Saltwater

Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle in the Punisher.

Bravo 6-1

baby blues

John Price + the panic of fatherhood x reader

pregnancy. babies. soft. sappy. angsty. slight allusions to rough sex. John being possessive and smitten. allusions to childhood trauma. the fear of children is somehow more potent than the fear of god. girl dad John. mentions of Price's divorce lmao

Most assume he'd take to fatherhood like he'd been born for the role; handcrafted to cradle a swaddled babe in his arms. The perfect father figure. But as he hovers over your sleeping form, the little bundle nestled in the sleepy bracket of your arms, he's overcome with a sense of dread that punches hard enough to shatter bone.

The reality is this: Price doesn't understand kids. He wants them. Covets them with a viciousness that almost immediately sets alarm bells off in the heads of those who were opposed to the idea of children, parenthood. Giving birth. But when it comes to being a dad, a role model, an effigy to siphon wisdom and knowledge off of, he flounders. Hesitates.

All he has as an idea of fatherhood is bruises laughed off by the neighbours as him being a clumsy boy. A man who drank in the living room, silent in his fury, his belligerence, until something—anything, really—set him off. He always seemed like he was itching for a reason to punish.

And god, was he ever fucking good at it.

If anger issues are hereditary, then Price picked up the generational slack of his seething ancestors. 

It's this, and the plethora of scars and burns that decorate his skin (well hidden, tucked away like a dirty secret because if Old Man Price was anything, it certainly wasn't stupid; he knows how to hide the ugliness of himself away, and how to turn a boy into a punching bag without causing too much damage, too much alarm) that make him ache something fierce when he sees his chubby little child for the first time. 

Price doesn't know how to be gentle. All he has are worn, rough hands and a constant stench of smoke. A voice that makes grown men tremble. An ire unmatched thus far in his life. 

Until you. Little spitfire. His hellion. You stood on the tips of your toes just to tell him off for being a stubborn pig! and then taught him how to hold you. How to be tender. But even now, he can see the wear on your skin from his bites. His propensity for violence that he morphs into desire. Into lust. 

How is he supposed to be a dad when he's this caustic? This mean? 

The answer doesn't come. All he gets is the rhythmic sigh of your breath as you sleep, well and truly exhausted after giving birth to their child. All alone. A constant in your lives, it seems. Aloneness. His work takes him away, throws him into dangerous situations. And you carry the brunt of it. 

It caused the rupture of his first marriage and is a needling fear he carried with him when you started pursuing him some odd years ago. To think that he'd be standing here now, gazing down at you with your heavy eyes and your soft cheeks, rounded with the additional weight you gained during your early trimesters. A plushness he's trying to keep on you for good—all softened edges, flesh that gives when he touches you, marshmallows out between his fingers when he squeezes.

You look good like this. Motherhood, despite your misgivings (it took three years of him hinting and hounding you before you'd relented with a sure, what's the worst that could happen? We're terrible parents and raise a terrible kid? Or we end up the catalyst for a list of psychological issues and get reamed out during their therapy sessions later on in life?), suits you. Fits you like a glove.

A fact you'd been quietly overwhelmed by in the first few months, grieving the loss of something he couldn't ever understand, or experience. A piece of yourself morphing into the mother that raised you. A kaleidoscope of feelings that you choke on when he asks, unable to render them into coherent words. 

But you're good at that, aren't you? Good at culling expectations, at superseding the limits others place on you. Even him. 

Especially him. 

When he'd said, don't know what you're gettin’ yourself into, love, you took it to the chin like he challenged you to a brawl, and set out to show him why you knew what this was, what he was, and why it didn't matter much. 

Even now—

Giving birth all alone. Overcoming the isolation of being shackled to a man who married his post first. Sisterwife to his career. Second in all things. 

Even this. 

He was in Iceland when he got the call. Laswell, of all people, was on the other line telling him his own wife was in the delivery room. Water broke. Baby is on the way. 

And you—

Don't worry, old man. Just do what needs to be done and we'll be waiting. Always. 

—well. You certainly are. Alone in a hospital room with the curtains drawn to blot out the sun as you sleep, cradling this thing he made with his fingers shoved deep into your mouth, uttering foul under his breath as he crushed you to the bed, rutting you like an animal—the most tender he could ever be—and he's suddenly all too aware of his own inadequacies. His shortcomings. Failures. 

