#he ain't reaching it big

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

James Vowles, you will not see heaven

[osamucide]

⊹ I AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A NASTY DOG!

. . . BSD MEN AS OVERUSED PORN PLOTS!

wc: 5.3k

cw: MINORS DNI—explicit sexual content, gn!+afab!reader, a lot of anonymous sex, dirty talk, BIG DICK MEN, probably a good amount of ooc, some questionable dynamics/dubcon that can be read through the lens of roleplay and/or prior consent. character-specific warnings—chuuya: public sex, penetration; dazai: penetration, riding, creampie; kunikida: professor/student, oral (m!receiving); fukuzawa: secretary/boss, office sex, oral (m!receiving), facefucking; atsushi: HEAVY DUBCON WARNING, stuck, perv atsushi, penetration; akutagawa: blackmailing if you squint, degradation, choking, penetration; oda: penetration; ango: public sex, penetration, riding; nikolai: dubcon, home intruder f!masturbation, penetration; sigma: a tiny bit of perv sigma, oral (f!receiving); fyodor: priest!fyodor, religion/blasphemy kink, christianity-specific, oral (m!receiving)

reid: putting my dual major in journalism to work by subtitling these like bad porn videos. little not so thought out drabbles many with no definitive ending just silly whore thoughts. some are more stupid than sexy but either way i hope you enjoy because this was a blast to write HAHAHAHA

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⊹ CHUUYA NAKAHARA—HOT GYM BUDDIES CAN’T WAIT UNTIL AFTER THEIR WORKOUT TO FUCK!

“Yeah, that’s a lot better. Look at you, you got it,” the pretty redhead mutters, his hands still firmly on your hips as he spots your squat. “Give me one more, I know you can.”

The praise prompts you to draw in a deep breath that has nothing to do with your next squat; anyway, this gorgeous man, kind enough to help you with your form, believes in you. So you bend once more, squatting down, down, and pushing back up—until on your way back up, you feel your legs begin to buckle.

“Woah, woah.” It’s sweet how concerned he sounds as his hands fly up to the bar and his feet nudge you forward to help you replace the weight on the rack, but his hips end up pressed to yours, and you’re gasping. “You okay?”

You’re fine, caged between him and the bar as he leans over your shoulder to glimpse your face that’s flushed from exertion. Only exertion, surely, even though your ass is pressed firmly to his pelvis. He doesn’t seem hard, but you can still feel it, and it feels big.

“Yeah,” you breathe, moving to duck under the bar, but it’s low and you’re feeling a little dizzy, so you teeter backwards into him, and as his hands find your waist again. “Yeah, I’m about to be done anyway.”

“You should really stretch after maxing out like that,” he suggests, turning you around. “Don’t wanna be hurting, do you?”

But you can only look into his intense eyes and shake your head lightly before he’s easing you to the ground on your back, settling each of his knees over one of your thighs, and slotting his shoulder beneath your hamstring. He pushes forward, gently, slowly, looking to you for anything wrong; and there isn’t.

There’s nothing wrong, except for the fact that you can feel his huge dick against your pussy through both of your shorts.

It’s all you need to start moving blindly, reaching down for his waistband, pawing at his neck, mashing his lips to yours, and he doesn’t hesitate to do it back—he lets up on your leg only to slip your shorts off before your ankle is back over his shoulder and he’s grinding the head of his cock into your wetness.

“You gonna let me in, baby?” he pants hotly, looking down at you squirming beneath him. “Yeah, I know you will—you’re strong, you can take it.”

His tip catches on your clit, and you gasp before he’s plunging into you, setting a brutal pace. “Oh, fuck!”

“Oh, fuck, yeah,” he groans. “So fuckin’ tight.”

He hits the inside of you perfectly, his soft ginger hair falling loose from its low pony—you wish you knew his name so you could scream it, but you settle for moaning, panting, cussing, as he throws your other leg over his shoulder and drills into you on the gym mat. ⊹

⊹ OSAMU DAZAI—MY OLDER BROTHER ALMOST CAUGHT ME FUCKING HIS BEST FRIEND!

“Shit—I’ll be back, gonna go shower this off. Asshole.”

That was what your older brother, Chuuya, grumbled at Dazai before scurrying off to the bathroom. The three of you had just gotten back from getting ice cream, and Dazai had the brilliant idea of snatching Chuuya’s cone from him and sticking it in his hair. Cursing ensued the entire walk home.

And Dazai popped the tail end of his cone in his mouth and grabbed for your wrists as soon as your brother was out of sight, which leads you to now—in the living room, on the couch, bouncing furiously on his cock as he grunts.

“Osamu—be quiet!” you plead with him, but you’re moaning, too.

His lips fall into a grin. “Don’t worry, cutie, I can still hear the shower—fuck! Just keep—keep doing that, you feel so fucking good.”

So you reinforce your grip on his shoulders and slam your hips down to meet his, over and over, drawing sinful sounds from both of your bodies as you’re separated by a single thin wall from your brother—Dazai’s best friend, who would probably murder both of you if he found out you were fucking.

And then the water turns off. You muffle the choked cry you let out into Dazai’s shoulder, so damn frustrated that you won’t get there, not before Chuuya comes back—but Dazai’s flipping you onto your back, grabbing you by your hips, pulling you into him with such fervor that you almost shout.

“Need it, baby, I need to cum in this pussy—”

“Osamu!”

But even you can’t tell if you’re egging him on or warning him to stop—with no sound buffer and Chuuya undoubtedly coming back any minute, your body decides for you that you need it, too, you need to cum and you will, no matter how much your mind protests; your eyes flick nervously up to the hallway when they’re not rolling back from how Dazai’s rearranging your guts.

“He’s gonna come back—unh—and you’re gonna sit here with my cum in you, and he won’t even fuckin’ know.”

He’s digging his nails into your hips and ass, making you twitch, reaching down to rub your clit hard, and when you cum, clenching around him, he shoves his palm over your mouth and spills into you with a last few wet smacks.

Dazai’s scrambling back into his pants as footsteps pad down the hall; he all but throws himself at the other end of the couch as you curl up, dressed but fucked silly, focused on not letting the evidence of what just happened gush out of you and leak onto the couch.

“Fuck was that noise?” Chuuya mumbles, sauntering out as he’s tying his wet hair up.

“Hm? I don’t know, I didn’t hear anything.”

When Chuuya turns toward the kitchen, Dazai tosses you a wink. Your face burns as you feel yourself leaking. ⊹

⊹ DOPPO KUNIKIDA—COLLEGE HOTTIE SUCKS DICK FOR EXTRA CREDIT!

"You do realize I'm going to have to fail you," your professor informs you, looking into your eyes with a little regret. Truthfully, you've always been personable in class and shown promise as a student, and he's disappointed. Not in you, just in your poor academic performance during your final semester.

"There has to be something I can do to make up for it," you nearly plead, hands clasped together on the edge of his desk as you look to him with hope. You know you've been slacking, but you need this class to graduate.

"I don't know—" He sighs your name, clearly confliced. Your attendance record is less than impressive these days, and Kunikida's enforced a strict class participation policy throughout his years of teaching—as well as no extra credit—something he makes clear to all of his students in all of his classes, and you especially should know better after taking his classes for four years. "I don't know. Like what?" Maybe you can do a few credits in the summer and still walk at graduation, or pick up an internship. But he wants you to take the initiative and accountability.

He doesn't really know how to protest when you're slipping out of your seat and sinking to your knees as a spark starts to gleam in your eyes. You rattle off a few academic ideas for posterity, but ultimately find your hands sliding up his thighs and fiddling with his belt.

Fuck it, you think, you'll be out of here soon enough. Plus, Kunikida's always been kind, compassionate, understanding, and sexy—too invested in his field to even notice that handfuls of students on campus would throw themselves at him given the chance. Maybe he'll finally understand, you muse to yourself, as you work his hardening cock out of his dress pants.

He chokes out your name when you take his length in both of your hands; he's all the way gone when you're swirling your tongue over his tip, giving in to your little idea for extra credit sooner than he'd ever admit to himself.

"Oh, fuck—" He's staring up at the ceiling of his office in pure bliss because his student is working hot, sloppy kisses down the underside of his cock. His hands twist into your hair, and you gaze up at him, doe-eyed, as his head falls forward and he looks at you through his glasses. "Keep going. Don't fucking stop."

He's trying not to thrust into your mouth when you fondle his balls; his pretty blond bangs are dampening with sweat, and you can't take your eyes off him as you bob your head faster, hollowing your cheeks around him and moaning at the taste of your professor's cock heavy in your mouth. He twitches and jumps at your attention to detail—your fingers raking tracks down his thighs, your frantic tongue, your fluttering lashes and sugary moans, gags, and slurps that are music to him.

You know, as he falls apart more and more by the second, you won't have to worry about this class anymore.

"Unh—uh, yes, oh, fuck, we'll work something out, yeah, gorgeous? Just don't stop—d—don't stop, don't fucking stop, I'm gonna cum down that pretty throat, yeah, and we'll get it all figured out." ⊹

⊹ YUKICHI FUKUZAWA—NAUGHTY SECRETARY SEDUCES HOT BOSS!

You're perched on his desk when he returns from the meeting—Yukichi, your boss, who, lately, you can't stop thinking about climbling like a tree. You're sure your coworkers see it, too, but you're his personal assistant; no one gets to be as close to him as you, and he trusts you.

Which is why you'll put the moves on him today.

He runs a hand through his silver hair—obviously stressed—sighing as he pulls his office door shut and turns to you. He speaks your name, holds a few papers in your direction, begins instructing you on what he needs from you next.

But you know better what he needs. The papers that make their way into your hands are quickly forgotten about on his desk as you uncross your legs and hop down, sauntering up to place on hand on his arm, the other on his chest.

"Sir, you look so tense. Are you sure there isn't anything else I can do?"

He makes his way to sit down in his office chair, disregarding your touch in a way that has you following after him like a puppy in need of attention.

He doesn't answer, but he also doesn't protest when you settle between his knees beneath his desk and push his yukata and haori up to pool around his hips. His dick is thick and veiny, even soft; when you spit in your hand and begin to work him up and down his mouth falls open with a sigh, and he grows at least two inches as he hardens beneath your grip.

You didn't think you'd be able to fit his absolute monster cock in your mouth, but you find yourself, throat open, with your nose pressed to his happy trail as you swirl your tongue and breathe through your nose frantically; he holds your face down, speaking very little but making up for it with the way he grunts hotly in that deep, rough voice as he bucks into the back of your throat.

"Unh—ugh..."

You breathe through your nose as his hips fall into a brutal pace; his hands on either side of your head keep you pinned in place as he uses you, takes his stress out on you. Your fingers massage his balls, and you can't help the way you hum around him when he twitches in your mouth.

Yukichi pulls out of your jaw and you gasp for air, wiping the spit that drips down your chin with the back of your hand, but he's not done. When he does speak, it's demanding, low, and it makes your cunt throb with need.

"Get up. Get up, sit on the desk. 'Need to fuck you."

You do as you’re told, open up for him with no hesitation, smiling as he works his fat cock into you—yeah, his stress will be gone in no time with the way he fucks your hole so hard and fast that you shake with each creak of his desk. ⊹

⊹ ATSUSHI NAKAJIMA—STUCK IN THE ELEVATOR WITH MY SEXY NEIGHBOR!

"Ah! Atsushi, open the door!"

"Um," he frets, punching the button until he's sure it'll break. If it's not broken already. "I—I can't, it's not working!"

Not working? Is he fucking serious? You're trapped in the door—all you did was try to reach back out for your bag you'd set by the elevator and now you're stuck, by the waist, between the two sliding maneuvers, your bag dangling from your hands.

"It's supposed to have a sensor! It's not supposed to even close when someone's on the threshold!" you cry through your teeth as you try to squirm out. Atsushi's mind is already working, though, over the way you're pinned in half, wiggling your ass as you struggle against the industrial strength of the elevator door. "Atsushi, help me, please call someone or something—"

But his hands are on your hips, pulling backward, and you can't help the noise of surprise that slips out of you.

"Atsu', I seriously don't think that will work, please, just call—Atsushi!"

His hands shake as he slides your pants and underwear down your thighs, exposing your ass; he tunes out your protesting as he undoes his belt. You hear the clink of it hitting the ground, you feel his fingers dipping into your cunt from behind, and he cannot be fucking serious.

"I'm sorry," he cries like it's out of his control—he feels like it is. "I'm sorry, you're so hot, you're right here, I've wanted this for so long."

And you feel yourself beginning to drip at his desperate tone. You can't fucking believe it—this is depraved. This is some shit you would've never expected from the sweet, cute boy in the apartment across the hall who helped you drag your bedframe and couch from this very elevator to your room but here he is, prodding at you with his pathetically leaky cock while you're stuck in the damn elevator door.

And you'd be frustrated with how your body reacts, but as he slides his dick along your cunt, drenching himself in your wetness, you can't help but arch back into his touch.

"Atsushi, you have to fuck me, please."

And he does, fast and unpracticed—he whimpers for you, tells you you're all he thinks about when he jerks off; he confesses that he looks through his peephole when he knows you're leaving for work or school just to get at least one glimpse of you everyday to fuel his imagination, and you gush around him, the pain of the door trapping you falling irrelevant, drifting out of your mind, as he buries his face in your shoulder and humps into you like an animal, pounding against your cervix.

"Fuck, that's right, so good, so, so good—better than I could've imagined—agh, fuck, that's right, take it all, take it, take it, take it...!" ⊹

⊹ RYUUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA—HOT BABE HAS NO MONEY, LETS THE DELIVERY BOY DESTROY THAT PUSSY!

You rifle through your wallet and hum when you come up short. "Um, I... know you said you don't have a card reader, but I don't have enough cash."

The delivery boy looks at you with little more than boredom until you invite him in.

"Here, let me look in my room���I might have more stashed somehwere..."

He stands over you, searching you with his curious gray eyes as you dig through a drawer, a bag, another bag, only to come up short again. You even peek under your mattress for good measure, but you're just out. You turn to him sheepishly.

"I, uh... I don't have enough, I'm really sorry."

"Well, I can't leave without some form of payment," he deadpans, and you try to think of something, anything—you have a few giftcards for other delivery services, some jewelry—but he's letting his bag fall off his shoulder and grabbing you by the hips before you can register what he means.

You end up face down, ass up on your bed as a compromise, his hips rutting into you from behind as he holds your wrists behind your back. Ryuunosuke his name tag read—you're quick to adopt a way around that mouthful, moaning out, "Ryuu, Ryuu, please!" as he splits you open and calls you a whore.

"Fuckin' slut—"

When you're able to glance back for a second you can see his pretty black hair swaying with each rough thrust, and you're sure he's hitting your lungs—he's so fucking deep inside you, and you're gasping, moaning for more.

"—so eager to—unh—take this dick. Probably hiding your cash somewhere."

But whether you are or not doesn't matter; your eyes are rolling back to the hard smack of his hips against your ass and the white-hot pleasure that rolls through you every time he plows straight into your g-spot, and he's throbbing inside of you at the way your cunt grips him. Your pizza's getting cold on the counter in your kitchen, but you don't care—not when he bunches his fingers up in your hair to arch you back up to him so he can wrap his other hand around your throat.

You hold onto him as he bends you, pulling air down into your lungs when you can, and his gravelly voice barrages you with more words that make you gush around his cock.

"Gonna let me cum in this pussy so you don't have to fork over a few bucks for a pizza? Pathetic."

His teeth sink into your shoulder, his other hand reaches down to torture your neglected clit, and you're sure he's gonna break you over this, your hot delivery boy who just so happened to have the idea to fill you up as payment. You pant his name desperately between thunderous moans—you're gonna cum soon. ⊹

⊹ SAKUNOSUKE ODA—THIS PLUMBER FIXED MORE THAN JUST MY PIPES!

"Okay, that should do it." The man stands up, back to a height at which he towers over you, and you lean on the doorframe to the kitchen as he shuts the cabinets beneath your sink. "It's all movin' again."

You were in your robe when you answered the door, but you'd be lying if you said you didn't run to the bathroom to fix your hair and swipe on a little lip balm while he was working. Really, you hadn't meant to try to fuck the plumber. But this man was gorgeous, with his auburn hair, stubble-lined jaw, large hands, broad shoulders. You felt your eyes widen when you first laid eyes on him, and now you'd been throbbing thinking about what those thick fingers could do other than plumbing.

You pull your robe tighter around yourself, hoping to subtly accentuate the outline of your body. "Thank you so much, really, I don't know what I'd have done without the sink."

"Probably used the dishwasher a lot more," he cracked dryly, and your previous words suddenly feel stupid, but it only serves to make him hotter.

"How should I pay you?" You stride over to him. "Cash?"

"You can just pay online." He looks tired, but he has a well-meaning smile on his face.

You look a little incredulous. "Really? I can't—do you accept tips? Seriously, top notch work and super quick. I can't not thank you."

"I'm really not supposed to take tips," he drawls, running a hand through his hair. You find yourself biting your lip; you can't look away from him. You must look like a rabid animal right now, but you can't help it.

He doesn't tear his eyes away from yours.

"I mean, unless..."

Those three words are what find you on your back in your bedroom with your robe thrown open, the sweet and efficient plumber named Sakunosuke standing at the edge as he impales you on his cock. He worked you open with those fingers first, fast and harsh, just how you begged him to, but nothing could've prepared your weeping hole for the stretch of his fat dick—and now he's pounding into you, his hands clutching your waist as you hold your legs open for him to thrust deeper, deeper.

“Oh, shit. Unh—so wet—“

His groans come from his chest, deliciously—he looks a little like he knows he shouldn't be doing this, but your cunt is sucking him in like it was what he was supposed to come here for all along. You spasm and clench around him and he throws his head back, your whole body rippling as his strong hips and heavy balls smack lewdly against your ass with each thrust.

“Mmph—fuck—break that sink of yours more often, alright?” ⊹

⊹ ANGO SAKAGUCHI—I JOINED THE MILE HIGH CLUB (EXTREMELY RISKY)!

The man you met in the airport bar—oh, he’s pretty.

He's even prettier in your mind when the pilot announces phone permissions now that you're in the air, and the first notification your phone receieves is from him.

I have an open seat next to me in first class. Come visit.

You don't hesitate for a moment. You stride forward from the economy section, past the flight attendants who protest at you flimsily to search for his seat number—you see his unmistakably gorgeous hair, his glasses, his sharp side profile as he speaks to an attendant, catches you in his peripheral, and then shoos her away.

There's hardly niceties before one of your legs is slung over his knee and he kisses you with fervor. You don't think too hard about the people around you—none of whom can actually see you but without a doubt will know exactly what's happening in a few minutes—as you grind down onto his thigh, bite his lips, draw soft gasps from him when your knee nudges his bulge.

Before you know it, his cock is free and he slides your underwear to the side so you can sink onto him; he groans shamelessly when your wet heat envelops him completely, causing heads to turn in your direction, but you just brace your knees against the airplane seat and your hands on his shoulders make quick work of milking him of everything he has.

He kisses you, hot, heavy; he smells good, he smells expensive, and you tear his dress shirt open to rake your nails down his chest as he grabs your hips, letting his head fall back and a full-bodied moan into the cramped air of the plane as he does so. You lift up to let him thrust, let lewd smacks resonate throughout first class, and with your chest in his face he rides your shirt up to latch his teeth to one of your nipples; you echo him, moaning unabashedly, running your hands through your hair, gripping him as people look on.

"Fuuuck, yeah, feels so good," he praises from beneath you. "Knew I had to fuck you from the second I saw you." His eyebrows draw up in concentration as he looks down at where your bodies meet and continues fucking up into you hard. "Hah—listen to that cunt cry for me. You like being watched, huh? Gonna let me fuck you 'til the plane smells like sex? Huh?"

You nod, messily, desperately, and he quickens his pace ever faster, pulling you back down into a sloppy kiss.

An attendant awkwardly approaches in the aisle, but the gorgeous man who's destroying your insides just holds up a palm, shoos her away again.

"Fuck—so sexy. Keep takin' this dick." ⊹

⊹ NIKOLAI GOGOL—LUCKY INTRUDER GETS TO FUCK HORNY VICTIM!

You're splayed out on your bed, two fingers stuffed deep in your cunt—and he's just surprised you didn't hear him breaking the lock on your front door.

When you meet his eyes, you're so glazed over with pleasure that you barely miss a beat, your gaze only blowing wide when he peers around your bedroom doorway. His snowy white hair, his sharp features—you can't find the sense to be alarmed at this unfamiliar man, the one holding your laptop and—is that your wallet?

Doesn't matter—they're clattering to the ground, another factor here you can't find it in yourself to care about as his gray eyes are locked onto you fucking yourself open on your sheets. The sheen of sweat that covers your skin, your desperate moans as you grind your clit against your palm, the obscene squelching that comes from your wet cunt—they all serve to propel him over to you, prompt him to dig his already-hard cock out of his pants as you just watch, beg him with your stare to come fill you up. You're so lucky he's here, really—you look like you're struggling to get deep enough with your pathetic little fingers; he guesses it's only fair that he repay you for the material goods he's about to rob you of and pawn off on whatever sucker will buy them for cash, right?

"Right? I'll help you out—" He gives his cock a few pumps as he positions himself between your legs, "—looks like you need it, sweetheart."

You can only bite your lip to supress the moan that leaves you as he enters your cunt and lifts your fingers up and out of you by your wrist to swirl his tongue around them, lick them clean. He's huge—even your third and fourth fingers weren't enough to prepare you properly for the burglar’s dick in your needy pussy, so you let out strained combinations of gasps and screams when he starts to drill into you mercilessly. You can't help the way your ankles link behind his back, the way you reach for him—and he smiles wickedly when your eyes roll back.

"You like having a stranger's cock deep in your guts, huh?" he speaks between deep sighs and grunts. You can only babble your incoherent agreement, your laptop and wallet forgotten, the actions of this man forgotten, everything but how desperately you need to squirt all over him forgotten—you reach down and rub your clit, play with your nipples as your mouth is frozen open as you moan, moan for this man who's just broken into your home. "Uh—yeah, you're gonna like takin' all my cum, too, I bet." ⊹

⊹ SIGMA—MASSEUR HELPS HIS SEXY CLIENT RELIEVE STRESS!

"Oh, yeah—right there," you groan softly as the heel of his palm meets the center of your back. You've been looking forward to this full-body massage the whole week, and this man was not disappointing.

He works his way down your back, twisting knots out as he goes—his lithe fingers feel like heaven against you, overworked from hours at your desk hunched over your computer.

But it's a full-body massage, as mentioned before; when his fingers dig into the plush of your asscheeks, you can't help the groan that leaves you.

"That okay?" he inquires; you think you hear a shake in his voice.

"More than okay," you reply, thinking you could fall asleep as he works you into relaxation. You could close your eyes from how good it feels, or you could peek behind you and see his face burning with blush at your sounds. You do the former, but smirk a little at how sweet it is of him to check in.

He checks in again when his hands are inching your underwear down, and you tell him of course, he's the professional.

He's still the professional when he climbs up on the table behind you and buries his flushed face into your cunt. You arch up and back, crooning, as his hands stay massaging you, spreading you apart, kneading your ass with career expertise and plunging his tongue into you with enthusiasm.

"Oh! Oh—feels good," you breathe, grinding back into his face, onto his nose. He laps at you happily, this masseur you've barely looked upon for a total of twenty seconds, but you can't lie to yourself and say you didn't think he was pretty when he led you back to his room; he hums into you, sending you shivering, twitching. "Please, more."

"Mhm," he mumbles, releasing one of your asscheeks to lay back beneath you and insert a long, thin finger into your pussy; you sigh, you settle onto his face, and his tongue speeds up in this new position in a way that rips a high moan from your lungs.

Not hunched, but arched, the stretch feels heavenly on your back in combination with the way he pumps another finger into you; you graciously sit up, throwing your head back, begging, pleading for more until his tongue settles into a tight back-and-forth rhythm over your clit. "Please, please, please—"

You grind against his nose, your moans become more erratic, and you dig a hand into his hair as your hips move in dizzying circles over his head.

"Cum for me?" he asks, muffled by your pussy; you'll ride him until his face is soaked. ⊹

⊹ FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY—CONFESSING MY SINS ENDS IN HUGE CUMSHOT ALL OVER MY FACE!

“And I’ve been terribly, terribly lustful, Father Fyodor,” you say with regret. “It consumes me. I really never used to be like this."

"Temptation lurks everywhere," the priest sympathizes. You can barely see him through the grate, but his soft, forgiving voice sounds close to you. "The Devil and his army are constantly exploiting our vulnerabilities to try and turn us to sin, but worry not, child of Christ; we're human. I'm here to guide you. Continue."

You shift on the wooden seat in the booth, crossing your hands tighter over your lap. "That's really all. It's been very concerning to me. I think about it... I think about it so much."

"About what?" Father Fyodor prompts, and you bristle even more at being asked to elaborate.

"Sex," it barely comes out as more than a whisper. "I can't help it—it's everywhere. It leaves me feeling so... exhausted and frustrated, and the only thing that helps is... Well..."

But you're met with silence. You know he wants you to go on. You're here to confess, after all.

"...touching myself. I do it at least once a day. It's like a burning within me—nothing helps but—but—cumming all over my fingers." Your voice is laced with shame—the throbbing of your cunt as you talk makes you feel all the more guilty, and you can only imagine how he's shaking his head. "That's all. That's all."

"You'll do penance," he says, comfortingly. "When we bring our sins to the Lord and repent he cleanses us of them."

The grate pops out of the window, and you see the the waist of his alb as he speaks his next words.

"You'll take communion, now—" the cinctures around his waist fall undone beneath his hands, and the alb is hiked up to reveal a leaking cock, pretty and pale and bobbing in the air of the confessional. "—and be saved from the flames of perdition.”

"Yes, Father, please. Anything to be saved." But your mouth waters in a way that you know has little to do with your thirst for salvation.

"Take this; eat. This is my body," he recites the scripture as his length reaches through the window; your hands, eager and already on the threshold, accept him willingly. As you wrap your mouth around him, he groans, and it's like seraphim singing their holy, holy, holy.

