adee!

You’re heavier than you were in his memory and lighter than you should be for your age.

Sedative soft, head lolling against his shoulder, lashes trembling where they rest against your cheeks. You breath comes warm through parted lips, uneven at the edges from crying, from screaming, from fighting them with everything your body had left until chemistry dragged you under. One of your hands is trapped between his vest and your chest, fingers curled loosely in a way that looks too much like your childhood if he lets himself look at it for more than a second.

(And he doesn’t let himself look at it for more than a second. He counts instead, the rise of your chest- one and two and three and- because counting is the only sound quiet enough to drown out the one you made against Ghost’s palm, and if he stops counting he’ll hear it again, and again, and again- so he keeps counting, four, five, six, past the point where counting means anything.)

The transport shudders over something uneven in the road and your head tips further into him, unresisting, and he adjusts his arm without thinking. Old muscle memory, older than any of this- the same automatic correction he made when you were small enough that all of this was a given and not something he had to take back with a needle.

Gaz only put the needle in your thigh because Price told him to.

That fact sits in the back of his mind, hot and deep and impossible to remove, buried deep. He can still see your eyes in the room at the estate, wide and furious over Ghost’s hand. He can still hear the muffled sounds of your screaming. He can still feel the thin line you tore down the back of his hand with your nails when he reached too close.

I hate you.

He tightens his hold on you as the vehicle turns off the main road and into the woods.

The safehouse is buried deep enough that the road disappears twice before they reach it, swallowed first by pines and then by darkness, headlights cutting through branches heavy with late frost.

The place had once belonged to one of Laswell’s ghosts, someone dead or disappeared or quietly folded into a different name. Stone foundation. Timber walls. Black windows. No neighboring houses. No passing cars. No sound except tires over frozen dirt and the wind moving through the trees like something dragging its nails along the bark.

A good place to keep you alive.

That’s what Price tells himself when the house appears through the dark.

You’ll hate it.

The thought comes suddenly, definitive. He knows you’ll wake and look at him like he’s done something unforgivable.

Makarov has seen to that, had taken six months and fed you whatever version of the world made John Price look like the enemy, had taken every wound Price left open and put his hand inside it until you mistook the pressure for care.

This is home.

Price’s jaw locks.

It doesn’t matter how softly you said it. It doesn’t matter how frightened you looked when they came through the door. It doesn’t matter that you tried to tell them to leave before he came back, that your first instinct on waking to your father was not relief but panic. (- and Price knows that’s Makarov’s voice speaking through places in you Price doesn’t know how to reach yet.

But he will.

He has to.)

The vehicle stops and for a moment no one moves. The engine ticks in the dark, heat fading from the vents, and your breathing fills the silence between four men who have survived ambushes, interrogations, chemical attacks, collapsing buildings, and every ugly act war can invent, only to sit in a car with an unconscious girl and not know where to put their hands.

Soap is in the front passenger seat, turned halfway back, eyes fixed on you. There’s blood dried along his forearm where your nails caught him. (He hasn’t wiped it away. Maybe he hasn’t noticed. Maybe he has and thinks he deserves to keep it there. His face looks hollowed out in the dashboard glow regardless.)

Gaz sits beside the door with the med kit against his knee, hand resting on top of the bag, thumb worrying at the seam, over and over, the same motion repeated until Price wants to tell him to stop and can’t, because he knows exactly what the boy is feeling. (Gaz had objected. One word, low and tight- Cap- he had seen what it meant and had done it anyway.)

Ghost gets out first.

Of course he does.

The cold comes in around him, wet pine and frozen earth, and then the door shuts with a dull sound. He’s a shadow moving through shadows, rifle raised, body already turned back into a weapon because that is easier than being a man right now. He clears the porch. The front room. The hall. His voice comes through comms a moment later, flat and controlled.

“Clear.”

Only then does Price open his door.

The cold hits you both. You stir against him, brow pinching, and Price freezes so abruptly Soap’s hand goes to his weapon before he catches himself. Your fingers twitch once against Price’s vest. A small, pained sound escapes you, thin as thread, and every man there goes still.

“Easy,” Price murmurs, bending his head closer. “Easy, love. I’ve got you.”

You settle again, slipping back under.

Soap exhales like it hurts and Gaz looks down. Neither of them speaks.

Price carries you inside.

The safehouse smells of dust but there’s fresh supplies- Laswell’s doing no doubt. The front door is reinforced and he can see the windows are secured. Back exit narrow but usable. Basement access shut. Good. Necessary. Contained.

