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atinylittlepain · 1 year

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ok so given that the oscars just happened, imagine a joel x actress!reader. before everything went to shit joel was a normal human being who loved watching movies and like any basic person had a celebrity crush. fast forward and the world has gone to shit and joel and ellie (and maybe tommy too) go on a patrol that goes wrong and get saved by miss “i just smashed a guys head in with my oscar” or something like that, just a fluff and fun imagine that isnt gonna break my heart in a million pieces like last nights episode

oh my god, your mindddddd - I love this idea :)

Big Fan

Joel Miller x actress!reader

Joel Miller masterlist

Joel recognizes her right away. After all, she starred in his favorite movie of all time.

warnings | 18+ a little angst, nothing wild, this is fluff through and through

Read part two!

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

“Are you–”

“I am.”

“You were in–”

“I was.”

“Well I’ll be damned.”

“Alright, somebody better start speaking in full sentences, because I have no clue what the hell is going on.” Joel huffs, glancing at Ellie who's looking at him like he’s gone crazy, her gun still cocked at the woman in front of them.

“What? You don’t recognize her, kid? I just showed you Curtis and Viper.” Ellie’s brow furrows, but then she looks back at the woman and her eyes finally widen in recognition.

“Holy shit.” The woman laughs, eyes still focused on the barrel of Ellie’s gun.

“That’s not usually the movie people recognize me from. But I suppose it was my big break.” Joel nudges Ellie, muttering for her to put her “damn gun away, jesus christ,” and she quickly tucks it back in her belt.

He’s trying to not be weird right now, they did just kill five clickers together, but he’s finding it hard not to lose his cool over the woman who had been a silly crush of his since he first saw that cheap action movie as a teenager. He knows she did much better films afterward, remembers hovering behind the couch one night while Sarah was watching one of those awards shows, lingering just a bit longer when he saw her giving an acceptance speech with a blinding smile in a dress that probably cost more than his house. She’s certainly less elegant-looking now, but even after twenty years in a world like this, he can’t help the quick kick of his heart at actually meeting this woman in the flesh.

He clears his throat, also trying to clear his mind.

“Are you alone?” She sighs, wiping the blade of her knife on her jeans before sliding it back into its sheath.

“I wasn’t, and then I was. We were headed toward a settlement we heard about, I think a bit further north from here?” Joel keeps his expression steady, but can feel Ellie glancing at him. Movie star or not, he knows they have to be careful about who finds out about Jackson. But apparently, this woman isn’t just pretty, and she seems to pick up on the heavy pause after what she said.

“Do you two know about the place I’m talking about? Are we close?” Joel, sighs, looking at Ellie before making a decision that Tommy is probably going to smack him for later.

“We, um– we’re from there, actually. If you’re talking about where I think you’re talking about.” She huffs out a laugh, and offers them that megawatt smile Joel remembers seeing on his TV screen. Ellie, meanwhile, scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest as she glares at Joel.

“No shit. Do you think you have room for one more?” Joel’s eyes dart once more to Ellie, just seeing the subtle shake of her head, but he chooses to ignore it. How could he say no to the woman who had, embarrassingly, been one of his first wet dreams?

“You’ll have to talk with my brother, but I’m sure you’ll be welcome to stay on.” Megawatt, megawatt, megawatt. He reckons that smile could melt steel beams.

…

“Joel, what the fuck–”

“Ellie–”

“No, what are you thinking? If not Tommy, Maria’s gonna be so pissed she’ll probably cut your balls off.” He shushes the girl, glancing ahead at the woman hiking further in front of them.

“Look, she’s all alone– hardly a threat– and she’s looking for somewhere to stay–” She scoffs.

“Oh, so this has nothing to do with the way your eyeballs practically popped out of your head just looking at her?” He grumbles, hand tightening around the strap of his rifle.

“You just mind your own business, alright? I’ll take care of it.” Ellie huffs, starting to trudge further ahead of him, but not before muttering out “whatever you say, fanboy.” Joel is stunned still by her words.

“Where the hell did you get that word from?” She turns on her heel, walking backwards for a beat as she smirks at him.

“One of those old magazines. Pretty sure she was on the front page if you wanna borrow it.” Before he can get a word in edgewise, she’s already turning back around and continuing their hike back to Jackson.

…

“Holy shit. Joel, look who it is!” Joel grunts, nudging Tommy out of his starstruck stupor.

“Yeah, I know. Just hiked five miles with her.” Tommy laughs, slapping him on the back before grinning at her.

“It’s real nice to meet you. You know, Joel here had your poster on his bedroom wall–” The nudge he gives his brother this time is a little less friendly, causing Tommy to grumble and rub his arm. She, however, takes it in stride, laughing lightly as she shifts in her boots.

“I’m flattered, really. It’s, um, it’s nice to meet you, Tommy.” Tommy’s eyes go wide.

“I can’t believe you just said my name. This is crazy–”

“Tommy.” Joel cuts his brother off with a hard look before he embarrasses himself anymore. He clears his throat, seeming to get a hold of himself as Joel continues.

“She had been traveling with a group, looking for this place. She’s the only one left though. Was hoping to join the town.” Tommy grins again, glancing between her and Joel.

“Well, I’m sure we can make that happen. I think Joel would kill me if I didn’t let–” He squeezes Tommy’s shoulder hard, willing him to shut his mouth.

“That little house next to ours is still empty. Why don’t we set her up there?” Tommy’s smile at his brother’s words is all too smug for Joel’s taste, but he still nods, turning his attention back to her.

“If that’s alright with you, ma’am. I’ll let the folks know to turn the gas and electric back on for that place.” She smiles brightly at that.

“That would be amazing. Thank you so much. I owe you all big time.” Tommy snorts.

“I’m pretty sure you can pay Joel back with an autograph, he’d probably cre—“ Joel’s heard enough, resorting to kicking Tommy in the ankle to shut him up. Ellie huffs from where she’s watching their pathetic display.

“Alright, well if you two freaks are done making fools of yourselves, I’ll show her over to that house.”

…

When Joel gets home, the first thing he does is look at that DVD. He had found it a week or two ago on a patrol shift, left in a hollowed-out RV. Ellie was less than impressed and Maria refused to show it at movie night because it’s so gory, but he held onto it anyways. He can still remember going to see it in the theater with Tommy, both of them too young to get in if not for their friend working the ticket booth. He flips the case over in his hands, and sure enough, there she is on the back cover, looking impossibly beautiful while firing a machine gun. What’s not to like, right?

He’s broken out of his revelry by the sound of the front door opening, and soon enough, Ellie is stomping up the stairs to come looking for him. When she finds him in his bedroom, sitting on the end of his bed, she glances at the DVD he’s holding, a grin spreading over her face.

“Just like you remember, huh, old man?” He grumbles, getting up to set the movie back on the bookshelf before turning back to Ellie.

“She settling in alright?” She hums, nodding lightly.

“Yep, made a beeline for a shower. Told me to thank you. I told her you’d be coming around for your autograph later.” His face crumples in indignation while Ellie lets out a cackle.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But in all seriousness, I think she’s interested– in you– which pains me to even say, but, I figure you deserve to know that the woman of your pubescent dreams was asking questions about you.” Joel’s jaw goes slack, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead.

“She– she was asking about me?” Ellie nods around a smirk.

“Mmhmm. And I told her you’re a grumpy old bum who doesn’t take kindly to strangers.” He huffs, but she laughs again.

“Sorry, kidding again. I didn’t tell her much. Just that you’ll be around. But if I were you, I’d “be around” sooner rather than later, before the rest of Jackson gets a piece of her. Snatch her up before there’s sweeter bait to bite down on, you know?” He thinks briefly that he needs to see just what sort of magazines this kid is reading, because he can’t quite believe what’s coming out of her mouth. He grumbles, shaking his head at her antics.

“There ain’t gonna be any snatching going on. Just mind your–” She huffs, already walking out of his room.

“Mind my business, yeah, yeah, I know. But think about what I said, old man. Better cast your line quick for this one. My guess is you weren’t the only one who had her poster in your bedroom back before.”

He’s not letting that kid read magazines anymore.

…

When he steps out on his porch later in the afternoon, fully intent on what Ellie has affectionately started calling his “adult nap time,” he’s interrupted by someone calling his name. He catches sight of her sitting on the porch of the little house next door, waving and smiling at him like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“Hey, neighbor.” He tentatively waves back, but that doesn’t seem to satisfy her as she motions for him to join her. He sighs, rather stiffly walking over to her porch and joining her on the bench seat, keeping a very respectable distance between them. Clickers, raiders, general imminent danger, he can handle. Pretty lady? That’s touchy. Pretty lady who he imagined marrying as a teenager? Just put him out of his misery already. He knows it’s ridiculous, that none of that matters now. She’s just as worn and weathered as the rest of them by this crumbled world. But that smile she keeps flashing him might just bring him to his knees.

“I wanted to thank you– for bringing me along. I was, uh, starting to lose hope back there a little bit.” He nods, glancing at her.

“No need for thanks. Just the right thing to do in this world. I’m sorry– about your group. I don’t know what happened, but that couldn’t have been easy being out there on your own.” She shrugs, waving off his sentiment.

“It was barely a group to begin with. Just some folks who happened to get out of the San Francisco QZ together.” His brain is quickly trying to knit together the movie star he remembers from the past and this woman who sits before him now, an obvious edge to her.

“Were you in California? Back when everything…” She nods, her face set in a grim look.

“LA, where else? Now that was a nightmare. I bet the only worse place to be when everything went down was New York. Bodies everywhere. Don’t think I’ll ever forget it.” She lets out a humorless laugh before glancing at him.

“That movie you like so much? I remember when I got the role, I had no idea how I was gonna pull it off. Grizzled heroine with a dark past and a penchant for violence. I was nothing like her. But now, I feel a whole lot more like her and a whole lot less like me.” She sighs, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I dumped that on you.” Joel is quick to shake his head, leaning over his thighs to catch her gaze.

“No, no. I get it– in my own way, I guess. The world changed and– we had to change with it.” That coaxes a crooked smile out of her as she looks at him. A simple silence descends between them as they share quiet smiles. She finally giggles, scrunching her nose at him.

“That girl– Ellie? I think she said something about you wanting an autograph?” Joel can feel the hot blush creeping up his neck as his face goes slack. She just splits out in a laugh, tipping her head back in delight.

“I’m sorry, I’m kidding. But, you know, what I went by, what people still call me, that isn’t my real name.” Joel’s eyebrows quirk up and she sighs, shaking her head.

“Just a stage name. I don’t really mind people calling me that, but can I tell you my real name?” He can feel the smile tugging at his mouth as he nods. Before he knows what she’s doing, she’s taking his hand into her lap, slowly tracing out her name with her finger across his palm. An autograph, of sorts. He’s pretty sure his brain short-circuits, just barely stringing together her name as she finishes. He murmurs it lowly and she offers him her brightest smile yet, still holding his hand lightly in her own.

