Picture This: Doll Is Selectively Mute, Or Otherwise She’s In So Much Shock From Her Situation That

Picture this: Doll is selectively mute, or otherwise she’s in so much shock from her situation that she literally just cannot speak (as an autistic person sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I go partially mute). The boys think she’s just being stubborn but she’s at least trying to sign, so they know she’s not necessarily doing it on purpose.

Queue competition between the boys where they fuck her nonstop and tell her they’ll only stop if she says one of their names, and place bets on who will break her first.

Main fic

Hm. reader's too nonverbal to do much narrating so I'm gonna carry on with John's POV.

cw: noncon. multiple (forced) orgasms. anal. dp, including two in one. ghost has a jacob's ladder cause i'm incapable of imagining him any differently sorry. overstimulation. unrealistic sex. Unedited again cause I'm dropping this and running tf away

It's Simon who notices first because of course it is.

John spends all morning wasting his time trying to get a reaction out of the girl, but she just grits her teeth and bares it all without so much as a whimper. It would be impressive, if it wasn't so goddamn annoying and he tells the boys this over a meal one evening, listening as they each in turn complain about the silent treatment they've been receiving.

Not long after, Simon disappears downstairs, seeking John out in his room when he reemerges.

"She's gone non-verbal."

"You too, huh?" John sighs, pulling on his boots. "Well, I'll get that bitch to bloody scream if I have to. Let's -."

"No, cap, it's... muteness. Don't think she's doing it on purpose."

John's about to ask why the fuck he should care if she's doing it on purpose or not, but he suddenly remembers the first few years of knowing Simon, the long stretches of silence he'd fall into. At the time, John had just assumed it was Ghost being broody, but now he wonders...

"Well, how do we get her out of it?"

Simon shrugs. "Not likely to, honestly. Can be a trauma thing."

John rolls his eyes, carries on tying his boots.

"The more pain you put her through the worse she's gonna clam up."

Now that gives him pause, gears grinding to a halt until the piece of debris that clogs them is ground beneath the cogs. They spin to life again with a renewed energy after - a wind up toy cranked too far.

"Pain. Pleasure. Hard to tell the difference sometimes."

***

The game is simple enough, but the objective is harder than initially thought. Gaz gets her first, always eager to please. Soap can't even wait until the other sergeant is fully done to get his hands on her, spitting on her tits to fuck between them while Gaz pants into his mouth, the two rapidly falling into each other's pleasure more than the girl's. She keeps her mouth firmly tight, though the pinch between her brow tells John she's not immune to Garrick's pretty cock.

Simon at least understands the objective, pushing Gaz away when he's done to manhandle Soap onto the bed, putting the bird in his lap. Simon works her arse open with cold lube while Johnny moves her in his lap, spearing her down onto his cock and Simon's waiting fingers. This time when she grits her teeth she looks far less pleased, but John wouldn't care if she cried out for them to keep up or to make them stop so he says nothing, watching raptly when Simon decides she's stretched enough for him and he pushes at the bird's shoulder until her and Soap both lay flat on the bed. Soap whines, watching over her shoulder while Simon lines himself up, legs straddled wide over Soap's knees. The poor boy stands less of a chance than the girl does, whimpering the second his lieutenant starts fucking into her, his piercings probably rubbing Soap through the thin wall of the girl's cunt.

Sure enough, the sergeant breathes a soft, 'shite, LT,' and his thrusts turn weak, aborted, sporadic. He moans when he cums, combining with Gaz's, dripping down his softening cock as Ghost's movements keep the girl bouncing on him. Soap whines again, overstimulated, and John can't help reaching out, cupping the sergeant's base to keep him nestled in the girl's warm cunt. Simon chuckles when Soap wails, adjusting his grip on the girl to keep her in place and carries on, cock sliding against the younger man's with barely any barrier.

If the goal was to get the bird to sing, Soap leads by example. But while her mouth hangs open as she watches the younger man fall apart beneath her, she still does not cry out. Not even when Simon grunts in her ear, voice gravel rough and shot, symphonic as it twines with Soap's incessant crying.

Simon pants as he comes down from his high, peering down at John questioningly for a moment. John nods, not entirely sure what he's signing up for, until Simon pulls the girl up off Johnny's front, snaking his hand down her stomach to get his thick fingers on her clit. John grins, feels Soap's cock give a valiant twitch when the girl clenches around him instinctively, sending a hot glob of cum rolling down to the base of the man's cock. John can't help leaning forward to lick it off, laughing cruelly as the younger man yelps.

He's vaguely aware of Gaz straddling Soap's head, assumes he's fucking the man's mouth by the way Soap's whines have turned to soft wet noises. He's too distracted licking his way up the girl's cunt to look.

Simon adjusts to make room for him, sitting on the bed next to Johnny as he continues fingering the girl's pretty clit. John licks along the seam of where her cunt seals around Soap's hardening cock and he hears her gasp - strangled and quiet, but a genuine gasp all the same. He spreads her cheeks, makes more room for himself, and gets to work moving her along Johnny's cock again, his tongue worming its way in alongside Soap when he pulls her back to Soap's base.

They work her like that for a bit, listening as her gasps slowly lengthen, become something like proper moans. Gaz coos at her about how pretty she sounds and she wails when Simon hooks a finger in her rear.

He knows she's cum by the way the spend that coats his tongue gets thinner, tastes less bitter.

"Fuck," John grunts, mouthing at the base of Johnny's cock to make him cum quicker, eager to be in her pretty cunt next. Soap gurgles around Gaz's cock, hips flexing as he fucks up into her faster. When he cums, John laps it up eagerly, tongue flicking against the rim of the girl's cunt just because he likes how she whines.

With Soap truly spent, John drags the girl down to his lap, spearing her on his cock without much preamble. She's loose, soaked, and John rocks her shallowly on himself for a moment just to listen to the way the cum churns within her, frothing on his cock and catching in his curls.

"Shite, doll," he groans, catching her wrists when she tries to reach up over herself, gripping onto his shoulders for leverage. He draws them back down behind her back, keeping them trapped between their bodies in one hand. With his other he cups the exposed column of her throat, revels in the feel of the tendons working - words forming and dying off under his very hand.

"Wanna cum again, don't you?" He coos, mouth pressed close to her poor sunken cheek as if he's completely absorbed in her. Really, he's watching Simon pull Gaz down alongside himself, fisting both their cocks in one big hand.

"Stop that," he warns when the girl bites off another sweet sound. "You wanna cum again you gotta let me hear it."

She doesn't at first, wiggling in his grasp as if he'll let her ride him without asking first. She breaks when he squeezes her throat and his cock twitches within her.

"Please," she whispers, "wanna -."

He's about to tell her too bad when Simon nods at him, a clear 'reward her' if ever he's seen one.

"Spoiled," John chastises, but the hand on her throat moves to slap her cunt all the same, spurring her on. "Go on, then, fuck yourself. Take what you need."

She's uncoordinated, sloppy, legs too tired to ride him with any finesse. It does the trick any way, and she falls limply against his chest when her legs give out beneath her, cunt dripping clear cream and residual cum, both.

"Good girl," John coos, fingers collecting the mess, spreading it over her abused clit just to watch her twitch. "Wasn't so hard, was it?" But if he expects an answer, or for her spell to be over, he's sadly mistaken.

Well, maybe not sadly.

"You want to be done?" She nods against his shoulder, body still slumped and pliant. "Use your words," John warns and she swallows loudly, eyes drifting somewhere by his ear. "More it is, then," John sighs, mock disappointment staining his tone. He shifts, gets his toes dug in underneath himself, and then fucks up into her with the kind of abandon only earned after watching four people cum multiple times.

She yowls, tests his grip on her wrists. He lets them go in favor of keeping her hips elevated, and her fingers find his thighs, digging into the meat of him there.

"You're gonna cum again," he hisses between grit teeth, using his free hand to turn her toward where Simon grips his and Gaz's cock loosely, teasing. "And then I'm going to hand you off to the boys again. And you're gonna take them both, right here -," he illustrates what he means by dragging his hand down her front and hooking the tips of two fingers in her cunt alongside his cock. "Unless you say my name, beg me stop."

She doesn't, so John fucks her stupid, stretching her open until she whines and begs and pants and releases, cunt squeezing around everything he's given her so tight he can't help but follow, paint her poor abused insides in so much cum he's no doubt she'll be able to take the other two easy enough.

The boys drag her up between themselves, hooking her leg up over Gaz's hip. They line up and her voice is shot when she finally uses it again, reaching behind herself to push at Simon's abs.

"Can't - you -."

Simon just hums, big hand brushing along her flank. "Want it in your arse is that it?" he teases, and she squawks, alarmed, when he slides in easily there instead, cock still coated with the lube he'd used to stroke himself and Gaz off with. He grinds deep a few times, letting Gaz's head notch against the rim before pulling back completely to let Gaz dip in. The girl whines, long and loud, and Soap hums in sympathy as he slots himself behind Gaz, too fucked out to do anything more than watch raptly.

She doesn't break until Gaz asks if she can take them both, his hand on Simon's ass keeping the bigger man in place while he slots his cock up next to the other, her poor abused rim stretching threateningly.

"No, please," she cries, and Simon just laughs, pushing in further.

"You know the rules, pet."

But it's John she turns to, eyes big and pretty and watery. "John, please, make them stop."

It's Soap who snuggles her after, the two of them both so fucked out and used up that they can't do much beyond lay there limp and exhausted anyway. Simon and Gaz get each other off with tight fists and dirty kisses, then follow John up to collect on their winnings from the game, but it's John who pockets the keys of a recent vic's car, grinning when Gaz scowls at him.

"Well it was my name she called."

Tags

fic recs WAQAWAWWAWASN this is a drabble in relation to it but fic is linked

finders, keep her

ghost/soap/reader

18+ only for dub-con/non-con, lifestyle puppy play, implied depression, (consensual) kidnapping, spit-roasting, cunnilingus, dehumanization, fingering, double penetration, pussy and face slapping, leashing and collaring, dollification(?), victim blaming, breathplay, less-than-socially-acceptable quid pro quos. (9.1k)

They’re big enough to fill the hole in your heart. You’re small enough to fit in their cage. It's a perfect match. or: Ghost and Johnny shepherd an unassuming girl into their puppy play lifestyle.

read on AO3.

You’re neglecting the fourth drink of the night.

The ice cube has melted. The salt on the rim has hardened. The lime wafer has wrinkled. You stare at the glass so hotly it could curdle along with the resentment lining your gut.

A group of girls—pretty, you must admit—flock towards the bar, all giggling and swapping inside jokes that have you flinching because you aren’t privy to them even though you want to be. One bumps into you and throws you a cursory glance, frowning, an apology crossing her tongue which you hate because then it means you can’t dislike her without being the asshole.

You squirm away, giving them their space. Your gaze slips toward them every now and then like a one-sided game of hide-and-seek, your eyes scratching at their intimate bubble because you want a way in so badly you’re willing to fold like wet cardboard.

Poking your head into their conversation is an idea you quickly retract because the embarrassment would smite you. You would come off too strong, or too weak, perhaps, and would make them uncomfortable. They’d either feel as though they have to speak to you, or you’d get muscled to the sidelines of the conversation. In any case, you’re the stilted bird with farmed out wings.

You polish off your drink in one, slick motion. It’s lukewarm and arid and doesn’t give your throat the chafe it needs. Your stomach seethes for something wide-shouldered, stronger, leading you to slip off the stool because you know the bartender won’t serve you any longer. Your makeup has thawed with your tears, tracking down your cheeks. Your eyes are puffy and your feet are blundering, pigeon-toed.

You stand up, consider saying bye, but bite your tongue and leave without a word. You step outside and shiver as the midnight mist swathes you mockingly, burning the untouched breadth of your skin because you’ve never had a lover to claim it first. You stumble down the sidewalk, the route back home parsed-over in your memory because this is the only route you ever take—to the bar and back home—no detours to a friends place nor a secret lover, no address scrawled on a napkin from a guy who saw you across the room and found you cute.

Again, you know the route perfectly. You know the motel-turned-escort den that gutters out with vacant signage and the corner-store that’s about to close down because it doesn’t pull enough customers.

(Sometimes, you buy a bouquet of roses just to raise the owner’s spirits. You oscillate between pretending it’s for the friends you don’t have and the lover you’ll never get, and the owner nods each time, happy, never catching onto your ploy because you suppose people have their own problems and nobody is indebted to solving yours.)

You know the broken fire hydrant, the gritty alleyway and the cat that noses at garbage bags for food to feed her kittens.

What you don’t know is the shadow that loiters beneath the awning, nursing a cigarette.

The smoulder barely illuminates his face, leaving him in the shadows. It gives you a blank canvas to stab at, lets you fit the features of your silly crushes into his face, lets you imagine him as the one that got away from high school. Lets you picture that in some world, it’s you between his lips. You’re his cigarette. Hot and addictive and comburent, wrapped by his mouth and spent because he won’t stop sucking you dry.

“Oi.”

The world quickly collapses beneath you, but you realize you’re just tripping. You gird your feet to keep yourself from falling and continue stumbling down the sidewalk because surely, he wasn’t speaking to you.

“Bird in the dress. Oi.”

You spin around. There’s no bird in a dress behind you—but a portent bank of mist in your wake, an omen—so you turn back around and point to yourself, whiplash gnawing your neck.

“Yeah,” he nods. “You.”

All you can see are the whites of his eyes, so uncanny it has you squirming. He’s shrouded in the shadows, nebulous, with the only thing attesting to his humanness being his gaze, unwelcoming and off-putting. More anthropoid. Less human.

“What’s got you walkin’ here all alone?” He asks. “It’s dangerous, y’know. Lots of crime roamin’ round these parts.”

You don’t know how to tell him you’ve fallen into an orifice in the earth that God forgot to fix while making it. A hole that you haven’t been able to claw yourself out of, rendering you invisible to that of a regular passerby.

Nobody “bothers” you. Even if somebody did, you wouldn’t read it as such. Any bone thrown in your direction is something you’d viciously thumb through. It would stave off your deep-seated hunger, scratch the itch that’s been burning you for God knows how long.

You settle for an awkward, “Oh… thanks,” and preen under his stare.

He has no details on his face. No depressions. It’s as if he were cut from a monolith, devoid of any identifiable features.

“Are you lookin’ for something?” He tacks on. “I am. We could help each other out.”

He takes a drag from the cigarette and the light softly flares. That’s when you see he’s wearing a mask, overripe and macabre, hiked over his snarled lip.

“Oh…”

“C’mon, pet,” he murmurs. “Have a mate waitin’ for me. Wanted me to bring back some fun.”

A plume of warmth smoothes over you, simultaneously smothering the part of your gut that screams warning but also wrapping around your hindbrain, making you act on want instead of wit.

You pick at your nails, fidgety.

“Uh, I dunno.”

“Figured,” he nods, tossing his cigarette on the ground. “Didn’t reckon you’d say yes, anyway. Don’t seem the type.”

It feels like a scythe through the heart. You don’t know this man, but he’s already wadding you up and tossing you to the side like a moth-eaten cloth. It hurts. Claws your throat. Thumbs you in like a dimpled orange, tears you open.

You take a panicked step forward. “I– I’m the type.”

He makes a noncommittal sound and shrugs.

“I am,” your eyes are dewy, and your fingers cramp around his stout arm because you’d rather die than prove him right. You’d rather twist the spire in your gut than prove all those people right.

You are fun. You aren’t a wet blanket. People love hanging out with you, in fact–

You can’t see him in the darkness, but you know his face is distorted by something mean. You can hear it in his voice, stale and cleverish. Amused. The skin of his lip is pulled back, poorly imitating a smile. You can hear it.

“Sure?” He asks. “My mate, he’s a barky one. Hyper. Might be too much for you.”

You nod. It’s like slicing yourself open, baring yourself to him. Signing the blood pact even though you don’t know what you’re getting into. He’s thrown you a morsel of attention and now it’s your sustenance. You cling onto him like a parasite, deriving whatever attention he throws at you and feeding off it, sluggish and squeamish and malleable. So loose-limbed, you could break off and harden into the quick of his fingers.

(He’s a mean man. Capitalizing off her loneliness because she doesn’t have the friends to steer her away from the bulky, scary brute with scarred flesh. She’s vulnerable, so desperate for attention, he barely has to do any work. Her makeup is already blotchy, smeared, hollowing out her eyes.

He can only imagine what she’d look like choking on his cock. Would she cry? Would she genuflect and try saying thank you because they’re the only people to ever spare her a second glance? Would the words collapse because her nose is scrunched, flattened against his bristly pubic bone?)

He grunts, slipping his hand over your hip.

“My flat’s close, c’mon.”

He holds you so firmly, it almost hurts. He curls his hand around the base of your neck and drags you after him, inconsiderate of the way your tipsy, pigeon-toed feet struggle to keep up. The people you pass by glance at you concernedly, others excitedly, as they gape at the bulky giant who doesn’t seem keen on letting you go anytime soon. It gratifies you because finally, you aren’t nebular. People are looking at you, and they’re jealous. There’s an attractive man who has you by your scruff, and this time, he isn’t going to leave you for one of your so-called friends.

The thought turns you gooey. Impairs you for the rest of the walk. You kitten into his neck—which stinks of sulfur and cigarettes—when he picks you up so suavely it makes your head spin, throwing you over his shoulder. He carries you into a down-trodden flat and up a flight of stairs, fishes his keys from his pocket and jams it into the lock, kicking it open. The whole time his expansive palm presses a spoor into your pillowy flesh, the fore-end of your ass cheek.

He sets you down and doesn’t bother stabilizing you.

“Johnny!” He yells. “Where are you?”

You try stealing a glance around the flat, but everything is astigmatic. Bleeding. The alcohol is catching up to you. It ropes through your veins, drenching everything in molasses.

You hear the faintest reply, “In the bedroom,” muffled behind a wall. Your respite fleets away when you’re picked up again and brought further into the flat. Into a dimly-lit bedroom where another man emerges from the murk, his cheeks engorged around a splitting smile.

He—Johnny—closes the space between you in three strides. He’s shorter than the man who carries you but is taller than you, and since you’re still hoisted over the masked man’s shoulder, you’re able to peer down at him. Get lost in the labyrinth that are his blue eyes, the velvet of his lips. He’s so pretty he could be split across magazine catalogues.

He’s so pretty, it disarms you.

His eyes remove your fuse. His lips make you melt, fluxing into his palm as he cups your cheek because currently, he has the intimacy you’ve been divested of for so long. Anxiety and presentiment—which is something you should be feeling, really, after being shepherded into a sketchy flat—eludes you. Johnny reaches out and toys with your hair.

“Oh,” he gasps. “She’s real bonnie. Real bonnie.”

His voice is softer than the other, but still held down by something rough. It could be cigarettes, could be something else.

(A raw throat, bruised time and time again.)

“Thank ye, Ghost,” Johnny warbles.

That should have been your prompt to leave, among many. A man who calls himself Ghost, a manifest to the living. Invincible and untouchable. Dangerous.

Ghost sets you down again. You’re squished between the two men, each one more intimidating than the other, and squirm. Johnny asks for your name, which you give to him with a tremor in your voice.

He hums. “Pretty name for a pretty girl. Fittin’.”

Your inhibitions esker and your brain halts. Warmth spools over you. The last time you were called pretty, it was your grandmother pinching your cheeks. Now, it comes smooth as silk from a man three times your size with stout arms and a crooked, boyish smile.

He steps away and sits on the foot of the bed. A few seconds pass, awkward, because you’re unsure what to do with yourself. Johnny placates you as he pats the spot beside him.

“Here,” he says. “Sit with me.”

Ghost gives your bum an encouraging squeeze. You walk up to Johnny and sit next to him, squeamish.

The mattress dips under Johnny’s weight and you fall against his shoulder. Your lungs toil, and the feeling of his flesh against yours works like an aphrodisiac, inspiring heat and froth in the pit of your stomach.

It increases twofold when Ghost grunts.

“Give ‘er a kiss, Johnny.”

You seize up. Johnny’s hand is on your cheek in record time, suffocating and divoting as he turns your head towards him. The kiss is wet and rough, over-eager, and makes your mind rescript him as volatile instead of purely obedient. He’d gone from prey to predator—with Ghost’s permission—and pounced on you.

“Kiss him back,” Ghost says a little too harshly. “Give him your tongue.”

You comply, yelping when Johnny sucks at it. Licks it. He cradles the back of your head as he curves his tongue into your mouth, mapping your every inch. He moans into the seam of your lips, humps the bed, and pulls you closer. Johnny grabs your hand and guides you over his crotch, cupping it.

“Feel it, hen?” He breathes. “So fuckin’ hard for ye. Are ye wet?”

He’s kissing you before you can answer. It’s bruising. Teeth clinking, lips bumping. He rams your answer to the back of your throat and decides to check for himself, making your stomach flip as he drags his fingers over your pussy and presses into your clit.

He scoops your dew up and pulls his fingers away, sucking them clean, turning to Ghost with imploring eyes.

“Can I eat ‘er pussy?”

The fact that he asks Ghost instead of you thrums you with concern but it gets smothered when Ghost shortly nods, and it dawns on you that a stupidly attractive man is about to go down on you. Your blood rises to a rolling boil, your stomach churns. Your panties cling to your cunt and outline the barest hint of your lips.

Johnny pushes your back onto the bed. He nudges your legs apart, hikes your dress over your waist, and borderline salivates from his loose jaw as he rubs your pussy through your panties. Your head swims when he leans down, flattening his nose against your sex. The air in your lungs turns to creosote as he sharply inhales, kissing your clit. Kneading your waist. Leaving a mosaic of teeth-shaped concavities into the chub of your thighs. Your hands find the tuft of his mohawk and your eyes find Ghost in the corner of the room. Tempered together, it’s metamorphic. Euphoric. It smites you like the first thaw of spring as Johnny presses his tongue against you, licking a stripe up your sopping slit while you maintain eye contact with Ghost. You flounder under his eyes, tremble under Johnny’s mouth.

Dew skitters over your skin. Your belly cramps with pleasure. Your thighs clench around Johnny’s head, hemming him in. He growls and releases your clit with a pop and spreads your legs back open a little too roughly, stretching your tendons like frayed rope.

He ignores your gasp of pain, as does Ghost. Johnny thumbs you open and grins at your hole, blowing at your bare cunt. He flicks your bud with his tongue, shutting his eyes, murmuring into your sex.

“Cute fuckin’ pussy,” he whispers. “Such a bonnie girl. Tasty girl. Pretty little puppycunt.”

It hits you like whiplash. A vein of discomfort tempered with a fresh stir of arousal. You’re squirming, threshing. Johnny won’t stop making out with your… puppycunt, and now, when you turn to look at Ghost—perhaps to ask for help—he palms himself through his jeans, watching raptly.

You whine when two fingers prod your hole. It’s Johnny working you open. He slips a finger inside and pumps it in and out, curling them into your walls before adding another. He finger fucks you so fast and with so much vigour, it hurts. He’s like a dog with farmed out hair, unfettered without a leash. Eager.

Ghost strides close and grips Johnny by the neck, pulling him away. “Easy, kid. You tryin’ to rip her a new one?”

Johnny flushes. Blush colours his cheeks, reflecting his embarrassment at being scolded. He sniffles. “Nae.”

“Then play nice,” Ghost growls. “Or no more playdates with my pet.”

Your ears ring. Surely, you didn’t hear that right. You couldn’t have, otherwise you wouldn’t be shaking with another wave of arousal. You aren’t a pet. You can think and speak and most importantly, you don’t have a tail to chase.

It’s off-putting and discomforting. Who wants to be degraded to a pet? Pets are muzzled, leashed. Two things that don’t belong on humans—but Johnny seems to disagree.

He pulls his shirt over his head, baring his hairy chest. His prong collar.

It cuts into his neck, makes the skin around it puff up, plum-coloured, stealing the oxygen that should be rising to his head. It explains his bleary gaze, his behaviour, dimmed by the pillowy headspace he’s in. It makes him gasp and drool, tongue lolled out, still glistening from your cunt. Makes him pant. Like a dog.

He quivers. “Can I fuck ‘er? Please, Ghost?”

Ghost situates himself behind Johnny. He swings his forearm across his neck and puppets him into a headlock with one arm, shoves down Johnny’s pants with the other. He chokes a hand around his cock, pumping it, squeezing it, brushing his thumb over the sensitive slit, collecting his precome and using it to lube him up.

Ghost pets him, scratches behind his ears. It must have a Pavlovian effect—conditioned and trained, broken in—because Johnny is quickly poised above you and folding your knees up to your ears, catching his cock onto your sticky clit.

“She ever taken one before?” He breathes. It takes you a while to understand he’s speaking to you, but is asking about your… core. Talking about it like it’s sentient, like it wants him just as bad.

(Considering how warm you are, how your clit throbs, you just might. You feel gooey, close to melting on his tongue and between his sticky fingers. Blood roils under your flesh, bubbling while you clench around nothing at all. Desperate. Needy, because you’ve only ever had your fingers and a regrettable vibrator. Hungry, because Johnny’s cock is drooling onto your belly, long and solid.)

“She– uhn, no,” you eke out. “I’ve never, um, done this.”

He sharply inhales. You think he can smell sex in the air, prurient, because he’s quivering and bucking himself forward, slipping his cock between the fat of your cunt.

“So me and Ghost, we’re… markin’ our territory, aye?”

Apprehension knots in your throat. You swallow it down though, nodding. You’re already neck-deep in this ordeal and you’ve long-since drowned in purgatory, waiting for someone to spare you affection. This is your only buoy.

And so you nod, goading him.

Johnny grins. He grabs your waist to keep you from thrashing and pins you to the bed while Ghost takes your wrists. Johnny sinks into you, splitting you open, his drool dripping onto your cheek.

He has to force himself past your first ring of muscle, and since you’re pegged into the bed, you can’t squirm at his lengthy, curved cock ramming into you. You can whine and beg him to “Please be gentle–“ but that gets smothered under Ghost’s palm as he covers your mouth, blocking your nostrils in the process.

You worriedly scratch at his other hand—the one keeping your wrists together—because you start to feel spotty. You bury your nails into his flesh, etching him with sickle-shaped divots, trying to dig his skin into the quick of your fingers, panicked.

But Ghost looks down at you unfazed. His eyes daunt you through his mask. He pointedly does not move his hand. He keeps your lips pressed tightly and your nose flattened, abased to sniffing his cigarette-smelling palm.

You squeeze your eyes shut. Johnny is pounding into you, crazed, making your legs flail dumbly and also making your stomach knot. You can’t deny the pleasure that tears through you, tempered by your pinched nostrils, complemented by Johnny reaching down to thumb your clit.

“So fuckin’ soft–“ he gasps. “So warm. I need to come in ye, puppy. Need to–“

Your mind doesn’t track the rest. It’s caught on him, how his wet lips wrap around that operative word—puppy. How it sent shivers down your neck, how it prompted the faintest whisper of a phantom tail from your spine.

“Like tha’, don’t you?” Ghost grunts. “Bein’ our dog.”

You shake your head and pick out a laugh somewhere in the syrupy stretch of your mind. It’s sarcastic, disbelieving. Surely, it would have your hypothetical dog ears drooping.

“‘Course you do. You’re just like one,” Ghost says. “So fuckin’ needy. So desperate for attention, am I right?”

Each word is a punch to the gut. Your gaze turns runny with tears, leaking down your cheeks, to which Johnny swiftly laps up. You can’t squirm away—you’re trapped beneath him—helpless as he licks away your brine.

You sob. “I– I don’t like this anymore–“

You move your fingers to cramp around Ghost’s wrist, only to find he isn’t there anymore. It’s a small mercy because he returns swiftly, this time, holding something that glistens.

Handcuffs. Not the fuzzy type you see in intimate, soft-edged pornos. It’s the type that translates into being snared up, bitten by steel. It sizzles your skin when he loops them around your wrists and locks them in place.

With his hands free, Ghost unzips his jeans. His boxer-briefs are distorted by a hard-on, pushing into your face, impossibly large and intimidating. He takes his cock out and even though he grips it by its base, it droops. Ghost is just so heavy, so fat, it hangs downward, whispering against your lips, leaking with thick precome.

He slaps it against your cheek. “Open, pet.”

You hate that you listen. You tell yourself you’re just scared of being punished—not at all chuffed for Ghost’s cock—as you unfurl your tongue and take him between the lips, flinching at his taste. His size.

He works the hinges of your jaw open as he forces himself inside. Your muzzle burns, aching, splitting around his fat cock. He pushes himself all the way inside with a hard thrust, the bristly hairs on his pubic bone tickling your nose. You feel the spine of your throat bruise and your spit fruitlessly trying to soften the burn, pealing out as a gurgle.

Ghost rolls his hips and growls when your molars graze him.

“Pet’s got teeth, aye?” He grits out, nudging himself deeper. It tastes like creosote when he hits the back of your throat—thick and tart.

You’ve never been so full. From your cunt and your mouth, your beginning and end. Johnny’s ravaging you, Ghost’s pounding into you. You’re getting dizzy.

Whenever you fantasized about your first time, you thought it would feel magical. Like falling into tufted grass. Spread open like an oyster shell with your mother pearl licked clean. Squeezed like a stone fruit to test its ripeness, pert and plush. Forever in a state of becoming: a sculpture, or a painting, perhaps. Your lover’s hands would wisp around you like paintbrush bristles and mould you with clay-crusted fingers. You always hoped that during your first time, you would be suckled like ambrosia and kept in their molars for later because you’re just that sweet.

But these men maul you like a chew toy–

–and spit you right out.

They come without warning. Johnny’s seed hits your walls just as Ghost fills your throat. They hold you down and snap into you, giving you their last inch. Making sure that what they force into you, takes.

And you do take it. Rapidly unfurling like a spool of thread because all it takes is a gruff “Good pet,” from Ghost for you to climax.

You whine like a dog when you do. Johnny lulls you with kisses and heavy pets while Ghost waits for his cock to soften before pulling out. You can’t speak after. You whimper, whine, and howl. Like a dog. You curl into Johnny’s arms when he hugs you even though you hate him, blindly trusting and stupidly forgiving. Like a dog.

