#there should be a word for it to commiserate over together | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

critrolesideblog · 27 days

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AO3

"Hi, Yussa!" Yussa paused, fork suspended in midair, as the voice of Jester Lavorre flared into his mind, sudden and bright, but not at its usual break-neck pace. There was a slight pause as she considered her words. "Caleb wants to send a friend through your teleportation circle tomorrow… Friend is from Xhorhas… just passing through… Caleb casting - that okay?" He heard a note of triumph in her voice as she managed to complete the question within the allotted word limit. From Xhorhas… It was not every day he had visitors from Xhorhas, and for Caleb Widogast to ask… that was intriguing.

"I may be amenable to that, so long as Widogast is not handing out my teleportation coordinates to whomever requests them."

"He's not." The reply came so closely on the heels of his own that she must have started casting before he completed the thought. "He really wanted me to stress that. Great! Esssss- our friend will message you when he is on his way. He's cool! You'll love--"

"Very well," was all he replied, and as the spell released, he felt a reverberation of annoyance at his failure to use up the space allowed. He smiled to himself as he retrieved his fork and called to Wensforth to clear his schedule. Tomorrow promised to be an interesting day.

---

"Well, we should get on with it I suppose," Caleb said softly. His breath was warm against Essek's ear as he squeezed him tightly one last time, and Essek breathed in the now-familiar scent of him -- woodsmoke, incense, leather, parchment, Caleb. Essek knew he was right. They had delayed long enough as it was, lingering on an outcropping of rock, sheltered from Eiselcross's fierce winds and bitter cold by Leomund's Tiny Hut. Caleb had important things to get to in the Empire, and Essek should not keep him from them. But he indulged in his selfishness a moment longer, keeping his grip around Caleb firm. He was the stronger wizard, by a hair, and Caleb did not resist the embrace. Instead, he leaned his cheek against Essek's for a breath, and then offered a kiss there in exchange for his release.

"I suppose so," Essek agreed at last, keeping his hands in touch with Caleb's form until the very last brush of fingertips against fingertips as he slipped from his grasp and crouched to begin drawing the teleportation circle.

Essek turned away from the sigils being drawn and looked out over the icy tundra. The day was fittingly grey and dreary, the sun a weak suggestion of a glow through the haze of snow on the horizon. He pulled a copper wire from his pocket, stretched it, condensed it, collapsed the distance between his voice and its intended recipient: "Hello, I hope I am not intruding. I will be arriving in one minute."

"Thank you for the warning," replied an unfamiliar voice, sounding pleasantly-surprised. "I will be waiting."

Curious.

"He sounded surprised to hear from me," he called back over his shoulder. "That was the plan, was it not?"

"Ja," Caleb's voice sounded amused. "But our calling ahead is usually a message from a few floors up after we've already arrived."

"Ah… yes, that does sound like you."

"It's a good thing Jester is so charming."

"We will have much to commiserate over."

"Ready?"

Essek turned back to find Caleb twisting the remaining stub of chalk this way and that in his hands, the circle beyond awaiting the final marks that would complete it. He took a deep breath to steady himself and with a flourish of his hand and a murmured word cast Disguise Self. He then slipped a pearl from a pouch on his belt and held it close enough to Caleb's forehead to feel the warmth radiating from his skin but vigilant not to touch it. Caleb's clear, blue eyes looked at him with such warmth that it made him want to say foolish, selfish things about running away together or venturing into Aeor once more, but he murmured only the verbal component of the spell and took another steadying breath.

"Good luck, Caleb Widogast."

"Don't be a stranger."

Caleb knelt again and completed the final rune.

------

Disguise Self.

Disappointing.

Yussa had all night and the better part of the morning to hypothesize on the identity and motivations of his intended guest and came up with a few interesting theories. Interesting being the key word. The Mighty Nein were many things, but never dull.

He could allow that the handsome, young Drow now standing in his teleportation circle had applied the spell in a smart way: shifts to the hue of his skin and eyes and adjustments to his facial features, leaving his hair, clothes, and the shape of his ears true to form. Such small changes were harder for the untrained eye to spot. But he had to have known he would be arriving to a pair of very well-trained eyes.

The young man arranged his features into a soft, politician's smile.

"Yussa Errenis, I presume." He bowed politely, speaking in Common. "It is a pleasure to meet you." Yussa dissected his features for tells of the veracity of this statement, but even looking past the paltry illusion, he was hard to read. Good for him, he supposed. Good for his chances at surviving this side of the Ashkeeper Peaks, anyway. There was a slight shift in pitch to his voice that might have been earnestness, but he arrived in Yussa's home in a poorly-thought-out and -- more importantly -- boring disguise. He could not allow that to pass unchecked.

"Welcome," Yussa replied in High Elven to match the young man's mask (and his own). He watched his attention come to a still point on the sound of his voice as he continued at a conversational speed. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. And what is your name? Ms. Lavorre did not provide it." He knew high-born Drow (which he would wager his guest to be given the fine make of his clothes, if he were a gambling man, which he was) often studied High Elven as part of their schooling, but with little occasion to use it, found it difficult to converse in. It did not help that Drow diverged from High Elvish some centuries ago, influenced by Undercommon in subtle but important ways.

His eyes became sharp above his soft smile as his mind worked quickly.

"Sylmarr is my name. I'm sorry. It took me a moment to… change roads." He responded at length, accented but much more smoothly than Yussa expected, and that was interesting…. Sylmarr… Right.

"Please, come in. I have prepared tea for us."

"Ah, no. Apologies, I cannot--"

"I insist. It would be very rude of me to have you in my home and not at least provide you with tea. Right this way."

Yussa lead the way down the stairs and heard a soft huff and the rustling of a cloak behind him. Sylmarr's steps behind him on the stairs were quiet…

Imperceptible…

Nonexistent?

He glanced back. He had not paid attention to his feet before, noticing only the height of his head to be commensurate with the illusion, but he saw now there was a space between his feet and the steps. Indeed, now that he was so close behind him, he caught …

He never found a good word for it in any language. It was not a scent exactly or a taste but an evocation of ozone and burnt metal and the feeling in the back of one's skull when dizzy and about to fall. Something he hasn't sensed in a long, long time.

Interesting.

Yussa's tower contained a number of receiving rooms for guests of varying importance. The one Sylmarr was ushered into had walls painted a shade of blue that matched the midday sky outside and high windows that opened onto balconies rarely visible from the exterior but which offered sweeping views of the city, the harbor, and the ocean. Layers of finely-woven linen curtains filtered the bright Nicodranian sunlight. The furniture was made of imported, Uthodurnian maple, expensive but not ostentatious. Yussa settled into his favorite high-backed chair upholstered in a rich turquoise velvet by the tea table as Sylmarr paused by the window overlooking the city. When he turned back to the room, his politician's smile was gone, replaced by a thoughtful frown.

"So, do you think my Elvish is good enough to continue with this disguise?"

"Briefly, perhaps, but if you plan to spend much time in the Menagerie Coast, your accent is just strong enough to garner unwanted attention. I would recommend limiting its use to places further afield."

"Understood."

He sat gingerly on the edge of the chair opposite Yussa, as if it might grow a mouth and consume him if he got comfortable. Not an unreasonable fear, all things considered, Yussa mused as he poured the tea. One of the adventurers he travelled with centuries ago was almost consumed by such a creature… Talia? No, Talia, when he travelled with the Wandering Wyrd, was almost killed by a Gelatinous Cube. It was Tyros with the --

"You have lived in Nicodranas for some time?"

"For over two centuries. Before that I travelled. A little bird told me--" at three in the morning last night, when she could not sleep and decided to make that Yussa's problem "--you have been travelling yourself recently."

"A bit."

"With Caleb Widogast?"

"He speaks very highly of you."

"He is an impressive talent and a good ally."

"And a good friend."

"I have not known many high-born Drow to speak of friends."

"Well," Sylmarr retrieved his teacup from its saucer. "I have been called exceptional." Yussa was uncertain whether he actually took a sip or just made a convincing show of it. He fixed Yussa with a sharp gaze as he set the cup back down neatly. "And have you known many Kryn?"

"A few."

"You've been to Xhorhas?"

"Not for many centuries." Yet he remembered the way the wind swept across the plains, ruffling the grasses like a great, invisible hand, the dry caress of it on his cheek. The bustle of the Gallimaufry at New Dawn. The ebb and flow of song as devotees wound their way through the streets. The echoing halls of the Marble Tomes, traversed by its supplicants with as much reverence as any shining temple.

"Have you any Undercommon?" Sylmarr asked, switching tongues as he did so. Yussa smiled at the at the attempt to knock him off his game, failed though it was.

"A bit, yes."

"You are well-travelled, indeed."

"Quite. Now, back to Caleb Widogast." This elicited a small crack the genteel mask as Sylmarr's eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly. He sat back in his chair then, settling in for whatever Yussa had to say.

"What about him?"

"As I have said, he is an impressive talent and a good ally. I consider him something of a --" Student wasn't right word. Nor apprentice. "A mentee of mine, if you will. We have different arcane specialties, but I believe I have some wisdom to offer on surviving as a mage in a mercenary group, not to mention centuries worth of professional connections." Sylmarr made no response, except to pick up his teacup again with a noise of polite attentiveness. "Ms. Lavorre mentioned to me that you are an accomplished arcanist as well, and you've taught Caleb -- I believe her exact words were a bunch of cool magic." Sylmarr frowned thoughtfully for a moment.

"I taught him the basics of my discipline, but much of the interesting magic of mine that he possesses he reverse engineered." He said the last words with a huff of annoyance that had little heat behind it. "He caught up to me very quickly and has taught me some of his own discipline as well."

"You would consider yourselves peers?"

"Yes," he responded quietly, lowering his eyes to his teacup for a moment, and there was a soft, shy smile on his lips, a little awkward and, if Yussa was not quite mistaken, tender. …Ah.

"I see."

"Yes," his smile sharpened quickly into something more keen. "You need not worry about me poaching your mentee." Yussa was only allowed an instant's intimation of indignation before Sylmarr continued. "If anything, I may wish to avail myself of some of your wisdom before too long, if that is agreeable to you." Ah… well… Yussa took a sip of a tea. He supposed if he wasn't losing the ear of the rising star in the field of Transmutation that would be alright, and the proposition did present an opening.

"It is agreeable, but I prefer to know my mentees' names. Sylmarr doesn't strike me as particularly Kryn."

"Neither does Errenis Yussa."

No, it doesn't does it, Yussa mused as he took another sip of his tea. Then again, that was rather the point when he chose it. There were other considerations as well, of course. He reflexively ran the pad of his thumb against a spot on his finger where a ring had not existed for centuries. Sylmarr was watching him with a haughty expression that dared him to challenge his conclusion. He considered the merits of feigning confusion but had to ask. "What gave it away?"

"If my Sun Elvish is a little too rough, your Undercommon is a little too smooth. There are also the windows." He gestured toward the curtains. "It could be polite consideration for an expected Drow guest, but I find non-Drow's idea of dimmed daylight is often still too bright. The odds that you happened to get it just the right amount to see clearly are slim. Also, the way you have arranged your robes -- I believe it is the custom in Gwardan to arrange the front panels right over left, not left over right." It was, but it always felt wrong.

"I see." Yussa set his teacup neatly in its saucer. "In that case, let us be plain with each other." He dispelled the young man's Disguise Self with a flick of his wrist, allowing the lilac eyes, high cheekbones, stardust freckles on twilight skin to become fully clear at last. He let his own facade fall as well.

They surveyed each other quietly for a moment: two Drow in a sunlit room.

The young man bowed politely in greeting as he had when he first arrived. Yussa bowed in return, and asked "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, and you are?" His persistence earned him a wry sort of grin, followed by a frown.

"I … have enemies," he responded slowly. "It may be better for your not to know."

"It is always better to know."

That earned him another wry grin and a moment's thoughtful consideration.

"Thelyss," he said at last, with a sigh. "Essek." Thelyss. Not just a noble den, but a ruling den. Yussa did some quick mental math regarding the Luxon beacon the Mighty Nein brought him, some months ago now, the level of political intrigue that would have been required for its Dwendallian sojourn, and the likelihood of Essek's involvement. Interesting. "And you?"

"Errenis Yussa is the only name of mine that matters, and the only one I have used for a long time."

Essek's lips formed a thin line, clearly dissatisfied with the answer. Open curiosity burned in his eyes. Nevertheless, he had the tact to approach his next question gingerly. "May I ask why you left Xhorhas?"

"No." Yussa replied primly, pushing aside memories of that first band of adventurers that wandered into his life (the way Dzi'an's golden eyes shone when he laughed, Anat's swagger, Maggie's sweet voice). "Not this visit, anyway. It is a long story, and I believe you have a ship to catch." Essek conceded the line of questioning with a nod.

"You're not wrong."

Yussa gestured for Essek to stand and with a word and a twist of the hand settled a Seeming spell around him, so he looked much as he did before, though with a new touch of gold embroidery to the hem of his robes. "Do you have Seeming in your repertoire?" He asked, and Essek had the good grace to look mildly chagrinned at the question.

"I do, but I wished to conserve my spell energies."

"Energy expended to avoid a fight is never wasted, young man." Essek barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes at the platitude, which delighted Yussa to no end, and he smiled smugly to himself as he reapplied his own facade and ushered Essek from the parlor.

"Do the Nein know?" Essek asked, pausing before the front door. "Of your… origin?"

"Not that I am aware of. I did hint once that my appearance in the Empire would cause a stir should my illusion be dispelled, but they had other, greater mysteries pressing on them as I recall. You may tell them if you wish."

"Ah, I only asked because Jester implied to me once that she thought you were a dragon. I wondered if she was pranking me, but perhaps not. Fare well." And with that, he glided out into the bright hustle and bustle of the Open Quay, melding quickly into the crowd and leaving Yussa standing agape in the doorway.

A dragon?

#it's wizard wednesday!#yussa errenis #essek thelyss #shadowgast #couldn't resist a little interlude #see the notes on AO3 for my Yussa is a [spoiler] theory :)#my writing tag

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sugarspicenights · 2 years

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Angel Voices - Vash x Reader

4.1k words / minors DNI / takes place in trigun '98 canon

CW: reader has breasts, wears a bra, and has a vagina/vulva/clit, but no specific use of pronouns in fic (though one mention of "goddess"), no mention of skin color, hair color or texture. Both reader and Vash are written with the mindset of bisexual switches.

Use of nicknames like baby and good boy, mentions and descriptions of Vash's scars, oral (m on f + f on m), 69, f squirting on m's face, discussion of contraceptive method, piv sex (sitting with f on top, cowgirl, and missionary), monsterfucking (since Vash is a sentient plant; discussion of plant sex differences and weird plant cum), overstimulation, cum eating (only a little), brief aftercare (as there might be a fic part 2)

AN: Thank you to everyone for waiting on this! I wrote this with so much love for the original source material and I hope it captures the slightly goofy spirit of the Trigun 98 dub, both for Vash and reader 💖

Morning again…

Slowly waking, you scrunch up your face, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. From behind, you can hear soft, even breaths and feel a warm hand around your waist.

We must have fallen asleep after the mission…

Closing your eyes, you take in the sensation of Vash’s body around you: his left arm slung around your waist, fingers tucked slightly under your shirt and legs tangled between yours.

You had only meant to talk for bit and process the day’s adventure, but even one beer and leftover donuts from the morning was enough to relax Vash and make him realize just how much energy he had used up.

He was staying at a hotel down the road, so you offered to let him rest a minute before heading back. He had obliged, slipping his jacket off and removing his metal prosthesis, showing you just how much he trusted you.

When you had sat down next to him, petting his hair as he relaxed, you must have fallen asleep too, lulled by the repetitive motion and gentle hums from Vash. You were supposed to wake him up, but instead you were laying next to him, the closest you’d ever been to the man you had a huge crush on.

He really should have been able to figure it by now…

For all his “reputation” as a womanizer, besides some harmless flirting, you had never witnessed Vash make a move on anyone. He seemed to prefer the company of drinking buddies or a bag of fresh donuts more than a night with a woman.

You knew why, though.

Beneath the handsome and charming outer surface, Vash the Stampede kept a secret perfectly contained. You’d never guess it by a glance, but he was pushing 150 years old, and hidden under layers of crimson leather and cloth were relics of his past—scars, surgeries, repairs, and metal prosthetics.

With a flashy enough jacket, no one usually asked questions about what was underneath.

You hadn’t seen them for yourself more than a quick glance when Vash stretched and his shirt rode up, but you had heard about the extent of his injuries from Meryl and Milly.

The insurance girls had become your friends quickly, often hanging out together and commiserating over how much trouble you all got into around Vash and Wolfwood.

You didn’t mind the adventures. Sure, danger followed you at every step, but you always seemed to come out alright—Vash and Nick always found a way to turn things around.

Which is how you ended up here, snuggled in the arms of the infamous gunslinger, the humanoid typhoon, and the man currently pressed up against your back, half-hard and sleepy, holding onto you like a touch-starved lover.

You knew if Vash woke up right now he would apologize furiously and move away from you instantly, but you didn’t want him to leave.

You wanted to go further—spend the morning in bed and explore…

You don't know how to cross that emotional barrier yet, but have time to think, cheeks burning as Vash’s fingers ghost over your stomach, almost dipping below your underwear waistband. Sucking in a breath, sensitive, you move your hips slowly, closing your eyes and waiting for Vash to wake up.

Only he doesn't.

He lets out a few breathy moans in his sleep, holding onto you tighter and nuzzling into your shoulder. You lay there, blushing, feeling Vash’s cock swelling into your back and starting to pant softly. You're already so wet without being touched, but don't feel comfortable going any further without consent.

Fuck, this was going to be awkward.

“Vash?”

He only stirs slightly, still lost in his sleepy haze.

“Vash, wake up.”

“Hmmmm??”

You needed only wait a moment before Vash’s hand promptly flies away with an embarrassed “WHAAAAYAGHHHH!!!” and the string of apologies comes as expected.

Instead of accepting them, however, you shove Vash back down onto the pillows and climb onto his hips, raising a finger to talk to him.

“Stop that!!!”

He immediately shuts up, cheeks still flushed, and stares up at you, dumbfounded.

“I like you, Vash.” You go right to the point, bluntly, so he has no excuses. “I like you romantically… sexually… and I don’t want your apologies!!!! I want you to stay.”

Vash’s mouth pops open, looking you over to see if you're really telling the truth, then asks sheepishly, “Why didn’t you say anything before???”

Frowning, you remain in your position, looking down at the gunman. “Do you know how hard it is to get a moment with you alone??? I appreciate the gentleman act and all, but it makes it hard to get to know each other.”

Turning his gaze away, Vash mumbles out, “Maybe you don’t want to know the real me.”

Reaching down to take his face in your hands, you gently turn his head back toward you. “Look, this doesn’t have to be anything permanent. But I don’t want to waste the time I have with you. You’re constantly getting into trouble and I never know if I’m even going to see you tomorrow.”

His brows furrow, but gaze softens towards you. “The life of an outlaw isn’t a safe one. Danger and destruction follows me everywhere I go. And I don’t want you to be collateral.”

Reaching for his hand, you lace your fingers between his, squeezing tight. “I don’t know what today holds, but you’re here with me now.”

Vash looks like he’s tearing up, having resigned himself to a life of loneliness long ago. “Do you really want me?”

You break into a grin, all the anxiety you had felt lifting away. “I do. All of you.”

“I…” He starts, then hesitates, swallowing nervously. “I’m not all that pretty. My face maybe, but. I’ve been around a long time, you understand? And fought so many battles…”

You nod, dragging your hand out of his grip and settling both of palms on his stomach. “I understand. Meryl and Milly told me a little about your past… But I don’t care about that. I care about you. However you are.”

“Ah, shucks.” He laughs, carefully putting his hand on your waist. “You’re gonna make me blush~”

“I believe I’ve already done that this morning, Mr. Stampede~”

He grins, his playfulness finally returning. “Please, not my full name!! It’s just Vash to you.”

“Vash.” You say his name out loud once more, uttering it with reverence and adoration.

“My Vash.”

His gaze meets yours, tracking down to your lips, then back up. “Can I kiss you?”

You nod, licking your lips unconsciously, then lean forward, setting your fingertips under Vash’s jaw and tilting your head. He meets your lips with his own, gripping your hip tightly as he whimpers into your mouth.

It had been far too long since he had been this close with anyone and your touch was electrifying.

Pulling back for a moment, though still desperate, Vash gets out between soft pecks, “Wait, wait. Lemme get my arm. Go to the bathroom. Wanna do this right.”

You sigh, sitting up. “Alright, hang on.”

Climbing off of him, you stand up and ask him to wait, then go to pick up his arm, making a little “oof!” sound as you return, struggling slightly with the metal’s weight.

Presenting the device to him, you watch as he aligns the locking mechanism, wrinkling up his nose as his arm reattaches, and letting out a sigh of relief out when he can finally move his arm again.

“I don’t usually take it off since it hurts to reattach, but my shoulder was aching so bad last night, I needed a break.”

You tilt your head, eyes traveling to his shoulders. “Do you need me to look at your shoulder? Did you get hurt?”

He shakes his head. “I’ll check it in the bathroom. Be right back.”

As soon as the door closes, you run to your drawers to look for lingerie, digging until you find a red bra, the same shade as his jacket, and a clean pair of bottoms. Shoving them into a cloth bag, you wait impatiently to swap places so you can surprise him.

Soon, Vash peeks out, hiding slightly with his clothes slung over his arm. He’s shirtless now with just boxers on, his scars fully on display. You walk over to him, kissing his upper arm and glancing up. “I’ll be right back. There’s water and snacks if you’re hungry.”

“Mhm.” Vash smiles, ruffling your hair affectionately. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Vash has half a pudding eaten when you finally return, dropping his spoon and his jaw when he sees you step out of the bathroom.

“You all good?” Clasping your hands in front of your stomach, you sway slightly, watching as Vash sets the pudding aside and rushes toward you, getting on his knees.

“You're the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in the whole galaxy…”

“That’s not possible, there are objectively prettier things than me. Like… the Horsehead Nebula.”

Vash laughs, still on the ground. “Nerd.”

Reaching out a hand to pat his hair, you drag your fingertips over his scalp, grinning down at him. “Dweeb.”

Grabbing the backs of both your thighs, Vash pulls closer as you shiver at the cold metal on your skin, a slight damp patch already forming on your panties. Mouthing over the cotton fabric, Vash inhales deeply, drunk on the smell of you. You look down, embarrassed, pushing his head away. “Vash…”

“Sorry, was that too much?”

“You don’t waste any time, huh? Is it possible you’re really a ‘ladykiller’ like the legends say?~”

“Mmmh.” Vash raises his eyebrows, squeezing your thighs and making you squirm. “No more talking.”

Tucking his fingers into your waistband, he yanks the material down and lets you step out, tossing the garment to an unknown corner of the room. The air in the room is sticky with the desert heat, but Vash’s hands on you are making you sweat even more, starting to pant hard as he ghosts his breath over your now-bare pussy.

He’s maddening, teasing you without giving you what you want, making you only imagine what his tongue feels like.

Instead of kissing your clit, he moves to your thighs, kissing and sucking faint hickeys into your skin. He can’t contain his own pleasure, moaning softly as he leaves gentle bites, making you jump and suck in a sharp breath as he moves closer and closer to your dripping cunt.

Grabbing his hair, you desperately pull him up onto you and he makes a surprised “mmpf!” as his nose bumps your clit. Your cheeks flush even deeper, finally feeling Vash’s tongue dart out and collect your slick, sucking messily as he traces his tongue over your folds.

When he’s teased you enough, he pauses a moment, looking up at you with sparkling eyes, pussy-drunk, then dives back down, finally wrapping his soft lips around your clit.

“Nnnnh!!!”

Bracing yourself against the hotel wall, you bring a hand to your mouth to stifle your moans, remembering there are other guests just across the wall. Hissing out a, “Vash!” you point to the bed, knees buckling slightly as he rubs his thumb over your clit and gives you a false-innocent questioning look.

“Need something?~”

“Can we—“ Interrupting yourself with another high-pitched moan, you try again, voice wavering. “Bed. Please?”

“Well since you said please and all~”

Wiping off his mouth and grinning, Vash stands, sauntering over to the bed and pulling back the covers, waiting for you to lay down first.

When you finally do, he stares down at you quietly, watching as you cross your legs, pull your arms over your chest, and look away, suddenly shy at the intensity of his gaze roaming over you.

“No, please, don’t hide.” Vash sits down on the edge of the bed next to you, tracing his fingers over the bottom edge of your bra. “You look so beautiful right now…”

Finally meeting his eyes again, your heart leaps, seeing his softer side come out—his smile is warm and sincere, making you smile in return, sharing his happiness.

As you study Vash a moment longer, you notice little details: his eyes are wide and full of desire, hair disheveled from your touch, and lips still puffy from eating you out. You can feel warmth blossoming in your chest and cheeks, silently drawing your heart closer to him.

Leaning up quickly, you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him down into a kiss, tasting yourself on his tongue. He moans when your tongue finds his, exploring your mouth softly as he climbs onto the bed. One leg settles between both of yours and his hands reach for your face, neck, breasts—anything he can hold onto and get closer to you.

When you finally break for air, Vash is giggling with the biggest, goofiest grin on his face. “Why didn’t we do this sooner?? This is great!!”

Laughing too, you pull the back of your hand over your eyes and grin, cheeks flushed and breath coming out in soft pants.

You had noticed lately that Vash had two aspects to his personality: the hardened, tough, expert outlaw gunslinger side, and the very playful, hopeful, trusting and almost child-like side. In this moment, you loved being on the receiving end of the latter.

Moving your hand enough to peek an eye open, you see Vash grinning down at you again, tilting his head curiously and waiting for you to catch your breath. “You all good??”

You nod and sit up, pulling him into a hug. “Just happy you’re here with me is all.”

Feeling the warmth of his skin against yours and his hands resting gently on your back, you calm down instantly, taking a moment to rest. This was the first time you had been close to his scars and you reach out, gently tracing over some of them, watching for a response in case you were overstepping boundaries.

He lets you keep going, however, watching carefully as your fingers trace his skin’s memories of the past—the metal grating, the permanent clamps, the burned patches, old bullet wounds, and healed-over gashes.

Pressing your lips to the biggest scar on his chest, you slowly kiss your way up to his neck while your left hand slips down his stomach to his cock, rubbing through his underwear as you continue your gentle barrage of kisses and nips.

Whimpering, Vash tosses his head back, arching into your touch. “Feels… so good!” He whines, tilting his neck so you have better access. With a grin, you lick a stripe up his pulse point, making him shiver and sending even more blood rushing to his cock.

“Don’t stop. Pleeeease.” Vash grinds against your hand, desperation bleeding into his voice. You squeeze his cock gently, making him let out a strangled “aaaah!” and lean his forehead onto your shoulder. “Baby, please… You’re killin’ me.”

Laughing softly, you free him from his boxers, tapping your fingers on the precum leaking from the tip and stringing it out, then slicking your palm over the head. His reaction is instant—whole body shaking and cheeks flushing hot as he unsuccessfully tries to keep his composure, letting out a loud “fuck!”

Using the collected slick as lube, you grip tightly around his cock, jerking the shaft slowly and avoiding grazing the head until he calms down.

