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toxicanonymity · 7 months

Text

Hunger.

7k, raider!Joel x f!reader

Raider master list ⭐ Joel master

raider playlist 🖤sweet pea (smutty)

SUMMARY: Joel takes you on an eventful trek. You have a bit of a meltdown and he comforts you in a way he hadn't before. He kills a guy. And later, Joel finally goes down on you because he craves you and can't physically resist. WARNINGS: I8+ oral f receiving 🎉, unsafe P in V, creampie, jacking off, brief violence (og raider typical?), hurt/comfort, neglected animal (he's ok), angst, dark fluff, emotional tension, POV changes. A/N: 1/3 smut. Can read alone - Joel has been resisting the urge to kiss you. Carter is Joel's right-hand man. Jack was your bf Joel killed. Happy 6 months to the 1st raider Joel fic, have some oral.

—You 🌸🫛—

You're reading in a clover patch at one end of the trailer while Joel chops wood. Two of his men come up the hill, and Joel tells you to stay put while he talks to them. Even when Joel addresses you, they don't look in your direction. They stay in the doorway of the trailer. You put your book face down and start looking at the clovers while you try to eavesdrop. You can't hear what they're saying, but it sounds like someone might have tampered with one of the vans. You brush your hand through the leaves, and one catches your eye. Without plucking it, you gently separate it from the others to make sure it's not an illusion. There really are four leaves. You smile and get down on your stomach to look at it. You think about leaving it so it can grow more. That's what you did when you found one earlier in the week, but you pluck this one.

The men go back down the hill, and Joel goes inside for a moment before emerging again. You're laying the clover leaves flat between the pages of your book when Joel calls you inside. Then he leans against the trailer with an arm above his head, the side of his wrist resting near the top of the door frame as he waits for you. He's wearing a body holster now. "C'mon, let's go," he shouts so you can hear him.

"Ok," you call.

You just want to finish pressing the clover into the page, but he rushes you: "Now."

"What for," you ask.

"Cause I said." He disappears inside, and his back looks so broad, framed by the holster straps.

You come in and pout in the window nook with your book closed, waiting for him to explain. There's a belt on the kitchen table. Joel emerges from the bedroom and tells you he's going down the hill to help fix the van, and you're coming.

“you good in that?” he asks, looking at your spaghetti strap dress. You nod. You like the dresses he gave you, and it’s still warm enough, you think. He confirms, “Sure ya won’t be cold?” and you nod. He seems glad.

He approaches the kitchen table holding something strappy and leather. He pulls out a chair and faces you in the window nook.

"C'mere," he says. "Gonna carry your gun today."

"Oh," you put down the book. Sounds exciting. Sounds like he trusts you. "Yeah, sure," you try to play it cool. He takes your knees and swings your legs toward him.

"Gonna see if this piece'a shit's worth anything. If not, ya wear mine okay?" He thumbs the shoulder strap of his holster.

You frown and mutter, "I like when you wear it," eyeing the muscles straining his white shirt. He suppresses a smile, but you see it in his eyes.

"Gimme your leg," he commands. You give him your leg on your shooting side. You watch his face. He has a toothpick behind his ear. He bends your knee and puts your foot on his thigh. He lets the skirt of your dress fall all the way down your raised leg, exposing your panties. His eyes linger there, and he draws in a slow breath as he unbuckles the strap of the holster. He wraps the strap around your thigh and mutters, "good." He slides the strap into the buckle, then tightens it. "Too tight?" He asks.

"No."

He fastens the buckle on your inner thigh, and his massive hands map your thigh, checking the fit. You flinch in pleasure as his fingers graze the edge of your panties.

There's a long ribbon dangling from the other end of the holster where another strap should be. He laces it through two hand made grommets on each side. There are two more empty holes on the top of each side.

"Here," you offer and take both ends of the ribbon from him. You tie it in a bow on the outside of your thigh.

"That gonna hold?" He asks.

You shrug. "Feels ok, what do you think?"

He's not listening. His eyes have returned between your legs. You spread them a little more, and innocently widen your eyes. He wets his lips, and his gaze remains for another inhale, then he pries his eyes away, sticks the toothpick in his mouth, and lets your foot down. You stand up and he hands you your gun, then adjusts himself, quickly cupping his crotch through his pants as you slide the gun into the holster.

"Walk," he mumbles.

You walk the length of the kitchen.

It's a weird sensation, having one of your legs burdened by a weight while the other one is free. But aside from that, it's fine.

"Alright?" He asks.

"Yeah."

He nods, "Good. C'mere." You stand right in front of him, between his knees. "Hold your dress up for me."

You hold it up over the holster.

"Higher. Belly button."

He grabs the belt from the table and when he picks it up, ribbons are dangling from its holes. The ribbons have their ends burned and melted like a shoelace for threading. He fastens the belt securely around your bare middle, then threads the loose ribbons through the empty grommets on the top of the holster and secures them.

He turns you to the side, tugs at the ribbon, and mutters, "good." Then he can't help but grab a handful of ass, and your bottom lip creeps under your teeth.

As he turns you to face him again, he takes the toothpick out of his mouth and gives you a serious look. "Comin' with me today, sweet pea. Ya do what I say, understand?"

You nod.

"I say get outta here, ya run. I say stay put, ya don't fuckin' move."

"Got it."

—-

He puts the toothpick behind his ear and picks up a few pieces of jerky off the counter as he stands up. He hands you a piece.

You take a bite and chew it as you walk down the hill. You watch his jaw flex when he chews. You tell him, "This one's good."

"Cause Carter made it," Joel notes. You cringe at yourself,but he doesn't seem offended. "Turkey," he adds.

Turkey, that's why. Much better than venison. You haven't had poultry in a while, not even grouse. Traps have been empty.

"I love yours," you tell him.

Joel gives you an appreciative pat on the back of your head, then his hand trails down your back, over the swell of your ass. He slides his hand under your dress and palms your butt cheek. He lifts it, then lets it drop.

Joel brings you around the front of the stash house where the vans are normally parked and tells you to wait. There’s only one van. One of the other guys took the second van to get gas and isn’t back yet.

You reach under your dress and adjust the holster as you sit down on a patch of grass to watch. Joel's muscles glisten and flex as he lifts the hood of the van and props it open. He looks around the inside of the van and dabs his head with a bandana that he tucks back into his pocket . He looks under the van while you pick tall blades of grass and braid them together.

When he's done, he tells you they need a part. Need to go to the junkyard and see if they can find one. You’re going with him and Carter on foot.

—

The junkyard is a few miles on the other side of Joel’s trailer. You go down that side of the hill and walk through the abandoned mobile home park to get there. It’s the first time you’ve seen most of it close-up, aside from through the scope of Joel’s rifle. The rest of the journey is mostly on a dirt road, and you have to climb through a fence to get into the junkyard.

It feels like you’re there for a long time. You hear the weak bark of a dog in the distance. Joel thinks it’s coming from the woods. It stops. There’s a house that looks abandoned, but Joel thinks there might be junkies in it. He says they gather around there. He’s even found one sleeping in a car. When Carter finds a part they think will work, they have trouble taking it off the truck. They don’t have the right tools. Brute force isn’t an option because it could easily break.

The three of you cautiously approach the house and the barking starts again. The structure is run down, and the windows are busted out. It’s small, can’t be more than a couple of rooms.

—--

As Carter sweeps the house, you go around back with Joel, and there's the dog. He's skinny and his bark is weak and strained. He's chained to a pipe on the side of the house. The pipe has been pulled a little bit outward so it's leaning, but he wasn't strong enough to free himself. He's a scrappy little mutt with a floppy ear. Probably less than 20 lbs (9 kg). You and Joel both stare at the dog, then Carter calls from inside, “Miller!”

Joel looks around to make sure you’ll be alright for a minute. “Don’t move. Stay alert. Hand on your gun.”

As Joel goes inside, Carter says, “Think he’s alive.”

“Infected?”Joel asks.

“Nah, see the track marks?”

“Piece’a shit left his dog to die.”

Outside, the dog watches you. He sits attentively with his head down. You put on a soothing voice for him. "Hey, buddy. Whatcha doin'?" He lowers his head almost to the ground as he slowly stretches his arms out, then his tail starts to wag hesitantly, staying close to the ground. He begins to whine. There are a couple of bones behind him with no meat left on them at all.

Carter comes out to watch you. There's a metal bowl upside down out of the dog's reach. "He needs water," you say. Carter looks around then reaches into his backpack and hands you his water. You pour some into the dish for the dog, and his tail begins to wag with more pep. When you reach out to touch the dog, he flinches and backs away, then cautiously returns and gets closer to you than he was.

Carter gets closer, and when he reaches out for the dog, it growls and barks ferociously. Carter isn't afraid–it's too small to be afraid of. He reaches for the dog's collar and the dog chomps his hand with a vicious growl, high pitched from his throat. He doesn't want to let go.

"DAMN!" Carter yells. "SHIT," he shakes his hand.

"No," you firmly tell the dog. The dog lowers his stomach onto the ground and raises his brows pathetically with a whine.

"He's just scared," you tell Carter as he rinses the wound with the rest of his water.

"I know, I know," Carter nods. He puts his water back in his backpack. "Feisty little fucker." He spits on the ground.

“We’ve gotta get him out of this,” you mutter.

Carter tries to stop you. “Don’t touch–”

You hold your hand out to the dog, and Carter sighs in resignation. The dog reaches his neck out to sniff you, then licks you. He lets you touch him. Then you touch his collar and he growls, but not as bad. The collar has inner spikes that must be hurting him. It's too big and has some slack hanging down from where it's been tightened.

Joel comes outside with a bag of tools clinking heavily against each other.

"What the hell's goin' on out here?" You give Carter a hopeful glance and he doesn't snitch on the dog for biting him.

You look at Joel. "He's gonna die if we don't get him free," you explain. Joel lunges toward the dog and you try to warn him, "WAIT-" Joel stops short of bending over and instead looks at you. The dog goes after his ankle, bearing his teeth and going nuts. Joel shakes his leg free. You tell the dog, “No" and he submits on the ground with a whine. Joel looks at the dog and raises his gun.

"You wouldn't," you whine. "He's protecting me."

“Course i wouldn’t. Damn.”

Joel steps closer and aims at the drain pipe behind the dog, shooting the chain to break it. It hurts your ears but it works. The dog yelps and skips out from the building, chain dragging behind him. Joel takes the bag of tools back to the truck where they found the part, leaving Carter with you while you try to free the dog.

"C'mere," you sit back on your knees and open your arms for the dog. With the freedom of movement, you can work the collar off him. The dog whimpers and paws at the collar with you. When he lets out a sharper, high pitched whimper, you freeze as it triggers a memory. Your chest feels hollow and long-buried grief stabs at the backs of your eyes. You push it away. You don't want to cry. You want to be tough and whatever else you need to be for Joel to always take you with him. The dog whimpers again and you return to the task. You free him from the collar and he trots away from the house.

— Joel ⛓️ —

When he gets back, the dog is playfully pawing at your knees. You scratch behind his ears and he rolls over. One look at your face and Joel knows what you want.

"Alright, let's go," Joel says and looks at the ground next to you. He steps forward and the dog growls. "It's ok," you tell the dog and you reach for Joel's hand.

“Maybe he wants to come with us,” you say as casually as you can.

Joel clenches his jaw and shakes his head.

"I can take care of him," you plead, your eyes big and watery. "He's not big, he doesn't need much."

Joel shifts his weight as he looks at you for a moment. "I know ya get bored-"

"Not because I'm bored," you protest. "He's hungry."

"No," Joel tells you firmly and your tears overflow. God damnit, not here. He's hungry because he was chained. He'll be fine now.

Joel doesn't want to share resources, doesn’t want the barking to attract attention, and doesn’t want someone to come after the dog–after you–if there’s anyone left to come. The junkie inside is as good as dead, but they run in packs and they’re dangerous.

"It's for your own good, sweet pea.” Joel really thinks it is.

You shake your head no. "I had one," you sniffle. "Before."

Joel’s nostrils flare at the shake of your head, then his stomach drops. He doesn't want to know about before. He does, but he really doesn't. He covers his mouth with the crook of his thumb as he rubs both sides of his beard. Before. It gets harder and harder to avoid. He shakes it off. All he can do is keep you safe and take care of you the best he can, which means taking care of only you. He shakes his head no again, then reaches into his backpack. He throws a piece of jerky as far as he can. “He’s fed, Gonna be fine.” He throws another piece.

You watch the dog run off for the jerky, but you're in a trance, thinking about something else.

“Let’s go, baby,” Joel steps forward, wraps a hand around the inside of your bicep, and gently pulls. You try to resist walking, and his grip gets firmer. You stand there watching the dog, feet planted on the ground, muscle tensing under Joel's grip.

Joel faces you and cups your face with both hands, making you look at him. He gets a few inches from your face and lowers his voice. “Ain’t gonna spank ya in front’a Carter, but ya better move.” He means it. Non-negotiable.

He grabs your arm again, and as he starts dragging you away, you blurt out, "Her name was Daisy. She saved my life."

Joel ignores it. “Move. Now. Or I’m pickin’ ya up.” You relent and stop resisting. Smart. He wouldn't want to regret bringing you with them.

Joel squints into the ground as the two of you walk. Carter walks ahead, not wanting to get in the middle of it. “Maybe this one could save me, too," you suggest. "if you’re gone.”

Damnit sweet pea, you sure are smart. Nice try, but that's what Carter is for.

"Dog that size?” Joel laughs. You compose yourself. You walk in silence for a few minutes, but Joel is still thinking about it. “How,” Joel asks, and adjusts his backpack. “How’d she save you? Must’a been bigger, right? meaner?”

Carter looks over his shoulder with a side-eye at the word “meaner,” but doesn’t reveal his injury.

You don’t answer Joel. You're checked out. You keep eyeing the tree line, but you wouldn’t. . . There's no way you’d run, right?

You look at him with your eyes red. “You don’t wanna hear it.”

The vacant look on your face makes Joel stop in his tracks to face you. “Tell me,” he demands.

You sniffle and look toward the tree line again. “Can I go pee?”

Joel can’t read you right now, which disturbs him. “Yeah,” he mutters and puts his massive hand on your back, guiding you to the edge of the forest.

He starts to come in behind you, and you ask him, “Do you mind if I go?”

He swallows and furrows his brow as he looks at you. You must read his concern, because you hand him your bag. He nods. He steps into the woods, but tries to give you some space, without losing track of you. He doesn't wanna have to chase you down, but damnit he'll tackle you if he has to, to save you from yourself. His stomach is uneasy.

There’s a hollow, rusted truck about 30 paces away. You go on the other side of it. Joel knows you’re not just pouting about leaving the dog. There's more to this. But you’re right, he’s not sure if he wants to know.

Until he hears you sniffling, and it's not just sad, it's scared, painful.

Ah, fuck it. He moves as quietly as he can.

“Sweet pea,” he says softly as he walks around the old hollowed-out car. You’re squatting–not peeing, just hugging your knees, facing the abandoned car. You're shaking and your cheeks are wet. There's not much space, but Joel gets between you and the car. He takes his backpack off and drops it to the side.

“She wasn’t afraid like me, Daisy,” you choke out and wipe your cheeks with the heel of one palm. “They,” you croak. You pause and try again. “He had a gun-” you close your eyes. “Pointed at, pointed at me," you take a deep breath and keep your eyes pinched shut. "He was, he was gonna—but she wouldn’t," you choke on a breath. "She wouldn't stop barking.”

"Shhhhh, it's ok." Joel cuts you off. It's too hard to see you re-living this. He doesn't want you to get to the details. He squats down. His head is full of pressure, and his heart is full of rage. You take shaky, shallow breaths.

He puts a hand on your shoulder and lets his knees into the ground. “Breathe,” he says. “Breathe, sweet pea.” You lean forward, letting your weight into his arms, and he holds you for a minute as you regain your breath. He cradles your head. "Yeah, you're okay, I got ya." He buries his mouth in your hair. "I got ya, baby," he whispers. You wipe your eyes on his shoulder and your cheek catches on the holster. When you lift your head, you apologize and he shakes his head no. He brushes a fresh tear off your cheek, and arousal stirs in his pants.

“Who did it,” he asks, unable to mask the darkness in his question.

“Just a guy,” you tell him. A guy like himself, Joel assumes with disdain.

“What kinda guy”

You sigh and he hates making you think about this, but he needs the answer. “Mean. Had a gold tooth.”

Joel takes a deep breath and nods.

"FEDRA," you add, and Joel's face goes cold. His mind goes blank. For a moment, he doesn't even breathe as the life is sucked out of him and replaced by ice cold rage. FEDRA. Not a guy like him.

“How’d ya get away?” Joel asks.

You look at him for a second, doing a double take at his face. You shake your head. “You don’t wanna hear it." You bury your head in his neck again. You’re right, he doesn’t want to, but he insists.

“Tell me.”

“Jah–” you stop and look at Joel’s face. His jaw clenches. He knows what's coming, but the thought of FEDRA has fortified him with numbness.

“S’okay, sweet pea.”

“Jack shot’m.”

Joel takes a deep breath and looks up at the forest canopy, then bows his head and looks at your knees, bracketed by his own. For a moment, Joel is filled with an uncomfortable appreciation for Jack. But that fades into, no, it should have been Joel, he should’ve had you all along, he should’ve been there to save you *and* your dog.

“He take good care of ya?” Joel asks in self-loathing.

You shrug.

“Better than. . .now?” He can take it.

“No,” you shake your head. “He didn’t shoot him dead.”

Jackass fucking moron cuck. He left that motherfucker breathing? Suddenly Joel is glad he killed Jack.

Joel nods, “I see.” He keeps nodding slowly, looking to his right at the moss on a far off tree, clenching his jaw.

"And I didn't have a gun," you add. "Cause I killed a guy Jack said not to." Joel scoffs. You could've killed the guy yourself if not for Jack.

You continue, “and. . . Jack didn’t cook.” Joel chuckles, caught off guard -- he'd forgetten his original question. You keep going, “And he didn’t–I didn’t–I didn’t feel the same,” you wipe your eyes. This has gone far enough, and Joel knows it's his own fault. His stupid question. He takes the toothpick from behind his ear.

You look at him with your eyes all watery, and Joel's cock twitches. The next thing he knows, his massive hand is wrapped gently around your jaw. You put your hands on his shoulders, then straddle him. You wrap your arms around his neck.

"Mmm," he sighs as your warm crotch meets the bulge in his jeans, and he swells harder against you. He holds your face about two inches from his, looking down at your mouth, then your nose, and your eyes again. He puts his toothpick in his mouth and looks past you as he lets go of your jaw. You bury your head in his neck, blinking warm tears into his skin, making him harder. He whispers your name. He relaxes and takes the toothpick out of his mouth just in time for a branch to fall on the car with a loud clang.

"All good?" Carter yells from the treeline.

“Shouldn’t stay here long,” Joel mumbles as he puts it back behind his ear. ”Bad area.” He eases you off his lap back onto your feet, as you both stand up. He brushes dead leaves off his pants and your knees. He adjusts himself, puts his backpack over one shoulder, then reaches down and you take his hand. You walk a few steps together and he looks back at you slightly behind him. He realizes you’re shaking. He drops your hand, goes in his backpack, and pulls out a flannel that he packed even though you said you were fine. He unfolds it, holds it out, and helps you put it on.

“Thanks,” you whisper and rub your nose. He keeps his hand on the back of your neck as you walk.

Joel stews and broods as you leave the forest together. He wants to go back in time and kill everyone who’s ever hurt you, anyone who let you get hurt, and anyone who failed to hurt the people who hurt you. His muscles are all tense, and his veins are throbbing.

When you get to the treeline, Joel asks Carter, "Can ya gimme five?"

"Sure thing, boss.".

“No ones gonna miss that asshole," Joel mutters as he checks his gun then sets his sights on the house.

Joel can’t go back in time, but by God, he’s got to kill someone. He drops his backpack then hurries back to the abandoned house, rifle in both hands. When he gets there, he puts the rifle around his back and grabs the dog chain off the ground on his way in.

—---You 🌸🫛-—

You and Carter look at each other. “How’s your hand?” you ask him.

“It’ll be fine,” he reassures you. “I dunno where the little bugger went,” he looks around for the dog.

You both ignore the sound of the chain thrashing around until you hear grunting and look toward the house. Punches are landing. Carter puts a hand on his rifle but doesn’t move yet. Joel grunts and yells between punches. A minute later, Joel steps out of the house, walking backwards, with the chain pulled taught, and a bloody man dragging behind him. Joel kicks him up against the wall, hits him in the face with the butt of his rifle, then wraps the chain around the drain pipe where the dog was tied up. Joel hits the man again, then aims the rifle and calmly shoots him. Even if you never see the dog again, you're certain the dog is better off without that man. Joel wipes blood splatter off his brow and scowls at the ground as he walks back to you and Carter.

“Ya good?” Carter asks him.

Joel nods. He’s sweaty, chest heaving. You try not to let your eyes linger on the remaining blood. You observe his throbbing veins instead. The whole scene has you clenching your thighs.

You walk mostly in silence. When you stop for water, you realize you're being followed. Joel doesn’t notice, but you see the dog duck behind an old car when you turn around. You keep a straight face.

You hear something in the distance. Dust is kicked up down the road. Carter says, “Finally.” It’s the van that still works, picking you up. You didn't know it was coming and wish the dog could follow you the rest of the way home, but you don’t say anything. You're glad he's unchained.

—–

When you get back to the stash house, Joel works on the broken down van. When he��s done for the day, he takes you back to the trailer and washes the grease off. When he comes out of the bathroom, you're sitting in the window nook looking at your book, but thinking about the dog. He comes over, wiping his hands off on a towel. "Wanna go out 'n' shoot?" He seems to want to cheer you up.

Joel goes first. He looks through the scope at the trailer park. Ever since those guys showed up one night, he's looking for other raiders or troublemakers. Then he lines up a shot at the usual target. Your eyes are on his biceps. When Joel is about to take aim, the rare sound of ducks honking startles you. They should’ve already flown South. Joel gets up on his knees and aims toward the front of the flock. He hits one, shifts ahead of the flock, and hits another. It gives you butterflies. You hear a thud as the second one hits the ground.

“Nice!” you tell him. He winks at you and puts the gun strap over his shoulder. You smooth your dress under your butt as you stand up, then adjust the thigh holster. Joel groans as he stands up. You peer down toward where the birds fell, and something is moving up the hill. A bird, moving strangely. A dead bird, in a little dog's mouth.

You gasp. Joel looks at you, then follows your eyes. The bird is as big as the dog. His mouth is open wide to fit the neck. He crests the hill and drops the bird. "Good boy!" You praise. He does a happy circle and trots back down the hill.

You look at Joel and try not to smile. Joel puts his hand on his hip and shifts his weight to one leg. He looks down at the ground and rubs brow with the flat of his index finger, squinting. When the dog returns with the second bird, Joel mutters, "alright, big guy," and squats down to accept the bird from his mouth. Then you barely hear him mutter, "good boy." The dog does another circle and trots around the other side of the trailer.

"How'd he find us, all this way?" You marvel.

"Must have some hound in’m," Joel shakes his head. “Guess ya made an impression.”

Joel starts a fire and boils two big pots of water. The dog keeps a respectful distance, lounging in the same clover patch where you were sitting earlier. Joel chops the heads and feet off the birds, and tosses them on the ground. The dog scurries over, wagging his tail. He drags one of the duck heads over to the grass to chew on with his butt in the air and his tail wagging furiously, all the way upright now.

Joel beckons you back inside to wash up and change. He takes a quick shower while you take off the flannel and wash your hands in the kitchen sink. You take off the belt, untethering the ribbons, but you leave the holster on. You sit back down in the window nook.

—-

When Joel comes out from the bathroom, he sits down, manspreads, and pats the kitchen table in front of him, looking at the skirt of your dress as you get up from your seat. You unholster your gun and set it down, then use your hands to help yourself onto the surface, sitting on your dress so your thighs won't stick. Joel spreads your knees so he can be between them, and grabs your ass to scoot you closer.

