A Geologic Feline

it's therapeutic, in a way, to let more mundane thoughts and memories wash over your mind and cleanse your palate of the horrors your neighbor had been unwittingly subjecting you to. it's a much more intimate method of people-watching, and you enjoy sitting in your corner with the book you aren't reading propped in your hand, trying to match what memories and thoughts belong to which customer.

the young professional squinting at his laptop screen is likely the one who's trying and failing at making complicated financial data make sense. the young teenager waiting for her iced coffee is likely the one that's agonizing over a bad test score. you're pretty sure it's either the barista or the pretty goth girl that's still in line trying to mentally plan their next manicure and wondering if their nail tech is up to the challenge of a particularly ornate design. it's a total toss-up which four folks have their minds totally distracted by the big fluffy samoyed that's sat outside the big windows, patiently waiting for it's owner to finish her animated conversation with her friend about how her work acquaintance is likely embezzling from the company.

your coffee is delicious, the cafe' is full of wonderfully mundane thoughts and memories, and the weather is gorgeous. a thought floats across your mind- one of your own- and you wonder if you should try making a little money tonight. after all, there's a back room poker game later on this evening- god knows it's an easy way to pad your pockets and kill several hours away from home. it's not a terrible idea, really, but there's a mental exhaustion that comes with actively reading multiple minds at once and strategically bombing on occasion so as not to arouse any suspicions of cheating again.

after all, your pinky never did really heal right after the first time you were questioned. it arches away from the rest of your fingers, not bending fully around your coffee- a crooked reminder to not get cocky or comfortable when you're playing cards with sharks.

the only downside to choosing to play poker all night is that it's a cash-only game- which means you have to go back to your flat, braving the contents of kyle's mind just long enough to grab the stack of cash hidden in your closet and slip away again. with any luck (and a lot of strategy) you can walk away from the table with enough extra money to hole up for a week in a nice hotel. you can soothe your stresses in a big jacuzzi tub and order room service and-

your planning grinds to a halt as you feel outside thoughts gradually growing louder and more vibrant in your mind, and it freezes the breath in your lungs as you slowly realize what's happening.

-then it's just two more bloody days until i can get back and finish what we started. better remember to get mum's birthday flowers ordered when i get back to the flat- a flash of a bouquet, peach colored with little bits of pink and yellow- maybe i'll order takeaway for dinner while i'm at it- a rolodex of local restaurants flips in his mind, landing on your favorite lebanese place- i'll have to ring soap and see if he wants to play fifa tonight, that could be fun-

it's almost shocking how normal kyle's thoughts are when he's out of his flat. you stare out the window, looking for any sign of your neighbor heading your way, your eyes wide and mouth agape in shock. you've never seen him in person, really, but you've seen him looking in the mirror before plenty of times. the sound of his thoughts grow steadily louder, and any hopes you had of him simply passing some other direction die as soon as you spot his blue baseball cap bobbing down the street and heading straight towards you.

-so bloody knackered, probably coffee instead of tea today. cappuccino, maybe- a stylized cup of coffee floats through your mind, image sharpening with every step your neighbor takes- yeah, that sounds nice. i wonder if that redhead still works here. what was her name? nina? marina? fuck, she had a nice arse. wonder what it would take to get her to let me fuck it. probably not much.

you can't help the exasperated sigh that slips out of you. it's not like you're a prude- after all, you've had a lifetime of hearing people's most sexual thoughts about one another since way before you were old enough to know what any of it meant- but by virtue of it being from kyle, someone you're already biased against, it's the most obnoxious thing in the world.

a pretty red headed girl smiles she hands over an americano. it's wintertime, she's wearing a turtleneck and the sky is grey outside the cafe windows. christmas music is playing softly in the background, muted by steamers and the low din of chatter in the cafe. she turns to work on another drink, and kyle's eyes catch on the curve of her ass as she bends to pick up a dropped lid.

in your heart you know you should take your coffee and leave, but you're too curious. for one, it's interesting to you that the murder and mayhem you're used to seeing from him is suddenly gone now that he's out and about and not just puttering around his flat. maybe that's just what happens when he's bored- his mind fills the gap between active thoughts with memories, good and bad, because it can't stand to just rest. the epiphany almost makes you feel bad for the man... until you remember the things you've seen him do while on deployment.

hm. maybe karma is real.

it's not until he's crossing the street that you see his face for the first time, and it feels so strange to see him in real life like this. you've managed to avoid running into him for years, and now here he is, just on the other side of a pane of glass, stepping back onto the sidewalk and then pushing open the door to the cafe. he really is a handsome man- and even prettier in person, if you're honest. he looks like a model as he tucks his cap under his arm, flashing a charming smile to the barista behind the counter that gets her twitterpated and giggly.

it was such a surprise the first time you'd seen him through his own eyes in the bathroom mirror- never in your life had you imagined that a face with such kind eyes would be capable of the brutality you'd seen him dole out. it was a shock to the system and a memorable re-enforcement of a lesson long since learned: never ever trust appearances.

it's hard not to stare, but you do make a valiant effort to finally pretend to read your book as he puts in his order. your eyes lock onto a a slightly smudged looking 'b' on the page, watching through his eyes as he dicks around on his phone, texting his sister about birthday plans for their mum as he waits for his order to finish. it's strange to see yourself in the periphery- out of focus, but still very much there, the red cover of your book standing out slightly against the beige and white decor of the cafe.

"americano for kyle?" a pleasant voice rings out over the din of noise, both in your ear and in your head. kyle's attention snaps back up off his phone as soon as he taps 'send', and you sneak a glance right as he happens to look your way.

the shock of it- making eye contact with yourself through his eyes, of the way his thoughts skid to an abrupt halt at the sight of you- almost makes you flinch. instead you drop your gaze back down to your book, pretending nothing happened, waiting for him to move on, to do another sweep for the redhead before he leaves-

he's watching you sit in the corner, eyes lingering on how your round ass fills the seat you occupy. he sees that you're staring down at a book he vaguely remembers hearing someone talk about, and he knows you're not reading. he's noticed your eyes aren't traveling across the pages,instead stuck still on one spot- shit, fuck, goddammit- oh, now they are. how interesting-

bootfalls come closer and closer as you skim your book, strategically choosing to turn the page despite having retained nothing of what your eyes had glossed over.

-just sit close enough to see, but not close enough to raise attention. fuck, what a pretty thing, he thinks as he sits a few tables over. bet i could really bite down on that arse- there's so fucking much of it. i could just sink my teeth in, dig in my fingers, fuck. been a while since i followed a big girl home, wonder if she's a screamer-

flashes of half-formed plans to seduce you flit across his mind, and you wish the samoyed was still here, that kyle could've been distracted by the big beautiful dog instead of you. lebanese, fifa, and flowers for mum are all wiped clear from his thoughts- he's determined to get you in his bed, to bite and fuck and use you as he likes.

there's absolutely no way you're letting that happen- he might be pretty and he might have a big dick, but you've seen the kind of man he really is. you know the things he's done. you're not about to let a goddamned war criminal between your legs.

i'll just catch her eye again, flash her a smile, and ask about her book. that'll get her to talk to me. it'll be easy after that.

his confidence would be sickening if you didn't acknowledge how right he is. if you couldn't hear his thoughts, that beautiful smile paired with that handsome face would make you putty in his hands, there's no denying it. you've seen the memories of him flirting- the man has game. you wouldn't stand a chance.

you pretend to check your phone for the time, pretend to suddenly realize you're late for something, and pretend to be in a massive hurry to leave. it's not an oscar-worthy performance, but it's enough to make your sudden exit plausible, and that's all you need. kyle chuckles to himself in mild surprise when you don't even glance his way, sipping his americano as he watches you through the window, fantasizing about what it would be like to bounce his hips off your ass as he fucks you from behind.

fuck, where are you going, babes? where are you hauling that big fat arse to? bloody hell, look at the jiggle on that girl. what's i'd give to see her on a trampoline-

kyle makes no move to follow, and it's a relief when you're finally out of his sight. the intensity of his little fantasy fades the further out you get, and by the time you're home it's at a much more manageable level, barely distinguishable over the worries of the old woman next door who isn't sure if she forgot to take her meds or if she took her meds and already forgot.

you pull your phone up to your ear, phone already calling a contact that you have saved simply as a red diamond emoji. the call connects, and you don't even wait for a greeting.

"what's the buy-in?"

"it's off." a familiar voice says, clearly annoyed. big d is, on the best of days, a gruff motherfucker anyways- but there's something else happening here. something more than their everyday levels of irritation.

you blink, hard, staring at the inside of your closet where your little portable safe is tucked away under your winter coats and behind your boots.

"it's off?" you repeat, surprised.

"s'wot i said, innit?" d snaps. "the kraut earned 'imself an hmp 'oliday, and until we know wot's been said, it's off."

ah, shit. if that big dumb austrian's been pulled in by the police, god only knows what will happen next. he's a weird one, to be sure- when he's not playing cards and focusing on putting hands together, his thoughts are usually just... empty. nothing there at all. no stray curiosities or memories or even to-do lists. as far as you can tell, the space between his ears is vast, cavernous, and filled with fuckall.

god only knows what a man like that does and says in police custody.

"ah." the phone disconnects in response, and you sigh as you slide it back into your pocket, closing the closet door. so much for your evening plans, you guess.

you preheat your oven for a small frozen pizza as you mull over your run-in with kyle. it's encouraging that he's only replaying his nightmarish memories when he's stagnating at home- and it makes sense, you suppose. you also start thinking about rancid shit when you start feeling stir-crazy, and a man who routinely jumps out of aircraft and gets shot at probably feels restless the second he's off-base and off-duty. with any luck he found someone else to lust after, some other fat girl to follow home and work off some steam with so you can have a peaceful night with mediocre frozen pizza, a joint, and a few good documentaries.

two slices and a half a joint in, you start to feel kyle's thoughts growing louder again. he must be coming home, you reason, and take another deep toke as you brace yourself, cursing your optimism that he might go somewhere else for the night.

-even if it is french. still, could be good. can't remember the last time i read anything for fun, busy as i've been. ghost's a reader, wonder if he's read this. wonder if he liked it. was it him that was telling me about it? or was that raven? so bloody hungry, i should've gotten more than a coffee for lunch. i wonder if that girl is a regular there. i should go back tomorrow, see if i can find her again. wouldn't mind taking a bite out of her, fuck that arse really did look thick enough to sink my teeth into- a proper bite, no holding back- an image flashes in your head, a woman who looks a lot like you, but isn't you. her skin is too clear, hair too perfect, eyes just a little bigger, tits a little perkier. she's an idealized version of you, still fat and sat in the corner of the cafe, reading your book, glancing shyly over the cover.

ugh.

through kyle's eyes, you watch him approach your building, shopping bag rustling on his arm as he fishes out his keys in the lift, mentally finalizing his dinner order for tonight. fantasy-you giggles and smiles at him in both of your minds, and you take a particularly deep toke and turn up the volume on your documentary, david attenborough's voice nearly loud enough to drown out kyle's fantasies as he narrates the journey of a particularly cute looking penguin. it's somehow just enough to distract you from when he imagines you bent over the edge of his couch as he slides the key into the door, toeing off his shoes and digging out his phone to order dinner.

it's not until later, as the credit roll across your screen as orchestral music swells, that you even notice kyle's thoughts again. it's not a memory-it's too vivid- the image playing clearly in your mind: a man in a straw hat and a pale little girl walking across farmland. the little girl speaks simply of god and angels, and they pass by an abandoned church- hey, wait a second.

focusing a little more, you realize that not only is kyle reading, he's reading the same book you'd had in the coffee shop. he must've gone to a bookstore this afternoon and picked it up before heading home. closing your eyes, it's like getting a private movie of your novel, one entirely imagined by your neighbor. it's incredible how clear and realistic his imagination is, and it's better than any film adaptation could ever be. the remote finds your hand, finger instinctively turning off your television as you opt to lean back, eyes closed, head resting on the back of your couch as you let kyle's imagination illustrate your book. for once in your life, the strength of kyle's mental signal to you is an asset, allowing you to enjoy the book at the same time as him.

it's hard to say how much time passes like that, with you blissed out and dozy as you lie back and let your neighbor's imagination wash over you, but it's brought to an abrupt end as a loud knock at your door stirs you from your reverie.

through the peephole is a teenage boy clearly delivering food, little cardboard boxes adding shape to the plastic bag in his hand.

"delivery from agora." the boy says in a bored voice when you open the door.

"oh, uh, i didn't order anything, i think maybe for my neighbor-"

as if summoned, the door to number 542 opens, and your neighbor pops his head out. as the delivery driver peers at the receipt in his hand, you watch kyle's face run through a range of emotions: surprise, disbelief, confusion, and giddiness.

flashes of you on your knees, bend over his couch and smiling coyly over your shoulder, pinned to his mattress underneath him- ugh, god, it's too much too suddenly and you are way, way too high for this.

"goodnight!" you practically squeak, and as the door closes behind you, and you can practically feel kyle's rush of excitement as he stares at your door, the number burning into his memory as he takes the food from the apologetic driver.

a thought that is not of your own mind rings out loud, clear, and full of awe through your wall:

You know of him, of course. 

It's rare that anyone at your work doesn't know his name by now:

John Price. 

But what you've scraped together is all surface-level wisdom gleaned mostly through sight alone—the way he walks through the resort like he owns it; the broad stretch of his shoulders wading through the crowd, the thick bundle of muscles in his thighs when they flex before he sits at the table unequivocally known as his; the shape of his hands, the dusting of hair on his knuckles, when he grips the tops of his trousers, tugging the fabric taut before he takes his seat—and whispers. Things you pick up like small baubles, little trinkets and shove into your pockets when people talk about him like he's a minor god—half in reverent, the rest in fear. 

(Powerful men just seem to awaken a primordial sense of self-preservation, but considering his penchant for unrelenting submission and an unquestioning respect in almost everyone he meets, their malformed sense of awe and terror makes sense.)

But all of this knowledge comes with the prickling awareness that he isn't the type to waste his day in the bar he finds you in. 

That this, his presence alone, is an anomaly. A burgeoning enigma. 

You've been loitering around enough upscale resorts to recognise patterns. Distinguish habits. And he has been reliably steadfast in that regard—in fact, this is the first time you've seen him shirk his own rules and do something beyond the norm of his constant, unchanging routine. 

He's been part of the upper echelon since he set down in Cape Cod for the season, often found in the exclusive lounge—a place that's restricted to platinum cardholders only (where the annual membership fee costs more than twice your salary alone). You've never had a reason to speak to him, or even an opportunity—not when he's part of the untouchable group that's individually catered to by only the most experienced staff. Hand-picked delegates with their own form of prestige. 

You've been steadily limping through a degree, and picking up odd hours cleaning guests' suites at the local motel when you weren't getting roped into your dad's get rich quick schemes. Spending the bulk of your free time in this empty bar after hours where all the underpaid, overworked employees congregate, and the guests without memberships can get a drink. It's not a lounge. Not even advertised as one. On a map of the manor house turned country club, this place is listed simply as a cocktail bar. Floor-level. Off the shoulder of the entrance and lobby. A stopgap for weary travelers to start spending their money before being sucked into the haze of affluence that never fails to loosen even the most miserly of men's tight fist. 

Simply put: it isn't a place for him. He's not the sort they let loiter in the lobby even if his room isn't ready. No—he’s ushered into a private lounge where he has a personal bartender to cater to his wants as soon as they appear. Being paid just to feed his burgeoning appetite. 

But somehow—

He's here.

Just—standing there. Watching. Taking up too much space in what has slowly become your sanctuary to people-watch and learn secrets about a man you'd never get within five feet of—until now. Until he's glowering at you with an intensity that makes your stomach churn—leaving you feeling like you've been caught doing something wrong. Twisting in shame and embarrassment; whole body tensing up in preparation for a blistering chastisement for your mere existence having the gall to smudge his periphery. 

And he does chastise you. Unmoors the connecting threads keeping you tied to reality with just a handful of words—ones that come with a bite, a pinch of anger, as if the mere idea of you being here was somehow unacceptable to him. 

if you were mine, you'd be tucked in bed already instead of drinking alone in a goddamn bar—

Despite it being the most ostentatious thing anyone has ever said to you, it's full of mockery, too—an infantilising barb drenched in ownership, possession. As if you're a trinket to be kept; a child, one in need of supervision. A firmer hand. 

And it's—

It's strange how easily it disarms you, making you almost breathless from the panoply of emotions running through you all at once—anger at his gall, embarrassment, want (that sticky, awful thing simmering between your hips; a bubbling heat crawling up your throat)—until you're left feeling, speechless and gaping at him, trying to unravel the thread but it's buried under the muck. Hands slipping over the knots you keep trying to untie, dazedly wondering if he means it as it comes out—a disapproving father seeing the smudged shape of his own daughter in you. Angry on your behalf, like a well-intentioned father. Paternal instincts rearing. Or is it a—a wanting thing. Mine, he said. If you were mine… 

Mine—in a fatherly way: anger bracketed inside something innocuous and parental. Pater patriae. Filial piety. You're young enough that you could be his daughter, too. Be the kid he had when he was barely sixteen and just a child himself. Kids raising kids. You can see it lingering in the stress line around his face. The subtle, soft streak of grey at the corner of his mouth, dusting at the arch of his left temple. Feel that fatherly anger like a fist pressing against your navel. Dad-like disappointment—the kind you've only ever known from Disney Channel. 

(words buffeted by a deep sigh. puppy-dog eyes, wide and wet and pleading because dads on television were always softer than velvet, always wrapping up their kids in tight hugs, so free with every single i love you that you'd felt the burn of jealousy when they'd turn around, rolling their eyes. dad, you're embarrassing me—) 

It could be that. Just that. Someone else's dad looking at you and seeing some version of his kid in the way you slouch on the chair, fingers tapping a tuneless rhythm on the old, alcohol-stained wood. A poor imitation of someone who belongs to him echoed back through the lonely reverb of an empty bar. 

Heartaching. Baby, dad is so disappointed in you—

But there's want there, too. A greedy, ugly thing that twists over his expression when he glances at the too short dress you're wearing. The heels that make you feel older, braver, than what you really are. A competent adult who drinks martinis at the bar. Who actually uses the free gym membership and sauna that comes with the privilege of scrubbing tiles for fourteen dollars an hour. Put together in the way that you so obviously aren't. 

The look is hideous, though. Too full of hunger, too red with anger, for it to just be desire. Tangled up between the two; caught alongside need and ire. 

The way men who want things they shouldn't have—and can’t have—sometimes look. Proprietary. Ravenous. Fury darkening along their brow from the denial of what they crave despite it being right there. Theirs for the taking, if only everyone else in the room would look away—

You're not sure which one it is, and it should be obvious. You should know. But there's so much space between those two things—a chasm stretching out in the middle—and you're not sure if he's angry at you for existing, for tempting him, for making him want, and salivate, and grit his teeth to fight the urge to sink them into your skin, branding you for all to see; or for looking like the quixotic image of a daughter, his, and sitting alone in a bar he'd never set foot in willingly. 

Half of you wants him to look and see you. To want you. Your skin, salt-touched and sweat-slicked, under his hands. His for the taking. 

But the other half wonders what it would be like to live out that Disney Channel fantasy where you can roll your eyes, lovingly, at the antics of your dad. Where all of the lines are coloured in with affection and warmth instead of stale cigarettes in an overflowing ashtray and your life shoved inside a tattered old suitcase as your father chases the American dream without ever realising it's a fallacy. One that only exists when he's asleep. 

Home is a motel. It's the back of a 1967 Monte Carlo. It's a trailer park you're too embarrassed to bring your friends to. It's half-remembered birthday dinners and i owe you one’s from the tooth fairy. Your dad buying you a Lilo and Stitch piggybank just to bust it open himself when he needs cash for a pack of cigarettes. Empty beer bottles littering the floor. Tiptoeing around a man's fury. Staring into open windows on your way home and wondering what it'd be like to live with them instead. 

Life is being dragged around to different resorts and five star hotels as he works his charms on the rich, hoping to score business deals and partnerships and investments instead of handouts. It's why you're here, after all. A cover story in case anyone looked too closely at the man who squirms his way inside members only lounges despite not having one of his own. Pyramid schemes where money passes from one hand to the next, and each person skim just that much more off the top. 

