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of rage and ruin - chapter two

of rage and ruin series

chapter two

series masterlist | prev chapter | next chapter

werewolf!alpha!Joel Miller x f!omega!reader

word count: 3.3k

summary: you come face to face with the beast.

chapter warnings: dark, dead dove do not eat, a/b/o, alpha/omega dynamics, omegaverse, captivity, canon-typical violence, genre-typical violence, horror themes, graphic violence, allusions to/threats of torture, abuse by captors (not by either joel or reader), depiction of injury, body horror, typical raider/hunter behavior, mention of cordyceps, angst, viewer discretion is advised,

also on ao3

dividers by @saradika-graphics

They were careful never to touch you. The exam you’d been given when they first brought you here was done with thick rubber gloves, and no one has touched you since. 

But there are plenty of ways to teach you compliance without touching you. 

Before they moved you, you didn’t see a soul for two days. No one delivered or removed the cloth strips, food, or water. No one woke you up with a loud buzzer or dragged you outside to hose you down. 

No one hurt you.

The first few hours, you sit and do nothing as usual. You don’t really notice.

After that, though, you start to wait. This deviation, this anomaly, was far more terrifying than the wretched routine. And with no meals, you’re bereft of a way to count the passing of time. There’s no sunlight down here, after all. 

To your deep relief, the lights still go off at night. Until you’re lying awake in the dark and realize they’re probably on a timer. So maybe all your captors are dead. Made a stupid mistake and got their asses handed to them by FEDRA.

Which would be nice, but also, you’d still fucking die. Because you’re trapped in this godforsaken grimy ass basement, and somewhere on the other side of it is the only other resident you know of. Him. 

So either you starve to death, or he eats you. Or both. 

You spend the next day hoping to see Cheryl’s smug bitch face. 

When someone finally comes for you, it’s not Cheryl. It’s not Jim, either, but that’s not a surprise. He doesn’t like you, doesn’t like whatever Cheryl’s doing with you.

Not because he has any objections to the captivity or abuse. No, Jim’s been clear—you’re a waste of resources. 

Anyway, it’s fucking Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber who show up. They’re not real twins (you’re not even sure they’re brothers), but they’re a damn good argument for nurture over nature. Spending the apocalypse together has them moving in tandem, grunting and jerking their heads to one another in a language all their own. They’re built like oxen and about as polite. 

You don’t fight anymore, but they still tie you and drag you around. You haven’t so much as argued in weeks. You’ve heard that everyone breaks from torture eventually. You waved your flag from the start. 

You’re not made for this. 

They tie you up without touching your skin; hands layered in gloves just in case. They leave a length of rope from your wrists to pull you by, leaving the rope around your feet as it was. You had earned that six inches of slack, just enough to stand and walk to the makeshift toilet instead of crawling, after a solid week of good behavior. 

When you figure it out, though, you try to run. Every electric screaming nerve in your body says to go. Go where? Who fucking knows. Anywhere. Away. Run. 

The room they’ve brought to you is saturated in oaky musk, and you only need a glimpse of the little cage within before you’re jerking backward.

They must have gotten used to your compliance because the rope flies from Tweedle Dumb’s grasp. The three of you stand still for a moment, all shocked by the turn of events. 

You turn to run, but it’s too late already. One of them swept your fucking legs like this was an action movie, and bound as you are, that’s the end of the fight. You crash and earn yourself some new bruises, and they drag you into the room by the rope between your feet. 

One of them—you’ve forgotten who had which nickname in all the hubbub—snaps out a baton.

“Get in the fuckin’ cage, or I’ll break your ankles.”

It’s a strong argument that you have no desire to see if he’ll follow through on. Already hurt and humiliated, you crawl into the cage.

They lock it behind you and leave without another word. The lights go out with a buzz, casting everything you hadn’t taken in yet in total darkness. 

When the lights come back on, you wish they hadn’t. 

At first, you don’t even realize they’ve flickered to life, because what they’ve revealed isn’t real. 

It’s a big, brown Rorschach blob. It’s an oil spill. It’s moving, in a jerky, fluid way that should be impossible. The limbs have pointed bony joints, and you can only describe the way they crawl as spidery, though they’re thick and bulky. 

Jim is standing on the other side of the gate, holding onto a thick chain that rattles and creaks dangerously as the beast strains against the thick metal band around its neck. He looks bored, but he usually does. 

Cheryl, however. The way her lips are curled, eyes wide and bright… this must be him. 

“Don’t you know what happens to the others? The alphas?” she had teased the night of all the howling. She had laughed at the traitorously dumbfounded look on your face. 

You do now. 

A long pink tongue has unfurled from his massive jaw, flopped over far too many teeth, and dripping thick saliva onto the floor. The… fur, for lack of a better word, around his muzzle is matted with something dark that you can’t look at anymore. 

Jim yanks him by the chain, and the creature lets himself be pulled to the door, barely holding still while the padlock and chain are removed from his collar and the cuffs from his paws. 

He’s at the end of your cage before you realize he’s moved, and you scream, scrambling back as much as you can into the corner. The spaces between the bars are thin enough for just his… good god, are those fingers? They certainly aren’t canine toes. They’re tipped in thick, long claws packed with soil and detritus.

“Hey,” Jim barks, and the beast side-eyes him. “Remember what I fuckin’ told you. You break or eat her? That’s it. I’m not getting you another one.” 

Eat? Eat?  

Oh god.

Your stomach swoops and falls, abdomen clenching and drawing attention to your too-full bladder, unlocking a new fear that you’re going to piss yourself if he comes closer. 

He does. You don’t. But just barely.

That long, dark snout pushes against the cage, as if it could nudge through to reach you, pink tongue lapping against the air. The oak musk is so strong now that it lines your throat and makes you gag.

You choke back a retch-turned-sob and he rumbles, a strange vibration that rattles the bars where he’s pressed against them. He rises, stretching up up up on his hind legs until he towers over your little cube, enveloping you in his shadow, and you can’t help it. You start to cry. 

He can’t reach you, not when you’re tucked back in the corner of your cage. But he can smell you, and he can smell the rich iron soaking into the ropes around your wrists. It’s not yet visible, but the skin squishing through the edges is red and rough. 

He whines, pushing his muzzle against the bars, long tongue flopping out like he can reach. 

The sharp battery acid edge of your fear spikes, and he growls. Stupid girl. Stupid fucking omega. He’s trying to help you, and you’re—you’re— 

You’re starting to cry again. 

He can’t make human words like this, can’t enunciate or even really remember them. He tries to reach you through the bars again, snarling when they burn against his knuckles. Even the distended bony fingers of his full form can’t reach you there, not even with the tip of his claw. 

You’re shaking now, body twitching and jittering beyond your control. Everything inside you is screaming white-hot and dissolving; vomit tickles the base of your throat, and you just can’t stop crying. It hurts; it’s ripping your throat and lungs to shreds. It’s a violent, tumultuous thing, and you can’t stop the wounded keening of your cries. 

He’s pacing in front of your cage now, the beast, on four mangled limbs too long to be canine and too warped to be human. His huffs startle you, long snout returning, again and again, tongue darting out for a taste. 

A little drop of blood slides down your hand from where the rope’s edge cuts into the bottom of your palm.

He freezes, nostrils flaring. You freeze, barely breathing. 

He looks right at you and then tips his head back to howl, the sound like icy water through your veins. 

You can’t help yourself. You scream, broken as your voice is from all the tears. 

Between the cacophony, Jim stomps into the corridor and slams his hand on the wall. “Shut the fuck up, both of you!” 

“Help me,” you yell. 

I’m trying, the wolf howls. 

“Please, please help me,” you gasp, sobs reaching new highs alongside your panic. 

“If you don’t quiet the fuck down, I’ll open up your goddamn cage and let him eat you,” Jim snaps. “I said you were going to be more trouble than you’re worth, and I was fuckin’ right.”