He's not a dad. He's not the sort of man people think about when they think healthy father figure. He likes cigars and whiskey, and sometimes aches for a mission that will let him cut his knuckles on teeth—bloodletting; exorcising his demons out on the people he's sanctioned to kill. How is he supposed to guide a child when he threw a man over a railing without a second thought—

The bundle stirs. Wrinkled, red face scrunching up tight. Little thing is just like you, huh? All softness and give. All—

They cry, and it's shrill. Loud. It jars him.

Not the sound, but the anguish he feels piercing through his chest as they bellow out their confusion to the world, this lost little thing. Strapped with a father who was beaten black and blue and told to be a man when he cried. 

But right now—anger is the furthest thing on his mind. He can't fathom that emotion when his child is whimpering in your arms, chubby little fingers grasping at the air. Seeking comfort. 

Waking you feels cruel when you've spent the better part of two days awake. Four, really. You couldn't sleep when the contractions hit, wide-eyed and worried about everything. What if something went wrong? If they hated you? What if you hurt them—

Worries he tried to assuage, but couldn't deny he felt them, too. 

All he knows how to do is hurt. But as he reaches down for this little thing squirming in your arms, he tells himself to be tender. To be the man his dad never was. 

And they're soft. So fuckin’ soft. Tiny, too. His hands dwarf them, engulfing them completely. He tries to blame the way he trembles on the denial of nicotine for so long, but the mist in his eyes, and the burn in his throat, call him a liar. He doesn't know what to do. Even with all the hours spent thumbing through manuals and books and scoffing under his breath at the parenting courses you dragged him to (but paid rigid attention to every word the heavily bangled woman said to him), he feels lost. Unsure. The ground is shaky. Control slips. And that's maybe the crux of it all—

Babies can't be controlled. And it's the loss of this, what makes him whole, keeps him steady, that has him feeling rubber-limbed and fawn-like. 

“Quiet, now,” he murmurs, and then winces at the rough drag of his voice in the silence of the room. Too firm, too forceful. All the gentleness he has in his bones was devoured by your greedy mouth when you cracked him open like the legs of a snow crab, marrow slurped up until he was hollow. Empty. His tenderness rests inside your belly. What else does he have to give—

But the warm bundle in his awkward, clumsy hold stops their shrill cries. A girl, he remembers you saying. Crying. Sobbing into the phone when he called, all ugly and gross. He heard you sniffle, snot undoubtedly dribbling from your nose as you wept to him about how fucking cute their baby was. Their little girl. 

She's soft. Smells of a newborn, too—something powdery. Sweet. Warmed milk, fresh bread. The clinical books that made you squeamish, the ones that outlined every anatomical and chemical change to your body, mentioned that newborns smelled distinct to each parent. A phenomenon meant to encourage protection and bonding. 

It made you shiver, muttering my little parasite under your breath, even as your hand curved possessively over your bulging belly. 

He knows that's what this is. Chemical. His mind is evolving, shifting. Changing. And it's then that he feels something hot thicken in his throat. Something ugly, and bitter. The scars on his knuckles, the cigarette burns on his fingers are a sharp reminder of what his father felt and ignored. 

He scoffs, then, irritated at himself. He's a grown man and still—

Still thinks of him. 

“Won't be like that,” he says, still rough. Still firm. She blinks up at him, eyes rheumy and wide. “Not with you.” 

Never. Never. He pins the word to his pericardium, letting it rot his tissue. He'd rather die, he thinks, than ever hurt this little girl. But despite that, he knows he will. Inevitably. Just like he does everything good—or bad—in his life. Leaching from the goodness of others, sucking them dry and letting them moulder. A disappointment everywhere except the battlefield where he screams himself hollow and rents the air with his ire. Incorrigible. Immovable. An object of cruelty. Unforgiving in all aspects. A curse that follows him home, into his marital bed when he pins you down, and makes you profess your love for the beast inside of him. Never satiated, never quelled, until you're shackled at his side. Tucked away from the world he knows is too cruel to people like you who end up a corpse he has to step over on his way for empty retribution. 

He thinks, too, about all the ways he's going to ruin this chubby little thing in his arms, and wishes, suddenly, he was a better man. 