He lifts the dress to look at the holster, and he puts his toothpick in his mouth.

"s'prised it worked," he mutters. He eyes your legs and runs his hands all the way up your thighs with a deep breath. "Looks good on ya, too," he murmurs. He thumbs the ribbon of the holster, then unties it. He unbuckles the real strap, too. Then he lifts your knee, slides the holster out from under you, and sets it aside with the gun. He runs his hand over the indentation in your skin from the buckle. "that hurt?" He asks.

"No."

He puts his elbows down on either side of your hips, and his biceps rest against your thighs. He looks back and forth between your breasts and takes the toothpick out of his mouth. Without taking his eyes off you, he throws it into the kitchen sink and it hits the metal with a light plink.

He furrows his brow and looks at your body, then puts his cheek flat against your breast at the lace neckline of your cotton dress while he palms the opposite tit. He turns his face to nose your nipple, and it hardens through the fabric of your dress. He dampens the cotton with his mouth as he flattens his tongue against it. One hand holds your back, near your shoulder blade for leverage, with his thumb hooked under your arm.

He kisses wetly at your breast through your dress, then glances up at you. His hands slide up to the straps of your dress. He gently nudges the straps off your shoulder. His fingers skim your nipples as he curls his thick fingers into the lace neckline, then pulls the dress down below your tits. He presses his wide tongue onto your nipple and closes his eyes as he latches onto it. Then he lets go with a soft pop and sucks below the nipple as he massages the other breast. You're gushing arousal with your legs wide open. He inhales through his nose and his stomach growls.

"Joel," you sigh, resting your hands on his muscular back. You watch his vein

His only response is "Mmm," into your nipple. You're throbbing, and the more attention he pays to your tits, the more your cunt aches to be filled. You want to let him explore your body, it's not something he normally does, but it also makes you want his cock so bad. You want him to slide you off the table and sink you onto his massive erection. He's really taking his time. You take a deep breath and try to relax. Your clit twitches.

Joel pulls down the dress a little more, exposing an inch or two below your breasts. He switches sides, dragging his mouth to his right, your left. With your left nipple in his mouth, he looks up at you and makes sleepy eye contact. His pupils are blown wide.

"Joel, I want it," you plead.

His tongue trails as he moves his mouth an inch to the right of your nipple, then he closes his eyes again. He licks and sucks the outer curve of your breast, massaging the other one with a thumb lightly brushing the nipple, then the heel of his palm flattening it into your breast. His eyes open to watch his massive hand moving languidly on your breast.

You whine his name again and slot your fingers into his dark, curly hair. He doesn't look up. You finger his curls and the pads of your fingers lightly caress his scalp. He pulls his mouth off your breast and backs his head away enough to look at your body. You let your fingers fall out of his hair and rest back on his shoulders. One of his hands moves to rest on your hip, his fingers curling around your flesh and his thumb brushing the hem of your dress.

His voice is low and husky. "Ever feel like ya just. . ." He meets your gaze with hungry eyes, then looks at your lips. "gotta have your mouth on somethin’?"

His eyes fall down your body as he sits back and palms himself through his jeans. You whisper "yeah," with a smile and begin to scoot off the table so you can suck him off. He abruptly leans forward and stops you with both hands firmly on your hips. He doesn't let you move. His brow furrows. He looks back and forth between your breasts and noses a nipple again. He murmurs low and gruff into your supple skin, "Ain't talkin' 'bout you."

Your chest erupts in goosebumps. He drags his hands down your dress to the bare skin of your legs, then slides his massive palms back up your thighs, slipping his fingers under your dress, leaving his thumbs hooked on top. You brace your hands on the table to lift your butt for him. His hands keep moving up, reaching your hips. The fabric of your dress bunches above your ass, then he curls his fingers under the waistband of your panties and begins to take them down. You let yourself back down on the table as he slides the underwear down your legs. It dangles between his fingers as he brings his hand to your neck and caresses the side of your throat with his thumb.

You feel the damp cotton against your throat and smell your own arousal as he grips your jaw. He locks eyes with you for less than a second before his gaze drifts downward. He returns his other palm to your breast, fingers slotting under your arm to hold you steady as he pushes you down until your back is flat on the table. He nudges your thighs farther apart. He sucks in a sharp breath through his nose and hums "Mmm."

He drops the panties on the table. He spreads you open and thumbs your folds, bringing the moisture up to your clit. He hunches over to bring his face between your legs and his left hand reaches up to fondle a breast. He drags his nose through your slick and inhales, then moans at your scent. He plants his mouth on the crease of your thigh. He sucks the skin into his mouth, then lets go. He runs two knuckles through your folds, then gently nudges his middle finger inside. Your walls spasm around the intrusion and he breathes, "god damn."

He pumps his finger once and adds a second digit. You moan, and he hums a deep "Mmm," in response. He takes his fingers out and sucks one, then both into his mouth. "Fuck," he breathes.

He doesn't waste any more time, spreading you wide open with his thumbs and burying his face in your cunt. He starts at your entrance where your wetness pools and licks up from there, punctuating the first lick with a kiss on the clit that makes your thighs tremble. Then he laps at you more selfishly, like he's thirsty, like he needs to drink you. His tongue starts flat and stiffens as he digs for more and explores each crevasse. He moans into your folds. You've never felt anything as powerful and precise as his tongue. It's stronger than his fingers. It makes you tingle in one swipe, then presses into the tingle for relief. He holds you gently until you wriggle in pleasure and he holds you down firmer with one forearm across your lower belly.

He breathes through his nose and moans as he devours you. When he pauses, he draws in a deeper breath through his mouth then exhales vocally against your wet cunt.

"Feel good?" He asks with a glance to your face, then plants his mouth on your clit.

He slides one then two fingers into your core again and you gasp then answer "y-yeah," as he sucks your clit while he pumps them.

He takes his arm off your abdomen to unbutton his pants and take his stiff cock out. He pulls his face away from your pussy. You're throbbing, and your body races to replenish all the moisture he's sucked up. He gathers some on his fingers then also spits into his hand and wraps it around his length. You want it inside you so, so bad. You hear the squelching as his hand moves up and down his shaft.

He brings his face between your legs again and puts his arm back on top of you to hold you still, angling his elbow so his thumb is planted at your clit. He laps at you again, moaning into your throbbing, swollen lips. He firmly licks between your clit and hole, then thrusts his tongue into your entrance and you whimper. He tilts his head and jabs his sharpened tongue into you again and again, pumping his cock all the while. He noses your clit as he sucks and laps, then fucks you with his tongue again.

You writhe under his arm. "Yeah," he whispers before planting his mouth again. He works your clit with his thumb as he thrusts his tongue into you, dragging it against the top wall, and your desperate cunt twitches against him. You let out a long whine, and his thumb gently rubs the top of your clit, over your hood.

"Joel," you whimper and it turns into a moan.

His thumb slows down, and he gathers more slick on his fingers. He wipes it on his shaft, then pulls you by the thighs closer to the edge, unsticking your bare ass from the table. You sit up on your elbows and whimper, "want you. . ."

He's holding his cock, chest heaving. "Want this?"

"Yeah-yes," you whimper. "Please."

He gazes darkly at your cunt and decides, "Ain't done yet."

You whine his name as he puts his face between your legs again. He sucks your clit for a few seconds until you're whimpering, then he plants his mouth a little lower. He flattens two fingers to rubs your clit while he fucks you with his tongue. You moan his name as your climax seizes you, and you clench around his tongue. He moves his hand from your clit to your mound to hold you steady as you come. He withdraws his tongue from your hole and laps up and down your folds for a few seconds as you continue to twitch.

Then he stands up, holding his stiff, wet cock. His face is flushed, and he's shiny from the nose down. He braces a hand on the table and teases your clit with his swollen tip. You flinch in pleasure, still reeling from your first orgasm. He notches his tip at your wet little hole, holds onto your thighs,.and shoves himself into you with a groan. He stays in for a moment, sighing “Ohh, fuck,” admiring your body as it rushes to accommodate him. You spasm around him, still twitching with aftershocks.

He backs up then slams into you with a low growl from his chest. It's a lot to take, but god it feels good. He lifts your legs and puts his arms under your knees, wrapping his hands over to hold your thighs as he buries his length in you, grunting and sighing. His balls slap against your ass. His biceps flex, and It isn't long before you begin to moan and writhe, and squeeze his cock.

"Good girl," he breathes. "Good, sweet pea."

He closes his eyes and fucks you through it. He breathes deep and slow, like he's trying not to come yet. He slows way down, moans, then bottoms out and begins to pulse. He brings his hands to either side of your body and hovers over you while he thrusts slowly with each warm burst he releases. You milk his cock until his balls are empty, then your contractions fade.

Joel hovers there, admiring your body. Then he slides out and sits down on the chair between your legs again. His armpits are warm and humid on your thighs. He puts one hand on each breast and lowers his head to rest his cheek on your lower abdomen, tickling you with his beard. He wipes his mouth on your belly and a spot of drool from the corner of his mouth hits your skin. He stares off at the front door of the trailer in a trance, gently cupping your breasts. He mumbles, "Taste so good, sweet pea."

You reach for his hair and he doesn't stop you from fingering his curls. His eyelids droop, and after a few seconds, he closes his eyes. You lightly massage his scalp again.

He only allows himself a minute or two before he tenses and clears his throat. He lifts his head and slides his hands under your arms, helping you sit up straight.

“I'll check the birds,” he says as he tucks his cock away. He squeezes your thigh and gives you a wink before he stands up to go outside.

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Thank you for reading and engaging 🖤 It means the world to me when you show him your love! whether this post is new or old. I also love when people throw a comment when they re-read. It's like adding coals to the fire that keeps me warm and writing lol.

You can find more raider!Joel oral on the raider master list under hypotheticals/imagines/HCs.

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All Joel minus ones i'm pretty sure already saw it or are on toxic notifs or don't read joel anymore? . . : @silkiers @eiviea @evyiione @queerly-anxious @chernayawidow @ambassadortotrilliusprime @fandomsfallnomore @djarinxore @blackvelveteen1339 @manazo @taeslarityy @str84pedro @lokanda @kyloispunk @filthfairy @fieryglutenfreechickennoodles @harriedandharassed @moonlightdivine @worhols @fan-fiction-floozy @cutesyscreenname @weddingfairy @pedropascal-whore @spideysimpossiblegirl @feministfanboi @prettypartyfavor @am-3-thyst @babeincolor @switchbladedreamz @within-the-depths @may-machin @pedromania91 @sloanexx @paleidiot @yourmistysecret @bean-is-reading

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#joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfic #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #tw animal death #tw animal neglect #dark!joel miller #raider!joel miller #toxicanonymity ☠️#raider!joel #raider!joel ☠️

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bluebeary-jay · 1 year

Text

How easy you are to need

Joel Miller x f!Reader

Summary: Joel notices that the peaceful life in Jackson has its consequences. he is not happy about it (based on this wonderful ask!)

Tags: TONS OF ANGST, but also FLUFF, established relationship, ahh intrusive thoughts (how much i hate them), Joel is probably ooc but i don't care anymore, also he's soft and insecure and vulnerable

Warnings: body dismorphia and lots of self-loathing on Joel's side, at one (two?) points borderline on smut ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) hihihi, swearing, drinking (just mentioned), suggestive stuff bc apparently i can't help myself 😌

Word count: 8K ! (8028 specifically woah)

A/N: the next fic will definitely be shorter bc i really need to start caring less about the quality of my work, it takes way too long for my liking. buuut anyway as always 🎶i hope yall will like it🎶 this is my birthday gift for you guys 💕

Joel looked at himself in the mirror with furrowed brows.

He pulled in his stomach and tried to zip his pants. It still fit, but barely. He undid the zip, turned to the side and looked at his reflection again, just to make sure.

Yeah. This pair was definitely loose until a while ago.

He glanced at the door, but didn’t hear you coming, so he sighed and looked in the mirror again. Joel was never particularly muscular, but he could no longer see those thin lines which accentuated his torso before. There was also a bit of fat above the hem of his jeans, and his frame seemed somehow heavier…

Good thing his left ear was directed to the door, because he heard the moment the water in the shower stopped running, which meant you were coming back from the bathroom. Joel spared himself one last wary look and zipped up his pants before turning around to your shared bed where his shirt lay discarded.

He was putting his arms into the sleeves when you entered. A couple of light steps, and then Joel smiled when he felt your arms wrapping around his torso. He glanced over his shoulder at you.

“You took your sweet time in the shower,” he pointed out, and he could feel your smile when you pressed your face to his back.

“We finally have hot water, so I’m gonna use it every chance I get.”

“You left some for me?”

You huffed a laugh and went around him, moving his hands away and starting to button his shirt yourself.

“There would be, if you took a shower with me.”

“Next time, sweetheart,” he chuckled and leaned in to kiss your forehead softly, combing his fingers through your wet hair. He hummed. “Your hair smells nice.”

“It’s that shampoo Ellie didn’t want.” You shook your head with a smile. “I have no idea why, it’s fantastic.”

You buttoned up the last button and smoothed your palms over his chest and down, lastly resting them on his waist. Internally Joel furrowed his eyebrows, wondering if he could always feel this fold when you put your hands in that place.

“You look handsome,” you whispered, looking up at him with twinkling eyes and such a soft, love-struck expression on your face that Joel felt his throat constricting. Everything but the sight of you faded from his mind, and he joined his hands behind your back, pulling you closer into his chest and basking in this precious smile you blessed him with. “Especially with the bed hair.”

“It’s your doin’, you know,” he murmured in response, nudging your nose with his and reminiscing how you tugged and raked your nails through his hair the night before. “You gotta be careful with it, sweet girl. If you continue doin’ it, m’gonna go bald soon.”

You hummed noncommittally and leaned against his chest, standing on your tip-toes. “I’ll take it under consideration. No promises, though.”

Joel lifted his hand to the back of your neck and kissed you slowly, reveling in the soft sigh that left your lips. You rested your palm above his heart, leaning forward to the point that you would fall over if he wasn’t supporting your weight.

But Joel held you tight and close to his body, gladly steadying you as you deepened the kiss, once again tugging on his graying hair in that way he adored. He wanted to tease you about it, but his thoughts strayed to the image of his body again when you lowered your hand from his chest to his side.

“You remember that tonight is this party?” you asked suddenly, pulling him out of his thoughts. Joel gave up pondering about his physique and sighed heavily at your question, pressing his forehead to yours.

“Yeah, I remember. Regrettably.”

“I don’t want to go, either,” you whispered with guilt, as if someone would hear you both. “But Tommy really wanted us to come and… Just don’t make me go alone.”

“Hey, darlin’.” Joel took your face in his hands and looked deeply into your eyes. “I promised, didn’t I? M’not gonna leave you there on your own.” He leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to your lips, smiling against them. “And mind you, I gotta make sure no one will try to seduce and steal you away from me.”

You giggled, and you were standing so close that Joel could feel your eyelashes tickling his skin. He held you close when you tried to take a step back, and your lips collided again.

“That is the one thing you don’t need to ever worry about,” you murmured quietly into the space between you two. “How could I even look at other people when I have you all to myself?”

Joel’s reflection in the mirror flashed across his mind again and a small wave of uncertainty rippled through him, but it quickly disappeared when you opened your eyes and looked at him with this raw love radiating from them. Your every word, every affectionate gesture only confirmed his conviction that you meant every word you said.

So why did he still feel so uncertain?

*****

Life in Jackson was perfect. Considering the state of the world right now, living here was like winning a lottery.

Joel had a lot to be thankful for, he was well aware of that. No longer had he any fears or sense of guilt about going to sleep and leaving you and Ellie defenseless if something were to happen. He didn’t have to count rations anymore, worrying that the kid would be forced to march all day hungry. There was now no need to keep a watchful eye for new clothes if someone’s worn off, ripped or got soaked from walking in the rain, posing a threat of you or Ellie catching a cold.

Back in Boston it wasn’t much different, though he and you had at least a bed to sleep in, as uncomfortable as it was. But there was never enough food for all those people Fedra kept there, and the winters were cold as hell, leaving at least one of you a bit sick every year.

None of those things were keeping him awake at night anymore. The only people he had to take care of – you and Ellie – were safe and comfortable. None of you had to starve or freeze, and you all didn’t have to continue walking across the country for days and days without end, struggling to survive.

Maybe that was the problem.

Joel wasn’t stupid. He knew that those luxuries he had an access to now were at the root of his problem. Before you all settled in Jackson, you were constantly on the move, fighting for your lives in one way or another, so of course he was… leaner and more fit back then. It was never something he paid attention to, though, never something he concerned himself with.

But now you three were living here, surrounded by more people than Joel could count, and he couldn’t help but… notice things about them.

Especially about all those men and women who looked at you in a different way.

Due to the nature of the party Tommy invited them to – mainly consisting of dancing and talking in the biggest bar in Jackson – Joel had a lot of time to ponder about his situation, all while nursing his drink and looking at you from across the room with his elbows resting on the table.

You were chatting with one of your friends near the counter, laughing and smiling so beautifully. No matter where Joel’s eyes strayed, they always came back to your person, as if you were the moon against the pitch black sky, reflecting some imperceptible light.

Some guy he knew by sight – Chuck? Bart? – walked up and tapped you on the shoulder, and from what Joel could tell, he was offering you a drink. He was standing way too close, though, and you took a step closer to your friend, shaking your head. Chuck – or Bart – persisted for another half a minute, but eventually shrugged and shuffled off, his movements tense.

Joel didn’t move. He knew from experience that you’d let him know if you needed his help.

As if sensing his gaze, you turned your head and sent him a radiant smile. He mirrored it, lifting his glass slightly like he was toasting you, which made you do the same before resuming the conversation with your friend.

His smile disappeared as soon as you stopped looking at him. Joel sighed and rubbed his eyes with his fingers, feeling a headache coming from the dull lights and loud chatter all around.

It were moments like this when it hit him just how old he was compared to you.

You were a sweet, young thing. Funny, sharp, drop-dead gorgeous… No wonder some people were seeking your attention. That guy was just one of the half a dozen he saw or heard about since you moved to Jackson.

Joel knew you were a loyal sort – God, he knew that, he knew you for so long now – but every time he saw you talking to someone else, his treacherous mind started to wonder if he wasn’t somehow keeping you chained to his person.

It was probably alcohol talking, but Lord, if he wasn’t reminded of how old he was compared to you every time he saw you next to your peers. You still had so much life ahead of you, and he was pushing sixty, for fuck’s sake. Before long he’ll be old and decrepit, unable to bring something useful to the table or help you in any way, and you’d still be as pretty as ever, trapped in a relationship with an old man.

For example, that guy – Chuck, or whomever – was way closer to your age, had handsome features, and Joel knew for a fact he was working at tree felling, so he had to be muscular, too.

Joel was once, too. Once.

He subtly ran his hand across his stomach under the jacket, his brows furrowed, and leaned back on the bench to get rid of those damned fat folds.

He sighed and downed the rest of the liquor in his glass, trying very hard not to think about it, not to put himself down like that and let those cruel thoughts fester in his mind, but no matter what, he couldn’t stop comparing himself to this guy, and also… how you looked next to him.

Shit. What if he was doing you more harm than good by continuing to stay with you?

“I could pickpocket you and you wouldn’t notice.”

Joel looked up, abruptly pulled out of his thoughts. You were standing over his table with your head tilted and still that beaming smile on your face.

“What are you thinking about, handsome?”

He opened his mouth, glanced in the direction of the bar, and closed it. There was no sign of any of the people you just talked with.

“Nothin’,” he replied, maybe a little too dryly, so he quickly changed the subject. “You havin’ fun?”

“Yeah, it’s nicer than I thought.” You looked around and then spotted the empty glass on the table in front of him. “Do you want me to bring you another one?”

“No, there’s no need,” he grumbled, but you had already put your drink down and sent him a wink.

“I'll be right back, baby.”

Joel hissed your name but you just looked over your shoulder with a smirk, swinging your hips provocatively to the music and ignoring him completely. He sighed heavily, slumping in his seat.

He needed to get his shit together. Fuck his insecurities, he didn’t want to take his frustration out on you when you were nothing but a ray of sunshine in his life, always so good and affectionate.

Joel’s thoughts came to a sudden stop when he searched for you in the crowd and noticed another man, this time one he didn’t know, swinging his arm over your shoulders while you waited at the bar. He tried to read your body language from here, but you didn’t seem particularly uncomfortable with the man’s actions. Joel furrowed his brows, a pit of uncertainty forming in his stomach again... but then you threw the man’s heavy limb off your shoulders and went back to Joel’s table as soon as you got the drink.

“Thanks, darlin’,” he murmured, taking a large gulp despite telling himself earlier that he was done drinking for today. “Were you okay back there?” He pointed his chin towards the bar.

You sat down next to him and smiled innocently. “Whatever do you mean?”

Joel knew you long enough to recognize when you were teasing him, and he smirked despite the doubts swirling in his mind.

“Was that guy givin’ you any trouble?” he asked lazily, deciding to play along.

“Would you beat the shit out of him if I said yes?” you asked with your eyebrows raised, and Joel shrugged, acting nonchalant.

“Probably.”

You giggled and bumped his shoulder with yours playfully.

“Then no. Peter’s a good guy. Just a little,” you seemed to be looking for the right word, “uhm, persistent.” When Joel sent you a dubious look, you rolled your eyes and made a face. “He’s politely hitting on me, but doesn’t get that I’m not interested. He works at the same place I do.”

“If he keeps makin’ you uncomfortable, that’s not very polite.” You squinted at him and Joel lifted his hands in fake surrender. “M’not sayin’ anythin’. You can take care of yourself, I know that.”

You hummed melodically and glanced at the bar, then back at Joel. Then back at the bar again where that Peter guy stood. Joel noticed you biting the inside of your cheek, so he gently nudged your knee with his.

“What’s on your mind, sweet girl?”

“Maybe you could help me make it clear that I’m taken?” you blurted out quickly, making him crack a smile and chuckle under his breath.

It was so very easy to forget about all the problems in the world when you were there, sitting right next to him and warming his soul and body with your mere presence.

“Come ‘ere,” he breathed and tugged you gently to sit on his lap. You faltered, but he gave your hand another light tug, and finally you let him guide you, putting one arm around his shoulders and making yourself comfortable.

Joel’s hand mindlessly went to rest on your thigh and he rubbed it comfortingly. That Peter guy, as he noted with satisfaction, was staring right back at you, eyeing the way your body was pressed flush against Joel’s with a twisted face.

Once the eyes of the both men met, Joel leaned in and kissed your neck, keeping eye contact the entire time. Peter turned away, taking a large swig from his glass.

Joel felt your muscles relaxing, and you giggled adorably next to his ear at his antics, hiding your neck between your shoulders when he nibbled at your skin lightly. Then your hand covered his, the one lying on your thigh, and stroked his skin lovingly.

Maybe Joel was keeping you chained somehow. Then again, he was but a selfish creature after all. He didn’t know if he could bring himself to ever truly let you go.

*****

The next few days – which then turned into weeks – Joel spent wondering. Mostly about what to do with his predicaments.

He had a couple of them.

The first problem was the nights. They became more difficult since he noticed… details about himself that weren’t there before, and which bothered him more and more with each day.

Joel used to love the nightfall, especially since you all settled in Jackson. In those evening hours no one bothered him, he could finally relax, spend some time alone with you, and later collapse on the bed to get a good-night sleep.

Well, not anymore.

The bedtime unexpectedly became the most stressful one for him. He was so fucking mad at himself, because laying down and having a chance to hold you in his arms was something he treasured for the longest time, but now his own insecurities stood in a way of it.

You loved cuddling and being close to him in your sleep, and Joel was never bothered by it – hell, he initiated those moments more often than not. But now he started noticing more and more how this layer of fat on his stomach moved and looked like when you draped your arm around him or snuggled closer to his chest, and it became all he could think about.

