Kelce cursed under his breath, shifting where he sat. ❝Fuck, bro. What’s she like when you really wreck her? ❞

Rafe smirked, biting his lip, eyes dark with something possessive. ❝You ever fuck a girl so dumb she can’t even speak? Just little whimpers, eyes all glossy, like she’s ruined for anything else? ❞ His fingers tapped lazily against his thigh. ❝She sucks my fingers just to keep quiet. Like she knows she shouldn’t be moaning my name like that. Fuckin’ clampsaround me like she’s trying to keep me inside. ❞ He let out a low chuckle, shaking his head. ❝And the way she looks afterwards? All fucked out, all mine? Man, I don’t even think she gets how dirty she is. ❞

You hadn’t been paying attention at first, padding barefoot through the hallway, the sleeves of Rafe’s old t-shirt hanging long past your wrists, your body warm from sleep. You just wanted to find him. You hadn’t even thought about whether he’d have company, not when he’d spent all of dinner teasing you under the table, slipping his hand onto your thigh just to watch you squirm. But then, just before you pushed open the door, you heard them.

❝—so fuckin’ tight, huh?❞ Kelce laughs, voice dripping with disbelief.

❝Nah, man, you don’t get it.❞ Rafe’s voice was low and drawling, each word rolling slow and smug from his lips. ❝She cries when I put it in. Every single time. Like a good girl.❞

You froze.

Kelce made a strained noise, somewhere between disbelief and something much filthier, and Rafe only chuckled. ❝Yeah, yeah, I know. I thought it was fucked up at first too, but she’s just so sweet about it, man. Always getting all wet just from me playing with her. Can’t help myself. ❞

Your stomach plummeted. A silence stretched. Heavy. Loaded. Like they didn’t quite know what to say, like maybe they should speak up, but maybe they didn’t want to.

And then Topper, voice rough and barely there, muttered, ❝You’re saying she lets you do whatever you want?❞

Rafe scoffed. Amused. ❝Let me? Bro, she fucking needs it. I get her worked up, and she’s a mess. It’s adorable. She looks so guilty about it too, but the second I start touching her, she’s mine. I swear, I could get her to do anything.❞

Heat rushed to your face, humiliation prickling in your chest. They were talking about you, talking about what Rafe did to you, laughing about it like it was some kind of joke. But before you could run, before you could even process it, Rafe’s head turned toward the doorway. He saw you.

And he smirked.

❝Speak of the fuckin’ devil,❞ he drawled, and just like that, three pairs of eyes snapped toward you.

For a second, everything was silent. You felt it, the way their gazes drifted, the way they took you in—bare legs, soft thighs, the hem of Rafe’s t-shirt barely skimming the tops of your panties. The way your skin still had that post-sleep glow, a little too flushed, a little too warm, a little too wrecked from how Rafe had kept you up last night.

Kelce was the first to swallow hard, like he had to physically force himself to hold his tongue. Topper shifted, jaw clenched, a muscle ticking in his cheek, but he didn’t look away.

Rafe, lounging back with a whisky in his hand like he owned the room, crooned, ❝C’mere, baby.❞ And before you could think, before you could process what a terrible fucking idea it was, you obeyed.

Rafe pulled you straight onto his lap the second you got close, arms winding around your waist, possessive, like he was staking his claim. You went rigid, barely breathing, hyperaware of the way his friends were still watching—watching his hands drift beneath the hem of your borrowed shirt, watching the way he spread his thighs beneath you, making sure you were settled perfectly between them.

Kelce swore under his breath, and Rafe chuckled, gaze flicking between his friends. ❝What? Thought I was making it up? ❞ You squirmed, breath hitching as Rafe’s fingers dragged higher, too high, teasing the band of your panties.

Topper exhaled sharply, the kind of sound someone makes when they know they should look away but can’t. Kelce wasn’t even pretending not to stare anymore, his fingers curling into his knee like he was holding back something filthy.

Rafe’s hand flexed over your thigh. ❝You shy, baby? You weren’t shy last night.❞ Heat rushed through you, mortification curling hot and heavy in your gut. Your lips trembled, but Rafe tilted your chin up, forcing you to look at him. ❝Don’t you, baby?❞

You swallowed, and when Rafe raised a brow, you nodded. Topper cursed, running a hand through his hair, but he still didn’t look away. Kelce had his hand over his mouth now, eyes dark and heavy-lidded, like he wasn’t sure if he was jealous of Rafe or of you.

And then, slowly, deliberately, Rafe kissed you. Not soft. Not innocent. Not like a brother should kiss his sweet little stepsister.

He devoured you, lips sliding over yours with an obscene amount of hunger, tongue pushing into your mouth, tasting you, making sure his friends saw exactly how you melted for him, how you didn’t even try to resist. Kelce shifted, jaw tight. Topper exhaled sharply, almost like he was in pain.

And Rafe?

Rafe just grinned against your mouth, breaking the kiss with a lazy, smug, victorious smirk. ❝Yeah, I think they get it now.❞ His fingers skimmed between your thighs, teasing.

❝Go on, baby. Say goodnight to my friends.❞ Your voice barely came out. ❝…Goodnight.❞

Kelce cleared his throat.

Topper finally stood. Rafe just chuckled, already dragging his fingers beneath your panties, whispering, ❝That’s my girl. Letting me show you off like that. ❞

Then the door slammed, leaving you alone with him. And before you could catch your breath, he was already ruining you again.

── ⋆ 𝐲𝐚𝐩 : ohhh, anon, you filthy thing thank you for this idea—i had way too much fun with it! sorry it got a little long, but you know i had to do it justice 😌 rafe is such a smug, possessive perv, and you?? you’re just his sweet little thing, letting him have his way.

── ⋆ 𝒕𝒂𝒈𝒔 : @scne-vampire

at fourteen, he asks if you want to come sailing with him. “im already going with Sarah,” you say apologetically.

at fifteen, he asks you to homecoming. you tell him you're going with someone else.

at sixteen he buys you flowers, knowing they’re you’re favourite lilies. you thank him but leave them sitting in the passenger seat of your car.

at seventeen, he kisses you after a beach bonfire because he's convinced — absolutely convinced — you've been looking at him differently all night.

you pull away almost immediately. "rafe..." that one word is enough."i don't like you like that."

he smiles, says it's fine, goes home and punches a hole through his bedroom door. how can someone spend their entire life loving one person... and still never be enough?

after that, something changes. the crush doesn't disappear. it curdles and becomes quieter, ess hopeful and instead more patient.

he stops asking you out. stops bringing flowers. stops making himself obvious. everyone thinks he's finally moved on.

you think he's finally moved on and it feels like a fresh breath of fucking air.

except he hasn't. he's just realized that asking nicely has never worked.

years pass.

you date. you graduate. you build a life that never seems to include him which only makes him want it more.

every boyfriend you introduce to your parents gets something he has spent half his life chasing so desperately he can barely breathe around it.

your smile, affection. worse : future

so he starts paying attention. not to you but to everything around you. who your father does business with. which charities your mother sits on the board of.

wgat your family needs, what they owe, what they stand to lose. he learns that marriages on figure eight aren't always about love.

sometimes they're contracts with rings attached. sometimes they're business and sometimes they're survival.

and every single person in the outer banks knows rafe has never been above using survival to get what he wants.

when ward mentions a merger over dinner one evening, rafe barely looks up from his plate until he hears your father's name.

that's when he starts listening carefully.

three months later, the families are having dinner together. you're confused: your parents are strangely optimistic.

ward is unusually generous. and rafe... rafe barely looks at you. he knows if he does, he'll smile. he can't afford to smile yet.

the announcement comes half way through the dessert, through clinking of metal spoons. your father clears his throat. "there's... something we'd like to discuss."

your stomach drops. you’ve recognised the tone. adults only use that voice when they're about to ruin somebody's life.

it's presented as an opportunity. a partnership.a joining of two respected families. your mother reaches for your hand beneath the table while ward starts talking about legacy.

all you hear is: "...an engagement."

you laugh. actually laugh. it's absurd in every aspect. "that's funny." when nobody laughs with you slowly, your smile fades. "wait." your eyes move around the table to your father, your mother, ward and finally... rafe.

he's already looking at you. calm & composed. almost gentle like he's been waiting for this moment his entire life. “you're serious."

your father nods. "it's what's best."

"for who?"

silence. you stand so quickly your chair nearly falls over. "absolutely not." you look straight at rafe. "tell them."

he doesn't answer. “rafe."

"i can't."

your face twists. "can't?" his jaw clenches. "or won't?"

another silence, long enough to tell you everything. the realization settles like ice in your chest.

he knew.

he knew before you did. your voice comes out barely above a whisper. "you did this."

for the first time all evening, something cracks across his face. guilt. real, unmistakable guilt but it disappears just as quickly. "i made sure they'd say yes."

you stare at him like you've never seen him before. "why?"

it's such a simple question that he wishes it wasn't. There isn't one answer he can give

it's years. it's every rejection that he was forced to take with a smile. every "no." every time he watched someone else take your hand, take what was his from him. every future he'd imagined slipping further away.

he laughs once: a quiet, tired sound, surprisingly brittle. “you were never going to choose me.”

"so you took the choice away."

he doesn't deny it. doesn't even try. "yes."

your eyes fill immediately but not because you're emotional. you're horrified. "how could you?"

rafe looks at you for a long time. "i've loved you since i was ten years old."

you shake your head. "that's not love."

"i know."

the wedding is beautiful. that’s what you hate the most: of course it is.

white flowers, the exact same lilies he gifted you at sixteen. champagne. expensive smiles. the entire island calling the two of you a perfect match.

nobody notices the way your hands tremble during the ceremony.nobody notices that when the officiant tells rafe, "you may kiss the bride," he hesitates for half a heartbeat.

for one devastating second, he sees it. he got everything he'd wanted since he was a little boy. your last name. your hand with the ring, the promise.

and somehow he does not have your heart. he forced the marriage. he couldn't force you to love him.

standing there, with your eyes fixed somewhere over his shoulder instead of on him... rafe realizes obsession can win a wedding but it can never win the thing he spent his whole life chasing.

© BITTERSWEETLYBLUE. do not copy, translate, edit my work then claim it as your own, attempt to plagarise or repost it on any other website nor feed into AI. you will be blocked.

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and even worse than the girls that draw hearts around you and sukuna’s staff photos next to eachother in the main office, he’s got gojo. gojo, who ships you two and nags him like worse-than a middle school girl. gojo, who shoves you two together for any school event.

“what game do you have planned for tomorrow?” you ask, leaning over to whisper to sukuna as eighth grade awards are called for each subject, timing claps inbetween your words while names are called. you smirk, “how many kids am i gonna have sent my way next time?”

“just dodgeball.” he leans down to whisper flatly against your ear, still staring down a kid giggling in the seating rows of the auditorium and effectively getting him to stop with his gaze.

“your version of dodgeball is basically to the death, i might have to have paramedics in my room on standby.” you joke, turning to smile at him so sweetly. in his mind, this counts as him making you laugh and therefore counts as a win.

he chuckles lightly, just a quick huff of his chest, but essentially the hardest he can laugh if he’s not looking at a kid getting tackled in class. “these kids will toughen up eventually, i am just teaching them to do it early.”

“were you a weak kid that needed to toughen up? i can really only picture you as a big scary dude.”

“i was actually a severely malnourished child due to my mothers impoverished state during her pregnancy.“ he says, truly not realizing how solemn he sounds in his voice even as he means it as a light hearted jest.

you blink at him, face contorted in confusion and awkwardness. he wants to hit himself.

the only thing that saves him from not saying anything stupid again is the end of the assembly, marked by gojo yelling into a megaphone and for kids to round up by homeroom.

the following week he’s still embarrassed to even look you in the eyes. he’s mulling over how stupid he must’ve looked infront of you while sifting through the equipment closet.

he hears steps echo throughout the currently empty gym before he yells out.

“gojo i’m not covering your lunch break, fuck off—” he turns around to not see the usual suspect he finds during his free period. instead, he sees you, leaning against the door in scrubs and white coat clinging to your body. he stills in his motion.

you speak before he can (if he can speak at all in his embarrassed state).

“i understand the confusion, he bothers me all the time too.” you dismiss, smiling at him with your glossed lips he probably thinks about hourly. waitwaitwait, gojo talks to you all the time ? he’s going to kill that lanky fuck. “just wanted to drop these off for yuri in your next period.” you jostle around a pill bottle in your hand, “she can get fainty on gym days so give these to her just in case to help prevent that.” he knows it’s your job and all, but your concern is honestly kinda cute.

“uhh yeah i’ll be sure to.” he nods, right as you drop the bottle on top of a stack of rubber cones by the door before you walk out. and he would just like it to be known he definitely didn’t stare at your ass as you left.

and he typically makes it easier for himself to deny how down bad he is to you, but now, after you spent a week of saved up sick days out last week, he’s kind of craving your voice. so who can blame him when he calls his 6th grade nephew into his office while he’s supposed to be at lunch.

“look, kid. i’m going to need you to do something, and i’m gonna need you to not be annoying about it, kay?”

yuji furrows his brows, fiddling with the strings of his hoodie.

“you,” he gestures to his nephew, “are going to act like you collapsed and let me bring you up to the school nurse. you are then going to be quiet when i talk to her.”

“is it cause you have a crush on her—”

sukuna tenses before cutting him off.

“do a good job acting and i will consider buying you that human earthworm blu-ray. do you hear me, brat?”

yuji’s eyes light up at the mention of the dvd.

“is this impression good enough then?” yuji leans and clutches at his side in fake fatigue while moaning dramatically for help, then immediately straightens up with a smile like he’s waiting for a rating. sukuna shakes his head and genuinely wonders how he’s related to this—in sukuna’s words— pea brained doofus.

he dials your number on his offices phone, sitting tense in his chair while he shh’s yuji. yuji nods and salutes as sukuna continues to roll his eyes.

yuji could’ve sworn he saw him smile when you pick up. he continues to watch sukuna fiddle with the curled wire of the phone as he explains yuji’s apparently dire situation. he can just barely hear the muffled sound of you saying ‘just bring him up and i’ll check him out.” over the speaker of the phone before sukuna hangs up and fixes his hair.

sukuna walks out the door and desperately tries to ignore yuji’s terrible post fainting impression behind him as his nephew follows his step to your room.

just before they step into your room he whispers to yuji as he leans over.

“if you can bring up me being single i’ll take you out for ice cream, brat.”

That’s how you ended up here—naked on the bed, thighs spread over Price’s lap while Gaz knelt between your legs like he’d been invited to dinner.

Price’s big hands were firm on your waist, keeping you pinned back against his chest. “She’s sensitive.” he muttered, almost clinical, but you could feel how hard he was against your lower back. “On with it, sergeant.”

Gaz’s eyes flicked up to yours, dark and hungry. “You ready for this, love?”

You nodded, already wet and aching just from the sheer thrill of the situation.

Gaz didn’t waste time. Two thick fingers slid through your folds, spreading you open. “First thing—don’t rush. Get her nice and wet.” He rubbed slow circles over your clit until your hips jerked, then pushed two fingers inside, curling just right.

Price watched every movement like it was a briefing.

“There’s a spongy spot here…” Gaz pressed upward deliberately causing your whole body to jolt. “Right there. That’s your target.”

He started pumping—steady, focused strokes that dragged over that spot again and again while his thumb kept pressure on your clit.

Price’s voice was rough in your ear. “Breathe, sweetheart. Let him work.”

Your orgasm built fast—embarrassingly so.

“That’s it..” Gaz praised, voice low. “She’s swelling up. See how she’s pulsing?” He added a third finger and the pressure inside became unbearable. “When she starts trying to close her legs, don’t let her. Keep going.”

Price’s hands moved to your thighs, holding them open. You came with a broken cry, but Gaz didn’t stop. He kept fingering you through it, rough and relentless, and suddenly everything felt tighter, hotter, like something was about to—

“There..” Gaz growled. “Let it go, lovely...”

With a whine, a gush of wetness flooded out around his fingers, soaking the sheets and his wrist. Price made a low, filthy sound behind you as he watched you squirt for the first time in your life.

Gaz eased his fingers out slowly, letting you ride the aftershocks, then lifted his soaked hand to show Price. “That’s the spot. Consistent pressure, curved fingers, and you don’t stop when she comes.. you keep going until she gives it to you.”

Price’s breathing was ragged. His cock was nearly throbbing against your back.

Gaz wiped his fingers on your inner thigh, then met Price’s eyes. “Your turn, Captain.”

Price shifted you forward, laying you down properly. He kissed the inside of your knee, voice low with promise.

“Watch close, Sergeant. I’m a fast learner.”

He was right, you had not thought enough while walking back home late at night. Initially you had thought of taking a cab but just to save a few bucks you decided against it.

You shouldn't have. You lived in a big city so even if you had a job which on paper seemed good enough of a paycheck it hardly managed the expenses of the said big city.

Everything was expensive here so even if you lived past a shady neighbourhood, you were glad enough to have the roof above your head. You couldn't afford or even think of changing places until you got a promotion or changed your company for a higher paying one.

You were walking towards your block when you felt someone following you and you glanced over your shoulder only to see this huge bulky and scary man walking a few feet away from you.

You had immediately turned around, heart pounding with fear, hoping it was not what you were thinking and he would take a different turn or route from you. But no, he kept walking after you, turning where you did as you kept checking for him through your peripheral vision.

Even from a distance, he stood out so it was not hard for you to realise that he indeed was following you. And it seemed like he was not going anytime soon or leaving you alone, so you had fastened your pace and nearly ran when you were just a few blocks away from your apartment.

You ran as fast as you could in those damn work heels of yours, as it clattered loudly on the silent street. Huffing as your chest burned, not used to this much of physical activity as you hardly got any time for it, you ran with all your might not looking back and that was your biggest mistake as he was also running after you. Just two more blocks you had thought, you were so close!

Then only he had caught you, his massive arms wrapping around your waist, yanking you to his chest and his large, rough hand had clamped over your mouth before you could scream, smothering your cry for help and protest.

He had moved really fast, dragging you along with him in a nearby alley, where even the streetlamp’s light didn't reach, bunching up your work skirt and tearing off your panties.

You had thrashed wildly, kicking your legs, trying to fight him off, but it was useless. He was too strong for you to do any real harm to him or save yourself from him, he had easily overpowered you pushing you up against the wall in the complete darkness.

He changed the angle pulling out his cock with a low, frustrated grunt, like he hated being out of you even for a second. His thick cock dragged heavily along your walls on his way out, before you could even relax thinking it was probably finally over and he was done with you, he bent his knees slightly, adjusting his angle, and drove back in with one powerful upward thrust. A sharp burst of pain shot through your core, making you yelp in agony against his hand.

The new position forced him even deeper. You felt every inch of his thick cock stretching you open again, his cockhead pressing hard against your cervix, bullying its way in until his heavy balls slapped against your clit, your fingers clawing against the plain brick wall, nothing to hold on too as he started fucking you harder from the new position.

“Don't you know how dangerous it is to roam outside at nighttime, especially if you look so fuckable and vulnerable. You're gonna attract the wrong kind of men you know?”

You tried to scream again, thrashing your head side to side, but his hand only tightened over your mouth making it hard for you to breathe. Tears streamed down your face as your legs shook violently to his relentless ramming inside your cunt.

He chuckled darkly, the sound vibrating through his chest pressed flush against your back. “Shhh,shhh, don’t fight it, sweetheart. You’re doing so good for me. Taking my cock like a good little slut.”

“And it's not like you're taking a cock for the first time, I went inside you so easily. Do you have a boyfriend, doll? Who's the lucky bastard fucking this sluty cunt of yours, not gonna lie I am quite jealous.”

Another hard thrust as he pushed himself up from the low angle making you whimper against his palm. You could feel the huge and fat cock of his dragging inside your walls, as it clenched around him due to your fear and distress.

His fingers on your throat loosened just a fraction, as you gasped finally able to breath taking deep shaky breaths only for him to slide up and force two thick fingers past your lips, pressing down on your tongue and fucking shallowly into your mouth as you choked and gagged on his fingers, while at the same time he fucked you with his cock slamming inside you.

He slowed for a moment, grinding deep, letting his cock settle inside you. One of his hands left your hip to grope roughly at your tits through your plain office shirt, “Such a nice pair of tits, baby. Should I loosen them free? They will bounce real good while I fuck you raw–ahhh....shit.”

Toji threw his head back letting out a deep moan as your cunt involuntarily clenched around him, your body reacting out of new found fear. The sudden tight squeeze made him hiss through his teeth.

“Oh, baby don't do that” he let out a throaty chuckle near your ear, "You’re gonna snap my dick in half. Don't worry I am not bothering with your shirt, too much work you know.”

You sobbed harder, body trembling as he picked up the speed again, fucking you harder and faster, as your whole body shook from his ruthless, rentless thrusts.

Your knees finally gave out beneath you as you almost fell down only for him to tighten his hold on your waist keeping you upright and going in and out inside of you groaning in your ear.

He lifted you higher with both his arms now wrapped firmly around your waist, pulling your body back against his chest as he slightly bent his knees and leaned a little backwards. Your feet left the ground, dangling helplessly just inches above the floor, toes pointing down but not touching.

The position was overwhelming, dangling like this, worse than before any of the positions he had put you through. Now, only supported by his arms around your waist, hardly able to move except by the thrusts of his cock.

Your body had grown so weak from the brutal fucking that all you could do now was take it, with your back arching against his chest as painful moans and whimpers spilled from your lips now free from his clamped hand.

