#fic: helen | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kiwisbell · 2 months

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helen ; chapter one

dear joel

Si vis pacem, para bellum. Or, the inciting incident.

series masterlist | my masterlist pairing: joel miller x f!reader tags/warnings: 18+ (MDNI), john wick AU, (retired) hitman!joel, husband!joel, graphic violence, established relationship, artist!reader, love as worship (and blasphemy), blood + injuries, murder, cars, joel lifts reader once, reader has hair, oral sex (f receiving - aka munch!joel returns), married fluff, angst, threats of rape/SA, home invasion, disgusting awful men, childhood/religious trauma, the typical alcohol + smoking + profanity, erotic paintings, dividers by @/saradika word count: ~ 8.2k a/n: so i'm posting this and sprinting away because i'm terrified. that being said, this story means more to me than words can say and i sincerely hope you enjoy what i have to offer. thank you so much for reading, and please let me know what you think!! gigantic thanks to @cavillscurls for beta reading this chapter and being generally incredible throughout this whole process. i couldn't have done it without ya baby ❤️ next

PREFACE

“Love is my mover, source of all I say.”

— The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto II.

The blood is tangy, near-sweet, as he swipes his forearm over his mouth and smears crimson on his shirtsleeve. It tingles faintly on his lips and crackles, warm as the melt from a late-winter snow. He feels it settle in the grooves of his palms, the hairs of his beard. He’s drowning in it.

Joel Miller grins as the punch rocks his jaw.

His opponent hits hard, but he’s slow. He’ll take five punches in the time it takes to wind up for one. Joel brings his arm up to block the next and delivers a blow to the sternum with his knee as his opponent’s guard drops. Wide open, the man stumbles a few steps back, choking down the telltale wheeze of being winded. Joel marches forward, relentless in his crusade, grasping him by the scruff of his neck, teeth bared like a mad wild dog, and bears his skull down on the side of the railing. Around them, the wind howls and lashes at his clothes, but he still hears the pained scream as if it were poured into his ears.

The man drops to his knees, and Joel grabs him again, bashing his head repeatedly against the steel bar, the lapel of an Italian leather coat bunching between his fingers, tainted by rainwater and the fist of the man who's about to take his life.

And fuck, Joel wants to make it last.

But there's a knife in his opponent’s hand, conjured from the darkness of his coat pocket, and Joel must release him to avoid the lethal slash of the blade. Blinking blood and lashing rain from his eyes, the man lunges with a snarl, and Joel recovers from his lost victory, stopping him with his fingers curled around his opponent’s wrist. He brings his hand to the crook of the man’s elbow and uses his leverage to snap the bone.

Yowling, the man drops to his haunches, the knife clattering to the ground. Joel, chest heaving, stands over him, flexing his fingers as he readies his fist for the killing blow.

His name leaves the man’s bloodied mouth, accompanied by a mouthful of crimson-tainted saliva spat on the ground at Joel’s feet.

“Joel…” He lifts his head, cradling his own broken arm, and sneers. There’s a chilling glow of satisfaction in it. “Did you get your perfect life, Joel? Do you really think you’ve won? It won’t ever stop. Not after you’ve killed me, not after you’ve killed all of them. Is that what you’re going to do? Kill them all?”

Joel staggers backward to pick up the knife, clamping his hand over the curve of his opponent’s shoulder, and drives the blade down into his neck.

“Yeah.”

He leaves him slumped against the railing, choking on his own blood, and limps his way to one of the beaten-up Range Rovers whose front right bumper was totaled in the crash. Joel groans as he settles into the front seat, gnashing his teeth together as he lifts the hem of his dress shirt to inspect the damage.

The bullet has pierced the soft flesh of his stomach. Blood blossoms bright through the white fabric and spirals outward. Joel blinks away rainwater and pulls his phone from his pocket, the screen smeared with blood. He doesn’t know if it belongs to him.

He grits his teeth and makes a call.

In the back of his head, Joel vaguely recalls an old song of prayer. He used to watch others sing it while he lingered in the shadows at the back of the cathedral. He would memorise the shape of the words leaving their mouths and wonder how a benevolent God, who had shaped man—perfection—from red clay, could have made him.

He would lower his head as if swept up in a tide of repentance, examining the bones beneath his hands. The flickering of tendons. The bulge of veins as he delicately folded his fingers into a fist.

Red clay. Blood. The old dance of serpent and man.

He was fourteen when he escaped.

Joel looks down at his bloodied hands. They’ve grown since then. They’re stronger, thicker, scarred. There are no pictures of him as a young boy, but if he saw one, he knows he would not recognise himself. Not his eyes nor his hands nor the set of his jaw. God makes man makes boy. He is destined for Hell.

The call goes to voicemail.

Joel curls his hand into a fist and whispers a prayer.

Something cool and wet collides with Joel’s forehead as he stalks into the airport. It’s begun to rain.

His target gate is close, and he's early. The press of bodies begins to crowd him. Prickling body spray and sickly-sweet perfume and sunburned skin from Spring Break return flights. Joel shoves through them, unseen, unnoticed amid the rowdy din of reunions. The collar of his shirt sticks to the nape of his neck. It’s the sensation of being strangled, clammy palms slick against his own skin. He adjusts his jacket and tightens his grip on the black fabric dangling from his hand.

Joel waits by the gate, his eyes flitting between its apex and the people milling about him, reuniting with partners and parents and children. Nobody seems suspicious, but his fingers still dance upon the blade hidden in the inner lining of his leather jacket. Those performing wide berths around the scowling man try not to make eye contact. Most don't notice his presence at all.

He waits, flicking his sleeve up every couple minutes to check the time on the inside of his wrist. Every tick of the thin hand registers in the pulse of his heart against his ribs.

He hears the suitcase before he sees it—and it’s hard to miss. One wheel is wonky, and the case stutters in its path along the polished floor. It’s huge, pink, hideous.

His hand dropping from the blade in his pocket, Joel makes his move.

You see him approaching and drop the lopsided suitcase, shrieking as he takes you up in his arms.

He swings you around twice, holding you firm against him, your fingers grabbing desperately at the locks of his curly, brown-grey hair. Joel nestles his face in your throat and breathes in: vanilla and shampoo and the unmistakable scent of a you he can never shake. Home.

You shudder into him, your feet barely scraping the floor as he holds you around the waist, one hand cradling the back of your head. Joel lets his eyes close.

Daisies made of diamonds dangle from your wrist, connected by a fine golden chain. He can feel the faux petals dig into the back of his neck, etching their shape into the phantom pain of the ink peeking out from his collar. Sometimes, his skin would pull back with the needle, briefly protruding from his body like a tent made of flesh, as if grasping feebly onto some innocent time before the black hands of Dürer were permanently his. His to remember. His to loathe.

There is a slight in the way his gift to you, wrapped snugly around your wrist since the first anniversary, kisses the old wound, the tip of the cross, and all he feels is the echo of agony. He holds you tighter.

“Can’t breathe, honey,” you croak, shoulders shaking with laughter.

Joel mutters an apology, loosening his grip on you just enough to pull away and cup your face in his hands. His thumb traces the curve of your jaw, and you beam up at him, smoothing back the hair you’d tousled with your fingers. A curl swoops back down over his forehead.

“Hi,” you say softly.

“Hi,” says Joel, already on his way to kissing you, his mouth slanting over yours.

He tastes of mint and smells of his dark cologne, pine, Joel. Your Joel. And you kiss him like it—your hand cupping the nape of his neck, the other sliding up his strong, broad back, your lips meeting in a consuming kiss that knocks you off-kilter. He bends slightly over you, keeping you upright with a large hand on your lower back.

“Never leave again,” mumbles Joel, grinning against your mouth, his hand sliding down your arm to your left hand, where two glimmering bands rest on your third finger. Your hands intertwine, and he bumps his nose into yours.

You give him another short kiss. “Get me out of here.”

Joel slides your raincoat over your shoulders and you slip your arms through. He presses his lips to your forehead and closes his eyes, letting himself linger briefly in your space before he scoops up the handle to your affront of a suitcase and escorts you out back to the car.

He opens the passenger-side door to let you slide into your seat, securing your case in the back, and makes his way around the vehicle. You reach for the collar of his jacket and pull him toward you for a kiss, grasping his jaw between your thumb and forefinger. He grins crookedly when you pull away, bushing the pad of his thumb across your cheekbone.

“Missed you,” he says.

You sink your teeth into your bottom lip. “Yeah? How much?”

He reaches across the console and kisses you deeply, making you gasp into him as his hand slips underneath your silky little blouse and fits his fingers in the grooves between your ribs. Your skin prickles with goosebumps under his touch as his exploration migrates to your belly, sliding south, ever lower, his hand playing at the waistband of your panties—

“Okay,” you laugh, smacking his hand away. “Okay. You’re paying for parking, Miller.”

“I’ve got money,” he says plainly, dipping his head to kiss you again, his pupils fattening as he tries to gorge on all of you at once. You place a hand on his chest, enjoying the strong pulse of his heartbeat where you typically rest your head, and gently push him back.

“Take me home,” you coo, your gaze sweeping fondly over the face that hasn’t changed, that you cannot forget, “and show me how much you missed me.”

His wedding band coolly kisses your cheek as he retracts his hand, reluctantly turning his key in the ignition. “Yes, ma’am.”

He’s always been a meticulous driver, expert in the way he flattens his palm on the wheel, his other on the back of your headrest, turns the car out of the spot, and merges onto the freeway. When he no longer needs his other hand, he gives it to you, and you bring his long-scarred knuckles to your lips.

His hands are marked by years of use, of abuse, speckled with little white scars, freckles, divots, curves. You already know the lines in his palms, have traced them and painted them and put them under sensitive study with your body. But you turn his hand over nonetheless, your own fingertips careful in their examination, following their contours as if searching for a change. But they’re the same—he’s the same—and so you tuck your fingers between his and bring your palms together in a warm, awaited kiss.

It’s only been a month, but you study his profile as if years have passed. He’s still Joel, still surly, plush lips curved into a permanent pout, the space between his brows marked by a ponderous gash, the vein in his throat fluttering in silence when a driver cuts him off or he spots a car following too closely. He’s a good study, practised in his stoicism.

His nose is artful. Its convex slope, pronounced, strong, curves deliciously into his upper lip, the soft greying hairs in between a space of waiting. His mouth, soft, learned, often languageless, is what you know best of him. You know it like your own—can trace its shape in the dark, hands behind your back. The strong jawline, the slight wrinkles beside his eyes, ones he never had before you met him, the patches of skin disrupting the fullness of his beard: they’re the picture of the man you married, and there’s always something you’re disappointed in discovering you’ve missed. A something you’ve never noticed, a something you wish you could go back and add to all your canvases.

When you left him at the airport, it was a freckle just beneath the hollow of his throat. Now, it’s the frayed hairs just behind his ears, crimping in frizzy patterns that don’t match the languorous curls on the rest of his head. They look singed, as if he’d put a match to himself.

Maybe it’s making up for lost time, for all the days you’d missed being away from your Joel. But there’s a second, smaller something: the little round scar beneath those wild hairs. You lift your hand to it, and before your thumb can make a pass over the white, puckered skin, he speaks.

“It’s a burn.” Merging off the freeway, he pulls into a gas station. His fuel ticker is tapping gently at the E. “From a cigarette.”

Your heart tips off the edge of a yawning chasm, and your hand pulls back in a wary twitch of your fingers. Throat tightening, you feel a distinct pressure behind the T of your nose and forehead. “From the people who raised you?”

A muscle in his jaw spasms, and he lifts your joined hands to his mouth. “None of that,” he says softly, meeting your eyes that well with unshed tears.

No tears for me, he once said to you. Not until I’ve earned ‘em.

You sniffle, watching him nuzzle his cheek against the soft flesh of your wrist, his lips finding your vein and following it halfway up your forearm.

“Tell me about your show.”

You let him tuck your tears away in the grooves between his joints and smile. “Successful, but lonely. So many people knew my name, and I’m pretty sure I knew about a quarter of theirs. Made me feel like some snobbish pig.”

“Nah, that’s my job,” says Joel. “Everybody loves you, baby.”

You roll your eyes. “Either way, the gallery was a hit. The triptych sold for the highest at the auction.”

Joel smirks. “The nude ones?”

“Yeah, dirtbag. The nude ones.” Your smile is dry, still somehow saccharine.

“I liked those,” says Joel, fingers playing upon your upper thigh.

“Perv.”

He playfully smacks your thigh. “Goddamn right.”

“It was good. It was. But I missed you.” Your voice breaks, and Joel squeezes your fingers in response. “Could hardly sleep without you there.”

