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soaps-mohawk · 1 month

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Cherry Red, Crimson Blood

Chapter 12: Fire In My Veins

Summary: Your heat begins. Luckily you have a good alpha to take care of you during your most vulnerable time.

Pairing: Poly 141 x reader

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, smut, oral fingering, p in v sex, unprotected sex, knotting, spanking (it’s like once), fluids so many fluids, heat cycles, mating cycles, lots of talk of breeding and mating, biting, brief mention of blood, this is gross y’all, Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alternate Universe, a/b/o typical classism and sexism, language, and of course a little fluff

A/N: It was quite the ordeal, this chapter, and it's come a long way from when I first wrote it between Sunday and Monday this week. It's pretty much just smut so enjoy!!

The smut starts after the first scene and goes to the end, so only read up to the first green line if you don’t want the smut. You’re not missing much, just Price biting the reader to claim her, but I’ll talk more about that in the next chapter.

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“You alright, love?”

You look up from where you had been staring at the floor, suddenly pulled back into the real world by Gaz’s voice. He had been organizing the nutrient bars and electrolyte bottles in your room while you sat and dissociated to the sound of rustling paper bags.

You stare at his furrowed brows and worried eyes for a moment before averting your gaze with a nod. “Yeah.”

The carpet under your feet has never looked quite so interesting before.

Gaz moves to sit next to you on the bed, sinking down onto the mattress with a sigh. “Nervous?”

You nod in response, clutching the strawberry pillow in your arms tighter against your chest.

“You’ll be alright.” Gaz says, his hand warm as it presses against your back. “I’m gonna take good care of you, yeah? Both you and Price. I’ll be right outside that door, and I’ll be in and out too. Dr. Keller’s ready in case something happens, but I don’t think anything will.” He wraps his arm around you, pulling you close against him. “You’re in good hands.”

“There’s no going back after this.” You say, leaning into his side.

“No, I don’t think any of us would want to anyway.” He smiles down at your surprised face. “What? I thought that was obvious. We all want you as part of our pack. You are part of the pack already, at least in every way but officially. None of us would trade you for anything.”

Your eyes fill with tears at his words. You know it’s just the stress and the hormones and the impending heat that could start at any time, but his words reach some deep part of you that was worried that they were all faking, that they all actually hated you. His words calm you a bit, easing away that stress and fear that you’ve been carrying for the last almost six weeks.

“Come now, none of that.” Gaz says, wiping the tear that trails down your cheek. “Can’t afford getting dehydrated now.”

You can’t help but laugh, even though you know he’s right. You’ve had so much liquid over the last couple days you feel as though you might burst at any second. It was necessary, considering the amount of fluid you were about to lose.

Gaz leans down, kissing all over your face. You giggle, falling back on your bed to try and escape, but he follows you, continuing to plant little kisses all over your face and neck.

“Kyle!” You shriek, giggling as his kisses tickle your skin.

He pauses, leaning up so you’re eye to eye, a grin on his face. “You called me Kyle.”

“That is your name, isn’t it?” You say, blinking up at him.

“Yeah.” He chuckles. “You can call me Kyle as much as you’d like, love.” He says as he leans down, pressing his lips to yours.

You wrap your arms around his neck, holding him in place as you kiss him back. His arm snakes beneath you, pressing you tightly against his chest. He groans quietly into your lips, body taught against yours. You can feel every part of him, the muscles under his shirt, the strength of his thighs. Your head is spinning, and you know it’s mostly due to your impending heat.

You let out a quiet whine as his lips leave yours, trailing down your neck to your shoulder. He leaves a scalding kiss over your scent gland, nipping playfully at the sensitive skin.

“Can’t wait to see the mark,” He murmurs against your skin, a quiet whimper leaving your lips as your body begins to warm a little. “When Price claims you, makes you his.”

“Fuck.” You breathe, a shudder running through your whole body.

Kyle chuckles, sucking a mark on your collarbone. “You won’t be just his, though, huh? Gonna be ours.”

You let out a whine at his words, your fingers trailing up the back of his neck. He lets out a quiet groan, his body shuddering as you tease the sensitive skin. You feel lightheaded and dizzy from the rapidly shifting hormones of your pre-heat. You’re very close to the start. Any day now you could wake in a sweat with an insatiable ache between your thighs. You're like a ticking time bomb, but neither of the demolition experts you now live with can disarm you.

If only it could be so easy.

Kyle presses one last kiss to your lips before he pulls back, smiling down at you. “You’ll be alright. I’ll make sure of it.”

You can’t help but believe him, especially with those big brown eyes staring down at you.

It’s sweltering. A fire has started beneath your skin, flames licking your veins, your very cells scorching in the fiery inferno that has overtaken you. An arid desert has bloomed in your mouth, your tongue heavy and sticky. Sweat has slicked your skin, consciousness only bringing awareness to the dampness of your sheets and pajamas.

It also brings awareness to the pain.

There’s an intense ache between your legs, your pelvis cramping. Slick has coated your thighs, soaking through your pajama pants, the fabric clinging to your skin. It’s too much, the sensations of your pajamas and the weight of the blankets nearly driving you to insanity. You need to be bare. It’s too hot and the drag of the fabric across your skin makes you want to cry.

Not to mention the intense need burning through you.

The mattress protector crinkles as you shift on the bed, every movement taking an excess amount of energy as you attempt to tug your shirt off with fumbling fingers. It’s like you’re moving in slow motion, your arms heavy and sluggish as you peel the fabric from your sticky skin, letting it fall to the floor. You lay there exhausted, body twitching as your temperature begins to spike. You blindly reach out, fingers trembling as they grasp at your phone. Your eyes are bleary as you blink rapidly at the too bright screen. You fumble with clumsy fingers on the screen, dialing the first number you see, not caring who it is.

“Hello?”

You let out a quiet whine at the rough voice, thick with sleep. You can’t get your mouth to move, to form any words as you lay there pathetically, half undressed and soaked in sweat and slick. There’s an ache between your thighs, pulsing in time with your heart. Your free hand fumbles with your waistband, desperate to try and get your pants down, to remove the feeling of your underwear sticking to your slick folds.

“Help.” You manage a single word, not even sure it was intelligible. You let out a frustrated whimper, your body not cooperating to lift your hips so you can pull down your pants.

A moment of silence passes before you get a response. “Fuck, be right there, love.”

The line clicks, and a moment later a door is opening down the hall. You’re silently grateful you hadn’t locked your door last night, as there was no way you would be able to get out of bed and make it across the floor. It opens just enough for the figure to slip in before he closes it, not wanting to let your scent freely flow down the hallway.

The light of the lamp on your nightstand accosts your eyes as it’s turned on, making you squint. You don’t miss the way Kyle’s nose crinkles for a moment as he catches the sickly sweet, overwhelming aroma of your scent as it pours from your body. His hand is cool against your forehead as he brushes the stray strands of hair sticking to your skin back. Johnny had braided it last night at least to try and keep it out of the way.

“Easy.” He says quietly, shushing you as you whimper in need.

You let out a whine as Kyle pushes the blankets out of the way. You’re incapable of caring that you’re half naked in front of him for the first time, and he pays it no mind. You tug uselessly at your pajama pants again, letting out a frustrated whine as you fail to shimmy them down your legs again. Kyle bats your hands away, slipping his fingers under the waistband and tugging the pants down your legs. You sigh in relief as the fabric is pulled away from your skin, a shiver running through you as the cool air hits your slicked folds.

Kyle gathers your clothes, adding them into the bag of things that would need to be washed as soon as your heat is over before he returns to your side.

“I need you to drink something for me, then I’ll go get Price, alright?” He says, kneeling down next to the bed as he grabs the electrolyte drink from your nightstand.

You flop against his chest as he slips an arm around you, helping prop you up. Your face presses into his neck, inhaling deeply. A whine of disappointment leaves your lips as you realize he’s not what you need, your omega dissatisfied with the scent of beta emanating from him.

“I know.” He says, easing you away from his neck. “Just drink this first and then you can have your alpha.”

“Alpha.” You whimper, leaning against Kyle’s chest.

He helps you drink some of the sweet liquid, and you gulp it down, relieved as it eases some of the dryness in your mouth. He lets you drink half of the bottle before he pulls it away, setting it on the nightstand.

“Good girl.” He praises you, helping you lay back down against your pillow. “I’ll go get Price. I’ll get your alpha.”

You hum contently at the promise of what’s coming, your omega practically screaming for her alpha, for some relief.

Kyle slips back out the door, your head buzzing as the intense arousal and need burning within you gets stronger. Your pussy is pulsing, slick dribbling out of you as the need to mate takes over. The primordial instinct to reproduce is strong, your omega clawing at your mind, screaming to be bred, screaming to be bred, to carry pups. You need your alpha. You need his knot.

You roll onto your stomach, pressing your hips into the mattress. You need something, anything to ease the aching pulse in your body. You begin to rut against the sheets, dragging your clit against the rough fabric. You let out a quiet whine as the friction sends pleasure shooting through you, a slight relief from the pain of your intense arousal.

The door opens, your head shooting up as the heavy scent of alpha washes over you. Your eyes dilate, a shudder traveling from your head to your toes as the familiar scent of damp earth laced with the musk of arousal invades your senses. You let out another whine as John approaches the bed, your hips still rutting desperately against the sheets. You look utterly ruined, wide eyed and sweat-slicked, panting like an animal in heat.

You are an animal in heat.

“Look at you.” John mumbles, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. He stands over you, watching the desperate movements of your hips for a moment. “Needy little thing.” He teases, setting his phone on your nightstand before tugging his shirt over his head.

You watch as every inch of skin is revealed to you, lips parting as you take him in. The strength of his muscles, the softness of his stomach. You want to lick every inch of him. You want to roll around in his scent, cover yourself in his essence, mark every part of your body with him.

You arch into his touch as he drags a hand down your back, rough fingers following the line of your spine. You press your ass into his hand as he passes over it, fingers tugging your thighs apart. He groans again as a wave of your thick, sweet scent washes over him.

“Let me see you.” He growls, sweatpants hitting the floor.

You hear him, but you’re too busy staring at him in awe. More slick slips out of you at the sight of his cock, red and angry and painfully hard already. You can almost swear it’s pulsing in time with your pussy. A harsh gasp is pulled from your throat as he brings his hand down across your ass, the sound of skin striking skin loud enough to pull you back to reality.

“I said, present for your alpha.” He says, the rough rumble of his inner alpha coating the edges of his voice.

You whimper in response, scrambling up onto your hands and knees like a good omega for him as he kneels on the bed behind you.

“Good girl.” He rumbles, a pleased whine leaving your lips at his praise.

You push back into his hands as he cups your ass, his hand smoothing over the burning spot on the cheek he’d slapped. You can’t feel the pain from it, far too lost in your heat-riddled brain to register anything but the need pulsing between your thighs and the alpha staring at your soaked pussy. Thumbs part your folds, slick dribbling onto the sheets as he stares at your pussy.

“So fucking slick for me.” He groans, dragging a thumb along your slit.

“For you alpha!” You gasp, pressing back harder against his hands.

A low growl rumbles in his chest as he drags his thumb through your folds again, pressing the digit against your clit. Your gasp is broken by a whimper, your clit already sensitive from you humping against your bed like a needy pup. You bend your top half down, relaxing against the mattress as you grind back against his hand. He lets you, keeping his hand still as he lets you work yourself to pleasure on your own.

“Please! Please!” You beg, mind going numb with pleasure as his thumb brushes your clit with every rock of your hips. Your legs are already shaking, body trembling as the pleasure starts to build and build, the promise of relief coming at the hands of your alpha.

“Eager little thing,” He rumbles, his breath fanning across your folds.

You moan as his tongue drags along your slit, tasting your slick. Your fingers sink into the sheets, holding on as his tongue prods your entrance, his mouth slurping at the slick dripping from you. It’s obscene, but either of you care, both of you too lost in your need.

Your knees nearly give out, your pussy clenching around his tongue as he applies more pressure against your clit, drawing slow circles with his thumb. He’s groaning against you, the quiet sound rumbling deep in his chest. He’s losing his own sanity, his alpha taking over as your heat triggers his rut instincts. His alpha has to be screaming as much as your omega is to mate.

Your orgasm hits you suddenly, washing over you with a power that almost makes you black out. Slick spills out of you as your pussy flutters, soaking John’s face and beard in your juices. He’s relentless, not giving you even a second as he continues to fuck you with his tongue as his thumb rubs tight circles on your clit. Your legs are shaking, eyes rolling as the pleasure continues to build. Despite your orgasm, it’s not enough. Your brain knows it and your body knows it. You need a knot before you’ll be able to relax, before the pain and the need fades enough for your brain to relax.

Even then, it will only be for a moment.

“Alpha!” You whine, pushing back against his face, seeking out more.

John growls against your pussy, the sound vibrating into your very soul. You let out a whimper in response, clutching at the sheets desperately. He pulls away from your pussy, licking his lips. You wish you could see him, the way his face shines with your slick, his beard soaked with your release. He licks his lips, savoring every last taste of you he can get as he sinks his fingers into you.

You clamp down around the thick digits, a groan leaving his lips as you squeeze around him. You’re desperate for another orgasm, another chance at relief from the blazing inferno under your skin, the painful need still pulsing in your pelvis.

“Please, alpha!” You whine, bucking back against his hand. “Hurts.”

He shushes you, continuing to fuck you with his fingers. The wet squelch of your pussy is loud in the small room, obscene and depraved, but you cannot bring yourself to care who might be able to hear as another orgasm rushes through your body. You whine in pleasure as slick dribbles out around his fingers, forced out by the fluttering of your walls. You can’t stop, don’t stop, as you continue to rock back against him. He watches you, holding his hand still as you fuck yourself on his fingers. You’re still desperate for more, still needing the one thing he won’t give you yet.

He pulls his fingers from you, making you whimper at the sudden emptiness. Your pussy is still pulsing with the aftershocks of your orgasm, still trying to clench around nothing. John curses as he drags his fingers through your folds, spreading your slick and your release across the sensitive skin.

“Tell me what you need.” He rasps, the edges of his voice harsh as his alpha begins to take over.

“Need your knot, alpha.” You whine, pushing your hips back, searching for anything that might offer some more relief. “Please.”

He lets out a pleased rumble, shifting behind you. You bite your lip in anticipation and excitement, your body twitching as his rough hands smooth over the skin of your hips. His touch is electric, amplified by the sensitivity brought on by your heat. You want to feel him against you, you want to feel him inside of you. You need him, every fiber of your being, every cell in your body reaching out to him, inviting him in.

A quiet mewl escapes you as he drags the head of his cock through your folds, gathering your slick on his hard length. Your entire body flutters in anticipation as he pushes against your entrance, meeting no resistance as he presses into you. Your body aids him, relaxing around him as it welcomes the intrusion. There’s no pain, no discomfort as he stretches you open, aided by the copious slick that still seeps out around his cock. You practically shudder in relief as you finally get what you want, what you need.

Your alpha’s cock inside you.

His grip is tight on your hips as he begins to move, rocking his own hips as he presses deeper into you. He shifts his legs around yours, pressing himself closer until he’s flush against your ass. You can feel him deep inside you, and you’re almost certain you could see it if you looked. You brace yourself against the bed, instinct taking over as you begin to move with him, rocking back to meet his thrusts. It’s lewd, the sound of skin slapping skin as he sets an almost frantic pace, sharp thrusts accentuating the wet squelch of your pussy around him, and the sound of his hips meeting your ass.

His fingers dig into your hips almost to the point of pain, but you don’t care. You’re far too lost in your instincts, and the pleasure, to care much about anything. The hormones and endorphins block it out, only one thought on your mind, playing on repeat.

Knot knot knot knot.

You moan loudly as Price ruts into you, not caring who might hear, or who can hear. Price moans and growls, the sweetness of your scent blocking out all thoughts except how much he needs to breed you, how much he needs to be a good alpha and take care of his omega.

You just want to be a good omega for your alpha.

You cum again with a cry, pussy fluttering around his cock as more slick dribbles out of you, soaking the sheets below you. John doesn’t stop, save for a slight falter of his thrusts as you squeeze around him tightly, your pussy trying to milk his own orgasm from him. Your body is shaking, his hands the only thing keeping your hips upright as more and more pleasure continues to build despite now three orgasms that have rocked through you.

You need him to cum, you need him to fill you up with his knot. You need to feel the warmth of his seed inside you, the heaviness of it as it fills you. Drool begins to pool on the sheets below your face, adding to the mix of fluids soaked into your already damp sheets. John’s pace never falters, even as sweat begins to build on his brow, sliding down the sides of his face. You want to lick it, follow the trail of salty liquid as it falls down his neck and onto his chest.

Sweat drips from your own skin as another orgasm begins to build. You can tell John is close too as his grip tightens on your hips, the pain registering just for a moment at the back of your mind. You’ll forget it by the time your heat ends, the momentary pull to awareness lost in the haze of mindless pleasure and a need to mate.

“C’mon.” John growls, his hand wrapping around the back of your neck. “Give it to me.”

You let out a whine, knowing what it is he wants, what it is you need as you push yourself back up onto shaking arms, the adrenaline the only thing giving you the strength to move. John moves your braids to the other side of your neck, his chest pressing against your back. It changes the angle of his thrusts as he grinds against you, the swelling at the base of his cock catching on your walls as he continues to thrust deeply into you.

“Please,” You whimper, bearing your neck to him as he kisses along the line of your shoulder. “Please alpha. Wanna be yours.” You whimper, arching into him in an attempt to get closer as his teeth drag across your skin.

“My good omega.” He growls, teeth nipping at the sensitive skin right next to your scent gland at the junction of your neck and shoulder. “My good girl. Gonna take my knot like a good omega? Let me fill you up with pups as I make you mine?”

You let out a high pitched whine at his words, trying to press your neck closer to his mouth. “Please, alpha! Please! Wanna be a good omega!”

