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kiwisbell · 10 days

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helen ; chapter four

nowhere to run

Si vis pacem, para bellum. Or, the capture.

series masterlist | my masterlist pairing: joel miller x f!reader tags/warnings: 18+ (MDNI), john wick AU, hitman!joel, husband!joel, established relationship, artist!reader, love as worship (and blasphemy), sacrilege in the name of romance, flashbacks, graphic violence, guns, blood + injuries, tommy gets stuck with the babysitting gig, joel is still a bit of an idiot, childhood/religious trauma, joel in a church, violence against pastors, criminal underworld, secrecy/lies, betrayal, Big Angst, we're getting there though, the smut returns, fingering, conflicting emotions, kidnapping, Angry!Joel, cliffhanger (oopsie daisy), the typical alcohol/smoking/profanity, dividers by @/saradika word count: ~ 9k a/n: fucking hell. i'm so sorry for how long it took me to bring this chapter to you, friends! my thesis sucked all the life from me and i had to go on a quick trip to the underworld and back to get it back again. thank you so much to my baby @cavillscurls for beta reading and as always being the biggest goddamn help throughout the process. below is the moodboard that mya made for this chapter and the reason i'm her no. 1 lovergirl. prev | next

When he was young, he fed stray dogs on the street.

He would steal sandwiches, pluck out the meat to gnaw on himself, and toss the bread onto the pavement. He would sit back on his haunches just like them and lick his chops when he was finished. Being a runner earned him good money, but it was hard to find jobs that would take a scrawny eight-year-old with dirt on his nose. His memories of those days are far away, foggy around the edges, but he still smells the eye-watering prickle of trash, cigarette smoke, wet fur of the dogs. He still remembers the moist scratch of soaked-through denim after a night sleeping outside in the rain, the bone-deep chill that lasted for days in winter.

One night, a Sunday in July, a hand stretched out toward him. He had not eaten in days, and he’d begun to feel the stretch of his skin around his ribs. A skeleton haunting the wrong body. The face is blurred now, but he remembers the hand. Long-fingered and a little wrinkled, a bracelet dangling from the bluish vein-ringed wrist, a charm in the shape of a cross.

The hand brought him from his bed of ratty blankets and old newspapers to a giant cathedral. The bold lettering above the grand doors read The Sisters of Saint Eustace. Joel had been too small, too weak, to reach up and touch the golden words, but they were tarnished with age and buffed around the edges. He looked up at the owner of the hand—the hand which then lowered onto his shoulder, collarbones protruding, and squeezed just hard enough to sting.

He felt the warm soak of the daytime breeze on his face.

“You must come inside with me,” said the woman. He remembers that the hand belonged to a woman. There was a black hood around her head that made her appear as wraithlike as death itself.

The Creation of Adam was immortalised on the north wall. It was the first thing he saw when he walked inside.

“I can’t go inside,” he said.

“And why not?”

He turned his head away from the image of Adam and God, whom he did not know at the time, and could never have hoped to know. How could he, after all, when God had never appeared to him? Then, God was only a man, frail and old, reaching out a wrinkled hand. Why should the weak ask for aid from the strong?

“The dogs need someone to feed them,” he said.

He still does not know God. He does not suspect he ever will. But there’s a warm, soft palm encasing the skin and muscle over his heart, irradiating down to the bone. There’s an intermittent puff of air on the back of his neck, slow and ticklish, the way snow melts. The dog that still lives in the core of him shows its belly.

You’ve moved closer in the night, your soft skin warming his back where your shirt rides up. You breathe silently, catlike, as measured as the rise and fall of the winter sun. He listens for a while, his chest pushing out to match you. As he settles into the new rhythm, he feels for a moment as if it’s all been a dream. As if he never lost you, never lied.

His name leaves your sleeping mouth and his heart ceases altogether. It’s the breathless sound of need, of a desire he supposes you’ve forgotten. In your sleep, some stale withered flower blooms under a fresh rainfall, and he wonders what you’re dreaming about.

Before Joel put his mouth between your legs for the first time, you had forgotten what pleasure tasted like.

It was July, sweltering, and you were draped across the sofa with his head in your lap. It was date night, and his turn to choose the movie: some god-awful karate action film that was a sequel to a sequel to a sequel and so on, infinitely repeating. Neither of you were paying attention to the exchange of staged punches. You were occupying yourself with threading your fingers through Joel’s hair, and he’d taken to toying with the little bow that held up the waistband of your shorts. You watched him pull the strings until they unfurled only to tie them again with one hand. The white noise of on-screen blows lulled you into a gentle doze as you both lay idle.

“Joel.”

“Hm,” he said, the scratch of his beard tickling your belly.

“The door,” you said. “Someone’s knocking.”

“Hm,” he said again, his questioning pitch the only indication he was truly listening.

“You should probably get it.”

His sleep-soaked eyes fluttered shut, his lashes brushing your skin. He gently squeezed your hip. “I’m just fine here.”

“What if I told you I had a surprise for you? And what if I told you I worked very hard to find your surprise?” you cooed.

Joel blinked up at you. “You got me somethin’?”

Your heart swelled. “Yeah, I did. Come on, cowboy.”

Outside, Tommy lounged against the hood of the surprise as you guided Joel outside, your fingers over his eyes.

“I don't like bein’ blind,” he grumbled. “Can't you just tell me?”

“How about I show you?”

You lifted your hands. For a moment, Joel blinked, his eyes adjusting to the blazing light of the sunset, and his lips parted at the sight before him.

“Jesus,” he said under his breath. “You… got me a car?”

“It's not just a car. Boss Mustang 429,” you said sheepishly. “1969. You know, the one you never shut up about. I thought this might help.”

Joel’s breath hitched, and you watched him swallow it. “How…”

“Tommy called me a while back. He'd sourced it from another garage; it was bound for the dump, but I wanted to surprise you by fixing it up. So… surprise.”

Tommy tossed the keys to Joel, who caught them without even looking. “Your girl can get her hands dirty. Helped me fix up the whole damn thing.”

You tried to gauge his reaction, the slight hollow in his throat where he seemed to store the falling sunlight, a faint sheen of sweat turning him gold. Your heart plummeted into your stomach when he didn't say a word.

“It's too soon.”

His head whipped around, his brows curving up in the middle. “What?”

You wetted your lips, panic closing your throat in at all sides. “I know we haven't been dating long, but… I don't know, I couldn't pass up the chance. But now I know it's too soon. I shouldn't have presumed—”

Faintly, he shook his head, his eyes darting across your face as if he were trying to trace it, and closed the distance between you. You gasped as he slanted his mouth over yours, his hands cradling your face, old paper and salt and your perfume. You threw your arms around his neck, a buoy for the drowning man whose arms wound around your waist and pulled you so close he could disappear altogether. Maybe he was trying to. Selfishly, you would let him.

Tommy grumbled something—“You’re welcome, asshole,” probably—and his own car roared to life as it pulled away.

The car keys jingled in the bowl in your foyer as Joel tossed them blindly behind him, his heel shutting the front door. He kissed you like you were a fever he needed to burn out, and you felt the match strike where his hand curled its heavy weight around your neck.

“What time do you fly out?” he grumbled against your mouth.

“Not until morning,” you said breathlessly, watching him drop to his knees in front of you, taking your little shorts with him. Your chest heaved at the sight of your Joel, made humble at your feet, pressing his searing-hot lips to the bare skin of your belly. “Joel…”

“Nobody,” he said, his voice the velvety drag of night, “is like you. Not a goddamn soul.”

The admission caught in your throat the way a web ensnares dewdrops. The intricate folds of your brain would forever carry the imprint of the words—words no one else had ever said.

A starving artist, an old teacher of yours had said, remembers every kind word said about their art. They eat from them when there's no other food in the house.

“You're it for me,” he told you. “There's nothing else.”

You wake slowly, serenely, a yawning ache blossoming in the core of you.

Maybe that's why, even now, you cannot forget the way he touched you that night. You still recall every thumbprint, every stroke of his tongue, every soft cry into the otherwise empty room.

The fact is that nobody can love you the way Joel Miller does. Not even when his love hurts more than anything else.

He's watching you now. His eyes are half-open but alert, instinct pulling him closer to your side of the bed. Or, maybe you're the one who’s crawled closer to him.

“Joel…”

He doesn’t speak, but you feel the pads of his fingers on your belly, the soft fabric of your shirt bunching over his bruised knuckles, and his eyes shutter at the touch alone, a worn sinner.

“Tell me what you need,” he whispers, and it's chipped porcelain, the sound of his voice.

A part of you wants to cry, to let the pressure build until it crests, to feel the salt settle in the pores at the sight of him so close, so open. But you've shed your tears and he’s slept in your bed, and now his fingers brush the hem of your panties, not begging entrance, but asking, wondering—

You say so weakly, “I need you to touch me,” and he nods because he knows, because he's Joel, because your body has not become foreign to him even if you've made your heart a stranger.

You shiver as his hand dips beneath the cotton, two fingers sliding through the gathering wetness between your legs. Joel's gaze is fixed on you, black as the sky, his bicep flexing as he parts your folds with his fingers. Absently, possessed, you sling your leg up over his hip to spread your thighs.

The shockwave brings you down as he slides his middle finger inside you, sinking to the knuckle. The gasp that leaves your mouth feels like inhaling glass. You cup the back of his neck for purchase, tugging the little curls at his scalp, and watch as he bares his teeth.

“That's it, baby,” he says brokenly, the heel of his palm applying pressure to your clit as you writhe. Back in his arms, your heart thunders in your chest, the ache of his absence ringing in each rib like the aftershocks of a blow. He pumps his fingers inside you, curling up against the spot he knows as intimately as his own hand, studying your face as if he has become the artist and you the muse. For a moment, you think you see the reflection of your face in the whites of his eyes, and you’re overcome with a shudder that compresses your spine.

He’s too close. Too far away. Your hand curls around the scruff of his neck, a misbehaved dog. You’ve let him in, it’s too late, too soon, and you’ve assumed all the blood he’s spilled, taken it inside your body with the press of his fingertips past your begging entrance.

You hate that your body still sings for him, that your eyes cannot shutter, that you cannot shuck the curtains closed despite all he’s done. You hate that his eyes still hold the sorrow you’d seen in him since that very first night, and you hate that you existed so happily, so blindly, with him, in spite of the arid darkness that has always lingered just under the brown you thought you knew so well.

But he’s always known you, and that may be what hurts the most.

He’s always been keenly aware of your moods, your tastes, your body, and he plays you now like a pipe, lending his body to yours in supplication. Your heart aches as you let him inside, some feeble breach of contract, as if nothing is wrong, as if nothing was a lie.

He slides his fingers from you and spreads them before your eyes, the sight of the slick webbing eliciting a gasp you can barely hear. He licks his fingers clean and dips them back between your bodies, circling your clit with a renewed fervour.

“Fuck.” Your eyelids droop, your stomach tightens, and the glint of Joel’s bared teeth is that of a wolf’s in the dark. “I’m… fuck, I’m…”

“I know,” he says, “I know,” and you wish he wouldn’t.

The rhythmic, meticulous path of his fingers is nothing like the desperate writhing of your hips, the feverish grinding, the cries. Prey caught in a trap, you grasp the iron bars of his shoulders tight and beg for mercy.

And it feels so good, so right, that it slashes open your heart and spills the blood. The cold bite of his wedding ring bumps up against your opening as you blossom, brittle as a new bud, his fingers pumping in, out, in—

“Oh, God,” you whimper, burying your face in his throat, sinking into the familiar warmth.

Joel grunts, his nose sliding across your temple. “C’mon, baby girl, c’mon… I’ve got you… Can feel it…”

Normally, you would lick and bite and kiss the sweet, humid skin of his throat until you came, soft as dough in his arms. There’s a steel edge to the way you come now, fingers stiffly prickling his scalp, eyes bleeding tears into the crook of his neck. It feels good—good to slash at the bars that cage you in, good to weep over the loss of some willpower you let dissolve.

He doesn’t stop until he’s wrung every drop, inhaling the cloying smell of soiled linen and sticky perfume and saltwater. He closes his eyes against your temple and you can feel the caress of his lashes—wet, like yours.

His lips always carried the faint bitter bite of black coffee, and he always said yours tasted sweet. Like goddamn honey, he’d whispered into your throat the first night you let him inside, and you’d laughed—maybe the graze of his mouth was ticklish, or maybe you thought it was funny: the idea that you could be so sweet.

Now, you’re splintering as your eyes flicker down to his mouth, plush lips moist but split from the blow of an enemy. If you kissed him now, he would only feel a sharp sting. If you kissed him now, you’d let the blood win out. You would only hurt him and yourself alike.

“What are we doing, Joel?”

His eyes shimmer in the dark, his palm tentatively cradling the crown of your head. The hollow of his throat deepens, and you hold your breath.

“I’ll be anything you want me to be,” says Joel. “If you want me just to use me, then use me. You can have me whenever you want. I just wanna be someone you need—even if you don’t need me the way you used to.”