“Gonna hate my fuckin' guts when you're sixteen, aren't you?” In response, this little thing just opens its red maw and blows bubbles. He huffs. “You're gonna be nothin’ but trouble, mm? Steal my car. Crash it because your mum's gonna teach you how to drive and she backed into the garage six times already. Gonna gang up on me. Both of you. Little nightmares.” 

He's not sure what else to say, and thinks, already, that he said too much. Bared his belly to her too soon. She'll have this memory, buried down in the deep recesses of her psyche of her father falling to pieces while he held her. An impossibility, he knows, but can't shake the feeling that this, in itself, is an epoch. A marker for what's to come. All the ugly, the hate. The screaming matches that make him curl his hand into fists as she levels his failures at him. Not to hit. Never to hit. But to stop the tremble that won't stop. That has already started. The shake in his joints that tell him to run before he hurts. Before he ruins this precious mass of his blood and your tissue in his arms. 

“Gonna—” he isn't crying. Isn't. But there's a thickness in his throat as he thinks about how quickly she'll grow up. Age marked in the crows feet that gather around your eyes. The laugh lines. “Gonna be a fuckin' menace, and I'll—” he chokes, then, when she reaches up with a pudgy, red fist and snags the strap of his vest he didn't even bother taking off before he fled here. Fat, tiny fingers curling into the spot he grabs to ground himself from lashing out. “Fuck.”

He'd burn the world for her, he knows. Sacrifice everyone and everything just to keep her warm. Both of you. It begins and ends with this little thing that has your eyes and his nose. 

But he doesn't know how to translate that into love. Into affection. 

It comes out caustic. Abrasive. Possessive. 

And he is. 

Now that he has her in his hands he knows that nothing else will ever compare. That they'll never be empty because she'll always fit in his palms no matter how big she gets. There's only ever been enough space in his heart for you. Chiselled into with a fuckin’ pickaxe because you wouldn't wait for it to grow on its own. 

But there's give, he realises. This domicile you carved yourself has a room attached. A place for her. And she fits like a glove. Sliding inside. Cocooned against his pulse. 

He loves her. Endlessly. Forever. She deserves better. More. 

But when he tells her this, she makes a noise and it sounds like a giggle. 

“Laughin’ at me already, mm?”

She giggles again, and he likes that her laugh is a little ugly. A little mean. 

“Scarin’ the wits outta me,” he confesses, shifting her weight as she occupies herself with the clasp of his vest, disinterested in the man that breaks into pieces around her now. “I don't know—fuck, I don't—”

You come to in a panic. It starts as a slow roll to the side before your eyes flash open, wide and furious even as sleep congeals in the corners, pawing at the empty spot where the lingering warmth of your child presses into your chest. Anger, fury, darkens over your brow, and the apoplectic rage that simmers in the gaps of your dread, your fostering panic, softens him. Makes him melt. The burn of your ire, your fear, liquifying his bones. 

He falls in love with you a little bit more at that moment. When the snarl rucks your upper lip up, up, teeth bared to the world as you whip your head around in frantic, desperate dismay, searching for the little girl he knows you, too, will burn the world for. 

“I've got her,” he says, whisper-soft and low. Cadence even, clear. Tries to quell the howl he can see hammering its fists against your throat before it rips from your lips and scorches the world around you in a hail of horrifying anguish. “She's safe.”

It says something when you immediately go still at the sound of his voice, muscles going lax, slack, as you slowly turn your head toward him, blinking against the fog clotting your vision. Something that cuts him to the core. Rents his chest in halves. One side for you, and the other for her. Nothing left to spare. 

This feeling brimming in his chest sweetens when you startle at the sight of him, them, lashes shuttering like an old camera as if you were trying to sear the image in your head forever. Branded on the back of your eyelids. (A sentiment he knows all too well considering the stream of photos added to his camera roll of you and her nuzzled together.)

“You—” your voice catches, breaks from sleep. Fatigue. You swallow, slowly licking your lips. “When did you get in?”

Your eyes are glued to them. Unblinking. Widened with pure affection, the intensity of which makes him want to touch you, hold you.

“A few hours ago,” he murmurs, glancing down at his—

It cuts a jagged line through his chest. Knicks his bone with how deep it goes. False starts pressed tight to his heart. 

—his daughter. Fuck’s sake. 

He's choked. Strangled. Rendered mute, immobilised. It guts him, this. Daughter. The ring of it echoes in his head, filling the recesses of his mind. Embedding itself within his head. Congealed over. Fixed in place. 

