Okay But Ghost, Who Is An Omega, Letting You Breed Him For The First Time. Price Had Put Him On Leave

“for you, i’d steal the stars.”

In poly!141 I think it’s so funny for them to send Ghost in first. Not because Simon is actually the best at dragging in a pretty little thing, but because if they’re looking to share, Simon is typically the hardest to get through. Simon is scary guy with gruff and morbid humor. If you can tolerate him, and he can tolerate you, the others can move in and secure you in place. It’s infinitely funnier for the reader to decide that Simon is her little wet dog and he puts up with it to piss off Johnny who desperately wants to lay in your lap.

mayhaps soap with lovebird?

Which of you bastards took a bite out of him? Thank you for the request!

The Captain - Simon Riley x Sniper!Reader, Wife!Reader

summary: Ghost’s sniper wife (reader) joins Task Force 141 on an op, against his wishes call sign: Freyja warning: mentions of violence and death (ofc), blood Next >>

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Daughters with Soft Underbellies

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

Chapter Twelve: apple pie

tw: minor violence

You remember the Blackpeak Coal Mine Slaughter well—very well.

Plastered over the front page of every newspaper in the nation, it’s hard to forget the event and the harrowing accounts of survivors and the family members that were left behind in the wake of the tragedy. Over thirty men were massacred that day. Nothing but lifeless torsos without hands to stop the bleeding, limbs too far out of reach to retrieve. Twelve more were injured. You remember the paper retelling a story of one of the workers, now rendered blind from the explosion that rocked The States, rippling through the population. 

Confusion kept everyone stupid for some time—it was widely accepted that this was an accident. Natural gases within the earth that ignited when explosives were detonated in order to carve deeper into the earth’s surface. When this take was first published and traveled down the wagon trail to Penmosa, you remember your father huffing at the words, fist clenched tight around the arm of his chair. 

“Serves them right. Desecrating God’s green earth like that. Bastards, every one of them. You hear me, girl? This is what human greed does. It makes you a corpse.” 

You suppose that, in the end, he was right. 

Weeks later it was confirmed that this was no accident, but rather intentional. Workers came forward with stories about strange men in masks wandering into the worksite towing obscene amounts of TNT. Many men fought back, only to be shot. Others couldn’t quite escape before the earth caved in on them, burying them beneath mounds of rubble. Even to this day, they still find pieces of them. Shattered bones and dusty work boots, never to be lacquered again. 

Last you knew, the criminals were still on the run. Some uncouth hit and run. Nothing but a slimy act of terror. The old company went out of business, unable to make up for the lost workers and the compensation that was owed, and a new one moved in, still putting the site to use. A memorial was erected in honor of the lives lost. The day has been lost to memory and grief. 

Now, you know otherwise. 

Dead or Alive: for the Blackpeak Coal Mine Slaughter. 

Your stomach twists as you travel down the winding roads of Grand Hollow, but the nervosity chewing on your neurons makes it impossible to enjoy the otherworldly beauty presenting itself before you. When Mr. Beckett had warned you about John Price and his posse, you had never expected violence in a magnitude such as this. You’ve broken bread with these men. Fished in the same waters. Laid on the same dirt. 

Now you understand his secrecy. All John’s hidden motives and dodged questions, answers given with vicious snark and a half lidded glare. What terrors does he expect to rage now in Blackpeak? Was his slaughtering of those working men not enough? Must he now steal from their grieving families, too? 

Guilt spears through you like a freshly born knife still hot from the furnace. How dare you have the audacity for such emotions? Had you known John Price was this much of a monster, you would have let him spill your blood next to the campfire the night you fled from your father. 

“Pecora.” 

The driver’s rough voice pulls you from your nightmarish anamneses. You glance up from your worn, tattered nails and stare at the back of his head where his wiry, white hair greets you. He does not look at you, but you’re certain you were the one he spoke to. 

“Pardon?” you ask. 

He looks over his shoulder and stares at you blankly for a moment before pointing to something on the cart’s right. “Pecora,” he repeats. 