“And you’re Joel, right?” He’s only a little embarrassed by how quickly he nods.

“Mmhmm. Miller– Joel Miller, yep.” She lets out a breathy laugh, now clasping his hand in a firm shake.

“It’s nice to really meet you, Joel Miller.”

#joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller #joel miller x you #joel miller fluff #joel miller angst #tlou fanfiction #tlou #the last of us #joel miller imagine #joel miller blurb #request

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fairuzfan · 3 months

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Hey I am a Sudanese and I want to provide context to why what Motaz said is racist ... (I have to no ill feelings towards him or anything similar ... this is just for education purposes).

1. Attaching being black/dark skinned to being Sudanese. Yes it true Sudanese are "black", but people with dark skin exsist across all the Arab nations ... and Sudanese people have different sade and tone of blackness, you won't find two people with the same "color" in the same household (i.e siblings...etc).

We use different specific terms to describe different skin tone of blackness ... • wheat قمحي • Asmer اسمر• green اخضر •blue ازرق •black اسود.

Attach blackness to Sudanese lead to multiple racist remarks like some can reserve a question "how can you be Sudanese and be light skinned? You are probably mixed right?" .... and multiple portrayal of Sudanese by non-Sudanese actors in media lead to them doing "black face". (For example: ادوار ناصر القصبي في مختلف اجزاء "طاش ما طاش") and (there is a scene in the Egyptian movie "عيال حبيبة" where they meet a light skinned Sudanese person and they end up painting his skin black because light skinned Sudanese do not exist).

I am not talking about South Sudan or the west part of (north) Sudan "Darfur", I am talking about Sudan as whole. Sudanese are East African of course we are "black" (I am not gonna touch the subject of Colorism and tribalism that we suffer as a society).

2. The way he pronounced "Ana Asmar" it sounded like he is trying to imitate the Sudanese dialect by changing the "s" sound to sound like a "z" sound. (It ended up being more like "أنا أزمر" and not "أنا أسمر") ...

First of all: we don't talk like this ... sure some people sometimes change the "س" to "ز" like in the word "nine تسعة تزعة"، but never the word "Asmar اسمر" we say it as it is.

Second: it maybe a reach ... but sounded like a broken Arabic. We are Arabs we speak a normal arabic dialect like any other Arab nation ... (to tell how many times I met Arab for different nations and be surprised that I can speak and understand Arabic... like they expect us to speak in a different language).

This is why what he said in the video is racist and problematic.

Side Note: something related to racism towards Sudanese that unrelated to the video, I am saying this to educate people ... for the love of God عليكم الله when you meet a Sudanese person and know they are a Sudanese for the first time don't say "يعني انت زول؟" ... it is condescending. "زول" means: person/شخص/human it is not a specific term that mean Sudanese it is just a normal word that just means a person. Of course I am a "زول" and you are a "زول", everyone on this earth no matter their nationality/ethnicity/race is a "زول" ... so stop being racist.

I apologise for the long rant.

With love

thank you so much for sharing, i think this is really important for people to read. i really appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

i remember seeing other reasons why people were angry at what he said including how he was laughing instead of asking why the aid was in gaza and not sudan also, making it seem like hes taking the situation in sudan lightly.

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samkerrworshipper · 7 months

Text

found family | arsenal women x reader

no warnings just sickness, comfort and a little bit of angst

blurb: when r decides it’s a good idea to go out in the snow for the first time after training they suffer the consequences, and then suffer the consequences of trying to conceal their sickness

sorry if this draws on, wanted to give y’all something so this is from the drafts lol and idk how i feel about it

Doing snow angels after training in nothing more than shirts and shorts was never going to be a good idea, but I’d done it anyway. Me, Katie, Caitlin, Alessia and Beth having snuck out without telling any of our other teammates to have a moment in the snow. It was some harmless fun that we were sure our coaches and captains wouldn’t approve of, so we’d snuck out of the recovery room without anybody taking notice and had some fun in the snow. We hadn’t been out in it for much longer than 20 minutes, just long enough to slip out and in. It was rare for there to be so much snow so early in the year, I had hardly been expecting it and it wasn’t the normal sludge that North London was renowned for, it was proper fluffy white snow, the stuff you see in hallmark movies. I was the only player on the team who had never seen real snow before, so when I’d pleaded with Katie to take me out in it, she could hardly say no to me.

Beth, Caitlin and Alessia had just been casualties. Katie had taken Lessi under her wing since her start at Arsenal, the two had very quickly become bonded and there wasn’t much you could do with Katie anymore without Alessia and Caitlin being her companions.

Beth and Viv had happened to overhear our conversation in recovery and Beth had pleaded with us to let her come, Viv just shook her head at us, clearly in disapproval of our decisions but also not bothering herself with trying to stop us, there wasn’t any point, she wouldn’t win.

So we’d somehow managed to sneak out of the recovery rooms and out onto the spare field, which was covered in a blanket of white snow. Almost immediately I’d thrown myself down into the powder, shivering slightly at the coldness but not really caring, it was an experience that felt so incredibly surreal that I was in complete ignorance over my senses.

The four other women just sat and watched as I rolled around in the snow, Katie and Beth shaking their heads at my antics. Alessia busied herself with getting in a snowball fight with Caitlin. It had stayed fairly tame until I’d thrown one at Katie’s head and then it had turned into a full on war, ending with Katie and I wrestling in the snow.

Our snow escapades had ended with Beth forcing me out of the snow and into a jacket, I was shivering all ready but I didn’t care, my heart felt mended in a way that was inexplicably perfect.

I’d been forced into a hot shower by Katie, her overbearing motherly tendencies also making Alessia and Caitlin join me. Beth had been the only one to not enter the snow so she’d slipped her way into the dinner room whilst us other girls had been busy warming our bodies back up. Caitlin and Alessia were fairly quick, but I took a little bit longer, my body still shivering even as I exited the shower to throw on some sweats.

Katie’s furrowed brow was enough to tell me that she was a little worried about the fact that I was still shivering and cold, but she didn’t vocalise her worries, instead opting to rush me and the other girls into the dinner room. Somehow our absence had gone unnoticed, something that I was shocked by because we were hardly the quiet crew of the group.

I’d slid into a seat across from Viv and beside Steph, my body still a quivering mess. Viv’s eyeroll was enough of an ‘I told you so’, the older dutch woman clearly disapproving of our decisions. I tucked into my dinner, pesto pasta with chicken and garlic bread. It didn’t take long for Steph, my fellow Matilda to notice my shivering body. My fingers struggling every once in a while to hold my fork still.

“Little bit cold, y/n/n?”

I smirked and chuckled at the light implication from Steph, trying my very hardest to not give away the intense chills that were wracking my body, I was sure they would fade eventually.

“Just not fully used to this London weather I suppose, had someone warned me it was going to be so cold I think I would have stayed in Perth.”

Steph nodded at me knowingly, before returning to her conversation she’d been having with Beth, leaving me face to face with Viv, who had worry weaved between her brows as she studied me. Beth and Viv had just been two of the people who had taken me under their wing since my arrival at the Arsenal. Viv especially, although she’d never admit it, had particularly gone out of her way to look after me. On top of the two captains, Leah and Kim who had practically adopted me as soon as I’d walked through the doors. Leah was harder on me then anyone else, considering she was also a mentor to me on the defensive side of the pitch, so when she’d taken me under her wing I’d been a little bit terrified. She was always on my ass, I was always the first person in trouble with her and the first person to be blamed for anything. I was also the youngest on the team, and my personality was loud and bubbly, something that didn’t assist in helping me keep my head down around the team.

It was one of the reasons Beth and I got on famously, the both of us always looking to cause a little bit of mayhem but most of all have fun, Katie normally getting caught up in our antics considering she was the team's designated prankster.

Right now though, I felt anything but bubbly, my head beginning to pound against my trembling form as I pushed the pasta around my bowl, no longer feeling the overwhelming hunger I’d left a few minutes ago.

It was the clambering of a teammate sitting down beside me that pulled me from my daze, dropping my fork on the bowl as I turned to see who was sitting next to me.

“Hey lover girl.”

Kyra’s hand found it’s way to my head, ruffling my hair, her hand retracting back quickly though as soon as she made contact with my scalp, her eyebrows furrowing into a similar expression to what Viv had given me a few minutes ago when I’d been caught out by her.

“Why’s your head so cold? Feels like you’ve just come out of the ice baths.”

Kyra’s voice was nothing but friendly, but with the mixture of my sudden headache and my annoyance over people telling me that I was cold I couldn’t help but give her a bitten back response.

“I’m fine, just leave me the fuck alone.”

Kyra visibly flinched back at my words and everyone around us went quiet fairly quickly, everyone sensing the sudden tension and confrontation occurring between me and my teammate. Kyra slid into the seat beside me, one of her hands falling to my thigh which I immediately flinched away from.

“Everything okay, sweetie?”

I moved myself away from Kyra, inching myself further towards Steph, my other national teammate who seemed as equally confused by my behaviour as Kyra was.

“Y/n, a word?”

It was the voice from the other end of the table that captured my attention, Leah standing from the table already, clearly having detected the awkwardness between Kyra and I.

I clambered my way from my seat, scuffing my feet against the carpeted floor of the dining room as I tagged along behind Leah, following her out of the room and out into the corridor. I flicked the hood of my jumper over my head, toying with the drawstring as Leah turned to face me as soon as we were out of earshot from the group.

“What was that about?”

Her facial expression was as stern as ever as she looked at me, I kept my eyes on my feet, my head fucking hurt and I was still shivering, it was less noticeable though as I stood, I kept my hands out of sight and tried my very hardest to keep my body still.

“She was pissing me off.”

I could hear Leah frowning from in front of me, I didn’t need to look at her face to sense it.

“Does her pissing you off make it okay to tell her to fuck off, because I would hardly say that she deserved that, what’s up? This whole attitude is hardly normal for you.”

I kept my eyes focused on my shoes, toying with a bit of fluff that was stuck on the carpet, edging it slowly across the material with my shoed foot.

“Nothing’s up, I’m fine.”

Leah’s arm grabbing for my sleeve covered hand hadn’t been what I was accepting, the action drawing my eyes up to meet her own.

“I won’t have this piss poor attitude, go home, get some sleep and be here with a fresh mind tomorrow morning, understood?”

I pulled my hand from Leah’s, not letting her hold on to mine long enough to feel the tremors coursing across my skin.

“Aye, Aye, captain.”

I rolled my eyes at Leah, fake saluting her as I walked back into the dining room, picking my keys and phone up from the table quickly before exiting the building, not leaving any room to ask any questions as I stormed out of the room.

I somehow made it back to my apartment without passing out at the wheel, a miracle if you asked me. I didn’t have the will to do anything besides fall straight into my bed, very quickly changing into a pair of flannel pyjamas and stacking a pile of blankets on top of my sheets before climbing into the bed and relaxing into the mix of blankets, the mixture of heat and darkness calming my symptoms just enough to lull me into a fever induced sleep.