“I have a fuckin’ daughter,” he breathes at length, the air knocked from his lungs. He's not sure why this is what breaks him, but it does. And it's you, then, holding the fracturing pieces together, hands reaching out—in a startling mimicry of his daughter, and fuck, doesn't that just eviscerate him—and curling against the heaving brackets of his ribs, boxing him in. 

“John,” you say, but your voice wobbles. Wavers. When he peels his eyes away from the sleepy yawn she lets out long enough to look at you, there's tears flooding your lashline. Threatening to break. “Fuck,” you say, crass and beautiful, and he's overcome with the urge to tuck you into his other arm, keep you both cradled in his hands. “Don't make me cry or my stitches will tug.” 

“We've got a daughter,” he says again, just to hear it uttered aloud. We. Yours. His. It messes with him. Bludgeons into his core. “We've—”

“She's beautiful, isn't she?” 

Your words shatter him, but the pinch of your hands on his waist keeps him from buckling. 

“Yeah,” he rasps, voice thick. Ugly. It's mangled in his throat. All fractured and raw. “Just like her mother.”

He shows his affection in the burn of his embrace. In the way he holds you tight, refusing to let go. Keeps his words callous and firm. Soft utterances, declarations of love, tucked away in the sure, greedy way he clings to you in his sleep. Yields to you like no one else. Lets you in. 

And he supposes he ought to say it more often if the way your face crinkles up just like his daughter when she cried, tears spilling over your rounded cheeks. 

“Don't,” you heave, ugly and brittle, and he thinks you're the prettiest thing he'd ever seen in his life. “Don't or I'll rip my stitches—”

He huffs. Nods only once, and then steps toward you. “Do you want—?”

“Keep her for a little while,” you mutter, leaning back into the bed, eyes lidded by fond. So in love with him, the picture they paint, it's almost sickening. “She likes you.”

He snorts. “She's only three hours old. Give her time.” 

You're quiet for a beat. Pensive. Mulling something over. It's never a good thing when you're silent, and the unease that grows in his belly is justified when you heave out a long, tired exhale through your nose. 

The way you look at him is raw. “You're not your father, John.” 

And isn't that just the worst lie he'd ever heard.

He scoffs, then. Shifts his weight, still cradling his daughter tight to his chest. “Mm, 'dunno about that.”

“I do.”

“Jus’—” leave it. Keep going. Keep feeding him lies as he stands here and pretends that he wasn't a horrible bastard for wanting this from you. From taking it. Strapping you with a man who's always, always, one foot out the door—

“No.” You say, soft and sure. “You're not him. I know you're not because you're still here.”

“So was he.” 

You don't acknowledge the interruption. Content, it seems, to rattle off lies and half-truths into the stifling air. Your eyes close, the curve of your lashes leonine. Breathtaking.

“Do you want me to take her?” You ask instead of the multitude of things he can see piling behind your eyes. Some of the ugly. Jagged glass. Others powder soft. 

He shakes his head. “You need your rest,” it's a half-truth. Fatigue clings to you still, swathed in the purpling of your skin. The slow, heavy blinks you take to try and fight the tug of an artificial sleep. 

But the real reason is this:

He's just not ready to let her go. 

Thinks, viciously, suddenly, that if he does, this moment built between them in budding, liquid blue will cease forever. Severed too soon. She'll carry the same resentment in her heart he feels for his own father, and he'll die in a shallow pit thinking about how badly he wanted just a second longer. 

Generational, right? Trickle down hatred. Ancestral rage. It's what your grandma talks about sometimes over tea and fried bread, half disbelieving you brought a white man into her home, and making a show, a facade, of wisdom even though he spotted the how to raise a child notebook she hastily shoved into the kitchen drawer when you arrived. Taking over in place of your own mother, stepping up. And yet—

She just doesn't get it, you said, rubbing your hands over your belly when she steps away after another long-winded conversation about traditions, spirits, and dead languages. Raising a child like yours in a world like this. She's just. I don't know. Ignore her. 

(He doesn't. But you don't have to know that.)

So. He clings to her a little tighter. Holds her a little firmer. Brings her close to his chest and hopes she can hear the echo of his heartbeat and know that this tired, old song is just for her. 

