Touch (and Be Touched)

Honesty

A rather long piece about a certain dodgeball player not being quite that honest about his past.

warnings: female! reader, graphic mention of death, murder, mention of blood, yandere and alcohol and drug use

“C’mon! Is that all you got?” You take another sip of your relatively weak drink, a little bit of rum mixed with a whole lot of cola. It wasn’t your intention to get all that drunk, but you couldn’t abstain while trying to get someone else drunk. The pirates were wasted every night Razor would give them off, but the problem with those day’s was that Razor would join the fray sometimes, and the absence of your husband way key to this plan working. “Since when are you such a lightweight?”

“Lightweight?! I’ll have you know I held the record for most tequila shots downed in an hour at a bar back at home.” True to his word, despite the seven shots he’d already thrown back, he wasn’t anything more than tipsy. “If you drank more than twenty in an hour, you didn’t have to pay.”

“Sounds like an easy way to get drunk.” 

“You don’t wanna know how big those shot glasses were.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve, your nose crinkling when you saw the amount of dried up goop on there. You would’ve rather spent your night with nearly anyone else, but he was the only one that took the bait when you’d suggested drinking at the bar. Most didn’t want to get near you with a six foot pole. “Their technique was to get you shitwasted by the seventh glass or so and make you pay for all of it.”

Geldro was a plain old alcoholic with a rather serious criminal record, having been a notorious serial killer, targeting wannabe hunters that had high hopes and little ability, easy targets that no-one looked for since most would just assume they’d died during the exam. He freaked you out, his hair and beard disheveled, and eyes that always seemed to be pointed down at your chest, despite you dressing as modestly as possible when he was around.

The only reason he’d followed you up on your offer to get drunk was because you had access to the liquor cabinet-key, and so he could ogle you during. He wouldn’t touch you, though, you were sure of that. 

He wasn’t suicidal.

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protection - lucas (yandere oc) x reader (5.3k)

halloween has always been your favourite holiday. with your captor, though . . . perhaps not so much.

a/n: if i cannot be self-indulgent and write a fic about my cannibal murderer yandere oc for halloween when he is such a horror pastiche of a man, when can i? if you would like a primer on lucas, reading this is probably the best thing to do!

cw: yandere, cannibalism, kidnapped reader, descriptions of gore, non-explicit mentions of past dub-con/non-con.

Lucas has one of those perpetual calendars upon his mantelpiece.

You’ve never had much cause to look at it before. It’s another of those mix-and-match décor pieces that are so prevalent in the cabin; a boring block of wood and blocky white font that you suppose someone might describe as ‘minimalist’. It’s certainly not something you’d choose for yourself – and from what you’ve seen of Lucas’s own choices, his clothing, the items he gravitates towards in his little slice of home, it’s not something he’d have chosen either. Had it not, perhaps, been chosen by someone else.

You ignore the way your gorge rises when you consider that it’s one more piece of somebody who must be long dead by now. Lucas’s cabin is full of those reminders; embroidered tablecloths (your own hands are not so steady), handmade blankets (the wool used makes you itchy), clothes in the wardrobe three sizes too small and two sizes too big. A bookshelf of tattered paperbacks; crime novels and romance novels and horror novels, an eclectic mix you can’t imagine belonging to the same person.

That’s not important.

What is important is the morning after breakfast, when Lucas and you have gone out to collect eggs already and he’s held onto your waist while you carefully fried them along with the something-that-might-be-bacon that you’re growing more and more accustomed to cooking.

(It doesn’t even make you throw up any more).

He’s casual as he walks over to it; you’ve never really paid much attention to it before. It’s simply one of those rituals that he does; he likes the domesticity of a daily routine, and though you’ve always been rather more spontaneous . . . You’re hardly in a position to argue about it.

He moves the cube around and you glance vaguely towards it and you see the month and date, clear and bright as if illuminated by a shaft of sunlight.

The thirtieth of October.

You stop breathing, just for a moment. It’s been three months, then – time had lost meaning for you somewhat, after you’d realised you had no choice but to play along if you wanted to keep yourself away from the sharp end of an axe. But . . . three months. Three months of smiling nicely and forcing your mouth around the name ‘darling’ and letting his weapon-calloused hands curl about your waist, slide over bare skin. Three months of making yourself smile, of showering with a stranger in the bathroom (three months and he is still a stranger, though you suppose you know him intimately; three months, though, and you still do not know his surname), of sleeping beside him at night--

“I love Halloween.”

You don’t realise you’ve said it until it comes out of your mouth like the dry squeak of a frightened mouse.

Lucas looks up in surprise. You don’t often volunteer information readily; you answer his questions, but otherwise you’re a quiet obedient little home-maker for him, the way you think he likes you. That’s not to say you think he’d mind, but . . . you still keep some of yourself held close to your chest. You share hearth and home and body with Lucas; you think you’ve earnt the right to not have to share everything.

“S’that so?” He rumbles, after a moment. He doesn’t smile, the way he does when you tell him that you like the present he’s brought you back from town or when you let slip once that the western film he’d been watching on VHS reminded you of your childhood. “I’ve never been all too fond of it myself.”

His green gaze stays steady on you. He lets the moment stretch, waiting for your answer. You are walking a tightrope, as always; there is a right answer, you think, and a wrong answer. Which one are you supposed to pick? You’ve seen Lucas angry – that smouldering, teeth-grit explosion when he’d caught you, early on, trying to open a window.

(You’d sobbed and promised, sworn on everything you loved, that you just wanted some fresh air – that the August air was stuffy and pressing. Enough tears, and Lucas had repented, finally, drawn back his blistering anger. Calloused thumb wiping your tears away and a gruff apology, followed by; “Aww, darlin’, don’t cry like that. C’mon now.”

Followed by kissing your eyelids. Followed by the press of his body upon yours. Followed by hands on your hips, thumbs digging into your thighs to part them. Followed by him murmuring for you to cry for a different reason.

He likes the tears. It’s a good lesson to learn so early on in your life with him).

You shrug helplessly.

“I like the atmosphere?” You give him, your voice quavering at the end. “All of those kids in cute costumes, jack-o’-lanterns, cuddling up warm and cosy on the couch with a scary film on--”

His shoulders relax minutely, and he lets out a breathy chuckle.

“Yeah,” he says to you. “I s’pose those things ain’t so bad. I’m not a scary movie guy – there’re enough things to be frightened of out there in the real world, y’know?” He walks towards you, joins you on the couch. His arm wraps around your shoulder and you let yourself be drawn into his embrace, because you risk upsetting the balance again if you shy away. With a sigh of pleasure, he drops a kiss onto the top of your head. “Gets real busy up here around this time. Trespassers. I prob’ly won’t even be around mosta the night; gotta patrol the area. Think we can rustle you up a pumpkin and a coupla’ videos though, huh?”

You swallow. You know what he means by ‘patrol the area’ – you think of teenagers in local towns, daring each other to spend the night in the woods. You think about twenty-somethings with their tents and their camping and coolers full of beer, telling spooky stories about huge cannibals who live in the woods--

You think of Lucas’s weapons, the axe shining bright mounted on the wall, and the sound it had made as it had thwacked into the ground beside your head as Lucas had realised you were trembling and whimpering and sobbing and merely lost, not some ne’er-do-well out here for any other reason.

How much fuller will his freezer be, come the first of November?

He’s true to his word, as he so often is. Despite everything, he looks at you hopefully when he presents to you the things he brings back from his little foray into town; his head cocked, an echo of the earnest young man he might once have been beneath the scars and the greying.

He presents to you: one large pumpkin, three VHS tapes of movies you haven’t heard of that look like schlocky 90s B-movies, a multi-pack of sweet treats obviously intended to be poured into a bowl for trick or treaters, and a bean-filled plush of a fat black cat.

“I thought we could carve the pumpkin together,” he says, which you think is just an excuse not to leave you unsupervised with sharp implements. He trusts you to cook, now – but he still likes to be in the room, even if he’s not guiding your hand with his fingers entwined around your own over the knife.

“That would be nice,” you cautiously reply, and he smiles at you all soft and gooey-eyed. Your spine still feels like a rod has been shoved in it; being around Lucas can so often seem like a balancing act, and normally he does not come back from town in anything resembling a good mood. But giving you presents and the pleasure that had sparked in your eyes and the truth tinging your thanks have clearly set him well for the evening; he’s whistling as he rattles around in the kitchen to find the implements.

“C’mon here then, angel,” he calls, and you tuck the fat little black cat into the corner of the couch - it will be nice, you suppose, to have something to hold when you are alone later. You doubt the movies will provide much in the way of stone-cold terror, but the knowledge that Lucas is out there stalking the night and it would not take all that much for him to turn his rage on you certainly does.

It will be nice, too, to have something to hold that is yours and is not haunted by the echo of ghosts of Lucas’s past. Once, you had been uncomfortable in bed, rolling and writhing and whimpering through a nightmare – and Lucas had gently shaken you awake and placed a bear into your arms you had never seen before.

You might not have ever seen the bear before, but it had clearly once been loved; visible stitches re-attaching an ear, the velvet flocking rubbed off on its nose, the fur compacted from many nights of cuddling.

You try not to think about someone else, after you, having the little cat placed delicately in their arms.

When you enter the kitchen, you see that Lucas has spread newspaper out all over the floor, placing the pumpkin carefully in the middle with an array of carving implements and pens laid out for you. There’s a waiting candle and a box of matches on the table, waiting for the final touch.

The newspapers are all nearly twenty years old. The matches have packaging you’ve never seen before, the kind of retro artwork you’d see hipsters hang ironically on their apartment walls.

You crouch to get onto the paper he’s laid out, but Lucas clicks his tongue in annoyance at you.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” he says, and he pats his knee where he’s knelt with them spread apart. “Come sit between my legs and let’s do it together.”

It takes you a moment to gather the courage to do it – touching him voluntarily is always harder than when he makes the first move – but you see that shimmer of frustration in the air, the imperceptible twitch of his jaw, and you clumsily climb over to situate yourself between them. You feel him let out a satisfied exhale as one of his arms wraps around your waist possessively.

“There,” he murmurs, directly into your ear. “Ain’t that better? More . . . cosy?”

You can feel every hair on the back of your neck, the thrum of your heartbeat, as Lucas’s hand fastens over yours and works at removing the top of the pumpkin. His chest is solid behind you, a barrel of muscle and scar – and when he shifts, and his crotch in his fatigues snugly presses against the curve of your spine, it takes all of your grace not to whimper at the feel of him hot and wanting.

Domesticity always seems to stoke something in him – and you suppose this would, under other circumstances, be a perfectly lovely Halloween evening. If Lucas were somebody you loved, and not a madman who kidnapped you from the middle of the woods. If that were so, Lucas’s breath against your ear wouldn’t make your head pound – his calloused fingers over yours wouldn’t make you wonder how he got all of those scars. The sight of a sharp instrument in his hand wouldn’t make you wonder how many have met their maker at Lucas’s behest.

There is none of the joy you would normally find in this activity, doing it with Lucas’s arm around you and his body bearing down over yours. There’s instead, the knowledge that he could break your bones if he wanted to – and a desire beating at your ribcage to get this over with as quickly as possible without alerting him to how much you hate it. Lucas hums softly under his breath as he helps you scoop out the insides of the pumpkin--

You feel your gorge rise at the sight of his hands scooping out the insides alongside your own, at the sensation of the stringy sticky pulp and seeds as they coat your fingers. The viscera of the pumpkin, laid out on the newspaper, as if some grisly crime has occurred right here in Lucas’s cosy cabin kitchen.

(He doesn’t like a mess inside the house. You know about the storeroom that you’re not allowed in, having peeked in it once when he’d left the door ajar to go and pick some meat up for breakfast whilst you stood in the kitchen with the chickens pecking around your feet. When he’d come out and seen you there, you’d stammered something about Dolly the silkie having wandered off – and though there’d been mistrust in his gaze, you’d kept your eyes wide and hidden trembling hands behind your back and eventually he seemed to have believed you).

The flash of a sharp knife in his hand makes you start against your will, your back pressing against him, your rear pushing into him. He lets out a noise that’s half a strangled huff and half a breathy chuckle.

“What’re you scared of, angel?” He murmurs, and you are stiff and frozen as he gently, gently, presses the flat of the blade against the palm of your other hand. “I won’t ever hurt you. Not less you give me a reason to. And you aren’t gonna, are you?” You’re glad he can’t see the deer-in-headlights look on your face, even as you give him a jerky shake of your head, and to your immense relief returns the knife to carving. “Good. Hurts my feelings thinkin’ you’re afraid of me.”

You don’t know how to respond to that.

“I—I’m not?” You guess, stammering it out, trying to weigh out all of the options in your mind. If he was threatening you – one of those late night murmurs of “I’d break you into pieces if you ever tried to leave me, darlin’,” - then perhaps you wouldn’t have said it. But right now, he is pretending the two of you are a perfectly ordinary couple doing a perfectly ordinary thing, and so--

He laughs again, good-naturedly pressing a kiss to the top of your head. The pumpkin has taken shape now; a classic jack-o’-lantern face, jagged triangular eyes and teeth.

“You’re so cute,” he says into your hair. “Here. Look at that. Ain’t that adorable?”

Shakily, you nod. It’s not your best work – in your own kitchen, at home, you’d mastered the art of silhouetting elaborate scenes in your pumpkins. You’d used your favourite horror stills as inspiration (you force yourself not to think of last year’s pumpkin, of spending so much time carefully carving that iconic scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre into the orange flesh, Leatherface holding his chainsaw aloft – it’s better not to dwell too much on fictional monsters when there’s a very real one sitting behind you, holding you close, pressing a kiss to your cheek and resting his chin on your shoulder as he admires your handiwork).

This pumpkin is a little lop-sided; one eye bigger than the other, the cuts jagged and messy. But Lucas is smiling at it, and you force yourself to smile too.

“Where shall we put it?” He asks you, as he pulls himself up and offers you a hand to help you too. He’s a little too rough with it; pulling you against him with a throaty chuckle as you stumble, off-balance. Little reminders of your own fragility, your clumsiness and all of the things you struggle with always seem to put him in a good mood. “Windowsill?”

You swallow.

“C-can we put it outside?” You whisper, softly. “I know we won’t get any trick-or-treaters, or anything, but . . .”

You trail off; he’s looking at you again, the green in his gaze impossible to understand. He might be thinking about exploding into anger, he might be thinking about kissing you – but as you feel your knees threaten to knock together, he smiles instead.

It’s another smile that, on someone else, you would read as utter infatuation. Love, in all of its gooey, saccharine sweetness. On Lucas, though--

“Of course, darlin’,” he says. “Come put it out with me.”

You reach for the box of matches, but Lucas’s palm comes down over your hand before you can get a hold on them.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about that,” he says, as he picks it up himself, and strikes a match against the striker strip. You flinch at the sudden light, and Lucas makes a soft noise of satisfaction. “You'daa just hurt yourself. Leave this kinda thing to me, sweetheart.”

He lights the candle and places it in the lantern himself, before he turns to you and gives you an indulgent smile again.

“D’you think you can carry it?” He asks you, voice soaked in honey. “Don’t drop it, now.”

You nod shyly as you take it, hating yourself for playing along with him. If he wants a sweet, naive little thing who can barely take care of themselves and needs the big strong hunter in the woods to do it for them . . . well, you suppose your dignity isn’t so bad a price to pay for staying alive.

You are allowed out of the cabin, supervised. You’d earnt that right by being sweet and soft and obedient, by doing what Lucas asks and doing it the way he likes. You go out to collect eggs in the morning and you’re allowed to help him in the garden, planting vegetables and tending to those he already has. But still, every time you open the front door it feels like a treat – a thrill running through you at the reminder that there is a world beyond the four walls of home that have become your prison.

Lucas takes in a hissing sigh through clenched teeth as he opens the door.

“It’s getting’ later than I thought,” he says, to himself more than you. “I’m gonna have to get goin’ soon, sweetheart.”

You nod, and carefully place the pumpkin by the front door, where the candle inside flickers and wavers in the light breeze. You find yourself wishing that it would somehow escape its own cell of pumpkin flesh and set the cabin afire – wondering if it would really be so bad, to perish like that.

(How many more Halloweens will you spend with Lucas? Is it worse if the number is small or large?)

“Do you have to go?” You ask him, voice tremulous.

You don’t know if you want him to go. You don’t want to be with him; he terrifies you, leaves you feeling rattled and confused and conquered all at once, his presence looming over everything you do. But at the same time – you can’t in good conscience want him to go out there, to cut down Halloween revellers who merely thought the woods would be a good place for a spooky experience. Are you far enough away from wherever he might go that you won’t hear the screams?

