#cod fics

CHAPTER ONE: I AM SOME

You step in the elevator to leave, feeling the upward pull and blink - suddenly it’s a new day. You’re in different clothes and the elevator is going down.

Every day starts like this. The end and the beginning are blurred together. You step into the lift and halfway up you inhale, hairline fracture splitting open and engulfing you - and you are coming back down again. Time has passed and you haven’t lived it.

You live in this office, aware that there is a version of you that lives upstairs, outside, in the beyond. You don’t know this other version of yourself, you don’t know what happens in all those hours in between your existence. There is only Here and the Work that you do.

The doors part and you step into the pristine white hallway, smooth green carpet. Muscle memory drags you forward, making the turns until you reach the office space that you live in.

Four cubicles sit in the middle, one of your coworkers already sat, tapping away at his keyboard. You murmur a good morning and get one in return before you sit down, switching your monitor on.

You don’t know what the codes mean that you look at everyday, but you know how to sort them the same way that you know how to walk and talk and breathe. There isn’t anything for you to work on beyond this, although you haven’t been here that long. You kept track of the days in the beginning, little lines on your sticky pad before you stopped. One of your colleagues has been here for years and your little lines don’t change your fate.

The rest of you coworkers filter in and you settle in to work, the room filled with the gentle sounds of keyboard clicking and the roll of the mouse. Coded words are in front of you and you didn’t know what they meant when you first started, and you don’t know now, but you’re able to sort them somehow. Your mind goes soft and malleable and the numbers feel different until you can categorise them. Not as good as your colleagues can, but not bad at all. The Work is Important, and you understand it when you look at your screen, even if you start to forget when you look away.

Every day is like this. Every day, one of your coworkers will get up for some coffee and tut over the jug. All of the cups are the same, and you will always choose the one with the chip on the handle. Marked, just for you.

Every day is the same. The cool fabric of your silk blouse against the line of your spine, smooth as it rasps against your skin. You don’t move more than you need to, always so still if it weren’t for the movement of your hands. A fluttering butterfly over your keyboard.

Then, almost every afternoon before lunch, the same -

-

“Can I speak to you?” Mr Price asks, his hands on his hips. You hesitate, immobile for a second and his eyes tighten.

“Yes, of course,” you rush to say, switching off your monitor and standing. No one looks at you as you follow Mr Price out of the room, your heels clicking on the floor.

White walls give way to more white walls as you walk along. Each turn is identical but familiar, dread building as you get closer and closer to that sudden black door at the end.

Mr Price is silent, and you watch the line of his back beneath his white shirt. There will be a blazer in his office, but you’ve never seen him wearing it.

There’s a lot that you don’t know about Mr Price. He’s your manager, and you know that when he rolls up his sleeves, you’ll see coarse hair that runs down his forearms. You know how he clears his throat when he’s impatient and how to distinguish between his polite smile and his annoyed smile when he speaks to your coworkers.

At least you know what your colleagues like and dislike. You know what disappoints Mr Price, but you don’t know what would make him pleased.

He is different from you and your coworkers in some untouchable way. You feel like a trapped bug in a glass, but he’s the one who made you and the glass and the countertop beneath you. He feels like something more than you are, which may be why you make yourself follow him so neatly. Feet echoing his steps, in unison.

He opens the door to his office and you filter in after him, hand trembling around the door handle as you close it.

He sits behind his desk, and blinks up at you, hovering near the door. That trapped bug again, smacking itself against the glass over and over again - fruitless escape. You understand the feeling even though you’ve never seen a bug and don’t know how you know what that is.

“I have some files that I need to sort through this morning, if you’d be able to help me out?” he tells you. You can only see the back of his monitor, the gap in hard plastic, the faint glow of the heart of a machine. It flickers, disappears and is back again.

“Of course, sir,” you nod, eager to please. You step toward the filing cabinet, so close to the door. Solace in increments, counted in the steps it would take you to leave.

“It’s the digital files,” his voice drawls behind you and you pause. Pivot. Feet drag against the carpet but you know better than to take too long to turn around and approach him.

The door may as well be a mile away. You hover next to his desk and blink, eyelashes stuck and peeled apart as you look at his computer. The empty home screens looks back at you, pixels wavering before solidifying. No files open.

He reaches up, slides a hand around the curve of your hip. His hand is a hot brand, you can hear the rasp of his palm against the cotton of your skirt. You are clay, formed into a shape in his hands, cold until you are warmed.

You stare at his computer, the screen blank. You remember you had reached for the mouse once and he’d clucked his tongue, sharp and annoyed. Displeasure is like a ripple effect, dragging you under.

You know better now.

You take a steadying breath and lower yourself on your knees. Squeeze in between his spread thighs and his desk.

You’ve never seen a body of water, but you know how to drown.

-

Your coworkers are no solace, whenever Mr Price comes for you. Their heads are lowered in supplication when he requests you in his office. You are the sacrifice for peace in the workplace.

You don’t blame them. You make it so easy for everyone. You stand and leave at Mr Price’s request and then you return and go out of your way to make sure that no one thinks that you have any resentment for their inaction.

You wonder how long you will be here. You used to step into the lift and dream of the nothingness in that split second where you become someone else. But every morning you are alive again, always awake. One of your colleagues fell asleep by accident at his desk and is reprimanded, but you cannot get the idea out of your head.

You crave the unconsciousness, the thought of being away from here and experiencing something like a dream is like a fever that takes hold of you.

You don’t say anything about it. Not that you’re expressly forbidden from discussing how you wish you weren’t here, but it’s cruel. The only thing that you always know is that you are down here, and the dream of being upstairs is like a hangnail that you keep pulling on until it rips and exposes your ugly desire for a life that you used to live but have forgotten.

-

There’s one day that Mr Price doesn’t call on you at all. The clock ticks closer and closer to 5 and you watch the door behind you, nervous. Like you’ve done something wrong.

You finally get up to leave and he still doesn’t show. You stand in the hallway, steps hesitant. Trail all the way to the elevator and wait, like he’ll jump out. The test failed, you know that you should’ve waited. You should’ve volunteered to go through to his office, just as you’ve been trained.

You take a step towards the elevator. Nothing.

You step inside and press the button to go up, your hand shaking. The doors close in slow motion, but no one jumps out, no one confronts you.

You exhale, feel the familiar pull as your head gets rocked back and you know you’re gone but you never left and the elevator is coming back down. A new day, a new set of clothes.

You inhale, and the lift ricochets to a stop. The doors part and Mr Price is standing there.

There’s a strained line between his brows, although his tone is even when he greets you good morning. He turns and you follow without him asking you to, the line of his shoulder lessening but only just.

Straight line and then a right - you reach his office and he steps inside, and you follow, closing the door behind you.

He clearly doesn’t have time for you to linger by his door because he’s still standing when you turn around and you jump before you catch yourself.

He blinks at you and you imagine this must be what wild animals look like - men in suits but with sharp teeth and the sound of his spit as his mouth parts. “Go to the desk and pull your skirt up,” he tells you, voice strained.

Your hands shake and you chance a glance at the door, see his hand on the handle. The sight of his knuckles piercing through his skin as his grip tightens under your gaze. Squeak of metal and you turn.

Your knees knock but you’re more afraid of what will happen if you don’t hurry. You’d worn trousers when you first started working here, you remember. Not for months though, now it’s always skirts and dresses, dainty heels that pinch your feet.

Hemlines are easy to pull up, so you do and place your hands flat on his desk.

Mr Price comes around and you jump when he touches you, his hand rough as it curves around your hip and the flesh of your backside. Usually he sits for a moment, watches you undress. This time he doesn’t pull his hand away, though the other is working his belt, you can help the clink of the metal.

There is something impatient in the press of his fingers, harsh as they slide down towards your belly.

Nothing built up about the glide of his cock through your folds, heat against your back as he leans over to grab the lube off of the corner of his desk.

You can hear the click of the bottle cap, then the wet schlicking sound as he wraps it around his cock. The press of the head against you, the heat of the back of his palm as he twists it before bringing it back down.

He’s never actually had sex with you. It feels like a line that you wobble on, an invisible barrier. The head of cock brushes your clit and you feel your thighs tense as he groans, his hand pulled up to catch on your hole before he pulls back again.

There’s a heat in your belly, tense and cross, made worse by the lewd sound of him beating himself off with you on display like this. You’re ashamed but you also want him to grind against you for longer than a few beats, anything to kindle enough heat that you could get off on it.

Later, approaching the elevator, you’ll be irritated by the injustice in it. How he’s allowed to get off while you sit, bent over and wet and nothing being done about it.

In the moment, your face hot, you listen to him groan and then feel him come, wet strips on your cunt and over your thighs.

He presses against your hole again, just enough that you can feel it gather there. A pretty sight if his appreciative sigh is any indication when he pulls back.

You wait, trembling as he stands behind you, his hands on your backside, framing his masterpiece. His hands are cool, you’re burning up. The memory of a memory of lying down when you’re ill before it’s gone and you’re left on your own again, shaking as you still support your weight on your legs.

Mr Price whistles and you flinch, making him chuckle as he pats your arse fondly. “You can head back to your desk now,” he tells you, offering you a tissue. There’s a sardonic look in his eye when you snatch it from his grasp and turn to walk away, trying to find some level of dignity.

You wipe your thighs down in the bathroom, shivering as you pat around your cunt.

You could get yourself off, quick and efficient, here where there are no eyes on you. It feels like giving something up so you come out of the stall and scrub your hands in the sink instead.

Back at your desk for the rest of the day, irritable and on edge. There is a bright bulb in your computer and it blinks at you, knowing everything about you, even things that you don’t know yourself.

In the lift, a second before you feel the pressure built and crack your skull in half, you wonder why Mr Price won’t just fuck you the way he seems to want to.

Then you’re cracked back into place, the elevator dragging you down. You wince as you step out of the lift, an ache between your legs that embarrasses you.

You sit on a cushion all day and Mr Price doesn’t summon you into his office again, although you can feel his attention on you as he checks in with another one of your colleagues.

There are incomprehensible numbers on a screen but you feel his eyes on the side of your head and they click into place. The roll of your mouse beneath your palm, numbers feeding into themselves like a snake that you’ve never seen.

He doesn’t call you into his office that day and you get more work done than ever even as a headache throbs in your temple. Rhythmic, like the ticking of the clock on your wall.

-

Today, you feel tired. Your eyes itch as soon as you step out of the lift. You must not have slept well last night and you grit your teeth at the spike of annoyance that you feel as you must deal with the consequences of that.

The bright overhead lighting digs into your retinas until they burn. You yawn enough to make your eyes water, coding in front of you blurring and becoming nonsensical. You blink, and imagine that you have slept before you open them again. An addictive thought that makes you you blink more than usual just to chase the feeling.

One of your coworkers leaves a mug of coffee on your desk for you, and then pats you on the shoulder when you almost cry when you thank them.

You’re sitting in the breakroom, laughing at something someone has said when Mr Price arrives and you’re beckoned away.

The room goes silent, and you leave your mug of coffee to get cold as you follow him out of the room.

“How are you today?” Mr Price asks in the hallway, walking beside you for once. It startles you, your hands flitting nervously before you settle them down. His head is tilted down toward you, eyes still as he waits.

“Fine, sir,” you say, wilting when he raises an eyebrow. You turn your head back to your shoes, the slow steps as they sink into the thin carpet. “A little tired, but nothing that some caffeine won’t help.” A weak laugh that he only hums in return at.

He steps into his office and you close the door behind you. He settles into his chair, his arm against his desk and he rests his temple against his fist. You feel more watched by him than when anyone else looks at you, as if he was seeing more than anyone else does. Standing, fully clothed, his gaze alone strips you naked and vulnerable.

You shuffle uncertainly and you see his pupil flex. “Do you have somewhere to be?” he asks, lifting his head to fold his arms and regard you straight on.

“No, sir - unless you mean me to be,” you reply, all in one breath. You hate yourself for being so appeasing but you see the breath that gusts out of him, his eyes briefly closing. A horrible thrill in you at the sight - you are good at pleasing him even as it makes you sick. Perhaps because it makes you feel sick - you’ve never felt a desire that hasn’t also made you feel warped and distorted.

He opens them again, and you’re caught in his line of sight again. “Come here,” he says and you step toward him, lightly stepping around his desk.

He swivels his chair, his legs spread as he looks up at you. There’s a bulge between his legs, caught in the fine line of his trousers, but you don’t look down at it. He sits up and grasps your hips, tugging you forward to stand between his thighs. Even sitting, he feels so much bigger than you, ridiculously broad in his leather chair.

Your hands catch yourself on his shoulders before you pull them back with a quick apology. He doesn’t acknowledge it, staring at his hands as he rounds the curve of your hips. You can hear the rustle of fabric as he smoothes his hands up from your hips, to your waist and up to the curve of your breasts.

He slides them back down, looking up at you. “Take your shirt off,” he tells you, and your hands are instinctive, immediately coming up to unbutton your blouse and tug it off of your shoulders.

You place it on his desk and he groans at the sight of your bra. You look down and you can see it, a dark green to match your shirt, lacy with a jewel in the middle.

He slides his hands back up, rough against your bare skin and you shiver. He cups your tits in his hands. A terrible image - your delicate bra and his hairy hand, and the mean way that he squeezes until you squeak.

He tugs one of the cups down so he can swirl his thumb around your nipple. You squeeze your thighs together, hands flexing as you resist the urge to catch his wrist.

“You’re killing me,” he murmurs, and you’re not certain that he’s speaking to you. You tremble, uncertain if you should say anything.

He leans forward and sucks your nipple into his mouth and you squeak, clenching your fists hard to prevent any further sound. The warm circle of his mouth, the heat of his tongue. You think of your own mouth, soft and wet when he requests it. This is hard, the bristles of his beard scratching your breast and leaving you feeling prickled and raised.

He pulls back and thumbs over where he has left your nipple wet in the cold air. You stay quiet, even when he gives you a parting pinch that makes you exhale sharply. “That will be all,” he says, leaning back in his seat.

