#seriously what the fuck wales
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David Tennant and me at Wales Comic Con Spring 2022 ❤️ Such a sweetheart who quickly came up with a pose when I didn’t know what to do with myself 🙈
#sorry I'm not allowed to do hugs#david tennant#me and dt#meeting dt#wales comic con#I was totally unprepared for them telli g us like 2 minutes ahead that we wouldn’t be able to hug him#which was all I had planned for#I don't get why they can't announce things like this in advance#it didn't seem like it was David's own decision so I imagine the one's deciding that must have known in advance#of course probably because a) they didn't want to risk people getting infectes by everyonw touching him#b) probably didn't want to risk him getting sick so close to filming DW#I had two ops and it seemed pointless to just have to of me standing next to him looking stupid#which I really did in the first photo!#holy shit that waa terrible!#maybe my self perception is fuckes but I look like I weigh about twice as much as I do#in hinsight I should probably have asked if I could get another one because seriously#nobody is THAT ugly looking#and when we are paying this much the photographer should makw sure people don't look like complete shit#anyway I was for some reason a bit nervous hence why I have my hands the aay I do 🤣#and apparently after the first photo when I was trying to figure out what to do#I posed my arms in a way that made hkm think I was asking for a hug#so he said#which only made me even more flustered! and I went no no I know it's just that I have another photo#and I'm not sure I even mato properly finish that sentence 🙈#but he went OH! You want another pose! let's see what should we do?!#and somwone I got turned around and he went around me ans went OH we should go low!!#and down he went 🤣🤣🤣#I I was so surprised while also my terribly shy self that I ended up in thia mid pose#But at least it's fun and different and I quite love it even if I still look weird AF 😂#adding for the sake of my own journal kinda thing..should probably have done that when it was fresh in my mind but oh well
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Finally ready to talk about that Argentina-Saudi Arabia match…all I’m gonna say is sexy Bond villain Jaime Lannister lookalike Herve Renard hasn’t seen an offside trap he didn’t like
#in other news I’m still crying#hoping Argentina pulls a 2010 Spain and wins the World Cup even after a loss in their first match#what? it can happen!!#no but seriously…Herve Renard: Argentina nt slayer? who could’ve predicted this?!#this wasn’t on my bracket y’all#all my nts clownin so far#usmnt#drew against wales#fuck you gareth bale#denmark nt#drew against tunisia#and last but not least#selección argentina#got offside-trapped into oblivion#fifa world cup#world cup 2022#Bri’s World Cup tagstravaganza
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you could fit the entire united kingdom in texas with room to spare and texas STILL doesn’t have as many fuckinf PLACES as the uk. honestly there’s such a thing as too much history and i think that country needs to like get blown up and start over. it’s too much i don’t like it
#i do NOT mean places as in like. wales and scotland. i mean like all the little places like fucking cornwall#how would i know what cornwall even is. like in my daily life. let alone WHERE it is#i’ve had to look up cornwall like 50 times (because i always forget) over the course of reading these books.#ok i will stop complaining now but like seriously why is this stupid country’s geography so. much.#beth.txt
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Wales 26 - 27 Scotland!
Up 27-0 just moments after halftime, no one would’ve expected a match this close.
But with a lack of discipline and sudden Welsh revival costing the Scots, they were almost able to lose a 27 point lead.
It was certainly a game of two halves, where Wales were hapless in the first, suddenly revitalised in the second, it went down to the final moments as Duhan Van Der Merwe got the ball over the line for the final effort of the night.
Ultimately, and anticlimactically, that ball was held up by a Welsh foot, and the try didn’t stand, nor did the winning bonus point, which could be vital in weeks to come.
Scotland broke their 22 year streak of losing in Cardiff, but questions are definitely going to be asked, namely how they nearly lost such a massive lead, and how the game could be turned on its head so easily.
Nevertheless, it was a spectacle, and about the only result that could’ve denied Italy fourth place on the table at the end of week 1.
Manic and unexpected, it wasn’t the spectacle of rugby people signed up for, but the most entertaining game of the week by some distance.
Maybe both teams can practice a bit more consistency for next week, where Wales are travelling to Twickenham to face England, and Scotland will be up against a wounded France at Murrayfield.
At this point, it looks like no one’s stopping Ireland, but who knows after a result like today’s?
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riptide | Simon "Ghost" Riley x f!Reader
"Thought we lost you." His voice is a crackle; sap popping as it burns in the fire. The log charring in the kindling. There was a battle in his head; artillery fire in the gaps of his eyes. "Thought we— fuck, pet. Thought you were gone, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it."
His knuckles graze the mark in your temple, gentle around the tight, irritated flesh—it's proof that you lived, that despite the tragedy of the betrayal from the man you counted on the most, you survived. You made it. You won
His touch is featherlight. But his eyes–
His eyes are heavy with the promise of nothing but ruin.
(it's like holding a lit cigarette to your pulse.)
part ii of in undertow
tw: gratuitous smut; unfettered filth; gendered reader; f!reader; female anatomy; near death experiences, MAJOR spoilers for the game (seriously, if you haven’t played it are saving it for later, or you haven’t finished, maybe don’t read this yet); PINING; cigarettes after sex was listened to on repreat during the making of this; also, i had “THAT’LL DO!” and “AHUEVO” on a loop, y’all. blame that.
notes: whenever someone asks what “doing the most” means, feel free to point them to this. it’s 16K. fullstop. it was only supposed to be smut. this ended up more plot than porn. but i so wanted the pining; the ambiguity, the danger, the drama. (i mean, this has none of that, but i wanted it.)
i told my very Welsh dad i was in love with an English man, and he said how could you do this to me? and that is pretty much all you need to know about Welsh culture.
Porthmadog hasn't changed much at all since you last washed up on the sandy shores, one hand gripping the strap of your off-duty duffle bag, and the other clenched around your passport. Wound tight. Ready to flee. A constant state of fight or flight.
The air is heady with the scent of the sea. Algae. Seaweed. Salt. Your lungs burn with the thickness of it. The sulphur sits in your throat, sticking to your larynx. It clicks when you swallow, refusing to budge. It curls behind your teeth when you suck the air in through parted, salt-chapped lips; the taste lingers in that strange microcosm of being both achingly nostalgic, and woefully foreign in the same breath.
The streets, too, live there: a realm of vague memories flashing by as your feet tap against the cobblestone. Boots heavy with exhaustion, and jet lag.
You're not ready to face it. Not yet.
Head bowed, you stare at the quasi-familiar cracks on the sandstone, and wonder how everyone else is fairing right now. An hour after takeoff. Soap would have been dropped off, wouldn't he? Safe and sound in Edinburgh.
You're both luckier than your American counterparts—the ones who have a full nine hours left to go.
Bouncing from the Middle East to Europe is a blink.
Europe to America is a whole ocean.
You and Soap played rock, paper, scissors for who got to depart first. In the end, you won. Wales was closer, anyway.
You left them behind with a heaviness that settled in your pericardium, compunction dipping in the valley of your pinched brow.
A strange feeling leaks from the fissures.
Ghost didn't depart.
They didn't stop in England at all. Right to Wales, right to Scotland. America. Mexico.
You try not to think about your prickly Lieutenant, but he flashes behind your eyelids, anyway. A bonfire in the dead of night. Tendrils of smoke drifting into the midnight blue aether. You're too close to the crackling flame. The heat scorches your skin.
He, too, sits heavy in your chest. A spooled cluster of questions bereft of answers. An unknown chasm gaping below. What it all means–
You woke up when the interior lights of the jet flickered on a few rows ahead, the jaundiced glow rousing you from your slumber. Your temple rested on something warm. Firm, sturdy. You blinked into existence, the ghost of a breath on your lips; a passing dream now left behind to rot. A world, forever unattainable, dissolving into nothing. Sand on your fingertips.
The world knits back into the cold clutch of reality: you're on a plane, and–
And you find yourself staring at tightly woven black thread. A balaclava.
Your eyes dart up.
The pad in his hands bathes him in iridescent light. It casts shadows on his face, in the pocks of his mask, and illuminates the white of the artificial bones. The paint used is tinged blue, brushed with cyan where it meets the black.
His lidded eyes crest low as he stares at the screen—a profile open on a man named Zyani stares back. Your eyes don't linger too long, pulled, instead, to the man you're leaning against. The coal under his eyes is smudged, nearly eroded away in the inner corners. You wonder if he rubbed them earlier, eyes gritty and heavy, but refusing to close. He won't sleep on the plane. He never does.
You don't usually, either.
Why didn't he wake you? Why did he let you stay?
There is no time for discussion—not on a jet that reeks of testosterone with ears everywhere. It will have to wait; shelved for another time when Gaz isn't snoring a few pews away, and Soap hasn't been glancing at you in intervals since you sat down.
Bonnie… you can almost hear him say. What are you doin'?
You can hear the steady breaths he takes, the sound swells through you.
It's the first time you've seen him so relaxed since–
Where are you going? Loose-limbed, one hand still wrapped around his softening cock, the other settles on the bend where your thigh meets the crease of your hip, fingers ghosting over the knob of your bone. His eyes are half moons. I didn't say I was finished with you yet, pet.
You shudder, a quiet breath leaving your lips. It draws his attention. His shoulder tenses under you. His head tilts just enough for him to slide his gaze from the screen balanced on his thick thighs to your open stare.
His eyes are liquid. Honeyed words over smouldering charcoal. "Alright?"
Your lungs quiver with your inhale. Outside of the acrid smell of ammunition, ozone, and gunfire, he carries something musky in his scent. Driftwood. Salt—sweat, blood, the sea. It's potent. You breathe him in again, lids lowering. You hold his scent there, nestled in the gummy webbing of your lungs, dripping down your throat.
Your eyes feel gritty when they slip shut. Anchors pull them down. You nod your head, slow and languid, murmuring your assent in a barely coherent mumble. The drag of his rough fatigues under your cheek, the straps of his tactical vest grinding into your cheekbone. And then—awareness. It startles you back into reality. Your eyes pop open, meeting the black pools above.
You wish you could chisel open his head, and read whatever it is that might be lingering in those unfathomable depths. His expression is shuddered, hidden by the thick of his mask. Eyes lidded and heavy and narrowed right on you.
Intense focus.
Sometimes, the others talk about Ghost like he's a berserker. A wild, untamed beast let loose in the shadows. Even the vilest people pale when they see him—his larger-than-life frame lingering in the background—and it's fear that dances in the cut of their brow, in their shaking glare.
You heard stories, of course.
Those always paled in comparison to seeing him on the field.
You got it, then, why no one mocked him. Why even the worst of the worst never bothered with leading him around by the nose.
He asked a question, and they answered.
For a long while, you thought it was his heigh. His size. Immense power. Expert precision.
But no. It's just him. Those eyes. His presence.
He doesn't just receive attention, he commands it.
You should move. You're awake, now. There is no reason for such intimacy with your Lieutenant, for a man more distant and unreachable than the sea.
You should.
But you don't.
He's warm milk under your chin. Heat bleeds into your skin from the firm bracket of his body. Ghost smells good—sweat and timbre—and feels even better. You could sleep again like this. Lashes fan down, sleep digs into the back of your eyes. You force them open.
Your fingers are tucked into the crook of his arm, pressed tight to his chest; there's a note of domesticity in the way he breathes with you, a palpable weight that falls on you like a thick quilt. His muscles jump. Body tense.
Eyes on you. Always.
But then they're gone. A flutter. They cut out to the pews, and you follow his gaze. Price wades closer.
The bubble pops. You're clinging to your Lieutenant like it's a luxury you're allowed.
Like it's something commonplace.
There is distance in his eyes when they flicker to you. The molasses hardened into something once again unreachable. A wall now sits between you.
(Maybe, that conversation will never come, after all.)
You should have known better than to let yourself want.
The air is crisp when you draw it in. The chill hurts your teeth.
You slip your fingers out from the wedge of his arm and ribs, already mourning the loss of him under your flesh—ticking muscles coiled tight; velvet draped iron. Ghost says nothing when you move, but his gaze is heavy on you when you fold yourself back into your seat. Proper, now. Lieutenant and soldier. You press yourself as far away from him as you can until your arms dig into the plastic around the window, and sit straight—as if you weren't sleeping on his shoulder.
As if he didn't let you.
He looks away when Price takes the bench on the opposite side, offers a nod.
Price echoes it. Flashes a tight smile your way.
Then his eyes linger. Not on you. Not on Ghost. He rests his pensive gaze on the sliver of space between the two of you. Where Ghost's bulky arm takes several inches of space up on your own seat, flesh glued together, parting only at the elbows. He's too big to get away from. Takes up all the space—
(—in your lungs, in your head, in your—)
Price, mercifully, isn't the type of man to pry. His brows buoy on his head, a fleeting glance sent in Ghost's direction, and then he's all business. Astute leader. Battle-ready even on a sleepy jet.
He clears his throat. "Where are you headed?"
It's for you.
Gaz is going to America with the men you'd picked up for this mission. His offer for you to join was swiftly rejected. The invitations from the Mexican operatives, notably Alverez, to come and enjoy the coast were also rejected.
"Is Soap going home?" You ask, hands fisting into balls on your lap.
Price's smile is wan. "He is. Not joining Gaz on his American adventure."
"Misadventure, more like." Ghost's dry tone makes your toes curl.
You can still hear the way he growled out pet.
You huff. "I'm…"
There is nowhere for you to go.
—Well. Nowhere else.
(Your knees ache, chafed and raw. Pebbles dig into your skin.)
"Wales," you murmur. You hear the ruffle of fabric when Ghost dips his head to look at you. "Whatever is easier. I'll take a taxi."
"Right," Price nods. "Get some rest while you're home."
It sounds like a dismissal.
Baleen lines fill your periphery when you turn your head. Your gaze sticks to the crease where his chin meets his neck. You can't bring yourself to look up.
"Better go fight it out with Soap."
He doesn't stop you when you stand, when you squeeze past him, thighs brushing his knees.
He says nothing at all when you depart.
(Don't think about it. Don't get your hopes up—)
The town is silent save your heavy steps on the cobblestone. In the distance, the roar of the ocean crashes along the beige shore.
Something inside of you begins to crumble.
(Too late.)
The woman by the apartment block greets you warmly, but the words are a strange amalgam of vowels and consonants that do not belong together. Her accent sounds English. The words make no sense to you.
Your bewilderment must show on your face. Her smile dips, a touch of laughter paints her words when she says, in English:
Sorry, dove. I thought you were Welsh.
It feels a little bit like a slap to the wrist. Naughty child… mind your manners, and speak your tongue.
"I'm not…," you murmur, chastised despite having done nothing wrong.
Wales isn't where you came from. Here is not the place of your birth. It's a paradoxical realm: a land where you were taken to as a child, and told welcome home; all memories erased of the other times they said the exact same thing. A taboo, now. Faux pas. A fresh start (for the nth time). Welcome home.
It's the place you stayed the longest, though. Your developing years from a child to a teenager, to a spiteful preadolescent with too much to prove, and an ocean to live up to.
(You wonder if the pavement is still stained red.)
You know Welsh. Have spoken it for years. You came, fresh-faced and chubby-cheeked, and the ladies cooed while they taught you the words.
But it's buried. They are covered in dust; a forgotten relic. You remember pieces of the greeting, but your lips are no longer used to forming them. Your tongue is too heavy, too foreign.
You say nothing at all, trailing off into a stifling silence.
"Right," her brows knot, rheumy eyes regard you warily. "Do you need a hotel—?"
"I live here."
You bend down, peeling the pristine welcome mat back, and fish out the key you keep tucked away. Years of training echo in the background; a firm voice rings out, one that sounds suspiciously like Ghost's, barking out how that's trouble. You'll come home to a world of hurt if you keep doin' that, soldier.
(You already do.)
You pull your duffle bag up when it slips, and nod at the bemused woman.
It's not much of a homecoming.
It never is.
The flat you own is barren. A bed that feels too comfortable at night for you to ever truly relax on is shoved into the bedroom, a wardrobe with civilian clothes, a shoe rack in the foyer. A kitchen that's always empty.
You mostly sleep on the worn, old couch where the springs dig into your shoulder blades, and remind you of that night you spent in Sierra Leone, belly full of yabeh. Ghost a hair's length away from you. His gloved hand brushing yours.
The duffle bag falls to the tiles with a heavy thud. Your passport will go in the safe along with all of your other belongings—clearance badge, certificates, your guns—until the call comes in for your next mission.
You hope it's soon. That Shepherd and Laswell trudge up some calamity that will take you far away from this place. A long-haul mission. The kind where you go deep into the trenches, and when you surface, it feels like an aeon has passed.
It's too quiet at night.
Your home reeks of dust. Disuse.
You settle on the couch, eyes fixed on the popcorn ceiling, and pretend you can't feel his shoulder under your head even now.
A world away, and you still think of him.
(Always, always.)
Shepherd calls you weeks later. A secret mission with the Shadow Company, he tells you. When you ask about the others, his voice is tight.
Just you, soldier. Just you.
Breaking up the Task Force isn't unheard of. Ghost does so many secretive missions on his own that meeting people he worked with in the past on a group venture isn't at all a rarity anymore. Price is the same. Soap, sometimes, too.
There isn't much else to do.
(You held your phone in your hand each night for those weeks, finger hovering over the CALL button. Two letters— Lt— on the contact screen. His profile picture is a dune of sand.
It never rang. You never called.)
You give your affirmative, and go to the coordinates where his operatives will be waiting for you.
"Show me what you got," he says, a challenge in his voice.
Your grin is sharp. "Always, Actual."
Phillip Graves meets you with a wide grin on his face. The American flag on his fatigues sticks out against the green. So used to the British flag, you can't stop your eyes from sliding down to it, drawn like a beacon.
(Maybe, in a bygone era, it, too, might have been home.)
"Welcome aboard, soldier." His eyes flash in the setting sun. Eager. Heavy. You echo it in your own smile. "Let's get these son'of'a'bitches."
You're back at the bottom.
The Shadow Operatives stare at you when they think you aren't looking. Low murmurs fill the jet— princess, chick, girl— and you gazed, pointedly, out the window.
Your hands itch; the phantom scabs prickle.
It makes you miss 141 more than you thought possible. Gaz, Price, Soap, Ghost. They flicker in your mind, and you wonder what they'd do in this situation.
How would they prove themselves to everyone around them?
(Answer: they wouldn't.)
The only one who isn't pushing you in a box is Graves.
"Heard great things about you," his smile crests over his lips. Eyes hungry. Ready for battle. "Can't wait to see what you can do."
He worked with Ghost a month ago. You find this out when he mentions it offhand. Secret mission with your Lieutenant. Is he always that much of an asshole—?
Actual is in your ear, stay alert. Keep your eyes out, always. Never know what you might miss.
But it's Ghost you think of.
(Always, always.)
"He's not an asshole," you say, shrugging. "Just a man who cares too much."
Almost immediately, you want to swallow the words back down. Stupid. Stupid. You force yourself to remain still, nonchalant.
(How presumptuous of you to think you know him.)
Military likes to gossip. It'll come back to him somehow. The little rookie who stuck up for him. Who said he cared.
Graves' eyes flicker. "That right?"
You blush. English is gone. The only language in your throat is Welsh.
(Graves' guffaw echoes in the jet.)
