Spacecola7 - The Rot Lives Within

I opened a box thing again on Instagram and folks sent me stuff to doodle, and someone's request just unleashed the gay man within me

dark matter | ghost x f!reader

INSTALLMENT TWO — TIME ROT COLLECTION

type: one-shot, part of anthology series, can be read standalone (6.5k)

cw: dark!ghost, mature language and content, mature sexual language and content, mw3 spoilers, death, grief, unhealthy coping mechanisms, dubcon, size kink, manhandling, breeding kink, cumplay, unprotected piv (18+)

You don't know how long it's been. Maybe days, or maybe it's been weeks, you aren't sure, but it's hard to move when there is nothing that waits for you.

All that's left is a box that sits on your kitchen table. It has his name scribbled across the top, and when you opened it up, just seeing the photos of him tucked into the sides was enough to nearly make you sick. You haven't opened it again since. You haven't touched it. When you touch the cardboard, it burns, it stings.

You don't know what you're supposed to do when the love of your life doesn't come home. You don't know what you're supposed to do when there's bills on the table, when half of the bed is empty, when everything that was supposed to happen died along with him.

You used to sit on this very couch and talk about everything you would do and everything you wanted. You used to lay there, your head in his lap, looking up into those baby blues and tell him about what a good husband he would make, how it was going to be so hot watching him fixing the leaky sink and hanging up the new shelves you bought, being the house husband he was always meant to be.

Someone that pretty deserved to be at home all day, baking bread and fixing a vintage car.

He promised you so much. He promised you love. He promised you laughter. He promised you a lifetime of something more.

But there never really was anything more. He never married you. He never proposed. He just fucked you full before every deployment, whispering into your hair as you drooled about how, "I'll see ye when I get back, bonnie, 'n I'll tell ye how much I luv ye."

But he didn't come back. So you really aren't sure now how much he loved you.

You stand in front of the bathroom mirror, fluffing a brush over your cheeks. The makeup helps, but you look dead, and your eyes are dull.

You don't want to go to work, but you can't pay your bills, and Johnny wasn't your husband, so the box in your kitchen stands as a loving gesture from his mother, and that is all he left behind. And when you went to the service and asked for something, for anything, they said it was out of their hands.

You are entitled to no compensation—because on paper, you are nothing to anyone, and you belong to no one. And though his mother kissed you shakily, with tears in her eyes, you couldn't bear to ask her for anything, because she hurts, too, and you are nothing to anyone, and you belong to no one.

So you work; you work, and you don't stop, and you sleep only a few hours before you get up and do it all over again, and even after a long day, you count the pennies in your purse, and it isn't enough. You let yourself get comfortable, you allowed yourself to succumb to a man, a man you loved, and what did it get you?

Fuck all. You have fuck all, and you let a man do it to you.

Fate and destiny are a cruel reality. Unforgiving—they don't care about the choices you make because they happen anyways, and it's hard to be angry when this is how it was always going to be. It doesn't make you hate any less, and it doesn't make the dust collecting on the box any less thick.

When you do gain the courage to touch it again, you have a week left to find a new flat. You don't know where you will go, but you're packing, and you rip the top of the box off as harshly as a band-aid. Your eyes focus on the knick-knacks that Johnny must've kept. A few different sized sketchbooks, the nubs of worn and used graphite and charcoal pencils, a crystal and beaded rosary that his mother gifted him when he first enlisted. You pick up the crinkled and well-loved papers that are stacked at the bottom, and your eyes blur with fresh tears at the ripped out sketches that sit in your hands.

It's you, in different angles. Asleep, staring out at something, smiling at him. He captures your face beautifully, and you can see where he's smudged the shading with a thick finger to cast shadows and light over you. He sketches in exquisite detail—he always has, but he has always had a certain style, a certain eye, that made lead look like real life. 

It’s odd to see what you looked like through his eyes. Bright. Lovely. Soft. He draws with a breath of fresh air, and you can see where his finger has rubbed away all the harsh lines. When you see a few places where the graphite on his thumb has stamped his fingerprint onto the paper, you feel your throat close up. You want to feel those fingers on your face. You want him to brush the hair out of your eyes and look down at you. You want to feel that hand tracing your jawline, your nose, the lid of your eye—you want to feel the warmth that he always radiated, and you want to breathe in the scent of him until you forget the smell of anything else.

You pick up a loved and bound book, with thinner pages that you know can't be a sketchbook. You unwind the leather string on the front, flipping it open, and you swallow thickly when you realize what this is.

A journal. You never knew he kept one.