“You live around here, right?”he asked grunting. “Bet you’re gonna feel me leaking and dripping from your cunt all the way home when I fill you up, I hope you remember this big cock of mine, I bet it's bigger than your boyfriend's.”

“Gonna fill this sweet pussy of yours, doll.” He said his hips slamming up harder into you. “Pump you full with my cum and you’re gonna take it all like the helpless little fucktoy you are. Ain’t that right, princess?”

© darkbirdie 2026

꒰Please do not copy, plagiarize, translate or repost my work. Custom bow divider made by me please do not copy꒱

half the lights have been turned off and the office is silent except for the hum of electricity and the faint sound of a mop down the hall. you rub the sleep from your eyes as you pack up another draining work day. it’s times like these where you find yourself wondering if all the extra hours are worth it.

but then nanami steps out of his office in a crisp pair of slacks and polished shoes, his hair perfectly neat. he’s shrugging his coat on when he flashes you a small smile.

“another long day?” he asks.

you nod, grabbing your work bag and pushing in your chair. “yeah, it’s alright though.”

nanami hums like he understands what you really want to say. “the extra hours are a pain in the ass, but you’re doing a great job.”

you can’t help but smile back at him, a sense of pride budding in your chest at his recognition of your hard work. “thank you, sir.”

nanami swallows thickly and it takes everything in him to quell the shudder that moves through his body. sir. if only you knew what that did to him, you’d probably quit on the spot. he can feel his dick twitch in his pants every time you say it, every time you remind him that you know he’s above you.

“have a good night,” he dips his chin at you, opting to take the stairs while you step into the elevator.

for a split second he thinks that maybe he should just get in there with you now. pull the emergency stop button and press you up against the wall, his hands dipping beneath your skirt. no one would know, he could be fast. it wouldn’t be difficult to erase the footage after if he had to, the janitor has a set of keys to the security office.

but no, his patience will pay off. he’s already waited long enough, he can hold on a little longer.

“you too, sir. see you next week.”

next week. you really were fucking oblivious.

the sun has set by the time you’re stepping off the bus at your stop. footsteps clamor behind you as the other passengers exit, everyone eager to finally get home.

your house is silent when you arrive, toeing off your shoes by the door and shutting it behind you. you toss your keys onto the holder and head straight to your room to get ready for bed. 

it’s while you’re rummaging through your drawer for some pajamas that you hear something for the first time. a soft creak followed by an even softer click. you freeze halfway through undressing, standing perfectly still to try and pick up on any other sounds. but when you hear nothing else, you try to brush it off. but goosebumps still pepper your skin as you throw on a tank top and a comfortable pair of cotton panties for bed.

and then it’s while you’re brushing your teeth, staring at your tired reflection in the mirror, that you hear what sounds like that old floorboard in the hallway—the one that groans each time you walk over it. the worn wood seems hardly able to sustain weight anymore.

that was unmistakeable, you’re sure of it.

well, you think you’re sure.

gingerly, you tiptoe until you’re able to peek out of the doorway and into the hall, but it’s empty.

you inhale a shaky breath, telling yourself that it’s nothing. there’s no way someone could have broken into your home without causing a scene because they’d have to shatter a window or find another way in with the front door locked.

was the front door locked?

a wave of nausea washes over you and forms a pit in your stomach. you can’t remember if you locked the door. you always do, but lately you’ve just been so tired and overworked.

and now, your first thought is that you need your phone. you remember leaving it plugged in by your bed and you’re moving before you can think any further. you rush back to your bedroom but in there you find nothing but the charging cable on your nightstand.

the bedroom door is slammed shut while you’re distracted and you gasp, spinning around so fast you feel dizzy.

it’s unmistakably him standing before the door in the same outfit you’d seen him wearing just an hour ago. nanami doesn’t speak, he just slides your phone into the pocket of his slacks before loosening his tie with a sigh.

“w-what,” you start, breathing heavily. he cocks an eyebrow at you, like he’s curious as to what you’re trying to say. “what are you…”

nanami cracks his neck, letting out a groan at the release of tension. “what am i doing in your home?” he finishes the question for you after you trailed off.

all you can do is nod and step backwards until you bump into the nightstand, rattling the lamp on top of it.

“careful,” nanami cautions, striding closer to you. “are you also going to ask me how i got in? i think we’d save a lot of time if we didn’t ask questions we already know the answers to.”

your throat feels tight, it’s dry when you swallow down the bile threatening to come up.

“get on the bed," nanami's tone leaves no room for protest and yet you try.

“n-no, no. get out.” 

your head is whipped to the side before you even hear the loud crack that rings out, before you even feel the impact of nanami’s palm colliding with your cheek. then pain begins to bloom from the spot, your skin searing as you touch the area gently with your fingers, stunned.

“on the bed. now.”

you realize you’re crying as you climb onto the mattress. steady streams of tears as your breath shudders and you try to catch your breath. how could you be in this situation right now?

“hands behind your back,” nanami is unamused by your emotional reaction, though he’s pleased when you listen this time.

the soft satin of nanami’s tie wraps around your wrists, binding them together. he gives it a sharp tug to make sure the knot won’t come loose, and when he’s satisfied he pushes you onto the mattress.

you scramble pathetically to try and pedal away from him but he grabs your ankle and tugs you back to the edge of the bed in one swift motion.

“enough,” he snaps, irritated by your sudden fight after you’d just been so pliant.

a choked sob escapes you when he wrangles your legs apart, but you resist less which earns you a gentle stroke of his hand up your thigh. it’s supposed to be soothing in a sickening way, but it just makes your stomach ache even more.

nanami hooks a finger into the elastic of your cotton panties, pulling on it before letting it snap back against your skin. “if you weren’t so clueless, i’d think you dressed this way just for me.” 

he thinks that this pair will be a nice start to his collection as he slides them down your legs. holding them up to his nose, nanami inhales deeply, committing the scent to memory before tucking the fabric into his pocket.

you squeeze your eyes shut when you see him finally unbuckling his belt, turning your head away from his as more tears spill from your waterline. nanami hates that you don’t want to look at him. you should feel lucky. it could be any gross man here in his position, but it’s not.

it’s him.

someone smart, successful, handsome. and you’re still fucking upset, acting like this is the worst thing to happen to you.

“god damn brat,” he hisses, gripping your chin to make you face him again. his free hand is yanking down his pants and his briefs, trying to free his aching cock.

he’s been hard just thinking about fucking you since the minute you walked into the office this morning. and now that he’s about to, it’s torturous. his pretty pink tip is already leaking, a translucent bead of precum sitting atop the slit.

“please,” you choke out one last attempt to persuade your intruder to let you go. “i promise i won’t tell anyone, i-i swear. just don’t hurt me.”

nanami scoffs, pumping himself slowly. “if it hurts it’s your fault. don’t blame me for that.”

your shoulders ache already, your hands starting to tingle as they’re stuck behind your back, between you and the mattress. you’re trembling, jerking away from nanami’s touch when his hand leaves your face to hold your hip but one sharp glance from him causes you to still.

you can’t help but notice how different he seems now. in the dim light of your room, the scars on his face seem more rugged, his eye appears darker, almost black. his hair is tousled from your struggling and his chest is heaving as he lines himself up at your entrance.

he rolls his hips, pushing his cock forward so it glides between your folds and his eyebrows raise when you let out the tiniest whine. he does it again. you squirm in his hold and the embarrassment on your face is evident.

when he chuckles you want to scream at him that you can’t help it. that just because your body reacts to the stimulation when his shaft drags across your clit doesn’t mean that you like it. and yet all you do is bite back a moan and try to prevent more tears from falling when you feel your pussy starting to get wet.

saliva pools in nanami’s mouth at the sight of you. he pulls himself back until the head of his cock is just poking at your hole and he lets a fat glob of spit land on your cunt. it slides down slowly until it gets pushed inside you when he starts to fuck you with shallow thrusts.

nanami dips the first couple inches of his length in and out of you, groaning at how tight you are. the little bit of slick that had gathered at your entrance does nothing to aid him when he finally forces himself in all the way.

and your pussy feels like everything he could have imagined and more.

so warm and tight, squeezing his cock like a vice as your back arches and you let out a weak cry. you feel so good like this with no prep, your cunt pulsing around him every time you writhe beneath him because it’s trying to push him back out. 

“been waiting so long to do this,” nanami groans, pulling out all the way before slamming back in.

you scream. you wish you could claw at him, scratch him until he bleeds, until he hurts as much as you do but you can’t.

you can do nothing but let your boss use you, violate you.

and the worst part is, when he presses your knees into your chest and lays his full weight on top of you, it makes you see stars. he’s hitting the exact right spot inside you with such precision that you wonder if he somehow knew where it was. maybe it was listed in your file next to your home address.

the sound of skin slapping against skin gets louder as he fucks you harder and faster until you can also hear the lewd sounds your pussy is making. the slick squelch each time nanami re-enters your cunt is a humiliating reminder of the fact that you can feel an orgasm building against your will.

“see? it doesn’t have to hurt,” nanami speaks down to you, condescending as you avoid his gaze. “you can admit that you like this.”

“n-no,” you whimper, “stop, nanami—”

the second slap across your face is harder than the first. “it’s ‘sir’ when speaking to me.”

“sorry!” you sob when he rams his hips into yours with a particularly rough thrust. “i’m sorry.”

“sorry, what?” he rasps.

you wince, prepared for another hit as you squeak out an acceptable apology, “i’m sorry, sir!”

“such a fast learner,” he praises dryly and unfortunately it makes you feel better. you're thankful for the fact that at least you’ve done one thing right in his mind, and maybe he’ll be easier on you for it.

how naive.

he’s relentless as he fucks himself into you. the pace he’s set is impossible for you to keep up with, and within minutes you’re nothing but a puddle of moans and tears on your bed.

that’s just how nanami wants you. soon you’ll see this is a good thing for you and him.

you’re clamping down around him so hard that he knows you’re about to cum no matter how hard you try to stop it. his thumb finds your clit, rubbing tight circles on the bud and you start to quiver.

“no wait, i don’t want, oh god,” you mewl, “fuck!”

“dirty whore, look at you cumming around my cock from this,” nanami goads, “say ‘thank you, sir’.”

“…thank you, sir.” you want to throw up the minute the words leave your mouth, reminded of all the times you’d said it to him at work.

the humiliation is written all over your face and it’s beautiful. nanami knows that you couldn’t help it when you came but that makes it even better. you’ll be so ridden with guilt, finally vulnerable enough for him to start weaseling his way into your thoughts.

it’s only a matter of time before you’re thinking that maybe you did like it. maybe it only hurt at first because you didn’t want to admit to yourself that you wanted this. is it really as bad as you think if you came so hard for him?

maybe you'll even find yourself seeking him out first after this, and just the thought of that alone is enough for nanami to reach his climax.

“not inside!” you whine, but you’re too late. not that he’d listen.

he’s already plugging you up one last time and spilling inside you, warm cum flooding your abused cunt. it’s then that you finally relax, giving up. every muscle in your body goes limp as you slump into the mattress feeling utterly defeated.

when nanami finally pulls out, he continues to hold your legs up against you, admiring the way his spend starts to get pushed out, dribbling down to your asshole.

he should fuck you there next.

She turned shifty, elusive, didn’t speak more than a few words at a time for the remainder of that day. His own fault, because whatever he had said to her had evidently unsettled her; after that she spent another half hour tucked in the bathroom, hiding from him, as if the door could lock. Spent the afternoon creeping awkwardly between rooms, sitting at the table instead of her armchair, dutifully tidying up her mess and folding up her clothes. Haunting his house more than occupying it, as if bothering him was a risk she dared not take. 

Not without cause, he supposed. It wasn’t as though he had been at all sweet, even he couldn’t deny that the shift in the air had turned him cold and irritable. Something was intangibly altered after he cornered her in that shower. He could feel it in his jaw, a toothache, and much like all of his other little pains he intentionally and spitefully ignored it. 

Her sulking wasn’t his problem. He had a right to be frustrated with her, the bolshie thing — leaving her shit everywhere, draining his hot water, whining about his food, tossing around in his bed, leaving her hair in the shower, bitching and moaning and hissing like a stray — the fact he had maintained any measure of tact was a marvel in itself. 

Didn’t help that he couldn’t let himself look at her. 

Even a glance made his ribs tight, and he didn’t like it. Hated whatever he felt in the pit of his stomach when he blinked and saw her skin all wet again. Loathed that she seemed to know it, because she avoided eye contact with him as much as he did her; she must, she must have seen right through him. 

He spent most of the day outside to avoid her. He had logs to chop, since she had emptied the basket by the hearth to keep the fire lit. He had supplies to bring in from the storage shed. He had a dog to walk. He had a call to make with his superiors. 

Plenty to keep himself busy with, and by dusk he had unwinded, if just slightly. The air was biting but there was no wind, and the void winter silence was something of an anti-inflammatory for his brewing resentment. 

It was bluish evening by the time he returned to the cabin. 

He noticed, as he hung his snowy jacket on the rack and the dog followed him in, that her suitcase was zipped up and tucked against the wall. The blanket was folded neatly over the back of the sofa. The chairs were tucked under the table. The smell of green apple detergent hung bubbly in the air. 

His first thought — and it nettled him to consider — was that the wee nuisance was preparing for a hurried departure. That she, like him, had reached her wit’s end, and would next demand once again to be taken back to whatever shithole town it was.

He prepared himself for that very argument, in fact. Came inside with a terse sigh and tight shoulders, tongue forming the words not fucking likely if she were to demand premature freedom. If you want to walk all the way to Smithers, be my guest. 

“Hi, Johnny,” he heard a soft voice coo out from the kitchen, where no doubt the dog was already lavishing her in attention, his tail could be heard whipping through the air from the front door. 

His boots tracked snow in the pattern of their soles as he lumbered towards the kitchen, where, surprising him, she was busy wiping the bench with a cloth in wide, full-bodied circles. In a t-shirt too big for her and — only as she leaned forward, and the loose hem lifted slightly up her legs, he noted — a pair of spotty pyjama shorts. Too short. 

There was a shudder of humiliation in her expression when she glanced up and noticed him; gone quickly as he approached her, when she looked away and wrung out the cloth in the sink. 

“Clean in ‘ere,” he commented stiffly, the ire he had arrived with still audible in his throat. 

She turned to face him, adjusting her posture as if she had been standing incorrectly, and disquieted that he was within an arm’s reach. 

“Yeah, well,” she bit out, chagrin in her throat, “I just thought, um.” 

He was irritated again. Already reverted to her tetchy fear of him, as if the last five days had never happened, and all progress was moot. Made his teeth grind together. “Thought what.” 

She swallowed a breath and let it out measuredly through her nose.  Regarded him with sincerity. “I’m sorry for using all the hot water.” 

A humourless puff escaped him at that. Bemused by it, because he utterly did not expect those words to leave her mouth. 

“I just — I’ve been thinking about it and, it was selfish of me, and I feel bad about it, and—” she sucked in another breath, then looked at her fingers, “—well, yeah, I’ve been inconsiderate, and I’m sorry.” 

He couldn’t help but grin. 

That was the issue, was it? Not fear of him, not sudden distrust, not a desperation to leave — no, she was contrite. Simply guilty. Avoiding his eye because she was in trouble. Because he had scolded her. 

He was immensely endeared by it, and he assuaged the want to praise her with a brush of his knuckle under her chin. 

“Apology accepted,” he said, in passing, as he stepped around her toward the sink. Grabbed a squeaky clean glass from the dishtray and filled it up under the faucet. 

She was quiet as he drank his water, he could feel her chewing on something to say without even having to look at her. 

“And, um,” she continued, and at this point he sighed, “I realise I haven’t really thanked you for, like, taking me in, or whatever.” 

“Or whatever?” He chortled, leaning against the counter once he put down his empty cup. 

The fuse of her sweetness was running short — he could literally see it draining from her eyes as they went from cloyingly apprehensive to low and spiteful — but she persevered. 

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” she said. Murmured, more like. 

Yet another sentiment he thought he’d sooner hallucinate than ever hear her say aloud. He was smiling at her, now, at both the visible effort it took for her to say it, and the chagrin that etched in her features once she did; but, even still, the sentiment itself was guilelessly cute. He didn’t give her the credit, considered her incapable of humility or self-reflection at all — and there she was, evasively picking at her fingernails while she waited for him to let her off the hook. 

It was difficult to stay mad at her when she looked like that, averted gazes through her lashes and the unsubtle humiliation that riddled her in having to seek his forgiveness. He could have told her that he had already forgiven her, but he wasn’t about to embolden her. 

“Not itching to escape anymore, are ya?” He asked, satisfaction slickening his tone. A simple you’re welcome would surely have sufficed, but he couldn’t help but rub it in. 

“No,” she gritted, now defensive. “That was — I was scared.” 

That he found less humorous. “No shit.” 

“I’m not anymore, though,” she added insolently, crossing her arms. “Now I know you’re just an asshole.” 

He laughed. “An asshole that saved your life, though, eh?” 

“Yeah, that’s why I said thank you.” 

“Did you?” 

“I literally just did.” 

“Don’t think I heard that,” he jeered.

She scoffed. “You’re deaf, then.” 

“Thought I heard thanks for letting me stay, then something about me being an asshole—”

“I’m not saying it again.” 

“—not quite a thank you Simon for saving my fucking life, that’d be nice, don’t ya reckon?” 

“I’m not saying it.”

He snorted. “Go on, I wanna hear it.” 

“Nope.”

“I think I’ve earned it.” 

“Too bad.” 

There was a smirk, the faintest thing, dimpling in her cheek; enough to pull a true grin from him in response, because — he knew it — she was goading him on purpose. 

“Wanna go back to sleeping on the floor?” He threatened, and she rolled her eyes. 

“Mph. No.” 

“‘Cos that’s where I’ll put you, if y—”

“God, fine, thank you dear Simon for deigning to rescue me from the cold, oh, how I might have perished if you left me in the snow! I can never express the depth of my gratitude, I am forever in your debt — thank you, oh, thank you—!”

“Alright, fuckin’ hell,” he barked, rubbing his brow and letting loose a chuckle. “I’m havin’ a shower.” 

She continued her melodramatic performance for the back of him as he walked out of the kitchen. “Please, tell me how I can make it up to you! Anything, Simon, I owe you my life after all—”

“Careful,” he sneered on his way out, and she laughed, satisfied. Best that he wasn’t looking at her while she begged like that, however unseriously. 

“No, go on,” she teased, her sing-song voice following him out into the hall, “tell me what you want. I can’t ever repay you, but I’ll do my best!” 

“You’ll think of something,” he barked back.

Her laughter bubbled down the hallway, victorious. “I’ll try.” 

Seemed she had cleaned up the bathroom, too. 

Tucked all her little toiletries — face wash and serums and soaps and all — into her spongebag, which she had put away in a vanity drawer. Really digging her roots in, he thought, already leaving things in his cupboards and drawers; it should have aggravated him, that she felt so emboldened as to put her things away in his house — but, worse than that, it disarmed him. 

She’d set her toothbrush next to his. Wiped down the mirror. Replaced the roll of toilet paper, and the old hand towel with a fresh one. Her own stripey bath towel hung beside his navy one, folded neatly on the rail. 

What did it say about him, he wondered, that he didn’t care? That, if anything, he found it profoundly endearing? 

Didn’t bode well, that was for certain. He’d let himself get used to it, and he’d have to suffer the vacuum it’d leave within the week, once it was time to send her home again and all her shit went with her. A deadline he had incidentally been counting down the minutes to just that morning. 

He didn’t look at himself in the mirror before he got in the shower. He kept it brief and hot enough to make his skin red. Raptly watched the water condensate and roll down the curtain to keep his mind off her expression when he cornered her in there. To prevent himself imagining all the ways in which she could repay her debts. And he could imagine a few. 

When he emerged from the bathroom in a t-shirt and sweats, the sickly scent of heavy cream and melted chocolate hung in a smog that drifted down the hall; notes of cinnamon that he followed to the kitchen, where she was leaning over the stove, stirring some liquid in a large saucepan with a wooden spoon. 

She glanced up at him. “That was quick.”

He bit down on a snide remark about her showering habits as he approached, arms crossed. “The hell have you gotten up to.” 

“I’m making us some hot chocolate,” she said proudly, and it was then he noticed the discarded wrapper of a full block of chocolate with only three squares remaining. 

“Yeah?” He snorted, now beside her, leaning over the pot to look at what she was stirring. It was thick, and dark, with a stick or two of cinnamon spinning within and foam forming from the bubbles of the steady simmer. “Gonna put marshmallows in it, too?” 

“Mmm, that’s a good idea,” she cooed, either unaware of or purposefully ignoring the potent sarcasm he layered his words with. “Do you have any?” 

He plucked one of the leftover bits of chocolate from the wrapper and chucked it in his mouth as he opened the fridge. “No,” he replied simply. 

“‘Course you don’t,” she scoffed, then added; “Dickhead.” 

“This your way of paying off your debt, eh?” He asked facetiously, through the chocolate snapping between his teeth. “Hot chocolate?” 

“It’s special,” she explained, a little eager, so he redirected his attention from the shelves of the fridge back to her. 

Only then did he notice the heady aroma of liquor carried by the steam; something dark and full of molasses, barrel-aged and — fuck’s sake — there on the counter sat a half empty bottle of Smuggler’s Cove with the cap still off. A bottle that had previously been unopened, last he checked. 

“Jesus,” he scoffed, grabbing the bottle and preemptively screwing on the lid. “Went a bit light on the rum, d’you reckon?” 

That sarcasm she picked up on, at least. “It’s a big batch,” she argued. “Do you want some or not?” 

