i a-door you
contents ౨ৎ ⋆ k. bakugo x fem reader. fluff. cursing. food. minor unintentional violence. ⭑ bakugo hits on you. literally.
You’re minding your business, book bag slung across your shoulder, and about to walk through the door to 2A’s classroom when something smacks you in the face.
Not only unprompted, but hard.
“Ow!”
It happens so quickly that you don’t remember squeezing your eyes shut as you stumble backwards, both hands flying to clutch your forehead.
Opening your eyes, you swear you can already feel the spot starting to bruise. The previously closed door to the classroom stood ajar and as the cherry on top of the concussion you just received, someone roughly brushes past you.
Fucking asshole.
You whip around, head still throbbing, about to give whoever it is a peace of your mind and finally speak above an inside voice for the first time since a robot almost fell on you during entrance exams semesters ago, when your teary eyes are met with crimson red ones.
He turns his head to give you a once over and your body freezes as his eyes linger a little longer on the darkening mark where the door got you. Something similar to amusement tugs at his lips.
“Pretty cute.”
You blink, dumbfounded as he casually turns on his heel to walk away.
What. The hell.
Did you literally just get hit on by Bakugo freaking Katsuki.
The identical dropped jaws of your classmates that were visible from inside the open doorway confirmed that what just happened was not in fact a post-traumatic induced hallucination, with Midoriya looking the most gobsmacked, his eyes almost comically bulging out of his skull, and upon glancing at Mina, who quickly gets over her initial shock to grin and shoot you a double thumbs up, she excitedly mouths ‘i told you so,’ and you’re not sure whether to laugh or to cry.
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀:¨ ·.· ¨:
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ `· . ꔫ
The next day, you’re sporting a fresh, new bandaid on your forehead. It was quite a fashion statement, if you do say so yourself.
It was also the last one at the nurse’s so you were pretty happy to nab it, apparently being the brand that everyone chose when they too got their respective boo-boos.
The latte Mina and the girls brought back from your favorite cafe sat on the wooden coffee table in the common area, still steaming. You refused to go out with a huge bruise marring your appearance, even with the bandaid covering the most of it, and you would take the fullest advantage of the injured person princess treatment while it lasted.
All while awkwardly avoiding a certain blond.
Now that you’re thinking about it, he’s honestly always been kind of nice to you, in his own weird way.
Like when you were forced to ask if you could borrow his eraser, because apparently no one else in the class carried one. Imagine saving Japan your first year of highschool and only writing in pen, even for calculus. Is this what the future generation has come to?
After breathlessly rushing the words out in a hushed voice and wondering if he heard you at all, Bakugo doesn’t even turn around from where he’s resting his chin on his hand listening to Present Mic’s enthusiastic lecture on subject-verb agreement, as he reaches an arm behind him to drop it on your desk.
You’re not sure if you remembered to say “your” before “eraser,” so all he probably heard was “can I borrow eraser?” and it still haunts you to this day.
Shaking the thoughts of him from your mind, you flip your history textbook open to page three hundred and ninety four, ‘A Comprehensive Timeline of Quirk Generations.’ You’re attempting to study for your next upcoming quiz in Midnight’s class.
Key word: attempting.
A delicious smell was starting to waft your way from the kitchen across the room, and now you were kind of hungry. You could feel your attention waning and shook your head, the image of your most recent report card filled with straight As sobering you up. Food could come later, right now you had to focus.
Just twenty more minutes of review, then I'll eat.
Bakugo’s placing the breakfast he easily finished whipping up on the counter. As he uses a spatula to gently coax the fluffy soufflé pancakes out of the pan, he notices the familiar petals of your favorite flower decorating the ceramic he’s putting them on.
It was from a tableware set he picked out when everyone first moved into the dorms. Glasses had assigned everyone groceries among various other things to go shopping for in small groups, and he was paired up with Ponytail to go buy plates.
They were browsing the shelves of a local Daiso store filled with colorful, adorably decorated dishes and rice bowls, when he stopped in front of a price tag, eyes dragging up to study the item it belonged to. The details on it were intricate, and breathtakingly so.
It reminded him of how he felt whenever he looked at you.
Ponytail follows his gaze, and her own eyes brighten.
“Oh, it’s decorated with the favorite flower of–!”
“I know.” He cuts her off, glaring at the floral box set of bowls and plates, before carefully putting it in their cart.
Momo’s eyes widen a bit, before a small, knowing smile spreads across her lips and Bakugo curses at her perceptiveness.
He almost wished he was paired up with that icy-hot bastard instead, who was so oblivious that if you dangled a confession letter in front of him he would have thought you wanted him to proofread it for you.
That was a while ago now, and everyone’s been happily eating meals on the plates they bought ever since.
He tops off the pancakes with a handful of fresh berries and a drizzle of honey, and slides it next to a steaming plate of a kimchi omelette with a zigzag of sriracha sauce already on the counter.
From where he stands, he snorts at your bandaid, noticing the obnoxious amount of Hello Kitty’s plastered all around it. Out of all the bandaids from Recovery Girl’s collection that she kept in her office, of course you would pick the cutest fucking one.
It was undoubtedly something you would like, he thinks, begrudging in his fondness. It was so you.
“Get your ass over here.”
You jump in your spot on the couch at the loud volume of his voice, though it sounded a bit softer than usual. With a finger pointing to yourself, you raise your head in confusion. “Me….?”
Was this about yesterday? Oh my god, was he mad?
You’re not sure why he would be, since he’s not the one that got bitch-slapped in the face by a giant door.
“I don't see anyone else I'd be talking to.” Bakugo scoffs.