He nods like he knows. And you know he does; he barely sleeps, even if you’re on top of him. “I know everybody loves you,” he says, “but next time you go away, remember I love you most.”

You blink away the shimmer of tears so you can see him clearly. “Casanova.”

“That's right,” he says, nosing his way into another kiss. “Don't ever leave me again, baby. My heart can't take it.”

You shake your head, laughing into his mouth as your tears slip onto your tongue. “Never again,” you whisper, “unless the hotel food is good.”

He nods. “I’ll make an exception, long as I can go.”

You grin. “You know… if I’m at home all the time…”

“We’re not getting a puppy.”

“Joel—”

“No.”

“Don't you want to make your wife happy?”

He faux-snaps at you like a dog, catching his teeth around your earlobe. “As a goddamn clam.”

You gasp as you feel his mouth suckle gently at the sensitive spot beneath your ear. “I… I want… We should at least talk about…”

“Hmm?”

He’s playing with the hem of your blouse, deft fingers leaving warm imprints on the soft skin of your belly, fingers enveloping your precious heart when he places his hand on your upper back. The organ pounds under his touch, pouring its blood into his palms.

You haven’t felt his touch in so long.

“I want…”

Joel hums again, prompting, his pinky finger dipping under the strap of your bra and pulling back, snapping it against your skin.

“What was I talking about?”

He chuckles, bringing his lips back to yours. You grasp for him greedily, trying to fix him to you this time, your fingers bunching the fabric of his T-shirt. But he’s pulling back, his forehead falling against yours.

“I’ll consider it,” he says, “if you can convince me.”

Giddily, perhaps stupidly, you smile. “I’m very prepared to convince you.”

“Uh-huh. I don't doubt you, baby. How ‘bout you let me fill up the car first?”

The throbbing bass of house music Dopplers as another car approaches the gas station. Three men exit the vehicle, one of them already lighting a cigarette while the other two make for the convenience store. One is wearing a backwards cap and the other a pressed suit.

Nice move, you think, sinking back in your seat a little as Joel slides out of the car, smoking by a gas pump.

“Nice ride,” says the man at the opposite pump, puffing at his cigarette.

“Thanks,” says Joel with a polite smile, locking the nozzle in the fuel tank and folding his arms over his chest. He’s hovering by the passenger door, halfway to blocking you from view.

The man surveys the hood, his fingers gently tracing the cool silver. “Boss Mustang 429. She a ‘70?”

“‘69,” says Joel.

“Very nice,” muses the man, drumming his hands on the hood. You feel the crude vibrations in your spine and straighten in your seat. This man—this kid, all his puffing and grinning and loud music—is bad news. Your stomach coils taut when his gaze shifts from Joel to you, staring hard through the windshield.

“How much?” he asks Joel.

You notice the minute stiffening of the muscles in Joel’s shoulders. “What?”

“How much for the car?”

Joel pushes off the car and dislodges the pump, brushing the kid aside on his way back to the driver’s side. “It’s not for sale.”

The kid wanders to the passenger-side door before Joel can turn on the car and roll up the window. He leans his elbows just inside, his face mere inches from yours, and you can smell the sickly, cloying smoke of his cigarette as he blows it in your direction.

He says something to Joel in Spanish that makes your husband’s hand still on the wheel.

And your Joel, your courteous Joel, your never-the-shit-stirrer Joel, narrows his eyes at the kid and says something in kind, his voice a low scrape that shudders through you.

It’s too fast for you to hear, and you never learned Spanish, and you were under the assumption (until right fucking now) that Joel never did, either. But he starts the car and rolls up the window, and you’re peeling away from the gas station before the kid can reply.

“That was…” You cast around for the words and instead rest your eyes on Joel, whose jaw looks ready to snap. “Joel, honey, when did you learn Spanish?”

He’s silent for a long while, and you would assume that he didn’t hear you—if you didn't know that he has stellar hearing. When he pulls onto the long stretch of road, signalling your first firm tug away from the stifling noise of civilization, he finally speaks.

“Picked it up in the Marines.”

“What did he say to you?”

Joel’s skin is stretched taut over his knuckles. “Somethin’ stupid.”

You hum, letting him linger in silence for the remainder of the trip. Scenery, green and grey sky and the drizzle of rain, swoops by the window, and you're going home. It isn't much different from what you found in Vancouver, but it's familiar. It’s the smell of the air after the rain and the way your shared home comes into view the same way it always has.

It isn’t a modest home. You and Joel had it built before the wedding, both eager to get away from the city and exist in relative peace when your job allowed it. It sits low and broad, geometric pillars framing the front porch, sleek modern lines in black and white. Your compromise: he assumed responsibility for the exterior, and you took everything within. Joel pulls into the garage, next to your beige SUV, and helps you and your hot-pink luggage out of the car.

The walls are littered with canvases. Mostly, there are paintings of Joel. The first time you brought him to your studio, a few weeks into the relationship, he’d sat stone-still for hours. You don't recall even a twitch of a finger. He’s in shades of blue, red, green, grey. He’s sitting, standing, lounging, sleeping. His lashes lie in repose over his cheeks, eyes closed, sometimes open, often averted. You’ve captured him in bed, by the pool, in the kitchen, in your studio. Like a spider, you’ve ensnared his shyness, his care, his devotion, weaving it into a tapestry of oil, watercolour, pastel.

You’ve never sold a single one. This Joel—whose eyes are sometimes closed, sometimes open, often averted—is for your eyes only.

The curls at the nape of his neck are creeping under the collar of his jacket. Winding your finger around a rich brown lock, you give him a tug. “You haven't been taking good care of yourself.”

Joel brings your hand to his mouth, kissing the rings on your finger that bind you to him. “You told me you liked it long.”

“You told me it itches.” You shrug his jacket off his shoulders and trail your hands up his muscled arms. “It's not about me, honey.”

Joel hums, cradling the crown of your head in his palm and pressing a lingering kiss to your forehead. “When will you learn”—another hand around your hip, tugging you forward by the small of your back—“that everything is about you?”

You narrow your eyes at him. “That's a good answer, Mr. Miller.”

He grins crookedly, backing you against the kitchen counter. “Yeah?”

You scratch his scalp and feel his mouth descend on your jaw. “Mhm. You’ve been practising.”

“Didn't have much else to do,” he grumbles, fisting the fabric of your blouse and untucking it from the waistband of the old jeans sitting low on your hips. “My wife was gone.”

“You're getting whiny,” you chide, smacking his hand away from your fly.

“Is it working?”

“You really wanna make your wife happy?”

“Yeah, baby. Yeah.” He looks down at you like he's close to pleading.

“Then you'll let me cut your hair,” you purr.

His pout lasts as long as it takes for you to get his hair soapy and your fingers in his curls, massaging slow and sweet. You take your time ridding him of the excess length, chopping carefully, your hands assured of their strength. You tell him to tilt up and look down and to the side, honey, and he obeys because it's your hands, and your voice, and he's pliable as molten glass.

You get lost in the musical shhhick of the scissors cutting through hair, humming a tune that does not match, and he's reminded of ballet. Watching you in the mirror is like seeing the dance through a glass he cannot permeate. You may be touching him, but most times he's struggling to grasp you in your entirety.

He sees an angel in his sleep, reaching out with a hand made of gold to guide him up from hell.

You tell him more about the gallery. You tell him about whale-watching and being too seasick to take photos for him like he'd requested. Joel wants to shake his head but he stays still and tells you it’s okay, baby, all I wanted was to know you were happy.

And you tell him I was happy. But it would've been better with you.

And he's joking, telling you I’d be throwin' up on the other side of the boat, but his body feels cold when you set down the scissors and leave his side.

“How’s Tommy?” you ask, rubbing gel between your palms. This, he knows, is your favourite part: styling him up all pretty like your personal doll.

It’s his favourite part, too. He holds you around the waist while you work. “He’s panicking.”

“Oh, come on,” you laugh. “He's read every book on the shelves. And your brother doesn't read.”

“Books can't prepare you for the real thing,” says Joel. “‘Least, that's what Maria told him.”

“Maria’s probably right.” You thread your fingers through his locks and watch with a smile as he closes his eyes, his forehead dropping to your belly. “But that doesn't take away from the fact that Tommy will make a great dad.”

Joel hums, pressing a kiss to your belly. “He’s been askin’ after you to paint their nursery. Want me to tell him to fuck off?”

You're beaming, curling one lock of hair around your finger and dangling it teasingly over his forehead. “Tell Tommy I'd be delighted. Maria shouldn't be doing any of that, pregnant as she is. You should smack some sense into your brother.”

“I tried every day when we were little. Didn't take.”

You give his styled hair a finalistic tug and brush it back from his ears. “Such a good model for me,” you coo, dropping into his lap, “just like always.”

“And what do I get?” he says, watching his own hand cup your breast, thumb ghosting over the soft swell, obscured by layers of fabric.

Your wicked eyes feel heavy on his skin. “What you always get.”

You take his hand in yours and lead him to the bedroom. You’ve done this a thousand times, it seems, this methodical undressing, made new with every hour spent apart. The dance replenishes in the sunlight, coming alive as spring blossoms, never stale, never withered. There is something new to discover each time.

Joel kisses you, staggering backward until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. You climb onto his lap without breaking the kiss, your arms winding around his neck as he tucks you into him. His cock is a hard, heavy weight between your thighs, accustomed to the touch of his hand alone in the month you've been apart.

The revitalising warmth of skin-on-skin strikes him true, blooming like blood from his heart. He clutches you so close that your heartbeat skitters from your chest to his, your mouths exchanging breaths, your bodies sharing heat. He knows nothing but the shape, smell, sound of you.

He trails his knuckles up and down your spine and wonders if he can make certain that he will die like this. He doesn't want to know an afterlife. It will spoil the memory of his very last moment, when he brings you in close and kisses your soft cheek and lets the darkness gently pull him down.

The sisters at the orphanage would tell him things. You will never know peace until you know Him. You cannot know a person’s love until you know His. You will never understand, child, what it is to breathe, until every breath you take is in His name. Joel drags his open mouth up the column of your sternum, its golden pillar, his tongue dipping to taste the nectar that pools in the hollow of your throat. He tastes you instead, and he feels he has not cheated God.

You gasp his name as he licks molten salt from your skin, and he feels the golden hand curl around his heart. His lids grow heavy with every taste. Intoxicated, he seeks more, putting his mouth to the crook of your neck. Your back arches, your chest flush with his own, melting and moulding together. Every second of time spent apart withers and dies.

You have taken Joel to bed and felt him angry, happy, morose, insatiable—but the Joel you’re feeling now is tired. A drowning man finally cresting the surface, he touches you like he never will again. Your skin bunches and folds under his too-eager hands, rubbing you raw. Your muscles pull taut as you try to accommodate his frantic mouth. He bites you and your lips part in a silent scream. He pulls your hair and you gush, your chest hot, prickling with friction and sweat and heat.

There is anguish in the way he holds you. It feels deep as a wound, old enough to still ache when it rains, old enough that you were never around to know him when it was cut into his body. You want to rescue him from the wordless pain, the agony that has no name.

You want to know what has made him this way. Because there are times when you see your husband and it strikes you suddenly that a different person exists in the black of his eyes. Because there are parts he keeps hidden, for your sake or his. Because there is a little boy in his chest who's been hurt and you do not know how to save that sliver of him.

Leftover hairs from his trim sting as your bodies slide together. Your scalp prickles at the desperate way he holds you at the crown of your head. You whisper his name and he looks up at you in the darkness, and there is water brimming beneath his irises.

“Tell me what you need,” you say.

He brings his hand between your thighs and touches the wet, warm place he seeks. You nod, letting him roll you onto your back, his mouth trailing kisses down your navel. When you squirm, he pins you by your belly, his palm flat to your skin. When you mewl his name, your chest heaving, he nods his head in reply, dipping his head and sliding his hot tongue through your slit.

Joel is the prayer you chant. He kneels at the edge of the bed, bringing your thighs around his ears, closing his lips around your clit. You cry out, your hand flying to his hair, tugging him closer, eliciting a groan from his chest. It rumbles through you, his face buried in your pussy, his hands fastened around your thighs. He places searing kisses between your legs, lighting you ablaze, leaving scorch marks wherever his lips touch you.

“Tell me you're mine,” he says, and the fractured sound of his voice cuts into your skin. He's watching you, his pupils puffy and seeking, hands squeezing, desperate. “Please.”

You whimper at the sight of the kiss he places on your clit. “I’m yours,” you tell him, reaching for his hand and threading your fingers through his. “I’m your wife, Joel. I’m not going anywhere. I’m yours and I love you.”

He lowers his head, an apostate seeking redemption, and his tongue slides heavily over your clit. At the suction of his mouth around the slick pearl, you gasp, “Oh, God,” your head thrown back, your spine arching into his palm. The cut of the diamond on your finger is sharp against his skin.