“Trying to get me pissed, are ya?” He gibed. 

“Yep,” she said. 

“What’re you plotting?” 

“I was just thinking — I feel like we haven’t broken the ice yet.” 

“Haven’t we?” 

“Don’t think so. Unless you count perving on me in the shower as an icebreaker.” 

At that he snorted. Decided it was best not to acknowledge it, but his lack of denial earned him a glance out of the corner of her eye. “Go on, then. Couldn’t hurt.” 

Certainly fucking could, but he wasn’t about to say that. Wasn’t about to tell her it was a bad idea because booze made him grouchier and grabbier than usual — which, when alone in his cabin, hurt nobody but himself. Thing like her around, though, no telling what he’d turn into. What he’d say. Where his hands would go. 

It’d been a good week, though, since he’d had a sip. The itch was there. Worsened by the mere mention. And it smelled fucking good. 

“Okay, good,” she hummed. “Grab me a couple mugs, then.” 

He scoffed. “Yes ma’am.” 

She straightened her back at that, a pleased little smile in her lips, and he made a note of that. He collected two large mugs from the cabinet and put them down beside the stove. 

With a tea towel wrapped around the handle she picked up the saucepan with great effort, intent on pouring it straight from the pot; but she was hindered by a grunt and a wobble, and a bit of brown milk dribbled down the side. 

“Christ, put it down,” he demanded, pre-empting an inevitable spill of boiling milk that would’ve burned any skin it landed on. She obeyed with a huff and set it back on the stove. “I’ll do it.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “Thanks.” 

The creamy scent billowed directly into his sinuses as he poured a steady stream into the first mug. Certainly looked delicious. He must’ve been twelve the last time he had a hot chocolate. Perhaps he wouldn’t have begrudged a marshmallow. 

He slid the first mug in her direction, before he poured the next one, and she picked it up with both hands; blew on it carefully for a while before she brought it to her lips. She made a grim toothy face after her first sip. 

“Mm,” she hummed thoughtfully, smacking her tongue. “Maybe it is a bit strong.” 

He chuckled at her as he went to taste his own. The first sip burned his tongue and went down his throat just as hot; sweet and creamy enough to stick to the roof of his mouth, exorbitantly chocolatey, and — though he had no complaints about it — at least a quarter rum. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” he puffed, stifling a cough, out of surprise more than intolerance. He usually sips it straight.

“I’ll just drink it slowly,” she said. “Doubt I’m a heavyweight like you, though.” 

“What d’ya mean by that?” He asked through a grin. 

She gestured up and down at him. “You’re like the fucking Hulk.” 

He tried not to let his feathers get all puffed up at that. Easier said than done. “More for me, then.” 

“Uh-huh,” she droned, plodding out of the kitchen with her mug in hand. “You got cards or something?” 

“Cards?” He carped, leaning beside the archway. 

She shot him a vindictive glance, stopping by the dog to run her hands through his fur, as he watched the altercation with his big dumb smile and his tongue hanging out. “Or, what, would you rather sit around and talk about your feelings?” 

“Should be some under the telly,” he said, plainly amused. 

“Thought not,” she muttered, as she put her mug down on the coffee table and began rifling through the TV cabinet. Once she found the deck of cards she made her way to the dining table. “Y’ever played rummy?” 

He chortled as he sat in the chair opposite her. “Been a while.” 

“Good,” she nodded, already dealing out the cards between them, “then I’ll beat you.” 

Four rounds in, and she hadn’t yet been proven wrong. 

She was all smug about it, too, beaming at him every time she lay a set of cards down on the table; now when she put them down they were wonky and overlapping, because she had already just about finished her third mug of spiked cocoa. She had earlier brought the whole saucepan over to the table, in fact, with the ladle sitting in it for ease of access. 

He wasn’t far ahead of her, but it had evidently not hit him as strongly. Where he was slightly warm in the ears, she had warmed all over — plain in her vibrant eyes and coy smile, in the tongues she poked at him when he lost, again, and — right as she declared her victory, the feet she nonchalantly propped up on his thigh under the table. 

As if she had done it unconsciously, she carried on sweeping the cards back up to shuffle them again. He smothered the urge to remark on it with two hard gulps of his hot chocolate, finishing mug number three with a loud sigh. Stupidly, he didn’t want to spook her into removing them. 

“That’s the spirit,” she crooned, nudging the ladle in his direction and nodding at him to refill. “A little more and you might be able to beat me.” 

He chuckled, obliging. “I’m goin’ easy on you.” 

“Psh,” she snorted. “You’ve got no idea what you’re doing.”

“I’m figuring it out,” he said, scooping the now lukewarm chocolate milk into his mug. “Got your tells down.” 

“There’re no tells in rummy, idiot, it’s not poker.” 

“Sure there are,” he jeered. “Every time you’re about to put cards down there’s a shiteating grin on your face.” 

“Ooo,” she hooted, dealing out the cards again, “aren’t you observant. I smile when I’m winning. Reckon you’ve got a knack for reading people?” 

He fanned out his cards once she dealt them. “Better than you.” 

“Dunno about that,” she teased, flipping between her cards to organise her hand. “I’ve got a pretty good read on you.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” she squinted at him, “you’ve got a little dent between your eyebrows. And — look, your lips are all tight. Ha — you’ve got another losing hand, don’t you?” 

He smirked. Triple kings, triple fours, a ten-jack-queen trio, and a lonely ace. Such a fortuitous hand that he wondered if she had counted the cards and dealt them this way on purpose, another effort to make up her debt to him. He needed another four, another king, or a nine for a clean sweep. 

“You’re up,” he nudged, when he saw she was still watching him, though it was her turn to kick off the round. 

She picked up from the stockpile. Let out a little scoff of disappointment; bad card. She discarded it face-up. A ten of clubs. He picked up next, his a useless one too — eight of diamonds — so he chucked it. She smiled impishly and plucked it up, adding it to her hand, and tossing down her discard. No doubt she was proud of that one, so gleeful when she could show off that she had something good brewing. 

Didn’t matter, though. He was sure his grin was shiteating now, too. The card she dropped was the king of spades. 

He picked it up, to her dismay, and reorganised his cards for dramatic effect. Then he lay down his triple fours — paused to see her reaction, and her lips pursed — then his ten-jack-queen set, then topped it off by dropping his quadruple kings atop of the rest, and flicking his final ace at her. 

“Rummy,” he barked, drumming on the table with his palms to congratulate himself, “s’that what you say?” 

She was slack-jawed. Snottily tossed her cards across the table and huffed as she slumped back into her chair. The satisfaction he felt was probably a little juvenile. 

“What the fuck,” she moaned. 

“What’d I tell ya,” he crooned, sipping from his mug. 

“I don’t wanna play anymore,” she grumbled, half-joking but half-serious, because her feet slipped from his lap, and she went to stand. 

“Fuck me, you’re a princess,” he derided, snickering, “have some more o’ your cocoa, might make a comeback.” 

“Nah,” she huffed, pottering towards the kitchen, “the cream’s making me sick. What else’ve you got?” 

No surprise that she’d waste all his chocolate and half his rum only to discard the bulk of it once she grew sick of it. It was, though, excessively rich to be the drink of choice for the remainder of the evening, should he continue drinking — which he was planning on doing. He wondered if it could be refrigerated or if it would go lumpy in the cold.

He left it on the table as he joined her in the kitchen, standing behind her where she stared vacantly into the open fridge. He reached around her to fetch a beer, ready to head back into the sitting room, until her head fell back and bounced against his chest. He was certain she wasn’t drunk enough for it to be a matter of keeping balance, but he elected not to consider any other motivation she might have had. He didn’t push her off, though he should have. 

“I don’t want beer,” she groaned. 

“What d’ you want, then.”

She sighed. “Gin and tonic. With lemon.” 

“Don’t have gin or tonic. Or lemon.” 

“Obviously,” she snipped. “Just whiskey and beer and misery.” 

He chuckled. An apt stocktake of his booze supply. “Well, pick one of ‘em. That’s all you’re getting.” 

She moaned histrionically as she grabbed a beer, too. Better that she stuck with something a little lower in percentage than the half-rum chocolate she had thrown together, he thought. She slipped out from under him, then, twisting off the cap and tossing it carelessly onto the counter. 

“C’mon, then, Johnny,” she cooed as she strutted past the dog, and Simon swallowed dry, “let’s put on some music. Wanna dance with me, boy? Yeah?” 

Something about that puppy-voice she put on had the dog immediately up and wired, bounding alongside her as if she were about to take him out into the snow for the third time that day; instead she stopped at the CD rack beside the TV. 

“You got a favourite, Simon?” 

Gave him a bit of whiplash to hear her say his name like that, casually as she might have if she had known him for more than five days. 

“Don’t listen much,” he replied, tipping his beer into his mouth. 

“Do you do anything fun?” She taunted, flipping through a couple of jewel cases. 

“Xbox is fun,” he said, mostly as a joke. 

She snickered. “Oh, yeah, right.. Still young at heart, eh?” 

“Still young all over,” he said mordantly, and she shot him a sly glance for that. 

“We’ll see about that.” 

He didn’t ask her what she meant by it. She continued perusing the CDs unfazed, collecting a few options in a stack on her palm. 

“Surely there’s one you like,” she groaned. “What about… the Police?” 

He grunted. “Piss off.” 

“Billy Idol… Queen… Ha — Wham. Jesus, big fan of the eighties, are you?” 

“They’re not mine.” 

“Right, duh. Belong to the random guy you stole this house from.” 

“I was given it,” he clarified, just then remembering the lie he had told her a few days earlier. 

“Whatever,” she hummed. “What about — ooo — U2. Now we’re cooking.” 

“Fuckin’ hell,” he huffed, rubbing his brow testily before he knocked back a sip of his beer. 

“Oh, would you rather we sit in silence? Does that sound like more fun to you?” 

“Uh-huh,” he replied, but she was already feeding the CD into the slot in the player. “I’m goin’ for a piss.” 

She was too busy fiddling with the buttons to acknowledge him as he wandered towards the hallway. The air was cooler down the hall, and marginally easier to breathe. If he had any left he’d have lit himself a cigarette, because he felt a throbbing in his temples that only nicotine could remedy. Or, if he was lucky, more booze. He forbade himself from seeking another antidote. 

He pissed for what felt like a day, then ran his hands under cold water for a minute or two. For motivations that eluded him, he then opened the drawer under the sink and unzipped her spongebag. Fingered through it out of a curiosity he could not justify. A few makeup odds and ends that he could identify as makeup but not much more than that, some sort of face cream or other, tampons, dental floss, mango lip balm, candy pink nail polish. He wondered what other bits and bobs she had left in places he hadn’t discovered yet. 

He zipped it shut when he heard the music start, explosively loud before it was swiftly turned down; and next he heard laughter, and a cloying I’m so sorry, sweet boy, did that give you a fright? Sorry baby, oh, I’m sorry… 

He hovered once he reached the end of the hallway. 

She held the dog up by his paws as if waltzing with him by the fireplace, swaying romantically and all, and the dog’s jaw hung loose as he enthusiastically panted. Fucking schmoozer, that boy. Watched her sing like the sun shone out of her mouth; I have cliiimbed hiiighest mountains, I have ruuun through the fiieelds, oooonly to beee with youuuu!

He stayed out of sight because he knew that, once observed, she’d revert to something more cautious and demure. Schrödinger's butterfly. He only watched with a grin. 

She let the dog down gently when she went to grab her beer; she sucked down four brave gulps and coughed, then another three. Getting herself pissed, he guessed, either to cope with her circumstances or to gird herself for something, and he did his best not to imagine what that could be. 

Next she spun around, held her bottle to her mouth like a microphone; it was waaarm in the niiiight, I was cooold as a stooone… but I stiiiill haven’t foouund, what I’m lookin’ foooorrrrr!

The dog was barking now, and she cackled, holding the bottle-microphone towards him instead. “Oooh, you’re such a good singer! Yes you are! Yes you are!” 

He finished off the last few sips of his beer as he finally emerged from the dark of the hallway, deciding he had lurked there long enough, and went to grab himself another bottle from the fridge. He’d rather make his presence known than have her catch him there, watching her from the shadows like a reprobate. 

Seemed he appeared too abruptly, though, because when she looked up to see him approaching she let out a cartoonish gasp, stumbling onto her back foot, and as though caught in a comedy of errors next she yelped; “Ow! Motherfucker.” 

“Fuck’s sake,” he chided, as she hopped towards a shelf to balance herself on, “What’d you do?” 

He turned down the volume knob on the CD player as he approached her, nudging the concerned dog out of the way. She kicked up her left foot, peering over her shoulder to try and get a glimpse of the bare sole. 

“Think it’s a splinter,” she said through teeth, frustrated. “There’s kindling and shit everywhere.” 

He was chuckling, and she patently disapproved. 

“It’s not funny,” she spat. “It hurts.” 

“I bet,” he snickered, “you gonna keep whining or are you gonna ask me to get it out for you?” 

She let out a long and theatrical sigh. Evidently assessing whether she’d be flexible enough to do it herself. “Can you get it out for me. Please.” 

Didn’t even have to tell her to use the magic word. He smiled, pacifying a chuckle with a sip from his fresh bottle. “Sit.” 

She hopped towards the sofa and fell into it clumsily, and he wondered whether she had finished another beer in the time he spent in the bathroom. She looked a bit surprised when he dropped himself into the cushions beside her. 

“Aren’t you going to use tweezers or something?” 

“Don’t need ‘em.”

She chuffed. “You don’t strike me as precise with your fingers.” 

He looked at her reprovingly. She wore a knowing smirk, then stifled a snicker, as if she picked up on the innuendo she herself had put there only after uttering the words. 

“You’d be surprised,” is all he said. 

She squinted at him, and he thought she might say something a little more overtly lascivious, but instead she asked; “Did you wash your hands after you pissed?” 

He snorted. “Yep.” 

“Mmmkay,” she jeered doubtfully. 

“C’mere, then,” he grunted, a little impatient, reaching down to grab her by the ankle; she shimmied slightly but he did most of the maneuvering for her, swivelling her on her bottom until her feet were in his direction and her back was against the armrest. 

Her uninjured foot rested itself on his thigh, cold even through his sweats. Cute feet. Found himself smirking when he noticed her freshly painted toenails, in that same cotton-candy pink she had in her spongebag. Painted them just today, by the looks. Who’d you do that for, he thought, just for me?

“Should’ve been wearing socks,” he remarked instead. 

“Whatever.” 

“You’re the one always whingeing about the fuckin’ cold,” he said, tugging her injured foot to get a closer look at the sole; it was small and soft in his hand, and he snickered when her toes curled up anxiously. Right below the ball of her foot, in the soft, uncallused centre, a miniscule sliver of wood about half a centimetre long was embedded beneath her skin. 

He put the pads of his thumbs on either side of it, but before he was even able to squeeze, she sucked a sharp breath through her teeth. “Ow!” 

He scoffed in disbelief. “Haven’t even touched it yet.”

“Well, be gentle,” she groaned. 

“You’re a big girl,” he grunted, lining up his thumbs again. “Deep breath, eh?” 

She inhaled deeply and held it, wrenched her eyes shut and all; so he dug his thumbs in, and after not even a second of squeezing, half of the splinter poked out from the skin. 

“That hurt,” she squeaked, and he chuckled. 

“Christ, you’re dramatic.” 

“You’ve got fucking bear hands,” she snapped, “I’m surprised you didn’t crush all my foot bones.” 

“I’m being gentle,” he insisted, returning his focus to the splinter and trying to pinch it with his fingernails. “Wouldn’t wanna ruin a pretty foot.” 

She snickered. “Like feet, do you?” 

“I like pretty things,” he said. 

She laughed impishly, and her other set of toes dug ever so slightly into his thigh. He gritted his teeth in an effort to ignore it, because she had surely done it by accident. “Do you— Ow!” 

Cut herself off with a squeal as he finally got a grip of the tiny sliver, but she bucked her foot before he was able to pull it out, and he groaned exasperatedly. 

“Fuck’s sake, keep your foot still.” 

“I’m trying,” she spat, “you need tweezers, you keep poking it.” 

“If I can pick shrapnel out without tweezers I can pull out a fuckin’ splinter.” 

She frowned at that, and only then did he realise his mistake. “Shrapnel?”

He was lost for an excuse for a moment. A nevermind would’ve only dug his hole deeper, as would any attempt to deny what he said. What day jobs might involve shrapnel, he wondered, and she curiously tilted her head the longer he took to respond. 

“You picked shrapnel out of someone?” She asked, and he sighed. “Or is that a secret, too?” 

“Uh-huh,” he grunted, distracted now, as he finally got a grip on the splinter again; and before she could fling her foot around, he tugged it with a steadfast pluck — and, there, it was out. She yelped through her teeth, but he shut her up; “Jesus, look — all done.” 

She exhaled in relief when she saw the piece of wood between his fingers, and he flicked it away.

“Thank you,” she puffed. 

He thought that might be the end of her questioning, but she instead made herself comfortable where she was curled up on the sofa, adjusting her foot on his lap and all. 

“You’ve told me, like, nothing about yourself,” she moaned, a little petulant, like sulking might goad him into sharing a little more. 

“You’re no open book.”

“I can be,” she said. “I’m not hiding anything. You just haven’t asked.” 

His head rocked over the back of the sofa. He certainly had questions, some more appropriate than others, but he hadn’t indulged them. Figured it was unnecessary seeing as her departure from his life was imminent, and there was little point in deepening a connection that was inherently temporary. 

“Alright, then. Got a question,” he said anyway.

Her eyes brightened a little. “Shoot.” 

“You runnin’ from something?” He asked, tilting his head to look at her. 

She sighed resentfully. Took her a moment to answer the question, her eyes flicked between his for a short while as though assessing whether he deserved to hear it.

“Kind of,” she said. 

“Boyfriend?” 

At that she snickered. “No.” 

Good. He hoped his relief wasn’t visible. “Go on, then.” 

“I dunno. It’s stupid,” she paused to rub her eyes in frustration, then rested her head against the couch cushion, “I just… I was sick of everything. Needed a change. A fresh start, or whatever.” 

“And a blizzard was the perfect time for your fresh start, was it?” He sneered. 

She scoffed. “It wasn’t a blizzard when I left.” 

“Were you headed somewhere?” 

“Not really,” she said. 

“Seemed pretty desperate to get to Hazelton.” 

She laughed. “I was desperate to get to a population centre. You’re pretty scary, you know.” 

Obviously. He held no illusions about it; he was not a good mannered man. Had no interest in nor ability to maintain any social grace, and his appearance was no help to him. He could only grin at the remark, though, because despite all that it seemed she was no longer scared of him. 

She wouldn’t still be sitting there if she were. She wouldn’t be wearing those little shorts around him. She wouldn’t have allowed him to continue holding her foot, mindlessly running his thumb along the arch. He should’ve let go of her. It was warm in his hand, though. And soft. He didn’t want to. 

She wore a little smile, slightly dim in the eyes as they lazily blinked at him. It struck him, then, that it might just be the booze. 

“Your turn,” she said. 

“What.” 

“I answered your question, now you have to answer one of mine.” 

He quirked his brow at that. “Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Fine,” he capitulated with a huff, “y’get one.” 

She pouted, looking to the side and bouncing her free foot. It was a while before she spoke, so he prompted her; “C’mon, then.” 

“Hold on, I’m just — I’m trying to figure out how to fit all my questions into one question.” 

“That’d be cheating.” 

“No, it’ll be one question. That’s what you said.” 

“Alright, Christ — get it out, then.” 

“I’m thinking!” 

“Better be good.”

She thought for a moment longer, until her face suddenly lit up. 

“Are you, like, a secret agent?” She asked, and his eyes shot to her. Likely too harsh a glance, because her smile went away, and she softened it with; “or something?” 

No, he was not, but her childish guess brushed far too close to the truth for his liking. “Where the fuck’d you get that from?” 

“Um,” she was a little on edge, now, sitting upright and prompting him to let go of her foot. It landed next to her other one on his thigh. “Well — you’re always sneaking off to make phone calls, and, like… your laptop looks like it’s bulletproof. And you’ve got guns everywhere. Everywhere. Who has that many guns? We’re not in America.” 

“You’ve—”

“Also, like, whose house is this? There’s so much random shit around, it’s like fifty people have lived here before. And you’re out in the middle of nowhere, it’s like you’re in hiding or under cover or something.” 

Her questions tumbled from her lips with an air of humour and fascination about them; evident that she didn’t understand how close she teetered to the truth, and that she had left him with very little room to come up with a believable enough excuse to cover all of it. 

“That’s more than one question,” was all he said. It was all he could say. 

Her face sunk at that. Smile gone, eyes lidded and brows knitting in patent disappointment. “Okay, then answer just the first one.” 

“No.” 

“Are you kidding me, but you said—”

“That’s the answer,” he clarified through a stiff jaw. 

She squinted at him. “I don’t believe you,” she spat, “you’re obviously hiding something. Either you’re some kind of secret agent or you’re a serial killer.” 

He tilted his head. “Which do you reckon I am.” 

“Well, if you were a serial killer you’d have killed me already.” 

“Still might.” 

“No you won’t,” she snorted, a little emboldened by the liquor in her system, he supposed. “You’re a big softie under all that.” 

He could only chortle. “So I’m a secret agent, then, am I?” 

“Or… maybe a soldier, or something,” she thought aloud, looking at him circumspectly. “Are you?” 

Observant little shit. “Y’already asked your question.” 

“So you are!” 

“No.” 

