Jane Austen Really Said ‘I Respect The “I Can Fix Him” Movement But That’s Just Not Me. He’ll

i hate people who know highways. “i’m heading south on I-65” okay man. i’m moving my rook to c2

is anyone else scared or is it just me and every deer

peristalsis - vi

selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to "lovers." somnophila. dubcon. smut. manipulative soap. unreliable narrator. terrible food. social isolation. suicidal ideation. suicidal resolve. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

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A hand pets between your legs sometime in the early morning, fingers searching for tender flesh. The other slips up the front of your naked body, cradling one breast, thumb flicking gently across the nipple.

The covers over you are warm with yours and Johnny’s shared body heat, the both of you having gone to sleep naked. His body curves around you, the hair of his chest and thighs tickling your bare skin. Water laps at the outer hull in quiet breaths.

You’d dreamed. You don’t remember exactly what of. Only impressions are left behind—the rocking of the trawler following you into sleep. Darkness. A sense of displacement. Your throat closing and opening.

When you crack open your eyes you feel it in the pit of your stomach. A storm to match the one that blew across the night.

If you give into it—it will hurt. You recognize it in your bones.

Johnny groans behind you when his callused fingers find your cunt warm and soft for him. His cock is a column of heat against your low back, morning-stiff. He circles your clit, mouthing the back of your neck and nudging his knee between yours, hooking your leg over his thigh to spread you open.

Fresh arousal wells up to coat his fingers. You hear him huff behind you, amused; he reaches down between the two of you to palm himself, cupping his shaft up between your folds and thrusting shallowly between them. Catching the flow along the length of his cock.

You don’t move, other than to breathe.

He toys with the breast in his hand as he tracks humid kisses up behind your ear. When he angles the head at your entrance, he slides in with minimal resistance—seats himself to the root.

You release the airy moan it draws from you. Snug—he’s snug inside you, cockhead sitting against your cervix. When he rolls his hips, he barely pulls out, just far enough that you feel where his cock begins to widen, thickest in the middle, before pushing back in again.

He rocks against you, playing with your clit. His other hand moves to your leg, drawing it outward a little farther. You stay limp in his hold, eyes closed.

He can do what he wants with you. Anything. If it keeps what’s happening in your belly contained—anything.

It doesn’t take long—you’re not awake enough to brace against it. He winds you higher and higher until your spine goes-arrow straight, your climax spilling through you, drawing you tight around him, and Johnny pistons into you with a few rapid thrusts before groaning, long and satisfied, as liquid heat fills you once again.

“Mm,’” he murmurs, “mornin,’ bonnie.” Angling himself to kiss the corner of your mouth. “Gonna get us goin,’ hm?”

You’re not entirely sure what he means until he pulls away from you. He stands up from the bed and tugs the sheets back up over your naked shoulders, humming some tune you don’t recognize—it sounds vaguely like a hymn—as he dresses and disappears up the stairs.

You feel the trawler rock and shift as he takes it away from the pier, back into the open water. Gray morning light shafts in through the small window triptych above the head of the bed.

You turn onto your back. Johnny’s spend seeps out of you slowly as you shuffle into the heat his body left behind on the sheets. You look inward.

It’s still there. Quelled—for now. If you think too hard about it, you might summon it up.

But Johnny is just upstairs, and the last thing you want is for him to hear you, to hear the poor, crazed animal you can become. There is only so much of you that you are willing to inflict upon him. There is only so much you would ask him to tolerate.

Although it strikes you, as you stretch under the covers, that you don’t believe he would resent you for it.

Probably, he would just wrap his arms around you, and coo at you in that smarmy way of his. No big deal. You can have a breakdown, bonnie, and he’ll make you something for breakfast after. And do you want him to eat your pussy again? Bet you’ll feel better after that.

You almost give in then and there just thinking about it. Wind shear pressing against the inside of your tear ducts.

That would make it worse—if he were to comfort you. You don’t think you would make it out to the other side.

So you swallow hard. Swim your legs through the tangled sheets and find the floor with your bare feet. Your carry-on still sits up in the bridge, so you drag a blanket around your shoulders and climb the stairs to retrieve it.

“There she is!” Johnny exclaims as you surface. He looks over his shoulder at you, one hand on the wheel, the other holding a cup of coffee. He grins at you. “Hell’s bells, don’ you look beautiful.”

You sneer at him, knowing your hair is a rat’s nest and the bags beneath your eyes have had no chance to deflate. Another drop of his cum falls down your thigh; you grab up your bag and retreat back into the bedroom.