“Good boyyyyy. Look at you being so good for me, Vash~”

He whines again, thrusting up into your hand and biting his lip, completely at your mercy. The greatest outlaw in history and he was absolute putty in your hands.

“W-what—” Vash chokes out while you continue stroking. “What about you??” Gripping the sheets, Vash closes his eyes and moans loudly when you lean down to flick over the head with your tongue.

“What about me?~” You look up at him, still holding onto his cock with your mouth open, drops of pearly pre on your tongue.

He huffs out a sigh, trying to compose himself. “You make it really hard to think, you know that?”

Nodding, you close your mouth and swallow, noting a slightly different flavor—more earthy, green notes than any you’d tasted before. Weird?

“I mean…” Vash reaches out and pulls you up into a kiss, then holds onto your shoulder. “What if we worked at the same time??”

oH…

“Are you sure?”

He grins again, nodding fast. Crawling up to the pillows, Vash holds out his hands and motions for you to scoot back towards him. You oblige, glad your face is hidden as he grabs your hips and pulls you to his mouth, immediately licking around the edges of your still-wet folds.

Letting out a pitiful whine, your focus falters momentarily, lost in the haze of pleasure Vash’s tongue is bringing you. You reach out to find his cock, having to stretch a bit to reach (since he’s so tall), but returning quickly to your pattern of stroking the shaft and teasing the head.

All you can do is focus on your rhythm as Vash continues to distract you with his flicks and sucks as he moans into your pussy. You can feel yourself getting wetter as both of you work, slick beginning to drip down your thighs (and you imagine, Vash’s face).

Crying out in pleasure, you pull away from Vash’s cock, clenching your legs as you feel yourself come close. “No, Vash’s it’s—!!”

You didn’t want to come so fast, but your body had other ideas, letting out a small gush of fluid as Vash teases your slit and rubs your clit, making you spill over the edge. You squeeze your eyes shut in embarrassment, feeling Vash sit up and lower your hips to his waist.

“Are you ready now??~”

You expect him to be upset or shy, but when you look back, he has another stupid grin on and looks happier than ever.

The humanoid typhoon sure was something.

“Ye-yeah, if you are…”

Vash finds a washcloth on the nightstand and dries his face while he watches you take off your bra, asking, “I don’t think we have any protection right now… Do you want me to pull out, or…??”

“I think that’s the only thing we can do? Unless you want to pause and go find some~”

He laughs, shaking his head. “I know I’m clean, I got a big checkup from the guy who made my arm just a week or two ago. Plus, we don’t really know if Plant DNA is compatible with human…”

“Hm?” He had said it so nonchalantly that you almost didn’t notice. “Plant? Like, the energy sources?”

Putting a hand to his chest, he nods. “I’m a plant. Not exactly the same variety as the ones in the power cells, but the same genetics. My caretaker Rem always said me and my brother were a ‘miracle’.”

“Can we talk about it more later?” You prompt gently, glancing down at his cock. “I’m glad I unlocked some Vash the Stampede lore, but I think we were in the middle of something??~~”

He laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, of course.”

There’s a twinge of sadness in his gaze now and you move forward, taking his face in your hands again. “I can’t wait for you to be inside me, Vash. Please. Fuck me.”

Smiling softly, Vash eases you onto his lap and holds securely around your waist with his metal arm. With his other hand, he guides his cock to your entrance, going slow and giving you time to adjust to his size as he eases inside you. When he hits the base, he leans into your shoulder, cockwarming himself a few moments as you acclimate.

“Jeez, you feel so good…” Vash murmurs into your hair, sighing happily. You wrap your legs around his waist tighter, trusting him to keep you upright. He fills you snugly, but not so much it hurts, and you clench around him once, letting out a whimper as he still refuses to move.

Pressing your hips down, you grind onto his pelvis, rocking yourself slowly as you hide into Vash’s neck and moan softly. He keeps the moment slow and intimate, rocking his hips up into you, matching your pace and energy until you’re ready for more.

It’s all so intimate—the sweat-drenched skin, panting breaths, hands grabbing into hair, feverish kisses, and complete trust. You’re intoxicated with the way Vash treats you like a goddess; a being worthy of worship and devotion. The way he kisses your breasts, grabs at your hips and waist, the way he times and angles his thrusts—his every thought is of pleasing you.

Laying back, Vash lets you stay on top, moving his hands to your hips to help you ride him. Bucking up with increasingly desperate thrusts, he lets out strings of “ah!!!” and “nnh!” with every motion, matching your chorus of whimpering cries. As you ride him, you reach down to your clit, rubbing slow circles as Vash pounds your sensitive pussy from below.

You can feel your second orgasm of the morning build quickly as your legs shake, your endurance starting to wane even as Vash continues unhindered. Holding still, you quietly scream out Vash’s name when your peak finally hits hard, squeezing your breasts through the shockwaves to heighten your sensations.

He watches you, lost in bliss, and memorizes every moment for later. He’s never seen anyone look as beautiful as you do in this moment: face contorted in pleasure and every part of you caught alight in bliss because of him.

Vash is feeling overwhelmed in the moment too; it can take time for a plant to come, even though they’re highly sensitive, as their complex sensory and nervous system has to partially restructure to prepare for genetic transfer. Vash can feel his non-metal arm go slightly numb as he gets even harder, noting that he’ll need to drink more water and be out in the sun again to regenerate later.

“Hey…” Vash smiles at you, watching as you slump onto his stomach. “I’m still not quite ready yet. Can you take more??”

Raising your head up from his stomach, you give him a weak but happy thumbs up.

He coos softly, pulling you up to lay on the pillows, “Don’t worry. I’ll do all the work. Just rest.”

Laying back, warmth still flowing out to your hands and feet from your high, you close your eyes as Vash lifts your hips to rest against his thighs. You soon feel his slick tip meet your slit and push forward, settling himself inside again. This time, however, the slow pace from the start is all but forgotten, Vash chasing his relief as he slams himself flush against you.

You can only focus on the sensory aspect of it all: the sound of his skin slapping against yours, the way neither of you can catch your breath, and how his grunts and moans get louder the faster he pounds.

Pushing toward your next orgasm, your clit is getting overstimulated by the metal of Vash’s thumb, mimicking your own motions from earlier and bringing tears to your eyes. You almost tell him to stop, but hold out, knowing he has to be close as he slows down, spluttering out, “I’m!!! I’m— nnh!!”

Sitting up onto your elbows, you watch as Vash pulls out of you, his tip bright red and swollen. He’s whimpering, almost crying, as he reaches down to swipe your slick onto his fingers and palm, making a fist and punching his cock through at a relentless pace.

“I’m so close!!! Gah!!! I’m! I’m coming—!!!” Vash is panting desperately, moaning out your name as he finally releases, splashing warm cum onto your stomach and thighs.

Completely drained, Vash shuffles on his knees to you and flops down, hiding his face into the pillows.

Sitting all the way up, you glance down at Vash’s cum on you and pick up a strand, analyzing it quietly: it’s slightly greenish in tint, a bit shimmery, and has a consistency more akin to translucent aloe vera than human cum. Popping your finger into your mouth, the same strange taste is still there—like lemongrass or cucumber mixed with a warm buttery taste.

Vash was full of surprises…

Looking over at your bed companion, you smile, seeing him already half asleep.

“Heyyyy, you did so good, baby. Rest, I’ll be right back…”

Petting his hair, just like the night before, you press a kiss to his forehead and go to clean up, leaving a sleepy Stampede to recharge until your return.

Do not repost or recc this work on tiktok / ao3 / wattpad, etc. It is meant for a tumblr-exclusive audience only 😚❤️‍🩹

#vash x reader #vash the stampede x reader #n/s/f/w #trigun smut #vash smut #x reader #angel voices #vash the stampede

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noxturnalpascal · 4 months

Text

Devotion 🖤 III. Path to the Future (Ch 9)

CultLeader!Joel x OFC!Reader

Series Summary: When is it enough? When is it too much? When does Devotion become Obsession?

Visit the Series Masterlist for series warnings, cult info, timeline info, and HCs on ages. Reader has a nickname and some minor physical descriptions - is an OFC from Reader POV.

*This series is 18+ MDNI. I will not be listing individual chapter warnings as I don't want to spoil the plot of each chapter. Please see the series masterlist for entire series warnings to decide if this is for you.*

III. Path to the Future

CH 9 (6k) “She left.”

The words ring in his ears, drowning out the cacophony of multiple things happening all at once. He’s trying to throw a jacket and shoes on while Tess is grabbing at him and begging him to wait until first light. He’s grabbing at Danny and demanding to know everything while Diego wails, apologizing that they didn’t look after you enough. The noise brings the other women downstairs and they all shout over each other, some arguing Joel should wait for a search party to be formed and some saying they’ll go with him and should leave right now.

In the end, Joel acquiesces to Tess, not wanting to ignore her heartfelt pleading after the hours they just spent commiserating together. He waits until first light to leave with Danny, Diego, and Sasha in tow. He orders Danny and Diego to ride their mounts to the east and west, climbing opposite peaks on either side of the valley to look for any sign of you. He sends Sasha north along the valley to look for the same and orders everyone to send up smoke signals if they see anything and to meet back at the house no later than sundown. But he knows all of those efforts will be fruitless.

He already knows that you wouldn’t bother coming back through the town when your goal was clearly to get as far away from him as possible. You would have left the farm and continued south, which is the direction he goes. As Sasha stuffs snacks and canteens in everyone’s packs before they split up, she repeats Joel’s words back to him several times, meet back here by sundown, but by the look on her face she already knows what he does, that he won’t be back until he’s found you.

---

Joel watched for smoke signals behind him all day until the sun began to sink below the treeline, making it impossible for him to see anything short of flares, which he knew they didn’t have. He figured he’d be the first one to see signs of you anyways, which he did eventually. The next town south in the valley was about a four hour walk and while he knew you’d probably never been through there, it was well picked over by his people and had been free of infected every time he’d been there.

He thought you’d be cautious and avoid the town, his hunch confirmed when he made his way up the gentle slope just north of the town and saw the footprints you’d left. The spring sun had melted the snow and left the ground muddy, and when you’d come through here late last night you most likely hadn’t even thought about covering your tracks. But now he knows he chose the right direction, and he pushes forward along the ridge, following the breadcrumbs you unknowingly left for him.

Joel follows your tracks along the river - just beside the interstate - noticing you keep to the treeline instead of traveling along the roadway, which has better footing but would leave you exposed. You also head east, which is the opposite direction of the bigger mountain range and also away from the state’s most populated city. You’re avoiding overexertion and big-cities. Maybe you do have some survival instincts after all.

He nearly loses your tracks mid-afternoon when you veer away from the river at another city but takes a gamble and catches signs of you again along the road leading towards the New Hampshire border. You’re not looking for populated areas here, there isn’t even any evidence you’ve stopped anywhere along the way. He assumes you’ve already got a destination in mind and are focused on heading there.

Long after sunset Joel finally decides to find a place to lie down for a while. He lays there in the dark and tries not to think about how worried Tess must be since he never came back, or how you’re somewhere out here too - all alone in the cold darkness. He knows this is all his fuckin’ fault. What a mess he’s made. He actually convinced himself that he was helping people, that he was saving them. He let himself believe them when they told him what a good man he was, a protector and a provider.

He falls into a fitful sleep and when he awakes a short time later he decides to forgo any further attempts at rest and continue on your trail. He hopes you spent more time with your eyes closed than he did and he can make up some ground on the head start you got. He follows your winding trail along the woods’ edge, through overgrown fields, around a quarry, and over creeks, all avoiding any majorly populated areas.

The only time you leave yourself exposed is through an hours-long stretch going through a wooded valley, where walking the roadway is your solitary option to avoid climbing up and down the rocky hills on either side of the pavement. By his calculations you probably traveled this section last night while he attempted sleep, which would have made your trek along the road a more protected position than he is currently in, trudging though the early morning hours and into the rising sun.

He hikes on through the morning, thinking over and over in his head what he’ll say to you when he finds you, and eats the last of his packed food around noon. He knows he can refill his canteen in the river just ahead, which creates the border of Vermont and New Hampshire. He also knows there’s a major city if he continues on his path and knows that’s the reason your tracks start to head south into what his map tells him is a wide forest.

This might be good he thinks, since he’s been hiking for nearly 30 hours and only slept a handful of them. He knows he could use a shady and secure place to take a nap. He waits until he’s about an hour’s hike from the last farm he passed before he walks off the trail to find somewhere to rest. Keeping the road just in sight, he walks straight through the woods and over a brook, finding a soft collection of last autumn's fallen leaves on which to rest his head. With the bird songs in his ear and the soft rustle of trees above him, sleep quickly overtakes him.

He jolts awake, a sound skimming his senses and alerting him to danger. He lies there, statue-still, and tries to listen past the woosh of the pumping blood in his ears, taking deep breaths to slow his thumping heartbeat. It’s dark here in the thick trees and the sun is low in the sky. He must have slept most of the afternoon away but he can tell it’s not evening yet. Suddenly Joel realizes it’s not a sound that woke him but the lack of sound. There are no birds singing, no insects buzzing, just the eerie sound of the branches creaking and the new spring leaves dancing on their boughs.

He slowly sits up - weapon in hand and his head on a swivel - trying to listen for the clues that nature around him has already picked up on. A predator is nearby. Infected wouldn’t be this quiet, they’re mindless and insatiable and only care about one thing. This is either a large animal or a human. He actually finds himself hoping to catch sight of a black bear as opposed to the alternative.

Before he can get up from his sleeping position he hears quick footsteps behind him and a blunt crack to the back of his head, the pain radiating across his skull. He slumps forward and groans in pain, his hands loosening around his gun. He hears footsteps move around the front of him and feels his rifle being snatched out of his slackened grasp. A foot kicks at his torso and he groans again.

“He’s not out, you gotta hit him again,” he hears you say above him.

No, it can’t be you. There’s no way.

“I’m not getting near him again, you said he was dangerous,” he hears a male voice behind him say.

You’re goddamn right he’s dangerous, and as soon as his head stops pounding he’s going to-

A second thump, this time on the side of his head, is the last thing he feels before everything goes black.

---

Joel doesn’t gain consciousness quickly, like coming up for air after being underwater. Instead it comes back in waves, just a few words here and there, a musty smell, the familiar sound of your voice, the beam of a flashlight hitting his eyelids. He’s trying to make sense of it but it’s all jumbled up and he’s not sure how to put the pieces together. He tries to sort out his thoughts bit by bit, every time he’s conscious he tries to figure one thing out and hold it in his mind, to remember it before he passes out again.

He knows he’s in a chair, he can hear murmured echos so he imagines the room is large, but the soft sounds of crickets outside tell him there's at least one window nearby. He knows he’s tied up, he can feel bindings wrapped around him and his arms are pinned behind his back. He knows he’s been relieved of his guns, the usual weights at his hip and ankle not present. When he’s finally able to stay awake for long enough to string a coherent thought together, he decides to open one eye for a peek at his surroundings.

He’s in a very large and long room - wooden tables and chairs scattered around - creating a maze of objects between him and five figures standing on the opposite end of the room. It’s dark - he’s been out for a while - and he can’t make out their faces or their conversations but he can see that two are tall and three are shorter. He thinks at least one of them is a woman. Could it be you? He thought he’d heard your voice.

Unable to hear any actual words amidst the murmur of conversation, Joel looks around again, trying not to move his head so he still appears unconscious. Divided windows line both sides of the building, moonlight pouring in from what he imagines is the south side and reflecting off the stark white rafters above him. He takes in the amount of chairs and tables in front of him and although he can’t turn his head, he would wager money there’s a kitchen behind him. If he had to guess where he was he’d say this was probably an old summer camp’s dining hall, the craftsman style construction pointing to a mid-century build.

He hears shuffling and sees two of the figures crossing the room towards him so he shuts his eyes and pretends to be unconscious again. Around tables and chairs he hears their soft footsteps, he’s still out muttered by a deep, gruff voice. He hears the footsteps stop just in front of him and feels a couple pokes to his chest. He does his best to play possum until he hears your voice - definitely your voice - shouting from across the room.

“You better make sure you double check him for weapons.”

“You already told us that three fuckin’ times,” a nasally voice with a southern twang shouts back.

A different, deeper voice says to quit hollerin’, then there’s a short back and forth between the two men in front of him filled with curse words while he hears stomping feet making their way over from the other side of the room. He hears your voice again but this time all three of you are cussing in hissed whispers, the most prominent phrase being fuck you, and he can’t take it anymore. He lifts his head up and stares right into your eyes.

“Oh fuck,” a tall asshole with the deep voice says, raising a pistol in front of him aimed right at Joel’s face.

“I told you,” you say.

Even in the dark Joel can see purple bruising around your left eye and a split in your lip, still oozing wetness. That’s a fresh wound.

“Shut up, whore,” a nasally twat that might weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet barks at you.

Okay, Joel thinks, he’s gonna snap this rude twig in half first for talking to you like that. Did he give you those marks on your face?

“Quit fuckin’ callin’ her that,” the tall one elbows the twig and then pulls you into his grasp.

He watches you break eye contact with him as you wrap your arms around the giant’s middle - seriously, this guy must be nearly seven feet tall - burying your face in the center of his torso. He hears your muffled voice say I told you he’d come for me into his dirty sweatshirt as his free hand moves down your side and squeezes your hip. Change of plans. The big fucker dies first.

The other two people make their way across the room as String Bean grabs a knife off his hip, which Joel recognizes as the knife he put on his own hip when he left the house yesterday morning. He watches this idiot flick it around in front of him like some kind of hillbilly ninja, the knife glinting in the moonlight. It’s pathetic but it’s the only thing keeping him from boring holes into the back of your head as you remain clutched to that big oaf like a goddamn koala bear. He subtly tests the ropes used to tie him to the chair.

The two that join the group are a chubby guy maybe five and half feet tall, and a girl just a bit shorter than him, both of whom look to be teenagers. The tall one tucks the gun into his waistband and they all engage in a terrible exercise of whispering, pointing back and forth. Joel knows he’s half-deaf in one ear but they know they’re talking about him right in front of him, right? From what he can surmise, the two younger ones are a couple, and the girl’s big brother is the tall guy you’re climbing like a tree. He’s not sure how the scrawny one fits into the equation or how you got mixed up in this. Do you know these people?

“So are we gonna get rid of him, or what?” Skinny asks.

“That’s not part of the plan,” you snap, pointing your finger in his face.

Joel watches him slap your finger away and then get pushed by the big guy before all of you devolve into loud whispers again, cursing and hissing. This is getting very old very quickly. He tests the ropes again, flexing his arms and chest against them. He’s tied pretty tight with more than one length of rope. Jesus, what did you tell them, that he was Houdini? The bickering still hasn’t stopped so Joel clears his throat and the noise finally ceases, everyone turning to stare at him. Except you. You won’t meet his eyes.

Just like old times.

“You ready to get the fuck outta here, baby?” he says, looking right at you.

He watches everyone else’s face swivel to look at you. You tilt your head slightly and meet his eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, asshole,” you twist your last word like a knife into his gut.

He watches Big Guy snake his arms around your middle from behind, drawing you back to his chest. Who the fuck does this jerkoff think he is putting his hands on you? And why don’t you seem to mind? Skinny points at Joel and starts to get mouthy but Big Guy lets you go and drags Skinny and Chubby away from the group and behind Joel, leaving you and the girl alone in front of him. He figures this is as good an opportunity as ever.

“PJ, I’m sorry-”

“Fuckin’ save it, Joel,” you hiss.

“Seriously though, what are we gonna do now?” Girl asks you, side-eyeing him.

“What do you mean? This doesn’t change the plan at all,” you say with confidence.

“You said he’d kill us,” Girl whispers loudly.

He watches your face as you pull her away from him but you don’t look back to meet his eyes. Your face is passive, giving nothing away. You told these people he would kill them? Why would you say that? You’ve never seen him kill anyone. You’ve probably never even heard about the terrible things he’s done. Of course he’s killed people, but so has everyone. He thinks you might have even had to do your fair share to survive. But why would you tell these people he’s a killer?

All three boys come around from behind Joel, Skinny stomping around with a large folded up paper in his hand. He shoves it in Joel’s face and points to it forcefully.

“Show us where you came from,” Skinny says.

Joel sees the paper is the map of the state of Vermont he’d been traveling with. Luckily nothing on it is marked, so there’s no indication where the Valley might be.

“He’s not gonna-” you start.

“Slut,” Skinny snarls. “You really need to learn when to shut the fuck up.”

“No she’s right,” Joel says, drawing Skinny’s attention back to him. “I’m not gonna tell you shit.”

Skinny opens his mouth to protest but you speak first.

“I told you I know how to get there, we don’t need a map,” you sigh.

“I don’t fuckin’ trust you!” Skinny whines, turning around to throw a mock punch in your face. You wince.

“You need to calm down,” Big Guy hums at his rageful companion, pulling you towards him again and away from Skinny’s reach. “She told us she’d get us there and it’s in her best interest not to fuck us over.”

Joel doesn’t miss the way Big Guy’s hand tightens around your arm when he says it’s in your best interest to cooperate.

“We been on the road for nearly two fuckin’ weeks and I’m gonna be real fuckin’ pissed if this little whore is jerkin’ us around,” Skinny hisses.

“I’m not,” you say, looking up at Big Guy.

“I hope not, ‘cause we’re really hungry,” Girl says.

“Yeah,” Chubby agrees.

“Both of you shut the fuck up,” Skinny snaps, pointing a crooked finger in the girl’s face. “You ate your weight in pickles this morning. Besides, your fat ass could go another week without food.”

This time Big Guy has had enough. He yanks you to his left by your arm and steps towards Skinny, right arm pulled back and threatening a punch. Skinny jumps back, arms in front protecting his face and starts muttering apologies, saying he was just kidding, avoiding the punch Joel isn’t sure Big Guy even intended to throw. Maybe he’s more bark than he is bite. However, he thinks Skinny is exactly as much bite as he seems to be, no impulse control and a violent streak, and most likely the one who gave you those bruises. Joel can’t wait to kill these idiots and save you from them, then bring you back home where you belong.

“It’s late and it’s been a long day, we all need some rest if we’re gonna make the long trek tomorrow,” Big Guy says.

Joel thinks that it seems like Big Guy is the brains of this little operation, watching as he orders the young couple to sleep on the opposite side of the room where they can guard the doors. He tells Skinny to take first watch of Joel - who he refers to as the old guy - and then mumbles something to you about keeping you close before dragging you back into the kitchen behind Joel’s back.

---

It’s a muffled sound Joel hears at first but he’d know it anywhere, your soft sighs. He never thought when he heard you making those sounds again that he’d be so fucking pissed off. What is that fucker doing to you? He tests the ropes a third time, wishing he could reach into the back of his pants where he keeps a second knife tucked away, a small one clipped to his boxers for emergencies. Emergencies like this.

Skinny sits in a chair just across from Joel, about five feet away, watching him with a shit-eating grin on his face. If this idiot closes his eyes for a few minutes Joel thinks he can try and go for his knife. He’d be able to cut his bindings and start eliminating these morons one-by-one. But Skinny hasn’t closed his eyes. And you’re behind him with Big Guy right now, making gentle moaning noises. He needs to get free now.

“Ya hear that?” Skinny asks, smiling. Joel doesn’t answer. “He’s gonna dick your girl down real good.”

Joel feels his face heat, his ears burning while he clenches his teeth to avoid letting go of the growl that wants to escape his throat.

“She told us all about you, ya know?” Skinny sneers.

“Oh, did she?” Joel scoffs.

“She sure did,” He whistles. “She sang quite the song. Said you have the biggest stockpile of shit she’s ever seen, and you have all these fuckin’ people doin’ your bidding.”

Joel tries not to let surprise paint his features. You little shit. You told this jerkoff about the town, about all the food and supplies, about him and his flock? What did he do to you to make you confess all that? It’s fine, he’ll just play dumb, convince him you lied.

“That sounds pretty nice,” Joel muses, nodding his head slowly.

“Yeah, that’s what we thought,” Skinny laughs.

“Almost sounds too good to be true.”

“Does it?”

“Come on kid, it’s been ten years since the fuckin’ world ended,” Joel drawls, a smile on his face. “No one is livin’ like that. We’re all just scrounging for our next meal.”

“Yeah… she said you’d say that.”

“One thing you should know about her?” Joel’s smile disappears. “She’s a lying little bitch.”

“Well she’s certainly a bitch,” Skinny huffs. “...’cept I’m starting to think maybe she ain’t lyin’. She told us you’d follow her, and you did.”

“Oh? What else did she say?”

“She told us you’d have a hidden gun on your ankle, and you did.”

“Interesting,” Joel hums, the reminder that they took all his guns creating a renewed anger at his current situation.

“And she told us you’d lie your ass off to keep us from raiding your shit,” Skinny laughs. “And here you are, tryin’ to lie to me.”

“I thought you didn’t trust her,” Joel mocks.

“I trust you even less, old man.”

Joel settles back in his chair, flexing to test the bindings again as he hears wet noises coming from behind him. He hears a low grunting, what he assumes to be that tall fucker getting off with his fucking woman. He lets the growl rumble in his chest now, hoping it’ll drown out the sounds behind him and quell his murderous rage. Skinny makes a grating noise that could be a laugh. Joel stares at a dark knot in the hardwood floor and imagines wrapping his hands around Skinny’s stick neck.

“Sounds like yer girl isn’t yer girl anymore, don’t it?”

---

12 hours earlier…

You knew that you’d been hiking for over a day, although there was no real way for you to keep time. You left the farm at sunset and now the sun was rising on your second day. You tried to do a lot of your walking at night, pushing aside the childlike notion that the dark was scary while also trying to ignore the very real threat of actual monsters. Scary as it was, you knew that logically, you would at least hear clickers coming. It's more dangerous to be quietly stalked if seen by humans in the daylight. Still, you kept to the trees for most of your trek and even climbed one for a quick nap the first afternoon.

You weren’t sure if anyone was after you but figured there was a pretty good chance Joel would send out a search party once he heard, so keeping a steady pace and stopping as infrequently as possible were your main priorities. You thought you would outsmart him by heading away from the populated areas or outrun him by walking almost non-stop until you hit the ocean. You didn’t risk stealing a map from Hank’s shelves but you stared at it for long enough to memorize the route numbers you’d need to take, even making up a song to fit them into so they’d stick in your mind.

So now you were just next to Highway ninety one, which - according to your rhyming song - takes you south to Lebanon. You spot the sun shining off ripples of water through a brief clearing in the trees and decide to fill your canteen away from the more exposed river, heading to what ends up being a serene lake surrounded by a thick forest. It’s gorgeous here. The sun is shining and keeping you warmer than the crisp spring air would otherwise allow. The landscape glows green, finally coming back to life after a long winter.

This place reminds you of the lake you’d swam in during the summer camp you went to five years in a row as a child. Grab a swimming buddy, plug your nose, and jump in. God, you were fearless in those days. It's too cold to swim now but you wouldn’t anyways, not all by yourself. You walk the perimeter until you find a dock that will take you far enough away from shore to get some clear water without vegetation mixed in. Not that eating a little grass would kill you, but you’d prefer your water to just be water and not a salad.