(The heart itself for you—)

And maybe—

Maybe he's not quite ready to see you be a mother. Some perverse part of him is already trembling at the promise of watching you nurture and feed her, the tantalising whisper is enough to make the air in his lungs turn humid, sticky. Tar, you remind him sometimes, having seen the ugly spatter of black in the grainy photos the doctor in Hereford likes to shove at him. Never too late to reverse the damage, John. 

Or maybe he wants you for himself just a moment longer. An hour. A day. When you're still you, shackled and bound to a man who reeks of stale tobacco, and started sneaking cigarettes in the dead of night like some pimply, awkward teenager when you first came to him, cheeks wet and eyes wild, and said:

“John, I'm—”

Pregnant. 

He did it, of course. Put that baby in you. Made it with his teeth buried into your throat and your hips canting up to meet him, taking everything he had to offer. Animal aggression. Nothing tender in the way he chewed you up, made you beg him for it. But still—

Wanting and having are worlds apart, aren't they? 

Faced with it, the consequences of his actions, he's at a standstill. 

You hum, and when your eyes slide open, he feels the mallet against his head. Cracked open. You fossick about until you find what you're looking for. Cheeky fuckin’ thing—

“Fine. Just pull up a chair before you keel over, old man.” 

“M’fine,” he grouses in that voice that serves as a dice roll between making you feel hot or homicidal depending on the mood he catches you in. Muttering something under your breath that sounds like a whispered plea for guidance (“tss, gimme strength.”)

But even with the waspish denial, he's inching closer to the spare chair left in the corner, looping his ankle around the leg to slide it closer. The squeal of rubber on aluminium makes him grimace, eyes darting down to his sleeping girl, nestled in his arms. Her brow pinches in the same way your grandma’s do when she's annoyed by the news. Her bingomates. The way he refuses her offering of burning tobacco and lemongrass whenever he goes away for a while, unable to really commit to this little, broken family that feels more like home than his own ever did. 

(“aint my place,” he says, and she scoffs. 

“fuck, s'matter wit’cha?” is her counter, the harsh line between her brows now perfectly superimposed on his daughter’s face. “tss. ain't yer place, eh. are you tryna piss me off? fuck, you make me mad—”)

He sees that spitting anger in you. Generational, he knows. The same inherited attitude his daughter will inevitably have. The one that singles him out as an outlier. Outnumbered. Three, now, to one—

There's got to be a reason why his chest bubbles, innervated by the thought of a Sunday dinner when she's old enough to watch her grandma make intricate bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and pins with thread and glass beads as you, her mother, cuss at the stove that doesn't burn as hot as it used to, flipping over golden dough in a sizzling pan. 

Orange juice in old cups your grandma kept since the nineties. Something soft playing on the radio. The peeling, waterlogged wallpaper flakes off the wall when you slam the pan down too hard. The way the spill of the sun through the rusting window rents the room in half. Pale yellow and oak. Little orange blossoms in soft pink above the speckled granite countertops. Everything awash in a gossamer of sleepy-eyed affection. 

Just like it is now. But—

He looks down at her, head full of lead. Cotton. 

Complete, maybe. 

“Don't know how to be a dad,” he confesses to you, and thinks of how much easier it is to slam a sledgehammer into a metal door than it is to peel back the veneer sometimes. “Don't want to mess up.” 

“You'll be fine.” 

The crinkle of the plastic mattress, the scratch of the sheets sliding across the bed is louder now than it was before. He cuts the gentle sounds with an abrading hum that clicks off his teeth. 

“Get some sleep,” he says again instead of the awful truth that buoys in his throat. Things like you don't know and I tricked you this whole time into thinking I'm a good man and look what you’ve let me do to you. “You need it.” 

Another noise. In his periphery, he watches you lean back against the upright pillows, lips parted on a soft sigh. He feels—

Small, then. An oxymoron considering he has to duck his head to get in and out of the room, towering over most he meets daily. But the inadequacies gut him. Vivisect him. He should be more comforting to you, he knows. This whole thing has been difficult. Tiresome. Cut into and having the life you grew inside of you cut out—

“Did good,” he rasps, still staring down at her even as he pulls the chair as close to your bed as he can get. “With her.” 

You snort. It's inelegant. Ugly. Brittle, like you're holding back tears. 

When he glances up, he finds that you are. “You're strong,” he adds, and knows he should have started with this first. “Doin’ this all on your own.” 

“I had help.”