"That's it—child of God, follower of Christ; I absolve you of your sins," he gasps as his tip hits the back of your throat which was begging for forgiveness moments ago. His hands reach through the window to stroke either side of your face, and then hold you in place to fuck your throat. "The Lord will forgive you for this." ⊹

[startaee]

its a sunday morning and you're entering the elevator with your little nephew. he's whining and stomping his tiny legs as you drag him by his little hand when the doors finally shut.

"c'mon sweetie it's okay...." you pout, crouching down to his level and meeting his wet eyes. you ruffle his hair with your spare hand and hold the newly purchased cap up with your other. "b-but...i wanted d-dynamight's cap!" he says, almost choking on his saliva. "oh, you..." you feel so bad for this little boy. he woke up (himself and you) at 7am on a sunday morning to go stand in the stupid line to get access to the limited edition hero merch. it was too bad that, that stupid dynamight happened to be everybody and their mother's favorite hero, because by the time you reached the entrance they were all sold out. "but, hey, you know, this shoto guy ain't half bad...?" you tried to chirp him up, opening up the cap as you point to the silly little picture of shoto. the elevator's reaching the penthouse, and you sigh when you realise you didn't even press the button for your floor. but hey, at least you finally get to meet the mystery man who bought the most expensive penthouse in your locality.

so your hands are gripping onto your little sad nephew's as he sniffles with his shoto cap on his tiny head and you turn slightly to look at, oh god.

a gorgeous man. tall and buff. a little scar on his right cheek. makes him look so much hotter. and then it hits you at the same time it hits your nephew. that's....

"DYNAMIGHT!!!!"

and you can't do much when the little boy throws himself onto him. dynamight's smirk turning into a worried frown as he wraps his arms around your nephew. "careful, kid." he chuckles as the little boy with wide eyes, tears completely dry now, speaks loudly about how much he loveeeessss him. you can't help but awe at the view infront of you as you realise how nice dynamight would look as a dad.

"you want that cap?" he whispers to the little boy who nods his head eagerly. to this, dynamight remembers izuku, and laughs a little at the memory.

then he takes the cap off of his head and sets it on the boy's.

"wow, you wear your own merch...?" you say as you try to be grateful and not cringe. and he immediately turns his head to you, with eyebrows furrowed, and a big pout on his lips, he's about to put you in your place for saying that.

but when his eyes fall on your face...the only voice that can be heard is your nephew's as he adjusts the cap on his head happily. his asks of an autograph go unheard by dynamight because....?

suddenly he's having heart problems again. and his ears are heating up, and he wants to know your name.

pt.2 pt.3

© startaee 2024. do not copy, translate or repost .

[hairmetal666]

Steve wins the bat plush at a fair when he's seven. He doesn't care about bats, but it's the prize for making all five baskets in the basketball game, so he gets the little bat. Its eyes are a little crooked and one wing is slightly smaller than the other, but it being lopsided sort of makes it cuter.

He and his dad, they're supposed to be going on rides now, but his dad's pager keeps going off. He puts Steve next to a funnel cake stand, tells him not to move, and goes in search of a pay phone. Fifteen minutes pass, and Steve is bored under the flashing lights and tinkling music. He wants to play not sit and wait.

Eventually, he drifts back towards the midway, watches the people rushing by, searches for a sign of his dad's return. His attention is caught by another boy at the basketball booth. He has to be about Steve's age, with a mop of dark curls on top of his head and a jean jacket that's slightly too big, sleeves flopping over his hands as he lines up his shots.

This boy, he's terrible at basketball. Every shot is too high or too short or goes wide, but he's trying. Even from this distance, Steve can see how hard he's trying. He uses up his five balls, fishes into his jacket pocket for more money, and gets five more.

He misses every shot. This time, when he goes back for more money, he comes up empty. Steve thinks he sees his lip shaking.

A man, one in a leather jacket and boots that Steve thinks look mean, comes up to the boy, drops a heavy hand on his shoulder. He's too far away to hear the conversation, assumes the boy asks to play again and the man's response is a shaken head and a tight smile. They walk away from the games, right towards Steve, who slinks back to the side of the midway, not wanting to be caught staring.

"What was it you wanted? That stupid bat? Just another piece of trash you wanna bring in my house." Steve hears as they pass.

The boy nods, but keeps his eyes down and to the side.

He feels bad then. Felt bad before, but now he looks at his own bat, at its funny eyes and poorly attached wings, and wishes he could hand it over to the boy who really wants it. Steve almost does, then, makes to go after them, but his dad appears, dropping a hand to Steve's shoulder and saying, "ready to hit those rides?" And he knows the opportunity is gone, knows his dad will say it's too soft, not what men do.

Steve manages to lose himself for a while in the swirling lights and funhouse music and carnival rides, forget about the little bat in his back pocket and the boy who wanted one so desperately. But then his dad's pager goes off some more, he goes back to the pay phone, and Steve ducks into the low brick building that houses the bathrooms.

His eyes immediately land on the same boy from the basketball game. His eyes are red, face damp, obviously from tears, and Steve just--

"Here." He shoves the bat into the boy's chest.

For a second, the brownest eyes Steve's ever seen widen at him, before narrowing in a harsh glare, the boy's teeth barred.

"Why?" He snarls.

Steve thinks he may regret every choice that led him to this but he says, he says, "Because I want you to have it."

The boy blinks a few times, hand reaching out to gently pinch the bat's smallest wing. "You sure?"

Steve nods and the bat is slowly withdrawn from his grasp.

"No takesies-backsies?"

"It's yours."

The boy looks at the bat in awe, and Steve says, "see? It already looks happier with you."

The boy's beaming smile is cut-off by a voice calling from the door, "you in there,? I ain't got time to be waiting for your boohooing."

"Coming!" The boy carefully tucks the bat into an inner pocket of his jacket. "Thank you," he whispers, eyes big and glistening and happy, before he disappears out the door.

---

13 years later, give or take a few months, and Steve stands in the cracked shell of a bisected trailer, rummaging through what remains of a life well-lived, searching for anything whole. He's already found a few undamaged mugs and clean hats, but this room--it took a lot of damage. The brunt of it, really. Some sick sort of joke, after everything.

It's mostly rubble in here, scraps of fabric; slivers of notebook paper, magazine, poster; crumbled shards of vinyl and cassette plastic. A few times he comes across the disembodied limb of one of those dnd figures, and something weird happens to his throat.

In the far corner there's half of a dresser collapsed into itself, and he shuffles through the debris to see what he can find. There's something, soft and black, just the edge of it, peaking out from under half of a drawer face. He pulls it out, careful as can be and it's--it's a plush bat. It's a little dirty, but unharmed, though its eyes are a little wonky, and one wing is smaller than the other.

He holds it and he stares and he has to brace himself against the wall. It can't be--it's not the same one--but he remembers those big brown eyes and the curls and--

"Harrington," a warm, rich voice calls from what's left of the hallway. "You get lost in there?"

Eddie shuffles in, slow, careful with his crutches. And it--it took so long, months and months of convalesce and physical therapy, still physical therapy, but he's here. He's alive. He's perfect. And the something blooming between them, it's not spoken yet, but it's there, growing, and now, now--

"Oh my god, you found Lilith! I thought she was toast."

"Lilith?" He's still cradling the little lopsided bat in his hands, but moves closer to hand it over to Eddie.

"Yes, Lilith." Eddie takes the bat, presses it to his chest. "The first boy I ever loved gave her to me."

His heart turns over in his chest and when he swallows his throat clicks. Eddie doesn't notice, he's smiling softly at the bat, at Lilith, but then, "why are you looking at me like that?"

"First boy you ever loved?" He says. He thinks he sounds normal.

Somehow, Eddie's smile grows even softer. "Yeah. Roan County Fair, years ago. Tried to win her, but--" he clicks his tongue--"never had great hand-eye coordination. And then this kid just gave her to me out of nowhere. I used to think I was going to marry him."

"And now?"

Eddie laughs. "I grew up, Steve."

And for a second, he doesn't know what to say, but then, "I was right then, huh? That she'd be happier with you."

He stares at Steve, those same big brown eyes, wide and glistening. "Steve that was--Steve?" Eddie presses a hand over his mouth, overcome, before launching himself into Steve's arms. The crutches clatter to the floor, but Steve has him, will always have him, no matter what.

"I can't believe you kept her," Steve whispers.

"God, I carry her everywhere. She's Corroded Coffin's mascot, and you--Steve, I can't believe that was you."

"Surprise," he bumps Eddie's forehead with his.

They hold each other in the center of the destruction, but none of that matters right now, not when it feels like every moment since they very first met as children was leading them to this.

From the other half of the trailer, they hear footsteps, chattering, Wayne and Robin and Dustin, but Steve wants this to last a little longer.

"So, marriage...that still off the table?"

Eddie laughs softly, nuzzles his face against Steve's neck. "Are you kidding, sweetheart? No way I'm letting you go."

[yanderenightmare]

♡ TW: noncon/dubcon, bullying, reader wears glasses

♡ gn reader

Thinking about jock bully hunting you down after the bell rings...

You hurry – haphazardously shoving your books and pens into your bag before slinging it over your shoulder – ready to get out before the chimes are even done singing.

Thankfully, it seemed fine for now as you couldn't hear the roaring of buzzing students in the hallway just yet, only your own class packing up their belongings with movements rather lazy compared to yours. 

But you couldn't afford to take your time – even with the free period following the end of your class. You needed to leave before he could find you.

"Where’ you off to in such a hurry, Specs?"

You ought to have knocked on wood before finishing your thought – you admonished yourself with eyes squeezed tightly shut and a punishing bite to your lower lip.

It's funny – you winced – how his voice is so casual, so breezy and laidback, all cool and friendly – funny how it sends such spiky goosebumps down your spine.

You ignore him, trying to squeeze past him – quick and dexterous as you attempt to slip away and disappear out the door – maybe be so lucky to lose him in the crowd.

"Whoa, whoa- you tryna run off on me?" He joked. His large hands held up to block your way. 

You watch the rest of your classmates leave – leaving you to fend for yourself. But you couldn't really blame them… none of you wanted to explain new bruises to worried parents at home.

He was like a shark circling, and if he smelt blood in the water, you were as good as done for. And you were like an open cut.

"Now, what did I do to deserve a disappearing act, huh?" He pouted. His head tilted, blocking out the lights in the ceiling, shadowing his already scary face. 

You nearly squeaked instead of speaking. "Please- I- I-"

"Calm down, will yah?" He dismissed. Flashing you a wide smile – the one that nearly fooled you into believing he was a good and decent guy. "I ain't come to pick on yah…"

You didn't listen. Once again, you bravely tried to push past him with your bag squeezed tightly to your chest – trying to rush to the door.

But his size was like the door itself. Big and squared. Muscly and tough as he blocked your way effortlessly. Though, no less bothered with your insistent attempt at running away from him.

"Now, when I tell you to do something-" He laughed passive-aggressively as his hand reached out to clutch the handle on your bag, yanking you back. "You should perk up and listen, yeah? Use that head of yours for something useful for once."

His knee rode up between your thighs – making you whimper where you stood, caged between his thick arms and the desk behind you.

"Wouldn't wanna make me angry now, do yah?"

His breath tickled your face, and you bowed your head under his gaze – unable to take your eyes off of the veins flexing along his beefy arms as his large hands gripped the table’s edge, sleeves rolled up like usual – the sight of his knuckles whitening, making you queasy with unease.

You tried ducking away once again. "Please, I need to-"

But he just clicked his tongue at the measle effort. Cutting you off yet again. 

"You don't need to do anything but stand here and entertain me." He decided with a voice a bit more biting than before.

You jolted, your eyes round and wide as you looked back up into his glare.

He laughed out a lighthearted chuckle before his hand broke off from marring the desk – scratching the back of his neck with an apologetic smile – serving a small effort at easing your worries where you stood tense and rigid in your place in front of him.

"Thing is…” He started once again, his tone back to normal – or whatever he wanted you to think was his normal. “Coach is gonna kick me off the team if I don’t get my grades in order.” He explained. “So’s thinkin’ since you’re such a good little nerd, you wouldn’t mind helpin’ me out.”

His hand reached out to tickle your chin.

“M’sure havin’ a cute little nerd-tutor like you is exactly what I need.”

Your throat was so tight you thought you might just choke. “I don’t-”

“Good!” He boasted over your pitiful protest. “Since y’got nothin’ better to do, how ‘bout we just head straight for my dorm right now?” He asked – though you knew better than to think it was a question. “Le’me carry that for yah-”

He yanked your backpack from your chest, ripping it out of the tight hug before throwing it over his own shoulder.

“I can carry you too if yah want?” He posed – smirk loud on his face as he placed his large paws at your waist – followed quickly by you shooting your arms forward to shove him off in protest.

But though you thought you’d put in some strength behind it, the boy in front didn’t budge at all. 

He just arched a brow as though asking if that was really all you had. And you hoped dearly he couldn’t see how the stiff muscles of his shredded chest had actually strained your wrists instead.

“What do you say, short stuff?” He leaned in, his breath foggy on your glasses and hot on your cheeks, as his hands clawed themselves into the fat of your waist, pulling you off your feet just a bit.

“N- no, thank you.” You stuttered out, stumbling a bit as you braced yourself against him. Your eyes squished close as you bowed your head away from him in a mix of fear and embarrassment while you suppressed the mortifying feeling of nearly pissing yourself.

But the tall boy realized little of your inner turmoil – rather enjoying it as he scoffed out an amused laugh at you. “A'ight then, come on.”

He yanked you along – his large paw gripping your arm as you struggled to keep up with his long strides. Nearly needing to resort to jogging where you otherwise tripped when the gap between the two of you became so large you had to skip a step or two to catch up – and before you even realized it, you were already standing outside the boy’s dorm waiting for him to find his keys.

He unlocked the door and welcomed you inside with the same grace of a warden showing a prisoner to their cell – with the weight and breadth of his warm hand on the small of your back as he nudged you inside.

The room had an overwhelming dank scent of both bodyspray and sweat and other things you’d only expect to smell in a boy’s locker room.

“Yo.” Came another voice from inside.

“Sup, roomie.” Your bully replied lazily. Grinning at how you gripped his shirt, all but jumping into hiding behind him. 

You’re cute…

“Who’s that you got there?” His friend arched a brow at you, where you peaked at him from behind your bully’s sleeve.

“I’mma need the room.” He announced, not really answering the question.

The roommate then scoffed with a grin, beholding you with slim eyes for a moment, then scoffed once more before he got up to leave.

“Don’t hit the books too hard – Coach’ll have your ass if you don’t bring your A-game later.” He warned, pulling his gym bag up on his shoulder as he excused himself.

You looked around once he was gone, spotting dumbbells and other equipment – and quickly realized how there must be many more muscles beneath his shirt than what you’d already borne witness. 

“So- uhm-” Swallowing the lump in your throat, you awkwardly turned to the boy. “Where're your books?”

Your bully smiled, taking a casual step toward you. “My books?” He asked, nowhere near even trying to sound the least bit genuinely confused.

“Your- uhm...” You paused, feeling uneasy. “Textbooks?”

His smile sharpened. “That’s cute.” He mocked sweetly while buttoning up the small black buttons of his white uniform shirt, giving a flash of those muscles you’d been anxiously anticipating. “You actually thought we were gonna study?”

♡ BNHA – Bakugou, Kirishima, Shigaraki, Dabi, Hawks ♡ JJK – Sukuna, Geto, Gojo, Naoya, Toji ♡ HQ – Kuro, Bokuto, Iwaizumi, Sakusa, Miya twins, Tendou, Ukai ♡ AOT – Eren ♡ DS – Akaza, Sanemi ♡ WB – Togame

♡ FEM x M INSERT masterlist ♡ GN x M INSERT masterlist

Full fic with smut available here:

[talaok]

Sunbathing

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

Summary: you’ve decided to sunbathe topless, or as your husband Joel would put it, you’ve decided to torture him.

Warnings: needy Joel, kind of sub!joel, unprotected p in v, premature ejaculation, creampie, oral sex (f receiving), come play.

a/n: i sunbathed topless for the first time and well this wrote itself

"You've seen my boobs before babe" A soft laugh bubbled up your throat as you turned your head left.

He wasn't even pretending not to be staring.

"Not like this"

You smiled, "what does that even mean?"

"not out... here"

You lowered your sunglasses to see him better, tilting your head to ask for further explanation

Yes you were outside, by the pool of the beautiful summer house you'd rented, but you didn't get how that made any difference, they were the same boobs he'd seen hours prior in your bed.

"I'm not used to not doing anything about them"

"ah" you hummed "is it that hard?"

You didn't even need to look at the smirk painting his face to regret your choice of words.

"yeah babydoll, it's real hard"

You only needed to lower your gaze a little to asses his statement.

"You're incorrigible"

"And you're torturin' me darlin'"

"How am I torturing you?" you laughed "I'm just taking advantage of the privacy we have to get a good tan"  

"and besides, I seem to remember how hard it is for you to see me with the whole bikini on too"

He sat up, the sunbed squeaking as he faced you.

"It ain't my fault if my wife's so pretty it hurts"

"you get so dramatic when you're horny" you chuckled, rolling your eyes.

He smiled, letting his gaze wander all over your body for a good minute, before getting back at your face

"nothin's gonna happen is it?" his tone was full of hope nonetheless

"no baby" you shook your head

He sighed, dramatically letting his head fall to his chest

"I'll have a swim then"

"have fun honey"

__ __ __

"darlin'?"

Not even ten minutes had passed, and that scene from the Barbie movie with the "Ken! Go for a walk or something" line couldn't not pop into your head.

"yes?"

He was standing right next to your sunbed, dripping wet and blocking out the sun.

"don't ya need sunscreen?"

A soft smile pulled at your lips.

Ten minutes, that's how long it took for him to come up with that.

"I put it on already"

He wasn't gonna give up, not on the first try.

"how long ago?"

"an hour, I think"

"the sun's real strong now doll," he said, drying his hair with a towel before throwing it on his bed "I think it's best if you put some more on… I can do it for you if you don't feel like it"

You chuckled, looking up at him, but he stayed in character, continuing to look oh-so worried about your safety.

"Somehow I knew that offer was coming"

"'m just worried about my wife, 's all"

he'd crouched down, taking your hand in his

"mh-mh" you hummed, sarcasm tracing your tone

"can't have you get sunburt now, can we?"

"no, we can't" you played along, smiling at him

"'f course" he murmured, leaning down to leave a soft kiss on your lips as he grabbed the sunscreen.

"I'm so lucky to have such a caring husband"

"I'm the only lucky one babydoll"

He gave you one more kiss, before he leaned away and got to work.

He squeezed some cream into his hand, but to your surprise, his hands didn't land where you'd expected them to-

Only his eyes were betraying him. They were only on one, or actually two things even when it was your legs he was massaging.

The coldness of the cream and his hands felt good against your warm body, so much you couldn't help but hum appreciatively.

"feels good?"

"yeah baby" you breathed as his hands made their way to your thighs.

It always amazed you how hands so big, rough, and strong were able to be so gentle and soft on you.

You couldn't deny the shivers running up your body when his fingers reached your inner thighs, getting close to your core.

"what's that?" your husband was smirking like a cat, as he dedicated himself much too long on that spot.

"I didn't say anything"

If he thought this was gonna work, he was wrong. It was too hot, and you were too relaxed to do what he so obviously wanted to do... although you both knew how much you liked seeing him desperate...

He still didn't touch your boobs, no, next were your shoulders, then your arms, and then... when he felt on the brink of exploding, when he couldn't stop himself anymore, he squeezed a generous amount of sunscreen in his hands, and oh so gently started massaging your tits.

He couldn't stop a soft groan from fleeing his lips.

It felt amazing- of course it felt amazing, but you didn't wanna give him the satisfaction, and this was mostly for him, not for you, so your eyes remained closed as you pretended like it was nothing.

But that only lasted so long, because Joel could endure just about 30 seconds of that before he was bending down, and his mouth was sucking your nipple.

"Joel!" you gasped, your eyes snapping open just in time to see him climb onto you to straddle your waist, and then go right back to groping and licking and sucking your nipples like it was his life long duty.

"baby you're all wet" you tried complaining, but the smile on your lips was everlasting.

He looked so damingly cute like this, looking up at you with those big doe eyes as he worshipped your tits.

"so are you"

And yeah so what if you were- there's only so much a woman can do in front of this.

A soft laugh spilled from your lips as your hand went to find a place in his hair, your back arching to offer more of yourself to him.

"I don't even know how good it is for you to be licking sunscreen"

The look he gave you made it very clear he didn't give one single fuck.

And just when you were about to protest again, his teeth had gently bit your nipple, and a moan had spilled from your lips.

he took that as an incentive to go further, his hand slowly sliding down your belly, between your bodies, until it was seeping underneath your bikini bottoms.

"babe-" you stopped him, your voice breathless

His hand stopped on your mound as he groaned in frustration.

You could feel his rock-hard cock on you since the moment he straddled you- the man was desperate.

"please doll" he murmured against the soft skin of your chest in between kisses "Gimmie something-anything” he pleaded “Have mercy on your poor husband"

Your response was mixed between a laugh and a moan

"I can take care of you if you want"

He shook his head, his teeth grazing your nipple "Need to feel you darlin’"

Again, a soft giggle rumbled from your chest

"’S too hot to have sex here baby"

His hand had gotten out of your bikini to reach the other on your waist.

"the pool- the ground? fuck- anywhere you want sugar, just tell me where"

His clothed hard-on was rubbing against your core now, and fuck but once again you’d succumbed to Joel and his goddamn irresistible neediness.

"bring me back into the house"

It was like he’d been waiting his whole life to hear those words.

In a haze of kisses and lust, he’d picked you up, letting you hold onto him by wrapping your arms and legs around his body as he hurriedly walked into the house.

He didn’t make it far enough to encounter a single surface- and perhaps that was because he’d stopped looking and placed you against the wall the moment he’d passed the threshold.

His mouth was on your tits again, his cock was out, and his fingers had pulled your bikini to the side.

He said nothing as he slowly began entering you, the only sounds in the room being your moan as you threw your head back, and the groan he emitted, muffled by your skin.

“Oh fuck” you cried once he bottomed out.

Your husband was a very gifted man.

"'m not gonna last"

He sounded like the mere act of talking was taking all of his energy, and yet he was thrusting up into you like it was a matter of life or death.

"'s ok"

"I've been hard since you took your top off" he murmured, his breath fanning over your chest “you-you-jesus”

Your left hand passed through his hair, softly soothing him.

“‘S alright baby, don’t wait for me”

“You’re too fuckin’-” he tried to speak, but he was interrupted by yet another groan

“What?” you taunted him, a smirk pulling at your lips “what is it baby?”

His eyes were wide with desperation as he looked up at you, as his mouth stole languid kisses from your tits.

“Too hot- too goddamn perfect”

You bit down a grin at that, still stroking his hair

“I love you baby” you breathed, his cock reaching the deepest, most fucking amazing spot inside you in the meantime.

The moment those words left your lips your husband was fucked- the only words he was able to mutter were a series of -fuckshitgoddamn- before he inevitably reached his peak, filling you up with rope after rope of come that never seemed to end.

He remained like that for a little while, buried inside you, eyes closed, mouth still connected with your boob, until you left a gentle kiss on the crown of his head, and he woke up from his heavenly trance.

He let out a soft groan as he slipped out of you, and took his time letting you down.

You were smiling at him with that soft smile that melted his insides right up, and he couldn’t help but lean in and kiss it, kiss you like you were a soft delicate thing that he was scared of breaking.

“I love you more” he promised, kissing you again, even if you were smiling.

“Feel better now?”

You said it like he was a kid with a stomach bug, and he couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“Yeah darlin’” he murmured against your mouth “thank you”

“You don’t have to thank me” you laughed, but he was already shaking his head

“Yes I do”

And without further explanation, he’d dropped to his knees.

He slid your bikini to the side once again, looking up at you with only adoration in his eyes.

“Baby you don’t have to” you tried to reason with him, but his mouth was already latched to your clit, and your hand had already flown to his hair.

He remained on your bud long enough to make you desperate, and then he started focusing on your whole core, his tongue lapping between your folds with what could only be described as feral hunger.

His come was everywhere, and yet he didn’t care, he was happy tasting the mix of your fluids, because that’s how Joel was- a nasty nasty man- only for you.

So much so that you felt his tongue enter your hole, simulating what he was doing just minutes before with his cock.

“Fuck-babe-”

Your moans were breathless, more like whines, like prayers.

You were looking at him as he was looking at you and Jesus... He looked fucking heavenly.

His hair all tussled from your fingers, his blown-out pupils, his never-stopping tongue-

“Joel” you cried, but he didn’t dare speak a word as he went back to your clit.

“Shit-baby- god!”

You had to tighten your hold on his hair as your orgasm crept up your body- and it was as you heard him groan with pleasure, as he sucked your clit into his mouth like a man starved, that it all came crumbling down, and you felt your body light on fire as your climax took over.

You were moaning and crying into the air for a good minute before you were sane again.

Only Joel hadn’t stopped eating you out for a single second, and even then, he looked like he had no intention of doing so

“Baby-baby” you whimpered, having to literally pull him away from your core.

He was smiling like a kid, and you couldn’t help but follow suit.

He put your bikini back in place, and then stood up, his hands lingering on your waist

“You’re crazy”

He couldn’t help but kiss you before answering,

“You make me”

[yeyinde]

STRAW HOUSE, STRAW DOG

Baby Trap + Soap x Fem!Reader : or, Johnny finds a wife in the woods and decides to take her home.

18+ | DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT: noncon, kidnapping, breeding/baby trapping. somnophilia. implied stalking. obsessive behaviour. forced reliance/dependency. non-con drug use (implied). vulnerable character (injured reader) being preyed upon by an opportunistic scavenger.

Somehow, getting hurt in the remote wilderness of Nahanni National Park without any immediate rescue is the least of your worries when a rugged man shows up and claims he's going to help. Out here, you've been told your biggest fear should be bears, steep canyons, and a swift death with fangs and claws.

But maybe you should have been more concerned about strange men with crowlike smiles and blistering eyes.

ADDITIONAL TAGS: descriptions of injury. implied head trauma. bearded Soap. smut. this is my love letter to NWT and a what not to do in a national park.

BABY TRAP MASTER LIST | AO3 LINK

It happens in an instant. 

The trek up the fjord narrows suddenly. Chossy growing slick from rainfall the night prior. You pace yourself, stepping carefully on the wobbling slate, testing its resilience before you take another step. Climbing higher. Higher.