He's right, to your increasing dread. The entire common area is completely empty, and you have no choice but to comply with his request.
You’re still nervously fiddling with the edge of your hoodie sleeve, the usual comfort of its softness abandoning you as you approach the kitchen to find him standing at a seat near the counter, arms folded. It hasn’t even been a minute in the same proximity as him and his presence is kind of overwhelming you already.
You’re trying so hard not to stare at his biceps. And just him in general.
“Sit.” he commands, the sound of the metal stool echoing against his hand as he pats it.
You obediently sit down, cursing your lack of a backbone. But his tone didn’t sound like he was planning to take no for an answer, anyway.
“Eat.”
He jabs a thumb at the plate of warm, sweet smelling cloud-like goodness in front of you. You stare at him, wide-eyed.
“This is for me?”
“Huh. You’re slower than I thought you were.” He rolls his eyes and starts to dig into his own plate of omelette in front of him, taking a seat on the stool across from you. It looked good too, as expected. “You’re welcome or whatever.”
With his aggressive blessing and after throwing a quiet but extremely grateful ‘thank you for the meal’ his way, you start to eat.
Your face lights up in joy as the divine taste of spongy goodness and honey spreads across your tongue, and you silently praise his mom for giving birth to the next Gordon Ramsay.
He flicks your forehead as you’re mid-bite in pancake and you yelp in surprise, raising your head to glare at his handsome face. What now? And did he have to be as infuriating as he was good-looking?
That crimson gaze once again stares you down, barely contained amusement dancing in embers of the hot coals of his eyes, and your skin grows warm as you realize you said that last part out loud.
You’re about to give into the urge to run away and take the plate of half-finished pancakes with you when he gruffly speaks up.
“You can’t retain information unless you have something in your stomach, idiot.”
You nod, mouth full, and make a mental note to study on an empty tummy away from him in the future. It’s like he reads your mind because you wince as he scowls, flicking your head again, although a little more gently this time.
Taking care to do it in a spot away from the bandaid covering the injury that he caused, your brain points out.
The both of you continue to eat in comfortable silence.
After a while, your plates are nearly clean.
You smile a little, realizing that you were eating on your favorite plate in the dorm’s kitchen the whole time, and admire the petals of your beloved flowers delicately painted in the center and outer edges of the stark white dish, with the pancakes no longer covering them.
Bakugo notices this, as you softly begin to trace the rim with your finger, and fights the twitch of his lips that threatened to curl upwards.
He’s also noticed those little glances you think you’ve been discreetly throwing his way between the bites of pancake, which you nearly inhaled to his pride.
You could almost be as quiet as that rock-faced animal whisperer of a classmate you both had, but you’ve always sucked at being subtle.
Good thing he hates subtle things.
“Where do you think you’re going?” He asks as you start to slide off the tall stool, a hint of smirk in his voice. It was cute, how you think you could run away from him so easily. You stop in your tracks, blinking at him as he rises from his own seat.
Strong, toned arms that you totally haven’t been staring at for the past half hour are slowly placed on both sides of you, caging you against the counter. An embarrassing noise escapes from your lips, and the cold granite bites into your back as you lean away, doing anything to avoid his gaze.
“Look at me.”
He rolls his eyes as you continue to look to the side, suddenly finding the chibi magnets of various high ranking heroes on the fridge to be very interesting.
“I said,” he grabs your chin in his hand, which was so big compared to your face that he could squish your cheeks between his ring finger and thumb, “look at me.
You huff, now forcefully held in place to face him against your will. “I’m looking.”
“Good.”
He leans down and his lips graze your ear, seeming to take great pleasure in only further adding to your embarrassment when he mutters:
“And don’t stand so fucking close to the door next time.”
not bakugo pulling the classic asian parent move and giving u food instead of a proper apology LOLL
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ANGEL OF SMALL DEATH [ john price x f! reader ]
: he sees you when his vices take hold. little love, invented. chimeric, he assumed - until you're not.
mdni. noncon; addiction (nicotine and alcohol); SSRIs; intoxication; breeding kink; daddy kink; hallucinations; kidnapping; drugging; objectification; slut-shaming; sexual harassment; violence; bondage; vomiting; guns; suicide, murder, pregnancy, spanking and branding mentions. 7k.
a/n: have yall seen ruby sparks? yeah imagine that but worse
John's always had his fixes.
He remembers the hysterics. Five and wet behind the ears, lungs scoured raw of anguish when his mum hadn't let him sup the vanilla extract. It's not what you'd expect, hun. But the child-sized idée fixe, destructive in its naivety, turned its head at the implication. He stuck his nose to the bottle's cap, got a whiff of it unfiltered, and revolted; how could it taste like anything but the ambrosia it promised?
Or, who was she to deny he try?
(His resistance to authority can be spoored there. A miasmic trail back to youth, stinking something foul. It had been a Sisyphean effort, pyrrhic, when he enlisted. Burnishing odour only to find, without it, there was nothing left for them to make use of.)
So – red-faced, tousled pyjamas at 2200, balanced atop a chair as his parents snored soundly on the couch – he snuck a teaspoon for himself.
It was foul, of course. A calcine irritation that clawed on its way down his throat, baring raw tissue in its wake. He hid his coughs behind his sleeves, vision cloudy with tears as he put everything back where it belonged – not disappointed so much as he was committed, he thinks. Because the very next night, he came back to try it again.
And again, and again.
Like clockwork, he tipped the small vial up onto his tongue and hoped it would pass into something different. Obsessive. Ruinous monomania. His dreams sprung into caliginous visions that detailed nothing but the phantom touch of it to his tongue; this taste, syrupy sweet like nothing he would find in comfits and puddings and pies.
