when your need grows teeth | John Price x f!Reader
John's the type of man to lock his jaws around what's his, preferring instead to ruin things, puncture it full of holes, and litter it with scars, rather than let it go.
It starts when you ask him to pick up your birth control—like dangling a piece of bloody meat in front of a starving dog.
Of course he's going to take a bite.
He thinks you ought to have known this by now.
SMUT 18+ | gratuitous smut; HEAVY breeding kink, breeding; Dom!John Price; p-in-v sex, unsafe sex; rough sex; mentions of spanking; mutual manipulation; this is roughly 10k of John Plotting and fucking you; John is: unhinged, obsessive, possessive, and Scheming. mentions of birth control tampering but nothing is followed through. No. He’s going to knock you up the old-fashioned way—by making you beg for it.
AO3 MIRROR
John has always had this desire—this awful, instinctual drive in the back of his head to knock someone up. Get them fat, swollen with his child. His.
And maybe that's the crux of it. Possession. To have something of the most rooted kind. To irrevocably change someone—their anatomy, their body, the chemistry in their brain, their status in life from them (single no dependents) to mother (mother of his child), their very atoms—and create life from the combined parts.
It's this almost fantastical beast, this unreachable dream for him.
It's his Shangri-la. His castle in Spain.
He's not under any disillusionment that this idea of fatherhood, of parenthood, is slightly skewed. That most men who want children don't feel this overwhelmingly greedy desire to fundamentally alter someone in such an irreversible way. It's not quite ownership, but it's the same ilk. A bastardised, unwanted child of it.
And it's not just this idea of claimation—to forever be the father of their child, even if neither of them stays together; a piece of him will always be there, parasitic, no matter what—but something deeper. Something a bit less—egregious.
This is, and always has been, about yearning.
John's the type of man to lock his jaws around what's his, preferring instead to ruin things, puncture it full of holes, and litter it with scars, rather than to let it go.
Marriage, he finds, is breakable. Divorce, separation. He's always on his worst behaviour in the initial stages of dating, so it's never something he has to entertain since no one ever sticks around long enough for it to be on the table, much less the menu, but the idea of it—of signing papers, of hashing out the split, of being known as ex-husband—leaves a bitter tang between his teeth. It won't do. He needs permanence. Perpetuity.
Nothing says forever quite like a child, does it?
And sure—he’s aware that countermeasures exist: custody orders, sole custody, shared; allotted visitations; divisional lines in this new age that keep the parents from ever interacting—but while you can get divorced, you can't unmake a child, can you?
The child would never write him out, either.
Where deadbeats exist, it's important to note that their counterparts do, too. The ones like him who will gouge their eyes out of their skulls before they ever let what happened to them growing up trickle down and impact their child, polluting the pool.
Simply put: John Price knows he'd be the best dad there is because he's stubborn that way.
It helps, he supposes, that he really only has so much love to give out to the world, and greedily, he stashed the entirety of it away in a box to give to his would-be wife and their child. An overwhelming deluge that promises happiness should it ever be unlocked. Pandora's box, perhaps—down to the very essence because if John Price were to ever love someone, then it's probably in their best interest to run from it, this gaping, needy chasm.
Not that it would ever be a possibility, of course—he’s much too good at compartmentalisation, in taking out his anger, his viciousness, on the ugly world he drenches himself in, the one his hands have a tangible cause and effect principle in place that will forever feed that starving beast inside of him.
Ergo—he’s a staunch supporter of the theory: happy wife, happy life. Though where those men think in a box stuffed full of emotional intimacy, flowers, chocolate, maintaining love, all-consuming and enduring, he takes it to extremes that would have them cowering a little bit. Maybe a lot.
But that's fine. He only has to make sure his family is happy. No one else matters, save a select few who have a seat at his table during Sunday dinners.
The rest, though? Spare parts.
(The ice-cold resolve in those two words is apodictic, brass bound, and he's sure if his higher-ups knew about it, well—
His chest candy would be a hole in the ground. Put the rabid dog down before it has a chance to bite.)
But that all-consuming, devouring, obsessive love he has to give, that begs to be let free, is the reason why it's so tightly leashed. Locked up in a box. Untouchable. Inaccessible.
It's why he isn't married.
Ghost once asked him why the women he dated were older. Much older. Menopausal (always). And he'd said something to the effect of it being his type. Older women who wouldn't cower away from the acrid burn of him, who wouldn't hurt their delicate little hands on his gritty surface.
But the real reason is because he knows better.
He's a starving dog, and it's just bad form to dangle a piece of meat in front of it. Especially when the hand holding it is his own.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you, and all.
(The keen look in Ghost's eyes told him that, perhaps, the man already knew the reason when he asked, and was just satiating himself with kinship—the dark, awful look on Simon's ugly mug after the dredging the underbelly of Price’s rotten, mouldering mudfloor of things unsaid spoke volumes.
They'd both nodded. Content, then. And promptly ordered a shot of whisky to drown the salivation, the hunger, from clogging their throats. Killing the urge to bite.
A pair of packless, stray dogs.)
But then he found you, and all his careful planning, all his distance, blew up in his face.
It's always been on his mind since then. Lingering in his periphery—this fevered, tantalising vision of you, round and swollen with his child.
It's unattainable, of course. A fantasy.
Though, this—you throwing up in the washroom of his penthouse, undoubtedly knocked up by his machinations—is probably because he kept that desire too close to where he hides his questionable mortality, the one that allows him to throw innocent people to their deaths, and send mothers and fathers to an early grave just so he can rip his fists apart on their bastard offspring in his own brand of catharsis that always bites back when they grow up, hankering for revenge.
He's always been good at snatching dreams out of the air, clenching them tight in his fists. Taming chimerical wants, whims, until they were docile, domesticated. Making realities out of fiction.
And really—he’s just not a good man.
He thought you'd have known this by now.
He remembers the first time he growled the words into your ear as he came, your cunt clenching around him like a vice. Desperate for it, he teased after, fingers fucking into your sloppy, leaking hole. Pushing his spend back into you. Half-drunk on the taste of you still clinging to his beard, but mostly just mesmerised by the sight of you—pretty pussy all ruined, swollen from the vicious, hateful pounding he gave it, and dipping with his cum like a faucet.
(It pissed him off—still does, really—when you waste it like this.)
Gonna fill you up, he snarled, low and wrecked. Gonna make it take—
It was a fantasy. Still is. But the way it took root in the garden of your bedroom, like it belonged—native flora, he thinks, a touch mad with it—had something ugly, oil slick, rearing up from that untouchable place in his head.
He could really blame you for it—and does. The way your ankles locked tight around his thighs, hands reaching, grabbing at his waist, clawing at his asscheeks to press him in deeper, deeper still, as he came inside of you, cock lodged right against your plug, had that untameable beast cocking its head in consideration after you danced too close to it, waking it from his long, restful slumber.
You wanted it. Ached for it. He could feel it in the way your walls tightened around him, practically starving for it. Your pretty, glossy eyes rolling back into your head. Drool running down your chin. A litany of pleas spilled from your kiss-bruised lips, begging him for it. Please, John. Please. Please—
Who was he to deny you?
Even if you made a big, flustered show of waving it off—not something I've ever imagined for myself, you know? and–and your lifestyle, what you do—is something like that even possible for us?—he saw how it curled around your shoulders, dipping its silver tongue into your ear. Germinating.
He let it. Encouraged it.
“Something to talk about later,” he indulged, reaching over for a cigar just to smother the urge to breed you stupid. To tie you to his bedposts and keep you full until your belly was swelling with more than just the absurd volume of his seed he pumped inside of you.
And, oh—
The uneasy smile on your face reeked of disappointment.
Fuck. Fuck—
John went to the washroom after that, heart pounding out of his chest, and jabbed the lit end of his cigar into his thigh to kill the fever in his veins. To rewrite the desperate, ugly howling in his head with pain instead.
It worked. Works—
Until you came to him, all watery-eyed and worried, and told him to please, please stop falling asleep with a lit cigar because you think you might just go mad if you lost him to a cigarette fire. And doesn't he see how silly it is, these burns look so bad, John, and I worry—
His teeth ached. He smiled, but it felt like a grimace. A dog holding back the instinct to bare its teeth.
“Sure, love,” he'd said, and started taking out his anger on your cunt instead, fucking you deep, and stupid. Getting you all cockdrunk, and hungry for the dream that spoiled so badly in the back of his head, he's sure a proper man would call it a nightmare. “Anything you want.”
(Brassbound. Apodictic. You know that, he knows you know that, so imagine his surprise when you come to him, all soft and tender, and ask him to pick up your birth control as if he hadn't spent the better part of two years grumbling every fucking time you took it and wasn't on the verge of tossing the damn bottle out the window, and fucking you until it took—
But—you do know that, don't you?
Well, then. Whatever his lady wants, right? Right.)
“Can you stop by the pharmacy on your way home tonight?”
He hums, fiddling with the belt of his slacks in front of the mirror. “Sure, love. You feelin’ sick?”
“No,” you murmur, sliding behind him on your way to the washroom, wearing nothing but a towel tucked under your arms. “I need my refill. For birth control.”
His hands still. A gnarled, rotted tendril curls over the edge of the cesspool, murky, ink black water splashing all over the place. “Oh, yeah? Still taking that, hm?”
You fluster. Hands waving, chock full of nervous, emotive energy you can't seem to shake off. “Well—yes. I mean, obviously.”