He curses under his breath, his arm wrapping around your body to hold you up. His knot presses into you, stretching you open as it continues to swell until he’s locked inside you. You cum around his knot at the sensation of being filled so completely, his hips continuing to grind against you as he chases his own orgasm.

You nearly black out as his teeth sink into your skin, the pinch lasting only for a second before pleasure rushes through you. You let out a loud, high-pitched sound as he claims you, marking you as his forever. Another, sudden orgasm slams into you, his arm holding you still as you try to writhe on his knot. He growls into your skin as he stills, hips jerking against your ass as he cums inside you.

Your arms give out as he releases your shoulder, blood dripping onto the sheets below you. Your head is spinning as he drags his tongue across the raised skin, cleaning the mark he’s left on you.

He shushes you as you let out little whimpers and whines, gently easing your body so you’re laying flat against the bed. “Easy, that’s my good girl.” He praises you, pressing gentle kisses against your neck. “My good omega. Take my knot so well.”

Your vision slowly fades to darkness as exhaustion takes over, a small smile tugging at your lips from his praise.

His eyes are dark and glazed as he stares up at you, mouth parted as he breathes heavily. Your head is thrown back, the sweetest little moans and whimpers leaving your lips as you bounce on his cock. His hands hold your hips, far too tight to be comfortable against your sweat-soaked skin as he guides your movements, but you offer no complaint. His thighs are soaked with your slick and a mix of fluids that seems to endlessly drip from you. Your own thighs are shaking around him, exhaustion prevalent in your sloppy movements. You’re close, eyes fluttering as your grip tightens on his shoulders. Your nails bite into his skin but he doesn’t care. He can’t feel much of anything but pleasure at the moment.

He guides you through your orgasm as it rocks through you, your body shuddering around him. His hips press up against yours as he reaches his own end, spilling into you as his knot locks into place, connecting you two once again. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, nor does he care. All he wants is to be inside you, fucking his seed into you until you’re swollen with it. He stares down at where you’re connected for a moment, your pussy spread open around his knot.

He guides you against his chest as your body gives out, the haze of his instincts lifting just momentarily. His body aches, soreness settling in as his mind clears. You lick at his throat, tasting his sweat-slicked skin. Sweet little whimpers and whines leave your lips as you rest against him, completely boneless and at his mercy.

He reaches over to the nightstand, wrapping an arm around you to hold you still so he doesn’t tug on the knot as he grabs the bottle of electrolytes. He unscrews the cap, gently easing you back. You’re both still breathing heavily as he cradles the back of your head with one hand, helping you drink the electrolytes. You gulp it down even in your exhausted state, your body recognizing its need for sustenance.

He drinks the rest after you finish, tossing the bottle onto the floor with the others. He picks up one of the nutrient bars, peeling the wrapper off before he begins to eat, feeding you bites of it as he does. You’re half asleep, chewing slowly as you rest against his chest, body still trembling slightly from the aftershocks of another of what’s now a countless number of orgasms.

He gives you the last little bit of the bar before he relaxes back against the headboard, keeping his arms wrapped tight around you. The skin on your shoulder is still angry and slightly swollen from his claiming bite. It doesn’t help that he’s sunk his teeth into that spot twice now since he first claimed you.

He swells with pride upon seeing it, the proof that you’re now his, a warning to others not to mess with you. It’s a slight weight off his shoulders. He has to worry less about someone trying something. Some haughty, cocksure alpha getting it through his head that he wants what he can’t have, that he can just take what’s not his. A low growl rumbles through his chest at the thought.

He shushes you as you stir in response to the warning growl, a purr rumbling through his chest as he eases you back into a relaxed state. His good little omega, his sweet little omega, taking his knot so well.

You make a quiet noise as he twitches inside you, the feeling of being enveloped in your tight heat almost like heaven. He closes his eyes, calming his inner alpha. He knows you need to rest. You need a little break before you start up again, before your heat continues to ravage you.

Before he continues to ravage you.

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#call of duty #call of duty fic #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #a/b/o #omegaverse #captain price x reader #price x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle garrick x reader #john mactavish x reader #soap x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #x reader

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yanderenightmare · 2 months

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TW: nsfw, noncon, poverty & debt, gun violence, organized crime, death threats, arranged marriage

fem reader

Thinking about owing the mob…

Not you specifically, but your family – debt you weren’t aware of before you’re being cashed in to settle it.

You imagined several terrible things before the arrangement was explained to you.

One of the sons needs a wife with a clean reputation.

It’s a simple equation. You’re eligible, and he isn’t picky.

And though it leaves you in mourning for a life yet lived, it still comes with a sense of relief. It’s one of the better deals you could’ve gotten. At least you wouldn’t need to witness or partake in any crimes, nor act as a scapegoat for the likes either.

Besides… though you’ve yet to meet your fiancé, you’ve been explained that he only plans on treating you like a wife on and for the camera – that his tastes otherwise lie in the gentlemen’s lounge.

All you ever have to do is smile. He isn’t interested in anything else.

That’s what you were told, and yet…

“It’s funny.” Your husband says after the wedding ceremony.

You’re back at the mansion you’re meant to call home. The grounds are about twice the size of the block you come from. Marble, gold, and diamonds – it’s so outrageously excessive it’s shameless.

“I was told your brothers run routes for us to make ends meet.” He continues, looking at you and the expression on your face as you stare up at the chandelier – it’s clear you’ve never seen anything like it. “Fuck, I mean, I can’t imagine risking my life and still end up needing to pick between food or rent at the end of the day.”

Your gaze falls down to him at that.

Clad in lush wedding expense – white gown and silver tiara – you still stick out like a sore thumb. Something in the way it wears you and not the other way around. It’s obvious you’re uncomfortable with it all. It’s probably worth more than your family's ever owned.

He steps closer with a chuckle.

“Then, the poor suckers go and fuck up so bad they end up needing to sell their own sister.”

He spots your fists ball at your sides. But you keep your cool. Only a slight grimace curling your lips along a tiny furrow between your brows. It all smoothens into something else when he reaches out to grab your chin.

“What’s even more funny…” He tilts your face in his hand – jaded eyes assessing you like he’s found a coin on the ground. “You don’t look like street trash like I expected.”

Your frown returns, and you try pulling back – but he grabs your arm before you can.

Tsking, “Ah-ah – Remember,” His smile sharpens. “You’re property now. When I touch you, you let it happen.”

You weren’t that easily convinced. He bet you’ve had to fight off a lot of unwanted attention back where you come from. But he isn’t some back-alley thug. When he wants something, he expects it not only to be served on a silver platter but to be hand-fed to him with a silver spoon.

He pulls the gun out from behind him. Slotted in the band of his dress trousers, it had stayed hidden beneath the coverage of his suit jacket during the ceremony.

Your throat dries up, and any protests you had died of thirst along with it – eyes wide as you stare at the piece.

You can’t believe he’d carry that thing into a church with vows upon his lips – now pointing it at the very same wife he’d made those vows to.

“Make me spend a single bullet, and your family will share the rest.” He taps the barrel’s mouth against the quiver of your lips. “I’d rather not it come to that. It’ll ruin the carpet…”

You quiver, feeling weak with a shudder – your eyes slip closed with a shivering tear.

“Not to mention this…” He strokes the pitiful droplet off your cheek with the weapon while eyeing the way you quake with grinning eyes. “Pretty little body I’ve only just acquired.”

BNHA – Dabi

JJK – Sukuna, Geto, Gojo, Naoya, Toji

BLLK – Reo

HxH – Illumi

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bet-on-me-13 · 4 months

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Talia took a 20+ Year Undercover mission a while ago

So! Talia is the Daughter of Ra's Al Ghul, and has been alive and at his side for many years now. Decades even. She is well into her 100's, even though her physical Body looks like that of a 20 yr old.

And in all the years that she has lived, what's to say she didn't take a few years off as a vacation? Even Ra's must take a few years off every once in a while, leaving to spend time on some remote island he can relax on for once. So, one day in the Early 80's she decided to do the same.

But she wouldn't be completely relaxing, she would take the break to further the League's goals still. She decided to Dye her Hair, change her Name, get into an acceptable College, and study Lazarus Waters to their scientific limit. She decided to name if Ectoplasm, to avoid any unwanted attention.

And while there, she met a pair of men doing the exact same.

Jack and Vladimir were nice enough. Although their Research was more focused on Ghosts, or as she would call them, Pit Demons. They were convinced that Ectoplasm and Ghosts came from another Dimension, and if they could find a way to open a Dimension Gateway to this theoretical Ghost Zone, they could aquire Limitless Clean Energy (and maybe find a way to contain the Ghostly threat).

Over the years, Talia Maddie would fall for Jack. Eventually, even after she had completed her College Studies and Vlad had left contact with them, she decided to extend her Vacation to further study Ectoplasm with Jack. One thing led to another, and eventually she found herself pregnant. And then it happened again.

Jazzmine and Daniel were the cutest little babies. But she knew the danger they would be in if it was ever discovered that she was their Mother, so she trained them in everything she could so they could survive. She knew her time as Maddie Fenton was coming short, but she resolved to stay, at the very least until Jazz was an Adult.

She didn't account for Daniel becoming a Small Town Hero, but those were just the Trials of motherhood.

Then, the day came. She left a note on her bedside table explaining that she regretted what had to happen, and left in the middle of the night. It was better this way.

...

The year right after she returned, her Father forced her to have a Child with his most prospective Heir. The Bat, he called himself. Oh he was Charming, there was no denying that, but unfortunately she was still working through her feelings about Jack.

She treated her resulting child poorly because of that, and that she regreted it deeply. She loved him, honestly she did, but it was hard to look at him and not remember Daniel. Still, she persevered.

The day she once again had to give up her son for his protection was the hardest of her life.

But it was unavoidable. The Coup that had taken her Father's life had also fractured the Organization, anyone could have taken their shot at her Son as the rightful Heir. She needed to protect him as she took care of the Traitors.

...

Damian always knew he was the One True Heir. It was his defining character trait for his early years of life. Even though he had grown to be more than just that over recent years, he always felt like it was a key part of his identity.

Until now.

Because the BatComputer had just finished running a DNA Test on the Blood of a man who he had spotted on his Patrol the previous night.

A DNA Test that had come back, with results claiming that the man, who looked almost exactly like a younger male version of his Mother, was his Half Brother.

#Dpxdc #Dp x dc #Dcxdp #Dc x dp #Danny Phantom #Dc #Dcu #Talia Al Ghul #Jack Fenton #Maddie Fenton #Talia Al Ghul is Maddie Fenton #She went on an Undercover Mission/Vacation to scientifically study Lazarus Water #She met Jack and Vlad in the College she was undercover at #She fell for Jack and his Himbo attitude #She knew that Danny was a Ghost/Pit Demon but decided to test if he had actually remembered any of her self defense lessons #She got Jack to agree to it #She will admit she may have gone a step too far (the threats over dinner were a bit much)(so was keeping the act up for so long)#Danny was 16 when she left an 17 when she had Damian #Jazz was 18 when she left and 19 when she had Damian #Currently Danny is 29 and Jazz is 31 #They never did figure out where their mother went #But they will never forgive her for what she did to her Dad #Jack was heartbroken #He still is #He got better over time but it took a while to begin to heal

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incognit0slut · 4 months

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The Last Laugh

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Spencer is forced to share a room with his rival. This is part two of Lose Control but can be read as a standalone.

warnings: sexual tension, a lot of banter, female oral, edging, rough sex, unplanned creampie (is that a thing?) words: 5,3k a/n: someone requested a part two with a one-bedroom trope and since this is one of my favorite stories, I had to do it

...Thinkin' you're winnin' with all of your grinning but I got the last laugh...

"I'M NOT SLEEPING WITH REID."

The idea was absurd. Ridiculous. Insane. Out of all the people in her team, why was she paired up with him?

According to Garcia, the only choice she had to spend the night in this remote town was with the person she least wanted to engage with. Did Garcia not know how much she had been trying to avoid him? How much she had been attempting to act as if the mere proximity with him wasn't making her lose her mind?

"Why not?" Garcia asked, handing her a key. "He's not that bad of a roommate, well, if you overlook his tendency to share random facts in the middle of the night, then he's really not that bad."

"Do you not hear yourself?" She steadied her gaze to her friend. "You want me to share a room with the person I hate the most?"

Garcia rolled her eyes. "You guys really should stop with this nonsense. You're both grown adults."

"I'll treat him like an adult if he starts to act like one." Her eyes drifted toward the man of the hour, standing at the other end of this old-looking hotel that seemed too close to falling apart, engaged in conversation with Luke. She then glanced back at Garcia. "Why can't he share a room with Luke?"

"Because I'm sharing a room with Luke."

She shot Garcia an incredulous look. "You're rooming with Luke? Since when?"

"Since always. We're buddies, remember?" She cocked an eyebrow and Garcia sighed. "Don't look at me like that, we're just friends. Besides, you and Reid are the only ones left without a roommate. Consider this your opportunity for personal growth or whatever."

"Personal growth? More like a crash course in patience. And what's the deal with Reid anyway? Why does he always have to be the exception?"

Garcia leaned in, her tone conspiratorial. "Well, let's just say Luke and I enjoy our peace. Reid, on the other hand, is like a walking encyclopedia. I figured it's your turn to experience that charm up close."

She scowled, a mix of annoyance and resignation on her face. "Charm? That's a generous way to put it."

Garcia stared back with an air of nonchalance that only seemed to amplify her exasperation. "Look, it's only one night. What's the worst that could happen?"

She shot her friend a withering glance as if the absurdity of the situation needed no further clarification. "The worst is that I might end up committing another crime in this town before the night ends."

Garcia raised an eyebrow, her amusement evident. "You're exaggerating, Reid is harmless. Plus, all the other rooms are fully booked. Consider yourself lucky we even found a place to stay."

"Lucky is not the word I would use right now."

"Just try to survive the night without killing each other," Garcia chuckled, ignoring the glare shot towards her way. "Give him a chance."

Her incredulous stare intensified. "A chance? Garcia, the man tried to argue with me about the most efficient way to organize my desk. And you know what's ironic? His own desk is a complete mess."

Garcia sighed, her playful demeanor softening. "One night, Y/n, that's all I'm asking."

She pursed her lips together. She could go on about how bad it would be to share a room with him, but the thing was, it would raise questions she did not want to answer. There was a limit to how much her disdain could stop her from entertaining the idea, and her avoidance, she realized, was more than just mere hatred.

Annoyed that she couldn't do anything to escape the situation, she shot a disapproving glance at him, who was still engrossed in conversation with Luke. With a resigned shake of her head, she turned back to Garcia.

"Whatever." She sighed, begrudgingly accepting the key Garcia handed her. "But if he starts reciting facts about, I don't know, the history of dental floss or something, I'm blaming you."

Garcia laughed. "Fair enough." She shoved her shoulder playfully. "But who knows, maybe you'll discover he's not as bad as you think."

That was the problem. Spencer Reid, in her eyes, was starting to... change. And she hated that. Why was the man she had never bothered to befriend occupying her mind more than she wanted him to? Was it because she now knew what it felt like to have his body pressed against hers? What it felt like to have him grunt in pleasure right in her ear? Just because they had sex?

Nope. Nuh-huh. She wasn't going to think of him differently tonight—or ever, for that matter.

She gave Garcia one last glare before making her way across the creaky floorboards toward him. Noticing her presence coming close, Spencer looked up and a slight tension filled the air as his gaze locked with hers. She quickly shook her head.

"You're sleeping on the floor," she declared with a point of her finger when she reached him.

A small amused smile played on his lips. "We're sharing a room?"

"Unfortunately," she grumbled. She then focused her attention on Luke. "Do you want to switch roommates?"

Luke chuckled. "I'm afraid I'm stuck with Garcia. Besides," he patted Spencer on the shoulder, "Don't act like you're not eager to spend the night with him."

Her eyes went wide. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Luke simply shrugged with a mischievous glint in his eyes, and walked away, leavingher staring at Spencer with a mix of confusion and suspicion. "What did you tell him?"

Spencer frowned. "Nothing." He sighed when her stare didn't back down. "Nothing, I swear. Luke tends to have his own way of interpreting things."

She narrowed her eyes, not entirely convinced, but decided to let it go for the moment. She turned on her heels, not waiting for him as she walked to their destinated room. She felt his presence close behind her but kept her mouth closed.

Spencer, on the other hand, found the situation amusing. He really shouldn't find any entertainment in her visible annoyance towards him, but he did. He couldn't help but notice that despite being angry, she still looked unbelievably attractive. The scowl on her face, her pursed lips, her chest heaving in anger. He took a step closer.

"This must be hard for you," he commented.

"What is?" she shot back, maintaining her brisk pace.

"Staying the night with me when you've been avoiding me."

Her jaw tightened. "I haven't been avoiding you."

"Really? So you haven't gone out of your way to avoid looking in my direction ever since what happened?"

Her steps faltered for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure, refusing to show any vulnerability. "That doesn't mean I've been actively avoiding you. It just means I have better things to do than engage in pointless conversations."

Spencer raised an eyebrow, a knowing glint in his eyes. "Pointless conversations, or conversations you're trying to avoid?"

She shot him a sharp look but didn't respond. "You know," he began again. "You do seem to be acting differently ever since that day."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Spencer couldn't resist a faint smile at her denial. "You really don't know what I'm referring to?"

She huffed, not giving him the satisfaction of a response. The narrow hallway seemed to amplify the unresolved tension between them as they stopped right in front of their room. She could feel his gaze on her, and it only fueled her annoyance.

She tried to ignore him by unlocking the door, but as she pushed it open, she felt his presence looming behind her. His proximity was so close that she held her breath as he gripped the edge of the door in front of her. His breath brushed her neck and her eyes involuntarily fluttered close when his other hand slowly rested on her waist.

"Should I help you jog your memory back?"

Her eyes shot open. She shoved him aside and stepped into the room. "No funny business, Reid. Keep your dick in your pants tonight."

His laughter lingered in the air as he followed her inside, closing the door behind him. "The question is," he taunted. "Can you keep it in my pants?"

