#simon riley/reader

[topgun-86]

Y'all

The song Light by Sleeping At Last is SO Simon Riley coded once he believes he can be loved and had a wife and kid

[drgnflyteabox]

ghost x fem!reader

simon finds a reason to live // stalking, depression, disassociation, simons past child abuse, body horror imagery, you're a single mom, minor sexism-kindaish

Simon's humanity is an external thing, amorphous and disconnected. He might've had a tether as a child, a distinct human softness necessary for survival, but it's since been deadened.

It's not so much a lack as it is a shrinkage. Empathy, emotional intelligence, they come natural at first but terrorize someone, neglect them? They'll turn black and rot as any limb without oxygen.

His father is long dead, he knows this, has read the obituary (full of lies) and pissed on his grave (twice).

And yet his father has the power to strike lightening through the only soft part of him left on any given day, at any given time, at any given place–

His father lives in the way that his heart nearly stops at the shop when the child beside him knocks down a full display of four cheese tomato sauce, glass and red slop crashing to the floor.

Run.

He freezes but his eyes snap to the sound, startlingly loud, mind racing and yet thinking of nothing at all as he feels the fear of god race through him.

Dad's gonna fucking kill you, Tommy laughs raucously.

Simon's never really blamed Tommy, but his voice echoes in his head sometimes too. It does again now, dad's got two tickets for the weekend.

The child takes two steps back, shocked at themselves and the mess and the loud loud sound that has quieted the rest of the store.

He thinks of all the ways he'll step in when the father rounds the corner. Then it's you and his breath goes thin.

"Awe, honey," you say softly. Kindly.

"Oops," the kid says, not a trace of fear in their face.

"Did'ja knock these over, Bram?" you crouch down, careful of the glass, and gently move the boy to the side, "that's okay. Do you remember what we do when we break a glass?"

Simon is still frozen– dumfounded, really. Your patience throws him off.

Fucking moron, his father screams in his head, useless! before he hurts Simon so bad the memory loops and loops, restarting just to torture him.

Fucking moron, fucking moron, useless, fucking moron–

And then you smile sheepishly up at him, eyes crinkling in the corners, and that soft human part of him eternally drifting sticks back to his skin and spreads like a rash.

They don't make you pay for any of the jars, nor do they make you clean up the mess. Still, you crouch again beside your son and explain to him again what to do when he breaks a glass.

Make sure you have shoes on. Don't use your bare hands. Call a grownup.

He's addicted to the sound of your voice. The softness of it, how gently you make sure to speak so that the message is taken in without any kind of fear.

Simon follows your car like the sound of your voice is the warm smell of pie on the windowsill and he's Mickey Mouse floating after it.

Awe, honey, loops through his head. Awe, honey. Awe, honey.

He doesn't make himself known just yet. All he does is note down your address for the next time he's on leave, tells John he's met someone and she's a sweetheart.

When he's back on leave he watches you struggle, and it tears at the new growth of softness.

You work, dropping Bram at school and then spending the day at the office. Then, when Bram is asleep and you've cleaned the house, you open your laptop back up and work a second job.

That just won't do. It takes everything in him not to kick your door down at the weak spot and have you whisper in his ear for a living.

Not yet. Not yet. He tries to loop that, but all he can hear is your sweet voice pleading with the electricity company and it becomes harder and harder.

Please, you say through the bug, I just need four more days. Then I get my paycheck.

Simon thinks about putting his hands around the answering voice's neck when they deny you–

But that's a bandaid solution.

It'll be better to eliminate the problem altogether.

Not the piling bills on your kitchen table that you tuck away when the child goes to school, nor the boss who shouts at you 'til he's red in the face.

No, he'll eliminate the real problem. The way he's seen John do, the way he's seen Gaz take example.

He'll be the man in your life, soon.

[alwaysshallow]

divorced simon...... or still in the court, your husband (almost ex) that doesn't want to let you go.

not only because he loves you (and in his mind, it should be clear; no matter if he says it or not) but because he owns you. he said "till death do us part" and as a person who almost died, multiple ways, it has a meaning to him.

it means that no matter what, you're gonna be here. and he's gonna be here too—crawling to you from the deepest, darkest depths of hell just to lay in the same bed as you, in his home, and you’re gonna be in his arms.

simon’s always been possessive, not only when you two got married, but when you two were dating too, so that’s not a surprise he doesn’t let go things easily. he gives your attorney dirty looks, provoking him whenever he feels like it, checking if he doesn’t have funny business with you. if he’s only your attorney. 

it’s only right that he got himself one; the best he probably could find here, a shark who definitely wants too much money, but simon ain’t gonna go cheap on you. if it means he’ll get you back—this way or another, but he prefers to do it in a civilized way—he’s gonna spend every penny chasing you.

and it feels pretty good after a few months of battling in court. your pissed glances at him only get him worked up more, and the two of you can feel exactly like when you were just fresh into your relationship. 

you’re not really one for the arguments, never were—his good girl knows better than that, knows how to talk to him rather than argue. an art he didn’t learn even to this day—so it’s not a surprise he eventually corners you in the women’s bathroom. locks the door so your mother or anyone else won’t interrupt you two. 

“what are you—”

“—sssh.” it’s probably the first situation in months that only the two of you are alone. completely alone. without all of the judges, attorneys, and family. it’s no surprise he wants to talk to you in private, but you know exactly why you avoided him.

his brown eyes; hands, full of scars, full of blood of his enemies, caressing your waist and his body that press against you when he wants something badly. just like it does right now, when he whispers something to your ear, and you’re not sure what because you can only focus on his cock pressing against your ass.

“—so, let’s go home.”

“it’s my house, simon,” you try to reason with him, clearing your throat out of all the saliva that’s been building up. “the court—”

“—built it with our money, with my own fuckin’ hands, ‘m not gonna listen to some guy that knows better.” his hand travels down, right under your skirt. “my favourite color, and you expect me to just watch you?”

yeah. yeah, maybe it was a moment of weakness, maybe longing, but when you leave the bathroom with disheveled hair, a wolfish grin on simon’s lips, you know you’re fucked with the divorce.

quite literally.

[ceilidho]

sundog

prompt: Simon comes across a girl when she's recently been evicted and takes her back to his place, despite her reservations (nsfw, 8.5k) [based on this old post] [on ao3 here]

-

The circumstances of your life change so abruptly that you lose sight of it for a moment. 

Then, you’re out on the streets with the clothes on your back and a suitcase packed so full that a sweater sleeve sticks out where the zippers meet. The locks to your apartment have already been changed. You know because you tried them anyway, desperately hoping that the eviction notice taped to your door might have been misplaced.

Evidently not. The keys don’t work. You contemplate chucking them on the walk out, but instead you keep them close like a talisman of protection, though it’s failed to live up to its purpose so far. 

You’ve got it under control for a day. If by ‘under control’, you mean experiencing a full body panic attack in the locker room of the twenty-four hour gym down the street from your old apartment. The staff gives you uncomfortable looks when you come in on the verge of tears with your suitcase rolling behind you, but they let you in because your membership is up to date. If you can count on anything in life, it’s consumerism. 

That doesn’t last long though, mainly because a locker and a wood bench won’t cut it in the long term. You sleep in the back of the local library until a stern-faced, if pitying, librarian threatens to call the cops on you. Pity isn’t sympathy, evidently. 

Gym management threatens to cut the lock on the locker you’ve been using as temporary storage space. Matter of fact, they say, you can’t be using the locker room as your quasi apartment between the hours of nine P.M. and seven A.M. just because everything else in the city is closed. Go home, they say. 

What home, you don’t say, before packing up your things and heading out on your way. 

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s capitalism. 

You didn’t think this kind of thing could happen to someone like you. Someone like you being an ordinary person. Homelessness always felt like a far away concept. But the world is cruel and life is brutal. What you didn’t realize before was that, at any moment in time, you’ve been closer to poverty than wealth, and here you are now, sitting in the park with your suitcase between your legs, the sun rapidly setting behind you, your phone at ten percent battery, and nowhere to go because your family is, frankly, nonexistent, and your friends, for lack of a better word, have almost entirely washed their hands of you.

Sorry, they’d say, the frown emoji expressing something like pity at a distance. We don’t have a couch to spare. 

I can sleep on the floor, you’d texted back. They’d gotten cagey after that. People like to be wanted only to a certain extent.

You can feel the panic rise up in you, too big to contain. It comes out in the form of blubbering tears and snot running from your nose. Big, hiccuping sobs. It’s not pretty. Passersby avert their eyes for the most part, save for the ones that eye you with something bordering on perverse delight and that’s what finally makes you get up and speed walk away, lest they feel compelled to approach you. 

But even in the tailwinds of summer, it gets cold outside at night. Worst of all, as the evening grows dark, the streets empty out until you can’t help but feel like a beacon with your little rolling suitcase. It clatters against the sidewalk as you try to hoof it down the street, looking for any shop still open to loiter in. Most close after nine though. You’ve googled homeless shelters, but the sheer anxiety keeps you floundering around up and down the streets instead.

It feels beyond helpless. You’re in a state like you’ve never been before, crying under a streetlamp because you needed a moment just to get your bearings. 

What you know now is that this world is a house of false bottoms. You thought the circumstances of your life could never change. You were never well to do, but you were doing well. The sight of the unhoused sitting with their backs to the brick and mortar stores on your walk home or congregated in a park in the middle of the city with their tents and shopping carts used to fill you with immeasurable pity, maybe even a quiet moment’s reflection; now, you see them as kin. 

Easy, isn’t it? To slip between states. To go from solid to liquid to gaseous. Easier than you ever could have expected. 

When it starts to rain, you almost close your eyes in relief. Anyone could’ve predicted this. 

You almost don’t respond to him at first, keeping your eyes trained on the sidewalk to avoid any bumps. Also, it never pays to look up at a man barking at you, especially not when he’s barking something like, Girl or Bird, turn around. 

Then he says it again, closer this time, and you’re forced to look up, if only to see who’s approaching you. Your suspicion melts away to distrust at the sight of the man stalking towards you. Distrust with a touch of trepidation—maybe outright alarm. Surely no man his size wearing a balaclava tucked into a hoodie straining around his arms would have innocent designs on you. 

He’s one of the bigger men you’ve ever come across. You look across the street to see if there’s a bar missing its bouncer, but all the shop fronts are dark like the ones on your side. 

You don’t bolt at the sight of him, but it’s a near thing. He appears from nowhere, and yet there’s nowhere for him to hide. Not with the size and breadth of him damn near taking up the whole sidewalk. His demeanour and stride evoke such a sense of authority that at first you mistake him for a plainclothes man, and wouldn’t that be just the icing on the shit cake of a week you’ve been experiencing. But something about him says otherwise. 

“Plan on catchin’ your death out here?” he asks, and you shiver. Not from the cold, but from the sound of his voice. 

You’re not used to talking to strangers. A month ago, you would’ve ignored the man lambasting you for being out in the rain; maybe crossed the street and hailed a cab instead. You don’t have those kinds of options anymore. The only thing left in your repertoire is to shout back. 

“I’ve got mace!” you yell out, your voice a hoarse rattle carved out from hours spent crying. 

“That’ll do ya fuck all out here,” he says, a touch condescendingly. “You lost or somethin’?”

“I’m not lost,” you sniff, rubbing the snot away from your nose with the end of your sleeve.

“Then get home instead of roamin’ the streets. You’re askin’ to get snatched up, bird.”

The threat of that has been lingering in your head these past few days, even stretching back to the very first moment that you noticed the sign on your door, but now it has its intended effect. You shake. 

“I can’t,” you whisper.

“Bloody hell,” he sighs. “Why the fuck not? Need someone to call you a cab?”

“I got evicted. I don’t have a home,” you say, and sniffle when your nose leaks again. Saying it outloud brings tears to your eyes again, a pressure building behind your orbital sockets and down to the tip of your nose. 

You must look like the saddest thing in the world standing there in the rain under the dim light of the streetlamp, the pole looped with graffiti and old gum. When the man berating you for being out in it takes a step forward, coming into the light, you can finally make out the bored depths of his eyes. A deep brown. Entirely unimpressed with the picture in front of him, maybe even a bit peeved. 

Your socks are wet and your shoes squelch when you take a step back. You pull the sheer sweater tighter around your frame, but it does nothing to protect you from the damp, frigid air. 

“You been out here long?” he asks, taking another step closer. Not tentatively either. His gaze sweeps over you proprietarily, taking stock; his arrogance comes as an afterthought. He’s not rubbing it in your face that he can do whatever he likes—he just does. 

You wheel your suitcase around in front of you to put something between the two of you. “…Just today. The gym kicked me out.”

You sound petulant, words chewed between your lips and teeth; begrudgingly admitting to the various pitfalls of your existence. All the bad luck. It’s shameful to admit to losing complete control of your life. 

“Haven’t ya got any family, girl? Friends? What’re they letting a girl like you stay out on the streets for?”

You could be sick on the pavement. “…That’s none of your business.”

His eyes go flat at that, unimpressed. “You always this nasty to people tryin’ to help?”

And you’re not. That’s the part that grates the most. You’re all soft underbelly; no bark, no bite. It’s inconceivable that this could’ve happened to you—inconceivable because your head is filled with false promises and mythologies. The myth of exceptionalism. This happens to other people. Not good girls that go to college and get their degrees and find a stable job. 

They’ve pulled the rug out from under you so fast that you haven’t even toppled over yet. That’s how quick it all happened. 

“What help are you?” The bite comes out of nowhere, fueled by bitter humiliation and resentment for the predicament you’ve found yourself in. “Are you gonna put me up in a hotel?”

“Think I’m made of money, bird?” he asks rhetorically. 

“You’ve probably got more than I have.” 

Now you’re weepy again at the thought. Down to your last hundred dollars and you’re in between jobs at the moment. It might’ve been easier to haul yourself out of poverty if applying for jobs didn’t require a mailing address. That’ll be your first priority once you find a place to live. But conversely, how are you meant to find housing with no proof of income? Landlords laugh in your face before slamming the door shut. The conversations are circular, but they always come to a grinding halt; that’s the only thing you’ve learned to expect. 

The worst part of this whole conversation is that it doesn’t follow any of the scripts you’ve previously memorized. When have you ever had to deal with a man interrogating you about your place of residence? It makes no sense. 

It’s inconceivable to imagine that this is happening to you, but it is. Life comes at you hard, with a razor’s edge. Sharp enough to cut, to lacerate. 

“You need a place to stay,” he states bluntly. 

“It’s fine. I’ll—I’ll find something.” 

“You could come home with me.” He says it so bluntly that for a moment all you can do is blink. Surely you misheard him. Surely a man of his size and breadth, dark mask obscuring his face, wouldn’t be daft enough to ask a woman he found on the street to come home with him.

The offer, as well-intentioned as you hope it is, puts you on edge. “No, that’s…that’s alright. I don’t want to…put you out. I was going to look up nearby shelters.”

“Shelters’ll all be full this time of night,” he says. “Never been on the streets?”

You clenched your teeth, nerves starting to get the better of you. 

“I can go to a church,” you say, voice terse now, frayed with nerves. 

He snorts. “Haven’t been to one in a long time, but pretty sure those close too, pet. It’s late.”

