Deep End
deep end
price x transmasc!reader | 7.9k | AO3
cw: dubcon (power imbalance, price steamrolling reader), hints of daddy issues/mild daddy issues for those who want to see them, abrupt ending, age gap, alcohol, masturbation, praise kink, hand feeding, fingering, oral, anal sex a/n: clit, cock, and cunt are used to describe genitalia of reader's body. reader has top surgery scars.
There’s something to be said for the kind of work that doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not.
It’s not glamorous, but it’s yours—a modest business with your name on the side of a sun-faded van, stocked with gear, and enough regulars to keep the bills paid. That’s more than a lot of people can claim. It keeps the lights on. Affords you food and pride, both. Proof you’re getting by.
This little operation, humble as it is, at least gets you outside. And on days like this, that’s a gift. The cirrostratus looks like pulled strands of candy floss overhead, and the breeze takes the edge off.
You tip your head for a moment to admire the clouds, then tug the brim of your sunhat. It’s too big, like everything else you’re wearing. The clothes came out of the same catalog you order your gear from. A stiff, white button-up with your logo on the pocket and shapeless red shorts that skim your knees. Cheap. Chafes in all the wrong places, but expensable.
You scratch absentmindedly near your navel and guide the vacuum along the pool floor in methodic passes. The water is clear, the motion soothing. Slips you into a quiet headspace.
It’s satisfying. Calming. The zen and predictability of a repetitive task cannot be understated. Lulls you into a lovely state of not-quite-daydreaming.
So, you don’t hear Mr. Price the first time.
“You with me, lad?”
The vacuum handle nearly slips as you twist around too fast, your foot catching the edge of the pool. You wobble, free arm flailing for balance. Mr. Price steps forward instinctively—poised to surge across the yard. You manage to steady yourself, weight rocking back in time.
Both of you exhale at once.
He scrubs a hand over his face, dragging it across his beard.
“Sorry, sir. I didn’t hear you.”
“I gathered.”
You switch off the vacuum, the underwater hum fading. “Was there, uh, something you needed, sir?”
His sunglasses are too dark to tell, but you feel him sizing you up, same as he did when you arrived. He hadn’t said much then either, just opened the door, looked you over from head to toe, then gestured toward the side gate with a grunt.
You don’t know what to make of him. In truth, you rarely give your clients much thought beyond big house and lucky bastards. If you see them at all, it’s through the windows.
This is your first time at his place, and you’re still formulating an assessment.
You don’t know if Mr. Price has a family, but his house is big enough to accommodate one. There’s a sporty car parked outside his garage. A sprawling garden, lined with hedges, mature trees, and a wrought-iron fence. No immediate neighbors butting the property line.
And, obviously, a pool.
What sets him apart is that you met him, and not a housekeeper or assistant. Clients typically let others handle the scheduling and small talk. It caught you off guard, putting a face to the voice, and matching the face to the owner’s name.
Still, your gut says to treat him the same as the others. Another man accustomed to obedience. So, you straighten and lift your chin.
Your change in posture seems to amuse. The corner of his mouth lifts.
“I asked if you needed water.”
Your eyes flick to your bag and your beat-up thermos, plain as day. He had to have seen it. Which means this isn’t really about concern. You’ve done this dance before. A casual, innocuous question preceding a snide comment or suspicion. Are you slacking off? Cutting corners?
Knew it, you think bitterly.
“No thank you, sir.”
His mouth twitches again, this time downward, then flattens.
“Suit yourself.”
He retreats indoors, and the rest of the visit passes without incident. No more words exchanged. The clouds lift, sharing a rare, naked sky.
You pack your tools and log the time. As you pull out of the drive, you check the rearview.
Mr. Price stands at the back gate with a phone pressed to his ear.
You can’t read his face from this distance—but you feel the weight long after the house disappears from view.
You must’ve made an impression, because Price starts booking weekly. On your docket every Friday afternoon.
It mystifies. His pool is never particularly dirty. Maybe a thin film of grime at the most, a handful of leaves blown in from the hedges and bird cherry trees. No signs of children or pool toys. No evidence of parties. It’s clear he lives alone, and doesn’t host.
Far be it for you to question easy money.
It makes for a pleasant, if not boring, routine. Knock on the door. Head around back. With booking and billing handled online, there’s no need to see or speak to him at all.
For a couple weeks, it’s simple. Another lucky bastard with a big house who leaves blank five-star reviews. The best you could hope for.
Then he starts appearing poolside.
At first, you assume it’s a fluke. That he’s forgotten you’re scheduled.
He’s the picture of leisure. Drink in one hand, cigar in the other, stretched out on the cushions. If he’s startled or annoyed by your presence, he doesn’t show it. He gives you a polite nod, then buries his nose in a magazine.
But then it happens again. And again.
Like clockwork. The new fucking routine.
You unlatch the gate, and there he is, waiting. He makes himself comfortable—well, more comfortable, given it is his house—and watches. Or seems to. It’s hard to tell with the sunglasses.
He never interrupts, just smokes and reads. The magazines he cradles are dog-eared, covers curled over. Sometimes you catch glimpses of the topics: cars, golf, current events. None of it hints at what he does for money. If he’s retired or working from home. If he’s ever worked a day in his life.
It changes things.
The calm dissolves. You grow more aware of every little thing. The way your shirt sticks between your shoulder blades. The trickle of sweat down your spine. Every time you bend at the waist or kneel by the pool’s edge.
You try to ignore it, but you feel his eyes brushing over the nape of your neck or small of your back. Yet every time you peek, he’s not looking. You can’t shake it anyway—the sense of being observed, possibly admired.
That’s when the shame creeps in.
What are you doing? What do you think this is, a slow-burn porno? Are you that vain?
This is just a job.
You scold yourself, cheeks burning hotter than the sun overhead. It’s mortifying. To even imagine that a man like him—older, composed, probably has a different watch and woman for each day of the week—would be watching you. You. You’re not special. You’re a line item on an invoice. Background noise.
The thought that you’ve spun some dumb fantasy makes your stomach knot.
You work faster. Keep your eyes down. Try not to think about it too hard.
But when the breeze shifts and carries his smoke toward you, heavy and spiced, and it curls around your ribs like a hook.
Your first real conversation, you’re in trouble.
“You’re late.”
“I know. I’m sorry, sir.”
Mr. Price’s fists sit on his hips, a cigar at the corner of his mouth held in place by a frown. Sunglasses hiding a glare.
“What kept you?”
You’re sweating from the mad rush, juggling the hose and skimmer, and running on fumes. A dull throb pulses in your skull, the tail end of a headache from your last client’s shrill tirade. His threats to leave bad reviews over a handful of rowan petals in his pool and a perceived lack of hustle.
A nutcase, you want to spit. You want to tell Price about how you skipped lunch and nearly got sideswiped on the drive. Complain about how your life depends on the goodwill of people who don’t remember your name and settle for obscenities or diminutives.
Instead, you drop your armful on the grass and lie. “Traffic.”
He cocks a brow. “Traffic got you worked up?”
“Yes,” you bristle, and slam the gate to storm back to collect the rest of your supplies.
When you return, he’s still at the gate, and this time, one long arm swings past. He slows the metal before it slams, guiding it shut with a quiet click. Suddenly, he’s too close, and you’re boxed in. A meld of tobacco, sweat, and body heat seeps into the space between. It’s toothsome. Heady on the tongue.
You form an apology—you can’t afford to lose business—but he doesn’t raise his voice.
“Whatever’s actually put you in a mood, you won’t be takin’ it out on my property.” He ducks his head to chase your eyes and you’re forced to stare at your reflection in the dark lenses. “We clear?”
The steel of his jaw, his arm flexing, the authority crackling in his tone like fire splitting wood—it shouldn’t make your stomach flip, but it does.
“Yes, sir.”
He smiles then. Not kindly. Smug, maybe. “Good lad.”
The words hit a nerve you didn’t know you had. They sink in somewhere soft and sensitive. The same place that makes a dog’s hackles rise and puts butterflies in bellies.
“And you better not slack just because you’re behind.”
“I won’t, sir.”
He lets you pass, and follows when you do. It’s a struggle to not trip over your own feet.
This time, he makes no secret of watching. His cigar burns out untouched. The magazine flutters in the wind. He sits with his fingers laced over his middle, legs crossed at the ankles.
Bent on all fours over the system compartment, a prickle at the back of your neck grows impossible to ignore. You glance over your shoulder.
He appears asleep—utterly still—until the corner of his mouth lifts. A slow, knowing smirk.
You snap back to the task at hand.
A chuckle follows, low and indulgent. It drapes over you like velvet and settles somewhere deep, where it can hum and hiss like a wasp caught under a jar.
On a night off, you go dancing. Three glasses of cheap vodka in your bloodstream, the taste coating your tongue. You considered ordering whiskey, but lost your nerve.
Leaning against a wall outside with your friends, getting air between songs, someone asks if you’ve met anyone lately.
Or are you all work, no play?
You answer without hesitation. Without thinking.
(It’s not until the next morning, hungover and rueing the sun itself, that you understand they meant someone from an app. A date. A one-night stand, maybe.)
But you’d already blabbed. Confessed.
Mr. Price.
John.
Your mouth runs wild with the liquor in your blood.
He’s a bit odd, you admit. Hard to read. Just the other day, you’d walked in as he finished swimming laps, and he climbed out the moment he spotted you. You swear it happened in slow motion—water rolling off the hard lines of his chest, the softer spread of his belly, the pelt of hair. The treasure trail and fading farmer’s tan. You nearly keeled over at the sight. And it’s hard to guess his age. He’s fit, and the silver threads in his beard do something to you.
It isn’t until the laughter shifts into something sly, that you realize how long you’ve been going on. The teasing comes fast, merciless but fond. There’s no walking it back.
And when they ask—flat-out—if you’d fuck him, you can’t lie.
That gets them going.
“Do you think he’s—?”
You cut them off. “No. No way.”
Denial is easier than the fantasy of hope.
With an excuse, you peel yourself off the wall and flee back into the fray to shake the heat crawling up your neck.
You attempt to bury it all in the mouth of a stranger. Older, taller, dark hair curling damply at his temples. Broad enough shoulders. A cheap cologne that stings your nose. You let him kiss and paw at you against the sticky wall by the toilets, but it’s no good. He tastes like rum. Too sweet, no substance. Nothing like what you want.
The night ends early, frustration simmering. Alone in your room, sprawled in the dark, you add one item to the shopping list on your phone:
Whiskey.
The weather turns fast one afternoon.
It starts with the trill of Mr. Price’s phone and a curse. He abandons his post, gritting out a clipped Yeah? before striding toward the house. The glass doors shut behind him, and though they muffle the sound, his voice climbs in volume as he disappears from view.
Almost in answer, the sky darkens. In minutes, clouds quicken and roll in, dragging the light with them and smothering it in a drab, gray sheet. The breeze kicks up and then your sunhat is gone, plucked clean off your head and hurled skyward.
You watch it spiral away helplessly.
Leaving your equipment where it sits, you duck beneath the umbrella between the chairs. It offers little protection. The raindrops fatten, splattering against the stone, and without giving it much thought, you scoop up his magazine and half-finished drink.
Clutching the snifter to your chest, the scent of whiskey rises. You’re more of a wine fan, really, but the smell settles you. Warms you, even as goosebumps sprout along your arms and shoulders. Reminds you of your dad.
You shift foot to foot, back turned to the wind and rain. The uniform clings in cold patches as it soaks through.
Then, from across the lawn—“Inside!”
Mr. Price stands in the doorway, motioning you in.
You hesitate. You have a policy: stay outdoors. Liability. Safety. If rain hits, you wait it out or move on. You know this.
Then a sheet of rainwater sluices off the umbrella as it topples sideways in the wind, sloshing down your back. Shuddering, you shove the magazine under your shirt to shield it and bolt.
The rain lashes your skin. Grass squishes beneath your feet. His drink sloshes over the rim with every step, drenching your fingers in liquor.
You slip through the doors, soaked, clothes plastered on. You produce the rumpled magazine and offer it to Mr. Price with his half-drained glass.
“I, uh, tried to—”
“You’re dripping,” he says flatly, his gaze dropping to the puddle forming at your feet.
You glance down at the water pooling at your feet and almost stumble back outside, stammering apologies, but he cuts you off.
“I’ll get you a towel. Shoes off.” He empties your hands, pivoting toward the kitchen to deposit them on the island. As he rounds a corner, he points at the floor. “Stay put.”
Outside, the rain picks up, and you gingerly remove your shoes and socks, not wanting to make more of a mess. Shivering, teeth clacking from the chill, you rub your arms and gawk. You’ve never been inside a client’s home before.
A polished, heavy table anchors the immediate area. Old wood floors stretch beneath it, the tile under your feet a practical addition. Meant for footprints. Framed photos are scattered throughout, on the walls and sideboard, family portraits old and new you assume.
A grand painting behind the grand table seizes your attention: a small fishing boat, crimson and white, nearly lost in a violent storm. The sea churns around it in deep greens and blacks, lightning tearing across a sickly sky.
You admire the scene until you hear footfalls.
Mr. Price bears a towel and clothes. You accept the towel, pretending not to notice the second offering. When you peek out from beneath the cotton, he’s holding a shirt out.
Does he seriously think—
“Go on. You’ll catch your death if you stay in that.”
A laugh putters out. You shake your head. “You can’t—I can’t take that, sir.”
His chin dips. “You’re not taking anything. You’re borrowing. C’mon. Shirt off, son.”