There's a storm brewing in the distance. Its burgeoning pace grows rapidly, nipping at your heels as cool winds whistle through the steep valley below.

The park wardens at the visitors centre warned you about it when you set out into the rugged wilderness of Nahanni this morning. Brows pinched, wary, when you'd come to them—all alone—and signed your name on the barren ledger collecting dust on the counter. A fact that drew your attention when you flipped through the empty pages. 

Don't get too many visitors around here, the man murmured, eyes cresting in apprehension at your question. Not the most isolated or remote, no. That's probably higher up. Quttinirpaaq, maybe? Heard from some buddies up there that they had no visitors last year. We do pretty well. About one thousand a year? Usually filmmakers and the like. Adventurous types. Gets kinda lonely up here. Ain't no Banff, that's for sure.

They added that the weather was unpredictable this time of year. All year, really. Nahanni is known for sudden swells and white-outs, for weather that can turn in an instant, going from calm to cataclysmic within seconds. 

(“Storms,” the man huffs, and you think the sigh was meant to be a laugh. One that falls flat when he takes in your hiking boots (too big, but the sales lady at the sporting goods warehouse assured you it was fine, that you would grow into them), and your cheap Lululemon knock-off tights. Your flimsy rucksack. The tinge of green around your ears; the stench of an overeager novice. “And, uh, it’s urban legends.”)

Valley of the Headless Men, he intones, squinting up at you when you ask about them. Adding: be careful out there when you turn to leave.

Dauntless, you still set out into the park, determined to at least make it to your campground before it set in. But the majesty surrounding you on all sides distracted you from your pace. Eyes caught on the Xanadu of an untempered wilderness slowing your trek to a crawl as you took in the steep, rolling batholiths reaching high into the aether, their sides sloping down in a dizzying, vertiginous drop to a lush valley below of scheele’s green below. It all looked so perfectly symmetrical from the high point in the valley where you stood, breathing in the scents that perfumed the air. With the rugged mountains cupped around a winding white line where the river sawed through. 

A lone moose grazed at the bottom of a rolling fell. The sight of her stopping you in your tracks long enough that the plume of darkened clouds—all a terrifying burnt sage—had time to catch up to you, crackling overhead as thunder rumbled through the canyons. 

Your campground is at the top of this ravine. Three nights spent inside a cabin with nothing but yourself and several paperbacks for company. Into the Wild amongst them—a morbid parting gift from a friend on what not to do—and its inspirational predecessor, On the Road. 

You won't read it. You never do. But it sits, a humourous paperweight, in your rucksack as you clamber up the ravine. An anchoring comfort. A piece of home. Something that reminds you you're not completely alone even though you are. 

The book, your friends, and the encroaching loneliness that you feel prickling behind your eyes, all weigh on your mind. Spooling out before you in loose, loop threads. You follow them eagerly, glad for something to abate the unnatural silence, and—

A sound.

It comes from the left, hidden in the thick tangle of furze. A click. It shatters through the eerie quiet of the sprawling boscage. An animal, maybe. Hopefully. 

It must be, you think, heart hammering thunderously in your chest. There's a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. You hold your breath. Eyes glued on the thatch of green shrubs lining the base of the dense forest. 

Nothing happens. You blink, shifting on your feet—

A red line pierces through the gap between the leaves, aimed straight at your ankle. It's thin, diaphanous. Slips over the scraggy rock like liquid.

It's so out of place here that it takes you a second to familiarise yourself with its unexpected presence. A laser—

An explosive boom fills the ravine the moment the thought connects. A rifle. Aimed right at you. It happens fast. The world turning over itself, spinning right off its axis. You fall against the ledge in a crumpled, heavy heap, legs so close to dangling off the precipice. 

Gravity is a choking weight on your sternum, pushing you down, down, toward the jagged, rocky shoreline. A fall like that—

You curl into yourself instinctively. 

“Ah, shite—” is all you hear amid the roar in your ears. “Y’alright? ah didnae see ye thare—”

In your tear-stained periphery, a man appears. He stands into the glare of the waning sun, limned in a halo of gold. There's a pinch between his dark, thick brows. A steep ravine.  He's ragged. Wild. Tuffs of black hair hang loose past his ears and nape, curling slightly at the ends. It blends, almost seamlessly, into his thick, scraggly beard. He pushes a hand through the top, grabbing a fistful in his palm.

“Easn't expecting anybody oot 'ere. Nae this far intae th' woods.”

He seems to be speaking to himself more so than he's talking to you. There's anger writ in the fine lines of his face, but this ire isn't turned toward you. It's inward. Self-admonishment. His eyes darken when they flicker down to your ankle, as if reminding you of the hurt there when you'd been so focused on how out of place his accent is in the Northwest Territories.

The ache in your ankle brings you crashing back into reality. The pain seems to vibrate from within your marrow, riveting up your bones. 

You chance a glance—

You swallow down the drum of panic. A trick of the light. It must be. 

A dream. A nightmare. 

But the man appears. His hand falls onto your knee, holding you steady. 

“Ah will hae tae put oan a tourniquet. Will hurt a lot, doe.” 

Absently, you nod. Keep nodding. Can't stop. 

There's a hole cut through your ankle. Tore thro' yer Achilles, he's saying, words water in your ears. He instructs you to wiggle your toes.

"Ah know it hurts, but just dae it fer me, okay?"

You do. You—

Nausea buds in your guts, churning your stomach. The apple you ate earlier is choked out into the bushes dotting along the ravine. Insides purging themselves, replacing everything—food, water, coffee from earlier, bile—until nothing but shaky panic remains. It tastes like iron in the back of your throat. 

“Ah know, doe,” he's saying, fingers knotting into your slick hiking trousers. Lululemon knockoffs from an outdoor warehouse in the city. A pocket knife follows, and cuts a seamless line inches below your hip. 

Sad tae see ‘em go, he murmurs, accent thickening around the words. Saturating them in a drawl that's too liquid for your unpractised ears to catch. He makes a mournful sound when he slides the blade down your leg, adds, “hugged yer arse like a dream, doe.”

Another trick. The mountains do funny things to sound, you know. It must be all in your head. All—

“Don't worry,” he's shushing you now as he peels the fabric off your legs, groaning low in his throat. “Ah have ye. Ah will take care o'ye, tae, doe. Bonny thing, aren't ye? a' alone. Nae anymore, doe. Jus' me 'n' ye now. Jus' us —”

You always thought you'd have your wits about you in a traumatic situation. Be able to think clearly, rationally. Make appropriate decisions that befit the situation unfolding. Life saving ones. Practical. 

To gear up for this trip, you watched survival videos on YouTube. How to make a fire. How to make drinking water. How to build a shelter. Tips on weathering down for a sudden storm. Tucked it all inside your head, and thought, I got this. 

Had to, really, because everything you've read about Nahanni says it's unpredictable. Calm weather, gorgeous views one moment, and then a sudden deluge the next. Snow falling quicker than you keep up with. Animals blend in seamlessly with the landscape. Slips, falls. It's so easy to get lost, someone wrote. 

But as he uses the scrap of your trousers to wrap around the wound on your broken, mangled ankle, you realise all that planning was for nothing. This was one of those moments when you discovered just how much you bit off. That panic made you mute, made you freeze up. 

The pain is almost secondary to the surge of adrenaline. Fear.

You need to go home. You tell him this, slowly. Muttered through numb lips. 

There's something almost like pity in his eyes when he glances up at you. 

There was a mix-up, he says, slowly. Cautiously. You got yourself turned around in the opposite direction. There's no campground on the fjord above. All the lodges and cabins are in the opposite direction. 

Y'got lost, he tells you. Turned the wrong way out. Ye'r in th' backcountry.

“I'll go back,” you press, urgent. Insistent. Panic is acidic in your throat. Corrosive. It burns when you swallow. “Please, just tell me which way to go, and I’ll—”

"Cannae dae tha'."

“Why?”

“Storm,” he points in the distance where a plume of cloud gathers. So dark, they're almost black. Ominous. “Gonnae skelp solid. Na choice but tae git oot."

“I don't have anywhere to go—”

He rakes his hand through his hair. “Ah kin take ye tae mines. Git a cabin in th' woods. Juist ootdoors o' Nahanni Butte.” 

“No, I—”

His hand squeezes tight around your ankle. The pain makes itself known in a visceral, awful throb that travels up your leg, curdling at the base of your spine. Wrong, wrong. Something is wrong. Your body is trying to reject the agony. The breaking of your bone. It's foreign, it doesn't belong. But there's nowhere for it to go. 

Pain pulses in tandem with your heartbeat. 

You don't realise you're screaming until you hear the echoes of it rebound against the limestone walls. And then there's a whisper in your ear. You feel the scratch of his beard against your cheek.

"Shush, bonnie. Cannae let ye go oot oan yer own. Gonnae take ye home, yeah?"

Home. Home. You nod furiously, and it's only when the scraggly black curls covering his chin and jaw catch on damp skin do you realise you're crying. 

He leans away from you, arm stretching toward the rucksack behind him. 

The rifle leans against it. You feel sick all over again. 

“Drink this,” he says, unscrewing the cap. “It'll make ye feel better.” 

He presses the lip to your mouth, a hand slipping over the back of your head, tilting your chin up. “Drink,” he says again, and it's firmer this time. A command. “Ah promise ye'll feel better, doe.” 

It tastes bitter. You swallow it down. Keep swallowing.

“Good,” he rasps, hand sliding down the length of your spine until it rests against your lower back. “Keep drinkin’, sweet thing.”

It pools in your belly, sloshing uncomfortably when you move, but it washes the bitterness from between your teeth. You keep drinking. Swallowing it down. You know you shouldn't, that you might get sick again, but it's a distraction from the mess that is your ankle—bloody, twisted, mangled—

Nausea swells. You choke it down until you can breathe without feeling as though you were going to be sick again. 

“You'll be okay,” he's saying, moving around you with a practised efficiency for something so broad. It's almost graceful. Agile. 

He patches you up as much as he can with the supplies he has, but you refuse to look again at your ankle. It's broken, that much is clear. You can feel your bones grinding, sliding against each other. The sensation is horrific. Wrong. You turn your head to the ledge you were standing on just to distract yourself from the agony of it all. 

You're surprised you're not crying. Screaming. The urge is there, just beneath the surface. But for some odd, unfathomable reason you find you can't. Your chest feels heavy. Lungs sluggish. Slow. 

It must be an adrenaline crash, you think. Why else would you feel so tired, so exhausted. 

“I'm—” you start, but you feel dizzy. “‘m—”

“Shush, doe.” He mutters, and it sounds far away. Garbled. “You need yer rest. Had a traumatic accident. But don't worry. Ye can trust me. A wouldnae let anythin' ill happen tae ye ever again."

“Yeah,” you breathe, nodding. Nodding. You can't stop, can't—

“Lay back. Git some rest. A'm almost done, 'n' then ah will hae ye back home in no time—”

You come to on a groggy whimper, head buried in the messy locks curtained over his nape. There's a soft, pulsing thud in the back of your head when you try to lift it up. It feels heavier than it should. Leadened. You groan again, fighting against the currents dragging you back down to those soporific depths—

Your head is a slurried marsh. Thoughts ephemeral, broken. Fragmented. They slip through your fingers when you reach for them, diaphanous wisps you can't seem to catch. 

“Don't worry, doe—” your world quivers when he speaks. Words vibrating through your chest, catching on the heavy rails of your ribs. The seismic vibrations rumble in your ear, coming to life as a mere echo in your head. “Ah will keep ye safe.”

It's comforting. A raft in squall, something to cling to as the waves make futile attempts to drag you under. Your arms, dangling loosely over his shoulders, sluggishly flatten to his chest, linking over his chest. 

He grunts at your touch, palms slick on your skin. 

“Thank you,” you slur, words thick in your throat. Sluggish. “Thank you for helpin’ me. Fer savin’ me—”

Your body shakes when he trembles. With your forehead against his nape, you hear his thick swallow. The air ghosting out of his lungs in a soundless whisper. 

His hands flex around the backs of your knees. Squeezing tight. The man doesn't say anything for a moment. In the silence, the pursuing somnolence catches up to you. It digs heavy fingers into your eyes, dragging you back down into the sticky, thick tar. 

Sleep finds you in an instant. 

You try to read his words in the quiver of your bones when he speaks. Make sense of the tremble reverberating through the hollow gaps, tangling in the pulpy mess. 

But there's a mistranslation somewhere. A missing decibel. A forgotten wavelength.

It almost sounds like he says—

“Wouldn't leave mah wife alone in th' woods like tha’.”

How funny, you think, and hide a giggle into the hardened ridge of his shoulder blade. 

Cognisance is a transient flicker.

You're not sure how long he matches through the thicket with you on his back, navigating the unending chaparral with an ease that feels innate rather than practised. You stare down at the ground, world hazy around the edges, and think, suddenly, intrusively, that you ought to remember the steps. Every left, every right. 

You get to seven lefts, three rights—a small ravine, a flattened coppice; a gnarled spruce sat alone in a valley of lush green and clumps of topaz podzol—before your eyes are too heavy to keep open. They slip shut. And you think, only for a moment. Just a second, I just need to rest my eyes, and then come to at the sound of a groggy engine growling to life. 

The world morphs from a dense forest intercut with sheer cliffs looming, indomitable, in the grey distance, to the faded beige felt covering the ceiling of an old truck. 

Your blink is a slow crawl, lashes weighed down by anchors dredging over the seafloor. Gritty, raw. It hurts, now, to hold them open. A furious throb jabs at your temple. It aches like a bruise. But it's nothing compared to the nauseating agony that floods your core each time your foot is jostled. Nerves being lit aflame in an endless throe of pain unlike you'd ever experienced before. 

Your mouth feels sealed when you go to speak. Lips glued together. Sluggishly, you squeeze your tongue through the crack between your teeth, licking along the seam. 

A plastic bottle appears in your periphery, nozzle tipped toward your mouth. A hand curls around the body of it. Fingers overlapping. It looks small in this big hand. Tiny. Long wisps of black hair cover their ruddy knuckles, spreading in a dense crop up their forearm, growing thicker at the wrist. 

Their skin is pale, tinged slightly pink. Even through the brume, the lambent light of the sun catches on their skin. Illuminating small scars, cuts. Little scratches from the snagging furze. 

Their hand shakes. The dark veins that branch off from the white-capped peaks of their bent knuckles pulse under the thin skin when they move. 

“Drink, hen,” he murmurs, bringing the bottle to the jut of your lower lip. “Ye’ll need it.” 

A plastic bottle is an odd choice to bring into the backcountry, but as you peer through the translucent skin, you find the water inside is cloudy. Chalky. 

“Donnae worry—” he gives the bottle another shake, disturbing the sediment congealing at the bottom. “It's electrolytes, ken. Nothing fishy.”

Your teeth ache from the cold when he slips the rim between your lips, prying them apart. With your head already tilted back in the seat, the water slips in. A slow trickle. He feeds it to you, humming in appeasement when you swallow. 

“Tha’s a good girl.” 

It carves a jagged tunnel through the murk in your head. The praise slipping in, liquid, until it coats your burgeoning trepidation in a sudden swell of endorphins. With their unpractised, gauche hands, they paint a mockery of Sargent in the gaps of your synapses, stuffing the spaces between with oversaturated hues of teal, white, yellow, orange, and pink. 

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. 

But despite the shoddily crafted pastiche, it works. 

Your eyes flutter, bones growing heavier, heavier, as they're forced to carry the weight of your liquified flesh. This molten heat in your chest turns your insides into putty.  

Water dribbles down your chin. He sees it and coos.

“Ah, doe. Right mess ye are now. Ah will hae ye home in no time. Git ye a' cleaned up."

The idea of home melts you further. You sigh in the seat, soft and drawn out, and shake your head slowly when he wriggles the bottle in front of you again. 

“Get some rest, doe,” his hand falls, heavy and warm, on your thigh. Thumb stroking along the curve of your leg, fingers curling into the seam, digging deep. Resting there. 

It's too high to be appropriate. You know this. Went through lesson upon lesson in school of bad touches and what's considered friendly, polite. But when you try to open your mouth to say something about it, you catch the spread of his palm over your flesh. Wide, broad. Masculine. It catches in your throat, and gets tangled in the mush at the base. 

It should be fine, you think, dizzy over the way his hand swallows you whole. He saved you, after all. 

But it burrows. Digs deep. Some sense of wrongness permeates out from the firm grasp he has on you. It feels possessive. The sort of thing you might expect between people who are intimate with each other. A couple. You've known him for—

Hours, maybe? 

Most of it was spent in a pain-induced hypnagogia. 

It curdles in your stomach. Rotten, spoiled milk. 

But—

He saved you. 

You'll choke yourself on it if you keep thinking about it. So, you don't. You push it down. Cover it beneath the sediment, and bury it deep. 

He's just a man. 

Kind. Helpful. 

As you dig a hole for this unease, he keeps his hand fixed on your thigh. The other is pressed against the steering wheel, the ball of his palm under the curve at the top of the wheel. Relaxed. Easy. You try to adopt his nonchalant disposition and glance out at the blurry world around you. 

You feel exhausted. Unsettled. The sort of fatigue that comes with a raging fever. There's sand in your mouth. Your throat is dry. 

You don't ask for water. 

In the lull, he pitches the truck forward with a grave rumble. The silence is broken by the crunch of vegetation and gravel beneath the wheels as he ploughs forward. 

There are public roads to get to Nahanni. The floatplane you entered into the park on was chartered by Parks Canada. And yet—

He commandeers the truck around a flatbed of rock and dirt. Muskeg dots the tops in some places, and he veers expertly to avoid them. 

It's less of a traditional road and more so a forged desire path. You know the highway has to be close by, the link between Fort Liard and Fort Simpson, but as you peer out the window, the world around you looks overgrown. Wild. Alien. 

Sloping hills in lush green stretch out into the distance, meeting with the dense montane forests dotted along the stretch of land. The grassy coppice under his wheels is matted down, and interspersed with clumps of brown, wet muskeg and crushed slate. 

Over the grey peaks of the mountains in the distance, a thick, black cloud looms. The sky turns gunmetal, almost indistinguishable from the monoliths jutting beneath them. 

At some points, he takes his hand off your thigh to navigate winding turns better, but it always ends up back on you. And always a little higher than it was before. 

Your mouth is filled with lead. Tongue thick, malleable. Tensile like mercury. You can't speak. So you just ignore it. Dig your crown into the headrest, and breathe in the woodsy scent of him. Laurel, tree moss. Coumarin. Rotting pine. Sweet acacia. It tickles the back of your throat. Sticks there, glued in the syrupy mess. 

You'd hoped it would get easier to ignore, but it stays there, a constant weight, even as the world outside fades into a hazy twilight. 

In the hush of the cabin, he squeezes your thigh. “Cannae wait tae get ye home, doe.”

Against the staggering backdrop of a black, jagged mountain, a doe stands in the talus. Her fawn fur and tuffs of white spots stick out against the charcoal-coloured cliffs, and you watch, some distance away, as she bends down to fossick through the scree in search of food. 

With the looming clouds of gunmetal and ash gathering around the craggy peaks, her presence here feels dangerously out of place. Jarring. She shouldn't be here. She doesn't belong. 

But the beauty of this moment is breathtaking. Mesmerising. You stare in muted horror, awe, as she grazes in the rubble, slender neck bent in a graceful arch. The sloping handle of fine china. Her wet, black eyes are so open, so kind. Puddles of ignorance, naïvety, as she flicks her tongue out against the desolate rock, a fruitless search for grass in which to mull on. 

Thunder crackles over the snow-capped ridges. Her ears flicker, but she doesn't run. You should warn her. Scare her away. But you can't move. Can't speak. You're a mute spectator, a piece of dross on the ground watching the approaching calamity without a mouth. Horror churns. You want so badly to tell the doe to run—

An impossibility, you know. It's much too late for her to do anything at all. 

Around the doe’s leg is a shackle. 

Your skin rips, tears, as you force your jaws apart, blood pooling in your mouth. If you can make a sound, she’ll—

A boom echoes through the canyon's cradle. 

The scream gurgles in the back of your throat. 

Agony rips through your leg—

—you wake with a gasp. 

Sputtering, choking on the saliva pooled in your mouth. It tastes bitter, brackish. You feel something gritty between your teeth. It sticks to the backs, granular specks that dissolve, sour and chalky, on your tongue when you run it along the ridges of your gums.

You swallow it down, grimacing at the acidic taste. 

“Awake, aye?” His voice chips through the dense fog. You blink the haze away, glancing sideways at him through bleary, heavy eyes. 

His profile is lit by the harsh glare of high noon. The sharp jut of his ball cap. The curve of his nose set in the thick bushel of his scraggly beard and moustache. His broad chest concealed most of the view from the driver's side window. The lax bridge of his arm, knuckles loosely curled around the steering wheel.

He tilts his head toward you. “How're ye feelin’?”

Sluggish. Awful. There's sand in your eyes. Cotton in your head. You feel like you've been left out in the hot sun all day. Dizzy and sunburnt. Feverish. Heatsick. Your throat is dry, but you don't ask for water. You don't answer him at all. Can't. Your tongue is laden. Lips numb. 

It takes you a moment to reorient yourself, squinting through the glare of the sun—

That reels you back. Breaks through the fog. 

You know that the concept of day and night in the summer is different here. Twenty hours of daylight with twilight lasting all night. But even with the skewed perception of time and the heavy molasses thickening around the edges of your cognisance, you know that something is wrong. 

When you left the park, it was close to five in the evening. It should be twilight, not—

Your gaze lists sluggishly to the clock on the dashboard. Through the haze, the unmistakable gleam of one-fifteen stares back at you. 

It was the right time last night. 

“Wha—?”

You're not sure what you're asking. It's not even really a word, but a garbled sound. A noise of distress, confusion, in the back of your throat. 

He seems to understand it all the same. 

“Park had a bad storm,” he answers, pitch far too light for the severity of your situation, of what you're feeling. It makes you frown, sharp and sudden. “Washed through th’ river. Where ye were—well. Wouldnae ‘ave made it out, ye see. Would’ve gotten all torn up in th’ storm—”

You read that storms in Nahanni are vicious, sudden. Weather can turn in an instant, going from moderate to devastating in a blink. But—

What he's saying doesn't make sense. You remember bits, pieces, from earlier. He said you got turned around. Wandered too far off the trail, lost in the deep wilderness of Nahanni’s sprawling valley. 

“Where are we?”

“Nearly home.”

You push the wave of nausea down. “I need to go to a hospital.”

“Can't dae tha't'.”

“Why not?”

He doesn't answer for a beat, eyes fixed on the dirt path. Unblinking. 

Finally, he mutters: “had tae leave th' park oan th' opposite side when th' storm came in. No roads take us tae town.”

“I have—” you're not sure where your bag is. You hope he had the wherewithal to snatch it up after you fell. Hope. “I have a satellite phone. I can just call—”

“Sorry, hen. Yer bag flew off th' ledge. Ah coudnae grab it 'n' ye. Ah dinnae hae a phone oot 'ere. Never needed one—”

Hopeless. Hopeless. 

“How—how could you survive out here without one?”

“Nahanni Butte is a few hours awa'. Go intae town when th’ winter road is open. Inaccessible now. Th’ rivers flooded it. Cannae cross it. Can hunt, 'n' ah hae everything a'm needin' oot here.”

“So…” the reality of your situation is beginning to dawn on you. Helpless. Hopeless. “I'm stuck here until—winter?”

“Ah hae a friend flying oot fae Yellowknife. Comes tae drop off supplies 'n' th' lik'. He'll be 'ere in two months—”

“Two months?” This whole situation feels impossible. Wrong. You're so close to people—Fort Liard, Nahanni Butte, Fort Simpson. How could you be stuck here for two months? The idea of it is absurd. “You're not—you can't be serious.”

“Aye. I am.” 

There's a pinch between his brow. You wonder if it's meant to convey the severity of the situation, but as it grows deeper, deeper, you have the sudden sense that it's not an emotional decree of his sincerity. That it's, instead, a sudden twist of anger. 

It scares you. 

“I want to go home.” You mean for it to be forceful, but it comes out in a whimper. 

The man nods. The punch in his brow lessens. “Aye, me tae.” 

“Where are you from?” You pry, needing the distraction from the endless trawl of green and slate and permafrost enclosing in on you. “You're not from around here, are you?” At the gentle raise of his brows, you add, hurried, rushed: “you just. Have an accent, and I—”

“Fae Scotland,” he answers, and there's a quick grin on his face. Roguish. Charming. The sight of it has your start thudding in an uneasy gallop. “Edinburgh."

“Oh. Far from home.”

“Aye—” the grin fades, twisting into something ugly. “Had an—accident,” he spits the word out, brows pinching once more. Anger is writ in the hard clench of his muscles, his jaw. His knuckles blanche around the steering wheel, and you think you should have just kept your mouth shut. “Sent me here.”

There's a multitude of questions you want to ask. Vying for the top is the most obvious—why did this happen? why isn't he letting you go?—but what comes out instead is, “why?”

Just that. Nothing else. 

“Military.” 

He adds nothing, either. 

“Military?”

A nod. “Go’ hurt. Had rehab. Sent me here tae clear ma heid, and well—” his eyes flicker to you. You can't read his expression. “Got a fresh mission, dinnae I?”

“You don't—”

“I cannae leave ye. Both oo' us are stuck 'ere 'til someone comes tae pick us up, 'n' take us home.” 

The idea that somehow he's just as trapped as you are hasn't occurred. Why would it when he has a rifle, a truck, freedom—

But what good is all of that when you're landlocked in a place known for winter roads. Permafrost. The forced shift in perspective doesn't quell the anxiety roiling in your guts, but it lessens it. Somewhat. 

“Two months?”

He nods. “Aye.”

“And you have no cellphone? No satellite?”

“Ye can check it—” he makes a flippant motion toward the glove box in front of you. “Deader than ever.”

You hesitate only briefly. Long enough to level him with a searching look that yields no results before you reach for the compartment, gingerly pulling it open, and—

Sometimes, things get overlooked by their surroundings. Swallowed in the vacuum. Blending seamlessly into the muddle, the commotion. 

This isn't like that. 