And he'd leave it there, let the spillage dry on the hot pavement, if you hadn't glanced back at him, all damp keenness, slightly skittish, and asked, feather-soft and utterly fragile, “right?”
Right? A question, he notes. Not a statement.
He licks his teeth. Tastes something rancid in the gaps.
“Mm. I suppose so.” He leaves it vague, but drenches it in the heavy weight of his disappointment. Anchors dragging it down. You flit around the space like a house-locked bird, slamming into the walls and ceiling as you try—blind and panicked—to find an escape. Any escape.
He finds the whole thing utterly charming. Especially when you realise he pitched himself in front of the only exit, thick, heavy hands curled around his belt, cock outlined against his slacks, already thickened, drooling in his pants.
There's gasp—wet, and sharp—as you take him in. The liquid of his eyes as his want bleeds out of his skull. The flush on his cheeks, the twitch of his cock at the mere mention of you not taking your silly little pills.
John lets it sit for a moment, taking in greedy lungfuls of your unease as you glance everywhere but at him, as if looking in his direction, breathing in this toxic miasma will give you a contact high. Infectious. Gnarled.
The little seed that started germinating blooms.
He fights back the urge to grin, all teeth. Madness staining them black.
“It's—it’s on—” and fuck, he's never seen you so unsure before, this nervous. You handle him like a wrangler, wrassling his brutish dominance until it's putty in your hands, splitting his head into pieces and galvanising the madness inside until it's scripture for you to peek at whenever you need guidance, insight into him, his essence, his being.
Your dyadic has always been built on permeance.
John doesn't think there's a single person alive who understands him as much as you do. The only person who seems content to gorge yourself on his rotted marrow like it was a delicacy.
Seeing you like this rents his resolve in two.
“It's the pharmacy near the, uh, the school. The kindergarten.”
He chokes on a groan, and thinks he tears something in his throat with the strain of keeping it down. There's blood, ash, in the back of his throat.
“Alright, love. I'll pick it up.”
You smell it, and shiver.
It's giving meat to a starving dog, and saying, dog, don't take a bite.
And so, of course he does.
John picks up your prescription, tossing it in the passenger seat like it personally offended him. And it has. Does. It's what's standing in the way between what he wants, what he craves, and there's a distinct thrum of irritation welling inside of him. One that started when he had to bark out your name at the counter earlier, and the pharmacist looked at him, and calmly, kindly, explained what it was he was picking up.
Make sure she takes them once a day. Preferably at the same time. This brand of oral contraceptive can be taken with or without food—
Fuck off, he thought—thinks, even now, glowering into the tinted window of the pharmacy.
He grips the steering wheel tight until his scarred knuckles bleach white under the strain, and sits in the parking lot, staring, unseeingly, at the shops. Pensive. Thoughtful. It gnarls over his expression until he's the picture of that grizzly-like intensity you often accuse him of. All furrowed brows and a pinched, angry twist to his lips.
There's a series of complex equations running laps in his head. He's no stranger to this process, needing to make life or death decisions in less time it takes someone to snap their fingers, or tentatively stammer out his title.
This one is more linear than the rest. One plus one, so to speak. But the weight of it is profound. Heavier, even, than deciding between the success of his mission and the life of an innocent bystander.
(But he thinks he's just selfish like that.)
In his head, he debates the ethics of replacing all of these silly little tablets that stand in his way with sugar pills.
It would be the quickest path to the end, but the risk-reward ratio ebbs and flows the more he considers things without the miasmic influence of that abomination throwing itself at the walls of its enclosure, howling in an endless cacophony of do it, do itdoit—
A better man wouldn't even have such a temptation. He supposes that's what you deserve, but he already had this particular crisis a few months after he met you, and realised that the things he wanted to do to you would undoubtedly put him on a list. Slapped so hard with a restraining order, his ears would still be buzzing.
That something about you made his jowls twinge, and his teeth ache, and no amount of stay away from her, Price; she deserves better than you was going to keep his dirty hands from curling around your throat, leaving soot-stains on your skin in the shape of his fingerprints. Brandishing ownership in burst blood vessels; a pretty collar for you to wear because as much as you like to pretend otherwise—
You're a dog just like him.
In any case, he's the best choice for you. The only one who'd burn the world just to keep you warm, and that's what you really need. Protection.
And fuck—you toy with that particular urge that has always been etched in fine lines within the walls of bones; dipping your fingers into it, and spreading it over the apples of your cheek. Everything about you prickles along his hindbrain. Renders him from a modern man with modern ideals to an animal who can only speak in growls, snarls; pure primalism, all instinct.
You're made for each other down to the bone. He's sure he could split your head apart and find that your cranial sutures are perfectly mirrored. Made in the same image: you were grown from his missing rib, and he always meant to be cradled in the brackets of your thighs.
So, crisis of worthiness aside—because there are none, not anymore—he plots. Plans. Schemes. But his machinations keep catching on the soft fibrils of your wants.
John doesn't know what he'd do if you changed your mind.
(Or, rather, he does but that's another madness to unravel with his personal therapist.)
It's with this—the slight brandishing of his uncertainty in your certainty—that he gives up the idea, pocketing it for a later date, and drives home, back to you.
He doesn't toss the bag on the counter, but sets it up perfectly, placing it as close to the edge where the bin sits under it. All it would take is a breath of wind for it to fall into the trash.
That doesn't happen, though. You stare at the white, crinkled package for a moment as he sips on his tea, quietly contemplative. With your expression hidden from him, he has no idea what might be going through that pretty head of yours. Disappointment, he can only hope. And then you're reaching for it, fingers gripping the bag tightly in your fist. He hears the paper crumble. It sparks something inside his chest. A bloom of hope that you might just throw it out. Toss it in the bin—
You turn to him instead, knuckles white.
“Thanks,” you say, and the matter is dropped.
He goes to tuck that want back where it escaped, leaving slick trails of putrefying rot behind, but—
John peeks in the vanity later that evening, but where he expects to see the little rectangular package sitting in its usual spot between his aftershave and the mouthwash, he finds nothing. Just an empty spot on the ledge, spotlit by the lack of dust. A clean square of white paint, undisturbed.
His jaw twinges. He wonders if you're hiding it from him, keeping it safe from his machinations, but then he finds it shoved in the drawer with his shaving kit, and the box of condoms he bought when you'd first started dating (for show, naturally—John had no intentions of using them and learned persuasion was your Achilles heel; that and you tended to get a little glossy-eyed whenever he growled filth in your ear, the smell of your cunt heavy on his breath).
The package is crinkled like you squeezed it tight in your little fist before you tossed it in.
You're always meticulous in the way you put things in their places. Even the junk drawer is organised, all neat.
This speaks volumes, but he's not quite sure what it says. They are still here, though. Accessible. One is missing from the pack. It dampens his mood.
He picks up his toothbrush, and runs through those calculations again to see how he can convince you to skip the one you're meant to take tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, and the next—
He stays awake as you sleep beside him, looking into how many days you can miss before your brand of birth control stops being effective.
Seven pills in a row.
He files it away, lost in thought.
The next morning, he leaves his phone open on the bedside table with the article pulled up. He kisses you awake before he leaves to shower, humming something soft under his breath.
When he returns, he finds you sitting up in bed with your knees drawn to your chest. There's something pensive about the look on your face. Paper soft, as though it would all blow away at a mere whisper.
You regard him almost cooly but something raw, fractured splits over the ravine. A waterfall of midnight black sludge rains down.
(He wonders if it tastes of the same rot, the same madness, as the basin of the untouched recesses of his head—)
“I'm working late tonight,” you murmur after a measured beat, and he can't place your tone. “Maybe we can watch a movie when I get home.”
John nods, and your eyes drop, scaling down his bare, broad chest as he breathes in the flint staining the air. Your gaze is white-hot when it bludgeons into him, feverish.
It doesn't take much beckoning at all to have him crawling toward you, towel ripped from his hips and thrown somewhere in the aether.
As he steals the madness from your tongue, his eyes flicker to the phone still sitting on the table. It looks perfectly untouched. The screen is off.
That, too, he files away.
John comes to the succinct conclusion that the only means he has in his arsenal to get what he wants—legally, and somewhat morally, anyway—is persuasion.
There's no recourse if he can water that burgeoning plant inside of you, make it seem like this is something you want, too. A family. With him.
(Only him.)
He knows that you see things quite similarly to him. Wherein love is desire. Desire is hunger. And there's nothing more profound to you than to eat the person you love alive. Consumption of every part—the good, the beautiful, the bad, the ugly, and the rotted: skin, fat, muscles, blood, and bones. All of it.
So, even if somewhere down the road you think you hate him for this, it'll be fine. He'll just consume that, too.
John Price is a tenacious man. Stubborn.
(Bullish, he hears around the barracks. Fuckin’ stubborn prick, too.)
It helps that this line of work is perfectly suited for such a peremptory drive to the finish line, no matter the cost. Utilitarian to a fault, despite his rather recalcitrant disposition. It's how he gets his way more often than not. Brutish dominance. Loutish suppression.
But a near reckless, suicidal loyalty that attracts the sort of beasts this line of work needs.
But that's work, not this. Not trying to convince you, his sugar-sweet (and viciously diabolical) lover, to bear the burden of giving him a family because society says it's uncouth (and illegal, morally reprehensible, villainous) for him to chain you to his bed to keep the darker parts of himself that want to rip into anyone who had the pleasure—pleasure that no longer belongs to them—of looking at you.