An ember catching kindling. You struggle to tamp it down.
“Can’t I change in the–”
He scoffs dismissively. “I’m not moppin’ up a trail. Nothing I haven’t seen before. Transparent, anyway.”
Nothing I haven’t seen before. You doubt that. Your scars have faded into blurs, but they’re recognizable. Obvious in their purpose.
He is right. Your shirt clings better than cellophane, sheer in all the worst places. You tug at the hem, flustered, burning up under his scrutiny.
Another look at his face says arguing only delays the inevitable. It’s fucked—whatever this is, however he keeps pushing and playing with you. Batting you around like a bored tomcat would a mouse. Worse is how easily you’re letting it happen. Part of you, perversely curious, wants to see where it’ll lead, if he’ll eat you whole or what. Another can’t stop replaying the memory of what he looks like, soaked and shirtless.
One-handed, you work the shirt free, and new goosebumps bloom across your skin. Your nipples stiffen. It shouldn’t be a big deal—but Mr. Price is staring.
Maybe your scars haven’t faded as much as you think. You take the shirt, refusing to shrink, and square your shoulders. Posture makes all the difference amongst men, you learned.
The borrowed shirt slips overhead, and you juggle the towel to thread both arms through. It’s loose in the shoulders, hitting the midpoint of your butt. Plain black, clean-smelling cotton.
Price clears his throat. “Better. Bottoms, now.”
If your cheeks weren’t already warm, they’re scorching now.
“Sir.”
He clicks his tongue and swings the spare shorts. “C’mon, these’ll do if you tie the string.”
“There’s no need!”
“You’d rather make more of a mess on my floor?”
You hold your ground, waiting for an indication he’ll back off, but he doesn’t. An unevenly matched game of chicken and you’re losing one concession at a time. You last all of ten seconds.
With a huff, you wrap the towel around your waist. Wiggling your hips, you coax the shorts down without revealing more than you already have. It takes a long, awkward minute. And when you think you’ve made it through with some shred of dignity intact, he kneels, and closing a hand around your ankle.
“Steady.”
You freeze as he lifts one foot, then the other, helping you step out.
You snatch the shorts out of his hand and hurriedly shove them on, nearly combusting when the towel comes away in his hand seconds after you pull them over your bottom.
And then he’s up, moving, your wet clothes slung over his arm like nothing happened. Like he wasn’t—like he didn’t just—
“Back in a jiff.”
This is where your curiosity’s led you.
Barefoot, in his clothes, heart fluttering ridiculously. Breaths in short bursts, stifled little things, afraid to be too loud. Dumbstruck.
How ridiculous you must look.
Do you think he’s—?
Well.
You dry off as best you can and sidestep the puddle. Your boxers are likely see-through as well now, but you vow to not mention them. You wouldn’t survive Mr. Price insisting on a fresh pair with your ass on display.
You rinse the whiskey off in a haze and find the kitchen as orderly as the dining room. Together, they’re larger than your entire flat. Modernized, no-frills.
Through the archway, the hum of a tumble dryer kicks up, and Price reappears.
“Some rain. Didn’t expect it, did you?”
You almost ask which part—the rain, or the forced striptease?
Instead, you mutter, “No, Mr. Price.”
“Think you can call me John now.”
Within minutes, he talks you into tea and a sandwich. While you nibble, he fills the silence with small talk. He doesn’t cook much himself—so if you don’t like it, s’not his fault—and arranges for a chef to deliver meals every Sunday. Nothing elaborate, enough for the week, with extras in case of company.
You work up the nerve to ask what he does for a living.
He’s unfazed. Says his parents passed, left him the house. He’s retired military, lives comfortably off a pension. Mentions he does some consulting now and then—vague, detached, the kind of answer meant to end the conversation, not invite it forward.
“But enough about me. Want to know more about you.”
You wash a bite down with a sip, uncertain that he’s serious. He’s being polite, you reason. A man like him—he doesn’t really want to know. You’re a half-drowned dog he brought in from a storm. A good deed.
“I’m not that interesting.”
“Says the kid with his own company.”
Fair play.
You relent. Share little things. Where you’re from how you started, and that most of your work is seasonal. You help out at a school in the off months, and teach swimming at the community pool when they’re short-staffed. He listens intently, attention never wavering. Probably finds it novel, working more than one job.
“Sounds like you have your hands full.”
You nod, swallowing the last sip of tea. “I keep busy.”
He hums. “You do alright on your own?”
The question is light, but it lands heavy. It’s simple, benign—but it isn’t neutral and it needles. He ducks his head when you look away, searching. Like he’s casting a line, hoping you’ll give something up.
Heat flares under your collar. Your throat constricts, shame blooming sharp and sudden.
You shrug, keeping it light. “I manage.”
When the rain finally stops, you’re overdue, and itching to escape Mr. Price—John’s—attention. There are only so many ways to dodge questions.
He meets you at the van once it’s packed.
“Be seeing you, kid.”
“Yeah,” you nod once. “Thanks again, John.”
You offer a cordial hand, business-like, and his palm is hot around yours. You bet it’d feel like a brand elsewhere.
At a light on the way home, you tug the collar of his shirt up over your nose and inhale. For a brief, blistering second, you imagine his hands around your ankles again. Pushing them up and up and up.
You don’t remember the rest of the drive home.
It’s only after you’ve kicked off your shoes and settled into the couch with a sip of your new whiskey, that it hits you—your uniform’s still in John’s laundry.
Shit.
You go back for it after the weekend, off schedule. Have to.
Having rung ahead, he’s expecting you. He meets you at the door, phone tucked between his shoulder and cheek. You hand off the spare clothes; he passes yours back. He mouths sorry and squeezes your shoulder, before disappearing back inside like it never happened.
You’re already behind, so you change in the van before your first job. The moment you slide the shorts on, your eyebrows hit the ceiling. They sit higher now, snug around your thighs, hitting well above the knee. You assume they must’ve shrunk in the wash—until you pull on the shirt. It’s been hemmed. Clean, subtle stitching. Tighter at the sleeves, better at the waist.
You consider going back, but your schedule’s packed, and the day runs away from you.
When you see him next, he beats you to it.
“Fits better, doesn’t it?” John claps your shoulder, pinching and tugging the shoulder seam.
“Yes, but did you—?”
“Eyeball the size?” He grins. “Not bad, eh? I’ve got a good tailor.”
It’s not like you can undo it and you’re not about to shell out for a replacement. So you thank him, and receive a pleased, grumbled good lad in return, and a swat to the small of your back, a hair north of improper.
A wordless dismissal. Back to work.
With every window flung wide, you wage a hopeless war against the stagnant heat. Your sheets are drenched in sweat. Restless doesn’t cover it—you’re strung tight and buzzing, sticky and half-mad with frustration.
Sleep’s not happening, not like this.
You groan and kick your boxers down your legs, then roll to your stomach, pushing up onto your knees. The air’s balmy, sticking in your lungs.
You’re not surprised to find yourself wet. Some of it’s sweat, sure, but the rest—that’s your own fault. The consequence of a wandering mind and no one around to check it.
You let your imagination take the reins.
Face mashed into the mattress, you imagine his foot on your back. Weight bearing down on you, pinning you in place. His cock rutting over your ass, one big hand grabbing himself at the base, slapping it against your hole, and the other digging into a fleshy cheek to spread it.
Your cock pulses between your rubbing fingers and a moan spills out. Your teeth scrape the sheets, eyes welding shut. It’s obscene and loud in your quiet room when you steal slick from your cunt to rub over your asshole.
He would work you open, push one finger in at a time. Get you to cry on two, render you incoherent on three. Your own aren’t enough to bring tears to your eyes, but thinking of what he’d say is.
He’d ask if you wanted it. Needed it. Deserved it. All in that frustratingly even timbre of his.
His voice comes out of nowhere, clear as a klaxon in your head.
Good boy.
You come hard and fast, bucking your cock into your palm, fingertips prodding at your rim. Didn’t even get far enough to slip them inside.
You lie there for ages, gasping, limp. Your muscles are too heavy, and you’re too far gone to care about the mess.
Sleep takes you like that—sticky and spent.
The next morning, you peel yourself out of bed and strip the sheets in silence, tossing everything into the wash, shame eating you alive.
You can’t look at John that week without that memory pumping blood south. Imagining him bending you over a chaise or pushing you into the clover until your uniform turns green.
It’s divine punishment when he decides you need feeding. Like he somehow knows what played out in the privacy of your bedroom, or caught the stench of desperation that only comes with a misplaced crush, and you need your nose rubbed in it.
John presents fruit under a mesh cloche and demands you take a break. Not like there’s much to do, anyway. The pool goes unused most of the time, the maintenance minimal at best. You put up little resistance, beckoned toward him by a crooked finger.
He moves his legs for you to sit as if there aren’t three other loungers ringing the pool. Gesturing for you to scooch closer when he uncovers the fruit, stabbing a cocktail fork into a pink cube dusted with tajin. He offers it handle first.
A drop of juice drips onto his shin, and you think, lick it. You could. You would, if he told you to.
The impulse grips you so intensely, it’s absurd. This whole thing is absurd. Here you are, with a client. Not a date, not a boyfriend. A man with at least ten years on you, casually bullying his way past all personal and professional boundaries, and you’re waving him through as if they don’t matter.
You know he expects you to take the fork from him, but that curious twitch stirs, and instead, your mouth falls open.
His eyes narrow, and he turns the fork, tucking the fruit into your mouth. Your lips close around the bite, tugging it off the tines with your teeth.
“Cheeky.” he murmurs.
A good little pet sitting at their master’s feet.
Your head spins.
You’re convinced now. There’s a tear in reality, one that opens every time you turn onto that private lane. You pass through it like Alice through the looking glass, crossing into another plane thrumming with heat and heavy air, a whole world that revolves around Mr. Price and his whims.
A gravity all its own.
A special request from John arrives mid-week, close to the hottest day of the year.
Full-service. Deep clean, filter flush, system check—the kind of job that’ll eat your afternoon and keep you working well past quitting time. Two other clients will have to be bumped, but he offers triple your usual rate. Says he understands it’s last minute.
Says he’ll make it worth your while.
For the hundredth time, you’re unable to turn him down.
You tell yourself it’s the money, but that’s only half true. The other half keeps your hands tight on the wheel the whole drive over when Friday rolls around.
Nothing helps your nerves. You can’t stop thinking about eating from John’s hand. The weight of his stare. His attention. About that man at the bar—the cheap imitation whose tongue you sucked in a vain attempt to quiet what’s only gotten louder.
It’s all climbing to a fever-pitch, and you want it to break.
John greets you at the gate.
“Glad to see you.”
He lays a hand across the back of your neck, and you fall into step.
“Hosting a mate’s retirement party. Suspect his kids’ll want to swim.” He continues on about the details, but you’re stuck on how he directs your attention via squeeze.
You expect a mess, or evidence of a gathering on the horizon, but everything’s the same. Practically pristine. Swept and hosed down. You glance sidelong toward John when he sits, buzzing with something you don’t want to name.
There’s no real reason you should be here.
No real work to do.
But he’s bought your time, so you give it, and it crawls. You move equally slow, checking the seals for wear, inspecting the heater, running tests. All of it busy work and theater.
You’re kneeling on a folded towel, bent over the open housing for the pool’s pump system. Focused until his shadow spills across the ground.
“Don’t mean to sneak up on you,” John says.
You twist to peer over your shoulder and almost swallow your tongue at the sight of his trunks at eye-level, and rise to your feet. “Everything alright?” You swipe your forehead with your wrist, willing yourself to relax.
His knuckles brush your cheek, featherlight. He frowns. “You look warm,” he taps one to your chin. “Come on. Enjoy the fruits of your labor with me, yeah?”
You barely put up a fuss when he cajoles you into a dip. Stripped to your boxers, you wade in, relief singing up your legs. Curling around your waist. You nearly groan from how good it feels.
At the other end, John dives in. He slices through the water, sleek and galeoid, surfacing within reach. Veins of water cut down his chest and stomach, disappearing at the elastic at his hips.
“Better?”
“Loads,” you say, hoarse.
He gives a faint smirk, then turns, launching into lazy laps. Says something about needing to stay limber, working out a knot in his back. You hopeless to watch. He puts those shoulders to use, pulling with long, fluid strokes.
You swallow hard, trailing him shamelessly: the sweep of his back, the bulk and muscles under freckled and scarred skin. You’re greedy. You want him. On you. Around you. Inside you. You want to bite down on that smirk and hear him swear your name.
You sit on the steps, draw your knees in, and press your thighs closed to hold yourself together. Your hands flex on the vinyl. They want to reach. Grab.
He pushes off the wall for another loop, and you stay right where you are, trying to think about anything that isn’t the throbbing pulse between your legs.
John doesn’t bother asking if you’re hungry, or if you’ll stay for dinner.
Haphazardly dressed, shirt half-buttoned and untucked, you stow the last of your gear. You’re in a daze, holding fast to denial. The spell will break, your van will revert into a pumpkin, and you’ll head home to scrub the day from your skin. Send the invoice, knock off a percentage, and you’ll do it all over again next week.
Then smoke hits the air.
John’s at the grill laying down strips of pork, the meat hissing on the grate. He halves peaches with a paring knife that’s tiny in his grip and sets them cut-side down beside the meat. The air turns lush with salt and charred sugars, rosemary and garlic.
You slink to his side, salivating, meaning to say goodbye and thank you. Polite and decisive.
