that don’t care that they’ve run out of space in your stomach. They travel up—burrowing deep into your esophagus until you’re choking on your words.

“Who did that?” you question cautiously.

Johnny’s throat bobs underneath his collar as he stares at you. Eyelids flutter as his gaze darts around your face like he’s watching a movie. A scene by scene replay of something he can’t look away from. His thumb drops from your cheek and instead clasps over your hand, pressing your fingers into him.

“A bad man. A very bad man,” he whispers. “But don’t worry. Simon saved me.”

Closing his eyes, Johnny sighs long and deep, relishing your softness against the abrasive scar you caress. It’s only a microdose of what he truly desires. More. Always more. This insatiable being. His hand falls from yours, palm resting flat on the mattress as the two of you lay in silence.

Quiet trepidation bubbles in your stomach as you continue to trace over that scar. This entry wound. You think of Simon’s rifle and your stomach turns so violently your vision begins to darken. No, Simon wouldn’t hurt him. Couldn’t. It would ruin him to hurt his obedient pet in such a way. Look at what he did to you over a bloody nose. Surely he wouldn’t stand for a fractured skull.

Surely.

Your hand retracts from his skin as if the very thought alone ignites your DNA. Burns your neurons and nerves until you’re nothing but a body filled with soot and ash. A pyre waiting to be lit.

Johnny mourns the loss of your touch, and his dull eyes open once again. He stares into nothing. Into some forgotten space behind you as if you’re cellophane. His fingers begin to wander, and for the first time, it’s not toward you. Nails scrape against soft bedding as he touches the leather clasped around his throat. Muscles tense and freeze, pulse throbbing to the point you can see it jut out of his skin. He thumbs over his nametag like it’s the first time he’s ever felt it.

“This is home. Simon saved me. Just like he saved you.”

A reminder, you realize—but to you, or to him?

follow @mother-ilia to be notified of updates | get early access to chapters here

#oh bonnie :((#my poor sweet girl #kore you write such a beautiful tragedy you really do #stomach churning as always my love 💜#sr #jm

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pfhwrittes · 4 days ago

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simon riley x reader

18+

contains: no reader pronouns, survivalist themes (it’s not described what happened, but something has happened), mentions of hunger and eating, mentions of hunting animals, the smallest hint at cannibalism, poor hygiene, body odour, male masturbation, hints at dacryphilia, impressions of somnophilia, handjob, face riding (there is no description of reader’s genitalia), illusions to free use, mentions of penetrative unprotected sex, brief mention of urination, non-descriptive mentions of murder.

on the first day, there was nobody.

not a soul. not for miles, at least. still and dead and dead and dead quiet. if there was a pin around to drop? you’d have heard it.

but it was just you. it was hard to tell if that was reassuring or not.

the more there is nobody, the more there is a chance for somebody. an unexpected somebody.

the last person on earth hears a knock at the door- something like that.

but there is no knock, at least, not for now.

in the first week, there are still no signs of life.

you’re sure, from the direction of the sun, that you’re heading east.

you really hope you’re heading east.

what you’re hoping to find? anyone’s guess.

anyone if there was anyone out there.

you set up camp against the cold rubble of stone. it’s always cold now. it’s like, when the people went away, the sun followed.

you know the sun is out there, you’re following it- you can physically see it. you just can’t feel it.

maybe that’s a secret of the universe you were never meant to discover. many bodies means heat, maybe people were the key after all.

maybe it was always about company.

you remember company.

a distant memory. how long has it been since you’ve heard another voice? fuck-

how long has it been since you last spoke?

“hello.”

how strange is that? you know nobody is out there, yet the first thing you say just to test your voice- it’s a greeting.

a hoarse greeting, at that. rubs your throat the wrong way and it squeaks on its way out, sound broken by underused vocal chords.

nice to know you still have a voice, even if nobody is around to hear it. suppose the tree does make a sound when it falls.

your greeting to a vast and empty loneliness, you worry that you might’ve welcomed it in. you resign yourself to delusion when you hear it.

in the first month, the emptiness talks back.

“where’d you come from?”

the emptiness has a name, simon.

for a man all dressed in black with only a smattering of white, he enters your life in full screaming colour.

ironic for a man of so few words.

you both spend the first day together parallel to one another. silence, sat either side of the fire you’d been stoking since you’d arrived in this spot.

there’d been minimal exchange of words, no more than needed.

your names. where you came from. how you’d ended up here. what you had on you.

and, no- you hadn’t seen anyone else.

simon looks angry, as much as you can tell from his eyes. his balaclava looks like it stinks but it looks warm so it makes sense.

he looks tough, but he looks strong. well fed.

you wonder how he’s managed to remain the size that he has with the dwindling supplies he’d gotten his hands on. a paranoid part of you wonders if he’s hiding more from you.

it’s the rumbling of your stomach. when it gets quiet, it starts speaking to you- tells you to do things you normally wouldn’t.

you’d managed to get out of dodge with the bare essentials, with the time that has passed, you’re running on empty.

the hunger allows you to understand the previously unanswered. that, perhaps, some of the cruelest people of our times were just hungry.

once you snap out of it, you realise that what he produced from his rucksack was really just that. few tins, some muesli bars, some non-descript silver pouches.

you study the pouches like you’ve discovered fire, turning them round in your hands like squeezing the edges will tell you what you’re holding.

“it’s freeze dried cottage pie.”

oh, he’s military.

simon proves himself very useful.

strings you both a bivouac. keeps the fire going even when it rains. makes the food stretch for miles.

your stomach aches in a way that becomes less noticeable. it aches of an ungrateful privilege to have once been fed so well.

at night, you dream of standing in the refrigerator light with a handful of whatever you wanted. in your dreams, you eat with your eyes shut and don’t even care to see what it is.

when you wake, simon pushes a crushed snack bar into your hand and you look at it with both eyes. you eat it very slowly.

simon tells you that you need to move camp.

he doesn’t tell you why but he says it with such conviction that you don’t care to ask.

he slings your bag on his shoulder without asking. probably because it means nothing to him, broad shoulders carrying everything else you have to your names.

he makes you walk ahead of him. in the silence, you can only hear the crunch of gravel underfoot combined with the tide of his breathing.

he breathes like high tide, big chest with crashing waves. he doesn’t huff like he’s unfit, he just breathes loudly. he’s a quiet man but his presence is loud.

that and his breath fucking stinks.

you’re no sunday morning, either. water is reserved for drinking, the minute you can find camp near a running water source? that’s when you can wash.

until then, you’re both ripe and unpleasant to be around.

but maybe it’s all about company.

simon finds you both a flat piece of sod, tucked under an overhang. he fashions the shelter so that the rain will run straight off it.

he’s very useful.

makes you follow him on a short walk north-east of where you’d left your things. you can hear it before you see it.

running water.

he collects it in your bottles as you splash it across your face. wiping your face with your sleeve, it leaves a dirty streak across the fabric.

but there are no mirrors anymore.

and, well, simon doesn’t mind.

dinner is a quarter each of freeze-dried-something. like with most things, you both eat in silence.

until-

“you homesick?”

“uh, yeah.”

“right, ‘m sorry.”

“oh, thanks. me too, i guess.”

“nah, i’m used to this.”

what’s the opposite of doesn’t speak unless spoken to? speaks only when speaking to?

you study his side profile as he eats, really the only time you see him without the balaclava.

his nose is visibly broken but not in a way that it hurts. he’s got scruff but he has to be dry shaving, or maybe it just doesn’t grow. he’s got a few scars, that could be why.

you thought he wore the balaclava for warmth, you’ve started to figure it’s just a him thing.

as you settle in for sleep, you don’t know what possesses you to be the first to speak- to even ask him a question.

“do you think things will ever go back to how they were?”

“probably not.”

that’ll learn you.

at the first sign of sunrise, you head down to the water. you’d had a bar soap at the bottom of your bag since the first day. for a moment there, it had felt like a stupid possession, that was until you first ran it over your skin.

river water and bar soap felt like salvation.

the pristine white of the soap turned a murky grey at the first swipe. caked on dirt falling away with every drop of water.

washing every crease of your skin, the soles of your feet, the back of your neck. it was part of feeling human again.

it felt like an act of defiance.

they’d tried to remove all trace of humankind but here you were. soapy and smelly and alive.

there was a smell under your arms that’d outlast religion but the more you worked over it with the soap, the more it got lost to the aloe vera.

as you sat waist deep, your ears pricked to the sounds of of parted water. like breaking waves.

high tide.

you turned in time to see simon striding toward you, naked as the day he was born with one outstretched palm.

“i’ll get your back.”

fresh clothes, your others drying on a line beside the fire. your shirt, simon’s socks, your undies, simon’s balaclava.

exisiting in harmony.

the sound of crackling fire helped to hide the fact there were no birds, no bugs, nothing. it was easier to ignore when you were on your own.

fear heightened by your own solitude, your mind raced so fast it was hard to get a thought in edgewise.

simon quieted that down. his mere presence worked wonders for your anxiety. you’d like to see anything try get past him.

but when it got quiet, it allowed you a moment alone with your thoughts. if what he said the night before was right-

you couldn’t catch your first sob in time to muffle it.

“oh, what the hell? y’not crying are you?”

a weak apology only seemed to annoy him more, sitting up on his bedroll to look at you through the light of the fire.

you probably looked quite poetic, illuminated in orange with tears on your face and the soft flutter of foliage around you.

“jus’ stop crying- what’s got you in a fuss?”

you looked at him with a hint of exasperation.

“oh, you know, just the end of the world.”

he let out a big sigh, a large hand dragging down the length of his face.

