#THE WAY HE JUST FRICKIN. STARES

[royalarchivist]

Moments that keep Quackity fans humble 💀💀💀

(Translator note: he was basically saying "Yeah you can ask me anything you want about QSMP!")

[giddyfatherchris]

At your mercy

pairing. han jisung x afab!reader

type. requested

warnings. suggestive, MDNI! we get to see more of dom han👀 and curse words

words. ~2k

a/n. thank you to my angel @solisyeah for this request i hope you’ll like it!! also, dom han lives rent free in my head:) and this fic is a continuation of han’s part in this text fic we made in collab

a/n2. the first time i wrote this it was kinda really frickin toxic and I'm sorry but I just couldn't. being in a dom relationship does NOT EQUAL that toxic behaviors are okay. boundaries are important people! and what can I say I'm a whore for ppl who respect them:) hope you enjoy xxx

You're so flushed when you head out of the lunch room that you want to crawl under the earth's crust, as opposed to your boyfriend walking out like he owns the world. He's cocky and particularly satisfied when he notices Seungmin trying to avoid at all cost to lock eyes with you or him. You try to get rid of the aura of sex surrounding you and decide to sit near Felix while Hannie gets back to the recording booth as if nothing happened. He gives you a cocky wink, but you quickly advert your eyes, feeling your cheeks heat up with fire once more. You're determined to move on, so you focus on your friend to notice Felix really looks down in the dumps. "Hey, you okay?" you ask while nudging his shoulder. 

The blonde boy lets out a heavy sigh, "Not really. Management has been really tough on us these past few weeks. Our schedules keep multiplying, I'm tired and miss my family. I feel like I can't breathe." His eyes fill with tears, breaking your heart in two. Even if Felix is known for being easily moved, he isn't the type to start crying like this in the middle of a room. You gently stroke your hand down his back to comfort him. "Can I do anything to help? I'm so sorry you're going through this. You should have told me earlier instead of enduring this all alone." 

He quickly wipes his tears away before anyone notices and whispers. "Can I have a hug?"

You immediately wrap your arms around his neck to bring him closer to your body. You won't pull away from this hug before he does. From the way he clings to you, you know he needs this. Suddenly, he pulls you on his lap to lay his head better in the crook of your neck. You don't mind the physical touch, Felix and the other boys had always been a touchy bunch, so you kept stroking his soft hair, shushing sweet nothings to console him. 

What you don't notice is your boyfriend's piercing death stare from across the recording booth as he stares at the way his member's head is lying on your skin, how tightly you hold him and how you are sitting on his goddamn lap. Felix and you are in a bubble of your own, lost in your little world when you hear a familiar ping from your phone. Without letting go, you reach out for your device, your eyes turning round as saucers as you notice the texts coming from your boyfriend. They keep popping up on the screen in a raging litany. They come so fast that you barely have the time to read them all.

One second you're hugging your friend the next a firm grip is roughly pulling you off his lap. You lift surprised eyes to see a fuming Jisung. His gaze is set on his junior with an aggressive spark. Everyone stares in silence at the scene, shocked to see such a demeanor coming from one of the most peaceful members.

"It's time for Y/n to go. They have things to do." 

You can barely mutter a confused 'what?' when he grabs your things, shoves them in your hands, gives you a quick kiss on the cheek, and pushes you out of the room. The door behind you closes in a slam, leaving you alone, feeling on your back the baffled gaze of the other boys through the glass.

"Ji, what the" you barely hear Bang Chan start, but he's quickly shut down by the boy's poisonous tone. You don't know what he said, but from the way Chan's mouth is hanging out open, it was not good. You watch your boyfriend head to the booth, put back on his headphones, and resume his verse like nothing happened for the second time today. 

You head home completely enraged with his behavior. You never minded his dominant side. In fact, you loved it, but today was too much. The first thing with Seungmin was hot, even if it had raised warning signs in your brain. The way he kept it going with Felix was something else. He crossed a limit you couldn't tolerate.

When he gets home hours later, he's back to being his cute usual self. He babbles about his day while you stare silently at him from your seat at the table.

After a while, he notices you haven't said a word since he got home. He finally turns to you with questions in his big eyes. "Is everything okay, sweetheart?"

You stare back with flames in yours. You're basically breathing fire. "I don't know Ji. Are you okay? I don't know what was up with you today, but I don't want you to do something like that ever again. There's a difference between being dominant and being an asshole. Felix is one of my best friends and one of yours too. He really wasn't feeling well. You know I would never ever leave or cheat on you. He just needed comfort. I will not allow you to throw me around like a rag doll and act like that towards me or your friends."

His soft expression vanishes with your words. Suddenly, he looks like he's burning from the inside too. "Their hands were all over you today." 

"Their?" you furrow your brows in question. "What are you even talking about?"

"First, Seungmin pushes you, bruises you, and then keeps touching you while he apologizes. Then Felix whines and brings you on his lap. I don't get why they think it's okay for them to touch you like that." His hands tighten in fists while you stare at him in disbelief.

"What happened with Seungmin was an accident, and he was just APOLOGIZING! Felix was sad and needed a hug. We've always been like this. I don't know what's your problem, but you better figure it out."

His gaze zeroes on you, and he's fuming at this point. "My problem is that you are mine. No one else gets to touch you like that. Only I get to leave marks on your body. Only I get to have you writhing on my lap. Only me. I don't get why you don't understand that. I don't get why you're being such a brat right now."

"That's not what this is about. You being dominant and possessive in our private life is something. Having you push me out of a room and throw fits because our friends touched me in a platonic way is another. I'm not some object you can control to your will. If I decide to hug my friend for 30 fucking minutes because he needs it, it's no one else's business. Especially not you. I've had my fair share of experiences with toxic pricks. I need to make sure this is not happening again." 

Pleasure and toxic conduct are two different things. You won't let him get away with this behavior. Even if the tension in the room, the look he keeps giving you, and the way his eyes burn make you want to let him do anything he wants with you, you won't avert your gaze. You have a point to make, and won't shy away from it. 

You start to get nervous when he stays silent, but the way the fire in his eyes slightly dims makes you breathe a little easier. He walks up to you, and you keep your chin up, not showing one inch of weakness. He stops unbearably close, he's not touching you but every inch of your skin feels on fire by his simple proximity. "Listen," he starts in an ushed voice. "I'm sorry about today. I didn't want to make you feel like I was trying to control you. I respect you, and I would never want to make you feel like that. I want you to know I also apologized to Felix and Chan for my attitude. I know it wasn't okay. You just have this way of making me go absolutely berserk." You let go of a breath you didn't know you were holding, relief flooding your blood. "I think I got a little too carried away. I love feeling like you are mine and only mine. And after our little... adventure in the lunchroom, I think my brain was a little fogged up." Your cheeks flush at the mention of what you did. Phantom sensations of his fingers inside of you make shivers run down your spine. "Still, it wasn't okay for me to act the way I did. I truly apologize." His eyes connect with yours, and you only see soft and caring love in his dark orbs, even a hint of shame for the behavior he displayed. 

You feel your fears vanish into nothingness, "I appreciate your apologies, and I'm glad you apologized to the boys. They didn't deserve this. I love what we have going together, but I needed to make clear that I won't tolerate being used or treated like an object." He shakes his head with a nod. You can see he is taking everything you're telling him very seriously. "And I want you to know that I agree. Nobody else should touch me the way you did in that lunchroom earlier," you add with a tempting smile. "I am yours and only yours. Heart, body, mind, and soul." Your breath comes out in small puffs as you look at his plush lips.

"You are?" His own gaze keeps traveling from your eyes to your lips with a dizzying hunger. 

"I am completely at your mercy."

Your eyes lock one last time before he tilts the chair up and it hits the wall with a small thud. His hands are caging you while his lips smash against yours. The kiss he gives you makes your head spin and your pulse accelerate. The way his tongue slips against your own makes you moan in seconds. As suddenly as it started, the kiss ended. You open hazy eyes, a question on your lips, but one of his hands softly wraps around your throat while his feverish gaze burns through your skull. 

"You're my little plaything, aren't you? Just one kiss and you're already panting so much sugar." His eyes are basically undressing you. You feel his hand slip up your thigh to the center of your desire. You're whimpering before his fingers even reach your clothed core. He presses three digits on it once, making you melt on the chair under you. You're waiting for more, you need more but he's not making any further motion. He's looking at you like a predator ready to pounce on his prey and you feel your insides burn like molten fire. You know what he's waiting for. You know what you both need to hear to break past this tension point. 

You lean so close to him you feel his breath fan over your lips, and you're only staring at them when you utter your next words. "I'm a little plaything who needs to be reminded who they belong to."

It's all your boyfriend needs to dive back like a tidal wave, unleashing all the tension accumulated. In a second, your clothes are torn off your body. Soon, your legs are up in the air, your hands gripping his soft curls, and all you can feel is his hot mouth attached to your core as he feeds on you like a starved man.

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

"What are you doing?"

You jumped at the sudden voice behind you and turned to see Carol surveying you with her arms crossed and an amused expression on her face.

"Shhh!" you urged her. "I'm—nothing! Don't worry about it!"

She laughed and cocked her head at you before stopping beside you and peering around the corner of the house. "Really? You're spying on Daryl?" she laughed. "Why? What is happening?"

"Shhh!!" you urged her again. "The man has ears like a frickin' fox! I—I need ideas for his Christmas present and he is entirely unhelpful when it comes to things like this. I asked him what he wanted and all he could say was—nevermind. Inappropriate to repeat," you stopped yourself, your cheeks blushing as you bit your bottom lip remembering his request and the way he'd kissed you afterwards. "So... I'm just... keeping an eye on him until an idea presents itself."

Carol laughed again. "He'll be furious if he finds out you've been spying on him."

"Give me a little credit—he's never going to find out. That's why they call it spying, and you know, not openly watching..." You stared as Daryl angrily tossed a tool onto the table. Apparently working on his bike wasn't going particularly well today.

Carol shook her head, smiling at you. "Good luck. The man is a mystery."

"Tell me about it..." you mused. "Hey! You won't tell him, will you?"

Carol made an 'x' movement over her heart with her forefinger. "Your secret is safe with me! It'd be nice to see him surprised for once."

"Good," you smiled. "We're in agreement there."

Prompt: "He'll be furious if he finds out you've been spying on him." / "Give me a little credit—he's never going to find out. That's why they call it spying, and you know, not openly watching..."

[mostly-marvel-musings]

Officer Stark

A/N: This is for you @ccbsrmsf1 my lovely! I’ve heard you’ve been stressed lately, so here’s an attempt to make you feel better. @nicoline1998enilocin You’re a good friend, my darling. Leave a comment, heart or reblog if you’ve enjoyed the story.

Picture credits: @tonystark-au 🤍

Pairing: Tony Stark x F! Reader

Warnings: 18+ smut & humour.

Word count: 1642

Tony Stark Masterlist

.

You never got pulled over. This was a first.

Sitting in your car, your fingers tapped against the steering wheel in nervousness as you waited for a cop to appear by your window and give you a ticket for overspeeding. In your defense, you were heading home after a terribly long day at work.

Your muscles ached, your head felt like it was about to explode, you were looking forward to soaking your butt in a hot bubble bath. And now you were on the side of the road, waiting for a frickin cop.

A figure approached, got closer and closer to the mirror as you watched, taking a deep breath before looking out the window. Standing outside was the most strikingly good looking cop you had seen in your entire life.

The dark gray uniform hugged his muscles perfectly, a tie fixed to his shirt with a gold pin, a badge adorning his taut chest. He motioned for you to roll down your window, a small smirk appearing on his features as you did. You wished to see his eyes that were hiding behind those aviators, but you were sure they were just as pretty as he was.

Safe to say you had a thing for men in uniforms. And this guy wasn’t helping. At all.

Your heartbeat quickened as he opened his mouth to speak, asking you for your driving license. Watching you fumble only deepened that smirk, like he knew the effect he had on you.

“Did you realize you were driving over the speed limit, ma’am?”

“It’s Y/N.”

Mentally you cursed yourself, feeling heat rush up to your cheeks as your meek little voice reached his ears. Why would you even say that?

“I–I’m sorry, I understand I was. And I’m sorry, officer.” you mumbled, shaking your head.

“It’s Stark.”

Your head snapped up in his direction, an amused smile adorned his handsome features as he lowered his sunglasses just about an inch.

“I’m gonna ask you to step out of your vehicle, Y/N.”

You obeyed at once, and you could swear to God you heard him say ‘good girl’ under his breath, or you imagined it. You weren’t sure given your flustered state.

His walkie beeped and you heard a muffled announcement come through, it was hard to decipher. Also because your eyes were fixated on the way Officer Stark’s lips moved as he held it mere millimeters away from his mouth, the movement also gave you a chance to shamelessly check out his toned arms with veins that popped out.

He was a few steps ahead of you, and your eyes couldn’t help themselves as they wandered shamelessly over his rear. The slate gray pants defined his ass so well you salivated at the thought. He wasn’t too tall, you noticed, but you thought his persona more than made him for his lack of height.

You stood staring at your feet after you reached his car, feeling terrible about how the day had been, and how quickly it went from bad to worse. He scribbled something on a pad, throwing occasional glances your way. Was he checking you out?

The silence stretched long, you grew impatient enough to clear your throat to get his attention.

“Aren’t you going to give me a ticket?” he simply hummed in response, making you frown as you wrapped your arms around yourself, the air was pretty cool out.

“Or I could just arrest you.”

“W-what?”

Of all things that could go wrong today, you weren’t imagining this day to end with you going to jail. You hoped and prayed to God there was another way around it.

“For driving a little over the speed limit? That is highly unnecessary!”

A metal clinking sound reached your ears before you saw Officer Stark take out a pair of handcuffs. He seemed to be having fun watching you all flustered and tense, stepping in your personal space, a little too close, allowing you a whiff of his musky cologne.

“Hands behind your back. Now.”

When you didn’t oblige, he reached around to clasp your wrists together and held them behind your back, his warm breath fanned over your cheek as he clicked the handcuffs in place. You swore as his body deliberately brushed against yours, you felt his bulge against your lower abdomen. As if his presence wasn’t enough to get your panties damp, this little gesture only added fuel to the fire that unfurled deep within your belly.

“Now that’s a good girl.” his eyes raked appreciatively over you, while he grazed his fingers over your waist, leaving a trail of dark, x-rated thoughts in their wake. This certainly took a turn where only your deepest fantasies had gone until today. It was like your brain had turned hazy, unable to think rationally.

“Officer Stark please...” you trailed off.

He clicked his tongue, gently caressing the side of your face and reveling in the way your body reacted to his touch.

“You’d do anything? No. You’ll let me do anything, Miss Y/L/N. Because you’re such a good girl, aren’t you?”

He expected an answer out of you, his coffee brown eyes now revealed that stared intently, swimming with lust. Morals left you as you felt yourself nod in a yes, the last thing you saw was a victorious grin before Officer Stark’s lips descended on yours. Capturing you in a heady mix of want and desire, your resolve melted away.

His grip on you was strong, not that you would run away, you wanted this as much as he did, you were at his mercy. His hands cupped your breasts wantonly, slipping down to undo your pants. A needy moan escaped your lips as his fingers made it past your panties to find you soaked for him.

“What do we have here? You’re so wet, dirty girl. Did you want this to happen?”

His voice sent a thrill down your spine while he teased your wet folds, thumb brushing against your clit occasionally. He nipped at your bottom lip when you remained quiet, withdrawing his fingers slowly.

“Yes! Yes! I wanted this to happen. Touch me, please.” hating how desperate you sounded, you let out a gasp when he rewarded you with two finger that pushed into your slick entrance.

“That’s a good girl.” he murmured against your lips, trailing them down your neck while massaging your walls, stretching you open deliciously. Your hips moved to gain more friction, needy for more as his words and ministrations brought you to the brink of your climax.

It was the kind of pleasure that made you moan out loud, so loud it resounded everywhere. Least bothered about the fact that you were out on the side of a road, handcuffed while being fingered to the most earth-shattering orgasm by a police officer.

“Mmm…” your moan reached Tony’s ears, making him stop in his tracks to look back. Seeing you on your side, still fast asleep with your leg draped over a pillow and hand reaching over to caress the sheets, it piqued his curiosity.

“I’ll be your good girl, officer…” you mumbled, the words garbled but clear enough to make Tony lie back down next to you with a wide grin on his face as you dreamt on, blissfully unaware that your boyfriend was an audience to it all. He felt his cock twitch inside his boxers at the sight of you panting and moaning in your sleep.

With a sudden gasp, your eyes flew open, making you realize it was all a dream. Light sweat clung to your skin as you released the tight grip you had on your sheets. You were met with a smirking Tony Stark who was eyeing you with amusement, waiting for you to get your bearings.

“Someone had a good night’s sleep.”

You felt heat rush up to your face at his words, he probably heard you talk or worse, moan in sleep. The dream had felt too real.

“Now I understand the kind of porn you’re into, what was your safeword?.” he jested, catching the pillow you flung in his direction with a hearty laugh. Your neck felt hot as you groaned into your hands, embarrassed about the whole thing.

“Can we just forget about it please?”

“No way. Tell me more, I wanna know.”

“You were a police officer.” you mumbled, your voice too low and incoherent.

“What?”

“You were a police officer, okay? Happy now?” you shook your head, wanting him to drop the subject, but then again, knowing Tony, he probably wouldn’t.

“Hey I’m just happy it was me. Judging by your moans there, I could tell I was pretty good.” Tony chuckled, grazing a finger up your arm only for you to swat it away.

“Drop it, Tony.” you begged, throwing the sheet off of your legs to get up. You just knew you were in for a whole day of this with your boyfriend, or days.

“Just out of curiosity, what did I arrest you for?” Tony seemed thoroughly entertained by the idea as his eyes bore into yours, mirth swimming in them.

“Overspeeding.” You admitted sheepishly as he chuckled, clearly enjoying this reaction.

“Ironic.” He was amused, given how he wasn’t exactly known for driving within the speed limit. He stood up all of a sudden, headed for the door while pulling out his phone to type something.

“Where are you going now?”

“To see about that uniform for my girl, where d’you think?”

[yelena-bellova]

Twenty Years Later: Joel Miller x F!Reader - Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven: Almost

Plot: Joel, Ellie and Y/n work their way across Wyoming in a desperate search for Tommy.

Word Count: 12.6k

Warnings: tlou ep.6 spoilers, language, death, loss of a child, angry outburst, trauma, anxiety attacks, 16+

A/N: SURPRISE! One day ahead of where I thought I’d be, swooping in for a dose of bedtime angst 🌙

As always, I have to put that this series is 16+ and I will not be adding anyone to the taglist if your age/range is not specified in your bio. Gotta look out for younger eyes 👀

This chapter and the one that will follow are the chapters. They’re the culmination of this whole frickin’ journey. It’s been so fun to eead your theories about Joel and Rosebud’s breakup, and now you’ll have (some of) your answers. I hope it lives up to what you imagined, or maybe even surprises you. Above all, I hope y’all enjoy 😘

—————

December 2023. Somewhere in Wyoming.

Fuck the philosophers of the pre-Cordyceps world.

Time healed nothing.

If anything, time made pain worse. Because, with enough time to study its victim, the pain could evolve. It could morph into anger, bitterness…much like Cordyceps, it could consume its host until they were shrouded in so many layers of hurt, they became unrecognizable.

Time healed absolutely nothing.

Marlon returned to his cabin, hanging the two rabbits he’d killed on the hook outside the door. The little warmth the home managed to retain welcomed him in, but the inside had changed since he’d been gone.

“Who the hell are you?”

Y/n sat adjacent to Florence, Marlon’s wife, blowing on a spoonful of soup. “A deep admirer of your wife’s cooking,” she answered.

Marlon stood confused at the door, slowly removing his jacket.

“And the gun.”

The old man turned to see another stranger, this one a man, emerging from the kitchen. He had a pistol drawn on Marlon.

“And you?”

Joel shook his head, carefully moving towards Marlon, “Just someone passin’ through. Take the gun out, two fingers only, put it outta reach.”