Following the crooked curve of wrinkled his finger, you spot an ewe and her lamb. They’re terribly out of place, fresh white wool contrasting against the darkened grey cobblestone of the streets, but the ewe does not fret. She trots through the foot traffic, splitting pedestrians who gawk at her and her child with coos, all while stopping to chew on the weeds that spring up between the bricks. 

Her lamb, however, stumbles behind her on jelly legs with wide eyes and a mouth that knows nothing other than to cry. Its voice is strident as it weaves through its mother’s legs, eyes anxiously gazing at the tall creatures that surround them. Utterly lost and out of place, you hum as you watch them find a patch of grass to lay and bask in. 

“Oh, sheep,” you realize. “How cute.” 

“Cute,” the driver repeats with a nod. 

Proud, baronial buildings slowly dwindle into something quieter the further you’re taken away from The Twin Rose. At first you passed them off to be more stores and places of interest for citizens and travelers alike to visit, but you come to the realization that these are houses when you catch a woman throwing bed linens out onto a clothesline. 

Wide lawns stretch out like royal carpets before two story houses with large windows and porches sporting long sunroofs. If your father witnessed the white paint that decorates the wood, you’re certain he would keel over in the dirt of the streets, scandalized that simple homes would bear the same pure milky sheen of his church. It’s quieter here without the hustle of the deep city. Fewer pedestrians, sparse horses, children laughing in a nearby field as they kick and throw various toy balls around to one another. 

The cart comes to a stop in front of a house at the end of a cul de sac. It’s different from all the others in the neighborhood, sporting a rosy pink rather than snowy white. Several flower bushes line the siding of the house, almost in full bloom, bitterly reminding you of your mother’s lily plants back in Penmosa. From somewhere inside of the house, music bleeds. It’s a quiet crackle with a canorous melody soaring over compressed violins, trumpets, and pianos. It sounds wrong. Nothing at all like the warm tones you’re familiar with from the church choir. 

Your driver hops out of his seat, worn boots scraping on the stone at his feet, and offers you a hand. “Here. Laswell home.” 

Placing your hand into his worn palm, he helps you out of the cart and gestures to the front door with a wrinkled, lopsided smile. You give him a quiet thanks as he loads back up, reins flicking and prompting the horses into action where he turns around and slowly trots back down the street. 

Each beat of your heart threatens to drown out the music as you trot up the steps to the porch. The sillage of rose and lavender bleeds from the flower bushes at the base of the stairs and mixes with the warmth bleeding through the open windows of the house. Swallowing, you approach the door and knock. 

There is no answer. 

Someone obviously is inside the house. You can hear chirpy humming and various utensils being knocked around, so you try again only to have the same luck. After a few minutes, you muster up the courage to open the door and peek your head inside. 

The foyer is small with shoes lined up against the floorboards and various coats and hats hanging on hooks drilled into the wall. Just past the entrance you can see a staircase that leads up to the second floor with a rich vermillion runner along dark stained wood, but there is no sign of the woman you were sent to help. 

“Lottie?” you call out as you close the door behind you with a shaky hand. 

Still receiving no response, you exit the foyer and begin to wander where the noise is loudest. You travel down wide hallways with open windows, sunlight bleeding through wispy drapes like mist on a cold autumn morning. Various paintings catch your attention as you walk, hung up high and proud, displaying scenes of nature and animals and captured with a keen eye. Other hallways split off like a burrow of tunnels, like a warren lurking in a field, but you keep your feet steady until you reach the kitchen. 

The woman you’re assuming is Lottie stands with her back faced toward you as she sways her hips in front of the stove. A phonograph plays on the counter, spinning a waxy cylinder and playing its music loud and proud. A rosy pink skirt twirls around her legs as she wipes her hands off on her apron, then toys with the frizzy curls of her bright blonde hair as they fall from her disheveled bun. She’s humming along to the music—some upbeat tune you don’t recognize—as she hops on her feet, hips twisting as she reaches for a large wooden spoon. 

“Miss Lottie?” you ask once more. 