(You’ll hate that too.)

He pushes the thought aside.

You don’t know what’s necessary right now. That’s the part he keeps coming back to, the part he grips with both hands because letting go of it means falling into something he cannot afford to feel. You don’t know what’s safe. You don’t know who to trust. Makarov twisted something in you until you looked at your family and saw monsters, then looked back at him and called it home.

(Price tells himself he has to hold the line until you can see clearly again. He can fix this. He’s fixed harder things with less. Six months of dead ends and he still found you, still got you breathing in his arms, and if he could do that then he can do this too- the alternative isn’t something he can afford to think about yet, not while your pulse is still warm under his hand-

Even if you hate him for it.

Especially then.)

“Bedroom,” Ghost says from the hallway. “Ground floor. One window. I’ve got eyes on the treeline from there.”

Price nods and carries you down the hall.

The room is small, plain, and cold despite the radiator ticking beneath the window. An iron bedframe. A faded quilt. A wooden chair. A dresser scarred by old water rings. Nothing like the estate. Nothing like that room with the lake outside and everything arranged neatly on the table and your book facedown by the bed as if you had settled into captivity with a bedtime routine.

(He hates that he knows that detail.

He hates that he saw the glass of water beside you, the folded cloth, the lamp left on low. He hates that Makarov had made a prison look softer than rescue. He hates that when Price found you, you looked rested. Fed. Brushed. Cared for. He hates that his first feeling after relief had been horror because there were no chains to point at, no obvious brutality to hold up in front of you and say, look, this is what he is. Makarov had been cleverer than that. Patient. Gentle where it would do the most damage. He had wrapped control in tenderness until you couldn’t tell them apart.)

Price lowers you onto the bed.

Your head turns on the pillow, mouth moving around a soundless protest. The blanket slips from your shoulder and reveals the fading mark at your throat, yellowed at the edges, ugly in the lamplight. Price’s hand stops above it, not touching- not because he’s earned restraint, not because he fully understands it, but because if he touches that mark, he thinks something in him will split open and whatever comes out won’t be useful to anyone.

Soap makes a low noise behind him.

Price turns his head. “What?”

Soap’s eyes are fixed on the bruise, jaw working once before he looks away, anger and grief fighting for space in his face. “Nothing.”

“Say it.”

Soap looks back at him then, and for one second Price sees the man who held your ankles while you cried. Not Johnny. Not the lad who used to let you clutch at his bicep while he raised his arm and you swung from it giggling and kicking your feet as a kid. A soldier in a bedroom, doing what had to be done because Price gave the order.

Soap’s voice comes rough. “She’s gonna wake up scared.”

Price looks back at you. “I know.”

“No, Cap.” Soap swallows. “Scared of us.”

The truth in his words land badly and there’s no cushioning it, no softer angle to turn it at- flat and total, and Price feels them go in somewhere just beneath the first wound, widening it rather than making a new one. He doesn’t have an answer. There isn’t one that survives contact with what Soap just said.

So Price resorts to pulling the blanket up over your shoulder with too much care and says. “For now.”

Soap says nothing in response.

“For now,” Price repeats, harder this time, because he needs that to be true. “She’s been with him six months. Whatever he’s done, whatever he’s told her- ” His voice catches on the edge of something and he forces it flat. “It won’t undo itself in one night.”

Gaz appears in the doorway. “No. It won’t.”

There is no accusation in it, but Price hears one anyway.

Gaz steps inside with the med kit. “I need to check her vitals.”

Price’s first instinct is to refuse. It rises fast and irrational, possessive. She’s asleep. Leave her. Don’t touch her. Hasn’t enough been done? Then training catches up. Necessity. Sedative. Shock. Unknown injuries. Unknown substances. Six months of unknown everything.

He moves aside.

Gaz approaches carefully, slower than he would with anyone else. “I’m going to touch your wrist,” he tells you, voice quiet.

“She can’t hear you,” Soap mutters, not unkindly.

Gaz doesn’t look at him. “Maybe.”

Price watches Gaz take your pulse with two fingers, watches his face smooth into concentration. Watches him check your pupils, your breathing, the bruise blooming where the needle went in. The boy’s hands are steady now, but there is something wrong in the set of his mouth. Something Price recognizes because he has seen men carry the memory of necessary violence before. (Funny how it never weighs less just because it was necessary.)

