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ma1dita · 2 months

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🐥hey babe, thoughts on sirius x reader during hogwarts years? sirius is known for being a huge playboy and reader's a gryffindor and good friends with all the gryffindor girls n marauders. think (best) friends to lovers? he's going out with all these girls all the time searching for a connection and physical affection, but doesn't realize that he has feelings for her until he sees her with another guy (asked to hogsmeade, hanging out at a party, slug club, etc). love ya <33

🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥

sirius black x reader

a/n: for my lovely nini!! i hope you like it LOL sirius was always hard for me to write

wc: 1.5k

—

Sirius Black has everything he’s ever wanted in life.

It’s a bold statement to claim at 17, but after leaving his hellhole of a house, getting good ol’ Uncle Alphard’s inheritance of gold with enough to swim in at Gringotts if he so wishes, and having the best of mates he also has the privilege of calling his family— some may ask what’s next for him, and that’s what he’s trying to figure out too.

Everything will be easy from now on, he thinks— smoothing down his hair and spritzing some cologne while he gets ready to find another girl to get under so that his weekend will have some merit.

“Looking good, Pads,” James grins from his bed as he tosses a quaffle back and forth between him and Peter. The impish boy almost gets nailed in the face, huffing, “Who’s it this time? The girl from Ravenclaw? What’s her name again—Venetia? Violet?”

“Something like that…”

Sirius straightens out his shirt collar and flicks off a speck of imaginary lint from his shoulder—there’s physically nothing wrong with him, but something is still missing.

The door opens with a bang and you brush past him like a hurricane, the boys cheering at your arrival.

“Pretty girl, give us a twirl!” James hollers, and Remus gets up from his bed to spin you around as you giggle with your dress twirling in the wind.

“M’gonna be late because of you lot!” you grin, grabbing James’ bottle of Sleakeasy’s off his dresser and sidling up next to your best friend who’s silent as he stares at you through the mirror with amusement in his eyes.

“What?” you mumble, cheeks flushing as you lather the potion between your fingers to smooth it into your hair, “Can’t let you be the only pretty one around here, Pads.” He’s pulling on the fabric of your dress teasingly, inspecting you from head to toe, “Mhm, and who exactly are you going on a date with, lovie?”

“None of your business! Don’t want any of you boys meddling,” you say exasperatedly, elbowing him when he laughs, and Peter yells out in protest from the floor behind you. You squeeze Sirius’ shoulder, looking at the both of you in the mirror and noticing that his silvery eyes are still glued to you, cool as steel.

“Do I look bad? Borrowed it from Mary, but it doesn’t really fit me as well as it fits her, no?”

He notices the low cut of your dress and the way it frames your body just as well as he can draw it from memory—from the curve of your collarbones to the plush of your hip it certainly doesn’t leave much to his imagination, he’s just never seen you like this before. Sirius is blatantly ogling you now, and Remus throws a pillow at his head sending every perfectly combed piece of hair in different directions. He doesn’t even move to fix it, his breath growing quicker the more he takes you in.

“Lucky bloke. You’d look pretty even if you wore a sackcloth though,” he mumbles, eyes unseeing when you reach up to smooth his strands with a gentle smile. Sirius moves closer so you can reach, lips grazing against the powder blush you applied on your cheek— though if he got any closer he might’ve felt the heat reverberating from your skin. His finger plays with the tie at your bosom, almost in hesitation, or was it contemplation?

When does Sirius ever hesitate to do anything?

“This dress is just….hmmm…”

“What? Making me nervous… Is it too much?” You turn away to ask the other boys, who watch the two of you dance around each other like an old Muggle film Remus’ mum would send them to watch (Hope Lupin wants to teach these boys a thing or two about how to woo women in a respectful, romantic manner, mind you).

“A bit,” Sirius swallows, pulling at his shirt collar like it’s suddenly hard to breathe. Behind you, Peter grips at his hair almost comically while Remus throws his face into a book and sighs. James is watching through his fingers, eyes darting between the two of you two in anticipation. Groaning, you jab at his torso, taking out the rest of the air in his lungs (though he tries not to choke when he pulls you in and feels the smooth skin of your thighs as your dress rides up in the struggle).

“Shut up, you tosser! And I better not see any of you in Hogsmeade later trying to ruin my date—I actually have high hopes for this one…” you giggle, tossing your head against your best friends’ shoulder as you look at the varying faces of shock that surround you.

“Who said we were going to meddle?”

“Us?”

“We’re good boys, doll, we’d never!”

Sirius’ voice rings clearer over the rest of the Marauders as he whispers in your ear, “My girl’s looking forward to a date? Who would’ve thought….”

You spin in his arms and correct him, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other playing with a button on his shirt, “Your best girl…I’m allowed to have fun too, Pads!”

“That you are.”

He presses a kiss to your temple, inhaling the perfume you spritz on for special occasions and feeling like he’s lost you already even before you walk out the door. You send him off on dates all the time with an encouraging smile on your face. So why is it that after you leave the boys watch him flop into his bed and stare at the ceiling?

Sirius could’ve been there for hours for all he knows— ignoring the boys when they tell him they’re going to badger your date at Hosgmeade, unmoving when his date (who’s name turned out to be Vina) banged on his door for skipping out on her, he laid there, arms crossed and brooding. It’s like nothing made sense anymore.

You come tiptoeing into his room with your heels in hand a little before dinner, pulling back the curtains of his poster bed whispering, “Pads? You okay? What happened to your date?”

Sirius rolls over, looking at your wide eyes glinting in the candlelight, “What happened to yours?” he counters.

“It was okay. The boys sent a Bat-Bogey Hex to my date and snot landed in my butterbeer. He thought it was weird when I laughed.”

“M’sorry, lovie,” he sighs, grasping your hand over his duvet and playing with the rings on your fingers.

“S’okay! Don’t wanna be with someone without a sense of humor. Grown man that can’t take a prank. How awful is that?” you grin, before slapping his thigh, “Move over, I’m coming in.” There should be nothing special about the way you easily find your place against his body, molding against his form in both of your wrinkled dress clothes but Sirius can’t help nuzzling against the crown of your head, pressing a kiss to your scalp like it’s second nature.

“Why didn’t you go on your date? Heard Vina almost set the common room on fire.”

He doesn’t have an answer to that, nor the way he questions why his heart is beating faster when you draw stars along his spine.

“D’you at least have a good time today? Looking so pretty and all,” he whispers, pulling your chin up so you can look at each other eye to eye.

“Rem said you weren’t feeling well, so I had one foot out the door the entire time. Besides he was boring. Much rather spend time with you here,” you say like it’s nothing of the sort. Shiny lips press a pink kiss onto his nose. Your lipgloss smells like strawberries, leaving a mark on his aristocratic features.

“Doing nothing?”

“Mhm. Already having more fun, aren’t you?” you breathe out a laugh into his neck, unknowing of the way he looks at you like you hung the stars in the sky. He comes to the realization then that there’s no other place he’d rather be without you by his side. Nothing’s missing, or wrong with him—he has all he needs as long as you’re pressed against him like this, fingers in your hair and legs tangled under the bedspread.

“I didn’t want to go on my date because I wanted to be with you today,” he whispers into the air. You don’t freeze or jolt back like he expects you to, instead pursing your lips against his jaw.

“Yeah?”

“Is that okay?” he mutters, closing his eyes with the feeling that he’s said something awful, shoulders tensing like how they would when his mother would turn the corner.

“Why wouldn’t it be okay? Siri…” you sigh, grabbing his face to look at you and when he opens his eyes, you suddenly know.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Sirius says shakily, putting his hands over yours in case you’re an apparition or want to leave. There’s a space in his heart that’s in the shape of you, and you smile at him like he wasn’t in on the joke, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“S’okay. You have me.”

And he nods, knowing that’s all he needs.

#jo's 23rd birthday bash ⋆｡°✩#sirius black x reader #sirius black fluff #marauders x reader #made by ma1dita ♥︎#harry potter x reader

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carolperkinsexgirlfriend · 5 months

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Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 53

Part 1 Part 52

The days pass, blurred like the trees they pass in the car on the way back from every session at the lab. Each one makes Eddie’s skin crawl, even when Mama Byers can’t come so Wayne goes in her place, flanked by Hopper as usual.

The car’s always quiet on the way back. No one ever tells them anything, but Dr. Owens’ eyes look flinty when he analyzes the print-outs, gaze drifting to Steve more than Eddie likes. God, if only someone in the party was a fucking doctor.

But the NDA’s tied their hands on bringing in second opinions, and Eddie’s pretty sure that the guards they all pretend not to be creeped out by would stop them long before they make it to the outside world.

So, he sits in Wayne’s truck on the drive and stews.

Steve’s getting quieter after each visit, like they’re sucking something vital out of him. It makes Eddie rabid, a little. But all he does is turn the music up louder, singing along like his heart is still in it.

Steve smiles at him when they lock eyes in the rearview mirror. Eddie ignores the way Wayne huffs, just lets the warmth in.

It should be weird, now that Steve looks like The Hair again. Now that it’s long enough, Eddie knows the secrets of his hair care – bullshit expensive shampoo and conditioner, and a few sprays of farah fawcett hairspray. Steve spends obscene amounts of time hogging the bathroom mirror, making sure each strand lays just so.

It’d taken months to be let in on the process. Eddie’d sat on the toilet lid, watching transfixed as Steve puckered his lips in concentration and twirled his hair around his finger, spraying it lightly with hairspray until it held.

So, yeah. Steve The Hair Harrington is back with his lucious locks, but he’s huddled into one of Eddie’s oversized sweaters in the backseat of Wayne’s truck, so he doesn’t see much more than the same old Stevie who he’s shared a bed with for months on end.

It’s thanks to Eddie’s obsessive need to glance at Eddie in the mirror that he notices it so quickly. Steve’s eyes are vacant, zoned as he looks forward blankly. Eddie meets his gaze in the mirror and sees nothing there.

“Stevie?” he asks, turning in his seat to look into the backseat.

“He okay?” Wayne asks, keeping his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel.

Steve doesn’t react to either of them. Eddie unclips his seatbelt, tangling his feet in it as he crawls over the console and into the backseat, calling Steve’s name. He snaps his fingers in front of his face, and gets nothing. It’s like he’s a doll, and everything that makes up Steve has been sucked out of him.

“Steve, wake up!” Eddie says, slapping lightly at his cheek. Hoping, hoping hoping.

“What’s happening back there?” Wayne asks.

Eddie doesn’t answer. He doesn’t register that the eingine has cut off until Wayne opens Steve’s door and peers in at them. Steve looks up at him, begging Wayne to help. Wayne looks down at Steve, frowning at his unseeing eyes.

“I don’t like this!” Eddie says, shaking Steve by the shoulders as tears spring from his eyes.

Wayne’s mouth twists, but he reaches down, grabs Steve’s wrist and digs his fingernails in, hard enough that it turns bloodless white. Eddie wrenches Steve back, looking down at Steve’s bloodless wrist, horrified.

But then Steve gasps. He’s crying before he even has time to breath. Eddie pulls him bodily into his lap as he shakes and sobs in a way Eddie’s never seen him do before. Never seen anyone do before.

“You’re alright, Stevie,” he says, hoping it’s true. “I’ve got you.”

He murmurs nothing’s into Steve’s ears as Wayne gets back into the truck and drives, trying to make safety out of words, shoring Steve up and bricking him in. It seems to work. Steve’s breathing slows, and his shaking stops.

He doesn’t say antying until they’re pulling in front of the trailer. Wayne parks and cuts the eingine, silence deafening them all. No one makes a move to get out.

“Sorry,” Steve says, like a fucking idiot.

“Nothing to apologize for, son,” Wayne says, far more diplomatically than whatever was about to make it out of Steve’s own mouth.

“What happened, Stevie?” Eddie asks, squeezing Steve where he’s still huddled on Eddie’s lap.

As if only just then noticing his pricarious position, Steve scrambles back and into his own seat, cheeks heating. He doesn’t say anything. Eddie sighs.

“Come on, Eds,” Wayne says, opening his own door. “Let’s get him inside.”

They do. Steve stays quiet, shrinking into himself like they won’t notice him if he makes himself small. They sit at the table, where all family meetings and important talks take place. Wayne fusses over tea as Eddie stares Steve down, unwilling to let this lie.

Steve breaks. “It just happens sometimes?” he says, lilting up like it’s a question.

Wayne sets a cup of coffee in front of them. Eddie sips his with a grimace, letting the warmth hit his stomach. Steve grips his tight in his palms, probably burning his fingers on the heat radiating off the porcelain.

“What happens, son?” Wayne asks.

Steve’s lip wobbles, but he looks up, glancing between Wayne and Eddie before looking back down at his drink. “It’s like, I blink and I’m just there sometimes.” No one has to ask what he means by ‘there.’ “But this time–”

His voice shakes, then breaks. Eddie cups his palm around Steve’s forearm and squeezes. Steve takes a shuddering breath and then continues. “This time, it was like something else was there.”

“A Demogorgon?” Wayne asks, the syllables stretched clunkily over the unfamiliar word.

Steve shakes his head, movements slow and shaky. “It was just shadows last time,” he whispers, looking off into the distance at something that isn’t there. “But this time, I saw it.”

When he doesn’t continue, Eddie asks, “What did you see?”

Steve finally meets his gaze, his pupils pinpricks. “I don’t know. It was just like a spider? But longer, and so fucking tall, Eddie.”

Eddie swallows, nods, tries to smile. It doesn’t work. He settles for squeezing Steve’s arm again, hoping it helps.

“You know,” Wayne interjects, waiting to continue until they both look up at him, “this sounds a lot like the same issues my buddies have had when they get back.”

Get back, in this case, doesn’t mean the Upside-Down. He means state side. He means war vets who don’t ever quite make it home. Friends who get lost staring at walls, bracing for explosions that will never come.

“They call it shellshock,” Wayne says, leaning forward to meet Steve’s gaze. “It gets better for most people. Over time.”

Eddie lingers on the word ‘most.’ What if that’s what’s in store for Eddie’s future? Days spent trying to bring Steve back into his body. What if being in hell, over and over and over, is what’s in store for Steve? Eddie slips his hand down, covering Steve’s warm hand where it’s still cupped around his mug.

Steve looks at Eddie, and he can tell that Steve doesn’t believe Wayne. And something worse wriggles its way into Eddie’s brain: what if it’s not days of Steve disappearing that they have to look out for? What if it’s not shellshock at all?

“Should we tell the lab people?” Steve asks, shaking Eddie’s hand off so he can take a sip of his coffee.

“Absolutely not!” Eddie says.

Wayne nods, thankfully in agreement. “I don’t trust those people to start sticking them nodes on your brain instead of jus’ your head.”

Steve grimaces, shivering, but thankfully he nods. Thank fuck.

After all, what if it’s not shellshock? What would a ruthless rogue faction of their evil government overlords do to control a threat of the size Steve was talking about? What would that do to Steve?

Eddie just hopes he never has to find out.