The woman squeals like a bird caught in the maw of a barn cat as she spins around, spoon waving as if she wields a knife. She’s rather pretty, you think, even with this look of terror on her face. Pale brows rising as her teal eyes widen, free hand pressed against her collarbones as if to still her fluttering heart. She looks you up and down and then sighs before wiping her brow. 

“Oh, darlin’ don’t do that to me. Damn near scared me half to death!” Her voice is saccharine and slow, accent drawing long vowels and dropped consonants. Southern, you think—Georgia, if you had to guess. 

“I’m sorry, miss,” you apologize. You raise your hands as a sign of good faith before you glance at the items behind her on the counter. Fresh meat, a mason jar of white, bubbly liquid, a fresh block of cheese. “Laswell sent me here. I’m supposed to help with dinner?” 

“Did she now?” Lottie asks. Her face melts. All tension vanishes back into the depths of her skin as a smile pulls at her lips. “Reckon we have guests to cook for, then?” 

You nod. “Yes—erm—myself and a few others. Four men.” 

“Sounds like we have half a battalion to feed,” she muses. Tapping the spoon against the side of her hip, she seems swept away by the chorus of the song crackling from the phonograph, melody bleeding from the speaker like a warm campfire in the midst of the boonies. “Awfully kind of Katie to send me a little helper, then. Why don’t you grab one of those aprons darlin, we can’t have you mucking up that dress of yours!” 

She points over her shoulder to a small rack of off-white aprons long stained by home cooked meals. Each of them are embroidered with little flowers. Some sport roses, others daisies, and what you think is an attempt to do forget-me-knots. You snatch up the one with lilies before tying it around your waist and hopping in line next to Lottie, who isn’t afraid to throw work your way. Handing you a knife, she orders you to peel potatoes and cut them into cubes while she works on heating the stove up enough for the meat. 

When she asks you what your name is, you tell her the truth, though it’s overshadowed by the mention of your nickname. Lamb. It makes her giggle something sweet and bubbly like champagne. 

Lottie is a beautiful woman—it’s difficult not to find yourself starstruck by her. Rosy cheeks flush in the heat of the kitchen, illuminating the sweet and sparse freckles that spot her face. Her lips are painted a matte cherry red, though it slowly fades each time her teeth dig into the tender flesh as she mutters to herself about the next steps for her meal. Then, there’s her bosom. Your eyes burn when you notice the swell of her breasts and how her corset can hardly keep them from spilling over the blushing fabric of her dress. She’s any man’s dream. 

“So,” you speak up. Small talk is not a strong attribute of yours, and Lottie and her phonograph are doing plenty of conversing for the both of you. Still, you are a stranger in this home, and the acrimonious bile in your stomach urges you to make something of yourself. “You live here, then? With Laswell?” 

“Well, of course,” she Lottie giggles. She’s got flour smeared on her face, dusty eggshell staining a line across her forehead. “Certainly wouldn’t be doin’ all this good cookin’ for free.” 

“Are you and Laswell sisters, then?” you ask. 

Lottie’s in the middle of placing a thinly rolled piece of pastry dough on top of her sheet of pot pie when she freezes. Her gaze is quizzical as she turns her attention to you, eyes studying every line in your face. For a moment, there’s something malicious that lurks in her gaze. An incensed flicker that leaves your spine tingling. It quickly vanishes when her eyes drop to the necklace dangling around your neck. 

“Oh, bless your heart. Aren’t you just as sweet as a peach,” she says with a quiet smile before returning to her work. 

Unsure of what else to say, you continue to do as you’re told. Chopped potatoes. Rolling dough. Making bread—sourdough. Slicing apples. Warming sugar until golden brown. You’re grateful for the work. It’s been a long time since you’ve cooked a proper meal, and you’re hoping you’ll actually be able to get a taste of it this time around. 

Neither you nor Lottie take a break until her apple pie is cooking in the oven and her pot pie is staying warm atop the stove. She fetches you a cup of water from a valve in the kitchen, leaving you slack jawed, and corrals you out onto the porch where the two of you sit next to one another on a thatched bench.