I woke up multiple times during the night, vomiting, coughing, sweats, chills, it all. My sleep was restless and by the time my alarms were going off I felt worse than ever. I was supposed to be at training by 9, but I could hardly manage to get out of bed to get to the toilet, let alone even attempt to try and put my training gear on and run around on a football pitch for three hours. I let my phone snooze one last time before flicking a text to Jonas, telling him that I was feeling a little bit under the weather and was just going to take the day to recuperate, all though something in my gut told me that one day wouldn’t be enough, not with the croaky cough that was wracking my whole body and the fever that I knew I was running. It was winter in London, I’d probably just picked up a 48 hour bug.

Jonas replied fairly quickly, telling me that he hoped I felt better and that it was a good idea to take a rest day.

With that text I turned off all of my alarms and burrowed back into my blanket fort, the effort of even having to look at my phone and piece together a text being too much for my head. My whole body hurt, my chest and ribs hurting every single time I took a breath, let alone coughed. The chills from yesterday were yet to pass, my whole body feeling like I was still out lying in the snow, even though I knew in reality my whole body was overheating. That thought still didn’t stop me from piling more blankets on top of my body, settling back into my bed with a groan as a wave of nausea and pain washed over me.

I faded in and out of the day, similarly to as I had done at night, my fever induced state making even my conscious moments feel like a dream. I ignored the incessant sound of my phone buzzing on my bedside table, opting to ignore anybody or anything that was popping up on it, I had one job in North London, play football, and I’d alerted my coach so that was as far as my social correspondence needed to go, any teammates or friends who decided my life was their business didn’t matter to me right now, my body hurt to much to care.

Somewhere around 5 or 6 the incessant coughing came to be too much for my body and I found my body keeled over the toilet bowl, dry heaving as I coughed up the mucus and phlegm that was caught up in my lungs. It was a painful experience, my lungs burning with every single breath that left my body, the oxygen burning on its way in.

I dragged myself back to my bed once I was done, the sun just beginning to set and my body having the capacity to do nothing more than lie down in my bed and wait for darkness to come so I could go back to sleep, tomorrow was our day off, so at least I didn’t have to worry about explaining another absence to Jonas.

My sleep through the night was even worse than the previous day, probably credited to the lack of energy I had in my body. The pain in my chest worsening drastically and in the wee hours of the morning I dragged a blanket and pillow into my ensuite, coming to the realisation that I didn’t have the energy to walk back and forth from the bathroom every time I had to go to the bathroom, which was fairly frequent with the amount of shit I was coughing up. I contemplated calling a teammate or Sam, whose apartment was fairly close to mine and I trusted her enough to ask her to come over. I didn’t though, opting to fall asleep on my toilet seat instead of getting up to go fetch my phone.

I stayed like that for most of the night, I think, honestly somewhere along in the night it all blurred into one. Until I was awoken brutally at 8am by the sound of pounding on my apartment door. I ignored it, half not believing that the sound was real and that it was just the sound of my fucking skull pounding against my brain in my head, a reflection of how my head had felt for the past 24 hours.

The knocking only grew louder and more persistent though, until it finally ceased and not much longer than 30 seconds later I was face to face with my two arsenal captains, both of their faces pink and rosy from the London cold and slightly exasperated.

“Hey skippers.”

My voice was laced with delirium, the only thing keeping me conscious at that point.

“Hey Joey, how you feeling?”

Leah walked cautiously towards me, letting Kim do the talking whilst she approached me and pressed the back of her palm to my forehead, grimacing almost immediately as her hand made contact with my own skin. I leant into the contact, her hand a relief from the fluctuating temperature my body had been upholding.

“Fuck, she’s burning up.”

Leah’s accent was thicker than normal, her voice covered in a blanket of concern that I’d never heard before.

“I’ll get Katie and Viv to come up, they can help get her into the car, we’ll have to take her to A&E, it’s bloody impossible to get an appointment with a doctor at this time of year.”

I shook my head at Kim almost immediately, or shook it as much as I could with the headache I had.

“M’ fine, just a 48 hour bug.”

My voice made me sound so much smaller, like I was a six year old and it was doing absolutely nothing to get my point across, in contradiction probably making my argument far weaker.

“Viv told us about you playing in the snow. What were you thinking? Playing in the snow with no clothes on after training, different breed you aussies.”

Kim mused at me, smiling a little bit as she watched Leah hurry around my bathroom, searching around. I frowned guiltily, knowing that once I felt better, once this was all over I’d be on the receiving end of a rather lengthy lecture about not endangering myself, a lecture I was sure Beth and Katie would have already received, considering Viv had snitched on us.

“I’m fine, I feel fine.”

My words were followed up by a fit of coughs that had me leaning back over the bowl of the toilet coughing up more phlegm, hardly a convincing point. My cough was dry, from the lack of fluids I’d consumed and the lack of liquids that were left in my body from the vomiting. My throat completely raw from the continuous retching.

“Don’t sound fine, sweetheart.”

Kim’s words were paused by Leah exclaiming as she located my first aid kit, that the two of them had put in my apartment when I’d moved in, claiming I was far too clumsy to not have one. She pulled out a thermometer almost immediately.

“I’ll make you a deal sweetheart, if you are below 38 then we’ll stay here. Me and Leah will look after you, like we could have yesterday if you had called us, or anyone. If you are above 38 though then we have to go to the hospital, because we don’t want you getting seriously sick, I know it sucks but we have to keep you safe sweetie. Kerr would have my neck if I didn’t return her best defender back in perfect condition when the international break rolls around, understood?”

I frowned at Kim, her stern scottish accent leaving no room for argument. I opened my mouth up to Leah, letting her slip the piece of metal into my dry and inflamed mouth. Waiting patiently until it beeped and frowning almost as soon as she saw it.

“41.”

Fuck. That number even made me frown a little bit, because that was unsafely high and all of us knew it. It explained all of my symptoms, and the cloud that I’d been floating on for the last day, a fever induced high that was the cause of my incessant sweating and shakes.

Kim frowned down at me, I shrugged at her in defeat, both of us knowing what it meant.

“C’mon sweet, let's get you changed and in the car.”

I looked up at Leah, my body folding in defeat as she bent down to lift me from the floor. I immediately wrapped my arms around her, letting her carry me back into my bedroom. She made quick work of changing me out of my pyjamas into a plain grey pair of sweatpants and an arsenal hoodie, giving me a peck to the forehead once she was done getting me changed. Her lips, cold from the London air felt so good on my burning skin, relaxing the itching and searing sensation that had covered every surface of my skin.

“Kim?”

Kim had busied herself with collecting a bag of my belongings, chargers, electronics, a change of clothes, and my toiletries. I had pretty much gone limp in Leah’s arms, letting her brush through my hair and comb it into a plait at the back of my head. The vice captain whispering sweet nothings in my ear as I groaned and coughed, my body tired from the constant pain.

“Yes, Joey?”

She took a pause in her hunt for my things, turning to face me, one of her eyebrows quirked at me in questioning. .

“Do you think you could text Sammy for me, please, and maybe Macca, I don’t want them to worry about me.”

My voice was so quiet I wasn’t even sure she’d heard it. The worry was growing on me though, the realisation that I really wasn’t as well as I’d been telling myself and Sam would want to be the first person called. Kim gave me a little smile before nodding and getting back to her job, collecting the last of my things just as I heard my front door open again.

“Of course I can sweet, let’s just get you in the car and then we can text whoever you need, alright?”

I heard Katie and Viv making their way through my flat, eventually making it to the doorway of my room, poking their heads around the side of my bedroom door.

As soon as I caught sight of Viv I bursted into tears, no longer being able to hold in the emotions that I’d holed up for the better part of the past 24 hours.

She was quick to be at my side, not protesting whatsoever as I threw myself into her arms, soaking the shoulder of her jumper with my tears and snot immediately. I was a blubbering mess, murmuring a flurry of apologies and admissions into Viv’s collarbone, the guilt of my actions settling into my gut.

“Hey, liefje, it’s okay, take some deep breaths for us.”

I burrowed my head into Viv, the feeling of sickness washing back over my body and making me feel worse.

“We’ve got you kiddo, I know you feel icky, but we need to get you to the hospital, to get you some help, so you can feel a bit better.”

I groaned into Viv’s body, rolling my eyes as she snickered a little bit at my reaction.

“I know you don’t want to, but we’re all really worried about you and you need some help, you're burning up like crazy, so let us take you, please?”

Leah’s palms were rubbing circles into my back, relaxing the muscles that were so tense. Viv’s arm was wrapped tightly around my shoulder, like she was protecting me from the world.

“C’mon kid, Katie and I have the car downstairs, all warm for you.”

Viv’s offer was enough to have me sighing in defeat and pursing my lips. I nodded half heartedly, letting Leah pull me from Viv’s arms so she could stand up. Leah helped me to pull my ugg boots over my feet whilst Kim and Katie finished collecting my things. I tried valiantly to walk by myself, but only made it to my doorway before my legs were weakening below me and Leah had to catch me. She carried me bridal style to the car, squishing me into the backseat between her and Kim.

My head found its way into the nook of Kim’s neck, silent tears and snot making its way down my face as we drove slowly towards the hospital. Leah, with a tissue at hand, very discreetly wiped at my face when I needed it and kneaded my arm muscles with her hands, helping my trembling hands to relax just a little bit. Slowly as we continued to drive any energy that I had previously possessed started to fade.

Kim called Sam, at my insistence, Sam was worried as soon as she heard Kim’s voice and after the explanation practically begged Kim to let her speak to me, so I was put on the phone with Sam, even at my reluctance.

“Joey?”

“Yup.”

“Hey sweet, how you feeling?”

I gulped slightly, not wanting to make Sam worry but also not wanting to lie to my skipper.

“Shit, I’m fine though.”

I could hear Sam’s eye roll from the otherside of the phone.

“41 degree temperature doesn’t sound too fine to me, what were you thinking?”

“Just wanted to have some fun.”

Sam’s scoff from the other side of the phone was enough to tell me she was more than displeased with my actions, something that most of the people in the car seemed to share.

“Next time you want to have fun, can you do it with someone other than McCabe, I hardly think she’s a role model for you, considering both of your reckless personas.”

Somehow Katie managed to overhear Sam’s words, a look of complete offence washing over her face.

“I’ll have you know Kerr that she practically begged me.”

Leah shushed Katie with a glare, the guilty look on Katie’s face told me she’d already had to hear a mouthful from our captains, and she would be on the receiving end of another one if she didn’t shut her mouth.

“Mm, sounds like our girl, well I’m going to go collect Alanna, Macca and Caitie, who are all very concerned about your wellbeing and we’ll see you at the hospital, okay?”

“Mm kay, thank you Sammy.”

As soon as the phone call ended I passed my phone back to Kim, relaxing my body back against hers, the actions of the day taking a toll on my body and resulting in a dramatic drop in my energy levels.