“Pulse is fast but settling,” Gaz says. “Respiration’s good. She’ll be out a while longer. Maybe confused when she comes round.”

“She was confused already,” Price says.

Ghost, from the doorway: “She wasn’t confused.”

Price looks at him.

Ghost stands with his arms loose at his sides, mask turning his face into something unreadable except for the eyes. His left glove is torn near the thumb where you bit him. A dark stain seeps through the fabric. “She knew what she wanted.”

“What she wanted was to stay with Makarov.”

“Aye,” Soap says quietly, like the word hurts him.

Price’s temper flares so quickly it almost feels clean. Better than guilt. Better than fear. Better than the image of you looking at him like he was the thing you needed saving from. “Because he got into her head.”

No one argues and that should satisfy him but it doesn’t. (Silence isn’t agreement, not really- it’s four men who’ve spent six months learning exactly how much weight grief can carry before it tips into something none of them know how to talk the other down from, and none of them are willing to be the one who adds to the load, like six months of finding nothing has left then fluent in every version of quiet that isn’t peace.

Price wants suddenly- badly- for the anger to be the whole truth. It would be easier that way. Easier to hate Makarov clean and simple, a wound with a cause behind it, than to sit here recalculating every year he spent overseas, every mission he took because it felt like purpose, every time distance felt like the safer kind of love.)

Ghost’s eyes remain steady and he’s never been one to dress a thing up before he hands it to someone- never softened a call, never let a man walk out of a briefing believing something kinder than what was true, because in his experience kindness that isn’t earned is just another way people get killed. “Still knew.”

Price steps toward him before he realizes he’s moved. “You think I should’ve left her there?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Ghost is silent for a beat. When he answers, his voice is as flat as winter ground. “Then don’t pretend she’ll thank us when she wakes.”

Price stares at him.

Something ugly tightens beneath his ribs, not because Ghost is wrong, but because the words feel like betrayal. As if there is any room in this house for nuance. As if they can afford to stand around splitting hairs over consent while Makarov breathes somewhere out there in the world. As if Price had not spent six months imagining every possible way he might find you, only to discover that the version he got back had been taught to call a monster home.

“She doesn’t have to thank me,” Price says. “She just has to be alive.”

The room goes quiet again.

That, at least, nobody can dispute.

Gaz closes the med kit while Soap shifts his weight, restless and miserable. Ghost holds Price’s gaze one moment longer before looking away first, not in submission but because there is nothing more to say without making things worse.

Price turns back to you.

You look smaller in the bed than you had in his arms. Younger too, though he knows that’s a trick of sleep and lamplight and his own desperate memory. The girl who woke at the estate had not been small. You had been terrified and furious and absolutely certain of him as an enemy. You’d told him he didn’t get to say Dad now and defended Makarov with tears on your face and your mother’s stubborn chin lifted.

He took care of me.

Price feels something bitter climb the back of his throat.

He had wanted to grab you by the shoulders and shake you screaming until you believed him: Makarov learned your soft places and pressed his thumbs into them until you accommodated the pressure. That wasnt care. That was strategy. That was ownership.

Price sits in the chair beside the bed instead.

Outside the bedroom, Soap says something low to Gaz. Gaz answers even lower. Footsteps move away. A door opens and shuts. Ghost remains near the hall, not quite guarding the room, not quite leaving it either.

Price keeps his eyes on your face.

He thinks of the kitchen, if you standing there too thin, too tired, telling him his best wasn’t good enough. He thinks of himself reaching for the kettle after you left because making tea was easier than following you. He thinks of the photos loading on his phone one by one, each of them showing a version of you he had not seen in years. He thinks of Makarov’s hand at your waist and the message waiting in the penthouse.

Too slow, Captain.

You’re here now.

You’re alive.

You’re not with Makarov.

The rest, Price tells himself, can be fixed with time.

Outside, the woods close around the safehouse. Inside, his men secure the doors, check the windows, set the watches, do all the things good soldiers do when they have brought something precious out of enemy territory and need to keep it from being taken again.

Price sits beside your bed and counts your breaths until dawn.

***

Price wakes to cold water hitting him full in the face and your voice already tearing through the room, incandescent with rage. “You can’t do this to me!”