The first few pages are dated from when he first enlisted, a few years before he met you. He writes just as eloquently as he draws, and you settle into the couch behind you as you read about his enthusiasm joining, the purpose he finally has, the weight of the world lifting off of his shoulders as he thinks about all the things he will be able to do as he rises through the ranks. You let your fingers skim over the words, feeling how his pen has pierced the paper, and you try to imagine him—fresh shaven with less muscle, life in his eyes as he thought about serving his country. You smile a little, but it hurts after a few moments.

You flip a little further, your eyes skimming over times he cursed out his commanding officer, punched a private for sneaking into the women's barracks, the love he has for a detonator that began when he soldered his first pins. His personality shines, and it's like you can hear him talking to you all over again, and when he begins to talk about a love he doesn't know how to handle, you smile to yourself, because you think he's talking about you.

But when you look again, the dates are wrong. You hadn't met him yet, not at this point, and your smile fades when you realize he's talking about someone else.

He never says their name. He writes at length about them, someone who has captured his eye, someone he says he can't have. Someone unattainable, unavailable, and then there is his own reservations. You don't realize until his entries from a few months later that he's talking about a man.

never felt this way before. not about anyone. rosary i always look at is fucking mocking me, i think. i can hear mum, somewhere, telling me to find a good catholic bonnie, but this is real. i know it is, but i don't know what to do about it. not like anyone i've ever met. can't explain the bond. but i look at him, and i think he looks at me, and i just know. i know. it can't be just in my head, can it? i'm not mad. i'm not. but what am i supposed to do?

You flip the pages frantically. There's sketches of hands on one page, hands that hold a handgun, that squeeze a trigger. They're tame sketches, but you feel a little sick because you feel like you're looking at a part of his life that you're not supposed to be looking at. The intimacy of these sketches—just hands, and you feel like they should be censored to your eyes.

The sketches and the words, they morph as time goes on. Sketches of closed eyes. Of blonde lashes. A harsh brow, a scar cutting across a thin lip. There is no softness in these sketches. Johnny draws with an abrasive pencil. It cuts the shapes, jagged edges akin to glass.

i can't tell anyone. i want to tell the whole world. won't let me. want to scream it from the fucking roof that i love you, but you're such a stubborn bastard. so fucking stubborn.

The sketches suddenly become warped. Angry, spiked, and you can see the emotion from how hard he presses the pencil into the page. More hands, and you can’t help but notice how he draws them simply functioning. Hand over wrist. Holding a utensil. Picking nails. These hands tell a story, and you can see the bumps and bruises and the wounds that litter the surface of them—these hands are anything but delicate. They have wrought. They have dug until their fingernails bled. They have been stuck through barbwire, maimed to the point of texture and roughness and the blurring of scar tissue.

don't fucking believe you. it isn't just me.

You're blind for a few moments from the intensity of your tears. You wipe them furiously, you need to know more, you need to know. The dates skip, and you pause on the day that you met.

so bonnie. so beautiful.

Softer sketches. The delicate lashes that are your own, the gentle curve of your pouty lips. You recognize yourself, but only barely, because he draws you like you are out of focus. He draws you as if you are too far away, just out of reach.

she's everything i've ever wanted. so why can't i let it go?

Your bottom lip trembles when sketches of a butterfly overlap skulls. The motifs never disappear, not completely, and it's only obvious what his true feelings are when you smooth a finger down the sketch of a butterfly escaping its cocoon that hangs from the mouth of a discarded skull head.

haunt my fucking dreams. go away. go away. go away. the ring is right there, so why can't i give it to her?

You close it abruptly. It falls to the floor, the cover of it thudding as you cover your face with your hands. Was he thinking of someone else all this time? Every morning, every kiss, every time he looked into your eyes and told you that he loved you—was all of this meant for someone else? Someone he wanted but couldn't have? Someone that just didn't love him back?

You scream. You toss the coffee table. You shatter the flowers that have died, you pick up the box of his things, and you throw it. You watch the papers fly, the books fall, you hear the rattle of his dead memories meet the floor of the home he left behind, and you scream at all of it just to stop, please, stop, stop, stop—

You're not even sure if it's really Johnny you're angry at. Maybe yourself, because you've never really been good enough to be loved by anyone. No one has ever loved you and you only—you've only ever been additional, on the condition of loving another, never enough to be the one and only, and maybe that's your real problem. Maybe the real problem is that you want to die because you always give everything you have, and no one has ever wanted it enough to give you the same.

Maybe you just want too much. Maybe your dreams are too big, maybe it's just that no one wants what you are handing over. Packaged pretty, all shiny and new, but if no one wants it, you shelve that kind of love, and that's where it rots.