It sits on top of a manila folder. Sleek black and cold silver. You're not terribly well-versed in guns—the extent of your knowledge stemming mostly from formulaic crime shows aired late at night; CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds—but you recognise this one instantly. Some sort of handgun. Police issued, you think. It's bigger than you'd expected. Looks heavier, too. 

Your heart stutters. The air galloping out of your lungs in a stammering rush. 

He makes a noise, soft and nonchalant, as if keeping handguns in the glove box of his old, burnt orange truck is perfectly normal. 

“Fer protection,” he mumbles. You catch the jerk of his chin in your periphery. “Forgot I had it in here. Been usin’ th’ rifle fer huntin’ mostly. Or th’ shotgun.”

Three guns. You swallow. “Why—” your voice comes out in a brittle whisper. You clear your throat. “Why, um, why do you need three?”

“Not fae around here, are ye?” He echoes your words with a wry twist of his mouth, eyes slanting in the sunlight. “Tha’,” he takes his hand off your thigh to jab his finger at the handgun. “Is fer wolverines.” His index finger falls, his thumb juts out. He jerks it over his shoulder. “Tha’ is fer huntin’. The shotgun back home is fer bears.” 

You try to move out of the way when his hand falls back to your thigh, but the pain radiating up your leg immobilizes you. There's not much you can do in this situation but endure.

Military. Wounded in action. Three guns. Touchy. 

You're not sure what to think. It would be easier if you couldn't. 

“What do you hunt?” You ask instead, glancing out the window to the barren landscape rolling out around you. There doesn't seem to be much in the jagged hills, and towering mountains. 

“Gettin’ hungry? Donnae worry, doe. Go’ tha’ pesky hare I was tryin’ tae shoot oan th' ledge fer dinner tonight.” 

It's not much of a comfort. The idea of being injured—by accident, he claims—to such an extent over a rabbit makes you feel a little sick. 

“That's it?”

“I can make a mean steak oot o' anythin'. Stews fer tougher meat. Fish—whitefish, arctic grayling, and lake trout. Learned how tae make a nasty fishfry from th’ locals in Nahanni Butte. Bannock, too. Got berries ‘round ma cabin. Caribou, Moose. Taste better in tacos or burgers. Mountain goat, Dall’s sheep. Been eatin’ better ‘ere than ah did at home.”

“And you're—just allowed to hunt them?” The website advised about a permit through some special outfit needed to hunt when you requested your pass into the park. Said that only aboriginals were allowed to do so. “You're not—”

“Aye,” he cuts you off with a small nod. “No huntin’ in th’ park. But. We're nae in th' park anymore.”

“Where are we?” You ask again, firmer this time. 

“I told ye. Nearly home.”

“And where is home?” 

The way he sucks his teeth makes you recoil slightly. Wet. Irritated. As if he's tired of this conversation already. 

“Close.”

You don't let his flat tone deter you. “Are we—are we still in the Northwest Territories?”

“Thereabouts.” 

It's not an answer. It doesn't reassure you in the slightest. 

You open your mouth to say so, words curling on your tongue when he jerks his chin toward the handgun, brow furrowed. 

“Thought ye wanted tae check oan th' satellite phone.”

His tone is severe. A growl curdling the ends, pitching it down, down. Displeasure, irritation, blooms in the gnarled petals of witch hazel when he narrows them into slits. 

You swallow, wrenching your gaze from the storm brewing over fields of wheat, and set your jaw. Masking your fear for annoyance. Confidence. 

But your hand shakes when you reach for the black box shoved into the corner. Palms slick with sweat. You try not to touch the gun, doing your best to curve around it. It feels—

Real. 

A real gun. In the real world. In a place you came to get away for a weekend, experience something you'd never had before. Freedom. Reliance on nobody but yourself. And now—

Somewhere in the Northwest Territories. Injured. Locked inside of a truck with a man who wavers between warmth—an unending heat, a furnace; a beacon of light—and severity like a swinging pendulum. You feel safe with him. You commit every turn to memory. He's in the military. He's going to take care of you. You think he's lying to you. He'll—

He'll let you go. 

You're sick. You're paranoid. You're taking all of your grievances out on this poor man who is just as trapped as you are, turning him into a monster for no reason at all. At the end of this, when he drops you off at the airport in Yellowknife, you'll have to grovel on your knees for his forgiveness. Sorry I thought you were a bad man. 

It could be worse, you suppose. He hasn't done anything untoward to you—touching your thigh like he's owed the right aside—and you shove it down. A problem to deal with later even though the suspicion tucks itself into your head, folded up against your skull. Metastatic. It eats all of his expressions, turning them over and over again for hidden clues. 

If he does something, you'll run. 

You'll—

“Almost there,” he murmurs, and you hear the rasp of exhaustion glued to the hinge of his jaw. You wonder how long he's been driving for. And why didn't he just go back to Nahanni Butte. Flooded he said. Too deep into the park. Never would have made it. 

If that's the truth, you suppose you should thank him. 

It sits in the back of your throat. You swallow around it, reaching for the phone instead. 

There's a small thread of hope in your chest that it'll work. That he's wrong, doesn't know how to work it, and all you have to do is press a button and it'll crackle to life. Freedom within reach. 

But when you press down on the button, the phone doesn't even whimper. Broke, as he said. Dead. 

“Can you—can you charge it?”

“Tried. Must’ve blown somethin’ inside. Fried it.” 

His words are a prison sentence carrying a punishment of two months. You knew this, of course. He said so himself. But the reality of it breaking over you is different from blind belief. The realisation of your predicament is a jagged knife cutting through tissue, letting corrosive panic entrench you as it spills out. 

This is the sort of thing you’d only read about. Novels, and biographies. Memoirs. Movies. An extraordinary event that could never happen to you. Never. 

And you're aware of it. Optimism bias. The not-me fallacy. But everything in your life thus far had been so unequivocally mundane that the possibility of it not happening seemed to eclipse any chance of it occurring at all. 

The crux of the bias, you suppose. Though it does little to stem the disbelief surrounding it all. Even when you told your friends, and your family, that you were going on this trip, the most mordant of them said you'd get eaten by a bear or end up lost in the wilderness. 

Injured, unable to walk, and stuck with a man you only marginally know (trust) seems like the plot of a lifetime movie. 

But—

Two months. 

You're sure in the meantime, someone will notice your absence. Raise the alarm. Call the police. They'll launch an investigation, and come searching for you. It's just a waiting game. 

And—

(You glance at the man once more, his profile limned in a halo of gold. The rim of his hat casts shadows over his face, eyes concealed in the thickening tenebrous that enshrouds him down to his broad chest, dense with corded muscles. Athletic. Trim. Big.)

—staying alive. 

Survival. 

If only for just two months. 

But the facts are cold, unforgiving. You are alone with a man you don't know. A man with three guns. Military. His experience in this wilderness vastly eclipses your own. 

He's fine. Fine. Touchy, sure. But he hasn't asked for anything. 

—his hand is on your thigh—

You'll be okay. 

It hurts to swallow. “Thank you,” you murmur, hoping the conciliatory lilt eats the panic you feel. “For saving me.” 

His gaze darts to you so sharply that the truck veers slightly to the left, tires crunching over thick beds of furze that line the forged road. The action is sudden—surprised, maybe, by your reedy gratitude. A deviation from the demeanour he'd shown you so far—calm friendliness. Affability. It jars you. Scares you. You grip the seat cushion tight in your fists as he mutters something sharp you can't discern under his breath. 

It only takes him only seconds to correct, rippling his hand away from you to commandeer the truck back into the centre of the beaten path. Even keeled now. Almost as if nothing amiss had happened at all. 

But it's undeniable. Congeals in the air, tense and unignorable. A vacuum that siphons the breath from your lungs. It sits in the whites of his knuckles, arsenic bones jutting from thin, rough skin, demanding to be seen; the terse set to his shoulders. To the grind of his jaw as he clenches his teeth. 

You take him in with bated breath, swallowing whole each microcosm that buds to the surface of his demeanour. Wary. Watchful. Squeezing the satellite phone tight in your hands. But he doesn't meet your wide-eyed stare, choosing instead to keep his gaze fixed on the dirt road. Knuckles popping, brows furrowed. Silent. 

But it's heavy. Oppressive. The same unrelenting chill as outside. You fight back a shiver in the blooming cold, wishing you'd packed more than just a pair of hiking tights (in tatters, now) and a thermal windbreaker for the trip. 

The hum of the engine, and the cracking of rock and muskeg crushed under the wheel, are the only noise that fills the cabin. You stifle your breath. Hold it in your throat. Skewer your eyes to the landscape yawning out around you. The deep, thickening sense of unease grows in the pit of your stomach. Metastasizing. 

Outside is a sprawling taiga forest. Emaciated spruce, balsam fir, jut out from the muskeg, dusted in a sparse layer of sphagnum. You can almost hear the trickle of a stream. The dirt road is wet under the tires now. A creek must be close by. A river. Flat River. South Nahanni. Further out might be Slave River. The Liard. Little Buffalo. Great Slave Lake, even. 

Narrowing it down seems impossible when nearly the entire south corridor of the Northwest Territories is wet marsh and snaking bodies of water. 

It both worries and reassures you at the same time. Getting to Nahanni alone was a challenge. With most of the surrounding area limited to a few year-round highways, there are not many places he could go without reaching dead-ends or winter roads closed for the season, inaccessible in the warmer summer months as the snow melts. 

Though—these highways arch as high as they can. From Yellowknife to Tuktoyaktuk, right on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. 

But he hasn't driven on any stretch of highway since you woke up. The road is unpaved, wild. You're confident you're still south, but the exact location eludes you. Northwest Territories. Yukon. Northern Alberta. It's overwhelming. Daunting. 

You try to commit the geography to memory. Sifting through an endless trawl of nothing to find something familiar. A mountain range. A sign. Anything. Anything—

“Ye mean tha’?”

The sound of his voice draws your attention, raspy. Hoarse from disuse. 

He swallows. There's something raw in his expression, fractured. Yearning, you think. For something. What that something is, however, you can't place. 

It stays on as he slowly slides his tongue out, licking over the bristles of hair covering his lip. 

You offer a shallow nod, unsure why this matters to him suddenly. 

“Yeah, I'd be—” 

You pause, words turning to smoke in your throat. Uninjured, is the first thought. Without him, your leg wouldn't be—

Whatever it is. Ankle broken. Achilles torn. A gunshot wound clean through tendon and tissue. 

But at the same time—

All turned around, he said. Lost. He was hunting, too. You must have somehow wandered outside of the park limits. Must have because the sound of a rifle would have drawn attention from nearby wardens. They'd have come to investigate. 

You swallow down the bloom of unbridled panic. The aftertaste is bitter in your mouth. The thought of being outside of the borders, all on your own—

“I’d be dead if it wasn't for you.” 

The hush that falls is immediate. Your own mortality dangling by a thin thread. Happenstance keeping you alive. 

He clears his throat again. Your fingers tighten around the metal until it hurts. 

“Names Johnny.” He twists in his seat, facing you. “Johnny MacTavish.” 

It's a bit late for introductions, but you take it in all the same. Johnny. Johnny.

(saviour—)

His eyes grow wide when you slowly, haltingly, breathe yours out. Letting it sit in the air where it dissolves into the silence, the weight of it somehow more damning than being alone in the woods. There's power in a name. In knowing it. Military. You're not sure why it matters, but it does. 

You fight another shiver when he says it back after a beat, much too fond, adoring, for the sparse companionship you've barely begun to build. 

“I'll keep ye safe,” he says your name again, accent curling in between the bridges of each letter. There's a heat in his eyes; pyretic. A sickness. “Don't hae tae worry aboot anything.” 

He turns back slowly, angling the wheel around a sudden bend in the thicket. The path is clearer here, looking more like an established dirt road than a sparse coppice. It twists upward, cutting a meandering line through a dense cropping of spruce. The canopy above—as thick as it is—curls over the road, enclosing it in a bed of conifers branching overhead. Concealing it from view. 

The sight fills you with a new bloom of unease. How quickly the wild swallows you whole, shielding you from prying eyes, prickles against the nape of your neck, dripping like hot oil down your spine. 

“Where are we?” It comes out in a whisper. 

He makes a noise in the back of his throat. In your periphery, you see him lift his hand off the wheel, but sit, paralyzed, when he brings it down to your thigh, giving what attempts to be a pacifying squeeze. 

“Home,” he answers, making the turn. 

A log cabin comes into view. It’s situated at the end of the clearing, covered by the same dense tangle of trees as the path. The forest seems to bend around the single-storey home, enclosing in a cradled embrace of intermixing wry jack pine, bold tamarack, dark spruce, and white birch. Trembling aspen peaks above the heads of the other trees, hiding the smoked black spruce roof from view above. 

It might look homey under different circumstances, but the thick, stripped logs—made of varnished white spruce—jutting out half-crescents to form the walls seem brooding. Claustrophobic. It's small—just a storey and a half. A camper's cabin not meant for longtime use. It wears its age in wood rot and peeling varnish. The scent of wet wood clings to the air when he rolls the window down, coming to a stop a few paces away from the single step leading to the porch. 

Firewood stacked high to the awning on both sides of the blue door, encased in metal to keep it dry. Moss-covered concrete foundations lift the house off of the ground, keeping it from melting the permafrost below. The remains of a snuffed, charred campfire is perched to the left of the winding path leading to the door. Felled lumber lays on its side, the top whittled down onto a seat. A wooden rack leans against a tree close by. The hide of an animal is stretched taut across the panels. Leather-making materials sit in a bucket beside it. 

A metal box—bear-proof, you're sure—is half-buried in the soil. Storage, perhaps, for the unusable remains of the animals he hunts. 

It's fairly standard for a cabin up north, you think. But something about this place makes you feel anxious. Trapped. You can't see anything at all through the dense cluster of trees, but you can hear the sound of running water. A river, maybe. A stream. It splashes against the rock, the current too quick for you to even think about swimming in it. 

It only adds to your unease. 

“This is home,” he says, jerking his chin toward the house. 

Home is a cabin nestled somewhere in the unorganised wilderness of the Northwest Territories. Nahanni National Park is several hours in another direction. Too few communities exist on highway seven for you to even stumble onto them—

Assuming, of course, that you could walk there to begin with.

The lingering pain in your ankle, the heavy bandage wrapped around it—it's an immediate certainty that you can't walk. Broken, you know, from the glimpse you'd taken before. Milkwhite against raspberry red—

You don't think about that. 

You don't think about much at all. 

“Right.” You murmur. This place is the furthest thing from home you could imagine. 

He moves in your periphery, reaching for you. You jerk back, driven by instincts. The need for distance, space—

The jostling of your foot makes you hiss in pain, and he offers a conciliatory hum. 

“Ye’ll be alright, bonnie. Lets jus’ get ye inside now.” 

The inside is made of varnished wood. A mix of black and white spruce. It's cosy, you suppose. 

It opens up to a living room immediately upon walking in the door. A mat sits under your feet. A small closet to the right with the door slightly ajar. Along the length of the left wall is a doorway spilling into a small kitchen. From your vantage point, you make out a sink, and then another door to the right. 

Along the back wall beside the arching doorway is a brick fireplace. Soft fur is spread out on the ground in front of it. An old, weathered couch is pushed against the left wall, a shawl tossed over the back. 

There's no television. A stack of books and magazines sit above the couch—used more for an end table than entertainment, you note, spotting the glass of water resting on the pile. A pack of cigarettes beside it. An ashtray on the floor. Bottles of beer sit on the small table shoved under the window. One of the chairs is covered in clothes. 

It's lived in, you note, but lifeless. 

There are no pictures on the wall. No personal artefacts littered around. It's—

Perfunctory. 

He comes home, shucks his boots off by the front door, and drinks warm beer on the couch until he falls asleep. An inference, of course; but as he carries you further into the house (his insistence—ye cannae walk oan tha’, doe, stop bein’ stubborn and lemme carry ye), your notion gains credence. It's sparse. Threadbare. 

There's a single plate in the sink. The old stove, separated from the sink by a small countertop, is covered in a layer of dust. A fridge is pushed against the back wall. 

The door you glimpsed in the kitchen leads to the washroom. It's tight. A shower, a sink, a toilet. No windows. A towel is hung over the curtain rail, still damp from his shower before. A single mat covers most of the tiled floor below. A tube of toothpaste sits in the porcelain basin of the sink. 

Beside the washroom is the master bedroom. The bed is unmade. An untouched glass of water is left on the end table beside a worn leather book and a bible. 

An open closet sits across from the bed. The window is open. The breeze flutters the old, jaundiced curtain. 

He gives you his room and says he'll take the couch. Under normal circumstances, you might have fought it. Insisted that he sleep in his bed. You're a guest. You couldn't put him out like that. But the door has a lock. 

“Thank you,” you murmur, and he seems to tremble at your words before nodding. 

“O' coorse.” 

Johnny places you on the bed before he sets to work rebandaging your ankle. You're all too aware of the fact that you need to know. You need to see what you're dealing with, and how bad the damage is, but the pain that cuts through you when he rests your ankle—as gingerly as he can—on top of an extra pillow makes you yowl in agony. 

It's vicious. Whitehot. The pain rattles through your bones. 

He shushes you as he unwraps the clumsy brace he put on in the park, murmuring incomprehensible things under his breath that you think must be Gaelic. Words of comfort, perhaps. 

You feel none of it except an uneasy dread pooling in the empty pit of your stomach. 

“How bad is it?”

He hums, brow pinching tight. “Th' hare took most o' th' damage,” he says, eyes tracing along the congealing blood on your ankle. Dark cherry red. You swallow down a gag. “Tore yer achilles, though. Clean. Doesn't seem tae be any fragments. Broke your ankle, though. But,” he taps your calf, just above the bend of your foot. It doesn’t hurt. “It’s a clean break. Maybe just a fracture. Shuid heal up in no time.”

“And what about infections?”

“Got some stuff oan hand if that happens,” he leans back, and gives you a wink. It feels out of place considering the severity of your predicament. Garish, almost. “But ah was a good nurse. Patched ye up nicely.” 

You don't ask anything else, and silence trickles in as he refocuses his attention back to cleaning your wound and redressing it. The bed is soft under you. Giving. You lean back, staring up at the log ceiling, and will yourself not to think at all. Each slight jostle of the wet cloth running along your ankle feels like fire licking at your skin. If you had anything at all in your belly left, you might have thrown it up on the side of the bed. 

This pain is consuming. Persistent. 

Your fingers knot into the soft blankets below, gripping tight until your knuckles ache. A futile attempt to exchange this pain for a lesser one. Something you can ignore, forget. 

Through the open window, you can hear the playful caws of a raven searching for food. You want it to distract you, to pull you away from the sickening sensation of your ankle separating from the heel, but it doesn't.

All you can think about is the fresh pain. Your flesh ripped apart. Torn achilles, he'd said. You feel it as he moves, washing away the dried blood, the viscera. The break in your tibia. It's a nauseating feeling. Visceral. It screams at you that something is wrong, reverberating through your bones. 

The raven caws again. 

“Gonnae ‘ave tae stitch yer heel up.” 

You make a sound—a pathetic whimper choked in the back of your throat. 

“Fine,” you rasp, tensing. “Just—”

Get it over with. 

Johnny seems to understand, offering a consolatory pat on your shin. “Ye'll be fine. Ah know what am doin’.”

You glance back at him, avoiding whatever is happening below his elbows. Refusing to look. 

He reaches up, fingers stained pink with your blood, and pulls the ballcap off his head, shaking the matted hair loose. His hair is thick, curling at the ends. Dark brown. Soft. You take in his expression, him, as he works, using it to churn your thoughts away from the prickling sensation of him pressing your torn skin back together, readying it for the needle. 

He's intense, focused, as he works. Eyes lidded to half-mast. Long lashes fanning out over the dark circles beneath his eyelids. Bruises that speak of long, sleepless nights. The empty bottles of beer and the full ashtray within arm's reach make a little more sense as you see the extent of his fatigue. 

It doesn't concern you. You rip your gaze away from the thin, twisting rivers of red that snake through the jaundiced whites of his eyes; the possibility of his vulnerability notches something inside your chest you don't want to think about. Can't. 

Your saviour, you think again, veering sharply on the edge of too cruel—

“Might pinch a bit, doe,” he mutters low, soft. His thick, even brows pull together at the centre. You feel the prick of the needle pushing through your skin—

Down his brows. The oblique curve of his nose. Bottled to a point. The thick bed of hair beneath his nostrils. Thin, pink lips jutting from the thatch of black bristles. The wisps curl down the slope of his neck, thinning at the hollow below before thickening back into a dense crop on the scant patch of his skin visible from his unbuttoned shirt. 

Another prick—

A thin, gold chain loops around his neck. Tucked against his sternum is a Latin cross. It's plain. Traditional. Solid gold, maybe. But not purely for decoration. Where the arms meet the body, the surface is smoothed down. Worn. In the reflection, you can see the thin, circular lines of a fingerprint. 

The bible on his dresser makes sense. You glance over at it, taking in the folds and creases on the leather cover. Aged and well-loved. Used. Pages are dog-eared. Waterlogged. Scotch tape holds the spine together. 

The Holy Bible gleams in faded gold lettering. Douay–Rheims is etched into the surface. 

The sight of a worn-down book and thumbed cross shouldn't relax you, but it does. A good ol’ boy, then. You turn back to him, eyes caught on the gleaming gold flush against tanned skin. It's tight to his sternum. Hung delicately around his neck. 

Seeing it now feels a touch voyeuristic. It wasn't intentionally bared to you. Wasn't offered up willingly for you to gawk at, mind looping around thou shalt not kill and do unto others as you yourself would want done unto you, and finding comfort in the ordered morality of its symbolism—however fickle that could end up being. 

You know a man is not as moral as his religion demands of him, but he looks devout. 

A good Catholic boy. 

Still—

You peel your gaze away from his chest as the thread slides through. The sensation is uncomfortable. Ticklish. Forcing your attention back to him, well above the neckline. His nose. Nostrils flaring when your knee jerks. His hands close over your shin. Mouth parting slightly just to say, keep still, doe. Donnae want tae hurt ye. 

His hair is slightly greasy near his scalp. Sweat from earlier dampens his locks, flattening it tongue head. It's longer at the top compared to the sides. An odd, asymmetrical hairstyle that doesn't feel like an aesthetic choice at all. Maybe he had a mullet. Or—

You see it when he tilts his head down, chin angled toward your foot. 

A scar stretches from his temple back, thinning the hair that lines his scalp on the right. The flesh is jagged, uneven. Cratered. It forms a ravine. The canyon walls clumped scar tissue. The nullah in the centre is all pink and raw. 

You think of a shooting star. Meteor showers in the indigo sky. 

You think of his words from earlier—ah know what am doin’—and the depth of his medical knowledge. It stands out now. You suppose he would, wouldn't he?

The thought has shame dripping down your spine like hot, slick oil. Burning. Tarry. You remember what he said in the truck about being wounded in action, the misery in his words, the anger, and choke yourself on the regret that swarms your throat. 

He looks up, then, catching whatever awful amalgamation of self-hatred, shame, and regret makes of your expression, and the words—sorry, I'm so sorry—tear through your throat until it's bloody and raw. Pulp. Unspeakable, now. 

It dampens his brow, but there's no embarrassment in his eyes when he holds them to yours. Nothing except an intense, dizzying sense of curiosity. Of—

Intrigue. 

It doesn't have a place here, and the sight of it is sobering. 

Why is he looking at you like that when you're gawking at his injury? Confusion knots deep. Uncertainty coiling around your ribcage. Maybe he didn't notice. Doesn't care. 

Is too used to it to worry about whatever conclusions you might draw from the jagged skin barely knitted back together. But his eyes flash. Understanding edging out the unfathomable greed lurking in hazel plains, nestled, restive, in the shade that falls over the sloping boscage. 

You almost miss the shadow when it appears. Wrought with Leashed ghosts. Tempered anger. Wild, frenetic. The chains holding it at bay tremble. Shake—

And then it's gone.

Dissolve back into passive cordiality. All ire stayed behind a wall. 

You want to apologize, but the words are ash in your throat. Unspeakable. Johnny doesn't address it. He dips his head down once more, silently refocusing his attention to your ankle, and offering no explanation for the scar on his head. 

You don't ask. Don't pry. It's not your place. But your eyes are still glued to it. 

It's a horrific injury. Survival from such a terrible wound seems like an impossibility. A gunshot, you're sure. Seeing the small chasm carved into skin, narrowly missing his eye socket, fills you with a blistering sense of pity for this man, and you quietly, quickly, peel your eyes away from the jagged surface, letting your gaze run across the room. A meagre sense of privacy, you're sure, but it lets you breathe a little easier when you can't see the way his temple split apart to make room for a bullet—

“Had a mohawk,” he says. “They cut it off when this happened.” 

A mohawk. The asymmetry of his hair makes sense now, and you can almost picture it as you stare at him. The edges shorn, the top long. Unruly. His hair has a slight curl to the ends, but is mostly straight for the first few inches. 

As wild as he looks now—untamed, rugged; the thick tangle of uncharted wilderness—the mohawk must have made him roguish. Boorish. With his broad shoulders, thick biceps, and piercing blue eyes, the mohawk would have added to the playful appeal. Boyishly charming with his cropped hair and puckish grin. The draw of a bad boy, a vandal. 

But as you try and shape this around him, you catch the strain in his shoulders. The terse set to his jaw. 

“You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.”

“Was shot.” 

It's said without a preamble as if he was waiting for you to ask. But the words are spat out like they're something foul in his mouth; like he's ridding the taste of it between his teeth. The anger, the aggression cows you slightly, but you offer a small, warbling smile you hope is conciliatory. Apologetic. 

“I'm sorry,” you offer around a stuttering exhale. You can't imagine what that must be like. Shot in the head. The idea is unthinkable. Improbable. And yet, the evidence slashes across his temple; a meteor shower carved into his flesh. 

He lifts his chin, staring down at you from the bridge of his nose. “Wasnae yer fault, doe.” 

“I know, I just—” 

Johnny gives a nod in response, ending the bubble of words and apologies building up behind your teeth. It is what it is, he mutters when you blink at him, flummoxed. This sort of reveal seems like it should necessitate a bigger conversation, a deeper one. Questions buoy to the surface—from prying (how did it happen, how did you survive) to intrusive (what did it feel like, does it hurt still)—but you trample them until they sit, a building mass lodged in your throat. 