You wouldn’t be able to pretend even if you don’t hear them. You’ll meet them later on, at the end of your fork.

“Awww darlin’,” Lucas simpers at you, grasping your chin in a hold like iron. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it, I told you. I ain’t gonna let a single thing near this cabin; you ain’t gonna be in a jot of danger. I promise.”

Your face must betray your anxiety, because Lucas tugs almost painfully on it.

“Don’t you trust me, angel?”

Sickly sweet and bladed like ice, you mutely twitch your head in a meek nod.

“Of course I do . . .” You whisper, and Lucas smiles in satisfaction.

“Stay here at the door for a bit while I get ready, okay? Fresh air’ll make you feel better.”

Unspoken goes the ‘don’t you dare try and run’. You can’t see yourself doing it tonight of all nights, either – though Lucas has been sweet throughout the pumpkin carving, you can already see that as he considers the blanket of night out beyond the cabin he is shifting into a predator. So you stand there, breathing in deep, slow, controlled breaths. Trying to think about how pretty the stars are and the candy that Lucas has brought you to eat in front of his crackling old television. Trying not to hear the thud of Lucas’s boots and the sound of him getting down the axe from the wall, the swish of the displacement of air as he gives it a few practise swings.

“There we go,” Lucas says, as he comes back. His axe is slung over one shoulder, and he’s smiling at you. He hasn’t made a single allowance for the cold; he wears the same shirt in a shade of forest green, straining tight over his shoulders and biceps. The silvery skin of his scars shine in the moonlight. “Don’t stay up for me, okay? Get yourself to bed. I’ll try not to wake you up.”

(Will you wake up, hearing him drag a corpse into the store-room? It doesn’t matter – you know you won’t get much sleep tonight).

He stands there in front of you for a long moment. Anxiety sends a bead of sweat rolling down the nape of your neck. He’s waiting for something – he wants something, and you don’t know what it is, and he’s going to be angry at you for being a bad beloved and he’s going to lodge that axe in your skull--

“Don’t I get a kiss goodbye?”

His tone is teasing, but laced with simmering anger. Grateful he has thrown you a lifeline, you practically trip over your tongue as you reply in the affirmative.

One slow, lingering kiss – possessive. You’re shivering as he pulls away, and he smiles as he wipes his thumb over the corner of your mouth with something that might be fondness and might be triumph, like a hunter who has his prey cornered.

“See you later,” he says. “Don’t scare yourself silly, now.”

You stand at the door-frame, waiting for Lucas’s hulking figure to disappear into the darkness of the trees. His axe is swung over his broad shoulders. The jack-o’-lantern beside you flickers and gutters in the breeze, your only companion out here. Lucas turns and waves one hand at you, and then makes a very firm ‘shoo’ gesture that you interpret to mean ‘that’s enough, now. Get back in the house before I make you’.

You close the door behind you and turn the key as he disappears fully from your view. You’ve always felt awkward being alone in the cabin – about three weeks after your arrival here, he had given you heavy warnings and set out to the nearest town for the kind of supplies he couldn’t make himself – but tonight, it feels all the worse.

You jump at shadows and feel like you hear screams with every footstep, your brain already playing out thoughts of Lucas in the woods surrounded by corpses, bloodied and grinning and feral-bright. You have to try twice to get the video into the player, and your hands are trembling as you attempt to open a packet of M&Ms and spill them all over the sofa. You pull the curtains closed for full immersion and almost give yourself a heart attack when you see light flickering outside, until you remember the jack-o’-lantern.

Eventually, though, you do relax into the movie.

It helps that it’s a movie about a werewolf stalking a suburban town; you don’t know if your nerves would hold out if Lucas had brought you some kind of killer in the woods movie. Even he, though, seems to have realised that – a quick glance at the other movies show you that one is about giant bugs attacking and the other is set in a hospital.

It’s not a good movie. In a different lifetime, you’d watch this with friends and laugh and joke over the cheesy special effects and the over-acting. On your own, though, you at least feel somewhat comforted by the familiarity of the horror recipe. The coquettish blonde in the hot pink outfit will die first; the outcast girl in her too-big denim jacket will survive to the denouement and will perhaps kill the werewolf herself.

There’s a sound from outside.

You’re half-asleep in front of the sagging middle act of the movie, but the crunch of leaves under feet has you bolt upright. Lucas can’t be home already, can he?

Time stands still. There’s a muffled giggle, and then a low voice murmuring something. You slowly, slowly, pull yourself up from the couch. You’re grateful to have pulled the curtains closed. At least they can’t tell you’re in here.

A hundred scenarios run through your head, none of them ending well. You think of every home invasion movie in a holiday home in the middle of nowhere you’ve ever seen. You could laugh at the absurdity of dying like that, when you’re literally the prisoner of some cannibal psychopath already . . . all of that, and some other horror trope catches up with you instead?

Three knocks on the door, and a voice jokingly calls;

“Trick or Treat!”

Oh, saying all of that stuff to Lucas about trick or treating was so stupid. Wanting a pumpkin out there so you could pretend to have one little bit of normalcy left in your life.

A rumble of conversation floats through the walls; something about a dead phone battery, needing to find somewhere with a landline, a map that didn’t seem to have any of the landmarks they’d seen marked on it.

(You can sympathise with that; the map you’d been using, once upon a time, hadn’t made a single lick of sense after you’d gotten into the heart of the woods, like some nature spirit was messing with you).

But that could just be a way to make your defenses fall, you think. You’ve seen that in movies time and time again – I need the bathroom, I need to use your phone, I’m sorry I fell over and I’m injured can I rest here--

One of them has the nerve to try the door; the key jingles traitorously in the lock.

You’re shaking as you approach. You can hear conversation now; a male voice and a female voice, arguing. They sound about your age.

“There’s a fucking jack-o’-lantern burning, and there’s a key in the front door, of course someone’s in--”

“Look, this is some horror movie bullshit, I don’t like it--”

“Do you think anyone keeping fuckin’ . . . those fluffy-ass chickens is gonna be a murderer? C’mon. It’s probably some old couple with their hearing going. I’m gonna knock again--”

Three raps on the door and you find yourself collapsed against the cabin wall, your knees trembling. You know you should answer the door and you should tell them what’s going on here. You should beg them to run and take you with them.

But now you’re faced with it, you don’t know what to do.

“Hello?” The girl’s voice is louder now. “Is anyone home?”

Oh, she shouldn’t be shouting. Lucas can hear when you drop a fork doing the washing up from halfway across the yard, and always comes hurrying to make sure you haven’t hurt yourself.

“Look,” the boy, “We just need to use your phone, we’re lost—”

Another voice cuts across the squabbling – one deeper and darker and grittier. A thick Southern accent.

“You sure as hell are,” it says, and there’s outright hate in it. “What the fuck do you think you’re doin’ on my property?”

The girl screams. You can’t blame her; at six foot four and bound in scars and muscle, Lucas is a frightening prospect at the best of times. But when he’s appeared from nowhere, holding his axe, like a horror movie villain . . .

“Shit!” The boy is swearing. “Look, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t--”

You do not see the axe come down – how could you, from the hallway, behind the door? But you hear two screams, this time – both his and hers – and you hear the wet sound of something sharp meeting something soft. Blade striking bone – the slick noise of an axe blade being pulled out of a body and then swung back in. The sound of someone choking on blood, of someone sobbing--

You don’t know how long it goes on for. Your knees give out long before the girl gives up on screaming, as you sink onto the floor and hug yourself tight and squeeze your eyes shut against the noises.

It could last forever. You try and think of something else; somewhere happier. What would you be doing right now, if you were at home? How different would your October have been?

But the slosh of blood and the hacking noise of blade and flesh worm into your consciousness, the very real massacre going on outside the front door seeping into every memory you try and recall. Your pumpkins smashed to pieces, accusing staring eyes of the corpses of your friends at last year’s Halloween party as a man with an axe mows them down in your living room--

The noises have stopped. There’s not even heavy breathing, now.

“Darlin’?” Lucas calls out, from behind the door. “C’mon. I know you’re there. You can open the door now. You’re safe.”

You can’t disobey him, you remember, as you shakily climb back to your feet, using the wall as leverage. If you don’t do as he says, then you will also meet the business end of his weapon – and he’s already said, in those jealousy-fuelled threats that he whispers into your hair at the most intimate of moments, that for your betrayal, he’d make it hurt.

You turn the key with a trembling hand, and have to force your fingers to close around the door handle. Slowly, slowly, you pull it open--

The front porch is a mess of blood and flesh and organs and other things you carefully do not look at. These people have been butchered for more than just meat – but you look up at Lucas’s eyes instead and ignore them. You can’t think too hard on it.

There are splashes of blood all over his face, flecks of red in his stubble. His clothes are ruined.

“You’re safe now,” he murmurs, and he steps forward and the tang of blood invades your mouth and your nostrils and gets on your clothes as he pulls you into a tight embrace. “Don’t worry. I told ya’, I won’t let nothin’ happen to you. Not tonight, not ever.”

He says it like this poor lost couple were a threat, and not just unfortunates who happened upon the wrong woods at the wrong time. The wrong house.

(If you hadn’t put that pumpkin out, they wouldn’t have thought that there was anyone here. It’s your fault.)

His grip around you is tight. You squeeze your eyes shut and bury your face in his chest for a moment, and try to pretend nothing has happened.

It can’t last. Lucas pulls back, takes hold of your shoulders.

“Well?” He says – and bile rises in your throat as you realise you have to say it. You have to do it. If you want to stay on his good side--

“Thank you,” you breathe out, hating yourself for every syllable. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

And as you stretch onto your tiptoes and Lucas bends down to meet your lips for a thank you kiss, you pretend that there aren’t two corpses outside of the front door.

You carved a pumpkin. You ate candy. You watched a shitty horror movie. It’s like every Halloween before it--

He pulls back; a hand ruffling through your hair, a smile on his face.

“Happy Halloween, darlin’. You get back inside while I clean this up, okay? Night ain’t over yet.”

hi qts! im working on ALL my requests at the moment so if you feel like yours hasn’t gone through please send them in!!!

exams killed me and my imagination 😭😭

but thank you all for waiting so patiently and wishing me luck for my exams <33333

Something something you’ve been seeing this new guy for a few weeks now, sparks aren’t flying between you two but he’s hot, pays for your drinks, only mostly stares at your tits when you’re talking, and best of all he consistently fucks your brains out at the end of each date, so you’re in no rush to break things off yet

Something something he asks you out on another date but says his car is stuck in the shop for a while, asks if you wouldn’t mind being a ‘real bonnie lass’ and picking him up from work, swearing up and down that he’ll make it worth your while in bed tonight

Something something you’re surprised when the address he gave you is a well fortified military base, unable to recall if he’d ever mentioned what his job was in the first place, but visions of his mohawk between your legs tonight silences any apprehension as you pull through the gates

Something something you shoot him a text from your car to let him know that you’re here, but the reception is shoddy and you end up walking around a bit in hopes of finding better connection so the message can go through

Something something you’re focused on your phone screen, smiling to yourself when you finally see the text become delivered, hardly noticing when you walk into a brick wall of a man, dropping your phone to the ground

Something something you both bend down to pick it up at the same time, hands connecting and instant sparks flying through your fingers, letting out a genuine laugh when you end up knocking your forehead against his and falling on your butt

Something something the tall, masked stranger offers you a hand up, never letting go of you as you start talking, the two of you hitting it off instantaneously, hardly paying attention to the sky around you steadily growing darker and darker, each word slipping past his lips in that deep, gravelly Manchester accent of his has you forgetting why you were here in the first place, until he asks

Something something, you explain you’re here to pick up a friend for what’s supposed to be a fourth or fifth date, though you don’t see things going much further, especially now that mister tall, dark and handsome is standing before you, a vision plucked straight out of your wildest fantasies brought to life

Something something, Johnny finally looks away from the recruits long enough to see to see your text, unaware that his plan to show you off as his newest sweet piece of ass to his mates has quickly turned into his Lieutenant stealing his girl right out from under his nose

BIRD DOG | Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

MOODBOARD · AO3

A few times a year, Simon goes home to an empty apartment in a shithole city and counts down the days until he can leave. This time, there's someone waiting for him when he comes home.

Convenient. He was already planning on ordering takeaway.

Or: the live-in masseuse au

tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB reader - Freeform, Masseuse Reader, Forced Cohabitation, Strangers to Roommates to Lovers, Porn with Feelings

The mangled hand of fate lets him go but seldomly. 

He does, though, get a few weeks off a year. Bids farewell to his captain (the barest hint of a nod after leaving each other on the runway, chopper blades spinning faster and faster, the other man headed back out, his duties never finished; the world can never let them both rest at the same time) and then he’s gone, bags long packed and truck loaded the night before last. He drives a long, circuitous route after leaving the military base, the mask only shed when the paranoid prickle in his head finally abates. 

It never quite goes away though.

And then comes the drive back, the road long and the drudgery endless. One hand on the wheel, the other hanging out of the side of the truck, a cigarette pinched between two knuckles. Occasionally, he takes a drag. 

This is the part he always hates. The drive back. Roads winding through quiet towns and over hills, blue disappearing into black, streetlights piercing the darkness and demarcating the beginning and end of civilization. Manchester is a long drive north. He stops once for a piss by the side of the road and then carries on. 

It’s a wonder they let him go at all. He is violence forthright; setting him free does no one any good. It’s hardly even a reward for him, more of just a pretense of normalcy. A week to stretch his legs, so to speak. If he were anything other than human, maybe they’d force him to stay on base indefinitely, secured and contained behind barbed wire fences and reinforced concrete walls.

But a few times a year, they play this game and send him off into the world.

There’s an apartment in Manchester that he’s rented for as long as he can remember. A shithole flat in a shithole borough, and though Simon’s squirreled away enough money to buy a place of his own, the thought of owning anything makes his skin crawl. It’s not in his blood, he thinks. He’d sooner live in a shack in the woods, no fixed address or way to find him. Even his flat in Manchester is rented under a different name, and he pays his landlord in cash for the year. 

It’s dark when he reaches the city, the sky soot black and patchy with clouds. Moon nowhere in sight. Nothing beautiful ever visits Manchester. 

But there’s a light on in the window when he pulls up in front of his place.

Odd.

Would’ve remembered if he left the light on the last time he was in town months ago; filament would’ve blown out in at least that time as well. Still, there’s a light on in the living room window and a new curtain pulled across to keep anyone from looking in.

Simon stares at the light while he leans outside against the truck and finishes his cigarette. Stubs it out under his boot when it’s down to the filter and locks the car door behind him. Violence already itches under his skin, knuckles tingling like they know what’s coming if he opens that door and finds some junkie living in his flat. It’ll be worse if he finds out that his scumbag landlord moved someone else in after picking up on him being gone nearly half the year.

His key still works though. Fancy that. 

He finds you like that, sitting up from a nap on his couch, sweater slouched down a shoulder and groggily blinking open big doe eyes that widen when you notice him in the doorway, fear making you freeze up. 

You’re a pretty little thing; a pleasant surprise to find something like you sitting on his couch. It quells the violence simmering in his belly because it awakens another appetite instead. Like a meal delivered right to his door. He was already planning on ordering takeaway. 

He drops the duffel bag by his feet, propping the door open with it. “You lost, bird?”

Terror leaves you mute. He can only imagine; he must seem like something straight from a horror movie—defenceless girl waking up to the dead-eyed stare of a giant dressed in all black watching her sleep and blocking her only way out. That’s not completely true; there’s a backdoor through the kitchen that leads into a laneway behind the house, but the door sticks in the winter, not easy to open in a hurry. 

He has as much right to ask as you do to run at the sight of him though, considering it is his fuckin’ flat. 

You can’t seem to choke out a single word. Scared stiff, likely, heart slamming against your chest while the worst scenarios possible play out in your mind. Simon nearly rolls his eyes. 

“Fuckin’ ‘ell,” he grumbles, finally kicking his bag out of the way so the door can shut behind him. “Cat got your tongue or somethin’?”

The sound of the door slamming shut must finally snap you out of it because you scramble off the couch, nearly tripping over the arm when you run for the back. Screaming too, just to piss him off extra. His back already aches something fierce from the long drive—he wasn’t expecting a headache on top of everything else. 

“Heeeeeeeeelp! Heeeeelp!” 

Your screams are borderline deafening, almost more aggravating than finding someone living in his flat in the first place. 