The beast snarls, snapping his sharp teeth at the air. 

Jim regards him with a sneer. “And you! Giving her a heart attack counts as breakin’ her.”

The words don’t make sense, but you don’t really hear them, anyway. “Please, I want to go home, please, please,” you whisper. 

But no one’s listening. 

The Wolf is listening. 

He prowls back and forth on all fours, which really, isn’t any more or less terrifying than when he rises up on his haunches. Neither image capitulates to your need to make it make sense. There is no sense, no logic, no reality that can hold him.

The wolf, for really, that’s what he is, isn’t he? God, you don’t want to say it. Unbidden, a memory works loose in your brain, slipping out of the crates of nonsense stored away in favor of survival, and rattles around.

I know what you are. But you won’t say it. 

Did you bring this upon yourself for reading trashy supernatural romance novels? Did you watch Underworld too many times? Did the shot actually put you in a coma, and you’re living in some kind of nightmare?

The wolf is watching you. There are no whites in his eyes, just pools of gasoline on muddy puddles. 

You close your eyes and pretend you can’t hear the way his claws click against the tile. 

While Laura had fed them stew, she told them about the trials. 

They had been the first. The first taken, before volunteers were called. Before they knew they’d need secure places to hold them, they had been gathered for observation in an old YMCA, packed in racketball courts so the doctors could stand outside the large wall of glass and watch them all at once.

They stood outside that glass and watched them change, in one way or another. The ones who turned, as she called it, went first. The ones who would become test group alpha. More than half of the overall subjects, who became suddenly, violently ill. 

They left them all in there with the rest, waiting, watching them cry out, watching them vomit and sweat and break impossible fevers. Temporal thermometers reading 105, 106, before they’d succumb to unconsciousness. 

If they woke, they were… inhuman. Something more. Something hungry. 

A lot of the first round of test data was lost when the subjects were eaten. But some were lost to the turn. Test group beta, Laura’s brother among them, didn’t survive the fever.

Laura’s husband turned but didn’t lose himself to the beast. Something in him stayed present, alert enough to protect his wife from the others. Or rather, something in her kept him that way. Something that had turned in her too, albeit without the violence, into something more than she’d ever been before. 

“They drove us out of the QZ,” she said, picking idly at a gouge in the table’s surface. “To shoot us where they could burn all the bodies and forget.”

“And what happened?” Tommy asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

“We ate them.”

They come back for him that night but he’s not waiting for them. He’s sat with his big, furry back to you, close enough to the cage that you could pet him. The thought crosses your mind in a moment of delirium. You could stick your fingers through the little bars and feel the coarse hickory hair. You know, if you were clinically insane. 

You’re not about to offer him a little snack. 

He’d given up on reaching you a few hours ago, content to sit there unmoving once your tears dried up. It’s only slightly less terrifying.

But when they take him out, you only get to sit with the relief for a moment. Minutes pass in the dark and silent room, but you regret letting your guard down when footsteps echo through the cavernous halls beyond. 

The Idiot Twins are back, and they’re not taking chances with you this time. Oh, no. When they unlock the cage, you’re faced with the barrel of a handgun that doesn’t leave your temple as they pull you out by your bound hands.

They don’t bother to stand you up or give you a chance to move on your own, just dragging you out of the room and across the hall. You’re sprawled on your stomach across the frigid floor of the new room, with the door slamming shut behind you without so much as a word. 

The rusted pipes on the wall in the beast’s room make more sense now, once you take in your shadowy surroundings. This room has the same shitty tan tile over every inch, but the walls are lined with blue (or what used to be blue) lockers. Not a single one is intact, whether rusted or dented or doorless, but they’re unmistakably lockers. 

There are two lines of seamless benches, though half are rotted to oblivion. But it’ll be a better bed than the floor.

This is practically paradise. There’s a tray by the door that you don’t see for a while, but when you do, you almost cry again. Might have, if you hadn’t spent the day in tears. 

It’s just broth and water, long gone lukewarm and dusty, but you set upon it like a vampire upon a vein. Wait, no, you really don’t want to think about that right now. But it’s not your fault you’ve got monsters on the brain.

Your reprieve is not long. The sun rises. 

The beast returns.

Oh, and he’s pissed that you’re gone, based on the fucking racket that brings you back to the waking world. 

“Oh, did you think you’d been good enough lately for a treat?” Cheryl taunts him. 

The steel doors between you aren’t enough to hide the sounds of his fury. 

“You’ll have her back when you’ve earned her,” she tells him amidst the cacophony of snarling and gnashing. 

It’s ten days before they return you to the cage. Ten days of poking around the abandoned lockers and finding nothing. Ten days of broth delivered at dawn and dusk. Ten days of your back no longer appreciating the bench to stretch out on. 

Ten days of listening to the nonstop scratching and growling and whining from across the hall. And worse. Oh, much worse. Wet squicks and splatters and harsh groans. You’re not sure if he’s eating or masturbating or what, but it sends shivers through your whole body each time. 

It also sends the weird, sticky slick pooling between your thighs, but you ignore that. It’s been happening since the shot, one of the weirder side effects, but it’s gotten downright fucking annoying since you got here.

You try not to think about it. 

It’s not long after they drag you back to the little cage that they drag him into his. For that’s what this room really is, you know that, even if it doesn’t make you feel better about being in there with him. He’s trapped, too, but you’re the one in danger.

They haven’t untied your wrists since the first time, which have blistered and bled and scabbed until the ropes rubbed the scabs raw and started the whole thing all over. 

He smells it before he sees it, any interest in the slippery sweetness on your thighs gone when he tastes the blood in the air. 

Hurt, he whines, though you can’t understand. Help.  

You don’t cry this time, don’t split the sour tang with salt, but the fear and pain and exhaustion are enough to center him. If he tries, if he could just focus…

And there it goes. You watch, mouth agape and eyes blown wide, as he shifts in front of you for the first time. He backs away while it happens until he’s on the other side of the room and sits his very bare ass on his bed. 

You watch the way his bones jerk and his body shakes and cracks and huffs out sharp, agonized grunts until he’s just a man. Just a man, nothing more. Just a beast masquerading. Worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you think, because you know he’s the wolf, but right now? 

He’s just a pathetic, broken human. Bruised and bloodied, though his marks are rapidly fading as the healing takes over, but his face is edged in nothing but pain and sorrow.

“M’not gonna hurt ya,” was the first thing he croaked out. 

You startle, rattling the cage a little, which makes you wince. 

But he stays on the other side of the room. He’s sitting on his mattress, legs bent up and crossed, as if he had anything left to hide. As if you hadn’t seen too much already.

He tries not to think about it, but jesus. It’s a fucking struggle. As he takes you in this way, unclouded by the hazy moon, it still punches him back. Your smell. 

Joel’s never really liked tart things. Too much of a secret sweet tooth, of a deep yearning for the char and depth of anything fresh from the grill. 

But even now, even nearly fully man , he’s salivating at your green apple tang. Of uncovering the sweet ‘n sour burst of you on his tongue. Of letting his sharp teeth fall sharper through the tough act you fail to wear right, too bruised and soft underneath. 

To feel the way you’d give beneath him. The way you’d spill down his chin. No. He has to get a fuckin’ handle on himself. He can’t even look at you, not now that he knows you can smell the salt of his own slick where his swollen cock sits sobbing, neglected and furious. 

“I’m not,” he protests against your silence. 

He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince. 

But he doesn’t stay himself for long. Not after he thinks instead, suddenly, of autumn. Of the sweet smell of the orchard. Of taking Tommy’s truck up up up into the places where seasons meant something. 

The roads sprawled like veins and they followed them with no end just to see the way the trees curled overhead, branches reaching and burning with dying leaves—a sight so devastating that Joel considered leaving Texas behind for somewhere he could start to take this beauty for granted. 

