Short Simon Riley & Fem Reader Nsfw…

Uninvited, Unexpected.

a/n: it's nice until the very end. it hints at baby trapping. one solid sentence that's kinda degrading (i couldn't help myself ok) this was in the works for so long, i did so much research just to use words. english is hard. and ignore the plot holes, for my sake. my sanity.

this is SMUT. 18+mdni please (if im missing anything else, lmk)

ty to my wonderful beta readers @waves-against-a-cliff & @xoxunhinged

wc: 3,1K

Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!reader

You're awoken by a loud noise. At first, you think you dreamt it. Exploding head syndrome, maybe. You strain your hearing but it's quiet, save for the occasional creak of the house settling, its old bones creaking in the dead of night. Rain gently patters against the windows, blurring the world outside.

A flash of sudden light illuminates the bedroom, casting elongated shadows across the floor, followed by a loud crack that rattles the glass. Thunder. You should've guessed.

The frantic beating of your heart slows to a gentle roll, and your eyes leaden with sleep. The soft pillows beckon, the warm blankets cradle you as you sink back onto the mattress.

Only for you to be snapped back into reality, drowsiness dissipating like a morning mist.

Someone's knocking on your door.

Your heart is in your throat as you quickly peel off the blankets, the chill of the floorboards underneath your bare feet seeping into your bones.

In the bookshelf sits the gun Simon had given you before he had moved out, the rumble of his voice a ghost in your ear. "For protection," he'd murmured, placing the cold metal onto your open palms. "Jus' in case."

Your trembling fingers fumble as you search for it in the dark, flinching as a couple of books spill from the shelf onto the floor, pages rustling in your urgency.

The knocking persists.

The metal of the grip is unyielding in your clammy hands. You've never tested it before, never had the displeasure. As you hold it close to your chest with a quivering breath, you hope tonight won't change that.

Simon's instructions echo in your mind as you approach the front door. "Thumb the safety. Hold the grip with both hands. Do not, under any circumstance, put your finger on the trigger unless you're plannin' on sendin' hate. Clear?"

Your throat tightens, a phantom snake coiling around the narrow passage, and panic grips your heart as you reach for the blinds, slowly hooking two fingers and carefully pulling down to look at who is—

Simon.

Simon?

Sweat-slick fingers flip the light switch before quickly undoing the locks, the hinges groaning in protest as the door opens.

"What the hell?"

It's Simon, disheveled— maskless— swaying on his feet. His eyes are half-closed and unfocused. Johnny's holding him up by the arm, struggling to keep him upright.

"S'ry, bonnie. We wen' out fer a few 'nd clearly, he's out 'is face. Quite crabbit, too. He said ye'd let 'em sleep 'ere," he slurs.

Simon's not the only one who's pissed. With a resigned sigh, you gesture at the couch with your free hand. "There, I guess."

That he thought of you even in his drunken haze tugs at your fragile heartstrings.

Johnny guides him to the catch, a quiet C'mon LT to spur him forward. Heavy boots thud against the floor as they stumble toward the living room while you carefully place the gun on the kitchen countertop before reaching for a water bottle in the pantry. Johnny snickers under his breath as Simon collapses onto the sofa, the springs protesting his weight.

Two bottles, then.

You watch Simon's head loll as you hand Johnny the water. "Tell me you aren't the one driving, Johnny," you grumble.

He takes it with a quiet thanks. "Naw. Cap'n's stone cold sober."

Small mercies.

Johnny gives Simon a rough slap to the side of his leg as he bids him goodbye, pulling you in for an embrace tight enough that your spine pops before walking out the door.

You let out another sigh as the lock clicked back into place. The tangy, sour scent of stale alcohol mixed with stings at your nose, as does the invasive smell of smoke.

His boots are mud-caked, and you'll be damned if he stains your nice furniture with his mess. "Shoes off." He groans but complies. The laces come undone quickly, and you tug his shoes off with a grunt. "Simon."

His glassy eyes meet yours. "Drink your water." The burning need to chuck it at his head is one you have to vehemently smother into embers. Moron. Only Simon would have the gall to show up unannounced months after the separation. And drunk.

You push the bottle into his chest roughly and make to go back to bed when he encircles his hand around your wrist and the world spins on its axis, suddenly finding yourself beneath him with his face nestled in the crook of your neck.

Simon's breath is hot against your skin, the weight of his body pinning you down so achingly familiar. It stirs up past memories that would have you pressing your thighs together if he wasn't right there, using his broad waist to spread them apart.

"Missed ya, love." A confession. "S'much."

The breath you draw is jagged, his slow-spoken words hanging in the air. You want to push him away, scream at him for stumbling in and disrupting your night, your rest, your carefully crafted peace. But there's a part of you that can't help but soften at the tenderness in his tone.

"Simon," you whisper. "You're drunk. You don't know what you're saying—" his lips find your fluttering pulse. You find purchase in his shirt, shaky fingers grasping at the hem.

"'M drunk, no' no liar." Your resolve wavers. No, he never had been. Honesty hadn't been the reason for the split. It wasn't the truth he'd spoken but the truths he'd kept to himself. A fortress around his heart, the bridge to its gates raised. Unwilling to share a burden, share a life.

His warm tongue licks a hot stripe up your neck reaching the lobe of your ear where his blunt teeth sink into it. A choked gasp spills from your mouth, spine arching in reflex— your treacherous body remembering his touch, yearning for it.

"Simon—" your words get caught in your throat; snag like fishhooks when he undulates his hips, arousal creeping along your veins like ivy.

"Don't ya miss me, pet?" You've asked him to not call you that because it never fails to stoke the fire in your belly, to sodden your knickers. Before you can chide him on his choice of words, he shifts. One arm, an inked column under the soft light of the living room, holds him up just enough to bring his rugged face into focus. His eyes, like a stormy night's sky, swirl with untamed desire.

You know it's dangerous to play with fire. Touch it and burn, ache, blister. But the passion of this old flame beckons like a siren with sharp teeth. Each drag of his prominent erection against your core only succeeds in pulling you away from the shore of clarity. It's disorienting, insistent.

Relentless.

"My pretty little love," he mumbles. Simon's gaze drags from your glassy eyes to the delicate contours of your collarbone. His fingers trace lines of intimacy onto the swell of your breasts before using the pad of his thumb to swirl the stiffened peak of your nipple. "Say the word 'nd it all stops."

The scent of alcohol clings to him, a bitter reminder of the loss of inhibitions it brings as it warms one's chest. Blurred lines he might not mind, but you do. Lost boundaries. Rejection sits on the tip of your tongue, on the edge of your teeth when he says something that frays the last threads of your resolve.

It comes undone.

"Please. Jus' tonigh'. All I need." His words sound like footsteps in winter mire, slushed, syllables blending together.

You'll just have to kick him out on his arse in the morning.

"Okay," you breathe. Just one night, you tell yourself. He's always been good to you in the bedroom. One last hurrah wouldn't hurt. Maybe it'll allow you to finally close this painful chapter in your life and start anew, with pristine white pages and fresh ink.

Your hands, trembling with nerves and anticipation, cradle his face. The roughness of his stubble in contrast with the softness of your palms is grounding, keeping you from being pulled under your own swirling emotions.

" 'M righ' 'ere, love. You're safe with me, always." He whispers the last words reverently, a vow. Simon's breath mingles with yours as he leans in for a kiss.

The world around you fades, your senses tunneled on the feel of his lips, the taste of him— mildly sweet with a hint of peppermint. He slants his head to deepen the kiss, and the bruising ache in your heart is replaced by another, one that burns brightly and threatens to sweep you away.

The lulling sound of the pouring rain outside is drowned out by the beating of your racing heart.

The bed creaks when Simon perches you on the edge of it, quietly ordering you to take your top off.

"What about my bottoms?" You bite down on the gummy inside of your cheek when he pins you in place with a look— a predator eyeing its prey.

"Those are mine." Resounding. Final. A gavel in a courtroom.

You fling your shirt off, tossing it into some forgotten corner in the room, and cheekily watch Simon undress. It's not methodical like it used to be. No longer a means to an end. Experienced fingers undo the buckle of his belt before he takes it off, the leather material snapping in the air, slicing through the silence.