God, you could go for a salad right now. Rosie made the best salads with a homemade vinaigrette that rivaled any dressing you’d had before the world ended. Why were you thinking of that now, of Joel’s house? You shouldn’t be thinking of that. Or of him. Fuck him. You were far away from him now, having finally escaped. You were staring out over the gentle ripples of a beautiful lake on a peaceful morning all alone. Enjoy this moment, you earned it, you tell yourself. You stand up and twist the lid closed on your canteen, stuff it into your pack and turn around.

Only you’re not alone.

There is a man at the end of the dock blocking your path.

Shit.

The fear starts to grip you, its icy tendrils shooting up your limbs and threatening to seize your rapidly beating heart in its grasp. No, you can’t freeze now, you have to keep your wits about you, you have to get yourself out of this situation. Making mental calculations as quickly as you can, you take off running down the old wooden dock, towards the shore, towards him.

Surprised by your sudden movement, the man takes a couple steps forwards on the dock, planning to take up even more space on your path. A few more steps and you’re within spitting distance from him. You see his arms come out in front of him to grab you. You quickly turn and leap off the dock, landing in the shallow water by the shore several feet away. You use your paltry headstart to your advantage and take off running along the shore.

You turn your head to look back and you see him, stumbling over his own long legs, having tripped and fallen into the shallow water. Relief bubbles up inside you like a percolating kettle, warming your insides and making you feel almost buoyant. You’re still looking backwards which is why you don’t see the six-foot-plus wall of man in front of you. Not until you smash into him and turn your head back, finding that his chest fills your entire field of vision. The pungent smell of his body odor stings your nose, nausea washing over you.

He twists you around so your back is to his chest and two anaconda arms wrap around your torso, squeezing you so tight you can barely breathe. You see the other man coming closer, soaking wet but laughing his fuckin’ head off, a mouth half-full of crooked, rotting teeth. He’s more of a boy than a man, now that you can see him closer. Probably early 20’s and around six feet tall. With his clothes soaking wet you can see how skinny he is, hardly any meat on his lanky frame. A nasal twang comes out of his voice between sputters and chuckles.

“You- You thought you were real slick back there, didn’t ya, bitch?”

“She gave you the fuckin’ slip, Roy,” a deep voice huffs above your head. “She woulda gotten away if I wasn’t here.”

“Whatever,” Roy mutters. “Shut up.”

---

You were practically carried around the lake until you arrived at an old summer camp, a worn wooden sign calling “Aloha” to its campers. Pulled inside a small white building, you’re tied to a chair by Roy - still dripping wet - in what looks like a space once used for arts and crafts. You see the really tall smelly guy and two shorter kids - one boy and one girl - going through your backpack, pulling out the food you’d stolen from the Mansfield’s root cellar. They’ve already eaten half of a jar of pickles by the time the ropes are secured around you tightly.

Roy strips off his wet coat and joins the group, prying open a container of applesauce and greedily drinking it straight from the mouth of the jar. You hear the girl offer the tall guy a wrapped up parcel and she calls him Mike. You watch Mike open your package of homemade smoked jerky that you were saving for later on your trip and his eyes nearly bulge out of his head. He looks over at you, catching you watching them, and holds it up above everyone’s heads.

“Where’d you get this?” he asks.

“I found it,” you whisper, your voice hoarse due to your too-tight restraints.

You don’t even have time to process the fist that Roy throws at your face until after it lands. You feel his knuckles hit the edge of your left orbital bone and slide into your eyeball, sharp pain shooting around your skull and straight back through your eye. You cry out and tears spring to your eyes, pouring even harder out of your left eye, which you can’t open. Your chest tries to heave with sobs as you hiccup, struggling to take deep breaths against the bindings. You hear Roy’s piercing voice over you.

“...so stop lying if you don’t want another one,” he finishes, flecks of applesauce flying out of his mouth to hit your face.

“I- I ca-, I can’t-,” you feel a tightness in your chest and you worry you’re going to start panicking, the blinding pain and the reality of your current situation hitting you simultaneously. This is bad. You’re sputtering. “I c- can’t b- b- breathe.”

Roy completely ignores your tears and your pleading, tipping the applesauce jar to his face and drinking down more of it.

Pain spreads across your chest like a white hot heat, quickly becoming all you can think about, even pushing the throbbing in your eye to the back of your mind. You continue to gasp and choke, breathlessly begging anyone who’ll listen, but unable to focus on any faces. It feels like your body is being crushed, like you’ve been buried alive, every breath you can’t take in fully is another bucket of dirt thrown on top of you. The bindings across your chest seem to get tighter and tighter, the ringing in your ears growing louder.

Finally relief is delivered when you realize the young girl is at your side, her hand on your shoulder and a knife in her hand. The pressure is gone. She’s cut the ropes away from you, leaving you to take the deep lungfuls of the air you need to calm yourself down.

She pats your shoulder to reassure you before Roy - realizing what she’s done - drops the jar of applesauce to the floor. Ignoring the shatter of the glass jar and the splatter of the rest of the applesauce all over the floor, Roy grabs her by her hair, causing her to yelp in pain. He begins to scream in her face, calling her every name in the book before a massive hand is pushing a pistol into his temple. The tall guy, Mike, shoves the gun so forcefully into Roy’s head that it pushes him to the side, away from the girl. He lets go of her and stumbles back a few feet.

“Don’t you ever put your hands on my fucking sister,” Mike says.

Sister? This is good. This is very good. If Mike is willing to protect his sister from Roy then he could be willing to protect you too. You watch the girl run to the third young man’s arms, his face still covered in baby fat. You watch as he kisses her cheeks, petting her hair and telling her everything is okay as tears spring from her eyes. Once Roy has calmed down Mike lowers the gun, uncocking the hammer, and looks to you. He raises his other hand, still holding the package of jerky.

“Where’d you get this?” he asks again.

You look around, surveying the faces of his companions, each of them looking at you expectantly. They look weary. They look hungry. Looking in Mike’s eyes last, you see his deep blue eyes under heavy lids looking at you. They look like kind eyes. His floppy haircut curls up at his ears, giving him a youthful appearance but you’d guess his age was close to thirty. He seems quiet. He seems safe. You hope you’re not fucking wrong about this one.

“I can take you there,” you squeak, sounding as meek as possible. “There’s a lot more where that came from. They’d let us stay as long as we wanted. We’d be safe there, well fed... I can help you.”

“He asked you where, cunt” Roy snaps as he moves forward, his rage restored.

“I know how to get there, it’s a day’s hike away from here. I can take-”

You feel a whoosh of air right before the crack of his bony palm hits your face. Unrestrained, you fly off the chair and land crumpled on the floor, barely catching yourself. Roy has slapped you. God, it fucking hurts. Roy steps up to you and bends over your folded frame, shouting obscenities down at you before he’s elbowed out of the way by Mike. He must have put down the jerky because he reaches out to you with both hands, practically picking you up off the floor like a child. Instinctively you grab onto his arms and once on your feet, wrap yourself around him, drawing your face into his chest.

Ignoring the pungent smell wafting off him, you lick at the wetness on your face, salty tears and metallic blood. Blood? Fuck, your lip is throbbing. You touch your tongue to your lip and the source seems to be a split in your bottom lip. That fucker has hit you twice now. You wish he’d fucking choked on that applesauce he guzzled down like he owned it. You cling to Mike even after you’ve calmed down, raising your eyes to meet his, hoping your gamble pays off.

“If you help me, Mike, I can help you,” you whisper - just loud enough so only he can hear you.

His ocean eyes scan your face, no doubt looking for hints of deception. It’s hard to trust others in this world, you know that better than anyone. He looks for long enough that you hear Roy call out ‘what’s she sayin’?’ over his shoulder. He looks back at Roy, then over to his sister, and then back at you. He nods his head.

🖤

I miss you Iris 💐 Thank you for helping with this series. Thank you so much to my bestie Bug for helping me edit this. ILYSM.

🚨GOING FORWARD I WILL NOT BE USING TAG LISTS - THEY DON'T EVEN WORK HALF THE TIME. PLEASE FOLLOW AND TURN ON NOTIFS FOR @nox-notifs AS I WILL POST *FIC UPDATES ONLY* THERE.🚨

TAGLIST (lmk if you wanna be added or removed) @strang3lov3 @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin @covetyou @iamasaddie @sr-lrn @clawdee @theywhowriteandknowthings @beefrobeefcal @merz-8 @speckledemerald @alltheseperfectimperfections @survivingandenduring @afraidtofear @millennial-teenybopper @missladym1981 @xdaddysprincessxx @lumoverheaven @ghoulettesinspace @brittmb115 @wintersquirrel @obscurexsorrows @littlevenicebitch69 @lulawantmula @pedroswife69 @joeldjarin @heimtathurss @untamedheart81 @pixielou5 @feel1n-h1gh @elegantduckturtle @koshkaj-blog @vickie5446 @lilipads @blvckmvgicwoman

#devotion series #cult leader joel miller #noxturnalpascal #ofc!reader #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #pedro pascal characters

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bizaar · 2 months

Text

Cruel Summer Epilogue - Part Two

Masterlist - Part One - Part Two

pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

warnings: sexual content (18+) minors DNI (you guys they go the fuck off idk what to tell you, gird your loins), pregnancy, mentions of sickness and vomiting, traumatic flashbacks, angst, swearing (please let me know if I missed anything, there's a lot going on here)

word count: 10k (still a beast but come on tumblr)

a/n: you guys don't look at me I am not kidding when I tell you this is NOTHING but filthy rabid smut

“Please,” you cry, “Please, please, please–”

“Good girl,”

You barely have time to register the way those words cause your walls to flutter and clench before he catches you in a tight, wet seal of heat, and goes to work with the soft warmth of that worship you’ve been waiting for.

Your eyes slide shut, and your head drops back into the pillows. Somewhere in the distance, your mixtape has changed tracks again, and Heart is playing a heady soundtrack of commiseration as Eddie makes a meal out of you.

Ohhh, he’s a magic man, Mama… and you can’t help but agree.

The sweet warmth of concentrated attention fills your senses and makes your insides feel heavy — tongue, lips, gentle suction, bright burst of pleasure, rinse and repeat.

A single direct graze, the stuttered rise and fall of your chest quivering on the beginnings of a needy whimper.

Christ, you always forget how good he is at this. You don’t know why, except that maybe the reverent finesse with which he applies the perfect combination of tongue and teeth and lips is enough to completely wipe your memory.

Eddie has always had a knack at turning that good head atop your shoulders into a useless piece of wanting, whorish meat, and part of you is certain that is never going to change.

Your knees drift impossibly wider, allowing him the space to do all that he has to, and with every confident swipe of that lithe muscle, you feel yourself growing a little stupider in the best possible way.

He teases your drooling center with the tip of his tongue, drawing a tight circle ‘round and ‘round and gently probing until your jaw goes slack on a moan that you swallow before it can escape.

You set your teeth, breathe in through your nose – steal half a dozen pregnancy tests and go all the way across town to drop your jeans and pee on the stick and wait wait wait –

“Eddie—” you whine.

“That’s it. Keep talking, Baby…” Eddie hums, you flinch against the fanning of his breath against your slick folds, “Wanna hear that sweet voice of yours…”

Shit — fuck, oh fuck… should you keep trying to tell him? Where did you leave off?

Thankfully, your man is nothing if not a gentleman and is more than happy to prompt you.

“Something good but…?”

“B-but…” You stutter, gasp, “But it's-it’s kind of –ahh, hmm– kind of … s-s-scary.”

Your fingers drifting instinctually down to knot themselves in the tangled halo of still-damp curls set snuggly between your trembling thighs. You’d intended to use your grip to ease him back — because you’re going to need the use of your brain if you expect to get anywhere with this confession— but you suddenly don’t know which way is up and end up pulling him closer rather than edging him away.

You rake your nails over his scalp and tense against the way he hums in encouragement, bucking your hips forward and grinding against his face in search of more more more…

Eddie hooks his hands under your hips and pulls you closer. Closer, closer, he always needs you closer, and you’re nothing if not happy to oblige him.

A vulgar wet smack rings out a little too loudly through the room and your stomach clenches, cheeks burning with the lewdness of it.

For a time that seems to stretch on and on and on indefinitely, the pair of you simply exist like that, sealed together by one lewd point of slurping, sopping, writhing connection. You’ve lost complete track of yourself, where you end and Eddie begins, and suddenly there is nothing and no one but you and him and this moment of mounting ecstasy.

If you had any functional use of your brain at that moment, you might have tried to reign yourself in a little, because you’ve suddenly become exceedingly vocal – vocal in the way your neighbors are bound to complain about later on – but what's a girl to do when her head has gone so empty?

You’re aching inside, moaning so loud that you’re practically howling with ecstasy, and you can barely hear the music, imploring you to come on home girl – you’ll be there before you know it if he keeps up like this.

“So good to me,” Eddie moans when he breaks for air, “Always so good to me – let me be good to you, huh? Let me treat you right…”

Pussy drunk is perhaps the best way to describe the slurring, heady timbre he’s suddenly adopted, and the notion would have made you laugh if you weren’t feeling its effects too. You can barely think through the fog of impending orgasm.

You lick your lips and nod your head — yes, he’s so good, it’s so so good and you’re so close–

“Huah fuck! Jesus Christ—!” You yelp, hips bucking up at the sudden and startling intrusion of the two thick fingers you were not prepared to receive, stretching you and crooking up to tease the coil in your belly tighter and tighter.

“Nope, still me,” he says — Jackass — and you can feel his teeth on your pussy as he smiles.

“Fuck you” you’d meant to say, but with your wires so hopelessly crossed, you get lost along the way and forget just who the sentiment is meant for.

“Fuck me,” you gasp, head lolling back again into the pillows as it swells and becomes suddenly much too heavy to lift.

“Be patient, Sweetheart,”

Oh, he’s the worst – he’s the absolute worst.

The rational part of your brain that wants so badly to be heard might usually suggest that a fella ought to warn a girl before he goes doing something like that, but it has gone suddenly very quiet under the muffled howling of your animal brain when Eddie turns his attention to that swollen bundle of nerves, so woefully unattended to.

You curl your hands into fists in his hair and you pull. Harder than you’d meant to, but there are no small measures when he’s sucking and fucking you like a drowning man fighting for air.

A particularly sharp burst of pleasure has you yanking hard enough on his hair to jerk him up ever so slightly, and Eddie makes a noise that nearly sends you over the edge. It’s the kind of noise that is going to haunt you later in the most inopportune moment, and he grips your thigh so tightly, you know it’s going to bruise.

You don’t care. That useless slab of meat occupying space in your skull is more concerned with canting your hips forward and back in a stuttering rhythm, trying so desperately to match time with Eddie’s fingers, all while he’s still got your clit trapped in the tight seal of his lips — sucking, sucking, fucking hell, you’re so close.

Tragically, before you can let him in on that secret, he releases you with an unbearably loud slurp that sends a chill rocketing up your spine. A man’s got to breathe, sure, but you still whine out your disappointment in the sudden absence of that sinful mouth.

Eddie leans heavily against the trembling flesh of your inner thigh as he fills his lungs. He rubs his face against you to wipe away the slickness coating his lips and chin before evidently changing his mind about that, and lapping it back up with gentle kitten licks. Each shy swipe of his tongue brings with it a hungry sound of ecstasy, rumbling up from his chest.

You shudder and clench almost painfully around his probing fingers, and you can feel him smiling against you again — God, he’s the worst — working you in the way he knows best and getting off to it.

You can’t see him doing it, but you can feel the bed moving independently of you, and the haggard uneven cadence of his breath fanning your folds and drying the sweat in the crook of your thigh tacky. You can hear him tugging on his cock, using your slick to ease the friction, and it’s entirely too much.

The sound is already halfway out of your mouth before you realize you’re even making it. You’d only meant to try and breathe out, but the raunchy schlick schlick schlick of skin on skin as he fucks his fist forces a strange, guttural sound out of you. One that Eddie quickly mimics.

“Yeah?” He pants, “Getting close, Sweetness?”

Close is a gross understatement – you’re right fucking there.

He curls the fingers inside of you in a come hither motion, pressing firmly into that coveted spot on your inner wall – the one you can never reach on your own – and your body lights up like a live wire.

You pull your lower lip tight between your teeth but quickly release it as you cry out, nodding emphatically as tears suddenly prick at your lashes.

“So close,” you mewl, “God — I’m so close—“

“Don’t cry, Baby,” he says, slipping his fingers from the quivering, clenching walls of your pussy and reaching up to stroke your cheek fondly – wetly – the unabashed raunchiness of the gesture has you clenching tragically on nothing, gasping — sobbing. “Don’t worry – Daddy’s coming…”

Ugh, God…

He’s lucky you’re so hot for him because it just about kills the mood entirely.

“You’re the fucking worst–” you moan, and he cackles villainously in a way that sends an electric shock right down to the base of your spine.

Eddie wipes his hand crudely on the mattress beside you, then inexplicably, he untangles himself from your legs and retreats.

What the fuck?

In the moments it has been since he stopped finger fucking you, the coil in your belly that had been so tight, so close to snapping only moments before, begins to lose tension.

You shift up to look at him with hazy, half-lidded eyes and are devastatingly confused to find him just sitting there, sphinxlike, and watching you with immeasurable patience.

He’s not even touching himself anymore, he’s just got that shitty little mischievous smirk on his face, and you know whatever it is he’s about to do, it’s going to be unbearable.

Oh, it’s not fair, it’s not fucking fair. You were right there.

You squirm, trying to catch the climax that is so steadily slipping through your fingers, but every time you move your hips to try and entice him once more, he shifts backward a little further and denies you your prize.

The coil continues to unravel, losing slack at a devastating pace. This time when you try to reach him, Eddie pushes your legs up to pin your knees against your chest, and he holds you there, bearing down on you with all his weight.

“Eddie–” you whine. “Come on–”

“Take it back,” he says, and you almost don’t believe you heard him correctly.

“...Huh?” you gasp, blinking stupidly up at him as he looms over you in a way that might be misconstrued as menacing on anyone else. “Take what…?”

“Tell me I’m the fucking best,” He demands, shifting off the mattress and slowly easing out of his boxers.

“W-what?” you stammer, trying not to get caught on the way his cock bounces up to slap audibly against the taught line of his stomach.

He kneels back on the bed, never taking his eyes off of you as he moves with a glacial, calculated stoicism.

“Who’s the fucking best?” he calls in a gentle sing-song, spreading your legs and pushing them flat against the mattress, splaying you open and taking a good long look at what you’ve suddenly got on display – his gaze is blown dark and wide when his eyes flit back up to your face, “And who’s the best at fucking?”

You groan.

“Jesus – you and that fucking ego—”

You bite your sentence off with a startled yelp as, with both hands on your hips, he yanks you further down the bed and slots himself in place between your legs.

You watch him watching you as he takes himself in hand and begins teasing you with a raunchy, painfully slow-up and down. He nudges the domed tip of his uncut cock through the dripping slick of your folds, only just barely there and not enough to actually do anything useful.

“Take. It. Back.” He says slowly, emphasizing the words with each agonizing pass through your wetness.

You grind out a deeply frustrated groan and push up on your elbows, shifting uncomfortably as the waterbed rocks beneath you – stupid waterbed – and opening your mouth to give him a piece of your mind.

“What makes you think you can–ah!” He snaps his hips into place with all the grace and finesse of a cowboy holstering his gun.

Eddie slides in all the way to the base and is seated firmly in your guts before you feel the press of his hips on your ass.

Your mind turns to meat again – giddyup.

“Say it.” He says, thrusting into you and setting an agonizingly slow pace – fucking you the way he’d lay fucking the bed – and it already has you coming apart at the seams.

You suppose that’s what you get for teasing him earlier.

“Hah–!–fucking shit! I take— Jesus Christ — I take it back!”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

You feel every inch as he pulls back and almost all the way out before snapping back again, each hungry thrust slamming home with enough force to make you see stars. Your arms tremble and fail under your weight, and you drop back into the pillows.

He’s punishing you for something, you know it. Maybe for being mean, for yelling at him, or maybe for making him wait around all afternoon and refusing to tell him where you went, but it’s punishment all the same.

Eddie’s not cruel, but he likes to take his time as he dismantles you. He likes it painfully slow and hard enough to knock the headboard against the wall, and you are nothing if not the impatient recipient of his love.

“...you’re so… hah – s-so…” You try to say, but he drives the words right out of you with a sharp snap of his hips.

“So what?”

He knows exactly how stupid he’s making you.

“So f-fuckingg mean…”

You can feel the vibration of his laughter buzzing into you through his cock and it’s nearly enough to make you seize.

“Yeah, but you like it, don’t you?” he pants, “Tell me how much you like it,”

You try to answer, to tell him to fuck off and stop bossing you around, but you’ve been rendered understandably mute as you fist your hands in the sheets and do your best to push back against him and meet his every thrust. It’s difficult with the waterbed roiling beneath you, but you try all the same because you know at this pace he isn’t going to last long and you’ll be damned if he runs out of steam before you cum.

And then, almost as if he’d anticipated the thought, Eddie puts a hand on your hip and forces you down, holding you pinned so you can’t do more than take what he has to give.

It is only enough to keep you teetering on the torturous edge, never enough to send you over, never too little to draw you back, but it feels so fucking good.

This is why you really let him fuck you into oblivion every night. Not because he needs it or because it’s one of the only things that stirs the embers of his old personality.

It’s because he’s really, really fucking good at it.

You can feel the litany of whorish noises flowing from your lips more than you can hear them over the vulgar sounds that fill the air with every pass of his cock through your aching hole.

You’re painfully tuned into it all: the harsh slap of skin on skin, his soft grunting and moaning fills the room as he moves, and the slick mess dripping down the backs of your thighs, making for a smooth glide in and out of you and helping him to sustain his quickening pace.

You’re suddenly so wet. You can feel it making a sopping wet mess of him as well as yourself, and it’s enough to make your toes curl and your walls flutter. You clench over the length of him, drawing a low rattling moan from deep within his chest, and feel a bright burst of warm satisfaction flood your veins.

Good to know you’re not the only one so affected by this.

You’re only vaguely aware of all the things Eddie has begun to say as he fucks you. The raunchy little questions and affirmations to which you can only nod along in consent, too drunk on the delicious sensation of being so perfectly stretched to form any kind of coherent response.

You can’t believe you weren’t going to let him fuck you tonight.

Yes, it feels good — so, fucking good. Yes, you like it when he fucks you like this —faster, more! Yes, you’re his good girl, taking him so well — don’t stop — yes, yes yes yes…!

“God–” He grinds out, cutting into the endless tide of your babbling, “—I can feel you squeezing me – Jesus — fuck, you’re so tight…”

The sudden vice Eddie has on your waist is a crushing thing as he forces your knees up and bears down on you with all his weight. He’s suddenly so much deeper than he was before, pressed flat against you and as close as he can possibly get (without slipping beneath your skin).

He begins a punishingly slow, grind, just the perfect amount of friction against the swollen, needy bundle of your nerves to have you writhing under him.

Now, this? This is exactly how you like it.

Your eyes roll back and slide shut as you press your head into the pillows and arch beneath him, exposing the tender columns of your throat and mewling at the intensity of this new position.

“Oh— f-f-uh—!” You bite the curse off with a shrill gasp, one hand flying down to grip his wrist as his palm splays over the lowest point of your belly, applying pressure there like he is in danger of bursting through your abdomen and needs to hold himself in, “Fuck! E-Eddie—!”

“I know, Baby,” He grinds out, cupping your cheek with a tender, sweaty hand, “I know…”

You’ve got your lower lip pulled so tightly between your teeth that you half expect to taste blood as the heat in your abdomen quickly begins to bloom and wind itself into the tight, vibrating coil which had eluded you before. Your lips part on a gasp, and he presses the pad of his thumb down into the middle of your tongue. You close your mouth around the digit and suck the lingering salt of your own desire from where it has dried tacky on his skin.

Eddie moans, and after a moment, you can feel him beginning to tremble. He falls forward to brace a hand on the mattress beside your head, and he keeps fucking you, but with decidedly less gusto than a moment before as his thrusts become sloppy and immeasured.

You heart jumps in anticipation of what is about to happen.

“Are you close?” You ask, curling your fingers around his quivering, sweaty forearm.

He’s breathing so hard over you, you might be surprised to learn he wasn’t teetering on the edge of an earth-shattering orgasm, but only if you didn’t know what you knew about Eddie’s stamina these days.

“Uh… hah – n-not quite, Sweetheart.” He says, swallowing hard and gasping out a haggard, raspy breath, “Not yet… but I’m getting there.”

Oh, shit – you were afraid he was gonna say that. He’s getting tired, too tired to keep up this pace at least, and that means you’re suddenly on a time limit here.

The problem with Eddie on top these days is he has, unfortunately, become all bark and no bite.

He can’t do a lot of things he used to, like sit up straight in a chair for too long, or run faster than a staggering jog, or fuck you like he used to without cramping, stuttering, and losing steam before either of you can finish.

It’s not his fault, and yet it is, because he quit physical therapy before he could make any real headway, and more specifically because he smoked half a pack of Camels today.

Suddenly faced with the possibility that he might not finish, you take matters into your own hands.

“Come on,” you say, reaching up to hold the back of his neck, pulling him down so you’re nose to nose. You kiss him, “Don’t stop, you’re almost there.”

He nods and does his best to find his rhythm again, and you do all that you can to assist him in that. You hook a leg over his hip when he paws at your knee, feeling only the slightest bit of difference in this new position, lying on your side and facing him.

“Doing so good,” you say, hoping that a little praise will be as effective on him as it is on you, “Keep going – that’s it, that’s my good boy…”

“Oh, fu– fuck!” he stammers, sweaty fringe sticking to the both of you as you knock foreheads.

Normally, referring to Eddie as your “Good Boy” is just about enough to turn him completely feral, and despite the eagerness it attempts to muster in him, he only manages a short burst of wild thrusting before he stutters and falls off his rhythm altogether.

It draws a pitiful whine from deep within you as the orgasm you’d been hurdling toward begins to turn gossamer and slip through your fingers.

You try to take as much of the slack as you can and smother him with everything you know drives him crazy.

“Such a good boy… so good for me,” You moan in a hushed and breathy whisper. “Love you fucking me like this – love you so much. God – don’t stop, Eddie… don’t–”

He tries to oblige you – he really does – picking up the rhythm again and again, but it’s slower every time he falters, and the desperate canting of your hips becomes borderline violent as you attempt to compensate for the way he’s steadily flagging.

He’s burning so hot and shaking badly enough that you have half a mind to put your hand on his forehead and check his temperature, but you know his is a fever of a different kind, and it sends a hot wave of pressure blooming in your stomach.

You’re almost there, you just need a little longer and you’re almost certain you can get him there too if you can make this last, but after only a few more arrhythmic stops and starts, Eddie makes a harsh sound and hitches as something evidently pulls in his bad side.

“Ow, shit–!” he yelps, stopping to grasp at the spot where it suddenly hurts, “Ah – Goddammit…”

“What’s wrong?” You ask, but he’s shaking his head, and you know before he says anything that he’s reached the end of his tether.

“I can’t–” he says, fighting for breath between every word, “Baby, I’m sorry … I gotta … I gotta stop,”

He drops heavily on top of you, crushing you flat, and just like that, he’s finished without either of you managing to cum.

Goddammit indeed.

You try not to let him hear the agitated sigh you breathe as he rolls off of you, painting you in his sweat and sliding onto his back with a weighty groan. For a moment, you just lay there, staring at the ceiling and listening to him try to catch his breath as the euphoric high of your bunnyfucking steadily begins to fade.

