And On The Wind, It Howls
And On the Wind, It Howls
(Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Medic "Fix" Reader)
Part Seven of Snowblind
Rating: Explicit MDNI 18+ Wordcount: 7.3k Tags: Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, There's Only One Bed, Awkward Sexual Situations, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Female Masturbation, Size Kink, Praise Kink, Fluff Warnings: N/A
It’s a soft, overcast Wednesday when you and Ghost set out to Scotland.
You watch the sprawling landscape from the window of the passenger seat, captivated with a small bit of childlike wonder as the car navigates the aging, cracked roads of the Scottish countryside. A dove gray sky- brumous but not yet threatening rain, arches over the tall, rugged peaks of the hills that flank you on either side. Even in the damp cold of early spring the wild, untamed beauty of the Scottish highlands breathes magic bleeding into your veins.
There’s a rawness, a brutality to the Cairngorms that aches heavy in your heart. You feel it in the way water trickles down from the hilltops in small springs, carving its way through dark stone and allowing infant growth to spring forth in green fronds that unfurl like a wistful sigh. Despite the jutting rocks atop the hills, the intimidating slope of the mountains that give rise to the highlands above, the landscape around you breathes with the barest whispers of fresh life. Beautiful, unrestrained, beckoning you to hike higher into the hills.
You take it all in, daring to lift your face to the crack of the window that allows a sliver of wind to slip through. It fills the emptiness inside you, allows you to fill your lungs with air that seems scarce inside the silence of the car.
Beside you, Ghost does not speak as he drives.
You cast a sidelong glance at him. It’s unclear if he ignores your stare or simply doesn’t see it, eyes trained on the road that curves higher into the hills. There’s a murmur of tension in his shoulders under his jacket, the hood drawn up despite the balaclava that covers all but his eyes. Without the smear of paint and the hard plastic skull you can see the pale skin underneath, the awkward curve of his nose that speaks of a bone broken one too many times. If you look closely enough you can see the silvery pink of a jagged scar that runs from the bridge of his nose to his right eyebrow, the traces of burn scars, and the smattering of soft freckles under his eyes.
Even in the daytime, the vision of his moonlit face haunts your dreams.
It’s not entirely a coincidence the two of you are together, but it certainly is unexpected. When Price had brought up the topic of leave following the team’s most recent deployment, you’d felt the men around you silently take a breath of relief. It felt like ever since you’d gotten back to the team you’d barely had more than eight hours of rest before being sent out again. You’d barely gotten six hours of sleep after getting back from your disastrous helicopter mission before Price had the five of you boarding a chopper to go hunt down an arms supplier south of Georgia.
The next week and a half was spent existing on MREs and substandard rations while you camped out in spider infested safehouses, counted your limited ammo supply and spared precious radio hours to inquire about supply drops. You’d found your target, eventually, and thankfully he’d croaked not too long into the makeshift interrogation. It had only taken Ghost two of the man’s separated fingers before he’d finally given you the lead on your target.
Eighteen hours later you’d returned to base with the same AQ captain that had slipped through your fingers on the night your helicopter had crashed. Even then, the weeks that followed were spent skimming actionable intel for something worth the fruit of your labors. Back to back missions meant you were catching what little sleep you could in transit, often nodding off on one of your comrade’s shoulders despite yourself.
When Price had announced leave for all of you (without failing to firmly state “None of you are allowed off base until I get your after-action reports, you complete your physical exams and read the dossier of our next objective. Phones on at all times when off base. Be prepared to be back sooner than you think.”) You’d been looking forward to a strong cup of tea and a book as you curled up in the corner of whatever airbnb you’d managed to secure for a few days off base.
Gaz and Soap had different ideas.
As soon as you had mentioned staying in the UK for your break, the two sergeants jumped at the chance to drag you along on a complete tour of London and Glasgow respectively- taking turns hosting you and ensuring you had seen the true side of each city (minus the tourist traps). The idea charmed you, admittedly, but when you’d asked Price and Ghost if they’d be interested in tagging along, Price had levied the three of you a tired, bemused sort of smile and declared he had alternative arrangements.
Ghost, on the other hand…
“I’ll be up north, hunting.” He declared flatly despite the slight tilt of his head, the small glimmer of interest in his eyes. “If you get sick of these two tossers, come find me.”
You were certain he was joking of course. In the days that had followed the reveal of his face to you, the breathless, almost tender exchange that had occurred at the safehouse, you’d managed to go back to convincing yourself Ghost was nothing more than a teammate, perhaps a friend.
It didn’t stop you, however, from eyeing him from afar. It’s hard not to notice Ghost despite his moniker. The sheer breadth of him is hard to miss. He towers in door frames as you sweep houses, takes up space in the back of the confiscated truck rolling through the countryside, exists purely as a sweeping obsidian shadow just in your periphery- there and gone again in pursuit of the target.
Off the field he’s imposing, an undeniable presence in any room. You’ve gotten used to sensing him through footsteps alone, by the way his massive weight shifts behind you. You’ve caught sight of him at the gym more than once- sleeves pushed up to reveal the swirl of dark ink tracing up his left forearm as his biceps bulge under the weights. You feel his eyes linger on you in turn- burning coal dark into your spine. Watching. Waiting.
They haunt you at night, in the darkness of your room. You try not to, but sometimes you find yourself imagining what it would feel like to have those eyes bore down into you from above, the warm exhale of his breath fanning through the mask and onto your face. You think about his scarred hands, the knuckles uneven from the number of times he’s broken them. In your mind the calloused palm of him slips down over the meat of your thigh, hauls your leg open and his voice murmurs darkly into your ear:
“Fix.”
In the morning, you awake sweaty, heart racing, the whisper of a dream clinging wet between your thighs.
So, despite yourself, despite the knowledge it was a poor decision, you’d gone to him.
Now, six hours into your drive, the silence in the car sits as a low pit of regret in your stomach. Whatever meager conversation the two of you had managed died off long ago, and now instead you turned your face to the open countryside where the barest slivers of sunlight slice through the clouds above.
Four days, Ghost had said. Four days tucked up in a hunting cabin at the edge of some Jacobian estate atop rolling hills and rocky crags where red elk and roe deer roam at the tail end of spring. Four days alone, away from civilization with nothing but the howling wind and the superior that you long to touch to keep you company against the vast wilderness between you.
In hindsight, you’re beginning to think maybe that grand tour wasn’t such a terrible idea after all.
Ghost guides the car off the A9 just as a passing rain shower splatters against the windshield. It feels as if you’re driving to the ends of the earth, not a car in any direction as you slowly pick your way up the road and higher into the hills. You eye Ghost from the corner of your eye, watching him fixed on the road ahead and gently avoiding potholes along the way. He catches your glance at him, and you feel warmth rise to your face as you quickly look away, even as the silence lingers.
“Soap is going to be pissed we didn’t invite hi up here.” You offer mildly, and Ghost grunts.
“Too loud. He’d scare the deer off with all that barking.”
You snort.
“What, you’ve never hunted with hounds before, Ghost?”
“Mm.”
That seems to be all the response you’ll get, and you turn again back to the window, watching a soft sheet of rain pass you by.
“I used to go out hunting with dogs.” You say softly, not even entirely sure if he’s listening. “In the summer as a kid. We...my parents had a caretaker who had two bluetick coon hounds. The kind that you use to tree raccoons and black bears.”
Ghost is quiet, but when you glance at him the fission of tension in his shoulders seems to have loosened. It’s an odd gesture, miniscule except to your studious eyes that track every flinch, every movement, the tiniest indication of displeasure or contentment.
“If I ever went out into the woods, those two dogs would always come with me. Especially on hunting trips.” You go on, smiling. “If you think Johnny is loud, you should have heard those two howl.”
Ghost taps his fingers against the steering wheel for a moment. You try not to think about how much larger they are than yours. “Didn’t realize you could hunt that close to Washington.”
“West Virginia.” You correct him, averting your eyes once more. “At least in the summers. Up in the Appalachians.” You look out the window, to the rolling, ancient hills where mist hangs like a reverent sigh. “Same mountain range, you know. Just millions of years and thousands of miles apart.”
“Going t’tell me you’re Scottish?” Ghost intones dryly, keeping his gaze ahead, and you grin.
“Haud yer wheesht.”
“English.” Ghost replies, but there’s no real bite to the warning, and it only makes you giggle. Except it’s muffled by the sudden sound of a low, concerning rumble from the engine followed by an irritated clicking. Your eyes shoot to Ghost, who curses low in his chest and carefully manages to navigate the stuttering car off to the barely-there shoulder just as the engine begins to sputter.
“How much did you pay for this rental?” You ask innocently, and Ghost slams the steering wheel with his hand with a growl.
“Too much.” He seethes before putting the car in park and swinging outside in one fluid motion. You follow him just as he pops the hood and peers irritably at the engine inside. You manage to lean in and gaze down next to him, looking over the components just as Ghost towers beside you, annoyance radiating clear off his form.
“There’s a toolkit in the trunk.” He states, making no motion to retrieve it. You recognize an order for what it is, and despite the fact that you’re no longer on the field the familiar weight of Ghost’s leadership feels almost second nature. You reappear with the toolkit in hand a moment later, and rather than hand it to Ghost, you begin to unpack it yourself- ignoring the sideways glance Ghost casts at you.
“By the sound of it, it’s the starter.” You tell him, and when you gently nudge him aside for more space he makes way, stepping back to watch you bend over the engine with tools in hand. “Would you mind trying to turn over the engine for me?”
Ghost doesn’t respond, and when you glance behind you his eyes suddenly dart up to your face after looking elsewhere. “Ghost.”
He holds your stare for a moment before nodding and making towards the driver's seat. A moment later the engine attempts to turn over, the car shuddering and coughing before silencing once more. You poke your head a little further into the hood, trying to locate the source of the noise. Ghost reappears at your side a moment later, just as you fiddle inside the toolkit for a wrench.
Ghost is quiet, observant as you slowly work at the engine, peering over your shoulder close enough you can almost feel the warmth of him spill into your back. It takes everything in you to suppress a shiver at the fact he’s so close. Yet he offers no commentary as you work, no snide comments or dry humor. It would be unnerving if it weren’t for the fact you’re well used to it by now.
“Got it.” You declare a few minutes later, straightening up quickly- colliding with Ghost’s hand that shoots out to cushion your head from impacting the metal hood. “Oh- thanks.”
You hold up the retrieved spark plug victoriously, corroded and rusty from age. “Probably caused a misfire.” You declare. “It needs to be replaced, but we’d have to drive into town for a repair shop...” You trail off, face falling with realization before digging in your pocket for your phone.
No signal.
You look at Ghost, who stares back at you. Nonplussed, done.
and then, without another word, he turns around and starts walking.
It takes about three seconds of you gawking at his back before you’re running to catch up.
“W-where are you going?”
“Town.”
“That’s...15 kilometers away?”
“We’ve hiked farther with our gear.” Uphill. In the snow. You mentally hear him add.
“Shouldn’t one of us stay with the car?”
