Too many ideas, too little time

MILITARY SERVICE HEADCANONS

(Ages are estimated. I'm using the age I think they are today. My sources on the military aspects are my autism. Also I know SAS officers don't do any boots on the ground work. In reality Price would be a Regimental sargent major and Ghost would be a Sargent Major.)

Soap likely went through selection as soon as he was able to. Likely as soon as he hit their eligibility criteria (2 years service and recommended by their CO) given age and rank. You reset your rank on joining the UK special forces, so he likely went into selection as a private. He was 3 para before this (his canon regiment in the original series) and used to call everyone a 'hat' when he was still a paratrooper. (Hat is an insult used by paratroopers towards other regiments.) I think he's about 26 or 27, he probably joined the army at 16 as you're able to do in the UK.

Gaz canonically went through selection in his fourth year of service but the maths doesn't work out. Realistically, he probably went into selection in his second year in the infantry. He's a little older than Soap (probably around 30-ish assuming he only did 3 years in the Met and joined the Met at 18. He'd have to do a minimum of two years to be allowed to do armed policing work in England like he does in MW 2019.) and likely was aiming for the SAS as soon as he joined the army.

Ghost was likely either Infantry or potentially a Royal Marine. Given his potential age is around 30 to 35, I'd say he likely went into selection in his second year of service. I think he was one of the older people in his intake, being around 21 while the others were 18. He was probably a late 80 to early 90s baby, so would have been around 18 during the big wave of royal marines recruitment that started in the 2010s. (For any Americans here, Royal Marines are very different to American Marines.) He was likely a butcher for a bit before he decided to join, his size and build would have definitely made him suited to being a commando. Average age of a Lieutenant is between 28 to 30, so given the extra years for training and selection- its a good probable age for him.

You wake up with post-text message clarity the next morning, but there’s little you can do to backtrack now. You gave the man your name and number. You spoke to him on the phone about it, albeit briefly. Sure you could call John again and tell him that you thought it over a little more and decided against it, but then—

“It’s gonna cost four thousand dollars.”

Your coworker lets out a hissed breath, wincing. “That’s not cheap.”

It’s a pea-soupy summer morning, all hot and humid with the sky tinted a yellowish colour from forest fires up in the country, the hazy light seeping in through the windows in the office kitchen. Not a cloud in sight. You wouldn't call it a particularly pleasant morning, with the weather as overcast as your mood, but it could always be worse.

She’s the first person outside of a few close friends that you’ve told about going to the clinic at all, but she reacts exactly as you thought she would. It’s both affirming and annoying; it’s not so bad hearing from someone else that four thousand dollars is a bit pricey for a single person, but part of you wishes she’d try to convince you to go through with it. You need someone to push you in a direction—in any direction. 

You nod, mouth screwed into a grimace. “And that’s only for a single try. I think she said it would be closer to, like, twelve thousand dollars altogether.” 

“So are you gonna do it? Or are you gonna keep looking around?”

“I have another appointment next week,” you half-answer, getting cagey all of a sudden. 

The truth is, that appointment isn’t the only thing you’ve got on the books. There’s another dot in your calendar for a few days before, one that seems to glow ominously when you stare at the date as it slowly approaches, lumbering forward one ground-shaking step at a time. 

You wonder how long you can go without telling anyone. Theoretically, you could keep up this ruse for the rest of your life, pretend you always went through with the treatment. Lie through your teeth when your friends ask you if you know anything about the donor. No, they didn’t tell me anything, I just picked a profile with a good medical record and family history. 

Don’t think about how you live in the same city. Don’t think about the likelihood of running into him around town with the baby in tow. 

You shake your head. Those are concerns that you can foist off onto a future version of you. All the current you needs to worry about is making this all a reality. 

You don’t know what to wear out to dinner with him. It’s both a date and not, more of a prelude to the later events of the night. Part of you wonders if you should just text him your address and tell him to skip the preamble and come on over. 

The only reason you don’t is because a little voice at the back of your mind insists that you at least do your due diligence and screen him a little more over dinner. You can always back out at the last minute if a few too many red flags pop up. 

(You tell yourself that as if a strange man offering to knock you up within five minutes of meeting weren’t a big enough red flag on its own.)

John meets you at the restaurant looking every bit as handsome as the day you met him, once again nearly taking your breath away. A little more buttoned up this time though, actually quite dashing in a proper dress shirt and suit jacket, even his shoes polished. 

You have a second to think about calling it off. A second to consider turning tail and getting as far away as possible. Maybe, with enough time, you could scrape together the money for IUI. You could wait a year, or take out a loan with your bank, or pray for a decent enough raise to manage it on your own. 

But then, as the time before, he turns his head and locks eyes with you. 

It would probably be a good idea to take a picture of him, maybe even a picture of his ID, and send it over to one or two of your friends, on the off chance that he turns out to be a dangerous man, but you don’t need to be inundated by a barrage of text messages and phone calls from your friends trying to talk you out of it. You’ve made up your mind. 

Walnut and burgundy furnishings decorate the large room, and the amber glow of candlelight and antique wall sconces saturates the restaurant in a dark, sensual bloom. A server guides John and you to a table right in the middle of the room, a better table than you might’ve hoped to get on your own. You eye him sideways when he pulls your chair out for you. 

His demeanour is so relaxed that if you didn’t already know the purpose of this dinner, you could be forgiven for assuming that you were out on a real date. John certainly acts the part. 

“You know, we didn’t have to do this,” you start awkwardly, eyes gliding over the room to look at all the other well-dressed patrons, some presumably out on actual dates. 

“Call me old-fashioned, but I was taught that dinner comes before the rest of the evening.”

“I just mean you didn’t have to. I would’ve been fine just…” getting right down to business, you leave unsaid, hoping that he doesn’t make you spell it out. 

“We’re two civilized adults. I thought we might get to know each other first.”

“Well, what do you want to know about me?”

“This is as much for me as it is for you—don’t you want to know anything about the father of your children?”

You wish he’d keep his voice down. He isn’t wrong though; it would be a good idea for you to take his candidature more seriously, actually ask him questions about himself and his parentage. He already emailed you a recent STI panel and bloodwork results, both done through the fertility clinic back when he was still keen on donating, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn a little more about him.

“Alright. How old are you?”

“Forty-six.”

You nod, pleased with yourself for guessing it right. “What do you do for work?”

“Just some work for the government,” he says, brushing the question off. “What else?”

That piques your interest though. “Oh, come on. What are you, M16 or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” John laughs, genuinely amused enough for you to believe him. 

You roll your eyes when he doesn’t elaborate any further though. “Fine, leave me in the dark. Anything else you want to know about me?”

“Where are you in your cycle?” he asks, blunt as a hammer.

A classic spit take moment. It’s a good thing you haven’t ordered a drink yet. 

“I think it’s, uh…it’s coming soon actually. Um. Next week or so.”

He chews on that for a second, mulling over the timing. “That’s fine. We should still be able to make it work.”

There he goes again, making comments that leave you fish-mouthed and stunned, jaw slack with disbelief. Never able to conjure up a good enough retort. 

When the server comes by to take your drink orders, both of you still deliberating over your food, John orders a beer for himself and a mocktail for you, not even bothering to consult you about it. 