He seems content, then, to continue with what he was doing, and says nothing more about it. And it's not your place to pry. To chisel into his trauma. 

You let it pass. Let it moulder. 

The raven caws once more. You lean back in his bed, staring through the fluttering curtains, mind reeling at this discovery. 

Stupidly, you feel more at ease in his presence. As if this show of vulnerability somehow negated the distress of your predicament, and the infeasible nature of how you ended up here, in his home. Gazing through the thick canopy of green to the golden sky above. A whole world away from your home. Broken. Injured. But the cross, the thumbed-through bible, and his human fragility seem to curl along the vicious dread curling inside your guts, soothing over the distrust with gentle, sweeping brushes. 

Quelling a frightened child after a nightmare. 

How strange, you think, but let yourself relax in his presence all the same, breathing in the scent of stale smoke, sweat. Coumarin. Tree moss. Fresh pine. It smells like the valley. Soft, waning detergent. Masculine. 

You pretend you're watching for the raven as you sneak small glances at him. Taking in everything with a new perspective. The broadness of his shoulders. The thickness of his waist. There's power in his arms, in his thighs. Sculpted musculature, honed and refined. Despite the thickness of his fingers, he has a delicate touch. Deft and sure, as if he's used to working his bulk around small parts. 

He's unkempt. The ballcap hid most of his dishevelled state, but he's not sloven. It reminds you of the outdoorsy explorers. The hikers you met on your trip out. Roughhewn and unconcerned about their overgrown beards and their tousled hair. 

There's something potently masculine about it, and you can't deny that even with the garish wound on his head, all mangled scar tissue, he's handsome. Rougish. The scar elevating it somehow—a testament, perhaps, to his resiliency. 

He catches your stare on the next glance, holding it as he leans back with a quirk of his lips. It's not quite the grins he aimed at you before, but the shadow of it lingers. 

“Now,” he utters, the severity in his tone makes you flinch. Sobering quickly under the weight of his solemnity. “Th' bad part.”

“Bad part?” You echo, confused. “What could be worse than that?”

He taps two fingers against your swollen ankle, urging you to look. You swallow and force yourself to glance at where he rests his fingers. 

With your split heel stitched up and wrapped in bandages, the sight of your leg doesn't make you want to curl into the fetal position and cry. But it's still horrifying to look at. 

A mass half the side of a baseball juts out from your skin. 

“Ankles dislocated,” he murmurs, sliding his fingers over the mound. “Gotta pop it back into place.” 

“That's not—” you shake your head. “That's impossible.” 

“S’okay, doe. I gotcha.”

“That's not the point. That's not—”

“Look,” his pitch lowers dangerously, firm now. “Gotta do it or you'll have problems later on. Much worse than a bit o’pain.”

“But—”

He inhales sharply. “Can't let it go, doe. Gotta fix it.”

You understand the logic in that. Leaving a dislocated ankle will undoubtedly cause problems later on. But—

“Will it hurt?” 

Your fear quiets the irritation brewing in steeled hazel. “Aye. I won't lie tae ye, doe. It will hurt.” 

You swallow around a whimper. 

“But,” he leans over, his hand sliding over your cheek. Cradling your face in the palm of his hand. “I'll do mah best tae be quick. Ah won't hurt ye, doe.” 

It must be the way he carries himself that puts you at ease, so assured in his abilities; confident in what he can do without any sense of grandiosity. 

“Fine.” The word is juttered out of your chest. “Just—”

His thumb catches the tears that spill over your lashline, swiping them away with a tenderness that makes you shiver. 

“Ah’ll be quick.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out two chalky white pills. Tylenol, he mutters, catching the furrow of your brow. It abates the unease somewhat, and you let him drop the pills into the flat of your palm, rolling them over with your thumb as he grabs the water on the end table. They're circular with a slit down the middle. 

“It'll take the pain away.” He says, holding the water up to you. “Ready?” It's uttered so severely, so seriously, that your breath hitches in your lungs. Mirth blooming between your teeth. 

“As I'll ever be,” you rasp out before popping the pills into your mouth, cradling them on your tongue protectively as you reach for the glass he holds out. They're bitter. 

You wash it down with a mouthful of stale water before leaning back on the bed, letting the scent of his sheets wash over you once more. 

Outside, the raven trills. 

The pain of popping your ankle back into place leaves you a weeping mess in his sheets, but Johnny doesn't seem to mind the shuddering sobs. He pets down your back, shushing you quietly under his breath as he mutters something in Gaelic that you're sure is meant to be soothing. 

“Ye’ll be fine,” he says, tracing figure-eights down your spine until the Tylenol kicks in, and the agony tapers off into an aching throb. “Jus’ breathe. Ah’ll get ye somethin' tae eat.”

He leaves soon after. You let the numbed, drowsiness of the pain medication lull you into a doze, listening to Johnny move in the kitchen. The squealing slide of unvarnished wood rubbing against old metal. The thud of a knife. The scent of hot oil. Muttered curses. A playful raven's caw. 

You're not sure how long you slip in and out of this dreamless state, but Johnny appears in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the frame. He watches you with hooded eyes, a small, secretive smile tugging on his lips.

Blearily, you yawn, somehow still exhausted despite how long you slept between yesterday evening and today. Trauma, you suppose, and say nothing at all about it when he helps you sit up in the bed. 

Dinner consists of leftover bannock—the fried dough soft in your mouth, the flavour buttery; smokey—and hare stew. He pulls a chair from the living room into the bedroom, eating on the edge of the bed with you. 

He's sloppy about it. Slurps all the meat and potatoes out of the bowl before sopping chunks of bannock into the gravy, shoveling it into his mouth with a grunt. It dribbles down his chin, and dirties his beard. This slovenly display might have churned your stomach before, but you're just as ravenous. 

And it's good. 

The bread leaves grease stains on your fingers, but the toes on your uninjured foot curl when you bite into the crispy surface, teeth sinking into the pillowy dough below. 

“This is bannock, you said?” You ask, dabbing the napkin he offered with a wink when you finish. At his nod, you continue. “It's good.”

“Aye,” he grunts around a mouthful. “S’the best. Make it every mornin’ so ah go’ fresh bannock tae go.” He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, slurring out: “s’good wit’ jam.” 

“Did the locals teach you how to make it?”

He nods. “Scottish dish, originally. Made wit’ oats. Drier, too. But—fuck. S’good—nae. Better like this. Ol’ couple taught me when ah first came. Paler ‘n’ shite, they said. ‘n didnae ken a fuckin' thing about surviving oot ‘ere. Big man, Jim, taught me ‘ow tae hunt. Where tae fish. An’ ‘ow to cook it. Made this cabin, aye. He, ah, and his son. Offered ‘er up tae me when they realised ah didnae come wit’ shite all but a bad attitude.” 

“That was nice of them.”

“Most folk up ‘ere are. Quiet, ken? People take care’a ‘emselves, most. Take care’a others, too.” 

You mull over his words as he leans back in the chair with a satisfied groan, legs spread wide. His hands folded over his belly. The picture of ease. Contentment. This freedom of motion makes you slightly envious. 

“An’ wha’ about ye?” His eyes are lidded, leonine, and fixed on you. The intensity is always on the side of too much. Too dizzying. Consuming. 

You stamp it down, running your thumb along the inseam of his gingham throw. “What about me?”

“Why’d ye come here?”

His question throws you off balance. “It’s a pretty park,” you offer with a shallow laugh. “Who wouldn't come here?”

“Lots of pretty parks. Why this one?”

“Dunno. It was—”

“‘ave ye ever been tae any other parks? Anything like this?”

“I hiked a bit, and, um—”

He sucks out a piece of meat from between his teeth. “A bit, aye?” 

“Yeah. A bit. Why—”

“Ye came all the way here fer what? A pretty park? With no experience at all? And alone?”

The shift in his posture reads as angry, irate. You blink, bewildered by this sudden change. 

“Well. It was supposed to be an experience.”

“An experience, aye? Survival skills of a lemming.” 

It's derisive, cutting. You bristle through the sting of humiliation, grappling through the slurry of fatigue to cobble together some form of defence against this lambasting of your—admittedly—ill-thought adventure, but he's already moving on. Fingers tapping an off-rhythm beat against his belly as he levels you with a sober look. More serious than you'd ever seen him before. 

“An’ yer family? They just let ye come here oan yer own?”

The mention of your family makes guilt well to the surface, buoying above the indignant anger at his mocking words. Cowed, you shrug. 

“Sure.” 

Something cracks in the severe mein he carries; fracturing through the blatant disapproval. Cutting it like a knife. 

He sighs through his nose before reaching up and scrubbing his hands over his face. “Shite. Ye really needed me, aye?” 

You blink at the odd choice of words, brows drawing together in a tight knot. It's indefensible, of course. In many ways, he's right. If he hadn't found you—

Well. 

You temper that thought before it forms. You're too out of it, spatially unaware and unmoored, to let yourself fall into an existential pit of despair when you know you won't be able to climb out. Thinking of your assured doom out there, all because of a misstep somewhere along the path, makes dread bloom in the pit of your stomach. Nauseous, roiling. It froths over the basin, ready to spill over and drag you under. 

Swallowing around the surge of panic—mortality a fickle thing in a place like this—you offer a despondent shrug in response. Unable to scrape together any sense of a defence that won't make you sound childish and idiotic. 

You ready yourself for more mockery, having become the very thing the park rangers tried to warn you about when you showed, alone, in hiking boots much too big for you. 

But then he's shifting, expression clearing. The anger folded back behind a quick grin. 

“Pretty here, isn't it?” 

You're not sure what to make of his mercurial temperament; emotions cascading by, quicksilver and sudden. The flashes of anger, intensity, curiosity, and this, all happening within such a short period. It's overwhelming. 

It unsettles you. But—

“Yeah,” you mutter, unable to stem the awe from leaking through. 

The change in conversation is freeing. Sometimes it's just easier to let sleeping dogs lie, and that's exactly what you do. Tucking his odd behaviour behind a plexiglass of indifference, pretending it wasn't there, lurking just out of sight. Something to unravel later, when your heart wasn't on the verge of buckling under the strain of your anxiety. When your chest didn't feel like it was slowly being crushed. Your stomach is all twisted up in knots too tight to untie with your bare hands. 

It's easy to let yourself heave through jittering lungs, and pretend you couldn't feel the rot festering on the sides of them. Eating holes through delicate tissue. 

The majesty of this place hasn't quite worn off, and you use that as an excuse to drift. To close the doors on the overwhelming deluge of hysteria creeping up on you. 

You still think of the jutting fjords instead. The steep ravines, the moose in the distance—her colours sharp against the green backdrop—and let the untempered sense of reverence split you down the middle. 

It comes out in a flood, then—as if you've been biting back the words this whole time. 

You tell him about the valley. The waterfall. The white river. The marmot you saw poking its head out. No bears, you sigh; the forlorn lilt to your tone seeped with a touch of relief, an aspect he pokes at with a crooked smirk until you huff, rolling your eyes to the ceiling at his gentle ribbing. Huffily, you admit that as much as you want to see a bear, you're not quite ready to face them in the wild. 

Lots’a bears ‘round ‘ere, he taunts, rolling his knees out further as he sinks deeper into the chair. 

He dodges your next question of where, exactly, is here with a silky grin and a need tae know rolling off his lips before they tug downward in a sudden frown. 

You must be acclimating to the strange ebb and flow of his emotions because the lour grimace on his face doesn't deter you as much as it did moments ago. You pick up the slack when the conversation lulls, telling him about the places you've been and how they compare to Nahanni.

“They just—don’t.” 

It's hard to encapsulate the scale of it all into simple words; digestible pieces someone else can swallow. The park isn't too far from Yellowknife, and yet it feels like a world on its own. The remoteness, the vastitude of it all, is hard to describe, but Johnny seems to understand. 

He listens with a slight quirk to his lips. A smile you'd almost call fond. He gets it, you know. The words you can't say. The ones that feel too lacklustre when you do. 

“That really why ye came?” 

You hesitate for a moment, looping a loose thread around your finger. Contemplating. Mulling it over. You've never told anyone the reason for the trip outside of a new experience for yourself. Testing your mettle. But with Johnny—

There's a sense of kinship, you find. An understanding. 

“It seemed so—” he waits for you to find the words. “Lonely, I guess.” 

“Lonely,” the way he says the word is ruminative. Rolling it around between his teeth; testing the weight of it. “Ah suppose it is.”

“You don't think so?”

“It's—” he pauses, eyes listing to the side as he mulls over what he wants to convey. 

He does this sometimes, you think. Gets lost. Loses himself. Retreats inward. You can't help but wonder if this is a manifestation of his trauma—a head injury such as this would be classified as a traumatic brain injury, wouldn't it? You're not well-versed in this area, and it feels a little mean, cruel, to have this thought, but it blooms as his eyes fog over. As he struggles, almost, to find the words he wants to say, to give voice to what he feels, thinks. 

“Lonely, aye,” he grinds out after a beat, but he looks frustrated about it, and glares down at his lap, silently fuming. Annoyed. “Big.”

The word is ripped out from between his teeth, and you nod, hastily, to both quell the looming anger brimming in the terse set to his shoulders and to let him know you understand. Can read between the lines—if only just. 

“Is that why you came?” 

The shrug he offers is noncommittal but you can see the tension pooling in his brow despite your efforts to quash it. “Couldnae go home after this—” he lifts his hand, tapping his fingers against the scar tissue on his temple. “Wasn't safe. Had tae give up everything after. Maw. Da. Sisters. Cannae ever see them again.”

It doesn't make sense. None of it does. The innate understanding between you is shattered by the impossibility of this moment, and his half-formed words. What you gave up seems paltry in comparison to what he's confessing to. His family. His whole family—

“Might see them one day. Once that fuckin' prick is in th' ground, but 'til then—” he shrugs again, easy. As if the look on his face wasn't cataclysmic in its anger. It's rage. Sorrow. Hatred. You flinch back as if the blackhole of these awful emotions will eat you alive. 

Johnny sees it, and reaches for you, making soothing noises under his breath as his hand wraps around your thigh. “Ah, doe, don’t worry. He wilnae find us—” 

You're not sure what to say to that, but the grip he has on you is firm. Unyielding. There's a scowl etching over his lips, as if the mere thought of such a thing fills him with disgust, fury, and you shake your head slowly. 

“I'm not—I’m not worried.” You don't know how to tell him that this phantom prick from his past isn't what made you reel back, but the intensity of his wrath. The sudden infliction of his ire. So you don't. You give in with what you hope is a conciliatory smile. “I, uh, I trust you.”

It's loose. Shaky. Your conviction wanes around the edges, falling flat and hollow when it trembles out. If Johnny notices the brittleness around it, he doesn't show it. If anything, he seems to take it as a sudden gospel. 

“D’ye—” There's a crack in his voice. He swallows, then. Adam's apple bobbing harshly against the skin of his throat. You wonder if you've upset him. Angered him. But he's leaning down, eyes widening. Feverish. Blue lagoons. “Ye trust me.”

It's not a question, but he poses it as such. You nod slowly and unsure. 

Johnny ducks his head, then. Lifts one hand to rub at the bristles around his chin and upper lip. Lost in thought, maybe—

It's when he reaches around, scrubbing at the nape of his neck, do you see the flush peeking out from beneath the thick bed of hair covering his cheeks. The sight is jarring. Unexpected. 

You're not sure what to make of it. Of this strange reaction. But it passes almost as quickly as it started. The red is replaced by a wide, blinding grin. He squeezes your thigh. 

“Hah, doe. Ye really know what tae say tae cheer me up—”

You haven't said anything at all, but this, too, goes unacknowledged. And before you can even try to draw attention to it, he breathes in deeply as he sits up in the chair. 

“Ye finished?” He motions to the bowl and plate on the bed. You nod. “Alright. Ah'll put ‘em away. Get ye some tea.”

“Oh, I'm fine—”

“Nah, hen. Tea is good for ye. Will help ye heal.” 

He leaves without another word, carrying away your dirty dishes. The unfinished conversation lingers in the air around you, but beneath the loose strands of everything unsaid, you feel something tangle inside your chest as you replay his words in the back of your head. 

All alone in Nahanni, unable to see his family. You're sure the prick he's referring to is the one who gave him that horrific scar, nearly taking his life. 

Somewhere in the loop, a knot of pity begins to take shape. 

Johnny brings you Labrador tea—a speciality he learned how to make from Ethel and Jim, the couple from Wrigley who took him in. It's good. It tastes sweet, earthy. Honey and pine. You sip at it as he grabs sleep clothes from his dresser, watching him with a muted sense of listlessness. 

You can't imagine the next sixty days that loom before you. Restlessness, claustrophobia—it coalesces into this strange, itchy feeling that sits, uncomfortably, atop your chest; an increasing pressure. You wish you could pick it off like a loose scab. Dig your nail under the hard clot and tug—

Peel it all off until just silken new skin remains. 

Johnny looks antsy when you finish the tea. Eyes bright. Wide. 

As you contemplate the surrealism of your predicament over Labrador tea, he grins like a shark and tells you he only has one toothbrush. 

“Dinnae mind sharin’, doe,” he offers, too jovial, eager, for the notion of lending his toothbrush to a stranger he met less than twenty-four hours ago. Ah ‘ave good hygiene, he adds, as if that might make this any better. 

Putting away the disgust, the idea of sharing a toothbrush feels much too intimate to you. Something befitting a long-term partner, or kin, before a man you know only the bare bones of. 

But like most things lately, what choice do you have? 

Johnny grins brightly at your acquiescence. All teeth. He hands you an old sweater—his favourite football team, he adds with a wink when you blink at it—and then moves toward you with a wicked gleam in his eyes you try to pretend is just overeager hospitality. 

“Wait—” you start, jerking back instinctively as he looms over the bed. “What are you doing?”

A dip forms between his brows, and he cocks his head quizzically at you. “What're ye talkin’ ‘bout, doe? Need'tae brush yer teeth, don't ye?” 

“I—I can walk—”

He snorts. “Oan yer broken ankle? Will only hurt yerself more.” 

Despite the truth in this statement, the flippancy in his voice stings. Prickles under your skin. Your loss of mobility, of being wholly dependent on another person, is a bitter thing to try and swallow. Especially when you're here for the literal antithesis of it. To be free. Self-reliant. 

Not needing anyone at all except the grit in your bones and the determination to see things through. 

Having all of that ripped into pieces in front of you, by a man who says it with such nonchalant disregard—as if your efforts were meaningless, insubstantial for what it got it—is humiliating. 

You can't remember the last time you needed someone for something so simple as walking to the washroom to brush your teeth, to wash up. The loss of this minute freedom makes you want to cry; to break down. Rage. Break things with your bare hands just to show the world you still can. To fight against these shackles locking around your ankles, and run—

Johnny's hand falls on your knee, thumb brushing the torn edge of your tights, grazing the skin beneath the loose threads with each pass. 

“Don't worry. Ah'll take care 'o ye.” 

That's the problem, you think, chest burning. This awful feeling inside is churning. Frothingly acidic, corrosive. You don't want him to. You don't want to need this man at all. Ever. For anything. 

But—

“Thanks,” you choke out. It tastes like iron. Like defeat. 

He carries you to the washroom, cooing the whole time about how ye ‘ave nothin’ tae be embarrassed ‘bout while you blister from mortification, from shame. 

You came here to be self-reliant. To grind your mettle against the wilderness and come out on the other side victorious and better for it. But what you've accomplished so far is getting lost, getting hurt, imposing on a man you barely know—

One who has to sit down on the ledge of the bathtub with you cradled in his lap like a child, injured foot elevated on the lid of the toilet seat. He cups his hand under your mouth as you scrub at your teeth, trying to catch any of the foam from the toothpaste that spills from your mouth. 

It's mortifying. 

You've never felt so vulnerable in your whole life. 

“Sorry,” you choke out around the brush—his brush—as he slowly commanders the weight of you around enough to spit in the sink. 

He waves you off with a noise. “S’alright, doe. Ye can lean oan me all ye like.” 

So he says. But you feel the rapid inhales behind you. The soft pants spilling from his lips, lungs expanding, broadening his chest into your back. Exertion, you think, slightly cowed and humiliated. Desperately trying to hold some of your weight on your uninjured foot. 

“Nah, ah,” he breathes, arm slinking around your middle, tugging you firmly into his lap. “Ye jus’ worry about gettin’ ready tae go tae bed now. Ah got ye.”

He soothes his palm up and down the length of your arm as you finish up in a fruitless effort to calm your nerves, but it doesn't work. Can't. Because you know what's coming next. 

“Can I, um—” your tongue is thick in your mouth. “I need to use the washroom to–to, uh, washup, and stuff—”

His thigh jerks beneath you. When he speaks, his voice is rougher than normal. “Okay.”

But he stays where he is. 

“I think I can do it on my own—”

“And if ye step oan yer leg?” He tuts, arm tightening around you. “Only gonnae hurt yerself more, doe.”

“I'll be careful, but I really have to—” 

“S’okay,” he coos. “S’only me.” 

That's the problem, you think wildly. Hysterical. That's the whole problem, isn't it? 

“No, you don't understand. I need to, um, go.” He makes another noise, soft. Agreeable. Fuck. “I need to pee.” 

It comes out in a hiss. Feral, like a cat. Embarrassment turns you into more animal than man. 

Again, he hums. “I know, doe. Donnae worry, ah’ll hold yer leg.”

“Can't I just keep it, um, on the ledge?” 

“No, no. If ye put weight oan it, doe, ye’ll be in serious trouble. Dislocated. Broken. Jesus, ye cuid slip the bone out of place—”

No. No.

The idea of him holding your ankle as you piss is beyond any measure of shame you've ever felt before. You like your privacy. Crave it, sometimes. You don't think you've ever done this in front of someone since you were a child. 

You need—

A moment.

Time. A pause. 

But he doesn't give you a chance. 

Johnny's other arm loops under your knees, and with a small huff he stands, holding you aloft with an arm anchored across your belly. It's quick. Mercilessly so. He steps back and lifts his foot to toe the lid off the toilet seat, unbothered by the loud clang it makes when it hits the tank. 

“There we go,” he mutters, and sounds almost breathless for it. “Let's get ye ready.” 

It should be awkward. Clumsy. But he moves with a surprising agility that belies the firmness of his muscles, the bulk. He lets your uninjured leg drop to the floor, murmuring for you to put some weight on it as he cradles your shin in his hands, careful not to let your foot move more than it needs to. 

The strange dance ends with him holding your shin in his hands, stretching your thighs out more than they'd ever been before. An image that might have been comical under different circumstances but just makes you flounder at the suggestiveness of the pose. Added, in large part, by the firm hold he has on you. There's not an ounce of give. No threat of falling. 

You gasp when he moves, shuffling backwards to pivot you around until the back of your shin meets the cold porcelain. 

“Alright now, doe,” he motions toward the seat as he slowly bends down to a crouch on the floor, your foot still held in his grasp. 

You follow him down until you meet the seat, trying to avoid his gaze as you clumsily paw at your tattered pants, slipping the down your thighs in a hurry. Your panties follow after a moment of hesitation. 

When his breath catches, you say nothing at all. Pointedly avoid whatever face he might be making as you stare, fixed, at the panels on the wall behind his head. Wallpaper. Probably moisture-resistant. It's peeling in some places. Decades ago, it might have been a soft canary yellow. 

His breathing is shallow. You ball your hands into fists and press the flat of your knuckles against your thighs. 

It's hard to focus when you can feel the scorching heat of his body bleeding into your leg, your knee. Close enough that all he has to do is bend down a little more, and his face would be pressed against your thighs. 

There's no room, no privacy. 

You close your eyes and pretend you can't hear how his breath seems to fill the entirety of the small washroom, ghosting over your skin. Virginia Falls comes to mind—a roaring rush of water—but even in the solitude of your mind, you can't ignore the way his stare drills through your skin. 

You swallow. You can't do it. Can't do this. 

“Can you—” back off, go away. Stop breathing so heavily because you might get the wrong idea, like this whole thing excites him somehow—

His voice is rough when he speaks. Ragged. “Cannae ah what, doe?”

“Turn the tap on? I can't—I can't concentrate.”

“S’only me, bonnie girl,” he murmurs, but does what you ask. Leaning over you, broad torso swallowing you up entirely under his bulk. You can feel the soft give of his belly on your knee as he presses it into you, but it only lasts a second before you meet a wall of solid muscle beneath. He braces a warm, rough palm on your naked thigh, leaning in as he reaches over to the sink above. 

It's barely a fraction of his weight but the drag of it makes you blink in surprise. His skin is burning. Redhot. 

Opening your eyes brings you close to his chest, nose only a hair away from the tanned skin stretched over his collarbones. The metal chain gleams in the flushed light hanging overhead, sitting in a golden contrast to his sunkissed flesh. Its reflection casts beads of glittering lambency over the slope of his neck. 

Pretty, you think, watching as it coruscates in a mesmerising dance each time he moves. 

The faucet turns with a metallic squeak, breaking you from your reverie. Water gurgles up from the pipes, spitting into the basin with a hiss. You pull back, twisting your head to the side as heat floods your chest. 

“Thanks,” you mutter, unable to meet his stare.

His fingers tighten around your flesh. His voice is raw when he mumbles, “anytime.” 

The trickling rush of water reverberates around the room, and it's easy to close your eyes and pretend you're alone.

So that's exactly what you do. 

His palm grows slick on your skin. Damp. But you ignore it, focusing on nothing but the urgency of getting this over with as quickly as you can. It works, marginally—

(Johnny makes another noise in the back of his throat. 

That, too, you ignore.)

“Finished?” His voice is thick, wet. You nod slowly, peeking out from the sliver between your lashes to paw at the wall for the toilet paper roll. “Here, ah’ll help ye out of fer pants—”

Your head feels heavy. Limbs laden. The embarrassment crushes you into a fine powder; malleable, putty. You let Johnny take the lead after. Let him slip your tattered tights down your thighs, and say nothing at all when too much of his palm glides along your skin as he pulls. Needlessly, of course, when just two fingers would do. 

But it's fine. Fine. Maybe he's never taken off tights before. Maybe the material is too thin and he's worried about it catching on the scrapes over your knees, the bandage wrapped up to mid-calf. 