You doubt his kids, his daughter, ever had to sleep on a mattress littered with burn holes. 

Envy, you think, is just the ugliest thing—

But it doesn't sit with you for too long before he's sliding into the stool beside you after disassembling your entire being with just a handful of words. Barely even offering a greeting beyond a shallow grunt of acknowledgement, one tightly wound inside the careless effort made to flag down the bartender with a quirk of two, thick fingers.

Says more words to her than he does to you after that, really; rasping out an order for two whiskeys, neat, and promptly waves away your bewildered, half-hearted protests with a growling, low:

“you'll drink what i pay for, sweetheart.”

And you do, of course. 

You drink the whiskey because he said so—commanded, really, in an authoritative bite that cinched around your throat like a collar, adding to the bitter burn of the alcohol searing down your throat before it settles like hot coal in the pit of your stomach. You drink what he places in front you, a wilful adult reduced to little more than a meek, stammering child in the face of waspish authoritarianism, and let him dictate the conversation around who you are, why you're here, stuck in this eighties time capsule moonlighting as a resort—

(and furtively, the pitch in his tenor dipping into an angry little rasp: does the man you came here with know that you're drinking your night away to Labi Siffre's soft croons in a room that reeks of smoke, lemon cleaner, and cheap plastic—)

But despite the prying, intensity of his interrogation, he never once, not even thinly veiled behind a hedging question, asks if you're single. If you're interested in him.

And you suppose that doesn't matter when you've been watching him wander around the resort like he owns it for most of the week, stealing shy, blistering glances at the middle aged Adonis for girls with daddy issues (as your friend calls him; or—like, the modern day Selleck or Reynolds, y'know? a walking, talking sex dream for dumb, needy little losers who need, at minimum, three pills a day just to function—an upper, a downer, and a middle man to keep the room from spinning, y'know?). She says all of this even though there's a ring on his finger—a neat, tidy line of solid gold—and her words are always whispered below the chatter of Mrs Price like it was a faint echo in a crowded cathedral. Heads bowed together, gossiping, as the choir sang. 

It doesn't matter, though.

Not only is he so far above you in social class—separated by tax brackets, credit score, affluence, power and prestige—but he's also older. Much older. A few years older than your father, even. And married.

A married man.

Untouchable.

(if you were mine—)

Or should be, but he's sitting at the bar, nestled in a breath too close, buying drinks for a little slip of a thing, a nothing in terms of social hierarchy, barely on par with the slew of maids he hires to clean his house. A scrap. Spare parts. The ninety-nine percent. Word of the Day calls you and your ilk banausic. Boring.

If the statistics are correct, he can find thousands of yous anywhere he goes—all young, idealistic little things aching for heartbreak and agony after the crash of a life-changing ecstacy—

and that's exactly what he would be to someone like you: a paradigm. misery and euphoria wrapped up in one. the other (blink and you'll miss her) woman that he indulges in (for the weekend), sharing secrets and fantasies and what-ifs that make the ground beneath you tremble from the quiver in his voice.

a neat, tidy little distraction that he'll sever at the root before it can become a problem. a nuisance. 

men like him need someone like you every once in a while because they crave that nuance in their routine, giving life. they need someone who idolises the ground they walk across to reinforce his stature, his life.

like a little fawn wandering up to a hunter clothed in camo, oblivious to the long, thick finger on the trigger, and offers an artless salvation in the middle of the forest. a moment of peace and serenity before he squeezes down and hangs her head on his wall, another trophy he can admire every time he walks into the room: a grand spectacle of conquest and a little death as he regaled the tale of that time a little doe sought him out for comfort,

the dumb fuckin' animal.

and that's what you are;

—a dime a dozen. And probably cheaper by the dozen, too: wholesale discounts, less tedious and time consuming to grab a handful and run than to barter over a single, insignificant grain.

And it's not as if he isn't aware of this. You can see it echoed in the pinch of his mouth beneath all that fur: the way he growls at you, not to you. Expects compliance and respect without giving it out in return. Demands perfection only to delight in watching you fall short of the mark (elbows on the table, slouched posture, common accent: tick, tick, tick)—the reason for the severance, you see; he's not heartless, just pragmatic, and it bleeds into everything he does. Even breaking hearts when he's used up girls like you until they're wrung dry. Nothing left to give except desperation and pity. A mess he leaves behind because he's never, not once, had to clean up after himself. 

Trash for the maid to drag out the back, kicking and screaming but locked behind several non-disclosure agreements, as he ushers in a new, shiny you through the front door.

You always told yourself you wouldn't be that girl: another nameless, faceless entity for his wife to bleed over. For him to forget when he finally exorcises his demons and comes home, begging for forgiveness.

They were nothing, he'll swear, and he'll mean it, too. Nothing at all compared to her, the one he just wasn't ready for.

His children won't ever know your name, but they'll know what you've done. Who you are. What you are. They'll hate you with a quiet, burning passion. The slut who ruined a family: an easy girl who just wanted an easy life. Easy money. The harlot. The whore.

His wife, the Madonna.

You can see it all laid out like a map in your head, each point a new hurt, another moment for you to bleed until you haven't any blood left to give. Wasted on a man who, in three more years, won't even remember your name or what you tasted like or why he wanted you so badly in the first place.

You won't be that woman.

But when his hand drops below the table, and becomes an unseen weight on your skin, a heat burning through the thin fabric of your dress—heavy and firm and full of promises he’s probably the only man you'll ever meet who’ll keep them—you let it stay there for the next three drinks he buys (bought and paid for), and say nothing at all—

—nothing, except okay when he finishes his drink, and jerks his chin towards the door with a gritty, soot-stained, c'mon.

(Because between the harsh cut of his jaw gnashing as he fusses over the lack of good fuckin’ whiskey, you come to the rather quick, mortifying realisation that he thinks you're someone else entirely—Something else, really.)

and at the core of it all, it's a little clichè—

an older man preying on a young, pretty thing who is old enough to know better, but hungry enough not to care.

A punchline to an untold number of jokes—a comedic parable of what happens when men with too much influence fall victim to vapid, empty-headed vixens just coming into the zenith of their sexual awakening. 

Power lies in the split of their thighs, and they'll learn this at the expense of a man who is all too eager to foot the bill. Fresh-faced youth sinking their newly formed adult fangs into the wallet of a man who ought to know better.

The basis of every rich man's dream (and eventual nightmare) because for every rich man, there's always several opportunists looking to find a hole in their ship to fasten their greedy lips to and bleed dry. A leech; a single-minded entity eager to slake their appetite on stolen goods. 

And his just happens to be you: 

the prettiest parasite he'd ever seen, and someone he's all too eager to help break their baby teeth. 

—and utterly untrue;

to you, his money is the least interesting thing about him.

stupid fucking animal, you think, but let him slide his knuckle beneath the strap of your dress, anyway; delighted and sickened by the scrape of rough skin across the soft curve of flesh where your neck slopes into the ledge of your shoulder. Callouses toying close enough to the rabbit-quick jerk of your pulse that you're sure he can feel the tremble of it echo through the crowded cathedral of your skin.

For as much as he seems to think this is commonplace for you, enough not to warrant any significance, you aren't the parasitic distraction he expects you to be.

Maybe the problem with having a leech for a father, a money-sucker trying to blood-let this entire room dry, is that his disgrace is tattooed into your dna. The natural conclusion to the statement of: like father is, irrefutably, like daughter, after all.

Why else would you be dressed the way you were if you weren't looking for a man to suck dry, too? 

But as the dress—a cheap knockoff from Ross that made you look older, more weathered and jaded than what you were—slips from your shoulders, and pools around your ankles, there's no artifice in the tremble of your limbs as you bare yourself to an older man in an empty poolroom.

The scraps at your feet seem to highlight the contrast of what he expected and what you are in an unmistakable, bolded slant. Unmissable, really. And if it wasn't the shake in your fingers that gives you away, or the flash of fear set deep in the canyons of your wide, artless eyes, pupils blown; vacillating between trepidation and terror that isn't man-made, it would be the stark difference in thread count. 

Him, in a tailored suit of warm coffee coloured tweed trousers and a subtle, off-white dress shirt, and Italian leather Oxford's; you, standing partially nude in nothing but a bra and panty set that you snatched off the clearance rack at Marshalls. Laura Ashley. And you mutter a silent hail mary that it isn't the pink and black satin abomination from Juicy Couture.

Under the low light of the pool house, you can see the moment it dawns; realisation cresting through burnt umber. A slight inhale through the thin gap of his parted lips. A flash of teeth as he bites back a snarl, chokes on a ragged growl that brims, brumous, in the back of his throat.

The expectation of an easy lay with an even easier girl fading into consternation, a brief, waylaid contrition over the man he has become, one willing to stand in front of a young woman and brand her, silently, as a whore; then condemnation as the result of his silver-spooned upbringing edges through the guilt.

He sucks in another breath; a seething whisper of air through clenched teeth. The featherlight tickle of his fingers on your skin becomes a shackle. A punishment for not playing your part.

The problem is this:

You're not the only one who has been staring across a crowded room. The moment you caught his eye, he curated a fate for you, a life in whispers. Every moment designed—from a furtive look reaching across the dining room (man in the throes of a midlife crisis coming out in a chuff, the quirk of his lip as if he heard your friend, as if he knows; then: bet he likes to be called daddy), to simmering in your own fantasies as you watched him wander around the golf course. The architect to your fall. 

You're in this world, his world: invitation only, under pretense. Forgery. Your father is rarely good at anything, but the one thing he does excel at is flattery. Bribery. Got his golden ticket through subterfuge, and needed to drag along his daughter as a cover story in case someone examined the cracks in his veneer a little too closely. Friend of a friend, this world is told; the reality, though, is that your father, himself, is a parasite clinging to his richer, more affluent host. 

(Someone you've yet to meet with him squirreling away at odd hours, begging for scraps and handouts and hoping his get rich quick scheme of the hour will work on someone here.)

In the interim, you've been pingponging between stations—sipping free coffee in the tea room, watching grown men squabble over golf, and tally up net worths with your friend in a bitter, scathing game of spot-the-nepo-baby. Having fun on the sidelines while stealing guilty glances at middle age Adonis. 

His jaw tightens with the knowledge that this isn't a burgeoning appetite for richer men slinking out from the cracking facade of your artless tremble, but a blooming unease in gutless pale-pink:

old enough to know better, but curious enough to try—

"Lets take a swim," he grunts, hoarse and charmless. If anything, he seems a little out of his depth. A little shaken, like a naughty child sneaking out of the kitchen with his hands covered in cookie dust.

And then, after a moment, a brief pause, he adds: "sweetheart," but it comes out as a growl. Condemning and wanting all at the same time.

censure for the loss of the should-be whore who enticed a good man from his wife's cold bed; anger at the quivering woman who wants him not for his money, but just to feast on the pale strokes of his design. art in grizzled fur and aged, jaded wisdom. an untouchable man softened by age around his belly and thighs. hunger for food instead of power.

You wonder, then, if he's ever done this before.

This, that is, with someone like you. Insubstantial. Non-transactional. Charity. Desire unfolding, furling open for the idea of who he is, what he represents rather than the number in his bank account.

Inching apart for gruff, authoritative masculinity; a father figure for dumb girls whose dad's never taught them not to wander up to the predator that wants to hang them on a pre-existing hook to gawk at only when impressionable company is over. Aching for discipline despite having done nothing wrong, as if indivisible sins could be stripped away under the firm rap of a rough, worn hand.

Daddy issues—one that comes with shaking limbs and an unfounded, unquenchable need to be freed on their knees; baptised with a collar around their neck, a little chain that says daddy's girl.

It dangles on tenterhooks, the truth of what this is suspended between you like a spun web. A fragile gossamer of silk, easily broken and destroyed with the slightest touch—

And that's what he gives you: touch. His fingers sloping down the shape of your body until he reaches the soft skin of your waist, digging in. A slight pinch, a pressure: a warning and a promise all-in-one. Then his palm falls, glueing to your flesh. The bend of his wrist. His arm slipping around your back, hand anchored on the opposite hip he branded with the bite of his nails. A tug, and you're pressed against his body: cheap polymer sticking to laundered silk. The heaviness of him bleeding through the tweed slacks, nipping at your belly.

His belt is cold against your bare skin, the buckle digging in. He tips his chin when you shiver, and pulls you closer when you try to wiggle away.

"take it off, sweetheart," he commands, but it's spoken like a suggestion. A choice.

He's good at that, you think, numb fingers already wrapped around the expensive cut of leather before you've even made up your mind. But that was always part of the appeal, wasn't it?

The true problem is that you've always been—

Different.

Mercurial, more insightful, well-read people would correct in a whisper, the word accompanied by a nod when you finally break down and confess that sometimes you didn't really know what you were feeling, only that you felt it a lot. Always. An inevitability. There, in the back of your head; an itch you were helpless to scratch. Moods swinging with a high, looping arc that it was difficult to keep up with, to remember which side it fell on. Too much, and always all at once. A constant, insistent pressure. Euphoria to desolation in a fingersnap: a marionette on strings controlled by a hand that wants and yearns and needs and has to have, no matter the cost; and another that fears, that trembles and shakes.

They two united by the collarbones of indecision; choice.

Maybe that's why you were drawn to him.

A man who made choices as easy as breathing, and who often did so for an entire room. Ripping away agency and the ability to pick because in the core of himself, he knows he's always right. Control, a necessary thing; something he has to have, not something he wants. Needs, like oxygen.

And he wasn't wrong when he deduced that you were a parasite—in fact, he was very correct in that regard—but what he failed to realise was that you were the type that ached for an imbalanced symbiosis: the kind that wanted to be necessary to its host. Needed by its host. Predator and prey living in tandem, like a pet frog a tarantula kept in its burrow.

He doesn't give you the respect of autonomy. No—he takes it away. Shapes it in the palm of his hand, and makes you wear the reforged remnants like a collar around your neck. 

Nothing, from the onset, has ever been a choice of yours. He took the seat beside you without asking. Pulled out pieces of yourself without giving you the freedom to hand them over willingly. And now, with his arm around your waist (the plain, gold band glinting in the gauzy ceiling light), he doesn't give you an opportunity to choose.

He simply tightens his arm around you when you strip him of his belt, the trousers slipping down his legs. Leans over you until the wry curls around his chin graze the electrified skin of your temple; murmurs: "hold your breath, darlin'," and then drags you off the ledge and into the deep end.

Under the water, he's nothing but a pale blur above you.

Some god of old in peach-tinged skin; a distorted smear of impartiality and emptiness as the waves lengthen over his image, wobbling the edges until it's a symmetrical mess of flax and wet, raw topaz. His eyes, somehow, are the same dark blue as the waters that press in around you, reshaping the look on his face into something indivisible, unknown. He just—

Stares down, down at his disciple, into the wide-eyed helplessness of your chlorine burnt gaze. Fingers tense around your waist, immovable even as you start to claw at him, legs kicking under the water in a sluggish arc as you fight against the harsh, aching squeeze of your lungs screaming for air.

He doesn't let you up until the fruitless kicking of your legs stops and the strangling hold you have around his neck falls lax. Maybe there's something on your blurred, wave-washed face that convinces him you've had enough, throat aching, taught against a mettle you never wanted to meet, because the harsh grip on you softens, and with his guidance, you begin to float. A submerged buoy coming up on a ragged, choking gasp—his name sputtered out between coughs, and—surreally—laughs.

A hacking, broken giggle.

He indulges you with a low, growling hum. Kicks off against the slimy tiles at the bottom and leans back, letting you come to rest, to float, on the broad, wet spill of his chest. There's something almost tender about the way he wades through the water with you clinging to him, letting you stifle your giggles into the soft padding of his chest, feeling the material of his shirt glue to his skin beneath your mouth, the springy press of thick, matted hair flattened beneath. It's domestic. Parental.

above the water: a father teaching his baby girl how to swim.

below: his cock thickens in his soaked trousers, throbs against the melting, burning split of your thighs bracketed around his hips, his hands gripping the underside tight. the water is cool, but all you can feel is an unbearable heat bubbling between your legs; a white-hot ache that makes you huff and squirm, and hide your shame in the quick thud of his pulse.

It's different from anything you'd ever felt before. The affection, the easy, paternal clutch. The silken, throbbing heat of a man between your thighs—

When your dad taught you how to swim, he did so by tossing you into the deep end without a floaty or a life-vest. Barked at you to stop playing around as you drowned. Dragged you back to the steps of the pool in the motel with his hand clenched around the scruff of your neck before tossing you back in again with a grunting try again.

this is how my dad taught me, he barked when you sobbed, arms thick with baby fat curling around your aching stomach, gagging on pool water and misery. now I know how to swim.

But Price says, go on, jus' like this, and shows you how to slowly cut your limbs through the water with your body safely held against his chest; each stroke easier, more effortless than the last until the gruff words spoken in a vacuum of two bodies overrides the jerky, graceless survival instincts your father awakened in you at the age of four. Held and taught. Praised and acknowledged. The silken good girl brings you back to that day, sitting in the front seat of your dad's Monte Carlo as he grumbled about the clogging, oppressive heat of Florida, and sent wayward, clumsy glances at you at every intersection as your sobs tapered out into sniffles. The stiff, awkwardness of him grunting don't tell the others when he hands you a McDonald's kids meal and lets you eat it at a playground with rusting monkey bars and hardened gum glued to the bottom of the swing seats.

You wonder if he knows, and then more acutely, sharply—how. How would he know. He wasn't there. You've met him, officially, less than four hours ago.

(unofficially—god, get a look at him, hey, look, look, i bet he's fucking loaded—three days ago)

But there's a deliberateness to the way he cuts through the water, offering little praises when your feet kick slowly, matching his pace. A lazy crawl around the pool that is supposed to be closed for the night and inaccessible, but he had a key tucked into his pocket. An inevitability, maybe. Or something preplanned, like he knew your friend would flirt with the cute poolboy today, and take him up on his offer to hang out tonight. That she would shove a dress that barely fits into your arms and pout until you agreed to go for drinks because it's not fair if she's the only one having fun.

a wink, coy and sweet. go on, she urged, slightly mean because she knew how much you hated being alone when your moods dipped this low. maybe you'll get lucky, too.

Lucky. Like your dad and that once in a lifetime invitation to the men's only lounge, smoking cigars and drinking expensive wine and scotch, and gambling away money he didn't have.

It's too much of a coincidence—in both regards—and the pendulum keeps swinging, unsure of which reality is the truth. He gives nothing away, either—even when the odds pile high: remains the perfect image of a man used to getting what he wants, either by his own machinations or the innate injustice of the world falling in his favour once again.

You want to ask, but it sounds crazy no matter which way you shape the question, so you swallow it. Let it burn through your esophagus like the whiskeys he made you drink, the smoke that sticks to his skin when you press your nose into the flesh beneath his jaw, and breathe in the sea-slanted, smoke-cured scent of him. Wood—charred oak and rotting sycamore. Earthy—damp soil; waxy, decaying mushrooms crushed in the meat of your palm. Pine resin. The remnants of wet forest after an autumnal storm. Comforting—like warmed milk and honey. Like stale sweat, ashes; a heavy, warm hand on your forehead breaking through the fever dream when you were eight and sick with chicken pox. Gonna be okay, honey. Canned soup heated over the stovetop in an old, ill-used copper pot. Tinny, like licking your fingers after holding pennies in your fist all day. Sour with sweat.

He smells like home. Like winter nights on a worn couch; Home Alone playing on a grainy television—the red light from the VCR cutting through the dark. Christmas lights the neighbours put up shining through the window and catching on the screen in a smear of red and green and gold. Safe, too; but edged with a veneer of loneliness. Waking up on the couch at midnight to the stutter of the tape rewinding on its own, the moving playing from the beginning again—a Pepsi commercial flickering past as you rub your eyes and peer into the kitchen towards the microwave, trying to read the blurry time stamped in neon red. Alone in the living room, left with just the hum of the refrigerator to fill the silence, and a warm, thick throw tossed over your body.