“No alcohol,” he reminds you before you have a chance to ask. 

To be fair, the spicy blackberry-basil concoction that the server comes back with a few minutes later is a refreshing burst of fruit and fresh herbs, but that doesn’t excuse the overstep. You ignore it only because you know there’s no use getting worked up when you’ve already made your mind up. It’s a peccadillo in the grand scheme of things considering what he’s doing for you. 

Conversation flows surprisingly well over dinner, but at the back of your mind, you can’t stop thinking about how at the end of the night, he’s going to take you home and fuck you. It creeps back in whenever you let your guard down for a split second. 

So, do you have any hobbies? (In three hours, this man is going to strip you naked and have sex with you)

Do you have any siblings? Any twins running in the family? (In two hours, this man is going to climb on top of you and fuck you until he puts a baby in you)

It’s a lot to keep in your head at the same time.

“How long have you been thinking about doing this?” John asks apropos of nothing, the earlier thread of your conversation evaporating on the spot.  

“I mean, I’ve wanted to have kids for a long time, but actually planning to have them…maybe a couple months?”

“Why now? Why not wait a little longer? Wait for someone to start a family with?”

You’re not sure why he’d ask you that, why it would matter. It’s none of his business, quite frankly. You almost want to tell him that, let yourself get righteous, get angry, but you find you can’t fully commit to the anger. It wouldn’t change anything. You aren’t being forced to answer him. 

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I’m not much of a family man myself. ‘Least not when I was younger, when it counted. Never had the time nor the inclination. Work took me all over—it just wouldn’t have been fair if I had a wife or kids waiting around for me. But since it didn’t seem like having a family was in the cards for me, I thought it would be a waste of good genetics.”

“Oh.” It’s arrogant, but it’s as good an answer as any. 

He waits a beat then lifts an eyebrow when you don’t reciprocate. “So? Why didn’t you wait?”

“I did try, but there wasn’t much out there, and I wanted a baby more than I wanted to be with someone, so…” 

Leave him to fill in the blanks. He met you at the culmination of that longing after all, even changed the course of it, disrupted your plans to place himself at the centre of them.

At the centre for a time, you remind yourself. Not forever. 

After that, he keeps the conversation light, only delving into superficial topics to help pass the time. You excuse yourself after finishing your meal to go to the bathroom, and come back to two coffees laid out on the table with sugar and cream in pretty porcelain cups laid out between them. John must have ordered for you again in your absence. Good thing you like coffee. 

The bill is also there, discretely tucked under John’s napkin, and that makes your stomach flip, realizing that only a coffee now sits between you and the end of this night. 

Then, at a certain point, when all that’s left in your cup is the dregs, sugar spoon bone dry on your plate, John gives you a look from across the table that says it’s time for you both to go. 

Well, here we go, you think a little hysterically as you push back your chair to stand, nearly jumping out of your skin when his hand comes down on your back. 

At your car, you sway back and forth on your heels. “You can, uh…follow behind me, if that works.”

“Why don’t you give me your address and I’ll meet you there?”

You bite your lip, pretending to deliberate, then acquiesce. 

Let him think he’s pulling one on you. You’re bringing him home instead of the other way around because you don’t want to have any memory of a man’s bed when you think about your pregnancy journey. If it’s going to be you alone, then it should be about you alone. Your decision to go out and pick a man to father your baby. 

His participation will be a short blip in your life. A minor footnote. You’ll remember it in bursts throughout the rest of your life: staring at a carton of cream in the dairy aisle of the local grocery store; garden spade buried hilt-deep in a plot of soil, blue bigleaf hydrangea in a pot beside you, sweat dripping down the bow of your lips; your baby’s face, for the rest of your natural life.

In your foyer, his hands glide around your hips, pulling you into his chest, and you realize abruptly that ‘short’ might not have been the most accurate interpretation of what’s about to happen. 

(Honey, you’ve got a storm coming)

“This off first,” John rasps, pulling the bottom of your shirt up and over your head, blinding you for a split second before he yanks it over your arms. 

“Getting right to it, huh?” you joke nervously. 

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks, staring down at you assessingly, as if staring into your soul. That cuts the humour from the moment. Vacuums it from the room, leaving behind only the crackling, blistering heat of his gaze and his intentions. 

“Yes,” you whisper. Neither of you mention the tremble in your voice and how unsure you sound. 

It doesn’t stop him from undressing you though. Bra pulled down under your breasts, pushing your tits up into his face like an invitation, one he accepts without question, pulling your nipples into his mouth one by one, hands on your hips to hold you in place when you try to squirm away. Not that it’s bad—it’s amazingly good after all, toe-curlingly good to have a man run his tongue over your areolas and suck each sensitive nipple to a stiff peak, until you’re on the verge of coming—but it’s a lot, a lot that you have to wrap your head around, your bra pinched off shortly after that and underwear next.  

Your touch is hesitant at first, fingers barely gliding down his arms and fisting in the fabric of his shirt to jerk it up, but he makes it easy for you to get lost in it, your nerves fizzling out in the heat and fervor.  

You don’t even notice that John has walked you backwards into the bedroom until he pushes you down onto the bed, the mattress bouncing under you. “One second, love—need to get all of this off myself.”

You watch transfixed as the suit jacket comes off first, shrugged off and discarded. He undoes only a few buttons before wrenching it over his head, eyes on you the whole time, his stare never breaking. Scalding hot. 

That’s how you know that despite all his lofty words, this isn’t some favour he’s doing you. He wants this just as badly—wants it with a vigour that you don’t even know if you’ll be able to handle, aware that you are just flesh and blood. There’s a prickle at the back of your mind, a whisper reminding you that nobody knows that he’s here, that he’s a hot-blooded man about to slake his lust with your body. 

Then he slides the elastic waistband of his boxers down his thighs and your mind goes blank when you see the flushed, heavy shaft droop between his legs. 

The two of you work together to shove a pillow under your hips, John fetching it from the top of the bed and you lifting your hips to give him easier access. You don’t have to ask why. 

Nestled between your thighs, John looks up at you with heavy-lidded eyes and says, “Let’s get you all softened up to start, alright, love?” 

The first touch of his lips to your sex sends a lightning bolt up your spine, and then it’s practically an open mouth kiss. Tongue running up the seam of your lips, pushing into the clenched hole at the centre, the bristles of his beard scraping up the insides of your thighs and the thin skin of your labia. 

It’s good, but it’s taking too long and your heart is a rabbiting mess and you can barely think or see straight, so you tangle your fingers in his hair and try to push his head away. “That’s okay, John, I just wanna—oh fuck, can you please just put it in?”

“No, baby, it’s good if you come first,” he murmurs. “Helps it take.”

That floods your system with a frenetic, crazed exhilaration. Baby fever bubbling and boiling, frothing spilling over the top like a pot left on the stovetop for too long. 

You gasp when he tucks a couple fingers into your hole to stretch you out, a perfunctory, almost clinical motion. Just enough to loosen you up for him, unmindful of the way you squirm and whine, rolling your hips to get him to go faster. He does not. 