“You’re lying,” she snipped, frustrated, “I can tell you’re lying.” 

“Not so good at reading people after all, eh?” 

“You fucking suck,” she grouched, shoving his leg with her feet as she swivelled herself to stand, and at first he was content watching her walk away. 

Until — and he should have seen this coming — she unlatched the front door. 

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” he barked, but by the time he lept up from the sofa she had already torn open the door and sprinted out into the black of the night. 

He was up and running before he lost sight of her, out the door with a firm stay, Johnny and without putting his boots on — though he should have — but the stupid fucking girl had run out into the shin-height snow in nothing but those tiny shorts and her hoodie. Perhaps she had done it just to spite him. 

“The fuck is wrong with you?” He roared after her; she was sprinting in zigzags as if an effort to lose him, but he could hear the squeaks in her panting through the still air. Wouldn’t be long until her feet were numb.

She was lucky that it wasn’t windy or white-out, because despite the subzero chill of the air, body heat was enough to keep one temporarily immune to the dry cold. The booze would certainly have helped, though. 

She was a speedy thing, but not as fast as him; his legs were far longer, stronger too, and he was quickly closing the distance. He wrestled with the idea that he might have to tackle her, because there wasn’t a way to do that without hurting her — but it seemed gravity did the job for him. She tumbled hands-first into the snow with a squeal, surprising him with a high-pitched giggle as she thrashed to get herself oriented before he caught up with her. 

He reached down to grab her; “C’mere, you fu—”

Interrupted by a flash of white and a burning cold across his cheeks as she hurled a handful of snow at his face, followed by a loud and breathless cackle. She was beaming as he brushed the snow away, proud of herself, but before she could scoop up another snowball he had his hand around her arm and was yanking her out of the powder. 

“You are a little shit,” he grumbled, hauling her over his shoulder like he had the first time; “and you’re stupid.” 

“And you’re a grumpy old hermit with a stick up your ass,” she grouched, but the spite didn’t quite conceal the amusement in her throat. 

“Watch it,” he retorted, glad she couldn’t see the smile that was fighting to dimple his cheek. “You’re already in trouble.” 

“Ooo, what’re you gonna do?” She taunted. “Give me a hiding?” 

Her ass was, literally, right next to his head, and the thought had admittedly crossed his mind. “Might do.” 

She only laughed — nothing witty to say to that one — as he carried her in through the open door, and past the dog who dutifully waited in its frame, tail wagging ferociously to greet them. 

“Your friend’s a big fuckin’ brute, Johnny,” she crooned as he escorted her towards the fire, he could feel the dog jumping up his backside to reach her petting hand where it hung from him. She yelped when he slid her off, dropping her unceremoniously to her feet right in front of the woodburner. 

Now she was shivering, the snow stuck to her bare legs finally catching up to her. Her hoodie was saturated once the snow melted, shorts too. 

“Feel better?” He asked, bitterly facetious, going to shut and lock the front door. 

“T-there’s snow in my undies,” she stammered, through a sheepish smile, and he fought the impulse to laugh at that.

He had to exhale, because now his mind was between her legs, ruminating on the snow melting into her cunt. Wondered if it felt strangely good for her against her heat. If she’d now be icy to the touch down there. If the melt would dribble down his fingers. 

“I bet,” he sneered. “Better take ‘em off, then.” 

Her mouth hung open in mock-horror. “You are a pervert.” 

“Never said I wasn’t, did I?” 

No doubt he was getting a bit too bold, because her eyes narrowed suspiciously at that, playful grin shrinking into a wry little smirk. He knew, in the pit of him, that he ought to shut his mouth. To put a sock in it and go to bed, and hope that she passed out on the couch with the dog, because he couldn’t guarantee that his dreams would stay dreams if she slipped in beside him again. 

“I s’pose you didn’t,” she snorted, as he went to the kitchen to put the kettle on; something to distract himself, so he didn’t stand there watching her shed her wet hoodie like a degenerate. 

He was watching, though. The only thing under the hoodie was white singlet. No bra under it, he could see the faint shadow of her nipples through the thin cotton, pebbled and conspicuous from the cold. Tits bounced a little as she dumped the hoodie on the floor and her arms fell to her sides, bounced even more as she plodded towards the kitchen. 

Where he expected her to stop and make some snide remark, she instead strode right past, down the hallway. 

“Where d’you think you’re going?” He barked, following on instinct, because he strongly suspected she’d be hopping back into his bathroom for an hour-long shower to warm herself up again. 

Wrong on both counts. She went straight to his bedroom. “To bed,” she said snidely. 

“No the fuck you aren’t,” he chided, but she had already leapt onto his bed by the time he made it to his bedroom door. 

She rolled over, sitting to face him, leaning back on her hands that sunk into the blankets. Bare knees together. Watching him with faux-innocence and a faint smile, because — obviously — she was doing it on purpose. Pretty clear to him now, in fact, that she had been from the start. 

“Get off the bed,” was all he could say, and it came out tightly. 

“I’m tired,” she said, artificially stroppy. She was buzzing with energy, he could see it in the way her eyes flickered about him, downward from his face and back again. 

“Don’t care. You’re back on the couch.” 

She pouted, tilting her head and fluttering her lashes and all, tipping her knees side to side — but she did not move from where she sat. 

“Don’t you look at me like that,” he ordered, reaching for an ankle; she didn’t make a single effort to escape him as he ensnared her, and he pulled her down the bed until she was sprawled flat with her feet dangling off the end of the mattress. 

“Like what?” She moaned, as she sat upright, now too close to him. Her face a foot from his lower stomach. She looked up at him through her eyelashes. 

On purpose. No doubt about it. Against his better judgement, he hooked a finger under her chin and tipped her head back; she blinked at him, wide-eyed and wet-lipped, as if surprised he’d have touched her at all despite her palpable desperation for him to do just that. 

Playing with fire, as usual.

Fucking around. Finding out. 

“Like you’re asking to get fucked,” he said. 

Her face smoothed over at that, as if the matter were suddenly deathly serious. No longer fun and games. What did you expect, he wanted to ask — did she think he’d let her poke and prod indefinitely? That he didn’t have a fuse she was actively burning short? 

She had nothing to say to that. Her eyes jumped around his face, looking for a sliver of humour, any evidence that he might not have been serious. She’d find none, because he was. 

“Last chance to head back to the couch,” he murmured, after her lengthy silence, and he felt her swallow against the finger her soft palate rested on. 

“Or what,” she whispered. 

He just about chuckled. As if the answer wasn’t obvious. “Or you’re gonna get fucked.” 

She stood up, then. Slowly, slightly wobbly, a hand on his stomach to regain her balance as she came to full height in the small gap between his body and the bed. It wasn’t quite disappointment that struck him, nor was it relief; something in between, or a sticky emulsion of the two. For the best, he thought, because whatever fragile dynamic they had established would be irreparably altered if he fucked her, and he had no idea for how much longer she’d be stuck with him.

She hesitated, though, eye-level with his sternum and dithering about where to go. Her hand was still on his stomach, though. Warm through the fabric of his t-shirt. Her window of escape was narrowing. 

Then, confounding him, her hands slid up to either side of his face — with her nails in his skin, she tugged his head all the way down to hers, where her lips were open and wet — he needed no further instruction. He kissed her. 

What else was he to do? She was all but begging for it, and it was palpable in her lips, in how she sucked his air into her mouth, in how she welcomed his tongue, in how her teeth clacked against his in her intensity. He could taste liquor on her breath and chocolate on her tongue, and he only wanted more of it — her claws were in his neck as if he might try to escape her, as if there were anywhere else on earth he’d rather be than right there, with his hands gliding up her back and palming her ass. 

“Fuckin’ knew it,” he panted through a wet mouth, separating from her briefly to reach behind him and shut the bedroom door; God forbid the fucking dog wander in to see what the fuss was about. 

He shoved her with a hand flat on her chest, and she tumbled backwards on the bed with a bounce. Perhaps he had forgotten how strong he was, because she landed far harder than he had intended for her to — but he wasted no time with an apology, already taking handfuls of her tiny fucking shorts and yanking them down with three tugs until they were around her ankles. He tossed them. Undies, too. 

“You’re such an asshole,” she puffed in the midst of it, but any anger in the first few syllables quickly syphoned out when he hunched forward and pressed his lips against the inside of her ankle, leaving only whiny air to escape her mouth. Couldn’t help but glide a tongue up the sole of her foot, take a freshly painted toe in his mouth just to hear her squeak when it tickled. 

Figures that her pussy was pretty, too. So pretty. He’d have liked to take it in his mouth right then, too, but he resisted the impulse — instead he smeared his mouth up the inside of her leg, crawling up the mattress as he did, until his lips met the velvet-soft skin of her inner thigh. The urge struck him to bite right through it, certain it’d taste like butter and marshmallow — he quelled it with a firm grip of her instead, fingers digging into her meat a bit too hard where he held her by the hips. 

His mouth hovered there, though. Breath fanning over her cunt, an inch or two from his lips, he could feel the heat of it against his cheeks — eyes flicked up to meet hers, where she watched him raptly, brows all curled up and eager, mouth hanging loose and sucking air. 

How long had she been so desperate, he wondered, that she was so flustered and wanting already? All day? Several? Since the night he found her? Certainly would explain a few things. 

He grinned, sinking his teeth into her groin instead, pulling a yelp from her. She hadn’t earned it, had she? How could he reward her behaviour like that? It’d set a bad precedent, he thought. 

She groaned exasperatedly in dispute, “you can’t just—”

Bitten off when he leaned back to flip her like a ragdoll, she landed on her front with a squeal, and before she could catch her breath he had already hoisted her hips upward until her ass was in the air. He kneeled behind her, nudging her knees apart so her cunt was spread and open. A sight men have fought and died for. Mouth-watering. Just when he thought he couldn’t get any harder. 

“The fuck I can’t,” he grumbled. He was not a patient man, nor was he a tender one; she knew what she was getting when she decided to stay in that room. 

He ran a thumb down the slit of her pussy, and it was scalding to the touch, even through the callus. Glossy slick was already leaking from her hole, a sweet droplet of dew dribbling downward towards her swollen clit, and he chased it with the tip of his thumb. 

“I hate you,” she whined, hiccuping when he brushed her clit, and he snickered. 

“I know,” he chortled, rubbing it just briefly, firm enough circles that her breathing was broken up by weak grunts, and her cute little asshole puckered as she twitched. If he was lucky he might get a go at that one, too. 

He lined a finger up with her hole and pushed it in, sinking into the knuckle and pulling a whine from her. Fuck, it was soft, and hot, enveloping his finger like a slick mouth and spasming around him. He hooked it, dug the palp of his finger into a gummy wall and pulled downwards. Then he slipped in another finger, and it went in easy — good, she was already loosening up for him, slick as oil and hot with want. 

He was too distracted to scrape together something witty to say, even though another knew it was sliding down his tongue; any words he uttered would turn to pure filth in the air, though, because that’s what his mind was swimming in. Knew you were a slut. Is that what you’ve been doing in the shower, girl? Touching your pussy to the thought of this? 

He slid his fingers out of her, and he snickered at the mournful whine she let out in protest. Greedy, impatient thing. He pushed down the front of his sweats to free his cock and, Christ, he didn’t think he’d been that hard in a decade. Maybe in his life. It was far heavier than usual in his hand, leaking from the tip which it almost never did. Ruddy and dark with the copious amount of hot blood that filled it, he could feel his heartbeat where it sat in his palm. 

He smacked his shaft against her pussy, just to gird her for it, so she might know the weight of it — then he rutted forward, sliding it along her hole, letting her wetness slicken him. Wouldn’t be wet enough just yet, though — no doubt eating her cunt would’ve helped, but too bad — so he brought his fingers to his lips and hucked up a lump of spit, smearing it over her hole and wiping the residue over his tip. 

Her cunt shuddered as he wedged his blunt head against her entrance, resting it there for a beat, waiting for her to loosen up just a little more. 

“Deep breath,” he grunted, and she inhaled deeply as instructed; before he tipped forward, pushing himself into her until he bottomed out in one go, and a groan ripped itself from deep in his chest. “Agh — shit.” 

Inside she was magmatic, viscid walls soft as velvet that fit so snugly around the length of him it may as well have been vacuum sealed; constricting in waves from her entrance to the deepest part of her, and she let out the sweetest whimpering sound into the blankets beneath her when his cock pressed into the pillowy flesh at the end. Took a steady amount of focus not to blow his load the moment he sunk into her. 

His vision went hazy as he pulled himself out, and he was granted the friction of her ridged walls around him, before he plummeted back in again. And again. And again. He found a steady rhythm, a little slower than he felt compelled to, but he didn’t want to hear the bitching if he fucked her hard enough to hurt. 

Surprising him, though, she quietly mewled; “harder.” 

He didn’t think he heard it, at first. Uttered so sheepishly and desperately that she must have been humiliated to even request it, because she knew the satisfaction he’d get from it — and she was right. He chuckled smugly at her as he leaned forward to rest a hand at the nape of her neck.

“What?” He asked, goading, no effort made to conceal the mocking tone in his throat. 

She grumbled frustratedly in response, when he stilled inside her, waiting for her to repeat it. It was clear she struggled to say it, that the first time she uttered it it slipped out by accident — but, after not more than ten seconds, she groaned, “harder.” 

And how couldn’t he oblige her? He might have told her to say please, he might have dragged it out just to teach her a lesson — but even his patience was wearing thin. 

So he fucked her harder. He leaned a portion of his body weight into the back of her neck, enough to hurt just a little but not enough to do any damage — his other hand gripped the hollow of her waist, thumb dimpling the flesh of her back and yanking her backwards with every rut. 

Didn’t take him long to get lost in it. Soon the noises she made were sweeter but harsher, forced out through her teeth with the momentum and muffled by the blankets. Her hands took tight and desperate handfuls of wool, and the arch in her spine deepened with every thrust, and her painted toes curled and spread as her feet scrambled to get a grip. 

He wanted to see her face, then. On impulse he flattened her, pulling out just briefly enough to flip her over onto her back, and he spread her legs with his hands on her knees. She took the chance to take her singlet off, twisting and stretching her torso to pull it over her head. 

He wondered if she had read his mind, because yes, of course, that’s exactly what he wanted to see; perfect tits, too, bouncing as she lay flat on the mattress, skin sheeny with sweat. 

“Take your shirt off,” she panted, eyes fluttering about him expectantly. 

He chortled, because he did not expect such a demand from her. He didn’t imagine there was anything particularly appealing about his body these days, unless she were partial to poorly healed tattoos and a hearty layer of two winters’ worth of hibernation fat — that’s what he liked to call it. Maybe she liked his broad shoulders, or his big arms, or the unmaintained wheaten hair across his thick chest, or how it trailed down from his navel to a nice heavy dick. 

Couldn’t help but feel a little cocky, could he? Not when he shucked off his t-shirt and she looked at him like that, heavy-lidded and slack-jawed like the sight of him alone made her drunker. 

He could have said the same about her. That drinking in the sight of her splayed out in front of him was more potent a panacea than booze had ever been, and it was doubly as addicting. She was perfect, fuck, of course she was, and of course fate would have it that he could only experience such a luxury if it were painfully temporary. 

She pulled him out of his reverie by clawing for him, so he obliged — slid the head of his cock down the cleft of her spread pussy, nudging around for her entrance, and sinking in once he found it. Spread her legs with his torso alone, and they hooked around him, needy and forcefully pulling him as deep as she could take him. 

He suspended his face above hers, watching every minute detail of her expression as he did; how her brows knitted up tightly, eyes glossy and bright but out of focus, how her teeth sunk into the inside of her lip as if some effort to stifle the delicious little noises that bubbled up her throat each time he pushed in. 

His head fell to hers and he landed a slovenly kiss on her cheek, dragged his mouth down her jaw, settled it against her neck. Even her smell was inebriating, the salt of her skin and the floral sweetness of her hair, some biological mechanism in his animal brain was set off when it filled his sinuses and all he wanted to do was eat her. Kissed her there instead, felt her heartbeat against his lips as he fucked her steady. 

“So pretty,” he murmured, the words half-formed and murky as he spoke them into her skin. He didn’t even mean to say it, but he did, and she let out a soft giggle between ruts. 

Her hands were at his cheeks, then, pulling his head from the crook of her shoulder and meeting him halfway — she kissed him. Properly and eagerly, almost supplicant with her mouth, breathing him in as he did her. Hands brushing over his ears and fingers weaving through his cropped hair, she let out little moans against his lips. Thighs warm and soft against his sides as her legs wrapped around him. Cunt all but sucking him deeper into her, slick enough that it made wet noises as he pulled out and pushed in. 

God, she was sweet. What could he possibly have done to get so lucky — though only lucky enough to taste her once, or twice, however many times she let him before she was gone — as to have a thing like her cross his path by pure chance? 

She moved her mouth from his lips to his stubbled cheek and kissed him there, and that was enough. 

“Agh—fuck, hol’ on—” he spluttered, immediately stalling, because he felt an all-too-familiar surge in the base of him and his cock started to twitch sooner than he thought it would; he tugged his cock out of her all at once, leaving it hanging between her legs and just about holding his breath to make sure he didn’t finish on the blankets. 

His head fell to her collarbone, and she snickered softly. “Did you come?” 

He let out a puff of laughter. “Not yet,” he grumbled, kissing her there, before he began smearing his lips downwards. 

Took a handful of her breast, sunk his lips into the milk-soft skin of it and breathed in deeply — dedicated a moment to her nipple, sucking it into his mouth until he felt it stiffen against his tongue. Travelled down her stomach after that, licking and suckling as he went past her navel, lowering himself down the mattress. 

Her breaths turned long and yearning, because she knew where he was going. Spread her legs for him and all, as he kissed where her stomach met her hips; still holding out, just to keep her needy, how he liked her. 

He sunk a finger into her pussy, then another, and she was somehow hotter to the touch than before — might find a use for that snow after all, he briefly thought — she tilted her hips towards him, entire body alight with the same desperation he saw in her face. He considered making her wait, making her beg a little, just to hear it; but he didn’t even think he had the patience for it. 

He opened his mouth and smeared a flat tongue up her slit, before sealing his mouth to her cunt. She sighed in relief, twitching as he pulled her clit into his mouth, suckling on it and running his tongue up and down all at once — curling and tugging his fingers inside her, too, massaging her from the inside out, and he hoped it felt good like that — seems like it did, because the noises she made now were even sweeter, needier, stickier than before. 

Pussy tasted as good as he had imagined it would; heady and vaguely salty, undiluted sex on his tongue. Something indescribably animal that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and his cock leak a drop of precum from where it hung between his legs. 

Her thighs tightened around his head, feet indecisive in whether they’d prop themselves on his shoulders or hang down his back, hips bucking unconsciously; but he followed her. Didn’t let his mouth separate from her once. 

Claws burrowed into his scalp after a moment, deep enough to hurt, and her breathing began to stutter; “f-fuck, Simon, I’m—”

He smiled against her — wanted to hear her say it, but he wasn’t going to grant her the reprieve. He was consistent, avid, precise, and soon her cute noises stopped dead as she sucked down a deep breath and held it there — when she came, her cunt clenched eagerly around his fingers, fast at first before evening out to a slow rhythm, and some part of him wished he’d feel that around his cock next. 

She exhaled all at once, then, and it came out shrill and wanton, before she finally put her palms on his forehead and tried to push him away. For a moment he didn’t, kept his tongue busy, just long enough to hear her squeal in dispute but before her pushing turned to hitting. 

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand once he was done, proud of himself, because she just stared dazedly at him on his way up. 

He stroked his cock with one hand as he knelt, debating briefly where he wanted to put it. Her legs were still spread wide, pussy still twitching in the aftermath of what he did for her — but she blinked at him with those pretty eyes, soft lips gently open as she breathed, shiny with saliva. 

“Sit up,” he grunted ungracefully as he went to stand at the end of the bed, expecting some whinging or perhaps even a refusal. 

Not so. She sat herself up almost immediately, adjusting herself until she was on all fours, and crawling in his direction with the faintest smirk in her lips. 

She replaced his hand with hers when she knelt in front of him, wrapping her fingers around his shaft, running the palp of her thumb along the ridge underneath from the base to the tip. Peered up at him through her eyelashes as though supplicating, waiting for him to tell her what he wanted, even though she already knew the answer. 

He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone, settling a hand on the side of her head. “Your turn.” 

So she complied. Opened her mouth so her tongue could slide out past her bottom teeth, and she dragged it up the length of him, focusing pressure on the sensitive underside of his head. She kissed the shiny tip, lapped up the dollop of precum that oozed from it, before she wrapped her lips around the head whole. 

Then she sank lower. Fuck, she was good. Purposefully slow at first, cheeks hollowing out where she added suction, the texture of her tongue rougher the closer he got to the back of her throat. He was not surprised that she couldn’t take him whole, buffered by her fist around the base of his shaft, she got about two-thirds of the way down before she gagged and her pretty eyes started to water. 

He found a grip of her hair, the other hand cupping her jaw as she reeled back and sunk back down; picking up speed now, and pulling an ursine growl from deep within his chest, she held onto his hip with her free hand and stroked his cock with the other. 

Jesus, it wouldn’t take her long. Not when she looked up at him like that, eyes glossy and contrite as if this was her way of seeking his forgiveness, of repaying her debt to him, of pleasing him for the sake of it. Not when she sucked him off so devotedly, carefully, avoiding using her teeth but lavishing with her tongue. Not when something so deliciously yet dangerously perfect had popped into his life and was there, somehow, choking on his cock in his bedroom, so indistinguishable from a hallucination borne of solitude that the closer he got to coming the less he believed she were real. 

