#mw 2022

[miilkybnn]

it’s gonna take a while for me to render this in between artfight and irl so I’ll give y’all the lines for now :) I was also stuck between ‘09 Soap and ‘22 Soap so I decided y’all get the best of both worlds 🤩 it’s bug and bubbles, bubbles and bug <3

[abedofroses]

(Source)

[mentoskova]

"Have you seen that bigboy with a skullface??"

[zarstarss]

leyendecker art study but it’s ghostsoap because im autistic as shit and everything i draw has to have The Funny Characters

(original is called Portrait of Two Men!)

[2kiran]

subbot!ghost that's shy about how loud he can be >< he can barely see with tears in his eyes because you're making him feel so good :(( domtop!m!reader with prompt 10! take ur time <33

SIMON RILEY X TOP!READER

prompt, let me hear you

“Fuckin’ hell, luv,” Simon groans, large hand wrapping around the back of your neck. His head tilts back, eyes fluttering shut and he drags out a whine. “Yeah?” Teasingly rolling your hips, brushing past his sweet spot to feel the impatient tug provoked by a sharp twist of his calloused fingers. “Hngh, do-don’t be such a tease.”

“You like it when I am.” Simon rocks against you in response, thighs squeezing around yours, and he’s too far gone to snap. Shit, your cock is keeping his greedy hole so full, head light with pleasure when you suddenly pull all the way out, rim clenching and unclenching on your tip — then burrowing in again with a rough slam.

“Ah, haah—” His free hand clamps down on his mouth, silencing himself before he lets out an embarrassing moan.

His eyes fly open, jaw tensing as his hard length weeps pre. His whimper is muffled, tears catching on his lashes, and he’s suddenly conscious of how thin the walls of your home must be. He swears he’s almost going cross-eyed, you’re right in his throat and he’s lewdly quivering on your cock. Simon’s desperately stopping himself from yanking on your hair, uncertain if it’s whether to shove you away or force you closer.

Gently, your hand search for his, panting when you’re wrapped in his tight warmth again. “Oh, baby,” your thumb swipes across Simon’s knuckles, attempting to pry his palm away though his teeth are already sinking into his bottom lip. “Let me hear you, yeah?”

You take both of his wrists, pinning them above his head and you’re almost concerned he’ll draw blood with how hard he’s biting himself. Has there always been two of you?

Oh, now you’re a blurred group of three, and it makes him clench on you harder through the dizziness. He can feel himself shying away from the firm grasp of consciousness, all that is left of his thoughts are you and your big, stupid cock that keeps teasing his insides, forcing out choked-out moans.

He doesn’t want to seem like an idiot, doesn’t want to sound like one. He’s close to piercing his own lip, all in vain to keep his little groans from echoing throughout the quiet space.

But then Simon cries out as you ram back deep in him — cock pulsing and fuck he doesn’t want you to stop — finally unable to contain the needy whimpers that threaten to humiliate him. It’s raw, hoarse, aching when it finally breaches its confines. He’s trying to blink away the beads pooling from his eyes, simmering down his cheeks but you’re here to help him, wiping them away sweetly.

He’s shivering, too fucked out to think about anything besides your warmth and soft stare being constant reminders of how good you are to him. “Please,” a pathetic, little plea. He needs you so bad it’s physically hurting him. “More, nnh, I n-need you.”

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

The Invisible String Theory

PAIRING: König x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: You didn't expect the man who gave you his coat to be the same one to bust down the door where you and the other women slept - sniper hood scaring everyone within an inch of their life. You didn't expect him to become so important to you, either. (Based on König's in-game backstory).

WORDCOUNT: 9.2k

WARNINGS: Human trafficking, mentions of unwanted touching, trauma, blood, gore, guns, bullets, protective!König, soft!König, nightmares, mentions of bullying, etc.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

'DATE: 25, NOVEMBER, 2021

LOCATION: BERLIN, GERMANY

TIME OF EVENT: 0230

MISSION REPORT: PENDING….'

You don’t remember much from the day that could be called out of the ordinary. Ever since you’d been moved here with the other girls, everything was predictable down to the time the men would come over, to the point where the screams had to be muffled by pillows. 

Never in your life did you think you’d be part of the nearly fifty million people stuck in this situation, and neither did you think you’d be the one in one hundred who got out. But before you can think about November twenty-fifth and those pale gray eyes, you have to go back to the beginning. To Al-Qatala. 

You hadn’t been with this cell initially—you’d been moved around and bartered off more times than you could count; the initial founder of your predicament was long gone at this point. North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania…you’d been practically everywhere and on every continent barring the obvious last. In Europe, you couldn’t name the countries, but you knew this for a fact: you’d never been to Germany before. 

They had you with five other women in a large SUV in the beginning, this international ring of human traffickers. You had watched from the window, face blank and eyes unblinking, at the men who met near the docks. They had brought you in through Hamburg, first—not only the largest seaport in Germany but the third largest in Europe; you think you read that on a flier at some point. One of those flimsy ones that you find in gas stations with bright lettering to attract the tourists with their interesting facts. 

You wished you were only a tourist. 

You’d watched the men shake hands, and that was when you knew your fate, as well as that of the five other women, was sealed. You were going to all be here for a long time. 

This Al-Qatala cell was ruthless, but you supposed with being around terrorists, ruthlessness was better than being executed. 

For days you’d be exploited with the false promises of moments of freedom, breaks, food, and water. For some of the women it was drugs or money, but when your stomach was empty and your eyes blurring from lack of sleep, even addictions seemed to pale for brief hours. But above it all was the threat of death at every corner. These men would kill you. 

It was only a matter of time unless you could give them what they wanted. 

You yourself had developed a system, and it was probably the only reason you were still alive. Pick one of the handlers, gain his favor, and pray that he treats you specially while you keep up the act of a mindless, weak, woman. 

Ivon was the man’s name this time around. Born and raised here in Berlin before the clutches of his fanatical ideations brought him to Al-Qatala. You hated him.

Hated his touch—hated his scent and how he talked; every bit of him was corrupted like a black dog at a crossroads, always leading people down the wrong path. Your only saving grace was that he was stupid. The other girls called you Cat—said you managed to nuzzle up to someone and soon after got them to give you what you wanted. Everything you wanted except freedom, that was.

You didn’t deny that Ivon did give you privileges, but that was the point. About a week into your stay in Berlin, he allowed you to go into public with him. Arm-candy.

A doll. 

The townhouse you’d been stuck in had disappeared into a spec behind the rearview mirror, the chilled air from outside making you shiver at the lack of heat and the thin shawl you’d been thrown. No jacket. 

The care of your health only extended to how well you were able to work—at the moment you were relatively healthy despite the bulge of bruises and constantly shell-shocked look behind your eyes.

But the trip—the trip. You supposed that was when it had fully started, and you didn’t even realize it before you saw those gray eyes again. 

“Come,” Ivon orders, holding tightly to your arm and dragging you along from the corner shop without making a scene. Your hands loosely brush the wrack of clothes, fabric soft under your fingertips as it sways. 

Fixing your shawl, you try to burrow your neck into it, gaining what little heat is available to you. It was cold out—you were shivering. People send looks, eyes tight as they shift up and down your form, but no one ever says anything. To be this bold, this cell had to have been at this for a long, long time. The realization didn’t make you feel any better. 

That was when you first saw him. 

You were standing outside a coffee shop, quivering like a newly hatched butterfly, Ivon making a call only a few feet away with fast motions of his arms. It was hard not to make a run for it right then and there; hard not to take those few seconds of open air and dash away—start screaming and yelling until the authorities came. 

It would save yourself, but what about the others? They wouldn’t be so fortunate, you’d be sentencing them to death. None of this was simple—it needed to be thought out. Two games of chess being played at the same time.

The irony of it was that König had been off-duty that day. It had been a shot in the dark. 

“Are you alright?” A thick Austrian accent makes you flinch as it appears beside your right ear, grating.

Your eyes snap to the side, moving one foot back as you blink wildly up at the blue-gray orbs that would become a staple. You liked to call it as everyone else did—the invisible string theory. A theory that stated that the universe connected people who were destined to meet one day. Through thick or thin waters, it was inevitable. He was inevitable. 

“Yes,” you say quickly, holding your hands tightly around you. The man ahead of you was tall, almost startlingly so, with muscles more bulky than a boulder and his buzz-cut head open to the chilled breeze. He wore a surgical mask over his lower visage, his hoodie under the thick material of a canvas jacket. “Yes,” you say again, hearing Ivon’s voice behind you still on the phone. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Gray eyes furrow slightly, gaze darting over your head. 

“Are you…sure, Ma’am?” 

“Thank you for your concern,” you fake laugh, eyes pained, backing up farther. That invisible string snaps into place, pulling tight at only those few simple words. 

His stature made you slightly nervous—large, intimidating; those hands could do quite the damage if given the chance. Your eyes had hit and bounced off the identity discs at his chest with little thought, too preoccupied to notice the fact that he was in the Service.

König’s eyes had narrowed softly, dark brows minutely moving in.

Ivon hangs up his phone. 

“Can I help you?” He asks, coming up and sliding a hand around your waist. The man had stared at him for a long minute, and you had felt Ivon tense slowly at the unblinking eye contact. 

This stranger had commented in German a long string of frim words, hands going to his jacket and grabbing at the arms—he slips out of it while still uttering. 

Before you can react, the large coat swallows you whole and you snatch at the heat that’s still inside instinctually, now only realizing how much you were shivering. Your body sags into the weight of the fabric, the scent of sweat and coffee. 

You don’t even pay attention to the growing tones, shocked. People look over to the two fast words being tossed.

Yet it could only last so long. 

Ivon’s hand latches onto the side of your arm, beginning to drag you back and away from this kind stranger like a lap dog while throwing curses behind him. Gray eyes meet yours as old shoes skid and stumble. 

König had taken a firm step towards you that day, his body tense and his hands clenched at his side—ready to do anything on a moment's notice should you ask for it. But all you do is stare, jaw loose, and the given coat still on your shoulders. You just couldn’t understand why he would do that. 

The stranger gets swallowed by the crowd, and just like that, he’s gone. 

That was all it had been; a moment—a few mere seconds in the large plot that was this almost impossible tale. You were glad it had been him, or else the events of the future could have been very different. 

Of course, they hadn’t let you keep the jacket, but the memory was enough to warm you for days even as old pains faded and new ones took their place. 

But those gray eyes would help you in the future, like a guardian; a protector in your dreams as you watched the snow fall from the sliver of outside light in your room with the others. Your mattress was on the floor like the rest, thin blankets and clouds of cold breath wafting up from sleeping forms. 

This was the time it happened, and you’d just woken up to find the curtains shifting as one of the women near it moved in her sleep. Shadows slip past, the light interrupted as it shifts over your tired face with broken fractures. 

You were always kept on the ground floor. 

'CLEARANCE: APPROVED 

TRANSLATING MISSION REPORT ‘RED FREEDOM’…

STAND BY…

Operation Red Freedom took place on November twenty-fifth, 2021, at approximately 0230 in the neighborhood of [REDACTED], at the residence of [REDACTED], Berlin, Germany. A squad of ten highly trained [REDACTED] personnel covertly entered the residence in two teams of five. Fireteam One advanced from the back entrance while Fireteam Two entered the residence from the balcony at the top floor, accessed via ladder.

Squad Leader [REDACTED], part of Fireteam One, set foot in the residence of [REDACTED] at approximately 0238 and began sweeping the ground floor as Fireteam Two cleared three of twelve known individuals belonging to the terrorist organization, Al-Qatala, on the top floor….'

You shift and shiver, your body trying to warm itself as the world blurs at the sides of your vision. Fingers twitch as your hand goes to wrap your waist, curled into the fetal position, creaking emanates from above you. Blinking softly, you frown and take a quivering breath, head nuzzling the thin mattress. 

“Cold,” you say, the following low exhale of air out of your lips only making it all worse as everything seems to drop another degree. The darkness didn’t help either, only that one line of light trying desperately to fill the room like a bucket descending into a dry well. 

You’re only clothed in the dirty and tattered remains of a large shirt, your legs feeling like they don’t hold any blood in them as they quiver without your knowledge—shaking the blanket above you. A few of the girls had said it would be okay to share, but everyone was afraid of the lock on the door clicking open and the men coming back in and seeing them. In the end, you could only look after yourself.

A thump makes you startle, drooping eyes snapping back open as you gasp. 

Head shifting, you blink rapidly upward to the ceiling, confused as to whether that had been a part of a failing mind or if you’d really just heard a muffled bump upstairs. Brows furrowing, you lightly sit up, hands still around yourself and legs limply outward; spine hunched. 

Your fingers had lost feeling, just as your nose had gone numb, but moving helped a little. Your hands dig into your flesh and your ears twitch at every creak in the wood—every pass of silent feet that suddenly becomes all the clearer as the sheen of fatigue slowly leaves your brain. 

Walking? Small pains move along your body like needles, poking and prodding, but you ignore them as easily as you do the vile hands that had touched you. Survival had forced you into a constant state of self-preservation—pain couldn’t bother you, because if you stopped, you wouldn’t get back going again. 

Your head tilts so you can side-eye the door to the room, sleeping forms all around shifting, singular groaning of tired lungs. But there’s something inside of you that stiffens like a prey animal, and you don’t know why. Inside of your sockets, your eyes hone in, bones stiff and your chest stilling as the grain becomes the most interesting thing to you beyond breathing. 

There was someone….out there. 

Watching, the sides of your vision shadow over to focus harder, your muscles tight. Your mind goes to the thumps from upstairs, the moving feet that sounded far more careful and deliberate than the ones your jailors took care to walk with. 

Inside your ribs, your heart patters a bit faster, adrenal glands sending a certain flight or flight through the few veins you hold that aren’t chilled over.

Something was happening. Something wasn’t right.

Only when you move to shake the shoulder of one of the women sleeping beside you does it happen. 

A yell. 

A scream. 

The girls in the room all startle awake, sounds of concern and shock entering the air that you mirror; faces snapping to the ceiling and the door. The townhouse erupts into gunfire and the sound of slamming wood—a warzone that only is separated from all of you by the thin material of the four walls.

You feel yourself being grabbed and held in fear in the dark, as your open face holds the expression of a rabbit in an open field, looking along the long, hidden grass. 

The sounds persist, loud German shouts going up over the house and echoing with heated fever. This continues for minutes, added in with the sound of doors breaking off hinges, bouncing off the ground, and shaking the foundation so hard that you can feel it reverberate. The women go silent. Stone-still. 

But the gunfire—so much gunfire. The constant pop of assault weapons and a pound of multiple booted feet. 

What was going on? You can't make sense of it, so you only freeze and listen; trying to understand the longer the fight goes on, heart hammering; mouth slack-jawed. And then it’s like it never happened.

Silence. 

You share quick looks with the others, all gripping one another and heads angled to the door. The heavy feet start back up again, coming closer. Your mind slashes to the window across the room, but it’s hard to think beyond the sudden body that shakes the door that leads directly to you all—the women scream, some standing up and racing to the glass with the same idea as you. 

'…Squad Leader [REDACTED], and both Fireteams successfully eliminated all targets inside of the [REDACTED] residence, leaving the room occupied by known hostages last to prevent casualties and/or the usage of bargaining chips. Squad Leader [REDACTED] made contact with hostages at approximately 0244 after the final sweep of the townhouse had been completed and all personnel accounted for.

Local authorities had been contacted by neighbors due to noise but were dismissed.' 

The door busts off its hinges and the room devolves into panicked yells and hurled bits of mattress material. Loud pleas and curses stuck like gums to teeth as they were forced out in fear and bone-crushing terror. You remember pushing back into the wall, many others doing the same, as a beast of a man enters the room with his face covered with a loose fabric hood of some sort. 

Large—brutish. Like a demon walking with the color of black printed over his entire body; gear hangs from a combat vest, hands holding an assault rifle as a sidearm is strapped to his bulging thigh. Forearms the side of your head stays near his chest, and in order to not hit his head on the doorframe, the individual has to bend slightly. Over that hood, the lenses and head-gear of a night-vision rig sit heavily before it’s moved back with a firm hand that is nearly double the size of yours.

A monster.

Your entire being is tight with quivering tension, eyes blinking away tears at the smell of blood that rolls in from the hallway. The women at the window duck down, hands to their heads as if expecting a bullet to carve its way between their skulls. 

“Cat,” one of the ladies behind you mutters, voice quivering. You shush her on bitten lips and move her farther behind you. 

“Don’t speak,” you mutter. “Don’t move.”

You don’t know what you expect, but nothing about this is correct. 

The man raises his hands, the rifle slapping his chest as it hangs from a strap. He speaks in German, and the heavy and fast noise of it makes your already addled head spin. No one answers beyond the slide of their own feet over the hardwood floors.

“Ich heiße König,” his head swivels from one to another, “Sprichst du Deutsch? Irgendjemand?”

You stare blankly, panting. 

After a moment, and a slow step forward from the stranger, he speaks again, though this time, it’s in English. 

“My name is König.” His voice is familiar to you, and you blink in confusion quickly, hidden near the back of the shaking bodies. “I am with the German Military, yes? We have conducted a raid on this residence.” 

Military? Raid? 

“...I am not here to hurt you.” He nears one of the women, beginning to bend down slowly. She squeaks, balking back—making him tense and halt. It didn't matter what he said, König was the epitome of a man who was intimidating on body alone; the gear wasn’t helping. Neither was the hood. 

A soldier appears in the doorway, calling out to him in his native language as you flinch at the noise. 

König calls back calmly, trying to keep an air of gentle strength around him.

The second soldier comes inside, dressed similarly despite the lack of fabric over his visage which instantly puts many at ease again. He clears his throat as König steps back, gargantuan hands coming up to rest at his vest collar as his legs shift. He seems a bit put off at the fearful stares from everyone, rolling his shoulders for a moment as he turns his head to look out of the doorway. 

Your eyes don’t move from him, though. A nagging feeling in the back of your skull. 

“We have to leave this place,” the second soldier tells you all, kneeling and resting a hand over his knee. “We’ll get you medical attention. Food. Water. There’s no need to suffer here any longer, hm? We can see to it that all of you will get the best care that can be provided.” A pause. “We can get you back home.” 

That certainly got the attention that was needed. 

Meek questions started falling out, then louder ones before pandemonium was roused in that tiny room pushed to the very back of the townhouse. Home. It was a word that had almost lost all meaning but was still that constant shining light in the back of everyone’s mind. 

Home.

Did you even have one of those left? 

As the rest of your fellows all got to their feet, taking you with them, you had to think over that fact as the soldier guided them gently out of the room to join the others waiting—trying to answer their questions and get them away from the gore before they saw it. 

You stayed behind, feet shifting over the floor and your lips thin. As the silence settles in, you hold yourself a bit tighter and glance at the mattress all mashed together and stained—those thin blankets as you shiver. 

“Are you alright?” Your head snaps over. 

You’d forgotten about König.

He still stands there, still and with his hands at his collar; he clears his throat softly, speaking up from his low utterance. “Please…do not be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” you say tinily, your voice cracking in the lie. 

You can’t see his eyes—not with the shadow from his hood or his head rig, but you can see the way his skull lightly tilts to the side, trying to see you better in the low light. 

“That is good,” he answers, not convinced. “I’m glad. I did not wish to scare anyone.” He moves back and motions with a hand to the door from where they hang. “Please. It is best not to linger, yes?”  