Joel relishes the cool bite of the gem as he licks through your folds and his saliva mingles with your wetness. He kneels with fervour, presses his mouth to you as if whispering his confessions through the lattice, and makes you his.

The flat of his tongue is scalding, his palm a brand. He licks and sucks until you’re quivering, suffocating his hand in yours, and he wants to bare the imprint of your sigh forever. He should be the one submitting to you, and here you are, lending him your body to please, if only for another moment. Joel flicks his tongue over your clit, takes it into his mouth, and makes you sob his name.

I’m yours.

Yours.

And it sounds so permanent that, for a second, he believes it himself.

You come with your back curving and your hips grinding and your nails in his skin. Joel doesn’t stop until you’re begging him to, until you push yourself onto your elbows and tell him to come here.

You swing your leg over him and bring your mouth down to his. Joel squeezes his eyes shut and kisses you so deeply that it bruises him somewhere he cannot reach. His hands cupping your face. His cock heavy between your bodies. The sun lowering, casting you in bronze. He loses his grip on the world.

“Now,” you whisper in the growing dark, “it’s your turn to tell me.”

You lift yourself onto his cock and bring yourself down, and Joel’s fist opens against your back. “I’ve been yours since the restaurant,” he rasps.

You beam at him, and dusk ends.

There is a thumping beyond your bedroom door.

Joel hears it before you. In a flash, he hooks his leg under your knee and rolls you over, pinning you under his body. He reaches for the nightstand on his side, throws open the drawer, and pulls a gun.

You grasp his shoulders, nails digging into flesh. Eyes meet in the slippery darkness. Wide, careful. Words wordlessly exchanged.

Your fluttering heartbeat begins to pound in your ears. The noise migrates down the hall.

Footsteps.

In the kitchen, glass shatters, and your stomach swoops, down and back up, lodging in your throat.

“Joel,” you whisper, your own voice trembling out of you. He shakes his head, his finger coming to his lips. Your body begins to tremble. The chill digs a pick into each knob of your spine as it climbs up to your brain stem.

Your home begins to pound with its very own heartbeat. You can hear its tightly-wound tension in the walls. Nobody breathes except for your husband, slow and steady, hovering over you with a gun in his hand.

You hadn’t known he owned a gun.

His hips ground you against the bed and his fingers intertwine with yours, bringing your hand to his chest. His heart pounds strongly into your palm, his eyes narrowed, fixed to you. But you know his focus is split down the middle, divided between keeping you safe and listening.

Your breathing peters out until it’s silent as the breeze outside the window. A man’s voice carries from the kitchen, and another answers. Joel shifts slowly off the bed and brings you with him, handing you his T-shirt and boxers. He tucks himself into his jeans and pulls another shirt over his head while you silently dress. The fabric slips from your hand as your trembling fingers struggle for a purchase. Once you’re dressed, Joel pulls you into him, pressing his lips to your forehead.

“Under the bed,” he whispers.

Oh, fuck that.

“You want to go out there and confront them by yourself? Are you fucking crazy?”

He shuts you up by lowering his mouth to yours in a scorching kiss. “Do not fuckin’ argue with me,” he rasps, his teeth scraping against yours. You open your mouth to do exactly that, but another glass shatters, and you flinch away.

“Under. The. Bed.”

And he’s gone, leaving you alone, helpless, the predatory prowl of his gait something unfamiliar to you. It’s learned, utterly silent, the curve of his elbow guiding your gaze to the gun held behind his back. His head juts out before him, peeking around corners.

There are dust bunnies underneath the bed. You’re a better cleaner than Joel, but he makes an effort. He gets lost in it sometimes, sweeping his way through the house as if there’s a grid on the floor, precise in his methods. He doesn’t attend to the details, like the corners of the trim or the grooves in the floorboards. And yet, your floors are polished. Your plants are watered. He cares for you in quiet ways, when words fail.

Your heart thuds against the hardwood through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. It smells of rain and him. There are no more noises coming from the kitchen.

You drop your head into your folded arms and will yourself to breathe. The claustrophobic space between the bed frame and the floor edges in on you. The only light disrupting the vignette is the small lamp. You’re alone.

When you lift your head again, a pair of heavy black boots stares you right in the face.

You bite down on your scream as your heart swoops down into your stomach, pressed hard against the cold floor. Though you do not breathe, the thrum of your heart echoes in your throat as the sputtering of an engine in the dead of winter. The boots leave scuff marks on your floors, the boards groaning under the weight. The owner is heavyset, likely male from the size of his feet. And he's calling for you.

“Here, pretty kitty.” He pitches his octave high as he taunts you. “Come on out, sweet girl. Don't make me mad.”

You watch the path of his boots across the floor as he approaches the nightstand, throwing open the drawer and rummaging through your belongings.

Objects roll under the bed with you as he periodically drops them, careless in his vandalism. Your journal lands next to your head with a thunk, and you hear the low buzz of your vibrator in his hand. “Hmm, kitty likes to play.” And it lands on the floor, rolling to a cool stop in the groove between two boards.

Petrified, you can only watch him stalk across the room, his heavy footfalls thundering in your ears. He whistles a tune you don't recognise, and you wonder what's taking your husband so fucking long.

Joel, cries your heart as the man halts in his tracks, lowering himself to the ground, taking a knee. JoelJoelJoelplease—

And there's a spark of recognition when your eyes meet in the dark, like you've been acquainted with their black depths, before you're scrambling out from under the bed and kicking him square in the face with the heel of your foot.

He grunts, holding his nose, free hand grasping for you like wisps of smoke. You crawl to your feet and begin to run, only for him to wrap one cold hand around your ankle and pull.

You crumple back down to the floor with him, barely saving your own skull from cracking on the hardwood as you throw your hands in front of your eyes. The impact to your elbows radiates up to your neck, and you scream your throat raw, kicking out at your assailant, your blood roaring, weeping.

With a firm kick to his throat, you force him to let go, his hand flying instinctively to his windpipe. He wheezes something crude, probably, but you’re running—limping, mostly, slamming the bedroom door behind you with a shattering thud that quakes the frame.

“Joel!” you cry, turning the corner in the hall, feeling the walls as you go as if your own home has become foreign to you. What if he’s dead? What if you’re about to stumble over his body in the dark—the only body you’ve ever been able to know as something more than a vessel for art, for a painstaking study? That body, the body you could trace in the black with fingertips, not brushes, does not make itself known.

“JOEL—!”

A hand comes to rest on your cheek. It is not Joel’s hand. It is no hand at all, but the edge of a blade, a cool stinging thing that nicks the tender skin beneath your eye.

Blood from his nose drips down his mouth, staining his teeth red. You feel a small thrill of victory.

Joel is on the kitchen floor in a heap, vaguely stirring from the impact of a baseball bat to his ribs. The bat which a second intruder now uses to smash the framed pictures on your wall. Glass rains down on him. Shards have cut Joel’s soft belly, shredded the fabric of his shirt. Your captor holds you by the hair.

A third man smokes a cigarette, sitting on your countertop, swinging his feet back and forth, and it strikes you that he’s really only a kid. Twenty-five at most. You know young hands, young eyes. Your pencils and paper know them better.

“Nice of you to join us,” says the man from the gas station, making shapes of the cigarette smoke. You watch the way it curls around the low-hanging light.

“Joel,” you whisper, the salt of your tears stinging in the wound on your face. “Baby, please… get up…”

“He’s fine, chiquita,” says the kid. “Don’t waste your energy.”

Joel’s eyes peel open, his hands blindly grasping for something he does not have. He’s curled in on himself to protect himself from the inevitable next swing of the bat. You wonder if he’s been struck in the head, and you can feel pieces of your heart slowly wilting as petals untended.

His gun, you realise, your eyes dropping to the belt of the man who holds you hostage. It’s tucked into his waistband, but you cannot reach it with your arms trapped in front of you. His arm is a heavy band around your chest, glueing you to him, helpless. You’re fucking helpless and you cannot get to him and he will die.

Your Joel will die and he will know pain in the way you want him to know love.

“Let him go, please. You hurt him.”

The kid sniffs, tossing his cigarette to the floor beside Joel and jumping down from the counter to stomp it out with an expensive sneaker. “He disrespected me,” says the kid, leering down at your half-conscious husband like a speck of dirt on a polished glass. “But he doesn’t matter.”

You choke on your sobs, writhing in your captor’s grasp in a futile effort to feel not-so-suffocated, not-so-stuck. “You can have anything you want. Please, take anything. We have money, we have cars, we have paintings. They’re worth something, I promise you. Just—just look up my name. They’re worth a lot, please, just take them and leave us alone, please—”

The anger explodes through the gash in his face where he’d put the cigarette, that yawning maw eager to swallow blood and pain. “I don’t want your fucking paintings!” he screams, stalking toward you and yanking you free of the other man’s grasp.

Your stomach swoops as he shoves you, hard, to the floor. This time, your arms do not take the blow. It is your temple that absorbs the impact, striking hard on a floor already flecked with blood. Black seeps through paper. Your eyes darken. A man—you do not know which—is speaking.

“Go on, Emil, have some fun with the bitch,” he says. “We can put her up in the kennel when we’re done with them both.”

You hear the rustling of a belt as the man above you flicks open his fly, laughing all the while.

You're still blinking hard to clear the fog when you hear a growl rumble in your husband’s chest, the faraway noise of a fist meeting flesh, the scuffle of feet across your freshly-washed floors, the first gunshot.

Your cheek meets cool hardwood as you succumb, the shape of your Joel’s rage etched into your eyelids.

There’s a painting on the wall depicting two bodies in orgasm. Curved spines, feverish hands, dimples where fingers meet flesh. There is a hole in the canvas where the woman’s heart should be. A splatter of blood taints the image where the man drags his open palm down her back.

His face is obscured, but his mouth is on her throat, exposing the cut of his jaw. The scruff of his beard. Careful strokes of oil paint join their bodies in harmony. It’s knocked askew on the wall.

He’s rusty.

He can feel it in the taut pull of his shoulder as he brings his arm back for the death blow. The blade comes up against the rough skin beneath the man’s chin, slicing him open just beneath the scruff of his beard. Blood bruises the hardwood floors, and although the man is already dead, Joel grasps him by the hair at the crown of his head and brings him down against the wall.

His shoulder aches. His finger joints crackle. His knuckles are already bruised, his abdomen sore. He spits out pinkish saliva and turns his attention to his next job.

His gun now back in his hand and its thief dead, Joel puts a bullet between the eyes of the third man, and another in his chest. The baseball bat clatters to the floor.

He thinks of the first time he wanted to kill for you and couldn’t.

A man at the bar had groped you while you were out with friends. A little tipsy, you told Joel as he tucked you gently into the passenger’s seat, wrapped in a pretty black dress, and fell promptly asleep. He remembers the cool flutter of your hair from the air vent. He remembers the way your lashes spread like spider legs on your cheeks at every red light, the way the street lamps turned you golden.

He remembers the man’s name. His face. His address. Some of the little wrinkles in his brain still hold echoes of information he'll never need again. But he keeps it tucked up there anyway. Maybe it reminds him of what he could never do, now that he had you.

It seems the rules have been bent.

Glass crunches underfoot behind him. Joel turns just in time to see the retreating figure, the fucking coward, sprinting for the door. He fires a shot that chips a piece of drywall and goes nowhere significant. Cursing himself, Joel hears the roar of his Mustang come to life as the kid leaves with his fucking car.

Everything has a price, he'd said, blowing smoke in your face. Including your bitch.

Joel curls his hand around the hilt of the knife. Blood begins to crust along the edge. Some of the blood, he realises, has been stolen from your sacred body. There is a cut on your cheek.

And does your bitch have a price? Joel had replied, glancing behind the kid at the lackey he'd brought along. He seems to like you.

You teeter on your way to standing, and Joel rushes to catch you before you can hit the floor. He flicks on the safety and sets his gun aside, cupping your face in his bloodied hands.

Your eyes, blurred with tears, struggle to meet his. They're fixed to the man in a heap over Joel’s shoulder—the man who'd cut you.

“Baby,” he says.

Trancelike, you shake your head.

“Baby, I gotta see you're still with me. Don't look at him; he ain't important right now. You’re important. Hear me?”

His voice is gentle, guiding, his thumbs hooked just behind your ears, hard eyes flickering between each of yours.

“You killed them.”

“Yeah,” says Joel as the pad of his thumb traces the soft skin beneath the cut on your cheek. Your fingers curl around his wrists as if you’re trying to strangle him, temper him.