You scramble down the hall, so terrified that you go for the first open door, slamming it shut behind you. His eyes follow the shape of your bare legs and the way the muscles in your ass move as you run. 

“I’m c-calling the police!” you yell from behind the bathroom door. 

When Simon looks back down the hall, he notices your phone on the floor, bright side up. Must have dropped out of your pocket when you bolted like a scared cat.

“No, you’re not,” he says blandly, staring at the door. There’s a pause on the other side like you just noticed your missing phone, then a bleat of panic. “Don’t try going out the window either—thing’s been sealed shut since the nineties.”

On the other side of the door, the window rattles in its frame for a good few seconds before you give up on trying to escape that way. There’s a pause while you consider your options. Simon waits patiently on the other side of the door, his temper slowly but surely getting the better of him the longer he goes without a shower and a beer, locked out of his own bathroom. 

What a bloody headache. 

He pounds a fist against the door, bracing his feet in case you try to open it and scurry out around him before he’s had a chance to have a chat. “Gonna come out now?”

“Get out of my house!” you shriek instead of being polite. 

Figures. He should’ve known his landlord would pull some shit like this. “How long’ve you been living here, bird?” 

“I have a knife!”

Pretty thing that likes to lie. There’s not a shot you have anything better than a hair dryer or nail clippers in there. 

“Better get away from the door ‘cause I’m kickin’ it in,” he announces, taking a step back to give himself some distance and waiting a few seconds for you to realize that he’s dead serious before you start screaming at the top of your lungs again. 

Got quite a set on you. That doesn’t matter much to him though. The door caves in after only a few good kicks, the frame splitting right up through the lock when it finally gives, and the two halves—the door itself nearly snapped in half—banging against the wall when it ricochets open. 

You’re trembling between the toilet and the wall when Simon walks in, knees practically knocking together. The crotch of your shorts are wet and there’s a small puddle under you; must’ve pissed yourself in fear, and he’d almost pity you if you weren’t squatting in his flat. 

The closer he gets to you, the harder you wail. Full on bawling now, snot and drool dribbling down your face, and Christ, he sure picked a bad time to grow a heart. He’s not immune to a pretty girl in distress, much as he wishes he could be. 

He kneels in front of you, purposefully blocking your only way out, before knocking his knuckles under your chin, huffing out a breath when you flinch. “Ain’t gonna hurt you, bird. You’re just in my flat, is all.”

“Your flat?” you repeat in disbelief. “This is my flat. I pay rent!”

“Got a lease then?” he asks, and though your eyes are still bloodshot and your nose is still leaking, you nod. 

“Yes.”

“Show me then,” he orders. 

And you do when he steps back to give you some space, scampering shamefully to your—his—bedroom to rifle through the dresser until you pull out a handful of papers that look suspiciously like a lease. He skims it with a growing tick in his eye. It looks like one because it is one.

“See?” you mumble. He ignores the attitude in favour of reading until the end, where he finds his landlord’s name, the blotchy signature underneath it unmistakable. 

“Bullshit,” he grunts through his teeth.

“It’s not. You can call him and ask! Where’s yours?” 

His copy of the lease is tucked away in a drawer in the kitchen, buried under loose rubber bands, old batteries, and takeout menus from restaurants that went under years ago. When he returns with it and holds it up to your nose, you frown.

“Oh. I guess that explains some things.”

“Explains some things, huh? The clothes didn’t tip you off?” Simon asks, referring to the sweatpants and shirts still lining the dresser shelves. Your lips tighten. 

“I thought the previous tenant skipped town and left his clothes. I was gonna throw them out eventually.”

“Good thing you didn’t.” His voice is thick with sardonicism. 

It’s an interesting standoff to say the least. You, standing there in your soiled sleep shorts with tear-streaked cheeks, and him still decked out in his military gear and boots tracking dirt across the flat. You sway on your feet, the adrenaline crash likely intense. He catches you when you sway too close to him and you flinch when his hand clamps down over your shoulder, a new wave of adrenaline coursing through you. 

“I’m fine,” you snap, taking a step away.

For fuck’s sake. His mood darkens at the continued hostility. It’s not like you’re the one who came home to a strange man squatting in your flat—if anyone has a right to be hostile, it’s him. 

Skittering back into the bedroom, you shut the door behind you, likely to change into another pair of shorts. Simon’s mood festers the longer he waits for you to come out. The last string of his patience nearly snaps when you finally creep back out into the living room, the sour expression on your face pissing him off even more.

“I’m gonna call Tom,” you mutter, picking your phone off the coffee table.

“Go ahead.” He doesn’t bring up that it won’t change a thing. Not his problem if you’re so green behind the ears that you think your landlord will drop everything to answer a call, especially after dinner. 

No one answers when you ring, just as he thought. He plops down on the couch and rests a foot on the coffee table, ignoring the way you pace back and forth waiting for your landlord to pick up.

“No answer?” Simon asks rhetorically. 

“Aren’t you gonna try?” you ask.

“Yeah. Tomorrow. When ‘e’ll actually pick up.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do then? I’m not getting a hotel room for the night.”

“Me neither, birdie.”

He meets your stare with one of his own. It doesn’t take long for you to give in. 

There’s a pullout bed in the couch that you offer to take and he lets you because he is, at the end of the day, a selfish prick who won’t give up a week of decent sleep for anybody. Not when his back and neck have been acting up for the past month and keeping him from getting more than three hours at a time. 

The ache behind his eyebrow throbs as Simon sits on the edge of the bed. A slow exhale. 

Tomorrow can’t come quick enough.

In the morning, Simon rings his landlord and listens silently as the fuckhead blubbers on the other end of the phone about late payments and eviction notices.

“This ain’t a charity, y’know,” the other man sniffs. “I gotta pay my bills too.”

He lets the man make excuse after excuse and accuse him of this and that until he finally goes silent when he notices Simon hasn’t said a word in minutes. At which point, Simon icily reminds him of what he does for a living and the fact that he paid him for the year in full just a few months back. 

Not much to be done after that. There’s silence on the other end before his landlord tries to hem and haw his way out of it. He offers Simon one of his other properties currently sitting vacant on the other side of town, but that’s not the answer that Simon is looking for. 

“If anyone’s moving out, it ain’t me,” Simon growls into the phone. 

The wounded look that you shoot at him rubs him the wrong way.

His landlord’s still rambling on about moving costs and lawyer fees when Simon hangs up, no longer in the mood to try and talk things out. 

He doesn’t really understand the legalities here, but he knows he can’t just toss you out on your ass when you’ve also got a lease, same as him.  

“I have every right to be here,” you start up the second he hangs up the phone, not letting him get a word in edgewise, shoulders rolled back like you’re trying to be assertive. “I’ll take it to court if I have to.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” Simon scrubs a hand down his face. 

“I’m serious. Rent is expensive and this is the only place close enough to where I work that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg—and I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to get my money back—”

“I’m not gonna kick you out,” he finally snaps, fed up with your caterwauling. 

You pause, hope warring with disbelief. “You’re not?”

He gives a curt shake of his head. “Too much of a headache. I’m only…in town for a week anyway.”

“Oh. ‘Til when?”

“‘Til whenever I’m back.” Purposefully cryptic. He gives you a flat look when you open your mouth to pry some more. 

You reconsider, chewing your bottom lip until a better question occurs to you. “Are you in town a lot? Because I’m not sure how else we could make this work. I could sleep at my cousin’s until you leave?”

“Your cousin live around here?”

You hesitate. “No.”

“Then that ain’t gonna work, is it?”

“At least I’m trying,” you hiss, and Simon has to tamp down the amusement that swirls in his chest at the sight of your shoulders puffing up. “I’m not ripping up my lease and if you’re not either, then we have to figure out something unless you feel like taking this to court.”

While Simon wouldn’t usually take kindly to being threatened, his annoyance never quite develops into anything more substantial. 

“Just keep outta my way and I’ll keep outta yours,” he says. 

“Fine.”

The agreement you come to is that when he’s in town—seldom and erratic—he’ll take the bedroom and you’ll sleep on the couch, a fair compromise since you have the flat to yourself the rest of the year. 

He doesn’t explain himself, of course. Doesn’t explain why he’s allowing this instead of dragging you to court kicking and screaming. It’s no one’s business but his why he chooses not to go down that road.

He tells himself that it’s easier this way; that it’s easier just to run your lease out and spare himself the legal mess. It’s not like he’ll even be around most of the time anyway. 

What he carefully side steps, even in his own mind, is the sharp displeasure that accompanies the thought of forcing you out of his flat and onto the streets.   

Cohabitation is—

Easy wouldn’t be the right word. He certainly doesn’t make it easy on you, leaving his dirty dishes in the sink and his half-empty beer cans in the shower caddy, his cum drying on the wall over the tub spout. You try to do the same by leaving your dirty laundry on the communal furniture, but it doesn’t have the same effect. 

It’s interesting, at least. It’s not as though he’s never lived with anyone before—his memories of his early years in the service are littered with bunkmates packed into every corner of the room, and learning to sleep everywhere from moving caravans to while standing in formation, always surrounded by other people—but he’s paid his dues. Barring deployment, he thought he’d earned the luxury of his privacy. 

But it’s not all bad; it’s been years since he had fun like this. 

You try your best to annoy him in return, but you don’t realize that you’re playing chicken with a man who’s been buried alive. There isn’t much someone like you could do to break him. 

Living with another person doesn’t soften him up one bit. There’s a time for change and it’s not off the back of a four-month covert operation, his nerves still razor sharp and ability to sleep practically nonexistent. He gets precious few weeks to himself and he isn’t going to waste them trying to get in the habit of smoking on the porch instead of in his own living room. 

“I’m a masseuse.”

“Oh yeah?” Simon grunts, barely listening. There’s a match on the telly and a beer in his other hand—a perfect afternoon, if only you’d just stop yapping in his ear for five fuckin’ minutes. 

“Yes, and I can’t show up to work reeking like a chimney,” you explain, scooching closer to him on the couch while being careful to leave some distance between the two of you. For all your posturing, you’re still timid around him, like a kitten hissing and spitting around a much bigger cat. 

“What’s that got to do with me?” he asks rhetorically, not in the slightest interested in how it pertains to him. He takes another drag from the cigarette dangling between his index and middle finger, ashing it over the side of the couch. 

“It means I’d prefer if you didn’t smoke in the flat,” you say, hissing the last few words. 

He takes another drag, turning to look at you before exhaling right in your face. “That’s a shame.”

You cough and squawk, and he fights down a grin. 

For the most part, he leaves you to your own devices, intent only on enjoying his time off. He fixes the bathroom door at least, which you begrudgingly thank him for. 

A week and a bit, Simon reminds himself when you come in through the front door chirping into your phone, your voice effectively drowning out the TV on in the background. When you spot him staring at you from the couch, you go quiet as a mouse and slink off to the bathroom, locking the (newly installed) door behind you. He supposes it’s the only place where you feel any semblance of privacy since his bedroom is off limits until he leaves. It does leave him without a bathroom though. 

Pissing in the alleyway behind the flat half an hour later, he scowls into the darkness and reminds himself that he has no one to blame but himself for this mess.  

When his leave comes to an end, Simon doesn’t bother to give you a heads up. You’ll realize it in a couple of days when you notice his absence around the flat, the siege finally lifted. He supposes you’ll be grateful for his departure and grateful not to make you feign politeness.  

Duffel bag packed away in the car, he leaves with the bed still unmade. Knows that’ll ruffle your feathers later on when you come home, but it’s his parting gift. His reminder to you to enjoy the couple months reprieve his job allows you. 

And then the road slips away under him and he’s gone. 

The months away are just complex rearrangements of the same thing. Each time it drives his soul deeper into the gully, buffeted by katabatic winds. 

His daily life on base is split into brackets of time. Wake up, go to the gym, work, clock out, see the captain for a drink. Wash, rinse, repeat. Each day blending into the next. Back where he belongs, under the thumb of a system that he’s long sold his body and freedom to, and sent out God knows where to do God knows what. 

Then, again the rooster crows at first light and he lifts himself out of bed.

When he’s deployed, everything changes while everything stays the same. He doesn’t have the same freedom of movement as he does on base, but in truth very little changes from one deployment to the next if you zoom out enough. Limited time to sleep on the chopper before it touches down, body tensed for what’s to come, and then he’s off, his objectives clear. 

Driving a knife into a neck to the hilt and pulling it out one inch at a time. It’s the one he knows how to do, and he does it well. He doesn’t have to like what he does; he doesn’t even have to think about it so long as it gets done. 

Ghost exhales and slips the mask back on.

In [redacted city] in [redacted country], he sets his scope up in the window of a building across from one where his target is slated to be in twelve hours and then he waits. Flexes his fingers when they go numb and ignores the thirst clawing up his throat. Four hours later, his elbows ache something fierce from digging into the ground for hours on end, a sharp pain shooting up his arms, but Ghost pays it no mind. Mind over matter. 

Amidst the hours of laying there and waiting for his target to come into frame, his mind doesn’t wander. That’s a luxury for a different time—when the job is done and his target is executed. 

At the very edges of his consciousness though, something flickers. The skin around his eyes pinches as he pushes the half-formed thought away. 

Then his target walks into the room and everything else disappears.

You’re still there when he returns months later on another government ordered leave. Same petulant frown and wobbly lower lip when he walks in through the front door, dripping wet from the rain outside. When he tosses his duffel bag onto the couch, you scowl, nudging the bag onto the floor with your foot. 

“You could’ve rang,” you mumble, pulling the throw from the back of the couch over your lap to hide your bare legs. Pity to be deprived of a nice view, but Simon doesn’t take it to heart. 

“Didn’t think you’d still be ‘ere,” he grunts instead, shrugging out of his jacket and shaking it dry, suppressing a smirk when you start squawking about getting water all over the floor. 

That’s partly a lie, though not one he’ll ever admit to. Simon figured there might be a chance you’d be gone, but in the time since he last saw you, he’s done enough digging around online to know that you weren’t kidding about the lack of affordable flats in the area. There’s hardly a unit nearby that isn’t going for double what he pays, some even more. 

“Well, guess I’m sleeping out here tonight,” you grumble. You’re on your tiptoes in the doorway to the living room now, the throw wrapped around you like a security blanket. 

He doesn’t answer that. No point getting your hopes up when he has no intention of giving up the bed. 

In another life, he might be enough of a gentleman to let you sleep in the bedroom while he takes the couch, but in this one, his back is ravaged by sciatica and his dominant hand and wrist twinge with the beginning of carpal tunnel syndrome. Most nights, it’s a miracle if he can get five uninterrupted hours. 

So no, he won’t be giving up the bed.

But Simon toys with the thought of dragging you in with him. It’s been awhile since he had a woman, so long that the memory is fuzzy when he dredges it up, and though his hand does the job when the itch grows severe, he’s no monk. He could pull you in with little effort, sweet talk you until your knickers are around your ankles and your legs are in the air, hot cunt steaming when your legs part and he sinks his cock in deep. Wouldn’t take more than a half dozen thrusts before he busted, pretty pussy painted with his cum.

In the doorway, you eye him dubiously, scrunched nose expressing your discontent. 

It’s an idea, at least.

He still leaves his dishes in the sink and wakes to you pounding on the bedroom door, whining about having to scrub his plates with a pot scraper, but time and distance have mellowed any hostility in you. You treat him less like a stranger intruding on your space and more like a roommate you’ve grown to tolerate despite his many faults. 

The oddest thing is opening the fridge up to more than just a six-pack, a stick of butter, and three half-empty bottles of mustard. Fresh produce and meat spill from the shelves now, leftovers packed in tupperware and neatly labelled. He eats like a king now, takeout relegated to the days when you don’t feel like cooking. On those days, Simon heads down to the chippie a few streets away and gets enough for the both of you before heading back to eat on the couch with you. 

He still gets a kick out of leaving his cigarette butts in cups strewn around the flat for you to find. 

“So what do you do anyway?” you ask out of the blue.

“What’s it matter?” Simon grunts from beside you. He has to slow his usual gait to keep pace with you—which is irritating as all fuck—but you didn’t leave him much choice when you insisted on going to the store well after dark.

“I’m just making conversation. You always get so squirrely when I ask—what are you, some kind of secret agent?” 

He’d roll his eyes if he had any less self-control.

“No way. No way. You are?” you gasp, suddenly glued to his side, hands scrambling for purchase on his bicep and shoulder. 

Simon stares down at your hands clutching his arm, unconsciously tucking his bicep between your tits. “Best to not ask questions, bird.”

You pout. He ignores the impulse to lean down and sink his canines into that plump bottom lip.

His nose itches because the world is changing. 

