Joyce Gunn Cairns (Scottish, B. 1948, Bonnyrigg, Midlothian, Scotland, Based Edinburgh, Scotland) - Darling

Just thinking about breeding programs between alphas and omegas in which people basically sell their uterus or sperm to have the most attractive/strong/smart kid possible.

And I’m thinking about the person you choose being John Price. You’d seen him one time in the hospital you worked at and immediately went “that’s the father of my child”.

Except he insisted on getting you pregnant the old fashioned way and would only take half the amount you offered him for his services. And as he laid you down in one of those sterile and neutral rooms they used for this sort of thing, his scent hit you full force.

John Price was your mate. And you had picked him out of a damn crowd of people, no scent needed.

The employees had to usher you both out as the planned breeding became a full-blown rut and heat, the alpha insisting on mating you at that very moment.

John Price is older and John Price has spent his entire life serving and giving. It’s only fair he finally take something. Something that was his from the very moment he came into the world.

'cause now I'm scared to love the thought of you the way you did with me

word count: 10.6k

summary: love, you know. you, simon knows.

The first time Simon ever met you, he had the aching feeling that he knew you already.

No, not the sense of deja vu you get in snippets throughout your life. He felt the strange sense that he had known you all his life and had done something to wrong you somehow. He's four. Four-year-olds should not know that feeling. Especially not the sense that somehow, he had broken your heart or betrayed you. He's never met you before — that much, he's certain. He'd know. You're his age, so it's not like this feeling can be from knowing you as an infant. He doesn't remember that far back.

You wave at him, grinning as you pull him off with his brother to hang out as your parents talk to his mom, and you show him what it means to play.

When he leaves later, you ask him if you're friends.

He gives you a blank stare.

You end up in his class later that year, his next-door neighbour and companion, walking home with him from primary school, asking him if he understood anything in class. You're not as bright as he is, Simon thinks. You struggle a little more with certain concepts, and you argue with the teachers over ways to do certain things. A contradiction of everything, he thinks. He mulls over what you are and what you are not. How do you feel simultaneously like a fifty-year-old and a five-year-old at the same time?

He tugs on you sometimes to calm you down.

"Stop it."

"But it's—"

He gives you a look and you huff.

Simon likes sticking by your place, but he also doesn't enjoy it.

When he goes home, dad beats him because he was with you again.

Can' have them findin' out abou' what I do. y' hear me?

The purple is hard to hide around you. You pry too much. You ask too many questions. You tug Tommy around too much and Tommy talks too much. You don't need to know what it's like at home for him. You ask too many questions about why he's wearing a turtleneck when it's already twenty-two degrees outside. You tug at it, offering one of your shirts, but he can't. You don't need to know. You can't know. You shouldn't know. For some reason.

He wants to hide it from you for some reason.

You seem to know anyway, blinking at Simon curiously as you push back his sleeve, staring at the purple.

"You should report him, you know?"

"Ma wouldn't like that."

"So you'd rather be beat? Is it not just a fear factor?"

You don't speak like you're from around there either. You have a mixed accent. Like you've been in an amalgamation of countries and grew up everywhere at once. You don't feel like you're from Manchester. You had moved, sure, but you're young. You seem to be a constant dichotomy between everything and nothing. What does it mean to exist to you? You stare off into nothing the same way his ma does. But time travel doesn't exist or whatever. It's impossible to be sent back in time. All of that is just science fiction.

Pondering. Is that the word?

"What are y' looking at?"

"I'm thinking." You hum, blinking back to life. "That cloud looks like a rabbit."

"No. Looks like a duck."

"Well, now that it's moved." You huff. "That one's a heart."

"That one looks like a dog."

"I don't see it."

"The four legs?"

"Hm."

"'kay, well, that one's a worm."

"See that."

"mhm."

Dad is taken away at one point. Simon returns home to police at his door, hauling his drunken dad out as another officer comforts his mom, and he leads Tommy inside.

"You Simon?"

"Yes ma'am."

"This Tommy?"

"Mhm."

"You won't need to worry about that man anymore."

"Dad." Simon says. "Dad."

"You won't need to worry about him hitting you anymore."

"He makes all the money. Where are we t' go?"

He spots your parents with his ma, and he wonders where you are.

"They said they'll take you all in." The woman tells him.

Your place isn't big enough for all of them.

Yet, when he's brought home to your family, the guest room is set up, yet he finds himself in your room when he can't sleep, staring at you quietly in the dark, watching as you rub your eyes tiredly and scooch over to make space for him.

He still fits in your bed at this point in time.

"Does that make us siblings?" You whisper, getting yourself comfortable as you tangle limbs with him.

Simon wants to say yes. He does. But there's something else he wants, he supposes. He pauses.

"Maybe."

Room for maybe not. Maybe yes.

Maybe it's a cruel joke that he failed to fall asleep with his mother yet knocked right out with you. He's not so lucky as to be able to do it, and he understands that he's a guest so he shouldn't get too comfortable with the host, but you seem to abandon all care and treat him as though you really were siblings. You share everything with him, and he doesn't get why it hurts when you do.

The maybe was a maybe yes to you, maybe.

The maybe was a no to him. It was maybe not.

There's something in his chest that twists uncomfortably when you treat him like a sibling, abandoning all care for it, and he understands that maybe it's what his mother felt when she had been with his father. He doesn't know how long he'll be able to squeeze here with you. Maybe he'll eventually grow to be too big. He knows he will. He's not supposed to be sleeping with you. He sees it in the way your parents shake the both of you awake in the morning with all the concern for you.

It's almost as if he shouldn't be friends with you at all.

Yet, you don't give him the ability to choose, telling your parents that it didn't matter because Simon was like a brother to you.

The concept of siblings should not hurt Simon as much as it does.

He nods along, and you lace your fingers with him and Tommy, telling your parents you're thrilled that you can finally have the brothers you've always wanted.

Your parents let it go and his mom apologizes for the case, but your parents assure her that it's all you and none him.

Simon keeps his fingers laced with you all the way until the two of you get to the classroom.

You don't mind the teasing from the kids, and in turn, Simon doesn't seem to either.

That's how you spend the rest of primary school, tangled limbs with Simon, tugging and dragging him around with you to different things, and he learns to grow comfortable in your presence. The strange sense that he's done something wrong eventually fizzes into nothing that he worries about. The certainty you have in your friendship keeps Simon afloat even when his family eventually moves into a flat nearby.

You hang out at his place after classes, doing homework with him, munching on snacks you bring from the local supermarket on your way back from classes, humming and chewing on the chips as you do homework.

You struggle less than Simon now.

It's like you know.

The strange feeling that you know everything yet nothing lingers despite the guilt leaving. You blink at him quietly and sleep over occasionally, humming quietly as you lay on the mattress on the ground, staring up at nothing.

You do not go through puberty the same way Simon does.

Simon hits a growth spurt in the early years of secondary school — bed suddenly too small, skin stretching out at the alarming pace he was gaining height, and you hold back laughter when he hits his head in the morning and you laugh from the air mattress. He grumbles as he heads off to wash up, and when he returns, you only smile at him like you know something and he doesn't.

He finds you stare at him with a lot more pride than you used to. It's almost like you're his mother staring at him grow up, and it makes him uncomfortable.

You still sleep in the same room as him because you don't seem to think of him as a threat of any kind.

The girls at school start noticing him as well — whispering happening around him of how he's grown so much and how he's "oh suck a looker" because of his height. You've always told him he looked real pretty. "Blond lashes are rare" you'd told him. "makes you look real pretty, Si". He had flushed red at your compliment, but only because it had been you. He had found that it would only be you. Everything you did, intentional or not, had caused more than enough flustered stumbling from him.

He supposes it is just the curse of a teen in love.

You squeeze his bicep when you pass him in between periods, waving bye to him as you're off to the classes you chose and he didn't.

It's in the periods where you're not by him that the girls like to step up to him and giggle, asking if he's free or if he's all alone.

He wonders if he should lie sometimes.

A no warranted a "well would you want to? what about me?" and a yes warranted a "oh surely you jest" so truly, Simon did not have much a choice. He'd prefer it if you just branded him at that point.

Branded.

You brand him?

He understands that whatever he had felt for you in his earlier years was a sense of yearning, and whatever he felt for you in the current years was most likely closer to love than it is a schoolboy crush. He finds it unfair to do that to you, though. You had only ever seemed to see him as a sibling or something adjacent, cheeks warm and lips curled upwards as you head over to his place with him after classes, helping his mom out with cooking if she needed it, heading home only after dark and making sure that Simon walks you there.

He's utterly and completely a fool for you, he finds.

You could tell him to steal the stars in the sky and he'd somehow find a way.

He finds that it's just a curse, maybe. He's stuck with you and he enjoys it because you had met him at four and suddenly everything you ever did became a benefit to him. You knew what he would do good in, and you knew where he could find a job. Everything from start to finish was as if you had preordained it all. Like you had known before the moment the two of you first met. It was as though you knew everything and were intervening. Some kind of angel for him.

"How was class?"

"Was fine."

He's the one who drags you into the store this time, fishing out cash as he hands you a pack of cough drops, raising a brow when you raise a brow at him.

"You're gonna start coughing soon."

"I still have leftovers from last year."

"y'know tha's not the flavor you like."

You hold a hand over your chest, pretending to be moved as he passes by with a ruffle of your hair.

"Si, you do care!"

"Think I didn't?"

"Maybe."

He follows you home to your place tonight. His ma isn't home and Tommy wanted some alone time with his girlfriend, so he settles at your place. It isn't as though he has no other friends. He's hard to approach because of the deadpan look on his face at all times, but he knows others. You worry that he doesn't so to ease the worry, he has other friends. He thinks about it a little. He only seems to care for what you say. It's been a while since his ma's words have worked on him. Though, he still avoids getting in trouble. She doesn't deserve that, and you'd probably give him a hard time if he really did trouble her in any sort of way.

"How was class?"

"Was fine." He sighs, spreading out his books on the table as you scribble away with yours.

How your hand does not fall off from the writing drives Simon up the wall. Writing has never truly been his strong suit — he's much more fit for his part-time job at the butcher's or fixing your parents' old car when they ask him if he knows what to do with it. He's much better with his hands than he is with his mind at times, but it's never stopped you from just breaking everything down into simpler concepts for him.

"Why d'you do it?" He had asked you once.

"Why wouldn't I?" You left the second part of the sentence hanging in the air.

Simon wonders if he could dare to imagine that the second half of the sentence was an "i love you" the same way that he seemed to love you with.

Though, he'd never know.

You beg your parents to let you spend the night with Simon at the turn of the century, the agreement being that he'd spend the night with you, settling on the floor or your room on an air mattress that he most definitely does not fit in, offering him your bed that's too big for you alone when you're sure your parents are knocked out. He finds himself tangling limbs with you once more, staring down at you as you blink up at him under the sheets, blanket covering the two of you as you open a flashlight. He blinks as you stare at him.

"What?"

"Yer really pretty, Si." You hum. "Can I touch you?"

"Ya nasty—"

"Your face." You mumble. "You can say no."

"'s fine." He mumbles, letting your hands map his face gently as he hums, observing as you seem to memorize something. Patterns of his skin. Your eyes gentle from the flashlight as you press your forehead to his. "You look scared."

"I'll live." You whisper, voice shaking.

You fall asleep in his arms that night, and he wakes up to you tucked under his chin snoring.

He doesn't recover from it.

You suggest him to join a military boot camp over summer after secondary since he wasn't planning on university, tilting your head and shrugging when he asks why. Would suit him. Maybe he'd like it. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. He doesn't need to pursue it. Besides, he doesn't have anything to do either.

"Thirteen weeks is a long time, angel."

"Angel? Well, then, maybe you should embrace what this angel's telling you to do."

He goes per your suggestion, and you send him off with his family and yours, grinning as he frowns at you at the doors with his duffle bag, blowing him a kiss as he fights the blush that snakes up his neck. When he emerges for one final look without his hair, you laugh and play with the new cut, humming quietly as you whisper that you'll be waiting for you after his three months.

