Rise
Joel Miller x afab!reader
Warnings/Tags: 18+. Jackson Joel, Touch starved Joel, Lonely old man Joel. Too much religious imagery. Feelings, feelings, feelings. References to sex. Unedited.
Words: 700~
Summary: You are a brightness, Joel is the undeserving dark.
He hadn’t meant to stare, he really hadn’t.
The thing is, you were just so mesmerizing. The way you laughed and the way you danced and the way you could shine so bright in a world he had rarely known to be anything but cruel.
Jackson brought that out of people, Joel recognised that. The ability to let go finally, to live for more than survival. You had been half the bright star you are now when you first arrived; wary and traumatised. He knew those feelings well. Why had he held on to them for so much longer than anyone else?
You were like the antithesis to him: easy to know, easy to love, creating something out of the nothing your life had once been. You were well liked. Joel liked you more, he thought, but people saw you as someone they could talk to.
Tommy often told Joel he was respected in Jackson, appreciated. But it was never the same. He doesn’t have that glow, that brilliance. People know him. No one knows him. Not since Ellie had started to grow away from him, started to doubt him more…
No, not now. Those thoughts aren’t for now.
Right now, this moment, is for reverence. How had this happened? He had been staring more than he should last night at The Tipsy Bison. How had that lead you to be in his bed this morning? He could barely remember; the night a blur of things he didn’t think he should have been allowed to see. He had bought you a drink, you had given him a dance. And then more, and more. You had given him so much more.
Joel is staring again, your resting form so resplendent in the early morning light. So…divine…there’s no other word for it. You were made to be worshiped, he’s sure of it. Being of blazing light brought down to shine on his dimmed world.
When was the last time he had been touched before you? God, he truly doesn’t remember. Certainly not the way you touch; softness of your fingers paving the way for a needy grip on him, he wouldn’t forget that touch. He had been craving it for too long, imagining. Thought upon thought of what a thing your touch could be but he was never prepared for the reality of it.
Joels own hands find their way to you, fingers skimming the bare skin of your lower back. Unworthy. So defiant that his unworthy hands - so rough from years of wear - should get to lay a place on your body.
The word repeats again and again. Unworthy. Unworthy. Unworthy.
And yet last night you had told him in the silken whisper of your moans and pleas. Worthy. Worthy. Worthy.
His calloused hand travels its way slowly up the path of your back. A pilgrimage across a body meant for more than him. The rise and fall of your breath breathes fresh air in to the staleness of his home.
Of his heart.
What did he do to deserve this? What mistake did you make to let him have this?
Grey and alone and aching in ways that go beyond physical. But you were the one who kissed him first. You were the first to touch, to feel where he had not been felt in longer than he knew.
Joel leans slowly across to you. Those harsh fingers of his trailing down the curve of your waist. He dares to plant a pious kiss to your shoulder. Surely soon you’ll wake and realise the mistake?
“Joel” You moan. A soft little thing that makes his heart jump. The same way you’d spoke it last night while he’d had you on his lap, when he’d told you to come and you had like he should have any say in anything you did.
Fuck. He is undeserving of all of this but his greedy heart wants more. Hungry mouth wants to take you apart on it over and over again. Eager fingers itching to feel their way around every beautiful, delicate crook of your body.
He breathes your name back. You turn to him. Surely now is the time you tell him it was wrong. Now…
Joel’s breath catches as you turn to face him, pull him to you. He practically trembles as your lips meet again.
This can’t last forever. He doesn’t deserve it.
It means too much.
He means too little.
You kiss him again. He feels the glow of you everywhere.
This can’t last forever, he reminds himself.
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Hi, how did you learn to draw Steve's physique?
Ohh what a complicated thing to answer...
When it comes to how I learned to draw anything, it's hard to say anything too specific since it's always a culmination of many years of assorted study and practice... but I can try to do my best to explain some of the biggest things that helped me learn, some tips I keep in mind, and maybe at least some places to start/delve further.
(just a little disclaimer it's not like my drawings here are going to be 100% medically accurate.. they're just to illustrate concepts!)
The main thing about learning various physiques is understanding anatomy. Which feels obvious, but I don't mean proportions; these are important, but perhaps more important is understanding the skeleton and how it moves and learning where muscles connect to bones and where fat grows on the body. When you understand how these function on a more mechanical level, depicting form and movement in a way that feels natural comes in tow.