It bothered Joel so much that he started wearing a t-shirt to bed, even though he hated it with all his passion. When you asked about it, he lied that he’s cold, but in reality he was always sweaty by morning. It didn’t seem to make any difference to you, though, and you didn’t shy away from pressing your body close to his, and even slipping your hands under his shirt when you were spooning him. Some days Joel was waking up with you lying on his chest or having your arm slung across his belly, and every time it caused a lump in his throat.

He knew you didn’t mean anything bad by it – for God’s sake, you probably didn’t even have any idea that he had a problem with himself – but what once was a wonderful start of the day, now became a bitter reminder of all those things he was insecure about.

Recently he built a habit of waking up before you – he did it often before, but he always stayed in bed and waited for you to open your eyes, too – and carefully disentangling himself from your embrace. It wasn’t like it didn’t feel wonderful to be enveloped by you in this way, but once he stirred awake, lying still was a herculean task. No matter how much he tried to ignore it, his skin was itching and buzzing, he was sweating from nerves and a lot of horrible, self-depriving thoughts were flooding his mind.

So once he woke up, he’d go take a shower, trying to be a little bit louder than necessary in hopes that you’d already be awake when he gets back – so that he wouldn’t feel so guilty about not laying back down next to you.

The second of his problems was that you began to watch him more closely.

He didn’t know when it started happening, but in hindsight he realized it was just a matter of time – he was acting weird, after all, and you knew him too well not to notice anything.

A couple of times in the last few days only, Joel caught you staring at him in silence. Your eyes were solemn and your forehead sad, though you were quick to smile and act like nothing was amiss as soon as he turned your way.

You must have known something was wrong, but Joel didn’t ask about it. Honestly, with all that was happening in his own head, he didn’t want to know.

But at the same time it was as if nothing odd was happening. You were your usual self, a blessing in Joel’s life, and you still sought to be close to him and spend as much time together as possible. You still told him you loved him, surprised him with unexpected gestures of affection…

Just like today – you hugged him from behind while he was dressing up, started kissing his shoulders so tenderly and murmuring sweet nothings into his skin… In those moments Joel could almost forget about everything that was nagging him. It was easy to believe that you still liked the way he looked, that he was deserving of you, when you treated him with nothing but overwhelming love.

But the itch in the back of his mind never really disappeared. Even though he wanted it to.

Those thoughts filled his mind while you were sitting on his lap, telling him some story from work in a soft voice. You two were at Tommy’s, waiting for him to get back from helping his wife with something, and the day was so beautiful that you all went out onto the patio in front of the house to enjoy the unusually warm weather for this time of the year.

Joel’s hand was on your thigh, stroking it absentmindedly, while he nodded to whatever you were saying, but for the life of him, he could not focus.

Has your physique changed as well? Joel didn’t care about those things, of course, and in his eyes you were as breathtaking as ever – maybe even more, since so many of your worries disappeared and he got to see your smile more often. And you still felt perfect under his hands when he was holding you at night, still looked like a goddess every time he got to admire your naked body.

But even though he wouldn’t have cared either way if you gained some weight or looked any different, his body still bothered him.

You rested your head on his shoulder, and Joel fixed his attention to the wind-blown tree crowns in the distance.

Maybe he should start exercising.

Joel never liked the idea of waking up early and running down the streets in a sweat-soaked t-shirt, or going to the gym where everyone seems to stare and judge you, but it was never necessary.

With how much traveling, heavy-lifting and working he had to do, he never concerned himself with the way he looked. Hell, these things are the last on your mind when you’re fighting for your life in this god-forsaken world. But here, in Jackson, it was different. Life was good, and you were happy. And as stupid as it sounded for him, Joel wanted to look good for you.

Maybe he should ask Maria to assign him to extra patrols. He already volunteered for the morning ones, but perhaps…

“You’re quiet.”

Joel didn’t realize you stopped telling your story. He pressed his lips together and his hand on your thigh stilled.

“Sorry.”

“No need for that,” you reassured him quickly. Then you cupped his cheeks and lifted his head gently. “I don’t mean ‘now’, though, I mean… lately, in general.” Your eyes were flickering across his face, like you were hoping to read the answer from his features. “Is there something you wanna talk about?”

No. Hell no. It was bad enough that Joel himself was aware of his issue, he didn’t want to make it even more noticeable by pointing it out to you.

Which reminded him – he moved his torso away from you only a few millimeters.

“No, babygirl,” he answered. He brushed some hair behind your ear, smiling softly even though inside he despised himself for lying to you. “Everythin’s fine.”

You didn’t seem convinced and still were studying his face with concern. Joel resumed petting your thigh, wanting to put you at ease. He could worry about himself, but he didn’t need to concern you with his problems, too.

“I promise,” he added. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

That look in your eyes didn’t disappear, but you hummed and dropped your hands. It didn’t take a genius to know you didn’t believe him.

“If you say so,” you answered at last, and then covered his hand on your leg with your own. “But remember you can talk to me whenever you want. About anything.”

Jesus, your kindness was only confirming his concerns if he was the right person for you. Joel shook his head with a crooked smile.

“You’re gettin’ sappy.”

“It’s because I’m worried,” you shot back without skipping a beat, swatting at his chest with the back of your hand. “And you’re not making it any easier.”

“There’s nothin’ for you to worry about,” he repeated, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. But he failed.

You pressed your lips together and then made a move to get up from his lap without a word. Joel held onto you delicately, not letting you stand up.

“Wait, darlin’,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. “Didn’t mean to say it that way. I just… feel tired. Sorry.”

Your eyes softened when you took in the regret and weariness on his face. Joel felt your fingertips on his jaw, but before you could question him further, Tommy returned from the inside of the house with a grin.

“Age is a heavy burden, eh, ol’ dog?” he teased, apparently having heard the last bit of their conversation. The younger Miller placed three bottles of beer on the table, and winked at you. “That’s just how it is for us now. Enjoy your youth while you still can, punk.”

Joel felt a sharp jab in his ribs, not unlike being stabbed. He couldn’t find it in himself to look at his brother, less alone laugh at his teasing.

Of course Tommy didn’t mean anything bad by it, but his words were just a bitter reminder of the ever-present pit of Joel’s stomach.

The weight of you on his lap suddenly felt a lot lighter, and he himself felt so, so very heavy and tired.

Old.

Joel could feel your eyes boring into his face, but a second later you turned to Tommy, taking the burden of filling the uncomfortable silence.

“It’s already started for me. Sometimes I feel like my bones want to kill me prematurely.”

“M’sure Joel won’t let that happen. He’d fight your skeleton if you said it’s botherin’ you.”

You snorted and shook your head, but your smile faltered when you turned to Joel again. He almost broke down right then and there from the guilt and tightness in his chest.

And the dark feeling inside him just grew when your eyes stayed sad and concerned for the rest of the day.

*****

It had to end.

Joel could no longer pretend everything was alright like he wasn’t dying on the inside every time you did as much as hold his hand. He felt horrible about lying, avoiding spending time together and denying you affection he knew you so loved receiving.

If he was being honest with himself, he wanted this affection, too. Undisturbed with self-doubts and guilt.

He fucking craved it.

Those last few weeks, his evenings were mostly spent away from you and the warmth of your shared home. The nights, on the other hand, when he would sneak in and quietly lay down next to you (but just a little further away), became full of intrusive thoughts and wallowing in self-loathing.

No matter what excuse he came up with, you were persistent in holding and being close to him during the night, and Joel discovered that the only way to prevent you from doing it was to come to bed after you’ve already fallen asleep.

But it was a damn torture.

The worst part was when he was coming home to the sight of you lying amongst the tangled sheets and blankets in his bed. No matter if you were drooling or a pillow has imprinted itself on your cheek, every time this sight made Joel weak in the knees. You looked like a gorgeous, priceless painting, and it pained him to disrupt your rest with his arrival.

He tried to volunteer for evening patrols, because then he’d have a real reason to come home late, but not only Maria didn’t want to pair him with anyone during those hours – she also suspended him from all patrols whatsoever. Joel was understandably furious, but the damn woman threatened to tell Tommy about it if he kept being ‘a stubborn pain in her ass’. She sent him back home, murmuring something about spending more time with you, which he tried to pretend he hadn’t heard.

Joel sighed, sitting up on the edge of the bed and hiding his face in his hand.

If Maria of all people could see that there were some problems in your and Joel’s relationship, then you had to notice, too.

Christ, he was the worst.

Joel didn’t want to push you away, of course not. He wanted to stay with you more than anything, but that desire did nothing to diminish the guilt suffocating him. For some time, he felt like the luckiest man alive, having the privilege to call you his and every day come home to you. But now with all those little things he started to notice, he felt like a fraud.

It wasn’t even about him not deserving you anymore – it was that you didn’t deserve this fucking treatment he was giving you these past few weeks.

Fuck, he had to tell you the truth. About the patrols, sneaking out, distancing himself, all of it. He couldn’t bear lying to you a day longer.

Joel stood up and pulled his sweaty t-shirt over his head. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and patted himself under his armpits and on the back, then reached for a clean one.

He’ll figure it out. He just needed some time to come up with a way to–

“Morning, handsome.”

Joel flinched and turned around quickly, not having realized you were awake, but whatever excuse he had in mind, it fell dead on his lips.

You stretched with a groan, reaching one arm high above your head and rubbing your eyes with the other hand. A sleepy smile danced on your lips when you looked back at him with sparkles in your slightly puffy eyes, and Joel didn’t have any other word to describe you than ‘ethereal’.

“What are you doing?” you asked groggily, relaxing against the pillow and looking him up and down.

“Uhmm…” he hesitated, clutching the t-shirt that was in need of washing close to his chest. His gaze was drawn to the window. “Goin’ out, actually. I’ve got some work…”

“No, you don’t,” you interrupted him and swung off the covers from his side of the bed. “Get back here.”

Joel looked at you with surprise.

“What?”

“You heard me, Miller. Get your ass back on the bed.”

He crumpled the shirt in his hands, hesitating, but his eyes softened as soon as he looked back at you and your raised eyebrows – like you were challenging him to just try and refuse you.

But how could he, when you looked so pretty lying in his bed and demanding to have him close to you? How could he ever deny you anything?

With a defeated sigh, Joel started putting the t-shirt back on, but the sound of you humming in protest stopped him. Your face was grumpy when he glanced up.

“Nah. No shirt.” You extended your hand in his direction, making a grabbing motion. “Come here.”

Joel didn’t move. “Why?”

You rolled your eyes and dramatically flopped down onto the pillows, looking up at him with an adorable pout.

“Because it’s been a long time since I got a chance to admire my handsome, sexy man,” you answered with sincerity, and then grinned. “Now come here. If you ditch your shirt, I’ll consider ditching mine.”

He still didn’t move. You were patient, but when it became clear that he wasn’t going to do anything, you sent him a small, sweet smile. “If you get cold again, I promise to do something about it, love.”

Joel physically felt his heart softening at your words and at the sight of you.

With a silent sigh – and only a split second of hesitation – he took off the t-shirt and quickly laid down on his back next to you. He felt a bile rise in his throat, though he had no idea why, and it became almost choking when you shifted closer to him, putting one hand on his chest.

“You’ve deprived me of this beautiful view for too long,” you whispered, kissing the place below his collarbone, and then going up to the base of his neck. “I missed seeing you like this.”

“There’s nothin’ to miss,” Joel muttered, not moving a single muscle. He had his hands entwined on his stomach and to look in your direction was the biggest effort anyone could demand from him now. “We sleep next to each other every night, sweetheart.”

“You know what I mean,” you breathed into his neck, leaving love bites wherever your lips strayed. “You’re going out so early these days. And you work late.”

“Patrols,” Joel grunted with gritted teeth, his muscles tense and breathing ragged as your warm palm caressed his waist. “Sorry.”

“You work too hard, love.” You sat up and swung one of your legs over his lap. Joel actually shivered when you took his hands in your own and placed them on your hips. “Let me help you relax.”

Oh, fuck.

Jesus fucking Christ, Joel was sure he was going to drop dead at any second now.

“Darlin’…” he began, but you made a noise in your throat and leaned in to kiss him deeply, pressing your body to his. Joel loved when you initiated those moments between you two, and you looked so fucking hot sitting on top of him – but for the life of him, he could not relax.

“It hits me every once in a while how lucky I am to have you,” you whispered in such a sweet, adoring voice, like you didn’t hear him. You pressed your lips against his stubble again, igniting every inch of his skin with your touch. “Let me enjoy you. I love you so much, you know that?”

“I…”

I love you, too.

Lord, he loved you so much. Why was it so hard to return your affections, then? Why did he feel like the biggest crook by letting you love him?

Joel let out a shuddering sigh he didn’t know he was holding when you pressed your lips to the edge of his jaw, before capturing his mouth in a kiss. It was sweet, but heated at the same time and, without even thinking about it, he found himself wrapping his strong arms around you, bringing you closer to his chest. You smiled against his lips and murmured something he didn’t quite catch.

A groan escaped him when you bit his lower lip lightly, your soft palm going down, from his chest, to his stomach, down…

He couldn’t do it.

Joel abruptly rose to the sitting position and grabbed your wrist, his eyes sad and painful.

“I’m sorry, baby” he said with furrowed brows, gently setting you aside and off his lap, before standing up quickly. “I’m so sorry, babygirl, I love you, I promise, but I can’t… I don’t feel good today. I’m sorry.”

“Joel…” you started, but he shook his head, putting his t-shirt back on and turning away from you not to let you see the absolute wrecked expression on his face and wetness in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he kept saying, feeling like he’s about to throw up from the nerves and the burning shame. He cursed himself internally, wanting to turn around, to take your face in his hands and kiss you deeply, but he… he... “I’m so…”

All strength left him in a blink of an eye and suddenly he slumped on the bed, hiding his face in his hands. Joel desperately tried to get a grip on himself, but his chest felt so tight, and all the worry, all the guilt and fear, and self-loathing came crashing down on him all at once.

“M’sorry, darlin’,” he whispered hoarsely, his lips trembling and that damn muscle in his cheek pulsing when he felt the mattress dipping and your tentative touch on his face.

“No, no, baby, it’s alright,” you started saying quietly, trying to take his cheeks in your hands, but he didn’t let you. “Oh, Joel… Come here.”

You gently pulled him into your arms, guiding his head to rest in the crook of your neck. Joel hid his face in your skin, realizing with dread that his own shoulders were shaking.

For God’s sake, he needed to stop, he needed to put himself together and not show any weakness–

But it was you. It was your warm embrace and your loving hands brushing his hair, and your quiet whispers while you held him. It was your kindness and understanding, and stubbornness coming from love. You weren’t someone he had to hide from.

So he let you in. He let you hold him.

“Joel, please. Talk to me,” you spoke up after some time, and though your tone was soft, it somehow sounded too loud in the silence of the room. “I need to know what’s going on with you, you’re worrying me.”

“Nothin’ is goin’ on,” he answered out of habit, not even moving a muscle. “I just… fuck, sorry.”

“Stop apologizing and talk to me.” Joel pursed his lips, while you massaged his back gently. “Whatever it is, we’re gonna get through it together, okay? It’s gonna be okay, love, I promise.”

He planned on telling you. He wanted to tell you and get it off his chest, but… he wasn’t ready. Not now. Not when he broke down in front of you, for fuck’s sake.

But you deserved to know. If not to help him, then at least to make you aware of what you’ve gotten yourself into. It wasn’t fair to keep you in the dark and at arm’s length because of his absurd fears.

He wetted his lips and inhaled softly, but no words came out.

You gently lifted his head and Joel immediately squeezed his eyes shut, knowing there was no way he’d be able to say anything if he looked at you.

“You can tell me, baby,” you whispered sadly, touching the side of his face. “Anything. I promise everything will be alright.”

Joel was silent for a couple of moments, before he swallowed and took a deep breath, trying to calm down his pounding heart.

“I don’t have any extra work,” he started very quietly, so his voice wouldn’t break. “I was lyin’ to you, and I… I’m so sorry about that. I don’t get sent on any patrols now, actually…”

He shook his head and sighed heavily, faltering. He knew that wasn’t the problem, and although lying to you was one of the things he was guilty of, it wasn’t what started all of it. And you must’ve known it, too, because you kept looking at him, not saying anything.

“The thin’ is, I… God dammit,” he murmured, turning his head away from you and hiding his face in his hands, still keeping his eyes closed. “I can’t… I don’t– I have a problem with myself,” he finally blurted out, not even caring now if you understood his muffled words. “I keep…”

Fuck, man, just say it.

“I’m… I’m not as fit as I used to be,” he murmured, not moving an inch in fear that you’ll spot the wetness on his eyelashes. “I don’t want to do you harm, darlin’, keepin’ you from… Jesus, I don’t know. From livin’ your life, happily and to the fullest.”

“Joel…” You whispered with pain in your voice. “Is this what it is about?”

Joel shook his head, letting out a shuddering breath, still as quietly as he could.

“I’m old,” he said with tiredness he didn’t know he had in himself. “And you… You’re so pretty and young, I…” He lowered his forehead onto his hand, rubbing his temple. “I would like nothin’ more than to spend the rest of my life with you, darlin’. But I’m afraid I’m not… not good for you. You could do so much better–”

“Hey. Hey, none of that.” You forced his hands away from his face by cradling it in your own palms. “There’s no one else I’d rather share my days with.”

Joel just shut his eyes tighter, trying to contain the tears that started to gather in them.

“I know, sweetheart,” he whispered. “But in a couple of years I’ll be… God, I’ll be fuckin’ sixty, and you–”

“Do you really think I care about that?” you asked softly, brushing your thumbs under his eyes, but he shook his head, like you didn’t understand. “Joel, I love you more than anything in this world. And I know you love me.” He heard the faintest smile in your voice, and it made him feel so, so terrible with himself – that you were trying to make him feel better when you shouldn’t have, he shouldn’t have been another one of your worries… “So where’s the problem? I want to be with you. Only you.”

Joel pressed his lips together and before he could stop himself, he draped his arms over his lap, like he was trying to hide the evidence of his insecurities from you, even though his torso was already covered by the t-shirt.

“You’re young and beautiful,” he repeated, still unable to find strength in himself to look you in the eye. “And I’m anythin’ but. I just don’t wanna…”

Joel didn’t know what else to say.

He didn’t want you to leave. He didn’t want to spend another night apart from you. He didn’t want to push you away.

“Just don’t want you to be unhappy,” he finally murmured.

You let out something between a short chuckle and a stifled sob, and your fingers found Joel’s, still wrapped around his stomach.

“Do I look unhappy to you?” you asked, almost in disbelief. Joel finally willed himself to glance at you, if only to see for himself – which turned out to be a mistake. Your eyes were sad and teary, but not full of hurt or distaste like he feared, and you still had this faint smile on your face. He quickly turned his head away and you must’ve realized how you looked because your hold on his fingers tightened slightly. “Not right now. In general, did I ever do something to make you think I’m not happy with you?”

“No,” he answered quietly, not even having to think about it. “But it doesn’t…”

“I told you before, how can I even look at anyone else when I have you?” you spoke up when he faltered. “You’re beautiful to me, Joel, even if you don’t believe me right now. You’re amazing and kind, you’re fucking hot, and yeah, maybe you’re stubborn at times, but I love you so much, and every day I find another reason to fall for you all over again.”

Joel met your eyes again, looking for any hesitation or deceit – but he didn’t find any. As always, you were sincere in everything you said.

He realized, with another wave of tears threatening to roll down his cheeks, how much he missed your affection that he alone deprived himself from. How much he longed for this intimacy that once came so easily to him.

“M’sorry,” he muttered at last, lifting his hand to your face and trying to ignore those damn tears spilling from behind his eyelids. “Never doubted you, babygirl, but I just didn’t know how… how to tell you.”

“It’s okay, Joel,” you nuzzled your cheek into his palm, planting a kiss on the inside of his hand. “It’s alright, c’mon here.”

Not letting go of his hand, you tugged him gently and leaned back on the pillows. With great effort he refrained from fighting you, and instead let you pull him down, laying his head on your chest.

And in an instant, everything was alright again. The moment Joel heard your heartbeat under his ear and felt your gentle hands on the nape of his neck and his back… it was like coming home. This feeling of warmth spreading across his limbs made him feel safe for the first time in weeks.

It was so long since he fully let you hold him.

Maybe that’s what he’s been missing.

“I adore you, Joel Miller,” you whispered into the top of his head, holding him close to your heart. “All of you, and just the way you are.”

Joel couldn’t help it – a small smile crept onto his lips.

“Called it,” he murmured. “You’re gettin’ sappy.”

You snorted and kissed his hairline. “I think you need it, handsome.”

“Maybe I do,” he conceded, not moving his head from your chest, and sighed tiredly. “Dammit, missed holdin’ you like this, babygirl. M’so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” you countered, but he continued.

“I just didn’t know how to talk about it… How to tell you that I feel bad. About… the way I look.”

Joel felt your hands on his cheeks, and although he really didn’t want to move from the position he was in, he let you lift his head.

“I love the way you look,” you said quietly, in a tone that made Joel’s old heart flutter. “And our bodies change, there’s nothing wrong with that. If anything, I’m really happy that both of us can enjoy this kind of life.” You leaned in and nudged Joel’s nose with yours, closing your eyes. “Every change of our bodies is a sign that we’re finally safe after all we’ve been through.

“But you look gorgeous as ever, sweet girl.”

“M’glad to hear it, Mr Miller,” you teased, but then your smile turned wistful. “But you know, I was insecure about my looks, too, not sure if you noticed. My stomach and thighs, and,” you rolled your eyes, “well, my butt.”

Normally Joel would throw a playful remark, or try to make you giggle, but this time he stayed silent. He just listened to your soft voice, drinking in your features.

“It worried me for some time. But you still put your hand on my leg when I was sitting with you, and you never shied away from telling and showing me,” you stressed this word, a teasing note in your tone, “how much you like my body.”

“‘Course I do,” he murmured quietly, lifting himself on his elbows and leaning over you despite your huffs and efforts to keep him in place.

“So I thought that maybe you didn’t care about this extra weight, or even didn’t–”

The rest of your words were swallowed by Joel’s lips when he kissed you deeply and hungrily. So many strong emotions were swirling inside his chest, he didn’t know anymore what to do with himself. At first you tried to continue your train of thought, but soon gave up, erupting into giggles when Joel latched his lips onto your neck and wrapped his arms around you in an attempt to bring you in even closer.

“I didn’t care,” he was whispering into your skin, leaving a trail of wet kisses in his wake. “I don’t.”

“Then you see– Joel, stop it!” You squealed when he carried on with his assault, not giving you a second to gather your thoughts.

“M’so lucky to have you,” he whispered while peppering your face in soft kisses. “Thank you, babygirl.”

You finally managed to free your arms, and you cupped his face in your hands with a huge grin that Joel decided he wanted to see every day. Another adorable giggle escaped you when he snuggled his scratchy cheek into your palm.

“I know it will take time,” you said gently, but firmly, looking deep into his eyes. “But no matter how long it’ll take, I will make you understand how incredibly attracted I am to you.” Joel hung his head low to hide a bashful snigger, and your smile grew. “Understand?”

“Yeah, yeah. Understood, ma’am.”

“Good.” You pulled him closer to plant a slow kiss on his lips, and asked seductively: “I can start right now, if you’d want to. I don’t want my handsome man to feel insecure about any part of him.”

God, he loved you so much.

Joel hid his face in the crook of your neck again, his heart squeezing with adoration and disbelief at how it came that he’d been blessed with someone like you.

“Y’know what, sweetheart? I think it’d do me good.”

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us #joel miller #joel miller x y/n #joel tlou #i will actually be taking a break because i have uni stuff to do which i REALLY neglected on behalf of this fic #i really got carried away with this one and the final scene took me so long to write omg #i really tried to approach this topic with respect and understanding and i very much hope it's alright #soft joel miller #joel miller fluff #the last of us fic

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imfinereallyy · 1 year

Text

Father Figures

pt. 2 here, and full version on ao3 here

The first time James Edward Hopper meets Steve Harrington is when Steve is thirteen years old. It is back when he is still pushing everyone to call him Chief Hopper, or at the very least James to sound more professional. It is mostly a lost cause, as he has just returned to Hawkins after his daughter Sarah's death and most people can't help but call him Jim and Hop in familiarity, in sympathy.