Then he jerks his head to the door and tells you to fetch plates and cutlery, and you bound off. Retrieving them dutifully. Inwardly, a part of you raises the fact you didn’t agree to stay, that you shouldn’t stay—but that flicker of good sense snags on the barb of hunger and all your aching.
By the time the food’s ready, you’re ravenous. You never eat this well. Burnished pork glazed in its own fat and blistered peaches. You stop short of licking the plate.
After washing up, you peek at your phone.
“Stop that,” he scolds. “I know exactly how long I’ve got you for.”
And he does—he keeps you through golden hour.
Abendrot, painted in red and gold and soft indigo, bleeds over the sky. You’re boneless in the lounge chair. Content. Melting around the edges, the line between help and guest completely dissolved. Rendered.
John sprawls the next seat over, holding a lowball glass that catches the last of the light.
You lie on your side, head pillowed on your arm, watching the bob of his throat as he swallows.
“Can I have some?” you ask.
“Don’t think you’d like it. Picture you as more of the daiquiri type.”
“Not true,” you sit up. “I’ve got a bottle of that at home.”
That makes him glance your way. Then, he shifts, patting the cushion beside him.
He walks you through it, clearly doubting your tastes and experience: breathe in first, don’t take too much, let it roll. Savor it.
It burns, but it’s smooth. Honey folded in smoke. Leagues better than what you picked up on sale.
“Good?” he asks.
You wheeze, nodding. Emboldened, you try again twice more under his amused supervision. After a shallow fourth, you push the glass to his chest with a breathless laugh.
John chuckles, shoulders shaking. When the sound dies, you notice how close you’ve drifted.
“Well,” you murmur, easing upright. “This has been–well, I should...”
“That it?” he asks. “Off the clock now, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but, I should go, since–”
“Yeah?” he smooths a hand up your thigh. “Aren’t you the boss?”
Your brain stutters. Your mouth moves before your thoughts can catch up. “Aren’t you?”
It comes out soft. Sultry. Unfurls like a red flag in front of a bull.
His face blanks. Then, very quietly, “Careful.”
Panic punches through you. Words spilling fast. “I am so sorry, sir. That was—that was over the line. I didn’t mean—”
Storm clouds darken his blues and you brace for it—for the correction, the ending you walked yourself into.
But he moves.
The glass hits the table with a muted clink, forgotten. His hand shoots out, closing around your wrist, and the next thing you know, you’re hauled straight into his lap.
He’s kissing you.
“John–” you gasp against his mouth.
Devouring you.
His mouth slants hard over yours, tongue parting your lips, taking what he wants with a low sound—part growl, part groan.
You try to breathe through it, to think, but it’s useless. He tastes like smoke and whiskey and stone fruit. He grabs your waist and drags you closer, until you’re straddling him, knees framing his hips.
The lounger creaks.
“Christ,” he mutters against your jaw. His teeth scrape there, making you arch. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to make that face again.”
“What face? A-again?” you moan, dizzy.
“That one,” he murmurs, mouth trailing lower, grazing your throat. “Like you’d let me wreck you right here, out in the open. You make it all the time.”
You shudder. He feels it—laughs under his breath.
His hand slips to your nape. His forehead presses to yours, thumb brushing your cheek.
“You want this, hm?” he asks.
You nod.
“Words, sweetheart.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he says, and kisses you again. Rougher this time. Meaner. The decision’s final.
You belong here. On his lap. On his tongue.
“There’s a good boy, fuckin’ good boy.”
A head rush in two ways. The pulse of John’s cock on your tongue rewires your brain, resets it completely when he presses your nose into the steel wool of his hair. Dizzying, both the lack of air and the sheer size of his hand cradling your skull.
Right here, out in the open. Kneeling on a bunched-up shirt.
He had let you take charge to a point. Half-heartedly muttered about there being no need. Though as soon as you slid your tongue along the underside of his cock and hollowed your cheeks, he swore and took the reins.
He fucks your throat in slow, deep thrusts, and tells you what he thinks of your talent. What a nice surprise it is. He coos when tears well and spill, mistaking them, maybe, for strain. But it’s not that. It’s the way he looks at you. He means every word. That’s what’s undoing.
He catches your tears with a thumb, and drags them across his tongue to taste the salt. You could come like this, giving head to a man who calls you kid. When you slip a hand over your crotch he doesn’t stop you. In fact—
“Go on, do it. Show me how desperate you are.”
There’s not a shred of embarrassment when you cup yourself through your clothes, rubbing along the seam, chasing friction. You can’t do much of anything except rile yourself up. It works for John—a line of filthy encouragement streaming from him uninhibited. He grinds his hips up into the heat of your mouth, picking up speed.
John doesn’t give much warning before he comes. A stifled grunt gives it away—then his grip tightens, the pressure turning forceful, insistent, urging you to take more, to take all of him. You gag, sparks bursting in your vision when he spills in your throat.
He gives another couple thrusts before allowing your retreat. You sputter and cough, lips slick with drool. You curl inward slightly, heels digging into your backside.
While you scrub at your eyes with the heels of your hands, still sniffing, he leans. Drags your lower lip down and hooks a thumb in your mouth to steal a look inside.
“Perfect.”
His bed could eat yours for breakfast.
That’s your first thought when John eases you into it.
Then his mouth finds yours, slower now, pacing himself. He’s got all the time in the world. You’re not going anywhere.
His kiss deepens as he crowds in close, tongue sliding against yours. You can feel every inch of him, chest to chest, the hard line of his thigh slotted between yours. His weight is a delicious trap, anchoring you down.
He shoves your shirt open, one rough palm skimming your waist, the other dragging its thumb across a scar. His mouth works a line down your neck, maw open and hungry.
“You’ve been driving me fucking mad,” he murmurs, gravel-thick. His teeth catch the shell of your ear as he toys with a nipple. “Teasin’ me for weeks.”
You twist your fingers in his hair and pull. He groans, grinding between your thighs.
“I wasn’t trying to,” you gasp. “You—you made me—during the storm—”
“Never made you do a damn thing,” he grunts, tugging at your waistband. “Did I? Didn’t make you wear my clothes. Didn’t force you to eat my food.”
He yanks your shorts and boxers to your ankles, and there’s no hiding it. He finds you wet—slick and ready. His whole body stills to collect himself. Then he exhales slow, grinning.
“Christ,” he kisses your jaw, your cheekbone, your temple. “Don’t need to force a thing.”
John’s touch is as demanding as the rest of him. He learns you fast, using two fingers and his thumb to stroke your cock. His other hand slides under your back, kneading a globe to coax you into another filthy kiss.
He breaks to swipe through your cunt, and you moan into his neck, clinging to him. He groans at the way you flutter when he circles your hole, hips shifting so you feel the hard heat of him against your thigh.
“This alright?”
You nod, helpless.
“Speak.”
“Yes,” you gasp. “Yes, John.”
He slicks his fingers and returns to your twitching cock, stirring you up into a fit of noise, hips mindlessly canting into his touch.
You’re right there—right on the edge—when he pulls away. A desperate sound tears from your lips as he stands, leaving you aching on the bed. You turn, watching him through bleary eyes as he looms.
“John,” you whimper, tilting up.
He doesn’t answer. Just reaches down, huffing through his nose, and rolls you onto your front. You scramble to get your knees set.
“Please, please—”
“Know what you need,” He grits, hauling you by the hips to the edge of the bed, swearing when you’re completely exposed. “Fuck, look at that. Could sink my teeth in right here and eat,” he swipes over your flesh, chuckling at your whimpering. “Another time, baby. Don’t worry.”
You hiss as he massages your rim using the mess from your cunt. Firm circles to ease you open. When he finally breaches, sinking to the first knuckle, you lose a little time, and come back to feel the prodding of a second digit. It’s a touch too soon, but you don’t stop him.
Don’t think you could. Not sure if you’d want to.
Soon enough, you’re tearing at the sheets. Tears roll over the bridge of your nose and slopes of your face, staining the cotton. You’re trembling, hiccuping, overwhelmed—barely able to keep up with him working you over on three of his spit-coated fingers.
Just a job, you told yourself, and now you’re crying into his bed. Listening to him purr your name. You sob once—high and cracked—and he hushes you, holding you still at the base of your spine.
“That’s it, sweet boy. Let it out.”
You cling harder to the sheets, the salt of your tears burning where they admix with sweat. You’re not sure what you’re crying for anymore—relief, need, shame. The staggering, unbearable pleasure of being wanted.
Again, he stops short of letting you come.
You’re too far gone to complain, every nerve lit up and raw. The last of your common sense, a final coherent thought raising the issue of a condom, is seared out of your mind when his cocks glides through your folds. When it slaps over the cleft of your ass. Once. Twice.
Then he’s pressing in.
It’s almost unceremonious—the weeks of simmering tension finally and suddenly boiling over—white-hot and unbearable. It ruptures, spills molten in your veins, and splits you wide open.
John’s belly brushes your lower back, then presses, cushioning when he curls over to push until he’s flush.
“Oh–oh fuck, John,” you choke out, grappling the pillow half-tucked under you.
“You’re alright.”
He keeps you close, anticipating the kick of your legs, the instinct to wriggle away. One hand smooths over your flank, gentle as breaking in a wild thing, until the worst of your shaking settles.
Then he hooks an arm snug across your chest and the other under your stomach. He finds your leaking dick, thumbing it with a hum while his own stretches you out.
“Kept this waiting, didn’t I? Sweet boy, such a mess.”
He saws in and out slowly, luxuriating in it. The rough scrape of his stubble drags over your shoulder and neck, the humid gust of his breath puffs in your ear. His fingers dip and trace your seam, circling your neglected hole.
“Please,” you try to buck against him, but it’s impossible to move.
“Greedy,” He grunts derisively, though the eagerness with which he burrows a finger in your cunt, betrays him.
He stalls his thrusts to a grind as feeds your cunt his fingers until you cry and shake anew. They probe deep, the rub of his palm to your aching cock almost too much. You snake a hand under to push his wrist away, but his teeth find your shoulder.
“You begged for this,” he growls. “So you’re gonna let me.”
It’s not so much permission as surrender—inevitable, all-consuming. You don’t allow it so much as you yield, helpless but to drown.
The squelch of your cunt around his fingers is damning. Thicker than yours with a longer reach, he finds what makes you clench around him tight, earning a clipped curse. His wrist must be sore with the angle, but he doesn’t let it stop him. He picks up his pace again, keeping your cunt stuffed and smothered, hurtling you toward your release at last.
“John, I-I’m gonna…” you pant, breath choppy. Drool sticking to the corners of your lips.
“That’s it,” he growls. “Give it.”
Eyelids slipping shut, lightning splits the black and shoots through your nerves and muscles. You seize up with a shout then jerk, orgasm rolling through you in waves.
The rest blurs—distant. Muffled.
A guttural sound, John’s fingers retracting. Clenching around nothing and everything. Two sweat and cum-damp palms flitting over your hips and tugging, guiding you back to meet the erratic snap of his hips.
Clarity returns with the first spurts of his cum. Mouth falling slack all over again around a feeble, surprised moan as it floods you. You can’t see him, but imagine it. Head thrown, a coat of sweat over his front and back, glutes flexing. Rooted in this deep, all-encompassing.
It’s a while before he pulls out. Seconds, minutes. Doesn’t matter.
It beads out of you like a pearl, smeared under a thumb, then wiped by a towel.
You don’t fight him when he tucks you into his side. It’s far too hot to be this entangled in each other’s arms, but the musk of sex and sweat soothes. Easy to overlook discomforts when you’re so sated.
He sighs sweet dreams into your ear, but you’re already gone. Pulled under.
In the morning, you wake to a scorching quilt over your back.
His chest fitted to your spine, cockhead nudging at your sore hole. He contorts you some when you rouse enough to sleepily relax for him, hooking a thick arm beneath both knees and drawing them up. They press toward your chest, folding you like a bug. Tight and close to him until there’s no room, until you’re just a precious thing for him to fuck awake.
Dozing anew in bed, you draw circles through the hair on his stomach, lazy and absent, while his fingers trace soft, idle patterns between your shoulder blades. You yawn, stretching a little into him.
“Shouldn’t you be decorating or something?”
He grunts, the movement of his fingers pausing to scratch his stubbled jaw. “Hm? Wha’s that now?”
“The party,” you murmur, eyes half-lidded.
John exhales, then folds you tighter against him, dragging the duvet higher.
“What party?”
More Posts from Spacecola7 and Others
Everything You Touch
simon "ghost" riley x fem!reader | previously known as "soft spot" | masterlist
Chapter Twelve: anamneses
tw: minor violence, blood
By the beginning of December, Simon has fully moved in with you.
It’s an easy transition, considering he only has a few items to his name. Dusty hobby items and required necessities. With a few cardboard boxes and plastic totes shoved in the boot of his car, it only took one trip to your apartment to move everything over, and then only two hours after that to settle his things in with yours. Mismatching cutlery, plain and chipped mugs among your themed ones, a new toothbrush resting next to yours—it’s effortless. A gentle weaving of the threads of life.
Each morning that you wake up with him by your side, you feel those threads begin to knot. Inseparable, ends mending until the fibers are indiscernible. He’s always on his back, snoring in the middle of the night when you find yourself rousing. You watch the gentle rise and fall of his chest and decide to make it your pillow. It wakes him. You know it does because his snoring stops, but he never speaks. Never kvetches as you nestle your skull just beneath his collarbone. There is only a soft sigh, and the resting of his hand upon your head before he’s back to snoring again.