Marlon obeyed, dangling his pistol off his fingers and setting it on an end table. All the while, Y/n sipped her soup.

Marlon looked to Florence, “Why didn’t you shoot them?”

She nodded across the room, “The gun’s all the way over there. They didn’t hurt me by the way.”

“Yeah, I got eyes,” Marlon walked to his chair, he’d already deemed Joel as a very minor, if at all, threat.

“He won’t shoot you,” Y/n interjected, not once looking up from her bowl, “He threatens everyone he meets.”

Joel’s hardened stare landed on Y/n’s face, her casualty was greatly undermining him.

“You made ‘em soup?” Marlon gestured to Y/n’s meal, along with Joel’s untouched bowl that sat on the coffee table.

“Yeah, I did,” Florence answered, “It’s cold out.”

Y/n reached across and touched the woman’s arm, “And it’s lovely, Florence. Thank you.”

Joel sighed in exasperation, “We’re lookin’ for my brother.”

Marlon scoffed and removed his baseball cap, “Well, I ain’t seen him.”

“I haven’t told you what he looks like,” Joel replied.

“He look anything like you?” Marlon asked.

“A bit.”

Marlon shrugged, “Then I ain’t seen him.”

“They’ve got a girl with them,” Florence nodded up the stairs.

“Can I come down now?” Ellie called from above, overlooking the ground floor.

Joel and Y/n answered at the same time.

“No.”

“Yeah.”

Their eyes flicked to one another, Joel’s frustrated, Y/n’s calm. She was done playing the gunslinging traveler when unnecessary.

Ellie, always siding with whichever of them gave her what she wanted, bounded down the stairs.

“Ellie,” Joel reprimanded, as if it would do anything to stop her…

“Ooh-wa,” Marlon chuckled, looking to his wife and Y/n.

“What did I just say?” Joel said as Ellie joined him.

“Joel, come on,” she replied, aiming her handgun at the couple, “They’re like, a thousand.”

Marlon ran his eyes over Ellie, “Who’s this little psycho?”

“Never mind her,” Joel leaned forward, pushing his map across the table to Marlon, “I need you to tell us where we are.”

“If you got a map, why’re you lost?” Marlon asked.

“Must’ve missed all the street signs in the enormous fucking forest,” Ellie shot back.

“Ho-ly,” Marlon smiled to his wife, the two of them sharing a laugh.

Joel glanced over to Ellie, she was mirroring his posture, his tone…she was trying so damn hard to be like him. “We’re somewhere here,” he pointed to a spot on the map, “Exactly where? And your answer better be the same as your wife’s.”

Marlon’s eyes flicked to Florence, “You tell ‘em the truth?”

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Are you tellin’ me the truth?”

“Yeah.”

Marlon leaned forward and pressed a finger to a spot on the map. It wasn’t the answer Joel was looking for.

“Well,” he holstered his gun, “You found a great place to hide, I guess.”

“Hide?” Marlon chuckled deeply as Joel settled on his couch, “Came here before you and your wife were born, sonny. Get the hell away from everybody.”

“Not his wife,” Y/n was quick to reply before taking another spoonful. It had been three fucking months of assumptions and both Joel and her were exhausted by them.

Florence turned to Y/n, “I didn’t want to.”

“Eh,” Marlon waved his wife off and looked to Joel, “Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you about your brother but if you’ve come this far, then you know what’s out there. You seen Cody?”

“Yeah, got close enough,” Ellie answered from the arm of the couch, “It’s crawling with Infected.

“Yeah, Laramie,” Marlon listed off, “And Wind River Reservation. Anywhere people used to be. You can’t go there no more.”

Y/n set her soup aside and leaned forward on her elbows, deciding it was finally time to take the conversation seriously. “So you’ve never heard the name Tommy Miller?”

“Nope,” Marlon answered.

“What about the Fireflies?” Ellie asked.

Florence nodded, “We get those in the summer.”

“Not the bugs,” Ellie replied, thoroughly put out, “The people.”

“There are firefly people?”

Y/n joined the joke and gestured down the length of her body, “In the flesh.”

Marlon, Florence and Y/n shared a laugh, Joel couldn’t tell whether he was more annoyed or disappointed.

“You got any advice on the best way west?”

“Yeah,” Marlon leaned forward, “Go east,” he ran a finger along a stretch of water on the map, “But you never go past the river here. Ever.”

“What’s past the river?” Ellie asked.

“Death,” Florence answered, “We never seen who’s out there, but we see the bodies they leave behind. Some Infected, some not,” she turned to Joel, “If your brother’s west of the river, he’s gone.”

Joel and Y/n’s eyes met across the table, both trying to conceal their worry under Ellie’s ever-present gaze, but knowing they could share it with each other.

“You’re not gonna scare us,” Ellie said, confidently.

Florence nodded towards Joel and Y/n, “Scared them.”

They quickly buried their anxieties under blind determination. Whatever lay across the bank, it didn’t matter. They had to believe that Tommy was both alive and well on the other side.

Filing out of the cabin, Joel and Y/n marched ahead of Ellie.

“You don’t seriously believe them,” Ellie half-stated, half-asked.

“They’ve lived here a long time,” Joel replied, trudging through the snow. He could feel his heartbeat speeding up.

Y/n turned around to see why she couldn’t hear Ellie’s footsteps following theirs. The girl was unhooking one of Marlon’s rabbits, “El, come on, don’t steal their food.”

Ellie was undeterred as she swung the game over her shoulder, “They don’t know anything. Never heard of the Fireflies.”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t have out here,” Y/n stretched her arms out around her to the snowy expanse, “Doesn’t mean you have to steal t-“

Y/n’s words faded in Joel’s ear, a steady ring filling the space. It was happening again.

Joel stumbled forward, resting a weak hand on a piece of the cabin’s fence, his breathing became labored. His thoughts began to spin with worst case scenarios in all their various forms that could become reality, if what lay on the other side of the river was real. Every nightmare his mind drummed up ended with Y/n or Ellie d-

“Joel,” Y/n called, she was the first of them to notice. She walked to meet him, “Joel.”

“Joel?” Ellie echoed, she’d had yet to witness one of his episodes, “Joel, are you okay?”

“Shut up,” he said, verbally waving Ellie off.

“Holy shit, are you dying?” Ellie continued.

Joel shook his head and shut his eyes, trying to block them out, “I’m okay.”

Y/n wasn’t so convinced, she laid a firm grip onto Joel’s shoulder. “Joel, c’mon.”

“Okay, but are you okay?” Ellie asked again.

“I’m fine,” Joel insisted, wishing desperately that Y/n would remove her hand, but not possessing the strength to shove it off, “I’m fine.”

“No, no, but are you?” Ellie wouldn’t stop, why couldn’t she stop? “Because just a reminder, that if you’re dead, we’re fucked.”

Y/n’s gaze darted to the girl, “Ellie-“

That was enough to bring Joel back to Earth.

“I said I’m fine,” he pushed, contradicting his words with his palm pressed to his chest. “It’s just the…cold air all of a sudden.”

Y/n let her hand slide off his shoulder, wholly aware that he was lying. The episodes had been occurring more and more over the last few weeks, they seemed to be getting worse the closer they got to wherever Tommy was or wasn’t.

Joel refused to ever tell her what triggered them, hell, he had barely figured it out himself. What he did know was that he couldn’t deal with what lay at the core of them all. That would have required an honesty he hadn’t possessed in twenty years.

“All right, uh,” Ellie was the first of the three to bounce back, “So let’s go find Tommy and the Fireflies. It’s gonna be easy,” she slid between the fence and called back to them, “All we have to do is cross the river of death.”

Joel and Y/n were left on their own, the former waiting to catch his breath, the latter waiting on an explanation.

“Would it have killed you to back me up in there?” Joel asked, his usual sour mood replacing the small glimpse of vulnerability.

“Yeah,” Y/n’s watched him bury the lsat thirty seconds, denying her an answer once again, “‘Cause that’s our biggest problem.”

She slid through the fence after Ellie, leaving Joel to bring up the rear of their group.

The last three months had been trying, but not in the ways Joel and Y/n might have thought at the beginning of their quest. They could only stay silent with each other for so long before they had to talk, and they’d reached a place where they weren’t at each other’s throats any more. While the snow had frozen the earth, their anger had melted…

Leaving all the underlying emotions to fill the vacant space.

The physical distance they kept hadn’t changed, but the unspoken chasm between them was beginning to cave in on itself. With each passing day, it was growing harder and harder for Joel and Y/n to pretend like they didn’t need each other.

In every one of Joel’s attacks, his guilt slammed into him like a tidal wave, threatening to drown the life out of him. So many people he’d let down and when he opened his eyes, he was staring into the face of one of them. One look at Y/n caused everything he’d told himself about her over the years to follow the undertow out to sea.

Y/n, in all her righteous rage, was beginning to do the impossible…she was starting to understand why Joel had done what he’d done to her. She’d spent twenty years cursing his name, a constant boil in her stomach that bubbled whenever she thought of him, but there’d always been a voice in her head reminding her of the ‘why.’ All of Joel’s actions from Outbreak Day on had been driven by a deep pain inside him. That inkling was starting to spread through Y/n’s mind, the dye well on its way to consuming the whole brain.

In a perfect world, they’d have come to one another, humbly, and talked it through. Instead, they held their grudge, with its dying flame, as the barricade between them, hoping that it sparked once more.

—————————

In the fall, fires had been a luxury, but as winter rolled in, they became necessary to make it through the night.

Y/n and Joel sat on opposite sides of it, Joel adding another layer of duct tape to his boot and Y/n stitching up a busted seam in her leather gloves. It was the apocalypse’s version of domesticities.

Ellie was above them, having scaled a rock to get a good look at the stars. A green glimpse of the Aurora Borealis waved through the midnight blue sky.

Joel whistled for her eventually, “Come down from there. You’re gonna break your neck.”

Ellie reluctantly returned to the ground, choosing to sit close to Y/n and watch her mend her glove. The two of them had grown closer over the past three months. Joel would never let his guard down wholly for Ellie, but Y/n was more comfortable letting the girl see her as she was.

“Ahh,” Ellie said, spotting the flask Joel was taking a swig from, “Can I have some?”

“No,” Y/n and Joel said in perfect harmony.

“What? Just to warm up,” Ellie clarified, “C’mon.”

Joel’s eyes flicked to Y/n, who knew she couldn’t hold old world rules to their situation. Her gaze falling back to her handiwork served as Joel’s answer.

Ellie took the flask, made sure to give a little ‘cheers’ to Joel and took a drink. She grimaced as it ran down her throat, “Yep,” she strained, “Still gross.”

Ellie held out the flask to Y/n, who shook her head. The thought of being anywhere near where Joel’s lips had been unsettled her.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Ellie started after a short stretch of silence, “Let’s say we find the Fireflies, it all works, they draw my blood and put it through some of their fancy machines and make a cure.”

Joel’s brows furrowed in confusion, “Okay.”

“Then what?” Ellie asked, “Like, what do we do?”

“Oh, it’s ‘we?’” Joel replied.

“Yeah, the end of this partnership comes as soon as we get to the base,” Y/n pointed between herself and Joel.

Ellie nearly rolled her eyes, “Okay, fine. Whatever, you. Separately. You can do anything you want,” she looked to Joel first, “Where are you going? What are you doing?”

Joel glanced at the sky, to admit his true answer would kill another piece of the remnants of his heart. “It’s never been an option,” he cleared his throat, “Maybe…”

For a split second, he saw it all again. His old house. Tommy in the kitchen, raiding their fridge. Sarah at the table, doing homework.

And Y/n, somewhere in the middle of it all, laughing and looking to Joel with a softness that both uplifted and settled him.

“An old farmhouse,” he lied, “Some land…a ranch.”

Y/n stared down at her needlework, knowing that each word was a lie.

“Cool,” Ellie replied, oblivious to the history surrounding her, “What kind?”

“Sheep,” Joel answered, it was the first animal he could think of, “I would raise sheep.”

“Sheep,” Ellie repeated under her breath.

“They’re quiet,” Joel continued, his stare falling on Ellie, “Do what they’re told.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Ellie got the hint, “So just you and a buncha sheep. Romantic. Is there…” her eyes swung between Joel and Y/n, “Room for anyone else in the pens with you?”

The assumptions made by strangers that Y/n and Joel were a couple were enjoyable compared to Ellie’s constant attempts to push them together. They were getting more frequent and less subtle.

“I go back to work after this, El,” Y/n said, finishing up her last loop, “Doubtful I’ll be getting back to Boston any time soon, so I’ll probably stay at the camp out here.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Ellie shook her head, “I asked what you wanted to do. Out of anything, anything in the world.”

Y/n stopped her stitching, staring down at the needle, wondering if she poked herself hard enough, if she’d be able to draw blood. Would she be able to feel the prick? Or was she just numb enough that physical pain couldn’t touch her?

Joel had noticed that Y/n was beginning to slow down more. On the move, she was as fast as ever, but in the quiet moments between, there’d be times where the world was in motion, and she was perfectly still. It was like she was somewhere deep, deep in her mind, waiting for whatever hold had come over her to break and allow her to return to reality.

Y/n swallowed thickly, her past life flickering before her eyes like a movie montage. Sharing a beer with Tommy while watching a Cowboys game. Painting Sarah’s nails for her with a color the girl had stolen from Y/n’s bathroom. Laying in bed with Joel, deep in the pillows and listening to him sing softly over his guitar…

Her dreams were dead.

“I want to work,” she answered, it wasn’t a total lie, “Help people. If I stop for too long…then what the hell am I doing?”

Joel wished he didn’t recognize the underlying sentiment, that if she stopped moving at an inhuman pace, the grief would consume her. But he did, because it was the same way he lived his life.

Y/n clipped the thread with her teeth, beginning to tie a knot, “And what about you? What are you gonna do after you save the world?”

Ellie gave a small smile as Y/n nudged her with her shoulder. She turned her gaze to the sky, specifically the very visible moon. “It’s probably because I grew up in the QZ. Behind you, there’s ocean and ahead of you there’s a wall,” her smile grew the longer she stared at the stars, “Nowhere else to look but up. I read everything I could in the school library. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell…” Ellie sat forward with enthusiasm, “But you know who my favorite is?”

“Sally Ride,” Joel and Y/n both answered, it wasn’t hard to guess.

“Sally fuckin’ Ride,” Ellie slapped her knees, enunciating her point, “Best astronaut name ever!”

Whatever levity had come over their campsite faded quickly, Y/n watched as Ellie’s passion turned to sobering…grief? Guilt? She was hard to read sometimes, the innocence of youth and the scars of rushed adulthood creating something entirely new.

“It’ll work, right?” Ellie asked, “The vaccine?”

“It’s a little late to start wonderin’,” Joel responded, his hands folded over his stomach.

Ellie looked down at her lap, unable to look either Y/n or Joel in the eye. “I tried…with Sam.”

“Tried what?” Y/n asked.

“I knew he was infected,” Ellie confessed, “I rubbed some of my blood into his bite. I know,” she hurried, trying to stop Joel’s anxious admonishment before it came, “I know, it was stupid, but I…” she looked back down at her lap, “I wanted to save him.”

Y/n diverted her gaze to the fire, feeling the warmth of it deep in her belly. Not a day had gone by where she hadn’t thought about Henry or Sam. It had taken her a full day after their deaths to even be able to speak. The sorrow in Henry’s eyes before pulling the trigger on his own life haunted her. The pain of understanding still lingered in her chest, coming out to play every once in a while and remind her that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she worked to be a good person…she couldn’t erase what she had done.

“Well, I reckon it’s a lot more complicated than that,” Joel plainly answered, “Marlene, she’s a lotta things, but…she’s no fool. If she says they can do it, they can do it.”

Ellie absorbed his answer before turning to Y/n, waiting for her reassurance.

Y/n pulled herself out of her grief, barely quirking the corners of her lips up. “It’ll work,” she replied.

Ellie seemed to accept both their responses, letting silence fill the space again until she decided it was time to end her day. “How’re we splitting up the watches?”

Joel sighed, Y/n’s gaze already waiting for him when he looked up at her.

“We’ll do ‘em both,” he answered, “Get some sleep. Dream of…” he capped the flask and exchanged it for his rifle, “Sheep ranches on the moon.”

Ellie nodded, grabbing her sleeping bag and walking to the deeper part of their hideout, “I will.”

Y/n fitted her repaired glove back on her hand, tucking them under her armpits for extra warmth. This was the hardest part of each of the day/ When it was just Joel, her and the unmentionable divide between them.

Joel tried to distract himself, gazing up at the moon and focusing on tracing the constellations around it. But the self-discipline he tried so desperately to maintain concerning Y/n was slipping, his eyes using some uncontrollable part of his mind to drift over to her.

Y/n was struggling to keep up her stoic decorum, the urge to let her and Joel’s conversations warm growing stronger and stronger. It was natural in their mutual isolations to wish for someone to talk to. But with him in front of her, the figurehead of the past she wanted so desperately to go back to…she craved a piece of a memory, any memory, that only he could give her. A short hit of dopamine to get her through the next day.

“So, Tommy,” she began, it was the only part of their past she could safely return to.

“What about him?” Joel asked.

“Is he…” Y/n chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to phrase the question right, “Is he still…Tommy?”

Joel sighed, the memories of two decades ago mixing with the last version of his brother he’d seen. “He’s still a pain in the ass, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

Y/n gave a very small smile, “But he’s still him?”

Whatever she was looking for, Joel couldn’t give her. None of them were like they’d been twenty years ago, except maybe her. She had managed to keep her humanity intact. He was darkness in both their eyes. As rough as he’d been on her at the beginning of their journey, now, he didn’t want to shatter her illusion about perhaps the one person left on the planet she loved.

“Yeah,” he replied, “He’s still him.”

Y/n nodded, deciding not to ask anything else and let the moment stay pleasant. “I can take first watch,” she volunteered.

“No, you go ahead,” Joel shook his head, “I’ll wake you up.”

“Okay,” Y/n replied, too tired to fight him. She grabbed her own rifle before unrolling her sleeping bag on her side of the fire, stretching out under it and using her arm as a pillow.

Joel kept his eyes off of her until the even rhythm of her breaths told him she was asleep. Then, and only then, did he let himself watch her, trying to combat the various fears that filled his head. She was there, in front of him, alive and well.

But how long could he keep her like that?

—————————

Even in his sleep, Joel couldn’t find rest.

A barrage of images, flashes of colors and echoes of screams, played through his mind. When he startled awake, like every morning past, all he could feel was an overwhelming sense of loss.

The gun was gone.

This was it. His grand failure.

He bolted upright only to find Ellie, a few feet away, standing guard with his rifle.

“Still mumbling in your sleep,” she stated, “I woke up early. You and Y/n,” she glanced over at her still-sleeping guardian, “Were passed out, so I took second watch.”

“You gotta wake one of us up if that happens,” Joel snapped, quickly getting to his feet and crossing the distance between him and Y/n, “You can’t do things like this.”

“But I can,” Ellie smiled, “‘Cause I just did.”

Joel crouched down, shaking Y/n’s arm lightly in an effort not to startle her, “Hey.”

All credit to him for trying, Y/n still woke with a gasp. It was her basic programming.

“We’re fine, we’re fine,” Joel was quick to reassure her as she rolled onto her back.

Y/n scrunched her eyes, blinking the sleep away from them, and sat up. It was daylight. Joel hadn’t woken her up for her watch, again.

“My fault,” he accepted the blame she was getting ready to place on him before continuing his conversation with Ellie, “We’re responsible for you, okay?”

“Then don’t fall asleep,” Ellie challanged, “I was quiet, I checked my six, I looked for tracks, I found the high ground and I kept watch,” she explained as Joel approached her, “Like you taught me to. What can I say, man? I’m a natural.”

Y/n scoffed as she unzipped her sleeping bag, “And you’re not cocky about it at all.”

Joel held out a demanding hand, taking the rifle from Ellie, but accepting that she’d done the job right. “You wake us up next time,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Ellie replied, smugness evident in her tone and on her face.

