Spacecola7 - The Rot Lives Within

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

Addition to this one because I’m so unwell for this woman, you have no idea

Amira of House Karim comes into your life with courting gifts from her brother and heavy eyes that feels, see right through you.

There is one short, almost non-existent, moment when she blinks, as if stunned, as if she was expecting anyone but you.

She had a long way, travelling from a country where sun in the sky is hot enough to bring people to their knees, where neighbouring kingdoms do their best to ravage her home, where people speak in language so old it’s sacred.

Amira of House Karim does not give you her name — she is tight-lipped and stern, soft accent of hers bellies the steel of her character.

Amira of House Karim doesn’t want to make friends, she is not here for pleasantries and tea parties, she does not enjoy the blatant flaunting of wealth from the high lords that smirk in her face and laugh behind her back.

Amira of House Karim is a woman in a place where women are so rarely considered, the steel of her character seen as a sin rather than an advantage.

High lords sneer that no one would take a woman like that as a wife.

You catch just a glimpse of her rage when she muses “I wouldn’t take any of you as a husband either”, her eyes cold and heavy, her back straight as an arrow.

Amira is the diamond of her house, amira is the best there is and the example of proper lady.

When she wants to be it, of course.

You hide your smile behind your sleeve, looking in away when one of the lords stutters in her presence.

Not noticing the way amira’s eyes linger on you.

Thoughtful, curious, contemplative.

Amira of House Karim does not understand how in a place like this exists someone like you. She doesn’t understand how you can live like that.

How you can live with that.

How you manage to keep getting back up even after these greedy lords, these fools, these men try to topple you any chance they get.

This is undignified behaviour, princess, you shall not allow anyone look down on you. You shall do better.

Amira says like it’s easy, like she knows your court better, like anyone can be the diamond.

You just hum, finishing up your embroidery and looking up at the face of hers. She is beautiful in a way that makes you tongue-tied and slow, in a way that tugs on something inside of you slowly unraveling, in a way that makes you want things you shouldn’t.

Because amira is not here to make friends, she doesn’t like you and she clearly doesn’t think much of you.

And still you follow her to the gardens, ignoring worried whispers of your ladies-in-waiting, ignoring your knight and closing the gates behind you.

They don’t understand what amira feels.

They don’t understand how much it hurts to be reminded time and time again that no matter how smart and royal you are, no matter how confident and educated, how beautiful and capable — first and foremost you are a jewel of the house.

Not the head of it.

Amira of house Karim doesn’t look at you when you sit down next to her, doesn’t speak to you, doesn’t respond to your questions.

Amira doesn’t want you here.

What can you do, princess? She saw the way you smile to these men, she saw the way you make peace and the way you compromise even if you are the one on whose feet they step on.

Don’t you have any dignity? Does your royal blood not heat at their casual cruelty?

Don’t you have any honour, princess?

You let her pour it all out, you silently listen, your eyes distant as you watch the water fountain.

This whole garden is a gift for you — the only daughter, the pearl of the family, the favourite child of the king.

But the king is just a man, even if that man is your father.

King believes garden is more suitable gift than the library or the stables, king believes you should be wed before you are out of your prime, king believes that he knows what’s better.

And he never asks.

Why would he, right? Kings rarely ask, that’s not their prerogative, that’s not how it works, you learned that a long time ago.

Amira of House Karim hates everything your homeland stands for.

Amira of House Karim hates this she doesn’t hate you.

You, with your rows of pearls and bright eyes and soft whispers of witty comebacks you are not allowed to say. Glimmers of a person behind the beautiful empty portrait. Cracks in the fine porcelain of a royal doll your father adores.

You, with your long skirts and braided hair and gardens filled to the brim with roses-roses-roses.

Red and white and yellow and gorgeous pinks and wonderful magentas. Every possible colour, every single variety. Each one with thorns sharper than the previous one.

Must be expensive to take care of this many flowers, amira says in passing and the smile on your face — delicate, sharp and fleeting — stops her in her tracks.

You have no idea, you say, suddenly throwing away all the titles and honorary suffixes, pearls around your throat a heavy collar.

Pearls around your throat a gorgeous reminder of your position.

Amira tilts her head to the side, one of her braids siding off her shoulder, her eyes — the velvet of the night sky, the dark soil in which your roses grow, the promise of privacy you are so not allowed nowadays.

But you have been utterly perfect all your life.

You deserve a little break, don’t you?

There is a small pause before you offer amira your hand and pull her out of the ballroom, your skirts heavy, her palm in yours a steady weight that grounds you.

Something shifts that day. Something small that gives way to unavoidable change.

Amira of House Karim watches you whenever you don’t look, her fingers careful as she rebraids your hair, her lips cool and soft when they press to the nape of your neck.

To your shoulder, to your vertebrae, to the vulnerable spot between your shoulder blades.

Amira of House Karim waves off your maids and helps you with your corset herself, her fingers lacing it up.

Her fingers lingering on your waist, heat spreading under your skin, your cheeks warming up when she smiles like she knows something you don’t.

Like she finally sees something she likes.

Amira of House Karim doesn’t like your court, your kingdom, your knight and your father.

Her fingers dip between your legs late at night, coaxing all these little sounds that she drinks in, holding each one between her teeth like a pearl she has a pleasure of swallowing.

Amira’s name is Farah and she didn’t come to make any friends, she says. Her fingers trace idle patterns on your soft belly, gliding up to press her while palm under your breast.

Holding your heart in hand.

“So we aren’t friends?”, there is a small crack in your voice, pearls on your throat a choking reminder of how much you do not amount to no matter how hard you try.

Farah lies in bed with you, her head on the same pillow, your heart in her palm when she kisses you for the first time. Properly. Like she means it.

“We aren’t friends, princess”, she breathes out softly and wraps her arms around your waist, smiling at the way your whole face lights up.