“Mph, fuckin’ hell, you’re perfect,” he grumbled, before his neck gave out and his head tumbled back from his shoulders, “shit. That’s it, fuck—”

She was unrelenting as his cock jerked in her mouth, as his stomach sunk and all the muscles in the base of him tightened up — with a hoarse groan he came, toppling over the edge with enough momentum that it left him breathless, as her tongue and hand milked the come out of him. He felt her swallow around him, and his come kept pumping, filling up her throat — but she continued draining him, sucking it down dutifully, hungrily, until there was nothing left for his balls to squeeze out — and she continued still. 

He made noises he didn’t think he was capable of, too close to whimpers as he pulled at her hair and keeled forward, not yet willing to force her off but barely withstanding the overstimulation of her busy tongue. 

“F-fuck, easy,” he growled, panting like a dog, when he finally yanked her head away from him. She maintained the suction until he finally pulled his cock from her mouth, and it came out with a wet pop, still twitching as it hung heavy. “Jesus.”

She grinned sweetly, licking her lips like she’d just finished a meal, before she wiped her bottom lip with the tips of her fingers. She fell backwards, then, arms outstretched as she landed on the mattress with a light bounce and a sated sigh. 

He took a moment to catch his breath before he lazily crawled up the bed, until he collapsed on top of her, squishing the breath out of her when he rested his head between her breasts. The quiet that fell afterwards was heavy, broken up only by the ragged breathing of the two of them, and the sound of her fingers thoughtlessly tracing the shell of his ear. 

Gooseflesh travelled down his neck from where she touched him. Something treacly and warm was thawing inside him, heavy, aching somewhere between his lung and his stomach. A repletion he didn’t deserve to feel, he thought, one so serendipitous that it had to have been the sugar before the medicine. A trick of the light, a ploy enacted by whoever was tallying his misdeeds to get his guard down before his true sentence befell him. 

Too lucky, he thought. He was too lucky. 

“Isn’t it weird,” she panted, staring vacantly at the ceiling, “isn’t it weird that we met in the middle of nowhere?” 

He had no clue where her train of thought was taking her, but for a moment he genuinely wondered if she was listening to his thoughts. It was weird. A fucking fluke, for her sake, because she would have died without him. For his sake, because for the first time in a decade he hadn’t thought about dying at all. 

“Who’d’ve thought,” she hummed. 

He grunted in place of a response, too tired to think up something more meaningful. Who’d have thought, indeed, because he certainly never would have. 

“I kinda like it here,” she said dreamily. 

He grinned a little at that, despite himself. She sure as hell hadn’t been acting like it; not until today, anyway. “Uh-huh.” 

She sighed, and his head rose and fell with it. “It’s a shame.” 

“What’s a shame,” he murmured. 

“That I’ll have to leave.” 

He exhaled hoarsely, scooping an arm underneath her, trapping her on the bed beneath him. Perhaps she was right from the start, right to be all twitchy and nervous when he first brought her through his door; because even after all her begging and all his promises, after all of her attempts to escape, all of the ways she infuriated and dumbfounded him — he had no intention of letting her leave. 

“You’re not goin’ anywhere,” he said. 

By late spring, the rocky road into Smithers was far less perilous to drive. 

Once the snow had cleared, and the puddles of melt shrunk with the warming sun, Simon could even drive with the windows down. It certainly wasn’t balmy, by any stretch — but anything above zero was tropical, to him, after two years tucked up in the mountains. And that day, it was a whole seven degrees. 

He’d gotten better about his supply runs. More regular, more organised. Where he’d once leave them to the very last day — forcing him to make the two-hour drive to the Safeway in a squall — he now returned monthly. Got a bit more generous with his shopping lists, too. He’d always been a pragmatic shopper, buying only the barest of necessities, meat and potatoes and beans. In the back of his truck, now, he had a diverse range of goods. Ingredients for actual meals. Sweeter things, too. Marshmallows. Gin. Lemons. 

Johnny’s furry head stuck out the back window, his mouth wide open and tongue flapping in the wind, chomping at the bugs that flew by as if he had any chance of catching them. Dog always preferred the warmer months, because he could spend more time outside, didn’t have to spend all day sitting around the fireplace while Simon sheltered from the bitter cold. 

The CD player in the centre console flipped over to the next song. One he didn’t know the title to, because he hadn’t chosen the CD. 

His lucky girl sat in the passenger seat. Singing half-gibberish along to the song she clearly didn’t know much better than he did, with the window rolled down, and her hand surfing the wind. Speckles of evening sunlight danced over her where it was broken up by the trees, she just about glittered in it. He couldn’t help but smile like an idiot. 

She gave him a reproachful glare when she caught him looking at her. “Eyes on the road.” 

He snickered. “They are.” 

“Not having you spin out like I did,” she snipped, through a smirk, “eyes on the road.” 

“Yes ma’am,” he said, obliging only after another few seconds, just before it looked as though she were about to repeat the command without the humour underpinning the first two. 

“You can look all you want when we get home,” she chided. 

Never ceased to warm him up when she called it that. Home. It had never felt much like one until she stumbled into it, but she dug her roots in quickly. Filled in the gaps like spackle, held it together like glue. Warmed it up better than the woodburner. How lucky he was. 

He grinned. “Can’t wait.”

"You need somethin', Riley?" John asked, never looking up.

Simon's mouth was twisted beneath his balaclava as he weighed his options. He wasn't especially eager to be John's second victim of the day, but it'd been miserable for weeks with no stop in sight. In the end, he decided to be straight—

"Y'need'a get laid, boss."

John's hands immediately froze.

That unyielding anger came up his chest right on schedule — insubordinate, out of line — and then couldn't quite find his footing in it because the truth was a trapdoor just under him.

His eyes flicked up and across the room, ears warming up just like Johnny's had an hour ago.

"Bloody ornery, you are," Simon went on. "'ave been."

Simon wasn't wrong, John knew that.

The work winds them all too tight — adrenaline that can't be spent, images that don't erase, choices made under duress that keep them questioning at three in the morning. And everyone's got a valve that lets the steam out. Johnny shouts his out at the football. Kyle has somewhere to be lately that he's cagey about, and Simon has whatever Simon has, no one asks.

And John drives home, shuts the door, and the house is quiet, his walls holding all the built-up pressure.

Ten months since his usual I'm-Home-Hookup found herself a steady bloke and stopped answering his calls. He'd told himself the whole time it was casual right up until it ended, when he learned it had actually been load-bearing.

And was that affecting his mood? Maybe.

His eyes narrowed on Simon and his jaw ticked at the hinge. He threw his chin toward the open door.

"Fuck off out've my briefin' room, Lieutenant."

Simon's chair scraped across the linoleum when he stood, sighing through the cloth over his face.

"I jus' think—"

"OUT."

The door clicked shut behind him, and John stood in the silence for a moment.

Then he squared the stacks again.

——

Johnny never volunteers to bring the beer, yet here he is at half seven with a box of glass bottles rattling on his shoulder, grinning under the porch light. Behind him, the headcount runs long by one. Three men when John only agreed to two. Kyle with a canvas bag full of crisps. Simon at the back, hands sunk in his pockets.

"Thought it was just you and Garrick?"

"Aye, well." Johnny shoulders past him into the hall, close enough that their shirts drag. "Simon heard there was football."

"Simon doesn't care about football," John retorts as the rest of them push their way inside.

"I care 'bout football," Simon lies through a simper no one can see, wiping his boots on the mat.

Unfortunately for John, his team is undoubtedly adept at what they've trained in and he doesn’t always catch when there’s fuckery afoot.

Under his nose, in his very own home, Johnny distracts him with talk about the match while Kyle lifts his phone from the side table just beside his elbow. Simon waits an appropriate amount of time before slipping away to the kitchen to guess the passcode, which he manages in one go.

"Gonna have to talk to him 'bout that…" Kyle mumbles as he swipes to the App Store.

"He textin' anyone?" Simon cranes his neck over Kyle's shoulder. "He used t’see tha’ one bird… wot was her name…?"

"Leah," Kyle answers flatly. "Laura?" he second-guesses as he thumbs in the passcode again to approve the install: Hinge Dating App. "M'not lookin' at his texts, mate. Be lucky he doesn't RTU us just for this. Plus, I think he said she started seeing some—"

"—y'know, Cap," Johnny's voice cuts through, a warning for the men in the kitchen. "I can get ye another beer, y'don't have…"

Simon and Kyle glance up from where they've leaned against the counter and freeze when John appears in the doorway, face screwed with suspicion. His eyes flick between the phone in Kyle's grasp and the faces lit behind it.

His initial thought is that the phone's got a nice, durable case, proper practical. His second thought is to start patting down his pockets with his free hand — which all turn up empty.

The room's gone still, a collective held breath to see which way the tension'll break.

"That's my phone."

"It is," Kyle agrees carefully.

Johnny appears at John's shoulder, squeezing past into the kitchen. "Cap, before you start—"

"When'd you nick it?" His eyes accurately settle on Kyle, the slickest of the bunch.

"Doesn't matter when, sir. We just—"

"It matters to me." John puts his empty beer bottle on the table and uses both hands now to pat down his pockets a second time, not quite believing his own team got the drop on him. "Professionally speakin',” he mumbles. 

"Wot really needs addressin' is your passcode," Simon grumbles. "0-0-0-6?"

"Christ," Johnny snickers.

John chooses to ignore them and holds his hand out, palm up. But Kyle doesn't fork it over. Instead, he looks back at the screen and watches the progress ring around the icon close in on itself.

"What're we doin' right now?" John presses, stepping closer.

"Jus' take a seat, boss," Simon suggests, gesturing to the kitchen table just as Johnny yanks a chair out, beaming something mischievous.

John looks at the chair, then looks at Johnny.

"Think I'll stand."

"Suit yourself," Johnny spins the chair around and drops into it, arms folding over the back.

Kyle checks the screen one more time before turning it around. A new little white icon sits on John's home screen, Kyle points at it. John squints to read the little letters beneath it.

"What's Hinge?"

"It's a dating app," Kyle answers and places the phone on the table.

A dating app….

Grown adults sorting through each other like they're shopping. Swipe, tap, Add to Cart. He's heard the lads chat about it for years — the 'ghosting', the games — and always thought: thank god that's not me.

Under the simmering contempt, the idea of typing hello to a stranger who might simply never reply (left on read, whatever ungodly hour of the soul that phrase was invented in) shoots something cold through him.

There's a beat of hesitation before his eyes snap to Simon, the scowl on his face carrying the weight of Wednesday's interaction.

"This is you, then?"

"Team effort," Simon corrects without a flicker of shame.

"It's no' the dodgy kind of app, it's for relationships," Johnny explains. "Says so in their slogan: 'designed to be deleted'. You make a profile, upload a few pics, answer some—"

"I know how online dating works, MacTavish."

Johnny squints. "Do ye, though?"

"You've been rank for months, sir." Kyle tells it plainly. "Whole teams sayin' it."

John feels like he’s been put on a rinse cycle in the wash. His nostrils flare as he snuffs his irritation back down his chest lest he prove them right in his own kitchen. 

"So that's what all this is? A Friday night welfare check?"

"It's no' a welfare check," Johnny defends poorly, voice cracking at a pitch too high.

"It's a bit of a welfare check," Kyle shrugs.

"Right." John reaches for his phone. "Well, thanks for the concern, lads. Truly. Warms the heart."

Kyle slides it just out of reach. "Just give it a shot, sir," he implores. "Try it for the weekend. If you still hate it, I'll delete it and we'll never bring it up again."

John's chin tucks to his chest and he glowers at him from under his deeply furrowed brow. "You'll delete it now," he orders, except these men have never listened to him off the field.

"I could," he agrees, wrestling a smirk. "And you can keep spending your Friday nights with us."

It's meant as a joke. It doesn't land as one.

Because John looks around at the three of them and knows in a few hours their engines will fade down the street and that hulking quiet will pour back in, the one he keeps calling peace. 

So… he pulls out a chair.

Simon pushes off the counter and Johnny's grin pulls wider.

"Go on," John surrenders, falling into the seat with a sigh. He does not look at any of their faces because whatever's on them’s going to make him cross. 

Chairs scrape and Kyle settles down at John’s arm, Simon looms over them from behind, all crowded around the one screen.

The basics go quick — name, age, pronouns. Kyle finds his rhythm working through the questions.

"Drinks? Socially. Smokes…?" Kyle seesaws his head a bit. "We'll say no."

"I smoke cigars," John protests.

"That's a personality trait, not a habit." Kyle scrolls. "Height?"

"Six-two," Johnny says immediately.

"He's six-foot," Simon corrects.

"Aye, and on the app he's six-two."

Kyle selects 6'. "Occupation?"

That one hangs in the air a bit longer than the rest, and John doesn't quite know why. His hands turn palm-up on the table with the question.

"Consultant," Simon offers.

"Civil servant," Kyle tries.

"Military," John answers irritably off the edge of a scoff.

Three sets of eyes come up off the phone — Johnny's eyebrows go high, Kyle's mouth opens to argue, Simon tilts his head just enough, as if to say: if you say so.

"It's not a state secret that I serve," John says, eyebrows pulling close with confusion.

Kyle types it despite whatever he's got hanging on the tip of his tongue. And in the little silence afterward, the obvious question finally comes to mind.

"What've you lot got on yours, then?"

The simple question sends a tidal wave of overlapping chatter and excuses over the table.

"Ah, well—" Johnny starts.

"I actually—" Kyle says, at the same time.

"Different app," Simon adds, under both of them.

"—see, it depends," Johnny goes on, trying to gain volume over the others, "I like to keep the profile fresh. Rotate the pics, the bio—"

"—don't have one," Kyle is saying over the top of him, "because me and Amara are— well, it's not official-official, but it's a thing, so—"

"Been usin' Feeld," Simon finishes.

When the wave recedes, the full picture comes into view: Johnny reinvents himself on a cycle, Kyle has Amara, mentioned now for the first time ever. And Simon—

"What's Feeld?" John asks.

"No," Kyle says before the question has its punctuation, quick and stern, head whipping back and forth. “Absolutely not. We'll talk about that another time."

"It's not for you," Simon adds.

"Right," he mumbles, taking a pull of his beer, settling back against the chair. He inhales and looks off at the window. "M'glad it's amateurs running my love life."

"Enthusiasts," Johnny corrects.

The rest goes quicker.

"What kind of connection?" Kyle reads. "Options are: Long-term. Short-term. Short-term, open to long. Long-term, open to short."

"Short, open to long," John answers without hesitation.

Johnny opens his mouth but Simon glares at him just as quickly through his ragged eyeholes, and he closes it without a word.

His profile photos have to come off the lads' phones since John's camera roll offers nothing but screenshots of maps, car parts, and three random pictures of the K9, Xena, from another unit on base (he’s been trying to snatch her for his own team for months).

He watches the photos of himself go by and it's a strange census, seeing a year of himself entirely through other people's eyes. Makes him queasy, so he takes another bitter gulp to wash the feeling out. 

There's a short argument about the proper order the pictures should be presented, Johnny wins.

After, Kyle starts explaining what a good prompt does, how to choose one. He hardly gets any words out before John's holding his hand out the same way he did half an hour ago.

"I'll do these myself."

This time, Kyle hands the phone over.

The lads drift to the far end of the table to finally give John the space they've neglected to all night. 

Fresh beers are cracked open and a bag of crisps demolished as they fold into their own conversations. The match they’ve been ignoring comes first, then Amara, whom Kyle spends five minutes refusing to elaborate on, and somewhere in there Simon mentions an oddities shop he’s been meaning to stop by.

John sits with his reading glasses on, typing slowly, brows low in concentration.

When he finally sets the phone down, all three of them quickly move behind him.

"So, their profile comes up on screen," Kyle reaches over to demonstrate. "Have a look, read the bio. If you wanna chat to her, tap the heart. If you don't, hit the X, and you'll never see her again. Simple."

The first woman is on a beach holding a cocktail the size of a fishbowl. X.

"Okaay," Kyle drawls, mouth pulling straight. "Sure. Was there a reason, or…"

"No."

The next woman is at a festival covered in glitter and feathers. X.

So is the one after. X.

A woman in her work scrubs. X.

A woman holding a child. X.

A woman in a bikini on a lake (his eyes linger). X.

It's not that they're not lovely. Some of them probably are. But every picture is a performance — arms out, teeth out, look how much fun I am. Advertisements.

"The fish," Johnny mourns as another goes down, a woman on a small boat holding a big trout up. "Cap, she was fishin'. You love fishin'!"

"Wasn't her fish," he grumbles under his breath.

"Whose fish d'you reckon, then?"

"Bloke she cropped out," Simon says, and John tips the neck of his beer toward him.

"Give me criteria," Kyle pleads, both hands on the back of John's chair, gripping with restraint. "I can work with criteria."

"He's calibratin'," Simon says. "Let 'im work it out."

Simon's giving him too much credit. He's not calibrating. He's not reading these women, he's not even really looking at them. Each X is just the whole premise being declined, proof accumulating that he was right about the app all along, and if the profiles run out, well, he tried. Right? The lads witnessed it. He can get back to his peace with a clear—

His thumb stops and hovers, then pulls back to the outer edge of the phone case.

Huh. 

There you are.

Up a trail somewhere, hills of green grass rolling behind you, hood half-blown off, one hand trying to catch it. You're laughing at whoever's taking the picture, smile wide.

John's not sure he's ever seen eyes twinkle before, but that must be what yours are doing, shimmering even under overcast.

You're very pretty.

For the first time, John taps the profile open.

30. Executive Assistant. 4 Miles Away. Short-Term, Open to Long-Term.

Executive Assistant, so you likely work too much. That's familiar to him, something he understands inside-out. 

There's a photo of you in office clothes at what looks like a retirement party, smile an edge more saccharine than the one on the hill.

Another of you criss-cross on the floor, a black and caramel cat stretched out and content in your lap, belly-up. Shirt low cut, cleavage to feast on. He is sixty percent gentleman about how long he looks at it.

And at the bottom:

The best way to ask me out is by: using words.

I recently discovered that: I'm better in person than I am on here.

John huffs an amusement through his nose. He spent more time on his profile than he thinks you spent on yours. Seems like you're tired of the same things he's already tired of, one night in.

Behind him, the lads have gone silent, holding their breath.

John taps the heart and his screen goes bright with a wash of confetti, both your photos ringed together:

IT'S A MATCH!

"Oh, shit, she already matched with you," Kyle cranes his neck closer to inspect.

"Gimme that." Johnny plucks the phone from John's hand. "No way," he scoffs. "Fuckin' fit. A bit young for you, Cap, aye?" He looks at John, then back at the screen like the two won't reconcile in his brain.

"Careful," John warns mildly.

Johnny hands the phone back, muttering something in Scots only Simon could translate.

John doesn't hear much of it anyway. He's already looking at your photo again.

Better in person.

Yeah. He'd bet you are.

"Right, sir," Kyle says. "Now we wait. Midday tomorrow the earliest. Message her any sooner and it reads keen."

"It'd be accurate," he deadpans.

"There's rules, Cap," Johnny says. "No messagin' straight away, no double-textin', keep a wee bit of mystery."

John turns in his chair with a scowl to look up at the three of them.

"So, you're tellin' me a woman says she's interested in you and you… make her wait?"

Silence.

"I mean, when you put it like that…"

"Yeah, s'a bit fuckin' rude, innit?" John derides, turning back around.

He's already typing, screen tipped away.

"Sir," Kyle pleads. "At least let us read it."

"This is a two person conversation, not a five piece."

He presses send and quickly pockets the phone.

——

Four miles away, a phone lights up…

——

Your windows are open to the last of a long evening, warm air breezing through the sheer curtains. You’re finally on the couch. Shower taken, its heat still damp in your skin. A glass of off-dry riesling teeters precariously on the arm, cold from the fridge and sweating through its stemless glass.

Twix is a puddled tortoiseshell furnace against your thigh, one paw twitching through a dream, her purr winding down as she drops deeper. And on the telly, Last Christmas is on. You've seen it a dozen times, that's why you leave it — it's mindless.

The second glass goes down easier than the first, tart on your tongue, blooming warm in your belly and over your cheeks.

Somewhere in the lull, your thumb opens Hinge, a reflex to being bored. You don't really expect anything from it anymore. 

A man holding a fish, sunglasses on. X.

A man whose photos are all group shots. X.

A man who is 6'2" and it's his entire personality. X.

Your thumb knows the rhythm without you.

The next profile slides into view and you pause, thumb hovering.

He's handsome in that sort of rugged, classic way. His beard is salted at the edges, lines beside his eyes creased deep, cheeks faintly rosy. He's mid-laugh at what looks like a Christmas party, red and green tinsel drooping off the beams behind him; head slightly tipped, one heavy hand flat on the table. He's not cackling, you can tell it's more reserved, but it's probably still more than he usually offers.

John. 43. Military. Four miles away. Short-Term, Open to Long-Term.

The one thing you should know about me is: I'm gone a lot for work. But when I'm home, I'm home.

Most men bury the catch in the fine print, but he's leading with it.

You don't know yet whether that's honesty or efficiency. You suspect that with him they might be the same thing.

His second photo is of him on the tailgate of some enormous vehicle, fatigues taut over his thighs, thumbs hooked through his bulky khaki plate carrier, looking up from under the brim of his hat.

Two truths and a lie: I've never seen Star Wars. I have a lie-in every Sunday. I've had tea with a warlord.