“Do I…” you hesitate, shivering. “Do I know you from somewhere?” 

König’s face isn’t visible, but you can still sense the feeling of confusion leaking out of him. The man takes a small step closer, and you gaze up at him until his eyes are visible. 

Blue-gray. 

You stare, mouth parting in shock.

König blinks twice, quickly making a noise in the back of his throat at the sight of your eyes gazing into his—the same woman outside of the coffee shop from days ago.

That little invisible string pulls you closer, small millimeter by small millimeter. 

“You?” You both say it at the same time, laced with surprise and shock. 

It’s a long moment of gazing into each other, a battered body and another more strong than an ox. All fear of the man dissipates. 

“You gave me your jacket,” you whisper, still torn up about it. 

König’s hood shifts as he glances back to the door, German speech over the radio strapped to his chest which he takes in and processes in the back of his skull. But he always looks back at you, eyes crinkled with concern and perhaps even a bit of misplaced guilt. 

A protective knife sides into his side.

“Come.” The man reaches out a hand, hovering it over your arm. You stare at the gloved limb for a moment before softly moving towards it with your breath caught in your throat, hesitant. König’s fingers delicately slide over the flesh, not closing around it until he feels your muscles loosen. “...Let’s get you warmer, Schatz, yes?” 

You blink.

“It’s cold here,” you mutter, letting him guide you along, his gray orbs always keeping you in the side of his vision. 

“Yes,” he agrees, nodding. “Very cold. Have you been to Germany during the winter before?”

Your head slightly shakes, bare feet padding along next to the pair of great boots—you lean closer unconsciously to the promise of warmth. König guides you away from the seeping blood on the floor and protects your eyes from the view of the bodies across the room with his own as a guard dog would. 

“No.” He notices your leaning and brings you nearer to him, letting you use him as a brace. The man knows the effects of shock, and you wear it as plainly as any other. “I’ve never been here before.” 

König hums and his free hand goes up to press into the radio, muttering in his native tongue. He releases the connection and asks as he blinks at you, “Do you require any immediate medical attention?” 

Again, you shake your head. 

“Where are the others?” You sink further into him, being guided to the front door, open to the soft snowfall and a chilled wind as your shoulder hunch. 

“Just outside,” König glances at the bodies across the room—the ones he’d riddled with bullets that still twitch even as the minutes draw longer. Gray eyes going from one to another, the house is heavy with the weight of dead men. Twelve in total and all getting colder just like the temperature outside. König didn’t feel bad about it, and when he’d finally busted open that door to find you and the women, he was satisfied with the blood on his hands. If hell were to be his home, he would walk there with a golden-fanged smile. 

But now wasn’t the time for that. 

“I will bring you to them,” the soldier speaks, snow blowing in from the entrance. “Slowly, now, Schatz, watch the steps. Allow me to help.”

You stop at the doorway, bringing a hand to your mouth to cover a haggard cough as König makes his way down the first concrete step ahead of you—large armored vehicles had pulled up from a ways away. The women huddle around one another, the rest of the soldiers sticking by them and opening the doors to the vehicles as the night gets only more cold and stormy.  

Gray eyes flicker for a moment down to your lack of proper protection, fingers twitching and tapping at his thigh as König remembers your expression the day he’d first met you. 

“Do you want me to carry you?” He says slowly, cautious in his approach. The man wasn’t stupid—he wouldn’t touch you unless you explicitly stated it was alright for him to do so. “I will be gentle, I promise. I do not wish for your feet to freeze, I...” He pauses as you blink, staring into his soul. “I…will not touch you if you do not tell me to do it. You have my word.” 

You continue to stand there for a moment, face unreadable before your head slowly turns to the vehicles in the street. 

The neighborhood was so normal it still caused you to wonder how no one had spoken up and seen something. Rows of connected houses now with their lights on—faces peeking from the windows like little children on Christmas morning; trying to get glimpses of Santa and the man’s reindeer. 

Finally, your gaze moves back to the hooded visage of König, able to see it better under the moonlight and the glare of falling snowflakes—a few of those frozen pieces sitting in the folds of the fabric.

“The hood scared them,” you utter about the others. König stiffens a bit, blinking at you but not looking away. “They’re used to people trying to hide their faces, but yours…with how large you are…”

“I understand.” König doesn't tear away his eyes. “...Did I scare you, Schatz?”

You don’t know why, but for what seems like the first time in years, the question makes you giggle. The beast of a man goes still with his feet on the ground, usually jittery and moving body captivated by the sound as it echoes over the night’s air—the puff of your breath as it moves around his hood; rustling it like leaves on a tree. 

Eyes widening only a sliver more, König’s breath is in his throat.

It was like listening to a bird’s song.

“Maybe only a little,” you whisper to him. “But it’s okay. I’m scared of most things.” 

He licks his lips, but you’re unable to see the slight quirk of them afterward. 

“Then I will make it up to you, yes?” He holds out a hand. “Let me? The car is warm and your friends are waiting for you. My men say they ask about your health.”

You softly nod, the shadow of the house trying to drag you back into it—its blackened arms reaching and latching onto old scars. When your hand connects with König's, the man takes his time putting one foot back to a step and scooping you up from behind your knees. With a tiny grunt, you settle at his chest, calming your heartbeat with the fact that you know he won’t hurt you. 

“I’ve got you,” he says. 

In his arms, your bare legs hang in the air, hand wrapping his neck, and with a slightly nervous look to you as your body hovers. König watches for a moment, hesitating before he begins walking to the same vehicle the other woman had been moved into out of the snowfall. 

“Can you tell me your name,” he asks to distract you from his hold, to get you more comfortable with him as his boots crunch through the packed powder on the ground—making sure to watch his step so as to not jostle you. 

“Everyone calls me Cat.” Gray eyes blink your way, visible skin painted black. König’s head tilts. You can’t help but find it endearing.

“Katze?” He hums, and you can imagine his lips moving slightly upwards from the innocent tone of his voice as if taken by the strange moniker. “That is…interesting.” 

You huff tinily, shivering again as your body moves to curl a little more. 

The soldier quickly reassures you. “Nearly there.” 

The vehicle is in front of you, and a nearby man opens the door for König as he carries you over. Nodding in thanks, the large individual eases you into one of the seats as the blast of warm air makes you sag—the other woman in there mulls closer, grabbing onto you and laughing through tears. 

Looking back at them, you smile and feel yourself get a bit teary-eyed as everything starts to slowly come into focus. 

Glancing outward, you stare at the snow that hits the dark hood of König, sticking and hanging off until the tiny white dots melt from the heat of his body. With his legs shifting he moves back a step and nods to you, eyes moving to stare at the ground for a moment. 

“We will take you to base. From there you will all be given dorms and fresh apparel to—”

“Thank you, König,” you interrupted him. He stares, lips parted with the half-tones of cut-off speech. “And please extend my thanks to your men as well.” 

“...Of course, Katze.” König stands straighter, always twitching fingers moving to the car door as engines start with a grinding roar. He nods again, the loose fabric swaying as the lenses of his rig stay firm at the movement. “There is no need to thank us. Relax. Sleep, if you wish to do it. The ride will be long.” The man’s gray eyes linger for a moment on your own, studying the bumps and small marks on your face. His hand tightens over the door as your gaze is stuck with his own; warmth blooming in his chest. He was glad he had found you. 

König slips out a soft, “There are blankets under the seats,” before he closes the door with a firm thump of metal. 

You can’t help but smile. 

'…Hostages were taken back to [REDACTED] and received minor medical attention on site. Housed in [REDACTED] and were admitted for needed treatments/medications - all details/names listed in File 3 Section 6 for future reference. DNA was placed into databases. 

Next of kin were informed of their family members’ position and/or state of being via phone call to the corresponding government official that then traveled through the appropriate channels once identified.'

You sit as a nurse hands you heating pads for your hands, which you take with a small thanks and clenched tightly, sucking every ounce of warmth from them to stop the shaking. Your body was heavy with the weight of new clothes and heated blankets, the room utterly normal in a way you’d not known for years. A corner table with books and a chess board—a connected bathroom stocked with amenities you may need; even a rug on the tile floor. You don’t know why that was shocking to you, but even the simplest thing was awe-inspiring. Your eyes had even slipped over a tiny nightlight near the door. 

It nearly made you cry. 

Your nurse moves back a bit, smiling down at you kindly. 

“Is there anything else you might need, Dear?” Her accent is prominent, though not as much as König’s had been. She waits for your answer diligently as the pitcher of water and a similar glass sit on your nightstand. 

“No,” you say, shaking your head. Your socked feet rub together like a grasshopper. “I think that’s all.” Your eyelids blink. “But…” you stop.

“What is it?” The lady asks gently, hands slack at her sides.

“The man—König,” you pause. “Is he here?” 

Blinking at you, the nurse tilts her head to the side in curiosity. “Not currently, no. At least, not in this specific building. He and his men are being debriefed across base. They will be there for a long while.” At your blank look, her brows slightly move up in accommodating comfort. “Would…you like me to tell him something for you?” 

Playing with the heating pads in your hands, your face gains a slightly embarrassed sheen. You liked the thought of being near König, truthfully. No one had made you feel safe like he did—him and his selfless action of a large coat given with no intention of getting anything in return. 

“Just,” you breathe softly. “Just that I’m sorry for losing his coat, and that I hope it wasn’t expensive.”

The nurse stares, very much confused but not about to question you. Her feet shift over the floor, and a light nod is sent your way. 

“Of course. I’ll tell him.” She motions to the bed with a hand and explains that whenever you wished to sleep, you were free to use the bed—and the TV was open to you as well, though you might not be able to understand the local stations. With that, she exited the room. 

Left alone, your head moves around the room slowly, taking it all in once more as the small bandages under your clothes pull at your flesh. The tears start slipping down your cheeks with no warning. 

Wrist coming up to your eyes, the limb presses in tightly, water staining the flesh as it dribbles down, and your lip quivers like a worm below it. You don’t know why you’re crying now and not when König had gotten you out of that townhouse. Why now, when there wasn’t anything prompting you to do so? 

But something was prompting you—the knowledge that you would never be going back to anyone who would mistreat you again. You had your own room. Good food. All the water that your stomach could drink down. A nightlight that pushes back the darkness even if you’re so used to living in it. 

Through your soft sniffles, chuckles move out, filling the space with a warm echo. You pull the blankets closer to you and collapse backward onto the mattress, smiling widely at the ceiling. 

That little invisible string dances as your heart pulls at it. 

—

König’s leg lightly jumps from under his table, signing off his name at the bottom of a report before he stands and rubs a hand over the top of his un-hooded head. He grabs the paper and slips it into a manila folder, hands pale with deep scars running the length of them like fissures in the earth. Deftly taking the item, he walks out of his office and begins moving down the length of the building, fingers tapping over the yellowish material with a small connection of flesh and thick envelope. 

Tap-tap, tappity-tap. 

His fingers were always fidgeting—moving, tensing, twitching. It was one of the reasons they never let him become a recon sniper; the more obvious being the blatant size of his body. Both of which had been the cause of much teasing throughout his childhood. 

But König’s mind was on something other than the report in his hands, and it was starting to become a very strong distraction. You. The women. Al-Qatala. 

He was angry he hadn’t acted outside of that coffee shop—angry he hadn't noticed the signs right in front of him even if he had been powerless to stop it then. The soldier’s jaw clenched, the strong muscles of his jaw roving. 

“Verdammt,” he hisses under his breath, glaring at the tile. “Should have done something.”

König gets to his commanding officer’s office and knocks, only staying long enough to hand him the folder with his finished report and leave once more. His mind wouldn’t stay silent tonight. There’s no doubt that he won’t be able to sleep unless he reassures himself that you and the others are okay. 

The man’s head shifts back to the email he had gotten from your assigned nurse, whom he’d taken it upon himself to know the name of when he carried you into the base’s hospital—Eva. 

‘...She says she wants to apologize for losing your coat…”

König’s heart had twisted at that—that was what you were concerned about? He had to tell you that it was alright, or else he would never know peace. Perhaps even ask how you’ve been treated so far, just to make sure that everything was comfortable for you. 

The man’s eyelids move slightly downward in thought, a pull at his heart to walk outside. He passes a few other soldiers in the hallway, nodding to them with a tiny greeting but unwilling to stop and talk. In only fatigues, König exits the main doors quickly, lightly moving into a jog as his body shivers at the sudden chill touching his arms under the black compression shirt. Under him the snow has grown deeper, the large lights illuminating the almost greenish reflections of the winter landscape of open roads and large buildings. 

Curfew was long past—this had to be quick. 

Just a check-in, König tells himself as he nears the hospital, his breath puffing in the air. Then I can wipe my hands of it. 

He slows as he nears the doors, huffing a breath as he pushes on the barrier, opening it with a squawk of hinges and metal. Entering, the front desk staff looked up at him in surprise, muttering his name in question.

“Katze?” He responds, pushing a hand over his head and feeling the melting snowflakes. His cheeks are a light shade of exposure-red, and inquisitive eyes shift over the two individuals slowly. “What room?”

The pair share a glance and tell him in the same breath. Room ten. 

It’s no sooner after that König finds himself there, hand hovering over the handle as the hallway clock ticks beside his right ear. His gray eyes blink at the door, feet shuffling from under him before he clears his throat under his breath, glancing away for a second in hesitation. 

Was this appropriate?

König didn’t have an answer, but the pull in his chest was tight and firm—he just needed to see you. A glimpse, nothing more. He raises his fist and raps his knuckles over the wood delicately, three tiny knocks that hit his ears like bullets from a gun; the bullets he’s put into pathetic Al-Qatala bodies and watched burst like sacks of fluid. 

He waits, hands going to grasp at his shirt collar, pushing out a low breath to calm himself. 

After a long moment, his foot taps the floor, blinking. Again he knocks—a bit louder. 

“She is sleeping, you evolutionsbremse,” he utters, accent low and grating. “Leave her alone.” But even if you are, his nerves peek their head over the brimstone wall of his brain. 

With his fingers caressing the handle, slowly moved to clutch it fully, swallowing the metal in his grip. König takes a deep breath into his lungs, letting it fill them up. Again, he tells himself, just a check-in. 

He twists the doorknob and sets his forearm on the wood, pushing the barrier open. 

König moves so that his body makes no noise, even with how large it is as he angles the side of his head through the opening. He finds a large mound of blankets atop the bed—stacked and layered so heavily that he has to blink in surprise at how you can breathe under them; because you were under them. 

Gray eyes make out the small sliver of skin peaking out from the side of the bed—fingers—and the top of your forehead near the pillows formed around your skull. Unconsciously, a soft smile works its way over König’s lips until he finds himself chuckling.

“Niedlich,” he mutters, scars over his face shifting as he speaks. 

Sighing lowly, König pulls back his head, beginning to close the door once more.

“König…?” Your tiny voice makes him halt like he had in the townhouse. 

Eyes wide and lips parted at being caught, the door remains open, only a sliver visible to your vision as your furrowed brows are stuck at the barrier. A red sheen moves across the soldier’s face in a slow sweep of embarrassment that goes bone deep.

With a lick of his lips, König re-opens the door slightly.

“I did not mean to wake you, Katze.” He finds your eyes and nods to you. “I apologize. Go back to sleep—you must be tired.” 

 “Wait,” you utter, moving your head fully out from under the blankets. König pauses, eyes staring as his other hand comes up to itch at the back of his neck. 

“What is it,” the man asks, opening the door fully and moving inside. “Do you need anything?” 

The question had hit you in your thin slumber, interrupted only partially by the opening of your door to the familiar pull of gray eyes and a strong build. A buzz-cut head. You take a slow breath to wake yourself up more, watching him from your bed. “...Did you know that I would be in that house?”

König tilts his head at the question, sighing slightly and glancing at the clock inside of the room on your nightstand. He frowns. 

“No,” he explains gently, coming closer. “No, I did not. I do not get told such things—only where to shoot and where not to.” The man tries a small smile, kneeling on one leg down by the bed and staring into your sleepy eyes. “But I am glad I found you again, yes? You had me worried.”

“You were worried?” You can’t quite grasp it.

“Ja,” he nods. “Your eyes—they have stuck with me, Schatz, you understand?” 

Your eyebrows pull up your face, blinking in shock. 

“...Yours, too,” you confess. König’s heart flutters, listening until your lips have fallen still. “They’re very nice, König.”

He goes sheepish, lips flicking up into a smile and his eyes daring away for a moment. “You can thank my mother for them, then.” He chuckles. “I have stolen the family's eyes, I was told.”

You chuckle with him, hand coming to rub at your cheek. A silence falls between the two of you.

“I don’t sleep well,” you tell him in the relative darkness, light from the hallway and your night light illuminating the dips and bone structure of his face. “I was awake when you opened the door.” 

He nods after a moment. “Ja.” A pause. “I don’t either…Nightmares?” 

You watch him before nodding tinily. 

“Ah,” he mutters. “They are not pleasant, I’m sorry that they have been plaguing you. Do you…” König wonders if he should leave—this was far more than he had anticipated. “Do you wish for me to stay?” 

 Why had he said that?

The string between the two of you tightens evermore, gaining another thread just as it would for the years to come until it became as unbreakable as steel.

“I don’t want to be a nuisance,” you begin but are quickly interrupted with a shake of a square head and a huff of a sharp nose.

“You are not. Do not call yourself such.” His accent deepens with emotion, eyes narrowing as the dark brows on his face pull in. “If you want me to stay, I will stay. Wake you if you become shaky, yes? Keep the bad dreams at bay.”

“But what about you?” Your voice moves around the room as König stands and goes to the table in the back, shifting one of the chairs so that it’s angled your way. You shift so you can watch him sit back, grunting as his legs move out in front of him, opening so he can be more comfortable. He needed a bigger chair, but he wasn’t going to complain about it. 

“I’m not tired, Schatz.” A lie. His muscles are heavy, and he longs for his bed in the barracks. He pushes out, “Please, go back to sleep. I’ll watch over you.”

You stare for a long while, studying him and how he fidgets in his seat of choice. A small laugh meets the man’s ears as he crosses his arms over his chest. König pauses, blinking over in confusion. His lips move upwards slowly. 

“What are you laughing at, then, hm?” 

“You look like you’re about to break it,” you mutter, head nuzzling the pillow under you as fatigue claws its way under your skin. 

König huffs, fingers twitching over the meat of his biceps as he slouches. He nods jokingly. “Perhaps,” he shrugs, the window behind him letting a slight tinge of cold air in from outside. “It would not be the first, I’m afraid, though it would be quite the embarrassment to do it in front of you, Katze.” He smirks. “But I’ll say, hitting my head on door frames hurts more than letting my arsch kiss the ground.” 

You laugh under your heap, your body jerking to the movement of your lungs. 

“I bet,” you say, fingers grasping one of your blankets and pulling it closer. “It’s a funny image.”

“You can laugh all you want,” König jokes, eyes soft as they gaze at you. “It does not bother me.” 

Your sweet sounds of amusement waft out from under the crack in the door, where a small group of curious nurses mull and listen with glances to one another. A doctor moves past the hallway where they stand, and all scatter on quick feet. 

'…Signed,

[REDACTED]

SUBMITTED: 0517, 25, November 2021

END OF MISSION REPORT ‘RED FREEDOM’

RETURNING TO SELECTION MENU…

STAND BY…'

It’s only after most of the other women leave—sent home to awaiting families or loved ones—that you know your time is coming to a close here in Berlin, Germany. While you’re excited to put this behind you, you can’t help but feel a bit…lost. 

