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myfictionaldreams · 7 months

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Day 18: Sex Pollen - Bucky Barnes

Summary: It was your first mission out with your mentor, Bucky, but not all goes to plan when you stumble across an old Hydra laboratory and accidentally trigger a trap.

Tags: 18+ readers only, smut, dubious content (kinda), mentor/protege, grumpy/sunshine trope, sex pollen, fingering, begging, crying, rough sex, multiple orgasms, praise kink, creampie

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“Can you stay close to me?”

“Bucky, if I was any closer to you, I might as well be your shadow. Will you chill out, please?”.

All the response that you are given is an exasperated sigh from your team leader, who was directly in front of you, his gun raised and pointing in whichever direction his eyes followed. You were so close to him that the head of his body seeped through his uniform and into your back as you followed his steps, almost like a choreographed dance with the synrosy.

It was technically your first mission today; even though you’d been over comms for Bucky countless times, he finally gave in and agreed that you could join. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust you; in fact, he trusted you more than most. It was more due to his intense mentorship and protectiveness that he’d developed for you over the years, which had everything to do with your clumsiness.

Yes, you were an agent, but there were only so many times that you could accidentally hurt yourself before they called in your experience and practice. You were moved to a behind-the-desk job, which pained your heart, but soon, Bucky was your partner, digitally through the headset and then in person, as you begged him daily for training and a chance to prove yourself.

He was reluctant, but you were like an incessant fly, always buzzing around him with that chirpy personality that even managed to draw a smile to his grumpy old - yet handsome - face. The more time he spent with you, the more you could chip away at his heavy exterior and mask, which only hindered your chances of returning to the field again, as the thought of having you so close in the danger zone had him near palpitations.

He blamed it on your clumsy nature, tripping over your own feet or dropping vital machinery, but in truth, Bucky had wanted to prioritise your safety, which was hard when he had a job to do. However, after months of pestering, you wore him down enough to agree that you could attend the Avengers to a sweep of a supposed deserted Hydra base.

“If you continue down this corridor, I can check the rooms”, you say quietly, hardly audibly over a pin drop, but with Bucky’s increased hearing, you knew he could hear.

“Absolutely not; you’re staying with me; we’ve discussed this. We’ll check the rooms together and finish the rest of the corridor”. Bucky’s word was final, so you didn’t argue back, restraining violently to not eye roll at his authoritative tone.

“You two are like an old married couple”, Natasha quips over the comms, which was enough for both you and Bucky to roll your eyes. It was a comment frequently shared with those around you, and it warmed you to hear such pleasantries, and then the realisation that Bucky would never go for someone like you had the sensation of ice coursing down your spine.

“I think you’ll find he’s the old one, not me”, you retort sarcastically as Bucky leads the way into the first room. “This looks like Bruce’s office or something. Do you recognise any of these experiments?”

It was an old, decrepit office laced with dust and thick cobwebs, similar to something from Frankenstein with the number of attempted experiments that seemed littered around the room. Endless stacks of paper, vials of dusky-coloured liquids, and photographs stapled to the walls that were decaying with age.

“No, I don’t recognise any of this, but whatever it is can’t be good news. Stay close and don’t touch anything”. You once more refrain from the eye roll, knowing he means well, but you’re not a child who needs to be reminded to hold their parent's hand all the time. Taking a step away from him, your eyes scanned the various objects, noticing that it was in a language you didn’t quite recognise.

“Thor, I think we have some voodoo stuff here that’s from your neck of the woods”, Bucky announced through his earpiece.

“You think so?” you ask over your shoulder towards the man with his back to you.

“Yeah, I recognise some of these markings from his hammer”.

“Huh. maybe it’s one of the bases Loki was hiding in; he did like dark and damp places- SHIT!”

To your credit, you hadn’t touched anything or even tripped and knocked something over; potentially, a trip wire or a sensor was trapped in the room, but a light drizzling mist sprayed into your face halfway through your sentence. As you were talking, the concoction settled on your tongue but also seemed everywhere else: your eyes, nostrils, and ears felt wet.

“What? What happened?!” Bucky snapped, standing in front of you in seconds as he assessed you, wiping your eyes.

“I…I don’t know, something sprayed me in the face”. As soon as you’d explained what had happened, Bucky was cradling your face more harshly than you’d have liked, tilting your face in all directions, even sniffing close to see what had covered you, but it had already absorbed into your skin.

Bucky’s eyes were frantically searching over every pore of your face like it would give him answers about what had sprayed you. His gloved finger and thumb holding your chin tightened as he swore. “Fuck! I told you to be careful and stay by my side! Why would you touch anything?!”

Pushing his hands away from your face, you gave him an incredulous gaze, “I didn’t touch anything! I’m not an idiot, so you don’t have to talk to me like I’m one, bucky! Stop- stop trying to touch me, I’m fine,” he had been reaching for your face to examine it again, ignoring your sassy, angry tone. Still, you stepped back out of his reach, becoming frustrated with his lack of trust.

As Bucky’s mouth opened to probably further chastise you, the door ricocheted off the wall as The Avengers swarmed into the uncomfortable small room. Natasha was by your side first, examining your face just as closely as Bucky, but at least she had listened when you explained that you felt completely fine. Tony then scanned your vital signs, which were also fine.

“I told you! It’s probably some mouldy old water or something; I feel fine now can you all give me some space? You’re making it hot in here”. You were fanning your face to try and cool yourself like someone had just turned on the heating, but it was primarily because the small room was full of warm-blooded people.

“Let’s head back out, and we’ve nearly finished the sweep on the North side”, Tony began, the face plate of his suit sliding back into place. “We’ll continue and finish the rest.” He lifted his metal-covered hand and pointed a finger towards Bucky. “Barnes, take her back to the Quinjet, keep an eye on her”.

“No! Don’t send me back to the jet like a child. I told you, I feel absolutely fine!” you quickly tried to rationalise with Tony. Still, he ignored you, hovering off the ground and flying out into the corridor. You looked to the other Avengers with the hope that one of them may find some pity for you, but all you had in response were close-lipped smiles that notified you that there was nothing that they were going to do.

Letting out a frustrated shout, you stopped, admittedly like a child, in the direction you and Bucky had walked down. Even though his steps were silent, you knew he was behind. You could feel his stare burning into the back of your head.

As you returned to the Quinjet, Bucky continued to stay silent as you both sat on opposite sides of the seating bay. Your anger spiked as you shrugged off your jacket, still feeling slightly warm and needing air to reach your skin.

“Where are you going?” Bucky asked as you moved across the jet with determined steps.

“The toilet, or do I need you to hold my hand as I’m doing that too?” you snap, cheeks heating as anger bubbles deep in the centre of your chest. Bucky, for once, looked taken aback by your tone as he shook his head and allowed you to go to the bathroom.

Once inside the small compartment, you rushed to the sink, turned the tap onto its coldest setting and began to scoop it over your skin, sighing in contentment as your skin began to cool down. Pressing your fingers against your face, you felt uneasy with the temperature of your skin, and it was like you were starting to get the flu but also not quite at the heat that concerned you. You decided it was probably from rushing back to the jet after a few minutes of deep breathing.

A rush of guilt settled heavily in your stomach as you thought about how you’d spoken to Bucky. You’d never broken rank and been that rude to him before. Not once had you ever raised your voice or even been angry with him, even through all the times that he’d declined your joining for a mission; it was always for the best, but now, everything just seemed to have escalated. You couldn’t calm yourself down like you were buzzing from the inside out, affecting your temperature and mind.

Three swift knocks on the bathroom door had your head snapping in that direction. “Everything ok in there?” Bucky asked tentatively.

“Yes! Can’t a girl pee without being interrupted?” you snapped, and immediately, you regretted the nasty tone you’d spit out.

There was a pause from Bucky before he continued to speak, but this time, he had lowered his voice in a soft and calming way. “It’s been half an hour, and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay, Sweetheart”.

Half an hour?! You could have sworn it was only a couple of minutes. Rubbing your hands over your face and shaking away the tension, you nervously opened the door, tentatively looking up at Bucky through your lashes.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just didn’t want to let you down, and I promise I didn’t touch anything in the lab-”.

Bucky pulled the door open entirely, his eyes roaming over your body to check you were still in one piece before he sighed. “It’s fine, Doll. I just wanted to make sure you’re ok… Are you… ok?”

His blue eyes flicker over your face as he notices that there's something not quite right with you, but all you can manage is a shrug of your shoulders, wiping your eyes that were feeling a little irritated. “I feel mostly fine. I think I need a lie-down, though”.

Bucky looked unsettled by your words but didn’t stop you from walking over to the onboard bunker, where you rolled onto the thin mattress and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

“So, are we just going to leave her here?” Tony sarcastically asked the other Avengers members, who were now watching you sleep.

“No, asshole. I’ll take her”, Bucky grunted, moving past the billionaire to squat beside your body. You’d been in a deep slumber since collapsing onto the bed. Bucky had stayed by your side the entire journey home, which was a fair length, so he was surprised to see you still asleep. Tony had set up the screen to display your vitals, which he watched like a hawk and other than the fact that you weren’t waking, everything remained normal.

The other Avengers didn’t argue with Bucky, knowing how protective he was over you, as they shuffled out of the loading hatch. Bucky shimmied one arm underneath your knees and the other to support your back as he carried your bridal style. You moaned at the disruption, arms circling around his jacket-covered shoulders.

Bucky contemplated taking you to the medical bay for a thorough check, but seeing your peaceful face, he didn’t want to disturb you. He’d stay with you to ensure you were checked as soon as you woke up. It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d stayed with you as you slept, as there were many times you’d either fallen asleep on his arm during a movie or gotten too drunk during an Avengers event that he stayed just to make sure you didn’t choke on your vomit.

As he walked through the Avengers headquarters, he ignored the call for a debrief by his teammates and continued until he arrived at your bedroom, booting the door closed behind him.

Your bedroom was just as messy as he had anticipated it to be, stepping carefully over the shoes, clothes and books that you liked to say were carefully placed into piles on the floor, but you’d simply just left them there to clean up another time. Your bed was just as bad with mountains of pillows that you insisted on having, even though Bucky thought it was severely excessive.

Trying to reposition his hold on you, he hoisted you higher to spare one of his hands to throw the numerous pillows you owned onto the floor. In doing so, your forehead rested against his cheek, and you released an unsettled whine on the impact of his skin touching yours.

Bucky froze at the noise, trying to look down at your face, but in his position, he couldn’t see properly as you were thoroughly tucked under his chin. Finally having enough space, he ever so carefully led you out onto the soft mattress.

Your eyebrows were furrowed as if you were having a nightmare. Bucky sat beside you on the bed, counting your breaths and frowning when he noticed that you were breathing more rapidly than you had been when he was in his arms.

Sweat began to gather along your temple, causing your hair to stick to your forehead, which he quickly moved to move away. As the tip of his fingers connected with your skin, many things seemed to happen simultaneously.

For one, you released a deeply pained groan as you curled your body into a ball on your side, beginning to breathe in quick succession like you were hyperventilating.

“Sweetheart?” Bucky asked with rising concern, now cupping the side of your face with his flesh hand, but this seemed to trigger the pains enough that you awoke.

Your eyelids fluttered open just to clamp shut again, squeezing as you cried in unbelievable agony. Your skin was burning as if all your nerves had been individually set on fire, causing sweat to come to the surface of your pores drenching your clothes, which was still mostly your uniform.

“It hurts. It’s too hot”, you whimpered, lower lip wobbling as eyes effortlessly tracked down your cheeks. With trembling fingers, you attempted to undo your trousers, but the stabbing pain in your abdomen caused you to curl further into a ball like you were trying to shield your stomach from anyone touching it.

“Let me help. We need to get you to cool down. JARVIS, inform the medical bay that we need some assistance”, Bucky shouted Tony’s AI that ran throughout the building.

As Bucky managed to undo the button to your trousers, JARVIS responded with news that had Bucky’s heart almost stopping. “They are aware of the situation as Mr Stark has requested that I record her vitals from returning to Avengers headquarters. You are both officially in quarantine until they can find out what it is that was sprayed and affecting her”.

The sound of the bedroom locking echoed louder than any of your sobs as Bucky cursed, running up to the barricade and attempting to break out. “You can’t just lock us in here! She’s going to die, Stark, you piece of shit! Open the door!”

“Bucky!” you cried pathetically, still attempting to remove your clothes even though all that remained was your t-shirt and underwear. Bucky didn’t immediately rush back to you as he removed his jacket, giving him more freedom to swing his metal arm back and punch his way through the bedroom door, but all it did was bend; it still wouldn’t open.

“Fuck!” Bucky shouted, seething with unending rage as he rushed back to your side, helping to pull the shirt over your head. “Christ Doll, your skin is warmer than mine. Come on, I’m going to carry you to the bathroom; we need to cool you down”.

Bucky carefully carried you to your en suite bathroom in the same bridal style as before. He tried not to grunt at how warm your body was against his flesh arm as he carefully placed you into the bath, but as he tried to move away to turn on the shower, you screamed out, grabbing onto his arm to keep him close.

“Don’t leave me; it feels good to have you close, please!” Bucky frowned, not entirely understanding what you meant, as surely his higher-running body temperature didn’t feel good when you were burning up so significantly.

“I need to turn the shower on. I’ll be two seconds, and I’ll be back, I promise”, he explained and then didn’t wait for your response as he pried your nimble fingers off your bicep. As soon as some of him didn’t touch your skin, the symptoms worsened.

Bucky flinched at the pitch and volume of how you screamed. He scrambled to reach over the bathtub to switch on the shower head high above the wall and hastily turned the temperature down until cold water was running out.

“Sweetheart, you need to move further under the water; please work with me here. You’ll feel better, you just need to move for me”.

Your whole body was shaking with such force that you found it difficult to suck in air as the heat of your skin was the last of your worries. The pain in your abdomen had turned into pure agony, and if you were to describe it, it was almost like you were cramping, waves of stabbing pain but exaggerated to a level that made it impossible to breathe, think, or even want to survive. It was so severe that you couldn’t hear what Bucky was begging because you were desperate to try and hold your abdomen as it would in some way ease the pain, but not only this, your body was reacting in an extreme way to try and fight the unknown sensation coursing through your veins.

As if to relieve the cramps, your cunt produced an obscene amount of fluid to the point that it was dripping out of your hole and pooling beneath where you sat. If Bucky turned off the shower, you’d probably appear just as wet with how much of your juices were coming out.

“Fuck this”, Bucky whispered under his breath as he failed to get you to move by yourself. Awkwardly, due to the limited space, Bucky climbed into the bath, hoisting you forward to sit behind you and force your body further under the cold water. This, in turn, means that he began to get soaked, including the tactical gear he still wore on his legs, his combat boots and the black t-shirt. He didn’t care though, not when you were deteriorating so significantly.

Bucky put it down to the water, but as soon as he was in the bathtub, his body pressed against yours and arms wrapped around your waist so that the bare skin of his arm and metal touched yours, the screams reduced to stuttering whimpers.

Your head rested back on his shoulder, out of the way of the flowing water, but as your forehead turned and met his chin, you turned further to nuzzle closer.

“More”, you whispered, fingers digging into his forearms to hold him closer.

Bucky readjusted your body so that it sat fully between his thighs. “More what, Doll?” he asked gently, his thumb rubbing in circles along your rib cage. It was only now that he contemplated that you were in your underwear, but it was an emergency, even though some part of him deep down was awakening in some deep-seated emotions he’d been trying to keep locked away.

For the first time since you’d been in pain, you responded to his voice by turning your head slightly but only to rest your lips against his neck. “More!” It was like a siren was sounding through your mind, and the sensation of Bucky’s skin against yours was quietening it to a soft buzz; even the cramping had eased somewhat to a dull ache.

Bucky frowned, confused by your demands, but he squeezed his arms around you further, deciding that maybe it was the comfort that was helping you.

“It hurts”, you sobbed against his neck, “wanna feel more of your skin”.

“My…my skin?” Bucky asked, completely confused by your request and deciding that you’d probably entered the delirious stage of whatever illness you were experiencing.

“Mr Barnes? Are you there?” came a voice from the speakers in the ceiling.

“JARVIS? Is help coming?” Bucky asked with hope pleading in his voice.

“No, sorry, Mr Barnes, but we have an update. It seems that Mr Odinson has read through some of the markings found in the footage taken from the lab. The mist sprayed was, in fact, from Asgardian origin. Mr Odinson informs me that it is most likely planted there by Mr Laufeyson as a trick he has played many times in their lifetime.”

A prank? It sure didn’t look like a prank with the way you were trembling and crying in Bucky’s arms. “So what the hell is it? How do we stop this from getting any worse?”

“This is of a delicate matter, Mr Barnes, so forgive me. Mr Odinson informs me that the chemicals used in the mist are an aphrodisiac used during specific parties in Asgard to increase the user's arousal. Still, due to the amount of time that this substance had been left in this hydra facility, it has caused the ingredients to age and the symptoms to increase in intensity. However, Mr Odinson has reassured me that the symptoms should reduce if you were to consummate”.

Bucky was speechless as he looked down at your precious, unwell body in his arms. “You can’t be fucking serious”, he’d meant to shout, but all that came out was a doubtful whisper. “What would happen if we left her? Would the symptoms lessen? She doesn’t seem to be in as much pain when touching my skin”.

“Unfortunately, after some time, the symptoms will reduce. The chemicals used are designed to last as long as possible, and as they are all out of date, Mr Odinson is unsure how long this may last, but with her vitals as abnormal as they are now, it is unwise to leave her. Mr Stark has suggested that if you cannot fulfil the role of consummation, then he would find someone who could”.

Bucky’s reaction to Stark's comment was to shout in rage, and he could picture him now smiling at his sarcastic comment. There was no way he was letting anyone else touch you. “What if she doesn’t want that? I’m not touching her if she doesn’t want-”

“I do”, you gasp whilst still resting your face on his neck, calming your cries enough that you could hear JARVIS. “I want it so bad; I need the pain to go away. Please help me Bucky”.

Whether it was the way that you begged him for the intimate act or the thought of potentially what was happening, Bucky regretted to say that his cock twitched in the confines of his underwear as he sat up further. “Sweetheart, do you understand what’s being asked? To do this-”

“I want you to touch me, Bucky; I don’t need to tell you how long I’ve wanted this. I know you know how I feel, but please, I can’t feel like this anymore; it hurts everywhere”.

Bucky’s eyes glazed over. All the time of knowing you, he had somewhat of an inkling of the shared feelings. Still, it was firstly unprofessional of him to act on any feelings, but his self-conscious bias of being undeserved of love due to his past as the Winter Soldier stopped him further.

However, now, you were led out before him, ready to live the dreams and fantasies he’d been stuck on for so long, but what’s worse was the pain you were experiencing. It seemed he took too long to answer as he could feel the shift of the heat radiating from you once more.

Your back arched as your fingers delved between your legs, cupping your mound as the pain increased; this time, it wasn’t just the cramps but also white-hot tingles beginning in your clit, over every little sensitive nerve that ran throughout your core.

“Please help me!” you cried, tears lining your eyes.

Bucky had to decide then and there if he would potentially watch you suffer with unimaginable pain or help in the only possible way. He’d agreed, had from the second Jarvis had suggested it, knowing that he couldn’t lose you.

Sitting up slightly, Bucky reached behind his head to pull the black t-shirt off and onto the floor, the wet material squelching on impact. With his chest bare and kissing the skin of your back, you sighed in relief, but the throbbing between your thighs didn’t cease.

“Off, I need these off!” you referred to your underwear, the bra and panties restraining the areas that hurt you the most. Using his metal hand, bucky quickly tore through both garments and discarded them onto the floor to join his shirt.

The sound of relief that you made caused his heart to beat with a more affectionate rhythm as he looked down at your now naked body. The shower continued to coat you with cool water that glistened off you. Your nipples were the first thing that he noticed, impossibly hard and aching to be touched, and it seemed he was reading your mind as you grabbed his metal hand and used it to cup the squishy mound, directing his thumb and forefinger to pinch the sensitive nub.

You released a heavenly cry, back arching and thighs clamping shut at the lightest of touches. With his warm hand, he did the same to your other breast as he carefully squished both in his palms before rolling your nipples between his fingers.

“Yes! Feels so good, just like that”, you beg, eyes still shut, but your head had rolled back onto his shoulder, giving him the space to respond to his desire of gently kissing the column of your throat. Even this sparked more moans from you, needing to feel the plumpness of his lips, needing the electrical tingles that came from his touches to continue.

The kisses were soft, like he was scared to touch you, but as your sounds of pure elation continued, so did his confidence as his mouth opened, applying wet, open-mouth kisses to your skin.

As if on instinct, responding to these touches, your hips began to rotate, pushing down harder against his groin until Bucky was moaning in pleasure.

“More, touch me more”. Bucky responded to your demands by smoothing his flesh hand down your abdomen, feeling the skin taunt, reacting to him. He moved over your mound as he watched closely from over your shoulder. This was when he felt it, the wetness that was continuing to be produced and pour out of your cunt. Even though the shower was still coating you, the substance was different, verging on feeling slimy, more slippy and seemed to cover everywhere from the waist down.

Bucky contemplated licking his fingers to taste you, especially as his mouth filled with saliva with the need pulsing through him. Still, it wasn’t about him, so he continued lower until his fingertips were parting your labia.

The second his middle finger stroked your clit, it seemed a wild animal took over you like you knew how close you were to receiving what you truly wanted but not quite going at the speed you wanted.

One flick of his middle finger against your swollen, throbbing clit was all you allowed before you were turning in his arms, pushing his arms away momentarily as you raised onto weak knees.