“Sorry, Baby,” Eddie’s voice comes lilting up from your right side, bracketed by the charcoally rattle of his labored breathing.

You pull your shoulders up and cross your arms over your chest, hugging your biceps as you sigh.

“You tried your best,”

“Don’t say that,” he says, sounding incredibly hurt by the idea that that could be his best.

He didn’t even finish.

“Why not?” you ask, turning over to face him, “Didn’t you?”

It occurs to you that it sounds a tad too much like an accusation, but before you can rethink your tone, it’s his turn to sigh. It’s a deeply frustrated thing that quickly turns into a loud groan as he throws his arms over his eyes.

“Fuck me,” Eddie growls.

After a moment, you sit up and cross your legs, staring down at the pitiful, sulking form of your boyfriend – another image you would hang with the placard of “man’s mounting shame” – then again, maybe not, considering the indecent little detail of his hard-on is still lying stiffly against his belly.

Evidently, not every part of his body got the message that the game was over. He may be done, but his dick is not, which means it’s not all bad news.

He did just ask you to fuck him after all.

“Lay back,” you say.

Eddie drops his arms to watch as you swing your leg over to straddle him.

He puts his hands on your hips and gets caught in a volleying back and forth of looking up at you and looking down at where you’re settling over him, like he can’t believe you would do something so generous.

“You sure?” He asks unevenly, and you shush him.

“Just lay back,”

“...You’re an angel, you know that?” Eddie sighs and does as he’s told, settling back into the pillows and letting you take the reins.

You resist the urge to tell him you’re only trying to get off, and let him believe it’s a tirelessly selfless act as you lift up onto your knees, carefully taking his tender, twitching cock in hand and guiding it home once more.

If he knew how self serving the gesture really was, you don’t think he would mind, because at least this way he still gets to cum.

You do all the work, and you’re still the vessel.

Eddie breathes out a weighty, relieved sigh, and you shudder as he slips in with only the slightest bit of resistance. You never get used to that initial stretch the pull of gravity gives in this position as you sink down over the broad flare of him.

You’d been on top the first time you’d ever slept together, and you remember thinking that it was a deeply generous gesture on Eddie’s part, letting you set the pace like that. He’d pulled you so tight against him that night and held you close as he guided you through those first few moments of bright and blinding discomfort. It was the best first time a girl could hope for, and you used to love being on top, but these days, it’s never as good as it used to be.

With you on top, Eddie is more than likely just going to lie there with his hands on your hips while you do all the work. He’s a considerate lover when he’s not tired, or at least he used to be, but you can’t imagine he’s got much steam left after the earlier pace he’d set.

What it really means, however, is that you have got to be very careful how you proceed, or the orgasm you’d been hurdling toward moments ago will have a very good chance of wandering off entirely. So, you shut your eyes, and you go to work, with your brows furrowed and your lower lip pulled taught between your teeth in concentration.

At some point over the course of the last few minutes, your mixtape ended, so the room is nearly silent as you bounce and listen to the soft, wet sounds that steadily begin to fill the room again. The much quieter groaning and muttered praise – coming entirely from Eddie’s end this time – your own breathing, the halfhearted creak of the bedframe, and worst of all, the loud slopping of the mattress roiling beneath you.

It’s all suddenly unbearably gross.

You do your best to shut it out and focus on the stretch when you drop, the pull when you lift up again, and how you can feel every ridge and imperfection sliding through your pussy.

It's not nearly as effective as it was before, but then again, you don’t have nearly as much help this time. Something stirs in the pit of your stomach, and it is tragically not the first inklings of an orgasm. You breathe out slowly to try and banish the sick feeling roiling there, and distantly feel a muted stab of pleasure make an attempt at rising to claim the real estate it vacates.

It’s middling, at best, but it’s better than nothing.

Had you been looking, you would have seen Eddie staring, eyes hooded and mesmerized by the joining of your bodies.

You would see him looking so completely lovesick and watching the creamy slick ring dripping down to wet the thatch of coarse hair at the junction of his trembling thighs. It might even be enough to help you skip the prerequisite buildup and jump right to the ecstasy, but you’re not looking. You’re too busy rising up on your knees and dropping back down at a starkly disciplined pace – not so fast that you might bite things off too soon, but not too slow as to lose the steady building of bright sensation, welling in the pit of your stomach for the third time.

You shift, trying to find the perfect angle, to emulate the way he so easily takes you to pieces. Every one of your calculated movements is made with extreme caution as you work to construct that elusive tower of power. You don’t understand how Eddie does it, how he always knows exactly where to touch you, where to find that perfect spot and press on it until you’re a blubbering sloppy mess.

Maybe if you can just – a slight shift backward. A little to the left … you know it’s there, if only because of how aggressively he’d been pounding on it only a few moments ago – bastard. You grit your teeth and breathe out hard through your nose, searching… searching … getting warmer.

You jump as you feel the tip of him graze it – that elusive spot – and gasp at the bright sensation darting shyly across your midsection and fight to remember just exactly what you did to get there.

Then, your concentration falters when you feel Eddie reach up to paw at your tits and tug impatiently at the hem of your shirt.

“Take this off,” he says, voice thick with the gravely timbre of arousal.

You swat his hands away.

“Shh, I’m trying to concentrate,”

It’s suddenly so much harder to pretend that this hasn’t become a completely self serving act – the bloom is officially off the evening’s rose. He makes a put-out sound in the hollow of his throat and answers you with no small amount of sarcasm.

“Oh, boy, isn’t that sexy?”

“Eddie – shut up,” you warn him and brace your hands on his stomach, tilting forward ever so slightly to try and change the angle without losing your rhythm.

You’re not trying to be sexy, you’re just trying to get this over with, and if he’s too stupid to realize that, that’s his problem.

Don’t be unkind – that little nagging voice can shut up too. If Eddie doesn’t let you cum this time, you’re going to kill him.

The rocking of the waterbed is so much worse up here, and suddenly you’re teetering on the edge of seasickness. You drop your chin to your chest as another wave of nausea threatens to overtake you, and you grab for Eddie’s hand, peeling his fingers away from the fat of your hip and moving them to the point of your connection.

The way you see it, he might as well do something while he’s doing nothing.

Thankfully, he takes the hint without needing to be asked, and presses his thumb down, drawing tight, firm circles over your clit that sends out an immediate beacon of relief. Waves of ecstasy bleed up into your abdomen, steadily smothering the sick feeling scrambling for purchase there, and you sigh out a wistful moan of pleasure.

And thank God for that.

“Like that–?” He tries – you put your hand over his mouth.

Normally, you like how mouthy he is during sex, but under those circumstances you would have already cum twice by now, so what you need is for him to shut his goddamn mouth and let you do this.

Why can’t he just shut up and let you finish what he started? That fantastic, euphoric thing?

You need to feel that again, feel him, but you’re not as good as he is at this, and you’re starting to grow numb under the continued up and down, hitting all the wrong spots and hopeless to find the right one again without his help.

You fold under the weight of the conflicting sensations – the middling results of your bouncing and the building pressure of his thumb on your clit – and you fall forward. Forearms braced on the bed, bracketing Eddie’s head, your hips stutter and you fall off your rhythm.

You drop your head to press your forehead to his and hum out your frustration.

“Help me,” You say breathlessly, and if there is one thing you can trust in on this good green Earth, it is that Eddie will do anything you ask, no matter what.

You gasp when he rolls his hips and instantly strikes the spot you’d been working so hard to find. It’s a halfhearted effort because he’s too tired to do much else, but he curls his free arm around your back and pulls you flush to his sweat slicked body.

Your legs drift wider over top of him, and with the gentle rocking added to the dutiful ministrations of his fingers on your clit, you finally start to get somewhere.

You bury your face in the crook of his neck and moan, and the part of you that loves him so badly you feel insane with it sometimes, even when you can’t stand him, urges you to bite him. Not hard, you don’t want to hurt him, but there’s something primal about the need to feel his skin between your teeth.

Something about his neck has always made you hungry, ever since you first met, you’ve always felt the need to sink your teeth in, but the tender, puckered skin beneath your lips as they part reminds you that you are not the only creature who has ever given in to that urge. You want to bite him, to thank him and let him know just how much you love him, but it’s because you love him that you won’t do it (even if he did it to you first).

You press your tongue to the ruined skin stretched over his jugular and taste the salt of him. The hand pressed to the small of your back comes up to cradle the back of your neck as you lathe and gently suckle the spot, hyper conscious of every wonderful sound it pulls from him, waiting for the slightest hint that it is becoming too much.

But fucking him like this suddenly feels so unbearably impersonal – he could be anyone laying beneath you. Not truly, because his is the only body you’ve ever known and you know his body as well as you do your own.

You’d know him in the dark with your eyes closed (you have, many times before) but a misplaced, creeping dread building at the base of your spine is suddenly so worried he won’t be there if you look, despite the needy pull of his hands and the gentle fanning of his breath warming you. It’s been too long since you checked to make sure he is still here with you.

You need to be sure, but, if you open your eyes, you’re half afraid you’re going to lose your concentration and all this will have been for nothing – it’s never for nothing, but some nights you need those means at the end of that long and winding road as badly as he does – so you reach out with scrabbling fingers and take a possessive fist of his hair.

Eddie groans out a pitiful sound, and when you give a sharp tug to his scalp, his hips buck up, driving him deeper into the greedy sucking heat of your pussy.

You gasp and share the sentiment of “oh, fuck”, which comes tumbling from both your mouths when you spasm around him.

“Shit—getting close,” Eddie says, and you’re struck with an oddly contrary feeling.

You’re not nearly there yet, so you pull tighter, and you rock your hips back and try to force some kind of a synergy into your conjoined, sloppy movements. No matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to manage to get in sync.

You roll your hips over top of him like he isn’t even there, and fuck him the same way you would fuck a pillow you’d forced into the shape of something. You’re using him to get off rather than working together, and if you were thinking clearly, if you weren’t just trying to cum, you might understand that that was the issue here.

You feel the muscles in his abdomen tense and release as he makes a high, desperate noise and tries to swallow it down. He starts to squirm and writhe beneath you, and you know he’s reached the edge – he’s about to cum.

You also know that by the way he’s suddenly gone silent, he’s probably fighting tooth and nail to hold on to it until you can get there, and you hate him for being such a gentleman.

“Fuck-fuck –” he pants after a long moment of squirming, “Baby – tell me-tell me you’re close – I can’t…m’gonna–”

“Don’t–” you gasp, seizing him by the jaw and pushing bolt upright so you can ride him in earnest. “Don’t you dare!”

You don’t even want to hear him say it. He hums out a pathetic whine, but nods in agreement. He won’t cum until you do, and you’re gonna hold him to it.

You rock your hips violently back in forth, rising on your knees until he’s almost slipped out of you entirely and dropping with enough force to make him grunt with the effort. You feel almost panicky, heart pounding against your ribs as you desperately try to feel him as deeply as possible in one last ditch effort to beat him to the finish line.

You hadn’t realized that’s what you were aiming for until this moment, but that nasty little competitive streak in you has lit a fire in your belly that doesn’t feel nearly close enough to an orgasm as you need it to.

You know he can go deeper, and yet you can feel his hip bones kissing bruises into the backs of your thighs, and when that math refuses to explain itself, you release your hold on Eddie’s jaw and tilt backward, bracing your hands behind you on his trembling thighs.

Beneath you, Eddie squirms with the effort of trying to stay above water. Had you been looking – and part of you truly wishes you had – you would have seen how he’s flushed a bright, pretty crimson all the way down to his chest, brows pinched, jaw set, teeth clenched, and upon closer inspection, you would have seen tears pricking at the corners of his eyes as he goes to pieces beneath you.

You can’t see how you’re tearing him to pieces, but you can hear it. Every needy little sound he makes as you ride him to the end of the earth.

“Oh, God–” he chokes, “Mmmgonna cum… Baby – Sweetheart, please let me–”

“Almost there–” you gasp, reaching down to flick at your clit, “Just– just a little longer…”

“– I can’t I can’t – hnnghfffuck – please!”

You ignore him in favor of bouncing faster, trying to keep Eddie from going to smoke beneath you, trying to keep him here with you, and he makes a harsh, pitiful noise, something crossed between the agony of ecstasy and a pained yelp.

Almost there, almost…

“Don’t stop,” you say, over and over in a breathless mantra, as if they were the magic words to push you over the edge, “Don’t stop, dont—don’t stop…”

And then, he braces his feet on the mattress (as best he can, stupid fucking waterbed) and arches as he drives up into you, three sharp thrusts that hammer the elusive spot in your furthest wall with enough bruising force to nearly send you toppling over backward.

You would have done just that if he hadn’t seized you by your forearm to aid in the movement he wasn’t prepared to make, but it’s the last blessed push you needed to get there.

It hits you like a freight train, without any hint of warning. Fire explodes in your belly in a storm of ecstasy that shoots sparks out to every corner of your body. You tense so hard your bones creak under the duress of your orgasm, and the sound that tears itself from your lungs is loud enough to savage your voice box.

You’re powerless to resist the way your body seizes under the force of your climax, though distantly, you realize that’s not you – when it struck you and sent you hurdling over the side of that cliff, you pulled Eddie right down with you.

His face is screwed up in that devastated look of agony as he punches his hips up and pulls you down in the same moment. The muscles in his stomach spasm and heave with every beat of his orgasm, painting your inner walls with ropey bursts and filling you to brimming.

It’s just enough to keep the hot bloom in your abdomen undulating for that much longer, and when the initial brightness of climax releases you and finally begins to subside, you continue to tremble under the waning aftershocks of pleasure.

Eddie sinks bonelessly beneath you, and hisses from the blessed kiss of overstimulation every time you clench over him. You don’t mean to keep doing it, but yours is a hungry pussy, and she never seems to know when enough is enough.

When it becomes too much and those little noises become distant and pained, you push up on shaking knees. He slips out of you, you slump forward, and you lay your head on his heaving chest to listen to your favorite song as his cock grows soft against his thigh.

Eddie’s heart thumps with the erratic fervor of exhaustion as you lay pressed together, gulping down needy breaths of stagnant, sex tinged air.

You’re vaguely aware, lying atop Eddie like this and bearing down on him with all your dead weight, that you ought to roll over, so you don’t hurt him, but your body has taken on the consistency of half-set Jell-O and you’re not certain you could move if you tried.

Suddenly, the heavy up and down of wounded lungs fighting for air is replaced by a mirthful shaking, and you realize that Eddie is laughing.

“Jesus fuck–” he says, completely spent yet totally satisfied and you can’t help but share the sentiment.

You pat the side of his face with your open, sweaty palm.

“Good job.”

“Team effort,” He peels your hand from his face and raises it to clap with a weary high five, “Go team,”

Your body trembles as you begin to snicker, and the bed moves right along with you.

“God, I hate this motherfucking bed.” Eddie sighs, and your insides bloom with residual pleasure. You win.

You keep the triumph of that to yourself, however, and just pat him gently on the shoulder.

“I know, Eds.”

As the blissful numbness of the afterglow begins to fade, you start to come back to your senses and realize with no small amount of aggravation that you’re going to have to get back in the shower.

At least this time it’ll be easier to coax Eddie in with you.

Your palms stick as you brace your hands on his chest and push up, slowly, because you’re still too wobbly to trust that you won’t go toppling over again.

When you look, there are angry red marks in his skin where you hadn’t realized you’d dug your nails in when you came, and you feel a pang of despair over hurting him.

He follows your eyes down to them, and regards them with a gentle, probing hand.

“Like ‘em?” He asks, “I just got ‘em done.”

“Did I hurt you?”

He offers you a lopsided shrug.

“I’ve taken worse knocks,” he says, “What about you?”

“I’m okay…” you say, trying not to think about how unpleasant the cooling slickness between your thighs is.

It suddenly reminds you far too much of sticky blood spurting with every thump of your erratic heart, and your scar throbs with the memory of how badly your hands shook as you fought to tie a tourniquet off at the top of your thigh.

You feel the pinch of fingers at your elbow as Eddie fumbles with putting a hand on you.

“Hey, you good?” he asks unevenly, lifting his head to peer at you through heavy lidded eyes, “You’re shaking.”

You banish any lingering feeling of your trauma, attempting to claw it’s way back to the front of your mind and give him a wry smirk.

“Wonder why,”

He makes a pleased, fucked out sound in the hollow of his throat.

“You ready to say it now?” he asks, and when you give him a puzzled look, his eyebrows jump with innuendo, “Who’s the best at–”

You whip the pillow out from beneath his head before he can finish and hit in in the face with it.

He really is the fucking worst, and you hope he never changes.

This time when you step into the shower, you do it together. You lean heavily against each other as the stream washes away all evidence of your lovemaking – save for the bruises, of which there are many – and after, you let Eddie towel you off.

Neither of you has it in you to change the bedsheets, so you settle on laying a towel down. You’ll do laundry in the morning – it feels oddly hopeful, that there is something waiting for you on the other end of this strange, strange night, even if it’s only laundry.

Tomorrow well and truly is another day. You settle into bed together, and take great comfort in that – you did you best, and you can try again tomorrow.

Back to front, knees tucked in behind yours, arms around your midsection pulling you tight against him, you lay against Eddie and feel his heart beating between your shoulder blades.

Forget all your petty grievances and fears and frustrations. Forget anything but this moment and every moment you’ve had like this since you first climbed up into the hospital bed to lay against him. Whatever happens, whatever you lost, this is enough.

It has to be, because you almost lost this, and you don’t know what you would do without it. You don’t know what you would do without him.

Laying there in the still dark of four hundred square feet, you begin to feel something drumming on your throat. Not Eddie or anything tangible, but the urge to speak, to spill your guts, to tell the truth.

Oh, fuck off, you tell the feeling, Alright already.

It’s only when you feel his breathing go slow and deep, and you are almost certain he is asleep do you finally muster your courage.

You’re possessed with a sudden calm. Maybe it’s because you’re certain Eddie isn’t listening, and maybe it’s because secrets are always easier to spill when whispered in the dark, but that hot coal of truth has suddenly become too much to bear.

Behind you, Eddie shifts in his sleep, readjusts, and pulls you tighter against him so he can rest his head on yours, cheek pressed against your temple.

You’ll tell him for real tomorrow, but right now you have to say it out loud, if only to make sure it sounds right.

The words have to be perfect.

“Eddie, I’m pregnant,” you say to no one but the ghosts.

Your voice bleeds into the room and sounds eerily hollow against your eardrums, but there is a truth to the words that is inarguably relieving.

Like releasing a breath you’ve been holding too long, the tightness you’ve had in your chest all day begins to dissipate, and you finally feel like you can relax.

And then Eddie sits up.

“What did you just say?” He asks, and your heart leaps up into your throat so quickly you’re half afraid it’s going to come flying out of your mouth.

Every muscle in your body goes tense as you freeze against him. You hold your breath and wait to see what will happen, what he’ll say. Maddeningly, he doesn’t say anything, he just sits there.

You twist over to face him, and with him leaning over you, you can see the faintest suggestion of his eyes shining in the dark. For a long moment, you just lay there, staring up at him, waiting for him to speak, and suddenly so afraid of all the unknowable things that must be running through his head.

“I’m pregnant.” you say again, a little softer now that it’s the real deal.

“Oh… okay…” He says, suddenly sounding so painfully boyish it makes your chest ache. “…okay…”

Kids having kids.

You don’t know what to say to try and ease the shock of it all, because you’ve already been through the rollercoaster of thoughts and feelings and emotions he is bound to be experiencing and you hadn’t done so well with the information yourself.

After a moment, the silence becomes unbearable.

“I just… thought you should know…” You say, “…It’s yours.”

“Oh…” he says again, then “...yeah, ’course it is.” almost like he’s assuring himself of that fact rather than agreeing with you.

Whose else would it be? It’s not like you’re opening your legs up for anyone else around here. Still, the way you can’t read any sort of emotion on Eddie makes your chest go tight with panic. You want to shake him and snap him out of the paralysis that seems to have seized him, but you can’t make yourself move.

“I don’t know what to do.” You say, and it’s finally enough to get him to look at you again.

“Me neither.” He says.

It’s a deeply disappointing thing to hear. You hadn’t realized just how much stock you’d put into Eddie telling you exactly how to proceed. How heavily you’d been leaning on that crutch. With it kicked so unceremoniously out from under you, you fall.

Your voice is wet and burbling when you speak, tears are collecting on your lashes and it would be almost startling if they hadn’t been simmering just beneath the surface all day – all month if you were being honest with yourself.

“What should I do, Eddie?”

Something changes in the dark, a shift in the air, a flicker of something across his face that is gone before you can read it, and he lays his palm on your cheek.

“...You should go to sleep, Sweetheart.” He says softly, “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

It’s not what you wanted to hear. You wanted him to have all the answers, to solve your problems with a gentle guiding hand, but you conveniently forgot that he doesn’t know any better than you do.

He is right, though. There’s nothing you can do about it right now. You could stay up talking about it all night, you suppose, but what good would that do?

You’re tired. He’s tired. Even without the rabid session of mindless bunnyfucking, you had yourselves a day and a half, and you can feel it turning to sediment in your bones.

You need to sleep. You should sleep while you still can.

And then, you're struck between the eyes with the memory of having heard somewhere that most new parents don’t sleep for the first year of their baby’s life. You don’t know which part of that intrusive factoid is more startling: the idea that you’re not going to sleep for a whole year or the concept that you are going to be parents.

Eddie can’t be somebody’s father, you’re thinking as you cross your hands over your chest and stare up at the ceiling, He can barely take care of himself.

Don’t sell yourself short, Babycakes, the Eddie part of you chides. You’re not doing so hot yourself.

Out of the dark, you feel the real Eddie’s hand come down to grip yours and crush your fingers into a fist.

“Don’t worry about it,” He says, the sweet sureness of his tone chasing away the snarling angry doppelganger that lives in your mind’s eye, “We don’t have to worry about it until tomorrow,”

We.

The relief you feel to have someone shoulder the burden you’ve been struggling with all day is enough to push you back to tears. You swallow hard and breathe out a shaky, wet sigh, and sniffle when Eddie squeezes your hand and tells you once again not to worry about it.

Easy for him to say, he’s not the one who is about to become a human incubator.

But he is right.

There is nothing either of you can do about it in the hours preluding twilight. Tomorrow is another day, and for now, you only have to do exactly what you’ve been wanting to do all evening.

You’ll sleep this weirdness off, and feel better in the morning.

Somehow you don’t believe that for a second.

You roll over, and let your eyes slide shut when Eddie pulls you snug against him again, but you don’t sleep. You just lay there feeling his shallow breathing fan your neck and his fingers flex periodically over the curve of your hip.

A little while later, he shifts and rolls away from you. He sits up, and you can feel him looking at you, trying to decide if he thinks you’re sleeping, and then the mattress sloshes as he gets out of bed.

You listen to Eddie padding back and forth across the apartment, moving aimlessly from corner to corner as his mind no doubt spins out with worry. There is the muted rustling of things being moved, the telltale thump of a shoe being dropped and the pawing of searching fingers in the dish by the door.

He’s putting on his shoes. He’s looking for his keys. He’s leaving.

He's actually fucking leaving.

The notion is terrifying, but something about the way you left it has you paralyzed.

You’re committed to this charade of sleep, and there is nothing that can rouse you from this bed. Not even if the floor opened up and swallowed you whole.

You don't care what Eddie decides to do. You’re going to sleep, and you’re going to feel better in the morning, even if it kills you.

You hear Eddie call your name softly from the other end of the room, and you do your best to stay perfectly still, feeling his eyes on you in the dark, watching for any sign of movement.

You’re asleep, you’re listening, you’re holding your breath and waiting to see what he will do.

After a moment that feels like eternity, Eddie breathes an uneven sigh, and you hear the telltale sign of the knob twisting. The door unsticks, swings inward, and he slips out.

It shuts with a hollow thud, and you squeeze your eyes shut tighter and tighter, tight enough to squeeze a salty bead of moisture out from your tear ducts as there is the distant whine and thump of a car door shutting.

The van’s engine fails to turn over immediately, but the second time he tries, it roars to life with enough gusto to wake your neighbors, had they already been in bed.

You sit up and watch the door, and listen to Eddie leave. You don’t wonder where he’s going.

There is only one place he would be going at 10:30 on a Thursday - only one place he can go.

You drag yourself from the bed and move to the phone, feeling your legs wobble beneath your weight with the residual of your evening activities as much as nerves.

You punch in the numbers you’ve long since memorized and put the receiver to your ear, feeling an emptiness begin to claw at you as you listen to the line ring.

Brrzzzbrrzzz. Brrzzzbrrzzz –click —

“Y’ello.”

“Hiya Wayne,” you chirp, your voice cracks.

“Well, hey there, Sweetheart — wasn’t expecting a call from your neck of the woods ‘til tomorrow.”

Eddie and Wayne have a standing weekly conversation — Fridays at two — and you feel a wave of giddy panic wash over you as you begin to wonder about all the things they’ll have to talk about tomorrow.

“Everything okay?” he asks when a silence you hadn’t meant to allow room for stretches between you.

“Yeah… yeah everything’s—” you can’t make yourself say it, “I’m sorry, I know it’s late—“

“Nah, don’t you worry about that. What’s up?”

The sudden urge to spill your guts rises violently in you, and you have to clench your teeth to stop it from tumbling out.

I’m pregnant, Eddie’s not coping, nothing is ever going to be the same as it was and we can never go back.

I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. Help me, help me, help me.

But in a feat of stunning self control, you manage to keep the tide of that existential madness at bay.

You clear your throat in a futile attempt at keeping your voice steady.

It quavers anyway.

“Eddie’s on his way over.” You say, trying and failing to sound casual about it.

Wayne doesn’t respond right away.

Because Eddie hasn’t driven anywhere by himself in fourteen months, let alone to the other end of town in the middle of the night on a random Thursday in June.

Something is wrong, and he knows it.

“He is, is he?” He deadpans, and you can practically feel the intention to ask why.

You can’t stand to hear him ask, because you have no idea how to answer. What would you even tell him? The truth?

You can’t even begin to try explaining that to Wayne, especially when whatever the hell just happened feels entirely too much like you had a fight, and it’s your fault.

You can’t stand it.

“I just thought you should know,” you mumble into the phone, “He just left.”

The words stay ringing in your ears far too long and then are quickly followed by a measured silence that stretches before you like the unending march of time.

He left, he’s leaving, he’s gone – you try to swallow against the way your throat has begun to close and put your back to that door.

You hold against it, the fear, the worries, the impending future and everything else you have no hope of stopping.

By the time Wayne finally responds, your brain has begun to crawl with spiders and your hands are trembling.

“Alright then,” he says with no small amount of finality, “You want me to send him back to you after or…?”

You shake your head for no one in particular.

“No… I think — it might be better if he stays over with you. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all. I’ll keep him for the night and send him home in the morning — don’t you worry, I’ll set him straight.”

The words are out before you can stop them.

“… please be gentle with him,” you hate to have to say it, because if there is anyone on this earth who does not need to be reminded how to treat Eddie, it’s Wayne, but you still can’t help yourself, “He … he had a rough day…”

The hum that comes rattling up from the elder Munson’s throat reverberates through the phone and makes your back teeth buzz.

“You gonna be okay?” he asks and your heart palpitates.

Suddenly, the urge to tell the wretched truth sits once more balancing on the end of your tongue.