There’s something that keeps you here, on this base, until you’re the last out of all of them, waiting. And then you’re given the green light to go—go home—and suddenly you have a backpack full of necessities and you’re closing the door to your room with the little nightlight’s plastic body pushing against your spine. Yet, you stand in the hallway for a long minute, fingers interlocked. 

You take a long, deep, breath. 

Over the weeks of recovery, König had been a constant companion when he wasn’t needed. He had eased you back into a comfortable state, letting you somewhat lose the black-and-white view you had gained of the world. But there was only so much he could do, even if his soft eyes were still stuck in your dreams—the good ones, of course. 

You needed to go home, and, today, the C-17 was whirring on the tarmac, waiting for you to be transported to a military base far from here where you would be processed and, ultimately, let go. 

Let go. It was jarring to think about, all of that freedom. What would you do with it? Right now, you don’t have the faintest clue. It was the best feeling you can remember having.

Smiling, you take one last look at the room behind you and walk on. 

At the entrance, you say a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to the nurses and doctors in broken German, shaking their hands as Eva kisses your forehead and whispers how happy she is to have had you here for such little time—you know what she means and you chuckle with her at the double-edged sword. 

König waits by the door, holding it open with…you blink at the item in his hands as well as his sudden appearance. Canvas fabric. A coat.

The coat. 

“I had to have it processed,” he says, smiling as you gape at him. “Very long process. It was found in the closet in the townhouse.” 

“Then why are you handing it to me,” you ask, tilting your head and walking closer. 

“I gave it to you, did I not?” The man hums, head tilting as he motions with it again. “It’s a good coat, Katze. Winters get cold.” Gray eyes crinkle gently. “I would hate for you to shiver, wherever it is that you end up, yes?”

You shake your head, cheeks hot. But your hands don’t hesitate to grasp the item, König’s hold on it remains fast, though, and you blink at him as you both keep it gently clasped like it’s worth its weight in gold. 

König stares at you, the door still kept open behind him. He opens and closes his mouth for a moment as you tilt your head. 

“Keep it safe for me,” is what he ends with, but his expression tells you he’s not talking about the coat. 

It makes your arms tingle—your heart skips a beat. 

“I’ll be sure it never gets lost,” you smile warmly, eyes malleable as the make of their color glints. There is a connection to this man that transcends words, and it is tied to you just as heavily as it is to him; unexplainable, incomprehensible, non-describable. 

Enigmatic. 

König’s reverential face is soft with care. 

“Good,” he mutters, unable to look away. “Very good.”

Clearing his throat, his grays dart to the floor, shifting his feet to move backward. He pushes open the door wider for you, and you hold your backpack in one hand as you shift past him and slip into his coat. 

It was exactly how you remembered it, and you sank into the fabric with a thankful sigh and a fluttering of your lashes. You shift the bag back over your shoulders, letting the straps fall into the bulk of the extra material. 

The snow wasn’t falling today, and the ground was shoveled of any white powder too. On the air, you can hear the whir of the C-17. 

König comes up beside you, a hand hovering over the small of your back as he guides you along. For the most part, the walk to the tarmac is silent with the weight of the future. You had no phone. No socials. You didn’t even know if you wanted any, to be honest. Your mind had convinced you that a good bout of soul-searching was exactly what you needed. And you had to do that alone. 

Your lips are thin as your legs take you closer to the plane, König’s scent stuck into the stitches of the coat and covered your senses. 

At the ramp, he stops as your feet take you onto the metal. Closing your eyes for a moment, you turn and lock gazes with him—gray hiding away what other, more human, emotions to be found. It was a slate of carefully crafted acceptance, and your own followed soon after. 

It had to be this. The string wouldn’t break, no, but it had to be stretched to such a point to come back stronger.

“Thank—”

“Don’t,” he says, not blinking, looking up at you. 

You smile. “What do you want me to say, then?” 

“You don’t have to say anything to me.” You hadn't known it then, but the both of you had truly thought that this would be the last of your meetings. It produced a pulse in both of your hearts that would never be told aloud. “....Live well,” König utters. “Heal, Mein Schatz.” 

The soldier wasn't one to give his chances to hope. 

Your eyes follow as he backs up, moving away as you stare. In his head, König pleads with you to stop and give him a reprieve from the hypnosis of your gaze, the addictive movement of your head as it tilts to the side. 

Live well. 

You send him a smile, a delicate thing, and then you back up a step and turn, disappearing into the darkness. 

The string follows, and it continues to do so even as your hands slip into your pockets hours later, bumping into the small form of a black flip phone. The note hidden inside of it. 

 ‘For whenever you find what you’re looking for.’

'REQUEST FOR ADMINISTRATIVE DISCHARGE

REQUESTED BY: [REDACTED]

ENTERED: DECEMBER 15, 2021

TIME: 1422

OPEN FILE?...

REQUEST CANCELED….

RETURNING TO FILE SELECT MENU…

FILE SELECTED….

TRANSLATING…

STAND BY…

REQUEST OF HONORABLE ADMINISTRATIVE DISCHARGE OF [REDACTED] APPROVED ON JANUARY 2, 2022

OPEN FILE?...

REQUEST CANCELED…

SYSTEM SHUTTING DOWN'

You sit in a coffee shop in Berlin, Germany, by the window. It wasn’t just any coffee shop, but you try not to think about all of that. It was all in the past—three years, now. You like to think you’d learned something in that time.

“Danke schön,” you say to the woman who brings you your drink, nodding kindly. You take a small sip, humming and winking at her teasingly. “Perfekt.” 

She chuckles, wiping her hands on her apron. “Möchten Sie noch etwas anderes dazu?”

“Nein, nein,” you shake your head, waving a hand that soft bumps the flip phone on the table. “Danke.” 

The lady walks away, and you take another sip of the hot beverage, never put off by the heat. 

It was winter again, and your eyes followed the flakes as they fell from a cloudy sky, finding the beauty in it easily as you sat inside. The scarf around your neck is loose—your gifted coat open. You smile to yourself and hum, watching people walk past outside, thinking about their lives and how they live them. 

A large form travels out from a shop across the street, a plastic bag in his loose grip. He was not small, no, this man was a beast of height and strength alike. The loping, canid-like, walk was accented by the twitch of his fingers over his quarry. 

Your wide eyes stay stuck to him for a long moment as he moves to the crosswalk, people shifting out of his way as he ignores them. Familiarity strikes like lighting—a buzz down your spine that leaves you straightening.

After a long moment, a breathless laugh sneaks out of you.

There were just some things that people were never meant to understand.

Your hand places your cup back on the table, picking up the old flip phone and pushing it open. Your thumb runs the keypad, moving to the only contact that had ever been entered into the device. 

Pressing, you move it to your ear as you watch with a soft expression, heart pattering. 

Across the way, the man tenses, hand patting his leg before the other hand moves inside his pocket and shifts the item out. People walk away, moving to the other side of the crosswalk as he stares at the contact. 

A minute passes, and all the while you hold your breath.

He presses and moves the phone to his ear, staying as still as stone. As still as a man afraid his hood might scare a group of terrified women. 

His voice graces your ear.

“...Katze?” You beam, trapped in the warmth of the coat around your shoulders.

“How do you feel about coffee, König?” 

Blue-gray eyes had never been more beautiful than when they snapped up to meet yours.

TAGS:

@sheviro-blog, @ivebeentrashsince2001, @mrshesh, @berryjuicyy, @romantic-homicide, @kmi-02, @neelehksttr, @littlemisstrouble, @copperchromewriting, @coelhho-brannco, @pumpkinwitchcrusade, @fictional-men-have-my-heart, @sleepyqueerenergy, @cumikering, @everything-was-dark, @marmie-noir, @anna-banana27, @iamcautiouslyoptimistic, @irenelunarsworld, @rvjaa, @sarcanti, @aeneanc, @not-so-closeted-lesbian, @mutuallimbenclosure, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @gildedpoenies, @glitterypirateduck, @aldis-nuts, @writeforfandoms, @kohsk3nico, @peteymcskeet, @caramlizedtomatoes, @yoursweetobsession, @quesowakanda, @chthonian-spectre, @so-no-feint, @ray-rook, @extracrunchymilk, @doggydale, @frazie99, @develised, @1-800-no-users-left, @nuncubus, @aldis-nuts, @clear-your-mind-and-dream, @noonanaz, @cosmicpro, @stinkaton, @waves-against-a-cliff, @idocarealot

[sleepyconfusedpotato]

Don't mind me just MW actors holding a gun meme

I'm probably gonna make more but send this to your besties when they say something out of pocket or anything really

[mockerycrow]

Frozen Fingertips [2/2] (Ghost x GN!Reader)

ghost masterlist - part one

Summary: Ghost struggles to keep you alive through these harsh times.

A/N: I’m so glad you guys enjoyed part one!! i did not shrink the font of this one because i realized that it may strain some peoples’ eyes. this is not as angsty as i wished it to be, and it isn’t as long as i hoped. i apologize. tbh i don’t like this, but i hope y’all enjoy

[WARNINGS: Descriptions of developing hypothermia and frost bite, delirium, near-death experience(s), angst to fluff.]

THE BLIZZARD WAS not stopping and it didn’t show signs of stopping any time soon, which honestly terrifies Ghost because of your awful condition. Despite his previous efforts, you quickly slipped back into a delirious state of developing hypothermia—a state you weren’t completely aware of, but you knew something was wrong. You could vaguely acknowledge the way that you were fading in and out wasn’t normal, but it wasn’t like you could do anything about it. What you hated was the painful tingling and the weird.. harsh cold entering your lungs every time you took a deep breath. You’re so warm, yet your lungs burn cold.

You only saw times in glimpses—what you thought was likely a matter of hours, expanded across a matter of a few days. The harsh blizzard was unwavering, it’s snow falling from the sky harshly messing with the radio signals. Ghost would sit by the window with his personal radio on his vest, along with the emergency signal radio he had stowed in his pack. He would get small glimpses of other peoples voices—Price’s would come through occasionally, luckily long enough for Ghost to update him about their situation and their whereabouts, your condition; but Ghost was never able to provide an update about an exact location. The windows were frosted over and even when they weren’t, all Ghost saw was endless snow and pine trees far as the eye can see, until they eventually faded from view due to the snow coverage. Every time Ghost suddenly becomes aware of his breath, he can’t help but glance over at you; wrapped up in two sleeping bags, sitting way too close to the fireplace—sometimes shuddering, and sometimes.. not moving at all. His heart drops to his stomach when he doesn’t see your breath in the air. He calls your name loudly, firm and demanding and when you don’t answer, he scrambles from his position by the window. “Fuck,” He utters. “Fuck!”

Ghost ignores the pain in his knees when they harshly bash against the ground as he kneels next to you. He grabs your face by your cheeks, startled by the hue of blue on your lips. “Bloody bell—wake up!” Ghost snarls, somehow managing to keep his voice steady. He holds his breath until he sees your chest slowly yet shakily rise—and then you exhale very slowly, and clearly with amounts of trouble. Relief floods Ghost’s veins, but it’s quickly replaced by frustration and panic. You gasp quietly before you begin to shiver uncontrollably again, and taking Ghost completely by surprise; you open your eyes. Your eyes are glazed over, your eyelids puffy. “[Name]?” Ghost questions, his eyes staring hard into yours, silently noting your dialed pupils. “[Name], can you hear me?” If you do, you don’t make coherent indication. Your tongue darts out and wets your lips before you croak out, “I gotta pee.” Ghost huffs and shakes his head, his hand shooting up and laying on your chest—which is covered by many thicker layers, so disregarding Ghost’s hand, it’s not very likely you could’ve gotten up without help, anyway. “You went an hour ago, yeah? You need to stay layin’ down.” You groan and despite your arms being tucked into your multiple covers, something moves against the fabric as if to swat Ghost’s hand away. Ghost can’t help but swallow nervously; he isn’t stupid, he’s aware you’re in one of the stages of hypothermia, he told Price as much. He’s been able to keep the frostbite at bay, but he’s running out of firewood. It’s snowing way too damn hard for him to even pick up stray logs and sticks laying around. Your slowed heartrate, increased urge to urinate, slow cognitive functions, slurred speech, cold skin—blue lips..

It’s not looking good and Ghost doesn’t want to think about that, but that’s all he can see of you right now, so how could he not? And it’s hard both mentally and physically to stay in this cabin, seeing you deteriorate while he himself is getting absolutely fucking freezing. Ghost has had to shed a layer or two just to keep you alive. He can’t deny the way the cold air is scratching at his skin, seeping through his balaclava and into his jaw, nearly making his bones hurt. Ghost clenches his teeth as he shudders for a moment, eyes fluttering closed just long enough to gain his composure. Fuck. Ghost doesn’t want to die here. He doesn’t want you to die here, not like this. Not in a run-down abandoned cabin with shitty insulation, where frostbite is nipping at your fingers and where the cold is finally getting to Ghost’s head. He grits his teeth and sits back on his ass normally with a gloved hand to his head, his vision absolutely swimming. “Stop it,” He grunts quietly. “Hafta stay up.” Ghost takes a deep breath and grunts as he pushes himself to his feet, his boots booming against the wooden floor as he walks over to the area where the firewood is kept. He grabs a few of the pre-cut logs and he makes his way over to you and the fireplace, tossing the logs into the ashes, slowly refueling the dying embers. Ghost sniffles a little under his mask as he grabs a piece of paper and takes out a lighter, lighting it on fire before quickly tossing it into the fireplace to make a better fuel source. He crouches near the growing fire, taking his spot by your feet. Ghost sucks in a shuddering breath and rubs his upper arms, and he can’t help but take another glance at you. You stopped trying to get out of your warm enclosure of blankets, but your eyes were darting around the room slowly, unfocused and hazy.

Ghost’s chest clenches for a moment and he walks back over to your shivering form, and he already did it, but he presses his fingers against your lukewarm skin—nearly cold. Your eyes flutter again and then they vaguely glance in the direction that you think he’s in; which you’re almost right, but a few inches off. You try to speak but a quiet choked noise leaves you, your breathing shaky—finally from fear this time. Ghost puts his finger to his mask in a shushing motion, trying his best to keep you calm. “You’ll be alright, yeah? Gotta wait until the storm’s done brewing out there.” He attempts to reassure your delirious brain, but you can only make another “out of it” noise before your eyes flutter shut once again, you losing consciousness. Ghost feels an ugly and dreadful feeling deep in his gut, scratching at his veins, climbing them until his fingertips are cold both due to the temperature and panic. Ghost has always insisted he doesn’t panic, and he hasn’t—until now. Not until he fears the storm won’t pass over and help won’t arrive until you’re frozen and stiff under your fear, despite his desperate attempts to keep you warm—and alive. Ghost doesn’t want to admit it, but fuck, he’s terrified to fall asleep because out of the two of you, what if he’s the only one who wakes up?

Ghost’s eyelids flutter for a moment before he inhales in a sharp manner and his spine straightens up, his hands clenching together for a moment. “M’not going to fall asleep.” He mutters to himself as he takes his place next to you on the floor and holy hell, the floor is cold—so he silently scoots closer to you and wraps an arm around your body, and Ghost uses his other arm as a pillow. Your chest very slowly rises and falls, and he finds comfort in the sight of a sign of you being alive—you’re still here with him, and that’s all he needs.

Ghost is awoken from a banging on the cabin door. He jolts ever so slightly, but he’s immediately hit with chills, his limbs trembling. Fuck, he fell asleep. His eyelids feel like sandbags and and he can’t stop fucking shaking—and he feels so heavy.. so tired. “Ghost!” A familiar voice yells outside of the cabin. His arm wraps around your form tighter when he doesn’t immediately recognize the British accent behind the door, he grunts as he clumsily sits up and pulls you closer, his trembling hand grasping as his hip, taking out his service pistol. The door opens as he attempts to aim it, his weak and low voice hissing out, “I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out—“

“Ghost, it’s Price. We found you. Put the gun down.”

Ghost blinks slowly as he looks at the figure who slowly approaches, two others trailing behind—and it is Price—with Gaz and Soap. Ghost sharply inhaled and his arm lowers, the pistol slipping out of his grip. Gaz rushes over to him and your limp form, taking off his gloves. “We got you, Ghost. We got you.” Price assures, but his lips are pressed together as he watches Gaz. Ghost’s head rolls back for a moment, blacking out for a few seconds—Soap’s hands catching his head before it hits the floor. “They’re alive,” Gaz grunts out, leaning down to pick you up bridal style while keeping all of the layers around your body. “Barely, but we gotta get ‘em both to warmth. Now.”

When Ghost finally comes to, the first thing he notices is the smell—it doesn’t smell like rotting and burning wood; his lungs don’t burn with every breath and he can keep his fingers. The second thing he notices is the ache within his throat and his limbs, and the third thing he notices is that he is not wearing his mask. He still feels heavy, but it’s not the kind of heavy where you want to sleep forever heavy. It’s a.. comforting heavy. Someone laying on top of him heavy. It takes him a hot second to open his eyes, and another second to adjust to the harsh lights of the hospital room—oh, wait, they’re not that bad, his head just hurts. Ghost notices someone laying their head on the bed on top of Ghost, their arms under their head as a cushion. He blinks blearily as he doesn’t register it at first; the hospital gown, two IV drips for two separate patients, and the bandages covering your fingers—it’s you. His eyes widen and he lets out a quiet noise, causing you to lift your head up immediately and look at him with the most vulnerable look you could ever have, your eyes wide and bulging like when a child doesn’t know whether to believe the adult in front of them. “Ghost?” You ask, and fuck, your throat croaks. Your vocal cords sound like they’ve been torn apart and reattached, croaking with relief and pain. He swallows thickly and he nods for a moment, unable to find his voice. Your eyes soften for a moment before you whisper to him. “Hurts to talk, huh? Me too.”

Then don’t, said his silent gaze. Yet, somehow, you manage to catch on his memo. Wordlessly, you reach up to one of his hands—covered in scars and calluses, but you don’t mind. Your hands are similar as you nervously glance at him, grabbing his wrist and turning it over so his palm faces up. Ghost eyes your movements, but makes no move to stop you. You take one of your pointer fingers—the one that isn’t bandaged—and you trace letters into his hand slowly.

T H A N K Y O U

Ghost meets your gaze, and you have tears in your eyes. His hand is grossly limp as he grabs the hand you were moving away, and he instead pulls your hand closer to his face for a closer inspection. The bandages concern him, so he looks at you again. You reach for the clipboard you left by his feet and you place it in his lap, pointing to the part of the medical report about your frostbite blisters. Ghost inhales deeply for a moment before his fingers tap against your hand—rhythmically? Oh, it’s morse code.

Ghost is tapping SAFE over and over while looking at you, to reassure himself—and you. You nod in response and offer him the smile he’s been waiting to see and you tap back to him, SAFE.

[harveywritings92]

Soap: How’s Ghost’s head?

R/n, annoyed: Still full of bullshit.

Soap:...

R/n: Oh... You meant when he walked into that flag pole this morning. He’s fine.

Soap: …

R/n: Why are you still staring for?...(looks over her shoulder) Oh crap, is he behind me?

{Ghost is sitting on the chair next to her with out his mask on.)

Simon, flatly: No. I’m beside you...

R/n, jumps away shocked: Ahhh! 