Maybe this kind of love died with Johnny. Not the beginning of something, but the reality of it, and now all you can do is accept the things you cannot change and tame the heart inside of you that isn't good enough to be for anyone else.

When you pick up his things off the floor the next morning, you find a scribbled address on the back of a torn sketch. So, you do the kind thing, and you gather his things back into the box, close the lid on what never really was, and you carry it with you out the door.

The door is unmarked. The paint on it is peeling, but you know this must be the place because there's a pair of dark boots caked with mud sitting out by the bottom step. You raise your hand to knock, and you tap it with your knuckles timidly, adjusting your hold on the box in your arms.

A few minutes pass by, but no one answers. You knock again, louder and firmer this time, and it finally swings open. From the dark flat emerges a large man, sticking his head out from behind the chain latched and glaring down at you. You think he's about to close it on you, but then his eyes flicker down, and you know he must read the name scribbled in big letters on the box that you hold.

It’s enough to make him pause. It’s enough to make him stay, rooted to that spot, even if you can tell all he wants to do is sink back into whatever void he came out of.

"Hi," you whisper, and you have no control over how broken the word comes out. "I...I just thought you should have this."

Because he never really loved me. Not really. Not the way he loved you.

The door shuts, and you hear the chain unlatch, and then he opens it wider. He emerges in the doorway, taking up the entirety of the width of it, and he snarls down at you from behind the mask he wears.

He opens his mouth to spit something at you, but then you hold it out to him with shaky hands, and he can see the tears that are coming down your face. You can't control them, he can tell that much, and he reaches out to take the box from you. You look at his hands, and you recognize them immediately. Uncanny, the resemblance, and you recognize the scar that cuts across the knuckles on his left hand. You know if you push his mask down, you could trace with closed eyes the scar he must wear that starts at his nose and ends at his chin.

He doesn’t know it, but you know what he looks like. You know what he is. If he took off that mask, you would see a face you know, even if Johnny never drew the entirety of it at once. Always bits and pieces of him, but you’d know them if you saw them put altogether. You have the puzzle pieces of him in the back of your mind, and you know you could put them back together if you really tried.

He would not be able to do the same for you. The pieces of you are scattered, and you know they are lost, and that there is no getting them back. Johnny took them to grave; you would never ask for them back, anyways.

You don't ask who he is. He doesn't ask you who you are; but when your eyes meet, there is some kind of understanding. Some kind of knowing. You almost don't want to leave—you know he mustn't be kind, not from what you’ve read of him and the way he looks, but Johnny loved him, and you want to cling onto anything that still breathes that might connect you to him. You hate him, but you love him, and Johnny loved this thing, so maybe...maybe—

The door slams shut in your face, and you catch yourself with the step railing as you crumple to sit there, on his dirty step, crying into your hands. You don't know how long you sit there, but it is dark when you drag yourself home.

It is much too dark outside for you to see the shadow that you pick up along the way—and you’re too in your head to realize it never leaves.

When you come home from work, your knees are weak when you see the letter that’s taped to the front of your door.

EVICTION NOTICE.

They give you until the weekend, a courtesy they tell you they don’t normally give to anyone. You aren’t allowed to stay, even if you come up with the money, and you’re in tears as you pack up your flat. The last place you shared with Johnny, and it’ll be gone soon. You don’t know what you’ll do with your things. You don’t know where you will go.

Johnny never married you. You don’t have any family. You’ll have to stuff your car full of as much as it can hold, and you’ll need to toss the rest. You’ll have to—

The knock at your door startles you. You get up off the floor, where you were trying to stuff all your dishes into a small bag. You pull the curtain back on the window beside the door, and your eyes widen when you see a giant man standing at your door. He feels your eyes on him, and he turns his head towards the window, tilting his head to the side menacingly when he looks at you.

You wipe your face, trying to dry the tears on your cheeks. You open the door shakily, poking your head out.

“Hi,” you say. You wish your voice was steady, but it cracks. “Can…C-Can I help you?”

The mask he’s wearing today is different. There’s a skull mouth painted on it, and his hood is flipped up over his head. He seems taller with his boots on, and he takes up nearly the entire width of your doorway. He’s got so much bulk on him—if you reached across and touched him, you know your hand would hit nothing but a solid wall. No give, just pure muscle and fat. His eyes are still dark, and he still looks like the most unapproachable man in the entire world. He clicks his tongue under the mask, and you swallow when he snarls a bit.