You fix your bra and pull your shirt back in and leave, hot in the face and humiliated.

You force yourself to focus for the rest of the day, even though you can feel his attention on you, as physical as a hand around the back of your neck. You turn around to check but there are only white walls and green carpet, clean cut and separate.

-

You don’t know how Mr Price feels about you. You suspect that he must hate you, his face fierce at times when he’s above you.

Then there are times like now, with your hands wrapped gently in gauze with his hands, his head lowered as he tightens the end and tucks it away.

There are medics on this floor, you remember when someone twisted their ankle and they appeared. As if they had been pulled out of the wall, uniform given flesh, sprung into action.

When you cut your hand on the edge of the printer - a loose piece of plastic that had jutted out of the side and sharpened into a point - no one had been allowed to make the call for a medic.

Mr Price brought you to his office, and you sat in the chairs across from his desk. He sat on one himself, something that you’ve never seen before. He’s still bigger than you, but less formidable than he is behind his desk.

“I don’t need to bother you, I can get a medic,” you say now, and quieten down when he turns his hot gaze to you.

Satisfied that you’re silent again, he lowers his head back down to your hand. “You should be more careful,” he tells you, voice low with an order. You swallow and nod. He doesn’t smile, his face still severe as he looks back down at your hand.

He smooths his fingers over the bandage, making sure it’s firm and won’t slip. You watch the side of his face. The harsh line of his nose, the bristle of his moustache, the soft sweep of his eyelashes - perhaps the only soft thing about him.

You’re not allowed to touch him as he hasn’t requested you to, so you reach up and smooth a finger over your own eyelashes. They’re coated in mascara, but they’re just as delicate.

“Be more careful, otherwise I’ll write you up for recklessness,” he tells you, pulling his hand back and taking the warmth with him.

“Yes, sir,” you murmur and he regards you for a moment, dark eyes squinting before he dismisses you with a nod.

You stand up and walk back to your office on shaky legs.

A couple of your coworkers fuss over you before you reassure them and you all sit back down and get back to work.

There’s mascara staining your fingers, but you rub your fingers together and rub it away. Thinned out until it’s gone, like it never happened.

-

The next day, the bandage is gone. The only proof of the incident is an angry red line across the side of your palm.

Mr Price has you come into his office and he inspects the cut himself. It’s not even sore anymore, but he makes you tuck your hands behind your back while you sit under his desk. Your wrists flex when he slides his cock into your mouth, but you keep still and let him slide all the way back into your throat.

He cups his hand around the back of your head so you don’t pull back and catch it against his desk. But mostly so he can push you down further, eyes watery when he asks you to look up at him.

He comes with a mean throb, but he’s kind enough to let you catch your breath with your head leaning against his thigh, his prick against your cheek, wet with spit.

Your hands are numb when you stand up, but you keep them curled into your chest, hidden from sight. There’s no wound for him to poke and prod at, but you feel the harsh line of it anyway, worse now than when you first stepped into his office.

His eyes glint with knowing but he blinks and they’re flat again before he dismisses you.

You turn and leave, head to the bathroom and stare at yourself in the mirror. You look placid, polite. You wonder if you’ve ever been comforted when you cry in your other life. You want to smash the mirror up and carve words into your skin. Something crude, unlike you, if you know who you are.

You can imagine it, the same bleeding cut that you already have, but again and again until it spells out a message for yourself. GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

Your fingers twitch with the itch to write it, your skin is so smooth and perfect. You could rip it open, expose the red rot beneath it.

You smile instead and you look like someone else - insipid, sweet, ditzy.

You go back to your desk and your nails are sharp as they click on the keyboard. No one says anything but no one meets your eye either. Your reflection in the rounded computer screen, half covered in code. Your eyes are red and your lips are stretched, teeth wet and sharp. Someone new.

-

You step into the elevator only to step out of it. There’s something in your pocket but you don’t check, because there has never been anything in your pocket.

Mr Price greets you at the doors when they open and you make yourself smile at him.

You walk along behind him, the straight line and then the turn into his office.

John has always had this desire—this awful, instinctual drive in the back of his head to knock someone up. Get them fat, swollen with his child. His. 

And maybe that's the crux of it. Possession. To have something of the most rooted kind. To irrevocably change someone—their anatomy, their body, the chemistry in their brain, their status in life from them (single no dependents) to mother (mother of his child), their very atoms—and create life from the combined parts. 

It's this almost fantastical beast, this unreachable dream for him. 

It's his Shangri-la. His castle in Spain. 

He's not under any disillusionment that this idea of fatherhood, of parenthood, is slightly skewed. That most men who want children don't feel this overwhelmingly greedy desire to fundamentally alter someone in such an irreversible way. It's not quite ownership, but it's the same ilk. A bastardised, unwanted child of it. 

And it's not just this idea of claimation—to forever be the father of their child, even if neither of them stays together; a piece of him will always be there, parasitic, no matter what—but something deeper. Something a bit less—egregious. 

This is, and always has been, about yearning. 

John's the type of man to lock his jaws around what's his, preferring instead to ruin things, puncture it full of holes, and litter it with scars, rather than to let it go. 

Marriage, he finds, is breakable. Divorce, separation. He's always on his worst behaviour in the initial stages of dating, so it's never something he has to entertain since no one ever sticks around long enough for it to be on the table, much less the menu, but the idea of it—of signing papers, of hashing out the split, of being known as ex-husband—leaves a bitter tang between his teeth. It won't do. He needs permanence. Perpetuity. 

Nothing says forever quite like a child, does it? 

And sure—he’s aware that countermeasures exist: custody orders, sole custody, shared; allotted visitations; divisional lines in this new age that keep the parents from ever interacting—but while you can get divorced, you can't unmake a child, can you?

The child would never write him out, either. 

Where deadbeats exist, it's important to note that their counterparts do, too. The ones like him who will gouge their eyes out of their skulls before they ever let what happened to them growing up trickle down and impact their child, polluting the pool. 

Simply put: John Price knows he'd be the best dad there is because he's stubborn that way. 

It helps, he supposes, that he really only has so much love to give out to the world, and greedily, he stashed the entirety of it away in a box to give to his would-be wife and their child. An overwhelming deluge that promises happiness should it ever be unlocked. Pandora's box, perhaps—down to the very essence because if John Price were to ever love someone, then it's probably in their best interest to run from it, this gaping, needy chasm. 

Not that it would ever be a possibility, of course—he’s much too good at compartmentalisation, in taking out his anger, his viciousness, on the ugly world he drenches himself in, the one his hands have a tangible cause and effect principle in place that will forever feed that starving beast inside of him.

Ergo—he’s a staunch supporter of the theory: happy wife, happy life. Though where those men think in a box stuffed full of emotional intimacy, flowers, chocolate, maintaining love, all-consuming and enduring, he takes it to extremes that would have them cowering a little bit. Maybe a lot.  

But that's fine. He only has to make sure his family is happy. No one else matters, save a select few who have a seat at his table during Sunday dinners. 

The rest, though? Spare parts. 

(The ice-cold resolve in those two words is apodictic, brass bound, and he's sure if his higher-ups knew about it, well—

His chest candy would be a hole in the ground. Put the rabid dog down before it has a chance to bite.)

But that all-consuming, devouring, obsessive love he has to give, that begs to be let free, is the reason why it's so tightly leashed. Locked up in a box. Untouchable. Inaccessible. 

It's why he isn't married. 

Ghost once asked him why the women he dated were older. Much older. Menopausal (always). And he'd said something to the effect of it being his type. Older women who wouldn't cower away from the acrid burn of him, who wouldn't hurt their delicate little hands on his gritty surface. 

But the real reason is because he knows better. 

He's a starving dog, and it's just bad form to dangle a piece of meat in front of it. Especially when the hand holding it is his own. 

Don't bite the hand that feeds you, and all. 

(The keen look in Ghost's eyes told him that, perhaps, the man already knew the reason when he asked, and was just satiating himself with kinship—the dark, awful look on Simon's ugly mug after the dredging the underbelly of Price’s rotten, mouldering mudfloor of things unsaid spoke volumes. 

They'd both nodded. Content, then. And promptly ordered a shot of whisky to drown the salivation, the hunger, from clogging their throats. Killing the urge to bite.

A pair of packless, stray dogs.)

But then he found you, and all his careful planning, all his distance, blew up in his face. 

It's always been on his mind since then. Lingering in his periphery—this fevered, tantalising vision of you, round and swollen with his child. 

It's unattainable, of course. A fantasy. 

Though, this—you throwing up in the washroom of his penthouse, undoubtedly knocked up by his machinations—is probably because he kept that desire too close to where he hides his questionable mortality, the one that allows him to throw innocent people to their deaths, and send mothers and fathers to an early grave just so he can rip his fists apart on their bastard offspring in his own brand of catharsis that always bites back when they grow up, hankering for revenge. 

He's always been good at snatching dreams out of the air, clenching them tight in his fists. Taming chimerical wants, whims, until they were docile, domesticated. Making realities out of fiction. 

And really—he’s just not a good man.

He thought you'd have known this by now.

He remembers the first time he growled the words into your ear as he came, your cunt clenching around him like a vice. Desperate for it, he teased after, fingers fucking into your sloppy, leaking hole. Pushing his spend back into you. Half-drunk on the taste of you still clinging to his beard, but mostly just mesmerised by the sight of you—pretty pussy all ruined, swollen from the vicious, hateful pounding he gave it, and dipping with his cum like a faucet. 

(It pissed him off—still does, really—when you waste it like this.)

Gonna fill you up, he snarled, low and wrecked. Gonna make it take—

It was a fantasy. Still is. But the way it took root in the garden of your bedroom, like it belonged—native flora, he thinks, a touch mad with it—had something ugly, oil slick, rearing up from that untouchable place in his head. 

He could really blame you for it—and does. The way your ankles locked tight around his thighs, hands reaching, grabbing at his waist, clawing at his asscheeks to press him in deeper, deeper still, as he came inside of you, cock lodged right against your plug, had that untameable beast cocking its head in consideration after you danced too close to it, waking it from his long, restful slumber. 

You wanted it. Ached for it. He could feel it in the way your walls tightened around him, practically starving for it. Your pretty, glossy eyes rolling back into your head. Drool running down your chin. A litany of pleas spilled from your kiss-bruised lips, begging him for it. Please, John. Please. Please—

Who was he to deny you? 

Even if you made a big, flustered show of waving it off—not something I've ever imagined for myself, you know? and–and your lifestyle, what you do—is something like that even possible for us?—he saw how it curled around your shoulders, dipping its silver tongue into your ear. Germinating. 

He let it. Encouraged it. 

“Something to talk about later,” he indulged, reaching over for a cigar just to smother the urge to breed you stupid. To tie you to his bedposts and keep you full until your belly was swelling with more than just the absurd volume of his seed he pumped inside of you. 

And, oh—

The uneasy smile on your face reeked of disappointment. 

Fuck. Fuck—

John went to the washroom after that, heart pounding out of his chest, and jabbed the lit end of his cigar into his thigh to kill the fever in his veins. To rewrite the desperate, ugly howling in his head with pain instead. 

It worked. Works—

Until you came to him, all watery-eyed and worried, and told him to please, please stop falling asleep with a lit cigar because you think you might just go mad if you lost him to a cigarette fire. And doesn't he see how silly it is, these burns look so bad, John, and I worry—

His teeth ached. He smiled, but it felt like a grimace. A dog holding back the instinct to bare its teeth. 

“Sure, love,” he'd said, and started taking out his anger on your cunt instead, fucking you deep, and stupid. Getting you all cockdrunk, and hungry for the dream that spoiled so badly in the back of his head, he's sure a proper man would call it a nightmare. “Anything you want.”

(Brassbound. Apodictic. You know that, he knows you know that, so imagine his surprise when you come to him, all soft and tender, and ask him to pick up your birth control as if he hadn't spent the better part of two years grumbling every fucking time you took it and wasn't on the verge of tossing the damn bottle out the window, and fucking you until it took—

But—you do know that, don't you? 

Well, then. Whatever his lady wants, right? Right.)

“Can you stop by the pharmacy on your way home tonight?”

He hums, fiddling with the belt of his slacks in front of the mirror. “Sure, love. You feelin’ sick?” 

“No,” you murmur, sliding behind him on your way to the washroom, wearing nothing but a towel tucked under your arms. “I need my refill. For birth control.” 

His hands still. A gnarled, rotted tendril curls over the edge of the cesspool, murky, ink black water splashing all over the place. “Oh, yeah? Still taking that, hm?”

You fluster. Hands waving, chock full of nervous, emotive energy you can't seem to shake off. “Well—yes. I mean, obviously.”

And he'd leave it there, let the spillage dry on the hot pavement, if you hadn't glanced back at him, all damp keenness, slightly skittish, and asked, feather-soft and utterly fragile, “right?” 

Right? A question, he notes. Not a statement. 

He licks his teeth. Tastes something rancid in the gaps. 

“Mm. I suppose so.” He leaves it vague, but drenches it in the heavy weight of his disappointment. Anchors dragging it down. You flit around the space like a house-locked bird, slamming into the walls and ceiling as you try—blind and panicked—to find an escape. Any escape. 

He finds the whole thing utterly charming. Especially when you realise he pitched himself in front of the only exit, thick, heavy hands curled around his belt, cock outlined against his slacks, already thickened, drooling in his pants. 

There's gasp—wet, and sharp—as you take him in. The liquid of his eyes as his want bleeds out of his skull. The flush on his cheeks, the twitch of his cock at the mere mention of you not taking your silly little pills. 

John lets it sit for a moment, taking in greedy lungfuls of your unease as you glance everywhere but at him, as if looking in his direction, breathing in this toxic miasma will give you a contact high. Infectious. Gnarled. 

The little seed that started germinating blooms. 

He fights back the urge to grin, all teeth. Madness staining them black. 