She scoffed. Who was he and what did he do to the Spencer she once knew? The guy she remembered lacked any humor and always kept his distance from her. It was hard to believe a simple encounter—could you call sex as simple?—had turned him so crude, or maybe, she considered, this was his true self all along.

She decided to ignore his words as her eyes scanned the cramped room, containing only an old dresser, a nightstand, and a queen-sized bed, which she pointed at assertively. "That bed is mine."

His brow furrowed. "Why do I have to sleep on the floor?"

"You want me to sleep on the floor?" Her hand gracefully moved to her chest in a dramatic gasp. "Where is your chivalry, Dr. Reid?"

"We could share the bed."

She simply stared back at him, her eyes narrowing with a mix of disbelief and incredulity. Spencer, unable to resist stirring the pot, shot back with a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Come on, it won't be so bad. Did you know that the concept of sharing a bed has been a cultural practice for centuries? It symbolizes unity and—"

"Reid," she interrupted, shooting him a pointed look. "If you're trying to annoy me, you're doing an excellent job."

He grinned, clearly enjoying her irritation. "I'm just stating a fact. Sharing a room, sharing a bed—it's all deeply rooted in human history."

She sighed, rolling her eyes. "I highly doubt our situation is deeply rooted in anything other than poor hotel arrangements."

Spencer chuckled, undeterred, his laughter resonating in the dimly lit room as he took a step closer to her. The worn-out floor creaked beneath his feet, echoing the subtle tension that lingered in the confined space of the room. "You never know. We might be making history right now."

She shot him a skeptical look, her gaze unwavering. "I doubt historians will be interested in this disaster."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you always this skeptical, or is it just reserved for me?"

"It's just reserved for annoying people," she retorted, not missing a beat. She took a deliberate step closer to him, the air thick with a blend of tension and... something else. Her heart quickened as his gaze swiftly swept over her lips before dragging back to her eyes.

"Really?" He closed the distance between them, and she held her ground, tilting her head back to meet his gaze due to his towering height. A subtle trace of his scent hung in the air, his presence enveloping her. She felt a sudden shift in the air, her senses heightened, and her eyes traced the contours of his face—the sharp angles of his jaw, the warmth reflected in his hazel eyes. She also could sense the initial surge of longing coursing through her body.

Shit.

"Believe it or not," he added, his voice a low murmur that resonated in the confined space. "I find your company quite fascinating."

"Fascinating?" She responded, but it came out more breathless than she had intended. She took a deep breath, trying to act as if his close proximity wasn't affecting her. Her pulse, however, betrayed her composure. And it was evident in her voice. "T- That's a stretch."

"Really?" His lips curved into a subtle smile, catching the shift in her demeanor. "I think there's a small part of you that's enjoying this."

"Enjoy what? Your random facts and annoying habits?"

Spencer leaned forward. A tension crackled between them, and it swam in his eyes and played on his lips. It pulled at her chest, making her heartbeat flutter in her throat, and to her surprise, he extended his hand, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His touch left a searing sensation on her skin.

"Admit it, you're starting to see a different side of me."

She shook her head, refusing to acknowledge his point. "One night doesn't change anything."

"You're right." His hand made its way to the back of her neck, pulling her closer to him. "It can change everything."

Before she could register what he was doing, he closed the distance between them, holding her still as his lips crashed on hers. A thousand things flooded her mind all at once—each of them revolving around him. The way she melted into him felt oddly natural. The way his hands began to roam her body, the way her mouth opened for his tongue, the way her kisses became hungrier, also felt natural.

Which was bad. Really, really bad. This wasn't supposed to happen. One time, she could call it a mistake. But allowing him to have his way with her for the second time... there was no one to blame but herself. She should push him away and set the boundaries she was supposed to set the moment he invaded her personal space. But it was hard to think rationally when he tasted so good.

It was hard to stand her ground when his teeth softly nibbled her bottom lip. It was hard to think straight when she was already pulling hard at the locks at the base of his neck as his tongue explored her mouth, blindly walking her back until her back was pressing onto the wall.

"Look at you," he laughed against her lips. "You're not pushing me away."

"Shut up," she hissed, trying her best to keep her tone icy. But then again, it was hard to stay angry when he was touching her like this. His greedy hand traveled up her thighs, massaging the plush flesh. His fingers finally found the hem of her pants, and he swallowed her moan when they dipped underneath the material, slipping right underneath her panties.

Her breath hitched when two of his long fingers slide between her folds, spreading her slick before finding its rightful place on her clit. Spencer didn't hesitate when he started rubbing at her nub, smooth and deliberate, it made her toes curl and her body jumped in a moment of surprised bliss.

Her sound of pleasure was music to his ears, urging him to satisfy her even more. He was quick when those same fingers dipped inside her core, her inner walls tensing at the sudden yet pleasurable stretch. There was a distinct sound along her needy whines, wet and slapping as his palm makes contact with her clit every time he was knuckle-deep inside her. Her head fell back to the wall, mouth agape, face flushed—a sight Spencer secretly wanted to commit into his memory.

Without even noticing it, her hips started grinding to chase his fingers, desperate to reach that familiar pleasure twisting in her core. Her movement didn't go unnoticed by him, an amused, deep chuckle reverberating from his chest while he pulled his fingers out of her, rubbing her clit aggressively, knowing it would make her reach her high faster.

"You're going to cum, aren't you? This quick?" She glared at him through half-lidded eyes, not giving him an answer. His smile widened at her resistance. "Do you think I should let you?"

Her heart quickened its pace, knowing well enough what he was about to do. He was going to tease her, or as she liked to think, he was going to torture her by not giving her what she wanted. Her theory was proved right when he leaned down, his face inches away from hers, a sly smile on his lips.

"Beg me."

She quickly shook her head. A hand snaked up her back until it found the base of her skull. His fingers brushed through her strands before gripping hard, sending a jolt of pain down her spine as he yanked her head back.

"Beg me."

"Fuck you—ah!" A sudden pressure of his fingers sent pleasure shooting through her, pushing a moan from her that filled the room like a ringing bell—a bell that signaled the fact that despite how much she knew she shouldn't, she was already surrendering to his touch.

"No?" He taunted, his breath brushing against her ear. "Then I'm not letting you cum."

And just like that, the pleasure rippling through her body was ripped away.

He swiftly pulled his hand from under her pants with a smirk she wanted to wipe off before turning his back to her, leaving her all flustered. She took a moment to collect herself, her mind racing to grasp the situation. She loathed him. She really did. She despised the way he was so full of himself.

With a determined exhale, she shook off the flustered feeling that lingered. He may have momentarily unsettled her, but she was not one to let her guard down easily. She was not going to let him get under her skin. If he could make her sexually frustrated, then so could she.

If he was going to play dirty, she was going to get filthy.

Her shirt was the first thing that came off. Then she unbuttoned her pants, pulling them down over her legs. Dear god, she was going to regret this, wasn't she? But she couldn't stop. Not when the rustle of her clothes echoed in the quiet space and Spencer turned around, jaw slacked, a startled expression crossed his face as he watched her.

"W-What are you doing?"

There. That was what she wanted. That priceless, wide-eyed, disbelief face. She had to keep going.

"Taking matters into my own hands."

Her hand reached around to unclasp her bra before she intentionally took her time sliding the straps down her arms, enjoying the way his jaw clenched as you did. Eyes still focused on him, she tossed it to the side. Her hands lowered afterward, and an audible gasp escaped his lips as she slipped her fingers into the waistband of her underwear, sliding them down her legs.

"You're always so smug," she murmured, taking a step forward, closing the distance between them. "Thinking you have control of me."

Right hand reaching up, her fingertips just lightly swept the length of his stubbled chin, just below his lips. The corner of his mouth only drew up further at her touch. She smiled at his reaction, and her fingers dropped down to grip his chin firmly.

"But I can satisfy myself just fine."

And then she pulled away, the smirk now missing from his lips as she backed out of his reach. She then settled on the bed, and with her eyes never leaving him, she spread her legs wide open. She watched as a breathless sigh escaped his lips and smiled triumphantly, especially when the bulge growing in his dark pants was impossible to ignore.

With her gaze lingering on his steadily growing erection, she trailed her hand down her stomach, the tips of her fingers paused just over her clit. "What's wrong, Reid?" She hummed out, watching his chest heave. "You seem to be speechless."

Because he was, how could he not be when the pad of her middle finger slowly started to lightly circle over her clit. He watched as she teased herself, fingers gliding between her folds, gathering her arousal before slipping a finger inside. She gasped, the wet sound was audible even to her own ears as she gradually pumped her finger in and out.

He took a step closer, and her fingers moved faster as his eyes raked over her body—her luscious breasts fully exposed, legs spread apart, fingers between her thighs. A faint moan fell out of her, her eyes partially closing all the while her fingers never ceased their movement, vigorously thrusting into her cunt.

She then proceeded to put on a show for him, throwing her head back and rolling her hips. He was standing close to her now, eyes focused on her body, his tongue sliding along his lower lip. Her cunt immediately clenched at the sight of him, a bulge straining at the fabric of his pants. The sight sent a surge of warmth through her body, spreading from between her thighs to her cheeks as her fingers quickened in pace and her legs spread farther for him to see.

He was trying to hold himself, it was obvious in the way he held his composure. But then she watched with satisfaction as he stalked towards her, and just because she wanted to fluster him, she couldn't help herself from letting out a needy whine as she slipped her fingers out before rubbing her clit desperately, her eyes boring into his.

"Spencer," she moaned.

That was precisely when he lost it. He didn't even hesitate. He marched straight to her, and her finger stopped in its movement as she watched him settle between her legs, sinking to his knees. He wrapped his arms around her thighs and roughly yanked her over the edge of the mattress, and she fell on her back with a squeal.

"You're a goddamn tease, you know that?" He sneered, his warm breath brushing over her heat. "Fine, I'll let you win this time."

A gasp escaped her lips when he wasted no time leaning in, burying his head between her thighs. He wasted no time as she grabbed onto the sheets, feeling his tongue draw circles around her clit before flicking up and down at a rapid pace. Her thighs tighten around his head. and her whole body trembled beneath him, encouraging him to move his tongue faster.

His fingers dug into her thighs, holding them apart as he took his time. Ever so slowly he licked up her slit, gathering her juices on his tongue until he reached her clit, groaning every second of the way until she was shivering beneath his touch. She was breathless, mind buzzing and the room spinning as he thrust his tongue into her warmth, face becoming so deep between her thighs that heat rushed through her body.

When her thighs trembled and threatened to close, he made sure two heavy palms kept them open long enough for his tongue to drag deeper inside her. With a roll of his tongue, he was lapping at her walls, swallowing every drop until the second he heard her begin to whine.

It was embarrassing, letting him hear how worked up she was. But she couldn't help it, not when she was losing control of her mind and body. Her hips were starting to buck to meet his tongue. Her jaw slacked. Low moans spilled from her lips as he continued to ravish her, and her fingers dug into the sheets beneath her to hold onto her sanity as waves of pure overwhelming pleasure took hold of her.

"Oh my god," she whimpered, voice two octaves higher before growing silent. She was so, so close to the edge, his tongue relentlessly sucking her clit, licking, swirling over her entrance until her mind fell blank from the bliss. The heat began swelling from between her thighs, tension tightening and all she did was screw her eyes shut.

But seconds before the pleasure was nearly too much to bear, he suddenly pulled away.

"Reid!" She hissed, looking down between her legs. "You're fucking annoying."

He looked up at her with a teasing glint in his eyes, then his mouth parted a second before his tongue swiped over his lip to taste the remnants of her arousal. "What?"

Unbelievable. After pulling that stunt, he had the audacity to feign innocence. She huffed and opened her mouth to retort something but when he started to undress himself, she couldn't think of anything. Her mind was too busy taking in his slightly toned arms, his broad chest, his slim waist, and that patch of soft hair trailing down his stomach, disappearing underneath his pants.

And that was gone too, and now he was standing without any shred of clothing, and it then dawned on her that they were both very much naked. Their first time in that dusty storage room happened too fast that they didn't bother taking off their clothes, but now she had the time to sink in the way he looked wearing nothing but a smirk.

"I didn't bring a condom," he said as he climbed onto the bed. Like that was going to stop them, it didn't stop them before and it most definitely won't stop them now.

"It's fine," she mumbled just as he settled between her legs again, but when his eyes lit up at her words, she smacked his shoulder. "But you're still not finishing inside me."

He merely hummed a reply. Then seconds later he was lining up the tip of his cock with her entrance. His eyes meet hers as he teased her, and she noticed the smirk appear once again on his lips. She pushed her hips toward him, gripping his arm irritatedly, and released a breathy 'hurry up' before she could change her mind.

He wasted no more time pushing himself into her without warning, earning a gasp while he stretched her completely. He pressed his body into her, allowing her lips to collide with his and moan into the kiss when she felt him pull away just enough to slam back into her with one harsh thrust. His hands suddenly reached for her wrists, and he gripped them above her head, pushing them onto the mattress.

His eyes darkened as he looked down at her, and she quickly shut her own as he pumped himself into her cunt over and over again. His motions were aggressive, sloppy, and wild. The moment a particularly deep and brutal thrust hit her at the right spot was the moment she finally gave in to weakness as she let out a loud moan, her mind going blank to everything but the pleasure he was giving her.

Then he pulled back again, and his thick cock slid out of her partway, glistening with her juices, splitting her pussy apart around it before snapping forward, his hips going at a brutal pace, making her whole body bounce from the contact.

"God, you feel incredible," he groaned out just as she gasped from the intense pressure of him inside her, head falling above her, jaw slacked, sweat dripping down his temple. Her eyes fluttered open before exhaling a heavy breath, feeling him tightening his grip on her wrists. "We need to do this more often."

Though she didn't say it, she agreed with him. And it pained her to even consider making this a habit. But it was tempting. It was so tempting that the thought of having him inside her anytime and anywhere had her clenching around his cock, earning a low grunt deep within his chest.

Then something snapped inside her. She had started off holding back, keeping herself in check against the rising wave of sensations. But then, in a moment that felt like a long-awaited release, she decided finally to let go when he continued to hit that perfect spot inside her, and she almost felt ashamed at the noises she was making. She wasn't as vocal when she was alone, nor with other men, yet the man she claimed to hate earned every whimper, every desperate moan.

Hearing her cries urged Spencer even more. He leaned over to her and pushed himself deeper, earning a gasp from her as her legs fell apart even further, letting him sink himself as deep as he could. He pushed her hands above her head and hovered above her, letting his temple fall against hers as his hips rutted violently.

The pressure rose and the tension coiled in the pit of her stomach. Sweats beaded over her skin just the same as him, crying out for him, moans mixing with filthy noises of him thrusting into her wet cunt. His powerful thrusts then quickened, causing her to grow weak her body began to quiver in his grasp.

She cried out, wanting to warn him she was growing close to the edge, her mind growing numb, everything around her fading into black. But didn't give her the chance to speak before he pressed his mouth on hers in a heated kiss, all sloppy and wet and desperate, latching on her lips with so much fervor.

She felt him everywhere. On her lips, biting on her soft flesh. On her breasts, his chest rubbing against her hard nipples. And between her legs, his cock stretching her deliciously, a pleasant feeling that had her whining against his mouth.

But before she could whimper anything else, the pleasure erupted inside of her, red hot heat unraveling to every limb. Her release was a fiery blast—white-hot and overwhelming, turning her into the image of destruction. Her hair stuck to her skin, her back arching off the bed, feeling overwhelmed as his cock hit her deeper. She succumbed to the bliss, eyes shut tight, and her furrowed brow as she surrendered through her orgasm.

He held her tighter, pumping himself into her as she finally let go, calling out his name in a breathless whimper. She came so hard her legs were shaking uncontrollably, but he didn't stop. He pounded into her harder, reveling in the way she fell apart for him.

"I-I'm close," he grunted. "Where... where do you want me to—"

"Inside."

He looked down at her, trying to hold himself to not combust right there and then. "Are you—" he groaned when she clenched around him. "Are you sure?"

She was already too deep in her climax that any worries faded away. It was like time slowed down, and all that mattered was the intense sensations taking over her body. It was wrong, but it was what she wanted. She wanted to be full of him.

"Yes. Please, just—please," she whispered. "Cum inside me."

It was enough for him to let go, chasing his own pleasure inside of her, hitting deep within her walls as her own arousal dripped out around him. The slick and messy noises mixed with his groans filled the room, heat continuing to rush to her face as her entire body became overly sensitive.

With one final, sharp inhale, the bliss took hold of him. His hips slowed as he began to release inside of her, filling her up with a few huffs and grunts, creating a bigger mess between her thighs. He thrust one last time as the last few drops spilled from him, continuing to press his body against hers as closely as possible.

Then everything went silent except the sound of their ragged breathing. He pulled out of her with a heavy sigh, just as spent as her, breathless beyond belief. He collapsed on the bed, his chest rising up and down as he tried to gain some sense of control, his mind trying to grasp on the euphoria that happened moments ago.

"Well that was—"

She quickly nodded beside him. "Yeah."

Spencer turned his head towards her, and she could already feel him gloating that before he had the chance to say anything, she covered his mouth with her hand. "Do not say anything."

His reply was muffled underneath her palm, and she didn't understand what he was trying to say. She didn't even bother wanting to listen to him anymore. So she got off the bed, wincing when she felt the mess dripping down her thighs as she walked over to the bathroom.

"Where are you going?"

"Taking a shower," she called out. "I feel... sticky."

She then heard some rustling and she turned to see him hopping off the bed, following behind her. She narrowed her eyes. "Where are you going?"

"I feel sticky too."

"Spencer."

His lips twitched into an amused smile. "You called me Spencer."

She groaned and turned around. "We're not showering together, Reid."

"Why not?" He pressed, following her behind. "I promise to be on my best behavior."

She looked at him, assessing the way he was practically begging with his eyes. She was pondering whether it was a good idea to spend more time with him in an enclosed space. Probably not, but considering all the filthy, nasty things they had done, sharing a shower seemed harmless.

