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tallulah477 · 3 months

Text

Feral

Survive The Night Day 2: Predator/Prey

Pairing: Neteyam x Fem!Human!Reader

Warnings: AgedUp!Neteyam, Dark!Neteyam, ***NON-CON***, Dub-Con, Oral (female receiving), P in V, Sex Pollen, Size Difference, Chasing, Primal Play (Predator/Prey Kink), Creampie, Hair Pulling, Knife Play, Restraining Holds (i.e pinning/holding reader down), Fear Kink (?), Alien Genitalia (not really the focus, but its there), Knotting, Belly Bulge

Word Count: 7.3K

A/N: Based off a dream I had where Neteyam chased me through my house and I was running for my fucking life. Why didn't I let him catch me, you ask? Cause dream Talie is stupid.

Summary: You never understood why the Na'vi don't use this particular plant in their healing practices. It's a miracle plant for the humans - cutting healing times nearly in half when used as a topical paste. You would think it would have some similar benefits to the Na'vi. You would be wrong.

**PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS - DON'T LIKE, DON'T READ**

Translations:

Tawtute - Human

Kehe rikx - Don't move

Rutxe ftang - Please stop

Kehe - No

Even considering he’s a nine foot tall blue alien, Neteyam Sully still looks extremely out of place standing on the clean, white tiled floor of the lab.

His siblings don’t look so out of place when they visit - comfortable and familiar enough within the confines of the lab to make themselves at home among the multitude of beakers, whirling machines, and thick observation glass that make up your day-to-day workplace. Their large bodies twisting and contorting with ease when necessary to accommodate for the smaller space.

Neteyam isn’t so lucky. He doesn’t like the human facilities, opting to follow in his mother’s footsteps and stay as far away from the skypeople as he can. He’s only here because he was ordered to be, sent by his father to fix his broken throat comm before they head out with the hunting party on a three day hunting trip.

He looks uncomfortable as he stands behind you, back stiff and arms crossed across his broad chest as he watches you tinker with the comm. Repairing tech has never been your strong suit, so it’s taking you a bit longer to figure out than it probably should have, but since you're currently the only person left in this half of the base, the responsibility has unintentionally fallen to you.

You should be out there too. The thought forms bitterly in your head as you poke at the small opened compartment of the comm with your tweezers. Your favorite part of research is going out into the world and finding the specimens. The lab is great, a fine place for breaking ground and learning new things, gathering knowledge and data about a flora and fauna in a way that no other humans had ever had the opportunity to do before. Pandora is your home, where you grew up and lived your whole life - and yet, it’s still a mystery, and you learn something new and beautiful about it everyday.

But the real fun is outside the lab. It’s when you're out there, in the thick of it, stepping over breaching roots and feeling the moss of the ground between your toes when you take off your shoes during a rest break. It’s feeling the gentle breeze of air along your skin and hearing the trees rustle in the canopy above you as a result, and pretending that - just for a minute - you can feel the breeze of alien air brush against your face instead of your mask.

Usually one of the older scientists, Alice, offers to stay behind at the lab to run tests and be on call for the Omatikaya should human tech ever be needed. But she’s the most knowledgeable when it comes to locating the elusive and seasonally grown plant that’s come to be known as the Rust Plant.

So, that leaves you here, on your ass and pouting while everyone else gets to go off and have their fun.

As far as you know, the plant doesn’t have any special properties or spiritual significance to the Na’vi. But when the red dust-like powder is collected from the center and manipulated into a liquid, the result is a miracle paste that significantly reduces healing time with human injuries. You asked about it once - why the Na’vi don’t try to make the paste for themselves to see if it will work on them - but the only answer you got back was that it had some ‘unintended consequences’ when used by the clan, so they stay away from the plant altogether.

You don’t think about that when Neteyam walks in.

The plant mixture, once rust red, is now a beautiful glowing purple inside the beaker - a reaction from the solution added to the powder to form the liquid base. It’s been on the hot plate for a while now, but it’s only just starting to heat up enough to provide small spirals of smoke inside the clear glass.

You’re glancing at the clock when you hear Neteyam sniff slightly behind you. You don’t turn around, ignoring the little puffs of air that somehow sound like bullet shots in the silence, but a part of you is instantly insecure. What is he smelling? It can't be the mixture in the beaker. Despite the smoke, it doesn’t give off any kind of smell. Subtly, you press your chin to your chest, trying to see if you can smell yourself to find out if maybe it’s you giving off some kind of stench that his overly sensitive nose is picking up on, but you don’t smell anything off about you either.

The purple liquid is still thin inside the container, needing several more minutes of constant heat in order to bubble and thicken slightly before it can be considered a usable product, but you pause your tinkering on the comm to note the time for the smoke in a small notebook.

Neteyam lets out a loud sigh when you drop the tweezers to grab a pencil, the annoyed huff nearly ear piercing in the quiet of the lab. This time you can’t help but glance towards the harsh noise, a slight tilt of your head towards the large Na’vi and your eyes meet amber for just a second before they drop again to the paper as you scribble.

A part of you wants to be snobby, ask a prissy ‘can I help you?’ just because you feel like he’s being so unnecessarily rude when you're just trying to help, but you keep your mouth shut.

He doesn’t.

“Are you nearly done?” He grunts, accented tone pitched with agitation as his feet shuffle on the tile.

“Yes, just a few more minutes,” You say, picking the tweezers back up. “Be patient.”

You think you’ve almost got the comm fixed, just a minor replacement to the tiny inside panel, and you're thankful that’s all it is. It shouldn’t take too long. You’ve nearly got the replacement piece in place now, so all you should have to do is solder it in and it should be fine. Which is good because the sooner you can get this fixed, the sooner you can get the huffy, oversized, unfortunately very handsome despite being an incredible dick of a Na’vi out of the lab so you don’t have to feel him breathing down your neck anymore.

It only takes another couple minutes for the smoke to consume the rest of the empty space in the beaker, thick white wisps swirling inside of the glass and spiraling out of the top. You drop the tweezers again, cutting the power off to the hot plate and grab the pencil again to log the time.

Neteyam sniffs again, this time audibly louder and longer, before it sounds like his breath gets caught in his lungs.

Immediately, your head spins around to stare at him wide eyed, surprise and concern flooding your chest when you notice he’s backed up a few steps. He’s staring at the bubbling beaker, yellow eyes set with suspicion and what almost looks like distress.

“Are you o–”

“What is that?” He interrupts, voice gruff as his three fingered hand points to the beaker.

“It’s… the mixture for our healing paste,” You reply, confused.

“No! What is it?”

“The Rust Plant? The one that grows on the sides of river b–”

You’re cut off again by a sharp hiss, and you have just a second to register Neteyam’s dagger-like teeth as he stalks forward, spitting out a frustrated “You stupid–” before he’s jerking back, hand immediately covering his nose as if to stop himself from breathing.

He looks wild, eyes frantic as he stares at the beaker, and every muscle in his body looks tense, stung up tight like a bow ready to shoot. You’re a scientist, you’re meant to be observant, so you don’t know why you didn’t see it before. But it’s clear as anything now. The smoke doesn’t have any kind of smell to you, but to him - with the way he’s backing away and covering his nose to keep from breathing it in - it must be horrible.

His tail is trashing behind him, so upset that you think you can almost hear a swish from it cutting through the air like a whip.

“I need to leave,” He says suddenly. Instinctively, you back up into the desk at the sight of the large and angry Na’vi coming at you again, but he just grabs the still broken comm and turns around to storm out.

He’s big though, too much for the small space of the lab, and his frantic tail is still thrashing as he turns. The thin appendage accidentally snaps against the side of the still smoking beaker, sending it flying off the desk and onto the ground.

The glass shatters against the tile, glowing purple spreading across the white floor in a large puddle as the smoke spirals up into the air. Neteyam’s hand instinctively drops from his nose to grip onto his tail, holding the end of it close to him as if to keep it from swinging and smacking into anything else. But you watch, shocked and frozen in your spot as he takes one shuddering breath, and then another, tense back muscles shifting under his cobalt skin with each inhale and exhale of air.

“Neteyam?” You ask, timidly. Dread shoots through your chest and you have the feeling that something very serious just happened, but you don’t even know what.

He’s just standing there now, back towards you, but he’s not moving towards the door anymore. It’s like something is keeping him from moving, some unseen force that exploded out of the glass container when it burst and wrapped its tendrils around him before he could take another step.

Whatever he was smelling from the beaker wasn’t good for him, and now it's in the air, invisible signatures swirling through the small space of the lab, and it's affecting him - the ‘unintended consequences’ of the Rust Plant on the Na’vi.

Your every instinct is telling you to stay away from him, that he’s dangerous. But he’s one of the Omatikaya, and regardless of how he views humans, you know he would never hurt you and disobey his father like that.

“Hey,” You say, gently. You force yourself away from the desk, slowly moving around him to try to not startle him as you attempt to make your way to the airlock door. “Just relax, okay? Let’s try to air this pl–”

His deep growl has you frozen again, cold ice shoots through your veins at the predatory sound. It’s not a normal growl - not a low, quick sound made in anger or frustration. It sounds dark, a deep dangerous rumbling that came from his chest. A warning.

You watch in horror as he slowly tilts his head towards you, the pointed tips of his sharp teeth visible under the snarled curl of his lips, glittering in the bright fluorescent lights of the lab. Your brain screams at you to run - danger, danger, danger, it shouts, but you can’t move. The realization hits hard: he’s not Neteyam anymore. The Na’vi in front of you is not the same human-indifferent, scoffing, fearless warrior son of Toruk Makto.

He’s an animal. A predator.

Feral.

His golden eyes are now just a thin band of dark honey encircling two endless black holes. And in their reflection you see yourself - tiny and weak. Scared.

Prey.

His body shifts slightly, just the most minuscule movements as he angles himself towards you that you probably wouldn’t have noticed had your survival instincts not been ringing alarm bells in your brain. Without thinking, you grab the hot plate, gripping it tightly at its base and holding it in front of you as your only form of weapon.

“Neteyam Sully!” You shout, and you can’t even believe how out of your mind you are to try to use his full name like an upset mother. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you stop it right now!”

There’s not even a second after the words leave your mouth, not a beat or breath or anything before he’s coming at you.

Your body registers his sudden movement before your brain does, the roaring snarl bouncing off the walls of the lab as he lunges at you. The hot plate is out of your hands in an instant, the hard base of the plate smacking into his face with a loud cuh-thunk. His snarl is interrupted with a grunt from the hit, body jerking back a step from the impact, and you don’t wait around to see the way his eyes zero in on your retreating form again in rage.

You can’t think - your body is moving without your brain telling it what to do. Pure panic mixed with raw survival instincts is what drives you through the door behind you, nearly smacking into the wall as you barrel down the main hallway. You hear Neteyam’s footsteps close behind, bare feet smacking against the tile.

It’s a sound you never thought you would find terrifying. You think of little Mae, the daughter of the staff nurse and one of the science guys, and how the sound of her tiny footsteps stomping on these same tiles floors always brought a smile to your face. You could always hear her coming before you saw her, just a few seconds before she rounded the corner with unsteady steps ready to cause havoc as she tries to run from her exhausted and overstimulated mother.

These ones are louder though. Heavier, but somehow more quiet as they rush at you from across the unobstructed hall. Your body doesn’t wait for your mind to catch up, and that’s probably a good thing considering you have no idea how the fuck you knew to take the split second turn to your right the exact moment Neteyam tried to pounce.

You hear his snarl of anger as he rights himself, loud and echoing through the hallway. You’ve managed to best him for a second, but he’s still on your ass - gaining ground on you with his long Na’vi legs despite the cramped human-sized halls.

Your heart is racing in your chest, pounding with fear, and the adrenaline coursing through your veins is the only thing keeping you going. You can’t breathe - shallow, panicked, quick puffs of air rip from you as you run, your high pitched gasps sounding against the hall walls as a foil to Neteyam’s predatory growls.

“HELP!” You scream, voice cracking with how loud you're trying to scream. The desperation and pure terror are evident in your voice and you know if someone were around they would hear you for sure. Someone has to be around. They have to be. “SOMEONE HELP ME PLEASE!”

No one responds. No one steps in to intervene. No one even opens their door to try to take a little bit of a peek. No one to run to for help even though it feels like you're about to get mauled to death by a Thanator.

You’re truly alone. And that thought makes you somehow even more desperate.

Most people have a tendency to close the doors of their bedrooms, trying to keep as much privacy as they can in the small base. Norm has no such desires, often too excited or too focused on getting to his studies that he outright forgets to close his door.

It’s a god send now that you’re sprinting through the residency part of the outpost. Your room is one of the last down the hall. You won’t make it. Not with the way you’re shaking right now, body feeling like it's somehow both freezing over with ice and lighting on fire as the fear and adrenaline fight for dominance for your immediate attention. Neteyam’s right behind you, long stride more than twice the size of yours cutting any distance you gained through your miracle of a move back down to barely anything at all.

He’s going to catch you.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.

Throwing yourself at a random door is dangerous. Just the extra second it takes to turn the knob and push the door open could almost certainly be the difference between life and death if you even still have a chance at life at all. And even then you run the risk of it being locked. Your eye catches on Norm’s door - open and shining like a beacon of hope amongst the fluorescently lit hallway.

You don’t have another choice.

You turn.

As soon as you make it through the threshold, you slam the door behind you as fast as you can.

You don’t know what you expected, naively hoping that the door would somehow succeed in protecting you and keeping Neteyam out. It’s not even locked.

You scream as the door explodes under Neteyam’s weight, the wood splintering as it bursts apart, smaller bits of fragmented wood spraying towards you as the feral Na’vi shoulders his way in. The bathroom to your left is the only option, and you lunge for it just as Neteyam lunges for you. The tears pouring down your cheeks burn your eyes and blur your vision, your loud hyperventilating cries make your throat raw. Another door just barely slammed in his face and your back presses against the opposite door, your panicked hand trying to jiggle the knob but your brain not reminding you how to twist it. This other door hasn’t been used in years - the bathroom that once connected these two rooms together is just used by Norm now since Mary had her baby and her and her husband moved into a larger room to accommodate the crib. It’s locked, and your fingers are struggling to twist the mechanism up to unlock it when Neteyam breaks through.

Even through your blurred vision, you see it clearly. His arm reaches through the hole his shoulder has made, and the bathroom is too small, too fucking small because that arm looks like its reaching across the entire length of it, fingers splayed out like if he can just get one of the tips to brush you, he’ll snatch you up.

“HELP!” You scream again. Fuck fuck fuck. You’re going to fucking die. “HELP ME!”

You watch the door in horror as Neteyam pulls his arm back, head dropping to glare at you through the opening, and your veins fill with ice.

He looks murderous - pupils blown so wide you can’t see the golden ring wrapped around them at all. You want to drop to the ground under that stare, beg for mercy even though the look in his eyes makes it clear there won’t be any.

“N-Neteyam,” You stutter. Your heart is pounding so fast, blood sounding like it’s rushing in your ears so fast you don’t know how you haven’t had a heart attack yet. “P-please s-stop. P-please.”

His eyes stay locked on yours through the hole in the door, dark and glaring but for some reason he’s paused his attacks. A part of you wonders if your begging is making it through to the non-animalistic part of his brain. Whatever the smoke from the mixture of the Rust Plant did to him, it has to be only temporary. He’s still Neteyam. Neteyam is still in there somewhere.

“Please,” You try again, voice barely above a whisper. “You’re scaring me.”

He leans forward, one hand curling around the broken wood from the open hole in the door. When he speaks, you don’t know if you’re relieved to hear that he can despite the overwhelming feral actions, or if you’re horrified at how his voice comes out.

He doesn’t sound like himself at all. His words are clipped, short words made sentences that you don’t understand as both the gravely and growled way he says them as well as overall meaning.

“Tawtute,” He growls. “Mine.”

“Wha— I-I don’t understand,”

You scream when he hisses at you, long canines and sharp teeth on display through the damaged opening and you have a front row seat to the show as your back presses harder against the door behind you. The hand wrapped around the edge of the hole pulls back suddenly, taking with it a huge chunk of the center and the loud crack and snap of wood snaps your body back into gear. You twist the small lock on the door behind you, unlocking it and wrenching it open when Neteyam throws his body against the opposite door again. You’re out the door and into the next room, slamming the door shut behind you just as you hear the telltale crash of the wild Na’vi breaking through the other barrier. Without thinking, you round the side of the bookshelf that stands on the side of the doorframe. You push with all your might, tipping the bookshelf on its side so that it falls diagonally across the door. A dresser sits just on the opposite side of the door, the bookshelf catching on the edge of the dresser so that it blocks a good portion of the bathroom door.

Any other time you’d be heartbroken to see the books that fall off the bookshelf in your mishandling scatter along the floor and at your feet like they were nothing more than trash. Today, though, you can’t give a shit about that.

Your hands grip your hair in frustration as you hear Neteyam’s body barrel into the door, hot tears racing down your face as you waste valuable seconds staring at the bending wood behind the tipped bookcase. It won’t keep him back for long. He could probably easily push it out of his way, but it's something. Your only hope now is that it keeps him long enough for you to get away and that his instinct driven brain doesn’t realize he can just go back the way he came to get around the obstacle.

Turning on your heel, you sprint out the bedroom door, heading back down the hallway towards the lab. The sound of the loud crash echoing through the empty hall makes you run impossibly faster. Was it the door finally giving way under his weight? Or was it the bookshelf being tossed to the side like it was nothing and he’s about to barrel down the hallway to finish the job that you’ve somehow managed to postpone until now?

You make it back to the lab, foot smacking against the forgotten hotplate still laying on the ground in your haste to get to the airlock. Your hand smacks against the button on the side wall, fingers practically choking the heavy handle as you go to yank it open. The oxygen masks lay forgotten on the shelf next to the door. You don’t care about them, don’t care about breathing right now because what’s good about breathing when Neteyam could end your need for it in just seconds if he catches you.

The airlock door hisses as the seal breaks and for a split second you think you’ve done it - have somehow managed to survive this deadly game of cat and mouse you’ve inadvertently been forced to play. You can grab a mask and slip inside the airlock. Keep Neteyam locked up here in the lab while you sit safely outside until the others get back or he comes to his senses enough to remember how to open the airlock door himself.