The sky is pink with the morning in his third picture. He's thigh-deep in a lake, turned away from the camera entirely. (You're noticing it's a common theme that he does not look at the camera for any photo.) The sunlight catches the breadth of his back and shoulders, cotton molded around muscle.

Don't hate me if I: call instead of text. It's quicker.

You giggle just enough that Twix's ear rotates toward you in reproach.

It's kinda cute when older men put more effort into their profiles.

But the alarm is already going off somewhere in the back of your skull — too good, probably old photos, probably has a wife — it has never once failed to ring. But you're two glasses in, and the heart really costs nothing even if the conversation seems off.

You tap it, and put the phone facedown on your thigh.

On the telly, Emilia Clarke is busy falling for a man you happen to know has been dead the entire film. You mouth one of his lines along with him, not really invested, wine warm in your chest, Twix breathing slow against your leg.

Then your phone buzzes against you once, and you ignore it, because you have rules about lunging for male attention. But then it buzzes again, and, well, you just turn it over to have a look. Maybe it's your mum, you don't know!

HINGE: You and John matched!

HINGE: 1 New Message

You open it.

Evening. Not much good at using the app, but I really wanted to chat to you. How's your Friday night?

You hum to yourself curiously. Not an innuendo or emoji in sight.

i actually volunteer helping the elderly with technology, happy to walk you through it.

friday's been average. wine and a movie on the couch. how's yours?

You put the phone back down and focus on the film, but his reply comes within the minute.

Ouch. Friday's alright. The lads invited themselves round for the match. Still here, unfortunately.

you're messaging me with guests in the house? terrible host.

They invited themselves. Hosting rules don't apply.

What movie are you watching?

You glance at the telly where a dead man is mid-song and weigh lying about it.

You could be watching anything. You could pick something more interesting, something with a deep lesson, educational, historical, something niche to come off cool and worldly.

you're not allowed to judge me.

Judging is sort of my life's work, but I'll do my best.

You snort. Twix relocates to the far cushion in protest.

it's called 'last christmas'. i don't know why it's on in july, but i've probably seen it twelve times. it's good background noise.

The reply takes slightly longer this time. You picture him all big hands, small phone, and then stop picturing him, because that's how it starts.

Twelve times? Must be decent.

it's objectively not. the love interest is dead the entire film lol

Dead?

it's a twist. it's festive!

You and I have very different definitions for "festive". I've got a few questions. But I'll save them.

You smile.

so, your lake photo. did you catch anything that day?

Not a thing.

hours in freezing water for zero fish?!

The fish aren't the point.

do tell, what's the point?

The mist off the water. The quiet. The no one expecting anything from you.

It's the first real answer a man has given you on this app in, like, six months. 

You feel oddly like you've been handed something and should keep your hands still so it doesn't spook.

that actually sounds really peaceful.

i've never been fishing, but i do love nature in the mornings. i have a trail by me that i like to trek early on weekends.

That the trail from your photo?

it is! my best friend actually made me go that day, i wasn't in the mood. complained the whole way.

Doesn't show.

Good photo of you.

Beautiful, actually.

You stare at the screen and feel warmth tickling your nape, sliding lower, molten and slow. 

Every instinct you have reaches for deflection.

oh! thank you. the wind did most of the work lol

No it didn't.

— and he just takes the deflection off you, like being returned something you've dropped. You press the cool curve of the wine glass against your cheek and remind yourself, sternly, that this is a stranger on the internet.

well, for the record your photo's not bad either. handsome smile.

Somewhere past ten, you notice the conversation keeps not ending. 

how long have you been on hinge?

It's my first night, actually.

first night???

Profile's about two hours old.

yikes, so i'm just the practice woman then, huh?

Practice implies I'm planning to do this again.

——

John's still at the kitchen table, reading glasses pushed up into his hair now, beer gone warm at his elbow. The lads have migrated to the living room doorway — close enough to monitor, far enough to pretend they aren't.

He knows they're watching, and he's been watched by better.

What he can't seem to manage is his fuckin' face — it keeps doing things beyond his control, and every time your reply comes he has to reel it back to neutral, and he can tell by the quality of the silence behind him that he's not reeling nearly fast enough.

"He's smilin' again," Johnny murmurs, elbowing Simon in the ribs.

"Shameless," John mumbles, without looking up. "All of you."

He's typing when the floor creaks jus to his left. When he glances up, Johnny has drifted to his shoulder under the pretense of collecting empties.

"Need another, Cap?"

"I need you three feet back, MacTavish," he replies, thumbs tapping away.

A minute later it's Kyle from the doorway, "If she asks about hobbies, don't lead with the cigars. They poll badly amongst females."

"'Females'?" John grimaces, face down, thumbs still at it. "Say it with me Garrick, 'women'."

Then Simon, who hasn't moved or spoken in twenty minutes, asks, "Wot's she sayin', then?"

John rolls his eyes and sets the phone face-down, pushing himself up out of the chair.

"Time to go, lads," he says with an obviously fake smile, gesturing his arm out towards his front door. "Goodnight."

"It's no' even eleven oclock!" Johnny complains.

"Then the night's still young. Go on, fuck off."

They go — bottles gathered, snacks cleaned up, Simon herding Johnny down the hall as he’s still negotiating.

Then their engines fade down the street, and the quiet pours back in, right on schedule. Except tonight it arrives and there's a phone lit on his kitchen table with your name on it, and the quiet — for the first time in a long while — has to wait.

He locks up, kills the TV, then drops into his armchair with the phone already unlocked.

did the football finish? who won?

He glances at the dead telly. Hasn't a clue. 

Couldn't tell you.

omg lol you had ONE reason for guests tonight!

I got distracted.

by what? 😇

I think you know by what.

Nothing comes back for a minute. He pictures you on your couch, that cat beside you, deciding what to do with it — and it occurs to him, mildly horrifying, that he's enjoying this. The wait. The little emoji with the halo, transparently unrepentant. He finds himself smiling at the ceiling like there's something written on it.

anyway!

Anyway.

He'll allow it: retreat granted. There's no rush.

The cat in your photo. Yours?

yes! that’s twix. she's a menace.

Good name.

she prefers men that ignore her.

Then we'd get on fine. I'm very good at ignoring cats.

It goes on just like that: easy.

You ask if he's a morning person and learn he's up at five most days by choice; he learns you consider five the middle of the night.

He talks about the Brecon Beacons — the actual Beacons, the ones he loves, not the ones that nearly killed him at twenty-two. You tell him you've always wanted to go, and he catches himself already planning the route he'd take you. Then quickly chastises himself. 

How's the average Friday held up?

certainly improved

Mine too.

He puts the phone on the arm of the chair and sits in his quiet house, and for once it doesn’t feel so desolate.

——

The following morning he's up at five. He starts drinking his coffee at the counter, looking out the window over the sink, the sorbet summer sky bleeding morning.

He thinks of you before he can stop himself. Asleep, presumably, five being the middle of the night and all. Then he takes the coffee out to his back step for some fresh air.

He wonders if he was any good with the messaging last night. It's the longest he's ever sat with his phone in his hand, period. Let alone chatting with someone. There's no debrief for it, that's the trouble. No one to tell him whether ‘I got distracted.’ read as charming or desperate.

He runs the entire two-hour exchange back over and over and finds no actionable errors, but remains unconvinced.

He goes for his run at six. The route climbs uphill around klick seven, and somewhere on the hill he thinks about your photo, your smile, your mouth. He wonders what you smell like, what you sound like when you're being sarcastic. 

By noon he's under the Land Rover draining the old oil, and he catches himself pondering what you might do on a Saturday. Whether you slept in properly. Whether the cat allows it; he grew up with one himself and knows how demanding they can be when they're ready for a feeding.

He hasn't messaged yet and neither have you.

He couldn't say exactly why he's held off. Something the lads said about being keen, and rules, and mystery lodged somewhere he can't reach to dig it out. He's not normally a man that takes doctrine from Johnny MacTavish, and yet… here he is. 

It's a stupid fuckin' rule.

The afternoon goes long and gets quiet in the old way.

The house at four o'clock has a particular acoustic he knows down to the plumbing, and today, for the first time, he notices himself noticing it. It never used to be so obvious. Years of Saturdays like this one and it took his phone going quiet for half a day to show him the loneliness so plainly.

By the evening he's got Chinese takeaway at the kitchen table, eating it straight from the carton, chopsticks shoveling fried noodles down his gullet while he does the crossword from the morning paper in his head.

That's when his phone lights up for the first time all day, buzzing three times in succession — he absolutely hates how quickly it's in his hand.

spent six hours wedding dress shopping with my best friend. i need a glass of wine and a lie down.

thought of you on the tube home

He reads the second message again.

Thought of you. 

He’d been drafting the same admission since noon and something in his chest going catastrophically hot.

are you still up? i know sundown is bedtime for your generation.

And there's the sarcasm. 

Outside the window, the sun is — he checks — still up. Barely. He's got that going for him, at least.

Just in time. Was about to take my dentures out.

Thought about you as well.

He types the second line fast before he can be a coward about it. If you can say it, he can say it. Fair's fair.

I do have a question now though. It's not your wedding we're shopping for, is it? That'd be proper inconvenient for me.

lol no! maid of honor. today was purely supervisory.

don't really see myself getting married anyway.

the dresses were stunning though!

He’s picking up on a pattern. Three messages arriving like one exhale — the vulnerable thing said flanked with distraction. 

Nothing wrong with that.

Successful trip then? Or is there another six hours coming?

successful! she found it. there were tears and champagne.

what about you, how was your saturday?

He’s had a day spent purposefully not doing the one thing he wanted to do.

Quiet. Nothing worth typing.

hm. sounds like you should ring me then…

He looks at that one for a moment and blinks, the inside of his cheek finds itself between his teeth.

For all their blabbering, the lads did not warn him about this bit. Not that he can't speak on the phone, he prefers it. You're essentially quoting his profile back at him. But he's been thinking about something since roughly the fourth time you crossed his mind today, and a phone call isn't the ask he's been building up to.

Could do.

Truthfully, though. I was just working up the courage to ask you for a drink.

Courage. He's used that word in citations, for men who ran toward gunfire, heroes. Now he’s using it to describe the act of asking a woman on a date, and the genuinely undignified part is that it's regrettably accurate.

Your reply takes a minute. He watches the dots start and stop, and start again. God, he's been shot at with less suspense.

Then your message comes through and it's just a number. Ten digits. It buzzes in his hand once more.

for logistics.

He stares at it for a beat and then he's up out of his seat. Takeaway abandoned, at the fridge with his phone still in one hand, snapping the cap off a beer on the lip of the counter, and then he's out the back door into the garden where the evening's gone navy and the air’s still warm from the day.

He saves your number first. Then he stands there a moment, beer sweating in one hand, thumb over the call button in the other.

——

You’ve just tipped the bottle over your glass when the phone starts buzzing against the counter.

Unknown Number. Local.

“John?”

“Evenin’.”

Fuck. 

His voice lands an octave lower than you were braced for. A honeyed gravel that seeps into your ear and slides thick over your spine, pooling somewhere behind your ribs.

You set the bottle down before you drop it.

“So you actually do ring,” you manage.

“Said so on the profile, I think.”

“I half thought it was a bit.”

“I don’t really do bits.”

“No,” you say through a grin, picking up your glass and drifting toward the couch. You drop your voice into a gravelly impression of him: “You’re a very serious man.”

The laugh that comes down the line is quiet — more breath than sound, warm at the bottom of it, like you’ve caught him somewhere he doesn’t usually go.

“That meant to be me?”

“It’s uncanny, I know.”

The line goes quiet a moment — the good kind, neither of you rushing to fill it — and in it you catch the sounds of his side: a whirl of breeze, the faint ring of a glass set down on iron. He’s outside. You picture a tidy yard with tall dark hedges, a big man pacing slowly with a beer.

“Am I interruptin’ the wine?”

“The wine and I are happy to share the time.”

“Good.” There's a pause that you can hear his smile in. “I have a beer out here. Seemed only fair we’re both suffering the same.”

“Are we having our drink right now? Is this it?”

“No,” he says immediately, unamused even — which is very amusing for you. “This one doesn’t count.”

The speed of his reply sends something fizzing under your sternum. You tuck your feet up under yourself and take a slow sip.

“No?” you tease.

“I had imagined I’d see your face.”

“Been imagining, have you?”

You are very glad he cannot see your face right now. Cheeks warm and strained, you press the cool of the wine glass briefly against them in turns

“Nothin’ mucky if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”

“Mm, no, 'course not. You’ve been a proper gentleman. Haven’t even thrown me a cheeky pick-up line.”

“I could workshop somethin’ for you if you’d like.”

“No thanks,” you giggle into your glass. “It was a relief when I opened your first message and it wasn’t a riddles-three about your dick.”

You can hear his scoff and recoil on the other end.

“Is that what it’s come to?”

“Unfortunately.”

There’s a short silence you’d swear is him coming to terms with the modern world, and you bite down on a smile.

“Right,” he says, and there's a controlled shift in his voice. “My question...”

Your stomach does a free-fall, nauseating and fluttery, fifteen again on the Detonator at Thorpe Park.

“Mm?” you hum around a sip, deeply casual, a woman entirely unbothered, curled so tight around the phone that Twix doesn’t have a leg to lie on.

“There’s a pub about halfway between us, Lamb & Flag. I’d like to take you for that drink tomorrow. Will you come?”

Then you remember what tomorrow is and sigh, immediately irritated with your whole family.

“Ugh, I want to say yes,” you sulk. “But I’ve got Sunday dinner with my family tomorrow. My mum would hunt me for sport if I flaked.”

“Fair. Wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

“I could do a weeknight? After work?”

There’s a pause on his end.

“I’d rather not promise you a weeknight,” he admits. “I rarely get away on time, and I’m not startin’ this by standin' you up.”

You go quiet for a beat, you were ready for the usual ‘ahh, well, we’ll figure something out’. But instead got a man mindful of your time; a unicorn, really.

“Also fair. And— and thoughtful.”

“Friday, then?” he tries hopefully, you catch the small lean in his voice.

“Friday’s perfect,” you agree. “It’s a date!”

“It is,” he agrees, smiling.

The conversation should end there but it doesn't.

You learn things no profile has a field for; that he talks slower than he types, that he hm's real low in his throat when he’s considering something, that when you make him laugh it rumbles, so rough at the bottom that you feel at the back of your knees.

Somewhere past the hour mark you stop scrutinizing the call for red flags and just talk, and you only notice you’ve stopped when Twix jumps onto the couch and you realize you’ve been lying down for a while, phone balanced on your ear like you’re seventeen.

Eventually, you yawn.

“Right,” he says, and you can hear him moving, standing up by the way he tries to muffle a stiff groan. “That’s my cue.”

“Aw, no! I’m fine, really.”

“It’s late, love. And you’ve got your family tomorrow.”

“True. And you’ve got… whatever it is old men do on Sundays.”

“Lie-in, according to my profile.”

“Ha!” you bark, vindicated alone in your living room, having forgot about his little 'two truths and a lie'. “That’s the lie, I bet. I don’t think you’ve ever had a lie-in in your life.”

A low sound of amusement rolls down the line. “Goodnight,” he says, declining to confirm.

“Night, John.”

You sit a minute in the amber shine of your lamp after the line goes dead, phone loose in your hand.

——

Sunday morning, you text him at 8:12 AM.

good morning. how was the lie-in?

Wouldn’t know. Been up since five.

the lie confirmed!

He doesn’t dignify it. You don’t expect him to. You grin at your phone while you wait for the kettle to boil.

Your mum will later describe you, over dinner, as ‘suspiciously cheerful’.

The day swallows you — the drive, the roast, your mum’s questions, your brother’s kids. It’s near ten when you’re finally home, shoes off, replying to the last thing he’d sent that morning.

survived. my mum sends her regards to whoever put me in a good mood. her words.

Regards received. Sleep well.

——

Monday morning, John’s at his desk with his coffee going cold because somewhere between the canteen and the walk to his office, his phone buzzed, and it was you and he hasn’t stopped looking at it. 

good morning :) big meeting today. does this say “promote me” or “she tried”?

[ PHOTO ATTACHMENT ]

You, in your hallway mirror — chin tipped, black short-sleeve blouse with a wide collar exposing the smooth skin of your upper chest and collar, grey pencil skirt stretched over the curve of your hips and thighs, one knee bent like you’d just been lowering your foot from fitting on your heel.

His eyes are stuck on the soft-looking flesh just above and between your knees when a rap lands on his door and forces a cough from his throat.

Johnny eases it open with Kyle behind him holding a folder, Simon's behind them both, holding nothing, not even a pretense.

His phone goes face-down on the desk at a compromising speed, shifting to sit up straigher.

Simon’s eyes go to John’s hand over the phone, then to his face before he leans in the doorway with his arms folded.

“Mornin’, Cap. Good weekend?” Johnny asks, falling into the side chair in front of the desk with a theatrical groan.

“Fine.”

“Aye? Do anythin'?” He smiles, waggling his eyebrows. “Anyone?”

“You’ve got thirty seconds to develop a work reason for being in my office, Sergeant.”

It's an empty threat and everyone in the room knows it.

Kyle sets the (empty) folder down and steps back behind Johnny. “How’s it going, sir? Did you have any luck with Hinge?”

John could make them work for it. He’d planned to. But all three of them are standing in front of him trying so hard to look casual it’s a wonder none of them have pulled something.

"Have a date Friday. Drinks."

Johnny is ready to blast out of his seat, but Kyle shoves him back down by the shoulders, digging his fingers into the pressure points on either side of his neck until he relents with a hiss.

"That's great. Same woman or…?"

"The same."

“Good, good, good,” Johnny says, and means it — John can hear that he means it, he can also hear the restraint he's keeping from unloading shite advice.

“We'll stop buy Saturday for the debrief,” Simon says, already turning around, and Kyle picks the folder back up like it had a purpose all along, and they file out the way they came.

"I'm not debriefing you on my date. Don't come!" John calls to them half-heartedly, but the door's already shutting on top of his words. 

He turns the phone back over.

Promote you, he types.

You look lovely.

Your reply comes before he’s picked his pen back up.

well now the meeting feels easy. thank you x

He gets on with his morning, but by noon he suspects he's looked at that damn photo a dozen times.

——

The rest of the week goes standard. Your Tuesday runs long and his Wednesday runs longer, and the messages carry throughout it all. His texts arrive before your morning alarm even sounds, your replies go mid-commute — nothing heavy, just remaining in each other's orbit of interest as Friday chugs slowly into view.

Thursday night, near nine, he rings you, having first texted to ask if he could, which you’re beginning to understand is just how he’s built. It’s a short call by your new standards with him. He only wanted to confirm you’re still on for the pub, but he had you grinning into your pillow until you fell asleep.

———

You leave work at five on the dot, and you’re in front of your open wardrobe by six.

The little black dress comes off the rail first. Goes back. Comes off again. Back. The floral one gets as far as your shoulders before you pull it off over your head and drop it on the bed, where Twix immediately sits on it.

The silky baby blue halter’s been hanging on the door since you bought it. You put it on like you hadn’t already decided and do the tie at the back of your neck twice before the bow sits flat and neat. You pull on some jeans and rummage the closet for your chunky heels. 

You press some strawberry perfume to your throat in the mirror and try to comfort the nerve-ridden woman in the reflection.

“It’s just a pub,” you tell her. 

She doesn’t seem convinced. 

———

The pub is exactly the kind of place you imagine he'd frequent — quiet, all old mahogany and low brass lamps, no telly anywhere. You claim a stool, hook your heel over the rung, and decide not to order anything yet simply because it just feels polite to wait.

You're fifteen minutes early which means you're left alone with your anxieties. 

The last of the sun lies across the bar top in warm stripes, and you trace one with a finger while you wait. 

You’ve done this before, and it almost never goes how the phone promises. There was the guy whose photos were six years out of date. The one who spent both drinks talking about his ex and then sent a payment request for half the tab. The one who, two hours in, hadn’t asked you a single question about yourself. And John has been too good to be true for a week, and you know how that saying ends. Tonight is where you find out how, find out he really is just a man between deployments looking for entertainment and a shag.

It felt good, though. All week. Being excited about something. You’d forgotten the feeling. 

You pick at the hangnail on your thumb until it stings.

You don’t have to wait much longer for him. 

He casts a shadow when he comes through the door. Broad. Tall. Smart olive polo fighting for its stitching across his chest and where it grips into his biceps. He’s tidied his beard in comparison to his photos, hair less kempt in a purposeful way.

He scans the whole room before he finds you and stops looking anywhere else. He smiles tight and restrained, pleasant, but like he’s pacing himself, and by the time he crosses to you, your tongue has gone dry and whatever you’d planned to open with has shriveled away.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” you smile.

He smells clean, a bit like pine and amber, and faintly like there’s tobacco somewhere on his collar.

“You’re early,” he adds, almost pleased.

“So are you.”

“I’m always early.” His eyes drop to the empty bar top in front of you, then come back. “You haven’t ordered?”

You shake your head once, legs shifting to cross. “I wanted— I was waiting for you.”

The lines beside his eyes deepen and he holds out his hand, says your name for the first time, and his hand swallows yours — big and dry and calloused across the palm where yours is soft — and you hold on a beat too long. He doesn’t mention it. You add that to the list of things you like about him, which is getting embarrassing for something four minutes old.

“What’ll you have?”

“Uhm, whatever you’re having,” you decide.

He signals the bartender with two fingers and opens his mouth — and there’s a brief second where he looks at you first, and you notice for the first time that his eyes are blue, and you get stuck, and it seems so does he. By the time he looks back, he’s lost the name of the beer he’s drunk here a dozen times.