“You’re hurt.” Your soft cry inverts his ribs, sits heavy and wrong in his chest. When your glassy eyes slide to meet his at last, Joel remembers the second time he wanted to kill someone and couldn’t.

A man from your past had visited your apartment and told you he wanted to try again. You'd politely escorted him out and laughed it off. Terrible in bed, you’d joked.

Joel remembers kneeling in the cathedral, surrounded by the lick of a thousand votives coaxing sweat from his glands, as he tried and tried to find faith and only felt the agonising scrape of the floor against his kneecaps.

He remembers the first time devotion meant something to him. In the name of your second gallery showing. Paintings lined the walls depicting couples in embrace. “Which one is us?” he asked.

“I don't sell those,” you’d replied.

“Why not?”

“Because you're only for me,” you told him. “But I’ll tell you a secret.”

He’d ached to hear it. Even leaned in, a co-conspirator.

“There isn't any devotion in these paintings. They're all hired models.”

“Then why bother at all?” he'd asked. “Why call it that?”

“Because I like showing people that there’s love in the world. And because devotion means something to me now.” You’d looked up at him and tucked your hand in his and he knew what all those nights spent kneeling meant.

Faith, he thinks now, glaring at the shallow cut on your cheek, is knowing your purpose.

The wound is his purpose.

“I’m not hurt, baby girl. We need to pack a bag, okay? I have somewhere for us to stay.”

“Are they—are they coming back?” you ask, your bottom lip wobbling.

Joel swallows bile and a bit of blood. “No. No, they won't be comin’ back. But we need a safe place while I take care of things.”

“Take care of things.”

Your echo is ominous in his ears, and when your eyes leave him again to watch the way the blood trickles into the grooves between the floorboards, Joel knows what you will say next.

“Who are you?”

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

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sycamorelibrary754 · 5 months

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Merry Christmas

Summary: It’s the most wonderful time of the year. You and Natasha are off to the annual Stark Christmas Party. Little does the team know that a special surprise awaits them.

Genre: Fluff

Pairings: Natasha x reader, Avengers x reader (platonic).

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: None

A/N: This is part 2 to Happy Thanksgiving! I recommend reading it first, but it can be read as a stand-alone story as well. I hope you enjoy!

“Be down in a minute, malyshka!” Natasha called from your bedroom.

You were standing in the kitchen eating peanut butter out of the jar topped with chocolate sauce. A “homemade Reese’s” you dubbed it. Your first pregnancy craving that had Nat popping down to the corner grocery store at 2 am for the dynamic duo of ingredients.

“No worries, love!” Already dressed for Tony’s annual Christmas party at the compound. Clad in a green Sequin-Lace Halter Twist-Neck Jumpsuit, your baby bump beginning to show.

The click of Natasha’s high heels signaled her arrival a few moments later in a sleek long-sleeved red scoop-back midi dress that hugged her in all the right places.

“Wow, Nat. You look beautiful. Red is most definitely your color.”

“So you prefer it over the black,” she smirked as she put on her earrings.

“I didn’t say that now, did I,” with a wink.

“The baby enjoying its homemade Reese’s?” grabbing her clutch.

“Very much! I was thinking,” Putting away the chocolate and peanut butter. “Tomorrow we could make fudge!”

“Ah, because the baby has such a sweet tooth?”

“Yes,” you giggled.

“Well, whatever the baby wants, I suppose,” wrapping her arms around you in a loving embrace before leaning down and kissing your stomach.

“You ready to drop the baby bombshell tonight?” Patting the top of Nat’s head.

“Yes, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous,” sighing as she stood up. These are the same people who freaked out when they found out Clint had a family. How are they going to handle this?”

“Like the amazing aunts and uncles they were meant to be,” grabbing Natasha’s hand. “Plus, I think announcing it with the Christmas crackers is a cute idea.”

“I hope so,” placing a soft kiss against your lips.

“Frankly, I’m more surprised Yelena hasn’t blabbed yet.”

“Oh, that’s because I warned her if she told anyone I would make her run with me every morning at 5 am until the baby is born.”

“Well played,” high-fiving your wife.

“Thank you,” she smiled. “Now come on, let’s go get our holiday cheer on.”

*^~^*

The drive to the compound was even more beautiful during the holidays. A light snow fell as you passed house after house dressed in beautiful Christmas lights. Natasha placed her right hand on the center console. You softly intertwined your fingers with hers and placed a soft kiss to the back of her hand.

You are greeted by a rush of warm air upon entering the compound lobby. Natasha shook the delicate snowflakes out of your hair and off your coat. You both step onto the elevator and are welcomed by the soothing voice of FRIDAY.

“Merry Christmas, ladies. Welcome to the annual Stark Christmas party.”

“Merry Christmas, FRIDAY. How’s the party so far?” You asked as the hum the elevator carried you up to living quarters.

“The party is in full swing. Mr. Stark is currently treating guests to a medley of Christmas carols.

“Of course he is,” you giggled.

“You know, he only plays that baby grand piano when he gets a bit tipsy,” Nat said. “When we got home from our month-long undercover mission in Romania, he celebrated on the jet and then made us all listen to his rendition of Dancing Queen.”

“Aww, and I missed it!” Feigning disappointment.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened to joyous noise and laughter. An abundance of greens, reds, gold, and silver flashing here and there, adding opulence and brightness. Classic poinsettias tied in tradition, and shiny bows and foiled paper glistened under the 12-foot tall Noble Fir Christmas tree, inviting their recipients to sneak one open before the actual day.

“Hey, the Romanoff’s are finally here!” Clint exclaimed as his kids rushed over to both of you.

Nate jumped into your wife’s arms as you hugged Lila and Cooper. It seemed like every time you saw the Barton kids they had grown a bit more. It was thanks to Banner and Cho that you were carrying a child that would be half yours and half Natasha’s. Looking at Clint and Laura’s kids and how they resembled their parents, you couldn’t wait to see what features your little plum would inherit from each of you.

“How’s my little namesake?” Kissing Nathaniel’s cheek. Have you been practicing the punch and kick combinations I taught you?”

“Practicing the what?” Laura asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, nothing,” Natasha smirked as Nate giggled.

“You two look great, I love the green and red thing you’ve got going on,” Clint said.

“Thank you. Lovely Christmas sweater by the way. I especially love Rudolph’s glowing nose.” you pointed.

“Hey, the Barton’s are the cream of the crop when it comes to ugly Christmas sweaters.”

“Clearly,” Nat teased.

“I’ll take your coats,” Cooper offered.

“Why, thank you. What a gentleman,” you winked at Laura as you handed him yours and Natasha’s pea coats.

You scanned the room and noticed Wanda putting the finishing touches on trays of Christmas cookies. You put a hand on Nat’s shoulder and motioned toward the kitchen. She gave you a quick nod as you meandered over to the counter.

“Wanda, Wanda, Wanda… what do we have here?”

“Y/N! It’s so good to see you,” wrapping you in one of her signature hugs that you loved so much. “This is my parents’ Christmas cookie recipe,” she proudly declared. “I convinced Tony and Pepper to let me handle the desserts this year. So, we’ve got cookies, the Viennese torte is in the fridge and the pumpkin pie is cooling.”

“Wow, you have been busy,” you smiled. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Yes, you can take a cookie and go mingle. I’ll be done in a few minutes,” handing you a charming little cookie decorated like Santa. You took a bite and couldn’t believe it. It was the best cookie you had ever tasted.

“Mhmm, Wanda! This is amazing.”

“That is why I will always vouch for homemade over store bought goodies. Now seriously, go mingle,” shooing you away.

You turned back around to see your wife sitting by the fireplace talking to Steve, champagne in hand. As you started to across the room you were intercepted by a festively-dressed Kate and Lucky.

“Y/N! Hey, oh my gosh, I haven’t seen you in so long! How are you?”

“I’m good! I see you and Lucky are enjoying the party,” petting the Golden Retriever.

“Absolutely, say hello to Santa Paws and Mrs. Claus!” Kate exclaimed. Unfortunately, we’ve lost Yelena. She’s our elf,” glancing around the room.

“Wait, Yelena’s dressed as an elf?” Eyes wide. “Oh, that’s fantastic.”

“Yeah, if you see her will you send her our way? We’re supposed to be taking the photo for our holiday card tonight.”

“Nothing would make me happier,” you smirked with a hand on Kate’s shoulder.

You bid the young archer and pooch farewell and rejoined your wife.

“Hey, deka,” Wrapping her arm around your waste.

“Y/N, I was just telling your wife that she needs to find her holiday spirit and come Christmas caroling with us next week,” Steve said.

“Natasha singing? I’m not sure that would be good for community morale,” you joked

“Says the woman who performs one woman tributes to Harry Styles in the shower?” Nat giggled.

“Hey, my rendition of Sign of the Times is highly praised, I’ll have you know.”

Tony and Pepper join your little huddle with Morgan in tow.

“Romanoffs! You have to try this Hot Buttered Rum,” Tony remarked.

“Oh, I love Hot Buttered Rum, but I think I’ll stick with sparkling cider tonight,” you said “Nat would probably love some though, right, love?”

“Sure,” grabbing the glass from Tony’s hand as Steve looked back at you curiously.

You peered down at Morgan who was sitting on the ottoman next to the fireplace. Ever since you found out you were pregnant you were drawn to children like never before.

“Hi, sweetheart! You look so pretty tonight,” kneeling down to the little girl’s level.

“Thank you, Aunt Y/N,” she grinned.

“Are you excited for Christmas? You are clearly at the top of Santa’s nice list this year.”

“Really?!” Morgan squealed.

“Oh, absolutely, I have a feeling the man in red is going to be very good to you this year,” you winked.

“Did you hear that Daddy? Aunt Y/N said that I’m on the top of the nice list!”

“I sure did, squirt. I didn’t realize Aunt Y/N was so tight with St. Nick,” eyeing you coyly.

“Oh yeah, we’re on a first name basis. I’m surprised you’re not?” Smirking at the billionaire. You loved Tony like a brother, but you enjoyed giving him crap.

“Trust me, Mrs. Romanoff, I’m much closer to Santa than you are.”

“Really, do you have a direct line to the North Pole?”

“Are you having milk and cookies flown in from Holland? Because you know those are his favorite,” raising an eyebrow at you.

“Ooookay, that’s enough,” your wife placing hands on your shoulders from behind. “You both know Santa. You both have giant egos. Merry Christmas,” Nat mocked. Come on Tony, let’s go grab some hors d'oeuvrs for our better halves. I’ll be right back, detka,” leading the billionaire toward the kitchen.

You couldn’t help but admire Natasha as she walked away. Looking back over her shoulder, she smiled at you with all the love in the world. You just about melted right there in front of the fireplace. Snapping out of your love daze, you noticed Pepper grinning at you.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. I just can’t help but notice how glowing you look tonight,” as Morgan pulled her away towards Clint’s kids and Steve strolled away to join Bucky in conversation with Rhodes.

“Pssst… Pssst!”

You turned around just as a styrofoam snowball was about to hit you in face. You caught it in one swift motion.

“Nice catch,” a Russian voice said.

“Yelena, where are you?” Glancing around not seeing your sister-in-law.

“Over here,” poking her head out from the behind the seven-foot snowman next to the pool table.

“Oh, now don’t you look adorable as an elf,” you giggled.

“If you weren’t pregnant with my niece or nephew you would be hanging upside down from the rafters right now.”

“You know Kate and Lucky are looking for you, right?”

“Why do you think I’m hiding behind the giant snowman? Kate Bishop forced me to dress in this saccharin American Christmas costume and now she wants photographic evidence of it.”

“Because she loves you, silly,” your arms crossed over your chest.

“Detka, it’s time for dinner. Let’s go—“Natasha stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of her sister. “Oh my God,” she burst into laughter.

“Tred carefully, sestra,” Yelena threatened.

“No, I love it. I think this qualifies as new mission suit attire,” poking the bell dangling from her elf hat. “Maybe you can get Stark to upgrade this outfit with Widow Bites.”

“Do you have a death wish?” Yelena sneered.

“Come on you adorable elf, it’s time for dinner,” placing an arm around your best friend’s shoulder.

*^~^*

You took your seat next to your wife at the Astoria Grand Giovani dining table. Natasha quietly squeezed your hand. You looked over with a shy smile and a festive blush on your cheeks.

Pepper stood up from her seat next to Tony at the head of the table. “Before we enjoy this lovely holiday feast, I just wanted to take a moment to tell you how grateful we are that you’re all here,” grasping Tony’s hand. “Everyone in this room knows how precious life is and we don’t take a moment of it for granted. We love you and Merry Christmas.”

“Here, here!” Thor declared a couple seats down from you as glasses clinked around the table.