Part 54

Taglist: @deany-baby @estrellami-1 @altocumulustranslucidus @evillittleguy @carlprocastinator1000 @1-8oo-wtfbro @hallucinatedjosten @goodolefashionedloverboi @newtstabber @lunabyrd @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @manda-panda-monium @disrespectedgoatman @finntheehumaneater @ive-been-bamboozled @harringrieve @grimmfitzz @is-emily-real @dontstealmycake @angeldreamsoffanfic @a-couchpotato @5ammi90 @mac-attack19 @genderless-spoon @kas-eddie-munson @louismeds @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @pansexuality-activated @ellietheasexylibrarian @nebulainajar @mightbeasleep @neonfruitbowl @beth--b @silenzioperso @best-selling-show @v3lv3tf0x @bookworm0690

#steddie upsidedown au #my fic #steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington

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pucksandpower · 1 year

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can you do a leclerc!reader x mick schumacher au of them soft launching their relationship and her being a merc fan instead of ferrari and people loving it and making jokes 🥰🥰

Mick Schumacher x Leclerc!Reader - Instagram AU

y/n_leclerc

Liked by charles_leclerc, mickschumacher, and 137,852 others

y/n_leclerc an adventure down under

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charles_leclerc are you staying safe?

y/n_leclerc yes, charles

lorenzotl and using sunscreen?

y/n_leclerc yes, lorenzo

arthur_leclerc and keeping away from strangers?

y/n_leclerc don’t even start with me, arthur

oscarpiastri why didn’t you tell me you were visiting?

y/n_leclerc because three overprotective brothers following my every move is enough

mickschumacher

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mickschumacher had an amazing time in australia 🤙

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zoomyschumi australia looks good on you

mickymouse why does he look like when violet beauregarde starts turning into a blueberry in charlie and the chocolate factory? 😭

paddockgirlie i can’t unsee it now

mickandcheese got that winter break glow

y/n_leclerc

Liked by mickschumacher, arthur_leclerc, and 125,423 others

y/n_leclerc my eyelashes are frozen

📍Piteå, Sweden

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charles_leclerc where is your scarf? you’ll get sick

y/n_leclerc stop, i’m not a child

charles_leclerc i still don’t get why you’re in sweden in the middle of winter

y/n_leclerc 1) it’s beautiful and 2) i got to meet up with seb

leclercupdates isn’t the ROC happening in piteå right now?

talkingtifosi yes but her brothers are not competing so i’m not sure what y/n is doing there

leclercupdates maybe just cheering on a friend? she got close with seb when he was teammates with charles

feralforferrari or a boyfriend with all the time she spends around drivers 🤨

leclercupdates she hasn’t posted anything about a boyfriend since she broke up with her ex over two years ago so i doubt it

y/n_leclerc

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y/n_leclerc time for a change of scenery

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charles_leclerc who are you and what have you done with my sister?

charles_leclerc blink twice if you are being forced to wear that

y/n_leclerc i decided that black is more my color

charles_leclerc there is black ferrari merch. you don’t have to cheer for our competitor just because you got sick of wearing red

y/n_leclerc no thanks

charles_leclerc what do you mean “no thanks”?

charles_leclerc answer your phone, y/n!

mercedesamgf1 🖤

scuderiaferrari no

y/n_leclerc

Liked by mickschumacher, f1wagupdates, and 197,681 others

y/n_leclerc the many moods of mick

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charles_leclerc please tell me that you spontaneously got hired to be a mercedes photographer and this doesn’t mean what i think it does

y/n_leclerc i would … but then i’d be lying

charles_leclerc you promised not to date drivers!

y/n_leclerc do you have that from me in writing? otherwise it’s not a binding contract

charles_leclerc stop ignoring my calls

charles_leclerc this isn’t funny

y/n_leclerc really? i think it’s hilarious

f1wagupdates paddock drama incoming 🍿

leclercupdates i know her brothers are going to hate it but y/n and mick will make an adorable couple

mickschumacher

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mickschumacher one year with this pretty girl

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charles_leclerc my eyes must be playing tricks on me because there’s no way i just read that you’ve been with my sister for a year already which would mean you’ve been dating my baby sister behind my back for 12 months

y/n_leclerc your eyes are perfectly fine

charles_leclerc and your boyfriend is as good as dead once i get my hands on him

y/n_leclerc i don’t think ferrari will like their driver getting arrested for murder

mickymouse maybe mercedes should hire some bodyguards for mick 🫣

f1wagupdates okay but imagine their future babies that are half leclerc and half schumacher

charles_leclerc there will be no babies!

f1wagupdates 👁️👄👁️

gridgossip the producers of drive to survive are salivating right now

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florence-end · 10 months

Text

Wake Up Call

Azriel x reader

Request: Could you write a story where reader has a nightmare and Azriel hears her screaming for him then the mating bond snaps for him.

Summary: You have been having nightmares every night since the battle against Hybern, and more often than not you wake up having winnowed to Azriel’s door. You don’t know why your subconscious always brings you here, until one night you cross the threshold and wake up to hazel eyes looking back at you.

Warnings: slightly graphic description of battlefields, an almost-panic attack

You woke up just in time to see the familiar surroundings of your bedroom disappear into darkness, and a large oak door appear before you. Luckily you were just about conscious enough to avoid slamming into it although your feet landed with quite a considerable thud. The sounds, sights and smells of battle faded away with every second you took to gather yourself and remember that it was all a dream but your heart continued to race beneath your ribs, sweat gathering on your brow. Because it had all been very real and you knew the memories would haunt you for a long time.

On the other side of the door, Azriel stood as still and quiet a statue, not even allowing his shadows to ebb and flow as they usually did. He wasn’t sure why you winnowed to the hallway outside his bedroom more nights than not, but the first time, when he had thrown open the door in alarm due to the scent of your fear, you had been so utterly mortified that he didn’t want to embarrass you by discovering you again. He’d spoken to Rhys who explained you struggled with nightmares more vivid than most of your found family, but couldn’t offer an explanation for why you always appeared at Azriel’s door.

You weren’t sure yourself why your subconscious mind brought you here before you could fully pull yourself out of your night terrors but you were grateful every time that Azriel didn’t seem to know you were there after your pathetic half mumbled excuses the first time.

As your heart rate slowed and you got a hold on your powers, you winnowed back to your bedroom for a bath. Azriel heard you leave and went back to bed, feeling just as guilty as every night before.

Twenty four hours later, the nightmare returned but something was different.

The war is raging on. Hybern’s forces are decimating Prythian’s armies. Fallen allies are lying all around you and you can’t move fast enough to help them all. The Illyrian legions swarm the skies overhead.

You hear Nesta screaming for Cassian who lands next to her just before an explosion of power is unleashed from behind Hybern’s line, obliterating every winged warrior above the battle ground. You thank whatever gods are listening that Azriel is safely at the camp as you watch in horror. It’s only then that you see the blue siphons amid the falling bodies.

No, it can’t be him.

You run towards where the siphons should have landed, getting more and more bloody as you wade through the field. Once you get there, you know immediately. That familiar dark hair and tan skin shrouded by swirling shadows.

Those glassy unseeing hazel eyes.

You woke with a gasp and find yourself looking into those same eyes, now alight with panic and concern.

“Don’t be scared, you’ve winnowed to my bedroom. You’re safe here and it was just a dream,” Azriel soothed, his voice soft and deep.

Instead of finding yourself in the hallway, he was right. You had winnowed straight into the shadowsinger’s bedroom and found yourself sprawled on the luxurious carpet as he hovered above you.

You immediately averted your eyes as you sat up, your cheeks burning with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. It must have happened while I was asleep, I know you like your privacy and would never want to barge in like this. You were probably sleeping when I just appeared. Gods this is so embarrassing, I’m going to go,” you rambled as you tried to gain enough control of your shaky legs to get to your feet.

“Woah sweetheart, it’s okay just take a second. I’m not upset, I was actually waiting for you,” Azriel admitted as he rested his hands gently on your shoulders to keep you in place.

“What?”

“Usually I just wait by the door for your scent to go back to normal and then you return to your room but it’s nice to see you’re alright with my own two eyes this time,” he explained, moving to sit down across from you.

You were so mortified by this point that you didn’t think you’d ever be able to look him in the eye again. Your breathing was still too shallow and you could feel a panic attack rising as the adrenaline from your nightmare refused to leave your system.

“I promise everything is fine but you need to take some deep breaths, sweetheart. Can you look at me please?” Azriel pleaded.

You forced yourself to look up into his wildly handsome face, and as your eyes met, it was like everything stopped.

Your heart rate slowed, your breathing calmed, your racing thoughts ceased to exist. The only thing you could think, feel, remember in that moment was the warm golden thread that buzzed to life, irrevocably connecting your soul to the male in front of you for the rest of time.

“My mate,” Azriel whispered, his hand pressed to the centre of his chest.

Neither of you spoke for some time after that, adjusting to the flood of emotions running up and down the bond. You realised at one point that you were holding hands with no recollection of when that happened but you knew that Azriel’s skin against yours felt more right than any touch you had felt in all your life.

Eventually you let out a yawn, and despite your attempts to stifle it, your newfound mate couldn’t stand the thought of you being in any way uncomfortable. So he scooped you up and placed you on his ginormous bed. Crawling over you to his side before pulling you into his chest, he pressed his lips to the crown of your head. “Everything is going to be okay now,” he whispered into your hair. “I’m going to look after you.”

You burrowed further into his warm body, trusting his words entirely.

“No more nighttime winnowing though, if I find you outside Cassian’s door I might get jealous.”

“Guess I’ll just have to sleep here then so you’ll know if I disappear,” you joked through another yawn.

“You won’t find me complaining,” he whispered back.

The last thing you feel before drifting into a restful sleep is a dark wing draping across your body.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don’t know if I like the writing in this one but I hope it’s kinda what you had in mind! Thank you for your request🫶

#acotar fanfiction #acotar #azriel x reader #azriel acotar #azriel x you

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bvckleyydiaz · 1 year

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leap of faith - aaron hotchner

title: leap of faith

summary: sometimes, all you need to find true happiness is to take a leap of faith.

pairing: aaron hotchner x f!reader

word count: 1668

warning(s): mention of haley and underage drinking

a/n: so the idea of this story came from the amazingly talented @greg-montgomery's scenario here. all credit for this idea goes to them. if you want some really good hotch fics, please go check them out! i thought it was so cute and just had to write it. hope you guys enjoy!

This is not how I pictured my Tuesday morning at the office going, you think to yourself as Penelope crosses out yet another name from her lists of your potential suitors. With the help of JJ and Emily, she had managed to compile thirty-two names, and more than half of them have already been scrapped. Before today, you had refused every time they had brought up the idea of setting you up on a blind date. That was before you realized that the feelings you held for your boss, Aaron, were far from friendly. You knew that nothing would come of what you were feeling, so you came to Penelope’s office and told her that you would agree to one date.

“What about this one?” Penelope asks as she swipes to the next picture. This guy was not bad-looking, by any means. He looked young, had hazel that glittered with mischief, and there was a boy-next-door charm to him. Something about him seemed so familiar, though. You couldn’t quite place it. “His name is Thomas, he’s twenty-seven, and he works in the Cyber Response department.”

“He looks like a younger version of Hotch,” Emily remarks from her place to your right.

Penelope tilts her head and seems to consider this. “Huh. Now that you point it out, I can’t unsee it.” She looks at you. “What do you think, Y/N?”

Truthfully, you could see the tiniest bit of a resemblance between the two of them, but you know that this man would never compare to Aaron—Hotch. But you know that nothing will happen between you and Hotch. So, you see this as the perfect opportunity to start moving on. “He’s cute,” you tell Penelope. “I’ll give him a chance.”

Letting out a giddy squeal, she scribbles down his number and hands it to you. You text him as soon you leave Penelope’s office, introducing yourself, telling him that your friend from the office had told you about him, and asking him if he wanted to go out sometime.

Sure. Thomas writes back after a few minutes, Does Friday at eight sound good to you? There is a new Mediterranean place a few blocks away from my office I want to take you to.

It’s a date! I love Mediterranean food. :)

Friday comes faster than you expect it to. You’d made sure to bring a change of clothes and a bag of your favorite makeup to save you the half-hour drive back to your apartment to get ready. The dress you’re wearing is a little red number, courtesy of Emily, with a slit up your both your thighs and tiny straps holding it to your body. The first time you tried it on, you didn’t think your body would fill the dress out as well as hers did, but it fit like a glove. You felt confident in the dress; you felt sexy. It was the motivation you needed to not back out of the date.

You’re touching up your lipstick when a voice brings out of your thoughts. “I thought you left hours ago.”

It’s Aaron. “Hotch.”

He tilts his head, and the cute little frown he wears when he’s confused appears. “What are you still doing here? You should be at home getting some rest.”

“I have a date tonight, and I didn’t want to drive the thirty minutes home to get ready when the restaurant is only a couple of blocks away,” you explain, and he nods. “If I’m being honest, I don’t know how I let the girls talk me into going. I mean, I trust them with my life, but…” You laugh quietly to yourself.

“They just want to see you have fun and not focus on work all the time. We all deserve time to ourselves every now and again.” A small smile of his own comes over his face, and it makes your heart stutter in your chest. “At least that’s what Penelope told me before she tried to set me up on a date of my own.”

Your quiet laugh turns into incessant giggles. “Oh, I would’ve loved to see how that went.”

He shakes his head fondly. “Penelope meant well, but the woman and I didn’t click. Plus, I think it was too soon after my divorce from Haley. I wasn’t ready to let myself date again.”

You nod. “I understand that.” You stand from your chair and smooth out your dress with your palms, looking up at your boss. “Do I look okay?”

“You look beautiful, Y/N.” Aaron tells you, but there’s something in his expression as he says it. You don’t know what to call it.

“Thank you.”

“I should let you get to your date. Have a good night, Y/N.” He turns and makes his way back to his office.

You are on your way out of the bullpen when—and you don’t know what compels you to do it, either—you look back at Hotch. The blinds to office are pulled open, but you notice a shift in his posture. His shoulders are drawn tight like a cord that’s about to snap, the expression void of the playfulness that was there not even two minutes ago.

You dig your phone out of your purse and text your date. Hey, Thomas! It’s Y/N. I’m sorry that this is so last minute, but something came up at the office. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it tonight. You walk up the stairs to Hotch’s office and knock on the door. “Y/N?” He asks when he opens the door. “Did you forget something?”

You shake your head. “No. My date cancelled on me.”

He frowns. “I’m sorry.”

You shrug your shoulders. “It’s fine, it was only a date. I don’t think it would’ve worked out anyway.” You look past his shoulder into his office. “What are you still doing here?”

He lifts a file folder into your line of sight. “Paperwork for our most recent case. I wanted to start on it before we’re called on a new one.”

“Do I mind if I join you?”

He purses his lips in confusion. “Of course I don’t mind, but all I’d be doing is paperwork. You’d have more fun watching paint dry.”

“Well, since my night is now free, all I’d be doing is taking a shower and having a hot date with my couch and a bottle of wine.” You smile at your boss. “Besides, I wouldn’t be watching. I’d be helping.”

Hotch shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that—”

“Hotch, I mean this with every ounce of respect and admiration I have for you, which is a lot, but please just shut up and let me help you.” He lets out a laugh in surprise. “I know that I don’t have to help, but I want to. Please let me.”

He steps to the side to let you come into his office, and you take a seat on his couch. “So, what can I do, boss?”

He smiles at his place from behind his desk. “Will you read me my notes from the file next to you? I’d like to put them in the report.”

You nod. “Sure thing.” You pick up the file to your left and flip it open, Hotch’s notes scribbled onto post-it notes stuck to the paper. “You ready?”

“No way,” you exclaim through your fit laughter. “No way that happened!”

The table in front of you is littered with takeout boxes. You and Aaron sit next to each other on the small couch, your knees grazing. Aaron’s half-empty container of beef Lo Mein sits in his lap while you hold your nearly full container of veggie fried rice.

“Well, it did,” Aaron’s smile stretches from ear to ear. “I’m sure there’s still evidence of it lurking somewhere on the internet.”

“I just… I have a hard time believing that Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, Unit Chief of the FBI Behavioral Analysis, jumped off the roof of a two-story house into a pool.” You spoon more of your rice into your mouth. “It’s so out of character for you.”

“In my defense, I was sixteen and thought I was invincible. I may also have been drunk.”

“Huh. Aaron the troublemaker? Never would have pegged you that way.”

He tries to hide his smile under a bite of his Lo Mein. “There are a lot of things about me that will surprise you.”

You raise an eyebrow. “I’ve always loved a good mystery.”

Aaron tilts his head. “You know, now that I think about it, I never found out if that punch had been spiked or not.”

This causes you to dissolve into giggles.

“So, Y/N,” Emily asks as she walks through the bullpen the next morning with Penelope and JJ in tow, “how did it go last night?”