When you return to the bridge dressed and brushed, face washed and moisturized, Johnny brings you a second steaming mug, white ceramic, with “Hers” in black cursive printed on the side.

“Stupid,” you say, when you see it.

Johnny kisses the side of your head. “I’ll make eggs.”

“Shouldn’t you be driving?” you ask, as he sets a pan down on the stove. You eye the trawler wheel nervously, waiting for it to spin.

“Is no’ a car, bonnie,” Johnny snorts. “Dinnae have to watch for traffic.”

You eat the breakfast he makes you in disgruntled silence. Overhead, clouds pass, intermittent gaps allowing yellow sunlight to peek through, though never for more than a moment. You might’ve expected the day to be clear again, after the storm.

Six hours is six hours. You return to the novel you began yesterday, perched on the booth couch, though every time the hour changes your stomach draws tighter, as if winched.

At the end of the trip awaits more of the solitude you’ve been seeking. Johnny will deposit you onto the cove, and traipse off to his boy’s night. Possibly his old squad mates—team members—whatever they are, will be staying for more than one day.

You know. You know how it goes.

It’s better this way, you remind yourself. It’s what you wanted.

You pass the crags you saw on yesterday’s journey, and today they are vacant of their pinniped occupants. The island wildlife overall seems to be absent, perhaps hidden away in whatever sanctuary they found during the storm. A few seabirds circle above the dune grass, or trail after the trawler, but other than that, sky, sea, and land are vacant.

You reach the naval battle, and discover what the author spent the most time researching. She describes in exhausting detail how long it takes to load cannons, the role of current and wind speed in the maneuvering of ships, the bailing-out process of a breached hull.

It’s dull, and completely incongruous with the romantic melodrama of the previous chapter. You can see exactly why a former soldier would enjoy it.

You do not tell Johnny you’ve reached it.

Finally, sometime after noon, the cove comes into view. Johnny brings the trawler as close to shore as he can get it, and then drops anchor.

You sling your bag over one shoulder as you stand, lungs shaking in your chest.

“Well,” you say, “have a good time with your friends.”

He pauses, and then looks at you. The expression on his face is completely nonplussed, lips pursed, brows raised.

“What?”

“Your guys’ night.”

“What about it?”

You frown. “Aren’t you taking me to shore?”

“Why would I do that?”

Apprehension trickles down into your belly.

No. Oh, no.

“So you could go meet them?” you say, with growing trepidation.

Realization opens up his expression. Brows lift over blue eyes blooming. “Aw, bonnie, s’that why you’ve been cranky? You think I’m gonna abandon you?”

No—oh, no.

He comes over to you and gently nudges the strap of your bag off your shoulder, smiling.

“Course you’re invited, hen, what kind of bastard would I be if I left you all alone?”

Something breaks.

“No,” you say.

“Yeah,” he croons, bringing his hand to your jaw. Caressing the curve of it with his thumb. “Want you to meet my mates—”

You slap his hand away.

Panic, fully formed, climbs up your trachea.

It’s one thing to be left behind for better friends. It’s quite another to be subjected to them.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you snap. Fury boiling. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

Johnny blinks. You wrench yourself away from him, shoving against the pull of his gravity—smacking him in the chest with both of your hands.

“Was it getting shot?” you snarl, pickaxing your temple with two fingers. “Was it drowning? Because something made you fucking delusional, and I don’t know what it was, but I’m fucking sick of it. I don’t fucking like you.”

Johnny’s expression flattens. The gleam dulls in his eyes as he gazes at you.

“I don’t give a shit about you,” you tremble on. “You’re nothing to me. You’re a hookup. You’re good dick and that’s it. You don’t mean anything to me. Nothing.”

He takes a step toward you. You step back.

“And you don’t give a shit about me either! You’re such a fucking asshole, you know that? You don’t have to act like this is anything but you do anyway, and you make fun of me the whole time, because you know I’m easy, because I’ll still let you fuck me, because I don’t have—because I’m just convenient pussy to you.”

He advances. You retreat. The cocky, confident Johnny that has been your unwelcome companion these past three days now is gone, as if a mask tossed away.

The line of his mouth is sharp and straight. His nostrils flare. A severe crease cracks the space between his drawn-together brows.

You’re not seeing the thing you saw on the beach, that first day. You’re not seeing the carefree bar cook or the island enthusiast.

You’re seeing the special forces soldier. Advancing on a target.

And you can’t stop yourself, even as terror runs a live wire up your spine.

