#been playing in-between chunks of work

[peregrineggsandham]

Just realized why that first meeting with Five Pebbles gave me chills. Not just the sheer, overwhelming, artistic presentation of the General Systems Bus (but holy shit did that make an impression) but... this quote:

"Go to the west past the Farm Arrays, and then down into the earth where the land fissures, as deep as you can reach, where the ancients built their temples and danced their silly rituals. The mark I gave you will let you through."

It has the same vibes as the Last Unicorn quote that haunted me as a child:

"Listen. Don't listen to me, listen. You can find the others if you are brave. They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints. Listen! Listen, listen quickly."

...I cannot explain, but it feels the same.

[asxgard]

Healing | [2/3]

Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch x pregnant!wife!doctor!f!reader

Previous | Next

Summary: Healing comes in stages.

[ My Masterlist ]

Note: ayy, this idea came while I was thinking about a one-shot/possible continuation of Heartbeat lol ended up adding this and another part. gender was a coin toss, so don’t be upset with me😊

Word Count: 3.3k

Most of my works are 18+ due to adult language and content

Warnings: afab!reader, some angst, foul language, pregnancy, hospital mentions, medical inaccuracies, drug mentions (Langdon), struggling with feelings, vague ptsd, some fluff, pet names (my love, sweetheart)

not beta read

The month that followed the chaos of Pittfest was not an easy one — not only was there damage control, but there was also a hell of a lot of clean up. Both physically and emotionally. You saw the blood on your hands when you closed your eyes, but you kept repeating, “I did everything I could with the resources we had”. That only worked for about a week.

Your temper flared whenever you came to be in Gloria’s company after that, and you could plainly see you were testing her patience. Hospital politics and satisfaction scores meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of the ED, and the budget cuts and bare-bones resources meant everything if another mass casualty event rocked Pittsburgh. You had bypassed Michael entirely when you complained about it — which left him frustrated, but more-so over the fact that you were right and Gloria was still playing politics.

While Gloria had clearly stepped up during the tragedy, she was not much help in the aftermath.

In the wake of that shift Michael had worked, you could see it still weighed on him. You hated that you had taken that day off — sure, it had been for a checkup with your OB to check on your bouncing baby boy, but you had been needed. You hated that Michael had only called for you when he started to crack, but that was the man he was. That was the man you had married, fully knowing that fact. You were lucky he called for help at all.

Despite the fact that you were both fighting for better resources and an increase in the ED budget, you both found small comforts at home. Mostly in his touch, but in a handful of new hobbies you began to start to prevent your mind from wandering too close to the horrors you saw daily. Michael took to building your baby’s crib. Then their dresser. And then a wooden rocking horse.

Whatever it took to keep his hands and mind occupied.

Jake warmed back up to Michael sometime between Leah’s funeral and your birthday that month. Jake’s guilt had manifested as disbelief at first, dissolving into anger, and finally acceptance. He had shown up to your house on your birthday with flowers and a smile, asking if Michael was home.

They both talked out on the balcony for a good chunk of the afternoon, coming back inside with smiles and quiet laughs. It made you feel worlds better.

—

“Dr. R squared!” Dana called happily when you and Michael walked in together one morning, calling the attention of all the newer faces. You were happy she had decided to stay, but she had nearly gotten the nurses union up in arms about the violence they faced, which caused a big headache for Gloria. You were thrilled.

Whitaker and Javadi exchanged glances, while Santos let out a surprised laugh.

“I knew it!”

You enjoyed keeping your personal life private, but your marriage to Michael was more of an open secret, anyways. You were professional inside the hospital, so you could see how it took them awhile to catch on.

“Damn, Dana, you ruined my bet. I had another month to go before I thought they’d catch on.” Michael said with a fake frown.

You barked a laugh, “You haven’t exactly been subtle. I win.”

“That’s gotta count as foul play.”

“A bet’s a bet, Michael.”

Since your pregnancy, Michael had hovered more and left more lingering touches on your skin, touching your back when you were helping a patient or passing in the hall.

You noticed Princess and Perlah exchange a few bills, and it was then you were certain a similar bet had taken place in the ED as well. You smirked.

“Wait…wait. You guys are married?” Whitaker asked, looking back at you, face flushing.

“Happily.” Michael supplied, tone low, heavy gaze on the poor kid.

You knew how it looked — a younger woman with a much older man. You were also very obviously pregnant. But you were proud of your marriage, and if it weren’t for the board watching how you interacted together, you would have shouted it from the rooftops.

“...but your last name..?” Javadi whispered out.

“Less confusion with my maiden name, Dana’s just proud of her little nickname,” you told her with a grin. “Plus, the Pitt only has room for one Dr. Robinavitch.”

“Should I take offense to that?” Michael asked with an amused raise of an eyebrow.

You only smirked at him, before moving to put your things behind the charge desk.

“Alright, everyone back to work.” Michael said, following after you to put his bag down. “Residents, I want your reports.”

Michael quickly fell into his role as Chief ED Attending, and you fell into yours, moving to triage as you usually did at the start of your shift. You had a good eye for finding cases that could very easily slip into critical, and you had a knack for clearing away the cases that definitely did not need to be in the ED clogging up chairs. Sniffles, papercuts, and symptoms better suited for their primary care physician rather than the hospital.

Sliding in next to Michael to drop off a tablet, you smirked at him, “So…what’s for dinner tonight?”

Your bet had consisted of who was going to make dinners for the next month and Michael had lost. You were looking forward to not having to worry about that for a month, seeing as typically you and Michael traded off or cooked together.

His eyes still on his computer, he frowned, “I was thinking take-out.”

“Sore loser.”

He smirked, “Thai?”

“How dare you use my cravings against me.” You scoffed with a smile.

He looked at you fondly, eyes going back to the screen, “I’ll even get you ice cream after.”

You huffed, trying to maintain a frown, “I accept only if it’s a cinnamon roll from Grandview.”

He raised an eyebrow at you. Grandview Bakery was wildly out of the way, but you had been craving the sweet treat for days.

“What? It’s for your son, not me.”

Michael grinned and relented, agreeing to your terms.

—

Michael opened up to you about that shift two weeks later, on a quiet evening in. You were attempting to knit a small hat, but one of the rows had gotten uneven forcing you to backtrack. Your feet were in Michael’s lap while he watched a Penguins game, hand absentmindedly running along your leg.

“I think the choice I made with Adamson is still affecting me.” He said, not looking at you.

You glanced up at him, “It was a choice you never should have had to make.”

“Who else?” His brown eyes met yours, filled with a sadness that broke your heart. “Who else could have made it?”

Adamson had been a mentor figure to you as well, but not to the extent he had been for Michael. They had met a handful of years after Michael’s residency at Big Charity in New Orleans, and he had taken him under his wing. He had learned a lot from Adamson in the nearly fifteen years they spent together, while you had only known Adamson for a quarter of that, before he passed.

“It shouldn’t have been you.” You stressed again, putting your knitting aside. “But it was. That little girl ended up living, and Adamson would’ve been proud of you. In fact, if he saw the man you are today, I know he would be.”

Tears came, his face scrunched up and you moved forward to hold him. It was not the hysterical, fully body sobs you had seen in the Peds room after trying to save Leah, but it still burrowed its way into your chest. You curled yourself around his body, pulling him as close as your bump would allow and let him cry.

“I remember all their faces, I remember all of them.” He whispered into your neck, your skin wet from his tears.

Your own tears came, and you held him tighter, feeling heartache for how haunted your husband had become.

It was a reality you faced as well, and while you had never properly learned of a way to deal with it, you frequently found you had it mostly under control. But Pittfest? It had torn through your coping mechanisms like they were paper, leaving zero time to compartmentalize, and left you open and vulnerable by the time you began to process it all.

“I know.” You got out. “I’m here.”

Recognition was the only thing you could give him. Empty promises and sweet words had no place here; you could not placate him with a solution, because you had none to give. You only held him and did not let go, knowing that would be enough. All he needed was an anchor to help him weather the storm in his mind.

Michael moved from your grasp sometime later that evening, having held onto you long after he stopped crying. You had kissed along the parts of him you could reach, the length of his shoulder, the shell of his ear.

His eyes were red when he moved to sit up, still holding you close. He pulled you effortlessly into his lap, resting a hand on your bump and finally looking at you.

“Langdon was stealing benzos.” He told you, voice quiet and raw.

You blinked at him. You had known something had happened with Frank — Michael had taken him under his wing not long after he had started his residency in the Pitt. After the tragedy that had happened at Pittfest, Langdon had gone to rehab, putting his residency on hold.

“He was what?” You searched Michael’s eyes. You figured there was a drug problem if he was opting for rehab, but stealing from the ED? That was a whole other can of worms.

“Santos noticed some irregularities.” He said simply. “He avoided it when I confronted him. Found librium in his locker from Louie.”

“Not just stealing…but stealing from patients?” You asked, nausea rolling around in your gut. You had trusted Frank, helped him whenever possible. You had even hung out with his wife a few times.

Michael nodded, a faraway look in his eyes. “I let him leave when I found them…I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I barely had time to think before Pittfest happened and then he was just back. I was still worried about Jake, and everything else, and I let him stay. He was probably fucking high and I let him stay.”

You processed his words slowly. Even in the chaos, you had noticed a palpable shift between Michael and Langdon, a tension that (at the time) you were sure was due to them butting heads over a patient earlier in the shift.

You had trusted him, with your own patients, and it made you sick to think he might have taken advantage of that trust to score drugs.

You swallowed your thoughts, “We needed all hands on deck.”

It was a rationalization and not a very good one.

Michael saw right through it. “I compromised patient care because I was too fucking overwhelmed.”

“So, what? You were going to cause a scene right in the middle of all that shit? Take everyone’s attention away from patient care?” You asked, voice harder, “You were stuck between a rock and a hard place. If any one of the residents or nurses felt he wasn’t making the right decisions, they would’ve told you. Or Abbott. Or me.”

Silence came over you as you held each other’s gaze. He brought a hand to rub across his face, a long breath escaping him. You moved one hand to the back of his head, to fiddle with his hair.

“I told him before I left that he could either go to rehab or I would report my findings to the board.” He said to you after a few minutes.

Going to the board would have effectively ended Langdon’s career. Though, he took that risk when he started stealing from the ED.

“I’m glad he chose rehab.” You admitted quietly.

“Me too.”

It went unspoken that you both had no idea how you would navigate him returning to the Pitt, trust torn to shreds — forcing him to start even below square one. How would he gain back your trust? The care you had shown him? How could you trust him after all of it?

Did you even want to?

You moved your hand to play with Michael’s fingers, eyes on your hands.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about names recently,” you started, only glancing at him while your cheeks heated.

“The world doesn’t need a Michael Jr.”

A quiet laugh rushed through your nose, “Don’t be so self centered.” You looked at him. “I was thinking Adam.”

All the air escaped Michael’s lungs, watching you while water blurred his vision, but he did not cry.

“I like that one a lot.”

Adam Robinavitch.

—

It was easy enough to warm up to the new med students, intern, and year two resident after several shifts together. Though Santos had a habit of rubbing you the wrong way — far too cocky for your liking, frequently taking unnecessary risks without consulting her senior resident or any of the attendings. You felt she was better suited for surgery, lacking the kind of empathy the ED required. But she grew on you. Like a weed.

Javadi reminded you too much of yourself, thrown into the world of medicine at an early age. You were no prodigy, but you started earlier than most had. While she was textbook, you were hands on, and you thought to bring her under your wing — to help her in the areas you knew she needed. She steadily got better at patient interactions under your careful supervision.

You found Whitaker endearing, but he frequently internalized too much of the job. You had learned in passing from Collins that he had taken his first patient death particularly hard — but so had you, and most attendings you knew. He was kind and patient, knew not to linger, and was eager to get his hands dirty, even if he was a little insecure and clumsy at times.

And Mel King? You quickly grew a soft spot for her. She was capable and knowledgeable, and you quickly began to rely on her as you once had with Langdon. You could see her rolling with the punches, but in the quiet moments, you would see her take a moment for herself. It made you think that out of all the newcomers, she would be best suited for the ED. The Pitt needed more attendings who had healthy coping mechanisms rather than the Robinavitch-Abbot Method of Bury Your Feelings Until You Die.

In the latter months of your pregnancy, you leaned more heavily on the residents as Michael became more and more overbearing. With the uptick in violence against staff and no budget to get more security, you could understand the restlessness he had.

Michael would come running even if a patient or family member so much as raised their voice at you, or in your general vicinity. You appreciated your husband being near, but his careful gaze made you feel like you were being watched. You nearly made the decision to switch to nights, but you knew Abbott would not have been much different.

He just would have been more subtle.

You knew he would have been hurt by your decision, especially if you did not run it by him first, so you opted to do the only rational thing: talk to him.

Easier said than done.

You opted to not bring it up during your shift, knowing you did not want your personal life to bleed onto the job any more than it already had.

In the quiet of the car, more of a necessity now with how far along you were (though you missed your walks together), you broached the topic carefully. Michael didn’t need kid gloves, but you knew his concern was coming from a good place, and you did not want him to think you didn’t appreciate it.

“My love,” You started, turning down the R&B station, rubbing anxious circles on your belly.

He hummed simply to let you know you had his attention, moving one hand from the steering wheel to grab ahold of yours.

Hey, you’ve been increasingly overbearing and making me doubt myself as a doctor? No.

Hey, I’ve noticed you hover a lot more recently and it makes me antsy? Better, but no.

You really need to cool it? Definitely not.

“I’ve really appreciated all the concern you’ve shown whenever I have a difficult patient, and I’m grateful you have my back, trust me, but it’s edging on just too much, I think.”

“You’re my wife, I’m always going to worry about you.”

“I’ve been your wife for almost four years, Mike. You were never like this before I was pregnant. I’m not asking for you to not worry about me at all, but I would appreciate it if you relaxed, just a little. It makes me feel like you’re doubting me as a doctor rather than protecting me as your wife.”

He frowned as he digested it.

Did he use to step in before when someone got particularly aggressive? Yes. Was he always there when you needed? Of course. But it had increased tenfold since you first found out you were pregnant.

“I feel like there’s got to be some middle ground here.” You said after he stayed silent.

He pulled the car into the driveway, turning the car off before resting back in his seat. You stared ahead to the bricks of your townhouse.

“After Dana got hit, I realized how easily it could’ve been you had you been working. You would have been dealing with him in triage. I never would have forgiven myself.” He paused to swallow thickly. “And Pittfest…with Jake — it just takes a fucking moment for someone you love to be ripped away from you. With what we do every day, I never wanted you to be at any risk. I figured if I could put myself in the middle…if I could shield you, you would be safe. I never want anything to jeopardize your life or our son’s life. I don’t—I couldn’t—”

You grabbed his hand, processing just how badly that shift had affected him. You knew it would have a lasting impact, but now you understood just how great. Of course he would become more protective after that shift, how had you not put it together sooner?

“I didn’t really think about it like that.” You told him quietly. This was his way of dealing with that shift.

He intertwined your fingers, brushing a thumb over the wedding band you wore to work (your pretty engagement ring sat safe from the grime of your job in a jewelry box, which you wore whenever you were not working). You squeezed his hand, pulling his attention back to your face.

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m being overbearing or doubting you. I just can’t lose you.” He told you.

“And you won’t, my love. I’m here.” You brought his hand up to kiss the back of it. “We’re gonna get through this.”

He released a long breath, “Just promise you’ll come to me if you need me.”

It went unsaid that this was his way of promising you the same.

“Promise. Don’t get me wrong, the protective husband thing is really hot. Just perhaps a bit more of a subtle approach would be better.”

He met your eyes with a tiny quirk in his brow, “I can work with that.”

“Through thick and thin, yeah?”

A soft smile formed, “Through thick and thin, sweetheart.”

[ Next ]

want to join any of my tag lists? feel free to shoot me a message!

All Dr. Robby Content: @cherriready @kittenhawkk @seeyalaterinnovator @my-soulmate-is-mycroft @bxxbxy

Dr. Adamson’s first name is Montgomery (according to a screen grab of the plaque), and well, I couldn’t work with that, so that’s how I settled on Adam lol

Will I be writing something about last night’s episode? Yes, yes I will. (two, possibly three, parts planned already oof who gave me free-will??)

[ms-demeanor]

Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

[x-blue-spring-x]

Reincarnated Sukuna who vowed to take a different path this time, but ended up falling into the bad boy vibe trap because it lures him like a moth to the flame. Suits him too.

Reincarnated Sukuna with his vibrant pink hair, symmetrical nose rings and vivid black tattoos, so utterly unafraid of standing out, but still hoping to find a place for himself all the same.

Reincarnated Sukuna who loves music above all else, plays it obnoxiously loudly through his headphones at every opportunity, plasters the walls of his apartment with his favourite album covers, ripped jeans and band tees that fit him like a glove.

Reincarnated Sukuna who isn’t necessarily the kind of man you want to introduce to your parents, coarse and dry humoured, acerbic wit accompanying his punk exterior. It would be enough to make your mother faint.

Reincarnated Sukuna who spends hours wandering around at night absorbing the city, watching the sun sink low between tower blocks while he craves the wide open spaces of the countryside.

Reincarnated Sukuna who feeds the birds on his fire escape every morning, finding pleasure in their sweet songs before the sound of traffic humming on the streets below him starts up. Who scowls at anyone who disturbs him.

Reincarnated Sukuna who makes friends with a stray tom cat, one with chunks missing from its ears and half a tail. Occasionally they can be seen moving through the streets together, Sukuna has even been known to offer the cat an earphone to listen to Slayer.

Reincarnated Sukuna who finds his feline friend injured one day, limping on a paw that looks painful, meowing loudly.

Reincarnated Sukuna who ends up in the vet office you work at, shooting you a devilish grin across the counter as he asks who your favourite band is.

Reincarnated Sukuna who, despite his tough exterior, thanks you for fixing up his kitty with a reasonably sweet smile.

Reincarnated Sukuna who rocks up at your door hours after closing time, insisting that he educates you on the very best of metal, black roses in one hand and the cat purring under one arm.

You don’t question the guy with red eyes about how he found your address.

[ablobwhowrites]

Hi I saw your scenario on robbers and I have my own idea

Imagine reader having one of those standing showers and Yarnaby probably not understanding he can't fit joins anyway cause reader to being stuck between Yarnaby and the shower wall and Doey and Mommy longlegs need to force Yarnaby out so reader can continue their shower

(kissy missy likes to draw with crafty corn and you can't change my mind.)

Yarnaby does this with every hallway and door way. Like he is a unmovable force and if you lock a door, he will scratch up the door until hes realizes, he can break down the door so he just ends up body slamming the door down. Basically y/n has the most movable force and the most unmovable force and it's a struggle. Cause imagine if y/n was a popular streamer and just seeing this fucking unit of yarnaby like walts behind y/n like nothing until he's out of sight and if their chat every asks about what the hell just walked behind y/n, bro will just be like "what?" And look behind them as if they didn't see yarnaby walk behind them from their screen.

Totally imagine when y/n tries to be in the bathroom in peace like trying to shit in peace then suddenly they hear yarnaby scratch at the door and y/n has to ask someone who get yarnaby away because this will be the 3rd door ruined this week alone. Plus after the robber situation yarnaby has been a bit more aggressive to new voices and to new people and I love the thought of boogie bot and bunzo watching a horror movie and ended up getting freaked out so bad and they sleep in y/n's room for the next week because they where so scared that Freddy Krueger would come after them cause they watched the movie. And they are ban from being having the remote unsupervised for 3 weeks.

Also imagining that dogday just playing five nights at Freddy's as the other smiling critters watch and y/n was walking past their work room and saw dogday playing FNAF and y/n was like "what night are you guys on?" And dog day trying to lock in so KickinChicken just saying that dogday is on night 6 and y/n is just about to walk off "watch out for golden Freddy" and y/n walks off and hears the golden Freddy jumpscare scream and dog day scream with it. (He almost got to 6am and got this idea from that one fanart) dog day can't play fortnite cause he stood in shock when he got his first kill in the game and he doesn't like Fortnite.

Also if the nightmare critters ever come to y/n. They let them in but the other toys be side eyeing them cause doey knows that baba chops bit the shit out of y/n once and ripped off a chunk of y/n's arm and other nightmare critters in the factory basically bit, scratched and was kinda main reason y/n was was bloody and beaten (the other toys did to bite and hurty/n forgave them but the toys still feel horrible for it) the nightmare critters promise to try and be helpful and they do but the other toys are still suspicious and keeps a close eye on the nightmare critters.

[sweetsuburbanlegends]

The Band Played On

Pairing: Joel Miller x Reader

Word Count: 8.5k

Summary: You'd never met someone who loved the way Joel Miller did.

Warnings: talk of death of a spouse and child, age gap (less than ten years), brief suicidal thoughts, mentions of depression, yEaRnInG, author is very sensitive pls be nice, i was listening to the song of the same name by Guy Lombardo,

A/N: She's back baby! This one has been in the works for over a year (eep), and is basically just a love letter to @mirrormauve and I'm so glad she's back now and I've finally finished it. Becs, I love you with all my heart <3.

I don't own photos, dividers, or characters.

You’d never met someone who loved the way Joel Miller did. 

His severe, violent dedication to it, bits of soul laid down on the ground as offerings to the gods. Cracking open his chest, tearing off each rib and handing it over, not to say here is my heart but to say, here is the thing that protects my heart, it reminds me of you.

You thought this love was only talked about, only dreamt up. 

But then you’d been on a walk, in the early spring with the Earth vibrating with promise and you’d seen Joel, the worn, well-loved brown of his leather jacket, greying, long strands of his hair brushing against its collar, and you’d seen Joel, beside a tree, wrapping rope around its broken limp, saying soft things under his breath. You’ll be alright, yeah. That’s okay, I’ll be back soon, his voice heavy and measured with his drawl, warm. His fingers drifting over new buds, still tightly curled like a clenched fist, and cooing out his pride like a lullaby. 

Joel loved fiercely, savage and primal. There was nothing beautiful about the way he did it, but it was simple, it was honest and true and gentle. It was his work-roughened hands catching against fabric, his prickly stubble against his niece’s soft skin, the smell of whiskey on his breath and leather on his skin. 

His love wasn’t that of the ocean to the shore, the sun to the moon, the moon to the ocean. A tiring push and pull, illusive and fickle. 

He loved the way the soil loved the roots, giving over chunks of himself for nourishment and food. 

He loved the way the roots loved the soil, wooden fingers clutching tight against dirt and turning it dewy and tender with love. Constant, reliable, never changing. A tried and true dance that would continue to the end of time. 

He drew you to him unknowingly. Unravelled your affection for him like a ball of yarn, stringing it around everywhere he went, lighting up street corners and houses the way lamplighters used to do each evening in a world before you, Joel, and the slow thing he was knitting inside of you, row after patient row. 

Your eyes followed him like a magnet to the North, unknowingly, intrinsically, like breathing, drinking water. You found grooves and corners in Joel Miller that you revelled in, that you painted up inside your mind and took home with you to hang on your empty walls. 

The way he holds his spoon, wipes his mouth. The gnarled knots of his fingers’ joints. The rose-like curling of the skin around his eyes and mouth when he laughs, the way he touches and does so deliberately with intent and purpose. 

You walk by his house in the evenings, catching the glint of his eyes from the yellow porch light as he strums his guitar, the one he pieced together the way he did that tree. Ellie running home at all hours of the day, the trust held between them branching out towards Jackson like coconut, the aroma subtle, blink and you’ll miss it. But it hangs in the air like humidity, like frost on window panes or the fog of your breath against glass during the harsh Wyoming winters. 