The sob lurches out of your throat, your forehead dropping to his as the climax burns out, smoke from a snuffed candle.

When you can breathe again, you push yourself upright and cross the room to gather your toiletries. “I’m not going to use you. I never should have done this.”

“Stop.” Joel grunts as he stands, apparently forgetting about his wounded ankle. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Joel, let’s just—”

“I don't want it to be like this,” he says. “I don’t want it to hurt when I touch you.”

“It doesn't,” you whisper, hugging your bag to your chest along with a bundle of clothes. “That's what scares me.”

His brows curve upward in the middle and you're overcome by the need to fix your eyes to the floor. “Baby, please… Please just look at me.”

You swipe your thumbs under your eyes and pin him with your gaze. “I feel like I’m mourning a marriage that didn't even end,” you tell him, and Joel lurches forward as if he means to grab the words in mid-air.

“And maybe we did lose it,” you say softly, though the words sting on the way out of your mouth. “But maybe that's… good. I don't want a relationship based on lies, Joel. I don’t want to wake up every morning next to the man I love and wonder what he’s still keeping from me.”

Joel lowers himself into the chair by the table like a weight is tied to his chest. He's still shirtless, his wound bleeding through the gauze around his arm, but he's staring at you. Suffocating you.

Twisting his wedding band around his finger, he says, “If there's even the smallest chance that you really could still love me… that this ain't over, even though I’ve done everything wrong by you… I’m gonna fight for it.”

Not everything, you want to say. Not everything, or I wouldn't be so hurt right now. It’s funny that the words won't take shape—wraithlike as the black ink snaking up and down his back. “I know you will.”

“And if you want all the truth I‘ve got, even if it's bloody, I’ll give it to you.” He leans forward, muscles flexing under inked skin. “You’re my everything. Nothin’ about that has changed. Not one goddamn thing.”

You chew on the inside of your cheek, the tang of iron flooding into your mouth. “It’s not just about the lies,” you say, dropping into the chair across from him. “You've put me on a pedestal. You may be strong and you may know how to fight, and everyone in the world may know your name, but… I don't think I can survive being all that you breathe for. Not if it leads to this.”

He remembers waking up each morning in the orphanage, sunlight turning technicolour through stained glass images of praying hands. He’d always thought the sun was so strong, gathering pieces of itself just to wake half the world, reviving dead plants, rattling the bones that stirred dead in the earth. He’d put his fingers through the many colours just to watch them dance. He’d wiggle his digits and remember he was alive.

He watched you walk down the long aisle toward him in a white dress, a bouquet of daisies in your hands, the sun carving your path. His hand flexed at his side like it did on those long-gone mornings, and he briefly doubted he’d be able to touch you at all—like you’d disappear, smoke curling around the contours of his fingers, a dream.

“My heart hurts, Joel,” you say brokenly, your palm flattening against your chest. “I’m not as strong as you are. I’m just a girl who married the man she loved. One day, you're going to realise that I don't bleed gold. I’m not a deity. I’m not someone you go to war over. I’m not fucking perfect, and if you keep treating me like I am, you’re only going to be disappointed.”

Joel just watches the tears fall, somewhat enraptured by the way they linger like dew on your lashes, until you blink them away and they cascade down the curve of your cheek. He wonders if this is how it feels to be the painter, desperate to capture even a brushstroke of the subject in front of him. He used to watch you paint for hours, holed up in your studio, covered in splotches of oils he would later take his time to wash away. The colours would curl around the drain, a snake poised to strike, and he’d kiss you, his canvas, tasting the poison of paint at the corner of your mouth.

He’s made something dark of the light that grew inside you. He’s tainted your image with the blood he’s shed, and every one of the thousand cuts has struck true. He thought he was protecting you.

He was only hurting you.

“I just wanted to have you. And you wanted to forget.” Your eyes no longer meet his, tracing the lifelines in the oak table back and forth. “So where do we go from here?”

There’s a troubled tic in his brow, punctuating the feverish flitting of his eyes between each of yours, always restless. “You think I fell in love with you because I thought you were invincible?”

You lift your head, the whites of your eyes gleaming. Joel brings his chair closer to yours, and you don’t make a move to pull away.

“I fell in love with you because you’re human,” he says. “Because you’re kind. Because you have a heart bigger than any I’ve seen. Because you’re funny, and talented, and you love to make art, and when you find something you love, you give your soul to it. I love you because you’re an angry drunk and you hate mornings and you’re so fuckin’ frustrating when you won’t give up. I fell in love with you because you were the only person who’s ever taken a real shot at lovin’ me.”

Your bottom lip quivers and he wants to coax the heavy ache from your very soul, venom from the wound.

“You are my everything, baby. You are. And I know it ain't healthy, but I don't care. If that means I see you as a god, fine. You think I can stop lovin’ you the way I do? I can’t. But I never once thought you were perfect. Perfect people don’t fall in love with men like me.”

You laugh a little, but it’s taut, stuck in the back of your throat.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me. I’m not even sure I want that. But I do want to be the kind of man you’re willing to love again. You’re my best friend, and I’ll do whatever it takes, you hear me? I’m not givin’ up.”

You sniffle, your quivering hands folded into one another atop the table. He wants to reach out and touch you, pull you back into his gravity, smell your perfume. He wants to do a thousand other things he does not deserve.

“You’ve killed Manuel’s son,” you say quietly. “There’s still a contract on your head.”

Joel nods. “And he’s gonna pull it.”

You shake your head, lips parted around words you choose not to say. Instead, you look away, and he feels he's lost something he'd been holding.

“Do what you need to do,” you say, and every syllable cuts him along the bias of the bone.

He has known your hurt, your anger, your sadness. Something in an artist’s heart has never seen a day of peace, you told him once. He thought it was a joke; he may have even laughed.

I loved you.

Joel swallows. “I need you—”

“—to stay here.” The corner of your mouth pulls up despite your sombre tone. “Yeah, I know.”

There’s a knock at the door before he can open his mouth to reply. You stay apprehensively glued to your seat as Joel peers through the peephole only to unlatch the chain on the door.

“Anyone see you come in?” he asks Tommy.

“I’m sure plenty of people saw me, brother. But they can’t do anything, now, can they?”

A muscle in Joel’s jaw feathers. “You bring everything?”

Tommy scoffs, gesturing toward the bags weighing down his arms. “Everything on your fuckin’ mile-long list? Yeah. You gonna let me in?”

Joel ushers him inside and triple-checks the hallway to make sure nobody is lurking nearby. Your voice brightens by a fraction and it feels like an electric shock tingling at his fingertips.

“Tommy.”

“Hey, sweetheart.” He squeezes your shoulder and drops the bags at your feet. “You hangin’ in there?”

Joel watches from the shadows of the hall, his heart leaden at the sight of you smiling for someone else. He’ll do anything to earn that. He’ll forsake all he has, all he is. He’ll crawl on his hands and knees all the way back through hell; he already knows the way.

“Brought your supplies,” says Tommy, kneeling at your feet and opening the bags. Your brows knit together at the sight of your oils from home, your brushes, your pallets long ago stained with colour. “Heard you were feeling inspired.”

Your gaze lifts to Joel, eyes narrowed. “Is that right?”

He’s sheepish, ducking his head. “Just… thought you might be goin’ crazy, stuck in here.”

“That's not why I’m going crazy,” you grumble.

Tommy chuckles. “Well, if anything’s missin’, it's his fault. Most of your canvases were destroyed, but these are all good.”

Your heart feels a little lighter now that you can smell the tangy, cloying scent of your paints and run your fingers over the bristle of your brushes. You give Tommy’s hand a pulse, your thank-you barely snaking past the lump in your throat. “Tell Maria I said hi.”

He gives you a knowing look. “I’m holdin’ you to your promise, y’know. You still have to paint the nursery.”

You cast your eyes toward Joel, who leans against the wall in the dark corridor. “Yeah,” you say softly, stripped to the bone by the way he watches you, unblinking. “I don't break my promises.”

His fingers twitch at his sides, and the gleam of his wedding ring lingers in your periphery long after you've torn your gaze away.

“Tommy’s gonna stay with you,” says Joel, “while I take care of the rest.”

The rest. Of course. “Why now?”

“He just killed Cabrera’s son,” says Tommy. “And we don't want to risk anyone comin’ around, lookin’ for revenge.”

“But you said no business can be conducted here.”

“For enough money, a person will break any rule.”

“That kind of undermines the entire concept of your entire Underworld, doesn't it?” you say. “Rules aren't really rules.”

“But there are consequences,” says Tommy. “Just… if you’ve got enough money, you can hide from ‘em for a while.”

“Until they hunt you down,” you utter, looking across the room at Joel. His silence feels like hot hands on your bare skin. You turn back to Tommy. “What about Maria?”

“She's with her mom this weekend,” says Tommy. “Won't even notice I left the house. You need someone to model, I’m your guy.”

“No,” says Joel.

“I didn’t mean I’d get naked,” says Tommy.

Joel clips Tommy’s shoulder on his way to you, and his brother takes the hint to make himself scarce, disappearing into the bathroom. Joel kneels at your feet and places his hand on your calf. The weight of it is warm, carrying words he has no time left to give.

“This will be over soon,” he says, and he sounds so sure that you almost believe it.

“And then what, Joel?”

He sets his jaw. There's little of the predator, of the boogeyman, in his eyes. All that rich brown betrays now is a quiet resolve. A promise.

“Home,” says your husband. “We’ll make another.”

You squeeze your eyes shut only to open them again and find the hand that rests on your skin. He's bruised, bloodied, and violent, but he does not squeeze or press. He never once has. You wonder idly how often he's put those hands on your body while thinking of a time he'd taken the life of another.

“And what if we can’t?” you ask him.

The first time you'd unveiled a piece to him—the first piece you'd ever painted of you and him, together—Joel had instinctively touched the supple blue skin beneath the woman’s breast, as quickly as a nurse finds a vein.

“She’s blue,” he said. “Is that… how you feel? Like you’re… blue?”

“Blue doesn't just mean sadness,” you told him. “It could almost mean serenity. Stability.”

He looked at you, puzzled, for a while, his hand still extended, pressed to the barely-dry canvas. “Where I grew up,” he said, “I was never really taught anything besides black and white.”

“Colours are different that way,” you said. “They mean a thousand things to a thousand people. They can all look at the same painting and feel something unique.” You gave him a wry smile. “You look at a painting of us having sex and see sadness. I’m trying not to read into it.”

He chuckled. “You should know that's not true. And I like the way you think.”

“You never told me what you think about the painting,” you said playfully. “Do you like it?”

Joel’s hand travelled from the woman’s breast to her hand as if pondering the wash of blues that coloured her skin. Her fingers, intertwined with her lover’s, squeezed down on him—a lifeline.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It's the way I feel when you touch me,” you said. “Like I’m falling apart and coming together at the same time.”

Joel tentatively reaches for your hand and turns it over in your lap, palm to the ceiling. “If you decide a home isn't what you want with me,” he says, tracing your lifeline, “then that’s all right. But I just… I want to know if—”

“Don’t,” you whisper, pressure accumulating behind the inner corners of your eyes. Joel meets your gaze and it takes all you have to suppress the shudder at the feeling of his thumb making its ghostly pilgrimage across your palm. “Don't ask me yet. Please.”

He bows his head and his hand slips from yours, and you choke on the memory of a love uncompromising, effortless, simplistic.

“Just come back alive,” you tell him. “Come back to me, okay?”

Joel rises to his feet, and a kiss plants its roots at your hairline. “Always.”

“When he said to watch me, I don't think he meant the whole time.”

Beside you, Tommy clears his throat, averting his gaze to the floor. “Sorry. Just… it’s impressive, what you do.”

You’re still outlining the tangled limbs of the man and woman, their bodies disappearing into one another, each line indistinguishable from the next. “Well, if it helps, I don't know how cars work.”

He laughs. “Yeah, all right.”

You set down your pencil, casting a glance out the window. Outside, the stars wink down at you. “Will he be okay?” you say softly.

Tommy sighs. Now that he no longer needs to hide the fact that it isn't his brother doing the books, the sting of the reminder rings in your chest with the sound of his binder closing.

“I don't blame you, y’know,” he says, “for stayin’ pissed at him.”

“Good,” you reply, “because he's an idiot.”

“Yeah, that's one thing that's never gonna change.” Tommy leans back in the chair, taking a swig from his beer. “I tried to tell him he was makin’ a mistake. He's a stubborn bastard.”

“He is,” you say, frowning at the curl you've drawn over your subject’s forehead. He looks back at you, brow furrowed, one eye visible, the other blending with hers. It's gruesome, in a way: the frenetic lines, the frantic way their fingers dimple one another’s flesh. “But I can be stubborn, too.”

Tommy leans forward, studying the beginnings of your sketch. “I know he's made mistakes, and Christ knows I’m crazy for defending my dumbass brother. But if you knew how much he loved you…”

“Tommy,” you cut in, setting down your pencil. “Loving me isn’t the problem.” The outline of the bodies on your canvas blur as your eyes burn with tears. “I wonder if he ever really left—in his heart, I mean.”