“Like what do you think this was, Soap? I don’t care about you. I don’t care about your friends. I don’t care about your life. You’re wasting your fucking time. I don’t give a shit about you, and I never have, and I never will, and you’re too fucking stupid to notice—”

You run out of room to retreat. The backs of your knees run into the booth seat, but Johnny keeps coming. He invades every inch of your personal space, getting right up into your face, staring down at you with a hard jaw and sharp, spear point eyes.

“Stop it,” you flounder, “just stop it, just leave me alone, just—”

He closes thumb and forefinger around your chin and presses his warm mouth against yours.

You fight him. You clench your fists and beat their heels against his chest, but he wraps his other hand around the back of your head and sweeps his tongue between your lips. You screech into his mouth, but he hums back, the subvocal tones of calming an animal before it hurts itself. You sink your teeth into his bottom lip, seeking to draw blood, but it only eggs him on, makes him slant his head to kiss you deeper.

Even as you wear yourself out against him, his grip doesn’t loosen. He holds you in place as you struggle. Frighteningly strong—utterly indomitable; he overwhelms you with seemingly no effort on his part at all.

There’s bitter, black coffee on his tongue. Acidic. He presses it into yours, circling inward, making space for himself where you would give him none—

Insisting on it.

You gasp hard. Whimper futilely against his mouth. A few sharp tears escape the clench of your eyes, cutting down your cheeks.

Your fists land on him one final time, and then remain where they are. Your entire body slackens, submitting. Your lips find the curves in his where they fit the closest, and stay there. Bokeh spots dance across your closed eyes as your alveoli demand oxygen.

When you pull your mouth away from his to breathe, he lets you. Johnny rests his forehead against yours, hands coming around to cup your cheeks.

“Feel better?” he murmurs lowly, caressing the corners of your mouth with his thumbs. “Now that you got that all out?”

You take a shuddering breath. “You’re an asshole,” you repeat miserably.

Johnny kisses you softly again, first on the mouth, then the tip of your nose, then between your brows.

“Don’ be scared,” he says, mouth still on your forehead. “It’s gonna be alright.”

You sniff. “I hate you.”

He huffs—a small laugh, one that lacks his usual good humor. His hands slide down your shoulders to wrap his arms around you, and he tucks you beneath his chin, against his body. Even after so little time, the bulk of his frame is familiar, aligning with the shape of your body.

You don’t hug him back. You let your arms hang at your sides. If you nuzzle your face in between the soft slopes of his pectorals—you will take the truth of it to your grave.

John Price shows up in a motorboat, bringing along with him several grocery bags and a young man close to Johnny in age.

The two grin at each other and embrace, slapping backs in the masculine fashion and making loud, friendly noises as Price sidesteps them to bring his goods to the kitchen, where you’re hiding.

When he catches sight of you, his step falters.

“I don’t know why I’m here either,” you say, preempting him. You’re cloistered on the booth couch.

His mustache tilts at an angle. As with every other expression you’ve seen him make, you have no idea what it means, and it makes your stomach clutch.

Price is saved from having to respond as Johnny drags the other young man in behind him, beefy arm around his neck in a headlock. They’re laughing together, smiles wide as Price sets his bags on the counter.

The three of them populate the tiny space with the ease of years spent sharing little room between them, and you’d be shrinking back into the couch if Johnny’s friend hadn’t already caught sight of you. The surprise on his face is evident, even as he greets you with a polite, “Oh, hey!”

You make yourself stand up, pasting on a smile that feels more like a grimace. “Hi,” you say.

Johnny gestures at you with a proud, open hand, saying your name as fondly as if he’d just had it in a chokehold. “Stayin’ at the croft, the one I told you about? Just got back from Lewis today, we did, showed her the stones and everythin.’”

He winks at you. You fight not to scowl at him.

“Nice to meet you,” the young man says, disentangling himself from Johnny and extending a hand. “I’m Kyle, but everyone calls me Gaz.”

You shake. “Sorry to interrupt your, uh, your reunion.”

You can’t tell how sincere the smile is that Gaz gives you. Are the corners of his mouth too tight? The polite look in his eyes too saccharine? “The more the merrier, aye?”

“That’s what m’saying!” Johnny enthuses.

“Soap been behaving?” Gaz asks.

“Uh,” you say.

“Soap, you got a griddle on this dinghy?” Price calls, setting out packages of meat and buns. He bends down to root around in the under-cabinet, stored cookware clanging as he digs.

“Cap, tell me you didn’t get the patties,” Johnny complains, picking one up. Ground beef pre-molded into burger pucks, shrink-wrapped in their own thin red juice.

“What’s wrong with patties?” Price asks, still half-submerged. “Easy, innit?”

“For kids’ birthday parties, maybe,” Johnny protests.