You crave more, you’re starving for it. You want Joel’s love, and you want it because you’re selfish, because you don’t like the empty half of your bed, and you think he’d look nice in it, his golden skin and grey hair against floral sheets. You long more than anything to be part of the souls he holds up to the light and plops into his pocket like a marble collection. 

Whenever you are where Joel is, you look at him, fleeting glances in his direction like a heartbeat, over and over, rhythmic and regular. You’re eager to see more of him, to see him when he doesn’t know you’re watching so you can trace the curve of his neck with your eyes and pretend it’s your hands instead, to feel the soft hairs that grow there like peach fuzz. 

Joel loves in spades, in heaping bucketfuls of it. It strains throughout Jackson like a liquid heavier than water, curling around each corner in a warm embrace. You can’t go anywhere without being faced by it, the door hinge he’d fixed, the chairs he’d stacked, the floors he’d swept. The love he’s spread around soaking into your shoes and through your socks, drifting up towards your ankles and making your bones ache. 

It’s hard to deal with it. Its constant, uncompromising presence. The true reality of the man that he was, is. 

It’s even harder to deal with your craving for it, the way your skin sings for it, the way your lungs chase each trace of it they find in the air. 

Maria finds you one day in the gardens, asks, gently hesitant, for you to come over for dinner. You wonder if it was out of concern or pity for the life you lead alone, the simple, yet tried and true routine you occupy your days with. 

Worse than that, you begin to fear that she’s picked up on the fascination you’ve grown for her brother-in-law and the way his worn belt sits on his hips. 

And so to not aggravate it anymore, you agree to spend an evening close to Joel. 

Not alone with him, Tommy and Maria are at the table as well, Ellie coming and going, breaking conversation into brittle pieces of Sohan, but still you’re close and he gives you a brief taste of what sharing love with him could look like. 

His voice is rumbly and deep, river-like as it streams and trips over smooth rocks. The whiskey has loosened him up a bit, the straight, hard edges of his body softening over with comfort, the weight of survival lifted off of him. 

He’s pretty. You want him to reach inside of you and grab your heart, start pumping it for you and press his mouth against yours so you can share air together. 

It’s hard to focus around him, your eyes not wanting to work in tandem whenever they look in his direction, as if protecting you from what might happen if you manage to see him clearly, his peppering of a beard and moustache, the engravings of smile lines on his face. 

To abate the beating inside your chest, you get up for some water, go to refill Maria’s glass while you’re at it. Out of fear of the emotions he’s drawing out of you and your chest. 

You want to calm down, be normal about him and this growing obsession inside of you for an older man. Yet your body and mind refuse to do so vehemently, almost to seek vengeance on you for wanting to quell it, pour water over the burning fire.

As you stand at the counter, waiting for the water to boil and tracing the top button of your jeans round and round with the pad of your finger, you hear Joel and his lopsided walk follow you, his left foot dragging more than his right. 

“Hey.” 

The word falls at the end of itself, stretches against the ground. You follow the trails it leaves in the air, like citrus oil that sparks out of a freshly-peeled orange, bursting out like dust motes in a vibrant sunbeam. 

“Hi,” you turn around, smile at him as best as you can through the tangling of your lungs and stomach. 

Joel looks over his shoulder, back at Tommy and Maria, at Ellie, nudged into her uncle’s side, then he turns to you, “Nice evening.” 

You agree with him, though to yourself you think it’s only because of him, because of the cloud that hangs humid about him, makes the edges of his body go soft and blurry, grainy like all photos are, incapable of catching the true essence of what made them photo-worthy. 

He comes and leans against the counter beside you, hands folded on top of each other. A lock of his hair falls into his forehead and you think if he’d let it, you’d brush it away and go straight to the graveyard so you could die happy, dragging your stone along with you like a blanket. 

It takes everything inside of you to not inch closer to him. 

Despite the community and support that surrounds you everyday, you’re still lonely, still aching for something else. Something to come home to. To be something for someone to come home to. 

You have faint visions of Joel in the doorway of your house, revel in the way he’d drape his jacket over the couch. You want to see him basked in the glow of an early morning, to see his sleep-rumpled shirt and press your face into it and take in greedy lungfuls of his smell.

Ellie’s laugh rings out around the room. You think of the future she was going to have and the one she will have now, and you’re glad that she’s in Jackson away from the dark holes that are the QZs. 

You gaze up at Joel, at the cords rising in his neck like bread dough. Some depraved sprout shoots up inside you and longs to trace your nose against them and their engravings on his skin. You force yourself to look away, down at the glass of water in your hand. 

You ache to move your feet forward and away from him, for the betterment of the both of you and the cage you keep around your chest, the key of which you want to press into Joel’s hands. 

“You should come by more often.” 

He talks to you the same way he talked to the sapling. You wonder if he would rope you up the same way if you broke your arm too, in the same way. It sows dreams inside of you and you rub them away a couple seconds later, thinking of Maria’s sudden invitation asking you over tonight. 

“Thanks,” you murmur it. You’re not going to give him a rebuttal about being a bother so you won’t fall into the push and pull dance with him. 

To your surprise, he straightens up, ducks his head until you look up at him. “M’serious, honey. Really,” you see his hand reach forward before it falls back to place. It flinches and fidgets before it returns to normal. Here all the hair on his skin is grey. “We’ll do this more.” The condition has dropped from his voice. 

Despite your suspicions and reluctance, a bruised, battered thing weeps out inside of you, stops you from turning down his offer again, after he’s pressed it with you. It sits smooth and heavy in the palm of your hand, you run your thumb over it, pretend to mull it over. 

“Well, how about it? Me ‘n Ellie do board games a night each week, you should come,” There’s a swing to his voice, a soft gravel in it. If you could bask in it you’d never leave. 

He chuckles at your lack of response, “Now don’t you be tellin’ me you don’t like to play at cards.”

Finally, you collect yourself enough to shake your head, laugh a little though it’s hard when your lungs are turning themselves inside out at the thought that Joel Miller has invited you to spend more time with him, that he’s deemed you worthy of it. 

Tonight, you play Dutch Blitz. They’re not real Dutch Blitz cards, but with the mixing of yours and his decks, the picture cards tossed aside, there’s enough to play with.

Joel brings you hot water with some whiskey slipped in, his hand resting deliberately on top of yours when he gives it to you. He sits opposite you, Ellie at the head, his owl mug beside him, close enough that you long to trace with your fingers, follow the curves and valleys of it, and wonder if you can get it to talk to you the same way Joel talks to trees, close enough that you can see the splattering of spots ceramics often have. 

When he takes a drink, you have to look away from him and the wave-like motion of his throat for fear of doing something stupid and falling in love. 

He’s terrible at the game. 

After the first couple of rounds, he’d said it was because he didn’t have his glasses and went into the living room to rummage around for them. You could hear his voice sometimes, filtering in back to his kitchen. Not there, some rustling, a drawer being closed, no, I’m sure I ain’t left’em here. His voice is grumbly with aggravation and it makes you and Ellie giggle. 

It had been a long time since you’d laughed like that. Light and childish. The boulder of your personhood lifted off. 

When he does find them, he places them on the edge of his nose, but they don’t help him at all. With the sudden addition of a third player, the flick and slam of cards on the table, quickly adding up to a cap, it’s hard for him to focus. Ellie says that though he never does win, he doesn’t lose so abysmally either when she plays him one-on-one.

He murmurs to himself when he’s playing, like the gentle hum of a honeybee and it distracts you as well, giving Ellie yet another set of wins under her belt. 

“Face it, Joel,” she’s grinning now, shuffling up her hand of cards. “You’re fucking horrible at this.” 

He huffs, “You’re not giving me a fair fightin’ chance, that’s what.” The slope of his neck is just the right angle. He gathers his cards up, does an expert riffle shuffle. “And what’s more I ain’t playin’ no more. Go grab somethin’ else.” 

You’re surprised at how easily Ellie gives into him now, teasing only slightly before she goes away, back to the closet where Joel stores the board games he’s managed to piece together over the years. Monopoly, The Game of Life, Scrabble. There are Jenga blocks as well, ones he’s made himself, and that he’s sanded away at patiently, night after night on his porch. 

It’s your favourite game to play with him, Jenga. It’s tense, but quiet and calm. It gives you time to study his face intently, shade in the scar on his nose and the subtle way he favours the right edge of his mouth to his left when he’s talking. You like it even more because it means you can touch things his hands have touched, the ones he’s worked at patiently, each one a labour of love. 

Even kids come over to his house now, particularly during the summer, and play in his backyard with his Jenga blocks, Joel’s place an extension of the worlds they play in, the juniper trees at the edge perfect for games of hide-and-seek and tag. 

“She’s right,” he sighs, takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “I am horrible at this.” 

With his glasses in his hand he gestures to the cards. The action pulls at your liver, you may as well have drunk a whole bottle of whiskey. 

“Nonsense,” there’s a strange tendril of confidence wrapping around your throat, drawing out words before you knew what they were. “It’s a hard game. Fast-paced.” 

He laughs to himself, softly. It sounds like molasses, deep and rich and velvety. “That’s just a fancy way of calling me old, darlin’.” 

“I don’t mind,” the words surprise you, the emotion and conviction behind them and you drop them as soon as you can. 

“You don’t mind what?” 

Looking down at your hands, “That you’re old.” You don’t like how you’re bringing attention to it and meekly, you string behind it, “If it matters any.” 

Silence hangs around you, presses hard against your chest and breaks a rib. 

“Thanks, sweetheart. It matters much…more’n you could know.”

A being lies behind his words, unknown and ominous. You don’t want to touch it, break the beehive and let the honey pour onto the grass, the bees angry and furious ready to sting. 

You offer instead to wash the dishes to be able to touch his special mug, finally trace the curve of the owl’s body, embroidered into baked clay. You wonder where Joel found this mug. If it came with the house, how it morphed into his favourite one, if it was a certain thing, from first sight, or if it was a slow and steady climb. 

Ellie comes back a few moments later, the Jenga blocks in her hands. You feel his eyes against your back and you hold your hands under the hot water until they’re irritated and sensitive. 

Joel shows up at your door unannounced. In his hands is a bowl of strawberries, his fingers stained red from picking up, that soft gentle smile on his face. 

“Howdy,” He invites himself in, says the words for you and hands over the bowl. “For you.” 

You think about jam and honey, imagine the feel of granulated sugar clicking under your teeth. 

It’s the late afternoon, a lazy sun stretching into your open window, highlighting dust motes in the air in a stream of light. You place the strawberries on the table, Joel takes one and pops it in his mouth, the hinge of his jaw moving up and down as he chews. 

Laughing, he tells you quietly, “They’re supposed to be for you, I had a stomachful pickin’em.” 

Something twists and knots inside of you at the thought of Joel in the gardens, bending down beside the strawberry plants, choosing fruit for you and bringing it to your door. You wonder if he talked to them the way he seems to do anything, whether or not it can respond to him. 

“They’re good,” he pushes them towards you. “Have some.” 

The berries are a ruby red, vibrant with survival. They press against you as you roll their tiny bodies between your fingers, your nail catching on the seeds pressed into the skins. Biting down into one, you find it intimate to know that you and Joel are tasting the same flavour, tart and sweet, that he has a belly filled with this, that he’d filled his belly behind the soft of his waistline because he was picking you a gift. 

It’s hard to tear your eyes from him, from where he’s looking at you. The sun kisses his shoulder, curls up and around his ear. The strange need you have for him grows and reaches its peak, overwhelming you. You wonder what the soft behind his ear will feel like if you took his with your teeth and soothed the bite over with your tongue, what his hair will smell like. 

You want to ask him, demand him, to kiss you. To press you against the strawberries and not let you go until you’re covered in red juice. 

“Thank you for these,” you say instead, get up to put on some hot water.

“‘Course, honey.” 

You think that Joel may consider you a friend. His friend. 

You like the possession that lies inside the words. The heady things they imply, how they hold your heart in a clenched fist and promise to never let go. 

The other night, he’d invited you over for dinner. Just you. Had been clear about it as well. Ellie’s at Dina’s, Tommy and Maria have date night together. Like he could read your mind and knew the riptides you were apt to fall into if you weren’t careful. 

He’d talked to you, low and soft like he always does. Whiskey had been poured into your coffee and the sunset had lit up the sky in much the same manner as his voice, muted and tender, the air tinted golden like saffron. 

You think that that was the night you realised you couldn’t run from it anymore, had fallen, arms extended but helpless in catching you, towards him and how the sole of his left shoe is smoother than his right. 

The strawberries spark conversation in him about the upcoming harvest, and he analyses the weather with severity, concerned about the apples and squashes if it were to stay the way it was. You pour two cups of hot water, wishing you could give him something he likes more than that, whiskey or wine, and think of what you could trade to get a bottle for your kitchen. 

“...don’t know how we’ll make it through the winter at this rate.” 

Steam curls up from your cup, the heat of the summer day already fading with the sunlight. 

“We’ll make it, one way or the other,” you say. His worries are endearing, parts and pieces of him that you think he’ll never learn to let go of, not even if there was fresh fruit on the table, hot water in the pipes. 

Joel from before. 

He fascinates you, in every form you think of him. 

With your words, you see something in his eyes, something young and untamed. You think he’s going to press it with you, show you why the amount of rain and sun the settlement’s been getting will be its exact downfall. But it dies down, calms back into the soft burnt toffee you know them to be, and the ever-present smiling not-smile returns to his face. 

Finally, he nods his head towards the strawberries and winks at you. You start eating them again, trying to paint up images of him in the gardens, of the strawberries looking even smaller beside his hands. His voice, mellowed and soft, Yeah, yeah, you’re good, that’s alright now, okay? 

Joel’s hand brushes against yours as you reach in for another one, lighting a match against your skin, flames bursting up and down your body. He doesn’t seem to give it much mind, his unshakable calm draped against him like always. 

With a chuckle, he looks down at the one in his hand, “My mama used to make these inta jams.” He eats it, eyes fluttering shut at the taste. Your body pulls at itself and you take one for yourself as well, flavour oozing out into your mouth, tasting like love because you’re sharing it with him. 

“Loved’em with a fresh biscuit,” pausing, he breaks out of his memories to look at you. “You ever had jam ‘n biscuits?” 

“Sure, sometimes.” 

He tilts his head, “Homemade ones?” You shake your head and he waves you off in response, “Oh, then you hadn’t had jam ‘n biscuits. Lemme tell ya, my mama made’em mean. Nothin’ like a hot jar of strawberry jam.” 

Eyes going a little misty he keeps on, “Now, Tommy?” he laughs soft and low, mainly to himself, shakes his head some more. “Tommy he’d scarf’em down the moment they were outta the oven, boy’s got no patience. Couldn’t even wait to take out the jam and then he’d-” the words had been pouring out of his mouth like honey, soothing to your ears but he cuts them off abruptly, “-Ah, would you look at that. I’m borin’ yer head off.” 

It sounds like he is getting ready to leave, his eyes flicking around, on the table, back to you, to the strawberries. You rush forward without thinking about it to get him to stay, “No, no. I-I like talking with you…s’nice.” You finish with a helpless little shrug. 

You don’t know where this sudden confidence has come from and you’re scared you’ve gripped too tight on the bar of soap and Joel will slip out of your grasp and into the sink, that you have to scramble to take it back. To your surprise, you haven’t. 

The discomfort starts to fade away from Joel’s face and you fear what’s going to be put in its place and how similar it might be to what you hold in the farthest corner of your heart, closely guarded away from him. He melts down back into his seat, eats a strawberry. 

If you look closely, the greyer hairs in his moustache are stained red. 

“Well, there ya have it,” he chuckles, deep and warm. “The story of my mama’s biscuits.” 

“Lovely.” 

It stands in front of you, a bunny rabbit of a story, her nose twitching, ears flicking back and forth and incredibly small. You remember the first baby rabbit you ever saw, when you were sixteen over thirty years ago. You hadn’t thought something could be so tiny and also be able to move. It had scampered away the moment it caught sight of you, the bushes bristling into silence in its wake, but behind it one of your lungs and one of your kidneys followed dutifully, leaving you alive but just barely. 

Right now, you cup Joel’s story in your palm, tuck it away in some safe pocket and delight each time you brush against it, a knotted ball of heat and innocence. 

Gaze still fixed on the button-like eyes in front of you, you get surprised when he moves to sit in the chair at your side. His shoulders are broad and mighty still, and you have to look just slightly up to be able to see him fully. 

You see him struggle with his words. Maybe he always does, and you’ve never been this close enough to see it, thoughts breaking on the shore of his mouth, the twitch around his nose, the ever changing colour of his eyes not even quivering still for a moment. 

“You’re-” he clears his throat, it rumbles gently like an earthquake from your feet to your head, shaking your heart in the middle, reminding you of the ache inside it. “You’ve been lonely here…in Jackson.” 

There’s not much to say, and you shrug, “I’m alive.” 

“Not what I said.” 

It stings through you, sharp with truth and a keen observation. You’d thought you’d manage to hide it well, that people had bigger problems than to worry about you, and the emotions running in you that you’ve forgotten what they are and how they’re supposed to feel like. You don’t know what to say, looking down at your hands, starting digging into your cuticles for something to do with them. 

He hums softly, and on instinct you turn your gaze to him, watching his front profile bent forward. “These years…they’ve been hard,” he almost hears your thoughts. “On us all.” 

You think of your husband. The one who’d married you young, though you’d felt like you were anything but at the time, and cradled your heart gently and coaxed you out of moods as if it was the only thing he was made for and wanted to do. He doesn’t come to your mind often anymore, having lost him several years before the world blew up. Together, you’d lived a quiet life. Defined by soothing, soft sunlight and lazy afternoons. 

Truly, you’ve felt lonely your whole life. It didn’t really start twenty years ago, or two years ago when you arrived in Jackson. Had been a quiet and almost ignored child. There’s not much you remember from your childhood, but the knoll of a memory rings true every time. Standing in line for a whole afternoon, a worksheet grasped in your sweaty palms, feeling that soon, soon, you’d be rewarded for listening, for being quiet. 

How interminable that afternoon had seemed to you, long and drawn out, testing your patience at each turn, and how you’d risen up to each defiantly, child-like sense of justice still strong and unfailable. 

You learnt your lesson too late, when your soul and essence had already hardened into unchangeable patterns. So, you got used to getting hurt, tears springing at your eyes and burning through your lungs. 

“Believe it or not, I wasn’t always like this.” The corners of Joel’s eyes crinkle, fold up into themselves like fabric. He chuckles softly and you feel your face press into a smile. “I was real angry…and mean. People wouldn’t come within a square mile of me if they could help it.” 

His eyes glisten when he hears you laugh, and he holds up his hands, “I ain’t lyin’, I swear. Ask anyone you want, I was the town grump, yellin’ at kids to get off my lawn.” The words make you laugh even more, hiding it behind your hand and maybe the energy sparks in the air, because Joel starts to laugh too. A deep, gentle, belly laugh that seems to have come from another world. Of soft grey hair and tender eyes. It’s hard to imagine Joel as mean, a grump. 

The perpetuity of time weighs down on you heavily. How separated you feel from yourself at sixteen, twenty, thirty. The decades rolling past you like boulders. It scares you that you and Joel remember a world, a life, that doesn’t exist anymore and soon the two of you will be gone, the memories falling off into the air like they’ve done for generation upon generation. 

You wonder how so little time, in the grand scheme of things, can feel so long and tiresome. How you’re not even fifty yet and still, the thought of having to fall asleep and wake up the next day to do it all again exhausts you to the point of tears. The thought of having to do this for one more day even seems impossible, leave alone for years. 

When you were younger, and you’d first started feeling like this, you’d thought it would pass when you got married, when you got older. When the world fell apart you’d thought you would snap out of it, yet it never happened. The only time you’d felt happy waking up was from nightmares, panting and struggling to orient yourself. 

It had been better since you arrived at Jackson, found some semblance of routine and stability that you’d craved since you were a child. 

Joel sighs, drawing you out of your thoughts, and focusing you in again to see him rub at his beard, the movement tugging at the insides of you. “Don’t know why I’m telling you this really,” he lets out a quiet breath, and it washes over you, ocean-like. “I-I…” He swallows thickly, and you’re alarmed to see him gather himself as if to move to go. “Been botherin’ you really-” 

You cut him off by saying his name. It tolls inside you, flashes of hospitals and the dark green carpet of the funeral home coming to the forefront of your mind. 

You think about your husband's eyes, the soft slope of them, so similar and yet so different to Joel’s. You wonder if Joel would have liked him, if in another world the two of them would drink beer together and play poker, while you complained about them to friends you’ve never truly, properly had. 

The image is domestic, tugs at you and you know soon you’re going to cry if you’re not careful. You start talking, how the two of you had met, the sudden and then slow fall. 

The ache in you grows and grows, till it’s fit to burst. Talking about him to Joel feels like emptying out an abscess, makes you feel both guilty and relieved. 

He talks in turn. Of a daughter. The pulsing, too-hot blood covering his forearms and screaming until he’d lost his voice and spat red for a week later. Hot, bright flashes of anger that never truly went away. 

You wonder if that’s what had drawn you to Joel in the first place, that gaping, weeping hole inside of him that reflected so tenderly back into your stomach. He laughs a couple of times, telling you about Ellie. Then he cries and despite everything, you envy him for how he does it so rightfully, well-timed. 

You can’t remember a time you’d talked so much. The sun sets over his back, beside his ear. 

There’s a fatigue in your bone marrow, a deep, strong ache that ripples through your back and muscles. Joel looks a different person to you know, the ghost of a girl standing behind him, her hand placed on his forearm, gentle features in her face ringing true to her father’s and that of a woman you don’t know. You’re seized with the urge to turn back time, to see if you would have found Joel in the old world just like you have this one. If you would have liked his daughter, found companionship in her the way you do with all women. 

Joel smiles at you, eyes glistening, murmuring something about the time. The day comes back to you at once, and you feel you’ve taken a breath after hours of holding it in. You wonder at the way Joel’s drawn all this out of you, patient and with no rush at all. How he’d deemed you worthy of time and attention. 

You walk with him to your front door, feeling as if it was years since he’d shown up at it, bowl in hand. 

“Hey, honey?” The back of Joel’s shirt is wrinkled from the way he was sitting at your table. He turns back to you, the sun fully set now. 

You have a strange need to offer to walk him home. Then you hope he’d offer to walk you home and you’d do the same and then you could spend the rest of your life walking with him home. 

“Yeah?” 

The pull he has terrifies you. There’s a subconscious ache in your muscles to be closer to him, to right what seems to have been wronged. 

He does it for you, takes a step away from the door and barely a few breaths of space between you. From here, you can see the sunspots in his beard, flecked onto tanned and weathered skin and you think about a time when Joel was so young he didn’t have a beard. 

“There’s a-uh…ah, ” he goes gravelly and clears his throat, running a hand up and down his beard comfortingly. Something inside him renews and the insecurity falls away, it’s fascinating and addicting to watch. You’re sure there isn’t a more interesting person on the Earth. “You wanna come with me? To the dance next week?” 

You swallow and it does nothing to help the feeling inside you that you’re being torn into two. “Oh, Joel I…” you fumble for an excuse out of all the well-used and well-rehearsed ones you have. “I-uh…I’m not much of a dancer.” 

“Hell,” he laughs, and his eyes go to the size of slivered almonds. “Neither am I. But they play some fancy records. I go for the music.” 

“What kind?” 