Graves purses his lips, rolling them from side to side, as you sift through the documents in front of you. He's been pacing the room for the last ten minutes while you meticulously translate each paper in your grasp. Agitation bleeds through the usual warmth in his countenance.
It's tense. A slaughter.
His compatriots flank all of the exits; sounds of gunfire resound through the compound.
The infiltration was easy.
This—
This is not.
"So…," he drawls, the thick accent is warm, but his voice is constricted; pinched. "Heard you were the best at sniffing things out. What do you think?"
"It's not—," you pause, eyes skimming the page, squinting at it.
"What?"
His tone is sharp. Icy. The usual warmth dissipates into a palpable tension; a tight unease.
The shift is strange. Focus on the mission.
"It's not just Konni in this. They're being backed."
"That so?"
You suck in a deep breath. "We should leave. Tell Actual what's going on–"
"Yeah," he intones, crouching down in front of you. His eyes are placid. "We'll do just that."
It all happens so fast. A clichè, really, but a fitting one.
Head turned out the window of the cargo van, deadly missiles being dragged behind. Your mind is full, racing. Nothing makes sense.
You wish Ghost was here. Price. Soap. They're the ones you use to bounce ideas off of: this is what is happening, this is the missing equation, and this is what I think.
Good, bonnie. Now, tell us something we don't know.
And what if the equation is wrong?
Crafty, soldier. How do we prove it?
And then the world shatters.
Konni Operates. A gun to your head. Graves yelling in the distance; spitting curses, threats. Actual in your ear— you'll die here, soldier.
Chaos. Death presses cold metal to your forehead, snapped words in rapid-fire Russian, too fast for you to pick up.
The only ones that leak through are oozing glee. I'm going to blow your head off.
A dead-end. You think of Gaz—the closest to you in age, passing jokes back and forth; playing Never Have I Ever when the missions lull, the others looking on with amusement.
Kids these days, they scoff.
Have you seen this video? He asks, dropping into the vacant seat beside you. Ghost looks up. It's a club in London.
Soap huffing when you ask if he wants to come. Too old for that, bonnie.
You kids have fun, Price says, lips twitching. A rare show of amusement from the man. But I'll have to pass.
What if we went to a pub instead, you geezer? You chuckle.
Geezer? He nudges Ghost to his left, eyes dry. You've been rubbing off on the kids.
You meet his stare over the plastic table. Smile turns shy. Wanna come with us, Lt?
He holds it. Halfmoon. Eclipse. Liquid black. Negative, soldier.
You try not to let the sting of rejection show. It's stupid. Stupid—
Nice one, kid.
Y'did good, bonnie.
Let's show these old boys what us kids can do, yeah?
Their voices echo in your mind. One rings louder than the others. A sharp bark. Gravel shattering. Move, soldier!
You're a dutiful soldier. You never disobey a command from your superior officer. From him.
White-hot pain splits across your temple. The world turns static. You're falling down, down, down—
Waves lap at your body, tugging you out to sea. The briny water fills your throat.
Stay alert, soldier. The General. Voices.
"Well, shit." Graves. He sounds distant. Far away.
You think of Sierra Leone. Your first mission.
Hiding in a concrete house with no windows, no doors, no cover. Gunfire booming across the landscape, cloaked in the pitch black darkness of night. Flickers of yellow-red light pop in the distance.
You don't breathe. Don't make a sound. Your hands tremble around your rifle. Eyes wavering.
Warmth against your back. You startle. A gloved hand over your mouth. The brush of a balaclava against your neck.
"Easy, soldier. They'll see you if you jump."
They'll see you—
"They dead?" A boot knocks against your calf.
You go limp.
"Yeah," Graves. Companion. Comrade. Be careful who you trust, soldier. All you have right now is yourself. Trust your gut; you're on your own.
Copper on your tongue. You let it pool between your teeth, keeping it held in the space between your lips. It tastes of pennies. You try not to choke.
Sir… you whisper the words against his tactical vest. Feel the shift of his body when he looks at you from over his shoulder. Let's get yabeh after this.
We're not on holiday, soldier.
Really? Feels like one.
You need to get out more.
Yeah… maybe…
C'mon, now. Stay with me, pet.
Always… sir. Always…
You drag him to someplace you'd heard of through your new friends–best yabeh in all of Salone; gotta try the Jollof, too, Sesay insists–and he fits in like a sore thumb.
You both stand out, really. Foreigners in the middle of a place visited only by locals. Him in his denim trousers, and short-sleeved shirt, tactical vest fixed on his chest; his mask stays on. A ball cap low over his brow. He exudes danger. The rippling musculature of a tiger. The stealth of a panther.
You—nondescript and tiny beside him.
There is something to be said about seeing your new Lieutenant in denim. In the custom facemask instead of the full balaclava.
With the baleen lines missing over his chin and neck, he almost feels too exposed to you. Too vulnerable. Too open.
You can't stop fixing your gaze on the scant flesh, uncovered, above the collar of his shirt. His arms, bulky, and big, fold over his massive chest.
He barely fits inside the small booth.
Your eyes dance. Amusement. A roseate veil shudders over you—a novice, a rookie—and high off of the success of a mission.
"Sesay says this is the best place in town."
"Sesay says a lot of things, don't he?"
You blink, fingers tapping against the worn wood of the table. It's hot in Sierra Leone. A wet swelter that brands your skin with white-hot intensity. It's different from the dryness of the Sahara.
Somehow, his tone is drier than the arid desert you crawled out of. Drier than the burning heat of the massive sun.
"That he does…," you agree, floundering.
Was this a mistake? Maybe you shouldn't have come here. What were you thinking? Dragging your superior out for dinner. You flush. It's barely discernable from the blistering sunburn over the bridge of your nose. Unfamiliar with the intense sun that scorches the land.
You're drowning, now. Wallowing in this limbo of uncertainty. Maybe you should have just come later with Sesay and Abdul. They asked you when you pestered for directions, but you met Ghost's stare from over their shoulders, and hadn't heard a thing of what they were saying once you met him in the middle.
He's a whole head taller than everyone he meets. Massive. The locals' baulk at him: this huge, terrifying being with a skull on his face, cutting through the throng of people like a tank.
There was so much going on once you started the mission. After the Intel was gathered, and the forces were ready, those long nights spent inside a tent that was barely big enough for yourself let alone the behemoth bulk of your Lieutenant came to an end. It was abrupt. Sudden.
It was just you and him.
And then it was a sea of people.
You'd spent the better part of a year pouring over documents in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Scorpions and sand, and him.
The tent was deadly during the day; balmy with a humidity fit for the Amazon. At night, any complaints you might have had about the heat turned into regrets. It was freezing. You could see white clouds of condensation when you breathed out.
You'd lie next to each other. Grains of sand is the only thing keeping you apart. He was warm—bonfire hot.
You'll be frustrated, mad. That's normal when you spend so much time with a stranger. You might argue, bicker. But just focus on the mission. This is a test of camaraderie as much as it is endurance.
It wasn't like that at all. It was—
Seamless.
His ebb and flow were easy to adjust to. Maybe, it was the fact that you were a neophyte that made it so. Too afraid to let the bundle of frustration rear when this was your first mission. Your first test.
But—
It wasn't quite like that. You found that you enjoyed his company. His barbed insults spoken in a flat, serious tone often flew over the heads of the men you had to work with, but you grew accustomed to them. Enjoyed them, even. He was—
An enigma. A year later, and you know nothing about Simon Riley, and as much as he'll allow about Ghost. There is distance still, but;
It wanes. It cracks. Fills with the sharpness of his sarcasm, the stoic dedication to his mission; the grains of sand that stick to his sweat-slicked forehead. The deep hue of red from the mask he refuses to take off.
You'll suffocate, you quip, eyes glued to the paper in front of you.
Don't worry about me.
That's a silly thing to say…
It ain't. You shouldn't.
Mindless, stupid: well, I do.
Silence. Brutal and stifling. Then: focus on the mission, Rookie. Not on me.
You'd hummed noncommittally. It slipped into the back of your head, eyes fixed on the numbers in front of you.
But it wells, now. When Sesay asks if you want to go with him for dinner, when he tells you how to get there, and what to order.
Not on me.
Your eyes haven't left his. He holds your stare.
The chossy wobbles, cracks. Your hand on his arm. C'mon, boss, let's eat. It stays there while you lead him through winding valleys. The heat of his arm—bare, veins ticking under your palm, too burly for you to wrap your whole hand around the thick of him—bleeds into you. You, cold-blooded, leach the warmth from his flesh.
And now—
He doesn't eat when dinner is brought out. Doesn't take his mask off.
You watch him through the steam that wafts off the Jollof rice, his eyes roaming around the room like clockwork, looking for something that might strike. Hyper-vigilant. Wary. Cold. Distant.
A puzzle not meant to be put together, but your fingers itch with the urge to try.
Why did he come, you wonder. Why didn't he say no?
As if hearing your thoughts, his eyes are on yours. Tendrils of translucent white fog the air between you. His brow pinches. Lids crest.
It punches the air from your lungs. There is a phantom heat in your palm. Your hands shake around the fufu in your grasp, tightening around the tacky food until it bulges between your fingers.
The syphoned heat begins to simmer in your belly.
It bubbles over, blustering through your insides when his head pulls close, chin over the table, and says:
You did good, rookie. Might make a soldier of you, yet.
You bow your head. "Cachu hwch."
"English, soldier."
You shake your head. "N-nothing, sir… burnt my tongue."
You wake up in an empty hospital room. It was early August when you left for Al Mazrah. The calendar on your wall says it's now late September.
The space in between is a blur. Left in the mud. Graves was taken. Was he okay–
You don't remember anything after the point of passing out in the mud, and waking up—sick from infection, burning from a fever—and finding yourself strapped down on a jet. Medics surround you.
You'll be okay, you'll be fine–
You'd passed out again. The world slipping away until you felt the heat on your shoulder blades. The scent of yabeh thick in your nose.
You move, sluggish and heavy, on the rough hospital bed, fingers gripping the sheets below.
You still feel the grit of sand against your arm.
Heat in your belly.
(Cachu hwch, indeed.)
Shepherd calls you a day later on the phone in your private room. Your prison. The men outside say you're not allowed to leave. It's dangerous.
"Did good out there, rookie."
"Thanks, Actual," you murmur, hands clenched around the receiver. "Couldn't have done it without your help. Without you."
You want to ask about Graves. About your team.
You remember the rapid Russian spat in your ear. And this one? You bite your tongue, body pickling with unease.
"Rest up, now. My boys will be keeping an eye on you. They'll keep you safe."
You are discharged at the end of October.
Hands pressed against the still-healing scar on your temple. They peeled the bandage off yesterday.
The infection made it worse. It wasn't healing with the sickness you had. You're lucky some local boys found you in the mud when they did. You would have died.
Laswell finds you outside. Hand against her throat, eyes wide.
She looks like she's seen a ghost.
You certainly feel like one.
The ride to your safehouse is punctuated by a game of catch-up. She tells you about the mission they went on, the one you were exempt from.
The phone calls from Soap, Gaz make sense now. Straight to voicemail.
Hey, you skimpin' out on us, yeah? Skippin' duty? Not like you at all. Kinda worried, y'know? Text me somethin'. You know I don't like callin'. Anyway… we're keepin' it together, yeah? But kinda freakin' out. Uhh… anyway—
Not like you to miss one, bonnie. Call me when you can, aye? Want to make sure you're okay.
Price calls nine times. Leaves no voicemail.
A single text from Ghost. Wheels up at 16:00. Expect to see you there.
You didn't get your phone back until today. These were sent at the end of October.
The clock on your screen reads 2nd November.
"No one knew…," you murmur, hands clenched around the metal. "Why didn't Shepherd—"
"Shepherd said you were sent on recon. Said something happened. He didn't tell the others—just me and Price. Didn't want to distract them from the job."
"When did you find out?"
"That you were alive?" Her lips thinned, skin paling. "Yesterday."
"Where are they now?"
"That's confidential."
A scoff. "Sure. Now, off the record…"
"Mexico."
Something doesn't feel right at all. It sits like an anvil in your stomach.
"Laswell…"
"Get some rest," she says, even. Her eyes are glossy when she stares at you. "We'll keep you updated. I'm sure everyone will be relieved to know you're alive."
Your phone rings two days later.
The screen flashes. Lt.
Your hands tremble when you answer it.
"It was Shepherd," he admits.
Your head swims with the admission. Shepherd. Did good out there, rookie. Now, stay good. Stay alert. Keep your eyes out, always. Never know what you might miss.
"Is he–?"
"No," he grouses, the word a sliver short of being a growl. "He's alive. Graves is dead."
It hits you in the sternum—a punch unlike any other you'd received. Air knocked from your lungs, chest throbbing in agony, you sink down into your bed, fingers gripping the sheets until your knuckles bleach white.
This shouldn't have happened.
This is what you do. It's your purpose. It's your job. Your role. You were selected by Shepherd, by Laswell, Price for that, for your ability to gather information, to weed out the moles, the rats. To sniff them out, and puncture holes in their ship until they sank to the bottom, secrets leaking out.
The words roll out of your mouth before you stop them.
"I should have been there."
The tremulous quiver makes you wince. Weakness. You're not weak. You're not—
Ghost won't see it as such, you know this; he doesn't really react to the harsh emotions of others. He carries an unwavering focus, rapt attention to the overarching mission, the end goal; pragmatic, astute on the battlefield, he doesn't flinch.
It's a toss-up if he'll ever respond. If he does, it's usually with a dry, biting dismissal. Sarcasm with him often rides the line of being too sincere, and too flat. It's not just murky, but opaque. He'll say something—equal parts scathing and wise: it's already done, no sense dwelling on what you can't change. Do better next time.
The bite in his words hurt; it was enough to make even the most impassive man irritated by the blunt, almost cruel tinge to his tone.
But it's later when the message will unravel itself. When you're lying alone in your cot, picking over the things he said, and why he said them, and then—
Oh.
Do better next time.
Right.
A soft sound. The rush of air being inhaled through clenched teeth.
Then: "I'm glad you weren't."
Silence. Your heart thunders. I'm glad you weren't.
It could mean a lot of things. A lot of bad things, but:
He thought you were either dead, or missing, or just—gone. You get it:
The last job didn't kill you—the evidence stacks in your head; one conclusion drawn:
It should have. It was meant to.
Your brush with death was a footnote. Nothing at all in the grand scheme of things.
They wanted you dead. They failed.
Soap called you last night, voice tight. You good, bonnie?
Getting there, you joked. Actual had my back. Graves, too. I'm alive because of them.
You choke.
"You alright?"
It's on the tip of your tongue to say yeah. The usual response. Practised. Easy. Distant. But you think of his words, and your ears ring with the deep husk of his voice. He was honest with you. Open. And that's—
Your words are a rush, dipped in vulnerability. "I don't want to be alone right now."
Too much. Too honest.
Too open.
You flinch. Heart thudding in your throat.
Ghost makes you feel like an exposed wire. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Raw.
He says your name—a low, brassy rasp that tickles the back of your neck. It's rare for him to call you by your given name. It's much too intimate. Too—
Well. It's just too much. You want to lean into it, to drape yourself in the rich utterance. Have it whispered into your ear late at night, while he fucks into you the same way he bucked into his hand.
And in the morning when he first wakes. When he rolls over, body folding over your own. Lips against the shell of your ear. A husky rasp; the word dragged over gravel.
You want it, want him, in ways that are unattainable.
Domestic.
You gasp. "I–um. Thanks," you fumble over your words, head roaring with the realisation that there is more than just attraction in the way your heart flutters in your chest; the downy soft wings of a small bird ruffling its fresh plumage. "I'll… talk later."
Your name is barked through the phone when you pull it away. It's cut off before he can finish.
They video call you from some pub.
The sight of them together—Gaz, Soap, Price, Laswell, Ghost—makes you smile.
"Christ, bonnie." Soap's eyes are fixed on the line near your temple. Scabbed. Plum colour. Healing, but not yet there. An inch over, and you'd have been—
You flinch, shrugging. "Could be worse–"
"What happened?" It's a command. You try not to tremble at the bark in Ghost's tone. Perhaps Laswell didn't tell them everything.
His eyes are wide, the whites cresting over the puddles of black. You can't match his stare. You drop, darting to the clock in the corner.
It's Laswell who tells them about the mission with the Shadow Company. Graves. Shepherd.
"...Fuckin', aye." Gaz murmurs. He echoes Ghost's question. "What happened? No one told us anything. We thought— and then Shepherd said you were out for the mission. Not that—that you'd been— "
It falls silent. They don't know about the mission's end aside from Shepherd's lies. Laswell knows. She was the first face you saw in the hospital.
Let's talk…
"We were ambushed," you start, shrugging again. Blasé. Nonchalant. You pretend you can't feel the intensity of Ghost's stare through the screen. "I… they were going to shoot me. I got away. Got a scratch—," a scoff from Soap, a murmur of more than a scratch, aye; you ignore it. "They thought I was dead, so they left me there…"
There is more to it. Graves. The whispers in your head. Them, in your final moments. Agents outside your hospital door. Two inches from death. A day away from rotting.
You swallow it down. It doesn't matter. It happened and now it's over.
"Bonnie…," there is something raw in Soap's voice. It pricks your pericardium.
Left for dead. Abandoned by everyone around you. The ones you trusted the most. Your own team didn't even look. Had no time to mourn, no time to worry.
You know what they must see; the lines they must be drawing. How they, themselves, currently feel, and what they would do if it were them instead of you. It—
It hurts.
"I'd have joined you at the pub," you murmur, voice a shaky worble, before he can say anything else. "But–," you lift your head, eyes downcast. A facsimile of a smile flickers. You wonder if it hits the mark. "Maybe next time."
Price nods in your periphery. "Listen—"
"I'll be ready for Makarov," you interrupt. "I'm… I gotta go, though. Am I — can I be dismissed?"
"...Yeah, yeah you can."
You hang up without another word.
In the silence of your flat—in a land more foreign to you than the Sahara—you break.
Your night dissolves into a series of firsts in quick succession:
A knock on your door. No one knows that you live here. No one but Laswell when she dropped you off. The rheumy-eyed lady with knobby knuckles who mutters at you in warm Welsh. Words you pretend you can't understand.
Shepherd, too, because he needed a location to put down on paper. A place to find you if they couldn't get a hold of you.
You think it might be him—back for vengeance—and you hold your pistol in your hands, back pressed flat against the wall. One hand drops the brass doorknob.
"Who is it?"
A beat.
"It's me." A thick baritone—enough, you think, pulse racing, to rattle the door with his voice alone. "It's Simon."
Simon. Not Ghost—
Right. Off-duty, now. Until you get a lead on Makarov.
Your Lieutenant knocking on your door at—gritty eyes flicker to the stovetop in the kitchen—quarter to five in the evening is another first. Almost paradoxical, really.
Gun shoved into the holster, you turn to face the wood. Through the little window above, covered by a paper-thin curtain, you can see the dark shape of him, unmoving, as he stands on your porch.
There are a number of reasons why he'd be here, but only one makes you yearn.
You pull the door open, and the sight of him makes you dizzy. Hypoxia. Seasickness. Homesick.
He's dressed as casually as Simon is capable of. Black hoodie, wet on the hood from the snow that falls in clumps outside. A black beanie on his head. Skull mask flat against the bridge of his nose. Denim. Black boots.