A quip tumbles out of your mouth faster than you can stop it. "Gonna spank me with that?"

The air around you thickens— or thins, you can't be sure— when his eyes flash to you. He kicks off his jeans, one foot after the other, wobbling as he does. "Tha' wha' you want?" The words he didn't say ring out loud and clear.

Don't rattle the cage, sweetheart. This dog isn't muzzled.

You sink your teeth into your bottom lip to keep from saying anything else, something that he might take you up on, instead focusing on the way his heavy cock hangs in between legs (dangling with each step forward—)

"M'eyes are up 'ere." Your nose scrunches at his joke. Cute.

He lowers himself onto his knees, your legs cradling his face as it hovers over your sex, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath on your heated skin.

The sleeping shorts you're wearing are ratty and worn. They're thin too, practically translucent from constant use. Which means that he can see that you're not wearing any undergarments underneath.

"Hope you know I can—" Heat licks up the sides of your jaw, pooling in your cheeks as you cut him off with a snappy remark.

"Yes. I know."

The tip of his pointed tongue drags along the seam of your shorts, right along your slit. Your breath hitches, and you clench your jaw to keep from making a sound. Your back bows involuntarily, the feeling startling, intense.

"Can see tha' clear as day, as if lookin' through a windowpane, pet," he taunts. The words that are forming, almost ready to spill out, freeze in place when his mouth comes in direct contact with your slippery cunt. He licks once, twice, through your folds, slightly dipping into your slick entrance, only pulling away to nuzzle your pearl with his misaligned nose.

"Sweet as a peach, jus' like I remember," he purrs, the timbre of his voice buzzing against your puffy lips. "Missed this." A mewl slithers past your grit teeth when he gently sinks one thick finger into you, curling and twisting. Arousal drips onto his knuckle, tracing a hot path down to his wrist. He coos at you when he adds another digit, hissing at the sharp but brief pinprick of the stretch.

"Bloody fuckin' tight." Simon rises off the floor, the quiet sound of his knees popping swallowed up by your harsh pants. "Gotta let me in, love. Relax."

He keeps the thrusts shallow, his fingers dragging deliciously along your nerve endings. The sting soon fades, giving way to a gentle warmth that unfurls inside of you, letting Simon reach deeper until—

Your muscles stiffen, tight like a spring when he brushes over the rough patch of skin that has bursts of light appearing across your eyelids.

"Look at ya. Droolin' like a mutt with my fingers stuffed up your pretty cunt."

There's a pressure in your lower belly that's steadily building with each sloppy thrust of his hand, pulling squelching noises from your sodden pussy. He finally, finally, latches onto your neglected clit, lightly sucking on it in tandem with his fingers.

Your chin drops to your chest as everything nears a breaking point. The pressure inside you has your body wound tight. The fibers of your muscles contract, almost painfully, preparing for the release of what's to come, what can't be ignored.

The swirling of his golden tongue pushes against the boundaries of your endurance, pushes you to the precipice, where you finally hit the point of no return. You can feel something about to give, ecstasy trickling through the cracks in your foundation, uncontrollable, raw. Your fingers thread through Simon's hair, curling tightly, pulling it taut when you feel something about to give—oh fuck—

Snap.

The structure that holds everything in place collapses.

A sudden release of pent-up energy and emotion erupts like a dam bursting, a cleansing flood that washes away the grime of old wounds, of bitterness, leaving the edges softened so they can heal; knit closed and scar over. Closure. It touches every part of you, filling you with a sense of liberation.

Your heart beats freely, it throbs with life as a wave of relief washes over you, soothing, a balm over scraped flesh, a rush of cool air into starved lungs.

A lightness that comes after being weighed down with burdens for so long.

Simon's hands encircle your arms firmly— fingers digging into the meat of your biceps— and effortlessly maneuvers you toward the center of the bed as if your lethargic form were a feather caught in a breeze; weightless, insignificant.

Gentle but unyielding.

There's a ringing in your ears that muffles his voice, blurring the edges of his words, an unintelligible hum, as if you were underwater. The sensation leaves you feeling adrift in a tranquil sea, cradled in its silken embrace. The only anchor you have to the muzzy reality is his warm touch.

"'M sorry, sweetheart. I can't," he apologizes, hooking your right leg over his shoulder. You let out a sibilant hiss as he leans forward, pushing your knee to your chest, the corded muscle of your hamstring pulling to its limit. "Can't wait anymore, 'm sorry."

Simon gives you a sloppy kiss as his heaving length prods at your swollen entrance, the tip breaching your pussy with a warm burn that starts from under your navel and only flares, radiating from your core outward. It's searing, the initial bite of the stretch disrupts the haze in your muddled mind, bringing the world around you into cutting clarity.

A guttural noise claws up his throat as Simon sheathes himself halfway, his growled words not the salve he was hoping for. It only grates at already raw nerves, abrasive.

"Jus' a little more, you can take it." He winds a hand downward to draw messy circles on your slippery clit, to stifle the roaring fire in your stomach, your chest. "You already have."

His jerky touch does its job, transforming the sharp burn of him wrenching your walls apart fiber by fiber into a quiet glow; smoldering heat now simmering. You soften, mellow and pliant, accept him into your body as he sinks to the hilt with a quiet groan.

"There's my girl. Takin' all of it like you were made f'me." Simon's words of praise tangle around your spine, electric, prickling. Your heart gallops like a herd of horses, wild and free. "Liked tha' did you? Jus' about strangled my cock with your tight cunt."

He rolls his hips once, twice, searching for signs of discomfort, but when only warm pleasure laps at your heels, when the barest of moans spill from your open lips, Simon begins to put his weight behind his thrusts.

Through half-lidded eyes, you see a raw, primal hunger reflected in his eyes— his soul, the one he'd claimed to have lost long ago, back with his reason, his sanity.

Yet he looks down at you as if you were his only salvation. A lifeline he grabs onto with an unyielding grip, his only tether to hope, purpose. A lighthouse shining in a raging storm, a beacon calling him home.

Simon presses a large hand onto your lower stomach, his work-worn palm pushing until you wince, brows furrowing at the fleeting whisper of pain.

"Can feel myself right here," he sluggishly mumbles, drunk of the feel of your cunt, the taste of your skin on his tongue— sweet like ripened figs. The sensory overload has him sinking his fingers into your flesh until it dimples.

He murmurs something under his taxed breath, something akin to mine, only mine as his lips leave a slick trail of saliva on the dip of your collarbone, the gentle curve of your shoulder, the thin, soft skin of your bicep up to your inner wrist, where he laps at your pulse.

As if savoring the present. The precious gift he's unwrapped, here and now. The last taste of you, which he hopes with a reverence that borders on prayer, lingers on his tongue long after the fruit— the sweet evidence of this one last intimacy— falls from the bough.

Simon comes with his teeth in the crook of your neck, biting down with a crushing pressure that has an acute pain digging its spurs into your consciousness, cutting the blazing euphoria of your own release short.

His cock is still twitching as he fills you with his spend when he takes his thumb and collects some of your slick to take you over the edge one last time.

"F'me. You can take it, yeah? I'll go slow, I promise."

Simon presses a kiss on your sweaty temple, his large hand cupping your jaw as he lazily watches you succumb to sleep, your breath evening out.

He reaches for your arm again, feeling for the birth control implant you'd had there when the both of you were still together.

Gone.

Sweet girl. You'd let him in without a fight. (He makes a mental note to wash the beer off of his clothes tomorrow.)

He knows your cycle better than the lines that are etched onto his palm. Better than the voice of the captain who rumbles in his earpiece, ordering him to go for the throat.

From the moment you'd stepped into his life with eternity in your eyes and the warmth of the sun on your lips, you were his. And he'll do anything to remain in your orbit.