“No one is going to steal a car broken down on a country road.”
“What about our stuff?”
“Did you lock the car?”
“Well...yes. But-”
Ghost’s pace doesn’t falter, purposefully long strides as he hikes further up the winding incline. You follow him, casting a forlorn little look at the little green car parked on the side of the road. You’re loath to leave it, but between the choice of staying alone on the side of the road or going with Ghost, you know you’ll always choose Ghost.
The hike is quiet, just as it was in the car, and you find yourself focusing on the broad expanse of Ghost’s shoulders rather than the stunning scenery around you. You’re so used to Ghost bringing up the rear on long distance missions with the team, watching his own six, and by doing so watching everyone else’s, including your own. You’ve always trusted him to watch you, knowing that any possible threat from behind would have to go through him first. Now, you stare at the wide expanse of his back cloaked under his dark jacket and wonder if maybe he feels the same.
and you try not to imagine the bare expanse of his rippling muscles underneath.
“Kinda reminds me of Nepal.” You murmur after clearing your throat and quickly pushing away the image, and wonder if Ghost can hear you over the wind.
Ghost raises his head a little, but doesn’t turn. “Going hypothermic again, are ya?”
You huff, breathing warmth into your fingers chilled by the slicing wind. “A little.”
You nearly run into his back when Ghost suddenly stops, turning towards you. Before you can object, you watch as he shrugs off his thick leather jacket and uses a hand to drape it over your head.
Then he promptly turns and resumes walking.
Heat blossoms across your face, hot enough to warm you down to your toes. The smell of Ghost, of gun oil and charcoal and sweat permeates your very being. You try not to dizzy yourself with a lungful of it, try not to be obvious about scenting the blissfully warm and rain resistant jacket that you quickly wrap yourself in with zero complaints. Your heartbeat flutters against your ribs breathlessly, and you try to tell yourself the warmth you feel is just from the jacket, and not the helpless feeling of longing you keep secret there inside your chest.
You catch Ghost pause just long enough to look over his shoulder, but whatever choked thanks you can offer feels swallowed up by the wind.
At the top of the hill, you pause to take a breather, clutch the jacket a little tighter around you and let the wind ruffle your hair. Below lies a lush, green valley cast in soft hues from the gray shadowed sky, a tiny village tucked away at the edge of the long, sloping hills. It’s nothing more than a collection of houses, a shop or two, a petrol station, and a pub of some sort, but to you it’s the closest thing to civilization that you’ll see for the greater part of the day.
You don’t notice Ghost’s eyes on you until you turn to him.
“Olright?” He asks, and you pause for a moment, looking at his smoky brown eyes to wonder why they feel so heavy on your form.
A sound catches both your attention, and you turn to observe the sight of a small factory Ford making its way up the sloping valley road.
After a moment, you shoot Ghost a grin.
“Ever hitch-hiked before, LT?”
Before he can answer you sway to the roadside in sight of the oncoming car, jutting out your hip and sticking out your thumb before glancing back at him.
“Stay back a little, might scare them off with the whole serial killer get up.”
Ghost squints at you, hard, and you feel a little laugh bubble up your throat at the fact he looks almost offended. But he obediently takes a step or two back before crossing his arms and staring at the oncoming driver. If anything, you think he looks more intimidating than he did before.
Fortunately it isn’t enough to dissuade the driver, who honks at you both before slowing and pulling up beside you facing the wrong way.
“Do ye need some help, lass?” The woman in the passenger seat asks, accent thick. She’s a homely sort, round in the face with graying curls and rosy cheeks. Her gray-green eyes dart between you and Ghost behind you nervously, and it takes all your resistance not to shoot Ghost a look that says “I told you so.”
“Yes, actually, if you don’t mind. Our car broke down a while back and we were wondering if we could have a ride to town?” You ask politely, putting on your best smile and explaining quickly. “We tried fixing it ourselves but we need a mechanic.”
“Oh!” You see the woman visibly relax and flutter a hand at the driver, an equally older bearded man you assume to be her husband. “An American! You’re not that common around these parts. Archie dear, don’t you think we can give the nice girl and her fellow a lift?”
You nearly choke at that, opening your mouth to correct here when the husband, Archie, you presume, arches a thick eyebrow at you and looks at Ghost for a long moment.
“Aye, hop in.” He offers gruffly, jerking his head, and you thank him profusely before nodding to Ghost and sliding into the cramped backseat. Ghost takes up almost the entire space in the tiny car with his breadth, but manages to not squish you against the door despite having to tuck his legs a bit sideways to fit. You have to make it a point not to look at him lest you give yourself away.
It takes Archie a minute or two to point the car in the direction of town again, by which point his wife, who introduces herself as Ainsley, has begun to talk your ear off.
“Are you two on holiday?” She asks cheerily, all previous suspicion gone. “Visiting family?”
“We uh-” You spare a glance at Ghost, who’s stony silence offers no help. “We’re- yes. On holiday. Up to Balfour Manor?”
“Oh lovely! It’s quite the romantic spot, Balfour. We get lots of couples up that way. Archie and I had our handfasting ceremony there, ye ken.”
Oh.
You glance at Ghost, a little aghast at Aisley’s bold assumption. Yet when Ghost returns your stare, he looks oddly amused.
You feel your face warm, clearing your throat and attempting to speak. “O-oh well we’re not-”
“Balfour isnnae all that far from here. We might as well drive you all the way. We know the manager there, Lorna. She’s as sweet as they come. She’ll get you all set up and send someone for your car.”
She pauses, looking at her husband. “Aye, Archie?”
Archie grunts, looking at you in the rearview mirror before shrugging and nodding.
“That’s...very kind. Thank you. But you really don’t have to, we can wait at the petrol station-”
Aisley waves her hand at you. “Dinna fash yerself. We were going out for a drive anyway, got to stretch the ol’ bones. Now we’ve a story to tell at the pub!”
That seems to make Archie perk up a bit. “Aye.” He drawls, chuckling as he navigates down the valley road. “Bout the polite American girl and her burglar beau.”
“Archie!” Aisley gasps, swatting at him before turning to you apologetically. “He dosnae mean anything by it, lass.”
Ghost huffs beside you, offering Archie a withering look, but gives no indication of a reply.
“It’s alright.” You try. “He’s just-”
“Shy.” Ghost deadpans, and you arch an eyebrow at him. You can see his eyes laugh. Something breathless flutters in your chest.
“I was going to say ugly.” You whisper teasingly, low enough for him to hear- and Ghost leans in, crowding your space.
“You and I both know that’s a lie, Fix.”
Jesus.
He pins you with his coal dark stare, and you feel the sudden urge to look away from the intensity of his gaze. Your heart is racing in your ears, and the backseat suddenly feels too small, too close with the way Ghost suddenly is almost on top of you, heedless of your company.
Fortunately, it seems Aisley is too busy chastising her husband to notice the way Ghost has to practically crowded against the opposite door, his hand planted over the middle seat just close enough so his gloved thumb grazes against your hip through your jeans-
Only to sit back in a blink when Aisley pokes her head back again and begins to prattle on about the care rental salesman down in Perth and his shady marketing tactics. It takes all your composure to calm your racing heart and nod along politely despite the warmth flooding your face.
Beside you, Ghost looks oddly smug.
In the miles that follow, you find yourself glancing at him, and trying to match the memory of his moonlit face against the impenetrable mask that you’ve begun to see the cracks in.
- - -
Aisley and Archie end up driving you past town and into the hills where the manor rests upon a rolling, green slope that sits on the other side of the valley. Shadowed in mist, the ancient brick manor house overlooks the village below with tall windows and a tall, imposing archway which shelters a thick iron door. Carefully tended ivy crawls upwards along the brown brick towards the chimney, where a whisper of smoke is carried away by the gusting wind.
The car rolls to a stop in the long, gravel driveway that encircles a bubbling fountain and a collection of signs that likely details the land’s history. You long to peruse them, but Ghost is quickly shuffling out of the car with a murmur of polite thanks and quickly heading up the front steps. You scoot out behind him, remembering to turn and wave at the couple. Before you can trot after Ghost, Aisley makes a quick, urgent gesture for you to come closer.
“Have patience with him, lass.” She whispers with the window rolled down, halfway leaning out. her eyes dart to Ghost, who stands a ways behind you. “My Archie was a stiff, quiet one too. Give him time, he’ll let you in when he’s ready.”
You blink, and once again open your mouth to once again try and dissuade her of the notion that you and Ghost are a couple, but Aisley’s gray eyes shine knowingly, and in the end you smile quietly to yourself and give her a small whisper of thanks before turning to follow Ghost inside out of the slicing wind.
The interior of the manor appears to have blended well with the ages, renovated but kept at its bones a true token of history. The carved banisters and railings are worn with age, and the walls maintain their wood carved paneling. Yet the furniture is distinctly modern, and the grime of centuries past has been sanded down to nothing.
There’s a freckled, ginger-haired woman who greets you at the desk labeled ‘check-in’, and upon seeing Ghost you watch her instinctively raise her hackles at his mask and gigantic, looming stature.
“Reservation for ‘Riley’.” Is all he offers as his shadow falls over her, and it takes her a moment to process before she’s furiously typing at her computer.
You peek your head out from behind Ghost, and the woman who you assume to be Lorna instantly looks relieved at your smile.
“Sorry for the late arrival, we ran into some car issues on the road and had to hitch-hike. Do you have a way to call the repair shop in town? Neither of us have a signal.”
“Oh!” Lorna chirps, looking befuddled, then mildly distressed. “That makes sense. I tried to phone you, Mr. Riley. I’m afraid that we’ve run into a wee problem with your reservation.”
She swallows thickly, typing away at her laptop for a few moments. “We- we’re terribly sorry. We had a stag party booked prior to your stay, you see. The guests before you were a bit of a rowdy bunch. We’re still cleaning the walls after the…” She trails off, looking a little green. “...Well.”
“Does that mean the reservation is canceled?” You ask, brow knotting. Beside you, Ghost stiffens. You hear his gloves creak as his fists clench.
“No, no! We’ve just been forced to switch you over to a different cottage. It’s slightly smaller, but this one comes with a fireplace at least. We’ve also charged you the lesser price due to the issue, but we won’t be able to put you in your original booking seeing as we’re all booked up.”
You glance at Ghost, who appears mildly annoyed but otherwise calm. “O’lright.” He eventually offers after a beat, and Lorna’s shoulders relax visibly.
“Lovely. Let me finish checking you in, and then I’ll see about your car. I know the repairman in town, he should be able to drive out and see what the issue is.”
“It’s one of the spark plugs.” You tell her, stepping forward a little and ignoring the way Ghost’s bulk stays warm at your back. “Should be a simple change, but we’d like to at least get our luggage if possible.”
Lorna nods seriously, which is a bit of a humorous expression on her otherwise mousey features. “I’ll be sure to let him know. We’ll try to get your bags to you by this evening.”
Lorna quickly gives you a series of pamphlets and map of the surrounding grounds, pointing out the small trail that leads off into the woods towards the cottage you and Ghost will be staying in.
