DragonNarrative Writes

Ghost said, “You lost?”

“Looking for my wash bag.”

“Try your room.”

“Left it in here earlier.”

“Then get it.”

Gaz’s mouth moved like he wanted to smile and thought better of it. He stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind him with a soft click.

Ghost’s shoulders locked.

Gaz noticed. Of course he did. He noticed and stopped where he was, still several feet away, hands open at his sides as if approaching a stray dog with its teeth bared. The comparison should have irritated Ghost more than it did. Instead, something in his chest shifted, low and unpleasantly careful.

“I’m not gonna touch you,” Gaz said. “Not unless you say.”

Ghost looked at him.

Gaz held his gaze in the mirror. There was no pity in it. That was the worst part. Pity would have been easier to punish. Pity had edges he knew how to grab. Gaz only looked at him like this was a problem with a solution, and Ghost had spent too long bleeding quietly in rooms where solutions were for other people.

“Looks like mask rash,” Gaz said after a moment. “Friction, sweat, blocked pores. Maybe some contact irritation.”

“You a dermatologist now?”

“No. Just prettier than you.”

That should have earned him something. A threat, at least. A shove. A rough, humorless bark of laughter.

What came out instead was a low, breathless sound through Ghost’s nose.

Gaz’s mouth did curve then, barely. Not triumphant. Not teasing in the way Soap teased, bright and reckless and begging for retaliation. This was softer. Warmer.

He moved to the sinks two down from Ghost and opened the cupboard beneath it. Ghost watched him crouch, rummage, then stand with a black wash bag in one hand.

It looked too nice for the barracks; smooth leather an expensive in a way Ghost did not associate with military bathrooms or men who had slept in mud with rifles tucked under their chins.

Gaz set it on the counter.

Ghost should have put the mask on.

Instead, he watched Gaz unzip the bag and line things up beside the sink with a kind of quiet competence that made something in Ghost itch. Cleanser. Moisturizer. A small tube of barrier cream. Little round cotton pads in a resealable sleeve. Some bottle with a dropper. Another with plain block lettering.

“You carry a chemist with you?” Ghost asked.

Gaz shrugged. “Skin doesn’t stop being skin because you’re getting shot at.”

“Mine did.”

Gaz glanced up at him.

The fluorescent light did unkind things to everyone, but it seemed to give up around Gaz. It slid over the brown of his skin, the dark sweep of long lashes, the small tired shadows beneath his eyes, and still he looked put together. Not untouched, Ghost knew better than that. Gaz had been through too much to look untouched. But there was something maintained about him. Like he had decided, somewhere along the line, that violence could take plenty, but it wasn’t taking his face if he could help it.

Ghost understood that more than he wanted to.

Gaz picked up the cleanser. “Can I?”

Ghost’s fingers closed around the edge of the sink until his knuckles bleached.

Gaz waited.

There it was again. That waiting. No pushing. No command. No impatient sigh. Price could wait like a sniper in tall grass, but there was always expectation in it, always the shape of an order waiting to be obeyed. Soap could wait for about three seconds before filling the air with himself, with chatter and restless affection, because silence made him feel like he had done something wrong.

Gaz just waited.

Ghost hated how much that helped.

“Don’t fuss,” Ghost muttered.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Liar.”

“Yeah,” Gaz said. “Probably.”

He wet a cloth with warm water, tested it on the inside of his own wrist first, then folded it neatly. He stepped closer, slow enough that Ghost could stop him, close enough that the air changed.

Gaz smelled sweet.

It hit Ghost so unexpectedly that his thoughts tripped over it. Not sweet like cheap body spray or the sugary rot of spilled lager on a pub floor. Sweet like something clean and expensive, something with bergamot in it maybe, or orange blossom, or whatever men like Gaz bought from shops with glass shelves and staff who never had to raise their voices. There was warmth beneath it too, skin and soap and laundry dried properly, not the metallic bite of gun oil or the sour churn of sweat trapped under gear.

Ghost had smelled Gaz before. Of course he had, one didn’t get close enough to someone and not smell them in trucks, in safehouses, shoulder to shoulder behind cover. He knew the smell of him in battle: cordite, dust, adrenaline, blood drying at the cuff. He knew the smell of him exhausted: damp cotton, stale coffee, the sharpness of stress leaking through deodorant.

This was different.

This was Gaz with the day stripped off him and it made Ghost feel like he had walked into a room meant for someone else.

“You alright?” Gaz asked.

Ghost realized he had gone too still.

“Fine.”

Gaz’s eyes flicked over his face, unconvinced but merciful. “Sit down, then. You’re too tall.”

“No.”

“Simon.”

The name landed gently.

That was the trouble with it. Soap threw his name like a stone through a window. Price used it like a hand on the back of his neck. Gaz said it like he had found it somewhere fragile and decided not to close his fist.

Ghost looked at him for one long second.

Then he sat on the closed lid of the toilet like he was making a tactical concession rather than surrendering to a bullshit nineteen step skincare ambush.

Gaz’s expression did not change, but Ghost saw the satisfaction in the small relaxation of his shoulders. Smug bastard.

Gaz came closer.

There wasn’t much space between the toilet and the sink. Barracks bathrooms were built for bodies to pass through, not linger. Gaz had to step between Ghost’s knees to reach him properly, and for a second both of them noticed the intimacy of it at the same time.

Gaz paused.

Ghost could have shifted away but he didn’t and Gaz stepped in as a result. The air thinned.