Tommy’s voice is quiet. He’s twirling a small switchblade in his hand. “All he's ever wanted is peace.”

You cast your eyes toward the ceiling to stop the tears from spilling over, or to find some answer spelled in stars you cannot see. “Then why couldn't he just stay out?” you whisper. “Why did he have to come back?”

“You know, when we were kids, Joel would take all my beatings,” says Tommy, flicking out the blade. It glimmers in a way that catches the light as easily as a flame on kindling. “He'd say everything was his fault when it was really me who knocked over a shitty old vase or vandalised a fresco. And he'd just fuckin’ grin and bear it because that's who he is.”

He’d just been a kid. Just a kid who wanted to protect his little brother, who took every beating, who grew up in a faith he never had faith in.

The fragile wobble in your voice betrays the steel wall of your back. “He let me fall in love with him, Tommy. He let me give my soul to him.”

He ducks his head, folding the blade back into its wooden hilt. “Yeah, I know,” he says softly.

“And Maria?” You let out an airy laugh. “How did she react when you told her about all this?”

He doesn't meet your eye, and you feel your stomach turn over as he sets the blade on the table, bringing his hand over his jaw.

“Oh,” you say.

“We all do things we’re not proud of. Anyway, I had it easier,” he says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m just a mechanic.”

“And my husband’s a killer, right?”

Tommy sighs. “I know you shouldn't take my word for it. But he does want peace. And he came back because he didn't see another choice.”

On the canvas, the man holds the woman close, pulling her tight to his chest, as if he knows she's about to fall. “I hate it,” you say softly, “knowing he's felt so much pain, and I can't make it better. I hate that this is something he needs to figure out himself, Tommy. I hate that I can't be the person he thinks I am.”

“I think you don't give yourself enough credit.” When you turn to face him, Tommy puts the switchblade in your open palm. Your fingers reflexively close around it, and it's cool to the touch. Smooth. The grain in the wood looks like the wriggling lifelines in a human hand. “You made him leave this life. You got him to care enough to make a real one, and you didn't even know it.”

You flick open the switchblade. “This is beautiful.”

“Gave it to me for safekeeping when he retired,” says Tommy. “It was the prize for completing his first job.”

You frown at your reflection, angling the knife up and down. “How old was he?”

Tommy covers the blade with his hand and retracts it. “Keep it,” he says. “It never belonged to me.”

You try to push it toward him, suddenly repulsed. You've heard from his own mouth about the lives he's taken, but the thought of your Joel holding the very same weapon, sinking it into flesh, slicing through the strings that hold a person together, makes your fingers tremble. “It doesn't belong to me either, Tommy.”

“Maybe not,” he says, “but I think you’d know what to do with it better than me.”

You swallow hard. “A man declares war because he wants peace.” Your thumb slides along the smooth edge of the hilt before you hide it inside your bag. “I can't pretend to understand what you both went through, Tommy. But know that I’m glad you found a good life. And know that if you break Maria’s heart, I’ll make you swallow paint.”

Tommy nods sombrely. “I’ll tip the can myself. We're thinking green for the nursery.”

“Green is good.” You give him a conciliatory smile.

“Joel’s a good man,” he says. “He's just… misguided.”

“Are you a man of God, Tommy?”

He laughs. “I don't think anyone who came out of that place alive still believes there's a God. If only the Sisters could see us now.”

“I hope they never do,” you tell him. “I hope they never get the satisfaction of knowing they hurt him.”

“I don't think they’d be much satisfied,” says Tommy, “if they knew he'd found peace after all.”

Hours unfold. The canvas sits untouched as you and Tommy sit next to one another, the moon outside slowly enveloped by clouds. The silver silhouette casts a halo through the grey, and you think of your Joel, alone on his warpath, bloodying the ring on his finger. You think of your name on his back, nestled above the praying hands, and the pit of restlessness yawns wide open.

“He should be back by now.”

Tommy rubs his palms over his thighs, a behaviour you've noticed in Joel. “Yeah, he should.”

“But he'll be okay,” you say, a minute warble colouring your voice, “right?”

“He's Joel,” is all he gives you in return.

Your fingers twist themselves into knots in your lap until the jab of a car horn outside jolts you back to life. “Tommy,” you rasp, wetting your lips. “Go find him.”

He nods, standing abruptly from his chair and yanking his coat free from the hook by the door. “He’ll kill me for leavin’ you alone,” he says.

“We both know he needs you,” you say, turning your head to watch the moon peek out from behind the sheet of grey. “Just bring my husband back.”

There's a distinct sensation that erupts across the skin of a nonbeliever who crosses the threshold of a church. It begins in the floorboards, where the soul of a supposed Christ lingers, and radiates up through the soles of the feet, through the knees, until it circles the brain, persistent as a murder of crows. You don't belong here.

The little church is nothing extravagant, which Joel has to find a little funny. Five rows of pews on either side, a basin of holy water next to the pulpit, a smattering of devotees kneeling on the padded seats in front of them. He swallows the burn and approaches the pastor.

“My son,” says the man, spreading his arms wide as if welcoming Joel back from a pilgrimage. “Welcome. What troubles your heart today?”

Joel pulls the Benelli from his canvas bag and blows out the pastor’s kneecap.

His deafening roar echoes off the domed ceiling and reverberates through the stained-glass paintings of the Virgin Mary. “Fuck!” cries the pastor, scrambling backward with a hand covering his bloodied leg. “Fucking cunt, fucking asshole, vete a la mierda! What the fuck is your problem?”

Joel turns and fires another two shots at the guards on the balcony. One of them tumbles over the edge. The kneeling figures flee the scene, some screaming, some praying.

“Donde esta Cabrera?” Joel growls, bunching the pastor’s white collar in his bloodstained fist. When he doesn't reply, Joel applies pressure to the wound in his knee between his thumb and forefinger. “Habla.”

“Fuck!” he howls. “He isn't here. Hijo de puta, he's not here!”

“Fine,” says Joel, hauling the man upright with little regard for his obliterated knee. “Then we're takin’ a little field trip.”

Joel knew many of Cabrera’s secrets during his time working for the bastard. He would have changed the codes to the vault, but it’s the same nonetheless. Joel shoves the pastor down the winding staircase and aims the barrel of the shotgun between his eyes.

“Open the vault.”

“Manuel will kill me,” pleads the pastor.

Joel lifts a brow. “You see me cryin’?”

A pale, trembling hand rises to the keypad and types in the code. Inside the vault, two women are counting piles of cash behind the counter. Joel gestures toward the door with his shotgun. “Ladies,” he greets, “out.”

They scurry out of the vault with their hands in the air. Inside the small concrete cell, safes are embedded in the walls, twice Joel’s height, one of them unlocked and brimming with neatly piled heaps of bound bills and documents. Joel reaches up and unlatches a shelf, watching the avalanche of blood money cascade onto the floor around his feet. With one hand, he produces a lighter from his pocket and flicks on the flame. It ignites the piles of cash and papers as Joel walks out, leaving the wounded pastor on the floor.

A whisper goes up in flames behind his back. “El espectro.”

At the aggressive slam of car doors, Joel climbs the staircase to the balcony and looks over the rear exit. Outside, Manuel Cabrera and his men cross the concrete toward the church. Joel curses, ejecting the shell from his shotgun and inserting a new clip. The stained glass crumbles with the first shot as he puts a bullet in a bodyguard’s head. The shouts flutter toward the sky in the ensuing panic. Joel hears Manuel cry out his orders: Around the back. You two, flank him. The bastard’s here; go fucking kill him.

The smell of smoke begins to stick to his throat as he takes another shot. The sound of dress shoes clatters, echoing, across the floorboards below him. “Goddamn it,” he growls. He’ll be flushed out before long if he doesn't move. Joel checks his clip, fruitlessly searches the body on the balcony for more ammunition, and kicks him over the edge. The resounding thud of his corpse against the pews is somewhat gratifying. Cabrera’s men crowd the dead man, which gives Joel just enough time to descend the staircase and shoulder open the back door. The parking lot teems with Cabrera’s army ants, creeping around parked cars as they search for the boogeyman.

One of the bodyguards ducks behind a Range Rover, and Joel bares his teeth, the wolf at the hunt. He shoots out the front tires, which deflates the car just enough to give him a glimpse of the man’s head. He takes the shot.

“Puta!” someone cries. Joel ducks as a shot pings off the front bumper of the Cadillac next to him, and he briefly takes stock of his ammunition. Fuck. He would have really liked to keep the fucking high ground. Now, he's as trapped as they are. Rats in a maze of shiny new cars.

Joel peeks around the corner and feels the heat of a bullet seat through the sleeve of his jacket. He shoulders the sting of the new wound and rounds the corner, raising his weapon and firing. He counts another two, three, five dead, and the moist air begins to cling to the back of his neck, sweat lining his collar, blood soaking his sleeve. He calls Cabrera’s name. He calls again.

“Let's end this,” he growls. “Come out, and I’ll spare the rest of them.”

An explosion nearby sets him off-kilter, rattling the earth beneath him. The church goes up easily, flames licking the sky, sirens blaring several blocks over, the steady eruption of chaos like golden nectar in his mouth. Joel rises to his feet and continues his charge.

He calls Cabrera’s name again. He thinks of your body, prone and cold on the floor, reaching for him. He thinks of that night and imagines himself saving you before any of it happened. He imagines turning out of the restaurant that very first night, retreating into the darkness where it was comfortable and you were safe.

No—he'd gone to the light. He’d let it all topple, and he'd do it again. This world is not where he belongs. You are what the word has led him to. All the gospel and the hymnals and the nights spent praying on his knees to a false god led him to your soft, supple side, not to the jagged edges of this unforgiving Underworld.

He calls Cabrera’s name again, but he hears the roar of the engine too late. The circle of vehicles crowds him, claustrophobic, and it's Manuel Cabrera who steps out.

He looks the same as he did eight years ago, when Joel approached him and asked to be released from his contract, if not a little more grey. He's dressed in an Italian suit and his shoes are unscuffed. His hair is combed back and his eyes are sunken into his face.

Something strikes Joel in the back of his head, and he sees the Creation of Adam on the north wall of the orphanage, the wrinkled old hand, the stray dogs.

The starchy scent of the canvas sack jolts him awake. Someone yanks it up over his head, and he blinks in the harsh light of day.

He's in a giant empty warehouse. Light filters through the broken glass windows high above their heads, shards and empty bullet casings and cigarette butts crunching underfoot. Judging from the scuffling of feet around him, ten or so men surround him where he sits in an old folding chair, bound by the wrists. He feels a throbbing ache in his skull and winces. You’ll give him hell for this.

“It’s good to see you, Joel,” says the silhouette sitting across from him, flanked by two more shadows. Joel blinks them into focus. “It’s been a long time.”

The edges soften until he can see the whites of the eyes, the cool detached gaze, the glimmer of a silver watch. “Manuel,” says Joel. “¿Cómo está su hijo?”

A huff of air is all he gets in reply. Manuel sheds his long coat and leans forward on his elbows. “You know, Joel, my son was a fucking moron.”

“I could've told you that,” says Joel, “and I would've saved you a lot of breath.”

“My son,” growls Manuel, “was a moron, but he was my son. I told him as much—told him there was nothing he could do, not when Joel Miller was hunting him down. And when I asked him what he had done to warrant the boogeyman’s vengeance, he said it was because of a girl.”

Manuel rubs his hand over his stubbled jaw, laughing like the situation is amusing. “Well, that’s good for you, Joel. Good to finally find something you care about, to find a reason. I see you're putting your retirement to good use. Fighting for your very own Helen of Troy.”

Joel says nothing, studying the manic glint in Cabrera’s eye. He recalls that same look from the night he asked to leave, placing his gun on the desk between them.

“I want out,” he said.

“Out?” said Cabrera. “And why, Joel, would you ever want out?”

“Because I’m done here,” he said. “I'm done in this world and I’m done with you.”

Joel wonders if Cabrera had been waiting for that exact moment: for Joel Miller, the ghost in the corner of the Underworld’s bedroom, to step forward and give Manuel Cabrera the opportunity he needed to rise to the very top.

“Very well,” he said after a long silence. “But I want you to consider whether your freedom is worth what I’m about to ask of you. It will not be easy.”

“It’s worth it,” said Joel. “Now tell me what I need to do.”

Cabrera sits across from Joel the same way he did eight years ago, the same insidious gleam in those black eyes, smiling smugly without moving his face at all.

“You've changed,” he says. “You’re softer, Joel. That wedding ring must've done a number on my killer.”

“Maybe I never stopped bein’ a killer,” says Joel.

“Maybe not. But the difference is that now, you have a reason to keep living.” Cabrera has the gall to feign remorse as he shrugs his shoulders. “You took my son from me, Joel. You understand how this world works.”

