Spacecola7 - The Rot Lives Within

Everything You Touch

simon "ghost" riley x fem!reader | previously known as "soft spot" | masterlist

Chapter Twelve: anamneses

tw: minor violence, blood

By the beginning of December, Simon has fully moved in with you. 

It’s an easy transition, considering he only has a few items to his name. Dusty hobby items and required necessities. With a few cardboard boxes and plastic totes shoved in the boot of his car, it only took one trip to your apartment to move everything over, and then only two hours after that to settle his things in with yours. Mismatching cutlery, plain and chipped mugs among your themed ones, a new toothbrush resting next to yours—it’s effortless. A gentle weaving of the threads of life. 

Each morning that you wake up with him by your side, you feel those threads begin to knot. Inseparable, ends mending until the fibers are indiscernible. He’s always on his back, snoring in the middle of the night when you find yourself rousing. You watch the gentle rise and fall of his chest and decide to make it your pillow. It wakes him. You know it does because his snoring stops, but he never speaks. Never kvetches as you nestle your skull just beneath his collarbone. There is only a soft sigh, and the resting of his hand upon your head before he’s back to snoring again. 

He rises well before you do in the mornings, always managing to slip out of bed without stirring you and vanishing deep into the apartment. Usually, you find him in the living room with a mug in hand as he watches the news, or hunched over a book. In the beginning, he tried to make you breakfast but kept managing to burn the toast, so he’s given up that chore and left it to you, but your dishes are always done and the fridge never empties. 

You love having him here—your little ghost. You enjoy the fresh redolence he leaves behind after he showers in the bathroom and the heat he brings to your bed on cold winter nights. Even when you’re at work he still visits you, withdrawing money from his account and always leaving you a tip in the form of something for lunch or a bottled drink. 

Before long, all the wretched scars Eric left behind in your home have long faded. Simon patches over them tenderly with his boots by the door and his mouth on yours. 

For him, you have become a new constant in his life. A curious creature with odd routines of movie watching, long baths, and humming to music when you cook. His little bird, always chirping with fluttering wings, nesting into his side deep in the night, eating out of the palm of his hand and cooing his praises. Simon never thought he could be loved this much simply for existing—for providing such simple amenities like care and arms to hold you with. 

Still, there are old habits that the grey matter of his brain refuse to relinquish. 

His dreams being one of them. 

“Faster! Faster!” 

Pearly white teeth flash down at him as Simon’s arms extend high in the air, stubby legs and arms wiggling in the air as he holds his nephew up. His hands stiffen to a point, elbows attempting to lock as best as they can as he mocks engine noises and fluttering propellers, though it isn’t long before giggles interrupt his facade. He demands that Simon move faster, wiggling in his grasp, more worm than he ever is in an airplane. 

“Go easy on your uncle, Joseph.” 

A warm voice bleeds into his memories, and he instantly recognizes it as his brother’s. Tommy. He sits next to their mother on the couch with the soft lights of the Christmas Tree diffusing around him, illuminating the strands of his blonde hair. His smile is jolly as he leans back on the sofa, torso arguing against the Christmas sweater that looks roughly a size too small. 

“It’s alright,” Simon assures while he places his nephew back on the ground. The boy giggles once more as he keeps his arms straight and takes off running around the small living room. Chuckling, he steps back and watches the boy play, arms crossing over his chest. “You’re a lucky man, Tom. I’m proud of you.” 

And he is. Truly. There is immense pride that swells in his chest whenever he thinks of his brother’s battle with addiction—how he broke the cycle their father had long kept himself trapped in. It took true strength to pull himself out of that hole; more than Simon could ever dream of obtaining. 

“When are you going to stop saving the world and settle down?” Tommy asks. 

Simon can only smile at the floor. “Hm… Couldn’t do better than you ‘n Beth,” he admits softly, unable to look his brother in the eyes. 

“Simon?” And there she is. Looking up from the floor, his eyes find his sister-in-law. Beautiful auburn hair kisses her shoulders as she smiles, jamming a thumb behind her. “There’s someone at the door for you. A yank.” 

He knows what comes next. It’s always the same. An echo that refuses to fade. Still, Simon keeps that smile on his face as he weaves past Beth, fists clenching at his side as his dream twists before him. A figure stands in the doorway, a soft incandescence casting a warm glow on their body, but it’s different than what he expects. It’s wrong, twisted and morphed from something he should hate into something that he loves. 

It’s you.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Simon says like a warning—a threat. Voice low and caught deep in his throat; it’s foreign. Something he’d never say to you. 

Despite his menacing tone, your cheerful smile remains unwavering. “You were the one who brought me here,” you wittily retort. 

Eyes glazing over, you look past Simon and into the living room where Joseph continues to run around, arms spread wide and mouth still blubbering airplane sounds. His mother’s rocking chair creaks beneath her weight as she taps her feet on the ground, mouth opening but no sound escaping it. 

“You can’t stop it. You know that, right?” you ask, gaze still locked behind him. 

A hand absentmindedly rises to your neck where you play with the bead necklace around your throat, but it’s wrong. That comforting green is nowhere to be found, instead replaced with a bright crimson with beads that drip and morph down your throat like liquid—like blood. It’s too tight. Constricting. Choking. Taut fingers on your windpipe, fat palm crushing the cartlidge. 

“I can. I have to. They didn’t deserve it,” Simon chokes out, voice weak. He feels sick. Like he can’t get his vocal cords to resonate loud enough to make a difference. 

“No, silly,” you say with a patronizing giggle. “I’m not talking about them.” 

You don’t look at him when you laugh. Your eyes don’t light up the way he knows they’re supposed to; the way they always do when you’re with him. His chest collapses in on itself, ribs perforating lungs until they’re nothing but useless, mangled bits of flesh within him to feed the rot. He needs you to look at him. Desperate hands reach out to cup your cheeks, tilting your head so that your gaze would fall on him, but no matter how firmly he holds you, your eyes stray. Landing anywhere but on him, they wander, never focusing on him. 

“Look at me,” he says, grip becoming so firm he can feel your skull creak beneath his strength. Still, you refuse. “Look at me!” 

“It’s okay,” you assure him, voice soft. Cataracts cloud your eyes until they’re dull like stone. He can’t peer through it. He can’t get to you. “Ghost, it’s okay. You’re okay. You can’t hold onto me forever.” 

Finally, you look at him. He thought it would make him feel better, that it would feel like home, but it doesn’t. It’s a grave six feet deep with no company but a corpse. It’s maggots wiggling between his fingers, flies sizing him up for their next meal. All breath leaves his lungs, ripped straight from his chest, never to return. 

Why are you looking at him like this? Like you’re forgiving him? 

“Come on, you have to let go,” Tommy speaks up from behind him with a chuckle. A pair of arms snake their way around his torso, constricting his chest so tightly he nearly coughs. “You can’t do this forever, Simon.” 