Ghost’s hands moved before he thought better of it, settling on Gaz’s thighs to brace him, to make sure neither of them stumbled, to give his body something to do with the impossible closeness of another man standing there with care in his hands. Gaz inhaled once, not sharply, not obviously, but Ghost felt it under his palms. Felt the muscle there, the warmth through soft joggers, the human give of him. His fingers dug into the fat of Gaz’s thighs; not hard enough to hurt, but harder than he meant, a grasp that said stay in a language his mouth had never learned.

Gaz looked down at him.

Ghost loosened his grip by a fraction.

“Sorry.”

Gaz shook his head. “You’re fine.”

He said it like he meant more than the hands.

Ghost looked away first.

The first touch of the warm cloth to his jaw made him flinch.

Gaz stopped immediately.

“Too hot?”

“No.”

“Too much?”

Ghost’s throat worked. “No.”

Gaz waited anyway, the cloth hovering just off his skin, and that should not have done anything to Ghost. It was a small thing. A ridiculous thing. A man waiting for permission he already had.

It went through him anyway and made him feel, for one second, that he was human and someone worth waiting for.

After a moment, Ghost tipped his chin up the smallest amount.

Gaz began again. Careful strokes. No scrubbing. No rough practicality. He cleaned Ghost’s face like the skin there mattered, like it was not just the inconvenient surface of a weapon, like the redness and raw patches were not a failure Ghost should have handled alone in silence. The cloth moved over his jaw, his chin, the side of his mouth. Gaz’s fingers were cool where they rested lightly beneath Ghost’s cheek to steady him.

Ghost watched the tendons in Gaz’s wrist flex. Watched the concentration settle between his brows. Watched him bite the inside of his cheek when he leaned in to see the worst of the irritation near the mask line.

“Been using soap on this?” Gaz asked.

Ghost said nothing.

Gaz sighed through his nose. “Simon.”

“It’s soap.”

“It’s hand soap.”

“Hands have skin.”

Gaz gave him a flat looj.

Ghost’s mouth twitched despite himself.

“There he is,” Gaz murmured.

Ghost’s face went still again, but it was too late. Gaz had seen it. That tiny betrayal. That almost-smile dragged up from wherever Ghost buried such things before they became evidence.

Gaz didn’t point it out. He just put the cloth aside and squeezed cleanser into his palm.

“It might sting,” Gaz warned.

“Had worse.”

“I know,” Gaz said. “That doesn’t mean I’m aiming for it.”

Ghost had no answer for that.

The cleanser was cool and slippery at first, then warm under Gaz’s fingertips. He worked it over Ghost’s cheek in small circles, barely any pressure. The pads of his fingers moved with absurd patience along the edge of Ghost’s jaw, down to his chin, up where the mask had rubbed the bridge of his nose raw.

Ghost had to hold himself very still. There was nowhere to put the sensation. Nowhere useful. His body kept wanting to classify it as threat, then failing, then reaching for some other category and finding none prepared.

It was not medical. Medics had brisk hands and efficient sympathy. This was too slow for that.

It was not indulgent. Indulgence required ease, and there was none of that in Ghost. He sat with his knees bracketing Gaz’s legs, his hands still on Gaz’s thighs, breathing shallowly through his nose like one wrong inhale might break something.

It was not romance, not exactly. Romance was candles and beds and words people said because they wanted the shape of them returned. This had no script. No audience. No destination Ghost could identify without panicking. It was only Gaz’s thumb smoothing cleanser near the corner of his mouth while the barracks lived around them, and Ghost letting him.

That was the dangerous part.

Letting him.

Gaz leaned closer to rinse the cloth again, and his hip brushed Ghost’s knee. Barely anything. A mistake of space. Ghost felt it anyway, stored it anyway, stupid animal mind pressing it into memory like contraband.

“Mask’s trapping too much moisture,” Gaz said, voice low because there was no distance for volume. “And if you’re not washing it enough, the bacteria build up won’t help.”

“I wash it.”

Gaz glanced at the skull fabric on the sink.

Ghost followed his look.

“Sometimes,” he amended.

“Right.”

“Got sentimental value.”

“It can have sentimental value and still be nasty.”

Ghost gave him a slow look.

Gaz smiled, small and wicked. “I said what I said.”

The cleanser came off with warm water. Gaz patted him dry with a clean towel he had pulled from God knew where, because apparently his wash bag contained supplies for surviving both war and male negligence. He didn’t rub. Every touch was measured. Held back. Ghost could feel the restraint in him, which somehow made it worse.

Gaz had gentle hands by choice, not by nature. Ghost had seen those hands reload under fire, drag men twice his size over broken ground, clamp down over wounds pulsing red between his fingers. Gaz could be quick. Brutal. Effective.

Here, he chose softness.

Ghost wondered what it cost him.

Gaz uncapped the little dropper bottle. “Niacinamide. Helps with irritation. Don’t make that face.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. You look like I’ve offered to baptize you in acid.”

“Have you?”

“No. That’s Friday nights at the pub.”

Ghost huffed again, quieter this time.

Gaz’s eyes warmed in a way that made Ghost look at the cracked tile behind him instead. The bathroom had terrible grout. Someone had drawn a tiny cock on the underside of the sink in permanent marker. There was a hairline crack in the mirror above them splitting Ghost’s reflected shoulder into two uneven pieces. All of it was easier to look at than Gaz being pleased with him.

