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morning-star-joy · 1 year

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honey don't feed it, it will come back (Joel x F!Reader)

Pairing: Bodyguard!Joel x Sex Worker F!Reader

Summary: You run a brothel in the Boston QZ, devoting yourself to taking care of your girls. When the safety of one is threatened, you hire a bodyguard in the form of the surly Joel Miller to protect them. Little did you know that you were going to become his new favorite vice, and him your favorite addiction.

Warnings: MDNI Explicit Smut (oral f receiving, v fingering, Joel jacks off while going down on Reader, dirty talk, bit of a sir kink, bit of a brat tamer dynamic). Pet names (baby, darlin’, sweetheart). Alcohol/drug use. Sex work (Joel listens to Reader). Age gap (20 years). Mentions of physical assault (towards minor characters, never from Joel. Not stated to be sexual assault but it can be inferred as such, so please take care of yourselves).

Wordcount: 9.6k (how the fuck)

joel miller masterlist

The world was fucked to all hell and back, and so what did men do in those circumstances?

“Oh fuck,” your customer was grunting as he fucked into you from behind, your hands on the headboard as it rocked against the wall to keep yourself up, breathy moans expertly leaving your lips to spur them on, even if you hadn’t felt an inkling of desire in years.

Yeah.

They fucked.

Fight or flight were often referred to in the first years following the Outbreak, a default of survival instinct that most everybody resorted to in order to survive.

But fucking was the much less talked about, incredibly prevalent third option.

It became clear in the Quarantine Zones that there was a need to be filled here, a way to satisfy that urge in a way that wouldn’t cause a barely held-together society inside high walls to erupt into chaos.

From this need, brothels made an appearance. While FEDRA had nothing to do with the establishments officially, they turned a very convenient blind eye to the street corners where women trying to make some kind of a living in the QZ took up their stations, tempting any lonely man who may wander by into a night of needed release.

It was a dangerous profession, in its own way. Contraceptives were long expired twenty years after the society collapsed, and even if a client pulled out at the best time and you were keeping track of your cycle, there was always the risk of being put out of work for around 9 months if you were unlucky.

And then came the obsession.

Clients could become far too eager far too quickly, addicted to the touch and feeling of a certain girl, mistaking lust for affection and lurking around those street corners before the night even came or, worse, outside the brothel doors.

You’d experienced it first-hand and through other girls, but it wasn’t until one of the younger ones came to you with a black eye and bruised jaw that you had had enough.

“Who did it?” you said in a low tone, breathing deeply in and out through your nose as you tried to control yourself, reigning yourself back in from the need to grab the gun you kept tucked in the top drawer of your rickety old nightstand and find who the fuck had laid their hands on one of your girls in such a way.

After years of being in the business, you had gone from only taking clients to keeping a watchful eye over the other women who made the same living you did. Your glory days were mostly behind you, but you still had your reputation, even after the incident that left you with a jagged scar that stretched vertically across the right side of your face, from above your eyebrow, down across your eye to just below your cheekbone.

Those clients you did still have preferred to fuck you with you facing away from them now, but you weren’t complaining. Not seeing their ugly faces as they used you to cum helped you dissociate, focus your thoughts on how well you were going to eat the next few days because of a few minutes of sacrifice.

The young woman whose lip was trembling as you held her hands gently in yours now was hardly past her early twenties, a sweet young thing who you had taken under your wing when she confessed needing a way to get some extra ration cards for her little brother who had gotten sick recently.

You had snuck Isabel some of your own ration cards with each of her payments, not caring that you had a bit less to eat each night, especially when she had come to you a couple weeks later with a bright smile and the news that her brother’s health had improved.

Now that smile that could light up the whole goddamn QZ was nowhere to be seen, an abject horror darkening her gaze, making her angelic face gaunt as you reached up to gently hold it, tilting it so you could assess the extent of the damage.

Her eyes, a deep honeyed brown that had drawn in the most clients your brothel had seen in years, were avoiding yours as you searched for her gaze, and you gently directed her face back towards you, voice softer as you implored her, “Isabel. Please, talk to me, babygirl.”

A choked sob was the first sound to leave her mouth then at the sound of your genuine affection. The world may be fucked, but protecting these girls was your purpose. And the thought of not being enough to protect them, for one of them to come to you like this…

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” you whispered as her petite form collapsed against yours, holding her close as you smoothed a hand over the tangles in her hair, gently combing them out with your fingers as your other hand rubbed at her back. “It’ll be okay, love. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

Even as you assured her, a fear was creating pressure in the back of your mind, causing the first of many sleepless nights as you tried to figure out how to make sure this could never happen again.

You sat at your little makeshift desk in your tiny room on the top floor of the brothel, a cheap cigarette you had just gotten from a couple smugglers perched between your fingers as you slowly exhaled the smoke, staring down at your incoherent scribbled notes.

With a groan, you pushed yourself away from the desk, standing to cross over to the small window on the wall, gazing out in paranoia to make sure there were no dark shadows lingering nearby, waiting to get a hold of one of your girls if they didn’t want it.

Glancing back down at the lit cigarette, you pondered your few options.

FEDRA was not a viable source for protection. Yes, they turned a blind eye on your activities, but they would never risk their image by offering guards for your girls. Besides, you didn’t trust anybody in one of those uniforms within an inch of your life.

Fireflies weren’t a fucking option either. Those jackasses were so far up the proverbial ass of justice that they couldn’t see the actual struggles of the real people around them, subjecting them to be collateral in whatever useless statement they were making lately.

The cigarette was raised halfway to your lip when you paused, staring down at it as you suddenly had a small epiphany.

Who did you know that had not an ounce of a moral code, but a strong work ethic and determination to get the job done for a good deal that promised a stack of ration cards?

A smirk curled onto your lips then as you brought the cigarette back to them, placing it in your mouth as you took a long drag, exhaling it towards the window and watching it fog up the glass as you realized exactly who you were heading to.

“We don’t do protection,” your smuggling contact was saying, her voice as gruff and no-nonsense as always, and you sighed, meeting her sharp green eyes straight on as you shifted to cross your legs.

“Don’t bullshit me, Tess,” you said flatly back, your voice not harsh, but definitely firm, calling her out on her bluff even as you saw her ever-present guard dog shift a ways behind her at your tone. “You’ll do anything for a good trade. And I have that.”

“I don’t wanna fuck your girls,” Tess dismissed, waving her hand as if to brush the thought away, and you rolled your eyes, even as you couldn’t help a smirk, glancing at your associate with a small hint of mirth that matched her own.

“I’m not offering that,” you replied honestly, slowly drumming your fingers at the small table you were both seated at in one of the back alleys where these deals tended to go down. Public enough to avoid a shootout, but private enough to avoid FEDRA breathing down your backs. “My girls get paid for their work. So would you.”

Tess raised an eyebrow then, leaning in just a fraction, and you knew that you had captured just a fraction of her attention.

Good. You could work with that.

“What are we talking?” she asked in a low tone, voice still disinterested, gaze still closed off, but you knew that would change when you laid out the conditions of the deal.

When you did—offering a heft of ration cards (that they didn’t need to know was almost your entire cut of the brothel’s proceeds) for an able body to keep watch at your brothel during active business hours—Tess leaned back again, eyes flickering over your face as she processed the information.

“You know I’m good for it, Tess,” you implored, allowing a bit of emotion to creep into your tone now as you meet her gaze, hoping she would hear what you were asking for, woman to woman. “And these girls…they need it.”

She frowned then, sympathy flashing over her face as she glanced over yours, hearing what went unsaid.

Tess began to turn her head slightly over her shoulder, though she didn’t bother sparing a glance back as she called, “Joel.”

That was the first time you think you’d heard the name of her silent, watchful companion.

You knew that they were a package deal, but whenever you met with Tess, he lingered in the background, making sure you didn’t lay a hand on her.

Good, you thought to yourself, glancing over at him as he pushed himself off the wall and strolled over just at the unspoken order she gave for him to approach. If he’s who she has in mind, hopefully he does the same for the girls.

It was also the first time you really got a look at the man who Tess finally introduced you, explaining to the both of you how this was going to work at the same moment.

With those thick arms that could be around your neck as fast as you could blink, hardened dark eyes that were already measuring you up and calculating at least six ways to take you out before you could even open your mouth to say hello, you knew that just the sight of him in your brothel would strike fear into the depraved hearts of meeker, cowardly men.

He was older, too. Maybe had twenty years on you, and if somebody had lived that long in the apocalypse, they had to know how to get their hands fucking dirty if they needed to.

“I’ll take him,” you said back to Tess after appraising the man who would be your brothel’s bodyguard, your attention only pulled back to the hunk of muscles when you heard him scoff at your words. “There a problem?”

“I’m not a piece of meat,” he grunted, expression flat as he stared at you, and you arched an eyebrow, unamused by his comment that came right after you and Tess had agreed to the terms of the deal.

“Hate to break it to you, but a bodyguard is nothing but that,” you replied as you gracefully uncrossed your legs, rising to your feet as Tess collected their first payment from you off the table, pushing it into her front pocket as she rose from her own seat as well. “Muscle that can drop a man at a moment’s notice.”

You watched as Joel’s strong jaw ticked, your other eyebrow rising with the first as you stepped around the table, getting closer to the man than you probably should, watching as his tense shoulders bunched up even more around his ears when you approached.

“And now, you’re my muscle, Mr. Miller,” you said in a perfectly conversational tone, a practiced smile pulling onto your lips as Joel glanced down at them briefly before looking back into your eyes, his gaze narrowing as you added, “Pleasure to be doing business with you.”

Spinning on your heel, you strolled away from the smugglers towards the exit to the alley, but not without saying back over your shoulder before you got too far, “First shift’s an hour after curfew. Don’t be late.”

There was the sound of low grumbling behind you, followed by the smooth low tones of Tess’ voice, and you didn’t know why you felt the urge to laugh at that moment.

You didn’t know why, because you hadn’t laughed in years.

But you brushed that feeling aside, heading back towards your establishment to ready your girls for the change that would be coming in their worlds tonight, hoping that it would give them the peace of mind you all so desperately needed.

Whether you would be able to relax all depended on if Joel Miller could actually do his job.

He could.

One of the very first nights Joel had taken up station in the main hallway in the brothel that led off to private rooms, he had proven his worth, and then some.

You had been down the staircase in an instant when you heard the loud crash, heart racing in your chest, breath quickened from panic as you rounded down to see what had caused the loud sound.

Some thumps and bumps were common in an establishment like yours, but that sounded very much like a body not only hitting the ground, but being thrown down onto it.

What you saw then was an image that etched itself deep into your brain for the rest of your days.

Joel, your brand new, stoic bodyguard who hardly gave so much as a grunt to you or any of the girls he was hired to protect, had a half-naked man pressed to the old floorboards, knee digging right into his back to pin him down, a large hand keeping a tight grip on his neck to stop him from moving.

But what got your attention even more than the struggling client who Joel was snarling at as he roughly kept them down, was the girl who was standing behind him, arms wrapped around herself and subconsciously shifting to stay behind the bodyguard, eyes wide and relieved at the sight of him catching the out of hand customer.

You walked towards the scene that had drawn spectators in the form of clients and workers alike, peeking their heads out into the hallway to watch as you slowly knelt down in front of where the bastard was pinned so roughly to the ground that you weren’t sure he could even breathe.

Good.

You glanced up at Joel then, meeting his hard gaze with one of your own, and you gestured with a jerk of your chin towards the staircase leading down and out of your establishment that he could throw them out.

After rising to your feet, you paused next to Joel, watching from the corner of your eye as he grabbed the man roughly, yanking them to their feet and halting in his task only when you briefly laid your hand on his shoulder.

“Let him know not to come back,” you muttered under your breath, sending a sidelong glance full of unspoken things towards Joel, a tiny smirk curling onto your lips as the whimper of fear from the sick bastard and your bodyguard’s short nod let you know you’d been heard.

You walked straight towards your girl who had nearly been treated in a way you would not tolerate towards any of your women, wrapping your arm around her shoulder and pulling her against you, letting her sink into your warmth as you addressed the rest of the brothel that everything was fine, to resume their activities while Joel shoved the guy down the stairs as they started to beg for mercy.

Luckily, there weren’t many similar incidents after that one, letting you know the investment into a well-abled bodyguard for your girls had been more than worth it.

Because more than the concrete evidence of their safety, it was the palpable shift in energy at the brothel that reassured you that you had made the right choice not only in having a bodyguard, but in who you hired.

Joel never really warmed up to anybody, but all the girls had certainly grown fond of him. There were more than a few crushes on the emotionally unavailable older man who stood like a statue in the halls, ranging from innocent love to lustful fantasies.

There were a handful of times one of your girls had offered their services to him, some even trying to get him into a room free of charge, but Joel turned down every one—interestingly enough, it was never without kindness. Each time a proposition was offered, the detached bodyguard would give a slight shake of his head, mumbling a “no thank you, ma’am” in that deep Southern drawl that soon made almost every girl in that building buckle at the knees.

The fondness your girls had for Joel Miller became ingrained in the way the brothel functioned, and you knew that you couldn’t get rid of him even if you wanted to, even if that meant continuing to share a large portion of your personal livelihood with him.

And maybe you were crazy, but you thought that maybe Joel had a bit of warmth in that tiny, shriveled up heart for your girls, too. Sometimes he’d eye a client up and down before giving the girl with them a respectful nod and a polite murmur of their name as a greeting, and you didn’t know why the familiarity of the stoic man warmed your own barbed wire heart, but it did.