He used to catalogue his time off base in much the same way. Wake up, workout, tinker with the junk pilfered from estate sales and scrap yards he’s frequented over the years, then head to the pub for a drink. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

That’s changed since you came into his life. Aside from when you’re out working, you unbalance his schedule. Upset his routines. The structure propping up his entire existence gets taken down in an instant when you open your mouth and ask him to the market with you, giving him no choice but to slam the door shut behind him and drive you there.

Each day comes with its new flavour, a new bite to it. 

“You’re not eating takeout again?” you ask him, aghast when you come home from work to find takeout containers all over the coffee table

“Always a fuckin’ lecture with you, huh?” Simon grumbles into his curry. Shovels another forkful into his mouth. 

Just as he expected though, you don’t let it go. He was a fool to think you would. It’s not so bad at first when all you do is cook for him—with the life he’s lived, he’s never been one to turn down a home cooked meal, so he accepts the proffered food happily—but it’s another thing entirely when you rope him into it.

He’s already pissed off when you wrangle him into the kitchen under the guise of needing his help—absurd after your subterfuge from the day before, his expectation being that you were happy to do all the cooking yourself, not force him to debase himself by chopping up all the vegetables and meat while being ordered around like a line cook. 

What really ticks him off though is that—

he grumbles to himself as he chops the mushrooms into thin slices

—you keep getting away with it.

The worst is when you catch the tremor in his hand at the breakfast table, quick eyes picking up on the subtle quiver instantly.

“Something wrong with your wrist?” you ask. Always prying into his business. 

Simon closes his hand into a fist. “It’s nothing.”

You frown. “Doesn’t look like ‘nothing’.”

“Well, it is.”

“Can you relax your grip? I just want to see that again.”

How he lets you talk him into massaging his wrist is beyond him. Then you press your thumbs into the meat of his palm and rub in smooth, circular motions, and his brain goes offline for half a second. The relief hits him like a cudgel to the head; knocks him upside. 

“Jesus fuck, bird,” Simon groans. His knee bangs against the leg of the table. 

“Feels a bit better, huh?” you ask, the corner of your mouth quirking up in a crooked, teasing smile.

And fuck if it doesn’t feel a thousand times better by the time you’re done. He snaps when your thumbs dig in too deep at his wrist and pain radiates up his arm, but all you do is laugh it off, smiling to yourself when you press down on a tender point on his wrist and his jaw goes slack.

Sometimes, he wishes he could study you like a bug. Pin your arms and legs down to get a closer look. Kneel over you and pin your shins down with his to keep you from squirming away, then tuck his fingers into the inside of your cheeks to pull them open. 

But he keeps his hands to himself. Just barely. 

He doesn’t stay long this time, called back from his katabasis before the week’s even up, Price’s voice urgent over the phone. His duffel bag is packed before the call is even over, boots laced up and mask folded neatly in his pocket for when he leaves the city limits. 

“You’re leaving?” you ask when you notice, and if Simon were less of a realist, he might think you sounded upset. 

“Need me to take out the trash?” he asks, his answer implicit. Yes, he’s leaving. Even if it weren’t for his job, he’s not the staying type; those kinds of decisions are out of his hands anyway, and even if it were up to him, he’d be long gone by now. Adrift; across the pond or somewhere down in the Balkans, far enough away that you couldn’t find him even if you wanted to. 

That’s what he tells himself. Whether he believes it anymore is another question.

You’re quiet for a second. “Sure. Thank you.”

Simon nods. Nothing more to say. The ache in his gut could be anything else. 

He lifts a hand on his way out, ruffles your hair once before he’s gone.

Rain soaks him down to his britches but still he stands in it without complaint, watching some of the privates unload a delivery truck parked outside of the commissary. Even the mundane parts of his job are his to attend to and he does so with little complaint.

When they finish around eighteen-hundred hours, he signs out for the day and heads to Price’s office for a drink. It’s so routine it’s practically part of his DNA. 

Price already has both glasses poured when Ghost arrives, two fingers each, and it goes down smooth when he rolls the mask up over his nose to take a sip. 

“Got out the pricey stuff just for me?” Ghost asks. He can tell by the taste and from the bottle sitting on the shelf behind Price, label facing outward. 

“What else am I saving it for?” Price asks rhetorically. “I’m not letting the good stuff go to waste.”

Ghost hums. It’s still raining buckets outside. He watches as it hits the windowpane behind Price’s desk, almost transfixed.

“Got time for a drink before you’re out on Friday?” 

He shakes his head. “No time. Gotta be out by six.”

“Six?” Price repeats, a mite surprised. “Why? Something waiting for you back home?”

Ghost doesn’t answer. 

Price lifts an eyebrow. “Well, spit it out.”

He shrugs. “Nothing to tell.”

“So there’s no one back in Manchester?”

“Didn’t say that.”

Price’s lips twitch into a grin under his mustache, eyes faintly amused. “Heard.”

Truth be told, he has started to think of you as someone waiting back home. Maybe not for him, but waiting all the same. Why else would you be back in his flat in Manchester in his bed if not to wait for him to come back?

It almost makes him itchy to leave. He can tamp down the urge when the situation calls for it, but it sits right under his skin most days. If he thinks about it for too long, his focus goes razor sharp and the edges of his vision go blurry. 

In the present moment, he brings the glass to his lips and tips his head back, letting it pour down his throat. 

He has some nascent idea of where this is going.

As always, you’re curled up on the couch watching TV when he walks through the front door, on the verge of sleep. When your eyes land on him, you blink away the sleep and smile so brightly that his chest aches. “Simon!”

In nearly forty years, no one has ever said his name like that. Brimming with brightness and warmth. Like for once someone has longed for him in his absence. 

All he can do is stare at you for a time. It should make his skin crawl, and it does, to an extent. He should be out the door already—lease broken, all his shit in the back of his truck, ties cut, and so many kilometers between you and him that he has no choice but to forget your face. 

Instead, he kicks the door shut behind him and ruffles your hair when he passes on his way to the bathroom to piss and scrub a towel over his face. 

It must be a form of self-punishment. That’s the only explanation for why he comes back every single time when he has more than enough money to fuck off down south for a week instead—he could be spending his leave in Costa Brava or sipping rakija in Kotor, but he chooses to come back to this hovel with its bleak weather and seedy underbelly every single time. What other urge would drive him to abuse himself like this other than masochism? 

Any attempt to answer that is swiftly dismissed. 

One day. One day is all he manages after promising to keep himself in check this time around. He manages to get through that first day largely because of the physical distance he puts between the two of you, playing chess with a couple old men in the park, rock doves pecking at the birdseed scattered under the wrought iron tables and benches. 

His restraint breaks when he catches you dozing off in front of the television, socked feet tucked under your thighs and head balanced precariously on your fist, elbow resting on the arm of the couch. 

He sits down beside you and his lip twitches when your head bobs, slumber briefly breached when the cushion under you dips with his weight. 

“C’mere, girl,” Simon grunts, pulling you onto his lap. 

You go somewhat willingly, only putting up a little bit of a fuss. Grumbling to keep up appearances. But that melts away the second he tucks your head into the crook of his neck, body going lax and fingers burrowing into the fabric of his shirt at his belly, gathering it together in your fist. 

Christ, Simon thinks, dropping his head back on the couch. What am I doing?

Even he doesn’t know these days, but his chest aches in a way it never has before. He makes a mental note to see a doctor when he’s back on base. 

His back aches too, but you pick up on that rather quickly, hounding him when you recognize the stiffness in his back for what it is. It takes you days to wear him down enough to agree to a massage, but eventually you do. He regrets it the second the words leave his mouth, leery at the thought of putting himself in such a vulnerable position.  

You lock him out of the bedroom while you set up your table and do all the little things that you need to do in order to set the mood. His nose wrinkles when the smell of incense hits him. 

“You can strip down to your comfort level,” you explain after letting him back into the room, patting the bed as if he doesn’t know where to lie down. “Then get under the blanket and let me know when you’re ready.”

He cocks a brow. “You trying to get me naked, bird?”

“Simon,” you sigh, a touch exasperated, hands on your hips to emphasize your weariness. 

His belt clinks as he unlatches it. “Don’t worry, birdie, just gimme a second to get these off.”

A frustrated growl and then the door slams shut behind you when you bolt out of the room. 

He spares you the indignity of having to repeat yourself, sliding under the towel and barking at you to come back in when he’s stripped bare and covered. You slip back in quietly and flit over to the dresser to press play on your music.

The first touch of your hands against his bare back almost makes him flinch. All his regret comes rushing back and he very nearly calls it off, and then you press the heels of your palms into the meat of his shoulders and the bottom falls out from under him. Then you drag them down the length of his back and he very nearly bites his tongue clean off. 

Simon doesn’t bother muffling his noises when you dig your hands into his back to work out the plethora of knots, huffing and groaning like he’s balls deep. When you get to his shoulders though, he has to fight to stay put, 

“Oh, your back is really messed up,” you note, a bit breathlessly. 

He doesn’t acknowledge your words, too intent on not vocalizing his pain. Not even a grunt passes his lips. 

You work years of hard labour and soreness out of his muscles, leaving behind a new man. The oil coating your palms makes your hands glide across his back. 

He must fall asleep at some point because he wakes to the sound of television in the other room. Groggy at first, cotton mouthed and sleep drunk, and when Simon stumbles into the living room, you’re sitting on the couch with your knees drawn into your chest. 

“Oh hi,” you say when you notice him standing there. “Sleep well?” 

Speech still beyond him, all he can do is nod and plant himself on the couch beside you. Shirtless still. Simon only notices it himself when he tips his head to look over at you and finds that you won’t meet his eyes, gaze steadfast on the TV. 

“Shoulda ‘ad you do that when you moved in,” he says. 

“I could give you another one before you leave,” you reply, still not looking over at him. He bets that if he brushed his knuckles over your cheeks, they’d be hot to the touch. “Just tell me when.”

Maybe he will. What use is there in depriving himself of life’s little pleasures when his soul bears all of life’s bruises? 

He reaches over to pinch your cheek, grinning when you yowl. Just as warm as he thought.

One thing Simon doesn’t take for granted anymore are his scarce moments of privacy. No stranger to a little exhibitionism (barracks walls and tent flaps hardly muffle sound, and he’s learned over the years that men will tolerate anything if it means they can rub one out in peace), he still appreciates the time he gets to himself to take care of things. 

He’s only just finished tugging one out, his jeans buttoned back up and his hand still wet with his spend, when you walk in the front door.

You start up the second the door slams shut behind you, steam practically billowing out of your ears. “Well, thanks a lot—one of my regulars just gave me shit because she said I smelt like an ashtray and she couldn’t ‘properly relax’ for the whole hour—” 

Afterglow proper scotched, Simon sits there and lets you cuss him out until the pounding behind his eyebrow becomes unbearable. 

You go quiet when he rises to his feet, unused to him actually reacting to your whinging. Sometimes you don’t realize how accustomed to him you’ve become—how ingrained he’s become in your everyday life. What continues to elude you for no good reason is that you live with a stranger, and a strange man at that. It would piss him off if it were anyone other than him. 

Practically chest to chest now, you nearly go cross eyed staring up at him. Jaw unhinged and mouth dangling loose, just the slightest gap between your lips like you forgot to close them. He lets you size him up for a second before lifting his hand to your mouth and slowly but firmly shoving his cum-covered fingers into your mouth.

Dumbstruck, all you can do is stare up at him with his cum-slicked fingers in your mouth, holding them there for a few more seconds and whimpering when he drags them out and then feeds them slowly back in. You even go a little glassy-eyed.

When he finally pulls his fingers out and lets his arm drop to his side, you sway on your feet a little, at a loss for words. There’s a creamy sheen on your bottom lip that disappears when you suck it into your mouth on instinct, eyes going wide when you recognize the taste on your tongue. 

“Thanks for cleaning that up, birdie.” And then he reaches down to zip his fly up, smug when your eyes flit down to his crotch. 

The stakes are different now than what they were all those months ago. It can’t be a carefree cohabitation when he’s playing for keeps. Whatever that means. 

But his time is cut short again, the world catching up to him and yanking him back. And when Simon goes this time, he can’t help but drag his feet on his way out.

You’re looking good. A comment made in passing, Price’s face barely twitching through it, but Ghost catches it and he lets it sit for a moment before responding.

“Yeah?” he grunts, looking away. The recruits round the part of the track closest to where they stand, panting through their seventh lap. 

“Put on a bit of weight since you left,” Price notes. 

“Calling me fat, sir?”

He rolls his eyes, huffing out an exasperated breath. “Give it a rest, you fuckin’ muppet. I said you look good.”

Price isn’t wrong though. He both looks and feels different. With increasing regularity, he watches the clock and counts the days down until he’s released from his duties again. His want has him circling like a bird of prey. 

All his life, he’s had to live in the moment, concerned only with the immediate, tangible present because that’s all that life let him have. And though it’s been decades since he’s needed to be in survival mode, those instincts have never quite left him. 

The shock to his system has left him forward-thinking for once. A girl in his house and food in his fridge; his body feeling better than it has in years—he’s still lucky if he gets more than five uninterrupted hours of sleep, but his expectations are different when he’s not at home. Even the concept of home is foreign, like a language he’s just starting to learn. 

The future isn’t some nebulous concept out of his reach but a real place that he gets to walk into. 

Desire tips him like a scale. There may not be any coming back from this.

Love shows him no mercy, so he doesn’t show you any either. 

Months pass before Simon’s leave comes around again, and when it finally does, he’s already packed and signed out before his last day on base is even up. He says his goodbyes to Price on his way out and the other man visibly suppresses a smile, eyeing the bag clutched tight in his hand. 

“Give her my best,” is all he says before getting back to the paperwork in front of him. Simon leaves without another word. 

Then the long drive back. A skein of birds in flight follow him for part of the journey. A train running parallel to the throughway follows him for the rest. Tree boughs bend under the weight of the last snowfall.

Then he blinks and when his eyes open, he’s home.

You’re still sitting on that blasted couch when Simon opens the front door, pretty as a peach in August, and his name rings like a bell off your tongue when you say it, summoning him to you. It’s not his fault that his urges prevail, that he has no choice but to throw his bag down onto the carpeted floor and stomp over to you, lifting you up by the collar of your housecoat and dragging you into a scorching hot kiss. 

“Mmf,” you squeak against his lips, eyes flying open. 

It’s messy and frenzied, spit dripping down your chin and his tongue halfway down your throat. No finesse or skill to speak of, only an incessant buzzing at the back of his head that only quiets when you give a helpless little moan, an instant balm to his suffering. 

Simon pulls back for a moment to let you breathe. “That’s my welcome ‘ome?” he murmurs. His lips brush against yours when he speaks. 

“W-welcome home?” you repeat, flustered, your lip catching against his. He sucks it between his when it does, cock throbbing in his pants when you gasp, hot breath billowing into his mouth and making his head spin. 

This is nothing like being high on pain meds or three sheets to the win. It pulses through him and makes his cock chub up, forcing him to shove a hand down between his legs to readjust himself. That gets you good when you notice. 

He kisses hungry and mean, ever greedy for your mouth, fitting his hand over the back of your head and angling you how he likes. Holding the delicate cradle of your skull in his palm and knowing that he could crack it if he squeezed his fingers hard enough. The thought sends a rush right through him, his violent underbelly scratched in just the right way. 

“W-where’s this coming from?” you gasp when Simon pulls back. You look thoroughly flustered, but he ignores you to hook a finger in your mouth and wrench it open. 

“Open,” he grunts, giving your inner cheek a sharp tug. 

You go cross-eyed when he spits in your mouth, the glob of spit landing right on your tongue, and your affronted little gasp hits him like an arrow shot straight through his heart. He’s considerate enough to seal it in with a kiss, making sure not to let you waste a drop. Tongue pushing in right after to lick it up, growling at you to suck it when you only nervously kiss back.

His patience isn’t infinite though and kissing barely wets his appetite. It’s not enough to plumb the depths of his hunger when there’s something uglier down there waiting with its jaws wide open.

He twists you around and bends you over the back of the couch, rucking your housecoat up to your waist. Your knickers get ripped clean off, tearing at the seams, and your ensuing shriek nourishes the hunger simmering low in his belly. Appetite never satiated, belly never full. 

He likes that you didn’t expect him back so soon. Fuzzy, unshaved legs and holey socks; pimple patches on your face and nothing under your robe. The lazy domesticity appeals to him in a way he never would’ve expected. 