For instance, understanding things like the pronation and supination of the radius and ulna, as well as the fact that muscles can ONLY contract or relax, will help you understand a bit better which muscles will be flexed and which will not while someone moves. It's inherent to the positioning based on the structural makeup of the body... It's not like you NEED to memorize all the muscles and bones, of course, but understanding and gaining at least a passive familiarity with the concepts really helps.
In tandem with this concept is the way parts of the body flow into eachother. Muscles ALWAYS come in groups because they can only contract. Whatever muscle is there to lift something, there is a muscle on the other side to pull that bone back down. What this results in is a series of straight edges next to curves, which gives us a lot of really lovely "s curves" and dents and folds and so on and so forth just naturally occurring.
I would suggest at least learning the "bony landmarks", which are bones (usually) visible on the surface of the body. things like the iliac crest, the great trochanter, the 7th vertabrae, the acromion process... These can be used to help you understand the parts of the body as angles and relationships, rather than trying to remember lengths and sizes, which vary immensely... (since you asked about steve, he can be our model... also study these on your own don't just take my word for it haha, these are the ones I personally keep in mind)
I've done the same thing with body hair... learning where it grows and in which directions... It helps me make up variations without needing reference, because I have a set of rules I can follow.
The biggest thing that helped me understand all this on a much deeper level was my ecorche course. I sculpted this guy. We started by sculpting the entire skeleton to understand the bones, and then we added muscles on top. Not every single muscle, of course, but the "artistic muscles" AKA the ones which directly affect the surface of the body. Doing this let us see where muscles connect, because we would make a shape, put it on the bone where it actually goes, and then you get to see how other muscles overlap that.
This helped me, perhaps, more than anything else. But I also didn't just start with this course, I had been drawing for years before I even took it. I had been in school for years before I took it. Not that I think it wouldn't be helpful to someone just starting out, but I do think that the more you know going in, the better an in-depth course like this will help you and stick with you. Classes are also expensive, though so I'm not really like... recommending you pay potentially thousands of dollars to take one... But it did help me a lot, personally.
I also, of course, have done many figure, gesture, and master studies...
These just help you quickly gain a stronger understanding of generalized anatomy, and gives you real life examples of and practice with of how people move and balance.
What all this does when combined, is gives me a very solid ability to depict movement and form in a way that feels relatively natural from my subconscious without the need for reference.
The rest of how I've learned to draw his physique is honestly mostly just stylization. I understand the body, and this is how I am depicting it for his level of musculature.
And as I move into depicting him in other ways, either moving in comics or in animation, realistically rendered, or extra stylized, these concepts inform every step of that process for me! When he keeps the same/similar relationships between parts, he gets to still look like himself.
It ALSO really helps when putting clothes on, because the way cloth falls and bunches and lifts is all directly related to the form it is on... So the more you understand that form, the more you can depict clothing and movement in a way that feels natural.
This is all, of course, true when I draw anyone, you asked about Steve so I'm trying to mostly show with him! But because I'm just drawing from raw information of general anatomy rather than trying to study one body type at a time, it allows a lot more "give," I think!
Like, here's most of the cast from TTA so far... actually, they're not as varied as I thought they were nevermind LMAO ignore this part
But, it also makes monster and alien design much easier! It's a lot easier to come up with non-human anatomy when I understand human anatomy, because I can manipulate the knowledge I have...
There is infinite more to study in the world of anatomy... The complexity of the human body goes extremely deep. For our purposes as artists, we need only depict a fraction of it, but more information rarely hurts the process.
I'm sure there's something in here that's wrong on a technical level, I'm mostly going off of memory. But that's kind of my point - I understand enough generally and conceptually that when I am missing something and need to find reference for it, I understand what I'm looking at. It's much easier than trying to learn AND draw at the same time.
I hope even one thing in here helped you! Sorry it's so long.
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Johnny 'Soap' MacTavish is definitely the type of guy to still use that Love Tester game from the last 2000s because his sisters use it and he thinks it's real.
(This one specifically:)
So he put his and Simon 'Ghost' Rileys name in it and when it pops up as 99% he sitting there giggling like a lovesick school girl in the common room while Ghost sits next to him
Soap: see tha' LT?
Ghost: that's the stupidest thing ever
Soap:
Ghost:
Soap:
Ghost: now do Alex and Farah-
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