(left unable to distinguish prison from paradise when each poison-coated kiss softens the world he'll build for you and what's to come.)

two weeks after your second anniversary was when john decided to first break the news to you.

he's a man, he'd told you. always had been, just didn't know how to articulate that until right at that moment. he wanted to transition, to take testosterone, cut his hair, change his name, the works. he'd looked so, so nervous, holding your hand so gently, like he was afraid he might crush your knuckles if he held on as tightly as he wanted to.

just tell me what you need, i'm not going anywhere. you'd said, and he pulled you into his arms and cried into your hair. you meant it, too. you'd cut his hair for him, giving him a smart looking crew cut, and taken him to all of his appointments. new clothes were bought, elderly relatives were spoken to and given boundaries, the works. it was an honor to do it, to be john's support as he ventured into the unknown, traversing new and uncharted waters.

you'd had the absolute privilege of having a front row seat to the transformation of john price. the good, the emotional, all of it. every new step in the process was an adventure, a thrill. the nervous joy about getting the initial consultations set up with the right people. his barely restrained excitement over the patchiest peach fuzz you'd ever seen in your life. the voice memos to himself, recording the changes in his voice and comparing them on occasion. the mood swings, the acne, the bulking up. buying binders, and burning one in celebration a few years later when he no longer needed them, pink crescent-shaped scars adorning his chest. watching the scars get completely covered by thick body hair that covers almost every inch of him. watching him watch himself in the mirror, and seeing the smile at his reflection grow more and more over time.

it's incredible how much his confidence grew, how much more self-assured he felt. the first time someone called him 'sir' at a supermarket he'd rushed home to tell you about it, grinning so wide you thought it might split his face in half. gender euphoria, he'd called it, and you can see why. every time he felt it, whether it was looking good in a shirt post-surgery, getting consistently gendered correctly by strangers, or noticing that the dents in his shoulders from where his bra straps had been were slowly disappearing thanks to the growth of his muscles, the joy he experienced leaked out of the heart of him, dripping onto the floor and flooding the room with it. his happiness, his bone-deep contentment, his elation is infectious, and you're happy to catch it time and time again.

and now here he is, years later, still by your side. a husband this time, not a girlfriend like when you'd started out. the role suits him beautifully, if you're honest. much better than girlfriend ever did. the thought strikes you as you watch him do the dishes, and you can't help but admire the change in him. his beard is a matter of pride, thick and well-groomed, his chest, arms, back, hell, everything, is covered in a thick layer of hair as well. his shoulders are broader, his voice deeper, and his face is more angular. it's nothing short of incredible to watch him become the person he was always meant to be, and a feeling of immense love and pride wells up inside of you, borderline overwhelming.

you stand right next to him, silently wrapping your arm around his waist and kissing his shoulder through his shirt as he rinses a plate from lunch. you can't make the words come out, how much you love him, how much his joy brings you joy, how fucking good he looks, how sexy you think he is, how proud you are of how far he's come. instead you say nothing, opting instead to keep peppering his shoulder with pecks and squeezing his waist, hoping that might get the point across. john just throws you a curious, chuckling smile, right before he gently rests his socked foot on top of yours. no pressure, just resting, his way of holding your hand when his hands are busy. you both stand there for a while in a comfortable quiet, just enjoying being next to each other. john's someone whose company you'll never tire of, never not want desperately. even when you're tired of people and need some time alone, that doesn't include him. john isn't 'people', he's john. the glowing, perfect, singular exception to the rule. and you lucky, lucky thing- he's all yours, according to the rings on your fingers.

"you're so easy to love." you blurt out as john puts the last dish in the drying rack. he grins down at you, the smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"so are you, sweetheart." he says, deep voice rumbling, finally wrapping an arm around your big hips and holding you close as you both look out the kitchen window together, watching the birds at the feeder for a while as you soak up each other's company in companionable silence as his foot continues to rest gently on yours.

God. Specimen.

Redraw

folie à deux

or: the toxic ex boyfriend Ghost AU

PAIRING: Simon “Ghost” Riley x F!Reader 

WARNINGS: || 18+ only MDNI || Toxic masculinity || Possessive & obsessive behaviour || Slut shaming || Groping || Gaslighting || Implied & referenced cheating || Mildly dubious consent

w/c: 5.7k (Read on AO3)

a/n: this was supposed to be like 5 paragraphs, so PLEASE if y'all hate it i dont want to know

It starts with a knock on your front door when you’re only half expecting to see Simon Riley.

He even knocks with a sense of entitlement, and it enrages you.  Three hard raps, and that’s it.  He won’t knock again.  If you don’t open the door, he’ll kick it down to get to you—those were rules you’d learnt the hard way.  

You mentally reinforce your motivation when you fling the door open: You’re scared he’ll break your door down, again, and this time, when they try to evict you, Simon won’t be around to terrify them into letting you stay.

How on earth you’d ever found the prick attractive is beyond you in that minute.  Except, no sooner does the thought enter your mind do you dismiss it.  Of course you had—and still—found him attractive.  That had never been the problem.  

He wore his military career on his face, much easier to see than the chest candy he bragged about but no less attractive to you–scars and burns, healing and the not-quite healed bruises plain to see on his face, a cacophony of yellows and purples.  A nose that had spent more time broken than not, its slight curve most likely a combination of never having been set by a professional nor the opportunity to heal without being broken again.  A thin scar dissected his lip, went all the way up the side of his face to his brow, almost like someone had taken a knife to him, carved him up like a piece of meat.  You’d never asked, and it’s not like he’d ever volunteered the information.  

It just sat there along with the three thousand other things he’d deposited in the chasm that stretched between the two of you. 

“You…Jesus,” he breathes, and slams the door shut behind him, making you wince.  “Where are you off to, then?”

“N’ wearin’ that?” He prompts again when you don’t answer, motions to your body with his chin.  

You roll your eyes when he pulls you into him and plants a hard kiss on your mouth, ignoring your squirming.  “Fuckin’ about to spill out, little dove.” 

“Spill?  Simon, I’m sewn into this dress.”  You pluck at his shirt that has deliciously little give where it sits on his hard chest, leaving your palm there as a little treat for yourself.  “You would know.  You capable of wearing shirts your own size, or does the SAS make it mandatory to have your tits straining against them?”

When he doesn’t respond, you push away from him, and step back, crossing your arms against your chest, definitely not pushing your tits up slightly, and he mirrors your movement.  He’s leaning against the wall by the front door now, blocking your exit, and you can only roll your eyes at the foreseeable display of machismo.  

“Your stuff’s in the front room.  Grab it and go, I have to finish getting dressed.  I have plans.” 

“With a pimp?”

Back when you were blissfully ignorant of Simon’s penchant for keeping you destabilised at all times, unconditionally wanting the last word, his crass words would have made you sputter and struggle to respond.  Oh but you know him so much better now.

Now, the blatant transparency in his delivery just makes you laugh.  

You interrupt his next words with a wave of your hand and turn to retreat to your room.  “Get your shit and leave, baby.”  

You hear his harsh exhale at the dismissal, and once upon a time, the repercussions of dismissing Simon in the middle of a conversation would have excited you.  You used to do it to get a rise out of him, instigate him into chasing you around, fucking you silly when he caught you.  Now, you just do it because you can. 

“No need to be a bitch.  I’ll be on my way in a second, just wanted to check on you, little dove.”

Your laugh is breathy, and you have to pull your mascara wand away from your eyes so you don’t end up stabbing yourself with it.  “‘No need to be a bitch’ says the man currently being a bitch about me not telling him my plans.”  Your laugh is mocking when you turn back to the mirror.  “You ever tire of this routine, Simon?  Because it’s tiring to me.”

Your words only make Simon’s eyes soften, and he looks at you almost indulgently, patronisingly, as though you were a child throwing a tantrum to get an adult’s attention.  “Could never tire of you, little dove.”

“Stop calling me that,” you snap, but he only snorts in response.  

It’s all a game to him, you know that.  He makes it very clear how much amusement he derives from watching you fumble and fall, how much he gets off on the stress he gives you.

And yet, you’re drawn to him, every single time.  Every single time, you play mental gymnastics to find a reason to write off his bad behaviour because, well, it’s Simon.  He’s…like no one else you’ve ever known.  

Your choices have always been limited between a cruel, mercurial god and inane, paltry men.  

Except today.  Today you hold your response back, try not to rise to the obvious challenge.

“Come on then, I’ll drive ya.”

“Are you insane?” you screech.  “You’re not driving me to my date, you’re not driving me anywhere, what the fuck is wrong with you, Simon?”