You are the prettiest pearl of the court, the sharpest thorn in the garden, the most sensitive princess Farah has ever encountered.

“Would you let me take you away?”, she murmurs one night, her fingers moving inside of you in a rhythm that melt your spine and clouds your head. “I could bring you home with me. Could show you the other life there is to live”, Farah breathes out quietly, her eyes the velvet that wraps around your body, her eyes the soil in which you bloom like never before.

There are no words coming out of your throat, no sentences left in the empty bright place of your head, your thighs falling open for her, your heart pulsing against her palm when she unravels you again.

Amira of house Karim didn’t come to make friends.

Good thing that she never considered you one.

Good thing Farah of House Karim wants you as a wife.

peristalsis - viii - epilogue

selkie!soap x reader. strangers to "lovers." rebirth. mommy issues. semi-public sex. breeding season. smut. pregnancy reference. the end. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

Your pelt is not the same as Johnny’s.

Its greys are subtler than his paint-splash riot; nearly a solid dove, sparsely freckled with dots of charcoal. It’s lighter in your hands than you think a second skin should be—sometimes it feels so gauzy, so filmy, that you fear to tear it simply by wrapping it around your waist.

(Where it belongs.)

You can’t bear to part with it. You must be touching it at all times, fingers idly rolling a few soft strands of fur, palms smoothing out the wrinkles over your lap. Sometimes you find yourself staring at it, never knowing how long you have been until you come out of the trance with a jolt, neck aching and stomach growling.

You have no idea how Johnny went without his for even a day—the thought of ever putting yours down feels like abandoning a days-old infant.

Truly, though, the real infant is you.

The world touches your senses as if they are brand-new. Every sound is sharper. Every color is brighter. The world has come into focus in such a way that you are surprised you ever thought you could see it clearly before—nothing blurs in the periphery anymore.

It’s as if you have been completely reset. Every nerve ending tuned toward decadence. Everywhere you look, you find something that captivates you.

It makes you dizzy with rapture.

He is terribly amused by it, Johnny. He’s amused by all of it. As you settle into your new self, he watches you quiver and shake on new, coltish legs, and grins amiably at your frustration, quick to smooth over your frustration with his mouth on yours.

He’s been through it, after all. More than once, even—he has two resurrections, to your one.

And you’re quick to accept the appeasement he offers. Your appetites now yawn wide for anything you can fit inside of them, and you are voracious. You bite at him when he kisses you, which only makes him laugh more, and then he drags you down to the floor to rut like he knows you need to.

“I’m going to kill you someday,” you snarl at him, more than once, held against him back to front. “You did this to me, you fucking asshole.”

He grinds his cock deeper into you every time, touching some hidden nerve that has you clenching desperately around him, writhing with every limb as he laughs into your ear. “I could always pull out, bonnie, y’want me to do that?”

You claw at his naked hips behind you with the sharp tips of your nails, digging trails into the sheen of sweat coating his skin. “I’ll fucking kill you if you do.”

You’ve hissed and spat for too long to remember how to speak gently to him, but Johnny takes it in stride. He fits his teeth around your neck and cups the soft parts of your body with hands that can’t seem to get enough of the way your flesh spills between his fingers; when you spasm around him, howling your climax, he wrenches you against him with an iron grip and finishes deep inside of you moments later with a torn moan, thighs and hips hot and flush along your backside.

You threaten to castrate him if he pulls out anytime soon after. He kisses the indentations of his teeth and smooths his spread hand over your belly.

You end up with him, like this, more often than not. He always chuckles at your antics, your clenched teeth, the red lines and half-moons you leave on his back and thighs. Less with amusement than satisfaction—because these days, you don’t walk around without the bruises of his grasp painting your flanks, or the arch of his bite etched into your neck.

He’s been alone, too. He was alone from the start. All of a sudden awake to the world, unsteady with awareness, and so hungry all the time it must have felt like he could never be full—

And he hadn’t had anyone, not like you have him, to hold him in the throes of it.

You catch a look in his eyes, every now and again, and see the echoes of that time. It glints like a shard of sea glass catching rare sun beneath a wave. Dulled edges—he can think of it without hurting anymore. He can remember the craving without succumbing to its dissatisfaction, without falling into the gall welling in his stomach at the injustice of it. This was not always the case, but watching you, now, balms the ache in a way nothing before ever had.

You know this without his needing to explain, and you know it like scenting petrichor in the air. All you have to do is meet his gaze, and you know.

And he knows, too. Everything. You cannot see him without him seeing you, and he’s been looking at you with the kind of eyes you now possess for much, much longer. There is no depth within yourself that you can hide from him in.

He can look at you and know you’re hungry. He can watch the way you wave one hand and know you’re antsy. You can begin a sentence, and he knows the end of it without you having to finish.

It can only flay you to the bone. You are known. From the best to the worst parts of you, Johnny knows them like he knows the creases in the palms of his own hands. He knows the yawning chasm in you that near-overflows with your want, and he does not hesitate once at the precipice on his way to diving into it.

It pulls your jaw tight. You can only shudder with fever at the exposure, and reach for him. Again and again. Swallowing his laughter down like medicine.

John Price, when he finds out, heaves an enormous sigh of relief even your newly-heightened senses couldn’t see coming.

Your new vision peels back the gruffness. The gaze he has fixed on you, this whole time, has not been the apprehensive criticism of a lover’s apathetic friend. Instead, it is the concerned look of a stranger, one who gives a damn about what happens to a woman all alone on a side of the world to which she, until very recently, did not belong.

It had been invisible to you before; a wavelength of color your old eyes were unable to perceive. Now, you see so much of him that you wonder how you could have possibly missed it.