Penelope bumps her shoulder into yours. “Yeah. I want to know everything!”

Morgan looks up at the three of you from his desk, and Spencer does the same from his own. “What happened last night?”

“I was supposed to go on a date last, but it got cancelled last minute,” you tell them and then look between Penelope and Emily. “So, there’s nothing to tell.”

“That sucks,” JJ laments. You shrug and tell her that you weren’t really worried about it. There’s a lull in the conversation until you spot Aaron walking past the bullpen to his office.

You smile. “Morning, Aaron!”

He turns to you and returns your smile. “Morning, Y/N.”

Penelope, Emily, JJ, and Derek all turn to you once Aaron is out of earshot. “Aaron?” JJ asks, a tone of pleasant surprise coloring her voice.

You shrug nonchalantly, a small smile coming to your lips. “I’m solving a mystery,” you tell them before making your way to your desk.

The four of them share looks of bewilderment before Spencer speaks up. “You guys didn’t know? I could see it from a mile away.”

#e posts #e writes #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner fluff #aaron hotchner fanfiction

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whoopssteddiefeels · 1 year

Text

Penny in the Air

Robin is a lot of things: judgey, hyperactive, anxious, impulsive, talkative, loud- there’s a list okay, and she’s very familiar with it. High up the list is that she is very, very gay (if possible, she’s pretty sure she’s actually getting gayer. She blames Steve for this, as she’s pretty sure it has to do with being able to finally talk about her crushes to someone other than her reflection.)

The point is, she’s gay, so she’s not surprised that she notices first. The Steve-Eddie thing. Because it is, in fact, a thing at this point.

She knows Eddie is gay- knows it like the sky is blue and David Bowie rocks- because of, y’know, the way he is (if she had any doubt, the way he leaned in while calling Steve “big boy”, ew, killed it dead.) Her research suggests this is “gaydar,” but its very unfair, she thinks, that so far it has only detected exactly (2) gays, both men, making it pretty much useless. It has given her exactly 0 information on Vickie.

She empathizes with Eddie’s position. Feels it pang under her sternum when his eyes go soft watching Steve talk emphatically, hair flopping around in that ridiculous way it does. Knows how it must catch in his throat when his hand suddenly retracts halfway to Steve’s shoulder, going to his own hair to cover the aborted movement. Tries hard to not over-identify with the sharp tug he gives there, trying to snap himself out of it (fails because she did literally exactly that when Vickie was in the video store the previous day, almost as if he had seen and copied the mechanism).

The part of the puzzle she can’t figure out is Steve. She’s annoyingly aware that he likes (groan) boobies, thanks Fast Times, and he isn’t treating Eddie like a girl whose number he’s trying to score. That being said, whenever the older boy appears, Steve lights up like a damn Christmas tree. Affection doesn’t have to be romantic; she knows this- wants to hit several of the kiddos over the head with it whenever they allude to her dating Steve- but empathy for Eddie is tinting her judgement, and once you put on the gay rose-tinted glasses it’s hard to unsee the possibility. It certainly seems like flirting. Rearranging his hair every three seconds, drawing Eddie’s eyes to the mane that is his pride and joy. Getting what she can only describe as unnecessarily close when he squeezes by Eddie in the video store aisles or whoever’s living room they’re sprawled in, hands brushing a shoulder, back, or one time his hip under the pretense of maintaining balance. The soft blush whenever Eddie flirts hard in a way he knows can be passed off as a joke. The honest megawatt smile Steve gets whenever Eddie starts in on his usual antics is infinitely more endearing than the smolder he’s learned to use like a weapon.

She usually knows exactly what Steve is thinking or feeling before he does. They’ve got that whole platonic soul mate telepathy thing, and he’s easily the center of her social world. So, since she can’t tell what he’s thinking (other than the obvious but unhelpful “Eddie, yay!”), she’s 99.9% sure, from experience, ok, that it means he isn’t thinking. Like at all. So, what she’s witnessing is instinctive, his body just moving into Eddie’s space because it feels correct, and he hasn’t paused to think about it.

He’s walking that line of comfortable and affectionate that is ambiguously intimate. Could be platonic, could be more. It would be frustrating for anyone with a crush, but she knows from bitter experience with straight-girl crushes that Eddie must be going insane. And yes, Robin and Eddie are friends, but not close enough for her to open a conversation with “So you’re obviously gay and into Steve, my best friend who I talk to every second of every day, and no he hasn’t mentioned it, and neither have I. What’s up with that?” Similarly, she can’t quite figure out how to bring it up to Steve without accidentally outing Eddie in the process.

That’s the main reason she’s keeping her mouth uncharacteristically shut on the subject. She is not, however, above the occasional raised eyebrow, ok, especially as Eddie’s flirting slowly becomes ridiculously obvious. The man is literally leaning on the counter, chin on his hand, mooning up at Steve through his eyelashes. Steve has his hip propped on the opposite side, leaning into the shared space. How are either of them this oblivious, seriously.

~*~

She’s there when the penny finally drops.

They’re not even watching a romantic movie, it’s fucking Life of Brian, all three of them calling out their favorite lines along with the actors, throwing things and generally goofing off. If she takes the armchair to force the boys together on the couch, she doesn’t think anyone can blame her. If she’s feeling a little smug that they both sit in the middle, right next to each other, instead of taking opposite ends, she keeps it to herself. She might not want to stick her foot right in the middle of that mess, but she’s not above setting booby traps.

Robin couldn’t tell you exactly when Steve’s arm went around Eddie’s shoulder; it was somewhere between Eddie practically climbing into Steve’s lap for a “Biggus Dickus” re-enactment, the closeness and flirting safely enveloped in humor, and Steve attempting to force Eddie to “haggle” for the bag of chips. When she glances over from the safety of her armchair, Steve’s arm is trapped behind Eddie’s head, draped over his shoulder on the opposite side. Eddie, usually a constant ball of fidgety motion, is frozen stiff like he’s trying not to scare off a nervous rabbit. Even in the blue light coming off the screen she can see the flush coloring his usually nocturnal-pale cheeks.

The thing is, Steve had just discussed this move with her. Told her to invite Vickie to movie night, recommended light, easily joked off roughhousing and settling an arm around her in a way specifically gaged to judge the reaction. Which means he knows. No way he hasn’t finally figured out what his lizard brain has clearly been screaming for months (seriously, she deserves a medal. Someone tell her future girlfriends about her stamina), not with the way he’s twirling a soft brown curl around and around his finger. He must know Eddie can feel that. And oh. Steve is not-so-subtly glancing to his right, trying to gage that reaction like they discussed, to see if this is ok.

Yup. Robin needs to be literally anywhere else. She tries to be subtle (insert laugh here), muttering “bathroom” and legging it out of the room, seeking the safety of the kitchen. She wasn’t worried though- odds are she could start playing trumpet and those two wouldn’t hear it past the tension of the moment.

~*~

In addition to gay, Robin is also easily bored. She hums along to “Always look on the bright side of life,” drifting in from the living room, crunching on some peppery crackers she found in a cabinet in a way that vaguely matches the song’s rhythm. She would just leave the boys to whatever they were going to do (yuck, don’t think about it), but unfortunately the two people most likely to give her a ride home were occupied (seriously, no thinking about it). She’d held out for as long as she could, really, but if the movie was ending, surely she had given them enough time?

Hoping she wasn’t going to regret it, she peaked out of the kitchen, and was relieved to see that 1) everyone still had clothes on and 2) Steve and Eddie were cuddling. Fucking finally.

“SO, BOYS,” she boomed (remember loud is on the list of things she is), trying not to enjoy the way two ridiculous heads of hair jumped and then shifted away from one another anxiously. “Who finally lost the longest game of gay chicken I’ve ever seen?”

Steve’s head makes an audible thump as it drops against the back of the couch, hands coming up to rub at his face as she rounds the furniture to face them, feeling deliciously smug. Eddie gave up any pretense and buried his face in Steve’s shoulder, sweater and hair completely hiding his face.

“Shut up Robin, go away,” Steve groans.

“Nope! This has been the slowest burn of all time, you guys were killing me. I have to balance it out by being just as insufferable.” she chirped, doing her best Steve impression, hands on her hips and eyebrow quirked.

“Technically, I would say we both won gay chicken since neither of us pulled back. No chickens here. Roosters only, in fact.” Eddie surfaces with a smug little smile, dimples on full display.

“Oh you’re definitely a cock Munson, I’ll give you that,”

“Don’t make me flip you the bird-”

“That’s a bit of ostritch-”

“Well toucan play at that game-”

“I’m so happy I like tits-“

“Why me?” Steve grumbled at the same time Eddie dropped his teasing tone to ask, “Wait what?”

“Me? Lesbian. You? Obviously gay. Steve has been flirting back at you for months you dingus.”

“I’ve been what?” Steve sits up straight, suddenly laser focused on Robin. “I have not. I only realized, like, a week ago-”

He was seriously going to be the death of her.

“Steve. Stephen. My guy. What would you say if I told you a girl had been giving me a hair show, the unnecessary squeeze-by, and big eyes? Consistently. For weeks.”

Eddie starts laughing. Then cackling. Steve went an even deeper shade of red, though she could tell this one was more indignant ruby than embarrassed scarlet.

“Thank you,” Eddie wheezed out, fighting down another fit, picking himself up from where he had slid down the couch. “Oh my god, thank you for fucking noticing that. He was wasn’t he? I thought it was just in my head, y’know, and Gareth always said I tend to imagine signs that aren’t there.”

“Oh I know, you think you have a hard time, girls are so physically affectionate platonically, it’s impossible to tell-”

“Ok. Done with this conversation!” Steve interrupted, standing up between the two of them, hands furiously combing through his hair.

Robin only grinned wider at Eddie. “So, Munson, care to give me a ride home?”

“You know, Buckley, I would be delighted.”

“Hey now-” Steve tried to interject as the two of them moved towards the door.

“Why thank you, kind sir.”

“Don’t mention it, fair lady. Your chariot awaits.”

“Wait, hang on, Eddie-” Steve’s tone shifted from confused to plaintive as she stepped out into the night. And she resolutely pretended to not hear Eddie’s reply before he closed the door behind them.

“Sit tight, big boy, I’ll be right back!”

#steddie #steddie fluff #Robin Buckley #Robin POV #steve harrington/ eddie munsion #fic #ficlet #sometimes i write things #fluff #Am I the only one who remember Life of Brian? Biggus Dickus was iconic #I too am a tired lesbian #platonic stobin #gratuitous bird puns #i just think my writing style sounds like Robin so I wanted to try something #letterkenny reference if you squint real hard

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velvetmud · 1 year

Note

Joel Miller smut where they get caught in the act by Ellie, maybe in the woods while they’re trying to be like all secret-y 🤯

lolollll i fully can’t unsee this happening

warning(s): smut 18+ dirty talk dirty stuff dirty everythang

“can’t—fuck I can’t believe you’re makin’ me do this right now,” joel grunts. acting like he has the right to be so irritable even though he’s the one who initiates it. it’s hard to guess who started what this time, but they were vulnerable out in the middle of nowhere, dead of night. stranded. along with their surrogate daughter snoozing in her own sleeping bag only fifteen feet away from them.

nevertheless, joel grabs her from behind to scoot her back as close as need be. almost like positioning a rag doll to fuck up against. she reacts with a muffled squeal, biting down on her sleeve. he ruts up roughly against the globes of her naked ass, unashamed of giving her a nice head start.

“kept grindin’ that fuckin’ ass back on me, don’t act so surprised.” he huffed in the back of her neck. unbuckles his belt and shoves everything in his way down to his thighs. he parts her lower lips with two of his meaty fingers, going in nice and smooth to feel her out. greedy, considering how he already felt how wet the fabric got on the crotch of her panties before shoving them off. his fingers stop and pull back only to suck and smell the digits that just scooped through her. “I know you’re really wet baby, but we gotta stay quiet.”

she gasps and whines a weak protest, but got shut down quickly.

now his dick is happily smooshed between her sloppy thighs, the pulsing base grazing her slippery lips. it ignites a fire in both of them. joel gets more experimental with teasing her, moving his hips every which way.

“if you’re gonna beg to take it, you better take it good you hear me?” he whispers with harsh breaths fanning the back of her neck. a place he loved attacking with bites and licks. the arousing temptation glides through each of their sliding bodies like butter, and the thrill of the time and setting being so wrong bad stupid helps more than hurts.

his eyes naturally drift closed but his mouth stays open, teetering on the edge of shouting out from unmistakeable pleasure. he starts panting like a dog in the heat. hips going steady enough to give them stimulation, but not nearly fast enough to make noise. giving her clit its’ deserved attention with his swollen leaking head gliding through her, up and down. he hums with a mischevious smile while he reveled in just how much her pussy was dripping down on his dick. it became a ridiculous challenge trying to keep it down when the slick between their moving bodies starts making audible sound with every thrust forward.

“you want it inside, baby?” joel taunts.

she only has the capacity to answer him with an exaggerated drag of her hips, unable to speak. just looking back with wide wanting eyes.

he grabs the base of his cock to play between her lips, gathering up the creamy mess. it drenched his dick and helped smooth the way in.

“yeah, there we go,” he murmurs his praise low right in her ear. licks his lips and exhales a deep breath out.

it’s a satisfying rush for both of them when he finally began smoothing his entire girth bit by bit inside her. once he’s fully enveloped by her wet grippy flesh, he kisses a path from her shoulder to her jaw. keeping his mouth busy. nipping and sucking with urgency when she starts squeezing extra hard around the length of his cock. isn’t even remotely capable of holding the low, gutty groan in his chest any longer. it’s the loudest he’d been since they started, and the sleeping teen in the distance adjusts in her sleeping bag. she snaps her head up to wearily eye their surroundings, hoping the rustling wasn’t what she thinks it is.

“j-joel.”

“yeah, baby? this pussy getting filled good?”

her warning falls short after a particularly deep rigorous thrust. he bottoms out balls deep, only to rip himself out to slap the head against her clit. “oh god, jesus joel!” she wept, stuffing her face to maintain some speck of decency. now eagerly pushing back and forth and up and down the long length thick of him. their slapping skin coated with her cream. the harder he pound into her, the quicker he’d pull right out. it was slowly turning joel into a greedier man each passing minute.

his brain zeroes in on the signs showing how close she’ll get soon. anything else left to prioritize, other than getting his girl off as hard as she can handle, is temporarily stored away. he’s resorted to some of his favorite ways to get her exploding on his dick. silence and discretion be damned.

“that’s it, squeeze my cock baby. got us soaked. sucha horny little thing.”

he sucks more purple marks into her shoulder. marks he’ll definitely regret tomorrow, after relentless teasing. borderline desperate as he picks up speed rutting his hips. shameless about the steady wet slap filling the silent night.

“I know baby girl needs it bad. it’s okay. go ‘head and cum when you’re ready. wanna make a bigger mess on this dick.” joel rasped, clenching a fist at his side and squeezed a cheek in his palm before splaying them wide open for better access. she cries and mewls when he licks two of his fingers and rubs down on her needy nub in perfect circles from underneath.

there isn’t any self awareness left in either of them. she whimpered through more spasms as another ring of cum splashed between them while she hits the first heavy wave of her peak. joel is grinning ear to ear, feeling it all, every muscle clenching and unclenching. he stutters while stroking her through it before the sloppy mess dripping down to his balls triggers his own end. he rips himself out again, leaving her empty and aching while his cock twitched and shuddered up against her back.

joel’s load shot out thick and long, creating a painting on her skin with his cum. it could’ve sounded like he was in immense pain or in distress with what sound buzzed in his throat. he can’t help but gently slide back in for some more, one last moment in her warmth until next time.

she whips her body around while he’s still but it’s still too late. her palm grabs his face and muffles the rest of the helpless noises slipping out of him. she hears the sleeping bag start to move again. she doesn’t move nor let him move, holding her breath with a fat glare in joel’s direction.

somehow he’s grinning about this. she feels it under her hand. they both remember he’s still inside and she carefully moves forward so he slips out. he got what he wanted, to make a mess. both of them wince at the sticky, wet evidence drooling all over them - but for the most part, they think they’ve gotten away without a hitch.

joel chuckled quietly with mischief, not fully bothering to heave his pants back up. while they’re still indecent underneath their own sleeping bag, a thick branch the size of a baseball bat flies from the other side of their truck and barely misses joel’s head by a few inches.