But there is no flesh to cover his brother’s arms. There is nothing but bone and tendon, milky white and decaying; a skeleton dragging him backwards into the crypt that’s become his childhood home. Simon’s hands fall from your face as he attempts to push his brother off of him, but the iron grip is unrelenting. 

“I told you, Ghost.” It’s you. Voice gurgling, and choking, standing in front of him with a pained smile. There’s blood. Viscous splatters stain the wood at your feet as it seeps through your shirt, blooming like a flower in spring through the cotton. Your hands press over the wound, but there’s not enough pressure in the world to save you. How long have you been like this? “You can’t stop it.” 

Simon tries to scream, but when he opens his mouth nothing but a simple, pathetic push of air leaves his throat. More hands and arms assault his body, dragging him back, heels leaving long scratches in the floor as he’s separated from you. He’s helplessly frozen in place as he witnesses the blood continue to spill from your body, all while the mangled voices of his past coo in his ear. 

“You knew what would happen.”

“Did you really think it wouldn’t go wrong?”

“You killed her the moment you entered her life, Simon.”

“It was always gonna end up like this, kid.” 

When Simon wakes, you are not in bed. 

He sits up with a start, hand flying to your side of the bed where he finds that the sheets are still warm. He’s lost something—recently. It lingers. A hole in his chest. The space in the bed. 

Simon doesn’t bother to don a shirt before he’s thudding down the hallway, bare feet slapping against the solid floor in heavy, intentional thumps. His trigger finger twitches until he wanders past the bathroom door. A cascading waterfall emanates from the shower where he hears the stream interrupted by your swaying body. Through the noise, he hears your humming. A gentle melody—something made up, meant only for you. 

Stopping, he stares at the solid wood door before placing his hand on it. Steam warms it on the other side, seeping into his palm. It’s a pale imitation. A mere mimic of the beating of your heart. 

It’s enough for now. 

Going back to his roots, Simon decides to cook breakfast. Meat. Bacon and ham. Eggs. In another life, he was a butcher. Long ago when scars hadn’t yet marred his skin. When he was still an uncle. A brother. A son. As the food cooks in its pan, he can still perfectly recall the name of the cuts and how it felt to make those same carvings for himself. These days, he tries not to think about how similar swine is to the humans he slaughters on the battlefield, or how burning flesh always smells like barbeque once the hair is done singeing. 

You exit the bathroom with wet skin and a smile that’s too bright for the thoughts lurking in his brain. Not even your jokes or gentle hand on the center of his back can rattle them into submission. He tenses beneath your touch, wordlessly moving food onto plates and holding one out for you to take. You look at him knowingly, as if you’ve traced the spine of a book, knowledge soaking into you without so much as an utterance.

The two of you silently decide that it’s going to be a lazy day. Cuddled on the couch beneath blankets thick enough to stave off the drafty window, eyes focused on the television, attention long lost and drifting into space. Simon will be leaving again. Soon. Just after the New Year. Gone on the other side of the world, whispering sweet nothings to you through an old flip phone whenever the time difference allows. 

As you fall asleep against his side, your Saturday cat nap getting the better of you, he wonders how many times life can take something from him. What the capita is. If he’s paid his debt with the flesh off of his back yet or if life wants something more tender still. Something pure.

Someone like you. 

“Are you feeling okay?” 

As you look up at him, legs still curled over his lap, Simon can’t help but think how he doesn’t deserve you. He’s a stain in this apartment; in your life. Something rotten attempting to feed the roots of an astonishing flower. But he’d never admit it. He’d never willingly see himself out. He’s much too selfish for that. 

“What?” he asks, voice rolling off his tongue with a hum. 

“It’s just that you seem a bit more quiet than usual,” you note. You squeeze his forearm, fingers curling into his skin as if to pull him back home. 

“Yeah. I’m fine, sweetheart.” His assurance comes with a kiss to the crown of your head before he’s back to watching the television, eyes dull, staring through the screen as if he’s trying to decipher the tiny cracks in the wall beyond it. 

You don’t challenge his omission verbally. Instead, you lean into him as your leg twitches, fingers massaging the muscle of his arm. He tries to wander, but you won’t let him. Dragging him back, leaving behind nothing but claw marks in your wake, pulling him beneath the waves, smothering him until he’s painfully present in the moment, far away from war and death and the blatant disregard for all things sacred. 

“Do you wanna go for a walk?” You propose the activity as if you’re talking to a dog, voice pitchy and sweet. He supposes that, in some way, maybe he is. A dog. A bloodhound. Something to attack with foul teeth and no remorse.

Still—it’s all he really is. 

Once he agrees, you waste no time springing into action. You bound forward, shutting off the television and pulling him into the bedroom to change into proper clothes. It’s not late at night, but the season steals away the sun earlier and earlier in the evenings, leaving behind nothing but small puffs of orange that line the horizon. You share your excitement to see the lights, how your mother always enjoyed this time of year because of the decorations and how she wished they would keep them up year round, turning London less into a cement jungle gym and more into a creature that breathes something other than odor. 

It doesn’t take long for you to suit up in your scarf and hat, thick coat ensuring that you won’t be troubled by the unforgiving breeze too much. Still, you talk. You fill in the silence that would otherwise devour Simon. You always do. Humming your songs, sharing your stories—you cut off bits and pieces of you and share it with him, anxiously waiting for him to taste, to see if you’re palatable. 

And he does. Simon savors it. Hands on your shoulders, pulling you closer until his lips are on yours, tongue in your mouth, silencing your rambling, more than content with the flavor. You’re a treat he knows he shouldn’t indulge in, but he’s always had a sweet tooth. 

“Ready, sweetheart?” He’s pulling his balaclava over his face, obscuring his lips, denying himself the only thing he yearns for but knows he doesn’t deserve. 

When you smile, he nearly bites through the fabric to taste you once more.

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peristalsis - v

selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to "lovers." shower sex. cunnilingus. smut. manipulative soap. oysters as an aphrodisiac. unstable narrator. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

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You watch him over an open book.

It’s an old romance, something from the eighties. Classic bodice ripper, billowing sleeves, tight corsets, mullets and heaving bosoms and all. Naturally, it’s set on a pirate ship, the heroine as the unlucky spoils of a merchant ship raid and the hero a lusty captain able to pierce her virgin’s desire for sexual depravity.

It could only have been more pointed at you if it had been set in the North Atlantic—it isn’t—but you glare at Soap’s back anyway.

He must be able to feel it, because he stands straight at the wheel, shoulders thrown back, occasionally flexing.

The freak.

You’d realized the joke he’d been making, once your heartbeat had slowed. Hiding the pelt somewhere obvious enough for you to see it. You live in the age of the internet—you know what it’s supposed to mean.

And you kind of hate him for it. Now, post-coitus, you can’t shove it away into a box—he is the most attractive man you’ve ever encountered. Rugged and handsome, competent at everything you’ve seen him do, seemingly at home wherever he finds himself. Everything makes him smile. Nothing seems to disconcert him.