Joel kicks out his leg instinctively, baring his teeth at Cabrera like a caged dog. Two henchmen clap down on his shoulders and abruptly pull him backward in the chair. The rope around his wrists chafe.

“When I signed that contract,” he growled, “I had nothing to live for. Nobody to love. Until the day she showed up in my life. She gave me a word to follow that wasn’t yours or your God’s.” His mouth hardly fits around the name. Yours has always felt softer on his tongue. “Trust that Emiliano deserved worse than the death I gave him.”

“A woman above God,” Cabrera utters under his breath, rubbing his palms over his thighs before he rises to his feet and grabs Joel by the hair at the scruff of his neck. Joel winces at the prickling sensation erupting across his scalp. Cabrera’s breath stinks of weed. “El espectro,” he says mockingly. “The fuckin’ boogeyman. You're not so scary like this.”

Cabrera forces Joel to look up at him. The pressure accumulates behind his nose, painful enough to make his eyes water. “You burned my church down, Joel,” says his captor. “Money is replaceable, sure, but the leverage I had on this city… Hijo de puta. Just for a fuckin’ girl, Joel?”

Joel can't help but sneer. “Yeah, I enjoyed that part.”

It earns him a blow across the jaw, and he relishes the electric lash that wriggles down his side. Cabrera lets go of his hair and gestures with a glance to his men before he turns away, plucking his coat from the chair.

“Manuel.”

He watches Cabrera consider it: to indulge Joel, or to let him rot.

The first hit he executed on Cabrera’s behalf earned him just ten thousand. Then thirty-something, having long ago left the Sisters, the hard wooden floors worn with the pressure of so many kneeling bodies, the Marines, and the sound of warfare, Joel didn’t have many places to stay. He took the red money, earned from the body and probably the pockets of a dead senator, and rented a place.

Nighttime in the city didn't mean quiet, not outside nor in. That night, Joel sat on the side of his bed in a cockroach-infested Brooklyn apartment whose walls smelled of cigarette smoke, and he put his face in his hands. Leaving one war only to enter another, Cabrera told him, is just the way of life. You, Joel, are a killer.

But that can’t be all, he thinks now, his hands bound and his blood singing in his heart. He wonders if you're asleep by now, if you've taken to his side of the bed like you used to, if you've stretched your hand across the linen for a taste of the memory of that love-like-sunlight.

It's your blood, he realises, that courses through him. Your blood that tastes sweet as ichor, your blood that runs in his blue-green veins. It's your blood he hears whispering to him when the dreams go black as pitch and he cannot hope to breathe.

The last contract he took for Cabrera earned him no prize but his freedom. Nothing but the smell of your perfume and your warm body tucked neatly into his every night and the cool kiss of your twin wedding bands could have satisfied him. He was not just a killer. He’d proven it. He’d lived it in eight years of gentle mornings, kissing you awake starting at the roots of your hair, and he’d loved it as much as they all had tried to make him love a God that never loved him.

He’d never forgotten how to kill. But he hasn't forgotten how to love, either. That, he figured out all on his own.

“All I wanted was peace. And your son took that from me.” Joel lifts his head to watch Cabrera: the way his spine stiffens, the way his eyes narrow minutely. “He killed my peace and so I killed him. So you can either pull your contract,” Joel says, feeling the snarl pull at his vocal cords like jagged claws as his voice begins to rise, “or you can die screaming like your bastard son.”

He barely lurches forward in the chair before a plastic bag is shucked over his head, suctioned tight around his throat. Two men hold him down as Joel struggles against his bonds, gasping against the cool plastic. He's overpowered, hands wrenching his shoulders back against the chair. He kicks out for leverage, but his strength is waning, and the brief high of losing consciousness brings him back to you.

He took you to Greece for your honeymoon—or, rather, you took him. You were more travelled, more comfortable in the bright spots of the world, more settled in the spotlight. He thinks about how the sun adorned your skin like sequins, how eyes followed you everywhere you went, how you would see him frowning at all the attention and quietly take his hand.

They don't exist, you would tell him. You're all mine now, Joel Miller. And it’s just you and me.

Maybe there's a scrap of truth to fate. He's always been yours, long before he ever knew your face.

He basks in the sunlight on the beach for the time being. You wore his sunglasses when yours broke. You let him apply your sunscreen and you tucked your head into his shoulder on the luxurious chair. You fell asleep with your hand on his chest. Joel spent an hour studying the band around your ring finger.

Maybe Greece was a dream. Maybe the sun was a trick of the light and the clouds were smoke and the sky was black and the memory dwindles to a pinprick and he's grasping onto the image, your smile, your laugh, bells and perfume and a candle set at the foot of a golden statue—

“Stop.”

“Stop,” says a voice, and the air comes rushing back in. Joel wheezes, blinking hard to clear the spots or maybe to preserve the picture. But you're gone, slipping softly away as the brush of your knuckle over his cheek, and Joel is alive again.

“Tommy?”

His brother doesn't look at him, but Joel sees the brief shimmer of gunmetal hidden in his waistband.

He can feel the bruises blooming in a circle of fire around his throat. You’ll really be furious with him.

Joel watches his brother pull the handgun and feels the ropes cut into the tender skin of his wrists, helpless as he feels now. “What in the hell…”

“I’m sorry, brother,” says Tommy, turning the gun on Joel.

#fic: helen #kiwisbell's fics #pedro pascal #joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #the last of us #the last of us hbo #tlou fic #joel miller angst #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller au #john wick au

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ghouljams · 6 days

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Home [Chapter 6]

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Tags: Viking au, Viking!Soap, highlander!reader, healer!reader, Soap x f!reader, slow burn, f!oc cameo(Witch), sea travel, grief, kidnapping(sort of)

Summary: Again you find yourself at the mercy of the Vikings' will, moved without your consent to a place you'd rather not go. You must be going mad, somehow it all reminds you of home.

Packing up camp takes less time than you’d thought, though you suppose many hands make light work. Your hands aren’t saved from that work either. Despite decidedly not being a viking you’re directed to assist with collapsing and packing tents. Mactavish points out where to store them on the ship, before picking up crates and barrels with a soft grunt. You resent being given the easy work, relegated to burden before you even set out, but you would resent being given anything harder too.

Working with vikings. Your blood boils at the thought, but you have no other way to go. With no pressing medical needs you’re treated the same as every other man in the crew. You’re not sure whether to resent that fact or laugh. Are you a woman or aren’t you? Are you surrounded by wolves or are you taken into their burrow? Will you find hands shoved under your clothes, or won’t you?

You stick to Mactavish, try not to be underfoot after the first viking you bump yells at you. The men are all preoccupied with carrying their burdens, if it weren’t for Mactavish you might see threads of escape. You might have taken the chaos of packing the ship as your best chance to get out of here. But Mactavish seems to welcome your company, chattering away as he directs you to grab crates and load the long boat. His hand is firm on your back, always touchy even when it’s not called for.

“Is nae a long journey,” He explains, “jus’ across the straight. We’ll be there before ya ken it.”

It doesn’t escape your notice how excited your viking counterpart is at the prospect of going home. If it were you, and to some extent it is, you wouldn’t be so eager to part with your homeland. As you see it Mactavish may as well renounce the tartan he wears over his shoulders, eager as he is to be a viking. You don’t have much choice in where you go, but you’ll be damned if you’re eager to leave.

You’re employed, that’s it. You work or you die. You catch the captain’s eye as Mactavish shows you where you’ll be stationed for the journey. He tips his head to talk to the viking in the skull mask, his attention off of you as quickly as it had found you. Mactavish catches you staring and sighs.

“He’s just nervous about ya runnin’.”

“As if you wouldn’t strike me down before I left camp,” You mumble, your eyes following the trails of axes and swords where they sit on the hips of the men loading the ship. Mactavish winces. You don’t see how it could mean much to him, you’re just extra cargo, another mouth to feed that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

“Ah wouldnae,” Mactavish tries, you push past him. You’re uninterested in empty promises, in words that have the same substance to them as the air they whisper through. He would, he just needs to be given the order and your life is forfeit. Wants disappear when viking’s greed is on the line.

“It doesn’t matter,” You tell him, you’re already stolen, you’ve nothing to return to, what reason could you have for running? You’re the only woman on the ship, and for who knows how long. That’s reason enough to run. There’s space to run on land, but at sea? You pause, frown at the rocky beach below your feet. You’d be better served dead than passed between oars.

The fears of women, you have no sane way of voicing them to your captor. Mactavish hands you a bag, the contents of it shift with strange shapes as you find your hold. It’s smokey, smelling of meat and brine. It grounds you a little. You clear the anxiety from your mind and glance out over the sea, trying to find the other side the way you used to when you were small.

You’re reminded almost immediately that Mactavish owns you as the longboat pushes off the shore. You’re caged between the wall of the ship and your least favorite viking, his words bouncing around your head as he directs men to row. “My catch,” “my watch,” “prey.” He calls you that again in a hushed tone,

“Dae ya get sea sick, Vaenn?”

You ignore him, turn your head to rest it against the wooden wall of the ship. There’s little for you to do on the ship but wait. You patch a few blisters on the youngest vikings, and tend to the fever that’s brought on by a night of rain. Mostly you find yourself with Mactavish pressed to your side. Big and warm, sturdy when you try to push him off. His eyes are stormy each time you look at him, the clouds parting when he turns to meet your stare.

He pulls on smiles like an old pair of shoes. They’re well worn, practiced to his face, but they never reach his eyes. You wonder what he must be thinking. You try to drown out that curiosity with a different one. What are you meant to do when you get to shore?

Four days of sailing and the only thing you’ve come up with is: doctor. You suppose there must be more vikings, more warriors returning from different pillages, that need patching up. You can’t imagine what that must look like, a whole village of brutes. You wonder if they kidnap all their women, or if you’re a special case.

Exhaustion weighs on you. The rocking of the boat, the unease in your stomach around sleeping with so many strangers nearby, you find little rest and in the short grabs of it you jerk awake to the heat of fire. Your grief has started to numb you, or perhaps that’s the ocean’s chill. Mactavish fixes his fur around your shoulders more tightly, checks the heat of you with a cool hand against your cheek. You wonder if he even has the capacity to worry for others. A man that would turn away from the screams of an entire village is a man that holds no one but himself in his heart. You turn away from him more often than not, feel the frustrated curl of his fingers before they’re dropped in a fist to his lap.

You can see it every time you close your eyes, so you don’t. You can hear your own sobs ripping from your chest, can feel the strength of Mactavish’s arm around you, in your dreams. You don’t sleep. What’s lost can never be regained, and now you slip further from it. Your skin is cold and your stomach churns with the waves. You tuck your resentment close to your chest, and nurse it with bitterness.

You’re not going home. You don’t have one of those anymore.

You’re startled awake by a familiar melody, words you know from your mother’s tongue. You mutter her name, still addled by sleep, and split your eyes open. Mactavish is studying his hands beside you, digging his short nails into the calluses at the base of his fingers. His voice is low, but the tune carries. The usually noisy ship seems to hold its silence. In the dim grey light of dawn you wonder if it’s just the two of you awake.

The only two souls alive that carry the land’s proper tongue.

And yet he mutters it, the words of the lullaby said under his breath, breathed through the chopped melody that leaves his lips. He doesn’t even seem to pay attention to it, his eyes focused on his hand’s work more than the tune. You listen to the sharp pick of skin, nearly louder than the familiar tune, and try not to move.

“-found the trial o’ mountain mist, but ne’er a trace of baby o,” He hums, his lips twitching with pain as he digs his nail too deep. Mactavish looks up towards the bow of the ship and you follow his eyes as best you can, watching Gaz and the Captain speaking in quiet tones.

Gaz holds a telescope to his eye, nodding and directing course when he brings it down. The air waits for them. There’s a near silent beating of wings, and the captain holds out his arm for a black bird to perch on. He strokes its beak with a finger, the creature clicking pleasantly before it alights again, back the way it came.

Your heart pounds in your chest. The threat of land never closer than it is when the Captain turns to the ship and announces,

“We’ll be sleeping in beds tonight, lads.”

Mactavish smiles to himself, his head bowed, while the rest of the crew cheers. You don’t share their excitement.

The port you dock in is nothing like you expected. Mactavish offers you a hand to help you off the ship, and though you reach for it instinctually, you ultimately spurn the gesture. You’d rather make a fool of yourself tripping over your skirts than take help from that man. Again you see his fist clench, dropped heavily to his side as he stares at the space you used to occupy. The skull faced viking directs the unloading of cargo, barking orders to the others while you look out at the town.

It’s not what you thought it would be. There’s no dismal hopelessness to the buildings that dot the grassy landscape. Women and children move between the houses without fear, and market stalls exchange their goods for coin under colorful banners. In the distance you can see sheep grazing, men fish along the shore, farms and gardens dot the landscape. The dirt path that winds around town works its way inward, all roads leading to the center, a longhouse built up on a hill. It reminds you too much of your own home. Bigger perhaps, but twisting the knife in your heart as clearly as your mother’s face might.