Then his fingers split the seam of your pussy and the runoff of his appreciation cascades down the slopes of his shoulders and his back. Slick drips from your winking hole, gathering together into a tight bulb before a single drop drips onto the couch beneath you. 

“Fuck—now there’s somethin’ to come ‘ome to,” Simon grunts, and then drags his tongue between your dew-slicked lips.

His enjoyment was a foregone conclusion when he imagined this back in his quarters in the barracks, cock in hand, but the reality of having his mouth on your pussy exceeds his expectations a thousandfold. It’s all soft, pillowy skin and sweet nectar. He gorges himself on it, an almost pathological need to be tongue-deep in your cunt.  

“Wet little gash just sucks ‘em right in…” he murmurs, plunging two fingers into your hole slowly. The soft flesh of your hole bulges around his fingers when they sink in all the way to the knuckle. 

“Fuck—don’t call it that,” you bleat, so pathetic that he’s smitten. 

“Shouldn’ta wagged it at me if ya didn’t want me to touch it,” Simon teases, then crooks his fingers just so and your leg spasms. 

He keeps you stuffed full until your legs shake, on the verge of coming, and then he rips them out. 

You practically scream in frustration, twisting to look at him from over your shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?” 

“Somethin’ wrong, birdie?” He smirks when you arch your back, pushing your ass back in his face. 

“I want to come, Simon,” you whine, wagging your ass in his face again. Just his luck that a little slut like you dropped into his life.

“Alright,” he sighs, mock aggrieved. “Lemme see if I can ‘elp with that.”

Ungrateful little thing, he thinks when he turns you over onto your back and heaves you up into the air. 

“Simon—”  you keen his name when he has you pinned up against the wall, his arms scooped under your thighs to hold you in place. 

He plunges into that warm little honeypot between your legs in slow, measured strokes at first, savouring each punctured whimper and hiccup that drops from your lips. Each flex of his hips brings him that much closer to heaven and that much closer to hell.

“Didn’t think you could just barge in without consequences, did ya?” Simon asks rhetorically, voice gone brassy and tiger-stripped, thick in his chest. “Been sleeping in my bed for nearly a year, ‘aven’t ya? Ain’t I owed this?”

He means it too. 

“You’re—so full of it,” you retort, hiccuping through your words.  

Your arms hang limp around his neck, fingers twined at his nape and nails scratching at his hairline. The low ache in his back is barely a deterrent—he’d hold you up all night if it took that long to make you come. A distant voice at the back of his head reminds him that he’ll suffer for it in the morning, but he shakes that thought away. 

He chases the beads of sweat snaking down your chest and tits with his tongue, straightening back up only when that nearly makes you lose your grip around his neck and topple out of his arms. 

“Hey,” you pout when Simon chuckles, digging your nails into his back in retribution for laughing at you. It has the opposite effect though, the pain stoking his pleasure and sending a shiver down his back, his next thrust so rough that you bounce in his arms.

Your skin smells like sweat and musk this close, so heady that his head spins. It registers dimly at the back of his mind that he’s still dressed while you’re fully nude, housecoat and knickers in a pile on the floor in front of the couch, but he can’t pull away now, not with the need to come pressing into him on all sides, dick hard enough to split diamonds. 

He stares down between your legs where his cock splits you again and again, a ring of white cream at the base. He could paint that little snatch white with his cum or stuff it deep inside, both options appealing to his baser instincts. It’ll be a coin flip in the end.

When the ache in his back grows too significant to ignore, he lifts you up off the wall and drops you down on his cock, burying himself to the hilt before carrying you to the open door to the bedroom. 

“Sorry, pet,” Simon murmurs when he feels you clench around the thickest part of his cock, whispering a little oh fuck to yourself under your breath. He kicks the door shut behind him with his heel. “Back’s shit. Mind taking over for me?” 

The mattress squeaks under his weight when he sits down on the end. You blink up at him. “You want me on top?” 

He nods and hums his assent, digging his fingers into the muscle and flesh of your ass and kneading. “Yeah, bird. Still wanna see all the pretty bits though.”

The pretty bits being the globes of your ass facing him while you ride his dick, his hands pulling apart your cheeks to watch you take it inch by inch, thighs quivering with the strain.  

Your thighs are stretched out on either side of him, pretty calves resting perpendicular to his chest and toes curled into the mattress. He eyes those with some interest before your pussy distracts him again. There’s no angle that isn’t nice to look at, but this has got to be his favourite so far, tight bud between your cheeks clenching every time you drop down onto his dick. It’s easy to ignore the ache in his shoulder with a view this nice. 

“Fuck, birdie,” Simon murmurs, dragging his hand over your ass and then swatting it, grunting when that makes you clench up around him, inner walls squeezing his length and nearly milking him dry. “Coulda been doing this the whole time.”

You laugh a bit breathlessly. “No—you were way too annoying.”

Smack. You yelp when he backhands your ass and your shoulders go stiff, spine a taut line with your impending orgasm. Simon can feel it like a knot in his throat, pussy so hot that it nearly burns him alive. 

“Shit,” you gasp, hands on his legs the only thing keeping you upright. You nearly rip out the hair on his thighs when you curl them into fists.

His hands glide up and down your sides, touching wherever he wants. It’s his God given right after housing you for so long, and though Simon clings belligerently to that belief, like the foundation of his existence is built on quid pro quo, on doing nothing for others unless there’s something in it for him, there’s something else that burrows underneath that maxim. Something far truer and more terrifying, and if he were to look it dead on, it would bring him to his knees. 

Simon grunts, lungs pummelled when you squeeze around his length, tight as a vice.

Good thing you’ve got him on his back instead.

In the end, it’s not up to him whether he comes in you or not. When his cockhead bumps against your cervix and he feels teardrops land on his thighs, your shoulders shaking with the force of your sobs, the spigot loosens and his stomach aches with how hard he comes. His heels dig into the mattress, hips lifting up, trying to cram more and more of his cock into your cunt, tendons straining against his neck. 

“Take it, bird,” Simon snarls, teeth grinding together, his voice sounding wrecked even to him. “Take it nice ‘n deep, fuck—wanna see it leak from your hole when I pull ya off—”

Your nails sink into his thighs, cutting him off. 

He does too, when you flop down beside him onto the bed and he tucks you under his arm, spreading your legs so he can push his cum back into your cunt, fingers pearly white with your mixed juices. 

“Oh God,” you whisper, squeezing your thighs together around his hand until he’s forced to wrench them open again, hovering over you this time, the cudgel dangling between his legs already thickening up again. 

And that’s how he spends his week, in a suspended state of euphoria, no sense of time passing. It doesn’t matter where it goes as long as you crawl into bed with him at the end of the day, eyes sparkling with delight. 

The leaving is tougher than it’s ever been, claws scoring right through his chest when Simon tips your chin up and leans down to slot his lips over yours. He’s not made for this sentimental bullshit, but it finds him either way. 

His chest burns on the drive back to base, acid reflux a bitch as always. 

The next time his landlord calls, he comes bearing good news.

“I’ll cut you a deal on the first month to make up for the…mix up,” he starts begrudgingly. “But don’t worry—the girl’ll be out of your hair by the end of the month. Gonna tell her today that I can’t renew her lease.”

Simon hangs up without saying a word, swathed in anger. Nearly crushes the phone in his grip when his landlord calls back a second later. He ignores that call too.

If he were a different man, if this was a different world—

No one ever knows when their world is about to change until it does. 

But even if his walls have grown barbed wires in the years that he’s been alone, there’s always a way to dig out from under. 

The return home is different this time around, the wind under his sails all but lifting him into the air. 

A year to the date almost. Another month and time will wrap back around on itself, the seasons changing the same way they have for all thirty-seven years of his life. When fate lets him go this time, Simon heads over to Price’s office before taking off for the week, carving out time for one last drink before he hits the road. Over a whiskey and kretek, he tells Price his plan and only just keeps from rolling his eyes when Price barks a laugh, clapping his hands together.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” he chuckles, shaking his head. 

“Shut up.”

“It’s a big step, Simon. I’m proud of you.”

Simon rolls his eyes, pleased despite himself. “Stuff it, old man.”

And then he’s gone again, following the same winding road back, with one stop along the way this time. He stays overnight at a local inn after signing the paperwork, too exhausted to keep driving. Too much on his mind anyway. 

It means nothing to him that people do this sort of thing all the time. He has survived the locust years of his life and come out the other side. That should be enough to give himself some grace when he tosses and turns all night, back pain flaring up and immobilizing him for an hour. Only when the first rays of dawn pierce through the threadbare curtains does it finally abate, and he heads out after his morning piss, ignoring the cramp in his belly on the drive over.

You greet him at the door when you hear his car pull up, standing under the door frame while he gets out and rounds the car, bare toes curling at the cold air. And any effort to tamp it down now is in vain, his chest filling with something unspeakable and unsaid. 

“Put your shoes on,” Simon instructs, coming over just to pull you in for a kiss before nudging you back into the flat, shutting the door behind him. 

“Why?” you ask, lifting a brow. “Wanna go for coffee or something like that?”

“Something like that. Why aren’t you putting your shoes on?” 

Herded into the truck after getting dressed, you badger him with question after question the whole drive over while Simon keeps his mouth shut, focusing on the road in front of him. It’s not a long drive at least, but your incessant questions make it last an eternity. 

Until he pulls up in front of a house with a short gravel walkway and a garden in desperate need of attention, milkvetch growing near the front step. The outdoor sconces are new though, and though Simon already has a few things in mind to fix up around the house, it’s got good bones. Leagues nicer than the place you just left.

“Are we picking someone up?” you ask when he puts the car in park, confused. You stare at the door as if waiting for it to open. 

Simon doesn’t respond.

You look over at him and he takes one of your hands, holding it palm-side up and covering it with his own ugly mitt. You feel something cold drop from his hand into yours and he curls your fingers into a fist to hold it.

“No.” 

When his hand moves away, you uncurl your fingers to find a key. It means so little and so much all at once. If he could say it with words, it wouldn’t be the same so there’s no point in trying. 

“It’s ours?” you ask.

“Yeah.”

There’s a watery sheen over your eyes when you look up, and your lip wobbles. And in a way different than ever before, his chest grows tight, the ache in his heart a fresh and welcome pain.

treasure doyoung , high school au, strangers to lovers & prompt 31 pls! 💓

thank you so much for requesting!! this took a while bc I was confused with how to start, so enjoy :)

Kim Doyoung - “you never saw me.” highschool au! strangers to lovers!

You never really knew the boy well, but to be frank, not everyone did either, he only had a close knit of friends, plus, he was the type to only speak when spoken to. He gave off the impression of someone who liked to focus on their interests and hobbies, the type to not waste time partying like most kids at your school did. You admired that. He got good grades and he has a passion for dancing.

Unfortunately for you, your admiration for him ended up turning into a huge crush, you were always glancing at him, and whenever he would catch you he would only give you a smile in return. You wanted to get to know him better, but despite him literally sitting a row ahead and two seats to your left, he seemed so far away. He seemed like a stranger to you, you often wondered; ‘if he saw me in the streets would he even recognise me?’ You were sure that was the case, you weren’t the only girl to be caught staring at him, and you weren’t the only girl he smiled at.

Your feelings for him only deepened ever more when your class voted you both to be captains. Doyoung, of course, got voted captain, and you, vice captain. It was both a nightmare and dream come true, you two would be able to look into each other’s eyes and discuss plans for any class excursions or what not, the nightmare part was you being scared of embarrassing yourself.

You would always make sure there would be nothing stuck in your teeth after every meal and after every snack, you stopped wearing laced shoes due to your fear of them suddenly being untied and you tripping, so you switched to Velcro shoes. You switched to hair clips to put your hair up due to your fear of the hair tie snapping in the middle of class, now that, that was a personal and unpleasant experience.

Despite you always being on edge, Doyoung always had his eyes lead back to you, his gaze always softening, as he let out a small smile whenever you turned your back towards him.

It was like any other normal school day except for the fact that the teacher had been absent and that led to you having a substitute. After a long day the substitute had put you and Doyoung upon the task of bringing the many boxes filled with folders into the staff room. As you and Doyoung rearranged the boxes from lightest to heaviest, Doyoung decided to break the silence.

“Sucks to be here after school hours, huh?”

He smiled took you a while to register that he was talking to you and there was no one else in the room, you wanted to refrain yourself from embarrassing yourself, of course.

“Yeah, but it feels nice being able to help.”

You cringed after that sentence left your mouth, you felt so embarrassed, you mentally facepalmed yourself, you wanted to just jump into any hole avail-

“Hey you don’t have to be so hard on yourself okay?” He smiled softly and put a gentle hand on your shoulder.

‘Huh?’ You has been snapped out of your mental scolding and now you had no idea on how to reply.

“I see the way you’re so cautious around everything or how you scold yourself sometimes, you just gotta relax, you know?”

He continued, “its all apart of life embarrassing yourself but the best part about it is that you can laugh at all the embarrassing things you’ve done.”

He started walking out of the room with you following behind him with boxes in both of your hands.

“Now you’ll be able to laugh at it all, so you know, I wouldn’t call them embarrassing, they’re really just memories in disgu-“

“Wait your laces!”

It was too late, he had already tripped with the folders scattered around the floor, his cheeks tinted with a deep scarlet red. You put your box down and offered him a hand.

“You never saw me.”

You burst out in laughter with tears brimming your eyes, “what happened to the memories in disguise? Huh?”

You let your head fall back due to the laughter, whereas he watched you, his gazed soften, and smiled softly at you, he saw you in a light he had never seen you before, he saw you differently, he saw you, and felt like he knew you, he felt familiarity.

Choke.

another soulmate au nobody asked for :)

Akaashi Keiji x female reader x Bokuto Koutarou

TW dub-con, implied future non-con

It wasn’t a good day to begin with.

You’re late, rushing through the busy campus hallways to make it to an exam that quite frankly you’re at least 70% sure you’re going to fail, mostly because instead of cramming last night you’d been… otherwise occupied with your boyfriend.

And you really, really just want this whole thing to just be over with already.

With your nose stuck in your textbook, frantically pouring over your notes right up until the very last second, it’s hardly a surprise that you don’t see the two of them rushing down the hallway in the opposite direction until you’re quite literally colliding with the taller of the pair – the broad shouldered one.

Your notes go flying, the last of your coffee too and for one split second, you’re pretty positive that you’re gonna end up flat on your ass with a little more than some bruised pride. But just as you’re about to hit the ground, not one but two hands reach for you, catch you, and the very second they do, you feel it:

A flash of guilt and momentary alarm, embarrassment, you think, and chagrin, each emotion hitting you like a sledgehammer, overwhelming you, one after the other in a dizzying blur that’s distinctly other, and then–

Shock.

Dawning surprise. 

Keep reading

hi my loves, here are some links and a masterlist of my indiscretions. All of my writing is x fem!Reader and is 18+ only. heed the tags as some are dark. note: i do not write requests or do taglists (sorry) <3

ongoing

Houndtooth | ghost x reader | 88k words Wild Cherries | cowboy price x reader | 20k words Clingfilm | ghoap x reader | 10k words Iron Tide | fisherman price x reader | 11k words

complete

Southpaw | boxer ghost x reader | 17k words

drabbles

Price is a cowboy | price x reader He's your boss | boss price x secretary reader He wins the fight | boxer soap x reader He wakes you up | soap x reader You re-enlist & You're reprimanded | CO price x sergeant reader Simon forgets how strong he is | ghost x reader

hiatus

Licking Wounds | price x reader | 114k words Trainspotting | soap x reader | 7k words

other bits

ao3: bitterfruit pinterest: sweeterpoison my art tag

<3

Discipline

this is a fic that I wrote for @hypnoswrites's birthday! (tho I was a bit late in getting it done😅)

please keep in mind the tags on this one

Morel x female!reader

Warnings: yandere, kidnapping, dubcon, drugging, abuse, dehumanization, stockholm syndrome, victim blaming, Morel is not very nice in this fic

Word Count: 12.1k

The sound of creaking wood.

The heady smell of sea salt.

The steady rocking sensation as the world around you was being moved back and forth, back and forth. Consistently. Endlessly.

You groaned, pressing your face into the soft pillow as you yearned for more sleep. You were exhausted, after all. After all that effort, all that planning and carrying out that plan of yours – it had taken up a lot of energy, mentally and physically. So after all of that, you deserved to take a break, to reward yourself, even if it was a reward as simple as sleeping in just a bit longer. That wasn't so much to ask for, was it?

No, it wasn't.