(In hindsight, all it did was teach him how to embrace the burn.)
It only stopped when his mum woke to him voiding his guts in an old popcorn bowl. Poison control, buoyant levity clipped over the rotary phone, told her that it happens all the time. Kids go looking for a midnight snack and think vanilla will hit the spot. Our suggestion is to settle for alternatives until he's old enough to know better. Hydrate in the meanwhile.
– know better.
It's hard to say he does.
His wants still have wants, have asinine wants, that which keep him so late into the night that it's dawn before he falls comatose. Sunk into a leather wingback, the space of his parlour more smoke than it is air, contemplating keeping a warm body in these hinterlands. Helplessly soft, pretty. Fixated on that faceless something, burrowed beneath his sweet tooth again.
But on the wrong side of forty, he's honed prudence like a well-oiled firearm. Custom so things run smoothly, though not one he finds necessary if it weren't for convention. He knows his job would cut in on the upkeep, month long absences like a disease to whoever he manages to snare. It'll kill them, slowly, holed up in this home alone.
(When his parents did away with the extract, he tore the curtains and scribbled on their walls. A boy's green version of withdrawal, deprived of his favourite vice. He's never considered sobriety for that very reason – he's bad even with a maduro in hand.
And the thing about people, they're never so easy to replenish.)
Age besets everything. Counters them, grown as he is. Pragmatic.
Still. To say he knows better is... faulty, flawed. Not when he fists his cock to those fantasies and stirs on all the ways he can bring them to light. Early retirement (a prompt no; he's just as dependant on the field), or multiple little loves to keep each other company, his house turned an Arcadia of nymphs (though he tires to think of wrangling more than one, and the idea diffuses like sugar steeped in tea.)
It's on his fourth- fifth iteration that John starts to see it for what it really is. That this – a darling wife to curl between his legs – is like the imagined taste of vanilla extract. Too good to ever be made true. At least for a man of his ilk, whose bloody hands slip around nirvana. Unearned. Chained to purgatory so long as he weighs sins against the greater good. He wasn't meant for the finer things in life.
So he sticks to what he has. Old familiars. Noxious inhibitors, palmed for upwards of ten pounds, crafted for old dodgers like himself. Tobacco, dry whiskey. Nicotine to spout fire to his hindbrain. Cheap, easy accesses that sate the itch behind his eyes, so long as he lights another.
Ouroboros. It feeds itself and lasts.
(Until you come off the tail end that is, and sever the loop with your own, clever little hands.)
You pose a different kind of problem.
It starts after Serbia. Hounding across the Carpathian mountains for the better part of a winter has detrimental effects, see. And though he eventually locates the bunker Laswell's informants alerted them to, he comes out of it changed – head fixed the wrong way around, skin flaking over off a mulish swell of anger. Going back home is an ordeal when his body acclimatised to find warmth in the frost, talking to Stygian shadows like comrades. Necessitated madness revoked.
Because all of a sudden, everything is too comfortable. Vibrant. Nothing hurts enough to match the stress still ricocheting within him, and the imbalance threatens to capsize. The doctors prescribe SSRIs, tell him to keep it separate, Captain, when their eyes skim that part of his file that notes him as a habitual drinker – so he switches from bourbon to Canadian whiskey, like the ABV will make a difference.
(That inveterate defiance, rearing its ugly head once more.)
And really, he doesn't get what all the fuss is about.
The static in his head flatlines, white noise taking its slot. It's the greatest peace he's found since his bunkmate at boarding school stuck a joint between his teeth and told him to suck. Like fog wearing over a hill, his thoughts grow muddied, loose and abandoned once he can't tell which way is up or where the sky ends.
And the wants, the very same he's long since buried, come back with a vengeance. Unchanged, for the most part (he doubts they were ever dead in the first place) yet manifested differently, like they're privy to the scepticism that killed them last.
(Reveries no longer disembodied, shuddering old film onto the backs of his eyes, but projected into the dark corners of his house, instead.)
He hears your laugh, first. It is early March and easter endorsements already shade the telly in garish joie de vivre, corporations fighting for a foot in your spring celebrations! Buy an egg-dying kit and get one free, hurry before it's too late! John doesn't remember turning it on, can hardly feel the remote in his hands, but that acedia ebbs once the sound of it meets his ears. The sound of you–
Jingle-bell mischievous, he knows it has no place amidst the foolish ditties of spring. He turns the T.V. off, sitting upright in his chair, ears piqued in every direction as he waits for it again.
From the kitchen: another breathless titter, tapped from a chest too delicate to be mistaken for the howling winds outside. When he rises to inspect the source, he swipes the spare gun he uses to foot a broken table, trigger finger dangling bonelessly by the grip. Good to have it there, just in case, though he's confident he won't need to resort to such measures to neutralise you – not if you equal the Zephyr-like quality of your voice.
(Paranoia, it seems, is another effect of downing his meds with Crown Royal. Had he been less inebriated, he would have remembered that his doors are double bolted, and that there's no one out for miles.)
But what he expects to find, luminous between the birch cupboard rows, is not there. His kitchen is as empty as it's always been.
So, they might have warned him about it. He might have avoided this whole thing had he listened. But things snowball when he grasps what's happening. Calamitous uptake; it invades his dreams again, and his dreams invade reality.
(If he cannot have what he wants within the provident constrictions of life, then what's the harm in indulging himself, if only a little.)
Soon enough, he sees glimpses of you wherever he looks.