The coal around his eyes is smudged. A nebula of pale skin through a black oasis.
"What—?"
"Shepherd." Right. He could have called. Got the Intel from Laswell. His words leave no room for argument when he lets out an amalgam of a snarl, a growl; it's ground to dust when he says: "we need to talk."
"Not—," you don't want him to see the emptiness inside. The vacancy. Militaristically barren. Lonely. "Not here…"
Shepherd was here, too. Not him, specifically—maybe. You don't know for certain. But his agents, definitely. Polluting the inside.
It's a flimsy excuse. You hear the threadbare conviction in your tone.
"Shepherd was here," you say, and then wince. "Not now, I mean—"
The words die on your tongue. Ghost— Simon —is smart. Of course he wouldn't think Shepherd was here now. He'd fled. Went into hiding. You shift on your feet.
He can read you like no one else.
(You wonder if anyone at all can read him.)
You flounder. "I don't want…not here…"
"Where do you want to go?"
Somewhere stiflingly hot. "Anywhere."
Simon doesn't press. He never does. His head rolls, tips toward the street. "C'mon, then. Get your stuff."
He reads it on your face, in the things you don't say. It reminds you of Sierra Leone— eat, rookie, you haven't all day; get some sleep, you're dead on your feet; I'll take the first watch— and the memory clots behind your ribs.
"Okay," you murmur.
You feel his gaze on your back when you turn around. The door is left open. He doesn't follow.
There is a chill in the air when you step outside, bundled up in a knit sweater that does little to stem the frigid sea breeze from cutting through the cracks in the threaded cable.
It's a cold night in Porthmadog.
Snow falls in clumps from the indigo-smeared sky, sticking to the cobblestone under your feet.
Simon says nothing as you walk out of the apartment block. He stays close to you, so close you could inch your elbow out and touch him. The heat from his body is a beacon. You're at war with yourself, struggling not to get pulled into his current, and swept out to sea.
Despite the closeness, there is a distance in the way he paces. Eyes roaming under the hood, taking in the lights strewn overhead, lingering on the alcoves where someone might hide.
Having him here feels a little surreal. Porthmadog is off-limits to everyone—it's a place where you come to rot.
His presence shatters the sense that it doesn't really exist outside of those long nights when you stare up at the ceiling, and want. A metaphysical realm that laps at the cracks inside of you, eroding the thick veneer you cobbled together over the years until it withers away, and you have to patch it up when you get called in for another assignment.
Intact soldier. Whole. Nile.
It's a place, now. Real. Tangible.
Seeing Simon—Ghost, Lt—walk beside you down Lombard Street, footfalls echoing through the winding road, makes something churn in your guts. It sits inside, and feels a little like finality.
How could you possibly come back to a place you pretend doesn't exist? A place that is just en-route to wherever else you have to go?
A place you come to because you have nowhere else.
You can't come back here now that the streets are tainted with the nitroglycerin scent of Simon. A bonfire on the beach. The burning logs doused in kerosene. The miasma will suffocate you.
It clots inside of your lungs, sticking to the gummy lining when you breathe him in.
He smells of bourbon. Cigarettes. Carries the scent of everyone else with him—Gaz's cologne: thick vetiver; the sickly sweet tang of Price's cigars; thick metallic: ozone and gasoline that Soap wears after a mission—and you greedily take it in.
You let it sit, red-hot barbed wire, against your chest.
Your eyes slip. Illegal. Wrong. They find him, always. Bathed in the streetlight above; flushed yellow. It casts shadows on him, and makes his eyes look lighter.
A peaking shoal in the middle of the midnight blue ocean.
He's dangerous. Makes your fingers prickle with want; with the urge to touch.
Makes you greedy.
Stupid.
Despite not knowing the area, Simon cuts through the supine street like he's familiar with it already. Maybe, he is. He must have looked at the map on his phone before he got here, eyes locked on the space, the landscape. Mentally cataloguing each hiding spot.
You follow him—a stranger in your own home—and cross your arms over your chest when the thick chatter carries from inside the shops along the street. Heavy Welsh. Warm milk and honey.
Salt in your wounds.
You don't belong here.
The familiar green of the carpet and flooring shop nearly makes you trip, but you steady yourself. Ball your hands into fists by your side, and drop your gaze to the cracked ground below.
You can feel the moment his gaze shifts, sliding over to you. It bores into your temple; abrasive, and grating.
Goosebumps erupt over your flesh. You blame it all on the cold—the stutter in your chest, the ache in your lungs, the shiver dancing down your spine. The frigid weather. The icy breeze.
Another shiver rolls through you, different this time, when you catch sight of the park.
Your chin hits the pavement. Palms sliding through jagged gravel. Knees splitting.
Your blood puddles on the grey rocks.
They crack you open. Nothing spills from the gaping hole.
"You with me?"
You blink. The reverie shakes, shudders. The little girl with her chin on the ground warbles.
Simon stands there, his back to the streetlights. His presence makes the image distort, and bend to fit him inside. It doesn't belong.
"What's a'matter with you?"
You flinch at his voice, and peer up at him from under clumpy, wet lashes, heavy with melting snow.
The words are harsh, but his tone is—
He steps forward, a few paces ahead. You didn't realise you stopped.
He doesn't come to a halt until there is barely an arm's length of space between you, and seeing him this close to you, his face concealed, blank and empty, has that strange feeling pooling in the pit of your stomach again.
His lashes are blond. It surprises you. You'd always imagined he had black hair. Black hair, black eyes.
It's blonde.
You don't know why it matters, why you can't stop staring at the soft wisps around his lids. They flutter shut, fanning across the smudged ink skin under his eyes. The tips are blond. The bottoms are ash. They're nice, you note, a flavour of that same something blistering through you.
His lids slide open, the corner tightening as his gaze sharpens, focusing on you. "Y'alright?" He asks again, waiting for an answer.
You swallow, and it tastes of sand. Gritty, and painful when it slips down your throat. Your voice is a rasp, a shiver above a whisper, when you say, "yeah. "
His eyes tighten again, deeper this time. Something flashes in those polychrome depths. Under the hat, his brow pulls taut together.
The indent makes your fingers itch, the urge to reach out, to soothe it, is nearly overwhelming.
"You lyin' to me?" He grumbles, an edge to his voice you can't place.
"No," you mutter, the words dragged out of you by force. "Just a —a headache."
He has a look in his eyes that makes you think he knows, somehow. That he can chisel inside your head, and rummage through all the secrets you try to keep.
Your neck aches from having to tip your chin back so much to even look at him, the 90-degree angle making you feel dizzy. The opposite of vertigo where you sometimes look up at the unending sky yawning overhead and feel that tendril of fear curling around you, admixing the awe, until you feel the urge to dig your fingers into the ground, and hold on. You can't fall up, but in those moments, it almost feels like you might.
Ghost gives you that same feeling.
His chin dips low, eyes lidded and heavy. You could almost mistake it for bland disinterest had his jaws not been working, gnashing together in a wordless tick. He says nothing. You watch the bones move. The fabric teeth snap.
All his focus is centred on the blood-red gash near your temple. The black sutures keeping the split skin together.
Ghost makes a sound, and you almost mistake it for a growl. Inhumane. Animal. It's pulled from his throat, but bitten off by his teeth before it can take shape.
You blink up at him, wide and owlish, when he reaches for you.
His hand is warm even through the glove. The rough fabric grazes your skin when he brushes your hair away with his knuckle. His eyes are fixed on your forehead, hardened, all militaristic concentration as he looks you over.
"It's—it's fine…"
"It ain't."
Gritty sandpaper. Harsh, abrading.
It's hushed, though.
Speaking above a whisper feels taboo. This whole thing does, honestly. Illicit, wrong. Ghost shouldn't be lasering his glare on your forehead, searching for a reason to do something about the anger that now brims in those dark depths. His knuckles on your skin feel sacrilegious. Touching you is exempt. Illegal. Off-limits.
But he does it, anyway. Strips the barriers pitched in front of you both like tissue paper, and holds his four knuckles to your temple, his thumb brushing a hair beneath the irritated skin. Gentle. Soft.
You didn't think these hands knew how to do something so delicate. That they were made, instead, to break. To crush. To ruin.
He might, yet: the pad of his finger feels like a brand when it ghosts over the soft curve of your forehead, soothing the phantom hurt, and you think you might just shatter if he doesn't stop touching you like this. Gingerly. Calming. A balm over your aching flesh.
You'd gotten so used to the pain, the constant throb in your head, that this respite from it feels like bliss. Nirvana wrapped in leather.
His touch is magnetic. It pulls a sound from deep within your chest, something desperate and wanting, and you can't snap your jaws shut quick enough before it's loose in the atmosphere, and cresting over him.
Ghost's gentle prods go still. With his thumb pressed into a place that makes liquid heat spume in your vein, you can feel it tremble when your tongue snakes out, gliding over your lower lip.
Your head swims. Phosphenes dance across the back of your lids, and you struggle to remember when you shut your eyes in the first place.
They flutter open.
His stare is fixed on your lips in a total eclipse, honed in on the slow roll of your blood-red tongue as it peeks out from the warm cavern of your mouth. The wet trail left behind is swallowed by his gaze. It flickers up, catching the bloom of heat under your cheeks. The darkened flush makes him rumble; the soft rattle of an engine purring. A frisson passes over his expression, lashes fluttering.
He's close. Closer than he was before. You can feel the molten heat bleeding into your skin with his proximity. Taste the gunpowder, the ash, and the ichor that clings to him; he smells of war when you breathe him in. Gasoline. Copper. A livewire scent that makes your lungs itch.
Dangerous. Powerful. Deadly.
Every synapse in your head misfires, sending off warning signs and sirens to run from the man that reeks of gun oil, and fire; napalm-scented demise with blood-soaked hands meant to ruin. But it only makes you lean in closer until the acrid burn of him corrodes your throat.
His body is warm, and the heat is stifling.
You're drunk off the fumes he exudes; reckless and wanting, and in the slurried molasses of your mind, you wonder if this is what it feels like for a gazelle to stand so close to a lion.
Something cold pools at the base of your spine, making you shiver. A warning—distant, ancient—but the calls of your ancestors are dimmed under the bulk of his shadow. The heavy iron in his gaze rests over you, and you imagine that his body pressed into yours would carry the same heft.
He's somehow bigger up close, you think. Wide shoulders, thick arms, a broad chest and waist; muscular thighs, firm calves.
He's not Adonis, but you imagine he feels just like marble all the same.
"Thought we lost you." His voice is a crackle; sap popping as it burns in the fire. The log charring in the kindling. "Thought we— fuck, pet. Thought you were gone, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it."
We. He says we, now. It's new. You shudder in his hold.
"I'm here," you whisper the words, afraid of breaking this strange spell between you. It feels like everything else around you has melted away until only you and he exists on this lonely street that makes you ache.
"You are…" he rasps; a low hush. Maybe he, too, is afraid of shattering it. "You did good, soldier."
His knuckles graze the mark in your temple, gentle around the tight, irritated flesh—it's proof that you lived, that despite the tragedy of the betrayal from the man you counted on the most, you survived. You made it. You won.
His touch is featherlight. But his eyes–
His eyes are heavy with the promise of nothing but ruin.
A million thoughts run through your head, ones that taste like kerosene, and cauterise inside you like a cigarette to your skin. The heat blooms again, but it's not enough—all you can think of is how you wished you had more of him.
(You wonder if you run your tongue along his skin, kiss that acrid mouth, if he'd taste of napalm.)
Chiselled open, exposed to the air. Ghost takes a deep breath, holding the fumes of your burning need in his lungs. When he exhales, you can taste the smoke in the air.
His hand drops, fingers sliding down the curve of your face until he meets the plush softness where your chin and cheek meet. The hand he keeps on you is firm.
His eyes bore into yours. He wants your attention. Demands it. Then, he holds it steady until your mouth drops in a series of short, gasping breaths.
Your voice is featherlight when you say his name. His real one. Simon. It simmers in the air between you, and the scent of it almost makes his eyes snap shut, shoulders coiling. Tensed. Wanting. His muscles flex, bunching together in tight knots. Clench. Release. Clench.
It's only when you hear his haggard breath through the nylon, do you realise he's holding himself back from you.
Your belly flutters at the rumble roiling out of his throat.
Another command falls, deeper, darker, and your spine nearly snaps with how quickly you straighten up when he utters two words.
"Later, pet."
It's a promise. A demand. An out.
His mind made up, decisive and sure, he's now shoving the choice in your hands. Leaving the decision with you for safekeeping.
Like before, there is only ever one choice. As if you had any other answer for him.
When you nod, firm and eager, his chest shudders. "Fuckin' Christ–" it's a snarl, full of tension. Excitement.
His hand slides away from your face, and presses into the base of your spine, settling heavily over the curve of your ass. There is pressure, an urgency.
"C'mon," he rasps, jerking his chin to the end of the park. "Parked over here."
He keeps his hand on you, heavy and hot. A possessive branding as he leads you away from this place.
When you pass, your eyes drop to the pavement.
The gravel is clean. Your blood is nowhere to be found.
Your muscles go lax. You get pulled into his current, shoulder brushing over his chest.
Simon tightens his hold, and pulls you closer.
(Dragging you out to open water until you can't see the shoreline anymore.)
He leads you to a black jeep with tinted windows, and grounds out that it's rental when you press the heel of your palm into your mouth, futilely trying to hide a smile.
"It's nice," you quip, light and airy. "Very you."
"Just get your ass inside already," he says, pulling the door open for you. "Got a drive ahead of us."
His hand settles on your waist when you step up on the first rung, heavy. Firm. You want to lean into him. Have him pressed up against you like this for an eternity.
"Where are we going?" You breathe, shivering from the molten look in his eye. The heat in his chest.
He tugs you back into him, chin grazing the space between your neck and shoulder. His voice is white-hot in your ear. "My safe house."
Your eyes flutter. Heat blooms. "Simon—" his name is a whimper on your lips.
His fingers dig into your hips. "Fuckin' hell, pretty thing. You keep saying my name like that, and we won't make it to Southport."
There is no lie in the words that are forced out of his throat; inhumane, a growl. You don't want him here —in this town where you moulder.
Your fingers trail over his wrist. The coarse hair on his arms tickles your skin.
"Get me out of here."
His eyes sharpen. "Gladly."
Two hours and a half hours from Porthmadog to Southport.
A lot of time for him to reconsider. For that coldness he wears like a shield, that unbreakable distance, to pitch itself in front of him once more, locking you out. Perhaps, it'll be for good. Maybe—
Your hands ball into fists. Knuckles dig into the plush seat.
You know what you want. Know what you've wanted since before you stupidly opened your mouth— keeping my seat warm— and he saw it through.
But what about him? There was no time on the jet for a grand discussion, not when everyone was on top of each other already; not when Soap kept glancing at you, brow drawn tight, as if to ask really, bonnie?
Memories of Sierra Leone have you in a chokehold. Your purgatory, your limbo, your afterlife; when you were dying, it was all of him. Of the desert. Of the town that felt so warm, so inviting. The people baulked at his size but still ushered you over, offering snacks, and treats.
So tiny beside him, a woman laughs. You need to eat more. Your man should make you fat and happy.
You blushed. He's not—
Yes, yes… A wink. A coy grin. He watches from the dirt path as she presses bundled cassava into your hands. He says nothing at all. Your man. You like the sound of it more than you should.
You know what you want. What you've wanted.
It puddles inside of you. Droplets leaking through the fissures that have been splintering for years, now.
A man stands in front of you. Promise me, you'll get him.
You: young, naïve, nodded. I promise.
Ghost pulled you aside. He yells—quite often, in fact—but he's ice cold when he says, we don't make promises, rookie. Deadly. Your heart is in your throat when you apologise.
And then the scent of fire. A mission in Mesaieed left you and Gaz trapped. Helpless. Smoke clogging your lungs. Gaz wheezing under the intense blase; the noxious fumes billowing from the smoulder.
His voice in your ear. We'll get you out of there, rookie. Hang tight.
That a promise? You gasp, gagging from the black cloud drenching your lungs. Close to death, and cracking jokes. Confident. Assured. Nile crocodile lurking below the surface.
He isn't there to see your hands shake. You're thankful for it. Stupid, stupid—you want nothing more to impress your Lieutenant. Match him wit-for-wit. Vile joke for vile joke.
It surprises you when his voice filters through the line, one word slurred into your ear: yes.
Are you a man who keeps his promises?
Always. That's why I never make them. Close to a fiery death, and his voice crackles again. Why wasn't Jesus born in Liverpool?
Gaz coughed. Fuck's sake… Lemme die in peace.
Why, Lt?
There are no wise men or virgins.
Funny. I like that one.
Knew you would. Cover your heads.
The window above shattered. They saved you—just like they said they would.
(You realised then that Ghost cared for you, for all his subordinates, more than he let on.)
And now—
There is no turning back. Later, he said. He promised. A man who keeps his promises.
You think, then, of the look on his face under the streetlamp. Snowfall trickles between you. There was a battle in his head; artillery fire in the gaps of his eyes when he said:
"Thought we—fuck, pet. Thought you were gone, and we couldn't do a damn thing about it."
The words get lodged in his throat. They're ripped out with a harshness that bludgeons through you.
You turn to him, taking in his profile as he leans back in the seat, looking out the windshield.
As if he feels your stare, his eyes cut from the window, and find yours. He holds it until you taste smoke in your throat, until your lip trembles. Then it sinks low to your lap. One hand peels off of the steering wheel.
It feels like an anvil when it rests on your thigh.
"Almost there," it's a strangled rasp. A promise.
You nod. Your smile feels flushed when it pulls on your lips. Sunkissed. Warm. Expectant.
Your hand unfurls, fingers aching from the strain of your grip, and you curl them over his wrist. His pulse thuds under your thumb. You stroke it, and wonder what he would say if he knew yours beat the same.
The safehouse in Southport is not at all what you were expecting.
The winding road he drives on leads to a small, modest cabin on the outskirts of the town. Perched away from the rest of civilisation, it sits on its own island. Cut-off from the mainland.
The distance is something that makes a smile pull on your lips. So fittingly him —your lone wolf leader who only just learned the word we —but the sight of the house makes something gnarl inside of your chest. It's quaint.
Somehow, you'd expected a flat in the heart of the city. London, perhaps. Somewhere close to the airport, to the UK base used when you needed the closest weapons cache or jet.
The little abode in the middle of a farm doesn't mesh with the image you'd drawn of your prickly Lieutenant. It's too—
Wholesome.
"It's temporary," he grouses when he catches your teeth sink into your palm, a wide grin splitting across your face. "I haven't been back here in a long time."
"Is it yours?" You ask, turning to him. The jeep hums, idling. Neither of you makes any move to get out.
His fingers drum on the wheel. "Grew up here."
"I thought you were from East London."
"No. Moved there, then back here." He offers.
You nod. You get it.
"It's nice." You say instead, and it really is. A sprawling farmland with rolling hills in the distance where you know the sun hits in the morning. Where it'll bathe the boscage in ochre. "Peaceful."
"I'd have taken you to London," he grinds the words out from between his molars. "But it's too far."
Too far. Roughly four hours.
You've been sitting for nearly three. You shudder, eyes lidded when you turn to him.
A slow roll of your tongue has his arms flexing, hands gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles are stained white. Bleached.