It didn't mean they didn't take him any less seriously though. In fact, his cold, grieving demeanor gave him quite the reputation around town. Made assholes like Lenny Byers and troublemakers like the little twerp Munson turn in the other direction when they see him. So Jim doesn't try to push the professional name too much. He knows people around here respect him.

They respect him enough to follow his word, they respect him enough to turn a blind eye when he takes an extra pill or two.

Jim doesn't think too deeply about his reputation until he meets Steve Harrington for the first time.

He gets a call from Benny. It's directly to his line at the station, instead of a general 911 call. He doesn't think much of it when he answers, most likely it was a non emergency from an old friend from high school. That's the only reason people call him most days.

"Chief Hopper. Make it quick."

"Jimmy." A deep, worried breath comes from the phone.

Jim immediately straightens. "Benny, what's wrong?"

Benny usually only calls for a laugh, or to invite him out for a drink. The guy doesn't care about too much, or ask too many questions. Hearing concern in his voice was alarming, to say the least. "Listen, Hop, there is a kid here. And normally I don't care, cause business is business, but it's two in the morning, Jimmy. And despite the kid wearing the most expensive pair of sneakers I have ever seen, he only has two dollars on him for a meal. He got all skittish when the plate landed too loudly. And I don't know..." Benny takes a deep breath before he continues. "...I just don't want to be at fault if this kid's trouble and some fancy parents come looking for him."

Jim can tell Benny wants to say something else, he doesn't push though. Jim Hopper tries to never ask too many questions.

"Alright Ben, I'll be there in ten."

———

When Jim arrives at the diner, Benny notices him and nods in the direction of the corner booth. And there, sitting with his head low and scarfing down a plate of fries is Steve Harrington.

Jim has never met the kid personally, but he knows his parents. Cold, calculating, and pretty much owns half of Hawkins. Jim is starting to understand why Benny has called him.

Jim slides into the booth across from the young boy. He's prepared to take the kid by the back of his shirt and drag him out of there. He doesn't need these kids to be causing hard-working people any trouble. But when Jim makes a thump in the booth, the Harrington kid's face snaps up in fear, and Jim's plan for an angry monologue just drops.

Because there, on Steve Harrington's jaw, is a bruise the size of Indiana itself. Jim's face remains gruff, but his body language softens. "Hey, kid. What are you doing here so late?"

Steve's posture remains stiff and small. "Sorry sir, I was just hungry and it was the only place open. I wasn't—I wasn't trying to cause trouble."

It's then, for the first time, Jim thinks that his reputation isn't one of respect. Instead, his reputation might something worse. Fear.

"Didn't think you were. Just wondering what a rich kid like you, is doing on this side of town, at this time of night." Jim doesn't say it like a question, just fact. He tries not to take it too personally when Harrington turns his bruised side in on himself.

"Would have uh—gotten something from home but we—I didn't have any food left. And by the time I was able to eat, everything else was closed."

"Able to eat—kid what are you rambling about. Let me call your parents to pick you up." Jim makes his way to stand but Steve grabs his wrist to pull him back.

"No! I mean—" he clears his throat "—not necessary sir. My parents left for a work trip tonight. I uh—don't have a number for you to call them anyway. They call me instead, they never have a solid line to contact. Nothing bad happens in Hawkins anyway, so it isn't something to worry about." The last line sounds practiced, like it is something repeated to Steve religiously enough it's become his own mantra.

Jim is starting to put it together. The waiting all day to eat. The bruise on his jaw. The lack of money for food. God, the kid probably walked six miles to get here.

Jim isn't stupid, he can connect the dots. But Jim also knows when not to push things. When not to rock the boat. When sometimes, even if it pains him, helping someone would be a lost cause. He thinks of Sarah briefly.

It's even worse when that lost cause is just a kid.

Jim decides maybe the best thing he can do for Steve at that moment is to ignore the obvious problem and offer him a bit of kindness. "Well, I can't have ya here this late. Could look bad for Benny. And we don't want to get Benny in trouble do we?"

Steve shakes his head immediately. "No Sir."

"Didn't think so. Why don't I drive you to the station? Don't worry I'm not arresting you. But we got a nice cot there, and you can get some rest. Then I'll drive you back in the morning when I clock out. Cause I'm still on duty and all. Can't be driving you back Loch Nora quite yet." Jim doesn't mention how he can see bags under Steve's eyes. He doesn't mention how it would be quicker to his house than to the station either. Jim maybe, just a little bit, wants to keep an eye on him. Even if it's only for a short time.

"It's okay I can walk—" Jim levels Steve with a look "—actually that sounds great. Thank you, Sir."

Jim nods with finality and starts to stand. "Oh and kid? Enough with that sir crap. I ain't Mr. Harrington." He almost says I'm not your dad. But that felt wrong somehow, giving Harrington senior that title.

"Okay, sir—I mean Hopper. Okay, Hopper."

---

As the years go by, James Edward Hopper keeps an eye out for Steven James Harrington (Yes he looks at his file for his full name. Yes, it makes him feel some sort of way he has his name as his middle name and not his father's. Richard would make a horrible middle name anyway). At first, it's drive-bys to see if anyone's home. Giving the kid a ride if he sees him walking. Swinging by a basketball game or two, to see how he's playing.

Then it turns into busting his ragers. Hauling him in for the night not to arrest him but to sober the kid up. Pulling him over for driving while intoxicated with that dumb Hagan boy.

Jim wants to be mad, he does. He even yells at Steve sometimes. But he can't find in him to be mean to him, not really. Not when he's pretty sure the only thing Steve has consumed in days is alcohol. Not when even though he has gotten much bigger, and the bruises are less visible, Steve never ceases to flinch when Jim grabs him.

So mostly, Jim either just drives him home or brings him in, giving him a sandwich and bed for the night.

Around when Steve is sixteen though, things get worse for Jim. He becomes more frustrated, with Steve, with his job, and with this town. He takes more pills. He neglects his job. He forgets Steve.

Then the Upside Down happens for the first time. Jim tries to better himself for Joyce and the kids. He mainly though does it for El. His second chance, his new reason for trying, his daughter.

Jim knows it's okay to get a little lost in taking care of her. That it's a good thing, and she deserves his full attention.

He does feel a bit of guilt though, after round two of the Upside Down. When Steve Harrington sits in Joyce Byer's living room, looking like he went ten rounds with a semi.

The kids are all over him (including Mike which shocks the hell out of him). Dustin is trying to stop the bleeding on his face, Lucas is holding ice against his head and even El, who Steve met for all of five minutes, is sitting beside him on the couch, holding his shoulder up. There is a look in El's eyes as she stares up at Steve. Like she can see through him, like she knows him. Like she understands him.

Jim feels his heart break a little.

He approaches Steve in a crouched position. "Hey kid, I think we better take you to a hospital. You look like shit." He is sure there is a better way to say it, but Jim Hopper is a blunt man and that was never going to change.

The redhead, Max, snorts. "That's honestly the nicest way to put it."

Steve glares, Jim can't decide if it's at him or the kids. "No. I'm okay."

Dustin shouts, "Steve you are most definitely not okay. Hop's right you look like shit—"

"Language."

Dustin ignores Steve, "—and that's just externally. Who knows what's going on internally."

"C'mon kid, I can drive ya." Jim moves to help him stand.

Steve bursts with anger and pushes Jim away. "I said no. And you're not my dad."

Jim's jaw tightens and he resists the urge to scream back: and thank god for that.

El speaks before he can yell back. "You're hurt." It's soft, it's demanding and it's so very El. Jim watches Steve crumble back into the couch.

His voice is rougher than before, but much more gentle, "No hospitals."

"Okay. At least let Joyce look at ya. She used to be a nurse." Jim puts a hand on his shoulder, careful not to jostle him.

"Okay, Hopper. Okay, Hop."

———

After that, for a little while, Jim tries to look out for Steve again. It's harder this time though. He's more independent and harder to catch sight of. When he does see him, one of the gremlins is around him, and he can't check-in. And Hop has El, and he can't neglect her in favor of Steve. He tries to balance it out, but in the end, Steve isn't his kid.

Jim finds a small loophole though, which is El herself.

He worries about her every she since she ran away and he didn't even notice. And he knows Steve, like him, has a soft spot for the kids. So under the guise of babysitting, Jim gets Steve in his cabin once a week. So someone other than Joyce or Jonathan (or horribly, mike) is spending time with her. Sure, he's not there to keep an eye out for Steve himself, but it's the closest he's going to get.

Besides, biological daughter or not, El is just like Jim. She has a habit of collecting strays. If it's not going to be him looking out for Steve, he can't think of anyone better for the job than his little girl.

———

After Starcourt, somewhere in a Russian prison, Jim thinks of Steve.

Every day, Jim thinks of El. Misses her. Longs to hear her laugh even longs to hear her yell back at him. Every day, Jim thinks of his daughter and mourns what could have been. But Jim knows she's being taken care of. Knows Joyce and the boys will love her, and take care of her. Make sure she knows nothing else but kindness.

He worries though, between those moments, about how there is no one there for Steve.

———

Months later, in Hawkins Memorial, Jim Hopper finds Steve Harrington in a hospital chair next to Eddie Munson's comatose body.

Jim has a lot of questions but doesn't get any of them out because suddenly Steve Harrington is right in front of him, sucking in a harsh "Hop," and then collapsing in Jim’s arms.

Jim holds him close, says nothing, and cries silently with him.

———

During the summer that follows, James Edward Hopper notices a change within Steven James Harrington. Despite the obvious PTSD the boy suffers, and the scars that litter his body, Steve is visibly happier than Jim has ever seen him. He laughs more, he openly cries more, and he loves more.

Steve's now living with Robin in a tiny two-bedroom downtown. He comes to family dinner with the entire party every Sunday. He shares a cup of tea (no more beer for either of them) and a cigarette every Thursday evening on the Byers-Hoppers front porch.

Most noticeably, the biggest difference Jim sees in Steve is Eddie Munson.

Jim once again isn't stupid. And despite being an ex-cop isn't a bigot (he couldn't find himself back at the force, the corruption is too much for him. And he himself, was never very good at his job). So he can easily come to the conclusion that Steve has a massive crush on Eddie Munson.

Dear. God.

It's not that he has a problem with Eddie being a boy, but it's the fact that out of all people he can choose from, Steve had to go and fall for the twerp who used to trip over his laces when running away from Jim for the third time.

Jim feels, after all the years of neglect that Steve faced, he could do so much better.

Steve is happy though for once, and Jim doesn't say anything at first. But it becomes so painful to watch. The lingering touches. The longing gazes. The nicknames (sweetheart, honey, dear god did he just say big boy—).

Nothing ever comes of it though, it's August and neither of them has done anything but pine. And Jim seems to be the only one who notices.

At first, he thinks it's cause everyone is being kind, and giving them room to explore themselves. But with everyone making jokes about Robin and Steve (from the kids) or Steve and Nancy (from Eddie), it seems like no one notices the excruciating flirting between the two.

(Except for maybe Robin, but Jim isn't quite sure Steve and she aren't one organism. He doesn't count her)

Still, Jim ignores it though. He has learned his listen from Mike and El. Getting involved makes everything worse.

That is until, the second week in August right before family dinner, when he finds Steve and Eddie early, sitting on the couch, with Eddie dabbing the blood off of Steve's face.

"What happened?" Jim is over on Steve's other side in an instant.

"Nothing Hop, it's stupid." Steve tries to shrug off, and he looks towards Eddie briefly.

Jim's vision, for a brief brief moment, is filled with unclear rage. It's enough to consume him and makes him impulsive. Jim can't help but think he got it wrong. Maybe the two are together, and Steve had fallen into a bad relationship. He knew that Eddie was trouble, but he didn't think about it being that kind.

And though he is being irrational, and being for once a little stupid, no one can really blame him when he hauls Eddie up by the collar and into his line of vision.

"Munson, did you put your goddamn hands on my kid?"

Jim can hear Joyce, El, and Will (the only other people in the house) all run out into the living room at the sheer volume of Jim's voice.

Steve sits frozen, Joyce and El yell at him to "put him down, oh my god."

And Munson? He starts to ramble.

"No. No! I would never, ever hurt anyone. Haven't we learned this by now? I can barely kill a spider. I have to put them in a cup and put them outside." Eddie chuckles nervously, waving his hands around frantically.

Jim's grip tightens and pulls him closer. He's pretty sure his vibrating at this point.

Suddenly though, Eddie becomes deathly serious. As if he just realizes what Hopper has said.

"Hop, I would lay down my life before I ever hurt Steve. There is no one in this world that deserves kindness more than him. And if I ever do hurt him, whether it be emotionally or physically, I give you full permission to beat me up. Hell, I'll probably throw myself at your fist."

Jim doesn't let go but stays silent as he listens.

"You see, Steve here decided to pull a you when some jerks wouldn't leave me alone at Family Video today. They were throwing around a bunch of slurs. Nothing I haven't heard before. And even though I could handle myself—“ Eddie gives Steve a look “Steve here always has to be the hero and decided to defend my honor. And of course, it just had to turn physical. And Steve decided to take on three guys on his own. Got to say though, he held his own. It was kinda hot honestly—"

Jim hears Steve choke a little beside them, startling him out of his frozen state.

"—And he only got a cut on his forehead from one of the dickwads class rings. I'm a little worried he has another concussion though. Believe me, Hop when I say, I am just as pissed at those guys as you."

At the end of his speech, Eddie calms down and even holds eye contact with Jim. He still doesn't let go of the twerp, despite being considerably less angry. Well, at least at Eddie.

It's Steve though that finally gets him to let go. "Dad, please put Eddie down."

Steve says it like it's nothing. Steve says it likes its the easiest thing in the world. But to Jim, to Jim it's the best thing he's gotten since El.

Instantaneously, Jim drops Eddie back on the ground and scoops Steve into a bone-crushing hug. "You got to stop scaring me like this kid. Can't lose you again."

Steve's almost his height now, so he tucks Steve's head into his shoulder and lays his head on top of his hair. He hears a muffled, wet "I'm sorry" against him.

Jim chokes back tears as he says, "No, no you got nothing to apologize for. Just be more careful. Okay?"

Steve releases himself from his hold and looks at him. "Okay, Hop. Okay, Dad."

Jim ruffles his hair without jostling his head too much. He thinks he would do anything for his kids. Including pushing along this nightmare of a pining contest.

"And if you like him I like him too."

"Huh?" Steve says confused.

"Eddie here. If you like him, then he's okay by me."

Steve goes to stop Jim, but he's already one step ahead. "But if he hurts you even in the slightest, you're watching me dig the grave I'm going to bury him in. Understand?"

Steve blushes from head to toe and nods frantically, knowing if he protests it will only make the conversation longer. The room is silent until Eddie speaks.

"Don't worry Hop, I'll dig the grave for you." Eddie's voice, despite the threat, is filled with delight, wonder, and hope.

My work here is done Jim thinks as he gives the boys one last nod and leaves the room.

And if later, if Jim sees Steve and Eddie holding hands at the dinner table he doesn't comment on it. And if he sees Eddie give Steve's knuckles a light kiss, and whisper something that almost looks like "I love you", he only smiles at the two boys. Because if one more person loves his boy, it's a win for him.

Because James Edward Hopper, thinks his son Steve deserves that and so much more.

———

okay I spent waaaay too much time on this (as per usual) but I wanted to dive in a little more on Steve and Hoppers relationship (and how it impacts Steve and Eddie). I feel like a lot of fics makes them distant friends (which is canonically correct I guess) or surrogate family with no explanation. And I like the idea of them slowing building a father son relationship. Really leaning into you choose your family. I know people have mixed feelings about Steve calling him Dad (honestly sometimes I too think it’s cringey) but sometimes I love it and that boy deserves a good father figure. Even though steddie doesn’t come in until the end, I think it all really blends together nicely. Also in my head either the boys are both out to each other, is at least it’s heavily implied or is a known safe space they are in. We do not support outing people in the house. It’s probably a one-shot, but maybe I’ll add more snippets later on. For now it felt like a good place to stop.

As always I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I just zoned out for like two hours as I wrote it. It kinda made me emotional I’m not going to lie.

part 2 here and the full version on ao3 here

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yeyinde · 3 months

Text

LEASH CALLED YOU

PUPPY (RUINER) x F!Reader | 18+ Good dogs get rewards, and Puppy thinks you are the best prize to be found in this hovel. So, he takes you.

WARNINGS: smut | P-in-V, rough sex; D/s undertones; VERY HEAVY DUBCON!!; slight breathplay. female gendered anatomy. implied/referenced human trafficking, sex work. canon typical violence. implied threat of violence. loss of agency. obsessive behaviour. this is basically playing house with a psychopath who decides you're his. and he pretty much killed half the city and the guy who was kinda a god. or a king. or something. so like, what are you gonna do? say no? Pff. WORD COUNT: 7,4k imagine writing like, 7k for Some Guy after seeing one (1) gifset of him.

He finds you in South Rengkok.

Nestled amongst a conglomerate of seedy, black market shops in the red light district, you gaze out at the sea of people from a vaulted window in a seamy bordello. A voyeuristic view into the coquettish bedroom they placed you in—red satin sheets and pink, heart-shaped pillows. All dolled up and pretty.

The harsh light cuts shadows under your eyes and frames you in a heavy, oversaturated glow. You look like you're bathing in red. In blood.

The sight makes something curdle in his stomach. He isn't sure why. There's not much of a difference between you and the other workers—all locked up tight; enticing passersby to join in on the garish body auction set to take place soon—but where they see the dollar signs in this, dancing and swaying their hips, pressing their palms flat against the window plane and fluttering their lashes, all lovely and coy, at the men who press back, you sit. Motionless. A little doll.

You don't belong here, he thinks. You're something much too soft and fine, like silk in his hands, and much too delicate to be in this part of town that stinks like wet, oxidising metal and saltpetre.

The slip of your black, lacy kimono barely covers your skin. He tracks it. The shadows, the dips. The curves. His eyes fix on the protrusion of your collarbones beneath the moody fabric, pushed to the side, and hanging off your shoulder in what, he guesses, is meant to be enticing. Kittenish.

They dolled you up to skirt this line between sultry vixen and twee innocence. The sight of it does something to his guts. Has them rolling over each other in tandem with each heavy thud of his heart. It's the way you look that catches his attention, sure, but more than that, it's the look in your eyes.

They glow under the neon smear, hazy and drifting far away, turned inward. Lost.

And then you look up. Catch his gaze through the glass.

There's a moment when everything inside of him dims, quiets. Thoughts, missions. Reason, purpose. It falls under a thick blanket of whisper-soft snow. It's just him—something, nothing—and you. This little cosm of his own making.

You make a motion, then, as if to entice him inside but you hesitate, staring back at him instead. He knows the LED screen on his mask is doing something funny, voicing the thoughts he can't say, because your lips quirk slightly at the corners—bemusement, maybe; he's never been good at reading people—but then HER is husking out orders in his head, all biting witticism, and acerbic humour.

Later, Puppy, comes the clandestine whisper—hot oil down his nape—and he catches the warbled curiosity as it trickles through. Good Puppy’s get rewards. But there's work to do.

Work. Yes, work.

His helmet flashes. He catches the red flicker on the smeared reflection of the window. Garish red. Kill, kill, kill.

You see it, and you flinch.

Good, is the sudden thought. Good.

Puppy isn't sure about much—not anymore, and maybe not ever—but he knows this: he likes the way your eyes widen. Fear, undoubtedly. Round and doe-eyed as you take in the horrible words scribbled in neon.

Fright, dread. It looks good on you.

Pretty, pretty, pretty.

His hands shake. He thinks about how you'd feel under him. How he'd feel inside of you. And—

Purpose, he thinks. Purpose.

There's an emptiness inside of his heart. A hole left over from the remains of LITTLE BROTHER. The dream, the reason, turned into a ghost. Shrapnel in his chest.

He doesn't blame HER for his absence. For the machinations, the schemes. It all led somewhere in the end, even if that place was here. Alone. Stuck, now, with a gaping wound in his chest.

But—

Not for long, maybe.

It'll be an awkward fit—BROTHER was this unknowable, untouchable shadow that lingered in his peripheral vision; a driving force keeping him moving. The space carved inside Puppy for him feels like a cavernous chasm. You're so slight, so small, in comparison to that gaping void, that he wonders if you'll be enough to quench the hunger that brims up from those depths. Rapacious. Wanting.

It's different, of course. You are real. BROTHER was—

Not.

He satiated himself on artificial dreams and empty memories. Those spectral, hallucinatory feelings of desperation to save his younger brother carried him to the very end.

But BROTHER was always chimerical.

You are something he can touch. Have. Keep.

He sees the flash of uncertainty etched into the painted lines of your face as you look around the cesspit you've fallen into, and he knows that you, too, could be that for him. Purpose. Purpose. Purpose.

(His, his, HIS.)

The people wandering around, perusing the shops, stop and stare at you. At this little wisp, all shaken and terrified, and in need of saving. Needing him—

His hand clenches around the pipe.

You're too good for their eyes. For this place.

He'll kill them all, and come for you.

The room that houses his new target is in a penthouse on the better side of the city. Vaulted ceilings. Golden chandeliers. Crystalline glass in a mosaic of iridescent pastel. It looks blemishless, clean, in comparison to the hovel that is South Rengkok. It scrapes against the chalky insides of his skull as he slinks forward, and emerges from the shadows.

He makes his way through the levels, one by one, until all that remains behind him is a river of blood and a breadcrumb trail of dead bodies. Boss’ finest. It's all mostly just—

Cleanup.

A necessary evil, HER calls it, and so, he sees it through.

When he gets to the top, he hears noises. High-pitched, elongated. A sharp grunt.

He finds his target sitting down on a sprawling chaise, knees notched apart. A woman sits in his lap, hands pressed against his chest.

Both of them are naked. Their clothes are in a messy pile by the door.

Puppy watches for a moment. Enthralled, almost, by the sharp juxtaposition their bodies make, and then—

Confusion.

She looks just like you.

His meaty hands are tight around her waist, jerking her down with each sloppy cant of his wide hips. Dwarfing her frame in his bearish paws. She mewls into the room, the reecho of her synthetic moans daggers into his temple.

The pipe in his hand jerks with the rough spasm of his fingers.

Puppy doesn't care much for killing. Doesn't care much for anything at all, really, except for HER, BROTHER. The mission. His objectives.

Cold, they call him. Unfeeling.

He thinks, suddenly, of Wizard. About something he'd said back when Puppy didn't have a name.

You're—heh, you're a killing machine! It must feel so good, you know? To kill.

It doesn't. He feels nothing at all. Neither pity, nor guilt. Regret is an abstract concept in his mind; intangible. Unreachable.

He's—

Ambivalent, HER once supplied. You feel nothing, Puppy, because you are nothing.

Yes. Yes, he thinks. And yet—

There's a strange heat in his veins. A caustic feeling welling deep inside of his guts at the sight of them coupling. His hands on her body is an affront. An insult.

It makes him angry. Furious.

He'll kill him, he'll—

(Go, Puppy!)

In the man's hands, she looks soft. Delicate. Breakable.

Yes, so breakable. So—

She moans, then, and he jerks his chin up, catching her reflection in the marble pillar.

Ah, he thinks. Ah.

She isn't you.

He gets to work.

The success of his mission has HER offering a bleak congratulations in the back of his head. Job well done. He takes it all in, feeling a distinct thrum in his bones that is usually absent following his massacres. Its place, in the hollow gaps of his ribs, is strange. Foreign.

Excitement, he finds. How peculiar.

It offsets the adrenaline rush, the lingering anger coursing through his veins. Killing the Target, his companion who was entirely too similar to you, leaves him feeling satiated and starved at the same time. A paradoxical sensation that shouldn't exist together, but somehow found a way, a home, within the slurry of his chest.

He wants to find you. Has this pulsing need in the back of his head to make sure that the woman he killed wasn't really you. But you are contralateral to his current mission. His objective.