It doesn’t take much effort on his part after that to get you to come, too worked up and wound up, core squeezing his fingers like a vice until he gives your clit a suck and you squeal, oh, too much, breath ripping through your chest.

They’re wet when he pulls them out, and he dries them off by rubbing them on your belly. 

The shadow of his body draws over yours as he climbs on top of you. It’s as physical as it is visual though, John’s hands always on some part of your body, dragging up your legs and over your arms, fingers spreading over your belly before he runs a hand up between your breasts and over your throat, lingering there just long enough to close around your throat and hold for a second, then skating up to cup your jaw. 

And then he’s all big body on top of you, coaxing your legs around his hips, one hand squishing your cheeks when he bends down to kiss you. You can taste yourself on his lips, the tongue pushing into your mouth musky with the flavour of your cum. You’d protest if you could, but you can’t, his mouth slanted over yours and demanding. 

“C’mere,” he mumbles against your lips when he draws you in for another kiss, sawing his cock up and down between your folds, coating his length with your juices, until it’s there suddenly, breaching you. 

You have to grab him, loop your arms around his shoulders and squeeze to ground yourself. It’s a lot to take in. He’s a lot to take in. 

“I know, love, I know,” John murmurs soothingly. “Deep breaths, okay?”

You listen to him, letting a shaky breath out. It helps you relax. Barely, but enough to ease the strain a bit. 

He nuzzles his nose into your temple, his breath fanning out against your ear. “A little more, love, alright? You gonna be brave for me?”

“Oh—just get on with it,” you gasp when he eases in another inch, and John laughs in your ear. 

It feels genuinely romantic like this. Your arms wrapped around his neck and his hips slowly rocking into you, whispering sweet nothings like, there we go, you’ve got it, that feel good, love? When he fits his hand around the back of your neck and lifts your head up for a kiss, you swear you see stars. 

The kiss is too much. Too intimate. You wish you would’ve set that boundary ahead of time. It feels pointless now, trapped under the heavy weight of his body and impaled on his member, sucked into it, lips slotting and melting over each other, his tongue running over yours. He’s a good kisser at least, practiced from a lifetime of it. No awkward schoolboy tonguing. 

Too good. You wonder distantly how many other women he’s slept with (probably more than you have any business knowing). If he’s ever gotten anyone else pregnant. Your nails dig into his back instinctively at the thought and he gasps a wet and guttural sound, hips bucking harder. 

He gets rough enough to loosen a bolt of fear in your chest. All of a sudden, it becomes bright and clear in your mind. There’s a grunting, sweating man over you, all two hundred plus pounds of him laid out on top of you, with no protection between you. Raw cock plunging into your pussy. You can barely get a full breath in. 

“Fuck, I’m close,” John grunts, and your eyes flick down instinctively, trying to see past the dense mass of hair on his chest towards the length of his cock sliding into you. He’s pressed too close though. When he catches you looking away from him, he clamps his hand around your face again, forcing your gaze back up. “No, none of that. Eyes on me.”

You think you must gasp. Some horrified sound must escape you because you can feel the aftereffect of it, the big hollow where it used to be. 

His other arm wedges under your back to pull you closer to him, thighs spreading to brace his weight against the mattress before driving into you harder, deeper, the big, concentrated energy of him inescapable.

You can sense it the second before he’s about to come, his eyebrows digging in and his jaw going tight, the vein in his forehead prominent. 

“Christ, you’re gonna take it, aren’t you?” he snarls. “All this fucking cum.” 

On the next stroke in, you dig an ankle into the muscle of his ass and squeeze your inner muscles around his length, grinning hazily to yourself when that makes him shout. 

And then, oh, he surges in and you feel it, hear it, sense it all around you, his fingers from the hand wedged under your back digging hard into the side of your breast. Hips forcefully pumping into you and pushing his cum in deep, your own orgasm lost somewhere in there, a small, forgettable part of it all. 

Eventually, he stops moving over you, letting his cock slip out of you on the next stroke out. You hiss when he does, clenching up involuntarily. With nothing plugging it inside though, his cum leaks out, dripping down the crack of your ass and onto the pillow under your hips. 

John’s hot breath fans over your face as he pants, slowly winding down as well, the red flush in his cheeks still stark, though gradually fading. It’s only in the cooldown that you realize how claustrophobic it is being trapped under him, the sheer weight and heat of his body flush with yours becoming more and more uncomfortable, almost unbearably so. 

When he slumps off to one side, you can finally breathe again, the air rushing into your lungs. There’s sweat in your skin and tears in the corners of your eyes, everything tacky and humid, the frantic beat of your heart only beginning to slow down. The stiffness in your shoulders only dawns on you after a few minutes like that, and you push yourself up onto your elbows just to try to work some of it out. 

“No, don’t get up, love. We’re just gonna lie here for a bit,” he instructs, pushing your shoulder back down. “Better chance of my boys getting the job done if we keep it all in you.”

Of course he just wants to make sure that it takes. That way, you don’t have to do this again. “Oh yeah. I, uh, I didn’t think about that.”

He doesn’t just mean lie there, of course, though your body would like nothing more than to sink into the plush embrace of sleep. Instead he means keeping your hips propped up on the pillow now saturated with cum, and curling you into his side, separating your thighs again to palm your cunt, sliding his fingers through the wet. 

It’s a goopy, sticky mess that John plunges his fingers into, pushing it back up inside of you and shushing you when you whimper, a little gaped from his cock but sore to the touch. 

For much longer than you anticipated, he lies there on his side beside you and keeps two fingers pushed up inside you, blocking any cum from leaking out. 

“How long do we have to do this for?” you ask, voice all high and tight in your throat. 

John hums, unconcerned. “Ten, fifteen minutes.”

True to his word, he keeps you there for the full fifteen minutes. Only the sound of your breathing fills the room, quiet otherwise aside from the enormously large weight of his presence, too familiar now with the private corners of your world. 

He doesn’t warn you before idly circling your clit with thumb. You jerk, nearly biting through your lip. “John!”

“Relax, honey, I’m just making you come again.”

“I know that, John—ah, ah, ah—”

A leg hooks over yours, his thigh heavy enough to keep you pinned without even much strength behind it. His fingers don’t so much as twitch inside of you, buried to the fattest knuckle while his thumb circles the tight bud of your clit over and over again until you—

You haven’t finished the thought by the time he draws his fingers out, pearlescent strings of cum webbed between them. He hums approvingly when he sees that, pulling your thighs further apart to admire his work. “Gorgeous. That ought to do it for now.”

Your heart skips a beat and you stare up at him, exhausted, the sweat on the back of your neck now cold. 

The studio is warmer than you expect. Old brick. Tall windows dripping with rain. Canvases stacked against every wall, most of them turned backward, their painted faces hidden from you. It smells of linseed oil and damp wood and (- the sharp stench of a cave where things lie nestled in the dark with sharp teeth and sharper claws, maw dripping with hunger for every unsuspecting little thing that crosses in front of it’s eyes, too close too see the danger until its dragging them across stone floor- )

(And you’ll think about those canvases later. About how each one had been carefully turned toward the wall before you arrived, how easy it had been to assume this was modesty instead of concealment. Artists are strange, you’d thought. Private about unfinished things. You hadn’t yet considered that there might be things Johnny didn’t want looking back at you.)