And a nice big cock he actually knows how to use. Certainly the best lay you’ve ever had.

What every woman traveling solo, you think, longs to encounter on a solo trip across the world, but will never acknowledge looking for. An answer to an unaddressed desire; proof that satisfaction is out there to find, if it’s searched for.

A lover with no conditions. Someone willing to strip your inhibitions away, knowing your protests are only token.

You had not been searching. You’d given up searching.

And now he mocks you—with every satisfied glance he throws over his shoulder.

“Good book?” he asks, all casual and pleased. “S’ one a’my favorites. Tell me when you get to the naval battle.”

You frown. “You haven’t read this.”

He gives a little huff of amusement. “Read all of ‘em, bonnie.”

No, this is where you draw the line. A good cook, a good fuck, and a romance reader? No. No, you absolutely will not take this.

“Sure you have, Johnny,” you grouse, “you read every single stupid book on that shelf. Sure. Hell, you’ve read books that aren’t on that shelf. You’ve read every new release from the last six months, even. Why not.”

He looks at you again over his shoulder, mouth curled. “Aye. Needed ideas, once a’knew you were comin.’”

He says it matter-of-factly, with only a little bit of pride. As if it was a natural step in the process of getting ready for your arrival—renovate the croft. Stock the fridge and pantry. Plan some island excursions.

Study the erotic mind of the average woman to divine how best to seduce her.

Your frown deepens, and you lift the book higher, making it a barrier between you and him. Loser. Couldn’t he just go to the mainland for a few days if he wanted pussy? Not like it would be hard to find, for him.

You resolve to ignore him for the rest of the trip. A petty endeavor, maybe, but it’s the only one you can make.

But six hours is six hours, and you can’t read the whole time. Periodically you have to get up to stretch your legs, and the windows wrapping around the bridge draw your attention to the sea outside.

Johnny drives the trawler at a remove along the coastline, keeping close enough to the islands for easy viewing. The denizens of the Hebrides are out en masse, enjoying the clear weather, joyfully populating the land- and seascape in the absence of human interlopers.

Porpoises, so much smaller than you might have expected, periodically catch the wake of the boat, swimming alongside, playful and curious. Gulls loop in the air above the dunes, fronds of grass fluttering in the breeze. Gannets, stark white, arrow down into the waves, wings folded back pin-straight as they spear their quarry—silvery fish that boil the surface of the water in their frenzy.

Some removed part of you enjoys their pleasure secondhand. The normally-grey ocean is vibrant in the sunlight, crystalline and sparkling and as blue as Johnny’s eyes.

He seems to be in a good mood, too, although that could just be because you let him fuck you. You feel his eyes on you even as you refuse to look at him, dancing along the curves of your body the same way his fingertips might.

At one point—“Bonnie, I know you’re sulking an’ all, but c’mere.”

He gestures you over to the cockpit, and—embarrassed at being called out—you join him. He brings a hand to the small of your back, stepping behind you and pointing over your shoulder.

A gray wall of passing cliffs, and crags of rock jutting up from the churn at their base. You see ten or twelve grey-and-white seals lounging across every available flat surface, some cuddled in groups of three or four, apparently unbothered by the periodic spray of breaking waves.

“No’ where I’d choose to have a kip, personally,” Johnny says, sounding amused.

You turn your head to look at him, hard. His eyes soften when they meet yours, and he tilts his head to kiss you, undeterred even when you flinch away from it.

His hand tightens across your back, fingers digging in. He sucks your bottom lip between his and caresses it with his tongue, as he edges beneath the hem of your shirt to spread his hand across the warming skin of your back.

“I’m mad for ya,” he murmurs when he pulls away, blush high on his cheeks.

“It’s been two days,” you deadpan.

He presses up behind you, open hand sliding around to press into the low part of your belly, right at the sensitive crest of your mons; you can’t help your gasp when, at the same time, his erection nestles into the cleft of your ass.

“No’ to this,” he purrs in your ear. “Feels like it’s been forever, for this.”

When his fingers start making their way beneath the waistband of your pants, you grab his hand and wrench it away, scoffing.

“You’re just a fucking horndog,” you sneer, betrayed by the heat spilling through your core.

“Aw, you break my heart, bonnie,” Johnny simpers, but there’s a mocking edge to it. As if he knows exactly what you’re hiding.

You step away from him, folding your arms across your chest and staring out at the basking seals instead. Then—

“There’s one in the water,” you say.

A few meters away from the rocks, a round head pokes up from the surface, bobbing with the rise and fall of the waves. Its eyes are slitted closed, nostrils dilating.

“Aw, he’s bottling,” Johnny says affectionately, when he comes over to look. “Look at his wee face.”

You remember suddenly your encounter of the previous day—another lone seal, resting apart from its fellows.

“I saw one on the beach,” you say, “yesterday, after you dropped me off. A big one. You didn’t say they might show up.”

“Male?” he asks, and you nod. “Peripheral male, then. I’m no’ surprised.”

You sigh. “And that is…”

As if magnetized, his hands find you again, this time settling on your waist. It seems that Johnny’s touch is something impossible to escape, in his vicinity. He drags them down over your hips and back up almost idly, as if he’s not even thinking about doing it.

“There’s dominant males, and then there’s the rest of ‘em. Only the dominant ones get to breed at the rookeries, see? And the rest of ‘em have to wait around for the females to leave to have their chance.”

He leans into you from behind, nose in your hair, and you hear him inhale as his hands tighten.

“Once a peripheral male finds a female alone, separated from the colony, ready to go back out to sea—well, that’s his chance to pounce.”

You frown, mostly to yourself. “No matter how the female feels about it.”

“We’ve been over this,” he chides.

He brings his lips to the curve of one ear, then the soft spot behind it. His nose finds the juncture of your neck and shoulder, where the capillaries that he broke with his teeth still throb whenever you press your fingers to them. He inhales again, deeply.

“Why do you do that?” you grouse, unwilling to give him the win.

“Like how you smell,” he says, doing it again.

His tongue caresses the bruise before he closes his mouth over it—but he goes no further than to kiss your neck twice more before returning to the wheel. It leaves you reeling, half-dizzy with arousal, and when you stomp back to your seat with a frustrated growl, he only glances over at you, smirking, and laughs.

He finds a berth in the early evening to park the trawler, and at that point you’re thankful for any kind of solid ground to set your feet on, as well as enough open air to disperse whatever pheromones have saturated the enclosed space of the bridge.

You’ve been half-tempted the whole time to make him drop anchor and drag him belowdeck toward the nearest flat surface big enough for the two of you to share; as it is, you’ve simply stewed in your own juices instead, hot with angry arousal and ignoring the slick pooling in the gusset of your underwear.

Johnny steps out into the cooling air in his usual kilt and sweater, and you once again huddle in his jacket, aromatic with his musk, as he leads you onward. This time, unlike the last excursion, he insists upon holding your hand the whole way, callused fingers worming their way between yours, the captured air hot and humid between your palms.