“When’d you get so fussed about food?” asks Gaz, sipping from his can. “Not like this is London, mate, you get what you get.”

“Some of us have time to eat like human beings,” Johnny snipes. “You might have to choke on MREs, not like the rest of have to as well.”

“Soap,” Price says, “griddle.”

“Oh, nowhere near there.”

“You fucking muppet…”

Gaz and Johnny cackle. Price straightens, frowning gruffly, in a way that suggests he has regularly endured this hazing from the two younger men and no longer has the patience even to scold them for it.

Walking paths made together, now retread. Old stone, formed when the earth was young.

You step backward. Find the edge of the couch with your calves. None of the three men look at you as you settle back down into your seat. Your book lays half-open on bent pages.

“No Simon still?” asks Johnny as he cracks a beer off the pack.

“Still no word,” says Price. “Said he’d try, last we chatted, but wasn’t sure.”

“Hm,” says Johnny, sipping his beer.

His gaze slips over to you. You feel it like a rasp over your bare skin.

He cracks another can off and brings it over, sitting down to sling a heavy arm over your shoulders. You take the beer and open it, but do not drink.

“Not the same out there without you, mate,” says Gaz, folding his arms comfortably over his chest. “Neither of you, really, Cap.”

“Ah, you’re doin’ just fine, I bet,” replies Johnny. “You and Ghost? Dream team, right there.”

“Never gonna be you, Soap,” says Gaz.

Johnny’s replying smile is—contented. Satisfied. As if he’s hearing news he expected, but is pleased to hear nonetheless.

His arm hangs loosely over your shoulders as it continues like that. Johnny and the other two men punt the conversational shuttle back and forth, voices weaving with the cadence of an old scarf unraveling; the yarn thread frozen by time and tension into a shape that can wrap back around its fellows as easily as it came undone.

Unfamiliarity with their rhythm transforms the bridge—which has been, if not a safe space, at the very least something of a sanctuary to you for the past twenty-four hours. Someplace you could be your worst self without much worry of offending.

But Johnny’s old team members are not Johnny. You can’t speak to them the way you have spoken to him. They do not share his knack for inclusion—

At least, they don’t seem to, until, without you expecting it, the shuttle passes to you.

“What made you come out here?” asks Gaz, startling you.

You look up from the can of beer you have been staring at the whole time, warming between your palms, to find Gaz, Price, and Johnny all looking at you expectantly.

“Um,” you say, flushing with embarrassment. Completely unprepared to be treated like a conversational prospect.

“The quiet, didnae you say?” Johnny supplies, laying his hand along your upper arm, rubbing up and down.

He might as well have shoved that hand down your shirt instead—you catch the other two men seeing it. Noting it. Reevaluating who you are, who you might be, and why you’re intruding on their day together.

And Johnny mustrecognize it too, because he squeezes the soft part above your elbow.

Warmth like a candle flame in your chest.

“Yeah,” you say, lamely. “Just—tired, of the city, I guess…”

“I like the quiet too,” Gaz says diplomatically. “Bet it’s good surfing here too, in the summer.”

“No’ much,” says Johnny. “The wildlife’s the point here, innit, bonnie? Great seal watching, out here.”

You meet his gaze. Edges of sapphire blue are soft in your direction, mouth corners curled.

No obfuscation. No derision.

“Yeah,” you find yourself saying—and meaning. “The seals—the seals are cool.”

“Birds, too,” Price says, unpeeling patties after finally locating the electric griddle.

“How can you tolerate mucking around with two old codgers like this?” Gaz laughs.

Something effervescent infuses your bloodstream. Light and bubbly.

“As if Johnny has let me hang out with anyone but him,” you say, as if it has been a desire of yours in the first place.

You hear Price snort at the griddle. Gaz quirks a brow at Johnny without making any effort to hide it, and then clinks the belly of his can against yours before drinking.

You finally have a sip. It’s nice—hoppy, lightly sweet, fizzing on your tongue. Still cool enough to enjoy.

“Might take ya diving tomorrow,” Soap begins, fingertips twirling up your shoulder—

But then a distant voice cuts through the afternoon.

“Oy! Johnny!”

The three of you look around. Soap pulls away from you, warmth retreating with him, as he goes stick his head out of the door.

And then he dashes toward Price’s motorboat.

The engine revs as you, Gaz, and Price follow him out, watching as he speeds toward the shore. On the beach, a large man in dark colors, half his face covered by a black surgical mask, angles toward him, hands on his hips.

Johnny stops just shy of beaching the boat before he leaps out into the water, wades up the sand, and launches himself at the man.