"Maybe next time."
A promise. A question.
The vein in his forearm throbs. "C'mon, let's go."
You barely have enough time to pace a few feet into the foyer before it starts. You turn to look at him from over your shoulder—taking in the chimney, the chaise, the distinct lack of anything personal outside of a safe, a lighter on top of the fireplace—and he's suddenly there. Boots off. Hands curled into fists by his side. Head dipped down, and eyes more dangerous than you'd ever seen them.
That thrill pools—a warning. Run, run.
He stalks toward you, eyes burning coal. "Are you hungry?"
"No," you shake your head, swallowing thickly.
A step back. A step forward. They spark when you run.
"Thirsty?"
"N—no…"
Two steps bring him closer to you. Your back presses flush to the wall next to the fireplace, and he moulds over you like a liquid shadow. Dark, imposing. He's massive. You can't see anything but him.
Simon rests his forearm against the wall over your head, bending it at the elbow to bring him closer to you. The rough graze of his mask over your cheek has you panting.
His hand is a brand on your thigh. It slips down, fingers crooking in the fold of your knee, wrenching it up his hip. You gasp, hands grasping the bulk of his biceps when he drags your centre flush over the growing bulge in his pants.
Your head swims when he growls in your ear. "Is there anything you need to do before I drag you to my bed?" You shake your head slightly, pulse humming in your chest. "Because once I'm inside this pretty cunt, nothing at all will get me out. Understood?"
Your brain short circuits. A complete whiteout.
"A—affirmative." You choke, somehow coherent despite the absolute mess in your head. "Sir."
He rumbles. His chest pushes into yours; the sound reverberating through your bones. "Good girl."
He turned his back to you after he let you inside a modest bedroom, pulling the black sweater over his head. His back exposed—rippling muscles, etches of black from the tattoos—all pale skin wrapped in thick sinew. The sound you make has his shoulders coiling tight.
"Fuck, pet… I haven't even touched you, yet."
He turns, the mask slightly lopsided, and his beanie missing. His hair without the full balaclava sends a shock to your system. The newness of discovering something; elation bleeds in. His hair is ashen brown. Lighter than chocolate, darker than caramel.
You want to sink your fingers into the thick of it.
Thighs pressed tight together, your greedy eyes take him in. The way his hair—moussed from the hat—falls over his forehead; not cropped to the grain like Soap, and barely centimetres longer than Price.
He gazes at you. Waiting, maybe.
Your hands fall to your pants, eager to rid yourself of every barrier between your skin and his. You want him on you— in you. It itches like a sickness. Burns like a fever.
Your trousers fall. Fingers looped into the hem of your panties. He stops you, then, with his words.
"I took the mask off for the team."
You falter, bent down to push the panties the rest of the way off, and blink up at him.
The first thought, of course, is that Gaz saw his face before you. Gaz. The rookie rivalry (playful, carrying the flavour of siblings vying for their approval) makes you burn.
You swallow the jealousy on your tongue. "Oh…"
He waits, still.
"You don't have to…" you want to see him. He's a mosaic; an incomplete piece. You have two halves but the middle is murky. You try to fit them in your head, but the image doesn't line up.
"Lay back," he ordered, hands dropping to his belt buckle.
The image of him tugging the leather, veins rippling under the black ink of his burly forearms, feels unholy. It douses you with a want so palpable, your belly quivers with need.
You don't need foreplay, you think. Not when the sight of him pulling off a belt already has you melting. Has your pussy throbbing, your thighs slick.
"Damn, Lieutenant…" you mewl, dropping down on the bed, knees pressed taut together to stem the ache. "How are you so—"
"Simon," he rasps. The belt hangs in his hands. You wonder if he'd tie you up one day with it. Leave you quivering below him, completely at his mercy.
Or, would he let you use it on him? Let you bind this behemoth to the bed for your pleasure.
Your toes curl. The thoughts alone are enough to get you off, you think.
But it's the sight of him, then, standing over you, trousers hanging low on his hips, kept in place only by the thick thigh he slots between your knees, that really makes you shudder.
"Lay back," he orders again, hand dropping—white-hot, rough—to your shaking knee. His chin lowers, eyes staring at your pussy. "I want to taste you again, pet."
Fuck. Fuck —
He lowers to his knees, still somehow taller than you, and gazes at you between your bent legs. Dark eyes flashing. Goosebumps prickle along your flesh as he trails his gaze down the length of your body, settling, once again, on your cunt.
He looks as if he's going to devour you. Eyes wide, whites full, when he pries your legs apart, spreading your cunt for him once more. He hadn't seen you bare like this—beneath him for his own pleasure—and you feel the ghost of his breath on your sex when he leans in close, breathing in deeply.
"Bloody- fuckin' -hell, pet—" it sounds like a curse when he says it. A choked snarl. "So wet for me, and I haven't even touched you."
His hands are on the outside of your thighs, rough skin grazing the sensitive flesh as he trails them down to the soft flesh beneath your knee. With his thumbs hooked in the bend, pressing sharply into the cartilage, he wrenches them apart, opening you wider for him until your pussy is bared to him completely.
The groan he makes edges on the equinox of being absolutely filthy and wrecked when he drinks you in.
"Missed this pretty little cunt." His masked cheek rests on your knee, head cocked as he stares down at you. When he tips his chin, gazing at you, his eyes are blacker than midnight. A pool of ink. Desire brims.
He hooks your thighs over his broad shoulders, finger looping in the gap between his mask and the skin beside his nose.
You don't have a chance to see it. Fucking tease —
He dips his head before he tugs it down, and you feel the molten heat of his tongue slipping between your folds.
Your head falls back on the pillow, toes curling as that greedy mouth devours you once more. The stubble around his chin prickles the skin of your thighs. His grip is so tight, you already see blooms of blue pooling beneath the tips of his fingers.
The first time wasn't a flute. Simon presses his mouth to your cunt like he can't get enough; lips sealing over your throbbing clit, tongue lapping at you in even, thick strokes that make you see white behind your eyelids. It's good, so good —
He's going to ruin you.
"Simon—"
You remember those filthy groans rumbling against your slit, and your hand lifts, reaching down to tangle in his locks. A tug—sharp, pointed—makes him pant into your pussy, makes his fingers tighten until you can feel capillaries bursting under his firm hold. Until his short nails make indents in your flesh.
"Yeah, pet," his voice is molten rock; you throb, aching, from the sound alone. "Just like that…"
His mouth is on you again, devouring you whole.
You lift your head, staring down at the black eyes that bore into you, the thick locks of hair spilling out between your fingers, and you break.
You fall back with a groan, arching your cunt into his eager mouth, desperate for more. More of that liquid bliss that spools in your core, that has you leaking a puddle under his chin.
His hands shift, sliding down the meat of your thighs until they wriggle under your ass. Your flesh spills between his fingers when he grips you tight, lifting your hips, your cunt, to him.
Simon helps you buck against him, lets you cant your hips into his face, nearly smothering him with the sopping heat of your centre. When you're mewling, panting, with your head tossed back, and rapture in a quiver of his name spilling from your lips, he shifts.
His hold changes, and one hand falls back. His lips seal around your aching clit as a finger—long, thick—presses against your entrance. His tongue laves over you when he slowly presses it inside, crooking it to stroke against your fluttering walls.
The choked sob that leaves your throat is a mangled wreck of pleasure, of want.
"More," you mewl, but the plea barely has a chance to pass your lips before he's dragging his finger out until only the tip keeps you open. "Please, sir—"
He thrusts it into the last knuckle, groaning against you at the slick, wet sound that it makes. "Fuck, pet. Always so wet for me, aren't you?"
"Always," you gasp, fingers gripping his hair tight. "Simon, I need more—"
He pulls his finger out; another joins it when you whimper. The stretch feels good. Heat blooms in your belly. You won't last long. Your thighs quiver with each roll of his fingers pushing in as deep as they will go; with each stroke of his tongue over your clit.
You're going to cum—
"Simon—"
The coil snaps, pussy clenching on the thick fingers wedged inside of you, hips canting into his eager mouth as he rides you through the spasming pleasuring that ripples through your abdomen.
"That's it… that's a good girl," he slurs against you.
It's almost too much when he forces another finger into your throbbing cunt. You keen at the stretch, at the too-full feeling of him splitting your walls.
"Simon, I can't—"
"Yes, you can. You're taking me so well already."
His voice is liquid sex; the wrecked sound of him makes your toes curl, and your spine arch. You want him inside of you. You want to know if he'd make those same grunts of pleasure with your pussy wrapped around him.
High of the sudden burst of endorphins, you look down at him—sloppy with your wetness, his face hidden by your cunt—and you tug his hair until he meets your blown-out gaze.
"Fuck me," you try to demand, but the word comes out as a shaky plea.
"Too tight, pet," he rumbles. "Gotta get you ready for me."
Three fingers buried to the last knuckle, and he says it still isn't enough.
You'd think him cocky had you not the pleasure of seeing him hard and aching already. Big, fat cock leaking between the seal of his palm. You shiver, head dropping to the pillow.
It's all you can do but take whatever he gives you—long, thick fingers stretching you out, brushing the gummy walls inside that flutter when his mouth seals over your clit. It feels like an eternity since he pulled you inside the room.
A tug of your hand makes him groan. You meet his stare, pleading. Breathless. It's too much—
And not enough.
"I don't care," you slur, drunk and stupid on the way his hot mouth glues to your cunt. "I wanna feel you inside of me for days, sir—"
"Fuck!"
It's a harsh snarl that makes you whimper. The sound ripped from his chest, and rubbed raw as it was scraped out. His forehead is pressed to your mound, breathing you in once more.
His head lifts.
It's dark in the room. You can't really make out the entirety of his features—the familiar long nose, the cut of his jaw. His lips. It's bathed in black, in shadows, but through the glimmer of the washed-out moon that spills inside, you can see the distinct wetness gleaming on his mouth, his chin.
You whimper, eyes burning with tears of desperation. When he speaks, it's shredded rocks. Gravel. Low and dark.
"You're gonna feel me for weeks, pet."
It's a dangerous precipice. His voice alone shatters your resolve, and seeing those full, pink lips form the words that will ruin you, it's overwhelming. Your cunt throbs, walls shuddering in pleasure ripped through your being.
He feels it against his fingers; it makes his eyes flutter. His tongue sweeps out. Eye hooded, half-mast as they take you in.
He sits back, hands slipping to the crease of your knees. His chin dips.
"Hold 'em open for me, pet."
You gasp, belly knotting tight from the command that drips from his drenched, wicked, mouth. Your hand reluctantly falls from the soft locks to do as you're told. The warmth of his skin brushes over your fingers when you take his place, keeping your legs bent, spread, for him. You're on display. Open, wanting.
His hand, now free, reaches for the bundle of fabric pooled at the base of his neck. The mask is fixed into place again—a needless action, you think, pouting. Gaz saw his face in better lighting.
(You hope he had the wherewithal to take a picture for you.)
But there is something to be said about how illicit he looks, mouth now concealed from your view until just his eyes are visible. The coal is rubbed off, shadows along the crease, the corner of his nose, under his eyes, but it feels dangerous like this.
With the mask on, he's Ghost. Deadly. Dangerous. Fearsome. Men cower from him. His name alone scorches the earth, and makes the underbelly tremble.
And he's going to be inside of you. Claiming you, taking you. It's a cigarette thrown on a sea of gasoline. Your skin, fervid, begins to blister.
When you look up, it's ink-blot eyes in a sea of white. Red tendrils in the corners; rivers of ichor.
If he keeps looking at you like that, like you're a feast for him, you might go a little crazy, a little delirious.
Simon stares for a moment longer, hand dipping below the bed to grasp himself in his hand. A grunt at the touch, a flutter of his lashes, and then he moves. Coiled muscle; rippling flesh. He looms above you like a Cimmerian god—drenched in tenebrose, mask soaked from your slick—his haunting eyes gazing at you like you're an offering meant to be savoured.
His thighs—thicker than the tree trunks in the distance—slot beneath yours, and the sheer width of them makes you dizzy. The bulk is bigger than your head. Simon must notice the way you're drooling over them, knuckles white as you stare, open and hungry, wanting, as he takes a small amount of mercy on you. He shifts until the bulk of it is pressed taut to your core.
Your back arches, legs trembling. Fuck—
You want to ride his thighs. Want him to perch you on his massive lap, and have those molten eyes fixed on you as you use him to get yourself off.
You could do it, you think, mind blanking out; that soporific pleasure slurring all logic from taking root until a gossamer spools inside, filled with want. With greed.
"Wanna ride you…" you slur, wrecked on the notion alone. "Your thighs. They're so big, Simon, fuck— you're so big—"
"I like that idea, pet," he rasps, thigh notching closer to your throbbing cunt, smearing slick all over the coarse hair that covers his flesh. "Wanna see you desperate for it."
"I am…" you whine, breathless. "I want you so bad, I can't stand it…"
His hands fall, bracketing his burly arms beside your head until the absurd heft of him fills your vision. The muscles in his core pull taut; veins in his arms pulse.
He told you to keep your legs spread, but your fingers itch with the need to touch him. To feel him against your palm.
His cock hangs, daunting and thick, between his legs, head brushing your belly. Prespend smears over your skin; warm, tacky. You want a taste—
When you tell him as much, chin tipped backwards to whisper the words into his neck, he shudders above you. His cock twitches, spits more prespend on you. You want him to cum on your face, you gasp, words liquid, slurred. You're not entirely sure they're in English. You don't think you have the capacity to think beyond want, want, want—
"Yeah?" He rasps, elbow bending as he drops to his forearm. It brings his chest flush to yours. The dark smattering of hair rubs against your nipples. His face is a constellation: white jowls, black eyes. The look alone makes you smoulder. "Don't worry about me, pet."
You're shaking your head, but the protests die on your tongue when his hips slip between your thighs, prying you further apart. Completely spread beneath the bulk of his body, you crumble.
He knocks your hands away, a low murmur of his approval slipping past those sinful lips for listening to him, as if there was ever a choice, and he notches your knees against his hips, pressing himself closer to your core.
Finally free, your hands spring down to grab him, gripping his bicep in a vice just to feel the way it jumps under your fingers, and the other flat against his heated chest. His pulse thunders against your palm.
"Gonna give it to you, now."
You wanted it— ached for it—but as he feeds his thick cock into your pussy, you wonder if maybe you'd been a little overconfident before. That, perhaps, he was right.
It's swallowed down, smothered with a whimper. His stupidly fat cock will not break you.
"That's it, pet," he slurs, mask pressed tight to your ear. "Take it… C'mon, now."
He pulls back, widening your thighs, and then pushing them up until you're nearly folding in half beneath him. The movement jostles his cock, and it nudges something inside of you that makes you spasm around him.
"Fuckin' hell…" he groans, sinking in deeper. His eyes are fixed on the spot where he stretches you taut. Skin raw; cunt pushed to the mettle. "Almost there… look'it your pretty cunt take my cock…"
The air is punched from your lungs when he pushes in deeper, when the blunt head batters up behind your belly button. He knocks against your cervix, and the deep ache has tears leaking from the corners of your eyes.
"Go on, pretty thing," he husks in your ear, words drenched in pleasure. Your fingers dig into the bulk of his body, crescent moons embedded into his skin.
He bludgeons into something inside of you that has you see stars—galaxies burst behind your eyelids, and heat, supernova hot, burns low in your belly. It burns at the place where his cocks ruts into you so deeply that you can feel him in your sternum, almost taste him in your throat. It liquefies your body. You melt into a conduit under him; a receptacle that leaches pleasure from the stretch of his cock inside you.
Your body slackens. There is a give; something breaks. And he's suddenly deeper than you knew existed, than you ever thought possible. You feel him almost knocking against the cap of your womb. Each persistent jerk has your pussy clenching around him, milking him, trying to get him deeper.
As if that was possible. As if there was any room left inside of you for him to claim.
You're stuffed to the brim; overflowing with him. You can't take anymore.
You sob brokenly when his hips pull back until only the mushroom head of his cock splits your aching, raw cunt open. The seam of you flutters around him, as if begging to be filled again.
He grunts, a hoarse, low noise dredged from the depths of his chest when he shifts, his cock spearing back into you.
It nearly makes you scream. Your nails rake over his flesh, desperate to find purchase amid a crumbly chossy that threatens to send you plummeting down a precipice, hurtling you toward an unknown abyss.
"Easy, now," he commands, the bark of his voice bitten between clenched teeth. "You're gonna make me cum before I've gotten my fill of this cunt, pet."
"Want it," you slur, babbling on the liquid bliss roaring through your veins. "Want you to fill me up, Simon."
A snarl of your name is the only warning you get before his cock is battering against your gummy walls, blunt head jarring into that little place inside of you that has phosphenes filling your vision, has your lungs aching with hypoxia. Head dizzy, chest shuddering with each breath. You can't get enough of it. Of the heady scent of him, the sun-drenched heat.
Simon is normally so controlled, constrained, and you find yourself fracturing into pieces as his ironclad resolve seems to shatter with each squeeze of your cunt. It's a dizzying feeling to reduce your cold-hearted Lieutenant into a rutting beast, spoiling himself with each tight clench of your soft insides against his thick, hard cock.
Your eyes open, wet lashes flutter and stick to the crease of your eyelid, and you find the way his brow is pinched tight together as he burrows himself deep within you, until the taste of salt is heavy on your tongue, absolutely breathtaking. It's enough to get you hooked. Enough to make such an utter mess of you, that you don't know how you'll recover from this.
It's an intense feeling having him seated so deeply within you. Edging deliriously along that equinox of unfathomable bliss, and the sharp, distinct too much—too full quiver of pain. It's a pinch within your guts, a deep throb that follows the unending plume of pleasure so blistering as it batters into you, that you almost find yourself getting swept away by the sheer thrill of it all. Mindless, driven stupid by the way he takes, the way he ruins.
(You don't ever want him to stop.)
It's one thing to have his mouth on you, but another thing entirely to see how he breaks when he's inside of you. It's addicting. A powerful high that renders everything else static.
Pleasure, red-hot and dizzily intense, lacerates through your core, spooling at the base of your spine. It fills your limbs with molten bliss until nothing remains except the way he pounds inside of you, filling you over and over again with every inch he has to offer. You think you might just go insane if you don't have him. If you don't get to feel the delicious drag of his cockhead rubbing against your pulsating walls.
Your hands slide over his skin. The muscles clenching under the pads of your fingers as you drag them up, over his arm, his biceps, his broad shoulders.
The bulk of his back makes your fingers itch. You sink them into the corded muscles, clinging to him as Simon drags you to that hazy place where euphoria clots inside of your veins, and the heat you syphoned from him bubbles, frothing over.
It's pulled taut—an elastic band that stretches well past the breaking point, and makes your fingers sting when it snaps. You convulse beneath him, sobbing out barely coherent words that sound like a quivering war cry of his name, of how good he feels, and how you're mad with the taste of him nestled so deeply within you.
Your nails digging into his skin, his name on your lips like a gospel, the molten clench of you around—it all congeals together until he's snarling in your ear, a raspy grunt that makes your toes curl, that has you seeing nirvana once more. It's your name—somewhere in the mess of his growl, his groan—that is pulled out from him, and pierces you deep, makes your core tremble at the ragged sound of it, broken and hoarse.