Maybe it was because after all the shit they’d gone through to survive long enough to reach this point, they deserved to experience an ounce of genuine kindness from a man, without having to think about what they had to offer him.

Still, Joel irritated you. Any hint of kindness he had for your girls was never shown towards you, but you didn’t let it get to you. You were his employer, and the only times you ever really interacted with each other were the few short seconds it took him to head up the stairs to your office, collect his payment with you and leave.

Besides, you weren’t exactly the most gentle with him either.

You’d taken up a habit of poking fun at your bodyguard, a little teasing here and there about things like his face getting stuck if he never unfurrowed his brow, a comment that only made him scowl further, the sight pulling forward again that urge from deep within your bones to laugh.

But you never laughed, even as you smirked up at him before turning on your heel and going on about your work keeping the place running smoothly.

That work mainly involved management and finances, but when you began to realize you soon wouldn’t be able to keep supporting yourself with keeping Joel on as a bodyguard, you knew you’d have to start doing something a little extra.

Time to go back to your roots.

For all his time working at the brothel, Joel had never seen you take a client.

In fact, he could probably count on one hand the amount of times he had seen you in the hallways, only to check on a few of the girls from time to time.

But most of the time you were holed up in that small office upstairs, the one he entered for a minute or two at a time, long enough for you to gather his payment and give it to him so he could be out of your hair—or, more accurately, to get you out of his.

Because fuck, you were irritating. You knew exactly how to get on his nerves, and Joel suspected you actually enjoyed doing so, for whatever goddamned reason.

Still, the job paid well. He was living with a bit more comfort in the QZ than he ever had before with those cushy extra ration cards.

And besides, he was actually, maybe a little bit attached to the girls who worked these streets. They were kind, just making a living in the best way they could, and needed somebody to protect them.

Maybe there was also a part of Joel that needed somebody to protect.

He had to admit though, for all his aggravation towards your mere existence, Joel did respect you. You were the person who kept this place up and running, the one who looked after every need of each woman, the lady who had cared for them enough to search for a protector to keep them safe.

Joel had honestly assumed that you didn’t do sex work at all, just judging from how you were never in one of those rooms.

But tonight, you were walking up the staircase from the base floor instead of down from your office, drawing Joel’s attention and subsequent confusion when he saw what you were wearing.

Gone were the baggy jeans you usually wore around the brothel, replaced by thigh-highs that enveloped soft skin he had never seen before. There were just hints of lace at the top of the hosiery from where the tight black dress hugging your curves rode up with each step you took.

It had to have been one of the least scantily clad outfits he’d seen down these halls, but something about the sight of you wearing it caused a lump to form in Joel’s throat, an itch curling inside his veins that needed to be scratched when you turned your head back, offering a sly smile different from any you had sent him towards somebody behind you.

When you ascended to the top of the stairs, Joel saw the man following you, his back stiffening for more than one reason.

The first reason was that he knew this man. Not personally, but he had seen them around—on wanted posters, specifically. They were a higher up in the Fireflies, one who had their eyes on every covert deal around the city, a puppet master pulling the strings.

But it was clear now that you were pulling his, a coy batting of your cunning eyes tugging him after you down the hallway, your body turned slightly towards him in a way that accentuated every curve of your body in its side profile, illuminated in the lowlights of the hall.

When you passed by Joel, eyes meeting his as they shifted into something darker—not lustful, but with clear intent—he knew the other reason he had suddenly snapped to attention.

This man was your customer.

That look you had given Joel, it was an unspoken order to keep you safe in case anything went south with this considerably more…“exclusive” customer, for lack of a better term.

You didn’t spare another glance back as you moved to a door at the end of the hall, one Joel didn’t think he had ever seen another girl enter, slipping into the room as the man followed behind you, and the door quietly clicked shut.

Joel stared at the spot where you had just been in the hallway, feet frozen to the ground until he slowly stepped forward, moving down to lean against the wall next to the room you had entered, following your silent order to stay close and keep an eye out for trouble.

All his time working in a building full of the sounds and smell of sex at every moment, Joel had been unbothered. The moans, the grunts, the cries of “oh fuck” and “I’m coming!” that would echo through the halls, the overpowering scents of sweat and cum when a door next to him would open and a satisfied client would walk out—he couldn’t give less of a fuck. It neither bothered him, nor turned him on to any degree.

But at the very first soft, breathy moan of yours that drifted through the thin wall his back was pressed to, Joel’s breath was catching in his throat, entire body stiffening at the alluring sound.

A few seconds later, there was another moan, longer than the first, and Joel’s head tilted back, resting against the wall as his jaw clenched to the point where it was almost painful.

He didn’t care, he told himself.

Joel had never cared before, he didn’t care now.

But it had never been you before.

You, the stalwart image of the establishment, all business and no pleasure, putting every other person’s needs before your own.

So at the thought of you giving into pleasure now, satisfying your own needs as the sounds of slow, rhythmic squeaking of a bedframe carried towards him through the door, your whimpering echoing the steady echo of skin slapping against skin—

“Fuck,” Joel whispered under his breath, eyes fluttering shut at a particularly loud moan of yours that reached his ears that had tuned in through the walls, and he snapped his eyes back open, straightening back up and realizing with a quiet groan from the movement how painfully hard he had grown in his jeans at the sounds of you being fucked.

He reminded himself then that this was your job. There was no guarantee you derived any real pleasure from it—to think that you did was a delusional male fantasy, and made him no better than the rest.

But his dick wasn’t listening to logic, only growing harder in his pants with the more lewd sounds that you made, and Joel sucked in a deep breath, rubbing a large palm over his face and shaking his head to himself.

You were no different from the others.

Just another girl to protect.

Joel didn’t want you.

“Oh, god, yes!” you were gasping in between keening moans now, and Joel bit down hard on his lower lip, feeling the chapped skin break and bleed a bit as his hand twitched at his side, the urge to do something about the erection straining against his pants so incredibly strong.

He could do it. None of the other girls were close to finishing with their clients. Joel could pull his cock from his pants right now and fuck into his own hand as he listened to you having sex, get himself off from the sounds you were making, imagining he was thrusting into you instead of his palm as you—

“Yes,” you whimpered, the sounds of skin slapping against skin rapid now, the bedframe inside your room slamming against the wall as you repeated yourself louder and louder, higher and higher, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Then you were crying out at the same time your client did, and Joel grunted, hips bucking up into his palm at the same moment he realized his hand had drifted there, subconsciously seeking relief from the ache of burning desire before he snapped his hand away.

“Fuck,” he huffed, shaking his head sharply and cursing himself at how he had nearly jacked himself off at the sound of you having sex without even realizing what he was doing. “Get it the fuck together.”

But his erection hardly eased up even as the minutes passed, and Joel had to fold his hands together, trying to casually hold them in front of the obvious bulge constrained by his jeans when your door opened.

The client walked out first, and Joel stared straight ahead at the wall opposite him, jaw clenching painfully once more as the man walked down the hallway, glancing back to send you a wave as you leaned against the doorframe, bending forward out of it to wiggle your fingers back towards him in goodbye.

Joel’s eyes snapped from how relaxed the gait of the man now was before looking over at you, sucking in a sharp breath at the tattered silk robe you were wearing, seeing the dip of your collarbone down to the soft curves of your cleavage, nearly catching a glimpse of the tempting pillows of your tits from the way you were leaning forward before he forced his gaze away.

You were watching him now—he could feel the familiar intensity of your gaze on him, and Joel resisted the urge to swallow thickly, struggling against the lump in his throat as you pushed yourself off the doorframe.

He expected you to head back up towards your office, preparing himself to keep his gaze off you when you walked past him in that temptation of thin fabric, when you surprised him by speaking.

“Want a smoke?”

Joel froze, his head tilting towards the sound of your voice subconsciously before your words even dawned on him.

When they did, he glanced towards you from the corner of his eye, seeing you were watching him with a thumb pointing back over your shoulder towards the room behind you.

The room you had just fucked a client in.

Oh fuck.

Joel cleared his throat, brows furrowed deeply as he looked back at you, and he half-expected you to make a comment about it like usual, but you were simply watching him with an impassive look, not a hint of emotion or motive he could try to decipher.

Before he knew what he was doing, Joel nodded, feet automatically moving after yours when you walked into the room.

“You can close it,” you said over your shoulder as you walked towards a nightstand next to the bed where—

Joel spun around, trying to control how rapidly he was breathing as he grabbed the door handle, pulling it shut behind him before slowly turning back to face the room again.

He had never actually been in one of them before, but he still should have expected the smell to be so much stronger in one—especially right after it had been occupied.

Still, the scent of sex pulled his attention right back to the bed you stood next to as you perched a cigarette between your lips—one he thinks Tess got you, he realized somewhere in the back of his mind—and Joel’s eyes lingered on dark spots on the mattress, forgetting how to breathe for a moment before your voice brought him back.

“Mr. Miller?”

His head snapped forward, eyes meeting yours to see you looking at him in a question he didn’t know that you were asking.

“Huh?” he mumbled so eloquently, wincing internally as your lips twitched into a small smirk around the cigarette in your mouth before you pulled it out, blowing it into the heady air of the room, nicotine joining the smells of sex and making the space tighter, hotter, before you paced towards a window on one wall.

“I asked if you wanted one,” you said slowly, and Joel just then noticed how scratchy your voice was—from the cigarette, the moans you were making not that long before, or maybe both.

“Uh—no,” Joel shook his head, watching with bated breath as your smirk towards him grew. “No thank you.”

His heart skipped a beat in his chest as you beckoned with the cigarette held delicately between your fingers for him to join you at the window.

Joel did, almost automatically, cursing himself internally at his blunt eagerness to be beside you while you lifted the window to let some fresh air in, and he turned, resting his back against the open window pane, arms crossing over his chest as he watched you instead of observing the room any longer.

Not all that fresh, considering the perpetual staleness of the QZ air, but it did cut down on how overwhelming the aroma of sex currently was in that room.

If somebody was going to break the tense silence that had fallen between the two of you, Joel had expected it to be you, so he was surprised when the quiet words fell from his lips, “Didn’t know you took clients.”

You huffed out a laugh then, the stream of cigarette smoke leaving your plump lips in puffs with the action.

“The Mistress has to earn her keep somehow,” you muttered, pulling in another drag of nicotine to blow back out the open window, and Joel’s gaze snapped back towards you.

“The Mistress?” he repeated, eyes flickering over your face as he recognized that name in an instant.

Being a man in the Boston QZ, it was impossible not to hear about The Mistress. An elusive sex worker who was very selective about her clientele, but even still, the stories about her stretched far, the name representing the countless fantasies of every horny man who dreamed of a chance to get their cock wet with her.

His recognition must have been noticeable in the tone of his voice, because you lazily rolled your head back to look up at him, smirk growing fully across your lips, swollen from whatever you had been up to, and Joel nearly swore under his breath as he felt his cock stirring in his jeans again.

“You act like you’ve heard of me,” you murmured, tongue darting out to wet your lips before you placed the cigarette between them again, and Joel’s brain short-circuited for a moment before he could find the words to reply to you.

“I just—” Joel cut off, brows furrowed as he shook his head, as if trying to jumpstart his mind, get it to string coherent thoughts together again but Jesus fuck why were you looking at him like that, with dark hooded eyes he’d never seen from you before. “I mean, I’ve heard about her, but I didn’t think—”

“Why not?” you interrupted him before he could finish. The cigarette was back between your fingers, gesturing with it up towards the scar that stretched down one side of your face. “Because of this?”

Joel frowned then because, to his own surprise, he was offended that you would think he’d care about such a thing. That he’d judge your attractiveness off something as inconsequential as a scar, especially in such a time where such marks on your skin were proof of hard-earned survival.

Attractiveness.

No, no, oh, fuck.

“Just didn’t know it was you,” Joel muttered gruffly, shrugging in a way that he knew must have looked incredibly stupid as he turned his face away from you, only to see the mess of shabby sheets on the bed, and those same dark stains on the fabric.

“Oh, so you have heard of me,” you were nearly goddamn purring the words now, in the same moment his mind was recalling those sweet, sweet moans you were making, the ones that had left your lips and resulted in the cum stains he was now staring at. “What have you heard?”

“They say you have the ti—” Joel cuts himself off again, feeling blood rushing towards his cheeks and somewhere lower, somewhere he should not be feeling any heat as he realized what he was about to say without thinking.

That you have the tightest, hottest cunt you could get in the whole QZ.

“They say I…?” you trailed off as you quietly repeated his words, and Joel’s attention flashed back to you to see you drifting closer to him, one arm crossed over your chest to prop up your elbow as you smoked your cigarette.

The way your arm pressed to yourself pushed your cleavage together to make an alluring dip, lifting your tits so they were almost spilling out of the open collar of the silk robe. Although the fabric was faded and tattered from the years it had survived, it may as well have been the richest texture in the world with the way it caressed your soft skin, taunting Joel as he struggled to look away.

When you shifted just an inch closer, one of the sleeves of the robe tumbled down your shoulder, and Joel sucked in an audible breath as more of your body was revealed, tempting him with how bare you were under that flimsy fabric.

He tried to look back up towards your eyes then, he really did, but the sleeve slipping down to hook around your elbow nearly revealed half of your chest to him. The only thing keeping him from seeing one of your tits completely was the way your forearm was pressed against your nipple.

Was it a peak right now? Were you as aroused as he was? Did you need him like he needed you?