“There’s breakfast and dinner served in the dining room at seven am and seven pm, plus tea service at three. Otherwise you’ll have to run into town for lunch or groceries.”
Ghost nods stoically, eyes tracing over the hunting pamphlet, which Lorna sees him eyeing.
“Oh, and the hunting range is northwest of us. You’ll need to check in with us before you set off to make sure your hunting permit is in order. We do process any deer you hunt for a fee, otherwise you’re welcome to take it back home yourself.”
Ghost nods again, and murmurs a small thanks before tucking the pamphlet in his hoodie pocket and turning. You give Lorna a smile and a wave before following after him out the thick iron doors. The clouds outside have darkened to an ominous gray, with a whisper of moisture lingering in the air. You huddle deeper into Ghost’s jacket, falling in step with him as you begin to make your way towards the forest cottage.
You eye him out of the corner of your eye, finding his gaze directed forward. Yet he softens his stride, ensuring that you don’t fall behind him as you walk. One of a thousand silent things to fit further into the puzzle of him.
“Riley, huh?” You ask after a minute or two of walking, and Ghost glances at you before making a small, noncommittal grunt.
“Laswell gave you my file, didn’t she?”
She did, but the file had been so redacted that you’d only managed to get bits and pieces. SAS selection, top of his class, record breaking scores, details of his skills in covert infiltration, sabotage, and clandestine tradecraft. There was a mention of an extended leave, but after that? Black. Nothing. The words POW stood out among the endless redactions, but until his recruitment into the 141, Ghost’s file was an enigma, an anomaly, leaving you to fill in the gaps in between with the scarce glimpses behind the mask he offered you.
Then again, there were things in your file that you refused to share as well.
“You’re a mysterious man, Mr. Riley.” You smirk at him, and if you look close enough, you think you can see his mask tug at the corner with a smile.
“You sleep with that mask on?” You ask teasingly.
“Like a log.” He drawls.
“Might scare the deer off with that.”
“Brought a camo one.”
You gape at him. “You’re joking.”
Ghost looks at you, silent, deadpan. “I’ve been told I’m a comedian.”
You bark a laugh, out of pure surprise more than anything, only to quickly dissolve into a fit of giggles.
In the woods now, a thick grove of twisted trunks that shields you from the worst of the wind, you and Ghost enjoy a comfortable, mutual silence. Despite the fatigue from the day’s travel, the lingering unease from ruined plans and impromptu decisions, there’s a small warmth that curls inside your chest as you walk beside him, huddled in his jacket several sizes too big as the moorish wind sweeps across your cheeks.
“Well.” You say at last. “Broken car, nosy neighbors, and a just barely rescued reservation. They say bad things come in threes. I think we’re past the worst of it.”
As if on cue, a raindrop falls right on your nose.
You look up just in time for another to land on your cheek. Ghost pauses beside you, cocking his head, listening. There’s a distant rumble of warning from the sky above....
and seconds later the bottom drops out of the clouds and onto your heads.
“Bloody fuckin’ hell.” Ghost swears, glaring up at the sky with putrid annoyance. Then he looks at you as you hold his jacket over your head to try and shield yourself from the worst of the downpour.
You gulp.
“I...might have jinxed it” You confess, and you think you see a vein in his neck throb.
Your clothes are soaked through by the time you get to the cottage, teeth chattering loudly as the cold quickly sets in. Ghost’s tension is palpable, a low rolling thunder that mirrors the stormy skies above. You try to remind yourself you are not the source of his ire, rather that the events of the day draw heavy on his shoulders and rest as a tightly coiled tension under the soaked fabric of his hoodie.
You drip water onto the mat of the entryway, hugging the jacket tighter around your shoulders as you survey the interior. It’s quaint, cozy. The entryway feeds into a small kitchen with old wooden cabinets complete with brass handles. Beyond is the living area, and without thinking you walk over to the old stone fireplace and crouch before it, heedless of the puddles you leave in your wake.
“It’s an actual fireplace.” You smile at Ghost, nodding to the wood stacked on the edge. “Do you remember your boy scout lessons?”
Ghost scoffs, striding past you to survey the living space with keen, wary eyes. You know what he’s doing on instinct- marking entryways, noting escape routes and barricade points, possible fire hazards and other threats. Like you, he’s able to leave the battlefield, only for it to exist in his mind.
As he checks the locks, you wander over to the two doors opposite of the fireplace, peeking inside one to find a bathroom, and the other to find the bedroom.
Except...
“Oh.” You whisper, and you sense rather than hear Ghost instantly pause behind you, crossing the room to hover tall and dark behind your shoulder as he looks at what’s caught your attention.
A single bed, neatly made. Between the pillows, a red rose.
You feel Ghost go stiff behind you just as heat warms your face all the way down to your toes.
“Did you...” You ask quietly, without turning towards him. “...Book us a single bed?”
“No.” Ghost replies, a little too quickly, terse, and scoots his massive frame past you to grab the red rose on the pillow and briskly toss it in the garbage pail. You hear him mutter an annoyance under his breath that you think sounds like “Bloody stag party.”
There’s a laugh bubbling in your chest akin to hysterics. You’ve slept close to Ghost before, sure. Hell, he kept you alive with his body heat before, but that...that was different. That was on the field, in the presence of teammates, things necessary for duty and survival. Here, in this quiet, romantic cottage where it’s just the two of you, where everyone seems to be operating on the understanding that you’re a couple...
“I’ll take the couch.” You say before you can catch the thought. “You- you’re too tall to fit comfortably. You can have the bed.”
Ghost looks at you, dark eyes meeting yours, and you’re reminded just how intense his gaze is. You feel untethered, unbalanced, caught in the gravity of his stare alone. For a single, daring moment you pray that he’ll find a reason to disagree, that he’ll insist you both sleep together, but eventually he blinks and nods.
“Olright.” He cedes at last, finally turning away from you, and it feels as if there’s something left unsaid between you both, something you’re not brave enough to voice yet. It curls under your skin, and you shiver hard, curling your arms around you for warmth.
“You’ll catch a cold.” Ghost nods at you, and proceeds to unzip his wet hoodie so it lands on the floor with a wet splat. “Should change out of those.”
You don’t respond for a second, too distracted by the way Ghost’s shirt clings to every plane of his muscled torso, the soft flesh of his belly, the dip between his shoulders. Eventually your brain catches up with you, and you blink, swallowing back the dryness in your throat.
“Into...what, exactly?”
Ghost looks at you for a beat, before grabbing a quilt off the end of the bed and tossing it at you. You gape at him, equal parts baffled and aghast.
“Y-you can’t be serious.”
“If you’d like to catch your death that way, by all means.” Ghost returns, and turns from you to begin stripping off the shirt that clings far too tightly to his massive frame. You stand frozen to the spot, hands clutching too tight to the quilt as the pale, scarred flesh of Ghost’s torso is slowly revealed. The ink on his forearm swirls all the way up to his shoulder, and from there you trace a long, jagged scar that forms a ‘T’ across his pecs with their pale pink nipples. You don’t miss the blonde thatch of hair that coils just below it, curls down his stomach towards his waistband as his fingers go for his belt, only to pause.
With dawning horror, you look up and meet Ghost’s heavy, lidded stare.
“Looking ‘respectfully’, Fix?”
You can feel the instant your neurons misfire, electrocuting into nothingness as you stand paralyzed with your mouth open, caught ogling him in a way that’s so far removed from what might be considered ‘respectful’ you may as well bury yourself alive. You try to speak, to say an excuse, to offer an apology, anything, but the way Ghost’s eyes burn into you, the way you can’t seem to budge from his stare roots you to the spot, staring at the pale expanse of his bare torso and forgetting how to breathe.
The clink of his belt as he resumes undressing sends you scrambling out of the room and slamming the bathroom door behind you.
As you bury your burning face in your hands, you swear you hear Ghost chuckle from the other room.
You lean hard on the door, waiting for Ghost to finish doing...whatever it is he’s doing, and desperately trying to ignore the torrent of images that flood your brain of his scarred, pale shoulders, the smattering of freckles at his clavicle, the wisp of hair trailing below his waistband...
It takes effort to silence the groan bubbling up in your throat, caught somewhere between desperate desire and baffled embarrassment. Still sitting in your sopping wet clothes on the bathroom floor, the water slowly puddling beneath you, you try vainly to compose yourself and think of something...anything other than the vision of Ghost’s bare, rain-slick body hovering mere feet away from you with nothing but a wall to separate you both.
It’s the shivering chill of your soaked limbs that eventually forces you up, carefully peeling off your wet layers and wringing them as best as you can in the sink before hanging them to dry. By the time you step under the hot stream of water in the shower to warm up, you’re shivering head to toe from the cold.
Steam curls around your bare form just as the sounds in the other room gravitate towards the living room, and once more you try to brush away the thought of Ghost striding around the cottage completely naked with little success. There’s a coiling sort of tension that runs southward at the image of your lieutenant’s muscled, bare figure just steps away from your own naked form. It’s not the first time you’ve caught yourself with such thoughts- thoughts you usually reserve for your bunk at base, alone, lights turned off as your hand slithers below your waistband.
Even now, your fingers glide southward, cupping your bare cunt with a shuddering little sound. You’re a little wet just by the sight of seeing Ghost dripping, shirtless, hands fiddling brazenly with his belt with little regard for your presence. You can’t help but think about what might greet you if he had pulled his pants just a little further down, letting you see the bulge there. Ghost is massive, towering over your frame, and you wonder if whatever he hides there is at the least proportional.
You spread your cunt a little, fingers slipping between your folds as you tip your head back against the tile with a soft little sigh. You’re not sure if it’s the water or the burning heat of your own skin that coils warm in your veins, sending a murmur of pleasure electrifying across your hips and up towards the small of your spine. Your fingers trace slow, languid circles around your clit, your other hand raising to cup your breast just as you surrender and allow the vision of Ghost to engulf your hazy thoughts.
Ghost, bare, strong, built like a tank and able to rip men apart with his bare hands. Ghost, with scars littering his skin that speak of a lifetime of brutality and yet his eyes- eyes that fix you with a stare so intense you wonder sometimes if you’ll crack under the weight, burn so brightly you turn to glass, obsidian as dark as his voice that purrs in your ear during missions. Ghost who’s dark, swirling ink traces shadowy tendrils across your mind and drags you down, down into the abyss of his phantom touch.
You keen a little behind your teeth, hips pushing up into your hand just as you shudder at the thought that it’s not your nimble fingers, but his.
You have to keep quiet. The last thing you need right now is Ghost knocking on the door and asking about the barely stifled whimpers and moans you’re swallowing down with deep lungfuls of humid air. It’s hard not to make noise though, especially when you think about the idea of Ghost walking in on you like this, caging you with his towering frame against the shower wall and purring down in your ear.
“Fix.”