You’re not going to go, you’re certain of this, already feeling like you’ve imposed far too much on him, but this is another part of Joel, the music he listens to each week at the community dance. There’s no harm in taking it for yourself. 

“Real old stuff,” his eyes twinkle. “You think me old? Wait ‘til ya hear it, it’s stuff my grandparents listened to growin’ up.” A beat, something drops in his tone, “M’serious.” He sounds nervous even, “I want you to go with me.” 

You don’t know how to tell Joel this is the first time someone’s asked you out in a long, long, while. If ever. Your husband was the only man who ever loved you and he’d always been there. Had proposed to you in the low light of his kitchen, matter-of-fact sort of, I suppose we should get married. 

You don’t know how much of your story Joel’s gratuitously, much to the contradiction of your character, filled in. You want to have led the life he’s envisioned for you, so kindly and tenderly, eating strawberries at your kitchen table, rather than the cold, lonely one you’ve led instead. 

Through the sudden twisting and turning inside you, a cold pang stops it at your foolishness to assume that this is what you’d thought it was. That you’d taken the opaque words and read through them, leading yourself astray and susceptible to getting hurt. 

“Darlin’? Makes me real nervous when you take so long to answer questions like this,” he coos softly, you think again of the way he talks to everything, as if he can see through it to the marrow and essence, trace it with his finger. You see his hand twitch and this time he does touch you, holding onto your forearm, a soft fire burning on your skin. “What’s wrong, hm?” 

“I don’t know how to dance, Joel,” you say finally. You feel and see yourself leaning close to his touch, the warmth of his body spilling into your own, but you’re helpless to stop it. You want to feel his chest on your bare back, the prickle of his beard against your skin, roughened palms against your stomach. So much roughness pressing on you with love. 

He lets out a tender breath, as if to say, that’s all? “Well, I’ll teach ya if ya want. And if not, we’ll have a drink and listen to some Guy Lombardo, alright?” 

You know you should protest again, keep pushing it with him until he drops the act, keeps this where it ought to remain. But your yearning for him is overwhelming and tiring to fight against, “Alright.” 

“Alright?” His thumb brushes back and forth against your skin. You look up at him and you fear that now there’s no hiding from him anymore, behind quiet and excuses. You feel his eyes hit the back of your lungs. “Alright, honey,” he smiles at you, his skin folding up like intricate origami, stealing your breath away at seeing it up so close. 

“I’ll see you soon, then,” he murmurs. Then he’s leaning down towards you to kiss your cheek. A rough brush of slightly chapped lips before he’s straightened up and the door clicking shut behind him, a trail of blood following him from where your chest is, gaping empty, your heart trudging along unknowingly behind him and his broad shoulders like slug. 

For two years you fought against it, pushing it aside as it continued to grow like an untamed weed, growing a strong, unbreakable net of roots only for you to lose all of it in close to five minutes, to show you how fragile and fallible you were when it came to Joel Miller. 

The community centre in Jackson is one of the only buildings left nearly intact. The floors were still original wood, and creaked and groaned with each step. With the fall of summer, the harvest close to over, the nights were coming earlier, quicker, and colder. As you walk towards the building, the lights glow from the windows flickering some strange sense of nostalgia in you, twinging at a corner you’d thought was long gone inside your heart. 

Joel is standing at the entryway, hair brushed back in a way that, in the fickle light, almost makes him unrecognizable. You’ve never seen him like this, not just his hair, but his appearance. Your heart stutters when it sees itself reflected, nervous and trembling in Joel’s face. The thought of him making himself all pretty-like for you in the glow of his bathroom makes you feel faint, makes you feel young in a way you don’t ever remember feeling. That maybe, the thought of you has him nervous and stumbling and anxious, how you so often feel around him. 

“Hey, honey.” 

You stammer a little smile, say you hope you hadn’t kept him too long. A record scratch comes from inside and the soft drone of trumpets and crooning filters out to the two of you like fairy dust.

Putting his hand on the small of your back, Joel leads you inside. 

True to his word, he doesn’t do any dancing. You’re not sure if you can handle such close proximity to him, feeling the gentle wash of his breath, to breathe him in so deeply the push outwards strains your lungs without the promise of being able to do it again whenever you want to.  

He gets you two a drink and sways with you, arm around your shoulders, talking in soothing tones that rival the one he uses with his niece. When he pretends to not notice you looking, you gaze at him, his profile glowing in the lights of the hall, the wrinkles in his face like those of a tree trunk. 

You’d been nervous to be seen out like this with Joel, worried to hear rumours fly and nervous that your reaction to them would give away inner corners of your heart that you don’t even dare graze in the safety of the early morning darkness, alone, in your own bed and house. Even more, you didn’t want him hearing them, the malicious tongues of Jackson picking you apart any more than they already had had. 

Yet to your surprise, people only smile at you, ask you to join them at the Tipsy Bison, Joel agreeing readily for you as you struggle to find the words. 

You and Joel, it seems, are no great news. 

You wonder how much time has been wasted just because of your broken mind, thoughts from your childhood running through it constantly chiming truth-like when they were only supposed to light laughing matters now. 

The weight of Joel’s hand grows suddenly, and it drops onto your chest. The subtle, comforting smell of wood turns stifling, dust floating up and stinging your eyes. With a quiet word, you slip out from under Joel’s arm as he’s talking to Tommy, head back outside and start taking greedy gulps of air. 

The normalcy of it, the quiet indifference and accepting looks around you had taken you aghast. At how quickly you’d lost the rules you’d set in place for when you were around Joel. At how quickly you’d managed to fool yourself into thinking that you could do this, be normal and sound, at how you’d tricked Joel into thinking the same and now it felt that everything was suspended in the balance. 

The whole unworthiness of it. How you’d managed to outsmart the world time and time again into staying alive for whole decades after you’d thought you would, and how you couldn’t do the same for your husband, a man so worthy of life compared to you. How he’d worked at you patiently, tenderly. Made you believe, for brief, fleeting moments that maybe you were wrong, that you can think wrong thoughts and yet there was nothing wrong with that, and that nobody had been tricked and everyone was deserving. 

And how quickly that had all been torn away from you in a torturous six months. 

Some days, you feel you’ve gotten better, the tug of black tar lighter, only to drown even worse the next. 

He’d been the only person ever to convince you otherwise. And he’d been wrong. 

Until now. 

The back porch creaks softly under Joel’s shoes, and by now you’ve given up wondering why you can recognize the way the world around him reacts to his presence. You turn to face him, to see the angel-like glow around his silhouette for the half-instant it’s there. 

You look down quickly at your feet, hoping it hides the sudden heat rising to your face and calms it down. 

In so many ways, you feel older than you are, ready to lay down in the ground and surrender to the dirt and grass, and in others you still feel like a child, helpless and naive. Joel shouldn’t be finding you out here, staring into the night for answers you know won’t be there. 

“There ya are,” you’ve never heard his voice this way before, the many nuances and inflections that you’ve studied like a religion. 

Your shame is so great you can’t even bring yourself to apologize, an annoying habit your mother always lashed out at you for, your apparent insolence and indifference. 

There’s the same shuffling step of his, the left favoured over the right. There’s a loud round of laughter from inside and you flinch at it as Joel comes to stand beside you. 

“Needed some air?” 

If you could, you would crawl into his chest, burrow down there so he’d lull you to sleep with the rumble of his voice. Though he’s only inches from you, he feels much farther away. 

You nod quietly and you wonder how you can tell Joel that the outbreak hadn’t made you like this, that Jackson had brought it out of you again after years of a toughened, fraud outside you’d held to yourself protectively like a blanket. That there wasn’t anything more to peel away, and you couldn’t be fixed with rope or soft words like the plants he loves and the wood he whittles away into gifts. 

“Joel…” you lick your lips, bite down on the inside of your cheek until you bleed. His name feels right, shaped out of your voice, and you marvel at how well-trained your mind is, after almost fifty years of feeding you lies and your fighting right back against it, to find the cracks in your armour and press and press until it gives out. “I’m sorry.” 

Words so familiar to you they should be written on your gravestone. 

He tsks, waving at the air dismissively, “Now, stop with all that.” It’s the harshest he’s ever spoken to you yet it’s still quiet and kind. He comes to face you, the light inside falling on his face and into the deep groves of it. 

Despite yourself, you gaze into his eyes, to peer at the earnestness in them, dreadfully familiar. 

“I’m sorry.” A frozen clock, stuck on the same time, the seconds hand beating and beating and going nowhere, as the world around it covers itself in dust and death. 

Pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. 

He smiles, eyes still feather-soft and honey-sweet. A strand of hair comes loose, falling into his face and you see the Joel you’ve come to love, despite any and all precautions. 

You say his name quietly, “He was the only one who…” It’s hard to describe what your husband had done for you, even if you hadn’t felt so stunted with words since you started learning them. His earnest and pure love that had flowed through him for you and the whole world while he was alive, how you’d thwarted it away, the black, rotten core inside of you screaming out, and how, wave after wave, he’d returned to you. 

“And you think there’s only one person for you in this world?” There’s nothing patronizing in his voice, which makes it all the worse for you. You wish it had been that simple, that you had seen yourself worthy of only your husband’s love, had seen something in his relentless pursuit of giving it over to you with no hope of return. How it had been only stronger on the days it had been hard to eat, and sleep, and wake up. 

Your voice breaks, “I wasn’t even supposed to get the one.” 

“Oh, honey,” he coos. The heel of his palm is rough as it brushes against your jaw. Coaxing, he tilts your head up to face his. The second time only you’ve been so close to him and it seems your body still hasn’t gotten used to it. 

The darkness of the night is enshrouding, humidity pressing against your lungs. Joel’s jacket is on top of your shoulders, his presence drowning out the darkness, leaving sunlight and trees instead. You feel his roots claw down into your chest, latch onto your liver and heart. 

“You know…” he swallows and you’re too close to the motion because you’re dangerously close to your knees giving out underneath you. “I’ve seen the way you look at me.” 

It’s not judgmental, Joel could never be that. But you shrink inside nonetheless, embarrassed and feeling smaller than ever. 

Ghosts swarm around the two of you, stirring the air and making a soft breeze and goosebumps rise against your skin. 

You go to look away but he wills it not and what is the turning of the Earth if not for the wants of Joel Miller? 

“Real flattered, if I could say so. Didn’t think-” he clears his throat and this time he looks away, shy and young, a bird hiding its beak in its wing. “Didn’t think you’d fancy an old man like me.” 

The truth behind his words amazes you, how it’s something he seems to have considered time and time again relentlessly, from all angles, and still decided it to be his reality. 

“How-how…could I not?” 

There’s the deep, soothing rumble of his laugh again. It rings clear with tradition and home, and baked clay and spotted ceramic owls. “You’re a bit hard to read sometimes, honey.” 

Inside of you, your veins seize up, heart quivering at his words. He smiles down at you in that gentle, Joel way of his, quieting your thoughts. The soft drone of music drifts out from the open window, the slow murmur of a content crowd of happy people. 

His arm wraps around your waist, testing, eyes flitting back and forth on you. With each pass of his gaze, you feel the soft patter-like feet of butterflies resting against your cheeks, wings flapping slowly, measured as if to show your heart how to beat again, properly. 

Daringly, you inch closer to him. His nose comes down to meet yours. 

“Hey, darlin’...honey?” 

He’s whispering and he’s never whispered with you before. 

His breath is warm against your face, if you could, you would tuck your head under his shirt and never come up again. 

“Can I kiss ya? Would ya let me?” 

It’s hard to think that this is where you’ve ended up with Joel, from the first time you saw him those handful of years ago, where he’d been standing off to the side talking with someone, standing over a pile of wood, until now. His weight leaned on one leg, hip popped out making you lose your breath at the sight of it. 

Like a blossoming tea he’s unfurled for you. Had stretched and arched in hot water, catching your eye for it never to be let go of again. 

He traces your hairline with his finger, murmurs your name. “Can I?” His eyes are only on your mouth now, sometimes coming up to blink and meet yours. 

Joel seems close to as nervous as you, seems as if he sees you to be precious the same way you do him. It’s equally surprising and comforting, gives you the final push forward, your foot slipping against a grainy edge and plummeting you towards the bottom, wind beating against your ears. 

“Yeah.” You sound strong, certain. The sturdy trunk of an oak tree. Even more daring, you press your palm against his tummy, a few fingers under the edge of his ribs, enjoying the give of his flesh as you lean up into him even more. 

His voice rumbles against your lips, the whispering lost to the wind now, “Ain’t you the sweetest thing.” 

Thanks so much for reading, hopefully I haven't lost my edge after a year off. If you liked this please consider leaving me some feedback, I obsess over it constantly!

[coffee-fueled-cookie]

What do you think the club would be like if you were to marry them

Now, this is probably where I get delusional bc I have to like stretch to make this both appealing for those seeking romance, but realistic enough for the comic truthers. But at the end of the day, if you don't like House wife Josh? Wrap it up

That being said

Josh Levy

"Coffee, stop using Padme and Anakin pictures! They don't even relate to his head canons!" I DON'T CARE, I DO WHAT I WANT 🗣

Now listen

You may think Josh wouldn't be the best husband, that he's as bad as Bill, and maybe... maybe he is, but in my heart

He is the ultimate husband

Josh getting married was a healthy step forward for him. You basically saved him from his fate because now he has something to live for and look towards

Does that mean that he's kind of dependant on you? Yes, and sometimes that's hard in your marriage, but usually, things go pretty smooth

Does cook dinner, tries to develop at least a consistent and normal diet, but I'd believe it's hard. Stress eats when he's upset, you'll find wrappers of things hidden in the trash, old habits die hard

After that fire and his mom dying, things between him and his dad had been really rough, and there was a moment after college where they didn't talk to each other

They probably won't ultimately heal that relationship, but trust that when you both start to get serious, he does actually take the time to introduce you to his Dad

This guy is so deep in his fandom culture that the only cheating you've gotta worry about is his Ao3 tabs and his collected stuff, and even then, he probably sold repeats or unnecessary stuff to actually pay for y'alls wedding

It was a very moving moment for you two (He cried but you're pretty sure part of it was out of pain)

Like in the epilouge, he's probably just Facebook friends with Jerry and Pete, but he doesn't go out with them, they don't hang, he's blocked Bill on EVERYTHING

You're his safe space

Bill Dickey

DIVORCE

The fact this guy actually got married... he bagged a baddie?? Free yourself!

Okay, maybe I'm dramatic, but Epilouge Bill had me ripping my hair out, like how could you POSSIBLY be married to THAT!?

I don't even know what to tell you, this will be the most stretched one

Okay, okay, house wife, but like, doesn't do SHIT house wife

Doesn't know how to cook, will clean but like... complain that he's tired when you get home from work

Does use the money from his ebay gigs to pay for the TV subscriptions tho, so at least there's that

You would think he's miserable folding y'alls undies and sweeping and feeding the cat but honestly this is probably the most chilled out he's been in years

Now all you gotta do is peg him and he'll really evolve

Like I'm serious, the whole shebang, this will help and heal him, I swear it

Will he fight the whole way through? Of course, but you can tell by that light in his eyes and that tightness in his throat that he doesn't mind

He'll probably be vulgar mouthed, call you names, call other people names, but when I tell you that shit holds no malice, he just has high blood pressure

It's a dynamic, that's for sure, and you'll probably still have to deal with his collecting, but as years go by, down the line, he'll consider selling a chunk of it or storing it away

Jerry Stokes

The actual chill guy omg

Biggest thing you gotta worry about is stepping on a miniature he left out or trying to declutter his desk where he'll play his cards or customize shit

A crafty husband

Has paints, card stock, scalpels, all sorts of shit

Magic the gathering cards OUT. THE. ASS. And usually it ain't a problem, bc they're in binders and take up minimal space

But he for sure does magic the gathering youtube videos, and the house must be silent when he does em, so that can be a lil aggravating

You guys have your friend group, not seperate, y'all do everything together, and when you guys aren't, then expect to hear "Where's Jerry?"

I wish I had more to add, you guys get take out every Friday, do breakfast on Saturdays, you guys have a show y'all watch together and get excited when new episodes drop

It's just a very dorky and lovey marriage, there's not much to it

Pete Dinunzio

Y'all probably had a shot gun wedding, very sporadic, super fun, and you woke up with the worst headache imaginable

As for if Y'all knew eachother before then?? That's up to you and your lore

It's super casual, you guys considered yourselves married after sleeping in the same bed for 2 years

You know that couple that looks cool, and do cool shit, and you kinda wish you were spontaneous like them?

But then it turns out they're kinda dysfunctional? Yeah. That's it

If you're fine with him working at Sick MOFO then awesome, that makes life 10x easier

If not... yikes

He lives independently despite having a partner, and sometimes that's great, but when he comes home late as shit without having said anything and you're waiting, crying on the couch and worried, but it turns out he was just hanging with Butchie

That gets old quick

He does try sometimes to touch base and be open, he knows his job can be... problematic for some relationships

So a lot of times he'll make up for it by taking you out, setting time aside strictly for you (this pissed his side bitch Butchie off so bad)

Physical to the max, lays on you full body and sleeps like that, nuzzling on you, blowing raspberries in your neck, he can't keep his hands off

"We're married ain't we? Then I can love on you whenever I want!"

Not necessarily Pete but whatever

[imrllytootiredforthis]

wc: 1.1k .... i tried istg this is not what i intended to do, i tried to make this short :(

warnings: fem bodied reader, switchy? kinda power bottom reader, reader rec (vi wears a strap), titty worship (vi rec) both parties are very desperate, reader calls her cupcake, biting, marking, idk what else.

this is also perhaps based off a tiktok edit i saw....um anyway!!

she's over you, on top of you, whatever you want to call it. a hand clenches around your hip for dear life, the other one is beside your head to stabilize herself.

her tongue is in your mouth and her strap buried deep inside you.

her moans are needy and loud. even if every one is muffled and wet with the way you suck on her tongue, they're still loud enough to ring in your ears on repeat like a damn bell.

she kisses desperately, whines prettily, groans hungrily. like she's trying to devour you. like you're trying to consume her.

it's fucking disgusting, dirty and downright messy. saliva smeared across your face and her's; mixing with the residue cum on her face from when she ate you out. it makes her taste all the sweeter, makes you feel all the more feral, grabbing chunks of her black hair in your fists, dragging her in like she's the air you need to breathe.

It's like neither of you can get enough. like you're animals tussling on the streets with the way you howl, with the way she pants, with the way your nails dig into her back, drawing blood.

she growls into your skin. it's like she can feel the way your cunt clenches deliciously around the toy, feel the pulsing warmth of your pussy wrapped around her, sucking her in. feel every thrust as your heels dig into her back, pushing her, encouraging her.

her thrusts are needy, though they started out deep and hard, hands gripping your hips hard enough to leave bruises. enough to knock the wind from your lungs with every thrust, brutal like she wished it were real so she could fill you up and steal your breath away like that.

but with prolonged time, even with all her muscles and power they've become more shallow, sloppy, slowed.

her thighs burn, her muscles ache.

it's fucking maddening.

you sound like a wounded animal.

"vi," you pant between kisses. "fuck," you hiss as she nudges against your g-spot harshly. "faster, go fucking faster."

her forehead presses against yours as she grunts in reply. sweat runs down her temples, smudging her black makeup further, her hair brushes over your skin.

you push it back, cupping her face as you stare into her eyes. she's tired, you can see it. she had a long day at the pits, you know that. you told her that it was okay if she was too tired, but she insisted, pulling back her hair and getting on her knees.

her lips find your's desperately, she whines into them, licking into your mouth.

your body screams for release.

fuck, sometimes you just have to,

she lets out a cute gasp when you move, messily rolling over through the soaked sheets before you come out on top.

your hands plant themselves on her chest, rolling her nipples with your fingers, curious to what noises you can elicit. she whines, looking up at you with wide eyes.

"shit, you're such a fucking liar" you say in that ragged, sex filled voice that makes her head spin. it doesn't help that you're pinching one to hear another one of those delicious noises. "my tits aren't sensitive, my ass."

"s-shut up."

this position isn't unheard of for you two, but you've always been one to lay back and let her do the work. playing with her tits is new though, since she'd always claimed that they didn't do anything for her.

that's not what her body told you now.

you lean down, hands never leaving her tits as you start kissing up her neck, lazily grinding your hips down, moaning at the delicious sparks of heat lighting up inside you. "this okay, cupcake?" you whisper.

her voice is a perfect mix of vulnerable and wanton, "y-yeah." you squeeze the fat of her tits, tugging at a nipple until her back arches up, thrusting into you unexpectedly.

your eyes roll back for a moment, mouth falling open. she does it again and you curse under your breath. "keep fucking doing that" she obeys easily.

"good girl." you pant as you lift your hips up for the first time, letting yourself fall back. "fuck," it feels better than you remembered.

you bury your face into her neck to hide your moans, nipping at her skin to distract yourself from the coursing waves of pleasure as her hands find their home on your hips.

you begin biting, sucking, leaving red marks that'll fade to purple. it'll go with her dark attire, warn off all those other bitches who watch her at the pits and think she's someone they can try to fuck.

they can't. she's fucking your's.

"you like that?" she lilts, head thrown back, eyes rolled back at the feeling of your hands and mouth all over her. she really shouldn't be talking but you can also do nothing but bury your teeth into her skin as a reply.

you're so fucking wet, and so fucking close. you can't fucking think. your lips trail down her neck, over her collarbone, and then sealing over her right boob, sucking onto it gently for a moment.

and then her fingers find your clit.

you jolt like you've been electrocuted, like there isn't lights bursting behind your eyes as they roll back, back arching, teeth sinking into her skin for the umpteenth time.

it'll leave a pretty bite mark surrounding her nipple.

it drives her more crazy. her fingers moving faster against the nub. the feeling of your warm mouth around like fucking heaven. her feet plant on the bed beneath her to drive up into you harder, faster, hitting places that you didn't even know about.

her hand on the back of your head, presses you closer to her, spit covering her chest as you cum.

the tension in you snaps, hitting you head on like a train as you came undone with a cry of her name. your body convulses over her, your thighs trembling on either side of her hips. she never stops rubbing your clit, and you never stop grinding, riding out your orgasm with a gasp until it starts to ache.

"stop." and the pressure is gone immediately.

giving her nipple one last shuddering lick, you rest your forehead against her collarbone, sighing.

no words are exchanged for a moment, no words need to be. fingers run through your hair, and a hand soothes lightly over your hip. you can hear her heard beating from here, hear her panting lightly.

you're panting too, closing your eyes before you work up enough energy to make the simply action of looking up at her, a wide grin across your face. "did you cum? from me playing with your nipples a little bit?"

she groans. "shut up."

a/n: this is not an invitation to ask me to start writing for sub reader n stuff, cause at it's core i don't really see this as sub reader, just letting everyone know cause i most likely won't write stuff like this like ever again

i was in a mood while writing this and while it might be shit cause i haven't written lots of stuff like this before, i hope you all enjoyed it!!

[stellewriites]

Hii! Can you do ghoap x reader fluff? Like cuddles with mild flirting (from soap, obviously) and like soap is the little spoon, because in return he gets head scratches in return, reader in the middle, and Simon as the big spoon just pressing his face into the crook of readers neck?

Would rlly apreciate it <3

-🌑

i loved this idea when i read it and then proceeded to take far too long to actually answer it lmao BUT!! here it is,, ghoap x fem!reader fluff - ty for the request 💓

you picked up the cheap jar of pasta sauce and compared it to the branded version stacked next to it. as far as you could tell, the ingredients were the same and the little veg chunks included weren’t any smaller.

you nodded to yourself. it was decided, you weren’t paying two quid extra just for a name, fuck dolmio.

you looked higher to the top shelf and frowned when you saw the pasta had been pushed away from the edge and you’d be unable to reach it on your own.