But no sooner than the thought crosses your mind, an arm wraps tightly around your waist and pulls you from your death grip on the thick metal door.

You scream as you’re tossed to the floor, body pressed against the cold tile as Neteyam straddles you. His hips pin your legs down, leaving them useless and unable to buck or kick under his massive weight. You beat at his chest with your fists as hard as you can, trying to ignore how they hurt from your balled up fists trying to hit against pure solid muscle.

Panic manifests in your desperate cries and you aim for his face too, trying to hit or slap or scratch - anything to get him off of you. You feel like an injured animal caught in a trap. And you suppose you are.

“Get off!” You cry. “Get off me, Neteyam!”

He snarls as one of your hits lands too close next to his eye and he grabs your hands tightly in one of his, pinning them above your head.

Your screams stop, catching in your throat when the bright fluorescent lights of the lab catch on the knife on his hip. The light caresses the blade as he pulls it from its sheath, the sharp tip sparkling as he brings it to press against the base of your throat.

His face is in front of yours in an instant, so close you feel like you can barely breathe in the wake of the knife resting at your throat and the way his huge eyes feel like twin black holes threatening to suck you into their depths if you move even a single centimeter.

“Kehe rikx,” His words are hardly more than a whispered breath against your face, but their translation rings loudly in your ears.

Don’t move.

The point of the knife drags against your neck, scratching lightly as he draws it down your collarbone. It pulls at the fabric at the neck of your t-shirt as he moves it down your chest, stretching and bunching it down as he scrapes the tip through the valley of your breasts. Your heart pounds under the deadly tip of the weapon and your body wants to fight, keep fighting for your life that you know could be taken from you with just a quick movement of his hand, but your fear keeps you frozen.

Something hard presses against your trapped thighs and your eyes automatically rip themselves from the knife down to the space between your bodies, and your breathing catches in your throat again for a whole other reason.

Neteyam’s cock is hard in his loincloth, having escaped its sheath and filling out under the thin material enough to raise a sizable tent inside it.

He doesn’t give you time to react as his head bends down and latches onto the swell of your breast through your shirt, sharp teeth digging into it just enough for marks to surely be left even through the layers of shirt and bra. You yelp, back arching instinctively against the pain, and your body unfreezes as his teeth scrape against your breast before digging into the material of your shirt and ripping.

The loud sound of tearing fabric rips through the room and Neteyam releases the torn fabric from his mouth just to grip it with his hands instead, pulling up and out and exposing your bra clad torso to his darkened crazed eyes. The knife is still in his hand, but the blade is pointed sideways now as he uses the fingers around it to rip your shirt apart. It’s not smart, not a smart idea at all to try your hand at smacking at him again, but you have to do something.

You don’t know what he wants anymore. What did that mixture do to him? He was chasing you through these halls, growling and snarling like a predator on the hunt for its next meal, and now he’s on top of you - hard and tearing your clothes off like he wants to fuck you.

You only get a couple smacks in before the knife is back at your chest and you’re forced still again. Neteyam’s eyes are locked onto your chest, following the tip of the knife as he slides it under the band of your bra directly between your breasts. It cuts easily under the pressure of the sharp knife and the covering falls on either side of your chest, leaving you bare to his hungry gaze.

There’s a mark on your breast from where his teeth had dug into it and he pauses to stare at it greedily.

“N-Netayam,” You say, slowly. He seems a little calmer now that he has you trapped under him. You need to talk him to his senses. He’s still in there somewhere. He has to be. He’s not all animal. He can be reasoned with. “You don’t wanna do this. Plea–”

Your plea is cut off as he rises off of you, crouching back just enough to give himself room to flip you roughly over on your stomach. You grunt as your bare chest hits the cold tile, arms splayed uselessly on either side of you as you try to get your bearings from the quick movement before he’s using his knife to cut through the denim of your shorts.

“Neteyam! Rutxe ftang! Kehe!”

You don’t know why you think pleading in Na’vi will be any different than English, but desperation punches the frantic words out of you before you can even think about deciding to say them. Your hands finally find purchase on the ground beneath you and you try to push yourself up in hopes of crawling away, but Neteyam’s dropping the knife and taking hold of your hips before you can.

High pitched squeaking sounds hit your ears as he drags your body across the tile. Your hands scramble frantically against the floor as you’re pulled backwards, but there’s nothing to hold onto. They just slide uselessly, voicing their protest in the way the tile screams under your grasping fingertips as you’re hoisted up with your lower half in the air.

Your back arches against Neteyam’s hold, legs kicking in the air but doing no harm despite their efforts. The hole he’s created in your shorts is enough to have your pussy on display for him, and you can feel his breath on it - hot puffs are the only warning you get before his mouth is on you. Your voice is raw from all the screaming you’ve done, the sound crackling and almost pained as you shout again - shout for him to stop and to let you go as you kick and squirm and beg.

You want to cry more, any drying tears of fear you have still tracked on your cheeks are replaced with tears of humiliation. Your clit pulses under his relentless tongue, pussy subconsciously clenching around nothing as he licks and sucks over the puffy folds.

You’re wet.

You’re so wet already, body confusing the adrenaline caused by fear and desperation and flooding it with the adrenaline that comes with arousal instead. His textured tongue slips across your sticky cunt, licking up your wetness, and a reluctant moan escapes your lips at the rough feel on your sensitive parts.

A gleam to your right catches your attention and a flicker of hope rushes through you at the sight. Neteyam’s knife is laying on the ground next to you, scattered just far enough when he dropped it that it's a stretch for you to grab it, but not impossible. He’s distracted by your cunt, chest rumbling in what you can only describe as a more aggressive type of purr and your face contorts in unwanted pleasure as the vibrations pulse against your clit.

You reach for the knife, using one hand pressed against the tile to gain any kind of leverage you can while your other arm stretches out towards the forgotten blade. You're not even sure what you’re going to do with it when it’s in your hand. Would you just threaten him with it? Tell him to back off and that you’ll use it if he doesn’t? Would you cut him a little to show that you’re serious?

Would you stab him if it came to it?

Your fingers graze along the hilt of the knife, fingertips brushing along the part that it can touch and curling in, trying to coax the knife just a bit closer so you can grab it. Neteyam growls into your cunt, and you let out a gasping curse when his foot lands on your wrist, pinning it to the tile before you can work your hand around the knife.

“You son of a bitch!” You yell, anger burning through your desperation, but all Neteyam does is push his face deeper into your pussy. His large hands rip at the back of your shorts more, fingers digging into the exposed curves of your ass to spread you apart.

The pressure in your belly intensifies as he sucks on your clit, laving his tongue over the sensitive bundle of nerves before wrapping his lips around it in what feels like an almost pleasured punishment.

You’re going to cum. Fuck fuck you’re going to cum on the tongue of the practically feral Na’vi who just chased you through the halls of your own home and made you think he was going to rip you to shreds and leave you to die on the floor for your coworkers to find. It feels so good, so so good and you wail as your pussy spasms against his relentless tongue, contracting against the wet muscle as the coil in your belly bursts in an explosion of uncontrolled pleasure.

Neteyam groans against your core, lapping up everything you have to offer as you whine and shake. Your legs, still suspended in the air, are becoming numb - the tingling sensation of your limbs losing their life combining with the dramatic pulsing over your oversensitive cunt.

You grunt as he drops you to the ground, his foot lifting off your wrist as he crouches back up, and you pull it to your chest, cradling it there and quickly checking for any injury as your body automatically tries to curl up in a protective ball.

His hands are back on your hips in an instant, pulling you back again across the floor until your ass is pressed up against his front. Your blood runs cold when your bare ass meets bare skin. The bulge that was once blocked by the thin layer of his loincloth is now free - large, dominant, and demanding of attention as it presses tightly against you.

Demanding of your attention.

The hand on the back of your neck is uncaring as it pushes you down, forcing your face against the white tiled floor as he lines himself up with your entrance.

“Neteyam, no! Please!” You beg, even as your back is forced to arch from the exposed position he has you in.

And maybe if this was a different situation, a different circumstance, he would have used this opportunity to tease you. Tell you to stop fussing and stay still. To be a good girl for him while he fucks your tight cunt and maybe if you’re good enough, he would let you cum again. You would let him. Neteyam is beautiful, more handsome than any other Na’vi you’ve ever seen. If he would have been kind to you and shown interest in you like that, you would have agreed to fuck him in a heartbeat.

But he’s not himself. Doesn’t even have his mind enough to acknowledge your pleas with anything more than agitated snarls and frustrated growls.

His cock feels monstrous as he rubs it between your soaked folds. Thick and hard as the wetness of his own slick mixes with the sticky mess you have already between your thighs. The head of his cock rubs against your tender clit and you can feel how the sheer size of it forces your pussy lips apart.

You can’t take it inside you. Fuck. You can’t. You can’t.

You whimper when the tip makes its way back to your entrance, nudging against it before the blunt tip presses forward. Your hands press into the tile on either side of your head, mouth falling open in a silent scream even as he presses your cheek further into the floor as he pushes his cock further into you. You feel every thick inch of it as it spears you open, and you expect it to hurt. It should hurt, especially with the way you’re clamping down around him, body automatically trying to keep it out even as it bullies its way deeper inside you.

There’s pressure, so much pressure. He’s too big, large alien cock way too much for your tiny human body to take, but somehow it is. Your brain is trying to tell you to panic, that the pressure is pain and you should scream and cry and try to wiggle away from it. But it's not. He’s stretching you so much, filling you up - but it doesn’t. hurt.

And that realization hurts you more than the cock currently rearranging your guts ever could.

You know it’s the slick. Despite never being with a Na’vi yourself, you know that the wetness that coats a male’s cock to aid it with slipping out of its protective sheath has something in it that eases the pain of penetration. It’s a good thing. Inherently helpful for any relationship, especially for those between a human and a Na’vi to curb the extra struggle of the size difference.

You always thought it was sweet. A way for Eywa to reward the loyalty of the good sky people who are lucky enough to find everlasting bonds with her own children.

Now, the idea of it leaves a bad taste in your mouth as the cock inside you pulls out only to thrust in harder. The texture on his cock scrapes against your slick walls as he starts to fuck you, the bumps and barbs rubbing and pressing against the sensitive spots inside you that you didn’t even know you had.

A waterfall of moans and whines rip from your throat as he moves faster, your higher pitched pathetic sounds a stark contrast to his deep guttural grunts. His hand is off the back of your neck now, instead finding a place at the side of your face as he keeps you pinned to the floor. It’s so big compared to your head that it spans the entirety of it, thumb hooking just under the edge of your jaw while his fingers curl around the top of your head as he holds you down.

Your thighs shake underneath you as he pounds into you, thick cock so far inside you that you know there has to be a bulge in your belly. There is, you can feel it. The way the head of his cock pushes against your lower abdomen roughly with each thrust and you know that if you could move your hands from the death grip press they have on the tile, you could feel it disappear and reappear under your palm.

He adjusts behind you, both feet planted on the ground as he crouches behind you to try to push in deeper. Pleasure soaks into your brain as you subconsciously push back against him, pussy clenching and squeezing around him trying to suck him in.

“N-Neteyam,” And you have more to say, you do. But you can’t form thoughts anymore. Nothing else will come out other than little punched out breathless gasps.

It takes you a long time to realize that he’s speaking, and even longer for your fucked up and fucked out raddled brain to register what he’s saying. It’s not normal sentences, it’s not even English. His words are still animalistic, growled through gritted teeth as he spits out broken Na’vi between his groans of pleasure. You grew up with the language, but you’re so distracted, so overwhelmed by him and the cock inside you that your brain can’t seem to latch on to what he’s saying.

You think you hear the word for ‘whore’, maybe ‘take it’, something ‘baby’ but you can’t be sure.

And then he’s leaning forward, body curving overtop yours as he covers you completely. It’s only then you feel what you’ve been too distracted to notice. The thick knot at the base of his cock, fully engorged now as it prods at your entrance.

Your hands finally leave their place pressed against the floor as you throw them behind you in newfound panic. One hand pushes against his abdomen as best as it can, trying to slow his thrusts while the other grabs at his wrist in an effort to pull his hand away from your face. The hand on his abdomen doesn’t do anything to slow his relentless pace, but the hand on the side of your head moves to tangle in your hair, gripping it in his fist close to your scalp just hard enough to burn a little as he yanks your head back.

You gasp at the sharp sting and your gasp quickly turns into a whimper as his knot presses tighter against your soaking hole. He’s unforgiving as he digs it against you, holding your hair tight and forcing your back to arch as you stretch even further around it. You’re too wet, pussy too wet and almost greedy and it takes him in, determined despite the obscene size of the engorged ball of tissue.

“Please!” You squeal. Please stop. Please more. “Neteyam, fuck!”

Your eyes roll back into your head when the knot slips inside you, sheathing itself within your heat with another solid push of Neteyam’s hips against your ass. His cock hits that spot inside you that makes you see stars, your vision whiting out and there feels like there’s cotton in your ears as you cum around him, squeezing him tightly as you soak his length in your juices. Your breath catches in your lungs when you feel his cock pulse inside you, twitching and feeling like it’s expanding even bigger as his own orgasm hits him.

He holds you close, keeping you pinned and still underneath him with the savage hand in your hair and the firm grip he has on your hip - fierce and unmoving as if to keep you from running away.

As if you even could with the knot locked inside you.

His growl of pleasure reverberates off the walls as he paints yours. Long, thick ropes of release coating your insides and it's so much, so so much that you feel like you can’t fit anymore. Like if he cums anymore, you’ll burst. The knot is still lodged inside you, locked in and refusing to let you free, but there’s no space left inside you, no space, and you feel the excess cum seep out of your hole from around his knot to trail down the insides of your thighs.

You don’t remember blacking out, and you’re not sure when Neteyam was able to pull free from you or when he passed out next to you either. But when you wake up next, it’s to voices.

“Oh my gosh!”

“Y/N!”

“What the fuck happened?”

The bright florescent lights of the lab are blinding when you try to open your eyes. Exhaustion seeps from every pore of your body and fuck, you feel so sore.

Norm’s shocked face is looking down at you when your eyes finally adjust to the light, Max and a few of the other scientists are behind him, faces an equal mixture of shock and horror as they stare at you with wide eyes.

It takes you a moment to remember what happened - why you’re here, waking up on the cold floor of the lab. Naked. You scramble up, hands clutching at your chest as you desperately try to cover yourself. A deep groan to your right steals your attention from your group of onlookers, and your eyes fall on Neteyam, just waking up from his own sleep.

His eyes are back to their normal gold as they open, groggy at first and then alert in a heartbeat as it registers where he is. He’s up in a crouch in an instant, looking ready to fight but not really sure what he’s supposed to be fighting. Those golden eyes catch on the group, confusion twisting on his face and you can practically see the gears in his brain turning as he tries to figure out what’s going on.

Then his eyes meet yours, taking in your torn clothes and near nakedness, and you sit in horror as it clicks for him what must have happened.

And you watch as the horror in your eyes becomes mirrored in his.

**Special thanks to @quicktosimp and @itchaboi-itchyboy for the prompt!

Taglist: @eywaite @loaksulluyswife @erenjaegerwifee @f-cklife @beautiful-brown-skin-05 @minnory @localjasmine @skywonder @neteyamswillow @luvv4j4ybe11 @vampirefilmlover @aria-tempest @pocky444 @bambithewriter @xylianasblog @anemonelovesfiction @criticallybella

**Comment here to be added to/removed from my taglist!

#𝑻𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒆 𝑾𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒔 ✎#AvatarSurviveTheNight #neteyam smut #neteyam x reader smut #neteyam x female reader smut #neteyam x human reader smut #tw: noncon #tw: non con #tw: dubcon #tw: dubious consent

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sorcerous-caress · 11 months

Text

Giving them a hug

[ Bg3, fluff, nb!reader, several characters ]

[ Omeluum, The Emperor, Nere, Nym, Sorn, Minthara, Raphael ]

Omeluum

"Child, you have returned. Has your search been completed?" Floating just above the moss covered ground, the mindflayer you've grown quite accustomed to seeing as of lately, was in his usual spot.

Without saying a word, you saw the curiosity in Omeluum's eyes as you approached him.

He didn't make a move as he observed you move even closer, wrapping your hands around him and burying your face in the front of his robe.

You can feel the tentacles floating above your head, unsure of where to go and awkwardly moving away to give your body the proper space.

Pressing yourself closer into his embrace, you took a deep breath as you felt his long arms pat your back.

"It seems you have been in quite the stressful state."

You didn't let go. You didn't want to. Omeluum understood that in his own way, finding your specie's need for physical contact very fascinating.

More so that you chose him as your stress relief, he feels deeply honoured.

The Emperor

"Very well." A familiar voice spoke inside your mind. And just like that, a portal to the asteral plane opened up to you

Stepping inside, you were met with the person of your dreams. Every detail of their being moulded to your taste and liking.

"There you are." A honeyed voice called out to you from their soft lips. They approached you with the enthusiasm of an overseas lover finally coming home to their partner.

"No." You took a step back from their offered embrace, inviting you into their warmth. "Not this, I want the real you."

The most beautiful eyes you've ever seen in your life stared at you with a worried expression. That faux worry barely lasted a second before their face became neutral again.

"As you say." Dispelling the illusion, The Emperor stood above you with his towering figure. Cold tendrills and the same haunting purple eyes.

Making the first move, you took a couple of steps forward. The tentacles parted and made a space for you to slot your body against his.

Cold to the touch with a very unfamiliar texture, it was smooth yet hard in certain places. Still, you wrapped your arms around him in a resemblance of a hug.

His tentacles slowly curled around your body parts. Twirling itself around each part and bringing you even closer.

He didn't have a heartbeat. He head three instead, each of them drumming to their own rhythm.

The tentacles kept caressing you, his arms stayed at his sides.

Nere

"You should've left to deliver my important message to general Thorm." Nere's voice didn't hide his annoyance and neither did his look of disdain, "just what are you waiting around for?"

You shrugged, "a hug."

Preparing yourself to receive even more mocking and complaining, you were pleasantly met with a tired sigh instead.

"First that...filthy drider creature's bursts of insanity and now your perversion, why do I always get the defective ones." Nere impatiently made his way into your personal space.