Sylphic figure come to haunt him. Light bounces through you, your flesh gossamer-like. Diaphanous. He thinks you cannot be crafted that way if not to accent the dark, wet rims of your eyes. The lightning-branched veins etched to all four extremities. Nipples like petals, touched alluringly to your breasts. He thinks you cannot be fictitious – he's never been an inventive man, and the impish flick of your lips reads as familiar, somehow. Dancing on the tip of his tongue, or a song he's heard once and never again. Like he's taken to it before–
His memory swishes like watered nectar in this state. It's impossible to place.
Still–
So long as you continue to appear as fine mist does, chasing the throttles of his high, John's a happy man. He need not tell you anything; you already know his name, what it is he likes. You sway to imagined tunes (later, he couples it to the erratic drumming of his heart) and jump nimbly around his legs, winding and tangling and falling right through them when he wishes to see you stumble.
You don't talk much, either. He has yet to whet the finer points of your being, work out what makes you tick or how you'd enunciate your words. It's an eggshell process. Fragile. Some nights, he'll imagine you with a cadence that doesn't quite fit, and you'll stutter like a faulty motor before shattering from view. To avoid disillusionment, he has to be careful. Extend a platter of properties for you to choose from, picky thing, and watch as you notch them on your tongue, testing.
You'll get this look on your face as you do. Contemplative, lips pursed for a moment before you shrug and slide down to decorate his feet, arms stretched across his ottoman like willow branches over a creek. It would put him off if it were anyone else, but he's eternally endeared to you.
The first time you speak, it's to call him out on that.
'Naturally.' You giggle, twirling your phantom fingers in the tufts of his leg hair. 'You have to like something in order for me to present it. Or is that not how it works?'
He doesn't think so.
"You tell me, little one. If that were the case, why disappear when I try something you aren't keen on, hm?" His words are slurred, strung together hastily, like his tongue hasn't the strength to articulate each in full. You understand him anyway, of course, scrunching your nose.
'I don't know.'
"Think, then."
You shuffle straighter on your knees.
'Maybe I want to be just right for you, daddy. Not all your ideas are great.'
John jerks his leg admonishingly, the joint of it passing right through you. It causes you to blink out of existence for a second, and his throat twists uncomfortably around the new darkness. Loneliness hurts more, harrows deeper, now that he's unused to it.
But you come back, straddling his hips this time. You always do
(So long as he keeps sipping, the glass in his hand sweating cool condensation into his skin. His cigar slowly smoulders away in a nearby ashtray, waiting for the uptake.)
"Mm, thought I lost ya." And if you were there – really there, he thinks – he'd wrap your hair in a fat fist and angle your head roughly down onto his. His arms lay flat to his sides, however. Restless.
'No.' You don't exhibit the same discretion. You smooth down his bare chest, ironing his scars until he feels brand new again. Whole as a kid. 'Haven't you heard? I have a tongue now, and all I wanna do is talk.'
"Is that right?" He hums, half-lidded eyes watch the space between your knees widen. Like Artemis in her waters, cursing Actaeon to the jowls of his dogs – you love teasing him when you know he cannot do anything about it, destined to be torn apart by his inborn desire.
'Well, what else is there?'
And if not for that one thing, John would be content to live like this forever.
(Two, if you count his prescription quickly running out.)
Routine lasts about a fortnight, if his taking of time is to be trusted.
Staged courting, you call it. A production of how typical romances go. When the sky bruises, opening up like the ripe flesh of a plum, he'll knock back two tablets using the last dregs of his afternoon whiskey and wait for you to come home to him. You look stunning when you arrive; naked, your body soft and creased and effulgent. And while it depends on how his day's been, more often than not, you'll imitate rubbing his feet as he tells you about everything – paperwork and the taskforce and state secrets (does confidentiality count towards figments of his high?) – before he's settled enough to cut to the chase.
Yet he runs out of patience for it as time hauls on. Avidity amasses, tumorigenic need cramping his chest. One day, he stops you from kneeling at all.
"No need for that, sweet thing." He orders with a stiff grunt. There's no justification as to why, though it's clear you sense it already. The fraying strings of his sanity, that which you bat at like a playful kitten, have started to unravel dangerously close to what is holding it all together. "Just do what you do best, hm?"
(The best you can do–)
'Yes, daddy.'
Ever-dutiful, despite the monotony. There are no arguments with you, no taming and fights unless he's in a particularly aggressive mood. The only indication of your disappointment (not yours so much as it is his in himself) is the wet flutter of your lashes, the poking harlequin pout.
Both disappear from view when you turn your back to him and bend at the hip, small hands stretching to dig into your behind. His cock is out in no time – was practically tearing at his pant's seams, really – thrumming painfully hard, leaking onto his stomach when you pull apart either cheek like dough.
Your pussy spreads, glimmering under a matting of wiry hair. Arousal (feigned, imagined, projected–) webs your thighs together, swollen clit budding at the end of your mons. Apple of Eden; his jerks are awkward, uncoordinated, in comparison. Human. There's a twinge in his wrist from working himself almost daily.
His teeth taste like tobacco and spice, sleep clinging to the roof of his mouth. Would you eclipse it with your sweet-sour tang? He pictures taking you; stuffing his nose right below the tight rim of your ass so his tongue can lave over your slit. Working you open with his tongue. You'd soak the hair around his lips, and he'd press harder in response.
John spoils you rotten in his dreams. You know it, too, toes wiggling where you stand a few feet away. How cruel that he shouldn't get the chance to, then – that he has to consume his fixes to stop them from taunting him, and you're God's way of saying that he can't always get what he wants.