Callanish turns out to be a henge of standing stones.

Meters-tall megaliths, squarish and narrow like broken teeth, surrounding a burial site and extending in two directions as if lining a road. Inevitably evocative of its cousin Stonehenge, with the notable exception that you are allowed to go up and touch the stones with your bare hands.

“They used ‘em for that TV show,” Johnny informs you as the two of you circuit the main ring. “Well, no’ these, they probably had styrofoam for that, but they got the idea from these.”

You lay your free hand on the nearest stone; it’s cold, and rough to the touch, a day’s worth of sunlight evidently not sufficient to warm it. Tiny spots of moss and lichen cling to the old stone, green and eggshell white.

“Why are we allowed to touch them?” you say. You think of bronze statues, rubbed to a golden gleam by millions of tourist hands.

“That’s Lewisian gneiss, bonnie,” says Johnny, laying his hand, much larger, next to yours. His thumb teases the side of your pinky. “Doubt you could make much of a mark on it. This rock here? Three billion years old.”

You look at him, seeing his profile. The expression on his face is soft—not unlike the way he looked at you earlier, on the way here. He spreads his fingers over the stone, tendons furrowing down the back of his sun-weathered hand.

“No’ just older than us,” he continues. “Older than what we used to be, a’fore we were us. Was there when we first made fire. Was there when we came down th’ trees. Was there all the way back when we left the ocean for the first time—”

He looks at you, then. The setting sun catches in the dips of his irises, setting jewel blue aflame.

“An’ it’ll be there, bonnie, when we go back.”

The wind curls around the stones with the chill of the oncoming night. Even despite the jacket, despite the walk up to the site—you feel it penetrate beneath your skin, deep into your bones.

You choose derision, to reject the shiver.

“And you have this all memorized,” you say.

Johnny doesn’t respond. He continues to stare at you, mouth in a relaxed, but inscrutable line.

You suddenly remember that you do not know this man; though he’s told you enough about himself to fill out his background—you don’t know him. You don’t know how he feels about most things, what’s important to him, why he may find one thing or another meaningful. Not the way you’d have to, in order to understand why the gaze he fixes on you feels so significant.

Whatever you’re supposed to understand in the way he looks at you now, you don’t have the ability to discern. The only thing that occurs to you is that, perhaps, you’ve finally managed to offend him.

It does not satisfy you as much as you might have imagined—

In fact, the thought drops through your belly like a rock.

Again. You did it again.

In the one place you thought you’d never have to face this—you did it again. Here is someone who seems to like even the worst of you, and you somehow found an even uglier side of yourself to show him, a squirming thing that cannot help but sling itself around with no heed for the damage it can cause.

But when you open your mouth to say something reparatory, something that certainly won’t fix what you’ve broken no matter what he might say, his expression softens into something thoughtful.

“Visited when I first came here,” he says. Completely unbothered. “After the discharge an’ all.”

You blink. Sharp heat and the numbness of cold, warring across your face.

“Why?” you ask.

“Dunno.” He shrugs, and lifts his hand from the stone, smiling ruefully. “I was a bastard back then. Didnae wan’ anything’ to do with anyone anymore. Mad at the world, a’was.”

Shucked like an oyster; scaled like a fish. Heat wins out, even in the growing chill. Tender skin scalding itself.

“And what,” you say, reflexively nasty, panic whirring up behind your breastbone, “you thought—you’d get some sort of, magical insight here?”

Johnny laughs. “Naw, a’was just pissing my money away, bonnie. Thought I’d come up here an’ try t’ knock one over.”

Tight chest. Can’t breathe. You step away from him, far away, hide it like you’re looking at another of the standing stones, but a stabbing pain spears upward through your diaphragm.

In—count—hold—out—

“Could you?” you ask, wringing something like a normal tone out of your voice.

“Nope. Paid for it later, though.”

He says it casually. He hasn’t noticed. You reach out to the new stone, drag your fingers overtop of the rough surface, imagine every little bump flipping the friction ridges of each print like pages of a book. Cold—the rock is cold. The wind is cold, and sharp with the smell of rain. The jacket is heavy on your shoulders.

The jacket smells like Johnny.

“I’m sure the park wardens weren’t happy,” you say, feeling your heart slow in your chest.

“No,” he says, and—with the silence of a lightning strike—“I drowned, afterwords, first time I went to sea.”

You look back at him. The wind picks up, ruffling the ends of his mohawk; on the horizon, a rind of darkness splits the clouds from the earth.

“You drowned?” you repeat.

The hem of his kilt flutters and dances. His gaze is intense—the angle of his brow unreadable.

“Aye, bonnie. I did.”

Your ears begin ringing—as you stare at him, you get the sense of dreaming. There’s a distinction to Johnny that contrasts the landscape framing him, a sharpness so focused that everything else lenses around him.

“Why—why are you here?” you find yourself asking, though you’re not entirely sure why. The question leaves you as if surfacing on its own power.

The corners of his mouth quirk—although for once, he doesn’t smirk at you, the way he always does.

“You tell me,” he murmurs.

He holds you in the tilt of his head; in the depths of his eyes, currents pulling you downward. You inhale, and expect, for some reason, water to pour into your lungs.

Then a gust of wind buffets the two of you. Johnny turns, surveying the sky. Breaking the spell, he says, “Come on, let’s get back. I don’ like the look a’that storm.”

Halfway back down the path, the front overtakes you; rain begins sheeting down, ice cold, needle-precise into your hair and down your collar. Johnny grabs your hand again even as you start worrying about slipping, and though the torrent veils the way, the both of you make it back to the trawler in one piece.

Back on the bridge, a red light blinks on the panel by the wheel. While Johnny attends to it, flipping a switch and bringing a microphone on a curly wire to his mouth, you squeeze your hair out over the sink nearby.

“This is Soap on the vessel Sea Ghost,” he says, and waits for a response.

“Soap. Drop anchor somewhere. Looks like a storm’s coming in,” a gruff voice comes in.

“Yeah, Cap, we noticed,” Johnny says with a laugh, turning and smiling at you. “We’re moored, dinna fash.”

“Good. Looks like it’s just for the night. Clear enough in the morning.”

“Barry. You got everything? Shops’ closed tomorrow.”

“Never will understand why. But yes.”

“It’s a holy day, Captain,” Johnny says pleasantly.

Price grumbles something about damn Catholics and their damn rules, which just makes Johnny laugh.

Then, “Gaz is here. Made it in after you left.”

Johnny’s posture shifts. Similar to a dog hearing the turning of a doorknob; amorphous attention coalescing, finding a target to point at. Anticipatory. Tail twitching, winding up to wag.

It’s a new reaction, to you—you’ve never seen it before.

Johnny lifts the transmitter to his mouth. He holds it there for a silent moment, before saying, “And Simon?”

No response from the other end of the line, pulled taut, as if snagged. Then Price responds “Haven’t heard yet.”