It's awkward trying to adjust himself in the seat with his daughter perched in his arms, but he finds a way. Settled, then, with her still sleeping away, he lifts his hand from her back, keeping her cradled in his arm with the other, and reaches for you. 

The starchy sheets catch on the bramble of hair on his knuckles, the back of his hand, and the static jolts tickle against the rough scar tissue thickened over his knuckles, some still fresh, scabbed from the latest mission he'd been deployed to. You watch him, misty-eyed and tremulous, as he draws nearer, eyes flickering like a pendulum between the bundle nestled on the thick of his arm, to him, watching you back. Greedily taking in every spasm, every blink. 

Something inside of him cracks. Softens. He thinks, breathless, that you've never been as beautiful to him as you are right now. Bubbles of snot in your nose. Eyes reddened, dropping from exhaustion. A dizzying mess. The sort that speaks of tireless work, of physicality. Muted pain brimming in the backs of your eyes when you pull on your stitches. 

“Got a pretty wife,” he says, and it's not enough. He knows it isn't. Looks away before the fracture lilt to his tone breaks him in two. “And—” it's hard to say. He forces himself to. “And a beautiful daughter.” 

The tears stream down your face at this quiet, clumsy admission. 

“Don't—” you sniffle, hoarse. “Or I'll tear my stitches.”

“M’not doin' anythin’, love.” 

“Fuck you, John—”

He leans back in his chair with a hum, eyes slipping shut. A brief respite amid the panic still clinging tight to his ribcage. “Love you too.” 

It's quiet. Nothing but the soft drag of each breath his daughter takes, the tremulous sniffle you give as you try to dam the tears sliding down your cheeks. His heart hammering in his ears. He commits it all to memory. Glueing it to the fibrils of mind where it'll stay, embedded in tissue, for as long as he is of sound mind. 

Much like the grainy, black-and-white ultrasounds stuffed in his breast pocket. Tucked inside the drawer of his desk where he keeps the pictures of you. Keepsakes he's unnecessarily possessive over, elbowing the rowdier men who try to needle him for sparse information on the little wife he hides at home and the baby they'll never meet. Something just for him. Unshareable to the rest of the world because they don't deserve you. 

The feathered snores tell him you're finally asleep, and he thinks about resting for a moment as well—the bone-deep exhaustion he feels jetting from Iceland to home, to the hospital catches up to him with a vicious kick to temples—but the weight in his arm keeps him awake. Hyperviligent. 

There's this urge clawing at him, making ruins of his chest, and he answers its worried insistence by opening his eyes just a sliver to stare down at the little bundle in his arms only to find she's staring back at him. Eyes wide. Comically too big for her chubby face. 

She has your complexion, but his dark curls. Her eyes, though, are the perfect equilibrium between pools of sapphire, burnt blue, marbled with the dark gleam, that vibrant shade of yours that he's so fond of, the one that's often accompanied by a smart-ass remark. Seeing it gaze up at him with such incipient adoration knocks the air from his lungs. Has his heart shuddering in the brackets of his chest. 

It's love, he thinks first. Instantaneous. Apodictic. And then, cold, callous—

Chemical. 

Just to hurt himself, maybe. Just to let it cut deep. Scar. Because as he stares down at her, he knows it doesn't matter. No amount of hatred, of anger, will ever rip her away from him. His daughter. His family. His.

Like her mother. The root of it all. The catalyst. The start. 

Shackled to this gaping chasm that devours endlessly, never satiated. Always starving. 

Needy. Full of greed. 

Because even now he covets. Craves. Muses to himself about how he can convince you to have another the moment the opportunity arises and you're healed. Whole. Aching for it. 

He wasn't joking when he said he wanted a football team. 

But for now—

The soft sighs you make in your sleep, ones that almost sound like his name, and the comforting weight of his daughter in his arms are enough to make the beast inside purr. Preening under its own conquest, its own victory of successfully turning your body into a home he can rest his weary head on. Sacrosanct. 

He looks at her, then, and feels the dread ease into pride. Into elation. An emotion he knows should have come first, but it's here now, and that's all that really matters.

“Gonna be trouble,” he grouses, watching her pink mouth gape wide, blood-red maw grinning up at him in delirious glee only babies can imbue. Unhindered by the ruination of the world around them. Unfettered. 