Joel finally pulled his eyes up to yours, and when he saw the smug, knowing look in the heat of them, his desire flared into a fever pitch.

“They say you make sex an art,” his voice rumbled out from deep within his chest, and Joel hardly recognized it with the way his every word was coated in a thick need. “That your body feels like heaven, and you taste even better.”

You laughed at that, head tilting back with the action, and Joel was as distracted at the gentle, husky cadence that left your soft lips—how soft exactly, he wondered—as he was focused on the curve of your exposed neck as it led his eyes down your collarbone to the valley of your breasts.

There was a thin layer of sweat there, he just realized, and he wanted to dip his tongue between the soft pillows of flesh, tasting and tracing you, when your words pulled him out of his fantasizing that was quickly spiraling out of control the longer he was in this sex-tainted room with you.

“Those men don’t know a single fucking thing about how I taste,” you muttered, not bitterly, but simply matter-of-fact as you gazed out the window towards the dark lit streets of the QZ, taking another long drag of the cigarette.

Joel’s brow lifted, glancing over your side profile, noticing the way the deep red lipstick you had been wearing was almost completely faded, smeared a little at the corner of your mouth and down your chin, and coupled with the confession you had just made, he struggled with a sudden surge of an emotion he couldn’t name—or didn't want to, as it would surely become dangerous if he dared to entertain it.

“Seriously?” Joel found himself saying, and you turned back to him, your own eyebrows arching at the odd tone of his voice—almost appalled, but not towards you. “None of them?”

Your lips pulled back then, showing teeth in a grin that was nearly predatory, and Joel’s pulse raced as you answered with your own question, “You really think any man still alive wants to pay to go down on a woman?”

“I would,” Joel said in a heartbeat, and you blinked, surprise flashing through your eyes, and Joel hated the way his stomach flipped at the knowledge of catching you off-guard, as you were usually the one doing so to him.

“You’d pay for sex,” you repeated slowly, and although it was a question, you said it in a flat tone, disbelieving as you glanced up and down his body. “You. Mr. ‘I hate everybody and wish they were all fucking dead’ Miller?”

What surprised him the most out of everything tonight was the way you just made him laugh.

The sound was pulled from him so easily, tugged from his lungs towards you, and he sucked in a breath, as if trying to pull the sound back in as a dark look twinkled in your eyes from where they had fixed on the front of his jeans.

“Maybe you would pay for it, Mr. Miller,” you murmured, and Joel stiffened, his mind filling with a variety of curses in every language he still knew as you surely noticed his erection that still hadn’t fucking gone away.

Your eyes flashed back up to his, long eyelashes fluttering as you leaned forward, and Joel struggled to breathe as the forearm still covering the nipple of your almost completely revealed breast grazed against his chest.

“How would you prefer to take me, sir?” you asked breathily, and Joel’s chest began to rise and fall rapidly, brushing with your own nearly exposed chest with every fast breath he took as he tried to reign himself in, even as you started fucking seducing him. “Are you a fan of foreplay? Would you take your time and go slow with me?”

Your head tilts oh so slightly, hair tumbling down in a way that begged Joel to wrap it around his fist, as you continued to mercilessly tease, “No, I don’t think you’re one for taking it slow. Are you, Mr. Miller?”

Fuck, if you kept calling him that, he was going to lose his goddamn mind and take you right against that window sill if you would let him. He’d pay you all the fucking food rations in the world for a taste, just a taste of how sweet you’d drip for him when you came.

Because if Joel was fucking you, you were going to come.

“You like it hard and fast,” you whispered, your arm finally dropping from your chest, and Joel swallowed down a strangled sound as he finally saw half of your chest completely, your nipple hardened in the air before you pressed it against him and fuck, oh Jesus fuck, “I bet you’re rough too. Big man like you, you like to be in control. Probably gets off on taming brats, hm?”

Goddammit if you didn’t shut up he was about to show you just how well he could tame you, shutting up that pretty mouth by making you come again, again, and again, until all you knew to do was cry out for him every time he wracked your body with pleasure.

“But you’re not a missionary man,” you shook your head as it tilted the other way, bringing your face to hover inches away from his neck, and Joel shivered, actually fucking shivered when he felt your breath caress his skin as you teased, “You like a cowgirl, don’t you, Joel?”

That was the first time his name fell from your lips.

And at the sound of it, Joel lost any ounce of self-control.

His hands were on you in an instant, enveloping your waist in his large palms as he pulled you flush against him at the same moment he turned to push you against the wall.

You gasped, the dwindling cigarette falling from your fingers, and Joel lifted a foot to stomp it out, using his knee to nudge your legs apart with the motion. When his hips nudged against yours, erection pressing against the spot between your open thighs, he moaned at the feeling of your heat against the impossibly tight fabric.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized the robe you wore was completely open now, and your exposed cunt was pressed right up against his clothed erection, but his entire mind was focused on the way you also moaned at the same time he did.

“You keep running your mouth like that, I’ll show you how fucking good I can tame a brat,” he growled into your ear, one of his hands easily lifting your hip, dragging your folds across the bulge in his jeans, and he sighed as he felt wetness seep against the fabric. “Fuck, you this wet for me already, baby? Just from talking about how I’d fuck you?”

“I-I–”

Suddenly, no words were falling from your lips other than incoherent stuttering, and Joel smirked as he ducked his face against your neck, licking a path along the curve of it, groaning in need and irritation at the salt of sweat from your previous sex that still clung to it.

“Did you come for him?” Joel growled the question against your jaw, now directing your hips to grind against him in a way that put pressure to your clit, his eyes fluttering shut at the soft moan that left your lips—it sounded different than the ones he heard you make before, quieter, a bit huskier as opposed to so high-pitched—before he nipped at the skin just below your chin. “Answer me.”

“No,” you gasped, and Joel loosened his grip on your waist just a bit, wanting to see if you still chased that friction he had been providing against your clit.

When you did, grinding yourself against his clothed erection, Joel smirked against your jaw before asking his next question, “When’s the last time a man made you come, sweetheart?”

A shuddering breath fell from your lips to fan across his face, and Joel pulled back, looking down at how blown-wide your pupils were, his thumb brushing a strand of hair from your face as you muttered, “I—long. Too long.”

Joel wanted to smile at how you were already struggling to form full sentences before he had even started with you, but the anger he felt at you going so long without feeling an ounce of pleasure from being with a man made his jaw tick as he frowned deeply instead.

“Do you wanna come tonight, darlin’?” Joel murmured, his calloused thumb finding your bottom lip to gently pull it out, caressing the wet inner part of your lip while he searched your gaze. “I need you to answer me, sweetheart. I’m not doing anything unless you want me to.”

“Yes, Joel,” your voice nearly broke with the husky whisper, head bobbing in an eager nod, but Joel still waited to hear you say it clearly before he began. “I want you. Want you to make me come, please.”

A shuddering breath left Joel then, and he returned your nod, brushing his thumb across your lip again before pulling it back and leaning down to replace the digit with his own lips.

You were both moaning from the first moment your lips touched, kissing in a way that was much like how you always acted around each other—a battle for dominance, adding gasoline to the fire, but with an underlying respect that neither of you could shake even if you wanted to try.

“Fuck,” Joel mumbled when you allowed him access to slip his tongue inside your mouth, exploring every inch of it with a quiet moan that you echoed with your own. “Taste so good already, sweetheart.”

Every time he tried to pull away, you brought him back in with your lips chasing his, trapping him in another hot kiss, passion he didn’t think he could ever feel again building between you until he needed to taste more.

Joel finally tore himself away from your mouth fully, hands finding the opening of your robe to make sure it was pushed open completely, giving him access to every inch of your soft skin as he pressed kisses down your neck towards the perfect, perky tits that had been taunting him since you leaned out into the hallway.

His large palms cupped them, fingers stroking the soft flesh as he pressed them around his face, groaning into your skin at the feeling of being surrounded by them before turning his face to lap a path up the curve of one with his tongue until he reached that goddamn nipple that had been pure torture to nearly catch a glimpse of during your entire conversation.

Joel flicked his tongue over it, hips nearly bucking up as you gasped at the sensation, back arching to press further against his tongue when he flattened it against the stiffened peak. When he sucked it into his hot mouth, your fingers found his hair, tangling in the strands as you pushed his face further against you, and he moaned through a mouth full of your breast, teeth grazing against the sensitive peak before he pulled back to quickly do the same to the other.

Despite your teasing, he would take his time with you eventually. But tonight he was desperate, a drowning man gasping for air—but no, even that wasn’t accurate.

You were not the air Joel needed, but rather the unfathomable depths that he was drowning in.

He dropped to his knees between your spread legs, grunting quietly at the pain that ricocheted through his old bones at the action, but he couldn’t care less as he found himself facing your hot, dripping cunt.

Joel leaned forward, letting his breath fan across your sensitive folds as he lifted two fingers to run across your wet entrance, dragging the digits up to where you clit was already swollen with the need to be touched, to be pleased by him, and he smiled to himself at the sigh you exhaled above him from the sensation of his touch.

His fingers slid back to your entrance, dipping the rough pads of his fingertips into you just enough to collect more of your desire, spreading it along the lengths of his thick fingers as he swiped them up to your clit and began to rub in slow, tight circles.

You gasped quietly, hips rolling into his gentle ministrations, and Joel smiled against your skin when he ducked his face forward to press soft kisses along your inner thigh and up.

“Gonna take care of you, darlin’, don’t you worry,” Joel murmured against the mound of trimmed hair above where his fingers were slowly working at you, his lips moving down to replace them as he added breathlessly, “Gonna make you feel so good.”

Your hips bucked against his face when his tongue found your clit, a louder, breathless moan tearing from your throat at the heady sensation of his hot, wet mouth sucking around the sensitive bundle of nerves.

“Joel,” you gasped, nails scraping against his scalp as you grabbed his hair tighter, and he groaned around your clit at the feeling, pulling a delicious whine that sounded so much more real, more feral, more needy than the perfect, practiced ones you had made through the wall. “I—oh, fuck, that’s so good…”

He hummed around your clit before flattening his tongue against it, alternating motions until he found the rhythm that made you grind yourself against his face, and his palms found your hips to pull you up against him further, encouraging you to ride his tongue until you found your high.

“Come on, baby,” he murmured in between the moments when he’d suckle your clit, teeth gently grazing it as he resisted the urge to palm himself at the steady stream of moans and muffled curses that were echoing above him. “You can do it, come on. Soak my face, wanna taste your sweet cum.”

When you did just as he told you, Joel thought he really did see the gates of heaven, a sight he was convinced would never grace him after the lifetime of hell he had lived and caused.

He lapped up every gush of wetness that dripped from your folds in your release, dipping his tongue inside your entrance to drink you up, his thumb replacing his tongue on your clit, rubbing gently to prolong the waves of your pleasure.

Once the gyrations of your hips against his lapping tongue slowed, Joel pulled back from your cunt, your release glistening on his mouth and down his chin as he gazed up at your slack-jawed expression.

Your head tilted down, gaze meeting his as a lazy smile curled onto your lips, and Joel tried to ignore the way his heart lurched in his chest at the sight combined with the feeling of your grip loosening on his hair, fingers combing gently through the strands.

“Good?” Joel mumbled, turning his face to press a soft kiss on your inner thigh, and your head dipped down in a nod, humming in satisfaction as Joel smirked against your skin. “Good.”

His mouth opened, teeth gently nipping at your soft flesh, pulling an endearing squeak of surprise from you as he rasped, “Not done with you yet, though, sweetheart.”

When his tongue found its way back to your clit, his fingers went back to your entrance. This time, when he dipped one fingertip in, he didn’t stop, sinking into your tight, wet heat until the first knuckle, smiling against your swollen bundle of nerves as you rolled your hips into him at the sensation of his digit slowly filling you.

He gave a few slow pumps of his finger when he had sunk it in completely before pulling it out, chuckling around where he had sucked your clit back into his mouth at your whine at the loss of his finger before he added it back in with another.

“Fuck, can you feel you squeezing my fingers, darlin’,” Joel grunted against your cunt, lapping desperate licks against your clit, eating you out with increased fervor as his fingers pumped you faster at every mewling moan that left your lips, encouraged by the rolling of your hips to curl his fingers until he found the spot that nearly made your knees buckle.

His other arm wrapped around your waist, giving you support to stand while keeping you pressed to his face, not allowing you a moment of peace as his tongue worked mercilessly at you until you were coming around his fingers this time.

“Oh, fuck,” Joel was whimpering against your cunt this time as he continued to fingerfuck you through your high, sucking at your clit and drawing out every aftershock, his arm around your waist the only thing keeping you up now as the pleasure overwhelmed you.

“Joel,” you whispered hoarsely, fingers tugging at his hair again, and he pulled back to look up at you, his fingers stilling inside your cunt, but not sliding out of you just yet.

“What is it, darlin’?” he rasped, breath trembling as you stroked his lips with your thumb, collecting your own release combined with his saliva on it before raising it to your mouth to suck on, pulling a moan from Joel’s throat at the sight.

“Want you to touch yourself, sir,” you murmured, and Joel’s eyes widened, his fingers finally slipping out of your heat, reaching down to fumble with the button of his jeans at your permission he didn’t even know he was desperate for. “Make yourself cum just from the taste of me.”

“Jesus—” Joel couldn’t even finish whatever he was going to groan out as his hand wrapped around his cock once he pulled it out of its fabric constraints, eyes rolling back into his head at the relief of finally, finally doing something about the erection that had plagued him since he guarded you outside the room while you worked.