Chasing the colors led them first to a field of corn, blustering amber in the setting sun. They had returned the next day, fresh from the motel with burnt coffee and warm flannels, parting with precious dollars for the privilege of picking pumpkins and apples and a little corn husk doll. 

He’d have paid every cent ten times over to see Sarah smile like that again. 

This is where the man breaks and bows out. Where the wolf at its weakest is still stronger than Joel. He gives in, gives into the grief, gives into the wolf, and shifts back. He stays curled up on his bed, though, and doesn’t look at you.

He doesn’t speak to you again for a month.

[corazondebeskar-reads]

of rage and ruin - chapter two

of rage and ruin series

chapter two

series masterlist | prev chapter | next chapter

werewolf!alpha!Joel Miller x f!omega!reader

word count: 3.3k

summary: you come face to face with the beast.

chapter warnings: dark, dead dove do not eat, a/b/o, alpha/omega dynamics, omegaverse, captivity, canon-typical violence, genre-typical violence, horror themes, graphic violence, allusions to/threats of torture, abuse by captors (not by either joel or reader), depiction of injury, body horror, typical raider/hunter behavior, mention of cordyceps, angst, viewer discretion is advised,

also on ao3

dividers by @saradika-graphics

They were careful never to touch you. The exam you’d been given when they first brought you here was done with thick rubber gloves, and no one has touched you since. 

But there are plenty of ways to teach you compliance without touching you. 

Before they moved you, you didn’t see a soul for two days. No one delivered or removed the cloth strips, food, or water. No one woke you up with a loud buzzer or dragged you outside to hose you down. 

No one hurt you.

The first few hours, you sit and do nothing as usual. You don’t really notice.

After that, though, you start to wait. This deviation, this anomaly, was far more terrifying than the wretched routine. And with no meals, you’re bereft of a way to count the passing of time. There’s no sunlight down here, after all. 

To your deep relief, the lights still go off at night. Until you’re lying awake in the dark and realize they’re probably on a timer. So maybe all your captors are dead. Made a stupid mistake and got their asses handed to them by FEDRA.

Which would be nice, but also, you’d still fucking die. Because you’re trapped in this godforsaken grimy ass basement, and somewhere on the other side of it is the only other resident you know of. Him. 

So either you starve to death, or he eats you. Or both. 

You spend the next day hoping to see Cheryl’s smug bitch face. 

When someone finally comes for you, it’s not Cheryl. It’s not Jim, either, but that’s not a surprise. He doesn’t like you, doesn’t like whatever Cheryl’s doing with you.

Not because he has any objections to the captivity or abuse. No, Jim’s been clear—you’re a waste of resources. 

Anyway, it’s fucking Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber who show up. They’re not real twins (you’re not even sure they’re brothers), but they’re a damn good argument for nurture over nature. Spending the apocalypse together has them moving in tandem, grunting and jerking their heads to one another in a language all their own. They’re built like oxen and about as polite. 

You don’t fight anymore, but they still tie you and drag you around. You haven’t so much as argued in weeks. You’ve heard that everyone breaks from torture eventually. You waved your flag from the start. 

You’re not made for this. 

They tie you up without touching your skin; hands layered in gloves just in case. They leave a length of rope from your wrists to pull you by, leaving the rope around your feet as it was. You had earned that six inches of slack, just enough to stand and walk to the makeshift toilet instead of crawling, after a solid week of good behavior. 

When you figure it out, though, you try to run. Every electric screaming nerve in your body says to go. Go where? Who fucking knows. Anywhere. Away. Run. 

The room they’ve brought to you is saturated in oaky musk, and you only need a glimpse of the little cage within before you’re jerking backward.

They must have gotten used to your compliance because the rope flies from Tweedle Dumb’s grasp. The three of you stand still for a moment, all shocked by the turn of events. 

You turn to run, but it’s too late already. One of them swept your fucking legs like this was an action movie, and bound as you are, that’s the end of the fight. You crash and earn yourself some new bruises, and they drag you into the room by the rope between your feet. 

One of them—you’ve forgotten who had which nickname in all the hubbub—snaps out a baton.

“Get in the fuckin’ cage, or I’ll break your ankles.”

It’s a strong argument that you have no desire to see if he’ll follow through on. Already hurt and humiliated, you crawl into the cage.

They lock it behind you and leave without another word. The lights go out with a buzz, casting everything you hadn’t taken in yet in total darkness. 

When the lights come back on, you wish they hadn’t. 

At first, you don’t even realize they’ve flickered to life, because what they’ve revealed isn’t real. 

It’s a big, brown Rorschach blob. It’s an oil spill. It’s moving, in a jerky, fluid way that should be impossible. The limbs have pointed bony joints, and you can only describe the way they crawl as spidery, though they’re thick and bulky. 

Jim is standing on the other side of the gate, holding onto a thick chain that rattles and creaks dangerously as the beast strains against the thick metal band around its neck. He looks bored, but he usually does. 

Cheryl, however. The way her lips are curled, eyes wide and bright… this must be him. 

“Don’t you know what happens to the others? The alphas?” she had teased the night of all the howling. She had laughed at the traitorously dumbfounded look on your face. 

You do now. 

A long pink tongue has unfurled from his massive jaw, flopped over far too many teeth, and dripping thick saliva onto the floor. The… fur, for lack of a better word, around his muzzle is matted with something dark that you can’t look at anymore. 

Jim yanks him by the chain, and the creature lets himself be pulled to the door, barely holding still while the padlock and chain are removed from his collar and the cuffs from his paws. 

He’s at the end of your cage before you realize he’s moved, and you scream, scrambling back as much as you can into the corner. The spaces between the bars are thin enough for just his… good god, are those fingers? They certainly aren’t canine toes. They’re tipped in thick, long claws packed with soil and detritus.

“Hey,” Jim barks, and the beast side-eyes him. “Remember what I fuckin’ told you. You break or eat her? That’s it. I’m not getting you another one.” 

Eat? Eat?  

Oh god.

Your stomach swoops and falls, abdomen clenching and drawing attention to your too-full bladder, unlocking a new fear that you’re going to piss yourself if he comes closer. 

He does. You don’t. But just barely.

That long, dark snout pushes against the cage, as if it could nudge through to reach you, pink tongue lapping against the air. The oak musk is so strong now that it lines your throat and makes you gag.

You choke back a retch-turned-sob and he rumbles, a strange vibration that rattles the bars where he’s pressed against them. He rises, stretching up up up on his hind legs until he towers over your little cube, enveloping you in his shadow, and you can’t help it. You start to cry. 

He can’t reach you, not when you’re tucked back in the corner of your cage. But he can smell you, and he can smell the rich iron soaking into the ropes around your wrists. It’s not yet visible, but the skin squishing through the edges is red and rough. 

He whines, pushing his muzzle against the bars, long tongue flopping out like he can reach. 

The sharp battery acid edge of your fear spikes, and he growls. Stupid girl. Stupid fucking omega. He’s trying to help you, and you’re—you’re— 

You’re starting to cry again. 

He can’t make human words like this, can’t enunciate or even really remember them. He tries to reach you through the bars again, snarling when they burn against his knuckles. Even the distended bony fingers of his full form can’t reach you there, not even with the tip of his claw. 

You’re shaking now, body twitching and jittering beyond your control. Everything inside you is screaming white-hot and dissolving; vomit tickles the base of your throat, and you just can’t stop crying. It hurts; it’s ripping your throat and lungs to shreds. It’s a violent, tumultuous thing, and you can’t stop the wounded keening of your cries. 

He’s pacing in front of your cage now, the beast, on four mangled limbs too long to be canine and too warped to be human. His huffs startle you, long snout returning, again and again, tongue darting out for a taste. 

A little drop of blood slides down your hand from where the rope’s edge cuts into the bottom of your palm.

He freezes, nostrils flaring. You freeze, barely breathing. 