“I will be—” you lie, “...bye, Wayne,”

“G’night, Sweetheart,”

The line clicks, and on the far side of town, Wayne Munson heaves a sigh that carries the weight of the world.

He puts the phone back on the receiver and feels that weight settle into his deeply tired bones as he runs through all the possible scenarios laid out before him. A fight, most likely, a real knock down drag out if he knows anything about Munson men and their penchant for hitting the breeze. Then again, that doesn’t fall in line with the call you just put in to warn him of his nephew’s impending arrival, and it’s not as if Eddie can get very far on his own anyway.

He spends the next few minutes wondering if he ought to go out and try to meet the boy halfway, pick him up and stop him before he can blunder through some terrible mistake that is bound to upset the lives of everyone around him for the foreseeable future.

He wonders if that’s even possible where his nephew is concerned.

He ultimately decides against that kind of tom foolery. He’s got better things to do on a Thursday night than go chasing Eddie around town.

Got to let kids make their own mistakes, he tells himself.

Anyway, he doesn’t know why the boy is on his way over. You said he was coming, nothing more, nothing less. And yet, Wayne can’t shake the trill of warning raising the hair on the back of his neck. He knows what it looks like when someone is about to cut and run, he’s spent an entire life watching that kind of behavior play out before Eddie was even born.

He swallows that doom saying, and takes small comfort in the fact that at least his nephew has got sense enough to come and ask for help before he runs for his life.

Usually. The previous spring notwithstanding.

Of course, those were extraordinary circumstances, this is just Thursday, so he tells himself he doesn’t know anything.

He moves to the kitchen, flicks on the light, and puts a pot of coffee on the stove to boil.

It’s going to be a long night.

#cruel summer fic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #joseph quinn eddie munson #eddie munson #there is more than can come from this so let me know if I should keep going

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youcouldmakealife · 3 months

Text

SOTM: Gabe/Stephen; a low-key occasion (pt I)

For the prompt: Stephen Petersen, Bridezilla

It quickly became quite clear that this prompt would refuse to settle into a one-parter, so here is the first of at least two. Next one should come within the week.

“I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Stephen says

It isn’t always a bad sign when Stephen starts right in the middle of a conversation he neglected to invite Gabe to — sometimes Stephen genuinely forgets that ‘I should tell Gabe’ isn’t the same as ‘I have told Gabe’. But lately? Lately it’s been a very bad sign indeed.

But then, everything’s a bad sign lately. Stephen says ‘good morning’? Bad sign. Stephen doesn’t say ‘good morning’? Bad sign. Stephen shortens it to ‘morning’? Absolutely terrible sign.

It’s only been getting worse as the wedding date approaches. Gabe thought they’d be above stressing over their wedding, but in hindsight, he’s not sure why. Stephen stresses about everything, and special occasions are no exception. If anything, they’re the exemplar.

“I don’t know what they’re talking about either,” Gabe says, since Stephen’s giving him an expectant look.

Stephen squints. “You don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“No idea,” Gabe says. “You forgot to tell me.”

Stephen huffs.

“Who are they, and what are they talking about?” Gabe says. “I know you said you don’t know, but you sort of said it in a way that implies you do know, you just think that they’re—“

“Full of shit?” Stephen says.

That one, yes.

“You still haven’t told me who ‘they’ is referring to,” Gabe tells him.

Gabe knows Stephen’s trying to get him to agree, but he refuses to do that until he knows who Stephen’s talking about. What if he’s talking about his parents? Or Gabe’s? Gabe is way too big a mama’s boy to ever say his mother is full of shit. And if he did, he’s positive his mom would know. Even if he and Stephen never mentioned it again, even to each other: she’d know.

Stephen huffs at him again. “Them,” he says, gesturing expansively around the room, though Gabe doesn’t think he’s talking about their living room furniture. “Everyone.”

“Okay,” Gabe says. He thinks if he asks what everyone’s saying he’ll get a third huff, and if he gets a third huff, he’s probably going to start agreeing with ‘them’ just on principle, because, whatever it is that 'they' said, Stephen probably deserved it.

“Do you know what Jared called me today?” Stephen says.

Ah. Math. Gabe should have known it was Math, because he manages to get under Stephen’s skin like no one else. Stephen’s sole consolation is that it’s mutual.

Unfortunately, that’s the opposite of consolation for Gabe, who has to listen to both of them bitching about each other afterwards. Well, Dima often has to hear both sides of the bitching too, but he enjoys it.

“Something mean?” Gabe ventures.

“He called me high-maintenance,” Stephen says.

Gabe presses his lips together.

“Him,” Stephen says. “Jared Matheson. Who does not drink beer because he thinks it’s ‘yucky’.”

“You’re not the biggest fan of beer yourself,” Gabe says. He thinks Jared would take umbrage to the ‘yucky’ bit, claim he was too mature for to ever use that word, but he also saw Math’s face when he accidentally took a sip of Bryce’s beer, and ‘this is yucky’ is a pretty good description of the expression he made.

“But I drink it,” Stephen says. “Do you know why?”

Gabe knows exactly what he’ll say the reason is, and he refuses to participate on principle.

“Because I’m not high-maintenance,” Stephen says.

See? He doesn’t need Gabe for this at all. Doesn’t need him for conversations, or wedding planning, or —

“Can you believe that?” Stephen says, then gives Gabe a look that tells him it isn’t a rhetorical question.

Gabe makes a noise. It could be taken as support, if Stephen would like to take it that way. Commiseration, even. But it isn’t.

Because yes. Gabe can believe that.

In fact, messenger aside — no one who has ever met Jared Matheson would describe him as low-maintenance, except probably him, and maybe Bryce if he’s feeling particularly blinded by adoration that day — Gabe can’t do anything but agree.

#fic snippet #SOTM #stephen petersen #gabe markson #jared matheson

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moni-logues · 11 months

Text

Kintsugi 12

Pairing: Yoongi x reader

Genre: strangers-to-friends-to-lovers, non-idol!au, angst, smut, tiny bit of eventual fluff

Summary: In a fit of spiteful, post-break-up self-improvement, you sign up to a baking class. Yoongi, in a bid to appease his demanding girlfriend, signs up, too. Determined to make him your friend, you end up with more than you ever imagined.

Word count: 3.2k

Content: little bit of throwing up (alcohol induced)

A/N: thanks to @quarter-life-crisis2 for beta-ing the first part of this! This is now the second time I'm posting this so i have nothing more to say lmao

Chapter Eleven | Masterlist | Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Twelve – Peaches pt.2

You stood outside Yoongi’s front door, pie held carefully in your hands, breathing deeply, taking a moment to try to soothe your nerves. It was outrageous, you thought, that you could be this nervous. It was Yoongi. On the other hand, it was Yoongi. It was not every day that you confessed to harbouring romantic feelings for one of your best friends. It was not every day that you ripped yourself open and placed your fluttering heart before them, hoping, praying that they felt the same.

It was not every day, but it was today.

You squared your shoulders, shuffled the pie so it rested on the palm of one hand, and used the other to key in the entry code.

“I’m here!” you called as you strode in and shut the door behind you.

You could hear and smell cooking from the kitchen, music on low in the background. You kicked off your shoes and took a deep breath. You had run over a hundred different scenarios, a hundred different scenes; sometimes you just kissed him; sometimes you prepared a long, thoughtful speech; sometimes you played it casual; sometimes you told him you loved him; sometimes, even in your thoughts, you chickened out entirely; sometimes he rejected you and sometimes he didn’t. You always cried.

You were still standing in the hallway, staring up at the invisible obstacle in front of you when Yoongi approached, spatula in hand, frown on his face. You tried hard not to notice how cute he was with his apron on, how domestic. You tried to stop your mind flying forward to a future where he cooked all your dinners, or you cooked them together, in the house you shared. You needed to keep a level head.

“Oh,” he said when he saw you. “I thought I heard you come in but then you didn’t appear. Why are you just standing there?”

Good question.

You chuckled awkwardly and walked into the apartment fully, straight to the kitchen where you set down your pie on the counter.

“What’s in it?” Yoongi asked.

“It’s peach and nectarine,” you answered, wondering if he would remember, if he might understand its significance.

“It’s what?”

“Peach and nectarine.”

He looked at you with his eyebrows raised, expectant.

“It’s what?”

You groaned and rolled your eyes; your heart sang. You gave him a huge, dramatic sigh.

“It’s peachtarine pie.”

“Damn fucking straight.”

He was in a good mood. You liked that. That had to bode well, right?

“Do you want a drink?”

Yes, you were offering him his own alcohol in his own house, but you felt like you needed it. You should have had one before you came out but time hadn’t allowed.

“Sure, there’s wine in the fridge.”

Not the sort of drink you had in mind. You checked in his fridge for soju and, finding none, walked around to his drinks cabinet where you deliberated between tequila and vodka, eventually plumping for vodka. Tequila gave party vibes which wasn’t exactly what you were going for. You returned to the kitchen and poured two shots.

“Here.”

You nudged Yoongi – who had turned back to the stove – and handed him the drink.

“Wow, really? Are we celebrating or commiserating something?”

He knocked back the shot anyway and you did the same, cursing Yoongi in your head for not keeping soju – or anything more palatable – in the house.

“Nope. Just because.”

“Ok, party girl.”

He waved the glass out towards you, asking for another, which you gratefully gave, taking one more for yourself, too. That was a little more like it. You felt looser already. A little Dutch courage can go a long way.

“What are you cooking for me?”

You moved from the other side of the counter and stood next to him, peering into the two dolsots bubbling away.

“Haemul sundubu.”

“Yum, thanks.”

“It’s almost done; there’s banchan in the fridge. And the wine I said I actually wanted to drink.”

He grinned down at you and you hip-checked him, moving away to set the table and pour more drinks.

You hadn’t decided when you were going to tell him. You had told yourself that you would show up and you’d just know when was the right moment; you knew now that that was bullshit and you should have come more prepared. The fear of spoiling everything was rapidly creeping up on you; Yoongi was in a good mood and you were having so much fun. You knew the second you opened your mouth to tell him, everything would change. Even if it was what you wanted, what you were hoping for, even if he said everything you most wanted to hear, it would change things. It was the last night of your friendship, for better or for worse. You felt desperately like you had to make the most of the evening, make the most of everything you had right now: the ease, the comfort, the little sparks of something more when he laughed at your jokes, when he smiled at you, when you got to touch him even a little. There would be no going back. So you delayed your jump into the unknown a little longer and it settled your nerves. It put off the moment and you could relax, at least for an hour or two.

The addition of a film after dinner had continued; it was supposed to be your night to pick but you couldn’t focus on making a decision so Yoongi picked one for you. You didn’t care. You weren’t even sure what it was, even though it had been on in front of you for the last hour and a half. You couldn’t have explained the plot if you’d been offered a lottery jackpot for it.

You had your legs thrown over Yoongi, leaning towards him, sitting as you did every time now. He was slouching deep into the corner, his feet on the coffee table, picking idly at the threads of the holes in your jeans as he watched; your heart skipped every time his fingertips brushed the bare skin beneath.

You could almost hear a clock tick as time went by, you still not having said a thing. It was coming. You knew it was coming. You knew you had to say something; you had steeled yourself for this. You had promised yourself you would do it. You had promised everyone: Taehyung, Nina, San. You had made Taehyung go to your apartment and wait on standby, so he could be there with no delay if it was a ‘no’. You had to do this. You were going to do this. And it had to be now.

You reached out and put your hands on his, toying with his fingers. His immediately stilled and there was a twitch that told you he was going to pull them back, out of reach, but you held on. You kept his little finger in your hands, mindlessly fidgeting with it, finding yourself unable to look up at him.

“Yoongi?”

Your face was already hot, your heart already racing. He grunted inquisitively and you felt his eyes move to you.

“Can I ask you something?”

You were still looking at his hands, your stomach doing somersaults; you wished you hadn’t indulged in so much stew now that it was threatening to come back up the way it went down.

“Are you ok?”

You nodded, your throat feeling choked already.

“I, um... Do you ever... think about me?”

You risked a glance up at him; he seemed surprised by your question and then confused. He leant forward, feet on the ground, taking his hand from yours to reach for the control and stop the film. Then he sat back, not slouching this time, and looked down at you again. You focused on your hands.

“I mean,” you continued, before he could answer, “I mean that-… I- sometimes, just recently, I... I think, I have feelings for you.”

Your face burnt so hot, it brought tears to your eyes. You didn’t know what to say next; usually your mouth did all the talking for you but it had dried up. And Yoongi wasn’t saying anything. You tried to speak and nothing but a croak came out so you cleared your throat and gave it another shot. This was not how you had imagined it going; it was supposed to be smoother than this, more confident. You hadn’t expected to be this meek; you weren’t meek. But the weight of this exchange was crushing.

“I just mean that... Recently, I’ve felt... different... and I- I guess I just wondered if maybe you ever felt like... that. About me.”

It took all you had to look up at him, to try to gauge his reaction, see if you could divine what he was thinking through his face. It was closed, impassive, inscrutable in a way that reminded you of when you first met—his silence in that third class, which you had put down to his ex, but he had never actually explained. You felt the same way as you had back then. You were sticky with nervous sweat, hot and flustered. Embarrassed and self-conscious and burning like you’d been skinned alive. The anxiety was rising in you, a panic that said it was going to go sideways, that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. That something had already gone wrong. You tried to talk yourself out of it but the longer he stayed quiet, the harder it became.

“Yoongi?” you whispered, the sound barely making it out of your throat, when the seconds felt stretched to minutes.

He wasn’t looking at you; he was staring straight ahead until he gave you a millisecond’s glance and shook his head. You waited, again, for him to say something else, to say anything at all. There was nothing giving him away. You knew him better than this; you could read him; you could sense how he felt. But not now. Not now at a moment when you really needed it.

“No?” you asked when he still said no more.

He was looking down now, not at you but somewhere on the floor. There was pink at the tips of his ears; his cheeks just barely rosy. He shook his head again and cleared his throat.

“No,” he confirmed, just as quiet as you were, his voice just as strained.

“Oh.”

Your attempt to mask the gasp you gave when trying to gulp in air was poor but you couldn’t bear the thought of bursting into tears, here and now. They pooled thick in your eyes and blinking them back only sent them scurrying, falling, streaming down your face in a deluge. You opened and closed your mouth, gaping, fish-like, a few times before you found the composure to reply.

“Ok.” Your voice wavered. “That’s fine. Yeah, ok, friends I guess then.”

You weren’t looking directly at him—there was no way you could—but you saw him, from the corner of your eye, nod, two almost invisible dips of his head. You removed your legs from over his, curling them under you, trying to keep your breathing in check. You didn’t know what to do now. You didn’t understand. You thought about what Namjoon had said, the way he had seemed so confident. Didn’t Namjoon know Yoongi? Surely he wouldn’t have encouraged you if he had known Yoongi didn’t feel the same.

There was a tearing in your chest that felt like collapse. It had been quick at least. But it was sharp. You wiped at your wet face, wishing Yoongi would just say something, anything would do. You felt shut out, iced out, pushed out. Rejected. Which was exactly what you were. In an instant, he had moved a thousand miles away as he stayed sitting next to you on the sofa. You had never felt farther from him than you did at that second. It made your stomach sink like a stone in the sea. It made your hands go weak, incapable of holding a hand even if he’d let you. It made your blood burn with shame like the acid rising in your throat.

Of all your hundreds of scenarios, all the practices you’d run in your head, none of them went like this. You always talked about it, sometimes you even argued, but it was never this. This silence, thick like fog, choking like smog, resting over you. You began to feel smothered, suffocated by it. You couldn’t breathe for fear of falling apart; you had to get out.

Yoongi stayed still, looking at the floor, his fingers worrying a loose thread on his trousers. Did he want you to leave? Did he want you to stay? You couldn’t know and were not able to wait to find out.

“I guess,” you said, when you found the ability to speak without sobbing, “I should just go.”

Yoongi turned to you then, his face for a second wearing a look of panic. He opened his mouth as you stood and you waited for him, gave him a few seconds to tell you to stay, or encourage you to leave. He said nothing. So you walked, with heavy feet and a heavier heart, to the door.

Yoongi followed you, his hands tucked into his sleeves, his fingers twisting around one another. You stooped to put on your shoes and it was only when you were leaning on the door handle that he said anything.

“I’m sorry.”

You looked back at him as you stood in his doorway; you blinked away more tears and you could almost have sworn you saw tears in his eyes, too. You didn’t stop longer to make sure. You turned tail and ran.

You had managed to hold in your sobs in the taxi ride back to your apartment; you couldn’t stop the constant leak of tears from your eyes, but you just about kept a lid on the worst of it. Then you flung open your door and fell to the floor, gasping and choking and barely able to breathe.

Taehyung was by your side in a second, scooping you into his arms, stroking your back, pressing kisses into your hair, letting you make his T-shirt wet and snotty, not saying anything, knowing you weren’t listening anyway.

You couldn’t quite believe it. Not because Yoongi hadn’t wanted you, but because you hadn’t anticipated it going like that. Because you didn’t understand. Because you somehow thought that there would be discussion; you could, now, think of things that you wanted to say, things you wanted to talk about; every thought and idea that had eluded you then flooded back now. You thought of the many ways you had broached the topic in your head and wondered why you did it like that. That wasn’t what you had planned. You hadn’t been clear, had you? Or you hadn’t got your point across? Or maybe you did? You just couldn’t tell. You were, entirely, in disarray.

You also had to ask yourself, did it matter? If Yoongi didn’t feel that way about you, did it matter how he told you? Did it matter what he said or didn’t? Did it matter how you said it? He had clearly known what you meant because he had given you his answer. You had the answer you were looking for—you had the answer to your question, even if it wasn’t the one you had been looking for. The rest was irrelevant.

The emergency treatment for your heartbreak was booze and a lot of it. So much, in fact, that you ended the night with your head in the toilet, that seafood stew finally making its burning way back up, Taehyung standing behind you rubbing your back and making sure your hair was out of the way.

He put you to bed, tucked you up nicely and, at your insistence, curled up next to you, where you clung to him like a koala, desperate to not be alone.

Yoongi stood, gasping, at his door, unable to catch his breath. He was familiar enough with panic attacks to know that this wasn’t one, but he nevertheless sank to the floor and began walking himself through it. He focused on the inhale and the exhale, the counting that accompanied each usually uncomplicated step of breathing. He needed to focus on that. Anything so that he didn’t have to focus on what had just happened.

Panic. That was one word for it. Insanity. That might have been another. Stupidity, certainly. He hadn’t expected it, could not have seen it coming even from a mile off. Nothing had seemed different. You were the same as you ever were; things between the two of you were normal.

And then you asked him that.

And he’d wanted to say yes. He was trying to. He wanted to open up to you and respond in kind and see if maybe something, anything, could have happened.

But he couldn’t. The words got stuck in his throat. He couldn’t force them out, couldn’t make himself say it. He could see it all crumbling; as if he had been watching from outside his body, he had seen it. He had seen himself fail, let you down, lie to you.

And he couldn’t explain it. He didn’t understand the gut-wrenching, visceral fear that had gripped him when you spoke, when you looked up at him—timid and shy like he had never seen you before—and asked if he ever thought about you, said that you had feelings for him. Like a pair of icy hands, one on his heart and one around his throat, it took such strong hold of him that he literally felt strangled: couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do a thing that might have led him to happiness.

And then you left. In tears. Because of Yoongi. He wouldn’t forgive himself for that. He probably wouldn’t forgive himself for any of it, but his own pain, he could handle. He was used to that. Causing you pain? Before tonight he would have said it was unthinkable. He would never.

But he had. He had lied; he had rejected you; he had let you run out of his apartment with barely a word said.

He had lost you. That was it. He couldn’t see redemption, couldn’t see a way to walk this back. Not a hurt this big. Not a stupid, pointless, embarrassing lie like this was. It was over.

He couldn’t forgive himself for that either.

He stayed on the floor in the hallway until his legs started screaming for him to move, then a little longer. It wasn’t until Cherry came to chase him into bed that he stood up, walking straight through the apartment to his bedroom, not looking anywhere but straight ahead, not daring to glance at the scene of the crime, the scene of his immodest failure, a scene the very thought of which made him feel sick.

He fell onto his bed and stayed there until Sunday.

Chapter Eleven | Masterlist | Chapter Thirteen

Taglist: @chimmisbae, @idkjustlovingbts @miriamxsworld, @tarahardcore, @simp47koreancrackheads, @xyahrinx, @olyd, @diorh0seokie, @thelilbutifulthings, @acquiescence804

#yoongi x reader #bts fanfic #bts x reader #yoongi angst #yoongi fanfic

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randomfoggytiger · 9 months

Text

"You Had Nothing"

(Dedicated to @goodshipsmulder~. Merry Christmas!)

Perhaps a Part II to “Gold”

Set during the events of Fight the Future.

*****

They’d been waiting 56 hours, 13 minutes, 10 seconds before the phone rang, loud in a room so thick with anticipation that it was nearly nauseating. Langly would have answered, but he’d just dipped to the john; and had there not been security footage to prove either way, the victor of the final frenzy-- Frohike’s stumpy grab and Byers’ uncharacteristic snatch-- would forever remain a mystery.

Byers spat out “Lone Gunman’s headquarters--” in the same breath as Frohike’s “Mulder, is that you?”; and both were winded and heady with relief when their friend’s monotone croaked across the line, across the ocean, across the world.

“Hey, settle down, everyone. Can’t hear you all at once.” But he was smiling-- they heard it-- and was pleased he’d been missed.

“Is Agent Scully with you?” Frohike cut to the chase, locking his thumbs together in the half-second of silence.

“Yeah… yeah, she woke up a couple hours ago. Doing well. Fever’ll break sometime tonight, nurses say.”

His report was peppered with warmth and weary exultation, joy and a touch of fear fading and coming alive again, if they listened for it. The three compadres-- Langly had rejoined them, a streak of yellow lightning vaulting over cables and discarded coffee cups and a trampled donut box-- neglected further investigation in their eagerness to ask and ask and ask about what happened, were they at McMurdo, who did and didn't they and hadn't he--

“Fellas! One at a time, please.” The please was implied. “And can I get back to you on all that? We’re a bit jet lagged.”

Byers nodded, stopped the phone from its madhouse hot-potato from one hand to another, and sighed, “Yes, of course. Get some rest, Mulder--”

“Not a chance!” hollered Frohike; and snatched it right back. “Mulder, you can’t just leave us hanging like that, especially concerning the delectable Agent Scully.”

“Yeah, Mulder, what did she say? Bet her eyes really popped.”

There was a pause and a long sigh and what sounded like their friend shifting positions.

Finding it hard to judge if Mulder was amused, angry, or willfully silent, Byers tried to redirect. “I think we should let Mulder rest-- he’s had a hard couple of days.”

Langly snorted and Frohike huffed.

“Not until we know how Scully took his words of undying love.”

“Yeah, Byers, stop trying to be a wet blanket. Mulder’s just evading the question.”

They were bickering now, of course: tense days passed in total lockdown-- ear to the phone and sleeping in shifts-- wore them to frazzled ends focused on a singular purpose. Goal accomplished, their energy had to be vented elsewhere. Poking Mulder about his private life and hoping it matched the thrilling conclusion envisioned in their caffeine-marinated heads was exactly what Frohike and Langly were bent on doing; and they traded verbal blows with Byers as well as each other, three dogs scrapping for the upper hand and losing sight of their original aim the longer the battle dragged on.

The first few mutters through the phone weren’t loud enough to snag their attention; but a forceful “Guys!” pulled them up short.

It was Scully: authoritative, assertive, and annoyed. Deeply, deeply annoyed.

“Agent Scully?” Byers asked, again conscious and commiserate.

“What do you three think you’re doing?”

“What happened to Mulder?” Langly’s transparent attempts at misdirection, they hoped, hadn’t been caught by Scully. The trademark sigh-- humor them-- puffed through: they had, but their bid for Mulder's health had also, temporarily, stalled her wrath. Frohike thudded Langly on the shoulder.

“He’s resting, actually,” she replied. “Or I assume so, since he’s scrunched up in a chair.” Her voice shifted, misdirection having worn out its bag of tricks. “Like I should be; and was until a minute ago.”

Danger, once turned away, was doubling back with a vengeance.

Frohike tried-- “We’re terribly sorry, Agent Scully-- we’ll let you get back to catching your beauty sleep; and I’m sure Mulder will call us in the morning if anything’s--” but even her affection for him wouldn’t deter the delectable lady’s insistence.

“First, you three are going to explain why you were shouting about me to Mulder.” An expectant pause. "Is there something wrong?"

“Rest assured, Agent Scully, no one's in danger. We were merely….” As one, the Lone Gunman looked into every crack and crevice of the room for the right word. “...merely congratulating him. And you.”

“...'Congratulating’.”

“Yes, on a successful mission. And we’re sorry we disturbed the both of you. We’ll hang up now and let you rest.”

Her winding-up breath was abruptly cut off by Frohike’s swift stab to the end button; and all three slumped, sighed, or fidgeted out their nerves.

“What’ll it take,” Frohike snapped, swinging his arms to relieve tension, “an alien invasion?”

“Pffft, more likely the sun burning out and the cold consuming us all,” Langly parried.

Byers kept silent, wondered how they could so spectacularly waste another opportunity. Those were hard to come by, and with no guarantee of a second chance.

All three wondered how much of their fight Scully had overheard, and how much she would piece together later.

*****

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

#txf #A Fight the Future Phone Call #fic #xf fanfic #xfiles #x-files #the x files #Mulder #Scully #TLG #FTF #randomfoggytiger Christmas #2023 #mine #prompts

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joels6string · 1 year

Text

More Than My Father's Son

Joel Miller x f!OC

Chapter 7 - Hazy Whiskey Nights

Summary: What you thought would be a night to commiserate the 21st Outbreak Day anniversary at Tommy and Maria's has a much more heartbreaking origin.

Rating: E

Word Count: 6k

Content: NSFW, high levels of violence normal to the TLOU world, angst, fluff, miscommunication trope (it’s Joel Miller…), slow burn, Joel’s traumatic childhood, getting together, smut, canon divergence after SLC, fix it fic

How did you help someone manage their grief when it was something you’d never once allowed yourself to feel?

Chapter 6 || Series Masterlist

“Tommy! Cover me!”

“Tommy…”

As gunshots began to echo, you jolted up with a shriek, your eyes immediately jerking over in search of the line of defense between you and the door but finding no one. You’d been trying to remember the events of that day for two weeks now, but still, the blanks stayed blackened and shrouded, but Joel’s face covered in blood at your front door was always the last place you landed. The moonlight breaking in through the slits in your curtains illuminated the old clock hanging on the wall, the familiar sight of 4 AM greeting you as you sighed into the empty, lonely space. That was all the sleep you'd be getting tonight, sweat dripping down your temple and soaking the thin tank top you’d worn to bed despite the autumn chill that had settled over Jackson.

The gardens welcomed you at five after a hasty breakfast, an early start meant more could be done before your afternoon arrangements. While your proficiency with a bow was unmatched, it turned out your thumb might be as green as it was steady. Nothing had died under your care yet and your fingers itched to sink into the dirt more than they did to pull at a bowstring, the gentle needs of the crops requiring a softer touch that forced a more conscious effort as your hands adjusted to their new task.