You sway on your feet, the suitcase at your side the only thing keeping your knees from buckling. Dead ends everywhere you turn. You’ve always thought of yourself as resourceful; that if push came to shove, you’d figure your way out of any sticky situation. That smacks of arrogance now. All your suppositions are dissolving right in front of you, your own self-image along with it. 

A heavy foot stepping into a puddle brings you back to focus. The masked man is closer now, within arm’s reach. Your heart jumps into your throat. He towers over you, monolith man; big as a sequoia, or other deadland creatures that vanish out of sight when you catch a shadow out of the corner of your eye and whirl around to look it dead on. 

“I can’t go home with a stranger.”

You know you’re not supposed to put your faith in strange men. Bad things happen to girls that go around trusting any man that offers up their help. 

The fist in your chest loosens infinitesimally when the man reaches up to pull the mask off his head. He’s every inch the brute you imagined in your head—blunt chin and crooked nose, a nasty scar running up his lip. There are scars all over his face, in fact—bisecting his left eyebrow and down his cheek. The blond hair on his head is slightly grown out, like he’s used to keeping it neat and tight but it’s been awhile since his head has seen a razor. His beard grows in a bit patchy, the burnish gold of a five o’clock shadow.

You frown. “Is that supposed to make me trust you?”

“Well, now we’re not strangers, are we?”

“That doesn’t—that doesn’t change anything! I still don’t know you.”

He shrugs. Takes a step back. “Suit yourself then. No skin off my ass.”

Your stomach roils, anxiety coming back with a vengeance. You hadn’t noticed it recede since the man started talking to you, but you notice its return. When he makes a move to turn back around, you lurch forward, your hand extending out and fisting in the side of his shirt. He pauses, then looks down at you. 

“…Where else am I supposed to go?” you whisper.

He tilts his head. “Could sleep on a bench in the park.”

You glare at him through tear-soaked eyes. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be. You’re shit out of other options at this time of night.”

“So, what? Now it’s-it’s my fault or something?”  

His eyes don’t exactly soften, but they lose their hard edge. 

“I’m not gonna ask twice,” he says. Not cautioning you, just stating a fact. “You coming or not?”

Disaster seems like a given at this point. At least you could pick your poison. 

Words are beyond you though, so you just bite your lip and nod, eyes downcast now. 

What else is there for you to do but follow him after that? You trail along after him like a sad, wet cat left out in the rain. 

He finds her wandering the streets with her pretty little suitcase rolling over every bump and crack in the sidewalk and there’s no fighting the urge to drag her home. 

She doesn’t look like a runaway. Just a poor thing down on her luck. Her cheeks practically glisten with her tears when she looks up at him with her big, pathetic eyes, and it makes his cock plump up against his thigh. 

That’s not what this is about though. Simon presses his hand against his dick to rub out some of the ache while she flutters around the bedroom and reminds himself of that again. He didn’t take her home to maul her like a dog. He dragged her back to his flat because she looked wounded and scared out of her wits. 

He can be good every now and then. 

“Sit down, will ya?” he grunts, tugging her down onto the couch when she flits across the room to grab more of her shit out of her suitcase, glancing down at him apprehensively on her way by. She yelps when he sends her sprawling onto the couch. 

His flat isn’t much. A one-bedroom above a laundromat; eggshell walls and torn up baseboards because he hasn’t gotten around to fixing the place up. It’s better than sleeping on the streets though, he knows that much. 

Simon’s no stranger to that; if being in the military taught him anything, it was how to survive regardless of circumstances. In the weeks after his medical discharge—his knees beyond busted, basically bone on bone, and even these days, though he works more to have something to do than to earn a living, they still scream at him when he puts too much weight on them—he wandered aimlessly for a bit, crashing on Gaz’s couch for a bit and sleeping on benches for a spell after that before finding his footing again. 

Simon ignores the way that she yaps at him though, used to tuning people out. He flicks on the television and flips to a show that looks vaguely entertaining before getting up and ambling over to the kitchen. 

“D-do you want me to help?” she asks from the kitchen, tripping over her words in her haste to get them out. 

She reeks of the need to please. Desperate; cloying, sickly sweet like flowering dracaena. It clings to her like a perfume, silk-wrapped and packaged just for him. It could give a man like him indecent thoughts. His thoughts already tend towards the impure. 

He must eye her like a ravenous animal because she flinches suddenly under his gaze, eyes flicking away nervously before meeting his again. Good girl, Simon wants to say. Eyes on me. 

“Sit down,” he barks instead, and relishes in the way she sits back down with her hands tucked under her thighs. 

She’s really a pretty little thing. A shame that he found her out wandering in the rain, out where any man with worse intentions could have stumbled across her. The thought alone could drive him to violence. Again he stares at the back of her head and the slope of her shoulders, evaluating. His bloodlust dulls to a simmer. It pounds in his ears like a dull drum, but at least now he can hear again. 

Anyone else could have found her first, but they didn’t. He did. That tempers the homicidal impulse thrumming in his blood. She’s in his flat now, freshly showered and skin still damp. When she looks over her shoulder, it’s him she sees. 

Poor bird with her clipped wings. She’s not in danger of flying off anytime soon. The thought placates him. Tucked away in his cage, he doesn’t have to rend anyone limb from limb.

It’s been years since he traded in his fatigues for a hi vis jumpsuit, but some days he misses it so acutely that his hands shake and his vision fades in and out. This is one of those days. He toys with the idea of reaching out to Price in the morning to learn more about her, but then discards the idea. Better if it comes straight from her.

Besides, he doesn’t like asking for favours anyway.

“Name’s Simon, by the way,” he grunts, nostrils flaring when he sees her flinch at the sound of his voice. “Riley.”

“Oh,” is all she says. He waits a beat.

“Gonna give me your name, bird?”

She does, voice squeaky like it’s said under duress. That pisses him off more. 

He's not much of a cook, but he can whip up something quick, so he tosses one of his frozen meals into the microwave and sits her in front of the TV while she shivers and shakes on the couch.

They eat in silence, the TV on in the background. It’s the only noise besides the soft sound of her chewing. Simon can tell she’s gone hungry in recent days by the voracious way she eats, unable to keep herself from shovelling the food into her mouth. She seems almost embarrassed by it after swallowing her last bite, looking over at him from the corner of her eye like a guilty dog. He ignores it, keeping his eyes on the TV instead.

He can tell she wants to say something. A shit childhood and two decades in the military have left him with the ability to sniff out tension, and it comes off her in waves. After putting her plate on the coffee table, she sits back against the couch and squeezes her fists over her lap. Gnaws her lip and casts furtive glances in his direction. When the tears build up on her waterline, his cock twitches. 

“What?” he barks after the umpteenth sniffle, twisting to face her. 

“I—um—I just wanted to say thank you,” she whispers, her head still tilted downward, trying to make herself small enough to go unnoticed. 

Simon stares down at her, unblinking. He half wishes she’d cry a little more, just a few tears to soothe the beast in his chest. It’s better for her that her eyes remain dry. He doesn’t think he could hold himself back if one slipped down her cheek right now. He’d have to grab her by the nape of her neck and twist her over the side of the couch, shove down both their drawers and feed his cock into the warm, wet slot between her legs. Pummel her little cunt until his spend leaks out in thick, viscous globs, until her thighs shake so violently that only his hands on her shoulders and his shaft shoved deep in her pussy keeps her upright. 

He can almost smell it from between her legs, throbbing with gratefulness. He stares down unabashedly at the spot between her legs. Let her say something about it. 

“Don’t mention it,” he says instead, tilting his head when her tongue peeks out to wet her lips. “‘Was nothing.”

“No, it was really nice of you,” she insists, speaking more forcefully after gathering up some of her courage. “What if I…—you took a stranger into your house.”

That gets the blood pumping. “Gonna gut me while I sleep, pet?”

It’s half deranged that his cock chubs up in his jeans at the thought of his little bird with a knife in her hands, hands dripping with wet, dark blood. He shifts, readjusting himself so the metal teeth of his zipper don’t bite into his dick. 

She frowns. Endearing. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Not really good at looking after yourself, are you?”

“I am—it’s just…” tears build up on her waterline again, “it was one thing after another. I couldn’t get it all together.”

Pity isn’t an emotion he’s accustomed to feeling. Simon’s not even sure if that’s what he’s feeling now. It’s more like the bastard child of pity. 

He lets her off to bed with a warning not to fuck with anything in his room. She skitters off quickly after that. Her cute little ass follows her into the room until she shuts the door behind her, hiding it from view. He huffs. Being good never gets him anywhere.

He lets her run away though because he can’t tarnish everything he touches. Some things deserve to stay polished. 

Instead, he brushes his teeth and washes the last of the dishes before turning in as well, getting a clean sheet out of the linen closet to drape over himself. The couch isn’t nearly long enough for him to stretch out on, not like the king sized bed in his room; there’s already a spring poking him right in the middle of his back.

Sleep won’t come easy tonight. 

Simon wakes up on the couch with a kink in his neck. He lays there for several minutes gritting his teeth until the worst of it passes. When he sits up, his back cracks and pops, joints loosening only reluctantly. His age is getting away from him again; the wear and tear on his body finally starting to catch up. There’s only so much abuse he can put himself through. 

The morning races on outside his front door and he has work to get to, but his body orients towards the closed door of his bedroom almost without his say. It creaks as it swings open. 

In the slowly dimming haze of sleep, he must have subconsciously thought he dreamt the night before because seeing the girl from yesterday curled up in his bed halts him in his tracks. Her suitcase is open on the floor beside the bed. She must have changed into her pyjamas after slinking away last night because he doesn’t recognize the little cotton shorts hugging the swell of her ass and the shirt riding up over her belly button. 

Despite the perfunctory morning jerk he gave himself just ten minutes prior, his cock twitches in his work pants, gaze locked on the underside of her ass, the flesh peeking out from beneath her sleep shorts. 

The hunger ebbs out of a deep, cavernous hole in him. A heavy, oppressive heat; lust so gnarled and twisted that he hardly recognizes it. He can see it play out in his mind—crawling over the bird’s prone form and turning her over onto her belly, his knees on either side of her legs, cloaking her. Tugging down the zipper of his pants and wrenching those slutty shorts down to mid-thigh before burying his shaft in her hole. Little bird that followed him home, sleeping in his bed. She should thank him for his help with a wet hole. 

Simon takes a step into the room and then stops. He won’t—can’t—

His teeth grind together from how hard he clenches his jaw. 

He stands in the doorway and watches her sleep in his bed for longer than he should. Only when he feels something ugly well up in his chest does he finally bark out her name, snorting softly when she jumps and nearly falls right off the side of the bed. 

“Get up,” Simon grunts. “And make yourself something to eat. I’ve gotta head out.”

He walks away before the befuddled look on her face makes him crack a smile. 

She tiptoes out a few minutes later, still in her PJs. Her wary glances tick him off. For the effort it’s taken him to keep his hands to himself, he deserves more than her shifty looks, scoring him like he split her little peach open in her sleep.  

Breakfast is an uncomfortable affair. It’s partly his fault, but he doesn’t apologize for it. They eat in tense silence until it’s time for him to head to work. 

“Don't think about leaving—any of my shit gets nicked and it's your ass.”

He leaves her with that warning, slamming the door behind him.

Your heart goes quiet at the dawning of your new life. 

Adjusting to your new reality takes a bit of effort. The first few days with Simon feel tenuous at best. You worry constantly about doing something wrong and finding yourself back out on the streets. You’re thankful to the point of pandering, apologizing for any sudden move or sound that you make. You can tell it annoys him. 

The real work is recontextualizing your perception of yourself. The world feels strange now that you’re outside of it; alien somehow. You used to think of yourself as somehow inextricably woven into the fabric of society. The thought of losing everything never even occurred to you. It never even presented itself as a possibility. You worried about homelessness the way people worry about quicksand—in some nebulous way touching on the real without being absorbed by it. 

And now you are cut from another cloth altogether; abruptly, without any warning. You used to feel like one with the rest of the world, a kind of kinship based less on parentage or ancestry and more on inner nature. Weren’t you the same as any of them? But now the drapery has been pulled down and you know—you are not the same. 

Your future used to shimmer under the surface like a bioluminescent fish, but now it’s just a ghost.

He tells you to stay put when he goes to work so you do, spending the days puttering around the apartment, watching TV, and cleaning. There’s not much else to do. It’s almost a relief, to be honest. You’ve spent so much time without a place to call home that the second someone offered you one, the outside world became anathema in your head. You couldn’t step foot out of the front door even if you wanted to. 

Tears well up at the smallest thing. You blubber over not being able to work the coffee machine in the kitchen. When the sound goes out on the TV, you cry so hard that it leaves you woozy. You’re lachrymose, downtrodden. Soul a startling verdigris; your waterlines might as well be white with encrustations of salt. 

He must notice the dark cloud following you from room to room, but he doesn’t bring it up. You’d find it tactful, but you know him a bit better than that. 

Then Simon brings home a cat after his shift one day and you don’t know what to say to that.

Thank you doesn’t seem to suffice. I love it doesn’t cut it close. The truth of the matter is that words only ever approximate the feeling; they can get close enough to give you a glimmer of what’s stashed inside, but you can’t pry them all the way open. So you take the off-white cat from him when he practically tosses the poor thing into your arms, and stare up at him wide-eyed, eyes already watering for reasons once again unbeknownst to you. 

“Thank you for taking him home,” you say, already on the verge of tears.

He stares down at you, unblinking. You’re learning to read into his silences though. 

“Don’t expect me to take care of it,” he says instead of accepting your thanks. “If you can’t handle it, it’s going back outside.” 

You hold the cat tight to your chest, staring up at him with horror until the little beast nearly scratches your eye out in an effort to squirm out of your arms. 

At first, you’re not sure what to make of it. It can’t be a peace offering because, apart from the rare occasions where you manage to get on his nerves (not wholly impossible, but you’re learning how to stay on his good side for the most part), you and Simon get along pretty well. You coexist, at least. He cooks, you clean. 

It’s likely a distraction, you finally realize, something to keep you from moping around the apartment all the time, listless and directionless. Despite the fact that you’re no longer in any immediate danger now that you have a roof over your head, misery still clings to you like a second skin. The relative safety of Simon’s flat has actually only given you a chance to really properly mourn the loss of your former life. 

Training the cat to wear a harness without tipping over (the little drama king) and taking him on his first walk outside (just a little turn around the block, though you half jump out of your skin whenever you cross paths with another person) gives you enough of a sense of purpose to propel you through the next week. 

You can tell that Simon thinks the cat is more trouble than it’s worth, especially when it decides to fixate on the one person in the flat that doesn’t pay it a lick of attention, but still it makes your heart melt to see it curled up by his side when you watch TV together at the end of the night. 

“Is this normal for you?” you ask, hands folded in your lap.

His gaze doesn’t move from the television screen. “Is what normal?”

“Taking in strays.”

He snorts, then takes a second to answer. “No.”

You wonder if he intends to sound as caustic as he comes across. The truth is self-evident though. Words only mask the real, and the real in this case is that Simon Riley is a man that feeds and takes home strays. He can grumble about it all he wants. It’s a bit demeaning to think of yourself that way, but once again, the truth is what it is. 

You study him from the corner of your eye until bedtime rolls around again. He’s become the most interesting thing in the world to you, through every fault of his own.