{The reader is so used to seeing Ghost with his mask on, she often forgets what Simon looks like. Also the reason the reader is acting so catty is because Ghost stood her up on a date, he didn’t mean to. A female recruit who was after him, tricked Ghost into helping her with some tasks knowing full well he had a date with R/n. Long story short, the recruit tried to make a move and Ghost tore her down a few pegs in front of everyone. He tried to apologize to R/n for missing their date but she was giving him the cold shoulder so he’s basically following her around like a lost puppy...]

[PART 2]

[reschatzi]

SIMON RILEY ── YOU GET ME SO HIGH

🕸️·˚ ༘ warnings. top male reader. bottom simon. high typa shit. flashbacks. smoking. mentioned drinking. public sex. cockwarming. breathplay.

ִ ࣪𖤐 ࣪ by the end of it all, the smoke you exhale transforms into a kiss. ◞

the exact date when it began is something you’re unsure of.

he, lieutenant simon riley, simply walked into your room without a knock. no words were exchanged, not that they were really needed. your mouth opened, agape. a “what?” is what you want to utter, but his lips catches your own.

simon riley groans when he feels you return the kiss. the faint taste of malt liquor on your tongue has him pushing you back, onto your bed, as he straddles your lap. you remember that he asks,

“do you want this?”

his voice was breathless. heavy pants meeting your neck.

and you do. you agree, the next moments a blur. he lowers himself on your cock when he’s ready. he already was before he barged in.

strangely, something blooms. a progression you won’t know where it’ll lead. nothing worrying, nothing out-of-place. at least on the outside, it won’t attract that much attention. yours was focused on the feeling of simon’s hole stretching to accommodate to your size. it was stupid.

no, really. it was late at night, but that didn’t mean no one would wander around these hours. you were in the hallway, supposedly on the way to your room when simon couldn’t take the wait anymore. there’s not much plot to this story. fuck then leave. that was it. you hated that, and you were projecting your one-sided feelings onto his prostate.

“ah, ah, ah. fu—fuuck. shit- ggah! mhng... wait—”

your hand clasped his neck and he gasps. alarms blared in your head, you shouldn’t do this. this was territory you haven’t spoken or even thought of.

guilty, you wanted to whisper an apology. thrusts shifting into slow grinds, handing him a way out. but he only leaned into your palm, the coldness, near emptiness, emanating from your glove contrasting to the warmth of his shrouded flesh. “don’t... don’t stop.” he breathes, like there’s no more oxygen in his lungs.

exhale.

that’s what you did.

you puff out the smoke you inhaled from the cigarette that was in between your index and middle fingers. the dirty air landed on his half-masked face. his cheek went to rest on your shoulder, hips lazily lifting themselves up and back down. you lead the cigar to his mouth. sharing something like this, in this situation, with this person, was beyond unbelievable.

fuck, what even happened?

the events that were replaying in your head moments ago were quickly fading. you’re too tired. too unfocused. you hear him call your name. then another time. then another. he gently pats your face. “look at me,” your eyes dart downwards to him. “what’s going on in that head of yours?” he says as he brings himself back down on your cock.

“nothin’... s’ just—” he clenches around you when he feels the tip of your dick graze his sweet spot.

simon hums like he’s done an achievement. maybe he did, earning a whine from you. in some way, the weight of both of your chests were lighter. passing on the cigarette to one another, it was a repeating process. taking turns and the pace he set doesn’t change.

you think you’re losing the logical part of your brain. your thoughts are jumbled and gibberish. the temporary pleasure couldn’t outweigh the actual one you were experiencing now. your fingers find themselves attached to his neck, flexing as they try not to tighten their hold too much.

the last puff was yours. without thinking, you press the butt of the cigarette on his thigh to put it out.

he hisses, but the dizziness in you can’t find the moment to care. matter of fact, he enjoys it.

you don’t miss the way his thighs trembled, not missing the way he rocked against you hard. his cock throbbed and you show mercy. your free hand finds his length, causing him to see stars. he curses, lowly. “oh, shit, ‘m c-close.”

the lieutenant finds himself stuttering, losing his voice. how couldn’t he? you were hitting all of the right spots inside of him. both of your hands were on him, one working him up further to his release while the other bruised his neck. it was like you were claiming him but no one would know. they can’t find out unless you tell them or they’d catch a glimpse of his skin.

the combination of pain and pleasure was too good. his head was clouded, and so was yours. maybe he was at peace for once, all warm and tight around you. maybe, by the end of it all, the smoke you exhale transforms into a kiss from him.

and maybe, just maybe, you’re right.

𓍢‧₊🕷️ ࣪˖ knight’s phoning. wanna be apart of my taglist? fill out this form so you can be immediately notified for future fics. masterlist

[yawnderu]

A/N: We made it to 3k less than a month after I reached 2k followers 🥺<3!!

I was genuinely not expecting this when I first made my account, but so far I've gotten so much support and I've met so many lovely people. I'm always reading your comments and reblogs, you mfs are hilarious JFEHJBFEHJB💕Onto the nasty sinful monkey sex now.

Synopsis: tired of working a dead-end job with no rewards, your childhood best friend offers you a job at his company, promising the stress levels are minimal and the pay is good. You accept with no second thoughts, not realizing you were tricked into becoming a stress relief toy for his men.

CW: humiliation, hard sex, gangbang, double vaginal, triple penetration, unsafe sex, creampie, 14 vs 1, cum swallowing, bukkake, spit kink, cockdrunk reader, deepthroat, handjobs, size kink, watersports.

Being a commander who saw his soldiers as family, Graves knew he always had to watch out for his men, reward them for their hard work and loyalty, and what better way to do that than with a sweet little thing like you? Their own personal stress relief toy, who was tricked into taking a job at the Shadow Company, yet so willing to please. So eager.

"You're enjoying this more than you should." He's teasing you, of course, yet his cocky expression does nothing to help the pooling warmth on your stomach. One of the shadows is sitting behind you, gloved hands hooked under your knees to keep your legs open while Graves grinded his clothed boner on your bare cunt, the fabric feeling almost painful if it wasn't for how wet you are.

"Maybe I am." You manage to reply, barely able to speak between whiny moans and soft gasps, his cock rubbing in all the right places, but the stimulation wasn't enough. No, he had been teasing you like this for the past 20 minutes, making his men watch as you became a putty mess in his hand. The shadows were men of discipline and self-control, keeping their hands folded politely behind their backs, ignoring their painful, throbbing cocks until their commander allowed them to use their brand new chew toy.

"I want you to know," He began, hand slipping under your chin firmly to force you to look up at him, hard cock rubbing faster up and down your cunt, pressing into you harder. "That I ain't playin' with you, Stray. My men will do anythin' I tell them to. Last chance to pull out." He warned and you shook your head no, his cocky smile growing even wider as his other hand went to squeeze your tit, looking for any signs of discomfort and much to his delight, seeing none.

"I can take it." The words are more of a reassurance to yourself, gaze drifting around the room and counting the men inside. 14, including Graves. You swallow thickly, nervous eyes drifting back to Graves, who simply raises an eyebrow in return, waiting for you to realize just how fucked up you are if you don't pull out.

"I can take it." You repeat, slowly believing the words more and more. He simply smiles and ruffles your hair affectionately, the same way he always did growing up.

"Attagirl." He pulled away from you and you can see the satisfaction in his eyes, knowing you'll do a good job for him. He nods to his men and they quickly get to work, hands groping you all over, long fingers entering your cunt roughly to the point you're becoming nothing but a whiny, whimpering mess. They're rough and impatient, your wrists being grabbed and forced onto their hard cocks until you're willingly jerking them off, hands barely able to wrap around their thick lengths. It's intimidating, yet so hot to be locked in a room full of hormonal, pent-up military men.

"On your knees." One of them commands, yet you're forced on your knees before you can even try to get up. Four cocks are in front of you and you begin sucking with no hesitation, eyes closing as you give into your role at the company. Your lips wrap around one of them, slowly taking him deeper until he gets too impatient and forces your head down to the base, the gagging noises your throat lets out simply making it feel better.

"Good girl." You don't even know who's praising you, but it's enough to give you the encouragement you needed, starting to bob your head up and down until you're pulled off the cock, a new one being shoved down your throat. They're using you— you know it, and you're letting them. You get passed around, tasting and sucking on different dicks while your hands keep themselves busy, deep moans and groans coming from above you. They get too impatient quick, the man you recognize as Oz wrapping his fingers on your hair, pulling on it until you willingly get up, throwing you into bed and opening your legs wide with brutal force. You look down, eyes widening as you see just jow thick he is.

"You said you could take it, ain't that right?" He uses your words against you, the tip of his cock rubbing up and down your folds, your head dropping back as a moan escapes your lips. That's all he needs for confirmation, hands firmly holding the curve of your waist before he buries his cock to the hilt in one thrust. A pained moan escapes your lips, eyebrows furrowing as your nails dig into his arm— the pretty, long acrylic nails Graves paid for earlier that day.

"Shit... S‐slow down, asshole." The way you struggle to take him is almost cute, a cocky smirk pulling on his lips as he shakes his head no once, holding onto you tighter while he slams in and out of you. You don't have much room to complain before another cock is being shoved into your face, your lips willingly wrapping around the tip, hollowing your cheeks while your tongue circles all over it. Your whiny moans are muffled as you slowly begin to suck more and more, the pleasure of being groped all over and being fucked good slowly getting rid of any hints of regret you may have.

"Fucking slut." Oz says, hand coming up to gently pinch and pull on your nipples while he fucks into you faster. All you can do is nod, tears dotting your eyelashes at the mix of pain and pleasure, using the cock in your mouth to cover up the embarrassing sounds escaping you from being a used like a whore. Your body is manhandled into another position, a different shadow underneath you who wastes no time on fucking into your cunt, filling you just as much as Oz was. Your hands are kept busy jerking off more cocks while your mouth is put into good use again, muffling the moan of protest that threatens to escape when you feel the tip of a dick teasing the entrance of your ass.

"Wait—" You manage to speak when the shadow takes his cock out of your throat to give you time to breathe, only to be interrupted by your throat being forced open again. You close your eyes tightly, trying your best to relax, the folds of your tight hole slowly being eased, the man is being surprisingly gentle for someone who holds so much power over you.

"Good girl." He praises softly, voice deep with desire, yet holding so much care. His hand gently caresses your ass as he bottoms out, giving you time to adjust before his hands rest on your waist, pulling you up and down his cock, the thin layer of skin diving your ass and cunt making the pleasure even greater. It doesn't take much before you're willingly slamming your hips down, moving in your own pace and fucking yourself into the big cocks inside you like a greedy whore, too eager to wait.

"Lovely girl, ain't she?" You can recognize Grave's voice, choosing to ignore it for now as you simply focus on feeling good. It doesn't take long until the men are taking turns with you, wet cunt leaking everywhere, yet none of them seem to care. You wince as you feel a second cock on the entrance of your pussy, nervous, yet eager to please. You don't even have to lift your head to know whose cock it is— fucking Phillip Graves. The man who got you into this situation on the first place... which you're now glad happened.

He's surprisingly gentle as he squeezes his cock into your airtight hole, the pain of the stretch only being overpowered by the feeling of a cock slamming back into your throat, nose hitting dark, curly pubes every single time the masked man makes you deepthroat him. Your whiny moans are mixed in with the lewd, wet sounds of your holes being used and abused. You lost count of how many times you were filled, mind too hazy from all the overstimulation, yet you can register the door closing behind them, leaving you alone with Graves.

''Attagirl.'' He praises, his hand running down the length of your sweaty hair as his soft cock settles into your cum-stained lips, half-lidded eyes looking up at him with curiosity. Your mouth is suddenly filled with a warm liquid and you swallow without thinking about it, eyes closing once he's done pissing into your slutty mouth. He slowly pulls out, putting his cock back in his pants and admiring the mess his men did of your body, covered in cum and small bruises from their strong hold when they were fucking you.

''I got another job for ya. Ever heard of the 141?''

[temeyes]

still sick ahu, tweaked the [portrait] i made of Simon from last year to cope

[clancycatears]

LT. SIMON "GHOST" RILEY mw reboot masterlist

☁️ = angst || 💌 = fluff || ⚠️ = sexual/triggering content

ONE-SHOTS AND SERIES!

FIRST KILL [☁️/💌]

FORGIVE ME [💌/⚠️]

SAY PLEASE [⚠️] F!READER

SCARS YOU CAN'T SEE [☁️/💌]

HEADCANONS AND MORE!

PERSONNEL RECORD: SIMON RILEY

NSFW ALPHABET → rewrite in progress! SFW ALPHABET

GHOST'S PLAYLIST (+ Spotify link)

SMUT PROMPTS

BLURBS: On His Knees // Bad Day // Ghost w/ an extroverted partner // Fluster

clancy’s fav! (or ***)

[shadeops21]

God fuckign damnit IW

YOU HAD ONE JOB!

ONE! JOB!

I've seen some of the names you've given character skins, and I will admit, some of them are quite creative and some of them... less so.

BUT WHEN WE FINALLY GET THE BUNDLE WITH THE FAMOUS GHOST IN JEANS, THAT I COSPLAYED, THAT STARTED A FERVOR AMONGST FANS WHEN THE MWII TRAILER WAS RELEASED!

WHAT DID THEY CALL IT?!

"Jeans Ghost".

WHAT THE FUCK IW!?

I MADE UP A NAME FOR THIS FUCKING SKIN WHEN I WAS WRITING UP MY COSPLAY GUIDES, AS WE DIDN'T HAVE A SKIN NAME AT THE TIME, AND KNOW WHAT I CALLED IT?!

URBAN WARFARE!

Jesus fucking Christ IW, are you that creatively bankrupt that you can't even come up with a convincing skin name?!

Goddamn it...

Yes I still bought the bundle because fuck me I cosplayed that kit, you'll be damn sure I'm going to wear this kit full-time in game now.

[2kiran]

absolutely obsessed with the way you write sub!könig 😣 i was hoping to request sub!könig x dom!male!reader where the reader has a breeding kink and a big dick <3 + praise maybeee..? up to you !! thank you if you end up writing this <33

COLONEL KÖNIG 香菸 ── `` top m reader w, a big dick. breeding + praise kink. italicized words are in german.

“fuck, aahhng, s–sweetheart!” könig gasps, muscles spasming and visibly sensitive to the sensation of your thick cock. his legs subconsciously wrap themselves around your waist, holding you in place. one of his hands is planted over his eyes, attempting to hide himself in a futile distraction from the painful pleasure.

he’s finally managed to take in half, entrance struggling to accommodate the width even now; your release from earlier leaking down to your shaft. “you’re so beautiful like this, takin’ all of me.”

he sniffles, the other hand clawing into the material of the couch. “i can’t t-take it anymore. too big—” a sheen of sweat was built atop his skin. “yes, you can. doin’ so good, there you are, c’mon,” when you deliver a particularly harsh thrust with a soft grunt, your words are properly punctuated enough to numb his brain.

“nngh– yes, y-yes, feels so...” könig trails off into a whimper, greedily rocking back. he was squeezing you so well, hole an aphrodisiac strong enough to make you an addict. könig abruptly forces himself down to take in more of you, your dick responding with a twitch and teeth gritting with a grunt.

“so, so big, my love, i’m gonna break—” könig’s voice shifts into a half-mutter, half-broken cry. “taught you well, pretty,” you praise, slamming your hips upwards when you feel him ease. his own dick is a mess, trails of cum from prior unexpected orgasms beginning to adorn his skin. it takes every ounce of willpower not to continue fucking him until it somehow takes.

his back arches, combined lube and spend dripping down the length of your cock from his entrance. he swears he can feel you in his throat, not an inch of his insides untouched by you. “pretty little thing’s sucking me in.. gonna let me cum in you again? shit, he’s practically beggin’ me for it,” könig whines in humiliation from the way you refer to his stretched hole like that, but he dumbly nods his head and you’re certain he isn’t far off either.

“yes, yes, thank you, i need it.” the tip abused his prostrate with every push, sparks of blinding pleasure traveling up his spine. könig’s body jolting as he finished again, thick ropes spurting out only to land on your stomach.

the sudden clenching of his warm hole drags out your own climax, filling him to the brink as his thighs twitch. it leaks out and you pull out — just to slam inside again. you have to press your hand on his chest to keep him down, receiving a sweet, sweet cry out of the man below you. he lets you, simply taking it as you gently roll your hips into him.

one thing about the cocky colonel? he knew how to be a good boy.

masterlist﹒divider

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

PREY

PAIRING: Hunter!Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Werewolf!Reader

SYNOPSIS: There’s blood on your hands again.

WORDCOUNT: 16.8k

WARNINGS: Intense gore, body horror, death, mutilation, weapons, firearms, knives, intended harm, violence, blood, descriptions of wounds, angst, fluff, protective!Simon, religious mentions, period time standards for men/women (1700s), etc.

A/N: The first of my reverse AUs is finally here! Enjoy!

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The tale of the Werewolf extends back to around 2100 BC. It was written in The Epic of Gilgamesh, scored into a clay tablet by hands long buried—a corpse forever still in the earth so deep, the bones have yet to be found by greedy eyes. Perhaps the oldest surviving story in human history, and there is still a passage that bleeds into stories hundreds of thousands of years later.

In such, Gilgamesh, a man on the search for immortality, rejects a woman for the reason of turning her previous husband into a wolf. 

“You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf, now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks…”

And then, the tales spread, changed, through history and through spoken words of caution. Like water trickling from a well, down the shape of the wooden bucket delving deeper and deeper into a pit of age—of caution. 

“The Beast of Gévaudan. Man-eater.” Through France

“He has a wolf-head, you know? Tall thing—short brown hair all over him.” Through Scotland

“Beware the man that changes shape under the full moon.” England.

Now, in the late seventeenth century, it all comes to a head. Even the people in 2100 BC knew that someone who changes into a wolf, or some bastard-like imitation of one, was very much real; it is very much an affliction that overtakes sense and reason. A curse. 

Transferable down to the saliva of one entering your bloodstream.

You must never get within the beast’s sights. 

—

There’s blood on your hands again. 

Hunched over, your body quivers, and the bareness of your flesh in the moonlight is of little concern to you—trapped in a fetal position while the chilled wind howls.

Howls.

Howls.

“Get out of my head.” Your fingers grasp at your scalp, pulling; ripping. A sob jaggedly slashes your throat open. “Please,” you rattle in a fast breath, the grass snapping as you writhe. “Get out of my head.”

It had happened once more, and you can’t remember any of it. 

The forest is deathly still. No birds sing their songs—no breeze moves the long grass, patches trampled down around you as if a beast had staggered into the small clearing you’re lying in. Maybe it had. There are shadows that listen to your quiet panic, the low whines and gasping quivers of your throat; from behind the trees that speak in the way that only they could. The deep night creeps into you, and the moonlight bathing your flesh doesn’t push back the terror in your bloodstream. 

Your body burns like you’ve broken every bone twice over, and judging by the blood stuck in between every line and dip of your skin, to anyone walking past, the analogy could be very real. Fingers flexing and bending, you try to force out the venom inside of your head with desperation befitting a dying dog, spine visible out of the skin of your back as you sob all the harder. 

You tried to stop it—you had; you always do. But, just like every month when the full moon mocks you with its silver-hued face, it never works. 

It never works.