That's all for him.
(Nasty old bastard.)
And, of course, because he's ready. Everything clicks. Locks into place. There's no one else out there for him.
Really, though—it's your fault for prodding that beast in the first place. For letting inside your house, your bed. For thinking it could be tamed. And so. You should accept responsibility for it.
(Nasty, nasty—)
But just as much as you know him, he knows you. You'll give him a litany of reasons why this shouldn't happen, and none of them will be because this isn't what you want. It'll be filled with reasons why you think he doesn't.
And that simply won't do.
So, he plots. Plans.
The thing is. No one ever taught him how to hold things in his hands without crushing it.
He doesn't think he can be delicate. Gentle. There's no way to gently nudge you into this. No.
He'll convince you to yield the same way a tsunami convinces a house to move out of the way.
Buried to the hilt in your cunt, he growls gospels into your ear about this beautiful Shangri-la, this sprawling castle he has in Spain until you're clenching down around him tight, conditioning your body to come at the thought of swelling with his child. About letting his seed take root, letting him knock you up.
It's a crass image that he spits into your head—fuck you until it takes, love; breed this pretty cunt every day until you're fat and swollen—serves as the positive reinforcement to his classical conditioning. He'll turn you into one of Pavlov's mutts, salivating at the sound of him groaning into your ear as he fills your pussy up to the brim. He'll reshape you, change your wants until you only come around his cock when he's spitting his release against the plug of your womb.
And when you make to get up, letting all his spend slip from your sloppy cunt to take your pill, he pulls you closer under the guise of wanting to feel your body on his, murmuring diabolical compromises he has no intention of letting you see through.
“Later,” he rasps, pulling you closer. His mouth slots across your temple. “Just take it later, sweetheart. Later.”
“But—”
“It’ll be fine.”
And, as if you'd been waiting for that reassurance, you melt into his hands, wet putty.
(you take the bloody pill later, and he adds that to his mental calendar, adjusting the maths. He supposes he’ll just have to try harder next time.)
John's desire for you is overwhelming, all-encompassing, and he schemes around his wandering hands, bullying into your messy cunt only moments before your alarm is meant to go off, reminding you to take your pill, reinforcing that irritating little wall that keeps his come from reaching your womb.
It goes off, but he hardly hears it over the roaring in his ears, the sweet, sweet litany of moans that slip out, staining the pillow with your pleasure. He just keeps fucking you through it, growling mindlessly into your ears about how badly he wants to come inside of you. His warnings, threats, about how close he is intertwining with your desperate begging for him to come, come inside me, John is the most beautiful harmonisation he'd ever heard, and it sews itself into his marrow, polluting the ugliness inside with a new, fresh hell for him to torture himself with. That delicious pleasure-pain that drives him mad—
He fills you up, palm pressed taut to your lower belly as he spits his virile release deep into your cunt. He can feel the heavy outline of his cock against your skin, stuffed full of him, and it's this—the way he moulds your body around him, cock visible through your flesh—that makes his eyes roll back into his head. Makes the urge to fuck, to breed, to claim bludgeon into him, shattering reason, logic. He wants to change you, irrevocably. Forever. To mar you with his touch, his essence.
“Mine,” he chokes out, ugly and raw. It's a mangled mess in his throat. A threat. “All fucking mine, aren't you, love? All mine—”
His words seem to throw you into another climax, cunt clenching greedily down around him as he softens inside of you, plugging you up. You liked that, he notes, purs. The notion brands itself across his resolve, reshaping it into something that would make anyone else recoil in fear, disgust.
But you preen at this creature that bares its fangs at you, snaps wicked teeth against your jugular. Fingers threading through its hair, shushing it, soothing it, as you pull it back into your embrace, head tucked against your chest. You lull it into complacency with the heavy thud of your heart, your sweet, earthy scent.
What a pair, he thinks, and clamps his hands around your wrist when you murmur something about taking your pill now. Need to take it before it gets too late, John—
He makes his move, distracts you with his mouth, his tongue.
“Just take it after,” he murmurs into your pussy, thighs bracketing around his head. His hands pull your waist down, pressing you harder against his mouth. “Later, love. It'll be fine—”
“But, John—”
The protest dies, turns to ash, when he grunts, sealing his lips around your clit, bullying it with the rasping press of tongue until you're arching your back, riding his face. Thoughts of your silly pill are gone, swallowed by him as you gush, drenching his mouth in your slick.
And after, when you make to get up again, he pulls you close instead, voice curling around you like smoke when he tells you to take it after.
“No, love. Stay in bed with me,” he peppers kisses to your cheek, your jaw, chin, sweetening his words, and folds you into the tight embrace of his arms. “Take it in the morning. It'll be fine to miss a day.”
You level him with something that shadows the ravines in your gaze with pure, unadulterated scepticism, but as he scouts the canyons, the valleys, the pretty craters that make up the composite of your eyes, he finds no discernible trace of wariness, uncertainty. The terse line in his shoulders ease.
But while fossicking around he unearths something else. Something a bit more enigmatic, calculative, than doubt. Equivocal, slippery, it runs from him when he tries to give chase, tucking itself back into the harsh tenebrous that shades the landscape.
He hums, wanting to ask, but you sigh in quasi-acquiescence, and burrow deeper into his embrace.
“Fine,” you huff, but he tastes a purring sense of satisfaction in the air. “I'll take it tomorrow instead.”
“Good girl.” The praise slips out, low and gritty, perfumed with his heavy greed.
You shiver against him. The hitch in your throat is quiet in the bedroom, but to him, it sounds like a gunshot.
John keeps meticulous track of the empty pill slots, and notes with a sticky, resinous sense of glee that the numbers are becoming muddled, skewed. Later becomes tomorrow, and your soft acquiesce has days skipped. Missed.
You can't double up, you huff to him, mournfully slinking into the bed. It's nearly one in the morning. Technically, a brand new day. I absolutely have to take it tomorrow, John. Make sure you remind me—
There's something pointed in your tone. Something oil-slick. He nods, bites back a grin.
“Sure,” he pulls you close, breathes in the sweet, loamy scent of you—sweat and sex and the lingering remnants of your perfume, your soap—and lets it stain his lungs. “I can do that.”
You say nothing at all when he doesn't bring it up until well past midnight the next day, offering little more than an exasperated groan, and a huffy roll of your eyes, as if this was just a missed dinner with friends and not a life-changing misstep.
(The beast purrs. He places his hand over his chest, and feels the rumble under his skin.)
“Need to be more responsible than this, John,” you say, squirming in his hold to try and rush to the washroom to take that pesky little pill.
“Sorry, love,” he offers, and means none of it. Clings tighter to you. “Got a bit carried away today, is all.”
“It's not your fault—” something curls out from a dark crevasse when you look at him. “I've been so—off lately, you know? Must be the new batch. Maybe I should call my doctor.”
He stills. Body tensing, coiling. John tries to speak, but the words are ash on his tongue. He clears his throat.
“Could stop taking it.”
It crackles in the air. Hangs heavy like a stormcloud.
You blink, stunned. But it's artificial, hollow. Pulled from a wicker basket where you keep all your different skins.
“You mean—what? Stop it all together—?”
You flit in the space once more, but it's less of an injured bird searching for an escape, he realises suddenly, and more of—
A boomslang.
One rearing up, searching for the perfect place to strike.
Wishful thinking, though, because you're flustered and skittish once more, a small prey animal he isn't sure what he wants to do the most—sink his teeth into you, tear you into pieces, and devour you whole, or hide you away from the world.
“I can look for something else in the meantime,” you sound shy, hesitant, and it prickles across his skin. “But we'd need to be careful, you know. Otherwise you might actually get me pregnant.”
He tries to swallow his groan. Chokes on it instead.
“Sure, sure—” he hacks into his palm. “Of course, love. We'll be safe. I'll pull out—”
Naturally, he doesn't. Makes no effort to even try despite promising you he is.
“Not my fault your pussy won't let go of me, love,” he grumbles, hand cupping your weeping sex in his palm. The heat of you is searing. Blistering. He thinks he could happily melt inside of it for the rest of his life, and leans down to whisper his devotion into your come-slicked folds, the bitter tang of you, of him, admixing on his tongue. An elixir he could drown in.
You huff at him after, all glossy-eyed and sex-drunk, and tell him to please try harder, John, I'll have to get plan b tomorrow—
You don't, but the threat of it, the possibility, lingers in the back of his mind, souring his thoughts.
Next time, and I'll have to, John, you say, featherlight, lips pressed against the head of his cock. A warning, a goddamn tease—
His voice is strained, pinched. “Of course, love,” and he guides your mouth back to his cock, letting the matter fall into pieces when you suck on the sensitive head, tongue licking, coy and kittenish, over his frenulum.
It's only later, when watches you swallow down his come, that the beast slinks out of the shadows, pocketing the fragments.
You're off birth control—barely any scheming words of whispered concern needed—but the idea of you taking a little pill to wipe away his efforts has him pulling back. Recalibrating his plans.
He decides on a different route to the same end.
Damnation at your own hand.
John, for his credit, does begin to pull out after that—albeit, with a great deal of agonised reluctance—and instead comes all over your pretty face.
With thick ropes of his pearlescent spend dripping down the apples of your heated cheeks, he doesn't think he's ever seen a sight more beautiful than this.
And one with more opportunity.