“Ghost.” You whisper, barely audible as your breath hitches, eyes squinted shut with pleasure. There’s a whimper bubbling up your throat, and you bite the back of your hand just to silence it, fingers working your clit faster now, the dawn of your climax ascending rapidly. You think about him, about Ghost trapping you against the shower with nowhere to run, sinking two, broad fingers into you deep enough for you to feel his knuckles broken one too many times to be even. You wonder if even that is little compared to the cock that hangs heavy between his toned thighs, ruddy and pink and leaking at the thought of sinking himself into you.
“Fuck-” You gasp, a little too loud, but you don’t care because you’re close, close enough that you can feel yourself teetering on the razor’s edge, ever nerve in your body drawing taut, tighter.
You want him. You want him here, in the shower. You want his fingers inside you plucking at the sensitive point of pleasure inside your gummy walls that clench down on him with every retreat, trying to keep yourself full. You want him to split you open on his cock, to haul your legs up to his shoulders and fold you in half as he fucks you down into the bed, growling, snarling in your ear. You want to feel yourself bow off the bed with a little cry, walls rippling over his cock just as he huffs warm breath into your ear: “Good girl, Fix. Good fucking girl.”
When you cum, you have to swallow down a sob.
As the liquid warmth of your release unspools through your veins, you tip your head back against the tile, panting, trying to catch your breath. Your legs quiver as they hold your weight, muscles weak. It takes concentration to just remain standing in the afterglow of your shattering orgasm, shoulders heaving and brow pinched as you try to regain yourself.
You raise a hand to wipe the water from your face, holding the heel of your palm to your forehead and whispering out a little curse that’s muffled by the water. Outside, you can hear Ghost shuffling about in the kitchen and living room, and you pray by some grace of god he heard absolutely nothing from inside the shower.
It’s only after you’re steady on your feet again that you remember you have no clothes.
You groan then, heedless of the sound, burying your face in your hands and praying for some type of divine intervention or damnation. Inside the mist of your mind, Ghost’s chuckle haunts your thoughts.
You’re so fucked.
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More Posts from Spacecola7 and Others
Gérard DuBois (French, b. 1968, Argenteuil, France, based Montreal, Canada) - Guard from my illustrated book Rroû, a novel written by Maurice Genevoix in 1931, Graphic Arts
very first time i saw ghost i thought he was wearing a hat 👉👈 so i gave him a hat
*lightheaded with lust* yeah he's like a father to me
Raspberry Girl Previous + masterlist + AO3 Simon Riley/female reader CW: 18+ Daddy kink, spanking, anal fingering, cum play, whiff of breeding kink.
Days turn into a week, and then two, but you were fine.
Everything was fine.
Until you got your period.
You woke up to blood in the sheets a day early, underwear and pajama bottoms ruined, the only saving grace being that the mattress didn’t stain. The cramps kept you in the shower longer than normal, and you were late to work because of it. Everything went downhill from there.
You drank more coffee because you were behind, you skipped breakfast, you didn’t touch a glass of water until well after dark. You stayed up well past bedtime, your meals became inconsistent, you essentially forgot your glasses existed.
Going off the rails was only supposed to be one day, but then you couldn’t get back on the tracks.
It all fell apart.
You unraveled at your already frayed seams.
You were bad.
Your phone is buried in the mess of your bed.
When it starts vibrating, you have to dig through your blankets to find the sweater it’s in, shoved in the pocket haphazardly after you collapsed, kicked off your shoes and crawled into the middle, eyes already half closed.
It’s strange how your apartment doesn’t feel quite like home anymore-
but you don’t deserve to go back.
A blocked number flashes across the screen of your phone, and you answer it with fumbling fingers.
“Hello?”
“Hi baby.” You clap your hand over your mouth. The rush of emotion is too much, happiness building in the back of your throat as a sob, followed by anxiety that sticks like sludge in your mind.
“H-hi daddy.” You don’t deserve to say it, guilt curdling in your stomach when it comes out. It feels hopeless, like you’ve ruined it all, and you have no control, sure he can hear everything in your voice.
You don’t know what to say to fix it, you don’t know how to make it better. You don’t deserve him, or this.
Awful, noxious thoughts bubble to the surface, trying to spill out of your mouth and drown you. Drown him. Drag you both down.
“Hey sweet girl,” he coos, deep rumble contrasted by a lot of background noise, and it’s almost able to quiet the chaos in your head. “How are you doing?”
“I’m… um, I’m good.” Shut up. Change the subject. “How are you?”
“I’m okay. We’re about done here, and then I’ll be home.” Your excitement burns to ash in the face of dread. You don’t want him to know, to see you, to realize how far you fell. You didn’t follow your rules. You let him down.
“T-that’s… great.” An engine is the only noise on the other end of the line for a minute until it starts to fade, and a door slams.
Then there’s only his voice. Pitched smooth and soothing. “Are you okay?”
“Me? Yeah! I’m fine.” The fake cheer makes you wince.
“Are you lying to me?” You swallow the swell of sadness, the threat of a breakdown hovering on the edge.
“N-no.” There’s muffled conversation somewhere on his end of the line, and he sighs.
“I have to go, but I’ll be home soon, okay? Be good for me.” Your heart is pounding so hard the blood in your veins is throbbing, ribs caving in on themselves, your lungs struggling to expand.
“Okay.”
When the line goes dead, you burst into tears.
His house is hollow.
He’s talked to you twice since landing, and you didn’t mention being at your apartment a single time, though your absence is no surprise. There was a pitch to your voice, one he recognized from before, when you were unsure and lost, stumbling towards him on shaky legs.
He’s not angry, but he is unsettled. He hates uncertainty, it chafes at his control, thoughts of you alone in your apartment rubbing him raw, and a mountain of blame slowly settles on his shoulders as he grapples with the consequences of both his choices, and yours.
He knows what the rest of the night holds.
He’ll need to take you apart and put you back together.
He only has to knock once for you to come to the door.
You fling yourself into his arms, refusing to let go as he shuffles you inside, bringing you down onto the couch, halfway on his lap. You’re rigid, intentionally looking away, gaze focused on your lap where your fingers are threaded together, head bowed like you’re praying, seeking absolution. It’s a heavy weight you’re carrying, one he will wring from your bones blow by blow.
“Let me see your eyes.” He lifts your chin, finds what he anticipated in them, tears flowing freely down your cheeks. “Oh, baby.” Rattling against him, you hold on so tight like you want to crawl inside his body.
“I missed y-you, I just… I missed you.”
“I missed you too sweetheart.” You find your way back into his arms, pressing your face to his chest. “It’s okay,” he murmurs into the top of your head as he rocks you, soothes the shaking, the raspy draw of each breath. “It’s okay, I’m here.” It only takes a little bit for you to come back to yourself, and as you do, your fingers brush against the gauze on his arm. You freeze.
“You… you’re hurt. You’re hurt? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s nothing, just some stitches, nothin’ to worry over.”
“Just some stitches?” You squeak, eyes wide with alarm, concern tightening their corners. “Wh-what happened?” What didn’t happen. He’d never tell you, he can’t, but your worry burns a flame inside a deeply shuttered piece of his heart, and he kisses your forehead.
“I’m okay sweet girl. I promise.” He waits a beat, giving you silence, hoping you’ll come forward with it once you find your words, but when there’s nothing, he knows he’ll be pulling it out. Rip the bandaid off then. “Are you goin’ to tell me what’s going on?” You shake your head and stare at the floor.
“I can’t… I- I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” He knows, of course, but he needs to hear you say it.
“I… didn’t follow my rules.” He folds his hand over yours, maintaining the connection while carving out your space. You’re a tangled, jumbled snare right now, and if he’s going to fix it, he needs you to take the first step.
“Tell me what happened.” Your shoulders slump-
and then you start.
He makes sure you’re physically okay first.
You’ve managed to eat dinner tonight and drink some water, which is all he really needs right now. Food, and water. The rest, the mental and emotional strife, the pain, he’ll mend, but punishments don’t sit well on an empty stomach.
He takes his time. Leaves you on the bed while he showers, face down with your arms bound behind your back, stripped bare. If you were in his bed, he’d have each ankle tied to a corner, fully opening you up, teasing and toying with you, but this is adequate, and it can’t wait.
The mess in your mind is dark, and dangerous. It’s consuming you, hurting you, and he has to draw it out, suck the poison from the wound.
“Do you know why you’re being punished?”
“I w-was bad.” He pauses. He went over this earlier, but it’s a tough one to stick.
“No, baby.”
“But… I didn’t follow my rules. You t-trusted me and I-I let you down…” He squeezes the fat of your ass cheek, just hard enough to make you gasp, interrupting your train of thought.
“You didn’t let me down. You’ll always be my good girl, even when you make mistakes, and I know you didn’t break your rules on purpose, did you?”
“No daddy, I didn’t. I swear.” He settles on the bed, pins you down with his weight, holding steady as you squirm.
“I know.” You hiss when he lightly scratches his thumb nail across your skin. “But my girl has to take care of herself, and even after a bad day, she has to keep trying. Do you understand?” You nod. “Words please.”
“Yes daddy, I understand.” This is only part of it. The festering guilt inside you needs to be released, you need your exoneration.
“Daddy has to make sure you understand how important your rules are, because you’re his priority, and you need to be safe and happy and healthy, right?”
“Right.” Your brow furrows with concentration, preparing for what comes next.
We’ll do thirty, and you’ll count each one.” You choke on your breath. The most he’s given you is fifteen and this will be double the sting. He can practically taste your fear. “Do you trust me to take care of you?” Your answer is immediate.
“I do.”
“Good,” he swings, your ass ripples on impact, and you grunt.
“One.”
“Louder sweetheart.” The second one hits the same spot as the first, and you lift your chin, trying to project your voice.
“Two!”
“Good girl.” He brings the third one down on the other side and then starts alternating, two on top of two.
By the time he gets to twenty one, you’re right where he needs you.
Sobbing. Desperate. Wrists writhing against the bind of his belt.
“Tell me why you weren’t home when I got back tonight.” He allows a small reprieve as he waits for your answer, arcing over your spine to kiss between your shoulder blades, the fabric of his sweatpants brushing across your aching skin. You whine in protest, feet kicking, trying to absorb the shock of a new sensation, a different kind of pain, and then you jerk when he presses the length of his erection in the cleft of your ass, cock heavy from watching you cry and shriek under his touch.
“I d-don’t know.” He peppers you with four blows, back to back, forcing you to catch up with your count, the first two coming out as an agonized moan.
“Tell me.” He pulls back for the next, but you stop him with a panicked bleat.
“I didn’t deserve it!” There it is. “You trusted me… and I didn’t do it, I didn’t follow my rules. I’m sorry, I’m so- so- sorry.” You sob, spitting between your teeth, barely getting enough air.
“Breathe. Take your time baby, slow, deep breaths,” he folds his hands over your diaphragm with loose pressure, thumbs rubbing circles into your skin as he calms you. “That’s it, you’ve got it.” You’re so close now. “You’re doin’ so well. Can you tell me the rest?”
“I felt guilty, like I shouldn’t be there, like I… I couldn’t call you daddy.” Good fucking girl.