A traditional Christmas dinner soon filled your plate. Roasted turkey with all the trimmings. Home baked bread, mashed potatoes and garden veggies gently roasted, drizzled in balsamic vinegar. The group drank, were merry, and told the most terrible of jokes.

Pregnancy mood swings were becoming commonplace and as the dinner wore on, you suddenly found yourself overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of your extended family enjoying the holiday season together.

“Y/N, are you okay?” Carol looked at you with concern in her eyes from across the table.

“Oh, yeah” dabbing at the corner of your eyes with your napkin. “I’m fine.”

“The holidays always make her a bit emotional,” Natasha offered laying her head comfortingly on your shoulder.

After dinner you helped Wanda serve the desserts. The Christmas cookies took their place in the center of the table, flanked by the Viennese torte and the pumpkin pie. Coffee and dessert wine circulated around the table.

The group of full bellies and ever so slightly sleepy eyes then made their way to the living room to relax. Christmas music softly enveloped the room as the kids were discussing what they hoped Santa was going to bring them this year.

“Okay, Kate Bishop. Let’s get this picture over with. I want to put on my pajamas,” Yelena announced as she stood from the sofa.

“Yay!! Okay, don’t move. Lucky! Here boy,” calling the dog who promptly romped over. “Vision, can you take the picture?”

“Of course Ms. Bishop.” Taking the Canon EOS R-50 from the archer.

“It is customary to say cheese before a picture, but since it is Christmas time perhaps you should say mistletoe?”

“Just take the picture,” Yelena deadpanned

“Mistletoe!” Kate yelled.

“We’re going to get one of these cards right?” Looking at your wife.

“I had Kate put us down for two,” she smirked.

*^~^*

As night fell, you rested your weary head on Nat’s lap as she ran her fingers through your hair.

Natasha looked at her watch. “You ready to drop the baby bomb?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. I’ll get the Christmas crackers,” rising from the sofa.

“Umm, everyone. Y/N and I have a special gift for you all,” your wife announced nervously as you passed out the gold and silver novelties to the team.

“Christmas crackers? I have to be honest, I was hoping for something a bit more extravagant… Oww!” Tony whined, as Pepper pinching him on the arm.

You smiled with nervous anticipation as you reached for Natasha. The snap of the festive crackers echoed across the room. Clint was the first to reach inside and remove the tiny gift. A small round ceramic white ornament tied to a red ribbon appeared in his hand. Lila, Cooper, and Nate huddled around their dad to get a glimpse as Clint read the inscription.

“Uncle Clint?” Looking up at Natasha in shock.

“No way!” Sam shouted.

Wanda, Carol, and Kate all screamed at the sight of their own ornaments. Their names adorned with the title of Aunt.

“This is joyous news!” Thor crowed.

Pepper got up immediately and embraced you in a warm hug as Laura did the same with Natasha.

“How far along are you?” Wanda asked.

“Almost three months,” Yelena cut in.

“You knew?! Why didn’t you tell me?” Kate shouted; slapping her girlfriend on the arm.

“Because I want to sleep in!”

“I’m so happy for you, Nat,” Steve kissing her on the cheek.

Bucky wrapped his arms around you with a soft kiss to the top of your head.

“You ready to be Uncle Bucky?” Your eyes meeting his gaze.

“Oh God,” his face like a deer in the headlights.

“You’ll be great, Buck,” you giggled.

Bruce and Helen embraced Natasha in a tandem hug.

“I’m so relieved everyone knows,” Helen said turning to you. “Now we can openly discuss your pregnancy. Have you been continuing with your prenatal vitamins?”

And remember, you have an appointment on Friday,” Bruce interjected.

“Yes and yes,” you said as Natasha placed a soft kiss to your cheek and then another to your belly.

Tony walked up to you with that signature smirk on his face. You mentally prepared yourself for a signature Stark one-liner or some stupid joke. Instead, he took you by surprise when he wrapped you in a warm embrace.

“Congratulations, Romanoff. Looks like you do know Santa best.”

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ragsforless · 1 month

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Dune crack!au (1)

Paul: May thy knife chip and shatter-

Feyd: *starts singing* 🎶In another life, I would be your girl🎶

Paul: What?

Feyd: 🎶We keep all our promises, be us against the world🎶

Paul: I’m so confused right now.

Irulan: And I’m recording this.

Feyd: 🎶In another life, I would make you stay🎶

Chani: NGL, he has a great voice.

Stilgar: True.

Irulan: *is still recording* You’re doing great, Feyd!

Paul: Shouldn’t we be fighting-

Chani: Shush, Paul! Let him finish.

Paul: But-

Feyd: 🎶So I don't have to say you were the one that got away, The one that got away🎶

Paul:. . .

Jessica:. . .

Feyd: So how’s my singing?😀

Chani: I approve! You’re going to be our concubine number 2!

Feyd: Nice.

Irulan: Oh, great. A new roommate.

Stilgar: As written.

Paul: What?!

Jessica: I did not see that coming.

Mohiam: I did.

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autisticmight · 3 months

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i am SO NORMAL about lego bionicle

#so normal #did not get distracted from my fic daydreaming about the turaga and Feral Vakama #helen stfu

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johnwickb1tsch · 5 months

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FIC:

(most y/n fics are fem gender but [attempted] no real mention of specific appearance, race, body type) The Night Nurse - John x Helen CH 1 │ CH 2 │ CH 3 │ CH 4 │ CH 5 │ CH 6 │ CH 7 │ CH 8 CH 9. CH 10. │ A03

you're the worst thing (i'm addicted to) - John x Helen'sSister!Reader fic │ Part 1 │Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 A03 The Girl Next Door ~ Constantine x Vampire!Reader Fic Part 1 Part 2 (based on below imagine)

Imagines:

John x Helen'sSister!Reader Imagine John Wick x Tarasov'sDaughter!Reader Imagine Constantine x Reader x John Wick Imagine Young!John Wick & Model!Reader Imagine part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 John x Wife!Reader Fix it Imagine

BITTERSWEET Yandere!John x fem!reader coffee shop au (this totally turned into a fic) Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 PART 6 PART 7 PART 8 PART 9. PART 10 PART 11 PART 12 PART 13 PART 14 PART 15 PART 16 PART 17 PART 18 PART 19 PART 20 PART 21 PART 22 PART 23. PART 24 PART 25. PART 26 PART 27 PART 28. PART 29 PART 30 PART 31

OTHER KEANUVERSE CHARACTERS:

Constantine x Vampire!Reader Neighbor Imagine

Donaka Mark x MartialArtist!Reader Imagine

Donaka Mark x Secretary!Reader Imagine

THE DEVILS' TRIANGLE - Tex Johnson x Reader x John Wick (x Constantine) Yandere Collab with the diabolical @treedaddymcpuffpuff & @sweetwolfcupcake *so many dead doves here be warned...* Original Imagine COVER Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5. Part 6 Part 7. Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 WIP

EXCESSIVE FORCE - Tom Ludlow x Nurse!Reader collab w the AMAZING @treedaddymcpuffpuff CH 1 CH2 CH3 CH4 CH5 CH6 CH7 CH8

THE BASTARD'S MISTRESS - a don John x servant!Reader fic

#john wick #john wick x you #john wick x helen #john wick fic #helen wick #john wick x helen fic #keanu reeves #john wick x reader #john wick x y/n

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therealdistortion · 2 months

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Me and my comfort rare pairs who have never interacted in canon

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elialys · 2 months

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"So…I know it's Saturday evening, and I concede the original deal was Friday…"

THE NEWSREADER | 1.03 | Helen x Dale - Creative Date Part 1

#Anna Torv #Sam Reid #Helen Norville #Dale Jennings #Helen x Dale #the newsreader #helendale #they were just!!!!#SO SOFT #THE SOFTEST #helen is so romantic like 😭#dale redeemed himself alright #bless that one smutty fic featuring the aftermath that's all im gonna say #michael i need them back let me have them back #at least give dale his soul back #also bless my brand new laptop #took me 1/3 of the time it's always taken me to make a gifset before #gifs*

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sarcasticsciencefictionwriter · 3 months

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Welcome to the prompt list for platonic and romantic love for February 2024!

18 prompts, 9 regular and 9 dialogue to choose from, open to gen ficcers and shippers alike.

Only rules required is you must properly tag your writing so no one is triggered or misled.

Feel free to reach out if you have questions!

Prompts are also listed below the cut.

Regular Prompts:

1.Flowers

2. Favorite Meal

3. Gentle Touch

4. Trying the other's favorite pastime

5. Outdoor Activity

6. Blanket

7. Silly Memory

8. Handmade gift

9. Forehead kiss

Dialogue Prompts:

"Give me your hand."

2. "We're going to be late!"

3. "You did this for me?"

4. "Can I hug you?"

5. "Just for tonight."

6. "Just come here already."

7. "Please?"

8. "I already told you!"

9. "This was not what I planned on."

Thanks to amphytrionwrites for the lovely graphic! Prompts done by yours truly.

@tinknevertalks I promised I'd tag you, so here you go! 🥰

#prompt list #sanctuary fandom #gen fic #shipping #fanfiction #writing prompts #sanctuary tv show #helen magnus #i don't know how to tag this

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tinknevertalks · 5 months

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Roll up! Roll up! It's that time of year again: the nights are longer, it's all feeling colder, and the shops are all trying to sell you stuff. But here in the Sanctuary side of fandom, it's the start of the festive fic exchange!

Do you like writing fic?

Do you like reading fic?

Do you like putting unnecessary stress on yourself to make a wonderful gift for someone, just to have half of the fandom turn around and say, "Aaaaaaah, that's exactly what I needed to read right now?"*

Then this is the fic exchange for you! Today's post is the sign up post. Under the cut will be a list of questions. All you have to do is send me either a DM or an ask with your completed questionnaire then wait for your match!

Schedule!

Matches sent out by 7th Dec

Touching base post: 20th Dec**

Collection open for posting: 26th Dec

Collection reveal: 31st Dec

This is open to anyone in the Sanctuary fandom, regardless of character/shipping preferences. When it comes to fic length, the minimum is 300 words. I don't really wanna give a max (because I know how the muse can get sometimes), but if we cap it around the 2k words mark that should be cool.***

I'll be posting a link to this around the place (and reblogging again this evening for the later crew), and you are more than welcome to message/contact me with any questions, queries or concerns.

Under the cut: the questions!

Username on Tumblr/AO3: (I need a method of contacting you 😊. If you have neither, pop me your email or something? We'll figure it out.)

Things I am comfortable writing: (gen or shippy? Fluff writer or angst? Family feels?)

Things I would not want to write about: (all the things you don't wanna write - characters you dislike, pairings you don't vibe with etc. Also heads up on any triggers you might have - you don't need to explain the whys.)

What I'd like to receive: (go for gold! The more info you can give, the more tailored to you the fic will be.)

What I would not like to receive: (All the things that you do not vibe with, or squick you. Please please please again with any trigger warnings - I don't want a gift to upset you. 😊)

Any other info that doesn't fit in the other questions: (General vibes, could you be a pinch hitter, any thoughts, questions, etc)

And that's that. 😊 Thank you for joining in, and see you December 7th with your matches!

*You can answer no to this one - it's just how I am when it comes to these things. XD

**If you find you can't finish, or something comes up that means you have to pull out, please let me know so I can arrange a pinch hitter. I won't be angry or disappointed or anything because this is for fun, and your health (mental and/or physical) is more important.

**Obviously, if you find you go over a bit, don't freak out or anything. This is just for fun, after all.

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kiwisbell · 23 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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inlovewithgreta · 1 year

Text

Sunkissed — Narcissa Black/Malfoy x Fem!Reader

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Synopsis: A day at the beach gets heated when two minds get the idea of showing affection in a crowded place.

Warnings: Thigh riding, cunnilingus, fingering, semi-public sex, slight spanking, marking, praise, mommy kink, etc…

Word Count: 1.9k

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The sky was a brilliant blue today with barely any clouds to be seen. The air around you was hot and humid as the rays from the sun were helping you and Narcissa get that extra little glow. It was more her than you as you tended to burn to a crisp if you didn't keep reapplying sunscreen since your skin was very delicate.

The sun was hot against your back as you laid on your stomach, flipping through the pages of your novel. You were wearing some skimpy little white colored bikini with your wavy beach hair tucked behind your ears, and huffing when the small gusts of wind would blow it in your face, occasionally obstructing your view.

Narcissa was laid back in her own beach chair, a little black bikini tightly wrapped around her curvy figure, leopard print sunglasses sat on the top of her head, keeping the bangs out of her face while the rest of her hair sat even curlier than yours at her shoulders.

It's been a few hours since you and Narcissa decided to have a spontaneous beach day, wanting to spend the whole day just lounging around with nothing but margaritas, books in your hands, and the steady sounds of the water rushing up and down the shore.