The serum went on cold. Gaz tapped it over the reddened patches with two fingers, light as rain. Ghost’s grip shifted unconsciously, fingers pressing into Gaz’s thighs again when Gaz tipped his chin with the knuckle of one hand to reach the side of his face.

“Easy,” Gaz said.

Ghost almost laughed at that. Not because it was funny. Because there were so many things Gaz could have meant and none of them were easy.

He loosened his hands.

Gaz did not step back.

Outside, footsteps passed. Someone knocked once on the bathroom door, careless. “Oi, anyone in there?”

Soap.

Ghost’s whole body tightened.

Gaz didn’t move away from him. Didn’t jerk back like they’d been caught doing something shameful. He only turned his head and called, perfectly calm, “Occupied.”

There was a pause.

Then Soap said, “Kyle?”

“Yeah?”

“Ghost murderin’ ye?”

Gaz’s thumb was still resting beneath Ghost’s jaw. Ghost could feel the faint pressure of it. Could feel his own pulse knocking there, traitorous and obvious.

Gaz looked down at him, and there was something in his eyes Ghost did not know how to survive.

“No,” Gaz said, still looking at Ghost. “He’s behaving.”

Soap made a scandalized noise. “That so?”

“Go away, Johnny.”

“Och, fine, keep yer secrets.”

Footsteps retreated.

Ghost let out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold.

Gaz’s thumb moved once, barely. Not a stroke. Not comfort. Something smaller than that. A check in Ghost could deny if he needed to.

He didn’t.

“Soap would’ve made a meal of this,” Ghost said after a moment, because the words came safer if they were about someone else.

Gaz reached for the moisturizer. “Probably.”

“Price would’ve dragged me to medical.”

“Definitely.”

“You?”

Gaz squeezed a small amount onto his fingers. “I’m dragging you to hydration and SPF.”

Ghost stared at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Gaz’s mouth softened. “You thought I’d be weird about it.”

Ghost said nothing.

“Thought I’d look at you different.”

The room seemed to shrink around that. Ghost could feel every point of contact between them: Gaz’s shin against the inside of his boot, Gaz’s thighs beneath his palms, Gaz’s fingertips at his cheek, Gaz standing close enough for Ghost to count the darker flecks in his eyes.

“People do,” Ghost said.

Gaz’s expression changed, but not much. A tightening at the corners. A quiet anger with nowhere to go.

“Well,” he said, “people are stupid.”

Ghost should have looked away but he didn’t.

Gaz smoothed moisturizer over his cheek. It had no scent, or almost none, but beneath it was Gaz again, sweet and expensive and warm. Ghost wondered, absurdly, what the bottle on Gaz’s shelf looked like. If he kept it lined beside the others. If he used it after shaving. If someone had bought it for him, or if Gaz had stood in a shop somewhere and chosen it because he liked smelling like something soft in a world that kept asking him to be hard.

Ghost wondered if Gaz knew he smelled like that.

He wondered if anyone had told him.

He wondered why the thought made something dark and possessive move under his ribs, not jealousy exactly, not want in any clean shape, but the sudden unreasonable conviction that this small knowledge should remain his. Gaz in the bathroom light. Gaz with damp curls and steady hands. Gaz smelling like sweetness, touching Ghost’s ruined face like it was allowed to be held.

“Stop thinking so loudly,” Gaz said.

Ghost blinked.

“You get a crease.” Gaz touched two fingers between Ghost’s brows briefly. “There.”

Ghost caught his wrist.

Not hard, not a threat but Gaz went still anyway.

Ghost’s fingers circled the warm narrowness of him. His thumb rested over the pulse point. It beat steady at first, then a little faster. Ghost felt the change like a confession neither of them had made.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The fluorescent light hummed. The vent fan rattled. Somewhere distant, Price’s voice cut low through the corridor, followed by Soap protesting innocence in the tone of a man absolutely guilty of something.

Gaz did not pull away.

Ghost did not let go.

Ghost had no language for this. Not here. Not with Gaz. Not with the kind of wanting that did not sit hot and simple in the gut, but ached behind the sternum like a bruise pressed by careful fingers. He did not want to take from Gaz. He did not even know if want was the right word. He wanted Gaz to keep standing there. He wanted the door locked. He wanted Soap not to come back. He wanted Price not to call them out. He wanted this strange, unbearable gentleness to go on until his body stopped expecting pain at the end of it.

Gaz looked down at Ghost’s hand around his wrist.

Then he turned his palm slightly, just enough that his fingers brushed Ghost’s.

Not holding.

Not not holding.

Ghost released him first because he had to. Because another second and he might have done something honest.

Gaz went back to the little tube of barrier cream as if nothing had happened, though his breathing had changed. Ghost noticed. Of course he noticed. Not because he was looking for weakness. Because it was Gaz, and Ghost had always watched Gaz even when he didn’t realize it. The tilt of his head when he was listening for distant movement. The way he tapped two fingers against his thigh when he was thinking. The particular silence he carried after close calls, all the humor gone out of him but none of the kindness.

Now this, too.

The slight unsteadiness after Ghost touched his wrist.

Ghost tucked it away where no one could get at it, greedy, one of the few private moments that nobody else had and nobody else could demand he tell so they could put it on paper and stamp over it with black boxes.

“This one goes where the mask rubs,” Gaz said, voice almost normal. “Bridge of your nose, cheekbones, jaw. Thin layer. Don’t cake it on like war paint.”