“need a hand, dove?”

you turned to see a handsome man with a mohawk beelining towards you, his eyes tracing your frame with hot familiarity. without waiting for your response, he bullied his way into your space to reach over you for the pasta. barely stepping back, he handed you the pack and looked you up and down.

“thanks, stranger,” you said, holding back a laugh at his amused smile. you saw the moment he decided to play along.

“pretty skirt,” he said and nodded down to your bare legs peeking out beneath the denim.

“hm, my boyfriend got me it,” you said, a little teasingly.

“oh? and this boyfriend, he’s left ye all alone to do the shoppin’ has he?”

“no, he’ll be back soon. and he’s kinda protective, won’t be happy seeing me talking to other guys,” you said trying not to smile.

“ah’m no’ scared,” he scoffed, his own smile breaking out as he looked around the aisle eagerly for the aforementioned boyfriend.

“i don’t know, he’s pretty big and strong, wears a scary mask,” you said.

“aye? reminds me o’ my boyfriend,” he said and you finally giggled, leaning in to kiss him and giving up playing pretend.

“dove, they got their tiger bread in stock again,” simon said as he rounded the corner of the aisle and interrupting your kiss. “i ha’n’t ‘ad this in ages.” simon barely paused at the unexpected appearance of johnny, his eyes turning up in the corners as he smiled under his mask. “johnny, look, tiger bread.”

“yeah, i seen, si,” johnny said fondly, crowding you back against the trolley. “only getting the one loaf?”

simon paused. “hm. you’re right.”

you snorted as he dropped the bread into the trolley before heading back to the bakery section and leaving the pair of you alone again.

“work was a fookin’ drag, dove, cannae stand all this paperwork they’re keepin’ me busy with,” johnny groaned into your temple. you petted his arm consolingly before turning back to your list and shopping trolley.

“you were injured less than a month back, john, you can’t have been expecting to be back in the field so soon?” you hummed as you continued shopping with johnny leant over your back.

his silence spoke volumes.

you shook your head as you made your way through the store and waved simon over as you passed him by, hoping he hadn’t harassed the bakery staff into making more tiger loaves last minute for him. the absolute fiend.

“wha’s wrong with him?” simon asked as he got back, hands full as he nodded to johnny’s slumped frame. you refrained from asking simon if you really needed three tiger breads and instead nudged your other boyfriend up from your shoulder.

“he’s bored,” you said easily, grinning when johnny pulled back properly to send you a betrayed look.

“fuck’s sake. c’mere,” simon huffed before dipping down to kiss him, chuffing a laugh as johnny sputtered at the woollen texture of the mask in between them. “you’ll be back in no time. just behave or it’ll be longer.”

“ye sound like cap,” johnny grimaced. he wiped a hand down his tired face. “when are we goin’ home, hm? fuckin’ knackered, could do with a nap before dinner.”

“y’drive ‘ere?” ghost asked while you grabbed a box of eggs, checking for any cracked inside.

“aye.”

“then you can leave whenever,” ghost said flatly, though the glint of his eyes in the overhead lights betrayed his amusement at johnny’s plight.

johnny pouted.

“yer cruel, si. tell him, dove, he’s heartless,” johnny bemoaned dramatically.

“you’re cruel and heartless, simon, would you prefer strawberry jam or raspberry for a change?”

“could be a treat,” ghost conceded.

johnny groaned at the both of you, pinching your hip when you laughed.

“you both know i cannae sleep without someone’s arms around me,” he huffed, turning his big puppy eyes on you both.

you caved immediately.

“aw poor baby,” you cooed, biting your lip when you saw simon roll his eyes. “let’s get this done quick then, yeah? go grab the burgers we like from the frozen section and that ice cream we got a couple weeks back.”

“yes, ma’am.” johnny jogged off.

“si, can i trust you not to make your way back to the bakery if i give you a list of items to grab?”

“no,” he admitted without shame. “i saw the lad in the back prepping more for tomorrow, think i could convince ‘im to cook ‘em now for me if given the time.”

“right. hand holding it is as we find the toiletries then. ‘s like herding cats with you two.”

simon hummed, his eyes trained on the section you knew the bakery to be hidden in.

—

once home, johnny packed away the majority of your shopping in record time, snatching the jam from simon’s hands and almost throwing it onto the work top before plying his mask up one handed and dragging him down into a rough kiss with the other. you watched, amused, with raised eyebrows as johnny dragged him back towards the bedroom desperately, waving a hand at you and gasping out a needy, “dove, c’mon, stop fucking around,” in between wet kisses.

you didn’t need to be told twice before attaching your hands onto simon’s thick waist from behind, guiding them from bumping into any furniture or walls as they stumbled blind to the bedroom.

johnny pulled back with a dopey smile and pushed simon none too gently onto the bed. you took advantage of his lowered height and pulled off his mask completely, rubbing a gentle hand over his buzz cut hair and down to his jaw. you leant in for a soft peck before feeling johnny’s hands and arms wrap around your soft stomach.

he clung to you, nuzzling at your cheek over your shoulder until you turned in his arms to share your attention.

you heard the bed creak as simon settled further up the bed as johnny kissed you. you shuffled back, parting from johnny just long enough to get your bearings and climb onto the bed, simon’s hands moving to guide you back as johnny hummed against your lips.

you flopped back into simon’s arms, got comfortable as he wrapped you up and held you tight against him.

johnny sighed in relief at the sight and shuffled down so he could rest his head on your chest.

you gathered him close and laughed when he started whining when your hands stayed on his shoulders.

“so needy johnny, have you ever heard the phrase ‘patience is a virtue’?” you teased as you started to run your nails through his hair, lightly scratching until he sighed and dropped his body weight against you and simon.

“too t’red,” he mumbled.

simon lifted his warm hand from your hip and draped it heavily over the back of johnny’s neck, keeping him close. soon enough, the scot was snoring.

you tried not to laugh, your chest bouncing johnny with your muffled chuckles. “i think that might be a record.”

“tired lamb,” simon said condescendingly, but he rubbed his thumb lovingly over the soft skin behind johnny’s ear.

“don’t be mean.” you grinned back at him.

simon hummed and rested his head into the crook of your neck, tucking you in closer with the arm still wrapped underneath your waist. “not bein’ mean.”

he nipped at your neck, a soft nibble that had you gasping and clenching your thick thighs around the one johnny had slipped inbetween.

“prick,” you huffed without malice when he stopped and let out a long tired breath in your ear. he hummed with closed eyes, clearly not listening.

you chuffed a laugh into johnny’s hair. the low thrum of arousal simon had brought on was easy enough to ignore but you’d have rather he’d finished what he started. instead, you tucked your cold toes between his large calves behind you in penance and tugged johnny even closer, enough to smother him. with your arse perched perfectly in simon’s lap and johnny nestled close to his second favourite place on your body, you were sure they’d give you what you were after once their nap is over. you closed your eyes with a smile; you could wait for them to get their energy up, and you loved your puppy piles just as much as they did.

[bruisedboys]

hallo! i loved your tmr fics and your ones for jacob n saw u were asking for reqs? ^^ was thinking about jacob if he would love back scratches or having his hair played with! like the way he’d melt…. ouagh

anon how did you know I’ve been thinking about exactly this!!!! he is merely a dog of a man

jacob black who’s a total sucker for physical affection!! he likes giving it (all the damn time, whether there are people around or not) but he loves receiving it. especially because it’s you who’s doing it!

he gets home from a long night of patrol and you’re already asleep in his bed — the sight of you makes his chest ache with fondness. he slides in next to you and you stir, “jake?” you mumble, half asleep but no less fond, reaching for him in the dark. jacob hums, “yeah it’s me, babe.” you curl into his side, kiss his shoulder softly and then your hand finds it way to his hair, carding through the strands still damp from his shower, scratching lightly at his scalp with the tip of your nails. you seem to do it without thinking, and that makes it worse, because you’re not even trying and you’ve got jacob’s heart racing. he melts and goes very still so as not to disrupt your affections. you both fall asleep tangled up with one another and with your fingers curled in the hair at the nape of his neck.

he’s sitting in a pack meeting at sam’s and he’s stressed, his patience stretched thin and seconds away from snapping. everyone’s talking over one another, no one can agree on anything, and he’s sick of it, he just wants to go home with you. then you appear behind him, and you must be able to tell he’s grumpy, because you push your hand across his back in what he thinks is a comforting rub, pushing the heel of your hand into his tense muscles. jacob melts and forgets to pay attention, worse when you start scraping gently across the fabric of his t-shirt with the very tips of your nails, scratching slow semi circles into the space between his shoulder blades. he’s pretty sure he passes out, or falls asleep, or something, because he forgets the rest of what happens in the meeting, and doesn’t utter a word for the remainder of it.

he’s sitting in the garage, busy working on his bike while it pours down outside, and you sidle up behind him, hands sliding over his shoulders. at first he thinks you’re just watching what he’s doing, but then you start pushing your hand over the dip between his shoulder and neck, and up into his hair. you might be doing it absentmindedly, but jacob doesn’t think so — you get bored when it rains (which is most of the time), and when you’re bored, you’re trouble. it’s only when you start twirling chunks of his hair around your finger that he gives in and turns around. “did you want something, sweetheart?” he asks, quirking a brow. you smile at him sweet as honey. “no,” you say, but you don’t give up, you just keep touching him until he can’t stop himself from dropping what he’s doing and pulling you into his lap, guiding your hands to his hair again while you giggle, then smothering your laugh with a deep, warm kiss. it turns into a full on makeout session — you get exactly what you wanted, though jacob would be lying if he said he didn’t want it, too.

-

(I am 100% going to be expanding on that last bit because it deserves a proper blurb!! stay tuned hehe)

[strawbeerossi]

You Think, Genius?

Pairing: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid

Description: Being friends with Spencer Reid is an adventure within itself. Movie nights are no exception.

Content/Warnings: Friends type humor, tension, mention of food/food fight, best friends to lovers trope, heavy kissing, very sweet smut (wild because I hardly write that, I feel like lmao).

Word Count: 2.7k

Anon Request: spencer reid x sarcastic funny reader? not mean but like kinda like Chandler from friends humour? with earlish seasons reid (season 3/4)ish cute smut. ADDING TO THE SARCASTIC!READER SHE AND SPENCE HAVE A BESTFRIENDS TO LOVERS ARC 🫶🫶

Navigation || Criminal Minds Masterlist || Request

RIP Matthew Perry, thank you for playing the king of sarcasm and being my inspiration for this. 🩷

“Serial killers and childhood neglect have actually been linked together for years. Some of the most notorious serial killers were abused in some shape or fashion at home. Which makes sense whenever you take into account how easy it is to psychologically break a person and cause them to shut down, children being more receptive than most adults.” Spencer rambled on about some study he had been reading about.

Everyone was mostly tuned out besides you, your left hand holding the travel size cereal box up in clear view, your eyes wide. “That explains why I can’t stop eating this cereal! My mom made my life a living hell and now, all I think about is cereal. Oh god.” You said in a sarcastic tone, causing Derek to chuckle from his desk.

“She’s a cereal killer.” He joked while you both were giggling, making Spencer look between you and Derek, a confused expression on his face.

“She’s not a serial killer. I don’t think she’d be working here if she was one.”

The laughter continued on at your coworker’s obliviousness. “No, Spence,” JJ shook her head as she approached your chair, gently taking the little box before holding it up. “The joke is that she’s eating cereal. Cereal killer.” The blonde explained as you were turning back to Spencer.

“Oh, it’s no joke. I’ve got six bodies in my apartment right now. Just waiting to get home to do away with them.” You continued on, a little snort leaving your lips as you were getting your cereal back.

As you were pushing a handful in your mouth, you watched as Spencer looked at you with his head tilted to the side. “You haven’t killed anyone. I know that for a fact. You’re too nice.” He said while he was tapping his pen against his desk, JJ let out a huff and waved him off before she was walking away from your desk to get to her office.

“Isn’t there such a thing as killing people with kindness? That is my big move. I will be nice to them and boom,” You punched the palm of your hand to appear menacing. “I go in for the kill.”

Spencer was shaking his head with a soft giggle at the mere idea of it, your sarcasm slowly seeping through the cracks in an obvious way where he could see it.

“Right. How foolish of me to not understand it.” He joked softly while looking back down to the page he’d been doodling on. Your humor was new to Spencer, something he wasn’t really used to. You were a very sarcastic person, hardly ever having a conversation without injecting the encounter with your wit and sarcasm. He was still pretty clueless with it, however he felt he was getting better. Especially now that you had him saying his own sarcastic phrases at random times. It was weird for the rest of the team seeing the way you’d slowly brought Spencer out of that little bubble he was used to.

He was always the one who didn’t understand jokes or take sarcasm, appearing confused a good chunk of his career from the jokes and lighthearted banter. Being friends with you was a good way to learn how to understand though, which was why he was so lucky that you were his best friend.

“I was thinking of watching a movie. Do you wanna join me?” You asked, packing up your things as you looked over at Spencer as he raised an eyebrow.

“Tonight?” He asked, making you shake your head.

“No. Next week.” You answered with a deadpan expression while he crinkled his nose.

“You’re.. Being sarcastic..” He began while you rolled your eyes fondly with a smile.

“You think, genius? Come on, are you gonna come over or not?” You asked while putting your bag over your shoulder.

“I don’t see why not. Can we watch that new show that’s airing tonight?” He asked curiously, already following you out of the bullpen. He knew you’d give him a ride rather than sending him to go on the metro and meet you there later.

“Sure. I’ve been interested in it anyway. The new sci-fi one, right?” You asked as you made it to the parking garage with him as you were both in search of your car.

“Yes! It actually looks very interesting because from what I’ve read, they don’t make up their own rules as they go. They are using actual scientific data and evidence.” He gushed while you were clapping your hands together.

“Like learning in school! Oh how I loved school!” You were laughing as he had taken notice of the sarcasm and nudged your arm.

“Seriously. It’s going to be great! You may not think it now but you’ll enjoy it while learning about the real world when it comes to tech and space exploration.”

“We’ll have to see about that Dr. Reid.”

The ride back to your apartment was peaceful, the sounds of some radio station filling the quiet atmosphere of the car as you passed by numerous street signs. The comfortable silence was something you liked, never needing to strike up a conversation to enjoy Spencer’s company. Even if he was just reading while you were on your phone.

Back at your apartment, you’d just gotten the channel you needed pulled up, having about ten minutes until the show was supposed to air. Spencer made sure to tape it back at his own apartment, wanting to go back and watch alone to fully appreciate the show for more than its entertainment quality.

“Do you want me to run to the kitchen and get snacks?”

“You don’t have to run, Reid. You can walk.”

“Ha ha. So funny. Snacks or not?”

You were waving him off with a little laugh, offering a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Please go get some snacks. I think I have a big bag of that buttered popcorn you’re obsessed with.”

Spencer practically skipped to the kitchen upon hearing the news, retrieving one of your mixing bowls from one of your cupboards. After filling it up generously with the snack of choice, he was stopped by the fridge to grab two water bottles. With the two cold beverages under his arm, he was hurrying to the living room.

“I think we are all set.” He beamed with pride while placing the bowl on the table.

“Perfect. You’re right on time. It should start after these commercials.” You informed him while leaning forward to get a handful of popcorn from the bowl. While pushing a piece of popcorn into your mouth, you were only raising an eyebrow when you felt a pair of eyes on you. “What?” You asked, head turning to face Spencer as he quickly put his hands up in self defense.

“Nothing! I just wanted to see if it was good, that's all.”

“Right. I hate to tell you this, it tastes like buttered garbage. I don’t think you should subject yourself to eating it.” You joked, picking up a piece before flicking it in his direction, his eyes widening as he felt the snack hit his cheek.

“That could’ve taken out my eye!”

“Too bad it didn’t. We could get you an eyepatch.”

That was when Spencer took it a step further, getting a small handful of popcorn before throwing it in your direction. He was too busy laughing at your expression that mirrored his shock from earlier, pieces of popcorn in your hair and some on the couch.

“Is it a war that you want?”

“Me? You started it! Call it returned fire.”

That kickstarted a popcorn fight that didn’t seem to let up. Spencer was reaching into the now empty bowl before letting his eyes widen. He had no more ammo yet you had two handfuls. He was done for.

“You can apologize and we can end this.” You warned, your body now propped up on your knees as you had eventually turned to face him on the couch. “Just one ‘I’m sorry’ can end this bloodshed.”

“Never.”

“Suit yourself, Reid.” You were winding back one hand whenever Spencer was moving quickly to grip your wrist. There was some screaming, some laughing, and eventually you were being wrestled down onto the couch.

“Drop it!” Spencer laughed, both of your wrists being pinned down. “You do that and this will be all over.”

“No way.” You laughed, panting as you were being pinned down, some of Spencer’s long hair tickling the skin of your cheeks. You had both been in that position for a few more minutes before things calmed down, leaving you and the man above you to stare at one another and wait to reach a stalemate.

There was a growing tension, your faces only inches apart as he had you trapped between his body and the couch. Those beautiful eyes were looking down at you, almost as if Spencer was using the close proximity to take in every feature on your face. It was enough to make your face flush, cheeks hot from his gaze fixed on you and only you. The sound of the opening credits for the show you were supposed to be watching was playing in the background yet you could only look at each other.

There wasn’t a beat missed as he leaned down, lips against yours in a soft, yet cautious kiss. He felt like he had to play it safe, although the way you were feverishly returning the kiss told him all that he needed to know.

There was a fiery passion as your lips slotted together, almost as if they were made for one another. Your hands were moving to tangle in his hair, legs now wrapped around his waist as you both gave in to your urges that were always bubbling under the surface for however long you’d known the loveable genius.

It felt right, in a way. The way your were wrapped in one another’s embrace while having a moment of passion that you never expected to happen. However you had to admit, this was better than you ever thought.

Spencer was pulling out of the kiss, face flushed as he stared down at you with a shy smile. “It felt right. I’m sorry.” He whispered, only being pleased with the way you responded by pulling him down to connect your lips again, wanting to savor another moment as if he were going to disappear in thin air if you let him get too far.

The kiss had escalated soon enough, both of your clothes in a pile on the floor as you were tangled up on the couch, nothing but underwear separating you from each other. “Are you sure that you want this?” Spencer soon asked, his forehead against yours. Your friendship was always special to him, so naturally, he was worried about preserving those positive memories and the relationship as a whole.

“Definitely sure. I’ve thought about this for years.” For once, you were genuine. There was no hint of sarcasm dripping from your tone. That’s how he knew this was serious. “I’ve always loved you. I know you know that because I tell you all the time but it’s.. It's different than loving your best friend.”

Your confession had Spencer’s cheeks bright red, head nodding slowly to show he was paying attention. “Y-yeah. I love you more than a friend too.” He said slowly while he was bringing his hands down your hips, his fingertips tracing over your hot skin as he was hooking his fingers in the waistband of your panties.

Your hips lifted to assist him tugging your underwear down, your own cheeks hot from being exposed in one of your most intimate areas. It wasn’t like you hadn’t had sex before and you had confidence when you did but this seemed different.

“I need.. Hold on.” Spencer began while pushing himself up a bit, your watching with a raised eyebrow as you propped yourself up on your elbows. He went for his slacks, getting his wallet.

“Are you gonna pay me for this?”

“What?! No! I-I just..” He began, shuffling through the wallet before he was pulling a condom from one of the wallet folds.

“You have a condom? You were planning for this?”

“No! I have.. I asked Derek for one. Obviously not for tonight but I had to be prepared!” He said quickly while tossing his wallet on the table.

You didn’t tease him any farther, instead your eyes gazing over his body as he was shimmying out of his boxers while standing. Just kissing you had his cock semi-hard, his hand wrapping around his shaft to give a few pumps in order to complete the process although it wasn’t too hard with the anticipation of what was to come tonight.

After sliding on the contraception, he was heading over to get settled between your legs. His eyes were glancing over your glistening pussy, your arousal shining in the dim light of the living room. “Wow.” He whispered, hand moving between your thighs as his thumb pressed against your throbbing clit. The pressure alone was enough to make your mouth go slack.

“Fuck.” You breathed while feeling the pad of his thumb start to rub your clit, your arousal coating it with each swipe. He was taking his time with teasing you, at least.

When he was finished with massaging the bundle of nerves and he couldn’t hold back any more, he was grabbing his cock before lining his tip along with your entrance, thick tip breaching your slick cunt as he was slowly pushing into you when you were both ready enough.

There was a pleasurable burn as he was stretching out your inner walls, your hands tightly gripping onto his shoulders as you pulled his body down onto yours just to feel his skin against yours. It was oddly more intimate than you could’ve expected, even with him staying perfectly still with his cock nestled deep inside of you.

There was a soft gasp leaving your lips when he gave a slow thrust, just testing the waters for now as he didn’t wanna go too crazy before you were ready. He didn’t plan on going super hard anyway, that wasn’t who he was. “You alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Keep going.” You urged.

Once you proved comfortable enough due to your persistence, Spencer’s thrusts began to pick up a steady pace and rhythm. Your moans were enough encouragement for him to feel confident enough in the act, not shying away from you as much as anyone would’ve expected.

They rhythmic sound of his skin slapping against yours coupled with your gasps, shaky breaths and moans were filling the living room, the long forgotten show still filling the background noise. Spencer had since embraced you, one arm wrapped under your frame as the other kept himself pushed up over you. He just wanted to feel you close, to hold you as he made love to you.

It was beautiful to him, the way you were holding him and keeping him close in return. It was like you were the only people in the world, no responsibilities other than being close to one another. The warmth of your flushed skin against his was all he needed to be happy.

It was a dream, essentially. A dream so vibrant that Spencer didn’t want it to end, even if he knew that realistically he couldn’t be in a dreamland forever.

As he was torn from his thoughts at the feeling of your hands on his cheeks, he was offering you a smile as you were locking eyes with one another. “I love you.” He said softly, repeating what you’d both confessed earlier while leaning down to press his lips against yours.

It was after the fact whenever you were finally speaking again, body sitting up from the spot you were in on the couch as Spencer had retreated to the kitchen to dispose of the used condom. “Do you wanna come take a shower with me? No funny business.” You put your hands up in defense.

“No. It’s too personal for me to see you naked.” For the first time, Spencer was the one to be sarcastic with you, making you both burst into laughter.

“I’ve taught you well. Come on.”

[ktownshizzle]

Nerd & Nerdier | Chapter 1

✎ ˎˊ˗ Pairing: Min Yoongi x reader, Jeon Wonwoo x reader; endgame? x reader

✎ ˎˊ˗ Genre: Fluff, Attempt At Comedy, Roommates au, Love triangle

✎ ˎˊ˗ Summary: Moving in with two introverts should have been easy. Not when it’s Min Yoongi and Jeon Wonwoo, who decide they both want you. Unhinged, awkward, and nerdy as hell, they proceed to compete for your attention in the most unnecessarily dramatic fashion that culminates into a… rap battle.