“Mouth on my pussy, Joel,” you ordered, and he was diving back into your folds without a second thought, sloppily thrusting his tongue inside your wet heat as his hand pumped his cock, your release still coating his fingers spreading across his length as he felt himself already rapidly approaching climax. “That’s it. You like the taste? You wanna come because I taste so good?”

Joel was nodding against your pussy, groaning into your folds as he lost any rhythm towards making you feel good now, but you didn’t seem to care, your hand in his hair still keeping him pressed to your cunt as you encouraged him this time around, “Do it then, Joel. I want to watch you cum for me.”

If you said anything else at that point, Joel couldn’t hear it through the blood rushing through his head as he came harder than he had in years.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he had felt an orgasm so intense, his vision darkening at the edges as he sucked mindlessly at your wet folds, hips bucking up into his fist as his cum shot out to paint the wall behind you before leaking out steadily over his hand.

You loosened your grip on his hair, allowing him to pull back with a gasp, sucking in air he needed to not black out as Joel’s blurry vision focused back in on your face above him.

There was a small smile on your face, satisfied in more ways than one, and Joel couldn’t help but match it with his own half-smirk as he focused on catching his breath before slowly pushing himself back up to his feet.

“Mm,” Joel moaned quietly as his lips met yours in a lazy kiss, one he wasn’t sure who initiated as he mumbled against your mouth, “Heavenly.”

You laughed then, and he felt himself brighten at the sound, though he tried to ignore it as you gently pushed him away from you.

“Come on,” you sighed, straying away from the wall towards the door on shaky legs while you tied your robe back up, making yourself decent enough as he tucked his dick away and zipped up his jeans. “I’ll get you your payment for today.”

There was a brief moment where you made sure nobody was lingering in the hallway before beckoning him out, and you both made your way towards the staircase towards your office while Joel tried to ignore the foreign thrill at the chance of being caught with you after what you had done together.

When you passed his payment to him, he counted out a generous portion before holding it right back out, earning a scoff from you at the offer.

“You’re not paying me for making me come, Mr. Miller,” you said with a sly smirk, and Joel tried to ignore how oddly disappointing it felt for you to resort to calling him that after tonight. “That wasn’t work.”

Joel slowly arched his brow, but nodded at your insistence, tucking his payment in his back pocket before rumbling out a quiet question of, “One-time thing?”

It wasn’t an offer, nor was he insisting that you did or didn’t do it again.

In fact, he was secretly hoping it would happen again, and Joel felt the treacherous anticipation for even more of you when your exhilarated gaze met his.

“Guess we’ll have to find out.”

taglist: @darkroastjoel @thetriumphantpanda @cupofjoel @dinsdjrn @cavillscurls @tightjeansjavi @sinsofsummers

#joel x reader #joel miller x reader #joel x f!reader #joel x female reader #joel x reader smut #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller one shot

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thriftedtchotchkes · 11 months

Text

a matter of time

pairing: joel miller x f!reader

summary: joel can't remember the last time he took things slow and let himself feel. you give him a gentle reminder.

warnings: 18+ MDNI, late boston qz era, joel's pov, smut, porn with a twist ending, fingering, unprotected piv, creampie, slow/intimate sex, finger sucking, premature ejaculation, nostalgia, internal monologue, tess doesn't exist

word count: 2.4k

It's been a long time.

Joel's all but forgotten what it feels like when it's this gentle. There's almost a tenderness to it, even though he doesn't know much of anything about you at all. Not your name or how you ended up here in this hellhole of a safe haven.

Nothing but the sweet, tacky taste of your 20-year-old Lip Smacker gloss and the tang of sweat and something sweeter lingering on your skin. But he's learning.

And he likes this new knowledge. Even if he never gets the chance to use it again, he'll devour it hungrily because it's a worthy distraction from the monotony of life in a quarantine zone. Day in and day out, he returns to this shitty apartment with its peeling floral wallpaper and rotting mahogany furniture—memories of a distant past that aren't his own and, yet, sting just as viscerally.

Tonight, the space hums with a different energy. Highlighted by the soft rays of the setting sun, the room's only purpose is to serve as a backdrop to you, and that alone changes everything. Your beauty, your responsiveness, as he lays you across his moth-eaten duvet is reminiscent of a different time, and he'll happily accept that reminder.

It's one of the few pieces of nostalgia that doesn't ache or eat away at him the longer he lets it in. No, you feel good. You're warm against his fingertips, soft and pliant under the path his lips follow from the sticky smear across your cheek, past the breath hitching audibly in your bared throat, down to your soaked, coarse curls.

You want him. More than that, you want to take your time with him, and he's surprised at how much he wants that, too. Trapped within these walls, what else does he have but endless, empty time? And there's nothing he'd love more than to spend it taking care of you, just like you asked him to.

He hovers above you, refusing to part his lips from your body as he urges you up the bed to rest against his pillows. They're flattened and scratchy from years of use and abuse, but they smell like him, and you like it. He can tell. The moment your hair fans across them, rich and lively in contrast, you bury your face into the fabric to breathe him in, and your body's reaction is instantaneous.

Your back arches with a heavy sigh of contentment and your legs fall apart naturally, welcoming him closer, but he waits. Reverently, he slowly leans back onto his heels to appreciate the sight in front of him, and he can't help but feel grateful. You're already glistening for him, preening under his undivided attention as your delicate fingers trail up to your breast to tweak a nipple.

As your eyelashes flutter and a gasp escapes your parted lips, his hand quickly drops to squeeze his twitching cock over his boxers and he keens, nearly doubling over at the pleasure that overcomes him. A coy, knowing smile quirks at the corners of your mouth, and he decides he needs to taste you again. Now.

He lurches forward, and you let out a surprised squeal as he licks into your mouth and commits to memory the faint taste of artificial root beer and mint on your tongue. The familiar fight for dominance he's so used to after years of quick fucks and one-night stands isn't there, and, instead, you set a languid, passionate pace that makes his head spin. It's a slow, deep caress—wet and warm and all-encompassing—and it's everything he hopes fucking you will feel like.

He's so hard it hurts. God, when was the last time he was this fucking hard? He's leaking messily through his boxers, desperate to be touched and enveloped and claimed.

And how could he not be? He's kissing the perfect woman. A patient goddess who's leading his hands across every inch of bare skin, showing him exactly how you like to be stroked and gripped, sighing encouragingly when he heeds your lessons just right.

You're one hell of a teacher, and he thinks he might just be your favorite student. He separates from you with a lewd smack and a string of saliva keeps you connected for a fleeting second before you lean up to lick it off his bottom lip. Your eyes lock with his and they're dark, almost completely consumed by desire, and it's further encouragement to continue on to his next assignment.

This one might just send him over the edge. You guide his hand down to cup your wet heat and you're drenched, dribbling and smearing slick patterns onto his sheets that he'll probably trace with his tongue while he jerks off to the thought of you long after you're gone.

Bathed in the dwindling embers of twilight, your silhouette—the plush slope of your breasts and soft curve of your belly and thighs—is cast around the room in artful shapes and shadows, and he wishes you were a permanent fixture. That your visage covered these walls instead of false depictions of growth and life. It's a dangerous train of thought, but he's too lost in the haze of your warmth and wetness to think about anything else.

He needs to feel you. He needs to fuck you.

He barely even realizes he's already slipped inside you as if he's been there all along, stroking your walls with the rough tips of his middle and ring fingers and honing in on that hidden, spongy spot with such precision, you'd think he'd done it a million times before. Thick, cording veins strain against his forearms as he tenses with the effort of keeping his thrusts long and purposeful, and he watches, captivated, as your cunt sucks him in greedily and fruitlessly tries to hold him inside you.

Tight—fuck. You're so tight. He's bucking into his unoccupied hand, jerking himself off over his boxers, and he doesn't remember when he started, but he can't stop. It feels too good...you feel too good, and the steady, simultaneous rhythm he sets for both of you isn't nearly enough.

Faster. Harder. Still so goddamn tight. He'll never be able to stretch you out enough to take him, and he's starting to worry he'll cum before he even gets the chance to try. His cock throbs violently against his palm, and he bites back a groan at the vision beneath him. Christ, how did you get here?

You can't possibly be real. Your thighs are quaking on either side of his waist and your pussy clenches dangerously hard around his scissoring fingers. There's a thin sheen of sweat matting the wispy hairs around your temples and pooling everywhere your body connects with the mattress, your searingly hot skin an addictive, sticky trap he willingly and faithfully succumbed to.

And those sounds.

You need his cock. Fucking hell, you need it. Greedy, patient, needy fucking woman. He can hear it in your soft pants and hitched breaths. You're quiet and subtle in your pleasure, so unlike any other woman he's ever been with, but when you whimper—fuck. Fuck.

He's going to give it to you. Right now, after taking the time to map and explore and discover, he's going to use his newfound knowledge to hollow you out, then fill you up until you're overflowing with him.

He slows to a stop and pulls his glistening fingers from your cunt, and there's that faint, perfect sound again. A stuttered, broken whimper that lilts with each knuckle that catches on your entrance. He sucks his ring finger into his mouth and adds your taste to his list of all-time favorites, right alongside your Barq's root beer-flavored lip gloss.

Then, he offers you his middle finger, and he swears he can feel your lips sealing tightly around his cock as you wrap them around it. You work your mouth up and down, bobbing your head eagerly like he's about to blow his load down your throat, and—

He's going to fucking cum.

With his finger still nestled between your lips, he wrenches his boxers down his thighs and lines himself up with your entrance, ignoring how close he's suddenly teetering on the edge. His balls are already taut between his legs and it worsens as he inches in his aching, neglected tip.

"S'time, beautiful," he grits out, still tender in his touch as he splays his hand across your waist to stroke your heated skin. "You ready for me?"

You nod quickly, humming your affirmation around him, and he gives you another shallow inch. He was right. No amount of preparation was going to ease the stretch. You're gripping him so hard, it almost hurts, and the thought of how tight you'll be when you cum—he feels delirious with it.

Yes. Yes. Squeeze him. Let him feel you wringing him fucking dry. Let him pump you so full of his release, you'll be dripping him for days, an intimate, lingering reminder of this night. You have no fucking idea how long he's been waiting for this, for you. He doesn't even know your name, but that doesn't matter. Right now, all that matters is this.

This deep-seated, unspoken connection. It's been a long time. And, right now, his time is up.

He slides home in one long, deep thrust, the tip of his cock tenderly nudging your cervix, and your body struggles to accept him. He lights up every nerve ending like a live wire, drags against every sensitive pressure point in perfect succession, and your walls begin to mold around him as if they recognize the sensation. Like your body's remembering him.

Sharp nails dig into his side and drag from his shoulder down to his ass, urging him closer. You're trembling beneath him, your breasts thrumming with sharp, rapid breaths akin to a hummingbird as he fucks you further up the bed, one slow thrust at a time. You're fluttering around him, a delicate spasm and, then, an indicative clench, and it forces a sob from his chest that he barely recognizes.

That's it, beautiful. It's right there. C’mon, give it to me.

He doesn't speak it aloud. He hasn't coaxed or rushed you with his words this entire night and he's not about to start now. He knows, for some inexplicable reason, that he doesn't have to.

But you do. It's barely a whisper—a single, hushed syllable that trembles and passes your lips like a plea. A prayer only he can answer.

"Joel."

Christ. He knows you.

Christ, he's cumming.

His vision whites out, and he's only vaguely aware of his tightening grip on your hips and the long, drawn-out groan that tapers into something devastatingly familiar. Your name.

Now, it's his turn to pray. He repeats it like a mantra, breathing it into your lungs as his lips crash onto yours. It's almost as if he's afraid he'll forget it again if he stops, but your body's response quickly convinces him otherwise.

You bear down on him harder, driven closer and closer to your peak each time he calls out to you, for you. You're molten hot around him, searing each letter into his skin with every pulsing clench of your cunt, and he does the same, thick spurts coating your walls.

He can't help himself. He stays deep—he knows he shouldn't, knows how dangerous the consequences could be, but he needs to—and your ankles digging painfully into his back to hold him in place wordlessly tell him you need it, too.

So good, you're so good. You're perfect. You're his. You're—

Gushing, squeezing, finally moaning for him. You’re cumming.

With it, your orgasm brings every memory of you flooding back at once. Late summer afternoons spent in bed while Sarah visited her grandma. Champagne-flavored kisses on New Year's Eve, soundtracked by Dick Clark and cheers from the crowd in Times Square filtering through the plasma TV in his living room.

He loved you. He loved this. He should've known the moment he kissed you, the moment he saw you, but he's been surviving for so long. He can't remember the last time he lived.

Your limbs surround him, pulling his entire weight down to rest on top of you, and you continue to swivel your hips into his pelvis, riding out your high as his name falls breathily from your lips. He works you through it, frantically blinking away the sudden blur that engulfs his vision so he doesn't miss out on another moment with you. Not ever again.

He's...he's crying. He didn't even know he was capable of that anymore. Sensitivity starts to set in, in more ways than one, but he doesn't want to leave the heat of your embrace. He thinks he might break at the sight of his cum leaking out of you and seeping into the undeserving fabric of his co-opted sheets, far away from where it belongs.

But, then, your lips meet his tanned, weathered cheek—a stark contrast to the young man he was when he was yours—and you kiss away his tears. He feels more fragile than he has in decades, and that's surprisingly okay. Because you're here to protect him, now.