Carrot on a fucking stick. He's made an arse of. And worse yet–
He can't cum, no matter how enticingly you stand there. His palms are too calloused, nerves grown bored of their rough drag. Every jerk is a barely-there sensation. Surface level. Shallow. Like a rock skipping across a lake that never manages to sink.
(It never did amount to what you do to him in his head. But it seems as though his body has finally caught on to what the rest of him already knew.
That this – this tragic, autogenous slaking of carnal desire – can not continue on forever.)
He groans, paralysis needling painfully up his neck. It echoes like anger and holds none of the punch.
Breaking position, you twist to assess the newborn tension.
'Shhhh,' You coo. There's no judgement in your glassy eyes, none that can perceive (or wants to see). Rather, it's all pure love, a whisper of distress, and devotion. His little love, so perfect besides this one thing. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'
"Not your fault." Hoarse. Broken.
(Who has he become?)
'I'd help you if I could. Let you take whatever you wanted from me, you wouldn't even have to ask.'
He'd been the one to initiate it, but the prospect of his orgasm is long abandoned when you perch on the armrest, laying your head near his. He has nowhere else to put his hands, so he keeps them cupped between his thighs – and if he suspends utilitarianism for long enough, can almost believe that they're yours, instead.
"That's nice, little one."
He imagines your warmth, the soft comfort of your bosom, as sleep encroaches on his periphery. You'd cup the tired weight of his head and lay it on your lap, there to stay until he awakes to birdsong. There in the morning light.
Thus the minutes tick by in quiet melancholy. He's halfway layered in the pelts of hypnagogia before you speak again.
'You should visit town tomorrow. Mail something home for Mother's Day maybe, and stop by the grocer's for eggs. You're all out.'
He hasn't seen greater society for almost a month.
A wicked hangover splits his skull, worming its claws into the soft matter of his brain. John had initially set out to do as you bid him – find a nice present for his mum and stock up for the next few weeks' hibernation – but the throngs of people crowding home goods and the jewellers make his condition worse, so he resolves to call her on the day and heads straight to the market instead.
Eggs, you said. He needs a lot more than that. Water and red meat and perhaps something that leaks grease when fried. Cucumbers, yoghourt, granola, too. Milk or juice, never both because he can't commit to finishing them before their best-by date. Fruit. Cookies.
The list grows exponentially as he surveys the colourful aisles, under eyes tender to the touch. If it weren't for the cart carrying most of his weight, he would have toppled over already, his chest dipped over the handle, wheels barreling forward. The store's empty enough that he doesn't worry about clipping someone's ankles. For now, it's just him.
Always that. Just him, and–
"Ah!"
Fuck.
"Are you alright?" He defaults, lurching to pluck the rolling oranges off the floor. It necessitates far more exertion than he can handle at the moment. The woman he ran into catches what bowls from his reach.
"Oh, yes! So sorry, that one's on me." She laughs, nervous. The nature of it – gentle, shaky like the beat of a butterfly's wing – rouses a near Pavlovian response in him, pleasantries crystallising between his teeth, hard as pearls. He coasts a suspicious look up, but her head stays bowed as she piles everything into her basket, arched baseball cap obscuring her features. "I insist on carrying everything, see, then it gets too much for me and the baskets are the nearest thing, and you know how heavy those can get if you do some serious shopping, don't you?. Honestly, I never learn. How silly."
The wonder shatters. He cringes, eyelids pruning shut to gather his sore thoughts in the sudden clammer. Talks too much, too loud. He finds it hard to tolerate anything but singsong whispers these days.
(On him, he knows.)
Unceremonious, they both stand. John extends the final orange, appraising the products she tucks it between rather than look back up at her. Sugar, butter, eggs, flour. And a hefty heap of citrus, of course. Odd.
She seems to think the same, breaking the awkward lull first.
"Big family?" The question is clearly well-intentioned – posed to the stacked contents of his cart. No well-adjusted man would hoard as many perishables for himself, not with the grocer's as accessible as it is. But John is not well-adjusted in any sense of the word, especially in the past few months. All her prying does, then, is inflame the irritation dusting his throat, kneading salt into the wound.
How incredibly unfortunate timing.
"Gingivitis?" He clips back. His hangover makes regret a hard thing to reach, though given she doesn't take offence to his snipe.
"Ouch, okay." She laughs, more lighthearted than before. It reminds him of you (you, is anything its own thing anymore?) and John feels a fire light his heels. Agitation to get back home. "No, I'm making orange shortbread for the old folks at the nursing home. Needed to replenish a few things. I haven't baked in a while."
"How nice."
"'Tis the season! Erm– I mean. Y'know, with Mother's Day."
(Later, when he's staring at his fingers, sozzled like a cat on cream, he replays this conversation over in his head like he'll be able to change its outcome. Had he been alert, he'd have picked up on it by now. Christmas platitudes in spring – who else did he know with such transgressive peculiarities?
Captain Price wouldn't have missed it. Unfortunately for him, he left that intensity between powdered ice and silver firs.)
"Anyway." She coughs. He didn't realise he was expected to respond, stare lingering on the exit some distance away, keen to see this end. In his periphery, her cap tips down, supply list clutched in fidgety hands as she reads down the line of ingredients. He forces his attention back to the moment, training his eyes on the curve of her skull. "Just one thing left. Um, should be down hereeeee–"
Her head tilts up again, searching for the aisle markers overhead.
And it's–
Painful. Like the rip release of every organ seizes simultaneously, domino discharge down his spine. Ribs flush suddenly into the flaring muscle of his heart, which thrashes wildly against the corral, desperate to see itself out. To reach across this empty space and leech on to the delicate features that come into view. His brain – startled out of its judiciousness – blares I told you so's to the hot rush of blood behind his ears. Marrow melts to oil his joints, unmooring their structural integrity, and his breakfast threatens to disgorge and make for a foul first impression.