They embrace like tectonic plates colliding. Even at a distance, you can hear the sound of hands slapping backs, feel the way their bodies meet and sway—so resonant with shared affection that you can feel the shocks of it across the water.

Glacial ice pushes through your veins.

“There he is,” Price says fondly. “Knew he wouldn’t miss this.”

“Ghost’s always gotta make an entrance,” Gaz agrees.

Ghost.

Or, as it must be—Simon.

Simon turns the snugness of four bodies into an overcrowd of five. In the bridge, there is little room to maneuver around him, massive as he is, and he seems disinclined not to claim as much space as there is available.

“Bonnie!” Johnny exclaims. “Want you to meet my old partner, Ghost.”

His eyes are dark, the color of a full whiskey bottle. They gaze at you without interest, even as he proffers his huge hand.

“You’re Johnny’s tourist,” he says, in a flat, brassy tenor. The sound of a metal grate closing.

Johnny.

Johnny.

“Yes,” you say, in a voice as irrelevant as a minnow’s.

He shakes your hand with a perfunctory grip, and says absolutely nothing more to you. He turns, and leans his bulk against the counter in the kitchen—galley, Johnny informs, as he explains the ship, and its story, to Ghost in rapid fire.

Had he been as excited to introduce it to you?

Ghost swigs from his beer, mask hooked under his chin. “What the fuck you even do on this thing, anyway?”

“Fish from it,” Johnny says. He’s standing close to Ghost, second can in one hand as he gestures with the other. “Got crab and lobster traps all over the place, that’s where the money is.”

“Always did like fishin,’” says Ghost, as warm to Johnny as he had been uninterested in you.

You cloister back in your place on the booth couch.

You can’t blame him. You can’t blame either of them. You can’t. You can’t. You are extraneous in this situation and always would have been.

“This isnae really fishin’ though, see?” Johnny goes on. “I mean, I use the dragnet time t’time, but rich tits on the mainland, they can get cod anywhere.”

“Become a real foodie, he has,” Gaz chuckles.

“Knob,” Ghost agrees.

Johnny grins. It’s a soft thing, an expression of sinking into warm bath water in a familiar tub. Ghost grins back at him, more with his eyes than his mouth.

If what’s between Johnny, Gaz, and Price is an unraveled scarf, easily knit back together, then what’s between Johnny and Ghost must be the tight-woven threads of fine, raw silk. It’s visible to the naked eye; if you reach out, you think you could brush against it with your bare fingertips.

Impenetrable. Gleaming.

You, a loose, dropped thread.

Price announces that the burgers are ready, and the men crowd the counter before he snaps at them to back off. You hook one heel around the other, twisting your fingers in your lap. An invisible wall between you and them.

The men bring the food over, setting down plates of sliced onion, limp lettuce, squishy tomato. Everything has been sitting out too long. Price sets down a platter of patties, cookie-cutter uniform, some blanketed with yellow, processed cheese.

Your empty stomach cringes in on itself. You don’t want to eat. Johnny slides in beside you, trapping you in, and his friends drag chairs over. Ghost claims the head of the table. They dig into the food with gusto.

“This is awful, Price,” says Johnny. “Told you, shoulda had seafood.”

“I’m sick of fish,” Price grunts.

Something about fresh oysters is at the tip of your tongue, but it’s trapped behind the bars of your teeth. And anyway, Gaz beats you to speaking.

“So you decided to kill the lot of us?” he asks. “Forgot we never let you cook in the field.”

“Nah, that was Johnny’s job,” Ghost says. “Where’s a meathead Scot learn to cook anyway?”

“Quite disrespectin’ my mum,” says Johnny.

They all chuckle at that. It loops around them, that ripple of laughter, and they go on to bandy stories about their captain’s culinary misdemeanors on deployment.

You shrink.

You look at Johnny. His face is animated; vibrant. The lines at the corners of his eyes have not smoothed once, with how much he’s been smiling. It’s as if sunlight is radiating from his chest, warming the room.

It visibly brightens his friends, sitting around him. Price’s gruff demeanor has softened. Gaz leans inward, elbows on the table, as if magnetically drawn. And Ghost—

You catch them exchanging a look. Speaking without words.

You don’t belong here.

The few bites you’ve managed to take of a burger surge against the walls of your stomach. Your trachea quivers against your spinal column.

“I need to use the bathroom,” you say. “Excuse me.”

It halts the flow of conversation. The four men look at you as if suddenly remembering you’re there, expressions paused in whatever shape they’d been in before your interruption.

No one says anything at all.

And why would they?