He throbs like a heartbeat, cock pulsing as he sputters out a thick pool of cum. It's almost too much; your pussy is overstuffed, forced to take both the heaviness of his cock, and molten spume that fills you to the brim. It leaks out from around the plug of him, pushed to the base until not even an inch remains, and you feel it gathering under you.
You want a taste of it. It swells inside, fills you deep, and you wonder if he'd let you lick it off of him.
You murmur it into his drenched chest, more slurred words that only vaguely sound English. Maybe it's the tone of your voice—ruined and raw, and drunk of the taste of him—that punctures through, but it hits the mark. Simon buries his head into your neck with another gravelled rasp of your name that sticks to his throat, breaking over the vowels. His softening cock twitches within you.
Words, or sentiment, whispered into the crackling atmosphere that smells of sex and kerosene, and goes straight to his groin.
"Cheeky little—," he starts, a husking grumble, but you squeeze your sore, aching sex around him, fluttering like a soft heartbeat, and it dies with a groan.
The victory doesn't last long. Your raw, abused cunt aches from overstimulation, a throbbing sting from your tender flesh making you wince. You're too keyed up. A ragdoll against the shoreline, caught in the current that batters your body until you feel like one massive contusion.
Fucking Simon feels like surviving a war. It feels like clawing your way out of the trenches, tasting the heavy, gunmetal tang of acrid artillery fire in the air, and standing victorious. Brutalised, dazed, and numb from the beating, but full of the banquet of victory.
He keeps you under him, still buried to the hilt, and pants into your neck. Flushed with exertion, his chest red and drenched in sweat, you slip your hands through the mess of him, and find purchase where the knob of his spine protrudes from his flesh.
Simon's head rises. His eyes—quivering, glossy ink—lidded and sleepy with pleasure, and that tangible post-sex haze that permeates the air, find yours.
Sweat drips down his forehead, over his brow, his temple. It's swallowed by the fabric of his mask, lopsided on his cheeks. Red peaks over the black horizon. A deep flush the same bloodied hue as his chest.
(You wonder if it tastes like ichor.)
His eyes shudder, body trembling from the ripple of it.
"Fuck me, pet…"
You tip your heavy, mushy head back, and grin. Big, and wide. The smile of elation. Of success. "I already did."
He huffs, heavy and full, through his nose. "Bloody hell—" in response to your tease, he grinds his cock against your aching walls.
Your breath is sucked in through clenched teeth; a breathy, high-pitched whimper.
"Mae hi wedi cachi arna i…"
"English, pet."
Your ankles try to link at the base of his spine, body drawn like a bow. "Your cock ruined me."
His eyes are rapacious, tainted with the fervour of conquest.
"It was meant to." The smoke in his timbre makes your toes curl. Your lungs smoulder with the heat of it.
Simon has you seeing nirvana again, and again before the light outside crests through the thin curtains.
He rolls you under him, ankles hooked on his shoulders, and makes you watch as his cock spears deep inside of your well-fucked cunt.
Eyes on us, soldier. Don't you dare look away.
On your knees, head nearly smothered by the pillow, he covers you with the entirety of his bulk until everything around you is pitch black with the shadow he casts. He looms over you, chest pressed against your back, and fucks you slow, and deep. The position almost has you blacking out from the depths he reaches like this, and the burn of the stretch as your pussy pulls taut against his cock.
You can take it. This pretty cunt was made for my cock, pet.
Your favourite is being lowered onto him. Chests pressed together. You bury your hand in his damp hair, your face in his neck, and sink your teeth into the column of his throat until the salt of his skin nearly drowns you.
Fuckin' hell…
(In response, his hand brands the cheeks of your ass with the perfect impression of his massive palms.)
He lays back with you barely lucid, aching, sprawled on top of him, and runs his hands down your spine, husking in your ear about how good you've been for him, how pretty you look blissed out from his cock.
His words are mercury in your head.
"...wanna be good for you, Simon," you murmur into his collarbones.
He shudders under you.
His chest is slick with sweat when you rest your head on it, pulse thudding under your palm. His arm around your waist is an anchor, locking you tight to his side.
You'd woken up to the sun bleeding through the window, the room thick with the balmy swelter of sex. Ashes in your throat, salt on your tongue. Simon's heat burrows into your marrow.
There is a lot to be said, you think. Words that you were too cowardly to admit when in the soft, dazed atmosphere of the plane.
Only one thing buoys to the forefront. The only things you'd been clutching at this whole time. Life on the line, and all you could think of was the dunes outside of your tent. The searing heat on your back.
(Not on me.)
(Always, always.)
"...Since Sierra Leone," you confess into his flesh, mouth pressed against the side of his pectoral. His ashen chest hair tickles your nose.
Simon tenses under you. The soft strokes of his fingers–bare, warm–on your hip still.
You wonder if you misread things. If you made a mistake. Your mouth parts on his flesh. The briny taste of his skin is sharp on your tongue.
You won't apologise. The words are there, the confession lingering in the air like opaque tendrils of smoke. It's in his hands now. This little thing that flutters within your chest, tucked away for safekeeping since he turned to you, eyes dark and narrow, and said you did good, rookie.
His fingers coil over you, tightening against your flesh.
"Everything…" he rasps. Everything. It's pulled out of him; rolled over barbed wire.
Confused, you raise your head, brows knitting together. Everything—
A total eclipse. The ocean in the dead of night. Endless, unfathomable pools of black. The current threatens to drag you under to those depths that shudder in front of you.
The words die on your tongue, ashes in the back of your throat.
What good is a man if he has nothing to lose? So, what do you have to lose, soldier?
A smile splits across your face; a sun dawning over the beige spalls that seem to never end.
It tastes of the sea when you press your lips to his. You feel sand under your fingers, his pulse on your palm.
—Price calls it, has known since Mesaieed. He'd bet on Gaz, maybe even Soap. It never crosses his mind to think of Simon.
—But thinking about it now, it was obvious from the start.
("Sierra Leone. Wanna take Gaz with you–"
"No. I'll take the rookie.")
#simon riley x reader#simon riley x you#simon riley fanfic#simon riley#Simon Ghost Riley#call of duty#call of duty modern warfare#cod#cod mw2#cod mw2 spoilers#cod spoilers#simon riley cod
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Truth or Dare?
I have no idea of this is good or not lmfao I wrote some of it drunk, so if it doesn’t make sense I’m sorry!
Warnings - 18+ minors DNI, p in v, p in a, threesome, dp, (I tried some mlm I’m not very good), f/m/m, smut, porn basically
This is probably horrendous lmfao but I wish this was me. Comments and feedback welcome, thank you all so much for all the love on the other posts 🥰
‘… and that’s why our national animal is the best.’ Soap said proudly. Furrowing your brows in disgust you looked at him ‘um I think the fuck not Soap. Have you not seen ours? We’ve got a fukin’ DRAGON?!’ Soap tried to interject but you cut him off ‘a huge ass dragon to your tiny unicorn? Not to mention the dragon is literally on our flag. Sorry you lose, take a shot.’ Scowling at you Soap downed his shot of whiskey.
This was how you spent time in between missions, playing stupid games and getting drunk. Tonight’s agenda was stupid little power point presentations on who had the best national animal, Scotland vs Wales. Celt vs Celt. A competition you and Soap took very seriously. That was until Ghost decided to pipe up ‘well we have a lion, AND it’s real? So clearly I win.’
You and Soap spun your heads around in unison to look at him. ‘Get tae fuck Ghost’ Soap laughed. Eyeing Ghost you gave him the filthiest side eye imaginable ‘now I know you didn’t just pipe up after being quiet all evening’ you said dryly. ‘For that absolute tomfoolery you can have a shot too, get over here Lieutenant.’ You beckoned Ghost over with your index finger as you poured him a whiskey.
You were already bordering the point of tipsy and drunk, feeling quite merry and pleased with yourself. Soap was very much the same, he wasn’t quite slurring his words but his accent was getting much harder to understand. Though both of you talked pretty fast due to your accents, Ghost had a hard time keeping up with you both after a drink. Running your hand through your hair you felt the rush of the alcohol run through you. ‘Now gentleman, what game next?’
‘Truth or dare’ Soap suggested. Slapping his arm you laughed ‘are you high? You just want to play that to be a pervert and get me to kiss you. I know your type McTavish’ you snorted. He looked over at you with a glint in his eye ‘well yeah, that’s the only reason anyone ever plays that game.’ Refilling your glass you rolled your eyes, ‘fine, ask away.’
Soap started off ‘truth.’
‘Hmmmm … have you ever felt remorse for the people you’ve killed?’
‘Christ, startin off deep. No, I don’t think I have, can’t let that get in the way of the mission. I switch it off.’
Nodding you sipped at your whiskey, ‘ok truth’ you asked.
‘Have you ever found anyone you’ve been in service with attractive?’
‘Nosey aren’t you’ you smiled, ‘yeah I have actually.’
Soaps ears pricked up and he shifted closer to you on the bench. ‘Oh? And who is it?’
You tapped your nose lightly, ‘it’s a secret.’
Ghost rolled his eyes and excused himself, last thing he wanted to do was to be the third wheel.
Feeling more confident from the booze you glanced at Soaps lips as you licked yours. Your head was swimming as your limbs felt weightless. ‘Truth’ asked Soap. Shifting closer to him you placed you glass down on the table and leant in ‘would you kiss me?’ You said biting your bottom lip. Slowly Soap lent in to meet your lips, he gently placed his on yours as he moved his hand up your thigh. You slowly opened your mouth and deepened the kiss, teasing his tongue with your own. He let out a deep groan ‘you’re a fuckin tease girl.’ You smiled into his lips as you teased him again, sucking his bottom lip into your mouth giving it a nip.
His hand travelled up your thigh giving it a firm squeeze, as the other hand cupped your jaw. You placed your hand on the back of his head, raking your nails against the exposed skin. Your tongues weaved in and out of each others, you could feel yourself getting breathless. Pulling away you bit your lip ‘mmmm fuck’ you moaned. Grabbing his hand you stood up ‘come with me.’
You ran down the empty hallway to the sleeping quarters, footsteps echoing along the way. Most of the team had gone out for the night, leaving you, Soap and Ghost alone in the building. Speaking of, where was he?
You both fell into the bedroom, the orange glow from the hall lights dimly illuminating the room. There is the corner was Ghost, appearing asleep. You placed a finger over Soaps lips signalling him to keep quiet, and pointed over to the sleeping silhouette. Soap nodded before encasing you in his arms, you cupped his face reigniting the kiss. Soap sat on the bed, it creaked underneath his weight. As you climbed on top of him he bit his lip and let out a shaky breath.
Soaps hands trailed all over your body, leaving a burning sensation in his wake. Your skin tingled at his touch, the feel of his skin on yours was a high you never wanted to come down from. You removed your top and flung it over the other side of the room. He kissed along your collar bone as you hovered above him, nipping ever so gently. You snaked your hand underneath his top, feeling his toned stomach as you dug your nails in. His hands made their way to your breasts, massaging them beneath his hands. A small moan danced on your lips as he tweaked your nipple between his fingers.
You knelt up onto your heels, Soap completely at your mercy beneath you. The dim orange light bounced off his blue eyes, pure lust deep within them. As you sat looking at each other you heard a creak from the other side of the room. Looking up you saw Ghost sat on the edge of his bed, the white skull detail of his mask emerging from the darkness. You undid your bra freeing your breasts, all the while staring back at Ghost. Dragging your hands up your body, you pushed your breasts together letting them fall tantalisingly slow.
Still keeping your eyes firmly on Ghost, you used your hand to grip Soaps face, ‘open your fucking mouth John’ you commanded.
He opened his mouth and you slowly let a ribbon of spit fall into his mouth. Soap let out a whimper beneath you, eyes wide with adoration as he looked up at you. ‘Mmmm we have company’ you purred and raised an eyebrow. ‘Let him watch’ he mumbled, too busy letting his hand roam over your body. ‘He looks lonely, let’s fix that’ you whispered as you motioned for Ghost to join you.
Ghost slowly walked over to the bed and stood behind you, his intimidating frame closing you in. Soap continued to look up at you in awe, as Ghost slid his hand around your neck. He tiled your chin, so your head was leaning in his shoulder. He leant in, his mask still covering his face. His breath washed over your face, as the dull orange glow bounced off his dark glazed eyes. ‘Mask, Simon’ you ordered. He lifted his mask just above his lips, revealing them to you. ‘Better’ you whispered against his lips.
You hovered against his lips as he wrapped his free arm around your waist, pulling you closer into him. You sank down lower onto Soaps hard cock, as he began grinding against you. You moaned into Ghosts mouth as his grip tightened on your neck. ‘She looks beautiful like this’ Soap drawled, ‘would look even better with my cock inside her.’ Soap reached up and started to undo your trousers as Ghost grasped at your breasts.
Breaking the kiss you quickly took off your trousers and unbuttoned Soaps, pulling them down slightly. You pawed at his cock in his boxers as he gritted his teeth with pure pleasure. Ghost ran his hand up your back causing a shiver to run through you. Freeing his cock you took it in your hand slowly pumped it, feeling how hard he was for you. You ran your tongue up the shaft to the tip, keeping your eyes on Soap the whole time. You took him into your mouth, as he let out a whimper beneath his breath.
As you got into a rhythm you felt Ghost run his hand over your ass, sighing to himself. ‘She’s so fuckin’ wet Soap, so … fuckin’ … wet.’ He began to slowly trace his fingers over your slit, before he inserted a finger. You hummed against Soaps cock, the vibrations sending shockwaves of pleasure throughout him. Ghost slowly inserted another finger, the sound of your arousal filled the empty room. He lowered his face planting gentle kisses on your thighs, your back, your ass. ‘Bite me … please’ you begged, without hesitation he sank his teeth into your flesh.
Soap stroked your head and lifted your chin, ‘I wanna see you fuck him, while I take that ass of yours.’ Ghost removed his fingers, making you feel suddenly empty ‘I like the sound of that’ he replied. As they switched positions, you straddled Ghost this time and Soap took his position behind you. Slowly you sank onto Ghosts hard cock, his thickness stretching your wet pussy. His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he bottomed out. ‘She feels so fuckin’ good’ he groaned.
Soap pushed you forwards onto all fours, your forearms either side of Ghosts head. He began kissing your ass, just like Ghost did. Worshipping every inch of your body. He slowly started licking at your ass hole, the sensitive skin quivered at his touch. He gently massaged it with his thumb, before gradually inserting it. Resting your forehead on Ghost’s breathy moans escaped you as he whispered words of encouragement to you. ‘That’s it … you’re such a good girl … fuck you’re doin’ so well.’
Ghosts pace was gentle as he rocked in and out of your dripping cunt. He felt so good filling you with his cock. ‘Are you ready darlin’?’ Soap asked gently. Already feeling pretty cock drunk you managed to whisper a small ‘yes’ to Soap. He spread your cheeks before spitting on your hole, he lined himself up and slowly, very slowly began to push himself into you.
A sharp moan fell off your lips, Ghost had stopped moving to allow you to adjust to Soap entering you. Sweat built on your brow, small pieces of your hair sticking to the damp skin. ‘Fuck, I can’t … I can’t do it’ you panted into Ghosts mouth. He caressed your face, wiping the hair away from your eyes. ‘Shhh’ he cooed ‘you’re so well for us, you can do it. Atta girl … such a good fucking girl.’ You squeezed your eyes closed, the line between pain and pleasure had never been to blurred.
Soap started moving, in and out, in and out, cautiously building his own rhythm. ‘Tell me when I can move’ Ghost asked while cradling your cheeks. You nodded, as you grew accustomed to Soaps size. They both began moving in opposite rhythms, both muttering praise to you under their breaths. You buried your head into Ghosts neck, nipping on his ear lobe breathing in his moans of pleasure.
You felt Soaps body press against you, the movements slowing. As you turned your head you could see Soap softly place his lips on Ghosts. Ghosts eyes widened but he didn’t stop the kiss, he opened his mouth welcoming in Soaps tongue. Their jaws moved in tandem with one another, you nibbled on Ghosts neck before whispering in his ear ‘that looks so good Simon, don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.’
As they carried on exploring one another’s mouths they began slowly moving again. You snaked your hand down to your clit, using your juices to coat it. Rubbing small circles you let you’re pleasure build, your breathing got heavier, your chest becoming tight. You felt so full having two cocks working your cunt and ass, it was blissful. Your walls began to tighten as the pressure intensified, ‘fuck I’m gonna come, harder … harder’ you panted. Both men upped their pace, their own breath filled moans becoming louder.
You were completely at their mercy, completely powerless in between them as they ravaged you. Sweat dripped from your forehead onto Ghosts chest, he placed his lips on yours as he bit your bottom lip. Soap gripped your hips as he thrusted into you, incoherent mutters left his mouth.
‘Cum for me’ Ghost whisperer at he gripped your jaw ‘cum all over my cock, I wanna feel your cunt around me.’ His thumb slowly but firmly tugged at your bottom lip as you nipped at it. ‘Please Simon … please make me cum.’ You rocked your hips back into Soap as you peeked over your shoulder at him. ‘Fuck, John.’ You moaned through your teeth.
The pressure in your pussy was becoming unbearable, with one final thrust you came around Ghosts cock. Ghost held your throat as you stared into his eyes, moaning their names. ‘So fuckin beautiful’ he murmured. You collapsed onto his chest in a heap, completely breathless.
Soap pulled out, groaning at he did so, ‘am so close darlin, where do you want it?’ You rolled off Ghost so you led on your back and gestured to your body. They stood over you, both of their eyes hooded as they took you in beneath them. Spread out on the cot, glowing from your orgasm and beads of sweat fell around your breasts. Panting you smirked at them ‘finish each other off, I want to see.’
Nodding they gripped each others cocks and pumped them until they were on the being of orgasm. Ghosts large hand wrapped about Soaps cock, his forearms tensed at the unusual feeling of another’s man’s cock in his hand. Soap began panting ‘you done this before sir?’ He smirked. Furrowing his brows he began chasing his high ‘shhhhhhut the fuck up McTavish.’
‘Doesn’t she look stunning’ Soap asked, his mouth gradually opened, his breath hitched in his thirst as he came. His cum landed in pile on your stomach as you grinned up at him.
Ghost decided he couldn’t take anymore and threw your legs back before thrusting back into your pussy. Taken aback by the sudden intrusion you let out a deep moan. The feel of your cunt around his cock was all he needed, he held onto your ankle as he filled you. Unable to speak he could only moan breathlessly as you pulled him back on top of you by his jumper. He kissed your forehead gently before sighing contently.
You heard the shower turn on in the background, looking around you saw Soap was no where to be seen. ‘I’ve wanted this for a long time’ Ghost purred. Smiling back up at him you cupped his face and planted a tender kiss on his lips ‘me too.’