Your shirt, too. When he slips his fingers under the hem, splaying them wide over your belly before dragging them up until it bunches around his wrist. Tugging, tugging. Hands gliding over your skin, fitting along the contours of your body.

He keeps one hand moulded to your neck, fingers brushing your jaw, as he gingerly pulls the shirt over your head. The ragged pants in your ear, the soft groans when you slip into his old shirt—

It's exertion, really. Must be. He's tired from holding you up the whole time you brushed your teeth, washed your face in the sink. It's all fine. He's being gentle. Doesn't want to hurt you.

He's just being nice. 

(And when you notice that your panties are missing from the pile of dirty clothes he shoves into the corner behind the door, that, too, you ignore.)

Exhaustion takes you soon after Johnny tucks you into bed, dragging you under once again. He tells you he'll be on the couch. To holler if you need anything. Sluggishly, you nod. Thank him when he places a glass of water on the bedside table for you. 

(Bite your tongue when he brushes his fingers over your cheek as he bids you goodnight.)

Through the gossamer of sleep, you can hear the floorboards creak in the doorway, but when you look, there's nothing there. Just an empty kitchen. The soft flicker of the fireplace smouldering in the living room. 

Nothing, you think. It's nothing at all—

There's a weight on your chest. 

Warm, searing. It dampens your skin where it sits, heavy, on your breast, cold air ghosting along the sweat building up each time it moves. 

You stir. The pressure takes shape. A hand. A man's hand. Rough, calloused, and hot. In his palm, he holds your breast, thumb brushing along the curve of it. Sliding, sliding—

You come awake with a gasp. 

There's a twinge in your ankle when you move, and the pain grounds you, silences you. His thumb twitches on your nipple, but he, too, stills. Quietens. An impasse. 

And you suppose this would be where you'd scream. Rage. Slap him across the face, rip his hand off your breast. Curse at him for being a creep, and a pervert, and nasty, disgusting man because there's nothing at all that could justify the reason for why the shirt he gave you to wear to bed is tucked up over your chest. The bruising press of something hard digging into your hip negates any excuse he might try to give. This is unmistakable. You should scream, cry, and—

Leave. 

This is what glues your lips together. Keeps you from moving at all, from making a sound. Where would you go? How would you even get there to begin with? 

It's this—the uncertainty, your vulnerability—that paralyzes you. Keeps you still, silent, as his hands brush over your skin, touching, fondling. His palms are rough, calloused. Pyretic. He squeezes, kneading your flesh in his sweat-slicked hand like he's owed the right to touch you. Like he's allowed. 

He pants against your temple, breath warm, humid on your skin. Heaves like a dog in your ear, grunting low as he ruts his hips into your side, smearing something hot, tacky across your skin. Something you try not to think about, to inch away from. But he catches you quick, and stops your meagre protests before they form. 

His thumb and forefinger close over your pebbled nipple, pinching softly at your budded flesh. The shock of pleasure is unwanted. Awful. It churns your stomach, and you fight the urge to weep—

He leans up, ragged exhales growing heavier as he moves until milk-warmed breath shudders over your bare breasts. His excitement throbs against your hip. You swallow down around the sudden wave of disgust, the sickness knotting itself together in your belly. It devours the lingering pity you'd felt earlier. The safety, the comfort, that brimmed inside of you for him. 

(bleeding heart—

he gorges himself on it.)

Stay still, you think. And maybe he'll go away. 

But he doesn't. Of course, he doesn't. 

Johnny leans down, mouth closes over your nipple. It's all searing heat. Wet, soft. A sudden jolt of pleasure shoots down your spine when he sucks in tandem with the soft, rolling pinches he doles out on your tiger nipple, and you hate your treacherous body a little bit more for it. For how good it makes you feel when he flicks his tongue over your hardened peek, laving it sloppily. Messily. Drooling all over you—the big fucking dog—

You wonder how long he's been doing this. Touching you in your sleep. The thought sits like hot oil in your guts; sloshing against the soft lining of your stomach until it aches. Burns. You blame it on that when he grunts against your breast, the vibrations send a shiver down your spine. Have to, don't you? Because the alternative is to admit that you're slick, soft between your thighs already; folds soaked, inner thigh damp. Wet. Blame it on him, and the burden in your chest eases when you feel the stirrings of desire, lust, thicken in your lower belly. Bodily reaction becomes your clutch, your lifeline when he lays his upper body against you, the weight, the heft, of his bulk forcing the air from your lungs. 

Johnny lifts his head suddenly, eyes drilling into yours before you can feign sleep to avoid looking at him. You don't want this. Your body thrums with reluctance, with fear, but you can't drag your gaze away from him. The rapturous look in his eyes, burning in the low simmer of a never-ending twilight, is paralyzing. Electric. You can't remember a time in your life when another person has ever looked at you with such raw want. Desire. Need. It's covetous. Ugly. Marbled with heady streams of hunger, of awe, as if he's not sure whether or not he wants to eat you alive or savour you for aeons. Taking bites, nibbles, when this urge becomes too burdensome to bear; when the ravenous chasm in his guts threatens to devour itself, bones and all, like a man-made black hole. Under this heavy, unrelenting stare you wither. Submit. Your head rolls until your cheek is pressed against the pillow, neck bared. Offered up to him. 

(anything, you think, to run away from the naked want on his face. because with his mouth slack, lips slick, glistening with spit, he looks predatory like this. animal. bathed in gloam and flushed a deep roseate.)

He props himself up on his elbow, watching you. Feasting. Your quiet submission makes him moan; hips juttering at the slow reveal of your vulnerable neck. A paroxysm. As if he just can't help himself to hump against you like a beast in rut. 

He swallows. You watch his throat work from the corner of your eye, Adam's apple bobbing up and down, up and down—

Then:

He lifts himself up higher, angling his body until it's bracketed over you. Sliding between your legs until your slit is pressed against the coarse hair that covers his thighs. He keeps his elbow propped on the pillow, sliding up, up, until his forearm comes to rest beside your face. It boxes you in completely under his weight, and the position forces your legs to spread open to accommodate him. Not given up freely, of course; but your compliance in this is inessential, it seems. He moulds you how he likes, mindful of your injured ankle the whole time. A kindness that makes something molten thicken in your throat, stifling the scream that claws its way up your esophagus. 

You try not to stare when he clambers over you, chest bare against yours. Hips chiselling a gorge between your thighs wide enough for him to fit. To press his fattened length on the insides of your sticky thighs; groins drawing together. Your legs slung loosely around his tapered waist. A dreadful pastiche of lovemaking. Intimacy. 

But even as a mockery—bastardised as it is—it’s embarrassing how easily you open up for him. Legs falling, spreading further apart. Hot, sticky at the apex of your thighs. Wanting. 

Blame it on sleep, on this endless hypnagogia you've been feeling since he leaned over you on the cliff edge, and said, pretty thing, aren't ye? All alone. No’ anymore, doe. Jus’ me an’ ye, now. Jus’ us—

You swallow, fighting the urge to cry. Blinking rapidly against the tears that pebble against your lashline, but you're helpless to stop the flood even though the levee doesn't break, doesn't spill over. It just sits, a sorrowful lagoon with nowhere to go. 

In your attempt to hold back the deluge, you let your gaze wander away from the piercing blue that drills into your face—seemingly unbothered by the tears in your eyes, the ones that clot over your irises, stinging and hot—and stare down at his broad chest. A mistake, maybe, because you catch sight of the gold cross dangling around his neck. Like a pendulum, it swings. The motion is mesmerising. Hypnotic. 

It distracts you for a moment. Or maybe you've just grown accustomed to his touch, to the heat of his hand on your skin. Whatever the reason, it's enough to pull you away from the feverish trail his fingers leave as they make a steady drag downward. It's only when they dance over your belly button do you realise the muted tickle is Johnny, and by then—

“Shush, s’alright, doe,” he's cooing, warm breath ghosting over the plains of your face. It might be comforting if he didn't rest his weight on his elbow, freeing his other hand just to bring it over your mouth, thumb brushing under your eye. A warning maybe. Don't scream. “Ah go’ ye. Ah’ll make ye feel so good—”

There's a fever in his eyes. Wildfires spreading through the yawning boscage, burning everything in sight. The heat is hot enough to char bone; to blacken meat into a dessicated husk. Eating away at everything in its path. 

You know, almost immediately, that Johnny's beyond reason. Or, rather—

He's gone, turned inward; delusional enough to think that this is something he has to do. 

You'd seen all the warnings of the kindling fire before. Something you'd decided to ignore even as the hunger in his eyes surged; as the shape of it morphed into a frothing devotion that felt ill-fitting for two strangers stuck together like this. 

Stupidly, you thought you could outrun it. That he was a good man beneath it all, and wouldn't succumb to touching you in your sleep, to lulling you into a false sense of security—

Except. He hadn't, had he? 

He'd been blunt about it all since the beginning. My wife—

How silly, you thought. 

But the humour fades when he teases over your hips, resting his palm over your mound, middle finger perched above your clit. Just holding. Touching. The possessiveness of the action is unmistakable, unignorable. 

It shouldn't send a shiver down your spine when you'd rather he didn't touch you at all, but it does. There's something about him, you think. Electric. A lightning storm. It crackles in the air around you, humming low in the atmosphere; this unavoidable surge, natural phenomenon. Maybe that's what he is. 

More storm than man. A force you can't outrun, but can only endure—

His eyes flash when he slides his fingers further down your slit and finds your skin soft, hot. Drenched. When he groans your name out, it sounds like a prayer. An orison. 

“So wet, doe,” he's heaving out in a whisper, eyes nearly rolling back into his head as his touch grows bolder, more insistent. As if the softness of your flesh, the wetness that sticks to your inner thighs, is all the consent he needs. “So fuckin’ wet fer me, aye? Been waitin’ fer this, haven't ye?” 

You want to shake your head no but it's futile. He drops his head to look down the chasm between your bodies, watching his hand slide along your skin. Legs spread around his waist, inviting. He curses foul under his breath when he sees how wet his fingers are from just a touch, words mangled in the back of his throat. They sound less coherent as he roams your body, parting your folds and stroking through the slick spilling out of you, dragging it up to your clit. 

His voice is closer now. Lips bruising against the shell of your ear. Butchered English. Gaelic. An amalgamation of low whines, and rasping grunts. He sounds more animal than man. A booming thundercloud groaning above you, as if touching you is enough to please him, too. Siphoning it from your body as he presses his fingers against your clit, circling, stroking. 

It’s good. So good. And that's the problem, you think. It's easy to give in like this when he pets your pussy like the feeling of your fluttering heat on his hand is enough to make him cum. No one has ever touched you like they were starving for it. Needed it as badly as you did. 

The sensation is almost too much. The notion of it getting tangled in the back of your head, looping around the part of you still screaming to run. To go home. To push him away. 

(your arms are laden. your tongue is a puddle of mercury in your mouth—)

But just as the pleasure blooming in your belly raises with each pass of his thumb, he pulls away. Slides down, down—

Circles your hole with the tips of his slick fingers, petting with the same desperation he showed your clit until he deems you soft enough for him. He slowly sinks his finger inside of you to the knuckle, stretching your walls around him as he moans into your ear about how good ye feel around him, all tight. Hot. So fuckin' wet, do. So wet fer me—

He pulls out just as slowly, shushing the soft gasp you make when the ridge of his palm catches on your clit. 

“Ah told ye, didnae ah? Ah’ll take care’a ye.”

He presses two fingers inside of you as he peppers kisses over your cheek, cooing low about how badly you need him. Only him. 

Johnny fucks you slowly on two fingers. Gently. Deeply. Sliding into the last knuckle, petting against your slick walls, like he's owed the privilege and not touching you in your sleep.  

He brings you to the edge, takes you right there, and—

Pulls away. His fingers slide down as your hips flit, lifting to make them catch on your clit again. It's embarrassing how badly you want him to touch you. Shameful. 

He leans up and catches your mouth in a messy kiss. It's all tongue, wet, no finesse. The wild, unkempt tangle of hair abrades your skin, rubbing it raw as he devours you. Scoops out your tongue with his own, enticing it into his mouth. His teeth close on the thick of it, lips pursing. Sucking on the tip. 

His kisses are doglike and obscene. Leaves drool dribbling down your chin, soaking into your neck. He can't seem to decide what he wants to do, so he tries to do it all. Everything. Biting your lips, trying to choke you on his tongue. Slurping up the taste of you until his mouth is stained with it. Beard matted down, drenched. 

Despite it all, he's a good kisser. His pace is fast, breakneck. You can't keep up, but you try. Struggling along as he seems hellbent on eating you alive. But it's sporadic. He pauses just long enough to settle into an easy rhythm that makes you arch into it, silently begging for more as he fucks you on his fingers. Nips your tongue as he slides in a third, swallowing the gasp you let out, savouring your moans between his teeth. 

Johnny ruins you with just a kiss. Leaves you panting, unmoored. Mouth slack, open wide for him to do what he pleases because the taste of him is divine. 

“C’mon,” he urges, spreading his fingers inside of your cunt until you keen, whining his name. “Suck my tongue, bonnie.” 

It's disgusting. You do it, anyway. 

Your quiet acquiescence makes him moan, hips rutting against you. The hard press of his cock into your skin is bruising. It aches. Your inner thighs are tacky with your slick and the smears of pre-cum he leaves behind as he humps against you. 

He sounds mournful when he pulls away, mouth messy with spit, and whispers, “fuck, wish ah could taste ye again, doe—” You don't know what he means until his eyes drop down to his hand, working insistently between your thighs. 

Your stomach drops. Plummets. You thought this started when he was touching your chest, when you woke up to his hand on your breast—

“Ye didnae wake when ah did it before,” he says, as if sounding mournful, sad, over the fact that you didn't wake up to him eating your pussy while you were asleep, was normal. “Must’a had too much tea—”

You wish, so suddenly, so viciously, that he'd stop talking. You can't hear this. Can't bear to listen to him confess to all the needling worries that bloomed in the back of your head, ones you stamped down with a heavy foot and a potent sense of guilt, shame, for condemning a man who was just trying to help. 

It makes you want to cry. 

“Oh, doe, don't cry—” he coos the words out, contrite and conciliatory, but you can feel the way his cock twitches against your thigh. The unmistakable heat mushrooming in his eyes as the sight of tears streaming down your face. 

He seems to take it as misery over not feeling his mouth on your cunt, a plaintive assertion he whispers into your ear (poor thing, jus’ wannae feel ma mouth on you, aye? wannae feel me lick yer sweet pussy again?), and decides to rectify your sorrow by kissing his way down your body. 

His fingers slip out when he moves, resting them on your knee as he kneels back on his haunches. 

You spare a glance toward him, nervous with trepidation, and—

This whole time, his cock had been this phantom sensation against your skin, bruising and hot. Leaving wet smears over your thighs. Hidden from view. But like this, it's the first thing you see as it hangs, heavy and thick, from between his thighs. 

The sight is—

Something. 

You don't want to think about the heat in your belly. The nervous flit of your heartbeat. 

A pearlescent strand dribbles down the weeping, slick head, dropping to the sheets below. The shaft of his cock is similarly drenched, smeared with what seems like a copious amount of precum. It gathers at the base, a startling contrast of thick, black hair and globs of milky white. 

Something about it makes you recoil. Almost instinctively, primal. 

Your flinch just makes his cock twitch, spitting more out. 

The motion seems to unveil more of it to you, adding to the growing unease you feel because his cock is the furthest thing from pretty. 

It's flushed a daunting vermillion and purpling like a bruise around the engorged glands. Thickening at the base. Streaked with dark veins that run the length of it, like rivers intersecting and jutting up from his skin. Blotches of red, pink, purple, and peach make up the colouring of it. Marbled like a black eye. A busted lip. 

It bobs when he moves. Ugly, garish. You don't want it anywhere near you—

But Johnny’s wet hand on your knee keeps you from moving. Holds you in place as he bends down, resting on elbow to bring his face as close to your pussy as he can get. 

Johnny stares—unabashedly—at your bare cunt when he finally settles between your thighs, widening them further to fit the broad stretch of his shoulders. Eyes lit with a heady greed, a hunger, that knocks the air from your lungs. 

“Missed ma mouth, didnae ye?” 

For a moment, you think he's talking to you. Confusion colours the panic you feel, dampening the dread down until it's flattened by sheer bewilderment when you realise his eyes haven't left your slit. 

“Such a bonnie girl,” he purrs, breath ghosting over your cunt. “Been so lonely without me, aye? Poor thing.”

It heats you up from the inside out. The mesmerised, almost unfettered look of pure adoration shaded alongside the raw want on his face twists a sense of desire inside of you. Has anyone looked at you with such naked need on their face? As if the idea of not having a taste was somehow the most agonising thing they could experience? The way Johnny looks at you is enough to make you ache. And with anyone else, having him address your pussy instead of you would be awkward, humiliating, but somehow, him doing it makes you burn white-hot. Makes you want—

“Johnny,” you whisper, paper-thin, and his head shoots up, brows inching high on his brow. You're acutely aware that this is the first thing you've said since this started. Since you woke up to him groping you, touching you, in your sleep. And it's his name. Johnny. 

Not no, don't. Stop. Please. Just—

“Johnny.”

It's not consent. You're not sure you're fully capable of doing so right now, if ever. But it's the closest you think you could come to saying yes. Admitting that you want his mouth on you, even though the situation leading up to this still makes something ugly and awful twist in your guts, is as much as you can give. He seems to see this. To know. 

But Johnny takes it between his teeth as an unequivocal yes despite that, groaning low in his throat, midnight eyes rolling back into his head. The hands on you tremble. Shake. 

He breathes in deeply through his nose, the sound whistling as a great plume of air is forced through small channels, filling his lungs. Perfuming them with the heady scent of you, of sex, clotting in the air. 

“Fuck, doe. Gonnae give ye what ye need.” 

And then he bends his head, eyes lidded still, half rolled, and without any preamble, glues his lips to your drenched slit, forcing it between your soft folds. 

The first touch of his tongue is molten. Soft, tensile, he laves it over the whole of your slit from the sensitive skin beneath your hole, to the crest of your clit. Digs his tongue in, swirling it over and under your folds leaving no part of you untouched. Feasting. Devouring. 

It makes you mewl. Your back arches off the sheets, ankle throbbing in a heady, pulsing pain at the sudden movement, adding to the shrill whine in your voice. 

He notices, and pets your knee once before sliding his bicep under your leg, looping his hand around to secure your thigh in the crook of his below. Locked in tight. Immoveable. The other he pushes down with the flat of his palm, until your joints ache from the stretch. Your knee is almost flush with the mattress. Widening you further for his searing, eager mouth. 

If his kisses are dogish—wet, messy; sloppy with drool—then the way he eats your cunt is foul. Slobbering down his chin, slurping up the mess he makes with a series of chewed-off moans and muffled whines. He paws at you as if he was denied the pleasure of drink for aeons, feasting like a man half-delirious and starved. There's no finesse. No skill to speak of. Just a desperate man lapping at you like a beast. Worshipping you. 

He nuzzles his chin and cheeks against your cunt, drenching himself until his beard is matted to his skin. The feeling of his coarse hair grazing your sensitive flesh is overwhelming. Too much. Too ticklish. But—

It feels good. 

The contrast of his fleshy tongue rolling over your clit, and the rough brush of his hair when he nuzzles you with the point of his chin, cooing softly about how pretty this little pussy is, getting him all wet, is cataclysmic. The heat floods your belly, and you clench around nothing. Achingly empty. Moaning at the feeling of him bringing you right there, right to the brink, with nothing by the hair on his cheek. It's unreal. Inescapable. Your head drops, mouth lax, open wide as you pant and whimper through the madness of Johnny MacTavish trying to find a way to suck your clit and fuck you with his tongue at the same time. An impossible goal, you know, but he doesn't seem to care about logic or reason with his head buried between your thighs, mouth never leaving you once. He merely nods his head up and down, refusing to pull away.

It's divine. It's worship. It's—

He pushes two of his fingers inside of you, lapping at your taut rim to stem the sting of his sudden intrusion, and you think, for a moment, that you see Nirvana behind your eyelids. 

It's embarrassingly how quickly he brings to you the brink, slurping messily as he drills his fingers into your hole, petting against your walls in a mockery of what he'll do to you once he's had his fill. Satiated his hunger with the taste of your pussy. 

Something he can't seem to get enough of.

Your thighs draw together, crushing him between your legs. Arching into his mouth, nearly smothering him as you rut clumsily against his face, moaning at the rough scrape of his beard against your skin. You're not normally so aggressive, but he loses himself in it, eyes rolling as he grabs your hips and pulls you closer to his wanting mouth, encouraging you to use his tongue, his lips, to meet your end as you see fit. Riding his face as much as you can with your leg locked tight between his shoulder and bicep. 

And it's in between his loud grunts, his whines—almost caterwauling into your slit—where you shatter. The sound of his pleasure, the feeling of his mouth on you—it’s all too much. You break when he sucks your clit into his mouth, keening in the back of his throat as he works another finger into you. It feels good. Too good. 

Johnny works you through it. Lets you take, and take as your muscles spasm with the force of your release. Fingers digging into his shoulders, fisting the sheets. He moans along with you, eagerly lapping at your cunt until you whine, begging him to stop. You've had enough. Can't take anymore—

He only pulls away when you melt into the sheets, shuddering with the aftershocks bubbling through your body. Leaning back on his haunches once more, the hair around his mouth slick and wet. The evidence of your pleasure dripping down his chin, droplets still clinging to his beard.

He crawls over you once more, eyes boring into yours. Pits of coal. An endless black hole.

In this strange space, liminal, you lose yourself. Shed pieces of who you were before when he slots his hips between your thighs, cock heavy in his hand, and presses it to your slit. 

This is happening. He's going to fuck you. 

You wish the thought didn't make your knees fall apart a little wider for him. Make your hips flit, lifting slightly into the air. Eager. Hungry for it. For him.

It's loneliness, you think. Desperation. 

Madness is addictive. It feeds itself and infects those around it. Noxious. An all-consuming black hole that eats, and eats. It must have bitten you, too. Dug infectious teeth into your skin, severing flesh to imbed its jowls in your marrow. Clinging. Poisoning you from the inside out. 

There's no other reason for why you reach for him, hands sliding over his sweat-slicked skin as he falls into the open brackets of your arms, grunting when the head of his cock catches on your rim. He's a wall of heat. Firm muscles. Your nails dig into the thick cords of his shoulders just to feel the reluctant give of his skin. 

Nothing about this man is soft. His waist, his thighs, his chest, his arms, the hard ridge of his cock. It's all unyielding muscle. Burning. Searing into your skin when it drags against his. 

“Gonnae fuck ye, doe,” he whispers, words pitching low. Damp wood, felled timber. Rough. You shiver from the heat of it. The warning, the plea; both extremes coalescing together to make truism more potent. Weighty. “Gonnae fuck this pretty pussy, and yer gonnae beg me fer it.” 

Despite the surety in assertion, he doesn't wait for you to plead with him to split you apart, taking the initiative instead to sink the head of his cock into you. The stretch stings already, and only his glands have sunk in, a fact he grunts into your ear as he drives forward another inch. Another—

You don't think you've ever been this unmoored before. Rendered this docile. A mere domicile for him to burrow inside of; to carve a home from the sanctum of your walls wrapped tight around him. And carve he does. Splitting you apart as he grunts with the efforting of forcing his cock into you, feeding it further with blunt jerks of his hips, his hands feverish on your skin. Sweat slicked already even though he's barely halfway inside of you. 

“Feels so good,” he slurs into your ear, face pinching. Twisting up as pleasure blooms over his brow. “So fuckin’ good, doe, fuck—”

It does. Beyond the blunt pressure of him forcing his cock inside of you, the sting of the stretch, there's an intense, dizzying pleasure in the fullness you feel. In the press of him notching against something inside that makes heat bloom in your belly, turns your bones liquid. It might be the previous climax rendering you oversensitive, but the feeling of him splitting you apart is euphoric. 

It's aided by the moans he lets out as you take more and more of him, as if the sound of his pleasure is funnelled into yours. By the look on his face, eyes widened, feverish, as he darts his gaze between your face and your pussy, unable to decide if he wants to watch his cock disappear into you or watch your face, pinched up in pleasure, in flickering pain, as you take him fully. 

This sort of bliss, this pleasure, is addicting. Narrowed down to the sharp nudge of his cock grazing places inside of you that light your nerves on fire, burn through your synapses until your thoughts are muddled, mush. No coherency, no logic—just the fat length of him bludgeoning into your walls; the tap of his heavy, full sack slapping against your ass as he finally, finally, roots deep.

He must feel it, too. This strange, overwhelming pleasure loops around your lower belly, twisting itself into knots because when he pushes the last few inches inside of you, he nearly collapses on top of you, his whole body shuddering. Trembling. Presses his damp face to your cheek, matted, slick hair tickling your skin, and groans from deep within his chest at the feeling of you wrapped around him. The noise shivers through you. His pleasure is enough to make you clench down, tightening up around him. Already on the verge and all he did was slide his cock inside of you. 

A fact he seems to luxuriate in, huffing shakily into your ear as he quenches himself on the soft, fluttering pulses of your walls around him. Content to grind his hips into yours in shallow gyrations that make your eyes roll into the back of your head. The tension in your belly coiling tighter and tighter, the pleasure ameliorating the shame you'd felt before, burning it into cinders. 

As long as he keeps his cock inside of you, as long as he keeps pushing the blunt head into that spot that makes your vision whiteout, you think could cum just like this. Right now—

He doesn't. 

Johnny lifts himself off of your chest, elbow coming to rest beside your head, taking the brunt of his weight. His eyes are bright, burning. He stares down at you, and the look of sheer adoration on his face is daunting, overwhelming. It threatens to eat you alive. Devour you whole. Pure rapture. Devotion. 

You flush, face stinging with embarrassment. Prickling with unease. No one has ever stared at you like this, so hungrily, and the fact that it's him makes your head spin. Looping endlessly in circles of disbelief and fear. 

He might be omnipotent, you think, with the way his lips tug sharply downward, brow bunching together as if he can hear your thoughts, taste your disquiet in the air. 

Johnny rolls his hips back slowly, inching out of you with a hum until just the tip remains. The loss has your hands scrambling down his chest, fingers tangling in the coarse, drenched hairs at the soft incline of his belly. The other sliding around the thick breadth of his ribs, nails digging into the slick skin covering his spine. Pressing. Biting. 