Without another word, Y/n and Joel collected the few things they’d unpacked, smothered what remained of the fire, and the three of them resumed their hike to an unknown destination.

—————————

Even if they’d have been warned in graphic detail what lay over the River of Death, it wouldn’t have changed Joel and Y/n’s minds. The only way to Tommy was to risk their lives crossing, and they did so with very little hesitation.

Ellie, bless her soul, had found plenty of ways to keep herself entertained on the way, including trying to teach herself how to whistle and requesting hunting training. Joel still wouldn’t budge on the latter.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Ellie started at some point in their hike, “And I think I figured out what happened between you two.”

Joel and Y/n tensed up as they walked alongside one another, Ellie’s cleverness worked against them most of the time.

“Obviously, you two were a thing way back when in Texas,” she explained, adding a twang to the state’s name, “And then at some point, you guys break up. The ‘why’ was what was tripping me up, until I realized, boom…there was somebody else.”

Y/n forcefully exhaled, wondering whether the theory was more preferable to the truth.

“Now, I can’t quite figure out which one of you would’ve slipped up,” Ellie continued, “But even if you didn’t cheat with them, there was someone who got in between you enough to equal a big fight, throwing things at one another, screaming how much you loved each other and eventually ending with you swearing never to speak again. Which is why you two were ready to kill each other when you met in the QZ.”

Joel was near reaching his boiling point, fighting the pull to spin around to Ellie, wave a finger in her face and explain exactly how the situation had gone down. But the reality of those words finally escaping his lips and taking up space in the world was an unbearable thought.

Y/n was near breaking too, feeling the cracks in her chest begin to spread. She needed off the topic if she was going to be able to take a breath. “What the hell kind of stories were you checking out in between astronaut books?”

“Whatever,” Ellie brushed it off, “I know I’m right.”

Thankfully, she let the subject go as soon as they closed in on an old, out-of-usage dam. The water still gushed through it and into the river.

“Dam,” Ellie punned.

“You’re no Will Livingston,” Joel remarked.

“Yeah, yeah, but who is?” Ellie smiled, “So that made electricity?”

“Yeah,” Joel answered, predicting Ellie’s next question, “Don’t ask me, I don’t have a clue.”

He resumed their walk, Y/n and Ellie trailing behind.

“You know, you could have just made something up,” Ellie said, “I would’ve believed you.”

The three of them hiked a half hour more before coming up on another side of the river, or perhaps, an entirely separate one.

“Look at that river,” Ellie remarked, “It’s crazy blue.”

Y/n and Joel were hardly paying attention, both in their own separate thought bubbles. Any time the subject of their past relationship was brought up, it reset the clock on their comfort with each other and took at least an hour to warm back up to one another.

“Hey,” Ellie spoke up, “What if this…is the River of Death?”

The adults stopped in their tracks, the thought hadn’t dawned on them after the victory of crossing the first body of water. Joel whipped out their map, Y/n came to join him and the two of them examined it carefully.

“Fuck,” Y/n mumbled under her breath, pressing a hand to her temple.

“We don’t know it yet,” Joel quickly said, walking ahead a few steps to get a better view of their surroundings. Y/n followed closely, with Ellie on their heels.

A noise on the hill above them caught Y/n’s ear, her eyes lifting from the map to see a group of riders coming straight for them.

“Joel,” she shook his arm forcefully, bringing his attention upwards.

At the first glimpse, Joel grabbed Ellie’s free hand, Y/n taking the other, and they bolted for the forest. There were enough riders to circle them in, aiming their rifles at them and cutting off any escape route they could have found. They were fucked.

“Get behind me,” Joel told Ellie and Y/n, only the youngest of the two listened to him. The three of them held their hands up, “We ain’t lookin’ for any trouble, we’re just passin’ through.”

“Drop the guns,” one of the riders ordered.

Slowly, Y/n and Joel slipped their rifles off of their shoulders and placed them on the ground.

“You,” the same guy nodded to Ellie, “Take five steps back.”

“We can talk through this,” Y/n said, her voice gained strength the moment Ellie was addressed.

“How about you shut the fuck up?”

“Okay,” Joel spoke quickly, his hand instinctively flinching towards Y/n’s as she was threatened, “Easy,” he looked behind to Ellie and said with a low voice, “You’ll be okay.”

Ellie backed up reluctantly, her eyes darting between the riders, Y/n and Joel.

“You been near any Infected?”

“There’s no Infected out here,” Joel answered the man.

“The hell there ain’t,” the rider replied, whistling immediately after. One of them walked a dog, a German Shepherd, forward. He was barking wildly. “Last chance for a bullet. If you’ve been infected, he will smell it, and he will rip you up.”

Y/n and Joel’s blood ran cold.

The dog came forward, sniffing from Joel’s boots up to his torso, and deeming him safe. He went through the same motions with Y/n before walking back to its keeper. Joel and Y/n felt the same hesitant relief, could they really make it out of this?

“Like I said,” Joel said, “We’ll just move on.”

But life wasn’t that merciful to them. “Now her,” the rider nodded back to Ellie.

Y/n turned to face the girl, Ellie’s eyes widened with childlike fear. There was nothing Y/n could do to help. The second she raised her pistol, she’d be dead. They’d know they were hiding something and they’d shoot Ellie too. But if she stayed perfectly still, resting all of her hope on a blind theory, maybe…just maybe…

Joel wasn’t thinking hardly as rationally as his ex. His ears began to ring, his heart began to race, all his senses blinding him with terror as the dog approached. He was helpless again, his hands tied behind his back as he watched someone he cared about die a slow, meaningless de-

Ellie giggled.

Y/n huffed a sigh of relief at the sound, her and Joel turning to see the dog licking Ellie’s face. She fell back onto the snow, laughing and scratching the animal’s neck. When she smiled up at them, Joel and Y/n felt the oxygen return to their lungs.

The rider whistled for the dog to return, “You just bought yourself ten more seconds. What are you doin’ out here?”

It took Joel a few of those seconds to come back to his surroundings, “We’re just lookin’ for my brother. That’s all, nothin’ more.”

“Ho!”

The rider to the left of the one threatening them nudged her horse forward, stopping a few feet closer to Joel and Y/n. “What’re your names?”

“Joel,” he answered.

“Y/n.”

The woman looked them over, her bandana covering all but her eyes. “I can take you to your brother,” she finally said.

Joel’s lips parted in shock, instantly tilting his head to gaze over at Y/n, who wore the same surprise. Tommy was alive.

The woman called back to one of the riders, ordering them to go retrieve the two extra horses they’d left to graze. They were brought back, saddled and all, and Joel, Y/n and Ellie were directed to get on them.

Y/n jumped on one first, her and Joel both helping Ellie onto the rear of the saddle.

“You hold on and you don’t let go, alright?” Y/n said, wrapping the reins of the bridle around her fist. It had been a long time since she’d ridden.

“Mm-hmm,” Ellie hummed, locking her arms around Y/n’s middle.

Joel promptly mounted his own horse, nudging his them closer to ride alongside Y/n and Ellie.

“Let’s move out,” the woman called to the group.

They rode about fifteen minutes, galloping further west. In the distance, a building could barely be made out. The closer they got, the more Y/n and Joel could tell it was a fort. The party slowed as they approached the gate, two riders getting off their horses to help open it up. Joel and Y/n followed without question, despite having a dozen.

Y/n’s breath caught at the sight inside the walls.

It was a town. A proper fucking town.

Unlike the QZ, the place they were looked whole, kept up. The buildings weren’t crumbling, they stood firmly planted in the ground. All around them, people were strolling, not running. Children were screaming in play, not in fear. There were even snowmen lining the outside of one of the storefronts.

Y/n wanted to look back at Joel, to make sure he was seeing it too. She instead kept her eyes forward, scanning over her surroundings in awe.

Joel was entirely confused, but otherwise occupied by checking each and every face they passed to see if it was Tommy. Eventually, the sounds of construction instinctively brought his attention to the side of a building where two men were hard at work. The second silhouette, a tall, thin, dark haired man, didn’t require an extra second of examination. Joel knew it was his brother.

“Tommy,” he shouted.

Y/n followed Joel’s line of vision and let out a hushed gasp.

Tommy looked up from his work, scanning the group for the familiar voice. His eyes fell on his brother, shock freezing him for a few seconds before he began to climb down the scaling.

Joel slid off his horse, his steps quickening as relief flooded his body. Tommy strode towards him, the two of them meeting in a solid, long overdue, embrace.

Tommy laughed into Joel’s shoulder before pulling back to get a good look at him, “What the fuck you doin’ here?”

Joel took a breath, taking in their surroundings, “I came here to save you.”

Tommy’s brows furrowed while Joel exploded into a fit of laughter, the two of them pulling each other back in.

Y/n wound her leg over her horse, dropping to the ground and handing Ellie the reins. She kept her distance as she watched the brothers reunite, a sharp pain running through her chest she hadn’t felt in two decades. But when Tommy opened his eyes, gazing over Joel’s shoulder, he straightened up.

Tommy looked between his brother and Y/n, dumbfounded by the sight of them in the same vicinity. He broke away from Joel, walking the distance before matching Y/n’s quickened jog, and lifted the woman into his arms.

As soon as Tommy embraced her, Y/n’s long-held tears began to fall.

“What the hell?” Tommy asked, his mouth muffled against Y/n’s coat.

Y/n was too overwhelmed to explain anything.

“I tried,” Tommy rushed out, having held onto those two words for twenty years, “I tried to find you, I couldn’t.”

“I know,” Y/n sniffled, “I know.”

Cleared of any wrongdoing in her eyes, Tommy held Y/n a little tighter and pulled her off her feet. She laughed as she cried, digging her face into the denim of Tommy’s jacket.

If Joel had thought he could handle the reunion, he’d been wrong. The sight of his brother and his ex, so thrilled to be in each other’s presence again, split him. It was the first time in three months he’d seen Y/n genuinely happy, so full of joy she was brought to tears.

Joel could feel his own eyes growing wet.

Tommy set Y/n back on the ground, keeping an arm around her shoulders and looking to Joel. When Y/n and Joel’s gazes met, there was no trying to hide any of what they were feeling. It was a heavy moment, but a joyous one, and they had to sit with it.

“Y’all must be starving,” Tommy said, “Let’s head to the mess hall, give us some time to talk.”

The rest of the riders trailed off, leaving Joel, Y/n, Ellie, Tommy and the dark skinned woman who had led brought them there. Y/n and Joel remained on foot with Tommy, though Y/n kept a hand on Ellie’s reins all the way to the mess hall.

Inside, the woman Tommy introduced as Maria, made special effort to get Joel, Ellie and Y/n hot plates of food. Weeks of mostly rabbit had them shoveling their meals into their mouths, none of them even asked what they’d been served.

“There’s more if you need it,” Maria offered, her and Tommy sitting across from the threesome.

Joel looked up from his plate, “Thank you, ma’am. It’s been a while since we’ve had a proper meal.”

“Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever had a proper meal,” Ellie interjected in between bites, “This is fuckin’ amazing.”

Y/n took her eyes off her plate to shoot Ellie a raised eyebrow.

Joel’s southern upbringing turned him white with shock, he quickly looked up to Maria. “Sorry. Ellie, let’s mind our manners.”

Tommy smiled at his brother, it all sounded very familiar…

Ellie looked across the room, spotting a girl watching her from behind a wooden beam. She glared back at her curious stare, “What?”

Y/n pressed a finger to her temple, “Ellie…”

“What’s wrong with you?” Joel asked.

“What about her manners?” Ellie replied.

“She was just curious,” Maria cut in, “Kids around here don’t usually look or talk like you.”

“Right…” Ellie was unimpressed, “Well…maybe I’ll teach them. And I want my gun back.”

“They also aren’t armed,” Marie replied, the group had been forced to check their guns at the front door.

“You know what?” Tommy jumped in, “Uh, I think maybe y’all got a little off on the wrong foot.”

Ellie gestured to the woman, “She was gonna have her guys kill us.”

“Well, we gotta be real careful about who we let into this place,” Tommy explained, “But it’s all bark. We’re just tryna scare off those who might wanna try us is all.”

“Well,” Ellie returned to her plate, “You’ve got a couple of 90-year olds shitting themselves out there.”

Joel and Y/n’s heads turned at the same time, “Ellie.”

“They say that you leave dead bodies laying around?” Ellie continued her tirade.

“Those are the people that tried us,” Maria said.

“A bad reputation doesn’t mean you’re bad,” Tommy stated.

“Not always at least,” Maria added, staring right at Joel.

The tension at the table was palpable, Joel, Y/n and Ellie all wating for Maria’s glare to soften. That wasn’t going to happen.

“Ma’am,” Joel’s voice firmed up, while still retaining its southern pleasantness, “We’re grateful for your hospitality and all,” he looked expectantly to Tommy, “But it’d be nice to have a moment here, maybe just for family.”

Family, and whatever Y/n and Ellie were.

Tommy was half holding his breath as he leaned forward, “Well, um,” he took his wife’s hand, “Maria is family, actually.”

Y/n nearly had the wind knocked out of her, thankful she didn’t have a piece of food in her mouth.

“Oh, shit!” Ellie put together the pieces, “Congrats.”

Joel couldn’t take his eyes off of their clasped palms, painfully transfixed by the bands around their fourth fingers.

“Yeah,” Y/n added, quickly trying to adjust to the idea of Tommy as a husband, “Congratulations.”

“Joel,” Ellie lowered her voice, “Say congrats.”

It was going to take a hell of a lot more time for Joel to absorb the news. “Congrats,” he attempted.

It wasn’t that it was awkward, it was that the ever present dagger in Joel’s heart suddenly twisted.

“Well, how ‘bout a tour?” Tommy suggested, eager to exchange the tension for some fresh air.

“Great idea,” Y/n replied, wiping her mouth off and rising before anyone else. There was a pit of anxiety slowly and steadily building in her stomach and she needed to walk it off.

They were quick to find out that the heart of the town looked even nicer than the edge.

“We settled here about seven years ago,” Maria told the group, “Just a handful of us back then,” she pointed down the middle of the town, “That section was already a gated community, so we built the rest of the wall out from there. Stopped most of the raiding parties, but we still find pockets of them.”

Joel, Y/n and Ellie stayed in a horizontal line behind Maria and Tommy, the foreign environment causing them to want to stick closer together. Unwittingly, Ellie was once again being made the barrier between Joel and Y/n.

“And you said Infected?” Joel asked.

“Yeah, but usually smaller colonies,” Tommy answered, “Wandered off from the cities. All this open country out here…” he looked back to his brother, “It’s a turkey shoot. I still got my 700, but I found a variable power scope. Sub-MOA. Can headshot those fuckers from a half-mile out.”

Ellie’s ears perked up, “Can you teach me how?”

“No, he can’t,” Joel was quick to shoot down the idea.

“How do you keep off the radar?” Y/n asked, “I mean, using all these resources, how has FEDRA not tracked you guys down?”

“Carefully,” Maria answered, “Being in the middle of nowhere helps. Not advertising what we have, staying off the radio.”

Tommy snuck a look to Joel, who had come up alongside him. There was the answer he’d been waiting three months for.

“House of worship,” Maria continued to talk through the buildings, “Multifaith. School. Laundry. Old bank works as the jail, not that we’ve needed it.”

Joel’s eyes drew upwards to the electrical lines, “And you draw power from the dam?”

“Got that workin’ a couple years ago,” Maria answered, “After that, sewage, plumbing, water heaters…lights.”

“This place actually fuckin’ works,” Ellie remarked as she walked, leaving Joel and Y/n behind.

If Y/n thought she’d gotten a taste of normality back at Bill and Frank’s house, this felt like some sort of starvation induced hallucination. Except there was food in her belly and ice cold air in her lungs, it was all real.

Tommy and Maria led them towards the agricultural section of town, rows of greenhouses and animal pens lining their way.

“Hey, Joel, look,” Ellie pointed to the heard of sheep ahead of them, “Baaah,” she laughed before turning to Maria, “So are you, like, in charge?”

“No one person’s in charge,” Maria responded, “I’m on the council, democratically elected, serving 300 people, including children. Everyone pitches in. We rotate patrols, food prep, repairs, hunting, harvesting.”

“Everything you see in our town,” Tommy gestured around them, “Greenhouses, livestock, all shared. Collective ownership.”

”So, uh,” Joel figured, “Communism.”

Tommy was quick to scoff, “Nah. Nah, it ain’t like that.”

“It is that, literally,” Maria turned to her husband, “This is a commune. We’re communists.”

Tommy stopped short as the realization hit him, Joel and Y/n trailing behind purely to watch his full reaction.

“Easy there, soldier,” Y/n smirked, patting him on the shoulder while Joel matched her expression.

Rejoining Maria and Ellie, where Ellie was petting one of the horses poking their heads out of the stables, Maria changed subjects.

“Well, I’m sure they’d like a shower, some new clothes,” she addressed Tommy, “We can put them in the empty house across the street from us.”

“Yeah,” Tommy nodded, looking to Joel and Y/n, “It’s a decent place. Pretty much untouched since ‘03, but it’s the heat goin’ in it. Could do worse.”

“Oh, trust me,” Ellie spoke up, “We have been.”

“We’ve been doin’ fine,” Joel defended them, nervously rubbing his hands together. He needed to talk to his brother, just them.

Y/n was absentmindedly tapping her foot, matching Joel’s energy. The town itself was lovely, and Joel was bearable, but there was something about the combination of the two that was making her feel uneasy.

“Well,” Maria picked up on the mood, “I’ll take Ellie over there if you three wanna catch up?”

“Uh,” Y/n raised her hand quickly, “I’d actually love to join you.”

Tommy started to speak up, he was more than curious as to how Y/n and Joel had reunited. One look at the readiness in Joel’s eyes to be without her ceased his tongue from moving.

Ellie, however, had started to require both Joel and Y/n’s presence with her. Without one, she was restless. “Joel…”

“You’ll be fine,” Joel reassured her as he and Tommy walked off. He managed not to seek out Y/n’s eyes, it felt like the first time in days he’d had any control.

Y/n expected that parting from Joel would give her instant relief, but even when Maria led her and Ellie to their lodging, it didn’t come. In fact, the more distance they put between each other, the deeper Y/n could feel the anxiety within her. She was miserable with him and unsettled without him.

The house Maria assigned them was lovely, modest yet welcoming. Y/n nearly felt her heart break walking in, feeling the warmth of the air flood her body. It was like stepping back in time, a piece of seemingly meaningless history preserved perfectly.

“I’ll leave some clothes on the bed for you,” Maria told Ellie, pointing up the stairs, “First door on the left. There should be a towel and soap already there.”

Ellie looked expectantly to Y/n.

“I’ve got a few things to grab over at my place,” Maria said, “Maybe Y/n could help me?”

“Go,” Y/n nodded to the girl, “I’ll be back.”

Ellie filed upstairs, leaving Y/n and Maria to themselves. Maria made sure to lock the door on her way out, handing Y/n the key after.

“There’s only one, so don’t lose it,” she noted, leading Y/n across the street to her and Tommy’s house. The house felt much the same as the other one did, a few differences in designs, but nothing spectacular.

Maria began to rifle through a closet near the downstairs bathroom while Y/n meandered through the living room.

“Y’know, Tommy told me about you,” Maria called from across the room, “I’ve only heard your name once or twice. Every other time, he just referred to you as Rosebud.”

The nickname sent a sickening pain through Y/n’s stomach. “Oh, yeah,” she tried to play it off nonchalantly, “He gave me that nickname the night I met him and…”

“Joel?” Maria finished, popping her head out to try and get a read on Y/n’s reaction. She had a lot of feelings regarding her husband’s brother.

All Y/n felt capable of doing was nodding, blindly feeling around for the chair closest to her. She wandered the room, her eyes drifting to the fireplace before scanning her way up and-

Her heart stopped.

Sat on the mantle was a chalkboard, two names and two dates written across it.

Kevin - 4/3/00 - 9/29/03

Sarah - 7/20/89 - 9/27/03

Negative emotions always tended to stay right below the surface, regardless of the cliches about burying them. They were easily accessible under the right conditions, and if the wound was deep enough, it didn’t take much to trigger them. Y/n was already on the edge, teetering between holding onto the last bit of anger that had fueled her the past twenty years and collapsing under the weight of her grief.