Trailing from the apple of his cheek to his lips, up to the years of tension creasing his forehead, back down to kiss him tenderly, you establish a comforting repetition. He chases you every time you part, but, after a while, he's struck with a realization. What you've been trying to convey with your actions all night.

You always return to him. So, maybe this was just a matter of time. A slow smile spreads across that beautiful face he hadn't allowed himself to think about since the outbreak, and you huff out an affectionate laugh, your fingertips curiously running across his back and tracing raised lines and jagged shapes you've never felt before.

"Hi, Joel," you murmur fondly, still close enough for the tacky remains of your gloss to catch his bottom lip, and his tongue darts out to taste you.

It's real—it's too vivid not to be real. His eyes dart between yours, and he can still see everything your future together was supposed to hold. He still sees forever.

"Hey, baby," he rasps, his voice thick with tears and disuse, and something unidentifiable that sounds a lot like hope.

He hasn't felt this way in a long time. Not since you.

thanks for reading!

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller smut #joel miller angst #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfiction #pedro pascal characters

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thankyouforthememoriesworld · 2 months

Note

I present the master Paige/Azzi youtube watchlist in chronological order of filming (sorta). I'm not including every game because that would take forever but I did include workouts that I've loved watching. Of course this doesn't have everything but maybe someone can help put together a playlist or something haha. I just wanted all the major interviews that I love in one spot tbh and I supposed this is also a great way for new fans to get to know these two players actually.

Spring 2019

Azzi Fudd wins Gatorade Player of the Year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmI8Ochf92Y

Azzi Fudd’s remarkable road to recovery | ESPN Cover Story (technically this spans a lot but because it is about ACL, I'm placing it here)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6xpNyfPxsk

Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers after dinner at Cheesecake Factory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFzQocVgm10

Summer 2019

One-on-one with Azzi Fudd: Steph camp, Unicorn Fam, early offers and more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgQeatZpetQ

Paige Bueckers & Azzi Fudd Battle To Be The #1 Hooper (July 2019 is 6 weeks after her ACL surgery)

https://youtu.be/eTbVfXufQsg?si=VF7bE-fB7P6-6tVu

Fall 2019 to March 2020

Azzi Day in the Life (photoshoot was on Jan 30, 2020 for reference)

https://youtu.be/enzGl05J-4Q?si=_LpwhC3M_OIP0clJ

Hopkins Royal FULL SERIES (season ran Nov 23, 2019 to mid March 2020 and it is over an hour long)

https://youtu.be/kAmSzerEoHc?si=h__o2wWSIbbdvVnl

No. 1 Overall Recruit Paige Bueckers Is a Human Highlight Reel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT9P-96vA7k

Ball Is Life Paige Bueckers Day in the Life

https://youtu.be/mouE9jO9Y_A?si=O5P1W0iH5IZnCHSM

Spring 2020

Paige wins Gatorade Player of the Year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IENvfOL-YIA

Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd 1v1 Against Trainer (date based on Azzi's IG post)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxWgLaCAm6I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQN8cFt1o00

Azzi Fudd workout highlights with Chris Brickley

https://youtu.be/KpWVfzZN7qM?si=Ns6D6Vl1Yt01VGIB

Summer 2020 (starting with May)

20 questions with Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaK2qM05t7Y

Buried Treasure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEEEnYMibFQ

Purple Hair

https://youtu.be/nTmAQKScbUM?si=vCdOBMqK-mlDMkWZ

Quarantine Haircuts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTnDwiQc5qk

Paige Bueckers Receives Advice From WNBA SUPERSTARS Ft. Brittney Griner, Sue Bird, and More!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0MagDKjoTA

A Day in the Life of Azzi Fudd

https://youtu.be/ILZCeNVcL1U?si=iouVrM2rEqIkSWAP

Paige Bueckers & Azzi's CRAZY Quarantine Day In The Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_TmMlXPmB4

Azzi Fudd #1 HS Player in the Country & GTS Fusion BALL OUT Series (This technically overlaps with Fall 2020 especially with Azzi signing to UConn on her birthday and is approximately an hour)

https://youtu.be/nU24h5_vnBI?si=H8Ey8V9h6kDX-4l8

Fall/Spring 2020

Azzi Fudd Carpool Karaoke, Paige Bueckers FaceTime, and More | Day In The Life (Nov 5, 2020)

https://youtu.be/RmMe60uzbUM?si=lMLALlwBmRHK0kOE

Azzi Fudd's commitment live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xdnt7TXIdw

Faces In The Crowd: Azzi Fudd

https://youtu.be/bIz7Z_vLZJQ?si=LKlDWLhwN2yDQ6uv

"Step2TheMic" podcast Episode #4 featuring Azzi Fudd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-idN_tl9cSI

Beginning of 2021

Sports Stars of Tomorrow Feature on Azzi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXep2STcYq8

Summer/Fall 2021

Paige's live of Jon Fudd eating Cicadas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkVkxsc8rKo

PAIGE BUECKERS | Day In The Life!

https://youtu.be/6CzGZQe1pRU?si=6AcXFcIsYigTEzi1

UConn Star Paige Bueckers Shows Off Her Dope Sneaker Collection

https://youtu.be/IZArJtbceys?si=TKp83pvp6Lz_Sh8-

Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers: UConn Women's Basketball Media Availability - 7/6/21

Paige: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0vKs7VjYb0

Azzi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGwUNtXSEE0

Both: https://youtu.be/bL4Jq2sFt0A?si=Fkl5eDxwl3V-8zL-

Chris Brickley Workouts (Don't know when exactly this was)

https://youtu.be/nkcLs9qkz8g?si=7Sd-ho-d6YxreJ-T

Slam Cover Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HaJSLhx8xU

First Press Conference

https://youtu.be/JOuVS5RfsFA?si=lbcCMT_wX-u263W7

USF Presser (lowkey love this presser so much)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdWM_xTO7k

2022

St. Johns Presser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v4BgJhEc0M

Azzi Fudd's 2 dogs, playing with Paige Bueckers and her relationship with her parents | Inside Look

https://youtu.be/U9vnxoyoEwo?si=DmyoMR7-j_SfpksJ

UConn stars Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd talk basketball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szGAuDtsfkU

The Workout: UCONN Duo Paige Beckers & Azzi Fudd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN5Gtzx1jt8

How UConn’s Azzi Fudd Balances Brands and Basketball

https://youtu.be/7VFgYc6eXiY?si=P5zYmtqxFYaNU-uh

2023

Kelsey Plum and Azzi Fudd Exclusive Workout

https://youtu.be/EmEO5aweU2Y?si=vAS60IQuieEtbRGQ

2v2 Azzi's Camp

https://youtu.be/VbYGpBW6SUs?si=H-8rYG7PjGUCr54S

Azzi Fudd at Curry Camp

https://youtu.be/-w0kjDPLhPQ?si=iwd0NKPMSyiaL8fH

UConn in Europe Special (48 minutes but not just them)

https://youtu.be/hhOfSaY9D-c?si=Ly2MnTfL4dbt2Ydh

How Kobe Bryant's mentality helped Paige Bueckers' ACL recovery

https://youtu.be/ugq1GLWqxPQ?si=3-6QaO81GovOA7Re

Sue's Episode

https://youtu.be/ZONny74MNWU?si=x0nG2Ny4HJDYirlQ

YOU'RE THE BEST, YOU SHOULD GET EVERYTHING YOU WANT IN THIS LIFE 💖. You make me precise timelines and you know how much I appreciate that, plus you provide me with Azzi videos (when she's starving us out).

#I appreciate your work 🤗#youtube watchlist #azzi fudd #paige bueckers #🔎

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thankskenpenders · 10 months

Note

Help me out here: Why is there so much Ian Flynn hate going around lately? I thought everyone loved that he was contributing to the games. Now suddenly they aren't. I guess that's par for the course for this series but I don't get it. He isn't perfect but I like what he's done. Am I a weirdo?

Ian Flynn has always had a lot of fans, but any creator putting their work out there is going to have detractors as well. That's just the nature of being an artist. To some extent, it's no big deal. He's not a perfect writer. Nobody is! I consider myself a fan of his work, but I've criticized plenty of individual writing decisions from him on here.

But Ian doesn't just have critics. He has his own obsessive hatedom. And the specific nature of Ian's hatedom is... interesting.

A decade ago, Ian was only the guy writing for Archie Sonic, meaning any debates over his work were quarantined within that tiny niche of the larger Sonic fandom. Only people who kept up with the comics month to month had any real reason to have an opinion on the guy, which means we're talking about merely thousands of fans as opposed to millions.

Within that group, he had some haters. You had the people who were mad about story changes made during his run, particularly things like ancillary characters getting killed off (although over the years we've learned that most of those were editorial mandates from Mike Pellerito). You had the people mad that Ian didn't push their favorite ship, with feuding SonAmy and Sonally fans claiming that he was CLEARLY biased towards one or the other. You had the people who just really, really liked one of the previous writers way more - usually Penders, as hard as that may be to believe today. That sort of thing. Pretty normal comic fandom type stuff. Again, it comes with the territory.

Unfortunately, many of those haters only got worse over time, morphing into reactionaries who constantly try to incite Comicsgate type culture war bullshit.

There are people still mad at Ian for making Sally bi and pairing her with Nicole instead of Sonic in the later Archie comics. There have been elaborate MS Paint red string conspiracy boards explaining how people like Ian and Jon Gray have apparently been destroying the franchise from the inside for years by Making Sonic Woke. (Jon gets dragged into this because people are still mad about him drawing The Slap 20 years later. Yes, really!!) There was an unhinged change.org petition trying to get Ian fired, specifically from people who were mad that the Freedom Fighters aren't in the IDW comics. There was even a very sad little fan campaign from these people trying to get Sega to move the Sonic comic license away from IDW and over to Udon, because they thought Udon would bring Sally and Bunnie back and also make them sexy again. There's a lot of this.

(Unfortunately, Penders has also exacerbated this by gossiping about Ian on Twitter and giving these fans ammo, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.)

The thing is, for years, people who only played the games or watched the cartoons had no reason to pay attention to any of this. Now, though, Ian isn't just writing for some weird spinoff comics that only the super nerds read. Now he's writing comics that are canon to the games, and ALSO some of the games themselves, and ALSO consulting on other tie-in media like Sonic Prime, and ALSO writing the official Sonic encyclopedia, and ALSO serving as part of the new Sonic Lore Team at Sega. And on top of all this, he's got an increasingly popular podcast where he fields questions about his work on all of these things, which serves as one of the fandom's main windows into creative decisions being made behind the scenes.

As a fan of Ian's work, it's been really cool to see him rise in prominence. But the dark side of this is that his obsessive haters from the Archie days now have WAY more of a potential audience of their own. Now, every Sonic fan has to have an opinion on Ian. What this frequently means is that you'll have the Comicsgate types taking things Ian writes or says out of context, attempting to get more of the general fandom to yell at the guy.

Unfortunately, there are a wide variety of Sonic fans who take the bait:

You've got hardcore fans who disliked basically any recent piece of Sonic media and are looking for someone to blame.

You've got the people who are concerned about the sanctity of Sonic's canon, who shoot the messenger any time Ian mentions a new retcon from Sonic Team on the podcast - or any time he even mentions the THOUGHT of changing anything about the canon, as we saw recently with the Sol Dimension nonsense.

You've got people who romanticize some sort of mythical artistic vision that Sega of Japan supposedly has (or had) for the franchise. To many of these fans, American contributors like Ian just don't "get" the heart of the series and are trying to turn Sonic into something different. (This "heart of the series" tends to be some mix of Japanese instruction manual lore, the cinematics from Sonic CD, the OVA, and/or the games written by Shiro Maekawa, depending on what Sonic media the fan in question grew up with.)

You've got fans of specific characters or ships who pin the blame for how their faves are depicted entirely on Ian - most vocally fans of Shadow, even though the root problem is that Sonic Team hasn't known what to do with Shadow since 2006. At best this stops at regular old criticism, but at its worst this devolves into claims that Ian has an agenda against certain characters.

You've got fans annoyed by a perceived over-emphasis on comic-original characters in the IDW comics, ignoring the obvious facts that these characters exist because the game cast is so tightly controlled by Sega, and also, you know, that people just like the IDW characters and want more stories about them.

You've got a LOT of discourse over IDW's Sonic being a hero who tries to give his enemies second chances, as if half of Sonic's closest friends aren't already former villains and rivals. Honestly this is very transparently just reheated Steven Universe discourse lmao

You'll also see people who just think they could do Ian's job better. They can't believe that THIS GUY is the American fan working on all these Sonic projects, when clearly THEY understand the characters and lore and themes SO much better than this charlatan.

All it takes is for someone in one of these categories to be unhappy about some recent piece of Sonic media, and for them to come across an out of context quote or comic panel that rubs them the wrong way, and suddenly the leftist Zoomer Sonic fans will join the latest dogpile on Ian alongside the reactionary Comicsgate types who are mad at him for Making Sonic Woke.

In general, when fandoms get upset, they tend to want a scapegoat. A person or two to point a finger at and go "THAT's who ruined the thing I love!" This tends to be based less on reality and more on which contributors are the most visible online. You'll sometimes see teenage and adult fans of children's cartoons single out a storyboarder who's particularly vocal on Twitter, blame them for every story decision they don't like, and harass them off the platform out of a sense of retribution for their favorite ship or whatever. Failing that, fans might choose to blame every nitpick, down to individual lines of dialogue and frames of animation, on a showrunner, just because that's the name they associate with the show. And unfortunately, when it comes to Sonic, Ian is now arguably the most prolific and outspoken contributor on the English speaking internet, and therefore a common scapegoat.