He lets himself relax into your touch as your families stand to the side, and he whispers quietly asking you for a goodbye kiss as if he were off to war. He expects you to decline, but you press your lips to his forehead, humming as you lean back and admire the print that's been left behind from your chapstick, laugh on your lips as you reach to wipe it off with your thumb, too occupied with cleaning it off to notice the starstruck look on his face as he stares at you.

"Wait f'r me, won't you?"

"How could I not? As long as you send me off when you're back."

"'f course."

"Come back safe to me, Si. I'll miss you."

His body has muscle memory of everything. The boot camp is significantly easier than he thought it'd be. His muscles remember something he does not, maybe. He treks up and does stellar, ending up personally selected by his managing captain, asked if he ever thought about actually joining the military. He'd suit the SAS. He'd be a great addition to the team, even. He'd get all the military benefits and it doesn't seem like it'd be something that would warrant too much stress for him.

He doesn't know.

Despite his body's ability to survive in such harsh conditions, he finds that he doesn't really want to stay in that state of stress.

When he finishes, his captain hands him a number to call if he ever changes his mind, and he finds you in the crowd. He abandons all the military learning he's received in the last three months just to find himself in your arms once more. He barely cares that the friends he's made are whistling at him as he practically swallows you in his frame. You don't mind. He doesn't mind. It's not a problem.

"'m back."

"Welcome home." You laugh, running your hand through his hair as he buries his face into your shoulder.

"'m missed you."

"I missed you too, Si." You hum, peeking past his shoulder as you wave at his friend. "How was camp?"

"Y'wanna tell me why my body seemed to have no struggle with adaptin?"

You look to the side, whistling as he finally lets go of you, reaching over for his mom, humming as she welcomes him back home with Tommy.

"You have explainin' to do." He points at you, and your parents leave the two of you alone to start on dinner for Simon's return, leaving you in his room as you whistle and avoid his gaze, falling back into his bed with a huff and closing your eyes.

"How was bootcamp?"

"You knew. How did you know."

"I know everything, Si." You close your eyes. "Told you I was a fairy when we were kids."

"Yer less of a fairy and more of father time."

"Who knows. Maybe I'm just cursed with knowledge."

"A curse?"

"Or somethin'." You stare up at his ceiling. "How was bootcamp. Really."

"Offered a spot on the SAS."

"You wanna go?"

Simon turns to stare at you, taking a seat by the floor of the bed as he stares at you, and you turn to face him.

"Y' want me to?"

You stare at him, letting the water in your eyes speak for you.

"Oh, angel. don' cry." He whispers, hand reaching to brush the tears as he frowns. "I wasn' planning to."

"You can go." You mumble. "It's fine. I'm just scared."

"You? Scared?" He pinches your nose, humming quietly as you open your mouth to breathe.

"Yes. Me."

"'m not gonna go. I'll just meet you at uni."

"Simon Riley going to uni?"

"Got a problem with that, angel?" He lets go of your nose when the smile cracks at your face, and you roll over to laugh. "Think I'm too stupid for ya?"

"You wish." You hum. "You think I'd let you fall behind?"

"Never have." He hums, nudging you over as you roll to make space for him on the bed.

"So next cycle? Or are you gonna try somewhere else?"

"Might follow you halfway across the world. You'll fund me, won't ya?"

"Nah. Gonna make you pay rent at least." You swat at his arm playfully as he leans over you, humming as he stares down at you. "Glad your pretty face wasn't ruined."

"Think I'm pretty?"

"Just the lashes."

"Takes too much t' please you." He rolls his eyes, eyes landing on your stomach as your shirt rides up, humming.

"So, did they fuck a lot in the camp? Is it true? Did you guys have a barrack bunny?"

Simon flicks your forehead. "No bunny. yes fucking."

You hold your hands over your mouth, gasping. "tell me more."

"I didn't do anythin'."

"No way."

"Not losing my v-card to a bunch of men in the military."

"Don't know, Si. That sounds like a porno title. Virgin man gets gangbaned by five buff military men... or whatever it is the titles are formatted like."

"'m not even gon' ask how you know that."

You laugh, eyes crinkling as Simon stares.

"'s good to see you again."

"I missed you too." You hum. "I don't mind you going. Really."

"'s my decision to not." He pinches your cheek, glancing at the door as his mother calls for you both to go eat. "I promise."

"Send me to the airport tomorrow?"

"Of course."

You let Simon drive you around before driving you to the airport. You say your goodbyes to your parents at your place, thanking Simon with a grin and a squeeze of his bicep as he lifts all of your luggage into the back of the car. You gasp quietly at the fact that his muscles are harder than before, giving them a second squeeze as he rolls his eyes at you.

"You take that back!"

"Don't know what yer talkin' about."

You don't talk to him too much in the car, too preoccupied with staring out the window. Simon doesn't pry, used to the comfort of your silence when you need it. Besides, you're being sent off to somewhere where you'll be far from him. He wonders if that'll hurt him more or you. You're great, though. You promised you'd write to him, and he's more worried that somehow he will forget to write back to you and you will forget about his existence. You're too far away for comfort.

What if someone else lays eyes on you?

He helps you load the luggage, pulling it with him as you check for your passport, letting Simon put everything down for you, giving his forearm a gentle squeeze in thanks when you arrive with him at the gate. You let him wander around with you before you're supposed to board. He'll wring the final moments you have with him dry, he supposes.

You open your arms for him, squeezing him gently when his arms find themselves around your waist, squeezing you back.

"It's your turn to give me a goodbye kiss." You tap your cheek, tilting your head as you hum, and Simon mumbles under his breath, thumb brushing your bottom lip as he stares down at you for permission.

"You gonna kiss me properly? Real bold of you, Si."

"If you'd let me."

You wrap your arms around his neck, tilting your head as he brushes your bottom lip, staring, staring, staring before letting his lips brush yours gently, softly, and pulling away just as quick. Like a ghost of a kiss — lingering feelings that he can't quite pour out onto you yet because it wouldn't be fair.

"That alright?" He continues to stare at your lips, only snapping out of it when you notice boarding has started.

"More than alright." You reach up to give him a kiss on his cheek, humming as you take two steps back with your luggage. "I'll see you!"

"See you, then."

"Yer gonna let me study abroad without a boyfriend? How cruel of you, Si. Write to me!" You laugh, tugging your carry-on with you as you wave at him from the gate.

Simon stays to stare at you until you've disappeared down the corridor to the plane.

Then, his fingers find his lips where he had kissed you, and then the cheek that you had given him a kiss to.

Ah. He misses you already.

You write to him as promised. You send letters to him and he sends them back, sending you updates on how everyone has been, writing growing more and more illegible with the letters. He wonders if you're able to read everything he sends sometimes, but he eventually sends you a letter with the number slotted into his phone, and when you write to him that you'd be visiting on a certain date, you tell him to pick you up.

The first thing that Simon notices is that you've changed.

Not that you've ever been someone that he's found predictable, but you have changed beyond what Simon can remember from you.

"It's the air." You laugh.

He stares at you, uncertain if he really knows who you are anymore. Was he the one who was being left behind?

You mentioned that you'd never leave him behind.

"Y'sure changed."

"Cultural differences." You open your arms for him, tilting your head when he shakes his head at you.

"'m all smelly from work."

You frown at him.

"Maybe we both changed."

You spend the afternoon lodged at Simon's flat because you didn't want to go home. It's just a week or two, you tell him.

He hands you booze to drink, and you ask him how work has been.

"You still gonna join me?"

"I think I'm alright here."

He fears though, that by doing so, he's going to drift away from you.

"That's good." You grin at him. "If life ever gets too boring, come find me. I'm sure my friends would flip it if some guy who's like a hundred ninety two centimeters tall dropped by and called himself my best friend."

"You talk about me?"

"How could I not?" You tilt your head at him from the passenger seat, blinking slowly. "Si, did you forget about me when I'm gone? It's a little rude of you, you know?"

"I couldn't even if I was killed." He hums. "Your luggage's lighter."

"Mhm. Most of my stuff is with a friend who lives nearby." You grin. "Didn't want you to blow out your back for me."

"Couldn't do that if y' tried."

Simon wonders if there's something in the air when you come back to visit.

"You plan on stayin' there?"

"Maybe." You hum. "I quite like it."

"Leavin' me to fend on my own, huh?"

"It'd be unfair for either of us to do something all for the sake of the other. Your comfort comes before mine." You grin. "Get me a little something to eat?"

"Got dinner at 'ome." He hums. "Your favorite."

"What if it's changed?"

"You can't be sayin' that when you told me less than a month ago."

You laugh in the front seat, grinning.

"Dated yet, Si?"

"No." He hums. "This girl stops by the shop but I don' really like her like that."

"Mm." You tap your chin. "Broken no one in yet?"

Simon coughs at your choice of words, coughing as he catches his breath, your hand patting his back as you laugh.

"Bloody hell."

You have a shit-eating grin on your face when he catches a glance.

"Why? Y'been broken in yet?"

"Nope. Waiting for a certain someone to do the honors."

You laugh at the way he's red for the whole ride back.

Yet, he makes no real move on you back at his place. He hands you a glass of water and settles himself next to you on the couch, letting you show him the variety of items you've brought back to give him, grinning at him when he stares at the strange combination of things.

"Why'd you come back during such a shite time?"

"I wanted to spend the new year with you." You hum, blinking at the snow that's come with the weather.

"You didn't come back during summer."

"No." You close your eyes, throwing your head back. "I wanted to, but I decided not."

"Why."

You kick your legs over his, huffing as you grumble. "It was hard. Flying out the country's hard."

"Cuz of the thing, huh?"

"Yeah." You rest your head on his shoulder, staring out the window. "You got work these days?"

"Nah. Old guy's home with his family. Y' gonna go home?"

"No." You close your eyes. "Didn't tell mom n dad I'd be back."

"Yeah? Just me?"

"Just wanted to see you." You whisper, taking his hand and fiddling with his fingers.

"Y've gotten real handsy since ya left."

"Maybe I just missed you." You mumble. "It's lonely without you."

"Don't love y'er other friends?"

"Love you more." You whisper, finger smooth against his ring finger as you feel him tense up under you.

"Y'love me?"

"Si, I've known you since forever. Of course I do." You rest your hand on top of his, opening your eyes as you whisper.

"Oh, like that."

You don't breach the subject of love further than that, playing with Simon's fingers as he turns on the TV for a match, letting you get comfy with him under a blanket and eventually fall asleep. He stares down at you, voice tight in his throat as he rests his hand on your forearm, heart painful in his chest. Distance has given him no time to think if all he thinks of is you. But, it would be cruel to tell you of something that's long been his problem.

It is not your burden to bear.

It is not your portion to carry.

He rests his eyes as well, the two of you staying that way until late night, Simon first to rouse as he looks out the window.

It is dark outside.

You stir as he does, leaning back onto the couch to stretch out, and kick your legs out, and Simon holds your ankle to push it to the side. The snow creates the illusion of an empty street, and the black and white hurt each other in the lack of light, but you keep staring. It reminds Simon of when you were kids. The staring has since gotten better, but every now and then he catches you staring into nothing.

"Dinner?"

"Sounds good." You kick the blanket off of you, yawning as you follow him to the kitchen. "'m tired."

"Long flight."

"Mhm." You sit at the island, watching as Simon heats the food for you, staring at him as you lean on your palm. "Si, why did you never date?"

"Why should I?"

"Donno."

Simon takes out dinner from the microwave, placing it in front of you as he stares.

"Will y' ever tell me about the staring problem?"

"Probably not." You wiggle your hands comically as you grin.

"Don't do that again."

"So you hate me." You start at dinner anyway, thanking Simon as you chew on the food, scraping the plate in the end when you finish, grinning.

"How's Tommy?"

"Great. Getting engaged soon."

"Ooh! Did you help him pick a ring?"

"No. He went ring shoppin' with his girl." Simon hums.

"Wish you could show me."

"Get dinner with him sometime. I can arrange it. He comes over Friday nights."

"Can't I just grab dinner with him friday night then?"

"Next week?"

"Sure."

"I'll tell him."

"It's Christmas week." You hum. "Did you grab me anything?"