You see his exhaustion. His own loneliness, in self-imposed exile, one eye always on a man he fears will find a convenient cliff to jump off of in a fit of despair. You see sleepless nights, and notice for the first time a gold band on his ring finger, scuffed, in need of a good polish—if only he would take it off long enough to clean it.

“I’m sorry,” you say to him, out of nowhere, meeting the cool blue of his gaze. He doesn’t seem surprised at your understanding. He only nods.

“Ain’t been easy,” he allows.

But now you’re here. He’s not the only one Johnny has anymore. You can see the weight lift from him the moment you tell him you’re staying.

He goes to his office at the back of the pub with a lightened stride and returns, a little while later, with a stack of papers in his hand that he drops on the bar in front of you.

“Take care of the place,” he tells you with a heavy pat to your shoulder. “And don’t let Soap off easy. I’m going home.”

Price leaves you there with the deed to the pub and a casual wave over his shoulder. You do not see him again—though he’s left his phone number in one of the margins.

“Oh, aye?” Johnny says when you tell him, later that night as he’s boiling lobsters for dinner.

He doesn’t respond for a laden moment. You watch your report pass over him like a gentle wave; you see where it could build, where it could swirl up into something bigger, harder, angrier—but it doesn’t.

His back tightens, and then loosens, and he turns to grin at you over his shoulder.

“Barry, there’s a wall in there I’ve been dyin’ to knock down, and he wouldnae let me. Place is too claustrophobic, ask me.”

You arrange the silverware, letting his placidity wash over you.

About a week later, you drive Johnny’s truck somewhere with cell service, and call your mother.

The landscape of her emotions changes as rapidly as an ocean storm; elation and relief, to finally hear your voice. Hope when she asks you when you’re coming home. Confusion—when you tell her you aren’t.

Johnny explained it.

“We canna go far from the ocean, hen. Not for long. It won’t feel…right. I’ve tried. You get an itch, ken? You can ignore it at the start. But it willna go away, and it willna be denied, either. It’ll drive you mad if you don’t go back. So you canna stay away.”

And you’d known immediately what he’d meant—

You can feel it on the edge of the periphery. A lodestone in your belly points in its direction, always. You could close your eyes, start walking, and find yourself on the shore, pelt already in your hands. Sometimes, you find yourself waking in the middle of the night with the sound in your ears, legs twitching restlessly. You feel too hot and too cold at the same time, and thirsty, all over your body rather than just in your throat.

Any thought of moving further inland inspires an existential panic you can’t explain. The notion of a fifteen-hour flight, and landing somewhere that hasn’t seen an ocean for at least a million years, makes your skin feel so tight around your bones that you have to run to the nearest shoreline just to make sure the sea is still there.

You’re on a jetty right now, in fact, watching the water lap against the stones. It was the only thing you could think of that would give you the strength to make the call.

You cannot go home. You know now that somehow, you’d always expected to, deep down. You’d return to the house you grew up in, pet the old family dog. Meet for brunch at the same hole in the wall you’ve gone to for years.

Sometimes the price you pay to become something more does not reveal itself until it’s too late.

So you cry with your mother over the phone, when you explain that it’s best if you stay. You tell her that coming back would only hurt you if you tried, and this time, you aren’t even lying to her.

You don’t know if she’s actually comforted by the conciliatory offer you make of your new job tending bar—she doesn’t need to know you own the place yet—but she sniffles, and puts a brave face on it.

“You always did want to live somewhere else,” she offers, watery—but glad, you hear, that you’re alive.

You bite your lip.

From her, there will be no begging for you to come home. No entreaties of love or need.

When you say goodbye to her, you cry some more—but it isn’t the storm that used to claim you. You wrap your arms around yourself and squeeze, pinch the soft fur of your pelt and roll it between your fingers as you allow yourself to shake and weep, and when you catch your breath, you dry your face and drive back to the cottage, where Johnny is making lunch.

That night in bed, he holds you gently in his arms, rocking his hips into you as you cling to him with your fingernails.

“Don’t leave me,” you whisper in his ear.

He kisses the corners of your eyes before new tears can fall, and tightens his arms around you.

Each day you go to the sea.

It tugs at you, like a child tugging the hem of your shirt. Like a current pulling you outward. You wake every morning thinking not of breakfast, or the day ahead, but of that swaying world, slow and vast, hugging the edges of the land to coax it, eternally, back into the depths.

There is no serenity, now, like the serenity of the water. To enter the ocean is also to let it inside you; the barriers between yourself and the rest of the world thin out. You give some of yourself away, and receive something new to settle in the empty spaces left behind.

You think you understand now why Johnny is always smiling.

The cold no longer stings when you bare your skin to it, down in the cove. The salt-wind of the incoming tide is soft against you as you fold your clothes, beckoning as you tuck them beneath a large rock.

Johnny strips beside you, less careful, balling everything up in an untidy mass, until you glare at him. The intended admonishment falls flat as your glare turns into something sweeter, as the dark hairs on his chest lift with goosebumps.

He grins at you, seeing the shift. “Here, hen?” he teases as he obediently tidies his shirt and kilt. “Out in the open?”

Out in the open.

You draw him to you, dragging him down into the sand; the joining is quick and hard, spurred by the burgeoning need to go under. You cage his ribs with your knees as you ride him, breasts against his chest as you take his mouth without art or finesse. Johnny digs his fingers into the meat of your ass and helps you along with quick, forceful thrusts, and your orgasm prompts his own, inner muscles pulling him deeper as you pant and moan.

Primal. Without artifice. You exchange hot breaths through open mouths as you speak with your eyes, the ocean-blue of his gaze pulling you in. You grind together even after finishing, prolonging it, displacing a little longer the moment that your bodies must separate.

You have him every day, too. Often more than once. He is as essential a need as the sea, and he gives as freely and as frequently as you ask.

After, you both rise, and help to dust the sand away from each other’s bare skin.