Just as you started to explain how you truly just wanted a simple hug and didn't have ulterior intentions, you were rudly hushed and pulled against his body.

He smelled...like burned powder and rubble, of course he did. But below it, you could catch a faint scent of lavender.

His arms were firm as they held you in place, squeezing just enough to make you feel a comfortable pressure.

And when you wrapped your arms around him gently, hugging him back, you swore you saw his pointy ears droop just slightly.

This was...really nice actually. You never expected to even get a hug, let alone one this comforting.

And then you were unceremoniously pushed away from his body, almost losing your balance and falling into the pits of lava behind you.

He didn't show any signs of caring, "I've indulged your degenerate fantasies enough, now go and do your job."

Nym

"Of course, anything you want." She smiled so sweetly as she said it, "would you prefer we get comfortable on the bed? I'd be able to hold you much longer then."

Her body was so soft, holding you closer to her chest. Drawing soothing circles on yout back with her expert fingers.

The atmosphere was very peaceful, her touches very gentle and she smelled even better.

You had no doubt that she genuinely wanted you to have a great experience, no matter how insignificant one hug might seem in the grand scheme of things.

To you, it was clearly important at this moment, and that's more than enough reason for her to go the extra mile.

Occasionally, she'd hum a tone, soft spoken words in drow language slipping past her lips. Slowly and carefully pronouncing each syllable like a lullaby.

Sorn

"A hug? Really?" Confusion clear on his face, he crossed his arms against his exposed chest, "you know, you could've just asked for my sister instead. This is her domian more."

You shook your head, "I know, but I wanted you."

Sorn's eyes narrowed at you in suspension, "Just to be fully clear with each other, is it really just a hug? This isn't some niche fetish or form of foreplay?"

"Just a hug."

Seemingl convinced with you not having ulterior intentions, much to his displeasure, Sorn stepped closer to you with opened arms.

Lean muscles enveloped you, awkward at first before easing into a more protective hug. Sorn was clearly taking inspiration from his only other source of hugs.

You felt safe in his arms, like you had someone to relay on.

"It will be okay, you're safe." His words of comfort came shortly. And despite his earlier reluctants, it felt like he genuinely meant them.

He held you tightly.

You hugged back, feeling his body shiver at the soft, non-intrusive touches.

After it ended, he stepped back. His body clearly more relaxed and at ease.

"I have to admit, that wasn't as bad as I expected."

Minthara

You swore you could see her judging you as she appeased your request in her mind.

You hoped that the trust you've built between the two of you so far would assure her that you weren't trying to backstab her or trick her.

"Come." She finally gave her permission.

Her blood ran hot, you realised as you were met with the warmth of her embrace.

Still, her body remained stiff as you held her. This was clearly a very unfamiliar territory to her.

"Try to relax, i promise you'll be safe." You whispered against her ear.

She took a deep breath, taking what felt like was a leap of faith to her, she let her body melt against yours.

Holding onto your waist, her firm grip kept you in place against her body.

She didn't let go when you attempted to pull away.

"If we are to stop this, it will be on my own terms." She said as she kept holding you close. You've willingly walked into her web, and there was no escaping now.

Raphael

"Why, of course, anything for my favourite client." His pride was clear in his stance even as he extended an arm to you, "come to me, little mouse."

Listening to the devil on your shoulder, you did.

You were met with burning heat, flinching away the second you touched him.

A low chuckle came from his lips, clear amusement at toying with you. "Oh is it too much for you to handle? My my, and here I thought you knew what you were getting into."

With a snap of his fingers, a soft glow envelops your body from head to toe. It made you feel lighter and left a hint of a sweet taste at the back of your throat.

"Here, something to keep that deary skin of yours from melting off. We wouldn't want to tarnish your beauty now, would we?" Cupping your face in his hands, you felt absolutely none of the previous heat as he rubbed your cheek with his thumb.

"Enough games, my hug, now." You said sternly as he laughed at your impatience.

But no teasing came. Instead, you were completely wrapped into his embrace. His wings enveloping you and caging you more into his body.

The expensive materials of his clothes did wonders to cover all the ridges and sharp angles underneath them that adorned his body.

For a moment in time, you managed to find rest and comfort in a devil's embrace. Willingly surrendering yourself to him as he pressed his nose against the pule point at your throat, inhaling deeply.

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loveliest-venus · 1 year

Text

bittersweet - straw hats crew x reader

includes: Straw Hats crew x f!reader warnings: major character death summary: In your last moments, your crewmates reflect on their time with you before saying goodbye. content: angst, slight fluff, can be read as romantic or platonic, no spoilers, 1.5k words.

Dying was never part of the plan.

Then again, none of this was ever part of the plan, from getting experimented on to meeting a rowdy pirate crew that called themselves the Straw Hats to end up joining them, thus starting what would be the biggest adventure of your whole life. Of course, you regretted it from time to time, it was a wonder how this wasn’t one of those times.

Well, maybe a little bit. You didn’t like seeing tears further dirtying Luffy’s face. It didn’t suit him, you weren’t used to seeing him with anything but a huge smile on his face, the smile that gave you hope despite everything. Your ears were still ringing but you thought you could vaguely hear Nami’s cries, or were they Chopper’s? It was hard to say, the poison had spread fast and you were certain that the blurriness in your vision wasn’t because of tears, as your eyes were dry and bloodshot, most likely from the toxins pumping through your veins, making each breath just a little more painful and… Was it just you or was Zoro screaming? You honestly couldn’t tell anymore. Your eyes closed as your body fell forward, stopping as Luffy’s arms wrapped around your torso to hold you up, making your chin rest on his shoulder.

“Hang on!” Your captain called your name hoarsely, snapping his head to the side, desperate yells piercing through the air as Chopper clumsily dashed over to where you were, slumped over Luffy’s shaking form. “Chopper!”

“D-Don’t worry, I will save her!” Chopper’s fur was wet, snot and salty water mixing as he cried, his voice cracking at the vowels of your name while his arms reached out to help stabilize you. It hurt your heart to see them so distraught and you hated that there was nothing you could do to comfort them.

“Chopper… Stop.” Both of them froze, Luffy’s body growing stiff against your clammy skin. “It’s okay… I’m not scared,” the words tasted bitter in your mouth, in contrast to the serene look on your worn-out features. Blood was trickling down your forehead, hanging on your eyelashes and joining the tiny trail spilling from the corners of your lips. “I’m happy to die… for my crew.” You meant it, your heart had never felt lighter.

“Oi! What the fuck are you going on about?! You can’t just–!” Zoro’s voice was unmistakable, rough like the numerous knives on your body. From the looks of it, your peaceful declaration hadn’t settled well with him. You wished you could meet his gaze one last time, blissfully unaware of the milky sheen on yours. It was then that Chopper realized, with a heartbroken sob, that it was truly too late. “Chopper, do something! Hurry up!”

“Moss-head…” Zoro’s earrings jingled when he turned to look at Sanji, ready to cuss him out until he saw the look on his face, somber and pleading. It dawned on him that the cook had already begrudgingly accepted that this was it. But the swordsman wasn’t known for admitting defeat that easily, if ever.

“Save it, you damn– ,” he was cut off when a pale, delicate hand landed on his broad shoulder, Robin’s lips set in a thin line, the only thing betraying her true feelings was the tight grip she had on him.

“Zoro.” Her eyes were fixated on your battered form, her brow furrowing at your labored breathing. “This isn’t the time. She’s too far gone.” It was Franky’s turn to lose composure, aggressively kicking away the remnants of what had once been a beautiful tree. Taking away the destroyed flora, the unconscious enemies around you and your own blood splattering the ground, this could’ve been called a scenic place to die.

“B-B-But Chopper can fix her up! He always can! R-Right, Chopper?! Tell Robin that she’s wrong!” Usopp’s arms were tightly wound around Nami, both of their eyes growing misty, holding each other up in a fruitless attempt to hold it together. At the archeologist’s soft murmur of your name, their hopes were shattered, Nami’s knees buckling under the weight of her grief, almost taking Usopp with her, forcing him to stand up straighter than before, for once staring at death right in the eye. If only it wasn’t your bloodied face staring back…

Brook remained silent, for once devoid of all joy. It was happening again, someone he held dear was being taken away from him all too soon, your life cut short at the capricious hands of fate. Jinbei had a similar expression on his face, choosing to honor your wishes as you clearly didn’t want to leave them without a proper goodbye.

“Why…?” Luffy, who hadn’t stopped crying, tried shaking you as if that would rip you out of your dazed state, your hair tickling his cheek as you didn’t have enough strength to lift your head up to look at him properly. “Why did you do it?!” He kept yelling your name, now crushing you against his scarred chest, refusing to let you go. “You can’t leave us!” A choked sob rocked his body, a shiver running down your spine at the sheer pain lacing his youthful voice.

Chopper was clinging to your leg, burying his face in your calf to hide his swollen eyes. “I’m sorry, I-I’m so sorry! Please…” The mink was talking to himself at this point, stuck between begging whatever deity was listening and apologizing to you for not getting to you in time, for not being smart enough to find a cure. Zoro’s grip on the hilt of his sword tightened, loathing the helplessness wrapping around their group viciously, refusing to look away from you, still being held up by the devil fruit user’s embrace. His heart was fighting tooth and nail to keep itself from breaking, minuscule cracks growing the heavier your eyes got. Unbeknownst to him, there was already a scar in the shape of you.

Sanji gritted his teeth, taking a few steps in your direction, blinking away the moisture building up in his lash line, he didn’t want to miss any detail in your face, knowing it was the last time he’d ever get to admire it. In his eyes, you were as beautiful as ever, not even death could take your beauty away from you. Nothing would convince him otherwise.

Their allies could only watch, growing restless as the silence continued, were you gone already? None of them were close enough to see your face clearly, your crewmates had formed a circle around you, protecting you from unwanted eyes. Each of them had different opinions on your rambunctious group, however, none of them could deny that you were fiercely loyal to each other and seeing such a tight-knit crew lose a member was disheartening, a few of them inching closer to their own. It was an unspoken agreement, to pay their respects to the person who had given it her all to win this battle, saving them from a similar fate.

“Because… you called me your friend.”

Your soft voice cut through their thoughts seamlessly, a few gasps escaping from Nami, Usopp and Chopper. Zoro’s eye widened, almost losing his grip when the meaning behind that phrase registered in his brain; whereas Sanji chose to let his feelings take over, slowly sinking to his knees. Brook hung his head, and if he had eyes, he would’ve closed them, not wanting to witness the inevitable. Franky, on the other hand, kept his steely gaze on you, his fists growing tighter with each droplet of your blood that had touched the ground, none of this made any sense to the cyborg whose robotic body shook with the strength of his pained weeping. Your sweet words were like a knife to Jinbei’s kind heart, all of his memories with you as part of the crew playing like a cinematic sequence in his mind, you were one of the first to approach him when he had finally accepted Luffy’s invite. Robin could only smile, finally allowing her tears to drip down her face, wishing she could hold you for one last time. Life without you was unfathomable to them at this point, could this truly be reality? Wasn’t there any way to rewind time to save you?

None of them could see Luffy’s face, his reaction to you admitting that you were willingly exchanging your life for theirs in the name of your friendship. But it wasn’t hard to guess, seeing as he’d pressed his face into your neck, inhaling your scent to soothe his racing heart, torn to pieces by you and his inability to help you. He knew from the moment that he saw you that you would become an important part of his crew, however, he never imagined that it would end like this. He wasn’t ready to continue his journey without you. How could he become the King of the Pirates if you weren’t by his side?

“You truly are the best crew I could’ve asked for. I’m thankful for you… From the bottom of my heart, thank you.” Your eyes were fully closed, the corners of your lips curling up ever so slightly in a loving smile. It was a breathtaking image that would be branded into their hearts forever, sealed with your very last words to them.

“I love you.”

#one piece x reader #one piece angst #op x reader #one piece imagine #op imagines #venus.works #venus.sfw #venus.angst

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tiredfox64 · 6 months

Text

Little Red, Big Bad Chaos

Prior notes: Ah yes look at me use my homework for a piece of fanfic. Let me just forget how I connected Little Red Cap to being about womanhood (I bet it ain’t but my professor just wanted an analysis essay)

Pairing: Havik x Afab Reader

Warnings ‼️: NSFW, semi public sex or nature sex (one with the trees), dry humping, biting (I know I never stop), creampie, nipple play, pain (like the good kind but only a bit)

Havik was pent up. Not even causing chaos or killing anybody made him feel relief. There had to be a different way to handle this. Luckily for him, you walked by.

Aren’t you just a pretty lady. And all by yourself? With such a red, velvet cloak that makes you stand out no less. Oh dear, you must be careful. Stay on the path and don’t talk to strangers. For if you should do so, you may well provide relief for an anarchist.

Collecting things from the nearby woods was enjoyable to you. That could be rocks, moss, flowers, herbs, mushrooms, maybe even frogs. So much to do. But unbeknownst to you, there was something dangerous lurking around, or someone. You heard the crunching of leaves and twigs behind you which made you turn around. No one comes around here, it’s usually just you.

You gasped once you saw Havik. His face was…mutilated. He seemed so tall. There were so many sharp objects on his body. He approached you slowly as if you were a deer ready to bolt away. He couldn’t have that happen, he needs you close.

“Aww, don’t be afraid. I just want to get a closer look at you.” You heard him speak in such a deep, gravely voice.

You flinched just hearing him speak. You froze up, unsure of how to handle this. Closer and closer he came. You started to see the scars on his body and just how messed up his face was. How could he still be alive you wondered.

“Who are you?” You asked with a quivering voice.

He just laughed at you with such a maniacal laugh. It made you even more uneasy yet you still wouldn’t more.

“Don’t worry about that. You will know of me very soon. I just want to get a good look at how pretty you are.”

You swallowed hard as Havik came right up to you. You had to look up at him that’s how tall he was. The only way you could think of get out of this is by acting polite.

“Oh well, thank you. You seem like a very…handsome man. But I must get going now.” You tried to excuse yourself.

Havik didn’t move but just stared as you walked away. He was already planning ways to get close to you. Real close to you.

══💤══╡°˖✧🦊✧˖°╞══💤══

You still walked the same path, but you tried to ignore Havik. Sometimes he would speak, sometimes he would stay quiet. He’d walk behind you with a bit of distance. You felt like you were being hunted but maybe ignoring him more will do the trick. Ehh, not really. I mean in a way you almost started seeing him like a stray dog. He seems so vicious but will start to randomly follow you.

He was way too pent up by this point. It’s amazing he has some patience and strength to hold himself back from pouncing on you. The thing is he can’t risk scaring you away. You’re the only one who didn’t run away and never return after seeing him. You’re the easiest prey and that’s all he needs.

You spot something on that ground that you can add to your collection, some other smooth rock or even an Indigo Milk Cap. You made the mistake of bending over to collect your newest addition to your collection. That’s when you felt a pair of hands grab your hips. Any guesses on who those hands belong to?

You didn’t even flinch or stand back up. At this point you expected behavior like that. You just kept ignoring Havik and collected your items. But you couldn’t ignore when you felt him start to hump you. He really was like a dog.

Because you didn’t react, Havik thought he could do whatever. He took that opportunity to give himself relief. His clothed cock rubbed against your ass. Havik needed much more than that but this will have to do for now. You could hear him groaning as he continued to hump you. Alright, probably a good time to say something. You brought yourself back up to a standing position before speaking.

“Is there something you need?” You asked as politely as you could.

“Isn’t it obvious.” He answered, plain and simple.

He could have at least responded a little nicer. But you were left thinking of what to do. If this is what he’s been wanting well what would happen if you just gave him what he wants? He could keep returning to you for more. But he could also leave you be after he gets what he wants. The next time he gets pent up maybe the usual stuff like causing chaos will actually relieve him. You’re weighting your options here that you just say fuck it. No one needs to know what you have done.

“Are you trying to get more out of me?” You asked yet you received no verbal reply. Instead Havik decided to just bend you over again and tried to tear off any piece of clothing he could.

“Alright wait-!”

══💤══╡°˖✧🦊✧˖°╞══💤══

Your beautiful red, velvet cloak laid nicely folded on a tree stump with your basket of items on top of it. That’s the only thing you could manage to take off nicely before Havik got impatient and just teared whatever he could.

The woods are usually filled with leaves rustling and the birds chirping. But now there is the addition of moans, groans, and skin slapping together.

You held onto the tree in front of you as Havik rammed into you. His hands gripped your ass as he watched his cock go in and out of your pussy. His eyes couldn’t look away from your wetness that coated his cock. How easy it slipped in and made a wet sound when being pulled out.

You’re not fully regretting this decision. It is pretty exciting being out in nature and having you being pounded into. And Havik did have an impressive size. You practically announced it to the flora when you saw it. You’re only regretting who you are doing it with. Havik is still a stranger to you. But you can easy forget that every time he slides back in.

His body was pressed up against yours as his hands went to grab your breasts. You groaned at the feel of it. His hands were so rough, especially the one that had some sort of clawed glove on it. The claws pricked at your skin before going to your nipples. You winced in pain when he pinched them yet somehow it excited you more. Maybe cause he never stopped fucking you that’s why you got wetter. Whatever it was Havik enjoyed your reactions, even letting out a low malicious laugh. One nipple felt the roughness of his skin rubbing against it while the other dealt with metal claws pinching it. What a combo.

“I’ve never seen someone react like that to pain. I wonder if you will like this.” Havik said before pulling you closer to him and biting down on your shoulder.

That was the loudest you moaned from the whole experience. You couldn’t hide that fact you were loving this. Your pussy squeezed his cock when he bit you.

Havik might have just found his perfect lady. He was way too excited at this point and just start pounding into you hard. It was too much for you. His teeth that sunk into your skin, his hands still playing with your nipples, and of course his large cock fucking you. Well how could you not cum all over it. And how could he not cum right inside you. It’s just how nature goes.

══💤══╡°˖✧🦊✧˖°╞══💤══

It took a bit of effort to get Havik to pull out of you. He did not wanna budge. He didn’t say it out loud but he wanted to keep his cum inside of you for as long as he could. When you did manage to make him pull out his cum slowly start to drip down your legs, forcing you to quickly put your pants back on.