"No." He rolls his eyes. "Dinner wasn' enough?"

You pretend to think, grinning at him when he raises a brow.

"I'm kidding."

"Sure hope you are."

You wake up to a surprise on Christmas anyway, eyes glimmering when Simon serves you breakfast with a gift, kicking your legs as you gush to him about how he didn't need to. You give him a squeeze on his bicep as you ask him if you can unwrap it, pulling at the little ribbon and paper, grinning when you spot the headphones you've written to him about, bottom lip quivering as tears threaten to spill, and Simon rushes to brush them from your cheek, calling you a crybaby while he's at it.

"I should give something back to you."

"Yer back, hm? That's m' gift."

"But I like being with you too." You mumble, hand finding his as your thumb brushes his. "D'you want anything? Anything."

"Anything?"

"Anything."

Simon stares down at your lips, humming as he raises a brow.

"Truly?"

"Use my body or whatever. I trust you." Your voice quiets the more you speak. "I'm all yours."

"Tell me to stop whenever." Simon's thumb finds your bottom lip, brushing it as he presses his lips to yours — hungry, decades of holding back overflowing and spilling into you, hands gripping the counter til his knuckles turn white, tongue shoved down your throat and a hum in his as you pant once he pulls off of you, staring as your eyes haze over and your chest rises and falls, lips parted as you blink to come back to him, bottom lip glossy from his saliva as he brushes it once more. "y'still with me, angel?"

"Mhm." You hum. "You sure you didn't go around kissing others while I was gone?"

"On my life."

"Surprising." You reach up to cup his face, thumb brushing his bottom lip as you hum. "Only ever kissed me, hm? Only wanna kiss me?"

"Bloody hell, what did going to uni teach ya?"

You laugh, humming as you squeeze his face. "How to flirt, apparently. 's it working?"

"No."

The red of his ears betray him.

You're everything except the title, Simon finds. You barely bother hiding the fact that he's allowed to do whatever with you, lounging on his couch and sticking by him at every moment, barely bothering to hide your boredom with the TV and working your knuckles into his back instead. He doesn't need to look to know you've got a shit-eating grin on your face when he groans as you work out a knot in his back.

"Yer real tight, Si."

"Yer pickin' up my accent."

"Maybe it's cuz I love you." You dig your elbow into the muscle, earning a groan from his lips.

"At this point yer just messin' with me."

"Maybe." You hum, exhaling when the knot's released itself, and you collapse on his back, grumbling.

"Get off 'me."

"Don't call me heavy, big guy." You sigh, peeling yourself off of him anyway, falling back to the other arm of the couch.

"You got knots?"

"Don't think so. Sure you're not gonna get hard all pressed up on my ass, Si?"

"Said you were free use f'r the week."

"Didn't think you'd jump to fuck me like that." You settle on your stomach anyway, letting Simon run his hands along your back, oil warm on his hands as you settle with watching whatever's on the telly (it's a football game. you're not the biggest fan, but better than thinking about the fact that you're practically moaning and squirming under Simon. You can't run from the consequences of your actions forever).

Simon fights every bone in his body to not spill over and take things too far, jaw clenched as he brushes the knot from your shoulder, pushing his thumb into it as you whimper. He hears you bite your tongue, and fight back a moan, and it almost comforts him to know that you're not too far off either. Though, he doesn't mention anything when you swat at him to stop, rolling over to lay on your back, staring up at him through your lashes, humming as he stares down at you.

"Minx."

"Freak." You laugh, chest shaking as you grin, eyes crinkling as he presses his hands on your waist, thumb pressing down to your ribs, humming quietly.

"If I were a cut of meat—"

"What fuckin' nonsense are you askin' now?"

"Entertain me, won't you?"

"I wouldn't cut you up."

"You'd eat me raw?!"

"'m no cannibal, angel."

"Just say you won't fuck me."

You're pushing buttons, Simon finds. You're testing to see how much it'll take for him to crumble and snap in your hands. Your hand rubs at his bicep in the mornings when you pass him, cheek squished with his as you point while windowshopping, fingers laced with his as though you were really on a date, and Simon finds that it's hard to fight the red that ruins the pale of his skin, crackling between the cracks of his skin from the winter cold, forced to play it off as the fact that it is cold out. He gives your hand a gentle squeeze back when you ask him to enter a store, and he tugs you back when you're wandering off course.

"Did yer cough start this year?"

"Not yet." You hum. "Worried I'm gonna get you sick?"

"No. Worried you don't like the flavors where you are."

"You remember." You mumble, staring as he hands you the stick from the grocery bag.

"Hard to forget."

"Not when it's only mentioned in passing."

You take the stick anyway, unwrapping one and pressing it to your lips, sucking on it as you squeeze at his arm, puffer coat zipped all the way up as you head back to his place.

Simon doesn't snap the entire time that you're back for the week.

He knows you're trying to get him too, but he's probably held back more than you have over the years, so not much really moves him to do anything anymore. You can try all you want, but truly, you can't do all that much.

"Can I sleep with you tonight?"

Simon raises a brow from the island, blinking at you as you stare back at him.

"Not in the sex way. Just. Like when we were kids."

"You finally gonna tell me what all that staring you did as a kid meant?"

"Maybe." You place the dishes into the dishwasher, blinking slowly as you turn around to stare at Simon. "But I don't think you'd believe me."

"I'd argue against that. Can't tell me something insane."

"Oh, I'm sure." You mumble. "I'm sure you'd believe some made up war story from a world in the past."

"Is that what it was?"

"I don't know." You blink slowly, taking off the gloves and letting them dry as Simon stares. stares. stares.

Past your eyes and through your soul, like you're just a piece on display. Like he knows something you don't. He doesn't. Simon knows better than anyone that despite every single cell of his body crying for him to pour himself to devote to you, you would never accept it. You wouldn't. You wouldn't let him "throw his future away" all for the sake of you. Something stops you from letting him devote himself to him, and something stops you from just accepting that maybe Simon wants it and it isn't a side effect of being friends for so long.

There's a constant need to take care of him better than he takes care of you.

Simon finds it in the way you hand him a mug of water before bed, throwing the blanket over the two of you, flashlight resting between the two of you as you blink at him.

"You gon' tell me?"

"No." You hum. "But I'll tell you another secret if you tell me one. You first, though."

Simon doesn't keep secrets from you other than the fact that he loves you.

"I don' have any."

"None at all?"

"I tell you everything."

You blink at him from under the covers, tilting your head.

"Everything?"

Almost.

"Thinkin' 'bout signing up SAS." He whispers, voice cracking as he watches the grief crack past your eyes and your face drop. You don't mention anything, telling him it's fine as you collect yourself, swallowing everything back and smiling again.

"Yeah?"

"Thinkin' bout it."

"You gonna go? Really?" You whisper — scared. Simon knows you enough to be able to sense when you're scared. It's rare you even display such an honest emotion to him.

"Why don't you want me to?"

"No, it's just." You shake your head. "'m being paranoid. I'm just upset that I might not get to see you again."

"I'll see you between missions."

"I'm out of the country, Si." You mumble. "I can't visit all the time."

"I know." He mumbles. "but I've got to do sumthin 'n if not this, then I don' know what."

You rest your head against his chest, voice quiet as he runs his hand through your hair, pressing down to get you to relax for him.

"'m thinking about settling down permanently there."

Ah.

Simon seems to understand why you'd be so panicked at his enlistment. Truly, he wouldn't get to see you again, maybe. He'd be busy and if you start work, then you wouldn't get to see him at all. You can't write back to him if he's moving around, and his phone would most likely be off-limits in the service. Too little to do. Too little to hold on to. Maybe that is what you have feared.

"I'll tell you one more secret, then, Si." You mumble, hands finding his chest as you close your eyes.

"'s it, angel?"

"Tommy's gonna get married to her and then they're gonna have a boy." You close your eyes, and Simon feels you furrow your brows against his chest. "He's gonna be named Joseph. Joseph Riley. Sweet boy. Lovely, even."

"Why are you telling me this."

"Just." You whisper. "Just remember that."

You don't respond, going quiet for the rest of the trip, only giving him a hug at the airport and waving goodbye. You leave him your new address, smiling at him.

Simon doesn't know if he likes the silence he's left with when you're gone from his flat.

Yet, he's gone anyway, sending you letters that you can never quite send back, always too close or too far. He mails small things that remind him of you — tucks a photo of you into his helmet, stares up at the stars when it's night with a smoke between his fingers (that you'd scold him for) while the rest of the team joins him. He climbs up ranks — never stops writing to you. During the few times he has off, he returns to the empty flat and wonders how you're doing. You don't write back to him.

He wonders if you get his letters at all.

Yet, he can't stop to think. He can't stop. He just.

He becomes a Lieutenant.

When he's asked if he'd like someone to be at the ceremony, he briefly wonders if you'd fly over for him.

He doesn't ask you.

His feelings aren't yours to deal with.

Tommy and his mother help him pin it, but he'd wish that the hands promoting him to a higher position was you. It's to prove to you. It's to prove to you that he's fine and alive. Maybe it holds the same sentiment as when he writes to you. He's still alive, angel. He's still in one piece, even if you can't write back to him. He wonders if you still live there. Are his letters meeting a stone wall? Is it a brick wall that stands between the two of you? He'd break it down, but he doesn't want to risk the chances of you getting hurt in the crumble.

He returns home for Christmas one year, wondering if you'd be home. Tommy mentions sending you a wedding invite through Simon, and he stares. Really. Just stares at the wedding invitation. He doubts you'd answer. You feel like a ghost of his past. It's almost as if you had known that he'd never see you again when you had spent a winter with him. Like you knew. Like you wish he knew. Like when you pulled him under the blankets with a flashlight, you had known, maybe, that he'd be gone and you'd be gone.

When he sends the letter to the address you gave him, he almost worries that Tommy won't get a response back. (He slips an additional letter asking you if you'd like to be his plus one, but he doesn't have much faith that you'll respond to that one.)

Then, he's off and back to the military.

You meet him at Tommy's wedding.

You find him in the crowd, eyes lighting up as you sit next to him in the crowd, chattering excitedly about how you finally get to see him again. He listens to you talk. You've changed — as one does, and he has as well. Yet, he doesn't mind the change this time. You seem the same as before, sparkling eyes, only a little more mature. You look less like a kid and more like an adult now. You look pretty as you ever are.

"Missed you so much." You mumble. "So so much. Love reading your letters. Please never stop writing to me."

"You read em but won't send responses to my flat?"

"You didn't sell it?"

Simon shakes his head.

"Then I will. I'll write back to your flat." You mumble. "I just worry that your mailbox will overflow."

"Tommy takes care of it."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm."

"Alright." You grin. "You got a phone when you're off duty?"

He shakes his head.

"We'll stick to letters, then."

You sit with Simon at dinner. The wedding is nice. You're nice. Simon missed you, and he almost wants to ask if you've got a booking for somewhere because apparently you had tugged along with you a luggage when you first arrived and left it at the front for safekeeping. Maybe you'll ask him. It wouldn't be strange if you did. He has a day off, but you're more than welcome to stay as long as you want in his flat. He'll get you a copy of his key, even.

Maybe you'll give him a copy of yours next. He'd like to visit sometime.

"Si." You whisper, nudging him gently with the tip of your heel.

"Hm?"

"You got space in your flat?"

"I'll give y' a copy of the key. I gotta get back in the mornin'"

"You only took a day off?"

"'s just a weddin', no?"

"It's Tommy's wedding."

"Still a weddin', angel."

"Oh, should I be worried that you'll only take a day off for our wedding?" You squeeze his arm as you wave at Tommy and his bride.

Simon blinks at you.

"Y' did not just say that."

"Hm?" You tilt your head at him. "D'ya stop lovin' me over our break?"

"Who said I ever loved y'a?"

"The voices." You let go of his arm, going back to the food.

Simon takes you home after you get plastered at Tommy's wedding. He's never seen you drink so much, but to be fair, you didn't drink all that much last time you were at his flat. You seem like nothing to him as he carries you, letting you hang off of his shoulder as he brings you up the stairs, raising a brow at you when you beeline for his bathroom and throw up over the toilet.