A glimpse of his Adonis belt as he stretches his arms above his shoulders and cranes his neck from side to side briefly grabs your attention. 

“Don’t be difficult, little dove,” he gently scolds you, and your eyes snap back to his—yours wide with incredulity, his calm and collected in that beautiful, honey brown.  “What were y’gonna do, take the Tube with y’tits out like that?  If the prick ain’t pickin’ you up, I’ll take ya to him.”  He jerks his chin in your vanity’s direction and plops himself on your bed to watch.  “Come on, love, finish yer preenin’ then.”

“Preening,” you mutter under your breath as you turn back to the mirror.  “Fuckin’ weirdo.”

It’s only when you’re dabbing perfume behind your ears do you catch his eye just as he brings a cigarette up to his mouth, and you squeal.  “Simon!  The fuck are yo—don’t smoke in my bedroom!”

“Our bedroom—”

“What?!”

“—’n ya didn’t care before.  Y’wanna share, ‘s that it, little dove?”

“Oh my god.”  You turn around slowly, your hands against your lips, joined together as though in prayer.  “Simon.”

“Yeah, baby.”

“You don’t live here anymore.  This isn’t your flat, it’s mine.  This isn’t your bedroom, it’s mine.”

Simon just continues to smoke as though he hadn’t heard you, dark eyes taking the slow, leisurely route back to meet yours. “Y’look good, baby.”  His voice is hoarse, the words slow and deliberate and raspy, and…you can’t deny it.  The pull he’s always exerted on you, the undeniably ruinous sirens call—you burn hotter and brighter than accretion, you’re a helpless sailor caught up in his thrall 

“Simon” 

“Did’ya always look so good?”  The way he looks at you as though in a trance…you know he’s not listening, seeming to just be thinking out loud.  When he stands up, you take an automatic step back, then cringe when the vanity hits the back of your legs.  Nowhere to go to escape his looming presence.  “No…not like this. Somethin’s changed.”  He puts his hands on your shoulders and turns you around so you’re both facing the mirror.  

The back of your neck feels particularly warm as he pushes his entire front to your back, and you can feel him there, hard and insistent against your lower back.  When eyes meet in the mirror, he looks at you like you’re a puzzle for him to solve.  “Nothing’s changed,” you whisper.  “You’re still a dick.”

“Hmm,” he mutters, then lifts your face up with one hand around your neck, and brings his cigarette around to your lips with the other. 

Your instinctive inhale makes him shift against you slightly, and your eye twitches from how good he feels pressed up against you like this.  How he smells to you—that familiar mix of aniseed and icy menthol, fingers eking that potent hit of nicotine straight into you from where his fingers dig into your skin.  “Definitely somethin’ different.”  He pulls one strap of your dress down, and you exhale as he places one warm, lingering kiss on your exposed shoulder.  “‘S good.  Whatever’s different is good, little dove.”

“We can’t—,” you whisper, and his eyes glint at you with interest and arrogance through the mirror.  “We can’t do this.”  

“You’re so pretty all dressed up like this.  Always were so pretty.  So soft, and—” he inhales deeply at the spot just under your ear “—always smell so fuckin’ good.”

“You can’t,” you moan in response, but press yourself closer to him, anyway.

“But I can,” he responds gruffly.  “‘Nythin’ I like, little dove.  And I know y’like it too.”

“Fuck, just—”  He interrupts you by giving you another hit, and this time you turn around in his arms to exhale in his face.  He doesn’t even flinch.  “What are you playing at, Simon?  What do you want from me this time?”

Simon continues to look at your mouth as you speak, and almost as if on auto-pilot, slips his thumb into your mouth.  You want to bite him for his audacity, you almost kick him in the shin, almost almost almost…  But what you really end up doing is accepting it, licking the pad of his thumb and letting him push it into your mouth.  

Your initials on the space between the base of his thumb and index finger catch your eye—it’s a new tattoo, and you know this entire game is a ruse to draw your attention to it—but you don’t react.  You may be stupid horny for him, but you’re not stupid.

“Always such a good girl for me,” he praises, and it brightens you up on the inside, sparks hot and bright under your spine.  “Tell me, love…still me you think about when you touch your pussy?”

Your harsh exhale and slightly narrowed eyes are the only indication you give of having heard him at all.  In response, his thumb moves slightly deeper, sitting heavy on your tongue, and you let him.  

Your stubborn silence makes him chuckle, and he stubs out his cigarette on the ashtray you (still) keep on your vanity, pushing your dress up over your ass so he can grab your cheeks possessively.  The movement is so quick, so fluid that your protest turns to ash on your tongue when he finds bare skin and squeezes hard.

“Forgot somethin, did ya?”    

“No.”

“No?”  His hands grip you tighter and pull you harshly into him.  The angle makes you grind into his cock, and you know that he’s not even half as unaffected as he pretends.  “Gonna put out on the first date, then, like a slut?  Don’t remember you givin’ me any the first time I—”

“It’s not my first date with him.”

Simon pulls back to look into your eyes, and you’re graced by the first genuine smile on his face all evening—the most brilliant of Rayleigh scatterings put to shame.    “It is your first date, love.”

The blunt, matter-of-factness in his words gives you pause, your mind still coming to terms with what he’s just said, your heart starting to race at the barely concealed confidence about your whereabouts.  “How do you—what are you saying to me right now?”

“Truth, little dove.  Like I promised.”

The casual, off hand remark to one of the most devastating conversations in your life gives you whiplash and you have to physically shake your head to get rid of the feeling of something crawling up the back of your neck.  You put your hands firmly on his chest and push him away, and he steps back easily.  

“Are you…Simon.  Are you having me followed?” 

“Don’t need to.  I know you, little dove.”  He takes another step back from you and cocks his head at your dazed expression.  “Put some knickers on.  The white ones, y’know ‘em.”  When you don’t move, he motions towards your underwear drawer with an expectant expression—as though you’re frozen because you’ve forgotten where they are rather than because you’ve just learnt that your ex boyfriend’s stalking you.

When he crosses his arms, you’re jolted to action.  In a daze, you pick up the first pair your hands grab and pull them on.  He thrusts your purse at you, and leads you out your front door with his hand clasped tight around yours.   

You wish you could say that your ex boyfriend driving you to a date with another man is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you, but that’s not realistic for a life lived around Simon Riley. 

***

The drive is silent, but one big hand remains on your inner thigh.  His fingers are so long that they almost touch the seat on either side of your leg.  It feels invasive but it’s also familiar, so you don’t say anything.  Classic— he never had to try hard to get what he wanted from you.

When he asks you for a smoke, you light one up for him and stick it into the corner of his waiting mouth, and he kisses your fingertips as they retreat.  You still don’t say anything.  Instead, your eyes stay determinedly on your initials tattooed on his skin, his warm hand almost a brand on your thigh, and you think about your life with him in the .

The implication that things were normal in the before is wildly misleading, and a genuine disservice to the shit he’d put you through.   

Once upon a time, you’d been delusional about your place in Simon’s world; now it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.  He threw special forces and taskforce and lads need me in your face every opportunity he’d gotten, and worse. Simon Riley was not a man who did or could be convinced to do something he didn’t want to—and you’d hardly ever asked for any explanations from him but still, the excuses were on the tip of his tongue, ready to be flung at you at Mach speed.

You’d bargained with yourself for weeks—oscillating between wanting to proactively end the relationship yourself or allowing its inevitable heat death.  He was one of a kind.  No one had ever made you feel like he had.  No one had fucked you like he had.

No one had fucked you over like he had either, but on good days, you show yourself some grace and let that thought slide.

***

You find yourself falling into old bad habits easily—you wait inside the car until he’s on your side, opening your door for you and practically lifting you out of his car.  

The warmth of his hands seeps through the material of your dress, through the skin on your hips, superheating the bones underneath.  He squeezes the flesh there appreciatively, and though his expression remains hidden to you, you can safely guess the smirking just by the creased skin by his eyes.  

“I never want to see you again.”

The words make Simon pause.  He considers you for a second, the smirk never dropping.  “Go’n, give us a kiss, then, if this is the last time.” 