"Alright, fine," she caved in, letting out a sigh. "Just keep your hands to yourself."

He nodded eagerly, but she should've thought better when the spray of water finally hit their bodies and he closed in around her, burying his face in the crook of her neck as he held her waist. Then he pressed her against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall, and it was safe to say that he could not, as a matter of fact, keep his hands to himself.

Not that she was complaining.

a/n: I know this was supposed to be enemies to fuckable enemies but they're really starting to grow on me, they kinda cute

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kneelingshadowsalome · 5 months

Text

Christian Woman

(König x Nun!Reader)

Word count: 6.4 k Tags/warnings: Pining intensifies, religious despair intensifies, minor injuries, treatment of wounds, crying, enthusiastic kissing, König gets a few boners. 18+ for eventual smut in this story.

A/N: Don't tell me you wouldn't get horny scared too if you saw this tall guy suddenly emerging from the shadows in his full war gear :) There's a cute date night and a lot of angst in this chapter too, I tried to summon an actual plot here... As always, I need to explain why they’re bonking! But smut is coming, next and last chapter will be full of fluff and steamy first times (Reader is virgin!)

Part 2

You have a feeling that this is the last day you’ll see him.

The stranger from the Austrian Alps, the kindest mercenary you’ve ever met – the only mercenary you’ve ever met – the giant soldier who now carries a piece of your heart with him. You wonder if he even knows he owns it.

The morning prayers and mass are a chore and bring you no comfort, and the usual dawn bliss is gone. You find no delight in singing with your sisters, and withdrawing to your cell for solitary prayer feels like stepping back inside your own personal purgatory.

You’ve been in heaven and in hell for days now. Maybe since the moment you met him...

But at the same time, you know it must’ve been the Lord who brought you together. There must be a reason for God to make you two meet, you refuse to think it’s only because He wishes to tempt you. There must be a bigger plan; the connection, as sinful and carnal as it is, has to serve some higher purpose.

And you wonder if you’re going mad, because your most sinful thought is that you actually see God in him. It’s just your lower instincts speaking, a demon of some sort that tries to misguide you because no man is like Lord Jesus.

And yet, don’t they always preach that you meet Him in every person you meet? And that through you, other people meet God too…?

This reasoning feels much better. It solidifies the mercy you’ve longed for during the brief weeks you’ve known this man who brashly calls himself König. You want to believe that he carries a spark of the Divine in him, and that you hold a grain of the Virgin Mary’s compassion and love in you.

You decide to hold on to this thought: that you were meant to meet so that you could come to know God through each other. For in König, you see a suffering God, a crucified Christ who rises against evil by offering himself to the cruelty of men. Somehow, the image of him as a mortal man starts to twist into a divine, dark trooper, someone who battles the forces of the evil in this world.

And this reasoning leads you to think that it is only natural that you, a Sister of the Faith, have helped him find some rest and relief in the middle of his work. It’s pretty clear that König has found some solace in your company, and even if things have ventured into a forbidden area of low, simple lust, it’s not dark enough to taint the beauty and grace you've felt together. As long as you hold on to this purity, nothing can go wrong.

While praying for both of you that morning, you find yourself replaying the smiles and touches König has given you these past weeks. You know you will drown yourself in memories after he's gone because they are all you’ll ever have of him.

And they're more than enough.

Or at least they should be…

You feel a tiny dagger of guilt push into your heart, the place reserved for Christ, when you’re assigned to do some spiritual reading instead of helping out in the kitchen or organizing the small library. The appointed texts are about falling into temptation and sin, reminding you about the consequences of such actions. You read the passings with a heavy heart and then slip out to meet König, possibly for the last time.

You wear your everyday clothes to the café, and König says nothing about your sudden moral choice, only gives you another longing, enamored once-over. You keep him at arm’s length, both physically and emotionally, and the effects of this unexpected cold shower are immediate. The man doesn’t even try to disguise the sad, puppy-eyed stares he shoots your way.

You hate it that the bright, playful air of your meetings is gone, and your heart is tearing itself apart in your chest because the only thing you wanted was to spread joy into his world. Even the Lord seems disappointed in you being so cold-hearted, and you can’t bear to see His sadness and suffering in König’s eyes.

You get offered not one, but two coffees today, and a large piece of dark chocolate cake that tastes of pure sin. He talks about how he would love to write to you, but you tell him you can’t be in correspondence with a man who isn’t your brother or father. König isn’t even married, so it would only raise questions – you would find yourself reading spiritual texts about lust and sin until it drives you crazy.

“I’m leaving early tomorrow,” he finally reveals with a voice thick with sorrow. “Can I see you before I go...? One last time?”

“I’d love to, but… I’m sort of being watched,” you say, slowly coming out of your shell to make it clear that you’d want to spend the rest of your life with him, but you simply just can’t.

Your weak, apologetic look is like a dose of confidence shot through his veins because the face opposite of you brightens immediately. König’s whole posture gets a hopeful uplift.

“Just for a little walk...? To see what the city looks like in the evening?”

“I don’t know if I can make it… I have to work until six... And attend the evening prayer at seven. And then silence starts at eight…”

You’re wringing your hands under the table while you explain, hoping König will come up with a solution to this dilemma.

“We can go for a walk after silence, then,” he shrugs.

“I–I can’t just escape from the window.”

“...Why not?”

You look at König; he looks straight back.

The man’s serious about you sneaking out your window at night; he’s actually serious, even if there’s a dark, playful smile rising on his lips.

“I can help,” he grins.

Your heart cracks open, it shoots full of light only more and more with that smile. König doesn’t need to ram a door down and shoot his way through your chest; all he has to do is sneak inside your heart and take the place that belongs to God. You don’t even feel the difference as he makes himself at home.

Well, actually, you do... It’s like your Christ’s love and mercy have finally come to flesh and blood before you. They're materialized in the man sitting opposite of you, bouncing his knee excitedly and grinning like the most innocent little devil on Earth.

You find yourself whispering “Ok”, and the whole world shifts.

You take a step towards something forbidden but great, your whole heart starts to sing along with life. You haven’t even done the actual thing yet but you’re already filled with bubbling laughter and excitement. If only your friend could see you now, about to do things she probably did when she was fifteen...

But everything feels so right that it can’t be a sin – if it is, it just so happens to be the most natural, most divine thing to do too.

If this is the last day you’ll ever see him, you can surely steal a tiny moment for yourself and forget about rights and wrongs for a moment. Just forget about the rules, and live in the actual world for a few hours, breathe the worldly air, see what normal people do and pretend you’re one of them, for just one night.

…

You feel like Cinderella when picking clothes for the evening.

You rummage through the only closet in your room – during the time that should be spent in silent prayer before bed – and notice you still have your old jeans.

They’re light blue and still fit; actually, they fit more than well... You know that König’s eyes will be glued to your butt when you’re not looking.

You have completely forgotten how nice you look in jeans, and it’s the Devil talking, making you admire yourself in tight denim like this. You never cared about how you look before; you certainly never gave much thought to how men see you or if they’re checking out your butt or breasts. Now you’re grooming yourself like never before, trying to decide what to do with your hair as if your life depended on it.

You choose a simple, black t-shirt to pair with the jeans and not make it too obvious that you’re trying to flaunt yourself. It hugs your form but is otherwise plain, and for some people, your choice of clothing is probably their regular work outfit. To you, it feels like you’re about to go out to seduce everyone.

Everything’s so tight and earthly; everything’s so… there. Visible... Touchable.

Lord, have mercy on me. I know I’m weak. But please let me have this, just this once…

And König has seen you without makeup all this time, so what on earth has possessed you to lament the fact that you don’t own a single case of lipstick? You’d kill for a few sweeps of mascara, too, just to bat your lashes at a silly man.

It’s not a date, you remind yourself.

It’s not a date... It’s not a date. You’re just going to have a short walk with him.

And you fear that accepting König’s “help” was a mistake. If you get caught with a man on the convent perimeter, you’ll get your ass thoroughly whooped…

Can a man of his size even keep quiet?

He probably suggested it so that you wouldn’t chicken out of this. If König is at your window by 8 and there’s no sign of you, he’ll probably just come in, throw you on his shoulder and jump out. He knows where your window is located now, and surely has some questionable skills due to his profession, skills you know nothing about, but you’re still about to have a panic attack from pure excitement when the clock strikes 8.

You push the window ajar and settle on the sill to keep watch, gasping when you hear his familiar accent down below as soon as the window is open.

“Kätzchen...”

“König…?”

You peek down and meet his stupid, grinning face – God, he’s so happy to see you kept your promise. His eyes are shining, his fingers interlock to help you have something to place your foot on.

“Here, kitty, kitty…”

You could easily jump out the window without hurting yourself, but of course he wants to help you since you were so kind to tell him where he could come and "pick you up".

But to see that playful smile and hear him trying to coax you out like you’re some skittish little kitten…

Could a grown man get any more silly?

You wiggle yourself out the window, trying to ignore the fact that he’s probably staring at your butt, still grinning like crazy while you do it.

SupportING your entire weight like it’s no trouble at all, he helps you down. You’ve never been this close to him since you bumped into him: you have to take support from his shoulders as you search for a footing, and he scoops you in his arms the minute both your feet are safely on the ground.

“I knew you’d come,” he purrs with joy, and you place your hands on his chest – not to keep him at bay, but to touch him in a way that is as appropriate as possible when a man is hugging you like this.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” you whisper, still unsure if this is the best or the worst decision of your entire life.

“Kitty… Live a little, hmm?”

You have to crane your neck to look up at him – you’re not sure if you’re in the embrace of Jesus or Lucifer because the warmth of those eyes compare to the love of God, but they also make you weak and helpless. Whenever you’re with your sisters, the feeling is pure, pristine love, not a surge of complex emotions and thrill like it is with König.

“You’re a bad influence,” you breathe – König only laughs, and the grip around you tightens.

“My lady. You’re the one who climbed out the window.”

“Because someone would’ve probably thrown small rocks on it if I hadn’t…!”

“Natürlich. And if that didn’t work… A serenade or two. Do you like love songs?”

You look down at his chest, smiling, heart fluttering at the thought of a silly Austrian man serenading under your window. You have no trouble imagining him singing something syrupy in German, waking everyone up with his racket.

“You’re crazy, did you know that...?”

“Sure. They tell me that all the time at work. Aber du… Du bist süss.”

“...What’s that?”

His smile only widens as he takes in your lips, your neck, the tight shirt that finally gives him something more to look at.

“You’re cute.”

…

The whole evening is heavenly.

It’s everything you’ve ever wanted from a date and more.

He doesn’t take you for a short walk, oh no. He takes you out to eat, at some lively restaurant where they serve delicious, artisan, wood-fired pizzas. You have créme brûlée for dessert, and König gives you his strawberries when he notices you eat them first, but only on one condition: you have to let him feed them to you one by one.

He buys you a rose: a big, red, plump one. No man has ever bought you flowers before, and even if you love lush, abundant bouquets, the fact that he chose you a single red rose after you’ve spoken about the beauty of simplicity, doesn't escape you.

König hasn’t only listened to you these past few weeks: he gets you. And how symbolic is it that he chose a rose that’s also tied to all the mysteries of God?

You walk the streets with a flower in one hand and his palm in the other. It's a holy trinity of him and you and the Great Mystery, it’s passion and it’s thorns, it’s blood and beauty and pain, and you feel like he just gets you; he knows you through and through.

You pass by an outdoor bar with live music, and the place is so crowded that people are dancing on the streets. No cars honk as they slowly pass by the scene, the music and the laughing, dancing pairs make even the grumpiest passersby smile.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that König pulls you to him before you get to escape the scene. You’re drawn flush against his chest, hips colliding with his, hands finding each other in a slow sway that has never even seen the steps of Latin dances.

“Nuns are allowed to dance, no?”

He smiles dreamily, enveloped in the same sweet haze as you.

“Not with a man,” you correct, but don’t even bother to push him away. Instead, you let König guide his hand down your waist and draw you closer. If this isn't a date, you don't know what is...

“I can take the blame,” he says. “You can tell everybody it was me.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” you laugh.

“Why not?”

His eyes are glued to yours, making you warm all over, so much so that you feel like you’re burning from the neck up. You guide your stare down to his chest, then over to the quick heartbeat on his neck.

He's nervous, too... Your cruel soldier is nervous, and kind, and shy because he's pressed against you.

You rest your head there on his chest, watching the golden sunset far away, painting the rooftops with a genial glow. Your heart is made of molten gold, too, as you allow yourself find a home in his embrace.

“I can take your sins,” he promises above you. “Jesus did that too, right?”

“You’re not Jesus,” you smile against his shirt – black, always black...

“Are you sure? I would go to hell for you.”

Your dance comes to a halt as you swallow and lift your gaze. The smiles are gone now, both yours and his. He’s so close now he could touch your lips with his if he wanted to.

And he does want to.

You don’t shy away as he leans down to kiss you. It’s chaste at first, a slow exploration, but then he opens your mouth with his, demanding, hot, intoxicating. You melt in his arms, and he somehow supports you through it all, turning the dance into an embrace and the decent little kiss into a full French one.

It’s hot and wet and slow, so, so passionate that your knees are about to give in. You devour him back, feel how he grows hard against your stomach – the swelling erection makes you dizzy before you come to your senses, but only barely.

You break away an inch, panting into his mouth while he’s panting into yours. What a blessing that you don’t own any lipstick; both of your lips are red without it…

“This is–”

“Inappropriate?”

His voice is husky, and sends a flood of wetness down between your legs. Your heart is racing, but you can’t even note how terribly alive you are before he attacks your lips again.

The kiss is even more desperate than the first one, and the slow urgency is gone. His mouth leaves you without air, and then – he wraps his arms around you and picks you up from the ground like you weigh nothing. Your hands get squished somewhere between you, naturally coming to cup his face as you kiss him back.

It’s eager, pure lust, so powerful and needy that it scorches through your chest and ties your heartstrings into tight little knots, makes your brows knit together, too.

He grunts into your mouth, sensing you’re more than up for this after all. You let him see the full depth of your hunger and your lust, just waiting to be released and taken – made love to until you’re both sore and messy and limp.

God… This is better than God…

You hear whistles and whoos in the distance, some men yelling, “Let’s go!” and “Get a room” while they pass by. Realizing you’ve fallen into a dream trap of strong arms and needy lips about to depart tomorrow, you know it's something you could have had years ago, perhaps, but not anymore. You'll lose everything if you break your vows tonight: basically, you’ve already broken them, but no permanent damage has been done.

You can still turn back if you turn back now…

You push yourself away, push him away, heart clenching when you see his adoring, love-drunk, half-lidded stare.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, fighting back tears as you come down from your high. “I just–I can’t…”

He breathes labouriously, still clutching you against him, holding you in the air like you’re the thing he has searched for his entire life and now, finally discovered… Only to be told that he now has to put it back where he found it.

You’re crying by the time he sets you down, and you have no heart or will to pull away. Instead, you bury your face in his chest and cry your fill in his shirt. It’s soon damp from your tears as König hugs and supports you through his own stoic heartbreak.

“I’m sorry... I’m sorry…”

You repeat it until you can’t repeat it anymore, bawling in his chest while the world around you continues to spin despite your heaven and hell, despite your vows, despite your stupid devotion. The world revolves like it always has, as you choose a crucified man over the one who’s flesh and blood and holds you through your pain.

“Kätzchen, don’t cry,” he pets your hair while you sniffle and tremble in his embrace. You know this is not the last time you will cry your heart out over him, but knowing it doesn't help you when he offers you his last, bittersweet comfort.

“It was a good dream while it lasted...”

…

The rose withers in your cell.

You turn it upside down and tie it to the curtain rod to prevent it from dropping its petals. It dries beautifully and keeps its bloodred colour, now reminding you of both Jesus and him.

There hasn’t been a word from König in months, and of course there hasn’t. You denied his wish to write you, and the dried rose is the only thing left of your time with him.

In the first weeks, it’s hard to keep up a charade. You show up to prayer, work and mass with red eyes, revealing to everyone that you’re going through a loss of some sort. Somewhere during the first week, the abbess summons you to meet her and you brace yourself for a scolding.

God knows you don’t need the rebuke, and when you close the door and turn to face the symbolic mother of the convent, you end up breaking into tears right in front of her.

“Whatever you were up to, my child, I am glad that it is over now,” she says with all the gentleness of the world.

“Me too,” your voice breaks, and when the abbess extends her hands, you go to her, fall to your knees, and have another heartwrenching cry with your face in her lap.

You’ve denied yourself love and mercy for days, expecting to be expelled or shamed or ridiculed, but mercy is what you’re offered now, even after you’ve sinned.

The abbess caresses your hair just as softly as König did just days ago, and the fact that her kind gesture reminds you of some silly, infatuated soldier, only makes the breakdown worse. You bawl like a little child who’s deprived of candy, and you don’t even have the strength to berate yourself for it.

“I hope you haven’t done anything irredeemable...?”

“No... Nothing happened,” you sob and look out of the rose window, desperate for sun while your head rests on a gentle but distant lap.

Nothing happened except the most sinful, beautiful, lustful kiss of your life... Nothing happened except that you saw this man every time you could, held hands with him, swam in his smiles and affection, and went to bed with thoughts inappropriate for any human being.

“The world tests us in many ways... But Lord never tests us. He only loves us.”

Something in that sentence finally quenches the neverending flow of tears. Your muscles start to relax, and you remember that this is the eternal truth: to surrender, over and over again, to a power far greater than you.

The abbess never asks for details about what you have done. She never tells you you have sinned; you don’t need to be told that. The punishment has been dealt already: whoever ties herself to this world and its temptations will suffer exactly like this when the passion and excitement ends. The key to escaping its grip is to simply let go first, once and for all, surrender to the love of God, and trust that everything fill fall into place eventually.

“You must offer your mind and body to work now,” the motherly voice speaks above you. “Work, time and prayer will ease your pain.”

…

Work, time and prayer do ease the pain.