Some of the things I've seen Ian blamed for are truly wild. A lot of people have claimed for YEARS that he's just lying about the existence of creative guidelines and restrictions from Sega - or, as fans call them, The Mandates - even though they're just an inherent aspect of working on a licensed property. Others claim that The Mandates are real, but somehow Ian's fault. A vocal minority of fans have convinced themselves that Ian is the sole reason the Freedom Fighters don't exist in the IDW comics, even though Ian says he's been pushing to bring them back since day one.

Sometimes you'll see people say he ruined shit he didn't even work on. A few weeks ago on Twitter I saw someone claim that Ian had written a rejected script for Sonic Forces in which Tails died. I could not find a source for this for the life of me. As far as I can tell, the rumor seems to have been born from an alleged leaked script for Forces with margin notes from Aaron Webber that criticized the way Tails was written, and also an old tweet where Aaron joked that Tails would die in an upcoming episode of Sonic Mania Adventures. These merged into "Aaron Webber criticized a draft of the Forces script in which Tails died." How'd Ian get dragged into this? Who fucking knows!

It's all just a big game of telephone. All it takes is some asshole to make something up about Ian on Twitter or YouTube or a DeviantArt journal or some forum, and at least a couple people will believe it, and then it gets repeated as fact. Again, this used to be contained by the niche nature of the Archie Sonic fandom, but now there are WAY more people who are receptive to this shit.

It's just sad to me that Ian tries to be so open and honest about his work, to try to explain the rationale for certain things, to keep fans looped in on the direction the franchise is headed, and this just gives the Flynnspiracy types more quotes to take out of context and try to paint him as the devil. If it sounds like I'm being overly defensive and dismissing his critics, man... some of the things I've seen people say directly to him are just unbelievable. People will send paragraphs-long angry screeds in to his podcast that completely tear him apart, and he has to sit there and be like "Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it." People literally pay for special guest interview episodes where they just rapid fire complaints about his writing at him directly to his face. I don't know how he does it. I would snap.

All of this over Sonic the fucking Hedgehog of all things.

I don't know how to wrap this up. Engaging with fandoms online is very tiring, which is why I tend not to do it. Things like this are too common. I guess, just... remember that making art collaboratively is a complicated thing. The people involved are generally trying their best given the circumstances, but they're only human. They make mistakes. But please treat them like humans. Criticism and dogpiling are not the same thing.

#anon #ask #tkp asks #tkp post

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sunshine-zenith · 2 months

Note

I mean. If A New Wish takes place roughly 20 years after the original series (which seems to be the case since Vicky was 16 in the original and is said to be 36 here), then wouldn't Peri be RIGHT at college age?? Why is he immediately going into childcare instead of spending some time partying at the club.

Like I kind of get why he keeps getting distracted by his parents- he literally hasn't seen them in years and there doesn't seem to have been any contact between them during that period. Who was raising him while Cosmo and Wanda were gone. Is he still the only fairy born within the past ten thousand years. Did he cope at all with suddenly losing his brother forever, or is he just repressing it like he's apparently subconsciously been doing with Vicky and who knows what else. Peri and Dev can go to therapy together

This ask got me seriously thinking about the timeline between FOP and FOP:ANW, especially in relation to the Cosma-Fairywinkles

So Wanda and Cosmo’s ten thousand year long vacation obviously involved time travel, and from how both Wanda and Peri words things, it sounds like he wasn’t there with them, at least for the last part of it — she specifically says they lost track of him during those ten thousand years and he specifically call it their (his parents’) vacation, not our vacation. That said, this trip, again, obviously involved time travel, meaning that while ten thousand years passed for Cosmo and Wanda, they might’ve only been gone for a few months for Peri. While that’s still a super long time, given how old Cosmo and Wanda are, it might not be that long for them (ex I was talking about school timelines with an older coworker, and she said that while an extra year is a long time for someone in their 20s, like me, for someone in their 40s-50s like her it’s nothing)

That said, even if the vacation wasn’t that long from Peri’s perspective, Peri specifically notes he hasn’t seen them since they got back from it — we don’t actually know how long Cosmo and Wanda were living as a “normal retired human couple” but it’s been long enough that they at least know some of the local celebrations (the lightbulb-ice cream parade)

Wanda and Cosmo don’t seem like the type of people to abandon/neglect their kid, especially after something as presumably tragic and traumatic as their sibling completely forgetting about them, so I’m just gonna assume that they either didn’t start their vacation until Peri was old enough to be on his own, or that they took Peri with them and Peri broke off from them early on when he reached the age of majority

Cosmo specifically notes the year 2001, which is a reference to when the original show started airing. This also technically establishes 2001 as the year Peri was born, since Timmy doesn’t age over the course of the series (ignoring timeline shenanigans from later in the series that ended up being reversed anyway) (also Peri is officially Gen Z rep)

I’m gonna say that ANW takes place in 2023-2024, since that’s when it was animated/aired, so about 22-23 years from the original series, which works with Vicky being said to be in her late 30s-early 40s and AJ looking to be in his early 30s (plus for all the fantastical elements these shows include when history is concerned — ie every they do with dinosaurs — this writers do seem fond of establishing political events in the series as matching the real world — ie Cosmo getting emotional over Obama and wanting to go back to those days. Establishing the show as being 2024 instead of 2021 gives enough distance in universe from quarantines that the writers can get away with not mentioning it. If it was meant to be set in 2021, I feel like the writers would include some kind of reference — a throw away line establishing it as something that did/didn’t happen in universe)

We don’t know how fairies age, how long it takes them to reach the age of majority, but yeah, Peri just feels very Young Adult coded, and him being 20-23 just kinda works with his character. He comes off as someone fresh out of school working their first real job and being blindsided by how different it is from what he expected/studied. Assuming that he aged like a human up until adulthood and assuming that Cosmo and Wanda waited until he was old enough to study on his own (18) in a safe environment (a fairy academy presumably), that means it’s potentially been 2-5 years since he’s seen them and that he spent his adulthood/adult education without them — no wonder they still see him like a kid while he wants them to treat him like an independent adult, he was basically still a kid going off to school when they last saw him while he had years of his own to give the adult thing again (again, in a hard but semi-sheltered environment that would be a school in fairy world). It’s possible Cosmo and Wanda are overcompensating for the thousands of years they missed (for them)/missing important events like graduation (for Peri)

It makes me think of the fact that the writers specifically named the robots that care for Dev and fulfill his demands (ei what ends up being Peri’s job when he comes along) “au pairs” — an au pair is basically a cross between a foreign exchange student and a nanny, someone (typically a young adult) from a different country who moves in with a local family and helps take care of the children and house in exchange for a living situation, and many au pairs specifically take on the role while studying at a local university. That’s not too far off from what Peri/a Fairy Godparent’s role is

All that out of the way… yeah Peri should be in the club. BUT who would he even go out with? Yes he had similar aged peers in the original series (Foop/Irep and Goldie), but we don’t actually know if fairies started having kids again after he was born. If he had classmates as an adult, they would likely be fairies much older than him returning to school, so people he might not easily relate to

Thinking about it, it starts to make sense why Peri was given such a hard case for his first godkid — fairies can chose to go into retirement but for the longest time couldn’t have children, so there wasn’t anyone to take up the jobs they leave behind. In the original series there was a fairy godparent shortage that probably only got worse as fairies working that job got to the point of “okay, this is my last child, I’m done after this.” Peri was possibly one of the only fairy godparents available (who else would go to Dev? Cookie? The fairy still pissed off at Cosmo and Wanda and going after Hazel? Please, she’d probably refuse before even looking at Dev), plus he didn’t have anyone experienced to give him advice going into things, so he couldn’t, say, negotiate for an easier kid to start with or something before taking up the job

Peri is a young adult with almost no one to relate to, choosing a career that he views as “the family business” to make his parents proud, choosing a career he automatically has a unique relationship to because of the timing of when he was born and who he grew up with, who has a strained relationship with his parents because of years of (unintentional but still) no contact (not to mention the very real family loss of having their other kid/his big brother basically go away forever and completely forget about them in the process, which can’t be easy to navigate), who’s working a hard job with no experience and seeming no resources

He really was doomed from the get go, wasn’t he

#peri cosma #fairly oddparents #fop #fop a new wish #long post #ask #anon #meta #you’ve got the guy who was basically unintentionally isolated taking care of the kid who self isolates when upset

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wonwayne · 9 months

Text

cold season ☁️ lee heeseung

pairing : bff!heeseung x gn!reader genre : fluff, comfort warnings : mentions of food word count : 0.6k

a/n : flirty heeseung with zero survival instinct comes to cuddle while you’re sick.

“you look so hot right now.”

you winced your eyes open to look incredulously up at your doe-eyed best friend. it’s too damn bright in this room, you thought, as your head continued pounding. there were more things about the condition of your room you were unhappy with at the moment: the suffocating humidity from you staying cooped up here with the doors closed for nearly three days straight; the mess of your bedside table, littered with tissues and soaked tea bags; and your own nightmarish appearance, violated by swollen eyes and hair matted by sweat. you felt somewhat sheepish, letting yourself be perceived by heeseung in this state, but you were also too relieved to see him to shoo him away — or register the undertone of his comment.

“yeah, that’s a 101 degree fever for you.” your voice was so nasal, you wondered if the words were actively coming out your nose.

heeseung pouted, taking your clammy hand in his cool ones. “have you eaten? want me to order soup?”

you shook your head weakly. “no need.”

“to eat? humanity has proved otherwise.”

you rolled your eyes, trying to slip your hand out of his grip, but he held on tight.

“chicken noodle would be a bit basic, wouldn’t it? maybe something spicier? gamjatang?” with his free hand, he was opening the delivery app on his phone. “when i had that nasty cold like a month ago, this place absolutely saved me—”

“i really appreciate the thought, hee, but i swear i’ve got no appetite.” you squeezed his hand this time, hoping that, like a chinese finger trap, he’d let you go because of it.

when he showed no signs of doing so, you added, “do you really want that nasty cold back? i’ve been quarantining for a reason, idiot.”

heeseung only chuckled at the nickname. “perfect, just ordered. should be coming in the next 20 minutes or so.”

“heeseung.” you used all the energy left in you not to sound pathetically silly.

“yes, darling?”

you frowned at his response. “you’re seriously calling me darling right now? when i look like this?”

“’course i am,” and he took your hand up to his lips for the softest, sweetest peck, “as i said, you look so incredibly hot.”

suddenly, you felt the urge to punch him for being so unserious. (and for making you blush from more than your heightened body temperature.) but instead, against your will, you found yourself tugging him by the hand with such raw, instant force that he lost his balance, falling over you onto the bed and narrowly missing the headboard.

on second thought, you hadn’t seized him with that much force — definitely not enough to trip him over. but before you could open your mouth to apologize, at least out of courtesy, heeseung was adjusting himself to lie parallel to you, hand still intertwined in yours.

“ah,” he sighed, turning onto his side and shifting closer to you so that his face was almost entirely buried in your neck, “your bed is insanely comfortable.”

you sniffled in faux disgust, sliding to the edge of the mattress as if you actually had a chance of escaping his embrace. much to your surprise, he pulled you right back into him by your waist.

“your white blood cells are so pissed at you right now,” you huffed, trying not to betray how flustered you were by his touch.

“okay, nerd,” he shot back, snuggling ever closer into your backside. “you know, i’m starting to regret ordering that gamjatang.”

“and why is that?”

“because now that i’m here, i’d never want to leave your side.”

#wonwayne #enhypen #enhypen fic #enhypen x reader #enhypen fluff #enhypen scenarios #enhypen imagines #enhypen drabbles #lee heeseung #heeseung #heeseung fic #heeseung x reader #heeseung fluff #heeseung scenarios #heeseung imagines #heeseung drabbles #first post !!#the way i had the sniffles for the entire past week :(

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gilverrwrites · 7 months

Note

i’ve sent this request to river-rat69, but wanted to see how you would potentially interpret it >_>

exploring interests with jack and finding a common one? like art? perhaps?

just a cute idea idk

Finding common interests with Jack

Author note: That is super cute! I'm note sure if this is what you had in mind, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

I will also note, I know a common opinion is that Jack is like a child in an adult body, but I always read him more as like an adult with minimal world or social skills.

Can be read as romantic or platonic.

Rating: General

Genre: Pure fluff

Please be kind to your mind ❤︎

I feel like if Jack wants to make a connection with someone, he will try anything at least once.

He's a 20-year-old who has never had to make friends before. Cas and the Winchesters are family, thats different. Friends he has to make an effort for. (At least in his head.)

If he thinks you really enjoy something that he doesn't, he won’t want to hurt your feelings. He wants you to like him.

So even if he doesn’t enjoy something that much, he’ll try to pretend.

It’s up to you to figure that out and stop him from torturing himself.

He’s too nice, loyal to a fault.

Although, the many sceptical questions and the suspicious looks are a dead giveaway.

“Is it supposed to smell this strong?” Yep “And I can’t eat it?” No, Jack, it’s soap! “And we’re wearing gloves because? It’s dangerous, yep, got it.” “Is this what a headache feels like? NO! It’s fun! If you like it, I like it.” “It takes HOW LONG to cure?”

Probably stay away from things like candle and soap making.

He likes stability, so I think having a set day each week, or a couple of hours each night to do stuff together, would be ideal for him.