“It's—it’s on—” and fuck, he's never seen you so unsure before, this nervous. You handle him like a wrangler, wrassling his brutish dominance until it's putty in your hands, splitting his head into pieces and galvanising the madness inside until it's scripture for you to peek at whenever you need guidance, insight into him, his essence, his being. 

Your dyadic has always been built on permeance. 

John doesn't think there's a single person alive who understands him as much as you do. The only person who seems content to gorge yourself on his rotted marrow like it was a delicacy. 

Seeing you like this rents his resolve in two. 

“It's the pharmacy near the, uh, the school. The kindergarten.” 

He chokes on a groan, and thinks he tears something in his throat with the strain of keeping it down. There's blood, ash, in the back of his throat.

“Alright, love. I'll pick it up.” 

You smell it, and shiver. 

It's giving meat to a starving dog, and saying, dog, don't take a bite. 

And so, of course he does. 

John picks up your prescription, tossing it in the passenger seat like it personally offended him. And it has. Does. It's what's standing in the way between what he wants, what he craves, and there's a distinct thrum of irritation welling inside of him. One that started when he had to bark out your name at the counter earlier, and the pharmacist looked at him, and calmly, kindly, explained what it was he was picking up. 

Make sure she takes them once a day. Preferably at the same time. This brand of oral contraceptive can be taken with or without food—

Fuck off, he thought—thinks, even now, glowering into the tinted window of the pharmacy. 

He grips the steering wheel tight until his scarred knuckles bleach white under the strain, and sits in the parking lot, staring, unseeingly, at the shops. Pensive. Thoughtful. It gnarls over his expression until he's the picture of that grizzly-like intensity you often accuse him of. All furrowed brows and a pinched, angry twist to his lips. 

There's a series of complex equations running laps in his head. He's no stranger to this process, needing to make life or death decisions in less time it takes someone to snap their fingers, or tentatively stammer out his title. 

This one is more linear than the rest. One plus one, so to speak. But the weight of it is profound. Heavier, even, than deciding between the success of his mission and the life of an innocent bystander. 

(But he thinks he's just selfish like that.)

In his head, he debates the ethics of replacing all of these silly little tablets that stand in his way with sugar pills. 

It would be the quickest path to the end, but the risk-reward ratio ebbs and flows the more he considers things without the miasmic influence of that abomination throwing itself at the walls of its enclosure, howling in an endless cacophony of do it, do itdoit—

A better man wouldn't even have such a temptation. He supposes that's what you deserve, but he already had this particular crisis a few months after he met you, and realised that the things he wanted to do to you would undoubtedly put him on a list. Slapped so hard with a restraining order, his ears would still be buzzing. 

That something about you made his jowls twinge, and his teeth ache, and no amount of stay away from her, Price; she deserves better than you was going to keep his dirty hands from curling around your throat, leaving soot-stains on your skin in the shape of his fingerprints. Brandishing ownership in burst blood vessels; a pretty collar for you to wear because as much as you like to pretend otherwise—

You're a dog just like him. 

In any case, he's the best choice for you. The only one who'd burn the world just to keep you warm, and that's what you really need. Protection. 

And fuck—you toy with that particular urge that has always been etched in fine lines within the walls of bones; dipping your fingers into it, and spreading it over the apples of your cheek. Everything about you prickles along his hindbrain. Renders him from a modern man with modern ideals to an animal who can only speak in growls, snarls; pure primalism, all instinct. 

You're made for each other down to the bone. He's sure he could split your head apart and find that your cranial sutures are perfectly mirrored. Made in the same image: you were grown from his missing rib, and he always meant to be cradled in the brackets of your thighs. 

So, crisis of worthiness aside—because there are none, not anymore—he plots. Plans. Schemes. But his machinations keep catching on the soft fibrils of your wants. 

John doesn't know what he'd do if you changed your mind. 

(Or, rather, he does but that's another madness to unravel with his personal therapist.)

It's with this—the slight brandishing of his uncertainty in your certainty—that he gives up the idea, pocketing it for a later date, and drives home, back to you. 

He doesn't toss the bag on the counter, but sets it up perfectly, placing it as close to the edge where the bin sits under it. All it would take is a breath of wind for it to fall into the trash. 

That doesn't happen, though. You stare at the white, crinkled package for a moment as he sips on his tea, quietly contemplative. With your expression hidden from him, he has no idea what might be going through that pretty head of yours. Disappointment, he can only hope. And then you're reaching for it, fingers gripping the bag tightly in your fist. He hears the paper crumble. It sparks something inside his chest. A bloom of hope that you might just throw it out. Toss it in the bin—

You turn to him instead, knuckles white. 

“Thanks,” you say, and the matter is dropped. 

He goes to tuck that want back where it escaped, leaving slick trails of putrefying rot behind, but—

John peeks in the vanity later that evening, but where he expects to see the little rectangular package sitting in its usual spot between his aftershave and the mouthwash, he finds nothing. Just an empty spot on the ledge, spotlit by the lack of dust. A clean square of white paint, undisturbed. 

His jaw twinges. He wonders if you're hiding it from him, keeping it safe from his machinations, but then he finds it shoved in the drawer with his shaving kit, and the box of condoms he bought when you'd first started dating (for show, naturally—John had no intentions of using them and learned persuasion was your Achilles heel; that and you tended to get a little glossy-eyed whenever he growled filth in your ear, the smell of your cunt heavy on his breath). 

The package is crinkled like you squeezed it tight in your little fist before you tossed it in. 

You're always meticulous in the way you put things in their places. Even the junk drawer is organised, all neat. 

This speaks volumes, but he's not quite sure what it says. They are still here, though. Accessible. One is missing from the pack. It dampens his mood. 

He picks up his toothbrush, and runs through those calculations again to see how he can convince you to skip the one you're meant to take tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, and the next—

He stays awake as you sleep beside him, looking into how many days you can miss before your brand of birth control stops being effective. 

Seven pills in a row. 

He files it away, lost in thought. 

The next morning, he leaves his phone open on the bedside table with the article pulled up. He kisses you awake before he leaves to shower, humming something soft under his breath. 

When he returns, he finds you sitting up in bed with your knees drawn to your chest. There's something pensive about the look on your face. Paper soft, as though it would all blow away at a mere whisper. 

You regard him almost cooly but something raw, fractured splits over the ravine. A waterfall of midnight black sludge rains down. 

(He wonders if it tastes of the same rot, the same madness, as the basin of the untouched recesses of his head—)

“I'm working late tonight,” you murmur after a measured beat, and he can't place your tone. “Maybe we can watch a movie when I get home.” 

John nods, and your eyes drop, scaling down his bare, broad chest as he breathes in the flint staining the air. Your gaze is white-hot when it bludgeons into him, feverish. 

It doesn't take much beckoning at all to have him crawling toward you, towel ripped from his hips and thrown somewhere in the aether. 

As he steals the madness from your tongue, his eyes flicker to the phone still sitting on the table. It looks perfectly untouched. The screen is off. 

That, too, he files away. 

John comes to the succinct conclusion that the only means he has in his arsenal to get what he wants—legally, and somewhat morally, anyway—is persuasion. 

There's no recourse if he can water that burgeoning plant inside of you, make it seem like this is something you want, too. A family. With him. 

(Only him.)

He knows that you see things quite similarly to him. Wherein love is desire. Desire is hunger. And there's nothing more profound to you than to eat the person you love alive. Consumption of every part—the good, the beautiful, the bad, the ugly, and the rotted: skin, fat, muscles, blood, and bones. All of it. 

So, even if somewhere down the road you think you hate him for this, it'll be fine. He'll just consume that, too. 

John Price is a tenacious man. Stubborn. 

(Bullish, he hears around the barracks. Fuckin’ stubborn prick, too.)

It helps that this line of work is perfectly suited for such a peremptory drive to the finish line, no matter the cost. Utilitarian to a fault, despite his rather recalcitrant disposition. It's how he gets his way more often than not. Brutish dominance. Loutish suppression. 

But a near reckless, suicidal loyalty that attracts the sort of beasts this line of work needs. 

But that's work, not this. Not trying to convince you, his sugar-sweet (and viciously diabolical) lover, to bear the burden of giving him a family because society says it's uncouth (and illegal, morally reprehensible, villainous) for him to chain you to his bed to keep the darker parts of himself that want to rip into anyone who had the pleasure—pleasure that no longer belongs to them—of looking at you. 

That's all for him. 

(Nasty old bastard.) 

And, of course, because he's ready. Everything clicks. Locks into place. There's no one else out there for him. 

Really, though—it's your fault for prodding that beast in the first place. For letting inside your house, your bed. For thinking it could be tamed. And so. You should accept responsibility for it. 

(Nasty, nasty—)

But just as much as you know him, he knows you. You'll give him a litany of reasons why this shouldn't happen, and none of them will be because this isn't what you want. It'll be filled with reasons why you think he doesn't. 

And that simply won't do. 

So, he plots. Plans. 

The thing is. No one ever taught him how to hold things in his hands without crushing it. 

He doesn't think he can be delicate. Gentle. There's no way to gently nudge you into this. No. 

He'll convince you to yield the same way a tsunami convinces a house to move out of the way. 

Buried to the hilt in your cunt, he growls gospels into your ear about this beautiful Shangri-la, this sprawling castle he has in Spain until you're clenching down around him tight, conditioning your body to come at the thought of swelling with his child. About letting his seed take root, letting him knock you up. 

It's a crass image that he spits into your head—fuck you until it takes, love; breed this pretty cunt every day until you're fat and swollen—serves as the positive reinforcement to his classical conditioning. He'll turn you into one of Pavlov's mutts, salivating at the sound of him groaning into your ear as he fills your pussy up to the brim. He'll reshape you, change your wants until you only come around his cock when he's spitting his release against the plug of your womb. 

And when you make to get up, letting all his spend slip from your sloppy cunt to take your pill, he pulls you closer under the guise of wanting to feel your body on his, murmuring diabolical compromises he has no intention of letting you see through. 

“Later,” he rasps, pulling you closer. His mouth slots across your temple. “Just take it later, sweetheart. Later.”

“But—”

“It’ll be fine.” 

And, as if you'd been waiting for that reassurance, you melt into his hands, wet putty. 

(you take the bloody pill later, and he adds that to his mental calendar, adjusting the maths. He supposes he’ll just have to try harder next time.)

John's desire for you is overwhelming, all-encompassing, and he schemes around his wandering hands, bullying into your messy cunt only moments before your alarm is meant to go off, reminding you to take your pill, reinforcing that irritating little wall that keeps his come from reaching your womb. 

It goes off, but he hardly hears it over the roaring in his ears, the sweet, sweet litany of moans that slip out, staining the pillow with your pleasure. He just keeps fucking you through it, growling mindlessly into your ears about how badly he wants to come inside of you. His warnings, threats, about how close he is intertwining with your desperate begging for him to come, come inside me, John is the most beautiful harmonisation he'd ever heard, and it sews itself into his marrow, polluting the ugliness inside with a new, fresh hell for him to torture himself with. That delicious pleasure-pain that drives him mad—

He fills you up, palm pressed taut to your lower belly as he spits his virile release deep into your cunt. He can feel the heavy outline of his cock against your skin, stuffed full of him, and it's this—the way he moulds your body around him, cock visible through your flesh—that makes his eyes roll back into his head. Makes the urge to fuck, to breed, to claim bludgeon into him, shattering reason, logic. He wants to change you, irrevocably. Forever. To mar you with his touch, his essence. 

“Mine,” he chokes out, ugly and raw. It's a mangled mess in his throat. A threat. “All fucking mine, aren't you, love? All mine—”

His words seem to throw you into another climax, cunt clenching greedily down around him as he softens inside of you, plugging you up. You liked that, he notes, purs. The notion brands itself across his resolve, reshaping it into something that would make anyone else recoil in fear, disgust. 

But you preen at this creature that bares its fangs at you, snaps wicked teeth against your jugular. Fingers threading through its hair, shushing it, soothing it, as you pull it back into your embrace, head tucked against your chest. You lull it into complacency with the heavy thud of your heart, your sweet, earthy scent. 

What a pair, he thinks, and clamps his hands around your wrist when you murmur something about taking your pill now. Need to take it before it gets too late, John—

He makes his move, distracts you with his mouth, his tongue. 

“Just take it after,” he murmurs into your pussy, thighs bracketing around his head. His hands pull your waist down, pressing you harder against his mouth. “Later, love. It'll be fine—”

“But, John—”

The protest dies, turns to ash, when he grunts, sealing his lips around your clit, bullying it with the rasping press of tongue until you're arching your back, riding his face. Thoughts of your silly pill are gone, swallowed by him as you gush, drenching his mouth in your slick. 

And after, when you make to get up again, he pulls you close instead, voice curling around you like smoke when he tells you to take it after. 

“No, love. Stay in bed with me,” he peppers kisses to your cheek, your jaw, chin, sweetening his words, and folds you into the tight embrace of his arms. “Take it in the morning. It'll be fine to miss a day.”

You level him with something that shadows the ravines in your gaze with pure, unadulterated scepticism, but as he scouts the canyons, the valleys, the pretty craters that make up the composite of your eyes, he finds no discernible trace of wariness, uncertainty. The terse line in his shoulders ease. 

But while fossicking around he unearths something else. Something a bit more enigmatic, calculative, than doubt. Equivocal, slippery, it runs from him when he tries to give chase, tucking itself back into the harsh tenebrous that shades the landscape. 

He hums, wanting to ask, but you sigh in quasi-acquiescence, and burrow deeper into his embrace. 

“Fine,” you huff, but he tastes a purring sense of satisfaction in the air. “I'll take it tomorrow instead.” 

“Good girl.” The praise slips out, low and gritty, perfumed with his heavy greed. 

You shiver against him. The hitch in your throat is quiet in the bedroom, but to him, it sounds like a gunshot. 

John keeps meticulous track of the empty pill slots, and notes with a sticky, resinous sense of glee that the numbers are becoming muddled, skewed. Later becomes tomorrow, and your soft acquiesce has days skipped. Missed. 