“Ye did perfect,” Johnny murmurs against your lips. He’s practically sucking your face, licking off Ghost’s come.

“Still needs training,” Ghost grunts.

Johnny nods, pink, embarrassed at being corrected. “Aye.”

“So do you,” the bigger man sneers. “Too fuckin’ buzzed. ‘Aven’t I taught you better?”

You miss the way Johnny bristles, eyes blown wide. Your mind is too sticky, too gooey, to acknowledge how his breathing turns ragged. Your eyes flutter shut, and you slip into limbo.

Nobody knows if you dream of chasing squirrels and running after cats that night, a tight collar fit around your neck.

You wake with a dry mouth and a warm core. You’re alone in bed, uncuffed, folded in the sheets as you drowsily find your bearings.

You curl your snout in the air, smelling food. Your stomach bubbles with hunger but fear overrides that. You know you should leave but your heart, gluttonous, wants to stay forever.

You crawl out of their bed and adjust your dress. You stumble out of their room and find the kitchen by following your nose. Ghost and Johnny sit on two stools in front of a raised island, eating their breakfast. An untouched plate sits between them.

“Mornin’, puppy,” Johnny smiles.

You flounder, awkwardly stepping away. “G-good morning.”

Ghost is leaned over his plate, wolfing down his mountain of food. Johnny is more polite, patting the stool next to him.

“Come eat,” he says. “Must be hungry from yesterday.”

Right. Yesterday. There’s no need in rehashing the events because it still lives on your skin. Pocked flesh marred by bruises so fresh it looks like rope burn, a smoulder between your legs so hot it hurts when you squeeze your thighs. The retellings are parsed-over in your mind, flashing at you to get out of here as soon as possible.

They ignored your struggle. You’re desperate, but you don’t have a death wish.

You grimace. “Yeah.”

“It was nice, aye?” He asks, spooning another bite into his mouth. “We had fun.”

Your mind skids to a stop. Fun? Your cheeks are still stale with dried tears, your thighs still quiver. They turn limbless when you take a step for the door and Ghost snaps his neck around, shooting you a scornful look.

“Stay,” he growls. Commands.

There’s a storm inside you. A tempest. Cold winds that read of desire colliding head-on with humid air that screams danger. They drag each other aloft, fogging your brain. Making your feet move before your mind can.

You scoot into the stool and grip your plate. You sneer at the contents because it looks scooped from a tin, barely fit for human consumption. The slop trickles, and it’s obvious you’ll need a spoon. Your tongue braces when you realize that requires asking for one.

You speak with a rough burr. “Um. May I have a spoon, or something?”

Ghost spares you a cursory glance but doesn’t say anything, opting to smack his lips around another mouthful. Johnny is the one to smile, shaking his head.

“Sorry puppy, no more o’ those. We’ve just enough for us two. We dinnae get company much.”

Ghost spells it out for you. “We’ve no more utensils. You’ll eat without ‘em.”

The air around you blisters with his crass clarification. You stare at your plate, the wisps of steam that curl from it. You look at your fingers, white-knuckled around the chipped ceramic. Recently manicured. Too spruce to dirty with food. The unsaid fallback hangs over your head like a storm cloud, greyscale and grim. You squirm like a dog caught in the rain. Hair matted to your forehead, ears drooping.

You don’t say anything as you bend your neck and open your mouth. You snag a morsel between your teeth, swallowing thickly. You can’t liken the taste to anything—it’s unlike anything you’ve had before. Bland, like cardboard. Sticks to your teeth.

Johnny shoves his nose in your face and grins. “Yummy?”

You smack your lips a couple times. “Um, yes. Look, I should really get going–”

You stand up but get shoved back down. Ghost’s palm is split across your shoulder, keeping you in place. Your squirming is in vain. He has a vice grip on you, fingers tightening around you like a collar.

“This is what you wanted, no?” He asks. He presses his fingers deeper, divoting your skin. “Attention. We gave you tha’. Now you’re just being ungrateful.”

You can barely shake your head because Ghost still has an iron-grip on you. Your protest is fickle, because not even you believe it. You did want a good fuck. You did want to be broken in and put together again by hands other than yours. You did want to be fed vestiges of affection, but upon sleeping with them, you’ve found the taste to be bitter. Too harsh, like sandpaper on your tongue.

You want nothing more than to spit it out.

But Ghost isn’t so understanding. He doesn’t like being divested of what he wants, it seems. And what he wants is you. Even Johnny cowers under his glare, looking at you worriedly while Ghost moves his hand around your jawbone.

“Never taught any manners, were you?” He grunts. “Stray pet. Used to scraps. Wouldn’t know a good opportunity from a bad one if it hit you in the face.”

He pulls you in for a wet, sloppy kiss. You flush as you recall your fickle protests—that you aren’t a dog—because the way spit bends between you, stringy, smeared across your cheek, reminds you of two mutts fighting, their scrimmage made of mangled canines and saliva.

But only one fighting dog can be victorious.

And it sure as hell isn’t going to be you.

Ghost is all muscle softened by fat. Corded sinews and disciplined thew. He stands as tall as a sequoia and his shoulders yawn as wide as an ocean. He might as well be Sasquatch with how large he is, how he exacts fear in your bones. He’s eclipsing, and with such a sizable stature comes a sizable appetite. He bites into you.

You wince at his teeth in your neck. You’re already weak beneath him, thawed, like a volatile solvent. You’re the spun sugar of cotton candy, melting on his tongue. Soft and sugary. He sucks at your neck and leaves mulberry-coloured bruises on your skin, tonguing after you.

Your nerves flare when he bites, and you push him away. Your hindbrain has caught up, panicky and anxious because while you crave lips grazing your skin, Ghost’s mouth is cracked and dry and stinks of cigarettes. You beetle away, frowning, stumbling off the stool.

“Tail between your fuckin’ legs like I’m gonna hurt you,” Ghost sneers. “You always do this? Seduce men then scream rape? S’that the only way you get pity?”

You step back but hit Johnny’s chest. Fear seizes you. You’re damp with sweat and your heartbeat is quickly rising. You shake your head, tears falling, spitting incoherent protests.

“No?” He steps closer but he can’t crowd you backward anymore. Johnny’s chest is immovable metal against your back. He holds you in place, keeps you from squirming as Ghost continues. “You agreed to come home with me. Just ‘cause y’regret whoring yourself out doesn’t mean we’re bad blokes. We’re no bad blokes, pet. You’re just a fuckin’ liar.”

He grabs your chin, hoists your head up. “And I don’t fancy liars. Do you, Johnny?”

You feel the Scot puff up behind you. “Nae, Ghost. Dinnae like ‘em. Not one bit.”

“I reckon she needs a lesson,” Ghost rasps. “Would you agree?”

“Aye. O’course.”

Ghost looks down at you. “Would you agree?”

You can’t say no because he still has you by your chin. His grip is bruising, keeps you poised. You want to shake your head but Ghost puppets your chin up and down instead, making you nod even though you don’t want to. Making you sign yourself away like a forged slip of paper.

Ghost’s lips peel into a Glasglow smile. Johnny smooches your cheek.

“Can’t cry wolf now, puppy,” he says. “Ye nodded, ye ken. That’s consent. It’s practically on paper.”

“I– I didn’t,” you croak. “He made me–”

“Oh, but ye did,” he chuckles. “Quit bein’ a tease.”

Your mouth clamps shut and your legs follow mindlessly as Ghost tugs you away. He takes you to the living room, toward a man-sized dog cage nestled in the corner. The only thing disarming about it is the cottony blanket on the bottom, the pillows in the corner.

But the teeth marks that scratch the cage bars offset that. Someone’s been in there before, and they struggled. And the way Johnny bristles when you approach it tells you all you need to know.

“Get in,” Ghost grunts.

You don’t move, so he takes you by the scruff of your neck and forces you onto your knees. He swats your ass and shepherds you inside, locking it behind you.

You spin around on your hands and knees, lip trembling. You whimper, but Ghost shakes his head.

“You think about what you’ve done,” he says. Then he makes for the bedroom with Johnny quick at his feet.

The next hour is a blip in your memory.

You hear their door slam closed. You hear growls and groans, air sucked through teeth. You hear the zip of clothes ripping, the ring of a belt being unbuckled. Johnny’s voice wafts through the wall, distorted by sobs, while Ghost’s voice is husky and phlegmy. They’re both tempered by the headboard slamming against the wall.

It sounds like two bears trying to maul each other in there, but by your moistening cunt, you know better. Skin slapping against skin, wheezy breathing. Those sounds translate a carnal force. You feel it in your core, your wettening sex. The bars of the wired crate press tracks into your skin as you manoeuvre yourself, shamefully slipping your fingers below your panties.

You’re already slick. Shame burns you. Eats at you and makes you wilt like cellophane caught on fire. The all-consuming flare of arousal smothers your fear and licks your skin, makes your stomach knot as you imagine what they’re doing to each other. You rub your puffy lips, circle your clit. Edge your fingers into your hole and wince at the pain.

(Whether you like it or not, you’ve been claimed. Snared. Ear-tagged. Branded. Their shadows still haunt your skin, your abused cunt. There’s a rubbery stretch when you force your fingers inside, your other hand racing to clamp your mouth shut. You pump them in and out, a gyre of water and grease fire bubbling within you. You don’t want this—you want to go home—but pleasure has snuck under your skin. Arousal has annexed your forebrain, making you chase down whatever’s pleasurable.

An orgasm. Kibble. A bone. Belly scratches–)

You curl your fingers inside you. You can still feel Johnny’s mouth on your pussy and Ghost in your throat. They’ve violated you, broken you in. Made you theirs.

As their groans crest, you see your climax in the distance—two smouldering lights that hit you with the force of a bullet train. Liquid smooths out of your cunt, down your fingers. Your blood rushes to your ears and submerges the sounds of them reaching their own high.

Your orgasm gets drawn out like a spinning wheel, taking minutes to peter out. Still you don’t hear the door open, or the approaching footsteps. You don’t hear the dreadful leitmotif that plays from imaginary speakers when they enter the room. You simply open your eyes, fucked-out, and see them towering over you. Naked if not for their boxers.

“Did you touch yourself?” Ghost pants. His jaw feathers, peevish.

You smack your lips together, plucking whatever cow-sense you have left to shake your head and lie.

“No…” you scrimp out.

He snarls. “Check ‘er.”

Johnny pricks up with an unsettling level of enthusiasm. He drops to his knees and unlocks the crate, cooing, but is contrarily rough in how he forces your legs apart. You burn as he thumbs through the folds of your hot cunt, stroking your clit.

“Made a fuckin’ mess ye did, lass,” he tuts. “And ye dinnae leave any fun for us?”

Ghost grabs you and drags you out, huffing all the while. Your world helixes when you’re tossed over his shoulder, carried further into their flat. You get dropped in a tub and muscled against the wall, still drowsy, with no time to gird yourself before a barrage of ice-cold water starts stabbing you.

Ghost grabs the showerhead and twists it to the jet setting, spraying you down. You try folding yourself into the rust-crusted corner of the tub but it does nothing to offset the freeze that rattles you. You splay your hands out and curl your legs into your chest to shield yourself, but it’s fruitless. Ghost leans in and sprays you closer, the heavy stream tamping against your sensitive pussy and slick chest.

You open your mouth to beg–

“Please.”

–but it gets filled up by sloshing water, running down your throat like liquid fire which you belch back up.

Your legs beat around as Johnny rips your dress off. You think you've been spared when the water turns off, but your mercy fleets away as Ghost drags you out of the shower and onto the floor. You shiver like a wet dog, soaking wet, dripping onto the mat. You impulsively curl into the towel that Johnny wraps you with, desperate for warmth.

“Just had to hose ye down, bonnie,” he says. “Ye dinnae mind, do ye?”

He roughly dries you off. The terrycloth of the towel feels more like sandpaper with him. You can’t complain though because your head is suddenly puppeted back, forced by Ghost’s hand which is cupped under your jaw. He thumbs your mouth open and shoves a toothbrush inside, scrubbing your gums so roughly you could bleed. He scours away the taste of his cock and the alcohol from last night. The bristles reach the back of your throat and you gag around it, spitting into the sink as he shoves your head forward.

Your mind is too spotty to notice Johnny vibrating in the corner. “Can I dress ‘er, Ghost? Please can I dress–”

Ghost shoves you in his arms, and it seems that Johnny already came prepared with clothes tucked under his arm. He lowers to his knees and fits your feet into them, kissing up your thighs as he pulls up the shorts. A simple sweatshirt goes over your head—no bra—so your nipples perk against the cotton, pebbled.

He pulls you in for a deep kiss once he’s finished. It winds you, leaves you breathless.

(And strangely enough, it leaves you wanting more–)

Ghost stalks out of the bathroom and Johnny follows close behind, dragging you with him. They go out the door and into a beaten-up truck, shoving you in the back. It all happens so quick you have no time to brace when Ghost tamps down on the gas and hastens down the road.

Hope flickers within you. You stare outside, watching how buildings and trees blur past you. You believe they’re taking you home, tossing you back onto the same sidewalk they found you on. Maybe they sprayed you down to clear their evidence, maybe they changed your clothes so a missing persons poster wouldn’t find you first.

You prick up against the window as the bar Ghost found you in front of comes into view–

–but your skin melts around your bone when you drive past it, watching it become a speck in the sideview mirror.

Anxiety feathers its way up your back, gumming itself into the divots of your spine. You don’t bother asking where you’re going—that would earn you nothing more of a sparse grunt and a short huff. You purse your lips and try not to cry. Every second is another anvil on your chest, heavy and steely, stifling your breath.

Your fingers snap around the door handle as you approximate the best time it would be to pull it. You’d have to pucker yourself, swing the door open, then roll out—all without one of them catching you first.

You shoulder yourself into the door. Your hand goes taut on the handle. You nerve yourself, ready to push it open, ready to roll onto the pocked street and scrape yourself threadbare–

–but the opportunity never comes. Ghost pulls into the parking lot of a sleepy strip mall and cuts the engine. He parked tightly between two vans so even if you tried, you wouldn’t have the space to run.

You have to swallow your flinch when you glance at the rearview mirror and catch him staring at you, beady-eyed.

“We’re gonnae spoil ye puppy,” Johnny says. He slips out of the passenger seat and goes to retrieve you. His tone is pillowly but his grip is firm, warningly. “Ye get to pick out whichever one ye fancy.”

Embarrassment pulls at you as he tugs you into a store. The scent of bird seed and aspen shavings hit the back of your throat, stale and soil-like. You must smack your lips before talking.

“P-pick out…what?”

He stops short in front of a colourful aisle, and it strikes you belatedly that this is a pet shop. Fitting, seeing as you’re similarly skittish to the ensnared bunnies and hamsters.

Johnny nudges you forward. “Any collar ye like, puppy.”

That’s when it slides into place. There’s a glut of dog chokers in front of you, varying in colour and design. Some are bedazzled and some are flower-printed, others are made of cork and stink up the whole aisle with artificial leather. Your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth and your head begins to throb, as if you’re being pumped full of mercury.

You have to dig deep to find your words. Slowly, you find, human intelligence has been escaping you. You whimper before speaking and sink into your new sweatshirt.

“Do I have to?”

“Ghost’ll just pick one for ye if ye don’t,” he grins. “And I ken ye’ve got better style, pup.”

You look back at the aisle and try to think of what you would get your own dog to soften the discomfort creeping up your throat. Your fingers glance off the collars in an effort to gauge which would feel the best around your neck—or, as best as they could feel, anyway.

Your touch flutters over salmon-pink webbing. A bone-shaped tag dangles from the collar, waiting to be inscribed with a name and an owner’s phone number.

(The implications don’t elude you. The dog tag is an empty slate which welcomes a new name and erases your old one. Once the collar locks around your neck, the name that gets etched into the metal plate will be yours for however long they keep you. You wouldn’t answer to your current title but would get Pavloved into replying to something else.)

“Ye fancy this one?” Johnny asks. “Fine choice, puppy. It complements ye real nice. Brings out yer eyes.”

He swipes the collar and brings you to the cashier. The girl working the counter is young, plump, and briefly reminds you of the world outside your new confines. You consider whispering for help before Ghost situates himself directly behind you, the metal teeth of his jeans zipper distending into your bum.

“What name would you like on the tag?” She asks, listless.

You remember Johnny calling your name pretty. It makes it especially jarring when he sticks his neck out, answering with a bright smile, “Puppy.”

She gives a quizzical look. You can hear the question in the bend of her eyebrow—”You’re naming your puppy, Puppy?”—but you suppose she doesn’t get paid enough to care, so she shrugs and scores it into the plate, asking for a phone number.

Ghost gives his and pays with a crumpled wad of cash. He doesn’t wait for change before turning on his boot and dragging you out of the store, stuffing you back into the truck. This time, Johnny sits next to you. He loops the collar around your neck and kisses you softly, wetting your skin before locking it in place.

His eyes shine when he pulls back. They’re two lagoons, depthless and blue, gleaming like rip currents ready to pull you in. Again, Johnny’s beauty belays your hostility. His crooked smile and his ruddy cheeks flirt you toward him, nuzzling you into his chest. He cradles your head and doesn’t stop kissing you the whole ride back. Similarly, Ghost’s bone-deep stare never leaves you through the rearview mirror.

Evening comes quickly.

A greyscale canopy has blanketed the sky, mirroring the dread you feel in your solar plexus. Your knees are fettered from being folded for too long and your shins begin to bruise against the hardwood floor. Your neck has been leashed to a leg of their dining table for God knows how long now, tensing as they cook dinner.

You can’t see what they’re cooking, but you can approximate using your snout (potato skin, bruised onion). Your hearing is also more acute because again, your eyesight has been taken, blackened behind a burlap sack that’s fit over your head and girded around your neck.

You saw what was written on the bag before Ghost pulled it over your head.

Dog in training.

And it wouldn’t be incorrect. You keep scratching the floor, keep whining. Johnny just thinks you’re hungry and slips food under the hem of your sack. When you ask them to let you go, he suddenly can’t hear you.

You heed the belch of chairs being pulled out, and two deep sighs from Ghost and Johnny as they sit down. You hear their utensils clink, scraping against their plates, hitting their teeth. Your stomach burbles with hunger, and in a lapse of judgement, you feather towards one of the men and lay your head on their lap in a wordless beg, hoping it isn’t Ghost. During your time here you’ve come to learn he doesn’t take kindly to grovelling mutts.

But throughout this ordeal luck has continuously escaped you. It shouldn’t surprise you when a large hand rests on your head, squishing you against the thickening rise of his jeans.

“Hungry?” Ghost rasps. You hear the flick and flare of a lighter. You hear cigarette paper burning away as Ghost lights it up, inhaling the smoke between bites of food.

You grizzle, nodding against his tented jeans.

“Take my cock out,” he says.

Essentially blindfolded, you struggle with finding his fly. Your fingers fumble over his crotch and flinch when you catch his zipper, pulling it down to feel his boxer-briefs distorted by a raging hard-on.

You tug on his boxer-briefs just enough for his cock to slip out, thwacking against his tummy with a soft thump. You choke your hand around him, but his cock is too thick for your grip to wrap all the way around. You employ both hands, working them up and down his length, brushing the pad of your thumb over his dripping slit.

It startles you when he cups your cheeks. His hands are larger than your head, and unexpectedly rip a hole through the burlap, just big enough for your mouth. You capitalize off air that isn’t recycled and open your mouth for a lungful, but your inhale gets dampened as Ghost feeds his cock into you.

He rubs his slit over your tongue and slides himself down the spine of your throat. You retch around him, however his hand is split behind your neck and keeps your nose squished against his bristly pubic bone. He bucks his hips into you, drawing on his cigarette, eating his food. You can barely hear Johnny through the mescal pooling in your ears–

“Is she suckin’ ye off?” “Ghost, can I watch? Or join? Or can she suck me next? Please?” “What’s she doin’? Is she doin’ it right? Ghost–”

You feel cigarette shavings fall on your head, and humiliation tingling up your spine at being his ashtray. Your cunt twists when Ghost grunts, scratching his teeth together. His voice is husky and tight, malformed with arousal as you suckle his fat cockhead.

“You shut your gob Johnny,” he growls. “Or you’ll spend the night in the kennel.”

Johnny snaps his mouth shut. You can hear it. That, and the table rattling as he humps his chair. All the noise around you ripens into tinnitus as Ghost squishes his thighs around your head and goes rigid with his orgasm, emptying his balls down your warm throat. His spume is slick, filling up your mouth, chasing after him in strings as he pulls himself from your throat.

He swats your cheek. “Was that yummy, pet?”

Your pussy aches. Your tangible arousal bleeds through your panties, hot and sticky.

(They say that as you’re drowning, it feels like hell. Like you’re getting attacked by white-capped waves. The pain quickly ripens into an unexplainable peace, and soon, the treacherous water turns into a warm hug. It’s peaceful. A timeless limbo.

Maybe you’re drowning now. In Ghost’s come, or Johnny’s affection, or their doting. It’s the only explanation for the way your hackles lower and a drowsy smile stretches over your face, as you softly nod.)

“This is why you need us, pet,” Ghost continues. “We’re here to take care of you. Keep you fed. Groomed. It’s what you deserve.”

You drop your head on his knee, wistful.

“We cannae do that if yer bein’ thrawn,” Johnny tacks on. “You dinnae have to feel guilty about it. After all it feels good, aye?”

You nod as Ghost pulls the sack off your head and unleashes you from the table. He shepherds you into his lap and kisses you sweetly, fondling your tits.

“Does my pet want more?” He rasps into the seam of your lips.

You mumble a soft, “Yes,” languid, grinding on him. Ghost is quick to correct you—he grips your jaw and stares at you witheringly, shaking his head.

“Pets don’t talk,” he says. “You just nod, alright? And don’t shake your head. They don’t say no, either.”

Ghost stands up before your response and carries you to the bedroom. He drops you on the mattress and crawls on top, planting his arms on either side of you.

(There he goes again, trapping you in a cage.)

Johnny stalks through the threshold and leans down to kiss you. They scatter their lips over your body and map your skin, dragging their tongues across your curves. Their hands follow suit—gripping, dimpling, caressing. Tightening the collar around your neck.

Ghost tugs you by your martingale. “You’re gonna take us both, alright?”

A prudish “Yes,” sits on your tongue, but you bite it off. You nod instead. Thawing into their touch, their tongues. Their rules. Their lifestyle. You let them peel your clothes off and spread your pussy, spitting on it, plunging their fingers into it. You don’t know whose wrist to grab as they both fuck you open on their fingers, and you finally opt to twisting the bedsheets in your grip to ground yourself.

“So wet, puppy,” Johnny breathes. He sweeps his hand over your sticky folds, giving it a smack. Ghost catches your flinch and thumbs your clit, tracing it, curling his stout fingers into your walls.

“She wants more,” he grunts. “She’s needy.”

Johnny unzips his pants and takes his dick out. He nods, drowsy, as he tugs at his cock.

“I’ll fuck ‘er,” Ghost continues. “Fill out this pretty pussy.”

Johnny whines. Long and tinny. Pouty. “But ye said I could have ‘er, Ghost. Ye said I could have ‘er again. That’s nae fair–”

“If you keep being a brat about it, you won’t get her at all,” Ghost makes a withering, warning look that shuts Johnny up.

Ghost takes his shirt off, and you have no time to ogle at his bristly chest before being pulled onto his lap. His cock lays in front of you, fat and heavy, pressing against the squish of your cunt. You’re grinding down on him when he rasps something that drains you, turning you pruney, into vacuum-sealed cellophane.

“You take ‘er backside,” he says against your jaw. It agitates another stir of arousal out of you. It travels down your ass and waves over your furled hole, lubing it up.

You realize it now—Ghost warned you of it—Johnny is hyper, barky. He wastes no time in rutting his cockhead into you, breaking the skin of your shoulder as he bites you to offset the pleasure scuttling up his spine. He forces himself into your asshole, prattling nugatory apologies every time you smart with pain.

“I ken it hurts,” he says. “I’m sorry puppy, it’ll go away soon. Please dinnae be mad at me.”

Just as the burn starts to elapse, Ghost slides into your pussy. It’s a maddening squeeze. You clamp around him, clawing your nails down his hairy, bulging chest. Your hips spurt and stutter, taking them whole, unravelling into ribbons as they snap into you.

It’s world’s better than your inept fingers and cheap vibrator. Getting hollowed out, split open on two fat, heavy cocks. Trapped between them as they guide your hips, as they lean over you and dovetail their lips together, their saliva dripping onto your head with how messy it is.

You heft your neck up, desperate to join in. Desperate to catch their spit in the cradle of your mouth. You’re just barely given a gorge to slip through, kitten licking their lips, sucking their tongues. It’s wet and messy and has you knotting up around them, locking up tight as your orgasm feathers over you, caught in the girdle where your leash is and trickling down to your tummy where the barest outline of Ghost’s length protrudes.

They don’t let up after your orgasm. They keep going—they’re two dogs stuffing their snouts into an addled carcass, mangled roadkill—there is no mercy. They fuck you through the bulk of your orgasm, even as you go limp against Ghost’s chest. Even as words elude you when you want to prate about how good it feels, and you can only produce gasps, howls, whimpers and whines.

Perhaps it’s providence that you’re here, that you came across Ghost under that awning. You’ll ignore the red flags, the warnings, and you’ll indulge in their sick lifestyle.

It’s a quid pro quo. They have someone to pamper, you get pampered.

Maybe you’ll even bark for them too.

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bobiologist

7 months ago

Fics and drabbles that lay in the realm of horror whether that be straight spooks or non-con fantasies (basically if it has non-con or allusions to it then it'll be classed under horror over smut)

Fics

No Second Location - mainly serial killer Soap, some serial killer 141 Savage and Sacrosanct and further plot- historical fantasy, Soap and Ghost The Revelation - cult shit with Ghost and Soap The Eyes of God - evil religious Ale and Rudy Devil's Trumpet - Appalachian horror with 141 Cry Baby - Ghost plays with you while Gaz is away Back Chat & Sequel - IT reader getting bullied by Soap Foul Magic - druid Soap Deductive Reasoning - fish folk 141 Make your own way home - Soap possessing you to get to Ghost Mace teaching reader to deepthroat for Ghost Mace raping reader to make her hero worship Ghost

Drabbles

AU Thoughts Wonderland AU thoughts Neverland AU thoughts Westworld AU thoughtsFallout AU thoughts

Expanded with Drabbles Ghost kidnapping a civilian - #mhairidrabblescodkidnappers Graves doll - #mhairidrabblesdoll Good Boy Bad Girl - #mhairi's good boy bad girl

Soap Soap who loves his fleshlight more than you Soap who gets his team to run train on you Trick or Treat with Soap Obsessive Soap Soap’s obsessive girlfriend Soap preying on Catholic virgins Creepypasta Soap Dogfighting but the dog is Soap

Price Tinsel choking with Price Price breeding you Never lets go Price Price’s retirement plan Kidnapper Price Price manipulating his way to a wife Sleazy politician Price Tactical questioning with Price Price intending to steal you and your boyfriend

Gaz Branding with Gaz Gaslighter Gaz “Romantic” Gaz

Ghost Serial killer Simon Ghost who targets vulnerable women Matching scars Ghost

Ghoap Circus!Ghoap thoughts Marriage of convenience with Laird MacTavish Forced marriage with Simon Ghost mad at you for not realising you are Soap’s Soap using Ghost to lube you up Ghost fucking you to punish Soap Loan shark Price sending Ghoap to deal with you

Other Traded to Kortac Temporarily blinded reader Toxic senior officer 141 Astronaut reader Escape room Beta reader forced to be an omega Price and his dogs Price making a doll for Ghost 141 and how they break girls Bellesa sex toy customer service Serial killers Gaz and Ghost Price forced husband historical fantasy Misogynist to transfem 141 Salem witch trial Price and Ghost Honeytrap omega Flight with Price and Ghost Ghost kidnapping a nanny for Soap’s surprise baby Blindfolded reader with someone who is not her boyfriend Soap Soap’s filthy notebook Werewolf Johnny selling you out Ex-husband Simon sending Gaz to break your heart Crow shifter 141 Farmer with a holiday lodge Halloween not real cops Sustainability officer

Tags

for later

87 notes View Post

bobiologist

1 year ago

Did we as a society just forget this happened?