“you’ll be fine- won’t let anything happen to you.”

you weren’t sure if you believed him but you weren’t sure if there was anything else to believe in?

he took one last look at you, bottom lip still stuck out in a pout and the saddest eyes he’s ever seen.

he rolled his eyes one last time before hunkering down.

“go the fuck to sleep.”

you had no way of knowing what time it was. pitch black and the fire reduced to embers.

it was cold, middle of the night cold. you could feel your teeth begin to chatter before you brought your shoulders to your chin.

you could hear simon beside you, breathing stunted and shallow. his sleeping bag rustled, your eyes adjusted just enough to see movement.

“are you wanking?”

“go the fuck to sleep.”

the morning has a strange way of changing everything.

every shadow that was sure to harbour something nefarious was really just a tree.

every sinister sound whispered beside your ear was really just the wind.

and sleep can really make you delirious. where you know you’re awake but you’re still so tired that even forming a thought is hard.

so you wake up with nothing on your mind.

you used to know what day it was, now you don’t even know what time it is. you’re unsure of how long it’s been like this or how long you’ve known simon.

all you know is, at breakfast, he starts talking about hunting. he’s going to have to start catching stuff if you’re both going to eat.

“what do you want me to do?”

he looks at you like you piss him off. you’re not entirely convinced you don’t.

“whaddya’ mean?”

you’ve taken to having crushed up muesli bars in water for breakfast, so you finish your spoonful of that before you speak up.

“do you want me to help or anything?”

simon looks you up and down before letting out a big sigh.

“you stay here and you don’t move, alright?”

it’s not really a question, as much as an order. you wonder again if you’ve pissed him off but then he’s taking your bowl off you to wash it with his.

maybe it’s about company.

he’s got a knife strapped to his thigh and a whittled stick on his back when he’s ready to set off.

you aren’t really sure what you’re meant to do while he’s gone, so you mention washing down at the river.

“don’t- don’t do that til’ i’m back.”

right.

you don’t argue, just shrug your shoulders and watch him as he walks off into who knows what direction.

he’s only gone for a matter of moments before the lonesome sets in.

under any other circumstances would you have taken in a stranger so easily? would you have missed him so quickly?

you hear simon’s boots before you see him, trudging back up the rise towards your camp. he finds you cross-legged on your bedroll, weaving.

weaving what? fuck knows.

but you feel busy.

he easily overshadows your efforts, a young buck slung over his shoulders with its throat open.

poor thing, simon moves so quickly and so quietly. it probably never saw him coming.

he stops before you, shifting his weight and slinging the animal further up his back.

“what’ve you got there?”

you hold up your grass strands, you’d managed to make quite a bit of progress on your creation in his absence.

“uh, a mat- maybe?”

simon nods, he turns his head like something in the distance catches his interest. he looks at you again before he leaves.

“good job.”

your heart hammers in your chest just once before you stand to follow him. you’ve always struggled to keep up with his pace but, thankfully, he doesn’t go far.

he’s found some clearing to lay the kill, it’s under a tree with a large branch. he stands to unfurl the rope he’s had around the top of his arm.

he slings it over the tree before returning to the animal. he knows you’re over his shoulder, he always knows where you are.

“this is going to be grim, go finish your mat.”

and you do.

without a word, you take back down the path you’d just come from and you settle back under the shade.

you hum to yourself as you weave grass. its a song you think you might’ve known once. when was the last time you’d heard song?

simon returns with a plastic bag filled with meat. the blood drips down his arms and some has flecked across his forehead.

he doesn’t look like someone you’d want to run into deep in the middle of nowhere.

“get y’soap.”

the running river becomes paradise, that’s absolutely certain. they’ve taken everything from you but they haven’t taken this.

they’ve left you this and they’ve left you simon.

he who washes quickly to spend the rest of his time laying on warm stone. it looks uneven and uncomfortable but you don’t think he minds.

you figure he’s slept under gunfire. he could survive anywhere.

so far, he’s made that look easy.

he lays outstretched and it makes him appear taller than usual. he puts an arm behind his head, tilts it towards you so he can keep watch.

you know he stares, you don’t mind.

you think you like it.

the hand that isn’t behind his head rests on his stomach, amongst scars and a tattoo that says “in case of apocalypse create woman from this rib.”

his other tattoos flex as he scratches his stomach. there’s a skull that winks at you, flames that dance around his wrist.

he’s so rough around the edges.

you’d finished washing long ago but you allow yourself to splash about like you’re a child again. it’s almost true, you’ve certainly got no responsibilities and there’s an adult watching you.

but everything is different now.

tipping back until the crown of your head is submerged, the water rushes past your ears as your fingers stroke the stones below you.

they’re so smooth around the edges.

as you angle yourself towards simon, he shifts a hand to adjust himself. a simple gesture that fires the synapses in your brain.

you sit up in an instant.

“were you wanking last night?”

simon barely reacts. he opens the eye that was previously shut and he gives you a good look before he cuts you loose.

“y’look nice when you’re all upset.”

the venison dinner is nice. the meats tough but it’s cooked through and it leaves you feeling full.

bedtime might be your favourite time.

it’s different to wash time, it feels closest to home.

like you could be at home. with simon beside you.

it’s colder tonight, you’re smart enough to know that winter is on its way. the leaves were brown right before everything changed.

this was to be expected. it’ll only get colder from here.

soon, wash time becomes near impossible.

there are no warm stones and no wading. it’s a bowl of water and a torn rag, you start to dread the water touching your skin.

how quickly it can change.

simon takes to simmering your water over the fire, he prepares it for you one day without you even having to ask.

“clean yourself by the fire, too cold out there.”

he watches the colours dance on your skin as you wash yourself, your shadow broad on the overhang behind you.

you wonder if, at this point, you’d do anything he tells you to?

who else is there to listen to? what else is there to do?

it’s a particularly cold night and simon’s hardly sleeping. he’s awake every hour on the hour to stoke the fire, you could set your watch by him.

not that you’d know, you’re blissfully unaware in slumber- snoring gently and only shivering between breaths.

breaths that he can see, it’s that cold.

you hardly wake when you feel him behind you, his sleeping bag slipping against yours as a strong arm pulls you back to him.

he’s firm but he’s warm and you feel it consume you in an instant.

by morning, he’s got both your sleeping bags in his lap. he’s unzipped the both of them and he’s feeding the teeth of your bag through the zipper of his.

he sees you watching him.

there was probably a time where he would’ve explained himself to you.

that time was lost to, well, time.

you understood well enough, really, you welcomed it. you look forward to sleeping in the curve of his front, the man shaped furnace protecting you from the elements.

he looked up from the bags to see you weave another few strands across your mat. when he catches your eye, you smile ear to ear.

it isn’t lost on you that there is no evolutionary purpose to simon looking after you.

that from the moment he stumbled across you, it probably would’ve suited him better to kill you. he would’ve had your supplies, one less creature to worry about, meat.

but he didn’t.

he stayed at your camp before taking you with him and now he washed your back and kept you warm when you slept.

there was no benefit to his survival having you around.

but maybe it was all about company.

you both sleep better in your conjoined sleeping bags. he doesn’t need to stoke the fire and you’re warm all night long.

he’s very warm.

cold disposition but he radiates a heat like nothing you’ve ever felt. you feel most comfortable under his left arm.

your head lays on his chest and you raise your leg up over his, almost hanging off him.

he sleeps with his hand splayed over your hip and when he’s in deep sleep, he grips it and releases it almost in a rhythm.

the smells don’t concern you any longer. you’ve come to associate his musk with safety. you burrow your nose into his skin to keep your face warm and the tang of his sweat is almost sweet to you.

you miss it in the day time.

sometimes, when he’s cooking or whittling, you’ll appear behind him. he’s never startled by you, he always knows where you are.

you’ll rest your chin on his shoulder and he’ll teach you about what he’s doing, without prompting.

when your nose nudges behind his ear it makes him shiver, you must feel it as you’re close enough to be a second skin.

but you never mention it.

you’re both dozing off when you do notice it.

he’s hard, again.

“d’you mind?”

“no, go ahead”

you say it with a yawn and it makes it twitch. he licks his palm before he puts it down his underwear, stroking himself almost routinely.

he’s measured, like he is with everything. it’s obligatory more than pleasure.

you usually sleep through it, only occasionally rousing to spit in his hand or give him the okay to pull your top down.

he just needs something to work with.

his chest is under your ear, you can hear his trapped breaths as he twists his wrist around himself. he’s getting nowhere fast.

“simon?”

“yeah? say it again like that, please?”

“no, i meant- do you want a hand?”

literally.

you could whisper in his ear or let him look under your clothes all he liked- or he could get it at the source.

it was a kindness, really. he sounded tired, least you could do with all he does for you.

simon concedes quickly, replacing his hand with yours and already starting you off how he likes.

you’ve felt it enough to know, but you appreciate his direction. it’s come to be a staple of your relationship.

relationship? means of survival? existence.

simon cums the moment you touch his balls, the sound he makes is wretched and pathetic and you feel a tension in your stomach you haven’t felt in a long time.

it’s hot and it hits your core and there is a moment where you aren’t sure what it means.

it’s been so long since you’ve felt anything that wasn’t necessary to your survival.

something tells you to crawl down inside your sleeping bags and lick the spend off simon’s stomach, his muscle clenches under your tongue as you do.

he tastes acrid- he tastes like he smells.

but you don’t regret it.

simon is very useful.

wakes you, feeds you, bathes you, warms you.

you have no doubt in your mind that you’d have died if he hadn’t found you.

when it’s quiet, in your mind, you tally up the things you’re grateful for in case you’re only left with them tomorrow.

simon.

shelter.

simon.

food.

simon.

water.

simon.

what’s left?

it’s in the still of a cold night, you’d tugged him off and licked your hand clean when you finally mustered your courage.