A viking carrying a heavy crate bumps you from your observation, and your arm is caught by another. You give a shout of surprise, looking around for Mactavish and finding the Captain instead. He all but drags you along the dock, his grip firm and unyielding even when you struggle against it. You’re deposited in front of a woman. There's darkness under her eyes, runes in coal over her cheeks, and bone woven into her red hair. She smiles at you warmly, and you jerk back away from her.

There’s something unnerving in her smile, in her movements.

Her brows draw together, concern coloring her expression. The black bird that you’d seen greeting the ship rests on the staff she’s holding, its beak clicks curiously at you. You ignore it. Birds like that are only good for eating.

“One Læknir,” The Captain presents you, he says something else, a word you don’t understand that makes the woman laugh. She looks more alive when she laughs.

“You are-” She seems to struggle for the word, your language ill-suited to her tongue, she asks the Captain something uses that same word “Læknir” and he responds with his correction:

“Healer.”

“Healer,” The woman finishes, you glance at the captain and give a small nod. She speaks to the captain again, speaks past you, you try not to take offense. You’re starting to get the feeling this woman isn’t used to people let alone talking to them.

“Need a translator?” Mactavish’s voice jolts you from your thoughts, too close beside your ear. He grins when you glare at him. The woman seems almost relieved to see him. She speaks to him now, and you hear him say it again:

“My catch, Völva, I’ll watch ‘em.” His eyes dart to you as you bristle. The woman, the Völva (you heard him use that word before, you file it as a proper noun, a title maybe), glances at you as well.

“You stay with -” She says a word and you frown.

“Soap,” Mactavish fills in, leaning to murmur it by your ear.

“Soap,” You confirm, “I’m staying with the lye.”

“You’re stayin’ with Mactavish,” The Captain tells you, no hint of amusement in his tone, it startles you still to hear your own tongue so proudly fallen from his lips.

“Not a proper name,” You grumble.

“Needed a bath when we caught ‘im.” The Captain sniffs, “If he’s smart he’ll give you one too.” You stiffen, any humor you may have found in the nickname lost with those words. You don’t look at Mactavish, at Soap. You keep your eyes on the Völva. She must understand that they can’t force you into lodgings with a man. She tips her head, smile blank. You can’t hold her gaze for long.

“You wanted responsibility,” The Captain pushes you towards Mactavish, “there it is, your catch, your watch.”

You suppose it makes sense, you stay with the person that caught you, but it still drops like a rock in your stomach. Mactavish may speak your language, but as far as you’re concerned he’s a viking through and through. You’re not safe with him, not safe in this village. Mactavish settles his hand on the small of your back, and leans close for a third time, his voice is softer but still rings like a death knell.

“Let’s go Vaenn,” He must take your hesitance for exhaustion because he adds, “it’s nae far, then ya can rest.”

You very much doubt that.

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 4 months

Text

Old Scars, New Blood 2

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as dubcon/noncon, manipulation, borderline bullying, and other possible triggers. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: Reader has accepted that she’ll never be wanted, not only by the man she’s crushed on for years, but by anyone. That is until a new player enters the game. (f!, short!reader)

Character: Lloyd Hansen, Thor Odinson

Note: Man, I need some sleep.

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me <3

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)

Love you all. Take care. 💖

As the large house fills with the rabble of strange men and flowing alcohol, you retreat back to your quarters and stare at your dead phone. Still not sign of life from Lloyd but that doesn't worry you in any existential way. He always finds a way to scrape by, it's just that you usually hear from him by now. Even when he leaves you behind, he has a dozen orders for you. Not that time.

You lean against the headboard and mull the walls. Maybe you'll finally leave this life. You should be proud you got this far. You weren't exactly honed in blood like these underhanded mercenaries. You're just an executive assistant who took a chance. A woman and a Craig's List add, what an origin story.

After a while, you find it hard to sit still. You leave your bed in a mess from the turmoil of your nerves. You drag yourself to the door. You must look like you're going through a breakup, at the very lest, a crisis. A grey gap hoodie and black leggings. You shuffle around in your beat up Keds and drift downstairs, concealing yourself in the distraction and cacophony of the full house. Valhalla and his men jeer from the dining room as you slip past, a quick peek inside at the joining of forces.

Rico sits near the head of the table next to the gargantuan blonde with his braided locks and rugged jawline. The host looks less than impressed as his guest guffaws and claps his back roughly. You don't stay and watch, hurrying on as your stomach squeezes hungrily. You find when Lloyd's not around to demand his meals, you tend to forget to feed yourself.

You enter the kitchen and find chaos strewn over the counter tops. Bottles, some half-filled, others empty, littered over the granite. Crumbs and whole chunks of cheese and meat tossed around carelessly, a lingering stench hanging in the air. You assume the staff is hiding until there aren't men mixing alcohol and firearms.

You pull open the fridge and growl to find your neatly stacked containers gone. You keep your own food and Lloyd's precisely curated. You're a planner and meal planning is your greatest pride. While the other men depend on the processed foods dished up by the help, you make sure to feed your boss his preferred organic cuts. The door shuts as you let it go and turn to peruse the kitchen. There's a bag of biscuits with some spilling out. You leave the spilled cookies on the counter and claim the rest.

You stop as you come to face the wine rack. A single bottle remains in the crisscrossed slats of wood. You're not exactly fond of Risling but you've never been very picky. Nor much of a drinker.

You slide the bottle out with a soft clink against the rack and consider the label. You're not expert, would it pair well with shortbread? You compare the rumbled package of cookies and the pristine font on the bottle.

"Another!" The booming voice makes you leap and you spin around, the wine sloshing in the glass and loosening your grip. You face the large man as he bounces into the kitchen and the long neck slips free entirely. You step back with a surprised squeak as the glass smashes around your feet, sending a splash of wine up your leggings.

Valhalla stops short as he finds you standing in the ruin of your surprise. His rosy cheeks pale and his cheeks draw to a more sober expression, a glint still gleaming behind his bright blue irises, "ah, pardon, my lady, I didn't mean to startle you. And look at what I've done," he gestures to your feet. You lift a shoe and he makes a noise, "ah, ah, do not move."

He comes closer as you stand dumbly in the shards. You look down then back at him. "I have shoes on--"

"And you wouldn't want to stain them," he insists as he nears. You shy away but not fast enough. He picks you up easily, like a hero in a ridiculous story, scooping you over the broken glass and carrying you to safe ground. "Forgive me for wasting the wine."

"It's fine," you wiggle in his hold, the bag of cookies wrinkling loudly, "really, I think..." you look down, dizzy as you see the pattern of tile below, "you can put me down, sir. Please, if you don't mind."

"As you wish," he places you gently on your feet, "what an introduction. Valhalla," he holds out his large hand, his palm rough and calloused, fingers thick but lock, "and you, beautiful woman lurking in the shadows?"

Your breath is stolen by the unexpected compliment. You remind yourself that it is only gas. He's like Lloyd, he must be, compliments are only currency. You take his hand and introduce yourself as sternly as you can. Your voice is barely more than a mousy squeak.

"It is you," he lights up as he tilts his head, clinging to your hand.

"Me?" You question.

"Oh, I hope you remember. I suppose I am forgettable. We emailed... how pathetic I must sound," he chuckles at himself.

"No, I remember," you wiggle your hand and look at it, still trapped in his grip.

"Apologies," he lets you go, fingers brushing your palm reluctantly, "I only... I was disappointed when you disappeared."

"I disappeared?" You frown. "You never answered my last message."

"I..." he pauses, "I was in communication with Hansen, he said he preferred to take on the negotiations himself."

"Oh," you nod. Lloyd never mentioned that. "Of course, I'm so... careless. I have so much going on. I... I should've said goodbye. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he pleas, "you've nothing to be sorry for. I should be. I might make it up to you. You like wine, so let us grab a bottle and catch up."

"Catch up," you muse meekly, "you make it sound like we're old friends."

"Aren't we?"

"Emails..." you murmur.

He laughs as he turns and goes to the wine rack, ignoring the puddle of glass and wine by his feet.

"That was the last bottle," you say dully.

"There must be a cellar, I'm certain the best vintages are there," he turns as he pokes his finger into the air, "let us go scavenge."

"Uh, that's nice and all but I think... cookies are just fine for me."

"Cookies?" He comes back to you, eyeing the bag in your hand, "shortbread. My favourite."

"Oh, well, erm, if you want some--"

"Only if you come with them," he meets your gaze and you shy away at his implication.

You open your mouth but no sound comes out.

"I mean, I'd like to eat them with you. Share them," he stammers slightly, another rocky chuckle escapes him, "I've been on the road long, I'm afraid I'm bit delirious."

"It's fine, I wouldn't want to-- you and your men should settle in and maybe tomorrow--"

"Tonight. Right now. I can't wait. I'm not known for it," he seizes your hand, "come, meet my men."

"I... please," he tugs you, moving you with little effort, "I'm only an assistant."

"Bring your cookies," he insists, ignoring your protests.

You can't stop him. Your soles squeak and slide under you as he drags you into the hall and through the wide archway of the dining room. The men at the table are drunk and a few whistle as you pass by, even as female agents sit smattered among the group.

Valhalla brings you to the head of the table and claims the empty chair awaiting him. Before you can react, he lifts you onto his lap, his arm firm against your back.

"Wait-- what are you--" you can barely catch your breath with how fast everything is moving, "I really should-- Lloyd will be back soon and I have to--"

"Forget him. I want to know about you," he bows his head, focusing on the cookie bag as he slips his fingers through the open top. He plucks one out, admiring it before holding it out to you, "please, you first."

You go to take the cookie from him, shifting on his leg, uncomfortable as you hear the snickers from the table. You must look ridiculous. This man is like a storm, he just comes in and blows everything out of sorts. He pulls the cookie away from your reaching fingers, instead hovering it before your mouth. You swallow, too humiliated to look anywhere but him.

"I can--"

He shakes his head and presses the shortbread to your lips, quieting you. You open your mouth and bite into the crumble buttery goodness. You snap your teeth shut and chew stiffly, lowering your eyes as he watches you. He tosses the rest of the biscuit into his mouth and hums.

"Delicious," he remarks as his fingers tickle the back of your arm, "now, we have tonight. Tomorrow we can work, but now, you will tell me everything."

"Lloyd--"

"Not him," he interrupts again, "you," he cups your chin in his hand, "I travelled all this way, won't you humour me just a little?"

You rub your lips together. What can you say? Every time you try to come up with something, it begins 'Lloyd...' Is there even anything interesting about you? Have you lost yourself so completely to your own foolish crush?

"Tell me," Valhalla rests his hand on your shoulder more firmly, "anything. Tell me your favourite cookie. Just speak and I will listen."

You look at him again. Listen? How long have you longed for someone to do just that? To be heard? To be seen? It's almost as if he knows and is heeding that desperate call inside of you.

"The little..." you put your fingers up to show the size you have in mind, "jam-filled ones," your voice grows less wobbly as you speak, "with the bit of custard."

"Ah, those are a delight," he proclaims, "my brother is overly fond of those. I caught him sneaking some at the family holiday last year-- anyhow, he is another matter. I see it, you are sweet, you like sweet things." He frames your face with his hand, "and you have a sweet voice, tell me more.”

"I..." you begin and push your shoulders into a shrug. You take out a cookie, needing to do something with your hands, "I'm not that interesting."

You nibble on the cookie as he laughs again. Not mean or judgmental like Lloyd, just fun. You focus on chewing, wilting away as you feel him watching you.

"I'm interested," he intones, his timbre blowing through you.

You don't know what to say. There are no words. It's like you're the centre of the world in that moment, or at the least, of his. A man you hardly know, a man you only ever encountered in text.

Or maybe you're all wrong. Maybe you're misinterpreting every word he says. Just like you did with Lloyd. Searching for any sliver of longing.

"In fact," he leans back, rubbing your back casually, "you're the only interesting thing I've found in this place."

❤️‍🩹

The night sweeps you up like a whirlwind. You don't quite remember it ending, waking up in bed with remnants of the evening dancing in your mind. Valhalla's voice nips at you, sending spirals over your flesh, zapping every nerve as it echoes in your ears.

You almost feel guilty that he's your first thought. How he never looked away, never spoke to anyone else, only you. His entire focus was yours.

And yours was his. You listened to his stories, mentions of his family, though his reputation never suggested sentiment. His tales of firefights made comical by his retelling. The way he described his homeland like some mystical paradise. He filled the void left by your own boring life.

You stretch and roll over, sitting up as something dangles down your chest. You look down. Still inhe same hoodie you wore all night was a charm hanging between the strings. You take it between your fingers and examine the medallion, a bullet lodges into it, the burn of gunpowder seared around it. Strange.

A waft of amber and citrus clings to the sweater. You dare to take a whiff before you stand. It smells like him.

You peel off your sweater reluctantly and hang it, opting to skip the hamper. You strip your leggings and your undershirt and pick a fresh outfit. Something more appropriate.