If he didn’t want you to fixate on him, he wouldn’t have left you home alone with nothing else to do. 

“Bird!” Simon roars from the other room. “The cat’s pissed on the floor again.”

You spring out of bed before Simon has a chance to toss it out onto the balcony. 

It feels temporary up until the first time you use Simon’s address on a job application. It stands out stark on your phone screen, black on glowing white. You’ve always preferred it to dark mode, though that preference has fluctuated in recent weeks as you’ve spent more and more time on your phone. 

This is the first time staring at the screen without blinking for a prolonged period of time that hasn’t left you with a throbbing migraine. 

He tells you to stop bothering him with stupid shit when you ask him if it’s alright to use his address. That answers that. Guilt lingers on the periphery of your mind the first time that you do, but then the application is submitted. An innocuous grey box that redefines your whole world in a way that [Thanks for applying!] doesn’t seem to encapsulate. 

Your old friends come next. They come back one by one, guilty, furtive looks aplenty. You Facetime the one who wouldn’t let you sleep on her couch while sitting on Simon’s bed. When she asks you about your living situation, all you tell her is that you found a roommate. It doesn’t feel right to give her more information than that. What has she done to deserve your honesty? 

You manage pleasantries and a half decent conversation, but truth again lingers at the back of your mind. The unspoken reality that this person—someone you trusted—could’ve been there for you in your time of need but chose to look the other way instead. Like taking you in would’ve been some big, terrible thing. 

The body forgets everything except what hurts it. The body remembers nothing except what helps it survive. 

Gratefulness lodges into your heart like an arrow shot from a castle’s ramparts intent on your demise. You could pull it out from the other side and succumb to blood loss, or you could push forward, lay siege to the man hidden inside its walls. 

And you do. You want to show him every grateful inch of you. Even when it only results in more upset. Simon comes home to the smoke alarm blaring and a small fire in the microwave before he bans you from the kitchen altogether. You only cry for an hour in the bedroom with the door shut before he drags you out to takeout on the table in the living room. It’s an improvement. 

“I’m sorry,” you sniffle into your veggie burger, on the verge of tears again when you glance into the kitchen to see most of the mess still there. 

“It’s fine.”

“I just want to—I wanted to make it up to you…for taking me in.”

“You don’t owe me shit,” he says brusquely, dismissing you. His tone tells you to drop it, but that seems as likely as you growing wings and flying away. 

“Yes, I do. You let me stay here when I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“If you want to make it up to me, take care of the cat and stop leaving your shit all over the bathroom. Found your knickers on the floor after you showered yesterday.”

Your face goes hot at that. You have nothing else to say. 

Your attraction is a banal consequence of living under the same roof as him. There are only so many times he can come up behind you while you’re making your morning cup of coffee and swipe your mug before taking a sip from over your shoulder, barricading you against the counter. Acutely aware of the size of him with the way he’s pressed up against you. 

You lose your train of thought whenever Simon wanders into a room. He lumbers in like a beast, steel-toed boots covered in mud and dust, ignoring the way you scold him for walking around the apartment in his shoes. Just cocks an eyebrow and stares down at you knowingly, like he can see right through you, knows that you’re only squawking and flitting around to hide the way your thighs rub together. 

“It’s my fuckin’ flat,” he says instead of pointing out that your pussy’s wet because she knows there’s a man in the house that could take care of her proper. You know it too. 

“I live here too, you know,” you huff. “I can’t wash the floors every time you come home.”

“Thought I was doing you a favour letting you live here.”

His words would fill you with righteous indignation, but they don’t because his actions don’t line up. You study him like a moth under glass, enthralled by the parts of him that used to frighten you. 

It’s more than that though. He’s wedged himself into the hurt place in your heart, holding it up like Atlas. 

You really do think that there’s something so special about him that you’ll never be able to articulate. Simon is everything you didn’t know you desperately wanted. The longer you live with him, the harder it is to deny how much you need him. 

You will show your gratitude though. Every tender, aching morsel of it. 

The little peach she grinds on his thigh is wet and ripe. Simon doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t need her gratitude; if he wanted it, he would’ve taken it already. But he doesn’t shove her out of his lap either. It’s not his problem if she thinks it’s necessary or not.

Maybe it’s not solely for his benefit, he concedes when she winds both arms around his neck and pushes her supple tits into his chest, climbing over his lap until her pussy is pressed right up against the cock fattening up in his jeans. She whimpers like she’s in pain. 

Must not come a lot; he knows she at least hasn’t in recent days. Simon’s always been a light sleeper—he’s sure he would’ve heard any desperate attempts to get herself off in his bed, the springs creaking under her weight, her hushed, bitten off moans leaking out from under the doorframe. The thought riles him up more than he thought it would. 

Still, Simon doesn’t lift a hand to help the poor bird in his lap as she grinds down on his length. His arms stay stretched across the back of the couch, hips canted just enough to give her a perch and nothing more. 

She gasps every word into his ear, voice all pitched and breathy. “Ah, ah, ah—thank you, thank you, I…—can I please have it? Please, please let me, Simon, pleasepleaseplease—”

It feels like everything they’ve been through so far has been leading to this. He’d smelt it coming like blood in the water. 

All week, his bird has been sitting on her hands and trying not to give herself away. Cloaked in a nervous, frenetic energy. Anticipatory. She’d doe-eyed him the night before and begged him to sleep in the bed with her instead of wrecking his back on the couch, but he’d ignored her in favour of watching Argentina decimate Croatia in the semi-finals. It must have not sat right with her though because she’d been broody from the moment he left for work until he got home, steering him into the kitchen and practically hand feeding him before coaxing him into the living room to watch a movie while she cuddled up beside him.

That hadn’t lasted long. 

“What’s gotten into you, pet?” Simon asks, hardly dissuading her when she presses petal soft lips to his jaw and nuzzles, breathing heavily. His heart swells. Desperate little slut. 

“Took care of me,” she mumbles, almost slurring her words. “Always taking care of me, Simon.”

There’s no denying how hard it makes him to think about being her protector. The littlest things make her smile. Even the bloody cat had her trailing after him for a week straight after the fact, eternally underfoot. Always trying to curry favour. Eager to please. 

Her worship leaves him unbalanced. Unstable even. A train careening off its track, the massive weight of catastrophe right behind it. The sense that life will never be the same after this. His surface level indifference is underscored by steeled self-control. He keeps his arms on the couch because he knows the second he puts them on her, it’s over. There’ll be no holding him back anymore, no possibility of him ever letting her go back out into the real world. Lock jawed, teeth sunk into her tender underbelly. 

“Told you, you don’t owe me nothing,” Simon murmurs, curling his hands under her ass. 

“Then—then…—I don’t know, pretend it’s just for me.” It’s a joke because they both know it’s not just for her. When her eyes sparkle with amusement, his cock throbs.

He lets her ruck the shirt over his head and struggle with his belt until she manages to unbuckle it like he has no say in the matter. She’s far less considerate with her own clothes, shucking them off and nearly ripping her knickers in the process, which almost prompts him to take her by the wrists and slow her down. He likes the lace and frills. 

It’s a fight to fit his cock into her hole, as slick as she is. Coin slot tight; he almost breaks and tells her to take it easy when she reaches behind her to line his shaft up with her entrance and sits down, just barely stretching around the mushroomed head of his dick before wincing, tears springing into her eyes. 

Simon does break when she tries to sink down another inch, thighs shaking violently. “Right, get off—you ain’t ready for this.”

“I am!” she insists, face screwed up in a scowl and a bead of sweat dripping down her temple. “Just—I can do it, Simon—”

“No, you can’t. You’re rushing and hurting yourself—”

“Wait, okay, wait, I can…just give me a minute, okay?” she begs, and he doesn’t tell her that he’d give her all the time in the world. Stay on this couch until the flesh fell off his bones. He’s waited so long; what’s a little longer? 

Besides, the sight of her stretching herself out with her fingers is reward enough. She whines into his shoulder and shudders when she has to force another finger in before she’s ready. Too eager. It could give a man a complex. His blood is already scorching him from the inside out, too hot for his veins.  

He considers helping her out, but watching her writhe and struggle in his lap is far more enjoyable. 

He stopped paying attention awhile back, too focused on cupping her tits and running his tongue around the budded areola, sucking her pert nipple into his mouth, but she couldn’t have gotten to more than three fingers before running out of patience and lining him up again. This time, she sinks a bit deeper on the first stroke, still choking on her breath but forcing herself to take a bit more. 

“You’re alright—you’re alright,” Simon murmurs, stroking a hand up and down her back while she impales herself on his length. She’s still too tight to take him comfortably, sweats and shakes over him. He pinches her nipple to distract her from the pain and smiles when she yelps. 

She melts all over him, slick drenching his shaft and lap, her tongue lapping at the sweaty skin of his neck. Honeysuckle fragrant; the sweetest thing he’s ever known. Silken, tight. Fits like a glove around him. 

He could lose himself in her. Piston into her until the thought of where he begins and where he ends dissolves into the tight warmth between her legs.

His bird is a greedy girl. She uses him like a toy to get herself off, bouncing in his lap and mewling into his ear everytime his cockhead nudges against her cervix. Too big to fit all the way in. 

“You do this a lot, pet? Fuck every man that lends you a hand?” he pants, taunting her.

“No!” she snarls in his ear, feisty and sharp-toothed. Her nails dig into his back, scoring white lines into his skin. The shiver that wracks him is so violent that his arms tighten around her waist reflexively, making her gasp. 

It doesn’t matter whether she does this often or not; the only thing that matters is that he’s the only man that gets to fuck her from here on out. Still, winding her up is half the fun. 

“Perfect girl,” Simon chuckles, breathless. “Made for me. Got m’self a pet right off the street.”

And he did, didn’t he? Went wandering out into the night and came home with a bird fluttering her wet little wings. 

His conscience is clean. He could’ve tied her down, kept her right where he wanted her (in his bed, his flat, the yawning cavity of his chest—) but his self-control remains unparalleled. Tough as nails. Strong as steel. And now look at what he has as a reward for his patience—a fever-hot cunt around his cock and delicate fingernails scratching the base of his skull. 

A pretty bird that’s made his chest a cage. 

The world goes vertical, horizontal. Fluid; sliding away from him. Something crashes in the background, so far off in the distance that he can hardly make out the sound. 

He opens his eyes to find the ceiling staring back down at him, and then her face, hovering over him on the carpeted floor, her hands kneading the muscle of his chest. Her brows are drawn tight now, pinched. She stares down at him, past him, gaze like a transparent veil. 

“Gi’me…gi’me…” she pants, barely able to pull herself off his cock. 

He has to dig his fingers into her ass and pull her off, ignoring the way she whines and begs him to fill her back up. Ignores it because he knows what’s best for her; knows how to take care of what he owns. 

When he bucks up into her, she chokes, fingers nearly yanking his chest hair out. 

“Fuckin’ hell, that’s pretty,” he breathes. Snaps his hips up into hers again, relishing in the way she squeezes tight around him, almost to the point of pain. 

His pleasure always comes jagged though. Whether the ache of his joints or nails tearing up the skin of his back and chest. Vicious and messy—how he likes it. She gives him everything he could want and more. The hand dug into his chest right above his heart could pierce right through the flesh and tear it out.

He pulls her all the way off his cock just for the pleasure of hearing her beg him again, then pulls her up his chest and eats her out until the beast in his belly calms down. 

He yields to her whining only after a good few minutes. Soft bastard. Drags her back down until her soaked hole mouths at the head of his cock and he thrusts back up inside. Home. It’s his now, whether she likes it or not. Simon guesses he’s lucky that she wants it too; if he had to convince her, he would, but her desperation is just another gift for him to savour. 

“Squeeze me good, bird. Say thank you—” thank you for taking me home, thank you for keeping me– almost spills off his tongue, but he reigns it in. She knows what to be thankful for. 

“Nngh, Simon,” she sings, fucking herself on his cock. The sweetest sound he’s ever heard. 

Simon’s never felt bigger than under his sweet bird. Thighs spread so wide around him that he knows she’ll ache in the morning. Brutish hands groping her thighs and waist and tits, rough against the softness of her skin. Stuffed full of a big cock, not even to the root; she bites right through her bottom lip when Simon pets at the thin skin stretched around his cock, her gaze wounded, overwhelmed. 

Nearly blacks out at the thought of cramming a finger up there too. Only faint concern for her well-being tamps down the urge. 

“Come on, fuck—that good, pet?”

“R-right there, oh god, ohgodohgod—”

He lets her ride him until she comes, until he comes, until his spend is blistering hot in her cunt, drooling down the length of his cock, frothy white with her cream and his come. 

It’s a sight to look at. Gets him right in the chest. Nothing like times of yore; this is something with meaning, with feeling. When he lifts her off, his seed trickles out of her soft hole in white globs and makes his chest ache. It doesn’t matter whether it takes root or not. All that he needs is already here. 

Beautiful and rare as a sundog; haloed by light. All this time, he dared not think this could be it. 

He thinks he’ll love her with the same ferocity Icarus had on his descent.

She shivers when he traces his fingers up her spine. “N’more. M’tired.”

“Wasn’t gonna, pet.”

The bedroom then. She twitches in his arms when Simon carries her to bed and pats his chest approvingly when he slides in beside her. 

He could’ve told her that it’d end up this way. He smiles indulgently when she shifts and splays over his chest, her nose nudging his nipple. Already fast asleep. 

In the morning, you sit across from him, half a grapefruit in a bowl in front of you and a mug of coffee, black. 

“I think I want to go back to school,” you say, apropos of nothing. The spoon clinks against the inside of the bowl. 

“Yeah?” he says, only half-listening. 

“I can always get a part time job on the days when I don’t have class. I never liked my old job anyway.”

“Do whatever you want,” Simon grunts. “Not my problem.”

Under the table, your cat’s tail curls around your ankle while he waits for you to sneak him the scraps. 

You smile.

[pricetagged]

idk I just torturing simon and I love the idea of him—at some stage of his life, idk maybe immediately after he's declared dead— not having anywhere to stay.

His residence in Manchester got gutted and sold, greedy estate agents and solicitors picking it apart as soon as they got the death notice.

He could rent hotel rooms. Stay in the barracks. But sometimes he just needs—space. Familiarity. Simon Riley is dead and buried, but not buried deep enough.

So he goes back to his old house. He knows every nook and cranny. Knows which floorboards creak and which doors get stuck. He'll just cosy away in the attic and come out when the new tenant is at work, no problem. Barracks-living, only the other person won't know. It'll only be for a few weeks at a time—

—but he catches sight of you. The new tenant. Sweet little thing who saw the ugly, empty shell and decided it was for her.

Not a lot of money, no. But you've tried to make a home here. Decorated over the gouges and scars, filled the empty spaces with little signs of life.

You've taken such good care of the place. You're taking such good care of it, all by yourself. Off to work in the morning, and home late at night when it's far too dark and he knows the latch isn't as secure as it should be —kicked and shouldered too many times when his mum would work the courage to kick out his da—

So you need him. You're not saying it in words, but what is he meant to think when he sees how you leave the windows open all through the day and night? When you shuffle about on your weekends with only a playlist or podcast for company?

You need him. Good thing he's already there.