For one violent second, he is nowhere, body coming awake before his mind does, hand jerking toward a weapon, lungs dragging in a sharp, startled breath as water runs down his beard and under the collar of his shirt.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He’d meant to sit there until you woke, meant to count every breath, every twitch of your fingers, every small shift under the blanket until the drugs finally loosened their hold on you. But six months of terror had been laid down all at once, and the radiator had ticked, and the morning sun had slipped warm across his skin, and somewhere between one breath and the next, exhaustion had put its hands over his eyes.

Too slow, Captain.

Price blinks hard against the water clinging to his lashes and finds you standing several feet away with an empty cup trembling in your hand, barefoot, hair wild around your face, blanket dragged half off the bed and twisted near your feet.

The sedative hasn’t left you completely; he can see it in the unfocused brightness of your eyes, in the way your knees keep trying to give beneath you, in the fact that one shoulder is pressed hard to the wall because pride alone is not enough to hold you upright.

“You drugged me,” you say, voice raw. “You drugged me. You let them- ” Your mouth snaps shut around the rest, and the cup knocks softly against your thigh, hand shaking too hard to keep it still. “I told you no.”

Price pushes himself straighter in the chair, keeping his movements slow. “You were going to scream the house down. We had to get you out before he came back.”

“You took me.” The words come fast, tripping over each other. “You took me while I was sleeping. You took me from him. You had no right.”

“He took you first.”

Your face twists like he has struck something tender and infected and he instantly knows he said the wrong thing.

“Love- ”

“Don’t call me that.” Your voice cracks, then climbs. “Don’t. Don’t say it like that. Don’t look at me like that. You don’t get to look at me like you’re sad. You did this. You did this to me.”

Price stands, and the instant he does, your whole body jerks tighter. He stops, hands half lifted, water dripping from his beard onto his shirt. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You already did.” Your eyes are wet now, bright with fury and panic. You sway once and catch yourself against the wall, teeth gritting hard enough that Price sees the muscle jump in your jaw. “You let them hold me down. You watched. You just watched.”

His throat tightens. “I got you out.”

“I didn’t ask you to!”

The words tear out of you and leave the room ringing. Price has answers, too many of them, all practical and necessary and useless. You were drugged because you were fighting. You were restrained because you were screaming. You were taken because leaving you there would have meant handing you back to Makarov. You’re alive. You’re here. You’re not with him. But he knows none of that will reach the places you’re speaking from.

Price takes one step without meaning to instead and you snatch the pillow from the bed and throw it at his face as a result.

He catches it on instinct, one hand coming up fast, cotton crumpling against his palm. It blocks his vision for less than a heartbeat. When he lowers it, you’re already moving, stumbling past the foot of the bed and through the doorway with one hand slapping hard against the frame for balance.

“Stop!” Price barks, too much command in it, and the sound only makes you move faster.

You hit the hallway unsteady, shoulder grazing against the wall as you shove yourself toward the living room and the front door beyond it. Price follows, heart climbing into his throat, already seeing the woods, the road, the open world where Makarov still breathes. “Wait, love, please- “

You’re halfway across the living room when Soap comes out of the kitchen, Gaz turns from the table, and Ghost steps in from the side hall like a shadow drawn into your path.

All three of them stop between you and the door, not touching, not reaching, but blocking all the same and you skid to a halt so abruptly your balance nearly goes. Your hand flies to the back of the sofa, fingers digging into the fabric, breath coming too fast as your eyes jump from Soap to Gaz to Ghost and then back toward Price.

Front door blocked. Windows curtained. Men on every side. No clean way out. (Another room. Another door. Another set of men-)

“Move,” you say.

Soap sets his mug down slowly on the table beside him, his voice low and careful. “Easy, hen. You’re still half out of it. Just sit down before ye fall, aye?”

“Move.”

Gaz keeps his hands open at his sides. “We can’t let you go outside.”

“I said move!” The scream rips out of you too loud, too sharp, and your own body flinches from it. Tears spill down your cheeks, and you wipe them away with the heel of your hand like they disgust you. “I want to go home. I want to go home. Let me go home.”

Price steps into the room behind you. “You are home.”

You turn on him so fast your knees nearly buckle. “No, I’m not.”

“Sweetheart- ”

“No.” You shake your head, once, twice, too hard, as if the word is the only thing keeping you standing. “No. No. No. You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to decide that. You weren’t there. You’re never there.”

“That place wasn’t home.”

“At least he was there!”

The words crack open in the room and everything goes silent around them.

You look horrified by what you’ve said, then furious that anyone heard it. Your face crumples for half a second before rage slams back over it, clumsy and bright.