“Thank you for telling me.” He kneads the now raw skin of your ass cheeks, and you jerk, trying to thrash away from the burn. “I know it’s hard to talk about how you’re feeling sometimes, and I’m very proud of you.”
“I’m sorry I’m sorry daddy, I’m sorry,” your tears are different now, they come just as fast, but they’re born from a release, a dam overflowing with all of your pain and guilt. A river running free.
“I know. Five more, you can do it. You’re almost there.” And all will be forgiven.
You scream them out, and it’s over, but you can’t stop. You cry into the mattress, inconsolable as pets you, rubs your back, telling you again and again how good you are, how proud he is, how happy you make him, how important you are. You’re not bad baby, you’re perfect, you’re precious, you’re mine.
He repeats it as many times as needed so you feel it, let it sink in and fill those gaps, the ones your suffering left behind.
Almost done.
He hasn’t moved, still on top of you, marveling as your hips twitch and press downward, movement revealing a small wet spot on the sheets. His cock throbs.
“Look forward,” he tugs his sweatpants down to his thighs and strokes himself, squeezing from base to tip. The element of not knowing, not being able to see puts you on edge, but you trust him. You listen. “Stay nice and still,” it’s going to sting, pull more tears from your heart, and each one belongs to him. “Fuck, baby. Your daddy’s good girl aren’t you? Took your spanking so well,” You moan, grinding against the mattress desperately. “Nice and still sweet girl, you can do it,” he holds you down by your wrists, pressing them into the small of your back. There’s no endurance in this, no long game as he comes, painting your cheeks with it, milky white cum covering your skin as he empties his balls all over you, your shocked gasp music to his ears. It turns into a hiss and then a whimper as he smears it around, somewhat in mourning as he thinks about where it should be.
Though-
He unties you. “Keeping looking forward sweetheart. Can you wiggle your fingers for me?” Trembling, they uncurl, flicking back and forth until he’s satisfied. “Anything hurt? Feel numb?” You shake your head, sniffling. “Words.”
“No daddy.” He tugs on your wrists gently, guiding them to your cheeks.
“Hold yourself open baby,” Your fingers slide through his cum.
“L-like this?”
“Just like that.” You’re shaking, from the spanking, from your emotional release, from the uncertainty of this situation. You’ll need a lot of care tonight and tomorrow, hours and hours of reassurance, focused attention, physical touch. He yearns for it.
“What… did you- did you, uh-” You’re so fucking precious.
“Come all over your ass?” He scoops up a dripping pearl and drags it to the tight ring between your cheeks. “Yeah sweetheart, an’ now I’m going to put it inside you.”
“Inside me?” You squeak, instinctively turning your head to watch him from the corner of your eye, alarmed. Shocked. He chuckles.
“Do you want to watch daddy push his cum into your ass?”
“Oh god,” you groan, immediately tensing, still holding on but unable to thwart your involuntary response. The animal in his head tells him it’s a waste. It should be in your pussy, fucked deep past your cervix and into your womb.
You’re not ready. You can barely take his fingers, let alone his cock.
And you’re certainly not ready for a baby, though maybe he’ll give you one before he’s an old man.
“D-daddy, I… I’ve never… no one’s ever, um...” The pad of his finger gently presses, swirling cum across your hole as you shiver.
“I know, you're okay. Push out,” he coaches, “good girl, here you go,” he barely breaches the ring, but you jolt just as he expected, trying to wriggle away.
“Ow!” Jesus. He’s hard again, head of his cock already leaking where it sits on your thigh. “Oh- Oh my god.” It’s not pained, or uncomfortable, but moaned. You like it. He gives you more, sinking into you, stretching you around to his second knuckle.
“That’s it.” His control is a tether, a hook. It keeps him grounded, prevents him from tearing into you even as he keeps putting more and more of himself inside you, so tempted to stretch you with another finger so he can fit the tip of his cock there instead. Slow. Steady. That’s what will win this race.
He pulls and tells you not to move as he goes to the bathroom to wash his hands, tucking himself up into the waistband of his sweatpants.
His cum is dribbling out of you, falling in drips down to your pussy and the sheets. He tries to memorize it, burn it into his brain, indulge in it for one more second before he eases you out of the position, rolls you onto your side.
It’s time for the things that really matter.
Taking care of you. Holding you. Getting you in the shower and then rubbing cream into your skin, feeding you, hydrating you, putting you to bed in his arms. You’re far past ready, eyes glazed over, lips parted, bliss smoothing out the furrow of your brow. The only thing missing is making you come, but you won’t get an orgasm tonight, not with the headspace you’re in. He’ll have to save it for tomorrow.
“Mmph,” It’s not quite English, or anything, but he understands the sentiment and takes your hand in his, kneeling at the side of the bed, cupping your cheek.
“How do you feel?”
“Sleepy.” You find his thumb and suck, lashes fluttering. He lets it linger for a few minutes, massaging your wrists, your elbows.
“Precious girl,” You’re not with it, not aware of anything except his thumb, your comfort, and he takes advantage while he can, brushing his lips across the shell of your ear with a whisper. “Daddy loves you.”
Here me out (mentions of pregnancy) From the moment Simon put a ring on your finger, you’ve been bent over every surface in the house. kitchen counter, dining table, even the washing machine mid-spin (i make myself laugh LOL) So it’s no surprise you ended up knocked up. Honestly, it was kind of the point. He wanted to see you like this. Full. Round. Swollen with his baby.
Now, months later, your back aches, your belly's heavy and your husband’s hands are right there, soothing, lifting, holding you together with a kind of reverence that makes your knees weak.
Because if it was his goal to get you like this… then it’s his job to take care of you now that you are.
-------
From the moment Simon put that ring on your finger, he made a quiet, devastating promise with his body as much as with his words.
You’d been bent over every surface in the house. The kitchen counter, hallway wall, the back of the couch, his lap in a dining chair, gasping his name into the crook of his neck, legs trembling while he kept you right there.
It was no surprise, really, that you ended up pregnant.
He'd wanted it. Wanted you round and full with it—his. Not out of ownership, but out of something deeper. Legacy. Healing. The need to build something softer than the war-torn world he came from.
Now, months later, your belly swelled gloriously with the proof of all that want. His want.
And tonight, it hurt.
Your back screamed from the weight, pressure clinging low and stubborn as you leaned over the kitchen counter in the dim glow of the fridge light. You were trying not to cry, not to wake him. But Simon always knew.
You heard his footsteps before you felt him, that quiet shuffle down the hall. And then—
“Back again?” came the rasp, sleep-heavy and warm behind you.
You nodded without turning. “It’s… too much tonight. I can’t get comfortable. I feel like she’s pulling my spine apart.”
Simon stepped closer, hands coasting over your hips, then around to your belly. He didn’t ask, just moved with quiet knowing, slipping his hands beneath the curve of your stomach and slowly lifting the weight off your aching back.
Your knees buckled slightly from the release, from how the ache dissolved under his touch. A long, broken sound fell from your lips, something between a sigh and a whimper and you melted into him completely.
“Oh my God,” you exhaled, your head tipping back to his shoulder. “Simon…”
Simon didn’t say anything at first, just held the weight of you both in his hands. His lips pressed to your temple, then down to your cheek.
“You carry her all day,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. “Let me carry you.”
Your heart ached in the best way as he held you there, hands beneath your belly, supporting all the strain, all the pain. You let yourself sag into his body, trusting him completely.
“You’re so good to me,” you whispered, arms curling back around his waist.
Simon was quiet for a beat, his voice soft as velvet when it came. “You gave me a home I didn’t know I wanted. You gave me this…” His hand splayed gently across the side of your belly, where your daughter shifted softly beneath the skin. “I’d do anything for you.”
The silence that followed was heavy with love. The kind that needed no words.
Eventually, he helped you back to bed, slow and careful, cradling your body like a sacred thing. And when you curled into his chest, belly pressed to his side, you swore you heard him whisper thank you into your hair.
Like he still couldn’t believe he got to have this. Got to have you.
prev. | mlist ✎ᝰ.ᐟ
Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but your apartment is the last place he visits before being sent off on an assignment.
‘Jus’ need somethin’ to tide me over, yeah dove?’
Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but when he’s away, his rugged and calloused hands don’t feel like yours, can’t get off unless he pictures you.
Above him. Below him. On your knees. On your back. In your mouth. Buried in your cunt.
Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but your apartment is the first place he visits when the mission is finished, doesn’t even bother going home.
And you answer, despite it being three in the morning.
“There’s my girl.” He breathes. Relieved. Dropping his bags on the floor before lunging forward to cup your face in his palms.
The claim makes you whine quietly, digging your fingertips into his wrists, arching on your tippy toes to meet his lips halfway. It’s ravenous, leaves your breath ragged, and lips thrumming with swelling blood.
He hoists you in his arms, burrowing his hands under your thighs and ass, pinching the flesh so hard it’ll bruise, but he can’t help it. He’s greedy. Selfish. Hasn’t quite coaxed himself down from the harsh realities of being ‘Ghost.’
“Ah—Simon,” You whimper, huffing hot air against his lips, “You’re hurting me.”
“Sorry, baby,” He smooths his hands, petting the backs of your thighs, “I just-”
The ‘missed you’ dies on his tongue, stops it from rolling off and filling the empty space between the two of you, but you know.
That night when he asks you to repeat him, tell him you’re all his, you don’t respond like usual. He tries his best to coax it out of your pretty lips orgasm after orgasm because he needs to hear it, but you don’t give him the pleasure.
Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, so he has no other option but to accept it because you’re not his. The lack of acknowledgment eats at his skin, brutal talons gnawing at his flesh when you slowly stop responding to his texts.
Shows up at your doorstep anyway because you don’t get to tell him when this stops. When you answer the door, you’re all dolled up, a tight little skirt hugging your figure, lip gloss smeared on your lips like you have somewhere to be other than on his cock.
“What are you doing here?” You ask, glaring at him, “I’m busy.”
“With what?”
You frown, “I have a date.”
He snorts, pushing past you, making a show of taking off his boots and placing them next to yours, has no intention of leaving.
“Simon,” You sigh, closing the door behind you, “I don’t have time for this right now. He’ll be here any minute.”
The statement alone pinches his temples with irritation, but that’s when he sees it, one small hickey adorned on your neck, just below your ear. His vision narrows, tunneling red, nudging you against the wall with one swift movement, tilting your jaw to get a better look at it.
“The fuck is this?” He snarls, runs his thumb over the bruise, and makes your breath hitch slightly.
“Nothing.” You mutter quietly.
“Your little date give you this? Huh?” He grits through clenched teeth, grip tightening on your jaw, drawing dimples in your skin.
“None of your business.” You spit back, but it’s far too gentle to have any real bite like it always does with him, pup with baby canines.
Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but he seethes at the idea of another man inside of you, another man marking you as theirs when you’re his.
Sinks his teeth around the stupid mark, dragging sharp fangs against your delicate flesh, and sucks the skin viciously. Covers the ugly bruise with his own claim.
Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but he presses you right up against your front door, so your date can hear him fucking you in two when he comes to pick you up.
‘Can yer little boyfriend fuck you like this? Huh, baby? Did he know jus’ how you like it?’