More, you don't say. Please. 

The knot in his brow dissipates. Eases into something almost playful, impish. 

“Want ma cock, doe?” He whispers it waggishly, like a cloy secret, and you pretend the tease in his voice doesn't make your heart lurch in your chest. “Didnae anyone teach ye some manners? Gotta ask politely.” 

You won't. You won't. 

Your reluctance makes him sigh. The chain around his neck swinging when he moves. His hips pull back, and he reaches down with his free hand, and grabs his cock, pulling it out of you, and sliding it against your slit. The head bumps into your clit, and you nearly choke on the gasp that's ripped from your chest. The pleasure is too much, too—

He pulls away, denying you the euphoria of release. 

“No, no, please,” you babble, resolve crumbling into ash. “Please, Johnny, please—”

“That’s more like it,” he coos, and lets his cock dip back inside of your fluttering hole, rim stretched taut around him once more. The sting is lessened now, but still there as the thick glands force you open for him. “Sound so pretty when yer desperate for ma cock.” 

He leans down, catching your mouth in another sloppy kiss as he slams his cock back inside of you hard enough to bruise. To make you see stars. Cockhead bludgeoning into your cervix in a dizzying amalgamation of pleasure and pain that makes you whine, the whimper snatched up between his teeth as he burrows them into your lip with an echoing groan. 

He fucks you hard, working his cock into you at a maddening pace. Bestial, now. All animal. The tenderness from before dissolves into an choppy desperation. An eagerness to seek his own end as you fall to pieces beneath him, shaking from the force of taking him over and over again, each piston, each hard thrust driving the thoughts from your head until all you have left is sensation. An absence of everything except the way he feels above you, inside of you. 

Sweat builds up along your hairline, gathers at the base of your spine, and soaks the sheets below. You feel liquid under him. A ragdoll for him to sink his jowls into, to toss around as he likes. 

Johnny is all sensation and a cacophony of sound. 

He ruts into you clumsily, groaning in your ear. Moaning out how good you feel around him. Pretty pussy made just for him. 

“Oh, fuck, doe—” he moans, arching into the next thrust. Drool dribbles down his chin when he curves his spine, dropping his forehead onto your temple. “Feels so good. Feels like my cock is meltin’ instead ye—”

The lewd squelch of his cock pistoning into you seems to echo through the room, louder somehow than the ragged moans that spill from his mouth. 

“Been so long,” he shudders against you, rooting his cock deep. Burying himself inside of you as his cockhead bullies into your cervix. The flash of pain is whitehot, blinding, but the bloom of pleasure eats it whole before it can pollute the puddle of bliss pooling in your belly. “Been savin’ it all jus’ fer ye—”

His hand slides from your hip, burrowing between your bodies as rubs at your clit. It feels so good that it nips sharply into pain, into agony. Too much, too much—

But he doesn't relent. Fingers toying, circling your clit in time with each jarring thrust, tightening the coil inside of you until it whines from the tension, the pressure—

It snaps when he growls into your ear—cum fer me, doe; wannae feel this pussy squeezin’ ma cock—and releases in a flood, a deluge of molten heat. Back arching, toes curling. You're barely cognisant of the ache in your injured foot, the throbbing pain. It's swallowed by the surge of endorphins roaring through you, ringing in your ears. Blotting everything out except the way you pulse around the thick of him still lodged deep inside of you. 

You barely have time to come down before he starts again, forcing you to take him as he thrusts in harder than before, mindlessly seeking his own end as you gush around him, nails raking across his flesh. 

He's babbling above you, spitting words into your ear about how he's going to take care of you. All of you. Take you back to Scotland with him so you can raise your children—

It slices through the haze, ripping a hole through the fog clouding your mind. 

“No,” you whimper, devastation flooding your chest alongside the vicious pleasure still rolling around inside of you. “No, please—”

Children, he breathes like you hadn't spoken at all. Lots. Lots of them. Brothers and sisters. Two, maybe three, of each. But he's not picky, bonnie, he'll take whatever you give him. And keep fucking you over and over again until he gets what he wants. A whole family to raise. To surround himself with. Been lonely, you think he says. Needed something to keep him busy. 

You don't want this. Can't. But he doesn't stop, doesn't relent. He breathes life into the picture he paints with the soft flutter of your cunt clenching tight around him at words, once again betrayed by your own body. 

Despite the nausea that bleeds to the surface at his words, your eyes roll back into your head once more, driven mad with the thunderous pleasure that rips through you as he forces every last inch of his cock into you. 

Johnny grinds his hips against yours, moaning, loud and untethered, muscles jerking, twitching, as he cums deep inside of you. 

The aftershocks of his pleasure make him tremble, body spasming as he drives himself tight against the seal of your womb. A new heat grows inside of you as Johnny slumps against you, panting in your ear. 

“Ah’ll be so good tae ya,” he promises in a rasping growl, shoving his head into the crook of your neck. Gyves close around you as he nuzzles his mouth into your flesh, licking at the sweat that beads on your skin. 

“All mine. All fuckin’ mine—” The confessional is tainted with the sickness that leaks from the craggy hole chiselled into the side of his head. Obsessive devotion hewing ruinous dogma into the fibrils of your head. Tenderised, softened, by the blunt, unyielding touch of his hand. A slurry that this polluted notion slips inside, tainting your resolve until it's thickened into his whim. His wants. 

You sob into his chest as he wraps you up in his arms, shackled against the man who carved a place inside of you just wide enough for himself to fit. Who spat poison in the hollow crevasses, and called it absolution. Love. 

All you can do is heave through corrupted lungs as he smothers you under the weight of his madness. 

“No’ gonnae let anyone touch ye. Ah'll kill anyone who tries to tae take ye away from me, doe—”

The conviction in his tone is bound in steel. In feverish blue. 

“Ah’ll take care’a ye,” he rasps, voice thick in his throat. “Donnae worry about a thing, doe.”

“Will you let me go?”

He doesn't answer at first. Just digs his nose into your hairline, breathing in deep until the wide breadth of his chest expands across your back. Mulling it over, maybe. Coming up with an excuse for his behaviour. Something to negotiate with on reasons why you shouldn't call the police the moment he does. 

And for a moment, a startling, terrible moment, there's hope. The assurance wells on your tongue. Some unfathomable amalgamation of please and i’ll never tell. Maybe you were going to tell him he was an honest man who did something bad. That there was still good within him. All of those hideous clichès bubble up through the cracks—

But it's all dashed when his hand drops down from its perch beneath your bare breasts, sliding over your skin until it curls possessively over your lower belly. 

He breathes out and the hope inside you is snuffed under the gale of delusion, his obsession. “Why would ah do a thing like that?” He prompts, and the genuine confusion in his voice makes you shiver, as if the idea of it is so outlandish, so absurd, it negates everything he'd done to get to this point. You feel hollow. But not—

Not empty. 

As if he hears the thought thundering in the ruins of your mind, he presses a tender kiss to your temple that you think is meant to be soothing. Shushing you softly when you begin to shake. “After it took me this long to find ye, doe. Am no’ lettin’ ye go fer the world, ken. Yer mine. All mine.”

And then he closes his jowls around your throat. 

Time feels artificial here. 

You wake up several hours later, groggy and disoriented, but the sun doesn't seem like it moved from where it was perched last night at all. Fixed in place. Lost in some strange, eternal twilight zone where the sun is a warden, watching you tirelessly through the window. 

Cardboard cutout hung amongst the stars.

Your ankle aches horribly—an agonising throb. You must have turned in your sleep, jostled it. You're further away from the spot you were last night, too. Rolled over in your sleep, maybe. The burn brings tears to your eyes that you swallow down with a groan. 

As you awkwardly settle your leg in a way that hurts slightly less than it did before, you let cognisance slip back in to keep your mind off of the horrible ache that tremors through your bones. Your neck. 

Between your thighs—

It's then that you hear Johnny. 

He's whistling in the kitchen. You peer out through the crack in the door, catching the broad expanse of his naked back as he works over the stove. Flexing. Muscles bunching. He hums a tune you can't recognise as he scrapes the spatula over the cast iron pan. 

His grey sweats sit low on his hips. The divots above the hem—dimples of Apollo, you recall—are stark against the hollow ravine of his spine. You can't help but stare. Gawk. Limned in the soft light of the morning sun that spills through the open window, he looks almost ethereal. Unreal. Like something out of a magazine and not the middle of nowhere in Canada where the sun doesn't set this time of year. 

He feels surreal. A man too good to be true. All sculpted musculature that looks like it could just as well be handmade by an amalgamation of both David’s by Michelangelo and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. All sharp, angled lines; beautiful in their fluidity. 

It's unfair, you think suddenly. To be stuck with a man you feel nauseous thinking about but can’t seem to take your eyes off of. Some paradoxical madness. Retribution for a time in a past life where you swindled fate and got away unscathed. All of your karmic sins pile down on top of you as the events last night flicker past, drenched in seafoam. Ghosts linger in the cracks; in memories. 

The phantom weight of something slung over your waist, knotted tight between your breasts. Scorching heat glued to your spine. A heavy hand cradling your lower belly. Words whispered into your nape—

He turns, then. Catches your eye like he knew it was there the whole time. Stands there like the picture of ease, of a satiated man puttering around a small space while his sweetheart lounged in the bed, lazing the day away. 

Like this wasn’t illegal. Immoral. He treats you like a lover even though you’d only met less than a day ago—

And already his cum was drying on your inner thighs, thick and sticky. His madness pooling in your head, words uttered into your ear about this cabin he has back home, back in Scotland. He’ll take you there, he said. It’s time he came home, he thinks. His head is on straight again, and he finally feels like he can breathe without shattering into a million pieces—

(He put your hands on his head last night, palm cradling the ugly scar on his temple, and whispered, fervent and insane, ye keep ma head together, doe. Ye make me feel whole again—)

Knows a man, he told you. A good bloke who’d help him get you home, too. 

His smile is bright. Blinding.

“Mornin’, doe. Ah made breakfast.” 

[rowarn]

afab!reader, gn!reader, simons a fighter, protective!simon, blood mention, fingering, lil bit of mean!simon for flavor <3 MDNI

simon riley is by all means a "do what you want, i can fight" kind of man. and fight he will. simon will go to the ends of the earth to protect you. and that's always been incredibly hot to you. you'd never had a man so eager to defend you.

especially to the point that simon was. more than once he'd come away from a fight with bloody knuckles and a split lip. 

that's exactly how he looked now, but he also sported a cut across his eyebrow as well. the guy he'd beaten in the alleyway looked much worse, but he got a few good hits in. 

all you knew was that he said some revolting things about you that simon happened to overhear. simon refused to tell you specifics, citing that you didn't need to hear something like that. 

you both had gone home quickly after that. but the sight of simon all beat up, knuckles split and bruised from the force he'd used to beat the man had something stirring in your stomach. butterflies. 

as you cleaned his cuts and wiped away any blood that stained his skin, you could feel the wetness growing in your panties. you clenched your thighs and shifted as that began to uncomfortably stick to your pussy. 

simon, always attentive, noticed right away. his pretty, brown eyes lit up in interest, a brow raised as he watched you shift on your feet. 

"something wrong?" he asked, as if he couldn't tell what was going on. 

"n-nothing, si," you responded sheepishly, tossing the bloody gauze into the garbage can before stepping away. 

simon doesn't let you get very far before his arms are wrapping around your waist, pulling you back into his chest. you can feel the heat radiating off of him and feel how his heart pounds on his chest against your back. craning your neck, you look up at him. 

"ain't nothin'," he says, voice low and quiet, "and i'm not lettin' you walk out of here with that pretty pussy drippin'.''

you swallow around the lump in your throat as he says it. he wraps his big hands around your waist and moves them downwards, slipping under your shirt and pawing at the hem of your sweatpants. he dips his head down so he can kiss along your neck, practically purring when you sink into him. 

he takes the opportunity to slip his fingers under your panties, thick fingers prying your pillowy lips apart. you adjust your stance, leaning back against him for support as you spread your legs a little more so he can slip his fingers further down.

first he glides over your clit, pausing to stroke and roll the tender little bud under his fingers. your whole body twitched at that, trembling hands reaching to grip onto the fabric of his hoodie. your head fell back against his chest, giving him more access to your neck. 

his fingers dip lower, finding your entrance, slick and drooling all over the digits as he strokes back and forth, teasing you with their presence. 

"tell me," his voice vibrates in his chest, deep and low, "what's got you this wet?"

"mmm, d-dunno, si," you lie right through your teeth at him. 

he hums, pulling his fingers away from your sweet little hole to go back to your clit, pinching the bud. you whimper at the feeling, hips rabbing back to get away from the little pain, "you're lyin'. i want you to tell me the truth. what has this pretty little cunt all wet?"

"simon..." you whine. he knows you don't want the embarrassment that comes from the confession but he teases it out of you anyway, "y-you got me wet, si!"

"me?" he grins, wolfish and predatory, "i didn't do anything, love,"

you whine, rocking your hips forward. he took some mercy on you and slowly sunk one, long, finger into the tight clutch of your cunt. the stretch wasn't enough, he knew that, you'd become so accustomed to the fat girth of his cock that one single finger would never be enough to satisfy you now. he'd ruined you. 

"y-you beat that-that guy up for me..." you finally manage to squeeze out of your dry throat, "'s hot..."

he scoffs as if he didn't already know that that was the reason, "you like me beatin' some bastards head in for you?" you nod, sighing in pleasure when he rewards your with a second finger, "you're fuckin' filthy. you think he'd be happy to hear that it turns you on?"

"don't care about him," you quickly answer. 

his grin broadens, "that's the right fuckin' answer, love."

he finally gives you the third and final finger. you keen when he stretches you open on those digits, curling them just right to hit that gooey, spongey little spot inside you. his palm curls around your pelvic bone so the heel of his hand grinds against your clit just how you need to cum nice and hard for him. 

he works his fingers slow and deep, making sure to hit that spot every time he stuffs his fingers back inside you. his other hand comes up, wrapping around your throat to pin your against his chest. you moan freely, clawing at his tattooed arm desperately as you rock your hips against his hand. 

he can hear the wet, slick sounds of him fucking your precious little cunt open. you work your clit feverishly against his hand, helping yourself along to the high you so deserve. you're dripping down his fingers, making a mess of him and yourself but you don't care. 

"'m gonna cum!" you needlessly warn him.

"i know," he grumbles, tilting your head up so he can press his lips against yours, hand still firmly wrapped around your throat. 

he sees your eyes roll back before you melt into the kiss, your orgasm washing over you. he groans when he feels you squeezing and clenching around his fingers, pathetically humping against his hand to work your clit even harder. he slowly strokes that spongey little spot to help ease you through your high. you tremble and clutching desperately at his arm as you start to come down, whimper and panting into his mouth before he lets you pull away. a string of spit connects your lips and you look completely dazed as you gaze up at him. 

he always did enjoy the way a good orgasm had you looking all dumb and pliant for him. 

he pulls his fingers out of your panties and you whine at the loss, watching him bring those cum-covered fingers up to your face. you could see the way the bruises and splits in his knuckles were covered in your cum and had to hold back to keep from moaning at the sight. 

he popped them into his mouth, sighing at the taste of your sweet cum on his tongue. 

before you knew it, he was breezing past you out of the bathroom and down to the living room, no doubt on the hunt for something to eat. 

"simon!" you called petulantly. 

you heard him laugh from the living room, "what?"

"you aren't gonna fuck me?" you complain, feeling heat flood your cheeks when he laughs again.

"dunno, love," his tone is teasing, "we'll see."

ugh. he could be so generous one second and mean the next </3

mwah here is some food my beloveds

[smutinlove]

Jason Todd having a size kink will never not be on my mind. he’s 6ft, 6’2ft depending what universe you’re talking about and weighs at least 200 lbs if not more, he is built like a tank.

took him awhile to get use to his size so being around people who are 5’2 even 5’5, seemed abnormal to him. could pick us up with no effort, throw us over his shoulder and walk like nothing happened.

he would use his weight for advantage, leaning down real close almost suffocating but enough to get the gears turning… his hands? ough. big enough to wrap around throats, thighs.

sorry had some thoughts

YES, OH MY GOD.

after the pit changed him, it took him awhile to get used to his height and general appearance. I mean, this man is 6ft and weighs around 200 pounds.

he'd be hitting his head on doorframes and towering over people. can't reach the cereal box on the top shelf? don't worry, he'll get it.

and he's so strong and muscular too.

oh my god, he'd be the type of person to pick up ANYONE and throw them over his shoulder with no hesitation.

he'd even do it for fun.

and we all know that Jason reads books. he ain't no basic becky, okay? this man reads and it makes men and women feral for him.

this man's hands are big. so basically, he'd be enveloping the book in his hands.

speaking of his big hands, Jason's hands WANDER.

when his face is buried between your thighs, he'll occasionally give them a tight, good squeeze, causing you to whine. then he'll mutter something like: "aw, is my precious angel getting all worked up? come on, baby, i wanna hear those sounds."

this man is addicting.

he'll also occasionally give your throat a nice squeeze if he feels like it. or if you ask him to. he'll do it either way.

his big, veiny hand wrapped around your throat, leaving only a little bit of room for you to breathe.

this man is horny too.

he'll fuck you whenever and wherever. he has no shame. he'll do it in your local grocery stores' bathroom or even at the back of a bar.

and the groans he'll let out while he fuck your brains out.

"come on, doll, 'that all 'ya can do f'me?" or "fuck, you drive me crazy, love. your pretty face and thick thighs. you don't even know half of what you do to me."

[tojisun]

im going feral at the idea of biker!simon visiting you at work to bring you a little care package when you sent him a quick message, saying how tired you are :(

"hey, sunshine?" rosie asks as she stops by your desk. "someone's here askin' for you."

you would've jolted in panic at the unexpected summoning but rosie is cheekily grinning at you, her dimpled smile making her look a whole lot brighter, her exhaustion for the day easing off just a bit.

it makes you smile back.

"oh?" you say, standing up from your desk and following her towards the breakroom. "is it my prince charming?"

"i'd love to think so." you didn't expect the familiar drawl of simon's voice and you startle, whipping to face him, your eyes wide in surprise as a gasp punches itself from your lungs.

rosie slips from your mind altogether.

"hey, baby," simon greets when you remained unmoving, too stunned to know how to act. rosie giggles from behind you before hearing the familiar patter of her feet as she leaves, giving the two of you space.

"why're you here?" you finally get to respond, holding onto your excitement as you rove your eyes over your lover, cataloguing the box held in one of his hands and his helmet in the other. he must've driven here directly from the shop.

"you said you weren't feeling too good so i'm here to drop off some goodies." he shrugs as he closes the distance between the two of you before presenting you the box. you take it with trembling hands. "it ain't much but i hope it's enough to last you 'till later in the afternoon, and i promise: we'll do all that you want, yeah?"

he reaches forward to brush your hair away from your face, huffing a fond smile when he catches the way you sniffle. you're still not used to being spoiled and simon adores your shy reactions – eyes ducking away to hide from his, your teeth trapping your bottom lip to nibble on. he hopes one day you will shake away the shyness and start demanding from him. start being confident in what it is that you want.

(you can even ask simon for the stars and he won't find it unreasonable; he will claw his way into the heavens and pluck them out for you. sometimes it terrifies him how you make him feel a love so strong, it triumphs over anything and everything. but often times, simon basks in it. basks in the way his love for you overflows until it creates a crashing tide, ready to sweep him away.)

"thank you," you whisper as you slot yourself in his arms, hiding your face on his chest, breathing in the leather. you sigh wistfully when you feel him pat your head, reassuring. caring. loving.

simon kisses the top of your head. "it's no problem at all, love." he smiles down at you when you pull back just enough to stand on your tiptoes and peck him on his lips. "i'll see you later, yeah?"

you nod, falling back into his arms.

("jesus, sunshine. that is one big boy," rosie says as the two of you watch simon walk out of the office, his unmistakable bulk stark against all the exhausted office workers ambling about.

you giggle. "yeah. my big boy.")

[whateveriwant]

The 141 holding their baby for the first time

Can be read as a part 2 to this

Price

This man is so eager to hold his child for the first time, he almost doesn't wait for the nurses to clean him off first. So what if his son is covered in all sorts of blood and gunk? John has dealt with a lot worse before, trust him

So when he has to wait for the little one to be cleaned and then weighed and then dressed first, John almost steams from his ears he's so frustrated

Oh but the moment his child is finally placed in his arms, he just absolutely melts. Goes from a menacing grizzly bear to a harmless stuffed plushie in two seconds flat

With one hand supporting his bottom and the other curving along his back, John gently holds his son for the very first time. As he looks at the boy in his arms – his eyes, his lips, his little button nose – John feels a tickle behind his eyes, and he's quick to blink the tears away before they can form

He sniffs back his emotions and caresses the top of your son's head. “Hairy little bloke, ain't he?” he jokes, referring to the full head of hair the tyke's already been blessed with

Well, what does he expect when he has a werewolf for a father? Your jest gets John to chuckle lowly, muttering to the boy, “Just like your daddy, eh?”

He places the baby against the crook of his neck and softly pats him on the back, bouncing up and down ever so slightly. And when his son lets out a great big burp, John and you share a laugh. “Yeah, just like your daddy.”

Ghost

One thing Simon prides himself on is his sense of humility – knowing when his services are needed and when they aren't. In this instance, as the nurses flit around with his son, he knows it's the latter situation, so he waits patiently off to the side as he lets them work

Though he's sidelined, Simon watches like a hawk as his little boy moves about the room. Every hand-off, every measurement taken, it's all done under the careful eye of his father

But despite how cool he may appear on the outside, inside his heart is pounding, and that only increases as a nurse finally approaches him with his child in her hands

Simon goes to take the baby from her, stretching his arms out, but before the transfer is made, he remembers something. Quickly, he reaches up and strips the cloth mask from his face. He knows the little one doesn't have good eyesight yet, but first impressions and all that, right?

With the utmost caution, Simon takes his son into his arms, putting him in the crook of his elbow like a rugby player holding a ball. He feels like a giant as he holds the tiny boy against him. Like an ant compared to an elephant, he thinks to himself

Despite his size though, Simon is so delicate with his son, treating him like he's made of glass. He tucks him more firmly against his chest, and as the little one naturally snuggles closer, Simon can't help the smile it brings to his face

Rocking back and forth slightly, Simon tries to lull the boy to sleep. Unfortunately, his little cheek rubbing against Simon's chest has the opposite effect, and he begins to mouth at his pec, having accidentally triggered his rooting reflex

“Oh, he's…,” Simon mutters awkwardly, realizing what he's just done. He hears you giggle from your spot on your bed, and that makes him chuckle to himself. “Think he's hungry,” he says before handing the baby over to you

Gaz

From the moment Kyle laid eyes on his son, it was love at first sight. Even though he was filthy, wrinkly, and had a conehead to end all coneheads, Kyle was immediately smitten with the boy the moment he first saw him

He carefully trails after the nurses as they go about cleaning him/taking his measurements, not wanting to get in the way but wanting to stay close

Despite his watchfulness, however, when his son is finally offered to him, Kyle immediately freezes. His arms feel like they're locked down by his sides, like there's some kind of invisible force preventing him from reaching out and taking him

Though he's been preparing for this moment for months, when it's finally time to do it, he finds that he's scared. Scared to hurt him, to drop him, to do something wrong. He has to take a deep breath as he plucks up the courage, then has the nurse hand over his son

And the second the boy is placed in Kyle's arms, the tears he hadn't managed to shed during the delivery start streaming anew. “H-Hi, baby. Hi,” Kyle sobs, masterfully holding his son in one hand as he uses the other to wipe his tears away. “I'm your daddy.”

Though there's still a flurry of activity going on around them, it's like time seems to slow as Kyle admires the little boy in his arms. He leans in to press a soft kiss to the top of his son's head, holding his lips there as he inhales that sweet scent emanating from him

When he finally pulls back, he brushes another tear away, flashing a bright smile as he chuckles wetly to himself. Yep, he's in love alright. Truly, deeply in love

Soap

Johnny feels sluggish as he slowly wakes back up. It takes some effort for him to peel his eyes open, and when he does, he then groggily takes in his surroundings

He's slumped in some stiff hospital chair. Why? Oh, wait. He thinks he remembers. He was here to watch the birth of his first child, but the last thing he remembers was seeing a whole lot of red, and then everything went black

Johnny looks around the room for a moment until he realizes you're sitting in the bed across from him. He stands with a grunt, rubbing his forehead as he walks over to you. “What'd I miss?” he asks as approaches your bed

He notices something in your arms, but it's not until he gets close that he realizes what exactly. That isn't just any little bundle in your arms. That's your son you're holding

He finds he's frozen to his spot as you answer his question. Other than the birth? Not much. Just the first feeding… and the first burping… and the first swaddling

Johnny's lip threatens to tremble as he listens to you list off all the things he missed because he'd passed out. But when you ask in he wants to hold his son, all that sorrow immediately vanishes

Now, Johnny's held a lot of babies in his years (it comes with being part of the MacTavish clan), but there's something different this time as you pass the little boy to him. As Johnny looks at the baby in his arms – his baby – he realizes this is the most perfect, most beautiful, most amazing, angelic, awe-inspiringly wonderful–

There's the sound of a small whine followed quickly by a loud squish, and suddenly, the bum cradled in his hands feels about 2x heavier. The realization hits you before it does Johnny, and you can't help the laugh that bubbles out of you

Congrats, daddy-o! Looks like he woke up just in time for the first nappy change

[splataii]

toji x male reader

cw: dom male character, sub male reader,

wc 1.5k

freeloader toji who likes to pop in at your place n take a load off whenever he’s in the mood.

no text, no call, no nothing. just him showing up to sleep on your bed, watching his shitty tv shows on your couch after draining your fridge for everything it's worth.

you don't get no chance to say no cause he's way too busy telling you just what an absolute angel you are as he slips through your door. you won't even know he's there, promise. but it’s hard for him to keep such a promise when he’s such a terrible roommate.

he walks around half naked like he owns the place, sweatpants falling so low around his waist that his dick threatens to fall out with every step he takes..

when he feels like being more annoying than usual, he hangs around you, leaning against doorways and faking a yawn or two to stretch so you can catch the outline of his dick, and the way his body flexes.

it makes it hard to look him in the eyes when you're telling him to pull his own weight for the millionth time that week, and he knows it.