Johnny puts you in an oversized white shirt (‘s mine, Bonnie, but ye can borrow it- ), says the fabric catches shadow better. Leaves your own clothes folded on a chair near the door (- farther away than they need to be- ) and settles you on a low platform beneath the windows, your knees drawn loosely beneath you, one hand resting against your throat.

The first few minutes pass in silence.

Charcoal scratching.

Rain needling softly against the glass.

Johnny looking at you, baby blue traveling slowly, steadily, returning to the same places over and over- the soft inside of your wrist, the hollow beneath your throat, the place where the shirt slips away from one shoulder whenever you breathe too deeply.

You try to hold still, but your back starts to ache. Your fingers curl against your collarbone. Each time Johnny looks up, you remember you’re being watched and flinch, shoulders rising, knees pressing closer together, chin sinking protectively toward your chest, too stiff.

His charcoal stills.

You apologize.

Ach, dinnae apologize. He smiles when he says it, but something in his expression stays still. His mouth curves. The rest of him doesn’t.

Ye keep foldin’ in on yourself every time I look at ye. Ahm not goin’ tae eat ye.

It’s too perceptive and your laugh comes out smaller than you meant it to. Johnny’s gaze sharpens at the sound, charcoal held motionless between fingers stained black nearly to the knuckle. He sets the charcoal on the easel tray and walks toward you, wiping blackened fingertips against his trousers.

His hands settle on your shoulders and press them down, thumbs sweeping slowly along the tight muscles beside your neck, working circles into the ache until your head tips forward despite yourself.

(That should’ve frightened you too, perhaps, the ease with which he found the softest part of you and pressed his thumb into it. But cruelty rarely introduces itself as cruelty.)

Can feel ye fightin’ me, he murmurs.

You tell him you’re only nervous.

I know, hen.

His mouth brushes close to your ear when he says it- That’s the problem-

You’ve never done anything like this before. Never sat beneath someone’s attention and been expected to let them take whatever they saw.

Johnny hums.

- Got somethin’ that might help-

He leaves you there and crosses to a cabinet near the sink. The bottle he brings back is already open. Red wine, dark enough to look black where it gathers in the bottom of the glass.

He pours while you watch, the glass filling nearly to the widest part before he seems to remember himself and stops.

You tell him that’s more than a little.

Is it?

The dimples appear.

Scottish measure.

You laugh despite yourself, and that seems to please him. He passes you the glass, waits until your fingers close around the stem, then returns to the easel as though the matter is settled.

It’s sweeter than you expect.

Dark fruit and spice, something thick and jammy that clings to your tongue after you swallow. It warms your stomach on the way down and then sits there, a small red coal beneath your ribs, heavy in your stomach, spreading outward in a slow bloom that reaches your fingertips first.

Johnny starts drawing again once you drink, charcoal moving with renewed purpose, and each time you begin to tense beneath his gaze, he tips his chin toward the glass.

You obey because you don’t want to be difficult (- not after he told you that you were the first beautiful thing he’d wanted to draw in months. Pride and vanity always did come before the fall-)

The first glass disappears without you noticing.

Johnny refills it.

You watch the wine climb the crystal, a dark red tide swallowing the clean sides. He pours generously this time, his wrist turning until the glass is almost full.

Johnny-

Ye’re still wound tight.

He presses the glass back into your hand, cups the base and tips it toward your mouth, red wine spilling over your lower lip, a thin ribbon escaping the corner of your mouth to trail down your chin- Swallow, hen, that’s it, good girl- thumb catching the crimson streak on your chin, smearing it gently across your swollen mouth, bringing his thumb to his own lips and dragging his tongue slowly over the wine stained pad, his gaze still fixed on your (- tasting one thing and thinking of another entirely- )

The room softens, hard corners of the platform blurring, rain beyond the glass stretches into silver threads. Johnny’s face becomes something painted in oils- dark lashes, blue eyes, the warm cut of his mouth- each feature bleeding gently into the next whenever you look too quickly.

(You’ll try to remember how many times he filled the glass after that. You’ll count backward later and find nothing solid enough to hold. One glass becomes two only because you remember him pouring. Two becomes three because the bottle was lower when you finally noticed it again. Memory is unreliable even when sober; drunk, it becomes something else entirely)

Your thoughts begin losing their edges.

That’s the strangest part.

Not the warmth or the heaviness gathering behind your eyes, but the way one thought stops connecting cleanly to the next. You think you should check the time, but the idea floats away before you remember where you left your phone. You think you’re thirsty, although there’s still wine in your hand. You think Johnny has been staring too long, but then he smiles and the concern dissolves before it can settle into fear.

Your brain turns liquid. Loose.

Everything inside your skull has melted into something warm and buoyant, thoughts drifting past one another like pale shapes beneath dark water. You can see them. Almost touch them. But each time you reach for one, the motion sends it farther away.

The warmth moves deeper with each glass. Into your thighs. Your cheeks. The soft tissue behind your eyes.

Nothing has edges anymore. Johnny’s charcoal scratches from very far away, scraping down the back of your mind.

You take another sip.

Your tongue feels too large for your mouth.

The wine sits syrup thick in your veins, turning your body slow and porous. You can feel yourself dissolving from the inside, bones losing their hard white calcifications, thoughts melting down into something warm and red and viscous. Your mind becomes a glass overturned on its side, everything inside it pouring lazily toward the lowest point.

Johnny tells you to lift your chin and it takes you a moment to understand him.

Your head feels full of warm red water. Too heavy for your neck, too light to belong to your body. When you turn toward him, the studio follows a moment later, swaying gently around its fixed point. Your stomach seems to remain behind while the rest of you drifts forward.

Johnny smiles. Feelin’ better?

Mmm. Floaty.

The word leaves your mouth thick and childish. You hear yourself say it from somewhere above the platform and start laughing, embarrassed by the way your tongue seems to have grown too large for your teeth.

Floaty, he repeats. Aye, I can see that.

The glass slips sideways in your hand when you try to lift it again, wine cresting the rim, pouring over your fingers in a slow, dark sheet, slipping between your knuckles and tracing along the inside of your wrist. You make a startled little sound at the coldness that breaks apart into a thousand shards against the brick of the walls.

Johnny catches the stem before it can tumble from your loose fingers- careful, hen- and you try to straighten it but some how make it worse. Another red thread spills across your palm, and your laughter returns, thick and breathless, your head bowing beneath the weight of it.

Can’t hold it, you confess.

Johnny looks at your hand.

His smile doesn’t disappear, the warmth staying arranged across his face, but everything behind it grows watchful and still, his gaze following the wine as it crawls toward the soft bend of your elbow.

Aye, he murmurs. I can see that.

He takes the glass from you and places it beyond your reach.

Then he closes his hand around your wrist.

(There are moments when the body understands before the mind does. A pulse quickening beneath someone’s thumb. Fingers curling uselessly toward the palm. Some small animal instinct lifting its head inside you and finding every door already underwater. Yours tries to warn you now, but the wine has made a soft, red grave of your thoughts, and whatever is screaming has sunk too deep to be heard.)