Slowly, he swipes at it with his thumb and then promptly brings it down, hard, on your clit. You flinch, mewling at the overstimulation, and the threat he brings so close to your raw, unprotected sex. It's dangerous. This thin line he dances along could snap at any moment. Could rain hellfire and fury over his broad shoulders, unmake all the progress he'd steadily built up.
He walks the precipice, anyway. He pulls his hand away, and brings two fingers up to curve over your cheeks. His thumb, stained with your slick and his come, slides across your bottom lip.
The pout you give him—all wet-eyed lachrymose—has his spent cock twitching against his sticky thigh. “Fuck, love. Gonna send me to an early grave if you keep starin’ at me like that.”
“You're cracked,” you slur around his thumb. In retaliation, he digs it into your tongue, and preens—full of nasty, gnarled satisfaction—when your eyes flutter, rolling into the back of your head at the taste.
With this brief distraction, he drops his come-stained fingers to your mound, and rubs along the swollen rim of your hole. Just touching, pressing. A tease, a whisper.
You tense. “John—” it's muffled around his thumb, and he isn't sure if it's a warning or a plea.
He pushes the tips in, barely to the first knuckle, and just pets around your rim.
It's a battle of wills, now. “No more than this,” he promises, and the undercurrent of his threat rents the air. Makes you bristle.
You always loved a challenge—especially coming from him.
“Just the tip?” You tease, spittle running down your chin. Your eyes are dark—midnight skies, ink black—and he's struck by the afterimage of himself in those pools. Made in the same image.
He grunts, slides into the first knuckle, and scissors them apart.
“John—” it's breathless. Your teeth spear his thumb, tight around his bone. He wants nothing more than to have you bite down hard, scar his bones with the gnawed meteors of your desire. Your desperation. “Fuck—please—”
You give in so prettily, and he barely has a moment to think about how quick it's been when you angle your hips, hand falling to grip his wrist tight as you slide down his fingers, all the way to the last knuckle.
You clench around him like a vice. A pretty bow. He fucks you with his fingers, meeting your shallow thrusts with ones of his own, slamming viciously into your pussy as he coos adorations into your ear.
With his other hand, he reaches down and fists himself over your bare mound, pressing the tip against your clit where it weeps prespend over your flesh. His thumb sweeps across what spills out, dragging it back down to your sopping hole, pushing it inside.
It's probably not enough to reach your womb, to get you pregnant, but he clings to that tantalising fantasy as he drills his fingers into you until you come, breathlessly begging him to fuck you harder, to fill you up—
He isn't even fucking you with his cock, and you still beg him for it.
John pushes the tip into your slit, fingers still buried deep inside of your throbbing pussy, and groans with the force of his release. It makes him dizzy, almost nauseous with it, filling his head with nothing but the sweet, wounded sound of your moans filling the room, and the wet squelch of his fingers pulling out of you.
When he catches the threads of cognisance in his fingers once more, he leans back on his haunches, chest heaving, and brands the messy sight of your pussy fluttering, clenching around nothing, as his spend drips down your slit, over your hole, and pools in the sheets below.
He's not sure if heaven exists, but he knows the sight of you, breathless and whimpering on his bed, is the closest a man like him will ever come to seeing it.
The push-pull of this little game stretches on.
Price likes to see just how far he toe the line before you're whimpering into the sheets, telling him don't, John, don't come inside me, I'm not anything, John—and he's ripping himself away from the tight clutch of your wet, hot cunt, and coming all over you.
The illicit tease of barely pulling out in time, and then scooping up the mess he makes on your face, your breasts, your belly, your ass, lower back, thighs, and spooning it into your pussy until it's a fixture in your bedroom ritual.
And maybe it's the threat of it all, of playing such a dangerous game, seems to cudgel under his skin the most, ripping apart the thin veneer of that man he once pretended to be—righteous and good—shedding it off with each hiccupped gasp you make when he presses his come-slicked fingers inside of you, murmuring guttural words of affection in the shape of impish mockery (want it bad, don't you, sweet thing; so fuckin’ greedy for it, love—).
He likes it the most when he can fuck you stupid on his fingers. Cockdrunk, and come-starved (because you are, of course; he hasn't come inside of your cunt in weeks, and doesn't miss the mournfully pitiful whines you give when he pulls out, depriving you of the pleasure of feeling him come inside you), you're too blissed out, swimming in pleasure, to think about what he's doing.
In fact, he doesn't really give you much of a chance to think at all.
The next few weeks are filled with him fucking you each night brutally, viciously, snarling low in your ear about how bad he wants to come in you, stuff you full, and then keep you plugged up all night with his cock that it takes, and then pulling out right before, committing the sight of your betrayed expression to memory where it'll sit like a trophy when you finally break.
You make an appointment with your gynaecologist, and circle the date on his calendar.
John notes it down. Tucks it away.
And then he amps up the pressure.
John's fingers root behind your knees, pushing your thighs apart as he settles between them. His gaze drills into your bare cunt, slick and wet, and so ready for him. Eager for it.
He'd counted the days, and knows that if there's ever the absolute worst time to have unprotected sex, to come inside of you, is now.
Which, of course, means he has to. The clause in that is ironclad. Apodictic.
“Bit dangerous,” he rasps, and lifts your leg up, resting your ankle on his shoulder. You fluster beneath him, panting and pretty, and fuck—he’s not pulling out of your pussy tonight at all. “Should I pull out?”
It's a tease. A test.
He reaches down as he says the words, gripping his cock and bringing it down against your wet heat. The bare, blunt head of his cocks slaps against your clit, and you arch, keening. Nails bite into the thick muscles of his biceps, and he leans into the sharp sting. Letting it ground him. Centre him.
This will be your cacoëthes.
He's been depriving you for weeks, and John knows that you're wanting for it. Desperate. The little twitches your hips give, as if begging him to fill you up, are proof enough of how much you want this.
This. The dream he dripped into your ears, hot oil congealing over your frontal lobe; infectious and thick. You can try to chisel it off, but the pollution is already damning. Ruining.
You want this. He wears the axiom like armour.
And you beg for it—eyes shaded in gut wrenchingly beautiful lachrymose—and John snuffles closer, inching the weeping head of his cock into your tight, warm heat.
The sight of splitting you open is something he never grows tired of. Something that, without fail, makes his balls ache. His chest thrum. Blood turns to ichor. To wine. He's drunk on the contrast made between you—a garish chiaroscuro of your pretty pussy, soft and sickly sweet—almost nauseatingly so—swallowing down the fat, girthy length of his cock. The thick streams of veins running along the flushed, heavy shaft against your puffy, soft folds is almost hideous. Sinful. He can't equate it to anything else except corruption. The horrific beast sullying the princess.
And fuck—
The thought alone makes him throb.
He's sullied you plenty, he reckons, and yet you always look so sweet. Especially now, when your rim is stretched taut around the thick of him, pussy squeezing, clenching around him in a vice, as if you weren't sure to push him out or pull him deeper.
John decides for you. Opting instead to push your knees down to your chest, nearly brushing your ears, and follows with the bulk of his body until he feels your breath rush out of your lungs. You struggle for a moment, gasping wetly into his ear as his weight—every bearish pound of it—rests on you in the perfect mating press. Your bite into his biceps, keening prettily into his ear as he bullies the full length of his cock into you. Spears you open. Splits you apart.
He can feel you gush around him, drenching his groin and thighs with your slick.
Like this—chest to chest, forced to breathe in the same air, the same madness—he likes to just stare at you, taking in the heat simmering under your skin, the sweat beading along your temple, the pinch in your brow as you struggle to adjust to the sheer width of him cudgelling you open. A battering ram you're forced to make room for.
He takes it all in, each flicker of emotion, each heaving gasp. Burns it into his memory. Lets it soften the iron around his heart. Keeps it there, nestled in the cradle of his limited love, held aloft by indelicate, bearish hands. This sweet thing.
He can't wait to ruin it.
If these weeks leading up to this were lovemaking, fucking, then this, this, is mating. Animalistic. Primal. He pushes in as deep as he can, until the tip kisses the ripened seal of your womb, and grinds his hips cruelly into the cradle of your thighs.
Your nails leave bloodied indents in his flesh. A scar he'll proudly bear the mark of. A tattoo of the time when he turned you into something new.
His balls are soaked. The sheets, too. He mocks you for it, a rasping growl lodged deep in his throat, taunting you about how fucking wet you are for him. How badly you need it.
“Gotta plug you up, hm?” He grunts, and sets a pace that serves only to accentuate the sloppy, messy squelch of your cunt.
His cock pistoning into you, alternating between deep, full thrusts that knock the air from your lungs, and heavy, slow plunges meant to badger the blunt head of his cock against your walls.
You seem to like it best when he shifts his weight between each thigh, content to just grind into you. Make you feel every inch of him. You cling to him, yowling in his ear about how good it feels, how much you love this, love his cock—
The thick bed of wry, umber curls on his chest, stomach, and groin grow slick with sweat from the intensity of it all, from the shared heat. Pressed tight against you, he feels every quiver. Every flinch. Each moan is made known in a slight reverberation across his skin before he hears it.
Drenched in sweat, glued to you as he fucks you into the mattress, John feels very much like the beast making a house out of a twisted whim in his head. Feverish, sick, he drives into you with the single minded goal of filling that home up with three. Then four. Five—
As many as you'll let him.