“Need you now. I can’t wait; it hurts so much Bucky”. As you explained your reasonings, your shaking fingers were reaching for the waist of his tactical trousers, trying to undo the belt but grunting when you struggled to do so. Bucky thankfully helped you then, ignoring the evident trembling in his fingers from all of the adrenaline as he unfastened his belt, button and zipper.

With this new freedom, you were able to reach inside the space and grasp his hard dick, pulling it out of the confines of his clothes. You marvelled at it for a single second, enjoying the softness of the skin but the firmness of the shaft, the bulging veins and tip that was bulbous and aching to be stroked. It was like your prize, your pot of gold at the end of the tunnel, and you needed it inside of you right that moment.

Seeing and hearing your desperation to be as quick as possible, as the cramps continued to pulse through your abdomen, Bucky quickly grabbed your hips, pulling you over his lap to straddle him, even with the awkwardness of the squished space in the bathtub.

Your hands rested on his shoulders as you lowered yourself. Neither you nor Bucky had ever experienced anything like it. The agony catapulting through your veins completely shifted to one of pleasure, like a switch had been flicked throughout your body as you took inch after inch of his delicious cock. Bucky, on the other hand, was having to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from cumming, but he did moan in an animalistic way. He’d never been inside a cunt that was so perfect before, so deliciously warm and unnaturally soaked; you squeezed his cock in pulses that he soon realised was the thump of your heart.

“That’s it, you’re taking me so well.” Bucky couldn’t help but praise, wrapping his arms around your back to provide further support.

As your body naturally seemed to adjust to the size of his cock, you didn’t waste any time before beginning to ride him with the help of Bucky’s strong arms.

The shower still coated you both in refreshing cold water for the heat, devouring the two of you. Bucky is still wearing his tactical trousers and boots, and you are completely nude and riding him like your life depended on it. Well, it did, in a way.

Up and down, you bounced, your tits jumping on your chest, which caused your pebbled nipples to rub against his, giving extra stimulation. You were so incredibly out of breath with the momentum of fucking him, but you didn’t stop, only occasionally softening the bouncing to a soft roll which always caused Bucky to moan and squeeze the cheeks of your arse together.

In no time at all, you were finding your peak, cunt pulsing dangerously tightly around his cock as you came, face hiding on his shoulder as you slumped against him for a second. Bucky thought this would be over, that he would have to carry you to bed and hope you felt better soon, but then he began to feel the wetness flowing around his cock and the throb returning. Shortly after, you were whimpering.

“It hurts again, please Bucky, I need you again”.

Bucky didn’t need telling twice as he thrust his hips up to snap into yours, causing your delicious moan to echo around the room. He needed to hear it again, so he repeated the action, but it was difficult to find any sort of leverage in this position, so with his metal arm positioned beneath your arse, he supported your weight and stood. His boots were now the objects to be squelching as he moved towards the shower wall.

There, he pushed your back against it and began to fuck you with deep, fast penetrations. Your head fell back against the tiles, nails digging into the skin of his shoulder blades as you didn’t want this pleasure to end.

“Harder, Bucky fuck me harder!” you cried out, knowing he was still holding back. Bucky grunted, shifting so that both of his hands were beneath your arse cheeks, holding you more securely so that he could fuck you without any restraint.

Each thrust had you almost blacking out; they felt so good. The tip of his cock smashing into your cervix, which any other time would have potentially hurt, but for now, it was just what you needed.

You came again, spluttering and quivering from your mouth and cunt as he helped you over the edge. However, once more, the pains returned.

Bucky had once thought that his increased libido due to the super serum was a hindrance, but for the only time in his life, he was thanking whatever asshole had experimented on him for this moment.

His trousers and boots had been removed as he had carried your dripping body out of the shower when he realised your temperature remained low if he was fucking you. Into the bedroom, he continued his impressive and thorough fucking. Pushed onto the bed on all fours, in the spooning position, even missionary, and he wouldn’t change positions until you were a cumming bumbling mess. Wherever he decided to bend you over, it was always him on top; your legs were shaking too much to support your weight anymore, but he didn’t mind, not when he could take full control and draw orgasm after orgasm from you.

After god knows how many orgasms, Bucky finally couldn’t edge himself anymore and came with a gruff moan against your collarbone from where he lay over you, his seed seeping into your swollen hole, warming and massaging internally. This finally seemed to settle you, like it was the one missing ingredient your body needed, as you slumped onto the bed without any more cries of pain.

Bucky collapsed next to you, pulling your exhausted, limp body on top of his, your face resting on his chest as you both tried to calm your breathing.

He thought you’d fallen asleep, but then your face was tilting up to look at his, which, in turn, he looked down to look at yours. Even though you looked thoroughly exhausted, he could see that you were beginning to return to your usual self as you smiled so gently that it caused his heart to beat harder. Something you could hear as your ear rested over his heart. Tilting your head up further, your lips caressed his before Bucky could contemplate what you were doing.

The kiss was light and delicate, and it finally dawned on Bucky that this was the first kiss shared between the two of you, having been so distracted with fucking your brains out that he thought kissing would be too intimate. Neither of you said anything, just continued to smile before sleep finally captured your conscious minds.

#bucky barnes #bucky #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes one shot #bucky smut #marvel smut #marvel #mine*#kinktober #kinktober 2023

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buryustogether · 11 months

Text

lilac - chapter 8 + epilogue

miguel o’hara x f!reader

summary: the walls are crashing down, and even spiderman can’t hold up an entire universe.

wc: 6k

warnings/tags: smut, kidnapping, universe collapsing, torture, filming, blood, blade violence, explosions, choking, falling off a building, love confessions, major character death, start-overs

If you closed your eyes hard enough, if you flooded your senses with your deep, treasured memories and blocked out everything around you, you were able to transport yourself back into last week. Last week, when Gabriella had crashed on the couch, and you and Miguel were lying in bed with chests heaving and sweat cooling across your necks. The bedside lamp was dim; the bulb needed to be changed. Outside, the city continued to thrive, churning and burning and spitting. But inside your bedroom, your hand clasped in his, the world was still.

He had rolled you over so that you lay on top of his broad frame, but he was still inside of you, soft and flaccid now that he’d finally chased his release - after giving you yours four times. You blinked tiredly, staring at nothing as you felt one of his long, thick fingers skimming over your back.

“I’ve been thinking,” you murmured against the warm, tan skin of his shoulder.

Miguel hummed, acknowledging your words. His fingers continued to graze across your skin, up and down, up and down.

“Obviously we’re… planning on staying together. For a long time. Right?”

Though he kept his eyes closed, his thick, full lips quirked upward into a smirk, allowing the tips of his fangs to poke into view. “Believe me, sweetheart,” he rumbled from deep in his chest. “I’m not letting you go anytime soon.”

His words stirred inside of you, like a new hope springing to life. “Well… we’re going to need to move. Someplace bigger, with more room. For all of us. And this city, Mig, it’s… it’s not safe.”

It was then that Miguel’s eyes opened, and that smile slowly disappeared from his lips. You felt your heart sink with them, like an anchor in your belly. “You’re talking about moving away?” he said. When you only lifted your head to look at him, chin resting on his sternum, he exhaled deep and moved his hand to begin carding through your hair. “I can’t leave, bebe,” he said softly. “You know why.”

Yes, you knew why. It was because he was Spiderman, and this was New York, the worst city in the country to live in. With criminals on every block and fires and shootouts and a sky so deeply and violently purple you’d never even known its true color.

Being a lover, a father, everything before and after and in between, was what made Miguel who he was. But that was only a part. That other half came from being a hero, from helping those who could not help themselves. Walking with a sense of pride in what he did, knowing that people had something to trust in.

And you knew he could never leave that.

So you swallowed thick and let the issue go. You sighed and wrapped your arms around his large, naked form, nestling your face into the soft, delicate spot where his throat met his chest. “Okay,” you said, and you felt him lean down to kiss the crown of your head. “I’d still like a bigger place, though. Your daughter can’t sleep on the couch forever.”

Miguel chuckled, wrapping a sinewy arm around your middle to keep you close while you both dozed off. “I think we can do that.”

You were suddenly brought back to the present when, behind the glass partition you were facing, the giant, hulking machinery moved a few inches before coming to a halt. The metal groaned and squealed, startling the little girl held tight against your chest. Gabriella was heavy, and your arms were beginning to grow tired, but you would hold her until the end of time, if you needed to.

The Alchemax viewing area was dim and dark in the corners of the room, illuminated only by the glow of the control panel to your right and the stark, white lights projected onto the molecular collider in the lab. It was a massive piece of machinery, built to withstand its own otherworldly power, armored and bolted to the ground should the walls and ceiling be blasted away into nothingness.

You turned slightly when the collider moved again, twisting and turning in on itself, and Gabriella released a small, pitiful cry against your shoulder. Twisting your expression into a sneer, you fixed the man at the control panel with the meanest look you could muster.

Doctor Octopus - Otto Octavius, a visionary genius turned terrorist after his mechanical arms took over his head - lifted his head slightly and let his shades slip down his crooked nose. In return to your harsh frown, he gave an apologetic expression that carried no genuinity whatsoever. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said as one of his arms reached out to flip a few switches. “Just a few test runs.”

Shifting Gabriella’s weight to your hip, you glanced down and smoothed the girl’s hair from her face. She was still wearing her jacket that she would have put on at recess - they must have been watching the school, waiting for her to emerge from those brick walls so that they could snatch her up. Suddenly you were cursing yourself, wishing you could face your reflection in a mirror and shatter the glass with a fist. You could have been there. Could have made sure she was safe, she was secure.

Her being here was your fault.

And her being here meant something that made your veins turn to ice when you thought about it; they knew who Spiderman really was.

When the collider began to shift again, shaking the building slightly in its very foundations despite being here in the basement of the building, you turned your head to face Octavius again. “What exactly are you all planning to do with this thing?” you said, watching as he shifted across the control panel to reach a few buttons and scanners. “I heard it wasn’t ready for tests yet.”

“From who, darling?” he said, meeting your eyes over the rims of his shades. “A spider on the wall?” When you said nothing, averting your eyes to the floor, he hummed and continued on, allowing his mechanical arms to carry him over to a large monitor. His gloved fingers typed faster than you thought possible for a person. “Alchemax is playing a dangerous game with a toy they don’t understand. Tests mean nothing when dealing with a piece of the future like this. That Spiderman of yours told you about the multiverse, didn’t he?”

Told you about it. Explained it. Came from it.

Octavius raised a finger and beckoned you toward him. You hesitated, holding your breath, before silently padding across the observation area to stand behind him at the monitor. Squinting your eyes against the light, you watched as he gestured to a warping, live image of string-like animations repeating in a loop on the screen. “These,” he said, finger grazing along the lines, “are realities close within one another. They’re different, sure, but only in little ways. Someone’s eyes are a different shade. A grain of sand is misplaced a foot from where it landed. Again - little ways.” He used the touchpad of the computer to scroll outward, giving you a view of so many lines warping together it looked like almost an entirely colored screen. “And these are the realities within our grasp with the collider. Meaning -” he looked down at you - “every reality in the multiverse.”

You stared at the screen, hugging Gabriella to yourself tightly. One of those lines was Miguel’s reality. Where he was supposed to be.

As Octavius scrolled back in, you caught a glimpse of a line flickering and glitching, unlike the others. You stopped him. “That one,” you said, and he halted. “What’s that one?”

“Earth - 9193,” he said, his voice low and grave. He met your eyes, his gaze darker than it was just a moment ago. “Our home universe.” He gave a rather rueful smile as he watched your expression melt into one of confusion. “In our reality,” he explained as his mechanical arms set him - finally - on the ground, “there is no Spiderman. This city - it’s not supposed to get better. So imagine the universe’s bafflement when Spiderman from a different reality swoops in to save the day. It tries to expel him. Tries to correct canon events gone wrong. But it couldn’t. And so - it’s collapsing.”

“Collapsing?”

“Correct.” He paused and you both looked up when, overhead, there came a distant boom; the city falling apart at the seams. The building shook again and dust fell from the ceiling. To your surprise, he lifted one of his arms and shielded your head as it bounced off your shoulders and clung to your hair. “Call us selfish,” he said and lowered his arm again. “But my associates and I aren’t particularly fond of sticking around when the end comes around.”

You blinked a few times at the screen, feeling your heart skip a beat or twelve as you let his words sink in. Your universe - it was collapsing. That was what the glitches in the city had been. That was why Miguel’s apartment building had folded in on itself - it was because of him. No matter where he went, the glitches followed.

Because he was a virus here in your reality, and when viruses could not be expelled, the system would ultimately kill itself.

You clutched the little girl in your arms a bit tighter. “You’re… running away,” you murmured as Octavius fiddled with the monitor and its data. “You’re leaving us all here to die.” The words were barely able to clear your throat, barely able to keep themselves afloat.

He hummed in that way you noticed he did. “Running away wouldn’t be the correct term,” he replied. “Moreso… self-preserving.”

At that moment, the doors leading into the observation area were thrown open on their hinges to reveal the figures you had come to fear striding into the bay. You took three steps back as the Prowler slid down a railing and came to a smooth landing at Octavius’ side. “How are we looking, Doc?” he said as his purple, eye-lit mask dematerialized to reveal his face. His gaze was a touch crazier than you remembered it, bold and wild in a way that screamed danger.

Octavius’ cold, stony facade slid back into place as he adjusted his shades and rose, his mechanical arms lifting him off the ground. “Swimmingly,” he replied. “A few more tests, and she should be ready for lift off.”

“Perfect!” shouted Ferris abruptly, causing you to jump slightly. He clapped his hands and approached you as, behind him, Kraven hefted a news broadcasting camera onto his shoulder and began to fiddle with the settings. “Sorry to keep you waiting, babe,” said your ex as he approached you, taking two steps forward when you took one back. He showed off a disturbing, unnatural smile. “Had some loose ends to tie up.”

You sneered at him and turned, placing yourself between him and Gabriella. “You’re fucking insane, Ferris,” you hissed, inches from his sickening grin. “Taking me is one thing, but a kid? You’ve lost it, for real this time.”

“Big words, coming from you,” he said, tilting his head as the collider twisted and churned again. “Shacking up with a vigilante who crossed realities to dick you down.” He snickered to himself. “Listen, babe. That day when Spiderman - sorry, O’Hara - cracked my spine and broke my jaw and left me to suffer in that fucking alley, I realized something; why stick around in a dump like this when I can make like your little fuck buddy and squeeze myself into another dimension? Hell, why do I need you when I can just find another one of you who won’t screw me over?

“So I managed to get myself up. Crossed paths with these guys, told them…” He brought his lips close to your ear, so close you felt his breath fan across your skin. “I knew the identity of Spiderman.” He grinned again, drew back slightly to touch his forehead against yours. You would have smacked him, shoved him away, were you not still shielding the little girl in your arms. “I would say it’s not personal, babe,” he whispered. “But it is.”

Then his lips were smashed against yours, so roughly and ruthlessly you were flashed back to when you still lived with him, let him touch you, let him fuck you. He would always kiss you like this, like he possessed you, like he owned you. It only lasted a moment or two before he pulled back, forcefully plucked Gabriella from your arms, and handed her off to the Vulture, who was standing beside Octavius.

“Alright, boys,” he said as his mask materialized back over his face. “Let’s make a movie!”

Taking a few steps closer and backing you up against the glass partition of the observation area, Kraven hoisted the camera up and pointed it directly at you and Ferris. You found yourself frozen in place, petrified and staring back at your own reflection in the lens. His clawed hand came up to grip the back of your neck, and the other clapped over your mouth.

“Stick to the script,” he murmured in your ear, “and I’ll let the kid live.”

“Broadcasting to every system in New York,” said the hunter, then clicked a button and the camera and a light near the top flashed red. “...Now.”

Unbeknownst to you, across every screen in the city - televisions, phones, Times Square, everything - the broadcast crackled through and began to stream. There was not a soul in New York that was not watching.

Not one.

Ferris tilted his head at the camera in a way that made your stomach churn. Even behind his mask, you knew he was smirking and squinting his eyes in that way he did when he was playing coy. “Hello, Spiderman,” he said in a low, even voice. It sent chills crawling up your spine, made you struggle in his hold until his claws dug against your skin. “You and I have unfinished business, and it would be rude to leave hanging in the air - you know, before we both jump ship. You know where I am.” Behind you, the collider moved, and this time, it did not stop. A blast of energy exploded from the edge, shaking the building again. You stumbled slightly, raising a hand to clasp at his wrist over your mouth. “And just in case you need some incentive…”

You let out a small shriek when Ferris ripped you forward, sending you spinning around to face the camera. Before you could get anything out, he came up behind you like a vengeful apparition and grabbed your jaw, his claws digging into the soft skin of your cheeks. “Go on,” he murmured in your ear, just loud enough for the camera to pick up. “Cry for help. Cry for him.”

Against every ounce of willpower you had, because you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, you felt tears pooling in the corners of your eyes. Just a moment later, they spilled over, cascading down your cheeks and staining the fabric of his glove. Yet despite your tears, despite the silent sobs racking your body, you refused to speak.

Ferris dug his claws into your cheek further, drawing a few dots of blood and pinpricks of searing pain. “Come on,” he whispered against the shell of your ear. “Beg for him.”

Your eyes turned behind the camera, where the Vulture held Gabriella’s collar in a grip tight enough to pale his knuckles. She stood beside him like a confused puppy, tear tracks staining her face as she watched you. And you knew you couldn’t do this alone. Not with her here. Not with Ferris.

“Spiderman,” you breathed, then cried out when Ferris yanked your hair to expose your neck and poise a claw over your throat. It gleamed in the light that the collider was throwing about the lab, shaking and burning out energy.

“Ah-ah,” he tutted. “His real name.”

You didn’t have time to mull over the realization that you were going to expose his identity, didn’t have time to think about that, really, it wouldn’t matter, because your reality was tearing apart, anyway. Blood collected on your cheek where his claws dipped in, and pain seared through your face.

“Miguel!” you finally wailed, feeling your tears mix with the scarlet. “Mig, we need you - please! He has Gabriella. I need you, please, Mig, I need you!”

With a grunt, Ferris spun you to the ground, then stalked forward and grasped the camera by the lens. “Come and get your girls, O’Hara. Alchemax. You have until the universe collapses. Or, you know…” He trailed off as his mask tilted downward toward you. “I decide to let one of them go a little early.”

You found yourself sitting against the row of desks holding computers, cradling Gabriella to your side as you watched Ferris and the rest of the vigilantes watch the collider charge, murmuring amongst themselves. You heard the words ‘sensors’ and ‘turrets’ and ‘muzzle for those teeth’ and ‘dead before he hits the ground.’ They had planned for Miguel, were waiting for him.

Gabriella murmured your name - the first thing she’d uttered since you both had been brought here - and you at once looked down. She clutched onto your dress, her cheeks stained with tear tracks and her chest rising and caving with deep, panicked breaths. “Is Daddy going to come and save us?” she whispered.

Doing your best to shove down the dread, and sorrow, and grief hanging suspended in your throat, you put on your best wobbling, warped smile and brushed her hair back from her face. “Yeah, sweetheart,” you replied quietly, just barely audible over the sounds of the collider. You sniffled, holding her closer. “He’ll be here any minute.”

It couldn’t have been just a few minutes later when, from the corner of your eye, you saw one of the computer screens jump to life. You thought it to be chance, a touchpad disturbed by the constant shaking and rattling of the building, but then images began to flash across the screen. You turned your head and realized they weren’t images, but letters. Words - being typed out across the monitor.

Letter by letter, your name was spelled out. The cursor blinked for a moment before everything was deleted. Then -

H E R E.

Your breath hitched in your throat as you leaned forward. The word was typed again, this time in bold. Then in italics. The computer - no, someone behind it - was beckoning you forward. With a few words of reassuring nonsense in Gabriella’s ear, and a quick glance to make sure the men were still distracted, you crawled on your hands and knees along the row of computers. Sitting up on your heels, you faced the dim screen.

Hesitantly, you whispered, “Hello?”

The word disappeared, soon replaced by another. L Y L A.

Lyla - Miguel’s AI. A surge of hope flooded through you like a tidal wave, filling your veins, your heart, your soul.

H E I S C O M I N G.

You exhaled, blinking at the screen. Then -

D U C K.

Your body reacted before your mind even had a chance to catch up. The entire world seemed to move in slow motion as you scrambled to your feet, grabbed Gabriella and huddled behind the desk - just moments before the back wall blew outwards in a ground-shaking eruption. The glass partition shattered and the collider shrieked as debris rained upon the observation area like hail from a hellstorm. A chunk of rock sliced across your cheek, letting pain rip through your face and blood spill down your face.

Like a train unable, unwilling to stop, to keep from plowing into the first thing it saw, a flash of red and blue came tearing from the site of the explosion and collided with the purple figure of the Prowler as he struggled to his feet. They went sprawling across the rubble-covered deck, only separated when a mechanical arm grabbed the back of Spiderman’s leg and hurled him across the room.

He caught himself and landed in a striking pose - then his mask dematerialized, and Miguel’s scarlet eyes raised to the men before him. He opened his mouth, exposing those long, glinting teeth, and released an animalistic snarl that froze the blood in your veins. His hair was mussed and the lines beneath his eyes seemed deeper than before. His hands, his claws, practically trembled with the rage and fury radiating off of him in waves. In that moment he was truly more beast than man.

You shielded Gabriella’s eyes as he snapped, standing again to his full height.

“About time,” said Ferris behind his mask, then readied his own steel claws. “Let’s settle this once and for all - Spiderman.”

The next few moments were blurs of violence, of villains with metal limbs and wings and a thirst for blood all came down to assault Miguel where he stood. He was a whirlwind of action, taking blows and giving them back in a tempo you knew was not humanly possible. His teeth sank into skin. His claws tore through muscle. He roared and thrashed and fought for everything he had, because life outside may have been falling apart, but his entire life was right there inside that observation bay.