The prick tore your clothes up a good amount. He was too impatient. Luckily, you still had your red cloak to cover yourself up with. Better cover up that bite mark. You did your best not to look so disheveled and like you just had sex in the woods.

“Well…I must be on my way. You have a good day.” You still acted polite with Havik even after that experience.

He watched as you slowly walked away. You will return to the same path. This path is the best place to find items for your collection, so why move. Plus, you are hoping to find Havik again someday. Maybe not soon but someday. And Havik has the same thing in mind. He got his relief and he doesn’t expect to get this certain craving for a long time. But damn did he love your reactions. He’ll return soon and enjoy his lady in red again.

After notes: …if I see a hint of orange come rolling in I’m scattering to the wind…🦊. Ah, got to the end and realized I ain’t learn anything in my analysis class, I am scum. Anyway I’m meal prepping these fanfics cause I gotta work on my Kobold. I hope I can please the Havik girlies with this. He gives me post ovulation clarity and I don’t even ovulate, I’m not broken just on the pill. Have fun fools. Adiós!

#mortal kombat #mortal kombat 1 #mortal kombat x reader #mortal kombat x you #mortal kombat1 #mk x reader #mk x you #mk smut #mk fanfic #havik #mk havik #mortal kombat havik #havik x reader #havik x you #havik smut #mk1

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chococolte · 2 years

Note

kaeya or zhongli on their knees?? pls am begging,, ur work is so good

word count. 1.1k

୨୧ — ꒰ cw. yandere, unhealthy relationships, possessive & obsessive thoughts/behaviors, religious + cults themes, power dynamic (in readers favor), general cult au + sagau shit, g/n reader. i do not condone yanderes irl.

୨୧ — ꒰ a/n. i promise i'm not dead guys... i hope u like this nonnie, i chose zhongli cus im predictable but if u want kaeya too pls feel free to send another req!!!!

“Kneel.”

Zhongli listens with all of the urgency unbridled in his bones, reverence and fervor burning his skin as he bends his waist.

It’s not his place to question you, nor is it his place to wonder. He doesn’t concern himself with the reasons for your request— you’ve echoed your order, and isn’t it only right that he kneels before you?

He settles into place as if he had long been torn away, now back where he was always meant to be. A mellow silence engulfs the two of you, but it is a comfortable silence. To listen to you breathe is a blessing unto itself, and he yearns for nothing else but to sit by your side. To be able to hear your voice was worth every millennia he spent waiting. For even the briefest moment to touch you, he would go through all of it again.

Zhongli is known by many names— Morax, Rex Lapis, God of Geo, God of War, God of Contracts— each another layer to his image, but all of his titles are discarded when he is in front of you. His head dips forward, every breath held close to his chest; all of the rightful ego of a god lost within the swaddling warmth of your chambers.

His body creaks in place, eyes stuck at your feet. The heat of your gaze washes over him like sun flares, whipping at his flesh with embers. Zhongli takes note of the places where your eyes stray for longer— does his appearance please you? Or do you find those parts of him unpleasant?

Despite how his lungs struggle, it feels right to be burned by you, to feel his heart palpitate in his chest from your glance alone. It’s his place to be beneath you like this, akin to the ground you walk on; dirty his soul, and it will still call for you; it will still howl with the urge to kiss your feet— to hold your ankles as if they were porcelain inlaid with gold, lay benign kisses to every inch of skin, murmur all of his prayers into the warmth of your flesh until every moment where he did not love you in his youth has been made up for.

Whispered orisons and pleas in the silent cold of his room do not satiate him any longer. Adhering to every order and request does not prove how unlike he is of his past self. He wants to worship you until every part of his arrogance is turned into only devotion for you.

How else is he to prove worthy? How else is he meant to treat you, if not with all of himself?

Ask him to stay in place, and it is only a question of how long. Another thousand years to his lifetime of eternities is nothing if you are what awaits him. Let the moss cake him and the lichen curl around his limbs; he will keep his eyes open until he can catch glimpse of you again.

Zhongli’s expression gives nothing away to the severity of his thoughts, to the fervent piety churning within— his face is pulled taut, composed and as still as a winter's lake, still untouched by the sun's warmth.

Your hand cups his cheek, tilting his head up to face you.

Despite the unsaid permission, Zhongli doesn't allow himself to look at your face. He gulps down the desire until it sits with his heart, thumping in his throat. A punishment of his own design for failing to prove himself any better than he was once before— still unworthy to worship you in the way you deserve.

He doesn't dare to bask in your gaze, to soak in your light as if it's a sunbeam; your touch, even if only brushed along his skin, is enough to leave him weak and out of breath. The brief phantom of your nails against his chin leaves him biting the inside of his cheek, choking down the whimper that yearns to come out.

All he wishes is to say your name until it's ringing in his ears, the only word he cares to understand.

"You're so beautiful." Your thumb swipes over his lips, soft and malleable under your fingers. Your name seems to get louder in his mind, his heartbeat drumming against his veins like agitated waves against a cliff face. "I want you to look at me, Zhongli."

He no longer hesitates. Your order ripples in his mind for only a second before he complies, uncaring for how weak his legs may turn. All he bothers to think is that you have asked him to do so, and so he must.

Zhongli has wondered before what it is like for a mortal to see a god's body. What is it like to look on their majesty, to feel so infinitesimal in comparison? He wonders what it is like for man to see him, how their blood flows so quick at the sight.

But every time he looks at you, he understands. He knows what it is like to look upon a being, gaze at their light; to feel so small in comparison. He is nothing when compared to you, but is he meant to be anything more? You are the brightest sun, and he is a dim star, light flickering.

He desperately tries to cling onto your image just as he has before, until you are the only thing he sees when he closes his eyes. Anything to remember the curves of your features, the shape of your lips.

Zhongli's chest swells with every peal of his pulse, his knees trembling underneath him.

He has seen you before, but his heart still cries as though it was the first. His eyes still linger unfettered, still try to drink you in as if he will never have this chance again. He could see you every day, and still wish for it to be every minute; still feel the weakness in his bones and lungs with every moment in your presence.

Part of him wants to bow his head, to kowtow before you entirely— he wishes to completely give himself up to you, in all of his flaws and imperfections. Maybe once he has done that, he will finally be able to revere you the way he wishes. In the way he has wanted too since he was still a young god, hardened with the arrogance of youth and pride undeserved.

The other part of him tells him to stay still, to wait for your order. Even if his bones ache and cry, until your words echo permission, he is not to even breathe.

Your laughter, soft and mirthful, finds its way to his ears. It’s only then that he realizes how his cheeks burn— red and hot, blood pumping in his ears.

“This is where you look best— on your knees.”

Zhongli lets out a sharp breath, unable to stop the whine from coming out of his mouth.

#[🦇] — my writing #genshin impact #genshin x reader #yandere genshin #yandere male #sagau #yandere x reader #yandere genshin impact #yandere genshin x reader #self aware genshin #sagau zhongli #yandere zhongli #yandere zhongli x reader #zhongli genshin impact #zhongli x reader #gender neutral reader

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quillthrillswriting · 6 months

Text

i think that by far, the most common zutara trope i've seen is zuko freeing katara from her unhappy marriage with the clingy, unappreciative aang.

i've always felt that that aang would genuinely worship the ground katara walked on and be exceedingly kind and respectful, and so i've always thought that this trope would make a lot more sense flipped, with aang in the position of being katara's safe space after zukko reverts back to his angry, sullen, lashing out persona that he was before uncle iroh & the gaang's involvement.

this fic is the result of me having the thought "might f around and write a kataang fic that flips the usual zutara trope of "zuko helps katara escape a failing relationship with aang" 😳"

---

Zuko was all alone, heading an entire empire and facilitating the transition of his nation from a war-bringer to a force for peace. At first, she told herself that it was only because he had needed help that she chose to stay with him, but that wasn’t being entirely honest. After that play on Ember Island, all of the scenes where the two of them were in love had opened Katara’s eyes to the possibility, and try as she might, she couldn’t shut them again. And Zuko, after all that he’d sacrificed to help them, after redeeming himself in her eyes, even fighting alongside her, he had seemed like her best chance at home.

So she had stayed with him.

---

Zuko proposed, after just six months, but Katara thought little of the brief timeline. When you know, you know, right? He had given her his mother’s ring, and had her dress in Fire Nation colours for the ceremony. She had been under the impression that the wedding would be a welding of cultures, and so she had spent weeks painstakingly carving a traditional water tribe proposal necklace.

When she had presented it to him, Zuko had only said that a Fire Lord couldn’t be seen wearing another nation’s trinkets . She had quietly dabbed away her tears when he wasn’t looking.

---

The moon rose and set six more nights before Katara rose with it, slipping outside of the castle during the changing of the guard, draped in traditional water tribe colours for the first night in years. Before anyone had seen her, she had made it, slipping between Fire Nation homes almost silently. She only paused to pull clothes and a cloth head covering from a clothesline, silently apologizing to whatever family she had just stolen from. She tucked a couple of coins and a piece of gold jewellery into one of the pockets of the pants still on the clothesline, an attempt at making amends for her crime, then blended into the night again.

She hadn’t stopped moving until she’d finally found a small forest, then she’d made herself a bed of moss and curled up as if she was a child back on the tundra, pretending to be a sleeping snow fox alongside Sokka.

She missed her brother. She missed her home.

---

She knew where she would go once the cargo ship reached the land. The last location Aang had been in was the Western Air temple. So that was where she would go. If she needed to, to find Aang, she’d scour every inch of the mainland. She knew he would do the same for her. Which begged the question- why hadn’t he come to her when he began to feel that something was off?

It was that question that Katara started with, as she settled into a comfortable position on Aang’s woven rug, a cup of hot tea curling steam around her body that she absent-mindedly bent into shapes around her.

---

Aang sighed, looking away. “Katara, I hate to give you more reasons to feel distressed, but in case you hadn’t remembered, you told me to stay away. Told me my “juvenile crush” was ridiculous and made you uncomfortable. I felt awful, and so, I backed off. I kept sending letters every couple months, trying to make sure you were okay, but you told me you were too busy, and I respected that.”

Katara’s tone was unsettlingly neutral when she responded. “...What?”

Aang titled his head, confused. “You said, in your letters, that-”

She responded in that same tone. “What letters , Aang?”

♥ the rest of the (completed) fic can be found here!! ->

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bigassmoth · 7 months

Text

Marcille cleans you up after youve helped Falin

(2nd pov Reader x Dragon dick Falin and Marcille thweesome :3c overstim)

Falin had been struck with an unprecedented erection- you had pressed your chest against her arm to point to a bird-shaped patch of moss and the beat of your heart against her skin sent the blood straight to her cock. She was embarrassingly hard, and after a few more paces you took notice. You two were on a brief walk for firewood and other essentials, Marcille would usually be the one to assist Falin but the elf was now a 20 minute walk away. Falin was looking at you in a lustful haze, eyes drawn to the intimate parts of your body with unrestrained interest. You offered assistance, knowing what it entailed.

45 minutes later you were exactly as destroyed as you anticipated being- the thick slaps of Falins hips was the loudest noise in the area- with the wet squelch of her cock against your hole being a close second. Her hands were firm but gentle as they held your waist, she nuzzled her nose into the back of your neck, and her pace became erratic. Her body stilted against you, letting out a few more hard thrusts into you as a gush of warm cum filled you up. You could only claw at the mossy ground and groan with relief. Both of you panting, Falin slid out and gently eased your lower body to the ground. The amount of cum leaving your hole is absurd, it feels hot and is already forming a thick sticky coat on your thighs, ass, and public mound. Falin rolls you onto your side and peppers you with gentle kisses. She guides your waterskin to your lips and you take a few deep gulps until she pulls it away. Her touch is tender and warm, the rough skin on her hands rising goosebumps along your skin.

"Ah-ha. I thought this is what happened." Marcille spoke, jarring you out of your post-dragon dick stupor.

You sat up and began to explain-only to be pushed back down. Falin adjusted so you were in her lap, smiling down at you serenely.

"Hey..." Marcilles face pops in front of your own, she is on top of you now- sandwiching you between the two. "Dont push any out until I say you can." Her face carries a heavy blush and her eyelids are lowered in desire. Her hands have found your sticky thighs and holds them apart. Her touch is fleeting but poised, using the tips of her nails to press into your skin. Meanwhile Falins hands come to fondle your nipples, rubbing them into sensitive stiffened red peaks.

Falin kisses the side of your neck while Marcille lowers herself between your legs. When Marcille begins to lick up the cum around your hole you flinch. The overstimulation is painful but erotic and addicting, your hips squirm with discomfort which creates tiny pricks of pain as Marcilles nails leave indents.

"We have been watching you for a while..." Falin speaks softly in your ear, "youre even cuter like this than usual." You whimper and just barely manage to gasp out-

"Please, its too much- I need to recover." But your body betrays you as your hips buck into Marcilles mouth and your chest quivers in Falins hands.

"We just want to take extra special care of you. You are so brave, helping me." You can feel Falins cock twitch against your back.

"Cum." Marcille commands harshly and as your eyes meet you see the desperation in her face. She presses her entire mouth against you, teeth scraping your already raw skin. Falin pinches your nipples so hard the tips go white. You cum hard, already fucked raw by Falin and now mercilessly squeezed and licked you have no choice. Marcille moans and swallows the cum with loud gulps, making you shudder. She licks at your sex despite her heaving breaths, keeping you twitching and crying. Despite cumming from overstimulation, they continue to play with your body. It isnt until you are unable to see, just flashing white taking over your vision, that they relent. Your still-jolting body is held between them with hands running through your hair and praises being murmured in your ears.

Their affection soothes your nerves as you are promised more comfortable and prepared 'next time'

#dungeon meshi smut #falin smut #marcille smut

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j-eryewrites · 11 months

Text

Please Hold to My Hand

Part Four of A Sinner's Redemption

SERIES MASTER LIST | MAIN MASTER LIST

Previous | Next

Word Count: 11.4k

Warnings: Canon typical violence, gun violence, people, death, gore and injuries, lots of feelings, horrible jokes (that I even laughed at), language. (Let me know if I have missed anything)

Author's Note: Finally! It’s out. I’ve been writing this between classes and really haven’t had time to review the work. Piper is finally letting down some walls and so is Joel! Yay! We get some more flashbacks and, of course, Ellie and Piper's shenanigans. I hope you enjoy this chapter. If you liked it, I’d love to hear from you either with comments or reposts! Thanks!

Dirty. Piper felt dirty as she stood in the moldy gas station bathroom. Moss grew from the cracks in the ceiling and she was sure the black substance behing the sinks was something otherworldly. Shivering, Piper squeezed her limbs as close as she could to her body making herself as narrow as possible. Behind one of the bathroom stalls was Ellie, taking a bathroom break.

Piper couldn’t understand how her sister could relax herself enough to use the restroom in a place like this. With the creak and slam of the bathroom stall door, Ellie appeared with a care in the world. Again, Piper shivered and took a step away from her sister as Ellie stepped in front the the broken mirror.

“Jesus Ellie let’s go,” Piper said before turning around to face her sister. “What are you–” Piper laughed and for a moment she forgot about the disease infested place she was in.

“Pew, pew. Pew,” Ellie whispered. In her hand was the gun Piper had given from her.

Piper shook her head at her sister’s antics. “No, no, no. Here’s how you do it.” Stepping forward, Piper reached out a hand to grab hold of the gun, but Ellie pulled away.

“Hey, let me do my thing,” Ellie begged.

Rolling her eyes, Piper crossed her arms and sighed. “Well you’ll shoots someone’s eye out. At least take out the bullets.”

“Hmm,” Ellie hummed not realizing that was an options. She turned the gun around looking for a way to remove the tiny deathly objects in the gun.

“Here,” Piper muttered as she showed Ellie how to remove them. The young girl watched and took note of everything that her sister did. The dull metallic bullets fell out the cartridge and into Piper’s hand. “See?”

“Hmm? Oh yeah,” Ellie said and she retrieved the gun from her sister’s hand. Once again Ellie raised the gun at the mirror and put on her best menacing face. It was practice for when she actually got to shoot the weapon. In her mind, Ellie wondered if she would be as good of a shot like Piper was.

“Can we go now?” Piper asked. Her shivers got worse and Piper began to believe she could turn infected from just standing in the bathroom any longer.

Cocking the gun back, then shoving it deep into her backpack, Ellie nodded and the two girls trudged through the mess and out the doors to the fresh dry air.

Coming around the corner, they saw Joel just as they had left him; On the ground with one knee raised as support as he blew into a long straw like thing.

“We have to do this every hour?” Ellie sighed.

Piper could see Joel was just as annoyed as Ellie when it came to stopping every hour. “Gas breaks down over time. This stuff’s almost water. Back in the day, we’d drive 10, 12 hours on one tank. You could go anywhere,” Joel said.

“So,” Piper asked, “where’d you go?”

Joel looked up at the two girls. His eyes squinted underneath the bright light of the summer sun. “Pretty much nowhere.”

“Boring,” Piper muttered before finding a rock to kick around.

Joel continued blowing into the big straw.

“Nice!” Ellie leaned in close. “How does that work?”

“It’s a siphon. It’s when liquid…” Joel paused thinking about his words. “travels against gravity because pressure…”

Ellie smirked and chuckled. “You don’t know.”

“I know it works,” Joel quipped back making Ellie laugh even more.

Once the laughter was over, the young girl soon sought other sources to still her boredom. Lifting her legs up comically into the air, Ellie began to peruse around the rusted cars that Joel was searching for gas from.

As her eyes followed the rock on the ground as it rolled back and forth, Piper called out to Ellie. “No wandering”

With the biggest sigh she could conjure, Ellie replied. “Okay. This is your fault then.” She warned. Then dropping her backpack to the ground she pulled out a small book. Flipping it open she began to read. “It doesn’t matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.” Briefly, Ellie looked up to gage Joel’s and Piper’s reaction. Laughing, Ellie revealed the cover of the book. “No Pun Intended, Volume Too” by Will Livingston. “Volume Too.” Look. You get it? “Too”? Like, T-o-o.

“Jesus,” Joel grumbled.

“What did the mermaid wear to her math class?” Ellie paused. “An algae bra. Like, algae bra. Okay, I stayed up all night…”

“No.” Joel tried to interrupt Ellie, stopping her from telling the next horrible joke.