Something passes over Johnny’s face. Some flex of the muscle in his jaw. An expression held in check.

That’s—

That’s familiar.

“Alright. Back tomorrow then.”

“See you.”

He replaces the mic on its hook.

Thunder claps somewhere over the distant, open ocean. The trawler creaks and groans as the wind swirls around it. Yellow lamps illuminate the warm, wooden space, but are unable to penetrate the lowering blackness outside.

Tension—you can feel it drawing tight, see his shoulder blades shifting closer together. It aches in the muscles of your own back. He faces away from you, like you’re not there—

He turns to look at you. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t look quite real. As if he’s forcing the expression on his face.

“Poor bonnie,” he croons, looking you up and down. The tenor of his voice is saccharin-sweet and thick. “How’s a hot shower sound to warm up, hmm?”

Your belly pinches. “Sure.”

He leads you down a steep flight of stairs into the stomach of the boat, showing you into a single bedroom. The space is cramped, wedge-shaped—barely enough room for the double bed shoved into the middle of it, sheets and blankets gathered in rumples across the top. The unique musk of its occupant wars with the smell of lacquer; the walls are lined with orangey planks, evoking the sailing ships of old.

Directly to the left of the entrance, an open door leads into a small bathroom, into which Johnny guides you, hands on your hips.

“Go’ plenty a’ drinking water stored upstairs so take all the time you like,” he says. “Here, lemme show you how the taps work.”

You half-expect him, after the instruction, to stand there and watch, waiting until you undress. And he does hesitate for a moment, hovering in the threshold, before giving you a practiced grin, telling you to enjoy yourself, a closing the door behind him.

You stand in the middle of the tiny room for an uncertain heartbeat. Assumptions lurching. Almost—hoping.

His heavy footsteps climb back up the stairs.

So, you peel off your damp clothes and drop them into a pile on the floor, stepping naked into the shower. It’s far less mildewed than you might have worried of a single man living alone. Hot water chases cold out of your hair, streaming with pressure far superior to the cottage’s installment.

You realize your toiletries are still above deck, in your bag, beneath the two paperbacks Johnny packed that you haven’t gotten to just yet. You could step out after him—

You don’t do that anymore. You promised yourself.

The floor sways as the shifting sea rocks the trawler in its berth. You reach for the bar on the wall to steady yourself.

One version of yourself is sometimes able to fool the other. The truth is, you could have told him to stop at any time. Put your foot down, hard. Just because he owns the house you’re staying in doesn’t mean he gets to decide what your entire vacation is going to look like.

You scoff at yourself, without any humor. Vacation. Like you’d ever believed this was anything more than self-imposed exile.

The truth is, water takes the shape of the container it fills.

There’s a chill still present in your hair follicles. Impossible for you to identify until now; live with an ache long enough and it stops registering, until it’s balmed with a moment of relief. This is where the addicts begin; experiencing, for the first time, a complete absence of pain, as if it had never been there in the first place, and, once that pain is restored, the ruthless pursuit of its elimination.

Cold rain outside, warm rain within. You stand in the flow, listless. Steam rapidly clouds the empty spaces around you, gathering in droplets on the wall, drizzling down again.

That’s where the mistake is. Pain is never defeated—only deferred. Its panacea provides only diminishing returns, until it’s useless. Until you might as well be swallowing sugar pills or drinking seawater to assuage your thirst.

But you keep doing it. You remember too well how it felt. You chase it down because now you know how it feels.

At some point you have to understand that it always ends poorly.

The bathroom door opens again, and then the shower door, spilling yellow light into the shadowed recess—

Johnny.

The expression on his face is inscrutable; mysterious, as his gaze moves down your body, following the streaming water. Your arms curl around your chest in a perfunctory attempt to conceal yourself, even despite the futility of the effort.

He’s naked, and half-hard, a refrain on the previous night. One hand holds the travel-size soaps and gels that he must have dug out from your bag. He steps in behind you—enclosing the two of you in together.

“Sorry, bonnie,” he murmurs soothingly in your ear. “Had t’make sure we were tied up for the storm.”

The space is not even suggestive of being big enough for two people. You hear the squeak of the shower wall against his shifting back, hot skin slipping against yours as his hands draw you back against him by the hips.

“Dinnae want you t’slip an’ hit your head,” he murmurs, massaging the fat of your pelvis, as if there’s any reason to make excuses for what he’s doing.

Half-raised hackles petted down too easily. You relax into his touch, even as you disdain it. Your heart tremors in your chest.

“What’s going on tomorrow?” you finally ask. “Who’s Simon?”

Pathetic. A jealous lover, after less than forty-eight hours.

“Old task force,” he answers, kissing the back of your head. “Little reunion, food an’ beer, mostly.”

You half-expect him to go immediately for your breasts, or maybe your pussy. His cock is stiffening against the small of your back. But instead, he opens one of your bottles, squirts some pearly body wash into the palm of his hand. Rubbing a little to lather it, he puts his hands back on your hips, and begins massaging it into your skin.

Inward, up your stomach. Pressing into the soft parts of it, with the water slicking his way. His mouth touches the back of your neck—softly. Tenderly. With all of the languor you rejected the previous night, and not enough space for you to slap it away again.

His lips press inward, looking for the bite he left, which he lays his tongue on as if in contrition, licking it like a dog with a wound. The comfortable warmth of the shower swelters with his added body heat; the steam pulses in time with the heavy beats of your heart.

One hand slides up your body, fording your thoracic arch, the wedge of his hand ascending the length of your breastbone. He cups your jaw, bubbles between his fingers, one of your breasts nestling between his bicep and forearm.

He tilts your head to the side as he cranes his head further into your neck, lipping at the space behind your ear, kissing delicate, sensitive skin, as his other hand drags soap around your ribs, beneath and over both breasts, up into your pits and back down again.

A doll in his hands, bent along the shape of his will. He shifts his hips, frotting his erection against you.

“Johnny,” you breathe. “Johnny, this isn’t anything. This doesn’t mean anything.”

“Aye, bonnie,” he hums. “Whatever you say.”

He licks a hollow in your throat.

His other hand dips lower, sweeping down into the crease of one thigh to round the lower swell of your hip; then back up again, fingers spreading.

The stall compresses your arms close against you; the only space you have available to lay your useless hands is on his arms. The dark hair you find with your fingertips is coarse, wiry, plastered to hot skin with water. The spray seeps between the both of you, streams in the runnels of flesh pressed together.

Between your legs, your clitoris heats, awakening even though untouched. You give a small whine, and Johnny huffs a little chuckle in your ear, suckling your neck as his fingers make the descent back, rinsed in the falling water, teasing your pubic hair before nudging your folds apart.

He finds you slick and aching. He only dips lower briefly to wet his fingers, and then, as he settles a light touch over where you’re most desperate for it, relief razes through your nerves in a sudden wash.