You force yourself into the shower and come out feeling awake. You pull on each piece; a pair of stiff slacks and a striped blouse, paired with a gray blazer. Your usual dull attire.

You sit and slide into a pair of leather flats. The mornings aren't usually hard. Something is different. Something has changed.

You head downstairs and find several staff working at tidying the previous night's ribaldry. You enter the kitchen and set the keurig to brew a cup as bodies scurry around you. Everyone has their place here; you, Rico, and Lloyd.

But not Valhalla.

At the very thought of him, a blaring horn takes over. Your ears throb and you forget your mug as you race to the front door. There's a man passed out against the wall in his own puke. Wonderful.

You pull open the left door as the gate opens and tires bounce over the paved drive. Lloyd is behind the wheel to your surprise, laying into the horn as he skids to a halt. Grumbling comes from behind you as Rico drags his feet and peers out over your head.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

The alcohol lingers in his breath. You step outside to escape his stench. Lloyd swings open the door and hops out, smiling at the sky as he presents himself as some great hero returned home.

“Morning, fuckers!” He bellows.

Silence, only an odd rhythm. You realise as a figure jogs around the east wing that it's footfalls. You turn to look as Rico and Lloyd do the same. It's him, Valhalla, running towards you.

He smiles, unaffected by his brisk pace as he nears, a smile on his face as he waves. He slows and you get a clear sight of his shirtless torso. He wears only running shoes and a pair of riskily short shorts.

There's a sheen of sweat over his skin but he hardly seems spent. His veins bulge beneath his skin and his muscles are thick but toned. His chest is broad and trimmed in golden hair, every part him immense and statuesque.

You almost let out the ‘wow’ as it creeps up your throat.

“Who the fuck is this ken doll?” Lloyd asks as he points to Valhalla.

“Ah, you must be Hansen,” Valhalla ignores his brusque question and holds put his hand.

“Who's asking?” Lloyd rests his hand on his holster.

Valhalla smiles and gives his name, unfaltering as he keeps his hand put. Lloyd doesn't shake it as he scowls. He looks the larger man up and down.

“You're early.”

“Or you're late,” Valhalla challenges and turns, clapping his hand on Lloyd's shoulder as it goes unshaken, “I thought you'd be bigger.”

Lloyd tilts his head, a grimace twisting his features, “huh?”

“I must day, it's a nice property,” Valhalla continues, gesturing to the house. He smirks and gives you a wink, “very welcoming.” He grips Lloyd's shoulder and pulls him closer, “I could get you somewhere even bigger. How about that?”

Lloyd squints at Valhalla, head craned awkwardly, “yeah?”

Valhalla smiles, “let's talk.”

#lloyd hansen #thor #dark lloyd hansen #dark thor #dark!lloyd hansen #dark!thor #thor x reader #lloyd hansen x reader #the gray man #mcu #marvel #avengers #fic #au #series #multifandom #dark fic #dark!fic

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aalyssah · 1 year

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Respect You

Pairing: Hannibal Lecter x Wife!Reader

Warnings: Body parts in food! Killing, and Fluff?

Word Count: 1,502

Summary: When Hannibal meets your parents, they talk bad about you, so he makes sure they don't ever say a word again.

A/N: Every time I write for Hannibal, I think about body parts and food. Am I weird? Hope You Enjoy!

You were extremely nervous today.

You were nervous because you and your parents have never been on good terms. After an argument you had with them when you were 16, you moved out and ever since then, you haven't talked to them, but today you decided to give them a chance.

It is also going to be their first time meeting Hannibal. Hannibal is your first real lover, so having them meet him is very special to you and Hannibal knows that because you won't stop talking about it.

You stood in front of the mirror in you and Hannibal's shared bedroom, holding up two dresses against your body. "Han, should I wear my black dress, or the red one?" Hannibal came behind you, arms circling around your waist and placing kisses in the nape of your neck.

"It doesn't matter which one because you'll still look beautiful, Darling." A blush formed in your face at his compliment. "Okay, I'm gonna wear the black one." You broke away from his hold and began to get your jewelry and perfume out, making Hannibal look at the clock.

"Love, it's only 3:23, we have until 6:00. Why are you getting ready so early?" You sighed and turned around to look at him. "I already told you, Han. I can't afford to look bad after so many years. I gotta show them I'm better without them." You pulled out the iron and plugged it in.

"What are we eating tonight? Gotta make sure we impress them." Hannibal thought about it for a moment. "It will be my surprise." You didn't stress too much about the food, only your impression.

Hannibal laid a kiss on your forehead and grabbed his keys. "Imma go get the food, do you need anything?" You shook your head and continued iron pressing your dress. "Wait, give me your suit so I can make sure there's no wrinkles."

Hannibal chuckled and grabbed his suit before giving it to you and walking out to the car. From what you've told him, your parents seem like assholes. They didn't want you to follow your dreams.

They wanted you to become a dentist to follow in their footsteps, instead of you pursuing your art career. They told you that you were nothing and that if you don't follow their rules under their roof, that you should leave, and that's just what you did.

That's how Hannibal met you. Even though you were in your worst shape, he still found you beautiful and now looks at you. Living in a luxurious home with the man of your life, and still doing what you wanted to do when you were younger.

Every time Hannibal thinks about that story, he wants nothing more than to bash your workers head in and feed it to their dogs.

Hannibal watched a fit looking couple walk the streets laughing together. Too bad they 're gonna be screaming in a minute. Hannibal sneakily creeped his way over to the two and pulled them in an alley before brutally murdering them. All he needed was their legs.

The man's leg was full of meat and which was a good sign. Hannibal took the guy's leg and the woman before dragging them in his car.

When he got home he instantly got to work, cutting up the couple. Tonight, he was gonna make a whole roasted leg, smoked, glazed and served on a sugar cane quill for him and your parents. He was gonna fix you something 'normal' because he knew how much you hated human flesh.

Believe it or not, when he told you he likes to eat humans, you didn't leave him. And that's because you love him. You love him so much that you didn't let that scare you away.

He played slow jazz music in the background as he cooked, and added every spice in the meal. You came downstairs seeing Hannibal cooking. "Smells good, baby. You need me to do anything?" Hannibal hummed. "Set the table, please?" You pulled out a tablecloth and placed it on the table while getting the utensils.

It was getting closer and closer to the time and you were now dressed. Hannibal came behind you, smirking. "Damn, darling. You look so good I might have to eat you." He playfully bit on your skin, a loud laugh coming out your throat. "Well, if you keep being a good boy, you might get to eat something tonight."

The flirting was soon stopped when a knock at the door came. You looked at Hannibal with worry in your eyes before taking a deep breath. Hannibal went back in the kitchen to get the food, while you walked to the door and opened it.

There stood your Mom and Dad who didn't look no different from the previous years, other than a few gray spots in their hair. "Y/n." Your Mom's tone was strict and straightforward. "Hi." You tried to hide the nervousness in your voice, but it clearly didn't work.

"Come in." You stepped aside and let them walk in. Your Dad dropped his coat on you, leaving you suffocated by the puffy coat. You hung it on the coat hanger and made your way to the dining room. The table was set neatly and to top it all off, the food was plated.

You three sat down and began eating in an awkward silence. “So, how's life been?” They paused and looked at you when you started a conversation. “Good.” The short answer was all that was needed until Hannibal got back.

Your eyes lit up and a sigh of relief came out when he brought the door, breaking the silence. “Mom, Dad, this is my husband, Hannibal.” They studied Hannibal closely seeing how neat and tidy he looked.

His hair was brushed perfectly, not a single wrinkle on his suit, and the strong smell of his cologne, indicated how well he was. “Also, he prepared this lovely dinner.” Another point added to their list. He could cook that’s even better!

Your Mom stood up and held her hand out. “Well, hello Hannibal. I’m glad to meet you.” Your eyebrows furrowed in slight anger. Your Mom had a flirty tone in her voice as she eyed Hannibal. “Oh Dear, let go of the guy.” Your Dad scolded, making your Mom let out an annoyed groan.

Everyone sat down and enjoyed the meal. Every time you tried talking, they would ignore you and talk to Hannibal instead. “Oh my god, guys guess what? I got invited to-” Before you could finish your sentence you were cut off by your Dad. “Y/n, shut the fuck up! Nobody cares about your art!”

You dropped your fork on the plate and got up. “Just gonna go to the bathroom real quick.” Your voice cracked and went to the bathroom. Your Mom let out a breath. “Now that she’s gone, let’s make a deal.”

Hannibal perked up at the sound of their offer. What could they want? “Y/n has a sister. Beautiful girl, 34, and she’s a doctor.” Your Mom raised her eyebrows up and down repeatedly.

Hannibal cocked his eyebrow up, not understanding it. “She’s rich! What does Y/n have to offer with that shitty art?” Hannibal didn’t like the way they were downgrading you. He didn’t like the way they were talking about you and your career.

“Excuse me?” Your parents looked at him, a little shocked by the change of his voice. “What my wife is saying is we want you to marry Y/n’s sister instead, that way she can have a famous chef husband!” Your Dad summed it all up as if it would make it even better.

Hannibal stood up and made his way to the kitchen, grabbing a knife. “Well, what if I love Y/n, and want to be with her?” The faint scoff could be heard. “Why would you want anything to do with her? She relies on art as her job, she doesn't know how to cook, she looks like a homeless person— I mean everything is wrong with her.”

Hannibal heard enough. With him meeting face to face with your parents, he held the knife up and lounged it in the body. He took turns between the two, stabbing them. Their screaming could probably be heard from miles away. There would be no surprise if the cops were called.

He kept stabbing them repeatedly, until there was no sound, except the knife meeting their cut open guts. He was on the ground, over their bodies at this point, wanting them to be dead.

The sound of a door opening made him turn around. You stood there looking down at your dead parents and bloody Hannibal with a knife in his hand. You walked over and helped him up. “Thank you.”Hannibal placed a kiss on your lips and pulled back.

“I respect you, My Love. I’ll never let anyone disrespect you again.”

#hannibal lecter #hannibal lecter fluff #hannibal lecter smut #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal lecter x you #hannibal lecter imagine #hannibal lecter fanfiction #slasher fluff #slasher imagines #slasher smut

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celtic-crossbow · 9 months

Text

It’s Alright, It’s Okay

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x fem!reader {Could be platonic but that’s not where my brain was}

Setting: Alexandria era

Warnings: Mentions of self harm, struggles with mental illness

Summary: You accidentally allow Daryl to see your scars.

A/N: Yesterday sucked for me for a million different reasons. This is really a way for me to vent more than anything. I’ve never done a y/n before so I’m sorry if I screw it up. No beta, all mistakes are cause I suck.

©celtic-crossbow 2023. I do not allow for my work to be copied, translated, modified, adapted, or placed on any other platform without my consent.

“I got the dishes!” You volunteered, probably a little too cheerfully, before collecting the empty plates from the coffee table and shuffling along to the kitchen. You had a dining table but it had never seen a single use.

It had been a rather uneventful day in Alexandria, for which you were thankful. That meant no one had died just trying to complete what used to be mundane tasks for everyday living. Now, since the world had gone to shit, everything was a risk. Just scrubbing the sauce from those dishes could somehow very well lead to your demise. Regardless, you rolled up your sleeves and ran the water.

Daryl had brought home a deer earlier in the day. It was a large buck that would feed the town for a while if the meat was rationed properly. He had been given his own portion, as per usual, for being responsible for the kill. The archer had used the meat grinder in the kitchen at his and Carol’s place, meaning, of course, that Carol had offered and he had shrugged while sharpening a knife.

You had chosen that moment to knock on their door. The silver-haired woman had shown you a cookie recipe but the pantry was out of an ingredient. Carol usually had the things you needed or would at least know something you could substitute.

“Oh, man! My sister used to make venison spaghetti!” You had commented while she had stepped away to get what you needed. You had half a box of angel hair pasta and a can of sauce at your place. “Hey, Dixon?” You continued when he hummed in acknowledgment, “think I could steal just a little of this to make some?”

He had stared at you for a moment before giving a nod. In your excitement, you had thrown him an invite to share the meal just as Carol returned and handed over the ziplock bag with the ingredient you needed for the cookies.

“Alrigh’.” He drawled, sheathing the knife he had been working with.

You quickly invited Carol as well, realizing what you had done, but she smiled knowingly and shook her head. You had at least waited until you were on their porch before slapping a palm to your forehead and calling yourself an idiot.

Still, dinner had gone over without a hitch, even if you did sit side by side on the couch with your plates on your laps. You had laughed when he’d tip back his head to dangle the end of the noodles over his mouth so he could descend the forkful carefully. He had even chuckled when you had dropped half a bite onto your shirt when trying to mimic his actions. It had really been…nice.

Now you stood in your kitchen, rinsing the dishes and placing them in the strainer. You hadn’t heard him enter, but you rarely did. The man moved like a ghost for someone his size.

“S’that from?” His sudden inquiry from just behind you had startled you enough to send the plate clattering into the sink. It didn’t break, thank goodness.