✎ ˎˊ˗ Warnings: Wildly gratuitous, You might 100% chance you’ll fall in love with both of them so that’s a problem, no mxm dynamics to be expected

✎ ˎˊ˗ Chapter Warnings: None

✎ ˎˊ˗ Word count: 1k

✎ ˎˊ˗ Posting date: February 15, 2025

✎ ˎˊ˗ Notes: I am quite nervous about this series if imma be really honest bec this the first time I am doing a BTS-SVT crossover fic, but basically Yoongi and Wonwoo are ruining my life so I need to cope, please be kind I literally do not know what I’m doing. All I know is I have written out a good chunk of this series and I promise it’ll be fun. :) Thanks Jae @angellekookie for being my first test subject. I hope you all enjoy!~

TAGLIST IS OPEN | Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Moving in with two introverts should have been easy. That’s what you told yourself when you signed the lease, all bright-eyed optimism and naive faith in your ability to coexist peacefully with two quiet, low-maintenance roommates.

You were wrong.

Because Min Yoongi and Jeon Wonwoo weren’t just introverts. They were weaponized introverts.

The kind that moved through life with an air of effortless detachment, as if emotions were things that happened to other people, not them. The kind that could sit in the same room in absolute silence for hours without any need to acknowledge each other’s existence. The kind that, despite their best efforts, were also painfully awkward. 

But that’s okay. In fact that’s part of their charm.

You think they’re both cool, if slightly nerdy. Yoongi was a music producer and Wonwoo was a game developer. They both have a penchant for photography, their cameras holding space in a special shelf in your living room. Yoongi liked cooking, Wonwoo liked reading. Both of them are passable singers, but you’ve heard them rap (under their breaths) to Epik High whenever you played their old songs, and both got flow, not gonna lie.

While Yoongi had the energy of a cat who tolerated your presence at best, Wonwoo had the aura of a ghost who wasn’t sure if he was haunting you or just existing in the same space by accident.

And despite your awkward first interactions, Yoongi eventually warmed up to you in the way one might warm up to a stray cat that kept showing up at their doorstep—begrudgingly, but with an unspoken fondness. Wonwoo, on the other hand, started making these tiny, barely noticeable gestures of consideration, like leaving the light on if you were out late or subtly pushing your favorite snacks to the front of the pantry because you were too short to reach them from the back.

And you, completely oblivious to the trouble brewing beneath the surface, assumed that was that. Roomies being roomies. 

What you didn’t realize was that somewhere between stolen bites of Yoongi’s late-night ramen while listening to his records and the post-work gaming sessions you have with Wonwoo while sharing popcorn, both boys had started to notice you in a way that was definitely not roommate-friendly and vice versa.

Roll the tape…

(01)

You weren’t even thinking when you snuck into the kitchen that night, mind set on one thing and one thing only: honey butter chips.

It wasn’t your fault that you finished your bag (Calbee puts some kind of crack in there, you swear), but you know someone else might still have a bag or two on the top shelf, if only you could rea—

“Tryna steal hyung’s stash again?”

You jumped, turning to see Wonwoo leaning against the doorframe, his glasses slightly askew and his hair falling over his eyes. The loose shirt he wore hung off his shoulders just right, and it suddenly struck you how broad those shoulders actually were.

“Fuck,” you whispered, heart still racing. “You scared me.”

As he walked over, you couldn’t help but notice how quietly he moved, almost like he was gliding. And when he reached past you to grab the snacks with ease, you caught the faint scent of his shampoo, something clean and subtle that made you a little dizzy.

“How’d you know these were what I wanted?” you asked softly.

Wonwoo’s smirk faltered for a moment, replaced by something softer. “You always reach for them first at the store,” he said, like it was obvious.

And maybe it was. 

He casually opened the bag with one clean twist, the foil crinkling in the quiet kitchen before handing it to you. Without a word, he reached in and popped a chip into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

Then he smiled—small, lopsided, and so effortlessly boyish that it caught you off guard. You’d never realized how cute his smile was until now.

As he walked away, you stood there, clutching the bag of snacks to your chest as Wonwoo headed back to his room, leaving you alone in the kitchen with a weird fluttering in your stomach.

(02)

One night, sleep evaded you completely. Maybe it was the weight of the day, or maybe it was the sudden pang of missing your family that you couldn’t shake.

The faint sound of music led you to Yoongi’s room. You hovered at his door, unsure, until—

“Come in,” his low voice called out.

The room was dim, bathed in the soft glow of his monitor. Yoongi sat at his desk, sleeves pushed up, fingers tapping rhythmically against his keyboard. You tried not to stare, but there was something unfairly attractive about how effortlessly cool he looked, even half-asleep.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Mmhm,” you admitted with a hum. “Just… missing home, I guess.”

Yoongi’s expression softened just slightly, enough for you to notice. “Mm. That shit sneaks up on you,” he muttered.

“Can I stay?” you asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

Somehow, it felt weird taking up space in his bed. So you sat on the floor instead, hugging your knees.

After a beat he joined you on the rug and he played a track for you. The music was soft, layered, and it made something inside you ache in a way that wasn’t unpleasant.

“It’s beautiful,” you whispered. “Like a happy memory…”

Yoongi chuckled softly. “Yah, don’t go emo on me now.”

You rolled your eyes, but the tension in your chest eased a little.

At some point, your head found its way to his shoulder, your exhaustion catching up with you. Yoongi froze for half a second before leaning his head gently against yours.

Neither of you said anything when you stirred a few hours after.

Neither of you needed to.

Roommate Rule #1: Don’t Fall for Your Roommate(s). (Too Late)

Things like that kept happening. Quiet moments. Moments that weren’t meant to mean anything but lingered far longer than they should have. Little details you started noticing about them, that maybe you shouldn’t have.

The way Yoongi’s sleeves were always rolled up, revealing strong forearms that you had no business looking at for that long. The way Wonwoo’s glasses would slide down his nose when he was focused, and how you found yourself wanting to reach over and push them back up for him.

You pushed those thoughts aside. Because they’re your roommates.

But something had already shifted. You just hadn’t realized how much.

Which led to the current situation:

Yoongi, leaning against the kitchen counter, watching you laugh at something Wonwoo just said. 

Wonwoo, sipping his coffee with a smug little tilt of his lips, aware that his hyung was watching and he’s thriving off it.

And you, completely unaware that you were the unintentional catalyst for an impending nerd war aka the royal roomie rumble aka the most awkward month of your life.

Are you even ready?

;)

Chapter 2 >

A/N: How are we feeling????? I'm really excited about this series. (I know I have a million WIPS but pleaseee... this one has been HAUNTING my dreams)

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[writeriguess]

Hiiii I requested Katsukis sister x Dabi fic from you two days ago. I'm sorryyyyy if it's not proper to ask for another one before that's out but I can't help but come up with ideas!!! So. Reader is still Katsukis quirkless sister right, and they have a secret relationship with Dabi? Ok so. There's a battle and for some reason, reader has gotten herself in the middle of it. Katsuki sees her first just when she's about to get crushed by a flying piece of rubble and calls out to her in panic, which makes Dabi whip around and since he's faster than Kats, he saves her even when he knows it risks their secret. Kats is obviously baffled why did Dabi save his sister. Ok ok I'm trying not to dream too much but I just live for this dynamic omg.

author's note: I just had to make a confession scene XD <3 Also seems like my gif library works again!

Collateral Damage

The battlefield is chaos. Smoke and fire engulf the crumbling street as heroes and villains clash, explosions rattling the ground beneath you. You don’t even know how you ended up here—one moment, you were trying to get away from the fight, and the next, a collapsing building had forced you into the open, too close to the action, too vulnerable.

You don’t belong here. You never have.

And then you hear it.

A sharp, panicked voice tearing through the battlefield, cutting through the roars of fire and screams of combat.

"SHIT—MOVE!"

You turn just in time to see a massive chunk of rubble hurtling toward you, too fast, too sudden—

You don’t even have time to scream before a blur of blue flames and heat rushes past you. Strong arms wrap around you, yanking you against a too-warm chest, and then suddenly, you’re flying—whipped through the air so fast that your stomach drops. The next thing you know, you’re on the ground again, but not crushed, not dead.

You blink up, dazed. Dabi.

He's crouched over you, one knee planted in the dirt, hands gripping your arms tightly before they slide up in a fleeting touch—checking, making sure you're not hurt. His lips part slightly, breath coming quick, blue eyes flickering with something—concern.

And then he lets go. Stands up. Turns away.

Like nothing happened.

Like he didn’t just risk everything for you.

But Katsuki saw.

You hear him before you see him, the roar of his explosions, the way his feet slam into the ground as he lands hard, just a few feet away. He looks wild, eyes wide, chest heaving. His gaze flickers from you to Dabi, and you know your brother well enough to see the exact moment he puts the pieces together.

"The FUCK—"

Dabi doesn’t give him a chance to say more. The second Katsuki moves, he’s back in the fight, launching a wall of blue flames at your brother, forcing him to dodge.

But Katsuki is pissed now. More than before.

"Why the hell did you save her?!" he yells, dodging the flames, then twisting in midair to send an explosion right at Dabi. "What the fuck are you playing at, huh?!"

Dabi laughs. That same infuriating, taunting laugh that makes even you want to smack him sometimes. He sidesteps the blast, rolling his shoulders like this is just another day for him.

"Aw, what, can’t a guy just do a good deed?" he mocks.

"Bullshit!" Katsuki snaps. "You don’t give a damn about civilians—so why her?!"

Dabi doesn’t answer. Not directly. Instead, he smirks, cocky, knowing. "Maybe I just wanted to piss you off, huh? Looks like it worked."

Katsuki lunges, his palm sparking, and Dabi meets him head-on, fire against explosions, force against force. You scramble backward, heart pounding, knowing that if you stay too close, one wrong move could get you caught in the crossfire.

But you can’t leave.

Because you know what this is.

Katsuki saw.

He saw the way Dabi looked at you, the way he checked for injuries. He’s not stupid, and now he’s furious, more than he’s ever been before.

"You—" Katsuki growls between attacks, voice raw with disbelief. "You’re fucking Dabi?"

Dabi laughs again, this time sharper, smug. "Well, that’s one way to put it."

Katsuki’s entire body locks up, face twisting in pure rage before he slams forward with an explosion so big it makes the air shudder. Dabi barely dodges in time, rolling out of the way with a low whistle.

"Damn, didn't know you had that in you, little bro."

"DON’T FUCKING CALL ME THAT!" Katsuki roars. His next explosion is bigger, faster, almost catching Dabi in the side.

You force yourself to move, stepping closer before this gets worse. "Katsuki, stop—!"

"Stay the hell out of this!" he barks at you. "You—" He turns back to Dabi, snarling, "What the fuck is wrong with you?! You’re a goddamn villain! And her—she doesn’t even have a fucking quirk!"

Dabi tilts his head, eyes flicking back to you. "Yeah. I noticed."

"You could’ve killed her," Katsuki spits. "You will kill her."

Dabi’s smirk falters, just for a second. It’s brief—so quick you almost miss it.

But Katsuki doesn’t.

"Oh, what? You actually give a shit?" His voice is mocking, but there’s an edge to it now. A challenge.

Dabi shrugs, the cocky mask slipping back into place. "Maybe I do."

Katsuki’s hands clench into fists.

And then he moves.

Faster than before, hitting harder, more reckless, explosions lighting up the battlefield. Dabi is grinning, but you know him well enough to see the tension in his movements—he’s taking this more seriously now.

"You think you’re good enough for her?" Katsuki spits as they fight. "You? A murderer? A piece of shit villain?"

Dabi smirks. "Well, she seems to think so."

Katsuki loses it. His explosion sends Dabi skidding back, boots digging into the cracked pavement. He barely catches himself before Katsuki is on him again, and this time, Dabi doesn’t have a witty comeback, forced on the defensive.

You don’t think. You move.

Throwing yourself between them, arms outstretched. "Stop!"

Katsuki halts, barely, his explosion cutting off just before he can hurt you. Dabi, though, doesn’t stop fast enough. His hand almost catches you, flames flaring dangerously close—

And then he does stop. Completely. Too completely. His fire vanishes, his entire body stiffening as he realizes how close he came to burning you.

It’s Katsuki who notices first. "The fuck—"

Dabi swears under his breath and steps back, jaw clenched. "Move," he tells you, but his voice isn’t sharp. It’s careful. Controlled.

You shake your head. "I’m not letting you kill each other."

Katsuki glares, furious. "He—"

"I know who he is," you snap back, turning to look at him fully. "I know. But I’m not leaving him."

Your brother stares at you, eyes burning. Betrayal and fury and disbelief all twisted together. "Why?"

And you hesitate.

Because how do you explain it? How do you tell him that Dabi isn’t just some villain to you? That the man with the cocky smirk and taunting words has held you in the dark, has whispered things you never thought you’d hear, has been there in a way no one else has?

You don’t.

Because Katsuki wouldn’t understand.

So you just say, "Because I love him."

The words hit the battlefield like a gunshot.

Katsuki’s face twists. "You—" His voice cracks.

Dabi clicks his tongue. "Whoops. There goes the family reunion."

You shoot him a look. "You’re not helping."

He grins. "Wasn’t trying to."

Katsuki looks like he’s about to combust. His hands shake, explosions flickering to life before dying out again, as if he can’t decide whether to punch Dabi or just scream.

“Besides, he started it,” Dabi says after a moment of silence.

“I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU,” Katsuki yells.

Dabi snickers. “See?”

You groan, dragging a hand down your face. “Oh my god, I hate you both.”

“Aw, c’mon, doll,” Dabi hums, cocking his head. “You didn’t seem to hate me last night—”

Katsuki lunges.

You think you might actually die of embarrassment.

[casualhedonists]

✩ it don’t need your loving, it just needs attention ✩ (chapter five)

pairing: Coriolanus Snow x reader

warnings: NSFW (18+), snow being snow, themes of sex work (not the reader), cuckolding, eventual smut, fake relationship, unprotected sex, themes of voyeurism & mild exhibitionism, murder/violence mention (but no actual murder) , MAJOR manipulation/gross power dynamics + generally darkish themes, some power play, lots of switching between dom/sub dynamics, oral sex, thigh riding, face sitting, degradation, dirty talk, edging/orgasm denial, roughhousing, eventual piv, one chapter specific dubcon scene (pls tell me if i forgot anything!)

chapter: 5/6

words: um. 9.5k (sorry? but also you're welcome??)

chapter warnings: this chapter contains a scene that falls solidly into dubcon territory, so please proceed with caution, stay safe out there.

moodboards

series masterlist

a/n: WELL. here we are, almost at the end of our little rollercoaster ride. i've lost brain cells over this chapter, almost cut it up into smaller chunks, but ended up leaving it as long as i originally planned (longer, in fact. whoops). as always, feedback is very welcome + encouraged (i love hearing/reading your thoughts as things progress) buckle up, please do take note of the dubcon warning, prepare for the angst, and most importantly, enjoy!

i do not give permission for my work to be reposted/translated anywhere, under any circumstances.

He was back to ignoring you again.

But this time, the feeling was mutual. You’d never felt as thoroughly rejected as you did the night he had you walk back to your room, legs weak, wrapped in nothing but his shirt.

Once upon a time, this scenario would have been one you dreamed of, but reality often falls flat on its face. You wouldn’t have dreamt of walking away from him like this if you’d known it would feel this empty.

Humiliation ran rampant through your body, starting with the tears you blinked away as you left his room, closing the door behind you, and then flooding over as you stepped into your own room, slumping on the bed, curling up into yourself and weeping, pressing your still aching legs together but too upset to finish yourself off.

You kicked yourself for getting carried away, for getting too loud, too possessive with his face between your thighs and your hand in his hair. For getting so caught up in the moment, briefly forgetting your games, and for believing even for a second that you would be on the same page.

This push and pull had begun to wear you thin, and you were tired. So, you slept. Until nearly midday the next morning, when Lucille knocked on your door to remind you it was time for your monthly PR debrief.

The good news, though arguable at this point, was that your arrangement hadn’t been affected by recent events. At least, not on paper. Cordelia ran you through each gala, public appearance, and dinner, barely noticing your preoccupation, rambling on about speeches, coordinating outfits, dates and times of events, what to say and how to say it.

For you - and you could only imagine, Coriolanus too - everything had changed over the span of a month. 

Your shame made you abnormally quiet, head hung low, gaze averted, nodding along as Cordelia prompted either a response or approval from you. Snow just stared, glancing at her only when completely necessary, but otherwise, he didn’t take his eyes off you.

He was enjoying this. The sick fuck. You were glad when the meeting ended and you could scamper into the library, eager to lose yourself in a story of any kind other than the one you were living.

This went on. By day, you barely looked at him; by night, you tried over and over to prove that your own fingers were enough to keep you satisfied. To convince yourself that you just wanted him, you didn’t need him.

Because if you needed him, then he called the shots. He would win. And victorious as he may seem, the game wasn’t over yet. You’d slipped up in a moment of vulnerability, he’d tricked you into a corner just to prove his point.

You wanted him, you didn’t need him. But if you did… well.

He was going to have to need you more.

You held back this time. Keeping your cards safe, close to your chest. In a strange way, you found a kind of solace in your arrangement. Recent events had caused it to feel unstable, breakable even, but the meeting had ensured that it was all still on the right track. It allowed you to take a small piece of what you wanted from him without guilt or repercussions. After all, it was planned out to benefit you both. Then, when you were ready, and with a gentle hand, you began to weaponise it, loading it up in the barrel of a gun aimed directly at Snow.

You didn't have much left, but you had this. You knew where your promiscuity had led you. This time, you wanted to pull on his heart strings. Make him feel remorse, or whatever similar emotion he was capable of. Make him soften to you. Torture him with almosts that were never enough.

So when you took, you took cautiously, tentatively. You deepened your usually light kisses to what was just past socially acceptable, only to pull back when Snow began to lean in, turning away and smiling at the people surrounding you, or full-on entering into conversation with somebody else. You'd brush your thumb against his when you held hands, waiting for him to look at you, drawing your hand away when he did. You'd offer smiles to everyone but him, talk and laugh a little louder when you could feel him watching.

You pretended he didn’t exist. You could feel him begin to simmer. It wasn't as brazen as your usual game, but it was working.

Until it wasn’t.

“Something’s wrong, what is it?”

Lucille’s face dropped, her shaking hands lowering from the zip she was struggling with. You were getting ready for a luncheon, and you’d picked out an emerald green dress, one of your favorites for daytime events.

“I’d hoped you wouldn’t notice, ma’am. I apologise. It’s my brother, he… it’s getting worse again.”

“Sit down for a second. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

You listened to Lucille open up uncomfortably, visibly nervous that you would offer your financial support as you’d done before. But you didn’t, sparing her from having to turn you down.

Lucille was stubborn - she would never accept your charity. She was more than happy to work for her wages, and frequently worked longer hours. As months went by, you’d brought her pay up as high as you could without her noticing. But now things were getting more critical, and you knew there was only one thing you could do.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go and see your brother.”

“But you’re not dressed-”

“I’ll take care of it. Go home, Lucille. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

She smiled softly.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

You’d tried with the zip, you really had. You didn’t want to have to knock on Snow’s office door with two favors to ask instead of one, but the dress was tight and the zip kept getting jammed. So, there you stood, dress half undone at the back, heart in your throat. You counted your blessings; at least it wasn’t his bedroom. You didn’t think you could face him at all in there. You heard typing from inside.

“Come in.”

You pushed the door open, feeling like an intruder.

“Sorry, I just… Could you help me with this?” Your hand tightened behind your back, holding the dress together.

He narrowed his eyes. He was already in his suit, typewriter on the desk in front of him.

“Lucille forget how to do her job?”

“I don’t need snide right now. Please, Coriolanus? I’ll explain when I’m not half naked. It’s drafty in here.”

You tried to make it clear in your tone that this wasn’t some ploy. You weren’t sure you had many of those left to offer.

“Fine.” He sighed, and stood, making no motion towards you, so you crossed the room, gripping onto the fabric, turning your back to him.

His hand came to rest on your waist as the other took the zipper, and you tried not to flinch at his touch. You pressed your lips together as he carefully zipped you up, cold metal sending a chill down your spine. Or maybe that was just him. You felt your eyes slide shut and your lips part as his hand lingered on your waist. You couldn’t hear anything but your heartbeat and the tick of his grandfather clock.

“Is that okay? Not too tight?” His breath on your neck gave you goosebumps, you hoped desperately that he wouldn’t notice.

“No, it’s perfect. Thank you.”

The second his hand fell from your waist, you missed it. You carefully met his eye; he was looking at you like you had something he wanted.

So why hadn’t he wanted you? You’d been right there, and he’d turned you down.

He cleared his throat.

“I should finish this letter before we leave. Was there anything else?”

You paused.

“Actually, there is. Could I ask you a favor?” You glanced off to the side, suddenly very interested in the knots of wood on his desk. What helped was that you'd never seen inside this room before, and you hid behind your curiosity like it was a lifeline.

“What is it?”

“It’s…” you lowered your voice, “it’s about Lucille. Her brother, actually. He’s in the hospital again. The family can’t afford the medical bills to keep him in for as long as he needs. I’d like to foot the bill, but I can’t do it anonymously. I thought… well, I was wondering if you could pull a few strings.”

You were overexplaining, something you weren’t at all used to doing, but these days, just being in the same room as him made you nervous. You stared at his desk, at the lack of photographs on it, the single pen laying to the side, the smoothness of the glaze.

It was quiet for a moment.

“Consider it done.”

You looked up.

“Really?”

“Did you think I’d say no?” He asked.

“I- no, but…”

“It’s something that matters to you.”

You blinked, dumbfounded at how simply he put it.

“Yes. It is. Thank you, Coriolanus.”

“Don’t mention it. I’ll make sure it’s anonymous.”

“Thank you. Or, I mean…”

He looked at you, and you wanted to melt. Wanted to throw strategy out the window, god, but -

You couldn’t. It hadn’t worked last time. You’d hoped to avoid a stalemate, but here you were, sat right in the middle of one.

“The car’s coming in a half hour. Are you almost ready?” He asked.

“Yes. Almost.”

The luncheon was going well, at first. You were at the head of a large table, sat beside Snow, straightening your salad fork as he stood up to make a speech. You’d been glancing at him throughout the afternoon; it wasn’t so hard to anymore. It felt like his willingness to help Lucille without question, just because it was what you wanted, had more of an effect on you in five minutes than the entire week of your teasing had on him. One conversation, and the tides had changed.

As he began talking, you started to realise that your gentler approach may have been affecting you more than it had him. The party was transfixed; people loved to hear him talk, and you were proud. He had a certain way with words; you knew better than anyone. You’d fallen victim to them.

You weren’t sure why his words affected you – you’d been there, you’d agreed when Cordelia had suggested he say something nice about you in this particular speech, really make the crowd swoon, lay it on thick - but when he started to talk about you, about how proud he was to have you by his side, how strong you were-

You knew he was just reciting a script written for him, but you couldn’t help it. The tears began to quietly fall. You thanked whatever higher being was listening for not letting anyone notice.

Or so you thought.

It was just typical that out of all the people that could’ve noticed, the one person who knew better was the only one who did.

The rest of them would’ve brushed it off as you simply being moved by emotion, honored by his kind words. You blinked away your tears, taking small, polite sips of your wine. It was painful because you knew it wasn’t true. None of it was, you knew he could never say those words and mean them.

And he knew that too.

It was dark when you got home, and you trailed behind him awkwardly on your way upstairs.

“Can I have a word?” his voice was gentle, and it set you on edge.

“Sure.”

You stood awkwardly in the hallway, then he led you into the office. He leaned against his desk, and you shifted your feet where you stood, eyes on the floor, on the art on the walls, on anything other than him.

“You were upset today.” He started.

You swallowed.

“It won’t happen again, I promise.” you kept your voice steady. He paused.