Feeling the way your arms were stretched out above your head, you found that it'd be more comfortable if you brought them back down from where they sat on the pillow. In fact, you wanted to turn over, as you found you didn't quite like the way you were laying on your front. Intending to turn to your side, you pulled your arms down.

Or rather, you tried to.

Something stopped you. Something that was wrapped around both of your wrists that kept your arms from moving freely and held them in place above your head.

That was strange.

That feeling increased when you attempted to move your legs to shift to your side, as you found that your lower half was in a similar state: something soft but firm had been wrapped around your ankles that kept your legs attached to the bed and spread wide.

Why? What had happened to you?

A chill suddenly ran through you, hitting your exposed skin and running down the length of your spine.

…… Were you naked? What the fuck-

The creaking of wood sounded again, this time accompanied by the sound of waves splashing against a solid surface.

For the first time since waking up, you snapped your eyes open to look at where you were.

……..

This was Morel's room.

…. No.

No no no no no no no no no

Why were you back here? How had you been caught? Why the fuck were you back here?

Straining your neck to look over your shoulder, you were horrified to see that you were correct in what you had been wondering earlier: you were naked, and a further look at your ankles and wrists confirmed that the reason why you couldn't move them was because they had been securely attached to the bedposts, leaving you vulnerable and helpless.

Your breath began to come out in short bursts as you started to struggle against the bindings. You shouldn't be back here. You couldn't be back here. Not after everything. After all you had done to escape him, to escape the prison that was his boat while he kept you around just so he could have something to fuck when he was in the mood.

No, that wasn't a life you wanted to live anymore. That was why you left. That was why you escaped him.

Sweat was beading on your skin as you pulled at your wrists, attempting to slip your hands through the bindings so you could get away for good this time.

I need to leave I need to get out of here before he comes back -

A hand came down to grab the back of your neck and you froze.

The touch of that hand was cool in contrast with your heated skin, and the intent you felt as you were grabbed seemed to resemble a warning. A promise that if you continued as you were, something bad was going to follow. Something that you wouldn't like at all.

Relaxing your arms and legs, you cautiously looked up at the figure that had laid their hand on you.

It was one of Morel's smoke soldiers.

White, expressionless eyes stared down at you, all the while they kept their grip firm on your neck, the cold mist that made them up seeping into your skin. They must have been in the room and you hadn't even realized, you thought to yourself. You were too disoriented and shocked by your unexpected predicament to notice that they were even there.

Several uncertain moments passed as they held your gaze, their hand still wrapped firmly around your neck while you watched them, waiting for what their next move would be.

What Morel would make them do.

You remained still – as still as you were able to, at least. You couldn't help the way you trembled as you stared at the soldier that continued to hold you, but surely that wouldn't be an issue. The fact that you had stopped trying to escape the bindings should be something that would make the soldier happy – that would make Morel happy. If Morel was happy then things were good, you remembered.

Though when you considered what you had done to Morel to escape him, it likely wouldn't be that simple of a solution.

Eventually, the soldier let you go. Though not quickly, as they chose to slowly release their grip on you, letting you feel the pressure on your neck gradually dissipate before releasing you completely. Even then, their hand didn't leave you, as they chose to run their fingertips down the length of your spine, mapping out every bump and curve of your back softly before they reached the flesh of your ass. They pressed their hand more firmly against you there, causing you to gasp in surprise and a sense of indignity. They continued to hold your gaze after that, still squeezing you as if daring you to protest, to give them a reason to lash out at your disobedience.

As much as you wanted to do that, as much as you wanted to scream and yell at that thing, at Morel, to let you go…… Now wasn't the time.

A few moments later, the soldier pulled away completely and stepped back, crossing their arms as they seemed satisfied with your submission. That was when you allowed yourself to let out a shaky breath of relief.

As you settled further on the bed and slowly breathed in and out, you found that your mind felt clearer.

Their cool touch had been what you needed. Despite hating the way they grabbed you, it had helped your mind to calm down, reminded you that you couldn't brute force your way out of this and that you needed to think. Take a deep breath and use your head.

Start with what happened, you told yourself. How did things go so wrong that they turned out like this?

Breathing in through your nose, you closed your eyes as you went back to what you'd been dealing with over the past few months; a period of time that felt like an eternity after being taken by Morel – no, not taken. That word didn't accurately describe the gravity of what he'd done.

He'd kidnapped you.

The man that you had thought was a good guy, and a single star Hunter, no less, had snatched you away from everything you'd known just to keep you locked up on his boat, pretending that the two of you were a couple in a loving relationship and that you were his wife who was always there at the end of every day to welcome him back with open arms. A role that you had vehemently refused to play.

At first.

But as more time passed and you realized that he really did have the power to keep you where he wanted, you chose to change your strategy. You told yourself then, just as you had only moments prior, that you couldn't brute force your way out of this terrible, terrible situation.

The only way you could get away from Morel was to be smart about it.

Coming up with and executing a plan to escape from Morel had been stressful and time-consuming. It had required you to build up a lot of good will beforehand, to make him think that you were accepting of the idea of staying with him and were no longer interested in returning to your old home. Being inexplicably over eager for his affections would've raised his suspicions, so it needed to be done over time.

That was why, gradually, you had stopped shying away from his touch and let him hold you if he wanted. You would engage in conversation, going from giving one-word replies to actively engaging with him. You even did some normal couple stuff together, having nights where you cooked together, watched movies and listened to music. Like little date nights aboard his boat.

Morel was ecstatic by the change in you and clearly believed that his efforts were finally paying off. Which was what you needed. Getting away from him hinged on him being so trusting of you that he kept his guard lowered, that he didn't suspect that you would try anything this late in the game.

Unfortunately, getting him to be completely convinced of that meant that you needed to sleep with him.

That was where you found yourself on the night of your escape: in the bedroom, bouncing up and down on Morel's cock while he was laid out on the bed beneath you, his hands tightly gripping your hips and his eyes full of awe as he watched the way you moved on top of him. He drank in the sight greedily, watching your breasts that moved every time you slid down on him before turning his gaze to your wet pussy that engulfed his length completely. The man was genuinely happy that you'd asked to be on top, taking it as further confirmation that you were content in being with him.

That was good. Even though you were fighting down bile that rose to your throat every time the ridges of his cock hit a spot inside of you that caused a pleasurable shudder to run through you, it was good that he was happy. If he was happy with you, surely that meant that he trusted you. You were counting on that. Counted on him being so distracted by this new attitude of yours that he wouldn't think to question the action you would take after.

Your escape started after your coupling had ended; after Morel came when he felt you shuddering on his cock, after you pressed your face against your chest to prevent yourself from showing any signs of how truly disgusted you were by the feeling of him filling you, after he placed hands on you, stroking your hair and running down your back while he kept his dick inside of you.

After composing yourself, you waited a few moments as you pretended that you were enjoying his touch before you lifted your head back up, catching his attention with a bright smile on your face.

“Want something to drink?” you asked sweetly.

Morel smiled back as he answered “sure.”

The satisfied look he had on his face while you left the bedroom made you wish you could punch him and have the hit actually hurt him. It pissed you off – the way he lay there with his hands behind his head, a picture of contentment, a feeling that he certainly didn't deserve to experience after he'd kidnapped you.

But as much as you wanted to hit him, escape was the better option for the long term. That was what you had told yourself as you entered the kitchen.

And when you pulled out two glasses and a carton of juice, you cast only a single nervous glance towards the bedroom before lifting up a paper towel roll and pulling out the small packet that you'd placed inside of it earlier. After filling up both glasses with juice, you opened the top of the packet that you'd constructed out of a spare piece of paper and emptied the contents into one of them.

When the concoction of crushed up sleeping pills and juice was thoroughly mixed together, you made your way back to the bedroom.

When you handed him the tampered juice, you didn't even look at him when he began to drink, too worried that even a single glance would be all he needed to realize that something was amiss. After months of sneaking around behind his back and grinding up those pills in secret, you couldn't let all of that work go down the drain because you couldn't act normal for a bit.

He ended up drinking a little over half of the glass you'd given him, and after you both set them on the small bedside table, Morel pulled you into his arms again, throwing the sheets back over the both of you as he made you cuddle with him.

“I really love you,” he murmured, “you know that, right?”

“I know,” you said, waiting a moment before you added “I love you, too.”

Your soft-spoken reciprocation of his feelings was enough to earn you a kiss as he pulled you up to lock his lips with yours. Just like everything else that night, you had forced yourself to go along with it, kissing him back gently. Somehow that show of love felt more disgusting than the way you had let him fuck you.

You pulled away from the kiss as you settled your head back onto his chest.

“I'm tired,” you murmured.

“Me too,” he answered, his hand going back up to stroke your hair while he added “we can continue in the morning.”

“I'd like that,” you told him.

Morel looked back at you again, smiling brightly as he took in what he perceived to be a content look on your face. With that, he reached over to turn off the light in the room, but he couldn't resist placing one last kiss to your forehead before he settled down for the night.

The man was capable of being so sweet and caring; he probably could've had any girl he wanted. So why the hell had he gone and kidnapped you?

It was a question you didn't think you were going to get an answer to, but hopefully it would be the last time you would lie in his bed thinking about it.

You couldn't say how much time passed before Morel was out of it completely. You only felt that the pills were taking their intended affect when you heard the sounds of his steady breathing and felt when his grip on you had loosened a bit.

After slowly inching your way out of his loosened grip and hitting the light switch, you stared at him. Morel didn't react when the lights came back on, and when you pushed at the arm that had been laying of you, it felt more limp and lifeless than you were expecting.

Still, better safe than sorry.

“Morel?” you spoke, your voice barely over a whisper.

No response.

When you tried again, at a volume that surely would have roused the sea hunter from the hold of sleep, your heart beat heavily against your chest as you saw no reaction.

It worked.

It worked it worked it worked it worked

Morel was in a deep sleep and he wouldn't be up for hours. Only hours, but still, it was the biggest head start you would ever get.

And as you stood from the bed to collect the things you would need when you returned to shore, the rest was history.

Even though something had gone wrong since you had ended up back here, you felt a small sense of pride upon revisiting your escape. You'd managed something that seemed like it should've been impossible, after all. And while before all of this had happened you probably would've been horrified at the thought of drugging someone with sleeping pills, things were different now. Morel deserved much worse than being knocked out soundly for several hours.

But after all of that, how had he caught you?

You closed your eyes as you tried to remember what had happened after.

Getting off the boat had been something of an ordeal, as the waters had been choppier than you had anticipated. But you had managed to get to shore using a life jacket and doggy paddling your way to the nearby shore. From there, you had walked along a road you had come across. You were slower than you would have liked due to how much of your energy had been spent escaping the boat, but the important thing was that you kept moving. Even as night turned to day and the sun slowly rose over the horizon, you kept walking, reminding yourself that every step you took was adding the distance between you and Morel, making the possibility of you being recaptured less and less likely.

Or so you had thought.

But how had that happened?

A friendly motorist had pulled up in front of you at one point, and upon seeing how exhausted you were, they had offered you a ride to a town that was several miles away. You had accepted, and subsequently fought to stay awake during the car ride as the passenger's seat felt like a godsend after the way your muscles ached from both the swimming and the walking. And after that……

You'd made it a few days away from him. By hitchhiking and sleeping when and where you could, you got further and further away from the shoreline that led to the open sea, further and further away from what you considered to be Morel's territory. You chose to approach friendly looking people who were driving away from that direction and avoided the police, worried that if you went to them with your story, they wouldn't believe you if you said that a Hunter had kidnapped you. Or maybe they would, but they would decide that it was better not to make an enemy of the Hunter's Association and instead deliver you back to him.

Regardless, you did pretty well for yourself, as to make it a few days running away from a Hunter as experienced as Morel was something to be at least a little proud of.

But that didn't matter now.

Somehow, he had caught you, and you could only guess that it had happened during a time where you had been sleeping, as you had no memory of him confronting or capturing you. You were caught and were now back in the place where you had started, and the chance of escaping a second time seemed like it would be impossible.

When you thought of that, you wanted to cry.

But you held back your tears. The soldier was still in the room with you, still watching you. You knew enough about Morel's smoke creatures to know that there was some sort of mental link that they shared, and Morel was no doubt watching you even now, keeping an eye on you even when he was away.

Things weren't going to be easy from here, but you could get away again. It would take time – even more time than you had taken to convince Morel that you were happy with him, but another opportunity for escape could happen again.

It needed to.

Your tumultuous thoughts were put to the side when you heard something other than the creaking of the boat and the lapping of the water:

The sound of the door that led to the outside being opened, followed by footsteps.

In an instant your eyes were open, and you were staring at the door to the bedroom as you heard the footsteps descending the small flight of stairs that led to the boat's interior, becoming louder as they came closer and closer to where you were.

You knew who it was. The soldier wasn't reacting and was keeping its gaze firmly on you. If the source of those footsteps had been anyone who wasn't meant to be there, the smoke creation would have been on them in an instant. The fact that it remained where it was told you that it could only be one person.

And when those footsteps stopped just in front of the door and you heard a familiarly deep voice sigh ever so slightly, it acted as a confirmation that you didn't really need, but you tried to steel yourself regardless.

The door to the bedroom opened, and in the doorway stood a single figure.

Morel.

A very upset-looking Morel whose frown only deepened when he saw the way you looked at him. Stepping in and closing the bedroom door with his foot, he walked forward until he was standing next to the bed, his hands in his pockets as he looked down at you. It was hard to tell where exactly his mind was with the way his sunglasses hid his eyes, but there was a very prominent sense of dread that was building up in the pit of your stomach.

You were in for it.

And since this was the furthest you had ever gone to try and get away from him, you were terrified at what sort of response he was going to have.

Agonizing moments of silence passed as you waited for him to speak, the only sound that you could hear being the waves that lapped against the side of the boat. He likely hadn't wasted any time in taking you back out into the open ocean once he got ahold of you again. And now after getting as close as you had in escaping him, it would be a long, long, long time before you would have even a remote chance of leaving again.

Then Morel spoke.

“You can be really unbelievable sometimes, you know.”

While the expression on his face remained impassive as he said that, the anger in his voice was undeniable. There was also no denying how tense his form was, the rage within him that was currently being restrained. In all of your time with him, you had never made him truly upset. You had annoyed him – you had caused him to snap at you when you begged him one too many times to let you go, but even in those instances, it would blow over quickly. He would push for you to apologize; when he got what he wanted he would apologize himself, and then he would move on from it, letting those small incidents go as he was more interested in obsessing over you.

This wasn't going to be one of those times.

Morel continued, “I'm not going to lie and say that I've been perfect during our time together, and I understand that you still have some reservations about all of this, but after all that we've been through, all of the progress that we've made – you really went and drugged me? You wanted to get away from me so badly that you went that far?”

You shouldn't say anything to him. Even if you were to apologize, it wouldn't be received well. He must've figured out that you had planned this far in advance, must've found the little paper envelope you had fashioned that had held the crushed up pills. He must've figured out that the entire reason you had asked for the sleeping pills was just so you could use them on him.

No amount of apologizing was going to make this any better for you, so it was smarter to stay silent.

Except you couldn't bring yourself to do that.

“I want to go home,” you muttered sadly, tears already starting to prick the edges of your eyes.

“You are home,” said Morel.

“No, I'm not,” you answered, “this place could never be a home for me. Not after you kidnapped me.”

He had the audacity to sound exasperated when he said “that again? I told you – it's for your own good. If I keep you here, you're guaranteed to be safe whether I'm around or not.”

“I didn't ask you to keep me safe. I didn't ask for any of this,” you protested.

“I know, and that was why I needed to take you, because you're so stubborn that nothing I said was going to convince you,” Morel said plainly, “I hate to say it, but you don't know what's best for yourself. That's why I needed to step in.”

That statement of his sent a red-hot rage flooding through you, and you clenched your hands into fists as you stared up at him in disbelief, daring him to continue to spout his nonsense justifications.

He did just that as he said “the world is a dangerous place, far more dangerous than you even know. I tried to leave you where you were for a bit – I really did, but it was a constant worry at the back of my head. I worried over you so much that it was affecting me when I was doing my job. I even slipped up a few times and got hurt because of it. And it's all because you're so weak and helpless. Anyone or anything could kill you without much effort. That was why I would get so distracted: if something like that happened while I was away and unable to protect you, I knew I'd never forgive myself.”

You hated that you could tell that he wasn't mocking you, not intentionally. The man genuinely saw you as some weak little thing that needed someone looking out for them, and he had brought it upon himself to take that role that he thought you needed.

Bastard

“So that's why I did what I did,” Morel continued, “and I'm not going to apologize for that. Not when all I want is to keep you safe.”