Suddenly, you wonder aloud, “If I get pregnant—what’s it going to be?”

Johnny goes still, the hand on your shin stopping mid-sweep. Then, eyes crinkling, he barks a laugh. He kisses your knee and, as he rises, kisses your mons, then your navel, your sternum—

Then the reluctantly smiling curve of your mouth.

“Wouldnae mind findin’ out,” he says, stepping away from you, and walking backward toward the ocean.

His gaze does not leave you once it rises to meet him. It crests around him, embracing him, vibrant and alive and rushing toward you.

You draw your pelt over your head, and follow Johnny into the waves.

a/n: I'm going to put my final thoughts in a separate post. This is the end. Thank you so much for reading!!

you’re in his lap in the back of the transport truck, legs spread over his thighs, the rumble of the engine covering the wet sounds between your bodies. he’s still got half his gear on—vest, mask, gloves—like he couldn’t be fucked to wait.

his voice is low, hot against your ear.

“knew you’d let me have it. soon as i saw you, i knew.”

his hand’s around your throat, not tight—just there, just a warning. your head’s tipped back against the wall, trying to breathe, trying to take it, but he’s fucking into you like you’re his to use.

“look at you,” he mutters, cock buried deep. “so fuckin’ needy for it. all that mouth, but you open up like a good little slut when i get you alone.”

his thumb wipes the drool from your lip, smears it across your cheek.

“that’s mine too.”

The way Ghost laps at your pussy after coming back from a months long deployment has you on the brink of insanity. Each rub of his balaclava (hastily pulled up to the nose) against your clit burns in just the right way, your soft cries falling on deaf ears. He slobbers at you like a damn dog, devouring with a sense of worship only a man who has known God could. Pushing his tongue as deep inside of you as possible, testing your soft insides with an ebb and flow as your hips buck against his face. It’s only when he moves back up to your clit and sucks that it becomes too much, the soft bite of his teeth coaxing a strangled sound out of your throat as you orgasm. He had missed this.

NOOOOOO THE END? NOOOOOO

Daughters with Soft Underbellies

john price x fem!reader | cowboy/outlaw x preachers daughter | masterlist

Chapter Thirteen: shadows

tw: violence

Sleep does not come easy. 

Not even the comfort of a plush mattress can make the weight of slumber pull you beneath brackish waves, deep enough for the dreams to fester and swirl like poison in your mind. You lay flat on your back, eyes glued to the ceiling. It is dark, but nothing shines. The stars do not comfort you tonight. 

You spend the late hours of the night listening to muffled conversations that bleed through the walls as people mill about outside. Drunkards attempting to stumble back home. Theatre goers and prostitutes dragging men back behind closed doors. You hear their debauched moans in the room above yours, the way the headboard beats against the wall—there is no God in Heaven above, just a cruel, sacrilegious man. 

While the heat inside of you tells you that you ought to be scandalized, you can only feel rage. It boils over, still upset from dinner. John’s easy smiles can only placate you for so long before you’re brutally reminded about the blood that soaks his hands. Innocent men. Families torn to shreds. 

How long until your blood joins them? 

In the morning, breakfast is served downstairs in a private room. Soap and Riley smell strongly of lingering alcohol and sweat—Soap’s face turns so green you worry he might spew all over the skirt of your dress. Kyle yawns so often that you’re surprised he doesn’t fall asleep at the table, but those wide open sighs fade into a cheeky grin when John asks him how late he was out with some woman named Sofia. 

John. 

You do not look or speak to him for the entire meal.

He scarcely seems to believe you’re even at the table. 

It isn’t long before you’re put to work. Laswell returns to the hotel to give you a more in depth tour of the rooms while John vanishes into the mess of a city that is Grand Hollow. The building is bigger on the inside than it appears on the out, with endless corridors for housing and closets and kitchens that appear out of thin air. When your mind seems to swirl too much from the mass amount of information being shoved into your head, Laswell decides on a job that’s better fitting for a woman of your nature. 

Laundry. 

In a courtyard behind the hotel that sits next to a fetid alley, there is a small building dedicated to cleaning the linens. Inside, you find large wooden buckets that seem to be ten times larger than the bath you used  full to the brim with bedding. They soak in lye, breeding an aroma that smells peculiarly like roses, freshly cut from flowering bushes.

Several women work in other sections of the building, each wiping sweat from their brows as they beat the cloth into submission. Copper pots over fat fires boil water where women poke at them with sticks. Long washboards are used to scrub deeper stains from the bedding before they’re wrung out through a strange metal contraption that presses the water from the linens through two rollers. 

“It’s called a wringer,” Laswell explains upon seeing your narrowed brows. “It’ll be your best friend. Trust me.” 

For two weeks, you spend your days in this blistering building. It only takes one day for your hands to begin to dry and crack from the scalding water and unforgiving soap. Worsening around your knuckles, you find it difficult to grip your cutlery at dinner as your skin feels as if it’s stretching with each bend of your finger. 

When you begin to bleed into the cleaning water, a woman who you’ve only heard been referred to as Nonna sighs and shakes a bony finger at you. Thinking she’s mad, you do not argue or fight her as she drags you away from the water and sits you in a rickety wooden chair. 

She leaves for ten whole minutes before she returns with a small jar. Wordlessly, she slathers a pale yellow, fatty substance across your hands. It seeps into every crack that’s burrowed in your skin with a strong flowery aroma. Lavender, you realize. 

“Lanolin,” Nonna says. 

You hum. “How ironic.” 

On Sundays, you rest. It’s something Laswell forces you to do, but it’s not something that seems to be upheld by the other women. Still working throughout the day, spines curved over buckets and boiling water, she says it’s so that you may still go to church and enjoy your day of rest. 