“Two of the, uh— the local,” he manages.

You pretend not to notice. He knows you did.

He pulls out the stool beside you, and more of his cologne wafts around you as he sits, turned to face you, legs spread, one knee pointing between yours.

The pints arrive wet from the tap, and for a second neither of you says anything at all. You trace a bead of condensation down your glass.

“Funny, isn’t it,” you offer, sheepish. “We’ve talked every day for a week, and the second we’re actually in front of each other…” You trail off, cheeks warming, eyes fixed on the fizz jumping over the rim of your beer.

“You’re nervous?” he asks, a cheeky lilt on it.

“A bit, yeah. Aren’t you?”

“Not at all.”

You squint at him. “I don’t know if I buy that.”

“Hm.” He takes a sip that lasts a little too long, and the tips of his ears have gone pink.

Your cheeks are doing about the same. You drink your beer — cold, hop-bitter, helping — and let him have his lie. It’s a generous lie anyway. It’s a lie shaped like a man trying, and you’ve been handed far worse shapes.

“So,” you start. “I haven’t asked why you’re even on Hinge. You don’t seem the type.”

“I’m not,” he chuckles, and offers nothing beyond it.

You wait. He just sips his beer. You hike a brow.

“That’s it? That’s your answer?”

“Well, it wasn’t my idea. The lads put me on it.”

“The lads — your guys from work?”

“Yeah.”

“They what, talked you into it?”

“No.” He turns his glass a degree. “They nicked my phone and made the profile behind my back.”

“And what made them do that?”

He takes a moment with that one. He could give you a cover story — you can almost watch him weigh one — but then he doesn’t.

“Their assessment,” he laughs to himself, “was that I’d been… cranky. Needed gettin’ out of the house.”

“Cranky?” you repeat, delighted.

“Their exact words were a bit different.”

“Hm.” You look at him — at ease, half a smile living in his beard, one arm resting along the bar. “You don’t seem cranky to me.”

“Yeah, well. Guess they were right, then.”

Your neck goes hot and you have to look away from him. “Well,” you manage. “They do good work, your committee.”

He huffs into his pint, and lets you recover.

“Okay, next one, then. Military.” You tip your glass toward him. “What do you actually do?”

He sets his beer down and you can see him carefully choosing which door to open. “What d’you want to know?”

“I don’t know. What’s your day look like?”

“Depends on the day. Paperwork, mostly. Meetings.” A beat. “Sometimes we go away.”

“Away?”

“Away.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Doing…?”

“Whatever they need me to,” he says easily. “S’not me being mysterious. I’d tell you if I could.”

“That must be so strange, though. Having this whole— like, most of your life you can’t talk about.”

“You get used to it.” Then, because you’re still looking at him expectantly, not filling the space the way people usually do: “There’s loads I can say. Ask me what six weeks of rain in a jungle smells like. Or what a month in the desert does to your skin.”

“What’s a month in the desert do to your skin?”

“Nothing good, love,” he answers, shifting to face you better. “The beard’s load-bearing.”

You laugh into your beer, and it makes the next one easier to ask.

“Do you like it? Like, the whole life of it?”

He goes quiet on that one. Longer than he’s gone quiet on anything else you’ve asked. You can see him thinking on it. 

“It’s what I’m best at,” he says finally. And then, mostly to his glass: “It’s all I’ve known, really. Been doin’ it since sixteen.”

You turn that over. There’s a whole life folded up in that sentence and you notice you want to ask about all of it, which is not a thing you’ve wanted to do with a man in a very long time.

The second beers arrive, and the conversation stops keeping to lanes — his lads and your best friend, the wedding in October, the neighbor whose bins are apparently a whole saga. You’re midway through the story of your work feud when a birthday party arrives loud and glittering behind you, and John, without so much as glancing down, reaches down and hooks his hand under the edge of your stool, and pulls.

The whole thing drags six inches across the floor with you on it, your knee sliding neatly between his, close enough now that his voice drops to match the new distance. You’re looking up at him, pulse tapping somewhere that has your thighs pressing together. 

“Go on,” he encourages. “She said what?”

It takes you a moment to find your place, but you go on.

The bar only gets louder from there, the birthday table multiplying, and when a booth opens up in the back corner, John tips his chin at it.

“Go grab that,” he says, turning back to the bar. “I’ll get another round. Want the same?”

“Actually—” and you hesitate out of nothing but habit, out of years of a man’s face going tight when you complicate an order, “—could I do a vodka cranberry this time? I could get the round—”

His brows furrow with something akin to bafflement, brief and genuine. “You can have whatever you’d like,” he says, and suddenly you feel silly, your hand crossing to grip your elbow.

“No—I know. I just—”

“Whatever you’d like,” he repeats, gentler. “And—” he grimaces, like what he’s about to say pains him deeply. “Don’t ever offer to pay on a date with me again. Properly wind me up, that will.”

“S-sorry,” you shake your head, like you can rattle the habit loose.

“None of that either,” his eyes have gone crinkled at the corners, warm all the way through, and he raps two knuckles soft on the bar top like the matter’s settled. “Vodka cranberry. Go, sit.”

“Actually— I’m gonna go freshen up quickly. Two minutes.”

And you go, biting down on a smile, ears hot — embarrassed and looked after all at once, which is apparently a combination that works on you.

The bathroom is cooler than the bar and a quiet that leaves your ears ringing. You reapply some lipgloss and wash your hands and look at yourself in the dirty mirror, buzzing warm at the collarbones, eyes shiny, mouth half-curved.

It’s going well.

It’s going suspiciously well.

And every time it’s gone well before, this is exactly when you started hunting for the catch. So you dry your hands on the rough paper towel and leave before you can start.

He’s in the booth when you come back, settled against the wall side, the last of the evening gone from the windows and the lamp above him glowing gold over the table. Your drink is waiting — pink, iced, a lime wedged on the rim — set neatly across the table at the seat opposite.

You look at the seat opposite.

Then you slide in beside him instead. Your thigh a heated inch from his, reaching across to relocate your drink.

You don’t look at him, but you can tell John’s a bit curious of the arrangement. His arm comes up and settles along the back of the booth behind you, and it oddly feels like it was always going to end up here, his thumb grazing the bare skin of your shoulder. He picks up his beer with the other hand.

“Comfortable?” he asks, low, and with entirely too much satisfaction.

“I am,” you say, and the first sip of the vodka cranberry is cold and tart and sweet all the way down, blooming behind your sternum right where his voice has been landing all night.

The booth is easier than the bar, somehow — closer, quieter, the birthday party more muted — and the talk drifts wherever it wants, his low laugh arriving against your shoulder through the arm behind you. At some point the lull comes; ice softening in your glass, his thumb resting an inch from your shoulder. And maybe it’s the vodka, or the arm, or the running list of things you like about him that you’d need both hands to count now—

“How long ago was your last relationship? Like a real one.”

He takes a deep breath before answering. “Honest answer?”

“Preferably,” you giggle softly, and he smiles — most of it lost in the beard, enough that you wonder if there are dimples under there.

“Longer than what sounds good out loud,” he admits through the pull of it. 

“Say it out loud anyway.”

“I was thirty-two. So, almost ten years ago.”

“Ten.”

“Mm.”

“A whole decade.”

“You can stop countin’ the years to me at any time, love.”

“Sorry, sorry.” You’re grinning. He is too. “It’s just, quite the gap in romance.”

“It went quick,” he says, and it’s a joke, and it’s also not. “What about you?”

“Ended about a year ago, we were together four.”

“Mm.”

“It was fine. Amicable— mostly,” you shrug. 

“Mostly,” he repeats — not pushing, just setting the word down where you can see he heard it.

“Mostly,” you confirm, and leave it there.

The ice ticks in your glass. And the next question’s been sitting in your chest, so you take it out while you’re brave.

“Can I ask something and you not be offended?”

“Startin’ well,” he says, nodding on for you to continue. 

You settle further into the booth and your shoulders press against his warm arm behind you, his fingers brushing over your shoulder. You lean your head back, turned to his face. 

“What’s changed? Between thirty-two and now that you’re trying dating?” You mean just to ask the question, but you find yourself rambling on. “Because if the honest answer is nothing, and this is just— a-a hookup with, like, really good manners, that’s fine. Genuinely. I’d just rather know now.”

“Fair,” he says. “Asked myself the same thing this week.”

“Yeah? And what was the answer?”

“I’m tired of the quiet,” he starts, pausing as his eyes drift away in thought. They come back to you just as quick. “Used to come home to it like a reward. Now it just feels… empty.”

Something in your chest slides sideways.

“So, no. Not a hookup,” he continues with a breath. “But I can’t promise you’d be happy with the alternative either. I can be gone longer than I’m home.” His thumb brushes along your shoulder, once, like an apology.

“Guess I wouldn’t know unless I gave it a go.”

You say it lightly, and the exhale he lets out has a smile riding on it — and something in his shoulders comes down, some held thing you didn’t notice until it let go.

“No,” he agrees, low. “You wouldn’t.”

You’re suddenly aware of the distance between you — or the lack of it. Somewhere between sitting down and the vodka you’ve ended up awfully close: near enough to count the grey threaded through his beard, to catch the beer on his breath, near enough that the light between you has stopped reaching the space. Near enough that you can feel the heat coming off him, and your heartrate has picked up on it before the rest of you has.

His eyes flick down to your mouth. Quick — half a second, there and back — but you catch it, and it lands low in your stomach and stays.

Neither of you leans back.

And the pub carries on behind you — glasses clinking, the birthday table shouting, a till drawer slamming — all of it arriving from somewhere far off and dreamlike.

You move closer. Barely. Imperceptible. Your pulse is in your ears now, drumming out the last of your sense—

“You know,” you say, quiet, pitched for the six inches between you and nobody else, “you can kiss me. If you’d like.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mhm,” you grin.

“Well,” he says, matching your volume, low enough that it lands somewhere below hearing, “I was going to be a gentleman about it. Wait til I walked you out.” His gaze drops to your mouth again, slower this time, no secret. “But if you’d rather have it here in the booth, I won’t argue.”

“I suppose I could be patient.”

“Mm,” he says, and doesn’t move.

Somewhere in the world, presumably, time is passing.

His jaw shifts. 

“I’ll go pay the tab,” he decides.

And you’re both up and out of the booth quick, and you watch him stand at the bar with his back to you, shoulders set, and you press one cool knuckle to your own cheek and find it burning.

You two make it out the door.

The night’s gone hazy and July-thick, and you get maybe four steps down the side of the pub with his hand a light at the small of your back before you glance up at him and he glances down.

Whatever was left of patient dies right there on the pavement.

He moves you.

One hand finding your hip, the other your jaw, and then your back meets brick, warm through the thin of your blouse and against your bare shoulders, and his mouth is on yours.

Whatever mindful version he’d planned for the end of his gentlemanly walk out must have been spent in the booth — this is the interest. The kiss opens on a low rumble out of his chest, one you feel travel through his ribs into yours, and his tongue slides against yours, all beer and him, and you grip the front of his shirt with both fists just incase the wall behind you vanishes.

He kisses you thoroughly, his beard catching along your chin, a chafe you know you’ll feel tomorrow. A thigh slots half between yours, not pushing, not touching, but it’s not any less inviting. You could bare down on it, get the friction your body is craving, he’d let you, but you restrain yourself. His thumb strokes a slow line along your jaw in obscene contrast to what his mouth is doing — and it blooms down through you, fervid, liquescent.

He pulls back just far enough to breathe — forehead near yours, both of you loud with catching your breath — and when you open your eyes his are dark.

“Very gentlemanly,” you croon.

“I walked you out first, yeah?” he says, unrepentant.

You giggle against his mouth, and he claims it for himself with one more gentle kiss, and then he steps back a seemly distance, hand smoothing once down over his beard, shoulders resetting, breath evening out, everything going back in its place except his eyes.

“Walk me home?” you ask.

“I drove. I’ll give you a lift.”

You look up at him, all vodka-warm and enjoying yourself. “Well, just so you know, I share my location with my best friend and she knows exactly what pub I’m at, and has your name and photo, so—”

“Good,” he replies, no hesitation. “Smart girl. Keep it that way.” He finds his keys, fishing them out of his pocket. “I’m taking you straight home. You have my word.”

He draws an X over his heart, your lipgloss shining at the corner of his crooked mouth. 

——

The car smells like-new — clean upholstery and faintly of engine oil, everything squared away, nothing rolling around in the footwells.

The drive is short. The radio murmurs. His hand rests easy on the gearstick a few inches from your knee — close enough that you spend two full streets aware of nothing else — and the streetlights slide over him in slow bars, catching the grey at his temple and the small satisfied set of his mouth. 

The kiss is still thrumming under your skin like a struck glass, low in your belly, at the back of your knees — and you catch yourself doing the thing you swore off doing: imagining forward. Him in your doorway. Him in your kitchen on the weekend. Him coming home from wherever away is and it being your door he— 

You look out the window. Four miles has never taken so long.

He pulls up outside your building and sets the handbrake, and the engine idles, and neither of you move.

The dashboard glow makes everything blue. 

You want to ask him up. That's not the question; that got settled somewhere around the second kiss in the alley, possibly earlier, possibly around the moment he walked into the pub, or whatever. But there's the other thing you can't evict from your head: do you really want to sleep with him on the first date?

"So," you say.

"So…”

You look at him — streetlight in the grey of his beard, arm along the wheel, he’s in absolutely no hurry to resolve you.

"Did you have a good time tonight?"

His head turns. There's a beat where he just looks at you, and you watch him physically decide not to make a joke of it.

"Yes. Best night I've had in a while," he says. 

"Would you—" and god, you're thirty years old and your heart is doing this anyway, "—want to see me again? Like this?"

"Was already plannin' to ask you to dinner." A small crease starts at the corner of his eye. "Was workin' out whether to do it now or ring you tomorrow, so I didn't seem overly—"

"Keen?"

"Keen," he confirms, gravely, like the word's been a burden to him all week.

And that lands warm and the relief does something reckless to your mouth, which is that it stops guarding it.

"Okay. Then I'm going to say something, but you can't look at me while I say it."

“Right.” He scrubs a hand over his twitching lips and looks out the windshield, obedient.

"I want to ask you up."

"Mm."

"And I'm having a whole debate about it."

"I can hear it," he says. "Been losin' to the engine for about a minute now."

"Just—,” you sigh, “—shut up." But you're smiling at the dashboard. "It's just— I spent all week wondering if this was a hookup thing for you. And you answered that, and I believe you, I do. But there's this small, paranoid part of me that's like, well, that's exactly what a man would say at the pub, isn't it? And then there's this other, stupider part that thinks if you come up, you'll—" you take a deep breath, your fingers hooking into each other on your lap, and make yourself finish it, "—think less of me. First date and all."

He's quiet for a second, lips pursing. 

“Can I look at you now?” he tries.

“Yeah.”

"You want to know where I'm actually at?"

"Truly just desperate for a man to be honest so I know what headspace to put myself in."

“Alright.” He shifts to face you, wrist still hanging over the wheel. “I want to come up. Badly, if you want some extra honesty.”

The badly goes straight between your thighs.

“Okay,” you manage. “Noted.”

“I haven’t lied to you once tonight. And I’m takin’ you to dinner whether I come up or not.”

“And, like— you wouldn’t think—”

“Think less of you?” He frowns, like the math’s not mathing. “For doin’ the same thing I’d be doing? Together?”

“When you put it like that…”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sat here havin’ a version of the same debate. Been out of this a long time. Didn’t want you thinkin’ that’s all I came for. So if you’d rather I kiss you at the door and drive home, I’ll do that and consider it a perfect evening.”

And maybe it’s the ease of him, the total absence of pressure you’re always braced for on nights like this, that settles it for you. 

“Would you like to come up?”

——

The stairwell smells of somebody's late dinner and warm dust, the day's heat still trapped in it, and you take the stairs ahead of him to the second floor.

John is a gentleman.

John has been a gentleman all night.

John gives himself the length of one flight of stairs off the clock — the sway of you in those jeans, the shift and give of you with every step, the smooth line of your bare shoulders under the halter's little bow — and by the landing he's a gentleman again, and if you felt his eyes like a brand on you, and by the half-smirk you throw over your shoulder you did, neither of you says a word about it.

Your flat smells like you — the perfume he got to know at the pub, but underneath it, clean laundry, a candle burned down sometime this week — and a blur of black-and-caramel bolts across the living room and vanishes down the hall before he can so much as get a look at her.

"That was Twix," you say, her paws still pattering away. "She'll start her background check and circle back."

"Sensible."

And then the two of you are standing in your living room with the whole car’s worth of honesty sitting in the middle of the floor, and you look at him, and look at the kitchen, and say:

"Do you want a drink? I have wine. Or, um. Tea? I might have a beer from—"

"I'm alright," his mouth pulls at one side. 

"Water? I'm gonna have water."

"Then I'll have water," he says like he’s surrendering. 

He watches you go — and he could laugh, not at you, but because he knows exactly what he’s looking at. The two of you agreed in plain English on why he’s standing here, and now you’re in your kitchen filling glasses neither of you want, and wiping down a counter that, from where he’s stood, was already clean. 

So he gives you room. Settles against the arm of the couch, takes a slow lap of your shelf with his eyes — you and a woman he guesses is the October bride, you on a hike somewhere sunny, you and Twix bravely on the balcony — and he wants you the whole time, low and patient, in his back teeth, but doesn’t move on it.

 Your pace. Your move.

You come back with the waters, and hand him his, and hold your own in both hands like you might drop it. He takes a sip, looks at you over the rim of it.

“You’re nervous,” he says.

“Not at all.”

“Mm.” He nods slowly, deeply unconvinced and taking a page from your own book. “Don’t know if I buy that.”

He watches it land, watches the laugh come up out of you before you can stop it, head tipping back, throat bare, and half your nerves seem to leave with it.

He likes that. 

He sets his glass down. Then, gently, he takes yours out of your mid-fidget hands and sets it down too — he tips your chin up with one knuckle, and kisses you.

Easy-like, cold from the water, cranberry still faint on your tongue, your breath catches once against his mouth and then lets go. Your hands slide flat up his chest and stop over his heart — which is going quicker than he’d care to admit, and he feels the exact moment you find it out, the little hum of discovery you make.

When you pull back to look at him, whatever nerves were left in you are gone from your eyes, and they’re twinkly a lot like the first photo he ever saw of you. 

You take his hand off your waist, lace it through yours, and guide him backward toward the short hall.

In your bedroom he finds the tie of your halter at the back of your neck and pauses with the ends between his fingers, silk warm from your body. One pull and it gives, the fabric sighing loose, and he follows it slide down with his eyes first, then his mouth — the slope of your throat, over your shoulder, then the soft skin below your ear that tastes of strawberry perfume and salt. His beard drags over your neck and a shiver flows through you so he does it again, slower. You shiver harder, fingers curling into the front of his polo.

Good.

You tug the hem of his shirt up and he reaches back, pulls it off over his head one-handed, and drops it somewhere he’ll look for later. He unhooks your bra just as easily, and when your palms spread into the coarse hair over his bare chest and down his toned stomach, the muscle jumps under your fingertips, he hears his own breath go rough.

“Okay,” you say, a little wonder in it. “Wow, yeah, that’s….”

“Mm?”

“Nothing. Just— I knew military, just didn’t realize… this much military.”

“Lodging a complaint?” he askes, amused.

“Definitely not.”

The rest goes gradually — his belt, your jeans peeled down warm thighs with his calloused palms flat against your skin the whole way, a hop and a giggle when the denim catches your ankle and he steadies you by the elbow — and then you’re bare in front of him, lamplight pooling gold along your shoulder, your hip, the soft curve of your stomach. He stops with his hands at your waist and looks.

“Say something,” you murmur, half a laugh, shy at last under the attention. “You’re oggling.”

“I am.” His thumbs press slow arcs into your hips. “Give me a minute. Been picturin’ this since Tuesday and I did you no justice.”

You pull him down onto the bed by way of an answer, and the mattress sinks with a soft complaint, and then it’s just skin — so much warm skin, soft everywhere he’s hard, giving under his hands, smelling of perfume and the clean sweat July dampens into everyone.

He stretches out alongside you, one heavy thigh over yours, and takes his time. The curve of your waist. The full weight of your breast, thumb dragging over your nipple until it peaks and your breath stutters. The inside of your thigh, where the skin is finest and the heat pools. You move under his touch the whole time, restless and rising, fingers in his hair, at his shoulders, and the small sounds you make land somewhere at the base of his neck and prickle there.

Then he shifts down the bed, kisses the soft of your stomach, the plush crease of your hip, and looks up the length of you.

“Can I?”

“You— yes,” you breathe, trembling feebly. “Yes, obviously, you don’t have to a—”

His mouth is on you before the sentence ends.

You’re sweet and slick against his tongue, already so wet the first slow lick slides easy, and the sound you make is high and caught somewhere low, thigh twitching against his ear, one hand flying to his hair. He hums — feels you feel it — and settles in. No rush. Long soft strokes of his tongue until your hips learn the rhythm and rise to meet it, then his lips close warm around your clit, sucking gently, and your whole body pulls tight.

“Oh my god— okay— okay—”

“Mm.”

“Don’t be smug—” and your voice climbs off the end of the sentence as he slides two thick fingers into you, curling them, tongue still working, and whatever the rest of that scolding was, he never learns it.

“Could do this all night, sweetheart,” he murmurs against you, and feels the words land in a shudder. Your breathing changes. Your thighs start trembling, your hand fists in the sheets — and he keeps the pace exactly the same until you’re pulling at him. Hair, arm, anything you can reach.