Johnny stands to let you out of the booth. You extricate yourself, and hold your gaze on the stairwell, refusing to look twice at them.

The belly of the ship swallows you with a whirlpool’s vacuum; you veer into the bathroom and lock the door behind you. Overhead, the conversation resumes, as if you left no empty space within it to compensate for.

Heat leeching up your face. Heart beating against your sternum, so hard it must be about the split the bone.

You don’t belong here.

You start heaving. Big, hard breaths, truncated, refusing both to be drawn in or released without a fight. You stagger to the sink and grip it with both hands, shaking so hard you can barely stand.

You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with anyone. You don’t deserve—

Your stomach shoves upward. You tip your face over the basin, throat convulsing, but nothing comes up.

Your vision swirls. You feel Johnny’s hand on your back, but it’s only a ghost of his touch. He’s still upstairs, with his friends.

You hear a sunburst of laughter above you, hearty and deep and shared by four voices.

Tears start streaming from your eyes, though you can barely feel them. You vibrate. It builds and builds inside you, a scream, a hurricane, gale forces whipping around and beating the inside of your skin. The quiver of your skull sends a high-pitched squeal up through the canals of your ears.

You sink to your knees.

“No,” you whimper, in the midnight zone of your voice, so that no one can hear you. “No, no, no, not again, no…”

The bath mat touches your forehead. Your shuddering mouth hangs open. You dig into the soft skin of your forearm with the nails of one hand, seeking blood.

You are a wound in the world that refuses to close. A cyst. Something here that should not be. Wherever you go is a mistake.

Heartbeat like a drum in your ears. Entire body drawing up, higher, tighter, trembling, seams pulling, self receding, bones exposed, so far out you will never make your way back.

You’re going to burst. You’re going to make a mess, right there on the floor, and they’re all going to come down and see it. It’s building in your throat. It’s at the dam of your teeth.

You wrap your arms around yourself, gripping tight.

You don’t belong here. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong here—

You don’t belong anywhere.

Suddenly, you go still.

Flying debris settles. Your airways open.

Stillness. Quiet. The next breath you take is slow and smooth.

You hear the far-away slosh of the ocean moving beneath the hull of the trawler.

Yes, of course.

You clamber upward, using the counter as leverage. As you rise, you catch yourself in the mirror.

Your face glistens. Your eyes are swollen, bags heavy beneath. It does not reflect what’s behind it—

Tranquility.

It isn’t about resolve, after all.

The truth of it settles gently in your chest. Of course. It’s about certainty. It’s about knowing, in your bones, what should and shouldn’t be. What is and what isn’t.

The way things will be, and the way they won’t.

Simple. Natural.

The evolutionary processes of your body simply hadn’t caught up. The genetic predisposition toward persistence, the silly, reactionary aversion to pain, to danger, the biological imperative of a time before now.

Now—

Turning the cold tap, you wet your fingers and dab at the puffy skin. You pull some toilet paper from the roll and pat at your face. You breathe easily through your nose, and on steadied feet, you leave the bathroom.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” you hear Gaz saying as you climb the stairs.

“Aw, gimme some credit,” Johnny protests.

You stop.

“No,” Ghost says, and it’s odd to hear contemplation in the knife’s edge of his voice. “Somethin’s changed.”

“What’s that?” Johnny asks.

“You’re…calmer,” says Ghost. You hear Price hum. “Never seen you sit this still, not long as I’ve known you.”

You hear Johnny huff a little laugh. “Guess this place’ll do that to you.”

“Hey, Johnny?” you say, surfacing.

The conversation pauses again. He looks up at you. Blinks beautiful, blue eyes.

The rueful smile you give him is easy.

“I don’t feel very well. I’m sorry. Can you take me back to shore?”

Some tiny muscle at the edge of his expression shifts.

You don’t know what, exactly, it could mean, but it doesn’t matter.

“Sure, bonnie,” he says slowly, setting down his half-eaten burger.

“It was nice meeting you all,” you say to the three other men.

They echo something back—insincere. Obligatory, you know. They’ll forget about you the moment you leave their view.

That doesn’t matter either. Nothing does.

You don’t think about it at all as Johnny helps you down into the kayak, taking your overnight bag first and then your hand. It’s cloudy overhead, cool without being cold. The wind is gentle.

He stares at you the whole time he rows. You don’t meet his gaze. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see his eyes narrowed, the line of his mouth tight again.

“Thank you,” you say, when the kayak reaches the beach. “Have fun with your friends, Johnny.”

“Sure, bonnie,” he says.

You indulge yourself—you look him up and down.