It is—you realize—one of the few things that is familiar about Grand Hollow. Though it is a baronial building clad in pearl-white paint, and full to the brim of rooms that could fit the entirety of your small church back in Penmosa, it is still A House of God. You still feel His presence in the very marrow of the walls that creak like old bones that hum with the choir as they sing praise. 

So you sit in the pews with your Sunday best on, head lowered and fingers intertwined as the preacher teaches his lesson. Reciting scriptures. Raising his hands to the congregation. He’s dressed better than your father usually does. His voice is softer, too. A true shepherd caring for a flock. 

On the first day that you spent in that unfamiliar house of worship, you had to fight the terror that plagued you as you meandered out of the church. Each heavy step behind you felt like your father’s. Waiting, and impatiently so, with his hand grasping a stick and his tongue sharpened enough to draw blood. But there is no ichor to soak the floorboards that you can smell, and the only time the preacher looks at you is to smile. 

You didn’t think they could. 

Today is different. Your confidence and love soar like whiskey in your veins as your lips part to sing with the choir. There is comfort to be found in the fact that the hymns you grew up loving have followed you all the way out here in this strange, unfamiliar land. Closing your eyes, you sway to the angelic voices and the sonorous clinking of the piano, shoulders nearly knocking with the strangers seated on either side of you. 

When you were a child, your mother used to sing like this. Lost in the tune, melody carrying her away to some far off land. Sometimes you would get worried that she would float away—that feathered wings would sprout from her back and carry her upwards, too far for you to reach. To prevent it, you’d always hold her hand when you sang. Even now your fingers twitch with bitter yearning. 

The very moment she felt your little fingers poke her hand, she’d smile. It’s how you knew she was still there with you. Still within reach. 

But when she opened her eyes, everything would vanish. Even her smile. 

On the way back to The Twin Rose Hotel, you still find yourself humming old tunes that have long since been engraved in your mind. A self soothing habit of yours that you’ve cultivated for many years behind closed doors, forehead pressed against the wall behind your bed, knuckles tapping on the worn wood waiting for an answer. 

It isn’t long before someone is joining you in your humming. Curious bleating from the sheep mother and her lamb cut through the streets, snagging your attention as you cross through an intersection. Surprised to see them still here, you pause on the corner as the lamb butts heads against the lamp post. Their wool is greying—no longer the stark white that they were once before, now muddied with the grime of the city, and what you think might be blood or rust. 

After spending so much time here, both the ewe and lamb have grown more courageous around humans. The mother tenderly nips and licks at a woman’s hand as she crouches to pet her, rubbing the nub on the top of her head. The lamb chews on the hem of her dress, making her chuckle before weaning the creature off of the fabric. 

You smile. It is comforting to know that you are not the only wild thing here. 

Your sore feet welcome the sight of the hotel as you wipe the sweat on your palms off on the skirt of your dress. Though you’ve spent a few weeks here in Grand Hollow, you are not yet used to the rigid stone beneath your soles. In Penmosa, there are only patches of grass, slimy stretches of mud, and long packed dirt, leaving nothing but a mess of trails to follow until you’ve done enough circles to rival the rotations of the moon around the earth. 

What little reprieve you find in the open mouth of the hotel’s beckoning doors dissipates like fine mist the moment your eyes settle on the sparse inhabitants of the pseudo-restaurant on the main floor. There are familiar faces—Laswell, her wife, and unfortunately, John Price. 

It’s difficult to look at him without seeing the bounty that hangs over his head, held by the very same rope he ought to be hung with. He stares at you, cerulean eyes cutting across the room with the same sharpness as a speeding bullet. Fear strikes through your chest, then frustration. A bitter culmination of rage and confusion festers in your stomach, and though your tongue darts out as if to speak, your throat closes before you can make a fool of yourself. 

“Oh, Lamb!” 

Luckily, you are temporarily saved from John’s biting gaze as Lottie rushes away from the table, feet quickly tapping along the floor like a dog with too-long claws. The scent of rose washes over you, thick as if you’re in the midst of a garden. Wordlessly, she pulls you in for a hug, arms surprisingly tight around you as she clutches you to her chest. 

“Oh, Lamb. Tell me! Tell me!” Releasing you, Lottie quickly does a little spin with her arms held out against her sides like a doll. She stops, gaze back on you, grin wide enough to nearly slice across her face. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” you repeat, stunned. 

“About the dress, of course!” 

Blinking, you give her outfit a quick once over as you fold your hands in front of you. Truly, her dress is a marvelous work of art, one you don’t even want to attempt to put a price on. A thick petticoat sits beneath swathes of blush pink fabric trimmed with delicate white lace and full pockets. Her bodice is embellished with tiny, handsewn roses and stitched stems to match with it. It’s as if a garden had died and was reincarnated into a human being. 

“That’s a mighty fine dress,” you say, astonished. “Real fine, Miss Lottie.” 

“Oh, thank you!” she squeals. She takes your hand into her own as her feet excitedly stomp against the ground, unable to keep still. “Katie bought it for me! Isn’t that so sweet of her? We ought to get you one, too. A nice, proper dress. Doesn’t that sound fun?” 

You’re only able to talk about the prospect of dress shopping with Lottie for a short while before Laswell approaches and steals her away, chuckling as she mentions something about work upstairs. Feet following after them, you only make it halfway to the stairs. John Price, the inconvenient beast that he is, creates a bottleneck before you, blocking your path. 

“Afternoon, Lamb,” he greets. Though you’ve avoided him for the past two weeks, he doesn’t look much different. Still cleanly cropped, still holding himself with the same self-importance he always has. 

“Mr. Price,” you say bluntly. 

A fork in the road—that’s all you try to see him as. Something to sidestep. An obstacle to ignore. Yet the moment you move to go around him and up the stairs, you find him in front of you again, always in your way. 