With a sigh you mark the page and close the book, setting it back in the beach bag for later use. You catch sight of your skin turning a light shade of red, completely forgetting about your hourly sunscreen application.

Grabbing the SPF 50 sunscreen you take a peak at your back, noticing the same slight shade of red on your back and you had to somehow get back there as well.

"Cissa, can you help get my back?" You plead, holding the sunscreen out towards her.

"Of course!" She marks her page before setting the book down, grabbing the sunscreen from your hands and pausing to think for a moment. She has a cheeky smirk on her face as she climbs onto your beach chair, her legs on either side of yours as she pops the cap open of the sunscreen and starts lathering it onto your shoulders and back.

"Now let's just get this pesky little thing out of the way—" Narcissa swiftly unties the strings to your top.

"Narcissa!" You gasp as your hands quickly grab hold of your top to hold it in place.

"What?" She asks innocently. "It was in my way."

"Just—" You try to hide your laugh and whip your head around to meet her eyes. "Next time give me a warning, I don't want the whole beach seeing my tits."

"Yes ma'am."

She smirks while her hands were now roaming your entire back, making sure she rubbed it in as best as she could. She didn't want her precious little doll being in any unwanted pain in the morning.

"And make sure to get everywhere, darling. We don't need my ass getting all red from the sun."

At your statement, Narcissa ties your suit back on and her hands traveled lower down your back before landing promptly on your ass. Her hands continue their kneading and giving your cheeks a gentle but firm squeeze every few seconds.

Now she was just toying with you.

"Oooh," Her voice dropping a few octaves before continuing. "We wouldn't want the sun doing that to you, now would we?"

A harsh smack to your ass causes you to bite down on your bottom lip to stop any sound from coming out. The sharp sting spread straight over to your core.

She leans forward, bringing her lips next to your ear. "Only mommy's allowed to make it red."

She admires the newly red handprint forming along your sensitive skin for a moment before you flip yourself over and sit up, coming face to face with her. Hooking your finger under the string between her breasts, you pull her closer to you by a few inches. Your lips just barely hovering in front of hers.

"Car. Now." You let go of her string, causing it to snap back against her skin.

Narcissa just smirks and slides off your legs. She goes to put her sandals on but you're too quick to grab the keys and take hold of her hand, pulling her towards the car.

It was a short walk to the parking lot. Quickly pressing the button to unlock the doors, you practically push Narcissa into the backseat and climbing into the back with her.

After closing the doors, you twist the keys into the ignition and turn the air on, hoping for some kind of air circulation, knowing you're gonna need it.

You make your way to each window, sliding down each window shade, completely blocking out the view from the outside so nobody could see in or out.

Each window had black privacy protectors for impromptu moments like these.

Once each window was securely covered you look back at Narcissa who is laying in the backseat on her side with her head leaning against her hand with an eyebrow raised.

"Are you done yet?" She smirks, playing with the strings to her top.

"You're so impatient." You roll your eyes and crawl on top of her, straddling her waist.

Narcissa's hands instantly find home at your hips, kneading at your soft skin.

"Can you blame me?"

"Guess not." You smirk and bring your lips to hers, first starting off with a quick peck before going back for more.

Her hands leave your hips to pull at the strings of your top and removing it to feel your bare breasts against her hands. Her touch leaving goosebumps in their wake. You reach around to the strings of her top, untying them and sliding it off her, doing the same with her bottoms, leaving her bare beneath you.

As the kiss got heated you find yourself grinding slowly against her thigh, begging for any kind of friction. Narcissa finds the strings to your bottoms, sliding them off as well before her hands go back to your hips, guiding you across her thigh.

"Go on doll, get off on mommy's thigh."

You nod your head, not finding any words forming from your mouth. One of your hands gripping onto the door for support.

Little moans escaped your pretty lips as her nails dug into your skin, sure to leave faint marks afterwards.

"That's my good girl," She cooed. She kisses the center of your chest before moving to one of your breasts, her lips attaching around your nipple.

Your movements were getting frantic and sloppy as you slid across her thigh. "You're close, aren't you my love?" She moves over to your other breast.

Nodding your head frantically, you can feel yourself just on the edge. Her teeth graze your nipple, causing you to whimper. "Use your words, doll. Mommy wants to hear that pretty little voice. Can you do that for me?"

"Mhm—" Your voice cracks. "Yes, I'm close!" Your grip on the door hardened, knuckles turning white.

She gives your breast one last wet kiss before bringing her thumb to your mouth. "Now be a good girl and bite down, we both know how loud you're about to get."

Your immediate response was to gently bite down, wrapping your lips around her thumb to stop your growing moans from escaping. Your release comes at you in a flash, your legs just barely shaking, your thighs squeezing tightly against her as your head gets slightly thrown back.

She barely even winces as your bite gets harder, your muffled moans dragging out as your wetness drips down her leg. She removes her thumb when your movements still, examining the freshly made teeth marks.

"You did such a good job for me, darling." She praises, her dark eyes burning into your E/C ones.

"You deserve a treat. Be my precious little doll and help mommy finish too. Can you do that for me?" Her fingers tracing lazy circles along your skin.

"Mhm," Bringing two fingers to her mouth, you push them past her lips. "Now suck." She does as you say, her tongue wrapping around your slender fingers.

When you're content, you take your fingers out from her mouth and drag them down her chest, past her navel, and stop them when you reach her cunt. Your fingers easily enter her, giving her time to adjust before starting their pace, causing Narcissa to lightly gasp following closely by a soft moan.

Following the same trail your fingers did, you leave sloppy kisses down her body, making sure to give every inch of her body attention before your mouth reaches her clit. Your tongue flicking against the sensitive bud.

Your free hand moves to one of her legs, bringing it over your shoulder as you curl your fingers, hitting the spot she liked the most. Her back arched as her hand moved to your head, fingers brushing the hair out of your face before getting tangled in your curly locks. Her other hand played with her breast, her fingers toying with her nipple.

Breathy moans escaped her lips while her hand pushed down against your head, leaving no room for you to breathe but you didn't care.

"Faster—" Before she could finish speaking you pick up speed, helping her chase her finish. "Good girl," She breathes out, biting her lip to lower the sounds of her moans.

Her thighs attempted closing as she came, her release dripping down your fingers. Her breathing was heavy as you helped her ride out her high, removing your fingers and lapping up her mess, enjoying the taste of her on your tongue.

Sliding yourself back up to her, you pull her in for a sweet kiss, your tongues dancing together in unison. She gives you one last kiss as she tucks a stray hair behind your ear.

"I should tease you more often."

"Why? Because you like what follows it?"

"Who wouldn't?" She teases. "Here I am with teeth marks across my thumb and you have a big red handprint across that pretty little ass of yours."

You gasp as you sit up, going to look in the rear view mirror. "I do not have a handprint—" You cut yourself off as you examine yourself in the mirror, a large handprint was indeed visible on your skin.

"Narcissa!" You run your hand along the mark, your mouth wide open.

"It's okay sweetheart, people will just think you took a spill and fell." She chuckles, reaching around to run her hand softly along your mark. "Besides, I quite like the way it looks on you."

"Yeah, if you like it so much make another handprint on the other cheek while you're at it." You roll your eyes and playfully push her hand away, grabbing your suits and tying them back on.

"Maybe later," She pecks your cheek and reaches across to turn the car off. "But for now, how about we just go for a little swim and have one of those sweet drinks you love with those fancy little umbrellas, how does that sound?"

"Sounds amazing."

"Good, because you really didn't have a choice," She smirks and gives your lips a quick kiss before stepping out of the car.

You laugh lowly as you step out after her, making your way back to the beach. Narcissa follows closely behind you, her eyes only focused on your rear end, admiring her work and just waiting for the night to come so she can do it again.

#helen mccrory #narcissa malfoy #narcissa x reader #narcissa black #fanfic #lesbiansmut #smut #wlw smut #oneshot #praise #semi public sex #mommy k!nk #domme mommy #mommy #no plot whatsoever #pwp fics

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forasecondtherewedwon · 2 months

Text

seven degrees east - chapter one

Fandom: Masters of the Air Pairings: Gale x Bucky; Nash x Helen; more tbd Rating: T (may change) Chapter: 1 / ? Word Count: 3798

Summary: It's 1996. Soundgarden's on the radio, Charles and Diana are headed for divorce, and seven American PhD candidates are studying literature at the University of Thorpe Abbotts in Norfolk, England. Between taking Prof. Harding's summer class and obsessing over their favourite authors, the boys will kick asses when they must, and fall in love if they can.

Spring was about to fall headlong into summer and Bubbles had decided Princess Di was the woman for him. They were all in love with her. Tabloid magazine photos of Diana in black and lavender—torn with care along the crease—decorated the walls of their dorms, overlapping posters for Superunknown and Crimson Tide, pieces they’d had published in the literary journal, and mundane scraps of paper elevated by their status as vessels for the phone numbers of girls they’d met at parties. Naturally, their Princess took supremacy, especially as they expected imminent, official news of her divorce from Charles. Lucky Bubbles.

It was mid-June 1996. They spent their days horny and sunburnt from laying out on the school’s big English lawn. These long stretches of apparent leisure were punctuated by the summer course in which they were all enrolled: “Thoreau’s Walden,” taught by Professor Harding. He was transparently attempting to instill in them a sense of self-reliance alongside an understanding of transcendentalist thought. The class wasn’t mandatory—the rest of their cohort would rejoin them in September—but their small group comprised a brotherhood of dedicated scholars. (Dedicated to having fewer courses to take come fall semester.)

Bubbles was their Great American Novel man, obsessed with Faulkner’s long sentences and Steinbeck’s long books. Crosby envied and lionized his best friend’s focus, but had come to accept that he was irresistibly drawn to the lower-brow, femme-fatale charm of Chandler and Hammett’s hard-boiled novels. Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal was their resident 19th-centuryist, plotting the spread of both his dissertation and his mustache on the fertile—if possibly cursed—intellectual ground of Edgar Allan Poe. Herbert Nash was Rosie’s chronological compatriot. Though he’d begun the doctoral program with a proposed focus on the works of Mark Twain, he had a literary wandering eye for anything that struck him as romantic. In the face of Nash’s flakiness, Curt fought (sometimes physically) for the pure pleasure of reading, but then he was often under the hedonistic, lunar-like sway of Oscar Wilde—a deviation (guided, he claimed, by his Irish heritage) from the later, hedonistic influence of his preferred poison: the Beat Generation.

If their ragtag band of chronic dogear-ers had a leader, it should’ve been Jack Kidd. Kidd was an upper year student, nearly finished with his PhD (unless his PhD finished with him first). He was secretive, perpetually put-upon, and capable of delivering heart-shattering criticism in a tone that made it sound like mercy. In short, he was everything they longed to be. When asked about the subject of his dissertation, he would drop his face into his hands with all the enthusiasm and surrender to gravity of a bridge suicide. In lieu of possessing the middle-aged-divorcé jadedness that seemed to come naturally to Kidd despite his being only 29, the seven younger candidates had taken up smoking the preceding November.

Because they did need a leader to make sure they did things like readings and laundry and correcting their posture after hours spent curled over, under, and around the library’s long oak tables, they had Bucky. And they had Buck, because it was smart to have a backup. “Bucky” was really John, and “Buck” was Gale, and when any of the other five called them out on being pretentious fucks, they would both grin and offer no correction. While John directed his furrowed brow at Lost Generation titans like Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald, Gale was dreamily engrossed in a fin-de-siècle love affair with Henry James. At any given time, at least three of them (including John) were waiting for the pair to realize that who they were actually head over heels for was each other.

They were all students at Thorpe Abbotts—the Norfolk satellite campus of the Connecticut university. They knew people studying Goethe and Voltaire, Tolstoy and Shakespeare and García Márquez, seriously, they did. They just happened to be a collection of Americans reading Americans. In England. For one reason and another, they’d decided to study overseas, intrigued by the allure of matched tuition fees, rainy reading weather, and the proximity to older and fancier universities, which were fun to visit if they were looking to instigate a winnable fight against other easily-provoked academics.

That particular evening, they descended upon a bar favoured by students from the University of East Anglia. John and Rosie had both offered to drive. To decide who’d had to go with John (concealed as who’d wanted to go with John), Crosby had flipped a coin—well, a double-sided Batman pog he’d produced with minor embarrassment after fishing around in his pocket for a coin. As a result, Gale and Curt tumbled from John’s Wrangler (Gale from the passenger’s seat, Curt from the bench in the rear) looking half-drunk already from John’s weaving, lead-footed panache behind the wheel. Rosie pulled up smoothly, with no complaints from Bubbles, who might not have complained even if they’d slid into the parking lot on their roof, Crosby, whose motion sickness had not been triggered, or Nash, who’d ironed a shirt for this outing in hopes of meeting a nice girl. The rest had openly teased him, then tried not to feel self-conscious about their own attire.