As you drink, you can’t help but realize that even the water tastes different here. It’s strange. Tangy, like blood from a split lip. You hold the glass up to the setting sun where amber light refracts through it, illuminating the bubbles that swirl through the liquid. 

“You’re not from around here, are you?” 

When you turn your attention back to Lottie, you realize she’s staring at you, bright eyes piercing through you like cold rays of sun. Pressing your lips together, you place your hands into your lap, fingers clenching around your glass. 

“No, I just got here today, actually,” you explain. 

She nods. “Where’re you from?” 

“Penmosa.” 

“I’m not familiar.” 

“It’s… well, it took us a fair bit of travel to get here.” 

“Us?” 

Blinking, you realize the slip of your words. John’s name rattles through your brain like dark ink on parchment—pinned to a board, face on display for all to see, a call for violence; for vengeance. 

“Yes. I’ve been traveling with… a man named John.” 

“John Price?” Lottie confirms. 

Solicitude seeps deep into every bone in your body at her recognition. “Yes. Him and the others will be here for dinner tonight. I… I hope that isn’t a problem.” 

“Oh, not at all!” she beams as the tips of her feet tap against the porch. “It’s been quite a long time since I’ve last seen John and his boys. Didn’t think he’d be comin’ back to Grand Hollow so soon. Last I knew he was out wandering while tryin’ to wait for things in Blackpeak to cool down.” 

The more she speaks, the more your brows draw together. “You know him?” 

“Of course I do! Him and Kaite have been doin’ business for a little while now. He’s a fine man. A little strange, but I think all those English folk are, if you ask me.” 

A subtle discontent stirs at the base of your skull leaving your mind spinning. A dissonance screams. It burrows deep and roots. You’ve been warned that John Price is not a good man, and you’ve seen the very proof of it yourself. That man he shot and killed. The clothes he ripped off of your body. The wanted poster with his name and face plastered on it. 

Yet, he saved you from your father, and Lottie spews about him as if he were a disciple. You know it is ungodly to cast judgement on another person, but you can’t shake the discord of the situation. How thin is the line between salvation and betrayal? 

“Speak of the devil, and he shall appear,” Lottie murmurs. 

There, just down the road, trots a line of horses. Bear’s familiar head rears while his tail flicks, shooing off flies attempting to nurse on him all while Kyle pats the side of his head. John lazily looks around at the houses, shoulders squared as he seems to chat away with Laswell, who leads the pack on her own horse. 

Swallowing, you prepare for what you’re sure is about to be the most painful dinner you’ve participated in for quite some time. 

Laswell is the first to dismount, leg easily swinging over the side of her horse without a dress to get in the way. She trots up the porch and greets you with a polite nod before her hands reach for Lottie. The woman grins, bright, pearly teeth flashing between the blood red of her lips, before she allows Laswell to help her off of the bench. Then, their lips meet. Soft, chaste—enough to stain Laswell’s mouth with color. 

For a moment, all you can do is stare. Two women, embracing one another in such a way. Heat simmers from your core for only a short moment before it’s boiling, splashing bubbling water all up your insides until they’re searing and raw. You can hear John’s chuckle haunt you from somewhere along the staircase. 

“Come on, Lamb,” Lottie urges with a wave. “Let’s go set the table.” 

The distance you sow between you and John is appreciated and welcomed, but it only lasts for a few fleeting minutes before God has brought the two of you together again. Palms flat in your lap, eyes staring at the long table as you’re squished between Kyle and Riley, John’s eyes flickering like a lone candle flame across from you—the weight is nearly unbearable. Crushing. Bones fracturing. Splinters sticking in the raw, fleshy parts of you. 

Thick fingers curl around his fork, dark hair lining the space just below his knuckles. You watch as his tendons dance just below his skin as he cuts into his food before he shoves it into his open maw. As he eats, you wonder how many men he’s murdered with those very same hands. How much blood the earth has had to swallow because of him. How many children weep over rotting fathers because of what those hands have done. 