He looks right at you and then tips his head back to howl, the sound like icy water through your veins. 

You can’t help yourself. You scream, broken as your voice is from all the tears. 

Between the cacophony, Jim stomps into the corridor and slams his hand on the wall. “Shut the fuck up, both of you!” 

“Help me,” you yell. 

I’m trying, the wolf howls. 

“Please, please help me,” you gasp, sobs reaching new highs alongside your panic. 

“If you don’t quiet the fuck down, I’ll open up your goddamn cage and let him eat you,” Jim snaps. “I said you were going to be more trouble than you’re worth, and I was fuckin’ right.”

The beast snarls, snapping his sharp teeth at the air. 

Jim regards him with a sneer. “And you! Giving her a heart attack counts as breakin’ her.”

The words don’t make sense, but you don’t really hear them, anyway. “Please, I want to go home, please, please,” you whisper. 

But no one’s listening. 

The Wolf is listening. 

He prowls back and forth on all fours, which really, isn’t any more or less terrifying than when he rises up on his haunches. Neither image capitulates to your need to make it make sense. There is no sense, no logic, no reality that can hold him.

The wolf, for really, that’s what he is, isn’t he? God, you don’t want to say it. Unbidden, a memory works loose in your brain, slipping out of the crates of nonsense stored away in favor of survival, and rattles around.

I know what you are. But you won’t say it. 

Did you bring this upon yourself for reading trashy supernatural romance novels? Did you watch Underworld too many times? Did the shot actually put you in a coma, and you’re living in some kind of nightmare?

The wolf is watching you. There are no whites in his eyes, just pools of gasoline on muddy puddles. 

You close your eyes and pretend you can’t hear the way his claws click against the tile. 

While Laura had fed them stew, she told them about the trials. 

They had been the first. The first taken, before volunteers were called. Before they knew they’d need secure places to hold them, they had been gathered for observation in an old YMCA, packed in racketball courts so the doctors could stand outside the large wall of glass and watch them all at once.

They stood outside that glass and watched them change, in one way or another. The ones who turned, as she called it, went first. The ones who would become test group alpha. More than half of the overall subjects, who became suddenly, violently ill. 

They left them all in there with the rest, waiting, watching them cry out, watching them vomit and sweat and break impossible fevers. Temporal thermometers reading 105, 106, before they’d succumb to unconsciousness. 

If they woke, they were… inhuman. Something more. Something hungry. 

A lot of the first round of test data was lost when the subjects were eaten. But some were lost to the turn. Test group beta, Laura’s brother among them, didn’t survive the fever.

Laura’s husband turned but didn’t lose himself to the beast. Something in him stayed present, alert enough to protect his wife from the others. Or rather, something in her kept him that way. Something that had turned in her too, albeit without the violence, into something more than she’d ever been before. 

“They drove us out of the QZ,” she said, picking idly at a gouge in the table’s surface. “To shoot us where they could burn all the bodies and forget.”

“And what happened?” Tommy asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

“We ate them.”

They come back for him that night but he’s not waiting for them. He’s sat with his big, furry back to you, close enough to the cage that you could pet him. The thought crosses your mind in a moment of delirium. You could stick your fingers through the little bars and feel the coarse hickory hair. You know, if you were clinically insane. 

You’re not about to offer him a little snack. 

He’d given up on reaching you a few hours ago, content to sit there unmoving once your tears dried up. It’s only slightly less terrifying.

But when they take him out, you only get to sit with the relief for a moment. Minutes pass in the dark and silent room, but you regret letting your guard down when footsteps echo through the cavernous halls beyond. 

The Idiot Twins are back, and they’re not taking chances with you this time. Oh, no. When they unlock the cage, you’re faced with the barrel of a handgun that doesn’t leave your temple as they pull you out by your bound hands.

They don’t bother to stand you up or give you a chance to move on your own, just dragging you out of the room and across the hall. You’re sprawled on your stomach across the frigid floor of the new room, with the door slamming shut behind you without so much as a word. 

The rusted pipes on the wall in the beast’s room make more sense now, once you take in your shadowy surroundings. This room has the same shitty tan tile over every inch, but the walls are lined with blue (or what used to be blue) lockers. Not a single one is intact, whether rusted or dented or doorless, but they’re unmistakably lockers. 

There are two lines of seamless benches, though half are rotted to oblivion. But it’ll be a better bed than the floor.

This is practically paradise. There’s a tray by the door that you don’t see for a while, but when you do, you almost cry again. Might have, if you hadn’t spent the day in tears. 

It’s just broth and water, long gone lukewarm and dusty, but you set upon it like a vampire upon a vein. Wait, no, you really don’t want to think about that right now. But it’s not your fault you’ve got monsters on the brain.

Your reprieve is not long. The sun rises. 

The beast returns.

Oh, and he’s pissed that you’re gone, based on the fucking racket that brings you back to the waking world. 

“Oh, did you think you’d been good enough lately for a treat?” Cheryl taunts him. 

The steel doors between you aren’t enough to hide the sounds of his fury. 

“You’ll have her back when you’ve earned her,” she tells him amidst the cacophony of snarling and gnashing. 

It’s ten days before they return you to the cage. Ten days of poking around the abandoned lockers and finding nothing. Ten days of broth delivered at dawn and dusk. Ten days of your back no longer appreciating the bench to stretch out on. 

Ten days of listening to the nonstop scratching and growling and whining from across the hall. And worse. Oh, much worse. Wet squicks and splatters and harsh groans. You’re not sure if he’s eating or masturbating or what, but it sends shivers through your whole body each time. 

It also sends the weird, sticky slick pooling between your thighs, but you ignore that. It’s been happening since the shot, one of the weirder side effects, but it’s gotten downright fucking annoying since you got here.

You try not to think about it. 

It’s not long after they drag you back to the little cage that they drag him into his. For that’s what this room really is, you know that, even if it doesn’t make you feel better about being in there with him. He’s trapped, too, but you’re the one in danger.

They haven’t untied your wrists since the first time, which have blistered and bled and scabbed until the ropes rubbed the scabs raw and started the whole thing all over. 

He smells it before he sees it, any interest in the slippery sweetness on your thighs gone when he tastes the blood in the air. 

Hurt, he whines, though you can’t understand. Help.  

You don’t cry this time, don’t split the sour tang with salt, but the fear and pain and exhaustion are enough to center him. If he tries, if he could just focus…

And there it goes. You watch, mouth agape and eyes blown wide, as he shifts in front of you for the first time. He backs away while it happens until he’s on the other side of the room and sits his very bare ass on his bed. 

You watch the way his bones jerk and his body shakes and cracks and huffs out sharp, agonized grunts until he’s just a man. Just a man, nothing more. Just a beast masquerading. Worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you think, because you know he’s the wolf, but right now? 

He’s just a pathetic, broken human. Bruised and bloodied, though his marks are rapidly fading as the healing takes over, but his face is edged in nothing but pain and sorrow.

“M’not gonna hurt ya,” was the first thing he croaked out. 

You startle, rattling the cage a little, which makes you wince. 

But he stays on the other side of the room. He’s sitting on his mattress, legs bent up and crossed, as if he had anything left to hide. As if you hadn’t seen too much already.

He tries not to think about it, but jesus. It’s a fucking struggle. As he takes you in this way, unclouded by the hazy moon, it still punches him back. Your smell. 

Joel’s never really liked tart things. Too much of a secret sweet tooth, of a deep yearning for the char and depth of anything fresh from the grill. 

But even now, even nearly fully man , he’s salivating at your green apple tang. Of uncovering the sweet ‘n sour burst of you on his tongue. Of letting his sharp teeth fall sharper through the tough act you fail to wear right, too bruised and soft underneath. 

To feel the way you’d give beneath him. The way you’d spill down his chin. No. He has to get a fuckin’ handle on himself. He can’t even look at you, not now that he knows you can smell the salt of his own slick where his swollen cock sits sobbing, neglected and furious. 

