Honey and Hemlock. part 0. Introduction. cult leader john price x psychology student reader tw: dead dove do not eat. weird asf price, dubcon, slow horror, extremely manipulative price. no mentions of y/n. female anatomy. smut.
summary: hemlock is a beautiful plant, but its ability to kill you is astonishing. it does it slowly, gets under your skin unbeknownst to you. add a drizzle of honey and eat it.
You had read somewhere that cult leaders were supposed to have something wrong with their faces.
A tic. A coldness in the eyes. Something you could point to later and say: there, that was the sign, I should have seen it. It was obvious because it was visible. Right on the surface.
You were thinking about this as you stood outside his gate, clutching a recorder youād charged twice that morning, your heart doing something stupid in your chest. You were a young girl, only 20, however, you had never been afraid of making mistake or being wrong. It was a way to grow, your father would always say. You did have phobias though - silence, maybe. Small spaces, dark, the way your mom would call you by your full name when you were in trouble - but never being wrong. Mistakes were fixable, wrong was just data that hadnāt been sorted yet. A healthy mindset, isnāt it? Right.
This is exactly what you told yourself while the wind pulled at your hair and the gate's iron latch bit into your palm. It was rusty, had seen years already. You had chosen him for your thesis because he was soft. That was the word youād used in your proposal, soft. A soft-spoken spiritual leader with no criminal record, no leaked documents, no former members shouting on youtube. He was a perfect subject. The kind of man who would bore your committee into approval. Because it was that easy.
You had not chosen him because you didnāt have any other options. You had not chosen him because you hadn't slept well in months, or because your apartment echoed when you laughed, or because you couldn't remember the last time someone looked at you and saw something other than a deadline or another interesting short documentary. You had chosen him because you knew heād be a great option, road to success, instant A+ on your exam.
That was the lie you carried up his driveway, light as a borrowed coat. The wood of his door scratched your knuckles as you knocked twice. The door opened. And the first thing you noticed (the thing you would later lie awake remembering) was that his face had nothing wrong with it at all.
It threw you off even more. Because you swore that nothing could be that good and maybe he looked sweet and kind only on pictures. You were wrong.
āThere yāare.ā the words came wrapped in a thick British accent, slow and deliberate, as if he'd been waiting to say them for some time. They cut through the fog you hadn't realized you were lost in. A shiver raced down your spine - however, not from cold how you would have loved to claim, but from the sound of him. His voice was deep, gravelly, exactly how one would expect him to sound.
Jonathan Price was handsome, very handsome. That was not an observation, it was a fact, as obvious as rain or gravity or the way night followed day. But you had learned, somewhere along the way, to name the dangerous things for what they were. And beauty, you reminded yourself, was an unnecessary distraction. Especially in this case, you knew that keeping that thought away from your mind was the most effective thing to do. He was a dangerous, manipulative person and you are here solely for academic purposes.
āYes, mr. Price?ā internally you were ready to rip your hair out for the nervous and innocent tone that he definitely noticed.
It was difficult to resist his gaze, it was kind, yet pressing. The kind of kindness that didn't ask permission. It simply arrived, and expected you to make room. You noticed immediately that he had a way of enveloping you like a thick fog, or steam, perhaps. Warm. Careful. Complete. You didn't walk into it so much as you exhaled and found yourself already inside.
His cabin was large. Unreasonably large for one man but the word that rose in your throat, unbidden, was cozy. A lot of soft, cozy rugs on wooden floors, books stacked on every surface, not arranged but lived among. There was a fireplace which was nice on a such a cold, august day. It was windy, gloomy, warning. The air smelled of cedar and somethingā¦earthy, woody?
For a moment you thought: there is absolutely nothing more fitting for him than this.
Strange. How utterly normal it all was. What had you expected? A row of frightened faces and a pile of dead bodies? Silly little girl.
"You're looking for monsters," he said from behind you. You hadn't heard him move. A true predator, said your subconscious, unbeknownst to you, it seems. "S'understandable. Y'came here with a thesis. I get that."
His accent made thesis sound like a small, fragile thing. Thee-sis, the first vowel stretched thin, the second almost lost. It sounded so amusing and almost..sweet? When you turned, he was by the window now half-lit by the grey afternoon, his hands clasped behind his back. The sight made you slightly uncomfortable.