“can you touch me?”

you weren’t sure where you want to be touched or why. but you knew you wanted it.

you’d felt it coming on strong when you’d watched him whittling arrows to fill the quiver you’d weaved him.

he’d pressed the point till blood gave way on the tip of his finger, the one he’d wrapped his lips around.

you wanted to know what it felt like. to be under the tip of his finger.

but he had other ideas.

he wanted to show you what it was like to be on the tip of his tongue.

“simon, i’m filthy.”

“y’not, i wash between these legs every day- think i haven’t wanted to give you a taste?”

simon gets all the way out of bed to get his polar fleece, slipping it over your shoulders and pulling his woollen socks over your feet.

he gets back into the sleeping bag before he’s manhandling you up his chest, doesn’t stop till you’re hovering over his broken nose.

he sees the breath that escapes when you speak his name, quietly and just to him. he unfurls his balaclava from his fist, wrestling it over your head until all you can smell, and see, is him.

simon has you cum three times on his face until there are tears on your cheeks, only then will he relent.

almost like he gets what he wants.

his big hands had held your hips firmly where he wanted them, one had snuck up under his fleece but the other had slipped down to the split of your ass.

his stubble left you sore and his mouth had left you worn out. you didn’t know it was possible to feel like that again.

“if you’ve ever felt like that before, i don’t want to know about it.”

you nodded at his words, he always struck you as the jealous type even before he laid a hand on you.

the possessive type, what’s his is his and what’s yours is also his.

you fall asleep in the socks, everything else back off so he can feel you. likes to sleep with a hand up your top and your breath on his skin.

likes to know you’re still there. don’t go where he can’t follow.

when you remove all of society, so does go all of its rules.

simon splits you open in his lap as you watch the sunrise.

he puts your back to his chest as he sits on the stump he’d turned into a stool. he’d slipped your trousers down enough to slip inside and it never occurred once to you that you’d be seen.

you hadn’t seen another person in who knows how long. why would they show up now?

you let him take you wherever he likes. it’s not reserved for bedtime.

when you’re foraging for food, he bends you over against a tree.

when it gets warm enough to go back to the lake, he tastes the soap off your skin.

when he returns from a hunt, you put him in your mouth while he tells you he missed you.

it becomes ritualistic. if there are no rules as to when and where, it becomes all of the time.

and simon needs you all of the time.

joined at the hip, he doesn’t like you out of his sight. he leaves you behind when he hunts but that is purely it.

when he goes for a piss, he often makes you hold it. just to know that he can.

how quickly you’ve let him, how quickly you’ve become dependent on him. did you always want someone to come find you?

where would you be on your own?

maybe it’s all about company.

simon makes you walk ahead on your way back from foraging. he tells you that this is the way he came from his last hunt.

you feel closer to him, being out here where he never lets you go. you feel yourself becoming him, losing the place where you end and he begins.

through the long grass, the toe of your boot knocks against something that makes you stop.

you follow it through the grass until you come to see the shape of it, the arms and legs flattening the foliage.

their rucksack is emptied, anything they might’ve had already taken. already back at your camp.

you can hear simon approaching as you look into the person’s dull eyes.

poor thing, simon moves so quickly and so quietly. it probably never saw him coming.

#RAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!#THAT LAST LINE!!!!#fuckin 10/10 #sr

513 notes · View notes

pfhwrittes · 6 days ago

Text

fig. 4. blood in eyes (wipe it off for me) | Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

MASTERLIST · AO3

There’s someone in the building that messes with his head in a way that it shouldn’t be messed with.

or: the forced mating omegaverse au

tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Omegaverse, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB Reader, Stalking, Kidnapping, Heavy Noncon/Dubcon Elements

Too late for it to be of any use to him, Simon learns patience.

Patience in accepting things for what they are instead of resisting fate’s chokehold; in walking with the current instead of swimming against it.

It doesn’t come easy. He remembers being a milktooth child, quiet and sullen before puberty swallowed him up and spat him back out; his demeanour just off-putting enough to keep him from ever making close friends. Father a constant and dreaded figure in his life, a malignant growth ever close to metastasizing. Flesh like a bruised peach, busted lip telling a story that no one seemed capable of acknowledging or reading.

There was no such thing as patience back in those days. Just a constant rushing forward, grappling at the threads of adulthood like they might become a rope strong enough to pull him out. When they didn’t, he learned to tie them himself to strengthen the length of rope—learned every knot in the book, in fact, bowling, clove hitch, carrick bend, hangman’s—anything of use.

That was a long time ago though.

These days, he is something different. Something old-boned and asperous. Every morning, he again becomes a man like a poor choice of words. Darkness greets him when Simon opens his eyes, the sky outside of his window already pitch black, the sun long sunk beneath the horizon.

It’s not happenstance—it’s routine.

As spring inches into summer and the days grow longer, he gets a glimpse of the sun that he’s been avoiding all this time. It bleeds into his dinners with Gaz slowly but surely, the evening sky going ochre and then blood red in the twilight hours. He can’t say that he’s missed over the long winter months. There was a kind of relief in becoming nocturnal. Now, he has to face the day again.

The vestiges of all past incidents collide here somewhat mercilessly.

His life since leaving the service has been essentially meaningless, a direct continuation from the life he led before retiring. No aspirations or short-term ambitions. Staring down the barrel of his fourth decade and wondering whether he’ll make it. Whether it’s even worth it to try when the shit keeps piling up and the years keep slipping away and it’s getting harder rather than getting easier with time.

(too many people he’s seen die; too much that he himself has endured)

The shrink he’s forced to see (read: blackmailed into seeing) says things like PTSD and complicated grief. Simon scowls at the mention. He’s not disputing the nature of those things so much as their relation to him. What does it say about him besides that he was born? That he went through something terrible and now it’s over?

Some things are harder for him to deny. Sciatica and nerve pain; the low, constant buzzing of tinnitus in both ears. Muscle tension and migraines that come so suddenly that they nearly incapacitate him when they hit. Insomnia. Sleeping pills do the trick most of the time, but it takes a harrowing amount of effort to get any sleep without them.

He gets a job as a night security guard-cum-parking lot attendant of a big office building downtown and that simplifies things a bit. Gives him a steady paycheck and a reason to get up every day. It’s also a sterile, quiet environment for the most part—he waits in his booth as the workers come down one-by-one and slouch into their cars, squeezing past each other on the way out.

It’s not much, but it’s a living. More than that, it gives him a reason to get up in the morning, as mundane a job as it is.

But—

there’s someone in the building that messes with his head in a way that it shouldn’t be messed with.

In the three months that Simon has worked in the building, he hasn’t gone more than a day without smelling that telltale scent of fresh, ripe omega. The same one too, all the time. Fresh and clean, like peppermint; it makes him suck his teeth as if to get the sugar off when it wafts under his nose.

The first time he smells your scent, when the elevator doors open up and you step out into the carpark, it takes everything in him not to go after you. Head disconnected from his body, on a swivel; spine ramrod straight, steel-plated. Following your bouncy gait with his eyes as you traipse across the lot to your car sitting pretty in the corner of the carpark like that wouldn’t be the perfect place to accost you, all the security cameras pointed away.

He very nearly quits. Nearly rips off the badge hanging from the clip fixed to his belt loop and leaves the parking lot unattended.

The only reason he doesn’t is because, well—

Simon’s used to torture.

Pain is an inflexible, living thing that he has long since invited into his body to take up residence. It lives and breathes with him, synchronous movements in his chest. It flutters under the surface like a swimmer just barely keeping from breaching the water.

And breach it does. Over and over and over again.

So he doesn’t quit. Sticks it out instead. Ignores the internal recalibration happening inside of him because when has that ever mattered?

He knows who you are, after all.

Busy bee that you are, you often work until late at night, driving home only when it’s dark out and there’s hardly anyone else on the road. It makes him antsy to think of you out there after dark, your only company on the road the long-haul truckers and drunk drivers.

You’ve only ever spoken to him once—one time when you forgot your employee pass upstairs in your office and asked him so sweetly to let you back onto the elevator. Standing outside of his booth with your hands clasped together and your eyebrows delicately furrowed and his jaw growing heavier and heavier and—

Only a single, flimsy pane of plexiglas between the two of you. He could shatter it without much effort. Stuff you into the trunk of your car and use your keys to drive himself home. You eye him almost dubiously, like you can hear the thoughts writhing around in his head like snakes in a pit, and for a second your foot angles outward like you might even back away from the booth altogether.

Simon holds himself back though. Only just.

It’s not as rare these days for an omega to work such a high pressure job, but it’s certainly not common; you’re probably one of the few in the whole building. Certainly the only to have ever caught his attention.

He knows what it means too. Your scent. What it means that, after four decades of relative anosmia, someone suddenly comes along smelling like everything good in the world. The knowledge sits heavy in his stomach.

It wasn’t supposed to be in the cards for him. A mate. It was supposed to be enough for him to have this half life. He has a history all cramped up in his chest, too much to burden anyone else with. Even his team—men that have bled and killed and nearly died with him—only know what could amount to an approximation.

He was supposed to be fine with this arrangement, grateful that the universe has deigned to give him anything at all.

So why then—

(why can he not get you out of his head?)