And he almost loses himself to that thought alone. Dancing sugar plums that make his balls tighten. He stems the flood by pulling out of you, letting his heavy cock slap against your sticky, soaked cunt as he heaves into your hairline, sucking in the heady loam, the humus, of your scent.
The whimper you make when he pulls out of you sounds like a wounded animal, and the noise tickles across his hindbrain. His jaw aches. He bites down on a snarl as you thrash against him, mindless with the need to have him inside of you. It brings a nasty, vicious curl to the ends of his mouth, and he doesn't even bother trying to tamper it down. John lifts his head and lets you see his foaming muzzle, drooling with thick globes of saliva.
“Stay still,” he growls, low and dangerous. It's as much of a warning as it is a command, and the way you react, tensing, coiling tight—the flash of unease. Shock. And then the need. Achy, heavy. He feels it against his jugular when you shiver, moaning his name into the space between you where it reeks of desperation.
To soften the submissive tremble in your jaw—and maybe to temper down the challenging talons sharpening in your gaze—he nuzzles his cheek against yours, peppers wet kisses to your skin. He licks across your jaw, bites down on your flesh.
He tastes salt and sin on your skin.
(His eyes roll so far back into his skull he thinks he might get lost.)
“Gonna cum on your pretty cunt if you don't stop squirming, love.”
And John loves you most for your waspish intelligence—the ire smouldering in your throat. The way you bite back just as hard, never afraid to bear teeth when he snarls. He doesn't think he could ever love someone too soft—not without tearing them to pieces. To shreds.
But you wear plush, tender conchoidal skin over jagged, rough obsidian. He'll ruin himself if he ever tries to rip you apart.
Like this, though—you melt.
All that keen, vicious intelligence snuffed out. His scheming Cleopatra tamed on his cock.
Your heels dig into the back of his thighs, urging him closer to your sex. “Come on, John, just fuck me, fuck me already—”
(Tamed, though, perhaps being a misnomer.)
He huffs into your neck. “Impatient little quean.”
It gets him a sharp bite to the tip of his ear, and the floor roars so loudly in his veins, he gets dizzy from it.
“Fuck—”
He's pressing back into you again, into your warm, tight heat, and it's nirvana kissing his nerves. Liquifying his spine. He rolls into you with a weighted groan, buried to the hilt once more.
But even with the respite, he knows he won't last.
John needs you fucked stupid, docile and soft just for him, and sets out to do just that. Pounding into you with a spiteful twist of his hips that he knows will leave you a little sore, and tender tomorrow. But the idea of spreading your puffy, achy folds apart and soothing the slight hurt with his tongue for hours until you're sobbing into the cushions quells any hesitation that rears, begging him to slow down.
Go easy on your pretty cunt.
(As if.)
John batters into you until your eyes glaze over, and your chin, cheeks, smear with drool. Until the challenge in midnight black melts into submission. Docile, and malleable. Perfect for him to mould. Shape.
Reshape.
He glues to you, touch starved and tactile, and basks in the liquid heat that blooms from deep within you.
“Gonna cum soon,” he snarls, broken by the heave in his chest as he fucks into you, starved. “Gotta pull out, love—”
You're gripping him tighter, anchoring him to your body. You haven't come yet. Something he dangles in front of you like a threat.
He watches the slow crawl of realisation crest over your messy face, and thinks he falls just a little bit more in love with you at the sight of your little pout.
Loves, even more, the way it breaks apart when he pounds into you harder, viciously, watching drool dribble off your chin, and reason leak from your ears—
“Please, John—” the sound of your whimpering has him grunting, head dizzy with the saccharine sweet taste of it on his tongue. “Please, please—come inside me. I–I want you to–to fill me up—”
“Yeah?” He taunts, mean and breathless. “Want me to come inside your sloppy cunt? Dangerous, ain't it? Jus’ might take, sweet thing. Is that what you want?”
You're howling a litany of sin into his ear, desperation drenches each clamour of his name, each orison uttered, begging him to come, to fill you up, and then—
“Fuck—I want it so bad—” his head is filled with static. Whitenoise. “Want it to take, John—”
He comes inside of you, cock pulsing so hard it feels like a sob. Filling you up. Wishing on all the stars that it takes—
As a reward for your good behaviour, he spreads you out over the sheets, and growls his approval into your sopping pussy, drenching himself with the taste, the smell, of you, promising to wear it like a perfume so everyone knows how good you are for him. Him, alone.
(His, his, his—)
When you come, you nearly smother him, and he thinks he sees a glimpse of nirvana in baby soft yellow before he's pulled back by your shaking hands brushing the hair off his sweat-slicked forehead.
“Are you okay, John—”
He rolls you under him, fucking into your drenched pussy like a man starved. That tantalising vision glues itself to his hindbrain, so close he can scent the fresh dew of fresh milk, and warm bread in his nose. Feel the bump of your stomach.
He's almost angry about it, about being ripped away from that dream, and takes his aggression out on your sloppy, leaking cunt. The way his come trickles out, staining the mattress below and the back of your thighs has him growling darkly into your nape.
“Keep it in,” he snarls, words sharpened on the whetstone of his need. “Keep it all inside, love.”
“Ah, John, John—” something falls from your split-slicked lips, and his fingers bite into your hips. Punishment for the slurred backtalk.
“I'll spank your ass if any of it leaks out—”
It does. Of course it does.
He bends you over his knee, and slaps his broad, rough palm over each cheek ten times before deliriously shoving two thick fingers into your sloppy cunt, stuffing his come back inside your tender, swollen hole, rough and mean, as you howl, squirming in his lap about how you promise you'll be good next time, John, please—I'll keep it all in, I swear, I—
“You fuckin’ better, love.” He groans, and thinks about cumming on your messy face, all slick with sweat, and drool, but decides against it. A waste, he thinks, and leans over you to shove the thick, twisting length of his angry cock inside you to the hilt just spit his release against your seal once more.
“That was…” You're still panting against his chest, eyes dazed, and body laxed. Melted wax over his chest. “Intense,” you settle on after a beat.
There's a hiccup in your breath when he hums, chest rumbling with the sound.
“Mm, but you liked it, didn't you?”
Of course you did. Of course. The evidence of it is drying, tacky and slick, on his groin, his thighs.
You burrow into his side, peeking at him from over the thick bed of wry curls that clot over his chest. “You're fucking me like you haven't in years, John. Makes me wonder if you have an agenda.”
He considers your words. The weight of them. Wonders just how much you've clued into, but huffs when he catches the same look in your eyes as the one reflected in his own.
Cheeky little—
“Can't I just want to fuck you? Not everything has to be about schemes, love.”
The oil of his lies, the sticky resin of his evasion makes you huff into his skin.
In all his meticulous planning, he'd picked up several books on this particular topic, and scoured every available, reputable, site he could find. John knows what to look out for by now, and keeps a keen eye on you—one that very quickly dips into obsessiveness, but you're kind enough to call it overbearing.
Jesus Christ, John, why are you asking me how many times I pissed today?
He just needs to wait things out.
But rather irritatingly, he's called away overseas for the next week.
Ah, well. He'll have to try harder next time.
He arrives in Heathrow mid-morning, and follows Laswell into the office. There's a mountain of reports to fill out—things that, rather irritatingly, require his signature—and resolves to spend the rest of the day hunched over at his desk, even though there's an itch in the back of his skull demanding he go home.
It is always like this, though—both the post-mission ritual of banal paperwork that seems almost comical considering what he'd just done, and the undeniable urge to flee back into the sanctuary of your shared home.
His bones ache for it.
Laswell huffs when he lingers by the exit, and he swallows a groan.
While he was away, you'd been silent. Moreso than usual.
Where he'd have expected an update on what was going on—the mundanity of your life that he clings to when the beast in his head whets its talons a little too sharp, digs into a little too deep—you’ve gone silent. Not radio. Not completely. But the information you give is sparse. Cagey.
You don't tell him about the visit to the gynaecologist, offering nothing but a quiet hum into the receiver, all blase and nonchalant, and a simple, equivocal: “good.”
He tucks it away, lets the matter drop.
If he timed things correctly—barring your impish prevarication aside—then something will begin to show soon. You would have mentioned something. Some nominal change to your physical well-being, but when pried, pressed, you huff.
“I'm good, John. When are you coming home, anyway?”
He raps his knuckles on his desk, still smarting from the punches he'd thrown recklessly this past week, too keyed up to let his anger simmer instead of boil, and thinks. About you. About this.
A week isn't a lot of time—he’s been called away for months in the past—but this feels like it's lingering. Time stretched and distorted. Elongated. And a part of him feels chipped, fractured after touchdown.
It wasn't as if this particular assignment was any more, or less, dangerous than the ones he went on before. If anything, it was comparatively mild. Muted. He honed into his training, and did his goddamn job. And yet—
Yet.
You lived in the spaces he occupied. The air he breathed. The water he drank.
He brought you with him, something he's never, ever, done before. Perched pretty on his shoulder, he heard your voice in his head with every step he took, every radio call.
But it was hallucinatory. Chimerical. You weren't there, you were here, but the problem lies in the lack of a divide that usually bifurcates the world into two fractions: his job and you.
It eats at him.
He brought you where he's never taken anyone before. Never let them in.
His thoughts were asunder. Pulled in all directions, but the centre was always you. His compass pointing north. He wants you. Needs you. His whole being has been recalibrated with the needle aimed toward you.
An alert on his phone shakes him from his reverie.
He reaches for it, slides his hand across the lockbar. The notification pops up. A message from his bank.