Your eyes stare at nothing as you lay here, in this place of grass, blood, and bile, of corruption as deep as a vile sin of flesh. It came over you like a wave, fingers trapping your throat and bearing it to the caress of fangs. There were different names for it here, miles from your village and the terrified eyes that search the tree line; names coming from the hunters and their black deeds. 

Shapeshifter.

Demon spawn.

Werewolf.

“I can’t take it anymore,” you shove the side of your head into the ground, pushing the torn earth away from the cuts of long claws. Tears flood the dirt until it’s wet and muddy, pushing the crimson stains on your skin away in long streaks. “It hurts, God, please, it hurts.”

The sound of your hysterics rises and falls in the stillness—the inactivity of fearful birds and beasts wondering if your fangs would rip from your gums and your claws would tear from your fingertips. Fur along your body the color of which leads to stories of their own spreading far and wide. 

The White Wolf. The Specter of St. Francis’ Village. A hound from Hell. 

More pale than snow, and sharper seen than a knife or blade through the black trees. Even if the memories of your shifts were fuzzy at best, there were flashes of those who’d seen your gargantuan form from the confines of their stone-cut homes. Those wide eyes. Yelling—screaming; sprays of blood as heads were separated from bodies—

“Stop!” You scream, your legs kicking out as your toes scrape the grass. “It’s not me! It’s not!” 

There’s a call of alarm from deep within the woods, the flash of torches and bellow of hunting dogs. They’re running you down, you’d forgotten that in the depths of your breaking mind and body, and by the time your elongated limbs had set themselves back into a more human-like appearance, your spine cracking at every vertebrae, it had slipped your thoughts entirely. It always took you a long time to understand what had happened after…everything. 

But even now, the shouts of the hunt are pointless to the visceral breaking of your consciousness, stuck between leaving bloodlust and knowledge of horror. There’s flesh in your teeth, and you wail before your fingers drag down your face, cupping over your ears. In the back of your skull, the panting of dogged breath echoes; running, blood, blood, blood. It’s a dance of fangs, of pale fur, staining every inch and flooding the back of your mouth. Drinking it down like water.

Flesh—lovely, disgusting, flesh rent and torn to the bone with smacking gums belonging to a square snout. 

Who had you killed this time?

By the time the dogs had tracked your scent to your curled body, it was already too late. 

“Here!” Male voices shift in and out on the backs of crows, hard and cruel. “It’s here!”

“Get the dogs on it!” 

“It’s not me,” you mutter incessantly, not truly understanding what you’re saying as hounds burst through the bushes, all snapping teeth and slobbering tongues your eyes widen in an instant. Panting, your jaw clenches; long whines move your throat. 

“What…?” Blinking quickly, the dogs surround you—having to be at least ten of them on their nimble legs and thin tails. Everything is distant to you; separated. A knife could be driven through your heart, and you wouldn’t even realize it until minutes later, bleeding out on the grass. 

The hounds are afraid of you. 

They dart forward and balk back, your scent driving them up a wall until rabid slobber drips from their maws. Torchlight pulls through the trees—quicker now, running. Fangs nick your shoulder and you yell, shoving up to your backside as the world swirls, shuffling away as the dogs snarl. Their eyes are red-huen. Drunk off fear and order. 

Your head darts and shifts, blood dripping off your chin to travel down the flesh of your stomach and navel—so much crimson that the whites of your eyes are violent under the moon. Hands slipping over the wet grass, your face pulls and slackens in delirious confusion as you try to stand but fail. You cry out in sharp pain, and the dogs go wild in their kill circle, nearly attacking one another in anticipation. 

You glance down and see the black crossbow bolt sticking out of your thigh. 

The scent of wolfsbane in the air only then becomes clear to you, and the realization is slow. Wolfsbane—you’d been told about it by the village priest. It makes beasts of the night dumb and weak; minds unclear. 

In a moment of clarity, the reason behind your incurable hysteria becomes clear.

Lungs heaving and eyes far-off, the hunting party bursts through to where you stay, and you look up in animalistic fear. Figures dip and slip into one another, faces becoming demons as the visages melt into twos and threes. You yell out, sniffling and sobbing, trying to back up until the hounds grapple onto your shoulder and rip a chuck out of your arm. Screaming, your hand moves back, shoving at its snout before hands staple themselves to your wrist. 

“No!” You wail, injured leg dragging as you’re forced back into a heavy chest. Hot breath fans against your neck as multiple grips pull and touch you—shackling you down with rope and chains. Your throat screams itself raw, kicking and struggling futility. “Let go!”

You’re too weak—too drugged off wolfsbane and blood loss. Rotting teeth move across the canvas of a smeared painting, you can’t focus beyond the riot of your heart inside of your ribs.  

Grubby hands snap under your chin, digging into your flesh as you cry, not able to move as the restraints are tightened. A silver muzzle is slapped over your jaw. Dark eyes shimmer as you rage—aggravating the bolt wound until fresh blood forms a puddle on the ground, which the dogs lick their lips at. 

“Look at that,” a low, lust-filled voice eases out, and hands around your body tightening as you squirm, head spinning. Silver and wolfsbane. Your eyes snap to fight the sudden flood of fuzzy heaviness in your body.  “Pretty little Hell-Beast, eh? Almost seems a bit strange to have the Spector be her. Think that hunter shot the right bitch?”

“Course,” another grunt, a hand grabs the top of your head, jerking it up as your head lulls along with the force. You can barely focus on the words being said. “He isn’t a fuckin’ twat. Killed a werewolf in the next village over, too. Heard he skinned the fucker and took its head for his mantlepiece—just like the vampire skull he wears.” A pause. The dogs are still barking—echoing out in the trees. You can’t feel your legs. “Isn’t that right, Hunter?!”

A shout is sent into trees as your panic breeds with the drug, eyelids drooping as your head is snapped and moved by your hair. Your buggy eyes don’t focus on the man until he steps into the torchlight, the crowd parting for him as the metal of your chains drags and clinks together. 

It’s as if the very blackness of night takes human form. 

The man, the Hunter, is tall—very tall. He looms like an aloof animal over most of the others here with his dark boots and his black hood, and yet, under the fabric, there is no whisper of his face. 

Only the upper visage of a pure white skull, and two long, needle-pointed teeth where canines should be. 

“Ghost,” one of the men laughs, groping at your bleeding thigh before you shriek, muffled from behind the muzzle, and weakly kicked out. “Good shot, Mate. Right in the meat of the thing. Gave a good trail for the hounds.” 

Ghost blinks slowly, grunting under his breath as the large crossbow in his hands is shifted. He stays silent as your visible pulse hurries on as if you were a rabbit and not a wolf, watching from under the cover of his hood. The darkness of his clothes is blue in the moon—silver buttons down the length of a loose shirt and pants stuffed into boots. The hood is attached to a jacket, which itself extends down to his knees and sways lightly with every shift. The silent resting of weapons and tools is not lost to anyone. 

Belt of filled vials and large knives; a firearm over his back, and two pistols hidden on either thigh. That crossbow was still in his hands.

Brown eyes openly dig into your soul, dead as a corpse, and your voice whines as your thigh is finally released with a laugh. Your vision blacks and comes back a moment later as you try to breathe from behind the muzzle, gasping. That skull on his face…you don’t like it. It scares you. 

And the Hunter only continues to watch numbly as his wide shoulders stay stationary.

“Get the cage!” Someone roars, and you flinch, shrinking until a dog with short fur comes and nips at your ankles, the man holding you grinning sharply as you sob and shake.

“C’mon—expected more of a fight from you, Spector. Getting bullied by dogs, now? Ain’t that a twist of fate, then. Bet this devil’s whore can’t even walk with all that wolfsbane in ‘er, eh?”

A grumble of chuckles as the rattle of metal is in the distance. You grow more fearful, mind flashing to a burning stake and the trials you’d seen in village after village. No—no they can’t put you in a cage; they can’t put you on trial.

They’re going to make it hurt.

“Say we try it out.” A shadow comes closer and grabs you by the arm, ruthlessly shoving you to the ground. You cry out as your spine meets the earth, arms and legs kept under chains that tangle and screech in their metallic way. The rope that holds the muzzle pulls against your neck until you can’t breathe except in ragged wheezes. 

“Go on,” they taunt, some holding back the rampaging dogs just to watch you flail and shimmy. Your face grows hot as you struggle to sit up—shaking so violently you can’t focus on anything but the quiver. “Put on a show for us, Beasty!” 

Death would be better than this.

Tears hit the ground as the cage is finally brought into view, the men all groaning and annoyed that you hadn’t even attempted a forced shift or a desperate run into the trees. 

Ghost’s fingers, you notice from the side of your blurring eye, tighten minutely around the body of his weapon. You do not doubt that he’s wondering if it would be easier to just put a bolt through your eye right now. 

“Get it loaded up,” the Hunter’s voice is accented and gravel-like. As if rotting wood is being peeled back and scraped along gravel, he stares at you for a long moment and then glances at the dogs. “And get those fucking mutts under control.”

“Which one?” Is the low-blow joke, and the ruckus of loud amusement that follows makes you want to die. 

It’s not your fault, how do you tell them that? It’s not your fault.

Your throat bobs in an attempt to speak, but you can’t move your jaw from behind the restraint of your face—held tight to you as the men come back over and grapple for you again. The priest was right, wolfsbane makes werewolves sluggish.

You can do nothing as you’re ruthlessly dropped into a silver cage, borrowed, no doubt, from the Vatican itself, and christened with holy water. But it was a funny thing, really, and the dark humor wasn’t lost to you even like this. There was nothing godly about this contraption.

Locked in, you shove yourself immediately into a corner and hunch over, grasping at your thigh as the bolt still leaks fluid in a long trail over the ground. The pain is so great in your head, that the physical agony is little—a bullet wound to a sliver. 

Your temple slams into the metal, smacking into it as your eyes shove themselves closed. 

Head hurts—hurts. I can’t think. Can’t think. It’s humming, my skull is breaking open.

Bile pools in the back of your throat, but the muzzle keeps it in, leaving you gagging as the cage is lifted with a grunt and carried by long poles; back to St. Francis' Village, no doubt, but you can’t…focus.

“Think you might ‘ave given her too much, then, Hunter,” one calls, slapping Ghost on the shoulder as the crowd follows after the panicking quarry. The large man only gives him a look from the side of his eye and the villager pulls away immediately, awkwardly chuckling before hurrying off after the others.

Brown eyes watch your bare body hunch and spasm, pupils wide as you’re carted off. 

He’d been generous with the wolfsbane, truth be told. He’d expected you to be…Ghost’s dark brows pull in from behind his grim mask…he’d expected you to be different.

Humming under his breath, the Hunter watches the torches disappear into the trees and lets his gaze linger on you. 

There was something…off.

Blinking, he turns, eyes studying the place where they’d found you with sharp attention that misses nothing—not even the birds that come back to settle into the trees again. Large boots shift through the grass, and as he’s re-settling the crossbow in his hands, his eyes find something glinting. 

Watching, Ghost takes another step and brings his body to the item in the grass, hidden, before he kneels. Digging with large digits, the Hunter’s hands loop through the chain of a necklace, dragging it through the torn earth until he can gaze at it fully under the light of the moon.

Blinking in slight surprise, Ghost finds the body of a silver bullet hanging from the confines of a leather strap. Brown eyes shifting to look over his shoulder, the man listens to the cheers and merriment of the hunting party mutely. A simmering understanding brews in his gut. It’s only one that you could know from years of experience doing just as he had—hunting and being hunted in turn with a knowledge of all things dark and unholy.

It could never be easy, could it?

A low grunt later, the man sighs out a deep, “Fucking hell,” and moves to slowly stand, slinking back into the darkness. 

—

They kept you in the cage and set it on display in the middle of town for days.

Shivering now from the cold more than the wolfsbane, you stay collapsed into yourself as people come past to poke and prod at you—even sticking knives into the slits of the cage and digging them into you like an animal until your flesh was marked and brutalized. 

You don’t remember what it’s like to not be bloody.

The bolt wound was festering; infected. You dare not touch it, because the pain only makes you want to vomit, and if you do, you’ll most likely suffocate on your own bile before the trial ever happens. 

Yet, on the fourth night of this, as your eyelids flutter and your body grows weaker, a shadow comes to visit. 

“You weren’t born one.” It isn’t a question, but the sudden voice makes you startle. 

Eyes locking onto Ghosts’, your mind flies with fear—thinking that perhaps there’s more abuse that you’ll be put through. But no…the man has no weapons on him tonight. Only a long knife at his belt. The mask stays. 

You stare, unable to speak as your fingers twitch.

Grunting, Ghost’s head tilts, gaze moving up and down as you curl in tighter around yourself. A cold breeze rips through the square, and your eyes clench closed with breaking will. When you open them again, the Hunter is kneeling by the cage, and holding up something in his hand loosely. 

“You going to behave if I take that muzzle off?” You nearly gasped at the hanging image of your necklace—a silver bullet on a leather strap; that dark and heavy thing usually kept around your neck. A reminder.

After a moment of wide-eyed staring, you nod quickly to his question, a desperate, pleading thing without the need to utter words. Please, you want to scream at him, take it off.

Ghost’s eyes are as dark as a mound of dirt, sharply intelligent and filled with an unflinching reality. He doesn’t care what you are, and he won’t until you speak to him and let him judge your character far before any courtroom can. The man knows what a lie is better than any priest. 

“Good,” he says curtly, accent far more deep as he thinks, re-capturing the bullet in his palm and standing before he shuffles it into his pocket. 

You can’t help the anxiety as Ghost moves forward, loping to the side of the cage with the side of his eyes on you incessantly. It’s obvious how his other hand lays limp on the hilt of his blade that, with only one wrong move, you’d feel the chill of the edge with no time at all. 

But the temptation of getting this muzzle off was too good to ruin, and so, you stay as still as you’re able as crows call in the distance and the deadness of the town leaks into your blood. 

Ghost moves his free hand and orders, blankly, “Closer.” 

You hesitate, body tight before you drag your face closer to the bars, angling it parallel with the metal so the tight bind on the back can be taken up. The fear can be smelt the second your eyes have to break contact with his with the turn of your head—neither of you trusts the other. 

Ghost hums under his breath at the sight of your broken body coming farther into the open light of the moon, the whites of your eyes all the more visible from under the slathering of blood and tears. He hadn’t been absent to witness the abuse you’d been put through, even if the coin from his successful hunt was feeding him at the inn, a small window allowed the tight view of your torment at the hands of the people you’d once lived around. 

But the reality was that you’d killed people—scores of them—and yet the worst part of it was that he wasn’t sure if you even knew that.

It took four nights for him to break his only rule: never get involved after the job’s done.

But the hunch he had was too important to ignore. 

Large fingers latch onto the knot at the base of your skull through the cage itself, Ghost grunting at the sight ahead of him. The rope had been gradually chafing over your flesh, peeling back hair and skin until only the bloody meat was left—Simon had to wonder if the people of this village even wanted you alive for the trial or not at this rate. You’d be dead by tomorrow if that infected bolt at your thigh wasn’t taken care of.

Despite himself, a part of his chest tightens at the sight of the thing sticking out of your leg, dripping a yellowish puss. It had been a good shot, and he had overcoated the bolt in wolfsbane. 

Ghost hadn’t expected you to be so susceptible to it—most werewolves only got slower, but you…you seemed to have a stronger reaction. He files that fact away and tilts his masked face to the side. 

Grasping at his blade, the sound of a knife being slipped out of a sheath makes you startle, jerking your head back and shoving away even as your muffed whine of pain falls out. Ghost momentarily readies himself for an attack, but the way you force your mangled body to the opposite corner has him grumbling out a hard, “Easy.” 

The Hunter raises the blade, watching you with unblinking eyes. Your body shakes; panting. It was like calming a feral dog.

“You want the thing off or not? Have to cut it.” Once more, the man rises and walks over, boots almost silent over the small raised platform the cage had been set on like a trophy, you inside are comparable to the golden coins that greedy eyes touch and run their dirty hands over. 

Your mind is a troubled thing as you watch this Hunter and his crude knife come closer, kneeling again, and motioning with two fingers to shift your head. 

“Out ‘ere,” Ghost says, brown eyes not letting you guess anything about his true motives. “Don’t have time to fuck around. Guards’ll make a round soon and I’d rather not get caught wide-eyed.” 

Your brows pull in, hands clenching and unclenching in your lap as goosebumps travel the length of every limb. You were tired—hungry and thirsty; there were open wounds that burned with infection and ones that were crusted over with dirt and grime. You can’t feel your toes, and the tips of your fingers have long since gone numb. 

The thought of getting this muzzle off was like the promise of heaven being dangled in front of your nose. Your hesitation this time is far longer than the first, moonlight glinting off the visible blade in Ghost’s hand as he stares. That mask holds death. 

The hood is gone from him—only that pale bone left and sewn into dark, dark, fabric. The sharpness of the teeth leaves your throat bobbing in a nervous swallow as your head carefully shifts to rest on the bars. Bending, you present the knot once more and try not to focus on the way Ghost’s attention is fully on your expanding lungs; the pulse that is seen through the meat of your neck. 

But he says nothing before his fingers once more grasp the rope and the tip of the knife slips up. You don’t even feel it before the sudden slackening of the muzzle, and then the thing slips from your face before it slaps the bottom of the cage with a dull thump. 

The first thing you do is vomit. 

Spine pulling in, your body jerks as the bile that had been in the back of your throat rockets out, restrained hands slapping the ground as the acidic concoction leaks from between your torn lips. Face on fire, you choke and retch for what seems like minutes before you can finally breathe in the damp air—the innate shame and disgust rolling through as you cough raggedly. 

It’s only after you’d forgotten the man kneeling outside that he seems to remind you of his presence with a grumble. 

“Breathe. It’s no use if you can’t speak to me.”

A weak, quivering glare comes across your eyes, saliva dripping off your chin as your tongue moves to lick at your lips. But the brown gaze is as immovable as stone. Finding it pointless, your hands come up and delicately touch the base of your skull, only making you flinch when the fresh blood pools down and over your neck, licking at your shoulders. Tiny droplets fall to hit the metal one at a time. 

Ghost’s fingers twitch as he puts the knife away. 

“Who bit you?” You stare at him, hands falling before your wrists rub at the aggravated skin of your jaw. He shifts his head, voice slow but heavy. “Speak.”

“...I’m not a dog,” your voice is scratchy, hoarse. You send a small glance his way, mouth open and nostrils flaring in an attempt to bring in the oxygen you’d been lacking. 

“Really?” A hidden eyebrow is slowly raised. “Hell, coulda fooled me.” 

“Damn you,” you whisper, not meeting his gaze as you shuffle back. The crossbow bolt catches on one of the cage’s bars and you bite on your lip to stop the shrill yell that threatens to exit. Head moving, you lightly slam your skull into the wall in pain. 

Breath hitched, you clench your trembling jaw tight. 

“Speak or don’t,” Ghost grunts, and he makes a move to stand. “Your funeral.” 

A spark of fear stabs you as he begins to shift, and you can’t explain why. Perhaps it was because it was the first conversation you can remember having lately that wasn’t one-sided or on the edge of a blade.

“W-wait,” you stutter, blinking through the blood. The Hunter doesn’t slow, and then he’s on his feet and fixing the gloves over his fingers, flexing his hands before his foot begins to pivot— 

“Please, don’t go,” your voice is thin and pleading, echoing through the street. “I’ll answer your questions, any of them you want,” the sentence cracks through a dry throat, tears welling. “Please, don’t leave me here alone.” 