Simon thinks about it all the time, your scent still lingering in the carpark even hours after you’ve clocked in. Makes him think about sitting on his couch in his dingy flat, nursing a beer while you keep his cock warm in your mouth, dragging his thumb lazily over your scarred gland, a match on in the background. His perfect little family.

For weeks now he’s been on edge, pissed off because you keep flaunting your scent right under his nose like he’s supposed to be some bastion of self-control, somehow keeping himself from sinking his teeth into the delicate skin of your neck. It’s indecent. Unfair.

This is the point in his earlier years when his alpha would have twisted around in the back of his head and whispered something sinister into his ear, but those days are long gone. His alpha is not a distinct thing that he can feel or sense in any tangible way; it’s indistinguishable from him, no difference between its wants and his. Everything is just amplified, his hunger doubled. Refracted.

Lots of things have built him into the man that inhabits his body today. Torture and torment and trauma. Reckoning with his own mortality one too many times; coming close enough to naming it. The man who is buried alive is not the same man who digs himself out.

That, more than anything, is why he keeps his distance despite knowing what you are to him.

From across the lot, on your way out for the day, you glance up and happen to meet his eyes. You smile politely and nod his way.

The grey walls surrounding the booth press into him from all sides, squeezing around him until he can hear the blood pounding in his ears.

Every Friday night, Price and him have a standing date at the local pub where they order drinks and make minimal conversation. Just the way Simon likes it.

It’s always crowded and always thundering with noise, old timers smoking out front where cigarette butts are strewn all over the sidewalk. The men at the bar roar and clamour as they stare at the television screen hanging behind the bartender, banging their fists on the bartop and making the whole room shake whenever their team scores.

It’s rowdy as all hell and it feels like being home.

Simon knows that their weekly drink is just a way for Price to make sure that he hasn’t offed himself yet. He’s not a bad man, for all his faults. His dictatorial qualities are offset by his caring disposition, the temperament of a man willing to keep tabs on his soldiers well after they’ve left the service.

It’s excessive, but it doesn’t go unnoticed.

“You got plans for the weekend?” Price asks like he always does a few minutes into their first drink.

Simon shrugs and takes a drink. “Got a few.”

His unwillingness to part with a sliver of personal information for even his closest companion must wear on the nerves, but he’s been going strong for thirty-something years. It speaks to his character and the longevity of their relationship that Price doesn’t seem to mind, content with whatever Simon deigns to let slip.

“Got a few myself,” Price reveals, happy to part with his privacy for the sake of conversation. “Taking the missus up to Shropshire for a little honeymoon.”

“Just as well. She doing alright?”

Price shrugs. “Hasn’t taken apart the kitchen this week.”

That’s the extent of their conversation. The rest devolves into gentle ribbing about the match up on the telly (Manchester United vs. West Ham—ending in such a spectacular defeat for Man United that Simon nearly gets into it with a guy on the other end of the bar crowing too loud) before parting ways at the end of the night, Price going one way and Simon the other.

The streets are empty on his walk to the tube, the roads slick with puddle water from the earlier rainfall and the alleys illuminated by the red dots of cigarette butts, their custodians puffing away dutifully, their bodies ensconced in the shadows. A driver leans on their horn when he cuts across the street without checking for any oncoming traffic, and though the sound makes his upper lip curl, he ignores it.

Sometimes, he hopes that someone will take him out to pasture like an old warhorse. Do it while he’s not looking. Let him catch one final sunset before putting him down.

It would save everyone else a lot of grief.

The only reason he doesn’t do it himself is because he couldn’t do that to Johnny. Can’t even stomach the thought of what it would do to him; can’t even trick himself into thinking that it wouldn’t bulldoze a hole right through his boy’s life.

If someone else were to kill him, Johnny would at least have the possibility of closure. Maybe he ought to just pay someone to do it someday. Simon discards that thought as soon as it flits through his head though—there’s not a chance that Johnny wouldn’t scour the Earth to find the man that killed him.

Simon’s as sure of that as he is of anything because he’d do the same for him.

Though he has two hundred thousand in an offshore account and thirty grand stuffed into his mattress, Simon takes the tube and walks every day on principle alone. His truck stays parked on the street unless he needs to move it to the other side for street sweeper to pass by.

This train is for—

Next stop is—when leaving the train, please remember to take all of your belongings with you.

Cool in the early morning hours. When Simon gets off the train at his stop, the breeze slips into every open crevice of his jacket, crawling up his sleeves and down his collar.

It’s early enough that the only people at the station with him are the early commuters, everyone going in the opposite direction from him, on their way downtown instead of on their way home. The sun peeking over the horizon is spoiled by a grey, dismal sky, saturating everything in a pallid, dreary light.

There’s a bus that takes him nearly all the way home, though he has to walk the last ten minutes. He sits at the back with his hood drawn over his head, dead eyeing anyone stupid enough to glance his way too many times. When he gets off at his stop, it hurtles away from the curb as if it couldn’t get away fast enough.

His flat is the kind that not even squatters would deign to claim. Borderline squalid. Borderline hazardous to human habitation. The mold spores and asbestos is probably digging him an early grave, everything short of an infestation. On his better days, Simon contemplates tidying up the place before a wave of apathy and scorn bludgeons him over the head. Why bother when he has no one to bring round?

“Ye could try cleanin’ it up fer me,” Johnny gripes on one of the rare occasions when he spends the night. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s too late and Johnny’s a bit too squiffy from the pub to get home on his own.

He walks barefoot into the kitchen where Simon is rustling up something to eat (mac and cheese that he’ll eat straight from the pot when it’s ready), towel-drying his hair and swaying on his feet from sheer exhaustion. Nearly stumbles right into the wall before catching himself.

“What’s the problem?” Simon asks, drawling the question.

“There’s a ring o’ grime aroond the tub. Did ye hose off a dog in there?”

He shrugs. “You wanna clean it so bad, you can do it. There’s Pine-Sol under the sink.”

“Ah honestly think we’re gonna need a power washer fer it. The fuckin’ state of this place, Simon…”

“Get in the fuckin’ bed and quit runnin’ your mouth before I decide you’d sleep better on the porch.”

Johnny makes a face and waddles off, murmuring epithets under his breath before launching himself stomach first onto Simon’s bed and snoring before he’s even hit the mattress, his shins half hanging off the end. It can’t be comfortable, but they’ve certainly slept in worse places.

Simon will readjust him when he joins his boy later, but for now he focuses on taking the pot off the hob and fetching a fork from the cutlery drawer, scooping up a generous first bite. Flares his nostrils when he notices old food still flaked on the fork that he just pulled from the drawer.

Maybe the mutt has a point.

The thing is—

He’d like to say something to you. He’d like for things to go his way for a change.

But his appetite for violence won’t allow good things to come to him naturally. Always a struggle for survival, conditions worsening until there’s nowhere else to go but up (scrambling up the side of a self-dug hole). He hears it coming like an air raid siren off in the distance. Self-sabotage at its finest.

He feels little shame for the state of his existence, but it’s hard not to feel some sense of perceived inferiority. His military accolades aside (of which he can’t speak to, given that most were awarded post mortem for obvious reasons), Simon’s working class roots are indivisible from him as a person. When he looks at you, he sees someone who wouldn’t even touch the dirt he was sown and germinated in.

What could he offer a woman? What could he offer anyone at all?

His body carries the weight of his life in scar tissue, torn cartilage, and bones that have been welded back into place too many times to count. Theseus’ ship of a man. Simon is aware, distantly, of the things that make him appealing to women, but they’re stacked against the things that make him thoroughly undesirable. His body draws the eyes that his face repels, muscles less enticing when they get a proper look at his ugly mug. Good enough for a fuck but not more than that.

For a long time now, living has been an exercise in humility. Wanting but never receiving. Senseless violence that never seems to stop, always someone around to perpetuate it.

Often that person is him.

On Monday, Simon watches you walk to your car in slacks that cling to your legs, the fabric tightening across your ass when you lower yourself into your car.

On Tuesday, on a whim or possibly because of brain damage, he calls a professional cleaning service to give him a quote for a detailed deep cleaning.

The owner charges him double the usual amount, which nearly pisses him off enough to cancel the service altogether, but he lets it go when Johnny begs him to let him pay half (after calling him six times in a row after Simon made the mistake of texting him about it).

It doesn’t change the overall state of the place, but Simon does feel a flicker of pleasant surprise when he comes home to a house that doesn’t smell faintly of mildew. Walls a shade lighter, like years worth of soot has been scrapped off of them. Even the grates on the stove have been scrubbed and cleaned, the inside of the oven also free of grit and grease for once in probably a decade.

He christens the clean up with a smoke in the bathroom with the window propped open, the early morning noises keeping him company. Ashes his cigarette on the window ledge for once instead of the bathroom floor, the sound of the traffic in the distance keeping him company.

“Ah cannae wait tae see it,” Johnny enthuses over the phone when Simon finally picks up after three missed calls in a row. “When ah’m back in the city, ah’m comin’ over ASAP.”

Simon’s lips twitch into a slight smirk. “Dunno about that. Might change the locks too.”

Sometimes he says shit just to rile Johnny up. Just to hear the sound of him squawking on the other end of the phone, feathers ruffled. He gets a kick out of taking all that frenetic energy and compressing it, making himself the focal point of Johnny’s restlessness, the recipient of his undivided attention.

He’s always been selfish with his toys.

His body is red hot when he finally lays down in bed, cock thickening up and pulsing between his legs. All he can think of is getting you into his bed and pounding you until you come a few times around his knot, until the base of his shaft is a mess of cream and cum, and his chest is scratched up and bloody from your nails.