“You look like Hugh Grant,” John leveled at Nash when he saw him sweeping his hair back as they made for the bar.

“Thanks.”

“Wasn’t a compliment.”

Fortunately for Nash, he was impervious to most insults. John knew this and took it as licence to tease him all the more.

“Ladies love Hugh Grant,” Nash reasoned.

“Don’t say ladies,” Curt whined. “Fuck’s wrong with you?”

“The thing Hugh Grant has going for him is he’s British,” John explained.

“And he’s a movie star,” Gale offered, nonpartisan.

“Stellar addition, Buck: and he’s a movie star.” He turned back to Nash. “You’re non-movie-star, American Hugh Grant. Capisce?”

“Don’t say capisce.” Curt took out his frustration on the loose chunk of asphalt he booted across the parking lot.

“Ah, don’t listen to him, Nash,” Rosie instructed, slinging an arm around Nash’s neck and hauling him close so his steps stuttered and skipped.

“You look good, Nash,” Gale said.

“Like a real gentleman.”

“Too bad he’s just Nash disguised as a gentleman,” John lamented with a grin.

Nash cracked a telling smile.

“Whaddaya think, Croz?” John demanded. He looked around and found Crosby and Bubbles trailing them, laughing about something that was part of their own conversation. “Croz! Nash in disguise! This some kinda hard-boiled, sleazy villain shit?”

Crosby shrugged.

“Nash is Nash.”

“Nash is Nash,” Bubbles agreed, and then they were all saying it, speaking over one another, until their voices dropped into sync and it turned into a chant as they shoved into the warmth of the bar.

They fell into a booth together, then forced Crosby and Bubbles back out to get the first round since neither of them had driven and even if you tried to send one without the other, they’d both go anyway, as though attached by a tether. They returned with pitchers.

“Croz got carded,” Bubbles gleefully announced, handing out glasses from the stack in his hand.

Everyone awwwed. Crosby erupted in a flaming blush.

“Don’t worry about it, Croz,” Gale told him. Crosby nodded gratefully, but then Gale tacked on, “When I was your age—”

Crosby’s protestation that they were the same age had Rosie laughing until he had tears in his eyes. He tilted sideways into Nash, who did his best to scoot away.

“I love you Rosie, but I will slash your fucking tires if you wrinkle my shirt.”

This just made Rosie laugh harder.

“You alright to drive back?” John checked with Gale, leaning in to speak quietly below the hilarity.

“I gotcha, man.”

John nudged Crosby out of the booth a second time and came back with a pitcher of water for Gale, who’d smoke weed and cigarettes with the rest of them but drew the line at carbonation. Crosby’s hand hesitated between the pitchers of beer and water.

“I’ll drive,” Rosie assured him, brushing away Crosby’s wordless offer with a wave of his hand.

Crosby looked relieved to be let off the hook. He poured himself a beer.

John pointed at Rosie.

“You’re too damn self-sacrificing.”

“Maybe you’re too sac-selfrificing,” Curt countered, making John twist to face him with an expression of extreme indignation.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna take this outside?” John squared his shoulders. Even though it was all in play, Gale held out his hand, palm down, suggesting they chill out a little. They’d been bounced from this bar before.

“Might as well stay put,” Curt said. “If I knock you on your ass while you’re already sittin’ down, you got less far to fall.”

John smacked the brim of Curt’s ballcap down over his eyes and they broke into a scuffle in the booth, legs scrabbling beneath the table, Curt giggling wildly as he jerked away from John’s hands while protesting that he couldn’t see. Crosby, sitting on Curt’s other side, attempted to right his hat, but ended up having to dodge Curt’s elbow instead.

“Bets?” Rosie asked.

“What’s on the table?” Bubbles wondered. Somebody’s knee slammed the actual table from underneath and Bubbles’ hand shot out to steady his glass. “Figuratively.”

“Losers have to format the winners’ essay citations.”

“That’s not ba—”

Crosby saw Gale whack the back of his hand into Bubbles’ chest to shut him up, but it was too late. Rosie was grinning.

“And type up their essay.”

They groaned. Bubbles, Nash, and Crosby shook their heads, bowing out, but Gale stuck out his hand for Rosie to shake.

“You’re on,” he said.

“Who’s your money on?” Rosie asked.

“Who d’you think?” Nash cut in.

It really was silly to ask; Gale took John’s side in everything, always. Crosby was going to point that out, begin recalling supporting evidence, but John started fighting really dirty—his hands dove to Curt’s sides, tickling hard, and Curt hopped back. Crosby bailed out of the booth and stood.

“Maybe they should take it outside,” Bubbles observed, reading Crosby’s concern on his face before he could voice it.

Just then, there was a scoff: “Typical.”

John ceased his attack on Curt as they turned to look with the others. Curt fixed his hat. There were three guys standing there, just past Crosby, who took a step towards the table to show his allegiance. Like most people they encountered off the Thorpe Abbotts campus, the trio were British. They looked about their age, maybe a little younger, and enough sheets to the wind not to mind that there were fewer of them than members of the group they’d accosted.

The pause after that single word seemed to go on and on. None of the seven had a doubt in their mind that it was a criticism of their behaviour—their Americanness. The Brits would expect them to get angry, to fly from their booth and jab their impolite American fingers in their faces, wet American spittle spraying from their mouths as they shouted rude American words. They didn’t know that this was what these particular Americans did for fun. That even now, in the pause, they were just deciding how they wanted this one to go.

“Can we help you?” Gale asked calmly, while his compatriots wordlessly downed their drinks.

“We’re just fine,” one of them replied. “Try helping yourselves.”

Gale glanced around at his friends as though confused.

“Did one of you need help with something?” he asked.

Curt had just poured himself a second beer. He held up a finger, signally for everyone to wait as he took a long swallow. He sighed in satisfaction.

“I actually do need help,” he said, looking not at Gale but at the Brits.

“Want us to teach you to tie your shoes?” a different one taunted.

“Nah,” Curt said, tone dangerously placid to the ears of his friends. “Nah, got that one figured out. I actually got a question for you: loserssaywhat?”

The first one frowned, head cocking slightly.

“What?”

Rosie guffawed, prompting the change in the trio’s expressions: superior to insulted. Angry. But Curt was beaming. He took another swallow of beer before slowly enunciating, “Losers. Say. What.”

And then he burped so loudly that Crosby, recounting the story to Kidd later that night, would swear it shook the walls.

“That wasn’t part of the question,” Curt clarified.

The strangers surged towards the booth and Crosby got in their way, Bubbles and Gale jumping up too to put a wall between them and Curt.

Gale said one word to them, and he said it like an order: “Outside.”

“Fucking right, outside,” was thrown back at him.

The three on their feet watched the Brits out the door, then turned back to the group.

“Who’s holding down the fort?” John asked.

“Not me,” Curt said. He clambered from the booth and started shadow boxing. As he ducked and wove, eyes fixed on an invisible opponent, John spun his hat around, brim at the back.

“Let’s all go,” Nash said from his spot against the wall. “Nobody’s gonna…”

He trailed off as his gaze landed on something beyond their prizefighting trickster, beyond the inseparable Bubbles and Crosby, beyond the deep-running still waters of Gale. There was a girl. A beautiful girl. Thick, dark hair, talking with another girl Nash barely noticed. As he watched, she laughed. She was even more beautiful when she laughed.

“Actually, I’ll stay,” he amended distractedly. He tilted his head to see around Curt as Curt decided to add footwork to his routine. “The rest of you can fuck off.”

Rosie looked where Nash was looking and smirked.

“Ah, no way, buddy. Wouldn’t leave you here all alone!”

“No more than three of us can go,” John declared. “It’s not…”

“Sportsmanlike,” Gale supplied.

John snapped his fingers and agreed, “Sportsmanlike.”

“I guess it’s you three then,” Bubbles deduced glumly, glancing between John, Gale, and Curt.

“Sure is,” John said, considerably more gleeful. He rose and clapped Bubbles on the shoulder. “Hang tight.”

“But—”

“If you go, Croz’ll come too, and we can’t go five-against-three; they’ll think we’re chickenshits.”

“Who cares about their opinion?” Crosby wanted to know.

“Me,” Curt said. He stuck out his lower lip in a pout. “They hurt my feelings.”

Crosby rolled his eyes.

“Get the fuck outta here.”

“Yeah, and do us proud!” Rosie shouted at their backs as Gale, Curt, and John trekked towards the exit. John pumped his fist into the air.

When they’d gone, Rosie smiled slyly at Nash.

“So. Are we calling her over here?”

“What?”

“YO!” Rosie yelped at the top of his lungs.

The girl, her friend, and a dozen other people in the crowded bar turned their heads, searching for the source of the sound.

“What the hell?!” Nash blurted.

Rosie frowned at him.

“You think she’s pretty, right?”

“Duh. Look at her—”

“MY FRIEND THINKS YOU’RE PRETTY! YEAH, YOU! BLUE SHIRT!”

“If I wanted her to think I was a total jackass—” Nash began.

“You’ll get your chance. I just got you started. Wave her over.”

“You ever think there’s a reason you don’t have a girlfriend?”

Nash slid along the seat until he was free of them all, though Crosby did offer an encouraging thumbs-up.

“Watch and learn,” he called over his shoulder. He locked eyes with the girl—the beautiful girl, who was miraculously staring back at him with an expression of amusement rather than scorn—as he headed her way.

—

Outside, the tension was thickening. The Brits should’ve gotten some kind of points for holding their ground, John thought, because they looked nervous now that he, Gale, and Curt were all on their feet, not folded up in that booth. He lifted his chin and squared his shoulders to make himself as big as possible. And he smiled, not as massive as Curt though. That seemed to be pissing them off, maybe making them stay: that Curt was full-on grinning.

“Thorpe Abbott?” the mouthiest of the three asked, like an accusation.

“Abbotts, numb nuts,” Curt corrected.

“What do they grade you with there? Scratch-and-sniff stickers?”

“I wish!” John said. There was a threatening gleam in his eyes.

“You know it doesn’t mean anything when they give you all hundreds right? Your degrees don’t mean shit.”

“It actually does mean something,” Curt said. He suddenly sounded so serious that his friends looked at him from the corner of their eyes. “We go in this special room, ’k? Maybe not so fancy as the rooms at wherever you boys go—”

“East Anglia,” was offered.

Curt nodded.

“Yep, Easy Anglia, whatever. But we go in this room and then—true story—this woman shows up. Like, our dean calls her up to let her know another one of us special boys—”

“Us special American boys,” Gale emphasized.

“—got himself another fuckin’ hundred. Takes her maybe half an hour to show up. And then, guess what, you guys?” Curt looked at the befuddled Brits eagerly. “She blows us.”

Their reaction was a blend of highly skeptical and stunned by the turn Curt’s story had taken. Shit’s sake, Curt, John was thinking. This is gonna be a hell of a fight.

“And, you know, she did mention she had a son,” Curt said measuredly, homing in on the mouthy guy now, “but, damn, you’re her spittin’ fuckin’ image.”

The Brits lunged at them.

—

Nash wanted to ask her to dance, to hold her by the hips and sway along to whatever rhythm she chose. He didn’t care if it didn’t match the beat of the music. He didn’t care that no one else was dancing, or that this wasn’t really a place where people did that. “Helen,” she’d said her name was.

“You read much?” he asked stupidly, but he wanted her to like him more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. More than anyone in the history of humankind had ever even dreamed their descendants could want. The only thing he could think to talk about was books. Talking about books, he could start to sound smart again, reassemble his brain in the background while most of him got lost in Helen’s eyes.

“Yes.”

Nash loved how she said yes. His heart, thumping happily in his chest loved it. The rush of blood to his groin loved it. The sound of “yes” in her mouth. She was American. He tried not to think how easy it would be, the two of them moving back home after school. Or staying here, a pair of expats. Whatever she’d prefer.

“I’m actually studying creative writing.”

“Where?” he asked, starry-eyed.

Her eyes darted to her friend before returning to his face. The reaction said he was being sort of stupid now, but then her expression shifted to something like guilt. She’d felt bad for thinking it. for writing him off so quickly.

“At the University of East Anglia.”

“Oh. So, like, right nearby.”

“Right nearby,” she confirmed. “Hence…” She glanced around. Hence this bar. Hence. Totally. Nash gave her a smile, weak with adoration.

“Why there?” he asked.

“Kazuo Ishiguro studied there. I admire his work.”

“I loved The Remains of the Day.”