“Shame.”

“You’d find a way to make it terrifying.”

Ghost’s eyes moved over him. “You scared?”

Gaz’s fingers paused at his jaw.

There were a dozen easy answers. A dozen jokes. Gaz had always been good at knowing which kind of truth could pass as humor.

This time he only said, “No.”

Ghost believed him.

The barrier cream was thicker, leaving a faint protective sheen over the worst patches. Gaz applied it with the same careful focus, and Ghost let himself watch. Let himself memorize the slope of Gaz’s lashes, the crease in his lower lip where his teeth had worried it earlier, the clean curve of his throat above his collar. None of it felt like looking at a target. None of it felt like assessment.

It felt like standing too close to a fire after years of sleeping cold.

When Gaz finished, he didn’t step away immediately. His hands lowered, but the space between them remained full.

“You’ll need to wash the mask properly,” Gaz said. “Rotate them if you can. Let your skin dry before putting it back on. Use the cleanser at night. Moisturizer after. Barrier cream before missions.”

Ghost raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Mum.”

Gaz gave him the look again. “I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“I’ll write it down.”

“Don’t.”

“You’ll forget.”

“I won’t.”

Gaz’s eyes searched his face, and Ghost hated that there was less to hide behind now. No mask, no greasepaint, no skull, only the bare ruin of him under bathroom lights and Gaz looking anyway.

Finally, Gaz nodded. He stepped back, and Ghost’s hands slipped from his thighs.

The absence was immediate.

Embarrassing, that. How quickly his palms felt empty. How the air cooled where Gaz had been standing. How the room became only a bathroom again- tile, sink, mirror, fluorescent hum- and not whatever impossible little country they had occupied between breath and touch.

Gaz began packing the bottles back into his wash bag.

Ghost stood.

He reached for the mask.

Gaz didn’t tell him not to. That might have been the kindest thing. He only watched as Ghost picked it up, fingers resting on the worn black fabric, the skull face turned inward against his palm.

“You don’t have to put it on for me,” Gaz said.

Ghost’s grip tightened.

The words were quiet. Almost careless. The sort of thing that could be shrugged off if Ghost needed to make it nothing.

He looked at Gaz in the mirror. Barefaced, raw, treated in patches with Gaz’s expensive little remedies. He looked tired. Older than he felt in some places and younger in others. The scars did what scars always did: announced history without explaining it. His mouth looked unfamiliar without cloth over it.

Gaz stood behind him, close but not crowding, gaze steady.

Ghost thought of Soap, bright and loyal and too brave with other people’s hurt. Thought of Price, solid as a wall, always trying to keep the roof from coming down. They loved him in the ways they knew how. He knew that. He trusted it most days. But Soap would not stand in silence with moisturizer on his fingers and let Ghost decide what kind of seen he could bear. Price would not smell like orange blossom and clean money and wait for Ghost’s hands to stop shaking before pretending not to notice they had started.

This was Gaz.

This was different.

Ghost set the mask back on the sink.

Gaz’s reflection did not smile, exactly. But something eased in his face, something Ghost felt more than saw.

“Just until I leave,” Ghost said, rough.

Gaz nodded. “Just until then.”

Neither of them moved.

The bathroom door remained shut. The corridor beyond stayed loud and alive and far away. Ghost leaned back against the sink, bare face cooling under the tacky layer of cream, while Gaz finished putting away the bottles he had used like offerings. When he zipped the bag, he did it slowly, as if sudden sound might startle the moment out of existence.

At the door, Gaz paused.

“Same time tomorrow?” he asked, like it was nothing. Like men like them made rituals easily. Like Ghost had not spent half his life making sure no one could ever expect him anywhere without armor.

Ghost looked at the mask on the sink, then at Gaz.

“Got a whole routine planned, have you?”

Gaz’s mouth curved. “You need one.”

“Bossy.”

“Neglected.”

Ghost should have bristled.

Instead, he looked down, and the almost-smile returned before he could kill it.

Gaz saw it. Again.

This time, he let himself smile back.

It was small. Private. Sweet in a way Ghost had no defense for.

“Tomorrow,” Ghost said.

Gaz opened the door. The corridor noise spilled in, harsh and ordinary. Before he stepped through, he looked back once, not at the mask, not at the red patches, not at the evidence of Ghost’s body failing to remain untouchable beneath fabric and sweat.

At him.

“Night, Simon.”

Ghost’s throat tightened around nothing useful.

“Night, Kyle.”

Gaz left.

The door clicked shut.

Ghost stood in the bathroom alone, barefaced under the humming light, the scent of expensive sweetness still caught in the air where Gaz had been. For a long moment, he did not reach for the mask. He only looked at himself in the mirror and felt, with a slow and terrible confusion, the shape of Gaz’s hands lingering on his skin like care had weight.

Like it could stay.

cw: mature language and content, suggestive language and content, graphic depictions of violence, smut, unprotected piv, cumplay, oral, simon is not a good or nice person (except to reader), reader also maybe isn't a good person who knows, reader has hair long enough to hold, curvy/plus-sized!reader, size difference, size kink, military inaccuracies, 18+

There is a special place in hell for men like Michael.

You can see her through the window by the door. Her big eyes are looking at where you are, paws against the glass. Her mouth opens, and she scratches at the window, and your bottom lip trembles as you set your hand down where she touches.

You could care less about the things you left inside. Your clothes, your bags, your shoes, even your fucking computer can stay behind, but not her. Your tabby cat is inside, sitting by the window, and Michael changed the fucking locks.