“He was there,” you say again, smaller now but no less vicious. “He stayed. He listened. He noticed when I was tired. He noticed when I didn’t eat. He- he noticed me. He was more of a home than you’ve ever been!”

Price feels it go through him like a blade under the ribs. Behind you, Soap’s face twists, Gaz looks down, and Ghost’s eyes sharpen, fixed on you like he’s watching someone bleed out from somewhere no bandage can reach.

“Makarov hurt you,” Price says.

“You left me.”

“He used you.”

“You left me.”

“He got inside your head.”

“You left me!” This time the words come out raw enough to tear. You press one hand to your own chest like something there has started to split open. “You left me first. You left me and Mum over and over and over and my whole life and what? Now you’re here? Now you care? Now I’m supposed to trust you?”

Price has no answer that doesn’t sound like an excuse.

You turn away from him, back toward the door, and Ghost shifts a fraction to stay in front of it.

“Please,” you say, and the word is so sudden, so soft, that Soap’s face goes white. “Please. I won’t tell him. I won’t say you were here. I’ll tell him I ran. I’ll tell him it was my fault. Just let me go.”

Price’s blood goes cold.

There it is. Not logic. Not argument. Fear trained into loyalty. Makarov’s hand still around the back of your neck from miles away.

“He’s not coming for you,” Price says, though he has no right to promise it.

Your eyes flash. “You don’t know him.”

“I know enough.”

“No, you don’t!” You look at Ghost then, and your voice starts shaking again, harder, words losing their edges as panic chews through them. “Move. Please move. You don’t understand. He’ll be angry. He’ll think I- he’ll think I let you take me, and I didn’t. I didn’t. I fought you. I fought you, didn’t I? You saw. I have to tell him I fought you.”

No one speaks.

That silence breaks something.

“You saw,” you say again, desperate now, looking from Soap to Gaz to Ghost as if one of them might become witness, judge, savior. “You saw me fight. I didn’t. I didn’t want to go.”

Soap’s voice is barely there. “Bonnie…”

“Don’t.” Your face twists again, anger returning. “Don’t pity me.”

You take another step toward the door, and then the room tips beneath you. Price sees it drain from your face, sees your hand shoot blindly toward the sofa again and miss the first time. Gaz moves on instinct, one step forward, hand lifting.

“Don’t touch me,” you snap.

Gaz freezes. “I’m not. I’m just- ”

“Don’t touch me.”

“I won’t,” he says, and he doesn’t, but your body is still failing you. Your eyes unfocus for a second, lashes fluttering as you try to blink the dizziness away, and your knees soften hard enough that Soap reaches before thought can stop him.

“Hen, careful- ”

Your panic detonates.

You slap his hand away so hard the sound cracks through the living room, and the force of it sends you stumbling backward into the sofa.

“Don’t touch me!”

The scream tears out of you ragged and full throated, too big for the room, too big for your body, and then suddenly there is nothing left behind it but shaking.

Soap holds his hand where it stopped in the air, eyes wide and wounded and Price feels something inside him lock down hard because this is not anger anymore, not only anger.

You stand there trapped between the men who will not let you leave and the door you cannot reach, crying openly now, furious and humiliated by every tear. “I hate you,” you say, but it comes out small and childish, full of exhaustion. “I hate all of you.”

Price nods once because if he tries to speak as your father right now, something ugly will come out so he settles in Captain and hates himself even as he says. “You’re not leaving.”

Your face empties.

For a second, no one breathes.

Then you laugh under your breath, broken and bitter. “Of course I’m not.” Your eyes move over him then, slow and terrible, like you are finally seeing the shape of him clearly. “You know, you’re such a hypocrite. You talk about him like he’s some monster for keeping me where he thought I belonged, but look at you. Doors locked. Men watching. Telling me I’m confused. Telling me I’ll understand later.” Your mouth trembles, but the hatred holds. “You’re not saving me from him, you’re just angry he got there first. You’re projecting yourself onto him. You’re exactly the kind of person you’re accusing him of being.”

Price goes still.

No one speaks and h feels the words move through the room looking for somewhere to land before they come home to him.

You turn away from the door with as much dignity as your trembling body can manage. No one stops you as you walk back down the hall with one hand against the wall, spine rigid, head high, every step a visible act of hatred.

Price follows two paces behind because he cannot make himself do otherwise, because the idea of not being able to see you had already caused his pulse to climb with panic- but when you reach the bedroom door, you turn on him so sharply he stops.