“If that was my fault, I apologise. If I took it too far, if I upset you-”

You weren’t sure which part he was talking about, but you finally looked at him in a sort of distant defiance.

“Do you even care if I’m upset?”

“Of course I do. Especially when it’s something that affects you… publicly.”

You huffed, forcing yourself to stare him down.

“Because that’s all that matters, right? What the public sees?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Sure it is. It’s okay, Snow. I’m a big girl. And I can take a hint, too. So don’t worry about me, I’ll be just fine. Business as usual, right?”

He just stared, puzzled. You took a breath.

“Look, it’s been a long day. Can I go, or are you going to keep me here all night?”

The silence was like smoke, clouding between you. His brow furrowed, calculating. Then he sighed, long and heavy, and you tried not to let it phase you.

“Fine. Go.”

You nodded.

“Goodnight.”

You’d never been more relieved to get away from him. Your broken walls were starting to build back up. You wouldn’t let him break you, you couldn’t. You were stronger than this.

That night, for the first time, you couldn’t help but wonder if this was truly what you wanted.

“Darling, you look ravishing.” Lilian drawled. “It’s a pity Snow is so far across the room, and can’t appreciate you. If I dressed half as nicely as you did, perhaps my dear husband wouldn’t be screwing the maid.”

A scandalised chorus of giggles erupted from the group. It was a pretty dress, one of your best. Long and smooth black fabric, ruched at the waist, with a deep cut up the leg that was just acceptable for an evening gala. You stood tall, champagne glass in hand, gossiping with your friends.

Well.

Friends was being generous. You kept few true friends, and they would hardly be gossiping in a circle like this.

Acquaintances was a better fit. Pawns if you were being brutally honest. Politicians’ wives, senators’ mistresses, a chancellor’s daughter or two. Pieces of chess, really, in this bigger game. Anyone who could help you climb higher, whisper carefully spun words into open ears at your whim.

“I just know George would rip that dress off me the moment I got home. He might not even be able to wait, and just pull me into a closet here instead.”

Another eruption of giggles.

“Well, I’m flattered, my darlings.” You smiled. “This is one of my favorites. Coriolanus treats me well.”

“I’m sure he does,” a suggestive glance from Lilian, “in all the ways one would expect, I assume?”

You gasped in mock modesty.

“Lilian,” you drawled, “I certainly hope you’re not suggesting I disclose our-”

“Oh, just tell us dear, please. We’re all dying to know. You’re always so coy about it. What’s he like?”

You pulled your lips into a knowing smile, your perfectly painted face helping you slide into this facade. You scanned your eyes across the ballroom, across to Snow. He stood talking to a group of men, colleagues of his. You recognised their faces.

It had been four days since the luncheon. Four days since your outburst. Four days of hiding away. You’d been dreading tonight’s gala, but it gave you an excuse to dress nicely, and as soon as you’d arrived, you and Coriolanus has gone your separate ways.

“Well,” you hummed, masking your uncertainty as anticipation, “he can be a slight tease.”

A few dramatic gasps sounded through the group, and you turned back to face them, their eyes wide and expectant.

“Salacious. Do tell.” Another voice piped up with a giggle.

“He can be fun to toy with. I do enjoy pushing back, but sometimes he takes it… a little far.” You said carefully.

“My, who would have known? But you get what you want, my dear, surely.” Lilian asked.

You smiled, glancing back at him, suit pristine with a white rose in his breast pocket. You hated how good he looked. He was smiling politely at the group of men around him, but you could tell from the tick in his jaw that something was bothering him.

“Sometimes, I do. Others, I wait for my chance to push his buttons right back.”

“Oh, but where’s the fun in that? I don’t suppose,” she pressed, “that you’re in one of those… entanglements at the moment?”

“Lilian, darling, you know I don’t kiss and tell.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Another giggle sounded from the group.

“Oh, my.” Lilian repeated, glancing between the two of you. “I do hope you’ve been making him suffer.”

“Well, I’m playing a longer game this time, so I’m afraid there hasn’t been as much fun lately.”

Lilian sucked in a breath, like the perfect idea had just dawned on her.

“Well, I see no moment like the present. You’re here, you’re dressed marvellously, I propose you walk right over there and show him just what he’s missing.”

A chorus of yes and do it and we’ll cheer you ons rang out. Loosened by the champagne, you looked across the room at him again. You could do it. He wouldn’t be able to react, it would be the most perfect torture. You suddenly decided that you were done making small moves, done playing it safe like this was some schoolgirl crush. It was time to step up to the mark again. Take your power back.

Your group could sense the newfound determination in you. You smiled, slow and cunning.

Show him what he’s missing.

Simple. It’s what you did best.

“Watch and learn, ladies.”

A hush fell over the group as they watched you run a hand through your hair, handed your glass to one of them, and pressed your lips together. Before you’d left the house you’d added a swipe of red lipstick, dark red, almost bloodlike. It always made you feel more confident and tonight, you needed the pick me up.  

The middle of the ballroom was practically empty; the dancing was over, and everyone had long since gathered in groups to the sides. So you turned heads when you stepped out, the only one on the floor, black satin hugging your frame like a second skin. You didn’t look at them, you made a steady beeline to Snow. You felt more and more eyes on you as you crossed the room, heels clicking on the floor. They all watched, waiting for… something. Coriolanus didn’t look up until you were a mere few steps away, now deep in some conversation he was going to forget very shortly.

Blue eyes flashed to yours with a confused apprehension, but you didn’t give yourself time to think about the twitch of his brow, or the looks on the faces of his colleagues. You didn’t think about the way he opened his mouth as if to say something, only for it to be swallowed away.

You didn’t think about any of that.

Because your lips were on his.

Hot and hungry, teeth clashing, your hand grabbing the back of his neck as he leaned in, surprised at first, then warm, wanting. Lips tugging at yours like he was starving.

It was sinful.

You’d never been kissed like this before. Your fuzzy brain wondered how you’d gone through life not knowing what this felt like, the press of his lips devouring yours, heated and messy.

He kissed you like breathing, like you were his oxygen supply. His hand slid to your waist and pulled you in, and you heard the echoes of chuckling coming from around you, morphing into a few light claps.

Then, just as you felt him fully melt into you, your hand slipped higher to the nape of his neck, grabbing a fistful of perfect platinum curls, and tugged.

It was nothing but an affectionate display to the people surrounding you, but a brazen reminder between the two of you. It was your way of showing you hadn’t forgotten, that you wouldn’t be made to feel ashamed, to cower in a corner while he got the better of you.

Not in this lifetime.

The second it happened, his breath hitched, and his hand tensed on your waist. You were the only one who caught it, getting high off the satisfaction, finally pulling away.

You weren’t sure you’d ever seen a prettier sight; his blown-out eyes, his face stained with scarlet.  

How’s that for tasting your own medicine.

Watching him attempt to collect himself was sweeter still. Watching him reset his face into one of distant amusement. He let out a small laugh, glanced at the rest of the party.

“Everything alright, doll? Had a little much champagne, perhaps?”

His colleagues chuckled, but you didn’t look their way. You stood your ground. Offered a sweet smile, but he could see your slyness.

“Oh, I’m swell. And I think I’ve had just enough, actually. I’m gonna go freshen up.”

You turned on your heel and made your way through winding halls to the bathroom, riding an adrenaline high. You picked up a glass from a server’s tray along the way – the champagne had dried out, all they were serving now was posca, which while disgusting, worked a treat to take the edge off. It wasn’t long before the door swung open and you saw Coriolanus appear behind you in the mirror.

“This is the ladies’ room, handsome.” You looked away, continuing to reapply your lipstick.

He stepped closer.

“What was that kiss about, sweetheart?” Straight to the point.

“Nothing.” You shrugged.

“Didn’t feel like nothing.”

“That’s called acting, Snow.”  You rolled your eyes, vaguely aware that your words sounded a little jumbled. You put the tube of lipstick away. “We had an audience. A rather expectant one at that.”

He folded his arms.

“I don’t like it when you catch me off guard like that. Not with people around.”

“Seemed to like it plenty to me.” You mumbled.

He didn’t answer, pacing past you to the other sink, grabbing a towel and wiping it against his face, where the red had stained his skin. It only served to spread it around further, and if you weren’t already smugly entertained by the marks you’d left on him, now it was just plain funny.

He glared at you when you laughed.

“Don’t give me that look. Here,” you offered, stepping across to him, taking the towel and wetting it, “let me.”

You wiped at a patch, but he snatched the towel back and took over.

“No, you’re rubbing it too hard. It’s-” he glowered at you – “fine. Do it your way.”

You went back to lean against your sink and took another sip of posca, admiring the ornate decorations in the room. A little excessive, a little new money for your tastes.

There was a rap on the door.

“President Snow?”

“Just a minute.” He said coolly.

“You’re in a mood tonight.” You remarked, and he huffed.

“Running a country can get exhausting. Don’t expect you to understand.”

“Right.” You said flatly. “Because I’m just a brainless pawn like everybody else.”

He looked over at you, at the drink in your hand.

“How many of those have you had?”

You shrugged again, and he tossed the towel into the sink, walking over to you.

“Answer me.” His voice was stern, and for a second, you soaked it in, drenched in the danger as he approached, closing in. Your tongue slipped out to wet your lips, and your eyes followed his as he moved to stand in front of you.

“Shame you don’t have someone to let all that frustration out on, isn’t it? Sounds like that could be helpful.”

His eyes pierced yours.

“Doll-”

“I’m just saying, it’s a pity you don’t.” You moved to bring the glass to your lips, anticipating the burn in your throat, but he gently stopped your hand.

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“Posca? It’s my first glass.” You smiled, eyes batting.

“You know what I mean. I think you should stop.”

You looked at the glass, then back at him, and pried your hand away, slowly and pointedly taking another sip.

“Sweetheart.” He warned.

“What, are you punish me? Gonna make me beg for you then kick me out again? Already did that once.”

He gave an incredulous half-laugh.

“That’s what this is about? You’re not really going to be mad about that forever, are you?”

“That depends. How long is forever?”

The door knocked again, and he worked the glass out of your hand.

“Drink some water. Sober up. We’ll talk about this when we get home.”

You sighed, heading for the door, but glanced back at him, his face still a stained mess. You brushed a finger against your own cheek to mirror his.

“You missed a spot.”

You sat in silence in his office, feeling a little like a schoolchild caught misbehaving. His typing was the only sound in the room. The seat was low; almost as if it was there to point out his authority over anyone who sat in it. Knowing him, it probably was.

He’d managed to clean off the rest of your lipstick, but his face looked rubbed raw, uncomfortable. A tall glass of water sat on the desk in front of you.

“Thought you said we’d talk.”

“Not until you finish that glass. I’m not talking to you inebriated.”

“Seriously?”

He shot you a look from behind his typewriter.

“Fine. Whatever.” You reached for it and took a few sips. He looked back down again. A few folders cluttered the desk, and in your boredom, your eyes scanned them. They looked complicated; legal.

“What are you writing there anyway? Or am I too dumb to understand?”

He offered another unimpressed glance.  

“It’s a new bill I’m trying to pass. Except apparently, I’m the only one around here with their head screwed on enough to work on it.”

You waited as Snow pushed the typewriter’s lever, carriage sliding the page as he began writing the next line. You sipped your water.

He sighed. “One day I won’t have to mingle with these idiots anymore. They’ll just listen to me, and obey.”

You took that in.

“Do you feel that way about me?”

He studied you for a second, and stopped typing.  

“No. Not really.”

“But you wish I’d be more… compliant.” You stared at the floor.

“Not necessarily.”

“You sure? Didn’t seem to like it the other night.”

His eyes narrowed. Knowing this conversation was a game of chess like any other. But lately the stakes were higher than ever.

“Never said I didn’t like it. Just that you were out of line.”

“And where is that fucking line?” You snapped. “I’m serious, Snow, because we’ve never talked about it.”

“You want to talk, all of a sudden? Okay, sweetheart. Fire away.”

You put the glass down on the table, heavier than intended.

“I just don’t understand you, Coriolanus. I mean, first you don’t want me, then you do want me, then you don’t again. And now what? I don’t know what I’m supposed to think when you don’t give me anything to go off.”

He watched you carefully, and you wanted to shake him, to scream, anything that would give you answers. You stood, unable to sit still, and started pacing.

“You know what’s worse? I don’t even know if you want me here anymore. I don’t know how to act around you because I never know what you’re thinking. At first I thought all this, the whole push and pull, was just some control thing. But-” you laughed, airy and insane, “you know what I realised? You’ve had me fooled, Snow. All this time I thought we were equals, but now I think I finally realise.”

He frowned, waiting for you to continue.

“You pay for my company, if you think about it. We trade services, don’t we? You get something from me, I get something back. I live in your house, eat your food, wear nice clothes. At the end of the day, that’s just it, isn’t it?”

“What?”

You shrugged, tears filling your eyes as bitterness took over, so strong you could almost taste it.  

“I’m no better than a whore myself.”

You’d never heard a louder silence. If that hadn’t just taken everything out of you, you’d have begged him to say something. Instead, you just stared, eyes blurry with tears, as he seconds seemed to stretch into minutes, and you gave up trying to read his mind, because his expression was indecipherable.  

After what felt like hours, he took a long breath.

“Sit down.”

You glanced at the floor, then took a step towards your chair. He stopped you.

“Not there. Here.” He nodded at the desk in front of him, and you swallowed thickly, stepping around the desk, getting awfully close to him, and pulling yourself onto the desk, legs pressed together. He stood, looking down at you. 

“That’s really what you think of yourself?” He asked, voice steady and controlled.

You kept your eyes averted.

“Am I wrong?”

He lifted a hand and brushed his fingertips against your jaw, tipping your head up to look at him. And when you looked at his eyes, you knew exactly what he was feeling. He wasn’t hurt, or upset.

He was mad.

“Tell me something. What do you think I’d do if I heard someone talking about you that way?

“I don’t-”

“I’d have them executed. And you expect me to stand by and let you talk about yourself like that?”

You felt a tear spill down your cheek.

“I don’t know, Coriolanus, you tell me. Am I disposable to you?”

“Of course not."

“But you’d replace me if I left.”

“What makes you think I’d let you leave in the first place?”

A chill caressed your spine.

“That’s right. I’m keeping you here, doll. If I made you doubt that, I apologise. But you’re no whore. Though sometimes, I…” He trailed off.

“What?”

His eyes were on your lips again, hungry. You wondered how someone could switch from distant to depraved and wanting this quickly.

“Sometimes I wish you were. Because it’d make it a lot easier for me to take what I want. If you were, then I’d have no hesitation in ripping your clothes off right here. Fucking you on my desk, or up against the wall, not caring if you cum. Not caring if you enjoy it. If you were a whore, I’d have fucked you in every room in this house, twice over. I wouldn’t let you sleep.”

His hand was on your thigh, the now-creased fabric of your dress crumpling as it slid up. You weren’t sure when your eyes had fallen shut, your hot breath mixing with his as his thumb rubbed against your skin.

Your voice was pathetically quiet.

“Then why don’t you?”

He sighed, tone shifting into something tense, something you could cut through with a knife.

“Because you’re fucking impossible, you know that? I can barely think when you’re around. I don’t know where the games begin or end. I don’t… I don’t understand this power you have over me. I thought you knew, you must know that you’re under my skin. I don’t know if you’ll ever stop playing with me. It drives me fucking insane.”

You opened your eyes, hand gripping his wrist and pulling it from your thigh. You slid off the desk and took a step away from him.

“You think I’m playing with you? The only time you pay an ounce of attention to me is when you’re trying to fuck with my head, Snow. I said my piece, you heard me and you still didn’t care. So please, for both our sakes, stop torturing me. Just… come find me when you decide you want me again, okay? Let’s leave it at that.”

You made for the door, which you slammed with such an impressive force that it even took you aback.

You replayed his words in your head that night until you fell into a deep sleep, and when you woke, you felt like your dreams made more sense than he did.

“Tigris!” you exclaimed, catapulting into the blonde’s arms. The people who stood scattered around you in the manor’s large ballroom spun their heads around at your display. A few even dodged to the side as the momentum that you’d built running down the stairs nearly knocked her over.

A few days of silent glances and fewer exchanged words had passed. And now, you were just happy to be hosting in the comfort of your own home, and to finally see Tigris again. You wondered if she noticed how you hugged her, if she wondered - like you did - if you’d ever let go.

“I’m so happy you’re here. How’s your Grandma’am?”

“She’s quite well, she’s sorry she couldn’t make it. You look beautiful as ever. It’s been too long!”

“I know! I don’t think I’ve seen you since your birthday, which makes me the worst friend ever.” You groaned, scrunching up your face in shame.

“It’s okay! I know busy Coriolanus keeps you with all these functions. You must be going out of your mind by now. How are you holding up?”

The two of you walked to the edge of the room, where prying eyes had settled down after your greeting.

You looked at Snow, stood across the ballroom, dressed in a pristine suit with a champagne glass in hand, talking to yet another group of men who worked for him – ministers and such, a little higher ranking than the group from the other night – and spared you the occasional glance. As if he was keeping tabs on you. It wasn’t long before Tigris caught on and politely inquired.

“I don’t understand him, Tigris. I think he hates me.” You sighed.

“What? No, he could never. He has a soft spot for you, really, and I have it on good authority.”

“I’m not so sure anymore. I think I’ve pushed it a little far this time. I think… maybe we both did. I’m in uncharted waters, here.”

“Look, I know I don’t know all the ins and outs of how this thing between you works, but I don’t think he could ever hate you for doing anything. Coryo – I mean, Coriolanus, he does care, contrary to popular belief. It’s just that his way of showing it can get a little…”

“Fucked?” You offered, and she laughed.

“Yes, exactly. Now, I’m not going to lie to you and say that he’s an angel on earth, he’s had to do things to get to where he is now. Things that even I don’t know the extent of, and they’ve… changed him.”

You rarely got the chance to speak with Tigris alone these days, with Snow usually playing chaperone, or keeping one or the both of you busy, but it had always been easy to slide right back into conversation with her like you’d never been apart.

You’d first met Tigris at a Plinth gala years ago, on the same day you’d met Snow. The two of you had talked and laughed and she had an easiness around her, she wasn’t shallow and judgemental like a lot of the girls you’d grown up with, though you never knew why until many months later. Snow had placed a large wall between his life before the Plinth endorsement, and after. Few people knew the conditions he’d grown up in, but after countless hours with Tigris, you’d begun to assemble small pieces. Despite your closeness with her, you knew from her warnings that Snow had a sort of temper when it came to this topic, so you approached it with caution.

“Changed him how?” You inquired, finally.

“Well… It wasn’t always fancy balls and lunches with him. It never was, with any of us, as you know, but especially for him. He’s… had a different experience. Grandma’am and I, we’ve known hard times, but we haven’t seen what he’s seen. Not even close.”

“What kind of things?”

She glanced over her shoulder, making sure nobody was hovering.

“He’d kill me for telling you.”

“You know I won’t say a word. But you don’t have to tell me, if it’s too much to ask.”

 She took in a breath, and sipped her drink, voice dropping to a whisper.

“This stays between us, okay? Coriolanus has… been out there. In the districts, I mean. Before all this. And I can’t go into detail, he’d have my head if I…”

You swallowed.

“The districts? But… why? I don’t-”

“Tigris, lovely to see you, it’s been so long.” A male voice interrupted, and you quickly excused yourself, slipping away to let the two of them talk.

After mulling it over in your head and making small talk with a few more guests, you snuck out of a side door and into the hallways, winding upstairs until you were finally met with Snow’s bedroom door. The sound of voices and music a mere echo below you, you pushed tentatively, and stepped inside. It was strange, being in there alone, for the first time since he’d turned you away. But you paced the floor, looking for something, anything, that would answer the questions you had. Why the districts? Why couldn’t Tigris tell you what had happened there?

Glancing back at the door, you began thumbing through his closet, peeking inside drawers. You’d already given his room a once over, but you worked more meticulously this time, every corner you unsuccessfully turned over only fuelling your curiosity. You walked around the room again, getting frustrated.

You headed back to the door, scanning the place, and retraced your steps a third time. Knocking a little on cupboards and anything that appeared the slightest bit odd or out of place. It was a perpetually tidy room, neat as ever, save for the desk which contained folders you were sure weren’t for your eyes, but that didn’t stop you. You kept on, trying your best not to leave any stone unturned, and most importantly, trying not to move anything out of place.

Eventually, you moved to the smaller desk drawers again, rifling through them haphazardly, annoyed by the lack of evidence you were finding. One of the two drawers had very little inside it, just a pencil and a pocket dictionary, and as you pushed your hand further inside to feel for anything else, you noticed it felt smaller than the first. Shallower. When you knocked, it was hollow.

It had a false bottom.

Your father used to keep his cigars beneath one of these when you were growing up, so you knew what to look for. You felt around the edge until you touched a small, metal handle, then emptied the drawer, hooked your fingers into the handle and pulled. You frowned at first, there was less in the hidden compartment than there was above it. But you peered inside, and there lay two items: an old photograph, and a silver dog tag.

Suddenly, it all made sense. His efficiency, his drive, his orderliness.

Military. The districts. The dog tag.

You unfolded the photograph, caked in a layer of dust, and it hit you like a ton of rocks.  

Coriolanus was a peacekeeper.

But why? When? And why keep it a secret?

In the photograph, his hair was buzzed, and he was in a uniform you recognised immediately; if only because of the annual reaping ceremony shown in every building in the Capitol. He was standing next to a boy with dark hair, also buzzed. You recognised him as Sejanus Plinth, you’d never met the kid but you’d been to his funeral with your family, and had seen enough pictures to know.

You knew that the Plinth family had backed Coriolanus’ education, that he became their new heir, a protégé of sorts, but not that he’d been friends with their son. Not that they’d been this close, at least. They weren’t smiling in the photo, stood pin straight and alert in what looked like barracks.  

You folded the photograph and placed it back where you found it. Your hands lingered on the dog tag, though, despite the logical side of your brain screaming at you to put it back, leave the room and pretend you didn’t see this. But the louder part egged you on as you pulled it out of the drawer, examining the engraved words, running your hands over the name SNOW and, further down, DISTRICT 12.

You’d heard bedtime stories from your mother while growing up, about the war, the Hunger Games and why they existed, and why it was never safe to set foot in the districts, not even the richer ones.

They’re beneath us, she’d said. They’re dangerous. Barbaric. And 12 was notoriously the poorest, most dangerous of them all.

Coriolanus had now become more of an enigma to you than ever before, and a thousand new questions flooded your head.

You closed the drawer halfway, holding the chain, pulling out a chair in front of the mirror to sit down. You turned the tag over in your hands, as if it would start giving you the answers, if only you looked hard enough.

Why was he sent to 12? Why couldn’t he talk about it?

Despite the conditions Snow grew up in, there was respect behind his family name. It didn’t make sense why someone of his social standing and education would leave to be a peacekeeper, of all things, and in 12, of all places. A strange sort of pity filled you, wondering what he could’ve seen out there. What he could’ve done. It all drew you in as you got lost in a world of what ifs.

Despite yourself, you pushed your hair from your neck, and as if in a trance, wrapped the chain around it. It fell heavy and cold against your skin, sending a chill through your bones. You were so busy staring down at it, so lost in thought that you barely noticed the sound of the door pushing open. Or the floorboards lightly creaking. Or his reflection in the mirror. You didn’t notice any of that, until the door swung shut with a bang.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Coriolanus had had a long day, most of which he’d spent simmering over work and you. He’d kept his eye on you that evening; on the way you’d thrown yourself into Tigris’ arms, and talked, transfixed, and he hated not knowing what was being said. A strange feeling set in as he saw the two of you get deeper into conversation from the other side of the large room, a deep-seated uneasiness stirring him up as he drowned out the tales of his associates’ incompetence. It felt like a breath of relief when he sent someone your way to interrupt whatever talk you were having, pretending that Tigris had been looking for him earlier. He focused on your brief tour of the room when the distraction worked, eyes flitting around like you were preoccupied.