When we did arrive at the hospital I was hardly coherent, back on a fever induced cloud that made me hardly conscious. Katie was tasked with carrying me into the ER, Leah not being able to carry me much further than a few feet with her recovering knee injury. When we made it into the ER I was immediately tended to and sent straight into a room. My body was immediately connected to a series of machines and wires.

I fought against the nurses, to the point where Leah had to actually climb into the bed with me to keep me calm, my delusional body unhappy with the cold hands and cords connecting with my body. The contact with Leah though had seemed to calm me enough though for the doctors to be able to do their jobs and connect me up to monitors and IV fluids that my body was in desperate need of. There was a lot of bustling happening around me, but I kept my eyes closed, feeling instantly better when some pain relief and medicine was administered to my body, making me sleepy enough to fade into a deep sleep.

When I woke up I was hit with a reminder of my throbbing headache, my whole body hurt. Chest, ribs, head, it all hurt. I struggled to open my eyes and when I did my headache was only worsened by the light flooding into my room through the gaps in my blinds. I was shocked by the sheer amount of people crowded in my room, a different room to the one I’d fallen asleep in. My eyes flashed across my body, taking in all of the wires that my body was connected to, wires, leads, IV cords, my body was covered in more wires than it was skin. I panicked almost immediately, reaching to pull at the cords but my hands were stopped almost immediately.

“Hey Joey.”

It was Kim’s eyes that caught my own, her deep Scottish accent getting my attention and taking it away from the crawling feeling across my skin that all of the wires were causing.

“W-What happened?”

My eyes were darting across the room, my brain trying to remember what course of events had lead to me being in this position. My eyes caught onto my teammates, who were piled on sofas and chairs in the room.

“You went out in the snow, do you remember that? Katie took you out and you got a chill from it, because your body was vulnerable with the cold you developed pneumonia, pretty serious, you had us all worried for a little bit. Leah and I came to your apartment, because you hadn’t shown up to training and we were all worried about you, and we found you and took you here.”

It was a lot of information to take in, I couldn’t do much more than nod my head at Kim, like a goldfish.

“M’ sorry for worrying you.”

Kim smiled at me, shaking her head.

“It’s okay Joey, all forgiven, we’ll talk about it another day, right now you need to focus on getting yourself better.”

I pursed my lips, eyeing Sam who was sitting at my bedside, looking me up and down. There was a lot of emotions on her face, her jaw was locked and I could see some disappointment and concern in her eyes, amongst other things.

“Sam-.”

“We’ll talk about it another day Joey, I’ve already laid into McCabe about not giving into you, I don’t think Williamson is going to be letting you out of her sight anytime soon. I just want to know why you didn’t call me, or anyone. Sweet, there are so many people around who care about you and you worried us all, had you called anyone when your symptoms had started to show, or even the previous morning this all could have been avoided.”

Sam’s voice was stern, the voice she used when she mad at one of her girls for getting in unnecessary trouble.

“Didn’t want to bother anybody.”

Sam stood up at my reply, taking two short steps to my bedside and looking at Kim.

“Nobody in this room would have felt bothered, you were sick y/n, seriously sick and had Kim or Leah not decided to come and check on you, you could be dead right now, or in the ICU. You are so lucky to have a group of people that genuinely care and love for you and it worries me that you aren’t utlising that, what did I promise your parents when you told them that you were going to be making the move to London?”

I bit down hard on my lip. Sam had always been like my second mom, or older sister, ever since I’d started playing with the Matildas, when I was 15. She’d been a major influence in my life, so when my parents had found out that I had plans to move to North London to play for Arsenal at 19 they were displeased to say the least, I was hardly 18 as well, still a baby. They’d made Sam promise a bunch of things to them, considering we were both in London together.

“That you wouldn’t let anything happen to me, and you’d keep me safe.”

Sam’s jaw locked even more than it previously had, her eyes were dark brown, stormy almost, I could feel the internal conflict she was going through just by looking at them.

“Exactly, so how do you think it makes me feel when you are endangering yourself? It makes me feel like I should be calling your parents and telling them that maybe this wasn’t the best decision, maybe you need another year or two at home before you can live by yourself out here.”

I shook my head at Sam, that was the last thing I wanted. After all, it had taken so much begging with my parents to get me out here in the first place, being sent back practically ensured they’d never let me come back out here.

“Sam, please, this is where I need to be.”

“I have no doubt in my mind that those words are true, on a playing level you should be here. But you continue to prove that you can’t be trusted to make decisions for yourself. Going out in the snow was crazy, not telling anyone you felt sick was crazy. You're not proving to me or your parents that this was a good idea.”

I could feel tears brimming up in the back of my eyes. It had taken a lot of effort to get my parents to let me be here, there was nothing they wanted less than to send their eighteen year old daughter to London, all by herself, playing in a senior women's team.

“Please, please let me stay. I can’t go home, if I go home then that’s the end for me, Perth won’t take me back after how I left. My parents have enough on their plate with six other kids, let alone having to deal with me, please, I need to stay. I’ll make better decisions, I promise, please just let me stay.”

I’d shot up in the bed, tugging the cords and blankets up with me. Sam sat herself down on the edge of my bed, looking at me eye to eye.

“I know you’re sorry, and I really want to believe that you can do this, there is nothing that I want more than for you to be here and proving how amazing you are, but your risking your own health Joey, and I toe the line there. What happens when you get injured and decide not to tell anybody, I know you and I know that you are never going to ask people for help and I can’t be around 24/7 here to look out for you, if I could I would. I can’t trust that you are going to look after yourself when I’m not here.”

I felt a series of big, fat, wet, warm tears drip down my cheek, I felt like shit and all of my dreams were being crushed.

“We’ll look after her, we’ll take her in if we have to. Nobody wants to see y/n/n going home because of this, we’ll look out for her, please don’t make her go home.”

It was Beth’s voice, from the other side of the room that caught my attention. There was a guilty expression across her face, Alessia, Katie, Caitlin and Beth all carrying the same similar guilty expression, my accomplices.

Sam turned to Beth, it was clear she was tossing up her options.

“Beth’s right, she should stay, she’s worked hard enough to stay and we can hardly afford losing any defenders right now. I’ll take her in, she can move into the spare room in my house, I run a tight ship, I’ll keep her under control.”

It was the voice of Leah that was both my saving grace and sent a chill of fear down my spine. Moving in with Leah didn’t exactly sound like my dream situation, I knew that Leah would hold me accountable for my shit, something I wasn’t necessarily ready to deal with. Sam had immense respect for the England captain though, often times she’d expressed to me how much she admired Leah for doing what she did at such a young age, she was stern though, she didn’t forget anything and nothing got past Leah.

“Okay, if she can move in with Williamson then she can stay, this is all stuff we can talk about when you are feeling better though, you need your rest joey, with all those meds running through your body god knows how tired you must be, hm?”

I squirmed a little bit under the covers, not wanting to give into Sam’s words but also not denying that she was right, I did feel tired. Sam’s hand found its way to my cheek, wiping away the tears I had shed and giving me a little smile, the smile she kept for these moments, the rough ones that warranted some kind of assurance that it was all going to be okay.

“Go to sleep Joey, we’ll figure it all out when you are feeling better, right now you need rest, so you can feel better.”

I relaxed back into the uncomfortable hospital pillows, that all of a sudden didn’t feel so uncomfortable to my body, which was slowly starting to fade into a deep cloud of sleep. Sam pressed a kiss to my hairline before sitting back down in her seat and watching me drift off to sleep. Maybe everything wasn’t perfect, maybe I still had things that I needed to learn but I did have one thing, and that was a family that I’d found in my teammates.

#woso #woso community #leah williamson #arsenal wfc #arsenal women #arsenal x reader #arsenalwfc #kim little #sam kerr #sam kerr x reader #kim little x reader #katie mccabe #alessia russo #beth mead #vivianne miedema #caitlin foord #sickfic

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punksocks · 11 months

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wmarximoff · 1 year

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𝐤𝐧𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐭 | 𝐰. 𝐦𝐚𝐱𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐟𝐟

summary: to get what she wants Wanda will do anything - including hurting you.

warnings (18+): smut, strap-on sex (r receiving), non-con, a bit of dacryphilia, breeding kink, loss of virginity, forced pregnancy, toxic relationship, manipulation, heavy angst. MINORS DNI.

pairing: Wanda x fem!reader

word count: 3k

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༺ᱬ༻

At dawn, gray and foggy, the bitter winter temperature would arduously exceed the limitations of common sense degrees demarcated by popular thermometers.

The vehement peak of the serene dawn, as placid and peaceful as it ever was to be, had been swallowed up by a broad blanket of white, chaste snow; blizzard which had interspersed, crossing from north to south along the entire longitudinal extent of the ten thousand hectares located near the tiny town of Westview, New Jersey. You weren't born in there and, in fact, you barely knew that place at all.

The whiteness of sprays of snow in flakes of polished ice continued to crumble through the openings of the dense clouds, and a pale veil of frost took more and more possession of the tiles above the roofs and the tops of the enormities of the hills around the town, inferring a white and crystalline color.

You retained your own private assumptions about the phenomenon, however, and attributed it to increasingly distressing global warming (come on now Tony Stark, you could very well reverse global warming if you really wanted to!). But maybe you still held such a mundane concern at your core just to keep a sober dose of normality within you, and not give in to the long chants of long lonely days, as maddening as they could be.

The days that had passed gradually slipped one over the other, consubstantiating, consolidating into a single amalgam, and you no longer knew what to do to ward off the acute boredom that was consuming your nerves little by little like an autoimmune disease – there was no book to read or movie to watch that would wriggle your soul out of the lonely corners of a world you'd been segregated into, walls slowly closing in around you one by one. You were alone. Utterly alone.

Through the dim glass of the wide window of your solitary room, you gazed, with your gaze watered by the apathy that is intrinsically sprinkled in your irises and sluggish limbs and heavy in your joints like lead, the occluded sky of dawn – the few gloomy trees raised in the neighborhood surroundings like fortresses of dark, thick foliage, swaying on their own axes as the constant wind dictated outside their painted plaster walls.

With a sliver of fresh skin on your right temple pressed against the cloudy glass, so cold to the touch, your dead eyes followed the willow tree of snow outside as if it were natural, as if it was common to snow at that time of year and as if she wasn't using the situation to her whim, wherever she was at that moment, as much as she was everywhere at the same time.

Right, screw global warming. You were living like a little snowman cloistered inside your own particular snow globe – free from your point of view, but trapped inside the dome.

The truth was that Westview was a huge board full of pieces all situated in their proper squares, the vast majority composed of pawns as maneuverable and disposable as they could be, endlessly, always ready to be used and discarded and then replaced – and you were the queen of them, the most important piece to be cherished, but like everyone else, at your core, you would be just another component part of the grand scheme that Wanda Maximoff ruled with an iron fist. One wrong step and you were out, checkmate.

In a time that then sounded remote, an echo of a dream derived from a memory already forgotten, perhaps seven or eight months ago (you only calculated the passage of time by the gradual expansion of your belly, which then encompassed a larger roundness than a basketball), you were free. You were young and you were free and the world was a little less terrible than it could be.