Benevolence was something you thought your digits would have long forgotten. They’d nimbly and efficiently killed with guns, knives, bows, and shards of glass, slitting the throats of enemies and prey alike, their very existence a testament to your survival. But here in the plush soils and humid sanctuaries, it was all fond brushes and attentive inspections, the dewy green leaves not too distant a sensation beneath your fingertips from thin, sweat-soaked skin thudding with a rapid pulse.

“You’re up early,” a voice sounded from behind you, prompting you to quickly turn and whirl to find its source.

“Maria…” you sighed, not missing the fact your hand was now at the empty back waistband of your jeans, “So are you.”

“Well, I was curious who was getting here early and doing half the work before the rest of the team even shows up. I should have known.”

“Sorry…Killing time.”

“Still not sleeping?”

“Better than I was.”

There was no way she could fight that, and surrender settled on her face in a knowing smirk.

“Better than nothing,” she laughed, your growing nerves receding at her ease, ��leave something for the rest of them to do.”

“Sure,” you agreed, “Ellie and I are going to the inn this afternoon anyway.”

“You know, I’d offer to send you home if I thought there was any chance you’d actually go.”

“I’m stuck in my ways, what can I say?”

“Hopefully not too stuck.”

When your brow furrowed she took her leave, the wind rattling against the plastic encasing you nothing compared to the fretful chaos ensuing in your mind. The invitation to the Millers’ home for dinner had already been a source of turmoil since you’d gotten the invitation, Ellie was already thrilled at the thought of you joining her and Joel that there was no feasible exit or valid excuse. However, despite her excitement over the event in the days leading up, she was oddly quiet today when she arrived and took her usual place beside you.

At first, you allowed her the space she was silently requesting, but when the sun hit its highest peak and began to dip into the west and you were cleaning your hands in the icy tap, your concern got the best of you.

“What’s up today?” you asked nonchalantly, “You’re not usually quiet.”

“Oh…” she mused, half dazed and distant, “Just tired.”

“That makes two of us. You ready?”

The heavy sigh that followed wasn’t one of disdain, you knew that even if she tried to mask it as such. Ellie had been over to help the surviving women and still packed into the inn with you, her discomfort in the setting palpable in each visit. Joel, Tommy, and other townspeople had been out diligently searching and coming up empty day after day, every evening the hope fading from their eyes as Joel and Tommy reported back to update them alone.

“You don’t have to come,” you reminded her, “There’s no shame in it.”

“I do have to come!” she argued, her voice growing louder and more agitated, “That’s…what the fucking world is like. I can’t be hidden forever.”

Hidden. You knew Ellie was frustrated Joel had said no patrols until she was older, a ruling you found entirely fair, but hidden wasn’t entirely the word you’d have used. Not much had been disclosed about Joel and Ellie’s journey prior to them finding you, all you knew was that they’d traveled all the way from Boston, lost a few people along the way, and were headed to find Joel’s brother in Jackson. When they’d picked you up in Utah you’d teased Joel once you’d gotten comfortable about just how off the track he’d been if that had been his destination, but as time wore on you’d become almost certain there was more to their story and it just wasn’t for you to know, and you respected that.

“Don’t forget, Star Wars tomorrow,” she reminded you, her voice leveled and a sad smile settled onto her freckled face, “You promised.”

“I’ll be there,” you promised, slinging your arm around her shoulders as you took off down the road.

As usual, the survivors were huddled in the lobby as they awaited the return of that day’s search team. Thus far, the only victory had been reuniting Simon’s wife with him and James, a celebration you’d missed after the ordeal at the slaver camp. Indy had assured you of his gratitude and tears of joy and relief from that day, and he’d made a point to stop you at the market earlier this week to let you know himself. All it had done was remind you of all that had transpired there and just how little you remembered.

Lunch was doled out and reassuring words were shared, Ellie following you like a shadow keen to stay in the dark but forcing itself to stretch along the walls in the sunlight pouring in from the windows. She was silent, watching attentively as you put on the mask required of you, something you’d gotten better at since arriving in Jackson. It was a necessary skill. Maria was mingling, Tommy, Joel, and Indy were all part of today’s crew and you’d be lying if you said you hadn’t opted to come here today based only on that.

It hadn’t even been a week since the fall dance and yet it felt like a lifetime. Joel had been scarce, more so than usual this week, only popping around town when necessary, and his absence even in just the passing moments weighed heavily on your spirits. But here he couldn’t escape you, even for a quick wave, and regardless tonight you’d be at Tommy and Maria’s, although you couldn’t help but wonder why this day was chosen.

Outbreak day. It had been twenty-one years now since the world had ended and been replaced by this boundless hellscape. This year, the date didn’t bring on as many despairing emotions as years past, but still, it was hard to escape the reminder of all that was lost.

“Hey,” the wrong Texas drawl called from behind you, a sea of hopeful eyes lifting to the source and immediately falling, “We caught a trail but it’s no good goin’ after ‘em in the dark. We’re setting out first thing tomorrow.”

An optimistic murmur erupted in the crowd as your spirits fell, your own gaze searching for a missing mop of gray hair. So focused on seeking what wasn’t there, you missed a familiar face merely inches from your own.

“Earth to Millie,” Indy called, waving her hands theatrically in front of you, “You and Ellie have been reading too many fucking space books.”

“Where’s Joel?” your lack of pleasantries causing her to scoff knowingly.

“He went straight home.”

So he wasn’t hurt or lost or dead, but still avoiding you as if his life depended on it. Had you been too forceful in dragging him out onto the dance floor? He’d invited you over afterward, but was that just for Ellie’s sake? Maybe he really did want to dance with Francine, but the thought of his arm around the waist of someone else had sent a flush to your cheeks so hot you swore you’d been sweating as your cheeks blazed red. You supposed it shouldn’t have though. Who was he to you? The man that pulled you from the empty building you’d intended to waste away in? No, he was more than that.

“Still comin’ by tonight?” Tommy asked, pulling you from your thoughts, “I know Joel’ll appreciate it.”

Well, hearing that wasn’t going to help any of the confused feelings you’d been grappling with.

“Yeah,” you assured, “Six, right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Do I need to bring anything?”

“No, I think Maria’s got it covered. She likes to entertain.”

“I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or not.”

“Guess you’ll find out.”

Tommy walked off with a laugh and a gentle squeeze of your shoulder, his hair now just long enough to tie back into a little ponytail you knew Joel would be teasing him about if he wasn’t already. You bid Ellie a “see you soon” as you left, needing a shower to make yourself presentable for the first dinner party you’d been to since your teenage years, your options for clothes just as scarce as the jar of green buds Eugene had left with you last week after your episode. Oddly enough, it had been helping, and now you’d have to admit that to Eugene after brushing off his guarantee that it could take your troubles away, just for a little while.

Rolling the weed into the little squares of paper he’d provided returned like muscle memory from college, the familiar skunky smell hitting your tongue and nose simultaneously as you inhaled on your back porch, blowing the smoke out slowly and watching it dissipate into the graying dusk sky. You were ready to go, but something kept you rooted in place as your mind calmed and lightened, the realization that something, somewhere had changed churning like the sea. Pinpointing it was impossible, maybe it had always been there hiding in a corner waiting for the safest moment to come out, or perhaps it had been so slow you’d barely noticed it, time sending the sands to fill your empty, weary vial when your life had been flipped upside down entirely.

Now you were late, your head in your hands as your feet tapped rapidly on the wooden step they were glued to. The air had grown too cold for your simple flannel button-down to keep you warm, yet you still couldn’t decipher if the goosebumps erupting on your skin were from the chill or anticipation. This had all gone too far. It had reached a point you thought was lost.

It was almost seven when you were knocking on the Millers’ door, Tommy opening it up with a warm, welcoming smile, “Hey, glad you make it. C’mon in.”

Grateful for lack of criticism over your tardiness, you followed Tommy into the house, immediately spotting Joel sitting alone on the couch in silence, a tumbler of whiskey perched in his hand as he stared at the flames licking against the brick of the hearth. The despondent aura surrounding him was palpable, your brow immediately furrowing as your steps slowed, the desire to sit down beside him almost undeniable.

“It’s his birthday,” Ellie murmured as you entered the kitchen, her and Maria were putting the final touches on dinner at the counter.

His birthday. Your stomach went hurtling to the floor as your heart hammered against your ribs. His fucking birthday. You knew what happened. He’d told you about his daughter in a rare moment of vulnerability before you’d made it to those wooden gates. His face had been hazy as he spoke over the flames crackling through the summer air, the pain threaded in his voice proving that time could not heal all wounds.

“Fuck,” you hissed under your breath, turning to hide the tears pressing at your eyes from onlookers.

This felt almost invasive. That man was still mourning, the one day a year he could be celebrating himself marred by tragedy in every conceivable way. It explained his reclusiveness over the past week, and you felt disgusted that you’d somehow made it about yourself.

“Just…we just want to let him know that we’re here,” Tommy defended, clearly able to read the horrified look on your face, “We’re not forcin’ him into anything, we just…didn’t want him to be alone. Not this year.”

“Dinner’s ready,” Maria chimed in, bringing each of her prepared dishes to the table one room over. So Tommy hadn’t been being sarcastic.

“I’ll go get him,” you offered, needing a second alone with him, even if it was just a few short steps into another room. What you wanted that time for you weren’t sure, but your heart was screaming after decades of being mute and not one of your well-maintained walls could keep it quiet.

The room that had previously been occupied by the brooding figure of Joel was now empty, the decanter of whiskey that had been set in front of him also gone. You could see the shadow of his slumped shoulders through the front window, and you found him on the lone chair on the porch, decanter in one hand, glass in another, chin to his chest as he stared at the wooden slats.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he snapped, not even raising his gaze to see who had come out, maybe he knew it was you already.

“I know,” you assured him softly, hopping up to perch on the banister in front of him, the stars twinkling above you brighter than they should be on a night like tonight where it all seemed bleak and hopeless.

As you stared up into the heavens, a nudge on your shin pulled you from mapping your own constellations, the decanter of whiskey still warm from his grip as you pulled it from his hands and took a swig before passing it back. Whatever discomfort you’d been feeling quickly dissipated in the comfortable blanket of silence that wrapped you both up effortlessly, the only sounds being the swish of whiskey against glass and the rhythmic tapping of your heels against the thin wooden rails behind them.

“I never realized how much I didn’t stop to look at the stars,” you began to ramble, your head was still in the clouds, the effects of Eugene’s medicine the only thing keeping your mood afloat in Joel’s somber storm, “Like, there’s no more light pollution, you know? Look at them up there. There’s so many. Especially after living in New York, just black skies, the stars all drowned out by the skyscrapers and street lights. It’s been like this for 20 years now…”

”I see you’ve gone to the town’s doctor of choice,” he chuckled from his seat, his voice a little higher, less weighed down, and you couldn’t stop the giggles you were trying to hold back from snorting out of your nose, “It suits you. Maybe I should give it a try.”

“You’ve never had it?”

“Course I have. When I was younger you couldn’t keep me away from the stuff. But I’m old now, who knows what it’ll do.”

“Probably put you to sleep.”

“That work for you?”

“Like a charm.”

“It keep those nightmares of yours away?”

If only. The way your eyes averted was enough of an answer for him, the whiskey he offered again burning down your throat. There was nothing that could take those away, no matter how many years you stacked in front of certain choices, they never stopped. A constant reminder of poor choices made in desperation, moments that taken your open heart and sealed it behind iron bars and chains. The same courtesy you’d extended to him he granted you, no nagging questions or attempts to fix what had irreparably shattered, it was just a comfortable quiet where just knowing grief was shared was enough.

“If you want to come by tonight,” you offered after a few minutes of silence, “just bring that guitar of yours.”

“Appreciate the offer,” he slurred, the alcohol he’d been drowning in finally taking hold, “I’ll be alright.”

With those words he stood, the decanter in his left hand as his right reached out towards you, your palm sliding against his calloused skin before you leapt down, the way his fingertips squeezed against yours before he released you sending a ripple down your spine.

Maria, Ellie, and Tommy were seated at the table, plates empty in front of them with the dishes Maria had prepared set across the surface, their eyes all shooting up as the front door closed behind Joel. They began an animated conversation that was meant to sound as if they’d been chatting idly for the past thirty minutes but the performance fell short to your ears, and from the way Joel’s nostrils flared as he took the seat across from you and beside his brother, it hadn’t fooled him either.

As Tommy introduced each dish, you noted the pause as he awaited his brother’s reaction after each one was named. He got none.

“Are these your favorites?” you asked Joel sweetly as his glass filled again before his plate.

“A long time ago,” he grumbled, his presence and sobriety fading quickly.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Tommy snapped, ripping the bottle from his hands as he went to drain the last of it, “Last thing you need.”

“Give me that.”

“No! Now eat somethin’ before you make yourself sick.”

A fist slamming on the table had everyone but Tommy flinching, Ellie’s face falling as Joel stalked off, the house rattling as he slammed the door behind him.

“You should eat,” you reassured her, “We’ll take him a plate back.”

“Well, that went better than expected,” Tommy announced after a heavy sigh, “Everyone eat up. No reason to let it go to waste.”

Courtesy won out over the unsettled lurching in your stomach, the small servings of everything you’d put on your plate being finished in appreciation of the invitation. Ellie seemingly had the same intention, the both of you feeling almost out of place without Joel’s ever-reassuring presence despite the relationship you’d formed with the rest of his family. Both you and Ellie helped with clean-up, making the task quick and the evening’s failed celebration come to a relieving end.

When you hugged Ellie good night outside the door of her converted garage, you couldn’t help but drift your gaze to those two plastic chairs on the porch. They were barely visible, the porch light that was usually lit notably black, the usual occupant of the chair on your left absent. The notes that usually plucked through the air floated around you like ghosts, every window in the large 2-story home dark. All you could hope was that he was enjoying halcyon whiskey dreams.

The shower called to you as soon as you’d passed the threshold of your house, your book nook as Ellie affectionately had named it requesting your attention after you washed the day away. Your hair soaked through the thin black tank top you threw on, the kettle whistling as you prepped a satchel of chamomile tea you’d packed up just this morning from the strings of drying herbs hanging from the rafters on the gardens.

You swore you heard the softest raps on your door, noting the late hour and shaking it off, but when they sounded again just slightly louder as you set your mug onto the small book-covered end table, you spotted the figure lingering on your door through the front window. Concern washed away whatever qualms you had about your attire, the flushed face of Joel greeted you like a melancholic portrait.

“You brought the guitar,” you noted contentedly, standing aside and allowing him space to enter, “What’s in the bag?”

“Supplies,” he grunted, his feet shuffling more than stepping.

“We going somewhere I don’t know about?”

“No. It’s…it don’t matter. It’s nothin’.”

“Lemme see.”

His reflexes were too waterlogged to stop you from snatching the satchel from his arms, your eyes finding flour, sugar, cinnamon sticks, and a large cube of butter.

“You want to bake?” you asked, nose wrinkling in delighted confusion.

“Yeah...” he confessed, his hand nervously shooting back to scratch at the back of his head.

“Okay.”

If he wanted to bake, then you’d bake. You’d be horrible at it because it wasn’t something you ever got right even before you went twenty years without an oven, but as long as you didn’t burn your house down you’d consider it a win. Questions ran rampant through your mind as you watched him intently, even in his inebriated state each measurement was practically scientific. Flour, sugar, cinnamon, and rising agents you weren’t even sure would work all meticulously went into separate bowls, his quiet requests for help finding certain utensils as heart wrenching as they were endearing.

“When Sarah was real young,” he began, the sound of his daughter’s name took you aback, all your focus going to a story you knew he would be struggling to tell. His hands were gripping the counter, knuckles white, and while his face was turned toward the counter you could see the lines around his eyes were more pronounced, “I’d make these for…for breakfast on hers and mine. Up at four to get it done in time…I’d forgotten the last few years…”

How did you help someone manage their grief when it was something you’d never once allowed yourself to feel? You knew silence wasn’t the answer, despite being frozen in it, and with cautious steps and a shaking hand, you slid your palm across his upper back, gripping his upper arm as you rest your chin atop his shoulder. You expected him to shove you off, but instead he exhaled deeply as if he’d been holding his breath. The sheer size difference had this feeling inadequate, your arm barely taking up space across his broad shoulders, but he seemed content enough. It was the thought that counted, right?

“Okay,” he mumbled, standing upright once again to finish his task, and you pulled your embrace away quickly, still afraid you’d overstepped a boundary that you were never meant to cross.

“Shit,” he sighed as you heard the brittle cracking of an egg smashing on the floor, his head whipping around in search of a towel and yanking it free off the oven handle.

As he dropped to his knees, you followed, your noses inches apart as you laid your fingers over his, pulling the rag free, “I got it.”

Proximity to him wasn’t something you weren’t accustomed to, you’d spent weeks clinging to his back through forests and over rivers, but it was never face to face. You noticed his sunspots and scars, all the little fine lines nicked all across his face from years of knife fights and jumping through shattered glass, thorns, and dilapidated buildings. The prominent indentation spread across his crooked nose was deep, the dark color a stark contrast to the light hazel hue of his eyes that was locked with the green of your own. His beard had grayed more since your arrival months ago, his cheeks had filled in, and the sadness in his eyes gave a him a vulnerability that made him look far younger than his difficult 53 years

You cleared your throat as you broke the staring contest you’d been unaware you’d entered, turning to work on mopping up the egg yolk splattered across your floor. The oven blared as it hit the required temperature as you rose, tossing the rag into the trash behind you before the newest ailment that had been plaguing you kicked into gear. A slow ooze from your nose dropped onto the floor, Joel snapped his attention up to you. The back of your hand was pressed against your face, blood already smearing along your skin as he shot up, frantically digging through your kitchen drawers in search of a clean towel.

“I’m fine,” you groaned, “it’s the weather…”

The taste of copper sat wet on your lips, your cheeks burning in embarrassment as you ran to the sink, rinsing your hands as blood continued to roll down your face. Thick fingers tipped your chin back as you turned straight into a solid chest before pressing a towel beneath your leaking nostrils as his other hand cradled the back of your head, the ceiling coming into view as you went limp in his hold. It was silent, the butterflies in your stomach evolving into vulturous hawks as his fingers scratched soothing against your scalp, your unruly waves catching and tugging enough to keep you from letting yourself drift off to a forbidden sanctuary.

After what felt like an hour but the clock proved as five minutes, he pulled the pressure away, inspecting for new blood and finding now, wetting the clean edges of the blood-soaked rag in his hands and wiping your face clean. You wanted to stop him, you could handle this, but you didn’t. The water was freezing against your heated skin, his swipes tender and his eyes focused on cleaning the last evidence of your ailment clean. Your nails dug into the skin of your palm as you balled your fists while you mentally thanked yourself for not drinking as much as you’d wanted to, and you considered that the amount he’d allowed himself to have was probably fueling his own motions.

“I need to change,” you blurted out bluntly, your body searing hot as you pushed passed him and ran up the stairs, slamming your bedroom door behind you.

Squashing the hopes that he’d follow was harder than you’d hoped, your fingers rolling the last of your stash into a thin little cone and sticking it into the pocket of the flannel you donned over the thin tank top you pulled from the drawer. It had to be the exhaustion or the comedown from your first high, or maybe it was the heavy emotional fog that had surrounded him throughout the night, obscuring your view of reality as you’d inspected his frown lines and read the sadness in his eyes as if it was a code written only for you to decipher. He’d ended up here. Yes, you’d offered, but he’d refused. And yet hours after his abrupt departure from Tommy and Maria’s, he’d been on your doorstep, guitar in hand, looking every bit sullen and in need of a place to softly land. And that was here.

“You alright?” his voice traveled up the stairs, a hint of nervousness drifting along with it. You’d been too long.

The smell of cinnamon was strong as you hit the first floor, Joel hunched over the stove as he prepped another tray of dough to go into the oven. The sight had your breath hitching, his fingers looking too large for such a delicate task yet he moved as if he’d mastered it years ago, his brow furrowed in concentration as he plopped each ball onto the metal, his thumb dipping between his lips with a soft smack after he’d placed the last one.

“Hey,” he greeted when he spotted you leaning against the doorframe, “C’mere.”

Through your brazen staring, you’d failed to notice he’d started a pot of boiling water, the steam rising from the bubbling liquid as he flicked the burner off, the plaid shirt that had just been stretched across his broad shoulders surrounding your head as he stood behind you in a gray flannel that hugged every one of his dips and curves, the three buttons beginning at the collar undone to reveal a peak of the dark hair that covered his chest.

“Head down,” he instructed, the air warm and wet as he tented his shirt around your head, “Breathe that in a bit, it’ll help your nose.”

As you took over the task of holding his flannel that smelled like sawdust and cinnamon, you heard him working around the kitchen. The faucet going off, the clattering of spoons and bowls in the basin of the sink, heavy boot steps, and muttered reminders, it was the first time in your life you’d shared a space with someone like this, domestically, effortlessly. When the timer blared you leapt back in shock, his hands covered in soap as he turned from the sink to steady you first before grabbing one of the old oven mitts Maria had given you to pull out the first batch of snickerdoodle cookies, the other going right in as you watched on in awe yet again.

“Do you want a drink?” you asked, realizing that you had to offer since he’d arrived.

“Think I’ve had enough,” he refused with a lopsided smirk, resetting the timer to twelve minutes, “Unless you’ve got some coffee.”

“I gave that to you.”

“Yeah, that’s gone.”

With a knowing nod you grabbed your last clean towel and joined him at the sink, drying the dishes as he passed them your way and putting them away, the task bringing you to the beep of the final timer. He’d already placed the first dozen on a plate, and after setting the other tray on the stovetop he grabbed the dish in one hand, his guitar in the other, and gestured towards your back door.

“Comin’?” he asked, and without a second thought, you nodded, opening the door up to allow him out first before following.

Chairs were something you hadn’t gotten yet, but he was perfectly content on the top side, his long legs bringing his feet to rest two steps down. You sat facing him, your legs stretching out behind his back to leave enough room for the neck of his guitar, the warm, buttery cookies he made better than you expected as you took your first bite. He laughed quietly as you hummed in approval, shooting you a look that screamed ‘told you so,’ his eyebrows raised mischievously as he pulled the instrument into place.

“Play something for me, Billy Joel,” you crooned, tapping his lower back with your foot, your eyes unable to stay away from the galaxies above.

“Don’t he play piano?” Joel replied with a chuckle, and you shrugged, the familiar notes of the song he always played floating out into the night.

“What was her favorite?” you took a chance in asking, his fingers stopping and resting against the strings.

“Song?” he asked after a pause, the response to your prying gentler than you expected.

“Yeah.”

It was a melody you vaguely remembered, but you could tell he was flubbing some of the notes when his face twisted in frustration and you sat and listened, noting the slowing of his motions and the way his lower lip began to pout out. You hoped it was cathartic, healing, and not something sending him further into the abyss of mourning he’d been caught in.

“It was from some boy band,” he explained as the song came to an end, “I hated ‘em. Fought tooth and nail when she wanted to put it on in the truck. I’d do anything to find that CD now.”

“We’ll find it,” you assured, the flicking of your lighter piquing his attention as you settled the last joint between your lips and took a drag.

“Lemme try that.”

“You sure?”

“I’ve done worse. Just don’t tell anyone.”

With a laugh you leaned forward, offering the roll to him and expecting him to pull it from your fingers, but instead, he just leaned over, pursing his lips around the end close enough to have them brushing against your skin as he pulled the smoke into his lungs and then promptly pulled away choking. There was no helping your eruption of giggles and snorts as he wheezed and heaved, his head shaking in disgust and embarrassment alike.

“Do not tell,” he stammered, “a god damn soul.”

“I’ll do my best,” you teased, standing so he’d follow you inside as he shot you a glare, “I promise,” you finally conceded, hands raised in surrender, “Cross my heart hope to die,” you finished, holding your pinky out as you grinned up at him.

“Cute.”

Another snort rumbled from your chest as he rolled his eyes, ignoring your gesture of good faith and retreating to your couch, plopping down on the middle cushion and resting his head back, his eyes drifting closed. You plopped down beside him, knees tucked to your chest, grabbing your TV and DVD player remotes off the small table set in front of you, turning on whatever series you’d been watching. Thankfully, it was The Office yet again, and you were happy it was something he’d at least moderately enjoy, but your concerns about the TV went out the window as his arm looped around your legs and pulled them straight over his lap, his eyes not even bothering to open as he rest forearms almost as thick as your calves over your knees.

Within minutes he was asleep, his deep, easy breathing a sound you’d come to crave as you lay in bed alone in your room. His mouth was slightly open, his face relaxed and the tension from the day melted away. At least you’d been right, it did put him right to sleep. The urge to drift off here in the safety of the presence you longed for was strong enough to have you fighting your eyes to stay open as you debated, his arms still heavy over the top of you. He looked so at peace; would jostling him rob him of the serenity he’d found here?

It felt wrong to allow him to wake up tangled in you, he was still slightly drunk and now under the effects of Eugene’s hybrid blend, what if tomorrow he woke up mortified with your body so close to his? Carefully, you slipped free of his hold, gently laying him down on the single couch pillow you’d managed to clean well enough to use, the tattered blanket he’d let you keep from your time on the road barely enough to cover him as you draped it over his still-unmoving body. Well, he was at least out cold.

Your own bed felt colder, the room too silent as you tried to forget the source of comfort just one floor below you now instead of blocks away, the knowledge that at least he was safe here in your living room calming enough to let you drift into a light sleep.

The sun was barely up when you woke, gray light filling your room as you woke without a scream still in last night’s clothes. It was silent, your mind reminding you that Joel was on the couch and your feet hit the cold wooden floor quickly in hopes you’d beat him to the morning. But as you turned into the room, the couch was empty, the blanket folded neatly on top of the couch, his guitar gone from where it had been perched against the side. You weren’t surprised, hell, maybe you’d dreamed it. It wasn’t unlike your brain to play cruel tricks on you.

Sighing, you made your way to the kitchen, your mouth dry and your stomach gurgling, a plastic container filled with cookies on the counter the first sight you saw before a single white sheet of notepaper from the pad by your couch caught your eye hanging on the fridge. The simple inscription scribbled in messy penmanship made your eyes roll as your lips ticked up into a knowing grin.

Thanks. -J

Chapter 8

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us fic #the last of us fanfic #tlou fanfic #tlou fanfiction #tlou fic

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drabbles-mc · 11 months

Text

Crumbled to Dust

Horacio Carrillo & F!Reader (ft. OC Diego Ramírez)

For @narcosfandomdiscord's Day of Surprises: create a fanwork that focuses on dreams, either literal or metaphorical

Warnings: 18+, language, nightmares/ptsd, angst, mentions of blood

Word Count: 1.2k

A/N: It's so like me to see a prompt that says 'dreams' and automatically turn it into 'nightmares' isn't it? 😂 I feel like some of the context for this story makes a lot more sense if you've read Grave Mistakes however, that being said, you will be able to understand most of what's going on just fine without it. I think that if anyone is going to haunt Carrillo's nightmares, it's only right that it's Diego. That's all.

Narcos Taglist: @garbinge @616wilsons @mirabee @nessamc @mysun-n-stars @justreblogginfics @ashlingnarcos @proceduralpassion @artemiseamoon @narcolini @hausofmamadas @cositapreciosa

When he snapped out of the nightmare it wasn’t with a jolt and a gasp. His eyes snapped open, air constricted in his chest, tied into knots in his lungs. Sweat slicked the side of his face that was pressed to the pillow, the case of it cool now, but uncomfortable and damp. He could feel a few stray beads of sweat still creeping their way across his chest, gravity pulling them down towards the sheets as he laid with one shoulder pressed into the mattress, all stacked up on one side.