23 notes View Post

bobiologist

9 months ago

scrap metal muzzle part i

this started off being based on a nightmare i had and spun entirely out of control and become... this fucking thing. enjoy my ghoap x fat reader scrapyard fic.

this is just part 1 of 2, because holy hell did this get long (11k words in this part alone). part 2 is darker, so be aware.

cw: vague references to a past abusive relationship, manipulation, oral sex, threesome (kinda), voyeurism/enthusiastic cuckholding (sort of? idk how to even categorize it), possessiveness, un-negotiated kink, pet play, 24/7 kink lifestyle, praise, verbal degradation (towards soap only), only lightly edited bc i'm tired

in hindsight, you probably should have spent more time planning your escape. should've had a mechanic look over the car you purchased for cash off craigslist, should've planned your route more thoroughly, should've taken food with you. ah well. it's too late to go back, by now phil will have come home and noticed that you're gone. he's probably making the rounds to all of your friend's houses, banging on their doors and demanding to be let in. at least you'd had the foresight to warn them, you suppose. didn't tell any of them where you were going or what was happening, obviously, just told them you were finally leaving phil and he might come around looking. the repeated choruses of 'oh thank god' had spurred you on, stoking the fire within you that made your quick exit from that relationship feel like a life or death situation. hell, for all you know about phil's temper, it very well might've been.

the first few hours on the road went just fine as you broke every speed limit you came across, careening towards the sunset as you made your slapdash escape. the van was in your possession less than twenty minutes before you sent the mass text to your friends and family, letting them know you were on your way out. in less than sixty minutes everything you'd owned in phil's apartment made it's way into the back of the van, some of it boxed but most of it rolling loose. all your clothes are in garbage bags, your jewelry in ziplocks. out of spite you took all the silverware and remotes, all of them shoved in a grocery bag along with your toiletries and makeup.

by the time the sun had fully set, rain started pouring down. it was already difficult to see with the yellow, clouded headlights, but this unexpected monsoon just made it worse. it was already hard to navigate the winding country roads this way, but the deluge of rain made the line on the road look blurrier, and you couldn't help but worry about potentially crossing over the white line on accident and winding up in a ditch. you'd probably be safer on a bigger road with rumble strips, but you had figured risking it out here was still a far side safer than taking to the major highways where phil might have his cop buddies be on the lookout for you.

the rattletrap van gives up the ghost when you stop by the side of the road to pee, squatting so only your ass hung out the door and got rained on. you grumble as you pull your underwear over cold, wet skin, and cursed when you turned the key and realized the engine was outright refusing to turn over again. fuck, shit, motherfucker. you slam your hands against the steering wheel as you curse out god, phil, and nissan while the rain continues to slam against your windshield in a deafening cacophony. you turn your headlights off to look for light pollution against the cloudy skies, something to indicate which direction you should start walking in so you can find some help. hope rises in your chest when you see not just light pollution, but a small, glowing yellow square off in the not too far distance. it's got to be a building of some kind, clearly occupied. perfect. hopefully whoever's inside is feeling charitable.

after digging through black garbage bag after black garbage bag, you finally find your best coat and get to walking. the rain is freezing cold, and the northern wind, that bastard, is whipping it right in your face, shoving your hood back off your head and soaking your hair. you can only cling to your hood for so long until the biting rain makes your hands go numb, forcing you to shove them into your pockets as you trudge forward. why don't raincoat hoods have a drawstring like hoodies do? this is fucking bullshit. ugh, fuck, you're going to look like an absolute mess when you arrive, but hopefully that helps earn you some sympathy when you ask for help.

it feels like ages until you come up on the building with the lit window, but when you do, it's clear it's not a house, but a business. that... might be better, actually. it feels less intrusive to go to a business for help instead of a private residence. nobody's gonna answer the door with a shotgun if you walk up to a business. probably. right?

the sign above the door says s&j scrapyard, and with the light that spills out of the lit window, you can see the high fences that run around the building, large jagged shadows of scrap towering behind them. with a hard swallow, you rap on the door. shave and a haircut, just to let whoever's inside know that you're there and you're friendly. it feels like ages that you stand there, back towards the wind, waiting for someone to come, but when the door finally swings violently open you find yourself wishing you'd never come at all.

a huge man stands in the doorway, his big body nearly blocking out all the sickly yellow light that tries to pour out from his dry office and out into the night. he's so broad you wonder idly if he has to enter and exit doorways at a slight angle just to fit. he's covered from head to toe, with big boots, skeleton patterned gloves, and a balaclava, leaving only his dark eyes and the bridge of his nose exposed. he's so tall you find your head tilting back a bit just to look him in the eye. he makes for a very intimidating figure, and you can't be sure if it's the cold and wet that has you shaking or his domineering presence.

"wot you want?" he barks out, chuckling when you flinch. "s'after hours and i don't got copper f'ya anyways. beat it."

"i- no, my- my car broke down just up the road. i was just wondering if you knew of a mechanic's shop that might still be op-open." you stammer out through chattering teeth. from inside the building you hear a high pitched, animalistic whine and the sound of metal clattering on concrete.

"oi! settle!" the man in the mask barks over his shoulder before turning back to you. "ain't nothin' open this time of night."

"oh." shit, ok, now what? do you trudge back to the van on your sore feet only to come back in the morning and ask for a phone? do you curl up under the small awning and sleep here, hoping this man doesn't mind? do you-

"tell you wot- i'll come tow ya, and you can sleep in the parkin' lot. we can call a mechanic in the mornin'." the man says, gruffness in his tone easing up just slightly. "i'd invite you in, but the mutt- 'e gets too excited about new people. especially pretty girls. might bite on accident."

being called a pretty girl is a surprise, especially since you're pretty sure you look like a drowned rat, and you can feel your eyebrows rocket to your hairline at the praise. of all the things you'd expected a 6'5" scrapyard worker with a thick manc accent to call your fat ass, 'pretty' didn't make the list. still, it's nice, even if it does have you a little flustered.

"oh, uh, sure, yeah, thank you so much, i really appreciate your help." the relief is palpable, you can feel the tenseness in your shoulders melt away. finally, one thing has gone your way. you're determined to cling to your silver linings. thank god you've got a big van full of bags of clothes that you can sleep on top of and not, like, a vw rabbit full of pots and pans.

in no time at all the two of you are in the cab of a tow truck, rolling down the road to your broken down ride. the man tells you his name is simon, he's been picking up broken down cars and selling them for scrap for a few years since leaving the military. it's just him and the mutt out there, the mechanic he'll call is in next closest town, which is about a thirty minutes drive out. you tell him a little bit about yourself, explaining vaguely that you've just left a volatile situation back home and are looking for a fresh start. simon doesn't say anything to that, doesn't ask prodding questions, just hums thoughtfully as he pulls up to your shitty van before hopping out, hooking it up, and towing it back to the front of the shop.

"i'll take a peek under the 'ood myself tomorrow, but dunno 'ow much 'elp i'm gonna be. my business is takin' things apart, not really one for puttin' 'em back together." simon tells you before he leaves you for the night, cursing at his yowling dog when he steps back into the yellow light of his office.

sleep comes easier than you thought it would, the high adrenaline from making your daring escape suddenly coming to a screeching halt and bringing you crashing down while you rest on your nest of clothes and blankets. you don't even have time to kick your shoes off before you're drooling on the bag under your cheek, letting your guard entirely down as you take solace in the pitter patter of rain on the windshield of your locked van. phil could drive by this place, see the van, and never even know you're inside. that comforting knowledge is what propels you into a deep, dreamless sleep that's only disturbed by three sharp knocks to the door sometime in the midmorning.

"got breakfast, if y'like." a gruff voice calls through the door as you stretch out the aches in your bones. fuck, your hair probably is a mess, but it's hard to give a shit when a meal is being offered. after a quick change of clothes and fussing with your hair in the rearview mirror a bit, you clamber out into the bright morning sun, beelining for the front door and letting yourself in. the office isn't too big, just a small space for customers to stand at a big, long counter. there's also a kennel set up there- empty save for the fluffy pillow and chew toys left behind. there's a few doors lined up along the back wall, and you assume one leads out to the scrapyard, the other to simon's personal quarters. you're not sure about the third. janitor's closet maybe?

"oi." simon appears out of the far left door, jerking his head, beckoning you to come around the counter. you cautiously step through the door into the kitchenette of what looks like a small studio apartment. it's a real bachelor pad if you've ever seen one. there's a messy bed shoved into the corner, and the walls are completely sparse save for a large television that's hung just a little bit crooked. there's some dirty clothes on the floor, more chewed up rubber dog toys, and several empty beer cans lined up on the windowsill behind the bed. simon pulls out a chair for you at the little kitchen table, metal legs groaning against the linoleum.

"thank you so much, for everything. i don't know how i'm going to be able to repay you." you admit as he places a hot bowl of oatmeal in front of you. to say that your finances are limited is an understatement. phil hadn't allowed you to work for years, so half of your savings were used up on that rattletrap parked out front.

"mm. expect you don't 'ave much in the way of cash, then?" he asks, settling into the seat across the table from you. it's hard not to notice that he isn't eating. probably doesn't want to take off his mask in front of a stranger, you rationalize, trying not to think too hard about why he's wearing one in the first place. maybe he's scarred up, burnt, or otherwise disfigured. not your place to ask, really, not when he's been so helpful. he's allowed his own secrets, just like you're allowed yours.

"no, sorry. i, uh, i mean. you could put me to work, i guess?" you say before shoveling a hot spoonful of breakfast into your mouth. mm, peach instant oatmeal. that's the good stuff. simon leans back in his chair, crossing his massive arms over his equally massive chest, the corners of his eyes creased in what you hope is a smile.

"and the mechanic? gonna go work for 'im, too?" he asks, tone teasing.

"whatever it takes, i guess." you say with a shrug as you slowly finish your breakfast, savoring every bite. simon watches you eat in silence, dark eyes trained on your every move. it's unnerving, but you imagine that way out here, he probably doesn't have guests very often. hell, it's incredible he has two chairs for his kitchen instead of just one. it's likely you're eating out of the only bowl in the whole place.

"tell you wot. i'll show ya 'round the junkyard, introduce you to the mutt. 'e's been needin' a playmate, and i' 'aven't 'ad the time t'give 'im the attention 'e needs. you play with 'im and keep 'im occupied for a few days, and i'll make sure your van's taken care of." simon tells you, and you keep waiting for the catch.

"so... if i play with your dog for a few days you'll cover the mechanic's fees and call us even?" you ask, unsure if you're misunderstanding. he huffs out a laugh and nods. "... didn't you say he bites?"

"does sometimes, when 'e's oll riled up. olready muzzled 'im up f'ya, if that 'elps." he cocks his head, eyes still trained on you. "wot you say?"

"you don't even know what the cost of the repairs is going to be." you point out. "i doubt playing fetch and keeping fido out from under your feet is going to be worth whatever it costs to fix my shitty van."

"mm, maybe. still might be a right side cheaper than drivin' 'im oll the way to the city, boardin' 'im in a kennel for a few weeks. knowin' 'im, i'd probably 'ave t'pay extra, considerin' what a bloody 'andful 'e is." simon grabs your empty bowl. "tell ya wot, you 'andle 'im today and we'll consider the tow service covered. i'll call the mechanic, get an estimate, and we can take it from there. olright?"

"yeah, ok. thanks." you tell him, throwing him a small, grateful smile as he stands to clean your dishes. "i, uh, i really appreciate this. i won't let you down."

simon looks you over as he rinses off your bowl in the sink, chuckling to himself as if what you've just said is funny. ok. weird. but it could be worse, you suppose.

when he finishes, simon takes you on a tour of the scrapyard, showing you the piles of crushed cars, broken home appliances, and seemingly endless bins and barrels of various parts. it's a labyrinth of scrap, irregular alleys and lanes zig zagging all over the place. you're gonna get lost in here, you can just feel it in your bones. in the back is the car crusher, a barbaric looking piece of machinery that simon seems especially proud to own and operate. judging by how full this yard is, you'd guess he gets plenty of use out of it. the heat from the rising sun seems magnified in here, possibly intensified by the piles of scrap metal all around you, piled much higher than you are tall. simon walks alongside you, peering around each corner as if he's looking for something.

"'ang on, lemme call soap." simon tells you mere seconds before letting out an earsplitting whistle. "soap! come!"

there's an instant commotion up and around a blind corner, the sound of a big body hoisting itself off the ground and running towards you as fast as it can while you and simon saunter in the general direction of the noise. when you finally see soap, you stop dead in your tracks, jaw dropping so hard you're afraid it'll scuff your already dirty shoes.

this whole time, you'd been expecting some sort of half-pitbull junkyard dog, a canine with a skull that's roughly the size of a watermelon with badly cropped ears and a tail that won't stop wagging. what's bounding up towards you on all fours isn't even remotely close to what you'd seen in your minds eye. soap is, in fact, a fully grown man wearing shoes and gloves shaped like paws, with kneepads and the tiniest black speedo you've ever seen. there's a pert little rubber tail sticking out of a hole in the back, wagging as he wiggles his hips in obvious excitement. a shaggy looking mohawk is crushed under the strap of a black and brown leather mask that's made to look like a rottweiler's snout with floppy ears attached at the top. he looks at you expectantly with the bluest eyes you've ever seen, whining a little bit through what sounds like a gag of some sort.

simon's behind you, his big broad body blocking your retreat when you instinctually try to take a step backwards and away from the petplay enthusiast that's come to a skidding halt and kneeling at your feet. it's hard not to stare with wide eyes at the man in front of you. you're not anti-kink by any means, but, christ, some warning would've been nice, or at the very least a fucking consent check. still, you're not really in a position to argue. you can't afford to pay whatever simon's towing fee would be, seeing as you barely have enough for gas and food. too late to back out now, you suppose.

"you're right. your kennel fees would be enormous." you deadpan, and simon laughs behind you with a deep heh heh heh. a gloved hand presents a well-chewed rubber ball from over your shoulder.

"muzzle will stay on, but 'e can still fetch. it's 'is favorite game, so it should keep 'im occupied for a while. i'll bring lunch f'ya both 'round one." he says as you take the ball, noting the deep toothmarks that are suddenly very obviously human. "be good, soap. remember- no 'umpin' or nothin'. i'll let 'er 'ose you down with cold water if you can't behave."

it's wild how much his threat to soap makes you relax. ok, so this isn't a sex thing, really. he just wants someone to treat his boyfriend (you assume) like a dog while he gets some work done. outsourcing what seems to be a 24/7 lifestyle thing to a desperate traveler. it's still jarring, this nearly naked man in fetish gear loudly panting through a leather mask at your feet, but, hey. you've been to pride before, it's nothing you haven't seen. it's nothing you've ever participated in, either, but you suppose new beginnings will bring about new experiences. you'll just treat this man exactly like a dog for a while and maybe you'll be able to get back on the road soon.

"i'm sure i won't need to do that, he looks like a very good boy." you coo down at soap, who wiggles his hips so hard it makes the rubber tail go whap whap whap against his asscheeks. you really, really don't want to think too hard about how that tail's connected. simon chuckles and pats you on the shoulder.

"that's the spirit. i'll be in the office, let me know if 'e acts up or if you need anythin'." he says before stalking off back through the maze of rust, leaving you alone with soap.

"so." you start awkwardly, and soap huffs out a laugh from behind his leather snout. "hey! just gimme a second, ok? i was expecting a mean pitbull or something, not-" you pause. best to just keep treating him like a dog. "-such a handsome, nice boy. so sue me for being startled."

soap's eyes crease in the corner, an obvious smile, and when you absentmindedly toss the ball a little and catch it his attention snaps to the chewed-upon red rubber.

"can you show me somewhere that i can throw this? this, uh, lane isn't long enough for me to really chuck this, i don't think." genuinely it's amazing this man's impeccably bronzed skin isn't cut to shit, what with all the jagged metal sticking out of columns of ruined cars and appliances. soap's scrambling back to where he came from like a bat out of hell, and you find yourself jogging a little to try to keep up and not lose him.

he leads you to the fenceline, a long open lane that leads right up to the building, with a lawn chair propped up next to a very large dog house in the shade.

"think simon'll be mad if i borrow his chair?" you ask the gagged man that's hopping up on his knees trying to get the ball from your hand.

"mmrf mmmrf!" he 'barks', and you laugh.

"that a no?" you tease, eyebrow cocked as you hold the ball above your head.

"mmrf!" ah. one for yes, and two for no. or it might be the other way around. hm. ah, well, you figure a loyal dog will let you know if you've crossed a line sitting in his owner's spot. you chuck the ball towards the house as you wander towards the shade, laughing as soap scrambles to try to catch the ball, watching him scoop it up with his paws and open the 'jaw' of his leather mask, placing the ball snugly inside before trotting up to you, head held up with pride. the second you try to take the ball, he dodges, clearly in a playful mood as he rests on his forearms and wags his ass in the air.

"oh, you little shit." you laugh as you try to catch the wiley motherfucker to pry the ball out of his muzzle. soap seems thrilled that you're playing along, trying to duck and weave out of your arms reach while you urge him to 'drop it, soap! drop iiiiit!'. when you finally grab the ball and chuck it again, he shoots off after it, moving much faster than someone on their hands and knees should be able to. you post up in the lawn chair, happily accepting the ball that he thankfully chooses to deposit in your lap. your hand hovers over his head as you debate giving him pets. is that crossing a line? you should probably ask him first, right?

"you want head scritches? is it ok to pet?" you ask in a sing-songy voice you reserve for animals and babies too small to make words yet. soap's eyes go wide a minute before you get an affirmative and enthusiastic 'mrrrf'. you slide your fingers under the strap, massaging at the scalp there while you watch his eyes slide closed out of bliss. you wouldn't know for sure, but you'll bet it feels every bit as good as when you get a backrub underneath your bra strap. you can't help but laugh as soap's leg kicks out just like a dog's, thudding against the ground and kicking up dust.

it's funny, really. sitting here in this scrapyard with a half naked man who's pretending to be a dog while enjoying the shade on a warm and sunny day is the nicest time you've had in a good, long while. it sure beats the shit out of any day spent under phil's roof, that's for damn sure. you throw the ball a few more times, and eventually soap seems to get tired from all the fetch and flops down at your feet, sighing contentedly. you hover your hand over his chest, raising your brow in a silent question- is this ok? am i taking it too far if i pet your chest like a dog?

soap, bless him, seems thrilled at how much you're playing along, barking once as he rolls onto his back with his elbows, wrists, and knees bent, kicking his leg out again as you pet at his thick, dark chest hair, making sure to keep your touches all above the sternum. if soap gets hard, the head of his cock peeking out of his tiny little shorts while you gently card your nails through the dense patch of body hair, you politely ignore it, chalking it up to involuntary bodily reactions.

"y'gonna spoil 'im if you keep carryin' on like that." simon's voice comes from seemingly out of nowhere, and, shit, is it one already? you retract your hand like soap's scalded you, immediately standing to get out of simon's seat. soap whines a little in disappointment at the lack of your touch, rolling back onto hands and knees to nuzzle against simon's muscular thigh.

"sorry, i-" a single gloved hand in the air stops your hurried apologies as he hands you a brown paper bag.

"don't fuss, you're olright. johnny bein' good?" johnny? oh. yeah. of course this grown man crawling at your feet doesn't have 'soap' written on his birth certificate. you open the offered bag and find a sandwich- turkey on rye- and a cold can of coke. hell yeah, that sounds perfect.

"yeah, he's a good boy. and, uh, thanks." you raise the lunchbag slightly, and simon grunts in acknowledgement, leaning down to pet soap behind his leather ears. "i can see what you meant, he's got a lot of energy. you might as well build him a giant hamster wheel to run on, just watching him go after that ball makes me tired."

simon huffs out a laugh. "well, thanks t'you i've gotten more work done than i 'ave in a good long while. 'preciate it. i'll call the mechanic after lunch and make an appointment for 'im to come take a look at that van of yours."

"sounds good." you sit tentatively back in the lawn chair, putting your soda in the faded plastic cupholder built into the arm and cracking it open.

"think you can 'andle a few more days of keepin' my boy busy? not sure when price will be able to come by. only mechanic f'miles, 'e's got a full calendar, even with 'is employees 'elp." simon says, unbuckling something on soap's mask. it's not until he pulls it free that you can recognize it for what it is- a bone-shaped rubber gag, covered in drool. you have to blink twice to stop from staring at how chewed up it is.

"yeah, i think so. i think we've had a pretty nice morning together, huh boy?" you ask, and soap just wiggles his ass in an approximation of a wag, audibly panting through his mask.

"you like your new friend? yeah? olright, c'mon. gotta feed the both of us. you stay out 'ere and knock on the window if ya need anythin'." simon instructs while he and soap head back towards the door. it takes a few moments alone and a bite of your sandwich before you piece together that neither of them can eat in a mask, and that you're probably not allowed to see either of them without one. maybe the mask is a kink thing for simon too? ok, sure, that's the most reasonable explanation. they're also probably gonna fuck about this, but that's definitely not your business.

your sandwich and soda are long gone by the time soap trots back to you alone, flopping into the dirt by your side and clearly angling for more chest rubs. you hesitate for a moment, wondering to yourself if you're willing to give him another boner, but you figure simon's probably taken care of him during their lunch, that you don't have anything to worry about. the rest of the afternoon is spent alternating between gently petting at him above the waist, throwing the damn ball, wrestling the damn ball back from him, and idly telling him stories about back when you were allowed to have a job. he seems to enjoy the tales of crazy customers, funny things children would blurt out at you, and small acts of kindness you'd witnessed. when the sun starts to set, soap bumps his head against your knee, an obvious 'get up, go on' if you've ever seen one.

"didn't realize you were a herding breed." you mock-grouse, earning you a huff of laugher from inside a hollow leather snout. he leads you through the maze of twisted steel to the back door, pawing at the dense wood and obviously waiting for you to let him inside.

"hang on, hang on," you tell him as you poke your head in. "uh, simon? soap wants let in, is that okay?"

the groan of a chair sliding on linolieum is your response, and in a few beats simon's masked face greets you.

"impatient mutt. gonna eat in the kennel, then? is that wot you want?" simon chides, and you can't help but feel like you're the one that fucked up somehow. "go on, then. get going."

soap scrambles in past his legs towards the front of the shop, out to where you'd seen his metal crate. you're left standing awkwardly at the door, feeling bashful for having apparently broken a rule you didn't know about. simon notices the way your shoulders are raised, the way you're caving in on yourself, just the same way you did when phil would scream and throw things. unlike phil, he seems to grin at you under his mask, apparently pleased.

"oh, sweet girl, you duckin' your 'ead because you think you're in trouble, too?" simon coos at you, reaching out and rubbing his thumb against your round cheek. "you're a right side more obedient than my johnny, i think. you'd make a proper puppy, wouldn't you?"

"not my scene." you say quietly, and he exhales a small laugh.

"pity, that." he says softly, stroking your face and staring into your eyes for a beat before continuing. "come on, lets get you both fed."

he turns on his heel and steps inside, leaving you stunned and bewildered at the doorway for a moment before you cautiuously venture back in. there's a mostly-finished plate of meat and veggies at the table, and you can hear simon talking to soap through the door, chiding him for being a 'greedy pup' over the sounds of silverware scraping off food from a plate. you just stand in the kitchen awkwardly, waiting to be told what to do in this man's home. you're still a stranger to him, really, and you don't want to overstep while in his space.

when simon returns, he chuckles to see you waiting with your hands held behind your back, patiently waiting for his instructions. he nods to the empty spot at the kitchen table.

"sit."

your obedience is practically instant. you settle into the chair and watch as simon plates your own serving of chicken and steamed veggies, the smell of which makes you hungry. the chicken looks under seasoned as fuck, but, hey, free food is free food, and you're not about to say or do anything to fall out of the good graces of someone who's willing to pay your mechanic's bill in exchange for you throwing a rubber ball for his boyfriend.

"called price, the mechanic. 'e's booked up for a while but should be 'ere by the end of next week. went ahead and moved your van to the back, keep it from gettin' broken into at night." simon informs you as he sets down your plate and silverware with a small clatter on the table. that's a much larger timetable than you'd wanted, but you suppose it can't be helped.

"thank you. for everything." you tell him for the second time today, and those dark eyes smile at you from across the table.

"obedient and grateful. sure you don't want to be a pet, pet? i'd treat ya real nice, just ask soap. lad's got no complaints." dark eyes look you up and down as he sets down a glass of water for you, pausing briefly on your soft tits before his gaze meets your again.

"that might just be the gag." you tease, and you jump a little when simon suddenly lets out a laugh.

"that thing don't stop 'im none. should've 'eard all the bitchin' and moanin' i got this mornin' after breakfast when i told 'im not to 'ump your leg. you'dve thought i'd told 'im that 'e was gettin' fixed." simon teases, and you feel your face heat with embarrassment as you eat your bland chicken, keeping your gaze down at your plate. you eat in silence, simon watching you like a hawk the entire time, like he's studying the way you sit, the way you eat, the way you conduct yourself. he takes your plate away along with his own when you finish, placing them in the sink.

"you'll stay in 'ere with me from now on. need some proper rest on a proper bed if you're goin' t'keep up with soap all week. " he tells you, tone brooking no argument, and you glance nervously at the bed in the corner. it looks like a king size mattress, so it's probably big enough for your wide hips and his broad shoulders... but what about soap?

"does soap normally sleep out there, or am i gonna be taking up his spot?" you ask quietly, nodding towards the door that leads to the lobby.

"normally 'is crate's in 'ere, but 'e'd been actin' up lately and needed punishment." simon replies while rinsing the dishes, tilting his head to look over at you. "you said 'e was good today, right? think 'e should come back in 'ere tonight?"

"he was good, but. well. that's your call, not mine." you say diplomatically, doing your best to be as unobtrusive and unassuming as possible. after years with phil, you've perfected it like an artform.

simon hums, sounding very pleased. "too right, it is. still, if the pup's been good, may as well reward 'im."

he shakes his hands dry over the sink, and saunters over to the door, calling out to soap.

"oi. bird says you were a good pup today. you think you've earned sleepin' in 'ere with us people?" a single, clear bark rings out from the next room. "olright. finish up and bring it in, then."

the door swings closed of it's own accord when he steps away and back towards you, leaning in close enough for you to finally notice how blonde his eyelashes are. huh. maybe he's a ginger under that mask.

"now, as much as we'd both like, s'not safe to 'ave 'im masked and gagged oll the time. you just keep treatin' 'im the way you 'ave been, and no starin', yeah?" simon instructs, voice lowered as if the man that's noisily dragging a metal cage across a concrete floor in the next room could possibly overhear him.

"your house, your rules." you reply quietly, earning you another deep, pleased hum.

"you sure you don't want to be my pup? wouldn't even make ya stay in a kennel at night. bet i wouldn't need t'punish ya at oll. think you like bein' good. y'wanna be good f'me?" he rests his forehead against yours, his cotton-covered nose bumping against the side of yours.

"my knees hurt just watching soap run around all day. i don't think i'm cut out for it." you say as lightly as possible, shoving your hands under your thighs to try to hide the way they're trembling under simon's attention. "besides, you have him, you don't need me-"

"sure i do, love. need ya t'keep soap actin' right, don't i? s'pose you've got a point, though. you're a nice, obedient bird, but i can't 'ave puppies lookin' after puppies, can i?" a loud crash and yelp from the next room elicits a sigh and an eyeroll from simon before he stands back up to his full height, finally giving you some breathing room. fuck, you can feel your heartbeat in your throat. jesus christ, was he hitting on you? while his boyfriend loses a fight with a metal cage in the next room? what's even harder to reconcile is that you liked it, the way this man praises you and pays attention to you. continuing to stay here is probably a bad idea... but, shit, it's not like you have other options. on weak knees you follow simon to the lobby, where soap's crouching down, trying to push a turned-over pet cage with his shoulder.

"can i help?" you ask from behind simon, who turns to wrap his arm around your shoulders. you freeze, uncertain, but when you look to soap, he seems thrilled that his boyfriend (or whatever the fuck they are to each other) is holding you close.

it's almost jarring, seeing soap without his dog mask. he's a handsome guy, with a slightly grown out mohawk and stubble. his strong jaw is marked with a scar that looks like lightning arcing across his chin, and when he turns his head you can see another mark that had been hidden by his mask, a giant star made of scar tissue by his temple. it's huge and ugly, and whatever left it must've been horrifying. you school your face into a less pitying expression, opting to focus instead on how pretty the rest of him is.

"wot a lovely new friend you've got, johnny. offerin' to 'elp you out when she's olready looked after you oll day. a right angel, this one. wot do you say to the pretty girl?" simon's praise washes over you like a warm bath, making you feel golden and glowing underneath your ribs. he doesn't strike you as a particularly easy man to please, if the way he speaks to and about soap is any indication.

"thank ye, pretty girl." soap says, his first human words made even lovelier by his scottish accent.

"of course. this isn't a job for puppies, is it? can't move it with your puppy paws, huh? i'll grab the cage and you be a good boy and just show me where to put it." you coo down at him, and when he smiles at you it's like all of him lights up like a firework as he nods feverishly. the cage isn't heavy, just big and awkward, but you manage to get it tucked into the corner soap points at with his nose with minimal cursing and grunting while simon supervises the both of you from his spot leaning against the door frame.

"there we go, right where it belongs. what a good helper! suchagoodpuppy!" you praise soap, ruffling his mohawk in an approximation of a pat to the head. he looks so pleased to be spoken to this way, treated like the puppy he wants to be. honestly, you're starting to understand the appeal from simon's end of it. puppy play might not be your kink, but seeing this beautiful man smile at you like you're personally responsible for hanging the stars in the sky might be.

simon's arm wraps around you again, this time slung low across your lower back, his hand resting on your big hip. he's getting bolder now, unless you say or do something, you imagine things will only escalate... but you're not sure if you mind. sure, this maybe isn't normally your scene, but these guys have been nothing but kind to you, taking care of you when you needed it most. would it be so horrible to let yourself enjoy them like that? to let them enjoy you?

"startin' to get offended, johnny. you behave for 'er much more than you do f'me." simon teases, eyes smiling.

"she's so good t'me, sir. plays with me as long as i want. talks sweet to me and pets me nice." soap smiles warmly up at you from his spot on the floor, and you can't help but smile softly back.

"yeah? she pet your belly 'ow you like?" simon asks, fingers kneading at the plushness of your hip almost absentmindedly, thumb strumming along your waistband.

"no. doesnae touch me below the ribs." soap looks and sounds a little pouty about it, and you don't know why but it makes you feel embarrassed to have them talk about how you touch soap as if you're not even here.

"because she knows you belong to me." simon's free hand reaches over and tilts your head up to look at him. "isn't that right? you don't play with other people's toys without permission, because you're a polite bird."

"i try to be." your voice sounds so small, and simon rumbles a low, pleased sounding laugh at you before gently chucking your chin and patting your ass.

"come on, you two. on the bed. got a movie for us before we sleep." simon instructs before nodding to you. "go get your sleep clothes and toothbrush out of the van while we set up 'ere."

a motion detecting floodlight illuminates the scrapyard when you wander back out, throwing long, dark shadows behind the piles of rusting metal as you make your way to where simon had towed your shitbox nissan just a few yards from the door. it takes a little digging before you find your sleep shorts, tank top, and toothbrush, and you change quickly in the van before coming back in to see the small pile of pillows on the bed rearranged and that soap's changed, too. gone are the paw gloves, kneepads, speedo and tail, and it strikes you as almost weird how normal he looks in just paw print boxers.

"go brush your teeth and we'll get started." simon's voice comes from behind you, startling you briefly. your hand flies to your chest as you gasp and wheel around, and you can't help but laugh at how silly your response is. it's just simon, nothing bad or scary. not like phil. he's in grey sweats, a plain shirt, and his balaclava, thus solidifying your 'his mask is a kink' theory in your mind. why the fuck else would he wear it to bed, right?