Sarah’s name decided her fate.

And she crumbled.

—————————

“Those things I did, Tommy, those things you judge me for…I did those things to keep us alive.”

“We did those things,” Tommy pushed back, “And they weren’t “things’,” we murdered people. And I don’t judge you for it, we survived the only way we knew how…but there were other ways. We just weren’t any good at ‘em,” he paused, preparing himself for Joel’s reaction, “But I do judge you for what you did to Y/n.”

Joel sighed, he couldn’t take it. He physically could not handle discussing that day with Tommy.

“Joel, you l-“

“I know what I did,” Joel’s voice rose, he held up a hand more to calm himself than anything else.

“And now, twenty years later, here she is,” Tommy gestured to the door as if Y/n was right outside, “Do you even know where she’s been? What she’s been through? ‘Cause I don’t! And I’d have liked to know.”

Joel’s anxiety was beginning to bubble in his stomach, the vines climbing up his throat, ready to choke the life out of him.

“Have the two of you even talked about it?” Tommy asked calmly, his own emotions on the verge of showing.

Joel gripped the bar counter so hard, he thought he might snap the wood. He rolled the cold glass in his palm, trying to hold onto anything he could, as if it could save him from being sucked back into the vortex that was the past…

—————————

September 28th, 2003. Austin, Texas.

Cordyceps.

It was the only word people were capable of saying.

Cordyceps.

One little strand of fungi had taken out the entire world.

Joel, Y/n and Tommy ended up quarantined at a triage clinic. It was deemed one of the only “safe zones” for non-infected citizens. Dozens and dozens of people, crammed into a tiny building, practically sleeping on one another.

Joel had yet to string more than two words together since Sarah’s death. He was nearly unreachable. It was tragic enough for a parent to lose a child, it was another thing to cradle your daughter as she bleeds out in your arms.

Y/n felt like she was moving through cement, unable to fully comprehend what was going on around them. Her grief was overwhelming her, leaving her no more than twenty minute interludes between fits of wailing. But with Joel completely decommissioned, she was forced to rise to the occasion and take charge of their situation.

She returned from another attempt to reach her parent’s house, her cell phone getting no reception. She’d also tried the pay phone and Joel and Tommy’s phones. Nothing.

Y/n settled beside Joel in their corner of their hallway, it was nearly empty on account of it being the middle of the day. Most people took their walks around then. Tommy had volunteered to go out on patrol with a couple other veterans that were there.

“I still can’t get through,” Y/n started, hugging her knees to her chest, “Tried my parents, Annie, Jason…” she thought of her siblings, “Nothing.”

Joel didn’t even acknowledge her presence, he just kept staring down the hall.

“I have to get up there, Joel,” Y/n finally said, the thought had been keeping her awake all night, “I have to find them, make sure they’re okay.”

Many people assume that grief is but one emotion; sorrow. A deep sea of pain that you are thrown into without a floatiation device. But those who have never experienced it know not of the vastness of grief. There is anger, there is frustration, there is betrayal, there is jealousy…all of which can change you into an entirely different person.

And Joel was slipping away by the second.

“Joel, I have to go,” Y/n spelled it out in simpler terms for him.

Nothing.

“And I can’t go alone…” Y/n continued, worried that he had completely shut down. She rolled onto her knees, taking one of Joel’s cheek into her palm, “Joel, I need you.”

Joel stared forward, motionless.

Y/n was flying blind, unsure of how much was too much talking or how little she was supposed to be acknowledging Sarah’s death. But the world was, quite literally, falling apart. She couldn’t navigate the wreckage on her own.

“Joel,” she whispered, “I know it hurts-“

“Don’t,” Joel turned to her, the speed of it causing Y/n to pull her hand back, “Don’t.”

Y/n’s eyebrows came down in confusion, “Don’t what?”

“Don’t you act like you know what I’m feelin’,” he snapped, tears filling his eyes.

Of all the reactions, Y/n couldn’t have ever predicted this one.

“Joel, I was there too,” she replied, keeping her tone gentle, “I was-“

Joel pointed his finger at Y/n, their faces inches apart. “I’m her father,” he gritted through his teeth, “You were a bystander. They are not the same.”

Y/n inched back, bracing her body with her hands. He’d never so much as raised his voice at her.

As much as she wanted to let him grieve, she couldn’t let him descend into hostility. She wasn’t sure if her tactic would hurt him further or allow him to see the truth, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Joel…” she began, he was back staring numbly at the wall again. Y/n drew a shaky breath, the memory was so fresh in her mind, she could still hear Sarah’s voice. “She called me mom.”

If there was one thing about Joel’s reaction to his daughter’s death, it was the sheer delirium it threw his brain into. Much like Cordyceps, it was ripping through every cell of his body, changing the fundamentals of every inch. Whatever reaction he may have had to the news of Sarah’s decision had been poisoned by what he was allowing her loss to do to him.

He locked his hands together, gripping them so hard his knuckles turned white. Shutting his eyes, he let his head drop between his arms and took a shallow breath. “No, she didn’t.”

Y/n was afraid his mind was slipping away from her. “Joel, she did,” she continued, trying to push past the lump in her throat, “I went upstairs to bed a-and she called out for me.”

“She didn’t,” Joel repeated, his hands practically shaking with rage.

“Joel,” Y/n began, reaching up to touch his arm.

“NO!”

Joel jumped to his feet, his shout echoing in the empty room. He’d scared Y/n enough for her to fall back against the wall.

“She didn’t fuckin’ say it,” Joel aimed his finger at his girlfriend again, “You weren’t her damn mother.”

Y/n stared up at him with tears in her eyes.

“Doesn’t matter if you wanted to be,” Joel kept going, “Doesn’t matter if you tried. You weren’t. You were some fuckin’ woman livin’ in her house.”

Y/n got to her feet, trying ever so hard to be patient with Joel’s grief. But she wasn’t going to allow him to take her last normal moment she’d had with Sarah away from her.

“You weren’t there,” she argued back, “It happened, whether or not you want to believe it,” Y/n pointed a finger at her own chest, “She chose me.”

“You’re fuckin’ lyin’,” Joel growled, spinning away from Y/n and putting his hands to his hips. He couldn’t look at her.

Y/n was entirely lost, praying that Tommy returned soon. She couldn’t manage Joel in this state on her own.

Joel couldn’t see straight, let alone think straight. Only one thing seemed to ring true in his mind; Y/n was lying. She was a liar. She was lying about his dead daughter. What kind of monster would lie about a dead child?

Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, Joel’s delirious realization began to make sense, leaving him with only one course of action.

“I’m done.”

Y/n could barely register the sudden shift, from anger to calm. “What?”

Joel turned back to her, sweeping his hand through the air, “I’m done. We’re done.”

The air thickened suddenly, the stakes of his statement as important as the next breath Y/n drew.

“Joel-“

“No,” he shook his head quickly, “This is over. I’m not gonna stay with you when you’re lyin’ about my child-“

Y/n took an urgent step forward, reaching out for his arm, “Joel-“

“You don’t get to try and make yourself feel better about her now that she’s g-“ Joel choked on the word, flipping back to grief for a mere second, “Oh, God…”

Y/n was on the verge of panic, he was completely out of his mind. “Joel,” she urged, “Don’t do this. Take a breath and-“

Just like that, he was engorged in rage again. “Don’t. Don’t fuckin’ touch me, don’t even fuckin’ look at me.”

“Joel,” Y/n cried, her tears streaming down her face, “I love you. I’m here and I love you.”

Through the haze of insanity, Joel could feel her words. They wrapped around him, cradling him close to the warmth of her chest. He could almost feel something again, something pure and safe…it nearly pulled him back to shore.

Nearly.

Joel crossed the space between them, lowering his voice to a growl, “Well, I don’t love you.”

If there was an exact moment to point to as to when Y/n’s heart shattered, it was then. The force of Sarah’s death weighed so heavily on her chest, she was convinced she was in the midst of a heart attack. But when two tragedies occurred, so close together, it was always the second one that broke a person beyond repair. The second is unexpected, pushing you into a new level of grief you didn’t think you could feel. That was the one that could drive you to madness.

Snot and tears mixing across her lips, Y/n shook her head. “You don’t mean that,” she mumbled.

“I do,” Joel replied, his voice so full of confidence, “You’re a fuckin’ liar.”

Y/n felt like she was drowning, kicking and flailing under the waters, trying to find some way to make Joel believe her. To pull him out of his delusions.

The two lovers stood in the hall of the clinic, squaring off in a battle neither one of them knew how to fight. Their heartbreak was manifesting in completely opposite ways.

Scanning her face once more, to remember in the years to come, Joel turned on his heel and walked away from Y/n.

“W-wait,” she trembled, quickly following after him, “Where are you going?”

“To find Tommy,” Joel said, his fists curled at his sides as he marched through the clinic.

“Joel, stop,” Y/n begged, trying to keep up with his pace, “Joel!”

Joel made his way outside, where the clinic was still accepting injured civilians. All around them was tragedy, while one was unfolding between them.

“Joel,” Y/n called again, six feet behind him, the grief in her bones slowing her down, “Joel, you can’t go out there. Tommy said-“

“Don’t tell me what my own brother said,” Joel practically shouted, refusing to look back at her. He needed a quick escape.

Scanning the makeshift parking lot around them, he spotted an F1-50. He stalked towards it as if it were prey.

“Joel,” Y/n called in between her sobs, she was more terrified for him than anything else.

Once he got to the truck’s door, Joel slammed his fist without hesitation through the glass window.

“Joel!” Y/n cried, watching the blood begin to trickle down his knuckles.

Joel reached through the shattered window, felt around for the lock/unlock button on the door and clicked it. He threw the door open and got inside, the glass on the seat cutting through his jeans and into his thighs.

Y/n surged forward, Joel’s absolute insanity was becoming real. He was actually leaving her. She took hold of the door handle, “Joel, don’t. Don’t,” she hyperventilated, “I can’t do this without you. I can’t. I can’t.”

Her pleas began to crack the ice around his heart, just enough for him to allow another gust of icy wind through his chest. He became indifferent to her cries.

Joel slammed the door shut, the force of it pulling Y/n forward.

“Joel, don’t do this,” she sobbed, clinging to the side of the truck, “I love you. I love you. We can get through this. We can get through this.”

Joel felt around for the keys, finding them conveniently left in the ignition. He switched the truck on.

Y/n’s chest heaved, her window for reasoning with him closing. “No, Joel. Don’t do this! I love you, please, don’t do this.”

Joel’s body trembled, some sane part of him knowing that was he was doing was inhumane. But grief’s noose tightened around his throat, reminding him that the sicker state of mind was where he belonged now. His heart was nothing more than a liability now.

He pressed down on the gas pedal.

“No,” Y/n yelled as the truck shifted, she was practically tripping in the dirt trying to move with it, “Joel, don’t! Don’t do this to me! Please! Don’t do this to me!”

Joel ignored her cries, turning the truck towards the open road.

“Don’t do this,” Y/n shouted, her voice straining and fluctuating with her tears. If he didn’t stop soon, she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the truck. “Joel!”

The final cry did it, Joel couldn’t handle any more. He pressed down further on the pedal, jolting the truck forward.

Y/n was able to catch one last look at him, a final glimpse at the man she loved with her whole heart, leaving her as if she was nothing more than a dead body already. When her hand slipped from the truck, Joel having sped up to escape her, she knew he was forever lost to her.

She stopped running, screaming into the cloud of dirt he’d left, “JOEL!”

Y/n watched him steer the truck out of the clinic’s lot, pulling onto the dirt alongside the road and driving off. Her wet eyes followed the blur until it was completley out of sight.

That was when she fell apart.

She dropped to the ground, screeching like a wounded animal, clutching the ground underneath her fingers. She screamed loud enough for a clinic staff member to rush out, reaching out to help her. Y/n wrenched out of their loving grip, shrieking for them not to touch her. She didn’t want their oxygen masks, their sedatives or their counseling.

Sarah was gone. Joel had abandoned her. If this was death coming to collect her, she would go willingly into its embrace.

—————————

December 2023. Jackson, Wyoming.

Y/n dropped to her knees in the middle of Maria and Tommy’s living room, clutching her stomach.

“I think I found everything,” Maria announced, walking out from the closet and spotting Y/n. She rushed across the room, kneeling down beside her.

Silent sobs turned to violent ones, shaking Y/n’s body with a force she hadn’t felt in twenty years. Unlike that fateful day, Y/n allowed Maria’s caring arms to wrap around her as she wept.

“I’m sorry,” the kind woman said, pressing close to Y/n’s ear.

There was nothing anyone could say to put any of the pieces back together. Every part of Y/n’s grief over Sarah’s death, Joel’s abandonment, the choices she’d had to make after she was left on her own…it was all coming to the surface after three months of repression. The physicality of her sobs exhausted her less than the act of holding herself together in front of Ellie and Joel.

Five minutes or a half hour, Y/n wasn’t sure how long she spent on the floor, Maria cradling her as if she were a child. At some point, the tears stopped and she was once again aware of her surroundings.

“Tommy told me all about you,” Maria said, still holding Y/n, “About your family. How good you were with Sarah.”

Y/n sniffled, fighting the urge to gaze back up at the girl’s chalk-written name. It would only send her back into tears.

“It doesn’t matter what happened between you and Joel,” Maria continued, clearly she knew a lot more than perhaps she should have, “You helped raise that girl. Far as I’m concerned, you should feel a mother’s grief.”

A mumbled cry bubbled from Y/n’s lips. Every day she felt the loss of Sarah like that of a lost limb, the phantom pain constantly pulling at her body.

—————————

“I’m gonna be a father.”

Tommy’s words paralyzed Joel, he physically lost the sensation of his heartbeat, his breath…it all stopped, allowing grief and bitterness to fill the hollowness within him.

“To be honest, I’m scared to death,” Tommy lifted his glass to his lips, “But I don’t know, uh…” he smiled, “I feel like I’d be a good dad.”

Joel wanted to scream, he wanted to punch a hole through the fucking wall to counter the pain of the universe’s cruel slap.

“Guess we’ll find out,” he replied, reaching for the bottle of whiskey and refilling his glass.

“‘I guess we’ll find out?’” Tommy repeated, practically indignant as he looked to his big brother, “That’s all you got?”

Joel settled against the bar, keeping a firm stare on Tommy, “What else am I supposed to say?”

Tommy got to his feet, exhausted by bearing the brunt of Joel’s grief. “Just because life stopped for you,” he said, “Doesn’t mean it has to stop for me.”

Much like after losing Sarah, Joel was acting purely on emotion. The world had ripped away everything from him, and here Tommy was, with everything he’d almost had.

“We’ll grab some supplies and be out of your hair in the mornin’,” Joel bit out, turning from his brother and grabbing his jacket. He burst outside into the cold air.

—————————

“I, uh,” Y/n sniffled, trying to collect herself, “I should get back to Ellie.”

“Don’t worry,” Maria said softly, “I’ll take care of her. You take a moment to yourself.”

Y/n practically scoffed at the idea, she hadn’t had a second to herself in three months. But the tension within her was so great, she didn’t have the will to fight Maria on the offer.

“Thank you,” she laid a hand on Maria’s arm, letting the woman help her to her feet.

Y/n stumbled out into the cold, trying to absorb the sound of the children’s playful screams, the crunch of the snow under her boots, the feel of her breath slamming back into her face each time she exhaled…she’d had anxiety attacks before. Taking stock of your surroundings was supposed to help.

Except she was too far gone for coping strategies, she needed alcohol and she needed someone to talk to. Someone who understood.

On their way in, Maria had led them past a bar, and Y/n felt like a bloodhound, tracing her way back through the crowds to find it. The world may have changed, but she knew she’d find exactly who she needed at the counter with a thing of whiskey in his hand…

—————————

Joel stumbled out into the snow, leaning up against a metal lightpost. His breath was catching, his heart pounding out of his chest, the tinnitus flooding his ears once again…

Once upon a time, Tommy’s life had been his. He’d had his daughter, so bright and beautiful. A home that they’d made their own, despite the wounds that had led them there. And Y/n, his Y/n, the missing piece of his and Sarah’s life, a ring nearly on her finger…

And as much as he wanted to blame Cordyceps for losing all of it, he was hardly faultless.

He’d had twenty years of guilt soaked isolation, trying to convince himself that what his grief riddled self had thought was truth. Y/n had to have lied for him to continue on with life, because he couldn’t face the alternate. He couldn’t believe that he had abandoned her for no good reason…

It was a conclusion he’d come to weeks ago, the more time he spent with her reminding her of who she really was.

Across the way, there were families gathered around the Christmas tree. Joel’s eyes mindlessly drifted over them, catching on one woman’s silhouette. Her head of curls, the weightlessness of her voice…in his panicked state, it was Sarah.

He took clunky steps forward, chasing the illusion that his daughter was standing in front of him. He wanted, needed to believe it to be true. There had been some terrible mistake, they’d abandoned her body too soon and by the grace of God, she was-

A small child ran up to the woman, revealing her true face.

Joel stopped, his heartbreak pulling him back to reality. This was how far his mind could take him under the worst circumstances. He was convincing himself that his daughter was still alive and twenty years prior, he’d convinced himself that the love of his life was a liar.

It was grief that stood every chance at breaking him.

—————————

Y/n crossed through the middle of town, spotting the Christmas tree and the surrounding crowd singing and chattering around it. She couldn’t handle the sight, ducking into the bar as quick as she could.

Tommy turned around, glaring at the door, ready to rip into Joel further. “Oh,” he muttered, putting away his anger at the sight of Y/n, “Thought you were Joel.”

“I’m thankful you’re not,” Y/n remarked, walking to the counter and spotting the open whiskey bottle. He was everywhere she looked.

She reached over the counter and grabbed a glass, filling it a little over halfway, “You two not getting along?”

Tommy sighed, rolling his glass in his palm. “Complicated,” he answered, “But I’m preachin’ to the choir, aren’t I?”

Y/n bristled, lifting the glass to her lips and letting the burn of her throat force her into feeling something.

“Maria’s pregnant,” Tommy blurted out.

Y/n’s arm fell to the bar, the glass hitting it hard. To say she was shocked would have been a gross understatement.

Tommy smiled up at her, “That so hard to believe?”

“Well, you gotta cut me a little slack here,” Y/n replied, dazed, “The last time I knew you, there was a new girl every week. I was kinda half-convinced you already had a kid.”

Tommy chuckled, he’d missed her so much. He considered Y/n another loss from Cordyceps, though it chose his brother’s grief as its medium.

“I…” Y/n pulled out the barstool next to him and sat down, her mouth still agape, “How do you feel about it?”

“Good,” he nodded, “I think. Maria’s already been a mom before, but…I really do think I could be a good dad.”

Y/n rested her hand on Tommy’s wrist, drawing his eyes to her. “You’ll make a great dad,” she said, proud and with a smile. It was the first good look at him she’d gotten. Though he sported a few more wrinkles and scars, a mustache now hanging over his upper lip, his eyes still held the same sparkle.

Tommy beamed back at her, laying his hand over hers. The warmth shared between siblings still flowed between them.

“So that’s why…” Y/n glanced at the door, absentmindedly pointing outside.

“Yep,” Tommy turned back to his whiskey.

“Oh,” Y/n murmured, so caught up in the beauty of the news that she hadn’t thought about how Joel might have reacted.

“Can I ask you somethin’?” Tommy asked.

Y/n shook her head with a small smirk, “C’mon, it’s been twenty years but you don’t have to be formal.”

It wasn’t formality, it was handling gasoline near a wildfire.

“How the hell are you two doin’ this?” Tommy asked, setting down his glass to give the topic his full attention.

In her anxious state, Y/n hadn’t stopped to think that Tommy would bring up the very thing she was running from.

“There were…” Y/n cleared her throat, “A lot of threats the first few days. Lots of hate. Mostly from me. But we had to…come to some sort of truce if we were going to get through this.”