You can't double up, you huff to him, mournfully slinking into the bed. It's nearly one in the morning. Technically, a brand new day. I absolutely have to take it tomorrow, John. Make sure you remind me—

There's something pointed in your tone. Something oil-slick. He nods, bites back a grin. 

“Sure,” he pulls you close, breathes in the sweet, loamy scent of you—sweat and sex and the lingering remnants of your perfume, your soap—and lets it stain his lungs. “I can do that.” 

You say nothing at all when he doesn't bring it up until well past midnight the next day, offering little more than an exasperated groan, and a huffy roll of your eyes, as if this was just a missed dinner with friends and not a life-changing misstep. 

(The beast purrs. He places his hand over his chest, and feels the rumble under his skin.)

“Need to be more responsible than this, John,” you say, squirming in his hold to try and rush to the washroom to take that pesky little pill. 

“Sorry, love,” he offers, and means none of it. Clings tighter to you. “Got a bit carried away today, is all.” 

“It's not your fault—” something curls out from a dark crevasse when you look at him. “I've been so—off lately, you know? Must be the new batch. Maybe I should call my doctor.” 

He stills. Body tensing, coiling. John tries to speak, but the words are ash on his tongue. He clears his throat. 

“Could stop taking it.” 

It crackles in the air. Hangs heavy like a stormcloud. 

You blink, stunned. But it's artificial, hollow. Pulled from a wicker basket where you keep all your different skins. 

“You mean—what? Stop it all together—?”

You flit in the space once more, but it's less of an injured bird searching for an escape, he realises suddenly, and more of—

A boomslang. 

One rearing up, searching for the perfect place to strike. 

Wishful thinking, though, because you're flustered and skittish once more, a small prey animal he isn't sure what he wants to do the most—sink his teeth into you, tear you into pieces, and devour you whole, or hide you away from the world. 

“I can look for something else in the meantime,” you sound shy, hesitant, and it prickles across his skin. “But we'd need to be careful, you know. Otherwise you might actually get me pregnant.”

He tries to swallow his groan. Chokes on it instead. 

“Sure, sure—” he hacks into his palm. “Of course, love. We'll be safe. I'll pull out—”

Naturally, he doesn't. Makes no effort to even try despite promising you he is. 

“Not my fault your pussy won't let go of me, love,” he grumbles, hand cupping your weeping sex in his palm. The heat of you is searing. Blistering. He thinks he could happily melt inside of it for the rest of his life, and leans down to whisper his devotion into your come-slicked folds, the bitter tang of you, of him, admixing on his tongue. An elixir he could drown in. 

You huff at him after, all glossy-eyed and sex-drunk, and tell him to please try harder, John, I'll have to get plan b tomorrow—

You don't, but the threat of it, the possibility, lingers in the back of his mind, souring his thoughts. 

Next time, and I'll have to, John, you say, featherlight, lips pressed against the head of his cock. A warning, a goddamn tease—

His voice is strained, pinched. “Of course, love,” and he guides your mouth back to his cock, letting the matter fall into pieces when you suck on the sensitive head, tongue licking, coy and kittenish, over his frenulum. 

It's only later, when watches you swallow down his come, that the beast slinks out of the shadows, pocketing the fragments. 

You're off birth control—barely any scheming words of whispered concern needed—but the idea of you taking a little pill to wipe away his efforts has him pulling back. Recalibrating his plans. 

He decides on a different route to the same end. 

Damnation at your own hand. 

John, for his credit, does begin to pull out after that—albeit, with a great deal of agonised reluctance—and instead comes all over your pretty face. 

With thick ropes of his pearlescent spend dripping down the apples of your heated cheeks, he doesn't think he's ever seen a sight more beautiful than this. 

And one with more opportunity.

Slowly, he swipes at it with his thumb and then promptly brings it down, hard, on your clit. You flinch, mewling at the overstimulation, and the threat he brings so close to your raw, unprotected sex. It's dangerous. This thin line he dances along could snap at any moment. Could rain hellfire and fury over his broad shoulders, unmake all the progress he'd steadily built up. 

He walks the precipice, anyway. He pulls his hand away, and brings two fingers up to curve over your cheeks. His thumb, stained with your slick and his come, slides across your bottom lip. 

The pout you give him—all wet-eyed lachrymose—has his spent cock twitching against his sticky thigh. “Fuck, love. Gonna send me to an early grave if you keep starin’ at me like that.” 

“You're cracked,” you slur around his thumb. In retaliation, he digs it into your tongue, and preens—full of nasty, gnarled satisfaction—when your eyes flutter, rolling into the back of your head at the taste. 

With this brief distraction, he drops his come-stained fingers to your mound, and rubs along the swollen rim of your hole. Just touching, pressing. A tease, a whisper. 

You tense. “John—” it's muffled around his thumb, and he isn't sure if it's a warning or a plea. 

He pushes the tips in, barely to the first knuckle, and just pets around your rim. 

It's a battle of wills, now. “No more than this,” he promises, and the undercurrent of his threat rents the air. Makes you bristle. 

You always loved a challenge—especially coming from him. 

“Just the tip?” You tease, spittle running down your chin. Your eyes are dark—midnight skies, ink black—and he's struck by the afterimage of himself in those pools. Made in the same image. 

He grunts, slides into the first knuckle, and scissors them apart. 

“John—” it's breathless. Your teeth spear his thumb, tight around his bone. He wants nothing more than to have you bite down hard, scar his bones with the gnawed meteors of your desire. Your desperation. “Fuck—please—”

You give in so prettily, and he barely has a moment to think about how quick it's been when you angle your hips, hand falling to grip his wrist tight as you slide down his fingers, all the way to the last knuckle. 

You clench around him like a vice. A pretty bow. He fucks you with his fingers, meeting your shallow thrusts with ones of his own, slamming viciously into your pussy as he coos adorations into your ear. 

With his other hand, he reaches down and fists himself over your bare mound, pressing the tip against your clit where it weeps prespend over your flesh. His thumb sweeps across what spills out, dragging it back down to your sopping hole, pushing it inside. 

It's probably not enough to reach your womb, to get you pregnant, but he clings to that tantalising fantasy as he drills his fingers into you until you come, breathlessly begging him to fuck you harder, to fill you up—

He isn't even fucking you with his cock, and you still beg him for it. 

John pushes the tip into your slit, fingers still buried deep inside of your throbbing pussy, and groans with the force of his release. It makes him dizzy, almost nauseous with it, filling his head with nothing but the sweet, wounded sound of your moans filling the room, and the wet squelch of his fingers pulling out of you. 

When he catches the threads of cognisance in his fingers once more, he leans back on his haunches, chest heaving, and brands the messy sight of your pussy fluttering, clenching around nothing, as his spend drips down your slit, over your hole, and pools in the sheets below. 

He's not sure if heaven exists, but he knows the sight of you, breathless and whimpering on his bed, is the closest a man like him will ever come to seeing it. 

The push-pull of this little game stretches on. 

Price likes to see just how far he toe the line before you're whimpering into the sheets, telling him don't, John, don't come inside me, I'm not anything, John—and he's ripping himself away from the tight clutch of your wet, hot cunt, and coming all over you.

The illicit tease of barely pulling out in time, and then scooping up the mess he makes on your face, your breasts, your belly, your ass, lower back, thighs, and spooning it into your pussy until it's a fixture in your bedroom ritual. 

And maybe it's the threat of it all, of playing such a dangerous game, seems to cudgel under his skin the most, ripping apart the thin veneer of that man he once pretended to be—righteous and good—shedding it off with each hiccupped gasp you make when he presses his come-slicked fingers inside of you, murmuring guttural words of affection in the shape of impish mockery (want it bad, don't you, sweet thing; so fuckin’ greedy for it, love—). 

He likes it the most when he can fuck you stupid on his fingers. Cockdrunk, and come-starved (because you are, of course; he hasn't come inside of your cunt in weeks, and doesn't miss the mournfully pitiful whines you give when he pulls out, depriving you of the pleasure of feeling him come inside you), you're too blissed out, swimming in pleasure, to think about what he's doing. 

In fact, he doesn't really give you much of a chance to think at all. 

The next few weeks are filled with him fucking you each night brutally, viciously, snarling low in your ear about how bad he wants to come in you, stuff you full, and then keep you plugged up all night with his cock that it takes, and then pulling out right before, committing the sight of your betrayed expression to memory where it'll sit like a trophy when you finally break. 

You make an appointment with your gynaecologist, and circle the date on his calendar. 

John notes it down. Tucks it away. 

And then he amps up the pressure.

John's fingers root behind your knees, pushing your thighs apart as he settles between them. His gaze drills into your bare cunt, slick and wet, and so ready for him. Eager for it. 

He'd counted the days, and knows that if there's ever the absolute worst time to have unprotected sex, to come inside of you, is now. 

Which, of course, means he has to. The clause in that is ironclad. Apodictic. 

“Bit dangerous,” he rasps, and lifts your leg up, resting your ankle on his shoulder. You fluster beneath him, panting and pretty, and fuck—he’s not pulling out of your pussy tonight at all. “Should I pull out?” 

It's a tease. A test. 

He reaches down as he says the words, gripping his cock and bringing it down against your wet heat. The bare, blunt head of his cocks slaps against your clit, and you arch, keening. Nails bite into the thick muscles of his biceps, and he leans into the sharp sting. Letting it ground him. Centre him. 

This will be your cacoëthes. 

He's been depriving you for weeks, and John knows that you're wanting for it. Desperate. The little twitches your hips give, as if begging him to fill you up, are proof enough of how much you want this. 

This. The dream he dripped into your ears, hot oil congealing over your frontal lobe; infectious and thick. You can try to chisel it off, but the pollution is already damning. Ruining. 

You want this. He wears the axiom like armour. 

And you beg for it—eyes shaded in gut wrenchingly beautiful lachrymose—and John snuffles closer, inching the weeping head of his cock into your tight, warm heat. 

The sight of splitting you open is something he never grows tired of. Something that, without fail, makes his balls ache. His chest thrum. Blood turns to ichor. To wine. He's drunk on the contrast made between you—a garish chiaroscuro of your pretty pussy, soft and sickly sweet—almost nauseatingly so—swallowing down the fat, girthy length of his cock. The thick streams of veins running along the flushed, heavy shaft against your puffy, soft folds is almost hideous. Sinful. He can't equate it to anything else except corruption. The horrific beast sullying the princess. 

And fuck—

The thought alone makes him throb. 

He's sullied you plenty, he reckons, and yet you always look so sweet. Especially now, when your rim is stretched taut around the thick of him, pussy squeezing, clenching around him in a vice, as if you weren't sure to push him out or pull him deeper. 

John decides for you. Opting instead to push your knees down to your chest, nearly brushing your ears, and follows with the bulk of his body until he feels your breath rush out of your lungs. You struggle for a moment, gasping wetly into his ear as his weight—every bearish pound of it—rests on you in the perfect mating press. Your bite into his biceps, keening prettily into his ear as he bullies the full length of his cock into you. Spears you open. Splits you apart. 

He can feel you gush around him, drenching his groin and thighs with your slick. 

Like this—chest to chest, forced to breathe in the same air, the same madness—he likes to just stare at you, taking in the heat simmering under your skin, the sweat beading along your temple, the pinch in your brow as you struggle to adjust to the sheer width of him cudgelling you open. A battering ram you're forced to make room for. 

He takes it all in, each flicker of emotion, each heaving gasp. Burns it into his memory. Lets it soften the iron around his heart. Keeps it there, nestled in the cradle of his limited love, held aloft by indelicate, bearish hands. This sweet thing. 

He can't wait to ruin it. 

If these weeks leading up to this were lovemaking, fucking, then this, this, is mating. Animalistic. Primal. He pushes in as deep as he can, until the tip kisses the ripened seal of your womb, and grinds his hips cruelly into the cradle of your thighs. 

Your nails leave bloodied indents in his flesh. A scar he'll proudly bear the mark of. A tattoo of the time when he turned you into something new. 

His balls are soaked. The sheets, too. He mocks you for it, a rasping growl lodged deep in his throat, taunting you about how fucking wet you are for him. How badly you need it. 

“Gotta plug you up, hm?” He grunts, and sets a pace that serves only to accentuate the sloppy, messy squelch of your cunt. 

His cock pistoning into you, alternating between deep, full thrusts that knock the air from your lungs, and heavy, slow plunges meant to badger the blunt head of his cock against your walls. 

You seem to like it best when he shifts his weight between each thigh, content to just grind into you. Make you feel every inch of him. You cling to him, yowling in his ear about how good it feels, how much you love this, love his cock—

The thick bed of wry, umber curls on his chest, stomach, and groin grow slick with sweat from the intensity of it all, from the shared heat. Pressed tight against you, he feels every quiver. Every flinch. Each moan is made known in a slight reverberation across his skin before he hears it. 

Drenched in sweat, glued to you as he fucks you into the mattress, John feels very much like the beast making a house out of a twisted whim in his head. Feverish, sick, he drives into you with the single minded goal of filling that home up with three. Then four. Five—

As many as you'll let him.

And he almost loses himself to that thought alone. Dancing sugar plums that make his balls tighten. He stems the flood by pulling out of you, letting his heavy cock slap against your sticky, soaked cunt as he heaves into your hairline, sucking in the heady loam, the humus, of your scent. 

The whimper you make when he pulls out of you sounds like a wounded animal, and the noise tickles across his hindbrain. His jaw aches. He bites down on a snarl as you thrash against him, mindless with the need to have him inside of you. It brings a nasty, vicious curl to the ends of his mouth, and he doesn't even bother trying to tamper it down. John lifts his head and lets you see his foaming muzzle, drooling with thick globes of saliva. 

“Stay still,” he growls, low and dangerous. It's as much of a warning as it is a command, and the way you react, tensing, coiling tight—the flash of unease. Shock. And then the need. Achy, heavy. He feels it against his jugular when you shiver, moaning his name into the space between you where it reeks of desperation. 