He rises well before you do in the mornings, always managing to slip out of bed without stirring you and vanishing deep into the apartment. Usually, you find him in the living room with a mug in hand as he watches the news, or hunched over a book. In the beginning, he tried to make you breakfast but kept managing to burn the toast, so he’s given up that chore and left it to you, but your dishes are always done and the fridge never empties.
You love having him here—your little ghost. You enjoy the fresh redolence he leaves behind after he showers in the bathroom and the heat he brings to your bed on cold winter nights. Even when you’re at work he still visits you, withdrawing money from his account and always leaving you a tip in the form of something for lunch or a bottled drink.
Before long, all the wretched scars Eric left behind in your home have long faded. Simon patches over them tenderly with his boots by the door and his mouth on yours.
For him, you have become a new constant in his life. A curious creature with odd routines of movie watching, long baths, and humming to music when you cook. His little bird, always chirping with fluttering wings, nesting into his side deep in the night, eating out of the palm of his hand and cooing his praises. Simon never thought he could be loved this much simply for existing—for providing such simple amenities like care and arms to hold you with.
Still, there are old habits that the grey matter of his brain refuse to relinquish.
His dreams being one of them.
“Faster! Faster!”
Pearly white teeth flash down at him as Simon’s arms extend high in the air, stubby legs and arms wiggling in the air as he holds his nephew up. His hands stiffen to a point, elbows attempting to lock as best as they can as he mocks engine noises and fluttering propellers, though it isn’t long before giggles interrupt his facade. He demands that Simon move faster, wiggling in his grasp, more worm than he ever is in an airplane.
“Go easy on your uncle, Joseph.”
A warm voice bleeds into his memories, and he instantly recognizes it as his brother’s. Tommy. He sits next to their mother on the couch with the soft lights of the Christmas Tree diffusing around him, illuminating the strands of his blonde hair. His smile is jolly as he leans back on the sofa, torso arguing against the Christmas sweater that looks roughly a size too small.
“It’s alright,” Simon assures while he places his nephew back on the ground. The boy giggles once more as he keeps his arms straight and takes off running around the small living room. Chuckling, he steps back and watches the boy play, arms crossing over his chest. “You’re a lucky man, Tom. I’m proud of you.”
And he is. Truly. There is immense pride that swells in his chest whenever he thinks of his brother’s battle with addiction—how he broke the cycle their father had long kept himself trapped in. It took true strength to pull himself out of that hole; more than Simon could ever dream of obtaining.
“When are you going to stop saving the world and settle down?” Tommy asks.
Simon can only smile at the floor. “Hm… Couldn’t do better than you ‘n Beth,” he admits softly, unable to look his brother in the eyes.
“Simon?” And there she is. Looking up from the floor, his eyes find his sister-in-law. Beautiful auburn hair kisses her shoulders as she smiles, jamming a thumb behind her. “There’s someone at the door for you. A yank.”
He knows what comes next. It’s always the same. An echo that refuses to fade. Still, Simon keeps that smile on his face as he weaves past Beth, fists clenching at his side as his dream twists before him. A figure stands in the doorway, a soft incandescence casting a warm glow on their body, but it’s different than what he expects. It’s wrong, twisted and morphed from something he should hate into something that he loves.
It’s you.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Simon says like a warning—a threat. Voice low and caught deep in his throat; it’s foreign. Something he’d never say to you.
Despite his menacing tone, your cheerful smile remains unwavering. “You were the one who brought me here,” you wittily retort.
Eyes glazing over, you look past Simon and into the living room where Joseph continues to run around, arms spread wide and mouth still blubbering airplane sounds. His mother’s rocking chair creaks beneath her weight as she taps her feet on the ground, mouth opening but no sound escaping it.
“You can’t stop it. You know that, right?” you ask, gaze still locked behind him.
A hand absentmindedly rises to your neck where you play with the bead necklace around your throat, but it’s wrong. That comforting green is nowhere to be found, instead replaced with a bright crimson with beads that drip and morph down your throat like liquid—like blood. It’s too tight. Constricting. Choking. Taut fingers on your windpipe, fat palm crushing the cartlidge.
“I can. I have to. They didn’t deserve it,” Simon chokes out, voice weak. He feels sick. Like he can’t get his vocal cords to resonate loud enough to make a difference.
“No, silly,” you say with a patronizing giggle. “I’m not talking about them.”
You don’t look at him when you laugh. Your eyes don’t light up the way he knows they’re supposed to; the way they always do when you’re with him. His chest collapses in on itself, ribs perforating lungs until they’re nothing but useless, mangled bits of flesh within him to feed the rot. He needs you to look at him. Desperate hands reach out to cup your cheeks, tilting your head so that your gaze would fall on him, but no matter how firmly he holds you, your eyes stray. Landing anywhere but on him, they wander, never focusing on him.
“Look at me,” he says, grip becoming so firm he can feel your skull creak beneath his strength. Still, you refuse. “Look at me!”
“It’s okay,” you assure him, voice soft. Cataracts cloud your eyes until they’re dull like stone. He can’t peer through it. He can’t get to you. “Ghost, it’s okay. You’re okay. You can’t hold onto me forever.”
Finally, you look at him. He thought it would make him feel better, that it would feel like home, but it doesn’t. It’s a grave six feet deep with no company but a corpse. It’s maggots wiggling between his fingers, flies sizing him up for their next meal. All breath leaves his lungs, ripped straight from his chest, never to return.
Why are you looking at him like this? Like you’re forgiving him?
“Come on, you have to let go,” Tommy speaks up from behind him with a chuckle. A pair of arms snake their way around his torso, constricting his chest so tightly he nearly coughs. “You can’t do this forever, Simon.”
But there is no flesh to cover his brother’s arms. There is nothing but bone and tendon, milky white and decaying; a skeleton dragging him backwards into the crypt that’s become his childhood home. Simon’s hands fall from your face as he attempts to push his brother off of him, but the iron grip is unrelenting.
“I told you, Ghost.” It’s you. Voice gurgling, and choking, standing in front of him with a pained smile. There’s blood. Viscous splatters stain the wood at your feet as it seeps through your shirt, blooming like a flower in spring through the cotton. Your hands press over the wound, but there’s not enough pressure in the world to save you. How long have you been like this? “You can’t stop it.”
Simon tries to scream, but when he opens his mouth nothing but a simple, pathetic push of air leaves his throat. More hands and arms assault his body, dragging him back, heels leaving long scratches in the floor as he’s separated from you. He’s helplessly frozen in place as he witnesses the blood continue to spill from your body, all while the mangled voices of his past coo in his ear.
“You knew what would happen.”
“Did you really think it wouldn’t go wrong?”
“You killed her the moment you entered her life, Simon.”
“It was always gonna end up like this, kid.”
When Simon wakes, you are not in bed.
He sits up with a start, hand flying to your side of the bed where he finds that the sheets are still warm. He’s lost something—recently. It lingers. A hole in his chest. The space in the bed.
Simon doesn’t bother to don a shirt before he’s thudding down the hallway, bare feet slapping against the solid floor in heavy, intentional thumps. His trigger finger twitches until he wanders past the bathroom door. A cascading waterfall emanates from the shower where he hears the stream interrupted by your swaying body. Through the noise, he hears your humming. A gentle melody—something made up, meant only for you.
Stopping, he stares at the solid wood door before placing his hand on it. Steam warms it on the other side, seeping into his palm. It’s a pale imitation. A mere mimic of the beating of your heart.
It’s enough for now.
Going back to his roots, Simon decides to cook breakfast. Meat. Bacon and ham. Eggs. In another life, he was a butcher. Long ago when scars hadn’t yet marred his skin. When he was still an uncle. A brother. A son. As the food cooks in its pan, he can still perfectly recall the name of the cuts and how it felt to make those same carvings for himself. These days, he tries not to think about how similar swine is to the humans he slaughters on the battlefield, or how burning flesh always smells like barbeque once the hair is done singeing.
You exit the bathroom with wet skin and a smile that’s too bright for the thoughts lurking in his brain. Not even your jokes or gentle hand on the center of his back can rattle them into submission. He tenses beneath your touch, wordlessly moving food onto plates and holding one out for you to take. You look at him knowingly, as if you’ve traced the spine of a book, knowledge soaking into you without so much as an utterance.
The two of you silently decide that it’s going to be a lazy day. Cuddled on the couch beneath blankets thick enough to stave off the drafty window, eyes focused on the television, attention long lost and drifting into space. Simon will be leaving again. Soon. Just after the New Year. Gone on the other side of the world, whispering sweet nothings to you through an old flip phone whenever the time difference allows.
As you fall asleep against his side, your Saturday cat nap getting the better of you, he wonders how many times life can take something from him. What the capita is. If he’s paid his debt with the flesh off of his back yet or if life wants something more tender still. Something pure.
Someone like you.
“Are you feeling okay?”
As you look up at him, legs still curled over his lap, Simon can’t help but think how he doesn’t deserve you. He’s a stain in this apartment; in your life. Something rotten attempting to feed the roots of an astonishing flower. But he’d never admit it. He’d never willingly see himself out. He’s much too selfish for that.
“What?” he asks, voice rolling off his tongue with a hum.
“It’s just that you seem a bit more quiet than usual,” you note. You squeeze his forearm, fingers curling into his skin as if to pull him back home.
“Yeah. I’m fine, sweetheart.” His assurance comes with a kiss to the crown of your head before he’s back to watching the television, eyes dull, staring through the screen as if he’s trying to decipher the tiny cracks in the wall beyond it.
You don’t challenge his omission verbally. Instead, you lean into him as your leg twitches, fingers massaging the muscle of his arm. He tries to wander, but you won’t let him. Dragging him back, leaving behind nothing but claw marks in your wake, pulling him beneath the waves, smothering him until he’s painfully present in the moment, far away from war and death and the blatant disregard for all things sacred.
“Do you wanna go for a walk?” You propose the activity as if you’re talking to a dog, voice pitchy and sweet. He supposes that, in some way, maybe he is. A dog. A bloodhound. Something to attack with foul teeth and no remorse.
Still—it’s all he really is.
Once he agrees, you waste no time springing into action. You bound forward, shutting off the television and pulling him into the bedroom to change into proper clothes. It’s not late at night, but the season steals away the sun earlier and earlier in the evenings, leaving behind nothing but small puffs of orange that line the horizon. You share your excitement to see the lights, how your mother always enjoyed this time of year because of the decorations and how she wished they would keep them up year round, turning London less into a cement jungle gym and more into a creature that breathes something other than odor.
It doesn’t take long for you to suit up in your scarf and hat, thick coat ensuring that you won’t be troubled by the unforgiving breeze too much. Still, you talk. You fill in the silence that would otherwise devour Simon. You always do. Humming your songs, sharing your stories—you cut off bits and pieces of you and share it with him, anxiously waiting for him to taste, to see if you’re palatable.
And he does. Simon savors it. Hands on your shoulders, pulling you closer until his lips are on yours, tongue in your mouth, silencing your rambling, more than content with the flavor. You’re a treat he knows he shouldn’t indulge in, but he’s always had a sweet tooth.
“Ready, sweetheart?” He’s pulling his balaclava over his face, obscuring his lips, denying himself the only thing he yearns for but knows he doesn’t deserve.
When you smile, he nearly bites through the fabric to taste you once more.
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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.”
I’m finally brave enough to start reading Ghoap fanfics and I am actually scared
peristalsis - vii
selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to “lovers.” suicidal resolve. major character death. violent drowning. a reckoning. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.
previous
When you’re sure that Johnny’s friends have left, you return to the beach. The wind has died down in the late afternoon; the clouds sit heavy and motionless in the sky.
Night is coming, and it promises to be cold. It hangs in the wary stillness of the air, in the waiting quiet. The seabirds’ calling is absent; the dune crickets’ singing has ended.
He’s there on the sand. Somehow, you knew he would be. Felt it, even before he came into view. He stands by the kayak, almost as if he’s been waiting there for you.
You hold the folded pelt with both hands against your stomach as you approach. The fur is so soft against your palms, your fingers. Cool from having spent a night in the ground.
He looks at it with sharp eyes. Then, up to you, expectantly.
His eyes on you in the cottage bedroom, moonlight shifting in them. Teeth in your neck. The taste of brine in your mouth.
Pearls in your memory. Parting gifts to enjoy, as you come to the close.
“Missed you at the end there, bonnie,” he says, even and purposefully steady. “The boys were glad to meet you.”
He’s known—the whole time. He always has. You don’t know how you know this, but you do.
“I’ve had a nice time with you, Johnny,” you say, when you’re only a few paces away from him. “But I think it’s time for me to go.”
Three days. That’s all it’s been. Nothing much, objectively, to say goodbye to. A good way to end things, truthfully, with the aftertaste of good food still on your tongue, the heat and girth of him still lingering inside you. The etchings of his calluses still fresh on your skin.
A kind ending. A gentle one. Better than you and he deserve.
You hold out the pelt.
He looks at it. Mouth a tight line. Brows low and flat. Then his gaze moves to you.
“Where will you go?” he asks, still steady.
“I’m not sure,” you say. “Maybe—Amsterdam. Does it matter? I don’t know.”
“Just like that,” he says flatly. “After everything.”
You frown. “I was always going to leave, Johnny. Remember? I only booked the place for a month. This is just…earlier.”