"Regret drinkin' yet?"

"No." You rasp. "Fuck, no. Can't get alcohol this good where I'm stuck."

"Thought you loved it there."

"I only love being next to you." You start again, Simon sitting by your side as he holds your hair up. "Fuckin' hell."

"Yer slurrin' your speech, angel."

"Speakin' like you." You huff, crying. "I missed you, Si. Really did."

"Missed y' too."

You rest your palm against your forehead, eyes closed as you whimper. "'s lonely without you."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm." You mumble. "Thought I could take it again."

"Again?"

"Again." You whisper. "And again. Si, I'm not made for casual I'm made for soul crushing devotion. God, I need to move on already. Why's it so hard to move on?"

"F'rm who?"

You turn to him, eyes glossy and red as you let out a laugh— pathetic. Almost as though you were laughing at yourself.

"'m not gonna come clean about that, Si."

"Never?"

"Maybe when you get married." You bend over the toilet again, closing your eyes.

"Though' it was we?"

You laugh. "If you survive."

"You always know somethin', angel."

"Hard not to." You throw your head back, furrowing your brows as you focus on breathing. "I'd like for it to stop, though."

"And how would that happen?"

"Can't. Cursed with the knowledge. Wish you could just fuck it out of me, honest."

You wake up to the worst hangover of your life — head cracking open down the middle as you sit up and rub at your neck, groaning as you stretch your back. Getting plastered at Tommy's wedding was probably not worth it.

"Hey." Simon hands you a bowl of soup, and you whimper as you press it to your lips, drinking.

"Thought you had to go."

"You looked like shite when y' went to bed."

You huff. "So you stayed back?"

"If not me then who?"

"I could've handled it."

"Wouldn' have wanted y'to." He hums. "Wiped your face down last night."

"Thank you, Si." You mumble. "You angel."

"All you."

"No. Not this time." You close your eyes. "Did I tell you anything?"

"Said you thought y'could take being alone again."

He leaves out the part where you had cried about him fucking you.

"Oh." You mumble. "'m just lonely."

Without him.

"Would you let me visit?"

"Shall I give you a spare as well?" You tilt your head. "Or do you want to do it classic style and break into my place?"

"A spare would be nice."

"Okie dokes." You hum. "You can go back in the afternoon. I feel much better."

"Won't let me stay longer?"

"I'd assume you can only stay for so long."

"Can ask for longer. The captain'll get it."

"You don't need to, Si."

"Thought y'missed me?"

"I do."

"Then let me stay. Allow yourself tha' much."

"Yeah?"

He nods.

You let him.

He sticks behind and wanders around with you, following after you with your bags as you point and shop, squeezing Simon gently, stopping halfway to feed him, your fingers nimble on your new device as you click.

"A cell phone?"

"Mhm." You rummage through your bag, frowning when there's a lack of something. "Forgot it."

"Forgot what?"

"I'll give it to you later."

You end up leaving it on Simon's bedside — something he returns to after deployment, brow raised as he reads through the album and the songs you've burned down for him. The letter you tuck behind the tracklist doesn't go unnoticed, Simon's first letter greeting him in the house from you as he looks through the rest of his mail. You've started writing back. Blue and black envelopes stick out from the whites of formal mail, and he flips through them, your writing familiar to his eyes as he sits back with a cup of water, reading through your responses to what he writes to you.

He feels childish writing to you sometimes. The pen feels a little too light for a hand that only knows the sword and not pen. Well, sword is wrong. Gun. His hands are much more used to the weight of a weapon than a quill.

It helps ground him sometimes.

His letters are most certainly darker than yours. You report about what you've been working on in school, sending him tickets to your graduation later in the year. You tell him that it doesn't really matter if he doesn't attend, but you wanted to give it to him anyway. The extra ticket is in case he actually found someone in the military to bring as a plus one.

It wounds Simon that you'd think he wouldn't stick with you.

He writes back to you, marking down your graduation and taking the day off in advance with his captain, nodding when asked if it's the same person he took the week off for last time.

"Must really love 'er, huh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Got a ring on it?"

"No, sir."

"Better move quick, Simon. Yer at the age where dating's all the storm."

Simon wonders if you'd agree to do long distance if he can't call you all that much.

You deserve someone who'll at least be there for you when you need it.

Yet, he lingers a little too long in front of the jewelry store, battered and bruised face in the reflection of the glass, staring himself in the eye as he wonders just why you had called him pretty back then. He's hardly pretty now. Mangled upper lip and scratches on his cheek — there is no trace of the "pretty" you had once called him. Though, his lashes stay the same, so he wonders if you'll still recognize if the only thing visible are his eyes.

He stares for a second too long at the jewelry store, stepping in and looking for something you'd like.

A ring.

"A nice dramatic gem for the engagement ring" you had told him once. Yet, despite it all, the sketches you had drawn for him had been a moderate gem. A ring that would remind you of how much he loves you — it had been a simple request. Even without the title of it all. You did not need to know what you were and what you weren't. If you had the certainty that one day the two of you would end up together anyway, then why waste the effort and consider or think over other people?

Simon understands you a little more now.

"Custom. If y'do 'em."

He pulls out the sketches you made as a child. Messy and childish ones — ones where it's a moonstone or pearly, never a diamond, and ones where Simon's handwriting as a child are visible to leave ideas for his own. You did not know. He did not either. But there's something quite assuring in just knowing. Simon knows you love him. It's quite a simple thing, really. You love him in the letters you write back, painful detail down to the point and making sure not to miss a thing. You love him in the trips where you're back, refusing to book a hotel and squeezing into his flat with him, limbs tangled in an intimacy that you've both grown comfortable in.

Simon loves you too. He loves you in the simplicity of having grown up with you — in the hair held up as you throw up, and in staying back when you won't let him but you need him. He loves you quietly the same way you love him. It's quite simple, really. It doesn't matter if you won't marry him or that you deserve someone better than Simon. All that really matters is that you want him, and he wants you too. There isn't too much other thinking he should do. You've always been more simple like that.

He writes you a letter back, asking if you want any particular flowers (not that he'll get the chance to read what you want).

He'll know what to get you when the time comes.

There's a sense of stability that Simon's learned to realize now that he's older or whatever. Settling down with you and retiring from the military won't kill him. He'll just open a nice little shop by where you live if he has to. You won't let him, but you trust him enough to let him make his own decisions now. It doesn't matter what you refuse to tell him. Time will tell him, and then eventually, you'll be honest. He just has to have faith or whatnot.

He brings the ring to your graduation, sitting in the back with your family, catching up with them. He wears a mask to hide the scars on his face and whatnot, but nothing outside of it. There's a sense of age that's crept up with him, and something weighs on his shoulders, but you'll work it out of him like you always have. Seeing you in your robes and throwing your hat is more than enough to let him forget for a moment.

There's a long life of him ahead on the battlefield if he decides upon it. He'd like something to go home to or meet up with halfway.

Preferably you.

He tucks the bouquet under his arm with the box in his pocket, meeting you halfway as you spot him in the crowd of people immediately, his name yelled and your friends abandoned for him, launching yourself into his arms as he catches you with an arm, humming as you squeeze his biceps, eyes lit up as you ramble to him. He watches you, eyes gentle and warm as his mind reminds him that yes, this is what bliss is to him. Simple, easy, bliss.

"Got you flowers."

"Yeah?" You tilt your head, grinning as he presents them to you. "Can we get dinner at mine later? I'd go to the grad party but I missed you a whole lot and you probably have a hotel so—"

"You'll host me?"

"I live alone."

"Tha's unsafe, angel."

"So?"

"You wan' me to pick?"

"Nah. Takeout at my place, but I'll get to say I have dinner plans."

"And your parents?"

"They'll understand." You glance at the flowers. "You tryna tell me something with the single rose amongst all those yellows? Ooh, white carnations..."

"Maybe I am."

"You've gotten bold, Si." You laugh, squeezing his forearm as your parents spot you. "I'll send you my address. Love you lots, kay? See you in a bit."

Simon bends down to press his lips to your forehead, humming as he sends you off with a pat.

You seem to know too.

He enters with the spare key you keep buried in the depths of the crevice of a window, setting his luggage down as he reads your texts about where to stay and put his stuff. You live comfortably. He understands why you wouldn't want to move. His flat is significantly less impressive than this, yet you stayed with him every time. Considering it all, you probably could've just bought out a flat next to him if you really wanted to.

Maybe there is love in the way you simply choose to exist the way you do.

You return home a little later, makeup smudged and messy as you tell him you ended up in the backseat with some friends, but you managed to get home in one piece. You abandon the robe and hat, shaking out the bobby pins as you recite the local pizza place to Simon, pulling out a drawer with your makeup remover as you do.

It feels oddly domestic.

"Wh'd'ya want?"

"Just tell em my name. They know my order. Oh, tell 'em to make it a combo this time. You can ask them what options they have. I like the wings, but their salad isn't bad."

"This what you've been livin' off of in uni?"

"Maybe." You pause to yawn, shaking the bottle and pulling out cotton pads to get everything off. "They're good though, I promise."

"Trust you." He dials.

You're not wrong.

Simon sits with you on your couch as you tangle limbs with him, pulling the pizza out and letting the cheese stretch as you do, your TV turned on as you let him watch the game.

"Si, what do you think about me moving back?"

"Why? Y'live comfortable here."

"It's lonely without you."

"Yeah?" He reaches down to rub circles on your knee with his free hand. "Y'er so much better off here, though."

"We can just get a new place in Manchester." You lick your fingers, reaching for another slice. "I'll buy it. It can be a dowry or whatever."

"I couldn't let y' do that, angel."

"Why not?" You raise a brow. "I'm willing to."

"Then let me take care of utilities."

"If y'want."

Simon slides his hand up your leg, squeezing your thigh gently as you turn to look at him, pizza crumbs on the corner of your lips as he fishes something out from his pocket.

"If yer willin'—"

"Oh, hell, yes. Please." You grin.

"At least le' me finish."

"Sorry, Si." You hum. "Shall we reroll and rerecord?"

"'s fine." He hums, opening the box as he squeezes your thigh, humming quietly as he presents the ring to you.

"I can't promise bein' in bed with you every night, but I can promise an eternity of the time I have that is my own with you." He hums. "I'll come back to you in one form or another. I'll leave if y'want it. Anything you ask for, I will give. Marry me, angel?"

"Will I be upgraded to luvie if I do?"

"Anythin' y' want. Missus Riley, even."

"It's a yes, Si. Always a yes. Thought it was obvious when I said our wedding at Tommy's." You hum. "Let me wash my hands, though. Got crumbs and oil all over 'em."

"I'll wipe the ring down later. Gimme y'er hand."

You lick your ring finger, giving Simon your hand as he presses a kiss to the finger, delicate, gentle, soft before sliding the ring on.

"Looks real familiar." You observe the design, pausing when it hits you. "Did you keep the drawing I made back in Year 7??"

"Surprised y'noticed."

Your bottom lip quivers, tears welling in your eyes as Simon reaches to hold your head to his chest, humming as you wipe at the tears, chest shaking from laughter.

"Yer so stupid." You laugh, folding the last of your pizza and finishing it in a bite. "y'er such a bloke."

Simon pokes at your cheek, your hand flying up to swat at his as he hums.

"Yer bloke."

"Guh."

Two months later, Simon returns to help you move.

You sell the majority of your furniture and tell him you've got your eye on a nice little place a little more outskirt, but he tells you to pick where you'll be comfortable. He truly only needs to come home to you and it'll be enough. You kick at him and tell him at least to tell you whether it should be a flat or a townhouse or whatever. He settles with you as the two of you look into an agent, and eventually you find a place you both like to some extent.

You move back home to Simon, and you blink as you settle into the new place, keys in your hand as you squeeze Simon. You're back on the couch, legs kicked over his as your thumbs brush at his cheeks, staring.

“Heard Tommy’s baby is coming soon”

“Mhm.”

“Did they pick a name?”

Simon raises a brow at you when you tilt your head and blink.

“Joseph, luvie. Joseph.”

You laugh, cheeks warm as Simon hums.