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Do you know, I’ve realised I’ve never actually told you what I thought the first time we met? You see, for me, memories are difficult. Very often, they hurt. A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they’re inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system. I started to think of myself and my life and my whole lifetime worth of memories as all the dark, dusty rooms of Buckingham Palace. I took the night Bea left rehab and I begged her to take it seriously, and I put it in a room with pink peonies on the wallpaper and a golden harp in the center of the floor. I took my first time, with one of my brother’s mates from uni when I was seventeen, and I found the smallest, most cramped little broom cupboard I could muster, and I shoved it in. I took my father’s last night, the way his face went slack, the smell of his hands, the fever, the waiting and waiting and terrible waiting and the even worse not-waiting anymore, and I found the biggest room, a ballroom, wide open and dark, windows drawn and covered. Locked the doors. But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the gardens. I pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase. It didn’t fit in any rooms. You were talking with Nora and June, happy and animated and fully alive, a person living in dimensions I couldn’t access, and so beautiful. Your hair was longer then. You weren’t even a president’s son yet, but you weren’t afraid. You had a yellow ipê-amarelo in your pocket. I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire. And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you. And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it? Sometimes, even now, I still can’t.
You shut the fuck up.
I can’t decide if your emails make me miss you more or less. Sometimes I feel like a funny-looking rock in the middle of the most beautiful clear ocean when I read the kinds of things you write to me. You love so much bigger than yourself, bigger than everything. I can’t believe how lucky I am to even witness it—to be the one who gets to have it, and so much of it, is beyond luck and feels like fate. I can’t match you for prose, but what I can do is write you a list. AN INCOMPLETE LIST: THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HRH PRINCE HENRY OF WALES. 1. The sound of your laugh when I piss you off. 2. The way you smell underneath your fancy cologne, like clean linens but somehow also fresh grass (what kind of magic is this?). 3. That thing you do where you stick out your chin to try to look tough. 4. How your hands look when you play piano. 5. All the things I understand about myself now because of you. 6. How you think Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars (wrong) because deep down you’re a gigantic, sappy, embarrassing romantic who just wants the happily ever after. 7. Your ability to recite Keats. 8. Your ability to recite Bernadette’s “Don’t let it drag you down” monologue from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. 9. How hard you try. 10. How hard you’ve always tried. 11. How determined you are to keep trying. 12. That when your shoulders cover mine, nothing else in the entire stupid world matters. 13. The goddamn issue of Le Monde you brought back to London with you and kept and have on your nightstand (yes, I saw it). 14. The way you look when you first wake up. 15. Your shoulder-to-waist ratio. 16. Your huge, generous, ridiculous, indestructible heart. 17. Your equally huge dick. 18. The face you just made when you read that last one. 19. The way you look when you first wake up (I know I already said this, but I really, really love it). 20. The fact that you loved me all along. I keep thinking about that last one ever since you told me, and what an idiot I was. It’s so hard for me to get out of my own head sometimes, but now I’m coming back to what I said to you the night in my room when it all started, and how I brushed you off when you offered to let me go after the DNC, how I used to try to act like it was nothing sometimes. I didn’t even know what you were offering to do to yourself. God, I want to fight everyone who’s ever hurt you, but it was me too, wasn’t it? All that time. I’m so sorry. Please stay gorgeous and strong and unbelievable.
And you also shut the fuck up
They make me want to curl into a little ball and cry for the rest of my life
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Dancing On Your Heartstrings
Chapter 19 (prev chapters here)
Raghav pov
Raghav had tossed and turned and not gotten a blink of sleep in the last 3 hours. It was midnight, the night before the competition, and his thoughts had chosen the worst possible time to turn sour.
The competition is in less than 24 hours, echoed relentlessly in his mind. He couldn't stop stressing about it. Even worse was when he wasn't stressing about the competition. Because that would mean he would be thinking about Ranveer, which was horrible and utterly revolting.
He tried to not think about the future, and was yanked into the past by an unwelcome memory. He remembered the first day he entered the studio two weeks ago, wearing a bright neon jacket and holding a Sting in one hand, half an hour later than their scheduled time. He remembered seeing Ranveer and the beat his heart skipped at the sight. He had seen Ranveer before, sure, but only on stage with the alta staining his palms and the soles of his feet, in intricately draped garments and accessories; never in a plain flannel shirt and plaid bottoms. He looked so extraordinarily human that Raghav almost thought he had a chance.
From the moment their eyes met, Ranveer has stripped apart a piece of Raghav's heart with each passing day, until he lay vulnerable and bare to his torments. Such was the torment he was feeling right now, at midnight in his own bed, trapped inside his own rib cage.
He turned again and stretched to pick up his phone from the nightstand. 00:23 read the widget on his homescreen. Hesitantly, he dialled Madhuri's number.
"Hi?" She picked up on the third ring.
"Kya kar rahi hai?"
"Chhat pe naach rahi hu."
Raghav snickered quietly. "Kis bechare ko traumatise karne nikli hai ab?"
"Arey nahi re. Manu ke sath movie dekh rahi thi. Call kyu kiya?"
"Neend nahi aa rahi. Socha tujhse puch lu kal kya karne wale ho tum log."
"Arey arey. Seedha video hi send kar deti hu na. Bata kar kya samajh aane wala hai tujhe?" He heard someone snickering in the background. Probably her girlfriend. "Seriously kya hua? Kal ke liye nervousness toh ho nahi sakti. Tu aisa nahi hai."
He contemplated whether he should tell her or not, then thought what the hell. She already knows how much of a pathetic loser he is. He could vent his overthought thoughts to her and she wouldn't bat an eye. "Well aaj Ranveer thoda weird behave kar raha tha."
"Again." She groaned. There was some shuffling on her end of the call and then she said, "I thought we were done with him?"
"Yeah, well, it's going to take some time. But seriously, mera toh mujhe pata hai kyu closed off tha, but vo kyu itna ajeeb tha aaj?”
"Maybe because of the fact that you embarrassed yourself by acting like a jealous girlfriend the day before?" She added dryly.
"Or maybe," He said, letting out his worst fear, "maybe he realised he doesn't want to do anything with me now that he knows I'm gay."
"Okay first, you don't know for sure he knows you're gay — and that's such a gray fucking area, you should sort that out and know for sure before driving yourself crazy— and second, even if he knows, do you really think he's that kind of a person? From what you told me about him, he doesn't sound that kind of a person."
No he isn't, but what other explanation could there be for his weird behaviour? He wanted to call and ask him what was wrong, but he couldn't. It felt like he wasn't allowed to call him anymore after today, and it made him feel so helpless.
Madhuri continued when he didn't reply, "You know I love you Raghav, and I hate seeing you getting hurt. You said it yourself- he's straight. So unless he gives you blaring red signs that screams he's into you, remember he's just another guy you met not even two weeks ago." After a brief pause, she said in a gentle voice, "You know he only cares about the competition, Raghu. You'll only hurt yourself if you think otherwise"
"That's not true," he finally croaked out of his tight throat.
"You should sleep. It'll affect your performance if you don't." For the first time in almost 2 two decades of their friendship, he detected a note of pity in his best friend's voice, and it made him feel a mix of frustration and self loathing. He wanted to forget everything about that, hell, he wanted to forget everything that happened since the last two weeks. So he heeded his best friend's advice and went to sleep, desperate for the oblivion it provides.
• • •
Raghav didn't know why, but he was picturing Ranveer to be ready in classical dance attire as he picked him up from his house. He was not― something that in turn relieved and annoyed Raghav. Why was he still yearning for another brief flash of tan skin, now that he knew he had no right to?
Instead, Ranveer was wearing a white cotton shirt and a pair of cargo pants that had be have been sitting in his wardrobe for months, judging how tight it had gotten around his thighs―
Raghav cleared his throat, making Ranveer glance up at him as he made his way to the car. He said nothing and took his seat in the front. Raghav tried not to look at him. Because everytime he did, he could imagine his gaze. Sometimes it was on him, dark pools swirling with a million emotions, none of them good and all of them rendering Raghav useless. Sometimes it was on someone else; the girl at the cafe, a pretty girl walking by, a classical dancer performing upstage. Those hurt even more, for they all held a look Raghav could never get from him. It was easy to ignore whatever he was feeling; especially with the road to focus on.
But that didn't cease the heat rushing to his cheeks when his hand brushed against Ranveer's thigh instead of the gear shift.
He wasn't focusing nearly as well as he thought, because a pedestrian almost crashed into the car. Raghav slammed the brakes.
Ranveer's eyes widened and he gripped the door's handle. It took Raghav a few seconds to understand that he hadn't almost killed an innocent soul, it was the person who walked into the car's path.
The person walked up to the window on the drivers' side. "Ayush?" Ranveer whispered. Raghav wondered if it was to him, because it was certainly too low for Ayush to hear. He banged on the car window before Raghav got a chance to reply.
Slurs were flying out of his mouth before the window rolled down completely. Words Raghav was not degenerate enough to repeat, and frankly, much too stressed to deal with. He didn't care if Ayush wanted to waste his own time by calling Ranveer his boyfriend. He almost started the car before Ranveer put a hand on his arm.
Raghav froze.
"Ye Ayush hi hai na? Jo tujhse lada tha?"
His blood was roaring in his ears, heart pounding relentlessly. All the heat in his body centred on the mere inches of skin where Ranveer's palm met his arm. Goosebumps rose on said skin. Raghav nodded.
"Kya karega ab?" He heard Ayush sneer at Ranveer. Raghav had forgotten he was here. "Badla lega iske liye?"
Time be damned, Raghav wanted to actually slam his car into this fuckface. Ranveer got out of the car. His expression was unreadable as he shut the door.
"Before you do it," Ayush continued. "Let me tell you: he's a fucking fagg-" He saw Ranveer walking to the other side, barely registered his surroundings until a sharp crack sounded.
Ayush howled, cupping his nose as if he was about to sneeze. It took Raghav a moment to realise that Ranveer had punched him. Ranveer had punched Ayush.
"Saale madarch-" Ayush started, but Ranveer grabbed him by his collar and shoved him onto the footpath. It was graceless, a messy deal of blood and anger, and it was so so unlike Ranveer that it made Raghav question everything he knew about him. Most of all, it was exhilarating; seeing Ranveer handling the boy who had made his life hell, as if they were anything to each other and their problems were each other's problems, it made Raghav's heart run rampant and hair prickle at the nape of his neck.
Ayush scurried away, all-bark-no-bite threats falling from his tongue. Raghav thought for once that Ranveer would follow, but he was rooted in his place. His expression was barely controlled fury, a facade of stability over a wild beast. He watched Ayush turn the corner and run away, and then did what Raghav least expected him to― just like everything else he had done recently.
He punched the wall.
Raghav flinched, a concerned gasp involuntarily leaving his mouth. Ranveer's eyes met his and he seemed almost surprised to find him there. His features relaxed, anger draining out of him. Then, he smiled.
Ranveer fucking Kashyap smiled.
"What the fuck was that!?"
"I had wanted to do that for so long," Ranveer answered. "Ever since I heard he hurt you."
Raghav should've laughed. Raghav should've smiled back. He shouldn't have remembered Madhuri's words from last night. "You know he only cares about the competition, Raghu. You'll only hurt yourself if you think otherwise."
Of course he wanted to hit Ayush. Because Ayush hurt Raghav and hurting Raghav sabotaged his performance. He was angry for his ruined performance, not Raghav.
He turned his eyes back to the road. The car roared to life. "Competition ke liye late ho jayenge," he said.
Ranveer stared at him, smile fading. After what felt like an eternity, he tore his burning gaze away and walked back to his side of the car.
Better off like this, Raghav thought. Better off not smiling at all than wearing it like a weapon. Though he wasn't very sure which knife cut deeper: seeing Ranveer smile or being the reason for him not smiling.
Good thing he wouldn't have to deal with it anymore after tonight.
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Wanna write Junkers but dont know Aussie shit?
Writing a Junker for non-Aussies, some shit that will make it hit just right instead of half-assing it by writing arvo and calling it done:
the outback is a conceptual area, not a physical place, you cannot put "outback" into a gps and find it, but you can drive two hours out of your city and hit it. the outback can be a green lush rainforest or the outback can be red sand deserts. the point is, it's further away from where you are now and there is fewer people. A park is not the outback, but you can go "out back" to a park to infer its distance from your house.
the most aussie thing about junker queen, junk rat and roadhog is that shirts are a suggestion, not a requirement. if we dont have to wear full tops, we don't. no, that's not just blizzard going "lets show off half naked ppl", in many towns, especially on the coast, they have to enforce a "no shirt, no shoes? no service." rule, it gets that bad.
we also constantly get skin cancer, all the time. everyone. the australian sun has more uv in it than anywhere else in the world AND I DOUBT THAT GOT BETTER WITH ALL THE FREAKING RADIATION EVERYWHERE NOW. It doesn't matter your heritage, black, white, asian, you live in australia? you're getting skin cancer.
no this still does not mean we put on shirts. you'd think that change it, but no. wrong. fuck shirts. fuck pants too. scratch shoes probably while you're at it. ow my feet are burning on the hot pavement? TOO BAD SUCK IT UP. Shorts and a tank top if you really have to push it, but a bikini top at all times is perfectly acceptable for women.
but put on a fucking hat and sunscreen, you complete buffon, what are you, a tourist, not putting on a HAT? always put on a hat. DYOU WANT TO GET SKIN CANCER, HONESTLY,,,,,, but also we suck at putting on hats, just your parents yelled at you to do it and you tell others to do it and always have a hat on hand.
shirt exceptions: if you're in sydney or melbourne. they like, have actual standards about business dress. they even wear three piece suits and shit. my soul died just thinking about it. but even then,,,,, ehhhhh, if its summer, people get /hand wobbles, vague about shirt requirements. ive watched foreign business people see what sydney calls business dress and go EVERYONE HERE IS INFORMAL so like, its more dressed up than the rest of australia, but still probably more dressed down than half the world lmao.
they're call "sydneysiders" and everywhere else takes any reason to trash talk them at every opportunity. we all hate sydney. people who have never been to sydney hate sydney. sydney hates sydney: north sydney hates west sydney, west sydney hates east sydney and so on. everyone who lives in sydney wishes they didn't. fuck sydney. if you cant think of anything to say that's neutral, you can always just slander sydney and it'll be a fairly positive-neutral conversation. i can garuntee Junkers will be sitting there shoving radiated dirt into their horrendous bullet wounds, missing fingers, barely scraping alive, living in the literal apocalypse, and especially be like MAN AT LEAST IM NOT IN SYDNEY.
we call the brits 'Poms' and americans 'Seppos'. If you are talking to a Sydneysider, you can mutually hate on both of these groups. Poms more so. We hate the English. It's not active, btw, we aren't the yanks out here having national pride about a war or something, no, its a passive, low grade, mocking tone at all times about them. Ireland, Scotland and Wales are ok tho, we like them just fine. Just the Brits.
you are not allowed to openly state something is wrong, if its actually seriously fucked up, you have to understate it. for real my own mother was in a small flight plane that had to make an emergency landing in a farmer's field and the farmer came out and said 'bit of trouble mate?' as literal smoke was spewing out of the engine block and the pilot went 'reckon she'll be right in a bit', and everyone sat around having a beer.
except for the weather, you are always, at all times, allowed to complain about the weather. its too hot. its too cold. why is it so humid, why is it so dry. "hows this weather we're having?" is a normal conversation starter to make small talk and also just kill five minutes in line at [sports venue of the choice]. I can physically hear the two fucking junkers in the line to the Scrapyard Arena being like 'man fuck this weather lately' as if it's not the 432432 day of burning hot dry desert irradiated heat that was exactly the same as the day before, and everyone will be 'no yeah bloody hell aye'
slab of beer is a defined currency once you are outside of cities. this is a 24xbeer cans. you can pay for services in beer.
when passing people, "hey" is only acceptable in busy settings, the rest of the time, we're so fucking talkative. people in cities can say 'hi', but outside its got to be the 'eyyy' 'g'day', 'hey bruz', it's always "hi, how ya going?" then a nod and response of "not bad, you?" if you have the time to answer, otherwise a nod with 'g'day gotta go' and an indication you're in a rush is perfectly acceptable. if there is time for it, this is when you go into complaining about the weather. not engaging in this process is ruder than swearing at each other.
a mad cunt and a sick cunt, are your best friends, or the dude at the party who brought the rum and you all cheer. a shit cunt is the worst person who ruined it for everyone by calling the cops because you shouldnt stick a ice box drink cooler on a lawnmower and ride it while drinking said rum. asshole.
the ice box drink is called an Esky, by the way. Not cooler. Esky.
NORTH IS HOT, ITS WHERE ALL THE CROCODILES N CASSOWARIES N SHIT ARE.
the south is cold and does actually get snow, aka the Snowy Mountains are in the south. Yes, we did name it that.
Tasmania (that one big island at the bottom lmao) is snowy and rainy and makes really good whiskey and is probably actually just fine b/c no one cares about it and is not connected to the mainland at all, they judge all "mainlanders".
THEY'RE NOT CALLED COWBOYS, THEY'RE CALLED STOCKMEN, OR JACKAROOS AND JILLAROOS.
Kangaroos are like asshole deer. You will not break them if you hit them, your car however is *completely* fucked.
WE DO NOT CALL THEM 'FARMS'. They are 'properties' or 'stations'. A 'cattle station' is an acceptable term. A sheep station. If you say 'a property' everyone knows you mean an agricultural piece of land, and that it's specifically many, many, MANY, thousands of kilometers long. If you call them farm, we instantly clock you as american or a rich city person who has a 'hobby farm'.
The person who OWNS many, many, many, many, MANY, thousands of miles of land and don't actually work it themselves, may call themselves Farmers, but the rest of us often clock them as rich fuckers because of that reason.
We are not afraid of spiders, snakes, kangaroos, jellyfish, whatever it is foreigners scream about this week, the way you think we are. We don't like them, (ok some of us do), but they just are, and we all got education lessons young about how to not be an idiot about them.
we are fucking with you, at all times, i'm an aussie and I am fucking with you right now. i can meet another aussie in a bar that i do not know, have never seen in my entire life, and make shit up on the spot to distress someone about some animal that does not exist, and the other australian without a fucking beat will IMMEDIATELY. JOIN IN. Junkrat will be tricking Brigette about the existence of Land Sharks and even if she wants to strangle him to death, Junker Queen will 100% back him on whatever the fuck he's saying.
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OK THIS IS A RANT WITH ZERO PUNCTUATION IN ALL CAPS AND SPOILERS FOR HAZBIN HOTEL EPS. 1-4!!!!
OK SO I JUST FINISHED WATCHING THEM AND OH MY FUCKING GOD I LOVE IT SOOOO MUCH ITS AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL AND OH MY FUCKING GOD IM GONNA RANT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS AND THE EPISODES MAYBE IDKKKKK
CHARLIE GIRL YOU ARE SO WHOLEOSME AND I OOVE YOU BUT GODDAMN STOP TAKING PEOPLE’S SHIT JUST BECAUSE YOU AHVE TO BE NICE. ALTHOUGH WHEN YOU WENT DEMON FIRM AT VAL FOR FUCKING ABUSING ANGEL HELLLLLL YEAH THATS MY gIRL ILYSM. AND HER FEELING GUILTY FIR EVERYTHING LIEK IT WAS PARTLY YOUR FAULT BUT NO STOP REVEALING MY OWN PROBLEMS TO ME “YOU FIX EVERYONE’S PROBLEMS EXCEPT YOUR OWN” STOP IT HUSK STOP IT.