“Do you have a moment, Lamb?” he asks. His voice is low, wary of listening ears. 

“I’m very busy on Sundays,” you say, half sarcastic.

John’s chuckle is crass, and it sends a shiver down your spine as he reaches for your arm, fingers digging into your bicep. “I’m sure your god won’t mind a break from your kvetching for one moment.” 

He doesn’t bother to wait for your response before his thumb presses against your artery, guiding you away from the stairs and toward the back of the room where the bar lays. You do nothing but huff and puff like an annoyed dog as he drags and seats you on a stool. Though there is no one to tend to the bar, John takes the liberty upon himself as he stalks to the line of liquor and beer bottles that line the shelves. It’s hardly lunch time, but he’s not at all ashamed of pouring himself a glass of whiskey. 

“I have a proposition for you.” He’s got the glass in his hand, pinched between his middle finger and thumb, pinky supporting the bottom. 

You stare at him, blunt and dull, hands folded in your lap and back straight as if this conversation is below you. “What is it?” 

As John’s lips wrap around the rim of the glass, he raises his eyebrows at your tone. Whatever malicious words he wishes to spew at you gets swallowed down with his whiskey. “The boys and I need a little help with an errand.” 

His words stoke the fiery coals pulsing in your chest, sending waves of unbridled heat searing through your veins. You wouldn’t be caught dead helping someone like John Price—the butcher of the Blackpeak Coal Mine workers. 

“Why can’t Laswell help you? I thought we were parting ways after you brought me here. Really, I’m surprised you’re still lurking around Grand Hollow at all.” It’s a true feat keeping your teeth from snapping, but it’s an honor you can hardly claim as your eyes burn through the bar before you. 

“Trust me, Lamb, you were not my first choice,” John chuckles sourly. “Blackpeak is a bit further than she’s willing to travel, and the task is simple enough for you to handle.”

“If it’s so simple then why don’t you just do it yourself?” you spit. 

Cocking his head to the side, John places his glass down on the counter with a dull thud, obscuring your vision with the amber liquid. You’re already very much aware of where this conversation is headed—Blackpeak, bank, a robbery, a desecration of graves; something you want no part in. 

“You know, I’m still not a fan of this attitude of yours, sweetheart,” John says, jaw tense and words smothered between clenched teeth. 

“Then why are you dragging this out, Mr. Price?” you quip. “Weren’t you supposed to dump me here and move on? Go do whatever it is a scoundrel like you does?” 

Something is wrong with his chuckle. It gets caught in his throat as he shakes his head, gaze falling low as he places his hands on the counter. It sounds like a wolf’s laugh—or a coyote squealing in the night. Predators surrounding you, closing in, maw glistening with want. 

“You know, maybe that bastard who raised you got something right,” John muses. “Is that what you need? Huh, sweetheart? Need Daddy to bend you over his knee for a good spank?”

Your eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t dare,” you challenge. 

“You and I both know I’m not above doing it right here in front of all these strangers, Lamb.” 

This is the moment where your father’s daughter rears her ugly head. Nothing but suffocating skin desperate for a loving touch but teeth and tongue too sharp to properly ask for it. Palms flat on the counter, you place them dangerously close to John’s as you lean forward, rump rising off of the stool, face inching closer to his. 

“Fine. Do it then. But there is nothing on God’s green earth that will ever get me to help you, John Price,” you seethe. “Not after what you did to those poor people in Blackpeak.” 

There is a brief moment of indignation that overwhelms John’s face as he looks at you with sharp eyes, but it fades into guilt when the true meaning of your words snake around his throat. His gaze softens, knuckles no longer blanching against the counter as he leans back. 

You’ve never seen a wolf cower before, but somehow it’s worse than watching one growl. 

“Is that what all this is about?” he questions. His voice is soft now, laced with curiosity and a deep self loathing that’s almost hidden too far within him to sniff out. “Lamb, that stuff in Blackpeak, it’s-” 

Metallic clattering interrupts John’s explanation as a man slams his hand down on the counter, coins rolling with the movement. It’s so sudden that you jump, shoulders curling as you glance to your right to spot a man dressed in a dark duster coat and black gloves. John’s misty eyes tear off of yours for a short moment before they narrow. Heat rises in his face in the form of red cheeks and a clenched jaw before he springs into action. 

The moment his hand reaches for the revolver on his hip, the stranger has his arm around you. Chest pressed into your back, arm crossing over your front, digging into your collarbones—you squeal like a pig as he nearly drags you off the stool. Your hands grip the man’s forearm, fingers curling into the taut muscle that holds you still, but you’re silenced by the unmistakable bite of iron against your ribs. 

“Howdy,” the stranger says bluntly. “I’ll take a glass of your finest brandy.” 

Wide eyed, you stare at John with a trembling bottom lip, question dying on your tongue. He’s looking at where the barrel of the stranger’s gun kisses your flank. Open mouth. Hungry bullet. His own hand caresses the handle of his revolver, but the way the arm presses against your throat gets him to pause. 

“No, this can’t be. John Price?” the man asks facetiously. “Funny running into you here.” 

“What the fuck do you want, Vance?” John spits. 

“Heard you were in town. Thought I’d pay you a visit,” Vance says flippantly. “The Sheriff of Blackpeak sends his regards, by the way.” 

Something within you attempts to feel relief at the words this stranger speaks, but there is a contradiction of actions and words. An unsettling antilogy. If Blackpeak’s sheriff is being brought up, then this ought to be a good thing—John Price will be brought to justice, you won’t ever have to see him again, and you’ll be able to live out your life quietly. Just the way you always wanted to. 

But this man—be he bounty hunter or otherwise—is no better than John Price himself if he’d so willingly press a weapon to you. 

“Let her go, Vance.” John’s words are stern and leave no room for argument. His jaw is clenching worse than his fingers, fist curling around nothing, skin dreaming of a tender throat to squeeze. 