“you got a staring problem or what?” he teases, following the way your eyes trace down to the dick print in his loose grey track pants. guys like you are just way too fuckin easy. too flustered to finish, you let him off with a simple warning before leaving him be. but what he really wants is to force ya to quit talking his ear off by getting you on your knees and shoving his cock down your throat. maybe then he could finally put that mouth a yours to good use.

toji also gets so heated about the smallest things, moving you out the way so he can be the one to answer the door to all your one night stands and potential future boyfriends. taking way too much pleasure in how they shrink in on themselves when he sizes them up from the doorway, being terribly sweeter than normal to you with all his pet names and touchiness. it seems like his hand stays glued to your waist no matter how much you pry him off a you.

everytime another guy runs with his tail between his legs, you're pointing the finger at toji, but that man couldn't care less. it’s not his fault they're too pussy. he knows exactly the type a man a doll like you needs and he can give that to you better than any of those little boys ever could.

what's more is he has no sense of personal space. it’s always, “i was just looking for something,”

when he hovers so close you can feel his smile on your neck while you all bent over in the fridge, caged between his arms as his bulge rubs against the small of your back.

or “an accident” when he’s spreading out on your already too small couch and practically forcing you onto his thigh, subtly grinding you against it everytime he moves as his hand slips around your waist and under your shirt. he’s just tryna consolidate space, honest. it ain't his fault he's as big as he is. and it's definitely not his fault you’ve got such a dirty little mind.

and he's such a mess.. clothes, dishes, everything. you find them scattered just about all over the place. the worst offense, however, was a discarded package laying on your living room table. a fleshlight, you realized seconds too late, toji making his grand entrance the moment you're shutting the box closed.

you can tell by the shit eating grin on his face that playing it cool won't cut it, but you try anyway, pretending to get back to tidying up the table as he inches up close behind you.

“i don’t mind sharing,” he breathes, hand hovering on your waist a second too long as he reaches around you for his box, “if you let me watch,”

you stay still, waiting for him to laugh it off and turn back around, but he stays leaning over you.

“youre such a…”

“i’m such a what?” he tilts his head, hand subtly sliding down to the waistband of your pants, massaging where it meets your warm skin. he's rubbing in circles, fingers gently raking up and down your side till they're slipping under your pants.

your eyes trace the veins on his hand as you feel him squeeze at your bare thigh, your underwear hitching farther up as his thumb presses close against your clothed dick. your mind spins every time you feel him inching closer to your soft cock, taking in the thought of him pulling you back into his lap and sliding your pants to your knees so he could take care of you like you deserved. mind falling away, you let yourself lean back into his chest, your hand firmly placed on his arm to ground yourself.

“..or i can always give you the real deal,” he hums your breathe hitching as he gropes at your growing bulge, his words hot on the skin of your neck as you feel his hardening dick grinding against the curve of your ass, “if, that's what his highness prefers,”

you can feel the smirk on his lips as he presses a kiss against the side of your neck, and you blink away whatever trance he had you in.

“dickhead,” you mutter, slipping out of his arms and away from him, pretending not to notice his eyes trained on you as you break away. not once does that stupid smile leave his face as he watches you leave him and his half hard cock alone in the living room.

and that's he worst part of it all.. the worst part a him.. how smug he fucking gets. no matter how much you tell him off, no matter how much he teases you, he knows you can’t never stay mad at him for long. just a few touches in all the right places, a couple spoken promises, and you're like putty in his arms.

it don't matter how much tension you got pent up from his antics; at the end of the day, you're his. and he's always gonna be there to relieve that stress for you the best way he knows how; by bending you over whatever surface is nearest and railing you till you can't think of anything but the shape of his dick stuffed down your ass.

<3

“i was so lonely last night, yknow that?” tojis cock drills into you as you do your best to keep upright against the couch, “left me hard in the living room. had to take care of it all by myself,”

but you been knew that. he made no effort to hide it seeing how loud he was yesterday. you could hear him groaning your name and all the ways he wanted to have you from the comforts of your own bedroom, body hot as you kept your thighs pressed together, waiting for him to finish.

the moment you were back from your shift he was on you, pressing open mouth kisses as he made quick work of stripping you down. he had been waiting for what felt like ages to have all of you underneath him like this, so sweet and pliant in his arms, leaning into his heavy hands. coming undone at his every touch.

“what, nothing to say?” he grunts, grip on your waist tightening as you clench around him, sucking him back in with every thrust, his hands pulling your hips to fuck back into his, “or are you gonna let this ass do all the talking?”

you shake your head, helplessly grinding against the back of the couch as he splits you open on his dick.

“‘s too much,” you cry in between broken moans, burying your face in the nearest pillow in an attempt to hide how good he feels inside you. but he comes to a slow harsh grind of his cock, hands running all up your sides until they're resting on your shoulder.

he pulls you out of your pillow, forcing you to hear the lewd sound of his cock pulling out and leaving you empty. toji grunts, your tight hole not wanting to let go before its clenching around nothing, his pre dripping down the curve of your ass and off your thighs.

you do your best to stay steady on shaky arms, desperate whines muffled by your own hands as you feel him lining up again.

“you can take it sweetheart,” he rasps before ramming back into you, your ass spasming at the harsh thrust of his cock as he stuffs you full. your hand falls away from your lips, unable to hide the moans he rips from you as he pulls out and forces his cock into your ass again and again, making sure that the only thing your body will be able to remember is the shape of him inside you.

“that's it, doll,” he smiles, leaning down to kiss at the tears threatening to fall from your eyes as his strong arms keep you upright, “now let me hear you,”

[dazed-and-confused23]

Quickie

Summary: You, a wondering trader, and he, a ghoul bounty hunter, cross paths and decide to camp together. Nights in the wasteland were dangerous on your lonesome, after all.

Pairings: The Ghoul | Cooper Howard x Female Reader

Warnings! smut, face sitting, cowgirl position, coming inside

Fluffy part 2 -> HERE

Link to my other fallout works on ao3 -> HERE

Masterlist

The fire illuminates the harsh features of the ghoul across from the flickering flames. He is handsome by ghoul standards, and you feel an ache in your core you've not felt in a long time. You cock your head to the side and debate with yourself, before shrugging in a matter of a couple of seconds. You'd never been picky.

"Wanna fuck?"

Cooper jerks his head up from where he'd been studying the waves in the sand that the wind left behind. He locks eyes with you across the flame, gives you a once over, and then smirks deviously.

"Ain't ever been propositioned in such a way, but why not. You got any rad-away? I'd hate for such a pretty thing to end up lookin' like me," Cooper drawls and leans back on his hands, legs man spread and cocks his head at you when you nod.

"Come 'ere then, Darlin'."

You stand, reaching for the button of your pants and popping them open as you amble over to his side of the camp. You stand before him, and Cooper reaches out to hook his thumbs into your jeans, jerking them down and past your knees. The ghoul tugs one of your shoes off and tugs the jeans off one leg so that they are out of the way. You raise a brow when he stays clothed, confused for a beat before he pats his chest.

"Let's get you wet, Doll. Then you can ride me til the sun comes up."

Your cheek warm, but you aren't about to argue, and so drop to your knees, one leg one on either side of his head. His hands find your hips and guide you forward, and a hiss leaves your throat when his tongue meets your mound. Cooper eats you like this is his last meal, obscene wet noises coming from where he is buried between your thighs.

Cooper smirks when he sucks your clit into his mouth, sucking harshly and causing you to fall forward, hands hitting the sand and destroying the waves. The ghoul doubles his efforts, tongue swirling around your sticky folds and slurping down the mess you make, a groan of his own fading into the night when he tastes you.

Electric heat coils tight in your belly, and you are seconds away from having one of the best orgasms of your life when the ghoul lifts you by the waist and tugs you down. A shout breaks through when his cock drags across your folds and then slams home, his length deep and perfect inside of you.

"Heh, that's it, ride my cock, cowgirl," Cooper rumbles below you and grips your hips, bouncing you up and down, fucking up into your tight cunt every time he drags you back down. Your hands find his shoulders and dig in, holding on for dear life as the ghoul fucks you silly.

Coop drags a hand down from your hip and to your clit, pinching the pulsing bud between two fingers. You snarl silently, pleasure singing up your spine and making you curse colorfully. Cooper laughs under you, and knows you are close by the way your pussy flutters around his dick.

"Come on, baby. Come all over my cock," He snarls and you tip over the edge when he snaps his hips up, pulling you down and burning himself as deep as he could go. Coop rocks into you, and seconds later, you feel splashes of hot cum fill you up, so much that it begins to leak down your thighs.

You take big gulps of air to catch your breath, looking down at the Ghoul with a grin as you rock your hips back and forth.

"Think you can keep it up, old man?" You quip and are rewarded with Cooper rolling the two of you, the ghoul shifting to his knees and grinning meanly down at you.

"Well now, how about we find that out, Darlin'?"

[zephyrchama]

"This is it!" Mammon squeezed the magazine he was reading with both hands. He brought the page closer to his face to scour the words one more time. Then he announced, "It's perfect!"

Lucifer ignored him.

Mammon pushed his shades up so his bright blue eyes would twinkle better in the candlelight. "Heya, big brother... My bestest big bro in all a' the three realms."

Lucifer continued to ignore him.

"Biiig brotherrrr. Big bro. You'll never guess what I just found in a million years." Mammon shuffled across the room and plopped down on the couch where Lucifer was sitting. He wrapped an arm around Lucifer's shoulders and leaned down to gaze up innocently, much to the elder's chagrin.

The magazine was shoved under Lucifer's nose, opened to a full page advertisement for a very flashy dragonscale necklace. It boasted multiple enchantments, numerous rave reviews from celebrity endorsers, and a price tag anyone would balk at.

"You have plenty of necklaces," Lucifer said with a dismissive nudge to drive Mammon out of his personal space. "You don't need any more. Now back up."

Mammon tutted and grabbed his magazine back. "No, no. Big bro, you just don' get it. Wouldn't this look great on our human?"

Lucifer's ear perked up for just a moment. The magazine fell into Mammon's lap as he raised his hands, getting ready to pitch his idea. Lucifer readied to humor him.

"Picture it. Their birthday or somethin' is comin' up, yeah? They wake up all giddy in the mornin'. They come into the living room that's all decked out with balloons and gems and--"

"Who will be decorating the living room?"

Mammon shushed him loudly, "that ain't important right now! Er, I mean... gah, just lemme finish!" He didn't want to get on Lucifer's bad side and risk losing funding for this necklace, but Mammon was in the zone. He felt lucky. "The human comes over to me, and I give 'em this pretty little box. They're excited. They open it to find this awesome necklace that glitters in the light, suits 'em perfectly, and they go 'oh Mammon! You're the greatest! I love you forever! You're my favorite! Thank you so much, Great Mam--'"

"I get the picture. I've heard enough." Lucifer interrupted before Mammon's highly inaccurate falsetto impersonation caused him to go deaf.

"So, are you gonna give me the cash to get it?" Mammon wondered if he could find a shop willing to haggle the price of the necklace down so that he could pick up some other nice things. As a treat.

"No."

Mammon groaned and slumped back, sliding halfway off the couch. He looked seconds away from kicking his feet. "What'd ya get my hopes up for, huh? C'mon, man! It's for the human!"

Lucifer picked up the magazine before it fell to the floor. He studied the necklace page while Mammon threw his mini tantrum. When the younger finally stopped swearing under his breath and noticed, he attempted to unceremoniously snag the magazine back. Lucifer had already turned away and held it out of his reach.

With a chuckle, Lucifer said, "This would suit them, wouldn't it? I can't wait to hear how much they love me when I present it to them."

[yanderenightmare]

TW: NSFW, noncon/dubcon

fem reader

Thinking about massive beefcakes again...

Big, brawny warriors who're carved with both muscles and battle scars – who still have some blood on their hands they couldn't bother washing off before claiming their pretty little war prize.

Oh, but he's so gentle with you. No threats on his lips, just a smile as he lets his large hands do all the talking – that, and the bloody axe he left leaning against the wall of your humble hut. So big, you wouldn't even be able to carry it if you used both hands.

And speaking about needing to use both hands...

You straddle his lap while working his massive cock – trembling as you wrap your fingers around the base, one hand stacked on top of the other, fingertips curling around his shaft – unable to reach around it while rubbing over fat veins that pulse beneath your soft touch.

He coos at you – tells you you’re doing so, so good for him, how he’s going to reward you real soon – how he won't hurt you so long as you do what he wants.

Oh, and you're so scared – so very scared of those large scathed paws holding you steady at the hips as he rubs his thick manhood against your stomach – throbbing between your ribs – a good measurement for how far inside he would try to push. 

There’s just no way you can possibly cram all of that inside you, is there?

You hadn't even noticed you were crying. Fat tears slip from brimming in your eyes, sliding down your cheeks and splattering on the hair of his broad chest. 

He told you to breathe, and you realized you’d been holding it in. He told you to relax – but tears only kept falling when his hand reached under to cup your scared little sex – his calloused fingers a strange type of friction on the lips of your pussy, ticklish in a sense, sending energy splurging through your core. 

Oh, but ain't you just the sweetest little thing. “You’re so wet, baby~” He hummed, voice thick with heat as his finger slid playfully through the slick pooling from your slit.

You whimpered at his teasing, and he hushed you – cooing at you while his fat fingers started prepping your tight little hole for him with a thumb rubbing over your clit – still nothing harsh – just grazing the slit, letting your body know to prepare itself for him.

You almost wished he would just push you down, tower over you, and do it all swiftly – because you weren't sure just how much of this your poor heart could take. You heard its pitter-pattering in your head, felt it drum in your fingertips, in your toes, thumping where his hands were taunting your tender flesh – petting the silk as it wept for more.

You felt something curl – coil – wind like an adder in your gut along with butterflies. Soon, glossing his entire hand with arousal. 

You heard the chuckle as he filled you up with one of his digits – long and thick with muscle, bumpy at the knuckles as it eased inside you – swirling around your velvet walls, all wet and fluttering for him – then followed by another – still with his thumb drawing sweet circles into your swollen clit, making you clench around the two fingers tightly with an ever-so-sweet moan spilling from your lips.

He groaned at the sensitivity – the stimuli and response at his fingertips – how impressionable you were for him. So sweet and pliant – knowing you were but a sheep caught on wolf claws.

His eyes were heavy-lidded, a sloppy grin showing teeth as his lips brushed up your collar with wet praise – his tongue hot as he licked up your throat with warm breath ever so very intimately – puffing like a hound as he bit your earlobe playfully, letting you know with thick rust, “I think you’re ready to take me.”

Oh, how he loved the way you tensed – knowing he had you completely in his palm – hooked right on his fingers – and soon on his cock.

BNHA – Bakugou, Deku, Kirishima, Enji, AFO, All Might, Mirio

JJK – Sukuna, Toji, Kenjaku

DS – Doma

HxH – Uvogin

[ravengards-rogue]

i thought of you so often.

arthur morgan x reader.

✧ tags : fem!reader (gendered language, explicit use of she/her in reference to reader), children / planning on children, generally sappiness, fluff, au where nothing bad happens to arthur hdskjsdkfhsj.

✧ wc : 2.4k (???)

✧ a/n : arthur morgan.... save me arthur morgan....also not a super original thought but i can't Stop thinking about it.

✧ synopsis : a collection of love letters, all unfinished, tucked somewhere you aren't meant to find them. oh, arthur loves you more than you knew.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚☽˚｡⋆

You try to keep out of Arthur's belongings.

He's owed some privacy, for one. More than that, you've never felt any reason to look into it. Arthur isn't a man of many words, though you catch moments of his introspection should you pry. He isn't stoic, neither. And above all things, he's kind. Really truly kind in a way that makes him different from other men.

You don't have any complaints about him is what you mean. Unlike the men you've loved before, there are no short-comings of Arthur that would drive you to wanting to investigate his own personal things. Especially something so personal like his journals, prior or present.

On top of that, you were there with him through everything. You were part of the gang and stayed by him when it all fell apart. It was towards the end of that that Arthur came to you near frenzied, told you his plans, his thoughts. Confided in you and no less than begged to go with him where he ran.

You loved Arthur enough to stay, and so things ended - and you ran. There isn't much his journal could tell that you couldn't surmise on your own.

It's been years now, and you've long since left that life. You live with Arthur quietly, peaceful in the moments with a garden and kitty sweet as sugar.

It's a good life. An honest, quiet one sometimes to the point of being boring. You rarely miss the action, though occasionally you'll take up a bounty just to feel alive and make some money.

Mostly though, you live as unassuming folk. No bloodshed, no wardens, no gunslinging.

Been talk between you both about having a baby, recently. Serious talk. You've made some money between here and there, and you've got a good life. You've traveled too. But it gets a little lonely, and you don't really get your fill with just Jack when John and Abi are ways away.

Before anything like that, though - you need to clear some space. Empty out some belongings and things collecting dust. Living in one place for too long creates all sorts of mess, you find. When Arthur is home to help, he does - but he's been busy lately figuring something out with Charles. Some business venture related to ranching that you know nothing about so far. They'll tell you when its ready.

Usually when you're tidying, you keep to just your things, or your shared things - but Arthur has lived more life than you. It shows in that big closet space filled with nick-knacks he has yet to toss.

You'd mentioned it to him not too long ago and he'd given you permission to go through them.

(A kiss to your forehead from chapped lips and hands holding your waist, Arthur hums in acknowledgement as you ask his permission.

"Ain't nothing I gotta hide from you. Do whatever you need.)

But like you said - you try to keep your nose out of his business if it's not necessary for you to be in it in anyway.

You weren't trying to look through his things, really. You started cleaning, worked your way to that last box. Up on a shelf in his closet, a little too high for you to reach easily. You made a misstep and dropped the damn thing. It barely missed your head as the whole thing fell open, and out came journals and papers and photographs.

You've always known Arthur to be sentimental, so none of it has been particularly surprising. A photo of wolves and him on a horse, the picture from John and Abigail's engagement. Some other scraps of sentimental value.

And then there was a journal. Not Arthur's journal that he's always using, but another you've never seen before. You know Arthur journals, seen the thing plenty though you never look unless he shows you first.

A journal with a dark brown stained leather binding, fallen open and your name scrawled out in pencil lead at the top of it.

The curiosity got the better of you, okay? Not your damn fault.

So you're thinking on it.

The fabric of your skirt is pooled out underneath you as you hold the thing in your hands, sitting down on the ground surrounded by things. You've stowed away everything else that fell out from the box after ensuring it was intact, including Arthur's journals. Everything with the exception of the one you're holding.

Some guilt eats at you. You don't wanna upset him potentially by having looked. Even if he gave you permission, looking in the damn thing is a little different. But your name was there so clearly, and well - you didn't think he wrote about you. Apart from here and there, maybe.

You hold the book out in front of you with a sigh, looking fondly at his name ingrained in the leather. You press your forehead against it with, resigning yourself completely.

"Lord forgive my pryin'," You mumble, hoping it's enough to absolve you.

Your heart feels funny as you let your fingers trace over the hard edge of the front cover, one eye shut as you start to open it slow.

The first few pages are nothing special.

A page outlining who the journal belongs to and when it was started, and some doodles of yarrow and oleander. The pages after that filled with mundane entries. About people he met or things he saw, all endearing to you. The corners of your lips tug up slightly.

You really love this man helplessly.

You flip through a few more pages, many of them blank before writing starts to appear again. Little by little, you find passages. You look to the dates up at the corner (though not all of them have one) and trace the timeline. This is from all the way back in Horseshoe Overlook.

It feels like ages ago now.

You look at a page with no date, and reading the writing in it. There's doodles of flowers and trees along the bottom of the page. The words are easy enough to make out - because Arthur has the most unusually beautiful handwriting.

There's some entries about you. At first, they all include your name in some context. Mentioned in the same way Arthur might mention Hosea or Abigail. The further you go, the less you see it. The more you become her and she.

It's a trend. The longer you read, the less there is about anyone else. Just you and all your silly idiosyncrasies tucked between pages. Something lovestruck and foolish lights its match in you.

Saw a body hanging at the tracks at Valentine. A gruesome sight. I told her about it and she laughed. Asked me to take her to see it. A strange woman, by all accounts.

You feel yourself smile a little as you continue to flip through the pages.

She joined me riding into town today. Said she had some business to attend but would not tell me any details. After, she came with me to purchase a new gun. I engraved a snake into it's handle, per her request.

Another few pages littered with drawings of delicate berries and waterfalls before you stumble across more writing. The more you flip, the longer the passages become you.

You can't tear your eyes away.

Rained today. Nothing too terrible or worth mentioning, except that she nearly caught a cold playing in it. I brought her coffee to keep her warm, but could not scold her further upon seeing her delight.

Another passage, this time written with messier hand writing. A coffee stain splatters on the white of the page.

Your heart tugs on itself. Swells about a thousand sizes. To think he wrote so much of your time together between these pages.

You read and read and read - and each passage is a little more mundane at the last. Some pages go on in vivid detail, but others are so short you aren't sure what to make of the fact he wrote them at all. As if such little details were important enough to keep in mind.

I picked a flower for her. I thought it would suit her taste. It was white with delicate petals. I did not know the name.

She wore it in her hair this evening. I find I can't stop grinning.

One passage on the next few pages, longer than the rest, catches your eye. From later in your time together, written when you were in Leymone. Near Scarlett Meadows and before the mess in Saint Denis.

After Arthur had been kidnapped.

I have gone on and on about the business with Colm O'Driscoll in many entries before this one. Yet, I find it difficult to forget. Many times I have come close to death, and still no experience lingers on my mind quite like this one. Everyone has done their best to look after me. For that I am grateful, though I do not care for being looked after. What use am I like this, I wonder? Perhaps, I should simply be grateful to be alive and in one piece, if a little uglier than I was. Alongside Miss Grimshaw and Miss Tilly, she has been by my side while I recovered. Such a carefree woman and yet I have seen her cry and weep over me countless times in the last few weeks alone. The decent man in me is apologetic for causing sorrow. Perhaps, it is the outlaw in me that feels some strange relief or satisfaction. Her fussing does not give me any grief. If anything, I find myself all the more endeared. Such a decent woman does not belong in a place like this. I hope she is able to go somewhere far away and live peacefully. I am not so shameless to want anything more. The time together we have spent, I will make sure to cherish.

Something painful and pitiful tugs at your heart. Even when Arthur admitted his feelings for you, he had started it on a similar tangent. You tell him often that you're the one who feels out of bounds with him. That a man as decent and as honest as him often feels like too much for you to have so easily.

A tear slips from your eye and you laugh at your own sentimentality, wiping it away before it can splatter onto the pages.

The further you read, the more sporadic entries become. You find that there are pages filled with sketches of you, but many of them are scratched out or half erased - like he did not find them good enough. Of your side profile, of your hands, of you pointing at a target with a gun. You feel a strange feeling of love wash over you.

Instead of concrete thoughts, you're met with Arthur's abstract. Subtle complexities and studies. There's honest tenderness in the way he sketches you and the words he chooses to caption each with. Lighter, thinner lines. Smaller doodles like stray daydreams caught onto a page.

You've never doubted Arthur in his love for you, quiet man he is - but it proves to overwhelm when presented to you in such a way.

You get to back pages. There, you're finally met with more writing. Except, instead of journal entries, there's the start of letters. You find your name at the top of the page.

Over and over. Love letters, all unfinished or scrapped. Written over and over and over, but not completed. There's tens of them at least. You've never received a love letter from Arthur before, though it's nothing you fault him for.

Now you're almost glad. You like this much better.

My darling girl My muse The better half of me, I must find some way to tell you all of what I think of you. It seems no words do it justice, I'm afraid. Still, it is in my best interest to try.

Damn that man.

When you find yourself starting to weep, you don't fight the feeling. You merely shut the book closed and set it in your lap before crying into your hands.

Such overwhelmingly happy tears. You feel off balance. If the whole world turned on its head this very minute, you're unsure you'd notice. What a decent, honest man you've come to love. What a tender one.

In the middle of your crying, you don't hear the door open or close. Nor do you hear Arthur's heavy footfall until he's in the doorway, with a voice worried half to death.

"Sweetheart, what in the hell?"

You turn your head to look at him, watching his eyes widen at your tear stained face. You clamber to your feet hurriedly, book dropping onto the ground next to you as you throw yourself at him as soon as you can.

Arthur is a steady enough man not to stumble when you do, though you can feel his apprehension. Eventually, he circles his arms around your waist. His hugs are strong. Bout strong as him and then some. An arm wrapped around your waist, the other crossed over your back all around your shoulder. Full pressure as he squeezes you tight, patting the back of your head.

"I leave you alone for a few hours. What has gotten into you, little lady?"

You pull back and and look at him, wet lashes and all, before leaning up to kiss him. Arthur meets your lips chastely at first before making a noise of surprise as you kiss him further. You use both hands to grab his face as you do, scruff scratching against your skin. His lips are soft, welcoming. He melts into the touch, so easily - blue eyes lovestruck as you pull away.

"You know I love you, don't you Arthur? More than anyone in this crazy world we live in,"

His face softens visibly. He smiles at you, touching his head to yours.

"Somehow, I do. Though, I'm wonderin' what the hell brought this on."

You tuck your face against his chest, feeling his laughter reverb through you at the way you cling to him so fervently. You sniffle as you talk.

"Found your journal. The one about me,"

He goes stiff, then silent. When you look up again, he's blushing red. He pinches his brow.

"Lord, I'd forgotten all about it,"

You shake your head.

"Ain't nothing for you to be embarrassed about. You are so wonderful,"

He pouts at you. Your heart swells. "You ain't helping with the embarrassment."

You hold him further. Hug him so tight, worried he'll disappear if you don't.

"I love you, Arthur."

"You already told me once, didn'tcha?"

"And I'll tell you one thousand times over," You emphasize, pouting at him. "Really. I love you,"

"I love you too sweetheart," His hand cups your face, thumb brushing along your waterline. "Don't cry no more. Spoils that pretty face."

"I'll try but I don't know if it's all out of me,"

Arthur laughs, pressing a kiss against your hairline. "Guess I'll just have to wipe your tears."

.𖥔 ݁ ˖˚☽˚｡⋆