SPEAKING OF HUSK MY FAVORITE CHARACTER, MY BELOVED. I OOVE THIS WISE OLD BARTENDER. HIM IN THE 4TH EPISODE… AHHHHHHHHH MY HUSKERDUST HEART!!! AND IF HIS AND ALASTOR’S RELATIONSHIP AND PAST DONT GET DEEPLY DIVEN INTO IN THE SHOW I WILL NOT HESITATE TO FUCKING MAKE JY WAY TO FUCKING HEAD WRITER AND MAKE IT HAPPEN. AND HIM TAKING CARE OF ANGEL. GET FUCKING MARRIED (JKJK I LOVE A SLOWBURN (SERIOUSLY ATYD TOOK LIKE 70 CHAPTERS AT KEAST FOR FEELINGS TO EVEN HAPPEN)) AND HIM RELATING TI ANGELLLL AND THEIR DUETTTTTT!!!
AND NOW ANGEL. MY GOD I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU VAKENTINO YOU DO NOT GET TO HURT MY SECOND FAVORITE CHARACTER AND JUST EXPECT ME NOT TO BRANDISH MY FUCKING KNOFE JUST BCUZ YOU ARE FICTIONAL AND THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY I COULD KILL YOU. I WILL GET A FUCKING ANGELIC WEAPON AND SKEWER YOU. NOW ENLUGH ABOUT THAT SHITHEAD ONTO OMGGGG ANGEL NO ONE CAN BEAT HUSK BUT GODDAMN ILYYYYY HIM AND VAGGIE HAVE A SUBLING RELATIONSHIP AND NO ONE CAN CONVIBCE ME OTHERIWSE. THEY ARE JUDGEMENTAL SHITS WHO HATE EACH OTHER AND WOULD THRIW EACH LTHER IN FRONT OF A CAR BUT WOULD KILL SOMEOBE IF THEY SOMUCH AS LOOKED AT THE OTHER THE WROBG WAY. ALSO IN EPSIDOE 2 HIM BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF SIR PENTIOUS. YES. AND HIM FEELING LEFT PUT UGHHHHHHH!,!
OK SIR PENTIOUS TIME BCUZ HE IS VOICED BY ALEX BRIGHTMAN AND I AM A FUCKING BEETLEJUICE STAN, AND ALSO A FIZZAROLI STAN (HE IS THE BEST THING THAT HAPPENED TI HELLUVA BOSS AND NO I WILL NOT DEBATE THIS) AND OMG HES SO SILLY HOW DID HE EVER GO TO HELL I CANT HES SO SWEET AND APOLOGETIC. I MEAN HE WAS AN ASSHOLE FOR LIEK TWO MINUTES AND HE DID ONLY APOLOGIZE AFTER GETTING THE SHIT BEATEN OUT IF HIM BUT THEN HE SANG A WHOLE SONG WITH CHARLIE AND HES SO SWEET I CANT- ALSO HIS WHOLE THING WITH NIFFTY SPEAKING OF NIFFTY…
I LOVE THIS LITTLE GREMLIN SHE IS PURE COMEDY GOLD AND SHE IS EVERYTHING. SHE HAS PROBABLY KILLED MORE PEOPLE THAN ALASTOR AND I LOVE THAT FOR HER. JUST WATCHING “INNICENTLY” WHILE ANGEL PLAYED HIS PORN VID… AND HER AND SIR PENTIOUSSSS “OOH HES A BAD BOY” AND THEN HER WALING IN RIGHT AFTER THE MUSICAL NUMBER BEING LIKE “I HATED THAT YOU’RE NOT A BAD BOY ANYMORE” I LITERALLY LOVE HER SHES SO UNDERRATED!!! AND HUSK JUST REFUSING TO SHARE WHAT KIND OF SHIT SHOW SHE IS!!, FUCKING LOVE HER.
ANYWAY VAGGIE AND CHARLIE ARE LITERALLY SO CUTE (I HAVE SOME CHAGGIE FANART I MADE I JUST UGHHHH LOVE THEM) AND VAGGIE IS SO SWEET ALSO HER WHOLE THING IN THE 3RD EPISODE WHERE SHE’S KINDA LIKE SHES A GENERAL IN THE MILITARY? I FEEL LIKE THAT MIGHT BE A POINT FOR THE VAGGIE IS AN EX-EXORCIST (IF THE EXORCISTS ARE STRCTURED LIKE AN ARMY (LOOK AT ME THEORIZING MATPAT WOULD BE PROUD)) ALSO HER BEING READY TO FUCKING KILL ANYONE LOVEEEEEE!!!
UM ANYWAY ITS ALASTOR TIME AND IF ALL THE COMPLEXITIES OF HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH LITERALLY EVERYONE IN THE CAST AREN’T EXPLAINED IN DEPTH I WILL FUCKING KILL SOMEBODY (PROBABLY VALENTINO I HATE HIM SO MUCH I JUST WANT TO TAKE A KNIFE AMD-) ANYWAY ALL OF ALASTOR’S MONENTS ARE AMAZING I LOVED THE CALLBACK TO “HA! no” AND HIM AND THE EGG BOIS——— ALSO HIS DUET WITH VOX??? AMAZING AND DID ANYONE ELSE NOTICE THAT IT LOW KEY KIND OF SOUNDED LIEK “INSANE” AT SOME PARTS? MY HAZBIN OBESSED MIND ATE THAT SHIT UPPPPP!
WELP THATS PRETTY MUCH ALL I HAVE TO SAY ON THE MAIN CAST ALSO JUST WANT TO MENTION THAT I LOVE HOW WHEN CHARACTERS SING THEY ARE ACTUALLY SINGING!!! LIKE I LOVE IT WHEN MUSICALS ACKNOWLEDGE THE SONGS IT MAKES ME HAPPY
#hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel husk#hazbin hotel angel dust#hazbin hotel charlie#hazbin hotel sir pentious#hazbin hotel niffty#hazbin hotel alastor#hazbin hotel vaggie
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I'm not even remotely religious in any way, but I am begging people who are going to write about a character going into a monastery/nunnery whatever to please, please, please read some of the Cadfael Chronicles before you cast an entire population of people as fire-and-brimstone, self-mutilating, repressed, fanatical zealots.
For the uninitiated, the Cadfael Chronicles was a long series of medieval-set (specifically set in the 12th century) murder mysteries where the gumshoe role is taken by a monk who is well into middle age, a skilled herbalist and a former soldier and sailor who joined the Order late in his life (which for one, did happen!).
Now, there are some dated things about the writing that bears some examining; Ellis Peters (psued for Edith Pargeter) first started writing then in the late seventies (the last book was published 1994, a year before her death), and while she was a fantastic amateur self-taught scholar (she was so good she got an honorary degree from Birmingham University, having never even been to any higher education than high school) she is writing about the time of the Crusades and the Crusaders who invaded Jerusalem and she doesn't really delve that deep into the implications of her characters being involved in that, even though the characters are portrayed as the good guys, especially the titular one. But it's very possible most of the scholarship she had available for research at the time was all Western perspectives, which, you know, history is written by the winners, etc. She has a writers bias towards her protagonist, so of course he is framed fairly glowingly, though not without flaw.
But whether she had a view on the moral implications of the Crusades or not, the way she wrote medieval Britain and medieval Wales is absolutely textually fascinating because she doesn't flinch away from the fact that yes, Britain at this time was a feudal serfdom with slaves included, and was hard on marginalized people, chock full of patriarchy that did affect the lives of her female characters or that the Church was a big landowner themselves, and there was plenty of political tension and violence due to an ongoing civil war, but nonetheless the town the Chronicles are set in and the monastery where Cadfael lives is portrayed as a community.
Seriously. They don't just pray and whip themselves for 'bad thoughts'. The monks can be funny, snarky, and shy, and ambitious. They can be irreverent - yes, even about God, that thing that they are meant to be the most reverent about. They can have petty rivalries, they can annoy one another, even the Abbot, and not be sent for a backbreaking penance. They aren't thumping on bibles and telling people that if they don't make the cut that they're going to burn in hell.
They care. They take care of the children left in their charge, whether they're rich scions there to get an education or some poor thing left on their doorstep. One monk, in charge of the children, expresses real and genuine concern over a new novice that is having horrific dreams, worried that he has suffered a tremendous hidden trauma (he's right) and they're all concerned about what they can do to help him. A pair of teenagers literally fuck on one of the altars and the reaction from Cadfael is rueful amusement at young people's folly, not disgust or anger. They collect alms for the poor, redistribute everything given to them to help people survive. They crack jokes and show each other kindness and...
... look, I'm not saying that there weren't and still aren't zealots in religion. No religion is really innocent of that. And yeah, those zealots have done some pretty heinous things when they're put in charge - see Witch Burnings, Various Inquisitions, Crusades, Terrorism, etc. But I do wish writers wouldn't write about religious life like everyone who ever entered it was either a complete bag of bible-thumping assholes or just miserable all the time.
For one thing, that's really boring. Religion is a way we can tell stories about the complex reality we live in and the rules we think are important when dealing with other people. To reduce all that potential down to Miserable, Repressed, Self-Harming, Witch Hunting Jerks is intellectually lazy at best.
For another thing, you are losing the opportunity to portray a fundamentally queer experience. I don't mean they were all fucking (although some of the proscriptions that they felt the need to write down would rise your eyebrows - hand holding was apparently banned at one point); I meant that this was a group of people that took themselves out of the amatonormative status quo entirely and dedicated themselves to something that wasn't marriage, children, mercantile endeavors or anything 'normal' like that. That was, at the very least, a queer experience with clear queerplatonic overtones (not to mention, there were FTM trans monks that literally went on to sainthood, chosen gender kept intact).
And also? It just isn't historically accurate. Plenty of men and women actively chose a life outside the norm because they wanted to serve god and the community. They're just a group of people, all living together, making space for one another, all trying to serve people in whatever way they can. These people were less raging witch-burners and more Jedi without the lightsaber.
In the Cadfael books, they have brushes with zealots and they're reviled as bad guys every time. One (in the very first book) more or less fakes a whole-ass vision to manipulate the order to go to Wales and try and acquire a Welsh saint's bones and ends up doing even worse things because he believes he is destined for greatness and will get it by whatever means necessary. The head of the mission (who edges close to zealot territory himself and fully buys into the con for his own benefit) tries to buy the saints relics and causes a massive diplomatic incident as a result of this insult that makes him look like an idiot.
The other zealot that gives them trouble is a priest appointed to run the church. This man is as big a bible thumping, hellfire and brimstone dickhead as you might always picture a medieval priest to be and he is uniformly despised by both the monks and the township at large because his zealotry and strict adherence to only the letter of religious law and nothing else actively harms the community.
He's so hated, in fact, that when he (spoilers) dies, the reactions of all and sundry is mostly just relief that he's gone.
The Catholic Church has a lot of sins that it forgets more than it reckons with, but that doesn't mean that life in a monastery was all hair shirts and self-mortification, every abbot a little dictator. People have lived just fine in small communes for a lot of human history and they didn't all have small-minded tyrants continually cracking the whip. Most of them didn't.
I know it's an easy shaft to mine angst from, shoving people into an oppressive environment that they must either endure or overcome. And yes, the way we write about religion is sometimes a product of working through a complicated and traumatic relationship with it. I'm not trying to say any writer can't or shouldn't write that because your art is always supposed to be about putting parts of yourself out there, about telling the world a story about how you see it; and if you're working through something, if you need to tell a story about the scars that zealotry absolutely have and do leave, go for it, more power to you. That's a story that should and must be told.
But if your character is going into a monastery, try to remember that humans are social creatures. We make friends more than we make enemies. Even under intense tyranny, we make allegiances and form bonds and find ways to make the world were in a little bit more bearable wherever we can. And we tend to show each other compassion and mercy, even when we don't always like each other. It's true today, and it was true then too.
Monastic life was a queer experience that happened right under the noses of the dominant power structures for centuries. I think there's a story or two to be mined from that as well.
#writing#worldbuilding#character building#medieval history#religion#nicolo di genova#the old guard#brother cadfael#ellis peters#queerness#m#monasticism#monastic life
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They should have never let Catherine take the blame for the photo altering. Even if she did alter it herself, it only adds to everyone’s suspicion. I think she felt the need to put a photo out quickly and it backfired. Why didn’t the RP cover for her photo blunder?
Right. Literally anything would’ve been better than her of all people personally taking the fall for this! William would’ve been better, a random, unnamed intern would’ve been better, one of the kids fucking with the computer lmao idk. Just such a strange strange tweet to send out.
Someone should call KP and tell them we’re on mega thread #4 over here and we can’t have our mods getting sick from the “stress and fallout”, so just trot her out for a second or an audio message or even just a true statement sans doctored photos. And if she’s too unwell for that well gee maybe a smidge of transparency would gain them public support back . Nobody wants her medical info , just them to stop acting shady and disrespectful. She can have her privacy and also stop the shiftiness and theatrics. Unlike Reddit mods, the BRF gets paid.
I think Kate is refusing to play ball. It's entirely possible she's had setbacks in her recovery or drew a line in the sand and said "I'm out until x/y/z date, so quit pushing," but this is a woman who's been in the public eye for 20 years. She knows how the media vultures and gossip mill operate. The speculation has now turned dark. We're getting everything from she's passed and they're covering it up, to she was injured in an 'incident.' Papers are running articles on William's rage issues. Kate could easily clear this up but she's choosing not to. It leads me to believe she's pissed at her husband and is enjoying watching him squirm.
Just found out my best friend has independently fallen down the rabbit hole—which just illustrates how out of control this has gotten.
we’re both thinking it’s just a series of ‘own goals’ but are seriously hoping Catherine makes an appearance at Easter. If not, I think KP will have to make yet another announcement, and given how inept they’ve been, it’ll probably just make things even worse.
I’m just hoping she’s chilling with her kiddos, and is either not paying attention to the whole debacle or is highly amused by the shenanigans.
I would think that she is making an appearance at Easter but then wonder why KP wanted it to be known that she isn’t confirmed the attend Trooping of the Colour? Which was stupid on their part tbh
Princess Diana’s former private secretary on the matter from a CNN interview.
He’s kinda repetitious but still clear enough. He comes out critical of William for poor communications. Williams’s office created the vacuum of information which fueled the interest which fueled the out sized interest and the conspiracy theories.)
They definitely mishandled this situation. Supposedly Prince William just got a new private secretary. Hopefully they get a proper PR team again soon. While I’m not on team conspiracy theories and believe what has happened is exactly what we heard (Catherine had major surgery and is now recovering), they were way in over their heads in how they handled this.
Crazily, her secretary, Patrick Jephson, was my neighbor 8 years ago, super nice and very genuine guy. I definitely put stock in his POV.
This has been extremely poorly managed by KP. They’ve done irreparable harm to their image. The pressure they are now under for the next step/stage/messaging is immense. This is a defining moment for the royal family. Charles is not well, to what extent is not known. Kate is MIA and now three very questionable ‘proof of life’ photos have been released. The state of Will and Kate’s marriage is under a serious spotlight. It’s an information black hole. VERY rocky overall.
Charles and Kate are unwell. That is all. Kate is obsessed with her looks and image and she doesn’t want to be pictured looking anything but perfect that’s all. She will be back once she is looking like her old self.
I honestly don’t believe the marriage in trouble stuff. Kate will never leave William that too so close to becoming the Queen? No chance.
Is it possible, in light of everything that has occurred so far, that Charles is letting Will have enough rope so Charles can use this PR disaster as his excuse to shutdown Kensington Palace office so everyone falls under his office at BP? Get rid of Will's staff and his vanity projects so he has to get on with the everyday drudgery that being a royal entails? It's not just film premieres and photo ops. It's hands on in the community at events with little or no fanfare. Service rather than PR grandstanding.
With no more competing offices, Charles can have his people oversee everything. That at least might get some consistency.
I kind of doubt it. William has the duchy money now. He can spend it however he wants.
I believe the most significant thing is that - at the very beginning of this whole story- the surgery wasn’t planned at all… she had the agenda full of duties, included a trip to Italy… The narrative from the Palace was inconsistent from the first day.
Reposting, because I think my comment got removed.
My takeaway from all the conspiracy theories floating around out there is that no matter what the truth is, look at what the main themes have become. Essentially, there are several theories about Will's behaviour and being a less than stellar husband. Also, the feeling that KP cannot be trusted. No matter what the truth is, the fact that these are the themes that have emerged is interesting.
William has based his entire reputation on being a nice protective family man. He doesn’t really have any other accomplishments or character traits that the public cares about. He put all his eggs were in the good dad/husband basket. Somehow, the Harry & Meghan crisis only bolstered that image. Now Stephen Colbert is doing bits about his alleged affairs, and all the normies know about his anger issues. Now personally, I’m the kind of person who thinks where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But even if there aren’t any flames here, Kategate has done some massive damage to Will’s reputation.
KP PR team is giving toxic boymom energy. Anything to protect their precious son.
Is anybody else getting annoyed at all the normies acting like Rose is William’s Camilla? I mean, maybe she is. Maybe they never even slept together. We don’t really know. But the assumption is getting on my nerves. Not every side chick is a Camilla!!
My mum calls my dads best friend (another straight male) his Camilla.
I was filling in my husband about this mess, and his comment was that he thinks maybe the PR team WANTS this drama unfolding because it keeps the royals in the news. Like essentially, "all press is good press." What does this community think? I was inclined to think that as the figurehead of a political state and a future king, Charles and William really can't afford this type of bad press, especially about DV. Obviously, the royal family do bring in money and tourism for the country, and part of that has always been an uneasy relationship with paparazzi and gossip rags, but given that QE II is gone and there are a lot of people who find them irrelevant and an unfair state subsidy, I think this would be a terrible PR move. Thoughts? Could their PR team be milking this?
Their PR team are likely pulling their hair out. "All press is good press" applies to celebrities who need to keep their names front and center to remain celebrities. The Palaces never want bad press.
I think the issue is that William is incredibly stubborn and won't listen to their advice.
I've never been the type of girl to need closure when things come to an end, but if the season finale to this saga doesn’t answer every single question and include some bombshells I’d never even consider, I’m going to cry.
“She deserves her privacy, though!” Shut up, we’re all here for the same reason.
I just find it hilarious that the most interesting thing Kate has ever done in her life is disappear.
The whole ''she went shopping and we saw it, trust me bro'' thing is bad for them any way you look at it.
Either she wasn't really seen shopping and the story was completely fabricated with colaboration from the media, which would be pretty sinister and in line with everything else we've been getting lately, and at the least it would be a very North Korean-esque way of deceiving the public.
or
She actually did went shopping, was in ''public'' no matter how limited and controlled the public was, which means that she's physically capable + her face isn't bad or disfigured or whatever, as some people have suggested. Which portrays her as very irresponsible and weirdly uninterested in keeping up her image and popularity. Amidst all those very damaging rumors that could directly influence and traumatize even her children (forget about adults and public), she has time and will for shopping but not for a 10 second video, which is everything needed to dispell all the rumors once and for all?
All in all, terrible PR one way or another. The clusterfuck continues.
Do they actually think it’s a good look that she went shopping on St Paddy’s Day? She’s involved with the Irish guards and cancelled her appearance at their annual event… so she can’t work but she can pop out to the shops with Willy? Sure, Jan. Just fuck the Irish guards then right?! I mean, not that I remotely believe she went shopping. But another terrible PR bungle. These KP PR people are fucking idiots and I don’t understand why they still have jobs when they’re so clearly incompetent.