“John— John— come— I want you. Now,” you whine, “Please.”

He comes up the length of you slow, mouth mapping stomach and sternum and throat on the way, and settles over you on one forearm—

"I should've said this in the car," he starts, eyes on yours. "I don't have a condom. Wasn't assuming tonight would end up here."

"I don't have any either. I actually checked the drawer before I left tonight." You push his dampening hair back off his forehead. "I'm on the pill, and I trust you. But I'd still feel better if you pull out. Is that okay?"

He nods assuredly. "Then I'll pull out," he says flat and plain. "You have my word."

"You and your word—" but you're smiling, and then you're not smiling, because he's already moved and taken himself in hand and dragged the head of his cock through your folds, coating himself in you, and notched against your entrance, and the smile falls open into something much, much better.

He pushes in slow, watches your face the entire way — he couldn't look elsewhere if a grenade went off — your brows drawing up, your lips parting around a breath that doesn't finish, your nails biting little crescents into his forearms — and fuck, the feel of you: scalding, soaked, tight enough that he has to stop twice, jaw clenched, sweat sliding at his temple, feeding you his cock an inch at a time and pulling back, then giving you more; the slick easy give of you around him unspooling something in his stomach.

"Talk to me," he murmurs, gravel-low. "Alright?"

"Yes." Your voice has gone breathless and small and blissed. "You're— god—"

"Christ, you’re snug," he exhales shakily, eyes finding yours. “Relax for me, baby. Breathe.”

"I am breath—oh. Oh—shhit—"

John’s seated all the way, hips flush to your backside, and both of you go quiet — a shared beat of stillness, you fluttering around him hot and full, his body coming down, forehead dropping to yours, ten months of silence pulling a sound up out of his chest that he couldn't have stopped if he knew it was coming.

Then you shift your hips, experimental, a slow grind up against him, and that stillness is over.

He moves slowly; long level strokes dragging all the way out so you both feel every hot stretch of the return, your breasts pressing soft against his hairy chest. Your heels slide up the back of his thighs and he budges his hips closer, holding deep and pressing the head of his cock into your furthest wall. Your hands squeeze the meat between his shoulders and his neck as he pushes a small squeal out of you. 

"Right there—right there—right there, don't—"

"I won’t," he murmurs against your jaw. “I won’t move.”

"—okay maybe move a little—"

He breathes something restrained through a smile. "Make your mind up, darling," he grunts. 

“It’s hard to— mmm—think like this,” you half-moan against his cheek. 

“Don’t think, then.”

It’s all your talking that undoes him more than anything, he realizes distantly. He’d forgotten there was a version of this with laughing in it; a version with a woman eagerly gripping him and grinning against his cheek in the second before a moan carries her voice away — and every time you say his name, breathed and broken, something in his chest cinches another notch tighter.

He draws back and drives home again, and whatever you’d been about to answer with comes out as a punched huff.

You don’t think.

He feels the difference in you immediately — your body dropping the manners, hips rising to meet him harder than he’s giving it, heels dragging him in by the thighs on every stroke, a low frustrated sound building in your throat when he keeps the same controlled pace. You’re not asking for anything. You’re taking it in inches, greedy and unaware of yourself, nails dragging down the small of his back, pulling—

“Harder?” he asks against your ear. 

"Yes, please."

He hooks your knee up over his hip and opens you wider—“So polite.”—and gives it to you deeper, his weight behind it, your headboard cracking against the wall. You go loud and lovely underneath him, clutching, slick heat and plush skin and your nails scoring lines down his back that he hopes, viciously, will last long enough to admire.

He works a hand between your bodies, thumb finding your clit, riding the motion you’ve bkth created.

"That's— John— You’re gonna make me come," you sob. 

"I know. I feel you. Squeezin' me like— Christ. Go on—fuck."

He watches it arrive before you do, a shiver running ahead of the wave; your spine arches up off the bed, your cunt clenches around him in long pulsing, aching, waves —  it takes you under, and you pull him with you.  

He holds you, murmuring filth and praise in equal measure against your ear—

How good—

How gorgeous—

You’re mine now, you know that? Hm?—

It’s watching you eagerly nod along with his babbling that finishes him. He lasts maybe ten more strokes on borrowed time, heat gathering alacritous and irrevocable at the base of his groin — and he rears back onto his knees, pulling out of you with a growl that tumbles from his throat, fist working his cock over, soaked with you, spilling hot across your stomach and hip in thick ropes, head hanging, shoulders heaving, your thighs still bracketing his knees.

When he lifts his head, you’re already looking at him.

Glowing down to your chest, lips parted and kiss-swollen, wearing him low on your stomach — and neither of you says anything. Neither of you looks away either. His chest is still heaving. Your knee presses in against his side, and the corner of your mouth starts to curl, and his does too, helpless about it.

He comes down on his side, careful of the mess he’s made of you, one arm heavy across the pillow above your head. The curtain breathes at the window beside the bed and the night comes in and cools the sweat on his back, and he can see your heartbeat going hard at your throat, the rise and fall of your stomach not yet settled. He gently fits his thumb against your pulse, just to feel it going. 

He kisses you, your mouth lazy under his, and then your temple, and the crown of your head, and you make a low, boneless sound and turn your face into his hot neck, and the two of you just lie there breathing each other in, tangled and settling, your finger drawing slow shapes on his forearm.

"John?" Small, against his throat.

"Mm?"

"Would you mind grabbing me a cloth? Bathroom's just across the hall."

He's up before the sentence finishes, annoyed at his own carcass the whole three steps to the door, ten months out of practice and it shows, he used to know this part, the part where he takes care of you before you have to ask.

You bathroom is small and smells of your shampoo, fruity, herbal. He runs a flannel under the warm tap, wrings it out, catches his own eyes in the mirror over the sink — wrecked hair, beard ruined and shiny with your lipgloss. He turns, craning his neck spotting a blooming red scratch coming up nicely at his shoulder.

He comes back and cleans you up properly, kneeling on the edge of the bed, one hand steady at your hip while the warm cloth moves over your stomach — thorough about it, frowning slightly the way he does when he’s concentrating — and you watch him do it propped up on your elbows with an expression he can't quite read and doesn't need to. It's warm, whatever it is. And it’s aimed at him, so.

"You're staring," he says, not looking up. 

"You're tidying me."

"Should've done it before you asked." He folds the cloth, sets it on the nightstand, and stretches out beside you again, this time gathering you into his chest. "Out of practice."

"I'll allow it," you say, magnanimous, settling your cheek against his pec. "The rest was very in-practice."

He huffs into your hair.

Your fingers trail idle through the hair on his chest, down over old pinked scars, and you ask him about them — whether the jagged line at his shoulder hurt, what caused the puckered one under his ribs — and he answers more honestly than he means to, your weight settling heavier against him as the adrenaline drains.

There's a soft thump from the hallway, then, and a moment later a small shape appears in the doorway — sits, tail wrapping her feet, and surveys the wreckage: the trail of clothes, the stranger man in the bed, you draped over his ribs.

She stares at John.

John stares back.

"We have an audience," he says.

You look over him to see your cat, "Twix, John. John, Twix."

Twix holds his gaze a moment longer, supremely unimpressed, then steps delicately over his discarded shirt and exits the way she came and he feels you giggling before he hears it, the shake of it against his chest.

"That went well," you say, overly pleased. 

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

"Well, consider me chuffed."

Some comfortable minutes later he feels you surface a little out of the drowse, feels your breathing change, going careful; feels your face arrange itself against his skin before you speak. 

"You don't have to stay, by the way." Light. Smooth as eroded stone, polished by use, he imagines. "If you'd sleep better in your own bed. No pressure either way."

And there it is — the same maneuver from your texts, the honest thing dressed up so you can't be caught caring — except this time he can feel your heartbeat while you run it, quick against his ribs, betraying the whole performance from inside. 

He keeps his hand moving on your arm, slow, so you know nothing's landed wrong.

"I'll head home," he says. "Not because I want to," he clarifies.

“No?” you ask. 

"Believe me. This is about the last place I want to leave." His hand doesn't stop, slow up, slow down, steadying you through it. "I'd like at least one proper dinner between us before I go makin' a habit of your bed."

You lift your head off his chest and look at him — hair wrecked, eyes searching his face for the trick — and he lets you look as long as you need to because there's no trick to be found. He meant it. 

“Alright," you agree. 

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Dinner sounds nice.”

"Mm," he hums, contented. He presses a kiss into your hair and untangles himself, face scrunched with visible reluctance, and dresses while you watch from the bed with the sheet gathered loose around you.

At the door he stops. 

"C'mere."

You come to him in the sheet, and he kisses you properly, one hand cupping your face, thumb at your cheek. You go languid against him. He takes his time. Long past politeness. Long enough that leaving starts to look renegotiable, and he breaks away before he starts. 

"G’night," he says, low, still holding your face.

"Goodnight."

"I'll ring you about dinner tomorrow."

——

The flat is quiet. But it's a different quiet than the one you left this morning and you stand in the middle of it grinning.

Twix reappears at the edge of the counter and stares. 

“I don’t need the lecture, I’m grown,” you tell her and start walking back to the bedroom, you hear her little jump to the floor and her feather steps catching up with you, “I can have sex. I deserve it, even.” You drop into your bed with a sigh. “You’d understand if you still had ovaries.”

“How’d you meet him again?” Hana asks, knees pulled up to her chest.

“Would you believe me if I said we met because the gym? My parents got me a membership for my birthday and I’ve been using that sauna like crazy. Sunghoon and I happened to share one because the rest was full and well… we started talking and running into each other. It’s crazy because I’d never seen him before and then all of a sudden I was seeing him everywhere.”

“How romantic,” Jiwoo swoons, peering over your phone to look at Sunghoon’s abs. “I can’t believe you have a boyfriend now.”

“Oh my god!” Iseul squeals when she scrolls past a picture. A nude. Not yours, no, the four of you share your nudes with each other for approval before they go out to boys. It’s Sunghoon’s. He angles his phone camera down to show himself laying on his bed and gripping his cock with his free hand, fade and cock fully in the frame. “His dick is so big!”

“Let me see!” Hana exclaims, looking at the picture. “Oh my god, Y/N. You’re actually crazy. How does that thing fit in your pussy?”

“A lot of prep work,” you giggle. “Sunghoon always says I’m really tight and that we need to keep fucking so I can get comfortable with his size. He’s so sweet and considerate like that, girls.”

“I need a man like that, shit.”

“He sends you videos too?!” Iseul says with an excited laugh, her face turning red and she presses play on Sunghoon, stark naked in his bathroom after a shower, chiseled abs on his play. He films himself through the mirror as he jacks off with his hand, groaning while he masturbates.

“Need your tight pussy,” Sunghoon moans, eyebrows furrowing as his face contorts into pleasure. “Can’t stop thinking about last night, baby. Made me wanna take the condom off, if I’m being honest. Can we try that soon? Can we try raw sex? I promise it feels so much better without a condom.”

“It felt amazing,” you tell them.

Your phone rings. Speaking of the devil.

“Hi Hoonie, you’re on speakerphone!”

“Hi baby,” comes his raspy voice. Your friends squeal but you shush them. “You forgot your toothbrush at my place. I didn’t want you to go without one at your sleepover.”

“So romantic,” Iseul mouths.

“Oh shit, thank you so much, Hoonie. I’ll be outside in a second!”

Your friends follow you out the front door. Sunghoon leans against the side of his car with his arms crossed over his chest, smirking at you as you run towards him. You can’t help but get really excited over seeing him, especially when he wears those tank tops that show his toned arms.

Sunghoon bends down to kiss you, pulling your arms around his neck when his tongue pushes against your own. You feel the stares of your friends as he kisses you but you don’t care when it feels so good like this. He licks your tongue three times before pulling away and presenting you your toothbrush in a baggie.

“Thank you,” you whisper, looking up at him whilst biting your lip.

“Don’t mention it, sweetheart.” Sunghoon looks past your shoulder and sees your friends. “Hi girls.”

A chorus of “Hi Sunghoon!” echos behind you and he smirks to himself before putting his eyes back on you.

“Ditch them for me?”

“You know I can’t, Daddy. I haven’t seen them in forever.”

He nods and bends down to kiss you one more time. When he pulls away, his hands come up to grope your tits from over your sleep top. “I understand. Just miss you and fucking these tits, is all.”

“Tomorrow,” you remind him. “I’m all yours tomorrow.”

He nods and brushes his thumbs over your hardened nipples, licking his lips before looking at up at. “Hurry back to your friends, baby. I like knowing they wish they could be you.”

“They were so jealous when I showed them your nudes,” you giggle, to which Sunghoon pinches your left nipple slightly.

“Did you show them the videos of me cumming for you?”

“I’ll show them tonight, Daddy, I promise.”

“Good,” he mutters under his breath, hand coming behind you to grip your ass before giving it a spank. You hear your friends squeal behind you, not bothering to turn around and look. “Love it when you brag about me, baby. Make those girls see what they’ll never have.”

You push forward until your lips ghost over his own, putting your hand on his crotch and giving it a squeeze. “My cock.”

“Go back to your little friends before I fuck you on the street.”

“Promise?” You ask coyly, pecking his lips before pulling away. Sunghoon grits his teeth but pushes you away from him reluctantly.

“Enjoy your sleepover. Tomorrow, you’re all mine.”

~~~~~~~

“Shit, baby. I could kiss your tits until I die.”

Sunghoon strips you of your clothes the second the two of you enter his bedroom. There’s nothing but pure, raw horniness radiating from him the minute he sets his eyes on your chest, tits bouncing when he pushes you back on the mattress. You make a show of it, bouncing back on the comforter and arching your back to purposely make your tits jiggle. You go so far as to squish them together with your arms, clasping your hands in front of you until your nipples aim at Sunghoon, who settles between your legs as he pushes a pillow behind your head.

He leans his head down to peck each nipple, the sensation making your pussy jolt. Sunghoon cups your breasts, admiring the way the flesh spills from his hands. He zeroes in on your perky nipple and you feel the way he grinds his cock against the mattress beneath the two of you.

“Perfect tits,” he moans, fingers finding the buds as he pinches them. You gasp lightly and Sunghoon grins at that. “Daddy loves your tits, baby. They’re so soft and sexy. Fuck. They’re gorgeous.” He bends his head down until his lips attach to your right nipple and the graze of his teeth along with the flick of his tongue makes your back arch into him.

“Keep sucking on them, Daddy.”

“Smells so good too.” Sunghoon inhales as he sucks on you. “Fucking sexy.”

“Do you like my young tits, Daddy?”

Sunghoon groans against your nipple, harshly sucking on your bud when he hears your question before moving to your neglected one. “I love your young tits, kiddo. So perky and fuckable. Don’t you remember what I told you? Younger girls have the sexiest tits. So fresh and full of milk.”

The feeling of his mouth makes your clit ache. Sunghoon’s expert tongue licks over your sensitive spots until you’re mewling for him, hands coming to the back of his head for support. It’s not hard to start grinding and rolling your hips until your own crotch is rubbing against his covered dick, his hard and lengthy cock imprinting themselves between your covered pussy lips.

The sounds Sunghoon’s mouth makes is pure sex. He practically makes out with both nipples, making a wet mess of your buds by drooling all over them before sucking it back up.

He pulls away and lifts his head, dropping a fat glob on your right nipple. “You have beautiful nipples, kiddo.” Sunghoon bends down to lick it up. “I can’t get enough of them. I want them in my mouth every single day. I need your gorgeous big tits suffocating my face before I go to work. Can’t believe I’m the first man to worship this incredible rack.”

Sunghoon grips both of your tits until his fingers dig into the flesh as he pushes them together until your nipples touch, bending down to gently nip on them with his teeth. It makes you buck your hips into his lap, making him push his entire weight until you’re trapped between him and the mattress. Sunghoon groans against your nipples and flicks his eyes up at you, drinking in your already fucked out face. You’ve always been so sensitive. Sunghoon says it’s because you’re not as experienced as sex as he is, given your young age. But he wants to be the person to help you mature sexually as a woman and tells you every little girl needs a Daddy to help them discover how good playing with other people’s bodies feel.

You feel so alive when you’re with him. Sunghoon outranks all of the immature boys who only grope you when they’re teasing, flirting without meaning anything behind their words. Sunghoon is intentional and when he wants you, he tells you.

No guess work. No ghosting. Sunghoon tells you when he’s horny and he tells you to tell him the same. Now, your pussy’s never empty and despite having to sneak out of your house to meet up with him or tell your parents you’ll be working out when you’re really sleeping with Sunghoon, it’s all worth it because he knows how to play with your pussy and always leaves you with warm cum somewhere in or on your body.

Sunghoon’s hold on your tits gets stronger when he lifts his hips up just to slam them back down, dry humping your covered pussy, the flimsy material do doubt wet and ruined from your arousal and the precum leaking from his boxers. He moans against your tits, pressing his face between until his nose gets trapped in your chest, inhaling before sticking his tongue out to lick between your boobs.

“Play with these while I get my cock out,” Sunghoon mutters in a haste. He reluctantly pulls away from you but rushes to stand on the bed to strip himself of the fabric, big, girth cock springing out and sticking parallel to the floor. He’s so hard it hurts. His cock jumps at the first contact of his warm palm and he turns around to see you jiggling your tits between your hands. Sunghoon stares at the way your nipples move every time you push your chest up onto the bed to simulate missionary. He looks at the way your bib breasts move up and down like he’s really fucking you.

“We’re not using a fucking condom today,” Sunghoon growls, eyes looming over you like he’s a predator and you’re his unlucky prey.

He kneels back onto the bed, larger and taller frame practically towering over you as he nudges the tip of his huge fucking cock against your covered pussy rubbing himself back and forth until it causes hot friction by your clit. You whine out for him when Sunghoon slaps your covered nub with his dick over and over again, smirking at the way your eyes twist in horrified pleasure.

“I love the way your pussy feels when I rub them over your panties, kiddo. Do you know how fucking good the fabric feels on my cock? Girls nowadays want to be completely naked but I like that you keep them on for me. Fuck, baby, you’re so wet. Wetting my cock every time I slap this cute fucking clit.” He slaps on it again, making you moan out for him. “Wonder what it would feel like if I pushed it here…”

Sunghoon moves his dick until his cockhead nudges your covered asshole. His tip pushes uncomfortable by the wrinkled hole, making your gasp and clutch into your tits for stability. Sunghoon moans and licks his lips when you do, shallowly thrusting his dick against your asshole.

“No Sunghoon—”

“Your asshole is perfect,” he groans, ignoring you in favor of thrusting it against you one more time before applying pressure. Your asshole feels like it’s being penetrated even though it’s not and you can’t help but let out a squeal, clenching out of sheer vulnerability. But that makes Sunghoon chuckle. He finally pulls away and puts your legs by his side until he’s pulling your wet panties to the side, exposing your freshly waxed pussy. “One day, I’ll teach you how good anal feels. There’s nothing better than fucking a tight, wet hole, kiddo.” Sunghoon puts his thumb into your wet slit, gliding the pad around while occasionally dipping himself in a few times. “Waxed it smooth for me… you’re a good girl doing that I say. I love fucking you like this, feels so good when I have you on your knees and my balls slap against your smooth pussy.”

Sunghoon pushes himself in until he’s buried to the hilt, mouth latching onto your nipple as he thrusts inside of you. It’s primal, the way he starts to fuck. It’s like his cock and bios have a mind of their own when he enters your tight hole. The friction is too delicious and the warmth generating from your touching laps feels heavenly. Sunghoon’s tongue licks and sucks on your nipple as he moans against you, balls hitting your asscheeks the harder he fucks you.

You’ll never get over his girth cock, nor will you ever forget the first time he put it inside of you. God, you were so sensitive back then and could barely take two inches before you came. Sunghoon had only fucked you shallowly that night, watching your cum coat the tip of his cock over the condom, back before you agreed to have raw sex. He loves it when he gets to feel you, calling your pussy really sexy because it’s so young and untouched.

“Daddy can’t get enough of this pussy,” he groans. “Some people might think this is wrong, but I can’t help how I feel.” Sunghoon lifts his head and with his hands still gripping your breasts, he bend down to kiss you, whispering against them. “Can’t help that I love younger girls. You fulfill my every fantasy, kiddo. Such a tiny pussy and gorgeous fucking tits, there’s nothing better, I swear. My perfect little girl.”

You cum at that, white hot blinding lights shining in your eyes as you clench around Sunghoon. He moans and throws his head back before opening his eyes to watch the way your breasts jiggle every time he fucks you.

“Fuckkkk your tits make me so fucking horny. I’m close, kiddo. Daddy wants to fuck them.”

Sunghoon pulls out in a haste while spitting between your boobs. He slots his dick in between and growls when he sees your breasts perfectly covering him up until it disappeared between you. He’s got to the touch and he hold your tits in place, both of his legs on either side of your body while he ruts his dick between your big tits.

“Nothing better than cumming all over this rack,” Sunghoon groans as he chases his high, dragging his cock against your chest. You stick your tongue out and he bumps his tip against the flat surface. “Fucking hell, Daddy’s gonna cum all over your gorgeous breasts.”

He cums in thick white ropes, spraying across your tits, under your chin, and onto your lips. Sunghoon tastes salt but delicious and warm. You look up and his face is scrunched in pleasure as he comes down from his high, grinding his still-hard cock in his own cum before pulling himself away from your chest, aligning himself back against your pussy. Pushing himself back inside of you, Sunghoon makes you gasp and push your chest towards him.