He fishes something out of his jacket. You recognize it—Johnny’s journal. He holds it out to you, expectant, and you open the door wider to take it from him. You feel tears come all over again at the sight of it, and you hold the leather to your chest, hugging it. Johnny never married you, but he would’ve taken care of you right now. If he would’ve known you were here, about to live in your car, he would not have hesitated moving you in with him. Getting you into his bed. Shielding you from the world that was much too scary, much too unforgiving. Johnny would know what to do.

Johnny’s dead.

Just as you are about to close the door, a thick boot stops it. You flinch a bit, looking up, and then a big hand presses against your door and pushes it open until it hits the wall. The man cranes his neck to look around you, and he narrows his eyes at the heap of your belongings huddled in the living room of your flat.

You sniffle, shaking your head.

“I’m just…moving.”

You step aside when he moves. He ducks his head just slightly to get through, and you watch as he walks around, taking stock of what’s in front of him. He seems to find what he’s looking for when he sees the notice on your kitchen counter. He snatches it up and and turns it around to face you, and you just stand there, frozen.

“I told you. Moving.”

His house is soulless. White walls. Beige carpet. Grey tiles. There’s one couch, one coffee table, and one TV mounted to the wall. There’s only dishes in the kitchen enough for one person, and he only has one bedroom. It’s the same lifeless place in there, too. His mattress is on the floor, but he has the decency to put a mattress cover and sheet over it. There’s one nightstand, with just a few cables where he must charge his phone, and one lamp. There are no decorations. There is no other furniture. His house is functional, not valuable.

He puts your bag in the bedroom. That settles that.

You cry that first night. You sleep early, curling up under his one measly sheet, and you cry. You cry because you’re sad. You cry because you’re lonely. You cry because you feel like you owe this man now, this stranger who hasn’t told you his name, and you have no idea how you will pay him back. You cry because you miss Johnny, and he never even loved you.

You jump when the bedroom door opens. He walks in, kicking the door shut, and you watch as he strips himself of his jeans and hoodie, tossing them onto the floor. You sit up on your elbows, meeting his eyes, but he doesn’t take off his mask. Instead, he comes towards the bed, plopping down on the mattress next to you, and you pull the sheet up to your chin. You hadn’t anticipated sharing a bed with him, but you’re also too afraid to complain.

“I can sleep…on the floor if—”

A big hand covers your mouth. You’re silenced, startled that he would touch you this way, and you start to cry again when he presses until you are laying on your back again, moving his hand back until it rests behind his head.

“Please—” You hiccup. “Please don’t hurt me.”

He hums at that. Satisfied. Pleased at your reaction. He could pluck your strings right now, and you’d play music. He falls asleep with that thought.

You try to give him money. He never takes it. You try to buy groceries. You find the notes you spent stuffed back into your wallet later. You try to pick up a broom to clean up, and he locks the supply closet after that. The only way you find out his name is when you find his dog tags in the bathroom drawer, because he still hasn’t spoken a single word to you.

Simon “Ghost” Riley. That’s who Johnny really loved.

You don’t know why the sex started—you don’t know why you let him in, not exactly. Simon had been gone, one of his usual spurts of absence that he occasionally had, but he came home earlier than you expected. Simon likes to shower as soon as he comes home, but you are already in there, under the hot water, leaning against the tile as you empty your head of any thoughts. Simon doesn’t knock, and he pulls back the shower curtain even though he sees your silhouette. There are no words exchanged as he comes in, getting under the hot water, and there are no words exchanged when he takes off his mask for the very first time, and he hoists you up against the wall and fucks you into it.

You know this, too. Your hands trace his back, and you can feel every scar you know will be there, and you can taste the same things Johnny said you would taste when you lick over his jaw. Tobacco. Citrus. Animal.

It almost feels like cheating, but you’re too empty inside to be sad about it. It really feels like lying, even though Johnny’s too gone to hear your excuses. At the same time, it feels like getting something back. Not in its entirety, but something close, something that doesn’t feel the same, but feels so good anyways.

You cry again when you realize you like it better. You cry more when you realize that you’re starting to lose your dreams of Johnny in favor of Simon. You see in the dark instead of in blue. At first, you used to mumble Johnny’s name into the pillow. You used to bury your face into it, muffle the sounds as Simon fucked you from behind, two big hands pushing your ass apart as he pulled you back over and over onto his cock. Now your head is turned to the side, and you’re crying Simon’s name, and he’s fucking you harder, getting down onto his elbows, pressing you into the mattress and using your throat as leverage so he can arch your back and get your ass shaking with how firm he pushes his hips against you.

You’re so delicate, but he can’t be nice. He can’t be gentle. He needs to see teeth marks on your thighs and on your back. He needs to taste your blood and your cum and your spit. At first, he thinks he was doing it because he was lonely, too, but now he just wants to eat and eat and eat.