Something frenetic buzzes in his posture. The slight lean forward in the way he stands. The angles of his face seem harsher, more pronounced. Eyes dark as wet stone.
“Johnny, just—” you shake the pelt at him, still holding it out. “Just take it, okay?”
He looks at the pelt again, and then back at you.
At it, then you.
It—you—
Johnny lunges.
In one swift surge forward he snaps the pelt from your hands and flings it aside. As it flutters to the ground his hands whip at you, seizing fistfuls of your shirt a half-thought before you realize it, wrenching you forward.
“What the fuck?!” you cry, but then you’re off your feet, falling toward him, arms flailing as you lose your center of balance. You topple into him, and he hooks you beneath the shoulders with the iron bands of his arms, stepping away from the kayak, and only for a moment do you think that maybe he’s going to bring you back to the cottage before he starts dragging you in the opposite direction—
“Johnny, no,” you breathe, as you hear a wave break on the sand,“Johnny, no!”
You start to kick and thrash. You throw yourself against his grasp, dig your heels into the sand, try to find the meat of his forearm with your teeth, but he is resolute. Unstoppable.
You start to scream.
The waves eddy around your feet, rise up to engulf your ankles, your calves, as Johnny roils the water with wide, unfaltering steps, deeper in—
The water closes around your thighs. Your waist.
This is happening. This is really happening—
“Had a month to get to this, bonnie,” says Johnny, over your screaming, rough and harsh and completely unrecognizable. He slings you around to face him, jaw set hard, the muscles in his temples flexing as he clenches his teeth. “But I guess we’re doin’ it now.”
“Johnny,” you plead, “please don’t, Johnny, please—Johnny, no, no, no, no—!”
He clamps his hands on your shoulders and shoves you downward. You claw at him, push against the seabed, but your lover is too strong, immune to your fighting, and you are barely able to inhale before he forces your head below the water.
Frigid cold—it rushes into your ears, through your hair, knife-sharp and paralyzing. Salt flooding the open canals of your nose—
You close your throat. The surface swirls above you, distorting him, rippling and folding in on itself as a wave recedes. Hope waits for the retreating water to expose you, but he has dragged you out too deep, far enough that even the lowest point of the backwash still submerges you.
Seawater, eroding cilia, ramming against the rolled stone of your epiglottis. Burning the film of your corneas.
You reach up, swinging your hands at his face, but the distance of his straightened arms, muscles flexing to hold you down, is too great; you beat at empty air, or collide with the rock-hardness of his shoulders.
Another wave comes in, deepening the surf around you. You kick out, knee upward, wrench against him—you just need him to loosen his grip once, for just one moment, and then you can get away. You try to pry his fingers up, but they may as well have rooted in you.
Lungs pulsing. Throat already fighting to open. Chest heaving, diaphragm beating upward to pull in air. Pain lancing up your chest, unimaginably sharp, head so heavy it might burst—
You throw yourself to one side, kicking against the sand, and physiology subsumes your control. The cost of fighting is breathing. The floodways open—the ocean rushes into your throat—
Salt abrades the walls of your esophagus, claw-slashing downward. Acid bypasses the filters of your alveoli, honeycomb structures collapsing to the pressure, to the spasming of your lungs desperate to send oxygen to the rest of your body. Your diaphragm contracts—your chest convulses to cough, to force water out, only to welcome more of the sea in.
You beat at Johnny’s arms again. All you manage is to throw water against him. He is a sea stack above you. A pillar. Unmovable.
Holding your body against his in the bedroom, frighteningly strong, moving against you like the ocean itself—
The water churns above you with your struggle. You cannot see his face. All you see is the unstable shape of his silhouette, wavering lines distorting the edges as the corners of your vision darken.
More seawater, expanding your chest. Heart stuttering between your lungs, yanking in the last of your oxygenated blood, with nothing to send back out. The weight of your body swells, arms too heavy to hold up. They crash into the water before you force them back up again, searching and unwieldy.
Perception narrows. Him, and you. That’s all.
Sunlight through the window the next morning, rimming him in gold. The heat of his shoulder pressed to yours.
The seawater steals the tears from your eyes, throat convulsing on a sob you cannot make.
Grinning as you shared oysters.
You slap your hands against his arms, clapping your palms to whatever they can find, begging, praying—
Him moving inside you, his warmth, his smell, the weight of his tongue in your mouth. The tug of his hand on your arm.
His smile, his voice, his hand in yours—
Fists like weights holding you down. Fire in your chest. Too full.
Upward—something in you tugging upward.
You want to live. You want to live. You want to live—
It’s done.
Johnny lifts your body from the surf and carries it back to the beach. You fit in his arms as if they were the mold you were cast from.
He knew you would the moment he saw you in the airport. Perfect. You were perfect for him. He saw it in the angles of your body, the way you stood, the emotions moving behind the mask of your face.
He tried to explain it to Price once—the seeing. The knowing.
How he could look straight at his old captain, for instance, and know, without ever hearing the man say a word, that he felt responsible. For everything. For the gunshot. For the months afterword. Even though he hadn’t chosen to discharge Johnny himself, Price saw the mold of his hands in the shape his sergeant’s life had taken.
It’s how he knows Gaz couldn’t see the change in him, because he saw what he wanted to see—his best mate whole and healthy, thriving in a new stage of his life.
It’s how he knows Ghost doesn’t even recognize him anymore. Not really.
And it’s how he knows you’re just like him.
He lays you down on the sand, cradling the back of your head so it settles lightly down. Stretches your legs to rest straight out. He aligns your limp arms with the length of your torso, turning your hands upward so the sand will not cling to your palms.
Beautiful. Even with your face slack. Eyes half-open, unseeing. Mouth parted; seawater dripping from the corners.
Your feet touched the island the same way his did, years ago. Running away. Looking for the end, without really trying to find it. It was in the set of your brows, the tight pull of your mouth against your teeth.
Life had gone in every direction opposite of your intention. And it had left you alone.
Johnny smooths a few stray hairs away from your forehead, and kisses the place between your brows. The little line that has sat between them this whole time is gone, smoothed away. He kisses the bridge of your nose, and then your mouth, and then stands.
It took him a while, back then, to make the decision. It was hours before he woke to find Price watching him, sitting despondent on the sand, tears tracking salty down the older man’s face.
He goes to the place he threw his pelt away and retrieves it, shaking it out. Holding it in his hands assuages the anxiety that has wriggled in the back of his mind since the day he shoved it into the lintel of the croft. He’d known where it was, but survival instinct prevails over logic—for the rest of his life, he will always fear its loss.
It’s a consequence, but not one he’d been unfamiliar with.
And, in the end, preferable to the alternative.
He lowers himself to the sand a little ways away from you, propping his knees up and spreading the pelt across them.
When he had done this—he’d done it alone. It had been close. He almost hadn’t made it.
If he takes up this vigil—if he stays, the whole time, watching you—you’ll make it. It’s not a matter of hope or belief. It’s a matter of knowing.
He knows every time he looks into your eyes. Every time he’s been inside you. Every time your body has risen to meet his touch.
You want to live.
So he sits back. He keeps his eyes on you.
And he waits.
The sky claps you between its palms and hurls you back down the gravity well—
You vomit up the ocean.
Panting, with burning lungs. Closer—everything is much, much closer, loud and bright, and suddenly, individually distinct.
Channels of sound and aroma dance on the wind—sea salt, the smoke of someone’s grill from the village, burning meat, the rolling crash of the incoming tide, birdcall and the gust of beating wings and—and—
And you can sense them all.
A gap in the clouds lets the sunlight touch the earth.
You move on the sand. Turn onto your belly, chest heaving, empty and light. The cove—you’re still in the cove. There’s the path back up to the cottage. There’s the kayak. There’s—
Johnny, riotous, waiting in the crashing waves.
He calls to you: loud, long, triumphant, teeth bared in jubilation.
You cry out. Wordless. If you’d had any words to say, your lips could not shape them.
You’re alive.
It crashes into you. Alive.
You lift your head into the wind coming off the ocean. It caresses your face softly, tenderly, like a mother’s kiss on your cheek.
Johnny suddenly turns from you and darts into the water.
You wail with surprise. A wave rushes up to where you lay, water licking up the fibers of your body. You’re not ready. It’s too soon. Why did he leave you? What’s happening? Why isn’t the water cold?
You clutch at the sand. You can’t find your legs—you can’t stand up. All you can do is crawl, shuffle your ungainly body forward with the clumsiness of a newborn child. You cry out again, trying to convince him to return, to come help you, but if he hears it, he does not come to your aid.
Another wave surges forward; salt water crashes across your face. You flinch away from it, but something nictates over your eyes, shielding them from the burn.
Once you reach the surf, the water cradles your body, buoyancy easing your way. You submerge, finding something to kick with—
And then you’re gliding.
Murky, and blue. Sand clouding in the tide. But comfortable—cool, without being cold. You remember frigidity cutting into your skin only hours earlier, rending you at the seams, unmaking you.
Now, it receives you like an old friend.
Ahead of you, Johnny moves further out. You can feel him, far out in the distance, tiny eddies of water rippling against your cheeks.
He’s not the only thing you can feel. The radius of your awareness vibrates with blips of movement, darting, swaying, dancing, below and above and all around. It shocks you to realize, and you go still, hovering in place, momentarily stunned by how much there is living around you.
Johnny pauses too, ahead of you. Waiting. A lone distinct figure, patient for you to follow.
You shiver with startled wonder, and resume your way toward him.
The coastal shelf slopes downward, falling away. The water gradually clears as overhead, past the surface, the sun sinks in the sky. Warm golden light dyes the sea around you. He leads you on, further and further, until a forest of kelp grows up around you.
In the turquoise, ribbons of twisting green undulate and twirl, feathery and dancing in the windy current. Silvery bubbles trail toward the sunlight, intermingling with tiny schools of glimmering fish that dart and jump between the fronds. Down below you, red and green algae fur valleys of rock, swaying lazily like prairie grass.
It’s beautiful.
Johnny drifts to a stop in the middle of it all, wheeling around to face you. You approach him, coming in close—and it’s almost like approaching the sun, so much that he radiates across your senses.
His dark eyes hold yours the same way they had that day on the beach, and the pendulum swings balanced now between you.
He brushes the side of his face along yours, and with his touch he leads you downward, following the stipes of kelp toward the stone to which their holdfasts grip. The heat of his huge body warms the water that flows in the narrow spaces between your bodies, even as the coolness intensifies the further you dive.
The two of you draw up along the forest floor—and find the myriad little denizens of the sea. You’d known they were there, at the very edge of your senses, and now they bloom into fullness in your attention.
Shrimp perambulate beneath rocky ledges. Crabs walks along the ridge of a huge boulder, like climbing a mountain. And there, further down, snails in their spiral shells, pulling themselves across the sandy grain. Starfish, in shades of red and blue and orange. Anemones, translucent hair streaming.
Tiny lives—insignificant to you, before. Hardly worth your notice. Now, you marvel at them, reeling. You want to cup them all in your palms and bring them up to clutch against your chest.
Something brushes against you.
You look up—Johnny, sliding along your side, curving back in toward you, then looping underneath. He nudges at you, then darts away; you gaze at him, confused, so he comes back in, shunting you with his body, and once again retreats.
Behind him, you catch a turtle fluttering in between the green leaves. Atlantic salmon chasing capelin. An eel peeking out from its cave. Undisturbed by Johnny’s—and your—antics.
He nudges you again, then backs off, looking at you expectantly. Realizing his intentions, you follow—he makes a low clicking sound in his throat, pleased, and jets into the flowing leaves, buffeting you with the wave he leaves in his wake.
You’re shocked only for a moment before the kelp parts for you in your pursuit. Johnny quickly disappears ahead of you, dipping down below the canopy. You feel him rapidly shrink in your awareness, and you propel forward, scanning for telltale splashes of gray and white, arms of green caressing you as you pass.
You close in on him, but suddenly he evades. You follow again, only to find he’s nowhere in view. Then the chase is on: he stays in one place only long enough for you to catch sight of him before he bolts, or wheels around and backtracks to confuse you every time you approach. Teasing, taunting, flaunting the dexterity he has underwater which you have yet to acquire.
Golden shafts of dancing sunlight begin to dim and shorten as he leads you on. Frustration rapidly builds in your chest, buoyed as your lungs press against your ribcage. You need to breathe, even as Johnny becomes no more than a dot of movement in your senses, confounding you at every turn.
Why is he doing this? Why won’t he stay with you? If you surface, you’ll lose him, but the sudden memory of saltwater flooding your chest has you kicking toward the fading daylight. Self-preservation taking its place at the head of your priorities, and you follow it with no longer any second thought.
Above you shifts a mirror of silk.
You rise. Faster as the weight of the sea lessens, your reflection blooming as you approach, closer and closer to the wedge-shaped face, the large, dark eyes—
You swim into yourself and breach the air. Your nostrils open, and you inhale the wind.
You see the twilight bleeding into the day. Clouds moving quickly off as the sun sinks into the horizon.
Where is Johnny?
You can’t sense him anymore—as you knew would happen—and your chest contracts with fear and longing, suddenly believing you’ve seen him for the last time—that he’s left you all alone, to figure out what to do next, with no idea how to live in the skin of this new self you’ve become.
You give a mournful howl. You don’t want to do this alone, you can’t, you thought you wouldn’t have to—
But in the distance, back the long way you came, you hear an answer.
You whirl around, facing the shore, and almost too far away to see, a dark shape rests on the sand.