āLetās begin.ā you said already making yourself comfortable on one of the armchairs. that action looked like you were asserting dominance, but his smile made your shoulders slump in realization that you looked like a deer running from a bear in hopes to escape.
He took a seat with careful slowness.
You had to clear your throat. For a fraction of a second, because apparently you had lost faith in your own voice, what an irony. It had simply vanished, as if your body knew something your mind refused to admit.
The first few questions were only a surface scratches. What did you do before? Former SAS captain. He said it the way someone might say I used to bake bread. Casual. Unbothered. As if the weight of those words, captain, former, didn't press against the room. What brought you to create the community? Spiritual enlightenment. His smile didn't waver. Neither did his gaze, if anything, you saw his eyes light up. But his answers remained short, gave you an itch to ask to elaborate. But it was useless since you had obviously done your research.
Were you aware of the women who disappeared near your territory?
That one landed differently. You felt it land, the shift in the air, just slightly, like a door being pulled shut by a draft. And h didn't answer immediately which, to be honest, had you shift nervously. Instead, he slowly tilted his head, almost feline-like and let the silence stretch until it became its own question.
"Are you askinā me if I kidnapped them?" he had corrected your question and it was so gentle, like a father guiding his daughter. But his victorious smile curled at the corner of his mouth, and you realized, with a cold trickle down your spine, that you had just become the prey who had forgotten the predator was in the room.
The poor deer. Couldn't avoid the bear's sharp claws after all. He had managed to scratch it, just the spine, or perhaps a leg, but harsh enough to warn. And to remind yourself where exactly you are.
"I didn't do it," he said, leaning back in his chair, his accent thickening around the words like syrup settling at the bottom of a cup. "If tha's the question y'wanted to ask, darlin'. I didn't do it."
You hated when men were stepping over your boundaries and had the audacity to give you names. But this time, surprisingly even for yourself, you didnāt mind. Maybe he was just being kind?
"But y'see," he continued, reaching for his tea, not rushing, "tha's not really what you're askinā, innit? You're not asking if I did it. You're askinā if I am aware."
Although you didnāt say anything recorder was running. The little red light blinked like a heartbeat, steady and indifferent. When your gaze focused on it it also reminded you of something ominous.
"So let me answer the one y'actually meant. Could I take a woman? Make her disappear? Keep her somewhere she doesn't want to be?" You noticed how his voice dropped, it sounded lower, did you irritate him?
"Course I could. Mānot a fool, an' I'm not a liar. I've got the skills. I've got the space. I've got the sort of face people trust." He shrugged, as if admitting to something mundane. "But havin' the ability to do a thinā isn't the same as doin' it. An' I haven't. Not those women. Not any." He held your gaze, why did it feel like he was forcing you to agree with him? "Tha' satisfy your thesis, love?"
You cleared your throat again. Your voice, when it came, sounded smaller than you wanted it to. "For now, yes, it does, thank you. Letās move on to the second part of our first interview.ā
He smiled again, licking his lips and you could swear that it looked like an animal getting ready to pounce on its prey. The smile of a man who had just given you exactly what you asked for, but nothing of what you needed.
"Great," he said āthen ask me the next one iāve got all afternoon."
"Thank you very much for the interview. If you don't mind, I'd like to film your territory and your people tomorrow morning." He nodded once and that was all. A single, deliberate dip of the chin. No following questions. No why or what exactly do you plan to film or let me see your credentials first. Just the nod. You had already learned this about him, Jonathan Price was a man who spoke once. His first word was his last, he didn't repeat himself, didn't clarify, didn't fill silence with nervous chatter the way lesser men did. When he said something, or when he signaled assent with that small, motion of his head, it felt like a stone dropped into still water. You told yourself this was efficient, this was convenient. You told yourself that now you had permission to film, and all you needed to do was capture the footage and leave. Simple.
The word echoed in your head as you walked back to your car, your boots crunching on the gravel driveway, the cabin growing smaller in your rearview mirror. Simple. You had your interview, you had your access, you had a thesis to write and a deadline to meet and absolutely no reason to return after tomorrow. You would film his people, his land, ask them a few questions and just drive home. Transcribe your notes, and never think about the way he said darlin' again. That was the plan. That was always the plan.
ā a.n. itās not a slow-burn, i lied lmao. decided that after editing, i swear iām too impatient for a slow-burn. thatās an introduction yet, small. planning about three parts of this, so with this one itāll be 4 in total. hope you enjoy!!