The sheets under him are rumpled and hot with his sweat when he takes his cock in hand, tugging himself off until he spills all over his hand and up his chest. Simon stares up at the fan rotating above his head as the cum cools on his stomach, cool air wafting down on him, allowing himself, if only for a moment, to imagine what it would be like to actually have you.

He doesn’t think he’s going to do it.

His whims are hard to predict though. Quicksilver and fluid; volatile and inconsistent. Worse though are his morals, which fluctuate with his mood like the tides with the moon, pulled back only to rush forward at a moment’s notice.

Despite the way his chest sometimes burns with the need to follow you home after your shift and force his way in while you’re out for the day, Simon doesn’t let his urges cloud his judgment. Master of self-discipline; jack of all other trades.

It’s part of what made him such an indispensable operative: his ability to suppress all instincts and wants in service to a higher purpose.

He’s got rope in a drawer in the booth though. That’s where it gets tricky. Myriad uses for it and none of them good. God must have a bad sense of humour.

Then one day, you come in a bit too close to your heat.

Even before you come stumbling out of the elevator, swaying on your feet and barely able to keep yourself upright, your scent is pungent in the garage. When Simon opens the door from the back office to the lot, he stills, every cell in his body briefly freezing. He can’t pinpoint it to any one car in the lot at first, but his instincts and nose point him to yours.

You must’ve mistimed your heat and thought you had more time before it would hit. It’s the only reason you’d show up to your office on the cusp of it, to a building packed with alphas all foaming at the mouth to knot a heat-addled omega. There’s nothing they’d like more than to get their hands on you in this state.

It’s a mistake you won’t make again.

He oscillates between anger and hunger, pissed at you for showing up to the office at such a delicate time while his teeth ache something fierce in his mouth. Alpha nature rearing its ugly head again. If you were his, it wouldn’t even be a question—you’d have been home days ago, sequestered away in his place and readying the nest for your heat.

The elevator dings when it opens, alerting him and drawing his eyes over. Such a small sound for such a momentous occasion.

Even from a distance, you look a right mess. Eyes heavy lidded and bloodshot. Sweat beading at your hairline. Lips swollen from excessive chewing or blood flow. It doesn’t matter to him. You look good a little messed up anyway, like someone took you apart and forgot to put you back together again. Makes Simon wish it was him that did it.

Then the full, unadulterated scent of your heat slams into him tenfold and every coherent thought comes screeching to a halt.

Every wistful thought of taking it slow or approaching you first evaporates in a heartbeat. In an instant, he becomes an animal. Eyes tracking your every move. Breath lengthening and deepening to keep you from hearing him coming.

He doesn’t think he’s going to do it until the booth door opens.

Simon shuts the door soundlessly behind him, laser focused on the sway of your ass as you pop open the backseat door to toss your bag and belongings in. He moves towards you quickly, covering the distance between the two of you in just a few long strides, practiced at the initial advance.

This is what he was built for after all—hunting and capturing. Moving silently through the shadows, stalking his target through the thick and waiting for them to move into just the right position.

Right when you reach your car and open the backseat door—

Throwing your work bag onto the floor, none the wiser that there’s a man at your back moving closer and closer, eyes locked on the jut of your shoulder blades and the arch of your back and—

You don’t put up much of a fight when he forces you into the car and splays you over the backseat, likely too confused and disoriented to vocalize your surprise. He’s stronger than you anyway. When the fight finally snaps into you, it’s too late—you’re splayed across the backseat at an awkward angle and pinned in place by his hand, only a little force needed to keep you down.

The little dress you’re wearing gets rucked up around your waist and your panties pulled to the side. He unfastens his jeans with one hand and pulls his cock out before wrenching you towards him with one hand on your waist, the friction lifting your dress up the rest of the way until he can nearly see the full line of your back.

“What—”

You only catch on when his fingers graze your pussy lips and your whole body shudders violently. A thumb splits the seam of your lips, stroking you from slit to asshole, spreading your slick over both holes.

“Relax,” Simon grumbles when you start to fuss, things slipping out of your mouth like no, wait, stop, who are you?—a bunch of silly prattle. “I’ve got ya, pet.”

“Get off—” you hiss, spitting like an angry cat with its fur all bunched up, and he’d laugh if he wasn’t pushing his thumb into your wet little hole and watching it seize up around the digit. The rest of your tirade comes out in a choked gasp, indignant horror rendering you mute.

You try to push yourself up onto your elbows and he shoves you back down, making the breath rush out of you. A steady drip of slick wets the seat under you, making the dark fabric glisten, but Simon doesn’t spend too much time focusing on that.

“You’re not gonna fight after wagging this around,” he growls.

“I haven’t, I haven’t, I haven’t.”

Liar. He’ll make an honest girl out of you yet.

He pulls his fingers away from your cunt long enough to fist his cock and lift from where it droops between his legs. His cock throbs in his hand as he notches it against your opening, grits his teeth too when the heat of your cunt burns the tip of his cock.

“Fuck,” Simon grits out, then edges forward again.

Hot as a fucking branding iron. He pulls you back instead of thrusting forward, impaling you on his length like a toy in his hands. In, in, in until suddenly he can’t anymore, at the limits of what your body will allow.

“C’mon, bird, deep breath in,” Simon murmurs when you hiss, hoping you’ll listen.

As clenched up as you are, it’s almost impossible to fuck you properly. He can barely cram in a few inches before finding you too tight to push the rest of the way in. It’s enough to make do though. Enough to draw his hips back and thrust in again, fucking you with just the first few inches of his cock, your toes curling and flexing with every thrust.

“You’re—you’re inside me?” you gasp.

The laugh comes from his chest unbidden, disbelief plucking it out of him. “Yeah, pet. I am.”

Your groan is torn from your throat. “Oh god.”

He nearly spirals watching your cunt stretch around the width of his cock. Fits him like a fucking glove, and though it’s been awhile, Simon doesn’t remember it ever feeling like this. Intense. A thick blanket of heat weighing down on him, the inside of your car humid, the combination of your and his breath making the windows fog up, the car itself shaking with every thrust.

It registers at the periphery of his consciousness that he didn’t even bother to put on a condom. There might be one buried at the back of his wallet or in a drawer somewhere back home, but even if Simon were to look down and see one on the floorboard of the car, it wouldn’t sway him one iota. He knows he’s clean, and whether you are or not doesn’t matter because—

He wants it this way with a fervor that borders on irrational.

His hips drive forward in quick, short strokes, barely sinking in halfway before pulling back out, thoughts of shucking you open like an oyster and leaving a pearl behind stirring at the back of his mind. His wants are as ugly as everything about him.

Simon doesn’t think about whether it’s a bad idea or not. Impulsive as always, he lets the thing that has become him over countless years guide his hand, staring as it wraps around the front of your throat and lifts you up, your hands scrambling under you for purchase.

Lean down. His mouth is salivating. What he wants isn’t right but—

God, he wants it.

His wants outpace his self-control for once though. The devil on his shoulder (in his soul, in his blood, that which was curled up with him since birth, a remnant of the father, a seed waiting to germinate in bloodsoaked soil) guides his head down into the crook of your neck where your mating gland sits, your blood pumping frantically right beneath it.

Your throat pulses when his canine nicks your gland and when you swallow, he can feel it against his teeth.

So easy, like slicing through butter—

(whatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhat—oh my God, no)

Your voice in his ear, fluttering like a hummingbird.

And then, blood—a taste so familiar that he doesn’t even notice it at first. Only when it washes down his throat does Simon realize what he’s done.

He comes back to himself with his teeth buried in your shoulder, blood in his mouth and a buzzing sound in his head. Cock still only half-sheathed in your pussy, squeezing around him like a vice, your voice a dull roar in his ear.

A phantom presence undulates in the back of his mind, the first presence apart from himself in well over fifteen years. It twists and turns like a fish out of water, flopping around on its belly. It’s never been here before. It’s never been out of itself before and it’s terrified. It’s scared of what that means.

The flesh squelches when he pulls his teeth out, your ensuing gasp wet and watery like the blood dripping from his mouth onto your back. Little droplets colouring your dress red where they land.

“Fuck,” he murmurs to himself, staring down at the bite mark on your shoulder.

His imagined future suddenly switches course, a whole new world being terraformed before his eyes. Everything different even while everything stays the same.

At the base of his cock, his knot plumps up, filling with blood. When his cock glides back in, it presses fruitlessly against your opening, too big to slip in. You whimper when you feel it nudging at your entrance.

He has a really big knot, even soft; too big for you to take comfortably, if at all. Hard though, it’s another beast altogether.

Simon doesn’t need all that though. Not now, at least. Plans are already forming piecemeal in his head, colliding against each other as he huffs through short, shallow thrusts, mindlessly seeking his release. The sound of your squelching pussy echoes through the underground lot, unmistakable to anyone else that might still be milling around at this time of night.

What’s done is done. There’s no reason to bank regrets to cash in some day in the future because the future is already here. It’s here happening right in front of him and Simon has never looked back before.

Your pleasure flickers in the back of his head, like picking up a radio frequency previously undetected. Suddenly there. It’s almost his too; settles into the base of his spine along with his own need to come. Thin like a will-o-wisp.

What he wouldn’t give to sink to the root, feel that wet grip all around him, squeezing his shaft extra tight.

You keen and beg him through gasped breaths when Simon tries to force a hand under your belly to play with your clit. “Wait, wait, wait—too much—”

It’s tempting to just ignore you and keep rubbing your swollen clit, but he huffs and backs off instead, massaging his hands up the sides of your waist again. “Alright, alright.”