“Fuck off.”

You step inside and slam the door in his face and a second later, something scrapes hard across the floor on the other side, heavy and uneven, dragged into place with clumsy determination. The chair, probably. Maybe the dresser. Maybe anything you can put between yourself and them.

Price stands in the hall, water drying cold in his beard, one hand half lifted toward the door. For a few minutes there’s nothing, no noise from your room.

Then he hears you crying.

Muffled and badlg hidden, bitten down on, but still unmistakable.

The house holds around the sound of it, four men standing uselessly in rooms they have secured too well, listening to the girl they watched grow up, the girl who spent the last six months missing and in Makarov’s custody, the girl they rescued from a man more evil than human, sob behind a barricaded door.

None of them knows what to do with that.

(And if the sound of you crying is bad, then the sound of him waking hours later to your scream coming from outside the house is something the human body has no proper place to put.

It comes at him through sleep like a hook through meat, dragging him out of a dreamless dark with his heart already trying to break itself against his ribs. For one impossible second, Price doesn’t move. He only sits upright in the narrow hall with the taste of old fear flooding his mouth, staring at the bedroom door still shut in front of him, the chair still braced beneath the handle from the inside, the untouched tray he tried to bring to you earlier gone cold on the floorboards.

The door is closed.

The room is barricaded.

Somehow, you’re not inside it.

His mind refuses that at first, rejects it with the same desperation that makes men reach for missing limbs, that makes fathers look at empty beds and think no, because no is simpler than what comes after. No, because he brought you here. No, because he watched the door. No, because he counted your breaths until dawn and then counted the hours after, because this house was locked and watched and buried in the woods, because surely the world cannot take you from him twice in the same lifetime and still expect him to remain a man.

Then you scream again and it definitely came from outside.

Beyond the walls. Beyond the locked door. Beyond the careful perimeter and the sleeping house and every useless measure men like Price build around the things they cannot bear to lose. Your voice tears up through the black trees raw and terrified, no anger left in it now, no words, nothing sharp enough to protect itself with. Only fear, naked and bright and alive somewhere in the woods where Price cannot see you.

For one heartbeat, the whole safehouse holds still around the sound.

“What happened?”

“Boss was just being a dick all day.” You turn to give a real smile, eyes crinkling, “Good thing my drug dealers got a soft spot for me though, huh?”

“Who told you that?” He smirks.

Your mouth drops in surprise, smacking his shoulder playfully.

“That’s mean.”

“You’re my favorite client, you know that.”

That makes you smile, head rolling onto the back of the couch and he decides he likes making you do that. He goes to get you water, and when he comes back your eyes are closed.

He lets you sleep.

The next time he sees you, you’re leaving the club, and when you recognize his car you jog over with an excited smile on your lips. You’ve got this little black dress on that makes it awfully hard to focus on anything else besides the curve of your hips.

“Simon! What are you doing here?”

“Bird? The hell you doing out here?”

“I went out with my friend.” You point to a man standing close by.

His jaw tenses, “Get in.”

“Huh?”

“Get in the car, bird. I’m not arguing.” He’s already climbing out of the driver's seat to open the passenger door for you.

“I’m not gonna leave him, Simon!” You say, but you let him guide you into the car anyway.

“He’s a big boy. He’ll survive.”

When he gets to your house you turn to him with a mischievous smile, “Were you jealous?”

“Of who?”

“Don’t play dumb!”

“Just making sure you’re safe s’all.” He shrugs casually.

You lean across the center console, “It’s okay. I’m not interested in him.”

“Good.”

That makes you smile bigger, fingers playing with the collar of his shirt, “You gonna come in and smoke with me?”

“Course I am.”

You drag him inside giggling, stumbling a little over your high heels. You waste no time changing, pulling the dress over your head as you walk down the hallway, giving him a glimpse of your lacy covered ass before you disappear into your room.

You come back out in an oversized shirt and shorts. “Proper smoking fit now.”

“Could’ve stayed in the dress for me.”

You frown, “Was getting uncomfy.”

“Like you like this more anyways.”

That makes you smile shyly, sitting next to him on your couch. He’s already lit a joint, it’s pink, and the sight of his big hands around it makes you giggle.

“Couldn’t even wait for me to start?”

“C’mere.” He grunts, pulling you on to his lap.

It’s the first time you’ve been there since you begged to ride him. The memory makes him chub in his jeans.