(John always thought revelations came kindly, that they blossomed in the neglected forks of life. Like a summer boscage, or the gentle, prying hands of a monarch escaping its cocoon. How can divulgence be anything but soft, and refined? How would the world grapple with them if otherwise?
He sees it now for what it is.
The world would have no choice.)
"Vanilla extract." You shake your list, smiling at him – a vivid, honest smile – before you brush right out of view.
He tells himself this doesn't change things. No matter how you like to argue the opposite.
'I don't see why not, daddy. Don't you want me, too?'
More than he'd like anything else in the world. But it's back again, that reaper of dreams poison control once foretold. Know better. He does, at least to the extent that bringing you here – tying you to his bed posts like he so desperately wants to do – is not the best idea. His age, his job, his incessant fucking wants, all pave their own desire paths; some more practical than others but less tempting as a result.
He knows how loneliness kills. At least he's built for it, but you?
"Work complicates things, little one."
John finds it all unfurling before him, the coffin housing his fears unhinged.
(You, dead by your own hands or worse, made vulnerable to the brutes he works against. Not a possibility when you're linked to him like this, hallucinatory, unreal, but you – the you he saw earlier today – aren't any of those things.)
'You don't really believe that, do you?'
You're never so argumentative. He sucks his teeth, waving a hand through your hips. And it must snub you so, for you disappear like smoke beneath a cloudburst of rain.
No matter. He doesn't need the temptation finding him.
(That is, until an answer finds him first.)
He phones home for Mother's Day, and she asks for updates for any lucky miss he would call his.
In the borders of his vision, you're hunched over the persian rug that was a gift from an associate for a job well done. Your feet cross over each other, fingers working idly at pretending to braid the fringed edge. The sight gets the better of him, adorable, and he briefly considers switching his answer from the usual – wish you'd stop fretting, it's not doing your health any favours – until sense catches on. He wouldn't know how to deal with the questions.
"No."
"What a shame. I know you're busy with that job and all, John," Because his mother never addresses the big risk to her son's life by name. "but you really should work on making me some grandbabies, before I pass on to the earth."
"Please, mum. Don't start with that nonsense–"
"No! It's any day now, you know it as well as I do." She tuts. He remembers her hands – tracing cool patterns onto his scalp that night, back when he was five and only concerned with the best taste his mouth could fathom. He remembers, and thinks of the wrinkled stretch of them now. "Take this as my last word of wisdom! Family will be the one thing you have when those milking tosser's decide to do away with you. Family, John!"
He chokes back a sigh.
"Yeah. So you've said."
Family. So bloody simple, isn't it?
Iron-wrought key, right under his nose this whole time.
His last two pills frown at him from behind their orange confines, two-toned and unassuming. He could get more if he so pleased, but the hope is that they won't be necessary after tonight.
Carried by the bourbon that blazes down his gullet, they go down smoothly. Soon enough, you appear, summoned, as he laces his boots.
"Does it hurt you, sweet thing?" He finally asks, punching an arm through his windbreaker's sleeve. April showers carry bracingly after dusk, weatherproof attire a functional choice.
That is to say, the towel in his pocket isn’t for him.
You gain that elvish look to your face, of the same variety he fell in love with when you first appeared to him. He often forgets how otherworldly you can be; radiant, inhuman vision. Your mirror isn't so... remarkable. Frizzy hair, fleshly, bleeding behind round cheeks. Perhaps that's the appeal.
'F'course not. It is me, after all.'
"Is it?" The front door clicks behind him, new-washed breeze pushing it into place. It feels final, like casting his decision in stone.
'Hmm,' You pretend to think for a long, long while, prancing a solid two paces behind no matter what speed he sets. A new moon blights the fields around his home, sparse raindrops reflecting only your glowing figure. It lights the way until he reaches the skirts of town, when street lamps bleed gold down onto him. Only then do you speak again. 'I should think so, yes. Take a left here.'
John does as you say.
'Though she won't be as receptive to it all. Right.'
He turns right.
'You’ll have to decide how to deal with that.'
"I'd appreciate a few pointers."
'What do you think I'm doing, daddy?' You murmur, materialising before him as he comes up on an avenue known for its nightlife. 'Take a right here and keep going.'
"And you?" He asks, though he already knows the answer.
'I'll be there.'
You are. Though you’re not alone.
Two cretins crowd you into a brick wall, lanky arms anchored by your head to form a flimsy aviary. John hears their badgering a block away; crowing voices, placatory promises they wouldn’t be able to uphold even if they knocked back a viagra each. The wind carries it, works their whispers into fine dust. Powder. Negligible. He’s seen this dance before – this dreadful caper, a little bit of force behind what is otherwise an insipid show – but he’s usually above such drama. The men he keeps know not to ask for what they want. Not when it hazards a bird flapping out of reach.
You’ve got to clip their wings, first.
Though you look like you’d be indebted to any sort of hero. The hem of your dress rides up your thigh, snapping away from restive hands. Shortening what is already… He resolves to admonish you about it later, traipsing closer to the scene. Given your ornament, he can’t blame these men beyond covetous reason, but he won’t topple it onto you either.
Everything flays out before him. Of the bunch, you demand the slyest hand.
“C’mon, love. It isn’t that far of a walk.”
“Yeah. You’re pissed out of yer mind a’ready. Can’t go home now, huh?”
“Would be so cute between us both.”
“The best. Look at those wide eyes.”
“Busy checkin’ out the arse on her, but I’ll get to her eyes in a minute.”