"Yer still pretty as ever, Si."

"Even with the mangled lip?"

"Adds flavor." You grin. "Funny that we haven't gone on a proper date yet."

"Y'wanna go on a date? Bring your documents. We're off to get the civil ceremony."

"Wow, really can't wait f'r me to become Missus Riley, huh?"

"Waited long enough. 'm sure you've waited longer." He mumbles. "A whole life, even."

"Whole two." You hold up your fingers. "I'll tell you all about it after you finally break me in."

"Bloody hell."

You laugh, cheeks warm and eyes closed as Simon stares.

This, he understood.

You, he understands.

In this life, and whatever other he had.

You, he knows.

"Thinking?" You quirk your head to the side

"Thinkin' bout you, luvie."

"Yeah? You'll be doing that a lot more now, Si."

"Always have been."

Raspberry Girl Previous + masterlist + AO3 Simon Riley/female reader CW: 18+ Daddy kink, spanking, anal fingering, cum play, whiff of breeding kink.

Days turn into a week, and then two, but you were fine. 

Everything was fine. 

Until you got your period. 

You woke up to blood in the sheets a day early, underwear and pajama bottoms ruined, the only saving grace being that the mattress didn’t stain. The cramps kept you in the shower longer than normal, and you were late to work because of it. Everything went downhill from there. 

You drank more coffee because you were behind, you skipped breakfast, you didn’t touch a glass of water until well after dark. You stayed up well past bedtime, your meals became inconsistent, you essentially forgot your glasses existed.

Going off the rails was only supposed to be one day, but then you couldn’t get back on the tracks.

It all fell apart. 

You unraveled at your already frayed seams. 

You were bad. 

Your phone is buried in the mess of your bed. 

When it starts vibrating, you have to dig through your blankets to find the sweater it’s in, shoved in the pocket haphazardly after you collapsed, kicked off your shoes and crawled into the middle, eyes already half closed. 

It’s strange how your apartment doesn’t feel quite like home anymore- 

but you don’t deserve to go back. 

A blocked number flashes across the screen of your phone, and you answer it with fumbling fingers. 

“Hello?” 

“Hi baby.”  You clap your hand over your mouth. The rush of emotion is too much, happiness building in the back of your throat as a sob, followed by anxiety that sticks like sludge in your mind. 

“H-hi daddy.” You don’t deserve to say it, guilt curdling in your stomach when it comes out. It feels hopeless, like you’ve ruined it all, and you have no control, sure he can hear everything in your voice.

You don’t know what to say to fix it, you don’t know how to make it better. You don’t deserve him, or this. 

Awful, noxious thoughts bubble to the surface, trying to spill out of your mouth and drown you. Drown him. Drag you both down.

“Hey sweet girl,” he coos, deep rumble contrasted by a lot of background noise, and it’s almost able to quiet the chaos in your head. “How are you doing?” 

“I’m… um, I’m good.” Shut up. Change the subject. “How are you?” 

“I’m okay. We’re about done here, and then I’ll be home.” Your excitement burns to ash in the face of dread. You don’t want him to know, to see you, to realize how far you fell. You didn’t follow your rules. You let him down. 

“T-that’s… great.” An engine is the only noise on the other end of the line for a minute until it starts to fade, and a door slams. 

Then there’s only his voice. Pitched smooth and soothing. “Are you okay?” 

“Me? Yeah! I’m fine.” The fake cheer makes you wince. 

“Are you lying to me?” You swallow the swell of sadness, the threat of a breakdown hovering on the edge. 

“N-no.” There’s muffled conversation somewhere on his end of the line, and he sighs. 

“I have to go, but I’ll be home soon, okay? Be good for me.” Your heart is pounding so hard the blood in your veins is throbbing, ribs caving in on themselves, your lungs struggling to expand. 

“Okay.” 

When the line goes dead, you burst into tears. 

His house is hollow.

He’s talked to you twice since landing, and you didn’t mention being at your apartment a single time, though your absence is no surprise. There was a pitch to your voice, one he recognized from before, when you were unsure and lost, stumbling towards him on shaky legs.

He’s not angry, but he is unsettled. He hates uncertainty, it chafes at his control, thoughts of you alone in your apartment rubbing him raw, and a mountain of blame slowly settles on his shoulders as he grapples with the consequences of both his choices, and yours. 

He knows what the rest of the night holds.

He’ll need to take you apart and put you back together.

He only has to knock once for you to come to the door. 

You fling yourself into his arms, refusing to let go as he shuffles you inside, bringing you down onto the couch, halfway on his lap. You’re rigid, intentionally looking away, gaze focused on your lap where your fingers are threaded together, head bowed like you’re praying, seeking absolution. It’s a heavy weight you’re carrying, one he will wring from your bones blow by blow. 

“Let me see your eyes.” He lifts your chin, finds what he anticipated in them, tears flowing freely down your cheeks. “Oh, baby.” Rattling against him, you hold on so tight like you want to crawl inside his body. 

“I missed y-you, I just… I missed you.” 

“I missed you too sweetheart.” You find your way back into his arms, pressing your face to his chest. “It’s okay,” he murmurs into the top of your head as he rocks you, soothes the shaking, the raspy draw of each breath. “It’s okay, I’m here.” It only takes a little bit for you to come back to yourself, and as you do, your fingers brush against the gauze on his arm. You freeze. 

“You… you’re hurt. You’re hurt? Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine. It’s nothing, just some stitches, nothin’ to worry over.” 

“Just some stitches?” You squeak, eyes wide with alarm, concern tightening their corners. “Wh-what happened?” What didn’t happen. He’d never tell you, he can’t, but your worry burns a flame inside a deeply shuttered piece of his heart, and he kisses your forehead. 

“I’m okay sweet girl. I promise.” He waits a beat, giving you silence, hoping you’ll come forward with it once you find your words, but when there’s nothing, he knows he’ll be pulling it out. Rip the bandaid off then. “Are you goin’ to tell me what’s going on?” You shake your head and stare at the floor. 

“I can’t… I- I’m sorry.” 

“What are you sorry for?” He knows, of course, but he needs to hear you say it. 

“I… didn’t follow my rules.” He folds his hand over yours, maintaining the connection while carving out your space. You’re a tangled, jumbled snare right now, and if he’s going to fix it, he needs you to take the first step. 

“Tell me what happened.” Your shoulders slump-

 and then you start. 

He makes sure you’re physically okay first. 

You’ve managed to eat dinner tonight and drink some water, which is all he really needs right now. Food, and water. The rest, the mental and emotional strife, the pain, he’ll mend, but punishments don’t sit well on an empty stomach. 

He takes his time. Leaves you on the bed while he showers, face down with your arms bound behind your back, stripped bare. If you were in his bed, he’d have each ankle tied to a corner, fully opening you up, teasing and toying with you, but this is adequate, and it can’t wait. 

The mess in your mind is dark, and dangerous. It’s consuming you, hurting you, and he has to draw it out, suck the poison from the wound. 

“Do you know why you’re being punished?” 

“I w-was bad.” He pauses. He went over this earlier, but it’s a tough one to stick. 

“No, baby.” 

“But… I didn’t follow my rules. You t-trusted me and I-I let you down…” He squeezes the fat of your ass cheek, just hard enough to make you gasp, interrupting your train of thought. 

“You didn’t let me down. You’ll always be my good girl, even when you make mistakes, and I know you didn’t break your rules on purpose, did you?” 

“No daddy, I didn’t. I swear.” He settles on the bed, pins you down with his weight, holding steady as you squirm. 

“I know.” You hiss when he lightly scratches his thumb nail across your skin. “But my girl has to take care of herself, and even after a bad day, she has to keep trying. Do you understand?” You nod. “Words please.” 

“Yes daddy, I understand.” This is only part of it. The festering guilt inside you needs to be released, you need your exoneration.

“Daddy has to make sure you understand how important your rules are, because you’re his priority, and you need to be safe and happy and healthy, right?” 

“Right.” Your brow furrows with concentration, preparing for what comes next. 

We’ll do thirty, and you’ll count each one.” You choke on your breath. The most he’s given you is fifteen and this will be double the sting. He can practically taste your fear. “Do you trust me to take care of you?” Your answer is immediate. 

“I do.” 

“Good,” he swings, your ass ripples on impact, and you grunt. 

“One.” 

“Louder sweetheart.” The second one hits the same spot as the first, and you lift your chin, trying to project your voice. 

“Two!” 

“Good girl.” He brings the third one down on the other side and then starts alternating, two on top of two.

By the time he gets to twenty one, you’re right where he needs you. 

Sobbing. Desperate. Wrists writhing against the bind of his belt. 

“Tell me why you weren’t home when I got back tonight.” He allows a small reprieve as he waits for your answer, arcing over your spine to kiss between your shoulder blades, the fabric of his sweatpants brushing across your aching skin. You whine in protest, feet kicking, trying to absorb the shock of a new sensation, a different kind of pain, and then you jerk when he presses the length of his erection in the cleft of your ass, cock heavy from watching you cry and shriek under his touch. 

“I d-don’t know.” He peppers you with four blows, back to back, forcing you to catch up with your count, the first two coming out as an agonized moan. 

“Tell me.” He pulls back for the next, but you stop him with a panicked bleat. 

“I didn’t deserve it!” There it is. “You trusted me… and I didn’t do it, I didn’t follow my rules. I’m sorry, I’m so- so- sorry.” You sob, spitting between your teeth, barely getting enough air. 

“Breathe. Take your time baby, slow, deep breaths,” he folds his hands over your diaphragm with loose pressure, thumbs rubbing circles into your skin as he calms you. “That’s it, you’ve got it.” You’re so close now. “You’re doin’ so well. Can you tell me the rest?” 

 “I felt guilty, like I shouldn’t be there, like I… I couldn’t call you daddy.” Good fucking girl. 

“Thank you for telling me.” He kneads the now raw skin of your ass cheeks, and you jerk, trying to thrash away from the burn. “I know it’s hard to talk about how you’re feeling sometimes, and I’m very proud of you.” 

“I’m sorry I’m sorry daddy, I’m sorry,” your tears are different now, they come just as fast, but they’re born from a release, a dam overflowing with all of your pain and guilt. A river running free.

“I know. Five more, you can do it. You’re almost there.” And all will be forgiven. 

You scream them out, and it’s over, but you can’t stop. You cry into the mattress, inconsolable as pets you, rubs your back, telling you again and again how good you are, how proud he is, how happy you make him, how important you are. You’re not bad baby, you’re perfect, you’re precious, you’re mine. 

He repeats it as many times as needed so you feel it, let it sink in and fill those gaps, the ones your suffering left behind. 

Almost done. 

He hasn’t moved, still on top of you, marveling as your hips twitch and press downward, movement revealing a small wet spot on the sheets. His cock throbs.

“Look forward,” he tugs his sweatpants down to his thighs and strokes himself, squeezing from base to tip. The element of not knowing, not being able to see puts you on edge, but you trust him. You listen. “Stay nice and still,” it’s going to sting, pull more tears from your heart, and each one belongs to him. “Fuck, baby. Your daddy’s good girl aren’t you? Took your spanking so well,” You moan, grinding against the mattress desperately. “Nice and still sweet girl, you can do it,” he holds you down by your wrists, pressing them into the small of your back. There’s no endurance in this, no long game as he comes, painting your cheeks with it, milky white cum covering your skin as he empties his balls all over you, your shocked gasp music to his ears. It turns into a hiss and then a whimper as he smears it around, somewhat in mourning as he thinks about where it should be. 

Though- 

He unties you. “Keeping looking forward sweetheart. Can you wiggle your fingers for me?” Trembling, they uncurl, flicking back and forth until he’s satisfied. “Anything hurt? Feel numb?” You shake your head, sniffling. “Words.” 

“No daddy.” He tugs on your wrists gently, guiding them to your cheeks. 

“Hold yourself open baby,” Your fingers slide through his cum. 

“L-like this?” 

“Just like that.” You’re shaking, from the spanking, from your emotional release, from the uncertainty of this situation. You’ll need a lot of care tonight and tomorrow, hours and hours of reassurance, focused attention, physical touch. He yearns for it.