They ease all pains, but it takes almost six months to stop thinking about him every hour of every day.

You’re proud of yourself when you find out one day that you haven’t thought about him at all. He just now crossed your mind when you remember how he used to smell: of salty seabreeze mixed with intoxicating musk, the scent of excitement and safety all in one.

You could almost swear you catch a whiff of that particular scent in the yard when you go and water the flowers one evening, but it can’t be: he’s gone, and there’s nothing you can do about it, nothing you even want to do about it because you already made your choice. This path leads you to greater peace of mind in the long run, and you know you made the right decision even if it hurt you and König.

Sunsets still remind you of him, the colour of rose and gold mixed with endings, but the memories are now laced with bittersweet love rather than blunt despair and pain. The times you spent with him are a collection of brief, blissful moments, and you treasure every single one of them in your heart. You still pray for him, not every day, but nearly every day. You touch the rose when the hurt reaches its peak, but the last time you did that was almost a week ago.

And you thought you had forgotten his scent, but apparently, you have not. In fact, it seems to drift to your nose again, which is odd because you’re outside, after all…

“Kätzchen.”

A whisper is hissed from the shadows just as you’re about to straighten and investigate, because either you’re going crazy or then there’s someone here who smells exactly like him.

You startle and almost drop the watering can, staring straight into the shadows under your window. The tallest man you’ve ever seen steps out from the dark in full combat gear, and while you can’t see his face because it’s covered with a draping black hood, you recognize it’s him simply from the way he moves.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s me,” he rasps and tries to straighten from the slightly hunched position he’s in, but immediately falls back, then slants to lean on the wall. His gear is dirty, and he holds the side of his stomach with one hand, the lively blue eyes either drunk or very very tired.

“Dear God… What happened to you?”

You abandon the watering can and rush to him; it’s useless to ask if he’s injured when, clearly, he’s trying to prevent himself from slumping to the ground.

He’s enormous and intimidating even when wounded, a soldier loaded with ammo and weapons and protective paddings and guards, wearing a hood and a helmet and a radio of some sort, his tactical gloves bloody and eyes droopy. The weapon by his side is almost half as tall as you, and God – is that a grenade strapped to his vest?

“I got compromised,” König looks down at the wound but doesn’t remove his hand. He looks so different, like another man entirely when he’s not dressed in his customary olive green pants and a casual black t-shirt. He seems even buffier now, even taller, so terrifying that you wonder if you ever even knew this man.

You must look like a frightened deer because König mistakes your horrified look as sweet, simple concern.

“Don’t worry... They have it much worse, I assure you,” he says with his usual grin – you can hear it from the way he says it that he’s smiling. But it’s so weary now, so exhausted and frail compared to his confident, playful laughs and that husky voice with which he spoke to you after your kiss.

“I came to ask for help,” he continues under his breath, wobbling even when leaning against a wall. “You’re the only one I can… trust.”

“Of course, anything. I will do anything I can.”

His eyes smile down at you from behind the executioner’s veil. It’s that same devoted stare you’ve been trying to dispel for months now. You give yourself a quick mental shake, then tell him to wait here while you go in and call for an ambulance.

König bounces off the wall and seizes your hand, telling you he can’t go to a hospital and that, if anything, he must avoid any kind of public places. You don’t ask any further questions, even if you know you’re in a pickle now, and not only because those glacial eyes are making your knees weak again. There’s nothing much you can do: he’s wounded and still in danger, saying he can’t trust anyone else. Of course you have to help him in any way you can. If he says it’s not safe, then you must help him get somewhere where it is safe.

And besides, aren’t you a nun? You’re supposed to help those in need.

So when he asks you if there are any motels or a bed & breakfast nearby, you say you know just the place.

It makes your heart bleed that König takes support from you while you slowly make your way down the street. A man of his size, a body trained to withstand whatever his job throws at him, seeking support from a frail little nun… It’s a joke, indeed, and a horrid one.

When you get to the small place run by a humble old man, you don’t know who to feel more sorry for: the elder behind the counter or König, desperately trying to stay on his feet.

“I mean no trouble,” he says while pushing an unnerving amount of money across the table. “I just need a place to rest.”

The receptionist’s eyes dart to you, then back to König, who still has what you suppose is a loaded rifle dangling by his waist. The safety is on, probably, but there are also knives and grenades strapped to his person, and with that hood, he mainly looks like a terrorist of some sort.

“She’s here to help. See...? Bride of Christ. Even less trouble than I am.”

You try to smile reassuringly as the man risks a better look at you now instead of being fixated on König or his weapons.

You must make an odd pair, a soldier and a nun... The old man probably has a ton of questions in his head right now.

“No shooting,” he says to you, but his words are directed at König.

“No shooting,” he promises. “No mess if no one knows we’re here. Ok...? You’ve never even seen us.”

The receptionist nods. Then he extends a trembling hand and takes the money, and hands out a key without taking any check-in information.

You go to König and help him up the small stairs and into his room paid with bloody money and a menacing appearance. The fitted carpet is old, and floral patterned, the room small and adorable and meant for visitors far more petite than König. The bedspread is old-fashioned and floral too and has never even seen blood, of that you are sure when König lays himself down with a grunt.

You spend the next minutes – or hours, you can’t tell – in a tunnel-visioned fog as you do exactly as he says.

You help him out of his gear and weapons and lay them aside quickly but gently, you cut his shirt with an ugly-looking knife, then get a watered towel for him to press against the wound. You rush back to his tactical vest and search for a first aid kit and some medicine, and start to treat his wounds per his advice.

The sun sets in the window, and you patch up your injured soldier with care, trusting his word when he says it’s only a flesh wound and that it looks far worse than it is.

“I should get shot more often,” he purrs when you’re cleaning the rest of the blood off his skin.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” you scold, trying to focus on your task and not the vast plates that make his chest. Or the thick abs, right there under your fingertips… Or the fact that he has incredibly narrow hips, and a luscious breath of dark hair leading from his navel down and underneath the waistband of his pants.

You suppose this is what your friend calls a happy trail...

And it does make you very happy.

You don’t dare to look beyond that because the pants he usually wears aren’t as tight as these, and you fear he’ll catch you checking out his junk in an attempt to see if your friend was correct about his size.

To your blessing – or your curse – you don’t even have to look straight at it to see he’s having an erection. You can actually see from the corner of your eye how König grows hard while you’re treating him – it’s right there, a robust tent that rises beside you while you concentrate on wiping off the blood.

“Pay no mind to that,” he says thickly and completely without shame. “It just happens… Can’t control it.”

He breathes a bit too heavy for someone who’s lying down, and you fear it’s because of the blood loss. But then you start to suspect it’s probably because all the remaining blood has gone between his legs… He doesn’t even try to tone down the heated, obsessive stares he shoots your way, and you suppose he’s either missed you very much, or then there’s a fever rising after all. You’re not sure if you’re glad or disappointed that the bullet didn’t scrape his leg instead.

“I missed you,” he says like he just read your thoughts. He whispers the sentence slowly and with purpose, saying it like a long-withheld secret.

“I missed you too,” you whisper back.

Gosh… Here you are, a silly little nun who’s tried to get over a crush for six months, crying after him at night and caressing his rose during the day. You’ve been petting a withering flower some mercenary gave you in hopes of getting into your pants, you’ve fawned over memories of a few smiles and a kiss, all the while the said mercenary has killed people for money and now got shot. He came here to work again, but never sent a message, he only came to see you when he was injured…

...And you’re glad he did. If a bullet was needed to bring him back to you, then you’re grateful for it, no matter how horrible it is.

“Did you ever… find someone?” You ask while keeping your gaze fixed on his navel instead of the raging bulge in his pants.

“Someone, who?”

“Someone to hold hands with.”

He gives a strained laugh. “Ah. No. No time for that.”

You swallow, and slowly guide your eyes to his.

“Are you still happy with your crucified man?”

Ouch.

“I… I don’t know.”

His brows knit together; you can see it even in the dim light of the table lamp, you can see it even if there’s some godforsaken black war paint all over his face under that hood.

There’s a distant hurt in his eyes before he blinks softly, slowly.

“I wrote to you, Braut Christi... Many times. Never sent the letters… They’re still in my room, at the base.”

Your heart skips a beat.

He hasn’t had “time” for women, yet has written you letters all these months. He’s written letters while you’ve caressed a rose….

You wonder if hearts can find each other, even through a distance, and if you’ve felt the urge to go to the flower he gave you at the same time König has gotten the desire to write another letter to you. It’s bittersweet, like this whole thing between you two, the mystery that both brings you together and rips you apart.

“I wish I hadn’t… I wish I...” you start, but can’t bring yourself to finish.

“Liebling. I should’ve sent them anyway.”

You go get rid of the bloodied paper towels before you start to cry in front of him.

God… You’re not only in a pickle, you’re neck-deep in trouble, and you only notice you forgot to wash your hands when you return to him.

He reaches for your hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. Peace settles in, even if there’s blood on your hands and the man you adore is lying next to you, patched up with the help of a first aid kit when he should be lying in a hospital, receiving treatment and care.

There’s a knife and a pistol tucked under the bedspread, next to his hand, and the fact that he’s still prepared to fight anyone who tries to come through that door underlines the fact that you two come from very different worlds. König is more than just a rose buying, coffee offering gentleman, he's more than just a silly guy who threatens to sing serenades under your window if you don’t come out to play with him.

You’re not sure if you’re more enamoured or scared.

“You’re an angel,” he rasps from the bed as you try to swallow the tears that refuse to go down.

“No I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

A teardrop falls on the innocent floral bedspread as you wish you were in this room as a married couple instead of an injured, horny soldier and a childish nun in love. Spending your honeymoon or something, getting some rest after an eventful day in town, choosing this absurd old Bed & Breakfast as your place to stay for the night.

You wish you were doing anything else than treating his wounds, lethal or not.

“Are you crying?”

His voice is gentler than you even remembered. Six months of despair have turned him into a dark, alluring trickster when he’s really just a man, a big, amazing, tender man who’s multifaceted, multitalented, and always kind.

He's about to fall asleep, and it’s no wonder. The events of the evening have left you drained, too. You kneel beside his bed, too tired to even sit on a chair, wondering if he’ll die from his wounds tonight or get hunted down by the people who still want him dead.

“I wish you would stop killing people... I wish you would stop getting killed.”

You must look silly, kneeling beside a giant soldier’s bed, crying and holding his hand between yours as if praying. But his eyes smile at you, and while you’d want nothing more than to see his face again, you realise you kind of like König this way. Masked and menacing and mean to his enemies, but stripped down to his soul when he’s with you.

“I wish you would stop praying... And start living,” he mutters gently.

“Praying helps sometimes,” you whisper.

In truth, you wish you’d start living, too. You always thought you were brave when you said ‘no’ to the world. Perhaps you were only running away from it…

The hand is warm but not feverish. His breaths start to even, and his lids get heavier; his thumb gives you a small caress before he drifts off to sleep.

“Perhaps that’s why I’m still here, Kätzchen.”

#könig x reader #könig x you #könig fanfiction #konig x reader #konig x you #könig cod #könig mw2 #könig x fem reader

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softlyspector · 6 months

Text

Born lucky, under a bad star.

Summary: Joel has always been lucky, in the worst of ways.

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~13k (sorry)

Warnings: game!Joel, major spoilers for tlou part 2, angst with a happy ending, major injuries and recovery, anxiety, depression, relationship healing, mentions of death, mentions of violence, suicidal ideation

Disclaimers and A/N: Though this fic was based around some events in tlou part 2, almost all of the canon after the divergence from the canon timeline is thrown out. This fic is also based entirely around game events, characterization, and canon. This is honestly one of the most difficult things I've ever written. It took months and many many drafts, but I'm very proud of her. I hope you love her too, she was a labor of love.

As always, thank you for reading! I would love to know your thoughts! Please please please, be sure to leave feedback!

Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red. - Kait Rokowski.

The lights of the clinic are so bright they’re blinding.

Your hands are still shaking, covered in Joel’s blood. It’s been hours since you returned to the safety of Jackson’s walls but there’s still a frantic, frenetic energy in the air. Everyone is shaken. It feels a little like a thousand year old tree has been felled, like a giant has been swung at and leveled, like something monstrous and infallible has been brought to its knees.

You’ve seen it happen before. Rebar right through his belly. It should have killed him. It would have killed anyone else. You’ve pulled more bullets out of Joel than you would care to count, and swaddled him in probably several football fields worth of bandages over the years.

Still, nothing like this.

Because Joel has always been lucky, even when he hadn’t wanted to be.

Lucky, in all the worst ways.

That fucking rebar, you think bitterly. It should have hit at least one organ, should have severed his fucking spine. But it didn’t. He walked it off, really, mostly, at the end of it all.

This though — to see him tortured, beaten, bleeding to death slowly—

Your edge of your vision tips black, like your mind is already refusing to go back to that room, like you’ll pass out if you think of it for too long.

A part of you wonders if maybe it’s your fault. Maybe you forgot to stick lavender in his pocket before he left that morning, like you always do.

Someone pushes the door open, snow swirls in against the tile. Voices, rising and falling. The cold that rolls through the tiny waiting room is frigid.

It’s still so red, his blood, even dried and crusted around your fingers and up your wrists.

Tommy is still bleeding and even Maria hasn’t been able to convince him to sit down and let someone look at him. No, all attention needs to be focused on his brother. Anyone with any medical know how, has to be with Joel.

You agree.

Tommy, you, anyone else—can fucking wait.

Ellie is sitting next to you, looking just as numb and shocked as you feel, her fingers twined with Dina’s.

The chatter reaches a crescendo. Something about the worsening storm, something about tracking folks with that big of a headstart through a storm like this one, something about the rapidly deepening darkness, night coming on, something about well who could do something like that anyway? Who the fuck would we even send?

The quiet that follows is painful.

Joel.

Joel is the one you send. Joel is the one that could get a job like this one done, the one that could track people through a blizzard with a dogged determinism, with pragmatism and infallibility.

“What did they want?” Someone asks the room at large. You aren’t sure who asks, you can’t make the shapes in the room resolve into people you know. “Why us? Why Joel? They wanted something right? Who were they?”

You and Tommy look at each other, Ellie makes a half muffled, pained sound beside you. Joel crossed a lot of people, maybe there wasn’t any sense in guessing.

No one answers. You look at your hands again and wonder if the crimson will ever fade.

Someone says your name and you look up. A coat is tugged over your shoulders. You didn’t realize you were shivering and you don’t know what happened to your own coat. One of the patrolmen is looking at you, his name slips your memory but Jesse is standing behind him, Maria on the other side.

You feel the ghost of Ellie’s hand against your arm. Odd, you think distantly, because she hates you. She has for a long time.

“What happened?”

You look around, but Tommy isn’t where he’d been standing just a moment ago. Did they ask him, too?

There’s a dark hole in your memory.

“I don’t know.”

And it’s the truth.

There’s no one more dedicated, more involved, in keeping Jackson safe, than Joel.

Aside from Tommy, maybe.

Joel is an effective killer, like an executioner with a mission. It’s the thing that scared Tommy the most about his brother, and it’s also the thing that had kept him alive long enough to get his second chance in Jackson. It’s the thing you have always loved most about Joel, the violence born of necessity.

And, you suppose, that’s what he’d been. Dispatcher, destroyer.

Protector.

At the heart of it all, the meat of it is, that it had always been that with Joel. It had always been in the name of protect, provide, survive. He never shied away from telling you of his days as a hunter, or, something close to a hunter. And even then, it was keep Tommy alive, it was survive until Boston, it was we needed fucking food.

Survive and provide and protect.

Joel.

Jackson had been wary of him, at first. The stories of his dealings with infected and raiders alike at odds with the way he moved in the commune, with kindness and a certain gentleness, a competency and dependability, with something so soft in his gaze when it came to that little girl he arrived with.

That reticence and worry had dissolved as quickly as it had come.

They describe him as quiet and funny, because he’s prone to good natured teasing. They describe him as fierce and short to anger, because no one can say a word about him or his. They describe him as wonderfully dependable, ask Joel for something on a supply run and you would have it in short order; sigh about the state of something in your home and it would be taken care of, fixed, the very next day.

Jackson loves Joel.

Especially that softened up, gentle creature that had emerged in the wake of everything that had happened between Boston and Jackson. Joel had always had a soft interior, trotted out in brief glimpses over the years, but the shell he wore had been so thick and sharp it was near impenetrable, nearly unknowable.

Ellie is around plenty in those first couple of weeks after. She even takes to sleeping on the living room couch. She doesn’t say much to you or Joel, hardly anything at all, but she’s there and you figure that’s what matters. It seems like she isn’t sure what to say, and desperate for the connection that nearly shattered.

The first few days when Joel comes home from the clinic, someone knocks on the front door every couple of hours and you open it and have the same conversation over and over and over again. It’s always people worriedly asking after Joel’s wellbeing, dropping off food, expressing their anger that something like this could happen to one of their own, that it could happen to someone so widely and wildly beloved.

When the knocks finally stop coming, and you can convince Tommy to go home to Maria, before Maria has to walk over and collect her husband again, you take the stairs slowly up.

You’re exhausted. You hardly sleep and when you do, you have nightmares of Joel. Formless, mind numbing dreams that you can never remember when you wake up gasping. You aren’t sure if Joel dreams of it, too. He’s always mumbled in his sleep, eyes flickering behind closed lids, so it’s hard to tell.

And he hasn’t really been coherent enough, awake enough, to ask, anyway.

“Hey,” Ellie says when you round the doorway into the bedroom, lowering the comic book in her hands. She’s beside Joel, sitting on your side of the bed, back against the headboard. “Sleeping again.”

“Was he awake?”

“A little. Drank some water.”

Despite the tension of the last few years, you know she’s thinking of another time that Joel had slept a lot, injured and only half alive.

Now isn’t like then, but in some ways, it’s worse.

You nod and take a seat at the edge of the bed by her feet. “That’s good,” you reassure her. “It’s a good thing that he’s sleeping. He needs it.”