Go read this thing by gougie if u like the 'there's someone living here' thing - they do it sooooo much better

[yeyinde]

stalker!Simon decides to have a little fun with his favourite camgirl.

the message comes up halfway into your "show."

it's a boring night. slow. you wear a lingerie set one of your viewers sent in beneath a silk robe, all in a pretty pastel pink—cliche, but it works; an uncomfortably disgusting version of hair theory unfolding in front of your eyes—and discreetly chug wine when you twist away to grab a new toy. a series of pale pink vibrators, nipple clamps. mundane depravity for what's shaping up to be a lacklustre night.

but the money that pours in from these little shows (adult version of classic party games—hide and seek, would you rather, truth or dare) is one step closer to erasing your debts. student loans. car payments. rent. you smile so wide it aches, and put your best face on when you blink, coquettish and coy, at the camera where nameless, faceless men throw money in a ring for a scrap of your attention.

tonight's game is Simon Says. and it's supposed to be normal. boring.

but a message from a viewer named Simon (in a sea of many who cheekily changed their usernames to match the theme of the game) stands out.

Simon says... go lock your door.

you blink. between all of the Simon Says touch yourself for me baby, pull your shirt down, lemme fuck you for real it sticks out. a change in the routine.

you huff, pouting. "already did that, Simon. c'mon, gimme something else to do, honey."

another one pops up. Simon says... you shouldda got a dog.

your brows furrow. "that's not part of the game, Simon. i'm gonna move on—"

Simon says... open your door.

he's paying you handsomely. dropping coins, large amounts of money, for each message to shoot to the top. little superchats. why he isn't taking advantage of it and paying you to do something sexy, something lewd, unnerves you. your heart starts to race, thudding against your ribs almost painfully.

it's fine, you think. he's just a creep. a loser. "uh huh, not part of the game, Simon. i'm afraid i'm gonna have to cut you off—"

you block him. they don't normally get under your skin like this. ever. at all. even when they throw random names in your dms, hoping one of them happens to be yours, and try to blackmail you to your fake friends and family. it doesn't bother you as much as this. as him. get a dog. how absurd.

the next series of chats pass without the same odd comments. take your bra off, but leave the robe on. act coy, like you don't want to—

creeps, you think, in their own right. but. paying ones. so, you smile. stiff. uncomfortable. grinning so wide it hurts. pretending to ignore the strange unease growing in your guts. your eyes sliding back to the superchats saved in a glowing log. let me in. a troll. whatever. it's nothing. nothing. you'll drink wine after this, scrub your skin raw in the shower and buy yourself something pretty with the money these greasy losers threw your way—

Simon says... let me in.

you feel your heart in your throat. it can't be him. you blocked him. you have mods to keep trolls out of your chats, but wonder—hopefully—if maybe it failed. maybe they found your stream are just being weird. strange. but when you check, the filters are on. he's a registered user. paid the premium to watch you. to get an invite to your special game nights. it makes it worse, you think, that he paid to be here. to do this.

your hand shakes. you block this user, too, ignoring the discomfort churning inside your chest. the fear spiking along the nape of your neck. hair raising. there's a prickle on your skin. the feeling of being watched

no. it's fine. you're fine—

"ah, what else should i do, Simon?" you ask your viewers, pulling on another smile. one that hurts. aches. wobbles around the edges. you'll end the stream in a few minutes. order Thai food. drink yourself stupid. take the day off tomorrow. use this creeps money and waste it. blow it on something stupid. dumb. laugh about it with your friends.

your shoulders dip. the tension easing. you're fine. you're at home. the door—

you locked it. right? you definitely, absolutely, locked it when you brought in the package from the delivery driver. the massive, hulking man who loomed in your doorway, too wide, even, to fit inside, and growled out in a low, brassy timbre: sign 'ere. you took the pen, pretending he wasn't drilling holes into you with his gaze, eyes liquid in the dark. intense. wanting. and then scurried inside—

back pressed against the door, hands wrapped around the lingerie set.

you glance at the chat. "which Simon bought me this cute set? i'd like to thank them personally," you murmur, forcing your shoulders to drop. it's fine. you live in the middle of nowhere. no one is coming to your door.

there's no takers in the chat. you shift on the chair, licking your lips. "it's really cute, Simon. a perfect size, too, and i just—"

something catches your eye in the corner of the monitor. a movement. a slight shift. a whisper of fabric. you tilt your chin, peering into the hazy black reflection.

what you're looking at doesn't make any sense. your bedroom door is open. a curtain of black drapes over the wall where the pale strip of light doesn't reach.

the washroom light is still on, a yellow spill illuminating the hallway, but nothing is there. no one is in the hall. but you know you closed your door. you always do when you stream. your heart trips over itself. leaps to your throat. you almost choke on it—

another bubble pops up. Simon says... hey. uh, who is that guy behind you?

there's a ringing in your ears. your hair stands on end. something moves again. the black mass wasn't a shadow. it moves. takes shape. the covered head nearly reaches your ceiling, body filling the entirely of your room. massive. a mountain you remember thinking. a fucking mountain, you texted your friend. thighs the size of tree trunks—

a hand reaches out, grabs hold of your power bar. thick gloved fingers curling over the button. in the bluegreen glow of your computer screen, a man steps out.

"glad y'liked it, pet." the deep, brassy drawl sends shivers down your spine. you try to scream, mouth opening wide to choke it out, yell for help—

your chat bubbles up, feverish in their excitement. you skin through the messages, stomaching churning as it clicks in your head. their rabidness isn't about saving you, but—

(omg he's gonna fuck her pron??? we're getting pron????? no fucking wayyyyy god i wish it were me—)

this isn't a fucking bit, you morons, you want to howl. call the fucking police—

but he gets there first. two strides. it happens in a blink. the screen goes back and he's on you in seconds.

you're not even sure how someone so big, so heavy, could move that quietly—

"ah-ah, none o'tha' now," his hand curls around your neck, tight. choking. you try to fight but he just huffs, breathing in deep, chest expanding across your spine as his other hand snakes around your waist, trapping you against a corded forearm. he bends down, nuzzles his jaw into your crown. coos:

"Simon says... turn around for me pretty girl, an' be good, now. went through all this trouble t'find you. think i deserve a little reward—"

[nastybuckybarnes]

Homemade Lunch

Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley X Reader

Warnings: Angst, Language, Arguments, sad feelings, fluff,

Word Count: idk but she aint too too long

A/n: based on a tiktok i saw but cannot for the life of me find to link. enjoy! <3

~*~

You huff out a sigh when the door closes behind you.

Shucking off your coat, you hang it up and tug off your mitts and hat next, putting them all away while you listen for your boyfriend.

He's quiet on a good day. On a day like today? When the two of you have been fighting more than you haven't been?

You begin to wonder if he's even home.

Carefully, you venture upstairs to confirm your boyfriend is, in fact, still in the house, sleeping in the bed the two of you share.

Silently, you close the door and head back downstairs, wiping your hands over your face a few times before pinching the bridge of your nose.

Heaving a heavy sigh, you head into the kitchen and grab Simon's lunch bag off of the counter, pausing when you feel the weight of it.

Brows drawing together, you open it up slowly, your heart dropping when you see he's packed himself a lunch.

A pack of instant noodles and a few protein bars are shoved carelessly in the bag, and it breaks your heart to see.

It's become a ritual now, you making his lunch for him every night so that he can head to work and not have to worry.

When he's actively deployed it saddens you to see the lunch bag sitting on the counter, awaiting his return.

But that sadness pales in comparison to what you feel when realization dawns on you.

He packed his own lunch.

Your argument from earlier seems pointless now, you can't even remember what you were fighting about. Not when your man, the man you love with your whole heart, truly thought you'd be too mad to pack his lunch.

Washing your hands, you get to work on making him lunch, your anger disappearing as you focus instead on putting together all of his favourite foods and snacks.

You work as quietly as you can, packaging everything with love and care.

Once his lunch is made, you give the kitchen a quick clean then get everything ready to make sure his morning is as smooth as possible.

Does he piss you off beyond comprehension? Yes, absolutely. In ways you didn't know a person could piss you off.

Do you love him more than you've ever loved anyone before in your life? Without question.

As you settle into bed facing his back, you can't help but lean forward and give him a gentle kiss.

Ever the light sleeper, he peels his eyes open at the feeling of your soft lips against his skin, his anger settling a bit at the tiny yet profound action.

~*~

Simon wakes up the next morning in a sour mood.

With his eyes opening not five minutes before his alarm is set to ring, things aren't off to a good start.

His mood only worsens when he realizes that all he's got to eat today for lunch is a pack of instant noodles, a few protein bars, and the stale crackers you like to leave in the bottom of the box.

It's nothing but willpower and discipline that gets him out of bed, into the shower, and dressed.

His gloomy mood gets worse still when he heads into the kitchen only to not find his lunch bag on the counter where he left it.

The kitchen is clean, by your hand no doubt, and he grinds his teeth together as he begins hunting for his lunch bag.

After almost five minutes, he yanks it out of the fridge, only to pause at the added weight.

Dry noodles aren't this heavy.

He sets the bag down on the counter and slowly opens it, his heart filling with warmth at the contents.

Instead of his bland noodles, there are several containers full of food, along with two of the juice boxes you like to keep hidden in the back of the fridge where you think he won't look.

On top of all of it, though, is a note scribbled in your handwriting with a dried tear drop tainting the paper.

He has to fight the stinging in his eyes as he reads over the words you've written.

He sets the paper down after a moment and squeezes his eyes shut, then carefully folds the paper up and tucks it into one of his many pockets before heading upstairs.

Skillfully silent, he makes no noise as he enters your shared bedroom, even less when he kneels on the bed behind you.

You inhale sharply when his hand dusts over your shoulder, looking over your shoulder only for him to immediately shush you.

"S'alright, love. S'just me. Go back to sleep."

You hum, resting your head on the pillow once more and snuggling into him when he climbs into bed behind you.

He wraps a strong arm around your waist and pulls you tightly against him, kissing the top of your head.

"I love you."

You peel your eyes open once more and glance over at him.

"I love you too."

[inkbybambi]

bodyguard!simon riley who takes a bullet for you —

words: 2.9k rating: e warnings: nightmares, guns/shooting, gunshot wound, hospitals, smut, creampie, cunnilingus, mentions of threats against reader, threat against reader, lowercase writing — please let me know if i missed any! notes: 18+ content, minors dni. warnings have been provided.

He's been assigned to you for two-ish years now. You weren't thrilled at first, and neither was he — but he didn't make it as obvious as you did.

"I don't need a babysitter," you had damn-near hissed when he was introduced.

"I wasn't hired to be one," he counters coolly, which only serves to irritate you further.

Actively ignoring his presence — as much as you could when your company moved him into your apartment — even though you begrudgingly made room in the counters and fridge for his things, even going as far as investing into a better kettle so he could make his tea and clearing out an entire cabinet for all his tea, sugar, and steeper.

He trails you quietly as he was hired to; keeping close enough to always have you in his sights but far enough away that people wouldn't be able to clock his association to you — or so he thought.

Six months into his contract with you — an unknown amount of time left, as Price never answered and soon he stopped asking — he wakes in the middle of the night from a scream he never thought would come from you.

He rushes to your bedroom, gun in hand with his finger resting on the side — not the trigger. The front door is locked as he had left it, windows unbroken. He almost thinks he might've associated it with one of his own nightmares, until he sees you.

Curled in on yourself, face tucked into your knees, fingers threaded at the nape of your neck as you struggle to breathe properly, hiccups and sobs breaking between your stuttered breaths.

He knocks gently on your door, not wanting to startle you. You jump a little, regardless, but lift your head to look at him.

"'m sorry," you mumble, voice rough, "I didn't mean to wake you."

And you hadn't. You thought you were done with these awful nightmares, the ones gnawing at the edges of your mind during the day.

"'S'alright," he replies, tucking the gun into the waistband of his sleep shorts, walking carefully towards your bed. "You okay?"

The look he receives damn near breaks his heart.

He learns, that night, that an attempt had been made on your life before. More than once.

They never got close enough to do any harm, you say, but then swallow thickly and clutch your bicep where Simon sees a scar that he never took notice of previously. They didn't get close enough to do anything worse, you amend, chancing a look at him.

"I had security then, too," you explain, wiping your tears with your hand, playing with the blanket. "It didn't change anything."

Something shifts after that.

He starts cooking for you — with you, when there's time — and you bring him a cup of tea each morning. The bookshelf in the living room, previously only half-filled, collects Simon's books. You give him the login to all your streaming services, and ignore the pointed look he gives you when he sees some trashy reality tv show in your continue to watch queue.

He doesn't complain much when he stands behind you during an episode, arms crossed, asking a question here and there. You sigh, exasperated at having to explain everything, telling him to sit down as you start the series from the beginning.

Nine months into his contract, your nightmares become more frequent, and worse. You don't understand why. You were getting better, you cry in Simon's arms after a particularly rough night.

"Sometimes these things happen," he tells you softly, gently petting your hair, tucking you under his chin.

"Make them stop, please," you beg, even though you know he can't. he wishes he could.

He starts sleeping in your bed.

He's so warm, your cheek pressed into his chest, feeling more secure than you have in months when the weight of his thick, tattooed arm slings around your waist. He presses a kiss to your forehead at night, and you burrow into his side.

He starts taking the balaclava off at night.

A morning where you blessedly don't have to be up early, grey clouds hang in the sky, the promise of a storm later.

"G'mornin'," he says, voice rough with sleep, feeling him flex and stretch beneath you, groaning as his body relaxes. A flash of heat snaps through you.

"Morning," you reply, only half-awake, tilting your head up to drag your lips across his jaw, prickling with stubble.

He cradles the back of your head, fingers thick and comforting, tilting you back until his mouth slants over yours. He holds you so carefully, like glass, as his tongue slips into your mouth, hot and heavy.

The sheets rustle as he moves to lay over you, free arm resting by your head as your legs hook on his hips, trying to draw him closer to you.

He nips at your bottom lip as he rolls his hips, the heat of his cock through his boxers frazzling your brain. You mewl, his tongue back in your mouth, moving his hand to grip your waist and drag you up against him, moaning low in his throat when he feels the wetness seeping through your panties.

"Fuck," you breathe out as his mouth moves over your cheek, down your jaw, kissing the sensitive skin behind your ear.

"Say please," he rumbles.

"Simon, please," you whine, fingers curling at the base of his skull and scratching, and he snarls against your skin, sinking his teeth into the side of your neck as he tears your panties off, pushing his boxers down enough to free his cock.

You're so wet for him, slick coating your thighs as he drags his cock through your folds.

He usually takes his time — using his fingers and tongue to open them up first, wanting to feel the wet heat of their cunt and the spurt of their release to know they're relaxed and ready for him. He eats pussy like he'll die if he doesn't, will happily spend hours between your legs if you let him.

But with you? He feels feral with need.

"It's big, sweet thing," he rasps into your skin, lips hovering over that sensitive spot on your neck that he sunk his teeth into earlier, notching the head of his cock at your entrance. He's not trying to brag, it's just a fact.

You claw at him, the sting of open scratches burning his skin so pleasantly.

"It's okay, don't care," you pant, gripping him hard enough to leave deep crescent marks in his skin, angling your hips up to draw him into your cunt yourself.

He grips your hips with both hands, slowly pushing his thick length into you, nails digging even deeper the more he pushes in.