“wondering where the sun went…,” Ellie continued. “...and then it dawned on me.”

This joke made Piper laugh. It wasn’t so much the joke, but how much Joel despised them. His face contort with each failed attempt at a joke and it made both of the young girls laugh.

Joel sat up and glared at the two of them. “Feel free to wait in the truck.”

Piper’s eyes widened at the warning. “Going now,” She mumbled before leaving her rock on the ground for the safety of the boiling hot car.

“Ugh, okay,” Ellie sighed. “but just know,” the young girl warned, “you can’t escape Will Livingston. He’ll be back. There’s nothing you can do to stop him.”

As the girls hopped back into the car, Joel returned his mind back to retrieving gas. It was only a few more minutes for the dark liquid shot thorugh the hose into the gas canister and Joel was ever grateful for those few minutes of silence and solace from Will Livingston and his terrible jokes.

꧁_____________꧂

Everything was the color of rust. Rust was the color of time and those forgotten and neglected, left to the mercy of nature. It was boiling and there was noting the air conditioning in the car could do. There wasn’t anything in sight except for dirt, sand, and crumbling cars. Even the normally blue sky was tinted a shade of brown. Piper felt like she was stuck in a valley of emptiness, not a living thing around.

As the car drove further and further down the road, Piper moved her gaze away from the window and instead to the rear-view mirror. There in the mirror she saw something alive, something that kept her alive and going, Ellie. The younger girl sat lazily in the back of the truck using her bag as a head rest. Meanwhile, her hand gripped a pencil dragging it back and forth across a notebook. At least someone was entertained.

Eventually, Piper brought her sight back onto the endless road in front of her. Cars were pilled high to the sides as if something huge parted the sea of metal carcasses.

“Must’ve been some truck,” Piper mumbled.

Joel glanced over the side at the girl. “Yeah, they used to stick big-ass plows on them, and clear the roads for their tanks and such.”

Piper nodded her head in response. It seemed like Ellie had tuned into the conversation, her sketch book forgotten beside her. “I wanna see a tank,” Ellie chirpped as she scanned the sea of vehicles.

“You will,” Joel assured Ellie. “Tanks, choppers, all that stuff. But they’ll fight the wrong enemy. Just scattered around now.”

Bitting the inside of her cheek Ellie pretended to listen beyond the words “You will” before changing the topic.

“I got somethin’. Here,” Ellie passed up a small tape. Joel, curious, snatched it from her hands. “This make you all nostalgic?”

He had to pull the tape farther away from his face to read the fine print. His eyes pulled into a thin line finally making the words readable. Damn he was getting old. “This is actually before my time,” Joel corrected.

Ellie’s smile faltered. “Great,” she mumbled.

A strange tightening in his chest formed at the disappointment in Ellie’s voice and Joel couldn’t help but want to salvage the situation. “It’s a winner, though.” Ellie’s smile was back on her face. Upon seeing her smile, Joel placed the tape into the slot and hit play.

♪ We met in the springtime when blossoms unfold ♪

Tapping her finger on Piper’s shoulder to the melody of the song, Ellie’s flashed with a wicked glint. Withdrawing her hand and shoving it into her bag she pulled out something new. “Oh, man. Got somethin’ else,” Ellie said. Joel and Piper mindless nodded at her words. “It’s, uh… light on the reading, but it has some interesting pictures.”

As Piper and Joel whipped around Ellie’s smirk grew.

Gotcha! She thought.

“Oh. No, no, no. Put that back. That’s not for kids. Ellie!” Joel’s and Piper’s voices seemed to blend together as they tired to discourage Ellie from looking further.

Playing align with the ruse, Ellie buried her face between the pages, getting a good look at the images upon them. “How would he even walk around with that thing?”

“Fuuuckkk,” Piper groaned as she placed her head between her knees.

“Please get rid of it,” Joel begged. His hand reached back to take the magazine away from her.

Ellie swatted his hand away. “Hold your horses. I wanna see what all the fuss is about.” She quickly perused the rest of the magazine, except for a few pages. “Why are all these pages stuck together?”

Piper gaged like she was about to throw up.

“Uhh… the…” Joel was speechless.

Then Ellie burst out laughing. Her head thrown back as the giggles overcame her small figure. “I’m just fuckin’ with ya.” A window rolled down. Dusty wind blew around the car. “Bye-bye, dude!” Ellie had thrown the magazine to the wind.

♪ Alone and forsaken by fate and by man ♪ Oh Lord, if you hear me, please hold to my hand ♪ Oh, please understand ♪ Oh, where has she gone to ♪ Oh, where can she be ♪ She may have forsaken some other like me ♪ She promised to honor, to love, and obey ♪ Each vow was a plaything that she threw away ♪ The darkness is fallin’, the sky has turned gray ♪ A hound in the distance is starting to bay ♪ I wonder, I wonder what she’s thinkin’ of ♪ Forsaken, forgotten without any love ♪

꧁_____________꧂

The scene had changed now. It was green. There were trees and fields of grass. It was a welcomed changed to the drylands they had just drove through. The air was cooler now and the car wasn’t as hot. Piper could even imagine she was on a real roadtrip driving through the world before the outbreak. She felt normal.

She pressed a button and the passenger window opened. A brisk air kissed Piper’s face blowing the freed stands of her hair behind her. Yet she wanted more, so she slowly pulled out the hairtie. Her scalp groaned as the pressure was released. Then came the bliss as the wind weaved between the strands of her hair massaging her scalp. Her eyes close shut opening her arms to the comfort the wind gave her.

A shiver creeped up Joel’s shoulders and he turned his head to Piper. His mouth hung open with his forgotten wish to close the window. She seemed at peace as the music played and wind blew through her hair. She looked like what a kid like her should look like: Brow not filled with the worry of survival, hair not tied up and closed off to the world, happy, calm, and content. A thought of pity grew in Joel’s chest. This is how Piper should be living. Both her and Ellie. Afterall, they’re just kids. Kids with the future of the world on their shoulders. It was a weight they shouldn’t have, that no one should have. Joel knew that better than anyone.

“All right,” Joel sighed. “That’s enough for today.”

The wind release Piper’s hair from it’s hold as the window rolled back up. Rocking side to side, the truck turned away from the road into a grassy field. They were headed to the forest up ahead. A forest that would give them shelter for the long night.

Together, they did their part to unpack and get food started for dinner. Sitting down on the ground, the three of them ate. Piper wasn’t quite sure what they were eating, but it was cold and good. The square like noodles just slide down her throat easing her stomach’s plea for food. It was delicious.

A slurping noise came from beside her. “Jesus, Ellie. Slow down,” Piper said.

Ellie was slouched over her bowl devouring the food. Red sauce encased the skin around her mouth. “This is slow,” She mumbled with her mouth full of food. “What am I even eating?” Ellie asked.

Joel using his fork to point to the food inside his bowl answered. “That is 20-year-old Chef Boyardee ravioli.” His tone made the two girls think that this was the best food ever created on planet earth.

Ellie shoved another fork full of food into her mouth. “That guy was good.”

“I actually agree,” Joel added.

“Hmm…” Piper hummed. “How long we staying out here?”

Placing his bowl down into his lap, Joel replied. “I figure I sleep tonight… and drive tomorrow all day, all night, get us to Wyoming by next mornin’.”

Ellie sighed and rubbed her now fully belly. “So can we start a fire? I’m freezing.”

“No.” There was no hesitation in Piper’s answer.

Ellie rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re not in charge, now are you Piper?”

“Hey, hey,” Joel interrupted and waited for the two girls attention to be on him. “Now, why am I gonna tell you no?”

Sinking into the ground with disappointment Ellie answered, her voice as monotonous as they come. “Because Infected will see the smoke.”

Joel shook his head. “No. Fungus isn’t that smart. This is too remote for Infected, anyway.”

“People?” Ellie guessed. “So what are they gonna do? Rob us?” There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice as if being robbed was so horrible.

It was Piper who spoke next. There was no emotion as she spoke. The peace Joel had seen her face earlier evaprotated and he could almost see the ghosts hiding behind Piper’s brown eyes. “They’ll have way more in mind than that.”

“Okay.” Joel softly said as he observed Piper. There it was again, that same tightness his chest, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything to her. Instead he told the girls to hurry up and eat then get ready for bed.

“Actually smells kinda good,” Ellie commented as she flung her sleeping bag out, laying it onto the ground.

“Well, that would be Frank’s then,” Joel replied doing the same with his sleeping bag until a shuffling nearby caught his eye. “What are you doing?” Joel asked Piper.

Her sleeping bag was still bound. Instead, she stood by the truck grabbing something from her bag. It was a gun.

“Getting ready for watch,” Piper said. Her focus on checking her gun.

Joel pushed himself off the ground and approached the girl. “No. We’re all sleeping.”

Piper ignored Joel as she checked the bullets, counting them out. Joel did the only thing he thought would work. Placing his hand on the gun, her forced Piper to lower the weapon and look at him.

“Trust me,” Joel said. “No one is gonna find us.” His voice was clear and full of comfort. It was the same voice he’d use whenever Sarah cried to him at night about the monsters in her closet.

The teenager scoffed. “Bullshit…” Yet the longer she looked at Joel, the more she felt like letting go of that gun and letting the walls fall just this once. Her eyes fell to the ground. “jesus fuck…fine.”

Removing his hand, Joel returned to his sleeping bag. He watched as Piper placed the gun next to her sleeping bag, which now laid out on the ground next to Ellie’s. Eventually the girl did lay down, pulling the covers over her shoulders. Satified Joel followed suit and the lamp light dimmed until it was dark.

“Joel,” a small voice whispered. “Joel.”

Joel groaned. “What?”

“Can I ask you a serious question?” It was Ellie.

“Ellie…” Piper warned with a tiredness in her voice.

“I’m serious!” Ellie said.

“Yeah,” Joel said giving her the go ahead.

“Why did the scarecrow get an award?”

Joel was silent for a moment before he answered. “Because he was outstanding in his field.”

A whispered wave of giggles escaped the two girls. Both of whom didn’t expect the answer.

“You dick! Did you read this?” Ellie asked a bit louder.

“No. Now go to sleep.” Joel commanded.

“Hm,” Ellie mumbled before settling back down. “...Those people you said… there’s no way anyone knows we’re here, right? No one’s gonna find us.”

With those words, Joel was thrown back into his past and all he could hear was his daughter crying in the dark of her room. All sign of sleep and exhaustion evaded him now. “No one’s gonna find us.”

“Okay. Goodnight Pipes” Ellie whispered.

“Night Els…,” Piper replied. “...night Joel.”

꧁_____________꧂

There was no way Piper could ever sleep. Her sister’s words floated around her head and Piper had to be sure. Ellie had to be safe. It felt like eternity waiting to hear Joel’s breathing slow. Once the old man had fallen asleep, Piper peeled herself free from her sleeping bag. Each movement was carefully calculated to achieve the least amount of noise as possible. With her gun in hand and jacket zipped up to the top, Piper climbed on top of the truck, finding a seat on the roof of the car.

She had to admit, the forest was beautiful at night. There was a low chirping noise rumbling throughout the trees. Crickets, Piper guessed and she prayed it wasn’t something more. After a moments, contemplation the teen concluded her original hypothesis was correct and she soon tunned her ear into the other sounds of the night.

Piper was glad that they had the truck. It proved to be a useful vantage point. Even in the dark, Piper felt as if she could see more of the forest, than she would on the ground bringing the teen comfort.

The girl and the woods fell into a rhythmic cycle as the minutes passed. There was the cricket’s song, the breeze tickling the trees, and her own breathing. Again, and again this cycle came. Crickets, breeze, breath. Crickets, breeze, breath Crickets, breeze, breath, shuffling. Piper froze. Her head whipped around, and her gun raised defensively. She was ready to shoot.

“Kid?” A gruff voice spoke. It was Joel. Piper’s shoulders lowered at the sight of the man. “What are you doing?”

Piper didn’t answer for a moment. “On guard.” Not wanting any more conversation, she whirled back around, her sight on the forest once again.

Joel stood up and his hands found their place on his hips. He looked at Piper as she sat defiantly on the truck. Her back turned to him. The sight almost made him chuckle as he saw himself reflected in her figure. Almost. Instead, a worry fell over him. She was a kid. A kid who deemed sleep just as pointless as him. Releasing his hands from his hips, Joel pinched the bridge of his nose. Piper needed to sleep, but she was stubborn. Just like him and if he guessed now, Piper wouldn’t go to sleep without a fight.

He was too tired for this and too old to fight a headstrong teenage girl. Instead, Joel kept his mouth shut, picked up his rifle and turned his back to her, guarding the other half of the forest.

The two held their ground in silence and the forest fell back into the rhythm again. As the pattern repeated, the more Piper felt unease. Sighing, she turned around to find Joel.

“I’m sorry,” Piper said. She wasn’t even sure why she said it, but she knew she needed to.

Joel turned his head around at her voice. He wasn’t sure why she apologized yet still he replied. “It’s fine.”

Silence fell over them again and Piper bit the inside of her cheek. It was awkward to say the least. She waited, but then realized Joel wasn’t going to say anymore, so she turned back around.

“...the stars…are nice,” Joel noted.

Piper looked up for the first time that night. There they were. The stars were breathtaking. She hadn’t ever seen them that clear. “Yeah,” she agreed. Together, Joel and Piper withdrew their attention from the forest to the sky. “You know, Ellie is a fanatic for the stars, space, whatever else is up there.”

Joel glanced at Piper and there he saw it once more. The very expression in the car he saw on her face, now bloomed under the night sky. There was the kid she should be.

“...that one, the one that looks like a demented spider. Apparently its called Hercules.” Piper pointed up into the sky.

“Huh,” Joel hummed.

“Yeah, that’s about all I know. Ellie, I swear, knows them all.”

Joel tore his eyes away from the demented spider constellation. “Kid, you should get some sleep,” Joel suggested.

“In your dreams, Joel.”

꧁_____________꧂

It was official. Ellie hated sleeping outdoors. This was the second time she woke up with a knot in her back. Groaning she pushed herself off the cold ground of the forest. Looking around, she saw the rolled up sleeping bags nearby.

“Look who’s finally awake,” Piper commented as she walked by Ellie carrying her supplies to the truck of the car.

Ellie waved her middle finger in the air for Piper to see earning a laugh from her sister. Soon the young girl’s stomach began to rumble. Fueled by her hunger, Ellie crawled over to the pots and dishes piled together hoping to find something to munch on.

Lifting a lid, she found a boiling liquid. Taking a brief sniff, she pulled back and slammed the lid back on. “Ugh! The fuck is that?”

“You don’t like coffee?” Joel asked.

Whipping her head around to face him, Ellie replied. “If it smells like that, no.” Piper walked up beside her sister and crouched down, lifting up the lid to the coffee pot. Ellie saw the darkened circles underneath her sister’s eyes. “How’d you sleep?” Ellie asked Piper.

“Like shit,” Piper replied. She eyed the coffee. “Can I have some?” Joel nodded and Piper grabbed a cup and poured the black liquid into it. She raised the cup to her lips and drank.

Ellie gagged. “You are no longer my sister.”

Piper chuckled. “You’ll get it one day.” Ruffling Ellie’s hair, Piper stood back up to help Joel finish packing the truck.

“Is that seriously what those Starbucks in the QZ used to sell?” Ellie questioned.

“Well, theirs was a lot fresher than what Bill saved up, but, yeah, this is what they sold,” Joel explained.

Ellie shook her head. “Smells like burnt shit.”

Piper laughed once more. “Alright, hurry up and eat. We’ve gotta leave soon.” Leaving Ellie, to scavenge once more for food amongst the pile of dishes, Piper sipped her coffee. She hoped that maybe the caffeinated liquid would keep her sinking eyes awake and the exhaustion in her bones far away.

꧁_____________꧂

“Eyes on the map,” Joel instructed. His voice clear and firm.

Piper shot up in her seat. Her eyes wide open. She observed she was in the car. The vehicle hummed as it traveled along the road and Piper couldn’t recall how she even got into the car in the first place.

“Alright,” Joel said as the car pulled off to the side of the road, coming to a stop. When the shift stick was in park, Joel turned to the back seat. “Ellie, switch with Piper.”

Shaking her head, Piper replied. “No, I’m fine, just–”

“In the back,” Joel said and Piper knew she couldn’t fight him on this.

Unbuckling her seat belt, Piper reluctantly opened the passenger side door and crawled into the back. On the other hand, Ellie was esctatic to sit up in the front next to Joel. Jumping in her seat and getting a feel for the cushioned leather, Ellie beamed.

“Wow, it’s so much nicer up here. I’m never sitting in the back again!”

Just as Ellie was about to fiddle with the stereo, Joel shoved the map into her hands.

“Here.” Joel pointed to the map. “We’re here and need to go here. Remember.”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed, following Joel’s thick finger as it danced across the map. “76 west and then… 70 west for, like, ever.”

“Yep. Now eyes on the map.”

Rolling her eyes, Ellie glanced back down at the map. Her small fingers ran along the path that Joel had shown her moments before. Each time she got to the end, the image in her mind only grew more potent until Ellie was confident she could recite the map from memory. However, there was only so much of “eye on the map” she could take and soon Ellie diverged her attention elsewhere.

First, she experimented with the rearview mirror. It wasn’t something Joel particularly needed, so Ellie had free rein, so long as she didn’t annoy the old man. The small rectangular mirror, let her see the dusty road behind her. She ogled as the cloud of dust rippled out behind the truck clouding the green scenery behind her. Soon Ellie discovered that the mirror could move, tilting up and down and side to side. She tilted the mirror to look at Joel for a brief moment before she caught his glare. Quickly, she turned the mirror to herself. She extended her legs, leaned in close, and chuckled. Her face looked more stretched out than it normally did, and her eyes looked funky.

Ellie could have looked at herself for god knows how long if it weren’t for the pothole the truck conveniently rolled over. Thumping down in her seat with a huff, Ellie found a new target in the rearview mirror. Piper was fast asleep. Her body limp as her head rested on the stacked up sleeping bags in the back seat. Ellie thought Piper looked weird sleeping. It seemed against her older sister’s nature to relax and be at peace. Afterall, Piper was always on guard with a battle happening deep in the pit of her eyes. Yet, the sight of her sister asleep in the back seat created a warm feeling in Ellie’s chest. Even if the sight of Piper in a dormant state was bizarre, Ellie knew it’s what her sister need. It’s what Piper deserved.