To soften the submissive tremble in your jaw—and maybe to temper down the challenging talons sharpening in your gaze—he nuzzles his cheek against yours, peppers wet kisses to your skin. He licks across your jaw, bites down on your flesh. 

He tastes salt and sin on your skin. 

(His eyes roll so far back into his skull he thinks he might get lost.)

“Gonna cum on your pretty cunt if you don't stop squirming, love.” 

And John loves you most for your waspish intelligence—the ire smouldering in your throat. The way you bite back just as hard, never afraid to bear teeth when he snarls. He doesn't think he could ever love someone too soft—not without tearing them to pieces. To shreds. 

But you wear plush, tender conchoidal skin over jagged, rough obsidian. He'll ruin himself if he ever tries to rip you apart. 

Like this, though—you melt. 

All that keen, vicious intelligence snuffed out. His scheming Cleopatra tamed on his cock. 

Your heels dig into the back of his thighs, urging him closer to your sex. “Come on, John, just fuck me, fuck me already—”

(Tamed, though, perhaps being a misnomer.)

He huffs into your neck. “Impatient little quean.”

It gets him a sharp bite to the tip of his ear, and the floor roars so loudly in his veins, he gets dizzy from it. 

“Fuck—”

He's pressing back into you again, into your warm, tight heat, and it's nirvana kissing his nerves. Liquifying his spine. He rolls into you with a weighted groan, buried to the hilt once more. 

But even with the respite, he knows he won't last. 

John needs you fucked stupid, docile and soft just for him, and sets out to do just that. Pounding into you with a spiteful twist of his hips that he knows will leave you a little sore, and tender tomorrow. But the idea of spreading your puffy, achy folds apart and soothing the slight hurt with his tongue for hours until you're sobbing into the cushions quells any hesitation that rears, begging him to slow down. 

Go easy on your pretty cunt.

(As if.)

John batters into you until your eyes glaze over, and your chin, cheeks, smear with drool. Until the challenge in midnight black melts into submission. Docile, and malleable. Perfect for him to mould. Shape. 

Reshape.

He glues to you, touch starved and tactile, and basks in the liquid heat that blooms from deep within you. 

“Gonna cum soon,” he snarls, broken by the heave in his chest as he fucks into you, starved. “Gotta pull out, love—”

You're gripping him tighter, anchoring him to your body. You haven't come yet. Something he dangles in front of you like a threat. 

He watches the slow crawl of realisation crest over your messy face, and thinks he falls just a little bit more in love with you at the sight of your little pout. 

Loves, even more, the way it breaks apart when he pounds into you harder, viciously, watching drool dribble off your chin, and reason leak from your ears—

“Please, John—” the sound of your whimpering has him grunting, head dizzy with the saccharine sweet taste of it on his tongue. “Please, please—come inside me. I–I want you to–to fill me up—”

“Yeah?” He taunts, mean and breathless. “Want me to come inside your sloppy cunt? Dangerous, ain't it? Jus’ might take, sweet thing. Is that what you want?”

You're howling a litany of sin into his ear, desperation drenches each clamour of his name, each orison uttered, begging him to come, to fill you up, and then—

“Fuck—I want it so bad—” his head is filled with static. Whitenoise. “Want it to take, John—”

He comes inside of you, cock pulsing so hard it feels like a sob. Filling you up. Wishing on all the stars that it takes—

As a reward for your good behaviour, he spreads you out over the sheets, and growls his approval into your sopping pussy, drenching himself with the taste, the smell, of you, promising to wear it like a perfume so everyone knows how good you are for him. Him, alone. 

(His, his, his—)

When you come, you nearly smother him, and he thinks he sees a glimpse of nirvana in baby soft yellow before he's pulled back by your shaking hands brushing the hair off his sweat-slicked forehead. 

“Are you okay, John—”

He rolls you under him, fucking into your drenched pussy like a man starved. That tantalising vision glues itself to his hindbrain, so close he can scent the fresh dew of fresh milk, and warm bread in his nose. Feel the bump of your stomach. 

He's almost angry about it, about being ripped away from that dream, and takes his aggression out on your sloppy, leaking cunt. The way his come trickles out, staining the mattress below and the back of your thighs has him growling darkly into your nape. 

“Keep it in,” he snarls, words sharpened on the whetstone of his need. “Keep it all inside, love.” 

“Ah, John, John—” something falls from your split-slicked lips, and his fingers bite into your hips. Punishment for the slurred backtalk. 

“I'll spank your ass if any of it leaks out—”

It does. Of course it does. 

He bends you over his knee, and slaps his broad, rough palm over each cheek ten times before deliriously shoving two thick fingers into your sloppy cunt, stuffing his come back inside your tender, swollen hole, rough and mean, as you howl, squirming in his lap about how you promise you'll be good next time, John, please—I'll keep it all in, I swear, I—

“You fuckin’ better, love.” He groans, and thinks about cumming on your messy face, all slick with sweat, and drool, but decides against it. A waste, he thinks, and leans over you to shove the thick, twisting length of his angry cock inside you to the hilt just spit his release against your seal once more. 

“That was…” You're still panting against his chest, eyes dazed, and body laxed. Melted wax over his chest. “Intense,” you settle on after a beat. 

There's a hiccup in your breath when he hums, chest rumbling with the sound. 

“Mm, but you liked it, didn't you?”

Of course you did. Of course. The evidence of it is drying, tacky and slick, on his groin, his thighs. 

You burrow into his side, peeking at him from over the thick bed of wry curls that clot over his chest. “You're fucking me like you haven't in years, John. Makes me wonder if you have an agenda.”

He considers your words. The weight of them. Wonders just how much you've clued into, but huffs when he catches the same look in your eyes as the one reflected in his own.

Cheeky little—

“Can't I just want to fuck you? Not everything has to be about schemes, love.” 

The oil of his lies, the sticky resin of his evasion makes you huff into his skin.

In all his meticulous planning, he'd picked up several books on this particular topic, and scoured every available, reputable, site he could find. John knows what to look out for by now, and keeps a keen eye on you—one that very quickly dips into obsessiveness, but you're kind enough to call it overbearing. 

Jesus Christ, John, why are you asking me how many times I pissed today? 

He just needs to wait things out. 

But rather irritatingly, he's called away overseas for the next week. 

Ah, well. He'll have to try harder next time. 

He arrives in Heathrow mid-morning, and follows Laswell into the office. There's a mountain of reports to fill out—things that, rather irritatingly, require his signature—and resolves to spend the rest of the day hunched over at his desk, even though there's an itch in the back of his skull demanding he go home. 

It is always like this, though—both the post-mission ritual of banal paperwork that seems almost comical considering what he'd just done, and the undeniable urge to flee back into the sanctuary of your shared home. 

His bones ache for it. 

Laswell huffs when he lingers by the exit, and he swallows a groan. 

While he was away, you'd been silent. Moreso than usual. 

Where he'd have expected an update on what was going on—the mundanity of your life that he clings to when the beast in his head whets its talons a little too sharp, digs into a little too deep—you’ve gone silent. Not radio. Not completely. But the information you give is sparse. Cagey.

You don't tell him about the visit to the gynaecologist, offering nothing but a quiet hum into the receiver, all blase and nonchalant, and a simple, equivocal: “good.” 

He tucks it away, lets the matter drop. 

If he timed things correctly—barring your impish prevarication aside—then something will begin to show soon. You would have mentioned something. Some nominal change to your physical well-being, but when pried, pressed, you huff. 

“I'm good, John. When are you coming home, anyway?”

He raps his knuckles on his desk, still smarting from the punches he'd thrown recklessly this past week, too keyed up to let his anger simmer instead of boil, and thinks. About you. About this. 

A week isn't a lot of time—he’s been called away for months in the past—but this feels like it's lingering. Time stretched and distorted. Elongated. And a part of him feels chipped, fractured after touchdown. 

It wasn't as if this particular assignment was any more, or less, dangerous than the ones he went on before. If anything, it was comparatively mild. Muted. He honed into his training, and did his goddamn job. And yet—

Yet. 

You lived in the spaces he occupied. The air he breathed. The water he drank. 

He brought you with him, something he's never, ever, done before. Perched pretty on his shoulder, he heard your voice in his head with every step he took, every radio call. 

But it was hallucinatory. Chimerical. You weren't there, you were here, but the problem lies in the lack of a divide that usually bifurcates the world into two fractions: his job and you.

It eats at him. 

He brought you where he's never taken anyone before. Never let them in. 

His thoughts were asunder. Pulled in all directions, but the centre was always you. His compass pointing north. He wants you. Needs you. His whole being has been recalibrated with the needle aimed toward you. 

An alert on his phone shakes him from his reverie. 

He reaches for it, slides his hand across the lockbar. The notification pops up. A message from his bank. 

His card—the one he gave you, the one you've used all of once to buy a chocolate bar when he gruffly, surely, complained about you not spending his money—has been used. 

Curious now, he opens his app, eyes scanning the threadbare purchases—all mostly interest fees and service charges, bar one. It was recently used at a drugstore for under twenty dollars. 

He doesn't know what this means, what you're playing at. He makes to text you, but he gets an email next. 

Thank you for your purchase; here is your e-receipt. 

His heart does something strange in his chest. Turns in on itself. Goes all askew. 

Not only are you using his card, you're using his account, too. He clicks it, eyes scanning through the purchases (only two), and blinks. 

A card, and—

His want takes the shape of a hand, presses against his jugular. 

—a pregnancy test. 

He knew when he started this game that this was, of course, the inevitable outcome, but having it here, right in front of him—in that sneaky, noncommittal way you always do things; behind his back, and in the dark, like you enjoy watching him try and sniff out the truth—has his belly knotting up. Churning. 

A pregnancy test. 

Fuck—

(and out of all the ways to tell him, you cheeky little—)

He's up out of his chair before he's even aware that he's standing. 

“Laswell,” he gets out, and can't be sure how his voice is so measured when his head is being shredded into pieces. “I'm out for the rest of the day. This whole bloody week, too—”

“Something bad happen?” 

His hands shake when he pulls his jacket on, slips his car keys into his hands. “No. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm going to be a father. A bloody dad—”

It's on that sentiment when his voice breaks. Shatters. He clears his throat, blinks furiously. Fuck. Fuck. It's happening—

Shangri-la sits in his fist, taking the shape of an e-mailed receipt. 

In his periphery, he sees Simon's head come up. Watching him. Measured. 

Laswell, too, eyes him with a degree of wariness. He supposes to them this means the end of everything. 

She breathes in. “Tuscany would be my choice.”

“Oh?” He tears his eyes away from the screen, gracing her with a steady, unflinching look. “Was thinking something a bit more local. Liverpool.”

It gets a scoff, one full of disgust. “She'll divorce you within the year.” 

“I'm having a baby, Laswell. Not getting married.”

“Oh, no?” It's a challenge. “I seem to recall something about someone being a proper gentleman, or was that just the lie you told your unofficial missus?”

“We'll get married. That's not up for debate—” an intern makes an alarmed face, like perhaps it ought to be. Had he not been holding nirvana in his hand, he might be a bit more cautious with his madness. Too bloody bad. “Wherever she wants—Tuscany, Udaipur, fucking Siberia. I don't care. What I’m a bit more concerned with is my expectant wife.” 

“Soon-to-be,” she volleys, just because she knows it's the sort of thing that will itch under his skin. 

“Already is, Laswell.” He gripes, flat. “Or damn near close to it.” 

“If she knows what's good for her, she'll say no.”

“Lucky me, then, that she doesn't.” 

Lucky him, indeed. 

On his way out, Ghost utters a heated congratulations to him, and John can see his gaze is absent. Turned inward, mind whirring. Reeling. He can hear the gears grind from where he stands, and if the ink-black madness in his lieutenant’s drifting, pensive eyes means much of anything, then John sends a silent hail mary to whatever unlucky person was misfortune enough to unleash the muzzle on that particular dog. 

Well. It's not really his problem. Until it is. Until it becomes one. But since it's not something that'll impact him in the next five minutes, he tucks it away. “Thanks.” 

He doesn't linger. Doesn't, really, even remember the ride home, head buzzing with thoughts that keep twisting around themselves, driving him mental. Things like, is it real? what if you were joking. what you weren't? 

Oh, fuck—

You better not be. 

But you wouldn't. You're conniving and wily, but you're not cruel. 

This is happening, then. 

You've been playing house with matches inside of a tinderbox. He shouldn't be surprised when it all goes up in flames, in smoke, but as he walks through the door, and glimpses the pregnancy test perched innocently on the counter beside a card—congrats, daddy (and the caricature of a man in a pinstripe suit nearly makes him gag)—he feels all the maligned pieces inside of crack. 

It shifts—

You walk out, hand cupped protectively over your lower belly. Eyes gleaming like a wild cat crouched low in the tussocks surrounding the savannah, watching him an eager sense of anticipation, excitement, and just the slightest edge of what he can only imagine the unfortunate mate of a black widow sees before it's consumed. Spare parts. 

It thrums inside of him. Ignites this wicker basket he calls a heart until it's cinder. Ash. Soot. He breathes it in. Tastes you on his tongue. 

John doesn't have the words. Can't think beyond the steady brag of his burning heart. 

His. His.

—and then it all falls into place. 

Yours.

He dotes on you with an almost unhinged devotion, murmuring stilted, gruff words of muted affection into the shallow bump on your belly. Ones that you, politely, pretend not to hear. 

A new bedtime ritual, one he adheres to with an almost obsessive need. 

Until it becomes too much. 

“Go and get my prenatal vitamins from the washroom, please. I just need five minutes without you smothering me, you stupid bear of a man.”

“You love it,” he grumbles, but acquiesces, giving your small, barely there bump a pat. “I'll be back soon.”

“Oh, no… please take your time.” 

Despite the prickle in your tongue, your eyes are soft. Warm. Melting him just a little more. 

John pulls away, and doesn't even pretend the reluctance to be apart is feigned. 

“It's in the drawer,” you call, voice stretched. Echoing. “Next to your shaving cream.” 