“What… did you- did you, uh-” You’re so fucking precious. 

“Come all over your ass?” He scoops up a dripping pearl and drags it to the tight ring between your cheeks. “Yeah sweetheart, an’ now I’m going to put it inside you.” 

“Inside me?” You squeak, instinctively turning your head to watch him from the corner of your eye, alarmed. Shocked. He chuckles.

“Do you want to watch daddy push his cum into your ass?” 

“Oh god,” you groan, immediately tensing, still holding on but unable to thwart your involuntary response. The animal in his head tells him it’s a waste. It should be in your pussy, fucked deep past your cervix and into your womb. 

You’re not ready. You can barely take his fingers, let alone his cock. 

And you’re certainly not ready for a baby, though maybe he’ll give you one before he’s an old man. 

“D-daddy, I… I’ve never… no one’s ever, um...” The pad of his finger gently presses, swirling cum across your hole as you shiver. 

“I know, you're okay. Push out,” he coaches, “good girl, here you go,” he barely breaches the ring, but you jolt just as he expected, trying to wriggle away. 

“Ow!” Jesus. He’s hard again, head of his cock already leaking where it sits on your thigh. “Oh- Oh my god.” It’s not pained, or uncomfortable, but moaned. You like it. He gives you more, sinking into you, stretching you around to his second knuckle. 

“That’s it.” His control is a tether, a hook. It keeps him grounded, prevents him from tearing into you even as he keeps putting more and more of himself inside you, so tempted to stretch you with another finger so he can fit the tip of his cock there instead. Slow. Steady. That’s what will win this race. 

He pulls and tells you not to move as he goes to the bathroom to wash his hands, tucking himself up into the waistband of his sweatpants. 

His cum is dribbling out of you, falling in drips down to your pussy and the sheets. He tries to memorize it, burn it into his brain, indulge in it for one more second before he eases you out of the position, rolls you onto your side.

It’s time for the things that really matter. 

Taking care of you. Holding you. Getting you in the shower and then rubbing cream into your skin, feeding you, hydrating you, putting you to bed in his arms. You’re far past ready, eyes glazed over, lips parted, bliss smoothing out the furrow of your brow. The only thing missing is making you come, but you won’t get an orgasm tonight, not with the headspace you’re in. He’ll have to save it for tomorrow. 

“Mmph,” It’s not quite English, or anything, but he understands the sentiment and takes your hand in his, kneeling at the side of the bed, cupping your cheek. 

“How do you feel?” 

“Sleepy.” You find his thumb and suck, lashes fluttering. He lets it linger for a few minutes, massaging your wrists, your elbows.

“Precious girl,” You’re not with it, not aware of anything except his thumb, your comfort, and he takes advantage while he can, brushing his lips across the shell of your ear with a whisper. “Daddy loves you.”

Here me out (mentions of pregnancy) From the moment Simon put a ring on your finger, you’ve been bent over every surface in the house. kitchen counter, dining table, even the washing machine mid-spin (i make myself laugh LOL) So it’s no surprise you ended up knocked up. Honestly, it was kind of the point. He wanted to see you like this. Full. Round. Swollen with his baby.

Now, months later, your back aches, your belly's heavy and your husband’s hands are right there, soothing, lifting, holding you together with a kind of reverence that makes your knees weak.

Because if it was his goal to get you like this… then it’s his job to take care of you now that you are.

-------

From the moment Simon put that ring on your finger, he made a quiet, devastating promise with his body as much as with his words.

You’d been bent over every surface in the house. The kitchen counter, hallway wall, the back of the couch, his lap in a dining chair, gasping his name into the crook of his neck, legs trembling while he kept you right there.

It was no surprise, really, that you ended up pregnant.

He'd wanted it. Wanted you round and full with it—his. Not out of ownership, but out of something deeper. Legacy. Healing. The need to build something softer than the war-torn world he came from.

Now, months later, your belly swelled gloriously with the proof of all that want. His want.

And tonight, it hurt.

Your back screamed from the weight, pressure clinging low and stubborn as you leaned over the kitchen counter in the dim glow of the fridge light. You were trying not to cry, not to wake him. But Simon always knew.

You heard his footsteps before you felt him, that quiet shuffle down the hall. And then—

“Back again?” came the rasp, sleep-heavy and warm behind you.

You nodded without turning. “It’s… too much tonight. I can’t get comfortable. I feel like she’s pulling my spine apart.”

Simon stepped closer, hands coasting over your hips, then around to your belly. He didn’t ask, just moved with quiet knowing, slipping his hands beneath the curve of your stomach and slowly lifting the weight off your aching back.

Your knees buckled slightly from the release, from how the ache dissolved under his touch. A long, broken sound fell from your lips, something between a sigh and a whimper and you melted into him completely.

“Oh my God,” you exhaled, your head tipping back to his shoulder. “Simon…”

Simon didn’t say anything at first, just held the weight of you both in his hands. His lips pressed to your temple, then down to your cheek.

“You carry her all day,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. “Let me carry you.”

Your heart ached in the best way as he held you there, hands beneath your belly, supporting all the strain, all the pain. You let yourself sag into his body, trusting him completely.

“You’re so good to me,” you whispered, arms curling back around his waist.

Simon was quiet for a beat, his voice soft as velvet when it came. “You gave me a home I didn’t know I wanted. You gave me this…” His hand splayed gently across the side of your belly, where your daughter shifted softly beneath the skin. “I’d do anything for you.”

The silence that followed was heavy with love. The kind that needed no words.

Eventually, he helped you back to bed, slow and careful, cradling your body like a sacred thing. And when you curled into his chest, belly pressed to his side, you swore you heard him whisper thank you into your hair.

Like he still couldn’t believe he got to have this. Got to have you.

from the ashes, she has risen

i have no clue how to link a fic on ao3 here but my price x reader is finished and posted after much trial and tribulation!!!

John 6:51 by doulikepinacoladas on ao3

i toiled greatly for it

I lost the ask but it was about Soap in this specific shirt, and another one was about Ghost in a kilt, so here they are:

Leave at Johnny’s this time

Smooching my cat

tongue on loving wound

simon “ghost” riley x fem!reader | omegaverse!au | alternate universe to In Limbo | alpha!ghost x omega!fem!reader | masterlist

Simon Riley has a keen sense of smell that's kept him alive working for John Price and his illicit business, and it's a sense that's not easily fooled. But when he comes across you, an omega who has no distinct smell except for the lingering aroma of something much too sickeningly familiar, he finds himself infatuated. Little does he know, there's something else lurking in the depths of your silage, something that will leave him wrapped around your very fingers.

Chapter One: paint me red with your desire

tw: gore, death/violence, minor dub-con, alcohol/intoxication

Simon Riley has a keen sense of smell. 

A blessing and a curse—it’s a good tool but it always leaves him feeling nauseous at work. Here, in the midst of bodies pulsing to wicked bass beneath inadequate lighting that leaves his eyes straining through the numbra that cloaks Terminus like a sack placed over his head before a hanging. 

Pheromones waft through the air like spoiled food. Thick and unheeded, burrowing through his nostrils, overloading his senses until his scleras are red with spiderwebbed veins. There’s the thick musk of alphas, puffing their chests and flaunting the strengths of their genes. Sharp teeth, canines that—back in the day—were used for gutting; for protecting fawning omegas who trail behind them with wide eyes and unabashed smiles. Clubs like these replace the hunt. The primal urge to capture prey and nourish them. 

It’s why Simon isn’t surprised when he can smell a fight coming. 

Ancient rust spills across his nose as he stands with his back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, eyes focused on a growing crowd near the bar. It clashes with baneberry, tart on his tongue, saliva glands constricting until his mouth is dry—he watches a man bear his teeth. Hand on his omega’s shoulder, sneering at a too-comfortable intruder, he barks. They’re too close to their ruts. Musk thick on their throats, lips dry and waiting for the rainwater of delicious ichor to coat them—Simon steps in before the first punch is ever thrown. 

Hand on the alpha’s shoulder, fingers curling in his flesh to pull him back, he snarls a quiet, “Calm down.” 

The man turns, eyes wild and pupils dilated, teeth still on display, digits twitching as if ready to sink his claws into Simon. But he’s bigger, broader—a pristine and prime example of the wildness of animals. 

“I know you wanna fight, but you can’t do that shit ‘ere,” Simon murmurs, voice cutting through the dull thrum of the music. His attention flickers over to the omega, standing dazed with glassy eyes and a flushed face as she stares at her alpha. The want rolling off of her is palpable. That sweet redolence—that concupiscence bundled up nice and pretty—curls around his spine, and he hums. “Take your girl home.”

“You’re kicking us out?” the alpha growls, bewildered. 

“I don’t need some pillock too close to his rut startin’ fights,” Simon retorts, looming over him. “Look at you. Poor fuckin’ excuse for an alpha. Can’t you see how badly your omega needs you right now?” 

As if suddenly splashed with cold water, the man looks over his shoulder, eyes locking onto his dazed partner as her body sways to the music. She’s liquid beneath his touch when he takes her hand into his and begins to lead her out of the club, neglecting to say a word to Simon edgewise. 

The world is a jungle, and the city is a dangerous mix of too-close hibernaculums and territorial creatures.

He leaves for a smoke after the situation is diffused. A tenebrous alley swallows him whole as he shrugs off the winter cold to light his cigarette and chew on the filter as he breathes in the nicotine. It’s a reset. Something to temporarily numb his senses as thick swathes of tobacco rolls over his tongue to mute the memory of sillage, of too many conflicting flavors in the air.

Simon tries not to cringe at the memory of how he used to be like that—an unruly alpha driven by wretched hormones and unbridled rage. He used to be dangerous. He still is, but he’s predictable now. In control. Not only does he have the power physically—beast-like strength coursing through his muscles, sharp teeth meant to gouge and swallow flesh in a single bite—but he retains the mental fortitude. It’s why John Price keeps him around. 

A very good, well behaved dog on a very tight, very short leash. 

To reward him for his good comportment, Simon is tasked with being a chaperone. Trustworthy. Impeccable restraint. He trails behind Mrs. Price every time she decides to come to Terminus. An omega with claws of her own, he’s not sure why he’s given this job. She’s not a helpless woman. Flaunting the teeth marks on the side of her neck, very few are foolish enough to toy with the woman who smells of lingering musk. 

Though, he is worried about the near-pitiful creature trailing behind her. 

Well guarded with shifting eyes, you keep yourself properly protected with a turtleneck collared shirt and your palms rubbing flat over your biceps. You are the perfect fantasy, he thinks. The little fawn every alpha yearns for when they’re plagued with wet dreams of sweet omegas who don’t know any better falling right into their open, begging maws. 

Scapulas rolling, Simon inhales slow and steady, senses weaving through the medley of scents produced by the crowd. Usually, he’s a bloodhound. Nose sharp enough to slice out anything unwanted, whittling the gristle off of meat until it’s edible, but when he tries to get the vaguest taste of you, there’s nothing. 

Curiosity piqued, he licks his lips. 

“There’s our little shadow,” Aelin Price beams, half drunk and with her drink sloshing in hand the moment her eyes find Simon. She says it as if he were hiding, but he’s not anymore. Not when he’s needing to profile you—to familiarize the scent that can’t quite reach him. “Or, I guess little isn’t the right term, is it? Tall bastard.” 

Your tense giggling is stifled by the tips of your fingers as you warily watch Aelin take another sip of her drink—perhaps one too many. The bite of vodka assaults his nose and he huffs as she pulls you closer to him, readying a clean palette to breathe you in. 

“Chip, this is Simon, he works with John for security. Simon, this is Chip, my best friend,” Aelin introduces. 

You begin to flounder, hands in front of you, toying with your cuticles as you attempt to get your gaze to rise from your feet. Timid. A lamb on wobbling legs. You swallow as you give him a sheepish smile, but his eyes only narrow when he realizes he can’t pin your scent. Not even synthetic suppressants cloak the natural order of things as well as this. You’re an empty slate, with a hint of something macabre—

“It’s nice to meet you,” you eventually choke out. 