You're not sure why he brings this strange, childhood melancholy out of you—hazy daydreams; sunbleached polaroids from a time you vaguely remember—but as you dig your fingers into his shoulders, feeling the meat, the muscle tense and release beneath your palms, you're reminded of that lingering yearning for a simpler time; halcyon drenched nostalgia: when everything was both everlasting, neverending, and ephemeral all at once. Time is, somehow, more fluid than the sand you syphoned out of the damp clenched of your palm and into a plastic bottle of safekeeping. A token of each beach he dragged you that you barely remember now. 

In this moment, in his arms: weightless. Featherlight. Everything stripped away, peeling off like layers of old paint until the old wood peeks through. Your problems, your worries, hefted onto the bulk of his shoulders, carried in his arms as he kicks around the pool in lazy arcs; eyes fixed on you in something that's both coddling and possessive. A proud dad, eager to bond with his daughter; a starving man, staring at a feast—

His hands, skin slightly softened from the chlorine and cooled by the pool water, slide up the back of your thighs until the long, sloping ledge of index finger and thumb press against the swell of your ass. He doesn't look away from you as his fingertips dip into the sensitive crease between your inner thigh and the folds of your cunt.

He isn't even touching you, not really, but it quickens your breath into something gasping, needy. Each inhale tinged with the shallow trail of a whine, a whimper; wanting more than the slight grip he has on your ass cheeks, spreading you wide as the waves lap at your clothed skin, thumbs toying with the frayed lace of your cheap panties, tutting under his breath because you should be in silk, baby—

You grind against his soft belly, seeking friction with each clumsy, artless roll; tucking your mewls into his chest as he tightens his hands on your flesh, fingers pressing into fat, into muscle until it aches. But he doesn't do anything. Nothing more than just nudging you along on this stuttering, fever-touched desperation to feel something more than this unbearable emptiness. He holds you open, prying your folds apart through the thin, worn fabric with a grunt, but doesn't touch you more than that even when the mewls turn to whimpers, to pleads. Begging for more as the whine in your voice echoes through the empty room, dancing in tandem to the rough grunts, the splash of water sloshing into the edge of the pool. The slick, sticky sounds of your pussy rubbing into his belly—

"such a needy little thing, aren't you, mm?" He bites the words into your shoulder, tracing the line his knuckles made when he shed the cheap dress from your skin. Gnawing at your skin with blunt, warm teeth.

He turns in the water, one hand sliding up to brace against your spine, the other digging into your thigh; securing you in his hold in a quick, effortless motion that makes your head swim before he tenses, muscles flexing, and then lifts you up out of the water, and onto the cold tile lining the ledge of the pool.

The air is cooler out of the water, away from the warmth of his embrace, and you feel goosebumps prickle along your flesh. A shiver snaking down your spine. But this strange, overwrought feeling has less to do with the cold, you think, and everything to do with the way he looks at you. How he just stops, perched between your spread knees, and just stares. Full of heat, want; hunger. The man devours you with his eyes, flickering from the droplets sliding down from your temple, to the way they rain down off your chin and onto your breasts; to the split of your thighs, drilling into the thatch between them where the gusset of your sodden panties clings to your folds.

But as the man feasts, the father tilts his head to the side, radiating warmth. A pleasant buzz hums down your spine as you take in the look of approval, of pride, that brims in dark blue. Daddy likes the way you look; likes how sweetly you sit for him as he rubs his thumbs into the knobs of your knees, soothing the nerves that bubble as the man eats.

Good girl, the touch says, but the hunger in his eyes flays the skin from your bones; every inch of you feeling more sensitive than it's ever been before, stinging like a sunburn under the heat of his stare.

And it should be empowering, you think, to look down at him like this; but even with the slight difference in height now tipped in your favour, the top of his head comes up to your collarbones. Like this, you feel impossibly small next to him somehow—like a child being held up, gaining height in the arms of a parent. Small, in an insignificant way. A fragile way. This shivering, exposed little thing cradled in his palms; entirely at his mercy, his whims. Playing dress up in adult skin.

His head tilts like he knows the ugly thoughts in your head; can see through the centre of you, cutting through flesh and bone until everything is stripped away. Nothing but sensation in his hands; a thing made of hideous wants and terrible needs—to wrapped tight in daddy's arms, safe and sound; and fucked until you forget your own name.

Shame, desire. The two coalesce in the pit of your belly as his lips twitch into a clandestine smile as he softens the edges of his gaze, pulling back the man until the father remains.

"it's okay, baby—"

But as much as he can sand down the want in his eyes, he can't soften the rasp in his voice, and it catches on the coo, coming out as a low growl. Mangled in the pit of his throat; muscles tensing, unsure, because he's a man who either commands or yells, and it doesn't know how to handle something this soft.

There's an apology in his touch, a gentleness to the way he slides his hands up to the bend of your hips, over the softness of your belly. Soothing a hurt you don't really even feel, but one you know a younger, lonelier version of you would have. Might have pouted, even, with tears in your eyes; too sensitive, too nervous, around men who spend most of their time snarling instead of smiling. Unsure how to handle rejection, disappointment; or a touch that didn't carry a slight bite of pain.

And it's the subtlety of that action, performed without much thought (or too much, rather), that threatens to unmake you. Unravel you at the seams because there's playing pretend in the sanctity of your mind, tucked away inside a secretive, unknown place where no one can see the raw, oozing wound of a broken, lonely child yearning for parental affection, and clutching onto whatever scraps it finds, and—

And this:

"c'mon," he nudges, guiding you the same way he did when he re-taught you how to swim; the innocuous sentiment poisoned by the way his hands curl between your knees, forcing them open wider to fit him as he leans forward, eyes dark, his heavy. Staring at a place the skin he's wearing isn't supposed to peek.

You know the idea behind it. This. The word that shapes itself on your lips, sitting behind your teeth. A different sort of play; new roles shifting in the empty husks the old ones left behind.

But—

Crossing it, in reality, feels so much heavier than it did in your daydreams.

"Price," you start, words edged with a worming, writhing thread of unease. You've never uttered his name before, never tried to break this game of pretend, and his head jerks up sharply in admonishment for bruising the unspoken rules, eyes narrowing into slits, nostrils flaring. A threat: do not enter, do not say more. But your insiding are squirming through the bite of shame and uncertainty, and you suck in a tentative breath, and ease out, on a whisper: "I don't know if—"

The problem, however, is that when you toy with a man who feels more comfortable in a position of unquestionable authority, he'll inevitably just rip the choice from your hands when you refuse to bend to his whims.

Shush, baby, he coos, as soft as he can, but the look in his eyes is mean. "Just lean back for me—”

It isn't a question. He's not asking for permission—he doesn't have to. In his head, it's already a given. Implicit. Nothing he does to you right now would be anything short of consensual. Your acquiescence to this surrendered at the door when he dragged out a key from his pocket, hand low on your back, and nudged you inside. The steps you took over the threshold were all the assent he needed.

You wouldn't be here if you didn't want it.

And it's beyond the parameters of dominance and submission—where there is, always, an unequivocal thread of mutual respect, and negotiations on conduct and rules; setting the stage in partnership, rather than tyranny. Even the designs of free use are mutually agreed upon.

But this, you know, is spitting in the face of all of that.

It's ownership. Possession. He's making decisions for you with the expectation that you'll follow them through without question. Subservient to your King, always.

You think about pulling away from him, closing your legs and keeping him out. Running away—

But that's easier to digest in your head, where he's nothing but an insubstantial figure. In reality—

Price is a big man. Physically imposing. Dominating. Despite the softening of his flesh with age, you felt the undercurrent of muscle beneath the furried body he let you float on. Cling to. The heavy, thick muscles slabbed over his shoulders, his chest. His belly. His thighs. Even now, with his hands sliding off of your body, palms coming to rest on the ledge of the pool as he hangs his head and waits, you can see the shifting of those muscles beneath his soaked skin.

The rise and fall of his barrelled, furry chest both a safe haven and reminder that not only would you easily fit inside his ribs he carved himself open and stuffed you inside, squeezed there against his heart and sticky organs, but he's bigger than in a way you can barely begin to articulate. Physically—a given; but beyond the stretch of his body, the thickened bands of his arms flexing as he waits, a touch impatient, he has years on you. Experience you can't begin to unravel, to understand.

All it took for him to get you to this point, shaking between him, was less than a handful of words—and barely any of them complimentary.

A crook of his fingers. Meagre scraps of his attention. The dissemination of your walls, as easy as peeling paint from trim after it's being soaked in paint-thinner; unveiling the aching, bruised child that yearned, hungered, for something. Comfort in pieces—small morsels to entice your appetite; and now: panting like a dog for more, tongue lolling out to lick the only hand that touched you and didn't hurt—

Easy. Maybe he saw the threads from across the room. The broken, scared little thing playing pretend in adult skin; desperately in need of a guiding hand. Malleable. Pliable. And too socially insignificant to say no and have your refusal stick.

If anything happened, you'd be the whore who lured a good man from his wife's cold bed. A leech. A parasite.

He knew your role from the moment you glanced at him, trying to be coquettish but missing the mark—a coltish, wobbly-kneed doe nuzzling cold metal. Too stupid to see that the object you were seeking comfort from was the barrel of a gun.

Until it was too late.

You swallow, but your throat is dry; skin rubbing together painfully with the motion. The brief hurt, the lingering sting, almost feels like a portend, but you should know better now. It's hindsight—that what you wanted, what you flirted with, and what you get are sometimes mutually exclusive. The man, the father figure. Maybe they can't exist in tandem without one devouring the other.

"Come on," the man barks, impatient now. But the father figure softens his gaze, leans forward to press a chaste kiss to your forehead, breathing in the chlorine and sin that clings to your skin. Mouth warm, beard wet. "Come on, baby," he rasps, and his hand falls to your thigh, nudging. Urging. But it's a farce, this idea of choice, because the man won't take no for an answer and the father would be disappointed if you tried. 

And you lean back when that hand slides from your thigh to your belly, pushing. Insistent. Your palms squelch against the slick tile when you press them down, bracing as your knees spread around the wide stretch of his waist. A loud squeal fills the hushed, reverent silence of the room when he curls his hands under your knees and pulls you forward. Eyes locked, drilling into the cut between your legs as you part slowly for him. For the man, the father you never had—

"god, baby—" he grunts, the words sounding like they were torn out of his throat. Carved from flesh, wet and gutteral, still sticky with blood and spit. "Fuckin'—look at you—"

There's not much to see, not with your thighs this tense and the scrap of cheap fabric covering your cunt, but he doesn't peel his eyes away from you once, devouring the little tease of your flesh moulded to sodden cloth like it was a feast. Gorges himself on it, too; chest heaving, furried beneath the clinging cotton of his shirt, muscles pulling taut. Coiling as he sinks low into the water, now levelled with your knees.

"Go on," he rasps, and that touch of cruelty from before edges into his words like he can't help himself. Lips curling into a snarl beneath damp curls. All tenderness tucked away as the man prowls around you like a stalking bear, huffing, grunting. "Show daddy that sweet little cunt."

You can tell from the wry, almost indulgent lilt that he's tired already of making this same demand, and when you boxes you in, it tastes like finality in the back of your throat. The opportunity to run, to flee, squashed in his paw as he braces against the ledge of the pool, and dives in, head cutting between your thighs, forcing them open wide. There's nowhere to go, and the man is too hungry to listen to reason—

"god—" his nose pushes against the gusset of your panties, and you mewl despite the trembling unease that curdles in your belly. Still unsure if you want this at all; but your head is a separate entity from your body. Reluctance doesn't bubble in your blood when he shifts his hand beneath his chest, and pushes your panties to the side, groaning low and wrecked at the sight of you bared before it. Wet, wanting. You wish it was just pool water, but you know, when he ruts his long, broad nose into the crease of your folds, breathing in deep and ragged, that it isn't. That it's all you. All heat.

(and the furtive, terrible desire to make daddy proud—)

He knows when he tastes you, too. Tongue cutting a long, hot line up your cunt, slick gathered up on the broad, flat spread of it, and rubbed into his teeth, the roof of his mouth. His pretty, baby girl—

Soaked for him.

"m'gonna eat this cunt," he promises, words whispered into your swollen, slick folds. Muffled by the tremble of your thighs. You can't look away from him as he speaks, as he anchors his other hand against your thigh, pushing it open wider for him to fit. The other snaking closer, middle finger slipping between your folds, the back of his hand rubbing against the tile as he teases your slick hole. "And then m'gonna fuck you. Gonna give you the cock you've been achin' for, mm, and you're gonna beg daddy not to cum inside your pussy."

You can see it, too. Him, holding you down—hand against the scruff of your neck as he pounds his cock into your cunt, barely stretched or wet enough to take him without it being a little painful. A constant, dull ache behind your naval as he splits you open on the fat swell of him. A hard, too deep grind that'll leave you sore and bruised for days afterward. His cum, when he yanks your thighs apart and stares down at your battered cunt, will be slightly pink when it spills out of your swollen, stretched hole. The rim inflamed, maybe even torn—

A sick, twisted thing will fix itself in the quirk of his mouth as he coos about daddy making you bleed.

poor little thing, he'll say, and it'll almost sound like contrition but the wicked gleam in his eye will give him away as he watches you stumble out of the room, limping because his cock is too big and it hurt you too much to take him the way you did.

But you will. You'll take whatever he gives you even if it hurts.

And when he laves his tongue over you again, you lean back with a shuddering breath, legs spreading wider, and say,

okay, daddy.

Your friend doesn't say anything when you wander back to bed in the early hours of the morning, unsteady on your feet; dazed and liquid. Wearing nothing but a rich, cable knit sweater that's too expensive, too luxurious, to be yours. Smelling of chlorine and cologne. A slight limp to your gait—beard burn aching between your thighs—as you climb into bed with her on a quiet, fractured exhale.

Her arms loop around your shoulders, pulling you close to her side as she mumbles out a question drenched in sleep about where you've been. 

“Nowhere,” you murmur back, voice scraped out of your throat. “Just—”

“Come on, Dolly,” she huffs into your crown, dredging up that old childhood nickname from when you fought her over an American Girl Doll. Something that changed as you grew, like the stretch marks of your childhood still pasted over your skin. The Dolly Parton to her Kenny Rogers. “Don't lie to me—”

“Just drop it, Ken. I don't—” you can still taste him on your tongue. Feel the warm metal of his ring on your skin when he ran his hand up and down your thighs. Cupped your breast in his palm; the uneven heat of a single line on his knuckle a constant reminder of just how far down you've fallen in a matter of hours. Bent to his whim with a growl, a nudge. Pretty paper crane in his hands; brassbound morality crumpling like a sheet of paper between his worn, rough fist. “I just wanna sleep, I think. I just want—”

She shushes you quietly, whispering out a softened okay that melts into the starchy sheets, and your stomach churns as you wonder what she'd think if she knew. It's one thing to fantasize about a taken man, to make catty remarks about a wife you've never seen before (you're younger and hotter, doll) with a sly, green-eyed glint—a messy fever dream—but another entirely to actually be seduced by a gruff man using little more than a handful of words. 

Barely any effort at all and you went, willingly, despite being so sure you'd never be that person, that girl—

You feel restive despite the exhaustion. Unsettled. Windswept, almost—like you spent all day floating in the sea, your face angled up towards the sun, instead of crying beneath an older man as he fucked you, forcing you to take every fat inch of a cock that was too big for you. 

And maybe the idea of that, of taking a man into your body who doesn't fit, is a little more metaphorical than physical—even though you feel sick to your stomach, nauseous, and your belly aches behind your navel where the head of his cock bullied deep. 

It's guilt, you think—or an abstraction of shame. You weren't supposed to be that woman but all it took was minimal effort from a man you used to dream about as a child until the embers of that adolescent yearning left stretch marks across your shiny, new adult skin. Decades later, and you're still smouldering. Aching. 

The problem is that he didn't treat it like a transaction. Like it wasn't just sex. Something changed after he pulled away, letting his spent cock slowly slip out of your tender, bruised body. Instead of getting dressed, leaving things as they were with perfunctory nod and a goodnight, appetites sated for the moment, he gathered you in his arms, pulled you against his slick, hairy chest, and pressed his mouth to your temple. It was more of an exhale than a kiss, but you felt the brush of his lips, the warm, silky feeling of them sliding along your sweat-slicked skin. Tasting and feeling and just—

Just breathing you in. 

Even when his hand slid down, cupping your wet, sticky sex, it was somehow less intimate than the way he looked down at you, eyes wide open, just taking you in—

And then taking you apart. 

A soft interrogation as he fossicked around your sleepy head, rummaging through the muck until he knew everything—from your first memory, your biggest fear, your happiest moment in life to what your favourite foods and colours were: weaving threads of emotional intimacy (that you liked being held in his arms after sex), physical (you liked when he grazed your slit with his beard and tongue; the dual sensation of rough and soft making you whine), and everything else in between until he had the entire tapestry of your life cradled in the palms of his hands. Silken webs woven under the soft hum of the generator, and filled with the lingering scent of sex and chlorine. In the middle, he started a new anchor point, and let you stitch in pieces of himself in conjunction with your own. Soldered together with parts of two people who couldn't have been more different from each other, but worked in this strange, tentative microcosm knit along the edges of an empty poolroom. 

In the moment, with your head resting against his chest, it was easy to crack yourself open, to let those long-held secrets slip out into balmy air, echoing on the slick, condensation drenched air before dispersing into the steam wafting off the water. Swallowed by the quiet. The trickling drip drip drip of water sliding off your skin and onto the tile. 

Easy. And dangerous.

You consider chalking it all up to happenstance. Sleight of hand: the man hides the father figure in the cuff of his sleeve; makes you call him daddy in the bloom of a pale-blue dawn when no one can see the twisted artifice of taking any scrap of parental affection you can get—even if it comes from the rough slide of a thick cock. A broken adult still clenching around a childhood dream. 

But maybe it should have stayed that way. 

Dreams are, after all, inconsequential in a way real men are not. 

Ken curls her hands into the plush knit of your borrowed sweater, tugging sleepily at the fabric until her head is shoved into your neck; the slope of her nose dragging over your pulse. The flutter of her lashes tickles your skin and you wonder if she can smell it on you. Guilt and sweat. Sex and chlorine. 

It was a mistake, you whisper into her crown, words caught between denial and a plea. It was a mistake and it won't happen again. 

She hums, warm breath ghosting across your jugular in a sweet line. I know, she rasps out groggily, only half awake as you beseech her for forgiveness that isn't hers to give out. Go to sleep.

But when you sleep, you dream. And the problem with dreaming too much is that it becomes difficult to differentiate between fantasy and reality—

Fantasy is tumbling out onto the patio with Ken’s fingers laced between your own; blinking sleep-soaked eyes against the foggy glare of the sun as it smears across a pale blue dawn. 

Everything feels dreamlike: a hazy spill of light; fog thick in the air, dense with humidity. A warm morning—the kind that glues to your skin and causes the heat to bead sweat down your back, your palms; makes everything feel syrupy and intangible. Ephemeral. 

Ken peels her sticky, warm fingers away from your hand, glancing eagerly towards the pool house where the man she disappeared with last night lingers in the doorway, a long, blue net clasped in his hand. He grins wide when he sees her. 

“I'm just gonna go say hi,” she mutters, and huffs at the glance you send her, one laced with askance. “Oh, shut up, dolly. He's cute, okay? And it's harmless.” 

Your room is on the ground floor, perched across from the outdoor pool, and the sprawling valley of green that makes up the first of many golf courses situated on the resort. Ken doesn't bother using the door—she grabs her tote, and slips over the railing with a quick wink in your direction, hastily throwing a quick see you later over her shoulder that melts into the thickening humidity. 

You follow her lead, convincing yourself you're just going to lounge near the pool all morning. And for the most part—it works. There's a stack of magazines on the table beside the lounge chair, and a book someone left behind. 

You don't expect to see him today. The pool is public, and the golf course is beginner level—silver membership—and you spend the morning and most of the afternoon sipping on virgin cocktails, eating sun-warmed fruit, and pretending as though you couldn't still feel him between your thighs, on your skin. Ken shows up for a handful of minutes to check in on you, her eyes bright, slightly flushed with a tinge of warmth that has little to do with the sun, before she darts off again to meet with the pool boy during his breaks. 