As he cracks his knuckles, you’re reminded of the first time he ever taught you how to shoot. Trigger finger trembling, he told you a gun is nothing more than a tool. Something to protect yourself with. It’s a similar mentality he barked at you when you dared to challenge him over his slaughtering of that farmer who threatened to soil you. Protection. Saving. Family. 

What honor was there in slaughtering those coal mine workers? 

“I can see why Laswell’s tied you down with a ring, Lottie,” John hums. His thumbs graze over one of your sourdough rolls, nails biting into the crisp crust as it caves in beneath his pressure. He places a fluffy piece against his tongue and offers a tight-lipped to the woman. “With cooking like this, I reckon you had her ensnared.” 

Lottie’s giggle falls like a sheer blanket over the table as she shoos John off with a wave. “Oh, I can’t take all the credit. Your little lamb was quite the helper. Pretty much did everythin’ for me! And, as far as I know, she ain’t taken quite yet.” 

John’s eyes settle on you, and though you know better, you can’t help but return his gaze. Sticky like tree sap on fresh logs, you can’t look away. You hold his gaze, jaw tense and aching, he hums. His lips quirk into a smile and for the first time in your life, you find yourself wanting to slap it from his face. 

“Maybe we ought to keep you around after all,” he muses. 

Scoffing, you glance back down at your plate. There’s hardly anything left for you to eat, yet you poke at it with your silverware anyway. “Awfully rich coming from the man who considers me a right nuisance. What did you call me again? Cargo?” 

Enmity soaks your tongue so much that it does not feel like your own anymore. This is your father’s tongue that rots your mouth—bitter and swollen from long standing annoyance, ever petulant. Even John seems to recognize this change within you. Eyebrows rising, he shakes his head and chuckles. 

“Right,” he agrees. “The most headache-inducing cargo I’ve ever laid hands on.” 

A hush halts the table’s conversation leaving you to face the white hot anger brewing in your chest all by yourself. You note the sideways glances. The way Kyle turns away from you. The way Soap’s lips press together. 

Look at you, once again, the prodigal daughter. 

“Well, how about some dessert to offset all this bitterness?” Lottie suggests, voice gentle like honey, blunt humor pulling at her words. 

Laswell pushes her plate away before looking up at her wife with a nod. “A perfect idea, love.” 

Apple and cinnamon dance in a waltz on your tongue but their feet are numbed as the rest of the feast is finished in choppy conversation punctuated with long bouts of silence. Fatigue pulls heavy at everyone’s eyes, but your anger keeps you wide awake. Fork clutched in hand. Metal scraping on porcelain. When everyone is finished, John attempts to have everyone stay behind to help clean up, but Laswell waves him off, saying that he ought to get everyone back to the hotel to rest. 

Before you leave, Lottie bids you farewell with a soft hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Welcome to Grand Hollow, darlin. I hope it’s everythin’ you need.” 

You ride on the back of John’s horse. You’re much too close for comfort to him, and your skin tingles as if there were a million small beetles dancing on your body. He at least offers you the courtesy of not talking to you, allowing you to stew in your thoughts as your eyes glaze over and focus on the dusty stones that crumble beneath the horse’s hooves. 

Still, you are incensed that you missed all the omens. Vague warnings from Mr. Beckett. The bursts of anger that seemed to seep from every pore in his body. The way he never flinched when enacting violence upon others. 

You spent so long attempting to find humanity in the eyes of the wolf that you failed to notice the fresh blood staining his teeth. 

“Ever been to a theatre before, Lamb?” 

It’s the first thing John’s said to you for the entire ride, and it’s enough to get your ears to quirk. Gaze shifting upwards, you notice an unfamiliar sight that you’ve only heard about from word of mouth. Fat bulbs light up the street as they line a marquee board listing off show names and times. Stories you don’t recognize, with actors and actresses from a whole other world. Behind a glass window sits a man selling tickets, who looks as if he’s about to fall asleep face first into the palm he rests his chin on. 

“Can’t say that I have,” you reply tartly. 