Bits of light poking through the still-settling dust from the explosion drew your eye away from the nauseating fight, pulling your attention to the place where the door used to be. Flickering from the corridor - the exit.

Gripping Gabriella’s hand so tight you knew it ached, but you didn’t care, you brought your face close to hers so that she could look into your eyes. Blood still seeped down your cheek, now staining your collar and your neck. “Listen to me,” you said to her, just audible over the sound of her father snapping one of the Vulture’s wings in half. “We’re going to run, okay? And we’re not going to look back. You hold my hand and don’t let go. Just like we practiced with the drills at school, alright?”

She nodded her head, and then you were off. You ducked your head as a piece of technology sailed past, tugging the little girl along over rubble and through the shattered doorway. From there you took the first stairwell you found, listening as the sounds of the battle grew more and more faint. Up and up you went, until you reached a heavy metal door that you shoved open with all your might. Gusts of wind rushed in to greet you, whipping your dress skirt about, whispering about your fate in your ears, and when you reached the roof, it seemed that, really, they were right.

New York was no longer recognizable. It had turned into a hellsite of glitches and chaos, entire streets folding in on themselves before completely vanishing. You nearly screamed upon realizing Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn… they were all gone. From this height you could see past where the river was supposed to be, but instead it was all… nothing. There lay a vast, wide nothingness, like a blank canvas. No ground. No buildings. No people. Everything, just… erased from existence.

Panic rose in your throat like bile, pulling you to your knees and fresh tears to your eyes. It was all true - your reality was collapsing in on itself. All those people, gone. And soon, you would be, too.

It was a long moment before you realized Gabriella was tugging on your hand, attempting to pull you further along the roof as she kept her terrified gaze trained on the door to the roof - until it was too late. You both shrieked as the Prowler emerged from the frame, his suit ragged and torn, stained with blood and his mask vanished. Scarlet ran down his face, same as yours, as he approached you on the roof.

“You want to know something funny, babe?” he said. The last word, that awful pet name, was rasped through clenched teeth as he stalked you, taking his time even as you scrambled to the edge of the building, because you both knew - you had nowhere to go. “I wasn’t really going to kill you in that alley. Just wanted to scare you, ‘ya know?” His face dropped. “Now I really wish I had.”

In a moment, Ferris had pounced, rolling you over and over yourself on the roof of Alchemax, his clawed hands tight around your throat and his knees on either side of your waist. No matter how much you struggled, how much you kicked and screamed and wailed and bucked, he refused to let go.

How ironic, came a quiet, barely-there voice. Even while it dies, the universe is attempting to fix itself.

As tears blurred your vision, you shifted your gaze to Gabriella, who watched the life being strangled from you with wide, petrified eyes. To Gabriella, who suddenly clutched at her stomach, her lips parting. To Gabriella, who, slowly, like a channel stuck on a loop slowly fading out, began to dissolve into a reality-splitting glitch.

To Gabriella, who was there one moment, and gone the next.

For a moment, you stopped your struggling. You stopped trying to grasp at Ferris’ own throat, stopped your kicking and howling. You just lay there, feeling the life drain from you slowly, staring at the spot that little girl had been just seconds ago.

You would have cried, could you have breathed. You would have screamed, could you have breathed.

You would have died inside - could you have breathed.

“Isn’t this romantic?” panted Ferris over you as his hands tightened their grip on your throat. “The two of us, going out together? Like we were always meant to?”

You knew he would have killed you then and there, had you both not heard the thundering, storming, ground-shaking thuds pounding up the stairs leading to the roof. Footsteps. A body being slammed into the walls as they ran. An ear-splitting, heart-skipping roar of your name.

Ferris let out a long, trembling, exasperated groan before he yanked you up by the neck, hauled you over to the edge of the building, and held you out like a lure over a lake. Your hands, your nails, scrabbled at his wrist as you looked down the best you could, watching as people stories and stories below scrambled for cover before glitching out of existence. Your legs dangled, your hair blew in the wind.

This was it. This was how you bit it. Not from strangulation or being winked out of your reality - but from a drop that would hit you before you knew what had happened.

Slamming out onto the porch in a frenzy of raw, untamed, wild fury, Miguel skidded to a stop and began to lunge at the Prowler - before he laid eyes upon your form at the end of his arm. His gaze searched wildly for his daughter, for his Gabriella, before it met yours. Before it took in the tears spilling down your face.

“Don’t you see what you’ve done to us, O’Hara?!” said Ferris, flexing his fingers around the column of your neck - the only thing keeping you from plummeting. “What you’ve done to our world?! Can’t you just leave us this last bit of ourselves before we all kick it? Can’t you just leave us alone?”

Miguel began to pace on the rooftop, edging closer and closer with each step. “I can offer you a bargain,” he said, but his voice came out more snarl than word. “Give her to me and I send you home. To a different home, one just like this. You’ll never know the difference.” His tone dropped. “You’ll think you’re in the real thing.”

Your legs were beginning to go numb, your fingers clawing at Ferris’ wrist losing feeling. One hand dropped to your side.

Ferris shook his head, sneering at him with all the hatred left in this collapsing, dying universe. “You already took my world,” he said. “So I’ll take away yours.”

And suddenly you were falling. Released from his grasp, because in the split moment after he let you go, his body glitched and jumped and disappeared. But you were still there, plummeting toward what remained of the earth below you.

You didn’t think it would be so fast.

Craning your neck against the wind screaming in your ears, against the sight of the Alchemax building beginning to crumble as it, too, succumbed to the fate of all else, you watched as that familiar suit of red and blue jumped off after you. Extended his arm. Released a web that, you thought, wouldn’t get there in time.

But it did. The webbing clung to your chest, pulled taut, buoyed you like a bungee cord as Miguel stuck himself to the side of the building that was still standing. He slowly lowered you to the ground, then began the descent himself.

You stood. Extended a hand to him as he raced toward you.

Then fell as you lost the feeling in your legs, lost what it was to be still.

Miguel caught you before you hit the ground, skidding to his knees and gracefully pulling you into a cradle in his lap. “Hey, baby, hey,” he said in a strained, strangled voice. Red stained his temple, the crooked bridge of his nose. “Hey, I’m here. I’m right here.”

You realized then that you were crying again, letting sobs and wails rack your body, because you knew what was happening. You knew it because everything else of this world, of this reality, had vanished. Ceased to exist. It was just him, and you, and the sky overhead. Nothing else. And soon, you would be gone, too.

“Miguel,” you gasped, reaching up a shaky hand to paw at the side of his face. “Gabriella - I tried. I really, really tried, I’m sorry -”

“Shh, baby, I know. I know you did.” Through the wetness in your eyes, through the sensation of your lower portion becoming static and fuzz, you watched as tears pricked at his own eyes. They trickled from the corners, mixing with the grime and blood on his face, and he did not wipe them away. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

You cried and clung to him, desperate to hold onto the feeling of him. Of his hand cradling the back of your neck. Of his lips against yours. Of his body on your own. Of his laughter against your skin, and his fingers trailing across your back, and the warmth that spread through your chest when he smiled at you.

God, that smile. What you wouldn’t do to see it again.

“I don’t want to die, Mig,” you said, your voice wavering. You’d forgotten the feeling of your waist, of your belly. They were foreign to you. Glitched out. Going. Gone.

You did not jump when Miguel opened his mouth and released a stifled sob, his warm, salty tears dripping onto your face. “I know,” he shushed you through his own cries. “It’s going to be okay, alright? I’m right here, baby. I’m right here. You’re going to be okay.”

Arms dropped. Your chest stilled.

“Hey,” you said, nudging your nose against his when he leaned down to press his lips against your temple. He met your eyes, his forehead pressed against yours. “Look.” Your gaze tilted upward, upward, to the sky. He followed it. “No smoke.”

You were right. Without the buildings to churn out smog, without the people to feed the machines, without the universe to choke itself out… the sky had cleared. And it was not violet, or plum.

It was lilac.

Miguel dipped his head again, his lips quivering as you stared up at him. “I love you,” he said.

You would have said it back - were you not already gone.

He stared at his now-empty arms, eyes trained on the spot beneath him you had just been. There was no trace left. Nothing left behind, nothing to tell him you had even been there.

For a long, long moment, Miguel sat still, his chest heaving and his eyes wide and his lips parted. Then he dropped to all fours, shoulders shaking and knuckling the ground, and opened his mouth to scream. It was a wail heard in every corner of the empty universe, a cry that shattered everything of the nothing left. Filled with agony, and grief, and horror, and guilt. Again and again he screamed, fangs glinting and tears gleaming and throat hoarse.

When he at last could not take any more, he collapsed onto his side. Hands twitching. Chest shaking.

Nothing.

For a long while in that empty universe, it was still. Silent. Lilac.

Then, from behind Miguel, there came a voice. “Hey, boss,” said Lyla gently. “Ready to go home?”

—

Earth - 2943

New York

Roses, peonies, lilacs, irises… the bundles of flowers crowded your workstation at the back of your store like a wildflower field had grown right in the middle of the little shop on seventy-first. Greens and pinks and yellows and oranges filled your windows. Petals littered the floor like a chapel. Living walls carefully and lovingly-kept occupied the sides, a rainbow display of every flower and blossom one could name.

Your little flower shop was doing well - and you couldn’t have been more proud. You lived alone in your apartment just upstairs, your rent was on time, you didn’t have to work a second job at all to keep yourself fed.

Everything was perfect. As it should have been.

Your attention was drawn to the front of the store when the little bell above it chimed, signaling someone had just entered your shop. “One second!” you called around the corner, hurrying to clip off the remaining thorns from the blossoms. “I’ll be right there!”

When you were finished, you wiped your hands off on your apron, gathered the bunch of flowers up in your arms, and swept around to the front room. There, a man and a little girl - his daughter, no doubt, they looked almost identical - stood admiring the displays you’d set out just last night.

“Good morning!” you greeted them, carefully setting the bundle down. “Can I help you find anything?”

Brushing a bit of hair from your face, you were able to see the man more clearly. Your breath hitched in your throat; you were staring at the one of the best looking men you’d ever seen. Tan skin and cheekbones placed high on his face, full brows and lips, a sinewy body and a tapered waist… he was beautiful.

The man smiled at you - with his lips closed, but nevertheless it was gorgeous - and jutted out his hip to place his hand on. Oh, fuck, that was hot. “Just browsing,” he said kindly.

You found yourself unable to pull your gaze away from him. You could not say precisely what it was, but there was something that drew you to him. Like a magnet between walls, almost, yearning and needing to be closer.

When he realized you were staring, he smiled wider.

“Heh - sorry,” you said, shaking your head. You leaned over your counter as he meandered closer, letting his daughter marvel at your flowers. Up close, you were able to see the tired, exhausted lines beneath his eyes. “It’s just… have we met before? There’s just something about you…”

Unbeknownst to you, because he could never let you know, could never let you go… you had met before. In a different universe. In seven, to be precise. He had met you as a teacher, a stripper, a doctor, a thief, a hero, a villain… He’d seen you in every form your soul had to offer. And he would continue to do so. Because he wasn’t going to let you go.

Not then. Not now. Not ever.

He chuckled, his free hand reaching up to touch the delicate skin of his throat. “No, I don’t think so. First time in here.” He tilted his head, smiled at you. “But… I wouldn’t mind getting to know you better.” Then, like every other time before, and every other time that would come after, he stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Miguel. You are?”

tags: @mooomeadows @twentysomethingwereyote @screamforyani @fangirlreice7 @axdjelx @ornamentalnecromancy @faust-pda @ilikethemoon28 @mrm-pachypoda @wadafrick @natthernandez @bakgoktski @soupsexsunsalutationsss @roxannarichie @lovagirlxxx @soggyeyeballsss @yoyoyoyoyo55555 @sophipet @quaintii @lavnderluv @cookiezxx @euphorica @its-a-polyglot @nicalysm @maxi-ride @exzidss @crappwr0m @femme-is-dead @bitch-onthemoon @hier—soir @takayomi @kirke-is-my-name @d1lf-loverrr @might-be-a-rat @brooks-lin @maki-z @bookfreakk @act1839 @dollscircus @sleepingaway @anxietybutterfly @bioticboot @mxkn @freeingrebels @digitalcreature404 @aimee777 @hunnaye @blahbahed @cyanide-mustard @impettywhenyouare @mental-illness-is-my-friend @bobfood @jenniferdixon05207 @moonchild-cupcake @venomous-ko @marvelouslovely-barnes @syarblu @fruitcupsworld @soooooyesbutactually-no @hopefulcandywitch @elwyn7 @oh-theseus @thepanwiccan @takayomi @dreamingofbucky @yuuuumii @p1nkliquor @scammer-get-scammed @mlishe

#miguel o’hara x reader #atsv miguel #miguel o’hara #miguel spiderman #miguel x reader #miguel o’hara x you #miguel o'hara smut #miguel o’hara x y/n #atsv miguel o’hara #miguel o’hara fic #miguel o’hara across the spiderverse #miguel atsv #atsv #atsv x you #atsv x reader #spiderman atsv #miguel o’hara atsv #across the spiderverse #spiderman across the spiderverse

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littlenightma · 6 months

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Protective!Rusty Nail Headcanons

• Once you have Rusty’s unconditional love and trust, there’s no going back. He doesn’t get attached to people easily so once you’re his, you’re his for life. He is not going to let you go, not after you’ve won over his heart.

• You guys have seen what Rusty is willing to do for a car that was gifted to him so just imagine the lines he’d cross and the skulls he’d crush if anyone was stupid enough to lay a hand on you. Do not touch his cars and lord don’t ever touch his lady.

• One thing about Rusty is he may be a maniac with a temper problem, but he ain’t no cheater. You will never have to worry about him being with anyone else while on the road and he expects the same respect in return. He has two things on his mind while traveling; getting the load to its destination then coming straight home to you.

• When out in public, don’t expect to get any space from this man. He’s attached to you like bees to honey. If he’s unable to be near you, best believe he’s watching your every move from the shadows, waiting for any signs of distress.

• Hates crowds. By himself they’re not a problem since most tend to avoid him, but with you he’s in a constant state of vigilance, eyes actively searching for possible danger beneath his hat.

• If he ever looks and sees you aren’t there, this cool and collected man will become the definition of distraught. When he finds you, you are so going to hear it on the way to the truck and on the way home.

• “Rusty please, I said I was sorry.”

• “Damn near caused me to have a heart attack looking for you, darlin’. You can’t do that to me.”

• If this man could put you on one of those toddler leashes, he would.

• Seatbelt in the truck is a must. No ifs, ands, or buts. He drives a heavy piece of machinery all day long and when you are on board, he’s hauling precious cargo. If you try to argue, he will put it on himself, kissing you hard as he leans over to hush your complaining.

• Keeps a pillow and blanket in the truck when you get cold or need to sleep. The first time you fell asleep in the passenger seat your head kept banging the window and he was worried you were going to end up with a concussion.

• “That was the best sleep I’ve ever had I think.”

• “You worry me sometimes.”

• Hates to see you in pain, especially when it prevents you from riding with him. It eats him up inside when he’s unable to be near you. He’ll call you from the road every few hours to check up on you and if you ask for him, he’ll stop whatever he’s doing and turn the truck around.

• Don’t get him started about your period. He dreads it every month.

• “I hate it for you, baby girl. Is there anything I can do for ya?”

• “Can I put my feet on you? They’re cold.”

• “Prop’em up here.”

NSFW 18+

• Loves how horny you are on it though. Waking up in the middle of the night because you’re in the mood is the one and only reason he’d wake up early on his day off and not be grumpy. You have every permission to use his body as you please. Playing audience to you half asleep seeking him out, hand slipping him out of his sweatpants and making a pleased noise when you do is a sight to behold for this old man. He’ll lean against the headboard with an arm above his head and a hand stroking the back of yours while you suck eagerly.

• “My, my, what an appetite. Were you hungry, darlin’? Take as much as you want, then.”

• Always makes sure you are satisfied. He ain’t happy until you are. If he doesn’t think you’ve had enough, he’ll give you more. One more thrust, one more swipe of his tongue, whatever it is he’s giving it to you. He loves seeing you come undone, spewing nonsense, taking turns from pushing at his chest then pulling him back down again.

• One day he jokingly says that he’d love to brand you with the cattle iron with his initial on it not thinking anything of it until you ask him where he wants to put it.

• And were dead serious.

• He places the prod on your hip and presses, holding you in place between his knees while you bravely take the pain. When it’s over, he’ll admire his work and the person it’s placed on.

#joy ride 2: dead ahead (2008)#rusty nail #rusty nail x reader #mark gibbon #horror headcanons #slasher community #rusty nail the trucker #ken kirzinger #joy ride 3: roadkill (2014)#joy ride 3 #joy ride 2

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lxstfathier · 3 months

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Naive Boy

William Afton x Trans! ftm! Reader

Summary: after a long day at fredbear’s family diner, william takes all of his stress out on you.

Warnings: dry humping, blowjob, slight degradation, mentions of blood/murder, dom william.

A/N: omg this turned out way longer than i expected lmao, anyways, this fic is a commission for @rottrabbit ! thank you so much for trusting me! hope you enjoy it!! 💗

A shitty day. That’s how William would describe the last couple of hours.

He’s been inside the springbonnie suit for a long time, carrying the heavy machinery around the restaurant while struggling to breathe, just to deal with bratty kids and hear the parents complain about the cold pizza or how their child got the wrong item at the prize counter.

And not to mention the huge mess after one specific big party or the discussion that he had with Henry due to some issues with the staff.

It was way worse than other days, that’s what caused him to end up in a really bad mood. The stress heaves on his shoulders even more than the suit, and the pent-up anger boils in his veins. It’s unbearable.

In any other occasion, William might have gotten it all out on someone until his hands and clothes were covered in crimson red. But today? he has other plans, something better.

“Where are you, bunny?” he calls out to you once the restaurant is closed and everyone has gone home.

His vision is limited, even more with some lights turned off, but way earlier he had seen you all around the place, playing with the other kids in the arcades, helping the employees or eating pizza and ice cream. So he knows that you must still be there, somewhere out of his sight.

And as soon as you hear his modulated voice rumble on the empty restaurant, you let go of the plushies that you were playing with and then hop off the price counter, running up to him.

“Here!” you say happily, grabbing his gloved hand.

William slowly turns his head to you, glowing eyes illuminating your features on the dimly lit room. “Help me with something, yeah?”

He doesn’t even wait for an answer, before you can nod or say a yes, he’s already walking. Heavy footsteps and the constant clicking of the suit resonating loudly, while you just follow by his side, through the dark hallway and then into the storage room. But you don’t say a thing, maybe he just needs some help to get out of springbonnie? it wouldn’t be the first time that you do so.

Once inside, he closes the door, flicks on the light and immediately takes off the head of the suit, finally having a breath of fresh air.

“Fuck” William grunts. “It was about damn time that i got out of this thing”.

You take the head from his hands and put it up in a shelve. “I thought that you liked wearing your most precious creation?”

“Oh, i do” he says as he starts taking off the rest of the bunny suit. “Just not when it’s hot, we have a few parties and there’s kids screaming everywhere”.

By the tone in his voice, you can quickly recognize that he’s not in a good mood at all. That’s how he gets when he ends up way too stressed after a hard day, you know him well enough, so you just smile and reach out to help him with the suit. But he grabs your wrist as soon as you place a hand on the yellow fabric.

“I can do it myself”.

His grip is strong, more than usual, enough to make you whince. And it’s confusing, you’re not quite sure of why did he ask for help when he’s not even letting you touch the suit. But you don’t want to wind him up more, do you? it’s not a great idea.

When he lets go of your wrist, you take a step back, just leaving him alone to do his own thing.

There’s an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, while he gets out of the dangerous springlock bunny and you walk around the room, distracting yourself with the old animatronic pieces covered in dust, the boxes filled with arcade tickets, or the mysterious sharp knife that you had never seen there before.

“Come here” William’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts.

You didn’t even notice when he was done with it, but now he’s sitting in an old chair, in just the yellowish overall that he always wears underneath, patting his thigh as a signal for you to sit on his lap.

A shy smile appears on your lips and you obey his command without thinking it twice.

And as you straddle his hips, it’s almost impossible to not notice how sweaty and disheveled he is. But you don’t care in the slightest. His smell is so strong and so masculine that it turns you on in an instant.

“I had a bad day” William growls, slipping his calloused hands under your shirt. “Now be a good boy and let me have some fun with you”.

Resting your hands on his shoulders, you lean in and press a soft kiss on his lips. A silent invitation for him to use you as he pleases. And William is desperate already, opening his mouth to push his tongue inside yours, quickly turning the kiss into some more intense.

This time it’s not sweet or slow, no, it’s passionate and filthy, a wet mess driven by pure lust.

Still, he needs more than that, so he bucks his hips against yours, searching for a little bit of friction. And at the feeling of that movement, you act on instinct, starting to move you hips back and forth just to grind your clothed heat against his bulge.

Breaking the kiss, he lets out a deep groan and then hurriedly takes off your shirt, throwing the piece of clothing to the ground.

The cold air hits your skin, but you don’t care, not when his big hands come back to your waist to keep you in place and his face finds its way to your chest, dragging his warm tongue over the scars on your chest and your sensitive nipples.

“Will” you moan, too lost in the mixed sensations of his mouth and his hard length pressing against you, surely causing a wet spot on your underwear.

He bites your nipples, just as a fun way to inflict pain, and once he’s had enough he kisses all the way up to your neck, jaw and ear lobe, making your skin tingle with his beard.