“I would never,” you insist, finger poking at his hard chest, and he retreats from you, puts his hands up in mock-surrender.   “You’re a manipulative bastard, Simon,” you hiss at him.  “And I’m going on this date.”  With your piece said, you walk away from him.

“Never stopped ya, little dove,” he calls out, a hint of an aggravating laugh in his words.    

 You flip him off without even turning around.  “Drop dead, Simon.”

To your great disappointment, your words don’t inspire the heavens to smite him where he stands immediately, and when you quickly shoot one last look back at him over your shoulder, he stands against his car, arms crossed, looking for all the world like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Asshole.

It wasn’t even that Simon was a bad boyfriend to you—though he was certainly the fucking worst—it was the fact that a) he was a bad person and b) you’d become a bad person by osmosis.

Case in point: you wanted to leave your date mid-meal, battling the intrusive thought of just putting your drink down and walking out the front door, but you couldn’t even say why.  Your date had kindly acquiesced when you’d insisted on the worst table on the floor.  The one overlooking the car park.  The window overlooking the only car parked there—the massive black one, with illegally tinted windows and a suspiciously missing owner.

At least the bar was nice.  Great ambience, dim lighting and pretty interiors, it should have been the perfect first date.  Your date himself was fine too—nice enough with a sweet smile he flashed at you, politely having taken to talking at you when you’d made it clear with your apathy that talking with you wasn’t going to happen.  

After just two drinks, you start to have flashbacks—even an hour spent in Simon’s company clearly manifesting as literal madness—which was disconcerting by itself, but the uncharacteristic subject matter has you really worried.  Every time you blink, you see Simon’s face…or his cock…and when your date asks if you’d like to share dessert, you answer, “Simon…” before hearing yourself, and feeling the heat of shame dance on your cheeks.  Your date just looks confused.

A quick glance outside the window shows the empty car park and…nothing else.  No car.

Had he fuckin’ left?

The thought incenses you, and the irrational nature of the anger makes you feel even more shame.  Why should you care?  When had he ever done what you’d expected of him?  And when had he ever been there for you when you’d needed it.

Fuck it, you think.    

Maybe you were finally free of Simon and his toxic, shameless, unbreakable hold on your life.  Maybe it was time to move on.

You allow yourself a satisfied smile when, in what feels like divine approval of your plan, your date offers to take you home.

***

There are cracks in your ceiling that you’d never noticed before.

You resist the urge to wince, then try to moan but give up when it gets stuck in your throat, and your date misinterprets your sigh of boredom and discomfort as one of pleasure, choosing to go down on you with more enthusiasm than before.  Things could not be worse for you—the man between your legs is clearly in need of a compass and a map and trying so hard that you feel guilty about the whole thing—but you’re determined to tolerate it.  So that the point is made.     

When your date finally leaves, your shaky smile and poorly concealed look of relief convinces neither of you of a second date.  You suppose you should be grateful that he left without a fuss, but you’re just relieved that he’s gone.  You’re contemplating—holding your head in your hands while your elbows rest on the kitchen counter—when you hear him.

“This is pathetic, even for you.”  You turn around, and yep.  It’s him alright.  Sitting at your dinner table, your flimsy chair all but invisible behind his massive frame.  “Breaking in, Simon?  Seriously?”

“Y’gave me a key, little dove.”

“Yeah.  When we were dating.  A key that you’d returned?”  

When there is neither a response, nor any change to his posture, you turn around and start to pour yourself a glass of water.  Then change your mind and grab two whiskey tumblers and your decanter.  “Pathetic,” you repeat.  “How long were you planning this?”

His sudden breath on the back of your neck makes you exhale harshly, and he steadies your trembling hands by placing his on yours.  Together, you pour two glasses of whiskey, but his hands don’t leave yours even when you’re done.

“How was the date?”

“You tell me, Simon.”

“Wasn’t invited, was I?”

“It didn’t stop you.”

He places a small kiss behind your ear in response.  “No.”   His hands knead at your breasts and your head falls back to his shoulder with a sigh, and he grinds into you.  “Feel that?  What even your fake little noises do to me?”

“You were listening?”  The thought is…unbearably hot, and you stubbornly refuse  to examine it any further in your mind.  

“You belong with me, little dove, you know this.  You’ve always belonged to me.  All of you.  Every single inch.  Where would I go?”  

You reach behind you to touch him, and he’s thick and warm to the touch, even through the layers of fabric, and it’s familiar, it’s all so familiar to you..  “This is fucked up.  You were here listening when another man fucked me?”

In a quick succession of lithe, almost impossibly quick movements, he’s picked you up and placed you on your kitchen counter, one glass of whiskey shattering on the floor.  “Made your point, baby?”  

Your robe is off your shoulders and pooling around your waist in a second, and Simon doesn’t even bother hiding his smirk when he pulls off your panties and pockets them.  You don’t bother protesting.  It even feels like trouble when he runs a single finger over the seams of your cunt—you’re damningly wet and if you had enough withal to curse your body out for it, you would.

“You've got such a pretty pussy, little dove,” Ghost says as he fingers you, his voice half-muffled because he's pressing a possessive kiss to your forehead.  “And so wet baby, you’re dripping on my fingers.  All of it fo' me?  Or was it that twat, hm?” 

You're seething inside, raging that your plan backfired like this.  “It was him,” you say, before you can help yourself.  “You heard him fuck me, yeah?”  

“Fuck you?” Simon’s chuckle is dark and ruinous.  “He didn’t fuck you, baby.  He just stretched you out for me.  Good man. Saves me the work, innit.”

Before you can react, before you can breathe, he picks you up and throws you over his shoulder, picks up his glass of whiskey in his other hand, and brings you to your bedroom.  Fuck, your sheets are still rumpled, dress and bra strewn on the floor, sandals sitting like a death trap of heel and straps by the foot of your bed.  The room even smells of sex and the cologne your date had worn—it’s disorienting.  You almost feel bad.  Almost.

But…Simon’s presence is all over your bedroom too.  The smell of his aftershave lingered in the air, noticeable if you closed your eyes and breathed in deep.  Other signs too—the faint bitterness of his cigarette from earlier that evening, it’s corpse in the ashtray on your vanity.  When he sets his drink down on your nightstand, he sets it on the coaster you keep there—they’re strewn on almost every surface on your flat.  Mementoes from Simon from different countries he’d go to on deployment.  

“Told you he fucked me,” you say, cheekily—trying to dissuade your mind from leading you towards sentiment—and get a smack on you ass for your trouble.

“‘Course, little dove,” Simon drawls in response.  “‘N you enjoyed it too, yeah?  Tryin’ t’make me jealous.  Took him to the same place we used to go, huh?”  Another smack on your backside, this one hard enough to make you gasp.  “Think I’d forgotten, baby?  Fucked you in that car park, didn’t I?”

“Were you jealous?”

“Why should I be?”  He sets you down gently on the bed so you’re sitting upright, then takes a sip of his whiskey.  “Y’want this.”  

“I didn’t think you were giving me much of a choice.”

“I’m not.”  He takes another sip, and when he leans forward to kiss you, the whiskey floods into your mouth, rich and smoky and bitter.  He continues to kiss you and you have to swallow around his tongue, which makes him kiss you harder.  He’s a bully in every aspect of his life, and kissing you is no different.  His fingers clamp around your cheeks and you have no choice but to kiss him back.  Even in this he dominates you, trying to win even where there is no fight to be fought.

When he pulls away, your heart throbs at how he looks through the lights of the street outside pouring in through your window.  You’ve seen his face before, you’re one of the trusted few that can say they know what Simon Riley looks like, but it’s been a while since you’ve seen him like this.  The harsh lights from outside almost soften where they kiss the harsh angles of his face, where the sharp line of his clenched jaw disappears behind his ears, accentuating his thick neck.

He’s beautiful and cruel and bad for you and every adjective you can think of under the sun.

“Y’want this,” he repeats.  

“I want this.”

And then Simon moves so suddenly.  There’s no preparing for it, no accounting for speed that has no build up—one second you’re sitting upright looking up at him the next you’re on your back and he’s hovering over you, fingers making quick work of his zipper before, in one push, he’s buried in you.  Your breath feels like it’s literally been punched out of your chest.  He’s so deep in you, you can feel him in your throat—he allows you one deep breath before he’s got a large hand wrapped around your throat.  The one with your tattoo on it.