"Feels so fucking good," he says, tongue laving over your throat to collect the thin sheen of sweat that coats your skin. "Could fuck you forever," he groans, your breath hitching.

You make a strangled noise low in your throat. It's been awhile since you've fucked anyone, and you've never fucked anyone as big as him before.

The stretch feels so good, though. Your cunt clenches around him as he sinks in deeper, mind glazing over as you focus only on him.

"Fuck," he whines when he finally seats himself fully into you, nuzzling into your neck, overwhelmed by the heat and slick, "good fucking girl, taking me so well."

He swallows thickly, waiting a couple heartbeats to enjoy this — it's been awhile for him, too.

"Think you can take it, love?" and his fucking voice. You would agree to do anything as long as you could hear that rough accent along your throat, teeth skimming your skin.

"Yes," you breathe out harshly, moving to wrap your arms around his shoulders, needing him close, close, closer.

For a man of few words, Simon has a filthy mouth as he fucks into you, accompanied by groans and growls into your collar.

"Never had a cunt this perfect." "Fuckin' made for me." "Can't wait to get my tongue in you, feel you cum on my face." "No one else can have you." "You're mine."

And you, normally far more verbal than him, are reduced to nothing more than mewls and pleas and moans for more.

You mouth and nip at his jaw when you can, wanting to mark him, wanting to stake your claim. You'll be his forever if he lets you, but you'll be damned if anyone else gets to have him either.

"Simon — " is the only warning you give before you cum on his cock, head thrown back as you moan through the waves of pleasure, release coating his length and thighs.

"That's it, baby, good girl, give it to me," he says, blunt nails digging into your waist as he grinds himself deep into you. You feel so warm and pliant, the pleasure numbing your mind as he rocks himself into you.

"Wanna feel you give me one more, angel," he bites at your throat on the other side, his need to sink his teeth into every inch of your skin overwhelming. He hooks your legs over his shoulders, fucking into you deeper, hitting that spot inside you that has you seeing stars and your toes curling.

You grip at him again, clawing as he fucks into you, the sound of your wet cunt taking each thrust creating a symphony with his groans and your cries. He feels so fucking good, splitting you open and making you whole, desperate for him to cum inside.

The way your nails dig into his shoulder is the sign that you're getting close, and he thrusts just a little harder, a little meaner, your cute whines growing more desperate as you walk the precipice of another orgasm.

No one's ever made you cum more than once — sometimes, not even once — and you've never been able to do it yourself either.

Simon? Fucks a second orgasm out of you like it's his life mission, ankles tightening around his neck as pleasure lines your veins, shaking as he continues to hit that spot inside you as you cum, prolonging it as much as he can.

"Baby — " he chokes out, sharp teeth on your shoulder, thrusts getting sloppy. The slick of your two releases sounds so loud in your bedroom, feeling the desperation as he thrusts, deeper, harder.

"Cum inside," you mumble against his cheek, nails scratching at the base of his skull as he thrusts once, twice, three times — the warmth of his release flooding your cunt.

He fists the sheets in one hand, nails dragging down your thigh as he pumps deep into you, your slick and his release seeping out of your hole, dripping down his balls and your asshole.

You stay like that, lips brushing, breathing in each other's air as you slowly come down from the high.

Simon gently — so gently — lowers your legs, carefully watching your face for any signs of discomfort, settling them on his hips, hands moving up and down your thighs. "Y'alright?" he asks. You swallow thickly and nod, both hands now at the base of his skull, affectionately scratching at the nape of his neck.

He slowly pulls out, and you miss the stretch and the warmth immediately. You push up on your elbows, watching as the mixture of your pleasure leaks out of you, biting you lip.

"Fuckin' beautiful," he says almost reverently, mesmerized.

He spends the next hour cleaning you up, and you think your nails create permanent marks on his shoulders.

Time bleeds together.

His contract renews on the twelfth month.

He heard rumors that Price might switch him out for another guard.

You're at the meeting — it's your bodyguard, after all, they figure you should get some input. Price has two separate folders prepared. A sharp look from Simon is all Price needed to know about how he feels. The tongue lashing you give your higher ups has Price raising his eyebrows, and Simon sits forward a little more should he need to haul you out over his shoulder.

He wouldn't mind that too much, he thinks, but he'd rather not.

Ten minutes later and you're angrily signing his renewal papers, a blotch of ink at the start of your name as you didn't even read the contract before signing, lungs burning from your rant about personal safety and what the fuck are you thinking and I didn't just buy an entirely new tea set for nothing.

You grip his wrist as soon as he signs himself, dragging him to the nearest bathroom.

His hand covers your mouth as he fucks you deep and slow.

"Don't worry, darling, 'm not going anywhere."

Eighteen months into his contract, and he's never felt so little control before in his life.

He's meticulous, prepared, tactile.

There's a gun in his holster for distance threats and a knife in his sheath for those who dare get too close.

He makes sure to memorize the exists before you even get to the venue, now making no effort to conceal himself.

He's like a shadow, or a guard dog.

You've never felt more secure, more protected.

Until —

He doesn't know how it slipped past him.

He let his eyes linger a little too long on the curve of your neck, where a new diamond pendant lay with his initial engraved on the back. He admires the dip of the dress you wear, open-back that shows the enticing expanse of your back, the dress covering you above the curve of your ass. You look back at him briefly while whomever you're with speaks, eyes sparkling in the bright light of the room, a smile reserved just for him.

He hears the cock of a hammer and his eyes snap to a gentleman who brandishes a gun like he's never held one before in his life. His eyes, though. His eyes are like fire, black with rage, staring at you with such hatred.

You look one second too late.

Simon is on you right after the click of the trigger, pushing you to the floor and caging you with his body.

"Stay down and don't fucking move," he growls as he reaches for his own weapon, up in a flash.

You can't hear anything except white noise and screams that sound muffled, heart pounding and making it hard to breathe. Two shots ring out, in tandem, and there's the telltale sign of a body hitting the floor.

Simon is by your side, eyes scanning, frantic, looking for any signs of harm.

"You okay?" he asks, carefully outstretching his hands to let you stop him from touching you should you want. you don't.

"Fine," your voice cracks, and you can't stop shaking.

"You're okay, you're okay," he says, cradling your cheeks, thumbs wiping under your eyes. "I'm so fucking sorry," he adds, guilt heavy in his chest.

You grab his wrists lightly, tears streaming down your cheeks as you look him over. You gasp, unable to catch a real breath, unable to look away from his stomach.

"Simon — " you say, horror laced in your voice.

He looks down, seeing the red seep through his shirt.

Fuck.

At least it wasn't you, he tells himself.

Nineteen months into his contract, and he isn't dead.

While he's been shot before — a fact he tells you, assuming it would comfort you, but only got him a venomous glare in return — it's been awhile.

The hospital, the stitches, the gauze and needles. He hated it then and he hates it now.

Price comes to you in the hospital — they're keeping Simon for a little, to make sure there's no complications with his healing — offering another guard in the interim while he recovers.

You've never shot down a proposal so quickly in your life. The nerve.

Twenty-two months into his contract, and the last of the moving boxes are taped shut and labeled. Some of them in your writing, the others in his. The keys to your new house are tucked into his pocket, alongside a black velvet box.

"Why do we have so much shit," you whine when packing, only two boxes deep and so many rooms left to go. You're too busy stuffing a manatee shaped steeper into a box — mana-tea, you giggled when he opened it, him rolling his eyes fondly in reply — and don't see him pause, looking at you softer, never hearing "we" before like that. Never dreaming he could hear it like that.

A lot of stalling on your part and encouragement on his, and the last box is packed and placed in the back of the truck.

He laces your fingers together as you drive to the new house, a bottle of champagne already chilled.

Twenty four months into his contract, and you come home with something hidden behind your back.

You smile like you have a secret, which would be a first.

It's awkward to bring around from your back, but there's a large German Shepard puppy wiggling in your grip, tail wagging furiously.

He feels his heart stop for a moment, unable to take his eyes off the puppy, and then the band that's sitting around your finger. He touches his own subconsciously.

You set the ball of fur down, who immediately launches at Simon, whining and wiggling and trying to give him kisses.

There's a collar and tag already there, and you watch with your heart beating faster than ever, unable to stop the smile on your lips, as he wrangles the pup enough to read it.

Riley.

[b33zlebubz]

six months | simon riley

you accidentally ask your ex for a ride home after six months no-contact tags: vomit, themes of ptsd and depression for both characters, alcohol, angst, fluff, soft simon

It’s raining.

Your hair pulls on the concrete whenever you adjust uselessly, tugging at the bottom of your dress so that you could sit on the ground in a way that won’t leave bruises you won’t remember.  Balance clumsy as you sink against the stone and press your face against the soothing coolness of the bricks.  Listen to the music that still pulses inside and try to imagine what your friends are doing, dancing and drinking.

Your phone slips onto your lap, the blue light obscenely bright against the dim, dingy alleyway and incandescent street lights.  A text conversation pulled up and untouched for months suddenly dinging with updates.  You barely realize you texted him to pick you up until you get a response to your drunken gibberish, short and sweet.  Three little letters that bring more relief than you’ll ever admit.

Omw.

You’re surprised he’s able to read what you sent.  You sure as hell can’t, from the combined effort of the rain and the dumbness of your fingers.  And maybe some part of you would be fond of the fact that he had replied so fast, kept your number unblocked.  Hadn’t just ignored it like he probably should have.  Hadn’t discarded you completely.

Six months.  Six months since he said he’d never marry, six months since you left.  Time went by faster when you weren’t staring at your phone callender aching for his return.  Waiting by the front door of your shared apartment like an anxious puppy when he was late to return, as usual.

Maybe it was muscle memory, tapping his contact.  Maybe it was subconscious.  Either way, you couldn’t go back on it now.

You hear it before you see it.  That same old sleek, black car rolling around the block and stopping some ways in front of you.  There’s a headache blooming in your skull and your hair is slick against your face whenever you open your eyes to the sound of boots.  

He’s there, in front of you.  Kneeling down in dark jeans and a darker T-shirt.  More tattoos up his arm than you remember.  A fresh, diamond-shaped one—stark against the faded sleeve of his forearm.  A more sober you would have at least pretended not to stare, not to rake your eyes up lean muscle and tall stature to the permanently tired, grey-ish eyes of Simon Riley.

“You’re a mess,”  He grunts, and his velvet, smokey accent really shouldn’t make your chest warm over as much as it does.  Unearth memories and feelings you thought you packed away with the rest of your belongings whenever you moved out of his flat.  

You huff, glance away.  “Mess is an understatement.”

“You alright?”

You hum thoughtfully, reaching a dumb hand up to rub at your face.  You’re not.  You’re really not; not with him finally within arms reach.  Not when nausea claws distantly in your throat and your brain feels like it's been knocked loose in your skull.  But, as always, you lie.

“Yeah,”  you breathe, and your voice is hoarse from yelling and singing.  You curse yourself for drinking so much.  Curse yourself even more for asking him to come pick you up; you wanted this interaction to be something else.  Coffee, maybe, or a few drinks at the bar.  Talking.  Reminiscing.  Discussing what led you to split in the first place; his job and your loneliness.  Not getting baby-sat because you partied too hard and your ride got too drunk.

“Why’d you come?”  You mutter, voice hoarse and slurred, and even to you it sounds pitiful.

He huffs in response.  Quiet.  Barely a breath and a twitch of his lips, but it still happens.  Maskless, eyeblack still stained around his exhausted eyes.  Stuck to his blond eyelashes and caught in his brow.  He must have just gotten home from whatever he’s been up to the past few months, you probably don’t want to know.  It might make you want to stick around more than you should.  Make sure he’s alright.  That he’s eating and sleeping.  You’re probably the only one alive that knows he struggles, coming home and adjusting back to civilian life.

Simon reaches out, warm hand tenderly holding the side of your face and wiping away runny mascara.

“Because you called,”  he says, genuine.  Without an ounce of the annoyance you somehow expected, although he’s never once been annoyed before.  “Can you stand?”

You swallow again,  “probably not.”

He shifts.  You watch as he shuffles closer, snaking a large hand under your knees and the other around your back.  Lifting you with no visible effort other than a stifled grunt, tucking you close to his chest.  Careful not to jostle you too much as the movement makes you dizzy and you clutch hard at his bicep.  Hide your face in his collar and shut your eyes tight as your head swims.  Try to focus on the pulse between his ribs. His shirt smells like cigarettes and old leather, something distinctly him.

“Your heartbeat is fast,”  you breathe.

Simon's boots splash against the puddles on the street.

“Mm,”  he hums, adjusts his hold on you.  “A little.”

“Why?”

He pulls the door open with a finger and sets you down carefully in the passenger seat.  Gets you situated.  Something about it shoots a distant memory through your brain; wrangling a wet German Shepherd into your old car.  Thunder rumbling across the sky.  Driving home with a very relieved Simon in the backseat, curled up and rain-soaked with the dog he thought he lost forever.  

That was the first time you met.  Spotting him dejectedly along the side of the M62 motorway, leash in hand.  Trying to find his dog Riley who had jumped from his car in the midst of the worst rainstorm you’ve seen in years.

“‘Was worried,”  he confesses, low and sincere.  “Reckon you’d have to be real desperate to ask my sorry ass to get you.  Thought I'd have to beat someone up."

Hurt wells, hot and upset, through your chest.  Makes you clutch his shirt a little tighter as he gets to his car, even if he did intend for it to be a lighthearted joke.

“I’m sorry,”  it’s genuine.  You don’t exactly know if you’re apologizing for not staying in touch, the argument before he left, or bothering him in the first place. Either way, the apology is genuine.

He smiles.  Warm, tired, sad.  Much like he would whenever you’d drop him off at the airport or when he’d climb into bed after his return: sore, exhausted, and apologizing.  Something you like to think is reserved for you, although you know might be wishful thinking.

“S’alright, love.”

The drive itself is quiet.  You press your face to the cool of the window and let your eyes shut.  You’re still shivering from the rain despite Simon cranking the heat up.  A part of you is glad for it, it gives you something to zero in on.  Keeps you from vomiting in his car as you listen to the rain tap against the windows.  Watch the city lights come and go as he navigates traffic carefully.

“Where to?”  He rumbles.

“Same flat,”  you slur.  “The one on 8th.”

He sends a glance your way.  You meant to leave the city after you left but with money so tight you haven’t had enough time to go looking, so you moved back into the apartment complex you inhabited before the both of you got together.  Easy, cheap.  Sketchy neighborhood but close to work.  Small, but you never needed a whole lot of space, anyway.

He doesn’t comment on it.  Just flicks the turn signal on and takes you home.  You’re a little grateful.

Simon carries you inside.  Still avoids that one stair that is higher than all the others.  Still ducking his head down just a little under that one doorway he hit his head on once.  Water drips from his clothes and taps against dusty linoleum floors, boots squeaking as he sets you down carefully outside your door.

By the time your shoes hit the floor again, it seems to contort and dip underneath you.  Your heartbeat pulses in your ears and hands shake as you fumble for your keys.  Swaying as you clumsily press them into the knob and turn.

“Hm,”  Simon huffs, blinking at the familiar, dark, empty living room around him.  “Looks exactly the same.”