You bang on the door for an hour. You leave, come back, keep banging, but no one ever answers. You've never felt this desperate or uneasy, but every time you come back and see her by the window, you nearly lose all of your composure. It isn't fair. She doesn't belong to him. He can take years from you, take your money, take your sanity, but he won't take her. You'll come back every single day. You'll become a nuisance. You'll never let him relax. Until he gives her back to you, he will never know peace.

A single day passes before you decide it's time to take drastic measures.

The nearest military base is situated a good distance away, but not so far that you won't drive to its neighboring city. There's a small main road with a few local shops, including a few restaurants, a bookstore, a coffee shop, and the crown jewel—a pub.

It's just after supper time when you ring the bell above the door walking inside. On a Friday evening, it's lively, packed close with warmth and tall pints and plastic baskets full of chips and greasy fingerfoods.

There's a lot of military around here. You can tell by their haircuts and the way they chug their glasses; but you aren't looking for baby-faced rookies with too much pent-up aggression. You're looking for the meanest guy in the room, and that means someone with scars and someone who goes cloudy behind the eyes when you ask him how he's gotten back from where he's been.

That man is sitting at the far booth with his back to the wall. A place where he can have an eye on the rest of the room at all times. Big, gloved hand wrapped around a sweating glass, gaze focused on the foam of his beer as he pretends to listen to whatever the red-cheeked man across from him is laughing about.

You ask the bartender what they're drinking and order another round, picking up each glass and making your way towards their table. You'd be nervous if you weren't so determined. You stand awkwardly beside the table before his friend notices you there.

"Tha' fer us, bonnie?"

He juts his chin out at the drinks you're holding, and you set them down with a nervous smile.

"Yeah," you look between them. You fixate on the big guy, who barely squints at you over his drink, and you bite your lip. "I was hoping you had room for one more."

His friend cackles, "aye. Always fer a pretty face."

"Cute," you swallow. "But…I wasn't really talking to you."

The bigger one sits up at that. He leans back in the booth, rolling out his shoulders, and you hop up onto the seat next to him. His friend seems to get the message, picking up his new drink and tipping it towards you before taking a long drink of it and going to find a warm spot at the bar.

"Lookin' for advice or a fuck?"

"Neither," you say softly. "You're big, yeah? Are people…generally afraid of you?"

He laughs, and when he wipes at his masked face, you see a glimpse of a tattoo sleeve that adorns his massive left arm.

"Suppose."

"Great. How much for you to be my bodyguard for a few hours?"

He kisses his teeth under the mask, and then he turns his head to look down at you. His eyes are half-lidded, the skin looking a little greasy under the eye-black smudged there, but he's so calm and collected and amused. You've amused him; you're entertaining him. It's the most interesting thing that's happened to him all week, and you hope you're keeping his attention.

"Wot's tha' include?"

"It's gonna be illegal," you mumble, biting your bottom lip. "Just a little bit."

"Tha's my specialty, love."

"Not murder," you clarify, and he just shrugs. "Just…a little breaking and entering. Maybe some intimidation."

"'s Friday night, swee'eart, at least offer me somethin' fun."

"This isn't funny," you suck in a shaky breath. "It's…" You look down at the sticky pub table, swallowing again. You dig your nails into your own legs to keep your composure. "I need to get something back. Something that belongs to me. So it's not really…it's not really stealing."

A pregnant silence falls between you. You fail to keep the tears at your lash line back, and you quickly use the back of your hand to wipe your face gently. You think about your cat scratching for you on the other side of the window. You think about her sweet face; you think about Michael forgetting to feed her in the mornings as he usually did, and how he never changed the water filter in time even when you asked him to.

"'m Simon."

The low timbered voice breaks you out of your inner spiral. You look up at him again, and when you meet his eyes, you're finally able to let out a breath of relief. You don't know why, but there's something extremely soothing about sitting next to him. About being in his vicinity. He's so large and takes up so much space, but it's warm there, and he's not as mean as his outer layer might suggest. He's calm, and the way he presents himself tells you that it is not by luck that he's still sitting beside you.

You tell him your name, and his gloved hand touches under your chin.

"Olright, love. Lead the way."

Every time you have ever come back to this apartment, you have met the closed door with dread. A little fear. You feel none of that; not with the apparition at your back. You knock on the window beside the door, and like always, she appears. She meows on the other side, her eyes wet as she scratches and sniffs. You look over your shoulder at Simon who tilts his head to the side.

"This wot he stole?"

You look back at her on the other side of the window, shrugging.

"No," you say softly. "But it's all that matters."

The jiggling of metal brings your attention back to him. Simon is at the door, a multi-tool in one hand, and he's focused intently on working the doorknob until you hear the sound of a lock turn and then the door opens. The chain on the door jangles just as Simon opens it slightly, and you watch with rapt attention as he sticks his arm inside for just a few seconds, and then he swings the door open wide.

You push past him, reaching for the cat. She meows loudly, coming right to you, and you coo as you bend and pick her up from the floor. Loud purrs and sweet chirps follow as you hug her to your chest. You pet her little head, turning towards the living room. You used to keep her carrier behind the couch, and you find it as you go searching for it, exactly where you left it. You slip her inside and zip it up.

"What the fuck is this?"

You freeze, standing up straight and turning. You're caught, definitely—you knew he must have been home by the fact that the chain was latched, but you tried the nice way. You weren't going to get your cat back by being patient, not anymore.