“I’m not,” he protests against your silence. 

He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince. 

But he doesn’t stay himself for long. Not after he thinks instead, suddenly, of autumn. Of the sweet smell of the orchard. Of taking Tommy’s truck up up up into the places where seasons meant something. 

The roads sprawled like veins and they followed them with no end just to see the way the trees curled overhead, branches reaching and burning with dying leaves—a sight so devastating that Joel considered leaving Texas behind for somewhere he could start to take this beauty for granted. 

Chasing the colors led them first to a field of corn, blustering amber in the setting sun. They had returned the next day, fresh from the motel with burnt coffee and warm flannels, parting with precious dollars for the privilege of picking pumpkins and apples and a little corn husk doll. 

He’d have paid every cent ten times over to see Sarah smile like that again. 

This is where the man breaks and bows out. Where the wolf at its weakest is still stronger than Joel. He gives in, gives into the grief, gives into the wolf, and shifts back. He stays curled up on his bed, though, and doesn’t look at you.

He doesn’t speak to you again for a month.

[corazondebeskar-reads]

QZ Joel my beloved… this has my whole heart. I’ve been v cynical lately and now I’m laying here melting over this man and a little purple flower. 🖤🖤🖤🖤

A Flower in February

Joel Miller x F!Reader

Rating: T

Word Count: 2k

Summary: When he’s finished cleaning the scrapes on your face his thumb swipes tenderly over the curve of your chin once.

“I'll take care of it.”

Contents: Boston QZ!Joel. mugging. hand-to-hand violence. whump. wound cleaning.

A/N: This is a my Secret Valentine gift for @hoeruiner.

I hope you like this, Sarah! I tried to keep it in line with the info you gave.

Thank you @covetyou for reading over this. <3

You only notice the date because you glance at the calendar to check when your next shift is on your way out of work. The calendar is old and yellowed, from before when holidays were still celebrated as special occasions and not memories. The red of the “14” is faded too, but the color still draws your eye and sparks recognition in your brain. 

February 14th. Valentine’s Day. Huh. It’s depressing that your plans haven’t changed after 20 years and an apocalypse: going home after work with a good chance of spending the night alone. 

The ration cards stuffed in your jacket pocket cheer you up a little. Payday hasn’t changed either, and the ability to trade for questionably fresh groceries at the market tomorrow is something to look forward to. You head out into the dark streets of the QZ towards your apartment.

It’s fucking cold this time of year. The temperature barely rises even with a full day of sun, and it’s windy tonight too. There are piles of snow caught in the nooks and crannies of buildings and alleyways, radiating even more cold air. At least it isn’t tinged the same dirty gray-brown shade from before, with car exhaust and dirt kicked up by tires discoloring everything it touches. You’ll still find some of that on the main road, but not here in the backways that twist around the city. 

A gust of wind blows through and goes right through the heaviest jacket you own, chilling you to the bone. You grit your teeth and hunker down, trying to cover as much exposed skin as you can. That’s the only way you see it: the flash of vibrant color so out of place in a city that only has faded colors available. 

There, sticking through a chain link fence bordering what must have been a parking lot at some point but has grown over into a meadow, is a purple bloom of a flower. You take a few steps closer to get a better look. You’d crouch down, but with this cold seeping into your joints you might not be able to get back up, so you bend over awkwardly and try not to lock your knees. 

It’s dark, but there’s just enough light from a streetlamp in the distance that you can make out the shape of the petals. They’re too sharp and close together to be a pansy, and facing up instead of down like a snowdrop, not to say anything of it being purple and not white. So… most likely a crocus, you think. Being able to identify the small bloom brings a happy feeling, with the bittersweet memory of when you had time to indulge in a frivolous activity like flower gardening. You could pick it and bring the spot of color into your apartment. It’s a happy thought that dies and quickly as the flower would.

“Idiot.”

It’s the only warning you get with the wind howling in your ears masking the shuffled steps behind you. They’re right: you’re an idiot for standing in an alley looking at a flower alone at night.

You aren’t the only one happy about payday.

At least they’re quick about it. You don’t know how many there are, but one grabs you from behind and another delivers a fast, brutal punch to your middle. While you heave and gasp they rifle through your pockets and take your ration cards. They give you a few more hits for good measure, and it’s not the blows to your face that does it; it’s the momentum with which they send your head smacking back into the brick wall that makes your vision swim and dim. 

At first all you can make out is ratty shoes and pants with more holes than them, but then you force your eyes up up up when all they want to do is close and you catch glimpses of their faces in the same weak light that had bounced off the crocus and caught your attention. The QZ is a contained area with a small population, and they aren’t even wearing anything to cover their faces, just worn beanies tugged down low. You don’t know their names, but you recognize the faces of the group of thugs who like to crowd people at the market and intimidate them into giving up whatever they have to leave them alone. You still can’t hear them when they run away, the ringing in your ears is loud until you finally give in to it and pass out. 

You don’t know how long it takes for your body to shake itself back to consciousness. Taking stock of your body as you get up is easy: everything hurts, but nothing hurts more than everything else. You don’t give the flower another look as you start to drag yourself home.

The wind is quiet now and you hear the heavy footsteps coming this time. Fear zips through you, freezing you in place; had they come back to take even more from you? But then your name is called out in a voice that makes your body start moving again. That voice means safety and warmth and you’re stumbling towards it on shaking legs until you crash into Joel Miller’s solid body. 

He grunts as he absorbs your impact and his hands come up on your shoulders to keep you standing.

“What’re you still doing out here?”

You open your mouth to answer him, but your teeth are chattering too much to get anything out. Great clouds of hot breath steam out of him as he jerks his head back towards your building.

“C’mon.”

Joel’s dark form is easy for your aching eyes to focus on. It’s a mindless act: following where he leads. Your feet could follow his lead in your sleep, so being cold, beaten up, and maybe concussed is no problem. 

The lights are on in your apartment when you get in. You’re pretty sure everything had been off when you left, and wonder how long Joel had been here, waiting for you. You sit down at the kitchen table and close your eyes, safe in this room with him.

The sounds of Joel moving around the kitchen are nice. You play a little game, trying to ignore the throbbing, painful points on your body by guessing what he’s doing based on the sounds he’s making. 

Water from the faucet filling the dented kettle and the clank of setting it on the burner. The click of the stove knobs as he turns it on. The creak of his weight on the floorboards as he waits for the water to boil. His hum at the creaking cabinet door when he reaches in for the bottle of alcohol he keeps there. The slosh of the bottle as he takes notice of how much has been emptied since he last poured himself a drink. If he asks, you can account for every swig you’ve taken on the nights when you want to dull your senses, on the nights when he’s not with you. 

The noises are domestic and soothing, but the kettle’s whistle is like another blow to your temple and you can’t smother the noise of discomfort you make. 

Joel’s footsteps pause, but then the noises of him pouring you a mug of the hot water continues and those footsteps continue until you can feel him in front of you.

You let yourself have the few extra seconds it takes for him to set the mug on the table before you force your eyes open and look at him. 

He’s already frowning, suspicious about the entire situation, but he gets his confirmation when you have to tip your head back to make eye contact and your face is illuminated in the harsh overhead light.

His big hand is on your jaw before you can blink, but his grip gentles when you wince and he gently turns your face this way and that to see the extent of the damage. His eyes trail down your neck and across the stretched out neckline of your shirt, all the bare skin he can see, and his jaw rocks hard enough to capsize a boat on a turbulent ocean.

“What happened?” 

There’s no getting out of this. The demand in his voice and the anger sparking in his eyes makes you feel warm for the first time that night. It stokes dark emotions, the ones you don’t like to dwell on too much, and the first thread of satisfaction unfurls in your belly. You know giving him names will mean bad things for those men, but you can’t find it in you to care. Maybe they knocked it out of you with their fists. 