Ghost had half of his body turned away before it went rigid; the side of his dead eyes flash to you, swirling with specs of moonlit silver. A hunter and a werewolf lock gazes, great beasts respectively brought together in seconds that seep into slow minutes of delicate need.

Knowledge and company. Understanding and a horrible fellowship. 

The Hunter’s eyes twitch in their ever-narrow resting place, glancing away before he mutely moves back to where he was before. 

He wastes no time.

“Who bloody bit you?” 

You stifle a pathetic sigh of great relief, taking company with a man who had shot you not days before. Yet the ability to speak and be heard was a commodity that was dimming each and every day.

“It was already fully turned,” you speak quickly, tongue tripping. “A big wolf—a gray one with eyes like the sky.” 

Ghost glares to the side. Gray? There were no contracts for gray werewolves with blue eyes in the area. Only you—only Specter. The next question is just as stiff. 

“When?”

“Three years ago,” your lips move. “Only three years, I promise.” Brown eyes narrow slowly, fingers tapping the fabric of his pants once before he makes a noise in the back of his throat. Ghost’s jaw clenches, mind working through the hoops that need to be jumped. 

To you, the questions might seem pointless, but to a hunter, they were important—very important. Werewolves who are born afflicted with this moon-drunkenness are different from those turned by a bite. Not only are shifts from turned werewolves more violent, more deadly, but they rarely know their own actions from that of the frenzy under their skin; those that are born as such are rarely out of control, unlike your faction. 

The only question now was if Ghost could condemn you to death when it was obvious your human form was entirely different and you had no semblance of an idea of what was going on. Was it even his problem to care about? Even looking at you now, the man blinked away from cuts and inflicted injuries—the muzzle on the ground. 

The blood and the bolt.

He’d known it had been a foolish play to bring all of those townsfolk with him on this hunt but he needed their knowledge of the terrain; he hadn’t passed through St. Francis’ before. At the time, Ghost hadn’t been averse to assistance as long as he got the job done in his own fashion: capture or kill, the contract had stated. Rarely was he known for capture.

Maybe, deep down, he’d known something was already wrong about this.

“Show me it,” the Hunter grunts, staring you down, a deep anticipation growing in his bones. He had to make sure you weren’t lying.

You lick your lips, face pulling with every twitch and sway of your form. The black at the edges of your vision was coming back, and you blinked quickly, chains dragging before you shifted your back with a quivering breath. The punctures were difficult to see through all of the gore, but Ghost made do as he grabbed at the waterskin at his waist and the rag hanging from his belt. 

Flooding the fabric in the lukewarm water, he hums out a firm, “Don’t move. Cleanin’ it,” before you feel the press of the rag to your back. 

Gasping lightly, you almost jerk away before the sensation becomes a nearly welcomed one—the drag and slight scrape of rough material. Your averted eyes dip lower, staring at nothing as your heart momentarily slows to a normal pace. Ghost cleans the areas where the swell of scar tissue is the most obvious, and, one by one, the violent groves spread out like a slash of paint over canvas. Along the left side of your waist, the blood gives way to a dented ‘v’ shape of healed punctures. Deep, dragging; a point to where your side was almost ripped away before it broke off swiftly. 

Ghost’s dark eyes fight the need to widen, and that hidden blankness stays. 

A great gray wolf with blue eyes…

His mask tilts, head shifting as his gaze moves slowly. Gloved fingers twitch to touch them, moving in an almost examining way that befits a surgeon and not a decapitator. Your breath is held in the back of your throat, but you sag nearly entirely into the bars of the cage, growing more unsteady by the second. 

The scent of infection is so strong it makes your head burn, and you’re overtaken by it as Ghost’s presence suddenly disappears. 

You don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before you understand that you’re alone again, but when your limp neck finally turns to wonder where your silent captor is, you are greeted with nothing but moonlight. Blinking through the sludge behind your eyes, the sinking in your gut was stark and sudden—like a knife dragging itself from gullet to navel. 

But all you offer is a light whine as more blood moves to cover the places where Ghost’s rag had just cleaned. You were scared of him, no doubt. A hunter through and through down to the vampiric skull on his face and the shroud of death at every inch of his form. 

He’d shot you and drugged you with wolfsbane. Found your necklace. 

So why had he talked to you?

Your head is too muddled for this, too delicate. Like the crimson under your nails, it dries and flakes off of your brain as the lack of distraction breeds stored agony. There wasn’t anything left to focus on besides the upcoming trial, your death, and the pain that doesn’t let you sleep except for now, on the brink of not rest but unconsciousness. 

And at the sound of a key being slotted into the silver of your cage’s door, only then does your body slump with the weight of doom. 

You don’t even feel the hand that grasps at your ankle.

—

The sway of the horse makes your teeth clatter with every clop of hooves. 

Your conscience mostly comes and goes, only staying in thin seconds where you feel the press of clean bandages on your afflicted flesh and the tipping of warm broth into your mouth. Grass under your head. 

Blankets being shuffled over your clothed body when you shiver. 

When you’re finally able to speak, when the horse is moving along and hands keep your back stuck to a strong chest, it’s a low, garbled, “Ow.”

Ghost barely blinks down to your head as it slumps to the gait of his horse, glancing before his attention returns to the thin forest trail ahead of him. You’d made noises in your sleep often enough—this was no different except for the fact he felt your shoulders flex.

Slowing the horse with a pull on the reins, the dappled mare settles to a walk. 

“You up, then?” Ghost hums, his hand around your waist tightening as you groan under your breath. “Good. Thought I was dragging a corpse—would have wasted my bandages.” 

Your eyes shudder as they open into the light, having to focus on moving them before the sting of the sun makes them water. But you do, and then the confusion outweighs the numb stinging of tended wounds. 

Head shifting, you look behind you slowly with wide eyes as the horse under both of you snorts.

Brown eyes watch you before a dark brow twitches upward. “What is it?” 

You just blink, mouth slightly open. 

“Where…am I?” 

“Forest.” Ghost states matter-of-factly. 

If you had the energy to glare, you would have. Seeing that nothing will get the man into a proper conversation—he was a brick wall even now—you look down at yourself and land on the scarred forearm that keeps you secure on the saddle. Ghost’s gloves were still on, but the sleeve of his dark shirt had ridden back to his upper forearm, and in the wake of pale skin, you find the black ink of all manner of warfare. 

Werewolf skulls; vampire fangs and fire. The slash of inkish chains with skeletons. 

Your lips thin, your senses slowly becoming your friend again as you stare at the snarling face of a needle-hewn wolf. Eyes tightening as the horse moves to the left, your body follows the reactive action before Ghost’s pressure tightens once more, visibly veins behind the pale flesh. You move on, seeing the thin tunic and pants over your body—feeling under that, the bind of wrappings with the scents of mashed yarrow leaves in the fabric. 

They’d been re-applied recently, too. 

“Stay still unless you want to re-open them,” Ghost utters, eyes scanning the trees for unseen threats. It was midday by now, the sun high above the trees watching the both of you on your trek to seemingly nowhere. “We’re far enough away, but I want more distance before I take the time to close them fully.”  

“The trial,” your arm moves up, fingers grazing the side of your nose before it falls back down. Ghost can feel the air heat with unease. “The…the cage?”

“Trial was two days ago,” he draws, thighs shifting over the saddle. “Give or take.” 

The confession isn’t as shocking now that you have woken up here, but the lack of remembrance on your part of that time startles you. It’s a blank slate—just like the aftermath of your shifts. You don’t like not knowing. 

The next question comes out with a haggard cough, sweat dripping off your nose. “Why?”

“You’re going to tell me ‘bout the werewolf that made you,” the Hunter grunts. “And you can’t speak if you’re lit up like a pig on a spit. Took you the night we met in the square.” 

Through it all, Ghost barely looks at you—always his attention keeps to the trees and the shadows that linger; seeming to listen. He knows more than anyone that they do. 

The horse continues on, your pain surfaces again, and with a shuddering breath, you fall into a fitful sleep once more. The arm around your body tightens, and the warmth it lends is accented when Ghost’s shifting gaze glances at the top of your head. He wears an expression he can’t name yet.

When the throws of fever pull their curtains back for the last time, it shows you the slats of the attic above your head, wood polished and clean as the heat of fire moves over your body. Pulling a large inhalation of air into your lungs, you blink softly as if clearing away cobwebs with a broom—willing sense to return in the few seconds it had flown away. 

The furs are warm. 

In the village, you weren’t anyone of standing. A simple woman—unwed, and, thus, unimportant due to the era the world sees itself in. It wasn’t all bad…namely, it hid your affliction far longer than you could have hoped it did. You had a small piece of family land passed down to you on the edge of the village, and that was where you stayed. Nothing fancy; a hearth, a large, single-room property with a garden and a well. You were known to keep sheep, a fact that had caused perhaps a few hysterical chuckling fits when, every full moon, one or two went missing, but it gave you the ability to accumulate money and, more importantly, an alibi. 

Who would suspect a werewolf to own sheep?

But this home already had a more detached feel to it—something removed. The air was sterile, somehow. Groaning, your face tightens before you rise to the palms of your hands, muscles quivering to keep the strength your stubbornness gives to them. Half-vertical, you turn and study the area. 

Square, the four walls are stone with mortar and clay to keep the rounded blobs together. You’re on the ground floor, a staircase to the far right while the bed is stuck into the left corner; a nightstand sitting void of all except a single chamber-wick holding an unused candle. A sturdy table with one wooden chair, a stone fireplace set into the same wall the headboard is level with, and a large oak door.

There are runes written on it. 

You can’t make sense of what they mean, but when you see them, your tiny-pupiled eyes slip to the rest, all placed at windows or near some point of entry—unassuming things until you realize why they were red in color.

Your shoulders tighten, and whatever bit of magic moves through your skin lets your nose pull to the scent of human blood. 

You clear your throat and look away, licking your lips with a dry tongue. Moving your toes under the two bear furs that rest at your abdomen, you notice the lack of earth-shattering pain that accompanies it, and, shifting a hesitant hand, you grab the edge and push it back a bit farther. 

Bandages with perfect ties meet you, void of any crimson staining. 

Truth be told, you expected more of a Hunter’s home—skulls; trophies. The town always spoke of burnt bodies strung up on crosses that mark the property of those in this profession, a ward and a sign of grim hope. Vampires mostly, wasting away in the brutal sun. Others as well. Werewolf fur and witch bones shoved in blessed boxes. 

This place is almost normal, you think, thighs shifting over the dip of the bed as your finger runs the white wrappings where the bolt should be. Your mind dares not go to how he got the thing out of you, and at the stretch of sutures, you take your curious grip off of it entirely. 

Looking around once more, your brows furrowed tightly. 

Where was the man? The hunter responsible for your current predicament? Ghost. With his vampire skull mask and his black attire—a hellhound with dark ink and intentions. More importantly…

Why were you still alive?

Your memories come back slowly as you stand, bare feet moving to the floor as the tunic over your upper half falls to your knees at the verticality of your spine. They creak a bit, the bones, at the ability to stand fully upwards and not be impaired by bars of silver. A strength seeps through you slowly. 

In the deafening silence, you clear your throat tinily and lightly itch at the clean flesh at the back of your neck where the muzzle sat; rubbed raw now scabbed and healing with the spread of natural oil balms. Taking in a slow breath, you step forward with a heavy limp and watch the door, glancing at locked trunks and cupboards, eyes blinking. Your muscles ached, but the sting only served as a way to remind you that you were still here—living. Few in your position were granted second chances. 

You’re about to study the runes at the door when you’re called to with the creak of the stairs in your left ear. 

“Wouldn’t recommend it.” Your head snaps over, blinking quickly. 

Ghost carries the leather holders of his twin pistols in one hand, the bodies of the weapons in them hanging as he comes to ground level one step at a time. Brown eyes glance over through the confines of his skeletal face-covering as he walks to the table, placing down the items. 

“Keeps the spirits out—smudge ‘em and the house gets haunted,” he grunts. “Rather not bleed myself again to get the runes copied.” 

You stare in mild shock, sound sparking from the back of your throat. “...Right.” 

Side-eyeing the markings, you shiver and step back from the door, silent as Ghost seems to focus on his task at hand—looking over his weapons.

Large hands running the metal and wood, the pistols in his grip shift as the drying light of the day streams in through the curtains of the windows. He touches them intimately, knowing every grove and dip until he tilts one and rubs away a slash of dirt from the barrel with his bare thumb. 

You quickly turn awkward, looking down at yourself and the bareness of your lower legs. It wasn’t lost to you that the man was the reason you were in this situation in the first place. 

“You shot me,” you grumble—not unlike someone who had a knife to their throat. 

“Affirmative,” Ghost says nonchalantly. You get a slow, blank glance and nothing more. 

“Have you drugged me?” You ask, heart speeding up. There wasn���t anywhere to go—not without an escape plan and with Ghost in front of you.

“Wolfsbane?” The Hunter shifts his thighs, boots moving over the hardwood. “Negative. Not yet.” 

“Yet?” An attitude seeps in, lips thinning. 

Ghost sighs under his breath, slipping the pistols back into their holsters. “Forgetting about how we met, Love?” 

“No,” you huff. “Not really.”

“Perfect.” Eyelids pull down slightly. “Don’t.” Ghost nods his head to the table's chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sit.” 

“I told you I’m not a—” A sharp, numb look makes your snappy reply stall itself, and you stand there for more than a minute before you find the pointlessness of this.

You limp forward and sit in the chair.

Looping your arms around your waist, you glare to the side as your skin crawls at the unblinking eyes that stare. Ghost rolls his shoulders, tilting his head. 

“What do you know about the werewolf that bit you beyond appearance?” 

“Nothing,” you chuckle hopelessly, moving a finger in confusion. “I…I don’t know why you’re asking me about it—it’s not like I had a conversation with him.”

The Hunter blinks at your sudden confidence, unable to separate your form now from the one in the cage; blubbering ceaselessly in a grassy clearing. But lesser pains always bring out someone's true colors. As long as you told him what he needed to know.

Ghost explains with a sheen of dull annoyance. “Every turned werewolf holds a connection to the one that bit them. It’s pack mentality.” At your blank look, his brows pull in, the mask shifting. “You telling me you’ve never come back into contact?”

“...No?” Your lips dip. “For three years I’ve been by myself with this.” 

Brown digs into your face, a small sheen of confusion slipping in to tighten them, around his biceps, Ghost’s fingers twitch. 

You lick your lips, speaking up in the impending silence. “I don’t remember anything after I turn. Is that normal?”

“For you?” He mutters, still not taking his eyes off of you. “Yes.” 

“I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen,” you shrug. “But at the very least I want to try and understand why I’m like this.” You open and close your mouth for a moment. “Before you kill me, anyways.” 

“If I wanted you dead,” Ghost grunts through a half-amused tilt of his head. He doesn’t beat around the bush. “...You would be.” 

“‘Capture or kill,’” you huff. You’d seen the flyers; heard from word of mouth. “Right.” You sigh. “They’ll track you down, you know. They’re not going to just let you take me.”

“They won’t make it through the forest. Bastards would get lost on the trail.” The Hunter moves until he can grasp the waterskin from the counter, dragging it over with his hand. He tosses it to the main table in your direction after he comes back over, and you hesitantly reach forward and pull the top off. Ghost changes the subject back to his studies of your condition closely. Dark eyes slip down your front as your lips part to take up the liquid. “Before your shift, tell me what you see.”

Your throat bobs as you drink the water, thirsty as it soothes your dry mouth. You hum, but the inquiry makes your hair rise. Your arm wipes at your mouth as you lower the waterskin, a small thankfulness in your heart. “It’s less of what I see and more of what I hear and smell—blood; metal. River water. I…” Your chest tightens. “I feel my bones breaking and I hear howling mixing with whispers.”

“Whispers?” Ghost leans, eyes alighting with dim interest. “What’re they saying?”

“I try to block it out,” you whisper, not exactly answering. “Makes it go faster.” 

A long nothingness ensues. 

The impending night grows deeper, and then Ghost finally speaks again after you begin to shift with unease. He nods firmly, tilting his head as if it’s already been decided. 

“Next full moon, you’re going to listen to them.” 

Your horrified face snaps up. It’s a moment of stuttering before you force out a heavy, “What? No!”

He’s already turned, moving back over to the stairs and placing one foot on the steps. 

“Ghost!” You yell, face devoid of blood.

He side-eyes you. “Go back to bed. You’re dead on your feet.” 

And then the same man who shot you in the thigh with little remorse disappears into the attic.  

—

The Hunter was a strange beast.

The days the two of you spent together were mostly silent—left with tight stares and tense shoulders. Clipped sentences. 

Ghost, for what it was worth, gave you space in this small house; as much as you could get. He kept himself up above while you stayed on ground level keeping yourself occupied. You’d gotten spare trousers and socks, a jacket, and the bed was practically yours with how your scent rolled off of it now. Yet, you had never been permitted to go outside. 

You’d seen the land from the windows—careful of the runes, of course, and it wasn’t anything… ghastly. A vegetable garden, a single-stall stable with a dappled mare, and a beaten-down trail out the front. 

No livestock.

No bodies. 

It was only when you had become ever more curious about your lupine curse that you braved the stairs to the attic—one week into the impromptu stay. It’s funny due to the fact that Ghost had never said that you couldn’t go up there sooner.

You stand now in the flat room with a sloping roof and find the man making bullets. It’s a long table, parallel to the walls in the center of the room; dark and covered in all manner of books and tomes. Grimoires tied up and locked. Racks of weapons with markings and blessings tied to sheets of ribbon…it was something you’d never seen before. 

Studying it now, the contents were a dark fascination. 

Ghost fiddles with his silver shell, mixing in gunpowder into the hollowness. He doesn’t speak until you do, but he knows you’re there.

“Tell me more about werewolves,” you speak through the air, and he waits before answering. “The ones who are born with it.”

“Rare,” Ghost comments, and you’re stuck by how willing he is to tell you about this. He puts down his bullet and picks up another. “Harder to find, even harder to kill. Unlike you, they know what goes on when they’re running ‘round. Fuckin’ nightmare to pick up the pieces—bloodbath.” You thin your lips. “Not all of ‘em are murderous, but they’re unpredictable. Can’t help but make packs.”

“Instinct,” you murmur, coming a bit closer. Ghost pauses, looking at you before huffing in the form of a gruff ‘yes.’ Your wondering continues. “But why am I alone then?”

“That’s the question,” the hunter says slowly. “Need to figure out why.” Brown eyes slowly move to you. “‘Fore more people end up dead. Or turned.”

“Can I,” you stop at the table, standing opposite the man. “Can I turn people, too?”

“No,” is all you’re given. Ghost’s eyes glint. “And I’d rather you didn’t bite on me to try.”

Your face heats.

Your attention focuses for a while on how he works—prepares for something unseen. He’d said he’d kept you alive to help him find the one who bit you, but he’d also cleaned your infected injuries, bandaged you, and fed you. Kept you warm. Safe. It was far more than could be said about your village.

However, it was strange how Ghost’s stark muteness was something that you found in the darker hours, a small comfort. When the moon was coming in from the windows, and you hid from its rays as if being stalked down, he once found you sleeping under the bed on the floor because of it.

He never said anything, just offered you a silent hand and helped you back out with a slow blink and a tilt of his head.