“They used to be shows of just actors. People dancing on stage, things of that sort,” John explains, head leaning back in active conversation. “Used to have women hiking their skirts up, too. Would probably send your daddy into a proper fit if he ever saw it. Now they’re showing moving pictures. Films, I think they call it.”

“Is that so?” Short. Dull. The theatre passes you by and you’re back to staring at the ground. 

John’s hips shift in his saddle, fingers tightening on the reins. “The boys and I were thinking about seeing one tomorrow.”

All you do is hum in reply. You watch as John’s shoulders tense and rise before falling with a huff. The horse begins to slow, its proper trot dwindling to a lazy meander. 

“You know Lamb, I can’t say I’m too overly fond of this new attitude of yours. Picking fights at dinner while we’re guests wasn’t too godly of you,” he bites. 

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re getting rid of me soon, isn’t it?” you retort. 

His body stills. Not even the swaying of his horse can move him. 

“You might be right about that, little lamb.” 

With Laswell tucked away at home, John is the only one left to show you to your room. He bids the boys a goodnight before leading you up to the second floor, key pinched between his fingers as he unlocks the door for you. You find your carpet bag waiting for you on the foot of the largest bed you’ve ever seen—big enough to house six swine comfortably, if you had to guess. Another vanity sits shoved against the far side of the wall, along with several complementary products of soap and oils, but the wonder is lost on you now. 

Sighing, you take the key from John’s hand and busy yourself with sorting through the items in your bag. John’s gaze sears your skin. Shoulder tucked into the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, he stares at you. Through you. Piercing your body as if his eyes were knives. 

“You’re not still upset at me for earlier, are you?” he suddenly questions. 

“Earlier?” you repeat. You’re still turned away from him. Shoulders hunched, hands busy. You know it’s not smart to face away from wolves but you can’t bring yourself to be scared of his bite anymore. 

“When I interrupted your bath.” 

“Whyever would I be mad about that?” you reply bitterly. 

While John’s chuckles are usually warm, earthy things, the one he gives you now can only be described as sour milk. Thick and clumpy, noisome and in desperate need to be thrown out. “Full of fire today, aren’t you? Did you ever talk to your daddy like this?” 

Your fingers have just wrapped around your comb when he asks you this, and the unfamiliar choler it fills you with nearly suffocates you. Tossing the item onto the comforter, you whip around to face him, head tilted to the side and teeth grinding like eroding stones. 

“No, Daddy beat me whenever I opened my mouth out of turn,” you snap, stating the obvious with so much vitriol you nearly choke on it. Still, it propels you forward, feet sliding across the floor as you approach him. “Is that what you wanna do to me, John?” 

“You better slow down, sweetheart,” John warns. 

Ignoring him, you stalk closer on wobbly legs. Nothing but a freshly jellied lamb. 

“Gonna take off your belt and beat me the way your daddy did to you?” you challenge. You’re within biting distance now. John’s no longer leaning against the doorframe, but instead standing with his feet wide and firm as if ready for a blow. “Gonna make someone pay for your pain? That’s all you wan’t, isn’t it? Vengeance? You’re no better than the man behind the belt, John Price, you’re-” 

All it takes to shut you up is a hand on your jaw. 

Thumb and fingers curling into the fat of your cheeks, John Price is close enough to your face that you can feel his breath fan across your skin. His grip is firm enough to get your lips to part, but not enough to ache—not yet, anyway. Your pounding heart quivers against your sternum, making it impossible for you to swallow properly as you stare at him. 

Tobacco pairs nicely with the hue of his eyes—dark like a lake rippling during a storm. You want to be scared. Everything within you tells you to be scared. These are the hands that slaughtered innocent lives. Still, the way his thumb brushes across your bottom lip is the most gentle thing you’ve ever felt since your mother’s last parting kiss to your forehead, and you’re not sure why, but it feels worse than any slap you’ve ever received before. 

“Dunno what’s gotten into you sweetheart, but I’ll just assume you’re in desperate need of some good rest.” John huffs when he releases you, hands falling to his side before his fingers wrap around the doorknob. 