“What’s what from?” You replied, casting him a brief glance before you continued your task. The last dish was quickly rinsed and placed with the others.

“Them scars.”

You were drying your hands on a towel when you suddenly stilled. Fuck. The pale, raised imperfections stood out starkly on your forearms and you instantly felt nausea creeping up your throat, burning at the back of your tongue. “Oh, that’s nothing.” You dropped the towel and quickly started to roll down your sleeves.

But he was faster.

His calloused fingers felt rough against your skin in contrast to his gentle grip around your wrist. You felt electric pulses centering from where he was touching you, but the shame erupting from within you wouldn’t allow you to dwell on how right that felt.

Tears were already forming on your lashes as he studied the myriad of scars littering your arm from wrist to elbow. Some were larger or more jagged than others, but each one contained a story of your past; a hurt you inflicted upon yourself to cope with the hurt done to you by someone else.

“Don’t look like nothin’ ta me.”

You had never heard him speak so softly and it made you feel that much worse. Daryl Dixon was anything but soft. For him to pity you must mean you were a real piece of work.

“Please,” you begged, your bottom lip quivering. You were barely holding yourself together. “Just…leave it.”

Those striking blue eyes left your arm to focus on your face. You quickly looked away, lest he see how pathetic you were. He released you and took a step back.

“Thanks fer dinner, y/n.”

You nodded and tried to smile, but never met his gaze before you heard the front door close. You sat on the kitchen floor and cried for hours, finally dragging yourself to the couch a few hours before you’d have to be up for the start of another day.

Months passed by and things changed, as they often did. You started to find Daryl sitting on your porch steps, cleaning his crossbow or tinkering with some motorcycle part. Most days, you just offered him a greeting and went on your way. Some days, when you were feeling brave or especially curious, you would ask about his weapon. His replies were always short and gruff but never rude or angry.

Eventually, this became the norm. You started bringing him water or lemonade, sitting with him while you drank your tea. Conversations were never lengthy but enough to ensure any silence was comfortable. You started to miss him when he was gone for runs or recruiting. Then you’d open your door one morning to find him perched in what you had long ago deemed ‘his spot’ and the smile that would grace your features was unbidden yet genuine.

One warm summer evening, while you sat together on the top step, your head was laid against his shoulder while his arm was draped around yours. The first time you had tried to lean on him, he had flinched so hard that he had dropped the water glass and you had apologized profusely while cleaning up the mess. At some later point, you both had started dropping your walls, bit by bit, and now here you were.

Still, even with the contentment you found in each other's company, something lingered.

“Daryl?”

“Hmm?”

You could feel him move and knew he was looking down toward where your temple rested against the front of his shoulder. “I’d like to tell you about it now,” you paused for a breath, “if you still want to know.” You waited for him to ask what you were talking about but, as he tended to do, the archer surprised you.

“Ya can tell me if ya wanna talk ‘bout it. Ya don’ hafta though.”

You smiled to yourself but it faded just as quickly. “I did it to myself.” You took another deep breath before continuing, keeping your eyes on the stars in the distant sky. “My life was hard even before the end of the world. I couldn’t cope with the things that happened to me…that were done to me… so I’d find something sharp—” you heard and felt his breath hitch but you couldn’t stop now. “I’d use anything at first. Anything that could make a cut. Eventually I started using a razor blade.” You just let the words tumble out, feeling a tear slide down your cheek. You hadn’t even realized you were crying. “Everything just hurt so bad and it was the only way I could handle it all. It was the only thing that kept the pain at bay. I know it doesn’t make sense but I just… I needed…”

You felt Daryl shift and quickly found yourself pressed against his chest, his arm around your back while his other hand pressed against the back of your head. He had hugged you before but this? This was different. He didn’t say anything but you already knew that he wasn’t good with words, especially when it came to expressing emotion. So he was offering you this comfort.

And you accepted it without a second thought, crying hard while your hands fisted the material of his leather vest. The more you trembled, the tighter he held you. It was as if he was trying to keep you from shaking apart but somehow you knew that even if you did, he would pick up the pieces and put you together again.

After a long while, your tears had all but stopped, leaving you a sniffling, tired mess in his arms. He didn’t seem to care but had loosened his hold slightly and was rubbing small circles over your back while you collected yourself.

Now came the shame. “I’m sorry.” You managed quickly while you pulled away from him. His hands hovered for a moment like you would fall apart again any moment but he soon let them fall onto his knees.

“What fer?”

You could see him trying to catch your gaze from the corner of your eye as you wiped angrily at your face. “I know what I did was stupid.”

“It weren’t stupid, y/n.” Daryl said softly. You remembered when he had used that same softness when he had first seen the proof of your self mutilation. You nodded but didn’t say anything for a while. Eventually, you went back to staring at the stars, even though you could feel him still staring at you.

“I don’t hate them, you know.” You finally said. With a sigh, you braved a glance at him. He was still watching you, expression unreadable but not hard. “My scars.” Daryl nodded for you to continue. “I had a lot of battles and they are proof of that but… I won.” You looked away and shrugged with a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “I’m still here.”

“M’glad.” He replied quickly, drawing your gaze back to him. “That yer still here.”

You smiled again. It was small but this time, it was genuine. “Me too.” You watched each other for a few moments and you couldn’t help but notice him draw his bottom lip in between his teeth to gnaw at it. As you opened your mouth to ask if he was okay, he pushed himself off the step to stand.

“C’mon.” Daryl jerked his head toward your front door. Your brow knitted in confusion but you stood and crossed the small distance to the door.

“Daryl?”

“I wanna show ya somethin’.” He answered when his name had barely left your lips. Daryl reached in front of you to pull open the screen door and motioned for you to enter first. You could hear the deep, steadying breath he took as he followed you inside and began closing your door. “Ya trusted me with yers. I wanna trust ya with mine.”

#murda writes #daryl dixon fanfic #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon #daryl dixon x reader #the walking dead #daryl dixon x y/n #daryl dixon x you #the walking dead daryl dixon #Spotify

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athena-theunicorn · 10 months

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Hyrule doesn't have gender roles. Allow me to elaborate on this headcanon. (some minor totk spoilers for npcs)

Hyrule never had gender roles in a household. Men were just as likely to be seen mending clothes as they were hunting for food. Women were just as likely to be tending fields as they were cooking dinner. Was the woman the better shot in the household? Let her gather enough meat to feed everyone, because it would take less time and recourses. Was the man better at folding the clothes? Let him do the laundry. The fields were tended to more efficiently because both the man and woman of the house would be working on it.

This is based in canon, too. Women are seen running shops and businesses on their own. Prima ran the inn even after she got married. Cece ran her own business. Lasli runs the Kakariko armor shop. Literally all Gerudo town was built on the backs of women. Uma works the fields in Hateno. Even Zelda built and taught in the school.

All this to say, Link does the cooking, hunting, and some of the cleaning. Zelda mends his clothes and makes most of their income.

Thank you for your time.

#legend of zelda #zelink #tears of the kingdom #breath of the wild #legend of zelda tears of the kingdom #tears of the kingdom headcanons #legend of zelda headcanons

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meatyarms · 10 months

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˗ˏˋᴊᴏᴛᴛɪɴɢ´ˎ˗

ּ Breed Kink Sevika ּ 1,070

ּ She’s all about the bulge of your stomach when she pours into you, just the sight of your soft, delicate body with a little hump of her cum sneaks her bottom lip under her teeth a bit too fast, biting blindly until the fresh blood slips into her tongue turning her face into something terrible— the skin finally gave up after hours of her canine harassing it.

ּ This kink runs too deep in her that not even a moment into your relationship she had already introduced the particular toy— breeding strap, goodness knows how many inches it pushes, you were not counting when your jaw hit the floor gaping at its structure.

ּ Unlike you, it wasn’t her first time using it. She’s got the experience of an expert, and practice.

ּ “Such a pretty pussy for me to fill”, “gonna pump your guts out, princess”,,

ּ Her muscle memory carries a ton yet never once failed her, works her whole body on yours like a craft.

ּ Missionary, missionary, missionary, this woman performs in that position. Hazel eyes frozen under a crowd of wrinkled knitted brows, this very expression would mean trouble if it weren’t fixated on your stomach area. Looking, observing the outward shape of the strap- her dick building each full thrust.

ּ Cussing under her breath at its every appearance as she starts slow, in awe by how your belly button stretches out from the size of her. Now she wants to feel it, circles a finger around it, kisses it. Fondles it like it’s another one of you.

ּ A whole mountain-full of her cock forming so goddamn deep within you makes her eyes bling with lust, it feeds her, keeps her eyelids splayed for longer than they should just drying them up from how bad she needs to see it.

ּ And without a doubt imagines how it would feel If it were her own flesh and meat feeling the searing insides of your cunt, it literally does something to her.

ּ It adds more impulse on her hips, bigger numbers to her pace, makes more heavy and passionate her breathing and washes sultry red onto her skin.

ּ The desire to grow a cock of her own and fuck you with it helps her pound harder into you, running after that high— cumming inside you for that bulge.

ּ “Gonna cum inside you, baby”, “gonna- gonna pump a goddamn baby into yo-”,,

ּ Spreads your legs apart as she stills the whole thing in, not giving you a chance to bunch together like you desperately want to; they tend to come in the way and hide the filling from her.

ּ She’d watch, oh she’d let her eyes stalk for that build up in your steaming insides.

ּ Would beat whoever the fuck she has to just to be able to impregnate you, and when her cum inflates your navel you know she imagines it going straight to your unbothered egg.

ּ There she immediately stops this chain of thought. It only upsets her, the sour fact that non of it is real.

ּ It’s maudlin how she wants to drag that chance out of her dreams and have it, just so hell-bent on pumping a family into you.

ּ Her family.

ּ Always heats up the liquid before use, she likes the cum seeping inside of you to be hot, wouldn’t wanna miss out on you melting and fumbling at its temperature.

ּ Doesn’t pull out once she’s finished— not even for a while after— as to trap it all in.

ּ And how she salivates at the ample trickles that would escape from your folds, sliding down your inner thighs in a rush to mess the sheets with white fluid. Every drop speaks on just how full she made you, the pearls of her work. Her pridefulness grows unmatched here.

ּ Finally pulls out when the sensations are long dead, her focus severely divided between the utterly drenched strap and your leaking pussy.

ּ Her fingers would gravitate to you always, sliding the cum back in then covers your hole with two pads for surety.

ּ “Must take it all, sweetheart”, “want it to swim in your pussy only”,,

ּ Would definitely overstimulate you just to relive the fantasy over and again.

ּ “Can’t stop filling you up, baby”, “got a lotta seed for you to take”,,

ּ This one’s a listener, goes nuts when you describe the feeling in its purest form— right after she fills you up. Your approval equals succour to her unbearable thirst for a real dick.

ּ “How does it feel, baby?”, “tell me how good it is, sweetheart”,,

ּ Closes the distance between your faces in an effort to capture all of your weary little murmurs, softening the tension amid her eyebrows and pupils affectionately searching for yours which are…well…

ּ “So..full..”,,

ּ Losing your voice by the word, your consciousness hanging by a thread, eyes hopelessly drooping. Can’t even feel the rain gushing out the corners of your mouth from how much of your senses the hot slick inside of you demands. You collapse.

ּ And she grooves on it.

ּ “good, knew you could take all of me”,,

ּ Leaving the bedroom stops nothing, not one of her corrupt urges fade, might shrink to a smaller digit in the company of others. Sevika’s apparel is of notable importance to her, but with you all primped in her lap, she falters.

ּ Wraps an arm around you, with the boozes help, she starts to let loose.

ּ Eyes prying at your abdomen more frequently as the city begins to lose light, her hand would climb up the drapes of fabric on you and land flat on the spot. Rubbing her precious, feeling its warmth, how it expands as you breathe in.

ּ It kills her to hold it in.

ּ At first you thought she was throwing a nice gesture at your dress or the dozen rhinestones on your new bedazzling belt, but no.

ּ The woman’s rotten to the core.

ּ While you sit there all coy in your little pink wear, she is halfway through roughing up the middle part of you in her twisted head. And that’s just the start.

ּ It all builds up and eventually makes her dangerously hungry, you couldn’t be ready for where her arms would go once you stepped into the house that night.

ּ “Been fuckin’ waitin’ all day”, “Imma fill you up real good, baby”,,

ּ Baby, she loves your pretty dress. But she still wants to pump into you till the stitching pops off.