Eat Johnny’s pretty girl. Fuck Johnny’s pretty girl. Keep Johnny’s pretty girl, because how dare he keep this one a secret, and how dare he try and hide her from him? Johnny wrote a lot of things in that journal, but he didn’t talk about Simon’s insatiable appetite, and he didn’t talk about Simon’s rules. He blamed the entire world for his seemingly unrequited love, but the reality was that Johnny was selfish.

Johnny didn’t want to share. He wanted it all for himself, so it’s no wonder he died for it. When your world isn’t in balance, it compensates. Johnny ended up on the wrong side of the scale.

That’s the fucking truth.

Simon’s got you on your knees again. He likes you this way, ass up, face down, on display. On your back, he stacks enough under your back that you’re nearly upside down, pussy in his mouth as he bends you in half and eats it like that. Now, he’s squeezing your hips, pressing down between your shoulder blades, thick tongue inside of you as he teases your ass with his thumb. Johnny used to love that, but you’re such a jumpy girl.

He’s going to fix that.

Johnny is so predictable. Letting you run around, spoiled, never telling you the way it should be. Johnny made you think you were a pretty princess. He probably intertwined your fingers and fucked you in missionary like a good Catholic boy, but soft, delicate things like you don’t need to be reminded of what they are. They need to be so cockdrunk and dizzy that they don’t know anything else but this place right here, in his bed. Simon knows that’s what you really need—to not know the world outside of this bedroom.

Love is useless. Love can be lost. Love comes and goes, it’s subject to change. Time bends it, rusts it like iron, and Simon doesn’t need something else that will slip through his fingers, no. He needs something that is latched onto him forever. He needs to take one of your ribs and absorb it. He needs to taste you on his tongue and between his teeth always. He needs your blood to be his blood, and he needs your eyes to be his eyes.

Marriage is not finality. Love is not permanent. No—it isn’t enough. He couldn’t keep Johnny, and maybe he can’t keep you, but there is something he can give you that will keep you with him. Even if you left, you would stay somehow, some part of you, and he can see it in some distant place.

Once Simon sees something, it’s as good as true. It might as well be real. Simon is something himself of a manifestation, and he realizes now that maybe he never really saw Johnny because it was you hiding in what he couldn’t see.

Everything is in focus now. He knows what he has to do. Johnny was too stupid to see it—to preoccupied with how beautiful you are between the legs, too mindless when he was cock-deep inside of you to understand what he had in his hands. They don’t make things like you. One of a kind. Once in a lifetime. Something that will never be again if you let go, if you look away.

Simon knows all too much about what it means to leave a scar. He understands permanence. It’s why he’s still alive. It’s why he’s got you here, right here, underneath him, wet-faced and sobbing and clenching so tight around him. Your nails are fixtures in his back, holding him here, and he knows that you understand, too. If he asked you, you would think about the answer, but your body knows. It knows who Simon is and what he wants. He’s certain it does because even if he wanted to, your cunt has him tight, barely enough give for him to pull out and push right back in. It doesn’t want him to leave, and he’s glad for it.

You cry so sweet. Blubbers and gentle tears. You want this; it’s evident in the way you claw at him and pull him back in every time he pulls out just enough. When you pull just that hard, he drops onto his elbows, caging you in, and you sob into his mouth as he grinds his pelvis into yours. The wet smack of his thighs has stopped, but the pressure against your clit has you whining so nice. Fuck, you are beautiful, and you look so sad. From the first moment you showed up at his door, you were all big eyes and sadness. You drag around an air of heaviness that hasn’t left, and Simon is so sick of it—Johnny wasn’t man enough to eat you whole, won’t you just fucking let it go?

Maybe Simon did love him, too. Maybe he did love him back. No, he must’ve—that feeling in his chest still hasn’t left. Simon made a thousand excuses. A man like him, simply unloveable. A soldier like him, just too busy and too dedicated to have anything for himself outside of duty. A victim, what a rotten word, but that is what he is; no one can want him, not really. He saw it, in the back of his mind, peeling back layers of himself just for someone to make a face. After everything, after breaking his nails crawling out of an early grave, rejection just might be the thing that finally killed him. Not a bullet, but the sheer pain from the cut of giving a nasty piece of himself over and not even getting everything back.

Johnny was careless. Loving two things at once, pulled in opposite directions. Too distracted by what he couldn’t have that he forgot about how good he really had it—what a fucking dog. Greedy. Naïve. Fucking delusional. Johnny gave up this to chase something that could never be real. It was pathetic. It was stupid.

It was mine.