When he saw you dart away from the ballroom and up one of the stairwells, he followed you as soon as he got the chance.

He’d wondered if you might act up today, but this wasn’t what he was expecting. When he saw you, the all too familiar glint of silver around your pretty neck, something shifted in him. Something he’d done a very, very good job of keeping at bay during his first few years of presidency.

Rage.

Your eyes met his in the mirror.

“Coriolanus, I-”

His hands were on you before you could finish your sentence, hauling you out of the chair, fingers wrapped in a death grip around your arms, squeezing as he pushed you to the wall with a satisfying thud.

“What, you can explain? I highly doubt that.”

“I’m sorry, I just-” You gasped as he squeezed tighter, gripping your wrists.

“Do you even know what this means?” He seethed, dog tag pressed between his fingers, chain pulling at your neck.

The forest. The birds. The gunshots that deafened him for weeks.

“I didn’t know… I’m sorry. I never knew you were a peacekeeper, Coryo, I-” He flinched, saw the way you winced the second it passed your lips.

Snow may have been cold, but his eyes were fire. And you were only stoking it.

“So I’m Coryo now? Who the fuck told you call me that? Was it Tigris? I saw you talking to her, don’t lie to me.”

“No.” You shook your head. “She didn’t tell me anything, I promise. Please. It was just me.”

He moved in closer, eclipsing you altogether, grip on the chain so tight he was certain you’d be able to feel it pinching the back of your neck, digging a mark into your flesh. He let the sadistic part of his brain take delight in it, in the way your eyes widened, face pleading.

Whatever this game was between you, you’d gone too far this time.

“How did you find this?” He snapped.

You were crowded against the wall, unable to move. Tears started to brim, and you didn’t answer, he wasn’t sure you could. You just shook your head over and over, repeating I’m sorry like a broken record.

“Take this off. Now. Take it off.” He ordered, dropping it back to your chest, stepping away a little so you could lift your shaking arms over your head, removing the chain. He snatched it from you, gripping it in his palm, looking down at it, and you breathed out in relief.

“I didn’t mean to… I was just looking. I had so many questions. I didn’t know what I’d find.”

“And? Are you fucking satisfied now?” His voice chilled you to the bone as he looked up at you again.

You shook your head. Apologised again. Wished you could apologise in any way that would matter, but it was too late. You’d never been more afraid in your life, anticipating what might happen, remembering echoes of rumors you’d heard, of Snow poisoning his enemies, of sending them to hang. Some you knew to be true, but others you boiled down to rebel gossip.

Now, you weren’t so sure. These were the eyes of a man who’d dropped his mask, and it was like staring into a dark void. You could get lost in it, and never find your way back.

“Please. Don’t… I won’t tell anyone, I promise. You can trust me.”

He scoffed.

Stupid girl. Hadn’t you learned by now, that trust meant nothing?

“Like I trusted you in here? I don’t think so. Can’t believe you had me feeling sorry for you. Probably just made it up so you could lower my guard then turn around and stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“I didn’t, Coriolanus, I swear.” You pleaded. You were crying, tears slipping down your cheeks.

“I’ve been very patient with you, little girl. But this is where I draw the line. You have no idea how far you’ve pushed me. And you don’t even realise it, you’re so caught up in your little crush. Do you know how easy I’ve been going on you? The things I’ve let you get away with… I’ve killed people for much less.”

“You’ve…” You trailed off, barely hearing your own words, barely processing a thing. He laughed, low and dark.

“Does that scare you, sweetheart? Does it make you afraid?”

Eyes frozen open, you just stared. You felt your jaw go slack.

“Good.”  

Coriolanus toed an invisible line, one that had never been crossed before. You wanted him to show you he wanted you? Fine.

He looked down at the chain wrapped around his fist, but he didn’t pocket it, or place it to the side. He unwound it, and slowly pulled it over his own neck.

Your eyes dropped to where it sat in stark contrast, heavy and shining, garish against his fancy dress shirt. You felt your blood run cold.

“Get on your knees.” You heard him say. Your eyes darted back up.

“What?”

When he spoke, it sounded like someone else was talking. Someone you didn’t know at all.

“You heard me. Get on your fucking knees. Right now.”

What could you do? This was what you’d wanted. Just… not like this. Not when your hands were shaking in fear, and you had no idea what this Coriolanus was capable of.

Your head said yes; your heart wept. But you were far past listening to your sorry heart.

So, you obeyed. Legs all but giving in as you lowered yourself to the ground, knees meeting cold hardwood as the chill cut through your dress.

His fingers slipped under one of the straps.

“Take this off, baby.” He murmured, distant, like he wasn’t all there. Your head hung in shame, eyes on his feet as you pushed the straps from your shoulder, top half of the dress falling down. You heard his zipper slide down, and you shivered. No longer sure if it was in fear or anticipation.

“Head up. Look at me. Good,” he said, when you obliged, “now let’s see what this pretty mouth’s really good for, shall we?”

More tears welled up as his hand brushed your jaw, hooking a thumb to your bottom lip, pushing your mouth open. You couldn’t help the way your tongue grazed over it, tasting salt, whining when you realised it was the taste of your own tears. When your eyes fell open again, you finally caught a look at him, hard and tip weeping, and your brain filled with nothing but want, eclipsing your fear for a mere second, enough to bring Coriolanus to the ground again. He may have done terrible, unspeakable things, but he was still a man. A man who wanted you.

And why did that make your heart beat out of your chest? It thrummed like a hummingbird as you took in the sight of him, unbuttoning his shirt as he waited for you to move.

You’d seen how big he was from a distance. You’d felt him between layers of fabric, and you’d imagined this a million times over. But now, as he stood waiting in front of you, you hesitated, because it all finally felt real. Your mouth watered despite yourself, seeing the mess he’d already made, any more and he’d start dripping -

“Go on, sweetheart. It’s not gonna suck itself.”

Your eyes squeezed shut as you let him past your lips. The heady taste of precum filled your mouth as you ran your tongue along the shaft slowly, trying to start steady. He wasn’t having it. His hand twisted through your hair, pulling you in closer, making you gag a little. You instinctively lifted a hand up to his thigh to brace yourself, and he laughed.

“Giving up so soon? Thought you’d try harder than that.”

He pushed further, and the indignant sound you made as you adjusted only served to spur him on.

You tried to focus on breathing through it, but he slipped in and out your mouth unevenly, and faster than you could think, catching you off guard. He looked down at the way your mouth struggled to take his length as if you were a piece of art, like he was mesmerised by it, and that feeling was encouragement was enough to keep you going. His hand twisted harder in your hair, making a fist, and he swore when you hummed in discomfort.

“Look at you.” He said, strung-out and shaky. “You strut right in here from your silver spoon life, and think you can call the shots? You’ve bitten off more than you can chew, sweetheart. You have no fucking idea what the world is really like. What people are like. What they have to do to survive.”

He moved faster, and you let your jaw go slack. You were barely moving now, he was starting to fuck your throat like he owned it. You’d started to cry again, and when you looked up at him, it was a blur. The furthest you could see was his chest, shirt unbuttoned and falling to the sides, and the dog tag, silver catching in the low light, swinging against his chest as he moved. You closed your eyes again, trying to go somewhere else in your head. Trying to breathe through your nose, to focus on being used, on how good you were making him feel, on finally being his. It was all you had left to hold on to.

But he was unwinding you with his words, knowing just where to press to make it sting, to make the tears fall harder.

“You don’t have any fucking shame about it either. Touching yourself on my bed and wearing my clothes, like you’re – fuck, that’s it - like we’re married or something. Like you’re worth more than everyone else. But look at you. Maybe you were right after all. Maybe you are my whore.” he gritted out.

Tears streamed down your cheeks as you tried desperately to catch your breath between sobs.  

“I mean, you sure look like it now, on your knees for me, making a mess of your pretty face. So fucking good. You’re sucking me off better than she did, and you’re barely even trying.”

You hated it. Hated the way his thumb brushed painfully gently against your cheek, dusting away a tear as his cock bruised the back of your throat and you tried not to gag around him. Hated the way his words twisted around in your head, and how fucked up it was that your broken brain took it as praise instead of punishment.

Most of all, you hated the throb between your shaking legs, panties soaked through and probably ruined. Humiliation seeped through you as you imagined it dripping down your legs and onto the floor. Your salty tears spilled down your face, mixing with your spit and his precum. Hating every second, until your head went blank, and you didn’t feel much of anything anymore.

You weren’t sure exactly how it happened.

One second, he was pulling your hair, twitching in your mouth and spilling down your throat, and the next, in what felt like a flash, you were on the floor, loud, wrecked sobs spilling out of you as you held your knees to your chest, face hidden. He was on the floor too - when did he get down? - and his voice was soft, oh so soft and gentle, saying something you couldn’t quite make out, dull and repetitive past your ringing ears.

“- so sorry. I’m so sorry, baby. I know I - I didn’t… I took it too far. Can you hear me, sweetheart? Look at me. Please, look at me. I’m right here.”

You pulled your head from your hands, and through blurred eyes, you looked at him.

This wasn’t a face you’d seen on him before. His brows knitted, lips apart as he stared at you, like you were some wounded animal he wanted to save.

“Talk to me, sweetheart. Please.”

“I can’t…” You trailed off.

“You can tell me.”

Another wave of choked back sobs took over you. He held your jaw up like you were something breakable. Like maybe you’d broken already, and he was holding you together.

“I can’t do this.” You whispered. “Not like-”

He nodded, brushing a tear from your cheek.

“Okay. It’s okay, baby. Tell me what I can do for you. Just say the word.”

You caught your breath, and he flinched a little as you collapsed into his arms. The cool metal of the dog tag pressed into your cheek.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” You cried.

“I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t realise how far I’d pushed you until… I know I can’t make it up to you, but I’ll try. Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it. If you want to leave, I understand. I’ll make the arrangements.”

“What? No, that’s not…”

He cut you off, looking into your eyes.

“Decide tomorrow, okay doll? You don’t have to think about that now.”

“I didn’t know about… about the districts.” You hiccupped. “About you. You didn’t want me to know. I ruined everything, I-”

“Listen to me. It doesn’t matter anymore, I promise you. It’s okay, baby.”

You nodded into his chest.

“Here.” He leaned away from you, and you looked up in a question. He took the chain from his neck and placed it in your palm.

“You can have it. So long as nobody sees. You can throw it away, wear it around the house, whatever you want. It’s yours.”

You pressed it between your fingers. It cooled your hot skin like a salve.

“Thank you.” You whispered. Your head sank back onto his chest, and when you spoke again, it was barely audible.

“Coryo?”

He tensed for a second, but relaxed again just as quickly.

“Yeah?”

“Can I stay with you tonight?”

His hand brushed gently against your hair, and you relaxed into it.

“Of course you can.”

a/n: baby's first dubcon scene!! (screams cries and throws up bc navigating that was scary as fuck) p.s one more chapter left!! do we think they'll get their shit together?? who knows!! (i know)

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[youcancallmeelle]

She’s got a boyfriend anyway…

Rating: 18+ (Minors DNI)

Word count: 7K

Warnings: Semi public sex, Missionary, Cowgirl, Unprotected Sex, Creampie, Cunnilingus, Teasing, Sneaking around, Secret relationship, Brief David mention, Ellie being a menance, Tommy trying to play matchmaker.

Summary: Tommy has been trying to set Joel up for AGES, he’s got other interests.

Or

You and Joel have secretly been seeing each other.

A03

Read below…

Life in Jackson is promising, nearly a year and half here and Joel feels comfortable, no longer itching for a way out of civilisation because he’s just not used to that no more. Ellie is settled too - finally. She’s attending school three days a week, enjoying the new responsibilities that come with being sixteen and the tad bit of freedom it brings. She helps out at the stables, in the kitchen too but she’s not a fan. She likes being in the library most, checking in and out books, tidying shelves, using her art to create eye catching displays aimed at the younger generation of Jackson.

Joel is proud, his heart feels like it could burst out of his chest all the time. Ellie is still full of wit and charisma that comes out in curses and daft puns that make Joel roll his eyes and get her in a headlock until she’s laughing so hard she’s pink in the face.

There’s times when she skips school completely if a male teacher has subbed in, she flinches away if someone comes too close and sometimes if it’s stew night at dinner, she’ll stare blankly into her bowl at the chunks of meat and see a severed ear, she’ll try to swallow but gag instead. These are nights Joel gives her his bread and Tommy will too, then he’ll make her a fruit salad when they get home with a little double cream poured over it.

The nightmares are persistent on these bad days where triggers occur, he finds Ellie in bed screaming and thrashing multiple times a week. She’ll sob and cry hoarsely as he holds her, hushing her gently and resting his cheek on her head. Most of the time she’ll fall back asleep with him beside her, curled into him like she did back at Silver Lake when death was close.

But mostly, everything’s okay.

Joel had been with Tommy every single day this week so far and it was Thursday evening, they’d been focusing on fixing up the bathroom in a house way further down from his, they were getting it ready for a family that had expanded to move in. The floor was rotten and the pipes wrecked, neither of them were particularly fond of plumbing but they sorted it between them. There was still the kitchen to do but that was a job for tomorrow and probably Saturday too but not Sunday, that was his day with Ellie.

Sunday’s were for late breakfasts of bacon and pancakes - before and after the world ended. The only thing that changed was the kid for Joel, he used to serve Sarah indulgent breakfasts on a Sunday and they’d do something together and the tradition was carried on with Ellie and Sarah remained tucked in his heart.

Tired and stiff from working hunched over all day, Joel was enjoying a quiet drink with Tommy. They were tucked away on a small table with two stools, Joel would have preferred something with a back but beggars can’t be choosers; he was grateful for the cold glass of bourbon nearly empty in front of him and the sound of Dire Straits playing over the old speakers.

As always, Tommy is picking and prying into his lack of a love life. Since he’s noticed his older brother being more settled within the community, he’d been trying his hardest to set him up with various women and Tommy Miller was nothing if not persistent.

At this point in the day, Tommy’s voice is almost just white noise.

“Cath is nice.” Tommy pointed out, Joel snorts.

“She’s also gay, Tommy.”

“Oh shit, really? I didn’t know.”

“Clearly. Can we please stop talking about this? It’s the same thing every fuckin’ time I come drinking with you.” Joel begs, Tommy sighs heavily but drops it for now.

Joel takes in the scenery as he sits there, grateful for the moments silence from Tommy. His eyes stray to the left of the table and he listens as you speak to Denton, an older gentleman in his late sixties with a love of horses. He’s quizzing you about the new mare in the stables, he hears you mention checking on her again after your shift because she’s been particularly temperamental since she was brought in from outside but you’ve developed a nice bond with her, she’s slowly becoming more trusting.

It occurs to Joel that everyone likes you - literally everyone, even Ellie and she was a tough nut to crack. You’re sweet, soft spoken yet confident. You’re always helping out where you can; on patrols, stable duty, in the communal garden, sometimes at the school and also here at the bar when Darius needs his shift covered.

You find good things on patrol and give them to Joel or Ellie before taking the rest for the community, so they get first pick of everything.

You’re just the sweetest thing.

Tommy sees you and beckons you with a friendly wave, you mutter a goodbye to Denton and pat his hand.

“Hey.” You hear your name called over the music and you turn as Tommy Miller grabs your attention as you scoop up two glasses and an empty bowl that once held nuts and dried berries from the table two away from his and Joel’s.

“Yes, Miller?” You patter over with your hands occupied, you sneak a look at his older sibling, sparing him a wink as a greeting, he smirks softly back.

“Has Darius got an other fuckin’ music or are we strictly limited to the sounds of 1985 tonight?” He questions and you laugh, shaking your head.

“You don’t like Dire Straits?”

“He doesn’t appreciate good music.” Joel interjects, shaking his head at Tommy.

“I do - but other music. Eminem or even fuckin’ Britney! Anything but this shit.” Tommy groans, tossing his head back.

“Keep talking smack about Dire Straits, Miller - and I’ll snitch to your wife about the fact you’ve switched patrols with Mark twice this week because you were too hungover to go.” You smile sweetly at Tommy, tilting your head.

“Snitches get stitches.” Tommy remarks playfully, not an ounce of malice in his dark brown eyes and your eyebrows rise, you beam back.

“That right? Well, troublesome men get barred for life.”

“Oooooh.” Joel chimes in, looking amusedly between you and his younger brother.

“Touché.” Tommy quips, folding his arms.

“Tell you what, next time I’m in, I’ll have a rummage out back and see if I can find you some Britney. Bless you.” You pinch his cheek as you walk past and he swats your hand, rubbing the spot while Joel laughs.

“You’re pushing your luck giving her lip, I’m not sure if you’re aware but this is the only operational bar in Wyoming.”

“Tell me about it.” He grumbles back, Joel shakes his head once more as the door behind Tommy on the back wall opens.

“Joeeeeeel?!” He hears yelled from close by, he looks up and sees Ellie dragging her sneakers across the floor, scouring the bar for him with her honey coloured eyes eagerly. She spots him within seconds, beaming and practically skipping over to him and Tommy in the corner. “There you are, I looked fucking everywhere for you.” She groans dramatically, throwing her head back. “I wanna go out, I’m bored shitless at home. There’s nothing for me to do and yes - I’ve done my school work.” She quickly adds.

“You done those quadratic equation questions we were going over last night?” He raises his eyebrow.

“Yep. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, though I did ask my teacher because I’m pretty sure you were figuring them out wrong. You were, by the way.” Joel puffs indignantly, rolling his eyes. Ellie spins to Tommy, the soles of her shoes squeaking. “Can I try that?” She’s laser focused on the bourbon swimming between globes of ice in Tommy’s glass.

“What have I said the last twenty times you’ve asked, El?” Tommy’s dark brows are high on his forehead, his mouth is twisted with hidden laughter. Ellie rolls her eyes with annoyance, sloping over to Joel now.

“No.” She huffs, swinging her lanky arms around Joel. She hums and rubs her face into his shoulder bone, resting there for a second before her attentions shifts comically fast. There’s a warmth that spreads through Joel every single time she does this, she’s so casual about it and he’s drawn the conclusion that it’s a teenage thing because Sarah was the same. There’s a sadness that blossoms too, a darkness that twists and anchors in his chest as he thinks of her and who she’d be now. He can’t dwell for too long, not now - he did that for too long.

At one dark point in time, human connection was not key to survival, hence why he always kept Tess at arms length and then referred to Ellie as cargo until one snowy day it became apparent she was no longer cargo when she was frenzied and panting in his arms, splattered with the blood of a predator and gasping like she was taking her last breath. The sound haunted him for a long time, all memories of Sarah hitting him like a freight train. He had to protect Ellie, the minute he drew her in - oh baby girl - and held her tightly, wrapped in his coat and clinging to him just as hard.

Ellie’s his kid now. She’s his. He’s hers. They’re a family. Ellie Williams Miller - that’s how she’s known now. It’s scrawled on her school books. The love he feels for this human tornado in sneakers is unmatched, the one thing he’s ever been truly good at has been restored and it’s a role he knows well; being a father.

Sure, this teenager that he’s raising is the furthest from bubblegum pink and Avril Lavigne she could be, she’s particularly jagged around the edges and does have the temperament of an unsocialised cat that will bite if you get too close.

He looks down at her, rubbing into him like she’s trying to get his smell on her because it’s comforting and she feels safe and feels his heart ready to burst.

Of course the sweet moment of affection is shattered when Ellie yawns directly into his fucking ear because why wouldn’t she?

He grunts when she bears most of her weight on his aching shoulders, leaning easily into him and twisting her small fingers into his flannel.

“So? Can I go or not?” She presses.

“Go where?” He prompts, raising his eyebrow.

“Toni’s from school. Her cat had kittens a few weeks ago and they’re starting to play. Five of them, Joel! That’s a lotta kittens!” Ellie enunciates, brown eyes wide and Joel can’t help the smile that graces his otherwise tired face.

“You mean a litter?” He corrects and Ellie pauses, frowning.

“Huh?”

“A bunch of kittens is a litter, Ellie.” He informs her and she somehow manages to frown even more, she makes a noise like she’s computing the new information.

“Yeah, whatever.” She mumbles, Tommy snorts in amusement. “So I can go see them?” She presses, shifting her weight again and Joel groans louder now, unhooking her arms from his shoulders with a quiet ‘don’t do that, baby’ that’s full of affection.

“Yes but you’re back at nine latest, okay? Nine. I’ll be waiting for you, the minute those street lamps turn on, you’re home.” Joel says, Ellie’s mouthing along to his instructions that he’s been laying out since Summer began and the evenings stretched longer. “Be good.” He speaks more softly now and she nods, he presses a kiss to the side of her head, her eyelashes flutter happily as the warmth blossoms in her too with the security that’s Joel Miller.

“Peesh. I’m always good. Bye Tommy!” She says excitedly, fist bumping him when it’s offered.

“See ya, squirt.” Tommy replies but before he’s even voiced his reply, Ellie’s hurrying away and knocking into a patron while waving to you on the way out of the door so hard it slams. Joel sighs, thinking she’s a literal hurricane.

The door hinge has barely stopped shaking before Tommy starts with the suggestions of suitors once more.

“What about Myleene?” Tommy proposes, Joel shakes his head quickly, downing the remainder of his drink.

“Too young.” He replies.

“She’s twenty five.”

“Too young.” He repeats firmer this time.

“Okay, fine. What about Michelle? She’s what forty? I was talking to her in the cobblers the other day, she’s definitely interested - mentioned something about making you a pie?”

“I’m good.” He grumbles looking down into his empty glass but quickly shifting his gaze to the bar, you’re leaning on your elbows, laughing heartily with a patron.

You look beautiful tonight - just like every other night. Your shoulders are sunkissed, your cheeks a little flushed and skin glowing from the summer humidity. He absorbs the way your hair tumbles down your shoulders and the way the thin straps of your tiered sundress slip down occasionally, only to be tugged back into place with dexterous fingers.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.” Tommy jibes, Joel looks over with a firm scowl.

“What?” He asks, Tommy shakes his head.

“You can dream, brother.” Joel rolls his eyes, trying to act nonchalant. “She’s got a boyfriend anyway.” Tommy adds, Joel eyes him with full attention.

“A boyfriend?” He asks, trying to be sure he heard right.

“Yeah, overheard her talking to one of the girls in the garden a few days ago. Didn’t mention no names but she definitely said she was seein’ someone.” Tommy shrugged, Joel hummed with interest. “Anyway, it don’t matter because she’s way out of your league.”

“Thanks.” Joel retorts, sneaking one last look before focusing on the door behind Tommy, the one Ellie had not long barrelled in and out of just moments ago.

He wonders about the kittens she mentioned and gulps as he imagines her taking to one with its big eyes and soft paws, his mind is pulled back to a time in April when he’d come downstairs one morning to a sink full of tad poles she’d ‘rescued’ from birds out of the neighbours pond.

Basically, his girl can’t resist animals she deems too vulnerable to leave.

“Scared Ellie’s gonna come home with one of them kittens?” Tommy wonders, reading Joel’s mind.

“Terrified.”