“On your knees bunny” William orders in a low voice. “I want you to suck my cock”.

You almost pout at having to stop grinding, you were so close to getting your first orgasm, but you know better than to ignore his command, specially in days like these where he’s too focused on his own pleasure and stress relief to even care about what you want or don’t.

Getting off his lap, you drop to your knees between his legs and pull down the zipper of his overall, revealing his scarred chest damp with sweat and, a little lower, his veiny hard cock surrounded by a bush of greyish hairs.

Your mouth waters just at the sight of it, never getting enough of how pretty it looks fully erect, laying against his belly as a clear drop of precum drips out of the slit.

Not making him wait any longer, you wrap a hand around his thick cock, pumping it a few times.

“Don’t tease” William growls, too impatient, needing to feel you already. “Put it in your mouth now”.

So you do, you lick his pink tip and then slide it inside your mouth, inch by inch, until your nose is close to his pubes and he reaches the back of your throat, doing your best to breathe through your nose and don’t panic, just like he taught you a few months ago.

Looking up at him, you start moving you head at a steady pace, up and down, maintaining contact with those cold blue eyes.

“Fuck” he moans loudly when you hollow you cheeks and your hand squeezes his heavy balls. “Yeah, just like that”.

His words make your clit tingle, way too aroused and neglected, giving you the urge to reach down and rub that bundle of nerves. But you know that he would probably punish you for getting distracted, kicking your hand away with his foot.

And, almost as if William could hear your thoughts, he brings your attention back to him when he suddenly grabs you by the hair and pushes your head all the way down, forcing you to take him entirely, not minding the way you gag or the tears that run down your cheeks.

It’s rough, but you like it nonetheless, letting him fuck your mouth as if it was nothing more than a fleshlight.

“You like this, don’t you?” he says, tightening his grip on you hair. “Choking on my cock like a cheap whore.”

You can’t process his words this time, only focused on how he’s taking advantage of your mouth, just pawing at his thighs as you feel how he’s getting close to his orgasm with every thrust of his hips.

William pushes your head down again, burying himself to the base inside you, and suddenly comes undone with a loud groan. His whole body tenses and his cock twitches, spilling thick ropes of cum down your throat.

He keeps you there for a few seconds, only letting go of his hold when he’s emptied every single drop and his orgasm is now bordering in overstimulation. So you slowly take him out of your mouth, wiping the drool and cum that’s dripping from your lips and chin, tasting the salt of his seed.

Both of you need some minutes to recover. He throws his head back, breathing heavily to regain his composure, and you rest your head on his thigh, admiring his body glistening with sweat and his softening cock.

Neither of you say a thing, too tired for that, but soon you feel one of his big hands playing with your hair. A gentle touch that lets you know how grateful he is to have you, to help him feel better, to take care of any of his troubles.

William thinks that maybe he should do this more often, using you as a stress relief toy is way better than anything else. And, just for a little while, you distract him from acting on those violent urges to murder innocent children.

But you don’t know that. You’re still a naive boy who is just happy to be his little plaything.

#william afton fanfic #william afton x reader #william afton smut #fnaf fanfic #fnaf smut

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literary-illuminati · 3 months

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2024 Book Review #10 – The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

I read A Deadly Education last year and quite enjoyed it (and Novik’s unrelated Spinning Silver is just one of my favourite low fantasy books full stop so she has quite a bit of my trust), so I finally got around to putting in a hold request for the sequel. Broadening your horizons and reading outside your comfort zone means swimming through 400 pages of YA a couple times a year, right? Anyway, despite only barely remembering who anyone but El and Orion were when I went into this, was a fun read!

The book picks up more or less directly where A Deadly Education stops – with the horrible murderous monster-infested extradimensional wizard high school’s cleansing machinery repaired for the first time in generations, and the place therefor incredibly less monster-infested than previously. El, prophesied future dark lady of the apocalypse with a savant’s talent for specifically the sort of magic you cast after cackling and before someone puts a sword in you, doesn’t get to enjoy that much – her senior year seems destined to be spent being the target of just about every monster that’s left. Eventually you really have to wonder if the school is trying to kill you – and that question is where the plot really starts to go off.

So I said it before, but this is very much YA. I don’t mean that as an insult, or even a marker of quality, just that it’s a book from the perspective of a 17 year old looking down the end of high school and clearly written to provide a relatable emotional reality for an assumed audience of the same. So El sometimes acts like a cartoon character, and is pathologically incapable of expressing her emotions coherently or expressing affection for the guy she likes in any sane manner, and is far more blase about murder attempts and soul-eating monsters than emotionally awkward conversations – but honestly all that just rings as pretty true to life. Deeply aggravating at times, and her internal monologue and all its snark and doublethink does occasionally grate a bit, but overall it really works. She’s just a fun character to spend time in the head of, (and far less irritating in basically every way than she was in the last book. So hey, maturity!).

The emotional beats were all pretty simple and clearly telegraphed, and it isn’t exactly a book that requires you to sit down and ponder deep symbolism or metaphor to comprehend, but the pacing is tight and it’s very readable. The prose isn’t really anything to write home about – especially knowing what Novik can do when she decides to get fancy and show off a bit – but it very clear and just dripping with El’s personality on every page. I read this at the same time as I was picking through an incredibly dense and citation-heavy historical reader, and the contrast made me very appreciative of those virtues.

Character-wise – well, there’s El, and Orion (love interest, single-minded and near divinely-ordained monster hunter, golden boy of the most powerful enclave in the world), and there’s El’s few close friends, and then there’s a cast of dozens of students with maybe one memorable character trait who kind of drift in and out of the narrative as required. The amount of nuance and exploration someone gets drops off dramatically with each step down the list you go. Most of the cast shows up precisely when required and is more or less forgotten about directly afterwards – which does sell this being a school with over a thousand students in it! But the number of characters who really feel real drops off pretty rapidly.

(Also like, I assume it just comes down to social progress in the 2010s coming at you fast, but you really get the sense that at some point between the books getting written the publishers sent down a memo that you were allowed to say queer people existed now.)

Even more than Deadly Education, this is a book without any sort of singular villain, or even really any consistent antagonists. Some of the other students are assholes, sure, but the book’s whole thesis is that no one is that murderous or awful for the sake of it – they are because they’re rats in a cage, convinced that amoral self-interest and husbanding and acquiring every resource they can is the only hope they have of maybe living to see their families again. Offered a chance to do good, to actually change things for the better and help everyone without getting themselves killed in the process, just about everyone takes it. Even the semi-intelligent school itself gets in on it by the end, pressing the senior class to figure something out and make it obsolete – and the whole conflict of the final act is how and whether everyone will.

El and Orion can both kill basically arbitrarily large numbers of monsters (or people), so the monster-killing is never really where the book finds its drama either. I mean, both do a lot of it through the climax, but the actual tension mostly comes down to crowd management and logistics and whether everyone else is as committed to this as the two of them are.

As for what they’re struggling against – so like, this isn’t Divergent, by the standards of the YA I read in high school, the social commentary is both subtle and nuanced. But I mean, it’s also a story where highschool is four years or murder-hell-prison and justified only because it’s barely the lesser of two evils, and also a story where the poor and marginalized are only kept around more-or-less explicitly as ablative bodies for the kids the powers that be care about, with their only hope of good life being so impressive and useful to those kids that they try to bring them along when they ascend back up to the gilded paradise that is their birthright. So like, not that subtle.

As far as teenage romances go (which, for me, really isn’t very fair at all), El and Orion’s was surprisingly tolerable. It helps that they’re both actually deeply profoundly weird about it, and also that the book didn’t try to milk any drama out of will-they/won’t-they stuff or a love triangle. The ‘and they have sex for the first time the night before the final climactic struggle where one or both of them could very well die’ did feel right out of an old bioware game, though. (Also I’m just a sucker for tragedy and ironic mirroring/repetition, so the ending was great for me).

Look forward to finishing the series whenever I get around to it sometime in the fall.

#book review #the last graduate #the scholomance #sff #ya #urban fantasy

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notyour-valentine · 2 years

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The Boy in the Window 8 ~ Tommy Shelby x Reader (Series)

Chapter Summary: Tommy's regret and Emma's tantrum

Notes: Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback to the last part so here's the next one. I hope the content makes up for the comparably shorter length. I do not consent to my work being translated, copied or posted elsewhere on this platform or any other.

Here, you can find my [Masterlist] and the [Series Masterlist]

Warning: Canon conforming mention of violence. Smut/ sexual content (18/21+). Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Expect spoilers for Peaky Blinders Season 1-4.

Wordcount: 3714

Part 8

[Previously]

They took the shortcut down to the canal and began to walk alongside it until factories gave way to smaller buildings that grew ever smaller.

As the pathway narrowed, she made sure that the children walked on the inside. It was still cold enough for thin sheets of ice to form and the last thing she wanted was for one of them to lose their footing and slip.

Tommy slowed his steps so that the children could keep up and she was grateful for it, as she didn't exactly trust her own footing. Even if it hadn't rained, the stones were still slick from the cold.

Soon all the grey and red stone buildings on the other side disappeared, giving way to green plains and distant trees, as the banging and hissing of the machinery faded away until they could actually hear birds singing. The last time she had heard that, she had yet to become a window.

"What kind of bird is that, Dad?", Charlie wanted to know.

Tommy sighed deeply before answering, and when he did, his voice sounded strained and almost regretful, speaking with the voice of an old man.

"Blackbirds.", he mumbled.

They continued walking until Tommy's steps slowed. Across from the canal, which was wider now, they could see no sign of civilization while on their side they only passed smaller enclosures for boxes that she doubted held legally shipped goods. For that they were too far away.

For a while he just stood there and stared, but then, without a care to the cleanliness of his suit, Tommy crouched down and picked up a few small rocks in his hand, pulling off of his glove to clear them of dirt with his fingers.

"Do you know how to skip stones, Emma?", He asked, looking up at her daughter.

Emma shook her head as she and Charlie both crowded around the man.

She looked away before she could see more, her eyes burning from more than the cold.

(Y/N) was glad she was able to lean against some of the stacked boxes, as her feet had begun to ache a while back.

When he had announced he was going for a walk, she hadn't thought he would lead them out of the city.

But it really was a pretty view, even if the memories tasted bitter in her mouth.

As she allowed her feet, and even her eyes to rest, she could hear the song of the birds and the soft voices of Tommy and the children as they tried to skip stones all the way to the other side.

Only when she heard heavy steps approaching, did she open them again.

He leaned against the boxes next to her and lit a cigarette.

She watched the smoke escape his lips, and the figure that appeared from it, only to disappear a moment later as if it had never existed in the first place. Gone. Just gone.

But Tommy didn't watch the smoke, nor the children, nor the treeline or the way the light played tricks on the canal's water.

He was staring at something neither she nor any living person could ever see.

Then he shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You missed John today."

She barely whispered the words, but he heard them all the same.

Even if the only sign he gave was the faintest shaking of his head, still unable to overcome the disbelief.

Her hand found his shoulder and she sighed. It had been her suspicion ever since she had caught herself looking around for the Shelby brother that had been her brother's friend, the one who was missing. But the skipping stones had confirmed it.

It had been David and John's favourite passtime, one they made bets on with the same ferocity the rich folks did at the races, always trying to beat each other.

They must have sunk a thousand rocks in their attempt to make it all the way to the other side.

The memory was a sweet one, so sweet that the pain in her chest could not fully turn it to ash, but not sweet enough to cover the bitterness. And with her own loss, it had been years.

Suddenly (Y/N) had to fight the desire to lean into him. All she did was keep her hand on his back and watch him bring the cigarette to his lips once more.

Over and over again.

"You'd think it'd be easier…", he finally said, still staring into the distance. "After all, we didn't talk for two years."

The response already lay on the tip of her tongue, but he got to it first, flicking his cigarette away into the darkness.

"But it just makes it worse…fucking wasted time."

There was no grief in his voice, but it trembled all the same- with something darker than pain.

"So much time just fucking wasted.", He snarled. "Not just with John, with fucking everything. The business, the foundation -"

He broke off as his eyes found the children.

(Y/N) was about to defend him, but he wasn't finished.

"I had plans before…fucking dreams as stupid as it sounds. To make things better."

He shook his head once more.

"But you have.", She insisted. "For your family and for the people here, with your foundation and the charity work and the institute."

Tommy turned to look at her, not with his eyes, but with his whole body- facing her with wide, searching eyes.

And for a while he searched, until he seemed to find what he was looking for. And then he nodded.

"I'm going to increase Shelby Company Limiteds non-taxable donations to charities by 25% and I'm going to build two new institutes for destitute children in the city."

He said it as casually as if he was making a remark about the weather, while all she could do was not to cry out.

"Tommy, that's incredible."

He only sighed and glanced out into the distance.

"It's still not close to what I once wanted to do."

"What did you want to do?", She asked, surprised at his sudden defeatism.

He swallowed hard as his eyes gained a glassy shine.

"I promised someone I'd change the world."

"Grace?"

He shook his head.

"Before."

Before- that would mean before the war, half a lifetime ago. But it didn't matter whom he made the promise to, not as long as he intended to fulfil it.

"Good.", She said, making his eyebrow rise.

"Good?"

(Y/N) nodded.

"You'll make sure it's good."

He huffed and leaned back against the boxes once more, sighing deeply.

There, they remained in silence, him lost somewhere between thoughts and memory, while she kept an eye on the children.

"Mummy!", Emma called as she ran over, wrapping her arms around her legs. "Mummy my hands are all cold."

(Y/N) crouched down and pulled her gloves off to warm her daughter's hands with her own.

"Mine too.", Charlie said.

"Come here then!", She said, clasping one hand around Emma's hands and the other around Charlie's.

The sun was lowering already and the air was getting colder in its absence. Slowly, she no longer felt the bite of the children's cooled hands as they began to warm up.

"Perhaps she should head back soon.", She said to Tommy, who was towering above them.

He inhaled sharply but nodded, waiting until all the others had their gloves back on, before leading the way.

(Y/N) followed, one child on each hand, letting them go first when the path was too narrow for the three of them.

"Mummy do we have to go all the way back now?", Emma asked after a while.

"I'm afraid so.", She said.

Her daughter threw her head back and groaned, and when that didn't cater the reaction she wanted, she began to pull at her arm with her whole weight while dragging her steps until half her shoes were covered in dirt.

"Emma, please.", She reminded her sharply.

"I'm not even doing anything.", She argued.

"Yes you are. You're pulling my arm and you're not walking properly."

"I am walking properly!", She insisted, stamping her feet. "You're walking too fast for me."

Oh no, she thought, feeling the tantrum coming. Her plan to calmly continue lasted about another ten leagues, before Emma kicked the ground again only to lose her balance and pull at her arm for real.

(Y/N) yanked her own arm up in time to ensure she didn't crash to the ground fully, but even in the absence of pain, the damage was done.

Emma, despite standing on her two feet for several seconds, chose to drop herself to her knees and began to sob.

"I can't walk, Mummy. My legs are broken!", She wailed.

"No, they aren't."

"They are. They are. You were walking too fast and you made me break my legs!", She accused, slapping her hands against her thigh.

Taking a deep breath, she let go of Charlie's hand and crouched down in front of Emma.

"Darling, your legs are not broken. You don't even have a scratch.", She told her, trying to keep her composure.

Instead of responding, Emma threw herself in her arms with her full weight, going as limp as a sack of flour. It nearly made her lose her balance in the process.

"Up, Mummy!", She demanded, sounding like a child half her age, as round tears ran down her cheeks.

"No.", she said sharply, trying to pry her arms off her, but like most children, Emma had the magical ability to make her two arms feel like eight.

And when she removed her arm from her shoulder for the fourth time, she felt her patience run thin.

"Emma-", she warned, but it wasn't her stern tone that got through. Instead, a lower, gentler one caught her attention.

"C'mere."

The voice startled them both enough to stop their wrestling.

"C'mere, Emma.", Tommy repeated, his voice almost comically calm compared to her impatient instructions a moment earlier.

She slowly pushed herself up and when he reached out and picked her up with ease, she wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Tommy-"

"It's alright.", He said, before she had a chance to continue. "It's been a long day and she's been busy. Are you still good, Charlie?"

Charlie nodded.

That made her smile slightly as she let him take her hand once more.

They walked back in silence, and long before they reached the yard, Emma's head had dropped against Tommy's shoulder.

Still, he held her, only changing his grip slightly to support her better as her arms and legs went limp from slumber.

Upon their return, they were met by piercing looks, undoubtedly thrown to confirm or deny the suspicions they had begun to debate as soon as they had left.

They looked and they judged and she knew it was not in her favour.

Thankfully though, Tommy walked straight past them, nodding for Finn, who separated himself from Isaiah and Michael.

"You been drinking?", He asked, glancing up and down the frame of his younger brother.

"Just beer.", The youngest Shelby said.

"Good.", His older brother huffed.

"Take the car, take them home.", Tommy instructed, shifting Emma slightly so that he could reach for his keys.

He tossed them to Finn before wrapping his arms around her daughter again, carrying her all the way to the car.

Finn opened the door for them and Charlie slid through, then (Y/N) got in.

Tommy made sure to support Emma's head as he handed her over as gently as possible.

She mumbled slightly, but didn't wake from her slumber, as she took her in her arms, her head resting against her chest.

"Thank you.", She whispered, but he waved it off. In the mirror, she could see him watching as Finn drove them back.

The children were not the only ones tired after that day, although her fatigue was not from running around a scrap metal yard but rather from being chased with glares and questions.

She had always hated to feel attention on her, but today had been particularly cruel. They knew her, had known her, which made it even harder to face them.

She could not pretend or hide the truth from them. They hadn't shown her of course, but they didn't have to. She knew all the same.

So (Y/N) got ready for bed earlier than she normally would have, coming down to make herself a cup of tea, already in her nightdress and dressing gown.

She had undone her hair and brushed it out, letting it fall to her shoulders.

Just as the kettle began to hiss, she could feel the gust of cold air, as the kitchen door opened.

"That late already?", He asked, his voice carrying a trace of amusement.

She turned, but only after making sure her robe was secure.

"I'm just early.", She told him.

(Y/N) knew she ought to be shocked or horrified for him to find her like that, that she should be ashamed or embarrassed, or even scared - but she wasn't. Not anymore.

"Long day?", He asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.

"They went to bed happy.", She said with a soft smile. "So it's worth something. Tea?"

She always asked, even if he turned her down. He did so today as well, but by the time she took the tray over to the living room, he had built a fire.

He was quite good at that, better than she had ever been.

"Thank you for today.", Tommy said once they sat on the sofa. She had drawn her legs under her, the tea on the small table beside the sofa.

"I tried.", She said. "I know it's not as grand as it would have been if you were at your home, but he seemed to like the cake and the horse especially."

She did not say it without pride, and it amused her especially since she hadn't known about Tommy's gift.

He leaned his head against the back of the sofa.

"It was a lot better than last year, and the year before that.", He admitted softly.

"This was his first proper birthday…apart from his first, which he didn't even realise was his birthday."

She swallowed hard and averted her eyes.

Emma's first birthday without her father had been crushing - and she had been sick for a week after dragging herself through the mental and physical strain of putting on a brave face for her. And yet it wouldn't have been any easier, she thought, with maids and servants.

"I'm sorry.", (Y/N) whispered. "I didn't mean-"

"No.", He said sharply, shifting closer to where she was sitting.

When she only shook her head, his hand found the side of her face and brought it round so he could look at her.

"Don't be sorry, please don't be sorry.", Tommy whispered, as if the thought seemed to cause him pain.

"Not after today.", He repeated, bringing her face closer to his until his forehead was resting against hers.

"Don't ever be sorry for…for any this, not when-"

Tommy broke off and sighed once more.

His hand was still on the side of her face and his thumb gently stroked over her cheek.

A few strands of her hair had fallen out of place, brushing against his knuckles, but he did not remove his hands, and he did not push her hair away.

Her heart began to thunder as she saw the change in his eyes, but not in a bad way- not at all in a bad way.

She watched him glance down at her lips and then meet her eyes again, a silent question, a chance for her to go pull away, to end this before it had a chance to begin. Without strings. Without consequence. If she ended it now, they'd both have complete deniability.

But she did not want to.

When he closed the distance between them, she held her breath.

His lips were gentle, so very gentle as they met hers, as if he feared she might still change her mind.

Only when she began to kiss him back, did he dare to do more than merely brush his lips against hers.

The one hand that cupped her cheek moved to the back of her neck, stroking over the sensitive skin and leaving a curious tingling in its wake.

Her own hands found his chest, and somehow feeling that his own heart thundered as much as hers did calmed her as much as it excited her.

(Y/N) felt her breath hitch as his other hand found her waist, having slipped in somewhere between her robe and her nightgown, but more to steady her than anything else.

It was her, who pulled him in, her fingers brushing over the shorter hair on the back of his head. Her husband had let his hair grow out as soon as he returned from the war, before she had truly known him, so the feeling was entirely foreign to her- soft and yet coarse at the same time.

She pushed herself up on her knees slightly, leaning into him until she felt the fabric of his trousers brush against the exposed skin of her knees.

Tommy broke the kiss only to catch his breath for a moment before his lips found the side of her neck, pressing fluttering kisses down the length of it.

His hair tickled her jawline, and yet it was a different kind of itch that threatened to drive her mad.

She inhaled sharply as his lips brushed over a particularly sensitive spot and for a split second she could feel his lips curl into a smile, before sucking.

"Tommy.", She whimpered as she felt a tingling run from the side of her neck down her spine into every last part of her body.

The vibrations of his humm made her shudder as her robe slipped down her shoulders.

She shrugged it off, as quickly as she could so that she could touch him again, in any way possible.

She had to.