“Where in Wyoming did you say your brother was?” Ellie found herself asking now that the mirror was back in place after Joel corrected the tilt.

“Last contact came through a radio tower close to Cody,” Joel replied.

Nodding Ellie peered down at the map scanning the tiny words and roads for Cody. “Cody, Cody. Ah, man. That is deep up in there.”

“Yeah,” Joel said.

“...And if he’s not there?”

“Then odds are he’ll be near a settlement, probably close to another city out there. Ain’t too many of ’em in Wyoming,” Joel explained.

Soon, Ellie found herself finding the other cities in Wyoming. “Chee-Yen,” she read aloud.

“Cheyenne,” Joel corrected.

Ellie’s eyes widened at Joel’s correction. It couldn’t be right. “Che… really?” Joel nodded. Ellie continued to look for cities. “Cheyenne… Laramie… Casper? What’s his name?”

“Whose name?” Joel wondered.

“Your brother,” Ellie clarified.

Joel breathed in deeply before answering the curious girl. “Tommy.”

“Younger or older?” Ellie curiously asked.

“Younger.”

Peering back at Piper, Ellie asked yet another question. “Why isn’t he with you?” Afterall, her and her sister were always side by side. Never apart and always together.

“A long story,’ Joel said hoping that it would satisfy Ellie. It did not.

Ellie scanned the map once more. “Is it longer than 25 hours? ‘Cause I think that’s what we got.” She peered up at Joel with the most convincing eyes she could conjure.

Joel could feel her expectant gaze on him. Biting his tongue, he continued to drive in silence until Ellie’s stare grew too much. Finally, Joel “Tommy’s what we used to call a ‘joiner.’ Dreams of becomin’ a hero. So he enlisted in the Army right outta high school. A few months later, they ship him off to Desert Storm. It’s what they called that war. It doesn’t matter. Point is, bein’ in the Army didn’t make him feel much like a hero. Cut to 12 years later, outbreak happens. He convinces me to join a group makin’ their way up to Boston, which I did… mostly to keep an eye on him, keep him alive. It’s where we met Tess. And that whole crew, we, uh… Well, for what it was, it worked. And then Tommy meets Marlene. She talks him into joinin’ the Fireflies. Same mistake he made when he was 18. Wants to save the world. Pipe dream. Him, Fireflies, all of ’em… delusional. ‘Course, last I heard, he quit the Fireflies, too. So now he’s on his own out there, and… I gotta go get him.”

“If you don’t think there’s hope for the world, why bother going on?” Ellie asked. Joel glanced at her with his brows raised. “I mean, you gotta try, right?”

He shook his head. “You haven’t seen the world, so you don’t know. You keep goin’ for family. That’s about it.”

“I’m not family,” Ellie blurted.

“No…,” Joel paused to look at the young girl next to him. “You’re cargo. And I made a promise to Tess. And she was like family.” There was a flash of change in Ellie’s expression. “But you have Piper. Piper’s your family.”

“Yeah she is,” Ellie said with a dejected tone. “You know she reminds me of you.”

“How so?” Joel wondered as his eyes glanced into the mirror to catch sight of the sleeping teen.

“You’re going for Tommy. Piper goes for me.” Ellie said. “What if you don’t find him?”

“I will.”

“How do you know?” There was a challenge in the young girls voice.

“I’m persistent,” Joel answered.

Ellie smiled. “Yep, exactly like Piper.”

There was an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of Joel’s stomach at Ellie’s conclusion. It was to similar to the thought he buried deep in the back of his head. Piper was like Joel. It was something he didn’t want. Piper shouldn’t be like him. Joel was damaged, old, broken, and cruel with walls built as high as some of the skyscrapers that existed before the Outbreak. Piper was a teenage girl. She was still a kid. She shouldn’t be like him at all.

“Ya got up pretty early,” Joel mentioned. “If you wanna grab more sleep like Piper…”

Ellie waved Joel off. “Pfft. I’m not even tired.”

“Sure,” Joel said trying to fight of a smirk.

꧁_____________꧂

A quiet snore escaped the young girls mouth as she dozed off in the passenger seat. The smirk on Joel’s face finally won when Ellie had closed her heavy eyes. It was now peaceful in the car with the two girls sleeping. Their inhales and exhales were in tandem. Both of their faces were calm as the mid-day dreams over came them.

Joel’s momentary peace and quiet was never meant to last. Soon, there was a stirring in the back seat and a head of dark brown hair sat up. Piper’s hair had frizzed up in her slumber and the young teen tried to soothe the mess with her hands before giving up.

“How long I was out?” Piper asked as the sleep slowly left her voice. Her eyes scanned the scenes passing by the car windows.

Turning his head back to face her, Joel replied, “A few hours.”

Piper nodded before carefully peering over the front seat to find her sister fast asleep. “How long has she been out?”

“Not very long,” Joel said.

“Hmm…,” Piper couldn’t help but softly smile at Ellie as she brushed some stray hairs from her sister’s face. “Where are we now?” Piper grabbed the map from Ellie’s hands.

“Not far from Kanas City,” Joel explained.

She scanned the map and her surroundings for any signs to signify where they were. It didn’t take long for the teen to estimate their spot along the highway. Joel was right. They weren’t far from Kanas City. “We should go around,” Piper whispered.

Joel’s brows raised as his ears caught Piper’s words. “What do you mean?”

Piper solemnly glanced out the window. Her eyes darted back and forth as the sight flew by them. “Heard the QZ is horrible. Definitely not a place we want to be.” Once she had finished speaking, Piper had grown eerily quiet.

Joel wanted to say something. To ask if she was okay, but his vocal chords refused to make a sound. Soon the shuffling of the girl in the passenger seat drew everyone’s attention.

Piper smiled. “Hey there sleepy head.”

Ellie’s eyes closed and opened as they adjust to the harsh light of the day. “Fuck you,” she groaned. Her response made Piper laugh, but her laugh was cut short by the slowing of the truck.

The teen hadn’t been aware of how close they actually were to Kanas City. The road between all the cars and trucks was significantly more narrow than before. In front of them was an obvious barricade. They weren’t able to drive through this. Piper’s jaw clenched as she watched Joel unbuckle his seat. She wanted to tell him to drive back and go around the city. She was sure she saw a route they could take, but it was Joel’s voice that spoke instead.

“Stay put,” Joel told the girls.

Piper and Ellie watched the man look around the cars and underneath the larger trucks before he trekked back with a scowl on his face.

Fuck, the girls thought.

“Where are we?” Ellie asked as soon as Joel got back into the car.

“Kansas City,” Joel grumbled. He motioned for the map and Piper placed it in his hands.

“How far back do we have to go to get around this?” Ellie peered over Joel’s shoulder as worry spread across her face.

Joel sighed looking at the map. They’d have to turn around and drive a few hours just to get around the barricade. To Joel, it wasn’t worth it. Tommy was waiting. Time was precious. “Screw it.” Without another word, Joel pulled away from the barricade and drove the car onto the exit ramp. The road led straight to Kanas City.

Panic filled Piper’s being. “What are you doing?!” She yelled at Joel, “No, no, Joel. Away from the city. I’ve heard some things back in Boston QZ, we don’t–”

He knew the fear in Piper’s expression well, but a teenager’s fears weren’t going to add more time onto their trip than needed. “We can jog right around this tunnel… take the next ramp… and we’re back on the road. Minute tops,” he hurriedly explained to calm the girl.

Piper glared at Joel as she bit her lip. Tears began to well up in her eyes from the pain. The disturbing turning in her gut only got worse as they drove deeper and deeper into the city and the only comfort she could find was gripping the handle of her gun.

“Where the fuck is the highway?!” Joel fumed. His eye frantically over the map and then the road in front of him.

Ellie did her best to help. “I can’t tell from this. I’m all turned around!”

“Don’t look at the state map, Ellie. Look at the inset.” Piper was on the verge of snapping. “That there!”

The younger girl’s voice began to break. “Well, I don’t know where we are in that either! This is my second day in a fucking car. I mean, I think we’re heading north?”

“It’s gotta be the right,” Joel muttered, before swerving the car to the right.

The car jolted everyone as Joel tried find a way out of the labyrinth like city.

“Stop!” Ellie hollered.

The car came to a halt. Tires screeched and Piper barely had time to brace herself on Ellie’s seat. “What the fuck?” She asked her sister. Ellie just stared at pointed out the window.

“Is that the QZ?” Ellie asked. Everyone was now looking at the burned down gate. Smoke was still in the air. “Where the fuck is FEDRA?”

Piper wanted to spew. “Joel–”

“Hey! Please help!” The voice came from outside the car. It was a man. His right leg hung limp behind him and his arms waved in the air.

Her eyes widened and, using her free hand, she grabbed Joel’s shoulder with a painful grip. “Joel, we need to get the fuck out of here!”

Joel’s eyes darkened. “Put your seatbelt on,” he said with a low voice.

Ellie searched his eyes. “Aren’t we gonna help him?”

“No,” Piper and Joel said simultaneously.

There was a click. Then a stomp. Soon the car jumped forward as Joel pressed his foot down on the gas. The truck was headed straight for the man.

“Joel! Reverse!” Piper screamed.

“Fuck!” the man yelled as he jumped out of the way. “Go, go, go!”

In an instance, there was a deafening thud. The car slid. Joel turned the wheel to a nearby building’s glass doors. Gun shots fired. Their heads ducked down as they braced for impact. With a crash, the car came to a halt.

“Fuck,” Joel groaned. He turned to Ellie. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Ellie wheezed.

Quickly, he turned to Piper. “You’re not hurt? Nothin’?”

Piper shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Their momentary relief was destroyed by bullets firing. They had hit the truck’s windows.

“Belts off. Fast!” Joel shouted.

The girls did not waste time unbuckling the seat belts and opening the doors of the truck.

“Let’s see you, motherfucker! Give us your shit, you make it through this! I promise!” One of the raiders yelled.

Once all of them had left the truck and found brief cover, Joel looked around the room. “Hey, you see that hole?” He pointed to a small hole in the drywall. “Can you two squeeze through?”

Ellie and Piper followed Joel’s hand. With one scan of the hole, they knew they could fit.

“Last chance!” the raider snarled.

“When I say go, you crawl to that wall, and you squeeze through, and you don’t come out until I say, okay?” Joel instructed the teens.

Ellie nodded her head. The shock evident in her eyes.

Piper shook hers. “No, let me help.” She raised her gun up for Joel to see.

Joel growled and his jaw clenched. “This is not a negotiation. You’re going.”

A gun shot echoed around the room. They seemed to be getting louder and louder with each fire. Ellie felt her legs go limp and a cold sweat over come her body.

“they’re not gonna hit you. Look at me!” Joel told Ellie, “They’re not gonna hit you.”

Bang!

“You stay down, you stay low, you stay quiet,” Joel explained and Ellie absently nodded her head.

“I’ve got you Els,” Piper whispered to her sister.

“Mm-hmm,” Ellie hummed back with tears in her eyes.

“Okay,” Piper said before turning to Joel and nodding.

“Okay,” Joel commanded. “Go!”

Immediately, Piper shot off the ground and grabbed Ellie’s jacket collar dragging her along. They stayed low to the ground until they reached the hole. “Come on, go!” Piper yelled before shoving Ellie through the hole.

Bang!

Piper cried out in pain as she examined her shoulder. She was shot. The bullet had grazed her arm. “Fuck!” She cried before crawling through the hole.

Another shot was fired.

“Fuck! You motherfucker!” One of the raiders screamed.

There was another shot and Piper could hear the sounds of guns falter. Joel was doing it. He was taking them out one by one.

Crunch.

Glass had been broken and there was heavy breathing. It was breathing that did not belong to the old man. A shadow covered the hole. Ellie’s eyes widened and Piper pulled her back against the wall.

There was a grunt. “Now you’re gonna fuckin’ pay! What you fuckin’ did, you fuckin’ killed yourself, motherfucker!” A raider yelled. The girls could hear the voice so clearly.

Bang.

Something had run into the wall. Piper flinched and Ellie was no longer by her side. Turning her head, she saw her sister at the hole. Her gun in hand.

“Ellie, no,” Piper pleaded as Joel struggle with the raider.

Ignoring her sister, Ellie crawled through the wall.

“Fuck,” Piper groaned before following her sister out the hole.

The sight in front of her was pure chaos. Joel had his head tilted back with a long rifle underneath his chin. Behind him stood a raider. Piper didn’t care to note the specifics about him except for the fact he was choking Joel. It wouldn’t have been long before Joel would lay unconscious on the floor of the abandoned laundromat.

A clear shot rang through the air. The raider fell to his knees. The rifle choking Joel was gone. Ellie had shot the man. Her shoulders were stiff and her eyes were cold. Her skin was paler than white as the gun followed the man as he dragged himself across the floor.

The demeanor in the raider had flipped. Tears screamed down his eyes as the violence in his voice fled. It was replaced by terror as he pleaded with Ellie.

“No, no, no, no, no! It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s over. We’re not fighting anymore. I’m gonna go home. I’ll tell everyone you’re good,” his voice broke as a cry escaped his lips. “I don’t know what to do. My legs don’t work. My mom isn’t far, if you could get me to her. We could trade with you guys. We could be friends. I didn’t know.” Ellie stood unwavering. “I’m Bryan. I’m Bryan. What’s your name?” Bryan whimpered.

Joel stepped forward. “Wait, wait, wait!” Bryan pleaded, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. “You can have it… It’s a good knife.” He tossed the knife to Ellie. It fell to the ground beside her feet.

“Get back behind the wall,” Joel muttered to Ellie. He was still out of breath. His hand came to her shoulder, breaking her from her trance. Lowering the gun, Ellie turned her back to Bryan and crawled back through the wall. “Kid,” Joel said to Piper.

“I’m not a kid,” Piper whispered. With Ellie’s gun was quickly replaced by Piper’s. Joel’s eyes widened.

Bryan’s cried got louder. It annoyed Piper. Someone who moments before seemed to strong, now was at her feet begging for mercy. Something she didn’t have. Not anymore. “No, no, no, no! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please, please. We could just talk. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please, please. No, no, no! Please! No, please! Please! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please! You don’t have to! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please! No, no, no! We can just talk! Mom! Mom! Mom!”

Piper’s heart clenched at Bryan’s call for his mother. It was a brief moment, before her finger squeezed. A shot thundered around the room. Then there was silence and a small hole in the forehead of what used to be Bryan. Piper wanted to revel in it, but instead she felt sick. Swallowing down the rising bile, she lowered her gun. In the silence, adjusted the straps of her backpack and moved to the hole in the wall.

“Let’s go,” she mumbled.

“I can’t fit through,” Joel said.

Piper sighed and grabbed her shoulder massaging the pain. “There’s a door to the next room just around the corner.”

Joel nodded as he shuffled around to the door before turning the knob. The door didn’t open. It wasn’t locked, but it just didn’t open.

“There’s some stuff against the door,” Ellie voiced.

“Well, can you move it?” Joel asked.

“Uh…yeah.”

It didn’t take long for Joel to hear scrapping and shuffling behind the door. Soon the blockage was free and the door swung open. Joel stepped inside and closed the door behind him and darkness flooded the room.

“You okay?” Joel asked to either girl.

Piper didn’t answer. Ellie did. “I’m okay… I’m good. I, uh, got some food in here still, and I got your light still.” Ellie handed Joel the light. “What now?”

“We go up,” Joel answered.

Ellie looked up at Joel. “To get a better look?”

Joel nodded. “Hopefully, we spot a clear route out.” Leaning back, Joel peered out the door, briefly shutting it. His eyes flitted between the girls.

“Ready?” He asked.

Ellie nodded. The two of them turned to Piper. The elder teen gripped her gun close and raised her head up an down.

Light spilled into the room. The bright light momentarily blinded the three of them as they rushed outside. Their bodies crouched down low as they ran. One fact rang clear in their minds. They had to get far away from here. Some place safe, although it seemed as if they’d never be safe again.

꧁_____________꧂

“You fingers go here and then…Piper are you listening to me?” Levi asked with a knowing smile on his face.

“Huh? Oh yeah. Totally,” Piper chirped back.

“Right. How was I telling you to hold the gun?” Levi knew Piper’s reaction before the guilt on her face could manifest.

“Like…this?” Piper fiddled with the gun in her hand and Levi shook his head.

“No. Here,” Levi said as he reached over to fix Piper’s grip on the gun. Fingers go here and use both hands.”

“But that’s not how–,” Piper muttered.

“I know that’s how you were taught by FEDRA. It’s wrong. Now listen to me sweetheart,” Levi continued on with his demonstration. “...Soon enough you’ll be able to shoot.”

After some adjustments, Piper finally mastered her grip on the gun. Levi beamed. “See, now. I want you to try your hand at shooting. Don’t be afraid to miss.”

Piper huffed and moved her feet to a better stance, the very one she saw Levi take when he used his gun. Her small eyes narrowed to the targets on the other end of the room. They were old beer bottles, but viable targets nonetheless. Taking a slow breath in, Piper pulled her finger back, trigger the gun to fire. She missed.

“Fuck,” Piper hissed.

Levi chuckled. “Hey, what did I say? You can miss. You’re safe here. You miss here so that when your shot counts, you don’t miss. Got it?”

The young girl nodded before turning to look back at the targets. Piper puffed her cheeks with disappointment. She wanted to hit the target. She wanted to never miss again. She wouldn’t make a shot that night. She wouldn’t make a shot until it counted. Yet, time and time again, she heard Levi’s voice saying, “Try again,” and she’d get back up to fire once more.

꧁_____________꧂

Refuge was found in a broken down bar. The windows were sealed with old newspapers. To pass the time, Ellie tried to read the clippings. Some were stories about dead people. Boring. Then there were some stories about what the local school board was doing. Also boring. As she jumped from story to story, Ellie concluded that the news was boring. Instead she took to peeking out the window in the cracks where the news didn’t cover.