“Look at me.”

You do. Your eyes, hazy and wet, meet his, and your hands are shaking as you cup his face and sob because yes, yes, yes, please—I need it, it hurts s-so good.

It does hurt. It burns. It steals. It takes. It swallows, like a brush fire against dry land, licking and eating and tearing apart whatever it can reach. Your moans enrage it, and your cunt feeds it, whatever the thing is inside of his chest that is begging to come out.

This isn’t love. This isn’t romance. This is necessity—survival. Without him, you will come apart, and without you, Simon will starve. He used to take bites out of Johnny. Just enough to make the screaming inside of him quiet a little, just enough to be distracted; but he hasn’t eaten in months, and whatever you’re made of is too good to let go of.

This time, he’ll make it permanent. He’ll make it forever. Where you end, where he begins, where his hands have sunk into you, where his teeth are stuck; he’s going to fix himself to this place, and then he’s going to make himself forget how to leave.

You’re buzzing. You’re somewhere else. You feel like you’re floating above yourself, but at the same time, you’re right here. Simon’s so big; he told you he would be, but it’s another thing entirely to have this man inside of you and hitting your squishy cervix. He’s nasty about it, too—he likes putting a big hand on your stomach and pressing; he likes to feel himself inside of you and laugh at how you cry, and he likes the sound it makes when you’ve come, and your thighs are wet, and his skin smacks against yours with a toe-curling squelch.

“‘s mine,” he says, and you whine, and you nod. You don’t know if he’s asking you a question, but you figure he isn’t. Simon isn’t the kind to ask. He just takes what he wants. He always has. When you come back from the dead, consequences don’t apply to you any longer. You’ve cheated reality, and now you get to reap your rewards.

“Yeah.”

Yeah. Yes. Of course. Yes. Yes, Simon, whatever you want, Simon, anything for you, Simon, yes, yes, yes, yes—!

It will take time. As Simon puts his thumb to your clit to hear you sing, he thinks about how it won’t take much of it. You’re already so docile. You’re already in his bed, eating his food, crying with his cock inside of you and your thoughts filled with nothing but white noise and his name.

Simon won’t be like the man before him. Johnny drew you as a butterfly—something in need, but something that would eventually fly away. Fuck that. If there is a light in you, Simon will snuff it out. If he has to keep you from discovering your wings, he will just cut them off. If it’s the blood inside of you that keeps you warm, he will let it drain from the wounds left behind by his teeth because I will keep you warm, I will make it better, no one else, just me—

His index and middle finger in your mouth silence you. You choke on whatever you are saying in favor of sucking on his wet fingers, your eyes crossing a little as he bites down on your ear and pants there. It’s rare to hear him; Simon tends to swallow any noises he makes in favor of concentrating on hitting that same spot inside of you, but you can hear him now. It’s low and rumbly, so much so that you can feel his chest vibrating against yours. A groan—fuck, he sounds so good. To know your pussy feels so good, it’s making him falter is enough to have you just at the cusp of something white-hot and blinding.

You come when he comes. Simon’s other hand has an iron-grip on the side of your thigh, hiking it up around his hips as he comes hot and heavy inside of you. You shake underneath him, sucking hard on his fingers as he presses his pelvis to yours. You can feel it dripping between your thighs, and the heat of it makes you come, too, a sob coming out of you as you spit his fingers out in favor of closing your mouth over his.

He tastes like you. You suck on his tongue softly, lapping it up, and he uses his wet hand to hold your jaw at an angle so he can spit into your mouth and kiss you again. You grip his dog tags hard, tugging him back to you when he tries to look down at where he’s inside of you. He suffocates you when he lays over you, but you don’t care. You need him skin-to-skin. You need his mouth on yours, his cock still this deep, sharing breath and spit and heat. If you lose it, you’ll lose something else, something more, and you can’t lose it again.

His weight crushes you, and you don’t register the significance of one of his hands underneath you and between your shoulder blades. He feels for something that you can’t see, and he kisses you again when he’s satisfied with what he finds. The lack of something. The killing of it. The knowing that you’ve gotten what it is you’ve been searching for all this time.

He holds you like that always. He keeps your eyes on his when he comes inside of you—always wants to look at you when that first spurt of cum fills you entirely. He likes the way your lashes flutter when he brands you. He likes the way you lose the ability to speak. He likes the way your entire body goes rigid and pliant all at once, seizing up and then melting underneath him until it takes no effort to turn you over onto your stomach and do it all over again.

He notices the change before you do. The tender breasts, the warmth of your lower belly. You are wet always now, eager to be bent over wherever you are because the ache between your thighs is tenfold now.