Her own fingers trembled as they fidgeted with the buttons of his shirts. she had barely undone the first few when he reached back and pulled it over his head himself, his undershirt following suit at once.

The light of the fireplace made his pale skin gleam golden, like that of some mythical statue depicting a hero of old- not quite a God, but more than a mere mortal.

The tattoos captivated her attention more than anything else, and, like a moth to a flame, she reached out. Her fingers barely brushed along the lines of the sunburst on his chest, when he pushed back against her, his knees parting hers, thereby pushing her up onto his lap.

A hand on the small of her back kept her steady as the other slipped under the hem of her nightgown, already hiked up. Where his hand brushed against her thigh, they left flickering flames in their wake, and an burning only he could satiate.

Goosebumps appeared all over her arms, despite the ache he caused her.

She inhaled sharply as she felt his finger slip inside of her, almost startled by how easy it was, and how much she yearned for it- for him.

Bit by bit- touch by touch, she could feel herself getting lost, lost in his arms, in the smell of his skin, in the softness of his hair, in the sound of his breath until he seemed to be the only thing left in the world.

Just him and the feeling he gave her.

An almost pathetic whimper escaped her lips as he pulled his hand away.

"Are you sure?", He asked. His eyes, usually so pale, were almost entirely dark now, with some stray strands of dark hair falling into his forehead.

(Y/N) nodded, her chest rising and falling with heavy breaths as if she had just run a race.

"I need to hear you say it…I need to hear you want this- please."

"I do want this.", She whispered, seeing the look of concern fall, toppled by her words.

"Yes?", He asked once more.

"Yes.", She whispered. "Yes."

But no matter how sure she had been, a wave of doubt crashed over her when his hands travelled from her waist upward, slipping under the thin sleeves of her nightgown, feeling it slip from her shoulders in the wake of his touch.

Her body had seen the changes of childbirth and what came after and she wasn't as young as she had once been, nor had she ever considered herself beautiful.

What would he - a man like that- make of her? He, who could not only have half of Birmingham at his feet and in his bed in a heartbeat, but most of London too, no matter if they were dancers in his nightclubs or ladies in lunching circles.

But as his hands ran down the sides of her body, Tommy kissed her as if she truly was beautiful, with a desperate need.

Her fingers slipped under the waistband of his trousers. In search of the buttons on the inside of the fabric, her fingers brushed against him. Feeling how hard he was, sent another wave of need and anticipation through her.

"Don't tease me, love.", He groaned between wet kisses he had pressed on her collarbone. To urge it on, he helped her with the buttons and pushed his trousers down with one hand, wanting to be rid of it.

When she felt him slip inside her, she shuddered. It had been so long, and even if it was far from the pain she had felt on her wedding night, she couldn't deny the strain.

He had felt her muscles tense and slowed his movements, easing it away with tender kisses and practiced caresses and before long it was her that moved against him, eager, no- desperate for more.

When Tommy began to rock into her, almost agonisingly slow at first, she felt the rise inside her, growing, ever growing- a kind of warmth that she could get addicted to.

And it felt right- he just felt right.

End of Part 8

Part 9

Thank you for reading! I’d be very grateful for feedback of any kind! If you are interested in more, here is my [Masterlist].

Taglist:

@lilyrachelcassidy @jyessaminereads @watercolorskyy

@books-livre

TBITW Taglist:

@kaitebugg03

@esistmon

@chlorrox

@theshelbyslimited

@budugu

@woofgocows

@orkwardx0

@judig92

@100percentamess

@kabbuu

@esposadomd

@im-nowhere-but-also-somewhere

@starsnsecrets

@lady-loves-a-lot

@katiepie67

@acoolnight

@chaotic-onigiri

@ohshititsfenharel

@muhahaha303

@globetrotter28

@xoprincessmel

@shittingonyourgrave

@pessimisticbiitch

@elisa20beth

@simran-preet19

#Peaky Blinders #Tommy Shelby #Thomas Shelby #Thomas Shelby x reader #Tommy Shelby x reader #Tommy Shelby Imagine #Thomas Shelby Imagine #The Boy in the Window #valentineswritings

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noridoorman · 6 months

Text

More scrapped Nuzi fics (warning, some is angsty)

Fragmented/Fragments of the past/Echo/Whatever freaking title I had for this:

Uzi crawls on the ground, one arm missing and every inch of her metallic body feeling like extra weight she’s forced to carry. The room around her trembles, the walls shun a blinding white color, piercing the optical sensors of her visor. Some furniture pieces around her began to fade gradually into the white voice as Uzi continued pushing forward, crying out a name so familiar and yet so distant, grasping for something, anything, in her vicinity.

She hears another voice; a feminine one calling out the same name yet everytime it did, their voice would glitch or distort, making it unable for Uzi to hear it.

Yet she knew, the name somehow carried significance.

Uzi pushes forward, her vision partly recovering after having been assaulted by the light to see a silhouette in a glass capsule, several heavy machinery surrounding it. The silhouette turns to her and despite not being able to discern any facial features or attributes tied to the person she can see its somber smile as it kneels down to her level - or as far as it could go.

Again, Uzi calls this name as she stared at the figure, placing her hand weakly against the glass, a feeble attempt to break it. Sobs wreck through her body, begging the person, whoever they are, to get out of the capsule, to not do something that she couldn’t grasp no despite her own words repeating it. The figure’s eyes closed as they shakily exhaled, trying to communicate to Uzi yet all words came out as equally distorted as the name.

And yet, Uzi begged. Pleaded, cried, anything to convince the figure to leave. Yet it only responded by placing its hand against the glass, its words coming out glitched once again.

“Uzi, I love you…”

Her eyes hollow as the now clear words hit her audial sensors. A deep sense of both love and grief shocks her to the core, all sounds she once made fall mute as a sudden realization settles before her. For the few seconds of silence she had, the figure muttered a thousand apologies before the bright void engulfed them both.

What it was: this was meant to be a "what-if" kinda fanfic. Basically, N cannot take the thought of Uzi dying and looked for any chance for an alternative, which he found. He found a machine in the labs that could rewind time, bringing the time back to a time before they met. However, the machine needed fuel and N was the only one that could fuel it through his core. He sacrifices himself, despite Uzi's pleading. Time rewinds and Uzi wakes up without any memory of what happened and N has been completely ereased from the timeline. However, I really don't like sad endings and this fanfic would have ended on Uzi somehow remembering and bringing N back, however...

Why I scrapped it: I don't trust myself to handle heavy topics and angst and make it believable while also emotional. Plus, I started working on Cinnamon Scent and never found the time to develope it further than the prologue. And as time went on I thought of the concept to be boring and was scared it wasn't going to stick with others through all the other creative stuff out there.

Reborn:

"The absolute most angst-filled idea I could possibly think of for this series is N dying and Uzi proceeding to feed Eldtrich N living worker drones out of desperation, willing to sacrifice anyone to get him back. N revives but without any memory of what Uzi did to resurrect him,' with a traumatized, oil-stained Uzi hugging him in silence."

This was a comment a different Tumblr user made and I asked them if I could write a fanfic about it and they said "Sure". Aaaand, I never write it cause again; I don't trust myself with Angst.

Cinnamon Scent Chapter 5:

N // Today at 10:11 AM

“Uziii, I got the appel strudel u asked for! :D”

“But also… a bit of a surprise”

Uzi raised a brow at that, her mind already going in overdrive to try to think what surprise he might have planned.

Uzi // Today at 10:11 AM

“And that is?”

N // Today at 10:11 AM

“How do I say it ahhh”

“Well, it depends on you if it’s a positive or a negative surprise!”

Uzi // Today at 10:12 AM

“Don’t dodge the question”

N // Today at 10:12 AM

“Wahhh, you’re so scary when you’re serious!”

“It’s kinda hard to tell you bc they told me not to tell you”

Uzi // Today at 10:12 AM

“???”

“Who’s they?? Where are you?”

N // Today at 10:13 AM

“OO I said too much, we’ll meet u there!!”

“Wha?” Uzi whispers under her breath, an uncomfortable feeling emerges at the pit of her stomach, making her thoughts go even more in overdrive.

Did he bring a friend along?

With confusion and determination both etched on her face (and some sprinkled in nervousness) her pace quickens as she beelines towards the amusement park, ready to smack somebody if she needs to.

“Hey, Uzi!” Uzi turns around to the sound of N calling for her, spotting him standing near the entrance. And as Uzi had expected, he didn’t stand alone.

“That’s her?” A human with a large bow in her brown/reddish hair and a few freckles on her tanned skin. “It’s nice to finally meet you!”

“Yeah, so nice” A drone with her white hair styled into two twintails responded sarcastically, making Uzi forget about her shock for a second to glare at her.

“Don’t be like that, J!” V lighty smacks the shoulder of, who Uzi now knows is, J. J in turn glared at V’s direction, though the latter seemed not bothered by it.

“I… I didn’t expect you to bring your family,” Uzi chuckles awkwardly, pointing at all the new (and not so new) people behind N. He scratched the back of his head, opening his mouth to speak.

“Yeah, well-”

“We weren’t going to leave him alone with a stranger” J interjects, making N cower underneath her harsh gaze. Uzi only returns that, her shoulders tense.

“Friend. I’m his friend,”

“Guys, let’s not fight!” Tessa stands between J and Uzi, making N breathe a huge sigh of relief. Uzi’s eyes softened a bit, her stance growing less defensive. “N talked about an amusement park at some point. We all thought it would be fun to go together!”

“I wouldn’t be able to sneak out again anyway,” N shoots Uzi an apologetic smile that she returns with a soft sigh, both not hearing J yell in the background ‘again?’.

“No need to be sorry, bud,” Uzi hides her hands in her pockets, trying to mask her disappointment with a casual attitude. “It’s your family, I’m not going to deny you not taking them out here,”

“And we’ll get to spend more time together!” N cheers, looking excitedly at Tessa. “Right?”

“We’ll have to see how it will work with your schedule but otherwise, I don’t see why not!” Tessa ruffles N’s hair, chuckling.

“We’ll also have to see if she’s not a threat!” J argues back, however, it fell on deaf ears as everyone turned towards the entrance, all making their way inside the amusement park while J grumbled something under her breath.

“So, which rides look the most fun?” Tessa strokes her chin, looking at all the different attractions in her line of sight.

“The rollercoaster is pretty cool,” Uzi shrugs. “There should also be a carousel somewhere, but it’s for kids,”

“What about this?” N runs ahead towards a giant mechanical octopus with seats attached to its tentacles. “This looks fun!”

“And dangerous,” J crosses her arms, her eyes moving along the rotation of the octopus.

“I think it’s safe,” Tessa smiles, turning to Uzi. “Right?”

“Oh, uh, sure!” Uzi scrambles together an answer, somewhat surprised that Tessa would ask for her opinion. “I wasn’t on the octopus a lot, it always bored me. My mom thought it was tons of fun though,”

“I got us tickets!” V cackles as she hands each and every one of them tickets, with N taking it eagerly and J more reluctantly.

“V, you know we have to save,” J glares, making V roll her eyes.

“I know, I know, but we can take it easy once,” V hands the last tickets to Tessa. “What fun would we have if we saved every penny only for necessities?”

“They’re called necessities for a reaso-”

“J,” Tessa places a hand on J’s shoulder, making her eyes widen a bit. “Don’t worry about the money. I’ll take care of it”

“But-”

“See? Tessa got it covered!” V walks on the ramp as the ride stops, choosing eagerly which seat she’s going to take. “Besides, you should take it easy especially!”

“If this is what it's like to have siblings then I’m happy that my parents only adopted me…” Uzi speaks her thoughts out loud, flinching as N’s laughter rings out next to her.

“At least it never gets boring!” N takes her hand, leading her to two empty seats. Uzi’s core flutters at the contact, her eyes drifting towards their hands. N helps hoist Uzi up due to her smaller size, only intensifying her already prominent blush.

“I’m… really surprised they came along” A employee fastened their seats, taking their tickets with an odd look. Uzi returned the look with a glare before sighing. “How did you convince them?”

“Oh, there wasn’t any convincing needed!” N beams. “Tessa wanted to go somewhere, I just mentioned the amusement park!”

“Did you tell them about me?” Uzi grips the edges of her seat as the ride slowly begins.

“A little, yeah” N admits sheepishly. “J got suspicious that I knew about the amusement park”

“Of course” Uzi rolls her eyes, her grip tightening as the ride picks up speed.

“Tessa was all for it!” N grips Uzi’s hand, squeezing it as fans begin to whirr louder. “Th-This is my first time here, you don’t mind that I…?” N’s gaze flickers towards their hands, making Uzi shake her head frantically.

“N-Not at all!” Uzi squeezes his hand back, partially to reassure him, partially due to her internal panic. “Be warned though, it’ll get faster,”

“Faster?!” N yelled as the seats began to spin along with the giant octopus in the middle. Uzi cackled as the ride began to spin quiet fast in all directions while N’s grip on Uzi’s hand tightened, screaming as the seats moved up and down.

“Are you afraid?!” Uzi yells, her smile disappearing as she looks at N. However, a nervous smile etched on his face as turned to Uzi.

“This is awesome!” He kicked his feet in the air as the ride continued, making Uzi laugh in response.

Despite the wind tossing and turning her hair in every direction, the adrenalin in her body going on overdrive or the constant spinning of the ride, the feeling of N’s hand intertwined with her’s turned her entire brain functions into mush.

“That was so cool!” V fist bumps in the air as she excitedly jumps off the ride with the rest trailing behind. “We should do that again!”

“Yeah, right, it wasn’t THAT exciting!” J crosses her arms, a frown etched on her face.

“I saw you laughing like crazy, J!” Tessa giggles, fixing up some strands of J’s hair. “Admit it, you liked it,”

“J-Just a little!” J balls her hands into fists but doesn’t fight back against Tessa’s hands undoing her twintails to make it even again. “It’s still overrated!”

“What J actually meant was, thanks for taking me out on this fun trip away from my crippling workload and the same walls I have to witness every day!” V holds her shorter hair up, mimicking J’s hairstyle, posture and voice.

“Aren’t you mature?” J rolls her eyes as Tessa ties the first pigtail up.

“We’re kids, let’s enjoy it as long as it lasts!” V rests her hands on her hips, a smug grin on her face.

“V is right, J” As Tessa finally tied up the last pigtail she kissed the top of J’s head. “I wanted us here so that we don’t have to hide away anymore,”

J groans, her arms dropping to her side.

“Where did you guys live before?” Everyone's eyes turned to Uzi who immediately felt herself shrink under their intense stares. “...too much?”

“I-I can tell you sometime later!” N places a hand on her shoulder. “Right now, let’s just enjoy our… Wait, what’s that?!” N instantly runs away, leaving them all dumbfounded and scrambling towards his direction.

“N, don’t just run off like that!” J scolds as they finally reach him, his gaze concentrated on a giant Shiba Inu plush hanging from the side of a stand. Cans are stacked on top of each other with more different plushies and prices hanging on the sides.

“Do you want this?” Uzi points at the Shiba Inu plush, making N rapidly nod his head.

“Yeah, but… I’d have to win to get one,” N sadly scratches his arm as he eyes the plush.

“My mom used to be really good at those, she taught me a thing or two” Uzi responds somewhat smugly, yet a shy blush showed itself on her visor. “Maybe I could try winning you one?” Uzi smiles, her hands resting on her hip. N’s eyes brightened as he happily bounces on the spot.

“Only humans can participate,” V points at the sign, her expression turning sour. “How stupid…”

“I can try!” Tessa beams, handing the vendor money. “I’m probably not as good but it’s worth a shot,”

“Really?!” N claps his hands, they light in his visor shining somehow brighter. Tessa nods eagerly, grabbing one of the three balls on the counter, raising her hand behind her shoulder to throw the ball. Her eyes squint as pure concentration etched itself on her face, every fiber of her being channeled into landing the perfect shot. The drones all gather around her, looking with both excitement and unease in their eyes.

However, for Uzi, all she saw were the static covered eyes, an image of what should be her mom standing there, ready to throw the ball. Khan places a hand on Uzi’s shoulder, making her look up to him with a curious gaze.

Nori throws one ball and misses.

Wait… Mom never missed?

She throws another. Again, miss.

That’s not a memory.

“Come on, Nori, you can do it!” Khan cheers, looking as if he doesn’t see what Uzi is seeing. The static over her eyes, the clouds in the sky going faster than they should and the feeling of the breeze hitting them in all places at once.

Nori throws again. This time, all the cans fall down.

Cheers emerge from all directions of Uzi’s auditory sensors, voices so familiar and strange.

“Look, Uzi!” Uzi jolts as N holds the Shiba Inu plush at her face, recoiling slightly at her reaction. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“N-No, it’s fine, I was just… thinking?” Uzi shakes her hands.

“Explains why you stood there like a zombie,” J crosses her arms, raising a brow. Uzi opens her mouth, ready to defend herself until N presses the Shiba Inu plush again against her face.

“Look how adorable it is!” He offers for Uzi to hold it but she raises her hands in the air instead, taking several steps back.

“Uh, I-I…It’s cute,” N’s head tilts to the side, a puzzled frown on his face.

“Your fans are really loud!” Tessa notes, kneeling down to Uzi’s level. “Are you okay?”

“I-I’m fine!” Uzi takes more steps back as Tessa tries to place a hand on her forehead.

“Are you sure-”

“Bite me! I said I’m fine!” Uzi crosses her arms.

“Watch your tone!” J takes some threatening steps towards Uzi but is stopped by N who stands protectively in front of her.

“J, stop,” N says with a somewhat authoritative tone, surprising everyone. “She probably just feels overwhelmed. Leave her alone,”

J raises a finger, her mouth opening but after several seconds of no sounds coming, her hands fall to her side.

“I think we should all take a break,” Tessa says, trying to defuse the situation. “Maybe we could sit on a bench and stare at the ocean for a bit,”

“Great idea, my legs are starting to hurt,” V stretches her arms above her head, exhaling heavily before walking ahead. “Come on,”

“Do you know where you’re going?” N asks, staying next to Uzi’s side who looked at the ground, absent minded.

“It shouldn’t be that hard to find a quiet corner!”

“You’re walking into the crowd,” J groans.

“Hey, trust my intuition once!” V glares, looking behind her.

“Your intuition got us in more trouble than it actually helped” A exasperated sigh escapes J’s lips but V only chuckles in response.

“Like that one time in the mall?” J cracks a small smile as V mentioned the incident, making Tessa laugh along.

“We were looking so long for you two!” Tessa picks up her pace to walk between V and J. “What made you guys think that hiding into the gaming store was a good idea?”

“It was V’s intuition that made her think you’d look for us there first,” J rolls her eyes albeit with a smile. “Truthfully, I think she just wanted to look at the games there”

“Lies!” V gasps dramatically. “How dare you accuse me of such a thing!”

“It was the truth, wasn’t it?” N laughs from behind the three. “You told me, V!”

“N, you suck!” V yells, making both Tessa and J burst out in laughter.

“Ah, oops, shouldn’t have revealed it, huh?” N scratches the back of his back, a sheepish smile on his face.

The three began telling more stories of the past, recounting incidents or happy memories and sharing smiles and laughter together. However, N caught on to Uzi’s silence and somewhat distant behavior the whole time.

“Hey,” Uzi jolts slightly as N places a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You good?”

“Yes, for the thousandth time, I’m fine,” Uzi sighs.

“You’ve been so quiet though,” N sheepishly smiles. “Sorry about, uh… all this,”

“All what?” Uzi raises a brow.

“I should have told you my family was coming along and not make it out to be this surprise.” An unusual somber expression falls on his face as his lips twitch downward to a frown. “I’m sorry for overwhelming you like this,”

Uzi opens her mouth to speak again but N kept on rambling.

“In fact, I probably should have gone alone!” Slight panic arises in his expression, making Uzi feel a pang of sympathy in her chest.

This is scrapped because I felt embarrassed about the family drama. However, this is only the snippet of what's being edited, there's a ton that will stay the same bc it's Khan and Uzi bonding stuff :3

#murder drones #md #n x uzi #nuzi #uzi doorman #cinnamon scent

41 notes · View notes

silvervinewine · 1 year

Note

Gasps, omg hi 🤭🤭

Mayhaps... Request?? Hehe... Idea from that previous dottore post... Reader does something very cliche+romantic to dottore for shits and giggles, expecting him to like. Not react at all or walk away,, but reader did not expect him to be... Hella flustered 🤭 like dottore.exe has stopped working HSHDGSJGS

You can ignore this if you'd like, hope you have a nice day/night!!

Also can't help but notice the similar blog theme and dottore obsession we have...

AWFULLY CLICHE, YET MY HEART STILL BEATS FOR YOU... (W/ DOTTORE, CW: BLOOD AND CORPSE MENTION!)

GENERAL WARNING: dotdot, dottie, il dottore shenanigans!

IL DOTTORE sits around in his laboratory's steel chair, scapel at hand, reluctantly waiting for you. the experiment didn't go well. he looks at his bloody hands, disappointed. you did not arrive in time with the supplies necessary.

he failed because you did not bring the supplies. he was patient yet you failed him, he was seething.

the metal door opened, your familiar form stepping inside the room. you were awfully cheery for someone two second away from becoming his next test subject. he looked at you, you were holding a basket. a quaint little basket, a handmade picnic basket in fact. unless you managed to fit the very heavy machinery inside a picnic basket, you were doomed.

what surprised him whatsoever is when you opened a side of your basket, bringing out a checkered red and white blanket and laid it on the cold hard floor, avoiding the corpse currently meters away from you. you carefully slipped out a set of matching decorated china tea cups and cutlery. the pastries you laid out on the little china plates looked cute but-

"you still did not bring the supplies," IL DOTTORE sighed, "i have told you time and time again, we need to finish this project by next week."

you knew that, the tsaritsa was a demanding force, yet you always made sure you had your own share of fun. by extension that also meant he was forced to go along with whatever activity you had in store for the day.