Fucks you messy and pretty, until your cheeks are tear-stained and your breaths are wrecked, hiccuping over your moans that’s he’s so mean, so cruel, asking you to say you’re his when he doesn’t even have the courage to say he missed you.
‘Be a good girl f’me, yeah? Tell me you’re all mine.’
And when you do finally say it, he carries you to your bed, fucks you slow and deliberate like he always does, like he really means it, and whispers the words against your skin.
@bbygirl9 @ailanbutterfly @amberbalcom14 @h0lydrag0ns
peristalsis - v
selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to "lovers." shower sex. cunnilingus. smut. manipulative soap. oysters as an aphrodisiac. unstable narrator. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.
previous
You watch him over an open book.
It’s an old romance, something from the eighties. Classic bodice ripper, billowing sleeves, tight corsets, mullets and heaving bosoms and all. Naturally, it’s set on a pirate ship, the heroine as the unlucky spoils of a merchant ship raid and the hero a lusty captain able to pierce her virgin’s desire for sexual depravity.
It could only have been more pointed at you if it had been set in the North Atlantic—it isn’t—but you glare at Soap’s back anyway.
He must be able to feel it, because he stands straight at the wheel, shoulders thrown back, occasionally flexing.
The freak.
You’d realized the joke he’d been making, once your heartbeat had slowed. Hiding the pelt somewhere obvious enough for you to see it. You live in the age of the internet—you know what it’s supposed to mean.
And you kind of hate him for it. Now, post-coitus, you can’t shove it away into a box—he is the most attractive man you’ve ever encountered. Rugged and handsome, competent at everything you’ve seen him do, seemingly at home wherever he finds himself. Everything makes him smile. Nothing seems to disconcert him.
And a nice big cock he actually knows how to use. Certainly the best lay you’ve ever had.
What every woman traveling solo, you think, longs to encounter on a solo trip across the world, but will never acknowledge looking for. An answer to an unaddressed desire; proof that satisfaction is out there to find, if it’s searched for.
A lover with no conditions. Someone willing to strip your inhibitions away, knowing your protests are only token.
You had not been searching. You’d given up searching.
And now he mocks you—with every satisfied glance he throws over his shoulder.
“Good book?” he asks, all casual and pleased. “S’ one a’my favorites. Tell me when you get to the naval battle.”
You frown. “You haven’t read this.”
He gives a little huff of amusement. “Read all of ‘em, bonnie.”
No, this is where you draw the line. A good cook, a good fuck, and a romance reader? No. No, you absolutely will not take this.
“Sure you have, Johnny,” you grouse, “you read every single stupid book on that shelf. Sure. Hell, you’ve read books that aren’t on that shelf. You’ve read every new release from the last six months, even. Why not.”
He looks at you again over his shoulder, mouth curled. “Aye. Needed ideas, once a’knew you were comin.’”
He says it matter-of-factly, with only a little bit of pride. As if it was a natural step in the process of getting ready for your arrival—renovate the croft. Stock the fridge and pantry. Plan some island excursions.
Study the erotic mind of the average woman to divine how best to seduce her.
Your frown deepens, and you lift the book higher, making it a barrier between you and him. Loser. Couldn’t he just go to the mainland for a few days if he wanted pussy? Not like it would be hard to find, for him.
You resolve to ignore him for the rest of the trip. A petty endeavor, maybe, but it’s the only one you can make.
But six hours is six hours, and you can’t read the whole time. Periodically you have to get up to stretch your legs, and the windows wrapping around the bridge draw your attention to the sea outside.
Johnny drives the trawler at a remove along the coastline, keeping close enough to the islands for easy viewing. The denizens of the Hebrides are out en masse, enjoying the clear weather, joyfully populating the land- and seascape in the absence of human interlopers.
Porpoises, so much smaller than you might have expected, periodically catch the wake of the boat, swimming alongside, playful and curious. Gulls loop in the air above the dunes, fronds of grass fluttering in the breeze. Gannets, stark white, arrow down into the waves, wings folded back pin-straight as they spear their quarry—silvery fish that boil the surface of the water in their frenzy.
Some removed part of you enjoys their pleasure secondhand. The normally-grey ocean is vibrant in the sunlight, crystalline and sparkling and as blue as Johnny’s eyes.
He seems to be in a good mood, too, although that could just be because you let him fuck you. You feel his eyes on you even as you refuse to look at him, dancing along the curves of your body the same way his fingertips might.
At one point—“Bonnie, I know you’re sulking an’ all, but c’mere.”
He gestures you over to the cockpit, and—embarrassed at being called out—you join him. He brings a hand to the small of your back, stepping behind you and pointing over your shoulder.
A gray wall of passing cliffs, and crags of rock jutting up from the churn at their base. You see ten or twelve grey-and-white seals lounging across every available flat surface, some cuddled in groups of three or four, apparently unbothered by the periodic spray of breaking waves.
“No’ where I’d choose to have a kip, personally,” Johnny says, sounding amused.
You turn your head to look at him, hard. His eyes soften when they meet yours, and he tilts his head to kiss you, undeterred even when you flinch away from it.
His hand tightens across your back, fingers digging in. He sucks your bottom lip between his and caresses it with his tongue, as he edges beneath the hem of your shirt to spread his hand across the warming skin of your back.
“I’m mad for ya,” he murmurs when he pulls away, blush high on his cheeks.
“It’s been two days,” you deadpan.
He presses up behind you, open hand sliding around to press into the low part of your belly, right at the sensitive crest of your mons; you can’t help your gasp when, at the same time, his erection nestles into the cleft of your ass.
“No’ to this,” he purrs in your ear. “Feels like it’s been forever, for this.”
When his fingers start making their way beneath the waistband of your pants, you grab his hand and wrench it away, scoffing.
“You’re just a fucking horndog,” you sneer, betrayed by the heat spilling through your core.
“Aw, you break my heart, bonnie,” Johnny simpers, but there’s a mocking edge to it. As if he knows exactly what you’re hiding.
You step away from him, folding your arms across your chest and staring out at the basking seals instead. Then—
“There’s one in the water,” you say.
A few meters away from the rocks, a round head pokes up from the surface, bobbing with the rise and fall of the waves. Its eyes are slitted closed, nostrils dilating.
“Aw, he’s bottling,” Johnny says affectionately, when he comes over to look. “Look at his wee face.”
You remember suddenly your encounter of the previous day—another lone seal, resting apart from its fellows.
“I saw one on the beach,” you say, “yesterday, after you dropped me off. A big one. You didn’t say they might show up.”
“Male?” he asks, and you nod. “Peripheral male, then. I’m no’ surprised.”
You sigh. “And that is…”
As if magnetized, his hands find you again, this time settling on your waist. It seems that Johnny’s touch is something impossible to escape, in his vicinity. He drags them down over your hips and back up almost idly, as if he’s not even thinking about doing it.
“There’s dominant males, and then there’s the rest of ‘em. Only the dominant ones get to breed at the rookeries, see? And the rest of ‘em have to wait around for the females to leave to have their chance.”
He leans into you from behind, nose in your hair, and you hear him inhale as his hands tighten.
“Once a peripheral male finds a female alone, separated from the colony, ready to go back out to sea—well, that’s his chance to pounce.”
You frown, mostly to yourself. “No matter how the female feels about it.”
“We’ve been over this,” he chides.
He brings his lips to the curve of one ear, then the soft spot behind it. His nose finds the juncture of your neck and shoulder, where the capillaries that he broke with his teeth still throb whenever you press your fingers to them. He inhales again, deeply.
“Why do you do that?” you grouse, unwilling to give him the win.
“Like how you smell,” he says, doing it again.
His tongue caresses the bruise before he closes his mouth over it—but he goes no further than to kiss your neck twice more before returning to the wheel. It leaves you reeling, half-dizzy with arousal, and when you stomp back to your seat with a frustrated growl, he only glances over at you, smirking, and laughs.
He finds a berth in the early evening to park the trawler, and at that point you’re thankful for any kind of solid ground to set your feet on, as well as enough open air to disperse whatever pheromones have saturated the enclosed space of the bridge.
You’ve been half-tempted the whole time to make him drop anchor and drag him belowdeck toward the nearest flat surface big enough for the two of you to share; as it is, you’ve simply stewed in your own juices instead, hot with angry arousal and ignoring the slick pooling in the gusset of your underwear.
Johnny steps out into the cooling air in his usual kilt and sweater, and you once again huddle in his jacket, aromatic with his musk, as he leads you onward. This time, unlike the last excursion, he insists upon holding your hand the whole way, callused fingers worming their way between yours, the captured air hot and humid between your palms.
Callanish turns out to be a henge of standing stones.
Meters-tall megaliths, squarish and narrow like broken teeth, surrounding a burial site and extending in two directions as if lining a road. Inevitably evocative of its cousin Stonehenge, with the notable exception that you are allowed to go up and touch the stones with your bare hands.
“They used ‘em for that TV show,” Johnny informs you as the two of you circuit the main ring. “Well, no’ these, they probably had styrofoam for that, but they got the idea from these.”
You lay your free hand on the nearest stone; it’s cold, and rough to the touch, a day’s worth of sunlight evidently not sufficient to warm it. Tiny spots of moss and lichen cling to the old stone, green and eggshell white.
“Why are we allowed to touch them?” you say. You think of bronze statues, rubbed to a golden gleam by millions of tourist hands.
“That’s Lewisian gneiss, bonnie,” says Johnny, laying his hand, much larger, next to yours. His thumb teases the side of your pinky. “Doubt you could make much of a mark on it. This rock here? Three billion years old.”
You look at him, seeing his profile. The expression on his face is soft—not unlike the way he looked at you earlier, on the way here. He spreads his fingers over the stone, tendons furrowing down the back of his sun-weathered hand.
“No’ just older than us,” he continues. “Older than what we used to be, a’fore we were us. Was there when we first made fire. Was there when we came down th’ trees. Was there all the way back when we left the ocean for the first time—”
He looks at you, then. The setting sun catches in the dips of his irises, setting jewel blue aflame.
“An’ it’ll be there, bonnie, when we go back.”
The wind curls around the stones with the chill of the oncoming night. Even despite the jacket, despite the walk up to the site—you feel it penetrate beneath your skin, deep into your bones.
You choose derision, to reject the shiver.
“And you have this all memorized,” you say.
Johnny doesn’t respond. He continues to stare at you, mouth in a relaxed, but inscrutable line.
You suddenly remember that you do not know this man; though he’s told you enough about himself to fill out his background—you don’t know him. You don’t know how he feels about most things, what’s important to him, why he may find one thing or another meaningful. Not the way you’d have to, in order to understand why the gaze he fixes on you feels so significant.
Whatever you’re supposed to understand in the way he looks at you now, you don’t have the ability to discern. The only thing that occurs to you is that, perhaps, you’ve finally managed to offend him.
It does not satisfy you as much as you might have imagined—
In fact, the thought drops through your belly like a rock.
Again. You did it again.