Your face crumbles in on itself. He’s closer now. Can make out the mascara painting black tracks down your cheeks, lips smeared by the rain – or, the alternative, pecking vultures having claimed them already. Either way, a green-eyed serpent seethes in the curls of his gut, blood imbued venom coursing. He feels it wind, poising for attack, strength compressed into a tight ball of anger.
Then, when one of them – ginger, juvenile – snakes a hand between your legs, it strikes.
He rips his gun from the inner lining of his coat. The other kid is shorter, more on edge, so John doesn’t worry about the force it’d take to daunt him. When the cold press of his muzzle fixes to his companion’s temple, he dashes away with a pathetic screech, tripping over the loose ends of his shoelaces. Par for the course. Weasel.
The ginger isn’t so lucky.
“You get off on scaring defenceless girls, lad?” He barks into his ear, one hand gripping both floundering wrists. The boy cringes, fear rattling his throat. Any response he tries to shape turns out a nasally wheeze.
“P-Please-”
“Shut your fucking trap. You’d have a better shot at mercy carving your little cock off.”
“I w-wo– we were just-t having fun. No harm… harm done, right?” The pleas recourse to you. In his periphery, John registers your frown. Half-hearted. Scared still – of both the unfamiliar, violent men. He peels the commotion two steps back to show he means no harm.
(To his narrow definitions, of course. His plans for you constitute harm in anyone else’s book. He’s sure that, if you were wise to them, you’d slip in the other direction.)
“She doesn’t seem to think so.”
“No! No, p-please, p–” He silences the boy with a pistol-whip, blunt end of the gun breaking skin off his jaw. The message couldn’t have been clearer – twice now, he’s demanded silence – but no one seems to listen. His cries peak, out-of-tune in the pitter-patter shower. Tortured, like a mangled cat.
“Here’s what you’re going to do, yeah?” The air flutters around you. He’s trained to tread carefully, like you’ll disappear at any moment. Better make this quick, then. “You’re going to go home, lock your windows, and try to sleep with an eye open tonight. The young lady’s welfare matters more than your fate, but I don’t forget. There will be a time where I come to break every finger off your hand. Enjoy them in the meanwhile.”
Perfunctory, he shoves him to the muddy floor. Blood joins the streams sluicing to the sewers, inky swirls of gore a welcome sight. He hasn’t felt this alive since–
Well, since Serbia.
And the boy must see the predatory gleam in his eyes. The dead, inbred callousness. Shark out of the water. Knows what’s good for him as the fin breaks the surface, rows of teeth just underneath, because he runs off before they can snap around his clumsy legs.
(You, on the other hand, don’t have that instinct. Instead, you blubber, seal on a floating icecap.
And dive headfirst into his jowls.)
“T-Thank you, I can’t thank you enough. I- My friends left me and I didn’t have a ride home and no one was picking up my calls so I thought it would be safe to ask them, but I couldn’t have predicted how nasty they’d be. Really, they seemed like nice guys–”
John censures you with a stare.
“You should know better than to be out at this time.”
He’s gotten good at imagining your responses. He needn’t hear what you have to say next. Before you can even open your mouth, the chloroform-doused towel in his pocket is out and pasted to your pretty face.
There’s a brief pause where he expects you to fall through to the floor. But your body slumps, ragdoll boneless, right into his arms.
That’s what brings him here.
Here: cotton rope hitching your elbows together behind your back, a column of square-knots parallel to both arms. It was what he managed while you were unconscious. Could have managed more – so much more, tick off the beginnings on a cosmic index of all the things he wants to fucking do with you – if it weren’t for patchy effort. He went a little rabid, see. Clipped off the leash, chain to the doghouse broken. Saw the time better spent fondling your supple curves, your body lax beneath his.
Weakened or willing, it doesn’t matter so much as you’re corporeal. That he can.
(A book he bought as a much younger man details seven different ways to harness a chest. If he had a grip, he would have seen to it – your breasts purpling, ensnared in a lattice of his own construction. It’s this new, foul fascination. How many ways can a body bend before it breaks? He’s never been mindful of the line before, on the field, but he’s got one to do with as he pleases, now.)
Little one. New toy, fix. His wife.
You process it all in your own time, sleepy eyes peeling open to find that you’re no longer in some dingy alleyway. Though your hair has yet to dry, he’s made good work of paring the damp dress off your form, the steady warmth of a fireplace making for a gentle come-to. John takes it as encouragement when a tired yawn splits your mouth, lips quirking up. Smiling.
“Look at you.” He hums, thumb working quicker over your clit. With legs notched apart, your cunt’s been made vulnerable, bared to every ministration he couldn’t wait to inflict until after you woke. Thus you’re already weeping a steady stream of slick, folds lacquered in arousal. Leaking down the line of your ass, too. Desperate thing. He scrutinises the sloppy mess of it, doughy and swollen and wet, shoulders flexing over the possessive swell in his throat.
It’s comical, the turnaround. Reality overruns your face, peaky infestation from his carcass to yours. Your eyes well with teary distress as you take him in. What a monster he must make; frothy longing turned savagery, held too long under the blighted mass of his tongue. Festered. Ugly. He sees it himself in the contrast of his skin and yours. Where you’re satin, all incandescent sweat-slicked stretch, he’s 60 grit sandpaper. Sun-hardened leather and crooked scars.
“Hnmphh!”
But he can ignore that. Doesn’t have to concern himself with rejection, not when the bit gag between your teeth renders you mute. Simple knot sandwiched by your molars. Subtle. He doesn’t want it to hurt today – not any more than necessary, at least – but conversation has gotten old. There’s a reason he brought you home. Why thick fingers work your hole, breaking it to house something bigger. He isn’t interested in soft-soaping anymore.