,,,

ּ I definitely added a few more kinks into this one but I think it goes naturally with the breeding kink AND OH this is so lewd. I wanna call this extreme but stalker Sev is mmmgfffgg,,

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mickmundy · 29 days

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scout's ma headcanon thread! she was requested by a couple of people and i'm having a burst of inspiration for her so without further ado, let's get to it! i hope you like!

absolutely not your average "housewife"! there's lots of professions i entertain her having (hair/nail salon worker, waitress/bartender, something Generally Unassuming for a woman in the 70s to have as a job)… all intentionally mundane, but serving useful purpose in her life! good for keeping tabs on things around the city, sussing people out and potentially letting spy know any hot goss! these are just day jobs; she gets her thrills elsewhere!

knows everything happening everywhere, anytime. spy learned lots of his intuition-based skills from her! any time spy thinks he knows everything, she always has something in her back pocket that he doesn't! >:)

has a VERY contagious laugh that you can hear miles away. she loves being loud! will clap you really hard on your back or slam her hand on the table when she laughs.

can hold her liquor better than anyone around! doesn't like to get sloppy, but that doesn't mean she doesn't from time to time! loves drinking beer, but will always enjoy a nice glass of wine with her beloved spy! :-) wouldn't/doesn't care if scout is lgbt+ lol. it's absolutely not a big deal to him to come out to her, either. he knows his ma means it when she says she loves him no matter what! she will occasionally hit him with "well ya better bring somebody home to meet me sometime!" (loud laughter)

i think she'd be more financially well-off than her home leads one to believe; she's good at stashing and moving around spy's cash! her apartment is humble but she always looks immaculate. doesn't let scout know how much money she really has. very financially savvy and an incredible negotiator… even if it means getting a little ugly! used car salesman tremble in her presence!

fights like a scorned gambler who's owed a debt. won't let you know she can fight, though! likes it when people think she's just some dainty dame.

is a material girl, but knows what really matters. fell in love with spy before he was The Spy he is today and values loyalty and trust/honesty above all else. some might think that's ironic considering her partner of choice, but she'll be quick to quip back with a snide/cheeky "of course that's what you think! you only know the mask!"

breaking balls is her love language. she'll tease you, but never maliciously. this is also scout's, and one of spy's, languages of love too.

always trying to feed you. "put some more meat on your bones! it's good for ya!" (pops gum and winks at you) while i think she no doubt is well-versed in the lifestyle that spy leads, she's not Directly "in-it" like spy is. not an agent of any kind herself, but gives spy a hand when she can. knows how to shoot a gun and wield a kitchen knife!

grew up dirt poor and has "a champagne taste on a beer budget". high standards, takes no guff, won't hesitate to put you in your place. this (and many other reasons) is why spy loves her :-)

very charismatic, knows how to lie, but also how to be sincere. is genuinely a good mother to her boys, who love her in return. they're all protective of her even though they know they don't have to be; she has no problem sticking up for herself!

spy was not her first husband, but he's her favorite! she loves him very much, and he loves her. they aren't exes, they're happily together, and have an open relationship.

she knows all of the mercs (some better than others ofc!) and won't hesitate to talk their ears off when she visits the base, armed with embarrassing photos and stories about spy and scout that make them both groan and the mercs holler with laughter!

she picks out spy's suits for/with him. she's the only one spy would ever trust to dress him other than himself! they always look great together and accessorize around each other.

she does not tell scout about who his father is. not because she doesn't want to, but she knows the nature of spy's job and knows "the business" from being around him for all this time; it's the best thing to keep scout and herself (also spy!) safe. i think scout would be angry at first, but once it's explained to him, he'd understand. ma knows best!

spy taught her how to walk in heels and does things like painting her nails for her all the time. he always makes sure she has enough money for a well-deserved spa day, but if she knows he's coming to town, she'll let her nails get a little busted up so spy can paint them for her!

she loves to look at spy and sigh a fond "ugh, i could just kill you!" while smirking/bating her eyes at him after/as he showers her with gifts and other wonderful things… to which spy chuckles and hums lovingly and replies with "mhmhmm, ma petite chou fleur, if anyone could, it would be you. <3" and they give each other the most Loving Look.. :')

she's younger than spy but not by much. they met while she was a waitress in a diner in boston while spy was on a mission to assassinate a target in the city early in his career (when his suits were still cheap.. <3). he hides in the diner after a particularly fiery shootout and his pursuers come into the place. she recognizes him as the Quiet Gentleman who has been coming in for coffee in the mornings to enjoy with a cigarette. covers for him and spy never forgets her kindness and quick wit. he comes back after the mission ends and, with his payout from the job, treats her to a romantic night and promises to see her again. no matter how far away spy goes, he always returns to her! she has more faith in him than he deserves (so he says), to which she smirks and straightens his (now expensive <3) suit tie and places a kiss on his balaclava's cheek and says "we both know i only deserve the best." and winks at him and he smiles at her and hums in agreement.. kisses her hand… siigh.. this is a massively condensed "origin story" for them lol but! AH I LOVE THEM

AHH I HAVE SO MANY MORE THOUGHTS BUT FOR NOW.... i will leave with all of this... HEHE TYSM for reading! ^__^ i hope you enjoy ehe!!

#mercthreads #<- not a merc but this is where my long tf2 hc posts go slkjdf #dutchfoolery #dutchiehcs #tf2 #scout's ma #scoutma

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roosterforme · 1 year

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Lips on You | Rooster x Reader

Summary: When Rooster upsets you at the Hard Deck, he earns your forgiveness with his mouth and his tongue.

Warnings: Fluff, angst, somnophilia and smut

Length: 1700 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female Reader

Based on this request!

This was written to accompany my series Is It Working For You? but it can be read on its own!

Check my masterlist.

You agreed to a Saturday night out at the Hard Deck with your boyfriend. You did not, however, agree to a night of watching all the single women paw at him all evening long. Maybe it was your fault since you asked him to shave off his mustache for you, because now every girl within a three mile radius was making a fuss over the cute stubble he had growing in.

"Oh my God, Rooster! You still look hot, even without the stache!" This one looked barely twenty-one and had on a glorified bikini top as her outfit. You were starting to feel like you couldn't leave him at the bar alone for more than a few minutes at a time. He kept getting cornered up there. And now bikini top girl was literally trying to touch his face.

--------------------------------

"Seriously?" you asked, taking one of the bottles.

"What?" he asked innocently, grabbing a pool cue with his empty hand.

Phoenix stood next to you, shaking her head. "Don't play dumb, Bradshaw. You shaved your mustache off. Now you've got stubble. It's like a fresh meat feeding ground in here. All these girls think you look new and exciting, and you know it," she said with an eye roll.

"Yes! Phoenix is right!" you exclaimed, glad to have someone else on your side. "If I take my eyes off of you for one minute, one of them is going to drag you away," you said, gesturing to everyone sitting at the bar.

"Nah, you don't have to worry about that, Baby Girl," he promised, kissing you on the cheek and rubbing his stubble on your face before taking a turn at pool. You just sighed and sipped your beer. That was easy for him to say; he seemed blissfully oblivious. You wished he would do something to shut them all down.

When you and Bradley both needed another drink, you headed to the bar before he got a chance to get swarmed. But you could literally feel a set of eyes on you as you ordered and waited for Penny to get the beers. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw a woman walk up to Bradley after she made sure you were distracted. "Goodness," you muttered to yourself.

But when you grabbed the drinks and turned back toward the pool table, you saw her writing something down on a napkin. And when you hustled back in that direction, you heard her tell your boyfriend, "Call me sometime, Roo."

You froze up and had to fight hard to control the urge to throw both drinks at her face. Your blood pressure increased, and your heart rate sped up. You were practically seeing red.

Roo?!

Oh, hell no. He was your Roo!

You listened as he lamely told the other woman, "Oh, no, I have a girlfriend."

She giggled. "Just keep my number anyway." You watched her tuck the napkin into his shirt pocket and pat his chest a few times for good measure.

"No, really. Thanks, but no thanks," he told her with a laugh, pulling it back out of his pocket and handing it back to her.

"You never know. Keep it just in case," she told him with a wink, but you grabbed the napkin out of her hand.

"The fuck he will!" You were practically yelling, and you watched the other woman back away with her hands held up in surrender.

Bradley looked at you with a smile on his face and a laugh on his lips. "Sweetheart, I told her I have a girlfriend. It was no big deal."

You were seething now as you shredded the napkin to bits and let the tiny pieces fall to the floor like confetti.

"No big deal? Did you hear what she called you?" you asked, and he shook his head slowly. "She called you Roo! That's what I call you, Bradley!"

"I honestly wasn't even listening to her, Baby Girl."

"Sounds like trouble in paradise," Hangman muttered, and you shot him a look too.

"Zip it, Bagman. If you were half as hot as you think you are, none of these women would be hanging on Rooster," you informed him.

Bradley started cracking up, literally doubled over laughing. "And you can zip it too, Roo. I'm ready to go home."

He had the decency to look abashed as you chugged your beer and set the bottle down softly. "Actually, you stay. Have fun. I'll get an Uber. Night, Phoenix."

You made it all the way to the parking lot and had the ride share app open on your phone before Bradley came running up behind you. "Sweetheart, wait! I'll take you home, okay? We can go back to your place."

You rolled your eyes and stopped in your tracks. "You want to come back with me now?"

"Of course," he replied, gently taking your hand in his and changing your course toward the Bronco. "Please?"

"Fine," you agreed, and he buckled you in and drove you back to your apartment in silence.

As you got undressed and got ready for bed, he was your shadow. He helped you pull your hair up into a bun, kissing your neck in the process. He got you a glass of water so you could take your birth control pill. He fluffed your pillow.

"Are you still mad at me?" he asked softly when you rolled away from him after he reached for you in bed.

"Yeah, I am."

He was silent in the darkness for a moment. "Should I have been more firm? Told her I wasn't interested at all? Insisted she shouldn't call me Roo?" he asked softly.

You chuckled darkly. "Wow, it only took you an hour to figure that out."

More silence. "I'm sorry, Baby Girl. That's what I should have said to her. That's what I should have said to everyone. I... well, you know I don't have a lot of dating experience. And my words have never had much of an impact on anyone, ever. Sometimes I don't know what you expect from me. And I've never been in love before."

You felt your heart soften a little bit.

"But I'm not trying to make excuses for myself. You're the only girl for me, and I'll be better next time. Can you forgive me, Baby Girl?"

You rolled further away from him. "Maybe."

He sighed deeply but let you have your space.

------------------------------------

When you woke up to the early morning light peaking through your window blinds, you felt cool air on your skin, and a sinful sounding moan escaped your lips.

"Ohhh," you whined. Your entire body felt relaxed from sleep, but you were simultaneously receiving so much unexpected pleasure.

Bradley was eating your pussy. You'd never woken up to something as insanely sexy as this before in your life. He was going slowly, seemingly allowing you to get used to the sensation as you woke up. His lips were spreading you open so he could taste all of you with his broad tongue, while softly stroking your thighs with his rough hands.

As you looked down at him and whimpered, he licked one stroke from your opening to your clit, swirling his tongue before saying, "Morning, Sweetheart. Can you forgive me for last night?"

You groaned, gripped his wavy hair in both of your hands, and guided his face back down to your pussy.

"Make me come, Roo. Then maybe I'll forgive you."

You didn't miss the smirk on his face as he nodded and lowered his lips to place a soft kiss to your pussy. He knew how to get you off, and you knew you would end up forgiving him. You were planning on forgiving him anyway; he had admitted he'd never been in love before you. And you knew he'd only had two other girlfriends.

You also knew he loved going down on you.

He ran his nose along your landing strip and through your wetness before he fucked you lazily with his tongue. Oh, the buildup was blissful; there was no urgency, no rush to the finish. You let your grip on his hair loosen as he pushed your thighs wider before replacing his tongue with his hand. He stretched you out and fucked you with two big fingers, all the way up to his knuckles. You hissed as his stubble rubbed you just right, the gritty sensation on your clit making you buck against him.

"Oh!" you grunted. You felt yourself squeeze his fingers, riding his hand as he wrapped his pink lips around your clit, softly at first, then with enough pressure that you were moaning his name.

"Bradley." Your broken whisper goaded him on. He sucked your clit between his lips, teasing you softly with the tip of his talented tongue. His fingers pumped into you, and you felt that first clench of your orgasm as your moans escalated.

You fleetingly gave thanks that your roommate was a very sound sleeper as Bradley's fingers hit that magic spot inside that had the pitch of your voice getting higher and higher as your chest expanded faster as you gasped for air.

Bradley's tongue rubbed you just right as your back arched off the bed, and you came on his face as your legs twitched.

Bradley withdrew his fingers, and you watched him lick them clean as he crawled up the bed to lay down beside you. "Please forgive me, Sweetheart. I'm sorry. I'll be better."

You kissed his mouth and rolled him onto his back. "You'd better be the best, Roo. Don't make me jealous like that again." You licked his tongue, tasting yourself in his mouth and playing with his hair.

"I'll be so good for you. You'll never want to leave."

You’ll never want to leave, Baby Girl!!!!! Hope you enjoyed this, nonny!

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You watched your boyfriend back away with a nervous laugh, one beer in each hand, as he made his way back toward you and the other aviators.

#bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw imagine #top gun fanfiction #rooster fanfic #rooster x reader #rooster x you #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw fanfiction #bradley rooster x reader #bradley bradshaw smut #rooster smut #rooster x female reader

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