And for the most part, it's fine. A neat distraction. But it's between waving off Ken and sinking back into the same stagnant relaxation that he appears, shattering the silly, childish game of pretend that you've been playing with yourself. 

He's dressed for a game, wearing tweed trousers in a shade of off-white and a short-sleeved polo in the same colour—tucked in; cinched with a plain, brown leather belt. 

He looks good. Even better, somehow, in the misty light of a warm, foggy afternoon than he had yesterday under the glow of artificial lights. Almost like he was made for daylight. For soft, warm golds. Sun-touched. 

You pretend you're not staring. Watching him just—

Stare back. 

Intense. All heat. He hasn't looked away once—was watching you before you even noticed him, really. Looking down the length of the pool, eyes shaded beneath the bucket hat he's wearing. Endlessly dark, wanting. 

The look he pins you with is ravenous. Hungrier in the daylight. It's here, in the open, where there's no mistaking what he is, what he wants, and as he tips his head towards the lobby, a pointed look that's more of a summoning, a command, than anything else, you shift in your chair and look away. Pull the book higher up until the words of Coco Mellors drowned out the sight of him limned in the light of the soft yellow sun—

The long, silver club arcs high in the air, cresting over the book you've turned into a shield until it knocks into his shoulder where he lets it rest for a moment. The only thing you can see over the pages and beyond the pale smear of a gauzy blue sky. Tap, tap… 

Your knuckles ache. You're holding the book too tight but you're overcome, suddenly, with the urge to squeeze it tighter. To anchor yourself to something, anything, until he walks away because you feel restless—weightless. As if his presence, that subtle, unshakeable sense of authority, will make you float, obey, whatever command he makes of you. He unmoors you, and you need, above all else, to stay tethered. To stay present. 

Morality is not bendable. It is not fickle. You will not follow him into the shadowed alcoves of the resort, dancing to his whim. Will not let him pretend that he's making a monastery of your body when he advertises it so clearly as a bordello. 

You're stronger than your impulses, than the desire to feel those fingers gliding across your skin again; baptismal and condemning all at once—too much like coming home. Like being found. 

You won't—

You promise yourself, feeling sore and bruised in the lounge chair, that you won't follow him, won't let yourself be corrupted by a fleeting scrap of affection from a man you haven't decided yet which role he's meant to fill. 

But this oath is just a dream. 

The reality is that you find yourself on your hands and knees in a linen closet during breakfast as he brackets himself around your pliable body, and tries to fill the aching hole of a loveless childhood with the thick split of his cock. 

Mouth searing across your nape, whispering the words you wanted to hear your entire life, but they're Frankensteined together with the deplorable filth of a man trying to bully his stupid fat cock into a too tight baby fuck cunt—

(you're so good, sweetheart; takin’ me so well, aren't you? ‘course you are—you can take it, all of it (every fuckin’ inch)—‘cause you're a good girl, you're my good girl; my (tight, wet) baby, aren't you?)

It's still just as painful as it was last night—if not more. An ache deep in the middle of you; a raw, open wound being pried open, sticky with blood and serous. A constant, stabbing hurt—

But it's easy to slip into a dream, to blur the lines of fantasy and reality until it's a muddled mess of melting baby fat and charring bone; to push back into that unrelenting ache, moaning as he grinds his cockhead against a place inside of you that burns like a knife wound. 

so good, you say and maybe you even mean it, too. but it's good the same way swallowing through a sore throat is. ripping a bandaid off. blowing on skinned knees. digging your fingers into your temple to claw apart a headache simmering just behind your brow. a good kind of pain. a soothing sort of hurt. 

good—in an abstract sort of way: (a mother's hand on your forehead when you're sick; a tight hug). 

but he isn't satisfied with halves or quarters. he’s a man with appetite, someone who loves to eat more than anything else. consume without purpose—have just to have. 

his hand is a heavy weight against your nape, fingers tensing into muscle, tendon. squeezing until the air wheezes out on every shallow exhale. each gasping breath he allows you to take is a reminder of how little you matter beyond a plush, soft body and a warm, wet cunt for him to sink into. 

his touch is suffocating. dizzying. a pain you can barely breath around, but to be baptised is to drown—

go on, say it, say it—

you can't. 

“feels so good—”

whatever shame you can abstract from the broken, bruised remains he leaves behind when he finishes with you (daddy, dad, and god leaning back on his haunches; cock softening—wet and sticky—on his thigh, eyes riveted to the tender mess of your ruined cunt leaking the come you begged him not to pour inside) is left on the tile in a smear of pearled pink. 

a mess for someone else to clean.

(And as you stare across the patio, watching two shapes stand close together under an awning—locked in a heated conversation, his hand darting out to grasp her forearm, preventing her from leaving; an abstract shadow of anger (where have you been?) and icy diplomacy (nowhere, love; don't you dare walk away from me)—you come to the slow, stomach churning realisation that this is what you've always been. 

Just someone else's mess. Their problem. A project for them to fix—a broken doll on a shelf, clearance rack discount, and oh, you poor thing. 

All you need is some TLC, they say with a nod, decisive. Wiping the grime from your button-eyes with the sleeve of their shirt. Touch gentle, tender—like you're something precious. Something fragile. Fixable. We can have you looking brand new in no time. 

They promise they'll patch up the holes, the fraying threads, brush off the dust—an easy fix, dolly, don't you worry—but they soon realise the mess is bigger than they expect when they crack you open, unveiling all the rot inside that a simple spit-shine won't fix. 

Staring across the sloping green valley of the golf course to where he pulls a woman who isn't you into his chest to whisper in her ear (there's no one, it's just you), you can imagine how it would unfold so vividly in your mind—

With that pretty gold band on his finger, digging them into your skin, your flesh; wrapping his worn, rough hands around your bones. Cracking your ribs open only to discover that this isn't just playing pretend for you. That the rot is bone deep. Has been metastasizing inside of your marrow for longer than you can remember. 

Peeling his fingers out and finding his skin, that pretty little wedding ring, covered in a thick, putrid ooze; the necrotised slurry of everything you sealed inside. Wiping it off with a grimace, a damning fuck, sweetheart because you were supposed to be an easy fuck and nothing more. Something to lure him away from his wife for the weekend—a pretty, dumb distraction to sink his cock into. Whet his appetite before he went home on Monday and played the dutiful, loyal husband all over again. 

And now you're under his nails. Staining his skin. A liability. 

The men who tried to fix you in the past just handed you the tattered pile of rot and left you to stuff it back inside and sew yourself up. But him—

(he leans down, bringing his lips to her ear: only you, love)

He'll crush the pile under his boot. Have someone else drag you out to the trash, kicking and screaming. Empty, hollowed out. You'll stuff yourself with the money he'll give you for your silence and fill in the cracks with guilt. 

And soon, you'll be back on that shelf waiting for someone else to try next—)

He calls for you again that night, but you don't answer. Leave the summons rotting beside the single red rose he had someone tuck beneath your pillow, and slip down to the bar instead. 

You wash your mouth out with whatever they place in front of you, and pretend you're not pining. That you're not thinking about him all alone in whatever hotel room he bought for the night, sitting on the bed or pacing around the room, smoking cigars, drinking whiskey—waiting for a knock that'll never come. Not anymore. 

Not ever. 

dumb fuckin’ animal, you think, but let a man pull you over to his table where all his friends are sitting, spilling out around empty bottles and the thick stench of cheap cologne, anyway. 

“This is my new friend,” he says with a grin. “She said her name was Dolly. Everyone say hi to Dolly.” 

It's echoed in a slurred chorus of warm beer and scattered shots of rum. They all seem friendly enough—as welcoming as cheap alcohol will allow—but you hesitate, hovering, a touch unsure, at the edge of the table until the man, whose name you don't even know, won't even remember, drops heavily into his seat with a huffing little come on, sit. 

He sends a careless kick against the leg of the chair beside him, and it reels backwards with a loud, sharp squeal into your thighs. 

All you can think, staring down at the polished wood of the seat is that John would have pulled it out with his hands. Left them there, against the back, until you sat down. Tucked you into the table, his chest warm and big and firm against the back of your head. 

have a seat, sweetheart—

The man doesn't say anything like that. Come on, he grunts, sliding a tall, orange coloured drink your way. Have a drink. 

You take the seat. Take the drink. Let him loop his arm around the back of your chair, tugging you closer into his side as his friends laugh over something you can barely make out under the heavy, thrumming pulse of music. 

It makes your head ache, but you smile around the throb of it because this is what you're supposed to do, isn't it? Be the kind of girl who would let his hand slip under the table, and fall on your thigh. Climb higher and higher until he's teased himself into a frenzy of need while you sit there and get talked at, never to. Pretty doll he takes back to his room where you'll go through the motions without a word; laying there, silent and still, and let him fuck you on his bed, feeling nothing at all because you’re just a doll dragged off the shelf for a bit of play—at least until something else snatches his attention, and then you'll be left on the floor. Forgotten. Unwanted. A mess to take out before sunrise, sneaking through the halls wearing the clothes from tonight. 

The feeling of disgust and shame will only choke you when you think about it too much, so shoving it into a box, keeping it stuffed in the back of your closet, is just easier. Then you can chalk it up to a silly girl making a silly mistake. 

It's expected of someone like you, after all. 

To fuck, to get fucked. To take what doesn't belong to you only to be left behind. Watching from the patio as a man and his wife fall back into each other while the ruiner is left, forgotten, on the sidelines. Always the other woman, never the first choice. 

Young and dumb and—

Easy. 

It's what he thought of you, too, isn't it? An easy lay. A simple fuck. Someone he could buy for one night. Poor and cheap and so fucking easy—

He didn't see anything special when he looked at you—just an imaginary price tag he could try and talk you down on. Worth less than the soot beneath his boots. 

Just another lonely, broken thing—the kind of girl men like him could find anywhere they go. Thousands of yous easily becoming notches on his bedpost. 

The whore. Homewrecker—

His hand falls to your thigh, fingers tightening as he leans in—all smiles, too wide and too white—and whispers: “hey, uh, want another drink? I can get you something—”

“—oh, hey—” another voice cuts in, a pale hand falling between you and the face that keeps inching closer, shattering that white, dizzying spell of bad choices and boyish charm. “You're Ken’s friend, aren't you?” 

You've only ever seen him from a distance, but up close, you can see why Ken’s into him. He's cute. Boyishly handsome in a manicured way. 

“Yeah,” you say, pulling back. “I am. Is she—”

Ken appears at his elbow—a flushed, giggling spill of Dolly! that he catches easily with a grin. 

Seeing her feels a little bit like waking up. She's just so—present. Grounding. The sight of her makes you pull that much further away from the guy you just met, sliding to the edge of the chair until his hand slips off of your thigh. 

Ken catches your eye, her brows raising. 

“God,” she says, giggling into his date's shoulder. “Look who just showed up—”

You don't turn because you know. Because you can feel his glare burning into the bare skin of your shoulders where the fabric of the thin, cheap dress doesn't cover. The air is perfumed with the stench of burned flesh—rendered fat, and charring bone—and the earthy scent of burning tobacco. Robust and full—so different from the stale cigarettes that blooms off the skin of the man as he slides his arm around your shoulders, desperate to reel you back into that atmosphere of easiness that permeated from you. An easy lay, quietly slipping away from his grasp as your friend shows up, and her date slides between the two of you, shattering the spell and bringing you back to reality. 

He's not ready to let his conquest go. “Hey, man, we're kinda busy here, so, uh—”

“Yeah,” Ken's date mutters, rolling his eyes. “Gonna be real busy when he decides to come over here—”

“I don't know who—”

Ken reaches out, and the moment she touches you, his words buzz into static, lost under the heavy pulse of music. Her fingers slide down your cheek, touch soft and sweet and grounding. There's no judgment in her eyes when she looks at you—just that same childlike adoration that's reflected back at you each time you stare at yourself in a picture with her. 

“You look thirsty, Dolly. Why don't you go and get a drink, huh? Maybe clear your head.” 

“I'm not really—” you start, but she shakes her head, cutting your protests off with a little pinch to your cheek. 

The meaning is clear enough. She doesn't approve of the guy whose touch you can barely feel as he tries to compete for your attention, fingers grazing the strap of your dress, his voice a distant echo softly calling out dolly, doll, hey, doll like you're a dog he's trying to make come to heel. Her distaste shows in an obvious, sour twist of her lips, her brows raising when you catch her eye, the unspoken really, Dolly an admonishment that makes your cheeks sting as if you've been slapped. 

She doesn't know you fucked him—middle aged Adonis, a living dream for fucked up losers with daddy issues, isn't he, Doll?—and that, to her, sending you over to him, a married man, would just result in harmless flirting (at worst) and a reason to get you away from a guy she heavily disapproves of (at best). She doesn't know that you saw him and his wife together less than a few hours after you took him inside your body, letting him make a home out of your flesh. Adulteress; luring a good man away from his wife.

Or that the only reason you're here is to escape him—

A man who isn't supposed to be here, in his bar. A place he doesn't belong, doesn't fit in. He's supposed to be with his wife, or—

Or picking up a new, shinier you for the night. Anything but standing at the bar, glaring at the hand still sliding over your skin. You can feel it—feel his eyes on you. Drilling into the back of your head, the nape of your neck. A silent command that you feel rather than hear—can sense it like some primordial, instinctual thing. Primal, in a way; a prickle on your skin. A churning in your guts. The silent, authoritative come here without words. A soundless summons that makes you want to roll over, show your belly. Obey. 

A quiet get over here—

And you could ignore it. Could very easily turn around, waving Ken off with a little don't wait up and lean back into the other man's pull of self-mutilation. Catharsis in cleaving off strips of skin; each piece falling to the floor of his hotel room as you undress your flesh so you can douse yourself in shame. Self-immolation with a foreign touch. Fingerprints on your body, inside it, that doesn't belong. 

You can already feel them, too. On your thigh, your shoulder. Beer-warmed breath ghosting over your cheek. Come on, drink up, dolly. 

But as Ken drags her fingers away from your cheek, smudging the imprint left behind—you're so hot, dolly, fuck—you know nothing will hurt you as much as he ever could. 

a man you tore yourself open for. 

“Yeah, you're right,” you say, swallowing down the bitter sting of betrayal when her eyes light up—harmless, she thinks; you'll go and flirt with and admire a married man who won't touch you like the boy beside you, whose fingers are digging into your skin. “I could use a drink.”

Price doesn't take his eyes off of you when you approach and makes no move to meet you halfway—content to have you come to him, but you don't. 

You lean against the ledge of the counter, keeping several, empty stools between the brooding figure consuming the corner and yourself. A measure of safety, maybe; self-preservation. The look on his face is rich with anger—the kind that makes no promises of a quick, sweet death if you come within striking distance. Full of barely leashed fire; a deep, teeth-chattering fury that wilts some of confidence still lingering inside of you, leaving behind the bitter sting of unease as you wonder if coming even this close was a good idea. 

He makes no effort to soften the scorching ire that brackets his expression despite the fact that you—eventually—obeyed his command: little deer venturing guilelessly into the ravenous bear's den. If anything, he seems angrier. 

Even from across the counter, you can see the muscles in his jaw tick when he clenches his teeth. His fists, too, ball up tight. Knuckles blanching when he leans down, bracing on his forearm as he mutters something to the bartender—the only time he pulls that intense glower away from you. 

He's too far away for you to hear the exchange, and more unease prickles along your nape as time continues to stretch, ticking by. Slowly morphing from escapism to compliance to a strange waiting game you can't make sense of, the rules becoming unclear, marred, because you obeyed, didn't you? 

Sort of. 

You keep your eye on him as the bartender pulls away to make what he ordered, taking in the way his eyes narrow when he glances back at you, the anger still potent. Still heady. You can't really understand it, though—approaching a married man who wasn't supposed to even be in this bar was bound to cause whispers. Rumours. Did he really expect you to saunter over to him and play your part in the open like this? To wander up to him, in full view of a crowded bar, and make a spectacle of your broken parts for everyone to gawk at. Debasing yourself just to soothe a bruised ego—

His irritation folds, something else leaking out from the splinter of his churlish ire—amusement over this newfound reticence of yours, undoubtedly—and he shakes his head with a scoff, muttering something under his breath with a wry twitch of his lips. 

You've built yourself around the evolving moods of your father—a fortress to protect against the anger, the irritation, the quicksilver shift between sodden dolor and euphoria, a confluence of malignancy where the bulk of his schemes manifested—but in all that knowledge, in all of that crafting and building, and every safeguard you've made to prepare for each one, the look on Price's face is singularly foreign. Unsettling alien in the way it merges together—some strange amalgamation between anger and malcontent, and a third, implacable mood you've yet to discern. 

Greed, maybe. 

He's looking at you now the way a starving man would look at a feast. Just as hungry, as wanting, as they are overwhelmed with choice. Indecision lingering between that primal urge to devour, to sate themselves. 

Under that stare, the appraisal that seems to dig deep into your marrow until the heart of you is cracked open in his palm, you feel exposed. Raw. Adrift—

John raps his knuckles against the table twice before pushing off. The look on his face makes your belly churn with a deep, unending sense of foreboding as he slinks, quietly, purposefully towards you. It's just your imagination, you think wildly, edged with a touch of unease, hysteria: just your mind playing tricks on you—

But the look on his face is very real. 

The low light of the bar bathes him in heavy shadows that drape over the peaks and high arches of his facial topography, darkening the valleys and canyons that make up the hollow symmetry beneath. Cut lines of leashed fury tucked in the crevasse of an artificial disappointment. A facsimile of discontent, fatherly anger—or rather, a pantomime. A man playing pretend because real or feigned, he knows you'll ache over it, anyway. 

And you do. 

The sting bubbling beneath your skin. Shame blistering. It's unfair, really, that you're this susceptible to manipulation—ruined by a man before you were old enough to understand the consequences of his revolving, intangible presence in your life, and how it would shape you into this needy, quivering thing that burns at the slightest touch from the cookie-cutter shape of a father. 

You want to apologise for transgressions of a married man. Prostrate yourself at his feet until the sunlight catches the band of his ring like a prism, heat melting the metal until it drips down, and sodders your guilt across your flesh. 

He draws closer until his front is inches from your back. Lingering over your shoulder as you curl your fingers around the glass of whiskey the bartender puts down in front of you.

“Don't know what you're gettin’ into,” he draws, words a soft growl in the back of his throat. The sudden clench of his teeth catches most of the fire, but you feel the heat all the same. 

Your heart jumps. You feel it lodged in your throat when you swallow. “What am I getting into, John—”

His hand falls to your hip, the scorching heat of his palm bleeding into the thin fabric of your shawl. Goosebumps prickle along your skin, blooming outward from where he grips you tight. 

“This,” he rumbles, low and deep, fingers cinching tight on your waist like he's allowed. “Don't be coy, sweetheart. You know exactly what you're doing.”

“I don't.”

“No?” 

You want to argue the point suddenly. Defend yourself because none of this was your fault—

But his hand slides down your hip, grip tightening as his fingers begin to pull at the fabric of your dress, bunching it up into the cradle of his palm until your thigh is bared, leaving you exposed. No one can see you with your back turned to the bar, hidden against the counter and the bulk of his body, but fear—a snaking, looping tendril of want—cinches your throat until all you can eke out through the pulse of paranoia and desire is John, please—

His lips graze your nape as he shushes you quietly, unbothered by the panic etching across your face, the hushed pleads for him to stop, just please stop John—all of which he ignores, bringing his other hand up, around your waist, and lowering it until it's tucked neatly between your thighs, sex cupped in his warm palm. 

Your breath comes out in a stutter. 

“Think you do, sweetheart.” His finger grazes over the wet gusset of your panties, drawing a thin line across your clothed slit. “Was it that boy that made you this wet, mm? Got you soakin’ your panties through like this?” 

He presses his teeth into your skin, then, biting down on your flesh as he growls or is it my come leakin’ outta you still, mm? 

“John—”

“Think he'd fuck you like I do?” He hums the words into the indents on your skin, tongue snaking out to lave at the deep wounds. “Hmm? Think he'd be able to give you what you need?”