“Joel told me you’re with the kid,” Tommy cut in, “She’s not yours?”

Y/n snorted, “No. But she’s…” she paused, unprepared to unpack what Ellie meant to her, “She wasn’t going with Joel unless I came with. So really, she’s to blame for all this.”

Tommy chuckled, taking a quick sip before repeating the same question he’d asked Joel, “You two talked about what happened yet?”

Y/n shrugged, feeling the weight of twenty years in her shoulders, “What’s there to talk about?”

“I think there’s everything to fuckin’ talk about,” Tommy replied.

The seat was suddenly digging into her thighs and there were electric currents in her legs. Y/n slid off the barstool, trying to take slow steps around the bar counter to deescalate her body’s nervous energy.

“How long did it take him to tell you what happened?” Y/n asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“Ah, the full story?” Tommy said, shaking his head slightly, “All I heard when I got back from patrol was you two had broken up. I finally got it all pieced together after about two years. Gave him hell for it too.”

Y/n’s smile was filled with frustration, she threw back the last of her whiskey.

“I looked for you,” Tommy said, reiterating what he’d said at the gate, “I mean, I combed every fuckin’ inch of that place tryin’ to find you. I wasn’t gonna leave you.”

“I know,” Y/n replied, slipping behind the counter to pour herself another glass, “I figured that out at some point. That you wouldn’t have gone along with that…”

Tommy watched Y/n’s face carefully, a new emotion covering the expanse every few seconds.

“You don’t actually believe what he said, do you?”

Y/n poured a shot of a random liquor, “Why shouldn’t I believe him?”

“C’mon,” Tommy turned to her, “He was out of his mind with grief, we all were. He wasn’t thinkin’ straight.”

“I’m sorry,” Y/n raised a hand to her head, “Are you defending him?”

“Hell no,” Tommy gave a firm shake of his head, “I’m tryin’ to make you understand that he lied. He was lying. He didn’t stop lovin’ you, he-“

“Stop,” Y/n forcefully set the bottle down on the counter, some of it spilling out the top, “Stop. I don’t want to hear it.”

Tommy settled down in his seat, unaware he’d lifted off it while talking.

“You have no idea what I went through after he left,” Y/n struggled, her voice threatening to cease up, “What I had to do…” she sniffled, unable to hide the tears, “And then he came back. He fucking came back, and I haven’t been able to escape him for three months.”

Staying silent and still, Tommy allowed her the space to purge everything out of her system.

“And now we’re here,” Y/n gestured around them, her voice growing watery, “And it’s so fucking beautiful, I could cry. Look at me, I am,” she paused, squirming under the pressure of the sob building within her, “And it’s killing me. It’s killing me. To be here, to see you, to see all that…”

Y/n ran a hand through her hair, leaning against the counter. All that they could have had.

“I can’t,” Y/n held up a shaking hand, “I can’t…be near him right now. Because all I see is her, is us…and it’s fucking breaking me.”

Tommy looked down at his glass, wondering whether or not he was about to push too far. “That doesn’t sound like hate to me.”

Y/n’s bottom lip trembled, she knew exactly what it was. And she’d have rather died than admit it.

“Well, it needs to be,” she whispered.

——————

TYL Taglist: @bachiracore @stolenxkissess @kayleezra @the-wistful-reader @allthesesonsofbitches @goth-detectives365 @trippovert @rh1nestonecowg1rl @emiliaserpe @khaleesihavilliard @frietiemeloen @gracie7209 @dorck26 @thegirlnextdoorssister @alanis-altair @mariwinns16 @whosscruffylooking @endofthexline @alexiaricciardo @eonnyx @pedrosmexicangf @scarlettequinn @ao-sleepy @toinfinityandbeyonce2 @deanlovescassie @turmoil-ash @sorrowjunky @kpopslur @xxlilyxx90 @midgetpottermills @presidential-facts @scoopsnini @tubble-wubble @jamesdeerest @burninggracesandbridges @star-wars-lover @lucyhotchner @cococola-cocaine @witheringhqarts @fall-writes @alwaysdjarin @xxmoonn @emilia-the-artist @wand-erer5 @boneyarrd @lizard-zombie @itwasallinmyhead1 @cassidylea123 @paleepeaches @mxltifxnd0m @kettlekatie @ultimate-cinephile @gloryekaterina @caramelkatsukis-bitch @whovianayesha @memeorydotcom @deadunicorn159 @get0ut0fmyr00m @siriuslymooned @emmyeed @superbreadsoul @hellu-people1 @ourautumn86 @inas-thing @noraapple05 @givemylovetoall @luvwanda (tags cont. in comments ❤️)

[papil0nglegs]

Can I request tf2 mercs with a reader who is genuinely terrifying. Like there quiet, sneaky, uncanny, basically reader is kinda like the mercs very own cryptid. (Bonus points if reader is tall af<3)

Boo 🤍

A/n: Spy’s is a little short here 😣 I hope you weren’t too eager to see his lol. I got a little experimental with this one, not too much tho. Also I’ll be going on another break, I know I just finished one but I’m going through an unexpected rough time rn. So sorry guys, hope you enjoy <33

Warnings: Video used may be a spoiler for s2 of scream queens, Praying is used in a humorous light

To start things off, you introduced yourself in the worst way possible. The bus that you were supposed to take got broken down so you had to find your way through the base without knowing where the entrance was. So what’d you do? Bang into a bunch of glass windows at 3am while it was RAINING. Some of the mercs were up trying to fix up the power generator and..

I saved that clip for weeks I’m so happy I have a reason to use it now

I know they’re all supposed to be big bad mercs but you scared the living FUCK out of them.

Scout

This man went running. He went all the way from the generator to the fucking bunks in the span of a minute! So what’d he do when he got to his room? He grabbed his cross necklace, got on his knees, and started PRAYING.

“Please god Jesus frickin’ Christ hear my prayers, save me-I’m sorry about all those magazines I keep under my bunk and I’m sorry that I told spy to go fuck himself when he told me I couldn’t pull bitches and I’m sorry I call girls bitches please just don’t let me friggin’ die dude!!”

He just kept chanting the same things until Miss Pauling found him cradling himself on his bed with a blanket wrapped around him.

“Scout what are you doing?”

“THERE IS A GHOST IN THE BASE.”

“Oh, you mean y/n?”

‘Hi 👁️‍🗨️👁️‍🗨️’

Yea he was pretty freaked out by you. To make it worse, you always just stare at him. He can’t remember a single moment where he looked at you and didn’t catch your tiny pupils locked onto him.

At first he’d just gently wave awkwardly while you did the same so freakishly. Eventually he decided to say something because it was scaring him, something he’ll never admit

“Yo you got a problem or somethin’, what’s with all the stares?”

“Nothing, I just like looking at you. Your structure pleases me.”

“..oh, well that’s actually-wait I thought-hold on do you really-pfft-Yeesh, I didn’t expect you out of everyone to haha.. Yknow”

Yeah he was blushing like crazy, such a straightforward compliment.

He’s still scared of you, but he uses you as his hype man every now and then. He’ll fish for compliments and WILL receive them

“Dontcha think I got some nice racks for a guy?”

“..Totally”

He could literally walk up to you and threaten to kill you and your reaction is just “yuh go for it”

If you’re freakishly tall then he calls you tree. Cuz

If you’re on the shorter side then he would just pick you up from the shoulders and kiss you on the forehead. He knows you won’t do shit, you’re literally just 🧍‍♀️

Engineer

He didn’t even notice everyone else went running, he just kept on working on the electrical box. So when he stood up and saw you staring straight into the glass, he jumped a little but was mostly just confused

“What in the..”

“tap tap-Can you let me in?”

You’re lucky he didn’t go running like everyone else, you probably would’ve died from the flu if you spent another second outside in the freezing rain.

He puts a bell on you. He just had one laying around and tied it around the your wrist, it didn’t work because of how stiff your movements were so to ‘help’ you rang it against his ear.

“..”

“…..🔔🔔🔔🔔”

“GOD DAMN IT- oh, y/n”

“Sorry, the bell wasn’t ringing how you wanted it to so I rang it myself”

“Uh-huh, thanks for the warning partner”

From my experience southern people love to make conversation, but you aren’t really familiar with that. So when he tries to flirt it gets pretty awkward

“How’s it goin’ sugar, I reckon your looking quite nice today”

“👁️‍🗨️👁️‍🗨️”

“..you gonna say anythin’ back?”

“Oh, um.. I like your face.”

“Woah, alright then.”

He feels so embarrassed when he stands next to your tall ass, it makes him feel belittled. Especially when you actively have to look down just to make eye contact

But if you’re short then he loves it. Finally for once he doesn’t have to be reminded of his height when standing next to anyone.

Spy

He’s gone as soon as you show up. Like straight up disappears. He doesn’t like to show fear-makes him look weak

He’s convinced you could still see him though, cuz you happen to look in his direction even while he was invisible.

You don’t scare him as much as the others, if anything he took a bit of a liking to you because you stressed him out the least compared to the others. He always stood next to you + you were always his first pick for missions

You always make small talk with him. He doesn’t enjoy it but he still responds

“What is under your mask?”

“That is none of your business.”

“Why? Do you look like me?”

Spy doesn’t know if he should feel offended or annoyed

You don’t necessarily startle him like everyone else but you do make his heart jump slightly when you pop out of nowhere, you can see it in his pupils but never his body.

Pyro

HE RAN TOO BUT DIDN’T KNOW WHY LMFAO

He just saw everyone running and went ‘oh okay we’re doing this now 🏃‍♂️’

But seriously, he fell in love with you at first sight. Your features felt so intricate to him, you always gave each other blank stares, zoning into each other’s eyes.

‘⚫️ ⚫️’

“👁️‍🗨️👁️‍🗨️ hi”

“⚫️ ⚫️ mmf”

You’re the only person who can fully understand him. No, not using his body language, you can actually tell what he’s saying. He aw’s at that, finally someone knows what he’s saying.

It makes him more self aware than how he was before, he’ll say some really petty shit and when you react he panics

“Mmph mmm”

“um pyro I need you to calm yourself”

“Mm!”

Somehow you disturb HIM, you’ll point something out to him and talk to him like he’s crazy which makes him crazy

“Pyro, you reek of fire, it’s 30° outside, and it’s a cease day. Do you have any thoughts?”

“Mmmf mmm mph ☹️”

*plz leave me alone

Since you and him are so observant, the rest of the mercs are a little spooked by you guys. You���ll be in the corner with him watching and everyone is fairly weirded out.

“Mm mmmfmm mm”

“Pyro you’re hilarious.”

“What did thing say?”

“He said that if you were a littlest pet shop figure you’d be #508”

“..heavy is not sure what he expected”

[maviscat123]

Anatomy II

By: JohnBoy

Someone was pounding on the door...

Big Jim Reese woke up with a snort; he'd been having a late afternoon nap on the cot in his office. His "office" was actually a small trailer, parked amongst some trees near the back of the construction site.

Jim sat up groggily -- he coughed and slowly ran a large, beefy hand over the stubble on his shaved head. The pounding came again, more urgent this time.

"Hey, Mr. Reese! You in there?" It sounded like a young guy.

"Yeah, yeah," he spoke in his deep baritone, "hold on a sec." The huge black man got up and opened the door.

It was Ken, the son of the crane-operator. He was tall and rather well-built, about 20 or so, sandy blond and blue-eyed, and with a tuft of bristly beard on the end of his chin.

Jim had noticed (on the four or five other occasions that he'd met him) that he always acted a bit shy and nervous around him. Probably, he guessed, because he was intimidated by his size: Jim was a half-foot taller than him, and probably out- weighed the kid by at least 130 pounds (a good deal of it was solid muscle, too).

"Hey Kenny, what're you doin' here?"

"Is-- is my Dad here?"

"Nope, he's gone home already." Jim yawned; he thought the young man looked even more nervous than usual. "Uh, everything okay?"

Ken glanced over his shoulder. "The cops are after me, man."

"What?" Jim looked towards the street; he could see a police cruiser pulling up in front of the site. He'd heard that this boy had been in trouble with the law in the past: B&E, some minor theft...

"I need a place to hide. Please, you gotta let me in!"

Jim sighed. He wanted nothing to do with this kid's problems. But an idea was starting to form in his head... and before he even realized it, he said, "Okay, get in." Ken was peeking out through the blinds, watching the cop. Jim had not asked him what kind of trouble he was in this time, and the kid hadn't told him...

"What's he doing?" Jim asked.

"He's just talking to one of the workers. Wait-- shit, the guy's pointing this way!"

Kenny looked around the trailer. "Fuck, if I get caught this time, I'm going to jail for sure. You can't let him find me!"

"If he wants to look in here, I don't think I can really stop him."

"But... there's no place to hide in here! What am I gonna do?"

"Well," he said slowly, trying to sound nonchalant, "I got a suggestion."

"What??"

"How much you weigh, Kenny?"

"Wha--? Uh, about 190, I guess. Why?"

Jim tugged thoughtfully at his wiry, dark goatee. This young man was a fair bit bigger than the doctor had been. He wondered, could he do it?

"You can hide... in here." Jim pointed to his stomach.

"Huh?"

"I could swallow you."

Ken just stared at him.

Jim went on, "Just for awhile. I could swallow you whole and hide you inside my belly, just 'til the cop leaves. Don't worry, you'll be safe. If he comes up here lookin' for you, well... there's no way he'd find ya. Then when he's gone, I'll let you out."

Ken continued to stare at him.

"Well? What do you think?"

"Oh come on... this is a joke, right?"

"No, I mean it. I'm serious."

"You're crazy, Mr. Reese. You can't swallow a whole person. It's-- it's frickin' impossible!!"

"Well, yeah, for most people. But I'm different; there's somethin' special about my anatomy that lets me do it. Big mouth, big throat, big stomach... just ask my doctor. Trust me, I can do it." Jim knew this might not be completely true... after all, when he'd done it before (three days earlier), Doctor Moffat had given him some kind of injection as well. Whether he could do it now, without the drug, remained to be seen.

Ken still seemed unconvinced. He looked out the window again, anxiously.

"Well, we're runnin' outta time, son," Jim said, "Do you wanna try it or not?"

"But... you'll let me back out, right?"

"Yeah, sure, of course I will."

The kid shrugged. "What the hell, I guess I got no choice. Okay."

"Damn right!" Jim tried to suppress his excitement. Ever since the doctor's appointment, he'd been thinking of little else but swallowing someone again -- and now he had his chance!! Of course he intended to release the boy afterwards...

but he thought, maybe he could try to keep him inside for awhile? Say, ten minutes or so? Would he survive in there that long??

"Er, what should I do...?"

The big man went to the tiny fridge and pulled out a stick of butter. "Take off all yer clothes and rub this on you."

Ken's face screwed up. "What are you gonna do, fry me up first?"

"It's to make you slide down easy. Come on. And take that earring off, too." Jim looked through the blinds. "You better hurry up, son. I think the cop is comin' this way," he lied.

Kenny started to undress. Jim took off his own shirt, undid the button on his jeans, and unzipped his fly part-way. He saw Ken looking at him as he did this, and said, "Gotta make room for ya." He patted his belly. "You're a big boy."

The young man was completely nude now. After hesitating for a moment, he picked up the stick of butter and began to rub it over his chest. "It's cold!"

"Don't worry, you'll get nice and warmed up once you're inside me." Jim realized that he was starting to salivate. His stomach began to grumble and groan in anticipation, and he wondered if Kenny could hear it...

After the boy had buttered himself up, Jim ordered him to lie down on the cot, on his back. He dropped to his knees heavily at the foot of the cot and grabbed him firmly by the ankles, lifting his feet up. He hoped the hunger in his face wasn't too obvious. Now Jim could see a hint of fear in Ken's expression, and realized he'd have to work fast and get it done with before he changed his mind. (And just in case the policeman came around, too!)

He said in a reassuring tone, "It's okay, kid. I promise it won't hurt a bit. I've done this before." He grinned. Then he crouched down and opened his mouth very, very wide...

"Shit, man," Ken mumbled.

With a grunt, Jim quickly thrust both feet into his mouth and part-way down his throat -- Ken giggled despite his fear, squirming around as if he was being tickled. Jim grasped his legs more tightly and pushed again, taking him in almost to the knees with a thick, slurping sound.

"Holy cow, I can't believe you're doing that!" the boy said in amazement. "Hey, wait, I just thought of something... will I even be able to breathe in there?"

Jim tried to nod (which wasn't easy), and gulped again, taking his legs in even further. He couldn't believe how fantastic this felt... the kid was delicious! He'd be moaning with pleasure if his throat hadn't been so full. He wished he could slow down and enjoy every inch of Kenny's smooth, firm, sweet flesh as it slipped inside him, but there wasn't enough time -- besides, he was too ravenous!

Ken's face turned pale as he watched the huge man's mouth working to take him in, gobbling him up, the lips stretching around his hips and ass now. "Goddamn..." he whispered.

Jim's eyes were starting to roll over white with the effort. He continued to swallow, while at the same time holding Ken by his upper arms and shoving him in. Then he guided his hands into his mouth, gaping even wider to engulf the boy's muscular torso and arms. He could feel his legs starting to fold up inside his belly.

"Uhh, Mr. Reese?"

He ignored him. He couldn't believe the power of his throat muscles; it seemed they were working on auto-pilot, flexing and gulping almost on their own, practically sucking the kid down his gullet... it felt so natural. He realized there was no question now as to whether or not he needed drugs to do this.

But the most difficult part was coming: Kenny's wide shoulders...

Ken seemed to be having a bit of trouble breathing with the pressure on his chest. His eyes were starting to bug out, and there was an incredulous expression on his face; Jim imagined that he must've looked quite bizarre right now, with his mouth stetched out to grotesque proportions.

This was starting to get harder, and the sensation of fullness was unbelievable. Perhaps the boy was too big? Had he bitten off more than he could chew, so to speak?

The young man blurted, "I-- I'm not sure about this anymore. Wait..." He began to struggle feebly, but his arms were pinned to his sides, inside Jim's throat.

Suddenly, there was a loud knock at the trailer door. A voice called out, "Anyone in there?"

Jim's heart lunged. Shit, it was the cop! He looked Ken in the face, wondering what his reaction would be. Would he scream for help??

A moment of silence passed... then Ken seemed to make his decision: "Uh," he cleared his throat, and tried to talk in a deeper voice, "Yes, officer? I mean, who is it?"

Jim would've smiled if he could. He continued to swallow -- but now it felt like the kid was almost stuck!

"Jim Reese? I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind."

"Uhh... okay, er, gimme a minute," Ken said.

Jim reached out, clamped onto Ken's shoulders and began forcefully shoving him in with all his strength, swallowing hard.

The door handle rattled. "Please open up, it's the police."

"Just-- just let me get some pants on! Oh, Christ..." Kenny gasped.

Now only his head still protruded from the man's mouth. Jim pushed on the crown of his head with both hands, and he continued to slide in... he could feel the kid's little beard scraping against the roof of his mouth.

In a muffled voice, he heard him say, "Jeez, it smells like hamburgers in here..."

And then he closed his mouth completely over him and gulped hugely. He felt the boy going all the way down, filling his gut...

The cop was knocking again, impatiently. "Sir, will you open the door??"

Jim was gasping for air. "Yeah, yeah," he managed to say. He could feel Ken squirming around inside him -- it seemed like he was trying to turn around. He gulped down several large mouthfuls of air so the kid could breathe. Then he got up with a loud grunt, steadying himself against the wall. The weight in his gut was incredible; he was having some difficulty just standing up!

He quickly kicked Ken's clothes and shoes under the cot, then unlocked the door.

The police officer looking up at him was on the short side, but quite burly. He had a thick, brown, brush-like moustache and a buzzcut. He was carrying his cap under one arm.

Almost immediately, his eyes went to Jim's enormous, round globe of a belly, and his jaw dropped slightly. But then he tried to compose himself and looked Jim in the face, saying in a firm voice, "Is there a problem?"

"Uh, no-- sorry I took so long, officer. I was... I had to put some clothes on." Jim tried to laugh.

The cop looked at him suspiciously. "I thought I heard someone else in here."