There was a distrust, obviously, but there was also an unspoken nearness. No one would make any sense of it—you couldn’t either. It was like a wolf and a raven; something built on hesitence but necessity. You didn’t like Ghost’s mask or his brutalist profession of shooting his wolfsbane-coated bolts, and he didn’t like that once a month you turned into a rampaging werewolf. 

Comparable things, really. 

But even here, in this workshop in his attic, you saw the need for this—for hunters. If you couldn’t stop yourself, there came a time when you had to be stopped. Truth be told, you expected it to be a quick and final end. Maybe that was just a foolish hope. 

A silver bullet would have always been your final song, you believed. Perhaps the very one that had once swung from around your neck; the one you’d never taken off until now. 

But then, perhaps that would have been your own brutalist profession.

“Thank you,” you nod. Ghost pauses, fingers stained with gunpowder. He blinks at the bullet in his hand as you continue. “I know you don’t care about anything beyond your work, but if you hadn’t gotten me out of that cage they would have burned me alive. Skinned me.” Your tongue pokes out of the side of your mouth. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been kind. Job or not…thank you for getting me out of there.” 

“I shot you,” he utters, voice gravel. Ghost seemed confused.

Your lips flick. “I never said I forgave you for that part.”

A smooth chuckle wafts out over the attic and your own softly mirrors. Your head tilts somewhat quizzically. “But, about that…did you mean to put so much wolfsbane on it?”

Ghost shakes his head, grumbling. A small sense of honesty leaks out. “...Expected you to be bigger.”

You blink, and then, a few seconds later, a loud snort echoes like a ringing bell. 

The Hunter's unimpressed look only leads you to find him all the more enjoyable. “Shut it. Fuckin’ hell.”

A hand is waved from your party, dismissing the harsh snap. “Sorry, sorry.” You puff out amused air. “Spector not up to your expectations?”

Ghost nearly rolls his eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t mind your company, at the very least he knew he needed to keep an eye on you for any potentially forced shifts or hostile attitude. What he hadn’t expected was to find you so…different from your muzzled counterpart, your shared physical inhabitant. 

He could almost call you endearing if he wasn’t so numb to the sight and scent of reality. 

“Sightings were far between,” Ghost grunts. “Here-say. I took an educated guess—better to put something like you out of commission than drag my way out of a forest without legs.”

“No apology?” You try, tilting your head.

“None,” is the drawn response. “I don’t have regrets. You’re alive.” 

Your fingers touch the outside of one of his journals, tracing the bumps and grooves of age and wear. You hum, but don’t reply. Most of your pains have been pushed back now, even if you still weren’t up to full strength. Food and rest helped, but the anxiety that perpetuated only lengthened the healing process. 

When you can’t trust even yourself under the drunkenness of the moon, it only makes your fear of the sun worse. Everything made you afraid—most of all your mind; most of all, the future. 

“Why do you want to find the werewolf that turned me?” You have to speak this, have to push. Your curiosity demands it.

Ghost puts the bullet down and grabs a rag from his belt, mask turning to look your way as he brushes off his hands. He pauses, looming with that gargantuan height—natural intimidation in the span of his chest and the trunk that makes up his front. You find yourself in his shadow as he rubs at his fingers with the rag, taking it away and slotting it back into his belt a moment later. 

The man’s heat leaks into your body as he blinks over, glancing your form up and down in a single look; keeping a respectful distance but still making his attentions known. 

He stares. “If it keeps biting people, there won’t be any villages left to take up contracts from.”

“Money?” You frown.

“Principle,” Ghost counters, chest rising and falling steadily. “There needs to be a middle ground. Too many feral werewolves, too few people. Cut off the head.”

“Ominous,” your form turns to his, itching at the back of your head again—the scabbing skin. “If what you said was true, how do you know the thing isn’t already dead? If it hasn’t tried to get to me, what was the point of making me?”

“Because you hadn’t left St. Francis’ by the time I put a bolt in you.” Ghost grumbles, rubbing a hand on his bicep, itching above the fabric of his tunic. He stretches with a grunt—and you see his shirt ride up and the pale skin underneath. You gawk for a moment at the length of scars and brutal muscle.

“Charming,” you dryly utter, stuttering in a brief second of pulling back your senses, but the Hunter continues on, ignoring you.

“That was where you were turned—your territory. You stayed because your leader is still close by waiting.” Legs shift, and all of a sudden, a body is over you, hands are on the base of your skull, pushing your own away as brown eyes dig into the injury you pick at. 

Your breath hitches, tensing for a second as your spine straightens. You watch widely from the corner of your eye as Ghost runs a careful hand over the flesh. He puffs a breath, chest moving in a grunt that is both commonplace and expected, yet the brush of his chest to your shoulder is not. 

You restrain a shiver, nostrils moving to the overwhelming swell of leather and gunpowder. Bone fragments; the tang of whiskey. 

His skin as he runs a thumb over the edge of your wound.

“It’ll start cracking.” Ghost utters, and through his fabric, you feel the brush of speech. “Have to apply more balm. Stop messing with it unless you want stitches soon.” 

It takes a moment more of his surgical study and a small clearing of your throat before you can speak. Your mind changes the subject for you.

“So…if my bite can’t turn anyone,” you breathe, nearly sagging as Ghost’s fingers catch in your hair, shifting it under his attention to get a better look. He listens, you know. He wasn’t good at talking, but he always listened. “Why did they muzzle me?”

For a brief instance, you think you feel the Hunter’s fingers jerk a tiny amount—some reactionary muscle twitch that leads your body to still. 

Ghost can’t say why he did that, though perhaps it was the sudden flash of the injuries that he’d wrapped on the road back to his property that went over his eyelids. Or the cage—your pleading face aching for whatever small sliver of brutish company you can get. 

The silver bullet that he still had in his pocket, attached to that leather cord. He knew the purpose; the intent. Just as he knew the scrape of scabbing under his fingertips. 

“Control,” he grumbles, and it’s all he’ll say. 

Your burning face is somewhat down-turned, letting him do as he must, study what he can. He hadn’t made any moves to endanger you, and besides the upcoming full moon, there was nothing here that screamed imminent danger. Danger as a general, yes, of course. You were a werewolf in a hunter’s home—it would always be…your eyes flutter when his fingertips drag over your scalp…it would always be danger….dangerous.

Ghost doesn’t think you notice it, but your eyes are drooping. 

He watches after the slight shock wears off, a tiny smirk flickering the hidden skin of his lips after he realizes the reason. If you had a tail, he’d assume it would be moving in a soft arch by now. 

The man was mildly amused at that, and before he moved away fully, he had to stop himself from uttering a sarcastic, ‘like that, then?’ 

He had to remind himself not to get attached to whatever…this was. He was using you as bait, as some key to his problem. Not a companion. The distance here had to be firm and heavy-handed. 

“The balm is down in my packs,” he grunts, leaving just as his name implied before you had the chance to gather your bearings and the lack of caressing heat. You startle back to the attic room, eyes wide and face loose before Ghost’s retreating footsteps echo on the stairs. “Don’t bloody use it all, then.”

The front door opens and closes with a pull of weighted wood.

—

“I can’t do this,” you mutter, pacing alone in the middle of the night down in the living room 

The full moon was tomorrow. 

“I can’t do it,” you itch at the back of your head, peeling at the nearly healed flesh harshly. Your nails dig into the soft tissue, drilling like a knife. A bead of blood slips around your fingers, but it doesn't stop you.

It’s late—late enough to know that Ghost should be asleep by now. For days, the paranoia, just like always, builds until you are nearly as mute as your Hunter. No more curiously searching his attic; no more questions about his job or how he got into this business. Brown eyes had been lingering more as the days went by, this strange companionship growing. You knew, in his own way, he was…worried.

So silent, even he had been getting noticeably uneasy. Shifting legs and quick glances. Nights where you hid under the bed from the moon until lunch came around, Ghost speaking as easily as he could to try and coax you out to no avail. You, a feral dog with white-rimmed eyes. 

At supper, only hours before this panicked pacing, you had told something to Ghost that made him double-take. 

“If I can’t stop it…I need you to shoot me. In the head.”

He’d never answered, but his eyes seemed to get ever-sharper as the hours continued on. More tense. Ansty.

But…that was his job, wasn’t it? 

“Can’t do it,” you murmur. Blood slips down your wrist. “It isn’t right—”

“Spector?” Ghost’s voice had become so familiar to you that the only thing that made your heart skyrocket was the sudden call of it. Your gasp is sharp from behind a panted breath, hand flinching away from the crater you were steadily digging in your skull. A long string of blood trails into the air as your fingers jerk away, and it’s only then that you notice the deep pangs of pain.

Your eyes shudder for a second as Ghost’s form makes it to ground level. He comes over slowly, attention staying on the way the moonlight makes the crimson stains glint from the dripping line seeping into the sleeve of your tunic. He blinks, and you both stand.

The man’s skeletal adornment was missing, though the fabric under remained. A loose sleep shirt and pants, stained by the rays of night. 

“Let me see,” he sighs under his breath, a tiny rasp telling of the sleep he’d been awoken from.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” you utter. He doesn’t seem to care, grabbing your wrist and pulling the limb away as his body takes up presence behind you. 

“Was already awake,” Ghost grunts, eyes narrowing in hidden worry. You calm down a bit at that, one less problem to worry yourself about. 

The Hunter, quietly, leaves for a second and grabs his pouch near the door. With a muffled command, he nods to the bed until you’re backing up and hitting the back of your knees off of it, sitting. 

Ghost lights the candle on the nightstand and opens his belongings with stiff glances your way. He noticeably doesn’t ask why you’ve harmed yourself like this.

“I can’t,” you say it like a plea for help. “Ghost, I can’t do it again.” 

Hands fiddle with clean bandages and take out his waterskin. The man douses a rag with the liquid and comes over, shifting onto the bed and lightly turning you so your back is to him—legs half hanging off. 

The hard press of cold water makes your breath hitch, and you bite your lip.

“It hurts,” you push out. Ghost knows you’re not talking about the newly opened wound. 

“Breathe,” he says to you, seeing the way your sides expand with heavy lungs. Brown eyes flutter from the push of his large hand to the warmth of your shaking flesh. “Tell me about your home, yeah? Heard you lived in your own place.”

The question makes you double-take.

He’s asking me that? Here? Now? Hours away from perhaps another catastrophe?

Yet, you can’t help the slippage of your tongue as Ghost’s fingers rub into your scalp. The rag is lessened, and, soon, the material is rubbed gently over the sore itch of weeping skin. You fight a whimper and reply with an addled mind. 

“It…it’s quiet. Calm. I always keep the candles going because I don’t like the dark.” Ghost works quietly and quickly. 

“There,” he grunts, glancing at the flickering light of the candle he lit. He’d have to remember that. “And?”

“I kept sheep.”

He pauses, and, without meaning to, a soft scoff bounces off the confines of his chest. It catches your attention far better than a bullet could. Ghost shifts a needle and thread out of his gathering of items, taking away his limbs only for the short while it takes him to loop the two together. 

“How many?” The masked man asks, amusement gone just as quickly as it had come. 

“Only a handful,” you whisper. Your mouth opens and closes, glancing over your shoulder as the candle-light spills out over the room; casting shadows over Ghost’s face, catching on his long eyelashes. Those browns of his glint like tree trunks covered in dew.

“Please,” your words are muffled. Eyes wide and fearful, there isn’t anything that can console you on this. “You need to kill me.”

There was a dichotomy to you—a violent thing. You didn’t want to die, no, you feared it heavily, more than the moon, but the truth was that you couldn’t keep going through this. The unknowing. The breaking bones, the blinding pain. The understanding that nothing that you do can stop it. 

“It hurts, Ghost,” your breath stutters. “More than taking off a limb, more than slicing yourself open and ripping out your intestines—it burns more than the light of the moon.”

The Hunter listens through all of it. He sits, he stares, and he hides the brimming sense of concern behind his dead eyes.

With a pulling of his eyebrows, Ghost’s free hand moves upwards and grabs your chin. Freezing, you study this phenomenon from over your shoulder, face on fire with eyes wide to the pale skin visible to your view. You hadn’t realized until now, but this was the most you’d seen of the man’s face. 

You could make out the point of his crooked nose—the strength of his jaw under the form-fitting fabric. Cheekbones and the heaviness of his brows. Wisps of hair. He had eyes like a cat, you had to admit; something sly about them despite the numbness that seemed to extend bone-deep. 

But his hands had been kind to you. 

Firmly, Ghost’s fingers run your flesh, and he blinks softly before a low sound echoes in his throat. He pushes carefully on your jaw and shifts your head back forward so he can help you. When he lets go, your heart quivers in your breast

“I’m ‘ere,” he mutters, and you feel the first stitch enter the thin flesh of your head. You take down deep breaths, focusing on the scrape of his fingertips and not the point of the needle. Ghost can understand the fear of it—of pain. It’s instinct. He tilts his head and pushes out, “I can only ask for one full moon from you, yeah? No more. I just need one.” 

“And if I can’t find the werewolf?” Your voice vibrates with emotion, staring down at your hands as Ghost’s chest brushes your spine. The scent of him was addling your brain; the rub and slide of his hands.

The Hunter’s jaw clenches softly. “...Then I let you go.”

It wasn’t what you were expecting, but anything from the time you’d gotten a bolt through the thigh was unknown territory, and, like a dog without a leash, you’d run into it. Your brows furrow, blood oozing down your neck before Ghost’s grip shifts to place the rag back again, swiping away firmly. 

“Go?” He nods, but you can’t see it. “But what about the hunt?”

“I can manage.” The stitching pauses. The air is broken up nearly a full minute later. “You’re not evil.” Before they start up again as if nothing was uttered aloud. 

The confession makes the sting in the back of your eyes start up again—a strong thing of confusion and vulnerability. Ghost continues his task, pulling together your skin one suture at a time until the injury is fully closed; clean. 

“Chin,” he lowly states, and you allow him to tap your jaw, shifting it up so the wrappings can loop above your ear and over your forehead—securing them. 

Even far after the blood has seeped through, the two of you stay.

—

Come morning, you already feel wrong.

Your body stays in bed, shaking—sweating. A large pain flairs in your chest over and over like a pulsing well in the earth, skin twitching with the spread of blood. Ghost sits beside the bed all the while, having dragged over his chair. He leans back into it, one arm over the side, hanging with the thing ever so often moving to rub at the back of his neck. 

You don’t think he’s moved since he brought it over last night; since he got another candle to stick into the holder—push back the dark. To watch, to study, or just to stave off your rising anxiety is another question. 

It’s only after the fourth time you try to rip at the stitches at the base of your skull that he finally grabs your hand and holds it silently. Now, his thumb moves over your knuckles—his gloves back on. 

At noon, he tries to suggest eating.

“Hungry?” Ghost asks. 

“No,” you say instantly, sweat dripping over your temple, your body partially buried under blankets. “No, I’ll just throw it up.” 

Brown eyes glint. “Just one bite?” 

Your mouth is already salivating—thoughts of wet flesh and blood in the forefront until you whine and shove your face into the pillow; panting heavily. 

Whispers dance in the shell of your ears. 

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

“Go away,” you whisper quickly to them. 

Ghost pauses, hesitating. After a moment, his thighs tense with the action of movement, thinking you’re speaking to him. Something swirls in his chest, but he starts to stand nonetheless.

Your eyes widen.

“No!” Both of your hands latch onto the Hunter’s wrist, fear a needle stuck in your gaze. “No, not you. Stay, please.”

A silver cage covered in blood slides across Ghost’s slightly shocked look, but he only licks at the corner of his mouth and slowly leans back once more. 

“Not going anywhere,” he says, accent dipping. “Tell me what you’re hearing, yeah?”

His hand slips back into yours, and he presses into your pulse softly, counting. The sun continues across the sky.

“I don’t like how it sounds,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s wrong.”

“Focus,” Ghost breathes, looming closer. His grip squeezes once. “It can’t hurt you.” 

You shiver, eyes tightly closed as tears burn the back of your nose. “It’s howling.”

A suddenly gloveless hand spreads up your cheek, resting there and pushing back the sweat that pools. It’s calloused—scarred. You whine, head spinning.

I’m waiting. 

Find me.

Find me.

“I don’t want to,” you utter under your breath, words an amalgamation of slurring gasps. 

“Spector,” Ghost calls, head moving closer. “Eh.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” your hurried panic is similar to a mind overdosing on wolfsbane. “Gotta go away—gotta get out—”

“Spec!” The Hunter’s quick bark makes your eyes pop open, and you lock instantly with brown orbs. 

They’re tight, unblinking just as always. They offer just a few moments of clarity. 

Ghost holds your head still while the rest of you shivers with cold sweats, you can hear the blood inside of his veins; his heart pumping. The scent of his skin was addicting to the point of memorization on the airwaves. You watch, gulping down breaths as your throat bobs. 

Eyes dart you up and down, fingers spreading out to offer what little comfort he can. The man wonders if he’s completely in over his head. 

Ghost pulls his face-covering up to his nose, and your heart skips beats at the sight of ravaged skin and stubble, scars spreading out like your own. Long ones, short ones, burn marks, and hyperpigmentation. He wasn’t pretty, but he was real. 

Oh, he was real. 

His grip on you strengthens until all you can focus on is him. 

Ghost blinks, and you see his lips move. The gravel of his voice was never more clear. “Fucking hell, keep that head on, okay? Nothing’s going to happen as long as I’m here. I’ve got you.” He sighs out a low breath, thumb running your undereye as the small dribbles of tears begin to sneak out. Ghost murmurs. “I’ve bloody got you, alright? Let it happen—we can figure it out.”

He’d grown fond of you over the course of a month. You were curious; not pushingly so. Honest. Good. You’d been dealt a bitter hand, and damn him if his stone heart wasn’t stretched thin at the raw fear on your face. This wasn’t your fault, but he needed to find who turned you and stop them before it got any more out of control than it already was. If more unstable werewolves went running through the woods, there wouldn’t be anyone left in the territory alive.

“When you turn,” Ghost says as clearly as he’s able. “Go. Don’t fight it. I’ll find you.”

“Promise?” You ask, a weak flicker coming to your lips—eyes vulnerable. 

Ghost nods once, and it’s all you need. “I’ll find you,” he repeats. “Doubt me?”

“No,” you ease, clearing your throat. “But…one more thing?”

“Anything,” the Hunter instantly says. 

“Just don’t shoot me in the thigh again.”

When the claws start protruding from your nailbeds hours later, you’re bolting to the door with only one last glance at the Hunter and his half-pulled-up mask. Booted feet hitting the wood as he stands, he lets you go even as his thighs tense in a need to run after you. Patience was his beast to tame, but it seemed to have left him in the form of a woman disappearing into the tree line. 

There is companionship in broken things.

Your body slips into the forest just as the creak of your bones begins to shift and bend. You fall into a heap, hearing the gargling of marrow under your skin like a call to sea. An urge grows to infect you; a feral need to run and hide. Biting back a shrill scream, a hoarse yell escapes instead—flesh rippling as your mouth opens, fangs breaking the supple mushiness of your gums as blood floods like a river. 

Find me. 

Find me.

Find me.

“Ghost,” you whisper, hands snapping to your head. “Ghost, please.” 

Your bullet, you want your silver bullet.

A rabid scream rips from your throat, and back in the house, Ghost’s hands tighten into fists as he glares at the open door. He growls under his breath, eyes tightening in a certain type of anger that brews in his gut. The nights your shuffling woke his light slumber were more common than when you hadn’t, and every utterance was clearly heard to his ears. It had become a curse to him—how you’d met.