But Wanda had kidnapped so much of you, in fact, disfigured you into a bizarre parody, a grim reflection of who you once were – but of your own free will you gladdened to the end in an elan worthy of praise, in the greatest pose of a soldier who is willing to kill and die for the glory of your people, despite the notion that you were fighting a vain, lost battle.

At the end of the day you were still her possession to be used and abused however Wanda saw fit. She saw everything, and everything she controlled.

You were nothing but a poor college student, still so full of spirit, and your captor was an esoteric entity versed in superhuman capabilities, the wielder of celestial powers who, according to herself, was also a multidimensional traveler – whatever meaning it held, or at least what she meant by such an eccentric statement as that.

All you knew was the things she could do and undo with a simple, banal hand movement, and how it affected you.

The fact was that you were alone, isolated, confined to an unknown town where escape was infeasible and outside contact was nothing short of scarce, subject to the pleasures, daydreams, paranoia and whims of a woman deeply troubled by her own inner demons, that you supposedly hated, but couldn't get away from even if you wanted to. Not when she was growing on you like a parasite, literally and figuratively speaking.

It was clear as the snow outside – conceiving Wanda's offspring in your womb (albeit at odds with your own individual desires at first, but attempts to shed such a burden proved, at first, flatly flawed and highly unnerving to Wanda's exhausted mind, who wasn't used to being a very reasonable person), whom she held so dear, there would be no way to nurture a flame of hatred for that woman that would not be extinguished quickly; no matter how little you knew about her for as long as your pregnancy lasted, Wanda's humanity, so disparate from the morbid cruelty at the bottom of those abyssal green irises, resided in the bosom of motherhood for which she cherished so much.

In the intimate caresses exchanged between her gentle blackened fingertips and your swollen belly, there was a kind of love so subtle and genuine that it almost erased from your memory the fact that you didn't want to be there in the first place. Her contact with that embryo was covered by a lapse of vulnerability, and that's why that witch once proved to have been as human as you were.

At a certain point, goodness was already given for those intentions, when there was not a shadow in her very existence. Deep down you just knew she was good. But it was no use if kindness was eclipsed by a haze of cruelty.

The faint gleam of her smile was enchanting, and the jadish irises were drowned in waves of tears that pooled behind long, thick dark lashes, right at the waterline of the one who so affectionately gazed at your belly by her rotten right fingers. At some point, you knew, you just knew that Wanda had given as much love to the world as she had to the unwanted child in your womb. You wondered what it was that had stolen Wanda's innocence so voraciously that, in the end, she ended up stealing yours too.

“Twins,” in one night she came, and Wanda had smiled at the utterance of her own words, never breaking her gaze from the skin stretched just below your navel, “My boys.”

Her touch felt cold, plastered like a corpse's hand. Everything about Wanda was somewhat cadaverous, reminiscent of the dead – although a veil of purity always overshadowed her dying features (for that witch was indeed beautiful), the dark, sharp circles under her eyes and the deep fleshed cheeks made her a spectral creature, unreal, with the waxy pale skin that so accentuated those emerald eyes that squandered a nuance of intense feeling.

You were never quite sure how to pinpoint what was going on inside her mind, although she always expressed that there was something there to look for.

“How,” you muttered with your eyes focused on anything but her, your shirt pulled up to expose your swollen stomach, not a smile found on your lips' commission to reflect that woman's.

The situation in which everything of the last few months had culminated in your stomach was in knots – the idea that it was done, and now you had nowhere to run from her.

“How can you be so sure, Wanda? Twin boys... that's a pretty... specific guess, I think. It could just be a boy, it could be a girl,” in the room lit by the orange flames of a fireplace that turned Wanda's hair as red as blood, you blinked, “It could be anything.”

“I just know,” lisped the woman who owned the long auburn locks that fell below her breasts, sketching a ghost of a vaguely nostalgic smile on her well-shaped lips, like someone wistfully remembering something that is gone and will never come back.

“I… just know it's them. My… our boys.”

There was a brief pause interspersed by the crackling fire in the dry wood, a breath held within bristling lungs.

“Thank you, Y/n.”

Your eyes finally turned to Wanda, who was crouched in front of you. She looked at you in gleaming green like she did the first time she made you bleed, when she emptied herself inside you, condemning you to that sick moment of intimacy with her.

“I know you don't understand this right now, not this version of you at least, but,” her jaw moved slightly, speaking at length in her speech, as if she were speaking like a child, seeking to express clarity. As if she had to plan her words carefully.

“I love you, детка . Everything I've done so far is because I love you, Y/n. You and our boys, our family. Everything I did was for you. I hope one day you can understand that and forgive me for what I did.”

Your eyes stung and sickly bile rose to the surface of your tongue at that controversial statement of hers. She knew it was wrong, she was fully aware of it. You could never imagine that whatever resulted from that one-sided relationship between the two of you could fall under the nominations commonly associated with the definition of “a family” .

You already had a family to call your own and belong to, a father and mother and siblings too, and from them you were usurped by her. That couldn't be a family, not that relationship structure, not you and her. Not when you weren't even twenty and barely even aware of what, say, Wanda's last name would be.

That night you cried yourself to sleep. And, like every night before that, Wanda listened until you fell into the softness of your own sleep clouded by layers of thick, salty tears.

But the warm, abstruse sweetness behind Wanda's hideous facade made her as seductive as the apple would have been to Eve, and the fragility that rarely saw the light of day made her seem so small compared to the times you feared for your life as she chained her hands behind your back and sternly brought her hips to meet yours over and over again.

You've also heard her cry before going to sleep. It just so happens that she was the one making you suffer, while you just had to put up with her external suffering.

Wanda was a complex puzzle to understand, so fluctuating, fascinating and unpleasant at the same time, like a new flavor to try, bad at first, but then becoming dangerously charming to the palate. And you didn't know whether you wanted to put those pieces together into one uniform image, or throw them in the trash and close the lid.

In fact, if traced back to the beginnings of your gloomy model of relationship (at least in the most primitive sense of the word, summarized only to the exchange of physical touches between two controversial animals, to, moreover, the imposition of physical contact from one part to the other), it was as if Wanda saw what she solemnly did to you as an artifice, a mechanism, a forced method to an end you never chose to have. It was as if she was just performing a necessary sacrifice that justified the means she chose to use.

She apologized again and again because that inside of you stung and hurt when she ripped something inside you, and she worked hard to make you like it too, even though you barely knew her at the time, and in fact just waking up from the stillness of your sleep to the uncomfortable feeling of a foreign body on top of you, with your legs spread wide and streams of fresh crimson blood dishonoring the sheets down your thighs, ripping you in half like no one before her had ever done.

“Shh, it's okay Y/n, it's okay. It's okay, you’re okay детка.”

She lisped that night with the palm of her right hand screwed to your lips, stuffing your protests behind your teeth (scorched-tipped fingers sweeping strands of your hair behind the shell of your ear, Wanda in a red tiara looking like would cry as much as you already did). The first time you saw her, that strange woman invading your room and also you, she seemed as uncomfortable with what she was doing as you felt with her tucked inside your innocence.

“I know it hurts, baby, I know, I…” Green eyes then pulled away from your face contorted in sharp pain, as if, for half a second, she couldn't even look at you in that state. As if, in your room, she would burst into tears with you.

“I'm very sorry. I'm really, really sorry детка , but I have to do this. It’ll pass, alright? Will pass. It’ll fit, we'll make it fit, okay? Just take a deep breath. This will be quick, I promise. I,” Wanda choked on her own words, “I'm so sorry, Y/n.”

And it went on for quite a few sluggish minutes – the headboard hitting the wall rhythmically, hard and slow behind your head, your white cotton underwear crumpled and discarded at the foot of your bed, your eyes focused on how much the sharp points of that scarlet tiara that seemed to protrude from the top of her skull resembled two demonic horns as they rose and fell in the dark of your room, above you.

When your conscience woke up, the very next morning and in a room you were not at all familiar with, the wet pain between your legs was the final sentence given that you were already her property. And you tried to run away, wander the streets of Westview, cry out for help from your new assigned neighbors, but they were smiling like machines, nothing was wrong. Nothing was ever wrong.

And the visits continued, scheduled for sunset; the fall of the veil of night was the apogee of your fate – in that house with dismal walls, dark shadows lightened by the tongues of fire that burned in the hearth, Wanda came in the form of that crimson specter to do what she had to do. And time had washed the regrets from her soul, when did the pleasures of the flesh begin to burn hotter on her skin.

“Dерьмо,” Wanda anathematized one night in a sigh under her breath, moaning in a thick accent in the roof of her mouth as she stood behind you, blackened fingers digging deep into the skin of your hips as hers pierced into yours.

“Dетка, you feel so good, s-so good, Y/n...” she gasped, your white-knuckled fingers screwed to the sheets moving beneath you both, “Fuck, I missed you so bad...”

“I-it hurts,” you squealed beneath her, your right cheek rubbing against your pillowcase, your teeth clenched, your jaw set, “W-Wanda, Wanda wait– go slow, you're– you're hurting me, Wanda, please slow down–”

“I'm going to come,” she suddenly announced, indifferent to your protests, “Fuck, I'm going to come inside you, Y/n.”

The cognition of such a sentence haunted the nerves of your spine. At that point, you already had basic knowledge accumulated about her – she was called Wanda Maximoff, she was from another universe and, as a factor of greater relevance to emphasize, she was capable of performing and handling magic, something that for you, until that moment at the time, was nothing more than a fictitious topic. And, if she was qualified to run an entire city on her own, she might well be able to turn something as frivolous as coming inside you with a fake phallus into a permanent action and one fraught with the most undesirable consequences.

“No-!” you immediately chafed then, trying to crawl your body away from hers on the bed sheets, “Wanda, don't– don't do that– Wanda–!”

But with a pull and a jerk she held you steady, your hips up, ribbons of scarlet energy restraining your wrists bound to the bed, just to the side of both your temples. And the notion that you couldn't even move caused warm tears to pool in the waterline of your eyes, clouding your view of the raised wall to the left of the double bed located in the heart of that partially lit room by the dull bulb of a bedside lamp.

“Hold still, детка, I-I'm almost,” she growled, her hips hammering against yours in essentially violent movements, “Almost there–!”

“No, pull out,” you whimpered, “Wanda, pull out, don't do that, don't do that, Wanda– Wanda, please–!”

“I need to do this Y/n, I fucking need to–!”

“Wanda, please–!”

She didn't pull out. She never pulled out – the point was not to pull out, it was that she emptied herself inside you, painted your insides with that magical secretion that only a few weeks later proved to be appropriate for the purpose Wanda had in mind. And she didn't touch you anymore, not that way, when her goal was achieved – with the plan completed, all she had to do was wait for your organism to do what it had to do. And so the months passed, snow fell on that simulated dome. Her visits weren't as frequent anymore.

“Why me?” you asked her once, as she stroked your belly through your thick crimson wool sweater.