He takes a big inhale before gripping your chin, dragging you to his mouth, and exhales the smoke into your mouth. You writhe in his lap in surprise, fingers fisting his shirt, but you inhale as much as you can.

“Let me try.” You murmur.

He places the joint in your lips. You inhale deeply before leaning forward and blowing the smoke into his mouth.

The two of you take turns shotgunning the smoke into each other’s mouth. The pause between each inhale gets longer and longer, the both of you keeping your lips close, not kissing, just there. Breaths fanning over each other’s faces, your body becoming heavier and heavier on his thighs.

You smell like tequila, and there’s a part of him who knows he shouldn’t be doing this when you’re drunk, but you’re so fucking pretty in his lap, eyes lidded and edges stained red, lips parted to take shaky breaths.

“‘s all gone.” He says, holding the tip.

“Yeah.” You whisper, but your eyes stay focused on his lips.

The corner of his mouth twitches, “That’s not a good idea. You’re drunk.”

“But you’re high now too, aren’t you? Evens it out.”

He chuckles, “I need more than just one j to be high, pretty.”

You frown.

“You were on a date anyway. Don’t think you want this.”

Your frown deepens, “Wasn’t a date. He’s just a friend.”

He hums, ignoring the irritation pulsing at his temples, fingers smoothing along your hips.

“Just a kiss?” You murmur, “Hold me over til I’m sober.”

He tuts his tongue, but he pulls you down anyway because he’s a man after all, he can only resist so much. You smile against his lips, eyes fluttering shut and tugging him closer to you.

It’s slow, the both of your lips are a little numb from smoking, and the taste of the strawberry paper he buys for you has left a fruity taste in your mouths. His fingers tingle where they’re at your hips and there’s a pressure in his head from smoking.

He can’t stop himself from deepening the kiss when you taste like that and sound so sweet against him. You let him lick into your mouth, and your hips start to grind along his hardened length in his jeans.

You gasp against his lips every so often, filling your lungs with air before diving back in. He’s strong, god he’s strong because he manages to pull away, your lips stained a darker color, and you blink at him sadly when he stops your hips. All he can think about is how wet you probably are, just ruining your lacy panties, but he slides you off him anyway.

“Should drink some water, and go to bed.” He says.

Your brows crease, pout on your lips, but you nod anyway.

You text him in the middle of the night two weeks later.

‘You up?’

‘For you.’

‘I think I’m greening out andd I’m rlly scared can you pls come pick me up?’

‘Where are you?’

‘I don’t knowww.’

‘Send me your location.’

You’re at some random party, and you give him a wobbly smile when you see him. That same friend at your side.

“Hi.”

“Hi, bird. Let’s go.”

You nod, your hands shaking when you lace your fingers with his and he drags you through the crowd. He takes you to his, helps you change into some of his clothes, and presses a glass of water to your lips. You chug it like you’re parched, barely saving any room to breathe.

“You’re gonna stress me out.”

You laugh quietly, “Sorry.”

“Gotta be careful smoking too much when you’re not somewhere you’re familiar with.” He sits you down on his bed.

“I know. It just kinda happened.”

“How you feeling?”

“Better with you.”

That makes his teeth show.

“You want me to put music on?”

You shake your head, “Just want to lay with you.”

He invites you over for a smoke session a few days later. You roll the joint between your thumbs nervously.

“If you don’t wanna smoke we don’t have to. Just thought since it’s kinda our thing now.”

You smile big, “Our thing?”

“Mmhh.” He hums with a nod.

“That’s not what I was thinking about.” You murmur quietly.

“What’s it then?”

“You sleep with a lot of your clients?”

He chokes on the smoke he’s inhaled, coughing so much that tears well in his eyes.

“What?”

“Um, well. Have you fucked any of your other clients?” You bite at your bottom lip.

“Jesus, bird. No.” He coughs.

“Are you lying?” You squint.

“Never lie to you.”

“Okay.”

You smoke in silence after that. Your feet rest on his lap the entire time as you lean against the armrest. He runs his fingers along your ankles and up your calves. It’s innocent at first, but then you nudge your toes on the bulge in his sweats and he raises his brows at you.

You shrug, a devilish smirk on your lips.

“Accident.”

But then your legs fall open a little, your pretty thighs parting slightly for him. It’s an invitation, an awfully tempting one. It all happens so fast, he almost doesn’t even realize he’s nosing along the wet patch of your underwear and placing your legs on his shoulders until you squeak in surprise.