"for a big guy, you sure move quiet." you chuckle as you pass him to head to the small bathroom just off the kitchen. it's hard to say why, but the heh heh heh of his low laughter behind you makes your hair stand on end. when you come back from brushing your teeth, simon is sitting on the bed with soap tucked into his side. they look so cozy together, you feel a little awkward intruding. soap perks back up at the sight of you, not unlike a terrier, and pats the empty space on the mattress next to him.

"c'mere, hen. give us a cuddle." he looks so excited to be snuggled between you and simon, who are you to say no? as soon as you're sat down soap squirms to reposition himself so his head is against your shoulder and his leg is thrown over simon's, somehow leaning against both of you at the same time. you and simon make amused eye contact over his head, and you can't help but relish in the pleased sounding hum you earn as you gently scritch at soap's scalp. it's been so long since a man's been pleased with you, let alone two. you'd forgotten how heady it is, being liked and appreciated.

the movie starts, and it's one of the old godzilla flicks from the fifties. it's pretty enjoyable, and it reminds you of how much you prefer practical effects over cgi. every now and again soap readjusts himself, slowly sliding further and further down until his face is pressed against your chest. he's not sly, it was obvious from the get-go that this is where this was headed, and you can't help but roll your eyes in good humor as he nuzzles against you slightly.

"soap. be good." simon warns sternly, the tone of his voice making the smaller man freeze and glance up at you apologetically.

"sorry, bonnie. yer just so soft, ye ken? feels nice to snuggle up on." he rolls a little more towards you, rubbing his hand across your wide, soft stomach in gentle circles as a man in a rubber lizard suit smashes cardboard tokyo on the screen.

"i'm ok with it if simon is. it feels nice." you say softly, deferring to the obvious shot-caller. you're not lying, it really does feel nice to be wanted like this and not scrutinized and picked apart the way phil did. he only ever touched you to either hurt you, fuck you so hard it hurt, or to point out shit to hurt your feelings. being touched because you're being actively enjoyed as you are, big soft belly, stretchmarked tits and all? that's a novel thing for you. it's been a while since anyone's touched you like this, and you can't help but hope simon lets you keep this for just a bit longer.

soap's head whips around comically fast, his doglike pleading whine making you laugh. simon nods his head in chuckling approval once, and soap's face is shoved right against your tits with a pleased sigh, the impact of his face slamming back into you making you sway with a surprised laugh.

the movie continues, and by the end you and soap are turned towards each other, the side of his face pressed against your chest while you stroke your fingers through his chest hair, still not daring to go any lower than that. it's not like you'd need to, you can see the obvious tent in soap's boxers. simon grabs the remote and turns off the tv before curling himself around soap's back, hooking his masked chin on his pup's shoulder, rubbing his big hand on a hairy lower belly.

"isn't she nice, johnny? think we got lucky, 'avin' a sweet bird like 'er land in our laps." simon murmurs right into his ear, his dark eyes fixed on you in a way that makes you want to squirm.

"real sweet, sir, and a bonnie lass, too. soft as a lamb." soap nuzzles against you, eyes closed and losing himself in the sensation of trying to bury his face in your tits again.

"we like t'reward sweet 'round 'ere, don't we?" simon coos, and suddenly the room is much, much warmer. your face heats as you try to ignore the needy feeling between your legs.

"aye. can i do it, sir? cannae stand it anymore, need to taste her." soap whines against your skin, speaking about you like you're not even there. for some reason that you don't care to think too hard about, it makes you shudder, breath stuttering out as you clench your thighs.

"wot you say, sweet'eart? you want soap to give you your reward f'bein' so good?" simon's hand moves from soap's belly to your hip, grazing over the tender skin right above your shorts.

you shouldn't. everything in your logical brain screams you shouldn't. it's a bad, bad, bad idea, taking up with two of the strangest strangers you've ever met, especially right when you've just escaped a heinously controlling relationship. however, logic is the last thing you're concerned about, what with these two broad-shouldered men chomping at the bit to 'reward' you while they touch you gently and tell you how good and sweet and bonnie you are.

"please?" you whisper, and no sooner is the word out of your mouth than simon is scruffing soap by the hair on the back of his head, yanking him back away from you.

"you behave yourself, pup. she's not one of your chewtoys. if i see ya gettin' rough with the pretty bird, i'll throw ya in the kennel for the night. got it?" he growls in soap's face, angling the other man's head back at a deeply uncomfortable looking angle.

"aye, aye, i'll be good, sir. promise." soap says eagerly, his wrists still bent as if he's got little paws instead of hands. simon stares down at him silently for a moment before he lets go, sitting up on the bed.

"come 'ere." simon instructs, patting the space between his legs and pulling your shoulders until your back is flush with his chest. "take those shorts off for johnny, and let 'im make up for being such a right pain in the arse oll day."

"you weren't a pain." you reassure soap, lifting your hips to slide your shorts and panties off in one go, running your fingers through the thick mohawk as he settles between your thighs. it feels like there's hands everywhere, caressing your thighs and hips on soap's end while simon reaches over to push your tank top down and play with your tits, murmuring low in your ear.

"you just keep your eyes on soap, no lookin' back at me." he tells you mere moments before you hear a swish of fabric and feel a nibble on your ear. the way soap's smile is directed over your shoulder, you have no doubt simon took his mask off behind you... so, not a kink thing? it's confusing. "get to work, pup. need 'er relaxed f'me."

soap wastes no time diving into your pussy like a starving man, licking long, broad stripes across your core and shoving two crooked fingers into your cunt, gently massaging you from the inside as he moans against you. you're soaked already, although it's hard to tell how much of it's your own creeping arousal from during the span of the evening, and how much is just soap's slobber. he's so thorough, making sure every inch of your pussy is laved with the attention of his talented tongue. you can feel electric heat between your legs grow and grow, travelling up your spine and spreading through your body. your toes start to twitch and your hips start to buck, and every roll of your nipples between rough fingers makes your back arch.

the wet sounds of soap licking and slurping against your cunt echo off the sparse bedroom walls, making the entire experience feel that much more lewd as simon sucks hickies onto your neck and shoulders, urging soap on while he pinches at your nipples.

"'ow's she taste?" simon asks, and soap pulls off your cunt with a loud, sucking pop that makes your hips jerk and eyes roll back.

"like heaven, sir. sweetest little cunt i've ever had." soap reports back, adding a third finger with a suddenness that makes you yelp and press back against simon.

"yeah? think maybe next time i'll lie you on your back and fuck 'er cunt right over your face, let you lick us both at once. you can clean 'er out afterwards." simon tells him, laughing when both you and soap moan at the thought of it. "you like that, bird? like that mutt's mouth on ya?"

"it's so- ah!- so good." you say breathlessly, which earns you a kiss to your temple. soap gets to work lavishing your clit with attention, sucking and licking at it like making you cum on his face is his life's entire purpose, making your hips buck against his mouth as your fingers dig in to the thick thighs bracketing you from behind.

"lookit you. bet your tits bounce real nice when you're gettin' properly fucked, eh? can't wait to see that." simon whispers into your ear before sucking on your earlobe, his hot breath against your face making you shudder even more. you're so close, so fucking close, all of the nerves in your body are buzzing under your skin and you can feel your muscles twitch even more. all of you is primed and ready for release, just a little more, a little further-

a large hand slides up to your throat, not squeezing but just holding, keeping you pinned against simon's chest as you start to buck and shake and pant while soap works his hips against the mattress, chasing his own release while working hard to give you yours.

"gonna cum, love? go on, softie. cum on 'is face, make a right mess of my boy." simon growls, rocking his hips so you feel his hard cock pressing against your back, and it's enough to push you over the edge. your legs shake as your eyes roll back, nails digging into simon's thighs, and it feels like fireworks are going off inside of you, bursting into color and sound while you whine and shake in simon's arms. the sound of your own blood pumping in your ears nearly drowns out the pleased little laugh coming from over your shoulder, and the hand around your throat moves across your body to hold you in a backwards hug as you come down.

soap, however, doesn't stop his ministrations between your legs even for a moment, and it's quickly too much too much too much. you try to pull back away from his face, gently pushing at his forehead to get him off of you while your brain still comes back online, but he's not having it. when you pull on his hair, he growls against your cunt, lashing out suddenly and biting at the inside of your thigh with bruising force. the pain and surprise makes you jerk back, holler, and slap at him, but before your palm can make contact with the side of his head, ghost's big hand is wrapped around the back of soap's neck, yanking him sideways until he falls off the bed entirely.

simon shoves at you hard to get out from behind you, and is on top of soap in a flash, yanking him by the hair and shoving him into the wire crate, locking him inside. the second you realize you're seeing the back of his head, blonde hair cropped uneavenly, you close your eyes tight, knowing simon doesn't want you to see him without his mask. if he's going to defend you from soap's teeth, the least you can do is respect his rules.

"fuckin' mutt. can't 'ave nice things with you around, can i?" simon growls with what sounds like a sharp kick to his cage and a whimper from soap.

"'m sorry, sir, i didnae mean it. didnae mean t'hurt our pretty bird-"

"our bird? no, johnny. you're all muddled up. she's not our bird, she's my bird, and i gave you the chance to be sweet to 'er and you fucked it right up, didn't you? like the dumb mutt you are. can't even apologize properly, can ya? tell my bird you're sorry." simon grits out through clenched teeth, and you blanche at his words. his bird? you've only been here a day, only let soap eat you out, and he's already staked a claim on you? an alarm goes off in your head so loud that you barely register soap's groveling apologies.

"i'm sorry, lass, ye just taste so good, didnae want tae stop, ye ken? donnae ken what got into me." soap pleads, and you feel the mattress dip down next to you.

"lookit 'er, soap. even when she's scared and 'urt she's a good girl, know's 'er rules and 'er place, don't she? only been 'ere a day and 'as it down better than you." simon praises, his voice much closer. you startle a little when you feel the press of thin lips against yours, but a warm, solid hand on the back of your neck soothes you instantly, making you feel grounded and safe. maybe it's ok, maybe simon didn't mean to be so instantly possessive. the way he's kissing you feels softer and sweeter than you'dve expected from him, maybe he's all bark and no bite when it comes to you. the kiss doesn't last long, and you feel a large body lean over your lap for a moment.

"can open your eyes now. you olright, love? let me see." simon says softly, kneeling on the mattress, mask back on his face as he gently touches your knee to urge your legs apart so he can get a better look at the throbbing bite. "skin's not broken, but it'll likely bruise."

"he scared me." you blurt out, voice a little watery from high emotions. you feel better seeing soap in the cage, but you're still on-edge. it's jarring to see a man as big as him cower and whimper like that, keeping his head low and shoulders tensed behind criss-crossed metal bars. clearly these boys play rough when it's just them, and you're not sure you want in the middle of all that. plus you're still not exactly sure how you feel about simon calling you 'his' so quickly. you want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but you're not sure he's earned that yet.

"of course 'e did, you're just a soft little dove that got caught in a fuckin' mongrel's teeth. 'ang on." simon gathers the three pillows on the bed, positioning them under you and gently pressing your shoulders to urge you to lie back on them. "there you go. i'm gonna make you feel oll better now, olright?"

he shoves down his sweatpants, pulling out a fat cock that looks roughly the circumference of a red bull. it's half-hard already, twitching in his hand in a valiant effort to defy gravity and it's own considerable weight.

"that- that's not gonna fit." you tell him, eyes wide and staring at the absolute weapon hanging between his legs.

"it'll fit, just might need some 'elp is oll." he reaches down over the far edge of the bed and brings up a half-empty bottle of lube, slicking himself up thoroughly as the smell of silicone starts to fill the room. soap whines from his kennel, and from your periphery you can see him humping at the pillow that's been laid in his cage.

"quiet, you, or i'll throw a sheet over your kennel and you'll only be able to listen." simon snarls at him, and soap pipes down immediately, still rutting away without a pause in his pace. when simon's attention returns to you, you feel pinned in place, like there's a giant spotlight on you. he cocks his head to the side, his hand still working over his thick shaft as his eyes rake over your body.

"i- i have an iud, and i don't have anything. you know. if you want to, uh." you stammer out, unsure what to say. simon chuckles, a deep rumbling sound that reminds you of thunder. the warning of an oncoming storm.

"good. me n' the pup 'ave a clean bill of 'ealth, that makes things simpler, don't it?" simon tells you as he knee walks between your thighs, notching the head of his cock against your entrance. "deep breath, love. let it out slow."

it's not hard to follow his instructions when the push of his cock into your body feels like it's pressing the air right out of your lungs like the plunger of a needle. as big as he looked, he feels even bigger. the stretch of your already sensitive pussy tap-dances on the line between 'delicious' and 'too much', making you moan as your eyes roll back.

"oh ho ho, sweet'eart, you've got a nice tight cunt 'ere. gonna be 'ard t'stay offa you, innit?" simon chuckles a little breathlessly when he bottoms out, and looks back over his shoulder at soap, who's whimpering like a dog in his kennel. "which one of us you wishin' you were right now, eh? me or 'er?"

"both." soap whines, and simon laughs as he rocks his hips at an even pace that's already making you dig your fingers into the sheets. thank fuck for lube, the drag of his fat cock in your cunt would be a lot less pleasurable without it, you're pretty sure.

"of course, greedy pup. olways wantin' everythin'." simon turns his attention back to you, speeding up his rhythm, making all of you juggle with the impact of his body against yours. "'e can't 'ave this perfect pussy, though. that's mine. mutt like 'im would just ruin it. fuck, love, you look so good wrigglin' on my cock."

he leans forward, one hand planted on the mattress, and gives you a dirty grind of his hips against your clit that has you gasping and groaning. fuck, it's been a hot minute since sex has felt good and not something to be put up with, like a way for someone to work out their anger against you. it's nice to be wanted, to be coveted like this. you roll your hips up to meet simon's, and he groans a little at your enthusiasm.

"enjoyin' yourself, bird?" he asks, and you can only nod your head as you pant and grind your clit against him when he bottoms out. "tell soap 'ow much you like it. go on, don't be shy. 'e wants t'know."

you feel your face heat up, sudden embarrassment catching up to you, and suddenly putting together words and sentences is the hardest it's ever been in your life.

"it- he's so big, soap. he's so fuck- ah!- fucking thick, i've never- i've never- ah, fuck! simon!" you whine as he rubs a large thumb over your clit. it's overwhelming, somehow even more so than when soap ate you out. simon's just so big, so imposing, and all you can do is wiggle your hips and take what he gives you as that warm thrum under your skin winds up again, making your brain slow and your tongue clumsy.

"go on, keep goin'. you've never what? tell us." simon taunts as his free hand runs up and down your body, squeezing at your tits, hip, and belly while he stares down at you, panting through his mask.

"i've never been fucked so well!" you blurt out. "please, simon, please make me cum on your cock! i wan- ah!- i want to so bad!" you blurt out, hiccupping and squirming while your brain melts out of your ears and onto the pile of pillows underneath you. there's something so deliciously dirty about it, about hearing soap whine and pant from his cage on the ground, being made to confess how much you like taking his boyfriend's cock while he only has a pillow to hump. guilt doesn't have the chance to set in before soap pipes up.

"oh, bonnie lass, ye just keep taking him so nice and i ken simon'll give ye everything ye want. pretty girl, love watching ye bounce while ye get fucked by his big fuckin' cock. wanna see him fuck ye from behind and make that big arse jiggle." soap babbles, and the sounds of his cage rocking and rattling gets louder as he speaks, clearly picking up the pace as he fucks his own bedding.

simon only responds by dropping his weight to his forearms, bracketing your head and trapping you underneath him as he really starts putting his back into it. there's something extra thrilling about the way he stares at you from behind his mask, his face forbidden from your eyes. beads of sweat roll down his arms and drip from his shoulders onto your skin, and somewhere in the back of your cock-addled brain, the desire to lick them up is only barely restrained from becoming action.

your orgasm slams into you, harder and more acute than you've ever experienced before. all of the tension in your body is flung out of you with a velocity that makes you sincerely doubt it'll ever come back. it hardly registers that the yell echoing through the studio apartment is yours, or the loud grunt from soap's kennel, or that simon's sitting back up on his knees and digging his fingers into your big soft hips, leaving divots in the fat as he slams into you hard as he chases his own orgasm.

"gonna fill you up." is all the warning you get before simon groans above you, his hold on you tightening to a bruising pressure before he pulls out with a grunt and flops onto the bed next to you, yanking a pillow out from under your head to take for himself. he rolls his mask up to his nose, and you only get a glimpse of a scarred jaw and thin lips before you instinctually dart your eyes away.

"holy shit." you breathe, staring at the ceiling and trying to get your bearings back after cumming the hardest you ever have in your life. thank god you don't have anywhere to be, walking is going to be impossible for the next fifteen minutes, minimum. simon just huffs out an amused laugh as he reaches over and cracks a window, fishing a cigarette out of a jacket that's crumpled on the floor and lighting up.

"you learn your lesson, mutt? if you behave next time, you'll get to play with 'er some more. no more bitin' the big soft bird, you 'ear? not your place to mark 'er up." simon says after a long exhale of smoke, ashing his cigarette in a mug propped on the windowsill behind him.

"yessir. sorry, bonnie." soap says, flipping his cum-covered pillow over so he can sleep, settling into his cage for the night.

"i forgive you, soap. i should know better than to bother hungry puppies when they're eating." you tease, and your heart flutters in delight when both men laugh softly in the dark.

"keep tellin' ya, you're gonna spoil 'im rotten." simon mutters, not unkindly, before you hear another sizzle of a drag on his cigarette.

"i'll make it up to you." you tell him, scooting away a bit to give him a little more room to lie down. it'd be rude to try to cuddle him, right? someone like him probably doesn't want that, not from a random hookup slash vagabond he's taken pity on. you curl up on the far end of the bed so as to give simon as much space as he wants before the sudden sound of his voice breaks the silence.

"wot you doin' oll the way over there? get over 'ere." a big hand pulls at your shoulder, not letting go until you're pressed up against his side. his arm curls around your shoulder possessively, holding you tight. "stick close, don't want you runnin' off before you make it up to me."

"m'not going anywhere." you say sleepily, your eyelids getting heavier as you feel yourself sink into the mattress. you hadn't even realized how tired you are until just now, and it feels like sinking deeper and deeper into dark and murky water, overwhelming your body as you slowly lose consciousness. your ears hear but your mind does not retain the words that simon says to you while you drift off with your head against his shoulder and his arm keeping you in place.

"too right, you aren't."

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fic recs for later

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bobiologist

9 months ago

third hour of the night

Baby Trap + Gaz x Fem!Reader | 24k

The latest brush with death opens a wound, a chasm on the underside of his ribs that hungers for something he can't discern. He eats and it’s still empty. Gorges himself tirelessly but the maw still growls for more.

(He thinks it might be a sense of homesickness. And his home has always been you.)

OR: Icarus tries a different approach to capture Apollo once and for all.

18+ | SMUT: dubcon. baby trapping, contraceptive tampering. emotional manipulation. brief violence, near death experiences. obsessive/possessive Gaz. jealousy. unsafe sex. breeding. implied stalking. trauma and the consequences of almost dying several times. reckless behaviour.

MASTERLIST | A03

The thing about dying is that it tends to put everything into perspective.

Things like the fleeting, ephemeral blink of life itself. The fragility of human existence. How vulnerable this glasslike body of his really could be.

In a matter of seconds, he would have been erased. A soot stain on the pavement where the metal frame of a small charter plane impacted the ground, bursting into flames almost instantly. Incinerating him. Melted skin, charred bone. Suffused with plastic and steel. Entombed in a crumpled husk of iron and pipedreams.

The real cruelty, he finds, is how empty this brush with death leaves him. Gaping. A chasm. He sticks his fingers into the hole and feels nothing—

Nothing but hunger.

It happens in a blink.

Eyes open, and he feels like Icarus. Wings of metal, feathers, and beeswax. He soars above the treeline in a seamless incline, gaining altitude over the ochreous dunes in the distance. The great pyramids that once took dominion in his field of vision were soon to be specks in his periphery.

There's something about flying that makes him feel both endlessly invincible and damnably fragile at the same time.

Man's hubris—

Eyes half-mast, squinting against the smoulders of the sun, he feels the heat on his skin as they grow nearer to its coruscating flames. The window is hot. He places his palm against it. Feels the tremble of the machine as it works against gravity to free itself from those stifling confines.

Kyle’s eyes slip closed—

—and he's suddenly reminded of why hubris is defined as a defiance of the gods.

(Nemesis rakes her nails down the metal flesh of the bird, unyielding its wiry skeleton underneath; where are your wings?—

—man, willful creatures with their desire to be within the stars; cosmogyral. and oh, she laughs—)

Like Icarus, the plane meets the sun in a hard, hateful kiss, sputtering out in a series of agonising whimpers. The cockpit screams. Howls, shrieks, warning them all of an impending doom—

(—apollo, apollo, apollo—)

And then he's falling. Weightless. Wingless.

(too low, terrain, terrain; pull up, pull up—)

“Fuck!” The curse is garbled in his headset, nearly swallowed by the agonal hiccups of the plane nose-diving to the ground. “I don't know—I don't—” (—pull up, terrain, terrain; pull up, pull—); “we're stalling, we lost the engines, we're—”

In his periphery, he can still see the blurry blots of the pyramids smeared under the plunging freefall to the ground that Pharaohs have kissed with the soles of their feet. They flicker in and out of his line of sight, a taunting reminder that his kin don't belong in the skies. That they build from the ground up.

Amid the chaos, Price shouts something—a warbled hiss, words stuck in the back of his throat, limping out of his pale lips in a wheeze; gravity wraps a mocking hand around his neck, giving a tight squeeze. Kyle can see the whites of his knuckles against the armrest, skin prickling with goosebumps as they're dragged back to the dirt.

by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return

He folds suddenly, torso flopping down over his thighs, hands screwing themselves angrily against the nape of his neck. Protective embrace. Through the angular cut of Price’s bent arm, a blue eye gleams in the flickering dark—electricity cut; the only light source inside the cabin a devastating flash of sun each time the plane rolls—and the anger there, he knows, is pasted evenly across his face.

Fuckin’ helicopters. We'll take a bird instead.

Hubris, he thinks, just as Price barks out, get down, Sergeant!

Survival training ensures his movements are fluid. Unconscious. He tightens his body into a ball, hiding all his fleshly organs from spilling out across the aisleway. Scarred palms cupped over his head, his stem.

Couched into the claustrophobic space between his knees and the hard plastic of the seat in front of him, he finds he can't breathe like this. That training hadn't prepared him for the way gravity feels when it's trying to crush something into dust—but he heaves through the hypoxia, blinking furiously against the phosphenes spooling like ink blots over his eyes.

There's a whistle in his ear, a swooping nausea in the pit of his stomach. He tastes blood in his throat. Feels the fluttering winds of his trapped heart beating against his larynx with every swallow.

His thoughts are tangled. Knotted. The edges fray, unravel. It slips through his fingers, translucid. Weaving through the gossamer fogging through his mind. A thick, impenetrable cloud of mutinous emotions. All frothing over the other, intangible. They're drowning each other in a desperate bid to stay afloat, and Kyle can't bring himself to reach for one over the other, opting instead to save none at all.

There's a roar. Brontide. It echoes in his head as the pyramids once again fill the entirety of his vision. Close to the earth. Close to death—

Kyle doesn't pray. Doesn't beg for forgiveness, for salvation.

His mum might. He thinks he ought to, but where he should find repentance, sorrow, fear, he instead feels anger. Uncovers it like a forgotten relic. A childhood toy. Holds it like a knife to his throat.

It's vicious, this fury. This rage. Consumes him from the inside out, blisters through his veins. Chokes him—

In between the apoplectic bitterness, memories flicker by. Broken, fractured remnants of a youth wasted in his grim, spiteful anger. Ironic, now, since he tastes fury, bellicostic and wrathful, in the back of his throat, bubbling up, florentis.

Bathed in the endless red fury of his mindseye, he thinks of his mum. Standing up in church, her fingers knotted tight against a rosary as she murmured along with the passages, his father sat beside her. His brothers, and sisters. The life he led up to this point, and then—

—you.

Life in stages. Snippets. Him, you. It rushes by in a maelstrom of want, need, and anger.

It's short. The distance between knowing you and now charted in a paltry decade; an infinitesimal amount of time that leaves him feeling bitter, and regretful. He barely had you, and now—

Reincarnated as Icarus. Cobbled together from clay and feathers, subsumed with the ghost of a wilful man. Haunted by fate. Tortured with the endless agony of a looping, meandering death to kiss the sun and fall from grace, wingless. Scorched.

His life is a mere echo. Smoke from a snuffed flame.

And you— You. You, you, you:

Kyle finds you when he's running after a man through the tangled, indifferent streets of London.

Weaving, bobbing around the crowd gathered around—clusters of tourists standing still on the sidewalk, forcing the herd to mould around them; idle passersby meandering through the throng of a Saturday afternoon rush—the man he's chasing uses them all as an obstacle. A place to hide.

It nearly works, too. And if anyone else had been pursuing him, Kyle knows he'd have been long gone already. Seamlessly swallowed up by the rabble.

But Kyle's different.

For the entirety of his career, Kyle has been told he's more instinct than man. Reactive. The sort of person that was undoubtedly reincarnated from a wolf, one who used to prowl the boreal forests for musk ox and caribou.

When people run, he just—

Chases.

It's innate. in his blood. Instinctual.

And everyone knows better than to run from a predator. To trigger their prey (hunt, kill, consume) response.

So, when the man slips from his partner’s grasp and flees down the crowded streets of London, Kyle doesn't think. Not for a second. He locks his eyes on the man's back and follows.

He cuts a jagged path down the crowded streets, using the meandering passersby to his advantage. Thrown down to the pavement as obstacles in his pursuers' way, ones meant to trip Kyle up. To gain ground, put distance between them.

It's a futile effort in the end. He loses momentum and speed with each person he shoves, and Kyle soon closes in on him, less than an arm's length away. So close Kyle can taste the pungent burn of his cologne in the back of his throat, fingers reaching, nails grazing over the polyester fabric of his jacket, and—

You're there. Suddenly. All at once.

Thrown, roughly, into his chest. The only thing keeping you from breaking your nose on his kevlar being your fists touching his sternum before the rest of you followed.

Eyes wide, wild with fear, shock, you gaped up at him, blinking fast. Your pretty mouth opening, closing. The broken words swallowed down, crushed under the weight of your confusion, your fear.

With your chin tilted up, he could see the curve of your vulnerable neck, eyes drawn to the shadows under your jaw where your heart pulsed against your skin. Vein throbbing in tandem with your heartbeat.

Reflectively, his hands jerked up. Arms locking around you, palms bracing you—one falling to the small of your back, the other cupped protectively against the nape of your neck. It brings you closer to him, pushes the endless softness of your body into his hard, unyielding armour.

And—

Well.

It's not often—if at all—that he loses sight of a mission. Let's himself become distracted, pulled away. And even now, he's not. Not really. He can still see man in his periphery, nothing more than a bobbing head of blond hair, and he knows that his partners are waiting for him by the entrance of an alley. Crested above the crown of your head, he sees one of them—Marcus, he thinks—jump out, tackling the man to the ground. Domhnall follows suit, gun cocked, and aimed at the struggling man's head, finger never having left the trigger once since he set off in pursuit.

Kyle never had to give chase, anyway. But the man ran first, and—

A bad idea, really.

The men he works with now often joke that he's more instinct than man. Chasing after moving targets like a wolf trying to run aground an elk. Under the perceived stupidity of the action lingers a honed strategy. One passed down for aeons.

Chase, keep pace, until something gives. Something breaks.

And it's never him.

Until now.

You just fit. Like you were made to be in his arms.

Kyle knows, muted and distant; the thought all tangled up in the back of his head, that he should let go of you now. Gently nudge you on your way. Out of sight, out of mind. Go back to where the man is being wrangled into cuffs amid an agitated crowd murmuring to themselves, all trying to peek over the shoulders of the other officers, ones now congealing into an imperfect circle after spilling out of the blacked-out Tahoe parked near the curb. They'll need help to keep the crowd from fringing on their arrest. Kyle knows this. Knows, too, that he ought to join.

But he doesn't.

Can't.

In the gloom of a midday drizzle, you burn.

Bright. Ferocious. The coruscating gleam of your gaze is enough to render him to cinders at your feet. Burnt sage, sweetgrass. Bushels of charred barley. Ceremonial in this poignant unmaking; this chiseling down of his being into ash at your altar. He's swept up in it. The thick smog that congeals around you in a dense plumage of smouldering earth. Hallowed lands.

It razes him.

You: apollo—this devastating creature of pure light.

He wants to bask in it. Burn his flesh on your ethereal glow. Leans in to feel the white-hot lick of flames dancing, cosmogyral, across his flesh.

(Godlike, but you fit in his arms with an ease that belies your otherworldly splendour, that defies the partitioning between man and god—)

“Hi,” he says instead, the word chipped down to the marrow. Bare. Fractured. “You okay—?”

It's here, in this pardoning breath, where he finds the extent of your facile mortality. Beneath his hands, you're supple. Soft. Through the knitted cashmere of your sweater, he can feel the heat of your skin bleeding into his palms. His fingers clench, and he meets pillowed bone.

You're fragile. Vulnerable.

(a man threw you into him with an ease that prickles along his nape; chase hunt consume:

protect. shield. provide—)

Instinct, he thinks. More urge than man. Primal. Animalistic.

Kyle can't remember the last time he felt like this way about anyone. This heavy, poignant drive to burrow his face into your neck, to breathe in the loamy scent of you, and bite down, claim.

His teeth ache. He flexes his jaw to stem to throb under his canines. Wet, pulsing—like an infection (a heartbeat).

As saliva floods his mouth, yours opens shallowly in a huff.

“I'm fine,” you're saying. Dazed, windswept. “I'm—”

He clings to you harder. Knows that his grip is undoubtedly popping blood vessels under your skin like bubbles, but he needs this. Needs time. Needs you.

A minute longer. Just a minute more—

If it hurts, you don't make any show of it. Impassive in your shock, you gaze at him. Flay him alive under the burning charcoal of your heavy stare.

He thinks—

this is it. my apollo.

—but someone is calling his name. Fingers pry apart his hold on you, shoving him back into the iron embrace of his peers.