"i know dottie," you grinned, meticulously pouring some of the tea into your teacup, "i already turned in the project you see, i worked on it alone and pretty much finished it results and all."

IL DOTTORE scowled, how come you kept this from him. he geniunely thought you trusted him.

"sorry doc, i know you were angry and pretty stressed so i organized this tea party for you. i settled things out so no work for the rest of the day!", you cheered, but in fact he did not feel any better. but alas, there was no reason not to enjoy the meal. sitting down, he took the teacup and filled it up, steam billowing from the hot liquid being poured.

he raised his cup to his mouth, but you prevented him from doing so, cupping his face gently, your arms entangled with his preventing any movement. he felt his heart squeeze, there it was again, that horrid feeling.

"now, now ZANDIK," you brought out your handkerchief, patting his cheeks ever so gently, wiping the fresh blood out of his face, "we can't have a proper picnic without cleaning up, can we?"

his face was burning, his heart beating loudly in his ear. you took off his mask, revealing his scarred skin underneath. you looked at him with kind eyes that made him melt, holding him like as if he was made of precious china set. he felt... warm. he felt safe within your arms.

you pressed your lips near his ear, your voice a faint whisper, "there. now we can see eye to eye."

ZANDIK swore to hate you, after all you were childish and strange. but if you were to continue holding him like that, he might just his pride go.

#silver writes!#I WAS CONFUSED IF YOU WANTED GREMLIN! READER AND ANNOYED DOTTORE: (MY FIRST DOTTORE POST #NO TITLE)#OR YOU WANTED DOWN BAD DOTTORE AND CALM READER (MY OTHER DOTTIE POST: I LOVE YOU (I TRULY DO)#i didnt notice we have the exact same quote as a name (bio?) 💀#anyways are we mutuals?#if we arent this is a formal request #dottore x reader #il dottore x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #il dottore #dottore fluff #dottore #fatui harbingers #fatui harbingers x reader

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playertwotails · 1 year

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Okay I got thoughts about Tails and how much of a little badass he is and this is gonna be a long ramble with spoilers for like most everything I can think of so buckle up if you keep reading.

The villains of the Sonic universe are doing themselves a disservice by only seeing Sonic as a threat and that if they take them out they’re good to go. But Tails is arguably the main problem to all their plans going south and none of them have really taken that into account in any media that I can remember.

Like okay Forces didn’t do a great job of portraying this side of Tails and they murdered his characterization in that game. Frontiers had to backpedal hard to try and fix it, I think they did a pretty good job for the the band-aid they had to slap on for an explanation as to why Tails was like that in that game honestly. Saying he was essentially overwhelmed and couldn’t be brave and fell apart cause he is you know still just an 8 year old child, is a pretty solid explanation honestly. But still Forces really didn’t know how to write Tails around the Sonic OC monstrosity I know most of us made. If they wrote Tails with his previous characterization in mind there wouldn’t have been a point to the player character cause Tails probably would have kept Eggman at like 50% and saved Sonic. (side note making the OC player character lowkey terrify was hilarious in cut scenes if you went that route and if you didn’t go back and play the game and just make the most terrifying creature game lets you trust me it’s worth the laugh).

But stumbling off my Forces soapbox, none of their rogues gallery seems to put two and two together that they’d probably win if Tails wasn’t there to come up with a counter plan to theirs.

Just to like build on why Tails is such a threat the their villains I’m gonna start with just Tails’ physical traits:

To start, Tails can keep up with Sonic. Very few characters are listed as being able to do that (granted most game mechanics have to make it so other characters can also keep up with Sonic). But in all the written out lore and characterization it's usually mentioned that Tails is an outlier in how he can keep up with Sonic and that's part of the reason they became friends.

Obvious one, Tails can fly. Meaning he has a whole other terrain he can fight in and leaving it to gravity in a fight with him will fail. And combine that with his speed being up there with Sonic's and now nowhere is safe from him.

Tails can pack a punch. He's been fighting since a young age, younger than most of the older characters even, and is best friends with Sonic and Knuckles so of course the kid knows how to hit something and fight.

Tails is really strong. I know that one twitter take over has a joke that Tails is ripped but like he'd kinda have to be. We've seen him able to carry both Sonic and Knuckles at the same time and not to mention all the heavy machinery he works with regularly. That 8 year old is pure fluff and muscle.

Now here's where Tails goes from menace to threat for their rogues gallery:

To start with Tails is a super genius. At 8 he's on par with Eggman in intelligence, a man with a doctorate and who's been at this for years, and at times out out classes him (i.e. see the zombot arc Tails figured out a cure when Eggman couldn't against his own virus)

He's made a fake chaos emerald that was next to indistinguishable from a real one. Like I might make a whole separate post about this one later but this child made something that was essentially close in power to a god-like entity, like what the actual fuck.

He's defused a nuke. Eggman did not foresee a baby that apparently has a part time job as a one man bomb squad wrecking his plans.

Ace pilot skills. Wasn't sure if I should put this here or the list above, but I'm putting it here cause my list. But just any sort of air battle Tails has covered either with his own tails or a plane, the sky's are his.

No one really talks about this from Sonic X but Tails built a whole ass functioning space craft Star Trek Enterprise style that they all lived on for months, had artificial gravity, and fuck you levels of weaponry. I know nothing is really canon from that show but I mean how could I not list it.

Tails is the one that comes up with the plan or invention that Sonic and gang use to win (usually he is...Amy seems to have taken over the more plan side of things in IDW comics during/after Forces for big battles, and we love this for her in this house). But like Tails is the one whose invention or plan usually ends up being the main reason they win.

Tails has a super form and can use chaos energy. Like despite what the line up of the cast who can go super form would have people believe, this is actually stated to be a rare trait that few have the ability to actually do. (it's like going super saiyan, cause it ripped it off, stated to be rare then everyone can just do it cause plot)

Tails is just such a one man army at 8 years old that I see him just becoming an even bigger threat as they get older. Cause he's canonically 7 years younger than Sonic and one of the youngest characters in the cast. Meaning he's got room to grow still and if he can keep up with the older character at 8 how strong is this kid gonna be by the time he reaches Sonic's current age of 15.

Like I see it that as they get older Sonic will still be the main protector of the planet and a thorn in all their villains sides. But like if Tails walks up that's it..fight over..you lost..don't stop at go to collect $200 just do your self a favor and go straight to jail.

Out of the whole cast, though they are all young and could only get stronger at this point with age, Tails has the most potential out of all of them with just how many skills this kids has on him.

Also throwing this in here cause I can, Sonic is one of the few if not only person who recognizes this about Tails. It's why he trusts Tails so much and falls back on him when things go bad (also trusts him cause Tails is his best friend/little brother/family figure). Sonic is well aware that his little brother will more than likely one day surpass him and he's proud of that. Sonic pretty much raised Tails so he has a weird combination of proud older brother/almost-parental proud feelings about it. They're brothers you honor.

Welp this is my ramble about Tails cause he's one of my favorite characters ever. Feel free to add on to it if anyone else thinks of anything that I missed. This was all 100% rambles from memory and I have shit memory so I know for a fact I missed something.

#tails the fox #miles tails prower #sonic the hedgehog #I just love tails alright he's fluffy and adorable and can kick ass #all the best traits #wrote this cause it's been on my mind and I called out from work today cause I feel awful #instead of 10 hours of paper work today I'm writing this #but yeah Tails has been my favorite character since I was still in the single digits of age #so it's been a while of him at the top of my list considering I'm closer to 30 now than I am my teen years #time may be an unstoppable force no one can fight against in terms of aging but fav characters are forever #spoilers #just a general spoilers tag cause we'd be here all day if i listed each spoiler individually

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romana-after-dark · 10 months

Text

Ghost of You: Chapter 3

Ellie Miller & Joel Miller

ft. Tommy Miller, Lorenzo and Zach Aleverano

Summary: 16 years after her mom and dad's death, Ellie is finding her place in Jackson, being raised by her Uncle Tommy with the help of her uncle's Lorenzo and Zach. She loves them, but can't help but feel stifled. Soon, she finds out her suspicions were true, and her uncles have been lying to her. Will Ellie learn the truth? Can she trust anyone in this situation?

Takes place after The Wrong Way, but if you havn't read that series (too dark for you, too long, etc) you can read this. Since it's through Ellie's perspective, you can discover the truth alongside her.

DARK FIC! This is a dark!Joel, with canon typical violence and extra on the Joel. Anything discussed or shown in TWW is liable to be discussed here. There will be violence, but no shown sexual violence. Although this Joel is very dark, he is NOT DARK TO ELLIE. None of the things that happened to Ellie's mom are applicable to Ellie, but will be discussed.

Content warnings for entire series, not chapter by chapter unless more is added.

Talk/mentions/discussions of post rape, molestation, torture, violence, branding, forced breeding, major age gap (early 20's to later 40's), death. Child endangerment, major character death, murder, homophobic remarks, minor hate crime, manipulation, identity crisis.

This is longer than I meant it to be (4.5k words), but I needed these three scenes in there and I didn't want to rush. It's hard balancing showing you Ellie's relations with all 3 uncles AND Joel developed and change and shift.

Extra warning for homophobia, and Joel being Joel.

Also some lines/back and forth are directly from the game. I've been watching scenes a lot on youtube to really get the Jackson vibes. Remember, this isn't exactly Ellie we know. She's lead a different life than show/game Ellie, and she's16 so between ages of the games. I did my best to keep Ellie Ellie, but also how might Ellie be different growing up more sheltered.

******************

“So I was thinking, if you think you can get away from Tommy for a few hour, I could meet up with my horse this time, bring you to where I live, if you’d like?”

Joel and Ellie were fishing in their usual spot, a secluded area that Ellie was pretty sure no one was going to outside of patrols; and this was her section.

“Really?” She looked up at Joel from where they both sat, his kind eyes looking down at her, awaiting an answer.

“If you aren’t ready, of course, we don’t gotta. I know it’s kinda a big step but-”

“I’d love to! If I’m gonna take over, I better start learning the land outside of Jackson, huh?”

He smiled at her fondly. “Yeah, it’ll be like bring your daughter to work day.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind, pre-outbreak joke. You can meet some of the guys if you want. If not I’ll tell ‘em to clear out while we’re there.”

Ellie’s eyes lit up. “Really?! Wicked!”

“Careful.” He chuckled. “You’re starting to sound like you’re uncle Lorenzo.”

Two months ago, that would’ve been a compliment.

It took a few weeks to plan, but Ellie managed to trade some thing Joel brought her to Jesse in order for him to take her farming shift for the day. Jesse’s parents didn’t care where he was. After Ellie accidently cut Tommy’s hand, Maria thought it was only fair Ellie pick up the slack for what Tommy was unable to do. Well, unable wasn’t the right word. He had, in fact, tried to go to work as usual but got sent some when his dried wound broke open and bleed all over him. The news, of course, got to Maria who came to see him and found out the extent of the injury. Tommy refused to let Maria make Ellie do his work, not wanting her up on roofs or around heavy machinery, so Lorenzo swapped in for Tommy and Ellie was in charge of Lorenzo’s work for a few weeks while Tommy’s hand healed. He still helped as much as he could, but was frequently sent home with Maria telling him the point of a commun was everyone pitched in to help each other. Ellie found she liked the work, and even after Tommy got permission to work again she began doing agriculture in addition to patrol. It was summer, and she figured she needed to start doing more for the community. If she was going to take over for Joel, the more skills she had the better. She planned on earning her role, not just inheriting it.

Ellie stood at the porch, nervous. Not of Joel, no. She trusted him. Not nervous of the men inside, no. Joel wouldn’t let them do anything to her. No, this is the house. The house. The one she was conceived in, the one Joel took her mom to when he rescued her from Ellie’s grandpa, the one Joel and Uncle Tommy lived in for years before her mom, the one where her mom met Uncle Tommy and Uncle Lorenzo… This is the house she was born in, the house her mom died in. Joel had told her he and the men were gone when it happened, when the infected came. Tommy had found them, Tommy having come to the house for a reason he wouldn’t tell Joel… but he was the one that found the two of them before Joel came home and saw what happened.

“Do you wanna see her first?”

Behind the house is where her mom was buried.

“Please?”

Ellie stared at the grave, a headstone that read her first and middle name followed by Miller. Wife, mother, friend. ‘For they say you are taking the sunshine’ was inscribed on it, song lyrics Ellie knew right away. In the front, near patches of grass and a well worn area for sitting, there were flowers at varying stages of decomposition at the base… Joel brought them a lot, it seems. “Red River Valley” Ellie muttered about the lyrics, choking back tears. She will not cry, she told herself. “That’s uncle Zach’s favorite.”

Joel nodded in understanding. “Your moms too. Learned it on guitar just for her.”

Walking in the house, her chest felt tight, feeling like she may have another panic moment like she did when she first met Joel… all eyes were on her as she walked in, Joel telling them to ‘show some goddamn respect’ to shut them up. Walking in the dining room, however… her worry dissipated. Joel had set up a meal for her. “Figured you’d be hungry. I’m not the best cook, but…”

Thing was, it was good, vegetables and all. Joel even muttered manners after she ripped a large belch at the table. Afterwards, Joel asked if she wanted to see the room. Ellie knew which one.

It was strange, seeing the room she was born in, the room her mom died in. The window had been boarded up, a shitty mattress on the floor, a piano to the right and a few boxes of random things here and there.

“This is where your mom lived when she first came to live with us, before we were married. These are her things. You can look if you want.”

And look she did. Ellie flipped through the items, taking them out and holding them, smelling the clothes, boxes of pretty dresses, a few baby items that they had gotten preparing for her birth, a well-worn deck of cards… With Joel’s permission to explore and a heartsick eye watching her, she touched the things her mom touched, slowly getting a sense of who she was, dust-collected memories strewn about the room as Ellie took in everything she could: comic books that read Star Wars on the cover, a book called Jurassic Park, eventually landing on the piano.

She stood up from the floor of memories she never got to have, approaching the small piano with care and wonder. Zach taught her to appreciate instruments; they were rare, Lorenzo working extra hard and drawing in all his connections to bring Uncle Zach the one he had.

Tentatively, Ellie plucked out a few cords, drawing Joel over to where she stood.

“You play, Ellie June?”

Ellie nodded. “A little. Zach taught me some. I’m not good, but… I know Red River Valley.”

A soft smile spread across his sad face. “I’d love to hear you play, baby girl”

“I’m not singing. Fuck that shit.” She was quick to warn, making Joel chuckle and assure her he could handle that part.

With hesitant hands, she began playing the cords, and to her delight, Joel leaned over the piano as he began singing. He stared at her, intense and seemingly lost in thought. Ellie pulled her eyes away from his to concentrate on the keys. She couldn’t play when he looked at her with such pain…

“From this valley they say you are going…”

When concluded, the tears that glistened in Joel’s eyes were evident; a sharp agony pierced his so deep Ellie wondered how he made it through all these years without them.

“I loved her” His voice croaked.

“I know”

“No, I just…” Joel closed his eyes and shook his head. “I know you know.” When he looked at her again, she was greeted with a soft smile, the kind of smile that warmed her front he sadness that ached for her mom, for him… “I love you both, Ellie June. Very much. Death don’t stop me from loving her.”

Ellie nodded, but was uncomfortable with emotions like that, so she abruptly changed the subject, looking over the box of clothes. “She had a lot of dresses.”

There was that smile again, that fond, wistful smile. “Yeah, it was impractical, really, but she looked so pretty… I brought her back everything I could find, she could usually sew them up to fit.”

She couldn’t remember the last time she wore a dress; Uncle Tommy stopped putting her in them when he realized how much Ellie did not like wearing them, never pressed the issue. Now she was regretting not having anything, just a tad.

“There’s a town dance coming up… I don’t even got a sundress or nothing.”

Joel immediately jumped at the opportunity, striding over to the closet and flipping past them. “You can look through these! They might not be your style, their awfully girlie-” he quickly turned around. “Not that you’re not girlie!”

“I’m not.” She chuckled, and Joel chuckled back. “But won’t uncle Tommy recognize them?”

“Most of them are from after Tommy left- here, what about this one, it’s simple.”

Joel pulled out a dress that would rest right at Ellie’s knees, a collarbone neckline and ¾ sleeves. Simple, not showy.

“It’s really fucking purple” She said, hesitant.

His smile faltered a bit, the excitement in his voice fleeting out as he went to hang it back up. “You’re right, you’re right, maybe there’s something black in here? Or, depending how far away it is I can see what I can get my hands on for you?”

Ellie realized he was trying to connect, trying to make an effort, trying to do dad things with Ellie the way he never could before. She jumped up, quickly grabbing the dress. “It’ll be fun!” She assured. “I don’t really wear dresses anyway, so I’ll be trying all kinds of new stuff.”

Joel’s face lit up with so much bright excitement, she thought he looked 10 years younger. “You tryna impress someone, Ellie June?”

Heat crept up her neck and onto her face. She was, kinda. Dina had made a comment a few weeks ago how pretty another girl, Jess, looked in a dress and Ellie thought about it non-stop for a week. It wasn’t that she was trying to impress Dina, no! That would be silly! But… did she want Dina to think she was pretty too? She wasn’t sure. She had only just learned the truth of her existence. One identity crisis at a time.

Instead of telling her she can’t have a boyfriend, hounding her on who, giving her a talk, Joel simply smiles. “Good. Love is a beautiful thing.” He wanders over to the boxes of items. “You like to read?”

She nodded. “Yeah, when something catches my interest.”

Sifting through the books, Joel found what he was looking for. The book was hefty, nearly the size of a brick, the cover reading ‘Jurassic Park’. He tossed it to her. “Thought you might like this one. Lots of action. The leading lady is named Ellie, I think that’s where your mom got your name.”

Ellie looked at the book. She imagined her mom reading it, flipping through the pages while pregnant with her, as Joel worked long hours to protect his community and have everything Ellie and her mom needed… “What if Uncle Tommy see’s it?”

The bright look on Joel’s face darkened just a bit. “You’re awfully worried about him. He good to you? He take care of you?”

“I mean… yeah.” Although her and Tommy weren’t on speaking terms, she would never say he didn’t take care of her. Hell, every single day there was a plate or a bowl for dinner made up for her in the fridge with a note saying to eat her vegetables. That was all the communication she had other than Ellie shouting the newest lie of where she’d be.

“He don’t hurt you, does he?” Joel’s voice was calm and steady, but there was a deadliness behind it.

Ellie burst out laughing at that, cackling for a while before she looked up at Joel’s confused face. “Sorry” She said through laughs. “I know you’re trying to be protective but-” A few more laughs. “Tommy’s never so much as frowned at me. He couldn't hurt me if he tried.”

“You have no idea what Tommy is capable of.” The warning in his tone was clear. ‘You don’t want to know the things he’s done’ but Ellie just laughed at Joel’s serious act.

“No, no I know,” She giggled. “I’m well aware. He was a raider, and Tommy’s told me he wasn't proud of himself before he came to Jackson” Slowly, Ellie’s laughs settled, but her smile reminded as Jel watched her intently. “But Tommy would never hurt me.” Thinking back on the last 16 years, the years she remembered anyway, thinking about Tommy… the gentle father who showered her in nothing but kindness, understanding, care… Maybe she had judged him too harshly…

Joel’s body language changed, he loosened up again. “Few weeks before I kicked Tommy out, I found bruises on your mom.” He began walking around the room, pacing, avoiding Ellie’s eyes again.

“...What?” The life was sucked out of the room.

“She had some excuse or another, I questioned her if it was Lorenzo, Jack, any of the men… I didn’t even asking if it was Tommy. Never thought he could either.” Joel continued talking as Ellie listened intently, mouth slightly open agap. “When he left, she finally told me. Broke down sob’n about it, broke my damn heart, seeing her like that. Told me Tommy had come onto her.”

Ellie stood in shock at the revelation. All this time, Tommy spoke about her mom with such wonder, such reverence, tere had been times she wondered if he had feelings for her… but Renzo and Zach spoke similarly. She was an innocent, good person who died a tragic death, it was no wonder they held her in high esteem… but love? Or is it lust… What exactly was it he had done?

“Did he… did he tried to…” She couldn’t get the words out. She couldn’t fathom Tommy raping someone… but she was beginning to wonder if the Tommy she knew wasn’t really Tommy at all.

“No” Joel assured before clarifying. “Not that… but… he wanted her to choose him over me.” A slight blush, a shuffle of feet, the smallest sad smile… “This was early on, we were still figure’n things out, you know? I think she might’ve had a crush on him. I wouldn’t blame her if she did. I was gone long hours, leaving her alone with Tommy to protect her, it’s only natural. But she wouldn’t leave me. She said he took her arm, tried to pull her, get her to run away together ‘n shit. She wouldn’t go. She was loyal like that…” There it was again, that wash of sadness, that unbearable pain that Ellie had no idea how he stomached. “He gripped her hard enough she bruised for days…” When his eyes met hers again, there was a flash of anger, something she had yet to see from him. “I’m not say’n he’d hurt you either, I’m just say’n if he does, or he scares you, or you just want to leave for any reason… you have a home here. I’ll take care of you, Ellie June.”

Ellie’s eyes watered, but more importantly, she was focused on her stomach not spilling over in disgust. This was the nail in the coffin. Not only was her entire life a lie, but the man she had loved most in this world was no longer a safe person, no longer a good person, no longer her dad.

The dance was a week later, Ellie stepping out of her room in a dress to see Tommy turn around, mouth agape at the sight of his niece in a dress for the first time in… what? A decade? But Ellie ignored him.