He tried to move, tried to take a concentrated breath, but he couldn’t do either. He was just frozen for a moment, jaw and fists all clenched tight enough that it was shocking the nightmare woke him instead of the popping of his joints, or the cracking of his bones.

Slowly, working upwards from the soles of his feet until it finally reached the muscles of his neck, the tension waned. He unfurled his fingers, sucked in a deep breath like he’d finally broken the surface after being held underwater for too long. Instead of water he was drowning in he wiped the sweat from the side of his face instead. It took longer than it should have, longer than even on his night with the least amount of sleep, but he finally rolled onto his back and forced himself to sit upright.

It was harder to shake off nightmares when they were of things that had already happened.

He heard the gunshot, the scream. He heard the ragged breathing coming from the back seat of the car. He saw the blood—on Diego, on the backseat, on his clothes, on you. The knots in his lungs came back the more he thought about it. Awake or asleep it didn’t matter. The nightmare didn’t stop.

Each time he tried to think himself away from it, he always circled right back to it. His finger pulling the trigger. Diego crumpling on the stairs, his only crime trying to bring a fellow officer to safety. Ramos hadn’t ever really forgiven Carrillo either. In moments other than the one he was in, he wondered if the two of you ever commiserated together over that. All these years he thought he’d been adept at holding grudges, but his anger had nothing on his conscience, and now it was him versus himself.

Looking at the time on the clock, he knew there was no use in trying to go back to sleep. It was too far into the morning hours now. Even if it hadn’t been, waking out of a nightmare only to be catapulted right back into it when he went to sleep again didn’t hold any appeal. He might as well get up and shower off the sweat.

His head pressed against the tile in the shower, eyes closing as the water beat down his back. A reprieve that was close enough to sleep without letting his imagination run too wild. The water trickled down his shoulders, his back, down his legs until it hit the floor of the tub.

When he opened his eyes all he saw was blood swirling down the drain instead. His eyes widened, breath hitching. Two more blinks and it was all running clear again.

He was sitting at the foot of his bed, towel tied around his waist. Droplets from the showerhead were still slowly crawling down his back. Elbows pressed to his knees, he dropped his head into his hands. He stared at the floor beneath his feet, willing himself to think about something else, anything else.

He wished he could call you. He wished that you wouldn’t hang up the moment you realized who it was on the other end of the line. You had every right, of course. No one in the world could blame you, least of all Carrillo. He’d dashed your dreams once before, and somehow he’d figured out a way to not only do it again, but to up the ante in the process. He wouldn’t be able to be that cruel to someone even if he’d tried, and he’d tried, but somehow he’d accidentally dragged you directly into your worst nightmare.

The sun started to come up, colors clawing their way through the windows. He got halfway through buttoning the shirt of his fatigues before his hands started acting independently of his brain and he dialed your number. It rang, and rang, and rang. He hung up. He should’ve taken it as a sign to give it up while he still could, but relenting had never been a strength of his. He dialed Diego’s number next.

“Hello?” a tired, raspy answer after a ring and a half. He couldn’t force out a response. Clearing your throat, you tried to speak more clearly but it felt like your throat was still raw, head throbbing from tears spilt. “Hello?”

“I’m sorry,” he forced out.

The following pause was long, uncomfortably so. He would’ve assumed that you’d hung up completely if he’d heard anything reminiscent of a click. “Don’t call here, Horacio.”

“I’m—”

“I don’t care,” you said, voice cracking as a fresh wave of tears cascaded. “I don’t care if you’re sorry—it won’t bring him back. It won’t change what you did.”

He thought the nightmare had been losing you the first time around. All that time ago when he had driven you away. At that moment he’d watched a thousand little dreams about you all crumble to dust around him, all because he just didn’t have it in him to show you. That was all you’d wanted, really, someone who could show you, tell you how they felt. You’d gone and found it in someone else when you couldn’t find it in Carrillo, but he’d gone and taken that from you too—your dreams all dust right alongside his now. The real nightmare was so much worse than he ever could’ve imagined.

He only got one syllable out of the question how are you before you cut him off again. It was just as well, really. He knew how you were doing. He put you there. “I hope you’re losing as much sleep over this as I am, Horacio.”

You’d never been the type to be cruel. It almost made him think that none of it was real. But it was. He knew it was. And he was the reason you were like this now. “I am,” he admitted, honest the way that he should’ve been with you so long before now.

“Good,” you said, wanting it to sound scathing, but the tremble in your voice as your lips quivered dulled the edges of your anger. You tried to take a breath in and were only partially successful—Carrillo could hear the knots in your lungs too. “I keep waiting for this all to be over. But it never is. There’s always more.” You sniffled. “Absolute fucking nightmare.”

“Let me—”

“If you call here again, I’ll unplug the fucking phone, Horacio.”

He knew that you meant it. “I’m sorry,” he offered up one more time, like it was going to make any difference now. All he got in response was the click of you cutting the call.

#narcoctober #day of surprises #horacio carrillo #horacio carrillo x reader #horacio carrillo x you #narcos #narcos netflix #narcos fanfiction #narcos netflix fanfiction #x reader #x reader fic #my writing #fanfiction #oc diego #oc diego ramirez #drabblesmc

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statticscribbles · 1 year

Text

Cause/Effect

Summary: Commisson; Male reader/Theo Raeken, Theo has to know the effect he has on everyone, right?

TW: Smut

Support My Writing?

Commissons Rules Here!

You don’t look up from where you’re reading, Scott had given you a whole list of books and journal entries and text messages, and far too much to catch up on now that you were in the pack. You can almost feel Theo Raeken standing over you.

When you’d first met him, before you knew about all the supernatural things happening, before you knew what he had become from the doctors, you assumed that he was just cocky and though the was better than everyone else. After learning what had happened, what he’d asked for you assumed it was possible some sort of guilt complex but the longer you spend around him the more you realize he’s just being cocky.

Stiles had been the one to grumble to you about it first and you’re about to commiserate with him but then he scoffs about how Theo’s bisexual and he only does it since he discovered that the type of guy he likes also likes him back and he’s flirting.

“He’s flirting?” You watch Theo wiping the weights down with a towel.

“Yeah, he’s a cocky asshole, he learned it from Jackson fuckin’ Whittenmore.”

“Lydia’s lizard boyfriend?”

“Mhm, they’d get along better if they didn’t have doctor issues.” Stiles laughs a little and you join, knowing enough to be aware the joke is funny, in a traumatic way, which it feels like most everything is.

You don’t mean to pay more attention to Theo after that but you can’t help it, you’re attracted to him, and having confirmation that he’s actually into guys, that you could have a chance with him. You know he knows because you think he’s been showing off for you. You try your best not to make it obvious and don’t even ask Stiles if you’re being obvious, worried if you have to ask his answer will be yes.

“What do you want, Raeken?” Theo laughs, he knows he’s riled you up enough, knows you’re going to snap at him. He laughs more when you stalk over towards him.

“I may be human but there are things I can do that you’ll never expect.”

“Prove it.” You knew he was going to say it and you smirk a little.

It's clear he's not expecting you to attempt to shove him into the wall. The key word is attempt as you end up barely moving him.

"Better luck next time, pretty kitty." You scowl at the nickname trying not to blush at all. Theo had given it to you after Scott had mentioned how you'd stuck around all of them like a stray cat, after you'd been exposed to the supernatural underworld that covered Beacon Hills. He’d ended up shoving you into the wall instead, shoulders shaking in silent laughter as he moves his hand from your shoulder where he’d shoved you.

He’s watching you and tilts his head like he’s studying you. You’ve never seen him look at you this long and you wonder if this is what Scott meant when he’d mumbled how you’d kept Theo in line.

Theo laughs out loud and you huff a little. He closes his mouth and resumes watching you. You press your lips to his, surprised when he actually stays quiet. You can feel the spike of nerves, that you had gotten it wrong, that he might not be interested in guys that somehow Stiles had lied or Scott had been wrong and you’re about to say sorry but he just smirks and laughs more.

“What’s funny?”

“Well you finally got me to stay quiet, I was hoping if I laughed you’d do it again, or should I do something else?”

“What if we did something else?” You smirk a little and are expecting something to happen but Theo just steps back from you.

“We?”

“Yes? We, as in us doing something together?” You wink and he waits for you to continue.

“What?” You frown a little as he keeps his eyes darting around your body.

“Didn’t think you sucking me off would be considered an ‘us’ thing, since you’re the one doing all the work.” He grins as you blush at him.

“Or would you rather me suck your dick, do all the work?”

“Both?”

“We can’t use the bed, Scott has a ban on supernaturals in his bed unless it’s him.”

“Why would we do ANYTHING in Scott’s bed!!!” You scowl and Theo bites at your neck.

“Hm okay I see why we would…” You trail off as he rocks his hips against yours and you can feel his dick pressing on your thigh.

“So, you want to break the rules? I thought you were supposed to be reformed and all that.” You tease and Theo growls into your ear.

“Only if we break the bed.” He tugs you towards Scott’s room.

Support My Writing?

#male reader insert #male reader #theo raeken #theo raeken imagine #theo raeken reader insert #theo raeken x you #theo raeken x y/n #theo raeken x reader #theo raeken x male reader #written #stattic #commissons are open still #smut

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bravernificationbeam · 4 months

Note

I've never watched Supernatural so this ship ask game feels like a great opportunity to get you to explain Midam to me

LOLLLLL that makes 1 and 1/3 of us! (i've only seen s1-s10)

obviously i ship midam lol! so midam is like

adam milligan, rando nobody younger half brother of the winchester bros who's the result of a one night stand their dad had after their mom died. they don't know about him until a. he's like 19 b. after he and his mom have died actually (the first episode they 'appear' in, it's as the ghouls who have eaten them and taken on their appearances)

michael, oldest baddest bitch archangel. spn was originally supposed to be 5 seasons (and should have been imo!) and the culminating Thing of seasons 4 and 5 basically is that sam and dean are supposed to be vessels of the apocalypse, so that michael and lucifer can have their big rematch and destroy half the planet in the process probably. dean is meant to be michael's vessel and sam is meant to be lucifer's. dean and sam are like WTF???? NO???? the angels try to do everything in their power to get them to say yes and cas, angel who rescued dean from hell and has a crush on him, is caught in the middle of it all

one of the things the angels do in this whole thing is bring adam back from the dead so they can essentially use adam as a bargaining piece, since he comes from the same bloodline as sam and dean--sort of--and thereby could probably handle being michael's vessel

point a to point b is not that important but michael in his true form comes down and gets adam to say yes to being his vessel. meanwhile adam is staring at this BIBLICAL MONSTER like 😯 just a very genuine awe, in contrast to the winchester bros' terror, that we in the midam fandom like to say is his monsterfucker face LOL

so michael has adam be his vessel--close enough to dean, michael decides--to this big battle with lucifer, cas and dean manage to seal all four of them--michael, adam, lucifer, and sam (who's accepted being lucifer's vessel)--in 'the cage' in hell, where lucifer's been since he was cast out of heaven or whatever

we learn from sam who comes back that cage years are like 100x earth years.

GUESS WHO THE SHOW FORGOT ABT???? OOOOOPPPPPPPSSSSS.......

SO they bring these two characters, still sharing the same body, back in s15. 10 whole fucking years later, or 1000 cage years if we take sam's word for it. what's happened to them?

DEVOTION.

michael just sits there contentedly as adam gets diner food, is the FIRST person to bring adam up when tfw capture them, freely lets adam come and go to consciousness as he pleases, seems perfectly content to just let adam determine their life from now on, whateverrrr. and adam's perfectly happy like this! "it's not like i can go back to college, what with an archangel inside of me" said it before and i'll say it again. why did he. say it. like that.....

they commiserate over how much their families suck, michael says "you and I have been together for years, my father [god] and I have been together for eternity"--this little rando human becomes the most important thing in his life. 🥺 just through kindness. seeing each other as people. knowing each other inside and out.

godddddddd. it's choosing love. it's learning a gentle alternative. it's not forgiveness but an internal peace. it's "it didn't have to be you but I'm glad it was." it's "we only had each other" (LINE ADAM SAYS) !!!!!! it's making each other better people!!!! it's MAYBE THIS WORLD IS ANOTHER PLANET'S HELL. it's KESHA RAINBOW!!!!!!

#supernatural -#midam -

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auntie-venom · 5 months

Text

Will of Fate

Chapter Eleven

Fandom: Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Story Rating: Explicit

Chapter Rating: Mature

Characters: Din Djarin x Original Female Character

Summary: There hasn’t been an unidentified spacecraft in the stratosphere of Arkadia in over two decades, let alone three in one day. Those skilled or mad enough to venture into the Chaos unguided were few and far between. That means no one has ever made it to Arkadia who wasn’t intending to be here.

Until today.

Din Djarin finds an unmapped planet filled with beings who have the same powers as the Child, but know nothing of the force or the Jedi.

Chapter Summary: Eziriel and the Mandalorian kick off the hunt for the missing Imperial TIE pilot.

Word Count - 3,944

Chapter Warnings: None

Will of Fate Masterlist

Read on Ao3

A/N: This chapter is a little later than I intended. Real life tends to get busy when you want to get creative. I really appreciate everyone who is reading and letting me know that you like what I am doing. It is very encouraging. I hope you enjoy, any feedback is welcome!

Chapter Eleven

Eziriel is grumpily eating her breakfast. She got up at a ridiculous hour, long before the sun was meant to rise, to ride to the skyport and pack all the supplies she and the Mandalorian would need. She knew that he planned to leave in the morning after dropping his kid off with Nora and she wanted to make sure she had the skyship ready by then.

She had packed provisions into bags with the assumption that this task would take no longer than seven days. She honestly had no idea how long a bounty hunter took to catch a bounty, but if it took longer than seven days she would personally either grab something from a beacon station supply cache or take the few hours by skyship back to Helix to grab more supplies.

She had put away the drop-seats in the drop bay and packed the speeder bike into that area of the skyship. The ship was pretty small, but the Forest of Ga’ladora was very dense. She was sure she should be able to fly him close enough to the last known evidence point to drop him off with the bike to help his descent while she found a close place to land.

She did most of these tasks with a sense of smoldering rage. Amarian and her were discussing the lost Imperial TIE pilot on their way home from work the day before. After she voiced her concerns over her growing state of paranoia after returning to work and not knowing how to act amongst a potential betrayer, he admitted his frustration with the missing Imp and how he was irritated at the team of Enforcers’ lack of results. Eziriel thought they were just commiserating together over related woes until Amarian joked about hiring the Mandalorian to fix both of their problems; he could hunt down the TIE pilot and Eziriel would have to go with him due to her oath binding herself to his safety. Eziriel laughed, thinking there was no way Amarian would use her oath to the Mandalorian as a way to sneak her out of the office so quickly after being gone for weeks just so she can avoid the tension there.

But the bastard kriffing did it.

Eziriel knows an argument with the Mandalorian is coming. She did not discuss her coming with him on this trip and knows that there is going to be pushback from the man, and she completely understands. She does not want to be put in a dangerous situation. She is not someone who looks for risks to be heroic, she is the type of person to help come up with a plan and send people on their way with useful toys. So she knows she will have to sell her coming in a way that the Mandalorian is going to have to accept, and by the time she is finished with her labor, she thinks she's gotten her argument fully prepared.

It was an overall exhausting morning, but she took a moment of serenity, sitting at the edge of the launchpad and letting the rising sun warm her skin as she ate her breakfast in the quiet of the morning. Trying hard not to dwell on the impending argument from a stubborn man and about how much she enjoyed his presence interacting with her family last night.

After scheming with Amarian about the hunt and the supplies the Mandalorian needed to complete it successfully, they had a hearty dinner where Amarian offered the Mandalorian a table to eat in his locked study with the audio patched into the dining area. With how used to the disembodied voice of CHI the family was it was very easy to integrate the Mandalorian’s input into conversation. He did not speak much, but he asked more about the farming district where Nora grew up and how the agricultural council operated. This led to a boring discussion that Eziriel bailed out of in favor of making her niblings and the green child laugh with silly faces. It was a familiar type of evening that she missed while she was away trying to source the Cloak’s glitches. So she is extra annoyed she has to leave the familiarity of it so quickly because of Amarian using the Mandalorian.

By the time she is finished with her breakfast, Eziriel has built up the mental fortitude she knows she needs in order not to take out her frustrations upon another person. Taking one last moment to watch the late summer sunlight up Helix for the day, she stands up and goes to start running the preflight check on the small skyship.

════════════════════════════════════

“What are you doing here?” the Mandalorian’s voice asks out from the small cabin of the ship and she looks up from underneath the console to catch him placing a forearm onto the upper part of the door frame to lean in. “Don’t you have work?”

“Yep,” she says nonchalantly, hauling herself into the pilot seat and turning it to face him. She stares at him for a moment before continuing, “But I can review project updates during our flight.”

She watches his whole body still as he stares down at her and she feels a spike of worry come off him before he finally says in a stern voice, “No.”

“Yes,” she responds.

“You are not coming with me,” he demands.

“Hey Lori, I don’t want to come at all–”

“Great, problem solved,” he interrupts before grabbing her and pulling her out of the pilot seat.

“But I am sworn to your safety.” She explains, planting her heels into the ground and pulling herself out of his grip, knowing full and well that he isn't giving his full strength. She sits back down in the chair and gives him a scolding look. “We have gone over this.”

“What I do is too dangerous for some princess to ride along on,” he says in a frustrated tone. Leaning over into her space he plants his hands on the armrests, caging her into the seat. “This is dangerous and your silly superstitions have no place in it. Go home.”

Eziriel feels her facial features go heavy in anger at the condescending tone he is giving her and she has to take a breath before she lashes out. She’s used to being talked down to at work by her higher-ups or political snobs who want to use her for whatever skeezy plot they desire, but she expected more from those she considers friends. Yes, she has teased the Mandalorian, but has never patronized him like this before and it is insulting that he is doing it to her. She has been nothing but respectful to him and his more devout followings of his culture, just for him to throw hers in her face. There is a twinge of regret she feels from him that grows as she stares up at him in silence and she leans in close enough to him that her nose almost touches his helmet.

“The stakes of my honor are not superstition to me,” she states in a low threatening voice. “I thought a Mandalorian would understand that and would not insult it. Just as we do not insult how others' honor might be recognized in their culture,” she finishes with a flick to the side of his helmet to drive home her point and glares at him.

That small sliver of regret she feels in him cracks into remorse, but that initial spike of worry clouds his aura and she can understand where his harsh words came from. They stay there, him looking down at her still caging her in and her staring at the T in his helmet hoping she is meeting his eyeline. He finally drops his head forward and lets out a familiar sigh that Ezirial is starting to recognize as exasperated concession.

“I can tell that you are good at your job and my being there will be distracting enough to make it more dangerous for you, and ultimately go against my oath to your safety. That is why I feel I can keep you most safe by flying you to the locations you are needed and giving you backup from the safety of the skyship,” she explains her logic to him. “I have no intention of being on the ground with you hunting this person. My way of keeping you safe is to keep an open comm with you so I know if I need to give you transport, tech, or supply assistance.”

Eziriel gently raps her knuckles on his helmet, getting him to look up before continuing, “Come on, do you really think I am foolish enough to think a Mandalorian needs defensive protection? And that I would be the top choice for that position?” She makes a soft scoffing noise from her lips to show her feelings for that scenario.

“Having transport backup would be nice, so I don’t have to haul the bounty all the way back to where I initially parked the ship,” he admits to her and stands back up to his full height.

“I do seem to thrive as your personal chauffeur. Maybe I should consider a career change,” she quips while turning her attention to the console to start closing the loading ramp and begin her ignition checklist. “Plug in the coordinates that Amarian sent you into the navigation.”

“I am sorry I disrespected your beliefs,” he says softly, ignoring her command. He lowers himself into the copilot seat keeping his helmet on her and she can feel the remorse in both his words. “That was a cruel thing to do. Especially since I know you are just trying to help.”

“Thank you,” she answers just as softly, almost taken aback at his genuine, eloquent apology.

“But,” he starts and she inwardly cringes waiting for another argument. “If there comes a moment where you cross paths with the target, you must listen to me.”

Eziriel looks at how he is leaning in her direction from his jumpseat. He is tense and while his anxiety over her coming has lessened dramatically, he is still nervous. He cares, at least somewhat, about what happens to her.

“I will,” she agrees and smiles at him. “Didn’t know you cared so much Lori. I think you are starting to like me.”

“I just don’t want to create a political incident by getting the princess killed,” he says with a dry tone before turning to put in the coordinates, and for the first time since they met, Eziriel reads a lie off of the Mandalorian.

════════════════════════════════════

Since they were flying with a smaller planet-side ship within the troposphere they were looking at a four-hour trip to get to the crash site in Ga’ladora’s Canyon. The Mandalorian wanted to inspect the site itself to see if he could glean anything that the Enforcers missed.

The first hour was spent planning, starting with potential drop spots from the most recent planetary scans. The bottom of the canyon of the area they were going is too unstable with its rocky foundation for the weight of the ship, but there were a few options where Eziriel could lower into the canyon enough to drop the Mandalorian on the speeder bike so long as there haven’t been any recent collapses of one of the stone pillars that litter the canyon floor with debris.

After solidifying the drop plan, she then shows him some of the options for landing to set up a base camp near where he will land. The closest one, and the agreed upon one, is miles away in a small meadow in the woods that the Mandalorian will have to take one of the steep trails out of the canyon to reach.

She then gives him a small lecture accompanied by a slideshow on her datapad of any flora and fauna that reside in the Forest of Ga’ladora that were dangerous and what to do if he sees one. She doesn't have to see his face to know that he rolled his eyes several times at her presentation, but she does know that he is smart enough to take her warnings to heart.

For the rest of the trip, they sit in the small cabin as Eziriel works through her backlog of project updates from her DefTech team while the Mandalorian sits cross-armed with his helmet pointed at the front viewscreen while some percussion focused music thumps quietly over the comm system. She doesn’t know if he is dozing or just staring out the window but she cannot figure out how he remains so very still for such a long time. She is trying to figure out how long it has been since he last moved when his borrowed comm beeps at him and he slightly flinches. Ahh, dozing then, she thinks with a small grin as he looks at the comm and sighs with a shake of his head.

“Your brother is nearly as irritating as you,” he remarks. “‘Hope you like your pilot, she was desperate to fulfill her council-mandated community service.’” She snorts at Amarian’s message spoken with the dry unimpressed tone of the Mandalorian.

“I am still the reigning terror, I hope,” she says with a smile at him.

“For now,” he concedes and sits up a little straighter in his seat to check the ETA til the drop point. She checks it as well and sees they are about half an hour out and that CHI will be notifying her to take control from them shortly.

She stands up and makes her way out of the cabin and into the drop bay. She double-checks the bag she packed for the Mandalorian is strapped tightly to the speeder bike. She doesn’t want him to lose it on the way down or while he is traveling.

“What’s that?” his voice calls out from behind her making her jolt at his unexpected following.

“I packed some provisions for you. Medkit, survival kit, bedroll, and seven days' worth of food,” she lists as she climbs up to sit sideways on the speeder bike. “I just wanted to give you the option of not having to come back to base camp each night, but you will be missing out on actual bunks,” she says as she points to one of the retracted bunks on the side of the drop bay.

“I appreciate your preparedness,” he says. “But I don’t need much on a hunt.”

“Better to have and not need,” she says with a shrug and then holds her hand out to him. “Your vambrace, please”

He is hesitant but turns to lean his hip against the speeder resting one arm behind her and holding out his other arm to her which she gently takes to lay across her lap. Turning her visor on she inspects the vambrace silently and clicks it on to see the user interface he deals with.

“I could have done that for you,” he chastises.

“This doesn’t allow long-range reception or communication, does it?” She asks, knowing the answer at seeing the hardware through his visor.

“No, only proximity-based,” he says and she hums at him and she opens her HolOmni to pull up local holomaps and her dangerous flora and fauna presentation to begin the data transfer between the two.

“I could fix that for you. Make it so you never have to carry a separate comm again. It’s very freeing,” she offers resting her arm against his while they watch the data load. “I could also make your analog interface into a holo projection interface if you’d like. I’m still perfecting the tactility of the holoform, but it’s pretty solid if you aren’t too aggressive. Give it a feel.”

She angles her arm at him and he lifts his arm from her lap and drags his finger across her menu screen of the HolOmni. She looks up at him to make a joke only to realize how intimately close they are. His chest almost touches her arm and his arm rests behind her in a position that is inches away from an embrace. She feels her neck heat up at the observation and hopes he is too focused on interacting with her HolOmni to notice. When he finally draws his attention back to her face she tries to give him a normal smile but there is a small catch of breath that his vocabulator doesn’t pick up but Eziriel barely hears.

“I think that it might be too nice for me,” he says in a quiet voice before lowering his arm down to place it back in her lap, but this time his hand rests on her thigh rather than hanging off awkwardly.

“You are allowed to want nice things,” she says just as quietly and she feels one of his fingers twitch. She tries to compose what to say next when her HolOmni beeps that the file transfer is done. They don’t pay any attention to it and just stare at each other, gauging one another for a few moments before the posh voice of CHI rings through the ship’s comms.

“We are ten minutes from the drop zone, I suggest you relieve me from autopilot.” Eziriel jerks at his voice and the Mandalorian pulls away.

“Right,” she says. “Saddle up Lori, you’ve got a fall ahead of you.” She gives him a grin and hops down from the bike trying to bury that intimate tension that filled the space only moments earlier with their familiar banter.

“I think I can handle that,” he says while mounting the bike as she makes it to the cabin door.

“Hey,” she catches his attention and he looks up at her. “Let the Will of fate guide your way.” He gives her a nod and she slips into the small cabin to begin their complex descent into Ga’ladora’s Canyon.

════════════════════════════════════

Eziriel had just landed after the successful drop-off and was about to start setting up base camp in the area they both agreed upon when the Mandalorian comms in for the first time.

“Change of plans,” he states suddenly into her earpiece.

“Already? It’s been, like, fifteen minutes?” she complains.

“I have a trail and it goes the opposite direction of where you plan to set up camp. I figured you’d want to at least be in the same direction I’m headed,” he explains. “The second location option is in the direction I’m headed if you want to go set up there.”

“Will do,” she confirms. The second location was much further out, but to the south of the canyon next to a small river with just enough space for the small skyship to land. “Amarian said the storm washed away all their tracks, what did you find?”

“Imperial pilots have protocols if they crash. They are to find the closest civilization to make a rescue call. If they cannot find civilization they are to head to the highest point to set up an emergency transponder,” he explains. “However, they are supposed to make discreet marks to show where they are going so they can be tracked by a rescue unit. You wouldn’t notice the marks unless you were specifically looking for them.”

“And you are a smart hunter who knows their prey,” Eziriel says with a smile. She gets the ship back in the air and can’t help but be impressed with him as he explains what he found. A small mark on the lower part of a nearby stone pillar. From that mark alone he was able to determine the initial direction the TIE pilot was headed six days prior.

“A good bounty hunter knows the target’s tactics,” he states simply once he is finished giving her his explanation.