You search for the back of his head, slotting your fingers into the ends of his mohawk at the nape of his neck. He hums against you, hand dropping down from your jaw to cup one breast in his palm, weighing it, thumb flicking around the pert nipple in the same tight circle he draws around your clitoris.

Orgasm, usually so obvious on approach, sneaks up on you, quick and quiet, but when it takes you it floods you, rather than knocking you down. You tremble all over, the follicles on your scalp standing on end, the nerves down your back and sides bending like dune grass to a wind.

Your long, breathy cry reverberates against the shower walls, and you lean heavily back against Johnny’s body, grip tightening where you have your hands on him.

He twitches against your back, but he makes no move to chase his own climax. He only turns you carefully, when you recover, and lays his hot, open mouth on yours, tugging your hips close enough to trap his cock against your belly. This time, the wall is cool at your back, the crown of your head moving against it as Johnny angles himself deeper, sliding his tongue between your lips.

“C’mon,” he says, when he finally pulls away. His pupils are huge, black dilation swallowing the blue. The spray fills the empty spaces between the strands of his mohawk, fluffing the hair a little as it courses down the shaved sides of his scalp. “Need to get my mouth on you again, bonnie.”

This time, when he eats you out, he does it at his leisure. Licking honey off a spoon. So lightly that you whine at him, find the energy to bitch at him to do it like he means it, but tonight he does not indulge you.

No—he mouths at you, eyes closed, curly lashes against his cheek as you lay belly-up on the rumpled sheets of his bed. The heat of his tongue in your cleft is the only source of warmth you have as the rain lashes at the outside of the trawler, but the hot shower still lingers in your skin—

Humid. Sticky. Sweat gathering beneath Johnny’s palms where he holds your thighs to his ears, as if mimicking the way your sex will clutch around him when he enters you. Slick and tight and viscous.

When he crawls up your body—nosing at your belly, your breasts, inhaling as if your musk is something he’s trying to get drunk on—he fucks you slow and deep. You stop being able to tell if it’s the storm rocking the boat, or the weight of his hips rolling against yours, one of his hands on the headboard for leverage and the other on your mons, pressing down with the heel of his hand to feel the head of his cock moving in you.

Tacky skin catching on the grind; heart speeding up as he grins at you from above, thumb tapping your clitoris. Enough to wind you up. You reach for his hips with your clawed hands, digging your nails into the meat of his ass—firm, muscle tensed, twitching every time he bottoms out.

“Johnny,” you finally beg, on the edge of a sob, “please, Johnny, please—”

Breath leaves him like a steam valve turned, pressure carrying an uninhibited moan. He ignores your plea, hips rolling slow, forcing you to feel every inch of him in and out of you, every ridge—every vein pulsing on the surface of his cock.

His eyes are closed still; when the widest part of him catches the rim of you around him again, his mouth drops open, lips pink and bitten.

Lost—he’s lost in pleasure, in the feeling of you around him, pulling him in. You watch his chest as it heaves, the flex of his stomach as it tightens—the twitch in the muscles of his arms as the impact of each thrust ripples up his body.

Look at me, you want to say. Look at me. I’m right here. Look at me.

“Again,” he groans, choked, restrained, hands gripping your hips. “Say it again, bonnie—”

“Please—” you whine, on the edge of a sob, “please, please, please—”

Thumb metronoming at a quick tempo where you need it—you seize, back arching, tightening around him so narrowly you could force him out—

He snarls, sharp and hard, thrusting into the resistance, hands falling to fist in the mattress. Breath coming rough and fast, sweat dripping from his forehead into the cups of your collarbones and down between your breasts. Hard and fast now, pushing in as far as your body will let him, and a final, long moan tears from his parted lips, liquid heat flooding you as Johnny goes rigid with a climax following only moments after your own.

Pelvis flush with your thighs. He doesn’t let a drop escape, pushing against you, lifting your hips from the bed.

“Tha’s right,” he slurs, eyes hazy when they open. “Tha’s right, that’s where it belongs.”

He collapses on top of you, almost crushing you with his weight, as he seeks your mouth out with his. He moves his hips against yours with shallow thrusts, whining in his throat.

“Didn’t you—” you pull your lips away, too hot, too cold, buzzing and exhausted, “didn’t you just finish?”

He tongues at your cheek instead, and then down your neck. “Doesnae matter, is no’ enough. C’mon, bonnie, wrap your legs aroun’ me, please…”

After he is finally spent—long after you’ve had enough energy to do more than lay beneath him and let him use you as he pleases—Johnny diverts briefly to the galley, bringing back with him a plate of oysters and a pry knife. It’s his bed, so you don’t complain about shell fragments, but you resolve to make him change the sheets anyway, shifting uncomfortably to find a spot that isn’t soaked.

“Was on this boat,” Johnny says, as if picking up the thread of a conversation only recently dropped. He picks up one of the oysters and shucks it open. “When I drowned.”

The way he says it, you’d think it was a casual thing, something he barely thought about anymore, but the line of his brow is low and serious.

He hands you one half; you bring the shell to your lips and tip it upward. Brine slides across your tongue, flesh smooth and buttery. Johnny watches you with soft eyes before having his own.

“Price was with me. I told him to fuck off, but he said he wasnae gonna let me take it out alone the first time ever. I was a bastard back then, I told ya. We went out in a storm, like this one, even though any eedjit could take a look outside and know it’d kill him.”

You flick at the edge of the shell with your fingernail, looking down at your hands. “Why’d you do it?”

“Dunno. Had somethin’ to prove, I guess.”

“That you could still do stuff like that?”

He doesn’t respond, so you look back up at him. He angles his gaze toward the mess of your hair—the new hickies he’s left on your neck—the bead of your nipples in the cold. The hard angles of his face soften.

“All my life,” he says, measuredly, “all I wanted to be was a soldier. An’ I couldnae anymore. Even though I was better. Hell, I was better than better. But I couldnae go back. That was it. It all wen’ on withou’ me.”

He breaks open more oysters as he talks, hands steady and deft around shells and knife. When he finishes, he slides the plate into your lap, and reclines to face you on his side, propping his head up with his hand.

“We wen’ out when the waves were as tall as a man, an’ us hangin’ onto the railing for dear fuckin’ life,” he continues. There’s a faraway quality to the tone of his voice. “Only life wasnae so fuckin’ dear, was it? I could’ve held on tighter, I think. I fell off.”

“And Price pulled you out?”

That feeling again, meeting his gaze; caught in the arms of a whirlpool, being dragged down. A vial in a centrifuge, constituent parts separating.

“No,” he says, “he didnae.”

“Then…”

“Eat, bonnie.”

There’s a stillness to him that feels unnatural. Johnny is a man who should be constantly in motion, gesturing with his hands, bouncing on the balls of his feet, tapping any available surface with rolling fingertips. Instead, here in front of you, he’s still as a statue. Chest softly rising and falling, but otherwise completely placid.

He gazes steadily at you, down at the plate, and then back up. You sigh, and pick up another shell.