“You look nice” Tommy tried to tell her as she stormed through the hall in the purple dress (a light jean jacket on to offset the purple) “Be safe. I’ll be there in a bit if you want to-” but she was gone before he could finish. Ellie and Tommy always danced together, starting with little Ellie in his arms, then standing on his feet, then slowly learning moves as Tommy swung her around. A year back, Ellie asked why he always danced with her, why he taught her all these fancy moves, and he said it was so Ellie wasn't impressed by “some no good Johnny sidestepping to a slow song. If he loves you, he'll learn how to do the pretzel.”

Ellie had no intention of dancing with Tommy tonight. He joined the town hall as promised a little bit after her carrying the moonshine he was famous for. He used to allow her and Dina some sips here and there if they swore to be responsible… but Ellie was not going to ask. Maybe she could get Jesse to get a cup for them, Tommy wouldn’t know how old Jesse was, right? Ellie couldn’t stand looking at Tommy any more… Over the last week, she had mauled over what Joel had revealed: Tommy taking her, Tommy, Zach and Lorenzo lying, Tommy hurting her mom, trying to take her away from Joel… she was disgusted. The man she knew didn’t exist.

The offer to move in with Joel was on the table, and Ellie was considering it… Only thing is, even if she was furious at Tommy, she was still going to miss her other uncles and her aunts. Jackson was all she knew. Of course, she’d need to move in with Joel eventually if she was going to take over, and sooner is better than later, but besides the obvious of leaving her hometown, there was a huge, glaring reason why Ellie was hesitant to leave, and she was dancing in Ellie’s arms right now.

Dina.

Ellie spoke softly to her friend as they slowly danced… it was that basic side to side that Tommy warned her about, but Dina wasn’t a man. Dina was Dina, just a friend… “Every guy in this room is staring at you right now.”

“Maybe they're staring at you.”

She nodded, but didn’t believe her. Ellie never thought of herself as much to look at. It wasn’t that she was self deprecating, to her, it was just a fact. But That’s okay, she didn’t need to be pretty… well, except to Dina. “They're not.”

“Maybe they're jealous of you.”

“I'm... just a girl. Not a threat.”

“Oh Ellie... I think they should be terrified of you.”

To Ellie’s surprise, Dina went in for a kiss… and to Ellie’s bigger surprise, she reciprocated it. It felt good, so, so good to finally let out that tension, that desire for her friend she’s had for so long… until she felt a strong grip on her shoulder, and she let go of Dina.

“Hey, this is a family event.”

Turning to see Seth, Ellie wanted to back away, to apoligize and leave it alone… but if she was going to lead a group of raiders in protecting a community, she needed to be strong, to be brave, she needed to be the kind of woman Joel thought she was. Although only 5’1, Ellie stood up as tall as she could get and faced off with the old man in front of her. “We weren’t doing anything, Seth.”

Seth glared down at her. “Yeah, you were. We don’t need another goddamn dyke in this town.”

Before Ellie could respond, Seth was ripped off of her, Ellie wobbling forwards as Seth’s grip on her shoulder was yanked away.

“Get your goddamn hands off my daughter!” Tommy shouts, shoving him back and away from Ellie. Zach jumps in, something about ‘Did you fucking hurt her?’ and predictably, Lorenzo isn’t far. Seth has some choice words to say to Renzo and Zach and Ellie knows a few of them are slurs, but in the chaos of the four men and the shock entering her system, she can’t make out much. Maria appears, telling Tommy to settle it, and Tommy calls her uncles away, telling Seth that if he finds him near his ‘child’ ever again, he’s a dead a man, earning a glare from Maria as she ushered Seth away.

Tommy turned to her, attempting to put his hands on her face but Ellie stumbled back in fear. She didn’t trust Tommy anymore.

“Fuck off!” She shouted at the man who had only ever been loving to her, watching his heart shatter in his dark eyes. Lorenzo and Zach’s voices are heard interchangeably trying to calm her down, but Ellie had tunned them out.

“Ellie, I’m sorry” Tommy began. “He had no right-”

“And you do?” She shouted back.

“Elles, what-”

“YOUR LYING TO ME!” It was all but a scream now, echoing off the walls of the dance hall that had now silenced at the scene unfolding before them. “You’re all fucking lying to me!” She referenced her married uncles watching them. “Fuck you!” Running away from them, running past Dina, Ellie took off into Jackson as Lorenzo’s voice called for her, his footsteps keeping after hers for a short while before he stopped. Uncle Renzo had been shot in his torso before she was born, and the old wound showed up in his limited ability to do cardio.

By the time Ellie had made it home, both hers and her uncles houses looked like the had gone to step. Ellie almost made it up the stairs to the porch when she heard Zach’s voice over from his. “Is that what you’ve been hiding?”

Ellie wiped her head around to see him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Zach didn’t move to get up, simple sat in his chair, watching her. He didn’t look made, worried, sad… he just looked like Zach.

“Dina. You guys seeing each other?”

A blush crept up Ellie’s face. “I- I don’t- that was nothing we just-”

“30 years ago, Ren and I wouldn’t have been able to get married, you know that?”

Ellie nodded. She did know that before, men weren’t allowed to marry men, and women weren’t allowed to marry women.

Zach continued, soft and calm as he always was. “You have a blessing here. I ain’t saying you need to fall in love and marry her, but… she treat you right?”

The teared welled up again. Yes, yes Dina absolutely did. “Y-yeah.”

He nodded again. “That’s all I need to know about that, Ellie Bellie. I need you to understand something. What we are- or rather, what me, Ren, June and Maura are… you don’t need to label anything right now. What we are, for thousands of years was something that meant we could be legally killed for and was something people continued to beat and kill us for up until the outbreak. It was only a few years before when a boy in this very state was killed for being gay; just a teenager, about your age. Hell, it happens still, I know, but I think there are so much bigger issues at hand, most people just… begrudgingly accept it. Some people, like Seth, say a few things but he wouldn’t beat you, wouldn’t torture you, wouldn’t see the things I’ve seen…” Zach closed his eyes and shook his head before opening them. He didn’t say a thing about the tears that had finally fallen from Ellie’s face. “I ain’t tryna scare ya, or guilt trip ya. I’m just saying… it’s a beautiful thing to be living somewhere that we don’t gotta hide anymore. And if you are gay, I just… I need you to know, you don’t have to be afraid or ashamed. I love you, very much, so do Lorenzo, June and Maura. And even though you aren’t talking, Tommy would die for your right to love who you love.”

Ellie couldn’t talk. She could betray how much she had been crying in the light of the moon, how much Zach’s words had touched her, how much she was scared of her future. But Zach knew.

He nodded one final time. “Slam the door when you get in so Tommy knows you’re safe.”

It wasn’t long after the dance that things escalated for Ellie. Joel had been walking with her, showing her the rounds as he usually did when he asked if she’d like to take things a step further, if she wanted to see what he really did, the hard parts.

Of course she did. “What do you mean?”

Joel nudged her off their regular path that Ellie was getting to know, and explained. “Got a man, justice that needs to be served. You okay with seeing that?”

Ellie didn’t need to know what kind of justice it was. She trusted Joel, and if he thought the man needed to die, then he needed to die. Soon, she was standing in front of a man with a black bad over his head who was tied up to a tree. By the sounds of his muffled whimpers and cried, he must have been gagged by something. He was afraid, desperately trying to get out of the ties that bound him to the rough trunk that left bleeding scratches on his arms and hands.

Suddenly face to face with the concept, Ellie’s resolve wavered around her. “Joel, I don’t know…” The man paused for a second, listening to her it seemed.

Joel turned to her, his face open but firm. “This is part of the job. You can’t just have others doing the dirty work, we gotta be able to do as we tell others, Ellie June.” When Jole emphasized her name, the man began screaming in hysterics, writhing and thrashing against the tree which only served to disturb Ellie more.

The leaves and sticks beneath her crackled and she shifted her weight to the other foot. “I dunno… do I have to watch?”

His face was grave and serious. “Ellie June, if you don’t think you can do this, you can tell me now. You’ll always be my daughter and I’ll love you and take care of you. You don’t have to take over-”

“No!” Ellie jumped in, trying to ignore the frantic pleas from the man in front of her. “Just… he deserves it, right?”

“Absolutely. I don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it.” Joel talked over the wailing that was growing increasingly hard to ignore. “We don’t tolerate rapists here.”

Ellie gave her consent, and Joel, inturn, gave her earplugs. “Don’t wanna end up deaf like your old man.”

Stepping up to the man, Joel placed the gun up to his bag-covered forehead and fired. To Ellie’s shame, she mostly felt relief that the man stopped screaming, even though it was because the life left his body, head hanging down low as his body slumped forward. Shock was probably the best way to describe her feelings, she was unable to process witnessing her first death… but he deserved it, right? This was good. The man was a rapist. Rapists deserve death, and Joel didn’t tolerate rapists in his communities. This was a good thing. This was a good thing. Joel was a good guy. Joel protected women. Tommy had hurt her mom. Joel protected her mom. This was a good thing.

“What are you doing?” Ellie asked, shaking like a leaf- when did she start shaking? Was she scared? There was no reason to be scared, not of Joel. This was a good thing.

Joel was bent over the man, lifting up his sleeve and doing something Ellie couldn’t see.

“Always take credit for what you do, Ellie June. Never hide in the shadows.”

This was a good thing.

*****************

Ellie's name comes from Jurassic Park bc i fucking said so. I love Jurassic Park, so sue me.

Anway! Lots happening here

Fun fact I was already planning on having Tommy defend Ellie against someone being homophobic and I'm talking to Maura about it, and she, who loves the games and played the second one, goes "you'll never beleive this" turns out theres a scene in the game XD so hey!

All the stuff in little ones rooms made me emo esp the playing cards ;-;

and the irony of Joel saying he doesnt tollerate rapists SIDE EYE

@maura-honey @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @the-fox-den @not-a-unique-snowflake-blog @koshkaj-blog @primosworld @miraclesabound @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin

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tarohemianrocketmanapsody · 2 years

Text

Homeward Bound // Somewhere Only We Know - Chapter 2

Prologue.

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

It had been a long fucking night and she really was at her breaking point. They had been doing a choreographed dance all night and she sometimes had to look down and make sure that her clothes were still on and that they hadn’t spontaneously combusted from the heat of his stares. She’d needed intervention.

Aggressively staring at Jake until he got the hint and came over to her at the bar, she all but yanked him down into a seat that partially obscured her view of Rooster. While her inner slut mourned the unobstructed view of him bending over the pool table to take a shot (looking like he was bending something else entirely over with the way he moved his body and the heat in his eyes), she was grateful to have a moment of mental peace that she hadn’t been able to have since he had walked through the door.

Raising his eyebrow, Jake just took the beer she offered to him as a peace offering and stared at her.

“What,” she said, avoiding his eye contact and clearing more glasses left over by their rush hour, wiping up the sticky mess that was always, ALWAYS left behind because people suddenly forget how to drink out of a cup properly.

“Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, doing your job rather than participating in this antiquated mating ritual?”

The laugh that came out of her was unexpected, and she whipped around to throw her dirty bar towel at his face. He caught it easily, a smirk on his beautiful face as he essentially wrapped his mouth around the beer bottle and drank it. She even saw his tongue peek out to lick up a drop that had run astray. She rolled her eyes. Like he wasn’t trying to seduce any and everyone in this bar too, he loved the attention. At least hers was just one man with a pornstache and a Hawaiian shirt, rather than the entire clientele of the bar. As far as she was concerned, she won.

“Oh please you act like this job is rocket science, we don’t all have to fly thousands of pounds of machinery under threat of death by explosion to make money. Half of this job is interacting with the clientele. Now it’s just you military brats left so it’s not like there is much for me to do,” she said. The “but stare”, was silent, but she knew Jake got that without her saying it. Jackass.

“Oh in that case,” Jake responded, swinging his legs around and making to leave her defenseless, “I’ll leave you to interact with your clientele.”

She had never moved so fast in her life, reaching out to grab his arm and turn him back to her. She once again felt heavy eyes on her. She knew His pilot eyes were meticulous, wouldn’t miss a single touch or smile, and part of it brought a thrill to her. She had remembered the fun she used to have flirting with the boys at school, loved to rev him up and see how he took it out on them, and then later, her, in a very painful (pleasurable), meticulous, way. Her traitorous body literally clenched at the memory. It was like she was an animal in heat.

“Fine you win,” she grumbled, going to get refills on drinks for a few patrons before coming back again to glumly rest her head on her hands in front of Jake. It wasn’t fun to deprive yourself of what you really wanted, regardless of how afraid she was of him, how scared she was at the power he wielded over her and the control he had over her heart. “I need you to run interference.”

Jake snorted, but turned solidly in his seat and leveled his eyes with her and she knew her trusted best friend was in for the count with her tonight.

“Please, you want me here so you can just play hard to get.”

“Excuse you, I AM hard to get.”

“Uh huh, a young girl at UCLA begs to differ.”

“As I recall you were the one coming onto ME.”

“Oh and you put up such a fight, we only had sex with each other every night for like 8 months.”

“Yeah, until we realized we were both in love with someone else.”

“Details details, jury still stands that you, my friend, are being pathetic.”

“Oh I’m being pathetic? You’re literally trying to seduce all of my customers, and don’t even try to deny it because nobody just happens to drink their beer like that. No matter how much you might believe it to be true, you are NOT God and there are limits to your talents.”

“Maybe, but at least I can admit to my game, are you gonna own up to yours? Or are we going to pretend like you haven’t been eye fucking him since he walked in?”

She dropped her head between her arms and groaned. He was always right. Sometimes it was easier when he was away and he couldn’t read her like a damn book.

“I missed you,” she said instead, looking up at him and squeezing his hand. He rolled his eyes, but squeezed back nonetheless, the fondness in his eyes betraying the annoyance he was trying to feign.

“I know,” he replied. She didn’t take it personally, knew he showed his love in different ways, through actions and not words. He showed his love by always driving her to work and staying to take her home when he was in town. By laying in bed with her in silence while she couldn’t sleep, kept up by too many past regrets that she couldn’t put words to. And, by sitting here and entertaining her, quite frankly, psychosis as she battled feelings she hadn’t felt in 6 years while the object of her affection, and also her biggest fear, stood a mere 20 feet away.

“I’ve missed him too.”

“Yeah I think everyone in the bar can see that.”

“Do you wanna bust my balls or do you want to sit here and drink for free and let me get on my soap box?”

“…continue.”

“I don’t know, seeing him tonight just makes me realize how much I have cut myself off from feeling things. It’s scary.”

“Do you want me to ask you why or are you just talking to yourself?”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying I’ve spent the past 6 years listening to you whine and quite literally yearn after this man that I honestly don’t think is worth your time. But you want him and you swear that he is some dramatic long lost love with like the dick of God and the patience of Ghandi, and there he is and he’s looking at you like you’re a piece of meat, so go get him.”

“It’s not just about the sex.”

“Then what is it about?”

“It’s about the moment after dude, having someone who knows you inside and out hold you, knowing that you’re safe in their arms and that nothing can ever truly hurt you when you have them in your life.”

“Okay, now I’m feeling slightly sick. Is there a point to this? Because if this goes on much longer for a choker like Bradshaw, I’m going to need another drink.”

“Yes, the point is, he was that person. He knew everything about me, bad and good and everything in between. What if he doesn’t know me anymore? Worse, what if he does? He’s going to leave again, you all do, and I don’t know if I can go through that again. I don’t even know if I want to face him again. I spent so long desperate to get out of here and be different than my mom and my family. I didn’t for a moment stop to think that the things that actually made me happiest were here. I let it ruin us. I don’t know if he can forgive me for that, and I don’t know if I want him to. I’m not going to be my mom, falling for a man who’s always got his back to me, flying away.”

“Now you’re just making up excuses. Blah blah blah, we get it you have abandonment issues, but don’t pretend like you can’t do this, considering we have been friends for the past 6 years. You’re just scared to get your feelings hurt again, which is just honestly embarrassing for you because you can probably lead Bradshaw around by the balls and he would thank you based on the way he looks at you. Stop being a pussy and let yourself see what happens for once before we skip to the bad part.”

She poured two shots, clinking her glass with his as she tried to let his words sink in and drown out the shockingly high voices of her anxieties.

“You definitely don’t sugarcoat things.”

“You wouldn’t have practically begged me to come over here if you wanted me to placate you, you just want me to validate you so you can fuck him without feeling guilty.”

“I can’t just fuck him the first night he is back in 6 years, what do you take me for?”

“You forget that I’ve seen you in literally every possible physical position, and that I stay with you when I’m in town. I can hear what you watch through the walls.”

“That’s a good point. Just… don’t let me go home with him tonight. You might have some truth to what you’re saying, but things aren’t always black and white and I’m not quite ready to just let him back in. Things were said that can’t be taken back, and I can’t just forget 6 years of silence.”

“Whatever you want babe, all I’m saying is that you can’t hold him or yourself responsible for what happened when you were 18. Do you honestly think he would’ve been happy if he just blew off his dreams to follow you? Do you think you would’ve forgiven yourself if he did? You’re allowed to be irrational because that’s what teenagers do, but if you take 2 seconds to get your head out of your ass and stop being sad that he left, you might realize that it’s the best thing that ever happened for both of you. Timing is weird and you can’t control it, better that it happened then rather than you guys growing to resent each other.”

“Huh, your head is always so far up your own ass I forget how smart you are sometimes. Too bad in a month you’re both leaving and I’ll probably be left with some love child due to the indecent acts you’re trying to force on me.”

Jake actually snorted at that. You loved seeing your best friend laugh, didn’t see it often enough because just like you he carried his own losses from his past. Unlike you, however, he didn’t have a chance to reunite with his person, having lost her when he was just 20 and starting out on his military career.

“Whatever, all I’m saying is, you’ve been given this chance to see him again after all of this time. And, if he has any sense at all in that hairy little head of his, he would never willingly leave you. People make decisions all of the time about what is important to them, and if I could do it all again I would give up flying in a heartbeat if it meant seeing her again, and having the chance to create the life we had always talked about.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t talk about her a lot, nor did she know him before he lost her, but she assumed that this girl had inherently changed him when she passed. She understood what he was trying to say though, and was shocked at how deep his devotion still ran for her after all of these years (though, she didn’t know why she was, because she was in the same boat). Jake had detailed to her countless times how his skills as a pilot were given to him by god himself, and how he had always been born to fly. To hear that he would give it all up for her, even after all this time? It was incredibly humbling, and insanely romantic, even if he would hate to hear that.

She squeezed his hand again, knew he wouldn’t want her to say anymore on the topic. It was always a conversation he preferred when there was a lot more alcohol, and an intensely lower level of consciousness.

“You’re right,” she admitted, continuing on before he could make a comment about how rarely she would make that admission, “But I could never ask him to give up flying. I did it once before, and I was wrong, even if my reasons weren’t selfish. You can’t ask someone to walk away from something they love, something that makes them who they are.”

“No,” he conceded, “But they can choose between something that they love, and something that they can’t live without.”

“Does it always have to be a choice?”

“No, in a perfect world you could do both and have it all, but how often do we get to dictate what we have? All I’m saying is, if and when the time comes, and he isn’t the complete idiot that I think he is, he will make the right decision. No man would willingly walk away from you.”

“You’re just saying that because of all the under the bar alcohol you get.”

“Now you’re the one making a good point. Speaking of good points, you owe me another beer. All of this talk actually helping Bradshaw is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. He needs to focus on his flying, that’s where he really needs some guidance.”

She smiled as she got him another beer.

“You’re just mad because he gave you a run for your money for first in class.”

“I would hardly call it “a run”, I had to throw everyone in class a bone every now and again so their spirits would stay up. I can’t fly every mission for the military, someone had to be second.”

“Shut up and drink your beer.”

“You just want me to stop talking so you can go back to undressing him with your eyes with no interruptions.”

She smiled, making eye contact with Rooster again. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of her since she had started her conversation with Jake. She was pleased to see his jaw set while he clenched the pool cue between his hand, his thumb with his father’s ring tapping rather aggressively on the pool table where he was leaning and not even trying to hide his stare. It seemed inevitable, at least in her mind, that they would find their way back to each other eventually, and if she was being honest it had always seemed that way. But it didn’t have to be right now, and it didn’t have to be easy. There were obstacles to overcome, and they had to get to know each other agains as adults, rather than two kids who fell in love. She also had to convince herself to not run in the opposite direction and never look back for a fear that she might never live a full life again if she gave him her heart, only for him to permanently leave again. So yeah, she was immensely going to enjoy a jealous… Bradley. She was excited to see if he lived up to her memory.

“You’re not hearing any arguments from me.”

———————————————————————

It was finally closing time at the end of what was likely the longest shift of her entire life. Jake had been a good sport, sticking to her side at the bar and keeping her occupied while slowly but surely everyone had petered out of the bar, many going home together as the Hard Deck once again worked it’s unspeakable magic and brought people together. All that remained was her and Jake at the bar and a handful of the same pilots from earlier, all scattered around Bradley like he was some boy king (boy being the furthest thing from describing this absolute man who was sitting there and looking like he could eat her up). She looked back at Jake and was grateful that he spent the night catering to her and her neuroses rather than spending it studying his fellow pilots, finding ways to subtlety one-up them and establish his dominance (a favorite past time of his). While she was thankful for his continued dedication, she currently needed him get the fuck out. The aviators had come off of Bradley and he was not being shy with his looks and suddenly her entire carefully constructed willpower, and her former reservations from literally 2 hours ago, went right out the fucking window. With him spread out on a chair, legs spread wide, Hawaiian falling just right, glasses hooked on his tank top dragging it down to show more tanned skin from his chest, who could blame her. She just wanted to… talk.