You barely register his comment before the lump in your throat grows unbearable, barely hearing what he says.  Stumble across the room to the bathroom just in time to collapse by the toilet and retch a night of drinking, painfully, into the bowl.  It hurts.  The kind of vomit that only happens when you go too long without eating before having a drink.  The kind of sick that carries a thick kind of shame with it—a kind of oh no, I’m getting bad again.

Simon's at your side in an instant, a roll of paper towels under one arm and a glass of water in the other.

“Bloody hell, easy,”  comes his voice as he wipes at your face, fuzzy and distant behind the headache that pounds in your skull.  You breathe and it burns down your irritated throat as you lean your head against the porcelain. Let him fuss over you as you recover.

“Fuck,”  you curse yourself as the sobriety of throwing up brings with it a massive wave of clarity.  You run a shaky hand over your eyes, swallow thickly.  “I’m sorry, Simon, I—”

“It’s fine."

“I shouldn’t have texted you,”  you continue, voice cracking as you grimace.  “Should’ve just walked home or Ubered or something.”

He sighs,  “love—”

“I’m a fucking mess and I really didn’t want to—”

“Stop,”  Simon finally says, stern but never mean.  You shut your mouth tearfully.  Look up at him with that look that he knows all-to-well by now; from date nights he had to miss to disappearances without goodbyes.  Nights you needed him to stay but he couldn’t because the job needed him more.  When he shot down your suggestion of getting married because he didn’t want you in harm’s way should anything happen to him.

He wasn’t mad when you got tired of it, when you broke the news that you were packing up and leaving.  Left his flat jarringly empty and made his life outside of the Task Force a lot quieter.  A mediocre partner at best, really; he should’ve expected it.  Too tired to do much and too messed up to love you like you deserved.

He wasn’t about to leave you hanging here, too.  Wouldn’t.  Couldn’t.

“I’d rather me pick you up than some creepy bloke,”  he tells you, tone almost somber.  He runs a warm hand comfortingly over where your dress exposes your back.  “You’ve sat beside me while I puked too many times.  ‘Bout time I returned the favor.”

That gets a weak scoff out of you.  A twitch of your mouth just barely visible through the dark of the bathroom.

“This feels a little more pathetic, though,”  you breathe.  “At least you can hold your alcohol.”

“At least you made it home,”  he smiles.  “I wouldn’t have moved.  ‘Woulda spent the night sleeping against that building, most likely.”

You chuckle a little at the thought and he shifts, taking you into his arms again.

“You gonna get sick again?”

“No,”  you breathe, eyes drooping.  You swallow and it tastes like bile, but the tightness in your throat is gone.  “M’good now.”

He hums, but you barely hear it.  Letting the world fade into black just as he carries you down the hall.

You don’t remember much else.

The next time you open your eyes, you’re in bed.  Warm, golden sunlight settles in through the cracks in your blinds and irritates your eyes.  He somehow got you out of your dress last night and into one of the large T-shirts you’re always wearing to bed, wiped off most of the makeup on your face so that only stubborn mascara dots your pillow when you turn over.  Tucked you into all the blankets he could to ward off the worst of the rain's chill. It's the most care anyone has shown you in a while.

There’s water on the nightstand, your tumbler damp with condensation. Two red ibuprofen pills next to it.  In front of your messy side table, on the floor, is Simon.  Blond head perched up on an extra pillow, softly snoring away as he sleeps on his stomach.  Fresh tattoo on display thrown over a light blanket from your couch.  

For a moment, you blink at it.  Confused by the jarring difference in it compared to his others; all dogtags and fire and death.  A diamond with a landscape of a rainy highway inside, a road sign the main focus. A breath fills your lungs as you realize, then, what it is.

M62.

You stare at it for longer than you’ll ever admit.

[granddaughterogg]

Simon Ghost Riley crying

Yes, we'd all love to know Simon "Ghost" Riley in a biblical sense.

But may I also offer you:

Simon kneeling down and pressing his masked face firmly into your chest, those huge arms enclosing you in a desperate, ironclad embrace. You two stay this way until that hulky body of his actually remembers how to motherfuckin' cry. And longer still, until he gets it all out. Until your T-shirt gets all soaked with tears and snot. How very Romantic.

Once he starts, he can't stop. It's pouring from him like from a broken faucet, wide shoulders heaving and low, raspy sobs constricting his throat. He shudders and gasps as if he's regurgitating broken glass, one jagged shard after another. That's what it probably feels like anyway.

You'll never talk about this after. Yet unbeknownst to you, some key has been turned in the obscure lock that is Simon Riley's tortured mind, and for him there is no going back.

I can dissolve into a fuckin' puddle right in front of her and she still won't reject me.

I am safe.

[spaghettificationandpretzels]

hello love! for your kinkfest, I have a request!

simon riley w/ size kink and manhandling perhaps?

You may!!

Masterlist

Brute

Contains: Consent and kink negotiation, size kink, manhandling, oral sex (m receiving) fingering, P in V, fluff. Not beta read.

1.3K words

Simon was a gentle giant until you asked him not to be.

"Simon, you're going to give yourself a hernia."

He chuckled at your admonishment and continued to haul the uncut firewood onto the chopping block as you watched in awe. "It ain't that heavy lovey."

You sighed and rolled your eyes. "Sure."

You headed back inside your holiday cabin and made yourself comfortable on the couch, but the book you picked up was just a cover for gawking at Simon through the window.

He came back inside twenty minutes later, dripping in sweat despite the cold and flopped down next to you, lifting your legs to make room before placing them on his lap. He sighed and stretched towards you, and you smiled cheekily as you shied away from him. "Eww, you're all dirty."

There was nowhere you could go, between his wingspan and his thick thighs, he took up most of the little loveseat. His face crinkled with a smile, and he clambered into your space, crowding you into the corner of the couch as you did your best to hide the excitement on your face. "I saw you watching me out there."

You nodded. "Yes, you have very nice muscles."

He was so expressive without his mask, there was no Ghost here, just your Simon. Right now, he was grinning like the cat that got the cream as he lunged at you and threw you over his shoulder as he walked towards the bedroom. You struggled, doing your best to wriggle away, but it was like trying to get free from a vice. He all but tossed you on the bed, chuckling warmly as you bounced.

It was on now, and you tried your best to shuffle up the bed as he yanked you towards him by your calf. His ample muscles flexed as he pulled his shirt over his head, and you reached out to lay your hand on his chest, his hand enveloping yours as he held it to him. "You like it when I toss you around and show off, don't you Lovey?"

You nodded. "Yes, I would like more please."

He grinned and you fought back a gasp as he tore your pants from your body. "Simon, those were expensive."

He smirked. "I'll buy you more."

He yanked you up by both your upper arms, pulling your shirt over your head, and he spun you away from the bed and placed you on your knees on the fluffy floor rug. "I've been working hard all day to keep you warm and I think you should thank me."

The bludge in his pants made it clear what he thought his thank you should be. You rushed to free him from his pants, and he sighed as the pressure released from cock when you pulled him free. One hand found your cheek, and the other wrapped around the meat of the place where your neck met your shoulder. He looked down at you with a smirk as his thumb brushed your lower lip. "Get to it Lovey."

You licked him from base to tip, and his head fell backwards as heat filled him. He was squeezing your shoulder rhythmically, his chest rising and falling with controlled breaths as you took the tip into his mouth. You took him down further as he began to groan, the hand on your cheek moving to gather your hair into a ponytail held in his hand so he could take over the pace. "Tap my hip if you need a break."

You moaned an affirmative around him, and his hips bucked at the vibration. "That's my good girl." You relaxed around him as he bucked his hips, stopping each time he went deeper to let you adjust. When he really hit the tempo, he liked, he would pause each time he was almost all the way out of your mouth so you could suck him like a lolly pop before sliding down your throat.

All too soon, he was yanking you off of him, kicking his pants and boxers all the way off and all but picking you up before throwing you onto the bed. "That was a pretty good thank you."

You smiled. "It was my pleasure." He crawled on top of you, blanketing you with his body as he pressed his lips to yours to kiss you for the first time since he came inside. The kiss was all lust and desire as he broke the hook closures holding your bra together, your panties went next, one side ripped in half as he pulled them off you.

His thick fingers found your centre, and he groaned when he felt you soaked. "Fuck Lovey, you trying to kill me?" He didn't give you a chance to answer, rubbing his fingers up and down your slit before sliding two of them inside you as he swallowed your moans with his mouth. He was so warm that the coldness of the outside didn't have a hope, and you buried your face in his neck as he scissored his while his thumb rubbed your clit.

You were forced to feel every precise pass of his calloused fingertips on your G-spot, unable to do anything else under his body weight. His mouth was intent on sucking marks into your skin, the mix of teeth and lips sending shock waved down your body. You muttered out a warning, trying to let him know you were about to fall off the cliff, but he kissed you hard before you could utter a word, groaning against your lips when he felt you squeeze around his fingers.

He pulled his hand away, using your wetness to slick his cock before wrapping his hands around your tights to pull them apart so he could slot himself between them. "You ready Lovey?"

You nodded emphatically, and he grinned, gripping his cock so he could guide it inside you as your head fell back onto the pillow. He gave you a moment to adjust before rocking his hips slowly, his pace picking up as you wrapped your arms around him. Before you could really sink into it, he was pulling out of you and flipping you over, yanking you onto all fours before settling behind you and slamming back home. Your head and chest fell into the bed as he gripped your hips, and you knew, with how hard he was holding you, that you'd have finger shaped bruises in the morning.

One hand left your hip and slid around to your front, rubbing your clit as he angled his hips to brush your G-spot with each pass. The slap of his pelvis against your ass and the sound of your shared moans filled the air as he pushed you both closer to the peak, each thrust shoving you up the bed until you had to reach out a hand to stop your head from knocking into the headboard.

Your vision began to white out at the edges as heat grew in your core, and before you knew it, you were rushing into an orgasm as he grunted behind you. In the haze of bliss, the only thing that let you know he was close behind was his faltering pace and the tightness of his hand on your hip. He let out a feral grunt and finally stilled, managing to pull you into his chest and pull you both down so you were lying on your side with his body wrapped around you. "Now we're both dirty."

You couldn't help but giggle, and his arms hugged you to him. "You're crushing me."

He sighed and kissed the space between your shoulder blades. "You love it."

You nodded. "I do."

He ran his nose up your upper back to your neck, then kissed his way towards your ear before speaking. "I'll run us a bath."

That did sound nice. "I would like that." You spun in his arms and pressed your lips to his, the kiss soft and warm. "Thank you. I really enjoyed that."

He did his best to hold back his egoistical smirk. "So did I." He rubbed your nose with his and kissed you. "I love you y/n."

You smiled against his lips. "I love you too Simon."

Fin

[sir-heichou-smith]

Had a filthy thought just now.. missionary!reader travelling with their church to spread the word of God, and they find their way to one Simon Riley's apartment. Simon Riley dressed as the Ghost, fresh from a mission and hasn't yet changed out of his gear (looking every bit of the unholy Death you've ever seen).

As you try to recite the word of the Lord, Simon has you bent over the arm of his couch, fucking into your virgin hole with enough strength to move the furniture with each pounding thrust.

By the time he's finished with you, you begin to question if the words of your one true Savior were written in ancient scriptures, or if they're whispered from chapped lips directly into your soul. All you hear is magnificence.

[drgnflyteabox]

daddy cool, side B ⋆˙⟡

simon riley x fem!reader (background price x reader) summary: you make a movie with simon. ↪or, john produces. tags/warnings: making a porno, rough sex (p in v), oral (f + m), please forgive my dialogue i'm trying my best, degradation / slut shaming, squirting, a little dubcon, size kink, a little pain, unnegotiated kink, john is mostly in the background but he's there

“Alright honey, move a little to the right.”

“Like this?”

“Just like that, sweetheart. Spread those legs a little.”

John had been your fluffer earlier, licked you until you were rarin’ to go, wet and soft and needy. He can probably still taste you on his mustache.

You’re taking photos now, leaning back on the bed, bare wet pussy spread for John and the camera. Your two fingers create a perfect V, showing him your winking hole, your pert clit.

He really wasn’t lying about producing– you hadn’t deeply suspected him, but there was a niggling little thought there that he was maybe putting it on to get you in bed. It had worked either way, but nice to know he’s honest.

Ghost, the masked man. Cheesy, but popular with women, John says. They like the mystery.

“Touch yourself a little,” John shifts the camera as you do, lightly petting your clit with two fingers, “that’s good, that’s real good.”

You dip two fingers into your hole, wet from John’s earlier attention, biting your lip in what you hope is a seductive manner for the camera. John chuckles low in his chest, cock pushing against his tight pants. The view makes your mouth water, but you aren’t here for John today.

You’re here for the giant of a man that walks through the doorway, wearing scuffed blue jeans and big black boots. The mask isn’t what you’d imagined, but it fits over the tight white t-shirt he’s wearing. A skull.

“Ah, Simon,” John turns to greet him, “there you are.”

Simon’s cock is already chubbed up in his jeans, long and thick against his leg. For a perverse moment you imagine what it would look like for he and John to push their bulges against each other, groaning, pec squeezed against pec, and your pussy clenches.

You wish John would perform, if only just to tag team you with this meaty specimen of a man.

Add it to the spankbank.

“John,” Simon greets him back, stepping into the room. He’s not even looking at you, which is hot for some reason you don’t care to parse. He lifts a boot and steps onto John’s stool, “fresh meat?”

John laughs, which seems to be the only answer Simon needs before he turns towards you finally and pins you to the bed with his gaze. 

Your fingers pause, still dipped halfway inside, clit pulsing against the heel of your palm.

“Pretty,” he says, and just as you’re about to say thank you, “nice, Cap,” a pause, “picked a ripe one.”

He walks until his shins hit the bed, looking down at you and your spread legs, where your hand is still and your pussy drips onto the sheets. His eyelashes are pale, ghostly, strangely beautiful against his brown eyes. 

You wish you could see his face, his expression, but John was right– they do like the mystery.

There’s a little hint of a scar that pokes up from his cheekbone, pulling the skin of his bottom lid a little, but there’s no time to examine him in detail.

“Right then,” John interrupts, “let’s take a few pictures.”

The first pose he puts you in is on Simon’s lap, explicitly directing you to press your pussy against his jeanclad thigh and make a little wet spot for us, will you, love?

It’s honestly humiliating, but you’re so tuned up that the heat of your embarrassment only adds to the tension.

“That’s good, that’s real good,” John murmurs, instructing Simon to put a heavy hand on your lower back, pressing you further into his leg.

Your clit drags against the fabric, and the camera snaps your open mouthed gasp.

“Pull her shirt down,” and Simon does; pulling your tanktop down until your tits fall out, soft and peaked, pressed against the worn fabric of his shirt.

You’re looking over your shoulder, hazy, bottom lip between your teeth. John snaps a few more before he places you in the next position.

All you can stare at is the dark patch on Simon’s jeans.

“This one’s for the cover,” he says, getting Simon to lay down and pull his jeans a little down– showing off the line of hair leading to the biggest tease; the beginnings of his bush, trapped under just his jeans.

He’s gone commando. All you can see is the little pudge of his pubis as it’s squished by his waistband, a tasty little tenderloin you want to bite.

You’re next; standing over Simon, legs wide open, looking down at him with your tits out and your thighs wet. It’s a movie-esque kind of pose, and in another universe maybe you’re decked out in cheap sci-fi costumes for a blockbuster.