So you tell him, giving him the identifying features you remember. He’s quiet as he lets you talk uninterrupted, but the emotions that cross his face are enough to give you an idea of his thoughts. He snatches a clean washcloth from somewhere and wets it with the alcohol, the fumes curling into your nose when he presses it to your cheekbone.

His brows furrow when you mention the flower, and you’re thankful that you can use the firm press of the washcloth on scraped skin to camouflage the wince at the reminder of how unsuited you are for a world like this. 

When he’s finished cleaning the scrapes on your face his thumb swipes tenderly over the curve of your chin once.

“I'll take care of it.”

You don't even have the urge to protest, to tell him he doesn't have to. You want him to take care of it, to take care of you. You want someone to care. And while it’s not bouquets of flowers and candies that melt in your mouth, the warmth from the mug is seeping into your hands and his touch wipes away the violence that clings to your skin. He’ll take that violence and return it tenfold, you know it. 

His movements are filled with purpose and he only pauses with his hand on the door to give you a stern look.

“Lock up behind me.”

The next day is just like the one before it. Unable to do anything else without a fresh supply of ration cards, you go to work and try to ignore the pain that has settled in your body. You don’t even mind it that much, it’s nice to feel something else. 

You’re not stupid though, so when your shift is over you make sure to leave from the front entrance when a few others are heading out as well. It’s a small group, but they scatter and go their separate ways, their steps quickening after they notice the figure leaning on the corner of the building. From that spot he’d be able to see both exits, and when he sees you he pushes off to stand tall, waiting. Your feet move on their own before you completely register the surprise of his presence, falling into place beside him and matching his uneven stride. 

A nudge at your hand snaps you out of your whirling thoughts and makes you look down. His hands are always ruddy from the cold, but now dark purple joins the red and there’s a couple of places where the skin broke over the hard bone of his knuckles. The stack of ration cards trembles just once in his grip, maybe from the wind or a movement of his muscles, but you take it from him and stare down at it. There, tucked into the string securing the cards together, is the crocus blossom. A droplet of moisture that had clung to the snapped stem transfers to your fingertip when you touch it. He must’ve done it while he was waiting.

“Thank you, Joel.” 

Joel is watching you when you look up from the cards. His dark eyes are calm, his jaw moving as he takes in your expression. He chews on the sentiment he sees there as if working it over will make it more palatable, something easier to swallow, and you hope he doesn’t spit it out.

[corazondebeskar-reads]

Please tell me other people can relate I’m having a crisis

[corazondebeskar-reads]

(guy stuck in a timeloop) fuckkkkk i got yesterday tomorrow

[corazondebeskar-reads]

hot take:

if people just treated fanfiction writers as normal, everyday people, and didn’t place them up on a pedestal, this hellsite would be a happier, drama free place.

Fanfiction writers are not celebrities, please don’t treat us like we are.

At the end of the day, we’re all just taking extended bathroom breaks at work, and writing silly little fics about our favorite fictional men’s cocks!

Oh—wait, is that only me?

I have spoken.

[corazondebeskar-reads]

dear writers who are slower/take more time with their writing or writers who are on hiatus or writers who are trying to find their voice again, i see you and i love you and you are valid

[corazondebeskar-reads]

Joel Miller, appreciation post

[corazondebeskar-reads]

the self care industry will sell you face masks and teas and whatnot so i'm here to remind you not to forget the most important self care activity which is masturbation

[corazondebeskar-reads]

thank you so much 😭

this endless friction

dom!Din Djarin x sub!f!reader

[Okay, okay, this was written as a bonus one-shot for the "well it's love, make it hurt" series but it can be read as a standalone! there's zero plot! I just had those two in mind.]

Words: 1.4k

Summary: you and din find a way (or two) to pass time in space. 

Warnings: bdsm, d/s dynamics, enthusiastic consent, preestablished safeword etc, established relationship, reader is collared, dom!din djarin x sub!reader, soft din djarin, anal, anal creampie, double penetration (using a toy), spanking, din takes the helmet off on a loophole, overstimulation, no y/n, afab reader with no description (but in the full series, she is described as having long hair)

also on ao3

dividers by @saradika-graphics

Cockdumb. That’s what he likes to call you when you get like this. Cockdumb. 

He’s not wrong. 

Especially right now. It’s… well, you can’t string a thought together. Not with the way he’s got you pinned under his heft, pressed into the bedroll with nowhere to go. 

Not that you’d want to, but it’s all the more delicious as you writhe under him without being able to move an inch. 

Mando’s chest is pressed to your shoulders and when you tip your head back, he cages it in with his own. His own head, chin resting on top of you. No helmet. 

Because, of course, he has you so completely trapped and helpless here that you couldn’t look if you wanted to. No, but now you feel his lips against your hair and his grunts in your ear as he fucks mercilessly into your asshole. 

He’d crawled into the bunk and stripped you of your trousers without a word, pulling you up so your ass was in the air and your face buried in your pillow. You wrapped your arms around it and settled in, knowing him enough to know you better get comfortable. He slid one arm under you to immediately assault your clit while the other came down in a series of slow spanks, a lazy assault as he luxuriated in the sensations, gripping the fat of your ass between hits to revel in the way you gasped and moaned.

It was your favorite kind of spanking, honestly. You both savor it, savor the way he brings his hand down at random, at ease, at a whim. The intensity and rhythm are entirely improvised, and his nails scrape across the skin as it grows raw, just to watch you shudder. There are no words, no pleas, no punishment. Just the heat of your bodies and soft cries as you enjoy each other. The soft smacks have you burrowing your face in the pillow and arching your back. You know, and you know he knows, that you’ll be dripping from it. 

When he grew tired of that, or more likely, grew too eager to take you apart, that other hand slid around from behind to join its brother in pawing at your clit. It was more effective than any Bor in tearing your mind to pieces. Both of his precise, determined hands honed in, overwhelming and overriding any part of your brain that hadn’t already given in to him.

So cockdumb wasn’t entirely accurate, you thought, given that he’d made you go stupid with his hands and then just never let you come back up from it. 

“Such a sensitive girl,” he crooned while he broke you down into tears from overstimulation. “I haven’t even gotten started.”

He hadn’t been fucking joking, either. Oh, no. He granted mercy to your clit after three orgasms left you collapsed on the bedroll, but that was the only mercy he granted. Urging you back up on your knees, torso still slumped against the silky pillow; he left you exposed and waiting while he rustled around in the hull.

It wasn’t long before he returned, and you heard the snick of a lubricant bottle cap and smiled, nestling into the bunk to get fucked. 

But that wasn’t what he had planned. You should have known. It’s not that you never had simple sex, a quick in-and-out as duties dictated, but now? With 36 more hours in hyperspace? Yeah, you’re not going anywhere for a while. 

Not that you’re complaining. It is your favorite way to pass the time, after all, being meticulously taken apart and wrung dry by this man. 

One hand slides back to gently stroke at your clit while the other, freshly lubed hand, begins to work you open with two fingers in your cunt and his thick thumb wriggling into your ass. If you’d had the capacity to think, you might have gotten excited, but all you could do was feel. Feel everything he wanted you to feel, and maybe more, because between his neverending attentions and the snug, comfortable embrace of the Mandalorian’s leather collar around your neck, you’re gone. 

His hand leaves your clit alone, and the other shifts its goals to stretching out your asshole, two fingers working more lube into the tight clench of you. He doesn’t let you focus on it for long, though. Not when his other hand slips back beneath you, and you feel the silky head of a fake cock pressing into your pussy. He works it in slowly, teasingly, twisting and thrusting until you’re stuffed full of it, right to the fake balls at the base. 

Once it’s buried in you, he wastes no time now, pulling back and giving your already-warm cheeks another slap before lining himself up and plunging into your ass. He’d stretched you well, and slicked his cock with lube for good measure, so that the only sensation you’d be overwhelmed by was the sheer fullness.