“god damn it, the fuck was that?”

the signature scowl returns to his face, and he seems to fool himself that he couldn’t possibly have any idea who could’ve tried whacking him.

her eyes are wide while she clears her throat. “well…. I uh, I definitely think she’s awake now—“

“you assholes couldn’t even go one night, one night without scarring me for fucking life dude!” ellie shouts, aiming another stick in her reach at joel’s head.

joel is quick to snatch the stick with his hand this time and yank his drawls back up to his hips underneath the blanket. attempting to shrug and play it off, he looks down at the woman below trying to stifle her own infectious laughter.

“don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. we were only playing a round of patty cake.”

ellie scoffs and gags and rolls her eyes.

“shut up, man. gross. I thought you were like… having a stroke or something—“

joel gets comfy again, resting a hand on the back of his head while he settles down on his back. gazes up at the stars and combs the other hand through her hair, joining her embarrassed giggling. she lowers her volume to a whisper.

“yeah, yeah you had a lotta strokes—”

the teen can’t do anything except face plant into her pillow and bend it to smother her ears.

in unison, the couple decide to give the girl a break and call out one last “g’night kiddo.”

joel turns his head around then snickers some more once he sees ellie thrusting an aggressive middle finger above her head towards them. while his eyes drift closed he makes up his mind that yes, he will apologize in the morning and own up to picking the wrong place and wrong time—

“babe, next time maybe we should like… hike a little further and just find a tree or something?”

open to requests ! angsty or nasty im into it ! still tryna working on ones I have, I get slow sometimes but i appreciate anyone whos cared to read and interact with these works:)

masterlist 🩶🪽🪽

#joel miller smut #joel miller/reader #the last of us #joel miller x reader #pedro pascal #the last of us hbo #joel miller fanfic #joel miller #joel miller x f!reader #tlou x reader #joel miller/you #the last of us smut #anon

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myosotisa · 1 year

Text

Old Heart - Part 1 - Barely

‖ chapter summary: Faced with tragedy, you are forced to travel across the country with a series of people you barely know in order to reunite with your only remaining family. The second leg of your journey, and your traveling companion for it, promises to be way more than you bargained for.

‖ tags: enemies to lovers, age gap (41 and 25), forced proximity, slow burn, angst, hurt/comfort, HEA, "zombie" apocalypse, reader uses she/her pronouns, no y/n, no physical description given, minors dni

‖ chapter warnings: death of a parent, gun violence, grief, existential dread

‖ word count: 8.3k

‖ ao3 ‖ masterlist ‖ tag list request ‖ next ‖

Tuesday, August 9th, 2016 – Quantico, Virginia - 13 years Post-Outbreak

Out of everything you’ve learned in life, you know without a doubt that it really only takes one moment to change everything.

One moment, you’re walking through a safe zone you’ve lived in for the last 10 years with your dad. It’s a normal Tuesday morning and the two of you are on your way to the mess hall for breakfast. It’s the only time you have to see him because he normally works late on the base. So, despite your hate for mornings, you got up, met your dad in the hallway of your tiny apartment, he’d hold out his arm and you’d loop yours through it before going on your way together. It’s a routine, same time everyday. Has been for years. And today is no different. It’s raining lightly but the sun still shines. You wonder if you might catch a rainbow after you’ve had your eggs.

The next, you’re on your knees in the mud. There’s blood on your hands. There are people scattering, ducking for cover, running and crying out in fear. Your whole body trembles as you reach out toward the prone form in front of you. The familiar tan of his sunkissed skin. The smattering of freckles across his collarbone and up his neck. Your eyes, the ones everyone said matched perfectly, staring straight up into the sky. Unseeing. A bullet hole completes a 3 point triangle with them as they dull.

The one after, there are hands dragging you away from him, through the mud, through the crowd. You’re kicking and you’re screaming but you can’t even hear it past the shot still ringing in your ears. Armed guards descend, reaching to check for a pulse. As if someone could survive a shot like that. They circle like vultures to a carcass.

You lose sight of the gathering crowd as you’re dragged around a corner and pushed up against a wall. Every instinct in your body screams run, fight, lunge, survive but there’s a forearm to your throat and a single finger on your lips. When you blink away the tears, Helen is there. She works with your dad, you’ve had dinner with her more than a few times. Her eyes are bloodshot, her breathing heavy as she presses you to the wall with her entire body. The pressure and the brick digging into your back ground you for the moment.

“We need to get out of here, now.” Her voice is a soft hiss, her eyes darting toward corners and through alleyways. She’s anxious for sure, maybe even afraid. “You’re not safe here.”

There are a million questions you want to ask. What happened, how did someone get past the defenses, what are they going to do with him, how is she here, how did she know, what is she so afraid of. They all get lodged in your throat in a chokehold worse than the one she’s applying, the only sound that comes through is a broken sob.

Her posture folds then, taking an inch back and moving both hands to cradle your jaw. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I know. But we need to go. There’s no time.” Her thumbs wipe across the tears on your cheeks as she holds you just a bit tighter. Like that’s the only way to keep you together. “Do you understand?”

You don’t understand. Not at all. There is not a single thing that you currently understand. But you nod and let her hold your hand anyway. You follow her through side streets away from the mess hall. Away from your life as you know it.

Here one moment – gone the next.

Saturday, August 13th, 2016 – Louisville, Kentucky

“I really think you’ll like him, he’s still the coolest guy I know. Always has been.”

This is your 3rd time meeting Dustin Henderson. You’d been deposited into his care (mostly against your will) 3 days ago. The only thing he had going for him as a traveling companion is his bright smile and infectious enthusiasm. He’d accepted your silence with the ease of someone who was used to running their own conversations, even seemed excited just to have a new audience, no matter how little you participated. If you were being honest, you were grateful for the noise.

“I think this is the 7th time today you’ve said that I’ll like him.” You hear what you think is him huffing, but you’re too focused on tossing a stress ball into the air above you to bother looking over. You’re laying on a brick wall outside of St. John’s United Church of Christ, a few miles from where you and Dustin had slept for the night. “Why a church, anyway? There must be a million other potential drop off points in this place.”

“Dunno, Eddie always wants to meet at churches. Maybe because they’re normally pretty big and recognizable.”

The ball drops into your hand and you lower your elbows to rest, turning your head toward him with a small frown. “He a man of God or something?”

Dustin lets out a snort of amusement, his curls wobbling from where they stick out underneath his hat. “Definitely not.” He offers you another bright smile before he returns to scanning your surroundings. You would assume from his demeanor that he’s goofy – well intentioned, undisciplined. But you’ve seen how he wields the shotgun slung across his torso, how he seems to be able to hear things you’d think impossible, how he navigates through the ruined cityscapes of his domain with ease. He’s sharp as a whip and not afraid to get his hands dirty. A clever disguise of prey to lure in predators. He’s a part of this team for a reason after all.

Struggling to sit up with a groan, you lean forward to drape your forearms over your knees. “So, how much does he know?”

“About?” Dustin pauses, then shifts toward you when you don’t reply. All you offer is a loaded look, waiting for him to catch on to what you’re really asking. His eyebrows draw together in confusion before it appears to hit him. “Oh. Well. He knows you’re Robin’s sister.”

“Half-sister,” you correct easily.

“Whatever,” he rolls his eyes. “He knows you’re Robin’s half-sister and he’s tasked with getting you from point A to point B.”

“So nothing, is what he knows. Absolutely nothing.”

Dustin’s arms, brushed with dirt and a subtle sheen of sweat, cross over his chest as he leans further back against the wall you’re sitting on. “Yeah, I guess.” It’s your turn to roll your eyes as you pull your pack into your lap, digging through for your water bottle. “Listen,” you make a noise to let him know you’re paying attention, “you know it’s not my call who knows. Nancy decides when to bring people in.”

Immediately, you dig your palms into your eyes in frustration, rubbing in tight circles and unable to keep the tension from leaking out into your tone. “Why does everyone just do whatever Nancy says? Who the fuck even put Nancy Wheeler in charge?”

“Your dad did,” he replies, as if it isn’t an absolute punch to the gut. As if it doesn’t make fire burn up your throat and beg to burst from between your lips in a scream. He seems to recognize it soon after he says it, and decides the best way to move on is to sit in an awkward and tense silence for the next 30 minutes. Which is fine. Whatever. Works for me.

In fact, the next time he makes any sound or movement at all, he’s shifting forward, primary hand gripping his shotgun. “Dustin?” He holds out a hand for you to stop as his head tilts a bit down, his eyes closing to focus. You search the area visually and listen hard to see if you can get even an inkling of what he’s hearing. Coming up short, you simply watch as he trots down the small set of stairs between you and the street, directing his weapon west. You flounder, trying to decide if you should hide or pull your own pistol.

Just as you’re about to roll off the wall to duck behind it, a long whistle rings out. 4 distinct tones that echo past the debris of nearby fallen buildings and through the gothic architecture of the church behind you. Dustin’s posture immediately softens, his gun lowering slowly as he repeats the whistle back, adding an extra note at the end. He turns back, taking the steps two at a time as he returns to where you're sitting. “Your new babysitter is here.”

“Dustin, I swear to God, that’s not funny, and I will break your fingers.”

He barks a small laugh until he catches sight of your glare, then quickly raises his hands in surrender with a muttered apology. You’re about ready to continue to tear into him when you see a figure in black appear in the corner of your eye.

You’ve heard a lot of stories about Eddie Munson over the years, most you doubt are true, but have never actually met the guy. You know he's a little bit older than Steve, putting him in his early 40s. He’s been running the smuggling train through Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas for close to 10 years. He’d been part of Hopper’s original team, loosely connected via radio and scattered across North America. While you’d heard more about him in the last 2 days from Dustin than you had the entire rest of your life, you know he worked with Robin, Steve, Nancy, and your dad already. While you couldn’t say you’d ever stopped to wonder what he looked like, it definitely was not this.

But walking out from behind a solitary pillar, it couldn’t have been anyone else. A pair of dusty blue jeans and black boots, a red flannel tied around his hips, a white t-shirt that almost shines from how bright the sun beats down, a black biker jacket layered over it. His near-black hair is pulled back behind his head and, despite having a pair of aviators on, he still raises a hand to block the sun from his eyes as he surveys the area. When he catches sight of the two of you, his arm swings down to his side and he begins his approach. You watch carefully – studying his gait, the length of his legs, the broadness of his shoulders, the narrow waist tucked beneath leather. He’s tall, lean, strong. Intimidating, even without any weapons visible on his person. While Dustin is a predator disguised as prey, Eddie is a wolf, plain and simple.

Your sweaty palms press to the dusty, sun bleached concrete on either side of your knees as you face him. Dustin meets him halfway, arms wrapping around torsos to clap on backs as they exchange a happy greeting. While you had become very aware of Dustin’s fondness for Eddie over the last few days, you’re still surprised to see the affection returned in almost equal measure. By all appearances, the older is gruff, unapproachable, untouchable. But he still hits the underside of Dustin’s cap to knock it off, and, when the younger dips to reach for it, loops an arm around his neck to ruffle his unruly hair. They start elbowing each other and pushing lightly, messing around like brothers and acting half their age. Acting like there isn’t an apocalypse, isn’t a war, isn’t death all around them.

It’s hard to believe something like that is still possible. Relationships like that still exist.

Dustin is pulling Eddie back toward you before you’re ready for it.

“And this is your package to deliver,” Dustin offers with a grin, ignoring the hard glare you send him once again. Eddie raises the sunglasses from his eyes and it takes everything in you to stay firm as he studies you just as you had studied him. This close, you can see a bit more – the bits of gray woven into the dark waves of his hair, the sun-creased laugh lines that remain despite his neutral expression, a scar that arches down the corner of his lower lip and chin, disappearing into the subtle fuzz of a salt and pepper shadow across his jaw. But you mostly get caught on his eyes. They’re youthful in appearance: wide, bright, and a rich, beautiful shade of warm umber. Despite the crow’s feet that arch out beside them, if you’d looked at his eyes alone, you’d assume he was your age and no older.

“Hey,” he seems to finish his study of you first, offering nothing more than a slight head tilt of acknowledgement before his aviators hit the bridge of his nose again and he redirects back to Dustin. “So I get her from here to Three Corners, right? When are they expecting us?”

Doesn’t even ask your name or anything. Like you weren’t even there. Like you weren’t even a person, just a package to be delivered. Dustin doesn’t seem to notice as he whips out his map and they discuss the route the two of you will be taking so the younger can report it back to Colorado when he gets home. The frustration boils in the base of your gut again, a bubbling pool of lava that is desperate to erupt.

“We’re gonna have to stop in Memphis for a day or two,” Eddie explains, rubbing the back of his sweaty neck with his palm as they look over the map.

“And why’s that?” You cut in, some of the heat invading. Both men look toward you, as if just realizing you’re still there, before Dustin finally acknowledges your question.

“Memphis is Eddie’s base of operations. The two of you can get some actual sleep, bathe, and stock up for the rest of the trip there.” Eddie grunts an affirmative, back to facing away from you and leaning over the map Dustin has spread over a concrete pillar.

Your tongue presses against your cheek in annoyance, staring hard at the sun-faded leather that drapes over his back. “So how long until the next hand off?”

This seems to humor him, a small laugh huffing out of his nose as he shifts back toward you and lowers his sunglasses. “Desperate to get rid of me already?” There’s a bit of a tease in his tone that makes the boil bubble faster, the tension in your jaw getting tighter. Without waiting for an answer, he grabs the map and slaps it down next to you. “4 days to Memphis,” his finger tip touches the paper map, dirt under his nails, and drags from Louisville to the southwest corner of Tennessee. “2 or 3 days in Memphis to stock up. Then another 4 or 5 days to Three Corners.” Before you can really see where Three Corners is, he’s folding the map back up into its usual rectangles and holding it toward Dustin. “So I’ll be outta your hair and you’ll be outta mine in 14 days max.”

Your former partner gapes at him, taking the map and slowly drawing it back towards his chest with a dropped jaw. “Eddie, come on-”

“Jeez Henderson,” you interrupt with full disdain, hopping off your perch and wiping the dust off your clammy hands, “this is the guy you were so excited for me to meet? Whatta riot.”

This, finally, gets a reaction out of Eddie. Strong eyebrows raise as his head tilts, gaze hard on you as you turn away toward your backpack. “Listen, I don’t know what you think this is supposed to be, but it’s not a fucking field trip. I don’t care who you are or who you’re related to. We’re not going to be friends. I’m going to get your privileged ass from here to where it needs to go, alive mind you, and you’re going to shut up and do what I say.”

Steam billows out of your nose as you whirl back toward him, hands clenching into fists at your sides. “Privileged? Field trip? Look man, I get you’re old, but this complex that’s radiating off of you is really a bit delusional. We get it, you’re so seasoned and experienced and that makes you so much better than everyone else. I feel like I’m about five seconds away from getting ‘y’know back in my day’d.”

His own jaw sets tight as his neutral expression falls into a sharp glare. “You fucking brat, I should just-”

“HEY.”

Dustin’s voice isn’t loud – not when anything or anyone could be nearby and hear, but the volatile nature makes it feel as though it should be a scream. Both your and Eddie’s mouths snap shut as you face him, his cheeks flushed with something that looks like embarrassment. “Is this going to be a problem? I thought you were both adults.”

A scoff. “I dunno, is she actually legal?”

A glare. “Does a senior citizen count as an adult?”

“Guys.” Dustin looks furious. You aren’t sure if you’ve ever actually seen him mad. “I don’t need a guarantee that you two are going to be friends. I don’t care, actually. You can both be stubborn idiots if you want to be. But I do need a guarantee that you won’t get each other killed.”