“He isn't married—” 

He stills behind you, becoming a solid wall of warm flesh and bone, and you want to take the words back. Swallow them down. It's what you should have done—just let them rot in your throat instead of spitting them up because you know your role. You've known it from the start. This—

This changes everything. Shatters the understanding that puddled between the two of you, trickling down from each interaction where he pretended his wife wasn't waiting for him, and you acted as if the ring was just for show. 

John grunts, then, and you feel sick. Nauseous. “I didn't mean—”

He cuts through the deluge of excuses that threaten to pour out of your mouth when he slips his finger beneath the fabric of your panties, and sinks it inside your cunt. “My poor baby,” he's cooing as the walls around you warble, beginning to narrow. “I thought you knew,” he murmurs, and it makes you feel miserable. “Been feelin’ neglected, mm?”

“No, no, I haven't been. I just—”

His finger slowly slides out, leaving you clenching down on nothing. Empty. A pitiful whine slips out before you can clamp your teeth on it. 

“Drink your whiskey, baby—” he lets your dress fall, keeping it held up on his wrist as he reaches for the glass of whiskey the bartender placed down, and brings it to your lips with another coo, another too-rough murmur that burrows deep in your belly. “Go on, love. Drink up—” 

He doesn't give you much of a choice, and you swallow it down, choking on the scorching liquid when he slides his hand over your slit until he's cupping you in his palm again. 

“—Go on,” he urges on a low, charring rasp. “And daddy’ll give you what you need—”

“You can take it.”

The words growled out from between his clenched teeth are meant to be reassuring. And to some capacity, you suppose they are. But they do nothing to soothe the burn, the stretch, of him splitting you apart like this on his cock. 

More’n you can handle, he promised when he shoved you into the washroom of the lobby, and bent you over the sink before dropping to his knees, adding: but this is what my girl needs, isn't it?

And it is. 

All you can do is cling to the dingy sink as he shoves himself up against you, rutting furiously between your thighs. Taking what he has to give like the good girl he promised to make you be. 

And good girls take his cock to the root. 

No exception. 

So, that's exactly what he'll have you do. Willing or not. 

It shouldn't thrill you as much as it does. To be owned, possessed, claimed by a man twice your age (turned forty eight last month so we came here to celebrate, he'd rasped between a generous pull of his cigar, words drenched in nicotine; you'd nodded so hard, your neck started to hurt), but fuck. It does. Pollutes you from the inside out. Fills you with that ugly sort of want. The kind that looks at men who offer platonic, paternal affection and sees an object of desire instead of a patriarchal placemaker. 

It blooms in the hazy drag of alcohol and bad choices; a contact high off of all the cigars he'd smoked since he pulled you down to your knees, and barked at you to get him ready. 

The cigar flashes in the mirror when he takes another drag, ashes falling carelessly over your spine. His personal ashtray to use as he sees fit. It's demeaning. Gross. You arch your back for him, spine locking in a pretty bow so he has a place to keep it all, glued to the sweat that pools in the cradle of your dimples of venus. 

The butt of it wedges between his lips, splitting them wide in a snarl—all teeth gleaming in the low light. Predatory as he takes his fill of vices offered to him on a platter. 

His other hand curls over your hip, fingers digging in hard enough to pop your blood vessels, bruise your bone. Possessive, unyielding. He doesn't have to grab you so hard, but he does. Holds steady, keeping you anchored in place as he feeds you his impossibly thick cock. 

Taking it and admiring seem to be all you can do in his grasp, staring up at the hazy image of his wide hips swallowing you whole with enough room to spare on both sides to fit your fists comfortably on the knobs of his hip bones. His big hand holding you tight. The other one alternates between reaching for the cigar and the whiskey he'd kept on the sink next to the one he has you leaning over.

The thick, coarse hair dusting over his arms; the thatch above is groin that curls over the softness of his stomach. 

He's attractive. Beastly. The sort that reeks of undomesticated man; rancid, heady in the way a grizzly bear smells of rot and the wilderness. Masculine. Not like the boys you're used to. Soft skin. Peach fuzz. Chiselled jaws. Toned. 

No. He's rugged. Animal. 

The thought alone makes your toes curl. 

“Think that boy could be fuckin’ you like this, mm?” 

“N–no—!”

He brings both hands to your waist, cruelly pulling you back into the hard thrust of his hips. It forces the rest of his cock into your cunt, and you keen with the sharp burn of the stretch. A reprimand, you know. He seems like the sort who sometimes confuses affection with pain, moulding it into a multifaceted weapon to suit his needs. 

And right now, it's a punishment. Don't lie. 

Or, rather—tell me what I want to hear, or else. 

“Just you—just you—” you stammer out, barely clinging to the edge of the sink as he wrecks you. Ruins you. You're not used to this. To bring used. Everything in comparison feels so tame, so gentle. The way he takes you apart is new. Daunting. Uncharted territory. 

Thrown around like a ragdoll. A seal in the jowls of a great white. 

“Just me, mm? That why you came here instead of coming to me?”

“It was a mistake,” you slur, dropping your head onto your forearms. “I just needed—I needed—”

He hums low in his throat. “Needed someone to take care’a you, mm? That it?” 

The words are muffled around the cigar when he speaks, the slur in his voice sending shivers down your spine. Heat—white hot, electric—buzzing through your nerves. 

“Yeah—”

“Yes, what?” He corrects you with another sharp rut. The force of his hips slamming into you sounds like a smack. It's pain. Pleasure. The duality knocks something loose inside your head—common sense, maybe. Self-preservation. Whatever it is, was, the absence of it, a stopgap, unleashes the flood keeping you pinned. Docile in his arms.

Untethered, you chase more of that paradoxical painpleasure. Squirming back into the wide bracket of his hips, eyes rolling when his cock bumps into something that makes your cunt clench tight. Belly fluttering. Filling with heat. 

So close, you think. Chanting it in the back of your head as you roll your hips in kittenish gyrations. Head thrown back, eyes flickering up. Pleasure blooming whitehot through you veins—

His hand slides through the ash piling on your spine, glued to your skin with sweat that beads, pooling from exertion. The fever. From the sweat that drips down his brow, falling onto your back. The worn, rough graze of his skin skimming over your flesh makes you whimper, gasping into the cradle of your arms when his fingers reach the curve of your shoulder. He curls them over it, tips catching on your collarbone as he digs in tight. Using it like a ledge to bluntly slam his hips into your ass, balls slapping against your skin. 

Your belly aches. Too full, too much. Too deep. You yelp, jerking your head up, eyes wide, to catch his gaze in the grimy mirror. His mouth is twisted to the side. Displeasure dripping off of his temple. 

You remember yourself, then. Bowing your head in a soft, sinful supplication. 

“Y–yes, daddy—” 

Your demured submission is met with another roll of his hips that grinds his cockhead into your cervix. Tight, bellyaching flits that makes your toes curl. 

It burns. It hurts. But you swallow the whine brimming in the back of your throat because you know he wants it to sting. This is a punishment. Your pleasure is secondary. A fact you're all too cognisant of, but even as an afterthought, it still ruins you. 

“Been cravin’ this, haven't you? Struttin’ around like a bitch in heat. Waiting for someone to snatch you up, mm?” 

“Yes, daddy, yes—” 

He takes his hand off of your hip, pulling it away only to make up for the loss of momentum, control, by digging his fingers sharply into your shoulder, tugging you into each punishing thrust. 

“Gonna give you what you need, love,” he growls, and when he brings his hand back down, you feel the wet butt of his cigar dampen your skin. It rests pinched between his fingers as he ruts into you, and the thought of that—of him holding his cigar and your waist to piston his cock into you, as deeply as he can go, giving up neither—shouldn’t shatter you, but it does. The carelessness of the action, the surety he has that he'll lose neither his nicotine nor you—a mere vessel for him to sink his want into—sends a ripple of pleasure dripping down your spine. 

Being used like this is euphoric. It shouldn't be. The amalgamation of shame, humiliation, and pleasure burn through you. Made worse when he leans down, lets his soft, hairy belly push against your spine, and draws the cigar to your mouth. 

“Open up,” he grunts, pushing the wet butt against your teeth. “Y’gonna hold it f’me. And if you let it drop—” the fingers buried into your shoulder are pried off, his thick, burly forearm shoved under your skin, tucked tight against your neck. Punishing. You can't breathe. Your eyes roll—

But like a good girl, your mouth falls open for him. The cigar is pushed inside. Your jaw clamps shut, teeth digging into the damp paper, tasting the malt sweetness of tobacco. The velvet drag of smokey nicotine. 

Sweat clings to his skin, dampening your temple when he nuzzles his jaw over you, sucking wet, scorching kisses into your jaw. 

“If you let it drop, m’gonna put you over my knee and spank your ass so hard, you won't be able to sit for a week.” 

You whine around the thought of it. His hand on your skin—the sting, the ache. It's not something that ever sounded appealing to you before, but coming from his mouth, the rasping, burrowing words uttered in that deep, fraying tone, are enough to rewire every staunch belief you've ever had until it's putty in his hands. Moldable clay he can build, shape, into whatever image he wants—

—and mould, he does. Twisting you into a receptacle for him to pour his need into; to burrow deep beneath your skin until each breath that trembles out of your heaving lungs is shared. An entity forming, writhing as it takes shape inside the brackets of a condensation-drenched mirror: the beginning and the ending of him cradled around the whole of you, merged into a single, blurry line. He catches sight of it, too; gaze turning molten. Intense. 

Look, he snarls, bending down until the entire stretch of his front is glued to your spine, hand closing over the skin of your nape in a tight, painful squeeze that forces your chin to lift, to watch through lachrymose eyes as the hazy shapes from before transform, painting a picture of primal debauchery. One of a man—indistinguisable from kin or conquerer, man or father—hunched over your body, taking with a force that rattles the porcelain beneath your chest, and punches each noise, every breath, every sound, out of you, these breathless little ah, ah, ah’s that make him answer with a groan, echoing a call back to you. 

You see yourself being taken, being fucked by a man so much bigger than you, so much older and stronger and powerful—from the broad stretch of his shoulders, the soft give in his belly, his wide hips, his thighs, the sheer length of him able to tower above you and cover you from head to toe when he lays his thick, hairy chest across your back. Consuming you utterly. Too big in a way that feels wrong. In a way that itches under your skin. Rubs at your nerves until their raw and chafed and fraying around the edges because he looks so much like a man, like a—

A dad. 

It's the shape of him, maybe. The outline. A hazy image of a man—an authoritative figure hunched over you, uttering raspy praises under his breath, things like good girl and bein’ so good for me, sweetheart. Things that almost sound like good job and i’m so proud of you. Everything that shouldn't be said at the height of intimacy—a dark, swirling ugliness tucked inside brackets, wrapped around parentheses. Unspoken, but there. Present in a way that's unmistakable. Unmissable. 

Look at you, he burrs, bending down to suck biting, painful kisses, nips, over the stretch of your shoulders. Such a pretty little thing f’me, mm. 

Takin’ me so well—

The image in the mirror is catastrophic: lips peeled back in an expression that could just as easily be misconstrued as pain as it could pleasure, teeth sunk into the fleshy give of a cigar still smouldering, still burning in your bruised, sore mouth. A grizzled, barrel-chested beast of a man burring behind you, head hung low as he grips your hips and uses you, battering his cock so deep inside, it aches. 

He isn't soft about it. There's no tenderness in his touch. It's frenzied. Rough. Your reflection blurs with each thrust; the pistoning motion driving you forward several inches until your forehead kisses the glass, just to wrench you back into the wide spread of his chest, his belly sliding over the small of your back. 

This is the definition of being taken. Being used. Fucked. It's hideous. Primal. There's no finesse. No artifice. It's messy, wet. Soaked skin clinging together. Sweat pours from his face, dropping onto your back. His furried thighs stick to the backs of yours, hairs getting tangled in the spill of slick and sweat. It's hot. You feel overheated. Feverish. He’s a furnace behind you, surrounding you. The air is thick, syrupy. Dense with the smell of sweat and skin and sex—

Tobacco. Whiskey. Fig and waterlily. Sun-dried linen. Damp earth. Wet soil. 

It's heady, dizzying. Too much. But he doesn't stop. He doesn't slow. There's nothing sweet in his touch. In the way he grunts above you, growling out wants and desires into your crown, the words mangled in the thick of his throat. Praises that sound too much like scuffing rocks over dried soil, crushing rotting wood in the palm of your hand; gritty—lithic, harsh—to ever be mistaken for sweet nothings or sublime poetry. It's too rough. Knotted with burls and jagged splinters, and full of chatter marks. Cutting, too—

Snarled words forced out between clenched teeth. Look at you, so fuckin’ eager for my cock and pussy was made for me, wasn't it? Ugly, brutal things shaped by the hands of a lapidarian. Good girl, gaggin’ for my cock— 

Polished enough that they cause heat to pool in your belly, but they're porous. Rough. Scraping sharp, chiselled edges along your soft insides until it catches, weeps. A wound leaking shame into the molten pit of pleasure—a euphoria that sometimes makes your breath hitch, like swallowing back a sob. It feels good. It feels so good, but there's a pinch. A pressure. A sting—the pebbled words you gulped down tearing at your flesh, but the heat is hot enough to cauterize the wound, though it leaves behind a scar. Swollen flesh pulsing with shame, tucked behind a wall of make-believe, indifference. Scar tissue. 

Go on, he demands, forearm sliding beneath your chin. Choking. “Go on and come for me—”

Come around my cock—

The thick burl of his arm forces your head up, up, and in the mirror smeared with thick condensation, the true scope of his obsessive need to consume, to devour, you whole sharpens into a dizzying, breathtaking clarity:

the look on his face, in the molten sapphire pools of his lidded eyes, shifts when he looks down at you. staring at your back, your spine, as if you were the hook which he hung the entirety of his pleasure, his absolution, on—the only thing that can slake his substantial appetite. 

It's a terrifying, heart-stopping thought. To be on the receiving end of that paralyzing look is enough to tip you over the edge and into the arms of a release so heavy, so full, it's almost nauseating—

(But nothing compares to when he shifts his grip on your hips, holding steady as he pounds into you, and the moment he rediscovers the ring on his finger is reflected in the mirror. Etched inside the lines of his face, coloured inside the margins, is a breathtaking fury that brims up from the depths, chasing the receding tendrils of an unfettered, underfed devotion—)

despite swell of your release ripping through you—making you clench tight, desperate, around his cock, electrifying every single nerve ending until it's saturated in a molten euphoria, liquid pleasure—every instinct hums to life, buzzing with the unmistakable, atavistic urge to flee, to run from the thing that looks at you and snarls mine—

but,

(his teeth sink into the side of your neck with a growl. fingers digging into your hips, dragging you backwards, back into his cock, his chest. palms stretching wide across your belly when you try to leave, to crawl away from that earth shattering, cataclysmic look—)

“where'd you think you're going?” 

His tone pitches low, sated but not quite full. Still wanting. Possessive. He sucks bruising, blistering kisses across your shoulders, sinking his teeth into the spots the man touched, and growls:

I'm not finished with you yet.

His fingers slide behind your scalp, pulling you up onto your toes and into his chest as he bends down to meet you halfway, lips peppering over your cheeks, your jaw, trailing to the puffy swell of your mouth still wrapped around the cigar. A low good girl, good fuckin’ girl for me slinking out as he slowly peels it from between your teeth, soothing the ache in your jaw with his thumb. 

John's mouth takes its place, his tongue delving between your teeth. A rough, devouring kiss—an eating. Consuming. All teeth and tongue. The sting of his beard on your cheeks, chin. Scraping at your skin until it starts to burn. 

You feel dazed, dizzy. Barely cognisant, barely here; unmoored—as if the ground beneath you has opened wide, forming a chasm under your feet. It's just his touch, his hands that keep you from falling. Hold you steady, suspended in place. 

“Such a good girl,” he grunts, teeth grazing your bottom lip. “Aren't you, mm?”

“J–John—”

“Go on,” he presses, pulling you tighter into his chest, into his hold until you melt into the broad spill of him stretched around you. Floating in the bracket his arms make as he hums low in his throat, timber felling into a smokey, guttural growl, words charred. Dark. “Tell me you're daddy's good girl—”

Ken is asleep when you stumble into the room and there's a sharp, acute sense of deja vu that folds over you at the sight of her on the bed. A yearning that brims up inside of your chest—boneweary; aching—and you almost answer it, follow that familiar, comforting path. A place of sweet succor. Deliriously empty. A sanctuary where you can rest your eyes for a moment, and escape the lingering feeling of being hollowed out. Scorched. 

But you go to the bathroom instead. Turn the shower on as hot as it will go—until the room is cobwebbed in thick swaths of fog and the glass is drenched in condensation too thick for you to see the mess, the travesty, staring back at you—and sink down against the tile, letting the scalding water rain down across your skin. 

It isn't purification. This isn't a baptism. It's—

His come drips down your thigh. Thick, and milky white on your skin; tinged a pearled pink from your blood. Pretty, he'd grunted the first time he saw it ringed around his cock, drying on your skin. Just like a ripe, sweet cherry—

You can taste him on your tongue. Ash and whiskey. Tobacco. Malt and sage and sweetgrass. Salt-touched from the sweat on his upper lip, clinging to his beard. Feel it on your skin still, too. Coarse hair scratching your cheeks. Your neck. His rough hands pulling at you, cinching your waist tight between his worn palms. Callouses digging into your hips, scraping your flesh. Tugging you against him. Into him. Ride me, baby, just like that, mm. Bucking up from below. Your hands clenched on his shoulders; the dusting of hair smattering across his collarbones tickling your palms. His belly sliding over you. This is all you needed, huh? His hands cupping your breasts. Your throat. Squeezing tight. Just needed your daddy to fill you up, mm?

Your skin itches, prickling with the ghosts of his touch. The way he stretched you, filled you. Fucked you deep—too deep. Cockhead drilling into the seal of your womb; battering your cervix with each full, deep press of his hips. Spilling inside of you each time—gonna let daddy fill you up, mm? Must be so lonely, sweetheart. Maybe you just need daddy to give you some siblings, huh—

He's in your head. Tattooed along your gyri—his fingerprints lingering in every synapse. Wiggled in so deep, you could cleave through every limb, every muscle, and still feel him embedded inside you.

(a cancer.)

The only saving grace is that you don't expect to run into him again. 

He got what he wanted, after all—a pretty thing coming undone on his tongue, wrapped tight around his cock as you whined and writhed and tried to push him off of you, out of you, begging him not to come—and so did you:

a man, caught between daddy and dad; a father figure to breathe his sorrow, a silent apology, into the bracket of your thighs when his come leaked out, tinged pink, and a man who twisted your body into whatever shape he liked best, using you until you couldn't remember how to say no anymore. 

You feel both sated and sick—a sore, aching mess caught between nausea and dread (biting off more than you could chew; a child stumbling around in her mother's stilettos, lips painted clownishly red), and grown, aged and new, even though you walked into that room as an adult, old enough to buy your own drinks, and sublet an apartment of your own. Different, in a messy, sticky sort of way. Raw from shedding your old skin.

a baptism in the nicotine-tinged spit of an older man.

Ken blinks sleep out of her eyes as she reaches for the sugar at the dining table your father picked, yawning behind the stretch of her hand. You stare at her for a moment, feeling a strange, surreal sense of loss. Everything looks the same, but you feel different. Fractured, somehow. A new you in your old body. 

(like he made you leave more than just a smear of pale-pink behind on the cold tile—)

Maybe it's the consequences of toying with older men. For not playing the part he assigned to you originally—the whore who would be chirping at her next victim after washing away the evidence of her last host.

For trying to make something sacred and safe out of a married man, as if the ring on his finger, the one that burned when he wrapped his hand around your throat to hold you still as he pounded his cock inside of you, was inconsequential in face of your naked wants.

Broken childhoods can only excuse your ugliness for so long.

But it's fine, you think, even if your stomach churns and your palms sweat around the mug of coffee you can't bring yourself to drink. You got what you wanted—if only for a little while.

Lessoned learned—

Or they should be.

But after stepping outside of his role, he seems determined not to go back.