Johnny raises your hand slowly, turns your wrist upward and studies the dark streaks shining there as though you’ve offered him something.

His tongue touches the center of your palm.

Tickles, you mumble, trying weakly to pull your hand back.

Johnny doesn’t let you, fingers tighten around your wrist, dragging his tongue between two of your fingers, gathering the wine with slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes lifted to your face the entire time, stubble scraping your skin, your head tipping drunkenly toward one shoulder while he follows the spill downward. His mouth moves over the heel of your hand, then the tender inside of your wrist, tongue tracing the dark path until it reaches the quick beat of your pulse.

Johnny, you breathe, his name breaking apart around another shy (nervous) giggle.

Shh.

His lips close over the fluttering place beneath your skin, sucking gently at the flesh, and the laughter catches strangely in your throat.

For a second, the floating stops.

Your eyes find his. There’s no boyish embarrassment there now. No artist’s wonder. Only concentration, calm and proprietary, as if he’s discovered the precise place where you’re weakest and is committing it to memory.

Then the room tips again.

The fear slips away before you can name it.

Johnny lifts his mouth from your wrist. A faint red stain shines across his lower lip, though you can’t tell whether it’s wine or the shape of his teeth pressed too hard against your skin.

Couldnae leave ye all messy, he murmurs.

You smile at him, heavy eyed and grateful.

(That smile will return to you later. Not his. Yours. The soft, trusting curve of your own mouth while he held your pulse between his teeth, already learning how much he could take, could take, could take before you’d realize something was missing- )

His hand slides behind your neck when your head lists toward one shoulder, catching you with a palm spanning the base of your skull, fingers sinking into the soft place beneath your hair, and the strength of him feels like a pillar rising from the black water at the exact moment your feet stop finding the bottom.

You lean into him, body pouring toward the nearest solid thing with the blind obedience of water finding a crack.

(That’s the part you’ll hate most afterward. Not the touch itself, but the relief. The soft, grateful sound your throat makes when he holds your head up for you. The way your body, stupid animal that it is, mistakes restraint for shelter because the room has become a dark and gently turning sea, and Johnny- Johnny, who tipped the bottle into your mouth, who stood on the shore and watched the red water climb over your face- feels like the only thing left that won’t move beneath your hands.)

Can barely hold yourself up, can ye?

There’s laughter curled inside his voice. Warmth too. Enough warmth to blunt the edge of it, enough tenderness painted over the words that you don’t see the teeth beneath until much later, when you’re sober enough to pick each moment apart and find where the sweetness spoiled.

You mumble that you’re fine, word coming loose and swollen, a soft little shape that collapses against his chest before it properly leaves your mouth.

Course ye are.

His thumb moves behind your ear, slow enough to feel fond, presses into the tender hollow there and draws a circle, then another, while your thoughts slosh heavily from one side of your skull to the other.

Jus’ need a wee bit of help holdin’ the pose.

He reaches past you.

Something drags from the shelves, whisper of fibres over unfinished wood, dry and soft, the sound stretching strangely inside your head, unspooling through the wine until it becomes the scrape of something moving beneath a bed, the hush of grass parting around a body.

When Johnny settles back into view, there’s a pale coil resting in one charcoal stained hand.

You stare at it.

The meaning is there- somewhere- can feel it beneath the surface, pressing upward through the wine. But your thoughts are no longer thoughts, drifting pieces of them, each one separating when you reach, each one slipping wetly through your fingers before you can force it into words.

What’s that for?

The question sounds very far away.

Johnny looks at the rope, then at you.

You.

He says it so easily that you blink up at him, chin hooked against the hard planes of his abdomen.

Then his grin breaks wide, dimples cutting deep enough to make the answer harmless again.

The pose, hen. It’s for the pose.

He kneels beside you and takes your wrist, winding the rope around your skin once, then twice, explaining tension and composition and the body’s instinct to protect itself when it tires.

Always curls inward, he murmurs, thumb smoothing the inside of your wrist. Always tries tae hide the soft parts.

You watch his fingers move.

Over.

Under.

Through.

Cream colored rope, the shade of old lace or clean bone, pretty where it crosses your skin, fibres blurring at the edges when your eyes lose focus, becoming something delicate, ornamental. A bracelet. A ribbon. (Gift-wrapped and hand delivered-)

Johnny-

Too tight?

You don’t know.

You should know. The answer ought to exist inside your own head, but your body has gone dim and distant, a house seen through fogged glass. There’s pressure around your wrist. Heat beneath it. A pulse knocking weakly against the rope like someone trapped behind a wall.

Johnny slides one finger under the knot, fingertip stroking over your pulse while he looks up at you, eyes bright and attentive.

Wouldnae hurt ye.

You nod because he sounds so certain and rational thought is a stone tied to your ankle asking you to climb through red waters.

He binds the other wrist before you understand that the first one is finished. Lifts both arms above your head, and your body follows with a slow, boneless obedience that makes him smile. The stretch pulls through your shoulders, arches your back, tits pushing at the fabric of his shirt, body bent sharp enough to split the soft haze for half a second, and a whimper escapes before you can swallow it.

Shh. Easy, bonnie.

His hand slides down your arms, your sides, soothing the hurt he created, and the wine rushes back into the space pain briefly cleared. Warm. Heavy. Merciful.

He secures the rope to an iron ring sunk into the studio floor.

You hadn’t noticed the rings before.

There’s one near either side of the platform, black metal half hidden beneath old paint and dust. More beside the mattress in the shadowed corner, arranged at careful distances from one another.

The pattern should mean something.

(It does mean something.)

Your gaze catches on them and then drifts helplessly away.

(Fear needs a body that answers when called, and yours has become warm wax beneath his hands, softening wherever he presses, cooling around whatever shape he leaves behind.)

Your legs are next.

He cups one ankle and draws it outward. Then the other. Your heels drag over the platform with a soft rasp, your knees falling apart beneath the loose white shirt. The fabric slips higher along your thighs, and the first clean spark of alarm pierces the drunken fog when you try to close them again.

Johnny feels the resistance and his hands stop on your thighs, heat from his palms sinking into you until you can feel his fingerprints burning their marks into your bones.

Easy.

The word is quiet. Almost kind.

You shake your head, but the motion tips the ceiling sideways. The windows pour rain upward. Johnny’s face splits into two softened versions of itself, then swims back together as nausea rolls lazily beneath your ribs.

I don’t-

The sentence knots behind your teeth.

Don’t what?

The words are all there, drifting separately through the dark, but you can’t gather them into the same mouthful.

Johnny leans closer- what was that, doe- gives you every appearance of listening, eyebrows drawn with concern, mouth softened at the corners.

You try again.

Your tongue feels soaked through. Heavy as nebula, the sounds smearing against one another until even you can’t tell what you meant to say.

Johnny waits, watches the effort drain out of your face and only then strokes both hands down your thighs.

Thought so.

The ropes tighten around your wrists. Your ankles. A careful loop above your knee when your leg keeps listing inward, another where the position pleases him but your body won’t hold it on its own.

His hands guide the white shirt higher whenever it catches beneath you.