A harsh silence falls over you all like a blanket of fresh snow. You’re fully capable of putting your sudden negative feelings toward your new escort aside to get through the next 2 weeks. Making a fast enemy out of anyone you meet isn’t the best way to go about life in this world, but making friends isn’t exactly a great idea either. If he can keep his ego in check, you can easily make it through 2 weeks of silence and then forget about each other at the end of it.

The two of you make eye contact again, the shape of his eyes barely showing through the tint of the lenses. A silent appraisal. Can I trust you? And the answer looks to be a resounding: When pigs fly.

“We’ll be fine.” Eddie answers first, breaking away from your gaze to look over at Dustin again. “Haven’t died yet, have we?”

The younger looks at you, like he also wants your word on if this will work out. As if you have a choice in the matter.

“All good, boss,” you offer with a half-assed salute and smile before shouldering your pack with a huff. “On the road we go.”

Eddie gives a stiff nod then claps Dustin on the back once more as he passes. “I mean it, you guys,” Dustin continues as he holds out a hand to you. “If she ends up dead, Steve and Robin will kill you. And if you get him killed, Max will hunt you down.”

“Not going down without a fight, Henderson,” Eddie’s cocky grin is back, the tension that built quickly between the two of you immediately pushed to the side. “Don’t worry about us.”

He begins to walk back the way he came, motioning over his shoulder for you to follow, while you give Dustin one last pleading look. “And get home safe to Sally, okay?”

Dustin nods, hitting the brim of his hat with a finger. “Will do. Check in when you get to Memphis.”

All you do is wave back at him as you scamper to catch up with Eddie before he disappears back into the debris he emerged from. You keep your eyes on the wiry bun of hair at the base of his skull as you follow in his footsteps, leading you in the direction the sun will inevitably set at day’s end.

Very little is exchanged between you and Eddie over the next 3 days. As soon as you’re out of Louisville city limits, he leads you to where he stashed an old pickup truck. It won’t have gas to last even a few hours, but with some luck, there will be enough to scavenge along the way. You offer to trade off driving, explaining you’d learned on the base, but he says it won’t be needed.

Luckily, there’s a CD player in the car. You don’t recognize any of the songs, but the music helps fill the silence. It doesn’t help with your boredom however. After spending way too much time trying not to notice Eddie’s mannerisms – like how he bounces the leg that isn’t on the gas pedal almost all the time, how he taps one finger to the beat of whatever song is playing, how he mostly drives with his right hand and his left elbow propped up on the door – you start digging through the glove compartment.

“What are you doing?” His voice makes you jump, having not heard it in hours.

“Snooping,” you answer plainly, not even bothering to look at him as you dig through the mess of papers and trash in the small space. He lets out a long suffering exhale but makes no move to stop you. Eventually you find a paper map, slightly stained and a bit tattered, but it will do the job for a little while.

You unfold it over your lap and find Louisville. It becomes a challenge to see if you can figure out which way Eddie took you out of the city, but you find your sense of direction in a moving vehicle a bit lacking. South and west, that’s for sure, but you’d made more than a couple turns before getting onto this long, clear stretch of road and you’re not even sure where you started beyond the city. There had been a few hazards along the way, mostly broken down cars, but they were easy to maneuver around and Eddie had seemed entirely prepared for them. It made you wonder how often he made this same trip back and forth.

The next 15 minutes are spent looking out the window waiting for a road sign to fly by. With that info, you should be able to get a better idea of what highway you’re on and maybe even where on the highway based on the exit. Your patience rewards you with a faded green sign in the distance – a shield symbol with the number 62 in the center and says the upcoming exit is for ‘Central City’. Really? Couldn't it be something more unique?

Regardless, you bend back over the map and use your finger to trace across the weave of roads and cities, trying to find where you might be. You’re able to find US Highway 62 stretching west across the northside of Kentucky, but nothing that says Central City. The tension builds between your eyebrows as you pull the map a bit closer to your face, thinking maybe you’re just missing it.

“Look at Nashville,” you whip toward Eddie, who is looking between the paper in your hands and the road. He sounds wholly bored, but tilts his chin to direct your attention back to the map. “From Nashville, trace your finger straight north until it hits 62. We’re a little bit west of that.”

There’s still no ‘Central City’, but you figure it’s probably just too small to show up on a map this size. “Why didn’t we drive down through Nashville?” You find yourself asking, eyes scanning the wrinkled paper. “It seems more direct than this.”

“Roads into and out of Nashville might as well be graveyards.” He goes back to leaning his cheek on his left fist. “Nashville itself is totally wiped out. Well, not wiped out, but you get what I mean. All that's left is clickers and corpses.”

“Oh, okay.”

Having completed your goal, you carefully fold the map back up and set it on the dashboard. The gravity of his statement hits you hard despite the casual nature he shares it with. You remember reading in a book a couple years ago the population of Nashville had been over half a million people. Half a million. There’s no guarantee they’re all mindless Infected now, some probably got out, but statistically speaking…

Better not to think about it.

The rest of the days are spent listening to the same 14 songs on repeat, stopping along the way to siphon gas and hit supply caches he has set up across the state, breaking to eat or go to the bathroom, and sleeping. You take turns keeping watch while the other sleeps in the bed of the pickup. He explained he didn’t want to drive at night and risk trying to siphon gas in a dangerous area while it’s dark, so when the sun starts to set, he pulls the truck off the highway and into the closest tree line to hide away.

During the first night, you find another reason to resent Eddie. When he lays down on top of his sleeping bag, it only takes moments for him to lose consciousness. The second his eyes close, his breathing slowly gets deeper and the tension in his face falls slack. He wakes just as easily, but the rate at which he’s able to fall asleep is more than enough to keep the heat in your veins from fading. When he does wake up and gruffly order you to get some sleep, you lay down and stare at the stars overhead. Sometimes you actually manage to drift off.

Sleeping in the car is easier. Especially because it keeps you from more awkward silences with Eddie.

The third night is colder than before. You’re at a higher elevation than home and edging closer to winter every day. In the woods at night, the wind kicks up and sends shivers down your spine no matter how tightly you pull your jacket around you. While Eddie softly snores in the truck bed, you sit on the running board below the passenger seat, your sleeping bag wrapped around your shoulders to combat the cold, in silence.

You’ve come to learn that silence is your worst enemy. Infected have patterns, ways to outsmart them. People have weaknesses, morals, and desires. Hunger, thirst, FEDRA – they all have motivations for why they exist and ways to beat them or get around them. Silence, on the other hand, is overbearing, all encompassing. The quiet settles into your bones, leaks into the marrow, infects the white blood cells that are born there, uses them as weapons to subdue the boiling in your blood. Silence lays across you like a heavy, fiberglass blanket suffocating all of the air out of a fire.

It's a fertile breeding ground for thoughts better left alone.

One thing about living most of your life on the base at Quantico is you never saw too much of what the rest of the country looked like. The tall walls of concrete kept your community mostly secluded from the rest of the world and people like you had very little reason to venture outside those walls. You knew how to use a gun, how to drive, how to fight. For emergencies, your dad had insisted. Because you never wanted to catch yourself wishing you could when you really needed to know. Now, after days of driving past dilapidated towns, broken down cars, cracked streets, and the odd infected, it’s a harsh dose of reality. One you had thought you were prepared for, but evidently not. So you sit in your sleeping bag and remember the quilt from your bed, the one your mom had given you, with its faded pastels and fraying edges. The random poster of some boy band on the wall after you’d found it in an attic and put it up just to have something to look at. You miss the Christmas lights you’d hung along the ceiling after convincing your dad they used less electricity than a normal lamp. The walk to the mess hall in the morning when the world was just waking up and most people around didn’t have reason to be in a bad mood yet. The Carolina Wrens that rested along power lines and sang their high pitched songs. The guarantee of scrambled eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, and maybe some jam and toast if you were lucky.

You miss your dad.

Mistakenly acknowledging the grief you’ve been avoiding – just forcing yourself to keep moving, to keep fighting, to keep going – feels like releasing something long kept captive. It claws its way up your throat, starts to buzz in your ears, presses hard against the backs of your eyes. You try to scare it back down into the pit it came from, but you realize too late the path you’ve gone down and don’t have enough fire left to keep it at bay. It roars and howls, tears and bites, grows and climbs until it overtakes you completely.

You press your face into the polyester around your shoulders to muffle the first sob as it rips out of you. Let it soak up the tears that pour out as your back bends, drawing you in towards your knees, instinctually trying to make yourself feel smaller. Like maybe if you curl in tight enough, you can compress the waves that start to batter you so forcefully that they won't have room to move. Make it so the churning in your gut can’t erode at the concrete you’ve poured down your spine to keep yourself upright. This can just be a small release to take the pressure off the top. This won’t be the breakdown. The breakdown will never come.

If you’d been lucky, Eddie wouldn’t have heard your muffled cries. Would’ve slept right through your unwilling moment of weakness. But he wakes just as easily as he goes down to rest and has ears like a bat even in REM sleep. He sits up in the truck bed and leans over the side toward where you’re sitting in what you assume is panic, but you don’t dare to look. Instead, you just beg your body to stop sobbing, to stop trembling, to hold it together in front of him.

It doesn’t listen.

Dead leaves muffle the steps of his boots as he hops down to the ground and approaches slowly, like he’s trying not to spook a wild animal. Your choked cries and gasps are still muffled by the fabric pressed to your face – but it’s not exactly hard to guess what’s going on.

Eddie kneels a respectful distance away, his voice soft as the night itself. “Are you hurt?”

The gentle tone, the concern he shows in something so small almost destroys you. Almost tears you right in two. Almost makes the breakdown happen right here and now. But remembering how he’s acted since the two of you met – how this is the first time he’s asked you anything at all – has enough heat roaring to life to stifle your sobs and stop the tears. It takes a few moments of harsh swallowing and rubbing at your damp skin before you straighten up, blinking the last tears away to face him head on. “I’m fine.”

He huffs through his nose, his head tilting a bit to the side like a curious dog. “Yeah, you look real fine.” And if he hadn’t said it so sarcastically, with such disdain…

Better not to think about it.

Pushing off his own knee, he rises to his feet with a groan, arms stretching skyward. “You should try to get some sleep. I’ll watch for a while.”

Running the backs of your hands under your eyes, you shake your head harshly and focus your gaze back out into the woods. “My shift isn’t over yet.”

“No offense, sweetheart, but you’re not exactly keeping a good watch like this.”

Your eyes roll and you pull the sleeping bag tighter when another shiver rolls down your spine. “Oh yeah, none taken. Asshole.”

Leather ladened arms cross over his chest as he cocks one hip back and looks you over. “You’re cold, you’re tired, and you’re crying. Use my sleeping bag to warm up and get some rest. I’ll wake you up a few hours before sunrise so I can get another nap in before we hit the road.”

You want to fight him. You want to tell him to fuck off and go back to sleep, let you keep doing your job. But the small amount of kindness he’s shown, added to the way you’ve lost all the heat and steam that kept your engine running, makes it near impossible to argue. So instead you stand and shuffle toward the back of the truck, brushing past him without a word. You’re about to lift your shoe up onto the back bumper when a soft call of your name has your attention drifting toward him.

Eddie is barely illuminated in the moonlight. A shadow of himself in the dark. You can’t read his expression, can barely see the vague outline that implies he’s looking in your direction. “I’m sorry, y’know. About your dad.”

“Yeah,” you lift yourself up onto the truck bed with the very last bit of energy you have left. “Yeah, me too.”

Neither of you say another word as you shuffle down into his sleeping bag and layer yours on top. It’s still heated from his time spent in it and it smells of pine, whiskey, and something human. With the warmth surrounding you and the stars above, you find just enough comfort to allow you to drift off into a dreamless sleep.

Tuesday, August 16th, 2016 – 10 miles outside Memphis, Tennessee

The pickup rumbles to a stop, waking you from your nap. Your head tilts up from leaning hard against the window in shock. After wiping some drying drool from your chin and stretching your shoulders in the limited space, you look to the shadows out the windshield in confusion. Eddie flips the engine off and pulls the emergency break from beside his seat. “How long was I out? Do we need more gas already?”

“No, Sleeping Beauty, you were only out for an hour.” It really is comical how easy it is for him to take you from half asleep to wanting to snap his head off. “I know you need your beauty rest, but we gotta walk the rest of the way.” His door swings open with a creak, echoing in the concrete room you’ve parked in. Choosing to keep your mouth shut and just follow his lead instead, you open your door and slide out of the seat, your legs already protesting from how they were contorted while you slept.

“Is this a garage?”

“Yup.” Walking around the front toward him, he already grabbed his backpack and has it laid out on a table littered with gear. Pistols, rifles, ammo, machetes, metal pipes, baseball bats, knives, canned food, batteries – a spread perfect for any survivalist. It must’ve taken ages to collect it all, and even more work to keep it stocked this well.

Your curiosity gets the better of you. “Is this all your stuff? Or do you work with other people?” Eddie throws an annoyed look over his shoulder, like you should know better than to ask him anything. Embers fire to life as you walk up right next to him, looking directly into the side of his face while he keeps his eyes on cleaning his pistol on the tabletop. “Is it so horrible just to make conversation? Would it really kill you to be a normal person and talk to someone?”

“Maybe it would. Why the fuck do you even care?” The retort is cold but provides you with a bit of clarity. The chill isn’t directed toward you, but at the idea in general. The issue isn’t just you. The issue is someone caring. You just happen to be the one doing it.

“I don’t care,” you assure him as you swing your own pack onto the table next to his, opening it a little too aggressively and pulling out your own pistol. “Just bored.” The magazine clicks out of the grip at your request, falling into your opposite hand. You silently count through the remaining bullets and reach for the box of 9mms on the table. Your skin tingles with the heat of his glare but he doesn’t make any move to interrupt. You take enough to fill the empty space and let the rest clatter back into the box.

“I share the garage with someone else.”

The admittance falls as he rocks the slide back up the frame and clicks the parts back into place. He doesn’t look away from his work so you don’t either, trying not to react too much to him answering a question. The last thing you want to do is say something wrong and make him clam up again. Would probably be safer to talk about the plan than potentially ask anything else about him as a person. At least, if you wanted to avoid the silence. “How far out of Memphis are we?”

“Couple hours walk,” he’s much quicker to answer as he slots his pistol into a holster near his waistband and goes digging through a box full of what looks like rocks. “Too many patrols and blocked roads to bring the truck further without getting caught.”

“Why are we worried about getting caught? By FEDRA?”

He glances over at you, eyebrows drawn together tight like he’s confused. “Civ’s aren’t supposed to leave the QZ. If I got caught and they recognized me, we’d be fucked.”

Nodding once in understanding, you started putting your things back together with a bit more care than you’d ripped them open. “So we’re sneaking in.”

“We have a few routes in and out of the zone that we rotate through for safety. The closest one had some Infected lurking around last time I was there, but they might have cleared out by now, so we’ll try there first.”

You shoulder your pack again and spend the rest of your time waiting by snooping more. The garage is small and pretty dark, the only light coming from the open door to the outside. Just big enough to fit the truck, the work table, and room to stand between them. There’s nothing personal that could be traced back to anyone and most of the weapons are in locked containers. Nothing a pair of bolt cutters couldn’t get through with a little bit of elbow grease but still better than nothing.

Eddie claps his hands together in what seems like an attempt just to startle you – and it succeeds in making you jump as it echoes against the walls. When you turn on him, steam rushing up from below, his shit eating grin is the happiest you’ve seen him since you left Louisville. “Ready?”

Choosing (again) to exhale the heat instead, continue to avoid the animosity for as long as you can, you tuck your hands into the pockets of your jacket. “When you are.”