The thought of it incites something foreign deep in your belly, low and simmering hot—you can’t believe he’s tattooed your name on his hand after telling you that he didn’t think you were what he’d wanted.  

You can’t imagine your expression right now, but he tightens his fingers around your throat and it drags your attention back to him.  He’s gritting his teeth, his jaw clamped tightly shut while he grinds his pelvis into yours, each thrust driving you further and further away from him and towards the centre of the bed.  You don’t even understand the movement of his hips—you’re displaced and jostled from the sheer power of his thrusts—but the motion itself feels like it’s more of an up and down motion, dragging against your walls, punching into your G spot.  When your head falls back on a low moan, he jerks your body to alertness just by your throat, and you clench at the feat of strength even when he’s buried in you as far as he can go.  

Simon groans in response, the noise sounding like it tears through his throat on its way out, but you’re helpless to do anything at all, just trying to breathe through the foreign sensations inside you right now, clamp tighter and tighter around him, threatening to break.  You’ve given up trying to look up at him anymore, the pleasure making you squeeze your eyes shut, one hand intertwined with his by your head, the other clawing at his forearm.  

“Shit, baby, hold on, fuck, jus’ let me—” He moves to adjust you, grabbing one thigh to spread you open, push himself deeper inside you, when he freezes.  

“Wha—Simon, what—”

“The fuck is this?” His voice is pitched lower than usual, dark and dangerous.  You follow his line of sight and he’s transfixed, eyes unblinking, looking at a spot on your inner thigh.  You know what he’s seeing, and in the midst of everything that’s happened, everything that’s about to happen, you wonder if you’re seeing the evidence of the existence of a just God.

“You weren’t…you weren’t meant to see it.  It’s from ages ago…”  He reaches out a slightly trembling hand towards it, stops inches away from it—and oh this is better than anything you could’ve imagined—before he brushes two reverent fingers over the little skull you have tattooed there.  “Simon?”

When Simon looks back at you, he seems more determined, somehow.  Like the final part of a puzzle has clicked into place, somehow, and a decision has been made.

This time when he moves, it’s deeper, more powerful but equally as deliberate.  The hand around your throat moves to your face, brushing sweaty strands away from it, and framing the entire side of your face where it rests.  “Got my mark on you, yeah?  Want t’keep me, is that it?”

“I want…want to keep you,” you nearly whine at him, and his hips kick up, hammer into you, in and out, in and out— “Want to keep you Simon.  Want to be yours.”

He bends over you, his grip on your thigh unyielding, long fingers digging into the tattoo on your skin.  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I—” He uses your neck to muffle his own sounds for a second and then leans to kiss you.  But it’s more than that.  You feel Simon’s surrender in that kiss—the acceptance of the inevitable, your months of torturous longing for your torturer finding release—and when you come, you bite down hard on his lip.

It feels like your body is hot enough to melt the world into soft, sepia tones around you, and you don’t even understand what he’s doing to your body right now as he fucks you through your orgasm.  He readjusts your hips as you come, and the slightest brush of the coarse hair at the base of his cock against your clit makes you vibrate from the shock of what feels like your second orgasm bleeding into your first.

And when he comes, he slams his hips into you like he’s trying to crawl inside of you.  His groan is long and tortured, and for a man who’s usually silent when he fucks, the sound is delicious.  You never want him to stop.  “Fuckin’ shit,” he murmurs, and traps you as he collapses on top of you.

In the aftermath, there is quiet.  

Simon lifts his head, once, to try to feel his way to the glass of whiskey on your nightstand, all while kissing you deeply.  Turns out, fucked out of his mind Simon is clumsy as hell, and so you grab it for him, draining it yourself before offering him the empty glass.

“Fuckin’ whore,” he mutters, unimpressed, before burying his face in your neck.  

“Says the man who slept with the entire British army in a matter of six months.”  You kiss his sweaty hair and his grip on your hips tightens.  “Bunch of slags.” 

“Don’t call my sergeant a slag.”

“Your serg—” you gasp, feeling your restart its pounding in its cage.   “Not Johnny!  You slept with MacTavish?  He fuckin—he fuckin’ offered to meet me for coffee so many times when we were broken up!  I thought he was being nice!”

“Was bein’ nice, innit.  Lookin’ out for his CO’s girl.”

Your head falls back to the bed as you stare up at the ceiling again.  “This is messed up.”  His casual tone feels like a barb, reopens old wounds and threatens to ignite a fresh wave of hostility inside you.  But before you can stew in your bitterness any longer, he kisses the side of your neck and moves off of you.

“Can’t keep doing this, little dove.”  He says, gathering your clothes from where they’re strewn all over your room.  

You get up on your elbows and cock your head, feigning innocent confusion.  “What do you mean?”

“Gonna have twats all over town stretchin’ you out fo’ me before I fuck you?”

“Why?  You offering to put the graft in yourself?”

“Maybe,” he mumbles, and when he stands up to face you, he’s got a cig hanging off the corner of his mouth.  “Y’got a light around here somewhere, can’t find mine.”

You roll your eyes, reaching over to the nightstand to grab one and throwing it at him.  He catches it deftly, and lights up his cigarette.  “What’s next for you then, Simon Riley?  Off to the pub to find the next victim for the evening?  Send me a recording of when you fuck her in the disgusting toilet?”

“Victim?  Shit baby, give me ten, we’ll go again,” he says, exhaling a cloud of smoke.    

“You’re staying?”

He leans forward, smushes your face with his large hand.  “You got me inked on you.”  You squirm away from him and he lets you go.

“It’s just a skull, Simon.  Not my initials on your hand.”  When his eyes narrow, you gasp theatrically and your hand flies up to your chest.   “Or was I not meant to see that?”  You lean up to pluck the cigarette from his fingers and take a long drag.  “Obnoxious, by the way.”

He leans forward and kisses you, hard.  You inadvertently end up blowing smoke in his mouth, but he doesn’t move, kissing you until you melt.  “Love you, little dove.  You're a massive bitch, though.”

“Pot meet kettle,” you whisper against his mouth.

You know what they say about history repeating itself.  You’ve been through this cycle before, you and Simon.  And you know what he promised you when he fucked you—he may have asked you if you’d wanted to keep him, but you hear what Simon doesn’t say.  And what he doesn’t say is that you don’t have a choice in any of this.  Simon operates like a bully, thinks like a bully because he is one.  Like with most other things, Simon brute forces your relationship, moulds and bends and twists to his liking, does not care if anything breaks.  You have no doubt that in two or three weeks’ time he’ll be across the world from you, bouncing someone else on his cock but it hardly matters.  You’ll get your lick back.  It’s what he’s taught you, afterall.        

[fairytales: fathoms below]

⤷ john price x f!reader; fairytales!au, mermaid!reader, no warnings!

⤷ summary: a series imagining each of the cod men in fantasy/fairytale settings.

(w.c: 3.2k)

captain john price - the little mermaid 

Deep brown oak lays a steady foundation for the billowing ivory cotton. It is a formidable beast, splitting the current with a wicked ferocity that only further emboldens everything your sisters have said in the privacy of hidden corners and muttered breaths. This monster is a fearsome one, its force unparalleled. Something entirely different than what you have seen before.

Mind your distance, your eldest sister had spoken in between the echoing bellows of your father’s rampage as he raged and roared about the increased presence of the fiend in the seas. It is a frightening being. 

Yet, as you peek above the waves to peer at its high fixtures and its grand weight gliding across the water, you’re less inclined to be scared of the vessel and more curious about who could have made such a thing. Your sister’s words and your father’s fear are quickly things of the past, rendered outdated almost instantaneously beneath its shadow.

What could they know about the intent of such a thing with certainty when they themselves have never been as close as this before? If they had, surely they’d feel the same as you do now.