Crouched down in front of the couch, Wanda raised her eyes to you like she always did when she was trying to communicate with the child she had shoved inside you.

“Because I love you,” was her answer, of course. A wave of ominous disgust twisted your insides at that oblivious response, as if Wanda were genuinely alienated from the reality of where she was your captor and aggressor.

“You barely know me, Wanda,” you spat, “And I barely know you. This isn't love, you're using me like a fucking incubator. You’re sick and you fucking know it.”

She lowered her head in front of your prickly speech, a lock of reddish hair piercing an emerald iris of hers, while Wanda's left fingers, dark as pitch, kept stroking your belly through a layer of clothing. She compressed her lips into a long line, and you held your breath. From your point of view, Wanda, stripped of that crimson armor she always wore and then tucked into casual clothes, sweatpants and a sweater as thick as your own, looked small and confused like a child, a little girl.

“You used to know me,” she muttered quietly, “Where I come from, you used to know me. We were married. We had our boys. You... for as long as it took in Westview after I had you back again, you were my world after I lost everything.”

You blinked once.

“Westview?”

She looked at you again.

“Yes, Y/n. Westview. They took you from me, more than once. But the second time they took our boys too. So I,” there was a pause in her speech, “I had to look for you in another reality. In a reality where nothing could ever get out of my control again.”

And for half a second you looked back at her.

“Wanda,” the palm of your right hand slowly snuggled against her left cheek, which approached your touch in an almost pathetic neediness, when was it that you looked into her eyes, “You’ll never have control over me, no matter how hard you try.”

She closed her eyes as a tear trickled down her cheek.

“I know.”

When the twins were born, you didn't want to hold them. And, begrudgingly, Wanda understood. She understood that she could never have you, not after what she had done to you, but to her consolation at least there were those boys left for her.

And she had been benevolent in letting you go, as if she had released a bird from its caged captivity, erasing from your memory any and all discernment of what your relationship had been like for ten months or so, abstracting from the confines of your mind the idea of how much she had harmed you by excluding herself from your memory. You went back to your old life, and she started a new one.

Time has come and gone. You had no sense of the past, and no one in your social circle even seemed to notice your absence for nearly a full year – it was like a dream, a memory, a lie. A kind of collective amnesia. You moved out of your parents' home after graduation and obtained a steady job in your field of work. And, after a while, you decided that it might be good to share your life with a second person – soon enough, a relationship blossomed between you and a dark-haired woman you met during a snowy winter day in a coffee shop.

Your girlfriend was a few years older than you and a single mom, but it turns out you got along great with her kids, and she was the best partner anyone could ask for. And when, on a warm summer day in the city park, Wanda offered you a strawberry ice cream cone right after presenting Billy and Tommy with their respective favorite flavors each, you genuinely smiled at her.

“Thanks, baby,” and then, you kissed her on the cheek. Billy asked Tommy to play tag, and the older twin accepted.

Wanda smiled at you. She smiled at you as if she didn't know how much she had already hurt you. “You’re welcome, детка.”

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sarahgadonnews · 10 months

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youtube

#Sarah Gadon #North Of Normal #Trailer #Film #Movie #Robert Carlyle #Youtube

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minustwofingers · 1 year

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exoplanet p.1

masterlist

ellie williams x fem! reader (ur kind of a girly girl in this one sorry)

summary: you’re one of the luckiest people in the world as one of the few families that managed to gain entrance to the most exclusive safezone on earth. after living 19 years of your life in a soft and forgiving world, a lab accident sends you across the country to jackson, wyoming, entirely unprepared and unaware of what awaits you in the real world. its a good thing u run into a hot lesbian wink wink nudge nudge

a/n: now listen now hear me out i know this plot sounds kooky asf and im sorry i literally thought this shit up in a covid fever dream. but anyway i basically blacked out at the keyboard and have about 6k words to show for this weekend and no completed hw. i can’t believe im writing. this im so sorry

warnings: ellie is mean asf at first, reader is clueless and cannot do a pushup, you’re also a little bit of a snob and have a fixation on etiquette. i promise it gets better just bear w me lMAO. she/her pronouns for the reader, v vanilla violence and explicit language. kinda enemies to lovers vibe

im so sorry u guys idk what got into me this is the goofiest au i’ve ever written ok but i just want ellie to get to learn abt the stars and shit after all she’s been thru she deserves it ok enjoy part 2 coming whenever i finish it.

wc: 6k

It wasn’t that you didn’t know that something bad had happened to the rest of the world. You did. Of course you did. You’d have to be a special kind of stupid to not realize that there was maybe something else going on when no one was allowed outside of the walls and anyone who returned told hushed stories of decimated buildings and piles of corpses.

It was just difficult to grasp the idea of the world you knew no longer existing outside the bounds of the city. To anyone before the pandemic, you’re sure that you lead what seemed like a normal life for any privileged kid.

You had two parents, both of whom loved you very much. You went to an elementary school, then a middle school, and then eventually high school and university. You went shopping with your friends. You watched movies and ate shitty junk food and had first kisses and went on ice cream dates. You studied what captivated your interest the most—space—and threw your soul into learning about the physics of the universe.

You laid on your dorm bed, playing with the edges of your pink comforter as you gossiped with your roommate, Irena, about the professor that she thought was hot and the boy who tried to harass you for your number after you’d finished up getting lunch.

You lived a normal life, which is pretty ironic, because the only reason you got to say that was because you were born to not-normal people who had been at the right place at the right time when the world fell apart.

You see, when everyone got sick, some areas got hit harder than others. And your parents, who were vacationing in some swanky exclusive Canadian resort that only the elite knew about, happened to hit the jackpot.

Not only was their vacation spot the one area in North America with a significant metropolitan population that managed to get enough time to adequately prepare, they happened to be traveling with some big-wig execs that knew a guy who knew a guy who was in the process of evacuating and putting the final touches on a safe zone, Terranova, intended for only the highest rungs of North American society.

So, there you were. Some 25 years or so after the world as your ancestors knew it fell to shit—and you were sipping cappuccinos and getting facials without a care in the world. All because of a lucky vacation.

And, for the record, it’s not that you were ungrateful. You knew that you were lucky to be living in the last place on earth with a semblance of normalcy. What you didn’t know, however, was just how lucky you were, and you didn’t find this out until you made that one stupid mistake in Gunther’s lab.

“Morning, Y/N!” called out Professor Gunther, a short, squatty man with a receding hairline so impressive that his forehead now ended halfway up his scalp.

“Morning, Professor,” you said, setting your bag down on the desk, winding your long scarf from around your neck and running a hand through your hair to get the tangles out. The wind outside had been especially fierce for February, which was not ideal given that you'd forgotten your hat at home.

“Guess what I’ve got?” Gunther was smiling, his teeth perfect white squares.

You gasped. “No. It’s already here?”

He said nothing; instead, he pushed forward a slightly battered box with dents and various smudges and marks that were telltale indicators for outside shipments.

“No way,” you said, pulling it into your hands. For a moment you debated using your nails to open the seam, but you’d just gotten them done, so you reached for a pair of scissors on the table.

“This is even more than we need,” you told Gunther, reaching in to pull out a spool of wire that shimmered under the lab lights. “Can I just hook it up now? Or is there something else I should do?”

There was, in fact, something that you should’ve done before going with your pliers and wire. Something about your model wasn’t quite right, but you’d figure that out a little too late.

You see, you and old Professor Gunther were attempting to build a prototype that would enable travel at the speed of light. It did sound insane—and you should’ve known that it was a pipe dream—but you were a space nerd with nearly limitless funding and support from one of the most famous surviving professors in the world. It had been Gunther’s pet project, one that you joined as a research assistant in your first year at the university. Once you’d caught wind of it, you couldn’t stay away, and you two quickly began to form a connection only understood by lonely and isolated academics.

“Go for it,” said Gunther, waving his hand dismissively.

Excitedly, you approached the table, your hands almost shaking as you held the wire. It was a fairly new invention, first used in the creation of Terranova and its walls to effectively make it invisible to the outside world. It boasted a variety of properties that made it academically fascinating and functionally useful. Gunther had had a suspicion that it would be useful in stabilizing the process of disseminating atoms to make light speed travel possible, so you’d placed the order for a couple of spools.

“And I think that’s it,” you said, using your pliers to shape the blunt edge that you had just clipped and plugging it into the circuit board. A purple sheen seemed to vibrate around the bundle of wires and boxes.

Gunther leaned over your shoulder, peering at everything through the spectacles perched on his pudgy nose. “Well done, dear. Say, before we turn this thing on and start running some preliminary tests, would you mind grabbing us some tea from the caf? My treat.”

“Of course,” you said, standing up and brushing your hands off. “Lapsang?”

He nodded. “And anything you’d like.”

You pulled my scarf back on, pulling it snugly around your neck and snatching your bag from the table. The walk to the cafeteria was short, but it was cold enough to require suiting up again. You ordered, paid with Gunther’s card, and sat quietly as you watched the snow fall outside.

It was a beautiful morning. The wind had died down, leaving the snow to fall from the gray skies in fat, puffy flakes. The city outside was quiet, with only the gentle hum of the occasional car to break the silence.

“Y/N! A Lapsang Souchong and a Jasmine Green?”

You leapt up and grabbed the two disposable cups, smiling widely at the barista. “Hey, would you mind throwing a bag of coffee in too?”

“Anything specific?” he asked.

“I don’t know anything about coffee,” you admitted. “Anything that isn’t decaf. It’s for my roommate.”

He nodded and rang you up for the coffee, and you were back on your way.

“My dear!” boomed Gunther when you came back, throwing the lab door open and nearly floating off the ground in excitement.

“Lapsang with a spot of honey, as always,” you said, passing the cup into his hands. The bite from the heat slowly faded from your palm—the barista had forgotten to put a sleeve on his cup.

“Lovely,” he said, setting it down next to you. “I’m just going to go ahead and flip the switch…keep your wits about you! Haha.”

“Ha,” you said, though suddenly you were getting more nervous. The longer you looked at the wires, the less sense they made. And was that two uncovered wires touching? ”Hey, wait, actually—”

Click.

A hum filled the room as the power flicked on. The bright white overhead lights flickered once, twice, and then went out. Something that smelled suspiciously like smoke filled the room.

“Fuck!” Gunther fumbled for the switch. You, similarly, lunged forward to see if you could manually disconnect the wires from the input. “It’s short circ—”

As soon as you made contact with the input wire, you heard the sound of a cup tipping over seconds before the splashing of hot tea.

Then everything went black.

When you awoke, it was because you were shaking so hard that your teeth were clicking painfully together.

Slowly, you pulled open my eyelids to see a brilliantly blue sky without a cloud in sight, wide and unimpeded by any skyscrapers. This was definitely not Gunther’s lab.

You groaned as feeling began to return to your body, along with a thudding headache and soreness in every joint. Gently, you pressed your weight into your fingers and slowly sat yourself up, making observations as you went.