********************************************

The sun is setting in bursts of burnt orange and marigold by the time he leaves Tommy to his own devices at the bar, he hazards a look around as he makes his way in the complete opposite direction to his and Ellie’s house.

He slinks around the back of the school house, slithering through the gap and walking up the winding path that leads to the stables. He climbs the short fence and hops to the other side, his boots kick up the dust from the dirt path and the crickets chirp beneath the skyline.

With one more look around, he opens to rear door to the stables and slips inside, shutting it softly behind him.

Immediately he hears the horses further down huff and puff, he can make out the swish of their tails hitting the walls as they munch on hay, there’s a neigh that is absolutely Shimmer kicking up a fuss about something.

He slopes around the riding gear and sees you leaning against the wall, hands behing your back. You grin.

“Took your time, cowboy. Was beginning to think you couldn’t take the hint and stood me up.”

“Never, honey.” Joel prowls towards you, ready to grab you. “Missed you.”

“You just saw me.”

“Not the same.” He yanks you close like a man starved, you’d shared company less than 24 hours ago but you greet and leave each other like it’s the last time you’ll ever be together. It’s the apocalypse affect, you know that, he does too

This arrangement had been going on for almost two months now, all started by a late night patrol together where you’d shared more about yourselves in an eight hour shift than both of your time in Jackson combined. There was an instant attraction, it was so easy to talk to one another and that’s what you did every single time you were partnered together and it became the highlight of your day. It started innocently and friendship had bloomed, then before you knew it you were sharing a rum laced thermos of tea with him in the bed of a truck and kissing him with reddened cheeks shortly thereafter. You’d first slept together in the same truck, just as dawn began to break. It was clumsy and quick but you couldn’t get enough of one another. You hadn’t cum but Joel promised next time would be better which lead to the question of next time? You’d been seeing each other most nights since.

Any chance you got, you were together. Nobody knew about you both, hence why Tommy was incessantly trying to hook Joel up with other women around town and jealousy burned as you listened in on their one sided conversations in the bar whenever you were covering for Darius.

You’d left the bar shortly before Joel had, waving farewell to him and Tommy, coming straight up here to check on the mare just as you’d told Denton. This was a usual spot to meet Joel, it wasn’t your first rodeo in the stables with him. It was the one place you could be alone after a certain time.

“Were you hiding from me, honey? Hmm?” He growls playfully, pulling you to him even though you were barely a millimetre away in the first place. You hum in response, so utterly lost in him. You’re nuzzling his throat, fisting his shirt, desperate for his attention. “God, you look so good today.” He murmurs, mouth finding yours. You moan softly, standing on your tip toes and kissing him in a way that makes his lungs and loins burn alike. His grey tinged moustache prickles your upper lip beautifully, his beard feels familiar beneath your soft hands.

He’s crowding you and guiding you backwards, kissing you hotly in a sense that makes your cunt throb eagerly. You moan into his mouth when he nips your bottom lip, squeezing the left cheek of your ass.

You love when he’s like this - playful and easy. He feels lightyears younger around you, it’s like the heaviness dissipates the moment he’s in your company. He loses himself in the way you smell, the way your hair feels when his fingers are entwined between the sun kissed strands, the way in which your eyes sparkle with mischief.

It’s easy to pull him towards the back of the stable, where the bales of hay were stacked created a nice wall of privacy. You’d been in here a couple of times with him, having gone as far to stash a flannel blanket in one of the cupboards to lay down as to protect you both from the cold floor and the prickle of loose hay.

Once behind the hay and seated on a bale with you in his lap, strong hands are moving the thin straps of your sundress down your shoulders, you momentarily break away from his mouth to aid the removal of your dress to your waist where Joel roughly bunches it up so that your underwear is now on show and so are your tits.

His eyes light up at your bare chest, like he hasn’t seen your breasts countless times before. One thing among many that you first noticed was that Joel Miller is a tit man through and through. His rough and work toughened hands cup them both gently before his tongue swirls around your left nipple.

“Joel.” You murmur, arching into him, rolling your hips into his. He’s hard already, age not affecting him like that in the slightest. He’s a hot blooded male, every single inch a man and that warms you to your core. You grab his hand, bringing it to the top of your panties and he slides it in without hesitation.

“Christ.” He curses, exploring your lips with his fingertips, gliding through the dewy wetness gathered there and coming back up for a split second to drag it over your clit roughly. You whimper, bucking into his hand. “Mmm, babydoll.” Joel huffs against your cheek in a hot pant, repeating the action.

“Need you so badly, Joel. Almost got started without you.” You confess.

“Fuck. You can’t- don’t say shit like that, honey.” He growls lowly, unbelievably hard beneath you. His fingers explore again, you aid his explorations by canting your hips just so.

Joel is eager to get things moving, he’s hard and frustrated, he has a beautiful woman in his lap and the perfect setting. He pulls his hand from your underwear, looking down to see the shine of you on him. He loses his mind when you take his hand and lead it to your mouth, sucking the tips of his index and middle finger as he watches with eyes blown wide; they look black instead of the earthy brown that sometimes melts into caramel or runny honey.

The minute you hum like a content cat, he has you lifted off his lap and braced against him. You squeal at the sudden shift, the ceiling looking closer than the floor but then he gently lays you back on the blanket and settles between your legs.

“Hey, who was Tommy trying to set you up with?” You blurt, Joel pauses.

“Cath.”

“She’s gay.” You frown.

“Michelle too.” He adds before diving down into your chest, pressing your breasts together, mouthing at the swell.

“I’m not sure you’re Michelle’s type, she’s a cougar apparently.” You remark, Joel ignores you in favour of sucking your nipples until they feel raw. “Why Michelle? I don’t understand why Tommy thinks she’s a good match for you.” You don’t know why this is coming up now, your mouth seems to have a mind of its own, the jealousy settling like lead in your stomach.

“He said she wants to make me a pie.” Joel pipes up, the confession half muffled.

“What kind of pie?” You ask, pulling his face from your tits. Joel groans frustratedly, looking up at you with eyes dark and deadly.

“I don’t know. Why does that even matter?”

“A cream pie probably.” You snarl under your breath, the jealousy swirling in the pit of your stomach like a rattled viper.

Joel laughs, shaking his head and coaxing your mouth back to his. “Gross.” He murmurs, kissing you softly and squeezing your hips as if to guide you back. “You know I only like your cream pies.” He jokes, this time you break into a smile.

“Now whose gross?” You snort, tugging his plain grey undershirt over his head and to the side. You run your palms over his chest and down to his softer stomach, digging your nails in as they drag a long his skin. Goosebumps erupt all over him.

Joel is softer in his older age but strong too, years of walking different terrain, heavy lifting and fighting have made him lean also.

You hum contentedly, tracing over those familiar scars that have been made in the 20 years since the world imploded.

“He said you were out of my league.” Joel suddenly admits, resting his hands on your spread knees. You frown up at him. “Tommy said you were out of my league.”

“Tell Tommy he doesn’t know shit.” You retort with an eye roll, grabbing Joel by his belt and yanking him forward. “I like you, Joel. Fuck what anyone else thinks, it’s not anyone’s business who we choose to be with.” You say softly now, kissing your way up his chin to his lips. “I like you.” You affirm again, Joel kisses you tenderly, weaving his hand into your hair as you moan quietly.

“Well, I like you too.” He says, kissing you with so much passion yet so much tenderness all at the same time as you fumble to unbuckle his belt. You yank it apart, tugging open the button and prying the worn denim apart with the hiss of his zipper.

He barely lets you wrap a hand around him over his boxers before he has both your wrists pinned above your head, you make a sad whine but all disappointment quickly dissipates when he shuffles down the length of your torso and yanks your underwear down so fast you feel the material leave a friction burn. He grabs your thighs and then manoeuvres your legs by the backs of your knees, you like where this seems to be going.

Your spine curves against the hard floor when his mouth makes that first contact, he starts slow with a lick up the length of you, then he lightly suckles your lips and gently licks over the hood of your clitoris.

“Joel.” You murmur, twisting the blanket beneath your fingertips, scrunching it and bitting down on your lower lip as he continues his gentle assault on your clit, the rubber toes of your hi tops dig into his ribs almost painfully.

His thumb comes up to gently push the hood of your clit back, the sensation of his tongue directly stimulating the nerve causes you to gasp and wind one hand down into his hair, you tug and he groans against you.

You’re transported back to one of the first times you’d been intimate together after sleeping together in the truck.

For some reason, it had shocked you that Joel Miller ate pussy like a champ. The first time he’d gone down on you - behind the bar just after you’d blown him - you’d prepared yourself for dissatisfaction and disappointment, only it never came. Joel had licked into you with such ferocity and precision that you’d almost keened over.

He’d made you cum so quickly that you’d barely had time to process the first swipe of his tongue on your clitoris and the climax that followed minutes later.

He’d looked up at you, moustache and beard slick with his eyes wide; ‘I forgot how much I enjoyed doing that’ he’d panted while you squeaked back in shock.

Now, as you live in the moment, you feel that tingle of pleasure building but you don’t want to cum without him inside of you. As much as it pains you, you tug on his hair, urging him back up.

“Wanna cum with you.” You pant when he looks up with dazed brown eyes, frowning a little. He seems to accept that and sits up, shucking his jeans and boxers down over his ass with the help of your clumsy hands. “Lay back.” You demand, he does so and you move to take his place.

You throw your legs over his and settle above his lap, he’s got one arm behind his head and watches as you take him in your first and tease yourself with the flushed tip of him. He breathes in sharply through his nose as you do it again before notching him at the site of your heat, you steady yourself and begin to sink down.

“Fuck me.” Joel sighs, closing his eyes briefly because he’s so sure he’s in heaven. The sensation of your wet heat surrounding him never gets old, he’d forgotten how much he loved sex before meeting you.

“You’re so big, Joel.” You whimper, stroking his ego deliciously and he hates to be such a guy but the compliment goes straight to his dick.

“Fuck, honey. Take what you want, I’m yours - just fuck me.” He begs as you slowly begin to move, your nails scrape across his torso as you fall into an easy rhythm of rolling your hips into his. “You’re so fucking perfect, baby.” He babbles, looking up and admiring the curve of your back and the way your tits bounce as you ride him.

“Mmm.” You whine, picking up the pace and throwing your head back which exposes your jugular and Joel just wants to sink his teeth into you because you truly look good enough to eat.

“Come here, babydoll.” He urges, pulling you down so you’re chest to chest. Your peer at him with pretty doe eyes, your lashes flutter as they shut to kiss him deeply, your tongue swipes his and you taste the tang of yourself on him. You moan louder when he manages to plant his boots on the floor and thrust up into you roughly, tangling his hand in your hair to keep you pressed against him.

It’s so hot in the stables, you’re both sticky and warm. But with your pretty moans and keens filling the air, Joel manages to easily forget the irritation from the heat.

You push against his chest to sit up and Joel grabs your hips, guiding you easily and you feel yourself getting close but you can’t achieve orgasm through penetration alone.

You brace one hand on his thigh behind you, tipping your head back as the pleasure becomes almost too much to handle. Your hips roll in an easy rhythm, his cock head hitting your G spot perfectly and you whine when the hand on your left hip moves ever so slightly until Joel was able to thumb your clit. He knows you so well.

“Oh f - fuck. You feel so good, you’re so good - fuck.” You babble, your hips moving faster.

“Jesus christ.” Joel huffs, throwing his head back against the hard floor, biting his bottom lip hard to stave off his orgasm. You feel so good wrapped around him; wet and snug, like crushed velvet.

He knows he can’t stay like this, he’s too close to finishing and he can sense you’re not quite there yet despite being edged so he makes the conscious decision to hold you and flip you both over with a nimbleness he didn’t know he possessed in his older age.

You stutter out a choked moan, arching into his strong hands. You drag your nails down his toned back, leaving a little spatter of blood in the red tracks.

Joel hisses when your nails puncture the skin on the globes of his ass, somehow trying to pull him closer and push him away at the same time.

“Where?” He asks, nodding downwards as he fights off his climax.

“Inside.” You reply without hesitation. You’d counted your cycle days, marking in a blank notebook the day number and your symptoms, pretty accurately guessing your fertile window and probable ovulation day by cervical mucus alone. You were four days from your period being due, it was safe.

“You sure?” He hesitates, brow furrowed hard with concentration, he’s a stroke away from finishing. He knows better than most people to not trust the pull out method and he knows the importance of contraception but he still ended up a Dad before he hit his mid twenties. Pushing sixty he’s still playing a dangerous game but so far, neither of you had gotten burnt.

“Yeah.” You gasp, fingers on your clit rubbing faster. You groan suddenly and twist into him, making pretty little whimpers and purring. He groans too, thrusting in hard once, twice and then three times. You feel his cock stiffen and twitch, then the pulse of subtle warmth of his cum spreading inside and aiming for your cervix. He works himself through it, you push in return as the aftershocks slow to a flat line.

Joel heaves a breath, resting on his forearms as you lazily kiss his neck in satisfaction and rapture. You sit there for a minute, basking in the afterglow until Joel grows too stiff and has to withdraw from you slowly, kneeling up between your legs to pull his boxers and jeans back up but he leaves them unbuttoned and his belt loose.

You don’t miss the primal look in his eyes when they drift to between your legs, he can see his cum leaking and the pearlescent finish it leaves on your lips. His cock twitches, perhaps if he was younger he could go for another round but alas, he settles next to you on the blanket, pulling you to his chest and cushioning your head with a strong bicep.

“I think that might have been the best time yet.” You pant breathlessly, looking up at the ceiling and seeing the evening sky through the cracks of wood.

“Maybe one day we can do it in an actual bed, I’m not sure how much more of these places my back can take.” Joel jokes, you giggle and turn into him, listening to the rapid pace of his heartbeat as it settles, a perfect mirror of your own.

“Not bad for an old timer.” You tease, giggling when he growls and squeezes your hip.

“Was patrol okay today?” Joel questions you, you nod lazily against him. “You come across anything?” Now you speak, leaning up to peer down at him.

“A couple of runners. We shot them in that abandoned gas station near the entrance to the offices off the trail. I think they were probably people passing through, one was infected on the journey and turned, then bit the other.” Joel hums, rubbing your lower back and hip. “I have some things for Ellie I found, by the way. I’ll drop them over tomorrow. Nothing crazy, just some things I thought she needed.” You say between kisses down Joel’s chest and sternum, your delicate fingers tracing out old battle scars.

“What like?” He asks, catching your hand as it reaches his happy trail, bringing it to his lips instead where he presses tender kisses to your fingertips.

“Pyjamas, underwear and some toiletries. Oh! And get this, a new casette tape for her walkman.”

“What tape?”

“Teardrops.” You grin.

“Womack and Womack? She’s gonna love that.” Joel says, laying back and smiling at the ceiling of the stables, humming the song in his head. “Fuck, I haven’t heard that song in - jesus - years.” He’s frowning, contemplating lost time, the whole concept of time evades him, it never used to at the start but now? It’s one big jumble, his time is defined by events and not a calendar.

“She still playing that one you got her on repeat?” You wonder.

“Yeah.”

“What was it again?”

“Bowie. Heroes.” Joel replies.

“Nice.” You nod.

As you lie there together in an easy silence, content to be together in the quiet solace of the stables, Joel’s mind wanders back to his earlier conversation with his younger brother:

“Hey, er - Tommy actually said something else earlier.” Joel winces at how awkward he sounds and you huff loudly, ready to hear what other dumbass thing he’s said. “He said he heard you say you have a boyfriend or that you were seein’ someone.”

You sit up, frowning down at Joel.

“Okay…” You reply hesitantly, uneasy now. “Am I not seeing you?” You frown.

“No - no! It’s… that came out wrong. I just meant - “ Joel grumbles, covering his face momentarily while you try to will your stomach from not sinking. “I don’t know, I just wanted to know if you meant me.”

“Seriously, Joel? This conversation is going so well.” You say dryly, utterly unimpressed.

“No! Oh my god! I can’t do this.” He groans, realising his mistake. “I’m sorry, that came out so wrong.” Joel apologises, you snort.

“Look Joel, I was talking to Mrs Patterson in the garden and she was telling me about her late husband, saying how lovely he was and how men just aren’t like that anymore. She asked if I’d found anyone and I let it slip that I was seeing someone, I didn’t mention any names and I can totally understand why you’re freaked when we haven’t even had that conversation ourselves. I shouldn’t have assumed this was anything more than sex, I’m sorry.” You annunciate, warm in the cheeks.

“You want to just have sex?” Joel is sat up now, matching your frazzled expression.

“If that’s what you want.” You shrug, taking an interest in your cuticles. A large hand lays over yours, squeezing. You shift your focus to his knuckles instead, tracing out the scars.

“Honey, look at me.” He urges softly, you hesitantly meet his eyes. “I think somewhere we’ve miscommunicated.”

“How so?” You press.

“Look… it’s been a long time since I’ve done this, I’m a little rusty. I’m sorry if I haven’t been clear about what we are or what I want us to be, I kinda just assumed you knew and yeah, that’s real shitty of me.” He says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “But I wanna be exclusive with you, honey. I mean, I have Ellie to think about so we’ll need to go slow just so I can ease her into the change. Is that okay?” He whispers, pressing his forehead to yours.

“That’s more than okay, Joel. I completely understand, I don’t want to spook Ellie either.” You confirm, Joel let’s out a relieved sigh.

“Good - good, okay. We’ll figure it out, baby.” He assures you, nuzzling his nose against yours and kissing you softly.

It’s easy to lose yourself in Joel Miller, you’re swept up in the gruff voice and strong arms, the softness beneath his outer shell reserved for those closest to him.

You’re kissing him back in earnest, he’s reclining to lay back down with you on top of him and you’re sure this could lead to round two or at least head from either one of you, maybe even both.

However, the moment is spoiled when you hear voices creeping closer to the stables. You both stiffen and wait, looking at each other with eyes opened wide.

The voices are getting closer and you decipher it’s two sets, it’s not made clear who it is until they’re walking behind the stables and you can see their shadows slink between the thin gaps in the planks.

It’s Ellie and Tommy.

You and Joel scramble, you yank your dress back over your breasts and pull the hem of it over your ass. Your panties are on the floor and you narrowly dodge Joel’s elbow as he hastily buckles his jeans back up just in time for the door around the corner to open with a shriek of the hinges.

“What if he’s gone out on patrol without telling me? Or maybe he’s swapped with someone and gone hunting? I know I’m back way earlier than he said but he said he’d be home! Do you think he’s left the gate? What if he’s hurt? What if - “ Ellie begins to ramble and Tommy sighs.

“Kiddo, stop worrying. I’m sure he’s around here somewhere, let’s look at the whiteboard and see if his name’s on there. I highly doubt he’s swapped shifts and he wouldn’t leave without telling you, he’s gotta be around here some…” Tommy’s reassurance comes to a stop when he round the corner of the hay bale wall and abruptly stops, staring at you and Joel with as much shock as you return.

Ellie slams into his back and he wobbles but his gaze never falters.

“What the fuck, man!” Ellie exclaims, shoving Tommy and stepping around his statue like form but also freezing too.

You look between them both, trying to formulate an excuse but Joel shoving his t-shirt on, the fact your clothes are crumpled and there’s absolutely hay in your tousled hair says it all.

Your panties are shoved behind your back out of view.

“Well I’ll be damned, you’re the guy she’s seein’!.” Tommy snorts, looking between you both. Joel growls, yanking on his flannel while Ellie manually retrieves her jaw from the floor.

“What the fuck is this?” She asks, looking between you and Joel. “You have a girlfriend? What the fuck, dude? You didn’t say anything!” She fumes, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Look, it’s complicated and new.” He says, which placates her slightly. She stares at you again and you see the betrayal hidden behind a scowl, she looks at Joel again.

“Fine. I guess this isn’t that bad, it could be worse - we could of caught you with Esther.”

“That’s true.” Tommy nods, pointing at Ellie, she nods back.

“Esther?” You question, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, Tommy’s neighbour, she totally fancies Joel.” Ellie tells you. “You should fight her.”

“No, she doesn’t and stop shit stirring.” Joel warns Ellie, she hides a smirk which tells you she’s winding Joel up.

“I could take Esther.” You say, playing along, Ellie’s eyes brighten with mischief.

“Nobody’s fighting no one.” Joel settles, you’re all silent for a millisecond and then Tommy throws in his two cence.

“You could take Esther.” He agrees.

“Enough about Esther, please!” Joel begs, beside himself.

“This is fucking embarrassing, Joel. What the fuck do you expect us to do? It’s awkward!” Ellie complains, Tommy nods in agreement, you do too.

“Yeah? Try being where we’re stood, kid.” He retorts.

Ellie kinda has to resist the urge to throw up in her mouth because Joel has sex which is so horrifying that she almost can’t bare to look at him but she’s equally happy for him and utterly disgusted, she swallows back a retch.

“Fine, whatever. I’m very happy for you and my da - Joel.” Ellie bursts and corrects herself at the last minute, you don’t miss the hitch in Joel’s breathing but this is not the time for that discussion. “I’m willing to negotiate a price for the emotional damage you’ve both caused me by lying to me, sneaking around and also having sex in front of my horse.” She lists.

“My horse too!” Tommy adds.

“And Tommy’s horse too, Crash and Shimmer didn’t want to see your bare ass.” Ellie continues and for some reason Joel knows exactly where this is going, so he braces himself.

“Name your price.” He bites, Ellie looks at him with a levelling glare, it’s getting hard not to laugh when you see Tommy observing like he’s watching a mafia deal go down.

“A kitten.” Ellie reveals.

He fucking knew it.

[bighungrywolf]

Dan looked at himself in the gym locker room mirror somewhat disappointed with the progress he was making. He had been training his pecs today, and even with the pump he had received from his workout his chest didn't look as big as he wanted it to. It was then that he saw out of the corner of his eye a guy admiring how he was strapping his pecs in front of the mirror, while trying without much success to conceal a clear erection. At the sight of that boy, so weak compared to his great body, an internal fire was lit inside him, a flame that needed embers to ignite even more.

When their gazes met, the boy looked away, pretending he was on to something else. This excited Dan even more. "Oooog, I love it when they play coy, it makes them look like a helpless little lamb."

Without missing a beat, Dan walked up to the boy and said:

-Do you like my pecs? They feel better than they look, wouldn't you like to caress them a little?

The boy, completely losing his shyness and seeing himself engrossed by those mountains that were Dan's pecs, got up from the bench, and started rubbing every inch of Dan's pecs, from his erect nipples to his cleavage all sweaty from the friction of those two pairs of pectorals.

-I see you like them, do you want me to show you a trick? I can make them grow," Dan said, still smiling and not taking his eyes off the boy who was working his tits thoroughly. As he said this, he led the boy's hands to his cleavage, pressing them between his two big man boobs. The boy understood as Dan wanted him to admire that part of his pecs, but however, when he went to pull his hands out to touch his nipples again, he realized that his hands were stuck, and not only that, he could feel how a force was pulling him, inserting part of his arms between Dan's two chunks of pec meat, which were starting to look bigger and bigger. -Oooog, I love to see the surprised face of my prey, they never expect this final trick. Wait, now comes the good part- just as he finished saying this, Dan grabbed the boy's head tightly from behind, pushing him on his chest and making him sink deeper into it, after which he let out a deep moan of pleasure- Hmmmmm, yes, now be a good boy, and worship my pecs from the inside, ok?

Soon there would be nothing left of that boy, except a tremendous pec pump in Dan, who at last looking in the mirror was satisfied with the size of his pectorals, though perhaps adding another incautious guy to the equation wouldn't hurt.