“….. Bullshit.”

You felt Morel's gaze grow darker as he stared at you, saying “what's that?”

“…. That explanation is bullshit and you know it. None of this is being done for my sake,” you said.

“Everything about this is being done for your sake.”

“No it's not. Even in that stupid explanation of yours, all you could focus on was the way you felt and what you wanted. You didn't like worrying over me because it affected you negatively, so you locked me up to put an end to that, because you couldn't be fucking normal and trust that I'd be okay. Because for someone like you, capturing a person and treating them like a pet is easier than respecting that person's autonomy. As long as you get what you want, nothing else matters, right?”

“Plus, keeping me as your pet came with the added benefit of you being able to fuck me whenever you wanted. Must be pretty good for someone who doesn't view others as being people,” you spat out.

Morel's mouth was set in a hard line and his jaw barely moved as he said “it's nothing like that.”

“How is it not?”

“I care about you.”

“You treat me like an object and you claim to care about me? Really?”

“That isn't true. I don't treat you like that.”

“You kidnapped me and locked me up,” you said.

“Because I'm protecting you,” he countered.

“You aren't!” you insisted, “you're just using that claim as an excuse to justify keeping me with you!”

“It's not an excuse. I love you.”

“Stop lying!”

You managed to get those words out with more force than even you were expecting, and it seemed to surprise Morel enough that he didn't speak while you said “there's no part of you that can genuinely love and care about me if the fact that I'm suffering in this place doesn't matter to you!”

“You're being taken care of. You're hardly suffering,” Morel scoffed.

“I am because I fucking hate this place! I've hated every minute I've needed to spend on this stupid boat and all I want is to leave! I hate being here and I hate being with you! Every time you touch me makes me want to vomit and I wish you'd drop dead already!”

“….. You don't mean that.”

His voice was low rumble when he said that, and even in your current state, you were able to sense something dangerous within his tone. Under different circumstances, you would've backed off, would've at the very least quieted down until you sensed that he was in a better mood.

But right now you were emotional and upset over being brought back to where you started and being stripped naked and tied up, and all you wanted was to let out all of the anger and resentment that had been building up during your time here.

“I mean it. This place could never be my home. Trapped on some fucking boat every day all day – why the hell would I ever choose to be here? To be with you?”

You spat out that last part on purpose, which caused his brows to pinch together as his expression only grew more grim.

“I've been good to you,” Morel had the audacity to say.

“You kidnapped me,” you countered.

“I don't know how many times you want me to say that it was for your own good,” he replied, “you weren't being cooperative and I wasn't going to take a chance of something happening to you while I was away. It was the only option I had to ensure your safety and happiness.”

“Fuck you!”

The angry words continued to spill from your mouth as you yelled at him.

“You're so focused on what you want that you've deluded yourself into thinking I could ever be happy in a place like this!” you shouted, “you keep me on this goddamn boat so you can have something to fuck whenever you're in the mood, and then you run off to do your Hunter shit while I'm locked away on a floating cage! Nothing about this situation will ever make me happy and you're never going to be anything to me other than the worthless creep who kidnapped me and forced himself on me even after I told you 'no'!”

You paused after that, breathing hard as you looked up at him while the adrenaline rushed through you. It felt good to say what you really thought. To lay everything out there as it truly was, to shatter his delusional way of looking at what he had done to you.

It all felt good until it didn't.

When your breathing began to even out, the cold reality of the situation set in. The reality being that no matter what verbal lashing you sent Morel's way, you were still incredibly vulnerable before him, tied down naked to the bed he had made you share with him while he stood above you, stiff as a statue and with a stormy expression on his face.

He could always kill you, a voice in your head spoke. With the boat likely being out in the middle of the ocean, he could tie you down to something heavy and drop you in the water, and you'd be long dead before anyone found your body, if they found it at all.

Would that be better than spending another day with Morel?

You weren't sure what the answer to that question was, because Morel finally moved, pulling his hands out of his pockets in order to undo the belt buckle at his front.

What's he doing?

Panic began to grow in you as you watched him pull the belt off without a word, sliding it through the loops of his pants before it was dangling in his hand while a look of grim determination had settled on Morel's face. The air around you felt different and that confidence fueled by your own anger had died out as you returned to being his terrified captive.

“Wh-what are you doing?” you made yourself ask.

Morel straightened up somewhat upon hearing your voice, looking back to you.

“Ah, right,” he said, more to himself than to you, as if he had forgotten something.

Handing the belt to the smoke soldier, Morel stepped towards the bed as he now reached for his tie, undoing the knotted fabric with deft fingers as he stared down at you.

“I'm going to need you to open your mouth,” he told you, “I don't want you biting your tongue on accident.”

Looking at his tie and then back at him, you asked “you're gonna gag me?”

“Yeah.”

With that, he reached out with the tie in hand as he attempted to force it into your mouth.

“No!”

You yelled loudly as you twisted your neck, once again struggling against your bindings as you tried to keep that bit of fabric out of your mouth.

“Stop fighting me,” Morel growled as he grabbed a hold of your hair.

“No!” you yelled again, still struggling even when you felt the grip he had on your hair become even more tight and painful.

The red fabric was being pressed against your lips as he tried to force it into your mouth, and even though you clamped your jaw shut in an effort to keep it out, you already felt the way he was prying your mouth open.

Was it really a good idea to keep doing this? Any resistance from this point would mean a slimmer chance of escape at a later time. If you kept fighting, you were looking at needing to play docile for him for a long, long while until he trusted you again. The smart choice would be to accept what he was doing in favor of having him be at least a little pleased with you over how you were submitting to him. Because if he was happy, then his guard could be dropped once again.

That was a mantra you had repeated to yourself for several months, and you knew that you should listen to it. It was the smarter decision.

“You're only making this worse for yourself.”

The sound of Morel's voice cut into your internal thoughts while he continued to try to force the tie into your mouth, and upon hearing the anger in his tone, the way he felt that you, the victim, were somehow in the wrong –

It enraged you.

With nothing else at your disposal, you turned your head to face him and spat on him.

The shock on the Sea Hunter's face was evident, his anger dissipating for a moment as he stared at you in disbelief, no doubt able to feel the bit of saliva that had landed on his cheek as it slowly ran down his skin and reached his jaw.

Truthfully, a part of you was also surprised at that action; you'd never done something like that before.

But no one had ever made you as angry as Morel had before this moment, either.

You weren't able to ponder that line of thought for long, because shortly after, Morel's shock shifted into anger, his brows narrowing into a glare as he wiped your spit off of his face with his sleeve.

“Open your goddamn mouth,” he ordered.

Your response was to clench your jaw shut while you glared at him.

By that point, Morel clearly had enough.

Taking both hands to your face, Morel's fingers forced their way into your lips as he pried your jaw open. His tie was forced inside in a similar manner, even when you tried to push it out with your tongue or when you bit at his teeth. Nothing you did slowed him down.

A few moments after that, he was securing a knot at the back of your head, leaving your mouth unable to close as the tie had been used to gag you.

You were still struggling to escape and Morel was still radiating rage as he stood to his full height, glowering down at you from above.

“I love you a lot. I really do,” he spoke, “but I have my limits, and today, you've pushed well past them.

The soldier stepped forward, holding out the belt for him while their gaze never left your form. Taking the belt without looking, Morel silently wrapped the end with the buckle around his right hand, holding it tightly with his fist once he was finished. With that, he looked back to you.

“I want you to know that I'm not going to take any sort of pleasure in this,” he told you, “but you haven't left me any choice. You've made it clear that if I want you to learn anything from this, then I need to go to the extreme.”

Your heart began to pound in your chest as he approached the bed once more, this time standing in front of your exposed backside. He…. He wasn't going to….. Was he?

When he pulled the belt taut with both hands, tears began to well up in your eyes as you shook your head at him while your pleas were muffled by the tie in your mouth.

Morel gave you one last look before he spoke again.

“You made me do this.”

And with that, he pulled his arm back and brought the belt down on your ass.

The first time, you didn't scream. In fact, it felt as though you fainted for a brief moment as your mind went blank from the pain and all that came out of your mouth was a brief gasp as it felt as though the air was being forced out of you.

It was when he brought the belt down a second time that you screamed into the gag.

Tears filled your vision and your entire body reacted as your limbs once again fought at the bindings, and when that didn't work, you found yourself trying to press into the mattress in a desperate effort to escape the way the belt struck your sensitive flesh over and over again. It didn't matter that Morel and his creation were right there and would never allow you to step foot off of the bed – you weren't thinking logically. You just needed to get away.

But despite your best efforts, the bindings remained strong while you remained helpless.

The belt came down again.

The searing pain that ripped through you caused the veins in your forehead to bulge out as you cried out, your voice quickly becoming hoarse from how hard you were screaming. Sweat was beading up on your forehead as well while adrenaline was pumping through you, only adding to your efforts to escape from him.

It was just as useless as it had been every other time you tried to break free; there was no sign of the bindings loosening even slightly.

A pattern was beginning to emerge as he brought the belt down once more.

And then again.

And again.

And again.

The areas on your ass and upper thighs were soon all aching, every inch suffering from the force of his hits. With no more free skin to mark up, Morel began to hit you in the spots that had already been attacked.

The pain in those areas became worse the second time around.

You had long since lost count of how many times he'd hit you. You were only able to note when you felt your skin beginning to tear and you felt something liquid and warm dripping down from both your sides and the apex of your thighs.

You were bleeding, you realized. He was hitting you so hard that you were bleeding.

And he didn't care, as you felt the leather come back down on your aching skin and cause the pain to bloom in your body yet again.

Morel continued in a steady rhythm; he would hit you, pull back, wait a few seconds and then bring the belt back down.

Again and again.

Over and over.

No end in sight.

The sound of the belt moving through the air was seared into your brain. As was the sound it made when it came into contact with your flesh. The same could be said for Morel's determined grunts as he made sure not to go easy on you. Those sounds would likely stay in your mind forever and visit you with every nightmare.

And as for the pain……

All you could do was hope the memory of that would fade with time.

You were conscious for far too long. At a certain point you weren't really able to think. All you knew was the cycle of pain Morel was putting you through as the thick leather continued to come down on your damaged skin, making your wounds even worse in the process. You managed to be vaguely aware of the blood that decorated the sheets beneath and around your pelvis, just as you were vaguely aware of the spatters of blood that had managed to get onto the ceiling above you, flying off of the belt from the momentum of Morel's swings.

After enduring all of that for however long it truly lasted, it was a mercy when you finally passed out.

When you awoke, it was to a stinging sensation as something was being lathered on your rear. While not as bad as the pain you had gone through at Morel's hands, it was enough to wake you up, making you struggle again against the bindings you had fought so desperately against during the lashing. You were simply reacting again, the not-logical part of your brain trying to get away from what it knew to be a bad situation.

A cold hand came down to smack you on your injured flesh, causing you to shout in pain once again.

That woke you fully.

A glance over your shoulder revealed it to be the soldier that had hit you. They stared at you for a moment, as if warning you against fighting any further. When they were satisfied that you wouldn't, it went back to what it had been doing: tending to your wounds.

You strained your neck to see just how that part of you looked.

That was a mistake.

The skin of your ass and the upper parts of your thighs were covered both with bruises and bloody open wounds that stretched across your skin, some of which looked deep enough that you feared there would be permanent scarring. It would definitely be a long time before you would be able to sit down comfortably.

The sight caused the tears to well up in your eyes once again, and now without the gag in place to muffle your cries, you openly sobbed into the surface of the pillow. Your throat hurt, but you couldn't help it – what had happened to you was monstrous.

And Morel didn't care.

He had done all of that to you without remorse. He'd had the nerve to blame you for it before he'd gone through with the barbaric act, all because he wanted to teach you a fucked-up lesson.

In the midst of your sobbing, you glanced over your shoulder again, this time to glare at the soldier.

“I'll never forgive you,” you choked out between your scratchy sobs.

The soldier paused in their actions, turning their blank gaze over to you once again.

Morel was listening in. He needed to be.

“I'll never forgive you,” you repeated.

There was no verbal response from the soldier.

Instead, they spread more of the disinfectant that caused you to wake up, once again without an ounce of care, and your cries of pain echoed against the walls for what must have been the hundredth time that day.

The feeling that had been behind your fierce deceleration felt as though it was wavering. Whether or not your resolve had faltered too soon or too late was impossible to tell, as you couldn't tell just how long you had remained in your current state.

In the days following your horrible ordeal, you had been left with your limbs still tied to the bed. Every day of every hour, those bindings remained wrapped tight around your wrists and ankles, keeping you attached firmly without even the slightest bit of wiggle room, your arms and legs permanently stretched out. The only reprieve you got from that was when the soldier would allow you to use the bathroom, and at the beginning, it felt more like a punishment at first. As you had expected, sitting down was painful, and there were several times you returned to the bedroom a crying mess.

Every ounce of pain that ran through you only reminded you of what you had been through – what Morel had done to you.

At first, the anger from that brutal act only strengthened your resolve. How could he do this to you? How could he do such things and still claim to love you? He was a monster. You spat that out a few times, both at his creation and at him during the times he entered the bedroom. Morel ignored you and the soldier remained ever silent. When your words didn't draw any reaction, you went silent as well and kept your gaze averted whenever Morel entered the room for a fresh change of clothes. If he was going to ignore you, you could do the same.

You even told yourself that you were happy that he wasn't touching you, that it was better this way. For once, you were free from his incessant touch, his demanding need for you to give him the sweet kisses and the soft embraces that you had come to know that he craved from you. While his presence in the form of the soldier was still overwhelming, you told yourself that you had won if just for that fact alone.

At first all of it was easy.

As if the fact that he had kidnapped you wasn't enough, the pain that started in your backside that ran through you every time you sat down and the humiliation that came with every day you woke up tied to the bed reminded you of why you could never forgive him.

He was a monster and a brute who had done so many awful things to you that you felt there wasn't a good enough punishment for him to go through in order to make up what he'd put you through.

You would never forgive him.

But after what must have been weeks with nothing to do but listen to your own thoughts while you stayed firmly attached to the bed and listened to the endless creaking of the boat as it rocked back and forth, you found that it was harder to hold onto that rage.

And part of you felt pathetic for that fact.

There was only so much to focus on in that small area, only so much you could do while you were tied down. You weren't even allowed to feed yourself as the soldier was the one to do that, feeding you like you were an animal, and there was nothing you could do about it. If you tried to fight, they would take the meal away, a clear sign that told you if you wouldn't behave, then you wouldn't eat. After going several days with only being offered water, your desire to act up during mealtimes died down so as to ease the growing ache in your empty stomach.

Even then, the meals that were being offered were meager, but they were all you were allowed to have. That, combined with the little bits of movement you were allowed every day which caused your muscles to weaken, had your strength ebbing away bit by bit while your mind was having a hard time coping with the isolation and the minimal stimulation your brain was getting from the stagnant environment.

Your thoughts became less angry and more dismal. At first you were consumed by memories of your life before all of this, of what things had been like before Morel had torn you away from everything you knew. A life with family, friends, a dating life that could've been better and a job that you had really grown to enjoy, even if there was that one coworker who had a bad habit of oversharing everything. It wasn't perfect, but it was good, and it was mostly all you wanted.

And even if things could've been better, Morel didn't have any right to take you away from that.

Those times with your loved ones felt like a million years ago now, and more than once you found yourself crying tears of rage over how all of that was lost. All because of Morel's selfishness.

Thoughts like those had your resolve strengthening somewhat, and yet, it didn't feel like it lasted long. You were just so tired. You couldn't tell how many days had passed since all of this had started, even with your best efforts to try and count the meals you had gotten or the times that Morel entered the room.

He must have been sleeping on the couch in the main area of the boat, you thought to yourself.

What was the point in that?

Why wasn't he all over you? Why hadn't he nursed you back to health himself?

What was his endgame?

….. Was he tired of you?

“Are you going to kill me?” you asked him one day, your voice croaking out the question due to how little you had spoken.

Morel again ignored you, and nothing in his actions indicated that he was in any way affected by your question. His ever present soldier remained where they were, and there wasn't any change in their treatment of you after you asked that.

It should have angered you. That after having the audacity to kidnap you, he would then pretend as though you didn't exist.

But by the time you asked that question, you felt weak in both body and spirit as the true toll of the situation had begun to hit you fully.

It wasn't right.

Nothing about this was right.

But things were nicer when Morel was happy with you.

Even if it had all been driven by his own selfishness, having him hold you was better than the bindings that held you down. Having him regale you with stories of his adventures on the seas was nicer than the way he wouldn't even look at you.