Your panties come off easy and he beelines straight to the source. He kisses along your thighs, your breath getting faster with each approaching kiss. His thumb finds your clit first, just soft strokes while his breath fans over your vagina.

He licks one flat swipe along your clit and your back arches. He dips lower and fucking groans into your pussy when he gets a real taste, eyes closed like he’s got sugar melting between his teeth and not you filling his senses.

When he returns to your clit, your toes curl against his back, and your head falls back. You’ve got one hand stifling your moans and he’d make you take it off and sing for him, but he’s more concerned with laving at your swollen clit than anything else.

You cry out when he takes the bead between his lips and sucks softly. Your mouth forms an o and the look you give him is so cute that he smiles into your pussy. Furrowed brows and big beady eyes, lashes wet at the edges like the stimulation was becoming too much.

You don’t try to pull away though, instead, you arch deeper into him, hand curling around the back of his head and pushing him closer to your clit. His big hands find your hips when you start to grind on his face messily, and it takes everything in him not to buck his own into his couch because he’s sure you’re the sweetest thing he’s ever fucked.

His nose bumps along your clit with each thrust, and his face is drenched in juices down to his chin. He hopes the smell fucking sticks, hopes he can taste you on his tongue later tonight when you’re not there.

You finish with his name on your lips and your thighs squeezing around his head tight. He licks it all up, lapping eagerly at your walls while your legs slowly relax, falling open onto his shoulders, and twitching with each lick.

When he comes up, your chest is heaving, like you were the one down there suffocated by your thighs and pussy. There’s this dopey smile on your lips and he can’t help but smile back, leaning down to kiss you with your arousal all over his face.

You don’t even scrunch your nose, you lick right into his mouth hungrily.

“You’re fucking perfect.” He grunts between sloppy kisses, hands fumbling with his sweats.

He feels you smile, “You’re the one who just ate me out.”

You make a surprised noise when his head slips into your entrance, hands clambering to your shoulders. He slides right in, your pussy nice and lax from your orgasm. He rests his forehead against yours when he bottoms out. Your nails dig into his shoulders, eyes squeezed shut, and mouth popped open in pleasure.

“Fuckkk,” He drawls, “She feels so good.”

You whine, nodding against his forehead.

He starts with shallow thrusts, fucking into you just deep enough for you to get used to the stretch. When you start to impatiently arch into him for more, he hooks one of your legs over his shoulder and leans forward.

The new angle makes you moan loudly, the pace Simon sets is more brutal.

“Been fucking stressing me out all month, you know that?” He grits his teeth.

You shake your head, but he wasn’t really looking for a response.

“Can’t just fucking stay home, can you? Always gotta get yourself into some trouble, don’t you?” His fingers dig into the flesh of your thigh.

You whimper at his tone, “It’s not on purpose.”

“Asking if I sleep with other girls, like you aren’t smoking with other men.”

His hips slam into you hard at the end of his sentence, like he’s emphasizing his words.

“They fuck you like this? Huh?”

You shake your head again, “No! No, just you Simon.”

He’s not even sure where that came from when you guys have only fucked once, you’re not his, but you’re wrapped around him, pressing kisses against his neck because you think he’s mad and how can he not be jealous?

“You all mine?” He whispers, hips stuttering with his strength to not finish.

“Yes, yes, god, yes.”

ex!rafe whos always by your side at parties, never touching you without your consent but always there in time when you’re too drunk and slurring words. and rafe who takes you home as soon as he knows you’ve gone past your intolerance, saying kind words to your parents so they won’t scold you as much as they would if he hadn’t given an explanation

ex!rafe who doesn’t care how you call him your “boy best friend”. everyone has eyes can see the way you two look at each other, and whatever it is, it definitely isn’t platonic.

ex!rafe who pretends not to get jealous over how close you are with the pogues, especially the boys, but he doesn’t want to act like an over territorial animal so whenever you two hang out he just kisses your temple and rests his forehead against your hair.

ex!rafe who, when everything is quiet, looks over the photos of you two dating in his camera roll. he has a whole album with just pictures of you, and sometimes he’ll sneak one cute one without you looking.

ex!rafe who knows you love him, that the breakup wasn’t casual. it’s why he dismissed all you snarky comments whenever it’s bought up. he knows you, better than anyone.

ex!rafe who knows that no matter how many times you break up with him, you’ll always get back together. of that he’s certain.

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