“They’re not FEDRA, and they’re not Fireflies, so who are they?” Ellie asked. She peered up at Joel who was also looking out the window.

“People,” Joel grumbled.

Ellie nodded and drew her knees in close. Her tiny body crumpled together on the wooden floor. “Are we okay in here?” Ellie’s voice was small.

Joel’s ear’s perked at the sound of uncertainty in Ellie’s voice. He withdrew from the window and sat down on an abandoned chair. “For a little bit, maybe. Looks like they’re checkin’ out apartment buildings first. But they’ll be coming through these places soon enough.”

There was a sigh from the corner of the room. Piper’s head fell back against the wall. “There’s a really tall building, like, four blocks away,” she noted. Her long dark hair fell to the side as her eyes cast down. She had lost her hair tie a while back during the chaos of running from building to building.

"Yeah. Saw it,” Joel said.

Ellie sat up and peeked out the window once more. Her brown eyes darted around until they landed on the building, she believed Joel and Piper were discussing. “So that’s the one?” She pointed to the building.

“As soon as we don’t hear a truck, we move,” Joel instructed. “Fast as we can.” There was a loud hum as an armoured truck drove by and Ellie ducked down. The group froze as they listened. Their shoulders were tensed and backs stiff.

The rumbling of the trucks dispersed and a laboured groan escaped Piper’s mouth.

“Are you okay?” Joel asked. He was now standing up and moving towards the young teen.

Piper made a noise that was a mix of a scoff and a snicker. “I’m not the one you should be asking.”

Joel groaned at Piper’s stubbornness. “You were shot, weren’t you?”

“No.” Piper shook her head.

“I saw you got s–,” Joel rebutted.

“The bullet grazed me!” Piper heaved. “It’s not the end of the fucking world. I’m fine.” She squeezed her arm in hopes to divert the pain. “Ellie, how are you doing?” Piper tensely asked.

“I’m alright,” Ellie replied. “Joel?”

Roughly running his hands through his peppered hair, Joel answered Ellie. “Yeah.” Taking a few more steps closer to Piper, Joel crouched down. His body only a few feet away from the girl. “Thing is, is I didn’t hear that guy comin’, and… you shouldn’t have had to… both of you shouldn’t have had to…you know?”

“Well, you’re glad we did,” Piper concluded.

Joel shook his head. He was glad to be alive, but not at the expense of child. “You’re just a kid,” Joel pinched his nose. “You shouldn’t know what it means to… But… shootin’ or… I know what it’s like… first time that you, uh, hurt… someone like that. If you, uh… w… uh…I’m not good at this,” Joel confessed.

“Yeah, you really aren’t,” Ellie commented.

“I mean, it was my fault,” Joel apologized. You shouldn’t have had to. And I’m sorry.”

Those two words echoed in Piper’s head. They were such simple and unthreatening words, yet their delivery broke down her walls. I’m sorry. Piper gulped and dug her nails into the palms of her hands. I’m sorry. A new ache formed in her body at the sound of the words and the pain from her shoulder only dulled in comparison to the pain of her heart. I’m sorry. Instantly, her vision grew blurry, and against her will, a few tears escaped and trailed down her dirtied cheeks.

“It wasn’t my first time,” Piper sniffled . She looked up forcing the tears away.

“Right. Show me your grip,” Joel looked at Piper and never for a moment did he dwell on her tears. Piper was grateful for that as she pulled out her gun and showed Joel her grip. He took a step closer to check. “Good.” Then Joel turned to Ellie asking her to do the same. “Finger off the trigger. Now, who taught you that?” Joel asked Ellie.

“FEDRA school,” Ellie mumbled.

“Figures. Your thumb…over your thumb. Left hand… squeezes down on the right. You got it?” Ellie nodded. Suddenly, Joel’s hand reached out and tried to yank away Ellie’s gun. Her grip stayed unwavering. “There ya go. Look,” Joel noted.

Piper smiled as Ellie’s grin grew from Joel’s praise.

“How come you didn’t check Piper’s grip?” Ellie asked Joel.

Piper chirped up before Joel could reply. “FEDRA didn’t teach me to shoot,” She said and all elements of a smile has vanished.

Joel looked back at Piper before standing up. The joints in his knees and hips were displeased at this sudden movement. His movement created a wave of action from the other girls. Piper stood up and Ellie placed her gun in her hand.

Tapping Ellie on the shoulder, Joel shook his head. “Uh-uh. You’ll shoot your damn ass off.”

Piper snickered. “Be fucking hilarious.”

Ellie whipped her head around to face her sister. “You fucker.”

“Hurry it up, girls,” Joel grumbled as he retrieved his things. The girls quit their bickering to do just as Joel had.

Soon enough, the three of them were standing at the door. They shared a cautious breath as they awaited Joel’s cue.

“We’ll get through this,” Joel found himself saying. His eyes flashed with worry as he glanced at the weary expressions on the girl’s faces.

Ellie shrugged her backpack and looked up at Joel. “We know.”

For a moment, they waited. All their ears tunned into the sounds of the world outside the degenerating bar. With bated breathes they stood. Ellie gripped the straps of her bag tightly finding comfort in the constriction. Piper stood low behind Joel. The pain in her arm was now blaring at her. She clenched her eyes shut, waiting for the pain to subside. All Piper had to do was wait it out. Soon they’d be safe. Soon they’d be out of this god forsaken city.

“Go,” Joel commanded. The door shut behind them and a bar was left empty once more.

꧁_____________꧂

Joel was old. It was a fact that he knew quite well. It seemed to be Joel’s downfall that he was old in a world that favored the young. Especially when it came to survival. Except now, Joel had youth on his side, except this youth seemed…well, partially incompetent.

“You’re just gonna put your foot here,” Joel explained. “One, two…” With all his strength he raised Ellie into the air. The young girl’s arms flailed around trying to find stability.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Ellie cursed.

Piper couldn’t contained her laughter as she watched Joel and Ellie struggle.

Joel huffed and rolled his eyes at Piper’s reaction. “You could always help.”

“Nah, you’ve got it,” Piper replied.

Ellie cried out as Joel’s muscles struggled to keep her up. “Straighten up. I got you,” Joel said.

It took a moment, but then Ellie followed Joel’s advice. Her hands reached the opening and her fingers scrounged around for a grip. It didn’t take long for the weight on Joel’s shoulders and arms to lessen.

“Okay, I’m in.” Ellie’s voice echoed around the opening.

“Take a look around first. Ellie.” Joel instructed. There was silence from the other side. “God damn it,” Joel muttered.

“Hey, that's my sister,” Piper reprimanded the old man.

As if on cue, a nearby steel door swung open and Ellie’s head appeared. “Where would you be without me, huh?” Ellie smiled.

“By now, Wyoming,” Joel responded as he walked passed Ellie into the building.

Ellie’s shoulder’s dropped. “Oh, yeah. Walked into that one.”

Once they were all in the stairwell, Joel at the two girls. “All right. We’ll make our way up, and come morning, I’ll take a look at the city, and find our way out.”

A large white sign flared in the dark of the stairwell, illuminated by the flashlights of the group. Ellie groaned upon reading the mixture of numbers and words on the metallic surface. “We’re goin’ up 42 flights?”

“Forty-five,” Joel corrected and then shook his head. “But no… not all the way.”

Piper slumped against the concrete wall with a bang. The contents of her backpack were squished between her and the unmoving force of the wall. “Jesus. How far?”

The man’s brow furrowed with thought as he calculated an answer for the girls. “As far as I can make it.”

And so their ascent up the stairs began. Their footsteps clambered along the thick walls echoing to and fro. The stair case had a supreme level of acoustics. It was a fact acknowledged by all three of them, especially Ellie. By floor ten, the young girl’s thigh muscles contracted and with each step the burning sensation only grew stronger. In her mind she prayed Joel could only take so many more. Afterall, he was old. However, Ellie realized she had misjudged Joel’s determination and strength by floor seventeen. Her body was heating up and sweat oozed out of her skin. She was suffering, and it seemed like no one else was. Piper stood stoically as she climbed each step. The only hint of their physical stress was a slight shade of pink that tinted her cheeks. On the other hand, Joel’s brow shimmered under the light of his flashlight. He was sweating. He was feeling the effects of their activities. He was suffering, but not enough.

“What did the policeman say to his belly button?” Ellie asked with a devious smile as she watched Joel’s shoulder’s slump with defeat.

Piper snorted before rolling her eyes at Ellie. “I don’t know…um…hi?”

“Nope,” Ellie bit her lip trying to contain her laughter. “You’re under a vest!”

“Jesus,” Joel mumbled and Piper wasn’t sure if it was a prayer or a curse.

The stairs now echoed a new sound, Ellie’s giggles. “Okay, okay. Next one.” She cleared her throat. “What’s the difference between a well-dressed person on a unicycle and a poorly dressed person on a bike?” Dark brown eyes darted to Piper and Joel for any hint of an answer. “No one? Okay,” and throwing on her best posh accent, Ellie drove the punch line home. “Attire.”

Again, the young girl was thrown into a fit of giggles as Joel grumbled to himself occasionally sending her a warning glare when he broke free from his elderly annoyance of the youth present.

With each joke Ellie delivered, the laboured and steadfast demeanor Piper held up slowly chipped away. She wasn’t sure if it was the fact her body no longer had the will to fight against the abominable two-liner jokes, or if it was the sight of Ellie at such ease and joy from tormenting her and Joel. Although, Piper had to admit seeing Joel at such loose level of discomfort was quite funny. It was moments like these she had to remember when Joel would eventually discard her and Ellie just like everyone else.

“Ooo! This one. Okay,” Ellie cleared her throat. “What did the fisherman say to the magician?” She paused waiting for the internal drum roll to conclude. “Pick a cod, any cod.”

Piper sinched her lips together to contain the outburst waiting to pop. She was so focused on not laughing that she almost ran into Joel. The man had stilled and with his hands on his hips he glowered down at the girls with an unknown look in his gaze.

“No more jokes,” Joel said.

“Okay, just trying to lighten the mood,” Ellie mumbled as she shoved her joke book into her back pocket.

Upon seeing the book placed away, Joel collected his breath and the marched up the stairs continued.

They had passed four more floors when Ellie spoke again. “Hey, you know that guy who said he was hurt?” She waited for Joel’s acknowledgement. “How did you know it was an ambush?”

Joel’s chest rose pushing his shoulder close to his ears. “I’ve been on both sides.” He glanced back at caught Piper’s knowing stare. “It was a long time ago. We did what we needed to survive.”

“You and Tess?” Ellie asked. It was strange to think of Joel and Tess like the man who attacked them. They were protectors and that’s all Ellie had known them to be. She didn’t think she could imagine Tess hurting anyone. Joel on the other hand, she could see it…sort of.

“And the people we were with,” Joel explained. “My brother, too.”

Ellie took in a shaking breath, which she blamed on the physical exertion. “Did you kill innocent people?” Her voice faltered.

Joel was silent.

“Ellie,” Piper interjected. “Save your breath for the stairs.”

Joel’s jaw unclenched at Piper’s words. He was grateful for her interruption. He knew the answer and it was not an answer he wanted to tell Ellie. In a world full of death and decay around everyone corner, sometimes all you could do was kill. So, yes. Yes, Joel had killed innocents. Back then he wasn’t ashamed. He did it to survive. He had to. Now…now Joel just wanted to lie.

꧁_____________꧂

The stairwell door slammed open and Ellie toppled inside. Her knees hit the carpeted floor as breath hit her lungs like a tidal wave. “Holy shit,” she tiredly said.

Piper plopped down next to her throwing her head between her knees. “Yeah,” she agreed.

“Thirty-three floors ,” Ellie barely voiced. “That’s good.”

“It’s gonna have to be,” Joel panted. He placed his coarse hand on the wall for stability. Everything burned: his lungs, his calves, his thighs, hell, even muscles he didn’t know existed burned in a frenzy.

Pushing herself off the floor, Piper crawled to a standing position. “Come on,” she huffed.

Ellie shuffled around before reaching her hand out to Piper. Together the two of them got Ellie to a stand.

Joel looked at the two girls with a puzzled expression. The power of the recovery in the youth astounded him. “Gimme a minute,” Joel begged.

Ellie chuckled. “Get up, you lazy ass.”

“Lazy ass,” Joel grunted as he stood up. “Fifty-six years old, you little shit.”

Piper and Ellie laughed at his response as they watched Joel waddle down the maze of hallways on the floor before entering a large office. The office was in a pristine condition considering the start of the apocalypse two decades prior. The carpet was free of dirt and Piper could still see the design within the fabric. Ellie was in awe at the fluffiness of the couch cushions in the seating area. They were a little stiff but practically new. She smiled to herself as she laid a few of the cushions out on the floor for the three of them.

“Better than any bed I’ve ever slept–Joel?” Ellie turned her attention to Joel who had just shattered the glass door. “Joel.” He didn’t respond. Ellie looked at Piper with a worried shine in her eyes. “Joel!” Ellie yelled.

The man in question turned around with a quizzical look. “What?”

“What are you doing?” She pointed to the glass now on the floor. Not the best sleeping conditions, if she was saying anything.

Joel furrowed his brow as if his actions are obvious. Piper sighed and dropped her bag onto the floor before laying down next to Ellie. “He doesn’t want someone sneakin’ up on us while we’re sleeping.”

“Ohh, I get it. Crunch, crunch, crunch,” Ellie animately said. Her hands marched around in the air like feet ‘smashing’ the shattered glass. “Are you sure you’re gonna hear it?” The young girl asked Joel.

“Of course, I’ll hear it,” Joel said. “That’s the damn point.” He glanced down at the ground. The glass was evenly spread out. It’d be difficult to not step on the makeshift alarm. Satisfied, he shuffled over to the girls and sat down on the open cushion next to Piper.

“If he doesn’t,” Piper added, “I will.”

“Okay. Well, good night,” Ellie said. She snuggled into the couch cushions and drew her jacket tightly around her body.

“Yeah, good night,” Joel whispered back as he laid down settling in for the night.

“Night,” Piper mumbled.

A darkened shade of blue encased the room. Everything was a different shade and Piper could make out each of the objects in the room. The desk was a darker blue than the chair behind it. The ceiling was a light blue, and the young girl was sure she could hear the buzzing of the fluorescent lights, even though they were turned off. Shifting around on the cushion, Piper let out a disappointed sigh. Sleep evaded her.

“Hey,” Joel spoke.

“Yeah?” Piper hesitantly responded. Behind her, a small snore escaped Ellie’s mouth. Piper could hear Joel let out a heavy breath.

“When we were talkin’ about hurtin’ people…,” Joel paused. “What did you mean it wasn’t your first time?”

Piper rolled around onto her side. Her eyes glued to Joel’s back. “…I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“All right,” Joel quietly said. “…You don’t have to. I’m just sayin’… it isn’t fair, your age… havin’ to deal with all of this…”

Piper’s nose scrunched up and a line between her brows formed. “There’s a lot I’ve had to deal with…” Tears built up in the corner of her eyes. Piper wasn’t going to cry. She didn’t want to cry, but why was it so easy to cry at night? “The first time I…I was twelve…does it gets easier when you get older?” Piper sniffled.

“No, not really.” Joel rolled over and found lips pulling into a tight line. Piper was crying. The dark hid her tears well, but Joel was a father. He knew when a child was crying. “But still.”

Piper gulped and took in a shaky breath. She wasn’t crying. She refused to cry, but it was a lie. She knew and she knew Joel knew. Yet, there was an ease that filled her being as she cried on the floor of that office with Joel laying across from her. Even as war and torment surged outside, as people searched for them, Piper felt safe. She was safe under the shadow of Joel’s figure. Piper was safe, so she could cry.

“The reason Ellie asked whether you’d hear the glass or not is ’cause both of us have noticed you don’t hear too well from your right side… Is it ’cause you were shot there?” Piper pondered once her tears had subsided.

“Probably more from shootin’,” Joel honestly replied. “So if you wanna keep your hearin’, you stick to that knife.”

Piper chuckled and a small smile crept onto her face. “Too late.” Piper asked, “Joel?”

“Hm?” Joel raised his brow.

“Did you know diarrhea is hereditary?” Piper smirked.

“What?” Joel’s head turned to look over his shoulder. Utter confusion was placed on his face at Piper’s words.

“Yeah,” Piper whispered. “It runs in your jeans.” Then she laughed. It was a quiet laugh given the circumstances, but a laugh nonetheless.

Joel rolled back over. “Jesus,” he said before laughing along. “That is so goddamn stupid.” He shook his head at himself for laughing at the joke, yet he couldn’t stop. He laughed and then Piper laughed. He feared it be an on going cycle that would awaken Ellie.

“You laughed, motherfucker,” Piper noted. “Just wait till I tell Ellie.”

“I didn’t laugh,” Joel gruffly said. There was still a hint of laughter in his face.

“Yes, you did,” Piper said. She wouldn’t let him deny it.

“Jesus, I’m losin’ it,” Joel smiled. His face felt funny and alien as the smile stretched across his features. His cheeks hurt and his eyes crinkled in a way that they hadn’t in years. Piper had made Joel smile.

“You’re losin’ it big time,” Piper giggled and Joel laughed once more.

“Go to sleep,” Joel gently said.

Piper fondly smiled. “You too, Joel. You too.”

꧁_____________꧂

Sleep found Joel quickly that night. It must have been the thirty-three floors of stairs, the fight for his life, and driving consistently for days that finally brought him some rest. His mind was blank. He didn’t dream and didn’t think of Sarah, of Tess, or of Tommy. He felt at ease. Soon the pleasantry of slumber escaped him. The room was lighter and faded color crept into his view.

“Joel?” A muffled voice was calling out to him. It sounded worried. It sounded scared. Joel’s eyes widened. “Joel!”

He grunted as he lifted his head. There was Ellie and Piper. Ellie was looking down at him. Her dark eyes reflected the fear and confusion in Joel’s. Piper sat with her jaw clenched. Her shoulder were held back and an inferno was a lit in her eyes. The thing that scared Joel the most was where Piper was looking. She wasn’t looking at him. No, Piper was glaring down the barrel of a gun.

Something cold touched the back of Joel’s head. He whipped around. There in front of him was a child with paint around his eyes. In his hand was a gun.