In the one place you thought you’d never have to face this—you did it again. Here is someone who seems to like even the worst of you, and you somehow found an even uglier side of yourself to show him, a squirming thing that cannot help but sling itself around with no heed for the damage it can cause.
But when you open your mouth to say something reparatory, something that certainly won’t fix what you’ve broken no matter what he might say, his expression softens into something thoughtful.
“Visited when I first came here,” he says. Completely unbothered. “After the discharge an’ all.”
You blink. Sharp heat and the numbness of cold, warring across your face.
“Why?” you ask.
“Dunno.” He shrugs, and lifts his hand from the stone, smiling ruefully. “I was a bastard back then. Didnae wan’ anything’ to do with anyone anymore. Mad at the world, a’was.”
Shucked like an oyster; scaled like a fish. Heat wins out, even in the growing chill. Tender skin scalding itself.
“And what,” you say, reflexively nasty, panic whirring up behind your breastbone, “you thought—you’d get some sort of, magical insight here?”
Johnny laughs. “Naw, a’was just pissing my money away, bonnie. Thought I’d come up here an’ try t’ knock one over.”
Tight chest. Can’t breathe. You step away from him, far away, hide it like you’re looking at another of the standing stones, but a stabbing pain spears upward through your diaphragm.
In—count—hold—out—
“Could you?” you ask, wringing something like a normal tone out of your voice.
“Nope. Paid for it later, though.”
He says it casually. He hasn’t noticed. You reach out to the new stone, drag your fingers overtop of the rough surface, imagine every little bump flipping the friction ridges of each print like pages of a book. Cold—the rock is cold. The wind is cold, and sharp with the smell of rain. The jacket is heavy on your shoulders.
The jacket smells like Johnny.
“I’m sure the park wardens weren’t happy,” you say, feeling your heart slow in your chest.
“No,” he says, and—with the silence of a lightning strike—“I drowned, afterwords, first time I went to sea.”
You look back at him. The wind picks up, ruffling the ends of his mohawk; on the horizon, a rind of darkness splits the clouds from the earth.
“You drowned?” you repeat.
The hem of his kilt flutters and dances. His gaze is intense—the angle of his brow unreadable.
“Aye, bonnie. I did.”
Your ears begin ringing—as you stare at him, you get the sense of dreaming. There’s a distinction to Johnny that contrasts the landscape framing him, a sharpness so focused that everything else lenses around him.
“Why—why are you here?” you find yourself asking, though you’re not entirely sure why. The question leaves you as if surfacing on its own power.
The corners of his mouth quirk—although for once, he doesn’t smirk at you, the way he always does.
“You tell me,” he murmurs.
He holds you in the tilt of his head; in the depths of his eyes, currents pulling you downward. You inhale, and expect, for some reason, water to pour into your lungs.
Then a gust of wind buffets the two of you. Johnny turns, surveying the sky. Breaking the spell, he says, “Come on, let’s get back. I don’ like the look a’that storm.”
Halfway back down the path, the front overtakes you; rain begins sheeting down, ice cold, needle-precise into your hair and down your collar. Johnny grabs your hand again even as you start worrying about slipping, and though the torrent veils the way, the both of you make it back to the trawler in one piece.
Back on the bridge, a red light blinks on the panel by the wheel. While Johnny attends to it, flipping a switch and bringing a microphone on a curly wire to his mouth, you squeeze your hair out over the sink nearby.
“This is Soap on the vessel Sea Ghost,” he says, and waits for a response.
“Soap. Drop anchor somewhere. Looks like a storm’s coming in,” a gruff voice comes in.
“Yeah, Cap, we noticed,” Johnny says with a laugh, turning and smiling at you. “We’re moored, dinna fash.”
“Good. Looks like it’s just for the night. Clear enough in the morning.”
“Barry. You got everything? Shops’ closed tomorrow.”
“Never will understand why. But yes.”
“It’s a holy day, Captain,” Johnny says pleasantly.
Price grumbles something about damn Catholics and their damn rules, which just makes Johnny laugh.
Then, “Gaz is here. Made it in after you left.”
Johnny’s posture shifts. Similar to a dog hearing the turning of a doorknob; amorphous attention coalescing, finding a target to point at. Anticipatory. Tail twitching, winding up to wag.
It’s a new reaction, to you—you’ve never seen it before.
Johnny lifts the transmitter to his mouth. He holds it there for a silent moment, before saying, “And Simon?”
No response from the other end of the line, pulled taut, as if snagged. Then Price responds “Haven’t heard yet.”
Something passes over Johnny’s face. Some flex of the muscle in his jaw. An expression held in check.
That’s—
That’s familiar.
“Alright. Back tomorrow then.”
“See you.”
He replaces the mic on its hook.
Thunder claps somewhere over the distant, open ocean. The trawler creaks and groans as the wind swirls around it. Yellow lamps illuminate the warm, wooden space, but are unable to penetrate the lowering blackness outside.
Tension—you can feel it drawing tight, see his shoulder blades shifting closer together. It aches in the muscles of your own back. He faces away from you, like you’re not there—
He turns to look at you. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t look quite real. As if he’s forcing the expression on his face.
“Poor bonnie,” he croons, looking you up and down. The tenor of his voice is saccharin-sweet and thick. “How’s a hot shower sound to warm up, hmm?”
Your belly pinches. “Sure.”
He leads you down a steep flight of stairs into the stomach of the boat, showing you into a single bedroom. The space is cramped, wedge-shaped—barely enough room for the double bed shoved into the middle of it, sheets and blankets gathered in rumples across the top. The unique musk of its occupant wars with the smell of lacquer; the walls are lined with orangey planks, evoking the sailing ships of old.
Directly to the left of the entrance, an open door leads into a small bathroom, into which Johnny guides you, hands on your hips.
“Go’ plenty a’ drinking water stored upstairs so take all the time you like,” he says. “Here, lemme show you how the taps work.”
You half-expect him, after the instruction, to stand there and watch, waiting until you undress. And he does hesitate for a moment, hovering in the threshold, before giving you a practiced grin, telling you to enjoy yourself, a closing the door behind him.
You stand in the middle of the tiny room for an uncertain heartbeat. Assumptions lurching. Almost—hoping.
His heavy footsteps climb back up the stairs.
So, you peel off your damp clothes and drop them into a pile on the floor, stepping naked into the shower. It’s far less mildewed than you might have worried of a single man living alone. Hot water chases cold out of your hair, streaming with pressure far superior to the cottage’s installment.
You realize your toiletries are still above deck, in your bag, beneath the two paperbacks Johnny packed that you haven’t gotten to just yet. You could step out after him—
You don’t do that anymore. You promised yourself.
The floor sways as the shifting sea rocks the trawler in its berth. You reach for the bar on the wall to steady yourself.
One version of yourself is sometimes able to fool the other. The truth is, you could have told him to stop at any time. Put your foot down, hard. Just because he owns the house you’re staying in doesn’t mean he gets to decide what your entire vacation is going to look like.
You scoff at yourself, without any humor. Vacation. Like you’d ever believed this was anything more than self-imposed exile.
The truth is, water takes the shape of the container it fills.
There’s a chill still present in your hair follicles. Impossible for you to identify until now; live with an ache long enough and it stops registering, until it’s balmed with a moment of relief. This is where the addicts begin; experiencing, for the first time, a complete absence of pain, as if it had never been there in the first place, and, once that pain is restored, the ruthless pursuit of its elimination.
Cold rain outside, warm rain within. You stand in the flow, listless. Steam rapidly clouds the empty spaces around you, gathering in droplets on the wall, drizzling down again.
That’s where the mistake is. Pain is never defeated—only deferred. Its panacea provides only diminishing returns, until it’s useless. Until you might as well be swallowing sugar pills or drinking seawater to assuage your thirst.
But you keep doing it. You remember too well how it felt. You chase it down because now you know how it feels.
At some point you have to understand that it always ends poorly.
The bathroom door opens again, and then the shower door, spilling yellow light into the shadowed recess—
Johnny.
The expression on his face is inscrutable; mysterious, as his gaze moves down your body, following the streaming water. Your arms curl around your chest in a perfunctory attempt to conceal yourself, even despite the futility of the effort.
He’s naked, and half-hard, a refrain on the previous night. One hand holds the travel-size soaps and gels that he must have dug out from your bag. He steps in behind you—enclosing the two of you in together.
“Sorry, bonnie,” he murmurs soothingly in your ear. “Had t’make sure we were tied up for the storm.”
The space is not even suggestive of being big enough for two people. You hear the squeak of the shower wall against his shifting back, hot skin slipping against yours as his hands draw you back against him by the hips.
“Dinnae want you t’slip an’ hit your head,” he murmurs, massaging the fat of your pelvis, as if there’s any reason to make excuses for what he’s doing.
Half-raised hackles petted down too easily. You relax into his touch, even as you disdain it. Your heart tremors in your chest.
“What’s going on tomorrow?” you finally ask. “Who’s Simon?”
Pathetic. A jealous lover, after less than forty-eight hours.
“Old task force,” he answers, kissing the back of your head. “Little reunion, food an’ beer, mostly.”
You half-expect him to go immediately for your breasts, or maybe your pussy. His cock is stiffening against the small of your back. But instead, he opens one of your bottles, squirts some pearly body wash into the palm of his hand. Rubbing a little to lather it, he puts his hands back on your hips, and begins massaging it into your skin.
Inward, up your stomach. Pressing into the soft parts of it, with the water slicking his way. His mouth touches the back of your neck—softly. Tenderly. With all of the languor you rejected the previous night, and not enough space for you to slap it away again.
His lips press inward, looking for the bite he left, which he lays his tongue on as if in contrition, licking it like a dog with a wound. The comfortable warmth of the shower swelters with his added body heat; the steam pulses in time with the heavy beats of your heart.
One hand slides up your body, fording your thoracic arch, the wedge of his hand ascending the length of your breastbone. He cups your jaw, bubbles between his fingers, one of your breasts nestling between his bicep and forearm.
He tilts your head to the side as he cranes his head further into your neck, lipping at the space behind your ear, kissing delicate, sensitive skin, as his other hand drags soap around your ribs, beneath and over both breasts, up into your pits and back down again.
A doll in his hands, bent along the shape of his will. He shifts his hips, frotting his erection against you.
“Johnny,” you breathe. “Johnny, this isn’t anything. This doesn’t mean anything.”
“Aye, bonnie,” he hums. “Whatever you say.”
He licks a hollow in your throat.
His other hand dips lower, sweeping down into the crease of one thigh to round the lower swell of your hip; then back up again, fingers spreading.
The stall compresses your arms close against you; the only space you have available to lay your useless hands is on his arms. The dark hair you find with your fingertips is coarse, wiry, plastered to hot skin with water. The spray seeps between the both of you, streams in the runnels of flesh pressed together.
Between your legs, your clitoris heats, awakening even though untouched. You give a small whine, and Johnny huffs a little chuckle in your ear, suckling your neck as his fingers make the descent back, rinsed in the falling water, teasing your pubic hair before nudging your folds apart.