Something he couldn't protect you from, but knows you're both on the same wavelength when it comes to her. At all costs, you'd said, hand against the burgeoning swell. And he kissed you until he couldn't feel his lips anymore. Until all he tasted, all he knew, was the taste of you.

“Of the best kind, though, mm?” 

In response, she coos. And he hews the sound into his chest where it sits beside the brand of when you first said, i love you, too, John. 

So, he relaxes. Whispers soft, conspiratorily. "Think you might need'a brother, mm? What'd you say about that?"

And she giggles.

i think simon “ghost” riley would love me because i would be so easy to clicker train

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.

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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Hngggggg. Nikto being balls deep inside you, face buried into your shoulder, murmuring in Russian about how perfect you are, how tight and warm and loving. Made for him. Reparations from the universe for all his pain and suffering. He’ll never leave you, never. He is yours and you are his. He doesn’t care if he has to chain you to him and throw away the key.

gaz.

simon’s never been one for naps. never seen the point in them really, he’s spent too many years on high alert and ready to move at a moments notice to indulge in them. scoffs when johnny jokes about him not needing sleep. there’s a million other things i could be doing in that time, he grumbles.

but when he meets you, simon starts to see the allure.

he finds you curled up on the couch in the rec room one day tucked into your blanket and just stares for a moment. there’s a look of serenity on your face that he’s both captured by and in awe of. in fact, he’s a little bit jealous. he’s not sure what he looks like sleeping, but definitely not as a peaceful as you.

(johnny says he scowls in his sleep sometimes. even curses at him every now and then.)

when you and simon first get together he comes to find that one of your favorite pastimes is tucking yourself away in bed for a good nap. no harm in it, you shrug.

those words rattle around in his head the first time you ask if he’d like to join you. he blinks and scratches the back of his neck, asking if you’re sure about that because he’s ‘not exactly cuddly’ and probably won’t fall asleep.

“it’s alright. i just want you next to me.” simon bites back the urge to brand your name into his heart.

one hour is all it takes to change his perspective. suddenly, crawling into bed with you for a quick snooze becomes the most indulgent activity he could think of. simon’s quick to mold himself against your body, breathing in the tranquility of the moment. your breaths turned shallow not too long before and he’s shocked to find himself following you down the rabbit hole into a dreamless sleep.

it’s the vulnerability that gets to him. to lay in each others arms and slip away from the world together - it’s a level of intimacy he’s never experienced before and it intoxicates him. soon enough, he’s pulling you to the side during end of the day trainings, staring down at you with molten brown eyes. “i want to lay down with you after this.”

insists you’ve spoiled him, although you’re not sure how him finally getting enough sleep is a bad thing. but when he starts whining (if you could call it whining in that voice) that you should be laying in bed with him instead of doing whatever you’re doing, you start to think he might be right.

Simon is the type to put his wedding band in the velcro pouch on his chest when he’s out on the field, mostly because he can’t wear it for work, but he also doesn't want to get it dirty or taint it with the violence his hands see.

Sometimes, he wears it around his neck on a chain under his balaclava when he's away from you for an extended period of time, hoping it’ll help him find his way back to you—that one of these days while tucked away in a window, Simon won’t be on the receiving end of a barrel—and when he's home again, it returns to his finger. 

He silently takes in how your wedding bands look next to each other—shining silver staring back at him, scarred hands next to unblemished ones—when he places your intertwined fingers on his chest before he falls asleep at night.

The only time he allows his wedding ring to get dirty is when he's knuckles deep between your trembling thighs—your sticky-wet slick glinting in the low light of the room—or when Simon pushes those same fingers into your mouth to keep you quiet as he fucks you into the squeaky mattress deep and slow, grunting under his breath about how messy you are when your spit bubbles between your kiss-bitten lips.

You tell him how good he feels under a hitched breath, and his chest tightens because he can’t remember the last time someone used an adjective like that to describe him. Good. It’s weird how such a simple word can make Simon’s head spin and make him feel like he’s anything other than the man he is outside your bed.

A soldier. A killer. With you, he’s a husband—a best friend.

He ducks his head down to suck a little bruise right above your nipple, the corners of his mouth curling slightly, knowing that he’ll be the only one that’ll know it exists—that it’ll still be there long after he’s gone.

“Come on, love,” he breathes harshly, already close, wondering if this will be the time it finally takes. “Just a little more,” a small lie because there’s never just a little more when it comes to you.