You were not dead. Your heart was still beating and your nerves still functioned as usual. You had no idea how long you'd been lying on the ground, but it had to have been at least an hour given that the sun was almost in the middle of the sky.

Another observation: you were nowhere near Terranova.

Instead, you were in the clearing of a forest, surrounded by trees with unfamiliar trunk patterns and leaves. A thick bed of white snow coated everything in sight except for you.

You were well and truly fucked. There was nowhere even remotely nearby the city that you knew was in a fully forested area.

Though at least now you held the title of the first person alive to travel at light speed. It was a small comfort, but it was something to cling to.

A shriek sounded behind you, and you spun around, still seated on the ground. The forest line was clear, but you could hear rustling. For a moment you considered that it could be an animal, but it didn’t sound like any woodland creature. It sounded unmistakably human.

“Hello?” you called out.

The shriek came again, accompanied by more crunching—both much closer this time.

“Are you alright?” you asked, hoping your voice would carry to whoever it was. “Are you hurt?”

A mangled man suddenly came into sight as he fell into the clearing from a lopsided sprint, barreling right towards you. One of his knees was bent outwards as he went, so badly it looked broken, but it wasn’t enough to slow him down as he ran towards you.

You screamed, a real and proper one that pierced the frigid air. There was no time for to run as the man closed the gap and rammed into you, his filthy hands gripping your arms through your heavy jacket as his snapping teeth and rancid breath lunged for your neck.

Bang!

A single shot rang out. The man fell limp, slumping on top of you as you frantically snapped into motion and scrambled out from under him.

“Who the fuck are you?”

You whipped back around to see a girl standing at the other side of the clearing, a revolver in her hand and an incredibly cross expression etched into her features. She must’ve been around your age, and she had short auburn hair that barely brushed her shoulders and was being tossed about by the wind. There was a spattering of freckles across her face, muted against the backdrop of her cheeks reddened from exertion.

“Hi,” you said, your voice small and pathetic. You couldn’t stop shaking. “I’m Y/N.”

The girl just stared at you for a few more beats before turning back. “Jesse! Dina! Some help?”

You pulled your knees into your chest as you waited for whatever was to come. Now that the man was off of you, you could see that there was blood trickling from his gaping maw. Something that looked almost like shards had sprouted, like little spring buds, in little areas around his face. Even his normal, unshard-ed skin was a pallor that looked like death. Something wasn’t right here.

“Okay,” said the girl, gruffer this time. “Listen, I don’t know who the fuck you think you are just waltzing in like this, but this isn’t open to the public, alright? You’re trespassing.”

“Sorry,” you said, shrinking further into yourself as you thumbed the edges of your scarf. “I didn’t know.”

“Get the hell out of here,” she said, grabbing your backpack from the ground near her feet and throwing it at you.

Two other people emerged from the trees, another girl and one guy. They all seemed roughly the same age—early 20s, maybe—and were all carrying various weapons ranging from guns to knives.

To say you were on edge would be the understatement of the century.

They spoke in hushed tones as they approached the first girl.

“I don’t understand,” the other girl said, long black locks escaping from her ponytail. “We literally just patrolled this area. There’s no way to get here without either going through the town or going over the pass, and no one’s done that.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t see her then?” The boy looked curiously at you.

“Fucking obviously,” snapped the first girl. “I think we would’ve noticed.” Then, directed at you: “Hey. How’d you even wind up here?”

“Uh….” Your mouth became dry. “Where am I again?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “You’re telling me you don’t even know?”

“Ellie,” warned the other girl. “Maybe she’s been out here for a while. Hypothermia can make you think crazy things.”

“She doesn’t look like she’s been out here for long,” pointed out the first girl, presumably Ellie.

“You’re right outside Jackson,” said the other girl helpfully.

“How close am I to Terranova?”

“The fuck is Terra-whatta?” Ellie frowned at you.

“Where I live,” you said. “I—I’m a student there. I was working on a project and something went wrong and then all of a sudden I woke up here and—what is that thing?” You gestured frantically at the limp body of the man beside you, the shock slowly subsiding as reality set in. “He almost killed me!”

Ellie gaped at you along with her two friends. “What do you mean, what is that thing? Have you never seen a runner before?”

“A runner?” You stared back. “These things are normal enough for you to have a name for them?”

“Oh my god,” said Ellie, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Have you, like, never been outside before?”

“No,” you said, honestly. “I’ve never left the city walls.”

“We have got to take her back with us,” said the other girl.

“Dina.” Ellie scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Dina’s right,” said the guy, finally chiming in. “We can’t just leave her out here. She doesn’t even know what a runner is. She’s gonna be killed like that.”

Ellie considered, gnawing her lip. “Fine. Consider this your lucky day, Y/N. Get up.”

The first thing you did upon reaching your feet was faint once again.

“I told you, Joel, we just found her like this! Lying on the ground, with nothing but her bag.”

A man said something that you couldn’t quite catch.

“Yes. I went through it. No weapons, just…weird things. Like this.”

Your eyes snapped open to see Dina rooting around in your backpack, pulling out your laptop. You were laid horizontally on a table in some warmly lit home.

“Hey!” you said. She turned around, along with a tall, buff man at her side. “Be careful with that. That has all my homework on it.”

“See?” Dina whispered. “Do you think she hit her head or something, Joel?”

Joel frowned, picking up your laptop despite your protests. “I haven’t seen one of these in…I can’t even remember how long. And I’ve never seen one this slim before. Where’d you say you got this, er…”

“Y/N,” Dina supplied.

“From my university,” you said. There was a fire that crackled somewhere behind you, and it sounded comforting. “They provide all students with laptops. That’s how we do most of our schoolwork.”

“Let me guess,” said Joel. “You from the North? A place called Terra Something?”

“That’s a real thing?” Ellie came from around the corner, standing with her arms crossed. She’d changed out of her heavy winter coat and was instead wearing a dark gray hoodie with the strings tied into a bow.

“Never been there myself,” he said. “But when I was doing supply runs back in Boston we always heard whispers of a safezone in Canada. For rich assholes who had some even richer survivalist friends. The Fireflies attempted to break in for years, but they could never find it.”

“So, like a QZ?” asked Ellie, looking genuinely curious.

“What’s a QZ?” you asked. No one acknowledged it.

“Not quite,” said Joel. “No FEDRA. With no military presence, I’m sure it was a hell of a lot cushier living there. Wasn’t it, Y/N?”

“I don’t have anything to compare it to,” you said. “But, yeah. I guess it was nice. It was just normal, I guess. Nothing extraordinary.”

“You’re wearing a cashmere scarf,” Joel pointed out. “That’s not what I’d call normal in the apocalypse.”

You blushed, pulling at the fringes of said black scarf. The fabric was thin and soft, impossibly warm against your bare neck. “It didn’t—it doesn’t feel like the apocalypse in Terranova.”

“And how’d you make it all the way out here?”

“I’m a research assistant for a professor attempting to invent travel at the speed of light,” you said. “We just hooked it up to a different wire today. It short-circuited and when my professor and I rushed to shut it off, he spilled his tea on me and the prototype. Next thing I knew, I woke up here.”

Joel blinked. “What now?”

“I know it sounds crazy,” you said, defensively pulling your knees to your chest. “But I’m telling the truth, honestly. Plus, look at me.” You let go of your scarf and held out your hands, letting the glow of the fire catch the immaculate pearl polish on your fingers. “Do I look like someone who’s traveled from Canada to wherever I am now?”

“She’s got a point,” said Dina, nodding thoughtfully. “It really must be nice where you come from to have hands like that. It doesn’t look like you’ve done a day of work in your life. Reckon you could take us back with you?”

Joel sent her a stern look. “What did you parents do to gain access to a place like that? You the daughter of the president or something?”

“No. They just got lucky,” you explained. “They were summering in Canada and happened to befriend the founders of Terranova right before outbreak day.”

“‘Summering’,” repeated Joel. “It’s been a while since I heard someone use a season as a verb. Somehow it’s not been long enough.”

You cringed.

“I’m not gonna lie, it’s a little disappointing to hear that folks like your parents are still living in the lap of luxury, even after the world ended,” said Joel. “A part of me hoped that karma would get ‘em.”

“I didn’t realize how bad it was out here,” you said defensively. “They didn’t even tell me about…what was that that tried to kill me out there? Walkers?”

“Runners,” Ellie supplied. She watched you quietly from her position leaning up against the couch.

“You ran into one?” asked Joel, another wrinkle appearing in his forehead. “Ellie, have you checked her for bites?”

Ellie’s freckled face paled as she swore. “Fuck. No, I forgot. I should’ve done it in the clearing.”

“Well, better now than never. Listen, I gotta meet up with Tommy. You check ‘er. You got a gun ready, just in case?”

“Excuse me?” you scoffed, looking thoroughly scandalized. “What do you mean, just in case?”

“I’ll be outside,” said Dina, following Joel as he left the door.

“How come it’s my job?” Ellie called after them. “No one asked me how I felt about this!”

The door banged shut in reply. She turned back to face you, her lips set into a firm line. “Fine. Take your coat off. Let’s make this quick.”

“I didn’t feel anything bite me,” you said, grabbing your knees tighter to your chest. Ellie was intimidating and scary, and you rather liked how you currently wore an extra layer of protection.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.” She walked over to you, grabbing your scarf and unwinding it from your neck. “Shit. Is this what Joel called cashmere?”

“Yeah,” you said, watching as she stared at the fabric pooled in her hands. “It’s nothing special, really. Everyone wears them in Terranova.”

Ellie stared at you. “Can you stop saying Terranova? I swear it’s every third word that comes out of your mouth. I honestly couldn’t give a shit about whatever fantasyland you grew up in while the rest of us dealt with the real world.”

You opened your mouth, then thought better of it and closed it. It was discombobulating to hear a stranger swear so often at you.

Ellie knocked your hands from your knees and stared down at you. “Are you actually gonna make me take off everything myself? Do they have hired help to unzip your coats in Terra Novella?”

“Terranova.”

Ellie let out a sharp sigh, then lunged for the zipper near your throat.

“Okay, okay, fine,” you said, yanking yourself away and pulling your zipper down to reveal your standard lab outfit—a satiny button up shirt tucked into slacks. You pulled the rest of your puffer off, letting it drop in a pile next to you.

“So,” you said as Ellie grabbed your arm, gently rolling up the fabric of your blouse and turning your forearm back and forth, “Is this, like, a normal thing? To have deranged people in the woods attack you like that?”

“They’re not people,” she said quietly. Satisfied with your left arm, she moved to the next and let your unbuttoned sleeve fall. “Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

Ellie’s fingers encircled your right wrist as she fiddled with your sleeve. They were warm as they brushed across your skin, just barely touching you. “You really don’t know? I thought you at least knew about outbreak day.”

“Of course I know about outbreak day,” you said defensively. “I’m not stupid.”

Ellie arched a brow.

“They told us that it was a virus,” you added. “That it was lethal and incredibly infectious. Is that not what happened?”