His thumbs press into the divots of your back almost punishingly hard, sure to leave a bruise there. Squeezes your waist extra hard when he nears his end, his vision tunneling on the sight of his cock splitting you in half, soaked with your combined juices.

He catches your eye when you twist your head to look over your shoulder at him and that’s what sets him off. That desperate, helpless look in your glazed over eyes. Desire so vivid that for a second he can almost trick himself into thinking that this is what you want—

Thick ropes of cum paint the inside of your pussy. His knot butts against your entrance with every offbeat thrust, the base of it frothy white with cum, yours and his mixing together. It’s almost painful to have nothing wrapped around it, but it’s a pain he’s grown used to, never having knotted anything better than his own hand.

This should be enough for him, most of the fat length of his cock snug in your pussy and his knot wet with your juices. He shouldn’t want more than this. It should be enough for him to slide his hand over your belly and feel the slightest bulge.

His gums itch when he licks his lips.

It’s not enough though.

When Simon pulls out, you shudder one last time, a string of stuttered curses slipping from your mouth. Foul-mouthed little thing.

“Holy shit,” you wheeze. “What the fuck?”

Just that nearly makes his lips twitch.

He drags you back out of the car just enough so that your feet touch the floor, giving him enough room to right your underwear and readjust your dress. Dazed and confused, you sway on your feet before he catches you by the waist, his dick still out and spent against his thigh.

“You need a breather before we leave?” Simon asks.

You don’t seem to absorb his words right away, too lost in your own head. The wound on your shoulder is still raw and livid. There’s gauze in the first aid kit in the booth that might help, but that requires more cooperation from you than he thinks you’ll be willing to give once you find your bearings.

“Leave?” you repeat.

He nods, smoothing your dress down. “Can’t be ‘ere too long. Already too close to your ‘eat.”

That brings you crashing back down to reality, the comedown so hard that Simon has to hold you upright when your knees buckle.

“My heat,” you repeat, confused at first before it dawns on you.

“S’right, bird. Did ya forget?”

Obviously not, but he gets his laughs out of the little things.

You flinch when your hand comes up to touch your shoulder. “Oh my God. Oh my God, what did you do?”

Your panic draws over him like a cloak. He can feel it somehow viscerally real but distinct from his own emotions. If he were a weaker man, it might trigger his own panic, but he hasn’t been that kind of man in a long, long time. Too much has happened since he was that boy—Roba, Mexico, Makarov, the Channel Tunnel. He’s lived a hundred lives in that time.

So when your bloodstained hand moves to his chest and you start to struggle again, Simon knows how to handle it.

The cherry blossoms have been in bloom for quite some time now. Petals freckle the road bordering the park on the drive home, but they vanish in a flurry as he travels farther away from the city centre, creeping into the outskirts of London.

Moonlight like a runlet of white satin moths light the way home. It reminds him a lot of his childhood home. Spongy, mossy bogs where white moths feed on sallow and poplar, and the water barely announces its presence. Old remnants of cocoons spun into the reeds. A bosky landscape that, as a child, Simon spent hours trudging through to escape the turmoil of his home life, coming home in the evenings barefoot with his wet sneakers held in both hands.

The memory fades when he takes a necessary turn leading him home and passes a squad car with its lights off going the other way. He’s careful not to make eye contact, taking another unnecessary turn in order to get out of their visual field.

He’s aware of the predicament he’s in with you tied up in the backseat of your own car.

Lucky for Simon though, it’s Friday. Meaning that unless you had plans scheduled for the weekend, no one will expect to see your face until Monday, giving him plenty of time to figure out what to do with you. And given that you’re on the brink of your heat—your scent absolutely saturating the inside of the car, too strong for him to risk cracking open a window—he likely has even longer than that.

In the backseat of the car, you squirm around and howl through duct taped lips. Another reason for him to keep the windows up.

He cranks up the volume on the radio to drown out the sound of your whines. Bit of a pity, since it’s not like Simon has a problem with them. There are still cars around though, and for a little thing you’ve sure got a set of lungs on you. He’d be almost impressed if it weren’t inconvenient.

Densely populated boroughs give way to sparser and sparser neighbourhoods. Neatly manicured trees swapped for dense, overgrown bushes and trees, branches leaning over street lights and half-obscuring stop signs. He navigates the streets by muscle memory alone, not paying attention to the street signs or addresses.

Simon lives in a see-nothing-say-nothing neighbourhood. No one on either side of his house, both vacant for longer than he’s resided here. He knows even this place won’t escape gentrification one day, but for now prices are low and privacy is absolute. None of his neighbours want to know his business any more than he wants to know theirs.

There’s no one else on the street when he parks in front of his house. Not unusual, but he welcomes the privacy nevertheless.

The scent of your heat comes billowing out of the car when Simon opens the backseat door. Thick, rich, and musky.

His hackles go up instantly, territorial instincts lifting from the silt of his being. The street is deserted, but that doesn’t stop the influx of paranoia and suspicion. Anyone could be lurking around any corner. His paranoia comes from a place of truth, but it’s displaced from its original context—this is his home, not foreign territory.

Still, he’d be happier with you inside as quickly as possible. Too many open windows and alphas that might be stupid enough to challenge him, mate bond or not.

He lifts you into his arms from the backseat and tosses you over his shoulder, lips twitching when your breath comes out in a whoosh. The car beeps behind him when he locks it with the keys he snatched from your work bag and it’s a quick walk into his house, his chest only settling when the door is shut and locked behind him.

In the house, he deposits you on the couch and kneels in front of you, the breadth of his body splitting your knees when he situates himself between them. Hard not to take liberties with you considering what you are to him now. It doesn’t even occur to him until your brow furrows and you try to pull your knees into your chest, forcing him to plant both hands on your upper thighs to pull them back down.

“You gonna be good if I take it off?” Simon asks, referring to the tape on your mouth.

You nod vigorously, so eager to get the tape off that you’ll agree to just about anything, even if you have no intention of keeping your word. He can feel that duplicitous instinct at the back of his mind.

He wonders if you’ve begun to feel him in your head yet.

The tape pulls your skin up with it as Simon peels it out, a few hairs coming with it. You grimace and wince through the pain, eyes flitting around the living room, scanning every inch and looking for any way out. Look all you want. It won’t matter in a couple of hours.

The first thing you do is scream at the top of your lungs for help, erupting into a coughing fit when your vocal chords are pushed to their limits.

“Heeeeeeeeeelllllppppppp!” you screech, hoping that someone in one of the adjacent houses will hear your scream and come to your aid. “Someone help me pleaaaaseeeee!”

It’s disappointing but not surprising. Still, though his upper lip curls at the sudden burst of noise, he doesn’t so much as flinch, still as stone in front of you as you scream your head off.

When you pause to take a breath, panting from the effort, he raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “You done?”

Flummoxed by his nonchalance, you almost don’t know how to respond, stunned into silence for a moment. Then you start up again, louder than the first time, shrieking like a trapped bird looking for help.

Despite the relative privacy that this neighbourhood affords him, Simon doesn’t feel like pushing his luck. His hand snaps out viper-quick to cover your mouth, trapping the rest of your screams in his palm and making your eyes bulge with shock.

“Quit screaming or I put the tape back on,” he says, blunt as ever. No sympathy for the fact that he kidnapped you and brought you to a second location. Of course you’d be scared; of course you’d be panicked.

It’s not that Simon doesn’t understand your reaction, he just doesn’t want to deal with it. His reservoirs of patience have been all used up in holding himself back these past few weeks.

He waits until you nod before pulling his hand away.

For a minute, all you can do is stare at him, eyes tracing over his face and lingering on all the ugly bits. The scar from his cleft lip, the burns around his temple pulling back his hairline, the crooked lump of his nose (put back in place one too many times), the slope of his brow over his eyes, almost Neanderthalic.

“Who are you?” Though it’s not the first thing you’ve ever said to him, it’s the first time you’ve ever spoken directly to him, face to face, no screen in between you to dampen your scent.

Your voice rushes over him like a wave, taking him under when it curls over the other side and kisses the water. Fills his lungs with salt water. Even hoarse from screaming, it’s still the loveliest sound he’s ever heard.

“We’ve met,” he says curtly. Annoyed that you haven’t felt the same fixation with him. You look terrified to disagree with him though he can see it in your eyes. “I work in the building.”

Recognition flickers across your face. “…You’re the parking attendant. You helped me get back into the building that one time.”

So he hasn’t completely escaped your attention.

Simon grunts instead of answering.

You glance around the room again. “…Where am I?”

“My house,” he answers.

His ease in answering your questions must throw you for a loop. You hadn’t expected him to be so forthcoming, but what would he gain in lying to you?

The gravity of the situation isn’t lost on you though. On your own, miles from home, fucked and mated by a man who must have been watching you for weeks, if not months. Simon doubts you remember how long he’s worked in the parking lot.

Worse yet, you’re on the brink of your heat, maybe a few hours away from it breaking. It’s a wonder you left your house at all today. You would’ve been smarter just to call out, stay holed up in your flat until it hit and you slipped comfortably into your heat.

But you made your bed. Now you have to lie in it.

“You’ve ruined everything…” you whimper, trembling fingers feeling around the bite mark on your shoulder.

That pisses him off. Stings his pride. As if he were such a piece of shit that you couldn’t fathom being tied to him.

“Had a boyfriend or something?” he grunts dismissively.