Vance laughs—something short, like the squeaking of wood—before patting your shoulder. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.” 

“This is neutral ground,” John spits.

“Reckon you should come quietly, then.” 

There is a brief moment when your hearing fades and you close your eyes, and in that moment the vague attar of lilies washes over you. It is the closest to your mother you have felt in years. The veil thins. It shears. Cotton and wispy—enough to be torn apart by the softest zephyr. You can almost feel her hands reaching for you; then, there is the bite. Iron in your ribs, digging, burrowing until it’s enough to meet something tender. 

Something to make you wince. 

No sooner than your pule leaves your mouth does the firing of a bullet ring through the air. Something warm and thick coats you—a fine mist settling over your skin and the side of your skull. Your eyes open just in time to feel Vance’s arm fall from you and John reach forward, fingers curling inside of your blouse. 

“Up!” he orders. 

Quivering legs force you to follow John’s barking, and with his aid, you’re scrambling over the top of the bar, cloth ripping on the corner as you’re dragged to the floor. More gunshots ring out in a terrible cacophony that leaves your ears pulsing with each crack. You squeal as John fires back. Wood splinters as bullets rip through the walls, ceiling, floors—everything. There’s not a single inch of this building that feels safe as people bark and shout at one another. 

Gore is heavy in the air. The redolence of rose is quickly smothered by offals and meat—it reminds you of the butcher’s shop back home. Fresh kill. Venison. Tendons holding bodies together as they’re hung up on hooks for display. God’s creatures, here for your bidding. For sustenance. But you know that with each cry that fills the room, a life is snuffed out, and with it, every thought, desire, and love that made it human. 

When it gets too much, you cover your ears with the palm of your hands, and you fill the song of violence with a tune of your own. A quiet melody. Something muttered beneath shaky breath. 

“I am a poor wayfaring stranger.” 

It’s not enough to drown out the gunshots, nor does it quell the terror rising in your throat, but it’s all you have. Even as the ringing quiets, and there’s nothing but thudding feet on the floor next to you, you hold it. Clutch it close. Keep it safe. 

“I’m going there… to see my… my mother…” 

“Lamb?”

“I’m going there… n-no more to… roam…” 

“Love, look at me.” 

Hands. Warm. Over yours. Pulling. Music fades out and the present snaps back into focus. Too sharp. Too tangible. When your eyes open, you see John. There’s blood. It soaks his shirt. His vest. A hole through his arm. Scraping through the flesh. Still, he chooses to hold you instead of himself. Cradling your face in his palms. Thumbs wiping the tears from your cheeks. 

His touch ought to disgust you. Violent man. Violent hands. Instead, you lean into it. How he tethers you to the earth. You sniff, bottom lip still quivering. John’s head tilts to the side, chest deflating with a sigh. 

“Oh, Lamb,” he breathes. 

You don’t fight him when he helps you to your feet—that flame has been snuffed out of you. Smothered beneath blood and anxious bile. With a hand on your back, he leads you around the counter, and though he takes care to avoid the several fallen bodies on the floor, it’s impossible for him to hide them from your sight. They’re all men, clad in black, some with bandanas covering their faces, others with them blown clean off, leaving behind nothing but gnarly bone skewered flesh. 

There are more voices. More bodies. Fresh and alive. Still drawing breath. You see Laswell. Her usually tight bun is askew, locks spilling from the band, fringe awkwardly stuck to the sweat on her forehead. Then, there’s Lottie. The front of her dress is soaked in blood, and the cotton clings awkwardly to her petticoat. Her hands are clenched, fingers curling into the skirt, babbling about the stain, and how she’ll never be able to wash it out, how the dress is brand new and now it’s ruined because of these men. Riley is the last of the familiar faces you recognize. Towering over the small crowd left over from the fight and the concerned citizens, he cuts across the floor, muttering something to John that your fuzzy ears can’t make sense of. 

“Oh, Katie, it’s ruined! This is just awful,” Lottie babbles as she paces. “I don’t know what to do! Just awful! What a rotten group of people! What are we gonna do?” 

“Breathe, Charlotte,” Laswell attempts to console. 

“I can’t! I’m just so- so angry!” 

“Umbra catervae.”

Riley’s blunt voice bleeds through the conversation, silencing it, and forcing all heads—including yours—to turn to him. He’s standing by the counter, fingers tracing over the coins Vance slammed on the table. Huffing, he picks one up and holds it between his forefinger and thumb, displaying it for John to see. 

“Fuckin’ bounty hunters,” Riley snaps, tossing the coin back onto the bartop. 

There is only a single beat of silence that follows. Then, there is movement. 

“Lottie, why don’t you take Lamb up to the bath?” Laswell quietly suggests. 

Her wild, untamed eyes land on you where you can see the makings of a fit begin to wind up in her gaze, but it quickly vanishes when she fully drinks you in. The shellshock. The blood. Her hands unclench as she floats across the room, taking you out of John’s grasp with a smile. 

“Yes, a bath would be nice. Doesn’t that sound nice, Lamb?” Her voice is softer now. Tender. Like the petals of a flower. 

When you don’t answer, she guides you towards the staircase anyway. She talks about nothing. Meaningless small conversation that’s enough to fill the empty space in your skull. As your feet trudge up the steps, your fingers begin to twitch—but when you reach for your mother’s necklace, you find a terrible absence around your throat instead.

follow @mother-ilia to be notified of updates | get early access to chapters here

sneak peek of "fig. 1. hand in dog mouth"

“Fuckin’ gym isnae giei’ me a free month even though ah have tae drive tae practically the other side o’ the country tae get a decent pump in.”

“Mate, I can’t understand you when you get all worked up,” Gaz sighs on the other end of the phone, probably pinching the bridge of his nose. A lot of their conversations end up that way, one of them quickly losing patience with the other until the call abruptly ends.