"Nope, just me. I was having a little snooze."

"Well... I'm Officer Banks. May I come in? I'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Oh, sure." Jim backed up to allow the guy to enter.

"So you're the foreman on this site, Mr. Reese?" The cop couldn't seem to help himself; he kept glancing down at Jim's gut. Jim was nervous... for some reason, Ken was struggling a bit inside him, and he hoped it wouldn't be visible from the outside. Was the boy uncomfortable?

"Yes."

The policeman looked slowly around the interior of the trailer. He said, "You know a young man named Kenneth Delaney?"

"Yeah, I think so. He's one of the employees' kids."

"Have you seen him today?"

Jim's stomach gurgled audibly. "Ah, no. Haven't seen him."

"You sure? One of your workmen seems to think he came up here. He's in a bit of trouble, I'm afraid."

"Sorry, I was sleeping. I didn't see anyone." From Jim's belly came a small moan; Jim thumped a hand to his gut and uttered a short, loud burp. "Ooof... 'scuse me, officer!"

Banks couldn't seem to contain himself any longer -- chuckling, he poked Jim in the belly and said, "I'm sorry, but... man! That is some huge gut you've got there, buddy." He shook his head. "You got a horse in there, or what?"

"Aw, no, it's just fat. And... I had a big lunch today, too." Jim smiled broadly.

"Never seen anything like that. Damn! Sorry, I hope I haven't embarassed you."

"That's alright, I know I could stand to lose 'bout 200 pounds. So, umm... what's the boy done?"

"I can't really tell you that." The cop took another quick look around the trailer. "Well, you just keep an eye out for him, okay?"

"Okay, sure thing."

"Thanks for your time. You take care, sir." He left.

Jim could feel a massive belch building up, trying to escape. He sat down on the cot with a groan. Ken was wriggling around more now, and he could hear him trying to say something -- obviously, he wanted to be released.

Now that the policeman was gone Jim could relax, and really savour the experience of having a whole, live person inside his stomach. It felt great, even better than with the doctor... he'd never had such an enjoyable and satisfying meal in his life!

And now he was starting to realize something else: he didn't want to let the boy back out after all. He knew he had to; he'd surely suffocate in there before long and besides, he thought he could feel his digestive juices starting to flow. Just awhile longer, he thought...

The kid moaned again from inside his gut. His struggles seemed to be weakening.

Mm-mmm... he'd sure been a tasty morsel. He felt so full... and yet he thought that he could probably take someone even a little bigger than Kenny, next time. Jim rubbed his belly, opened his mouth wide and heaved out a huge, long, thun- derous belch. He was about to gulp down some fresh air for the boy, but then stopped himself.

With a sigh, he stretched out onto his back instead. I guess this was my plan all along, he thought to himself. Wasn't it? He didn't know if he could actually digest such an incredible amount of food...

but he supposed there was only one way to find out.

[miltonbarbie]

What does Stan's friend group love about you? (Sp x F!y/n) </3

Warning(s): Slight NSFW

Reader is Female, and in these scenario you and your dp (Desired person, for example: Kyle) are already in an established relationship.

</3

Stan🎧💙 :

Dude loves any form of affection you give him, whether it be quick kisses to long, warm hugs, he feels like he'll throw up any second.

He wishes he could call you pet names but he's gonna get sick in the stomach REAL fast.

he also makes playlists of songs that remind him of you and sends them to you + puts them visible on his Spotify account

he doesn't show any clingy-ness or PDA around his friends bc cartman's such an ass and he'll get teased for days, but in private all he wants to do is cuddle w/ you and watch a Christmas movie together

loves loves loves when you mindlessly copy his actions, he think its soso cute. Like for example if he does a secret handshake with one of his friends and catches you trying to make one with yours, he's gonna die of how adorable it is.

He likes to go skating with you, if you don't know how to skate he'll gladly teach you

Get's hard whenever he sees you in a skirt 🙏🙏

Whenever he texts you and you send him pictures of yourself being all cute n' shii, his eyes widen and he automatically saves them to his camera roll with a sly grin on his face.

bro thinks he's mf swiper with his devious ass

he gets realllll horny whenever you sit with your legs crossed on a desk/table, or when you twirl your hair and make eye contact while talking to him. my guy's gonna be walking around with a huge boner the whole day in pain until you relieve him.

Kyle 🎮💚:

He tries extremely hard not to get flustered whenever you hug him from behind

Especially when you compliment his hair and play with it/start flirting with him while you do it. ITS JUST SO ENLKBVJVBENKJJ FOR HIM HE GOES WILD

"Kyle baby, you look so cute with your hair out like that .." "I- h-hah .. T-thank you .." Then he legit MELTS INTO YOUR TOUCH HE'S SO DESPERATE

he wants to act all tough and whatnot 4 you but you make him so vulnerable

what makes him hard as a fucking rock is when he's sitting down on his chair and you bend over towards him with your titties on the desk, arms crossed. HANDS DOWN CATCHES HIM OFF GUARD SO QUICKLY HIS EYES DART STRAIGHT TOWARDS YOUR TITS 😔😔

He lovesss seeing you wear his hoodies, something about it is just.. makes him feel some sort of way..

he gets really excited whenever you ask him to tutor you, it means you two get to spend more time together

If someone insults you he's gonna get MADD ANGRY

Like his anger issues will not allow someone to disrespect you like that.

he's always at your beck and call, if you need him, he's there.

Send him a bikini pic and he's gonna have a seizure.

"SHIT Y/N IM WITH MY FRIENDS WHAT IF THEY SEE IT?!??1!?!?!/11/1/ FUCK WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME AMEOIDOAEINAMSLKN"

STUDY DATES ARE HIS FAVOURITE BUT ALSO GOING OUT TO CAFE'S >>>>>>>>>>

He gets really blushy and nervous whenever your showing him so much affection to towards him infront of his friends, but he secretly likes it, he just doesnt wanna seem like a baby.

Whenever you get better grades than him he either celebrates for days or cries in a corner for hours. There's no in between.

Kyle is honestly so overprotective like if he sees a guy staring at you hes gonna straight up smack their face with a stack of graded homework assignments.

He jealousssss 🤭 he HATESSS admitting it though hes so whiny abt it too.

"Y/nn, I'm not jealousss babeee shutt uppp-uh 😠😠" Like a frickin 10 year old, LMFAO WHY DO I ACTUALLY IMAGINE HIM SAYING THAT THOUGH

Kenny 🏠🧡:

Lovesss showing/giving PDA doesn't matter where you are or who you're with

Bro is soso touch-starved its insane

He holds you by the waist while he leans in for a kiss, he low-key smells like cigarettes and car gas but I'm kinda into it ngl 🤷‍♀️

Whenever he gets touchy, it's not always going to be sexual but this man has some pretty horny thoughts but you cant blame him

Hes so whiny and wants you to touch him REALLY BADLY.

"Y/nn please please please I love you so much please just this once oh my God please your so hot I'm gonna suffocate I love you just this once please please PLEASEEEEEE-" "Kenny omg calm down wtf-"

His weak spot is seeing you in clothes that bring out your figure, I mean, girls look better in a real tight sweater ifkwim 😋

The only time he will EVER be the submissive one during sex is when hes balling his eyes out about something that's happened at home, or when he's high on sumthin'

If he's going to see you, he sometimes brings karen with him because he loves the little relationship you two got going on, also his parents are always arguing so it'd be a huge relief for both Karen AND Kenny.

Send him ONE picture and he'll be begging on his knees for more

"MOMMY SORRY MOMMY SORRY- OH GOD SEND MORE- I NEED- creams aggressively YOUR A FUCKING GODDESS OH LORD HAVE MERCY GOAWDH DAYHUYHM 😍😍"

It's a big bonus if you come from a wealthy or rich family cause then you can spoil Kenny and his siblings rotten like how they deserve 😔💞

Please treat karen well she really looks up to you, your like her idol and shes def your #1 fan, she'll always be talking about you and how amazing and thoughtful and pretty you are ITS JUST SO AAAAAAA KAREN IS SO CUTEEE 😖

Kenny doesn't have much but he'll try to save up ENOUGH money to get you something nice like a headband or some nail polish 😚

He's trying.

He just wants you to be happy with him.

Please get married.

Cartman 🍗❤️:

Oh no.

When people started finding out that Cartman had feelings for the one and only, Y/n, they felt so sorry and started giving u random things and being oddly kind around you.

You were like: ???

If he sees a guy flirting or talking to you, he's gonna lower their self esteem to the MAX.

Like he'll be soso rude abt it too

"What kind of dumb fuck like you would get any girls? You got to be kidding me, your dumber than Kahl."

Once you started dating him, man everyone in the school was either shocked, no- not shocked, literally flat-out concerned for your well-being.

Cartman, REEAAAALLLYYYY .. ?

He always wants your attention, even when your busy doing something he'll be texting you at the most randomest times saying "I'm coming over", and shows up at your door in less than 2 minutes.

If you give him a hug or a kiss in public, he'll be acting all tough and start bragging to his friends. But once he's alone, he'll start giggling and twirling around like a fangirl (😨)

He has so many bad pictures of you on his camera roll but it takes all of your convincing skills to tell him: DONT. POST. THE PICTURES.

He doesn't wanna participate in any tiktok couple challenges bc he thinks their stupid. Buttt unless you offer Kyle to do it then he's def gonna cave in 🤭.

He's such a toddler too

He'll secretly want to be the little spoon often but if you offer him his face starts looking like a whole-ass sunburn with an offended look on his face

"AHEM? No we are NAWT doing that. You? Cuddling ME? No no no, its supposed to be the other way around, "Y/n" 🙄"

He'd diss your music taste and then you'll catch him twerking to your favorite song

He just like that y'know?

[little-miss-dilf-lover]

Okay for another rec. I know you are busy but I need to send you this before I forget it in like 20 minutes

Tangerine x reader smut and fluff?

You work with the Twins and over time you and tangerine develop a FWB sort of agreement. That is after missions and assignments you two always end up in a safe house where you blow some off some steam and come down from whatever hell you just went through.

After one smutty unwinding sesh, you can tell tangerine is still tense but exhausted. So without words you arrange yourself on one side of the bed and guise his heavy body to lie on you for a cuddle, you show him that it’s okay to be the little soon. You gently run you fingers through his hair and calm him down more eventually falling asleep. From then on, it’s rare and he won’t say it out loud but you know when he needs to to be held.

Im a sucker when guys are never used to that type of comfort. Never knew they can be the little spoon, or your weighted blanket. Like they are touch starved so when you show them that affection they are like WTF?! but melt into it.

frickin love LOVE love fics like this omg!! he so deserves it. thanks for requesting, hope you like it💌

GIVE IN TO IT.

tangerine x implied fem!reader — fluff/ comfort

word count. 453

summary. he’s not used to being the one to receive affections, so you take it upon yourself to change that after noticing he looks down (paraphrasing from the ask)

Tangerine is very rarely the kind of guy that’s open about the way he feels, about what is actually going on in his head. He often brushes off concerns and questions, dismissing any kind worry as he felt it wasn’t worth the hassle.

You learnt rather quickly through your no strings attached agreement, that he’s almost reluctant about being the one to receive love and care, and that he’d much prefer being the one to give. And though you both promised nothing else would come of this situation – that it would strictly remain physical, you couldn’t help but want to be the reason to let down his guard. To let him absorb that love he ever so clearly needs.

Safe houses after missions were the prime spot in which you’d both let off some steam – delve into your purely physical relationship. 

But tonight, you could tell something was different with Tangerine.

After you both finished, he wasn’t like his usual self: he didn’t bring you in for a cuddle, he didn’t jump at the offer to clean you up, he didn’t paw at your hips – begging you to stay in his room for the night. He kind of just layed there, catching his breath, absentmindedly staring at the ceiling above.

It was a worrying sight really, and it wasn’t something you felt equipped to deal with. You’ve never had a chance to learn how to combat it before.

You knew he was tired, exhausted even. He looked as if something was weighing him down, like something was on his mind.

And so, you scooch into his side, slipping an arm under his neck – like you were repositioning him, silently instructing him to turn into you. At first, he’s rigid, almost reluctant to cave in. 

But when you hum softly, it only gives him that push he needs to give into the touch. He rolls over so he’s on his belly, half of his weight resting on your side – the other half on the mattress, his arm draping across your middle.

You envelop your arm around his head, palm soft and gentle as it grazes over his hair, like the act was solely to soothe him. You other wraps around his back, stroking up and down his smooth, bare back, following the curve of his spine.

He sighs faintly at the touch, a gentle blissed exhale telling you it was what he needed. He just needed to be held, even if he didn’t know it himself.

And as you lovingly stroke him to sleep, soothing and calming and winding him down – you knew you had just passed a line. Past a point of no return in your sexual agreement. 

Clearly, this was something more.       

[ozzgin]

Hihihi!!

This is incredibly random but

Dragon!S/O (I was thinking about my favorite character from a show!)

Let's say S/O is a dragon Hiding as a human in society since many think that Myths/Legends don't exist so

S/O doesn't bother flaunting that she's a dragon and just blends in with the other humans.

S/O is originally a (the long noodle) dragon but takes a human form she can also sometimes have her horns and tail pop out!

Coincidentally She's dating (Any Baki character!) And one day when she got really irritated or sad let's just say..

SHE TURNS INTO A HUMONGOUS FRICKIN DRAGON

Infront of the (Baki characters!!)

GASP

Your choice if you want the police or satellites to detect her massive dragon form!

(I apologize for this ask, I really went random and if you're on break I don't mind if you can't do it! Thank you for reading!)

I hope you’ll forgive the delay, I set some older requests aside on purpose because I thought they’d be great for October. I found the fantasy theme very fitting. Funnily enough, if you didn’t know, Baki x Dragon Maid is an actual thing and you’ll find multiple fanart works of it haha. Randomly remembered it when I read your request.

Baki Characters x Dragon! Significant Other

Featuring some of the Baki men reacting to their significant other suddenly turning into a dragon.

[Baki Masterlist]

Truly, how embarrassing. Hundreds of years of flawless concealment. Carefully and steadily learning the ways of humans until no one could ever suspect the slightest off detail. You’ve changed identities countless times, lived in many places, and each time your true nature has been kept out of reach. So why, in the name of ancient Gods, have you just forfeited your secrecy? Now of all times?

Of course, you already know the answer. Never through the long history in which you’ve walked this Earth has there been a more annoying creature. You glare at Yuujirou with your glossy reptilian orbs. Annoyingly persistent, but also unbearably strong. Your human form was not enough to go against him, and your pride and anger took over before you could carefully consider things.

So now you stand here, your long, scaly body overlapping several times as it circles the entire Underground Arena, with your head just below the high ceilings. Everyone has gone quiet and the red headed culprit can only follow suit, staring back with raised eyebrows.

“…(Y/N)?” You hear your boyfriend mutter in an attempt to break the insufferable silence, perhaps looking for some explanation or awaiting confirmation that they haven’t gone mad. You hadn’t planned to be seen like this, especially by your partner. The shame is too great, all eyes are on you. You lift your clawed hands to your snout, attempting to hide your features, and let out a prolonged cry.

Between your sobs and hiccups you feel a faint pressure on your tail. You look down and notice your boyfriend stroking along the harsh skin, reassuringly. “Come now. You can’t blame me for being surprised, but that’s no reason to be upset. There’s nothing wrong with this.”

If you boyfriend is…

Baki, he will follow your movements with a silly expression that you can’t read. His stare is making you squirm and your long body slithers around idly, almost like a fidget. There’s a smile plastered on his face, but he’s not saying much otherwise. His gaze is fixated on you. Your orbs dart around the Arena, trying to come up with an explanation. After a few huffs and puffs, you finally face him with scolding indignation. “I know it’s strange, but can you at least pretend not to gawk like this? Why do you look at me like that?” He seems taken aback by your reaction, but follows with a chuckle. “You’re right, sorry. I just thought you’re very cute like this.”

Chiharu, he’ll be way more enthusiastic than you would’ve anticipated. You’ve already heard the story of his back tattoo and the symbolism behind it. He’ll tell you that this is no coincidence, and perhaps his design idea was already a subconscious preparation for your arrival. He finds you very cool and every now and then he might even jokingly scare you just to see your tail and horns.

Jack, he won’t say much. He is obviously very shocked alright, but he’d rather not make a big deal out of it, especially after seeing your reaction and embarrassment. He’ll cough, look away, and stumble over his words in an attempt to let you know that he doesn’t care and it doesn’t change anything. As the reality settles in, he will occasionally look at your small form with a newfound amusement. To think this tiny human could make him look insignificant in size in an instant.

Retsu, he will immediately apologize for intruding on your privacy like this. Clearly this was meant to be a secret, and the unwilling exposure makes him feel like he just caught you naked out of the shower. He is a blushing mess as he attempts to diffuse the situation, promising that he’ll take care in keeping the others quiet. Once you calm down, he’ll sneak in a few glances because he can’t help his curiosity. You remind him of a Chinese dragon. Noble, royal and powerful.

Katsumi, he will be absolutely entertained by the whole ordeal. There’s not an ounce of fear in this man’s eyes. He’s laughing and clapping his hands in disbelief and surprise. “I know I always say you’re special to me, (Y/N), but you’ve really outdone yourself this time! I think it’s safe to assume you’re just special. Unless there’s other dragons casually roaming the city.” He hasn’t thought about that. You promise him there aren’t hidden dragons in his Dojo and he doesn’t have to worry about being overturned. And you don’t know if the children are going to be half dragon. You haven’t planned that far ahead.

Hanayama, he will just stare at you after his last statement. You gradually become more nervous, unsure how to respond. That’s it? The scales around your face are flushed with a red tint and in your anxiety, a blow of hot steam is released from your nostrils. Hanayama realizes your discomfort and his eyes widen. “Sorry, I kind of assumed you needed a moment to recollect yourself. I now see I only made it worse.” He slides his fogged up glasses along the bridge of his nose and hums. “I’ll guide the others outside and then we can talk, okay? Leave everything to me.”

[yeehawbvby]

Hello! While I was doing the classes and Salvatore (the language teacher) gives you words in other languages and asks what they mean. He did this with 'I love you' and that gave an idea. What if reader and Arven are both in that class and Salvatore notices Arven's crush on reader (I feel like Arven's the type to stare at his crush and then get caught and get all shy about it) and tries to encourage him to confess. Sry this was a bit long. Hope you have a wonderful day/night!

WAIT STOP this is so frickin’ cute wtf 😭😭😭 Don’t be sorry at all for the long prompt!! The more details regarding what you’re looking for, the better :D

I hope you don’t mind that I went with a gendered reader – it just kinda naturally flowed out of me this way ;;w;; Enjoy! x

Love Languages | Arven x F!Reader

Rating: Teen+ | WC: 1,744

I have a crush on my best bud. I can’t help it. It happens, it’s not a big deal, and she definitely doesn’t need to know. But, I’m unfortunately far from subtle in my affections.

She’s just… so damn pretty. The way her hair shines no matter the lighting, the glimmer in her eyes when she’s excited, the blush on her little cheeks when she’s praised. With her brains, strength, and kindness on top of all that, it’s hard not to be totally enamored. 

Enamored enough to, y’know… check her out, every once in a while. I guess.

One time, Salvatore caught me in the act. She was answering a question of his during one of his lectures, and my eyes remained on her just barely too long. When he finished addressing her, our teacher looked at me, and his eyes widened. He glimpsed at her again, then back at me, and he winked. 

Now, I know Salvatore’s a good guy. He’s friendly, he often has his students’ and Pokémons’ best interests in mind, and he’s lackadaisical when it comes to grading and due dates… But I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t a little shit.

Whether I’m peeking at my buddy in class or grabbing lunch with her in the cafeteria, if Salvatore sees it, he gives me a look. Like, one of those “I see, I see…” sort of looks. It’s terrible. I could only ever hope to Arceus that her steel trap brain is oblivious to it.

Today, little buddy and I talked a bit before class – easy enough, with her sitting diagonally in front of me – and eventually Salvatore mosied on in, with his typical greeting. “My dear friends!” and so on. My bud turned around towards her desk, I got out my notebook and stuff, and everything went how it usually does, at least at first.