Even if she wasn't capable of attending a quick video message expressing her good wishes for the Irish guards etc etc would have worked wonders in terms of restoring good feeling towards them from the public and simultaneously would have quieted the conspiracy theorists. I don't buy she wasn't well enough to do a simple 1 minute video but was perfectly happy with a trip to the shops and watching sports with the kids where she would have been seen and possibly photographed.
My personal view is that the trip to the shop didn't happen. There's no way that there's not a SINGLE snap taken on a mobile phone that's made it's way to social media.
I'm continually amazed at how badly the Waleses are botching all of this.
To be clear, I've been a royal watcher since they got engaged in 2010, and I'd definitely fall into more into the "fan" camp than not.
I've thought the conspiracy theories about all of this are nonsense. And even now after "Photogate", I STILL think they're nonsense and that what is happening is what they said - Catherine had serious surgery and needs time to recover.
But the artificially constructed Mother's Day photo is such a huge unforced error, made worse by Catherine then taking the fall for it.
Catherine's clearly not ready to show her actual face as it looks right now, and that's fine.
But then don't fake a picture! Post a quick video of William and the kids making breakfast in bed for Catherine for Mother's Day, or making cards or something. It'd still have the conspiracy theorists buzzing about why we're not seeing her, but it'd have been SO much better received by the general public than what they did.
She's absolutely entitled to her privacy, especially while she recovers. But the deal that the Royal Family has had with the press for decades now is that they get privacy most of the time in exchange for occasional, official, REAL pictures. It's clueless at best - and outright deceptive at worst - to do something like this and think no one will notice or care.
With the farmer’s market story, I’m even more convinced that Kate’s story is a red herring and there is something else happening they don’t want people to notice or know about.
This is still so odd. Either something is up (and I have no knowledge and make no inferences as to what or why) or a lot of people are profoundly bad at their jobs. Ok, the photoshop happens. Then they lie about it, even when they are trying to apologize for it. Why not put out a quick official and genuine photo of just her. If she isn't ready for camera's yet, put out a voice recorded statement saying, "I appreciate everyone's interest in my well being. Rest assured I am recovering well and I look forward to returning to my royal duties as soon as I am able". They could so easily kill all of this speculation and non-sense if things are as they say they are (she is taking car rides and shopping and up out and about). It would literally take 1 hour of her time at most, and instead KP's continued silence invites more speculation. You know what happens in physics why you make a vacuum? It gets filled. The same happens in the media/press. So again I say, either something is up (and I have no grounds with which to speculate what it might be) or this is the absolute worst PR advice and self-made crisis in recent memory.
Edit: Grammar
I joked about this in one of the earlier megathreads, but what if the *plot twist* in all of this is that Kate handles her own PR.
I just remember when they got married how one of the little factoids that came out was that Kate did her own makeup for the wedding day. Like, royals! They're just like us!
Can someone answer why Royal Rota media are publishing these pics if there is a deal that they don't publish unauthorized photographs or was this a planned pap walk LOL? Is there a thread somewhere talking about this. I was listening to the Times (UK) Radio on YouTube today and the Assistant Editor for the paper (Kate Mansey) was unfairly criticizing listeners as strange people who are conspiracy theorists and says there isn't a pact or agreement that the family has with the media...yeah right LOL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIKUvQB2Z_M). Have these people read about the Royal Rota and the unprecedented-in-the-modern-era pacts the royal family has made with the British media.
If the British media are posting it its because they got the ok to do so.
Their PR team needs to pick a lane. On one hand they're selling that Kate is healthy enough to be out and about twice in one weekend, walking around a farmer's market, watching her kids play sports, but on the other she's unwell to the point she had to fake a Mother's Day pic and pull out of an event in June? Which is it? Their messaging is all over the place.
I hope that if we all take away one thing from this whole ordeal its that no matter how bad at your job you might think you are, you're still probably doing better than the KP PR team over the last couple of weeks so give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done and don't be so harsh on yourself.
what gets me and i know royal fans will call me a conspiracy theorist is that it's kinda obvious there's a story here. the impact or actual matter of it isn't what i'm questioning, but the motivation behind so many blunders. i am a writer/journalist and this entire story feels weirdly on edge of being something, anything.
like yes, let's presume kp was truthful from the beginning and she had abdominal surgery that took too long to recover from. great, but why throw her under the bus? or if all of this is a distraction, overplayed to the nines, what for?
i am sure any tea is probably regular people tea to the max, like relationship dynamics, family stuff and whatnot. it's not like i believed she was killed and it was hidden, but usually when there's smoke there's fire and i'm curious about what fire, you know?
i would love to be a fly on the wall and know what they disagree about, their relationship with staff and other royals.
i find kate stylish and their wedding hype was charming, if a little gauche. i am against royals in general, not specifically them, but they could be great philanthropists if they wanted.
the thing with Kate's personality (in public) is that it's nonexistent? i suppose that's the ideal, princess-like behavior that's expected from her. but i do wonder what happens behind the scenes with that. how curated it is x how many other blunders happened before.
The story seems to be that Will and Kate are going to find it much, much harder to be the center of the slimmed down monarchy than they realized. Though if it turned out that they’d never really thought about how that was going to work on practice, I would believe you. There aren’t as many working royals so the attention is on them, whether they want it to be or not. The disappearing and the stonewalling isn’t super unusual for Will and Kate, though not previously to this extent, but we’ll see if they make any changes moving forward. Judging from how this debacle has dragged on, I am guessing they won’t.
Well, I for one am very impressed by Kate's ability to emerge from her grueling 3 month surgical recovery looking like a radiant, bouncy 25 year old yoga instructor who doesn't have a care in the world.
#my gif#reddit#patrick jephson#media#british royal family#William The Prince of OWN GOALS#William The Terrible#William The Weak#prince william#William The Prince of Wales#kate middleton#Catherine The Princess of Wales#kensington palace#palace officials#pr games#strategery#PR fail#MESS!
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TRIGGER WARNING: Transphobic idiots on the internet. Again.
There's a LOT to unpack from ol' Mstoxictea here:
"Not from the pictures I’ve seen" - dafuq is she talking about?! There's literally billions of ways to look like a woman and I think Yasmin Finney is beautiful - not that it actually matters; if YF identifies as a woman then respect that or shut up.
"this is part of the problem with the UK, isn’t it? You all have spent so much time concentrating on getting rights for men in dresses" - quite the opposite, in fact. There are a lot of loud transphobes, with proud figureheads such as JKR, and it's infiltrating our politics, with a tory government fixated on culture war topics such as making the trans community look dangerous when it's the government themselves who are posing a significant risk to the country by failing to address the cost of living crisis and climate change, to name but a few. All fueled by a mainly right-leaning press.
"you fraudsters are only pretending to champion Trans while replacing actual female actresses with crossdressers" - There's no replacement, only representation which is a good thing! YF is, IFAIK, the only trans woman in the cast of this Doctor Who special.
There are very few "out" trans folk in England and Wales where the last census was collected:
The census question on gender identity was a voluntary question asked of those aged 16 years and over. The question asked “Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?”.
Overall, 45.7 million (94.0% of the population aged 16 years and over) answered the question.
In total, 45.4 million (93.5%) answered “Yes” and 262,000 (0.5%) answered “No”.
The remaining 2.9 million (6.0%) did not answer the question.
There used to be NO representation of trans people in UK media. There must be representation for conversations about trans, and wider LGBTQ+ communities to be normalised, so that these communities can feel safe. Which in today's climate is a challenge. Good on Russell T Davies for providing such a platform!
"You all are pretty fucking sick to keep trying to get rid of women." - this blatantly is not happening, you daft twat MsToxicTea, so STFU.
I know MsToxicTea needn't be taken seriously, but she encapsulates perfectly how some of the insane transphobes in the UK think, and they're a fucking scourge of our society right now. And the septics will demand until they're blue in the face that they aren't bigoted, but this shit shows them for what they are, time and again.
I'll end this with an extra snippet about Rose's storyline from the special. I personally loved this special, and this character, and I hope she has more to do on the upcoming episodes!
#stupid sceptics#msclaritea is a moron#the stupidity#tw: transphobia#doctor who#the star beast#if you want to go report msclaritea for hate speech violations then go knock yourself out
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I've rewatched all of Ted Lasso in the last few days. Here are some random Series 1 rewatch thoughts that no-one asked for.
I got a bit distracted towards the end and I didn't even bother to split it by episode, but I doubt anyone is going to read this anyway!
Ted and Beard are flying on DubaiAir, the sponsor of Richmond. Why aren't they in first/business class?
Ted looks so fucking cute and soft when he gets off the plane. I think this is probably where I fell in love with him.
It is hilarious that they go all the way to Tower Bridge from Heathrow when they would have to drive past Richmond (also why is Ollie still holding the sign with Ted's name on when they get there?!)
He likes my glasses? I guess I'll have to marry him one day...
I miss Colin's longer hair.
How adorable is Series 1 Bumbercatch? Little did I know back then that he'd become a favourite.
Trent is already smitten. Jeez Louise.
Isaac looks so good in glasses.
Sam thanking the photographers for taking his picture at the gala is beyond adorable.
Isaac and Colin and Richard all look so good in their suits.
I can't believe they filmed at the Rivoli Ballroom as the interior of Richmond Theatre. It is so close to where I live. They were right there and I didn't know. 😩
Knowing what we know about Jamie now, the player auction is PAINFUL. I feel so protective over Jamie now, but at the time I severely disliked him.
Roy correctly uses the term prima donna. Twice. But he says pre-Madonna in series 3.
Why is this hug so funny to me?
I didn't remember Ted saying 'plan' in an English accent copying Rebecca when he has semantic satiation. It is brilliant. As is his reaction to flan.
Interesting use of a Dutch angle when Ted is laying into Jamie. I don't think we see that used at any other point in the show.
No seriously. Why is Isaac not in glasses all the time?? Look at him.
I will never be over them setting something on fire on a Premier League pitch, dear god. 😩
Ted correctly names Sex and the City which he failed to do in series 3.
Earlier this week I wondered if Colin's nan would speak to him again if he got to play for Wales in the upcoming International Break episode. I didn't remember that she died. Sorry, Colin.
Colin's set piece suggestion is called Beckham's Todger. 🤦🏼♀️
Interesting that Nate uses a video of Jamie being a prick about Richmond to motivate the team like Roy and Beard using one of Nate in series 3. Both end in violence and Richmond losing.
#and those are my thoughts#that noone asked for#ted lasso#ted lasso rewatch#i'll go add some pictures to my series 2 one now#which also noone asked for but whatevs
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A Little Secret - Chapter 4
Here's my new chapter and I hope you like it :)
Let me know what you think in the comments and vote in the poll for your preferred run of the story (poll will be posted seperately as announced earlier :))
"Hi baby!"Andrew greeted her and casually kissed her cheek. She hated it when he called her like that but at least he had shown up at all so she'd better not complain. "Hi Andy. Thanks for coming.", she replied, equally casual and took his jacket. She had asked him to come home for the weekend and, much to her surprise, he had agreed without any further condition, so she had tried to be a good wife - though this was probably the most ridiculous term under the given circumstances - cleaned and tried up the house all week and made his favourite food for dinner, her legendary roast chicken with some potatoes and fresh vegetables from the garden, as well as a bottle of his favourite wine and, until now, he seemed delighted. "Just what I need after a week full of chaos.", he sighed and took a sip of the wine. "Oooh, Milla, do we have something to celebrate?", he asked, looking at her in anticipation. Camilla felt a cold breeze running down her spine. Gosh, she had already messed it all up. Apparently, he was expecting some happy news from her - how on earth was she supposed to go ahead with her plan under these circumstances? Goodness, no, she had to. There was no other option and she wasn't going to be a coward this time. She had to be strong, for the baby. "Not quite.", she replied, taking a deep breath, looking at him very seriously. He stopped chewing and frowned his forehead. "You're sounding serious, my dear." "I'm afraid, I am.", she added. "Andy, listen, I… I am in… a situation…"
"Are you fucking kidding me, Camilla?!", Andrew shouted at her, stood up, banging his fist on the table so that all the glasses and dishes and cutlery shook. Camilla winced and lowered her eyes in embarrassment and discomfort. What had she been expecting? Of course he wasn't going to be happy about the prospect of his wife having an illegitimate child with the Prince of Wales. "You know, I don't care whom you're dating or sleeping with, Camilla. God knows I have my… liaisons as well. But now… this… seriously, Camilla???" Every single word felt like a punch in her face. He didn't care. Had he ever really cared about her, had he ever really loved her? He didn't care. Of course, he had his liaisons as well, he'd always had, right from the start, yet she had always tried and hoped and even defended him… but he didn't care, he'd just said it himself, and though she didn't want it to affect her, it felt like a punch in her stomach. "Andrew, I did not plan this…", she tried to defend herself but he look at her reproachfully. "Could you not just use a bloody condom or something? Is your future King too cool to be cautious?! Fuck, Milla, I'd never have thought you'd be so damn stupid!", he screamed at her and she felt tears in her eyes again. She did not want to have this talk with him, not like that. It was so humiliating. "Don't talk to me like that!", she replied with a trembling voice and gave him a warning look. "You have no right to judge me! You're the one who ended our marriage with your 'liaisons', not me! And you were the one who-" She paused in order to swallow her tears. She didn't want him to see how much he was hurting her but it became harder by the second. "You were the one who kept telling me it was my fault that we couldn't have a third child without ever having seen a doctor yourself! You were so sure that it must have been me! Turns out, you were wrong!" She had meanwhile given up fighting against her tears and she actually didn't care any longer. Andrew was more than welcome to see what misery he'd put her into, how terrible he'd made her feel, not only now and then, in this very situation, but basically for the last couple of years. She had believed in love once, in marriage and family, but he'd managed to crash it all down, to rattle her entire life, her confidence, her belief and just everything she had ever wanted or felt good about. "Do you have any idea how I was feeling all those years?!", she screamed at him."What it did to me, the way you looked at me as if I wasn't good enough, as if I was the problem because, obviously, it was my fault that we couldn't have another child?" She looked at him with her teary eyes full of both anger and desperation. All of those years she had quietly endured it all but it had all broken free now and, somehow, it was a relief. Andrew stepped forward and towards her, his eyes had soften a bit and his hand reached out hers. She didn't refuse. "I'm sorry, Milla.", he said quietly and unusually genuine. "I'm going to think it all through and… come back to you tomorrow." With that, he turned around and went to his room.
Camilla tried to realise what had just happened while she cleared the table and did the dishes in the kitchen. It all felt so surreal. She had never talked to her husband like that and somehow she was proud of herself, that she has finally spoken up and didn't let him put her down because, when she was true to herself, she had allowed him to do so way too long. No man had the right to treat a woman like that and nobody, no matter their gender, deserved to be treated like that. He'd never been physically violent towards her, he'd always been a good father for the children and of course had offered her a financially secure life. But with his constant affairs he had broken her heart a million little times and slowly but surely destroyed almost all of her self-confidence. And in that moment, she realised that somehow Charles had saved her in the same way that he always said she had saved him. He made her feel loved and beautiful and special again, he appreciated her the way she was and, for once in her life, at least in her married life, there was nobody else around who was prettier, funnier, cleverer or better in bed for whom she was left alone. No matter what Andrew was going to do, she vowed to herself, never ever would she allow him to bring her down and made her feel that she wasn't enough again. She was enough. She was pregnant again, for goodness sake! Back then, when they had tried and failed to have another one, she had been suspicious whether it could be because of the mumps infection they both had caught from Tom shortly after Laura had been born. Everyone knew that it could affect male fertility but Andrew hadn't listened. He was the man, he was strong and healthy and if they couldn't have another baby it could only have been her fault. Of course, she had gone to see a doctor and everything had been alright, but he had still refused to go and see one himself so they had buried their wish for another child and just gotten on with their life as a family of four. For the children, they were good parents, they were a team, they worked well together and genuinely enjoyed spending time with each other, as parents and friends, but not as husband and wife anymore. She had never really noticed how much she had been missing that part of a marriage until she had gotten back together with Charles and he'd made her feel all the wonderful things once again. Oh Charles… she missed him terribly and wanted nothing more than to cuddle up to him right now, be held by him, feel him, kiss him, smell him… a part of her wanted to grab the phone and call him, hear his soothing voice whispering all the sweet nothings to her that'd make her feel better, but another part new that, if she did, she wouldn't be able to keep her little secret any longer, so she just went to bed alone, silently crying until she fell asleep.
"Okay Milla. Here's my offer.", Andrew announced almost solemnly when they met again for breakfast the next morning. "I have two options for you. The first is, you'll have the baby and it's going to be ours. The third child we've always wanted. I'll be the father, it'll have my name and nobody will ever know the truth. It will grow up in a loving family and lead a happy, normal life." Camilla looked at him in disbelief. That… sounded almost too good to be true. Surely there had to be a catch somewhere? Of course there was: "My one condition for this… agreement is that you will break up with your Prince and never see him again." "Andy, no…", Camilla interrupted with an almost begging voice. "You can't be serious… You can't ask me to do that, I…" 'I love him!', everything inside her screamed. 'And he loves me, too.' She couldn't imagine living without him anymore and neither could he imagine living without her, he needed her and she him. They had promised each other to always be there for each other from now… She couldn't leave him. That would break him. "Camilla, I don't begrudge you for having a bit of fun. But your relationship is way too serious and that'd be too risky. Imagine the baby resembles him. Would you be able to keep your mouth shut?" He looked at her provocatively and both of them knew the answer. Of course she wouldn't. "See. I'm not being cruel, I just want what's best for this innocent child and I'm sure that it's much better growing up as a legitimate son or daughter of a respectable British Army Officer than the fucking bastard of the Prince of Wales.", he casually added and Camilla winced. The bastard of the Prince of Wales. Hearing that felt like a slap in her face but, deep inside, she knew he was right. "It's up to you, Milla. If you can't do it, I see only one other option." He handed her a piece of paper with the phone number of a London private hospital. "They won't ask you questions."
With that, he turned around and went outside, leaving her in complete desperation. The piece of paper still in her trembling hand, she sank down to the floor, crying. What on earth was she supposed to do?
...vote in the poll! :)
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Tag Game 💌
Tagged by @higgspizzalover thank you! <3
Tea, Coffee or Soda?
Tea baby haha I'm british so what else do you expect
Dogs or Cats?
Cats :) I just think they're neat
Can you play an instrument?
Piano, self taught, very badly ahaha
What’s your sun sign?
Aquarius
First song lyrics that pops into your head?
So bye-bye, Miss American Pie...
Do you have any tattoos?
Nope
Favorite place you’ve traveled?
I really haven't been many places but there's this little beach in Wales that has my heart. It has a big rock like 20 feet out from the shoreline and I loved swimming out to it and sitting on it
What’s the last movie you watched?
Real Genius
Do you have any hobbies?
Hmm yes I really enjoy making horrific life decisions. No ok seriously I like reading, writing, swimming, baking, scrolling tumblr...
You can hang out with one fictional character for an hour, who do you choose?
Fuck this is hard how do I choose... can I choose Leo Valdez from Heroes of Olympus because he'd be such a laugh to hang out with
Compliment yourself:
Oh boy... is it bad I sat here for legitimately ten minutes trying to think of something... I guess I am very loyal I've been told him loyal
Tagging: @unmistakablyunknown @derpinathebrave @babygirllinds @malewifebillcage
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