And the feeling of his lips on yours was a better feeling than his belt hitting your ass repeatedly until you were bleeding.

As what must have been weeks slowly but surely passed, you found yourself wishing to go back to before the night of your escape. Back when things were good between you and your kidnapper. Back when he treated you softly and held you close in a way that felt secure.

That's stupid. He kidnapped you, you told yourself. You really think anything about that was good?

But another part of you didn't care. Things had been better before you escaped, and you didn't want this existence anymore.

You wanted to take it all back.

Your resolve to not forgive or speak to him broke soon after that, and for the first time in a long while, you tried to make conversation for the sake of your own sanity. You offered up apologies in between pleas for him to say something to you.

Morel didn't acknowledge your request.

Morel didn't acknowledge you at all.

That night you broke down sobbing as you feared that nothing about this could ever be fixed and that your current state was going to be the rest of your life.

Standing in the corner, the soldier watched you impassively.

Sometime later, there was a change in the awful routine you'd been forced into.

That evening, Morel came into the bedroom as he always did, and you anticipated that he would grab his nighttime clothes and immediately head back out without sparing you a second glance, as was typical.

Morel didn't do that, however.

Instead you were caught off-guard when he approached you, standing at the spot at the top of the bed and reaching out to grab at the bindings. He was untying them, you quickly realized. Your eyes widened as his calloused fingers undid the bindings around one wrist, loosening it until he was able to slip your hand out of the fabric before he turned his attention to the other.

What was happening?

Your heart pounded in your chest as you laid there silently, unwilling to do anything without his explicit permission for fear of Morel changing his mind and tying you back up again. When he had finished with your wrists and walked down to undo your ankles, you remained where you were, not even daring to push yourself up to look at him.

He would tell you when to move.

Which he did, though not verbally. Once he had finished freeing you completely, the Sea Hunter grabbed you by your arm and hauled you up to your feet, and without giving you even a second to recover from the way you had abruptly changed positions, Morel began to drag you out of the bedroom.

You had no choice but to comply, following behind him on unsteady feet while you tried not to bump into either him, the doorway or the walls. With one last glance back you saw the soldier following behind you, their eyes trained on you as always.

Once more you asked yourself what was happening, but you were still unwilling to ask that question aloud.

Morel pulled you into the main area of the boat, a room that you hadn't been in since the night you escaped. Your eyes went to the part of the kitchen, finding the exact spot where you had been standing when you had tampered with the juice you had given him. Where you had, in his mind, betrayed him to the worst degree.

Upon reliving that memory, you felt a pain in your rear. The marks from the way he had beaten you came alive on your skin. It was probably just stress pain, as your wounds had long since healed up. But that didn't make the ache lessen in any way. Nor did your nerves calm down as Morel dragged you towards the couch.

After he had settled down, Morel pulled you onto his lap after, his hands holding onto your hips while he stared at you. He still wasn't saying anything, so you followed his lead and remained silent as you stared back nervously. Feeling awkward, you ended up using your hands to steady yourself on his shoulders.

He remained silent.

The smoke soldier remained as a constant presence at the doorway.

And you remained tense, your muscles coiled up as you waited for something to happen. But you could only wait for Morel to say or do something.

Because something was going to happen; you were sure of it. Whether it would be good or bad for you remained to be seen.

You kept your hands on his shoulders, your fingers clenching and unclenching at the fabric of his shirt while you waited for him to speak to you, to explain what was going on. Maybe things would go back to normal? After everything you'd been through now, you wanted to go back to the way it was before you had run. Because even if you hated being his captive, even if he still used you how he wanted with little regard for your own feelings, at least there was a semblance of love to be found. Morel was gentle with you, he was kind to you. He went out of his way to do things for you that he thought you would like, would surprise you with little gifts that he felt suited you, or he'd cook you meals that he knew were your favorites.

That version of Morel, the one that doted on you and held you softly, was nowhere to be found. Instead, the man whose lap you were sitting on only continued to stare at you coldly, his mouth still set in a frown and and his eyes watching you from behind his sunglasses.

You didn't want to speak. Doing that felt like a bad idea, like all you would do was earn another round of punishment for yourself if you dared to do or say anything without his express permission. Waiting for his command was the smarter option, the safer option.

So you sat, still staring at him with uncertainty while you were unable to help the way you squirmed beneath his gaze.

Then Morel once again broke the silence, not with words but with action, as he moved his hands away from your hips, leaving you to hold yourself up on your own as he began to undo the buckle of his belt.

Seeing that had your heart rate increase on seeing that.

Was he going to hurt you again? Why? Had you done something else wrong? Or was this simply a continuation of your punishment?

Every part of you wanted to run and barricade yourself in the bedroom, but you made yourself stay still as you stared on helplessly. Running would only make it worse, you told yourself. Just stay still.

Even when he pulled the belt out of the loops of his pants and gripped it in one hand, you forced yourself to stay where you were.

Still remaining silent, Morel placed the belt next to him on the couch as he reached down for the button and zipper of his pants, the sound of the zipper teeth pulling open echoing loudly in your head.

You made yourself sit there, even when he shoved his pants and boxers down in order to pull out his semi-hard length.

Then, for the first time in a long, long time, Morel spoke to you.

“Touch it,” he ordered.

“……”

Somehow it hadn't been obvious when he was undoing his pants of what he wanted. Even though you were staring at him the entire time, your mind hadn't truly been taking in what was happening. As such, you found yourself shocked at the order, and you couldn't help but open your mouth as you began to form a question.

“T-touch-?”

“Did I say you could speak?”

You snapped your mouth shut, fearful of angering him. Again.

Morel stared down at you through the lens' of his sunglasses, waiting impatiently for you to do as he had told you while also having no concern for your distress that was once more slowly building as you remained still on top of his lap.

“I'm not going to repeat myself,” Morel told you.

His words brought you out of your stupor. If you didn't do what he wanted, he'd give you back to the soldier and make them tie you up to that bed, wouldn't he? You would only see him in passing and all you would have was the creature made up from his abilities. Always by your side. Always impersonal, never offering any sort of kind or loving touch.

Letting out a shuddering breath, you pulled one of your hands off of his shoulders and placed it on his cock, wrapping your fingers around his length. Then you began to stroke him.

The interior of the boat was quiet as you ran your palm up and down his dick, and the air around you felt stuffy. Dense. Like you were slowly being suffocated. You took in a big gulp of air as you increased your pace, trying your best to put your all into pleasing him despite how tired your muscles felt already.

Maybe he would appreciate that.

Maybe this could be the first step in him forgiving you.

You don't need forgiveness from him. He kidnapped you.

Shaking those thoughts away, you continued, watching as his cock hardened until it stood erect in your palm, a bead of precum sitting at the tip as you worked him over, bringing your other hand down in order to use both on him.

You must be doing something right, otherwise he wouldn't be aroused like this. Even if the setting still felt suffocating to you and not arousing in the slightest. The air still felt heavy and grim.

Maybe he likes seeing you at his mercy.

…… You didn't like that thought, and you again banished it from your mind as you continued, determined to keep your focus solely on pleasing him. All the while Morel sat there with his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at you.

It sure didn't feel like he was enjoying this. It felt like he was still pissed off at you.

Just don't hurt me again, you begged silently. You can lock me back up, but don't hurt me anymore.

By that point your hands were becoming slick as you kept rubbing them up and down Morel's length. His precum was dripping down from the tip of his cock, and the stickiness was getting in the areas between your fingers as you rubbed him harder. You focused your touch on the veins that ran along his cock, areas that you remembered were sensitive, areas that you hoped were having the same effect on him.

But it was impossible to tell with the way he kept staring at you.

“Stop.”

Your hands stilled as soon as he spoke, and you stared up at him nervously,

“How wet are you?” he demanded to know.

You blinked.

“Um…..”

You didn't want to answer, because you didn't feel aroused at all and you felt worried that he'd be upset by that.

It turned out that you didn't need to answer as he sighed, saying “I should've figured.”

He sounded annoyed.

Feeling compelled to apologize, you opened your mouth to do just that, but you stopped, remembering how he didn't like it when you tried to speak earlier. So your shut your mouth yet again as you waited for him to speak once more.

“Whatever. You'll ride me anyway.”

Then Morel's hands were on your hips again, and he hoisted you up so you were on your knees above his length. He then readjusted his grip so he was holding onto the globes of your ass while the tip of his cock brushed against your pussy lips.

And then he held you there, waiting for you to sink down onto him, regardless of whether you were ready for him or not.

I don't want this, you thought to yourself as you stared down between your legs, at the cock that you didn't feel prepared for.

I don't want this at all.

Morel's fingers gripped tighter on your ass and this time, the pain that ran through you wasn't an echo of what he had done to you that night when he caught you.

What you wanted didn't matter right now.

So you squeezed your eyes shut as you lowered yourself down.

It hurt.

The stretch felt like too much and you wanted to pull off of him, but you forced yourself to go down further and further. Tears were now pricking at the edges of your eyes and your knuckles had paled from how hard you were gripping at his shirt, but you didn't stop or pull away even when your senses were screaming at you to do so.

At least it's not as bad as the belt.

Thinking that helped a little bit.

You were able to sink down to about the middle of his cock when you paused, taking in a deep breath before you began to pull upward, waiting until his head was all that was inside of you and then sinking back down again. Morel didn't make any indication that he objected, so he must have been pleased.

Except he still didn't show any signs that he was enjoying this.

He still seemed angry.

So you continued with uncertainty, still feeling fearful even as the stretch became more comfortable and you were able to take in more of him until you were able to hilt him inside of you fully. Even when you were able to move faster as you bounced on top of him, nothing about it felt like things between the two of you were mending.

And evidently what you were doing wasn't enough, because Morel took it upon himself to force you to go faster.

Grabbing you by your hips, the Sea Hunter began to move you, plunging you up and down on his length at a pace that you weren't capable of in your current weak state. The room was soon filled with the sounds of your bare thighs hitting his legs while you let out pained groans and sudden shrieks whenever he handled you a bit too roughly, and all you could do was hold onto him for dear life.

Morel wouldn't have done that before.

He had always been attuned to your discomfort, being able to sense when something was wrong and stopping before you would get the chance to tell him to. He'd even agreed to you saying 'no' to certain acts when you cited that they made you uncomfortable. And even when he was lost in a haze of lust, he was never so lost that he continued to seek his pleasure without thinking of you and his desire to make you happy.

You hadn't thought of it before. You had been too focused on using sex to get him to lower his guard to realize how nice he was being to you. The man was so sweet and caring; he probably could've had any girl he wanted, and he picked you.

And how had you repaid him?

And could things ever go back to normal?

“I'm sorry.”

You breathed out those words, and immediately, Morel came to a stop, his hands still gripping your hips hard and his cock still buried in your cunt. You felt their gazes on you, of both himself and the smoke soldier that had stayed in the doorway. Tears began to run down your cheeks as you began to sob out more apologies, your voice becoming more and more choked with every syllable you forced out.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

You couldn't tell how your many apologies were being received – even if your vision wasn't blurry with tears, you couldn't bring yourself to look at him. For some reason, you felt ashamed, and it was all you could do to keep yourself upright while you forced more apologies to fall from your mouth.

“I'm sorry.”

The boat creaked as it moved against the waves.

“I'm sorry.”

The soldier's gaze remained ever present on your back.

“I'm sorry.”

Morel still said nothing while you sobbed on top of him.

The next apology of yours caught in your throat, and though you were unable to speak, you clenched your fingers tighter on his shirt, hoping that he would still understand what you wanted to say, how remorseful you truly were over your actions.

If we could just go back to the way things were, I'd be fine.

You weren't able to process how wrong that thought of yours was.

Because Morel chose then to respond.

Lifting one large hand to cup your cheek gently, Morel moved your head up so you were looking at him. And with a gentleness that you hadn't felt since the night you ran away, he brushed away the tears on your cheek as he murmured to you softly.

“Shh. Don't cry,” he said to you.

That just made your tears flow harder, and you couldn't help but grab at the hand on your cheek with your own, pressing his palm against your skin in the hopes that he wouldn't pull away. Not that you would be able to stop him if he really wanted to let go, but your desperation for his soft, gentle touch drove you to try anyway.

You felt elation when Morel not only chose not to pull away, but went and wrapped his other arm around you as he pulled you in, holding you close to his chest. Immediately, you wrapped your arms around him in response, nuzzling your face against him. When was the last time he had held you like this? The night of your escape? Regardless, it felt like it had been years since the last time this had happened, and you didn't want to let him go.

Morel sighed as he buried his face in your hair.

“I'm really happy to hear you say that. I was worried you would never come around,” he said softly, “I don't know what I would do if you stayed that way. If you still couldn't see things from my point of view.”

Morel moved his hand to the back of your head in order to stroke your hair as he continued “it's been a tough few weeks, and I know I wasn't good to you during that time, but it was necessary. You get that, right?”

You nodded.

Morel let out a sigh of relief as he said “that's good. I'm glad you understand.”

His other hand began to run up and down your back as he said “and I hope you'll also understand why we can't immediately go back to the way things were. I'll need to keep you on a bit of a leash for a while. That means you can only go topside when I say so, and I'm going to keep using my ability to watch over you.”

“But it won't be forever,” he added, “just until we've rebuilt the bridge between us completely. Understand?”

You nodded again as you let out a soft “I understand.”

He sniffled when you said that, which caught you off-guard.

When you pulled your head back up to look at him, you were surprised by what you saw:

He was crying.

Moments ago he'd been glaring at you; he hadn't allowed for any other emotion other than anger. But now…… Now tears were streaming down his face as he looked at you with an expression of sheer relief.

“Good. That's good, sweetheart,” he said, leaning down to place a kiss on your head. He then held you tightly, his tears landing in your hair as he declared “these last few weeks have been hell for both of us, but we're going to come out of it stronger, I know it.”

You hummed in agreement as you nodded, reciprocating his embrace as you held him back.

This isn't right, a small voice at the back of your head protested. How could things have been hell for him? How could he hurt you over and over and say that he was affected negatively by it? How could he have the gall to make it seem as though he had also suffered?

Shut up, you told yourself. Just shut up and stay quiet. He wants to love you now, so take it.

The alternative is being tied to the bed.

You held him tighter, your shoulders trembling slightly from the warring emotions within yourself.

Morel noticed as he asked “what's wrong?”

You shook your head.

“I just missed this,” you answered softly.

On hearing that, a soft smile graced Morel's face.

“I did too,” he admitted, taking a brief moment to wipe at his tears with his sleeve.

When he then moved your chin up in order to pull you in for a kiss, you didn't protest.

The smoke creation of his that had been a constant presence dissipated as Morel began to readjust you, slowly moving you so you were laying back on the couch, his cock buried in you the whole time as he took his place above you. He pulled away from your lips in favor of covering your neck with kisses as he gently caressed your sides with soft strokes that soothed you. Your hands came up to grasp at his shirt again, to which he chuckled.

Taking one of your hands into his, he kissed your fingers before asking “are you ready?”

You nodded.

Morel began to thrust into you once more. This time, his movements were softer, not as forceful as moments ago when he had been taking what he wanted from you. The stark contrast to the change forced a sob to escape your throat, to which Morel shushed you gently as he wiped away the remainder of your tears.

Then he pulled away and pressed his face into the crook of your neck, sighing contentedly.

“Welcome home,” Morel whispered.

“What are you doing, step-bro?”

💌Yandere!Stepbrother!Hawks | Keigo Takami x F!Reader💌

6.4k words

Summary:

Your stepbrother has always remained an enigma to you. That is, until you eventually manage to start bonding with him and end up unveiling secrets far more disturbing than what you wanted to find out.

TWs for: Pseudo incest, rape/noncon, sexual harassment, themes of divorce

Tags: quirkless au, college age!reader n hawks, set in america? I guess?, liberal use of step-bro and step-sis, pls send me feedback on this my asks do be open rn and im actively trying to improve, slightly sexual tailoring, fashion designer hawks!, reader has good bond with mother

From this ask

———

You don’t know a lot about your stepbrother, Keigo. Or Hawks, as you used to hear him be called in high school - but both his dad and your mom refuse to call him anything but Keigo. You’d never even heard his real name used back then and now it’s one of his few facts that you’ve been able to confirm.

He skulks around the house when you’re both home, confident in his authority over the place. You stay largely inside your room to study for college and wonder why he’s not doing the same, why he’d rather sit on the couch eating cereal at 2pm, wishing you a “good morning” when you came in, to which you’d reply with a “good afternoon” and then he’d grunt and get back to eating, not sparing you a glance longer than a second.

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