He stands in front of the table, looking down at you, and it's such a perfect moment of symbolism, that you almost feel awed as you stare at the shadow he casts over your untouched omelette.

Dressed in brown corduroy trousers, and a seashell dress shirt that cost more than the rented suit your father promised to return three years ago, he looks like a staple piece; a figurehead of luxury. Everything tailored to perfection. Cut with his measurements in mind.

But it's not his clothes you're staring at, but the pale, slim hand curled around his forearm.

It's easier to render someone's existence into little more than a guilty afterthought when they don't exist within the brackets of your physical reality, when they're incorporeal and watered down; a ghost on the edges of your periphery, easy to ignore. To banish. To make up slights to feed the flimsy excuses you whispered to yourself while her husband groaned into your cunt—

Your dad jumps in quickly, obviously to your paroxysm of conscious; offering a seat to Mr and Mrs Price—an honour, of course, to have them at his table, and wouldn't you know it, he was just thinking about how good the two of them looked together, admiring them from afar because, gosh, Mrs Price, your husband is quite an accomplished man and a genius when it comes to business ventures, which he, himself, is interested in, too, maybe Mr Price would like to hear a bit about it, as such a highly regarded man of business—and you swallow down the nausea that dredges up again as she gives him tight-lipped smile drenched in a cold, polite indifference, before casting a shrewd, and rather pointed, look at her husband.

But he isn't paying much attention to her displeasure. No. He seems to be relishing in yours even if he hasn't yet graced you with his gaze, or given you any modicum of attention.

You can feel it, the arrogance, roiling off of his shoulders, the same ones that carry the deep, jagged red lines from your nails as the command of fight him off, beg him not to come inside you edged a little too close to reality. A futile one, of course; easy dismantled with the tight grip of his hand around your throat, a snarl brimming the back of his.

don't leave a mark on daddy, baby—

He cut himself off then, but as he tucks himself into table as if he wasn't the reason for the ache between your thighs, the rest fills in with a simmering, sinister whisper: or my wife will see.

You feel flayed. Hollowed out. A feeling that's made worse when Mrs Price sets her eyes on you, and they immediately narrow into suspicious slits. The only saving grace from the guilt that chokes you alive is that she doesn't linger. No. Her disdain is aimed at Ken instead.

Despite yourself, you can't help wondering if Ken was the type Price usually went for. If there was something about her that drew a wife's ire quicker than you. Jealousy, in this context, at this abhorrent table with an adulterer, a spiteful wife, a whore, and a leech, is unfounded—especially when it's directed at the only innocent one here—but you feel it tightening inside your guts all the same. Another shame to add to the rest; sin after sin after—

"...and this," your dad says, a loud proclamation that cuts through the terse glare Mrs Price keeps on Ken (and the bemused look Ken sends your way in response), and draws everyone's attention back to you when he motions with his hand, an easy sweep. "Is my daughter."

It's then that Price finally looks at you, takes you in. But where you'd expect the haughty conquest of a man whose machinations put his wife and whore at the same table, eating the same waxy eggs and drinking cool, bitter coffee, you instead find a brief, but deep, thrum of anger that clots over the sun-touched blue of his eyes, darkening them into a murderous slant of unpolished sapphire; a swelling, blackening azure of a Mediterranean storm.

The suddenness of it, and maybe the ugliness, too—a soot-stained smear covering all the warmth you'd felt last night when he curled his hand behind your head and dragged you in for a kiss softer than the cashmere sweater he gave you before (more tender, too, than the rasped arms up he uttered as he slipped it over your head; or when pressed a featherlight, gentle kiss to your forehead when it popped through the opening before sending you to your bed); leaving you sated and sore but more whole, settled, than you felt in a long, long time. 

But it's gone, peeled away from you and angled at your father as he beams in some facsimile of pride—undoubtedly having just lied about what university you went to and what job you have, if only to bolster his own status of a man who breeds promising upspring.

And as your dad continues with another lie ("my daughter's a good girl, ivy league, aren't you, kiddo?"), you realise what it was that set him off:

daughter.

It's on this word that his jaw clenches. The he placed on the table curls into a fist, knuckles blanching under the strain. It's—

It's a powerful feeling, really. For a man to be so covetous of you, enough that's plain to see the lines of greed, of jealousy, etching into the divot of his brow, the sour mark of his mouth when he frowns. Fingers curling, holding himself back from—

From lashing out, maybe.

From snatching you up, cradling you possessively to his side.

Powerful—and intoxicating. Enough that it makes you deliberately press your thighs together, just to feel the ache he left behind. Delighting in the sting, the burn; letting it balm the guilt and shame that eats at you still.

Your squirming catches his attention, and he stares at you again as your dad prattles on. The look on his face is full of barely stifled want, a naked hunger; burning sapphire. A look so scorching, that makes Ken gasp beside you.

Mrs Price, drawn to the noise, glances sharply over to her. Disapproval makes her lips tilt downward, angling the corners to the ring of Tiffany Blue diamonds draped over her slender neck. The hue almost matches Price's eyes, and your stomach churns at that subtle realisation.

"Well," she says, her voice low and rich. Saccharine as she looks away from Ken, and back to your dad. "Hopefully one day our daughters can be as accomplished as yours."

Daughters.

You knew, of course. In the back of your head. In the sleepless nights spent tossing and turning, mind reeling over what you were ruining, the thought of a close-knit family brimmed. Dark and awful. Those poor kids. But now the thought makes you sick for another reason. And it's silly. He's a grown man, married—it's almost a given that a man as traditional as he is would have children already. Probably married Mrs Price at nineteen, too. It shouldn't rankle you this terribly, shake you this much, to think of him as a father, and not just—

Whatever he was to you last night. This week. Filling in the margins of something you didn't ask for. Didn't seek out. 

And maybe a little bit of it is envy. Jealousy. Taking away the man, and the father you're left with is something out of a hallmark movie—coddling, gentle; softening his words even though the natural grit in his voice won't let him. Patient and reverent and so goddamn doting—

Good girl, he'd said, and you can easily imagine his hand on your head, thumbs stroking your skin as he doles out easy praise.

But the thought of that, too, of being related to him by blood, makes your stomach churn just as viciously because you want him with a fury that makes your throat ache, scorched and bruised swallowing back the fire that threatens to leak out—want more of that paternal warmth, too—but not enough to give up the way he felt inside of you. How he growled your name when he came, muffled by your hand pressed against his jaw, fingers curling over his lips. Trying to keep him from kissing the pleads of no, don't come inside me, daddy from your lips. 

A game; playing pretend.

It feels like there's a war inside of you; the ache left behind from his cock is the sweetest, most awful thing you'd ever felt, but it wouldn't be complete if the hurt wasn't balmed by the warmth in his voice as he murmured arms up, baby and so good for me, sweetheart. His lips against your forehead. Safe and sated. The two knitting together until they become a single entity.

It's wrong to want this, to feel this way. To want a man to be two things at once, polar opposites: a lover and a father; a comforting hand that soothes and heals and gives out affection as easy as breathing—

But to also be held down, taken apart, and bullied into a soft, melting submission by those same hands. The ones you want to slip the clothes off of your body, hungry for your bare skin; but to redress you afterwards. Arms up, baby.

(a sick, sick, terrible thing, and you think you hate Price a little bit for dragging these ugly, buried wants out into the naked daylight only to taunt you with the idea of them; his daughters, protected against the world that will hurt them the same way it hurt you if it gets a chance, and his wife, her hand still curled around his arm—)

It's more petulant than you want it to be when it slips out, a soft, chiding: "daddy," something you've never called your father before, but it's worth the temporary embarrassment when Price jerks his head up, eyes burning, narrowing when your father makes a noise, dismissive and pleased at all once. "Stop it, you're embarrassing me."

The man is angry, jealous; but your father is proud.

"Oh, honey—"

Price makes a noise in the back of his throat, cutting him off. "Well," he starts, and his hand flexes, tensing. The look he gives you is nothing short of murderous. "You're in luck, sweetheart—" your heart lurches, a hopeful, yearning squeeze, but he glances pointedly at his wife, and you feel bile climb up your throat. "You're looking at their new nanny."

She's just as bewildered as you are when she turns from Price to Ken, then slowly, carefully, to you. "Oh. I hadn't—" she swallows, and tries to smile but it comes out as a grimace. "I hadn't realised we needed one—"

"Ivy league nanny," he cuts in, leaning back in the chair. The picture of ease, as if he hadn't just shocked the table into an uncomfortable silence. "Quite a catch, isn't she? The girls will love her."

"Yes," she agrees after a moment, her smile pained. Forced. It's clear that she won't—or can't—interrupt her husband, no matter how utterly disagreeable she finds his decision. Finds you. A nanny to his children—someone they barely know. How utterly absurd. "What a lovely surprise."

"Been thinkin' about it since you—" as Price motions lazily towards your father, something in his cadence makes the back of your neck prickle; "—mentioned her all those months ago. Couldn't let the opportunity to snatch her up for myself—my daughters—pass. You won't mind, of course—she'll come stay with us, be closer to the girls—" Mrs Price nearly chokes, but John doesn't look her way; "—easier for everyone," he finishes, decisive. Firm. His word, at the table and the world at large, is final. Non-negotiable. He wants it, he said it, and so, it must be true. And if it isn't yet, it will be.

In the wake of that irrefutable finality, the table quiets, digesting his words slowly. Ken looks confused (her elbow presses into your side, hissing why didn't say something under her breath), and your dad tries, and fails, to bring the conversation back to focus, making prying remarks about pay and wages and how proud he is of you, his daughter, all of which are ignored by both of the Prices'—John, content to stare at you over the rim of his mug, ignores her attempts to get his attention, and she lapses into a stiff, uncomfortable silence; her face slipping back into the cold disdain from before. Guarded, almost, as she slips her hand away from his arm and into her lap.

You're not sure what to make of this sudden revelation, either. You had assumed that you both got what you wanted—him, a fantasy come to life: a pretty thing wrapped tight around his cock; and you, something to stuff inside the wound inside of you, to balm the ache of a lonely, affectionless childhood in the arms of a man who could be both things to you at the same time, and neither all at once.

To you, another wound you'll feel when you're older and wiser and realise that there wasn't any victory in conquering (in being conquered) by a man like him—just more hurt, more trauma that would ache before it scabs over, scars. A twinge you'll feel sometimes when you think back to this moment and wish you never met him at all because men like him like to consume, they devour, and when they're finished, there's seldom anything left over the salvage. Ruin to you, but to him—

It was supposed to be another dime in his pocket, another notch in his bedpost. Something to reminisce about later, when he went out searching for something else. Trying on new yous for size just to see how they fit. Insubstantial. Temporary. Impermanent. What you had with him wasn't transactional—it was wish fulfillment and nothing more. A stopgap. Not something to be dragged into the light of day.

You thought you were both just playing your parts.

But this—

This changes the dynamic. Reshapes it into something new. A new role for you to fill where he parades you around in front of his family, and they all pretend that they can't smell the putrefying residuum of a lonely, starving child oozing out of the wound in your chest. Where he'll fuck you in his martial bed when they leave the house, and make you call him daddy. And you will because once you let a man like him make a choice for you, it'll never end. Never stop.

But that's what drew you to him in the first place, wasn't it? And there's really no one to blame for this but yourself—after all, you should have known better.

Power is a wonderful thing in the hands of people who know how to weld it, and his are worn enough to tell you that he does it often. And usually at the expense of everyone except himself.

You just didn't expect it to happen to you.

The unctuous spill of your father trying to scheme more favours under the guise of thanking Mr Price for everything he's done follows them as they leave the table.

Feeling slightly dazed, numb, you watch them go, lingering on the firm hand Price keeps around her arm, jaw clenched tight as she mutters under her breath. You can imagine the things she must be saying to him (really, John? not even the pretty one?) from the venomous glare she angles his way when they reach the door, but he doesn't spare her a glance, just pushes her towards the exit as the pool boy Ken has been seeing—Kevin, you think she said—spots him, and offers a wide grin.

Ken lets out a small noise as they exchange a few hushed words. 

"You should have told me you were fucking Mr Midlife Crisis," she whines, pouting. "What gives? And please tell me he has an equally rich, equally fuckable best friend, or something—"

"I'm not fucking him," you murmur, ignoring her snort of disbelief and the churlish yeah, right as you watch John slip his hand into his pocket, and drag out a wad of cash that Kevin takes with a grin.

And for the most part, it's true:

You're not just fucking him. And as the pieces of whatever he's planning, whatever schemes he has for you, begin to fall into place, it becomes clear that you don't just fuck a man like John Price without consequences. 

he’s dangerous, your dad says afterwards, thumb running over the curve of the lounge card Price let him keep (with a Duchenne smile, one too wide for his face: all yours, he'd told him, but his eyes were on you). There's something in the lines etched across his face—an uncertainty, almost. Dark corners touched with guilt. He looks at you, then, and you know that the hazy figure who lured him here—some silent partner, interested in his schemes—was Price. 

Gets what he wants, he adds, tentative. Meek. You've built your life around his moods. Made a home out of his anger, his misery. But you've never seen him look quite like this. So shaken. So rattled. As if the wool was being ripped from over his eyes, and he wasn't sure what to make with what sat in front of him. 

“He always does. And he's, uh, he’s a pretty rough bastard to negotiate with. Knows things, y’know?” Something uneasy swims over his expression, shuddering through the guilt. The uncertainty. “Don't know how the fuck he knows what he knows, but he does. And if that don't work—well, the big fucker who follows him around like a goddamn shadow can be pretty persuasive.”

And then—

“but, uh, you'll be fine, kiddo. John, he—well, he loves his girls. I didn't know he was even listenin’ when I was talkin’ about you, though. Might've, uh, embellished your accomplishments and how great you were with kids, but you'll be fine. Sweet little gig until you get another job offer somewhere else—”

it takes a while for everything to really sink in, but you can't really be too mad—fathers have sold their daughters for a lot less, after all. 

Before he leaves, he tells you that he'll send for you in three weeks.

"Got things to take care of first," he murmurs into the back of your head, the hand on your belly slides lower, keeping you secure on his lap in the private lounge. "When m'done, I'll send for you. First class—you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

His wedding ring gleams under the gauzy, golden light when he drags his hand further down until he reaches the tops of your thighs. The other rests lazily on the arm of the velvet green chaise. A tumbler of whiskey cradled against his pinky, ring finger, and thumb; a lit cigar sits between his index and middle.

A man comes to refill both whenever he gets too low without a word. A silent presence. He doesn't look at you. Doesn't acknowledge that you're not the same woman John showed up with.

Money, you realise, can buy indifference. A cold, impartiality. Frigid ignorance. The men in the room, the same ilk as Price, all look away when he gropes you openly, immodest and unashamed.

"And don't bother packing anything," he rasps, rolling his mouth across the back of your neck, the thick tangle of wry curls scraping across your skin until it smarts, a little sting. "I'll buy whatever you need."

You know his game. Remember, vividly, the way he handed over more cash than you'd make in a day working to a man your friend was distracted by. Know, deep down, that this is a dangerous thing. Thrilling, of course, in a way you can't begin to unravel; but deadly.

A man who buys people, morals, so effortlessly is not the same as the boys you'd tease in college—the men you'd flirt with when your dad turned his back. Shunning them the moment they bowed, keeled over, and teased you back. It was more thrilling to chase than it was to have, but with him—

There's no just teasing, no just fucking, a man like him. Not without giving something of yourself up—a trophy for him to hang on the wall.

But still. Still.

"Gonna spoil me, daddy?" you breathe, pushing against his chest, a light tease—just to feel the rumble of his low growl against your spine. The heat of him searing into your skin.

"m'gonna treat you like a goddamn queen."

There's a sting against your nape, the burning pinch of teeth as he bites down on your skin, as if to embed the words into your flesh. Make them true.

His hand slides down, fingers slipping between your thighs to tease the bare skin of your mound. Spread 'em for daddy comes in a sneering growl. The men around you politely avert their eyes when you obey his command, letting his hand slip between them as your hushed gasps reshape themselves into low moans, little whimpers.

You might be more like your father than you realised because you can't stop the oily, greedy sense of victory from blooming in your belly; the ugly want that rages, hungry for more of what you don't deserve. Pushing back into his chest as if you could absorb the feeling of him against you through osmosis, keeping it tucked inside to soothe the loss of him for the next three weeks, waiting for whatever plans he has to come to fruition.

But, as it turns out, you don't have to wait very long.

The news comes a week later.

Mrs Price, after snorting clonazepam and drinking a bottle of wine, slipped on the slick tile of their indoor pool, and drowned.

It's branded, officially, as an accident, but whispers lurk in dark corners of a deeply unhappy woman in a loveless marriage—one soon to be dissolved had it not been for the untimely tragedy. 

Price started divorce proceedings a month ago, they say. Something she just—hadn't taken very well. Accidents happen, though, and the investigation is closed without much pomp; Mrs Price is laid to rest only a few days later. 

He calls you in the days between the wake and burial, and though you didn't really know her, know their marriage, the absence of any sorrow in his voice as he speaks around cold, indifferent facts—give the girls a week to mourn, send tickets for the airline afterwards; a dinner to introduce everyone, but, oh, they're fine; eager to meet you, of course (a shock, really: you hadn't known they knew you at all)—and they sink in your belly like a stone. 

It isn't your place to dwell on the mechanics of their lacklustre marriage and whatever might have led him to you, and her—

well. 

You ask, though. Just a bit. Mostly hedging around the edges, skirting the periphery of what happened that night, and where he was (busy with work, the girls at their grandmother's for the night). He seems faintly amused by your subtle prying, humming into the phone about how he'll feel better when he finally has you home until it's all put to rest, and you pretend the nervous flutter in your belly when he calls is excitement instead of dread. 

A terrible tragedy. That's all—

and the dreams that plague you at night are just that: dreams. even if each time you close your eyes, all you can see is the smear of a man—a vague, gauzy entity of smudged pale peach and brown—leaning over you, holding you down; submerged in a watery kaleidoscope of Tiffany Blue as the waves breaking over his long, thick forearms cutting through the surf gleam like diamonds on his skin before they disappear beneath your chin. 

—and really, you were never much of a swimmer to begin with (too many bad memories shaped by your father, after all), so it doesn't mean anything at all when you start to avoid pools and open water after getting that call. 

It's just—

Pragmatic, is all. 

The problem is this:

Your daddy didn't do anything to protect you, he muses, fingers beneath the hem of your new dress. Offered you up like it was nothin’. Ain't that a shame? 

The quiet, shaken yes spills from your lips when he sinks his finger inside of you—right to the knuckle. 

“‘course you think so,” he drawls, twisting his hand until the unease in your belly evaporates into pleasure. Into need. “Knew right then that a sweet girl like you deserved a better dad.”

Didn't you, he prods, low and dangerous. Edged with something you can't place. Didn't you baby?

“Yes—” you eke out, moving against his hand, chasing the pleasure his touch brings because it's better than the alternative—than thinking too much about what he's saying. What it means. 

Something you'll consider later, maybe. When you're all alone in his house, wearing his ring. You'll think about it, and then him—how he looked beneath the water: dad, daddy, and god—and you'll choke on the chlorine in the back of your throat—

“Forgettin’ your manners already, mm?” he asks, and there's flint in his tone. A thin line of steel cutting along his words that makes your toes curl in the kitten heels he bought for you when the plane landed. It's a demand, even though he shades it as a soft coo, and gentle nudging. “Go on. Say thank you.” 

And you do. Spread across his lap in the back of the car, clenching around two thick fingers as a man you met briefly as Nik hides his expression behind dark sunglasses, pretending as if you weren't coming undone against the soft silk of his bosses slacks, you sob your gratitude into the thick column of John’s throat. Choking it out as he works you over the edge and into that sweet oblivion where he's still just a man, and this is all—and has always been—a choice you made in the low light of a bar. 

“Thank you, daddy—” 

"Like it?" He asks, and draws you closer to his side when you nod, still taking in the cosy home he brought you to. 

Meeting him might not have been aleatory but when he moves away from your temple, nose trailing downward over your cheek until his lips whisper over yours, the world seems to set itself back in motion. Antiphonal heartbeats blooming in tandem. 