It’ll wrinkle, hen-

A little farther-

Hold still-

The fabric gathers in pale folds until it rests beneath the curve of your breasts, baring the plane of your stomach, the flare of your hips, your soft, silky cunt he has spread open for himself. His thumbs stroke once along the crease where thigh meets hip, pressing into the give of flesh (- as though he is already imagining how it will feel when he is between them- )

He looks at what he has done and the boyish grin is gone. What remains is quieter. Hungrier. His eyes move over you like he is deciding which part to taste first.

There we are, he murmurs. Much better.

You drift.

Fear is still there, but it has risen above you now, trapped on the other side of the wine. You can see its shadow crossing the surface while you float beneath it, black and frantic and distorted by the red water between you. Your shoulders ache. Your wrists burn dully where the rope takes your weight. Your legs are held apart by pale fibres and Johnny’s careful arrangement, but the body enduring it feels impossibly far away.

A figure at the bottom of a lake.

A pale thing laid open in the silt.

You’re near the ceiling. You’re inside the rain crawling down the glass. You’re suspended somewhere behind your own eyes, watching a woman in a white shirt test the ropes with small, weak movements she won’t remember making.

She looks frightened.

You wonder why she doesn’t leave.

(Drunkenness makes a cruelty of distance. It lets you watch yourself suffer without understanding that you’re the one inside the body. Lets the mind climb out through a crack in the skull and hover somewhere clean while the flesh remains below, warm and obedient and available. It feels almost like escape until you realize Johnny can still touch what you’ve left behind.)

Christ.

The reverence in his voice draws your gaze back to him.

He’s looking at you, eyes moving slowly over your arms lifted and secured, your knees drawn apart, the shirt bunched high where his hands kept moving it, pausing at each point of strain as if pain is another line he’s finally managed to place correctly.

Something in his face has gone still, colder than lust. The deep and emptied devotion of a man standing before an altar built for a god that cannot refuse him now.

There ye are, he whispers, as if you’d been hidden from him, as if the rope has finally uncovered something true.

Then he crosses to the studio door and you follow him with your eyes slowly, the room dragging several seconds behind his body.

Johnny turns the lock and the click enters your head like a stone dropped into deep water. He slides the bolt into place and the sound travels down through the wine and settles somewhere beneath your heart, where the part of you that still understands begins, very quietly, to drown.

Then his hip catches the corner of a canvas on the way back.

It happens slowly from where you’re floating. The frame tips away from the wall, knocks against the one beside it, and then the whole uneven stack begins to slide. Wood scraping brick. Canvas whispering against canvas. Johnny swears beneath his breath and reaches for them, but they have already fallen face up across the floor.

And…

There you are.

Your face.

You blink at it, wondering for a syrupy moment whether it’s the sketch he’s just made, though the woman in the painting is wearing your green coat from last autumn. Her hair is damp, cheek tucked into the collar against the rain. She’s standing beneath the yellow shelter at the bus stop near your work, eyes lowered toward the phone cupped between her hands.

Another canvas has you carrying groceries against your chest. The paper bag splitting at the bottom, oranges bright through the tear, your mouth caught open in a laugh you don’t remember giving him.

Another-

you behind the steamed glass of the little cafe on Bell Street, both hands curled around a mug. There are Christmas lights reflected over your face. Red and gold smears threaded through your hair like something festive and burning.

That’s me, you say.

Or think you say.

(There’s a truth arranged across the floor in front of you, patient and chronological. Months of it. Seasons of it. Proof painted in oils and hidden with its face toward the wall, waiting for the moment when you could no longer count backward clearly enough to understand what you were seeing. But your brain has become a red tide inside your skull, and recognition is a small animal trying to swim through it. You watch its paws break the surface once. Then it sinks.)

When did you- ?

The question dissolves halfway out.

Johnny crouches and turns the first canvas over, handles them gently. (More gently than he’s handled you.) Checks the corners for damage, thumb brushing dust from your painted cheek before he hides it against the wall again.

Clumsy bastard, he mutters.

You stare at the remaining portrait. The one at the corner shop. Washed out lights. Coins scattered across your palm. Your face turned slightly to the side as if someone has just called your name.

- The moment he told you about-

- The first time he saw you-

Except the painting of you at the summer festival last year is underneath it.

Your eyebrows pull together and the thought almost forms.

Johnny looks over his shoulder and sees you struggling there and his expression softens.

Dinnae hurt yourself, hen.

He rises, steps over the paintings and comes back to you. One blackened fingertip presses between your brows, smoothing the crease away as though confusion is another flaw in the pose.

Ye’re thinkin’ too hard.

You try to tell him there are paintings of you. You try to ask how long.

You try to but the words leave your mouth sodden and misshapen, each syllable dragging another behind it until the sentence reaches him as little more than a murmur, the beginning falling away before you reach the end.

Johnny understands anyway. (He always seems to understand you when it suits him.)

He watches your mouth with that same fond concentration he wore while sketching (the patient attention of a man waiting for something soft to finish struggling) then glances toward the canvases he hasn’t managed to turn over.

Did tell ye I’d been stuck for months.

The dimples sink deep.

Never said how long I’ve been working since then.

You look back at the paintings.

The woman beneath the bus shelter has your green coat buttoned neatly with a button that broke last September. The woman at the cafe is holding the chipped blue mug they stopped using sometime around Christmas. Another version of you is walking beneath trees still fat with summer leaves, bare legs flashing beneath a dress buried now at the bottom of your wardrobe.

Your mind touches the sequence and recoils, but there’s nowhere for the thought to go. The wine has flooded every corridor inside your skull, filled every room up to the ceiling. Understanding swims toward you through it- slow, pale, terrible- but each time it comes close enough to recognize, the current rolls you gently away.

Something cold opens inside you, but the wine pours into it before it can become fear. It fills every clean edge, rounds everything off, turns horror into a distant pressure beneath the sternum. Johnny strokes your cheek and waits until your eyes lose focus again.

(He hadn’t found you beneath the lights of the corner shop tonight. Not in the way he’d made it sound, not like lightning or providence or some dead part of him suddenly shocked back into motion. He’d already known which bus carried you home. Which cafe you preferred. What store you used. He’d watched summer soften into autumn around you, watched autumn die into winter, and called it inspiration because obsession sounds beautiful when an artist says it.)

Johnny collects the last canvas and turns it toward the wall and your painted face disappears.

There, he murmurs. Nothin’ tae worry about.

He comes back to you slowly, hands settling on your thighs, hot enough to feel like brands through the wine heavy numbness, heat sinking in around the breadth of his palms and the effortless weight keeping you where he put you.

You shake your head.

Or perhaps it only falls weakly to one side.

Johnny’s mouth brushes your trembling knee, almost gentle, while his thumbs draw slow circles against your skin.

Easy, hen.

You try to tell him you want to go home but all that emerges is a broken little breath.

He lifts his head and watches you struggle to assemble the words, patient until the last of them dissolves behind your teeth. Then he smiles tender enough to make it seem as though he’s forgiving you for being afraid.

(And somewhere above the wine, the small surviving part of you finally understands why the paintings were turned toward the wall.)

Johnny reaches back without looking and the amber lamp beside the platform clicks off.