“Now, mes amis – my friends, that is! I’ve decided to change up our typical lesson format a bit.” 

Oh? 

“In le cours d’ajourd’hui – today’s class – we will learn about a very special phrase that you can put to use when the time is juuust right!” 

Salvatore smiles and scans the room as usual, searching for a reaction. But this time, before continuing, his eyes linger on me. 

“Ai shiteiru! Je t’aime! Te amo! Ich liebe dich! Does anyone know what these phrases mean?”

After a few quiet moments, little buddy raises her hand, and I notice what seems like a small blush on the side of her cheek. Salvatore calls on her to answer, and it comes out… timid?

“T-they mean, um… ‘I love you.’”

Hearing those words from her mouth makes my heart pound in my chest. 

“Très bien!” My eyes feel like they’re gonna pop right out of my skull as Salvatore turns to me. “It’s so very important to express your feelings about things to others, you know!” 

…He’s scheming.

Salvatore slowly walks across the class, inspecting us all. “So, mes merveilleux élèves – my wonderful students – I’m going to be setting you up into pairs.”

No.

When he reaches my row, he stops. He’s watching me. “I want you to practice amongst each other!” 

Nope!

“I’ll supply you with worksheets, made by yours truly,” he saunters over to the podium and grabs a stack of papers, “so that you all have prompts to work with! That way none of you will find yourselves ​​à une perte pour les mots – at a loss for words, that is!”

No thank you!

Whispers erupt amongst my peers. “Is he serious?” “This is so humiliating…” “What if I get paired with… you know?!” My eyes wide, I look around, studying everyone’s expressions and eavesdropping on their reactions to today’s lesson. At least I’m not the only one who’s worried. 

My gaze lands on my buddy, and she’s staring down at her desk. The same flush that coated her cheeks when she answered his question is still there – if anything, it looks a bit darker now.

“Oh my!” Salvatore laughs, interrupting the chatter. “Have I embarrassed you all, my friends?” 

No shit, man.

My brain turns to oatmeal as I zone out on my notebook. Salvatore continues instructing, and he’s probably trying to give me some kind of “wink wink, nudge nudge” of sorts, but it’s falling on blind eyes and deaf ears.  

He wouldn’t pair me up with her… would he? It would make the most sense for him to just pair us as we’re paired in our desks, right? Right?!

Two by two, the other students begin to shuffle around. And eventually, Salvatore calls my buddy’s name… followed by mine.

“Come get your assignments, you two!”

I hate him. 

I pack up my things, as does little buddy, and we both make our slow trek up to the front of the class. 

As Salvatore gives us our work for the day, he says, “Bonne chance – good luck!”

Fuck off.

Sighing, I stare down at the paper in my hand while we make our way to one of the last sets of empty desks available. My bud’s uncharacteristically quiet as we settle in, grabbing our pens and reading over the worksheets in front of us.

“So…” I prompt, wanting to get this over with. I can’t even look at her right now. “Y-you ready?”

When I don’t hear a verbal response, I look to my side, and she nods. Her face is still rosy, and she won’t look at me, either. Nerves getting the best of me, I do the only thing I really know how to do in a situation like this: I ramble. 

“Er, the first part here is to just match up the phrases with what languages they are. Easy enough…” 

“Mhm,” my friend hums quietly. 

“Alright, number one…” I can’t even bring myself to say the words out loud. Why is this so embarrassing?! At the end of it all, this is nothing more than an assignment, right? “...is Johtoan.” I peer up, and while writing down her answer, my bud nods. 

This continues until we complete the first section of our work. Maybe this won’t be so bad… as long as we don’t talk much, we’ll avoid any embarrassment, right?

“How are we doing, vous petits tourtereaux?” Salvatore asks. I don’t know what that last part meant, but little buddy seems to. Her eyes widen and she tenses up, her cheeks flushing. 

I squint at him. A look that says “You suck, and this feels like betrayal.” While doing so though, I verbally answer, “N-nous c’est bien…?” 

“Nous sommes bons, but I appreciate the attempt, Master Arven!” Salvatore winks, before suggesting, “You know, practice makes perfect.” Yeah, and? “Why don’t you two discuss the lesson amongst yourselves?” No. “You won’t improve without expérience de vie réelle – real life experience – after all!” 

“Er, we’re alri–”

“O-okay.” 

My head whips towards my buddy. When I look back up at Salvatore, he has a menacing grin on his face. He mutters something in Kalosian before moving onto another pair of students. I turn to my left again, and watch as my friend places down her pen, before shyly peering up at me to her right.

Are her pupils always so big? 

It’s probably just the lighting. Or I’m just seeing shit. Whatever.

“So…” she mutters. She looks down at her paper and fidgets with the corner. “We can just… go down the list here, I guess?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” That accidentally came out as a whisper, but she heard it well enough to begin. 

My buddy clears her throat, then mutters, “Um…” she pauses briefly, shifting herself to sit facing towards me. I do the same. “J-je t’aime.” 

Her eyes almost look hopeful as they flicker up to mine, then back down at her worksheet. Oh Arceus this is gonna be harder than I thought. 

“...Wǒ ài nǐ.”

More silence. Swallowing a lump in her throat, my buddy furrows her brows, then looks me in the eye. It’s like she’s hyping herself up… so cute. “Te amo…!”

Oh.

T-that had more of an effect than I expected. 

My eyes widen, and hers follow suit. She looks down promptly, while my cheeks redden to match hers. I quietly keep the flow going. “Ai shiteiru.”

“T-ti amo.”

“Didn’t you just say that one?” I softly tease. I’m relieved to see her shoulders relax a little, and her beautiful lips curve into one of her beautiful smiles, as I make light of what’s going on. 

She shakes her head. “Different languages.” 

Mirroring her grin, I keep up the antics. “Bullshit.” 

“It’s true! Ask Salvatore.” 

I glimpse over at him, and having heard his name, he’s already looking at us. I shake my head at him and turn my attention back to my friend. “N-no, it’s alright.”

We fall into another silence, so I go again. “Salanghaeyo.” 

Gnawing the cap of her pen, little buddy meets my eye again. “I-ich liebe dich.” 

Fuck. 

In a trance, we both seem to not want to pull our irises away from one another… so we keep going, just rambling based off of the word banks in our brains.

“Mahal kita.”

“Ya tebe lyublyu.”

“Se agapó.”

“Volim te.”

“I love you.”

Both sets of eyes widen. 

I… wasn’t supposed to use our own language. 

See, I could easily pass this off as an easy mistake now, but something is stopping me. I take in a deep breath, my eyes scanning my friend’s face. Somehow, her eyes focus even harder on me. Like she’s having some sort of revelation. Like… like she wants me to say more. 

I wonder if…?

“...I love you,” I repeat, adding her name to the end. Trying to look more serious, in spontaneous hopes that she knows I’m serious.

Taken aback, she squeaks. Her mouth opens and shuts a few times. “I…” she pauses, looks down, then looks at me again. “I love you… Arven…”

…!

“You…? Wait, a-actually?”

Fidgeting with her pen in her hands – focusing hard on the way she’s twirling it between her fingers – she nods. She grins to herself, too shy to meet my eyes.

“I… oh my god, I love you!”

I look towards Salvatore. My mouth’s agape. I silently mouth the words, “IT WORKED,” in his direction. He beams, and a broad smile forms across his features.

…Salvatore, you sly motherfucker. 

You actually did it.

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

lets say that the skeletons have a really close friend, best friends. And they often hang out in his room if he's up for it. But every time they leave his house everything in his room is moved half an inch. Its not noticeable until everything is off. If they don’t hang out in their room the friend will do it to their living room.

The classics, fells, swapfells, horrors, and horrorfells if you could?

Undertale Sans - He doesn't notice it before the mark of his bed clearly appears on the floor because of how dusty it is. He's a bit confused and simply moves it back thinking he probably did that when he threw himself like a walrus in his bed lol. It's only after it repeats several times that he starts to get suspicious. He swears his desk wasn't that much on the right because he tried to align it with the window when he put it there. Uh. It doesn't take long for him to notice it always happens after you come. We have a jokester, are we? You wake up one day and all your furniture has googly eyes. The war has started. He's never letting you go.

Undertale Papyrus - He doesn't understand how it keeps happening. He doesn't notice immediately, but now he can only see that. After three or four times, he puts some tape on the floor to mark where the furniture goes, to be sure it's not just him. But it's not him! All his things are moving every day and he's worried now. Is the house collapsing on one side? Should he call someone to check? Until he couldn't keep it to himself and came to see you to talk about this, accidentally catching you in the act. Papyrus gasps loudly, in shock. What is wrong with you? Do you think it's fun to watch him run everywhere like a headless chicken?! He's amused but also definitely a little angry as well lol. Stop stressing him like that, it's not funny!

Underfell Sans & Papyrus - Red never suspects you. However he for sure suspects his brother and one day you come to visit and witness the two brothers screaming at each other with Edge desperately trying to explain he did nothing wrong and Red continually antagonizing him asking if he thinks he's a frickin idiot. You struggle to not laugh. Red doesn't notice, he's way too angry for that. But Edge suddenly snaps his neck at you. You try to keep it cool but you can tell he already understands. Edge immediately tries to antagonize you but Red defends you and says he's just trying to save his butt. You say you saw Edge did it. Edge is mad at you for an entire week and won't even look at you lol.

Horrortale Sans - He's disturbed. Something is not right but he's not sure what. Oak has been standing at the entrance of his room for twenty minutes now, just staring blankly. Did someone enter his room? He's kinda unsure. It's stressing him out. It's actually stressing him out so much he's sleeping on the couch tonight. He doesn't feel safe in his bedroom. You decide to give up after noticing he's acting strange.

Horrortale Papyrus - He's very attentive and notices quite quickly. He has a good idea of who is doing that too. The next day, you notice all the curtains are closed so you're entirely in the dark. You notice the net trap on the floor is too late. The light switches on. Willow is in the corner, arms crossed. Busted. You can't escape the lecture to come and maybe you deserved it a little as well.

Horrorfell Sans - He has a bad eyesight so he doesn't notice for a very long time. Actually, he doesn't notice at all. All his things are against the wall at this point but he's way too lazy to put them back at their place. He understands you're doing that, but there's a point where you won't be able to push his things more so he simply waits for you to get bored and give up. He's not going to please you by noticing it if it's what you're waiting for.

Horrorfell Papyrus - He immediately notices because of his wheelchair. His house is not really adapted so he pretty much made sure his wheelchair could fit between his furniture. Except now he can't fit so obviously someone touched his furniture. And of course, since he's still a drama queen deep inside, he's immediately overreacting and starts to scream at his very confused brother who has genuinely no idea what's pissing him off. Since he's actually not really in an "it's a prank surprise" mood, you decide to retreat and let poor Copper take the blame for you.

Swapfell Sans - You can see him make a face, clearly suspicious. Nox can feel something is off. He asks Rus if he moved the furniture, but Rus says maybe a ghost did it. Nox knows his brother. If he did it, he would have rubbed his victory in his face, so it's not him. He stares at you suspiciously. You try really hard to look elsewhere, but when you look up again, Nox is two inches from your face. You're so busted. He's not fooled. Put everything where it was. Now.

Swapfell Papyrus - Oh, he knows it's you at first sight since Nox would never do that. But Rus likes chaos so he's going to snitch on you to his brother just to see what will happen. He then simply sits on the couch, smiles at you, and waits for his brother to stomp his way in to lecture you. He even had time to make himself some popcorn. All you can do is make angry eyes at him while his brother is tormenting you. Rus clearly doesn't care though.

[101maverick]

prompt request: preteen Dick and Jason are stuck babysitting little Tim.

a/n: i decided on some fluffy shenanigan with mild angst. Tim has just come to the manor, he’s 7, and 6 years younger than Dick instead of 9 (so Dick is 13). Jason is 11.

Word count: 1151 words

Babysitting Hell

Bruce hated them.

That, according to Jason, was the only possible reason for why he had assigned him and Dick to a day-long torture.

“Jay, Dick, you are getting bigger and I trust you with this responsibility, plus it’s not something worth of disturbing Alfred’s vacation.” Is what Bruce had said to justify it.

Jason agreed with the fact that Alfred didn’t need to be disrupted from his rest by anything less than a death in the family of the ending of the world, but that didn’t in any way mean he agreed to being left with his brother to take care of the snot-nosed brat Bruce had brought home.

It’s not that Jason disliked the kid per-se, it’s that the kid actively didn’t want to be there. And that just meant he was gonna make this day a hell for Jason and Dick both.

And even more so for Jason himself than his brother! Because Jason was more than aware of his brother’s short fuse and knew how to not trigger it, but the new kid didn’t. And that meant Jason was gonna have to scramble to make sure his brother didn’t pop a blood vessel or strangle the kid, before the kid could do something stupidly reckless like trying to run away by jumping through the window or setting the kitchen on fire to gain enough of a head-start to steal the bat-mobile and run off. Or, anyways, whatever creepy seven-year-olds who stalked vigilantes on rooftops in the middle of the night usually do to get out of places they don’t wanna be.

And don’t get him wrong, Jason understands the feeling of being thrust in a new environment where you suddenly don’t have yourself only to rely on can be disorienting and unsettling, it happened to him too when he first got to the Manor.

But the thing is the kid isn’t happy with Batman wanting to take care of him, while simultaneously adoring him, acting as if he hung the frickin sun in the sky. It was that dichotomy Jason didn’t understand.

And he didn’t really care about understanding it anyways, since the more pressing matter at hand was finding the brat and making sure Bruce didn’t break his precious no-kill rule upon learning Jason had taken his eyes off of him for a few seconds too long.

As Dick searched the kitchen and foyer he headed for the library, head swishing from side to side while his eyes raked over the hallway.

Opening the door to the library he heard whispered cursing and the barely-there rustling of clothes. Bingo.

He fully entered the room and shut the door behind him before quickly darting around one of the bigger couches, snatching the kid by the collar of the jacket before he could run off.

“There you are!” He said, an exasperated huff in his voice as he hauled the kid up and steadied him on his feet, hands coming up to set them on his shoulders. “Kid, i understand you don’t really want to be here, but please make this as painless of an experience as possible for me and you both and try not to set Dick off. I know he seems very friendly and kind- and he is, almost painfully so- but you really don’t want to find out how easy it is to anger him. Trust me, i was there for his a good part of his grief-stricken rampage and it was not pretty.”

After he finished talking, the kid just stared at him, slightly bewildered and analysing eyes staring into his own determined and wide ones.

The semi-intense stare off was ended by the kid, an indignant inclination to his voice. “It’d be a lot easier if you just trusted me to take care of myself and let me go home! I’m not stupid!” Hi eyes had turned wide, a hint of fear barely visible through the angry and annoyed fire in them.

That gave Jason pause. Specifically, one little word.

“Trust?” He started, kinda bewildered. “Kiddo, you’re seven. It’s not so much about trust, as the simple fact that your house has not burnt down and you’re still in one piece proves you’re more than capable of being the perfect latchkey kid.” He explained, holding Tim’s gaze steadily with his to get the message across, “the thing is that you shouldn’t have to. Because, again, you’re seven. And I’m not stressing your age to imply you’re somehow stupid, but because seven year olds like yourself should be able to be stress-free and not worry about managing every single bit of their life and house-keeping.”

“Then,” Tim started, unsureness creeping into his big eyes, “…then, how am I supposed to show that I’m good enough?”

Jason’s eyes became comically wide at that, he was sure he looked like a cartoon character. “Good enough for what exactly, kid?”

“Good enough to be here! With Batman and Robin! Both Robins! Good enough to see all the cool gadgets and the cases and the mementos and trophies! How do I show I’m capable of being around all of that and not break anything or tell stuff I’m not supposed to tell, if I can’t take care of myself? There’s not much more responsible than that, and I want to show I’m responsible enough for all of this!” By the end of his tirade Tim was slightly panting, hands still in midair from his animated gesticulating.

And with this explanation it all clicked for Jason, he finally understood why the kid was so against being taken care of by Bruce. He explained the misunderstanding away. “Kid, Bruce doesn’t want to care for you because he thinks you’re not responsible enough. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s kinda got a thing for strays. Think of it more as you taking care of him, ‘cause trust me when I say that if he knew you were alone in your big, empty manor he’d have an aneurysm or like, pop a blood vessel or somethin’.” There, simple as that. Laid bare on the table in words honest enough they would hopefully get through to an overly-independent and angry seven year old.

“Oh.” Tim said. “I guess i never thought about it like that.” A beat of silence, then, “I guess it makes sense. I can make do with that.”

Jason felt his shoulders sag in relief, just in time for Dick to come bounding through the door, no doubt having listened to at least the last of their conversation.

“There you are!” He started, bright show smile lighting up his face. “Now that we’re all together, who wants to play Cluedo?”

And as they settled on the couch and he took his first turn as Ms. Scarlett, Jason thought that maybe Bruce didn’t really hate them, and that babysitting the brat wouldn’t be that much of a torture after all.

[raccoonfallsharder]

rocket raccoon prompt week ✷ day six bite ✷.⁺⋆˚₊

low-grade spice & fluff | no use of yn | gn reader | minific | word count: 2,266.

“That’s — a big frickin’ scar you got there.”

Your eyes flare wide and you twist in your seat so fast you nearly spin off it, staring at the stranger who has just hoisted himself onto the barstool next to you. Not because you recognize the voice — you don’t yet, though you will — but just because it’s such a personal remark.

And you’re a little bit sensitive about the scar, if you’re being honest. It’s something of a souvenir.

Then recognition clicks in. Because there he is: short. Covered in fur. Velveteen ears and a dark mask, and a plush ringtail that sweeps behind him. Eyes like red stars.

Cutie.

You stare at him, breath sucked right out of your lungs. He’s got hesitation scrawled and sprawled all over his face: ears flicking down and tail lashing once, nervously. His claws clink against his massive, nearly-empty stein of Xitarish whiskey. 

You tear your eyes away and stare down at the ring of pearly ridges stitched into your arm — like maybe there were answers carved into your flesh there all along, and you’d just never noticed. Or like each toothmark is a lodestar, and together the circle of them can help get you home. 

“Isn’t it rude? To comment on a stranger’s scars?” you breathe out, trying to buy yourself time as all the pieces begin falling together. 

He blinks at you, and shifts uncomfortably. “Uh, Jemiah.” He gestures at the owner of The Boot, who just so happens to be your boss. “Next drink’s on me.”

“Sure thing, Rocket,” Jemiah says warmly — far more warmly than you’ve ever heard from him before. 

You feel your eyes flare wide. “You’re Rocket?” you manage to utter, eyes scrolling up and down him again. “One of the people who bought this damn skull? The pilot — the Guardian of the Galaxy or whatever?”

Somehow he looks even more uncomfortable. “Guardians of the Galaxy. Plural. We’re — a team.”

You exhale slowly — measuredly — and try to loosen all the small feathers of confusion crowding up your head, downy-soft. And as you let go of all those wisps, adrenaline rushes in to take their place: the intoxication of suddenly seeing him. Meeting him — for real this time. Having a name to put with the memory. 

Your smile blows wide. You can’t help yourself. 

“The cutie has a team,” you murmur under your breath, and you feel the blood rush to your cheeks when his eyes sharpen on you. He shifts on his stool, but his shoulders relax a little, and the corner of his mouth twitches. 

“Don’t listen to him, Jemiah,” you call out. “His drink’s on me.”

Your boss ducks to hide his grin even as the cutie in question — Rocket, you think, with a pleased little grin — grimaces. “Wait—“ he starts.

You click your tongue and shake your head, cutting him off and grinning. “Not a chance. You bought this stupid skull out from under the Collector and made it a tolerable place to live? There’s no way you’re buying the drinks. I have to show my gratitude somehow.”

You drop your lids to half-mast and raise a brow, hoping he knows that you’re happy to show your gratitude in a few other ways as well. The risk of offering brings a nervous little buzz to your belly. 