This, this, feels like waking up. Like coming home. 

As if he hears your thoughts, he pulls you closer to him, swallowing the gasp that tumbles from between your lips; taking your breath into his lungs. 

Me, too, it says. Me, too. 

"Good. Now—" he presses his lips to your cheek, a sweet kiss to anyone looking but you feel the bite of his teeth scraping against your skin. "Go say hi to your sisters, and tell them we're goin' out for dinner. Gonna celebrate me brinin' 'em home a new mommy—"

Simon, used to quiet mornings and an eternal early riser, lazily trudges to the kitchen. Not even one foot in the threshold, and he's already lost a few years off his life when he spots you perched on the countertop.

He rushes in. "The fuck are ya doin' up there—Jesus Christ."

You swivel your head, taking absolutely no pains regarding your safety, your movements quick and careless, as you hold onto the flimsy cupboard handle.

You smile brightly. "Good morning!"

He puts his hands on your hips. Ass right in his face—great view, but not the point. "Get down 'fore you fuckin' fall—it ain't even seven am for Christ's sake." 

Like you didn't hear a thing, your nose is back in the cupboard, hands leafing through pots and kettles. "I'm looking for the, uh—" you snap your fingers twice. "—that thing I use for the milk."

"The saucepan."

You snap your fingers once. "Right! That. Where is it?"

"Get down an' I'll show ya," he grunts. 

You agree, letting him help you down the countertop. When your feet touch the floor, Simon takes a much-needed breath of relief.

“Could’ve hurt yerself." He states.

"Ha!" You point your finger at his chest. "But I didn't! There's the catch. Now," you gesture with your hand to the kitchen. "The saucepan thingy."

With a withering sigh, he points with his thumb above his shoulder. "Dishwasher."

You get on your tiptoes and kiss his cheek. "Thank you, baby."

Still in the throes of sleep, Simon digs a knuckle in his eye. Takes a couple calming breaths as the noises of you wandering about the kitchen to warm up your milk fill the air. 

"Can you prepare the moka pot for me?" You ask him from behind his back. "I'm running late because you didn't empty the dishwasher yesterday and so I almost died looking for where it should've been in the cupboard."

He snorts. You hate preparing the thing, and he knows it. "Clever."

"Obviously." You say, tinkering with your breakfast.

Lazily he looks for the espresso cups, tiny things that always fall in the back of the dish rack, and then goes to grab the moka pot from the dishwasher—the one he should've emptied yesterday night but didn't as you so kindly reminded him first thing in the morning.

Then, he hears you gasp.

With ice in his veins, he swivels his head. "You alrigh'?"

"Did you put the moka pot in the dishwasher?"

He blinks. "Yeah. Needed a wash."

You look impossibly appalled. "Ma che cazzo Simon," you whine.

He's not learned your language yet, but he knows he's fucked up big time because you looked awfully annoyed. Cazzo isn't really a telling word since you drop it in every sentence no matter your mood.

"Bad?"

"Fucking awful."

He grimaces. "Looked stained, love. Thought it was 'bout time."

You huff. Turn off the stove before your milk boils over, and then return your eyes to him. 

"Now my coffee's gonna taste like dish soap—that is, if the thing isn't completely ruined." You're pouting—cute, but not the point. "I told you not to wash it with soap!"

He frowns, walking to you. "Yer overreacting."

You scoff. "Says the man who made a fit because I microwaved tea."

Simon crosses his arms in front of his chest, looking down his nose at you. There's a subtle twitch of his lips, threatening a smile. 

"Threw."

You cock your head. "What?"

Simon sucks in a breath and properly gnaws on his cheek to keep from smiling because he knows you'll—well, throw a fit if he does.

"It's throw a fit," he rumbles. "Not made a fit."

Your confusion flattens into the most deadpan expression he's ever witnessed in his whole life—and it's the Ghost making this statement.

"Remind me, Simon," you tongue your cheek. "How many languages do you speak again?"

His lips quirk. "Three."

You open your mouth to retaliate, but whatever you had to say dies on your tongue. Your nose crinkles in annoyance, the curl of your mouth acknowledges your defeat.

"Yeah alright, got it," you huff, crossing your arms. "This trick doesn't work on you."

You look lovely, still drowsy and now a little miffed too—definitely the point, now.

He hums. "C'mere."

His arms gather you to him, as you squirm around for show, pretending you're not loving the smell of him wafting around you as much as he loves yours.

Gently, he brushes his nose with yours. 

"I'll drive ya to work an' get ya tha' coffee, yeah?" he whispers. "Deal?"

You sigh and pretend to think for a moment, but he's spotted the twitch of your lips already.

"Alright," you murmur, lips blooming in a smile.

Your arms come to wrap around his neck and he pulls you in for a kiss, the first of that day. It takes a whole lot out of him not to bend you over the counter and fuck you seven ways to Sunday when you drag your teeth along his lower lip.

He drops you at work with your coffee in hand and a croissant in the other. Thank fuck there's a bakery nearby, otherwise he'd have to cross half of London to get something that remotely tastes like what you're used to.

Before heading back home, he ventures to the nearest Tesco and splurges a whopping thirty pounds on a new espresso maker. Doesn't bother trying to look online for how to fix the previous one, or if it needs fixing at all.

By the time you're home that evening, you find your boyfriend wearing the proudest smile—a once in a blue moon event. In his hands, two espresso cups he pinches by the handles between two fingers. Warm smoke still billows from the top.

"What did you do?" You ask suspiciously, slowly closing the door behind you.

"I made ya a coffee del cazzo."

Definitely less composed than him that morning, you burst out laughing until your chest hurts. Simon follows suit, cheeks dusted pink. Some coffee spills over the edges as he shakes, but you both barely care.

"Not how you use that," you say, knuckles drying the tears from your eyes.

Carefully, Simon sets the two shots of espresso on the coffee table. He comes to you, wraps you in his big arms and gives a couple of squeezes that make you giggle even more.

He hunches down, brushing his lips with yours.

"Remind me, love," he breathes. "How many languages do you speak again?"

Cazzo is a very versatile word you can use for everything. It literally means "Penis" but in the most vulgar of ways—however, we do have many ways to say penis... vulgarly. But that's not the point.

We use cazzo when we're happy, when we're sad, when we're angry or when we're afraid. We sprinkle it everywhere—if you talk to me I'll drop it every five words, but that's because I talk like a sailor. Not the point.

Then it was Kyle, and your scent only grew even more sour. Still, you didn't show it on the outside, so he chose not to comment on it again. He probably never would’ve really— after all, who wants to be ‘comforted’ by someone who can't even fix himself?

When the Sergeants hung out, you were no longer in their little circle, always off somewhere else. He asked Johnny once, why you hadn't gone to watch a movie with them, only for him to just blink at Simon. “Oh— them? Guess we kinda just forgot to invite them. We’re not that close, an’ we got an omega ‘n all now.”

Is that what happens? When an alpha gets an omega? They forget everything they ever knew and just.. lock in on that? Still, Johnnys relationship with him never changed, not like he did with you. Something was wrong about all of this but what was he supposed to do, force the Scot to hang out with you again? This wasnt bloody nursery, besides, matters like this meant nothing with the weight of the nation placed on the team. Well, rather on the four alphas, since he soon learnt you were being taken off their shared missions too. For the first time, he faltered during the briefing with Price.

“You’re not bringing them for this one?” He heard about you being taken off of Johnny’s but this was a whole team mission with your file not in it.

“We have to spread resources efficiently. Technically we dont need them anymore, with two mated alphas. They’ll be placed with the extraction team.”

Ghost wasn't stupid, he knew that part of the reason for you being on the team was because of the regulation effects of having a beta on an all alpha team– it’s the same bias that got him into the SAS anyway. Omega’s never got this high in ranks either. But that’s exactly it, it’s meant to be a part of the reason not enough to throw you off an op.

“When we need to go solo, they’ll be on that op. It’s not that bad, Ghost.” Price reassures him, and all he can do is sigh and nod along. He already anticipated how your scent would tighten upon the news, a hint of sadness seeping in. This time he couldn't help himself– this was something he knew. So, he immediately secured your place the second he received orders of his mission, stationed beside him like you belonged. He’d always been able to recognise the change in scent, from the smallest degree, something that was forced into him at a young age. This time, it was clear you were much happier like this, beside one of the 141, on a mission, doing something.

That he could definitely relate to. He’s no stranger to feeling out of control when he can't contribute to an objective.

Having you beside him had a much better effect than he perceived anyway. Not only were you skilled and efficient, but he felt he just worked better beside you. And so he decided to set up a trip to the pub— give you a chance to hang out with Kyle and Johnny too. He was convinced that they had just gotten to in their heads with their new omegas– a honeymoon phase he supposes.

He kicked himself for not saying more at that fiasco, not forcing Johnny to regret those cruel comments in the moment. But you had already retreated back to your barracks at the end of the night, and he was left staring at your closed door with a chest aching with regret he hasnt felt since he was far smaller. The next day he hounded Johnny until he went to apologise to you, listening from the other side of the door in hopes that’d be enough. Still, he had figured you might’ve still been annoyed after yesterday, wouldn't even blame you really, but instead the acceptance was one of a prey who stopped fighting.  It didn't satisfy the wound in his heart even for a second.

“Why have you denied my team for the next mission?” He stands before Price’s desk, an anger boiling in his chest that he hasn't felt for years. He swore to himself he wouldnt let his happen again.

“You know I'm mated, Simon–”

“But i’m not.” His palms press on the desk as he stares at his Captain, the man who gave him a reason to keep going ever since this force had started. But he cant defend this, not when he’s taking away your purpose. “Price..” 

“If i dont do it now, they’ll force my hand later. It’s a better opportunity for them to work with other teams too–”

“Bullshit.” He knows there’s no more arguing when Price gives him that look. It’s not like you’d be happy in your new omega team– he wouldn't be surprised if you grew envious of them from how their existence had thrown you out of the entire team. He knows something violent would burst if it happened to him. 

————-

There’s a heavy haze on your mind when you try to blink your eyes open, like it’s muddling all your thoughts into one. You’re extremely hungry. 

A small groan escapes you and when you finally open your eyes, it’s like they’re forced to droop. You can feel dried stains on your cheeks which explains why your eyes feel tired themselves. What happened?

There’s a small rumble behind you, startling you but you hardly have control of your body right now so there’s not much you can do but blink in confusion. The last thing you remember is training for the mission with the team, and by the pain rippling across your body, something must’ve happened during it. Still, your chest doesnt pump with fear, in fact you feel calm, like your body is well aware that you’re safe wherever you are.

Again, you try to move, inhaling a sharp breath as you force yourself onto your back. The pain is instant and you have to breathe out slowly as if you dont feel like there’s tears across your arms. When you finally sober up, you stop scrunching your eyes so tight and finally notice the weight next to you. Or rather.. around you.

“W-what the—?”

———

He had woken up to the feeling of you shuffling beneath his arm, but the muffled pained sound is what made his eyes snap open. It takes him a few moments to realise the predicament he had found— or rather put himself— in last night. One arm draped across your stomach protectively with his nose pressed as close to you as he could manage.

“You’re up early.” He glances at the clock behind you, sat on the dresser, the early time of eight am flashing beside ‘Saturday’. Even though he knows he should be questioning why he’s even doing this, his body feels strangely at ease. It’s even better than the day after a successful op.

“Lieutenant.. why are we in bed?” You croak out, trying to sit up from the embarrassment of it all but his arm tightens to keep you from going too far. It startles you, against his intentions, leaving you even more confused than before. “Wasnt i on a mission..? And— and there was a hostage.. is she alright? Did anyone else get seriously hurt—”

“Mission went sideways ‘cause of a bomb strapped to a hostage, everyone’s out alright. You got the brunt of the damage saving them, the rest of them are already going home safe.” 

His alpha isnt as fiery as he remembers it the night prior, the ache in his chest now a warm thrum with you so close. Still, you look uncomfortable, and that hurts his alpha more than being away from you. So he pulls away, letting you sit yourself upright against the headboard.

You take a long breath of relief at his words of reassurance, and he can only assume it’s your own instinctive need to keep others safe. “And how I ended up here..?”

“You had surgery to remove shrapnel and a stray bullet that skimmed you. When you woke, the anaesthesia had you terrified, flailing about like a fish outta water.” He murmurs, gesturing towards the bandages peeking out from the hospital gown you still wore. It had ridden up in the night and now showed the gauze and bandages wrapped around your middle. There were some on your calves as well and the way you wince he supposes you realised about the one on your back.

“They called me in to help stabilise you— figured you’d recognise me. You did, calmed down a bit and then..” He trails off for a moment and you look up at him curiously, watching as he leans back against the headboard. He pauses, unsure whether to tell you about what you had confessed to him in your drugged state. “Jus’ started crying… not sure what about.” He swallows and then glances back down to you. “And well, y’know how we’d get, when another got injured”

They’ve always had their fair share of injuries, usually due to their own brashness as alphas. He remembers when Gaz got shot like it was yesterday, the three of them wouldn't leave his side. It took you all the strength you could muster to force John to let you treat him, even if Ghost had been glued to his side anxiously throughout the entire thing too.

“I took you away from there, brought you here. Stayed till you fell asleep, and then I must’ve passed out myself.”

It’s obvious you’re extremely confused right now, and to be honest, even he is. He’s never felt a pack instinct so strong in his life, not even towards the rest of the 141– it’s still shocking him, and yet, he still cant feel anything but calm.

“Sorry.. for the trouble i caused.” You mumble out but he shakes his head immediately.

“You didn't cause any. Just glad you’re okay.” He gets off the bed, mattress creaking from the relieved weight and springing immediately after he stands. “I’ll go grab breakfast. You shouldn't move too much.”

—————

It took everything in him to force himself to leave you to head towards the mess hall. Doing so also cleared his mind from the tranquility forced upon it, letting him finally go over the events of last night to just five minutes ago.

He had forgone all professionalism, and snatched you from the infirmary like it was what he was meant to do. 

When he got back, you practically shovelled the food in your mouth whilst he restrained himself from telling you to eat slower. Still, he offered to help you clean up, since seeing all those wraps didn't make his chest any lighter regardless of instinct. Though,that was enough for you to adamantly shake your head and accidentally shut the door straight in his face.

“Thanks for making sure I was okay.” You say gratefully, dressed in some spare clothes and picking up your phone in your bag to see for any messages about reports or briefings. “ I should head back to my room though.”

He freezes, you weren't supposed to just leave straight away. Well, technically you didn't have a reason to stay, but a burn in his chest makes it physically impossible to watch you step away now.

“Stop.”

You listen to his command, turning to meet his eyes as you wonder what else he could really want. The chair creaks as he stands, making his way over to you until he’s just standing there, scrutinising you.

“You smell.. off.”

“Well.. I'm not using my usual shampoo obviously.” You give him a meek smile, and even though it’s not enough to settle the craving he just nods— accepting it.

“Should probably check by the infirmary just in case.” He mumbles, fighting every urge to scent you before he lets you go.

“I will.”

———

Three days.

That’s all that’s passed since that night, and still his mind is a turmoil he can't unravel. As much as his brain insisted you needed some space, he found himself insistent on making sure you’re okay. 

That’s exactly why the second he saw you alone in the mess hall today, he was beside you in seconds. 

“Are you feeling any better?” Your shoulders jump in a way that makes him wince, but you relax just as quickly when you realise and smile at him.

“What, better than yesterday when you asked me in the hallway?” He likes seeing you tease him like this, as if the pain wasn't eating you from the inside. You hadn't got the opportunity to talk more than in passing, so you answer more when he looks at you attentively. “The nurses gave me ointment for the burns, and I'll be back on regular training soon. Just taking it easier with lighter gym sets, and running instead to keep my body moving.”

Right, he remembers the significantly less damage on your lower half; running must be a bit easier than any other activity for you.

“Good to know, I’ll keep an eye on you too.” 

You look embarrassed by his words, quickly turning your head away as you hurriedly step forward in the queue. “I’m not going to exert myself, you don't need to do that.”

All he can do is shrug, trying to push down the feeling that bubbles with your reaction. Instead he steps in front of you to dish out your portions of food for you. Not too much, or too little, just the way you’ve always liked it. He even skips the sides you don't like. 

“I do, actually. As a lieutenant, you’re under my care. And as my beta, I need to make sure you’re well.”

It slips out so easily before he can stop it and he pauses, waiting for you to narrow your eyes in disgust. Who is he to claim you like that? Although.. you don't even seem to catch it, but he does notice the small quirk of your brow when you finally process a few moments later. “Wait–”

“Im on grocery run on tomorrow— havin’ a team movie night on Saturday. You should come too, get some steps in instead of being in this stuffy base for so long” Before you can even answer he places your utensils on your plate and then locks onto the exit. “Meet me by our usual car, alright? Eight amsharp.” And then he’s already weaving through the crowds, leaving you standing on your own. 

————————-

For the first time in his life, Simon Riley was excited to see you. He hadn't really had time to question it, between the brand new load of paperwork dumped on him today alone and a million other problems in his mind. And yet, every time he glanced at the time ticking towards tomorrow, his instincts roared.

Would you allow him any closer than before? Although, sleeping beside him was already past many boundaries he had only considered he’d need to ease through now. He’s sure you’d flash him that exact smile when he saw you waiting by the car, positive you’d be embarrassed when he no doubt did something for your sake. 

Or you’d back up in fear, your eyes flashing with the same hurt you directed towards Soap that day. You’d realise he’s no different than the rest, infact probably just as cruel as they are. 

“Bit late to still be working, Lieutenant, even for you.”

“John.” He murmurs, voice on the quieter end as he watches from his seat on the Captain’s couch. There was a small wad of paperwork clutched in his hands like he needed reason to be here, and not solely for the true purpose.

“Simon.” Price returns, walking over to his desk to light a cigar before returning to sit infront of him. “Got a feeling I know why you’re here.”

It’s silent for a few moments and John is convinced he’ll have to lure the question out himself. But it never really is that simple with Simon Riley. Straightforward as ever, he can't help but jump right to the point “How did you.. know? Your omega.” 

Price raises a brow this time, having not entirely expected that, but nods regardless as he breathes out smoke. “Feel it in your chest first. Like your instincts are controlling you really… pulling you towards them. It’s not like you can even try to stop it either.”

“And then what..?”

“The mating bite. The feeling will come soon after, fast even— you’ll get violent. But it’s what’s expected, nearly every alpha goes through it. Just advise your omega to not fight back and there won't be much to clean up.” 

He pauses when the air in the room suddenly becomes tense, taking another inhale of the cigar.

“The sooner you do it, the easier it’ll be. You don't know when you’ll see them again with our schedules. I don't want to see you actin’ feral on a mission desperate for their scent.”

—----------------------------------------------------------------

Soon enough, it was the next day, and he had driven you to the nearest Tesco Extra. Luckily you had come just in time for a sale.. although that meant there were a lot more people than usual. Despite offering to hold it, the basket dangles in his right hand while you glue yourself to his left side. The explosion had left your senses much more sensitive, so sticking to him was the best option. 

“Anything else you want?” 

“Maybe another biscuit?” You tease since he’s been filling up the basket with them so far, making you snort a little. When you did hang around the team, him and you were the only ones who’d eat them but you didn't know he liked it this much.

He rolls his eyes at your teasing, and leads you to the next aisle. “Grab what you want and meet me over there.” It’s emptier here, so you nod and watch him go towards the tinned food, now facing the shelves of crisps he left you with.

Well you know Soap and Gaz’s favourites already, and Simon loves kettle chips. You’re not sure if the Captain would also be there, so you grab a mixed bag for him. Would it be weird after not seeing them for so long? Strangely enough, you really can't bring yourself to resent them for what happened. 

Was it really their fault? No one ever seemed to have the same problems as you. There was only one time you confessed it to a fellow beta on base, although he had quickly become defensive, shaking his head at you. ‘We’re colleagues at the end of the day. As long as it doesn't affect work, it’s totally fine.’

“Didn't get the crisps you like.” You jump as he appears, grabbing your favourite and tossing it in the basket. “Come on, we’ll get some drinks and go.” 