“I don’t remember exactly what happened. I remember getting pushed down deep, real deep, then getting forced up again, on a current or something. Not far enough to get any air, mind. I thought, I’m gonna die out here, an’ I didnae want to.”

He shifts then, a little forward toward you.

“That seemed important, you know? I didnae want to die. Dinna think the sea would’ve given me up f’ I did. It knows. Sometimes it doesnae care. But I guess that time, it did, ‘cause after I blacked out, next thing I know I’m wakin’ up on the shore.”

Something hard shifts in your belly.

“Cap found me a bit later, bringin’ the boat in. Gave him a real scare. Think it turned some of his hair gray overnight. After that…a’was no’ the same. How could y’be, after that?”

You—you don’t want to know any of this. You don’t care. You didn’t ask. His story drops expectation on your shoulders, heavy, custom-tailored, laden with understanding that sands your abraded nerves.

All of this is too much. The damp sheets beneath you, the food, the sex. The fact that you picked the last place in the world thought you could ever meet anyone, let alone someone who—

“And now you have a seal fetish,” you sneer.

Who understands.

Indulgent. This is indulgent, reckless, idiotic in the extreme.

Soap reaches out, and wraps a large, sun-brown hand around your wrist, the one still holding the oyster. Pulling it towards him, he opens his mouth and then tips the flesh from the shell. He slurps it down, noisily, mimicking the sound of his mouth and tongue on your pussy.

“Something like that,” he says, with a sharp, cocky grin.

He changes the sheets. Dims the lights. Plasters himself around you as the storm blows itself out, arm heavy over your waist, thigh and knee nested inside yours.

He’s warm at your back, musky with the mingling aroma of dried sex and sweat.

Sturdy. More real than anything that’s ever put its hands on you.

Johnny, who the sea loved so much it spat him back out. So treasured by the world that a bullet to the brain couldn’t even take him away from it.

Who, by the sound of it, means so much to the people in his life that they would follow him to the middle of nowhere just to keep an eye on him.

Bile churns in your stomach.

next chapter early access

a/n: two chapters left!

I love how we all seem to agree that Soap is just insane for his lady (you, hello?). Constantly on his mind. On missions the boys are driven half mad by every mention of the “beautiful lass” he’s seeing right now. Oh and he’s even worse if he has a ring on your finger. “My wife” this and “the missus” that, showing the team the latest photos of you so much that any time he pulls out his phone they instinctively groan. Because nothing could possibly compare to the woman who lit up his whole life with just a smile.

from the ashes, she has risen

i have no clue how to link a fic on ao3 here but my price x reader is finished and posted after much trial and tribulation!!!

John 6:51 by doulikepinacoladas on ao3

i toiled greatly for it

hey me thoughts about simon hitting on a stranger somewhere and it works except whenever she comes back out all disheveled and sticky soap thinks it's the perfect time to shoot his shot too (nothing sloppy about those seconds, honey) and ghost has to be like wait that's actually my wife

Captain John Price in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 20/??

You always find Simon in the same spot—sitting on his couch with a mug of tea in one hand, the TV on but the volume low, like he’s watching it just for background noise. He barely moves when you come in, just shifts his head a little like he was expecting you, even though you never text to say you're coming.

“And then she rolled her eyes at me,” you say as you drop down next to him, letting out an annoyed sigh. “Like I was the one being unreasonable for asking her to hold the door.”

Simon doesn’t react right away, which isn’t unusual. He lets a second or two pass, like he’s thinking it through, even though he probably made up his mind as soon as he heard your tone. Finally, he hums quietly and says, “She’s not worth your breath,” while reaching over to pat the top of your head in that way he always does.

You don’t even bother hiding how much you like that. You lean into his hand just a little, and for a moment you let the annoyance melt off your face.

It’s always like this between you and Simon. You walk in, already mid-rant about something that annoyed you during training or some dumb argument someone had in the mess, and he just listens. Or, well—he sits there while you go off, mostly quiet, only chiming in with a few words here and there.

But he always makes it clear he’s paying attention. The way his eyes shift to look at you when your voice tightens. The way he’ll hand you a blanket or a snack before you even ask. The way he remembers the tiny details you forget you even told him.

You joke sometimes that you adopted him. That you took in this emotionally unavailable soldier who barely likes people and decided that he’s your best friend now, whether he wanted that or not. He never complains. He never tells you to leave. Even when you steal his cookies or fall asleep on his couch, he just lets you stay.

He’s quiet, sure, but he’s also dependable in a way that makes everything feel easier when you’re around him. You can talk to him for hours and he won’t interrupt, won’t judge, won’t try to fix it unless it’s something he can fix. And when it is, he usually does—without making a big deal out of it.

So when you started seeing that guy from base, Simon didn’t say anything. You thought maybe he just didn’t care, or that he wasn’t the type to get involved in stuff like that. He didn’t ask many questions. Just nodded and said, “He treatin’ you right?” in that low voice of his that didn’t give much away.

You smiled and said yes, because at the time, it felt like the right answer.

He stayed the same after that. Still your go-to person for venting. Still the only one who ever made you feel like you could talk without holding back.

But every now and then, you noticed something shift. He wouldn’t look at you as much when you brought up your boyfriend. He’d change the subject quicker. And when you said something like, “he forgot our plans again,” Simon would just sigh and hand you tea or cookies or whatever he had nearby, like he didn’t want to say what was really on his mind.

You remember one night clearly, when you showed up outside Simon’s door after a long shift. You were quiet, which was rare, and you didn’t even try to hide the frustration in your eyes.

“He forgot again,” you mumbled, pulling your knees up onto the couch. “Said he’d pick me up, and then just... nothing. Not even a text.”

Simon didn’t say much in response. He just handed you the remote and tapped your shoulder once, like that was his way of saying you deserved better without actually having to say the words out loud.

But the breaking point came later. One night, you showed up to his room without even thinking, your eyes red and puffy, your hands trembling a little as you wiped at your face. He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. He just stepped aside and let you walk in, like he’d been expecting you again, like he knew this was coming.

“He cheated,” you said, and the words felt so bitter and small in your mouth that you almost didn’t believe them yourself.

Simon pulled you into a hug before you could even finish the sentence. He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to offer advice or tell you what you should’ve done. He just held you, solid and quiet, with one hand pressed between your shoulder blades and the other smoothing over your hair. You didn’t realize you were crying until your face was already buried in his shirt.

At some point, he moved you to his bed. You weren’t even sure how, but you ended up under his blanket, wrapped in warmth that didn’t come from the sheets, and you felt safer than you had in weeks. His voice was low when he whispered, “Don’t worry about it,” like he was promising to carry the weight of it for you.

You didn’t know it then, but he didn’t sleep that night. He stayed up until you were out cold, then got up quietly, left his room, and came back a few hours later like nothing happened. What you also didn’t know—what he would never admit unless you asked him directly—was that he had counted every single tear that rolled down your face. Every shaky breath, every time your chest stuttered with a sob. He remembered the number. Kept it in his head. Then found your ex and hit him that many times. One punch for every tear you cried.