(The two of you have had your honeymoon already.)
No. Purpose, he thinks. His mum laid it all out for him. A family to bear you company during those long weeks he isn’t home. Family, linchpin to making this all work. To crowd this house with not just one, or two, but multiple sweet things that’ll extinguish the lonely flame at its hearth. He celebrates it already – boisterous corners, crowded kitchens, the cable he pays for finally being put to use.
And you–
“Promise I’ll suck that pretty pussy like I promised, little one. Just– fuck- daddy just has to do something first, yeah? You gonna be good for me?” John huffs, shucking his trousers to fish himself out of his pants.
Your muffled protests launch into something else entirely, feral defiance compelling your limbs like electric shock. It’s fusillade, violent devastation. Your legs flail, unhinged, compensating for the lost mobility in your arms. He manages to slip his fingers out of your clutch and tuck a hand under either knee, but not before your heel connects to his jaw. As is true on the field, adrenaline primes a strong kick. Metallic warmth swathes the inside of his cheek, strength waning for a second.
And through it all, you have the audacity to cry.
When he regains his bearings, anger has supplanted care. He hoists your thighs up onto your chest, calves upright in the air, and pushes a knee forcefully into the space exposed. It flattens your cunt with the pressure, clit crushing in on itself. Agony bulges fine lines at your temples, veins bloating as a miserable scream tears from your throat.
“I’ll cane your ass raw if you keep up with this. Strike your hole until all you’ll feel for weeks is your punishment. That what you want, mm? Want the memory of our child’s conception to be filled with pain?”
His nose fits to yours, beard tickling the canyon of your upper lip. It's intense, the proximity. Heat flush between you, sustained fire you can’t pull away from. John watches the hesitancy flit over your eyes, the reluctance of a burn, breaths erratic and shallow. You didn’t breathe, before. Didn’t need to. But he finds that he likes the new rhythm of it. Like watching the life drain from a quarry, game bleeding out into Serbian snow. He never thought he’d miss hunting for survival – not until he had you pressed to his side, lured from those other predators into something much worse.
(And perhaps that’s what’s been absent, all along. You used to come too easy, allowed him to grow permissive and lazy. But this–
His skin fits the moniker again. Captain, revitalised in his bones.)
You shake your head no, just as he rubs his cock along your entrance.
The feeding is effortless. You practically draw him in, needy for it, walls conforming to the fat intrusion until his head nestles against a hard spot. Steel-wool pubes tangles in your own, scratching the sensitive hood of your clit as he adjusts to the balmy suffocation. Tight. So fucking tight, more so than he could have imagined, your struggle working against you as it contracts the muscles around the area.
His teeth knock into yours, borderline bruising kiss closing the gap. Should he give it a moment’s breath, his lips would swell blue. But he keeps you to him, your reluctant mouth slow against his own – impeded by the gag and your own stubbornness, snivels sucked into his gluttonous abyss. It tastes like seawater and vanilla, the wires crossing in his brain.
This, he thinks, is the taste he’s been searching for all his life.
This petty space separating you, a carpet of chest hair laid over our thighs. Breathing one another in, memorising the scars behind your cheeks. Pistoning into your cunt, making room for himself in the years and years to come. He’ll never get enough of you. You’ll never get enough of it – once you learn to embrace the pleasure wrought out of you.
In due time.
He batters parallel to your cervix, plunging deep as he can go. You’re slippery with the effort, wet where you thrum fierce, depravity stringing the oscillating gap of your mons and his pelvis. Binds you to him like gauze on a day-old wound, sticky and raw, and you must be a masochist if the stiffening of your joints is anything to go by. Your pupils roll, stupid, to regard the back of your head. Fucked dumb. Nerves snapping, limbic system miswiring.
“Can’t wait to see my seed take, have you grow round and glowing.” He growls, speaking into your cheek. The faint hints of your cologne, long faded under rain and sweat, cram temptingly into his synapses. It’s all he can do not to take a whole bite of you, now that he can. Wants to see the evidence of his ownership mark your skin; violent, a little bloody. Physical. Carnal. Imperfect presence honing in the fact that it is better than none at all.
“Mmmmff,”
“Yeah? Want me to keep you pumped full of my cum? Think that would be nice. Plugging you shut. Maybe suspending you upside down so it’s a sure process. How does that sound, sweet thing? Y’like it?”
Your feet thump weakly on his back.
“Then cum. Go on, be a good girl f’me.”
And with the orchestration of it all; your already tense pelvic floor, the rippling liquid of your eyes, the stifled voicing of your plight–
John can’t tell whether or not you do.
You tire yourself out, eventually.
It’s much later; the rise of a new morning flooding his home in sheer blues, illuminating last night’s mess. Without the orange glow of firelight, it looks a lot less romantic. Torn clothes, cotton fibres. Body fluids matting the pelts he uses to break up the floors. He would have it in him to blanch at the forfeiture of his self-control, cringe a little for appearance sake. He’s grown, now. Should know better.
But there’s no one around. No one. Just him, christening a loveseat instead of his wingback, and–
You, knocked out on his lap, rope burns raw up your arms.
(When you wake again, he’ll make it official. A passing of the torch, so to speak, from one fix to the next. He hasn’t a band, or really any certification to make it legal. But–
The lit end of his cigar should do. Touched, fittingly, to the proximal length of your ring finger.)
John’s always had his fixes.
He finds he’s finally had his fill when you cradle his child close to your breast, and reach out a hand for him, too.
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