The sun is absolutely blazing when you both step out of the shadowed garage and into the bright heat of the morning. You’re surrounded by light gray concrete on all sides, the sun’s rays ricocheting off of every surface until the light is hitting you from all directions. Even squinting hard with your hand over your brow does little to assist your eyes in adjusting to the new normal. When Eddie steps back up, garage door lowered and locked behind you, he has his aviators back on and looks perfectly content.

Prick.

“Must be shit around here in the summer.” You’ve only just made it outside and you’re already tempted to take off your jacket despite the subtle breeze.

“It’s shit everywhere in the summer,” Eddie’s grumbled reply is almost quiet enough for you not to hear, but offers another piece of information. He hates the heat. “Come on, ‘s this way.”

Outer Memphis is utterly deserted. Both by humans and infected. Hell, even seeing an animal at this point would be shocking. But that doesn’t mean it’s missing life, not at all. Greenery stretches all around you as you walk through the suburbs and toward the city center. Vines climbing up walls and poles, grass and weeds pushing out from between sidewalk cracks, bushes weaving their way into chain link fences. Trees left to go wild grow towards each other, making canopies of shade here and there as you walk down the empty streets. The leaves have just started to turn into yellows and oranges, some falling and scattering in muddy piles across the pavement. If you hadn’t known any better, it would’ve looked like humanity just disappeared one day and left the Earth to reclaim what was hers. But you do know better. And the signs of what actually happened are everywhere if you know how to look.

Shattered shop windows of every pharmacy, liquor store, gun shop, and grocery. A rusted and warped metal sign calling the area a FEDRA quarantine zone, matched with another that tells you to look out for signs of cordyceps infection. An apartment building with a yellow ‘X’ spray painted across the door and dried fungus peeking out through the cracks in the frame. Lines of cars in off street parking with the wheels stripped, hoods open to scavenge for parts, gas caps hanging from tanks siphoned. Deep brown streaks of long-dried blood arching across the pavement towards alleys and behind buildings.

While it can be easy to look at the plant life thriving and feel serene, really focusing on the details produces a sulfuric taste in your mouth. One that can only be washed away with liquor or enough time to forget.

You’ve been walking for close to two hours when a wide palm suddenly lands on your chest, halting you in place. It mostly freezes you in shock and disbelief at the touch, but when you look up and see Eddie staring at you with a single finger pressed to his lips, it’s enough to make your heart rate kick up in your chest and a cold sweat break out across the back of your neck. Neither of you move for a few moments. You try to focus your ears in to listen, wanting to try to understand these stimuli Dustin and Eddie seem to instinctually respond to. At first, all you can hear is the brush of leaves across concrete. Attempting to push past that, squeezing your eyes shut as if that will help you extend your senses further, you pick up on the edge of something deep. It’s a rumble in the distance, pitched low and long as it rolls through the air. Almost like a groan.

Brown eyes pitched black by tinted lenses meet your own as soon as you look for them. Wordlessly, Eddie directs you towards the sidewalk where a car sits with its wheel wells flat to the ground. He follows close behind as you cross over and duck behind it, shuffling towards the back bumper to try and peek around the other side. You’re looking out over a 4 way intersection and you spot the source of the noise towards the northern end.

Three infected stand in the street, deep moans pouring from their throats as their heads twitch erratically. One’s arm is broken, bent unnaturally backward, and all three have torn clothes and are covered in dirt. There’s visible fungal growth along their skin, indicating they have been this way for some time, but their eyes remain uncovered. Runners.

Shifting back to being fully behind the car, you hold up 3 fingers to Eddie. His expression is stone as he circles his finger in the air before him. Confused for a moment, you realize he’s probably asking you to check the perimeter and make sure there aren’t more. A careful glance around yields nothing. You return to him with a shake of your head. His middle finger and thumb pinch together 3 times in quick succession, his eyebrows raising in a question. It takes you another pause to consider what the motion means, what exactly he’s trying to ask you. It’s not like the two of you had considered beforehand how to communicate in case danger arose. But some part of your brain nags at you: He’s asking if they’re Clickers.

Going with your gut, you give another small shake of your head and mimic a person running with your own pointer and middle finger. He exhales through his nose in what seems like both relief and amusement before motioning for you to get behind him and reaching for something in a side pocket of his bag. By the time you’ve inched your way around so he can look out beyond the car, he’s produced an intense looking slingshot and a small tan pellet. Unable to ask what the hell he’s doing, you can only watch as he places the pellet into the sling and begins to pull it back hard, his bicep straining against leather with the movement. The tip of his tongue peeks out the corner of his mouth as he takes aim.

It goes sailing – your eyes can barely track it as it arcs high and sails directly over the heads of the infected. You think maybe he missed trying to hit one of them, but his true intention becomes clear when it makes contact with the ground. There’s a small flash of white accompanied by a sharp crack that echoes between the buildings on either side of the intersection. All 3 heads immediately turn on the noise, one so forcefully it almost knocks itself off its feet, before they take off running. Eddie counts to 3 under his breath and then grabs your bicep, pulling you along with him as he jogs across the intersection and a couple blocks further. You rip your arm from his hold but continue to follow close behind as he ducks around a corner and into an overgrown city park.

Once you deem you’re a safe distance away, you chance talking again. “That was a pretty neat trick. What are those things?”

His long legs don’t stop moving so you try to keep the pace as he continues to hurry away from the scene. “Little mix of gunpowder and a couple other things. Some brainiac made the recipe as an alternative to fireworks or sparklers for the kids, which then turned into kids throwing them everywhere and pissing off the guards, which got them banned and confiscated. And, well…” The corner of his mouth pulls toward his ear, dry lips spreading in a sly smile. “FEDRA contraband is fair game if you know where they keep it.”

For the first time in what feels like weeks, you laugh. It bubbles up unexpectedly, the feeling foreign by now, and bursts from between your lips in a bark, one you’re quick to stifle with your hand as it trails off. “Y’know, I thought people were supposed to grow out of their rebellious phase by your age.”

His smile disappears just as fast as it occurred, a flat look directed your way. “Very funny,” is his grumbled reply, huffing as he adjusts his pack. “Come on, we’re not too far.”

You perk up at the idea of this hike finally being done, especially with the promise of a bath on the other side. Jogging up to his side from where he’s walked away, you ask for confirmation with a little bit too much enthusiasm. “Really?”

“QZ was set up in the Medical District, just east of the Mississippi,” he explains without looking your way, his head swiveling on an axis. Ever vigilant, circling his surroundings like a hawk. The two of you approach a small, wrought iron arch, bracketed on either side by hedges that have to be 9 feet tall. You assume it leads out of the park but Eddie stops you before you can cross through. “Wait here a second.”

Eddie leans his head through, looking both ways like he’s about to cross the street before disappearing to the right. Unease prickles up your spine as you hear the shift of greenery ahead, your lower lip drawing in between your teeth in a nervous habit. The silence builds, starting as a pressure at the base of your skull and growing into a ringing in your ears. It spreads down through your nerves like radio static as you shift uneasily, anxiety setting in quickly the moment you’re left alone. Adrenaline drumming up, you’re close to either yelling for him or bolting when he finally calls out:

“Okay, we’re clear, come on out.”

You pass through the archway and into a tunnel of vines. The sun filters through as the leaves shift, projecting dancing shadows on the packed dirt floor. You turn right and push ahead, using your arms to part a curtain of hanging vines. There’s a concrete staircase on the other side leading up. Halfway to the top, you look ahead and see Eddie.

His back is to you as he stands tall and proud. His silhouette is surrounded by bright blue sky on all sides. The red flannel around his hips and loose bits of his hair sway in the breeze as the sun beats down on the cracked leather of his jacket. His hair is frizzy, his jeans dusted and worn, his boots spread wide as he raises a hand to his brow to look out. A few steps further and you see he’s standing on a sort of balcony over a decorative town square, a murky fountain in the middle and dilapidated statues lining the walkways. It’s situated on a hill, well above the city center that stretches beyond. You can see straight over the buildings of downtown, to the barbed wire-lined walls of the Quarantine Zone, and beyond to the Mississippi River as it rolls.

Eddie turns to you, slowly walking backward toward the stairway down into the square, hands in his pockets with the thumbs sticking out. “You coming or what?”

thanks for reading!! if you liked it, please consider reblogging and leaving a comment, they make my day 💜

#eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x female reader #older!eddie munson #eddie munson angst #eddie munson hurt/comfort #the last of us au #eddie munson series #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #myos ideas #Old Heart

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matchingbatbites · 1 year

Text

you're the inspiration

@steddie-week Day 5: Established relationship This starts out kind of panicked, but it does have a happy ending!

Eddie knows he isn’t brave. He knows how to stand up to bullies, how to make himself seem big and untouchable, but actually having to face danger, something that could cost him his life? No, he’s a coward all the way. He’s spent the last few days more afraid than he’s ever been in his entire life, the only relief being the familiar faces around him, helping him navigate this nightmare.

Every single moment of fear from the last week is overshadowed when he hears Robin Buckley’s terrified, wailing “Steve!” from the Munson living room.

He moves without thinking, rushing to the living space from the bedroom with Dustin hot on his heels, and his heart stops when he sees Steve standing in the center of the room, eyes white and unseeing.

Robin is frantic, her hands hovering over him like she wants to grab him but is afraid to. "We- We need a tape! Springsteen or Tears For Fears or something!"

The others start digging around in their bags, trying to find an appropriate tape, but Eddie knows that even if they find one, none of them will work. He shoves his hand into his pocket and pulls out the tape he had thankfully grabbed from the stereo in his van, and prays that it’s dry enough after his unexpected dip into Lover’s Lake as he crams it into the nearby cassette player.

The kids are talking over each other, almost unintelligible as Eddie lets the tape rewind as much as possible, trying to get back to the first song. When he presses play he’s flooded with relief as he hears the familiar sound of Peter Cetera.

And I know, yes, I know that it's plain to see

We're so in love when we're together

He cranks up the volume to it's max and shoves it as close to Steve as possible while leaving it plugged in, sending the rest of the group into silence.

Robin looks at him, and her fear thaws a little, hope taking its place as she realizes what song is playing.

Dustin’s eyes snap from Steve to the radio, to Eddie. “What are you doing? He doesn’t even listen to this stuff!”

Now I know (Now I know)

That I need you here with me

From tonight until the end of time

Eddie ignores everyone else as he steps closer. He can’t stop himself from reaching for Steve, he needs to touch him, needs to bring him back to them. He marvels again at how Steve’s face was made to fit in his hands, and Eddie finds that he wants nothing more than to hold it for the rest of his life.

He mutters a soft “Come back to me, baby,” that goes unheard over the sound of Chicago blaring from the nearby speaker.

You should know

(Yes, you need to know)

Everywhere I go

Steve starts to lift off the floor and one of Eddie's hands slides around to the back of his neck, trying to keep him grounded. He needs to break through the curse Steve is under, needs to stop it, and he barely notices Dustin grabbing onto one of Steve’s arms as he starts to sing along, trying to coax his boyfriend back to reality.

“You're always on my mind. You're in my heart, in my soul.”

He can't lose Steve. They haven't been dating long - fuck, they haven't even hit six months yet - but Eddie knows that Steve is it for him.

Dustin had opened his eyes to the change in Steve's heart, and after a few run-ins with the former jock he had seen it himself. He made a point to get to know this new Steve, away from prying eyes or people who might cause him to be anything less than his genuine self, and Eddie fell ass over tit in love with what he found.

“You're the meaning in my life, you're the inspiration."

The younger had eventually opened up to Eddie about his relationship failures, about how sometimes he feels completely unlovable, and Eddie took a risk. He made the leap, offered to be the one to love Steve if he would just give Eddie a chance.

Surprisingly, Steve had agreed, and Eddie followed through. He loved Steve recklessly, even as they kept it secret for their own safety, even though Steve didn't feel quite the same at first.

Now, they like to joke that Eddie fell fast, but Steve fell hard.

"You bring feeling to my life, you're the inspiration."

It was the smallest thing, in the end. Eddie made him a gift, a mix tape lovingly dubbed the Sunshine Mix, and Steve had cracked a joke about Eddie titling it like that to trick him into listening to metal.

"No tricks, angel. Just some songs that make me think of you."

They popped the tape in right then, and Steve had seemed pleasantly surprised when Chicago started flowing from the speakers of Eddie's van. Eddie grinned at Steve's wide-eyed expression as they sat through the first verse, and he couldn't help but join in with the chorus, singing directly to Steve.

"Wanna have you near me, I wanna have you hear me sayin'!"

And in that moment, three months into their unexpected friendship, one month after Eddie started to love Steve without abandon, Steve just- Kissed him. He reached over and took Eddie's face in his hands and kissed him, more gentle than anything Eddie had ever experienced.

When he pulled back he was looking at Eddie with stars in his eyes, and the older could feel his heart skip a beat as Steve sang to him softly.

"No one needs you more than I need you."

Steve blinks and white gives way to warm hazel, and Eddie barely catches him as he falls back to Earth with a gasp. Eddie holds him tight as they tumble to the ground, and Steve grabs him in turn as a sob rips through him.

“Eddie.”

“I’m right here, sweetheart. I’ve got you, I promise.”

He presses his face into Steve’s hair as he rocks them gently, eternally grateful when he hears Robin shooing the teenagers outside with a soft “He’s okay, just give them a minute.”

They’re going to owe everyone an explanation, and Eddie is already preparing himself for the menace that Dustin will be when he finds out that he's the reason Steve and Eddie even started talking.

For now he just holds Steve, fingers digging into the denim of Eddie's vest that Steve is still wearing because Eddie was supposed to be getting him a shirt to change into.

It takes a moment for Steve to calm down, for his breathing to return to normal. He laughs wetly as the song fades out and Toto starts to play over the speaker.

"Do you just keep this tape on you all the time?"

"Course I do. You never know when you might have to save your boyfriend from evil wizards from an alternate dimension."

Steve laughs again and pulls back enough to look at Eddie's face, and they shift a bit so they're sitting more comfortably.

"Hi," he mutters.

Eddie can't resist leaning in, nudging their noses together gently. "Hi yourself. You scared the shit outta me, baby."

"M'sorry," Steve replies quietly, and Eddie presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

A sharp “Henderson!” comes from outside, and Steve and Eddie both jump when the door slams open hard enough that it almost bounces off the interior wall. Dustin barrels inside and practically throws himself onto Steve, nearly in tears as he asks “Are you okay?!”

Steve laughs softly and pulls the kid into a tight hug. “Yeah, I’m okay. That bastard has nothing on Chicago."

Dustin grumbles something into Steve's shirt before he pulls away, and the others start filing back in as he looks between Steve and Eddie and says "Explain."

Edde glances at Steve, who shoots him a look. “How about we get through this, and we’ll tell you everything, top to bottom. Deal?”

The kid is hesitant, but eventually relents and allows Steve to pull him back into his arms, and Eddie is only a little uncomfortable when the other teens join the pile, each needing their own reassurance that steve is okay.

He just lets it happen, pulls the whole bundle of them closer as they take a moment to calm down before the real terror begins.

#steddieweek2023 #day 5 #LISTEN #i know the song of the day is hold the line #but I couldn't not do Chicago #steddie #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #joey writes #ficlet

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k-marzolf · 5 months

Text

Say you love me.

warnings; blood, gore, violence, smoking, angst, blind!reader, kissing, soft dark!Billy, nudity, implied sex, fem!reader.

summary: Billy kills, and contemplates if you could love him still.

words; 800.

author’s note; title inspired by Fleetwood Mac.

The Chain masterlist.

&&&&

His fingers dropped the body in the snow, watching it color the white pristine snow, red. And he thought of you. You who always passed him chocolate candies every day he drove you to work. You who were indifferent to his beauty, and so didn’t exploit it in any way.

You were like the snow, and he was staining you with his filth, he thought, watching the blood completely cover the snow. Billy had never cared about anyone other than Frank, but you’d wormed your way in the moment you first met him on a busy street and you hit him with your cane, impressed by your confidence navigating a large city.

Your compassion for the father who blamed you for your eyesight going.