The ship rocks with a force equal to the volume of the men steering it. They are of varying shapes and sizes, loud as they shout at one another along the choppy water. Words you can only catch on whispering winds, syllables and sounds that are completely foreign as you try to repeat them to yourself. A pulse echoes within you, a ferocious beating of your heart that begs you to get closer, to let the curiosity that surges within you seize its grand moment. If only just to see, just to hear. 

It is one thing to see the ancestors of this magnificent watercraft on the seafloor—to play in its cracked beams and chase your sisters through the wreckage, imagining in secret what an image it would be were it fixed and afloat—but it is something entirely different to see the beast alive. 

To see it be tamed, made nothing more than a tool to be beckoned— by him.

He stands commanding on the helm, the gruffness of his voice carrying on the winds, crossing the distances to you. The men follow his calls, responding in time to his orders and moving with preciseness on the vessel, not entirely unlike your father’s guards. They are seasoned, well learned, and they follow him without question. It is truly a sight to behold, but him, he trumps it all. 

His figure is distinguishable even from afar. You’ve been able to make him out even as you trailed a couple hundred kilometers behind, curiosity consuming all reason as you followed the ship past neighboring reefs and exiting well beyond the boundaries of your father’s kingdom. He’s well cut and corded, muscle visible even if the white of his shirt didn’t stick to his skin—wet from the seawater. 

He’s wide in the shoulders, tall and lean, before it tapers down to a narrow waist; His bottom half is obscured by a dark fabric, which must be the object of your father’s frequent cursing. Legs. You’ve never seen them before, much less two of them. 

Still, his… abnormality hardly detracts from the verboten truth—your eye is caught. It hardly deviates from his powerful stance; Your gaze can wander across the bridge of the ship to the working crew, but it ends up inevitably circling back to him. Drawn into the vortex of him, water rushing, pulling and pushing, and the pang of longing that you have long held quiet finds its strength.

It tastes of wonder and the desperation to escape; To leave behind the home that you know, all that has created you, for the realization that there’s more.

You leave behind the ship before you risk the chance of it seeing you, but the appetite of fascination is hardly appeased. It becomes the bad habit. The ships are wondrous things, but you find out rather quickly that when he is at the helm, that is truly when your heart leaps and you trail even closer to its hull, eager for a sight. 

It goes this way for forty rises and sets, your eyes held on the horizon for the familiar sight of the wooden ship’s sigil and its master. 

Today, he is seen on the day of the great storm. 

The sky sits in a violent gray, lightning spreading its branches as they flare across the clouds. The air smells of the impending storm as the seas grow rougher and with it the ship rocks unsteadily—the waves beating against wood, climbing up its ridges higher each time it strikes against its side, as if it were begging to climb aboard. Despite the mayhem, he stays sharp, pointing direction from the helm and eventually leaving it to the charge of someone else when he decides to help directly. Grabbing rope and throwing it around the masts, clapping others on the back, Keep going, boys! shouting from his mouth.

You see it before they do. A crack that widens in the undercarriage of the ship, beaten open as the waves ram against it, water rushing in. You want to shout, tell them to look, but they realize it soon enough. One of the shipmates peers over the edge of the ship before turning back and shouting,

“She’s goin’ to sink, Captain!”

The Captain—finally a name to the face, one that you roll around in your mind as your eyes track his every movement; Captain, captain, captain.— moves quickly, foregoing the lugging of a rope and saying something that forces all men to divert attention elsewhere. It’s a flurry of movement from there, the men gathering supplies, hauling smaller wooden vessels by rope and filling them in a quick frenzy. Abandoning the ship. 

It’s difficult as wind and rain pellet them, obscuring vision and keeping them unsteady as they attempt to save themselves. The first lifeboat hits the sea viciously, the waves almost capsizing the vessel as they meet its surface. You don’t mean to interfere—you know you shouldn’t— but they’re terrified, and risk drowning, and you’re much more worried about them dying than you are yourself, so you swim to them; Grab the bottom of the boat and pull with as much strength as your arms and tail can muster and haul them away from the immediate danger of the turbulent waves split by the sinking ship. 

The pulley breaks when the next boat tries to descend, hitting the surface unceremoniously, but the men make it to the water.  Two wooden boats buoy a safe distance away from the main ship and the crew sits, thankfully, unharmed as they look towards their Captain, beckoning him to jump. He stands at the edge of the great being, a monolith of a man overseeing the wreckage of his great accomplishment. He must be bidding it goodbye, because he then turns, ready to jump, fortified in that decision as he realizes that all of his men are safe and it is now his turn. 

Wind turns threatening and the air ignites with a charge that speaks of impending doom. It is then that lightning strikes the mast, sparking a loud blast. It singes the wooden pillar, immediately exploding it into a shattering of pieces. The detonation’s impact pushes him off the edge, the Captain’s body hurdling over one-hundred feet. 

Your scream is hidden by the shouts of his own men. His body hits the surface of the water, plunging into the depths as the violent waves hurtle him below. 

There is no hesitation, a choice made without conscious thought. You curl beneath the cresting of a wave and immediately sink into the depth in search for him. It is significantly easier to swim beneath the hurtling waves than atop of them, pressure equalizing against your body. You glide within the water, pushing straightforwardly to the spot where his body met water. 

Your heart pounds in fear. Even if you reach him—no, when you reach him— there is no guarantee of his survival. There must be some kind of injury from falling that kind of distance, or so you would imagine. Being sucked into vortexes does all kinds of damage to merfolk, it must be of equal balance for humans. And even if by some miracle he does survive impact, humans cannot breathe under the water like you can. He must have swallowed some water, is that dangerous for him? How much can he swallow? What do you do if he has swallowed too much?

Thoughts hurtle and tumble in fast succession, but your body moves faster. Crossing the distance between your position next to the lifeboats to the spot of impact at a speed that has never before been demanded of you. Your lungs burning, your mind aching, your heart hurting with worry for a man that you do not yet know. A man that, for all you have been told, could kill you. A man whose kind has hunted yours down for sport, strung your people up for decoration. 

You should not care for this man, have been warned not to, and yet the relief you feel when you find him are the blessings from the forces of the heavens and earth. 

He’s sinking, unconsciously. His eyes closed, body suspended to the whims of the tides as they pull him down. Nearing him reveals that he is much larger than you had anticipated but it means nothing in the rapid pump of adrenaline. Hooking your arms underneath his, his back to your chest, you haul with great might. Lugging his weight with a grunt to the surface, just to get him to breathe again. 

Breaching the surface exposes you to the pellets of the ferocious rain, but it matters not. Your eyes set for direction, your head turning frantically in search of a marker, a sight, something to reveal where you are— where you can take him for safety. The lifeboats have been taken far away by the tumbling tides and the ship that was once so marvelous now roars with a fire aboard its surface. 

You have no idea where to go. You have no idea what to do. 

But the Captain is held tightly in your arms, his head rolling lifelessly on your shoulder. A quick placement of your fingers on his neck reveals a pulsing heart and while it hardly solves any of your problems, it’s all you need to do as you have always done and swim. Somewhere, anywhere. 

So, you do. 

South, in search of sanctuary.

It comes faster than you had thought it would. The shallowing of waters after an hour long haul of both he and you bleeds a hope in your soul that pushed you forward until it came into sight. A cove. Away from the large strip of land that surrounds it, remote enough to deposit him without being seen, but close enough to civilization for him to find a way home. Wherever home may be for him.

Your body is exhausted, the muscles in your tail cramping and spasming from the sheer burden of his weight on yours but you don’t stop. Even as you can touch sand with your hands, even as the movement of waves can carry you the distance to the shore— you don’t stop until he is safe. On land. 

Hauling him out of the water and onto the flattening surface of the beach is surely the worst part. Dragging him a safe distance from the water that was able to ease the pressure of his full weight on you to now being on the surface where his body seems to weigh even more, your arms trembling from trying to pull him further up on the coast, is misery. But you do it, with some herculean effort that has never been introduced to you before. 

He lays on land, supine on his back, finally safe. The rain has stopped, the sky turning from the harsh gray of before to a smattering of thickened clouds that finally allow the sun to bleed through. 

You fall beside him in exhaustion. Ragged breaths heaving your chest, your tail grateful for the much needed rest. The swim home will be significantly easier (and faster) without the man in your arms, but such a trek is daunting when physical debility renders you useless. 