And stars above, he’s going to kill you like this. “Kriff, Mando,” you whine in a hiss as he sinks into you.

He gives you a harsher slap before pulling out to push back in and hear you keen. 

“Mmm, what was that?” Mando says. You almost forget to answer; it’s the first thing he’s said since taking his helmet off, and somehow, you always forget just how delicious it is to hear him unfiltered.

“Sorry, sir,” you gasp as he shoves roughly back in. 

He doesn’t bother fucking you with the fake cock. He just leaves it deep inside—its only purpose to break your brain and make your ass even tighter for him. It’s about his size, and you’re drooling onto your pillow already.

He chuckles, low and dark the way he does when he’s got you like this, all dumb and sweet for him. “You like being filled up, don’t you, cyar’ika?” 

“Uh-huh,” you squeak on a particularly rough thrust. 

Another smack.

“Yes, sir,” you whimper. “I love it when you fill me up.”

“There’s my good girl,” he says, nuzzling your head with his own, and you have to beg to come just from that.

But he doesn’t let you. “Not yet,” he says. “You’ve had enough earlier. You’re just going to take it right now.”

Your eyes roll back, and he knows that if you weren’t his perfectly trained girl, you would have lost control. But you don’t. You grit your teeth and whine, but you don’t come.

He pins you down further with one hand on your shoulder blade and fucks into you with a feral grin. You can’t see it, sure, but you can feel it as his face is pressed against your head. He’s grunting with each thrust, and it only serves to bring you even closer, hearing the way he’s losing himself in you, how he’s simply seeking his own pleasure right now.

He doesn’t bother to rub your clit when he reaches his own climax. You don’t need it (and frankly, you’re a little sore already). He knows you don’t need it, he knows your body obeys him, and when he feels you choking his cock with your sweet, tight channel, he simply nudges his nose against your cheek and whispers the only word you need.

You know you come when he tells you to, but it’s a strange, floating thing; your attention is drawn elsewhere when he starts to twitch and pulse inside you. He floods you, each spurt of cum feeling like it’s going to overflow from you as he fucks it deeper into your ass. 

When he pulls out, he rolls off you onto his side, and gathers you in his arms. You don’t quite surface from subspace, to his delight, and he gently strokes your cheek and runs his hand up and down your arm. 

You whimper, and he laughs. 

“Sorry, almost forgot,” he pants and reaches between your legs to extract the toy. He can’t help but tease you a little, and you moan when he finally pulls it out. 

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs. “I’ll fill you there next, pretty girl. We still have a long ride, you know.” 

You try not to pout when the helmet goes back on. It’s not that you care if you see him, but you always miss the soft caress of his lips in between. Like he knows exactly why you’re sulking, he tugs it up just enough to press one last kiss to the back of your head, reveling in the soft, content sigh you grant as you snuggle up together. 

*title from "It Doesn't Feel a Thing Like Falling" by Taking Back Sunday

[corazondebeskar-reads]

✨ wip wednesday ✨

tysm for the tags @aurorawritestoescape and @janaispunk

sneak peek at “of rage and ruin” chapter two under the cut:

still no eta, sorry. this one is a beast (🥁)

no pressure tags! @kewwrites @tightjeansjavi @alwaysmicado @beskarandblasters @covetyou

[corazondebeskar-reads]

I love this so much that it made me nauseous. or I love it because it made me nauseous? Idk either way I love this so much.

I knew it would be okay because I read the warnings but that didn’t matter. The fear and pain and sense of impending tragedy were so strong. brb crying myself to sleep tonight thinking about holding Joel while he bleeds out 💀

✨Stay in the Light✨

A/N: I’ve been wanting to do a one shot based off the song “The Night We Met” by Lord Huron for a while, and I finally got some inspiration yesterday to write this little piece. Hope you like it 🩵 Thank you to @mountainsandmayhem for being my beta reader before I decided to release this out to the world 💕

Summary: Joel gets injured after a raider attack, and he’s wishing he could’ve told you all the feelings he held back from you for so long

Word Count: 2.2k

Pairing: Joel x fem! reader

Rating: 18+ Only

Tags: Outbreak! Joel, Jackson! Joel, blood, angst, comfort, feelings, regrets, in both reader and Joel’s POV, no deaths, fluff (I am bad at tags, so let me know if I should add anything)

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

“When the night was full of terrors, and your eyes were filled with tears. When you had not touched me yet. Oh, take me back to the night we met”

- “The Night We Met” by Lord Huron

The ground is cold, wet, unwelcoming with a thick puddle of crimson blood pooling beneath his worn green flannel. Large flecks of powdered snow lace through his grey threaded curls that stick to his sweaty forehead. His vision blurs, going in and out in waves as pain takes hold of his insides. He can hear Tommy screaming in the near distance, his deep voice sounding like it’s washed out beneath a wave of deep water. He can barely register it, barely hear anything, but what he does see is a bright light, an angel in disguise. He sees you.

You. The girl he should’ve been more careful with. Your feelings, your heart, your everything. He was such an asshole ever since the first day you came walking through the front gates of Jackson. He should’ve been nicer, shouldn’t have yelled at you over petty things that were his doing and shouldn’t have thrown insults your way when you were just trying to help on every patrol you were assigned to with him.

Maybe if he would’ve been fucking nicer then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. A clean gunshot to the abdomen, now bleeding out on the thick white snow beneath him. Raiders. He wasn’t being careful, wasn’t paying attention. No, he was fucking fixed on arguing with you. Maybe he deserves it, maybe if he wasn’t such a grouch all the time then maybe none of this would’ve fucking happened. He sure as hell doesn’t deserve you. Warm, bright, gentle, kind. He was none of those things, so why the fuck were you still sitting here with him, keeping him from slipping into the thick fog of darkness?

“Joel! Stay with me, okay? Stay with me.” Your voice is so adamant, so terrified, so hurt. And it fucking kills him, destroys him. “Tommy! Help him!”

Joel sees the gathering tears that burn through your beautiful eyes, sees the absolute horror that’s coated through your knit together eyebrows, sees the pain of holding it all together just like you always do. Always so brave. His brave girl…. NO. You’re not his to keep, not his to hold, not his to tell everything’s going to be alright. You weren’t his and never would be. Not after the way he’s treated you.

He wishes you were his, but you’re not, and it’s his own damn fault for being so reckless. He should’ve been softer, more kind, like you. He should’ve done so many things, should’ve told you just how he felt. How much he likes you, how much he…

He winces in pain as Tommy presses down on the open wound, barely holding himself together to even keep his eyes open, but he fights. He fights for you. The girl he so desperately fell in love with over the last year, the girl he wished he treated differently. He should’ve fucking told you, but now it’s too late. It’s all too late.

“Hey, hey. Joel, look at me. Look at me!” You grab the sides of his face, sink your delicate fingers into the scruff of his greying beard, and cling to him just enough to where maybe he won’t slip through your fingers. You can’t lose him, you can’t.

“Joel, open your eyes. Please, keep them open for me.” You shake his head lightly, kneel over him and let your hair fall in a heap at your side as you pray for one more day with him. “Joel…”

Your voice is so sad, so desperate as you call out for him. He sees your face blur in his spotty vision, sees the glistening tears start to spill down your face. So he reaches up, musters up enough strength to wipe away the falling tears that stain your beautiful face. He thinks you’re so gorgeous, always has. Ever since you walked into his life, he knew. He knew he’d fall, and that’s why he pushed away so strongly. He didn’t want to lose you, he never wanted to. But now you were the one losing him…

He holds the side of your face for just a few more seconds, just enough to finally know he got you, some part of you, if only for a minute. And that was enough for him. At least he knew what it was like to feel your soft skin slipping under the weight of his calloused fingers. That moment alone was all he wanted.