Ellie just holds up the comic in her lap and then jerks her chin at the box on the bedside table, Joel’s glasses and book about space pushed aside. “I, uh, found them in the study.”

You shrug. “He always picked up any he found on supply runs.” You watch her from the corner of your eye and then shift your gaze to Joel. The slow rise and fall of his chest is reassuring in its steadiness, though you hate how still he is.

The skin by his temple is puckered and red, the stitches a neat little row up to his hairline. It still looks raw as a live nerve, the swelling extending to his eye, purple and shadowed in a dark bruise that trails down his cheek and jaw.

“He never said—” She stops and shakes her head. “So stupid.”

“Well,” you scoot closer and pat her extended leg. “You didn’t exactly want to talk then. We tried giving them to you, once. Left them outside your door. They got a little rained on.”

“Yeah,” she says, mouth twisting to the side. “Some of them are. . .can’t fucking peel the pages apart.” In that moment, she sounds like that little kid you left Boston with, being told not to touch something and doing it anyway.

That might have been when you fell in love with Ellie, watching her snap at Bill, and watching Joel react like any father would. It had come back to him so quickly, so naturally.

There’s a long pause in which Ellie flips rapidly through the comic book and doesn’t say anything, her fingers nervous. She looks how you feel — exhausted. “Why don’t you go get some sleep in your own bed?” You ask, reaching out to twitch a fallen lock of auburn hair behind her ear. “You’re just across the yard. If anything happens, you’ll know.”

She looks up at you, eyes flicking over your face. “I was fucking mad at you too, you know,” she whispers suddenly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

You drop your hand and shake your head before looking back at Joel. He sleeps deeply now, deeper than you thought possible for someone like him, even drugged and injured.

There’s a knot tangled in your chest, that only tightens further with her question. “It wasn’t my place. He didn’t. . .he didn’t say anything to me about it for a long time, either. Wouldn’t explain what happened while we were separated. He told me the same lie. And you were going to be mad at me, too, no matter what. It had to be between the two of you.”

“And you think he was right,” she accuses hotly.

“And,” you level your eyes to hers, “I think he was right.” You dip your head. “I wouldn’t change anything, Ellie. I wouldn’t. You know Joel wouldn’t either. You matter more than that.”

Her bottom lip trembles for just a second. “Even knowing this happens?!” She gestures around the room, maybe just the situation at large.

Some of the tension knotting up your shoulders bleeds away. “He’s still here. It’s not too late.” She glances away and sucks in a harsh breath. You wait until she meets your eyes again. “And Ellie, it is not your fault. It’s not. None of it.”

“It almost was.” Her voice is strained. “Too late.”

You shrug. “He knows you care. Trust me, he does.”

She scrubs roughly at her eyes with the sleeves of her hoodie. “Yeah, uh, well, I’m still gonna sleep on the couch.”

“Why don’t you just stay right here, then? With Joel?” You ask and stand. “I’ll take the couch tonight.”

It is the ultimate admission of how scared she is, that she does not argue, doesn’t even try to.

For the first few weeks after the attack, Joel is in and out of consciousness. He sleeps much more than he’s awake.

And, it’s hard to tell, at first, why he’s sleeping so much. The pain medicine? That carefully doled out, nearly impossible to come by miracle drug — was it just knocking him out? Was he just sleeping because that’s what his body needed? Or, was it something deeper? Brain damage?

“He’s fucking. . .old!” Ellie says to you one morning around a mouthful of toast. It’s kind of odd, how easily she’s taken to old routines. And how weird the old routine is, because the third piece of your puzzle is missing, sleeping. “Old people take longer to heal, right?”

Right.

But he’s also Joel. And he isn’t that old.

It feels wrong, that he’s so still and silent.

“It’s not—” Her fist opens and closes. She sets down the toast in her other hand on the plate and turns, pacing the length of Joel’s kitchen, fidgeting with her fingers as she goes, white morning light slatting over her. You eye the toast. It’s hard to get her to eat, these days but you figure most of one piece is better than nothing. “His leg. It’s not infected or something, right? We’d know if it was.”

“It’s not infected,” you agree. When your own hands start to shake, you set down your mug, afraid to drop it or spill hot tea all over the floor, and make Ellie even more anxious in the process.

You don’t like to talk about it. You don’t like to think about it. The memories are like a hot brand.

The staircase creaks with the heavy thud of footsteps, before Tommy appears in the kitchen archway. You’ve always thought Tommy and Joel resembled each other, but now you see similarities in the kinds of expressions they make, too, the quirks in their movements that only siblings could share, and Tommy is sometimes a little hard to look at.

“Heading out?”

“Yeah, he’s, uh, sleepin’ again.” He leans against the doorway and crosses his arms over his chest.

Ellie doesn’t say anything, just slips past Tommy and heads up the steps. Tommy looks after her and then back at you. “She won’t say it but she doesn’t like leaving him alone,” you explain.

Tommy nods and then pushes away from the door to settle at the kitchen table. “Well, I don’t like the idea of it either. Good she’s with him.” He tips the chair onto its back legs and tilts his head. “How ya holdin’ up?”

“Probably about as good as you are.”

He huffs a bitter laugh. “Yeah. Maria told me you want off partols.”

You swallow and look away from him as you take the seat across from him at the table. “I - I know we’re down people already but I can’t. . .Tommy I can’t even look at the goddamn gate without feeling like—” You shake your head. “I just don’t think I can do it. I’d get somebody killed.”

“All right,” he says, not unkindly. “We’ll figure it out. It’s okay.”

A burn starts at the back of your eyes so you stand again and swipe your fingers against your cheeks. “You want coffee before you head out?”

“Nah, save that for Joel.” Then, “How you think this is gonna go? When he’s awake more?”

“I don’t know. You’d know better than me.”

Tommy laughs. The chair scrapes against the linoleum as he stands. He looks tired, and worried. It’s an odd look on him. It isn’t like Tommy at all. You and Tommy have always bonded over teasing Joel. There’s none of that now.

“Like hell. You’ve spent the last fifteen years with him, not me.”

“He’s your brother.”

“And you’re the love of his damn life.” He pauses and leans on the counter next to you.

That makes your mouth twitch, the pleasantly warm feeling in your chest consumed in the next second by a lancing pain that can only be an approximation of grief for someone and something that still breathed.

“I just can’t help worryin’,” he continues. “This might be enough for us, but not for him. If Joel can’t ever do anything again—”

“He just needs time, Tommy,” you cut him off quickly. Not able to stomach the thought. “We’ll figure it out. He’ll figure it out,” you say with more conviction than you feel. “We can probably figure something like a prosthetic out. People have been making them for thousands of years. We can do it. It’ll be fine. But it’s going to be different.”

Tommy’s right. You’ve spent the last fifteen years with Joel. You aren’t sure who you are without him anymore. You aren’t sure you know how to get along without him anymore. And you never want to have to find out. “He’s alive,” you finish with a nod. “Everything else, we can figure out.”

He nods. “You think we shoulda went after ‘em?”

“Maybe. But this is more important.”

Before he goes, Tommy wraps you in a hug. “So long as you and that girl stick around, it’ll be all right.”

“Ellie’s been playing the guitar up there,” you answer.

He nods and pulls back, one big hand clapping down on your shoulder. “See? Things might be all right yet. Always told Joel she’d come around eventually.” He releases you and heads toward the door then. “And get some sleep. Y’look terrible,” he calls over his shoulder. “Orders from Maria.”

For the first time in weeks, Joel wakes with some semblance of clarity. The bedroom is warm and dark, the tiniest pool of light washing over the form next to him from a little light plugged into the wall.

It’s the nightlight he found for Ellie when they first got to Jackson and her nightmares gave her more grief than she cared to admit to.

His whole body aches. He feels sick.

The sharpness of the pain is disorienting. He’s only been awake in brief, muddled flashes, the dulled fingers of drugged pain lancing through him and consuming most of his thoughts. He’d only been awake long enough to eat or drink or be helped to the bathroom like some kind of damn—

He remembers Tommy at his bedside. He hears the ghost notes of music in the air, your voice in his ear, the gentle slide of warm fingers over his skin. He remembers Ellie reading aloud, curled on her side next to him, like she used to do when she was younger, like when they’d stop for the night on the road.

That can’t be right, though. She hasn’t done that in years. She wouldn’t do something like that. Not anymore.

You’re next to him now, face tilted against the edge of his pillow. It’s hard to make you out in the dark, the shape and slope of your features hidden in the dim light.

When he says your name, you twitch, the slightest wrinkle to your nose, the tiniest spasm of your fingers against the sheets. “Darlin’,” he tries again. His voice grinds, catches and snags around his teeth. It feels like he hasn’t spoken in years.

He reaches for you and it’s agony, because his shoulder must be broken. His ribs contract painfully right, like the shrapnel of the bone is digging up into his lungs, piercing his heart. But your skin is soft and warm, pliant, beneath his fingers. It smells like you’ve been burning sage again. He wants to burrow his fingers beneath your skin, you’re so warm.

The cut of your cheekbones are sharper, the angle of your jaw reminds him of winter in the QZ, winter traveling with you and Ellie. Discolored circles line the space beneath your eyes like little hollows. You look exhausted, wan.

You blink, slowly at first, then more rapidly. “Joel?” Your voice is a whisper, like the dark is stealing it away.

Your fingers slide through the backs of his against your cheek when you shift closer, so careful about it, until you’re pressed to his side. “Joel,” you repeat, eyes sliding shut, forehead against the edge of his sore jaw.

He breathes you in, the warm scent of your skin, the smells of hearth and home, lavender and sage and woodsmoke. He closes his eyes for just a second when you shift up and tilt your forehead against his, breath whispering against his chin. “Joel.”

“You all right?” His voice still sounds rocky but clearing it doesn’t seem to help any.

Slowly, you sit up, hand still in his when you pull it away from your face. “You’re asking me that? You’re kidding, Joel,” your voice creaks. You’ve never really been a crier, but there’s a thickness in your mouth, softening out the vowels and snapping at the consonants. “Are you - We didn’t want you to be in pain. But you’ve been sleeping for so long, we gave you a lower dose so that—”

“I feel okay,” he interrupts your fretting, sweeping his thumb against the back of your hand. “Considerin’.”

You swallow and nod. “Hungry?” You glance at the window, where a gray, pale morning light is starting to leech into the room, the color of dirty snow.

“Yep.” He wishes you’d keep your eyes on him. “If you’ve got somethin’ ready.”

“We have anything you want,” you assure him. “Anything.”

Joel nods and attempts to push himself up next to you, chest and shoulder aching something awful. He bites back a groan but it still pushes past his teeth.

“Careful,” you say sharply. Before he can protest, you’re up and around the bed, one hand behind his back. “Your shoulder is broken in a million places.”

“A million?” He grunts.

“Three.”

“That ain’t a million.”

You don’t laugh and your hand doesn’t move from his back. “And broken ribs. Now lean back.” He does as you ask, real careful about it so you don’t worry.

An odd feeling creeps up inside his chest, dulled by the lighter dose of pain medicine coursing through his veins. It ain’t just a sick feeling, but something else. A helplessness, maybe. It feels wrong, in more ways than one.

Joel becomes acutely aware of what he already knows, every single injury, the graveness of them. He knows about the broken shoulder and ribs that had to be reset, torn skin that had to be stitched together, that he has internal bruising but by some miracle no internal bleeding. His face throbs suddenly, his temple tight with pain. He feels his heartbeat behind his eye and in the swelling in his cheek.

And, the worst of it, leg amputated to just above the knee. Sick crawls up the back of his throat. He doesn’t dare look.

The feeling in his chest swells until it chokes him.

Helpless, useless — something hard and fanged digs into his mind. It feels like grief, but what is he supposed to be mourning, exactly?

Everything, maybe.

His whole damn life.

“I’m fine,” he grunts suddenly. Sharply. “Quit fussin’.”

He feels like fucking crying.

“Just - shut up, Joel,” you snap back. “You almost fucking died.”

A fist curls around his throat, warm and tight. He almost can’t breathe through it. “Yeah,” he croaks, voice breaking the word in two.

“Yeah,” you snarl. “So shut up and let me fuss.”

You turn and leave before he can say anything else, footsteps rapidly descending the stairs. Voices trundle up, creased and folded, rising but muffled. You’ve always been mean when you got scared, ever since Joel can remember. You were mean as hell when he first met you, a hissing kind of frustrated, new to the QZ and new to trying your hand at smuggling.

You’ve softened up over the years. He hasn’t seen you like this in a long time, maybe not since you got separated in Salt Lake City.

More footsteps, this time heavy, stomping, coming upwards.

Ellie appears in the doorway a second later. Her hair is messy; her eyes are wild. She’s in sweatpants and a shirt that’s too big for her. She looks tired but unharmed. The knot tangled up around his lungs eases just a little. “Hey, kiddo.” He tries not to sound surprised.

Her eyes flick over him and then away. She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t leave either. Instead she picks up a book from the corner of the dresser and settles in the chair across the room.

A firm but unyielding presence.

He closes his eyes, tips his head back against the wall, and tries to push down the feeling of failure rising in his throat like a tide.

Joel’s fingers are clumsy.

He can’t walk, can’t work, can’t do much of anything without irritating every ligament and tendon and bone in his body.

But even worse than that, he can’t remember how to play the guitar.

And nothing makes him feel so helpless as that.

Even after not playing for twenty odd years, the notes and the placement of his fingers on the strings and frets had come back easily to him, almost like he’d never stopped playing at all.

Now, it doesn’t.

In part his shoulder is to blame. Even nearly healed, it’s stiff. But the other part of it is that he can’t remember how to play. Every note seems wrong, and he can’t decide if he’s hearing it wrong, if there’s something wrong with his hearing, his perception, or if the note really is just wrong.

Ellie plays for him, instead.

It’s easier than talking. Neither of them are really good at that, anyway. He’s just glad she’s around at all.

He can’t help but think of that last conversation he’d had with her on the back porch, that she wants to try to forgive him, even if she thinks she might never be able to. He supposes this is her way of trying her hand at that.

Sometimes he wonders if it would be like this if he hadn’t almost died, if he wasn’t collecting sympathy from everyone like there was some kind of shortage. Maybe that conversation on the porch would have meant nothing, otherwise.

The thought hurts him, no matter how glad he is that she’s there.

One evening, pretty late, as snow peppers down through the early winter black that curtains the window, she stops playing.

The living room is quiet, aside from their breathing and the crackle of flames in the fireplace.

“I was going to invite you over to watch a movie.”

The metallic twang of the last note she plucked hangs in the air.

“I was - I was going to fucking ask you to watch a movie with me. That night. One of those dumb action movies you like. Like the ones we used to watch, remember? Curtis and Viper 2.”

She doesn’t look at him. She stares at her fingers, idly, nervously, twisting the tuning pegs of the guitar. “Think I saw that one before,” he answers, voice a little choked. “Pretty good.”

Ellie rolls her eyes and doesn’t say anything for a few minutes. “Yeah, you would think so, old man,” she replies eventually but still doesn’t look up, her mouth twisting to the side. “I just - don’t want you to think I’m only here because you—” She shakes her head, and props the guitar against the wall before she stands and paces the room twice, toying with her fingers in that way she always has. “I never wanted anything bad to happen to you. Even when I was really mad.”

“Ellie,” he says but she doesn’t seem to hear him. “I know.”

“Anyway, I meant what I said.”

“Ellie.”

“I wanted things to get better. I wanted to try. I was going to.”

“Ellie.”

She spins suddenly toward the front door, one hand on the back of her neck, rubbing awkwardly. “I gotta get going.”

“Kiddo.” This time she turns and finally looks at him. The scent of pine and smoke fills the room. The red of the flames flash across her face, so serious and anxious.

When they first came to Jackson, they spent a lot of nights on the couch together. His neck always ached the next morning from sleeping upright but he’d never complain about it. Then the distance between them had grown, and he doesn’t know when the last time something like that had happened.

But that same distance is slowly shrinking now, even if things might never, never be the same again.

So many times when he looks at her, he still sees that fourteen year old kid. He’d had the same problem with Sarah, looking at his twelve year old and seeing her at five and eight. It was just how it went, being a parent.

“I know, Ellie,” he reassures her. “I do. It’s all right. Even if you didn’t mean a word of it, it’s all right. I meant what I said, too.”

And even though she said she needed to leave, she nods and sits down again. She plucks a few notes out on the guitar when she pulls it back into her lap.

“D'ya still wanna watch it?”

She does.

Joel is whittling.

It is decidedly not going well.

He’s too distracted for it. He never realized how much pressure settled on his shoulder, how much it pulled at the muscle around his ribs, from doing something as simple as this, and he doesn’t like the nausea that comes with the pain.

But it’s something he can do, so he does it.

It’s snowing outside again, wind raking against the siding, rattling the window panes. There’s a thin stream of air coming in around the window’s frame, cold.

His hands are chapped and raw, blood pooling at the seams of his knuckles.

The fix would be easy enough, but everything he needs to do it is in the basement. And the basement is a near impossible location for him to reach, so he puts up with it, hands growing more frustrated by the second because he wants to fucking fix it.

You use the office, his work space, often enough, and it’s one thing for him to be cold and uncomfortable, but another thing entirely for you to feel that way.

But he can’t make it down to the living room without help these days, let alone down two flights of stairs to the basement, and then back up them, too.

“Joel?”

He glances over his shoulder to find you standing in the doorway. You have a pair of shears in your hands.

“Still want me to cut your hair?”

He wants to do it himself. But you’d offered earlier, because you’ve been doing it for him for a long time, for years and years now. And he’d always liked it because your hands are kind with it and you’re better at doing it, anyway. But now it just feels like one more thing he can’t do for himself, one more thing he’s relying on someone else for, and that makes guilt and shame choke him.

Joel can’t seem to do a damn thing, not for himself, but, worse, not for anyone else either.

“Joel?” You ask again when the silence stretches until it’s uncomfortable. “I don’t have to; you can do it yourself.”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s all right, darlin’.” You start forward when he labors up from the chair, teeth gritted, but quickly stop when he meets your eyes, warning you away with a glance.