You’re smiling. You haven’t smiled in a long while, and you’re smiling, hips hiked up on the couch, your dress crumpled around your middle as his cum drips down the back of your thighs. Simon licks his lips as he sits back on his heels, thumbing over your puckering hole.

You lay underneath him in your cocoon. Death at your doorstep, and you let him right in. You draw it around you tight, tucked into this blanket of security and warmth and factitious love that you think will hold this time. Simon’s hand draws around your throat, but you easily fall into him. When he squeezes, crushing what you’ve built back up, you sigh with relief, letting yourself fall into his chest and stay there.

When you close your eyes, it feels like something familiar. Like a place you’ve been before. When you open them, it’s gone. Simon is there, staring at your curiously. Your shadow that never leaves. The thing that remains. Time passes, but you know this will stay, you know it won’t go away. When he bends you over again, his hand slides low, cupping your belly, and your mouth twitches—the ghost of another smile. You put your hand over his there and press, feeling the scars you know by memory alone.

You will give him new scars; and these ones will be only for you.

Smooching my cat

I’m fine, girl……

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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sea fog comes, like a river rolls a stone, it's rolling me

Imagine being a succubus that feeds regularly on one John Price. He’s an excellent source of energy— vivid dreams, active imagination, plenty of pent up desires and time spent desperate for the soft touch of a woman— it’s no wonder you come back to him more than a few times a week.

What you don’t know is that John, deep in his ancestry, has a bit of demon blood in him. So he doesn’t get affected by your enchantments in quite the right way. He doesn’t wake up suddenly, convinced it was nothing more than a wild, lustful dream. No, he knows what you are and what you’re doing. And your pheromones are that much stronger

And he’s tired of you running away at first light. Always taunting him with that pink, glowing tattoo right over your womb. So cute, just beckoning him to shove his cock inside you and make it a home for his seed.

So he walks out of the occult shop, talismans in hand, excited for what the look on your face will be when you try to leave him and your wings are bound and body heavy. When he slips that delicate silver chain around your neck, the spell inside humming to life. And when you find out that his demon blood makes you breeding compatible…

Ask Nicely

Summary: You decide to let König have what he wants- and your poor couch suffers for it.

König x F!Reader, 1.1k words

Era: N/A

TW: thigh fucking, sub!König, violation of a couch lol. Temporary and accidental orgasm denial.

Day 3: Thigh kink with König (kink)

It’s hell trying to keep König’s hands off you in general, the mountain of anxiety disguised as a terrifying Colonel and your partner not exactly an easy person to boss around.

You know that the easiest way for him to ground himself is through physical contact, but you didn’t think that would mean sticking his hand up your shirt to grope at soft flesh in the middle of a train station or holding you like a teddy bear in his lap while at the bar. The contact isn’t unwanted, not by any means, but it can be a hindrance- especially given his propensity for the squishier parts of you.

Working in the front garden, for example, is difficult to do when he won’t get his hands off your ass. Cleaning his hard with him nipping at your calves and heels figuratively and literally, the freak.

Forget trying to focus on anything that involves you sitting still because he pounces like a 6’11” puppy, hands and teeth and lips aching for a taste of you. Your thighs take the brunt of it, always bruised by his overeager hands and tacky with his dried spit. In hindsight, maybe the dress was an unintentional provocation, and he was all too quick to take the bait. The second you flopped onto the couch in that creamy dress, his head was buried in your lap. He’s so hungry for a piece of your pillowy flesh that his hood is forgotten, drenched through with slobber as he mouths at the fabric in an attempt to get at you.

“Please, liebling,” König begs as he shoves his head under the flowing skirt, drenching your skin in hungry drool. “Let me. Let me, let me.”

His gigantic hands cling to your legs, forcing them open so he can shove his head in like a curious dog, nipping hard enough you squeak. You didn’t wear any underwear today, which König takes as invitation to bury his nose in your cunt with a long sniff. “Slutty Schatz,” he mumbles to himself as he laps at your core before going back to the real object of his infatuation- your thighs. It’s enough to draw a needy whine from your own lips.

“Wait.”

Your heads paw and push at his head to try and detach him and for a few moments, it’s like trying to move a brick wall before he relents with a tortured sigh. “Ja?”

Once you can catch your breath, albeit still being driven insane with each needy puff of König’s panting still under your skirt and keeping you soaked and needy, you speak. “Ask nicely. If you… if you ask me nicely, I’ll let you fuck my thighs. This one time.”