"I'm just getting her, I'll…I was just leaving."

"Fuck no, you broke into my flat."

"Our flat," you snap back, putting the straps of the carrier over your shoulder. "And I'm leaving."

Michael looks like he's going to take a step towards you, but then he notices the dark shape in the corner of the room. He frowns a little, squinting.

"Who the bloody hell is that?"

You turn just in time to see Simon take a small step forward. The sudden movement seems to terrify Michael; he scrambles backwards into the kitchen counter, making the plates behind him fall off the counter and shatter onto the ground. He nearly trips over himself trying to get distance, and Simon seems to think it's very funny. He laughs, chest heaving, and he looks down at you as he gets closer.

"Flopping like a fuckin' fish, he is, in'he?"

Michael looks around frantically before he finds a pair of prongs. His hand shakes as he holds the pointy end towards Simon, spitting at him.

"Get the fuck out of my flat! T-The both of you!"

Simon's reaction tells you that maybe he has a few wires crossed in his head. He steps forward instead of away, laughing still, and you watch warily as he tilts his head to the side and nods his head towards Michael.

"Go on, then, mate," Simon taunts. "Try it."

Like a fool, Michael obliges. You flinch when Michael swings, but Simon tilts his body at just the right moment to dodge. He smacks Michael's arm, but he tries again—and like playing footie with a child, the weapon is now in Simon's hand, and then oh—

Michael's screaming as it pierces through his open palm.

He bleeds a lot less than you thought he might. Sadly, also, his blood is as red as yours. You thought he might be a little less pathetic at a moment like this. It is a gift, however, to see him bursting into tears as Simon grips the collar of his shirt and leans over him.

"Lot like you like to take things that aren't yers, tha' right?" Simon spits. "Like to punish and intimidate and fuckin' take, even if ya aren't owed."

"Please—please just get out, take her, fuckin' please!"

"Oi, wot's all this?" Simon snorts. "Now yer pissin' where you stand cause it got too real, eh? Got wot was comin' ta you? Reckon it's not like you thought. Reckon you thought she'd come hat in hand, beggin' for wot she deserves, but you wouldn't know good cunt even if it sat on yer face, yeah?"

"Please…"

"Simon—" You try, but he tsks, shaking his head.

"Nah, love, he's gonna learn," Simon murmurs. "Have you learned?"

"Yes," Michael squeaks, and you're not longer staring at the blood dripping on the hardwood, you're oogling at the giant man standing in what once was your kitchen that's starting to look more delicious by the second.

"Good," Simon breathes. "I know where ya lay yer head, mate. Know where ta come back if things aren't quiet on her end. You'd do well to remember tha'."

He releases Michael with a shove; Michael sinks to the floor, hands trembling, and Simon makes his way towards you to put a hand to your back and turn you around towards the front door.

"Need anythin' else?" Simon asks. You're too speechless to say anything, so all you do is shake your head. You clutch the carrier closer; she meows from inside the bag, and Simon nods his head towards outside so that you start moving. The door shuts behind you both, and then you're being led to his truck, ushered into the passenger seat, precious cargo on your lap as you breathe a huge sigh of relief.

The drive is quiet, but a comfortable quiet. You don't realize until a few streets over that you're smiling; a big, sparkling grin that's taking over your face, and when Simon rolls his truck to a stop at a red light, you lean over the center console and give his masked cheek a big, wet kiss of gratitude.

"Got a death wish or somethin'?" Simon turns to look at you, glaring from under the mask. It's so hard to be scared of him. He just put the fear of God into your terrible ex-boyfriend so you could get your precious cat back; he scared him shitless—literally—and he did it looking this good.

"Is that what a kiss gets me?" You ask. You slide your hand down his bicep, swallowing the drool when you feel just how solid and beefy he is under that hoodie. He fills it out too well. He must be so fucking handsome under that mask; there's no way he wears it for anonymity, he must be so hot, he wears it so he doesn't have to swat away all the boys and girls when they usually buzz around him like moths to light—

Maybe death is really this sweet. This good. Your cat is snoozing, safe and sound, in your bedroom with a full belly. The lights are on low; soft orange glows from well-placed lamps, giving the entire living room a warm feeling. There's a man on your couch with his belt unbuckled, mask halfway up his face as he pants because his cock is in your mouth, and he tastes like sweet, sweet victory.

"Ahh—fuck."

You nuzzle your nose up the length. He's so hard; you don't think a man has ever been this hard for you. He's leaking so pretty, dribbles down the length that you catch with the tip of your tongue, forcing him to hiss and spit and bite his knuckles. He keeps his hips still, but his hand around your hip squeezes the flesh there nice and tight, borderline bruising when you suck his tip a little too softly. You lick a stripe around the head before leaning back up towards him, and his hand around your hip curls against the back of your neck as you share a messy, wet kiss.

You twist your wrist, pumping his cock with a gentle glide of your palm, and he grits his teeth between kisses, touching his forehead to yours.

"Oll tha' for a cat, yeah?"

It is true. You did do it for her. But you did it for you, too.

"Not just the cat," you whisper, smoothing your thumb along the tip. He kisses you again, slower this time, and you groan into his mouth as you squeeze your thighs together. "Look at you…"

"Fuck—" Simon grunts, and his other hand finds the base of his cock, squeezing hard, and you giggle as he scrunches his nose. "Don't say shit like tha'."