“I’ll take over, sir,” he hears through the clamour of noise. “I’ll take them to the paramedics to get checked over. You can let go now—”

“C’mon, Garrick, let go—”

The commotion heightens. Through the hands, the shoulders, the push and tug, your eyes never waver from its perch along his thundering jaw. The anxious, angry pulse of his ire blooming viciously in his veins.

(how dare they—? how dare they touch you—)

Your mouth opens again. Soundless, but he hears it like a gunshot.

“Go.” And then: “I'll be fine.”

It breaks. His partner wrenches him back, stumbling under the sudden momentum as Kyle lets his fingers ease up, releasing you. You're dragged away, swallowed soon by the crowd, but like a hunting dog, he doesn't look away. Can scent you even when you're gone; a thick, earthy scent collars around your neck, and leads him back to you.

He moves to follow it—

A hand lashes out, slams against his sternum. “Kyle! Come on, man, we got a fuckin’ criminal to detain—”

He blinks, wrenched from this reverie, this stupor. “Fuck,” he spits, tasting ash between his teeth. “Fuck—!”

“You never think,” is what his higher-ups often tell him after he sprints, full throttle, at a target within seconds of them making off. “Your performance is incredible, Garrick, but you just never think before you act—”

This isn't true. Kyle thinks a lot. All the time, really. Kyle's mind has the propensity to spin itself into exhaustion; to never cease. A constant loop. Endless spirals.

He thinks about everything. Nothing. All of it shaded in both abstract ideas and concrete plans.

Because the thing is:

Kyle sees the world—or rather, situations—as a chessboard. Pieces, pawns, meant to be moved in a preordained sequence.

But telling people who believe that the definition of subordination is waiting for the green light to trickle down from several floors above despite those men only having fragments of a puzzle is a lost cause. A battle he's never, ever won before.

So, he relents. “Yes, sir.”

Relents so much that his palms carry jagged crescent moons across his life and heart lines. Swallows down the fury, the rage, even though it blisters through his veins. A permanent, simmering agony burning him up from the inside out.

Flashes a grim salute to hide the hissing vitriol as it claws up his throat, tearing tissue as it climbs, until all he tastes is blood flooding his mouth.

“Good,” they simper. “Keep that up, and maybe one day, you'll be where I'm sitting.”

His ambitions are worn on his skin. He feels something hot, sticky, congeal between his fingers, and knows that he'll soon be wearing a pastiche of ananke’s brode on his flesh.

Ambition, he finds, feels like choking himself until his vision goes blurry around the edges. Until hypoxia bleeds in, dripping down his periphery in tarry black splatters.

It feels like swallowing his tongue. Burying himself alive on his—

draw the line wherever you need to, Sergeant.

—righteous fury.

His palms itch,

like an infection. untreated. left to rot. gangrenous. septic. his blood is polluted. he feels the fever run, red-hot, through his veins, charring bone.

marrow burns to ash. he finds a peculiar comfort in the fire.

moth to a flame. maybe it's only natural, then, that he goes to find you.

The scent trail fades, erased under the stale tang of a restless crowd; admixing into the nauseating smells of London after dark.

But where it began, he finds a flickering ember. Discovers your chevelure, and winds it around his aching palm until it hides his brode under starlight.

Everything is murky grey, but he finds you in pure white. The cashmere sweater is a beacon, luring him in, and he hides his intentions under the guise of militaristic concern. Altruism. Crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Tells the paramedics hanging loosely around you that he has a few questions for you. Purely professional.

They don't question him. Eagerly offer up your name, your date of birth, your address, your status. He doesn't even have to pull rank to get it. When he bites into the thought, it tastes of bittermelon.

How easy could it have been for anyone to discover, then. To pick pieces of you between their fingers, plucking ripe cherry tomatoes off the stem.

Kyle bites back a snarl, and offers then a wide, gleaming smile instead. Baring teeth. Says, “thanks, mate,” and weaves around them before they can see his fists shaking by his side.

He finds you standing by the curb, curled fingers tucked tight against your temple as you survey the throng of lingering onlookers with an impassive, flat stare. Limned in hazy red and blue, you look almost like a picture. A painting. Something archaic. Special. He wants to hide you away from the prying eyes of the reporters congregating down the street, all rallying for the biggest headline on a new story.

At the same time, though, he wants to stay aside. To watch. To let the rest of the world see you behind a thick sheet of plexiglass. Visible to their voyeuristic gazes but untouchable to all,

(bar him)

His heart thunders when you turn. Chin tipping, tucking against your pearled collar to peek over your shoulder. Even in the matte grey gloom of London, you burn. He blinks. Blinks again.

You're turning now, brows drawing together as you struggle to piece together why he's lurking behind you like a shadow, but—

You brighten at the sight of him. Recognition chewing through megrim. Still curled into a loose fist, you lift your hand and give him a small, perfunctory wave. You must expect him to stop here, a modest, safe distance away.

Your brows knot once more when he doesn't. When he steps, boldly, outside of the lines of societal propriety, and into your orbit. You wear this flummoxed uncertainty like a mask. Kyle finds it more endearing than he ought to. Finds, too, that he wants nothing more than to see you bare.

“Hi,” he greets again, just shy of an arm's length away. Even with proximity, it feels too far. “You alright?”

Breathless, you murmur: “yes,” and then, hurriedly, like you've just remembered yourself. “Thank you. For, um, catching me, I guess?”

Catching you. The wording needles under his skin, an ugly, vicious itch he can't scratch. But he supposes that's what it looked like from the outside in. Stopping a fall. Protecting a civilian.

You were pushed, shoved into him, and he caught you. Held you aloft as his partner took Kyle's place in the pursuit.

So, he takes it. Smiles again, softer this time. All that rugged, boyish charm that his friends used to tease him over.

Deadly that is, mate. Dunno how any bird can resist a smarmy fuckin’ grin like that.

Model, ain't he? Pretty boy. Maybe you should change careers, eh? Bet Givenchy is frothing at the mouth for a looker like you.

And it works. Of course, it does.

Hook, line—

“Had me worried there that he might have hurt your pretty face. Was proper ticked off, so I thought I'd come and check on you—”

At pretty, you duck your head shyly in response, lips warbling around a nervous smile. Eyes bright, gleaming, under the hazy smear of red and blue light.

He makes a show of checking his phone, brows tightening at the time played in neon white.

“Gettin’ late. You live close by? I, uh, I'd feel terrible sending you home by yourself at this hour,” there's an immediate protest on your lips. He nips it with his teeth. Gives a bashful grin. “And, ah, I like talking to you. Wouldn't mind continuing the conversation if you're interested?”

You're burning. Grinning under a plume of demurred appeasement. Sweetened by his bold words, and the wide, boyish smile he wears.

And—

—sinker.

Dazedly, you offer him your hand, stammering as his thumb brushes delicately over your knuckles. Lips wet, glossy. He wants to lean down, lick across them, and taste you on his tongue. But Kyle refrains. Rocks back on his heel, reluctantly dragging himself away.

It's endearing, endlessly sweet when you unconsciously follow. Leaning forward, eyes wide and full of wonder.

In the next beat, you give him your number.

He takes that, too, and holds it.

At the foot of your door, you thank him once again for catching you. The joke rolls off your loose tongue in a playful quip that he snatches up from the air, holds in the palm of his hand.

“Anytime,” he says, softened under the pale moonlight.

caught. catching you.

he sees it much differently.

to Kyle, you were a gift thrust into his unexpected hands. a pretty little box for him to unwrap, unravel.

(his, and his alone—)

As he hits the ground, he thinks of you.

As flames fold over his body, ripping through broken metal, he hears something crack. Hears it shatter.

And he still thinks of you.

Kyle crawls from the burning wreckage with the bloodied, broken tips of his jagged nails digging into the scorched pavement. Emerges a phoenix. Rising from the smouldering husk of a plane mangled on the pavement with fawnlike legs and an ache in his jaw.

Intact, he finds, but there's an echo in his head. The sound of breaking glass. Bones snapping like twigs. Something shatters. Something breaks.

He holds his hand to his chest and knows, then, that it's not so much a fracturing of bone or tissue, but a cage. A prison. Something housing the things he'd rather not think about.

It's fine. It'll be fine.

He crawls through the smoke to get to Price and doesn't think about the oil spill he left behind on the pavement.

Price says, “that was close,” in a tone so unbothered, so unconcerned, that Kyle has to take a moment to reacclimate himself to his trauma after being knocked so far off-kilter. Jerking back into flight or fight after that blase dismissal when the smouldering ash begins to clog the air, spewing noxious poison from the chemicals, the metals, now completely aflame.

He might think Price is numb to this, to falling from the sky like every parable of Icarus he's ever heard (if the ambitious god had metal blades instead of feathers for wings), but adrenaline makes his senses keener. Sharper.

As the idea of his captain being an unrepentant sociopath (the jury, though, is still very much out on that one) starts to congeal from its incorporeal shadows, he catches the shake of his hands as he pats his beast pocket down for the stash of cigars he keeps on his person.

Trembling, white-knuckled. Each pat feels much too heavy than it ought to be. Too forceful.

He gets it, suddenly. Thinks he might understand Price in a way he didn't before.

So, he says, “yeah.” And when it comes out far shakier than he intended, he clears the soot, the iron tang of adrenaline from the back of his throat, and adds: “a bit too close, mate.”

In the end, they take him away on a gurney to a medical ward in a nearby city.

Kyle isn't hurt—barring the contusions, the bone-deep bruises, the cuts, the lacerations—but they pay little attention to his protests when they poke him, prodding at his insides to find a phantom crack in the tender network of his body.

Physically, he's fine. Nothing amiss at all. Everything is in good, working order—if a little scraped around the edges.

They decide to keep him overnight for observation, though. The doctor's worrying about head trauma, concussions. Price, too, is forced to stay—not so much kicking and screaming, but certainly with a lot of complaining that echoes down the hall (bloody fuckin’ muppets—can’t you see I'm fine?)—and he takes a marginal amount of comfort in knowing that he's not the only one on mandatory best-rest.

It all could be worse.

He thinks, then, of Soap. Of the gaping wound in his head—blood spilling everywhere. Ghost leaning over him, sounding less like a human with each harrowing Johnny! that was ripped from his throat.

The endless trawl of uncertainty as they carried him away, his hand falling from the gurney. Hanging there, pale and limp. Jostled with the movements of the medical team as they tried, desperately, to stabilise him.

And then—

The aftermath, he supposes.

Soap sitting up in a hospital bed, head wrapped up in stark white bandages. He smiled, laughed. Said he had too much to do to leave them now, but there was something wrong. Something—

Missing, almost.

Gone.

They don't speak about it, but he knows Price and Ghost feel it all the same. Must, of course, because Price is firm, unyielding, when he tells Soap to piss off somewhere for a while. Takes each excuse to the chin, stalwart in the face of Soap's pleading negotiations.

It could be like that. Medical leave. Mandatory. Something was absent in Johnny's eyes. A hollow vacancy where hazel once burned bright in the gloom.

Kyle places his bandaged hand on his chest, feels every brag of his heart through aching skin, and knows, somehow, that it's not the same. Not quite, but—

He thinks he might be missing something, too. He's just not sure what it is, and that—

That scares him.

Because if he didn't feel the jagged glass digging into his flesh, he might not have known something broke free. Escaped. Fell, perhaps, to its death when the helicopter started to whine like an injured animal, barely able to limp through the sky.

Standard procedure would dictate that he calls someone. Schedule a session with a licensed therapist the moment he gets back home, and let them determine if he's field-ready.

But he doesn't. He thinks about Soap, and the anger in his eyes when Price told him that he was on leave, dismissing him with a simple flick of his wrist.

“How long, cap’n?” He ground out between clenched teeth. “How long are ye sendin’ me away fer?”

And Price just levelled him with a flat look. “As long as it takes, Sergeant.”

That was that. That was—

He's not what compels him to call you, but he does. Drags out his phone from his pocket, unlocks the (cracked, of course) screen with a shaking finger, and pulls you from his contact list. His nickname for you isn't anything special—can’t be, really, in this line of work—and it's boiled down to something so inconsequential, so mundane, that he feels a little bit untethered seeing it now. If he really did die, if he was seriously injured—

How would they know to call you when your name in his phone is simply: doves. A lingering remnant of your second meeting.

Doves. A pretty pair perched on the curb when you met again after texting for a week, pecking idly at the scraps left behind. You surprised him, then, when you materialised out of the air, murmuring to yourself about the sorry state of them.

Too pretty for crumbs, you lamented and reached into your pocket for a rolled-up bag of sunflower seeds. You barely paid him much mind at all, too busy scattering seeds for the birds, and watching as they scurried toward it.

It was the ease with which you moved through the world—seamless, untethered—that drew him in. The peaceful serenity that leaked from your pores, clouding around you, seemed to scour the anger that hung tight to his shoulders, hitching itself across his nape. Weighing him down. You picked the anchor up, letting him breathe for a moment through lungs that didn't feel as if they were being crushed under unfathomable pressure. All his rage accumulating right by his heart now cupped in the palms of your hands.

You turned back to him, then, a defiant tilt to your chin as if begging him to say something about feeding pigeons on the street. Readying yourself for a fight despite the loose set to your shoulders, the flat, open palms dusted with powder from the seeds.

Gone was the sheepish woman who tripped into his arms. In her demurring place stood a thunderclap. A lioness.

He knew, without any sense of uncertainty, that he wanted to know more about you. Everything, if you'd let him.

(And you had. Without any sense of hesitation or uncertainty, you—)

He stares down at your name for a moment, thoughts in tatters much too thin for him to pick out. But he feels. Too much, not enough. Arguably the worst in its abundance, in its raw, fractured ache somewhere deep in his chest.

It's a want. A need. Desperation drapes itself over his shoulders in a way he's never felt before; all soot-stained, and foul. Rank. It smells like an infection: gangrenous and putrid, rotting tissue leaking puss. Skin sloughing off in blackened, festering clumps. The stench of it sits in his nose, clogged in the back of his throat. He can almost taste it.

Despite its nauseating miasma, the horrid tang pooling between his teeth, there's an odd sort of comfort in it. A familiarity he can't place.

He wonders if Soap felt this way after he woke up in the hospital with a hole gouged in his head from a bullet. Left wondering what piece of himself was torn out along with a bloodied, mangled mess of tissue, bone, brain, and grey matter that once filled the space. A vacuum the width of a thumb. A permanent pockmark on his forehead.

The thought shakes him, and drags his tender leg up to his chest, rests his forearms on his knee, ignoring the tremble in his hands, and he calls you.

His face appears on the screen, stuffed into a box. He stares at it as the call connects, taking stock of the way he looks.

In the gloam of an Egyptian sunset—swaths of ochre coruscating across dunes of gold; glinting off the desert sand as if the sun was trying to inch closer to this haven, the place it called home—the cuts on his face are limned, turning the colour of ripened pomegranates; crushed cherries. Highlighted under the mournful torpor of the sun, he looks worse for wear. Bruises under his eyes, framing them heavy kohl. Splotches of yellow—the same shade as a fresh bushel of wheat—halo around the worst of them, painting a striking picture of injury on the high arches of his cheekbones.

He should angle the phone away. Sit back into the deep blue shadows and let the absence of light hide the worst of it all from your eyes. It's what he normally does. What he should do.

But there's a hollowness on the underside of his ribs. A gaping maw that hungers for something he can't discern; rapacious. Unknowable. It wants. Yearns.

(He thinks it might be a sense of homesickness.

And his home has always been you.)

So, he calls. Waits for it to connect. And somewhere in the back of his head, he knows something isn't quite right.

But he doesn't fight it.

Can't, really, even if he wanted to because your face appears on his screen, filled out in a perfect box. The smile is already there, blooming daffodils against dark indigo. The greeting on the tip of your tongue has a flash of pink and gleaming white splitting the tomato red of your lips apart, happiness draping itself heavily over you.

But it falls, instantly, when he moves. Winces. You catch it, then, the unmistakable ugliness splattered across his face. Bruises framed in hazy, blood orange. Cuts illustrated by the last vestiges of a stubborn sun refusing to yield.

Kyle dips his chin. The stitches on his forehead pull against the inflamed skin. It's the worst of it, he knows. It catches in the fading embers of an ethereal twilight, and the hitch in your breath echoes in the room.

“What—?” The words are ashy whisper in your throat, falling over him. A rainfall of soot.

The frown on your face is a dagger. It twists, turns. Scraps muscle from bone. Leaves a gaping hole between the milky bracket of his ribs.

“Oh, Kyle—”

There are a multitude of things he ought to say. I'm fine, first and foremost. And it's the truth. He is. The cuts, the scraps, the bruises, all hurt less than the ache in his head, the throb in his muscles. The fallout from the adrenaline rush following the crash hurts more than anything else.

He should calm your worry. Laugh about it in that paper-thin way he's wont to—like it doesn't bother him, doesn't hurt despite both of you knowing he'll be up all night long for the next several weeks, running along his own desire path carved between the living room and kitchen. Not thinking at all, and—

And thinking too much.

The juxtaposition, a blatant oxymoron, will curdle in his chest, growing moss, leaking spores. He's good at pulling them out before they mushroom inside of him, burrowing deep and leaving gaping pockets behind. Scrapes them from flesh. Douses them with gasoline. Purification with fire.

With your touch. You'll wake the next morning and find him dozing on the couch. Will rain kisses across his face, gentle and soft, before wandering away to make something for him to eat. Later, you'll drag him to the tub. Wash his body as he leans against your chest, the hollow spaces inside of him slowly filling with warm, lavender-scented water.

He'll come back in pieces. Inchmeal. And then hold you as close as he can in bed as though he's trying to fuse your skin together. Crawl inside of you and stay in the brackets of your ribs.

It's all—

Routine, maybe. Carved out from years of this. This slow crawl to the inevitable end, hand-in-hand.

And yet.

(and yet: he can't.)

Can't bring himself to reassure you when his heart is racing in his chest. A naughty child sneaking cookies off the counter when his mum isn't looking.

“Almost died,” he offers, fractured and raw. “I—uh, shit. Sorry. I don't know. Just—needed to see you, is all.”

And it's the truth.

You feel it. You must. The urgency, the desperation. This time is not like the others.

“No, no, Kyle. Don't—don’t apologise. Don't ever apologise, I—fuck. I'm glad you're okay, I'm—”

Pearlescent tears puddle in your lashes. You've never cried before. Not in front of him. Never. Preferring instead to bite your knuckles, to press your face into the pillow. Unwilling to let yourself ask for more than what you think you deserve.

(And it's never enough. Not to him.

your plate is empty, you're starving. but you refuse to eat.)

And when they spill down your cheeks, he leans back with a huff. Satisfaction is whitehot in his veins and he doesn't know why. Doesn't understand how the sight of you crying over him like this almost makes him want to preen. To purr.

Blames it on the fall. On the taste of burning metal still clogging the back of his throat.

“I'll be fine,” is offered, scratched out of his throat with jagged nails. Birthed into the world on a whisper-soft scream. “You don't have to worry about me.”

Your face falls. “Of course I’m going to worry about you.”

“I promise I'm—” he chokes a bit. Tries to cover it up with a cough. The frown on your face grows, eclipsing all the prior happiness that once glowed when you first answered the phone. “I'm good. Just need some rest.”

“Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

The tension is thick. He feels it thrum against his jugular; this living, breathing thing. This heady, undeniable agitation.

Your worry manifests itself in the deep canyon between your brows, heavy and all-encompassing despite your attempts to hide it from him. The weight makes your lip tremble, and Kyle wants to devour your sorrow, your grief, from the source. Taste your sadness. Feel it on his tongue.

He leans against the knotted fingers pressed tight to his windpipe until phosphenes prickle across his vision. Midnight black against burning blood orange.

Breathlessly, he quips: “and maybe to stay away from helicopters, too.”

The laugh you let out sounds like it's underwater. Garbled, choking for air. It's drenched in hysteria, in misery.

He wants to crush it between his teeth, but settles, instead, hanging his head low, shoulders shaking. From the angle, he knows you'd never be able to tell if he was laughing or crying.

(It helps, he supposes, that he doesn't know, either—

Is just slowly being consumed by this vacuum of want, one that keeps tugging at his insides, flaying pieces of himself off and dropping it into the maw.

He wonders, then, what'll happen after he eats himself whole. Will he disappear or will the masticated scraps of himself reassemble into a Frankensteinian lump of who he once was—)

You stay like that for a moment. Both of you pretend you're not falling into pieces for all the wrong reasons.

As he's saying goodbye, you add, nonchalant, unconcerned:

“Oh, David's calling me. I was supposed to help him pick out an outfit for a wedding.”

“David?” His tone is flat. His fingers tighten around the phone. “Who's that?”

“My friend from work. You met him, I think. He was at that party we went to. In Kent.”

“Huh. No, I, uh, don't remember.”

“Oh. Well, I won't be long. And I'll have my phone on me, so if you need to talk, just call, okay?”

You're unbothered. He can understand why. Neither of you have ever really had much reason for jealousy—Kyle trusts you. Implicitly. Both of you have friends of the opposite sex, and there's never been any sense of distrust in that friendship.

But—

David. Something about it burns through his chest, twisting and ugly. And the awful thing is, he trusts you, he does.

You have everything except a ring, and—

Well.

Synergy is a knife sliding across bone. Understanding skirting on the edges of his periphery, within his grasp. Obtainable. He reaches for it, clawing with eager fingers—

It breaks against his knuckles in blooming anguish, dissolving into the same gaping unknown, unknowables, that sets his teeth on edge.

In retaliation, he sinks his fist into the wall, and tries to remember the last time he felt so out of control—

Your conversations take on a strange tone. Jovial, blase, but the topics are endlessly lour.

Things like perhaps the lease ought to just be in your name. And maybe he should update his emergency contact—just in case.

Just in case.

It hangs over you like a stormcloud. Just in case. He can see it in the tremble of your lip, your fingers, ones you desperately try to hide behind sips from your chamomile tea. Faux indifference to the garishness of it all. To the fact that this is a real, pragmatic conversation that's happening, that ought to happen. Because you never know.

But you avoid these conversations by telling him about your day. And soon, your time is divided between pretending as if seeing him hurt like this doesn't make you cry yourself to sleep at night, feigning strength despite the darkening lines under your fatigued eyes in an effort to not become a simpering burden to him when this is just another hazard of his occupation, his chosen career; and helping David search for a suit.

And then a tie. And then shoes. The perfect wedding gift—

Kyle, too, pretends. Acts indifferent. Unbothered. As if it it doesn't irritate him. It shouldn't. He knows it shouldn't. He trusts you. Gives you free reign to every part of himself you'd ever asked to see.

Your palms are the perfect plinth to his aching head. His shoulders broad enough to carry your burdens sat right along with his own. He knows you. Jokes, sometimes, that he could pick out your soul with his eyes closed. And you volley back that no matter where life leads you, you'd always find your way to him.

“Every lifetime,” is whispered between kisses, folded in the brackets of his ribs. “All of them. It's always you—”

So why—

Why does he feel sick to his stomach when you talk about David, as if he'd gorged himself on too much of his rage?

(why, why, why—)

This chasm inside of him grows. Gets bigger. Hungrier.

Where he could normally shove inside a box, ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, he instead finds fractured glass, fragmented and broken to a jagged point. He cuts his finger on a shard, and watches, hollow, as the blood puddles up, dripping down to his split knuckles.

He gets it, then.

The want, the greed, the hunger will consume him from the inside out.

But what, exactly, it wants is still a mystery.

(But he knows himself. Knows what he shoved into that awful, putrid chasm, and is sure that whatever it is, it can't be good—)

Egypt is a distant memory soon after. An aged polaroid of sunlight spilling over sand, watery and thick; an ocean of ochre, of burnt umber. He thinks, fondly, of the locals and their chatter as it fills the sun-dried streets, with the heat, an oppressive blanket of warmth, tucking against him.

Winter nights are static with the buzz of life. Of distant echoes of temple prayers in harmonic songs; haggling patrons and hissing vendors just outside his window.

Kyle thinks he'll miss this place for it could have been, not what it is.

Because what it is ends up being a cockpit in distress. Wind shrieking in his ear. The crunch of metal slamming with all its might against the cobbled pavement. The hiss of gas.

He didn't know fire could roar like a lion until then. Until it blooms, white-hot and wild, mere inches from his face. The snarling, drooling maws of a starving pride.

Clawing from ash, soot. Metal raining down around him, liquified under the intense blaze of the fuselage on fire. His leg twisted up in the seatbelt. Unable to get free. To get out.

Smoke in the air. In his eyes, his nose, filling his lungs.

He'll die, he thought. Is dying. His fingers scrape over concrete, flesh gnashing against grainy sand. Unable to get a grip on the slick blood that puddles out, staining the pavement and his hands.

He doesn't think of you, but he feels you there on the edge of his periphery. Lingering like a phantom, reaching for him. Get out, get out, get out—

In the bloom of gunmetal smoke that plumes around him like a sweltering cloud of heat and ash, a hand appears. Covered in grit, in grime. Blood.

“—out! We've gotta get out, Kyle. Grab my—”

Pawing in the dark, nebulous cloud, he finds Price's rough hand and latches on, hauling himself to safety. But what emerges from the soot, the smoke, is a version of himself that feels raw, fractured.

He's agitated. Leg bouncing, restless.

Price notices it on the plane ride home, eyes slanting over to stare, pointedly, at the continuous bob of his knee. Up, down, up, down. Kyle should hide it. Bite the inside of his cheek until it bleeds instead, but he doesn't.

It won't be enough to stem this urge to run, to flee.

“Almost home,” Price huffs, shifting in his seat. He, too, seems to feel that same prickling sense of unease. Kyle lets it wash over him. Not quite a comfort, but something. “Get some rest, Sergeant.”

At that, he scoffs. “Feels like I've been doing nothing but resting, cap.”

“Mm, you're young. Take advantage of it while you can.”

As Kyle rolls his eyes at that, Price makes an aborted move, hand jerking to his breast pocket as the plane rocks over a patch of clouds, turbulence shaking the frame. Searching for his cigars. Then angrily throws his hand down, fingers tight around the armrest, white-knuckled, when he remembers he can't smoke here.

“Might be a good time to quit,” he quips, chin jutting toward his hand, fingertips turning pink with the grip he has on the plastic.

Price follows his gaze, staring at his hand for a beat. And then he snorts, and pries his fingers loose.

“Nah, ‘m too old for that nonsense—” Kyle’s brows buoy, but he swallows down the harsh retort on his tongue (aren't you only thirty-eight, mate?), letting Price continue, uninterrupted. “‘sides, will probably need it once we land.”

“Yeah? Why's that?”

He grunts, and settles into the seat. The look he fixes Kyle with feels like having a cold, metal blade pressed to his jugular.

“Gonna have to make a report, Sergeant. Falling from a bird twice now? And what's this? Third time for you? They'll want a review. Full. Will probably make us talk to a doctor or somethin’.” He cocks his head to the side, presses his pink knuckles to his temple. “Make sure we're all right up here.”

Kyle flinches. Tries to hide it with a cough when Price’s eyes tighten.

He's not sure he wants to do any of that. Have someone crack his head open and rummage around looking for defects to toss in his face later on as an excuse to kick him out. Medical discharge. Honourable, they'll say. An early retirement.

“And—” he swallows down the bitterness on his tongue. “And if we just didn't—”

“Can't do that, Sergeant.”

He struck for a moment. Anger quivers in his veins, rearing up like a viper ready to strike. He has to wonder if it was Ghost or Soap, would Price—

“Believe me,” he continues, eyes fixed on the open cockpit. Intense. “If it was just us, if it was one of our own, I'd have said piss on it. As long as none of you were seriously injured, why bother wasting time? But we have to be held accountable now.”

If it was one of our own—

“Right,” he rasps, hollow. Anger scorches his insides. “Okay.”

“Believe me, Sergeant. I want nothing more than to go home, and drink this whole bloody mess away, but—”

“I get it, cap.”

And he does. He's just not sure he can really talk about it in a way that won't show the world the gaping hole in his chest, the hairline fractures that crisscross along him, all screaming the same thing—

Terrain, terrain, pull up. Pull up. Terrain, terrain—

“Gotta let it go, Kyle.”

All he sees is fog. Fire crackling from within.

“And if I can't, captain?”

“Then it's been a pleasure working with you.” Kyle swallows again, blinking furiously against the dense cloud of smoke in front of him. “I know the commander at Scotland Yard. Could put in a good word for you. Might be for the best.”

Anger is a poison, he finds, but fear—

Fear is quicker. A knife to his heart. Left bleeding on the pavement before he knew what hit him.

“Or…” Price drawls. “Hide it away. Nothing bad happened, did it? You're still alive.”

Another hand appears from the midst of the fog.

He reaches for it.

“How?”

“Lots of ways. Best one I find is to just give in to whatever it is you're feeling. Let it consume you. Then just bury it.”

“Right,” he whispers, paper-thin. But he gets it now. “Thanks, cap.”

“Anytime, Kyle.”

He does as Price asks. Buries it deep inside of himself, and greets you when you come to pick him up at the airport with a wide grin, and a tight hug. Pulling you flush into his body, breathing in the scent of you until it stains his lungs. Sickeningly sweet.

“I missed you,” you whisper into his neck, words humid against his skin. “So, so fucking much Kyle—”

“Yeah,” he rumbles, caught on the feeling your chest makes when it heaves against his. Little, breathless hiccups of relief, worry. Elation. Fear. It tastes good in the back of his throat when he steals another lungful of your scent. “I missed you, too. Fuck, dovie. Don't know how much I fuckin’ missed you.”

He clings just a little bit tighter to you, holds on a few moments longer than he normally would. Leeches the comfort your presence brings like he's starved for it. Kyle breathes in the scent of you—lemongrass and fennel; sweet and earthy—and feels that gaping wound inside of him close, just a little bit, when you fold him into a tight embrace, letting the vice of your grip speak the words he knows you'll never utter.

Things like, please, don't ever do this to me again; and, don't go, Kyle. Please don't—

There's a multitude of things he wants to say to you. An endless bastion of sorrow and happiness and grief and elation all coalescing into this heavy anchor that hangs off his rib, pulling him down, down, down—

But he can't speak through the pulsing want in his throat. The urge to bite, to sink his teeth into you and never let go.