You don’t say anything else, just back out the door and pad down the hall to the bathroom.

He isn’t sure if your feelings are hurt or not, all his focus directed on hauling himself upwards and then limping down the hall with one crutch under his arm. Feeble threads of pain lance up his leg, centering in his joints, the hinge of his knee. The space under his arm is sore too, from the crutch, even wrapped in cloth.

Joel is used to pain. He’s used to temporary aches, the sharp stab of healing wounds, the quick rip of a bullet or knife through skin, chronic pains from age and long healed injuries. On cold days, his side aches something fierce, like that rebar never really came out of him.

But this pain is different, without origin, and he’s having a hard time adjusting to it. Or maybe he’s just having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that this is not a healable injury, at least, not in the way he wants it to be.

For the rest of his life, he will be disabled. He’ll never get back to himself, never be what he once was.

The bathroom light is gold. It washes his skin into a better color, not so pale and strained and pained looking.

He hates looking in the mirror now. Joel never considered himself particularly good looking, never thought about it much, really. And, for most of his life, looks haven’t really mattered anyway.

But seeing his reflection now is a reminder of his failures. It’s a reminder of everything he can’t do.

His whole body is nothing but reminders.

He is a patchwork quilt of scars.

He doesn’t know how you can stand to look at him. But you just brush your hands through his hair when he leans the crutch against the counter and sits heavily on the stool you dragged upstairs.

The bathroom is thick with the scent of lavender and earth. Every winter it turns into a makeshift greenhouse, all the plants that can’t survive the winter dragged inside for the season.

The feeling of your hands through his hair is soothing and the tension in his shoulders slides away.

“I can do it myself,” he grumbles, despite himself, and without conviction when you run a comb through his hair.

You hum under your breath, not really paying him any mind. You know he doesn’t really mean it. Even if he feels like a fucking burden for it, it’s something you’ve always done for him, so it’s a little easier for him to accept. “I know. I like to.” You tilt his chin up and Joel steadfastly avoids looking in the mirror. “Besides, I’m better at it. You take to it like it’s a hack job.”

The trim doesn’t take long, since he keeps his hair longer anyway. It’s mostly an excuse for you to rake your fingers through his hair.

“The window needs fixin’,” he says when you slide in front of him and set about trimming his beard without asking. That’s fine, too. “I know you been, uh, kinda cold in that room.”

“It’s not so bad,” you say when you finish with him, brushing your fingers against his cheeks and then through his hair. You smile, eyes crossing his face, tracing his features like a well known map, before you twitch a lock of hair away from his forehead. “You gonna fix it for me or what?”

“Mighty big ask of ya,” he grouses, irritation itching at the edge of his mind.

You’re still smiling faintly, touching his face, the curl of hair behind his ear, the scar along his hairline and then the one over his nose.

“I just can’t see how,” you say and Joel almost snaps. He wants to. He wants to say you don’t fucking get it, that you don’t want to get it, that it’s different now. He wants to say he’s not the man you’ve always known, that shit ain’t as easy as it’s always been. He can’t do shit for you, anymore, and isn’t that the reason you’ve stuck around all these years?

But then you continue. “I left that damn caulking gun on the side table three days ago.”

“You what?”

You shrug. “Thought you might have noticed it too. And I’ve always been so bad at that stuff.”

The guilt that settles in him is heavy, but familiar. The shape of it is different, but it's still like shrugging on an old coat, it’s so natural and intimate.

He must be destined for some kind of failure, born under a bad star, something.

Everything he touches falls apart, no matter what he does. Everyone he holds dear, leaves him, one way or another, somehow. His mama, Sarah, and then Tommy, and then Tess. Most recently Ellie, though maybe things there were being mended. Maybe you were next, soon as you came to your senses.

Joel has spent most of his life taking care of people. And when he wasn’t taking care of people, he was moving, working. He hardly ever sat still. He didn’t have time to sit still.

Not before the outbreak, and certainly not after.

Even in Jackson where the pace of the world is slower, he was always busy. If he wasn’t on patrol, he was on wall duty, looking after Jackson’s security. Or, he was fixing something for someone, building something, helping with the horses. If he wasn’t doing any of that, he was improving his house, he was working on a new carving, he was playing the guitar.

Healing up, it’s involved a whole lot of sitting still and feeling useless. It had involved a lot of other people fussing over him.

A lot of sitting still and feeling like he was failing everyone he knew. Like he had already failed everyone he knew. For all the effort he put into it, it would never be enough. He cares wrong, he loves wrong, and now he can’t even do that.

He fails you in this, too. Of wishing he could accuse you of all the things he thinks of himself.

Joel knows you think of it too, you just haven’t gotten frustrated enough with him to say it yet. You haven’t had the full weight of his broken, uselessness on you, yet.

That day will come. There’s no way it won’t, because he can’t do for you what he’s always done, what he was put on this god forsaken earth to do. The one thing he’s always been able to do. Not just for you, but for everyone. Ellie, Tommy and his family, Jackson at large.

It’s always been the thing he could point to and say look, this is why I am like this, this is why you need me, why I’m around. You survived because of me. Because I made sure you did.

So he’s not worth much now, really, and all the promises he made you and all the promises he made to himself, he can’t keep them anymore. And isn’t that why you stuck by him all these years? Despite all his shortcomings?

“Sorry, darlin’,” he cups your face in his hands, smoothes his thumbs over your cheeks, the hinge of your jaw. “I’ll get right on fixin’ that for you.”

“I know you will. Thank you, Joel.” The full weight of your head tips into his hands, and your eyes slide shut. His hands are large against your jaw, scarred and calloused, harsh. Reminders, maybe, of what he used to be. He looks at the hollows beneath your eyes, the raw, worried skin of your bottom lip.

You don’t sleep anymore and when you do you have nightmares. You hate to leave the house. And sometimes you flinch even when nothing is happening around you, like memories are snapping at your heels.

He did all that to you, too. Terrible gifts he’s given and can’t take back.

When he glances back up to your eyes, you’re staring at him, a worried, anxious kind of look lodged there that he absolutely hates.

“What?” He asks, smoothing his thumbs over your cheeks and then the delicate hinge of your jaw.

“Nothing.” Your eyes shift away from his, and you twitch in his grasp. He already knows what you’re about to say, because you’ve never gotten better at saying it, just like him. He doesn’t need you to say it, but you do anyway, and he hates how much he likes hearing it. It’s like a ray of golden sun. “I love you, Joel,” you murmur and hook your hands around his wrists.

For a long time, you just look at him, the silence is heavy with unsaid words, but he isn’t sure which of you is the one not saying something. “That enough?” He eventually grunts. “For you?”

You frown. “Why wouldn’t it be? Do you think it’s not?”

It shouldn’t be. All those promises stack up in his mind again, everything he can’t keep.

“It shouldn’t be.”

You pull his hands away from your face with a shake of your head and lean in to kiss him. Your lips part softly against his, the hitch of your breath sweet against his mouth. The heat of you is so close and intoxicating, it’s something he never wants to have to give up, not when your thumbs are pressed to the pulse in his wrists, and not when you taste like apple, honey.

He shakes one of your hands away to wrap his arm around your back and pull you closer, until the warmth of your body is pressed securely to his chest. Your tongue slides against his, teeth nipping gently at his bottom lip. Something warm floods his cheeks and his chest goes tight.

When you pull back, you tug on a piece of his hair then touch the blush pinking on his face. “You look real handsome, Texas.”

He tucks his forehead against your collarbone, and you fold your hands against the back of his head. “It’s enough,” you say. “Always has been.”

The next day, he finds that most of his tools have been relocated upstairs, either to one of the cabinets in the living room, or to the office upstairs.

Either way, he no longer has to traverse two staircases down and back up.

He isn’t sure when you had the time to do it, or why he didn’t at least hear you doing it.

Joel’s chest swells with love for you, right alongside the guilt that does nothing but grow.

He fixes the window.

Some days are easier than others.

He has good days and bad, and some of the bad days are worse than others. He sows the feelings up inside himself, cocoons the bad away inside his chest. It’s easier that way. And it’s necessary now. It’s just another thing you’d have to deal with.

He’s never been good at saying the things that needed said, anyway.

He tries not to snap at you. He’s trying not to get mean, and he can’t just walk away like he used to be able to when his mind got messy. But he’s been failing because he wants you to fight with him, wants you to hate him.

Joel wants you to say that he fucking failed, that he’s been failing his whole life at the one thing he was supposed to be able to do. The one thing he’s really good for.

“Stop it,” Joel snarls one day in the spring, when you offer your hand down the steps to the living room.

He doesn’t mean to snap at you like that, but he doesn’t take it back either. He’s in too much pain. And he doesn’t want to admit it.

The smile slips off your face as you step back from him, a stoney expression sliding over your face instead. It’s routine, you helping him, and maybe that’s the problem. He grits his teeth, that look reminds him of Boston, reminds him of the time before you used to trust each other.

“I ain’t helpless.”

You raise your hands and take another step back, looking away from him as you do.

The breeze that comes in the landing’s open window is cool. It isn’t quite warm enough for the window to be open but the house needs airing out after such a long winter, such a hard winter. The air is crisp with the scent of pine and the lavender hung in dried clumps above each doorway.

“I know, Joel.”

When he looks at you, you visibly brace yourself.

A wave of self-hatred so hot it burns immediately follows the guilt. But it also doesn’t stop the angry, frustrated pulse beneath the surface of his skin, pressing against the back of his teeth.

“I don’t know why you didn’t just leave me there.” The words are bitter, poisonous. Accusatory. “You should have left me to fuckin’ die.”

Whatever you might be expecting him to say, it isn’t that. Your breath catches hard.

You can be cruel, too. He waits for your anger, the burn of words he deserves to hear, something mean and hateful but true.

But the words don’t come; your anger doesn’t come. You just look tired and empty, sad.

You pace the landing, the soft shush of your footsteps echoed by the creaking of the floorboards. Your silence pricks at him. He wants you to scream at him, blame him, for failing, for being so fucking stupid.

“What if it was me?”

Your voice is so low, he almost doesn’t catch your words.

The quiet of your footsteps come to a halt. “What if it had been me, Joel? It could have been. It could have easily been me. They knew who you were. We’ve done a lot of the same shit. We’ve made a lot of the same enemies over the years.”

Your hands are shaking, your breath comes in quick little pants. The acrid, bone aching feeling of cresting anxiety and panic floods the little landing. “Me and you and Tess, we were kind of a package fucking deal. So, what if it was me?”

The breeze sliding through the open window feels different now. Colder, older, more brutal.

“That’s fuckin’ different and y’know it,” he snarls.

“Why?” Anger floods your face, the curl of your fingers harsh against your arms when you cross them. “Why would that have been different? Because you think I always need to be taken care of?”

He doesn’t answer. He looks away from you, but he can’t go anywhere. He’s at your mercy and you both hate it.

Joel leans heavily against the wall, his right hand curling around his left wrist, a nervous, anxious tick he’s never been able to shake.

“Tell me,” you beg. “Say it, Joel. How is it different? Why?”

He shakes his head once, slowly, and doesn’t look up at you. “You can say it,” you continue, your voice eerily quiet. “You never trusted me to have your back.”

That ain’t it at all.

It’s not your failure. It’s his, in every single way. He doesn’t blame you or Tommy or Ellie or anyone else. He doesn’t believe for a second that you don’t know that.

It would have been better, probably, if he died.

He doesn’t understand the guilt you feel.

He can’t take care of you anymore, can’t protect you anymore.

Worse, he can’t do that for his kid.

If he’d died, maybe that final sacrifice would have been enough to make up for everything else. Maybe it would all just be done.

He’s the one breaking promises, not you, just like he always has been.

Sometimes, when he thinks of Sarah, he can only remember her final moments. He can’t think of anything else but her blood, how red it was in the dark. He can’t think of anything else than what could have been. He can only see the halo of that mounted flashlight glaring into his eyes, his own voice pleading. Please don’t.

If he’d just been shot, he would have died first, he wouldn’t have ever known how bad he failed in that moment. He would have died first, like a parent was supposed to. No good father should ever outlive his kid.

Maybe, this had been his second chance, to finally die first.

Born lucky, bad star, like always.

So, what would he do, if it had been you? He’d have taken care of you, just like you’re doing for him. But that is not anathema to him; that is just how things are supposed to go. It wouldn’t have been a failure.

He’s no use to you anymore, no use to anyone.

He doesn’t say any of that.

Instead, he nods.

“You’re right.” He shrugs and pain splinters across his shoulders. “It would have been different.”

Your expression flickers blank and you turn away. It would have been easier to stomach if you screamed at him, if you slammed a door.

But you’re just quiet.

Once, during the late autumn, when you were traveling with Joel and Ellie, you noticed Joel wasn’t eating.

Food was in short supply. None of the houses or buildings you looted turned up anything edible, and wild game had been elusive for weeks as the weather turned wetter and chillier.

You’d noticed him doing it a few times before, but nothing like then. Joel would dole out carefully rationed food and not allocate any to himself. The bags under his eyes deepened. His temper was shorter. He’d gotten pale and hollows appeared in his cheeks that meant he hadn’t been getting enough. Joel had always been huge, broad and strong and tall, with thick arms and thighs, but when he dropped weight, it always showed in those little hollows first.

Then, one evening, after clearing out a barn of infected, he’d stumbled, hand to his forehead, pale as you’d ever seen him. “Christ,” he’d mumbled.

“Joel?” Ellie’s voice had pitched up with worry. She’d looked at you, and said, “He hasn’t been eating.” The words were all a rush, accusatory and begging for you to do something.

“Ellie—” He’d growled.

“I know she’s right, Joel,” You’d interrupted with a snap. “You think we wouldn’t notice? You think I wouldn’t notice?”

He’d gotten pissed off and marched off into the woods to the stream to refill your canteens. You’d given him a wide berth for several hours, making the newly cleared barn into something livable for the night with Ellie. When dark had started to set in you went after him, boots crunching through frozen leaves.

He’d been sitting by the creek bed, an inscrutable expression on his face. “We ain’t got enough,” he’d said, not looking at you. “You and Ellie need it more. I’m fine.”

“But you're not. You can’t just not eat. You can’t take care of us if you aren’t okay, Joel.”

The air had smelled like earth and decaying leaves and stagnant water and ice. The scent reminded you of better times, of apple cider and cinnamon and new beginnings, of autumn fairs and coffee shops.

You’d sat behind him, pulled him against you for just a moment, chin on his shoulder, and said, “It’s all right to let me look after you, too.”

You figure that even with the change in circumstances, things are still like that with Joel. He’s always doing the metaphorical equivalent of making sure everyone else eats first, even if it means he’s starving.

He’s never been one to give up or give in or let go. When Tess was bitten, Joel hadn’t wanted to leave her. He’d wanted to stay and fight. To fight a useless and unwinnable fight. That mindset was never going to fade.

You don’t speak for a few days. Guilt swallows the whole of your heart and leaves you dry and empty. Joel blames you, you think, even if he won’t say it.

He comes to you late one night.

It’s dark and the bedroom is overly warm. He sits heavily but without help at the edge of the bed. He’s getting better at that, even if he doesn’t think he is.

His hair is longer and it falls into his face when he leans over you, fingers against your forehead and temple and then your cheek.

“When I was real young,” he says. “My dad died. We didn’t have much money and my mama worked all the time.”

You turn on your back and try to make his face out but his expression is unreadable.

Joel hardly ever talks about his folks.

“I got my first job when I was fourteen, to help with the bills. Money was better on account of half of it not bein’ drank away, but we still needed the cash.” Joel pauses and you scoot over. It takes a minute for him to find a comfortable position with you but when he does, he continues. His voice echoes against your ear, the beat of his heart pounds against your cheek. His chin rubs against your forehead, one large hand splayed across your shoulders.

“Since she worked so much, I was always takin’ care of Tommy, of damn near everything else. And my mama, too, sometimes.” He swallows, and you feel the bob of his throat against your forehead. His chest is warm beneath your cheek, even through the two layers he always wears. “So I knew I was young when Sarah came along, but I didn’t really feel it. I took care of her and her mother, ‘til she went her own way. Just the way I always had.”

The rise and fall of his chest is steady. He cups his free hand around yours and tucks your palm against his heart.

“I know I’m not easy, in any sense of the word. I never have been.” A heavy tug of shame weighs his voice down. “Too mean and bitter, I guess.” There’s a long pause, and you want to protest but you’re sure if you interrupt, Joel won’t finish saying whatever it is he needs to.

“So anyway,” he continues. “I try to make up for it. By doin’ what I always have, even if it means I end up alone. I wouldn’t change anything. I don’t know what I’m good for if—” His hand slides up your spine, thick fingers resting at the base of your neck. “And I can’t do it anymore. Can’t take care of ya. So, it woulda been different, if it had been you. Because it’s you we’re talkin’ about.”

Joel goes quiet after that. His palm continues its nervous path over your spine. The bristles of his beard are soft against your temple. The rhythm of his breathing is still slow and even, but you feel the prickle of nerves in the way he touches you.

It isn’t easy for Joel to say the things he feels, even to you, even all these years later.

His body is so familiar to you, so warm and strong beneath you. Comfort, in short, in its purest form.

You aren’t expecting him to say any more, but he does. “Things. . .they always have a way of fallin’ apart, in the end.”

When you lift your head, he doesn’t look at you. You press a finger against the edge of his jaw, turning his head gently until his eyes meet yours. “Joel,” you touch your forehead to his. You aren’t good with words either, but you try. “You are more than that. More than what you can do for people.”

He’s quiet for a long time, eyes fluttering closed, his breath a calm pool against your mouth. “And I’m more than that? To you?”

“Joel, if I only wanted some guard dog, I would have gotten one that could listen better.”

He snorts, and a little of the tension melts away. “Yeah, I reckon you would have.”

The dark is a warm cocoon of things less easily said in the light.