A few days passed, and word started going around base that your ex hadn’t been seen. Missed duty. No one could get ahold of him. You didn’t ask Simon anything. You just looked at him across the mess hall, saw the way he was nursing a cup of tea with a blank expression and fresh tape wrapped around his hand, and something in your chest clicked into place.

You didn’t smile. Didn’t say anything. You just looked at him, and he looked back, and that was enough.

Later, after things calmed down, you found yourself back in his room. Same spot on the couch. Same blanket. Same you and Simon. But this time, out of nowhere, he said, “I’m in love with you.”

It wasn’t dramatic or emotional. He said it like it was just a fact—like he was finally telling the truth after hiding it for too long.

You blinked at him, not even sure you heard him right. “What?”

He shrugged a little, like it didn’t matter if you believed him or not. “Figured you should know.”

You didn’t know what to say right then. There was too much in your head. But a few days later, he took you somewhere quiet, away from base, with a folded blanket under his arm and your favorite cookies packed in a tin. He made tea and handed you the mug like he always did, and when you sipped it, it was just the way you liked it—strong, with that little bit of honey he adds even when you don’t ask.

You sat next to him, legs stretched out on the grass, shoulder pressed against his. After a while, you turned to look at him and said, “You’ve been looking at me like that for a long time, haven’t you?”

He tilted his head slightly. “Like what?”

“Like I’m your whole world.”

Simon didn’t answer right away, but the look on his face said more than words ever could. Then he reached over, patted your head like he always did, and said, “Yeah. That’s about right.”

--------------------------------------------

@daydreamerwoah @kylies-love-letter @ghostslollipop @kittygonap @alfiestreacle @identity2212

Ref Recs for Whump Writers

Violence: A Writer’s Guide:  This is not about writing technique. It is an introduction to the world of violence. To the parts that people don’t understand. The parts that books and movies get wrong. Not just the mechanics, but how people who live in a violent world think and feel about what they do and what they see done.

Hurting Your Characters: HURTING YOUR CHARACTERS discusses the immediate effect of trauma on the body, its physiologic response, including the types of nerve fibers and the sensations they convey, and how injuries feel to the character. This book also presents a simplified overview of the expected recovery times for the injuries discussed in young, otherwise healthy individuals.

Body Trauma: A writer’s guide to wounds and injuries. Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY…and What to Do Instead: Written by a paramedic and writer with a decade of experience, 10 BS Medical Tropes covers exactly that: clichéd and inaccurate tropes that not only ruin books, they have the potential to hurt real people in the real world. 

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction: Increase Realism. Raise the Stakes. Tell Better Stories. Maim Your Characters is the definitive guide to using wounds and injuries to their greatest effect in your story. Learn not only the six critical parts of an injury plot, but more importantly, how to make sure that the injury you’re inflicting matters. 

Blood on the Page: This handy resource is a must-have guide for writers whose characters live on the edge of danger. If you like easy-to-follow tools, expert opinions from someone with firsthand knowledge, and you don’t mind a bit of fictional bodily harm, then you’ll love Samantha Keel’s invaluable handbook

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Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but your apartment is the last place he visits before being sent off on an assignment.

‘Jus’ need somethin’ to tide me over, yeah dove?’

Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but when he’s away, his rugged and calloused hands don’t feel like yours, can’t get off unless he pictures you.

Above him. Below him. On your knees. On your back. In your mouth. Buried in your cunt.

Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but your apartment is the first place he visits when the mission is finished, doesn’t even bother going home.

And you answer, despite it being three in the morning.

“There’s my girl.” He breathes. Relieved. Dropping his bags on the floor before lunging forward to cup your face in his palms.

The claim makes you whine quietly, digging your fingertips into his wrists, arching on your tippy toes to meet his lips halfway. It’s ravenous, leaves your breath ragged, and lips thrumming with swelling blood.

He hoists you in his arms, burrowing his hands under your thighs and ass, pinching the flesh so hard it’ll bruise, but he can’t help it. He’s greedy. Selfish. Hasn’t quite coaxed himself down from the harsh realities of being ‘Ghost.’

“Ah—Simon,” You whimper, huffing hot air against his lips, “You’re hurting me.”

“Sorry, baby,” He smooths his hands, petting the backs of your thighs, “I just-”

The ‘missed you’ dies on his tongue, stops it from rolling off and filling the empty space between the two of you, but you know.

That night when he asks you to repeat him, tell him you’re all his, you don’t respond like usual. He tries his best to coax it out of your pretty lips orgasm after orgasm because he needs to hear it, but you don’t give him the pleasure.

Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, so he has no other option but to accept it because you’re not his. The lack of acknowledgment eats at his skin, brutal talons gnawing at his flesh when you slowly stop responding to his texts.

Shows up at your doorstep anyway because you don’t get to tell him when this stops. When you answer the door, you’re all dolled up, a tight little skirt hugging your figure, lip gloss smeared on your lips like you have somewhere to be other than on his cock.

“What are you doing here?” You ask, glaring at him, “I’m busy.”

“With what?”

You frown, “I have a date.”

He snorts, pushing past you, making a show of taking off his boots and placing them next to yours, has no intention of leaving.

“Simon,” You sigh, closing the door behind you, “I don’t have time for this right now. He’ll be here any minute.”

The statement alone pinches his temples with irritation, but that’s when he sees it, one small hickey adorned on your neck, just below your ear. His vision narrows, tunneling red, nudging you against the wall with one swift movement, tilting your jaw to get a better look at it.

“The fuck is this?” He snarls, runs his thumb over the bruise, and makes your breath hitch slightly.

“Nothing.” You mutter quietly.

“Your little date give you this? Huh?” He grits through clenched teeth, grip tightening on your jaw, drawing dimples in your skin.

“None of your business.” You spit back, but it’s far too gentle to have any real bite like it always does with him, pup with baby canines.

Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but he seethes at the idea of another man inside of you, another man marking you as theirs when you’re his.

Sinks his teeth around the stupid mark, dragging sharp fangs against your delicate flesh, and sucks the skin viciously. Covers the ugly bruise with his own claim.

Fuck buddies with Ghost who tells you it means nothing, doesn’t want anything more than sex, but he presses you right up against your front door, so your date can hear him fucking you in two when he comes to pick you up.

‘Can yer little boyfriend fuck you like this? Huh, baby? Did he know jus’ how you like it?’

Fucks you messy and pretty, until your cheeks are tear-stained and your breaths are wrecked, hiccuping over your moans that’s he’s so mean, so cruel, asking you to say you’re his when he doesn’t even have the courage to say he missed you.

‘Be a good girl f’me, yeah? Tell me you’re all mine.’

And when you do finally say it, he carries you to your bed, fucks you slow and deliberate like he always does, like he really means it, and whispers the words against your skin.

@bbygirl9 @ailanbutterfly @amberbalcom14 @h0lydrag0ns