Your throat convulses with a clumsy breath, and then you dive. The water parts for your body, sliding around you, streaming through your hair. Faster than you expect, the slope of the shelf draws close, and you jet upward, belly meeting the sand, and when the water recedes and you drag yourself back onto the beach, your own weight settling heavy on your bones, you cry out again.
You shake the water from your head, wailing at the top of your lungs, desolate and blind as you blink the salt away, and then there’s a warm body up against yours, weight melding against you, heat reaching out to drive away a coldness you hadn’t felt until you’d surfaced.
You continue crying as Johnny closes his teeth around a hank of your neck and drags himself on top of you, pressing you down into the sand. You shift to let him settle over you, and all of his weight compresses your body—sandwiching you between himself and the earth, pinning you down in one place.
Something in you still wants to fight. To shake him off—to escape. But all you can do is cry. He enters you with no resistance, and you cry more, harder, until your lungs deflate, and then you take a deep breath and start wailing again.
Saltwater streaming down your face, dripping into your own mouth. Your voice hits the cliff walls, rebounds off the stone until the air fills with your weeping. Johnny shifts on top of you, pressing your head down to the sand.
The vessel you have contained yourself within overturns. You cry.
You cry for yourself. You cry for him. You cry for what you’ve done, what you haven’t, and for what you can never undo. Your lament fills your own ears and spills out again, all across the beach, catching in the wind to fly off into the ether, raised to the birds, to the passing clouds overhead.
You cry with despair of never going back. You cry with the terror of Johnny finally rolling off of you, to dart back into the waves, to leave you here alone again. You cry until your throat hurts, stinging and raw—
And Johnny’s hands, strong and warm, edge beneath your pelt and pull you out, still bawling with every drop of shame you’ve carried in your body since the day you realized you hated yourself.
“Shh, shh,” he murmurs, drawing you up into his chest, arms steady and strong around you. “It’s alright now, bonnie, it’s alright. I’m here.”
You cannot respond to him. Your mouth hangs open only to wail your grief. Your body wracks against him, convulsing, involuntary, as you scream with despair and relief and horror and resolve, too much to contain, too overwhelming now to ever split yourself away from.
You find his arms with your shaking hands and grip on tight. He slips the pads of his thumbs beneath your eyes every so often to clear away your tears, and you feel his mouth press against your forehead. You wait for him to drop you. Wait for him to see the mess you’re making and wash his hands of it.
He doesn’t. Every time another sob wracks you, he grips you tighter.
Eventually—when you begin to wonder if it ever could, if this is all you are now, a squalling bundle of fragile skin pebbling in the cold—it passes.
The next time you pause to draw breath, you find nothing more inside you to disgorge. You begin to shake in Johnny’s arms, trembling with exhaustion, whimpering with clenched eyes.
He breathes slowly against you. Calm and even. He strokes your face with gentle fingers, even and patient, as if there’s nothing more in the world he’d rather do.
You find the courage to meet his gaze when your heartbeat steadies, finding the rhythm in Johnny’s chest to match. You see again what you saw that first day, that next night; you know now what you’ve always known, somewhere inside you. Your face is familiar in the reflections of it in his eyes.
His mouth curls gently as he gazes down at you. His eyes dance in yours, corners creasing as he traces the curve of your cheek. Light catches in his pupils.
You see him clearly, as the sun gives way to the evening, and the moon rises over a cloudless night of stars.
epilogue early access
a/n: shoutout to @/gildui for suggesting screenshots for that one section of text. Thank you to @/bi-writes for trying to figure out how i could keep the formatting with tumblr's coding. Please let me know if alt text is necessary. God forbid a text-based website allow for formatting said text.
Raspberry Girl Previous + masterlist + AO3 Simon Riley/female reader CW: 18+ daddy kink
It’s too soon.
The weight of this certainty is nearly too heavy to carry, his footsteps echoing with dread.
You’re not ready.
He’s not ready.
It’s his fault. Selfishly, he’s encouraged your co-dependence, pulled you closer and closer into deeper water where he knew you’d have trouble swimming without him. He thought he’d have more time to help you develop coping strategies, to get you settled, moved out of your apartment and into his house. Now, he’s leaving you alone as you try to navigate an entirely different life while straddling two living situations, without him at your side.
You’re at his house tonight. It’s becoming more common, three nights turning to four, then five and sometimes even six, letting yourself in before when he gets caught up on base. His brave fawn on stronger legs, taking self assured steps, and following his lead, his guidance. Your comfort in his home, this world he’s created for you, feeds the beast inside his chest, the dark one, the monster curled around your body in the night, possessive and obsessed. It’s a perfectly balanced scale, never tipping too far in one direction, all his parts and pieces perfectly arranged for you, expertly developed so he can love you in every way you need.
He’s pleased you’re home and already in bed an hour before you’re supposed to be, curled in the middle with your kindle, your blankets and pillows arranged in the usual bird’s nest, lips parted, glasses halfway down the bridge of your nose.
They became a new rule after he realized you were getting headaches from not using them.
“What do you think is appropriate?”
“For my recipe cards?”
“For screens and your recipe cards, precious girl. Squinting and strainin’ your eyes is what’s causing these headaches.”
“Oh right.” You nodded, and then lifted your chin. When you have rules, boundaries, you have security, confidence, support. You don’t have to think, agonize, try to step into a skin that doesn’t fit. All the things that worry you, frighten you, overwhelm you, they now belong to him, they’re his to deal with. You just have to focus on the rules. “Wear my glasses when I’m looking at screens or my recipe cards. Got it.”
“Good girl.”
He pauses in the doorway.
You’re kneading.
It started a week ago in your sleep. You’d find your way to his chest, rocking and rolling overtop his heart, working a rhythm into to his sternum as you slept, a physical manifestation of your peace, your trust, a subconscious recognition of feeling safe, and cared for, and loved. It’s become present in the quiet of the morning or an evening lull too, when you’re relaxed and content, kneading away on a pillow or his thigh. Such a simple, silent thing that says so much.
Knuckles thunk on wood, and you kick beneath the blankets, kindle falling into the pillows, your startle turning to surprise, and then the sweet spread of happiness colors your face. His drug. The way you beam and light up when you see him is the same way you bloom when you’re baking, or talking about baking, or feeding someone. Your bliss gets him high. A gift he could never repay, and something he’ll never give up. You’ve been able to venture outside of your comfort zone more and into his hold, no longer hiding yourself within his walls, cautious steps becoming more self assured. He knows you’ll always struggle, but he’ll always be here, ready to catch you when you fall.
“Hi daddy.”
“Hi sweet girl.” He leans over the edge of the bed to brush a kiss across your lips, little whimper falling into his mouth as he takes it farther, tastes you, nips you. You give him more and more, truly limitless in his arms, your home, exploring and testing, discovering both him and yourself. This willingness, this trust, is a precious thing like your heart. And it all belongs to him.
Your throat bobs when he pulls back and tugs his shirt over his head, sneaking a sly glance as he tugs his pants down next. “I need t’get in the shower. Stay put, keep reading your book, I’ll be a few minutes.”
“Okay.” He’d have you get in with him, but you look so happy, so cozy, fuzzy socks on your feet, cuddled up in a sweatshirt, and he wants to leave you to your peace.
Since he’s about to ruin it.
Your hand is small in his, and too cold. The ice he finds there matches your frozen posture, your nervous expression buried beneath snow as you try to put on a brave face. His precious girl.
“I don’t understand… I’m- a-are you…” you lose your words, hitch of panic in your breath as you scramble to find what’s needed, something, anything to convey the influx of emotions, the quick build of questions, and he squeezes reassuringly.
“Take your time.” Normally, he’d just stay silent, give you the space and time, but right now, he knows you need more, recognizing the way you’re tearing yourself apart inside your head. You blow out a shaky breath.
“How long… how long will you be gone?”
“It’s hard to say, but I think it’ll only be a few weeks.” The flash of fear strikes through your irises like lightning.
“Okay.” You nod, but it doesn’t stop. You just keep nodding, trying to steady yourself, and he doesn’t think you know you’re trembling a bit, lower lip start to peel away. “What if something bad happens?” It’s a question for the ages, one he’s wagered his entire existence. A longstanding bet with the reaper, one he never made a fuss about.
Now, he’d barter his soul for one more moment.
“Nothing bad is gonna happen, I’m very good at my job.” He tries to soothe you, but you’re already lost, tangled up in a web, one he should have cleaned up before.
“B-but you can’t promise that, right? I mean, you can’t be sure. Right?”
“I’m going to be just fine, baby. I want you to focus on yourself instead of worrying about me, alright? You’ll follow all your rules and take care of yourself. Do you understand?” You have a faraway look in your eye, responding like he didn’t speak.
“I’m sorry, I’m not handling this… I feel… I’m overwhelmed, I don’t…” He pulls you close, and you don’t waste a second, placing your cheek to his chest, ear just over his heart.
“My good girl, following her rules,” you look up at him, so tortured, conflicted and scared, and his heart aches. “There’s no reason to be sorry. I should have prepared you for this, and I didn’t. That’s daddy’s fault, not yours.” You’re drowning. You’re too far underwater, trying to reconcile what you know with what you fear, kicking and swimming against a current that keeps sweeping you out to sea, desperately clinging to him, searching for your lighthouse in the storm. It’s too much, he knew it would be, and if he could put it off he would, but this is one mission he can’t delay. It’s a rescue, in the bloody jungle, one squad already failing to reach the other. He has no choice.
He curves around you, pulls you down into the blankets and pillows, kissing your salt soaked cheeks. “I know you’re scared baby, I know. I’m sorry.” The guilt stings and bites, a serrated blade between his ribs. He did this, it’s the consequences of his failure that you’re facing now, your uncertainty and fear all created by him.
Your face presses into his neck as he applies pressure to your nape, murmuring against the shell of your ear, surrounding you with himself, blocking out the rest of the world.
That’s where the two of you stay, long past the conversation, your tears turning to quiet whimpers before you fall asleep, snuffling against his skin, still holding him tight.
“I’ll be good daddy, I promise.” He’s got a duffel slung over his shoulder and a backpack at his feet, truck running in the driveway, waiting. He should have left ten minutes ago. Fifteen even, but he can’t let go, still standing in the foyer cupping your face, memorizing every detail. There’s not much he can do now to fix his mistake. It will have to wait until he comes back, a razed city left waiting to be rebuilt.
“I know you will sweetheart,” he brushes his knuckles over the apple of your cheek, “everything is going to be fine.”
“And you’ll call when you can?” He kisses your forehead.
“I’ll call when I can.” He’ll need to release all of this before he steps on the plane, but for now he allows himself to feel it, ruminate and own it. He’s worried. This is his fault, he’s pulled the rug out from beneath you without any semblance of a warning, he’s changing your routine, your life, again, uprooting you just when you’ve started to feel comfortable. You’re vulnerable, and he’s abandoning you. Ripping a freshly healed wound wide and pouring salt in it.
You lean in, turning your cheek to press your ear over his heart. “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you too sweet girl, so much. But I’ll be home soon, I promise.” His younger self would scoff at him, chastise him for making such a promise, but it’s different now.
He’d dig himself out of grave all over again just to crawl home to you.
In Limbo
simon "ghost" riley x fem!reader | mafia!au | masterlist
Chapter Twenty-Seven: to you, Aelin
tw: minor violence and gore, miscarriage, abortion mention, infidelity
“You see that girl right there? You stay away from her. She’s nothing but trouble.”
It’s the first thing John’s father says about Aelin Gilroy. Using one long, crooked finger, he points her out in the thick crowd of parents and students attending their Year 8 science fair. Projects and standing boards obscure her as they tower overhead on rickety folding tables, but that blinding smile and incandescent teal eyes shine through the crowd like a lighthouse leading a ship safe to shore.
Trouble. He often disagrees with his father, and this instance is no different. He does not think Aelin Gilroy is trouble. She’s never disruptive in class, and he once saw her give another student her cardigan two years ago when she couldn’t stop shivering in class. It isn’t until her father steps into view that he realizes the meaning of this warning—crisp police uniform, hat held in front of his stomach, giving a firm handshake to the science teacher. An officer. An inspector. An adversary to his father in the most wretched of ways.
Police officers always make the family business difficult.
For many years, John heeds his father’s warning—if not for his own sake, then at least for hers—until Year 11. By some terrible twist of fate, his maths teacher sat Aelin Gilroy next to him in that small, two seater desk. She smells like roses freshly woken by morning dew after a spring shower. He learns she likes to doodle in the corner of her notebook during lectures, and she can’t stop tapping her foot against the floor while taking an exam. John finds that he likes the way her pale brows knit together in concentration, scrunching her forehead, and how soft her voice is when whispering answers to the table on her left.
But he doesn’t have time to think about her. Not that he should. John Price is unfortunate enough to come from a long line of brutal patriarchs who often condition equally as cruel heirs. Once he turns sixteen, his father’s petulance only grows as he forces him to join him on escapades in the night after lectures have concluded. Bodies crumble. His fists split on begging faces pleading for the mercy that has long been snuffed out of his father’s chest. Each night his cheek grows tender with the force of his father’s hand, and his eyes droop with the weight of the secret life of a killer—of a true son born into the family business.
“Red color corrector will hide the bruise on your eye.”
It takes John several moments to realise Aelin Gilroy is talking to him, but even then he doesn’t fully believe it until he turns to see her already staring at him. She’s lazily leaning forward on the desk, hand propping her head up beneath her chin as her tongue darts out to wet her rosy lips. John’s pencil ceases its dance across his worksheet.