Then he’s ready, and you have to re-dress. Tanktop goes back on, shorts get slid right back up your legs, and he puts you on top of the covers.

Simon prowls like a panther, graceful in his movements despite the sheer size of him. You’re leaned back, elbows on the bed, breathing harder the closer he gets.

“Felt that wet little pussy,” he says, voice low, “she’s more than ready for me, isn’t she? Probably soaking those slutty shorts.”

“Uh huh,” you murmur, legs outstretched and straight before him. 

John had told you a little bit of the ‘script’ beforehand, a loose skeleton to follow outside of improv, so you aren’t shocked when he pulls the button open on your shorts and pulls them down in one fell swoop.

“Look’it that,” his lips move under the mask. You wonder if he’s licking his lips, looking at your pussy like that.

He takes you by the ankle, dragging you across the mattress until you’re flat on your back and looking up at him.

“Haven’t even seen my cock yet,” he laughs meanly, his other hand reaching to take a big squeeze of his cock through his jeans, “and look’it that. Slag if I’ve ever seen one.”

Your face burns, breath stuttering. This wasn’t a part of the little warning John had given you, but you’re not that mad about it. Hot, humiliated– but not opposed.

Simon looks at you for barely another second before he’s crawled up to your face, knees on either side of your head.

Oh.

“Gimme a kiss.”

You lean forward, lips pressing against his rough jeans. He smells good, a little like cigarettes but there’s that musk you love so much. You mouthe against him until he pulls your head back to the mattress by your hair.

He pulls down his jeans, freeing a mostly plump cock that flops onto your cheek. Oh man, it’s weighty. The nestle of curls at the base of it is like a magnet for your eyes, too.

“I can take it all the way,” you look up into those inscrutable eyes.

“Yeah? Prove it.”

You take the tip first, licking it lewdly, turning to the camera every so often like John had told you to– just let them see those eyes, honey. Show them how much you like it.

So you do. You give big, wide eyes as Simon gets impatient and starts tunnelling down your throat, shoulders trapped beneath his heavy thighs.

When you gag, he laughs lowly, keeping you there. He runs a rough thumb over the taut stretch of your upper lip, down to your lower lip, palm cradling your jaw.

“That’s a good girl,” he slides backwards, jeans scraping your nipples through your tanktop, hardly giving you but a moment before he's pushing back in. Rinse and repeat.

It’s like with John, only Simon’s cock is a little different. Longer, and curved where John’s is thicker. The tip pokes you in the back of the throat, sometimes at the roof of your mouth from the awkward angle.

You feel crushed underneath him despite your entire lower half being free, legs coming up and thighs squeezing together as the camera pans towards them and John murmurs, “show me that pussy, honey.”

So you spread your legs, humiliated at the gluk-gluk-gluk sound coming from your throat but gushing impossibly more under the camera’s lens.

“That’s a pretty picture,” Simon grunts, sliding out of your mouth to tap the head against your lips, letting you stick your tongue out and drool drip down your chin, “yeah. Keep your mouth open.”

This is mostly for the camera, the way he rubs himself on your face, the way you lay there and keep your mouth open. You don’t have to fake the desperation, but still.

Simon’s a pro.

He leans back, fingers finding your bare cunt and sliding a finger along your slit. Slippery, swollen, the contact is like drinking water in the desert. Like the satisfying pleasure-pain of pressing down a bruise.

His finger slides up and down shallowly, never stopping where you need it while you kiss the underside of his cock.

“This cock-hungry pussy’s soakin’ my fingers,” his eyes squint, like he’s grinning under the mask, “reckon I could solve a drought with this,” he lifts his finger to your mouth, slipping them in for you to taste yourself.

Where the fuck did John find this guy?

You play along, face burning, sucking his fingers with a soft moan.

After a moment, he leans back and gets off you, pulling your tanktop down as he does so your tits bounce back out. Hello again, ladies.

There’s a small moment of stalling where John sets the camera up on a tripod near the end of the bed and Simon drags you so your head is towards the headboard, and then it’s 3 2 1 action again.

“Hands on the headboard,” Simon gruffs, then slides onto his belly and presses his mask to your cunt. Your hands fly to the headboard, hanging on for dear life as he inhales through the fabric.

Jesus. He rubs the knit on your swollen pussy, up and down, spreading you open with his covered chin and then pressing his nose to your clit.

You don’t have to exaggerate your sounds. They come naturally, rising in pitch when he pushes his mask up just enough to see his pink, scarred lips wrap around your engorged clit.

He’s greedy, eating more to taste you than to please you.

When he lifts his head, mouth wet and tongue poking out to lick the remnants of your slick, stopping at the cusp of your orgasm, you give the camera at the end of the bed your best wounded animal look.

Simon doesn’t take his jeans off when he gets back up to his knees, shuffling to kneel between your legs.

You notice all too late that he hasn’t fingered you, not even a little dip. He’s licked you, sucked on your clit until you were keening, but there’s a deadly focus in his eyes as he puts the fat head of his cock against your hole that tells you you’re in trouble.

“Got a good look at this?,” he grunts, tilted towards the camera, “this is the best part.”

Oh fuck, he pushes in and it feels like a hydraulic press; crushing pressure, a sting, stretching taught around him as you gasp–

“Pinching me,” he curls his lip, abdomen tensing, “Jesus.”

“Oh god, fuck,” you shiver, trying to keep your knees spread, wincing and gasping in deep breaths for air as he carves a space inside you for himself.

“Relax,” he squeezes in further. Stretching, painful, intensely delicious, “relax that cunt for me, sweetheart. Let her get what she needs. ”

You try, only noticing John as he palms his bulge, watching your pussy struggling to take Simon’s cock.

It takes a few see-sawing movements of his hips before you finally loosen a little around him and he really lets loose. Doesn’t let you take a breath, just starts pounding like he’s getting a bonus for it and you shout with surprise.

A vision of an adventuring viking comes to mind, beaten and lashed by storm, the only respite to hang onto the mast in the middle of a ship… that’s the headboard for you.

He fucks like animal, but it’s still as graceful as the way he moved when he first entered the room. How can a man that looks so rough, is so big, roll his spine and slap his hips into yours in such a dancerly way? His pace is inhuman.

His cock spears into you like he’s digging for gold, tilted just so that you’re loud with how good it feels and almost wincing every time he pokes a little too deep.

You think maybe it’s on purpose, what with the way he stares down at you, big hands coming to hold your midsection and dig his fingers into your skin. 

Yeouch, that feels good.

“There she is,” he fucks you deep, unrelenting, groaning when he feels your hole start to squeeze, “doesn’t even need a hand, then,” he laughs.

He’s right. You don’t. Your abdomen squeezes, orgasm building, the first of its kind– without any kind of contact on your clit, that is.

You try to hold back for as long as possible, try to make eyes at the camera again, but you’re lost to the feeling of getting fucked so good and so deep. The feeling builds and builds and steamrolls you, legs shaking where they’re spread, ears going deaf with the blood rushing in them.

A scream bursts forth from your throat at the same time as you literally spray, slick soaking Simon’s jeans and the bottom of his t-shirt. 

There’s no time to be embarrassed with the hard, punitive thrusts he gives you as he rides his orgasm out behind yours, filling you up with hot come.

You’re boneless, after. Laying nice and still for John to get closeups of your creampie’d pussy, for Simon to rest his spent cock between your pussylips and grin under his mask, tucking himself back into his soiled jeans as John dismisses him.

He’s damp everywhere, but he strolls over to John’s little minibar area and pours himself a whiskey like it doesn’t bother him.

John doesn’t give you a break, either. He pans the camera to the mess on the bed, the wet spot you’d caused by squirting all over Simon’s cock.

John grins at you from behind the camera.

“You’re a natural, honey.”

[alwaysshallow]

simon might appear cold, when you two are dating.

mechanical, almost. not able of human feelings, maybe too harsh for your liking. not really saying the l-word (yet, right? you think that will take him time, even if it's almost six months of you dating, you do not lose hope). your friends don't really like him either, he's weird and has jokes that no one understands. he's not really engaging with anything that has to do with them.

sometimes, it would be easier to just break up with him than hear the silence on his side, when you two are fighting. stone cold silence, like you weren't just saying that he's the worst because he seems like he doesn't care anymore.

but i assure you, he knows what he wants since he laid his eyes on you.

you don't know this, but he bought a ring after two days into dating. is that because he's romantic? not really, it's more like a possession type of thing. he knows you're the one, why would he play games? you're his, he's yours, a loyal dog that stands by your side till the end of the line. nothing more, nothing less.

one day, you wake up with a ring on your finger. no proposing whatsoever, just a fact that you're his fiancee now, and a small gift by your night stand that has you bawling.

he doesn't even say anything about it, he just gruffs that you need to be quiet and his arms tighten around your middle more.

he cares, but not in the typical way.

the only thing that could be romantic is the wedding that you can organise from scratch, but it's a whole ass different conversation.

[ceilidho]

prompt: construction worker ghost and his elementary school teacher neighbour who made the poor decision to start feeding him (nsfw, 2k) [based on this old ask] [on ao3 here]

-

They say not to feed wild animals. 

It makes them grow soft, lazy. Alters their behaviour. Takes an animal previously capable of finding its own food dependent on humans for sustenance. Makes them lose their natural fear of humans and nearly always results in an increase in human-wildlife conflicts as they start to seek out people. It’s a known fact. You can’t go to a park without seeing it plastered on posters in the bathroom and on the sides of the vending machines under the gazebos where you purchase your post-hike iced tea and veggie roll to eat on a nearby bench. 

You know this. So you really don’t know what possessed you to leave a cooler full of sandwiches on your neighbour’s doormat before turning in for the night. 

He wakes up preternaturally early and leaves every morning around four-thirty or five o’clock on the dot. Sometimes in the fog of sleep, you wake to hear the door to the apartment beside yours crack open and slam shut, and then the sound of lumbering footsteps down the hall towards the staircase before that door opens and slams shut too. 

He never comes home before four o’clock at the earliest. That’s around when you come home from work as well, meaning that you sometimes catch him at the door, him covered in grime and reeking of old sweat while you come flouncing down the hall in whatever colourful dress you’d donned that morning, inevitably paint-splattered by the end of the day. Always something appropriate to wear at an elementary school but colourful enough to keep the kids’ eyes and attention on you. 

You’ve caught his name in half-whispered conversations with the property manager, but aside from that, all you know about Simon Riley is that he works in construction. He certainly looks the part: big, calloused hands with blunt, dirt-caked nails and cut up fingers, knuckles always swollen and thick. Body all strength and brawn. Hard hat tucked under his armpit and decorated with countless stickers from old job sites, the same way his forearm is covered in tattoos. 

You’ve even passed by his current job site once or twice—some new condo complex going up by the canal that’s forced you and hundreds of other commuters to leave an extra thirty minutes early to account for the road closures. You pointedly don’t bring that up in conversation though. That would just be rude. 

At least it would be something to talk about though.

It’s not like the two of you talk. You’re not close by any means. Though you moved in a few months ago, you haven’t had much luck mustering up the confidence to squeak out more than a hi to him in passing. When he grunts back something approximating a hello, it’s all you can do not to break your key in the lock when you hurry into your apartment and slam the door shut behind you, heart beating frantically in your chest. 

It’s humiliating. You’re a grown woman and you’ve talked to plenty of men before. You’ve dated plenty of men before. Just because this one speaks in monosyllables and stares at you with an intensity that makes your stomach churn and your palms grow sweaty doesn’t change anything. Just because this one is built like a redwood with wrists thick enough that you’d need both hands to wrap around doesn’t make him any different than any other person.

And yet, when Simon asks you for your name on a rainy June afternoon after you’ve come in after him for a change only to find him sifting through letters at the mailbox, you garble out something that sounds nothing like your name before scurrying up the stairs to your flat.

It’s humiliating. It’s humid outside and your dress is sticking to all the wrong places (namely, your nipples and the inside of your thighs when the skirt swishes between your legs with each stride) and now you’ve made an ass of yourself in front of the only hot guy in your building. There are serial arsonists with more charm than you. 

So maybe the sandwiches are an apology letter or an olive branch. Or maybe it just makes your heart race to think of Simon opening up the cooler and finding four wax paper-wrapped sandwiches tucked neatly over ice packs. 

All you know is that when you step out of your apartment the next morning, the cooler is empty on your doormat, the lid propped open. He must have taken them with him. 

You smile. A job well done. Apology served fresh, with cucumber slices in the middle. 

The problem starts when you don’t leave him another cooler full of sandwiches on his doormat the next day. 

You didn’t consider that he might think you’d make it a habit. Perhaps that’s partially on you for not leaving a note on the cooler the first time to explain that it was just a one-off; just a way to apologize for being less than chipper around him. But instead of shrugging it off, you come home after a long day to find him standing right outside your apartment, arms crossed over his chest, thick biceps straining against his sweat-stained shirt. 

“Open the door,” Simon commands, nostrils flaring as he glares down at you. He jerks his head towards your door when you just frown, not following. “Been starving here waiting for you to show up.”

You open your mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. You’re at a loss for words, never mind that your whole job involves talking. He leaves you speechless though. 

Simon doesn’t move when you step close enough to unlock the door. You try to keep your body angled away so as not to brush up against him, but it’s inevitable. He doesn’t move when the door opens either, forcing you to squeeze by him. 

He goes straight to the kitchen and drags a chair out, letting it scrape across the floor like men always do before taking a seat. You follow after him nervously, apprehensive at having a man in your space. Not just a man, but Simon Riley. It feels sacrilege—not like he has no right being in your space, but you can’t imagine him here, sitting at your tiny dining room table like he comes over for dinner every Sunday. 

When he catches you standing under the archway to the kitchen just staring at him, he barks, “Well?”

That has you scurrying over to the fridge to pull out the cold cuts and pickled red onions. There’s a loaf of bread already on the counter, the bag twisted and tucked underneath because you had to leave in a rush this morning. You don’t know half of what you pile on the sandwiches, but whatever you serve him must satisfy him because Simon digs in with gusto, finishing the plate off in only a few bites while you wash the cutlery in the sink. You watch him out of the corner of your eye the whole while.

He leaves not too long after that, only a light warning for you to not miss tomorrow’s lunch before heading back over to his own apartment. You don’t even get a word in edgewise. 

It becomes something of a routine after that and not one you have any control over. Every night before bed, you leave him a cooler full of sandwiches and other things like cut up fruit or slices of cheese on his doormat, and every afternoon you rock up to him waiting on your doorstep, demanding to be let in. 

He takes to giving you a wet kiss before he leaves, all tongue and his fingers curled around the nape of your neck, holding you in place. When you try to cover his mouth with your hand, he nips at your fingers until you move them and let him slip you some tongue. 

The day you make him a casserole for supper, he bends you over the back of your couch and eats you out. Simon eats like a man starving, glutting himself on the wetness between your legs, licking even over the furl of your asshole and chuckling under his breath when you squeal and flail, your toes just brushing against the floor. 

In the aftermath, you sit panting in his lap while he eats. He gets up only briefly to get the bowl of strawberries and cream you left chilling in the fridge before lifting you up and putting you right back in his lap. You stare bleary-eyed when he holds a finger covered in cream up to your lips.