Frank looked at Billy, as the latter asked; “How does Maria view our bloodshed?”

Frank breathed out, a puff of air in the night air as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “She doesn’t know. The less her and the kids know, the better.” He paused. “Sometimes killing is necessary. Don’t let some fundamentalist tell you it isn’t. Even God killed.”

They stood silently, as Billy replayed the men who threatened you and Frank’s family. How Billy and Frank had gutted them, and now their intestines laid on the ground in the snow.

Frank lit up, handing Billy a cigarette after he’d puffed on it. “Sometimes I think about her, and I wonder what hell I'm doin’.” Billy said, exhaling the smoke and handing the cigarette back to Frank.

Frank inhaled, passing Billy the cigarette back. “She’s not your mother. She isn’t looking for a reason to leave you, Bill. I don’t tell Maria because I’m afraid she’ll leave me. I do it to protect her. But let’s be honest, our women ain’t stupid.”

Billy looked at the cigarette in his hand for a moment, before puffing on it. “I’d saturate these streets in blood to protect her.”

Frank stubbed the cigarette. “Exactly.”

That night Billy stepped through the door, kicking off his boots, and peeling his coat off. He moved to the bathroom, and noticed the light on. It was two in the morning.

He walked in, and there you were sitting in the bathtub, looking lonely. “Sweet pea? It’s late.”

You looked in his direction, unseeing. “I can’t sleep without you.” You murmured.

You could hear him dropping his tac gear, and undressing before he spoke; “Scoot forward, baby.”

You scooted forward, excitement tightening in your gut, feeling him slide in behind you, him pressed against your back.

“Can I wash your hair?” He husked, playing with it.

“Yes, Billy.” You never asked where he was during these late nights, but you always waited up for him.

He wetted your hair, running his fingers through it, kissing your shoulders, your back. He grabbed your shampoo, squeezing some into his hands, and gently scrubbing your hair. The same hands who had spilled blood—had taken life without remorse—touched you gently, like you were porcelain.

He loved the soft sounds of pleasure you made, the way you leaned back, closer to him. “You got pretty hair, sweet pea.” He said, breath tickling your neck.

“How’s Frank?” You asked casually.

Billy paused. “Good. We played pool, Frankie lost.” Billy chuckled. A partial truth. They’d gone to the bar afterwards, and Frank couldn’t play pool to save his life.

You giggled, feeling Billy rinse your hair. “And I bet you were a sore winner.” You teased him.

Billy smirked, running his fingers through your hair, making sure all the soap was out. “Damn right.” He paused as you turned around in his lap, facing him.

His dark eyes burned into yours, as his thumb brushed your lip.

He made you believe there was grace in the devil, without realizing he was dragging you down to the depths of hades.

“Touch me,” he said, pulling back, his voice almost desperate, watching you as you reached for him, your breasts pressing against his chest. “God, just touch me.” He said, voice thick with emotion.

He needed you, and he hated it. Wanting made him weak, because you could be used against him, a liability.

You touched him, and your tender touch was his undoing.

He abruptly pulled you out of the bathtub, carrying you to the bedroom, and laying with you on the bed, slotting himself against you.

He let himself get lost in you, the feel of your lips like velvet on his skin, your nails raking down his spine, trailing fire in their wake. Your hips slotted against his hips, legs in a tangle as he rutted into you, tasting your tears on your skin, the way you chanted his name like a prayer.

You looked at him like he was God.

For a while, he was loved.

Tags; @idaofinfinity @e-dubbc11 @rosaleenablack @firexfate @aoi-targaryen

#billy russo #billy russo x reader

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peachdues · 11 months

Text

Kyojuro’s Nightmare — Tell Me to Stop (pre-part 2?)

Part 2 is slowly coming along (I think I’m like 75-80% done with it?) but unfortunately I keep wanting to expand other things that I probably don’t need to include in the story. So here’s an example of something from an earlier draft of Part 2 that probably won’t make it in the Final Cut. Really this just helps set up his attitude more than anything (and also my first stab at horror?)

Massive TW: violent nightmares/death/corpse

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Kyojuro POV

Every night for the last two months, he has dreamt of her.

They are not pretty dreams, not like those he had before, when he’d wrap her in his arms and kiss her until she laughed, the two of them living in a monster-free world and at peace.

Now, he dreams of vacant eyes tinged blue, unseeing and unblinking and frozen, just like the rest of her. He dreams of iced skin and blood and poison pouring from her mouth and her nose until she chokes, her chest rising once with a final rattle before it falls still.

He dreams of Upper Three, smiling deviously as he aims his fist to deal his final blow, and Kyojuro wrenches his blade down, desperate to finally win.

Only, his blade decapitates Y/N, not Upper Three and he is helpless to watch her head bounce pathetically to the ground. His hands are covered in her blood, and instead of disintegrating, her body falls uselessly to the side. Human.

As quickly as he kills her, the dream changes. He is in a lively street, filled to the brim with street vendors and women and men offering their services. It is night but the lights of the shops and gambling dens and pleasure houses are so bright that it looks like daytime.

He recognizes her by the back of her haori, and his feet move towards her, relieved to see her amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. He reaches out to touch her shoulder, her name whispering on his lips. But she turns before he can make contact, and though she appears as beautiful and as healthy as ever, she looks at him with eyes that are white and unseeing.

I don’t understand, she pleads with him, It doesn’t make sense.

Kyojuro looks around in alarm and they are no longer standing amongst eager entertainment seekers, but among flame and wreckage, the once-ornately decorated stalls now smashed to splinters as fire slowly consumes the skeletal remains of the entertainment district.

He turns back to her right as a blade pierces through her gut, lifting her from the ground before letting her drop.

His hands shake as he reaches for her, desperate to check her wounds, but when she looks up at him, he stumbles back.

She is all wrong. Her skin is mottled and rotting from her face, and her hair is gray and matted. Where her eyes once were are black holes, empty and cold.

Why can’t I come with you? Why can’t I go home, Kyojuro?

Please take me home.

Every night for the last two months, he has awoken screaming.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

It’s not ✨delivery✨ it’s ✨de-trauma✨

#kyojuro rengoku #rengoku kyojuro #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer kyojuro #kyojuro rengoku x reader #rengoku x y/n #rengoku kyojuro x reader #kny rengoku #kny kyojuro #kyojuro x y/n

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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acourtofthought · 8 months

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Elain being traumatized in Hyberns fortress-

Az's Response:

And Mor backed away. Step by step. “What a prize,” the king said, that black gaze devouring her. Azriel’s head lifted from where he was sprawled in his own blood, eyes full of rage and pain as he snarled at the king, “Don’t you touch her.” Mor looked at Azriel—and there was real fear there. Fear—and something else. She didn’t stop moving until she again kneeled beside him and pressed a hand to his wound. Azriel hissed—but covered her bloody fingers with his own.

Lucien’s Response:

Lucien’s face had slackened. “She sold out—she sold out Feyre’s family. To you.”

Lucien, beside Tamlin, again put a hand on his sword. “Stop this.”

Lucien staggered a step forward as Elain was gripped between two guards and hoisted up.

“That is enough.” Lucien surged for Elain, for the Cauldron. And the king’s power leashed him, too.

Lucien snarled at the king over the bite of the magic at his throat, “Don’t just leave her on the damned floor—” There was a flare of light, and a scrape, and then Lucien was stalking toward Elain, freed of his restraints.

Water poured forth, Lucien hoisting Elain in his arms and out of the way.

Nesta slammed into Lucien, grabbing Elain from his arms, and screamed at him as he fell back, “Get off her!”

And for anyone claiming Az was too injured to do anything for Elain:

Nesta’s screaming was the only sound. Cassian blindly lurched toward it—toward her, moaning in pain.

Cassian again stirred, slumping on the floor—but his hand twitched. Toward Nesta.

Cassian stirred again, his shredded wings twitching and spraying blood, his muscles quivering. At Nesta’s shouts, her raging, his eyes fluttered open, glazed and unseeing, an answer to some call in his blood, a promise he’d made her. But pain knocked him under again.

Az was injured but still snarled at the King over the attention he gave to Mor. Cassian was injured but SJM still made it obvious he was reaching out for Nesta, that she was his concern.

Elain at her absolute lowest:

Az's Response:

Neither did Rhys when I sent my order down the bond, asking him, Cassian, and Azriel to help move them.

Azriel smiled faintly. “Would you like me to show you the garden?”

And that was Azriel's response after at least 2 months of Elain's depression, where she wouldn't eat, drink or sleep. His first interaction with her was after Feyre gave her orders to move the sisters and there is absolutely zero evidence that he worried about her before that.

Compared to Cassian's Response to Nesta:

“Nesta spoke as if you’ve been up at the House … often. You’ve offered to train her?”

Cassian’s hazel eyes shuttered as he crossed a booted ankle over another, stretching his muscled legs before him. “I go up there every other day. It’s good exercise for my wings.” Those wings shifted in emphasis. Not a scratch marred them.

“And?”

“And what you saw in the library is a pleasanter version of the conversation we always have.”

She needs to get out of the House. She needs to …” Cassian’s wings kept up a steady booming beat, the new sections only detectable by their lack of scarring. “She’ll destroy herself if she stays cooped up in there.”

But Cassian said quietly as we headed for the dining room, “Because I can’t stay away.”

Lucien's Response to Elain:

“Come get me when she’s ready.”

But he does wish to see her, Nesta.

But Lucien was standing in the doorway. And from the devastation on his face, I knew he’d heard every word. Seen and heard and felt the hollowness and despair radiating from her.

But he asked, “What of—Elain?”

“She needs fresh air.”

I could have sworn his ruby hair gleamed like molten metal as his temper rose. But it faded, his russet eye fixing on me. “Take her to the sea. Take her to some garden. But get her out of this house for an hour or two.”

And that's not even including his request that Feyre have a healer look her over or his supporting her vision, that was all when Elain was at her absolute lowest. That's not including how he was ready to enter into enemy territory, the territory of the most powerful High Lord in existence, to try to ensure her safety. Think of how much hostility and how many barriers were put up, how he was prevented from interacting with her over and over, how many times it's written that they actively kept him away. It cannot be denied that Lucien desperately wanted to be by Elain's side and made multiple attempts to help her recover even when everyone was standing in his way.

Elain After Experiencing her First War -

Azriel's Response:

.......................................................................

Lucien's Response:

Lucien, haggard and bloody, panting for breath. As if he’d run from the shore. His gaze settled on Elain, and he sagged a little.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, coming toward us. Spying the blood speckling Elain’s hands.

to where Lucien now stood in the sitting room, close to Elain’s side as she and my sister silently kept against the wall by the intact bay of windows.

Elain Losing her Father-

Azriel's Response:

.......................................................................

Lucien's Response:

“I heard—what happened. I’m sorry for your loss. All of you.”

I'm not including Elain's traumatic experience of being kidnapped to Hybern’s camp since it wouldn't be fair to compare Az and Lucien's reactions as Lucien wasn't around. And the reason he wasn't around is because he took Elain's vision seriously and went searching for an army. Call it a gut feeling but I highly doubt Lucien would have sat there watching Nesta and Cassian arguing over saving Elain before claiming he'd go after her.

But the rest were all moments where Elain experienced the most horrible events of her life. The fact that Lucien, and not Azriel's concern for her at those times is highlighted is a major clue of who is the right male for Elain (not to mention their compatibility).

No, it doesn't matter what Elain wants right now because it's pretty obvious Elain doesn't actually know what she wants. That's kind of a thing with fantasy heroines, they often get caught up wanting this guy while it's obvious to the reader that that guy is the one she's supposed to end up with (Fourth Wing anyone?).

Right now it's not so much about ladies choice as much as SJM laying the groundwork for who is right for her, something she'll eventually realize after her character growth. The kind of growth that happens once she's ready to actually talk about her traumas and come into her powers. The kind that happens once she stops apologizing to males who reject her, the same ones who underestimate her ability to handle the darkness of the Trove. And once she has that growth, it's going to become very clear to her who was fighting for her from the start.

#elucien #pro elucien #elain archeron #lucien vanserra #anti e/riel #pro lucien vanserra #lucien and elain #elain x lucien #pro elain archeron #elain and lucien #elucien supremacy #elucien bond #acotar mates

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blacktofade · 2 months

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Gemtho Fortnight Day 10

Prompt: Hello! Here for the Gemtho prompts! I mainly wanna try and request prompts you probably won't otherwise get. My first prompt is Gem dominating Etho, with a focus on cbt (mainly ballbusting, that's my fav). And for the other prompt, it's... also Gem dominating Etho, -but with a focus on foot fetish instead! There's only one non M/M foot fetish Hermitcraft fic, so why give another to the weirdos like me! Alternatively you could mix both prompts into one! Also I don't mind/care if it's RPF or not!

cw: nsfw

Gem finally realizes it’s not just a bit for Etho when she moves in close and finds he’s already hard. She glances down, smoothing her palm across the front of his pants, and he rolls his hips, like he’s trying to get more.

“Have you been thinking about it all day?” she asks, gently rubbing at him and listening for every catch in his breath.

He nods and she hooks one finger into his waistband and tugs.

“Take these off,” she tells him, “and get on your knees.”

For once, Etho doesn’t try to fight her, in fact, he hurries to obey, kneeling at her feet once he’s bare from the waist down.

He’s so hard, he’s dripping precome, and she’s almost disappointed she can’t get her mouth on him instead.

She sits on the edge of her bed, hands on her knees as she stretches out her legs toward him. He lets out a heavy breath when she rests her feet on his thighs and she digs in her toes, just to see what’ll happen.

His dick flexes, dribbling as he reaches down to cup himself, and she eases her foot higher, resting the ball of it against his hip.

“Move me wherever you want,” she tells him, and he glances up, brows drawn together like it makes him ache to hear her say that.

But he does as she says, fingers curling around her ankle before he moves her down, pressing the arch of her foot against his cock. He shudders, hips rocking, grinding himself against her as he exhales shakily, and Gem can’t believe she gets to see him like this.

“Has anyone ever done this for you?” she asks and Etho shakes his head, eyes tight. “You can ask for this whenever you want, you know that, right?”

She moves her other foot across, gently pressing at his balls with her toes, and the noise he lets out makes her want to press him flat on his back and ride him hard and fast.

He stares down between his legs, starting to set a proper rhythm as he ruts against the sole of her foot. He’s so warm, and she can feel the wetness of his precome as he lets the tip of his cock nudge against the underside of her toes.

“Gem,” he pants and she presses against his balls a little harder, cutting off his breath and turning it into a guttural moan instead.

“You’re not gonna last, are you?”

Etho has a tell — he gets a little divot between his brows when he’s close. She’s started to notice it recently whenever he fucks her, and now she can’t unsee it.

He shakes his head, fingers tightening around her ankle as the movement of his hips turns ragged.

“Gem,” he repeats, and she’s felt him come across the small of her back before, her breasts, her stomach, her face, but across her foot feels completely different.

He’s loud too, gasping and grinding until he finally lets her go, his whole body sagging as though the effort has been too much.

She gives him a second to come down from the high before she lifts her foot and presses it against his collarbone.

“Clean up the mess,” she tells him and he raises his head to stare at her, his spent cock jerking, but he doesn’t even hesitate before he grabs her ankle again and pulls her foot up to his mouth at the same time that he tugs down his mask.

His tongue is hot as it swipes across her, licking up his own come, carefully easing between each of her toes as though not wanting to miss a single inch of skin.

She lets him work at her, lets him take his time, and eventually he seems satisfied with his efforts, pressing his forehead against her instep.

“Better?” she asks and, after a moment, he nods, pressing a final kiss to the top of her foot.

“Thank you,” he murmurs and she smiles, more than happy to help give him whatever he wants.

#gemtho fortnight #fic

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netherfeildren · 1 year

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FEAR OF GOD : Chapter VI : The indignity of suffering

Series Masterlist ; Moodboard

Pairing: Joel Miller x OFC

Summary: Go into that dark wood, but do not lose yourself.