So, he doesn't.

He holds you back instead, presses your soft cheek to where it aches the most, and buries his nose into your crown.

Tries to satiate himself on the potency of your scent, the way it fills his lungs to bursting, and pretends the gnawing feeling in the pit of his chest is a purr and not a growl.

The ravenous roar of a starving beast, hungering for something Kyle can't name.

(He wonders if Soap felt this vacuum inside of himself, too.)

The comedown of the mission is spent with you tendering his wounds, and pressing trembling fingers to his pulse just to remind yourself that he's alive, that he's here with you. Present as warm flesh instead of a cold box full of ashes.

In these soft, aching moments, he's forced to contend with the fact that he almost died. Again—

—(the word echoing in the recess of his mind, over and over; an accumulation of all those incredible near-misses)—

Almost left you alone in this world with nothing but broken, fragmented memories that would eventually fade. Fingerprints on a rusted handrail. Tangled in a gossamer of time, nearly forgotten as you grew older. Changed. He'd be the ex-boyfriend lost tragically. The one who died too soon.

Someone else, he knows, would take his place when the grief took shape, becoming a corporeal feeling you could tuck away inside your pocket instead of a molten shadow burning you up from the inside out. Ever present.

And that's the thought he gets stuck on. The one that cuts through him the most.

You—his girl—belonging to someone else. Going on dates, kissing each other, laughing together. Falling in love.

It's selfish to want you to stay single for the rest of your life should anything happen to him. Impractical, too. But it needles under his skin. An itch he can't scratch. A want he can't satiate.

It won't even matter much when he's gone. He knows this. But it bothers him relentlessly. Souring his mood for days. Making him retreat, inward, to dismantle this unfathomable feeling taking root inside his chest. This bitterness, this anger.

The thing about dying is that it tends to put things into perspective.

Most common of all, he's told, is the fragility of the human existence, of life itself. Such a shallow thing, in retrospect. Barely a droplet in the unfathomable vastitude of time, and yet—

Something he never really thought about until it was unceremoniously thrown in his face.

It's this, the sudden realisation that he's not as invincible as he's often tricked into thinking, that seems to shake the foundations of his life in ways that would be unthinkable to the him that lived weeks before his brush with death. But that man, that version of him, is swallowed whole by the unrelenting fear that pulses through him each time it passes through his mind.

A fear of one thing:

Permanence.

Or, rather, the lack thereof.

Memories will be all you have left of him, and, well—

That simply won't do.

But the problem is this:

He doesn't know how to fix it. Doesn't know, really, how to stem this nauseating desire, this urge to own, possess, consume that roils through his chest each time he catches a glimpse of you unawares, tending to some mundane task.

The idea of you floating through life without him is not a poison, but a fear. A whitehot agony that trickles down his spine. They're all thoughts that gut him, that make him agitated. Restless. He paces again, roaming from the foyer to the living room, feeling too much like a trapped animal. A snarling tiger in a zoo. He needs an out. An escape—

So he runs.

And sometimes, you join him in the mornings before you have to go to work, setting out for a jog around the block in tandem. There's a quiet ambience to these outings, a comfort that makes him sigh—relieved, in parts, that the ache in his jaw, an unfamiliar urge to bite, abates in your presence. Your proximity is the balm to a hurt he didn't know he had.

Most times, though, he's alone. Left with his thoughts and the taste of iron in his throat as he paces the streets of Birmingham with a lour twist to his lips and a tightness in his shoulders he tries to shake out by running his body to the ground. Replacing the ache in his stomach with one in his thighs, his hamstrings. His lungs. Breathes in the humid air of a midsummer morning until they feel like they might burst.

It works. Marginally. Helps in the same way he's sure chamomile tea before bed does for an insomniac. But it's something. Something to suckle on until the quiver in his guts, the gnawing chasm in his belly, abates. Surrendering—albeit, mutinously—as the heavy taste of iron floods the back of his throat, and lactic acid leaves him groaning in the morning when he swings his sore, overworked muscles over the ledge of the bed.

Kyle's in perfect health. Peak physical condition. The burn in his thighs, the tremble in his knees, is a sign of pushing himself too hard. Of edging to the very brink.

But he can't stop.

Not when his body hums like a livewire. Vitriol coursing through his veins, seeping into his tissue. Infecting him from within until he's irascible. Always on the edge. Always tense. Agitated.

Everything feels like it's plunged underwater. As if he's staring down into the pool of an emerald lake, watching from above on dry land as the world goes on.

(A place, now, where he doesn't belong.)

He knows all too well that this is just a duct tape solution to a bigger, more devastating problem, but opening the floodgates without a sluice will drown him under the crushing weight of what rushes out.

It just makes sense, then, to bury it.

The problem is:

The tinderbox where these awful thoughts, this anger, went to moulder has been crushed, broken to pieces when he fell back to earth.

He has nowhere to put them anymore.

So he keeps them between his teeth, but being so close to you makes him want to bite—

(Bad dog.

Let it go, drop it. Let it—)

Something has to give.

He calls Price.

Hovers in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway leading to the living room, and tries to pretend that this isn't a cry for help.

Price picks up after the third ring, gruff and irritable. His surly tone balmed by the heavy inhale of his cigar.

He calls Price.

Hovers in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway leading to the living room, and tries to pretend that this isn't a cry for help.

Price picks up after the third ring, gruff and irritable. His surly tone was balmed by the heavy inhale of his cigar.

“Better be important, Garrick. It's the weekend.”

“Crime doesn't work nine to five, captain. Thought you knew that better than anyone. Must be getting soft.”

“Soft,” he repeats with a derisive snort. In the background, he hears peals of laughter, the distant echo of, only thing soft about you is your midsection, honey. A grunt. A thwap. A squeal.

This must be his wife, Kyle realises. The one he never speaks about directly, but can't stop bringing up in his own way. Home, he calls her. I’m going home. I'll be home for the weekend, don't bother me. Home is missing me, I reckon. Better pack it in, then, boys.

They learned this only a few short weeks into knowing Price. Home, to him, is a person. Her. His wife. The echo, the silhouette; the one who lives in the brim of his hat, the end of his cigar. The scabs on his knuckles.

The one he left at the door when had to beat a man, a father, for information. Picked up with bruised, shaking hands as soon as he was finished. Kept tight in his breast pocket.

This little glimpse into his captain's life, heard through the tinny phone, makes Kyle swallow down his jealousy. The nausea. It's all so—

Sweet. Domestic.

“Get outta here, this is a business call—” comes the brusque rasp, pulled away from the phone, and Kyle heaves out a breath. The voice comes back, gruffer than before. All tenderness shelved back in that box labelled only for her. “This better not be a business call, Garrick.”

“Been thinking about what you said,” he murmurs, and lets his head fall against the wood frame with a thud that rattles through his teeth. “About—lines, you know. And where to draw them.”

“Ah,” Price grouses, huffing. “So this is a work call, then.”

“Dunno, honestly, cap. Just—I don't know. I don't—”

“You bothered me on a Sunday, Garrick. Better know quickly—”

“How do you do it? Going out each time when you—with your—”

“Mm,” he steamrolls over Kyle's floundering question, humming deep in his chest. “I was wondering when this might come up.”

“Were you? Was that before or after the second helicopter crash?”

“Before, smartass—”

“Right. And? Any sage wisdom to impart on me, sir?”

He sucks in a breath. “What's botherin’ you, Gaz?”

Kyle blinks, caught off guard by the suddenness of the question. In retrospect, he supposes he should have expected it. Price is nothing if not brusque.

“My girl,” he murmurs, quiet. Soft. As if it was meant to be a secret. “I just. I don't want to leave—leave her alone,” he thinks of David and has to fight back the dizzying anger that burns through his veins. “I know what this job entails, and I can do it, but—”

“So don't.”

“Don't what? Don't die? That's a little unhelpful considering what we do, cap—”

“No. Don't leave her alone, Gaz. That's really all you can do.”

The thing is, he's sure Price means something sentimental, something metaphorical, like memories. Pictures, videos. Time spent together.

But Kyle has never been much for abstracts in the past. Prefers, instead, the concretes. The tangible. The corporeal. Things he can touch. Feel.

“My wife is expectin’. Has me running around the goddamn city for banh mi so unless there's anything else to add, sergeant—”

Expecting. He knew, of course. Despite Price saying very little at all about his wife, the silence has always been loud. Black and white ultrasound photos, phone calls. Dates scribbled down on the Staples calendar he has spread out on his desk in the office. He misses almost all of them—too busy running drills with new recruits, or on the field (or yelling—you did what, you fuckin’ Muppet?!—at Soap through the phone following his recovery leave somewhere that's need to know, according to Ghost)—but every time, Kyle catches him sneaking away, phone trapped in the crook of his shoulder and ear, muttering low, gravelly, into the receiver.

Yeah, how'd it go? Everything good? Good. That's—

The silence, Kyle finds, is telling.

His own, too, because this revelation seems to have knocked the air from his lungs. He can't—

Can't speak. Not yet. Not now.

Expecting. It's—

A thought. Not particularly something he'd ever really considered much himself. He comes from a large, overbearing family. Functions, dinners. Holidays. All spent crammed into his grandma’s house in Pelham. The unequivocal centrefold. The matriarch of the family.

Caught in the indivisible lines of oldest (between just his parents) and middle child (when including his two half-brothers on his father's side, and a half-sister on his mother's), he's no stranger to a big family. Something he's always wanted for himself, too. A little inkling in the back of his head that rears, purring in contentment whenever they all get together for Sunday dinners at Grandma's house and he's full of good food, lazing on the couch as his family bickers amongst each other over a game of monopoly (his older brother is always the banker, and always, always, cheats with his two younger sisters—twins, go figure).

And his older sister, too, is expecting. Had poked your stomach three weeks ago, teasing, and when can we expect one from Gazzy?

He didn't think about it much—snapped at her for using his military callsign, kissed your temple as you sputtered at her cackling laughter, and then ducked into the kitchen to help his dad cut into the pie the twins, Lolly and Lucy, had made.

(Made, though, as in popping into Tesco and making the decision to buy it.)

And now—

“No, uh…” He swallows. Swallows again. He tastes blood in the back of his throat. Realises, when his hands start to shake and his heart slams into the brackets of his ribs, that it's adrenaline. Excitement.

“Sure,” he rasps out, words slick, tacky with his blood. “I'll, uh, give her just that, cap. And—enjoy your sandwiches.”

“Oh,” he breathes out suddenly, sharp. Deep. “I will. Goodnight, Kyle.”

“Yeah, yeah. ‘Night, sir.”

He says, with all the casualness he can muster, “remember Price? John Price? Yeah, his, uh, his wife is expecting.”

“Oh,” it rings like a gunshot. Your chopstick clangs against the tin of spicy mapo tofu. “That's—wow. A baby, huh? A whole—”

You swallow. Kids are not something either of you gave much thought to. Couldn't with his odd hours, gaping absences, and your school schedule. Nothing ever fit together back then; jagged edges of a puzzle. Lock and key forced to fit.

But now.

Now—

He folds a smile into the crease of his napkin. “Yeah. Price as a dad, huh? Reckon he'd be good at it.”

It makes you snort. “You think so?”

“He's, uh, complicated. But—a good man.” Somewhat. Maybe. “Kids, though.” He lets the wistfulness in his tone carry the burden for him, content to simply exist in this moment with you. Let it saturate the air, perfumed in his longing.

You breathe it in. This heavy, noxious miasma.

“Must be great,” he adds, reaching for another piece of siumai. “Bein’ a dad an’ all. Lucky man.”

Over a steaming plate of mapo tofu, he watches as your expression falls inward. Contemplative.

You know him enough to understand that he's talking about it because it means something to him. That there's a hidden want tucked neatly inside the words he says, whispered echoes of the ones he doesn't. Won't.

And he knows you well enough to know that you'll be ruminating on this tenfold. Replaying the conversation in your head like an old rerun. Over and over again. Needling away at the cadence, the words, until you find something worth digging into further.

(The conclusion, of course, has been laid out from the beginning.

He just wishes he had the wherewithal to see it much earlier through the smoke.)

He licks his finger, and hums around the meaty oil smeared over his tongue.

All pawns on a chessboard. In the gap, he inches his bishop forward.

Slow. Steady.

But you cut him off with your knight.

“Kids are a big commitment,” you're mumbling in between bites of bittermelon drizzled with honey. “And considering the nature of your job—” the slipup forfeits your pawn. You pretend not to notice. “h–his. Uh, his job. I just—”

There's a piece of pale green rind between your teeth. It slips down your tooth when you speak, dropping down to your lip like a flake of fallen snow.

You swallow. Lick your lips. The slide of your tongue drags away the fruit. Like it wasn't even there to begin with.

When you speak, it's softer. Barely a whisper. He wishes you'd yell instead. Scream. It doesn't tremble past a few, gentle decibels.

“—is that really for the best?”

(is it feasible for us?)

Kyle sucks in a breath between his teeth. He knows he has to tread carefully here. The ground beneath his feet was as fragile as eggshells. One misstep—

“Does it matter?” He volleys, paper-thin. “If it's something we—” he comes to a stop, a sudden halt.

Manufacturing a Freudian slip is easier said than done but somehow he does it with ease. Bashful, then. Sheepish. Like he accidentally flashed you his hand. Revealed his secrets. He ducks his head—the vision of embarrassment, now—but it's multifaceted. The move serves to leave the impression of fractured vulnerability. Bares his soul, and all his broken, naked wants with it. But it also gives you a horrific glimpse at the ugly, marbled bruise still popcorned along his cheekbones, his jaw. The tear in his ear, scarred over into a black valley bracketed by red canyons.

Raw, splintered, he adds: “if it's something they want, why does the rest matter?”

The silence that follows is long. Oppressive. It comes about with a swiftness he doesn't anticipate, and spends a considerable amount of time debating whether or not leaving it is the right choice. It's unlike him to be so uncertain. So hesitant.

But this, he reasons, is different than getting a pretty girls number under dubious circumstances, or finessing your landlord into not renewing your lease. This is bigger than the games he played in the past. More is at stake here.

So, he holds.

Watches, quietly, as you fold under the pressure. “It's just—it's a big commitment, right?”

He latches onto your uncertainty with his teeth.

“If you're serious about it—like they are about each other—then what's the problem? I think they'll be fine,” he shrugs, blase. Indifferent. Winces when it pricks against the scab on his collarbone. “‘sides, it ain't like Price is gettin’ any younger. Man's been itchin’ for a family of his own for a long time. Might be the best time, too, considering the man's luck with—uh—”

He coughs into the top of his curled fist when you flinch at his callous implication.

“—just… he's reckless, is all. Might mellow him out. Keep his head on straight if he knows what he has to come home to, and what he'd be leaving behind if he didn't.” Another shrug. “Could be a good thing for him in the long run.”

You take flight as soon as it steals away his piece. Fleeting. Retreating.

You should know better than that.

Kyle always chases the things that run—

It leads him to a pub downtown.

David—fucking David—sits on the stool beside you, sipping on a flat draft, and laughing at something you're saying.

It's innocuous, really. Nothing untoward. No immediate reason for his hackles to raise, hair standing on end like he's under threat.

But he feels it in his bones. Gnarled fingers grazed over his flesh. A warning. Sirens wail in the back of his head, and his stomach drops like he's back in the airplane, the helicopter, all over again. Plummeting to earth. G-force flattening him against whining metal—

He's too close, is the problem.

Curled over you like he's trying to keep you a secret from the rest of the world. Something Kyle knows well—intimately—because he does it, too. Tucks you into his side, barely letting anyone get a glimpse of you. To see you. They can imagine, sure. And sometimes he likes to pull back a little just to let a peak of you be seen only to swallow you back up under his bulk. A taunt, a tease. Waggishly waving his finger at the naughty person who dared look at his sun, his Apollo, without permission.

To see it like this, from the outside looking in—a mere spectator when he's been teaching his hand up toward you for what feels like his entire life—is infuriating. It's voyeuristic, he finds, catching a glimpse of you from the triangular window of the man's arm—elbow on the table, cheek perched on his knuckles. All Kyle can do is squint into this little opening, catching the aftertaste of your smile.

And the problem is, he's entirely too aware of every overprotective boyfriend clichè that exists. Knows, very well, when it stops being cute and becomes an issue. Borderline abusive. Gross. Restraining order worthy.

You're allowed to smile at men who aren't him. To drink with them in fancy restaurants wearing a dress that he picked out. It's fine. He doesn't care. You do it often, honestly. There's something about you that draws people in. Like looking up at the warm sun after a long, dark winter. It's unavoidable. Expected, even.

But—

Fucking David seems to be the exception to his patience. To his goodwill.

Maybe it's the way he pushes your glass toward you, muttering drink up under his breath. Or the way he leans in when you move back. Following you despite the obvious signs not to. Pursuing you—

Even though he knows, very well, that you have a boyfriend.

It's the arrogance, he thinks.

(Or one predator sniffing out the stench of another; lions prowling around the same lioness—)

He doesn't realise he's sneering until you catch his gaze from between David's arm. Feels it then, when he has to let his muscles lax into a smile. Easy, effortless. Just like the one you give him in turn.

Soft, tender around the edges. Melting into happiness within seconds. A rare treat you give no one but him—

A fact that makes David jerk in his seat slightly. Maybe elated by this new look, the simmering heat in your eyes is warm enough to make someone sweat.

Whatever happiness he feels is dashed, though, when he realises your eyes are focused over his shoulder, away from him. Quietly, David turns in his seat, craning his neck over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of what caught your attention so much, and—

It's real sweet, he finds, the way the haughty look on David's face falls, breaking on impact, the moment he locks eyes with Kyle. Shifting into shock, into unease. Flinching almost instinctively, driven to run out of fear.

Like he knows.

And Kyle grins. Gives that boyish smile you tell him, repeatedly, that you fell in love with—soft edges, dimples; lips stretched wide over his fangled canines—and watches the satisfaction drip down David's brow as you extricate yourself from his shadow, and are pulled, magnetic, to Kyle’s side.

Where you belong.

But more than that, where you choose to be.

The weather outside is notably warmer this time of year than it should be, and it sticks, syrupy and warm, to his skin as he sips from his third bottle of San Miguel and picks at the leftovers of your shrimp scampi.

Across from him, David nurses on a ginger and rye, and murmurs to you about something—a show, he thinks—that he isn't privy to.

It's been like this for the last two hours they've sat out on the patio. Not quite an exclusion, not really. You do your best to keep him within this little cosm David is trying so hard to build, interrupting him quietly when he goes on long-winded tangents about something that Kyle isn't aware of, and filling in the blanks.

(it's a reality TV show. we watched something similar, you remember? just like First Dates—)

But he's an outlier here. Gone too much to invest in a show with you like David is, a new addition to your usual friend group. It's never been something he's cared about before. Why stop you from enjoying a show when he's carted away to Mexico or Chicago on another mission, the end date undetermined. Until it's fuckin’ finished, Price used to gripe when he asked. Until we end it.

It can't be helped. But his hands tighten around the bottle, warmed under his palm. Condescension bleeding in rivulets down the neck, drenching his skin. He's angry. Suddenly, viciously. Filled with a sense of irritation that drums up from deep within his chest as David plucks little inside jokes out of nothing, making you laugh, and laugh, and then turn to whisper in his ear about what they mean.

It isn't your fault. It's a catalyst to dating a man halfway out the door on most days, but it itches. Prickles under his skin. Selfishly wanting you all to himself, to fawn over him, and laugh at these little jokes he makes, leaving David on the fringes instead.

Childish. Or—

He'd think so if David didn't shift his gaze toward him each time it happened, lips quirking in a small, satisfied grin. Cats, he thinks. Little yellow canaries. Tries to pull some sense of normalcy from the frothing geysers that roil in his belly, anger sloshing over the basin, drenching everything in a molten ire. Anger. Blisteringly hot.

It scalds him. Scorches his insides as David laughs, again, at a movie Kyle was too busy in Macedonia to see.

When you explain that to David, he cuts a sudden grin at him. “Gone a lot, aren't you?”

And a tension thickens in the air. Drapes around his shoulders, his brow.

“Work, yeah,” it comes out as two, rough grunts. A warning. Stay back.

But David curls his fingers over the rusting wrought iron, peering inside. “Work, hmm? Heard you were military—” his eyes flicker to you briefly, like this is something that might get you in trouble for divulging to a stranger, but they're back on Kyle before he can say anything about it. Something like, don't fucking look at her—

“David,” is what you say, low and soft, and tinged with exasperation like this is an old conversation that keeps popping up, an uninvited guest you can't seem to shake.

The warning is ignored again. Coming from him, he almost understands. Could respect his contumaciousness, even, but you? It makes his hackles raise. A flare of anger pooling in the grizzle, the filament, that holds his knuckles together.

He keeps himself composed. Somehow. Tempers down that urge to bite, to break things, even as David leans back, shrugging.

“Military,” he says again, but this time his lip curls. “Can't imagine you're very well-liked anymore. Considering the state of the world and all.”

His fingers tighten against the bottle. “Yeah,” he bites, grins. Knows it's feral. Ugly. Lip curling over a single canine. “Can't really say I'm in it too much for how well-liked I am.”

“Oh no? Not in it for the glory. The prestige. What do Americans like to say? Thank you for your service—”

“—David!” Your voice comes out sharp. A reprimand. Brows knotting tight together. “That's not—”

“What I do won't end up on the news,” he interjects, and brings his other hand down over your thigh. The sight makes David sniff, glancing away. Anger writ on his brow. Jealousy mouldering in his eyes. Kyle tries not to laugh. “And if it does, it's usually after the bad guy is in the ground, and you find out about it sitting at a desk, twiddling your thumbs all day.”

The table falls silent.

He brings the beer to his lips, taking a generous gulp. Something dark curls in his guts even as David's satisfied smile dwindles.

He sends you home first, watching David move towards the washroom from the corner of his eye.

“You'll be back tonight?”

“Mmhm. Just gonna go for a quick run. Gotta stop and pick up some razors, too.” His hand comes up, fingers scratching at the stubble growing along his jaw. “Gettin’ a shadow.”

“A run, huh?” You don't believe him, but he knows you. Knows you won't fight him too much on it—especially when you think David already left. “And I dunno. A beard might look good on you.”

“Might,” he scoffs before leaning down, pressing a quick kiss to your cupid's bow. “Might not, too.”

“Think you'd look good in anything. Moustache. Beard. Bald. I'm not picky.”

“No, ‘course no,” he teases and holds the door open as you climb inside. “My unpicky girl.”

“That's not a word.”

“Sure it is. Word of the week for Oxford, wasn't it?”

Your words are swallowed up when the taxi driver asks if you're ready to go. You give him a nod, and Kyle a smile. He watches, lingering by the curb until you're out of sight.

And then his smile drops. His hands curl into fists. He cranes his head over his shoulder, eyes riveted to the washroom door.

There's a choice here, he thinks. Get the shaving cream, the razor. Be the man you think he is. The one who runs after a heaping serving of tiramisu and the leftovers of your shrimp you couldn't finish. Maybe watch that show on Netflix that David was so keen on one-upping him on. Your head in his lap. Soft smiles, taunts. Continue this playful banter you started through until his face is buried in your cunt—victor’s choice, naturally; and you always win—and you end the night whimpering his name, not David's.

That, in itself, is a victory. A win.

But—

He grabs the ball cap from the rack near the door. It's cream-coloured. Team merchandise for ManU. A little red devil stands in the middle holding a pitchfork. Black, western lettering says WE'RE NEVER GONNA STOP. He snorts at it. Macabre. Fitting. And slips it over his head, letting it hang low on his brow.

And then he follows after David.

David stands with his back to the door, hands curled around the porcelain sink as he stares in the mirror, chin titled under the harsh flood of the dull, fluorescent light.

His eyes flicker up when the door opens, widening slightly when Kyle emerges, liquid, in the reflection. But through the surprise, there's a touch of smug recognition that sets Kyle's teeth on edge when it drills into him. A sense of arrogance that makes his fingers itch. Trigger ready.

“Oh, don't worry, mate,” he's saying, a smile curling up the corner of his mouth like smoke. “We've just gotten—” he pretends to think, gaze darting up to the bulbs hanging over his head, smarmy and oil-slick. He must think himself leonine. Victorious.

Kyle wants to wear his bloodied teeth around his neck.

“Close,” he offers, and anger coils inside his guts like tar. “You know, since you've been away, and all. Nothin’ to worry about, though. We're just friends, mate. Promise.”

At that word, his smile turns sharp. Mocking.

“Oh, yeah,” he hears himself saying, words fine powder on his tongue. “Close, huh?”

“Well, she's been a bit lonely, you know. Big change, moving to a new city, an’ all alone. Needed, ah, some company.”

It burns. Blisters. The way this man speaks about you rips through him, bubbling away at his self-control like acid. Alone. As if he doesn't know. Lonely. Like he wasn't minutely aware of how much your dynamic has shifted since college, since he was some beat cop patrolling the streets with too much rage in his veins and no outlet for it, to now—when he's calling you from a medical ward (confidential, no you can't come see him) to let you know he was in (yet another) helicopter crash. Had another brush with death that pitches his mortality in the forefront of his mind like an omen. An obstacle. One that cracked open this sense of want, of urgency, hunger from the abyssal depths of his soul.

But this—

It reminds him of when he'd get into fights in high school. Needling the kids he knew would take him up on his offer, who would meet him in sketchy alleys near council housing where the police were less likely to patrol and the neighbours more willing to ignore it. When he'd mock them, twisting his words, his anger, into a brutal knife until they took a swing at him.

His hand curls into a fist. Muscle memory. It quivers through his joints—this insatiable urge to tear into something he knows will bleed. Will make him bleed. He needs it like a confessional. Therapeutic.

Because the thing is:

Kyle likes the fights. Like the way his knuckles burn, and his muscles ache. The bruises. The scraps. The contusions. The pain feels good. Cathartic. Rapturous.

And really—

He needs to get this awful, terrible demon out of him before the saliva that floods its maw at the sight of you, held back only by sheer willpower and reruns of golden girls on the couch you found by the side of the road, spills over between jagged teeth. Before the leash snaps.

David looks terrified. Scared. He turns around quickly, unwilling to let Kyle have at his vulnerable spine a moment longer. His skin catches on the porcelain rim of the sink as he swings around, the rubbery squeal loud in the sudden hush that falls between them. David winces. Pulls his hand off.

“Look, man—”

Kyle takes a step forward. Another. It's not fun when they shrink, when they shake, trembling as he nears. He likes the idiots who linger outside of crowded pubs on Friday night harassing patrons. They are drunken slobs calling out to the women they see. They fight back when Kyle corners them. Fists swinging, legs jerking out in a poorly timed kick. Slurred words full of vitriol.

At first, anyway.

And then the whine of their polyester tracksuits rubbing across ashlar cut through the alley, and the haze of alcohol saturated their senses. It's around then when they realise just how badly they fucked up.

But David is different.

Posh—even though the notion of the word itself rankles down his back, trickling like slick, hot oil. Pooling in the brackets of his spine.

“You did this,” he says, watching the paper shell of the man crumble. “Shouldn't have fucked with my girl.”

“I didn't mean anything—”

“You did.” He pushes his knuckles into his palm, listening to the satisfying crack of his joints. “But that's what you do, isn't it? Messin’ with things that don't belong to you.”

“She—”

“C’mon,” he grunts, keyed up. Aching for something to hit. “Gonna throw a proper punch at me or am I just gonna have to kick your head in?”

“Maybe she wanted it.” It prickles over his name. “Wants me. Begged me for it. Gonna hit me even though your girl is the one messing with me?”

The sour vindication on his face sets Kyle's teeth on edge. No way in hell. He knows this is what David's type does—losing in brawn, but trying to skew the game by getting in his head, making him lose his composure. Getting under his skin. Because that, in itself, is a victory, isn't it?

Bruises will heal, but this, these accusations, the idea that you want David in some way, went after him to slake something Kyle couldn't is gutting.

And he gets it. Understands why David is saying this, but it doesn't make it any easier to stomach. To listen to.

David sees his fist shake. Pales slightly. “What?” He asks, all false bravado. Broken confidence. Kyle can sniff the blood in the water. The fear in the air. “You gonna hit me, or somethin’, mate?”

And Kyle—

Kyle jerks his head to the side, letting the knot in his neck pop. The sound, ominous and poignant, fills the bathroom, eclipsing the static buzz of the dying bulbs over their heads.

“Nah, mate,” his tone flatlines. “I’m gonna let you swing first. And then I’m gonna bash your face in. S’only proper, yeah?”

He staggers backwards from the crumpled heap of the man—still breathing, he notes with a huff, files it away for later; one less mess Price will have to clean up—and works his jaw. It aches. He tastes blood. Spits a glob of foamy pink onto the floor by his feet. No missing teeth, but his lip is split.

Ah, well.

Kyle feels fine. Drunk, though. Sluggish. Keyed up. Dazed off that post-adrenaline high of sinking his mangled fists into someone; into flesh, sinew, and bones. But—

Intact. Whole.

He likes the sting in his knuckles. The tackiness of blood congealing around his fingers, staining his skin.

Outside of the tangible, physical sensation—

Kyle isn't sure what he feels.

A part of him was hopeful that this would abate the anger in his veins, and stave off some of the agony of an unrelenting, insatiable hunger. But all he feels is numb. Indifferent.

Hitting David doesn't bring him the catharsis he desperately seeks even though it should. If anything, it's made him more anxious. Restless.

He leaves. Needs to—to walk, to run, to escape the crime scene before they find an unconscious civilian in the washroom stall. Flexes his fists, his jaw, as he goes, pacing through the bar, the crowd of people he cares so little for. The cloying scent of alcohol, perfume, stale sweat, cigarettes is a thick, putrid miasma in his nose. He heaves through it, and cuts one of Ananke’s young to ground himself until he hits the door with the brunt of his weight, nearly tripping over himself to get out.