—a hint of danger that’s all too familiar. 

For the rest of the night, Simon doesn’t let you leave his sight. Lurking the way he always does, shady eyes raking over every inch of your body as he attempts to sift through the catalogue of scents in his brain, willing himself to recall what you’ve bathed yourself in. Saccharine like cherry pie with a hint of nightshade lurking beneath the crust, waiting to spring forth and trap him. An enigma hidden behind a kind facade. He doesn’t trust you nearly as far as he can throw you—lifeless corpse bobbing in still water, mistaken for a log, never to be missed or seen again. 

Eventually, you stray from the flock. Sweet little wannabe omega stumbling away from Aelin, lubbering legs dragging you to the crowded water closet. Simon loiters outside the door. Inside he can hear giggling, the popping of lips, smell the silage of synthetic pheromones pressing against necks and wrists—then, it’s the danger again. 

You again. 

Before you can wander back to where Aelin sits at a table for two, glassy eyes staring at her phone as she titters to herself, Simon’s fingers find their home wrapped around your arm. Your squeak is smothered by the pulsing music as he carefully drags you closer to him. 

“O-Oh, hi Simon,” you greet, muscles tensing beneath his touch. You’re next to him now, back against the wall while his eyes survey the crowd before the two of you like he’s waiting for something. A distraction. “Erm… is there something I…”

Your question is smothered in the back of your throat as Simon curls over you, attention now brought to your stunned face as he places his hands on either side of your head, palm against the sticky brick behind you. Tobacco fills your nose, but it’s all you can smell—you’ve never had a very good sense of smell. But you don’t need pheromones to read the blunt warning in his gaze as his nostrils flare. 

It’s hard not to flinch when he leans closer, nose brushing your cheek like butterfly kisses before his head dips down. Wide eyes stare up at the ceiling as he prods at your neck. It’s painted black. You can see where the uneven coating thickens in patches, pooling with paint, glistening bright beneath black lights and neon purples. Then, you turn away when he inhales, deep and slow. The grunt he exhales is difficult to read, but he doesn’t sound satisfied. 

“You keep interestin’ company,” Simon notes. He leans back just far enough to look you in the eye but not enough to let you free. Hands still planted firmly around you, arms curling like a cage to keep you close, you see the purposeful flash of his teeth as he snarls. “I’ll be watchin’ you, little ‘mega.” 

With that, he sends you on your way, and he does well to keep his promise. It would be stupid of him not to—especially now that he’s recognized that scent clinging to you like a second skin as Marco’s. 

That night, after Terminus is emptied and he’s laying in bed, Simon contemplates warning John and Aelin of your elicit friend. Truly, he’s impressed the overly protective alpha hasn’t noticed it off of you himself. You reek of him. Of Marco and his twisted greed for all things good and pure. His lighter flickers to life as he burns through half a pack staring at the ceiling, smoke curling upwards like greedy fingers.

No—maybe for once he can indulge. Maybe he can allow himself to enact the revenge he’s so desperately coveted for longer than he can remember. 

Come morning, the other half of his pack is absorbed by his lungs as he sits in his car across from your apartment. It was a little challenging finding the address without ousting himself from the shadows, but he managed. He has a keen nose, after all. You sleep in late. Either that or you like the dark. Curtains drawn tightly closed, not a single morsel of light to bleed through the fabric; you don’t exit your apartment until 11:30.

You’re not wearing enough clothes—fighting off the bite of winter with a simple jumper, another turtleneck shirt, and a thin pair of jeans, he watches you shiver down the pavement with a folded envelope clutched in your trembling hands. He waits for you to round the corner before his engine is quietly sputtering to life and he’s following you along the street. 

Too easy of a target, you don’t notice him at all. Never once do you lift your head to check your surroundings, you keep your gaze down to your feet, counting each crack in the cement before you stumble into a laundromat. Simon pulls into a car park across the street and lights another cigarette just in time to watch someone strut in after you. 

Marco. 

The man who nearly got his brother killed. The man who got him involved in this life of crime in the first place. 

Your rendezvous is relatively short. Just long enough for a lingering conversation before Marco’s skipping through the door again, hands occupied with something in his pocket. There’s a pull to his lips—a faint simper—that makes Simon’s fingers curl into his palms, nails digging into his flesh, claws begging for blood; for the chance to let loose. Countless dreams have come to him in the dark of night, each playing out ways in which he’d like to bring about Marco’s demise. A knife straight through the liver, internal bleeding overwhelming him in an instant. Hands crushing his windpipe. Knuckles cracking across his face until it caves in—an unrecognizable corse. 

After five minutes, Simon cuts across the street and bursts through the laundromat door to find you sitting on a bench, string wrapped around your fingers, and head hanging low as if you’re caught at the gallows. You jump when he enters. All broad shoulders and furrowed brow, you can smell the rage rolling off of him in thick, suffocating waves. The bobbing of your throat is hidden beneath your turtleneck, and you quickly stow away your string with a sniffle. 

“S-Simon? What’re you doing here?” you question cautiously. 

His eyes darken before they flicker across the room. It’s a small building. A simple 24 hour laundromat with countless machines, rundown tile flooring, a rusty drain that looks half clogged, and cheap detergent being sold for way too much in coin slots on the far wall. An old box television drones on in the center of the room, but besides the default news station, it’s quiet. 

“Could ask the same to you,” Simon quips, attention narrowing in on you as he steps closer. 

“I’m just… doing laundry,” you say, but your gaze adverts before you can finish your sentence. 

“Yeah?” he challenges. “Where’s your basket then, love? Which machine are you using?” 

Mendacities being torn apart limb from limb, your attention falls to your lap, fingers twisting together as if attempting to recall something. Muscle memory. A gentle motion to soothe. Simon stops in front of you, toes nearly touching yours as he curls forward, towering over you. The rage he feels now is similar to what he feels when he’s about to go into rut—uncontrollable and all consuming—but he knows he’s months away from it. This is pure virulent desire. This is the urge to make Marco pay. 

“Who was the man in here with you?” he questions. 

“I-I dunno, he was just, coming to check on-”

“Bullshit.” His interjection silences you, but he can smell the fear emanating from you now. Still, it’s faint. Quiet and dainty, but robust like the churning of soil during a storm; a wicked desire to be free, to flee, to fall back on human’s most basic nature. “Told you I was keepin’ an eye on you, pretty ‘mega, now cut the shit, yeah?” 

Tongue darting out to wet your lips, you raise your head just enough to look at his stomach, but you go no further. “Simon, look, I don’t- I don’t know what you think is going on, b-but-” 

“What I think?” Simon repeats with poorly concealed acrimony. Despite the edge to his words, his hand is gentle against your chin as he tilts your head up, forcing you to look at him. “What I know is that you came into Terminus reeking of Marco. One of the most dangerous bastards in this city. I don’t take that shit lightly.” 

Your eyes widen. “I… I smell like him?” 

“I dunno what you’re playin’ at love, but I don’t want you stepping anywhere near Terminus or…”

His warning dies on his tongue and rots the moment he catches sight of your neck. Faux pink leather stares up at him, playing peek-a-boo through the top of your turtleneck like a blinding beacon. Hand lowering, he pulls at the fabric until your neck is exposed, and his stomach churns at the sight. 

You’re collared. Like a dog. An animal. Something less than human. It’s held together with silver buckles and a small lock pad without a key, keeping it secured tight enough to hide your scent gland from sight—to keep it safe from biting teeth. He’s heard about people who do this. Degrading them to that of an animal, holding the false sanctity of virginity over the rights to one’s body, it is a disgusting act of possession to do such a thing. To deny someone the very thing that makes you human. 

Your bottom lip begins to tremble when his fingertips brush against the synthetic leather, tracing along the edge until he’s reached the tag. Having dulled over time, it doesn’t shine nearly as bright as the rest of the collar, but Simon has no issue making out the engraving in the metal. 

Marco’s Girl ♡ 

Clutching the fabric of your shirt, you yank your turtleneck up over the collar, forcing Simon’s fingers to fall from the tag as you cast your gaze downwards. He smells the brine—the stinging salt that plagues the tears in your eyes as you sniffle. When you stand to your feet, he relents by stepping back while you wipe your face on the edge of your sleeve. 

“I-I really have to get to work now. Have… have a good day, Simon,” you mumble. 

He lets you leave. Vanishing out on the streets, swallowed up by the pavement—a dull cement jungle gym caught in the throes of two crime syndicates. You’re in the crossfire. Directly in the center. Threatened by Marco’s ever hungry maw. 

After that, Simon gathers as much information about you as he can, and it’s a pitifully easy feat to accomplish. You work at a restaurant—some fancy Italian place he’d never be caught dead in outside of going for a date—and you always take the late bus back to your apartment. Sometimes he’ll catch you perched at your window, in that building that looks like it’s rotting from the inside out, scribbling away at a journal. 

You are a sweet thing. Something his instincts urge him to scoop up and hide with. There’s a spot in his den that he knows you’d look perfect in—swaddled with blankets, nesting like you should be doing instead of living in fear. You behave unlike any omega he’s ever seen. He wonders if it’s because of your anxiety—how it slithers through your ribcage, weaving between too-tight bones. 

An alpha would fix that, he thinks. 

“Why? Are you interested in her?” 

Simon’s made the mistake of approaching Aelin for information about you, prompting questions in what he thought was casual conversation but seems to be something the woman is all too good at sniffing out. She looks up at him while making herself comfortable in John’s office chair, hands on the arm rests, legs crossed, and a proud smirk on her lips. 

“Really, I introduced the two of you because I was hoping you’d get together. Or at least hook up,” Aelin concedes. Rosewater washes over his nose as she taps her fingers against the chair, but it’s not enough to cover the bitter musk of regret. “Chip is… well, I get a little worried about her, I guess. She’s a little stunted, if that makes sense. I’m sure you’ve picked up on her near lack of scent. I think it makes it hard to have anyone pursue her and… well, it makes me sad. Thinking of her all alone. Without someone to take care of her.” 

Aelin doesn’t know it, but she’s planted a seed in his chest—one that germinates all too quickly. Rooting through him, he thinks of you in what he tells himself is a slow workup to a bloody revenge on Marco, but he can’t deny the swelling. The primal urge to care for you, to stick his nose against your scent gland until he catches something worth savoring. He needs to know you. You, the only creature who seems to evade his sharpened senses, an enigma he needs to learn; to study. 

So then it is surely intentional when Aelin drags you out to Terminus on the next weekend he works. You smell different—wrong. Bathed in synthetic pheromones, slathered with glitter across your eyes and too much alcohol in your system. You’re being paraded around. Put on display. A flaunting show all for his approval. 

Dazed, you seem ignorant to his watchful gaze, and a squeak erupts from you when his hand finds the small of your back. Standing behind you, neck curling forward, he whispers to you: “Follow me, sweetheart.” 

You trail behind him like a kid following behind a Judas Goat, ignorant to your impending fate as he seals you into one of the VIP rooms. The door locks with a click and you’re left stunned, staring at the opulent decor before you. A conversation pit sits below a thin, gossamer chandelier, and large windows give a near birds-eye view of the bottom floor. Simon’s feet fall heavy against the stone floor, and he catches the way you shiver as he gently guides you to sit. 

“I-I’m sorry.” Your apology spills past your lips as you keep your gaze straight, following his direction as you sink into the pit, body bouncing on the sofa. “I know you told me not to come here again, but Aelin insisted, a-and I couldn’t say no to her-” 

“I’m not mad at you,” Simon interjects before you can spiral too far. He sits next to you, weight causing the cushions to dip, nearly getting you to fall into his gravity. Blinking, you look up at him, eyes shining with unfallen tears. “I just wanna know more ‘bout this.” 

He gestures to your throat, and instinct forces you to grab it—to feel the leather that skulks beneath the thin fabric of your turtleneck—but your hand quickly drops as if realizing your mistake. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Leaning closer, Simon solemnly searches through your eyes and counts every little fracture that forms in your facade. “You don’t need to lie, sweetheart. I already know you owe Marco money.”