He pulls the drawer open, scanning the contents briefly, before finding the purple bottle in the back. Why you chose here of all places to put the bloody things—

His knuckles knock against the old box of condoms, tipping it over. There's a strange rattle as it falls, and his brows furrow at the noise. 

Curiously, he reaches for it. Shakes it as he picks it up. The same sounds spill out. He pops the flap of the box open, peering inside, and—

A gruff chuckle crackles in his throat. 

Inside the old box of condoms—the ones he never bothered to throw out, or use—is an accumulation of all the pills you'd meant to take. 

His jowls ache. He rubs at his jaw with his hand, and feels the skittish patter of his heart thudding out of his skin. Madness in his veins. 

John closes the drawer with his knee, and then tosses the box of condoms in the bin, leaving it for you to find later when you're inevitably wracked by another wave of morning sickness. A little shred of vindication for this little game you made him play. 

Though he supposes turn-about is fair play, and the number of pills in the box is less than the months he spent scheming for this vision of his.  

In the back of his head, the beast purrs.

“Do we need to play these games again for the next one,” he rasps. “Or can I just fuck you until it takes.” 

You blink at him, wide and owlish. Full of faux innocence as you coax the beast out of hiding. “I don't know what you're talking about, John.” 

More games, then. He thinks he might crack open your ribcage and rest his weary head on the frantic beat of your heart. 

“Mm, don't know what I'd do without you,” he says, guns aching. He reaches for the pack of gum (no smoking around the baby or you'd toss him off the balcony), and pops a spearmint into his mouth. “Might live longer, I reckon, but—”

Your elbow digs into his side. “You sure about that?”

He just kisses your crown in response, and places his heavy, scarred hand over the curve of your belly. The beast inside purrs, content for now. Satiated. 

When he looks into your midnight eyes, he finds your own beast slumbering away. 

A match made in a tinderbox, he guesses, and kisses you until you're dizzy. His very own Shangri-la sitting pretty inside his bed, nestled in the castle in Spain you helped him build.

it only took a bit of prodding and pleading from your followers to get you to post your whole body. that’s where johnny first saw you, in a post where you did a full body reveal (sans face for obvious reasons). it had a few thousand notes and was the top picture for some of the tags you used.

soap practically felt his eyes bulge out of his skull at the sight of you, this perfect lass posting pics like that for free??? he was quick to follow you and then look at the rest of your posts, spamming you with likes as he went through your entire blog.

he contemplated keeping you to himself but knew the others would appreciate you just as much as he did, so he saved the original post he saw of you and sent it in the group chat. their messages were immediate, something to the effect of “holy fuck.”

that’s where the obsession with you started, and soap acted as their drug dealer, sharing in the group chat when you posted a new photo. of course, the other three knew that they could coax your username from johnny and they could make their own tumblr account to follow you but they found it more exciting getting your pics this way. one thing he did share with them was your throne wishlist which was full of lingerie and cute clothes you might want.

you had posted in sets you had gotten from other followers and the guys were interested in how they could buy you things too. your eyebrows practically disappeared into your hairline as you checked your phone and saw that your entire wishlist had been bought out. even the stuff that you put on there as a faraway desire, like the pair of mary jane’s you had been eyeing or the marker set that was too expensive to justify buying with your own money.

you always tried to thank people who bought from your throne personally, dming them on tumblr and sending exclusive pics in the things they bought for you. problem was, it was all under anonymous accounts and you didn’t get any messages owning up to the shopping spree. you decided to make a post asking who just bought you all that stuff and that you’d like to thank them.

soap was quick to message you, claiming responsibility for the gifts bought. you both get to talking and he mentions how he shares your pics with his mates, and how they get so excited when he sends a new picture of you. you respond back how you’re honestly so flattered, and you’d like to talk to them as well and thank them for their contribution to your wishlist.

eventually, you find some app or website that you can use to chat with them while not giving out any personal information. of course, when the things they ordered come in the mail, you make sure to send them plenty of videos and pictures.

they are hooked.

now it’s almost like you have four sugar daddies, paying for your bikini waxes (if you want them, they don’t mind hair down there yk), sending you money for groceries, for getting your nails done, or just because. sometimes, they even compete between the four of them to see who can make you the happiest (determined by the amount of exclamation marks you use when thanking them).

Your boots echoed as you followed the two men down the ramp. The tarmac was buzzing with activity: orders shouted in Spanish, soldiers and air crew moving quickly and efficiently. It smelled like jet fuel, but strangely enough, you liked it.

Directly in front of you was a man, older than you, but with his dark hair slicked back and a short, well groomed beard, he was noticeably attractive. It was too bad, you thought, that you were in a work setting and had to keep things professional.

“Alejandro,” Soap called to him.

“Sergeant MacTavish,” he replied, reaching out for a handshake.

“Call me Soap,” Johnny told him.

Alejandro's eyes skated to you, and you stepped forward offering your hand.

“Resident Geek Squad,” you told him as an introduction, although you weren’t sure anyone present would understand the joke. You told him your name and explained that you were SIGINT.

Whether he understood the joke or not, he smiled at you before he looked at Simon.

“Lieutenant. Laswell says they call you Ghost?”

Johnny put his hand up, cutting in with a sly smirk. “Actually, I think he prefers to be called—”

“That’ll do,” Ghost interrupted with a growl.

Soap snapped his mouth shut, his hand still hanging in mid-air. You stood next to him, stifling your urge to laugh.

Alejandro glanced between the three of you, mild amusement etched onto his handsome features.

“Welcome to the City of Souls,” he said, jerking his head and leading the way to a group of SUVs waiting nearby.

“I’ve never been to Mexico,” Soap commented.

Alejandro shook his head.

“This isn’t Mexico,” he replied. “This is Las Almas.”

“Shephard’s contractors are inbound to reinforce,” Ghost told him. “They’re bringing hardware. They’ll need room.”

You frowned, glancing up at Simon. This was the first you’d heard about a PMC joining you. Then again, you’d missed the briefing, having been a last second addition to the op.

“My base is your base,” Alejandro told him. “We’ll drop off your Geek Squad and make sure she’s got the space she needs.” He threw you a sideways glance with an amused twinkle in his eye.

You chuckled softly as you climbed into the back of the SUV, squeezing into the middle seat between Soap and Ghost.

Now you sat inside the spacious office that Alejandro had offered you. The wall in front of you was taken up mostly by a large window which provided a view of the spacious hangar, where you knew Shadow Company would be arriving with their air support.

You’d heard of them before. Shadow Company had a reputation that preceded them. It was the kind of outfit that got called in when things were messy, when governments wanted their hands clean but still needed a job done. Put plainly, they were fixers, efficient and ruthless. Men and women who lived outside the restrictions that bound conventional soldiers or government organizations.

You weren’t always a fan of working with PMCs. It wasn’t uncommon for these contractors to have an attitude. To think they were better because they didn’t have to operate under the same ROEs as the rest of you did.

But you knew not everyone was cut from the same cloth and you didn’t have a habit of judging people before you’d had the chance to work with them.

On the desk in front of you, your gear lay neatly organized. You adjusted your headset, running comms checks with Soap and Ghost while aligning your maps and data feeds. You pressed the talk button on the small microphone clipped to the table.

“Ghost, comms check. How copy?”

“Loud ‘nd clear, Sparrow,” came Simon’s reply. “How ‘bout me?”

“Crystal clear, Lt,” you answered.

You leaned back in your chair. Adrenaline was humming in your veins, and you began to bounce your knee. Subconsciously, you reached up to the back of your neck, fingertips brushing over the familiar lettering etched there.

Your Soulmate Mark.

You’d had the name printed on you for as long as you could remember. Most people’s showed up at around ages six to eight, the tattoo like lettering appearing faded and light at first, and then darkening quickly over the course of a few years.

You couldn’t remember a time when you didn’t have your Mark, but you do recall your mother’s excitement when it first appeared.

Your parents weren’t Soulmates, but that wasn’t uncommon. Many people went their entire lives without finding their fated match.

But that didn’t mean they didn’t fall in love and get married.

You’d heard stories of people being married for decades only to meet their Soulmate and leave their spouse for them.

To you it sounded messy and complicated.

Still, you’d spent much of your adolescence trying to imagine your other half.

Phillip Graves.

Was he tall or short? Was he kind? Was he smart? Loyal?

You’d heard about the intensity of the Soul Bond many times.

Allegedly, when you met your Soulmate, it was like your brain chemistry altered. You experienced a strong emotional connection that even allowed you to feel some of each other’s emotions through some unseen tether.

But you were certain that was all an exaggeration used to sell contemporary romance novels.

By your mid-twenties, reality had set in. Your parents hadn’t found their Soulmates, and they’d been perfectly happy. That was likely the path ahead for you too, and you’d made peace with it. You weren’t going to sit idle waiting for fate to hand you the perfect partner. You had a career you enjoyed and a life to live.

But sometimes, late at night, the curiosity snuck back in. His name would slip reflexively from your lips in quiet moments when your own fingers were coaxing you toward release. You’d even let it escape once during a drunken hookup, moaning a name that didn’t belong to the man inside you. The memory still made your cheeks burn with embarrassment.

You leaned forward in your chair forcing yourself to return to the present. You hated this part of the job... the waiting. Sitting behind a desk while your team pushed into danger, knowing you couldn’t step into the fight alongside them. But your role was different. Intel was an effective tool and providing them with the most accurate data possible could mean the difference between life and death.

“Troops in contact,” Ghost’s voice clipped through the radio, the sharp snap of gunfire echoing behind it. “We’re taking effective fire.”

You stood abruptly, leaning over the desk. A frustrated breath hissed through your teeth, and you drummed restless fingers against the metal surface, eyes flicking toward the hangar’s open doors.

Movement caught your attention. One of Los Vaqueros was sprinting across the tarmac, urgently. Then you heard it: a deep, rolling thunder that grew louder by the second, vibrating through the floor beneath your boots.

The low rumble swelled until it shook the air around you, the sound rolling across the tarmac like a storm front. Squinting into the distance, you caught sight of the C-130 cresting down onto the strip, its massive frame descending with an almost predatory grace.

You bolted from the office, sprinted through the hangar and across the tarmac to meet the man you’d seen running by.

“Shadow Company?” You shouted, as you caught up to him, jerking your chin toward the looming Hercules as it barreled closer, engines snarling. “We have troops in contact. They need backup,” you told him quickly, urgency sharpening your words.

He nodded once, before looking past you at the incoming aircraft.

“Is that them?” you asked again, the urgency of the situation making propelling you forward.

Without waiting for his reply, you reached across to the radio clipped at his vest and pulled it off of him. You brought it to your mouth and keyed the mic. “Shadow Company, this is Sparrow. How copy?”

The man fumbled with his headset, pulling it off and passing it over to you.

You nodded to him as you slipped it on and caught, a smooth southern drawl saying, "—is Shadow One. Read you loud ’n clear, Sparrow. Send traffic.”

Your pulse jumped. “Shadow One, we’ve got troops in contact at a safe house approximately ten klicks north of our position. They’re taking heavy fire.”

“Copy that,” the man replied without hesitation. “Consider it handled. Shadow One, out.”

The transmission cut, leaving only the fading hiss of static on an empty line. You lowered the receiver slowly, watching as the massive aircraft immediately began ascending once more.

You shaded your eyes with your hand, watching the plane pick up speed. The engines roared like thunder, rattling through your chest, and you tilted your head back to watch it go by, spinning on your heels as it passed overhead.

The sound was deafening, a shrieking scream that tore through the sky, followed by the violent whoosh of displaced air that whipped at your clothes and tugged at your hair.

Then it was gone, racing north, banking toward the fight where Ghost, Soap, and Alejandro were holding out. Your pulse hammered in your chest, and you watched the plane disappear into the distance, caught somewhere between awe and relief.

Backup was on the way.

By the time the sun slipped under the horizon, the quiet base was alive again. The Hercules rumbled back onto the strip, its bulk slowing as it taxied in, the roar of the engines dulling as they began winding down. One by one, Shadow Company operators spilled out of the back ramp, helmets tucked under arms, gear slung across their backs, voices carrying a note of satisfaction that told you everything you needed to know about how the mission had gone.

You lingered near the edge of the hangar, watching them as they unloaded, chatting and slapping shoulders, moving with the swagger of men who’d done their job and done it well.

That’s when you spotted someone breaking from the group. He was tall and built thick through the chest and shoulders, his black Shadow Company fatigues stretched comfortably across his frame. His eyes were smudged with eye-black that streaked messily down his cheeks, giving him a look that reminded you a little bit of a football player. Dreadlocks brushed his shoulders and his face was framed nicely by a dark beard.

He came straight toward you, boots thudding heavily on the tarmac.

“You Sparrow?” His voice, deep and rough, carried easily in the large space.

“That’s me,” you confirmed, straightening as he closed the distance.

He thrust out a hand, wearing fingerless black gloves. His grip was firm when you accepted it.

“Oz Ryan,” he introduced smoothly. “Appreciate the call. You got us there just in time.”

Relief surged through you, tension bleeding out of your shoulders at the confirmation. “Happy to help,” you said. “Where are they now?”

You glanced past him toward the C-130, half-expecting to see Soap or Ghost.

Oz followed your look, then gave a short nod over his shoulder. “Somewhere quiet, talkin’ to our guest.”

You exhaled, finally letting go of the breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding. Hassan Zyani had been captured. That single fact unraveled some of the weight sitting on your chest.

Maybe, just maybe, this meant things were drawing to a close and you’d be on a flight home before the week was out.

“So, are you Shadow One?” you asked him.

Oz gave a quick shake of his head, dreadlocks brushing his shoulders. “That’d be Commander Graves,” he said.

Your heart skipped a beat. Graves.

You immediately thought of the Mark on the back of your neck, and forced yourself to keep steady, even as your pulse thudded in your ears. There had to be plenty of people named Graves in the world. Statistically speaking, it didn’t necessarily mean anything. Sure, you’d never met one before, but that didn’t automatically make the Shadow Company Commander your Soulmate.