His card—the one he gave you, the one you've used all of once to buy a chocolate bar when he gruffly, surely, complained about you not spending his money—has been used.
Curious now, he opens his app, eyes scanning the threadbare purchases—all mostly interest fees and service charges, bar one. It was recently used at a drugstore for under twenty dollars.
He doesn't know what this means, what you're playing at. He makes to text you, but he gets an email next.
Thank you for your purchase; here is your e-receipt.
His heart does something strange in his chest. Turns in on itself. Goes all askew.
Not only are you using his card, you're using his account, too. He clicks it, eyes scanning through the purchases (only two), and blinks.
A card, and—
His want takes the shape of a hand, presses against his jugular.
—a pregnancy test.
He knew when he started this game that this was, of course, the inevitable outcome, but having it here, right in front of him—in that sneaky, noncommittal way you always do things; behind his back, and in the dark, like you enjoy watching him try and sniff out the truth—has his belly knotting up. Churning.
A pregnancy test.
Fuck—
(and out of all the ways to tell him, you cheeky little—)
He's up out of his chair before he's even aware that he's standing.
“Laswell,” he gets out, and can't be sure how his voice is so measured when his head is being shredded into pieces. “I'm out for the rest of the day. This whole bloody week, too—”
“Something bad happen?”
His hands shake when he pulls his jacket on, slips his car keys into his hands. “No. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm going to be a father. A bloody dad—”
It's on that sentiment when his voice breaks. Shatters. He clears his throat, blinks furiously. Fuck. Fuck. It's happening—
Shangri-la sits in his fist, taking the shape of an e-mailed receipt.
In his periphery, he sees Simon's head come up. Watching him. Measured.
Laswell, too, eyes him with a degree of wariness. He supposes to them this means the end of everything.
She breathes in. “Tuscany would be my choice.”
“Oh?” He tears his eyes away from the screen, gracing her with a steady, unflinching look. “Was thinking something a bit more local. Liverpool.”
It gets a scoff, one full of disgust. “She'll divorce you within the year.”
“I'm having a baby, Laswell. Not getting married.”
“Oh, no?” It's a challenge. “I seem to recall something about someone being a proper gentleman, or was that just the lie you told your unofficial missus?”
“We'll get married. That's not up for debate—” an intern makes an alarmed face, like perhaps it ought to be. Had he not been holding nirvana in his hand, he might be a bit more cautious with his madness. Too bloody bad. “Wherever she wants—Tuscany, Udaipur, fucking Siberia. I don't care. What I’m a bit more concerned with is my expectant wife.”
“Soon-to-be,” she volleys, just because she knows it's the sort of thing that will itch under his skin.
“Already is, Laswell.” He gripes, flat. “Or damn near close to it.”
“If she knows what's good for her, she'll say no.”
“Lucky me, then, that she doesn't.”
Lucky him, indeed.
On his way out, Ghost utters a heated congratulations to him, and John can see his gaze is absent. Turned inward, mind whirring. Reeling. He can hear the gears grind from where he stands, and if the ink-black madness in his lieutenant’s drifting, pensive eyes means much of anything, then John sends a silent hail mary to whatever unlucky person was misfortune enough to unleash the muzzle on that particular dog.
Well. It's not really his problem. Until it is. Until it becomes one. But since it's not something that'll impact him in the next five minutes, he tucks it away. “Thanks.”
He doesn't linger. Doesn't, really, even remember the ride home, head buzzing with thoughts that keep twisting around themselves, driving him mental. Things like, is it real? what if you were joking. what you weren't?
Oh, fuck—
You better not be.
But you wouldn't. You're conniving and wily, but you're not cruel.
This is happening, then.
You've been playing house with matches inside of a tinderbox. He shouldn't be surprised when it all goes up in flames, in smoke, but as he walks through the door, and glimpses the pregnancy test perched innocently on the counter beside a card—congrats, daddy (and the caricature of a man in a pinstripe suit nearly makes him gag)—he feels all the maligned pieces inside of crack.
It shifts—
You walk out, hand cupped protectively over your lower belly. Eyes gleaming like a wild cat crouched low in the tussocks surrounding the savannah, watching him an eager sense of anticipation, excitement, and just the slightest edge of what he can only imagine the unfortunate mate of a black widow sees before it's consumed. Spare parts.
It thrums inside of him. Ignites this wicker basket he calls a heart until it's cinder. Ash. Soot. He breathes it in. Tastes you on his tongue.
John doesn't have the words. Can't think beyond the steady brag of his burning heart.
His. His.
—and then it all falls into place.
Yours.
He dotes on you with an almost unhinged devotion, murmuring stilted, gruff words of muted affection into the shallow bump on your belly. Ones that you, politely, pretend not to hear.
A new bedtime ritual, one he adheres to with an almost obsessive need.
Until it becomes too much.
“Go and get my prenatal vitamins from the washroom, please. I just need five minutes without you smothering me, you stupid bear of a man.”
“You love it,” he grumbles, but acquiesces, giving your small, barely there bump a pat. “I'll be back soon.”
“Oh, no… please take your time.”
Despite the prickle in your tongue, your eyes are soft. Warm. Melting him just a little more.
John pulls away, and doesn't even pretend the reluctance to be apart is feigned.
“It's in the drawer,” you call, voice stretched. Echoing. “Next to your shaving cream.”
He pulls the drawer open, scanning the contents briefly, before finding the purple bottle in the back. Why you chose here of all places to put the bloody things—
His knuckles knock against the old box of condoms, tipping it over. There's a strange rattle as it falls, and his brows furrow at the noise.
Curiously, he reaches for it. Shakes it as he picks it up. The same sounds spill out. He pops the flap of the box open, peering inside, and—
A gruff chuckle crackles in his throat.
Inside the old box of condoms—the ones he never bothered to throw out, or use—is an accumulation of all the pills you'd meant to take.
His jowls ache. He rubs at his jaw with his hand, and feels the skittish patter of his heart thudding out of his skin. Madness in his veins.
John closes the drawer with his knee, and then tosses the box of condoms in the bin, leaving it for you to find later when you're inevitably wracked by another wave of morning sickness. A little shred of vindication for this little game you made him play.
Though he supposes turn-about is fair play, and the number of pills in the box is less than the months he spent scheming for this vision of his.
In the back of his head, the beast purrs.
“Do we need to play these games again for the next one,” he rasps. “Or can I just fuck you until it takes.”
You blink at him, wide and owlish. Full of faux innocence as you coax the beast out of hiding. “I don't know what you're talking about, John.”
More games, then. He thinks he might crack open your ribcage and rest his weary head on the frantic beat of your heart.
“Mm, don't know what I'd do without you,” he says, guns aching. He reaches for the pack of gum (no smoking around the baby or you'd toss him off the balcony), and pops a spearmint into his mouth. “Might live longer, I reckon, but—”
Your elbow digs into his side. “You sure about that?”
He just kisses your crown in response, and places his heavy, scarred hand over the curve of your belly. The beast inside purrs, content for now. Satiated.
When he looks into your midnight eyes, he finds your own beast slumbering away.
A match made in a tinderbox, he guesses, and kisses you until you're dizzy. His very own Shangri-la sitting pretty inside his bed, nestled in the castle in Spain you helped him build.
Will help him fill.
3K notes
·
View notes
The faces of the Dark Presence
I have written a theory that explains the Bright Presence, obviously, there must be a theory about the Dark one. What do we know about its history, what happened to it after the Clicker “filled its heart with light,” why Taken are so different across the games and what is going on in the second game. Again, I will address the Presences as “it” as well as “she/he” when it suits my needs, obviously, both of them are “it”, for there is no indication that the gender for them is a thing.
Let’s begin from the short introduction to the Dark Presence’s origin and nature. For those who are familiar with the Bright Presence theory, yes, the first part will be similar, since the whole argument was built on the Dark Presence’s dialog in the first place, but with a lot of changes.
Obviously, we have no knowledge about the origin of the Presences and the Dark Place itself, except for it all being in Ahti’s bucket, but we at least have some information to help us understand their nature and what actually hides beneath the waves of Cauldron Lake.
Randolph, the trailer park manager has this to say about it:
“The Indians thought the lake was a doorway to the underworld.”
Alan in the notes of his poem from Samantha’s shoebox, expands on this from his insider perspective:
"E can't see it. He's view is too narrow, limited. It's not a lake, it's an ocean, darkness before the act of creation, before the Big Bang, darkness upon the face of the deep, upon the face of the waters, before light, before the primeval atom, before the word, before THE POEM. I can be a creator, the creator. It has happened before, and it will happen again, many times."
The Dark Place and its entities are old, tremendously old. The Dark Presence spells it for us in the final confrontation in the first game:
“I’m much older than you. Older than your first work of art.”
She’s talking to Alan, of course, but it is pointless to compare this entity with him, he’s 31-33 (depends on what you ask: the guide that puts his age at 31 in 2010, or the memorial statue, that has his year of birth as 1977), and the Dark Presence was kicking long before his birth, as we know from Thomas’ story and the beliefs of the locals. She’s talking about humanity, about our first primitive work of art. Which puts her at least at around 50 thousand years old, plus this vague “much older than you”, which will put her at an even greater age, depending on what she means by that — where her definition of “you” starts. I mean, we talking hundreds of thousands of years now or even millions; what is evolution for her, really? She finishes with a promise to find someone else to dream her free, so her definition of humanity might do something with the first glimpse of imagination. And that is hardly something that we can establish properly. The Dark Presence might’ve been “born” with the Dark Place, or might’ve been “created” later.