He really is an attractive man. Beautiful. Like the crash of a wave. You get that sense again—that he’s more real than anything surrounding him. More real than the ground beneath your feet. Than the ocean behind him.

More real than you.

“See you later,” you say, and turn away from him.

You walk the trail back, thinking about the anonymous feet that carved it into the grass. Years, generations walking the same way, down to the beach and back up. People you’ll never know. A part of something you never will be.

When you crest the rise, you see the cobbled siding of the cottage. You’d never looked at the back of it before—never thought to. It was unimportant in the face of everything else, irrelevant.

Maybe that’s why you look now. The finiteness making room for it.

At the cobbled wall’s base is a little mound of piled sand.

You go to your knees in front of it. The soil is cool to the touch, loose. Easily disturbed.

Somehow, you know what you’re going to find, even as you dig. Your fingers brush against it even before you uncover it fully, and it doesn’t surprise you at all.

Folded tightly, in a divot in the ground, is the paint-splash riot of Johnny’s pelt.

next chapter early access

a/n: had to add one more chapter because otherwise this would have been 9k words long lol

forreal this time—two chapters left!!

My favorite kind of balls is the ones that have so much loose skin they hang… especially when it’s fresh from somewhere hot, like a bath, so they’re even more relaxed. The swing…. the heaviness

I’m not sane. Not anymore 😪

Price coded....

I know that man's got low hanging fruit, makes you lay on the edge of the bed and warm them in your mouth while he tugs on your tits. Doesn't need to see the way your tongue darts out to lick over the seam of his sack to know you're enjoying yourself. He can see the way you're starting to slick between your legs, the way you press your thighs together to try and relieve some of the ache. If he were a selfish man he might make you stop and take his own pleasure licking you clean, but the hum of enjoyment that rattles through your chest is enough to keep him where he is. Purring like a lazy cat and sucking at his heavy balls without a care in the world to what he might want.

Laving your tongue over the loose skin, opening your mouth wide to suck both balls in, trying to lick the base of his cock. Pulling back only enough to suckle at the heavy weights that hang from him. Ooooooooh that man's got hair too, plenty to wiggle your tongue through and bury your nose in. Makes you feel accomplished to tug at the skin and see the dark hair darken further with your spit, slicked to his balls like he's fresh from the shower. He'll give his cock a few lazy pumps just to keep himself nice and hard for you, for when you decide to stop squirming those pretty hips and let him do his job. But for now you can have your fun.

Gaz would definitely court you like old times. Pick you up at the front door dressed in a suit, pay for dinner and insist you have dessert, drive you home and hold your hand as he walks you to your house kind of guy. Buy you roses on his way back from deployment despite his exhaustion and make love to you slow after devouring your home made meal. Take you to the movies and tie a bow in your hair before you leave, letting you stain his lips red with your own. Sing to you as you both dance outside under the stars, cry with you when you find out you’re pregnant for the first time. Gaz is everything a man should be.

ch1 something borrowed something blue (mafia!price x simon's sister!reader)

masterlist | next

-

“Yer gettin’ married next week.”

You scoff at your brother staring at his Scotch whisky like it holds the answers to the universe.

“And you’re the king of Egypt. Funny, Simon.” He doesn’t laugh. Instead, he glances at Johnny, his husband and right-hand man. The two have a silent conversation, a head twitch followed by a pursing of lips. Johnny’s lips are cracked and split, something you can’t imagine your brother is attracted to. Superb mental health does not run in your family.

Johnny rises out of his chair, a wooden thing that creaks with effort, and takes his leave. He ruffles your hair on the way out while you try, for the thirtieth time, to shove his side. You are, yet again, unsuccessful. He’s built like a tank.

“M serious, love. ‘Ve been in negotiations the past month. It’s happenin’ next Saturday, St Etheldreda's Church.” You run through a list of churches in your head. St. Ethledreda’s is not in Manchester. In fact, you’re pretty sure it’s not in your territory. Which means…

“Why’re you naming a church in London?” Simon’s quiet as his eyes bore holes into yours. This is one of his favorite tactics to use on his men - staying silent until they find the answer themselves. You hate when he uses it on you like you’re under his command and not his younger sister. 

“You can’t be serious.”

“We need an alliance an’ they offered.”

“Then write a fuckin’ treaty! Not a marriage certificate.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that.”

“It’s the 21st century.”

“Not in this family.”