You lick your lips, and he can smell the alcohol. Absinthe—anise. Your mind visibly swims as your head bobs, gaze cast down into your lap, fingers picking at the dry skin around your knuckles. “No, that’s… I’m not supposed to talk about this. I shouldn’t.” 

“Yeah? That why he gave you that?” he questions. 

An ant beneath a magnifying glass, you shift under the heat. The searing sun that lies behind Simon’s eyes—powerful and unyielding. “It’s insurance.” 

“Insurance?” he repeats. 

You nod. “I-If I ever make late payments or… try to run… it keeps anyone else from claiming me. It keeps me—like—pure, I guess, for Marco.” As if realizing the words spilling from your drunken mouth, your eyes widen as you look up at him, feet pushing against the floor as if ready to run. “I shouldn’t have- I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.” 

Soft and demulcent, Simon shushes you. Every thought in your mind quiets until your eyes are empty, and he attempts to bring back the light as he leans forward, cupping your cheek in the palm of his hand. Though you might not smell like it, you’re still an omega at heart. Fluttering lashes, the desperate desire to be taken care of, to have a silly alpha under your thumb to do your bidding—it ignites somewhere within you. 

“Please don’t tell Aelin,” you beg, voice hardly above a whisper. 

“I won’t. This’ll just be between us,” Simon swears. His other hand is on your knee now, fingers gently curling around behind the back of your thigh, pressing into the soft tissue there until you’re whimpering. “How long has this been goin’ on, sweetheart?”

Your bottom lip is quivering again. “Too long.” 

“Poor girl,” he coos. His voice is thick—so much so it nearly gets caught in his throat, but you let yourself drown in it anyway. “Need an alpha to take care of it for you? Huh, little ‘mega?” 

You’re leaning into him now. Knees knocking against his, basking in his warmth as he lures you in closer. He notes the way your nostrils flare, taking long drags of him as if he’s your favorite brand of cigarettes.

“Take care of…? Take care of what?” Caught in the depths of ecstasy, you’re hardly coherent, but you’re right where he wants you. Where he needs you. 

“Marco,” Simon explains, thumb rubbing over the apple of your cheek. “He won’t bother you again.” 

“You’d do that? But why?” you question. 

“Not a fan of him, sweetheart. Besides, look at what he did to you.”

“So you’ll talk to him for me?” 

Simon nods. “Yeah. I’ll talk to ‘im.” 

After that, you spill. Everything spews out of you like blood from a wound. You drunkenly explain everything he’s ever done to you—the touching, the kisses, the threats—each meant to break you down, to render you nothing but a pliant dog just for him. Something roars to life within Simon; an all-too-familiar rage that nips at his heels, urging him into action. You’re so sweet in the palm of his hands. How anyone could ever want to do anything other than cherish you is beyond him. 

When your rambling dies, Simon leads you out of the VIP room and retrieves a cup of water for you. As he holds it to your lips you let one last thing slip. 

“I have to meet him tomorrow.” 

Simon pauses. He almost can’t hear you over the music, but he reads the shine on your lips well enough. “At the laundromat again?” 

You shake your head. “Usually we meet there, but he wants to meet at the pawn shop this time…” For a moment, you distract yourself with a sip of water before coughing. “Tsar Trading… I hate it there.” 

“You’ll be okay, sweetheart,” he assures. “I’ll take care of it.”

Once he’s satisfied with the amount of water you’ve consumed, Simon returns you to Aelin, who doesn’t at all seem too worried about where you had vanished off to. A knowing smile pulls at her lips when you stumble back into her arms. Her nose brushes against your shoulder, and her eyes only narrow. She throws a disappointed look to Simon, who only shakes his head before he vanishes off into the crowd; a shadow blending into darkness, a prowling animal off to hunt. 

In the morning, your head pounds so fiercely you swear someone is living inside of your skull, angrily hammering away at your broken psyche in an attempt to fix it. You spare nothing but a simple slap to your phone as you turn your alarm off before rolling onto your back and staring at the ceiling. Stress fractures dance through the moulding. You have dreams that this place will cave in on you someday. You’re not quite sure if it’s a nightmare or a fantasy. 

Preparing for the day is a slog. One shoe on, and then the next. Cold water on your face. You longingly stare at the shower, yearning for the gentle soap to cleanse your body, but you’ve already overslept, and Marco doesn’t like to be kept waiting. 

He is not a patient man. 

You hate going to Tsar Trading. It’s halfway across London, and it smells acrid, like camphor left to rot in the walls for too long. The bus jitters across the streets, and you attempt to lean your head against the shuddering window, groaning to yourself at the bite of the frost growing in the corner. If you did not have so much cash tucked into your pocket, you’d allow yourself to fall asleep—to be dead to the world for a little longer. 

Instead, your mind plagues you with visions from the previous night. Of Aelin’s beaming smile and the liquor she kept shoving into your hands, of the scent of tobacco and Simon’s hand on your back, of the fuzzy memories that attempt to resurface. There’s something about deliverance. A troth whispered with your face cupped in loving hands. 

You push it out of your brain—there is nothing to save you; it’s simply a fantasy.

Marco is already waiting for you. His presence seeps from the building as you traverse across the dilapidated car park. Verdant eyes pierce through you like a mangy alley cat’s as you approach the counter—the two of you are alone, and you’re not sure if that makes you feel better or worse. Unwanted knick-knacks and heirlooms stare up at you from glass enclosures while peeling wallpaper titters at you in line with Marco’s too-perfect simper. 

“You’re late, babe,” he notes in a sickeningly cheery tone. 

“Sorry,” you murmur, fluttering eyes staring at the counter. There’s a new item added to the collection of blood goods and pawned treasures—a small fox. She’s clay, you think. Or maybe ceramic is the correct term. Glossy coat, vibrant red fur; she’s perfect for a fairy garden. “I overslept a little.” 

Marco continues to talk to you, but your fuzzy hearing doesn’t quite receive it. It’s nothing but dull sound waves bouncing off of your skin, dropping to the ground and shattering into silence as you focus your attention on the cash in your hands. You count the notes one by one, murmuring the number underneath your breath, before you push it towards him on the glass countertop. 

“There, that should be a thousand.” 

When he goes to reach for the money, he snatches up your wrist instead. Unforgiving fingers, claws digging into your skin, leaving behind indentations that you fear may never wash clean—he brings your arm up to his nose, teeth flashing as he inhales. You watch the forest green of his eyes be swallowed up by darkness, and you wince as his grip only grows tighter. 

“Where were you last night?” he demands. 

“W-What?” you stammer. “I was at Terminus. A friend brought me and we just-”

“A friend?” Marco interrupts. He yanks on your arm, virulent smile tugging on his lips as he brings you closer. “Did you let this friend fuck you?”

Bewildered, you attempt to wrench your hand free from his grasp, but you only whimper. “No, I just- I just had a couple of drinks and went home, that’s it!” 

“Are you sure? Because you smell an awful lot like Simon fucking Riley.” 

Need an alpha to take care of it for you? 

You so desperately wish to scream for Simon, but you’re not even sure why. It’s as if his name has been branded on your tongue for all eternity but you’re just now learning how to sound out the syllables. You know what his name means—safety, security, alpha. 

Your alpha. 

You feel him. It’s as if he heard your silent plea; the desperate attempt to get him to come for you. Fat palm on your shoulder, presence looming from behind you like a vengeful apparition—Simon growls. He’s always been a territorial creature. 

“Get your fuckin’ hands off ‘er.”

Marco relents, and you feel yourself stumbling backwards, feet catching on the torn carpet, rump colliding on the unforgiving floor. Tears welling in your eyes, you stare up at Simon just in time to watch him snatch Marco’s shirt into his grip, and then everything seems to go dark. You’re alone with nothing but the sound of your own breathing and the thudding of your heart in your chest. 

Something within you aches. A splinter wishing to push free from your skin. It rattles inside of you as you watch Simon pull Marco over the countertop. Marco is not a small man—always obsessed with his appearance and the tone of his muscle—and still he is tossed around like a ragdoll. Your lips part in awe as Simon’s head lowers. Marco’s pushing against his face, but there’s no force in the world that can stop the glistening canines that graze against his skin. 

You watch as the muscles in Simon’s jaw flexes, but there’s a disconnect. Though your eyes are open, it’s nothing but TV static. White noise in your vision. The overwhelming urge of your brain attempting to save itself from the gore. 

Finally, you see it—Marco, limp on the ground. 

There’s a bite-sized hole in his throat, displaying the gummy cartilage of his carotid artery that no longer contracts enough blood. It wanders to his trachea, severing his airway, leaving behind nothing but bubbles as Marco attempts to breathe in and out. He’s drenched in blood, and you can smell it—the iron. It’s the rust of violence, the same kind he wielded so flippantly at you, now blanketing him in his final moments. 

Then, there’s Simon, standing over his fallen prey, chest heaving with the thrill of the kill, and mouth painted red.

follow @mother-ilia to be notified of updates | get early access to chapters here

Love the trope of Price mentally constructing a nursery in every home and apartment he’s ever known, in the house of everyone he’s ever dated— it’s the first thing he thinks of (right after where on his body he’s gonna tattoo their name).

He has his dream nursery memorized. It’s his mind palace. He wants cream yellow walls, because his baby is going to be the sun, the same way his wife is his moon, with the away she has over his heart of the sea. He wants an accent wall with wallpaper in a classic motif— the kind they use in pediatricians offices, to be honest. Building blocks, fluffy clouds, circus animals.

John loves tradition, generational passings on, well-crafted things that can last centuries if cared for well enough. He wants his nursery furniture, all of the stuff in his house, really— to be solid wood, handmade (he promises that he’ll make the bulk of it himself, the rest antique). He’d rather die than buy a brand new house without any history. No craftsmanship, all straight lines and 90 degree angles, no consideration to what makes a home feel like home.

Despite being such a trusted member of the team, he knows precious little about your home life. Fine by him— your past is your own, he has no right to it. One day, as you’re about to pack up for leave around the holidays, you ask to speak to him as a friend, rather than a captain.

It’s well known that Price doesn’t have the family he’s dreamed of. An old war dog, bridges burned with the ex wife from his youth, he doesn’t hold out a lot of hope. Maybe in the next lifetime, it will be different. He’ll have that yellow nursery.

You tell him, with an astonishing amount of composure, that your parents passed away almost a year ago. They’ve left the care of the family home to you. It’s quite an undertaking— large, as it used to host all manner of aunt and uncle and cousin generations ago. But now, people are in the spirit of moving far away. Old wounds and grudges, new opportunities. Your parents had their own issues conceiving— leaving you an only child.

Gaz has his family to go home to, so does Soap. No one knows what Ghost does, but everyone suspects he follows Soap home for the holidays. Price has been invited time and time again, but always politely refuses. He doesn’t want to be reminded of the dream out of his reach.

But you tell him this will be your first holiday alone in the house, and that you need him. You don’t know if you can bear the silence for the season. Not to mention all of the upkeep you’re behind on. He figures it’s as good a place to be as any, and he’s the type who needs his hands busy to find any peace.

He falls in love with your old place. Sure, the bannisters could do with being refinished, a bit of carpeting could come up, a few fixtures are spotty— but it’s a beautiful place. Still very much full of love and warmth, the traces of you and your little family are everywhere. In the tarnished silver picture frames, the fraying knitted potholders, the penciled in height markings at the kitchen door.

On the tour, he’s stopped dead in his tracks at one open door. Faded yellow walls, slats of chestnut. A crib.

You explain to him that it used to be your nursery. It had been your mother’s, too, and many more. They kept it perfectly in tact when you’d grown up and moved into another room, hoping that they’d give you a little sibling. The day never came. You’re wondering yourself what to do with it— your career hasn’t left you with much time or appetite for romance. There’s a stinging sadness dripping from your words like lemon juice. You admit that you suspect this family, once monumental, will end with you— the house passed to someone who will strip off the carved filigrees of the stair railing, throw white paint over all of the walls, and put grey vinyl over the hardwood. That is, if they don’t just tear it down. Land could be divided up into a few new apartment units.

You’re barely listening to yourself talk— just ambling along, as if you haven’t just revealed to John Price what his life’s been leading up to all this time.