Content Warnings: canon typical violence; gore; angst

A/N: I just wanted to say that you all have been so fucking kind and lovely and supportive to me. I’ve read and tried to reply to every single one of your messages and cherish them so so much. I can’t even tell you what it means to me to receive this type of response to something I’ve written, my very first thing I’ve ever shared publicly, at that. I seriously thought this thing’d have two hits, me and my burner account and that’s it. I appreciate each and every single one of you to the end of the earth, and hope I can continue to write things that you all relate to and are moved by and find solace in. Thank you so so so much. I love you and I wish you all nothing but the most amazing things in the whole world.

Rating: Explicit 18+

Word Count: 3.5K

Read on AO3

CHAPTER VI: The indignity of suffering

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story. -Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

You sit now in the dark quiet of your living room, facing straight forward, unseeing, feet planted firmly on the floor, trying to ground yourself and count the sounds of your breath. Feel the inhale pass all the way into your body, deep down to your toes, back up again through your abdomen, whistle through your lungs, up your throat and out, back into the world. A repetitive exercise to try and soothe your racing heart.

You need to leave.

Birdie, I love you. Birdie, Birdie, my Birdie.

Your nails are splintered bloody, the tips of your fingers rubbed raw from the fight in the woods. It hurts, and you pick at the broken skin trying to distract from the other pain writhing within you. Something, something else has to exist in the world that can hurt more than this, than him. Please, please, let there be something else worse than this. You pick harder at the skin. You still possess enough clarity of mind to be cognizant of the fact that your thoughts are slightly unhinged. Something to hurt more? Why? For what? What good would that do you? For the girl who’s always tried to have the answers to every question that came her way, you find that there are no discernible solutions to this. No reason, no way to conceptualize it. There was no easy way to color within the lines in this moment, tuck it all away neatly into a drawer. Your edges are frayed, savaged, bloody and torn.

He had done this to you – true. But in many ways you had also done this to yourself. You could only go on accepting the way others treated you for so long before it got to be too much. And you knew, once again, that it was all about the choices you made. What were you willing to put up with? What were you willing to let go of? What was necessary for your survival? What would you die without?

I will die without him, you think.

Asking for things for yourself had always been excruciating. You’d gotten better at pushing that piece of yourself away – that deficit – with age. You saw it for what it was now, something to hurt you, rather than, naively considered, to protect you. And it was time now, to ask for this, to demand he love you out in the open. He could not say the words to you, fuck them into you with his body and his touch, press them into your skin – and then take them back? No. His terror at the possibility of losing you, of you getting hurt sent him over the edge, robbed him of rational thought, you could objectively understand this, but the agony of having him and not having him – of being able to only brush your fingertips along the phantom idea of him, never being able to hold on tight — dig your nails into his skin and draw blood; well that provided grounds for cowardice. Surely, it excused it, even. Because, you think: this is unendurable, unendurable.

The two of you were made up of so much fear in equal measures. Him, afraid of his own feelings, of showing his softness, of putting that softness in someone else’s hands. And you, you, sometimes you terrified yourself. The lengths you could go to swallow your hurts, to repress the things that broke your heart – you couldn’t live like this anymore. It was too painful, abnormal – emaciating yourself in the name of being strong and stoic.

So perhaps Joel was right, in this instance. You did. You needed to leave. As a means of self preservation, you needed to do as he’d told you. You needed to get out, away from him. From yourself. From all these people who knew you, and how much you wanted and needed and loved him and fucking prostrated yourself at the effigy of him you’d created in your mind. You wanted to scream and thrash and gnaw your teeth through the very marrow of who and what you were, and you wanted to say that you hated him and yourself and everything, everything, everything. Why did you have to be this way? Why did he have to be this way? You felt angry and resentful with the world, with life itself. But you didn’t, you couldn’t, say or do any of those things.

None of them were true.

What was true was that it was not your responsibility to step between him and his daughter. To defend or protect him from her. That was not your place. Not right now, at least. The struggle between them was their own, could only be mended by them two.

What was true was that you loved him. And he loved you. You knew this now, without doubt. What was true was that he hurt you. That he was terribly afraid. That he could not allow himself the vulnerability of being hurt again himself.

Beth. Beth. Beth. Where are you, sister? I need you.

You needed to go back out. Despite what had happened tonight, and your very real fear that there could be more of those men out there, that woman and her baby were out there somewhere. You needed to find them; there was something inside of you urging you out there to them – the look in her eyes, the sound of the child’s cries – and there wasn’t anything that could stop you from going. The idea of leaving the safety of Jackson’s walls without Joel, without his reassuring protection and competence, caused a fear to surge up inside you that was almost debilitating. But you had to do this. You had to find them, help them in any way you could. The desperation in the woman’s eyes – it was like a mirror of your own terror the night Beth had died. You saw yourself in her gaze in that moment, the terrified reflection of your past self.

You’d gone straight to Maria from Joel’s. The look on your face, enough to tell her this was something you needed to do now. She’d gone straight to Noah first, then another girl in town, called Vero, both were competent trackers and hunters, and Noah was your friend. You knew he’d help you. They’d agreed to go. You’d head out tomorrow at first light, search the greater part of the day, go as far out as you could and still be able to make it back before dark. Easy and quick.

He wanted you gone. He wanted you to leave. Then you would. It wasn’t in your nature to be petty or lash out, but it was in your nature to hide, to swallow a hurt, to run. This was self preservation at its core. You needed to get away from the humiliation. The burning rejection of knowing that you loved him, and that even though he’d said the words, he still saw you as something apart from himself and the things he held close. Not family.

There was a more level headed part of you that objectively knew he’d be furious to know you’d gone back out without him. That he’d lose his mind when he found out. You couldn’t bring yourself to care. The petty and hurt part, the part he’d just trampled all over, would win tonight, wanted to lash out. If Maria was letting you go you knew your plan wasn’t suicidal – at least not in terms of what you might run into out there. You both knew the three of you could take care of yourselves. Joel, though, he might just kill you himself when you returned.

But you needed time to conceptualize your feelings. Fold things away as neatly as possible – the things he’d said to you – you needed to shut this love away in a drawer, put it to rest as best as you could. Dissociate from it if necessary, from him.

You wished desperately for Connie in this moment. For his clear logic and calming baritone. Use your head, honey. The answer’s right there in front of you. For him to pet your hair and tell you it’d all be okay. But he wasn’t here. And neither was Beth or Ellie or Maria. No one you felt could understand, not truly. Really, you knew you wanted to talk to Joel. Knew he understood this overwhelming feeling of having absolutely nothing left to give. That he knew how someone who knows what it’s like to go without, is always willing to give more. Even if they don’t have anything left for themselves. That this feeling you were experiencing now was exactly what held him back from you.

He understood the sentiment intimately. As hard as he’d tried to push you away, keep you at arms length, shield the softness within himself from your prying eyes and grasping fingers, you’d seen it. You’d even felt it brush up against you. And you knew, you knew, he had so, so much left to give. Even if he couldn’t see it himself. Even if he couldn’t bring himself to share it with you. He’d done it for Ellie. For that little girl all that time ago who’d needed him, and despite his reluctance, fear, trauma, his painful, painful past – he’d given himself to her entirely.

It wasn’t in you to judge him for holding himself back from you. As much as it ripped you to shreds, you understood him with a profoundness and an empathy you surprised yourself with. Of course he was fucking scared. Of course he was terrified of the risk of pain. Of the risk of loss.

The mistake was to assume that any person you loved would be, at all times, without fault. Never cruel. Never selfish. Would never hurt you. In love or friendship or family, you now considered, with experience, the real test of longevity to be acceptance of that occasional mistake – whether it be cruelty or selfishness or hurt – it didn’t really matter. The people you loved would hurt you sometimes. They’d say the wrong thing. Do the wrong thing. Make the wrong choice. To err was human. No one was ever perfect one hundred percent of the time, and to allow for that margin of error, was to be merciful in your love. Not only for them, for the person you loved, but for yourself, as well. The capacity – the space to make mistakes and forgive yourself for it, own it and move on – that was true mercy. That was the true promise of longevity. Especially in a world like this, one so full of cruelty and danger and casual hurts. Risk, always risk just around the corner. And Joel, he was not a man who took risks lightly. He was an animal cornered – and a threatened creature does not think of consequences. It considers only survival.

It was in the way you proceeded after your mistakes, the choices, the actions you took to make reparations, that the true test lay.

All of this understanding, however, didn’t mean his rejection was painless. All the self awareness in the world still wasn’t enough to soothe the sting of rejection. And it stung like a bitch.

You feel yourself start to tilt sideways onto your sofa, glassy eyes taking in the warm corners of your home. The piles of books, your tacky orange plaid throw over the armchair by the fire, the drawings Ellie’d given you to put up. A life strung together with sheer determination – a safe space. It didn’t feel as safe, as warm, in this moment, without him. Autonomy over your body lost to grief, your shoulder hits the green cushion. You turn your face into the darkness and let the hot press of tears break free. Muffled and quiet, you let all that hurt you wished you could erase, out. The pain in your throat is strangling, trying to keep yourself contained. There is a savagely broken place within you that forces you, even in this moment, to remain subdued, and you wish you could let it all out in a messy explosion of tears and howling. That your mind would allow your physical reaction to reflect the seething pain you’re feeling inside, to let go of restraint for even just a moment.

When you’ve lost everything, how do you muster the bravery to hold onto something new?

You had it in you to run – to sneak away in the dark. This you knew. To be cowardly – even if only in his eyes. To be selfish. Even if you knew that running away, even after he’d told you to go, was the worst possible thing you could do to him. Be selfish, Birdie. Be selfish for me, just a little bit, he’d said once. Well, you would be. You needed distance and space to lick the bleeding wound your heart had become, and you had something you felt you direly needed to do. That woman was waiting for you out there – you felt it in your bones, the baby’s cry resounding in your memory over and over again.

Perhaps your anger was useless. After all, an animal cornered could only react on instinct, and Joel had cornered himself with his confession.

But you were so, so tired. You couldn’t fight anymore.

It’s the end of the goddamned world, Joel. Just love me like I know you do.

You pull the cinch of the saddle, checking it’s secure. You’d slept like shit, the events of the night before replaying in your mind on a loop. His words clanging against your skull over and over again. The dark woods – Beth’s dying screams. The clicking. The look on Ellie’s face – so concerned, scared for you. Scared of what would become of you without him. Dawn hasn’t broken over the horizon yet, but you’re ready to get out of here.

Sometimes you feel like he isn’t actually real. A figment you’ve created in your imagination. And really, if you’re being wholly honest with yourself, isn't that the most honest truth between the two of you? Isn't everything you think you need from him merely something born from your own yearning? Haven’t you been half-existing without him this whole time? One foot in, one foot out. If you’d never had the whole thing, had you ever really even had it at all?

Perhaps that isn’t fair, to either of you. You can’t tell what’s right or wrong anymore, real or imaginary. Your mind, blanketed by exhaustion, coherence gone out the door like an old lover.

Have I been walking in circles again?

“You ready to go?” You’re snapped from your reverie at the sound of Noah’s voice. Nausea churns in your gut on a low, threatening simmer. Everything held in a tight knot at the base of your throat. Vero’s saddled and ready to go – waiting for the two of you to mount, as well.

Maria’s old adage, her overused one at that, sounds in your mind: The only people who can betray us are the ones we trust. How right she always is. After all, hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. Who knows your soft spots, where to strike hardest, better than someone who loves you?

Leaving was probably a mistake. In the cool clarity of the damp morning, you’re worried you’re walking into something the three of you are ill prepared for, incapable of handling. But you know that baby is out there – you know the desperation in the woman’s eyes wasn’t feigned, couldn’t be. You had to find them. And Joel’d done most of the heavy lifting, killing, last night – that man’s skull crushed beneath the violent weight of his fist, the stray clickers done away with. All you had to do now was find that woman and her child, and hope nothing worse waited for you out there.

So much had happened in the span of such a few, seemingly short hours.

You mount your horse, and your belly sways with nausea you have to grit your teeth against. Concern nips at your heels, but you can’t think about that now. Not after last night, not in light of what you’re about to set out to do. Perhaps not ever. Perhaps you can ignore your anxieties and suspicions indefinitely. Perhaps then, they can’t hurt you, won’t be made real. Can’t remind you of how alone you’ll be after this is done.

You have much to do: you must make yourself into stone, kill your memories, kill your desires, find your future. Change the very nature of your soul, if you must, learn to live without him.

Noah settles on his mount, and you click your tongue, the three of you start to move forward. You’re afraid. A huge yawning pit of trepidation, of terror opening in your gut. This is how Joel must feel all the time. But there’s also the voice in your head, telling you this is something you need to do. No matter what. You feel so keenly, in your very marrow, that they’re waiting for you. There was no discerning evidence as to why you knew you needed to do this, why you felt you’d recognized her, but you did.

It seemed empirically impossible that the two of you’d have met each other at that precise moment last night. In the tumult of chaos that had crashed around the two of you in that dark wood, that the night had cleared for one precise second to allow you to look at her face, to see all she needed to voice but could not say; that she was terrified, that she needed help. There had to be a reason for that.

You’d been searching for reasons in meaningless things for far too long now. You knew this. You should apply your rational mind to questioning this hair-brained plan, tell yourself that leaving without Joel, despite the things he’d said last night, was suicide. You could very well die, either out there, at the hands of some monster, or in here, after he murdered you for going out there without him. Part of you didn’t really care anymore. A blanket of numbness clouding your judgment.

You’d always been a girl that had done as she was told, inhabited the place in life assigned to you. Perhaps now was as good a time as any to do something you weren’t supposed to.

You ride for several hours before you’re attacked. The silent woods surround the three of you, moving slowly in the general direction of the clearing from last night, and then further on towards the way which she’d fled. It’s peaceful, the steady cadence of the horses hooves, the wind disturbing the stillness of the trees like a whispered song of the leaves; you think they might be telling you to turn around, to go back to him. And then, as if you’d been struck by lightning, coming to after, only to discover catastrophe of the highest order. You tell yourself you won’t regret your choice to come out here, you won’t, no matter what happens, you all can fight, this was something you had to do. There’s chaos circling you, Vero and Noah’s shouts, a gun sounding, and then you turn to see Vero’s body falling to the ground. There’s a bullet wound straight through her skull, dead center, brain matter splattering behind her in a sick mockery of strewn life. You’re shocked into utter stillness, all thought, all understanding wiped from your brain as neatly as the bullet through hers. This is your doing.

And then fire, fire, fire, suddenly – shockingly. Pulverizing your ribs, your flesh, your very self. An inferno climbing up your chest, down your hip, and through your arm, spreading uncontrollably. You lose your seat on the horse, and then you too, are plummeting to the ground. The unyielding ground surging up towards your face like a cold wave. You feel as if you fall for centuries, and then your body is slamming sickeningly against the forest floor, your shoulder crunches and you want to howl; your head rebounding so hard you feel your very brain jostle inside your skull. Your vision flashes in and out, blurred and unfocused, and all you can discern are the mammoth figures of the trees around you. Looming over you like monsters in the dead of night, come to devour.

My secret, my secret, I never got to tell him.

You try to curl in on yourself, protect whatever remains of a body you’re not sure you possess anymore. More resounding shots of a gun, again, again, screaming and howling. Perhaps the wolves have descended. He’s going to be so angry, you think. My friends, my friends are dying because of me. Noah, where is Noah? Please, please, don’t be dead too.

You think that if you die, Joel and Ellie have to make up. They have to. He’ll need her so much.

Birdie, I love you. Birdie, Birdie, my Birdie.

You should have never left. You should have stayed with him. No matter what he said. What the hell did he know anyway? You should have fought harder. You should have stayed with him.

The dark lake of unconsciousness swallows you whole.

Chapter VII

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

#Joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller/reader #joel miller/you #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #joel miller imagine #the last of us #the last of us fanfiction #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #joel miller angst #FoG fic

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