“Clean me up, pet,” he says, then watches you with half-lidded eyes while you lick his finger clean. 

He makes you suck his fingers too, to keep things even. He does it when you’re angled half off the bed, thick digits stuffed down your throat until your eyes leak big, fat tears that he licks away, hungry for those too. The man is always hungry, always keen to fill his belly. 

The arrangement continues on long enough to become normal, even routine. Simon shows up at your door every day after work waiting to be fed, and then makes you come a couple times before he leaves, a little thank you to repay you for the food. He never really says all that much when he comes around, not a conversationalist of a man. His preference is to eat, fuck, and leave, which you’re happy to accommodate, still too tongue-tied yourself to broach a real conversation. 

That’s all before he starts helping himself to your bed for a quick nap after a big supper. Then for naps that turn into a full night’s sleep, snoring like a chainsaw under the covers with you tucked under his arm, naked breasts pressed against his side, keeping you awake most of the night until you pass out somewhere around one A.M. 

Just as you suspected, Simon gets up at around four or five to be at the jobsite on time, but at your place, he gets up a bit earlier to help himself to breakfast. He doesn't even bother waking you up, just turns you over onto your tummy and spreads your legs before sinking his dick into where you're still stretched out from the night before. If you wake up or squirm, he just leans down and murmurs, “S'alright, pet…just need a pick me up before work. Go back to sleep, you’re okay,” and ruts between your thighs until he comes inside you and leaves you all wet in bed with one last messy kiss to your temple. 

The door slams shut on his way out. 

Because you feed him, he keeps coming back. The workday passes in a blur: attendance, a spelling test, recess, maths in the afternoon, and then you’re driving home in the same daze that has you slamming on the brakes before rear ending an old woman who stopped two cars behind the truck at the redlight ahead. 

You’re home earlier than him for a change, so you unlock the door quickly while there’s still a chance to avoid him. No such luck. When Simon turns up, he pounds on the door until you let him in. And you do. 

It’s a wonder you haven’t come apart at the seams, horny and pent up after this morning. You were too sleepy to come after all, rode hard and put away wet. Still, you flit nervously around the apartment, looking everywhere but at him. 

He always smells rich after working all day in the sun, like sweat and dirt. It's not a particularly nice smell, but it still kind of gets you going. He goes for a shower and then collapses on the couch after, beckoning you over to you crawl into his lap and grind yourself on his thigh because he knows of course. Simon can probably smell it on you, the ache. He shushes you when you whine about it, big hands fitting around your hips and pressing you down until your clit rubs deliciously against the muscle of his thigh and your head goes cloudy, cheek mushed against the pillow of his chest. 

When you come, Simon tips your chin up with his knuckle and murmurs, “Knickers off, love. Haven’t got my fill.”

He feeds you your own slick from his fingers when he kneels on the floor in front of the couch, your legs draped over his shoulders. Your fingers scratch helplessly over shorn blond hair, buzzed almost to the scalp. It’s prickly under your fingertips. 

Simon’s a messy eater. Your slick dribbles down his lips and glistens on his chin. It makes the blood roar under your skin, feverishly hot. 

“Please, Simon,” you whine, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. “It hurts.”

You feel his lips quirk up against the folds of your pussy, the flat of his tongue running up the seam and flicking over your clit. He chuckles when your hips jerk. “Greedy aren’t you, pet? Didn’t even say thank you for getting on my knees.”

“You didn’t make me come!”

His voice borders on mocking when he coos, “Poor little thing. It’s gonna be a lot longer ‘til she gets to come if you don’t say thank you.”

Your brain goes staticy, fingers twitching on his scalp. His words echo back in your head. It’s rubbish, is what it is. All this time and he’s never said thank you once for the countless meals you’ve fed him. Indignation bubbles up in you, rising to the surface like fat on the cream, and you raise a hand to rub the tears from your eyes, a harsh rebuke on the tip of your tongue.

The protest dies on your lips when he meets your gaze. It’s hungrier than anything you’ve ever seen. Whatever animal lives under his skin stares back at you with black eyes, drool leaking from its jowls. It’s mindless, intent only on slaking its hunger. Filling its empty belly. And it is not afraid of you anymore. It knows you’ll feed it until it’s full. It knows you won’t let it go hungry anymore. 

So, always leery of the bigger animal in the room, you mumble out a chest-thick, “Thank you,” and shiver when he grins. 

There’s a reason they tell you not to feed strays. They often come back for more.

[pricetagged]

butcher paper

Here's a young (maybe 19-early 20s) Simon struggling with his emotions, working as a butcher's apprentice, and fixating on the pretty student waitress at the café next door (':

Content: plus size f-presenting reader; allusions to domestic abuse (Simon's past); fat-shaming (not Simon); little bit of violence, unedited. (Link to Ao3)

He's not sure that it counts as desire. Interest. It crawls over him, makes him feel aggressive, makes him want to dig his teeth in and shake and snarl.

It's hunger.

And he knows hunger. Knows it like he knows the cigarette burns on the back of his hand. Knows it like he knows his old man's a waste of space and that he has to defend his mum and protect Tommy and- and-

He's the man of the house, only the house is rotten. Woodloused frames, crumbling bricks. Gutted. Empty shelves hidden behind broken doors. Chipped plaster, electricity cutting off. Squeaky steps that always clued them in when the old man was on a rager (not that it helped, creaking out a warning but giving no clue where to run. The percussion leading to a gallows' jig; the heavy step before the hit).

But the old man's gone now. And Simon is left trying to fill in the boots he doesn’t know how to wear. All growth spurt and gangly limbs and anger. So much anger at the old bastard. Tear-soaked anger at his mum sometimes (buried deep behind the shame that he feels when he thinks of her black and blue. Anger and shame, bitter roots that he chews at to soothe the clench of in his jaw and the grind of his teeth). And then he sees you through the window. Through the peeling CHRISTMAS SPECIAL sign highlighting ham joints and turkey and pigs in blankets.

You're so soft.

You look like you’ve lived a life well-fed and well-loved. Something round and sweet and helpless, like the puppies he and Tommy had seen dumped in the park while they snuck cigarettes and swigged from cheap supermarket cider.

And that brings him back to the hunger. He's an awkward creature, shuffling to the café where you work part-time. He's more feeling than man, all rage and appetite stuffed into a skin suit. You sense it too, nerves tugging at the tilt of your smile as you approach the scavenger that swept in to sit at the cheap plastic tables in this greasy spoon. He sits awkwardly, too, hunched over the table like his stomach is gnawing at him. Big hands snapping the disposable plastic coffee stirrers and shredding the napkins. That first day, he just stares at you. Sneers a little when you flutter over to take his order.

You slosh the tea a little when you serve it.

He sees the burn bloom, watches as you suck at the sting with plump cheeks and a rosy little mouth, and he just wants to dig in and scratch hard to see you do that again.

It becomes a habit, watching you. He finds out bits and pieces listening as he rends and chops and saws through muscle and bone, stinking of sweat and iron. You're here as a student. You're living in student digs (good, best that you avoid the up-and-downs and rough streets that would fit a student budget), and you're a real sweetheart. Old Sal who has been running the café for the past 30 years leans a heavy elbow on the display counter as he chats with the boss.

"She's lovely, taken to it like a fish to water," his raspy, smoke-charred voice is cheery as he waits for the bacon and sausages to be weighed and wrapped. "Only asked for Thursdays and Fridays off since she has afternoon classes then. Otherwise, I almost have to round her out of the shop, doing more afternoons and weekends than my own kid."

You're hardworking too, then. He wonders if it's because you're hungry too, needing something to do with your time, living on pot noodles and supermarket ready-meals like he'd heard some students do. It's strange how that thought sits uncomfortably, makes him want to hunch over you and bring you his scraps.

That week, he decides to talk to you. Only the words get caught, don't come out quite right as he stares at the way your jumper clings to the soft curves under your faded apron. When you turn around, bustling to other customers, he can't help but stare at the line of your skirt. It's real pretty, decent, sitting just above your knees but Christ, he wishes that it would roll up a little higher. That it would catch on the corner of a table or hitch up as you raise your arms and swish past with a tray full of fry-ups. He almost gets lucky as you bend over to mop up a spill just across the room. Your thighs widen as they press against the table, tights stretching thin and sheer and he just can't tear his eyes away-

(The hunger in his stomach turns hot and biting, makes his cheeks flush and his mouth dry-)

But it's ruined. Fly in the soup, hair in the dish, as you catch him and your eyebrows pinch together as you look away. There's something guarded, bitter, in your lovely eyes, and the dryness in his mouth turns wet and sour. You seem to take pains to avoid him, swapping out with Sal's son so that you can work the counter instead of the floor.

"'m Simon," he grunts as he goes to settle the bill. "Work at the butcher's across the street."

You clearly didn’t expect an introduction, shoulders relaxing and hesitant smile blooming as you give your name in return.

"Yeah, I know. Sal mentioned you a few times. He's tried to give me the rundown of practically everyone on the street, feels like."

"Y'should come in t'the shop," the invitation rushes out in a way that makes him feel clumsy. Perhaps that’s why he did it; to have you in his space, with his head and his footing right. Here, he feels every inch the artificial man. Pieced together, too big and too looming, with no help or guidance on how to talk to soft things and pretty girls.

You grimace a little, eyes focused on the till as you count out his change. "Not really on a butcher-shop budget right now."

"'S'alright. I can keep something aside for ya," he doesn't mention how it would come out of his wages. How it would come out of what he brought home to his mum and Tommy. It didn't matter, though, when he was used to going without.

"That's - that's really nice, actually," Your sweet face is glowing now, and he feels like he could bathe in the warmth of it. "Next time you come by lunch is on me."

He sees the way you tuck your chin and smile as he walks away, and that bottomless pit in his guts feels just a little more full.

(He doesn't quite catch the snickers of the boys at table three, whispering and nudging each other as you come to take their orders. This time.)

He stares more and more through the window of the shop, watching as you come and go. Watching the way you greet the regulars and skirt around the group of lads who like to linger in the evenings. There's something sharp, nasty, to the way they circle around the entrance. The way they cackle and hoot when the one with the eyebrow piercing smirks and whispers to his mates as they force you to brush past. They're a pack of hyenas, shrieking and smug as they toy with the poor little thing that's walked past their watering hole. He's seen this type before, practically grew up with them. His old man was probably one of them, perfecting his cruelty while young, cementing it as part of his nature.

It has Simon sharpening his knives while he grits his teeth. Has the boss tutting at him when he cuts too close to the bone.

He knows there's something violent in him. The old man tried to bring it out then snuff it out, getting scared when the knife that he sharpened was able to cut him in return. He's no stranger to bloodshed. No stranger to the calloused, deprivation-dimmed apathy that breeds like algae in the environment where he was forged. Dripping, slimy, suffocating.

Doesn't mean he likes it, though.

(He'd gone back for those puppies, you know. Felt wrong leaving them. Felt like a rebellion against his old man's sick life lessons as he dumped the box outside the doors of a local veterinary clinic).

So he keeps his eyes peeled, stakes out the café like he owns it. Stares down anyone who looks at you wrong until they look away, muttering under their breath. 'Fucking freaky dead-eyed git.' It seems to work.

And you seem to like it, sparing more smiles for him. Bringing him bigger portions than normal and topping up his cup before he even needs to ask.

"I know you've been working since seven, Simon. Gotta keep your strength up," You seem bashful as you slide the plate across, and he just eats it up.

You've been looking at him, thinking about him. It's not something he's familiar with, having someone care for him. His mum loves him, of course. Tommy too. But it’s not the same, not when it's been his job to take care of them. His job to step up to the mantle and into the shoes that his father should've filled. Watching the sway of your wide hips as he tucks into the steak and kidney pie with gusto, he feels satisfied. The hunger is there, always is, but it's not gouging at him under the skin. It's satiated, pleased. The kind of comfort that leaves his eyes heavy and his belly warm.

It's a routine you fall into, and everything is rosy-

Until it's not.

He's closing up shop, wiping down the counters and getting ready to haul down the shutters when he sees them. Those stupid pricks, travelling in their pack and signaling that their quarry is in sight. Look, there it is alone and limping and- You're in a rush, leaving later than usual and shrugging your coat on carelessly as you shout your goodbyes to Sal. You're in that skirt again, the one that makes his lower belly tighten and mouth feel dry.

"Oi, look! Dirty scrubber has her fat arse hanging out!"

It sets them off, chittering and howling as you freeze wide-eyed and lip-quivering.

"Gonna be sick, mate. Don't want to see your knickers, love. Didn't even know they came in that size."

He doesn't even see red. Doesn't see anything but your pretty, round face crumpling as you try to tug your skirt out from where it got caught under your coat.

The ringing of the bell by the door muffles the sound of the first punch. His fist crunches into that prick's nose, and he wants nothing more than to keep going until his face is little more than meat and pulp and blood. He can taste it, smells the blood in the air like a shark.

But you're watching.

"Bit bored with y'taking the piss out of her," he snarls it as he hauls the man by his jacket, shoving him hard against the wall until his head thwacks against the bricks. Easy as hauling a side of beef. "Why don't ya try me next?"

The man seems dazed, head spinning and nose dripping. His mates, too, look floored. Ready to scatter and abandon their leader to the bigger beast. Only the promise of more blood keeps them watching, feeds their nasty appetites and he's just itching to let them see. Watch what happens; it's coming for you next.

"Speechless now, eh? Had so much to say earlier," he's spitting the words out, teeth snapping as he leans down so close to the man's face that he can see how his pupils constrict. "Apologise."

And he's smarter than he would give him credit for. Smart enough to whimper out his 'sorry, sorry, sorry' as he drops to the filthy, damp pavement when Simon swivels towards the others. Something about the set of his shoulders, the way his hands and apron are splattered with the gore of man and animal, has them scattering.

"That goes for the rest of ya! Don't ever want t'see your ugly fucking mugs around here again," he spits on the ground, itches at his jaw with his wrist as he watches them run.

He can't hear them anymore. Can't hear anything over the sound of his heavy panting and pounding heartbeat.

It's cold out. He's only realising it now, standing in the December chill with just an apron over his jeans and t-shirt. It has him shaking, flexing his hand as his knuckles start to sting and swell. He welcomes it, welcomes the familiar bite as he pushes down the savage, ragged anger rippling through his chest.

"Simon-"

"Y'alright?" he cuts you off, faces you head-on.

And all the rage saps out. You're not cowering away. There's no disgust on your face. No tears or embarrassment either, no. You've got a crumpled packet of wet wipes in your hand, reaching out for him. Concerned.

"Figure you'd want to get that prick's blood off you soon as possible," you give him a sad little half-smile. "Didn't have to do all that for me, Simon."

"Yeah, didn't have to." He concedes as he steps closer to you. Crowds into your space until you're toe-to-toe and he can feel your warmth. He brushes his fingers against yours, lets them linger on your soft skin as he reaches for the wipes. "I wanted to."

-----------------------

Let's all pretend that this was okay and ignore the fact that I still haven't posted the wips that I keep going on about 🫠💖

Just a little self-indulgent drabble idea that I had today, thinking back to watching 'My Mad Fat Diary' as a teenager, feeling nostalgic ~ (The Finn-defending-Rae scene had 18yo me in a chokehold lol).