A regret was seeping in, a care, and now, as he forces himself to back up and head into the attic, Ghost clenches his jaw tightly. So unaffected by the horror of monsters, he was now at a loss of sense for this growth of feelings. 

He wasn’t dull, he knew that some of the contracts he took marked him as a tool and not a person of stable mind. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of, and he would continue to do them for no other reason than they were the orders he was given.

But you had broken a piece of that off of him, somehow, someway, your face had seared itself into his retinas—speared him at the brutality that your community had treated you with. The muzzle. It was cruel, and while Ghost was precisely that, there was a limit. 

He did his job, and that was that. Anything after wasn’t his problem. 

You became his job, and the one who turned you was an add-on. Maybe if he justified it to himself, he could understand his actions better. 

But he was already sprinting to grab his gear when the first howl shattered the night.

—

A white beast prowls the forest. 

It stands on two legs, but it isn’t human—isn’t natural. It’s taller than a grown man is; snout pulled back in a soundless snarl that puts dogs to shame with rows of teeth so sharp, they look like pale knives. Its feet—large, splayed—soundlessly skate the ground until clawed fingers slam to the earth. 

A nose inhales the scent above the dirt, tongue lulling as a shaggy tail lays limp behind a curved spine. In between the erect ears, under the thick skull of the werewolf, the rolling bumps of a brain spark. A pull.

Find me.

Your eyes are tiny black dots—and they blink once before you rise once more. A great growl moves inside of your chest, the large collection of hair around your neck standing on end.

I’m waiting.

But there’s something that keeps you here—standing in the grass as the moon shines atop your head, your fur nearly glowing even with the stain of bloody injuries. The remains of clothes are about a meter away; only strips of what was. 

Your gaze looks over your shoulder, and your gargantuan frame lumbers backward until you can stoop to them—nose once more sniffing with your arms reaching.

Your fingers twitch, blackened claws digging through the ground as a near purr echoes in your throat. The scythe-like additions card across the strips.

Gunpowder. 

Leather.

Whiskey.

Something you can’t quite name, but feel drawn to despite the tightening noose at your throat. There was something there you can’t focus on…something that you need. 

Your drooling jaws snap, saliva coating the fangs until they drip off one at a time to stain the grass. Body shifting, your head lowers until your wolf-ish visage rubs against the fabric, licking at the sides of your gums as delicate grumbles slip out of your mouth. 

A far-off howl leaves your frame freezing.

Eyes slipping back into the feral-inhumanity of a wild animal, your body jolts up, gaze to the forest trees and the rustling of bushes. The swell of rain on the clouds is in the back of your nose, and the previous attraction to the ripped clothes is lost as simply as it had come. 

You were being summoned. 

Ears twitching, the entirety of your body refuses to move to the sound; tensed and ready to spring on anything that moves if only to let off the spike of anger at the lack of control. The pull grows stronger, and it feels like something is trying to drag you away into the wilds.

This was the sensation you were always trying to fight—the one that led to the aggression; the hunt. You knew that if you followed that howl, whatever was left of your human sense would be gone entirely before you could stop it. 

Yet, this time, there’s a nagging need to find the owner, and you can’t remember why.

Your large head tilts, feet spaced as the curve of your spine grows more aggressive—hunching forward as you snarl at nothing, claws shaking as your fur is more bristly than sleek. 

Like pure white spikes. 

In the back of your head, a thin sliver of a memory slips in. Fingers on the back of your head, caressing calluses and dark, dark, eyes. Clean bandages and gentle touches.

I’ll find you.

If the side of your vision picked up the shadow shifting from far off into the trees, your curled lip never turned that way. If your nose twitched to the heavy weight of a man’s sweat, it never shifted to point as a mutt would to the rustling bush.

Your body bolts after the resounding echo of a wolf’s howl, and it’s no later that Ghost slips after your clawed prints to follow.

—

Crossbow in hand, the hunter’s mask gleams in the darkness, his pale eyes twinkling. Bending down, he glazes at the long pushing tracks of your form—seeing the spray of dirt to the side and the broken branches. Ghost blinks, shoulders tense before he swiftly stands and continues on. The firearms at his thighs lightly rattle, and the bolts in his crossbow are already laced with wolfsbane; silver tips smelt a week ago. 

He passes a river with only a single glance at the tossed rocks from the bed, sloshing through the water as the bottoms of his pants get weighed down. Ghost’s mind is on one thing only: make sure this plan won’t get you killed. 

The bolts aren’t for you—the silver bullets aren’t for you. 

He grunts under his breath, the dark woods casting phantoms over the ground. The Hunter’s legs shift through tall grass, and he carries himself with the ingrained confidence a man of his station requires. If he were anything less than a monster himself, he would have died ages ago. Ghost shoots and lets others come up with the questions, but he could never be called dumb. 

Seeing what fast glimpse he had of your shifted form after the last time, he was struck by how erratic it acted. Snapping head, twitching ears, and roving eyes. If he didn’t know any better, Ghost would have called it rabid. 

Yet, your actions with his borrowed shirt were…body-stilling, to say the least about it. It had made his gut swirl.

“Give me a trail,” Ghost utters to himself, brown eyes still picking up the dash you’d taken. His agile feet splash through a puddle, the beginnings of raindrops hitting his head. 

The man grabs at his hood and pulls it up stiffly, frowning under his mask.

Rain would wash away the tracks.

“C’mon, Love,” he grinds out, body hunched. “Leavin’ me to do the dirty work, eh?” 

It’s too quiet—even a collection of minutes later of hard hiking, the trees barely move. There aren’t any birds; no animals beyond the black bodies of crows in the far-up branches, waiting, watching with obsidian eyes that don’t blink. 

Ghost isn’t off-put, but the length of his strides gets far tinier, carefully stepping over twigs and rocks like a soldier at war. Then again, he was at war. And if he was caught unawares, there wouldn’t be a bullet to pull out of his side, but, instead, a chunk missing. 

His ears were almost ringing from how hard he was focusing. 

Brown eyes shift from one area to another, and then, suddenly as if a deer, he freezes. 

Ghost’s body winds up, fingers twitching from the stark trigger discipline of his crossbow downward instantaneously. No one but him can explain what just happened, but he knows when he has to listen instead of act. Stuck in a clearing not unlike the place he’s first met you, his feet rest shoulder width apart and his eyes stare blankly into the trees ahead.

Your tracks end here.

From behind him, just as the large raindrops slap the side of his bone-ed visage, the small crack of a twig makes his ears twitch.

A low snarl sets his hair on end. 

Looking over his shoulder, Ghost is met with the same color that he’d become so accustomed to in a full month completely blacked out. Void. Lifeless to anything besides rage and bloodlust. 

Your white fur was infected with dirt, blood, and leaves—a mosaic of ferality ingrained into your body; pale fangs snapping. The beast slips through the treeline, slapping a veined hand into the soggy earth. 

Ghost only watches, eyes a mystery. 

His finger shifts over the trigger, and for the first time in his life, he hesitates. 

The man looks into your glinting orbs, the dripping saliva on your lulling tongue as your esophagus pants for breath. One hesitation, he always knew, would mean death. One mess-up. 

You’d asked him to end it, he shouldn’t feel remorse, guilt, perhaps—he was still human, despite his appearance, but remorse was deeper. It left wounds that were harder to lick clean again. 

…So why isn’t he sending a bolt into your forehead?

Ghost remembers the times he’d found you under the bed, your shaking, and the way you hadn’t allowed him to change your bandages the first few weeks you’d stayed with him; didn’t want him to touch you. The nightmares and the small smile you’d gain when he’d spew his dark, sarcastic words as if this was a joke. How you’d always thank him under your breath for the food he’d give you, hunted by his own hand. 

A silver cage. Crimson blood. The sight of your pleading eyes when you’d told him to shoot you.

Maybe the two of you were far more alike than he’d dare to admit. And he currently won’t, not even on his deathbed. Not even now.

Ghost watches, and he waits. 

He can’t do it.

Your body slinks closer, stalking with the sound of anger, nearly rib-shaking in its volume. Ghost’s jaw clenches, and his body shifts to face yours head-on. At the sight of the crossbow, your snarl turns into an air-biting rage, saliva flying through the rain.

“Spector,” he keeps his voice low, even. The sight he’d seen as you smelled his clothes had to mean something. Ghost tilts his head, moving out a hand from the side of his weapon in an appeasement gesture. “I’m not going to shoot you. We have a job to complete…get those fangs away.”

He wonders if ordering you around will even work. You had told him before—you’re not a mutt. Ghost agrees. No mutt was the size of a fucking boulder.

The werewolf’s claws drag—goring the mud as if a pig to tear apart. 

“Spector,” the Hunter tries again. But something’s different about his tone; he drops it, letting it pull on a softer string. “I’m here to end this. We’re here to end this.” He blinks and lowers the crossbow completely. “Breathe. The night can’t last forever.” A breeze whips the trees. “I made you a promise.”

There’s a second, he thinks, where he can see something shift in your gaze, pupils slightly widening above the deluge that wets down your fur into a sopping mess that hangs off muscle.

“That’s a girl,” Ghost grunts, taking a small step closer. “Never told you,” he utters, eyes locked with yours. He sees your nose twitch minutely. “But if we get this right, Spec, there’ll be no more painful shifts, hear me?”

Your dog-ish mouth is closed, hanging off every word as Ghost comes even closer.

“I kill this bastard,” the hunter breathes, gloved hand still outstretched, nearing closer to the near-silver of your form. “The moon’ll have no claim on you. She’ll let you off the leash, Little Wolf. You get to decide when it happens.” 

He thinks he has you now, back to some state of recognition in the addled brain that tries to see him as prey; as competition. Ghost’s fingers are close enough to almost touch you, but just before he can brush his gloves over your wet fur, your mouth opens in a display of untamed challenge. Your growl is enough to make the man unconsciously reach for his pistol, and in the time it takes him to realize the fault of it, you’ve already rampaged forward with an unhinged jaw.

Ghost’s eyes widen, taking a quick step back. 

Your legs push off, and you shove the hunter out of the way just before the fangs of an immense beast can clamp down on him, your own finding the shoulder of gray, thick fur.

Fighting as wolves do, Ghost only needs a moment to recover and get to his feet, though the sight in front of him can rival any that he’d seen before. His crossbow clatters a few feet away, sending the bolt off into the trees with a metallic ‘twang’.

The two werewolves roll around the pouring clearing, snapping teeth and rending claws drawing blood that’s deep enough to swim in to the green grass. White and gray meld together—blue eyes like a knife to Ghost’s chest when he takes it in from between the sound of tearing fur. 

“Bloody fucking…” the man trails, staggering as his palms slap to the pistols at his side. He blinks, shouting in more of a bark than even a dog could imitate. “Spector!” 

The wolves pull and rip the other to shreds, flesh torn and limbs grasping for purchase. Bodies are slammed to the ground before getting tossed to the side, fangs flashing in the moonlight. Ghost watches crimson stain your fur a pinkish-red.

He can’t get a good shot.

The werewolf that turned you sinks its claws into your sides, dragging them downwards as you yowl, eyes tiny with aggression before your jaws connect with its snout, biting down with more force than a horse’s hooves. The monster screams—a garbed thing of fangs and saliva. 

Just as easily as it called you here to it, as it stalked your Hunter, it bashes your body back into the earth and takes you by the scruff of your neck. Eyes wide in that lupine way, you lock on Ghost’s profile before your body is lifted, and tossed away violently. 

Spine slamming into a tree, you hear the cracking and bending of your bones in your ears just after you hear the sharp shout from the man in the clearing, body dropping to a heap into the grass and mud. Angled head flopping back and forth, black infests the edges of your vision, coughing up blood that seeps from between your gums and slips down the back of your esophagus. Fur and flesh are stuck at the base of your throat. 

Whining, your limbs drag and pull futility, eyes flooded over with crimson and fogged by rain. A great roar worries the air, sending long shivers over your spine as you try to rise to your limbs, a five-fingered hand slamming you back down. 

Just before the fangs can clamp your throat, two great booms burst through the forest. 

The wolf atop you reels back, great bellow escaping its throat when you can finally drag your head to look over. This beast was clawing at its chest, shaking its large head in an arch to try and dispel the shock of having two silver bullets entering its back—the gray head snapped around to Ghost, who held his twin pistols aloft with eyes burning with anger from behind his mask. An avatar of vengeance; a bringer of death. 

The orbs inside of your sockets widened, nose twitching wildly as you bleat a quick warning bark. 

Blue-Eyes rises, body far larger than yours would ever grow to be—on two feet more powerful looking than a bricklayer many years into his craft; tall enough to reach to the sides of black-shingled homes and pull itself up. Ghost takes one look and growls under his breath, knowing there would be no time to reload the weapons in his hands. 

So he drops them and pulls slowly at the cruel blade in his belt until the gleam winks in the low light like a curved smile. Setting it in his hands, the small flicker of a sharp smirk on his lips is lost to you. 

Yet, there isn’t a chance for some brawl between two beasts—there’s only the flash of pale fur and the final crunch of a body hitting the ground. 

You bury your fangs into the wolf’s neck; the one responsible for all of your pain and torment spanning years of isolation. You feel the body seize as it drops, the last remnants of a dying brain trying to fight the inevitable nothingness that ensues, and, you only hold on the harder, the bloodlust seeping back in with every drop of life pooling into your locked jaw.

Your throat releases tiny growls of pleasure, biting a bit to make sure there wasn’t a sliver of a chance that something living was walking away from this scene. 

Ghost pauses, and in the back of his head, he knows he should stop you. Brown eyes see the animalistic sheen of enjoyment at a fresh kill, the way you pull at the flesh until chucks peel away from a gurgling wolf. Even when the thing is long dead and the rain still slaps the earth, you barely let go until you get a hold of the meat and tear with a backward jerk of your snout.

“Love,” the Hunter sheathes his knife, taking a step forward. The blood was pooling under your body. How many of those were treatable? He had to know. “Let me see what’s—”

The eyes that lock on him are not yours. 

Up to your ears, the entirety of your face was awash with the stain of life, dripping off the whiskers at your cheeks; your chin. 

Before he can utter another word, he finds himself on his back with a snapping snout right in front of his face, two dead eyes staring deeply into his own. Ghost sucks down a quick breath, hand snapping to the large wrist shoving down on his chest.

He pants out, gravel accent far more deep than it was before. 

“Easy, Spector. Easy. Eh—focus on me.” Your tongue licks at your fangs, body shaking. Ghost pushes out, “That’s it, then. It’s over, yeah? You did it; let's pack it up and head back home.” He grunts. “Recon even dogs get cold in weather like this—the bed’s waiting. Get a nice fire going.”

Ghost sees your face move closer, and his hand minutely shifts to the vial of wolfsbane on his belt. It wouldn’t kill you, but it could put you out of commission until your body shifted back into its proper form. He could carry you back—that wouldn’t be a problem at all. 

But he was worried about your injuries. Even now the droplets of blood roll off of you faster than the water can. 

Too much.

Brown eyes crease, darting a look down. 

“Fuck,” he growls, seeing the carnage and the open meat. “Sweetheart, we need to get you checked out—you need to listen to me. Can you do that?”

He can see the conflict; the internal fight. 

Your mouth moves with fast pants, claws stuttering over his gear futilely. You blink rapidly, shaking your large head in fast increments with small snarls. 

“C’mon,” Ghost says slowly, fingers looping the vial. “Keep listening. Know my voice is utter shite, but only you can tell me it.” 

Your head drops to his chest just as the wolfsbane is popped open, and, for whatever reason, Ghost pauses. He waits. 

You take a long inhale of his gear—of the leather and the gunpowder, and just before the Hunter can dump the vial over your skin, the long blackish claw on your finger loops the bottom portion of the fabric under his bone attachment. 

The man’s breath hitches as you let it rest along his nose bridge…holding it there as you drag your head upwards as if it were an impossible chore. Your mouth dribbles out gore to his cheeks, but the Hunter stares upwards into your eyes as they soften in a lupine way. 

Inexplicably, you let out a bone-rattling sigh and slump into oblivion. 

—

Come morning, you sleep under the spread of large fur blankets—clean bandages over your bare frame as the man has tended to you for hours. He mutters for you to slip your arms into a spare shirt after he finds your eyes open, not uncomfortable by your nakedness, though he wants you yourself to be at ease. 

His brown eyes are creased, and you can’t remember what you’ve done. 

You comply with small grunts and moans; more sore and cut up than you can recall ever feeling as a large tunic is slipped over your head by scarred hands. 

Gunpowder. 

“What did I—?”

“You finished the job,” he says, sparing you a glance as he shifts back with his eyes averting themselves from your visible legs. The sun seeps in through the windows. “It’s morning.”

You blink slowly, and the man eases you back down into the furs. 

“I’m tired,” your voice yawns out—weak and brittle like the hope you’d had that this plan of his would work. Eyes half-closed, they blink at the hunter with a soft kind of care that you can’t remember showing before. Whatever pain medicine he’d given you, it was working. The underlying itch was still as strong as ever, though. 

“Tired is good,” Ghost nods slowly, standing still until he crosses his arms and sets his feet. He’s in a fresh shirt and pants. There’s blood under his fingernails; traces smeared over his flesh. “Means you accomplished something.”

“Don’t think that’s entirely true,” you breathe. A pause. “...Why is your mask like that?”

It was half pulled up—showing off his lower jaw and the stubble. The scars that you already have memorized. Ghost shrugs, blinking those dead eyes of his. 

“Ah,” he grumbles. “Forgot. Here.”

He reaches up and slips the thing off in one motion. Your loose brain takes a moment to realize the entire face you’re staring into, but the second it does, the image is engraved into your mind forever. You make a noise in the back of your throat. 

“Better, Little Wolf?” 

“W—” Your lips stutter, new sutures pulling tight. “Why would you…?”

“Hungry?” Ghost asks, quickly changing the subject. “Know you like that venison that I caught.”

“No,” you breathe. “No, I’m not…I’m tired, Ghost. My head hurts.”

A hand sweeps over your forehead, staying as you sag into it with a hum and a fluttering of your eyes. 

“Bloodloss,” the Hunter murmurs. “Normal. Go back to sleep; take however long you need. I’ll be here.” 

The bond between the two of you has strengthened to that of a silver rope.

“Stay,” you plead under your breath, already slipping back into nothingness with no promise to wake up again soon. “Hold me, Ghost?”

“Simon,” he grunts to only himself, knowing that the words are lost to you. Perhaps that makes him all the more eager to share it with you when you’re better. “Stay still.”

It wasn’t like you could protest.

The broad man slips in, shifting the furs until you’re covered back up and your forehead is to his chest—keeping himself closest to the door where the runes still sit in their bloody glory. If he listened hard enough, he could even hear them humming him a tune.

No song was better to him than the one of your breath at this very moment. Alive. Moving. There were many times in the night that he thought...hm.

“Better, then?” The dry tease slips out. 

A kiss to the side of his mouth is what he gets in answer, and he doesn't say a peep more until he knows you’re back in the clutches of a dream—a good one, he knows, because he watches your expressions like a loyal guard dog would.

Ghost, Simon, rests his lips on the top of your head, and in a delicate murmur, eases, “You did good, Love.” 

There was much to do, but for now, all he had to do was hold you a little bit tighter and let his stone heart beat a little bit faster.

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