You can't with his mouth on your cunt. He's laying flat on his back on the couch, legs too long to fit. Boots against your blanket, you'll whine to him about it later, but now both thighs are on either side of his head, and he's slurping with a hot tongue. You cup both sides of his head, dragging your hips, and while normally you'd think twice about dropping your weight on someone like this, the ease at which he hoisted you up his chest tells you Simon's a big, big boy—and he can handle whatever you give him.

"Gonna let me handle things from now on," Simon murmurs. He kisses the inside of your thigh, and you yelp when he smacks one side of your ass. He's waiting for an answer, and you took too long to give one.

"Y-Yeah," you breathe, leaning your head back. You feel yourself dripping between the legs, flooding his mouth, but he curls his tongue all the same. Uses two thumbs now as he hooks his arms around your thighs to pull the wet, sensitive skin back so he can drink what he's owed. He said he takes payment like this, getting his fill; he says he's never really satisfied until there's cum in his mouth and some in your cunt, and he's not gonna leave your flat before becoming familiar with those two, mutually non-exclusive events.

"Yeah, y'r pretty, olright," Simon laughs, but there's no more humor when he bounces you on his cock. Oh, he hurts a little. He told you he might, but then you're really there, knees on either side of him as you clutch onto the meat of his shoulders and hope to God he doesn't let you go. "Told you tha' you'd feel it, didn't I?"

"Yeah," you whisper, cupping that face of his, half-revealed to you, and you rub your thumbs down his scarred cheeks. Gorgeous, even with eyes that dead inside. "'s big."

"Don't—" He snarls, holding down your hips, shaking his head. "Wot did I say about sayin' shit like tha', eh?"

Life has spoiled you. Life is too good. Life is your pet curled up between your pillows and warm beneath the blankets, and life is fucking the sanity out of big, pudgy military men with blood under their fingernails and their breath stuck in their throat. You've rendered Simon to nothing but grunts and sputters. He's focused on keep the rhythm, arms clasped around your middle as he fucks up into you and pants into your neck. You reach for the back of the couch, digging your nails in, and all you can do is cry and take it as he keeps bringing you back down again and again and again.

The kiss you share is starved. You're so hungry, your hand slipping under the mask to cup the back of his head, and he draws your hips down and holds you there as he licks into your mouth and relishes in the pulsing of your cunt. This is what he fights for, maybe.

Not the glory. Not for the good of others. Not for Price and his self-guided moral compass, not for Laswell and her targets, not for revenge, not for blood, not to save the world. It's so he can come back here onto home soil and fuck a gorgeous girl without ever being interrupted by the sound of anything but her.

Her. You. Whatever she is, what you are, what you will eventually be—it manifests itself in the very room he's in, and he's got it between his teeth, and he won't be letting go for anything.

Nothing at all.

He's smoking a cigarette by the open window as she makes tea. He smiles, just barely, with teeth a little yellow when he sees you burn your hand a little as you pour the water into a misshapen mug.

"Olright?" He asks. The mugs shake a little as you bring them back into the room, precarious as you overfilled the mugs. He takes one from you and takes a long sip, flicking the cigarette out as he watches you get settled. You set your mug down on the coffee table, leaning forward to give him that same sweet, wet kiss on his cheek.

"Never better."

Belly full. Eyes bright. You are nothing like the woman that propositioned him just a few hours ago. A monotone, piss-drink evening, and then a scared, desperate girl asking him if he was willing to do something a little off the books.

Fucking finally. The world was just starting to get a little too dull.

It's the middle of the night when he hears the creak of a door. The sound of a little bell. You're laid out on your side, having just fallen asleep. The movie on the telly still plays, but Simon has turned the volume down. The light flickering from the screen is enough that he sees the cat trot into the room, eyes searching for you and seeing the two of you settled there.

She comes over slowly, sniffing the toes of Simon's boots, and then she closes her eyes as she rubs her face against his leg. Low purring, headbutts, and then she's putting a paw to his boot and looking up at him with the same big, wet eyes her mother has. Simon reaches down, scratching under her chin, and then she's curling up on his lap, little head next to yours as he leans back and takes it in. The sight for sore eyes. The thing that makes his medals and his stripes and all the money in the world look worthless—cheap.

Soap caught him at it in the mess — Simon parked against the far wall with a coffee going cold in his fist, focused on watching you eat. Soap followed the line of his stare, found you at the end of it, and grinned like the cheshire cat. "Oh, her," he said, delighted. "Aye, she's one of the hybrids. Mantis." He said it the way you'd mention someone supported the wrong football team. Then, because Soap cannot leave fuck-all alone, he leaned in and cheerfully added, "You'll want to be careful there, big man. Mantis females, ehh— they eat the fella after. During, sometimes. Bite the head clean off and finish the job. Read it somewhere once." He clapped Simon on the shoulder. "Best of luck."

And then he left. Wandered off to find some grub, whistling.

Simon stood very still against the wall, then. Felt the information go into him like a splinter you can't find to pull.

Bite the head clean off?

He looked back at you across the room — you'd tilted your head to listen to the person beside you, smooth and too far round, big dark eyes catching the strip-lights — and the want did not go anywhere, that was the horror of it, the want stayed exactly where it was and the new knowledge simply moved in alongside it and started rearranging some things.

He wanted you.

And being Simon, he did not do the sensible thing and walk away. He did the research.

The thing about dating Simon, you would learn, is that you have never in your life been so well fed.