For a moment, he stands there like this. Gaze wandering up and down, his pupils soak up the narrowing of your eyes and the shaking of your knees before he swings the door shut. 

“Goodnight, Lamb.”

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cw: dubcon, manipulation, babytrapping?

You ask Alpha!Gaz to spend your heat with you because he’s so chill. He’s always treated you just like one of the guys— since day one. Never once mentioned your designation, because he doesn’t care about that kind of thing, right? So when you ask him why his teeth are at your throat he smiles and laughs like you’re being silly, and says “I’ve been courting you for as long as I’ve known you, love.”

You ask Alpha!Soap to spend your heat with you because he’s so promiscuous. He’s slept with everyone on base, no strings attached, no broken hearts— obviously he’s a man who knows how to keep it casual, right? But when you’re pressed against him, stuck on his knot, he’s rubbing your stomach and asking “How many pups ye want, bonnie? Ah was thinkin’ we’d have a proper big family.”

You ask Alpha!Ghost to spend your heat with you because he doesn’t really seem to like anyone. Not the type to form attachments. Won’t give any part of himself to anyone, right? But he keeps you prone and pinned with his massive body, oriented so he can watch the door, grunting “You’re mine now, understand? Anyone who tries to get between me and my mate s’gonna end up torn apart.”

You ask Alpha!Price to spend your heat with you because he’s your commanding officer. He’s always been calm, cool, and completely professional with you. He wouldn’t compromise the structure of the team over some biological event, right? But he’s panting, tongue soothing over the fresh mark in your neck, telling you he’ll have a talk with your landlord once your heat is over about breaking your lease. “Gotta get you moved in with me, darl’. Pups’ll need more space to run around. What color do y’want the nursery?”

You ask Alpha!Nikolai to spend your heat with you because you trust him, but you don’t exactly have a relationship. You work with him some of the time, and he’s a good man, but he lives across the globe. He wouldn’t disrupt his globetrotting lifestyle to settle down with some omega he barely knows, right? But he’s cooing honeyed words in your ear that you can’t understand, one hand pawing at your abdomen while the other is at your throat, rubbing your gland and bringing the blood to the surface in preparation for his bite. “Imagine the look on John’s face— when he sees I’ve poached his prettiest little sergeant for myself…”

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.

previous

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!

‘Frankenstein was the doctor’ first of all that little bitch was a college dropout so don’t you ‘doctor’ me

old drawings of ghost

OKAY I’m a fanfic writer, I deserve to be a little delusional

König having a little YouTube channel. when you look at him you’d think he’d make videos on antique weapons, different blades and their history, or maybe old military equipment. he wouldn’t blame you, he does collect said weapons. of course, you could also wager he’d make videos on documentaries and movies he’s watched. he’s an opinionated man, loves to talk about old war documentaries and horror films, but you’d be wrong again

König likes to record little cooking videos. when he’s home on leave he’ll take clips of himself shopping - he prefers the local farmers market, but the grocery is nothing he’d scoff at. he gets up early to have first pick over fruits and vegetables, takes a moment to look at fresh loaves and sweet treats. the real magic is in the kitchen, always precise with measurements and handling a knife. he doesn’t really talk, doesn’t write out subtitles for the videos, just lets his cooking speak for itself

König who’s known to have a certain someone cameo in his recordings, your mumbled ‘hello’s and ‘good morning’s murmured in the background, the soft pad of your feet as you walk around. he always plates up his food carefully, big hands arranging little pieces of fruit ever so slightly. sets the table, his phone angled at the spread - fresh cut fruit, your favorite breakfast items, refreshing drinks. neither of you are fully in view, it’s really just your hands and the meal, but that’s all he cares to record. his videos always end after you try a little bit of everything, satisfied that he made you something you enjoyed - he awkwardly waves at the camera before stopping the recording

the captions for his videos follow a similar format, “breakfast for my liebling”, or, “surprise dinner for date night”. Horangi found his channel after snooping on the Colonel’s phone, he’s his number one fan and top viewer