You trail behind him as he carries on, noticing an obvious hunch in his shoulders. He’s tense, which for some reason you find entirely out of place despite you not even knowing him that well. It’s just that, ever since that morning in bed with him, he felt soft, and warm, like everything you’d find comfort in. Surely those same clenched muscles aren't the ones that laid beside you?

You’re about to spiral further into analysing his behaviour when you realise you’re at the checkout with him.  “O-oh, do you mind if I run to the beta section quickly? I just need to grab—“

“Already got you one.” He picks up the scent refresher from the basket, scanning it through, as well as other medication he’s also seen you use before. You can only blink at him in surprise—the prices had hiked even higher recently, and you had to debate over buying one or being able to afford morning coffees anymore

It brought a sense of relief to your heart though, that comforting feeling settling in your gut once more. He’s alright, probably just a tough mission coming up.

———————

The past few days it’s like a switch had flipped inside him, too similar to how the others reacted after their new omega. You’re at a loss really, it’s not like he’s being rude, but he’s being distant. Like he’s cautious of you. To be honest, you were half expecting him to tell you not to come to the movie night anymore. 

Though maybe you were judging him too quickly— it’s not all alphas, right? It was almost sickening every time the small bit of hope bubbled up though, like it was stupid to think he’d actually be the one to stay longer than the rest. You just hope the reason for this wasn't because of something they told him about you.

You were.. surprised to say the least when you entered the rec room alongside Ghost. The both of you had retrieved the bags from his car after he surprisingly called to make sure you were still coming. 

Soap and Gaz weren't lazily sprawled across the couch like they usually would—if anything they seemed antsy. They were both sitting there, shoulders tense, Gaz’s leg even bouncing slightly. You did hear they all came back from a mission recently but they were never this agitated, all pent up like this, back when you were with them.  

“Oh, hi.” Gaz looks upon hearing two sets of footsteps and smiles, though it doesn't quite reach his eyes. You just nod, awkwardly fiddling with the plastic bags you grabbed from Ghost’s car. “What’re you here for?”

“Ghost and I went to grab the snacks the other day” 

“Y’can call me Simon, y’know.” He takes the plastic bags from your hands and you nod sheepishly, not even realising you had been using his codename. 

“Oops, sorry.”  He shakes his head at your apology and you quickly help him unpack all the snacks onto the coffee table for tonight.

“Completely blew a mission and now ye come ‘ere for a movie night?” Soap must’ve gotten up at some point, now brushing past you. His arms are like rocks when they hit into yours, and his tone is heavy— almost accusing.

It catches you off guard, and you freeze, watching as he walks around the kitchen, grabbing a glass of water to swallow in one gulp. “Well.. we did always have the best ones, no?”  Surely he didn't mean to be that harsh, clearly something had been holding their bodies in a tight limbo. It must be a poor joke, even if it dug deep.

He doesn't take your words in the tone you intended though, brows narrowing down at you in contempt. “Don’t see why we ‘ave to entertain the fuck ups. My omega was in tha’ mission, she could’ve died ‘cause of you.” 

“Johnny—“ Simon cuts in, voice low as he steps in front of you, his scent wrapping around you, weak enough to not fill your head too much. He’s being careful for you.

Though before Simon can say anything more, you let out a soft huff, crossing your arms over your chest. “That’s the risk of every mission, Soap. I thought as a demolition expert you would know that. Or are you forgetting the time you almost killed me?”

“That was a calculated risk. And yer still standing, aren’t ya?” He scoffs, rolling his eyes at your supposed argument. “You were being reckless and stupid out there.”

“That’s not what you said when I was on the team.” You snap back, anger starting to simmer inside of you too now. After all, they had constantly sung your praises when you were here. It’s their own fault for throwing you into an omega mission when you weren’t prepared enough.

“You left the team.”

“Because I was forced off!”

That pisses him off, because your words feel like an attack against him, and he walks right up to you, inches away. “We never needed you anyway— just a beta to balance us alpha out. Clearly you’re useless otherwise.” Though suddenly his nose scrunches, stepping back a moment before his eyes narrow into a glare.  “Ye fucking bastard. Coming in here, stinkin’ omegas, stinking of her?!”

Your jaw clenches as you watch his body language, something you picked upon living around alphas. They get explosive, very strong quickly. First his fists start to clench, the veins in his forearms starting to show. Then his scent starts getting thicker with anger, pumping into the air like a burning building. It’s bad enough that it makes your own anger start to fizzle, hitting your head in waves of pain and you almost stumble backwards. Everything feels like it’s happening in slow motion, his hand rising upwards, the touch of skin against your cheek and the implosion of pain that spreads across your head.

Simon grabs you before you end up dropping altogether and pulls you away from him immediately, shielding you with his body. “I dont know what the fuck has gotten into you Johnny but you need to sort it out— now.” His scent is thicker than you’ve ever smelt it, in fact this is the most you’ve ever been able to make of it. It smells like gasoline, sharp and lingering, and ready to destroy something completely. So toxic, it forces you to gasp for a breath.

“Both of you, stand down, now.”

Price’s voice echoes across the room and you instantly shudder, leaning against the counter weakly as you grasp your face. The bruise will darken tomorrow but you can already feel your cheek starting to swell. What really has you is the mix of scents all around, filling your head so strongly.

“Captain—“ 

“No.” Price doesn't hesitate to march over, standing in between them as Ghost thrums with anger. You look over to the doorway, hearing the small creak as it closes Gaz standing there with his arms crossed. “You are soldiers, not fucking children.” He argues, pointing an accusing finger towards the Scot before turning to give Ghost an equally sharp glare. 

Then his eyes find you. All you can do is stare back, wondering how he’ll react. Would he blame you for all this? Would you be the scapegoat to keep his perfect little pack intact?

Would you let him humiliate you once more?

You’re a soldier, a beta one, but a fighter nevertheless. Missions you’ve fought through, almost died on, saved lives during. For this? To end up like this? You push yourself to stand despite the heavy scents weighing you down, regardless of the stare his alpha is directing to your beta. Everything tells you to submit, the haze in your head and the throb across your cheek. 

“You should go, I'll talk to you about this later.” Price commands, nodding his head towards the door. Surprisingly, his words weren't as harsh, in fact more exasperated than anything. 

“Enjoy your movie night.” You murmur, grabbing your jacket where it was on the chair and throwing it over your arm. 

“Wait—“ Simon starts, backing away from his offensive on Soap instantly to follow you. “Don’t” You hear Price stop him, his hand wrapped around his forearm to stop him chasing after you. 

————————-

If that wasn't enough of a reason for you to give up on all of them, you don't know what is anymore. They’ve treated you so horribly, it was hardly arguable anymore that you shouldn’t have even tried with them again. This was all so stupid—you’re so stupid for even thinking this time it could end differently. You could never coexist. 

As for Simon, all you feel is a deep regret in your stomach. It was obvious really, of course he must’ve just been smelling omega on you this entire time. It was just a biological confusion, not a genuine interest in you. He didn't care about who you were, his alpha smelt an omega, and that’s all that really matters. It makes you feel sick to your stomach, knowing that you had in some way probably tricked him.  His alpha probably had him strung up all week, no wonder he looked so uncomfortable in that shop and every day past. 

The chat with Price never happened. They had been briefed almost immediately after you left for an op, and you heard the chatters of their departure the next day. So with them all gone,it was time to get back to work. You had briefings to attend, reports to fill and to forget about everything that happened. Or what didn't happen between you two.

Except you can't.

Everytime you get a second alone with your thoughts, they drift back to him, to that morning and waking up beside him. The last time you’ve woken to someone’s scent around you was when you were very little, your family huddling together in the nest. That stopped as soon as you presented.

Now you’re stuck with this emptiness in your chest. At first you thought his scent had been too strong, and you even tried two pumps of the scent refresher to try and clear your senses. Not even that worked, if anything making it worse now that you longed for his scent even more. 

There’s a small balcony you used to see him smoke at, when you first joined the team. He came up here once or twice, and then over the two years you spent with them, never again. In fact, you overheard the sergeants say he quit it altogether. You pause by it today, staring out at the worn railing, the remnants of ash sitting upon it, the mark of his shoe making an outline on the unused floor. 

For some reason it makes your eyes water, mourning a connection you could’ve had but seems impossible now. 

—-

It’s late at night a few days later. You had taken the opportunity while they were gone to take all of your things out of the rec room. Sure, you should’ve done it before, but a small part of you was still clinging on to possibility. Your blankets that you and the sergeants would swaddle yourselves in on colder nights, the tea strainer you bought to show Price how to use leaves instead of the bought bags, even the few mugs in the cupboard you bought to match them. You left behind the one Soap bought for your birthday— perhaps it belonged there more than it ever did to you. Can't forget the CD player you let Gaz borrow a million times either.

They don't suit your room, the colour clashes with the boring greys in here, and they look like a pile of junk from where you’re beneath the duvets, staring at them. It’s almost midnight, and you know you should be sleeping, but it's a Friday night so to hell with that. You could afford late night wallowing; it’s not like you had anywhere to be tomorrow.

They were supposed to come back today. You heard it from Laswell when discussing something else; she must not know what happened between you. Either they chose not to tell her..or forgot, since you were never that important anyways. The clock blinks one am, maybe you really should sleep.

———

The knock on the door breaks your sleep, and you can only assume it wasn't the first as it continues, each one seeming to become.. slower. You crawl out of bed, mind trying to run a million possibilities through your awakening brain. An emergency mission? Bad news? A sudden attack? An intruder?

“Please..” You hear the groan on the other side of the door, convincing you enough to open it instantly and reveal the other side. 

Ghost— or rather Simon, with his mask now fallen at your feet— leans against your door frame, blood dripping onto the floor from a wound near his middle and his eyes glazed over. “Beta..” He breathes through a pained wince, chest sinking quickly. 

“Simon?! You should be in the infirmary, not here- ” You scoff, gaze flicking between the blood staining the floor, his hand clenched over the wound and the grime clinging onto his hair and neck.

“No— no- can’t think..” He steps forward, every movement heavy with pain and hurt and yet his eyes stay locked on you. His words are desperate as his hand clenches the handle, sucking in a strained breath. 

“A-alright, fine. I’ve got some stuff somewhere—“ Opening the door fully now, you reach for his hand, letting him lean the brunt of his weight as you haul him towards your bathroom. It’s only when you manage to get him to sit on the toilet seat do you free yourself from him, rummaging through your cupboards desperately. “Here- okay, lift your shirt we need to fix that quickly.”

Luckily the wound had just been leaking into the bandages so all you had to do was repack and replace, although you had to deal with his incoherent groans the entire time. Tucking the clean edge into the wrap, he’s finally alright again and you sigh in relief, stepping back.

“Stop—“ He grasps your wrist as you try to put the box back, forcing you to stay in place as you raise a brow at him.

“I need to put it back.“ You sigh, unable to fathom what was up with him right now.

“Stay.” 

“Simon, I’m just going to the cabinet..” You sigh as he shakes his head adamantly, pulling you closer even as you try and resist. “Let me go.”

“No.”

“Simon.” You say firmly, a fresh wave of your scent rolling through the air. Never have you used it on any of them before, in fact it only ever worked on inconsolable civilians you’ve saved. Beta scent’s only had the purpose of calming down people anyway, not like an Alpha’s commanding force or an Omega’s lure. “Let me go.”

So when he immediately goes lax, fingers grazing  your palm as he gently lets go, you step back in surprise. What? 

You keep one eye on him as you place the things away, but he just stays, unmoving. As you close the cabinet, you take a step towards him again, gently pulling down his shirt only to feel the soaked blood on it, as well as the gunpowder and grime. Definitely not a good mission then.

“Why.. don't you wash up, alright? I’ll get you some clothes.”

For a moment you’re convinced you’ll have to drag him yourself, but he takes a small inhale and nods quietly, standing the best he can before he kicks off his shoes and socks. Listening like a loyal dog.

—

You make your way to his room with your own mind full of questions from his strange behaviour. Why did your scent have that effect on him? Why did he come to you? Why did he always call you his beta?

The door unlocks easily with the card you nicked from his gear, and his room is in disarray. It wasn’t uncommon for a pack to have scented items from each other, or very close friends; it usually helped with sleeping or just getting comfortable. You remember Gaz and Soap often had items in each other's rooms for that exact reason, though they never traded with you, even if you never asked yourself.

You immediately noticed Price’s sweater on the floor, kicked to the door. Beside the dresser was Gaz’s spare shirt, crumpled and half shoved beneath the base. Soap’s jacket was behind the bathroom door, hidden away from sight like something that couldn't bear to be seen. In the midst of it was a pair of gloves you lent him during a mission when he was damaged badly. Like a pillar in chaos, it was neatly placed beside a brand new scent refresher and a pack of your favourite snacks. Surely, just a piece of repayment, right?

——————

The shower is quiet when you re-enter your room, and you hesitantly step towards the bathroom door, turning the handle. “Brought some clothes.” You murmur, watching the door handle turn. 

“Thank you.” He says, the same gruff tone but quieter, and takes the clothes you pass through the gap.

Surprisingly, he doesn't close it after, letting you hear his quiet shuffling as he changes. It feels weird standing on the otherside, knowing you can just walk in and see him bare like this— an alpha left vulnerable. Though, can an alpha truly be vulnerable before a beta? If anything, you’d always be vulnerable alone with him, and he’d always be the strongest in the room.

“I saw my gloves on your table.” You mumble out, stepping back to take a seat on the edge of your bed.  His silence doesn't help your inability to keep in the thoughts running wild in your head. 

His breath hitches behind the door, something you’ve learnt to notice since you can't read his facial expressions. “I meant to return it to you. But.. I hadn't washed them yet.”

Just as you thought.

The door opens, and he steps forward, the grime washed off and bandages covered by the thin cotton shirt. He looks exhausted like this, like everything weighing down on him has finally caused him to crumble. Just like the others, his shoulders stay taut.

“You left their things on the floor.”

Your beta is desperate to soothe, to understand the problems within his pack, and help him through them. No sane alpha would push away his pack’s items, it has your beta ringing alarm bells across your mind.

“Didn’t need them.” He murmurs, one hand tugging at the end of his shirt as it clings to his damp body. You’ve never seen him fiddle with things like this, running his tongue over his lips. 

“You didn't need your pack’s items?” You huff out crossing your arms over your chest. “At least make the lie believable.” Maybe this was his own strange way of pushing you away like they had, because you just wouldn’t understand, would you? 

“It’s not a lie.” He grunts, eyes flickering over you and then towards the door— like he’s about to bolt. Not now, not after everything.

You stand, blocking his path as you look at him. “Why did you come here, Simon? It’s not because you feel guilty about the other day, and you shouldn't anyway— Soap’s right. I’m not needed.”

“You are.”

“I’m not—“ You shake your head adamantly, turning towards the door. There’s no way you were going to sit around and be humiliated again, intentionally or not.

“We need you.” He says firmly, hand grasping your wrist as his strong ash suddenly washes over you and thickens in the air. It’s all you can smell, echoed by the weight of his words. Though, you feel his grip immediately falter afterwards, like instant regret. The scent calms quickly, back to the dull linger it usually is as his fingers fall to gently holding your palm. “I.. need you.”

For a moment you’re stunned, scent sprawling anywhere for something solid to grip onto as you try and weave through the possible meanings of his words. Him, Ghost, the soldier feared across foreign countries’ soil and by his mask alone, needs you? A beta? 

“I dont…” understand. The word falls silent on your tongue, glancing down at his hand on yours in the low light. “I thought.. the omega’s I work with– their scent rub off on me. That’s the reason for all of this, isn't it?”

“No, no.” His grasp tightens when you try to pull back, feet following you as you step back, until you take a seat against the edge of the bed. “Your scent, it’s been driving me insane. It’s like I can't function without it.”

“But that’s not possible, Simon. I’m not an omega— I can't lure you like that- even the sweetest scent is nothing more than cheap perfume.” You argue, because it’s the truth and there isn’t anything more to it. It’s facts, written and studied extensively in biological research that forms the foundations of society. There could be no other explanation because it just didn't exist, it never will.

His grip tightens again and this time his lip curls back, almost like he’s snarling.. except he seems to be more frustrated with his own actions than at you. “Lust isn't going to save us soldiers.” 

You see it now as you look at him properly since patching him up. His eyes are half lidded but you can see how his pupils have expanded in the short time you’ve had him here. Sorting out the blood spilling out of him might’ve helped, but he was crashing fast now that the pain-induced adrenaline was wearing off.

Now he just looked exhausted out of his mind, frantically holding onto his self control as his eyes locked onto the scent glands on your wrist. You could almost read his thoughts now, how he was slipping off the edge, fingers beginning to tremble. Wounded, exhausted and desperate for a moment of solace.

“Simon..” You whisper again, it’s been more than a few times tonight, but this time it’s different.

He drops to his knees before you, hitting the soft rug beside your bed as his hand holds onto yours. His mask had been off the entire time and yet only in this moment do you truly acknowledge the vulnerability before you. “Please, scent me.” He murmurs, low and soft though not gentle with the rasp of greed that bubbles from his throat. Like he told you, he needs this. He needed you. “Let me be.. your alpha.”

The silence rings loud between you, even from the slow drops from the bath’s faucet and the whir of the bathroom fan fading into nothing. “Okay..I will.” You nod, breaking the dam holding him together and he doesn't even let out a breath until he presses his nose against your wrist. The inhale he takes is greedy, like he wants every last scent coating the air, and then the exhale comes, his body dropping like a bomb.

“Thank you.” He breathes and you watch as he lifts your hand as he rises himself, and you realise now he doesn't have his gloves on from the feeling of his bare skin warm against you.

It’s like he doesn't even hesitate, gently rubbing his wrist against the scent glands on yours. You knew what was coming, read about it a million times between alphas and omegas— hell even heard a million more from them in your youth years.

Scenting, when the alpha’s scent envelopes your body, like a shot straight to your brain. 

Except, this isn't like anything they described.

You can feel your scents starting to mix, intertwining together before separating once more. They’re tied in the middle like a promise and yet sprouting at completely different ends and filling the room. His scent changes, shifting from the harsh burnt tinges of ash and smoke like they’ve been washed up by yours. It’s petrichor, the damp aroma whenever rain ingrains itself into the soil and washes over rocks. The smell is fresh, earthy and it feels like the relief of rain when it finally comes crashing down, washing over the ground and letting the dying flora renew.

But yours? Yours blossoms in magnitude, like a bubble that has grown and grown until it suddenly bursts. You’ve never smelt it so strong before, used to the quietness of it all, but it’s finally loud. Sweet honeycomb and chocolate, an appetising combination so rarely put together it makes his entire body melt. It’s comforting like a warm drink on a cold day and refreshing like a breeze on a summer night. 

You barely get a chance to shuffle backwards before he’s crashing into you, nose forcing it’s way towards your neck as his limbs one by one fall slack, muscles turned to the mere meat they’re made from. A low purr rumbles through him, up his arms where they wrapped around your middle and his chest which is pressed against yours. His eyes have fallen shut, content to be pressed against your nose gland as he lets everything go.

“My beta..” He murmurs, squeezing you tighter to the point you’re forced to exhale yourself and appreciate the warmth and comfort in the room. This was the first time you’ve truly been able to appreciate a friend’s scent without feeling your head start to spin, and it felt amazing. Like everything in the world was set in place, nothing could even shift the balance in this room. 

You squeeze him back, a small huff of laughter bubbling in your throat when he groans in contentment. His scent starts to settle once more, now the faint smell of smoke returning though with the gentleness of a campfire, easing your senses. 

“Alpha..” You breathe out, letting your own body relax under his, eyes slipping shut in his grasp. Your beta was satiated, curling up for the first time in weeks, and you were more than happy to lay your heart beneath him.

----------------------------------

part one Buy me a coffee!

one more part and then this will be done!! thank you for reading alonga nd im so shocked at how many people loved the first one sm! please leave ur thoughts in the comments <3333 ALSO THANK YOU FOR 5000 FOLLOWERS!!!!!!

general cod: @heyitsniki18 @insanityall @twoandahalfdimes @ririerm @alexinarcadia @sgt-artemis-owl-riley @fries-pls @tikitsune

taglist (thank you SO much to @lexloon for putting this tgt for me):