You understood it maybe six weeks in, when you opened his fridge expecting the usual bachelor wasteland and found it stocked like he was provisioning for a siege. Yogurt. Three kinds of cheese. A bowl of cut fruit under cling film. A tin labeled ‘FROG LEGS’.

It was risk management dressed up as romance, which in fairness is mostly what romance is… Isn’t it?

He'd taken Soap's splinter and built a guideline out of it. He knows — he has read, in studies he will deny owning — that the trouble starts when you're hungry. Or stressed. Or both, which is the cocktail that turns a nice evening into something a coroner writes up.

He has constructed an entire relationship on the single principle of never ever letting you get to that point.

You'll be reaching for him on the sofa, hand sliding up under his shirt, mouth at the hot pulse in his throat, and he'll go rigid and say, in that flat  rumble of his, "When d’you last eat?"

"Simon," you sigh,

"Tha’ s’not an answer, love."

"I'm not hungry–,"

"I saw you skipped lunch."

He watches a lot. He watches you eat with open, naked satisfaction, the way other men watch football, and the first time you caught him at it you'd put your fork down and said ‘did you want some?’ and he'd said ‘no, you have it,’ and meant it with his whole strange heart.

The man can produce a plate of food out of thin air, and there's no point arguing, because he'll simply outlast you, planted there immovable as a boulder until you've eaten enough that his shoulders come down from around his ears.

He's never once said the word out loud. Cannibalism. He skirts it like a tripwire. Early on you'd tilted your head at him a degree too sharp while he was shaving — honestly just affection — and caught his eye in the mirror, and he'd nicked his own jaw and not flinched at the blood at all, only at you. Razor frozen halfway up his neck. The muscle in his cheek jumped and his pupils shrank to pinpricks and you'd thought: Oh. He's frightened. Big, terrible Ghost, who garrotes men in their sleep, scared witless by the tilt of your head. 

You felt bad for almost a full minute.

You have, in fairness, never confirmed or denied a thing. When he goes still and careful you let him. It's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for you, this grim devout terror, and you're not about to spoil it with reassurance.

Soap, for the record, has really no idea what he started. He'll see the two of you in the canteen, Simon angling the better-fed plate toward you and think, good lad, taking my advice.

Simon had you down — the eyes that hold on him no matter where he moves, that dark point in each one that stays, tracking, while the rest of your face goes soft and human; the too-far head-turn; the way your hands fold up against your chest when you go truly still, wrists tucked, prayer-shaped.

He did not account for the wings.

You hadn't told him because you genuinely forget they're there — folded flat along your spine, a faint seam under the skin, a sheen across your shoulder blades he'd assumed was an old scar. You can't really fly. You never thought to mention them. Plus, it seemed like he knew plenty.

But now he's got you under him with your shirt long gone and his mouth working at the junction of your neck and collar, and there's none of the careful bracing tonight — he fed you an hour ago, he made sure, he watched you finish — and now there's just his weight and his hands and the husky sounds he makes against your skin. One big palm splays flat on your stomach and slides lower, fingers finding you already slick, stroking slow over your clit until your hips chase it on their own. "So soft, love," he murmurs, like he's not shaking. He gets two fingers inside you, curls them, and your whole spine bows off the mattress.

That's when they snap open.

In the dark it's monstrous; a sudden unfolding of something unknown and far too wide for the room, fanning from your back in a wash of color he can't quite name in the half-light. A deep iridescent purple shot through with flares of red, eyespots blooming towards the tips. One instant flat girl, the next a thing twice your size.

Simon goes to stone, shuts down, every system offline. This is it, he thinks — this is the bit where she takes the head. His fingers still inside you. He holds his breath, bracing.

You make a small strangled noise and pull them back down.

They fold away almost as fast as they came, gone into brackets around your spine, and you throw an arm over your face and refuse to look at him. Your ears are hot. He can feel it where his jaw rests on your cheek.

"Sorry," you whisper. "That just— happens sometimes. It– it doesn't mean anything bad, I swear… just… you… just feels good, is all.”

The single most dangerous woman he's ever shared a bed with has flashed her startle display because he got two fingers knuckle deep inside of her, and now she's mortified, hiding her face like a kid. Four months of Soap's splinter works its way loose, pushing out of his muscle, and falls out somewhere in the dark, and Simon — who has never in his life felt safe and certainly never expected to find it here, of all the deranged places — starts to come softly apart with relief. He pulls himself back to look at you.

"Le’me see you," he says, and peels your arm off your face, and when you do his eyes are doing something you've never seen on him: wet at the edges, wide open, not afraid of you at all. 

Worse than not afraid. Pleased with himself.

He leans back down and kisses you hard, pushing his fingers deeper and says it against your mouth because he’s got nothing left to lose: "Do it again. Want to watch."

So you do. 

And Simon fucks you slow and then not slow at all, and every time he tips you over they snap wide behind you and fill the room with color, and by the third time he's stopped flinching and started hunting it, smug, learning the exact angle that does it. When he finally comes it's with his forehead pressed to yours and your wings open around the both of you like something out of a church window, and he's saying something into your jaw, rough and ruined, that takes you a second to parse as all mine, there she is, there's my good girl.

Afterward you bite him. Just a little on the shoulder, just to be a menace, licking the taste of iron from your canine. 

He doesn't even twitch. "Knew it," he says into your hair, wrecked and grinning where you can't see. "Tellin’ Soap he was right."