So, what are the Presences? This House of Dreams gives the explanation about the Dark Place as well as its inhabitants:
In the end, he finally understood what he had to do, finally understood the true nature of the dark place that was hidden under the waves of the lake where they lived. The lake was an opening to dark place that was much bigger than the lake itself, in fact, much bigger than the whole universe we live in. He wrote one last poem, his masterpiece, a secret poem, a hidden poem, a poem that’s not among the poems I’ve found in the shoebox. And he took his girlfriend for one last dive. Together they sank down into the depths, far deeper than he had ever dived before. In the dream, I was there, diving with them. And from the depths, something, or some things, surged up to meet them. Things of darkness, but bright things of light as well. The diver explained that these things, or these presences, were forever fighting a war between the forces of light and darkness. A dark presence had taken over his girlfriend, and a bright presence now came to take over him. And he surrendered his body to it, but at the same time, the essence of who he was kept diving deeper, ever deeper, holding the essence of his girlfriend (their spirits? their souls?). The diver (or what was left of him, his true self) spoke the words of his secret poem. The poem described a new world, an island in this sea of darkness, a safe haven, a paradise, a “baby” universe. The nature of the dark place was such that anything dreamed up there, any dream or a work of art, would come true, just as true as anything in our world can be. And the poem came true and the essence of the diver and the essence of his girlfriend escaped from the darkness and disappeared into this new world to live there happily ever after; while their shapes, his now taken over by a bright presence, as his girlfriend’s had been taken over by a dark presence, surged up, through the opening in the lake to our world, to continue their battle there.
From this, aside from what’s spelled there, we can also take two important things: the Dark Presence might be the “evils of the world”, but the Dark Place is not — it is a home for the bright things of light as well and can create new universes for the sole purpose of someone living there happily, it’s impartial in its nature and grants wishes good and bad; and the Dark Presence is not the only dark creature living there, not even necessarily the biggest one of them.
Let’s expand on this a bit more, so we are on the same page. The Dark Place is, indeed, impartial and not good or evil by its nature, yet it’s not suited for humans:
We are built differently from all other habitants; maybe, we are more complex? Not ideas, but the whole package of ideas we have and create, rights and wrongs, emotions and perceptions, that’s why humans can dream anything in the Dark Place and the Dark Place will deliver. Different characters, who ended up in the Dark Place, show different ways humans can exist there: some make rules and hoops for themselves; some excitedly explore and observe; some just exist there, making maps and humming songs; some ascend and manage to make the Dark Place do their bidding to mislead and help someone else in ascension.
And the creatures there are not limited to the two Presences and their minions.
It even has a fauna! I know it’s irrelevant, but curious nonetheless:
Mr. Scratch also talks about the populace of the Dark Place and their goals (from his side, of course):
“And there’s so much darkness out there. It goes deep, and the thing that live in it are vast. Big bastards! They don’t mind getting a little bit of elbow room. All that chaos and madness, it doesn’t really do that much down there. It’s like pouring a glass of water into the ocean, right? But up here… Yeah, you can really make an impact. All they need is someone to bring them all the way though.”
Alan through Zane’s notes in the cabin expands on it further:
“Anything outside of writing is a struggle. I feel ill. I managed to make my way downstairs. There’s a shoebox filled with books and papers by Thomas Zane. It’s very hard to focus but I managed to read some of it. He’s a poet and a good one. He writes of muses and creators, summoning fabulous things from a magic lake, using its power to shape the world, of a realm of gods and dreams, and demons, dark things that wait for a chance to slip through, wearing the flesh of men as disguise.
Zane writes about himself, his girlfriend being taken over by a Dark Presence, about growing scared of the lake. Zane believes it’s a mirror to the gaping void of darkness above, where some Lovecraftian presence lurks. I crawled back upstairs. I’ll borrow these things for my story. They ring true. They fit.”
Alright, as I believe, the shoebox trick was added into Zane’s story by Alan, and also the whole “writing Thomas and Barbara out of reality” was him as well, but it doesn’t mean that all the contents were written by Alan; after all, in This House of Dreams we have two sets of poems — one by Thomas and another by Alan. It also fits into the Bright Presence’s story he showed Samantha, his own words in-game and what Mr. Scratch tells us about the Dark Place. So, I will count this information as the truth Alan borrowed, not as something borrowed becoming the truth. Although, it’s really exhausting — separating what Alan wrote into reality and what was the reality before Alan started to tinker with it.
Now we have a bit of an understanding of what the Presences are, where did they come from and what do they want. Let’s summarise: they are fighting an eternal war of light versus dark in the enormous, if not infinite, realm that has an opening into our world through Caldron Lake (among other places). They are insanely old and are not against taking humans faces to surge up. They are also drawn to our world, might be because of human’s ability to create something from nothing with just dreams or works of art; but most likely because the Dark Place is seen as a prison by them (the latter is also hinted at in the Dark Presence’s promise to find some who will dream her free; and in the Bright Presence’s acknowledgement, that he wasn’t able to find a way to leave the Dark Place for good; Mr. Scratch’s words about bringing “the big bastards” up here to make an impact). Although, the darkness and its minions are much more proactive when it comes to “find someone to dream them free”, as we see with the Dark Presence, Thomas’ story and Mr. Scratch. When both Presences in the bodies of Thomas and Barbara got out of the lake someone or something did put them back; the boys of OGoA (just a wild guess, there is only one thing that can tie them up to events of 1970 — the name of their first album, according to the now-dead site, was “The Memory of the Slaughter” and the release date is 1971)? The whole “we have bodies now, hell yeah” thing ended as they exhausted the freeing power of having flesh, but had no art, no story to sustain them being out of the Dark Place? Maybe this freeing power was exhausted in their clashing with no winner and they both retreated back. However it happened, back into the lake they went.
After that the story of the Dark Presence is pretty eventful:
We have her fighting with the boys of OGoA in 1976 and 1978, and them also keeping her always near. As Odin and Tor tell us:
“She’s been using you, boy. And you let her. You went and opened the door for her, didn’t you?”
“Now now, it was already open a crack. And whose fault is that? We’re morally corrupt, disease-ridden, old, and stupid.”
“Doesn’t mean he had to open it all the way, goddammit!”
“Ahh, pfah.”
“So tired...built the farm close to the lake. A place of power.”
“We had parties there, man. You...you should go there and have a party.”
And, taking Cynthia’s words, we can assume, they weren’t the only ones:
“I have been preparing for these times. The dark tides. You have found my caches, haven’t you? You can see the signs? Very few people can. […] We have both been touched by the darkness, young man. He saved us both with light. But the darkness stays with you, leaves a stain.”
This is an excerpt from The Alan Wake Files, from the “Bright Falls: A History” book:
“It is unknown whether these strange lights are related to the more recent rumors of illuminated messages found in the nooks and crannies around Bright Falls. None have ever been photographed, but multiple reports from disparate sources certainly point to a trend. Local law enforcement seemed less enthusiastic about these reports. “We’ve never caught anybody at it,” said our same anonymous source, “but you can bet that if we do, we’ll give these kids a little talking to. We’ve got our eye out for any kind of mischief.”
A survey of local teens produced blanket denials of vandalism, along with several shaky reports of sightings. “There were messages,” said one young woman. “I haven’t seen them myself, but my boyfriend’s cousin did and so has one of my sister’s friends. All different messages, too. Strange things, like, ‘Walk in Light’ and these odd symbols and arrows. Stuff like that.”
Despite the lack of photographic evidence, a few artists’ renderings of the strange messages have been recreated with the assistance of the alleged witnesses. A common thread that gives the story some credibility is that all witnesses have described the symbol of a torch alongside the bizarre messages.”
And the illustration for this bit is this:
So, there were more people touched by darkness to have the ability to see Cynthia’s magic paint. Which is to be expected, as I noted, the Dark Presence is very proactive when it comes to interacting with humans.
Now, in the second game we have a peculiar detail: the newspapers from 2010, reporting on the “Chaos at Cauldron Lake” dated 18th July:
It might be nothing, but it strangely matches how the Dark Presence was using Taken before Thomas wrote Barbara back. And the Bright Falls mini-series, where the protagonist, Jake, is becoming Taken in the few days he spends in the town. So, the question here: how comes we have this manuscript?
Loops, of course! The way the Dark Presence is in the first game is the result of Alan writing and rewriting reality to make the story into what we see: he doesn’t arrive by car at night in the driver seat, with Alice as a passenger, as it was in the Bright Falls mini-series, and there are no Taken, because he retroactively wrote the Dark Presence being asleep before he showed up. This way he can weaken her and give himself a fighting chance.
Now let’s take a look at the event of the first game. In the “missing” week the Dark Presence is being the editor for Alan, making him write her free, using Alice as bait. But as much as Alan claims:
“But it seems I have an imaginary editor to help me. She’s an old woman in a funeral dress. I call her Barbara Jagger. She’s very strict. I’m writing faster and faster. My manuscript is being heavily revised. The edits are getting very aggressive and each day there’s less of me and more of her.”
She doesn’t notice when Alan starts to write himself into the story or summoning the Bright Presence to set him free. The Dark Presence doesn’t have the same intelligence as we do, doesn’t have much imagination, thinks differently. Her power grows in the story? Good. Writer does something else? No matter, her power grows in the story anyway. She’s tunnel-visioning her freedom or doesn’t understand where the creative process necessities end and Alan’s plotting starts. The Dark Presence even allows him to write manuscripts about her weaknesses and set-backs.