Darkness folds over the studio, warm and absolute, and his hands tighten around your thighs when the ropes instinctively draw taut.

anyway she comes to in the middle of the woods and relax she hasn't been touched YET because there's suddenly 4 men around her (henceforth known as: The Pack) and they're all laughing about how big girls are SO desperate they're so easy to trick BLARGH they're spouting a bunch of general misogynist BULLSHIT about "high value males" and "the female brain" and they call themselves "the Pack" because YOU KNOW these fuckers live their whole life by that fallacious Alpha Male ideology ANYWAY obviously they are led by Hot Guy AND the Bartender is ONE OF THEM that's how her drink got spiked, she was watching the wrong man's hands!!

And they're like "haha don't worry we didn't do anything to you while you were out because it's only worth doing when you KNOW what we're doing to you >:)" PUKE they are basically a bunch of sick fuck serial killers who abduct women every full moon and then hunt them down in the woods THEY ARE THE WEREWOLF MURDERERS AAAAH anyway they're like "haha babe we'll give you a 10 minute headstart. You'll know we're coming after you when you hear us HOWL" 🤢 but these sad wimp shit heads are using high end hunting equipment including an infrared camera and night vision goggles they have NO respect for the art of the hunt I DIGRESS-

obviously our sexy chubby heroine runs for it but oh no she can't see in the dark, she's still wearing her cute but impractical heeled boots, she's still dizzy from the drugs and more importantly feeling like a worthless, pathetic FOOL for falling for Hot Guy and now she's going to get killed for it. Her heart is breaking with every step and then she hears them howling behind her and oh god, she's not gonna make it is she-

WHUMBLE TUMBLE she trips and tumbles down a ridge!! Our angel just can't catch a break and to make everything worse she lands in what is clearly some predator's den, full of old deer carcasses - and one FRESH carcass oh god something is growling at her from the darkness. With only the light of the full moon to see, she watches in horror as a dark shape advances on her. It must be a bear, she thinks, but then it rises on it's hind legs, and rises, and rises, and holy shit, what the fuck is that thing it's not a bear it's a FUCKING WEREWOLF

and then one member of The Pack catches up to her, and he's giddy with anticipation for what he wants to do to her, and he's the one with the night vision goggles and he stops laughing when he sees that... That THING next to her in the gorge, and he's like. What the fuck that can't be real. And in my movie we'd be cutting this between dark moonlit scenes and his night vision goggles of course, through which we'd get to see the werewolf's huge sexy teeth and eerie (sexy) glowing eyes and that the wolf is looking at HIM and this guy freaks the fuck out and tries to run but GUESS WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T DO BITCH. YOU SHOULDN'T RUN FROM A WEREWOLF because it launches at him and rips his fucking head off!!

And our heroine is like FUCK as if this night could get any worse now werewolves exist?!?! So she flees while the Wolf is busy with Pack Guy #1. Cut to: the other men in The Pack are regrouping, irate that Guy#1 got so far ahead of them because "He never shares 🙄" but ahead the guy with the infrared sensor is like "I see a big splatter of heat on the ground, he's finished her off without us that bastard!!" But lo and behold they get there and IT IS HE WHO IS SPLATTERED ACROSS THE GROUND!! The Pack are at first like wtf did this but they're all pieces of shit so they don't mourn their dead friend so much as lament the inconvenience of his death and assume a bear did it. Hot Guy is actually a little excited because he's never hunted a bear before and they have guns so, in his word, "we can mount a bitch and a bear in our trophy room tonight" and they leave Guy#1's body BUT they do take his night vision goggles.

Meanwhile the sexy beautiful apple of our eyes (Protagonist) has made it to a RIVER and she's like fuck it's cold but maybe I can follow the river downstream, there will be a town eventually right??? BUT who is right on her tail?? The werewolf of course! He's snarling and advancing in a mixture of animal curiosity and hostile territoriality and our darling beloved Protag is like FUCK I can't run I can only back away slowly oh god I'm going to die but JUST as the Wolf reaches her-

Howling! Those stupid shitfuck Alpha Bros are howling as a way to terrorize her so she knows they're closing in. But you know what that does to werewolf?? Immediately tells him who the REAL territorial threat is. The Pack burst through the trees to the river and Wolf wastes no time latching his teeth into one of them and ripping his throat open ( 🥵 ) and the Pack are like WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING and bang bang they SHOOT werewolf in the torso AAAH! He's not dead because the bullets aren't silver teehee but it HURTS and he's knocked into the river. Protag tries to run but they shoot at her too so with nowhere else to go she also jumps into the river SWIM BITCH SWIM

She and the Wolf are swept downriver in the rapid current, both gasping for breath between being dunked underwater. Protag manages to grab a hold of some logs to save herself. The Wolf tries to grab them too but oh NO he's too big and heavy and the water-rotted wood SNAPS and he continues swirling down the rapids. He manages to cling to a boulder in the center of the river and claw his way up for air, fast water frothing white around him, filling his mouth, trying to drag him under again.

Protag drags herself to the shore and breathlessly looks back, ready to run again as she hears the Pack howling in the distance. She sees the Wolf clawing desperately to life, and turns to leave him - but stops. She can't help herself. She looks back at him. The whites of his eyes are showing with their wide, confused panic. One hand is held tight to the boulder, the other flails desperately for some purchase. A high pitched, frightened whine pierces the air. He looks as afraid as she feels. He looks so HUMAN, so honest, so earnestly in need of someone's kindness. God, she HATES herself for being weak (*cough cough* NOT WEAK SHE'S FUCKING KIND!! but anyway *cough cough*)

She DRAGS a thick, sturdy branch to the riverside and feeds it into the water. She has to anchor herself in the deep, squelching mud to keep the branch (and herself!) from being yanked back into the current. The Wolf reaches with that helpless, human desperation. Monstrous hands close around the branch. She heaves, roaring with the effort to support his weight as he claws his way to shore. The howling is getting real close, now.

Once the werewolf can sink his paws into the mud, she abandons the branch and runs for the treeline. The two remaining Pack members are upon them now - but trapped on the wrong side of the river. They fire their gun at her. The Wolf launches a huge rock in their direction, which misses, but forces them to back off.

Protag runs for her life in the woods. She can hear the weight of the huge, loping animal behind her. She feels the shift in the air the moment before it makes impact. The Wolf tackles her from behind, bundling her into his arms while she kicks and shrieks in raw, animal defense. The Wolf, unable to contain the flurry of protesting limbs, throws her into the wet, sloppy mud and slams one of his heavy hand-paws down on her chest, pinning her down forcefully. He roars directly into her face, sharp teeth inches from soft skin, breath hot and rancid with the stench of dead deer. His message is very easy, even with the animal-language barrier: "SHUT THE FUCK UP."

Defeated, exhausted, and resigned to her fate, Protag goes limp. The Wolf half drags, half carries her across the forest floor. She accepts that she's just a slab of meat now - to both the Wolf, and the Pack. The drugs and the despair and the post-adrenaline crash all surge upon her in a wave of sudden sleepiness. She closes her bloodshot eyes.