The air outside is humid this time of year. Damp with the rain that's been drizzling down since mid-morning. He breathes in the balminess of it. Wishes, for a moment, that he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just not here. Not with that man's blood on his hands. Not with his words hissing ugliness and vitriol in Kyle's head—

He trusts you, is the thing. Knows, without any uncertainty or doubt, that you'd never cheat on him. But—

The thought is there. Not of your infidelity, your betrayal, but of you. You with another man. Someone who is not him. A stranger.

Lonely. Kyle wants to scoff. Wants to scream. He wishes he killed him. Sunk his teeth into his jugular, gorged himself on his blood. Lonely.

As if he didn't fucking know that already.

There's smoke in his lungs. Ash in his throat.

He digs into his pocket, wraps his aching, stiff fingers around his phone, and tugs it out. The blood on his hands leaves sticky smears across his screen. The touchpad barely registers the tremulous prompts he keys in.

Still. Still.

Kyle manages. Finds the contact he's looking for and hits CALL.

He's not even sure if the number is in service, and doesn't put too much hope on it. It really doesn't matter if it connects or not. He's just—

He needs something. Someone.

A clear path. A straight head.

“—this is Johnny. Leave a message aft’r th’ tone, ‘nd ‘ah’ll—”

“Johnny. Fuck, man. I—shit—” Johnny's supposed to be dead. Laswell made them all swear on it. Wear a spiffy suit to his funeral, and dance the choreographed routine in front of everyone of a team in grief. “I don't know why I'm callin’. Just—my girl, my—” doves. apollo. “I don't know. Kinda feels like lately my heads all a mess. I'm hangin’ thread here, and I just—”

need to be told what he's doing is wrong. terrible.

“—could use a friend, I suppose. Ah, shit. I don't know why I bothered—”

He hangs up. Drops his head.

He feels fragile. Like something is going to break.

Feet balancing on a spindle, the vertiginous drop below an instantaneous death, and Kyle—

He catches the moonrise on his way home. Thinks he can see Jupiter lingering in a flickering white light behind it.

In his pocket, his phone buzzes once. Thrice.

can' call right now. shite reception. in some park in canada. nahanni, ye ever heard of it? found a little doe injured in the wood. am takin’ good care’a it. plannin on bringin her home soon. once price sends a plane to pick me up. will introduce her to ya. pretty thing.

anyway. got yer message. see, if it were me. if that were mah doe. id never leave em alone. ahd make em stay.

think ye know what ta do, Gaz.

see ye soon.

—Kyle steps off the spindle.

You usher him in with a wounded noise in the back of your throat when you catch sight of the bruise under his chin, equal parts worried and questioning. He makes a show of shrugging, indifferent, when you take off his jacket, hanging it on the rack for him, and follows you inside when you move back.

“It doesn't look like nothing,” you whisper, so sweet he feels the sugary grain of your words rubbing against his teeth.

“It's just—” he's not sure where it comes from. In for a penny, he supposes, and lets the words flood between you, twisting and sour. “Your…friend, he, uh, caught me when I was about to leave, and—”

The worry splashed across your brow is wiped clean, replaced with disbelief, with shock, and then—

“Oh, that prick!” Anger. The tang of it is electric against his skin.

“Who the hell does he think he is?” Your indignation is blistering. He basks in it.

“It's fine,” he murmurs, soft and low. Quietly reassuring. “I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me.”

“Well, I do, anyway.” You volley back, words tight in your throat.

You're so pretty like this. Illuminated softly in the cool, hazy glow of the television. It's a picture he wants to fold up, put it in his breast pocket for safekeeping, where it will stay warmed by the steady thud of his still-beating heart.

Want pulses thickly in his sternum. The urge, the need, is there, simmering quietly in his periphery. Slowly taking up more and more space as it grows, too big for him to hold back.

And so, he says, “I thought about this, you know. When I—” he stops, adds a small huff. A shallow shake of his head. “Nevermind.”

If this were a movie, it would be a tender, heartbreaking beat. A moment filled with tension and a palpable, heady fear.

You might say to him, please don't ever do that again, or even, please don't go; but he knows you just as much as he knows himself, and so it doesn't surprise him much at all when instead you swallow all of it down, letting it slowly metastasise inside of you, offering a small smile in response instead.

A quiet, “yeah,” following along behind the brunt of your shielded misery. Buried for his benefit, because as much as these near misses might keep you up at night, you'll never tell him not to go.

He adds, “been thinking a lot about what I'd miss out on, too, but—”

Kyle doesn't finish. Doesn't think he needs to. Not when he sees the gears turning in the back of your pretty, tear-filled eyes.

Against the armrest of the couch you'd bought at an old antique store, his hand closes into a fist.

Close, he thinks. But not close enough.

It'd be easier to just flush your pills down the toilet. Poke holes in the condoms you keep in the drawer—just in case. Sabotage you through sugar pills; perfect replicas of the ones you clumsily take each morning, only ever half aware of what you were doing as you lean sleepily against the sink and listen to some podcast you've recently gotten into.

So easy that he buys them without a second thought from some sketchy guy in the back alley of a Tesco Express. Pockets the package, and brings it home to you. Slips them inside the half-empty bottle where they fall to the bottom with a sharp clank. Clank, clank, clank—

The orange-tinted bottle sits on the countertop. Innocuous. Mocking. Everything he wants—you, you, you: forever, permanently—right there in front of him. Within reach. The smooth plastic surface is still warm to the touch from his aching hand—Ananke’s mangled brode on his palm has been itching furiously lately; he thinks he has an infection running jagged down his lifeline, the sink pickled and oozing pale yellow—and he holds it tight. Tighter still. Until the tumid scab on his hand cracks, pops open. Leaks blood and foul rot onto the container. Smears it soft pink with infection.

Kyle knows right from wrong.

His mum is a pillar of the community. A stalwart wall of firm, unyielding faith: the kind that brokers no arguments—do unto others as you would like done unto yourself, Kyle—and offers no retribution. Forgiveness stacks as high as karma. As goodness. As fairness. She wakes up every Sunday morning and goes to church. Spends all afternoon cooking meals for the homeless, the sick, and drags his father along with her as she drops them off at shelters, each with a handwritten passage about love and humility.

He's not particularly religious, but she's never held it against him. Never forces belief when there is none. Content to let him grow into the man he wants to be.

Though—while he shirked her belief, he stole away with her vicious sense of morality. Of justice. Right and wrong.

Simply put: he knows better. Was raised better.

And yet—

Somewhere down the line, his idea of good and bad evolved. Shifted. Cracked. He feels the remnants of it thrum in his veins; this foreign thing—this abrasive entity. It surges. Spumes; seeps in his bones. His marrow. Rewrites his foundation, his sense of self, until it's marbled with streaks of murk. Gangrenous.

Good and bad.

(the and an entire island of its own.)

He wonders if it started with Price—draw the line wherever you see fit—or if it was waiting, a hibernating beast, for someone like him to come along. A pantomime of a paradigm. Mockery of justice. Absolution in shades of self-interest.

Either way, it doesn't matter much. Not anymore. Not when the cage, the iron shackles, housing that monstrous thing split open on the pavement outside of Giza, freeing this starving, angry animal.

And really—

—he’d rather it quenched itself on you than anyone else.

Kyle places the bottle neatly back in the drawer. Slides it shut. It looks the same way it did when he arrived—pristine, innocuous, untouched. No one would know that he tampered with the seal, spilt the pills into the porcelain basin of the sink, ran hot water over them until they dissolved into sugary-white clumps, and washed them down the drain. Gone. Dissipated into a barely noticeable residue he scoops up with the tip of his index finger, bringing the specks closer to his face. It gleams in hazy sunlight dancing through the open curtain.

Kyle brings it to his mouth. Licks it off.

It tastes sweet.

Ananke screams in agony when he grips a fistful of your hair, pushing your head down the length of his hardened cock, all the way down, down—

You sputter around the thick of him, eyes watering. Dripping rivers down to your hollowed cheeks. It pools there. A deep basin. A lagoon. He wants to drink it up—salt water cures everything, after all.

The noises you make—quiet gags, wet chokes—have liquid pleasure trickling down his spine. An endless cacophony fills the bedroom. A soundscape he could get lost in forever—

“Yeah,” he rasps when your fingers dig moons into his thighs. “Such a good girl for me, aren't you?”

The whimper that tumbles out vibrates through his cock, and he grunts with it, a deep groan that you answer by squeezing your thighs together, lashes fluttering. You like the noises he makes. The moans, the guttural grunts. The choked snarls.

His good girl.

“Takin’ me so well,” he's slurring his words, hips pushing with more insistence now. Desperate to spill down your throat. To watch you swallow him. “You always do, though. Don't you? Take whatever I give you, yeah? Gonna take it all now? All of it, yeah, pretty girl?”

He rambling. Words spilling out, breaking against his teeth. Ananke howls when he twists your hair, tugging you closer, closer, until the tip of your nose touches the thick bed of wry curls at the base, swallowed whole. You're crying now—choking. He grunts. It's liquid. Whitehot.

Your mouth is molten around him. He chases it, cock head nudging the back of your throat, bruising it. Ruining it. He wants to paint you in his cum; drench you in it. Mark, mar, your skin until all of the nobodies, the David’s, can smell him on you. Know, without any uncertainty, that you belong to Kyle—

His hips stutter—

“oh, fuck, oh fuck, fuck—”

—and he knows he's being too rough with you. Too demanding. Forceful. Taking his pleasure from your pliant flesh, cleaving pounds of you into his palm for him to keep. Scar tissue in the shape of his name—

His other hand drops, wraps around your throat, and—

Fuck.

He can feel his cock through your skin. The bulge unmistakable through your neck, fattened with the thickness of him.

This—and the hazy sight of you, angelic with your drenched face covered in spittle, pre-cum, and briny tears; eyes blown wide and preyish, full of desperate submission; and clumsy, needy way you hump against your fingers stuffed between your slick thighs, quivering under the unrepentant way he breaks you apart, takes you—pushes him over the edge.

Equilibrium comes on a snarling grunt, wrenched out from the depths of his throat. So rasping, so gritty, guttural, that it hurts. Scrapes against his flesh until it's raw. Bruised.

He feels the flex of your muscles as you swallow. The rasp of your tongue soothing the heavy pulse of the thick vein on the underside of his cock, greedy for every drop he has to give.

It's perfect, he thinks. You're perfect.

(and his. his, his his—)

He leaves later that evening. “Mission,” he offers, a wan grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Be back soon. Don't wait up.”

Worry chisels a ravine through your brow. “Is that—” you swallow. He hears the click in your throat. Tastes the anxiety rolling off of you; a sweet deluge. “I mean, you just got back. Are you—are you even cleared yet?”

“Ah, well. About that,” he scratches the back of his neck. Ananke shivers. “I have to do some recon. Nothing serious, but with—with, you know—”

Contrition tights his jaw. He sometimes forgets that officially Johnny MacTavish is dead.

“Oh,” you try to murmur, but it comes out like a whimper. “Okay, well—”

You won't tell him not to go. It's not in you to weaponise your worry against his ambitions, his dreams.

(It doesn't stop him from using this kindness against you.)

He times it well.

Gone for thirty days in a wet, balmy jungle, snacking on nothing but bamboo shoots and moss. Ghost comes with him, shoulders set in a terse line—as usual—but there's a strange ease to his gait, a sudden liquidity to his hardened obsidian that catches Kyle's attention immediately.

“Alright?” He asks, picking his teeth with a needle from a bush. “Seem in a good mood, Lieutenant. Not very typical for you, is it.”

He lifts one massive shoulder in a lazy shrug. “S’nice weather.”

It's humid. Hot. Steam billows up from the boiling first floor and congeals into a thick, dense cloud of heat. Kyle would hardly consider that to be nice weather.

“Oh, yeah. The, uh, one hundred percent humidity is really good for the skin.”

Ghost, for his part, just shrugs again. Rumbles something about misbehaving pets, and obedience training, and seems content to let the conversation lapse into a comfortable silence. Kyle follows suit.

It stays like that for most of the mission—save for the odd quips from Ghost, his humour a peculiar ester that sours, perchlorates, in the back of his throat. Team building, Price would probably say if he was here instead of back in Liverpool, looking at empty lots with his missus.

(wants to build a fuckin' house so we have somethin’ to pass down to the kids—

He sounded angry about it, but Kyle found floor plans laid out across his desk, markings scratched into the margins as he argued with himself—and his wife—about sizing and layouts; the quips between thick, bolded letters (all uppercase) and boxy cursive filling him with a sense of envy so visceral, it made his stomach churn—)

It's almost boring compared to some of the things they'd done. Incident-free—something he knows Laswell and Price will enjoy; less paperwork. Or—

Almost, anyway.

Kyle gets shot in the shoulder the last week of the mission—a surface wound, of course; but it leaves a mangled mess of scabs and torn, jagged tissue on his flesh.

Ghost sees it. Eyes liquid black through the thick foliage, cutting a searing line to where Kyle sits, arm wrapped in gauze, casual despite the burning agony in his shoulder.

“Coulda dodged,” he muses, head tilting to the side in what Kyle can describe as dogish.

Kyle swallows. “Could’ve,” he agrees, and offers nothing else.

“Looks like I’m not the only one training a new dog.” Ghost hums to himself, quietly amused by the puckered skin on Kyle's shoulder. “‘bout time you got a scar to match the big boys, Garrick.”

“Big boys.” He snorts. “And where's Price’s?”

The man's eyes are liquid in the nightfall. Vantablack. He wonders what sort of dog a man like him has at home. What kind would stick around.

Or if it's even a choice.

“‘ave you seen his back? Old dog wrangled himself a little tiger.”

An unknown number texts him later that evening. When he opens it, it's just a blurry picture of a figure bundled up in a tweed quilt, nothing but their shoulders and head visible, as they stare out the window. The room is lit in burnt umber. He catches the corner of what must be a wood stove—the only light source, perhaps. It baths them in a heavy swath of tenebrous on the opposite side of the stove. The other is highlighted in an ethereal, aged orange.

When his eyes slowly adjust to the hazy sfumato, he makes out the distinct shape of a woman. Fingers tangled in the throw. Spilled oil, midnight gloam, against dark blue. What a picture they make.

But why was it sent to him—?

His answer comes a moment later.

think it's time ta come home. know anything about gettin’ a little doe thru customs?

might know a thing or two about that, yeah. probs best to talk with Price.

shite. he'll ‘ave mah ‘ead fer this one.

In the quiet cabin of his airplane, Kyle places his phone on the empty seat, and grins.

Your fingers thread through his, palm kissing Ananke with a gentleness that belies the fire in your eyes. The burning fever as you draw him in, drag him closer.

There's an urgency in the way you reach for him. Touch him. Starved, almost. And he supposes it's only natural when the last time you've been intimate was a month ago—when he spread you out over the sheets and kept his face buried between your thighs for hours; uttering soft hymns, orisons, at the very apex of your altar—and so sparingly between. Too afraid to hurt him. Your worry is now a weapon used against you.

(“you crashed in an airplane, Kyle! there's no way nothing is wrong with you after that. something had to have broken, right?”

right. right. just the fragile walls holding himself together—)

His wince presses the blade taut to your neck. “Sorry, dovie. Hurts a bit—”

Digs it in. Draws blood.

Your eyes drop to his shoulder, wide and wild. Feverish with your worry, your desperation. The wound is bandaged up in gauze—thick enough that it leaves a distinct shape under his shirt. Pokes out from beneath his collar.

There's worry, of course. A bone-weary sort of sorrow that thickens around your eyes, pinches tight on the curve of your jaw.

He wonders if you'll pull away again. Cushion the wound between you like a wall, and keep your distance until the unfounded belief that he's somehow too delicate to touch.

“Sorry,” you murmur, and it's blistering. “I just—Kyle, I—”

You don't pull away.

“I know, yeah? It's fine. I'm okay. Back in one piece this time.”

This time sours in the air. Putrid. Rotten. Your lip wobbles. Lashes puddle with pearling tears.

He thinks you might cry.

(hopes that you do.)

“I know,” is whispered, gritty and raw. “And how long until—until you have to leave again?”

Kyle huffs. “In the morning. ‘m’sorry, dovie,” he leans down, rests his forehead in the crook of your neck. “I tried to wiggle out of it, but we're short a man.”

“Is this even ethical? I mean—” your shoulders shake. He bites back a grin. Your worry so thick, so sweet, in his ear. “You just got shot, and they're sending you back out?”

“Technically, it's just recon—”

“This was just recon, too, and look what happened—”

“Love.” He silences your protests with a soft bark. The way you immediately quieten at his tone liquifies in the base of his spine. “I gotta. I have to go. This is what I signed up for, you know?”

“I know. I just—” your hand lifts to his head, gentle. Fingers stroking over the shaved hair on the nape of his neck. “I can't lose you. And lately, it's like everytime you leave, you get hurt. I can't help thinking, is this the last time I'll ever see him again? whenever you walk out the door. I hate it. I know that's your job, I know that. But, fuck, Kyle—”

“I know, love. I know.” He kisses the warm skin at the base of your neck. You shiver against him, nails biting slightly into his nape. “There's so much I still want to do. So much in life I want, especially with you, but—”

You don't let him finish. Your arms wrap around him, holding him gingerly to your quivering body.

The way you cling to him feels like a victory in itself.

Check—

There's an animalistic desperation in the way you drag him into the bedroom, eyes sparking in the dark. Smouldering embers. Clothes strewn somewhere in the hallway, forgotten.

He worries his jaw to fight back a grin when you knock the condoms from his hand when he fishes them out of the drawer.

“‘s’fine,” you slur, mouthing along his neck. Suckling intently at his skin. “‘m’on the pill. I'm—”

God. You're so sweet, aren't you?

He buries his grin in your neck, biting down on soft skin until his canines catch. Split flesh. Blood wells, trapped under enamel. He tastes the iron as it pools up, thin and watery, and so distinctly you it makes him dizzy. Rust. Ore. A moan is dredged up from the back of his throat as he laves his tongue over the indents, the puncture wounds, he left behind.

You shiver at the sounds he makes, small whimpers tumble past your lips—breathless; shallow and quick, matching tempo with your heartbeat. Tinged with the sting of his bite, the way he sucks around them, irritated flesh; sinks the tip of his tongue into each little split until he can't taste blood anymore. Just salt. Skin. You.

This thing that lives inside of him is hungry. Starved. It growls low in his belly, a tightening heat that blooms with the blood he swallows down. Feeding it. Just a taste. A tease. Barely enough to sate the burn he feels flickering just behind his larynx, soldering through tissue, and tendon. Blackening bone.

You say his name, low and sweet. Peppered out between soft lips.

It's—

A lot. Not enough.

Kyle pulls back, rocking on the balls of his feet just to reorient himself, and then leans down, catching your mouth in a frantic kiss that makes you shiver against him, gasping into it. His tongue delves in, and chases the sweetness of his name still lingering between your teeth.

His hands glue to your skin, featherlight, as he slides his palm over your body. Feeling you. The heat. The goosebumps that break out at his touch. His other hand slips up your spine, curling over your nape.

He doesn't say much else. With the taste of you tucked between his teeth, he finds he doesn't need much else. Just this. Just you.

But you're tugging on him, pulling. Whining into the kiss. Peeling away with a gasp when he pushes you down onto the bed by your hips.

You go down quietly in the dark, eyes wide in the pale blue moonlight; fixed on him as he follows after you—hunt, chase, consume—until he's balanced above you with his palms pressed into the mattress. Beneath him like this, you're a vision. A dream. His heart breaks free, soars. He feels the flutter of wings battering into the cradle of his ribs as he looks down at you.

He almost calls you Apollo. Sinks his teeth into his bottom lip instead. Can't trust himself like this. Not right now.

So, he tries to grin, but it feels worn. Threadbare. “Fuck, you have no idea what you do to me.”

“I have a pretty good idea,” you whisper, gaze dropping down to his hips where his cock juts out, hard. Weeping. Feebly tries to curve up to his stomach but the weight forces it down.

Your legs spread, parting for him instantly. Hands reach, grabbing at his skin, pulling him closer. He goes with a groan, biting his lip when his cock brushes the soft skin of your slick, sticky inner thigh. Soaked, he finds.

“All this for me?” He rumbles, fingers slipping on your skin when he drags his hand down, pushing your legs open further. Wide enough for him to fit. “Gonna give a guy a complex.”

“As if you need another one,” you volley, but it's breathless. Caught on the tail end of a whimper when his hips slot into yours, cock heavy and hard on your soft skin.

“Sayin’ it's too big for you, then?” he teases on the jagged edge of a wide, sharp grin.

The need that blooms in your eyes, the slight part of your kiss-bitten lips, pupils melting over the edges, a total eclipse, makes him want to sink inside of you. Carve a spot just for him over and over again. Make you take him, break apart on the thick split of his cock inside of you. And he only just manages to reign the urge to pry your folds apart, nudge his head into you. Barely holding himself together, fighting for every ounce of restraint he has because as he knows you'll let him—let him slide inside, fuck you into the mattress until you're sobbing—he can't.

Too big, he thinks. Reaffirms. And it comes out as almost a pout.

“Don't worry,” he huffs, bending down to nip along your jaw, fingers sliding over the slick, sticky skin of your inner thighs. “I’ll take care of you, yeah? Get you good and ready for my cock.”

(and more, of course; a lifetime—

but the bite of Ananke’s young keeps him spilling these secrets onto the sheets.)

Kyle likes to think he has a keen sense of smell, and as he buries his face between your thighs, nose pressed tight against your clit, he imagines he can scent the chemical changes in your body. The natural musk of you, more potent now than ever, without the artificial blocks in the way.

Taste, too—

He presses a kiss against your slit before letting his mouth part on a deep inhale, tongue rolling out, pressing between your folds. Parting them. The first touch makes your hips jerk, breath catching in your throat.

You taste good. Earthy.

It's been too long since he tasted your cunt. Feasted. He slips the flat arch of his tongue over you again in broad, heavy strokes from rim to the soft crease between your clit and mound. Drinking you in as the soft moans, the hiccupping gasps, cudgel his resolve.

You babble his name as he presses your thighs flat to the mattress, head buried between them with a single-minded goal of making you fall to pieces with his tongue on you, lapping at your pussy. Tasting for himself the natural tang of you, his machinations seen through to the end.

And you—obvious to it all—whine, eager for more of his touch, as he presses his nose into the soft skin of your navel, and breathes in again.

He pulls you down on top of him after making you clench around him—tight, tied like a vice—three times with his mouth, tongue, his fingers kneading that soft spot just inside your cunt until your legs quivered around him. Until you gushed with your release, cumming on a choked scream.

It made you all pliant and soft, putty in his hands that he can tug as much as he wants, however he wants. Shaping you over the tapered spread of his waist, cock nesting between your hot, sticky folds. Your hands on his chest, breath shallow. Please is whispered out of your bruised lips, sweet and lachrymal. He shivers and licks his lips.

You have no idea what you're begging for. No idea what he plans on doing to you. And he thinks, maybe, he ought to feel some sense of shame for making you take what he gives you like this, making you ride him as he fucks you full. Traps you.

There's a fire burning inside of him. Molten. He reaches down, grabbing his cock. You blink at him, tears clinging to your lashes, before you slowly, clumsily, lift yourself up for him with a soft, heated breath. Like you want it. These awful thoughts sutured between you like a fine, silk thread. He nearly unravels at the seams just thinking about it.

Even playing pretend in his mind threatens to shatter his resolve,

—a golden fantasy filming over his gaze, dusted in starlight; the ethereal glow of ananke coruscating off of Jupiter's elves: you begging for him, pleading with him to sink as deep inside of you as he can get until no dog will be able to differentiate between your scent and his

break it into pieces.

“Want it, don't you?” It comes out sun-scorched. Blistered. Raw.

You whimper when the fat head of his cock catches on your sopping rim, stretching you open for him. He can't decide what he wants to look at more—the sight of himself disappearing into you, or the look on his face when he does—and his gaze swings wildly, a pendulum oscillating between both, greedy for all of it. Sears it into memory. Burns it behind his eyelids.

Kyle reaches up, hands sliding across your body. Feeling the quiver in your flesh, your lungs pressing against your ribs, pushing it out. He wants to touch everything. All of you. Settles, instead, for sliding his palm up to your shaking breast, letting it fall into the cup of his hand. Pinching your hardened nipple between his middle and ring finger. Just. A tease. Barely any pressure. Rolling it between his second knuckles until you're arching into him, desperate for more. More friction, more pressure.

He teases around your flesh until goosebumps prickle over the sensitive skin, bearing his teeth in a crooked grin when you whine, clumsily pawing at his chest and pushing your breasts into his hand.

“Want somethin'?”

Your response is a sharp huff. A half bitten whisper of his name.

“No?” He taunts, shifting his hips under you. Feeling the way your cunt pulses, fluttering over his thick length. “Fine. Guess I'll—”

He goes to pull his hand away from your breast, lips curling into a taunting smirk, but a whine tumbles out. Your hips rock, pressing flat along his cock. The pressure, the pleasure, knocks the air from his lungs, and for a moment, he thinks they popped. Burst. He struggles to fill them when you shift above him, drenching his lower belly, groin, and inner thighs with the wetness that drips, molten, over him. It's good. Too good—

“Kyle,” you whisper, clit pressing taut to the weeping head of his cock. Trapped between your cunt and his stomach, the blunt pressure rockets through him, bringing him close to the edge. Dangerously close. “C’mon—”

He snorts derisively—the impromptu amalgamation of a choked laugh drenched in disbelief and sutured together with the delirium of pleasure rippling through his stomach scrapes over the soft tissue of his throat. Abrasive. Rough.

The air that comes out of his nose, hacked up from the tatter of his lungs, hurts when he spits it out.

“Fuck,” he rasps, rolling his hips into you. Desperate. Eager. It's airy. Loose. He clenches his jaw, grunts a rasping, ugly fuck from between the tight seam of his teeth. “Gonna make me cum, dove.”

It spurns you on. You babble above him—no, Kyle, no, don't cum, don't—but do nothing to stop the quick cants of your hips, fingers knotted into the matted hair on his chest. It's paper thin, barely a whisper when you breathe heavily through your nose and whimper, I want you to cum inside me—

And it's—

It's a thought. A dream. Nothing new to your voracious sex life, really; but the sweet-sour taste still lingers in the back of his teeth. The heady scent of you in his nose.

A single pill placed in each slot—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday—

His eyes roll. Hips stutter.

There's a fever in his veins. An urgency. He groans his assent, hands falling to the expanse of your hips, holding tight as he stops the slow rolls you keep trying to make. He needs to be inside of you. Says as much when you pout at the loss of friction, watching understanding dawn over you. An eagerness that seems to keep pace with his own following quickly behind.

“Yeah,” you say, and the word is obscene. Breathed out on a moan that makes his cock twitch. Then, yeah, yeah, Kyle, please—

He pulls you up, up, groaning when you slide your hand down his chest, pawing at his cock until it's gripped in your palm. The touch burning through him. Skin on skin. Fingers barely meeting around the thick of it.

“Come on,” he rasps, swallowing down the words he can't say yet. Things like take me, all of me, every last drop—

He helps you lift higher. Keeps you steady as you line him up, the head pushing against your slick rim, catching when you sink down, thighs flexing.

It's a slow drop as you adjust to the burn of taking him. Down, down—gasps, mewls, whines leaving your lips with each inch, devastating little ah, ah’s that spin around his head until he's dizzy.

His name is a plea when you can't take anymore, when the thickness of him becomes too much. Eyes misting with unshed tears, bottom lip trapped between your teeth. The look you give him is so pitiful, he nearly whines—

“You can do it, baby.”

It's a shuddered gasp, thin and reedy. He wants you to cry, to weep. To rain your fists down across his chest when the burn of him splitting you open becomes too much, nearly choking on how viciously you spit out his name.

“C’mon,” he slurs, lifting his hips in shallow, lazy cants. Feeding you another half an inch. Another—

“Kyle, Kyle—” you gasp, and he knows. Should take pity on you for the sting, the burden of taking him so deeply, pretty pussy stretched tight around him.

Should—

“Barely much left, dove—” he means to grunt, but it comes out on a growl. His knuckles ache. “You can do it for me, can't you? Take all of me. Been so long, dovie. Been so fuckin’ long—”

It's between missed this pretty pussy on my cock and need you, baby, need you so bad that you break. Trembling above him as another inch is forced into you. Keening when his hands tighten around your waist, fingers biting into your flesh, and he pulls, pulls, at the same time he thrusts up, cunt giving way, opening up for him so perfectly—

“That's it, dovie—”

The folds of your pussy swell around the fat base of his cock, pressed tight to the skin of his groin, and Kyle can't stop the rough moan that spills out, hips jerking at the raw sensation of having you wrapped around him. Silken walls. A slick, feverish heat. You pulse, flesh fluttering over the length of him, and it's somehow both euphoric and uttering damning—the pleasure so intense, it churns his stomach. Makes him nauseous with how badly he wants to stay inside of you like this forever until it's sacrosanct.

You feel liquid around him. All heat and pulsing, flexing muscle. He ruts into it. Cants his hips up, up, little nudges that push the air from your lungs in short, choking gasps.

He lets you take what you need from him first, hands steady on your hip. Palm moulding over your breast, pinching your nipple between his fingers. Leaning up to lave his tongue over the hardened peak you squirm on his lap, bouncing shallowly on his cock. Giving you everything, all of him, as you slowly bring yourself closer to the edge. Face pinched in bliss, eyes squeezing shut, rolling slightly as you work yourself over his cock, hips twitching. Flexing. Your pretty mouth drops open when you lean forward, hands bracing over the swell of his chest, finding the perfect angle for his cock to hit.

His name is a whimper, a plea. A litany of sounds that blister through his chest. A white-hot knife buried in his groin because fucking you is always a sweet sort of agony, he finds; pleasure and pain effortlessly balancing on a razor blade. He breathes around the ache, feeling the threads of his control pull taut over the blade, snapping one by one—

It's a mindless drive for more of that electric pleasure, that blissful pain, when he plants the soles of his feet on the soft sheets, and bucks. His cock bludgeons through wet, hot heat, feeling the silken flutter of you clenching tight around him, and he can't stop the groan from jittering out between clenched teeth.