“It’s not a virus, it’s a fungus,” corrected Ellie, letting go of your sleeve and stepping back as you redid the buttons at your wrist. “And it doesn’t just kill. It turns you into—into something like what you saw today. You lose your mind. The only thing that matters to you is biting everyone and spreading the infection.”

“Oh.”

“I saw you get tackled. Did your legs get scratched up at all?”

“No,” you responded, feeling thankful that you wouldn’t need to take your pants off. In that moment, literally nothing seemed more embarrassing. Your hands had begun to shake again.

“Didn’t think so.”

“If it had bitten me, would that mean that I…I would get sick too?”

“Nice going, Sherlock,” said Ellie, returning to her spot against the couch. “Really stellar reasoning skills there.”

You pulled your knees back into your chest, the gravity of the situation sinking in. All this time you’d thought it was just a virus—a measly virus that killed. That it could be anything else had never occurred to you.

“Keep shaking and I’m going to start to think that you were bitten.” She smiled thinly at you from across the room.

“I’m sorry,” you said, your teeth bouncing against each other once before you clenched your jaw. “Please cut me some slack. This is just a lot to take in. If you’ll recall, I’ve just been the first person in history to undergo atomic dissolution and reassembly. It’s a wonder I’m still alive.”

“Welcome to the club,” said Ellie, her eyes narrowed. “It’s a wonder any of us are alive.”

Your lips pressed tightly together as you sat, trying your best not to lose it at her. You’d always been brought up to be kind, to be forgiving and sweet and polite. After all, there was never any reason not to be. Terranova’s culture put a heavy emphasis on keeping the peace no matter what. Your parents rarely ever raised their voices. Your professors kindly and respectfully asked their pupils to settle down if they were too noisy, but since you were all brought up with impeccable manners, such instances were few and far between. It just wasn’t a thing to chew strangers out. Such behavior was only reserved for extraordinary situations of the like you’d never experienced. Speaking of manners…

“Thank you,” you said, finally. Yeah, you could be the bigger person.

Ellie’s gaze snapped up to you, her brow furrowed. “Huh?”

“For saving me,” you clarified, avoiding her eyes. They were uncomfortably piercing. “Sorry. I should’ve thanked you earlier. That was rude of me. And I’m also sorry for just barging in here. I promise it wasn’t on purpose. Trust me, I would do anything to be back home right now.”

“I bet you would.” Her eyes dropped briefly to your hands, unblemished and smooth as they clutched your knees. Not even a cuticle was out of place, a result of your weekly manicures and daily lotion habit.

“Sorry,” you said again, feeling heat rise in your cheeks once again. “I probably sound so insufferable and spoiled to you.”

“Just—” She paused, frowning. “Just stop apologizing. It’s fine. It’s not your fault, or whatever.” The words seemed to pain her.

“What’s a QZ?” you asked. Now that you’d had a moment to draw in a few deep breaths, your hands were steady once again.

“Quarantine Zone,” said Ellie. “Established by what was left of the government for those of us normal people. There are a couple scattered around the country in the big cities.”

“Did you live in one? What’re they like?”

She was about to answer when the door banged open.

“Ellie!” Dina’s voice was breathless. “Joel wants me and you to go out and finish the patrol route together. She alright?”

“I’m fine,” you said quickly, hanging your legs off the table and reaching for your puffer.

“God, I fucking love that shirt,” said Dina. “Can I touch it? It looks so soft.”

You had a feeling that you would get on well with her. “Sure.”

“It’s not that soft,” said Ellie from the couch.

“Shut up, Ellie!” Dina walked over to you, grabbing the dangling fabric from your loose sleeves and letting it thread through her fingers. “Sorry about her, Y/N. She’s just like that sometimes.”

“Dina!”

Dina ignored Ellie’s protests, giving you a look full of mirth as she stepped back. “For the record, it was that soft.”

“You couldn’t wear it anywhere,” argued Ellie. “It looks ridiculous. Infected would just snag right onto the sleeves. That’s only if you didn’t get tangled up in a tree from all that loose fabric first.”

“There’s not an abundance of trees or sick fungus people in my research lab,” you said awkwardly. “So that’s not really something that crossed my mind when I got ready this morning.”

“Ha!” Dina’s eyes scrunched. “Ellie, be nice. Maybe she’ll claim us both as her long-lost sisters and get us into wherever she came from, but she’s not gonna if you keep acting like this.”

“It’s okay,” you said, shrugging. “I get it. I can’t even begin to imagine how much different your lives are out here. And, I mean, I probably could if you wanted. I’m pretty sure that all you need is a connection and a negative test for whatever the fungus is called.”

“See?” Dina gestured towards you. “Listen to her. She’s so wholesome.”

“I’d be wholesome too if I led the kind of life where I didn’t know about the infected and got to wear dumb shirts like that all day.”

Dina huffed. “Listen, Y/N, Ellie and I are gonna finish up with patrolling. I’m assuming you want to stay in Jackson until you figure everything out?”

You nodded. “If that’s alright. I don’t mean to impose.”

“We’ll talk to Maria and Tommy once we get back and see about getting you set up somewhere temporarily,” said Dina. “For now, you can just stay at Ellie’s until we finish up. Sound good?”

“Dina!” protested Ellie. “You’re just gonna leave her here unattended without even asking me?”

“What’s she gonna do? Ransack the town? With what weapon, Ellie? Her bare hands? She looks like she’d be blown over if I breathed too hard in her direction.”

You flushed. Sure, you’d never really seen much of a point of bulking up and working out when you were nothing but a student who spent all of her time goofing off with wires and telescopes, but it was humbling to have it pointed out so blatantly.

“She wouldn’t make it a day outside,” continued Dina. “I don’t think she’s stupid enough to try anything. Isn’t that right, Y/N?”

You blinked. “I mean, yeah. I’ve never spent a day without electricity and hot running water, so I’m not really clambering to leave and live in the woods.”

Ellie sighed sharply. “Fine. Cool. Whatever. Just stay where you are, okay? And don’t even think about touching anything.”

By the time that she returned with Joel, you were sitting at the table, 2 chapters deep into the one textbook you’d brought along with you for one of your courses.

“Glad to see the house still standing,” Joel quipped as he worked his heavy coat off his shoulders and pulled his boots off. Ellie trailed behind him, hanging up her coat and pulling off a pair of black gloves. “Ellie was concerned you’d raze the whole town.”

“I’m honored that she thinks me so capable,” you said in response, wincing as you had to dogear your textbook, your bookmarks and sticky notes tucked safely in your dorm desk far away.

Ellie sent you an irritated look before her gaze dropped to the textbook in your lap. It lingered for a moment, just long enough for you to know that she was reading the title Exoplanetary Systems.

“Tommy and Maria have decided to let you stay until you get back on your feet,” said Joel, oblivious to the hostility coming from Ellie. “There’s a cottage down the street that’ll be ready for you to move into soon. For now, you can stay with us. There’s an extra room across the hall from Ellie’s.”

“That’s too kind of you,” you said, your voice smooth and gracious after years of having your manners picked apart by your parents.

Joel looked mildly uncomfortable. “Uh, yeah. Don’t mention it. You know how to ride a horse?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Good,” said Joel. “Can you shoot, too?”

You stared. “Uh, shoot what?”

“A gun,” said Ellie slowly. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest, her mouth contorted into a scowl. She did not seem overjoyed at the prospect of a new housemate.

“No,” you said. Your ears felt like they were on fire. “There’s, uh, a strict ban on guns in Terr–where I grew up. There was no reason to shoot anything.”

Joel whistled. “Well, imagine that. So maybe we won’t put you on patrol just yet. We’ll find something else for you to do. Got any other skills?”

Before you answered, Joel picked up your bag and peered inside of it. “Say, is this a bag of coffee?”

He pulled out the bag of coffee grinds that you’d picked up at the cafe.

“Yeah!” you said. “Before the, uh, accident, my professor sent me to get him tea from the cafeteria. I ended up picking those up since my roommate and I were out. You drink coffee?”

“Not much anymore,” said Joel, picking up the bag and weighing it back and forth. “It’s hard to come by out here. You have to pay an arm and a leg to get just a bit. I haven’t seen a bag like this since before the outbreak.”

“It’s yours,” you said quickly. “I don’t even really like coffee. I just drank it because my roommate would make me a cup.”

Joel shook his head and placed it back in your bag. “No, I couldn’t do that. I’d probably have to trade my whole arsenal plus a horse to get something this big.”

“Please, I insist,” you said. “It’s the least I can do. It’s just going to sit in my bag anyway. You’d appreciate it more.”

“Well…” Joel gave you a considering look. “I s’pose this could cover your work for a few weeks until either we find another job for you or Ellie teaches you to shoot.”

“Joel!” Ellie interjected. “I have my own shit to do.”

“That’s really generous of you,” you said, smiling at Joel. “But you could honestly just take the bag—no need to offer any reimbursement.”

Joel grunted and picked the bag up again, slinging it onto the counter behind him. “Maria’s never gonna believe me until she sees this. Full bag of monsoon malabar…didn’t even think they had that shit anymore…” He continued to mumble to himself as he shuffled around, opening and closing cabinets behind you.

When you looked back up, Ellie was staring again at your book, a line in her brow.

“You can borrow it, if you’d like.” You pushed the book towards her as a poor attempt to call a truce between you two. “It’s not like I actually need to do the reading anymore. I’m already missing lecture.”

You winced at the thought of getting behind in your classes. In the very likely case you weren’t getting back in the next few days, you’d probably need to take a gap semester and return in the fall, delaying your graduation date another 4 months. Your parents were going to kill you. This was going to create an unfillable hole in your resume. “Shooting a gun” and “riding horses” were not acceptable activities to explain away why you took a whole season off.

“No thanks,” said Ellie, pushing it back to you. “Keep it. I don’t want it.”

“It’s about solar systems outside of our locale,” you continued. “There’s a bunch of them. It’s actually really interesting.”

“It doesn’t really sound like it,” she said, but there was no venom behind her voice—just something that sounded like exhaustion.

“Maybe not.” You sighed, deflated. So much for a white flag. “I guess it must seem pretty ridiculous to you.”

Ellie stood there, her arms still crossed and her frown deep. “Joel,” she said, speaking over your shoulder, “I’m going out. I’ll see you later.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” said Joel. You could hear him bustling around in what you assumed was a kitchen, filling a kettle with water and lighting the gas top stove.

When you turned back around, Ellie was already out the door, coat slung over her arm as she shut it.

Before the door closed entirely, her eyes snapped up to meet yours like she knew you’d been watching her.

She was gone before you had the chance to lift your hand to wave goodbye.

again apologies for this if you’ve made it this far. please confiscate my laptop. part 2 coming soon (?) if u want also im not an astrophysics student im a thickheaded cs student who barely survived ap physics so im sorry if i’m doing a disservice to the academic field of astronomy idk shit about it

#ellie williams x reader #ellie williams x you #ellie williams x oc #ellie williams self insert #ellie williams x y/n

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