Johnny drops his gym bag in the back and slams the car door shut, rounding to the other side to get in on the driver’s side. 

“Ah said, they aren’y refunding me fer the month even though the other location is on the other side o’ town. That’s a half hour back ‘n forth,” he gripes. The call switches to bluetooth a couple seconds after starting the car, Gaz’s exasperated voice coming from the speaker instead of his cell. 

“Don’t you already get a discount?”

“That’s jus’ fer bein’ a vet. This is completely different. It’s gonna be closed fer a month fer renovations. Ah cannae do this fer a whole month.”

“Hey, I know where you live. Aren’t there other gyms around that you could go to instead?”

“Are ye out o’ yer fuckin’ mind, Gaz? Ah’m no’ payin’ ten quid fer a fuckin’ day pass when ah already pay out the nose fer a membership.” 

“No need to get mad at me, mate, I’m just giving you suggestions.” 

“Well, keep them tae yerself if they’re all that bad.”

“Okay, this has been a great chat. I hope you blow a tire on the way there and try calling me for help so I can ignore it.”

The call ends with a loud beep and Johnny barks out a laugh as he reverses out of his spot, looping out of the lot and onto the main road.

He takes the highway because most of the slush and snow has long been cleaned off, though his wipers pump back and forth furiously to keep the snow flurries from sticking to the windshield. That already sets the tone for his evening. He nearly gets in an accident twice on the way there, everyone losing their ability to drive the second the weather is even slightly bad. 

He should just be lucky his gym even has another branch. They could’ve left him high and dry for the month, forced him to go to one the other gyms in his neighborhood that don’t offer the same range of weights and veteran’s discount. 

Worse, he could’ve been left with no choice but to use Gaz’s guest pass to his exorbitantly overpriced luxury gym downtown. Even the thought makes Johnny shudder. It could always be worse.

It’s so much more than just the drive that he hates about the other location. Like the first time he came here months ago when an appointment on the other side of town made him think it would be more convenient to pop in rather than heading back home for his workout, the parking lot is packed when he arrives, and he has to circle the lot twice before a spot frees up. 

The gym is similarly packed when Johnny walks in, and his mood darkens as he scans the weight section for a free bench. None in sight. Just meathead after meathead lining the far wall, huffing and puffing with each rep, dumbbells scattered around. 

Headphones slipped on and music loud enough to make his ears ring, he heads to the treadmills instead. Better to just start his workout like usual and hope for the best. 

The air stinks of sweat and hormones, alpha pheromones wafting through the gym and leaving not a corner untouched. It’s one of the reasons he prefers the location closer to his place—convenience aside, his location is mainly frequented by betas and omegas, the odd alpha not having much of an impact on the overall vibe. 

It’s not that he doesn’t have plenty of alpha friends (Gaz being just one of them), it’s just that sometimes he likes being the biggest, meanest thing in the room. Keeps him in line. Keeps him from being the stupid shit he is ninety-nine percent of the time, as Gaz would say. He likes to be the only one posturing. 

So he doesn’t relish being forced to work out with a million carbon copies of himself. It’s nothing Johnny isn’t used to at least—a decade in the military and a lifetime of contact sport before that had been enough of an education in coexisting with other alphas—but it leaves him on edge, muscles bunching up until his shoulders are nearly up to his ears. 

Running loosens him up. Distracts him from the urge to sink his teeth into something tender and shake until it bleeds. 

A brisk walk to a light jog to a full on sprint. Tongue suctioned to the roof of his mouth, sharpened canines throbbing. The most natural state in the world—legs pumping under him faster and faster, the faint memory of bare feet on a cold forest floor turning over loose soil with every stride. The steady pound of his feet against the ground rumbling through him.

It’s a pale imitation of the real deal, but the taste of salt and rust on the back of his tongue keep him grounded. The beast in his chest rumbles its approval. 

When a bench finally frees up, Johnny has to dash across the gym when he sees another alpha nearby eyeing his spot. He reaches the bench a few seconds before the other man though, slinging his sweat-drenched towel across the seat to claim it as his. The alpha hovers for a tense second, face screwed up in anger and nostrils flared like he might put up a fight for it. 

Do it, Johnny almost growls, teeth itching. Try it and see what happens.

Lucky for both of them that the other alpha knows when to cut his losses. He shoulder checks another alpha as he stomps back to the leg press machine and nearly starts a whole other fight, but that’s none of Johnny’s business. 

He cringes when he finally looks down at the bench only to find someone’s back outlined in sweat. Entitled shitheads at this gym can’t even be bothered to clean up after themselves. 

The noxious miasma of alpha stench would make his eyes water if he weren’t so used to it. Pungent and sharp, like gargling brine. 

A month can’t go by quick enough.

He leaves feeling worse than when he came in. Shoulders tight with tension and irritation crackling through him. Doesn’t even bother throwing a halfhearted see you later to the front desk workers on his way out. The height of rudeness. Not even rude so much as just not him; Johnny likes to talk, he likes to be friendly with the staff. It speaks to the anger riding high in his blood that he can’t even pretend. 

To make it worse, his car is covered in snow when he makes it back, forcing him to spend an extra five minutes cleaning the shit off before he can finally leave. 

It’s untenable. He can mind his ego for a paycheck, but on his own time his patience curls up into a ball in his chest and goes to sleep. It’s not a question of if he’ll lose his temper but when. Inevitable. His pugnacity has always been his downfall; his Achilles’ heel. Always cutting himself down on a sharp tooth.

The rosary beads dangling from the rearview window sway with the car when he takes a tight turn. 

“Ah ken,” Johnny mumbles to himself, silver cross glinting under the stoplight. “Ah can do a month. Ah can keep it together.”

simooooon