But you must go, before he sees you. You have done what you needed to, you have brought him to land, and while you don’t know how to save him, or if you need to, you know his heart still beats. And that is enough to make a job well done. Rather, it should be enough to grant you dismissal.

And yet, you linger. Unable to part, waiting. Watching. You shouldn’t, and still you cannot help yourself. 

You sit up and lean over him, curious to spare him another look. 

Laid beneath you, the truth repeats like a broken mantra in your head. It is a sin of the highest offense to touch him. Being near him like this is a crime itself. But, there is an ache in your fingers that urges you forward and the desire to know eats away at you, until you blink and suddenly, your fingers are tracing the length of his strong nose.

A straight bridge, freckled with color. Your fingers move in a fixed trance, trailing across the soft of his cheek until it reaches the jagged meeting line where skin becomes obscured with hair. You feel the coarseness of his beard, trace the pads of your fingertips down the thick and long hairs. The men at home have hair on their faces, your own father does, but it doesn’t feel like this. So coarse, so rough, prickling against the tips of your fingers. Not made silk by the submergence in water, but thick and apparent. 

You don’t dislike it. At least, you don’t think you do, your fingers smoothing down the expanse of his cheek. Up and down, over and over. Feeling the vitality of this human life.  

You don’t feel the same repulsion that your father does whenever mention of the humans is made near him, nor do you feel the same fear that your sisters have at the mere thought of them. You’re drawn closer, if anything. Curious to know more. 

Wondering what would happen if he opened his eyes.

He has a nose, two ears, and a gentle prodding of his lips reveals a full set of teeth. They’re not sharpened in fangs ready to rip your throat (a rumor circulating through the schools of children) nor are they laid in multiple jagged rows (a preach hailed truth by your father). Instead, just a set of hard bones, the same as yours. He has two eyes that you don’t dare try and see the color of, and a full head of thick brown hair.

For all intents and purposes, he looks like you. The same features, the same design.

Your fingers trail downward, below the thick of his beard and down the column of his strong neck. His shirt is soaked and stuck to his skin, stretched to reveal even more tufts of thick hair on his chest. That is new to you. The men at home don’t have hair on their chest much less a kind so thick. They’re smooth, and if you thread your fingers through it in wonder, it will be a secret you take back to the sea with you.

Maybe the gods made you more similar than different. From where you sit beside him, the only obvious difference lies below. Two long limbs that hold flat appendages at the end. Feet, separated with what you can only imagine are toes. Ten of them on each one. 

Maybe in his creation there was an image of you. A curiosity that was sated by the division of a tail into legs, but otherwise remains the same. Two beings sent to their respective homes and yet destined to intertwine. It must be, otherwise these unexplainable feelings that brew within you have no source other than sheer madness. 

A kind of madness that finds you sitting beside him, staring in lingering awe at the marvels of danger.

You don’t know how long you stay there for, trailing your fingers over him. Finding them studying the feel of his skin and somehow always returning back to his neck, feeling the pulsing of his heart as reassurance. But, a long look to the horizon reveals that the sun is beginning to set and you know then that much time has passed. The sky turns to a burnt orange and the warning to return home beats within your mind. It is unwanted, but you know that you can no longer stay here with the man. Soon your father will suspect something amiss and send guards to find you. While you don’t doubt the capabilities of the human, there’s no guarantee he will be able to defend himself against the royal guards of the palace, especially in his weakened state. (There is no telling what he could do to you if he awakens in this state.)  

So you will leave him with the hope that he will wake soon, that he will recuperate enough to pull himself from the sand and walk the short distance back to the mainland. That your efforts were timely and he is able to make his way home. 

You will leave him and hope that maybe, he will come back to the cove in search of you. You will leave him and hope that maybe he will see you waiting for him in the water.

With a sigh, you turn your head back to his face. To look at him once more before you go.

Eyes as blue as the sea you pulled him from, meet yours. You gasp, jolting backwards in shock and he—the Captain, alive and awake— blinks slowly.

“You’re real.” He croaks, his voice hoarse. It still holds the same gruffness that you heard on the ship, the commandeering tone and hefty weight, but in the closeness it is twinged with gentleness. No longer addressing men at his command, but you. A softness mirrored in tone and gaze as he, for the first time, sees you. 

His hand reaches up and you hold still in fear. The conditioning of your father’s paranoia rears its head; Is this where his strength is exhibited? In the calloused palm of his that is larger

than your own? Is this where he decides to lay waste to you in a manner your father is so convinced that humans possess? 

Instead, his hand raises to your face, fingertips slowly brushing a fallen strand of your hair and tucking it behind your ear. His touch is light on your skin, brushing against the curve of your ear before trailing downward and across your cheek. Warm and soft, he stares a seriousness into you as though the only thing he intends to do in that moment is commit you to memory. 

You fall into his touch with little convincing. His skin melding to your own, as though it were meant to be there. 

“I thought you a dream.” 

You shake your head slightly. His eyes dart across your face before moving downward. Surveying you before spotting the obvious truth.

“Mermaid.” He chokes out, in reverence. His stare does not falter and his face does not scrunch upward in disgust. He looks at you much like you have always looked at him. 

Adoration disguised in the innocence of curiosity. 

“You saved me,” He says. “Thank you.”

a.n: i blame my visit to disney world for this idea. the thoughts of john price soaking wet is irresistible, and i aint sorry for it!!

simon is next :)

Yes I did put the video at .25 speed just to stare at Ghosts lower body in those jeans as he kills two men. I am only human.

no no see, domesticity IS hot. how intimate it is to make food with someone, to share a bed, to brush your teeth at the same sink, to shower and use the same towels and the same laundry soap, to grocery shop and hold hands through the aisles, to be cornered in the kitchen to make out while a pot of pasta boils over on the stove. to fall asleep and hear them snoring softly and laugh at the little trail of drool out of the corner of their mouth. to spend money together and share chores and pick on each other for your weird habits. it's not always perfect and beautiful, but it's comfortable and familiar and I just think it's neat.

Pigeon-force 141!

Kyle "Gaz" Garrick always gets draw as the most level headed, more calm and more connected with his feelings. But in my experience, these kind of people always attract those that are more broken on their head (not talking about the 141, just funny it fits.)

Like, he just attract these people that love confrontation and it is always Gaz the one that has to deescalate the situation. Or people that when they notice they are in the wrong simply give him the cold shoulder or just straight up jumps to insult him, and at the end he still needs to apologise.

So yeah, he hasn't had the best experience with relationship. Until you, of course. He is completely smitten with you, delighted by how easy going you are, how easy it is to comunicate with you. But you are still human, and the dreading moment arrives, where you and Gaz get into an argument.

It was about something silly, like how he never cleans the water that splashes when he washes the dishes. You got home from work, took off your shoes and step into the puddle wetting your socks and it sent you into an emotional breakdown.

Gaz is expecting you to just insult him, he is ready, he is going to hate to hear you insult him, but he'll manage, you are worth it. But only then, you say:

"Kyle, I'm sorry but you are getting on my last fucking nerve right now. I had an absolute shit day, and it is not your fault it was. So I'm going upstairs, I'm getting a shower and I'm going to bed before I end up paying it with you."

And Gaz looks at you astonished, so used to people with an absolute lack of emotional intelligence and simple goes:

You don't make it pass him of course, because he grabs you, cupping your face. You look at him confused and he says: "I am going to fuck you so nicely, luv."

"Kyle, no, I'm pissed." You try to explain.

"I know, you can still be pissed when we are done. C'mon, c'mon. I have never been more in love with you, luv. I swear I have been waiting for you my whole life."

And just to be clear, you sock was not the only thing that got wet that day.

1. I know I am reusing the Donald duck photo, I'm sorry for the lack of originality, but it just encapsulates the vibes of the situation so good.

2. I just want to be clear, that I mainly think Gaz gets profiled as the most level headed, calmed and overall chill guy not because he is exceptionally any of them but because everyone else is just worse. I could go onto heavy detail, AND I'LL GO INTO HEAVY DETAIL. Just not today, but one of these days, I promise. Justice for Gaz, my man almost beat up the butcher when he was tied to a chair.

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