As for him — well, you get the sense that he’s a guy who doesn’t let himself flounder very often, but right now his face is flickering between so many emotions that you can’t possibly catch them all. Shock, and then a brief flash of something like smugness, followed immediately by a flash of narrow-eyed skepticism — then a sort of uncertain hesitance, a brief twinge of humor, and finally, a cynical half-sneer. Then he starts right back at the beginning and does it all over again.

It’s fascinating.  

“Did you know,” you say slowly when Jemiah sets down the fresh drinks, “that I work here at The Boot?”

The stranger — no longer a stranger, you suppose; no longer just the cutie — no, Rocket pauses in his cycle of expressions, takes a slug of his new stein of whiskey, and shakes himself out. 

Where the hell does he put it? you wonder. The stein is as big as his whole torso, you think.

But he doesn’t seem buzzed at all. Instead, he casts you a measuring, sideways glance, entirely too alert for your tastes. 

“You don’t say,” he drawls at last, one brow raised as his spine eases a little more.

“Mmhmm,” you say mildly. “It’s my day off.” You pause meaningfully and take another sip of your own drink. “Didn’t used to get days off in Exitar. Or anywhere else on Knowhere, as a matter of fact.”

His eyes track your hands, and flick to your face. 

“Guess the difference is all thanks to you,” you tell him lightly, and tilt your glass toward him. “Here’s to the happy change in leadership.”

He studies you, and waits till you set your drink down again. 

“So. Uh. How long you worked here?” he asks — as if he didn’t already have at least some idea.

You grin into your glass. “Long enough to have developed a very strict set of rules for my survival.”

His ears flick. You’re glad he’s indulging you — playing along for now. “What’re the rules?”

You lean back. “I’m glad you asked,” you tease, and splay out one hand so you can count them on your fingers. “Number one. Avoid the Collector at all costs.”

He snorts. “Well, guess you’re not a complete idiot,” he mutters, and then slashes his red-amber eyes at you and flinches, like he thinks maybe you’re going to be offended. 

But you only wink at him. Not a chance, cutie.  “Number two. Never hide all your units in one place — or on one datacard.”

A smirk curls the corner of his mouth and his nose twitches.

“Three. Always lock your doors behind you. And four, Don’t walk home alone from the Boot.” The smirk slides off his face at that and his eyes flash, so you rush along to the next rule, hoping to lighten the mood again. “Five. Always get customers’ money before you hand them their booze.”

There you go. The little curve is back at the corner of his mouth, even if his brow is still furrowed — almost like he’s distressed. 

You lean sideways and nudge him with your elbow. “And finally, number six.” He looks up at you and his ears tilt, eyes locked on yours like glimmering red stones. You lean so close you know your breath will flutter in the curve of his ear, and you drop your voice to a whisper. “Don’t try to break up fights.”

The pilot rears back, nearly tumbling backward off his stool, and you reach for him before you both catch yourselves. Reeling your outstretched hand back into yourself, you instead gift him a reckless grin and turn to your drink once more.

“It’s not a comprehensive list,” you tell him pragmatically, “and it isn’t in any particular order, but it’s kept me alive this long.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Rocket says, and his voice is suddenly raspy and low. “Even that last one?”

The laughter surprises you, fluttering up behind your ribs and escaping between your lips, soft  and velvety and hushed. 

“I only broke that one once,” you tell him, lifting your glass to your mouth and half-hiding your grin behind it. You can tell your eyes are sparkling, though. “And it’s not like I ever regretted it.”

He makes a sound in the back of his throat. “Sounds like you got a story.”

“Mmm,” you acknowledge, and you keep your voice playful. “It was years ago, now. I knew all the regulars back then — well, I still do, but more of them were jackasses back in the day. And this guy comes in — someone I’d never seen before. Swaggering, carrying a cannon twice as big as himself. Maybe — three feet tall? A true Short King.”

He’s got his stein to his lips and he chokes on a mouthful of whiskey, sputtering. “A what?”

You ignore him, still casting him that teasing half-smile and raising an eyebrow. “He had pretty eyes, and I remember him being more foulmouthed than a landlocked Ravager.”

“Pretty — what?” 

“Keep up, Rocket,” you taunt lightly, tapping a finger to the air just an inch away from the top of his nose, and his eyes go narrow. Everything on his face is suddenly promising retribution, but you’re reckless with glee now.

And you’ll be happy to pay up if he actually comes to collect. 

“I told him that I needed payment up front when he ordered—“

“Get the money before you hand them their booze,” he echoes Rule Five, eyes still hunting you, and you nod with mock-approval. 

“You get it,” you say with a chuckle. “Anyway, his response was just to swipe another patron’s datacard right in front of me and hand it over.” You can still fucking see it: his challenging half-grin, one brow raised.  “I think I stared at him for a full thirty seconds, but this cutie just smirked up at me. Brazen as fuck.”

You laugh softly at the memory, and Rocket — who might as well be your new landlord, you’ve realized — grumbles something under his breath. 

“Anyway, I was kinda smitten,” you admit with a little curve in your mouth, still buzzing the inside of your belly. 

It’s the truth, too.  You’d never thought that raccoon can get it before, but there you were. 

And here you are. 

To your surprise, Rocket goes quiet at that. The pilot of the famous — or infamous — Guardians of the Galaxy, and one of the new owners of Knowhere: still and silent for a long moment. 

Maybe he’ll slip out of his chair and leave, you think, and the flutters in your belly twist in sudden regret. Maybe you’ve scared him off. 

But when he speaks, his voice is like crystallized maple syrup: rich and gritty, waiting to crumble and melt and scrub against your skin.

“He’s why you got into a fight?”

You weigh out your options here. What to say? You’d lost sight of the cutie thanks to his height and the constant surge of new customers, and you’d sort of forgotten about him in the moment, to be honest — though you’re sure you’d have remembered later, alone in your shitty little room — but then you’d heard the sudden cacophonous boom of his enormous augmented cannon. There’d been screaming and crashing, and you’d woven yourself  between the bodies toward the sound. Just to assess, just to figure out what kind of danger you’d been in—

Fucking B’darl — the worst of your regular patrons — had entered into view and suddenly hoisted the cutie right up into the air before slamming him down into the orloni fighting ring. 

You hadn’t thought about it — about anything, really — just thrown yourself through the crowd, toward the fighting ring. By the time you’d gotten there, B’darl had the cutie pinned to the miniature arena’s floor by the throat.  Both the orloni and the f’saki had cowered back, blood-soaked and wounded, from the sudden interference in their battle-to-the-death. 

Looks like you wandered outta the ring, the fucking brute had sneered.Time to go back to brawling with the other vermin, you little monster. 

B’darl had lifted his other fist, easily the size of your entire head.

My money’s on the f’saki, though. 

You’d surged between them without thinking, latching onto B’darl’s massive forearm, knocking his fist to one side.

You shrug. “It was worth it,” you tell Rocket mildly, and take another sip of your drink.

His eyes drop to the ring of teethmarks in your arm again. He opens his mouth to speak, and you cut in.

“My own fault,” you tell him. “I should’ve known the cutie could handle himself. I got in the way.”

You can still remember how his firelight-eyes had stared up at you from behind a mouthful of flesh and blood, stunned and maybe horrified, teeth sunk almost to the bone.  In a worse timeline, maybe you’d have tried to rip your arm away. But here, in this one, you’d curled around him instinctively. Protectively. 

And then he’d reached around you smoothly and snagged B’darl’s ion pistol, and you’d heard the gun go off as he’d squeezed the trigger, blind.

“My only regret is that I lost sight of him in the aftermath,” you tell him with a shrug. You try for a teasing smile but it suddenly feels strained, tense on your mouth. You’d been too flushed with adrenaline when you’d first started this conversation. Now, suddenly, the nerves are present: rattling and twitching behind your sternum. Your fingers shake a little and you clamp them onto your glass. “Didn’t even catch his name.” 

He doesn’t say anything, and you squeeze your eyes shut. When you finally get the fluttering in your vagus nerve under control, you hazard a look up at him. 

His eyes are on your forearm though: the circle of silken raised marks, just three shades lighter than the rest of your skin, and strangely — almost prettily — translucent. His finger reaches out: dark and clawed, his touch like warm leather. You go so still that you can’t blink, can’t even breathe as he paints a ring of warmth on your skin, looping the circlet of scars onto his fingertip like pearls threaded on a string.

The flutters are back, full-force. 

Slowly, Rocket drags his gaze up to yours, sunset-eyes glowing.  “Cutie works.”

@hibatasblog deserves so much more & better than this little ficlet but i am dedicating it to them anyway because they regularly call rocket "short king" and i cannot get it out of my head. deepest love to them & all their writing (please do yourselves a favor and check out their ao3 fics if you have not already)

look i just feel like (1) rocket is a cutie and if you say it in the right tone, he'll be flattered enough to not kill you and (2) there's no way he'd ever forget the stranger who jumped into a fight on his behalf — and probably got scarred for it — back before he met the guardians. which is when the og encounter takes place fyi. forget about the fact that i don't think we know if he had ever been there before gamora brought them along — i headcanon that where two or more lowlifes gather, so too there is rocket.

sidenote oh my god i literally cannot stop with the increasing wordcount. day seven (when i eventually get around to it) is gonna be SHORT. it's a promise/challenge to myself. anyway i think my writing quality peaked with machinery and i'm sorry this is so late

day five. machinery. ✷ day seven. home. rocket prompt week masterlist ✷ main masterlist rocket raccoon prompt week list

taglist ♡ @evolvingchaoswitch ♡ @glow-autumz ♡ @wren-phoenix ♡ @suicidalshitstick ♡ @pretty-chips

[avengersfantasies]

Anymore - Chapter 5

Summary: You and Bucky take a big step, but there's still doubt in your mind.

What to expect: fluff, angst, smut

taglist: @kandis-mom @missvelvetsstuff @mavrellover91 @natashasilverfox @vicmc624 @blackhawkfanatic @haruvalentine4321 @felicitylemon @vonalyn @aboobie @stinkerbelle007 @crist1216 @je-suis-prest-rachel @buckysforeverprincess @bathwater101 @frickin-bats @lovely-geek @winterslove1917

After talking with Steve, you and Bucky headed to his room. You had decided to stay at the tower for the night instead of having him take you all the way back to your apartment.

            “You should move in,” Bucky suggested. “It’d be safer for you here.”

            You shrugged. “I like having my own space.”

“Well, you could have your own room on this floor,” he told you. “You’d have me and Steve right here if you needed anything.” As if it were second nature, Bucky began to change into his sweats and a t-shirt. He pulled his shirt off over his head with his back facing you. His back muscles were something else. You thought Steve had been ripped and fit, but just based off Bucky’s back, you could tell he was a bit bigger. He turned around to face you and started to speak, but his words were cut off when he noticed you were practically drooling over him. He had a perfect six pack, his chest broad, and his waist making a v-shape at the top of his pants. “Sweetheart?” he chuckled, causing you to come back to reality.

“I’m so sorry,” you quickly apologized. “I just—”

“You were staring,” he chuckled and walked closer to you. “See something you like?”

You blushed hard and giggled. “I see about a hundred things I like.”

Bucky stalked towards you like you were his prey. “Listen to me,” he spoke softly – his hands cupping your face carefully. “You and me…whatever happens between us…I want you to be comfortable.”

You nuzzled into his large hands and kissed his metal palm. “I am comfortable, Buck.” He smiled widely at you. “I want you to be comfortable too.”

His thumbs stroked your cheeks. “I am, sweetheart,” he started, “but you’re pregnant…there’s a lot of emotions and hormones that might affect how you’re feeling.”

“Buck,” you started to argue back, “can I confess something to you?” He nodded. “Before I got with Steve, I wanted you…I was too scared to say anything to you, and then you were with what’s-her-face for those few months, and I was with Steve, and well…here we are.”

His eyes were filled with adoration. He hadn’t been expecting those words to come from you, but they did. They pierced his heart, and acting almost on instinct, he gently pulled your lips to his – capturing them in a deep and passionate kiss. Your hands trailed up to his hair – tangling the dark brown strands around your fingers. You tugged on them gently – wanting to get some sort of reaction out of the man you had fantasized about many time while Steve was inside you, though you’d never let him know that. God, it’d break his heart to know he was your second choice. None of that mattered now, however. Bucky slipped his tongue into your mouth and guided you over to his bed – laying you down gently and hovering above you. The kiss deepened, and the two of you explored the other’s mouth – never wanting to break apart.

“Fuck,” you moaned against his lips.

“You okay?” Bucky asked – his eyes searching yours for any sign of discomfort.

You nodded. “I just…don’t want to go too far.”

Bucky flipped you over so that you were on top of him, your hands rubbing his chest. “What’s too far?”

“Whatever you think is too far,” you told him.

His hands gently held your face to look at him. “Baby,” he began softly. “I asked you what’s too far…that means I wanna know your limits.”

You gulped, nervous about pushing him too far. “I don’t have any,” you confessed, “but…if you do—”

He cut you off with a deep kiss, his hands resting on your hips. You could feel him growing hard beneath you even through his jeans. He felt huge…much bigger than Steve. Steve was big, and he knew how to pleasure you, but you couldn’t deny that you had always wondered what Bucky would be like.

“Does it make me a bad person?” you managed to say through panted breaths.

“Does what?”

You leaned down to kiss his chest. “That I thought about you while Steve was inside me most times.”

Bucky chuckled. “Makes you human, baby girl.” That pet name did something to you – sent shivers through your body. You felt yourself soak through your panties, and this didn’t go unnoticed by the super solider underneath you. “Can I?” he asked, his flesh hand making its way to the hem of your leggings.

“Yes, Sergeant,” you moaned out, not realizing that you called him the name you had reserved for your fantasies when you were alone.

“Ooo,” he hummed – making you realize that you had called him what you did. “I like that, baby girl.”

You blushed harder than you ever had before and hid your face in his hair. “Oh my God, that’s so embarrassing!”

He chuckled and pulled your head back to look at him. “It’s hot, baby.” His lips were back on yours before you could say anything – his hand sliding into your leggings and petting your clothed pussy. “Goddamn, babydoll…you’re soaked.”

“All for you, Sarge,” you moaned – taking your shirt off and throwing it to the floor followed by your bra.

Your breasts were beautiful – something he’d never thought he’d get to see. His metal hand gentle grabbed one of them. “They sensitive?”

“A little,” you told him. “Just don’t be too rough.”

“You got it, doll,” he assured you – capturing one of your nipples in his mouth. His hands began sliding your leggings off. He made sure to move slowly so that you always had time to stop him if you needed to. You didn’t, however, and you lifted your hips up so he could take them all the way off – taking your panties with them. “Can your Sergeant have a taste of your beautiful pussy?”

You bit your bottom lip. His words were dirty…much dirtier than Steve’s ever were. You had begged for Steve to be dirtier with you in bed, but he never seemed to try. With Bucky, though, you were scared about what he would do if you did start to beg him to be dirtier. “Go for it, Sarge.”

Bucky leaned you back on the bed and hovered over you – making sure he didn’t put his weight on you. His flesh hand rested on your lower belly as he looked you in the eyes. “If you start to feel uncomfortable…physically or not…just tell me to stop, and I’ll stop immediately.” You nodded in understanding. The last thing Bucky wanted to do was somehow hurt you or the little life growing inside you. He kissed down your body softly – making love to every inch of your skin. Before he dove in, he took in your scent – wanting to memorize the delectable smell. “Smell so damn sweet, baby girl,” he praised you before gently wrapping his lips around your swollen and throbbing clit. You gasped at the sensation – your hand immediately going for his hair to pull him closer to your aching core. The soldier licked up your folds – dipping his tongue inside before holding them apart so he could properly feast. The sound of Bucky’s voice moaning into you send vibrations through your entire body, and your hips began to instinctually grind against his face for more friction. “Ride my face, doll,” he ordered you through his panting breaths. “That’s it.”

The sound of his eating out of your soaked pussy were sinful, to say the least. It was a sound that filled the air, and you could only imagine what it would sound like once his cock was inside you. Could Steve hear what was going on? He was only next door, after all. You knew that if he did hear, he’d be heartbroken, but you didn’t want to hide how amazing Bucky was making you feel. You bit your hand to keep your sounds from escaping your mouth, and this caught Bucky’s attention.

“Babydoll,” he said – looking up at you. “Let me hear your sounds.”

You almost had tears in your eyes. You wanted to scream out his name…God knows you did…but you couldn’t help but still feel bad about what you were doing. Was it considered cheating?

“What if he hears?” you managed to whisper to the man in between your legs.

“Then he should’ve thought about that before he broke your heart.”

Bucky was right. You knew he was. But Steve was still a person with a heart, and you never wanted to be the reason someone’s heart was broken.

“I can’t…,” was all you managed to whisper out before tears came flooding.

[dancingdonatello]

Hello i have a very specific request but it will not leave my mind

Reader is just entirely in love with the stars, and this is no secret. Donnie makes a lil projector thing that projects the real positions of the stars at the time, and dramatically shows it to em?? Please... thank you so frickin much

rise donnie x gn reader

How many times have you complained about light pollution? Around 500 times, according to Donnie’s data table.

That was around an average of 3.5 mentions per week. You usually mentioned it when outside, during the dark, or when Donnie dragged you in for a documentary on space.

How many times had you mentioned stars? Too many to count. Donnie gave up on that spreadsheet months ago. Oh, there you went again. His fingers itched with the need to put it into the spreadsheet. Maybe he could make a new one standing from this month and forward.

But along with stars and pollution, you had started talking about Texas and Ohio. How you could see the stars so easily from some National Parks there.

You had talked about wanting to move there when you got a job and money.

Ohio and Texas were not New York. Donnie also was sure that the sewers didn’t continue on forever through the entire country and he wasn’t sure how their tank would get through tolls on the highway.

He had two options to convince you to change your mind.

One: solve pollution.

This one was a little difficult. For one, that meant convincing a bunch of countries to stop doing what they were doing immediately and changing. Also, he was a turtle mutant that would be shot dead if he tried to contact a president or dictator’s personal phone number that he definitely did not have.

But there was also the second option: Make an alternative star system. One that would satisfy you enough to stay.

This didn’t mean just taking glow in the dark stars and sticking them on the ceiling. No. That was too basic.

He’d caught you watching time lapses of night skies before. As the Earth spun, the stars moved.

So, he’d have to make a star projector that moved. Even better, he could make it accurate to New York. This meant watching a lot of videos and somehow timing everything right.

But he was Donatello Hamato. It couldn’t take that long right?

Well.

It did. It took forever. His usual projects lasted at most six months. This took him up to close to a year. So he waited for your anniversary to gift it to you. (Luckily, your complaints on light pollution and instances of randomly staring up at the sky had only increased according to his spreadsheet.)

He already has it set up. All he needs to do is to make sure you don’t go into his room—

“No!” he shouts when he spots you opening his curtain. He runs right at you and apparently terrifies you as you jump out of his way. He trips over a sock and falls on his face, inches away from crushing his gift to you.

“Is that an Xbox?” You pick it up off the floor. “You shouldn’t leave this just lying around.”

“Haha… ha!” He snatches it away from you. “Follow me.”

He leads you all the way back to your own home. You’re obviously confused. He asked you to come to the lair and now he’s just bringing you back to your own house. Honestly, the poor turtle was just too nervous and didn’t think it though.

“Close your eyes…” He said as he placed it on your nightstand in your room.

You sat on your bed, waiting.

“Ahem. Drum roll please.” You blindly reached out for your night stand. Donnie moved the projector out of the way in time before you slammed your hands onto it.

Jeez. This thing was going to be broken before he even showed you what it really did.

“Okay. Open.”

Your eyes opened. You stared at him until he almost nervously pointed up at the ceiling. His nervousness disappeared when you gasped in excitement.

“The stars are proportional to real life, obviously scaled down to fit. They also reflect what the stars would look like over New York right now. So, as the Earth rotates, this should show the new stars that would show.”

Your jaw dropped.

“Also, it can adjust to any room you put it in.” He crossed his arms, almost posing proudly. “Happy anniversary.” He already know what is about to happen by the look in your eyes.

He steadied himself just as you launch yourself into his arms.