“Commander Graves,” you repeated the name just to taste it on your tongue.

Oz nodded, oblivious to the turmoil brewing behind your expression. “Yeah, that’d be the big boss. He should be back soon enough—”

“Uh oh,” a new voice drawled smoothly, cutting above the chatter of the hangar. “My ears are burnin’.”

The voice was rich with confidence, carrying the easy authority of someone used to commanding a room. Both you and Oz turned toward the sound.

He was striding toward you across the room, every inch of him radiating capability. Mid-thirties, maybe, with sandy blonde hair that caught the last glint of evening light, trimmed close on the sides but a little longer on top. A thick stubble shadowed his jaw, lending him a rough and rugged look.

And then his eyes, a deep dark blue, met yours.

The world shifted. The voices of the men unloading the C-130 dulled into a strange, muffled sound, as though you’d been plunged underwater. A tightness pulled at your chest, not painful but insistent, as if some invisible thread had looped around your spine and was gently tugging you forward. Your pulse hammered franticly, a little voice in the back of your head whispered the thought that you were almost too afraid to acknowledge: this is him.

But Graves only kept walking, flashing you a polite smile, perfectly at ease. No flicker of recognition, no falter in his stride.

Your heart sank as you watched him approach.

Was he not feeling any of this? Was it just you?

“Sorry?” you blurted, realizing belatedly that he’d spoken.

He chuckled, the sound low and warm, and repeated himself with that same easy charm. “I said, you must be Sparrow.”

He held his hand out for you to shake.

You hesitated only a heartbeat before slipping your palm against his. And instead of introducing yourself as Sparrow, like you always did, you took a chance.

And introduced yourself by your real name.

You watched him carefully as you told him your birth name, but nothing came. His expression didn’t change one bit. Not even a twitch.

He just gave your hand a firm, professional shake.

And yet, when his skin pressed to yours, a sharp spark jumped, a jolt that shot up your arm like static electricity. You blinked hard, breath catching, your gaze darting to his face.

He remained perfectly at ease. Unbothered, with that easy smile. Calm and confident, like it hadn’t happened at all.

You forced yourself to let go, pulse racing as though you’d imagined the entire thing. Hell, maybe you had.

“So,” you managed, doing your best to control the waver in your voice, “where are Soap and Ghost?”

Graves pulled his hand back, casually grasping the neck of his Kevlar vest.

“They should be around here somewhere.” His expression tightened as he added, “Had to cut Hassan loose.”

You barely registered the words, your thoughts still tangled in that odd spark, in the way the world had gone muffled when his eyes first found yours. “Oh. Oh. Why’s that?” you muttered absently.

“Bloody politics, tha’s why,” Soap’s voice growled before Graves could answer, his heavy Scottish accent rolling across the space as he strode up with Ghost looming close behind him.

Soap’s scowl lingered on his features, and Ghost shifted forward, just as someone turned on the interior lights of the hangar.

A loud clapping sound reverberated in the space as each large fluorescent light blinked to life.

CLUNK. CLUNK. CLUNK. CLUNK. CLUNK.

The eyeholes of Simon’s skull mask were shadowed under the bright light, leaving them appearing as gaping black voids.

Without a word, he reached into a pouch on his vest, then tossed something your way with an underhanded flick.

“Got somethin’ for you to play with,” he said.

You caught it clean against your chest, fingers curling around the small object. You looked down at the little cheap cellphone in your hand and your brows shot up.

“Wait. You cloned his phone?” you asked, unable to keep the excitement from your tone.

Ghost’s silence was answer enough, and Soap smirked faintly, clearly proud of the stunt.

A grin tugged at your lips despite the storm still stirring inside you. “I’ll get to work,” you chirped.

You turned slightly, catching Oz Ryan still standing nearby. “Good to meet you, Oz,” you offered, genuinely meaning it.

“Likewise,” he said with a nod, stepping back to rejoin the rest of his squad.

Then, before retreating, you turned your eyes to the commander again. Forcing your shoulders square, you tried to bury the heat rising in your chest as you dipped your chin slightly in acknowledgment. “Commander.”

His eyes caught yours again, and for the briefest second, you swore you saw something shift there. Not recognition exactly, but a subtle tension in the lines around his irises, like a ripple across still water. It was so quick you might have imagined it, before he slid back into effortless composure. He flashed you a polite smile as if nothing had passed between you.

And maybe nothing had.

You blinked, heart hammering racketing your ribs, then slipped away before anyone else could notice. Back into the office, back to your desk, clutching the cloned phone tightly in your hand.

You needed to focus, to bury yourself in work, to ignore the static still tingling faintly up your arm from where his hand had clasped yours.

You shut the door behind you, set the cloned phone on the desk, and exhaled sharply through your nose. Focus.

Sliding into the chair, you pulled the portable hardline case from your rucksack and flipped it open, revealing the slim diagnostic laptop, connection cables, and a portable encryption-cracker. You connected the cloned phone with a USB-C tether, trying not to let your gaze drift to the large window where Graves and his man were was still chatting with his man Soap and Ghost. There was a familiar vibration buzzing against your fingers as the device came to life.

The laptop immediately ran its handshake protocols, fingerprinting the operating system and displaying a string of identifiers across the screen: IMEI, carrier frequency, OS build. You put on your headset mic out of habit and then your fingers flew across the keyboard, initiating a packet capture and beginning a brute-force bypass of the encryption. The algorithms spooled up, running through combinations at blistering speed.

Normally, this part of the job consumed all of you: the rhythm of keystrokes, the satisfaction of watching firewalls peel back one layer at a time. But as the evening crept into night, your concentration kept slipping. Every pause between lines of code was invaded by the image of midnight blue eyes pinning you in place.

Graves.

Your thoughts curled back to the name on the back of your neck. It really was improbable. The world was big. Enormous, actually. Graves couldn’t be that uncommon of a last name.

You didn’t even know his first name. And he hadn’t even flinched when you gave him your full name. Maybe the sparks, the tugging sensation in your spine… Maybe, it was all in your head.

Your mind replayed the jolt of static at his handshake, the way the world seemed to dim when your eyes first locked. Too visceral, too specific to brush off as imagination.

The screen beeped softly, drawing your attention back. One of the encryption layers had crumbled, lines of text flooding open. You adjusted your focus, parsing the fragments of contacts, geolocation data, and stored SMS logs beginning to populate your screen.

And still, the thought circled.

What if he is my Soulmate?

Another possibility struck harder: What if he is, and he doesn’t care?

Your stomach tightened. You’d never heard of someone outright rejecting their Soul Bond. People dreamed of it, yearned for it. But that didn’t mean it had never happened before.

You rubbed at the back of your neck unconsciously, fingertips brushing over the dark letters etched there like they might offer some clarity.

Like they might chase away the disappointment of one undeniable truth: Across the hangar, Commander Graves had looked at you like you were just another face in the room.

Another hour slipped by almost without notice as the screen’s glow pulled you deeper into the maze of data. The cloned phone had been a goldmine of fragmented intel.

With persistence, you pieced together a breadcrumb trail: Hassan’s communications pinging off a cell tower along the coast of Spain.

You scrolled through timestamps and connection logs. Cross-referencing geodata to paint a clearer picture, narrowing the pings to a stretch of industrial coastline. More digging, cross-matching contact IDs with known cartel numbers, revealed a common location.

A hatchery.

It looked innocuous on satellite feed, but the traffic in and out told another story. Long-haul trucks, unmarked vans, and vessels docking nearby at irregular hours. The cartel was possibly using it as a smuggling front.

You chewed on your lip, anticipation making you anxious. Could the missiles be there? It wasn’t proof, and you’d have to run it through your HUMINT pipeline, but it was the strongest lead you’d had yet.

You were so focused on the work in front of you that you didn’t hear the footsteps as they grew louder. A sharp rap landed against the door. The sound startled you, jerking you upright in your chair, just as the door swung open.

Commander Graves leaned casually against the frame, head tilted slightly to one side. That easy confidence clung to him like a second skin.

“S’it alright if I intrude?” His southern drawl smoothed over the words, polite but self-assured, like he already knew the answer.

Your chest tightened in that same, maddening way, a thread tugging taut behind your ribs. You forced it down, burying the feeling as you shifted in your seat.

“Uh, yeah,” you said, voice steadier than you felt.

Graves walked toward you with unhurried confidence, each step measured, steady. His eyes flicked to the screen, then back to you.

“Mind if I take a look?”

“Go ahead,” you replied, already beginning to stand, preparing to vacate the chair so he could take your place.

But he didn’t sit.

Instead, he leaned down, bracing one hand flat against the desk, the other on the back of your chair, as he hovered over your shoulder.

You dropped back down into the seat, the warmth of his presence filling the space around you. His shadow stretched across the desk in front of you as his eyes scanned the data.

A low whistle escaped him. “Impressive,” he uttered, voice heavy and close, reverberating directly into your ear.

The sound alone sent a current pounding through you. Something stirred to life beneath your skin, humming in your veins like electricity running hot through a wire. Your heart skipped a beat, every breath felt shallow, and that strange tugging sensation, the one you’d tried to ignore, tightened again, pulling you toward him even though you sat perfectly still.

“So, Sparrow, huh?” he said referring to your callsign. “I’m betting there’s a story behind that one.”

“Uh-huh,” you answered, your voice thinner than you’d intended. You turned your head slightly, forcing yourself to meet his gaze even as he still crowded your space.

One corner of his mouth tugged upward, though his eyes were sharp, watchful. “Hmm.”

He shifted his attention to your equipment, surveying the setup with what you suspected was feigned interest, a leader’s trick to put people at ease while he studied them.

“And a pretty young thing like you workin’ for the CIA?” His words landed smooth, almost casual, but beneath them ran an unmistakable thread of tension. “M’betting there’s a story there, too.”

That same something pulsed again inside you, insistent, as if it wanted to escape your chest cavity

“Yep,” you said, still not expanding any further.

He watches you for another moment, before his gaze flickered out to the window, showcasing the empty hangar.

“Do they know?” He asked, turning his gaze back to yours.

You blinked slowly. “Know what?” you were almost whispering.

The corner of his mouth lifted into the faintest smirk, and then he raised a brow at you knowingly.

“Do they know?” he repeated, slower this time, leaning closer as his hands settled on the arms of your chair, caging you in.

Your lungs felt like they’d stopped working completely and you weren’t sure if you were still breathing. Your palms dampened against the edge of the chair.

This time you whispered so softly you almost doubted he’d hear. “No.”

“Good,” he muttered, then his mouth was on yours.

The kiss was dizzying.

Your head buzzed as the Soul Bond roared to life, surging through your veins like fire. Sparks tingled along your lips, down your throat, into your chest until you swore your whole body was buzzing. Your breath hitched against his, your lips parting without thought, and for a second all you could taste was him. All you could feel was heat, want, and something sharp and electric that made your toes curl inside your boots.

You grabbed his shirt collar instinctively, fingers curling into the fabric. You vaguely noticed he’d shed his vest at some point.

He angled deeper, pressing you further into the chair until you had no choice but to clutch him even tighter.

When you finally tore away just enough to breathe, your lips were swollen and your pulse was hammering.

“Good?” you breathed, brows furrowing as you searched his face, dazed but still looking for clarification.

Graves looked down at you with eyes that you swore would burn right through you. His smirk lingered, dangerous and hungry. “Ain’t nobody’s business but ours,” he rumbled, his voice rough and thick. “Want you to myself for a minute. Anything wrong with that?”

You shook your head, unable to form words. He lifted one hand, sliding it up your arm and over your shoulder until his palm rested at the back of your neck. His thumb brushed over the raised Mark there, and his smirk deepened like he’d just confirmed something he already knew.

You bit your already tender lip, nerves twisting with need. You had to know for sure. Looking up at him, you forced out the name, soft and almost embarrassed to be asking. “Phillip?”

For a fraction of a second, his expression flickered with something akin to smug satisfaction, maybe even relief.

“The one and only,” he confirmed, and before you could draw another shaky breath, his lips were on yours again, harder this time, sealing the truth between you.

A sudden clanging rang out across the hangar, metal striking metal, sharp and hollow. Both of you broke apart instantly, lips still tingling, your breathy pants loud in the charged silence.

Your eyes darted to the window. A shadowy figure was moving between crates at the far end of the hangar. Someone doing some late night work.

Heat flooded your cheeks. You turned back, wide-eyed, only to find Phillip already watching you. He had a crooked grin.!-A chuckle rumbled in his chest, low and knowing.

“Follow me,” he drawled. “I’ve got a space.”

Straightening to his full height, he extended his hand down toward you.

You didn’t hesitate to slip your hand into his. The spark came instantly, fizzing up your arm like live wire, no less powerful than the first time. His fingers curled around yours with easy confidence, and the simple touch made your head spin.

The rest of the evening was spent in his makeshift quarters, blurring into something wild and intense as you got to know one another.

Not with words.

But with the glide of calloused hands over skin, exploring each other like you had all the time in the world. The press of his mouth, slow and sensual, then desperate and hungry. It was laughter, shared in ragged breaths between kisses, and the breathy, soft moans he easily coaxed from you. You learned each other beyond cautious introductions, with tongue and touch, the Bond humming louder and louder until it felt like every cell in your body was alive.

You memorized the line of muscle under his shirt, the way his stubble scraped lightly against your skin when he kissed the corner of your mouth, and down your stomach. You felt the weight of him braced above you, the press of his hand against the small of your back as though he couldn’t stand to let go.

And for the first time in your life, the gnawing ache of incompleteness that had lived quietly in your chest for years… went silent.

Now, warm water cascaded down your shoulders, rinsing suds into rivulets that swirled at your feet. You scrubbed sand and soap from your hair, humming softly to yourself, unable to stop smiling. Your body still buzzed with the aftershocks of everything you’d just shared. You felt overwhelmingly, almost deliriously happy, like you’d stumbled into a dream that you never had to wake up from.