He knows he won't last. Can feel it well up in his groin, hovering on the edge of a precipice. It's headier, more potent, than anything he'd ever felt. The elation, the urgency—it fills him up from the inside out, twisting in his veins, blotting along his hindbrain. Needing to cum, to fill you up—

Your nails dig into the smattering of hair on his chest, clinging to him as he squares his feet on the mattress, pistoning into you. Making you howl for him—deep, breathless moans rolling off your tongue, bitten out between his name, said like grace as it drips down your chin.

There's nothing better than this, he thinks, arching his neck on the pillow, head thrown back as he thrusts up, meeting you in the middle. Working in tandem. Pleasure is hewn together, tethered until you can't hold yourself up anymore. Until the stretch him filling you up, sitting thick, fat, inside your abused, aching cunt is too much for you to take.

The way you look above him—chin bowed, mouth open as a litany of moans spill out; brow furrowed, eyes listing shut in bliss—knocks the air from his lungs in a painful, agonising punch. You look ethereal, superlunary, as you babble above him, spine bowed in a pretty bow. Taking everything he has to give you—

His palms ache. Itch. Ananke grows restless as his thrusts become sloppy. Desperate.

“Come for me,” he barks. Demands. Pleas.

His hand squeezes tight before letting go, dropping down to your belly, over your mound. You’re slick, wet. His thumb softens over your clit, gentle strokes to bring you to the same summit he stands on, ready to jump. Hips jerking, thrusting into you from below. Fucking into you with steady, deep cants of his hips. Making you take him, all of him.

Your cunt flutters around him, clenching tight. Pulsing little throbs that mirror the heavy brag of his heart slamming into his chest. Made for him, he thinks, eyes widening in feverish delirium as he tries to commit the way you look arched above him to memory. Burning it behind his eyelids.

The pleasure on your face, the desperation, make him break.

He lets go of your hips, slides his hand up your spine, feeling your warm, damp skin under his rough palm as he drags it to your nape. His fingers curl over the back of your neck, a gentle squeeze; a comforting weight—just enough to make melt in his arms, relax, before he pulls you down until you're chest to chest. He snakes his arm out from between your bellies, throwing it over your waist to anchor you down as he bucks up into you. Taking. Taking.

The sounds made when he fucks into your like this, the squelch of your pussy, the slap of his balls on your ass, have his eyes rolling back into his head. Unbridled pleasure bloomed over his spine, spooling in his groin.

He's right there. Right there—

“Oh, fuck, baby—” he gasps out, choking. “I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna—”

He feels his name purr from within your chest before you push back, squirming on his chest as you fuck yourself back onto his cock. Taking him deeper inside of you until he nudges your cervix and makes you whine—

He grasps to find that same thread of control he keeps wound tight around his wrist, an anchor line for him to cling to, but when he paws at the dark, he finds nothing there. Nothing but thick, syrupy pleasure. Bliss. He feels your slick run down the length of his cock, pooling in the tangled hair dusting over his sack. Drenching the sheets.

His hand slides down your back, fingers stretching, reaching, grabbing a fistful of your asscheek in his hand. Squeezing it tight as he pulls you down over him again and again. It forces him deeper, until he's certain that there's no place inside of you that he hasn't touched.

And it's this thought that unravels the knot. Becomes his undoing. His violent end. But it's you bending down, sweat-slick cheek pressing to his chest, murmuring:

Please. Please—

And then:

“Come on,” you moan, the words shuttered out of your chest with the force of his thrusts, head shaking. Rattling. “Cum inside me, Kyle—”

It’s catching sunlight in the palm of his hands, feeling the skin burn, and blister. Apollo in his hands.

“Fuck, gonna cum, love—” he grinds out on a moan, grinding his hips into you in choppy, desperate thrusts until the force it punches through his stomach, leaves him winded.

You drop down on his lap, taking the full, thick length of his cock inside of you as he cums, vision blurring around the edges as he struggles to keep his eyes open, glued to the sight of you taking it all. Every drop—

Through the haze, he commits every blurred movement to memory: your quivering belly; your heaving breast, nipples pebbled and swollen from his mouth. The spread of your thighs over his hips, the way the coarse, thick hair on his groin flattens against your mound. Slick, wet from you. Milky, now, with the steady trickle of his cum leaking out even though he keeps you nice and plugged up. It makes him jerk beneath you, breath coming out in a heavy gust.

his apollo—

His hands flatten along your collar bones, curling upward to shape around your neck. He feels each desperate breath, each swallow, against his searing palms.

He wraps his hands around your neck, and it would be so easy to imagine a collar.

And you lean into it. Your head drops back, eyes slipping closed as you bare more of your throat to him. He folds the tips of his fingers over each other, linking them on the nape of your neck, shivering when the sweet, peach-soft peal of his name slips past your lips—

Yeah, he thinks, fingers tightening on your skin once before he lets go. Drops them down to your belly. Curves over your waist. Holding tight. Tighter.

But not a collar wouldn't look nearly as pretty, wouldn't it?

It's five in the morning when the text comes in.

Sitting between an update from Price (this doctor's a fuckin' muppet—), one from Ghost (how's the shoulder), and something from his mother—a TikTok video he thumbs loosely at, sending a chain of laughing face emojis in response—is a foreign number. According to a quick Google search, the area code—867—is from Canada. The Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, specifically.

He opens it, glancing at the string of numbers on his phone, brows furrowing as he tries to make sense of it—

And then it clicks.

Coordinates. Google says they're in Scotland. Remote. Knoydart.

The grin splits across his lips, pulls tight at his cheeks.

Welcome home, he writes. Any trouble with that doe of yours? Customs must've had a fit.

A second later, a message appears. Adjustin nicely to the highlands. Nik did all the heavy liftin. Y’should come visit. See fer yerself.

The bed shifts when you move, pulling yourself closer to him in the quiet dark of mid-dawn. Drawn to him even in the deep of sleep. He thinks of moths, flames, and curls his arm over your shoulders, pulling you closer. Presses a kiss to your crown, breathes you in.

With the phone held in one hand, he swipes his thumb across the screen, typing out a quick reply. Taps SEND. Watches the notification flick from delivered to read before he drops it onto his lap, and lets his head fall back, the grin still tugging on his lips.

Icarus couldn't get to Apollo with flimsy wings of borrowed feathers, and beeswax. The distance between Earth and the sun is too great to fly to. An uncrossable chasm.

So, he brought Apollo to Earth instead.

Just might.

In the quiet bloom of a mid-morning dawn, you find him on the patio, gazing out at the streets below. Brows furrowed in a soft contemplation. It's not something you're used to seeing on his face—this sombre, solemn grey shading his features in a way that makes you feel almost as far away from him as Jupiter.

“What's wrong?”

Kyle tilts his chin up toward you, mouth flattening as he shakes his head. Shrugs.

“Nothin’.”

“Mmhm,” you tease, fingers threading over the hair behind his ears. His skin is warm. Sunkissed. You press your nails to his scalp, dragging them through the thick coils of his hair until you meet the soft dip at his temple. He leans into your touch, forehead resting on the soft bump of your belly.

When he doesn't speak after a moment, you huff. Soft, coy. “Fine. Keep your secrets.”

His nose rubs over the soft cashmere of your sweater. “Been thinkin’ is all.”

“About what?”

He hums, breath warm on your skin. “Want to come to Scotland with me? Get away for the weekend?”

“You think your mum and sisters are letting me go anywhere right now? Pretty sure I heard them plotting about wrapping me up in a mattress so I can't hurt myself or the baby—”

A snort bubbles up. “Mum likes you. Loves you. She's just overprotective. M’sure I can convince her.”

“You think so?”

Kyle is quiet for a moment. A beat. Just long enough to mull over the probability of stealing you away from under his family's nose. Unlikely, of course. When the twins have your weekend booked up already—a movie marathon with nothing but pizza, snacks, and John Hughes.

And NO Gazzy allowed!!!

“Nah, suppose not,” he huffs, placing his hands on your thighs. “If they're being too much, you can tell them to piss off—”

“They're fine,” you shrug. Overprotective, but—

It seems to run in the family.

“I really don't mind.”

He gives in with a shallow nod. “You gonna be okay if I go?”

“I think I'll manage on my own. It's—”

“Yeah.”

Need to know, you remember the big, scary one saying when you met Kyle at the tarmac. His voice low over the whir of the engines in the distance, but robust. Brassy. The inflection is standoffish. Cold. But you saw how he turned back around when Kyle led you away, eerie gaze drilling into his injured shoulder for a moment before calling out to him that Bravo Seven-One was inbound.

The difference between Kyle and the company he keeps always seems to jar you slightly. He's so normal in comparison. So human. Grounded in reality in a way that makes everyone else around him feel preternatural.

“I’ll be fine,” you say at length, hand falling to the soft, barely noticeable bump he rests his head on. A happy accident. You wonder if it overwhelms him a little. Babies. Kids. None of it ever felt feasible before all of this. “Go have fun in the mountains.”

It pulls another snort of him, and he turns his head, peppers a soft kiss to your navel, eyes flicking upward to stare at you. Dancing with mirth. A mordant sort of humour you can't begin to understand.

Need to know, maybe.

“Fun, huh?” It's muffled by your skin. “Think I'm bein’ led to my untimely death, actually.”

“That so?” You hum, a smile curving over your lips. “At least make it look like an accident, yeah? We won't get the insurance payout otherwise.”

“No shit? Murder in the highlands isn't covered? What the hell am I paying nearly three hundred pounds for, then?”

“Peace of mind.”

It makes him snort before he buries his face in your belly, scratching his nose on your cashmere in a small nuzzle.

“Ain't much of a peace of mind, is it?”

“Better now,” you offer, fanning your fingers over the arch of his ear, soothing the tiny pout you can feel forming against your skin.

“Yeah, well—”

His words taper off, lost to a kiss placed just above your belly button. It might be an apology. Sorry for almost dying—

Again.

And as much as you hate that he has to, that he peppers kisses in place of it'll never happen again, or don't worry, I'm here now, you know what this is. You've known it from the beginning. Accepted it as is because with you or without you, Kyle was going to do what he does regardless. Begging him not to, to reconsider, is not a line of selfishness you're willing to cross—

Or, weren't, rather.

Until this. Until now.

This soft, barely noticeable curve seemed to overwrite the desire to let him fly as high as he wanted. To rearrange the stars until he fit amongst them; more dust than man. Selfish, maybe. Definitely.

But the condition was less of an ultimatum and more of a plea. I don't want to be a single mum, Kyle. Perspective, you suppose, does that to people. Changes them. Shapes them into something different.

You think maybe he felt the same way when he bowed his head over the table, staring down at the pregnancy test you laid down for him, and nodded.

(“Yeah, yes. Uh, I'll—yeah. I'll—” he swallowed around the brine in his throat. Salt congealed over his airways until his voice was a rough scrape between his teeth, desiccated. “I'll talk to Price. No more helicopters—”)

There was more, of course. A hashing of everything. All of it spilt out over the table. He gave up as much as he could without sacrificing that insatiable desire to soar as high as he can, untethered to the earth. And you promised to anchor him down when need be. When he tries to fly too close to the sun.

A compromise.

And—

“Bring some flowers for me,” you murmur at length, fingers grazing the shell of his ear.

—an apology.

He keeps his head bowed. “Supposed to be need to know.”

“Call it a hunch, then.”

A snort. His shoulders shake. “Sure. Price’ll love that one. Intuition will sound good on the report.”

“Oh, no. Big, scary military men afraid of a little paperwork.”

“Oi—” His fingers dig into your sides. A playful pinch. You choke out a shallow laugh, raking your nails over his scalp in retaliation, but it just makes him shiver. Groan.

Keep doin’ that and I'll give our neighbours a show—

“How long will you be gone for?”

His lips tug downward. “Just the weekend.”

“Don't have too much fun without me.”

He slides his face over your belly until he's balanced on the tip of his chin. That sombre look is back again. Pensive. Quiet. He'll tell you the truth when he's ready, you're sure, and you brush your fingers over the divot in his brow, smoothing the wrinkle out.

“We'll be fine.” You say, and he nods because he knows. You're safe here. But still—

He presses a kiss to your belly, staring up at you through the golden curve of his ashes. Sombre expression melting into something languid. Lax. Catlike, you think, huffing when his hands curl around the backs of your thighs, pads of fingers dipping into soft skin.

Kyle catches it. Grins. Heat soaks into your flesh where his palms rest, nestled just below the curve of your ass. His intentions are clear, obvious, and you go willingly when he pulls you into his lap, thighs thrown over his.

Your throne, he’d once joked in the early days of dating, when you were still discovering pieces of yourselves in each other’s naked flesh. A truism now because whenever he can manage it, Kyle seems to prefer you sitting on his lap, head tucked under his chin. Within reach.

Always.

His personal stress ball, perhaps. A weighted blanket. As you nuzzle close, his shoulders dip. The tension in his muscles bleeding out by the weight of you on him, the brush of your skin. You press in, leaching comfort from his sun-warmed flesh. Fingers trailing down the angled slope of his face until his jaw is held in the plinth of your palms.

The ghost of a pout still lingers in the jut of his lower lip. You sweep your thumb over it, nail curving along the valley of his cupid’s bow to map the path you know better than your own sloping plains. A kiss to the ridge of his jaw chases away the saturnine shadows still falling across lush beds of gold; sun dusted colluvium.

You taste salt on your tongue when you pepper a kiss just above the arched curve of his cheekbone, his lashes fluttering down, tickling your mouth when he blinks.

It doesn’t get rid of all the Ttenebrae tucked tight inside the canyons of burnt umber, coruscating amber, but flecks of aurate gleam through the shade of eventide. A glimmering gem in a sea of moon white.

The flickering embers of his unease melts with his huff. His thumb strokes along the curve of your ass, settling over your waist. Holding you close. You catch the way his eyes drop briefly down to your belly. The bloom of heat in his eyes. Liquid gold. Darkening as he stares, marbled with possessiveness. With the unfettered threads of satisfaction streaking through.

The eyes of a big cat as he licks the blood from his jowls, his kill still cooling on his paws.

“Better be.”

“Overprotective already and they’re not even here yet,” you tease when he lifts his gaze. Honeyed with want; syrupy with desire.

“Not just for them,” Kyle rasps, his hand sliding up your spine, cupping your nape in his palm. Dragging you closer to breathe his need over your lips. “You're both mine.”

“Kyle—”

“Say it.”

“We’re yours,” you whisper, catching the stutter in his pulse when your hands slide down his jaw, cupping his neck. “Just yours—”

The rest of your words are devoured by his scorching mouth, eaten right from between your teeth. Kyle’s kisses have always edged into consumption, you think. Like he trying to eat you whole—nothing saved for later. No scrap spared. Wasted.

It’s dizzying. Edges into too much, too intense. You can’t keep up with him no matter how hard you try. He’s always several paces ahead, drawing your tongue into his mouth. Letting the sharp edge of his canines graze your flesh, scraping the soft tissue. All you can do is cling to him. Hold on as he glues his mouth to yours and eats—

When he pulls away, giving you a moment to catch your breath, you think you hear him growl, never lettin’ either of you go—

But he drags you back into him a second later, mouth slipping over yours with an untempered hunger. The purr he lets out trembling over your tongue, shaking the thought right out of your head.

Never, you’d say if he let you. If he gave you a moment to think. Peeled his tongue from between the seam of your teeth long enough to let you gasp the words out.

He doesn’t. He won’t.

He drags wet, sticky lips across your cheek, over your jaw, down your throat, before sinking his canines into the throb of your pulse beating under your skin instead. Steals the thoughts from your head as you gasp his name out, followed quickly by please and Kyle, more—

Kyle lifts his hand from your spine, fingers stretching out. Reaching. The sun glows between the spread of his fingers; scintillating like fine, golden mist over his fingers. Beautiful, he thinks when your breath hitches in a shallow gasp; held tight his arm, and—

(with it cradled in middle of his hand, he closes his fingers around the sun until it's swallowed up in his palm.)

—all his.

Tags

fic recs

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bobiologist

11 months ago

this is basically my ‘to read next’ list, thank you for the food 🙏🙏

for all of us who can't bear to read anything but CoD fanfiction (due to the 141's fat tits) do you have any all-time favs?

Such an awful, sick affliction. I made one of these lists a while back but couldn't find it so you’re in luck because I have plenty of favorites and I’m happy to share them (in no particular order. I KNOW I'm forgetting at least ten fics I've read and loved but I have a goldfish brain today, forgive me):

And please, read the tags/warnings. Your consumption is your own responsibility.

Neon Medusa Too sweet not to share Ghost and Red Fox Alford plea The Willow Maid Exfiltration The Arrangement Civilian Asset See no evil Squeeze me I squeak MildLimerence Mine & Yours Saltwater Metanoia to you I can admit (that I'm too soft for all of it) white flag blood on my shirt, rose in my hand totally platonic Surviving you imprimatura Dog all that's said in the lowlight birdsongs or advice and symphonies for your children Happiness songs that sound like sea foam down to the marrow roommate gaz Chink in the Armour Man-sized Hummingbird don't leave me locked in your heart Listening In Situationship-verse The Scottish Cabin in the Woods

Additions to this list as of June 12

Spoils of War Where Your Feet Pass Neighborly and/or not The Rear Window jigsaws pictures in frames, kisses on cheeks sirius c Spoils Cabin Fever / part one lotus flower the lies we tell Who Dares Win babytrap anthology The Hard Way Of Sea Foam and Iron bury me beneath the basswood tree Wicked Harvest Tiger balm baby blue Keeper/Kept Something Sweet Stay Away appetite

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bobiologist

1 year ago

Ghost and soap need to realise reader has two holes!!!!!!!!!!! They can have her and each other 😭

LMFAO?? ok but ghost doesn't like reader that way (yet) so. yk

(johnny and reader are not even in love together too. they fuck not out of love but for a secret third thing which is because they're both in love with simon. sure, affections for each other arise but they're so stubborn that they won't even entertain their feelings until everything's splintering and has turned into a mess, and john is telling them three to get their shit together)

...what i would honestly see is ghost and reader sharing johnny.

ghost seeks you out first, hands balled into fists and shoulders tensed but there's something he loves more than feeding his greed and that was giving johnny whatever he asks for. and somehow, for whatever reason simon can't honest to god fathom, johnny wants you.

so he comes to you with a question, blind to the way you're staring up at him with a mixture of horror and pain.

"i really don't give a shite, honestly, and i know you don't care about me too." he pauses, breathing in deeply. "but you and i, we both adore him. so, what do you say?"

you say yes.

it's foolish, you know, but this is all that ghost allows you to be with him. this is how close you could ever get to him. and it hurts and it's pathetic but in that moment, submerged in your heartbreak, you couldn't even protect yourself and agreed to his proposition.

(the first night together with them was of peaking desperation; it was all gasped-out words and rumbled moans. johnny pressed you on the bed, ass up, and took you like that. ghost claimed his mouth; thick cock sliding down johnny's throat while ghost whispered out praises and confessions, calling him his good boy and his perfect love. telling him how beautiful he is as he choked on ghost's cock and how good he is at fucking you.

you felt forgotten. used.

johnny chased your tears away later with a kiss but ghost's silence almost kills you. it is as you bask in johnny's warmth that you realize how ghost has not once touched you.)

Tags

pussy screaming but heart is breaking

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bobiologist

8 months ago

Inhuman Encounters: Finale

an anon asked:

r u going to write a sex pollen situation where reader gets hit with it?

and i thought that was a great idea!

you're not okay, but you will be. they're all here for you.

->inhuman rex, jay and levine/reader. explicit; contains heat/mating cycles, dubcon/noncon due to sex pollen, mild possessive behavior, gangbang, marathon sex.

“It’s my turn, right?” Jay says. “I’m pretty sure it is. Levine’s been in there too long. It’s not fair.” He tries to look innocent, almost nonchalant, like he’s just asking about the weather, but Rex doesn’t buy it. He’s perched on the desk Rex is trying to use, the same one Rex told him to get off of five minutes ago, his tail swishing restlessly and smacking Rex in the leg. “Roosting,” Jay calls it. Sitting precariously at the highest elevation in the room to satisfy some deeply-ingrained instinct. He only does it when he’s agitated or pouting.

He’s also as much of a mess as all of them, stinking of sex with little human scratches and bite marks between his scales. He stopped bothering to get dressed between rounds a while ago, and all he’s got on are a pair of boxers. Rex isn’t much better, but he’s trying to keep it together.

“Go tell Levine, then,” Rex says dismissively.

“Levine doesn’t listen to me!” Jay snaps. “You have to tell him.”

“In a minute.”

Jay makes a grating sound, somewhere between a growl and a whine, and drags his claws over the desk petulantly. It’s annoying, but Rex understands. It’s getting to him, too, all the scents and sounds coming from the bedroom down the hall. There’s the musky stench of sex, sweat, and exertion, but above all that, there’s the scent of you. Your tears. Your distress. Your desire. Rex knows all of those smells, but it’s sharper than it’s ever been, irresistible and beckoning. He wants to lose himself in the haze of your need for him, but he has to focus.

His human—their human, as the other two keep reminding him—is unwell. He has a strong memory of the last time all of you spent time together, some strange, sharp aroma permeating the air in an abandoned place. You said you felt sick and left in a hurry. You didn’t answer any of his calls. And when he came to check on you—

“Are you almost done?” Jay whines.

“No, I’m not, and every time you ask, it’s gonna take longer,” Rex mutters. Down the hall, in his bedroom, you’re moaning breathlessly. Rex can just picture how Levine has you, pinned under him in bed with your legs over his shoulders, mostly human as he pounds into your tight heat. Whatever he’s doing, it’s making you gasp and cry, but it isn’t enough. He smells your dissatisfaction, your lust for more. He wants to be there. He wants to fill you. He takes a deep breath and ignores the erection straining in his jeans.

Rex carefully turns the yellowed parchment pages in front of him, trying to distract himself with the musty attic scent permeating the paper. He has a few boxes of his mom’s shit in the attic, things she didn’t care enough about to take with her (like him, he can’t help but think). There are encyclopedias and grimoires so old that no one alive would even recognize the language of the text. No index, unfortunately, so he just has to skim until he finds your symptoms. Not much to be done but help you burn whatever it is out of your system, and he knows that, but he’s more concerned with discovering the culprit.

He wants to find whatever did this. He wants to put it through agonies it never knew existed. He wants it to beg for oblivion, just so he can deny it.

He hears the bedroom door creak open. Your voice fills the hall, begging, weeping for more. “Please, please I can’t—it’s not—I need more, I need—need you, need all of you. Please, it hurts when I’m empty. Please fuck me, fill me up, I want you to cum inside. I need you. Rex—”

Jay jumps back like a startled cat when the desk splinters. Rex curses and starts pacing. He’s slipping bad. He has to take deep breaths, clutch his chest, and make his human heart slow down before he can get his tendrils under control. They want you. They twine together, straining against him to reach into the hall. He swallows hard and gradually, he pulls himself back together.

Levine appears in the open doorway, naked, gleaming with sweat, hair tousled and hanging in his face. He looks like worse shit than usual. He’s slipping, too, his eyes shining. He leaks nightmarestuff and it pools on the ceiling. “Listen,” he says groggily. His voice is wrecked. “I think we need a new strategy.”

“Fuck you and your strategy, it’s my turn,” Jay snaps, but Rex tugs him back with a tentacle before he can leave. Levine’s right. It’s not burning out of you fast enough, and your body isn’t built to handle this kind of strain. Your scent is even stronger now with the bedroom door left wide open, and he can hear how you writhe against the sheets. You’re delirious and rambling, telling them how much you love their cocks and how good you’ll be, how they can use you however they want and you’ll take it all.

“Alright,” Rex says, licking his lips. His tongue is too long, doesn’t feel much like a tongue anymore. He’s losing his sense of his own body, how the human form fits together. He clenches his hands into fists and sinks his nails in hard, makes himself bleed so he has to focus on healing. This isn’t about them. It’s about you. He has to be in control. “Let’s try something else.”

It’s a short walk to the bedroom, no more than a few steps to the end of the hall, but time slows to a crawl when he sees you. His human, curled up in his bed, panting and whimpering with need. You’re face-down, humping one of his pillows like a dog in heat, and he wants to take you like one. Wants to smother your body with his, bite your neck, pull you into the roll of his hips and fuck you deep. Jay swears under his breath when he sees you and that gets your attention, makes you lift your head and look at him with glazed eyes.

“Jay, fuck me,” you beg him, crawling on your hands and knees to the edge of the bed. You almost fall. Rex is closest and catches you, pushes you back into the safety of the pillows. “Rex,” you sigh, and his heart skips a beat. “Want you inside me.” He doesn’t know if he undresses properly, if he can bother to take his clothes off, or if his tentacles rip through them. Either way, he’s undressed and on the bed with you, and you’re nuzzling against his cock. Rex hates to stop you from licking and suckling at the head. He doesn’t, for a little bit, and pretends it’s just so he can gather his thoughts.

“Levine,” he says. The incubus is there suddenly, standing at the side of the bed closest to you. Rex didn’t hear or see him move. “You have another one in you?”

“Do birds fly?” Levine asks him wryly. He kneels on the bed and easily redirects your attention with a hand cupping your chin. “Here, little thing,” he coos, pumping his long, flushed length in front of your face. “Can you take me? All of me?”

“Yes,” you moan. You sound reverent. Without hesitation, you drag your tongue along his shaft from base to tip. Levine groans and tangles a hand in your hair, guiding himself into your mouth. He starts shallow despite your eagerness, just barely thrusting, but you’re shameless. You make obscene sounds sucking on him, saliva dribbling down your chin, and you start trying to take him deeper.

“Slow down,” Levine chides you. He tugs on your hair sharply but it just makes you moan around him. “Don’t rush this.”

You try to go still, but Rex sees you squirming, rubbing your thighs together. He doesn’t have to call Jay, because Jay is already there and trying to squeeze himself onto a bed too small for all of them, pawing at you, trailing kisses down your spine. Somehow, stuffed between Levine and Jay, you still manage to look up and give Rex a pleading look that makes heat rise to his face. “We’ve got you,” Rex murmurs. He brushes your sweat-sticky bangs out of your face. You almost pull off of Levine to lean into the touch.

You make it hard. You won’t sit still. The pillows and blankets end up everywhere, scattered across the floor from the constant awkward shuffle to reposition and your grasping, clinging hands. Jay mounts you like an animal and the quick, dirty grind makes you both cum fast, but it’s not enough. Levine works you with his fingers and you squirm, cry his name and cum all over his hand, but that’s not enough, either. You crawl into Rex’s lap and ride him and he cums twice, his nails sinking into your hips hard enough to draw blood. You don’t stop. You whine as you grind on him and run your hands over his chest.

He lies there bonelessly for a while, watching you get spitroasted between Jay and Levine with muted worry. Jay’s legs are buckling and his moans are getting quieter, almost pained. Levine’s thrusts are weak and robotic. He can’t help but passively feed on all the lust and frenzy you’re throwing off, and now he’s sluggish, so past full that it’s uncomfortable.

And it’s still not enough. You’re not cumming and you’re getting frantic, bucking your hips against Levine and sucking too hard on Jay’s softening length. Your body has to be at its limits. Rex considers all the things he knows that could have done this, and the chance that you’ll remember this in the morning. Doesn’t matter, he decides. He has to do something.

“Come here,” he says. He lets himself slip further, his voice going low, coarse, and commanding. He thinks he hears Jay collapse with a grunt but he doesn’t check. He doesn’t care. All that matters is you, the sway of your body coming towards him, the searing heat in your eyes. He waits until you’re in his arms, straddling him again, to slip even more. He wanted the first time he felt you with his true body to be special. It still will be, he decides. But right now, you need him, and that’s all that matters.

“I want you to close your eyes,” he says. “And don’t open them until I say.” You promise. You swear to him. Anything to get him inside of you faster. He’ll have to cover your eyes for you to make sure. He spreads your legs apart with a tendril wrapped around each, making you gasp at the wriggling, soft sensation. Something that you don’t recognize, that isn’t his cock and yet is, slides between your legs and rubs against your sex. Rex bites his lip so hard it bleeds. There’s no way he can hold his focus through all of this. You feel too good.

“What’re you doing?” Jay’s voice comes from just across the room, but it sounds even more distant. Rex can hear blood rushing through his ears. His flesh changing, his shape reforming. He keeps it restricted to his lower body so the top half is still human, still familiar to you. Easy for you to hold onto. Easy for you to look at with that desperate need. “Dude, you’re slipping—”

“I know,” Rex hisses, and the overhead light bursts in a rain of glass. Fuck, he’s in bad shape. You shiver against him. Rex quickly sweeps the shattered bulb off the bed with another tentacle and distracts you the best he can, caressing your body with his hands and tendrils. “You both need to get over here. Don’t hold back anymore.”

“...dangerous,” Levine murmurs, but he doesn’t disagree. In one smooth movement, he’s next to the bed again and his human skin is gone, consumed in the churning haze of his true form. The both of them crowding around you, caging you between them in their true forms, satisfies something in you. You whimper. You stop squirming and moving on your own. Everything about your body language screams submissive now, and Rex ignores the implications for now, the intentions of whatever set its sights on you, in favor of focusing on how much he wants you.

“Jay?” Rex says. He squeezes your ass, making you arch your back and moan for him. “Thought you were excited for your turn.” It’s cruel to tease him like that, but it’s good motivation. Jay is on his feet and staring at you, the way you shiver and moan as Rex threatens to penetrate you. He’s fully slipped, his tail thicker and longer, short horns poking out of his hairline. He kisses your shoulder and presses himself against your back, grinding against your ass until he’s hard again. You’re so far gone that all you can do is mewl helplessly.

“Thought I’d enjoy this, but I miss how they usually are,” Jay mutters. “Bein’ all mouthy and stuff.” He nibbles at the side of your neck and Rex feels you cum on the squirming length of his tentacle. A good sign, he thinks.

“They’re going to feel awful in the morning,” Levine says, but he’s wrapping cloudy wisps of himself around you anyway, chuckling at the needy noises you make. “It’ll be cute.”

“Focus,” Rex chides them, a useless reminder. You’re the center of the their universe right now. They’re going to get you through this, no matter what it takes.

Tags

fic recs one of the first docs i ever read this author always eats

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