“Color corrector?” he repeats.
“Yeah, you know. Makeup. Green hides red marks from acne, orange hides dark circles, red for… very dark circles.” Her brows raise as she silently motions to his eye, bringing his own hand to touch the tender spot on his face. “I’ve got some in my bag, if you’d like. Though, you’ll have to find your own shade of foundation. I think you’re a bit too warm toned compared to me.”
Her bluntness and unabashed reference to the shiner on his eye leaves him chuckling, transforming her coy smile into a small smirk. “You sound like an expert.”
“I am,” she quips before grinning. After a quick glance around the room, Aelin carefully pulls the collar of her shirt to the side, exposing the side of her neck. At first, John finds nothing of any importance until she points out a line of covered hickies just above her collar bone, fingers tracing it as if lovingly. They grey beneath the concealer and foundation, blurring them to the point they’ve almost vanished. “A girl’s gotta have her fun.”
John likes her humor. Appreciates it, anyway. Maybe there’s something comforting about knowing a girl like her gets in trouble; albeit, much less violent trouble than himself. A small flicker of hope ignites in his chest at the idea that perhaps there’s something in common between him and Aelin—that he has the possibility of even resembling something that’s normal. Something not drenched in blood.
It’s a short lived fantasy. When the end of term comes around, and they no longer share classes together, they drift. Aelin keeps her smiles polished while John continues to do the only thing his father ever bothered to teach him. By the end, Aelin’s A-Levels are enough to earn her a trip to anywhere in the country. Opportunities are thrown at her feet and offered up on dainty silver platters that glisten bright enough to reflect the future ahead of her. As for him, his father dies when he’s twenty. Murdered, and in a way that’s eerily similar to the way his mother had been. Cold, calculated, ruthless—his father’s existence is snuffed out by a single bullet, leaving behind nothing but a bloodstain coating the pillow that covers his face.
The torch is passed down—the handle is still bloody.
Over the years, he grows rigid and battle-hardened thanks to the business of violence that was bequeathed to him by his late father. He builds upon a decrepit empire until it’s thriving with sharp teeth and hired guns. It’s the only thing his father taught him; how to be dangerous. How to collect teeth and grind them to dust beneath the sole of his shoes. The Price family rises to power. The name forces people to tremble. John Price has nothing to lose but his own life, and even that pathetic amount he can scarcely get himself to care about.
The only thing he holds close to him is the ghosts of his past. They always lurk in uncomfortable places, whispering into the shell of his ear, biting at the nape of his neck. It finds him at all hours of the day—it torments him. Slithers beneath his skin. Even now as he stands in line at the florist’s shop his skin itches, eyes flickering to the exit, fingers twitching for the knife stowed in his pocket.
The only emollient he can find in this place is the voice of the woman in line before him. Demulcent and fleeting, he notes the way his heart slows. How the pathetic muscle quivers in his chest as she sweetly thanks the shopkeeper. When the redolence of roses reaches him, he tells himself he’s hallucinating, but when she turns to leave—small bouquet of flowers in her hand—he realizes who it is.
Aelin Gilroy.
Even after all these years he can still recognize her. The soft slope of her nose, the faint, bouncing curls in her flaxen hair, and her grace. How her chin is held high. How confidence exudes from every pore in her body as she floats toward the exit. Somehow, she’s even more perfect now than she was when they were children. He steps out of line, forcing the shopkeeper to stare at him with narrowed brows as he follows after her on uncertain feet.
“Aelin?”
All the air leaves his lungs when she turns to face him. She’s grown into her features now. Rosy cheeks and full lips, but her eyes are still the same. Crystalline like a low tide, filtering golden sunlight into fractals. Those eyes stare at him blankly, hands uncomfortably adjusting the bouquet as she traces him without a shred of familiarity.
“Yes?” she asks tensely.
Chuckling, he slaps his hand on the nape of his neck, rubbing out the tension there. “It’s John. John Price.”
There’s something about the light igniting in her eyes that has him feeling warmer than he has in a long while. A precious grin breaks out on her lips as she steps closer, now comfortable with his presence. “Oh my god, I didn’t recognize you! It’s been years… staying out of trouble, I hope?”
“Getting in just enough to keep things interesting,” John counters.
It’s as if no time has passed at all. She’s still that star pupil. Still that girl that had every boy tripping over their own two feet. Even now he can still hear her feet tapping against the floor as her pencil fills in test answers.
“What’s the occasion?” he then asks, gesturing to her bouquet.
“Oh,” she says. Her voice trips. Fractures. “Well, it’s—erm—the anniversary of my dad’s passing.”
John blinks. He can vaguely recall the news. Rolling clips of the police station and the accident that stole his life away. Somehow he never put two and two together.
“I’m sorry to hear that, I hadn’t heard,” he quickly apologizes.
Despite the terrible awkwardness of the conversation, she still smiles. Always graceful. Always poised. “It’s alright. I’m… making my peace with it.” She pauses, throat clearing with a tense cough. “What about you?”
“Oh, just some flowers for mum.”
His response makes Aelin smile something small and bittersweet. “How lovely. I bet she’ll love them.”
“They’ll make for good decoration.”
Something settles between the two of them—something that had never been there before. Not while they were children, growing up with one another in different corners of the world. It’s unfamiliar. Suffocating. It leaves John floundering, but the warmth it brings is intoxicating.
“Well, I ought to get going,” Aelin excuses politely. “Got a few more errands to run. But really, it was good seeing you again, John.”
This is the part where he should say goodbye. Wish her farewell just for her to vanish into a life of fortune where he’d never see her again. If he was a smart man, John would have done just that, but instead he finds his hand diving into his pocket where he retrieves a pen before quickly stealing one of the shop’s business cards to scribble down his number in the negative space.
“Here,” he says, holding it out for Aelin to take. “I’m certain you get this a lot, but if you need anything, anything at all, I’ll be there.”
To his surprise, she takes the card without hesitation, aqua eyes scanning his rushed handwriting while quietly thanking him. As she holds the card in front of her, something catches John’s attention. There’s a glint on her finger, one that reflects the light so brightly it nearly blinds him. Upon closer inspection, he realizes it’s a large, gaudy ring. Something given in poor taste. Something that attempts to steal the spotlight of Aelin’s beauty rather than compliment it.
“Did you get married?” John asks in what he tells himself is mere curiosity.
“Oh. No, not yet. Just engaged,” she says with an odd tone. Aelin glances at the ring—at the small band and large diamond that looks heavy enough to weigh her down. As if she can’t stand to look at it any longer, she shoves the card into her pocket before smiling at him. “Thank you again, John.”
As Aelin exits the store, she tries not to think about how this interaction with a long lost classmate of hers has her feeling lighter than she has in years. That’s all she feels these days. Heavy. Weighed down by a stony gaze that used to look at her with adoration as the looming nature of her own failure hangs over her head as if each step she takes brings her closer to the gallows.
There is little reprieve to be found in the cemetery where her father lays. Knees digging into the fresh grass, trembling fingers propping the flowers against his headstone, she does not pay attention to the tears streaming down her face. She’s learned to ignore them, if not welcome them. The wind picks up, cooling her feverish face as she traces the engraving of her father’s name letter by letter with her index finger.
“I miss you so much,” she whispers. “Everything’s gone to shit since you left. I dunno what to do without you.”
Her days have been foggy. Each waking moment leaves her stumbling through the dark all while she pretends she’s still the radiant girl she’s always been. It’s difficult to keep up the facade when her bed is cold in the mornings, and her fingers itch for the card John Price gave her. Ghosts follow behind her in the bedroom, her rearview mirror—the toilet.
So then, it should not come as a surprise when she returns home from her mother’s to see the lamp on in the living room. The television drones but no one is listening. A hand on a thigh. Unfamiliar lips pressed against ones she should have memorized but hasn’t felt the touch of in months. The woman looks nothing like Aelin. Inky locks cut into a short bob that her fiance weaves his fingers through as his nose kisses her cheek.
“Adam?”
Aelin’s stomach drops when they jump, heavy eyes now on her as she stands in the entryway. When Adam’s chest heaves with a sigh, she’s suddenly in the bathroom again. Hands clutching her stomach as she waddles out. Eyes full with tears as she sees him sitting on the couch, focused on the football match. It’s the same thing all over again.
She doesn’t wait around long enough to hear his excuses. The front door slams shut behind her but the sound is muffled on her ears as she slips into her car and speeds away.
Night has long since fallen by the time she reaches the park. When she was a child, her parents used to own a home in this neighborhood and she often came here with her dad. The swingset is painted blue now instead of red, but she makes no effort to approach it as she seats herself on an algid, metal bench.
During times like these, Aelin would often go to her dad for comfort. His office smelled like leather and Earl Grey, and he always kept a recliner in the corner of the room for her to curl up in to do homework, or cry about boys at school. He always knew what to say. What to do. Guiding her with a soft hand and sweet heart—she always wished she was more like him.
Now—without the luxury of paternal comfort—she does something stupid.
Fingers haphazardly digging through her bag, clutching the florist’s card, shakily punching in the numbers into her phone; Aelin knows she’s insane. Insane for thinking John Price is the person to call for something like this. Insane for thinking he’d even do anything at this time of night. Still, he answers. His voice bleeds through the speaker next to her ear like lukewarm wine. Intoxicating. Comforting.
The only greeting she can choke out is a sob.
By the time John finds Aelin, all of her tears have run dry, having been replaced with a brutal fury instead. A thick numbra clouds the park as the halogen lights hardly hold a torch bright enough to fight off the darkness. Still, he approaches her, noting how her knees bounce just like they used to all those years ago during exam season. Her bottom lip is bright red—irritated and cracked, abused by her teeth.
For as much effort as he puts into looking calm on the outside, there is nothing in the world that can settle the nerves fraying within him. Hearing her cry, hearing her beg for him to come and get her scared him more than he cares to admit. The tear stains on her cheeks make his fists curl. If only she knew the dangerous power she holds. The power to say bite and for John Price to respond where.
It doesn’t take long for him to coax out the truth. The rage swirling within Aelin nearly erupts as she spews every brutal detail. How Adam had been acting strange the last few months, how he used to show her off but has been keeping her locked away like a dirty secret, or something he’s ashamed of.
“Two fucking years, John,” Aelin seethes, teeth gritting so hard that they nearly crack. “Two years of being with him just for him to do… to do that? He moved me into his home, wanted me to quit my job because he said he wanted to take care of me, to take care of… of…”
Terrified that you’ll disintegrate before him, John reaches a careful hand out and brushes it against her shoulder. The tension melts beneath his touch, and if he wasn’t so concerned, pride would swell in his chest. “Easy, love.”
“I could’ve been great,” she continues, voice cracking as she leans into him. “I was able to go to any school in this country. I got my degree. I could’ve kept at work and been… something. And I didn’t need to. Not really. There was never anything I was trying to prove to anyone. I could’ve had a few kids with that white picket fence and stayed home to care for them, and I would’ve been completely happy living that trophy wife life if it meant I was loved. But I’m not, and it fucking hurts because I know I’m worth so much more than this.”
She crumbles like dust. The kind that’s so thin and fine you can only see it in the air when sunlight hits it. John’s arms wrap around her, pulling her close, palm cradling her head as she shakes in his grasp.
“Fuck, I’m so stupid,” she babbles.
“You’re not stupid,” he attempts to persuade.
“Adam only proposed when we found out I was pregnant,” she says. Her voice shatters. Fractures. Each syllable catches in her throat, slices the tender flesh. “T-Then my dad died and… It was stupid to think he’d want to stay after I lost it.”
John’s blood runs cold. His vision clouds with ichor—vermillion and thick. It’s so close he can nearly taste it. A violent man to a violent end, he craves it now more than ever. Instead, he holds her closer and gathers enough bravery to kiss the top of her head.
“None of that was your fault, love,” he assures. “You’re brilliant. Downright brilliant, and he’s a sorry sod for not seeing it.”
It takes a little convincing to get her to agree to stay at his place for the night. Really, there’s something comforting about being somewhere else. Away from her mother and that house that’s still haunted with her father’s ghost. John gives her an old t-shirt and a pair of joggers he’s been meaning to throw out for some time before ensuring she’s comfortable enough in his guest bedroom.
When he’s certain Aelin’s asleep, John sits in his office, hand over his mouth, teeth grinding as he stares at his phone. It takes only five minutes of deliberation before he’s dialing up the only man he knows he can trust.
“Yeah?” Simon Riley. His blunt greeting cuts over the line over the sound of thrumming club music and a cacophony of chatter.
“Riley, I need a favor. I’m sending you an address and I need you there as soon as possible,” John says, voice rumbling low and dark as he taps his desk with the tips of his fingers.
“What for?”
“A friend,” John excuses. “I need any items that seem like they belong to a girl. Clothes, toiletries, things of that sort.”
There’s a pause, and John can already see the expression on Riley’s face. A raised brow, tight lips, and a small huff. “Somethin’ ya can’t get yourself?”
“If I go myself, I’m breaking the jaw of the bastard who lives there,” he growls.
Inhale. Exhale. “This have somthin’ to do with the girl earlier? The one cryin’ on the phone?”
“Yeah.”
A hum. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
Much to John’s surprise, Aelin doesn’t ask too many questions when morning comes. She doesn’t push when he gives a vague answer about how he got her items, and she doesn’t question where her engagement ring vanished to, or why Adam hasn’t bothered to call or text her since she stormed out of the house. He tells her to stay as long as she likes—as long as she needs.