He finds you slick and aching. He only dips lower briefly to wet his fingers, and then, as he settles a light touch over where you’re most desperate for it, relief razes through your nerves in a sudden wash.
You search for the back of his head, slotting your fingers into the ends of his mohawk at the nape of his neck. He hums against you, hand dropping down from your jaw to cup one breast in his palm, weighing it, thumb flicking around the pert nipple in the same tight circle he draws around your clitoris.
Orgasm, usually so obvious on approach, sneaks up on you, quick and quiet, but when it takes you it floods you, rather than knocking you down. You tremble all over, the follicles on your scalp standing on end, the nerves down your back and sides bending like dune grass to a wind.
Your long, breathy cry reverberates against the shower walls, and you lean heavily back against Johnny’s body, grip tightening where you have your hands on him.
He twitches against your back, but he makes no move to chase his own climax. He only turns you carefully, when you recover, and lays his hot, open mouth on yours, tugging your hips close enough to trap his cock against your belly. This time, the wall is cool at your back, the crown of your head moving against it as Johnny angles himself deeper, sliding his tongue between your lips.
“C’mon,” he says, when he finally pulls away. His pupils are huge, black dilation swallowing the blue. The spray fills the empty spaces between the strands of his mohawk, fluffing the hair a little as it courses down the shaved sides of his scalp. “Need to get my mouth on you again, bonnie.”
This time, when he eats you out, he does it at his leisure. Licking honey off a spoon. So lightly that you whine at him, find the energy to bitch at him to do it like he means it, but tonight he does not indulge you.
No—he mouths at you, eyes closed, curly lashes against his cheek as you lay belly-up on the rumpled sheets of his bed. The heat of his tongue in your cleft is the only source of warmth you have as the rain lashes at the outside of the trawler, but the hot shower still lingers in your skin—
Humid. Sticky. Sweat gathering beneath Johnny’s palms where he holds your thighs to his ears, as if mimicking the way your sex will clutch around him when he enters you. Slick and tight and viscous.
When he crawls up your body—nosing at your belly, your breasts, inhaling as if your musk is something he’s trying to get drunk on—he fucks you slow and deep. You stop being able to tell if it’s the storm rocking the boat, or the weight of his hips rolling against yours, one of his hands on the headboard for leverage and the other on your mons, pressing down with the heel of his hand to feel the head of his cock moving in you.
Tacky skin catching on the grind; heart speeding up as he grins at you from above, thumb tapping your clitoris. Enough to wind you up. You reach for his hips with your clawed hands, digging your nails into the meat of his ass—firm, muscle tensed, twitching every time he bottoms out.
“Johnny,” you finally beg, on the edge of a sob, “please, Johnny, please—”
Breath leaves him like a steam valve turned, pressure carrying an uninhibited moan. He ignores your plea, hips rolling slow, forcing you to feel every inch of him in and out of you, every ridge—every vein pulsing on the surface of his cock.
His eyes are closed still; when the widest part of him catches the rim of you around him again, his mouth drops open, lips pink and bitten.
Lost—he’s lost in pleasure, in the feeling of you around him, pulling him in. You watch his chest as it heaves, the flex of his stomach as it tightens—the twitch in the muscles of his arms as the impact of each thrust ripples up his body.
Look at me, you want to say. Look at me. I’m right here. Look at me.
“Again,” he groans, choked, restrained, hands gripping your hips. “Say it again, bonnie—”
“Please—” you whine, on the edge of a sob, “please, please, please—”
Thumb metronoming at a quick tempo where you need it—you seize, back arching, tightening around him so narrowly you could force him out—
He snarls, sharp and hard, thrusting into the resistance, hands falling to fist in the mattress. Breath coming rough and fast, sweat dripping from his forehead into the cups of your collarbones and down between your breasts. Hard and fast now, pushing in as far as your body will let him, and a final, long moan tears from his parted lips, liquid heat flooding you as Johnny goes rigid with a climax following only moments after your own.
Pelvis flush with your thighs. He doesn’t let a drop escape, pushing against you, lifting your hips from the bed.
“Tha’s right,” he slurs, eyes hazy when they open. “Tha’s right, that’s where it belongs.”
He collapses on top of you, almost crushing you with his weight, as he seeks your mouth out with his. He moves his hips against yours with shallow thrusts, whining in his throat.
“Didn’t you—” you pull your lips away, too hot, too cold, buzzing and exhausted, “didn’t you just finish?”
He tongues at your cheek instead, and then down your neck. “Doesnae matter, is no’ enough. C’mon, bonnie, wrap your legs aroun’ me, please…”
After he is finally spent—long after you’ve had enough energy to do more than lay beneath him and let him use you as he pleases—Johnny diverts briefly to the galley, bringing back with him a plate of oysters and a pry knife. It’s his bed, so you don’t complain about shell fragments, but you resolve to make him change the sheets anyway, shifting uncomfortably to find a spot that isn’t soaked.
“Was on this boat,” Johnny says, as if picking up the thread of a conversation only recently dropped. He picks up one of the oysters and shucks it open. “When I drowned.”
The way he says it, you’d think it was a casual thing, something he barely thought about anymore, but the line of his brow is low and serious.
He hands you one half; you bring the shell to your lips and tip it upward. Brine slides across your tongue, flesh smooth and buttery. Johnny watches you with soft eyes before having his own.
“Price was with me. I told him to fuck off, but he said he wasnae gonna let me take it out alone the first time ever. I was a bastard back then, I told ya. We went out in a storm, like this one, even though any eedjit could take a look outside and know it’d kill him.”
You flick at the edge of the shell with your fingernail, looking down at your hands. “Why’d you do it?”
“Dunno. Had somethin’ to prove, I guess.”
“That you could still do stuff like that?”
He doesn’t respond, so you look back up at him. He angles his gaze toward the mess of your hair—the new hickies he’s left on your neck—the bead of your nipples in the cold. The hard angles of his face soften.
“All my life,” he says, measuredly, “all I wanted to be was a soldier. An’ I couldnae anymore. Even though I was better. Hell, I was better than better. But I couldnae go back. That was it. It all wen’ on withou’ me.”
He breaks open more oysters as he talks, hands steady and deft around shells and knife. When he finishes, he slides the plate into your lap, and reclines to face you on his side, propping his head up with his hand.
“We wen’ out when the waves were as tall as a man, an’ us hangin’ onto the railing for dear fuckin’ life,” he continues. There’s a faraway quality to the tone of his voice. “Only life wasnae so fuckin’ dear, was it? I could’ve held on tighter, I think. I fell off.”
“And Price pulled you out?”
That feeling again, meeting his gaze; caught in the arms of a whirlpool, being dragged down. A vial in a centrifuge, constituent parts separating.
“No,” he says, “he didnae.”
“Then…”
“Eat, bonnie.”
There’s a stillness to him that feels unnatural. Johnny is a man who should be constantly in motion, gesturing with his hands, bouncing on the balls of his feet, tapping any available surface with rolling fingertips. Instead, here in front of you, he’s still as a statue. Chest softly rising and falling, but otherwise completely placid.
He gazes steadily at you, down at the plate, and then back up. You sigh, and pick up another shell.
“I don’t remember exactly what happened. I remember getting pushed down deep, real deep, then getting forced up again, on a current or something. Not far enough to get any air, mind. I thought, I’m gonna die out here, an’ I didnae want to.”
He shifts then, a little forward toward you.
“That seemed important, you know? I didnae want to die. Dinna think the sea would’ve given me up f’ I did. It knows. Sometimes it doesnae care. But I guess that time, it did, ‘cause after I blacked out, next thing I know I’m wakin’ up on the shore.”
Something hard shifts in your belly.
“Cap found me a bit later, bringin’ the boat in. Gave him a real scare. Think it turned some of his hair gray overnight. After that…a’was no’ the same. How could y’be, after that?”
You—you don’t want to know any of this. You don’t care. You didn’t ask. His story drops expectation on your shoulders, heavy, custom-tailored, laden with understanding that sands your abraded nerves.
All of this is too much. The damp sheets beneath you, the food, the sex. The fact that you picked the last place in the world thought you could ever meet anyone, let alone someone who—
“And now you have a seal fetish,” you sneer.
Who understands.
Indulgent. This is indulgent, reckless, idiotic in the extreme.
Soap reaches out, and wraps a large, sun-brown hand around your wrist, the one still holding the oyster. Pulling it towards him, he opens his mouth and then tips the flesh from the shell. He slurps it down, noisily, mimicking the sound of his mouth and tongue on your pussy.
“Something like that,” he says, with a sharp, cocky grin.
He changes the sheets. Dims the lights. Plasters himself around you as the storm blows itself out, arm heavy over your waist, thigh and knee nested inside yours.
He’s warm at your back, musky with the mingling aroma of dried sex and sweat.
Sturdy. More real than anything that’s ever put its hands on you.
Johnny, who the sea loved so much it spat him back out. So treasured by the world that a bullet to the brain couldn’t even take him away from it.
Who, by the sound of it, means so much to the people in his life that they would follow him to the middle of nowhere just to keep an eye on him.
Bile churns in your stomach.
next chapter early access
a/n: two chapters left!
Simon, without ever really considering it, places a lot of weight on a name. It's why he likes the separation between Simon and Ghost, why he gets to a point where he calls Soap Johnny, even when no one else does. It's important, what you call someone. There's a lot in a name.
With you, you'd never even know about Ghost -- to you, he's just Simon, and that's all he ever wants to be. He doesn't want those worlds to mix. Simon will do just fine.
But, after you've been dating a while, when you've convinced him to relax enough to lay his head in your lap while you watch tv and you let out a soft little "there you go, baby"?
Well that's something else entirely.
Because he's never been a "baby." He's never been "honey" or "sweetie" or any of those other cutesy little names you come up with, but when you call him those things, it's nice. Sort of relaxing in a way he never knew it could be.
"Baby, can you change the lightbulb for me?" "What's for dinner, baby?" "Right there, baby, don't stop."
He notices, every single time. It makes him want to try it too, to see if it'll give you the same little easy thrill it gives him. But he's not sure what kind of pet name feels right. He turns over words and phrases in his head when he's trying to go to sleep or in the shower -- he'd absolutely never admit this to you -- and he practices, trying to figure out what feels natural, what feels like you.
In the end, all the practice is for naught, because the right one slips out without him even thinking about it.
It's after he comes home from a deployment, exhausted from both everything that happened and from trying to hide his desperation to see you. When he gets home, you take him in your arms, and all the tension, for the moment, anyway, just falls right out of him, and he holds onto you like a lifeline.
"Missed you so fucking much, sweetheart."
He can feel you smile, your face pressed against his chest, and while he is glad to see you seem to like it, he wasn't prepared for how much he'd like it himself.
Because what you call someone matters. He'd spent the first half of his life as Simon, the second as Ghost, and now, as a complete surprise to him, he's getting a third chapter where he gets to be "baby," where he gets to be close enough to you to share these special little names. He gets to know your sweet heart, and it's more than he deserves.
But he'll never, ever stop trying to earn it.
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