Almost pityingly, the route HER generates takes him right past you: a tantalising tease.

Puppy isn't sure what to call this. Madness, perhaps. Don't be stupid, Puppy, comes the choppy, mechanical whir in the back of his head. You are—human, after all.

The way it's said by HER has his hackles rising, but he doesn't have enough insight on the topic to pursue the strange cadence any further.

Indulge. You earned it.

Your face flashes before him—different, this time. Gone is the thick gold on the crease of your eyelids, the heavy red on your lips. You're barefaced. Gaunt. Your complexion reminds him of the bruised blue of the sky above. Midnight. Iridescent rainbows in an oil spill.

He wants to touch you. His hands shake.

A series of numbers flicker at the bottom. The price, he surmises, for you.

An auction. Right.

Tonight, HER supplies. He feels the clinical amusement in the back of his head. Oh, but Puppy—

To offset the generosity, HER pulls up the amount he carries on him. Cruel. Mocking. It's compared and contrasted. The difference is staggering. He can't afford you. Doesn't even come close to the asking price.

(Couldn't even afford the entrance fee.)

Sorry, Puppy—

The mechanised warble is pushed down before it can start.

That's fine, he reasons, dismissing it all. Dismissing HER.

He has no intention of paying for what's rightfully his, anyway.

The bordello—boasting some strange mix between classic geisha-sensualism and modern sex appeal (and somehow missing the mark for both)—appears closed for the night.

A fallacy, of course, as everyone is just inside. Squirrelled away with cheap vodka, cigars. Waiting their turn to cash in their victory tokens.

He looks at your window, shutters closed with a looping scrawl on neon pink that says be back soon~!, and makes his approach.

There's no plan for this. Not that he's ever really had any to begin with—most of what he does is driven by an endless need to fulfil someone else's objective through the brutal physicality he wields—but he makes an effort to go stealthier than usual.

He doesn't want to risk triggering a failsafe that will keep him away from you any longer than he needs to be.

Not that it matters—

These lowlives—some assemblage of Creeps, local gangsters, and general nobodies—are mere nuisances in the face of his ice-cold ire. His rage. Tearing through them is nothing. The fight they put up is flimsy. Tissue paper defences. He supposes they never really anticipated him showing up to reap his dues at an event that has been advertised for several weeks now (how he missed your face on those gaudy billboards hanging above the taverns in the red light district, he'll never know). A high-class event, they snicker from behind the thin doorways.

Politicians gambling away public funds to buy pretty prizes. Gangsters, pimps, all looking to pocket more flesh for their own abattoirs.

Killing them is insubstantial to this cleanup mission, he knows, but there's a thrum of vindictiveness that roars through his chest when they squeal, begging for forgiveness that they must know won't come.

(He's barely merciful on a good day.)

HER is a cheerleader in his ear, egging him on. Go, Puppy! Get your prize, Puppy! and he lets it fuel himself forward until he's covered in viscera and gore—a jaw bone breaks off, tacks on to the lip of his boot; blood drenches the sleeves of his leather jacket, stains his collar—and surrounded by pulpy, broken bodies. Alone.

It's quiet, now. The only sound is his heavy, ragged breath muffled by the mask covering his head. The harsh thud of his pulse cottons his ears, blotting out everything except the heady rush of blood raging in his veins.

HER watches with an alien sense of amusement that prickles in the back of his head. Wrongness permeates from their mirth as they take in the carnage spread out amongst the halls.

It all means nothing to him. A means to an end.

Nothing to them, either. To HER. This is a game.

The wet end of the pipe drags against the herringbone floor in a metallic squeal done to announce his presence from anyone unlucky enough to survive the brutal apathy of his initial assault. He hears nothing. Just the grind of rusting metal on wood. Porous. Hollow.

It all ends in a muted bloodbath. A bloodied trail of bodies leads right to your door.

Untouched, despite the garish horror painting the walls in rotting red. Congealed blood blackened under the thin oxygen in the room.

There's no movement from within, but he knows you're here. Can feel you through the wood. Catch the rabbiting of your heart. Your gasping breath.

With the hand not clutching the pipe, he reaches for the handle, turns. Locked. He expected it. You must have propped something up against the knob during the first onslaught of his fury. Smart.

But it's not enough to keep him out.

He pries open the door to your room with one hand, shattering the flimsy back of the vanity stool you jimmied beneath the handle. Cute. Resourceful. His heart pounds in his chest. He can't wait to have you.

Go, Puppy!

He takes a moment to shut the door behind him—no escape—before he slowly swivels his head toward you. Taking you in.

(Finally.)

You stare at him with that same look on your face as before. Terror, he reasons, and tries to piece it together on the men who looked at him as he cracked skulls open with the blunt end of his pipe, tore jugulars out with his bare hand. Fear, he thinks. They look at him with fear. Loathing.

But you're missing that one. There's no hatred on your face, no curses spat out even when he stalks forward with the same steady gait as always, the bloody end of his pipe leaving a macabre breadcrumb trail for anyone to follow.

There's a sea of dead bodies behind him. Businessmen. Lowlives. Commonfolk. The other girls. It didn't matter.

They were in the way.

All of them.

(The man, too, who came to collect you like a prize winner at a seedy casino. His head, in particular, is rendered into nothing but a pulpy mess of grey matter, tissue, blood, and bone.)

He thinks you might cry, but you don't. You stare. Owlish. Wary. Between the thick, brick wall—your cage—and him, there's nowhere for you to run. He slows at that, coming to a stop several paces away. Watching you back. Assessing. Calculating.

You're nervous. Shaken. He's under no disillusionment that you hadn’t heard the screams just outside of your door. Heard the thuds. The cracking of skulls. The breaking of bones. A bloodbath only several paces away. A massacre. Scary enough to you that it made you try to save yourself, to lock whatever it was that stalked the halls from getting to you.

How terrified you must have been.

Puppy doesn't feel much for anyone. Maybe the odd moment of sympathy for the inhabitants of his city, the ones who beg and plead for his help with the things they can't control, can't fight back against. He extends small mercies where he sees fit.

But for some odd, unfathomable reason, he has the sudden inkling to reach out. Pity. You're so pitiful to him. Poor thing. You poor, poor—

In a moment of pure absurdity, the words: are you good? flash across the curved plain of his mask, and you make a noise somewhere between a yelp and snort. Mangled in the back of your throat.

“Does it matter?”

And, oh—

Your voice does something to him. Turns his insides liquid. He's melting, he thinks. Burning up and turning to a heap of molten ore by your feet.

He tries to reign himself back in, forcing himself to focus. Focus. Puppy ponders your question for a moment before ultimately deciding that it doesn't.

(Or, rather, it does; but maybe not in the way you'd want it to.)

In the end, he gives you a shrug. Banal. Dismissive. It makes your brows furrow. A valley forms between them. Irritation bleeds through the flat apathy you forged.

There's a scoff. He thinks you look prettier like this—a feral, hissing cat. He wants you beneath him, clawing at his chest. Spitting curses in his name.

(Wants to try to tame you. Wants to fail.)

“Of course,” you hiss, hands fisting in the sheer fabric of your kimono. “You're no different from anyone else, are you?”

Puppy shakes his head in response. He isn't a good man. He's made of spare parts stitched together to create an amalgamation of likeness to some king he barely even knows. A megalomaniac. A madman.

In all honesty, there probably isn't much that separates him and the men who vied for your affection, paid for your attention. Threw coins toward an auction just for the possibility of taking you home.

But there is a difference.

Puppy will have you. This he is certain of.

There's nowhere for you to go. This city doesn't want you. Doesn't deserve you. He'll take you with him, chained at the wrist if he has to. Shackled. Caged.

You are so funny, Puppy, HER intones, amused. A puppy with a puppy.

Yes, he decides. His puppy. All his.

He found you first.

Puppy lets the pipe—drenched in blood, bone; in viscera that makes you recoil sharply with a flinch—fall to the floor with a metallic clang. With his hands free, soaked, he lifts them up, offering his palms to you.

It's not a peace offering, but he's seen what untamed cats can do when cornered. And while you're no match for his unfathomable physicality, he'd rather you didn't hurt yourself trying to maim him.

Still—

Mine, mine, mine flashes, lightspeed, across his visor. He gives you a moment to let the words, the meaning sink in.

—you’re his. With that ironclad notion comes the freedom to do whatever he wants.

Whenever he wants.

And then he moves.

The difference in your size is almost hideous. Grotesque. He towers above you—a looming mountain—and knows that it would take at least three of you side by side to even hope to match the width of him.

His hands, too, dwarf you.

It curls something noxious inside of his guts. A poison-soaked miasma that subsumes in his bloodstream, pulses in the base of his spine. A hunger. A heat. You're so small in comparison to him. So delicate. He could break you in two, shatter every bone in your body.

And there's not much you could ever hope to do to stop it.

He shudders at the thought, and knows he likes it more than he should.

Later, though. Soon. He wants your hands on his skin. Wants to see you come to terms with the vastitude of him, and watch as the realisation that you are well and truly his sinks in.

He reaches out, palms upward, and waits.

It doesn't take long.

(Well-trained, is the hiss. He ignores it, lest he claw his own skin off.)

You flick a scathing glare in his direction first, caustic and hateful, but you bend to his whims without a word. You touch him hesitantly, running the soft pads of your fingers over the metal of his hand, feeling the bumps. The groves in his circuitry.

Everyone so far has tried to chisel in his head. Galvanise him down into a mindless toy (HER makes a noise, he ignores it), but you seem to avoid his head. Touching the places on his arms not smeared with blood or gun oil, running down the thick wires in his artificial arm. The veins on his real one. The hair dusting his knuckles.

Then you spot the blood caked, dried and blackened, under his nails, and you recoil slightly. Pulling back. Dropping to his chest.

His breath whirs out in a deep tremble when you shiver at the muscles—hard iron, brass—that hums under your palms. It's tentative. Soft, almost. Exploratory as you navigate the newness of his body and this strange situation you've found yourself in.

There's a fractured look on your face that he can't quite place when you slide the cup of your hand over his beating heart.

(Surprise, maybe. You must have thought him a machine.)

You stay there for a moment, quiet. Pensive. Gaze inward as you mull something over, something he can't fathom, can't ascertain.

“You…” your voice comes out on a stilted breath after a brief silence. “You killed them all.”

It's not really a question. He grunts his affirmative, anyway, and reaches out to settle his hands on your hips. You jump when he touches you. Tense and angry in his arms, but you let him pull you in close. Are almost docile when he tucks his chin against your crown, lets his hands slide to the small of your back.

You make no move to pull away. He lets that notion marinate in the back of his head, bending reality to suit his whims when he decides that you must not want to. He hugs you tighter, nuzzling the top of your head when you shudder.

He's not sure where you're going with this particular line of thought. Doesn't, entirely, see why it matters much. Everyone is dead except him, you. The only two breathing in this disgusting bordello that reeks of thick, spicy incense and myrrh to hide the scent of sweat, stale cigarettes, and sex. Something plastic. Synthetic. Lubricant, he imagines. Latex.

Knowing that you spent an insurmountable time in this cesspool has anger spiking inside of him once more, but it's quelled, immediately, when remembers what the other men who lurked in these dilapidated corners look like now. Viscera, tissue, and bones are now all painting the cheap panelled walls in a deep maroon splatter.

(He'll burn it all down before he leaves tomorrow.)

He keeps you close, shackled. A parody of a lover's embrace.

Your hand drifts up, a slow crawl to the base of his neck. Puppy lifts his chin. The bright red question mark shading the room in an ethereal neon glow.

“You killed them,” you repeat, knuckles grazing the over-sensitive skin where his mask melds to flesh. “But you didn't kill me. Why?”

He feels the press against his jugular. A soft ache in his throat. It doesn't hurt, but he knows you want it to.

Puppy's puppy has fangs.

Puppy reaches up, snatching your wrist in his mechanical hand. Feels, instantly, the grind of delicate bone under harsh, unyielding metal.

You don't flinch.

“Why?”

Under the harsh edges of your anger, your feigned indifference, he catches sight of the look that drew him to you in the first place. Absolute despondency. A vacancy in the hollow of your eyes. Misery, maybe.

If he were someone else, he might have felt pity for you. Ripped from the arms of whatever birthed you into existence, thrown into this disgusting hovel, and now—

A pet for a pet.

Kept. Chained.

Puppy will keep you forever. He knows this just as sure as he knows his heart pulses in his chest. The sun rises. Falls. He'll take you with him, wherever he goes.

You're his.

A fine consolation prize you've found for yourself, HER quips, and he's content to ignore it for now. Their amusement is clinical, a kittenish scratch in the back of his head.

But he does agree. You're a fine prize, aren't you? His little treasure found in a trash heap.

His, his, his

all his, all his, all his—

(You look at the promises, the answers, flickering across the surface of his visor, and shudder—)

Puppy doesn't say anything when you lead him by the wrist to sit on your bed, simply opting to follow along with your demands for now. It's cute, he finds, the way you try to bully him around even when your hands shake, knees tremble.

He rests his forearms on his thighs, letting his hands dangle in the space between his spread knees—the picture of ease; the manufactured torpor of predator—and he waits. Watching, rapturously, as you flit in front of him. All soft and pensive as you look him over. Taking stock of the blood on his leather jacket. The stains on his pants. The flat surface of his mask, broken only by the protrusion of his nose.

Boss was a megalomaniac. A narcissist. Knowing that he's made in his image, his likeness (spare parts; a fractured failsafe), he can only assume you like what you see when you look at these scraps that make him whole.

Whatever you find, it shades the appraising glance in a hue of calculative decision—suddenly firm, now: wily.

“Okay,” you say, and bring your hands to the sash holding the sheer kimono in place. “I'll be yours—” his hands twitch; reaching for you already. You dance out of the way from his grasping knuckles with a scoff. “Only if you're mine, too.”

If he had a mouth, he might have grinned.

You seem content to take the lead after a noncommittal response to your demand of shared ownership (the idea alone of which has him thickening in his slacks), placing your hands on his shoulders to steady yourself before swinging your thigh over his lap, taking (what he hopes becomes) your rightful seat.

It places your barely covered centre right against his prominent bulge, sending an electric buzz down the base of his spine. The look when you feel him throb against you is equally as scathing as it is feverish, and nearly comes undone at your glare alone, panting harshly against your collarbones.

“Down boy,” you murmur silkily before dropping your cunt right over him.

Whiteout. Static. He sees nothing but blurry slashes of red, red, red—

His hands are bruising on your waist, and he's not sure if he's pulling you closer to him or pushing him away. Maybe both. Tugging, tugging, until he can feel the red-hot heat of you burning through the fabric of his trousers.

You can't kiss him so you pepper sweet, soft kisses against the column of his throat, teeth nipping the seam where metal meets flesh. Marking the column of his pale throat up with the brand of your claim. Your ownership.

A collar in red, black, yellow, and blue—

He doesn't have a mouth to claim you back, but his hands punch your flesh until it's pressed harshly against bone. Bursting blood vessels under your skin. It puddles there. He runs his fingers against the pool of blood that softens your skin, and understands, then, why the sting in his neck feels so fucking good.

He feels consumed. In a tailspin. You grind against him, and he sees stars.

Puppy can't think when you do that, and you seem to know this because you don't stop rolling your hips over his straining cock, pinched tight in his slacks. It's too much.

He wants you. Wants you. Wants you.

You pull back, and huff at the projection on his face.

“You're impatient,” you say, but you're slipping your hand inside the waistband of his pants in spite of your exasperation, fingers dancing over the soft skin of his groin.

It feels molten when you touch the base of his cock with your knuckle. Just a nudge. Just a press. He thinks he could come undone like this. Just like this. With your hands on him. Soft, dewy skin.

But he wants you pinned under him, taking him. Has thought about nothing except your knees spread, thighs open. Pussy bare to him. Full of him. Nothing but him. Him, him. It made him ache. Burn. A low grade fever in his guts at the enticing image of you beneath him. Pretty lips open, moaning. Eyes wide, doeish.

“You’re too—”

You start to say something, but he can't take this anymore. It's too soft. Too gentle. He wants you bent over. Wants to be inside of you already.

And so, he follows through.

You make a noise in the back of your throat when he gets his hands on the underside of your knees, and unceremoniously tips you back onto the velveteen sheets. The flimsy silk of your kimono spreads, unveiling the softness of your body. Your bare breasts, nipples pebbling under his stare.

With it haloed around you in an inky black spill over your arms, leaking from beneath your body, he thinks you look ethereal. Unreal. Otherworldly.

The slip covering your pussy is barely in the way. He can see dewy lips peeking out from the sliver of black nestled across your slit, wet and red. Red. Red—

“P–Puppy—!” You yelp when he tugs his trousers down with one hand, the other keeping your leg up, pinched tight on the underside of your knee. Spread open. Nearly bare.

He presses the heel of your foot where his neck meets shoulder, keeping it in place with a soft pat to your calf, before dropping his hand down to join the other in ripping the thin scrap of fabric keeping you from him. He's graced with another yelp, but it isn't in pain or distress, and he ignores it outright.

Mindless, it seems, in this pursuit to be inside of you as quickly as possible.

Your panties—if they could even be considered such a thing—are pushed deep into his back pocket. Saved for later.

And then he turns back to you. Spread open. Waiting and willing under him. The sight of you like this steals his breath from his lungs. Sparks embers in his guts that smoulder, billowing smoke through the hollow of his chest.

He tastes ash in the back of his throat. Wishes, suddenly, that he could quench it on the slick, hot taste of you—

Gripping himself in one hand, he presses the blunt head of his cock against your slit, glistening from your wetness in the jaundiced glow of the moody light above your head. He's glad he didn't cut the power to this shithole because the way you quiver beneath him as he rubs between your folds is nothing short of mesmerising.

You're wet. Soaked. All for him, even if you keep hissing out that this is just a bodily reaction to stimulus, don't be so full of yourself, you psychopath—

His hand drops. The flat side of his thumb pressed against your clit. You arch so prettily when he touches you like this, knees shaking, eyes fluttering. He presses harder, makes small circles against your sensitive flesh that have you whimpering. Whining.

“No more, no more, no more—”

He can feel the molten centre of you flutter around his weeping tip. Silken, inviting. He wants more. Knows that you want it just as bad, too.

Impatient now, he lifts his fingers from your clit, and wraps it tight around your thigh, gaining leverage before he slowly, agonizingly, begins to presses inside—just the tip, the first inch—but the way you wrap around him (all tight, wet silk) makes his mind grow fuzzy around the edges. Electricity rockets down his spine.

He thinks he blacks out for a second, short-circuiting at the white-hot pleasure of being inside of you, because when his eyes focus, he's pushed all the way inside, trembling above you.

You're whining his name with tears dripping down your temples, legs quivering around him, and he wonders if this is that version of heaven, the real one, he'd read about once.

It's too much. Not enough. He rolls back on his hunches to see the way you swallow him down to the base. Pulled taut, and far too pretty for what he's doing to you. Poor, pitiful thing. He'll ruin you, he's sure. Mess you up so badly, no one else would ever be able to touch you without thinking of him. Only him.

It's a thought that sends a thrill down his spine, and he rolls his hips just to watch you squirm. Builds up a sickeningly sweet momentum as he forces your body to acclimate to his girth, to the unyielding stretch of his cock. You're too tight around him, and he worries that the taut stretch might be too much for you, but it's passing. Temporal. He knows he doesn't really care. You'll take it all. All of him.

Nothing will tear him away from this pretty cunt of yours.

It flicks against a long dormant part inside of his hindbrain, and he pants for it. Chasing this feeling, this high.

The slow crawl within you isn't enough to satiate himself. His belly rumbles. His throat burns.

Puppy gives you no warning before he snaps his hips into you as hard as he can.

Your wet cries start the beginning notes of his new ascension, and he pounds into you harder. Faster. He fucks you like he's starved for it. Aching. Desperate. Belatedly, he thinks about your pleasure, about bringing you to the same highs the tight clutch of your pussy is bringing him, but he can't focus. Can't think. It's mindless, this lust. Turns him inside out and makes him greedy. Selfish.

He wants, wants—

Never, in all of his insignificant life, has he ever wanted something as much as this. As you. Pressed beneath him, mewling out his name as he forces himself inside of you, as deep as he can reach—

(and then deeper still because Puppy wants to crawl inside of you; want to nestle against your heart, tucked under the bracket of your ribs and with the way he fucks into you like this, bed whining in protest with each furious, sloppy snap of his hips, he just might make that dream a reality—)

—and fuck. Fuck.

Somewhere in the tangled web of his thoughts, all white-noise, static pleasure, he can hear HER utter things in secret under the heavy pants of his ragged breath (things like, you deserve this, Puppy; good boy, Puppy; treat your toy—kindly—Puppy), and it spurns him on. Makes him ache to drive those mechanised whispers out of his head, filling the space they leave behind with the sweet echo of your voice in ear.

Scream. For. Me flashes across the visor in bloody red, and he sees when it registers in your glossy, wet-eyed stare. Cuts through the haze of sex, the lashings of fear that still curl in the shaded valleys when you look at him, and digs its talons into tissue, bisecting the chemical slurry turning your thoughts to mush. There's a moment of clarity. Brief, ephemeral, because he's pressing in as deep as he can once more, grinding against some spot inside of you that makes your eyes roll, and your head drop.

Name

It flashes again, and finally—

Your pretty mouth drops open, spittle running down the corners as you struggle to keep up with his frantic, feverish pace, but nothing comes out—nothing he wants to hear, at least. Please, you beg, and he feels the plea like a punch to his gut.

You're so pretty when you beg.

But that's not what he wants.

Bad girl

It comes as a warbling flicker. Distorted in his anger.

You shudder under him, eyes widening when he drops his hands down to your throat, palm swallowing you whole from chin to sternum. For him, it's as gentle as he could be, but you gasp for breath, tears pebbling in the corner of your eyes. Hazy, murky, with fear and pleasure; the warring sensations separated only a hairline fracture, a thin sliver.

He shifts forward and has you take on more of his weight, stifling more air from your lungs, and making you feel the power flex of his massive body cocooning you entirely. No escape.

Your hands unfurl from the white-knuckled grip on the sheets, slamming against his shoulders as you try, futilely, to push him away. You're frenzied. Desperate.

Puppy finds it endlessly charming.

His hand lifts, offering a slight respite that you seize eagerly, greedily, gulping down wet, feverish lungfuls of air.

“Y–you bastard—”

He likes it when you cuss at him. A feral, hissing cat. He falls over you once more, shadowing you under his bulk, and pistons his hips into the apex of your thighs, feeling the slickness of your cunt drench his groin.

Angry, spitting thing. And yet—

You're so fucking wet for him.

You like this. The way he bends you mercilessly to his whims. Folds you in half.

His hand stays around your throat, feeling each breath and moan that reverberates up his arm. The other drops from your knee, falling to the black, iron headboard that grinds into the wall with each thrust. Centering himself. Gaining more leverage.

Puppy fucks you like this. Trapped beneath him—a tumulus over you—and unable to do much except take his cock however he decides to give it to you. And give it to you, he does—

(Mercilessly. Pounding you so hard, your breasts jerk, and your eyes flash vividly as you struggle to stay afloat in that equinox of pleasure-pain that rages over you.)

HER says he doesn't have a face, and maybe that's true. It might just be a flat mess of wires sutured to flesh. But

Puppy wants to devour you. Swallow you whole. Wants to taste the sweetness of your cunt on his tongue. Feel your lips on his. He wants to pry apart your chest and suckle from the marrow in your ribs.

He wants you.

Wants you. Wants you—

He's not entirely sure if he's human, but he breathes like you. Heaves. Gasps. Can feel the wet, molten clench of your pussy around the thickness of his cock as he spears you open. Pleasure blooms at the base of his spine. Punches through his groin. Bludgeons him. It makes his head feel heavy, fuzzy. Somnolent with the mindless drive ticking in the back that pushes him forward. Makes him want to imbue himself in whatever it was that made you. A pithy god of old. Stardust.

He wants to remake himself in your image. Spare parts just for you—

How romantic, Puppy.