She opens them to the muted daylight of an overcast morning, seeping through the mouth of a cave. Soft sounds alert her to the fact she is not alone: a nude man is hunched over in a corner beside her. Blood drips down his side. She shrieks and he jumps in surprise. She scrambles for the entrance to the cave - he grabs her and pulls her back. Shut up! He tells her, They're still out there! They're still looking for us!

She stops. Brain starts working. Realises where she is, what's happening, who THIS is. She shoves him away and accuses him of being the werewolf. He's like "uh. Ya. Who else were you expecting."

He's not thrilled about how he spent his full moon, either. He was shot several times in the arm and abdomen, and his accelerated healing means he's healed with one bullet still inside him. He's trying to dig it out. Horrified, but feeling obligated, Protag forces herself to help him. (It's an "EWW" moment, but also... A lil bit of an "awwh" moment ;3c )

In the quiet cave, reluctantly working together, they start to talk. She tells him who she is, who those guys are, what happened. He tells her he's a software engineer from the city. But yeah, also a werewolf. He's been using these woods for his full moons for his entire adult life. Recently, the so-called "werewolf murders" made him worry another wolf had moved into his territory - but now he realises it was these shithead men all along.

He tells her he'll help her get to the road, where she can flag down a car and get help, but she has to swear not to tell the world about his kind. She's like "Say less my guy, 1. I don't want a werewolf coming after me in vengeance, 2. who the fuck would believe me, they're probably not gonna believe me about these evil men either". He's like Well, don't freak out or anything, but I am 100% going to kill those guys. They've defiled my woods. They've perverted the air they breathe. And if I don't kill them, they're just gonna keep coming back here with more victims. She's like (*the following dialogue is expressed through facial expressions ONLY, no words) "Okay why is it so unbelievably sexy to hear this weird naked wolfman say he's going to kill those guys. I think he's actually quite fuckable suddenly."

Oh how they bond over extracting that bullet and the dire circumstances they find themselves in! His clothes are safely stashed on the other side of the woods, oh bother. The audience will just have to enjoy hairy burly naked man as Wolf and Protag trek to the road 😇

They walk, they talk, they have real romantic chemistry - but they are principally focused on the task at hand (not dying). They almost make it to the road, when they hear men's voices nearby. They duck into the hollow made by a fallen tree's roots.

It's Hot Guy and Pack Guy#3, the two surviving bad guys. They are using the infrared camera to track our heroes!! Those shitheads!! There's latent heat on the leaf litter and a few trees that were touched. Fuck!

By a small miracle, Wolf notices a doe grazing about two hundred meters away. He throws a pebble to startle her, and she takes off into the brush. The infrared camera only sees a flash of heat sprinting into the trees and the Pack take off after it. Wolf and Protag run the opposite direction, forced to abandon their way to the road as they would be too exposed in the thinning trees.

Instead, they make it to a disused ranger station that Wolf knows about. He manages to change into some shorts there (tragic) and they use the rain water tanks to wash the blood and mud off themselves. Forced to wait inside until nightfall, the pair finally begin to open up to one another (they both have trust issues for OBVIOUS reasons).

Protag asks if Wolf will recognise her when he transforms that night. He's like "Um, ya. The hollywood stereotypes that we're all these deranged, rapacious monsters is really hurtful actually. It's true I don't have my human decorum when I change, but I'm no more a monster than any real wolf. I hunt to eat, I kill if threatened. I'm not some unstoppable bloodlust predator, I'm just a fucking wolf."

She jokes that she could teach him some commands. Sit, stay, roll over, Good Boy. He BLUSHES (teehee). Their conversation turns a little flirtatious, in a "we both might die tonight" kind of way. He jests that he'd kill anyone who tried to put a collar on him, but... He MIGHT just make an exception, for a beautiful, resilient, ferocious woman. You know where this is going. THEY FUCK NASTY. Use your imagination and make it whatever you want :) In my mind she rides him hard until he's brainless and begging, and then animal instinct takes over and he rolls them over and fucks her into the bed until it breaks. But you can make it whatever you want :)

ANYWAY. In the quiet, cuddling aftermath, they both agree that it's Us or Them. There's one way out of these woods, and that's killing the Pack.

Night comes. The moon rises. Painful Wolf transformation. Awh he's a big scawy pubby :) Dressed in Wolf's improvised shorts and her dress from the night before, Protag leaves the cabin with Werewolf by her side.

They start a firepit to lure the Pack in, hoping to use the infrared camera against them. It works. While Wolf is monitoring their make-shift perimeter, Guy#3 sneaks up and manages to get to Protag. A bloody, violent fight ensues. She's armed only with a burning torch she made out of a branch, tree sap and leaf litter. He's got a gun - but he's too arrogant to use it. He wants to have FUN with her, first. He describes what he's done to all the other women they brought the woods. He laughs at how gullible she was, how desperate for a "high value man" to want her that she didn't see the OBVIOUS trap. Despite a commendable struggle, Protag is overpowered. Guy#3 gets her on the ground and takes out a large knife, taunting her over just HOW he plans to use it on her, when-

CRUNCH. Wolf arrives and rips his fucking head off, babay!! In a literal way. His clawed hands sink into Guy#3's throat, and with a violent jerk upwards, he tears the head from its shoulders. Poor Protag is showered with blood (but in a sexy movie way).

But alas!! T'was an OBVIOUS trap all along! The King Shithead, Hot Guy, knowingly sent his friend in first to lure Wolf out into the open. He shoots Wolf in the back, again and again and again and again, until poor Wolf collapses in a wheezing lump on the floor. Protag screams in horror, but there's nothing she can do.

She lunges at Hot Guy, and the final scrap for survival begins. He's out of bullets, but he has physical strength on his side; he's bigger and stronger than she is. He beats her to the ground, but - Protag grabs Guy#3's knife and stabs Hot Guy through the knee!! A total wuss for pain, he backs off immediately - but Protag isn't done, she isn't about to let this snake slink away into the shadows. She charges him, stabbing him in the groin, the stomach, the chest. She's more wolf than woman, now. She looks him in the eyes, and tells him "It's only worth doing when you KNOW what I'm doing to you," and stabs him straight in the heart. He is dead.

Exhausted and wounded, she crawls to where Wolf lies motionless by the fire. She strokes his fur and tells him everything is going to be okay. Over the trees, she watches the sky turning orange with dawn.

ONE MONTH LATER. Protag, still sporting some bandages from her ordeal, gets ready in her apartment for another night out, just as she did at the beginning. She texts her gal pals to say she'll meet them at the bar. All appears to be as it was before.

She leaves her bathroom, freshly made up, and stops in at her kitchen, asking "Are you all ready for the night, love?"

Wolf is in the kitchen, packing himself water, snacks, and a change of shorts. He wraps her in a huge hug, lifting her off the ground and peppering her face with kisses. He'll miss her for the full moon, he says, but he's glad she's going out with her girls. When he gets back in the morning, they'll have a lazy day together. She kisses him back fondly and calls him a good boy ;3 As they part ways, the news broadcast on the TV mentions the discovery of some remains - four men who were reported missing last month, now suspect to be the victims of a freak animal attack. The Reporter jokes about how maybe, they should take the "werewolf killer" a little more seriously. Protag turns the tv OFF.