Arms slid around your waist from behind, pulling you back into solid warmth. You startled faintly before relaxing against him, your grin breaking wider. Phillip’s mouth brushed against your damp shoulder, leaving heat in its wake, then grazed up to the back of your neck. His lips lingered at the Mark on your skin, sending a shiver straight down your spine.

“So,” he murmured, his voice vibrating against your skin, “I gotta know. How old are you, darlin’?”

You turned slightly, cheeks heating despite yourself. “Mm… twenty-nine,” you told him. “As of last month.”

He barked out a laugh, deep and unrestrained, the sound bouncing off the shower tiles.

“You’re a kid,” he teased, amusement thick in his voice.

You gasped dramatically, twisting to face him fully, water dripping between you both. “Well, at least I’m not an old man.”

“Oof.” He winced exaggeratedly. “That hurts. Real bad.” His blue eyes twinkled as he leaned closer, voice dropping. “I’m thirty-seven. Not exactly geriatric.”

You snorted, rolling your eyes, but the smile betrayed you, curling up despite your best effort to look unimpressed.

“I wasn’t sure it was you,” you confessed, quietly.

His gaze was magnetic as he looked down at you. He slid his hands down your sides and onto your waist, squeezing once. “I knew the moment I laid eyes on you.”

There, under the spray of the shower, with his hands firm on your hips and his warm laughter still echoing in your ears, you couldn’t quite believe it. You’d found him. You’d found your Soulmate.

next

“Good morning Simon!” Your cheerful voice mingles with the chime above his door, and lifts his previous quiet like good yeast to a better bread dough. Simon glances up at you from the cinnamon rolls he's piping frosting onto,with a small smile hidden behind his mask.

“A little too good, if ya ask me.” He teases as you walk up to the counter, poking fun at all your energy so early in the morning. You roll your eyes and gently plop a cup of coffee by his register. A cold brew just how Simon likes it, the dark liquid and ice swishing lightly.

“Don't act as if you don't start the day even earlier than I do.” You suck your teeth and say before moving to the display case. Simon just blows an amused huff and puts down his piping bag to take a grateful sip from the cup, letting out a deep hum as thanks. You shuffle and focus on slices of carrot cake, instead of letting his voice and that hum register in your ears. You purposely avoid looking at his face once he pulls his mask down, feeling as if it'd be invading his privacy, even if he was the one to pull it down in front of you.

“Yeah, but I'm still not awake. Energy hasn't caught up to me yet.” he mumbles around his straw, insinuating that he'll be as cheery as you later today, making you both laugh. Simon lets you take your time looking for whatever confectionery you came in for this morning and takes a moment to do some looking of his own. Your shop didn't open for another hour or so, meaning you were still in your casual wear. It's nothing but a sweater and jeans but Simon still struggles to take his eyes off you. Well, even in a grocers apron and uniform to Simon you look incredible, but there's something about your comfortable clothes. It's like he gets a glimpse of what you're like outside his bakery and your general store. It makes him want to see more of it. When you look up and meet his eyes, Simon doesn't flinch, just lets you take in the honeyed way he's looking at you and glance away on your own.

“What's got you gracing me with your presence so early today?” Simon continues with ease, knowing there's heat building under your pretty, pigmented skin, even if he can't see it. You recover from catching Simon shamelessly checking you out, and manage to answer him.

“Gonna be closing the shop early today so I thought I'd buy lunch for later.” you explain and Simon puts it away in his mind that he shouldn't look forward to seeing you later like he usually does. You continue to scan his bread shelves, lip poked out slightly in concentration, and Simon watches this fondly before speaking up.

“Your usual then, miss?” He inquires while placing the freshly iced cinnamon rolls behind the display, even though it's obvious you're looking for something else today. You rub your chin and do one more once over of his stock, making Simon wonder what you could possibly be looking for today, before turning around.

“Actually I wanted some of your famous focaccia today sir.” You hum and walk back over to the register.

“But I don't see any?” you finish and look at him with questioning eyes making Simon curse in his head. It made sense that you were confused. Simon's bakery always has focaccia stocked. The flavors and varieties change but the bread itself is a pretty much constant item in his store, simply because it's simple to make while simultaneously being his best seller. It's just his luck that the first time you come in for some, is right after the men had a late night drinking and Johnny woke up this morning and ate the first thing he could find. Simon lets out an imperceptible sigh, his broad chest only rising and falling slightly.

“ It's cooling on the rack now. Got a bit of a late start on it today.” Simon explains, deciding to take the blame rather than throw his friend under the bus. Johnny's already paying for drinks next time as payment. You nod with a silent ‘oh ok’. It wasn't that big a deal, not at all, you could just get something else, but to Simon the fact that you came here this morning looking forward to something and he couldn't give it to you, was unacceptable.

“ That's fine. I'll just go with what I always get then-!” You start, your expression dropping slightly in understanding, but a drop at all was all he needed. You stop when Simon dusts his hands off on his apron and walks over to the small door in the counter. You feel your heart pick up in speed when he pulls up the short slab,opening up the lobby to the rest of the space.

“ If you've got a minute, I can cut a slice for you in the back.” He offers and steps to the side to invite you behind the counter. You falter for a moment, knowing it's not necessary to invite you into the kitchen just to cut you a piece of bread. For anyone else, he'd probably just head to the back and come out when he's done, but Simon never misses a chance to invite you behind the counter and you never miss a chance to accept. You meet his eyes for a short second, long enough to catch that honeyed gaze again, and give him a small nod.

“That sounds good, thanks Simon.” You agree with a cool smile, masking any feelings that were toeing over the border of a fun crush on a coworker. Simon gives you enough space to scoot past him and into the backroom, and settles some of the overexposed feelings in his own chest before following you.

The front of Simon's bakery is a sight in and of its own but it doesn't rival the kitchen. You're not sure how he got a hold of such a beautiful set up, but Simon’s back room has a large window that washes the space in bright sunlight, and somehow it fits the large, brooding man. You'll never forget the first time you ventured back here( after being given the ok the day before) and stumbled upon him. Face serene and content, sunlight washing over his broad frame, and music playing softly while he prepared his goods. Besides that, he has his steel island in the center, along with his rows of stainless steel ovens and racks. Then there were the homey touches like his corkboard with hastily scribbled on sticky notes and a little ghost keychain from your store. With the smell of baking bread always floating around, it created such a pleasant place to sit.

“I'll cut it in half so it cools faster.” Simon informs you while sliding past, the cologne Kyle bought him for his birthday that he didn't start wearing until recently, brushing your nose during the short second he filled your space. He walks over to the large island and it's only then that you notice the large trays of focaccia bread resting in the center, the bread puffy and golden brown.

“So, got a new recipe in mind?” Simon makes conversation, while washing his hands and replacing his gloves. You set your purse down next to the small radio playing music at a low tune. Through the fire by chaka Khan, a choice that would surprise you if you hadn't already heard him listening to 70s music in the past.

“ Yeah! I saw this sandwich idea on TikTik, that I wanted to try out. I bought the meat from Johnny's place a while ago and want to use it soon. Can't let it go bad.” you explain as you make yourself comfortable on the tall wooden stool by the radio. Well, as comfortable as you can on a stool. Simon pauses for such a short moment that if you weren't already trying not to look at the way his shirt sleeves stretched around his biceps, you would've missed it.

“Ah, alright.” Simon responds shortly, understanding everything but one obvious detail in what you'd just said, and you notice. Simon doesn't even have to look up from where he's using a bread knife to slice a part of the focaccia in half, letting more heat escape. He knows your wide eyes are watching him and the corners of your lips are quirking up into a suspicious smile. You both sit in silence for a millisecondonger before you open your mouth.

“Do you know what TikTik is-?” You start and can hardly get the words out before Simon lets out an irritated groan. You burst out laughing, leaning back on the stool, and Simon just shakes his head, fighting off his own smile.

“Oy, I've heard of it alright? Just haven't got around to downloading it.” he defends himself and if you didn't know any better you'd swear you can hear a bit of a pout in his voice. You let your giggles taper off as Simon just shakes his head again, this time with an air of fondness because he can't help soften like butter when you laugh.

“Kyle and Johnny are always talking about that damn app. So what? They've got recipes on there too?” Simon inquires further, before looking for something extra that he could send you off with. Johnny only ever showed him things that left him with less brain cells than he had before he watched them, and Kyle tended to send him things he didn't entirely understand. You spread your legs a tiny bit and rest both your hands on the chair between them.

“ Mmh hmm! People can post anything. Art, recipes, book recommendations, baking.” You add with emphasis and do a small gesture towards what looked like a tray of buns that Simon had pulled out sometime during this conversation. He hums thoughtfully while pulling a plump piping bag full of custard out of his industrial refrigerator. Simon's told you before that custard separated in the fridge when it's not cooked right, and judging by the way the bag is full to the brim with fluffy pastry cream, that's not something he has to worry about.

“Baking hm? Maybe I should download it then.” he mumbles in response before picking up a bread bun and stuffing custard inside. If it'll give him something else to talk to you about, a reason to interact outside of the few hours he sees you during work, Simon was game. You could send him anything you found funny or endearing and he'd welcome it. He glances up at you, noticing you hadn't responded to him and startles when he sees your face scrunched up in, what he guessed is disgust.

“Nah don't bother. There's some nice things about it, but it's really just a time waster.” you respond with a shake of your head. An image of Simon turning into one of those guys that make thirst traps with food, makes a visible shudder run up your spine. No matter how fine he looks in an apron, nothing would make up for the level of cringe guys like that create. Besides, something about the thought of Simon wasting his time away on his phone like the rest of you mere mortals, made you disgruntled. Something desolate shades over Simon's eyes then, immediately making you regret shutting down his idea.

“Could use something like that. Can't find enough things to do these days.” He murmurs deeply and you pause. That made sense. Simon has told you before that he served in the military. He never elaborated on what he did or what rank he got to be, but how protective he was of the information made you feel it was probably something important. He's retired now, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that serving in the military likely leaves you with things you'd rather not have enough time to dwell on. You bite at your fingers, hating the tide this conversation had turned, and blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

“ If you need to waste time just hang out with me. You know I'm never doing much.” you suggest casually and Simon glances up at you in surprise. You hold his gaze and nod with a small shrug. It had been said in hopes of lightening the mood, but you meant what you'd said.

Aside from the time you spend with friends and family every now and then, you spend most of your time either in your flat or your store. That or in Simon's bakery of course. You're the kind of person that likes company. You don't have to speak with one another or fill the space. You just like to be in the presence of people you care about while doing your own thing. There was something about just knowing they're there that made you feel content. The thought of Simon relaxing in your living room with a book while you paint in the corner by your window, the night air keeping you cool, flashes in your mind, and the image alone makes your heartbeat a little faster. You meet Simon's eyes and he feels his face heat up behind his mask, but he surprises you by shaking his head.

“That wouldn't work.” He responds to you quietly and your heart drops. It looks like you were wrong to think that your company would be something he'd want outside of work, or that you could ease some of the thoughts clouding his mind. You rush to apologize when Simon walks up to you and places your bagged bread and cream bun in your lap. Your breath catches in your throat at his close proximity, his chest right in your face, but Simon looks down at you unaffected.

“If it's with you then it wouldn't be a waste, now would it?” He says softly while squatting down to your level. You're stunned silent as he brushes one of his fingers over your combed baby hairs. Oh. That was a good argument. You gaze at one another for a moment longer before you nod again and roll your eyes a little.

“Well, if you need some way to spend your time, you can spend it with me.” you reply quietly and run your thumb along the seam of his mask. You look into his eyes for permission and your heart jumps when he nods lightly. You breath softly, and right as you're about to tug his mask down, the loud chime of the bakery door rings into the room. Both you and Simon glance at the kitchen door as familiar voices fill the front of the shop.

“Dammit, completely forgot we were open.” Simon grunts before standing up, his broad body filling your vision for a second. You try not to feel too flattered that he was so invested in your conversation, he'd momentarily forgotten about his store. That wasn't necessarily a good thing after all, but it doesn't stop the butterflies you feel. While Simon pokes out his head to tell who you're sure is the town's elderly mothers, that he'll be out in a minute, you grab your purse and bag of pastries. You gently tap his back while sliding past him to get through the door, and Simon looks away from the chattering ladies to glance at you.

“Here Simon,let me pay you for the bread real quick, then I'll get out of your hair.” You whisper before grabbing a few bills. You try to hand them to him but Simon just wraps his large palm around yours. You meet his deep brown eyes as he presses the money back towards you, stepping closer and blocking you from sight of his customers.

“ It's on the house. Just save me a drink later, yeah?” he suggests instead, referencing the strawberry milk he always buys from your store, and what was a laugh turns into a small gasp when Simon leans into your space again.

“I'll take you up on that offer from before though.” he whispers against your temple with a hand at the small of your back, before leaving to handle the line of elderly women, who have gone suspiciously silent while waiting for their daily bread and gossip. His cologne is barely leaving your senses when you suddenly remember to breathe. You clear your throat quietly, never more grateful that the heat behind your cheeks isn't visible to the many, watching eyes behind the counter. It doesn't matter though because they'd seen everything they needed to.

“Excuse me ladies! I'll be seeing you later.” You excuse yourself politely before making your way to your own business, knowing that the ladies would be swarming your general store for answers later. Simon watches you leave with a small smile, looking forward to the interactions to come, until he hears someone clear their throat. Simon looks up to see a number of eyes looking back at him expectantly.

“Ahem, is there something you want to tell us Simon? Starting with a ‘you’ and ending with a ‘were right’?” Mrs. Thomas asks with an arched eyebrow, the other woman behind her wearing matching expressions. Simon takes a deep breath to prepare himself. He has his work cut out for him now.

A/n: I thought up some random dialogue for Baker!Simon and forced myself to write an entire fic around it. It was giving me way more stress than necessary, so I decided to stop nitpicking and just finish it. It's not perfect, I'm not crazy about it, but it's not bad either. Thanks for reading!🥖🥖🥖

🥖Taggies: @cookieswithay