Whatever you had before doesn’t phase him. Boyfriend, girlfriend, husband. None of it matters with that mark on your shoulder, the thing tying you indelibly to him. Still, he asks knowing that it’ll piss him off if you answer in the affirmative, though he can’t smell anyone else’s scent on you.

Your upper lip curls at the question. “No.”

“Good.”

“I just didn’t want to be—” You can hardly bring yourself to say it. You pause, biting your lip. “I don’t—I don’t even know who you are.”

“Name’s Simon.”

You look at him like asking for his name never even occurred to you. Less than impressed.

“Do you even know what you did?” you ask, tone slipping from disbelief to disdain.

The cheap shot at his intelligence barely gets on his nerves though. He’s used to people using words when they look at him and realize that physical violence won’t get them anywhere.

“Nah, bird,” Simon drawls, looking at you through half-lidded eyes. “What’d I do?”

You balk at that, clearly assuming that he wouldn’t call your bluff, that he’d have some excuse for biting you and tying you to him.

The amusement in his eyes must be obvious though because you scowl when you catch it. “So you messed up our lives on purpose?”

“Wasn’t planning on it. You’re the one that showed up to work right before a heat.”

The humiliation is plain on your face. “I had—I had a deadline. I didn’t think anyone would even notice.”

He shrugs. “I noticed.”

An understatement if there ever was one. It’s been months since he’s had a thought that didn’t somehow circle back to you.

You scowl. “It’s not the twentieth century anymore. Omegas don’t have to be housebound for the month of their heat.”

All Simon can do is stare at you. There’s a sweat building at your hairline and he can see the pulse in your neck, your impending heat evident in the way you hold yourself—so close to the cusp that a gust of wind would send you right over. It wouldn’t take much.

It could be as easy as grabbing himself through his pants and watching your eyes glaze over. He doesn’t have to be pretty to turn you on. He knows now from first hand experience that you’ll get wet for a big dick.

“Lot of omegas go to work without being slags about it.”

Shock ripples across your face, followed closely by a rage that makes his balls tighten. “You’re a piece of shit.”

Piece of shit is putting it lightly. He’s the bird picking the flesh off the carcass with the sun-bleached bones.

“Make your nest,” Simon grunts instead, leaving you to your own devices.

“I’m not making my nest here. I have one at home.” You sound outraged at the very thought of making a nest in his house.

“Don’t got much of a choice, bird. It’s here or nowhere because you ain’t leavin’.”

It’s not a joke or a threat either. This far from home, you won’t make it back before your heat breaks, and Simon sees the moment that realization washes over you, your fate set in stone.

You don’t much appreciate being made to use the meagre belongings in his house for your nest. It’s a bit of a shame. He should’ve taken you back to your place instead where you likely already had a nest that you’d spent the last week labouring over, but he couldn’t trust you not to get your neighbor's attention.

There’s not much in the way of materials for you to use either. Old coats of his and musty blankets stored in the chest at the foot of his bed. You don’t even touch the mattress. He watches you sniff a sweater of his and grimace, tossing it into another corner of the room far away from your makeshift nest.

He hovers nearby while you build your nest even though he can feel your annoyance as real as if it were his own. That’s not his problem though. You have your instincts to follow and he has his.

He inspects the meagre items in his fridge and pantry while you fuss around in the other room—hardly enough to see just him through the weekend, never mind an omega about to go into heat—and scowls, pissed at the thought of being found lacking as an alpha. If he’d been smarter, he would’ve seen this coming a mile away, but instead he let himself believe that he could keep his greed under lock and key and failed to prepare for the inevitable.

In the other room, you whimper, your scent suddenly gone sour.

He pauses. Lifts his head and sniffs the air.

“Nothing to do with you, pet,” Simon says, raising his voice loud enough to carry to the other room.

You don’t say anything in response to his words, but the tension lifts from his shoulders when your scent goes back to normal.

The weight of responsibility sits heavy on his shoulders. He’s learning in real time that taking sharp corners means skirting sharp edges. That an abrupt change can’t just happen seamlessly.

Choices have consequences.

Even scared and on edge, your presence fills the house with a kind of levity that Simon hasn’t enjoyed in decades, if ever, omega sweet scent clouding the air. It’s disorienting. Like barreling down a dark tunnel without knowing what could possibly be on the other side.

Simon’s blood pressure spikes when your scent changes, a new peppery note that makes him salivate.

You don’t come crawling to him though and that ticks him off. Already fucked and mated you and you still won’t cooperate; still giving him a hard time despite the work he’s put in. He stalks through the house and finds you huddled under a blanket in your nest, shivering and sweating, gaze desperate when you turn to find him haunting the doorway.

He tilts his head to one side to get a better look at you. “What’re ya doing on your own in there, bird?”

You pull the blanket tighter around you, the whole thing wrapped around your head and body and only exposing a sliver of your face.

“H-hot,” you mumble. “Leave me alone.”

“Gotta take the blanket off if you’re ‘ot, love.”

He feels like he’s approaching a skittish animal, one that might lope off into the woods at any moment. Only there’s nowhere for you to run. There’s nowhere for you to go, and even if you could figure out a way to duck around him, you wouldn’t have the energy for a chase, weighed down by the exhaustion and mindlessness of heat.

A few steps until he’s close enough and Simon drops to his knees, reaching out to cup the ankle sticking out of your blanket cocoon. You flinch when his hands touch your skin, colder than your scorching, sweaty flesh.

The little fuss you put up as he pulls the blanket off you doesn’t deter him in the slightest. He’s single minded in his goal of getting you naked, tossing the blanket off the mattress even when you whine and lean over the mattress to retrieve it, and going for the straps of your dress in his haste to pull you back to him.

It doesn’t do much. The dress gets trapped around at your biceps instead of coming down, too tight around the chest and arms to come off that way. Simon realizes his mistake when you start scowling and bitching—a bunch of lip that goes in one ear and out the other because he doesn’t have the patience to deal with it.

“Fuck, you’re burning up, pet,” Simon mutters instead of responding to your grumbling.

There is real concern there, though it’s buried under an avalanche of desire so thick that it nearly suffocates him. He’s even been with an omega in heat before. Never been close enough to an omega to be given that right.

And now, by his own hand, he has one to call his own. His to take care of and see through their heat.

You bat his hand away when it gets too close to your stomach. “You’re cold.”

Simon scowls, irked. “‘Course I am—you’re runnin’ a fever, bird.”

“Don’t wanna be touched,” you gripe.

When he tries to crawl his hand up your shirt for a second time, you smack him again and his temper finally snaps.

“That does it,” he snarls and snatches you by the waist.

Wrestling you to the ground is a kind of tauromachy, only he’s the one huffing through his nose like a bull when he splays you out on your back and then turns you over, forcing your arms over your head and pinning your wrists together with one hand.

“Get—off of me—”

Pinned to the ground on your belly, you flail wildly and scream his ear off while he yanks up your dress again and works your knickers down your legs, nearly getting a foot to the face for his trouble.

“Should be thanking me for getting your ass off the street,” Simon spits out, increasingly annoyed by the way you won’t just let him between your thighs all nice and sweet. “Not even making you do any of the work.”

He’s so magnanimous that he doesn’t even bring up the fact that you’ve been his from the start. So forgiving despite the fact that you should’ve recognized his scent at the very start of it all and approached him before giving him no choice but to go down this road.

His arm is a bar across the small of your back that lays heavy as he plants his face between your thighs and eats you from behind, the bridge of his nose wedged against your perineum and wet with slick. He could cover the whole thing with his mouth if he wanted to.

For as many birds as he’s fucked in his past, this isn’t something he usually does. Gets little out of it, like kissing in that way. For some reason though, he wants it with you; wants it with an ache that makes his stomach cramp, shoulders pulled up to his ears and traps all bunched up around his neck.

He moves on from your pussy, worming his tongue into your clenched up asshole.

“No, don’t do that!” you gasp, reaching behind you as if you grab his hair and yank him away, only for your fingernails to scratch at his scorn scalp in vain.

You make the mistake of trying to push his head away and Simon snarls, the sound so low and guttural that you freeze when you hear it, the vibrations against your skin making your toes curl.

“Move your hand,” he growls.

You grab the blanket underneath you instead, curling your hands into fists and doing anything to avoid reaching back and pushing his face away again.

Much better. He likes how embarrassed and ashamed you get when he runs his tongue over your tight little hole, not used to having someone touch you there. It makes him feel powerful, dominant over you. Like taking your walls down brick by brick and then building you back up with him on the inside.

Though you don’t try to push him away anymore, you’re still a bit too petulant for his tastes. When you whine about it too much, he yanks your hips up and smacks your pussy with the meat of his hand to get you to shut up, your whole body flinching with the impact.

“Ow!” you yelp, a high, reedy sound that splits him down the center.

“You’re givin’ me a hard fuckin’ time, pet,” Simon grumbles. “Stay still.”

“You’re a—fucking asshole!” you holler.

Many people have called him worse, and none of them had his tongue on their asshole. He supposes he can give you a little leeway there.

It quivers under his tongue when he flicks it over the wrinkled skin again, clenching up tight as if to pull away from him. Shy little thing.

The taste of your skin is as good as your scent—a little saltier, but decadent. He laves his tongue over it again and again, eating your ass out until your pussy leaks like a loose spigot, the scent of it so enticing that he nearly gives in and swipes his tongue over your swollen lips.

That’s not what you need though.

Still a little gaped from taking his cock earlier, you take two fingers with ease, stretching beautifully around the widest part of his knuckle. It’s up there with the seven wonders of the world; Simon would choose this over Rome any day.