Well, fuck.

꧁_____________꧂

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totallyjustabunchofhocuspocus · 5 days

Text

Fic: Something to Sink Your Teeth Into 13/?

Pairing: Buck/Tommy

Vampire/Witch!AU

Read on AO3

There was no snow on the ground, yet, but Evan’s breath came frosting out in clouds of vapor as he stood in the middle of a field on his coven’s land, hands braced on his knees as he heaved in gulps of air. The remains of a few bales of hay smoldered merrily a few dozen yards away from him, black smoke billowing up into the crystal blue sky. There were still about five bales scattered around him that were untouched, though.

Again, Evan.

The calm, gentle voice echoed around him, accompanied by the surge of electric power that always signaled a familiar casting. The smoldering bales of all hay went up in crackles of white-hot flame, fresh clouds of smoke billowing up and swirling in miniature tornadoes around them. A few seconds later, the smoke scattered as though blown away by a fierce, sudden wind, and when the air had cleared, all of the bales were restored to pristine condition. And now even farther apart than they were before.

“Sally, come on,” he whined. He knew he was whining. He couldn’t help it. He’d been out here since school let out almost three hours ago, he was cold, he was hungry, he was starting to get a headache from so much casting…and he knew that his familiar absolutely was not going to let him go home until he’d performed the exercise exactly how she wanted him to. He turned to look at her anyway, pasting his best puppy-dog eyes—the expression that always worked on Maddie—across his face.

Sally was perched on top of part of an old stone fence, her tail twitching back and forth as she observed the field like a queen surveying her kingdom. Her mangled ear—a battle souvenir she’d earned back before Pennsylvania had ever even been a state—flicked towards him, and even from across the field, Evan could see the amusement on her face. Most of the other kids in the coven thought it was so cool to have such an old and powerful familiar, that it must be amazing to be taught and trained by someone who had so much experience. And sure, yes, it really was. He loved Sally, and was so grateful that she’d chosen to bond with him, especially after going so long without bonding with any other Buckley witch.

But sometimes, being taught and trained by someone with almost three centuries of experience really sucked. He couldn’t get away with anything!

Again, Evan, she said, picking her way over to another moss-covered fencepost and lazily starting to groom her rough, calico coat. You’re still not dispersing your magic properly. You should be able to hit at least three more targets with the same spell.

If it had been either of his parents saying something like that to him, a hot flush of anger and embarrassment would have swept through him. The black cloud of their disappointment (God, Evan can’t you do anything right? How can you mess up something that simple? I don’t know where your father and I went wrong! Don’t you dare embarrass us in front of the coven.) would have pressed down on him like a physical weight, driving all his self-control and concentration right out of his head.

Sally’s criticism never felt like that, though.

Mostly because Sally was never disappointed in him. She was firm, and no-nonsense, and never let him get away with being lazy or taking shortcuts…but he never doubted that she believed in him with all her heart and would never ask him to do something she wasn’t absolutely sure he could do. Her patience with him never ran out, and even in just three short years under her mentoring, his power and control had improved a lot.

The only other person who ever made him feel so loved and supported was Maddie.

So, despite being hungry, and cold, and tired, he pushed himself up straight and walked back to the spot that would give him the best line of sight to all of the haybales. He stretched his arms over his head and shook the tension from his shoulders. Taking a deep breath, he started chanting.

This time, all but one of the bales burst into flame.

Excellent! Sally’s voice was filled with pride, and she vanished from the fencepost, reappearing seconds later at his feet. Her slightly ragged tail flicked back and forth as she once again smothered the flames and restored the haybales to pristine condition, this time all stacked together.

Evan looked down at her, hands on his hips. “Really? Again?” he sighed. Sally sat down primly and licked one of her paws.

Last exercise for today, she promised. This time I want you to do it without reaching through your coven bond.

Evan startled at that, looking down at his familiar in surprise. “Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked, like dispersing the strain of casting through a coven bond wasn’t literally one of the first lessons children learned when they started training with their magic. No matter how powerful you were, casting was difficult. It took a ton of energy and focus, and channeling magic—especially into more complex spells or multiple spells at once—could be exhausting. Drawing on your coven bond to alleviate some of the strain was an essential skill. While magic could be cast without the aid of a coven bond, it was like trying to lift something extremely heavy by yourself…the risk of injury was higher, and the longer you did it, the more dangerous it got.

I won’t let anything happen to you, little love, Sally replied calmly, and Evan scoffed.

“I know that,” he said, the idea of his familiar ever letting any harm come to him if she could prevent it so utterly ridiculous as to be a complete non-issue. He knew Sally would always protect him just as surely as he knew Maddie would. “I just—why practice that?” he asked, honestly curious. Sally never did anything without a purpose.

Strangely, Sally seemed to hesitate, looking out over the frosty field and wrapping her tail around her feet. I would see you prepared for any eventuality, she said at length. Even if it’s no longer a customary lesson, or something some might think a waste of time.

Evan knew his familiar well enough by now to know she was talking about his parents. She was always talking about his parents when she got that particular tone in her voice. Sally always played nice in front of other members of their coven or visiting guests, but in private she had never made her dislike for his parents a secret. She was polite—but every time she was in the same room as his mom and dad, the temperature seemed to drop at least ten degrees.

Truthfully, if Sally hadn’t been such an old and respected familiar, if she hadn’t held the status she did in their coven and in Pennsylvania witch society in general, he doubted his parents would have let her bond with him when she approached them about it. There had been no way for them to turn her down without it raising a lot of questions, though…and if there was one thing Phillip and Margaret Buckley hated, it was questions.

Still, Sally wasn’t wrong that a lot of her lessons and teaching methods were…old-fashioned. Maddie usually explained it as Sally just having lived most of her life as a coven familiar in times where conflicts—not even just with vampires, witch covens had once been a lot more volatile than they tended to be now—were a lot more common. Sometimes, though—sometimes Evan couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Sally was making her decisions about what and how to teach him based on something she was expecting. He had no real reason to think that way. It was just a feeling.

Perhaps sensing his distraction, Sally nudged his shin with her head, purring softly when he knelt down and scratched behind her mangled ear. You’ll wield tremendous power when you come fully into it, little love. You’re already stronger than many of my witches ever were. If your parents were wiser, they would be grooming you for coven leadership someday. Perhaps even a place on a high coven.

Evan snorted, even as a warm glow of happiness at her words curled through his chest. “We both know they’d never want me to be a coven leader. They hate my magic. They hate how I got it.”

Sally growled, low in her throat. They hate that it was given to you, and their part in how it was given at all. That they take their self-blame out on you is a shame they will have to reckon with someday. She batted at his cheek with one paw. You are blameless, Evan Buckley. You will be my finest witch. My last witch. Were it not for you, I would have left this coven when your parents…made the choices they did. You are precious to me and your sister, little love. And someday you will be precious to others. I would thank you to remember that.

He blinked hard, turning his face away and pretending to look over to the stack of haybales. Sally allowed him to, leaping up onto his shoulder as he stood slowly and draping herself over the back of his neck.

Now. Again, Evan, she ordered.

Evan took a few stumbling steps backward, almost tripping over the body of Jon—Greenway, Greenway, Greenway…he’d try to sell Evan out to vampires, damn it, he was directly responsible for this whole shitshow—Greenway’s familiar. The three vampires stepped fully out of the temp agency’s offices, and Evan’s heart dropped as another two appeared in the doorway. Five. Five vampires, their auras all roiling with the power that could only have come from drinking witch blood. Of their own volition, his eyes flicked to Greenway’s corpse, swallowing hard at the way the creatures stalking out of the offices and spreading out in the hallways had savaged him.

Kinard shifted, planting himself firmly in front of Evan, his movements shifting into the easy liquidity of a predator. The lead vampire—a massive blond man who looked like he’d fit right in as a bouncer or a bodyguard—looked Kinard up and down before zeroing back in on Evan. His companions weren’t nearly as physically intimidating, but Evan knew that didn’t mean anything. Evan was not a weak man in any measure of the word, but Kinard’s coven mate Lucy could have snapped him in half without any effort.

“Kinard,” blondie growled, his gaze never leaving Evan for an instant. “So you’re the reason our little present made it out of Gerrard’s party. Didn’t have that on the Bingo card, gotta say.”

Kinard tilted his head. “Do I know you?” he asked, his voice flat and cold, so different from the way he’d been speaking to Evan all day it was a little jarring.

Blondie finally looked away from Evan, smirking at Kinard. “Not personally. But don’t pretend the little traitor here didn’t give you the rundown.” He rolled his neck from side to side, scarlet light slowly starting to gleam in his eyes as his fangs dropped to visibility. He looked down at Greenway’s body, kicking it lightly. “Never tasted witch blood before…I’ve been missing out.” He narrowed his eyes at Kinard, his smirk turning a little more vicious. “Decide you’d rather keep him for yourself?”

“If you know who I am, then you know this isn’t going to go well for you, witch blood or no,” Kinard said, ignoring the vampire’s odd remarks. Why was he talking like Kinard knew what was going on here?

To Evan’s surprise, a couple of the other vampires glanced at each other uneasily. Logically, he knew that Kinard’s age granted him a lot of power…but he hadn’t realized it would be so much that a vampire might be worried about taking him on five to two. Especially as they’d all drunk witch blood as well.

“No reason this has to get violent,” Blondie said, though he very much sounded like he wanted it to get violent. “You walk out right now, we can all pretend we never saw each other.”

Kinard rocked back on his heels a little. “Generous. All right, kid, let’s go,” Kinard said, jerking his head toward the stairwell and holding out his arm back toward Evan like he expected Evan to tuck himself up under it.

Blondie chuckled mirthlessly. “Cute. Last chance, Kinard. Walk away. Leave the witch to us. I can’t say I blame you for trying to muscle in on the games, here…everyone knows your coven is strays and fresh turns. But you lost the gamble. Leave.”

A low, menacing growl reverberated through the hall. To his shock, Evan realized it was coming from Kinard. “Not. Happening.” The deadpan humor of a few seconds ago was completely gone, and Evan didn’t have to look to know Kinard’s eyes were glowing just as scarlet as the other vampire’s.

He bit his lip and murmured a spell, his power spiraling outwards and swirling around him. A circle of white light emblazoned itself on the floor, surrounding him totally. It was a risk splitting his focus on a barrier spell if he was going to be doing anything else—and trying to engage in combat magic without a coven bond was going to hurt no matter how quickly the fight went (and this was going to be a fight, there was no mistaking that). If he was going to risk using the kind of power it would take to help Kinard against five vampires, the smartest course of action would be to take the hit to fire off a transport spell and leave Kinard to deal with this mess.

He just…couldn’t bring himself to do it.

It was stupid, it was irrational…this was his chance to escape, damn it.

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t leave Kinard alone to deal with these things. So, he braced himself, firming up the barrier that would hopefully keep any of the vampires that got close to him at bay long enough for him to cast against them. He sent a silent thanks winging to Sally—wherever she was. She’d only been trying to teach him the kind of focus he’d need to wield the amount of magic he had when she had him practice casting without relying on his coven bond…but she was the only reason he was still able to cast the kind of spells he could without ending up a heap on the ground.

“Bad choice, Kinard,” Blondie said. “Very bad choice.”

Evan knew vampires were fast. He knew they were very fast. He’d seen it firsthand a couple of times since Kinard had taken him out of that mansion.

Kinard and Blondie seemed to fucking teleport toward each other. One second Kinard was standing right in front of him, and the next he was a dozen feet away, leaping at Blondie with a snarl that sounded more animal than human. They crashed into each other, and Kinard twisted in midair to get one arm around Blondie’s throat so that when they landed, he was able to fling Blondie like a goddamn battering ram at the other vampires. Three of them went down in a heap, skidding back over the hallway floor until they nearly hit the stairwell door.

Kinard glanced over his shoulder at Evan, as though checking to make sure he was still there, and then raced forward towards the two remaining vampires. Only one of them accepted the challenge, springing at Kinard with fangs bared.

It did not end well for him.

Evan nearly lost the concentration of the barrier, staring in horrified shock as Kinard’s hands closed around the other vampire’s neck. As he slammed into the other vampire’s body hard enough to take them both to the floor. As he made a wrenching motion with one arm and a fountain of blood erupted around him. Kinard casually tossed something the size of a basketball aside and oh God, oh God, oh God Evan couldn’t look. Didn’t want to look. Kinard rose from the still-twitching body of the vampire and took a few steps back, repositioning himself in between the remaining four and Evan.

Mere seconds had passed.

“Sure you still want to do this?” Kinard growled.

Blondie and the remaining vampires rose, a new, animalistic wariness in their movements. Evan watched them fan out like a pack of wolves about to attack and shook his head, forcing his shock at the sheer brutality he’d just witnessed aside. Another spell, and a ball of flickering fire erupted in each hand. For just a moment, he felt like he was standing in a frostbitten field again, Sally’s soothing voice in his head—Again, Evan—as he stared down an array of targets.

Blondie dove at Kinard again, two of the other vampires flanking him…but the fourth darted around them and made a beeline straight for Evan. He heard Kinard shout, saw the vampire lunge for the one that was barreling toward him, only to be dogpiled by Blondie and his flunkies. Evan braced himself, breathed, and flicked his hand forward, the spellword falling from his lips in a sigh. The fireball leapt from his fingertips, zinging through his barrier and straight towards the attacking vampire with the surety of a guided missile.

The look of shock on the thing’s face as his spell slammed home, fire and smoke racing over the vampire’s body like he was made of kindling, was very satisfying. The vampire screamed, clawing at his clothes and hair as ghostly white flames enveloped him, reducing the thing to ashes almost as quickly as Kinard had dispatched its friend.

Two down, three to go.

Kinard had gone down in a tangle on the floor with all three of the attacking vampires, fighting like a maddened bear. Evan searched frantically for an opening, somewhere he could aim and burn Blondie or one of his henchmen, but he couldn’t do it without hitting Kinard. His stomach twisted at the thought of the vampire erupting into ash, dying at his hand, and reluctantly he let the fire spell dissipate. Sweat started to bead on his brow, his heart starting to pound as he summoned another spell, holding it, holding it, holding it…

One of Blondie’s flunkies reared up, his fist pulled back as though he were going to drive it down into Kinard’s back, and Evan struck. He screamed the spellword, and an invisible force slammed into the vampire, sending him flying back to crash against the stairwell door and land on the floor in a heap. Evan summoned the fire again, his head swooping a little at the rapid shift between spells, at the effort it was taking to keep the barrier up, He didn’t dare drop it, though. The fireball erupted from his hands, striking home and the hallway once again echoed with pain-filled shrieks that abruptly cut off.

“Get the fucking witch!” Blondie screamed, getting his hands around Kinard’s throat and slamming him down onto the floor, straddling him to hold him down as his last remaining crony scrambled up.

Kinard twisted underneath Blondie, managing to get his legs up and kicking straight out. There was a sickening crack of bone as Blondie went flying back, and Kinard lunged to his feet, catching the charging vampire by the back of his shirt just before he crashed into Evan’s barrier. Despite himself, Evan stumbled back a step, losing his concentration on the fire and having to summon the flames a third time. His head was pounding now, sweat dripping down his face…God, he was not looking forward to the headache this was going to leave him with.

But he needed to live long enough to have to deal with the aftereffects of this.

Kinard whirled around, still holding the vampire and flung him towards Blondie with another animalistic roar. He looked over his shoulder again, his scarlet eyes finding Evan’s, and Evan grit his teeth, giving him a shaky nod of reassurance.

Blondie and his lone remaining companion climbed slowly to their feet, fangs bared, faces twisted with rage. Suddenly, though, Blondie cocked his head as though he heard something. Kinard whipped towards the bank of elevators and tensed, crouching like he was getting ready to spring again. Blondie chuckled, a sick sort of smile spreading on his face.

“Whoops. Should’ve taken my offer, brother.” Then he slammed the stairwell door open, and he and his companion vanished, taking a running leap straight over the railing and disappearing from view.

The elevator chime sounded, the doors sliding open to reveal a new group of people. Four this time, but Evan’s breath caught in his throat. All of them were witches. All of them in military-style jackets with the sigil of the SoCal high coven emblazoned on the shoulder. The one in the lead—an older Hispanic woman—reeled back in surprise, her mouth falling open as her eyes landed on the body of Greenway’s familiar, then snapped to Kinard.

“Kill it!” she shouted, throwing out a hand towards Kinard.

Evan was already dizzy and drained with the amount of magic he’d just used, the strain of casting so many spells so quickly grating over his nerves. Even so, he knew better than most what a high coven cleaner crew looked like. And just how uninterested they usually were in talking. He acted on instinct.

The barrier dropped and he lunged toward Kinard, grabbing the vampire’s hand tightly and screaming the only spell he could think of to save them both.

His magic erupted around them in a swirling orb of white light, and he had no time to aim it, no time to structure the spell and give it direction. He cried out the transport spell and the only thought in his head was: safe. Safe, safe, safe, safe.

The temp agency’s offices dissolved in a shimmer of light and a sensation he hadn’t felt in years enveloped him. He was falling, falling, failing, tumbling head over heels and the only solid thing, the only anchor he had was the feel of Kinard’s hand in his. His stomach dropped, his head swimming with the energy a transport spell took.

The spell dropped them with a thud, the white light fading and leaving sunspots dancing in Evan’s eyes. Or maybe it was just the dizziness from the strain of casting. He blinked hazily, a confused sort of shock running through him like an electric current when he realized he had transported them back to Kinard’s loft. They were standing in the middle of Kinard’s living room. What…

“Holy shit,” Kinard breathed, turning to look at Evan with wide eyes that had shifted back to their usual dark blue. They widened even further, and suddenly Kinard was standing right in front of him. “Evan? Fuck, are you all right?” he demanded.

Dimly, he realized it wasn’t sweat that was dripping from his nose and running down over his lips and chin. Shit. He’d overdone it. He’d overdone it bad. The floor seemed to be tilting under his feet and without thinking he reached up and steadied himself against Kinard’s chest.

“Evan? Talk to me,” Kinard continued urgently, and yeah…yeah, he really should say something. Or at least take a step back from the vampire—especially with his nose bleeding like a damn faucet.

He went to do that, and his knees folded underneath him entirely without his permission.

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