“Fuck—!”

Your voice is saccharine in his ear. A velvet gust of smoke curls in the back of his head.

With his hand around your throat, he feels the words before he hears them. It sends a thrill down his spine—dancing fingers pressing tight to each vertebra as it splits open the ventricles housing his spinal fluid, letting it all leak out into his bloodstream.

It's ecstasy, maybe. Or the closest thing to it he could ever reach.

“What are you doing to me?” You slur the words out against his metal cheek, hushed and fractured. Raw. “It feels so—good—oh, Puppy—!”

He shifts his pelvis into the bracket of your thighs. The head of his cock rubbing over that spot inside of you that makes your eyes roll back, and your cunt squeeze him tight. A pretty box wrapped, velveteen, around him.

There's friction in the pit of his stomach. Tension in his groin. It pulls taut, feels heavy.

He's close. So, so close—

You seem to realise this, too, your eyes growing wide once more as he twitches inside of you, pressed deep. Cockhead nudging into your seal.

“No, no—”

Despite your protests, your body is tightening up, quivering under him.

He takes it as an invitation.

Puppy's hips stutter to a slow grind as he hits the apex of his pleasure, cock throbbing, spitting his release, deep inside of you.

Around him, beneath him, you tremble. Shake. He can feel the tremors of your own hastily reached climax when you squeeze his cock tight in a vice, undulating pulses that seem to rocket from the sensitive nerve endings around him all the way to his brainstem.

It's good. Too good.

He doesn't have any other ambition right now outside of burying himself inside of you over and over again.

He wonders how deep his spare parts go for a belated second, how much of himself was forged in Boss’ likeness, but dismisses it immediately. It's unimportant to him.

“You're awful,” you gasp sweetly in his ear. “Terrible. A terrible man—” And fuck. He wants to ruin you again.

Puppy pulls you close, pawing at you until you're situated in his arms. Manoeuvred around like a little doll. He finds you precious, really. So malleable. So soft. He presses you flat to the lumpy mattress and folds himself over you. Thick thigh strewn over your hip, pinning you down. An arm tucked under your nape, bent at the elbow to curl over your shoulder, fingers brushing your collarbones. Shackled.

This is new. Foreign. He's never felt this before—all soft edges; sickeningly sweet. Unable to help himself, he bears his weight down, arching above you. Staring, openly and unabashedly. Drinking you in.

He wants to crawl inside of you. Worm his way to the place where you burn.

You're stiff in his arms. Silent.

But that's fine. That's okay. He'll melt you eventually. Make you understand that Puppy is yours now, silly. All yours. And you're—

All his.

Just like you wanted.

He owns you. And in turn, is owned by you.

It's fitting, he finds, considering all his miserable existence was spent handing his leash off to whoever grabbed it quick enough. Their hands were rough. Indelicate. He takes your hand in his, knuckles bleached white from the quivering fist you've rolled them into, and pries your fingers loose. Threads his between the gaps before you can swat him away.

He can feel your pulse like this, pressed palm to palm. A precious little thing. So fleeting. A hummingbird in an ivory cage.

Poor thing.

“What—what are you going to do?” You rasp, voice hoarse from the grip he had on your neck. The sound of it—gritty sand, smoke—makes him shiver. He likes it, he finds. Wonders if you'll sound the same if he scraped your throat raw with the tips of his fingers.

His cock.

You huff when you feel him twitch against your hipbone—cock tacky from his cum, your wet cunt—but make no move to pull away.

He purrs.

Keep you, is projected and you suck in a sharp breath like you'd expected that. Then, he adds a heart. A red one. Mine.

“I'm not yours. I'm not anyone's—” he doesn't bother correcting you. You'll learn soon enough. “And you don't even know me. Why do you even want this? I could be a liability. I could kill you in your sleep—”

Could, not should, he notes, fondly.

Hahahaha passes by and you let out an aggrieved snarl at the sight. “You're so fucking horrible—!”

He nods in response, and presses the jut of his nose to your sweat-slicked hairline. Breathes you in. Amber. Humus. Loam. You smell like ozone. The streets after a heavy rainstorm.

You smell good. Like home.

“Do you even like me? Or am I just something to fuck?” is whispered so softly into the air that he might have missed it if he hadn't been trying to suffuse atoms.

He hears the fragility in your voice. The paper-thin foundation holding you aloft.

In all honesty, he doesn't know what he feels for you. It's all—

Abstract, perhaps. Grainy smears of feelings, sensation, all roiled around inside of him. Intangible.

He just knows he wants you. Has wanted you since he first saw you, sitting all pretty in a glass cage. Untouchable to anyone except the highest bidder in your upcoming auction.

(Spare parts. A pretty bird in a cage.)

What a pair you make.

He likes that, though. The way you fill this barren hole in his chest. Pilliating the listlessness that rolls like a marble inside of him. In turn, he wants to do the same. To stuff you full of him. So full, there's room for nothing else. No one else.

There are flickers of life buried deep within you that he longs to dredge up. He thinks you'd be beautiful with your hands wrapped around his pipe (disgusting, Puppy), and that, for him, is enough.

He's sure one day you'll feel the same.

Until then—

His fingers tighten around yours and you wince at the pressure before gasping when the metal gears in his joints begin locking in place. Stiffening. Shackled to him, now, until he decides to release you.

Goodnight flashes. He sees the words reflected in the glossy canyons of your eyes. Smeared red bleeding into the dawning realisation that you are his.

And no one else's.

There's no escape.

#Puppy (Ruiner) x Reader #Puppy x Reader #ruiner #huuuuu #imagine staying up all night writing unhinged smut for puppy from ruiner after seeing one gifset lmao #and doing it while the wips i've promised to finish weep from neglect in the background #am so tired and this is so so niche but i need to flex my smut skills for some upcoming fics and this was the best time to do it me thinks

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ky-landfill · 1 year

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#fic rec #Wineskin by sevansa #bruce wayne #tim drake #vampire bruce #neglected baby vamp tim #must protecc #batdad #batfam #au where adult vamps need to feed fledglings and janet and jack have been a bit shit at it #batfam adds tiny tim to inventory #darling (affectionate)

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five-and-dimes · 8 months

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Thinking about Dream/ the Endless and their shitty parents and it got me thinking about some absurd situation where Dream somehow gets turned into a literal child. He gets dropped on Hob's doorstep while other folks look for a solution, and Hob is over the goddamn moon to see tiny Dream, but he learns very quickly that tiny Dream is, in fact, a menace. But not for the reasons he would have suspected.

Dream is very much a neglected child. Hob constantly finds him climbing up dangerous surfaces to get something he wants because it doesn't even occur to him to ask Hob for help. He hoards anything he can get his tiny hands on because best case scenario he'll never be given anything ever again and worst case scenario it'll be taken away from him. He gets upset when Hob pays attention to him because he doesn't know what to DO, he knows how to take care of himself, he knows how to be ignored, he knows how to be scolded or punished, but Hob just sits with him and asks him questions or offers to play and Dream is so confused it makes his child emotions go haywire.

Hob is very sad, and loves Dream very much, so he spends a few days pouring all his love and care into this child, and then once he has adult Dream back he keeps doing it, because that little kid is still in there somewhere, and he needs all the hugs he can get and Hob is more than happy to give it to him.

#the sandman #dreamling #kind of #having Thoughts #no I'm not making this into a full fic I have TOO MANY WIPS #thoughts and ramblings #poor neglected endless #also Night creeps me out

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rudeflower · 4 months

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In the brief sad time Jess goes back to New York after the car crash production spent a lot of money to show us things aren't okay at home. Besides telling not going to school and choosing to spend all day in a park they went further !

When Jess calls Rory they show him at a pay phone on the street at night in the rain. This in contrast with Rory in her warm home with a ceiling and her mother.

They could have shown him at his mom's apartment. If all they wanted to do was show Jess was in New York and wanted to talk to Rory all they needed was cordless phone and a beige wall with a vague NYC poster.

But instead they used a significant amount of their production budget to access or build a city street, pay extras, pay for a RAIN MACHINE!!

It's not a casual accident that lets us conclude Jess is desperately avoiding going home to the point of standing in the cold rain at night. They paid a lot of money for us to know that!

#jess mariano #uh oh i am going to have to write so much fic #Gilmore girls #if you think fandom is making up that canon suggests jess was seriously abused and neglected i don't know how to talk to you

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estrellami-1 · 6 months

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If I Should Stay

A few quick housekeeping things! First: a friendly reminder that my taglists are CLOSED! If you’re new (or if you’ve been her the whole time and just got here too late for the taglists), you can subscribe to the “#if I should stay” tag and follow along that way! I do my very best to post every 4 days. Secondly, if you’d like to see every part of this in one place, the ellipses below now links to the second part of the fic taglist! I’ve gone back and edited all previous parts so now everything should have a link imbedded in the ellipses. Unfortunately, if you reblogged an older version of a part, you won’t have the link in the ellipses. If you read all this, kudos! Now onto the story.

Part 1 | . . . | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30

They get to school and rush in just before the bell. Steve catches Eddie’s eye and blushes before he ducks his head, sliding into a seat and pulling a notebook out from his backpack.

He finds it more difficult than normal to focus, but he does his best, breathing a sigh of relief when the bell finally rings.

“Hey, Eds,” he murmurs as they walk out of class.

“Eds,” he parrots, something in his gaze that Steve can’t quite parse out.

Steve blinks, frowning slightly. “Do you not want me to call you that? ‘Cause I can-”

“No,” Eddie says. “No, it’s fine, just… new.” A light flush paints his cheeks. “I like it.”

“I’m glad,” Steve says, smiling softly.

“Steve,” someone calls from down the hallway, and Steve hides his wince when he turns to see Tommy heading his direction.

He sees the moment Tommy notices who’s with him; sees the moment his face changes. “The freak bothering you, man?” He asks, getting between Steve and Eddie.

“No,” Steve says, maybe too sharply for the way Tommy looks back at him, confused. He takes a breath, tries again. “We’re fine.” He looks at Eddie, wants to say so much, but sees him subtly shake his head.

He takes another breath. “I’ll see you later, yeah?” He asks Eddie instead. “For, uh, the project?”

“Project?” Tommy looks between the two of them, brows furrowed.

“Yeah, for Mrs. Click’s class,” Eddie says smoothly. “She hasn’t assigned it for you yet?”

Tommy looks to Steve, trying to confirm, and Steve nods. “She just assigned it, a two-page paper about the person she pairs you up with. She’ll probably stagger it, though, so you probably won’t get it for another week still.”

Only half a lie; that had been an assignment, and she had assigned it roughly a week later, but he and Eddie hadn’t gotten it yet.

Behind Tommy’s back, Eddie winks at Steve and walks away.

Steve moves to walk to his locker, Tommy following close behind. “Man, it sucks that you got stuck working with that freak,” he says sympathetically, shaking his head.

“Nah, man, Eddie’s cool,” Steve says, forcing the cheer to stay in his voice.

Tommy snorts. “What, that fag?”

“Stop it, man,” Steve says, a note of warning in his voice.

“Don’t tell me you’re sticking up for him,” Tommy sneers.

“Y’know what?” Steve says, stopping short in the hallway. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m tired of being an asshole like you, like my dad. Maybe I want to meet people and have them like me for me, not for what I can do for them, or for the money or the big house.” He shakes his head. “Stay the same if you want, change if you want, but I’m done.”

Tommy grabs his arm, and Steve yanks it away, glaring at Tommy. “Don’t do that,” he says. “And leave Eddie alone.”

“Or what?” Tommy says, grabbing at Steve’s arm again.

Steve intercepts, grabbing his wrist, giving a warning squeeze. “You really don’t want to find out,” he mutters, dropping Tommy’s wrist and walking away before Tommy can get a word in edgewise.

Robin brushes past him on his way to his locker. “Proud of you, dingus,” she murmurs, and he does his best to hide the smile that brings to his face.

Carol’s waiting by his locker, popping her gum obnoxiously. “So,” she said. “Heard you were a bitch to Tommy.”

“Takes one to know one,” Steve replies. “If you’re here to convince me to stay an asshole, feel free to leave whenever you want.”

She shrugs. “Tommy can also be a bitch sometimes,” she agrees. “But the Hagan name holds almost as much power as the Harrington family.”

Steve offers her a crooked smile. “There’s more important things in the world than names.”

“Maybe,” she shrugs, unconcerned. “You know he’s majorly pissed at you.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I don’t really care.”

“I didn’t expect you to. Just thought you should know. He’s gonna try to get back at you.”

Steve snorts. “He’s welcome to try.”

“Alright.” Carol shrugs again, gently nudges his shoulder with her fist. “See you around?”

“Maybe,” he agrees, looking at her. “What do you see in him?”

She sighs, looks down the hallway. “I think once upon a time I saw who he could be.”

“And now?”

“I’m afraid of who I’ll be if I leave him.”

Steve offers her a commiserating smile. “You’ll be yourself,” he says. “But it can definitely be scary.”

She grins, sharp, pulling her mask back on. “Damn, Steve, when did you get smart?”

He smirks at her as he shoulders his backpack. “It’s not that. It’s that I finally care enough to say something.”

With that, he walks off to his next class, mentally thinking about his schedule and holding in a groan. Chemistry. He hated chemistry, the first time, and something tells him he’s going to hate it just as much this time around.

Permanent Taglist: @justforthedead89 @ilovecupcakesandtea @madigoround @bookbinderbitch @suddenlyinlove @nburkhardt @artiststarme @paintsplatteredandimperfect @i-less-than-three-you @alyelf @quarble @messrs-weasley @littlewildflowerkitten @vankaar @starman-jpg @bornonthesavage @steddie-there @goodolefashionedloverboi @andienotannie @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @platinum-sunset @just-ladyme @steddiestains @swimmingbirdrunningrock @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @martinskis-lydias @notaqueenakhaleesi @sleepyboosstuff @bestwifehaver @m-owo-n @thatonebadideapanda @finalmoondragon @velocitytimes2 @callmeanythjing @ajeff855 @ilikeititspretty @knitsforthetrail @sillysparrow @that-one-corvid @ace-is-bored @muricel @harpymoth @weirdandabsurd42

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#stranger things #if I should stay #eventual steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #robin buckley #tommy hagan #carol perkins #I kinda love carol in this ngl #like she 100% sees he’s a shitty dude #but right now the easiest thing to do is stay #hes not hurting neglecting or forcing her #time travel fic #fix it fic #time travel fix it #starambles

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mediumgayitalian · 1 month

Text

———

For some reason the lack of a little jingling bell throws her off.

It’s a quintessential diner thing, she supposes. A little bell above the door. There’s the weird decor and the pressed cotton uniforms and the yelling chef and the little bell. It was in both Back to the Future one and two. That’s how she knows she’s right.

But when she pushes open the door with windows so caked with grime she can hardly see through them, there is no little jingle. And when she looks up at the door frame, eyebrows furrowed, it seems sad and lonely. She’s never been so aware of the lack of a sound, the absence of a noise. It makes the rest of the silence of the diner seem eerie, wrong. Dead.

She takes a hesitant step forward, door swinging shut behind her. She realizes as she approaches the ordering counter that her hand rests palm cupped on her belly, and removes it immediately.

“Hello?”

There are a couple groups of people in the back, talking quietly over their food. It doesn’t make the diner seem any less abandoned, somehow. If anything it feels like a TV playing on mute in a hospital. Saturated static.

“Seat yourself, girl. You ain’t never been to a diner before?”

The woman that speaks is tall and plump and harsh-looking. A very strange mixing of features. They’re at odd with the diner-specific yellow uniform she wears, collar pressed but skirt wrinkled. Apron dusted with flour and streaked with machine oil. Face pinched, eyes hard, black hair resting in dainty ringlets along her shoulders. Her name tag only reads the name of the business.

“A couple,” Naomi defends. “One even had a hostess.”

The woman — who must be a manager — raises an eyebrow.

“You see a hostess’ station?”

“No.”

“Then why haven’t you sat yourself?”

“‘Cause I’m not here to eat.”

“Well, then, get the hell out of my restaurant.”

Naomi holds her gaze, tilting up her chin. She will not be swayed by orneriness. “I need a job.”

The manager eyes her critically. Naomi’s hands twitch, and the top of her head feels suddenly itchy. Summer before highschool she’d wrote her first resume — Mama’d drawn her a bath and sat behind her and spent two hours slowly untangling the ratty mess of curls on her head with nothing but a bottle of cheap jasmine conditioner and her own two fingers, telling her about lasting first impressions.

“Go home, kid.”

“I’m not a fu —” She stumbles over her words at the last second, catching herself before that eyebrow can climb any higher. It does, and the other eyebrow begins to climb with it, but she rights herself and powers on. “I can vote,” she says finally. “I can throw on a uniform and get blown up across seas. I can — I can adopt a child, if I so choose. Right now.”

The eyebrows reach critical height, brushing the end of her carefully teased hairline. Naomi watches them and their inspiring journey with intensity, instead of noticing how the manager’s eyes drop down to her stomach, linger, and then return to her face.

“You gonna adopt it right outta your womb, or what?”

Naomi snaps her mouth shut.

“Well,” she says, and nothing else.

The manager sighs. “This ain’t a charity.”

Naomi barely manages to bite the snark back from her voice before she speaks.“I’m not asking for charity. I’m asking for work.”

Eyes shifting to the tables in the back, the manager leans over the counter, long fingers wrapping around the handle of a coffee pot so old the handle has worn right down to plain metal, and walks over to a beckoning customer. She fills a man’s mug with her lips pressed thin, offering a napkin to a child in a high chair.

“And why would I hire some pregnant kid?”

The customer pushes over a stack of plates without moving his eyes from the newspaper in front of him. There’s a woman on the other side of the table, holding a spoon out to the little kid, eyes desperate and tight smile slipping when the kid’s pudgy fist hits and sends the scoop of scrambled eggs flying. The man brings the coffee to his lips and waves the manager away.

“It’s illegal for an employer to discriminate against a pregnant person,” Naomi says finally. That had been drilled into her head by her Mama, too. That and how to keep her finances separate. She’ll have real trouble with that, what with the zero dollars she’ll have by the end of the week.

“Good thing I’m not your employer, then.” The manager sets the plates by a soapy sink, putting the coffee pot back on the hot plate. “Get lost.”

I am lost, Naomi almost says, almost slamming a hand in the counter to catch herself from her suddenly weak knees. She watches the manager watch her, tight little frown furling the corner of her mouth, through the blur of her eyes, swallowing hard around the lump in her throat.

“Please,” she says, too quiet, then tries again: “Please.”

The manager disappears behind a short half-wall, following the sound of an oven dinging. Naomi gasps silently, bowing over the counter, breathing heavily. She curls her hands into fists and presses them, hard, one to her chest and one right under her ribs. Ka-thump, ka-thump, kickkickkick. Kickkick ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-kickthump.

There’s an echoing clatter as a hot tray slams on a stove top. Scrambling upright, Naomi lifts the little door on the counter, scanning the space. The register is ancient and yellowed, buttons so worn with use the labels have worn away. There’s a thread-thin mat at the base of it. The counters are clean but scratched, walls stained but dust-free. The coffeemaker gurgles pathetically. An apron hangs from a hook nailed to the wall by the kitchen window.

As quietly as she can, Naomi slips it over her head. It’s tight around the waist, so she folds it once and ties it around her ribs, instead, letting the straps dangle loosely at the butt of her jeans. She ties her hair quickly behind her head and steps up to the creaky sink, silently moving the pile of dishes to the empty counter. When the clatter in the kitchen starts up again, she turns the water on as quick as she can — hack gurgle rush — and squeezes the mostly empty soap bottle as hard as she can to make up a lather.

“Hell are you doing?” says the manager gruffly, two pies balancing on her oven mitt hands.

Naomi shrugs.

“You deaf, or stupid?”

She thinks if laughter like a lyre and sun golden hair, plucking at her out-of-tune guitar string and asking a similar question. The ghost of a smile pulls across her face.

“Not deaf. And that’s rude.”

A pie plate crinkles under the press of a knife, and the scent of candy cherry mixes with slightly-burnt coffee. Makes her think of Grammy’s house, the smell of the jams she spent sixty years making soaked permanently in the wooden foundations. The manager finishes plating the pie slices and sliding them under the display glass around the same time Naomi suds up the last dirty mug. She watches her red-painted finger tap, tap, tap on her bicep out of the corner of her eye as she rinses it off.

Unplugging the sink, dirty water gurgling as it drains, she points a hesitant elbow at the dishtowel tucked into the managers pocket. She grabs it, threading it around her fingers, twisting the worn pink tail.

“Freezer broke two days ago.” She picks at a loose thread ‘til it pulls clean from the rest of the fabric, balling it up and sliding it into her pocket. She tugs on the fabric one last time, then tosses it, bundled, into Naomi’s waiting hands. “Tables in the back better have their bill by the time I get back from fixin’ it.”

Naomi hunches over the sopping dishes to hide her smile, listening to the scritch scritch click of the manager’s shoes as she stomps away.

———

Di doesn’t believe in paycheques.

“Great way to get ripped off,” she likes to grumble, slapping a stack of 20s bundled in a stapled piece of notebook paper into Naomi’s hands every Friday. She doesn’t think much of taxes, either, or lawyers, or racecar drivers. Naomi doesn’t quite understand that last one, but she knows better than to ask. As far as she’s concerned she’s still on probation, and probably will be if she works at the diner for another four months. Or the rest of her life.

On one hand, Naomi doesn’t have a bank account, so a cheque would be useless to her anyway. The cash she can use immediately and whenever she needs it. On the other hand, which is currently occupied with sewing back closed the hole she gouged in her backseat for the seventeenth week in a row, she has nowhere exactly to put that money, so it stresses her out.

Maybe she should look into an apartment.

Of course there are no apartment buildings in Sheffield. But she’s pretty sure Iraan is a big enough town to have a couple, as squat as they may be, and it’s only a twenty minute drive. There’s more to do there, too, so maybe she’d actually have a reason to take a day off every week. It’s not like she can buy a damn house with the less-than 3000 dollars she has saved up.

Waddling out of her car, she ducks into the diner. You’d think she’d be used to the lack of bell, now, but she finds that she still anticipates it; finds that her brain still quietly signals to her ears to prep for it. It always sets her off, a little.

“You’re late,” says Di critically, uniform hanging over her arm, foot tap tap-ing on the linoleum floor.

“I don’t have a starting time,” Naomi says lightly. “On account that I am not your employee.“

Di huffs, rolling her eyes. Naomi rolls them right back, snatching the uniform from her arms on the way to the bathroom. She has to wear Di’s, now, because she doesn’t fit into her old one. Di is much taller and broader than her and the stupid thing hangs down to her mid-calf, awkwardly drowning her shoulders, but it’s the only thing wide enough to cover her belly and Di refuses to let Naomi just wear her regular clothes.

(“You’re indecent,” she always says, sneering at her jean shorts, but Naomi has learned to translate you’re indecent but also you can’t have bare legs around hot oil, which she’s come to appreciate. Sure, Di makes her clean the bathroom whether or not she needs to crawl around in her knees to stay balanced, but she doesn’t want her burned to death, at least. That’s something.)

“And your hair’s unwashed,” she adds, as if Naomi had not walked away. She reaches up and adjusts Naomi’s collar, like that is going to do anything to change the fact that she looks like she’s wearing a collapsed tent. “You’re going to drive customers away.”

Naomi doesn’t say, you open before the community centre does, so I can’t shower in the mornings. She does not say, I spent last night trying to change the oil on my car when I couldn’t lie down to reach it. She doesn’t say, I’m too scared to sleep in the community centre parking lot, because my windows aren’t tinted and I don’t know what’ll wake me up.

She says, “The only thing scaring customers away is your busted attitude,” and scurries into the kitchen before Di can order her to clean the friers.

———

Naomi’s favourite part of the diner is the radio.