“I guess you weren’t exaggerating when you said you were the best,” she says cheekily.

“I don’t exaggerate,” he says.

“I know you don’t,” she reassures.

════════════════════════════════════

That first night the Mandalorian surprisingly came back to base camp when it was getting late. They had been staying in touch here and there with him giving her updates and her asking him bounty-hunting questions. When night became fully dark he showed up at camp. He claimed he was close enough that it made sense to rest where she was already set up and had a proximity alert, but the way he groaned in relief at laying on the bunk below her told her the real reason was simply comfort and she was glad she could give him that.

The second day he was out as soon as the sun rose, nodding in acknowledgment at Eziriel’s sleepy goodbye wave. She spends most of the day powering through the rest of her reports and pestering the Mandalorian with little jokes and quips just to hear him sigh, but she swears she can hear a smile in that sigh. He spends the day giving her updates and sometimes talking to her about his thought process in tracking the TIE pilot. He eventually found bootprints his HUD could follow and it made his job easier since there weren’t other humanoid tracks to taint the trail. He doesn’t come back to base camp that day and Eziriel is somewhat disappointed to be spending an evening alone.

On the third day, she spends her time working on a few of her own projects while lounging on a rock by the small river trying to soak in the sun’s warm rays. She ends up asking him random questions today during his updates and she finds out that he thinks having favorite things is pointless. But after nagging him she discovers he prefers savory food over sweet, rural areas over city, and nights in over nights out. Even though he claimed he doesn’t have favorite things he was quick to tell her of his preferred weapons and their ideal situation to be used when she asked, and she had to stifle the laugh his brief enthusiasm caused.

During that third day, he deduces that the TIE pilot is headed towards the mountain range south of them to try and set up the emergency transponder. They discuss finding a new spot for her to move to in the direction he is headed, but off the path that he thinks the Imperial is taking. There were three options in the dense woods and she is unsure if some of the choices are still viable after that storm he arrived in.

“I’ll just check them out tomorrow afternoon to see which one works. I can send you the exact coordinates when I land to your comm so you can manually punch it in your vambrace holomap,” she tells him over comms while she eats her evening ration. She gives him an exaggerated sigh before continuing, “Really Lori, let me upgrade your set-up so people can just drop information to you directly. Imagine, no more carrying a separate comm to sync to your kit.”

“It’s never been a problem before,” he says and follows it with a groan of relief that Eziriel assumes is from getting off the bike for the night.

“Streamlining that process could very well save a life,” she states. “You don’t know how much you might need something like that until it’s too late.”

She can practically hear his eyes roll over the comms, before he goes on a small monologue about how he is perfectly fine without her advanced technology and doesn’t need it to be the best at his job. She just listens to his voice lecture her and smiles softly to herself as the moons crest overhead in the night sky.

<< Chapter Ten

Chapter Twelve >>

#star wars #star wars fanfiction #fanfiction #din djarin fic #din djarin #din djarin x oc #din djarin x ofc #din #din djarin x original character #din djarin x original female character #man #mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian #mandalorian x original character #mandalorian x original female character #third #third person pov #third person perspective

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bisexualbuck · 1 year

Text

excess of it

word count: 5k | tedtrent, mutual pining, Roy pov

[READ ON AO3]

Everywhere Roy goes, he comes across Ted and Trent just stupidly pining, staring adoringly at one another with unconcealed loveful eyes.

And he can't fucking escape it.

OR, Roy needs a break and he can't catch it.

The first time it happens, Roy thinks he’s imagining things.

It’s early one rainy Tuesday morning and he’s woken up two hours before his alarm rang. Suffice to say, he isn’t in a great mood as he walks through the still empty corridors of AFC Richmond. He doesn’t expect anyone to be there but the cleaning staff.

However, there are hushed voices coming from the coaches’ office. Something makes Roy stops in his tracks, though he could not say what. Perhaps it is the soft quality of the voices, the gentle rolling of words spoken in trust and quiet.

As discreet as he can, Roy walks closer, still hidden.

It’s Ted and Trent in the office, both their chairs brought close together and their bodies angled toward one another, yet untouching.

From his viewpoint, Roy can’t see Trent’s face but he can see Ted’s and, well. That’s quite a sight to behold. For all that he wears his heart on his sleeve, Ted has never worn such an open expression of openness in front of Roy.

Ted’s smile, though small, is as bright as the noonday sun in July.

Strangely, Roy feels like he is intruding on something precious and so, instead of barging in the office like he meant to, he turns back, footfalls still quiet, and makes his way out to the pitch, undeterred by the rain.

Roy doesn’t think too hard on it.

It was weird but he caught enough of the conversation to understand they were speaking of their kids, reasons enough for the soft look caught on Ted’s face, Roy figures.

Right.

He gives them ten minutes before he ventures back inside, and, this time, they each sit at their own desk, a respectable distance between them and no indication that they were having an intimate conversation just minutes earlier.

It’s not a one time thing however.

It starts slow at first.

Mostly, it’s looks. Just lingering looks when the other isn’t paying attention. Sometimes they’re just brief glances, stolen snapshots of the other that Roy just happens to notice.

Roy will turn to ask Ted something and find him staring at Trent’s profile as he writes in his notebook. Other times, Roy will want to commiserate with Trent, only to find Trent’s eyes being preoccupied by the sight of Ted telling one of his colourful nonsensical stories.

He can excuse the looks.

Though soon enough, Roy starts witnessing little strange moments between Ted and Trent that have him pause before he shakes himself with a reminder that this is none of his business.

Whatever this is.

Weeks go by.

The looks turn into touches, the touches into long conversations filled with private jokes and references that fly over Roy’s head, every word English and yet still a language uniquely their own.

One time, he finds Ted massaging Trent’s palm for some reason, but he turns back on his tracks and doesn’t ask about it.

Clearly, there is something brewing between Ted Lasso and Trent Crimm, but Roy cares nothing for it. He would have before he got to know Trent, but now that the both of them have made their amends and have become friendly if not yet friends, Roy will just ignore the whole thing until they make it official.

This tentative pining is painful to witness as it is.

This is where it should have stopped.

In an ideal world, Roy would have been able to continue on with days without being inconvenienced by a pining of such epic proportions – but that’s not what happens.

By some sadistic turn of events, it seems that everywhere Roy goes, he comes across Ted and Trent just stupidly pining, staring adoringly at one another with unconcealed loveful eyes. And he can’t fucking escape it.

He tries minimising the amount of time spent in the office but even this proves useless. The Fates are out for Roy Kent and they will make sure that he suffers. Perhaps it is revenge against his breaking up for Keeley that he should bear witness to brewing love when he himself ran away from it, so fearful of how it might end that he ended it before its time.

Fuck, he’s being so dramatic.

Still. He thinks he’s allowed it, as they are definitively making his life hell.

“You know I love our chats.”

Trent’s voice is so open it makes Roy want to punch the wall.

“Your hair is softer than I thought it’d be.”

The pen Roy is holding breaks in half. He doesn’t turn how Ted would know about the softness of Trent’s hair.

“Your neck giving you troubles?”

“It’s nothing, I just fell asleep on the couch last night.”

Before Ted offers, Roy already knows what he is going to say.

“I could massage the knot out for you, I took a class in college and boy, let me tell you, my A was well-deserved. These fingers are quite nimble, I’ll have you all melted like ice cream on a sunny day in no time.”

Trent Crimm flushing bright red isn’t something Roy thought he’d see in his lifetime, and yet here it is is – and it’s his cue to bolt it out of there.

They are laughing, once again standing closer than any just-friends would be. Ted reaches for Trent’s knee, squeezes it before he seems to recall himself and snatches the hand away.

Roy has seen teenagers flirt less awkwardly.

It’s driving him insane.

Roy is tired. His knee has been acting up all day, and the only thing he wants is to go home, get an icepack, and watch a stupid film he will never admit to actually liking.

It’s a struggle not to limp back down to the locker room though, by some miracle, he manages it. He only needs to pick up his phone that he forgot at his desk and then he can lick his wounds in private where no one will offer him sympathetic comments.

If only Roy had it that easy.

When he walks into the coaches’ office, Roy finds Trent fucking Crimm sitting on Ted’s desk, his legs sprawled and chest angled down to Ted. Ted himself is on his chair, gazing up at Trent with adoration and – oh, God – lust in his hooded eyes.

They aren’t doing anything but talking, and yet the air is charged with a tension so thick it threatens to choke him out.

“For fuck’s sake,” Roy barks.

He walks right out, phone be damned.

The three coaches are discussing what new strategy to implement after the West Ham fiasco. Trent is nowhere to be seen just yet, it’s unlike him as he has never once been late, but Roy is too focused on his conversation with Beard and Ted to wonder why that is.

Not that he’d worry about it.

He gets the answer minutes later anyway when Trent speed-walks into the office, glasses askew on his face and his hair tied up in a bun so messy it’s not even attempting to keep the hair away from his face.

Trent drops his messenger bag, yanks his notebook out of his breast pocket, and then he is rushing to join them, trying and failing to appear composed.

“Well, hello there, Sport,” Ted welcomes him with a bright smile. “Everything alright? It’s not like you to be so late.”

“Quite,” Trent replies, slightly out of breath. “There was a bit of a glitter incident this morning, that’s all.”

That’s when Roy notices it. Trent’s cheeks are covered with specks of glitter that catch the light as he talks. It reminds him of Keeley and how she would put golden glitter sometimes, it makes me sparkle, she’d say. Roy regrets never telling her she didn’t need it to be shine brighter than anything he’d ever seen.

“You’ll be finding it everywhere for months,” Ted quips. “One time Henry and I, we were making these Christmas cards to all our friends and family, and we decided to have this glitter fight because Henry didn’t much agree with my choice of color coordination. Now let me tell you, Michelle was right mad at the mess we made, I’m sure she’s still finding glitter all these years after.”

“I’m sure,” Trent replies easily.

Ted’s gaze narrows. Ah, so he’s noticed the glitter as well. Roy feels like swearing all of the sudden.

“You’ve still got some there,” Ted says softly.

And then. Then he brings his thumb to his mouth where his tongue comes out to meet it in a slow, almost sensual gesture, his lips all but kissing it, his eyes never leaving Trent’s.

Trent stands rooted in place, mesmerized, his own eyes wide and unblinking as he stares up at Ted. Ted who brings his thumb to the spot of glitter on Trent’s cheek and starts wiping, conscious and gentle.

Roy is also stunned, though not for the same reasons.

Slowly, he turns to Beard. Are you seeing this shit? he asks without a word. Beard gives a slight nod to confirm that he is, indeed, seeing this shit.

Why is Roy still in the room? He should have left as soon as Trent walked in, honestly he should just walk away any time he sees Ted and Trent in the same vicinity, but for some unfathomable reasons, Roy is still standing there. His attention is returned to the two men who are making his life hell with their longing and rampant sexual tension.

Ted’s hand drops away from Trent’s face.

“Thank you,” Trent whispers, his voice so low Roy barely catches it.

For fuck’s sake. Have they forgotten they aren’t alone in the room? They are lost in their own little world of two, nothing existing around them but each other’s eyes and smiles.

“Sure thing, darling,” Ted tells him, his accent undermining the rhyme.

Trent giggles.

Trent Crimm, the man who’s made many a professional footballer cry with his scathing exposés and sardonic questions, the man who Roy used to think was always so composed and assured, that Trent Crimm giggles.

Roy snaps.

He spins around, grabs Beard by the arm and drags him away from this insanity that they’ve been witnessing.

Of course, neither Ted nor Trent notice their leaving.

“We need to do something about this,” Roy declares.

“Do something about what?” Higgins asks, confused about the brusque intrusion but ready to roll with whatever dilemma his dear Diamond Dogs bring about, and fuck, Roy will never admit that he thinks of himself as a Diamond Dog or he’ll never hear the end of it.

“Ted and Trent,” Beard quips.

“Oh, alright.”

Higgins doesn’t appear to be surprised at this, but of course he wouldn’t be. Roy is sure that half of the club has noticed the tension between the gaffer and the ex-journo, and the other half is sure to follow soon.

“So you agree we need to do something,” Roy says, a tad desperate.

“Well.” Higgins pauses. “No?”

On a good day, Roy Kent has a set amount of patience which is not much admittedly, but still, he has some of it. Today has only just begun and already it hasn’t been a good one. It’s been weeks of this dancing around, these yearning looks and hopeful smiles and broken smiles that only come with assured unrequited feelings.

Roy is sick of it.

He’s sick of this hopeful tentative thing forming before him, this something of magnitude that only reminds him of how alone and stupid he feels. Because he had a something, and he threw it away, and now he stands before Jamie’s door at 4AM everyday and there’s an inkling there, a possibility he won’t let himself acknowledge.

Feelings isn’t something he knows to deal with all that well.

“It’s better not to meddle,” Beard agrees. “They’ll come to their senses at some point.”

“When though?” Roy grunts. “They keep making moon eyes at each other, and I am this close to throw them into a closet and throw away the key.”

Beard’s left eyebrow rises as he thinks it over.

“No,” Higgins says. “We shall do nothing of the sort, I’m sure they’ll act on their feelings soon.”

His expression turns from certitude to doubt.

“I hope so, at least.”

Roy swears.

So they have decided not to intervene. Great, Roy can do that.

Except that he really can’t. He’s tried it, and he can’t.

And this is what breaks him.

It’s late after a match. Richmond has lost because that’s what they’ve been doing since West Ham, even with fucking Zava on their team.

The mood is down, even Roy is too tired to be angry about the loss. He wants to go to bed and forget everything for a few blessed hours before his alarm wakes him up at 3:30, before he has to ignore his own maybe-perhaps-but-surely-not pining and the strange little thrills he gets when Jamie directs a bright smile at him.

The team trickles out, the locker room quiet and subdued, until there is no one left but Roy, as well as Ted and Trent who are sitting side by side, each on the opposite end of their bench in the little corner Trent has all but called his own.

“This is just a bad pass,” he is saying. “This is a great team you have, they will find their footing again, and you will help them get there.”

Trent’s reassurances fall on deaf ears. Ted forces a smile on his lip that’s more of a grimace than anything.

“Just gotta believe, right?”

There’s none of his usual pep in it.

After a short goodbye that’s very telling of his true state of mind, Ted is fast out of the door. Roy turns to Trent to bid him good night as well, but the words die on his lip at the wretched sight he makes.

Standing, hand frozen mid-air in an aborted motion, Trent stares, lost, in the direction Ted went in. carved onto his expressive face is a look of absolute heartbreak, of helplessness too.

This is the face of a man in love who can’t do anything about it. Roy knows this face very well, he sees it every day in the mirror.

“Why don’t you tell him?”

Trent startles out of his staring.

“Beg your pardon?”

Roy doesn’t deign answer that with a sentence, a pointed look will suffice. Trent’s face does something very complicated, several expressions flashing across it at the same time before being replaced by another myriad of unspoken feelings.

It settles on resignation. It looks oddly out of place there.

“I don’t plan on telling him.”

There’s finality in it. Trent goes to their shared office to retrieve his messenger bag as if there is nothing more to say. Really, there shouldn’t be. Roy doesn’t have to say anything to that, what he already said is more than he was planning on. It’s also very clear that Trent doesn’t want to continue this particular conversation.

They should go their separate ways and pretend this conversation never happened.

So why can’t Roy let it go?

“Let’s go for a pint,” he says.

Trent turns to look at him, his eyebrow rising in question.

“Not the Crown and Anchor,” he replies.

“Of course not, who the fuck do you take me for.”

There is a moment’s hesitation in which Roy thinks Trent will say no, and the decision whether to keep on drilling him about Ted will be made for him. But Trent surprises him once again.

“Let me call my father, tell him I’ll be late to pick up my daughter.”

They sit across each other in the booth of a small pub Roy has been going to since he was a teenager. No one cares that he’s Roy Kent here and the beer is good.

“Why are you being a knob about it?” Roy jumps straight at it. “Just tell him and put us out of our misery.”

He’s not used to see Trent look like this – defeated. For as long as he’s known him, Trent Crimm has been assured, always looking for weaknesses in others so that he could write about it. Then Roy got to know the man and not the journalist

To see him with his shoulders down and his eyes tired, it’s wrong.

“I don’t pretend that you can understand,” he says tiredly, “the unique kind of agony that is falling for a straight man.”

Roy’s mind flashes to Jamie Tartt for some bloody reason, and he hastens to bury the thought hard and deep.

“Why are you so sure he is,” Roy replies, so flat it isn’t even pretending to be a question.

He isn’t certain of it, but to him, it does look quite obvious that Ted isn’t straight. No one talks that much about rugby men’s tights without being interested in more than the sport.

“Even if he weren’t, I’d be the last person he would ever be interested in, or have you forgotten the article I wrote disclosing his panic attacks?”

Breathe, babe, you can’t forget to breathe, yeah? That’s what Keeley used to tell him, and he really is trying to breathe but Trent, with his sad, resigned eyes, isn’t making it easy. Once more, Roy wonders why he decided to step in.

Then he thinks about witnessing another bout of pathetic pining and shivers.

“Trent, I’ve never pegged you for a complete imbecile.”

“Why, thank you.”

Roy swears he can feel the white hairs growing upon his head.

“I can’t risk losing everything,” Trent continues. “I was aimless as a journalist, quitting was the best decision I’ve ever made, and being here? This is what I’ve been missing. I’m– well, I’m happy here. I’m writing about something I care about and believe in.”

“So you’re really not going to say anything?” he asks despite already knowing the answer.

“I’m not planning on confessing my misguided feelings to Ted only to be let down no. Though I suspect he would be unbearably kind about it.”

He would be so fucking nice about it. Roy can picture Ted’s big brown eyes shining with regret and apologies as he gently explains that sorry, he isn’t feeling the same way, but Trent is for sure a catch.

Not that Roy thinks that would be Ted’s reaction to a Trent Crimm confession of love.

Love. Because yes, of course Trent is in love with Ted. It’s not about fancying him for a quick shag or two. He’s thought it before but there really is no denying it now.

“Fucking hell,” Roy mutters.

“Cheers,” Trent replies and raises his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

Talking to Trent solved nothing.

Roy could stop there, he tried, it didn’t work, and it’s not his fault if Trent is a pining no-brain two who refuses to see what’s right in front of him.

Still. He can’t exactly blame Trent for it.

He hadn’t thought about it before Trent mentioned falling for a straight man, but it’s true that, if those feelings weren’t reciprocated, Trent had more to lose than Ted did. It mustn’t have been easy being an out journalist, especially reporting on football.

Roy has caught glimpses of some of it, the unkind jokes, the sneering, the hateful looks.

Even then, Roy tried harder than he should have. In fact, he shouldn’t have tried at all and, hell, maybe Keeley is right and he’s got something of a soft heart beneath all his brooding and swearing.

Said heart pangs when he thinks of her still. Idly, he wonders how long it will take to stop missing her.

There is only himself to blame though, so he shoves the longing down, down with the thoughts of Jamie’s earnest smile and floppy hair, down where he can ignore it.

There is nothing to do about all that, but he can help the two pining idiots get over themselves.

It’s for his own peace of mind, nothing else.

Roy doesn’t like Ted’s flat much. It doesn’t feel like Ted at all, it’s empty and subdued and nowhere near as messy as it ought to be.

He knows Ted didn’t have a choice in the colour of the walls or the furniture, but it’s lacking in personal touches.

No matter what Roy’s feelings on it are, this is where he and Ted meet once a month to discuss club matters. At least, that’s what called Ted first called it. In reality, it’s just an excuse for Ted to have some one-on-one time with Roy and make sure that everything is going well with him at AFC Richmond.

Roy allows it because he knows that Ted blames himself for not seeing Nate’s growing resentment.

Also, Ted’s biscuits are very fucking good.

In truth, too, it’s nice. Ever since his break-up with Keeley, Roy has had more time on his time that he knows what to do with it. The early work-out sessions with Jamie have helped. They also make sure Roy is knocked out in bed by 8PM which is an added bonus.

Roy is drinking the tea he’s brought because he doesn’t trust Ted nowhere near a kettle, and Ted is enjoying a cup with so much sugar and milk it has no rights to be called coffee.

Ted’s rambling lulls, and a comfortable silence settles between the two coaches. Some would not think him capable of it, but Ted knows when to stop chattering and appreciate the quiet of a moment.

“I haven’t asked yet,” Ted says to break the silence, his tone gentle, “I think maybe because I’ve been dealing with stuff of my own – which, by the way, I’m finally addressing. But if you want to talk about Keeley with me, I’d listen.”

The urge to tell Ted to shut up, and to change the topic – maybe even straight-up leave. He doesn’t though.

Ted is his friend. Roy is never going to be one of those people who say often what they feel about the people in his life, but he isn’t emotionally stunted. He knows what they mean to him, even if it’s hard to admit it sometimes.

“There’s nothing to say. I broke up with her because I got scared.”

Ted’s eyes widen imperceptibly. It’s clear he wasn’t expecting Roy to open up quite so easily, but he’s quick to smooth his face into an open expression.

“Why were you scared then?” he asks. “It was obvious to anyone looking that you had a good thing going on with her.”

He really did. He loved her, still loves her, and yet he left her because it’s better than being left behind, and Roy has never known to enjoy something without thinking of how it’d end.

“I think because it was too good,” Roy confesses.

“It might not to be too late, you know. You really were a strong couple, and she’d listen to you if you explained the real reasons you broke things off with her. Maybe getting back together won’t be exactly like how you left things, but maybe that’s for the better, too.”

There’s something in the way that Ted says it.

Oh. He knows then, about this Jamie-and-Keeley thing.

“Huh.”

“You may have noticed,” Ted continues, “I haven’t been quite myself lately, or rather I have but not the myself I wanna be. I’ve just been lost in the parts of Ted Lasso that I don’t really like, you know? The parts I don’t like to think about. I think I got lost in it a bit, so much that I thought that was just who I was – but it ain’t. The dark parts are still there but they aren’t all of me, and I know it’s going to get better. I’m already getting better. All those dark thoughts I have, they don’t have the same power over me.”

Roy nods, pensive. He’s glad to hear Ted is doing better after these past few weeks in which he’d dragged this added shadow to his step.

They are men in sports and there’s this prevalent idea of not getting involved, not saying anything even if you see someone struggling. Let them pull themselves up, wait to see if they reach out. Roy thinks it’s all wrong.

Perhaps getting involved, offering insight even when it’s not asked for, is the way to go.

He wasn’t there to offer help when Ted was in the mist of a mental health crisis despite the warning signs. It’s possible he wouldn’t have known how to help then, but he can help him now, with this less tremendous thing.

“So what are you going to do?” Roy asks.

Ted’s eyebrows crease in slight confusion, “What about? The team or life in general?”

“About Trent.”

An expression of absolute bafflement falls upon Ted’s face. It battles with a mix of awe and worry also, a strange combination that should only work for a man as full of contradictions as Ted Lasso.

“What about Trent?” Ted aims for composed and fails miserably.

“You like him.”

“I mean, yes of course I like Trent Crimm, Independent! Who doesn’t? You like him, too, Waterloo, I’ve seen the two of you have several civil conversations. You’re not fooling me.”

Roy’s skin crawls. Having heart to heart isn’t his forte, but he’s started this and he will see it finished.

“Look, perhaps you’ve played for the same team your entire life and you never thought about playing for another team. Hell, I know I haven’t, but now I’m wondering and there’s no shame in that. Perhaps for you this isn’t the first time you’ve wondered, maybe you’ve even played that game before, I don’t fucking know.”

“No, I haven’t,” Ted confesses. “I’ve had moments where I thought– but no, I’ve never done anything about it.”

“Right, well. Maybe you weren’t ready or they weren’t the right team for you.” He pauses then swears. “Fuck, I can’t tell you what to do or feel, I’m just saying you should think about it.”

Ted’s eyes falls to his latte.

Silence stretches again between them, not as easy-going as it was earlier but not suffocating, not pressing. The both of them have some introspection to do.

Roy eats another biscuit, chewing with a bit more force than necessary.

“Sport,” Ted drawls. “What a metaphor.”

The week that follows their conversation, Roy finds Ted quieter than usual though lighter also.

Often now, Roy bears witness to Ted’s silent musing, gaze targeted on Trent who appears wary about this new development.

Trent in return shoots Roy suspicious glances that Roy simply ignores.

The ball is in their court.

It comes to no surprise that Roy, unwilling witness as he is, should be faced with its resolution.

It happens during lunch break. Most of the team is at the cafeteria, including Beard. Roy has finished his meal quickly because to review a few tactics before they are set off to start working again.

Of fucking course, Ted and Trent are in the office, standing close and talking softly.

Roy is ready to turn around and make his exit, yet he’s stopped in his tracks.

Something is happening there.

He could go and leave them to it, but there’s also a part of him that wants to make sure they aren’t being idiots again. So, silent and unnoticed, he walks closer to listen in.

“So there you have it,” Ted is saying. “I think I’ve liked you for a long time but I was too blind to see it. You know what they say about having it right in front of you. But I want to make clear that I don’t expect anything from you, alright? I’m just telling you because I believe in honesty, honesty with yourself and with the people that matter to you. I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t ever keep to myself how I value others.”

“Ted,” Trent sighs and he sounds oh so very besotted. “I’m afraid you’re still blind. I’ve destroyed my decade-long journalism career because it forced me into a position to hurt you. I’m here at Richmond not to write about the club, but to write about you. Ted. Of course I have feelings for you. Don’t be daft.”

Roy can see enough into the room to see the beaming smile of one Ted Lasso and the adoring shine of one Trent Crimm’s eyes.

He’s seen enough, more than enough in fact.

But now, at least, his nightmare has ended, and he won’t have to suffer their pining and flirting any more.

Still quiet, Roy goes away before they can spot him.

As he makes his way back to the cafeteria, Roy ponders about the merits of being brave and facing one’s fears. It may be time to follow his own advice.

There’s this new recipe he wanted to try and make – if he had some guests, it could be the excuse he needed to make it.

Roy arrives at Richmond AFC feeling lighter than he had in weeks. The team is still losing, but his training with Jamie is going great and he has no doubt the prick will outclass Zava soon enough.

More than that, Roy has reached out to Keeley and together and with Jamie too, they are heading somewhere with this something between them. It’s tentative, uncertain, but it’s hopeful.

There’s something to be said about trying, about staying and enjoying it while it lasts because perhaps, if they’re lucky, this thing will last for a long time.

Roy walks into the coaches’ office lost in thoughts.

His musing is soon crushed though as he finds himself staring in horror at Ted tucking Trent’s hair behind his ear, the both of them gazing openly and lovingly at each other.

No.

This was supposed to get better. They were supposed to stop with the lovey-dovey shit.

Oh, fuck.

By helping them get together, Roy has made it worse – out with the pining, and in with the blatant adoration.

“Fucking hell you two,” Roy swears, already turning around. “Get a room.”

“We are in a room,” Trent points you, “you walked in there.”

Roy doesn’t answer, but he does give them the middle finger.

Good thing that he has his back turned to them, he couldn’t let them know that he’s fighting a smile.

#tedtrent #tedependent #tedtrent fic #ted lasso #roy kent #trent crimm #my writing #this is so messy but also i enjoyed writing it so there you have it #please if you read it and you like it do consider leaving a comment and/or reblogging this post #literally i need feedback to live lol #also i haven't posted in a while and i'm like?? so nervous about this for some reason???

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