But she doesn’t leave.
Aelin Gilroy lingers in his home—not as a ghost, but as a dream. Something drifting between his fingers, just out of reach, that he wants so desperately to hold. He finds residuals of her in the shower with her golden hair stuck to the wall and the silage of rose toying with his nose. She’s there in the kitchen when he comes home, cooking up a late dinner, asking him to join her for a movie.
There is no effort on her end in leaving, just as there is no effort from him in getting her to leave. He would keep her forever if he could. Hold her in his arms like he did that night in the park, cradling her head against his chest. All she would have to do is ask him.
But as the weeks meander on, John finds himself sitting next to her on the couch. There’s too much wine in their bodies, ichor red and brimming full in his stomach, diffusing the light of the television as it illuminates her skin, her smile, everything. He decides that he likes this. Her. Enjoys the warmth of another human in this too-large house, always a void greeting him when he gets home, a black hole waiting to crush him. He doesn’t know how his father could have ever treated his mother so cold when the touch of a woman seems to make this home flourish.
She feels his gaze. Heavy lidded and murky with alcohol. She stares back, aqua hue bleeding into something darker, like the depths of the ocean instead of the mere tide lapping at the shore—unknowingly profound. He has yet to scratch the surface of Aelin Gilroy.
Yet he gets close to it when she places her glass on the coffee table and swings her leg over his lap. Bum resting on his knees, her hands steady her swaying body as she grips his shoulders, curls cascading down her back like a waterfall of sunlight. John stares up at her with awe blurring his vision. She smiles like she knows the mess she’s making of him.
“Kiss me.” She does not ask. She demands it. Requires it.
He leans back until his skull hits the cushion, then shakes his head. “You don’t want me to do that.”
Her eyebrow quirks. “Why not?”
“I’m not a good man.”
“I know.”
Those words are a baton to his diaphragm, forcefully expelling a chuckle from his throat before he can stop it. She tilts her head and he nearly grabs the nape of her neck to devour her whole. “How do you know?”
“I’ve always known,” Aelin insists. “I’ve always been a daddy’s girl. Besides, if you were a good man, you’d be dead by now. The good ones are always quick to go in your line of work, aren’t they?”
John wants to pretend that he’s surprised she knows, but of course she knows. Aelin Gilroy, daughter of Sean Gilroy, Chief Inspector, top of her class, the looks to kill and a brain to go with it. It does not take a genius to sniff out the blood that stains his hands. Dirty hands. Soiled hands. Ones he can’t help but place on her waist.
“If you know that much, then you know that you don’t want me to kiss you,” he insists.
“Why?” Her turn with the questions.
“Becuase I’m not dragging you into a life like this. I’m not letting you get hurt because of me.” His admission comes with plaguing visions that are so noisome they sting his eyes. Rose pink brains soaking into a mattress. Fingers plucked free of the palms they used to call home. His mother, dead and left to rot like a warning. “You don’t want this.”
“No. I just want you,” she hums. Aelin’s hands begin to wander, fingertips brushing against his hairline as she tilts her head, curiously inspecting him, spinning eyes hardly able to focus on one part of him before moving to the next. “You’re not your father, John. You share his name but not his mistakes. You are not a bad man.” Palm to cheek, warmth swelling together against his feverish skin—she presses her thumb to his lips. Drags down over them until they’re parted. “You might not be a good man, but you’re too kind to be a bad man.”
It isn’t until her lips meet his that John Price realizes that he’s been caught in Aelin’s trap for quite some time—she’s just now decided to rein him in. It’s the closest to heaven he’s ever been. Even as her teeth sink into his flesh, even as her nails rake across his back, even as she drowns him—nothing but a corse floating among stilly water—he knows he cannot starve himself of this one desire.
After so many years, he finally has something to live for besides the circle of life and death. Besides being a slave to his family name simply because paternal law decrees it. Now, he has something to build. Someone to love. A future that holds more than decrepit bones. A ring covers the old scar on Aelin’s finger. His bed is always warm in the night when he returns home and in the morning when he can’t bring himself to wake with the rest of the world.
The room she slept in during her first night with him now holds a crib.
It’s made of wood and engraved with pumpkins and rabbits, a project Aelin took upon herself and has been whittling away at with a small carving tool. Hunched over, stomach swelling quietly but still enough to be noticeable in her sundress. The image has been burned into his mind all night while he’s been away at work, hunched over his desk, listening to pathetic excuse after excuse.
He leaves early tonight, hands buzzing too much to quiet, fingers screaming for his wife. To hold her face and smooth over her stomach. She’s gotten more emotional these days; crying at any kind gesture, or any time she looks at the crib for too long. John hates to see the tears that stream down her cheeks but doesn’t mind the excuse to hold her close, to chuckle into her ear, to toy with the ends of her hair.
When John steps inside, there’s nothing but blood to greet him.
Watery. Bright red. It stains the couch in the very spot Aelin curls up in at the end of the day with a warm cup of tea and something quiet to put on the television. John stares at it. It spreads, ichor floating through the veins of the couch similar to the way it spreads on a mattress, soaking deep—too deep to get out. Deep enough to scar.
He panics. Her name rings through the house as he trips down the hallway, following the sparse trickle of blood like breadcrumbs. There is no answer, but he hears her quiet, muffled sobs. Hand clasped over her mouth, eyes squeezed shut as if that could ever stop the tears; she’s on the toilet. He doesn’t even knock before entering, but she doesn’t have the energy to chastise him for it as she sits curled over herself, sundress bunched around her waist, arms cradling herself as if she can hold the remaining bits of her child within her shattering womb.
“Love,” John breathes. Within an instant he’s on his knees before her, but she won’t look at him. He reaches forward, cups her face in his palms, wipes his thumb at the never-ending flood of tears. She’s feverish to the touch.
“I-I’m sorry,” Aelin sobs. Her arms press further into her stomach as she leans forward, head attempting to bow, but John keeps her head above water—keeps her from drowning. “I really thought it would be different this time, I just… ah… John, it hurts so bad.”
Her sobs come unheeded now, and each rattling reverberation that cuts through her shatters his newly mended heart. John holds her with trembling hands. His own eyes squeeze shut, faint tears wetting his eyelashes as he rests his chin on her head. Even against his neck he can feel how warm her forehead is—how it nearly blisters his skin.
After fifteen minutes of his world ending, he takes her to the hospital. Ultrasound visits turn sour now that there is no baby to look at. The bleeding stops. Their child is gone. When they arrive home, all they do is lay in bed with nothing but the sound of their hearts shattering to break the silence.
It is the first time, but it is not the last.
It happens again.
And again.
Eventually, after the years, they give up. Their hope flickers and wanes, but the desire still lurks in their eyes every time they pass a stroller during date night or they look at that empty nursery-converted-to-guest-room. John puts that love into the men who work for him instead, and Aelin gives it to her adopted sister. But at the end of the night, no matter how long they were out laughing or chuckling, they come home to a warm bed, desperately searching for the grubby hands of what could have been.
But it comes back. It barrels like a bullet into their lives, embedding into deep tissue, nestling too far to rip it out without doing more damage. It arrives as a phone call. A sob. A begging to be free of this torture. John finds it in the bathroom with Aelin, curled forward, ripped boxes strewn across the floor, along with three positive pregnancy tests.
She looks up at him as he enters the bathroom, eyes red and irritated, her usually neat hair now frizzy. “John, I can’t do this again,” she chokes.
Wordlessly, he joins her on the floor with an arm snaking around her back. Aelin collapses into his chest, legs slung over his lap, head resting against his collarbone as he cradles her. For a long time, he is silent. Neither of them speak as the weight of the situation begins to crush them under impending pressure. It squishes the blood clean from their bodies, suffocating their brains of all helpful thought.
The world is ending all over again.
“I’ll support whatever you want to do, love,” John murmurs against the crown of her head.
Brows furrowing, she stiffens. “What do you mean?”
His words get caught in his throat for a long, aching moment before he’s able to choke them out. “If you… want to terminate, then we can do that. Or if you want to keep it then we’ll do that, too.”
Aelin is quiet for a long time. There is nothing but soft sniffles and the occasional pule that slips from her lips, but John doesn’t rush her. Instead, he holds her until her muscles relax, and she’s nothing but a limp mess against him.
“One more time,” she decides, malice slipping into her tone as she wipes her nose on the back of her hand. “One more time, and if it doesn’t work, I’m getting a hysterectomy. I can’t keep doing this b-but… I just… want to pretend to hope for a little while.”
Nodding, John places one more kiss on her head. “Okay, love.”
For the first few weeks, Aelin is near unconsolable. Nesting on the couch, blankets obscuring her body, hugging a pillow to her chest as her glassy eyes watch flashing images on the television. She attempts to distract herself with the company of her adopted sister, but the connection feels severed. Smiling and pretending to be happy when she’s harboring a secret that will surely demand blood before she has the chance to sing its praise.
But that secret keeps growing. And growing.
Each passing day that Aelin wakes and there’s no blood to follow her throughout the day, a glimmer of hope roots in her chest. It burrows and whispers. It promises love and fulfillment. It promises something she’s never been fortunate enough to achieve previously. It’s enough to make her skin glow, rosy and golden like the sun kissing the horizon before bed. It’s enough to make her cheeks swell as shiny, opalesque teeth peek between glistening lips. It’s enough for now, and then—
“Oh my god.” Hands on her stomach, smiling through the tears, bottom lip trembling. “John, it’s twenty-four weeks. It’s viability week.”
—and then it’s everything.
Time rolls backwards as the guest room is once more turned into a nursery. Bunnies and pumpkins, soft oranges and fluffy whites, and a perfect hint of peach. A changing table with ribbons along the side. A rocking chair for the long nights when none of them will get rest, and it will be worth it to have a sleepless night due to love rather than turmoil.
But joy is a meal that tastes better when it’s shared.
So, Aelin stands in the kitchen. Film refracts the light above her through the sonogram in her hand, thumb holding the picture so firmly as if she’s afraid it will slip through her fingers. Heavy feet rattle the floor behind her before she feels warm palms smooth over her stomach and a chin on top of her head.
“She’s beautiful,” he murmurs.
Smiling in agreement, Aelin scans every little feature. The curve of the baby’s nose, how her lips part as if already babbling, hands squished up to her face like she’s trying to chew on her fingers. “Just over halfway there.”
Just as she lowers the sonogram, the baby kicks against John’s palms. His chuckle hits her, warm and dripping with adoration. He squeezes back, pulling Aelin against him.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he questions.
“Yeah, I think it would be better this way,” Aelin nods. “I feel… a little bad. Having been sort of ignoring her these last few weeks. I know Simon is taking good care of her but… well, it’ll be nice to have dinner with just the two of us.”
She turns her attention to the card before her. The outside is plain. A simple white background with frilly lettering asking Guess what? On the inside, there’s that same lettering with the triumphant announcement of It’s a girl! followed by enough space to put a sonogram. Then, there’s a mini calendar of August, with a circled due date. She shoves everything inside of a light peach envelope before sealing it shut with the tip of her tongue, but as she stares at it, she feels it doesn’t quite look right.
Inspiration strikes her, and she quickly retrieves a pen from the junk drawer before scrawling Auntie Chip on the envelope. Smiling, she sticks it in her purse.
And with that, she is ready for dinner.
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Cowboy!Simon who rides a big old Belgian Draft horse with a palomino coat. He knows a smaller horse couldn’t handle his weight and all of his hunting gear, so the sweet gelding he found tied up and abandoned to a tree was perfect for him.
Cowboy!Simon who has no interest in a wife or the word of God, only the small cabin he built for himself in the woods and the pitiful garden in his backyard.
Cowboy!Simon who comes home from a several day long hunting trip to find a small thing like yourself cursing silently under your breath as you rip at weeds and meticulously pick mites off leaves. Behind you, a small red Appaloosa eyes him warily as you fail to notice him on his massive horse.
Cowboy!Simon who decides at that very moment that he doesn’t need a wife or the word of God, just you to angrily tend to his garden. He’ll cook you dinner too; he killed a massive buck while he was gone.
Getting into a verbal spat with a nearby stranger (Soap) over something inconsequential when you’re forced to overhear the loud, very confident, and horrifically wrong point he’s trying to make to his buddy.
He seems quite annoyed to be interrupted at first, but then he actually gets a good look at you, and suddenly he’s more than happy to engage with your criticism—you’re tenacious. The topic far too stupid to deem either of you the clear winner beyond personal preferences, so it ends up being a fight to see who can outlast the other, and neither of you are willing to let up.
You’re jamming your finger into his puffed out chest, missing the dangerous glint in his eyes that he gets as the digit makes contact with his shirt when an uninvolved party jeers at the two of you to get a room.
Your eyebrows nearly fly off your face when your Irritating opponent snaps back with a frustrated “-ah’m tryin’!”
I love how we all seem to agree that Soap is just insane for his lady (you, hello?). Constantly on his mind. On missions the boys are driven half mad by every mention of the “beautiful lass” he’s seeing right now. Oh and he’s even worse if he has a ring on your finger. “My wife” this and “the missus” that, showing the team the latest photos of you so much that any time he pulls out his phone they instinctively groan. Because nothing could possibly compare to the woman who lit up his whole life with just a smile.
Gérard DuBois (French, b. 1968, Argenteuil, France, based Montreal, Canada) - Guard from my illustrated book Rroû, a novel written by Maurice Genevoix in 1931, Graphic Arts
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