She can’t believe that Di allows it, what with her general distaste for joy in all of its forms. But it’s balanced on the window sill watching over the oven, antenna extended out the torn screen, dials permanently stuck on an old forgotten country channel. Naomi likes to hum along as she works, frying potatoes or kneading dough, twirling around the kitchen with a mop or a broom. It’s nice even when she’s cramping, even when her feet are sore — she likes hollering along to Dolly Parton when she knows Di is listening, want to move ahead, but the boss won’t seem to let me, likes the way her little parasite goes absolutely buck wild whenever Willie Nelson comes on. She can hear it even when she’s in the dining area, plates balanced all up her arms (and on her belly, too, which is one of the many things she has discovered it’s useful for), humming along to scratching dorks and scritching napkins, working 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’.

She amuses herself often by making up lives for the various patrons. They’re close enough to the main highway that they get all sorts driftin’ in, from families with bratty kids who upend their food on the floor for Naomi to clean to men in starched suits who never leave a tip. The regulars she’s gotten to know, like the older, stocky, short-haired woman called Bella who smiles softly at her and leaves more than double her bill every breakfast. Or the two young men, college seniors, she thinks, who come in every Saturday afternoon and laugh loudly and talk about strange subjects and rope her into their conversations when there’s no one around and she’s bored.

Other patrons, though, strangers, she speculates. Like there’s a man in the farthest back corner, now, hunched over in the peeling green vinyl seats, scrawling frantically in a tiny notebook. She imagines he’s a private investigator, chasing a lead, about to discover that the woman on a date on the other end of the diner is cheating on her husband of fifteen years.

“Naomi, if you don’t get your ass back to work.”

She throws her hands up. “There’s nothing to do!”

Di observes the half-empty diner, noting the clean tables, neat counters, sparkling kitchen. Each customer sitting satisfied in their table, coffee mugs full, plates still hefty with food.

“Clean the grout.”

Scowling, Naomi stomps to the kitchen, wrenching open the cupboard under the counter and yanking out the Mr. Clean and scrub brush. It’s an ordeal and a half to get on the floor, wincing at the extra weight on her knees, sitting back on her heels with every spray and keeping one hand on her belly while the other scrubs. I Got Stripes by Johnny Cash starts playing through the radio, and she grits out the lyrics with every drag of the brush through the tiles.

“— and then chains, them chains, they’re ‘bout to drag me down —”

A pair of worn black boots come stomping into her line of vision. Naomi finishes scrubbing at a stubborn smear of grease, relishing in how it submits under her power, then rests her weight on her tired hands and tilts her chin up to glare up at her boss.

“I got stripes, stripes around my shoulders,” she sings defiantly, “chains, chains around my feet —”

“I should whip you, you damn drama queen,” Di says darkly, glaring right back. “Had three separate customers come on up to me askin’ me if I’m mistreatin’ ‘that poor young pregnant girl’.”

Naomi smiles triumphantly.

Di scowls, rolling her eyes hard enough to visibly strain her face, and drops some kind of foam pads at her feet. She stomps off without another word, scowling at the radio.

Poking at the pads, Naomi discovers they’re meant to be strapped to her knees. She slips them on, immediately noticing the relief.

For the rest of her shift, she’s an angel.

Di even almost smiles at her.

———

“Naomi, go home.”

“What happened to kid?” Naomi pants, knuckles going white against the counter. She breathes slowly and carefully through her mouth — in, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, in, two — and grits her teeth, staring determinately at the sticky tabletop until the dizziness fades. “I didn’t even know you knew my name.”

“I don’t.” A roughened hand rests on the small of her back, loosening the too-tight apron straps. “You’re sick, kid.”

“I’m fine.”

She tilts forward. Di barely manages to catch her, settling her slowly on the floor without so much as a comment about how heavy she is.

“The diner is empty, Naomi.” The same roughened hand moves up to the back of her neck, untangling the sweaty strands of hair that stick to her skin. Her voice is unusually soft. “You’re nine months pregnant, kiddo. You need to go home. You need to rest —”

“I need to work.”

With great effort, Naomi shoves her away, standing slowly to her feet. The world is still wobbly and bile climbs up her throat, but she pushes forward, hands half-extended beside her. She reaches back for the wet rag, swiping weakly at the table. An onslaught of nausea makes her pause, mouth clamped shut, breathing quick and deep through dry nostrils.

When she speaks again, Di’s voice is hard. “I’m not asking. Get out of my diner. Go home, or you won’t be allowed back. I won’t be accused of killing some dumbass kid who doesn’t know when to quit.”

“I can’t —” she gags, tears springing in her eyes, desperately trying to wrestle back some control of her body — “there’s nowhere, please, Di, let me —”

She slaps a hand to her mouth, heaving. She hasn’t even — she hasn’t eaten all day. The smell of anything makes her want to vomit. The idea of putting anything more in her body makes her want to peel off her skin. She feels — bloated and freakish and ugly; like an unsuspected astronaut on a sieged spaceship.

Like she’s about to burst.

“Oh, for the love of — Naomi, please tell me you are not nine months pregnant and sleeping in your fucking car.”

Naomi says nothing. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries not to think of Mama’s peony-scented perfume.

“Jesus Christ.”

Stomp, click, stomp stomp. Rattling chain, swishing cardboard. Flicking switch. Turning dial, fading music. Stomp, click, stomp stomp.

Two callused hands on her biceps, dragging her upright.

“C’mon, up you get. Where’re your keys?”

A hand digs around in her apron pocket.

“What, d’you fuckin’ run these over or somethin’? The hell’d you fuckin’ do to these things?”

No jingle on the door. A flipped sign.

“No, obviously you can’t — go get in the fuckin’ passenger seat, dumbass. God.”

Di mutters something about stupid kids and stupider adults, for putting up with them. Naomi smiles tiredly. Daddy used to say that all the time, flicking her on the forehead.

“Roll the window down. You need fresh air.”

The slight breeze coming in from the window is helpful, actually. It’s been a disgustingly hot summer, and Naomi has had to sleep with her windows down to avoid suffocating. She wakes up to mosquito bites in places she frankly did not know could be bitten.

“D’you think you’re going into labour?” Di asks quietly, over Dolly’s crooning. Bittersweet memories, that’s all I’m takin’ with me.

Naomi sighs, shaking her head. Already, the nausea has faded into the background. The sweat cools against her skin, and she stops feeling quite so much like she’s going to die.

“No. It’s only been eight months and a little less than two weeks.”

“…You remember the exact date?”

Well, hello, feverish flush. How I’ve missed you so. Will you do me a favour and cook me alive, while you’re here?

“It was a very memorable occasion,” Naomi mumbles, shrinking back into her seat.

“I see.”

Naomi’s never seen Di look quite so amused before. Her whole face softens, and her brown eyes look warm, for once. Naomi would attack her if she had the strength.

Di cruises slowly down Main St, conscientious of the kids ducking in and out of the shops, laughing with their friends. A tween girl looks over at an older boy and whips back over to her friends when he meets her eyes, the whole group of them descending into delighting shrieks. Naomi watches them with a smile and an ache in her chest. She wonders how Molly’s doing. How Esther’s holding up, how Leela is faring. Jen’s at school, now, all the way up in NYC. She hopes they’re well and tries not to hate them for not being here.

Sheffield’s small, and there’s not a street Naomi hasn’t driven down. She spends most of her free time in the community centre pool or the desert around the diner, sure, but she’s been around. When Di turns on Pine St and follows her all the way down, though, she frowns, looking over and asking a wordless question.

Di doesn’t answer. She’s driven them all the way to the other side of town in less than five minutes, pulling into a gravel parking lot and killing the engine.

“C’mon,” she grunts, climbing out of the tiny car and waiting, arms crossed, for Naomi to do the same.

“Sure, sure, let the pregnant woman crawl out of her own seat. Don’t lift a finger or anything.”

Di rolls her eyes.

As soon as Naomi has struggled her way out of the car, which takes her a good four minutes, Di stalks off. In her harried attempt to follow her, Naomi feels like a duck hopped up on an energy drink.

“What kinda money do you have?”

Naomi looks at her strangely. “Uh, what you pay me.”

“Yes, obviously, I meant savings.”

“What you pay me,” Naomi repeats.

Di purses her lips. “Well.”

She does not finish her thought. Instead, she strides down the gravel driveway, heedless of Naomi’s struggle behind her, until she approaches a squat looking building with ‘OFFICE’ printed on the little window.

“She needs a room,” she says to the clerk sitting behind it, gesturing at Naomi.

Naomi looks at her in alarm.

“Di, I can’t —”

“Fifty a night,” responds the man quickly.

“Try again.”

Di’s response is swift and immediate, ignoring Naomi’s tugging hand. She pulls away, resting her hands on her lower back, swivelling her head between Di and the man.

“Rate’s a rate, Di.”

She’s not surprised this man knows Di — everyone knows Di. But the slant to his eyebrows is unfamiliar, the hands clasped easily behind his head. He relaxes back into a leather office chair, heeled boot hiked up to rest in his knee, whistling absentmindedly in the face of Di’s glare.

“Two hundred a week.”

“Not a chance.”

“I’m not asking, Jed.”

The man — Jed — finally starts to look irate, meeting Di’s jaw-set stare with one of his own.

“I’m sorry, I musta missed something. Did you up and buy this place?”

Di doesn’t answer him right away. She never slouches, always standing at her full height, and she’s mighty tall for a woman. For anyone, really. She has a way of planting herself right in front of the sun, no matter where she is. Jed stares up at her, squinting, cast in Di’s shadow everywhere but where he needs to be sheltered.

“You gotta laundry list of shit you done owed me your whole life, Jed.”

Jed just his chin out.

“I don’t owe her shit.”

Blunt fingers wrap around her elbow. “She’s mine.”

“Ain’t how this works, Di.”

“Says who? You?”

For all her intensity, Naomi doesn’t think Di’ll actually fight anyone. If she would, Naomi would’ve gotten her ass kicked months ago.

(She’s mine. Kiddo. You need rest. Roll down the window.)

(…Well.)

Regardless, a flash of fear flits across Jed’s face. He cuts his gaze from Naomi to Di and then back again, pupils shrinking, and then invariably comes to a decision.

“Two fifty,” he snaps, scowling. “Not a penny less, Di.”

Di nods once. “Fine.”

She tightens the hold on Naomi’s elbow, dragging her away from the window. There’s an echoing bang, bang, bang, interspersed with muffled curses, before Jed stumbles out of a door on the side of the scaffolding. He stomps away without looking back, and Di tugs her along to follow.

“Laundry is your own problem. Clean your own shit. If you miss a payment, I’m kicking you out. Clear?”

Naomi stares. Jed standing in front of another low, old building, but this one is much longer, a door posited every dozen or so feet. A plastic chair sits in front of every door, and every door is numbered.

A motel, Naomi realises.

“Clear, kid?”

“Crystal,” Naomi manages, throat dry. Jed practically throws the key at her head, stomping back to the office. Numbly, Naomi slides it in the lock, pushing open the door.

The room isn’t big. There’s a double bed in the middle, a window in the far side and a dresser under it. A TV rests in a dugout shelf in the wall, and there’re two small doors next to it; a closet and a bathroom, Naomi assumes. Smaller than her bedroom back home.

Much, much bigger than her car.

“You’re gonna have to work another ten hours a week to afford this place,” Di says critically. When Naomi looks back at her, she’s lingering at the doorway, staring resolutely at Naomi’s face. Not a spare glance for the room itself.

Naomi does the math fast in her head.

“Twenty hours.”

Di scowls. “Don’t insult me, kid. Ten more hours a week; make sure you’re early tomorrow. I don’t give a shit if you’re sick again, either.”

Naomi swallows. She smooths a hand over the quilt tucked neatly over the bed — it’s soft, if not warm. The pillow is plump.

God, she’s missed pillows.

“Thank you, Di,” she says quietly.

Di makes a small twitching motion with her head that may, in some lighting, be considered a nod, then stalks off. Naomi sinks into the mattress; surprised at how much her feet aches now that she’s off of them.

She swings them up, kicking off her boots, to rest on top of the blanket. She leans against the rickety headboard. She rests her hand on her swollen stomach and slowly, silently, begins to cry.

“You and me and sheer fuckin’ will, kid,” she mumbles, face crumpling. The constant ache in the small of her back lifts, slightly. She stretches her toes as far as they’ll go and cries harder. “We’re gettin’ there. We’re gettin’ there. We’re gettin’ there.”

———

naomi art

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nerves-nebula · 1 month

Note

betcha thought u saw the last of me huh

been in a major writing slump for the past year, and now and conquering my writing slumo to hopefully get over all of my other ones so here u go this is inspired by a post a long time ago that i can’t find ab everyone falling back into old habits at the farm house and i can’t remember if it was april or casey who set them into shape but i needed an excuse to make it faggy

the farmhouse itself was nothing like the sewers. warm wooden walls, sunlit windows, and soft carpet were a very dramatic change from the damp, cold walls of the sewer, made colder by the presences within them.

it was a change, for sure, but raph couldn’t help but think it was a welcome one.

everyone could tell something had changed between them, between everyone. eggshells littered the floorboards during short, awkward conversations, before the occupants retreated back to their designated spaces.

some things lingered, though. what is it that people say—it takes twenty one days to form a habit? well, raph has been doing this for nineteen years, so beat that. he’s spent almost two decades walking on autopilot, not thinking twice about anything until it became a threat, picking up after everyone, cooking, cleaning. the list carried on.

and for the better part of two decades, his siblings had accepted that. some smart people online can say whatever they want, but a few weeks in the farmhouse can’t undo years of habit. but it was fine. it was fine if he spent a good few hours of his day cleaning up mikey’s paint. it was fine if donnie’s gadgets were scattered across the table. it was fine if leo left dishes in the sink from a meal he couldn’t be bothered to share.

it was fine.

raph was fine.

his brain woke him up early. it always did. he had to make breakfast and clean up the mess everyone probably made after he turned in for the night, and donnie probably hasn’t showered in awhile, so he needs to get on that and-

“you’re thinking too loud.” a voice grumbled from below him. that was odd. casey was never up this early. that was new. “quit it.”

“…sorry.” raph muttered, lifting his head from casey’s chest. that was relatively new too. he saw the way mikey looked at them, like he knew something they didn’t. he and casey were old friends, even if the bed thing was new. “i didn’t know you were up.”

“oh, im up alright. i’m up to make sure that you aren’t.”

…

“huh?” he asked, his eyes narrowing in confusion as he glanced up at casey’s face. his hair was tousled with sleep, leaving his eyes actually visible in the soft light of dawn. the warm sun hit the brown irises perfectly, casting them in honey.

“you heard me.” casey yawned, tossing a tan arm over his eyes. the long, thick strands of his uncut hair splayed across the pillow in tendrils. slithering out across the cotton to root their host into the mattress. “you’re sleeping in.”

…

that’s new too.

his mind screamed in protest. he didn’t do well with change; he never had. that was his routine—his new one. he woke up early, made breakfast, ate as much as his body would allow him, and then some, and then cleaned. leo would wake up next, take his fill, not clean his plate, and fuck off to god knows where. then mikey would emerge, and then donnie. april came down a few hours later, and then finally casey would wake up. it was never like this; he was never last.

some part of him, deep inside his psyche, begged for a break. sleeping in would be nice. he couldn’t think of a place he’d rather be than right here—casey’s arm wrapped around his shoulder, holding his head against the soft flesh of his stomach while absolutely shrouded in blankets. he hadn’t been this comfortable in years.

he was wasting time. dad never liked waiting for breakfast.

dad wasn’t here, and frankly, he could go fuck himself.

it took twenty-one days to form a habit. how long does it take to break one?

without a word, raph settled back into casey’s body and closed his eyes.

—:—

the next time he woke up, casey was still under him. the sun was higher in the sky, now painting the walls in golden rays as opposed to the vibrant pinks and blues of dawn. his friend's hand ran across the ridges of his shell, rendering him practically immobile. his limbs were loose with contentment, and his vision was hazy as he flicked his eyes around the room.

“mornin’. again.” casey grinned down at him, that gap-toothed smile wide, and pleased with his own poor joke. his fingers never stopped their soothing motions on his carapace, though, so raph decided to let it go.

his eyelids felt heavy as he forced them to stay open, blinking sleep away while flexing his body. every finger, every toe, arms, legs, and then finally his neck as he lifted his head from casey’s warmth.

“what time is it?” he asked, pushing his body up into a sitting position, much to his mind's dismay. everything in him was screaming to lay down again, to soak up casey’s warmth like the man was a rock in the sun. he may as well be with his body temperature.

casey helped him up, his big hands steady against his biceps as he manoeuvred raph into a sitting position in front of him. the sheets pooled around their waists as raph leaned his head against casey’s shoulder. the room was so cold now.

“c’mon.” raphs shoulder was prodded gently, and he raised his head to gaze into where casey’s eyes hid behind his hair. his voice was soft and low, like a vibration in the air.

maybe that could explain the tingling in his spine.

bare, tan feet hit the floor first, before his hand gently tugged the turtle off the mattress. still dazed with sleep, he stumbled, leaning into casey’s side to take the weight off of his unsteady legs. the stairs were the hardest to conquer, with all three of raphs fingers grasping casey’s wrist while they manoeuvred down the steps.

a muffled scolding sounded from the next room, and raph felt something inside of him freeze. it wasn’t dad splinter. splinter usually yelled, or even just spoke, but he never tried to make himself quieter. maybe the humiliation of everyone else knowing you were in trouble was part of the punishment.

“i swear to fucking god.” the voice spoke, tone controlled yet flaming. “i’m done watching him pick up after you guys. i love you, you’re my friends, but you need to get your shit together.”

his brain didn’t quite comprehend who was speaking until he heard the next voice.

“it’s not that big of a deal.” leo’s familiar tone punctured the air. raph refused to allow the sound to stab him like the knife it always was. “he’s done it forever! i’m sure he’s used to it by now!”

“that doesn’t mean it’s fine, leo!”

“april, w-we’re all getting better…aren’t we? i mean, we clean up after ourselves decently...”

“no, the house is clean because raph is still cleaning up after you guys like he’s your mom!”

casey’s hand tightened a fraction on his shoulder, and he looked back down at him with a grin. “how about we go outside, yeah? it’s s’posed to be real nice out.”

before raph could complain or comply, he was already being led in the other direction, hearing the voices fade back out. he opened his mouth, and casey cut him off. “i know you’re hungry. i’ll getcha something. wait outside for me? ‘kay?”

and like that, he was gone. the door closed behind him as raph turned his eyes to the tree line, plush with vibrant leaves and dark soil. remnants of dew still clung to the blades of grass, shining brightly in the light of the sun.

the wood of the patio was warm against his feet, and he leaned his elbows to the railing, licking his eyes into the woods. his eyes were still heavy, and the place around his neck where casey’s arm previously lay left a pleasant scorch sinking into his skin. still, the voices from inside bounced in his skull. at least the yelling was familiar.

somethings never change.

thaNKK YOUUU !!! this was SO CUTE UGH. you get the first neglected art i've been able to make in a while

#nnstuff #nnart #ask #asks are sweethearts #neglected fic #teenage mutant neglected turtles #neglected art #tmnt raph #casey jones

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phantoms-world-and-more · 1 year

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Danny and baby ghost jason

So dannys wondering the infinite realms and stubbles (falls) into gothem.

He wonders around for a few days before meeting redhood and because dannys a halfa he can only see redhood as a baby ghost.

A sick, hangry baby ghost

Danny dosent even ask,( if he had a parent who let him get THIS bad they dont deserve children) and picks him up and rushes him to the frostbite

Jasons too confused that this random teenager just picked him up the flew, FLEW, him off to the interdimentinal tundra to see an ice yettie.

After jason sees frostbite danny gets alerted that his new baby ghosts previous parent wants a word with him

Danny ready to fist fight batman

Batman is 0.2 seconds away from a stroke

And jasons chilling with his new dad?caregiver?friend? Who knowes, but this is the best he's felt in years and if staying with this protective teenager makes him feel this good he's sure as hell staying.

#jasons happy for the first time i years #bruce is about to loose his mind and son #dannys ready to throw hands atbhis baby ghosts neglecting parent #danny phantom #fic prompt #daily prompt #danny fenton #dc x dp #dp x dc #batman #funny #dc #jason todd #protective danny #danny chooses violence today

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nico-di-genova · 17 days

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Keep to the Line: Chapter 4

...Surprise KTTL update anyone?

Bahrain, to put it simply, is a disaster. For one, they lose.

Charles thinks it all maybe started with the car launch in New York City, when Max, Checo, and Daniel had been brought out on-stage to the cheers of a predominately celebrity crowd, motorsports enthusiasts few and far between. To Charles, it was all too much of a spectacle. He maybe had been turned into a bit of snob by Ferrari, there seemed to be a lacking amount of class. Daniel made jokes as if he was delivering a stand-up routine, very little attention was given to the car.

And it was a beautiful car. All sleek lines and raw design and truly a marvel of ingenuity. Charles was maybe a bit jealous of Newey, less so of Max who had to stand in the spotlight and pretend to care about the senseless questions they asked him. He was perfectly content to study the car from the shadows, to see the small changes to the suspension and the front wing and wonder how they would really perform come testing in Bahrain. It wasn’t his first time getting a full look at it, but it was the first in the stage lights, which revealed inlets he had missed at first glance.

In his mind, he was mentally calculating the full look of it all. How the air might flow from the wing tips to the back end. So caught up in his study that he failed to notice the attention being drawn to him until it was too late.

“-Charles. It’s exciting to have him with us,” comes Max’s voice saying his name, drawing out the ‘s’ at the end with a slight lisp that unfortunately has already become familiar to Charles.

He looks up just in time to see all three of the drivers, plus the host, turning their attention to him. Along with half the crowd and also the cameras. Max smirks at him, the bastard, seeming to delight in the way Charles blushes. He can feel it all the way to the tips of his warming ears. And then Max is walking to him, down the stairs, into the gaggle of engineers Charles had been standing with and guiding him onto the stage. His hand on Charles’ shoulder is firm under the guise of friendliness.

“Fuck you,” Charles mutters under the smile he forces, hoping Max’s mic doesn’t pick it up.

Max laughs, his eyes crinkling, as if Charles has just told the loveliest of jokes.

#...surprise shorty #does anyone even still care about this?#no #but I do #because it is my beautiful messy child who I sometimes neglect #keep to the line #lestappen #lestappen fic #my fic #kttl fic

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bad-tf-fic-ideas · 4 months

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(108) Ratchet gets in trouble for impersonation of an emergency services vehicle. He is not, as the court delicately points out, actually qualified to render aid to humans in the capacity of an ambulance officer. Also, even wearing a red cross without dispensation from the relevant government minister is a criminal offence. Now he's being charged with about 120 separate instances of deception and impersonation-related offences.

#tf fic ideas #maccadam #ratchet #it's late. i neglected my queue. again.

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imfinereallyy · 1 year

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Father Figures, pt. 2

I swear it was a one-shot. But then my hand slipped and "oh oops there's Wayne". You can access part 1 here. This is rated m btw. The full version will be available on ao3 (my first time posting on there...) which is linked here. Anyway, enjoy :)

The first time Wayne Allen Munson meets Steve Harrington is in a hospital room. Sure, he has seen and heard about the kid in passing. It was hard not to in a town like Hawkins. With the kind of money his old man has and the pretty face his mother parades around, the Harringtons become a sort of household name. Especially in Wayne's household.

See, Wayne may not be much of a talker, but his nephew sure is. Especially when he gets angry about something. And boy did Steve Harrington make his Eddie mad. During Eddie's first time around with Senior Year, Steve's name comes out of that boy's mouth so often that if not for that tone of his, he would have thought the kid had a crush on him.

Actually, Wayne regretfully asks at one point if he does have a crush. Wayne finds out pretty quickly that Eddie doesn't, which isn't the problem nor why he regrets asking. The problem is apparently at that very moment in time, Eddie hasn't exactly come out to Wayne. The boy shakes so much that Wayne is afraid that Eddie might cause an earthquake. Wayne has to calm Eddie down and explain very carefully he doesn't care, he's his kid no matter what. Eddie cries, and asks "Dad, what made you think to just casually bring that up?"

