#*sobs*

It's cute, though. The way you keep reminding him that you're going to college when he slips in sly comments about how good you look with his baby in your arms. barefoot in his kitchen as you make him dinner, his child on your hip, babbling at his new mommy. nervously stuttering around the notion that you're going to become something more than a mother, Mr Price. more than this deadbeat town stuck in the fifties, where women wearing pants is still an anomaly that makes men shake their heads and stare disapprovingly.

But you get these notions in your head. These little ideas he finds so adorable, and ones he sees no qualms in manipulating to his advantage—and why would he? You want to act grown, independent, then he'll teach you what happens to silly little girls when they get too deep in over their heads.

(like letting you think this is just a fling. flirting with an much older man is harmless, your friend says with a shrug. a little summer fun.)

And he plays into it, too. humming along dutifully as you stammer out that you don't want children when he shoves his hand under your skirt after steadily chipping down those walls of yours. Or that you don't want to be tied to just one man when he slips a little extra wine in your cup to loosen you up before dragging you upstairs to his bed. You want to experiment and enjoy life as a single woman while you're in college. And this is just a fling, right? Your friend said losing it to an older man was normal. perfectly okay as long as you were safe about it.

But he doesn't have any condoms, and you're too tipsy to put up much of a fight when he pulls you into his bed (beautifully obedient, as always). A nervous little tremble to your voice as you beg him for more—

(and please, please, please, Mr Price, don't put a baby in me—)

You're skittish around him the next morning, but that's fine. It's common for newlyweds, isn't it? And when you try to avoid him, pretending to be sick the day after—

Well. It doesn't hurt to remind your parents just who he is, and who he has stuffed inside his pockets, so he isn't too surprised to see you at his doorstep the next morning, wringing your hands as you apologise for getting sick. An indiscretion that's easily forgiven when you shiver against his hands, nervously asking how you can make it up to him.

(you want autonomy. agency. control. and he's always been the type to coddle, hasn't he? so he teaches you the most powerful position you'll ever be in next to him—on your knees, mouth wide open, begging for him to cum on your face like the naughty thing you keep pretending you want to be.)

It's a much better alternative than taking you over his knee like he was planning when you didn't show up to take care of your child the way a new mother should, and he tells you this after you put the baby to bed. Whispers it into your skin as he grips your hips and makes you take him deeper than you ever did before. Coos softly about places—

(and yours, sweetheart, is under him. takin' his cock like a good little wife should—

wide-eyed and shivering from more than just pleasure as he spells out your future beneath him.)

—something that seems to scare you a bit more than he expected when he finds out you sent your college applications out when he thought you had come to an agreement already. But luckily for you, he knows how to pull strings and keeps you right where you belong: with him.

Of course, the rejections come at the perfect timing, too, and he watches the fight inside of you dwindle to smouldering embers after your father pulled his funding, and even the local college refuses your application.

You just feel so confused, you tell him, biting nervously on your nail as he prowls after you. The baby is in bed. The other in your belly. His glass of whiskey after dinner did little to soothe his hunger when you showed up at his door with red-rimmed eyes and the ghosts of your father's anger snarling down at you. He, too, disapproves of college—and it's just so sudden, Mr Price, because he used to be so encouraging, but now, he's telling me it's not right, and i don't know why—

Everyone around you is pushing you towards the inevitable, it seems. And he manages to feign enough sympathy when you turn to him, teary-eyed, as your carefully laid plans fall to pieces under the weight of his own. Cups the back of your head softly as you weep into his chest over this craziness—this sheer madness, Mr Price, because surely you don't want to even marry me? god. you can't even think straight anymore.

but that's the problem, isn't it? he asks, rapping his knuckles softly against the side of your head before offering a smile oozing with thick patronisation.

"You keep thinkin', mm," he rumbles, chipping away the last of your meagre defences as he pushes you towards the bedroom—your bedroom, now. "Thinkin' 'bout things you don't need to, love. Not anymore. Got all these silly little ideas inside here—" his hand curls around the back of your skull, thumbs stroking your skin in a way that might feel comforting if he hadn't been adding a slow, unrelenting pressure to the cup of his palm. Pushing you down, down—

Your knees hit the carpet in a muted thud, and he doesn't even need to tell you to do anything—your hands are already there, trembling fingers unlatching the clasp of his buckle before clumsily pulling him out. Scared and cornered and with nowhere to go because he changed the locks, didn't he, mm? mum ain't answerin' the door? but that's okay. you belong here, anyway, don't you?

And really. You don't have much of a choice when you wake up feeling sick to your stomach at the end of August. belly already swelling with his second child. Your first. ain't that excitin'? givin' your little baby a brother.

He presses a kiss to your sweat-slicked forehead when he finds you hunched over the toilet that morning, cooing in your ear about how happy he is.

"and jus' think, sweetheart," he murmurs, eyeing the shredded acceptance letter sitting in the trash beside you, the one you tried to sneak past him, with a withering distain before aiming that dulled hostility back towards you, a mockery of a smile toying along the edges of his mouth when you shiver, pushing yourself closer to him. The only thing you have left.