He starts to close his eyes, starts to fade away into the midst of darkness and silence, but he hears you plead to stay in the light. “Stay in the light, Joel. Stay with me. Stay,” you beg. And he carries those words into the darkness with him. And then there’s nothing but the fading words of a promise he never could keep.

Stay in the light.

He awakes slowly, hearing the buzzing sound of some medical machine he doesn’t know the name of. Slowly but surely his eyes open as the harsh light from the blinding window slips against the warm sheets of the sterile bed. It takes him a second to come to himself, to know he’s not dead.

He looks cautiously down at his exposed torso, finding the tight bandage wrapped around his wound. It’s clean, mended to, but the pain burns through his body. Every breath he breathes feels like fire in his lungs, but at least he knows he’s alive.

He feels warmth sliding through his fingertips, feels comfort bubble over his entirety. He wonders what it is, wonders what thing could ever bring him comfort until he slowly turns his head and sees you sitting there on the edge of the bed, fingers laced through his while your thumb gently glides side to side in slow circles on the back of his rough hand.

His eyes go wide, eyebrows knit together as he stares wondrously at the girl he’s been pining over since the day he locked eyes on you. You look so goddamn beautiful there with your fingers threaded through his. He can feel it deep in his gut, that fluttering feeling he’s always tried so hard to push back down, but this time he can’t. He won’t. He can’t ignore the voices anymore that scream your name every single night he’s in between his sheets, wishing he could just have a chance to hold you, to feel you pressed against his firm chest. And maybe he would. One day. Maybe he still had time to make you his.

You hear a faint rustling sound in the sheets and turn your face slightly to the left, expecting it to only be your vivid imagination. Your jaw drops suddenly and your eyes go wide the moment you see Joel awake, breathing, alive.

“Joel!” You turn frantically and crowd his body, locking your arms tight around the back of his neck as you inhale his deep mahogany and pine cone scent.

“Ouch, take it easy!” Joel pants out as you jump back, realizing you might’ve hurt him with your body weight.

“I’m sorry, are you alright?” you ask as you assess his wound, running your fingers lightly over the bandaged area. He winces a little as you smooth out the edges, but he just hums in response.

“I’m fine. Jus’ calm down, will ya?”

You gently smile at him and brace your hands on the fitted sheets, just barely grazing your skin over his warm, sweaty body. Your eyes scan over his bare chest as you take in the coarse hair that covers his broad chest, watching the way the cool sweat glazes over tanned skin. You think he looks so beautiful, even after a gunshot wound. You’ve never seen him bare chested, and it surprises you what it makes you feel inside. Warmth.

“You came back to the light,” you whisper out, grazing your fingertips across the back of his hand as he stares wide-eyed at you, honey eyes so intense that you swear they’re about to split you in half. “I was so scared, Joel. You scared me half to death!”

He just watches you, eyes wading into yours like a violent tidepool about to drag you into the crashing waves, but there’s a fondness to them, a slight gleam in his eyes as he assesses you. Slow, curious, eyes that look like they might shed a tear.

“You… you saved my life today.” His tone is somber, his honey eyes wild as you see tears lick the surface, but he won’t dare shed them. Not in front of you. That’d be too vulnerable.

“Mhm. If Tommy wasn’t there, I don’t know how I would’ve ever gotten you up on that saddle alone. But we did it. We made it in time. I was so scared we were too late. You weren’t… you weren’t really breathing. Even the doctor was worried you wouldn’t make it. You’re a… well, a miracle.”

His face turns pale, lips parted solemnly as he breathes and lets oxygen back into his tired lungs. “Why did you save me?”

His words surprise you as you furrow your eyebrows and shift your weight slightly on the bed so you’re facing him. “What do you mean?” Your words come out shaky, appalled. What did he mean why did you save him?

“Why did you save me?” His honey eyes bore into yours, fingers flexing around the white sheets as he just stares with flared nostrils.

You place a hand gently on top of his warm hand as he tries to pull away, but you don’t let him. “Because I think you’re worth saving.”

His plush lips tremble, his eyes blowing wide as he takes in your quiet words. He looks like he wants to say something, looks like he’s fighting with himself in his mind, but he just stares unblinking, taking in the soft way you look at him.

Finally, he clears his deep voice and rasps out a response. “I’m not worth saving.” His eyes look so sad, defeated, and you wish you could take away all his pain. Physical and emotional, you’d take it all on if it meant he could have one single day where he didn’t wear the weight of the entire world on his tired back.

You lean forward as you hear the creak of the old bed and place your hand gently on his bare chest, feeling the bristles of coarse dark hair running down his tanned skin. “I think you are, Joel.”

He gulps, arms fidgeting beneath you as you see him fight with himself, battling the demons of reaching out or letting you slip through his grasp. He finally finds the courage to slowly, steadily crawl his hand up the side of his chest, then ever so softly places it on top of yours.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for bein’ a jerk to you the past year. I was a real asshole, and there’s no excuse for the way I treated you. I think about it every single night, think about how I should’ve done better, how I should’ve tried harder because I… I…” Joel winces in pain as he tries to sit up, but you push him back down easily and try to get him to stay still.

“Hey, careful there. It’s okay, Joel. It’s…”

“No, please let me finish.” You nod your head and he continues with a low grunt through gritted teeth. “I should’ve been nicer to you. And I want to apologize for everything I’ve ever done, every hurtful thing I’ve ever said to you. I didn’t mean it, not really. I’ve jus’… I’ve been goin’ through a lot, but that’s no excuse. Because I should’ve told you how I felt about you, not pushed you away. You see, the thing is… well, thing is I like you, darlin’. A lot. You’re so fuckin’ beautiful and those eyes, that smile. I…”

You cut him off as you lean forward and crash your lips into his, letting his warmth overwhelm you as you slip into him. His tongue tastes like coffee, his skin smells of freshly cut firewood, and he feels so good in the palm of your hand. He surrounds you in something like warmth, ecstasy, something you’ve wanted to feel for so long. He glides his thick fingers through your hair and pulls you closer as he gets lost in you, overwhelming your senses until all you can smell, hear, feel is him. It feels so right, this feels right. You almost forget he’s injured until he grunts and shifts his weight to the right.

You quickly let go of the kiss and lean back, assessing if he’s alright, but he’s smiling. Warm, bright, glowing. You’ve never seen him like this, like he’s the happiest man in the world. It’s that twinkle in his chocolate irises that gets you, and you finally know that this is where you belong. In Jackson, with him.

He guides a strand of hair behind your ear and cups the side of your face as his warm, calloused thumb grazes gently across your cheekbone. “You kept me in the light, sweetheart. You’re exactly what I needed all along, I jus’ wish I didn’t wait so long to find the light.”

You sigh and smile. “It’s okay, Joel. You found it. You found me.”

“You gonna keep the light on for me, sweetheart?”

“Forever, if you want me to.”

He pulls you back in and grazes lightly over your lips as he whispers out, “Forever it is.”

Tagging some friends who might be interested 💛 @sawymredfox @burntheedges @littlevenicebitch69 @keylimebeag @vivian-pascal @rav3n-pascal22 @princesatracionera @bbyanarchist @amyispxnk @pedrostories @syd-djarin @msjarvis

[corazondebeskar-reads]

"keep those fucking legs spread" as I'm abusing your cunt with my belt

[corazondebeskar-reads]

Comparing yourself to other writers is the killer of every new story you’d like to write

[corazondebeskar-reads]

Y’all can’t let these little thieves win. This is what they want, to make you stop. Don’t let them steal YOUR joy of creating. Take a break if you need to, but please, don’t let them crush your creativity.

They’re not making money off of your work. They are not getting (many) notes. 

Once they are found out everyone shouts it out loud of what they are. I myself am messaging every single person liking or reblogging the stolen fics, letting them know that they are liking stolen fic - and directing them to the original.

But you can’t stop. The world needs your creativity. The world needs your joy.

You cannot let these children win, we will not let it happen.