Wayne shrugs and simply says "Didn't think it was a secret."

Eddie lets out a wet laugh. Wayne doesn't mention how it's the first time since Eddie showed up on his doorstep that he calls him Dad.

His heart swells.

So, with absolutely no crush in sight god Wayne he's an asshole, Steve's name is brought up quite often.

"Steve Harrington just parades himself around like he's a king."

"Steve Harrington just stands there while Tommy continues to be a piece of shit. Worse, he acts like he's bored."

"Girls just hang off of Harrington, he's even got Nancy Wheeler on his arm now. What a prick, thought she was smarter than that."

"Looks like Harrington got the shit kicked out of him by Byer's. You gotta love Karma sometimes."

Wayne watches Eddie frown at the last one before saying, "Kinda gotta back Steve up on the pictures though. That was creepy."

Eddie shakes his head then continues to rant "But smashing his camera? Dick move. Doesn't understand what it's like to be poor."

Wayne is still not completely convinced it's not a crush.

Wayne Allen Munson seems to know all about Steve Harrington before he actually has the chance to meet him. None of which he has learned makes Steve seem all that good.

Imagine Wayne's surprise when he finds the Harrington boy next to his son's hospital bed.

"What're you doin' here?" Wayne asks, startling Steve from his chair. Wayne watches as he hops up from the ground, straightening himself out.

"Sorry sir, I was just uh, keeping him company. The kid's families won't let them out of their sight and Dustin wanted him to have a familiar face with him if, sorry when he wakes up. Because we weren't sure we were allowed to grab you yet. So I volunteered to stay with him, seeing as I don't have a job anymore, and well I sort of feel responsible for Eddie now. And, god I am hanging out with Robin too much because I am rambling. Sorry, Sir. "

Wayne raises an eyebrow at him. He has seen Steve around town before, hard not to in a small place like Hawkins. Eddie points him out once, scoffing at his perfect hair and holier-than-thou attitude. Wayne originally is prepared to yell at him. The sight of a boy who looks very much like the very ones who hunted his Eddie down just a few days ago ignites something protective within him. Hearing this boy ramble though, flustered and making himself hopelessly small in front of Wayne, makes him hesitate.

"Boy, I don't know half-em names you're sayin' right now. I do recognize that kid Dustin though, ya know him?"

Steve nods his head up and down, "He's like my brother sir. Our brother." He looks down towards Eddie's bed.

Wayne avoids looking at his boy and chooses to look directly at Steve. "Well, he's a good kid. Came to me when Ed was missing, at the school. Told me he was a hero, and that he'll be missed. Guess now it was probably cause he wasn't sure if he was gonna make it and didn't want to get my hopes up. Don't know what made him change his mind either when he found me again today, told me they had him here."

Steve's face softens as Wayne talks about Dustin. Wayne pushes on, "If that kid trusts you, I don't got a reason not to trust you either. Well, until Eds here wakes up at least. He can tell me otherwise."

"Okay, Sir." Steve makes his way to move around Wayne and leave. Wayne grabs him by the wrist to stop him, and Steve flinches. Wayne decides to file that away for later and lets him go.

"No need to leave kid. And stop calling me sir. I'm not your old man. "

Steve's lips lift a little bit like Wayne just brought up an inside joke he isn't a part of. "Okay, sir—I mean Wayne. Okay, Wayne."

Steve and Wayne sit side by side next to Eddie. It's then Wayne finally looks down at his kid. He can't help but the rush of tears that come up at the sight of him. He is paler than usual, curls flat and dirty, tubes coming out of every part of him.

"My boy." He chokes.

Steve thankfully stays silent as Wayne weeps. They sit for a while in silence before Wayne asks, "You gonna tell me what happened?"

Steve, who Wayne doesn't point out has bloodshot eyes, says "You going to believe me?"

Wayne simply returns "I'm willing to try."

So Steve tells him. Tells him everything that has happened over the last week. Tells him of monsters and other worlds. How it isn't the first time, how it is hopefully the last. How scary it is for them. How Eddie is stupid but incredibly brave. How Eddie barely makes it. How Steve will be the first to yell at him when he wakes up.

Wayne listens carefully through the whole thing and can't help but think of how fond Steve sounds when Eddie's name comes up. This isn't the boy Eddie once spoke of. Albeit, it has been a long time since Eddie's spoken his name. Wayne isn't used to tigers changing their stripes though. It's a pleasant surprise he doesn't comment on.

Wayne rubs his thumb across Eddie's hand. "How did he get out? If he was practically dead?"

"Oh, I carried him Sir."

Wayne's head snaps to Steve. "What?"

Steve shrinks a bit, "Sorry I mean Wayne. Sorry I didn't mean to disrepe—"

Wayne cuts him off, "Dammit kid, I'm not mad at that. I'm not mad at all. It's just—you saved him. You carried him out of what I can only understand is what I think hell is, and you didn't think to mention that when I first saw you?" Wayne looks at Steve for a moment. Really looks at him. He's in clean jeans and a polo, but that's where his old persona ends. When Wayne looks at him closely, he can see the dark bags under his eyes, the purple bruising all over his body, and the angry red scar around his neck. Steve looks exhausted, physically and emotionally. Steve looks like a boy, desperately trying to be a man. He looks like a soldier after war.

"It's not a big deal. I did what anyone else would do."

Wayne shakes his head. "Steve. That's just the thing, I'm pretty sure no one else woulda done that. And even if they would, it doesn't make what you did any less important. So, thank you."

Steve's eyes mist a bit when Wayne says "it doesn't make what you did any less important." He looks away from Wayne and just nods.

"Okay?"

"Okay, Sir. Okay, Wayne."

---

When Eddie wakes a few days later, after a night of breathing on his own without the tubes, he interrupts Steve and Wayne's conversation on the Chicago Cubs, and says "Dad?"

Wayne is up in an instant, crowding his boy's face. "Oh, Eds. I am so glad yer alright. You scared me."

"Mmm sorry," Eddie mumbles nuzzling Wayne's chest. He then looks up towards Steve, who is watching the interaction between the two men. "Harrington?"

Steve leans forward on his elbows, and chokes out "I told you not to be cute."

Eddie giggles, his tears reflecting Steve's "Sorry big boy, can't help what you're born with."

Steve looks up at the ceiling with a wet laugh. It eventually turns into a deep sob. The only other time Wayne witnesses Steve break like this over the past few days is when he's reunited with Hopper. "You shithead, you're not allowed to be funny right now. Don't. Don't do that again. Okay? You really scared us." Wayne can hear Steve's unspoken you really scared me.

Eddie's tears are rushing down his face now. "I'm sorry Steve. I'm so sorry."

"You didn't do anything wrong. Just—next time, don't let there be a next time. Okay?" Steve's not making much sense to Wayne as he leans his head on Eddie's bed face down.

Eddie seems to get it though. He hesitantly strokes Steve's head with his fingers. "Okay, Stevie. I promise. Now, get some sleep. It's your turn, I've had enough."

Steve's shoulders sag as he gives in. Wayne shares a look with Eddie, and Wayne knows right there they have the same thought.

They've collected another stray.

———

When Eddie is home, Steve becomes a regular occurrence in their newly acquired government-funded house. He helps a lot the first month especially. Takes Eddie and the Mayfield girl to and from physical therapy. Cooks dinner on the nights Wayne works (which is most nights) and makes sure to have leftovers specifically labeled for Wayne. Keeps both Wayne and Eddie company when one of their stress becomes too much for the other. Steve's even there on the nights the nightmares get bad. Spends his time on the couch until Eddie wakes up screaming, and calms him back to sleep so Wayne doesn't worry about him at work. Or so Wayne can get a full night when he's off.

Steve's there so often enough, that when one night he isn't, Wayne's concerned.

"You're going to pace a hole into the floor boy." Wayne looks at Eddie in their living room from the couch. Wayne doesn't tell Eddie he's concerned too. Doesn't think it would help much.

"I'm sure he's just held up, or got plans Eds. Not like he was plannin' on coming here tonight."

Eddie stops and faces Wayne, biting his thumbnail instead. "Sure we didn't have plans. But Steve's been here every day for the past month Wayne. And when he hasn't he's called. I haven't heard from him in like 22 hours—" Wayne doesn't point out that Eddie did the actual math "—and that's weird. He doesn't do that. We don't do that."

Eddie's anxiety starts to seep into Wayne's. He can't help but think of the worst-case scenario. Car accident. A run-in with that Andy kid. His mind even jumps to when Eddie was in the hospital, and his stomach sinks. Wayne can't help it, he has grown attached to Steve.

"Why don't we call some of yer friends, yeah? Maybe they've seen your boy."

Eddie is so incredibly distressed and doesn't even rebuke Wayne calling Steve his like he usually does. "Yeah okay, good idea."

As Eddie reaches for the phone though, there is a light knock on the door. Eddie rushes to answer it.

"Steve thank god I was wondering—Oh my god sweetheart what happened?" Eddie drags Steve in and places him on the couch. It's then that Wayne sees him.

There on Steve's jaw, is a bruise the size of Indiana. Steve's eye is swollen, and he is breathing heavily while clutching his ribs. Wayne remains frozen and Eddie frets over Steve.

"Stevie, who did this? Where does it hurt? What can I do?"

"Eds I'm fine."

Eddie looks like he's about to yell but restrains himself. "You are most certainly not fine. Do not give me that look Harrington—"

"Oh I'm Harrington now."

"—Yes you are Harrington right now because only a Harrington would be this stubborn and ridiculous. Now tell me what happened and tell me what hurts."

Steve's resolve loosens slightly, and his head falls onto Eddie's shoulder. He lets out a painful whine, "My stomach. It—fuck—it hurts so bad Eds."

Eddie brushes his fingers through his hair and whispers to him gently. "It's okay baby, I got you."

Wayne realizes three things at once.

One, Wayne isn't sure Eddie has called Steve that before. He calls him names across the board. But baby isn't one of them. Wayne knows for a fact the two aren't together yet. They have been dancing along the line for a few weeks now. Wayne thinks about pushing the timeline along, but the boys don't seem to be there quite yet. This seems like a step in the right direction.

Two, in the past month and a half Wayne has gotten to know Steve, he realizes that the boy doesn't do well around older men. He flinches at every sudden movement Wayne makes, and won't even let him give him a pat on the back let alone a hug. Also in that time, Steve has barely gone home. Knows his parents didn't visit him at the hospital, but did come home two weeks later to make sure nothing is damaged from the earthquake. Assholes.

And three, Steve avoids the question as to what happened. Eddie seems to let it slide. Wayne doesn't give the same courtesy.

"Who did this?" Wayne says abruptly, startling Steve who seems to realize Wayne's presence only now.

"Wh-what?" Steve shakes.

"I'm not mad boy. But I'm not stupid. I know this ain't a what but a who. And I think we can both conclude who. But I'm going to ask you anyway. Who. Did. This?"

The last of Steve's resolve crumbles as Wayne puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. It is as if he hadn't known a gentle touch from a father before. Maybe he hasn't.

"My dad. He uh, we got into a fight last night. Found out how much time I was spending here, with Eddie, with the kids. He started saying how I was spending time with the wrong people. I tried to just nod and go upstairs because it was just easier to ignore him than fight him sometimes. Like what's he going to do right? He's only here a couple of days a year. But then he mentioned Robin and he called her a slur, and that said her kind was an abomination. And oh god I don't even know how he found that out Robs is going to be pissed she's been so careful—"

"Babe." Eddie squeezes Steve's hand.

"Right sorry, he just was going off about Robin. And it just set me off, I just lost it on him. How dare he talk about her that way? And I just told him that if he's got a problem with her, then he's got a problem with me too. And God Wayne, the silence that came after. It was like all the words had been sucked out of the room. Next thing I know he's grabbing me by the jaw and throwing me on the floor. And he just starts kicking me, screaming about how I am no son of his. I didn't know what to do. My mom just watched it all. I just laid there... I should have fought back—I—" Steve trails off trying to collect himself.

"When he was done he sent me to my room and told me to think about what I'm doing to this family. I just laid there all night and all day, just waiting for them to leave. I had to wait til they left for dinner tonight to get out. I can't—I can't go back there. Me and Robs were planning on moving in together next week, we made a deposit on this two-bedroom downtown, but I don't think I can spend another week there, and oh god, all my stuff is there. What have I done." Steve puts his head in his hands.

Eddie is crying with Steve by the end of it. Neither he nor Wayne comments on how Steve just came out to the both of them. It doesn't seem important at that moment. Wayne crouches down to eye level with Steve.

"You did nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with you. You did what you had to do to survive, and even if you didn't it still wouldn't be your fault."

Wayne stands back to his full height. "Now, you can stay here until you and the bird girl have your place. Do not fight me on it. Anyway Steve, I know it's difficult right now. But I'm going to need you to let me know what you need from your house."

"What, why?"

Wayne just sighs, "I know you ain't stupid. Just tell me."

Steve seems hesitant but tells Wayne anyway.

He nods at both his boys when he speaks next. "You two stay put. I'll be back soon."

Steve and Eddie both look like they want to fight Wayne on it. Steve wants to stop him from leaving at all, and Eddie probably wants to stop him from going without him. They both smartly stay silent.

"Okay, Uncle Wayne."

"Okay, Wayne."

———

Later, Wayne comes back with three duffle bags and bruised knuckles.

Steve hugs him without a second thought.

———-

A few days pass and the three of them are in the kitchen when Eddie asks. "Did ya tell hop?"

Steve snorts in his coffee. "Hell no."

Wayne can't help his curiosity as he watches the both of them across the table.

"Steve, you have to tell Hop. He's going to find out anyway." Eddie pushes as he puts an ungodly amount of sugar in his coffee.

"No I don't. He'll just flip out, there is no good reason to tell him."

Eddie puts his hands on his hips. It reminds Wayne of Steve the past couple of times he's seen him around the kids. "I can think of one good reason. He's practically your dad. And I'm pretty sure your Dad would want to know what your old man did to ya."

Wayne can't help but hum in agreement. He knows if Eddie's old man comes around, he wants to be the first to find out.

Steve looks at Wayne briefly before saying, "No he's not. He's just like that with everyone."

"No, he's not. With El? Yea, that's his daughter. Maybe even Will. But not with anyone else. Except you. Why do you think I'm afraid of him?"

Steve gives him a look, "Cause he's an ex-cop Eds."

"Please that doesn't scare me. Didn't scare me when he was an actual cop either."

Wayne isn't sure that's entirely true. He remembers a very specific incident of Eddie tripping over his laces to get away from Jim.

Eddie carries on, "No, he scares me 'cause he's your dad, and I know he'll hang me by my toenails if I so much as make you cry. So yea, I think you should let him know. Besides, we both know he's going to be way more pissed when he finds out from literally anyone else. And we both know he will because you told Robin, who definitely told Nancy, who probably told Joyce, and you can see where I am heading with this."

Steve throws his head back and groans. "He's going to full government name me when he finds out."

Eddie lets out a manic giggle, "Ooo, you never told me what your full name is. Now you gotta tell me, Stevie."

Steve gives Eddie an exasperated look, "It's Steven James Harrington."

It's now Eddie's turn to groan. "Of course, you have his name. Well, I guess it's better than Richard. Hop must love that. Was kinda hoping you had my name or something."

Wayne makes a mental note to talk to Jim himself. Knows Steve will avoid it. But Wayne's got to make sure someone is looking after Steve when he can't. Wayne's been meaning to thank the man anyway. For all his done for Eddie. And now, for all he's done for Steve.

"Want me to make you feel better Eds?" Steve says with a smirk.

"Please. I'm not sure if I can go on any further with the torture of knowledge that contains your middle name."

"Hopper's middle name is Edward."

The scream of joy Eddie lets out nearly punctures what's left of Wayne's hearing.

———

By midsummer, the boys are an item. They haven't said anything to Wayne but he can tell. One day, the boys come back from their friend's weekly dinner holding hands. So they didn't have to tell Wayne. Not really.

It is just that, Wayne has gotten to know Steve Harrington over the past few months. He has gotten to know him as "Friend Steve" and "Brother Steve", and even after one intense game night, "King Steve". Wayne has a feeling though that "Boyfriend Steve" is different. As much as he likes the boy, his kid comes first. Wayne feels he needs to give Steve a talk.

The problem is he can't really give him a talk if neither of them has really told him. He has made that mistake once with Eddie, assuming, he won't be making it again.

So Wayne waits. And waits. And waits. And just as he is thinking he might never get the verbal confirmation from the two, he gets the image clear as day of what the two are on a Tuesday when he gets to go home early from work.

It's just not in the way he expects or wants.

Wayne can't really blame the boys. They didn't know Wayne would be coming home early, it was a surprise to Wayne himself. So they probably didn't think that anyone would be coming around the Munson household on Tuesday at midnight.

That doesn't make the situation any less scarring.

See, Wayne Allen Munson wasn't a god-fearing man. He can't be with what his Eddie had been through. But he can't help but think this is some sort of cosmic punishment when he gets home and hears moaning.

Wayne stands there in the foyer as a loud, "Yes baby just like that" and "Oh god, harder" and even the unfortunate "You're so tight, it's like you were made for me."

Wayne thinks god might be laughing at him. Wayne can't really go upstairs and stop them. They are both adults and he feels that having an image of what they are doing would be substantially worse than the noises.

Wayne decides to put some earplugs in (which thankfully cut off the noise, since his age made him half deaf anyway), sat in his armchair, and waits it out.

About an hour later (jesus an hour later) Steve comes downstairs to the kitchen in only his boxers. He doesn't seem to notice Wayne. His head is in the freezer when Wayne decides to clear his throat loudly.

Steve slams his head in fright and whips around with an icepack in his hand. "Oh shit."

"Oh shit is right."

All the color drains from Steve's face. "How much did you hear?"

Wayne appreciates that Steve cuts right to the chase. "Enough." He knows he can explain to the boy that he didn't really hear that much, and the earplugs are firmly in his hands as evidence, but he decides to torture Steve.

Just a little bit, can't have him too comfortable.

"I'm so sorry Mr. Munson, I—"

Wayne cuts him off. "No need to apologize, just as long as you boys are being safe that's all I care about. No that ain't what I want to talk to you about."

Steve visibly swallows as he sits across the counter from Wayne. "What about then?"

"Look, I'm awfully happy for the two of you. It's about time you boys got your shit together—"

Steve lets out a small laugh at the comment. Wayne continues. "—but I need to make things clear with you Steve. You hurt my kid, I hurt you. Eds has been through a lot. Not just with the whole spring break situation. I mean his whole life. He bounced around from place to place until he landed on my doorstep. He's used to giving his all, and not getting much in return. Eddie loves with his whole chest, and he doesn't know how to do it any other way. You better make sure you're worthy of it because I am not sure anyone is...including me. You're pretty damn close though, I know it. I can see it. You're a good person. But that boy is my whole world. I know where to hide a body if need be."

Wayne expects Steve to cower in fear, but instead, he smiles softly at him. "Don't worry. I'll dig the grave myself. I'll try my best not to hurt him, sir. I can't promise much, but I can promise I'll love him every day without fail."

"You tell him that yet kid?"

Steve shakes his head, "No. I think soon though sir."

Wayne nods feeling satisfied. "Good, and enough of this sir crap I thought we've been over this."

"Okay, Wayne."

"Better. Now, who's the ice pack for? You or him, because I don't want to have to grab the shovel outta the shed tonight."

Steve's blush spreads from his cheeks all the way down to his chest. "Uuuh, for me sir. I mean Wayne."

"Good. Go grab my son for me now will ya?"

Steve stutters, "Wh-what? Why?"

"Just go grab 'em."

Steve runs upstairs and brings down a smug-looking Eddie. Wayne's sure Steve gave him the rundown of what he heard, and Eddie doesn't appear to be ashamed like Steve had the smarts to do.

Little shit.

"Sorry Wayne didn't know you were home. Was that what you wanted to talk about?"

Wayne looks from Steve to Eddie, before narrowing his eyes at the latter. "Nope. It's your turn."

"My turn?" Eddie's confident face turns confused while Steve's flashes surprise.

"Yea kid your turn." Wayne contemplates for a second what to say, but knows in the end that Eddie will get the message loud and clear from one sentence alone.

"You hurt him—" Wayne turns to point at Steve, before facing Eddie again "—I hurt you. Got it?"

All the color drains from Eddie's face. That's the reaction he is looking for.

"Got it." Eddie grabs Steve's hand to make his way back upstairs. Before they are completely out of sight, Steve catches Wayne's eye. The boy looks softer than he did before. He looks like he wants to say something but settles on,

"Goodnight Wayne."

"Goodnight Steve."

———

Steve doesn't ask Wayne about that night until months later in October. Wayne is on the couch with a beer when Steve walks in (he has the key Eddie gave him in September). "Eddie's not here right now. Think he's running late with band practice."

"Oh I'm sorry. I can come back later." Steve stands awkwardly in the doorway.

"Don't be silly come sit. I'm just watching the game. It's no cubs considering they didn't make it far, but it's still a good game."

Steve nods and makes himself comfortable on the couch. Since spring break, Wayne and Steve have built a friendship of sorts. Steve still shows signs of apprehension in the first few seconds, but the conversation becomes an easy flow after a while. They usually talk about sports, cars, or cooking. All stuff Wayne enjoys but Eds won't show the slightest interest in. It's nice, to have someone to share this stuff with.

Today they mostly talk about the game on tv and Eddie's habit of running late. It's after a particularly funny joke about Eddie being late to his own birth that Steve asks, "Hey Wayne, can I ask you something?"

"Ya just did kid."

"God, you sound like Eddie."

Wayne chuckles, "Sure Steve. Shoot."

"Why did you talk to Eddie too? About the whole, hurting each other stuff? I mean Eddie's your kid, and I'm just the guy who gets to spend time with him." Steve waves his hands around, it reminds Wayne of Ed.

"Well, I love ya both," Wayne says easily while he takes a sip of his beer, like it isn't hard to say. And it isn't really. It was quite simple to Wayne. Just like Eddie, Steve might not be his kid by blood but he is close as he can come.

"Oh." Steve takes a deep breath, as if he is holding back tears, and says "Thanks, Wayne. I love you too."

Wayne almost mistakes the pain as Steve's voice as reluctance. The happiness that shines in his eyes says something else. Says he doesn't hear that from fathers very often. Says he hopes Wayne means it.

He does mean it.

Eddie walks in the doorway to find the two men silently staring at each other, and Steve close to tears. "Well hello there my lovely family how are—Wayne what did you do to Steve? Did you yell at him? I promise the bruise on my face was from dropping a wrench while trying to fix the van. Nothing else." Eddie pulls Steve up and squishes his face between his hands. "What did he say to you, baby?"

Steve shakes his head and laughs lightly at Eddie's antics. "Nothing bad. Promise. Happy tears."

"Happy tears?"

"Happy tears."

Eddie stares at him for long moment before deciding he believes him. "Okay. Okay. I relent." He grabs Steve's hand and throws a wave at Wayne. "Let's go upstairs though, I have to tell you about practice and how Gareth brought a boy with him! And you'll never believe what boy it was! It was our little baby Byers himself..."

Wayne hears Steve's gasp and Eddie's giggle as he continues on up the stairs. Wayne can't help the warmth that settles in his chest.

Because Wayne Allen Munson is lucky to have two wonderful boys. And he is even luckier that his two boys love each other. Because they deserve that and so much more.

———

Okay, it’s a lot I know. I just couldn’t resist. I wanted to write Steve and Wayne too. I think this one is less sad and more funny but I think that kind of speaks for the kind of relationship the two of them would have. Also it contains much more steddie than the last one. I’m thinking about maybe writing a part 3 with Steve’s relationship with the kids and how he’s their father figure? But for now it ends here. Also this took me like two days to write? I’m sorry for any mistakes or rushed parts. I am one woman show. Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed :)

Also I have finally posted on ao3!!! Can’t believe it, I’ve been so nervous about it especially because I am still without a beta. But this felt long enough to put there and I wanted to be able to share with more people.

access part. 1 here and ao3 here

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