He’d love bonding over shared interests in films and TV.

He doesn’t have to eat, but I think he would enjoy trying new foods.

So: having a weekly film night would be awesome. Where you can both veg out on the couch together, eat whatever new or different foods you find at the supermarket, and watch horror (primarily zombie) and/or sci-fi films together.

Or spend the weekend binge-watching The Walking Dead or The Cornetto Trilogy (+ Paul, non negotiable).

Video games too: Left 4 Dead, Fallout etc

Then fall asleep where you're lounging, talking about your faves and your fan theories.

I don’t know that he would be into making art, per se, but I think he would like crafts.

I feel like Jack would really like those diamond painting thingies. Or just like, bedazzling things in general.

Like, I can see him contracting some weird cosmic-being version of the flu, being quarantined with an Angel!Reader and it being like that one episode of Malcolm in the Middle.

Also legos. Just things that take a lot of attention to detail, something that can take his mind off of the constant pressure he is under, that you can really focus on, but that has a cool pay off at the end.

Animation as well, both watching (more 2D stuff like Batman, Invincible, Nimona)

And doing– probably more like stop motion, with again, legos, or claymodels.

(I’m totally not projecting because I am an animation nerd)

He would, however, enjoy art galleries and museums.

Being able to admire and learn about things created by humans throughout history would be so astounding.

Would like to have you with him so you can observe, learn, and discuss together.

If you’re interested but unable to go with him, he’ll memorise everything so he can relay it all to you later, or pick up a bunch of leaflets for you to read. Or he’ll make a note of all his favourite parts so he can take you there another time.

He would have a similar sentiment if you are an artistic person.

He doesn’t want to draw or paint stuff with you, but he would like watching you and your creative process (if you don’t mind being watched)

Like absolutely fascinated by your ability to create something from nothing. Something that evokes emotion or tells a story – wow!!

Your number one supporter. Gift him your art, and he’ll put it on his bedroom wall.

Those galleries I mentioned earlier, he’s buying you both tickets to go see your inspirations shows or displays.

Wants to look through all your old works, he doesn’t care if that horse you drew when you were 12 is the wrong shape and has wonky eyes, he thinks its so cool that you tried, and practiced, and learned. That’s human ingenuity.

You’re so cool.

#jack kline #jack kline x reader #supernatural #headcanons #supernatural headcanons #jack kline headcanons #gilverrwrites

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sicktember · 5 months

Text

While waiting for the Sicktember 2024, June 15th reveal, check out these past prompts and collections for inspiration!

Sicktember 2023 - 2021 Past Prompts and Collections

💚2023 💚

[AO3 Collection]

Prompts List ⬇

1. Hopelessly Bad at Self-Care

2. Quest for a Cure

3. “What happened to your phenomenal immune system, huh?”

4. Hiding an Illness

5. Preventative Measures (Not Taken)

6. Sick and Injured

7. “You’re a Jerk When You’re Sick”

8. Persistent Fever

9. White Coat Syndrome

10. “The only place we’re going is to the pharmacy”

11. Beginner’s Guide to Faking Sick

12. Old Wives Tale

13. Anxious Stomach

14. ‘‘I shouldn’t be worried about you, but for some reason I am’’

15. Sick in an Inconvenient Place

16. Consulting the Internet/Web MD

17. Magical Remedy/Healing Potion

18. “Wear Your Coat, You’ll Catch a Cold”

19. Curled Up With a Pet

20. Cramping Pain

21. “But if you stay, you’ll get sick too”

22. Terms of Endearment/Nicknames

23. Coughing Fit

24. “Did you just sneeze?”

25. Confused/Disoriented

26. Pink Eye/Conjunctivitis

27. Uncooperative Patient

28. “I should have stayed home”

29. Side Effects/Adverse Reaction

30. Patient 0

2023 Alternate Prompts

Alt. 1.“I Could Really Use a Hug Right About Now”

Alt. 2. Fuzzy Socks

Alt. 3. Pounding Headache

Alt. 4. Forehead Kisses

Alt. 5. “I’m so sorry”

💚2022💚

[AO3 Collection]

Prompt List ⬇

1. ‘Do You Know How To Take Care of a Sick Person?’

2. Homesick

3. Painkillers

4. Hangover

5. 'Great. Now I Have Your Germs All Over Me.’

6. Sick on vacation

7. A cry for attention

8. Intense coddling

9. Home remedy

10. Excessive use of tissues/ ‘Blow Your Nose’

11. Emergency Room/ Ambulance

12. Psychogenic Fever/Stress Induced Illness

13. Seasonal/Pet Allergies

14. ‘I Might Be A Teeny Tiny Bit Sick, But It’s Fine.’'

15. Frostbite/Sunburn

16. Care Package

17. Syncope/Fainting

18. Nausea/Upset Stomach

19. Whining/Crying

20. Cold Sweat

21. ‘Does this look infected to you?’

22. Common Cold/Flu

23. Tepid Bath

24. ‘I Need You To Pull Over!’

25. Acid Reflux/Heartburn

26. Tickle in the Throat

27. Sleepless Night/s

28. Chronic Illness

29. Lethargy/Exhaustion

30. ‘Get Back in Bed!’

2022 Alternate Prompts:

Alt. 1. Soft Pajamas

Alt. 2. Vapor Rub

Alt. 3. Cuddling on the Couch

Alt. 4. Taking a Sick Day

Alt. 5. ‘Can You Be Brave For Me?’

💚2021💚

[AO3 Collection]

Prompt List ⬇

1. Fever

2. Persistent Cough/Sniffling.

3. Chicken Pox/Rash

4. Headache/Migraine

5. Comfort Item (Plush/Blanket)

6. Nebulizer

7. Sneaky Temperature Check

8. Contagious

9. I’m Not Sick

10. Medicine/Injection

11. Bed Rest

12. Faking it

13. Appendicitis

14. Aches and Pains

15. Quarantine

16. Hot Water Bottle

17. Ginger Ale and Crackers

18. Fever Dream/Hysteria

19. Addiction

20. Doctor’s Visit/Check Up

21. Unlikely Caregiver

22. Toothache

23. Ear Infection

24. Sneezing

25. Sick at School/Work

26. Strep Throat/Laryngitis

27. Blankets

28. Missing Out

29. Motion Sickness

30. Food poisoning/Allergy

2021 Alternative Prompts:

Alt. 1: Warm Soup

Alt. 2: Too Many Layers

Alt. 3: Vitamin C

Alt. 4: Stay

Alt. 5: Asleep on the Couch

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epicbuddieficrecs · 3 months

Text

Weekly Recap | June 3rd-23rd 2024 ~ Podfics

Had to split the fic rec cause Tumblr couldn't handle how long it was 😅

Podfic

[Podfic] i want your midnights by Cass_Caelis/ @cassiopeiacaelis for heartbeatdiaz/ @loserdiaz (New Years Eve, First Kiss | 10-20min | Teen): Buck wasn't expecting his exes to show up at the New Year's party and he certainly wasn't expecting all of them wanting to kiss him at midnight. He only has one person in mind that he actually wants to kiss.

[podfic] trade amber clay roads for the sea foam by Matriaya // fic by @hattalove (Post-S5 | 10-20min | Teen): “It’s the thirty-seventh couch you’ve looked at today,” Eddie finally replies, trying to ignore the headache settling into his temples. “And I'm gonna guess there's something wrong with—what, the headrest?” Buck blinks at him. “It's the feet,” he mumbles, his gaze falling to the floor. “They're weirdly shaped.” in which buck is finally ready to buy a couch, except he doesn't seem to actually want one.

we made these memories for ourselves by half_bakedboy [Podfic] by Rhea314 (Rhea)/ @rhea314 // fic by half_bakedboy / @half-bakedboy (Love Confession, Chris&Buck | 10-20min | General): Buck (accidentally) starts a baby box for Christopher and Eddie finds out.

🔥 [podfic] the sound of love astounds me by All_I_Ask/ @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove for fleetinghearts/ @shitouttabuck (Getting Together | 10-20min | Teen): “All the more reason to sleep,” Eddie presses. Buck looks at him, blinking tiredly. “Okay,” he says, suddenly amenable, rounding the couch and climbing onto it. He drapes himself across it, settling on his back and shoving his head into Eddie’s lap with a contented sigh. Eddie sits frozen, book in one hand and the other hovering over Buck’s chest. or, there’s not a lot eddie wouldn’t do for buck

🔥 [podfic] share this hour of make-believe by All_I_Ask/ @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove for fleetinghearts/ @shitouttabuck (Quarantine, Getting Together | 10-20min | General): or, quarantine finds eddie sharing a bed with a pillow-thief and sleep-talker. he minds less than he thinks.

🔥 [Podfic] you knew the password (so I let you in the door) by RhetoricalQuestions/ @rhetoricalk // fic by lilythesilly / @lilythesilly (Post-S2 | 20-30min | General): “Last year,” he starts again, “We had this really rough call and Bobby—well, Hen and I went to check on him. We didn’t break down the door or anything because Hen had a key to his apartment.” His throat clicks when he swallows. “Said that they had keys to each other’s places in case one of them couldn’t make it home. And I don’t know I—it sounded nice. To have someone looking out for you like that. Just in case.” Eddie seems to come to a decision about something, because he nods once before pulling a key off of his own keyring and handing it to Buck. “Sounds nice to me too.” Or, Buck gives Eddie a key to his loft.

[podfic] but it feels like a fortress when the weather gets bad by TheBoyWhoWalksInTheLight/ @aro-of-artemis (Post-3x15: Eddie Begins | 20-30min | Teen): Turning his face to the side, his eyes landed on the collection of house keys that sat in a bowl on his counter. A key for his apartment, one for Maddie’s, the key to his Jeep and one for Eddie’s front door. Eddie had given it to him one day as though it were the simplest decision in the world. “Y’know. In case you ever need to watch Chris or something. Or in case of emergency.” OR Buck has a nightmare about Eddie dying, but he also has a key to Eddie's house.

🔥 Relationship Advice from Complete Strangers Online by HMSLusitania [Podfic] by Rhea314 (Rhea)/ @rhea314 // fic by @hmslusitania (Getting Together | 20-30min | Teen): When he gets home for the night, Buck turns to the one source of information that’s never let him down: the internet. But where does one go for relationship advice from complete strangers online? Which is how, ten minutes later, he finds himself on Reddit with a shiny new account and username. It takes him a while after that to craft his question for r/Relationships, but he thinks he’s got it pretty accurately conveyed before he hits post.

🔥 [PODFIC] Into the Unknown by TheyReadWhatWeSow (TheyReapWhatWeSow) // fic by benjaminrussell (Canon Divergent, S4 | 30-45min | Teen): Buck is cursed. Cursed to have visions of the future but for no one to believe him. Over the years he’s got used to working around it, until one day, the 118 gets a new firefighter who believes him without question. Okay, Eddie does have some questions, but he believes Buck, and that’s the important thing. But then Buck wakes to a vision of Eddie getting shot. Will he able to prevent his vision from coming true or is he destined to lose the one person who believes him?

🔥 [podfic] I Opened My Eyes and There You Were by All_I_Ask / @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove (Post-S3, Getting Together | 30-45min | Explicit): In which Buck provides the dots and Eddie finally connects them.

🔥 [podfic] i have dreams where i kiss you and it’s pink by All_I_Ask/ @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove for fleetinghearts/ @shitouttabuck (Getting Together, Fluff | 45-60min | Teen): or, jee-yun buckley-han's third birthday party is in dire need of some fairy tale magic and buck's attempt to save the day might just be the thing that finally kills eddie

[podfic] fall right into me by Matriaya // fic by therainbowsedge / @therainbowsedge (PWP | 45-60min | Explicit): They plan the evening on a Tuesday afternoon while on their way back to the station from a call. “Wait.” Buck waves his hand in the air to pause the conversation. “You’ve never smoked weed?” “I’m a firefighter,” Eddie says like that’s an answer to Buck’s question. OR: Buddie gets high.

🔥 The Red Means I Love You by EtoileGarden [Podfic] by Rhea314 (Rhea)/ @rhea314 // fic by @etoilegarden (Post-S4, Angst | 2-2.5h | Mature): How stupid was it that a song that freaked him out so badly was still catchy enough that his brain decided to just play it on random repeat? He held it together for long enough to set the washing machine, to press start, to stumble upstairs to his bed, to lie down. For weeks and weeks after Eddie had been shot, Buck kept dreaming of different endings to the scene. Most of them involving Eddie just dying right there on the tarmac, just out of Buck’s reach. Buck trying to hold him together in the back of the engine even though Eddie was already gone. Buck begging him to stay, to stay, to hold on, please hold on, and Eddie letting go. ~ Eddie's left the 118 and Buck is definitely coping with that.

🔥 [Podfic] listen to you breathing (is where I wanna be) by Itty_Bitty_Blondie/ @itty-bitty-blondie // fic by Yavilee/ @theladyyavilee (Major Character Injury, Angst, Getting Together | 4-4.5h | Teen): The thing is – and Eddie should have known this, has been taught this cruel lesson over and over and over again – the thing is most of the time the worst day of your life will start like just any other day. A million small moments, so familiar and mundane you almost don’t even notice them slipping by - until you would give anything to go back and get just one more. (You can’t.) - Or the one where Buck is presumed dead after a building collapse and Eddie has to live through the reminder that tomorrow isn't promised to anyone

#buddie #buddie podfic #buddie fanfiction #buddie fic rec #buddie fanfic #buddie fic #epic buddie fic rec

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quest-for-pluto · 2 years

Text

Sparkles

Aonung x Human!Female!Reader

Chapter Index Next →

Summary: You work as maintenance at base 36, a testing facility used for unethical experiments on captured local Na’vi. One day when the base’s power supply melts down and explodes, you’re caught in the flaming crossfire. In a split second decision, you also decide to free the panicking Na’vi in his glass cell.