That’s something you can’t argue against. Most people outside of your immediate circle don’t even know Simon’s married to Johnny, let alone into men. When he first came to power, you created a sob story for him - early marriage to his (female) childhood sweetheart, then fast-spreading cancer, ending with a man struck by grief. It allowed him a known reason for turning down arranged marriages while making him seem more human than your shared father. No one paid enough attention to you two as children to know the story wasn’t real, and fake certificates of marriage and death are a dime a dozen. Everyone knows he’s close with Johnny, his right-hand man, and that’s that.

“What about my bookstore?” It’s your pride and joy, plus it’s 95% legal. Mostly. 

“There’s bookstores in London.” London. Only 200 miles away, but it’s like another world. Another world where you can’t walk down the street where every single storefront owner knows who you are. Where the cops are on your family’s payroll and don’t blink an eye at the gun strapped to your hip. It doesn’t matter if you were raised away in your formative years, losing your accent and most concepts of slang that baffle you. It doesn’t matter if you only share a father with Simon, that your mother was a Riley employee and not Mrs. Riley. Manchester is your home. 

It doesn’t occur to you that you have a choice, mainly because you know you don’t. The firm, or mafia, gang, or whatever you want to call it, still operates as if women are objects to be traded and bought. Marriages are merely political agreements. Getting to run a bookstore, or cash-cleaning business, as a woman is almost unheard of where you’re from. Others might call you lucky, but it’s more like being a bird in a gilded cage. A glimpse of what a true, normal life might look like. Living in a flat above your store, hosting local book clubs, setting out free cookie samples - all to be ruined when Johnny stumbles through with a gunshot or the newest recruits are sent to grab more bullets from the basement. Every other week, you snap back from your daydream and remember that you’re a mafia princess at the end of the day, though duchess seems more adequate since the Rileys don’t have that big of a territory.

“And who is my husband-to-be in London?”

“John Price.”

“I’d rather marry Nikolai. In fact, I might just go elope.” Simon glares and you glare back. “I’m not marrying John Price.” You clarify, for emphasis. Simon leans forward in his office chair, looming over his desk like a puppet master. You’re in the chair across from him, crossing your legs casually like you’re not discussing your arranged marriage and potential future. “Contract’s done, love. Jus’ waitin’ on yer signature.” Your signature, the one change from the barbaric practices of old England. You could say no, but then Simon would have no choice but to cut you off. It would be a sign of weakness to the other families if he let a delinquent bastard half-sister run his decisions.

“I want to negotiate the contract.” It’s the closest your brother has ever been to rolling his eyes. They twitch with restraint, blonde lashes flickering. “This isn’t a TV show, kid. Yer not negotiatin’ yer bloody contract.” You uncross your legs, hands on your armrest like you’re about to leave. “Fine. Let me go call up the NCA, tell them all about my brother and his scary gang.” He sighs deeply, then pulls out his phone. “Bloody hell. Can’t wait t’ marry you off, fuckin’ arsehole.” You grab the bright pink stress ball on his desk, a stocking stuffer you gave him as a joke, and throw it at him. He doesn’t even bother to look up from his phone, huffing as the ball hits the side of his head. 

“Here.” He tosses you the phone that’s already ringing. There’s no contact name, just initials. JP. “Riley. Got a problem?” A smooth baritone emits from the phone’s tinny speakers. “Hope you’re not busy this weekend, future hubby. I can’t wait to see you.” Simon sighs at the consequences of his own actions. John’s silent on the other end, processing your words. Bit thick, that one.

“An’ why’s that, sweetheart?” It’s a term of endearment but he laces it with vitriol. “We’re having tea on Saturday at my store. Bring your contract and favorite lawyers. See you then!” You hang up before he can answer, tossing the phone back to Simon. He shakes his head at you.

“Smile, Simon. It’ll be nice to bond with your brother-in-law.”

This is going to be a very long marriage.

If you even get down the aisle.

-

Why does reader hate John? Why is she also a little shit? All will be revealed :)

TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROAD | MASTERLIST

PRICE x READER

You have nothing on your person apart from a hastily packed suitcase and the dress you came into town wearing, on the run from trouble back home. Too bad John's missing a bride that matches your description.

Or: the 1800s (mistaken) mail order bride au

[ao3]

tags: Alternate Universe - Western, Non-Consensual Spanking, Mail Order Brides, Past Violence, AFAB reader - Freeform, 1800s Timeline, Marriage of Convenience, Past attempted assault, Dubious Consent, Unnegotiated punishment, Minor Violence, Minor Character Death

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20

Extras

Series moodboard

I know my dog would NOT be doing all that

Dogs have had many jobs throughout history, in this case: Revenge.

Ask Nicely

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

König x F!Reader, 1.1k words

Era: N/A

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

Day 3: Thigh kink with König (kink)

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wait.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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