But let’s be fair, for the Dark Presence Alan might be the first to pull this off. We know only about how Thomas and the boys fought her and it’s nothing like with Alan, whom she held hostage. Her experience with humans and this kind of trickery can be very limited; and knowledge is power.
For the rest of the game she’s bound by the story and acts true to herself, but always loses. Because it was written. The Dark Presence is controlled by the power of the Dark Place that makes Alan’s writing into reality. Basically, she’s controlled by Alan.
At the end, when Alan jumps into the lake there is a brief moment, I believe, that was not necessarily written, but controlled by the dreaming and the power of the Clicker. In the New York flat and when the Bright Presence gave instruction of “fill its heart with light”, as well as the appearance of Mr. Scratch. The last one is a wild card; I can’t say for sure if he’s the Barbara’s Dark Presence’s minion or an agent of another dark being. He might as well be the Barbara’s Dark Presence’s yet another desperate attempt to stop Alan, and what we learn about him in AWAN is written by Alan himself, because, in fact, he has no idea of Mr. Scratch’s goals, but needs the grandiose one to make him the herald of darkness. And what herald of darkness he’d make if he wouldn’t be set on bringing the darkness into the world and just, you know, chill, killing right and left to his own enjoyment and harass Alan in the Dark Place?
But I digress. Returning to the ending of the game: judging by the text we need to burn with light, Alan is projecting himself to find the cabin, while he already is in the cabin, writing this journey. Ideas swirling around: phones, birds, shopping cards, but also dark ideas of Alice leaving him or them becoming like Barbara and Thomas. Alan pushes forward and there she stands: the Dark Presence, trapped in her own place of power, unable to even run or put up a fight. She says her last words:
“Now you will never get her back. I’m much older that you. Older than your first work of art. I will find a new face to wear. Someone else to dream me free.”
Then lets Alan insert the Clicker into her chest and just dies.
Well, “dies” is a very strong word for what happened; the Dark Presence as we knew her in the first game is no more, but the power and lingering goals, the essence of the entity, if you will, remain — in Alan. There are many clues. In The Signal DLC’s TV Alan says:
“The darkness wasn’t so bad. It was in him. he felt it. He knew the voice spoke the truth.”
And when we destroy his TVs with light, he screams “it burns!” and then, at the very end — “too loud. Too loud! I can’t think! It’s in my brain!” In The Writer DLC Alan-in-the-cabin keeps acting as the Dark Presence: sending Taken after his rational part, making Darknados and all those lovely things that launch themselves at you. The argument might be made that Alan just uses what he remembers, and it would be more plausible at the time of the DLCs. But, luckily, we have the second game.
But before we talk about it, we need to bring AW1 and AWAN together, because there we have two entities from the Dark Place, who have at least some agency in the constrains of the story, and their MO has similarities. The Taken are, maybe varying with Mr. Scratch’s creations being much more diverse, but have common things: they are shielded with darkness all over and, when killed, they dissipate in bright sparks. In AWAN we also have different, improved birds, the spiders are mostly not directly controlled by Mr. Scratch himself and good old poltergeists.
We have none of that in the second game. The rules are completely changed and Alan’s face is the face of the Dark Presence, that he’s calling (I’m sure in the loving memory) “Scratch”. Scratch in the second game is not Mr. Scratch from AWAN, they are not the same entity; aside from the obvious differences in their behaviour and demeanour, there is this little thing — Mr. Scratch, sadly, is utterly unalive, dead. He’s no more. So, the Dark Presence is a part of Alan; just like it was in the DLCs for the first game. Scratch is what remained of the Barbara’s Dark Presence, shaped by Alan’s mind — the result of Alan merging with the sheer force of the Dark Presence. His true dark half.
Scratch in the second game creates different Taken, who are not shielded by darkness all over; there are no birds or spiders, but there are wolfs; the poltergeists are abandoned for the walls of darkness with a suggestive “core”, where you need to burn it. And he’s kinda in love with the colour red — taking ideas from Hiss much? The difference in what we face in the first games and the second is stunning.
We also have a brilliant opportunity to look into the mind of the Taken: with Nightingale’s segment and with manuscript pages. In the first game we have a few pages that describe how people were becoming Taken; for all of them it was a horrible experience, for those, touched by darkness as well: we see that Rose is screaming inside in terror as she does what the Barbara’s Dark Presence told her to, same as Serena Valdivia in AWAN — while she flirts with Mr. Scratch, she’s screaming deep inside in horror. The last one of the Taken of, let’s say, first generation, that we see is Nightingale. First, he says that he’s lost and it’s dark, he needs someone to show him something. Then, as we walk him towards the Bookers, he says “please… can you hear me?” and then slowly the voices start to appear. After the first Scratch’s jumpscare, he sobs and starts to hear his own taken-voicelines. What do the Bookers tell about that encounter? “He was acting crazy, shouting weird shit at us”, thinking that he must have been on something. We never hear him shouting, because we are inside of his head, where he’s lost, confused and terrified, the shouts come from the outside, quiet and disturbing, he only breathes in distress. He even sees the Cult of the Tree as the Taken, when in fact, he’s the one with distorted voice and, probably, covered in shadows, not the cultists. For all we know, the Taken of the first generation were not aware of their own actions and suffering inside. What about the ones, that are taken by Scratch? We have few examples, but all of them are quite different from the first games: for Emmett Elwood it is a satisfying experience, for Gail Borrows, even if he knew he was dying, it felt good, he worshiped the darkness and even made a sacrifice to it in blood, Anna was overcame by vertigo, Thornton and Mulligan gave in to their guilt. Cynthia is the only person, whose corruption was violent, but after that?
“Cynthia Weaver smiled. Lost without her lantern? Nonsense. Cynthia felt giddy as a young girl in love. […] She sank into dark water. Into Tom.”
Some of these were edited by Alan, but some — not. Constrained by the story or not, Scratch tends to make Taken differently; even when he rails them up for the fight, they are filled with violent glee. It goes very well with what we see after he makes his story come true.
Let’s talk about what exactly happens when Scratch gets his hands on the Clicker. Bright Falls welcomes Alan with the Deerfest, sunny and happy day, revolving around the “Return” and how good it is. The Dark Presence in the first game wanted to take over the world, too, but, boy, she would probably cringe so hard she wanted twisted and evil things, as Mr. Scratch said about other dark presences, not this eternal celebration of Alan Wake! Even Alan is in awe, claiming this is not what he expected.
But, really, he is so clueless. He treats Scratch as the Barbara’s Dark Presence, but they are different to the core. The Barbara’s Dark Presence was in possession of a body with no soul, the shell of Barbara Jagger, taking from her only this much; Scratch is not only sharing the body with Alan, who is very present and aware (at times), but is entangled with his very being. The Barbara’s Dark Presence had agency and her own goals; Scratch, still being the Dark Presence, has an echo of that, but twisted by Alan, fed on his insecurities, fears and desires. And, most importantly, the Barbara’s Dark Presence needed someone to dream her free; Scratch, being so tightly connected with Alan, can dream himself free just fine: he wrote the first draft of Return after all. And the rules for changing reality are pretty clear:
Scratch is capable of performing a genuine act of creation; something, that was not available to the Barbara’s Dark Presence. “While the god is asleep, the devil rewrites reality” — one of the echoes, that describes exactly what happens with Alan and Scratch in the Dark Place. If Alan is not in the driver’s seat, Scratch takes over, benefiting from this tight connection greatly.
With all this said, Scratch is still the Dark Presence: he has all the powers of the Dark Presence, hunts Alan, can possess other people, create Taken, send Taken from the lake to retrieve the Clicker, turn into a mini Darknado, and wants to take over the world. But he’s sort of the next evolution: the essence of the entity, entirely alien to us, learnt humanity in its own twisted way. Alan notices that Scratch has an insecure need for fame and praise and questions if it was drawn from his own psyche. And it was. More so, the clinginess is from him as well: as Alan is lost without Alice, Scratch is lost without Alan. His lines during the chase in the Wellness Center are that of a puppy:
You are home!
We should be one!
We belong together!
Welcome me back home!
We can have this!
Happy ending!
We are the heart!
We are one!
Our story! Our ending! Our book!
We made this!
Everyone loves us!
We won!
Everything revolves around us!
Fame! Worship! Alice!
And in the writer’s room Scratch is gladly jumping into Alan’s head at the first invitation “come home” (welcome me back home).
In the end, the Dark Presence, actually fulfilled its promise: it found a new face to “wear” and someone to dream it free. Only not someone “else”, it was freed from the Dark Place by Alan, yet the freedom came with a cost. I will not dive into the ending of the Final Draft here, but I believe the Dark Presence is still inside Alan, it’s just balanced with the light (or the Bright Presence, hmm?). It’s not a demon anymore, not an entity, Alan puts all the blame for any wrongs — his or not his — onto, it’s an essence, a power, a shadowy flicker in the corner of an eye, not real enough to properly exist, but accepted and merged with Alan too much to fade away completely. Back to the beginning, to the manuscript from 2010.
In the end, it's never just the light you need
When balance slays the demon, you'll find peace
In the end, it's never just the dark you seek
When balance slays the demon, you'll find peace
33 notes
·
View notes