Never in your life have you seen the Austrian move so quickly, yanking his head from between your legs and looking at you with near-feral eyes as pleas flow from his lips in a messy combination of German and English that you only catch some of. “Bitte, bitte, do not tease, ja? Will be so good, won’t even make a big mess, ich werde so gut sein-“ You have to capture his cheeks, still hidden under that drenched hood, and squeeze to get him to stop. “König. Breathe. Get some air, calm down.”

The whine he lets out is enough to make you want to ride him until he’s nothing but a sobbing submissive mess, but you relent. “You can do it okay? Yeah? Let’s just-“ König doesn’t let you finish your sentence, using that strength he does his best to play down to spin you around and bend you over the back of the couch, so far over you have to splay your hands out over the back to keep from tilting over. “Will be so good liebling,” he pants and whines. The sound of a belt being fumbled with is audible before the sound of a zipper and suddenly the hot and soaked tip of your partner is pressing into the back of your thigh. “I will even clean the mess, ja? Make you cum too, I swear, Schatz. Now stay.” “Wait König, not on the couch-“

He ignores you entirely, manipulating your thighs to be squeezed shut and tight before pushing himself between them with a moan of pure desperation. “Ah-! Danke, danke, Schatz, danke- ah!” The shove of him between your inner thighs has you moaning as well, the hot thickness of König slick with pre-come shoving between the soft flesh has him grinding against your core, coaxing arousal to coat the both of you and ease his thrusts. “Fuck-”

Each thrust gets rougher from him until you’re relying entirely on gravity and the one hand he has on your waist to keep you from tipping over the couch, the other preoccupied keeping your thighs nice and tight.

It’s filthy and debauched, but fuck, it feels good. Although König is clearly getting more out of it than you are, based on the way you’re nearly immobile with his heavy weight pinning you down. The couch back is pressing into your ribs, but the pleasure is enough to forget the pain. “Pretty fucking thighs,” König whimpers into your ear, huffing and puffing as his hips slam into yours with a slap of flesh. “Look so good with my cock between them, liebling. Danke, danke, danke- I’m… werde abspritzen, fuck, going to p… ah! Paint this pretty skin white. Like this, Schatz?”

“K- König,” you whine, clawing at the couch fabric. That delicious heat is curling up your thighs, so close. So close…

There’s a hot spurting between your legs, thick creamy cum coating the insides of your thighs as König moans your name and the couch creaks and snaps, one of the legs collapsing under the abuse of your bodies. His hands are tight enough to leave dark purple marks, which you’re becoming aware of as your orgasm is snatched from you with a pathetic sob. His hips slow and he drops heavy down on top of your body, just short of crushing you like a bug under a boot. You can’t help but feel cheated getting your orgasm stolen, but at least he got off… “Shhh, Schatz,” he whispers into your ear once he catches his breath, brushing your hair back to press soft kisses to your temple and cheekbone. “Sh. You will get yours, I won’t leave my liebling hanging, hm? Shhh. You will get to come, baby.” A desperate noise pulls from our throat before you speak in a shaky tone. “Gonna need a new cou-” When König uses the combination of fluids to slide into you, bottoming out in one go, the last coherent thought you have is that at least the broken couch’s upholstery is spared any more filth.

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CW: explicit sex.

Simon’s never really been into movies. Or television. Books, comics, music—it’s never been his thing. Too much fluff. Too much noise. But when it comes to Sunday mornings? That’s when he gets his real entertainment. Birdwatcher, the fellow.

And no, it’s not some nature documentary or a wildlife show. He’s not interested in birds perched on trees or fluttering about. Simon’s into his bird.

You.

The sunlight pours in, streaming through the curtains and hitting your body just right as you move above him. He’s laid back on the bed, hands behind his head, the sight of you doing everything for him. The way you roll your hips, grinding down on him with slow, deliberate control—fuck, it’s all he can focus on. You’re everything he wants, everything he needs in that moment. His eyes track every little movement, the way your cunt sucks him in every time you rock back. Tight. Wet. Perfect.

Your moans, the little gasps you let out when he hits that spot—he could fucking live off it. You're magnificent, and he knows it. The way your body moves, the way your hips bounce up and down, you're giving him a show he'd pay for if he had to.

“Should be charging me for this view, love,” he mutters, his voice rough and low, watching as your body moves like it was made just for him. You’re his, and he’s taking it all in, relishing in every inch of your skin. You’re bouncing on him like you own him, and god, you do. Everything about you in that moment is fucking perfect, and Simon’s losing it, his cock twitching inside you as you get rougher, faster.

Every ounce of him is tuned into you, watching, listening, feeling the way your cunt grips him, pulling him deeper, tighter. And he can’t help but curse, a smile tugging at his lips as you move just the way he likes.