“You’re gonna take my knot this time, alright?” he murmurs into the underside of your ass, sinking his teeth in when you garble something contradictory at first. “Say yes, bird.”

“Fuck—” you choke out, recanting your previous words, wound up like a clockwork motor. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes—”

He skips straight to four fingers when your hips start to wriggle, amused by the way your thighs tense and your breath goes ragged, sweat dripping down your back. Your hips wiggle and his fingers sink in deeper until he’s practically cupping your pussy in his palm.

“Little bit more—c’mon, birdie, almost there,” Simon coaxes, fingers plunging in and out of the pretty quince between your legs, speeding up when he notices your thighs begin to shake.

You gush all over his fingers when you come, your upper body slumping over, settling deeper into lordosis. Fingers slick with cum when he pulls them out, the fluid webbing between his fingers when he pulls them apart to look at the mess you made.

He finally gives you his cock after he’s gotten you so wet and pliant that he could fist you if he was so inclined. His cock throbs at the thought; that’s a thought for a later day though, when he can afford to take his time with you.

This time when Simon settles behind you, he doesn’t wait for you to relax before pressing all the way in, trusting his own instincts over your frantic pleading. It’s a smooth glide in, wet channel stretching around his shaft with the memory of his size from earlier, easier this time even though you still swear through clenched teeth and shake when he nearly bottoms out.

“Shit…there we go,” he grits out through clenched teeth, forehead veins straining.

In all his life, he’s never had the same pussy twice. Never cared enough about someone to go back for seconds. And now he has one that’ll last him the rest of his life.

It’s rougher this time than in the backseat of your car. Messy and brutal. He fucks you fast and deep, nearly bottoming out with every thrust, panting like he’s been running with the bulls in Pamplona, blond tufts of hair on his chest matted with sweat. Your little grunted pants only spur him on.

He regrets not getting his mouth on your cunt before feeding you his cock. It’s so wet that it squelches every time his hips shuttle forward, slick leaking down the sides of his cock and pooling under you in a wet puddle on the mattress. His fault for not putting down a towel.

When he glances down, he sees your back hole still shiny with his spit and, in a moment of inspiration, wedges a thumb into it to keep it nice and spread. Better to just train you now while your body is so receptive, given that he intends on fucking every hole of yours before the week’s over.

“Coulda just asked for a fuck instead of doin’ all this,” Simon grunts through each thrust. “Wouldn’t’ve turned ya down.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t—”

He snaps his hips forward. “Yeah, you did. Filthy fuckin’ bird.” The sound of laboured breaths and wet, squelching pussy fills the room. “Been wantin’ this, ‘aven’t ya? Wantin’ me? That why you came waggin’ this wet cunt around?”

He’s desperate enough to trick his mind into believing that. The faintest flickering chance that it wasn’t just him sitting behind a booth and pining for what he couldn’t have. That maybe you’d been hoping and waiting for him to come to you instead, all coy and shy about it.

“No, no, I swear,” you gasp, turning your head to the side and looking up at him with your big, watery eyes.

“Yeah, ya did, birdie.”

He has to squeeze a finger in beside his cock to help stretch you enough to take his knot, and it’s a miracle that he eventually works it in. It takes some effort; time. Your back is slick with sweat, tense as a steel pole when he finally works it in, walls febrile and thin around the swollen mass of his knot, a single continuous wail ripping from your throat.

“Big, innit?” he asks rhetorically when he’s got you on the end of it and struggling to form words through soundless gasps for air.

The way you gulp in your breath says it all. Eyes probably wide and bulging if only he had a mirror to watch your expressions in. He’ll have to remember that for later.

It’s still good like this though. Draped over you, the pudge of his lower belly pressed against the small of your back, one hand on the mattress beside you and one clutching your hip to hold you in place.

When he drops his hand between your thighs to jiggle your clit, your inner walls squeeze around his knot and his brain nearly leaks out of his ears. His cockhead nudges against the firm, spongy opening of your cervix, and you mewl like all kittenlike and sweet.

“Gonna come, pet?” Simon rasps.

“I think I’m—think I’m gonna pass out,” you admit, practically slurring your words and Simon barely keeps from collapsing on top of you and fucking your brains out, smothering you under his weight until your words become reality.

It wouldn’t be enough to make him stop; would probably egg him on more than anything to have a soft, pliant body under him taking his cock without trying to squirm away. His knot throbs at the thought and he lets himself slip into the daydream, imagining you prone and unmoving under him.

One day he’ll have you like that. Middle of the night, moonlight streaming in through the window in silver ribbons, your legs akimbo on the bed and his body between them, monstrously large over your slumbering form. An ugly brute with no business plunging his big, filthy cock into such a pretty, perfect fairy doll.

He leans down, pressing a kiss into the back of your head, almost tender for what he’s doing to your pussy. “S’alright if you have to; I’ll take care of ya.”

A few more strums of his fingers over your slippery wet clit and you go tight and taut, coming almost violently, head lolling forward with the force of it, practically burying the crown of your head into the pillow. Maybe you do pass out for a minute or two.

Just the thought of that sends him freefalling over the edge, emptying his balls into the warm clench of your cunt, swollen knot throbbing with each spurt. His knot barely keeps it all plugged in, so much cum flooding your womb from weeks of pent up lust.

Indescribable pleasure crawls up his spine and winds around to the front through his ribcage. Too good for him to waste his time thinking about what he’ll do if his knot does what it’s meant to do and it takes. His cock pulses again at the thought, another wave of pleasure rushing through him. Jesus fuck.

He’s hunched over you for a while before it starts to slough off, thighs tensed on either side of yours. Balls drawn up tight and then slowly relaxing. Finally aware of the sweat pouring down his back and dripping from his chest. Muscles relaxing one after another. There’s an ache in his low back that likely won’t come out until he’s stretched it out, but it’s worth the pain to feel the way your back presses into him with every laboured inhale as you catch your breath.

Simon shushes you when you whine something about being full. “You can take it; you’re alright.”

“It hurts,” you whine, a touch dramatic for his tastes.

“Supposed to hurt, bird.”

Got no choice, is what he wants to say. It’s always going to hurt with him.

He keeps one hand on your belly to ensure you stay pressed up against him when he rolls onto his side, wary of you trying to pull yourself off his cock and hurting yourself in the process. The skin at your entrance is stretched taut around his knot, and though he’s never been a particularly gentle fuck, the idea of something ripping where you’re most delicate sets his teeth on edge.

Your forehead is still hot to the touch when Simon checks. And it will be for a while, your heat coming and going like the sun hidden briefly behind clouds before reappearing again. He’ll have to savour these moments of tranquility when they come.

The moment of stillness is broken when you open your mouth to say, “You know, you could’ve just…talked to me.”

He’s not used to being scolded. It’s been a long time since anyone had that kind of authority over him or reason to talk to him that way, longer still since he’s taken anyone’s words to heart.

“Talkin’ to you now, ain’t I?” Simon asks rhetorically. You huff and he can feel the movement of your back against his chest and it tickles something in him that’s still somehow alive, even after all these years. Even after everything.

“Not the same thing,” you mumble, cheek pressed against the pillow under your head.

‘Course it’s not the same thing, he wants to say, but compromise is essential for survival. You can’t tell a rock not to be a rock. Or a junkyard dog not to bite.

“Tell you what,” he rasps. He drags the hand moulded to your belly up your chest until it’s nestled between your breasts, cupping a tit. Not meaning anything particularly sexual by it. There’ll be a time for that later when your heat crests again and your eyes go filmy, any chance at a coherent conversation swept away. “When we’re done ‘ere…we can ‘ave a go at it. Pretend I asked you out first. Make a game out of it.”

He can feel your incertitude in the stillness of your body. “…What would be the point of that?”

Simon very nearly chuckles. Very nearly says that you alone are the purpose in anything. That everything else in his life has been an aimless meandering for some kind of meaning, all of which has been in vain. All of which has left him scarred and bloody and beaten and battered, and now, for the first time in his life, someone has come along and shown him how pointless all of what came before was.

But that seems like too many words for now.

“No point, bird. Jus’ to make you feel better about it.”

A fine layer of dust on the windowsill reminds Simon that he needs to call the cleaners again.

It’s been at least a day since he brought you home, maybe longer. The sky outside is lighter now than when he brought you in, creamy with light filtered through the clouds, the sun somewhere in pieces behind them.

His heart has always sat deep in the valley where the cold sinks. Sangfroid. Cold-blooded. He’s been called many things in his life, but never deserving. Maybe he still isn’t deserving of anything good. All he knows is how to take and how to spoil.

Today though, his heart isn’t as heavy as it’s always been, and a faint voice breathes softly at the back of his head.

You haven’t been asleep for more than a half hour when Simon goes into the living room to make a call.

Price answers on the second ring. “Lieutenant?”

He sighs. “Can’t keep calling me that.”

“Force of habit.” Simon isn’t thick. Price uses language like he’s casting bait; like if he says the magic word enough times, Simon will give up this bid for freedom and come crawling back with his tail tucked between his legs, ready to sign away his life again. He knows that Price would love to have him back under his command. “What’s the matter? You never call this late.”

“Gonna need a raincheck on our drink tomorrow.” His eyes shift to the bedroom door, darkness spilling from the crack where he left it open. “Something came up.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line and then a rough chuckle. “Oh, did it?”

His skin around his eyes crinkles as he stares into the darkness just beyond the bedroom door. If he quiets his breathing, he can almost hear the faint, soft sounds of your snores from the other room.

“Yeah. It did.”

#i do NOT have the willpower to ignore this and go to sleep at a reasonable time #AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #sr

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