“I need you to take a walk,” she said, turning to Jake.

He just stared back at her.

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I need you to take a walk.”

“At 1:00 in the morning?”

“Yes.”

He looked around the bar until he laid eyes on Bradley and turned back to her incredulous.

“You told me you wanted me to play interference.”

“Yes, and now I’m telling you to take. A. Walk.” She exaggerated her statement with intentionally dramatic blinks so he would get the fucking hint and clear the bar.

“What happened to holding out and easing back into things?”

“We’ve already run 23 miles of foreplay tonight, might as well bring it home.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“I have no fucking clue at this point, but it feels right. Now get out, I just want to talk to him.”

“Talk. Right. Is that what the kid’s are calling it now today?”

“Honestly your lack of faith in me is devastating, maybe I really do just want to talk. I would like to see him without the eyes of 50 other people looking in waiting to see what we do like we’re in a goddamn zoo.”

“Funny, as far as I can recall, you like to be the one doing the watching.”

“I’m literally kicking you out now.”

“I’m your ride home.”

“Then maybe you suddenly want to go check on your bike, I know it’s old and might need to be looked over before we drive it home, maybe will give you some time to sober up too, this is your 4th beer tonight.”

He just looked at her. She knew damn well that Jake could probably body two more drinks easily before he was at any point of intoxication that would prevent him from driving.

“I’m not finished with my drink.”

She reached forward and grabbed the beer out of his hand, not even looking behind her as she chucked it in the trash.

“And now you’re done. Do me a favor and take out the trash when you go outside, and maybe use that subtlety of yours you love to talk about to get the other pilots to go as well, it being such a long night and all. I’m really ready to close this place down.”

He got up from the bar, putting a finger in her face as he stepped away, “You have 20 minutes and I’m dragging your ass home, preferably clothed but I’m not above dragging your ass out of here naked. Some of us need sleep, we can’t all sleep until 11 and roll up to work at 4pm.”

She smiled and waved as he walked away, calling out, “You’ve lost a lot more sleep over a lot less noble pursuits.”

His middle finger in the air was the only response she got, coming around the bar to grab the trash before making his way over to the pilots.

She turned and busied herself with refilling the ice behind the bar and making sure the glasses and napkins were all back in order for her mom’s opening tomorrow. She was nervous now, listening out for the tell tale sound of the door opening and closing. She had been truthful about just wanting to talk, whether Jake believed it or not was a whole other story (and for good reason, as he knew her better than she knew herself, and knew she was likely being dishonest with herself).

The tension that fell over the bar tonight was thick, and not just from the unresolved sexual chemistry they still very clearly shared (though that did not make the situation easier). Years of things left unsaid was sitting between them, and she wanted to have the upper hand in this interaction, wanted to be able to be the one to have this conversation on her terms. He had always known how to, for lack of a better word, dazzle her and have her all but begging to submit when it came to sex, but she had always been the one with the upper hand outside of the bedroom. While he loved to dominate her for their more… carnal interactions, he had quite simply been nothing but worshipful the rest of the time, letting her have the lead. This was likely because he was able to be a lot more open with his affection and feelings than she always had been, products of their home environments (hers sporting an emotionally distant and unavailable dad and having a mom who cut herself off from emotions in order to handle her own issues with men, while Bradley’s house had always been full of emotion and verbal affirmation, likely because Carole knew that nothing was ever guaranteed and didn’t ever want her son to question her love for him). She had always felt more comfortable showing how she felt with physical touch and actions rather than words, something that had never seemed to bother him before, but something she felt guilty about regardless. She had often been kept up at night over the years thinking if she had been able to be more vocal about how deeply she felt about him, and her fears of losing him, things might have turned out different.

She didn’t want to lord any power over him, didn’t want to take advantage of their situation or the many unresolved feelings they likely had for each other. That had never been what their power games were about. While they had liked to dabble into seeing just how many ways they could get each other to bend, to see just how much they affected each other, it had always come from a place of respect and safety and love, two equals pushing boundaries and trying to understand this explosive chemistry that wrapped around them. However, in this specific situation, she just wanted to be on her A-game. While she might not be as much of an open book verbally, her body language and face had always been able to express how she was feeling, and he had meticulously studied her over the years, determined to be an expert in all things her. Bradley often knew what she was feeling before she did. She wanted to have this conversation without folding to the magnetism they had over each other, wanted to see if they could actually meet as adults and possibly see if they could overcome what seemed to be a mountain of unanswered questions and tensions. However, she also was human and, unfortunately, was typically driven by her desires versus her mind, and the object of essentially all of her desires over the past half decade was suddenly a mere few feet away from her. Maybe she could forget how to act for a night.

“No,” she said to herself, so distracted by her own inner angst and monologue she missed the sound of people exiting the bar, “I must stay strong, for women everywhere.” It seemed flimsy, even to her own ears.

She moved down the bar, turning over barstools and stacking them on the counter. Hands reached out from behind her, grabbing the barstool and flipping it over with much more grace and ease than she was sure she had demonstrated.

Her back felt hot and suddenly all of her senses were in overload, his presence behind her being like a shot of adrenaline directly to her heart. She felt warm lips press to her ear, felt a hand slip around her waist and splay out on her stomach. The size of the hand compared to her small waist made her mouth dry out, her tongue rolling into the back of her head as she took in how his hand seemed to cover her entire stomach, as if laying claim to it and marking it as taken territory. She allowed herself to be pulled back into a hard chest (a very welcome change, though part of her missed her lanky Bradley who was more soft and was all arms and legs). Felt his other arm come up to have his fingers dance along her collarbone, leaving a small trail of fire with every touch. His fingers strayed to her neck, and she felt the slightest press of his dad’s ring against her throat. It was cold, a direct antithesis to the heat that was no doubt radiating off her of her skin. It was also insanely erotic. She had allowed herself to become ensnared in a golden trap, and she couldn’t even find it within her to be mad about it.

“You know,” he murmured, letting his teeth graze her ear while the ring pressed down slightly harder on her neck, “That was probably the best performance I’ve seen you put on to date. I came to offer my personal congratulations.”

She took a deep breath and counted to three, ignoring the pressure of his fingers on her throat and the heat of his other hand burning a hole through her shirt on her stomach. Once upon a time she had dedicated years of studying to those fingers, knew what all they were capable of. The game was just beginning though, and she couldn’t let him see her sweat. Not yet anyways.

“Funny, I was just about to say the same thing,” she started, tilting her neck up to show off more skin, smiling as she let one of her hands dance up his leg, light touches all the way up until she hooked her thumb in the waistband of his jeans, letting it rest against his bare stomach, “All eyes were on you tonight fly guy.”

She felt him laugh behind her, felt the vibrations from his chest on her back. She felt his fingers on her throat moving again, felt them flutter across her pulse point (which he could likely feel being rapid and explosive at the moment), before settling on her jaw, firmly gripping it and turning her head to the piano. His thumb, the same one with that damned ring, ghosted across her lips. His other arm still had her firmly anchored to his chest.

“Only one pair of eyes I was looking for sweetheart, I remember how much of a fan you are of a show, even left a spot open for you on the bench just like old times. But,” he said, his voice taking on a darker edge here, “You seemed to be… distracted.”

She thought back to his performance, back to that brunette who stood way too close, thought of the familiarity that ran between them. She recalled the heated looks he threw to other women of the bar. He had been playing the same game she had, but she had always excelled far more in this area. While he loved to make her jealous like she so loved to make him, he just liked having her eyes on him (and only him) better, and enjoyed nothing more than being able to have his eyes on her.

She nipped at the finger stroking her lip, and reveled in the way his fingers on her jaw tightened in warning, loved the way his fingers pushed harder into her stomach, toeing the line of more painful than heated. She loved it, hoped, secretly to herself in her mind where she didn’t have to face any repercussions of her actions in her little fantasy world, that he would leave bruises on her. That she would get to wake up tomorrow morning and relive what it was like to be in his arms, feeling his touch again, knowing that it was real, finally.

Snaking her hand up his arm and over the back of his neck, she allowed herself to sink her fingers in his hair and drag his head down to her level, keeping her eyes on the piano, and more importantly, the piano bench, while she spoke.

“I would’ve been more entertained if there was something worth watching.” She let her tongue dart out, licking the shell of his ear, while her other thumb still tucked into his waistband started to stroke his skin.

Moves and counter moves.

His hand on her stomach moved faster than she anticipated, hooking his finger through her short’s belt loop, whipping her around and pushing her into the bar, his thigh going between her legs, with one solid, fluid moment. His hand that had previously been on her jaw was now resting flat on her chest, a chest that was now heaving up and down at being face to face with such proximity after all this time. She sent up a silent thanks to the gods that be for pilots and their ability to maneuver things (people) on a whim. His other hand had her caged in, wrapped around her waist as he pushed her even more, not so gently, into the bar.

“Mhm. How do you know him?”

She was suddenly scared to look him in the eyes, scared to see the fire that she knew to be in them, a similar fire that she was sure would be reflected right back from her own eyes. She focused, instead, on tracing the ridges of his chest through his essentially non-existent tank top.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

The warm hand that was resting on her chest started to move, sliding down her chest until he was full on palming (gripping) her boob. He moved his fingers and pinched her nipple, hard.

Her head shot up, her mouth opening, and she was embarrassed to admit she didn’t know if it was in outrage or arousal.

“Now I have your attention,” he murmured, his eyes scanning over her face. His fingers reached back out to soothe the sting on her chest, trailing a lazy circle around her nipple. Goosebumps erupted over her entire body. His face seemed humored, almost laughing at her obvious reaction to him, but his eyes held a heat she knew from many similar encounters in the past. He was seeking an answer from her, this one about Jake, and he knew how to dig until he got what he wanted.

“Let’s try this again,” he said, his warm breath falling over her face as he leaned in to whisper in her ear, his hand at her waist gripping to the point where she knew he would leave bruises. She smiled. “How do you know him? It’s nice to see that your acting hasn’t improved in all of these years honey.”

She felt fire in her veins.

“Who do you want him to be to me? You seem awfully eager to make assumptions.”

His thigh pushed harder between her legs, and she felt humiliation run through her body when the word “throbbing” came to mind. She was no better than the women in the trashy romance novels her mom swore she didn’t read.

“That’s because you want me to make assumptions.”

That was a fair point. While it was her favorite game to play with him, she had forgotten how well of a contender he was.

She leveled her eyes with him and smiled when he looked down at her, his eyes following the line of her tongue as she slowly licked her bottom lip. His hand, sadly, abandoned its menstruations on her chest, his thumb coming up to slowly trace the route her tongue had taken. Eyes locked. In a different scenario, at a different time, she might have sucked his finger into her mouth, maybe even dropped to her knees, if for nothing else just to see his hungry, desperate eyes follow her every move. But she had genuinely wanted to talk, and she was kind of letting herself get off track.

“He’s a friend, has been for awhile.”

“It seemed more than just a little friendly.”

“Aw, you remember how well I treat my friends Rooster, you used to be one of them once upon a time.”

His whole body tensed. He didn’t like that one. At. All. She couldn’t settle on a feeling, scared of how he might react, or actively anticipating what was coming.

His hand slid up from her waist, ghosting his hand over her chest while his other moved down to cradle the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and let her head drop back. His large hand framed her face, cupping it, while the other slipped into her hair and pulled, forcing her eyes open. He continued to pull until her back was practically arching over the bar, until their eyes met once again, a pair in orbit that always gravitated back towards each other.

“You’re playing a game and I’m willing to play along, I just don’t know if you’re going to be able to handle the consequences when they catch up to you.”

Their faces were mere inches from each other, and she resisted breaking their gaze to stare at his lips. His eyes held her in a trance, were reading her just like they always did when they were kids, and she suddenly wished she could freeze this moment in time, and always remember the way he was looking at her, like she was the sun and in charge of his gravitational orbit.

“I’m not sure what you’re implying, I just wanted to talk.”

He smiled at her then, genuinely smiled, and the sight of it made something warm blossom in her chest. It was like Catherine crossing the Moors and seeing Heathcliff again, like Darcy and Elizabeth crossing the field and coming home to each other, like the time traveler and his wife celebrating being in this moment, this current moment, together for just a minute.

“Talk?”he questioned, letting his thumb stroke her cheek.

“Talk,” she replied, leaning into his touch, trying to count the number of wood boards on the ceiling, anything to calm her down and get the absolute need between her legs under control, “Unless you’re going to find a reason to argue about that too.”

He moved his hand from behind her neck to her legs, picking her up with one arm (seemingly with ease? Dear lord) and laying her gently on the bar (a direct antithesis of his more forceful handling earlier, she couldn’t decide which one she loved more). His hand that was on her face was now being used to tenderly lay her head down and suddenly his entire body was between her thighs as she laid flat on her bar, him staring down at her. And the heat. Was. Back.

“Aw no baby,” he said, his hand once again coming down to dance along her throat, his index finger slowly drawing a line from chin to chest that had her seeing stars already, plotting a course of action or simply meaning to drive her crazy, she didn’t know, “I love to hear noises come out of your pretty little mouth, talk away.”

She put her hands on his shoulders, whether to drag him down or push him away she wasn’t sure, when he reached up with his right hand, the ringed finger, and grabbed her wrists.

Sirens went off in her brain as he lifted her arms over her head to pin them to the bar. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t- He pinned her wrists to the bar, flipping them over and interlocking her left hand with his right one.

Fuck.

He did it.

There was no coming back from this for her.

When they were younger no matter what position they were in or how heated things got, he always, always laced their fingers together. It grounded her, let her know that she was safe with him no matter what wicked shit he pulled on her body. Reminded her that she was loved and cherished. She felt his dad’s ring on her hands and had to suppress the tears that threatened to come to her eyes. It was all too much, all at once, he was everywhere and was flooding all of her senses.

“You wanted to talk sweetheart,” he whispered in her ear, taking his sweet time to nibble on her ear lobe before moving his lips behind her ear, sucking the spot behind it that literally had her back arching off of the bar and into his hard body.

“Yeah, I do. I think that there should be…”

He blew on the spot he had been sucking on, squeezing their interlocked hands before grazing his teeth down to her pulse point. She felt him place a sweet kiss to it before… Jesus h Christ placing his tongue on it, no doubt enjoying the rapid fluttering.

Her head fell back down to the bar with a thunk, exposing more of her neck to him (which honestly benefited her, once again thanking the powers that be that he remembered just how far he could get with her with a little bit of neck kissing and the biting… and the sucking… and the…). She went to speak again when he bit down on her pulse point. Hard. She wasn’t sure what sound emitted from her body, but she got a welcome hum against her throat and his legs came closer, widening hers even more, and she figured she must be getting rewarded for good Karma in another life.

“Boundaries. I think there should be solid boundaries between us while we get to know each other again…. See if we even still have anything… in common.”

He hummed, acknowledging her words, obviously taking them as encouragement completely ignore her in favor of continuing his onslaught of her neck. Before each stinging bite he placed a feather light kiss over his next victim spot. Her head was spinning between the juxtaposing sides he was showing. He was intentional with his path, she could tell. He was leaving his mark, that much was obvious, a brand that showed that he had been there. His feather kisses were even more branding than the bites and marks, penetrated her skin and touched her soul. He was forging a campaign to conquer every part of her body, ever the military man, trying to mix himself with every part of her he could, and leave his imprint not only on her skin, but underneath it too. Fuck.

“I’m being serious, I don’t even know how long you’re back for and we’re basically strangers right now and there are conversations that need to be had before we just…”

He had reached her chest.

Suddenly she had the strangest feeling that laying in her dim bar on her, lovingly, worn down counter, being kissed and marked and having her heart bared for everyone to see, felt strikingly similar to what it must be like standing in the grace of God himself.

His tongue dipped out, licking from where her cleavage began all the way up to her other ear. She didn’t even need to see his face to know he was smiling while he spoke low in her ear.

“I don’t know sweetheart, I could be wrong but I don’t think your body has forgotten me. Maybe a conversation about your masters in accounting can wait until I fully reacquaint myself though, and really address these boundaries of yours that you’re talking about.”

Another bolt of heat shot through her. He knew about her masters in accounting, which likely meant he knew about her BA in business before deciding to go on, wanting to learn everything she could about financials and banking before coming home and committing to a business. He had kept tabs on her too. The thought made her warm from head to toe on the inside.

“That’s a fair point Lieutenant.”

She felt his reaction immediately, took note of the way something most definitely jumped between her legs, and the way he stopped breathing for a moment in her ear. It was her turn to smile again. He had always loved having power over her in moments like these. To hear his rank uttered in such an intimate setting? It would likely drive him crazy (which she had partially wanted, she was obviously losing ground in her desire to have a conversation, the next best thing was to make him feel as out of control for her as she did for him). Plus… he was smart. He could read between the lines, would take her comment for more than face value. He was wearing his civilian clothes today. There was no way for her to know he was a lieutenant without having kept tabs on him too. It was an olive branch, albeit a small one, and a temporary ceasefire on her inner angst and turmoil over everything to do with him (and with them).

He attacked her chest with fervor. Gone were the light touches and slow passage, he was a man possessed as he, for lack of other words in her current foggy mind, ravaged her chest. He bit down and sucked so hard she swore he would draw blood. Her eyes seemed to be spinning in their sockets at this point and she shut them tightly, refusing to look down at him thoroughly debauching her for fear of how she would react. When he was done with one side of the top of her cleavage, he attacked the other with just as much gusto, and she started to squirm on the bar, her hips moving, looking for friction, while her hands were still clasped in his iron grip.

His other hand, forgotten in the midst of the overwhelming everything, shot up and gripped her waist tightly, his thumb pressing harshly into her skin as he stilled her hips and made her take the onslaught of his mouth and teeth. Holy fuck.

Then his lips were off of her and his hand above her head was releasing her and for a moment she could think, could actually formulate words in her brain, could produce reasons why not now, not here, not like this, but he didn’t give her much time to breathe. His hand came down from above to tweak her right nipple, pulling and pinching, while his mouth claimed her other nipple through her shirt (and wasn’t that insanely erotic wow, she suddenly was gleeful that she had forgone a bra tonight, the rough fabric of her tank top rubbing against her nipple, the wet friction creating overwhelming feelings of pleasure that, in combination with his other hand, went straight to her vagina).

His other hand ventured below the waste line of her shorts she suddenly despised, hated for the barrier they placed between them. Feeling of his fingers against the heated skin below her underwear had her suddenly wondering if it was possible to just get off on heated glances and bites and well placed fingers because wow she can’t recall ever feeling so turned on in her life.

“You’re trying to distract me and it’s not going to work, no matter how good with your mouth or how sinful your fingers are. We can’t just forget about the past 6 years Bradley.”

His head popped up at his name, and she swears she saw something soft in his eyes when he looked up at her from his position. He kept his hand where it was in her pants, but the other one came up to cradle the back of her neck again, his thumb stroking the skin he found that was most likely red and bruised.

“I think,” he spoke, his thumb pressing hard into her skin yet again in her pants, the pressure bringing her to attention while he all but forced her to look into his eyes, his other hand holding her head in place, making her look at the seriousness that danced behind his golden browns, “That we both know how this is going to end. That we both know that whatever games you want to play, and however far you’re going to run from me, you’re going to end up right back here by my side like you were always meant to be. I highly suggest we start enjoying that future now, rather than ruminating on things in the past that we can’t change. You can put up a fight if you want to darlin’, but at the end of the day we both know who you’re going to be coming home to.”

Fuck.

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A/N: Okay. Wow. This is my first ever public piece of writing and I wish someone had told me that characters, even ones made up by other people like Rooster, have a mind of their own. In my head they were already well into some ‘family friendly’ very kinky fun, and yet they had other plans and suddenly it was almost 8,000 words of further character / relationship development, Jake/reader best buddy time, and just the tip of the iceberg in regards to any smut (all for just this chapter no less). Who knew? Lol. I’m honestly not even halfway finished with this scene, but it's nearing 1am and I wanted to get something out (partially because I have this panic that everyone will move on from our Rooster obsession and I want to capitalize on the interest while it is there). I was trying to write some good old-fashioned smut and sexual tension and a lot of sappy worships and allusions to God / gods worked their way in there, whoops. I personally like my rough smut with a nice heaping side of worship and adoration, but maybe it’s just me haha. I promise after next chapter I will actually get them out of the bar and get the story truly rolling. I have spent the last few days obsessing over other people’s fanfictions and sitting and plotting on my own (sitting at the dinner table and thinking of pet names for him to call her during sex while your family is eating is not recommended). I can’t guarantee a regular updating schedule, because while I am riding this obsession train HARD, I have also come to realize just how fucking hard writing is, and don't even get me started on dialogue. And having to move them from place to place and describe every step and action so it is realistic? Kill me. I’m writing for my own personal fantasy and enjoyment tbh, but I hope you guys like it! The comments and kudos really inspire me to write, and just all around make me feel insanely good about myself and my writing, so thank you for that! I have messed around with the movie timeline just for my own creative reasons in the fic, so just know it’s my world and we’re all just living in it. Happy reading!

(Again, it is now nearing 1am as I finish this author's note, it’s going straight from my phone notes app to here with no editing because I couldn't wait to share it, my apologies because I write how I think, so one longgggg run on sentence with seemingly no understanding of commas or grammar).

We could call this scene a part 1 if we want, next chapter will pick up from here.

(BTW - this chapter’s pic is how I imagine him sitting, surrounded by his fellow pilots, watching ~her~)

#bradley rooster bradshaw #bradley bradshaw fanfiction #bradley bradshaw #bradley bradshaw smut #bradley bradshaw x female reader #bradley bradshaw x y/n #top gun #top gun maverick #jake hangman seresin

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