Aged up!Aonung to 21 and reader is 20

Chapter 1: think fast

Mission report: Base 36 quarantined due to overheated power supply explosion. Evacuated and searching for survivors.

•

“No no no no,” you cried, banging on the locked door. “I can’t die like this!”

Blaring alarms wailed loudly in the empty halls, the heavy smoke in the air muting the red flashing lights. You coughed into a closed fist, feeling the uncomfortable heat raging against your back.

The center of base 36 was locked down, after the power supply had exploded and started a massive, fast traveling fire that ate up everything in its path. They had immediately closed off the affected area, assuming everyone to be dead. And everyone was dead.

Except you.

“Fuck, fuck,” you swore, speed-entering every password you could think of on the keypad keeping the door sealed shut.

Incorrect password. Incorrect password. Incorrect password.

“For fuck’s sake!” You screamed, punching the titanium with all of your strength. It didn’t even budge, but now your knuckle was bloody and bruised. Well great.

Shoving your hands into your hair, you pulled frantically at the roots. “Okay think y/n, think.”

The fire hadn’t reached you yet, but it was close. You knew that it was coming from the hall on the right, but the center of base 36 was a circular design, so pretty soon the fire would be coming from both directions. If you went left, you had a chance of being stranded in the middle of the hallway, but if you didn’t—well, you would be stranded either way.

“Shit,” you dragged a frustrated hand down your face, before turning left and sprinting as fast as you could.

The walls blurred past you as you ran, your breath and heartbeat echoing heavily in your ears. The air was thick with smoke and heat, making your abused lungs ache.

You turned a corner and suddenly shrieked, skidding ungracefully to a stop only a few inches away from a jagged metal pole. The path that you needed to follow had caved in, blocked by a wall of heavy cement and metal debris. It was impossible to cross without somehow impaling or crushing yourself.

Brrrrrrk, the base shook, a deep rumbling noise that made you grab onto the wall for support as your eyes widened.

A cloud of dust suddenly showered over you, making you slowly look up in fear.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” you whimpered as you watched the ceiling start to crack above you.

Cursing profusely under your breath, you jumped into a random room to your left—grunting as your abused ribs hit the ground—and just barely missing the avalanche of dust and debris that buried that floor where you stood only a second ago. Coughing, you waved away the dust as it slowly settled around you.

To your horror, the entrance was now blocked with debris too, effectively trapping you inside. Well, you thought with a sinking resignation. No turning back now.

The room you had found yourself in was very large, about the size of an aircraft hangar. It was all dark, except for the flashing red warning lights that were also present around the rest of the base. High, overarching ceilings hung above you, supported by thick metal beams. The floors were a cold, porous grey concrete. You didn’t usually have clearance to be here, so the layout was foreign to you.

“Hello?” You called out hesitantly as you picked yourself off the ground, eyes scanning hopefully for any signs of life, but to no avail. Everything was quiet and abandoned.

The further you walked into the room, the more bizarre it got. Large glass encasements lined the walls, much too large to be cells. Not when the ceilings of these things were at least fifteen feet tall.

Or maybe, it was meant to hold something much larger than a human.

You gulped, warily continuing forward. You were a maintenance worker and carrier, so you didn’t really know what they got up to in the testing facilities. You just transported the samples that the lab technicians gave you and made sure that the equipment was clean and functional.

THUMP THUMP THUMP.

The sudden, loud banging noises made you gasp, taking a few startled steps back. Glancing in the direction of the sounds, you noticed that they seemed to be coming from one of the glass encasements a little further into the room—the only one still lit up.

You gulped, leaning your back against the wall and clutching at your chest. To investigate for exits, you would need to cross the room, and to cross the room, you would need to pass in front of that thing making those disturbing noises.

In the near distance, a deafening popping noise reverberated in the hall, vibrating against the walls and rattling your teeth. Shit, the fire was too close now, you needed to act fast. The thumping noises on the glass got more insistent, frantically picking up tempo and increasing in force.

“Ha…” you exhaled, gathering what little remained of your nerve. “Okay Y/n, this is happening.”

Without a second glance behind you, you ran as fast as you could, keeping your eyes trained in front of you.

Don’t look, you chided yourself. Don’t look. Don’t look you idiot.

THA-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

You looked, eyes shifting disobediently to your left and then…up. And higher. And they kept climbing until your neck was practically craned at a ninety degree angle, eyes wide and mouth gaping at an almost ten-foot-tall, blue humanoid figure.

“Oh, shit!” You shrieked, stumbling backwards and just nearly managing to catch yourself before you fell on your ass. “What the fuck is that?!”

The creature was male, as far as you could tell, with intricate black tattoo markings climbing up his biceps, neck and face. His hands—four fingered, you noticed in disturbance—were pressed against the glass walls of his enclosure, pointy canines protruding viciously from behind his lips as he hissed soundlessly at you.

Oh. Oh. You knew what he was. You’d heard too many horror stories from your coworkers not to recognize his monstrous features.

He was a local. A Na’vi. Apparently they were savage barbarians, mercilessly killing humans for pleasure and keeping their bones as decorations and trophies. They were no different from animals. Every single nerve in your body was screaming at you to get the hell away from it.

You gritted your teeth and sprinted past his cell, much to his visible anger and indignation. No way in hell were you going to let that thing out. You weren’t planning to die any earlier than you had to, thank you very much.

Thump.

That one was softer, sounding almost defeated. It made you pause, not able to stop yourself from glancing back over your shoulder curiously.

It—he had his head resting against the glass, fist slowly sliding down the surface. His other hand clutched reverently at what looked like a shark tooth pendant around his neck, lips moving quickly as if he was muttering desperate prayers under his breath.

Oh, no. No no no. Was that a shred of guilt you were feeling, Y/n? Banish the thought.

But…the more you looked at him, the less he seemed like a mindless barbarian who would enjoy ripping you limb from limb until you were just a bloody stump with a head, and the more he looked like—well, someone who was scared shitless of dying. Like you.

Another loud bang shook the base, gnawing at your conscience uncomfortably. The place where his eyebrows should have been furrowed, a painfully resigned expression contorting his face.

Shit. You were going to do something very, very stupid, weren’t you?

“You better not kill me, you stupid blue yeti,” you grumbled under your breath, running back towards his cell.

His head lifted when he saw you approaching, large blue eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Yeah, yeah,” you grimaced. “I’m back, don’t get too excited.”

Now you just had to figure out how to work technology you’d never seen in your life.

Frantically you scanned the complex control panel on the wall, your heart dropping as you stared helplessly at all of the different colorful buttons and switches. Of course it couldn’t be simple.

“Oh come on,” you moaned in despair, pulling at the roots of your hair. “Have you people never heard of labels before?!”

You felt his eyes boring into you as you nervously started pushing, turning and flipping random controls. So far, you’d managed to brighten the lights in his cell, play some music (—move your body like a hologram—), and activate a large gust of air that blasted him right in the face, messing up his hair. That earned you a stink eye.

“Oh, shut up, I’m trying!” You hissed anxiously at him, even though you were pretty sure that the glass was sound resistant so he couldn’t actually hear you, much less understand you.

All of a sudden, the metal frames of the entrance to the room started creaking loudly, grating on your eardrums like nails on a chalkboard. You looked on in horror as they began to cave in from the sheer intensity of the heat. The fire had finally caught up.

The Na’vi’s hands pressed insistently against the glass, staring down at you wide-eyed with a look that you knew meant hurry the fuck up, stupid human.

At this point you were just full on slapping and elbowing anything you could reach. “Come on!” You pleaded frantically as a wave of heat made a sheen of sweat break out over your skin. “This is really cutting it close, Y/n!”

To your overwhelming relief, the sweet sound of gears whirling and clasps unhinging blessed your ears as you watched the glass door to his cell unseal with a loud whoosh and swing open. And damn, were you unprepared for how incredibly tall he was.

It literally felt like you were standing next to a museum exhibit.

You didn’t really have time to think about it though, because the fire was now starting to eat its way inside the lengthy room.

“Oh, shit,” you swore, hearing him spit something of the same tone in a foreign language you didn’t understand.

Your eyes frantically scanned the back end of the room. Most of it was just cement wall, work stations and different types of weird machinery. Behind one of the stations though, there was a bulkhead door about two feet shorter than your giant blue companion, with a wheel to seal it shut.

“There!” You exclaimed, pointing at it as you made a beeline for the handle. Grabbing onto the wheel, you pulled it counterclockwise with all of your strength. But no matter how hard you pulled, it just wouldn’t budge.

“Arghhhh!” You screamed in frustration, digging your feet into the ground as your knuckles turned white from how tightly you gripped onto the handle.

Suddenly, a large hand gripped your shoulder, shoving you harshly away. “Rikx mìso!” He hissed at you, grabbing onto the wheel himself and pulling.

The rusty wheel creaked loudly as it began to turn from the sheer amount of brute force exerted on it.

“Any time now,” you tittered nervously as the heat on your back started to become painfully hot. You could now see the intense waves of heat in the air, distorting your vision like an unfocused camera lens.

The Na’vi huffed, turning it even harder, and soon enough the lock unclamped with a few clicks, leaving the watertight door to swing wide open. Both of you lunged inside, with him slamming and resealing the door behind you just as a station exploded violently nearby, the flames chasing at your heels.

“Oh my god!” You shrieked, stumbling back and falling into a cold wall. The bulkhead door had led into what looked like a decently sized storage room. Rebreathers hung on the walls, as well as protective gear that you knew the excursion division used. You didn’t really get to analyze much more than that though, because to your absolute horror, the door creaked ominously in front of you, warping from the intense heat that it was not meant to withstand.

“Shit!” Your eyes widened as you staggered away, almost tripping over your feet in your haste. You needed to get out of here now.

You ran to the sealed exit door, pushing on it in frustration. “No,” you cried when it refused to open, tears welling up in your eyes. “No, not now! Please.”

Your heart sunk further when you noticed the keypad next to the door, identical to the one you were trying to unlock earlier. You were right back to where you started.

Taking a few steps back, you stared numbly at the floor. This was it, then? This was how you were going to die.

The Na’vi ran up beside you, pounding desperately on the exit door, but you knew it wouldn’t budge. It was locked, sealed shut and made of titanium alloy like all of the other doors you’d discovered lining the edges of the base ever since it had been quarantined. The only way to open it was with the code. A code that you didn’t have clearance for.

“It’s not going to work,” you told him, staring at the concrete blankly. “Even if you fired a bullet at that thing, it wouldn’t even dent.”

He didn’t seem to listen to you, still pounding furiously at the reinforced metal. When that didn’t work, he let out a deep, guttural yell, turning to you with anger in his eyes.

Storming up to you, he grabbed the collar of your shirt, lifting you up to his eye level and sneering in your face. Your breath stuttered in fear as you stared into his deep, sea blue irises. They were much more vivid up close, mixed with swirling flecks of green and gold.

They pierced into your soul, burning with rage and fear but most of all, they burned with an unwavering defiance. In that moment, you understood perfectly what he was trying to tell you.

“Okay,” you found yourself nodding slowly. “We can try.”

He set you down, and you both got to work, scouring the room for anything that would possibly help you escape. The only light source in the room was the setting sun through two tiny polycarbonate glass windows to your left and right, and a measly flickering pot light above you.

You patted desperately at the walls, wrenching ration packs off of shelves, and ripping open closet doors. So far you'd found food, hunting knives, folded clothes, some rifles, camo backpacks, rebreather masks, a water filtering kit and a pair of boots. Nothing that would help you bust down the door though.

It looked like your companion wasn't having much luck either, although he seemed much more wary of the items he found, almost like he was confused and nervous to even touch them.

Creaaaaaak.

The door groaned behind you, parts of the metal starting to dent inward and blister. Shit shit shit. There was no more time, it was going to blow.

You stumbled over to the Na'vi, tugging on his leg until he looked down at you. "There's no time," you said, eyes wide with urgency. "We need to hide."

He glanced back at the sealed exit, before looking back down at you. He huffed, following you to one of the more secluded corners. Hastily, you began building a wall out of everything both of you could find in the room. It probably wouldn't do much, but it was the best protection you could afford. He seemed to get the message too, gathering three times as much as you could hope to hold in your limited human arms, and dumping it onto your makeshift barricade.

You grabbed a rebreather mask off the wall just in case, when suddenly you froze.

PULL TO ENGAGE EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN.

The words were now exposed, written in bold, red letters above a red metal handle. Well you'd be damned.

"Get back!" You yelled, pulling the lever down hard. It groaned, snapping into place.

Three things happened at once. The bulkhead door, which was already warped beyond repair and in the process of peeling, exploded open, exposing both of you to the most swelteringly unbearable heat you'd ever experienced. You screamed as blisters raised all along the length of your forearm, which you had raised to shield your eyes. Distantly through the pain, you could hear him crying out too.

Then, with a bang, three sets of diagonal doors emerged, sealing the entrance shut, but not before a final explosion knocked you clean off your feet. You cracked your head against a wall, and everything went dark.

************

Rikx mìso! = Move!/Move away!

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