“Yes,” you say quietly after a long, peaceful silence. “Joel. You’re so much more to me than that.”

It’s late spring again. The Wyoming air is mild, and heavy with the scent of blooming life.

Sage grows in dense clumps up in the mountains, deep between the ridges of the sharp peaks. The smell of it, earthy and crisp, chases itself on the breeze, all the way down to Jackson. It twines with the smell of flowers painstakingly planted along his front path.

Arrowleaf. Goldenrod.

Lavender, right by the mailbox, courtesy of some superstition held onto from before the outbreak.

It’s thick, cloying, pungent.

It’s overripe, rotting. It smells like death.

It’s making Joel fucking nauseous.

He squeezes your arm, a warning without words that he needs a break.

It’s the smell.

It’s the sun and the gentle breeze.

He tells himself the sick, crawling pain mixing sourly in his stomach has nothing at all to do with his newly fitted prosthetic leg.

Slowly, without a word, you turn and guide him back through his familiar backyard to the porch.

He sits heavily on the steps, just inside the cool pool of shade, and pulls in deep breaths that rattle in his lungs and do nothing to stave off the dizziness, or the pain.

Your hand slides up and down his back before your palm settles against the back of his neck and urges his head down between his knees.

Joel feels like a fucking kid. His hands are shaking.

“Damn thing is useless,” he growls after a minute when the nausea passes and he can lift his head, because it’s the only thing he can do, because it’s goddamn humiliating.

Everything is, these days.

You just bump your shoulder into his and hum low under your breath, used to his attitude, used to his bark that only sometimes has a bite.

You’re patient with him, but tough, not willing to indulge his foul moods. “It’s just something you have to get used to,” you assure him. “It’s not going to be like before.”

Joel doesn’t want to admit that he wants to take the prosthetic off. It’s like admitting defeat before he’s even gotten a chance to fight.

And he’s tired.

Exhausted, really.

“Hey,” you dig your nails into his wrist. He meets your eyes, pragmatic, practical, his match in everything. “We aren’t supposed to go at it so hard anyway, remember? You did really well.”

He doesn’t want to admit that, either, that your praise washes pink in his veins, that he likes to hear it, thrives on it. If he’s doing right by you, good in your eyes, things can’t be awful as they might seem.

That’s what he latches onto. Your pride. Your acceptance.

“This was just the first time, Joel,” you continue. “You’ll get the hang of it.”

He ain’t so sure about that, not with the way his leg aches. A leg that isn’t even there anymore, chopped off right above the knee, to save his life, apparently. It’s part of why it hurts so goddamn much. Feels like he’s pushing his calf into something it can’t fit in, like the long gone meat and bone are getting ground up into his thigh.

But if he gets the hang of it, then things will be better. He’ll at least be able to move on his own. He might be able to find some way to work again. Wall duty was looking pretty good, because all you really have to do is sit there and watch the horizon and be able to shoot pretty well.

There is hope in the future. There is hope in you reminding him of that, realistic to a fault, pragmatic to your core.

And unlike Joel, you’ve never had it in you to lie.

Joel tightens his hand on your forearm again, pressure on your sun warmed skin. It’s a poor substitute for the thank you that you deserve. You seem to get his meaning though. Your hand feathers through his hair again and the sun doesn’t feel so abrasive, and the smells of spring don’t seem so weighed down by death.

“Ellie’s coming for dinner,” you offer. “Said she’s got a movie or a game or something that she wants to show you.”

Yeah, so maybe the day ain’t so bleak as he thought it was.

“All right.”

You offer him a hand up, and slip your arm behind his back. He carefully drapes his arm around your shoulders, mindful, even now, of his weight against yours. “What a strong thing you are,” he comments, not able to stop the corner of his mouth from twitching. You look so determined.

It’s the way you always look, when put to task.

You roll your eyes. “Lucky for you.”

“Lucky for me,” he says, soft about it.

The stairs are the worst part of getting back inside, but it's much easier than it had been before.

It’s a relief to collapse into the couch and take the prosthetic off. The phantom pains still ache and stretch painfully tight, like the skin is being pulled taut, like there was a knot that just needed massaged out. He grits his teeth and represses the urge to reach down and rub sore muscle that no longer exists.

It’s a relief to collapse into the couch, even if guilt punches him in the chest for it.

It’s an even bigger relief when you press yourself into the space next to him. He doesn’t know how you stand it sometimes. How you can look at him and still not hate him for every mistake he’s ever made.

“Knee always fuckin’ bothered me anyhow,” he comments, turning his head so his words brush against your temple. “Don’t gotta worry about it gettin’ stiff now, I reckon.”

You reward him with a snort, the scrape of your fingernails against his cheek, a kiss.

It’s easier to get around, with the prosthetic that he hates.

But he’s slow. Slower than he’s ever been in his whole life. And sometimes, most times, it frustrates him.

Being able to walk is one thing. It’s a fine thing. But he needs to be able to do more than that. Run, fight, shoot. A fucking pipe dream. But he’s back to building, carpentry, and that’s something at least. Something useful.

Joel has tried asking you about that day, because he doesn’t remember a whole lot besides the pain. But your chest goes fluttery with panic, the rise and fall of it unfamiliar to him. You don’t get nervous. You never have, not over anything.

But when he asks about that day, you mutter something about Tommy and blood, and he can’t get anything else out of you. Tommy does the same, eyes cast to the side, thumbs hooked in his belt, foot starting a nervous rhythm.

He doesn’t understand what’s wrong with either of you, what the goddamn problem is.

In some ways, Joel’s always thought you were tougher than him, a balance of brutal and rough and unforgiving with softened sweetness. Bash the skull of a hunter in with a metal pipe, then use your unsullied hand to stroke back Ellie’s hair, to offer help to strangers, to pat the nose of your horse gently.

He would never want to be on the other side of the wrath you kept wrapped up inside your heart.

But, now, you don’t leave Jackson anymore. You haven’t been outside Jackson’s walls since that day.

Tommy tells him you can’t even bear to take a shift on the wall, which mainly comprised of sitting at the top of the wall and doing a whole lot of nothing, looking at the horizon, shuffling your feet to keep warm.

It’s unlike you. You love to patrol, just like him.

That’s his fault, too. Your nightmares, your sleeplessness.

Ellie plays the guitar for him, even after he gets the hang of it again, even after he’s walking on his own again, the chords coming back to him easier and easier. They don’t have to talk much, that way.

She’s still mad, but he almost died, and she’s willing to try with him.

She comes over for dinner. She always brings a movie.

It gets easier.

And slowly, by the end of the summer, she smiles when she sees him.

He’s gotten the hang of walking again, which is never a sentiment he thought he’d have about himself. Joel always assumed he’d be killed before something like really old age could set in, or something like this, a disability he doesn’t want to learn to live with.

It’s rained recently and the yard smells like perchitor and the ever present mountain sage. The grass is just a little muddy from the many loops around the yard. “You’re going to fall and break your neck, old man.”

“Breakin’ my neck can’t be much worse than what it is right now. We ain’t goin’ around the yard anyhow. Now c’mon, put your shoes on, kiddo.”

“It’s still raining,” she complains.

“Means no one’s outside to see me humiliatin’ myself.”

Ellie only rolls her eyes but does it anyway. He doesn’t need a hand anymore, but he’s shaky sometimes and despite your best efforts he’s still refusing a cane. But he also hasn’t been using the track in the yard in weeks.

That, and he actually has somewhere to be these days, figuring out better security for Jackson, looking after the patrol teams, assessing who was ready to be put into rotation. Managing is what he should be calling it, though he doesn’t care for it. He and Maria butt heads too often for it to be anything close to enjoyable.

When they pass the mailbox, Ellie points to the lavender. “I never thought to ask about it before. It’s everywhere. Some nailed above the door and everything.”

“Some kinda thing about protectin’ the home,” Joel explains. “Far as I remember, it protects from bad energy. Somethin’ like that.”

“I thought that was sage?”

“Sage you burn,” he explains. “And we get plenty of that too. Whole damn house smells like it.”

“Seems like the kinda thing Dina would do,” she says and then seems to realize who she’s said it to. But she doesn’t change the subject. “Didn’t take her for the superstitious type. Doesn’t seem like it really works anyway.”

Joel shrugs. “She was before the outbreak, I guess.” He watches Ellie from the corner of his eye. She’s steadfastly not looking at him, but she also doesn’t usually say so much to him. “Didn’t have reason to think of it for a long time. Lavender wasn’t exactly in high supply in Boston.”

Ellie nods.

“She used to, uh, put some in your backpack when she knew you was goin’ out. Same with me, always put some in my pocket.”

There’s a long silence. Jackson’s streets are oddly empty in the pouring rain. Lights glow in the windows; inviting, homely. “She didn’t have to do that.”

He shrugs and his shoulder only aches a little for it. “It’s just the kinda thing parents do, even if it don’t make any damn sense.”

“Yeah,” Ellie agrees as the turn toward the center of Jackson. “You wanna stop in the Bison?”

“Sure,” he agrees. “For a minute.”

“Full schedule?” She teases. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your sunset years?”

“Well, gotta have something to fill up the days, kiddo. Maybe one day you’ll actually be able to keep up.”

She just scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Yeah, whatever."

Joel tries not to smile.

Being mobile again, busy again, feels good.

It feels good, but it also means he’s in near constant pain.

He tells himself it’s good, that pain sharpens him, makes him better.

Until he’s slumped on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night, heaving his guts up from the ache in his leg.

You find him there, sweaty and panting, with a glass of water in hand. Joel pushes himself upright against the wall with a sigh as you close the lid of the toilet and flush it before sitting beside him on the cool tile.

“You’re overdoing it again,” you say, not unkindly.

“I ain’t tryin’ to,” he mutters and takes the glass of water when you offer it to him.

“I know.” You cover his free hand with yours. “Wanna get up?”

You smell faintly of peppermint, burned incense.

When he shakes his head, you stretch to flip the light switch over your head. He’s plunged into darkness, alone, for just a moment, before you settle again. The warmth of your head against his shoulder feels stolen.

For a long time, neither of you say anything. He breathes through the pain still crawling around his knee, the phantom flesh of his calf.

“I was a goddamn fool,” he whispers into the silence. “You know what I was thinkin’ that day?” He’s not sure where the words come from, the confession. It feels a little like the words are being pulled up out of his body, yanked right from the center of his chest.

“Tell me,” your nose is warm when it bumps against his collarbone.

“‘Bout Ellie. How I’d want someone to help her, if she needed it. So I helped that girl. Almost got all of us fuckin’ killed.”

You don’t answer, not at first. But eventually, you lean into him and say, “If you want me to blame you, I won’t. I will never find fault in kindness.” Your thumb strokes his knuckles slowly. “Never. Especially not yours.”

He brushes his mouth along your hairline, skin silken against his mouth. “Y’know when we was on the road, I was sure you’d get us killed. But y’always knew when to trust someone. How much to trust ‘em.”

“I. . .” you start and then trail off, fingers squeezing around his. “I was always lucky, and I always knew I had you at my back. If I messed up, you were always there.”

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness of the bathroom, and when he meets your gaze, he can see the glaze of tears in your eyes. You suck in a shaking breath and clear your throat but don’t continue. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there the same way.”

“This ain’t on you,” he says. “Don’t think that. It’s me. It was a long time comin’ somethin’ would catch up to me.”

You settle in against him, one hand digging into the sore muscle of his thigh. The heat feels like, the flex of your gentle fingers even better. The pain that doesn’t exist fades just a little.

“And for the record, darlin’, you were there the same way.”

It’s autumn again when you go back onto the patrol rotation. There’s frost on the windows and on the spikes of overgrown grass in the front yard. He just got back from a night watch on the wall.

You’re taking his old routes with Tommy, and you don’t tell him about it until the morning of. Not a fucking soul breathed a word of it to him, and he’s the one figuring out the goddamned rotations.

And Joel realizes though he’d been worried about you not wanting to leave Jackson anymore, not even being able to go near the gates, he was glad you hadn’t wanted to. It meant you were safe. Even if he couldn’t keep you safe anymore, the walls of Jackson could.

“I’m not doing this with you right now,” you say before you leave, pretending like he can’t clearly see your hands shaking before you walk out the door.

He follows you onto the porch. He can’t remember what he says, just that you look upset and then hurt, just that you don’t say goodbye when you walk away and that you probably don’t have lavender tucked into your pocket like he always did.

“Please.” A word he hardly ever says, a plea he never gives into.

He says it to your retreating back as you pass the mailbox, but you either don’t hear him or choose to ignore him.

Maybe he didn’t say it at all.

That day is hell. It’s long and pocketed with anger and anxiety. If something happens to you, he isn’t sure what he’ll do. He doesn’t like that you left him upset.

Maria doesn’t entertain his outburst about it when he finally corners her after looking for her all morning. “She was ready.”

“I didn’t even know we were considerin’ sendin’ her back out!”

Maria just levels him with a glare that could freeze hell over. “That isn’t up to just you. And why do you think she didn’t want to tell you?”

He’s at the stables with Ellie that evening when you come home, waiting. It’s cold and his leg is aching something bitter and awful but he doesn’t move and Ellie doesn’t suggest going back home because she knows he won’t hear it. Dina stops by and he listens to them talk. Ellie’s face softens when she looks at Dina, cheeks a soft pink in the fading light, ducking her head and fidgeting with her fingers.

Joel tries not to pay them any mind, but it's hard not to find endearing.

When you and Tommy get back, it’s full dark. He wants to throttle his brother for not telling him you were going back out on the trails, but it’s too cold for much of that. All thoughts of strangling Tommy fly from his head as soon as he sees you, because you have a smear of blood on your cheek and down your neck.

“Goddamn it, what happened?” He demands, hands against your face before you’ve even fully dismounted.

“I’m fine.”

“That ain’t what I asked,” he sweeps his thumb over your skin, flakes of red shifting to the ground. The knot in his chest tightens as he watches it flutter through the air. “What happened?” He growls again. “Tommy?”

“The usual, Joel,” you pull his attention back to you. “It was just cleanup. A couple of infected. Nothing.”

“Uh huh,” he tilts your face one way and then the other.

“Just some splatter.” You shrug and smile at him; your mouth twitches, and he realizes you’re teasing him.

“Splatter,” he repeats flatly. “That ain’t funny. You ain’t funny. C’mon, let’s go home.”

Ellie and Dina have disappeared with your arrival but they aren’t far; he can hear their chatter as they walk along the street toward the center of Jackson, the echoes of their voices reaching back towards him. “I’ll deal with you later,” he says to his brother.

Tommy just raises his hands and says he’ll stable the horses. But he’s grinning and maybe that’s a good thing. It’s been awhile since his brother has seemed himself. It’s been awhile since the two of you have given him grief together.

“Leave Tommy alone,” you say as you walk toward Rancher Street. You seem steadier than you had been that morning, more confident, more yourself. It isn’t a long walk back, even with his leg, though he limps worse than usual because of the cold. You wrap an arm around his waist, your fingers digging into his back pocket, body warm against his side. “We did good together today.”

“Mhm. I’m sure you did.”

“You mad at me?”

“I wish you’d tell me,” he murmurs. “When you’re goin’ off to do somethin’ stupid. I need you to talk to me. Worried the whole goddamn day. You ain’t exactly in practice out there anymore.”

You hum and then nudge closer to him. “Put your arm around me.”

“I’m fine,” he grunts, maybe a little harshly.

“Joel,” you laugh and nuzzle your face against his shoulder. “C’mon. I’m cold and I had a rough day. Put your arm around me.”

So, he does. And he leaves it there until you’re in the bathroom, sitting on the counter in front of him, lavender plants stacked in the sink behind you once again as the colder weather sets in.

This is better. So much fucking better, than the other way around. This is right.

He cleans the blood away, finds the swell of a bruise on your shoulder and a cut lengthways over your collarbone.

It’s easy enough to take care of. It isn’t as bad as what he’d been imagining all day long.

He’s well in practice for this sort of thing, for bandaging and assessing wounds.

“Sorry,” he says as he works. “For this mornin’.”

“Mhm.”

“I worried all day. Not much I can do now, if you get into a spot of trouble.”

“I handle myself fine. Tommy was there. He’s a good partner out there.”

Joel grunts, dabs rubbing alcohol along the cut. “He is,” he agrees reluctantly. He supposes if you had to go on patrol with anyone, he’d prefer you go with his brother.

You touch him as he works, fingers patting over his jacket, the collar of his flannel, the frayed edge of the t-shirt beneath that. “I had to go back out, Joel. You would have argued with me and I can’t be afraid and useless forever.”

“Useless,” he scoffs and unspools a length of bandage. “You don’t know nothin’ about that.”

“Joel,” you say softly, exasperated. “Baby, you don’t know what it was like that day. I thought you were already dead.” Your voice trembles and you have to swallow harshly before you can continue. “Helpless and useless doesn’t even begin to cover what I felt. What I still feel.” You shake your head and cup your fingers around his. “I dream about it every single night and I still don’t really remember what happened. That scares me a lot.”

He slides his thumb along the gauze, your eyes wide and worried when he meets them.“I’ll never be who I was, sweetheart.” His voice sounds mournful to his own ears.

“You’re exactly the same man, Joel. I’m just happy you’re here and alive and you’re worried you aren’t alive the right damn way.” You shake your head. “I can’t ask for much more than what I have. Than what we do. Me and you. Ellie back in our life. A home. Food. Family. You,” you touch his jaw and smile. “Still here. Still taking care of me.”

There’s a lump in his throat, hard as a stone. “Yep.” He coughs in an attempt to clear his voice but he sounds just as wrecked when he speaks. “Patrol musta been real good to y’today.”

You just laugh, and the sound of it is wet. “Yeah. It was. I thought it would be terrible but I missed it.”

“I know you did.”

“You should come on a ride with me sometime,” you say slyly. “I bet it’d feel good to be back in the saddle. You’ve always been a good shot from the back of a horse.”

He has.

Maybe he should.

💞 If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Comments and feedback are so appreciated. 💞

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction

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