Helen smiled at him. The clouds parted. Probably.

“Me too,” she said. “Are you in the arts as well?”

“English,” he told her. “Thorpe Abbotts. Working on my PhD.”

She was sufficiently engaged now that her friend moved off, giving them space.

“What’s your field?”

“American,” he admitted, and she got it, and she laughed. An American studying Americans in England. He shrugged, embracing her reaction.

“Who do you like?”

You. But she’d meant which authors.

“Twain,” Nash said, “and Hawthorne.”

Helen’s eyes lit up.

“Yes! My greatest influences are second-wave. You know, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem’s exposé on the Playboy Club, obviously…”

“Well, sure,” Nash said, just keeping up as she spoke in an impassioned rush.

“But I love the early feminists too. Hawthorne and Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Alcott.”

“Little Women!”

“It’s probably still my favourite novel of all time.”

For the first time, Nash took a careful, calculated pause, and he gave her a look. A Nash look. It was a look that usually communicated let’s get out of here, but this time, he wanted more. He’d worn the shirt.

“I’ve never met anybody who was as much of a Jo as you are,” he said, meaning it.

It was noisy, but he heard Helen’s pleased gasp. That she was actually an Amy was something Helen had not yet admitted to herself, and so Nash’s compliment hit its target with full effect. He watched as her lips parted—to thank him? to kiss him? to say some other unforeseen thing that would change his life even further? make him feel the earth move under his feet? did she like Carole King?—but there was a hard tug on his elbow.

Nash turned to find Bubbles standing there. He was the one person Nash wouldn’t snap at for interrupting, and the others knew that. He’d been sent.

“I am so sorry,” Bubbles said, addressing Helen. He was beginning to slur his S’s. “I gotta steal him back for a minute.”

“I swear my friends don’t speak for me,” Nash said as Bubbles physically dragged him away from the conversation. “I know it’s happened twice now, but they don’t!”

Was it worth it, to be removed from Helen’s side and brought back to the booth? Nash was surprised to feel that it almost was—almost—when his eyes landed on their smiling trio of champions. Gale had a cut on his cheek where a fist must’ve connected, or at least glanced off; John had the dark promise of a bruise below one eye; and Curt didn’t have a scratch on him. Nash laughed, shaking his head.

“What was he tryin’ to say though?” John was asking.

“Mumbling some shit about our hundreds,” Gale replied. “Our ‘bloody hundreds.’”

“Yeah,” Curt said. “But it was after I’d clocked him square in the mouth. That’s why he was lispin’. ‘Bloody hundredth,’ it sounded like.” He chuckled. “Bloody hundredth.”

“To the Bloody Hundredth,” Crosby proposed, raising his beer.

Rosie passed Nash his refilled glass, then lifted his own for the toast.

“Bloody Hundredth,” the rest of them intoned.

“And to Princess Diana,” Bubbles’ voice rang out when the rest of them had a glass to their lips. “Wherever she may be tonight.”

Crosby adopted an expression of deep solemnity, but Rosie ruined it by snorting into his water.

“Alright, men,” John addressed them. “Back into the booth. We got some fuckin’ drinking to do.”

“Spoken like a true Hemingway scholar,” Gale observed.

John gave him an affectionate smile.

“I try.”

#my writing #Masters of the Air #MotA #MotA fic #Joseph 'Bubbles' Payne #Harry Crosby #Robert 'Rosie' Rosenthal #Herbert Nash #Helen (MotA)#Curtis Biddick #Gale 'Buck' Cleven #John 'Bucky' Egan #Bucky x Buck #Gale x John

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oliviassunrise · 1 month

Note

if you’re feeling like it: hand-holding 30 or 34 for Helen and Dale? :3

Oh, I had fun with this one! I think my heart wants to believe that year between seasons 1 and 2 was a good time for them. Went with 34–holding hands while driving.

Thanks for the prompt!

Touches Ask Game

…

Windows down, music blasting.

That is the way Helen likes their drive to Bendigo for Christmas. Val has a turkey in the oven and has promised clean sheets on the bed in Dale’s old room. As they cruise down the freeway, Helen tips her sunglasses back over her eyes, fighting the hot rays of early summer in Victoria.

Dale is in the driver’s seat, bopping his head along to Helen’s choice of heavy rock. He’s the most relaxed she’s seen him in months. Since he took over the desk last autumn, he’s on edge, constantly trying to prove he belongs where he’s at and isn’t simply a filler for Geoff—a substitute until someone “better” comes along. His change in energy for this holiday is refreshing, and Helen is grateful for a stress-free trip.

This isn’t the first time she’s been to his mother’s, and their little trip back in the winter had been…well, it had been less than desirable. Dale had spent the entire time on the phone, listening to the radio—anything for updates on what he initially believed would become a huge story. He had been convinced they would have to pack up any minute and return straight to Melbourne, and not only had it left Helen unnecessarily antsy, but she’d watched him deflect and miss every single one of his mother’s attempts to enjoy their company.

Helen and Val had reached an understanding and appreciation for one another that weekend.

For this visit, however, they’ve had a talk. Dale is not to think about work. He is not to turn on the telly outside of the usual Christmas specials. And he sure as hell is not allowed control of any radio. Hence, Helen packing a shoebox of cassettes for the ride.

The current tape ends, and she sifts through her box for a new one. It needs rewinding, but the second Pat Benatar blares through the speakers, Dale is on cloud nine.

Helen can only giggle at his antics—at his exaggerated pitch and his enthusiasm as he drums on the steering wheel. He’s lucky they’re on a long stretch of road with few cars, or his swerve might have dire consequences.

“Watch the road, or I’m telling your mother to bust your arse when we get there,” she threatens with a chuckle.

But he keeps going. “We belong to the light, we belong to the thunder!”

He grasps her hand and holds it up victoriously, and she nearly chokes with laughter. “Dale!”

“We belong to the sound of the words we’ve both fallen under!”

He keeps up his dramatic performance, hand still holding hers. “Okay, Dale, really—”

“Weeeeee belong! We belong, we belong together!”

He stops and turns the volume down, both of them in fits of hilarity. And as she sees the smile on his face—a genuine smile for the first time in weeks—she thinks…this can work.

“Ladies and gentleman, that was the musical stylings of Dale Jennings,” Helen narrates, putting on her camera voice. “Tune in next time…if he doesn’t crash the car.”

“I’ll be here all week,” he gives a little bow, planting the hand holding hers back on the steering wheel.

“You know, we should see if Lindsay will let you turn this into a bit. Really put a bug up Geoff’s arsehole.”

“Oh, I’m sure the ratings will soar.”

“It’s what the people want—to be dazzled and entertained, right?”

Dale only laughs and shakes his head. “I bloody love you, you know that?”

Helen reaches for his hand again, offering him a sweet smile. “Yeah, I know.”

#ask kayli #the newsreader #helen x dale #helen norville #dale jennings #the newsreader fanfiction #my fic

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johnwickb1tsch · 1 month

Text

The Night Nurse ~ Chapter 10

A John Wick x Helen Fic

Masterlist / Chapter Map

Author's note: It's been a minute since I posted on this fic, I'm so sorry!! I lost a good chunk of this chapter to an untimely computer update (fuck you very much Windows) and I was so frustrated I just had to let it sit for a while. BUT I finally managed to re-write it, so here we are! I hope you enjoy! 💗💗💗 (Oh and the illustrations here are from the turn of the century version of Afanasyev's Russian Fairy Tales, the book John hid his marker in, in JW3...you'll see why.😉)

Times gets tough

Oh, they get tougher

Hold on to me

I got you, darling…

-I’ll be your man, The Black Keys

The walls of his library were lined with built-in bookshelves, filled to the brim with antique and vintage books. A single leather reading chair sat in the corner with a lamp and a small table. A larger table took up the center of the room with a proper book cradle. Helen breathed in, reveling in the magical smell of old books. She realized that this must be where John gets some of that intoxicating scent of his, bottom notes of leather and parchment paper. The chair in the corner looked well-worn, and she imagined him spending hours of his downtime just sitting and reading away the day.

For the umpteenth time, it squeezed her heart to the point of pain.

Throughout the course of the tour, they did not let go of each other once. John didn’t seem to mind handling books with one mitt of a hand, the fingers of his left laced tightly with Helen’s.

“Do you still have your book of Russian fairy tales?”

“Yes.” Gingerly he pulled it from a shelf, resting it in the cradle on the table.

They perused the book together, Helen leaning against his shoulder. He was warm, and solid as a tree, and for a heady moment it was difficult to concentrate on the antique tome, no matter how beautiful. The illustrations were utterly gorgeous, and she mentally kicked herself into focusing. She thought about a young John toting this beloved book around the world with him like a Lost Boy with his teddy bear, and the thought succeeded in tying her up in inextricable knots.

John turned to a page of an illustration of a lovely peasant woman in the woods, holding a torch made of a glowing human skull. “Oh, who’s that?” asked Helen.

“That’s Vasilisa the Beautiful,” answered John.

She hovered her finger over the first line of Cyrillic, careful not to touch the paper. “What does it say?”

John read it aloud, his voice low and all for her, and she sighed a little, not understanding a syllable. For some reason hearing him speak another language so easily, and something about the lilting cadence of the language in his deep voice, the soft shh and musical ya sounds of the Russian words inspired a curl of lust in her belly, a small thrill zipping down her spine. She shuddered lightly, and prayed he hadn’t noticed.

He absolutely noticed, his pupils blowing wide with desire. Doggedly, he kept them fixed upon the page below.

“Is that, ‘Once upon a time’…in Russian?”

“Something like that. This is a Cinderella story about a young woman who outsmarts her wicked stepmother and the Baba Yaga with her determination and the help of her magical doll. It’s one of my favorites.”

He’d seen a bit of himself in Vasilisa as a young man, straining under the yoke of his unforgiving masters. He turned the page to reveal a witchy old woman riding in what looked like an upright log. Helen couldn’t suppress a grin. “Oh look, it’s you, Baba Yaga.”

John snorted at that. “I still don’t know what idiot started that damned nickname,” he groused.

Actually, he suspected it was Marcus, but he’d never found out for certain.

“It sounds fierce, at least.”

His lips twisted in a smirk, and he couldn’t help himself from turning to look at her, then. Their faces were torturously close. “Think I should get some flaming skull torches for out front?”

“Yes, I think the neighbors would love that,” she deadpanned, and more felt than heard John’s responding chuckle.

He turned the page to a new illustration of a strapping knight on a black horse. “Oh hello, handsome. Who’s this guy?”

John narrowly resisted the urge to ask if she had a thing for men in black, even as that telling warmth clouded his brain.

“That’s…Night.”

“The night Knight?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.” Her lips twisted in a cheeky smile. “Nice. I like him.”

“You would.”

“I have excellent taste, John.”

He found himself looking at her mouth again, thinking her taste would be excellent. For the umpteenth time, he managed not to kiss her by the skin of his teeth. By the way she was looking at him...maybe he didn't need to be exercising such restraint. But maybe that was the excellent wine talking

Maybe he really was an idiot.

“So...in reward for being clever Baba Yaga gives Vasilisa one of the skull torches. She takes it back to her house, and when she lights the candles her wicked step mother and awful step sisters burn up.”

“Oooh. And she lives happily ever after?”

“Well...she marries the tsar, for what that's worth.”

Helen wrinkled up her nose, communicating her opinion on that. “Overall, I give it a nine out of ten.”

John couldn’t help it then. He actually grinned, showing teeth. “Glad you liked it.”

“Thanks for sharing with me.”

“My pleasure.”

She was still leaning on his shoulder, and was it him, or had she somehow sidled even closer, her body pressed to his side? Her eyes traveled leisurely from him to the book to the chair in the corner. It was then that she noticed that the bookmarked novel on the side table was a mass-market paperback she recognized quite well.

He’d taken her recommendation on the Codename Villanelle spy thrillers, despite teasing her about her taste in books, what felt like a lifetime ago that fateful night in the subway. The fact that he was on the second one touched her to no end, and she squeezed his arm.

“Aww, you’re reading about Eve and Villanelle,” she purred. “You like them?”

“Yes. You were right, they are fun.”

“Taking notes from Villanelle?” The Russian spy was wickedly clever at finding ways to kill her targets.

“Maybe. That poison hair stick was something. Think I could pull it off?” Helen reached up to curl a lock of his dark hair around her finger with a smile, and John couldn’t stop himself from closing his eyes, overwhelmed by the sensation of her touching his hair.

He was hopeless.

“Oh, definitely. You could so rock the man-bun.”

John rolled his eyes at that, reluctant to admit that he often did when training.

Helen looked back to the book, now with what John was learning to recognize as a sly glint in her eye. “I’m on practically the same spot in that book,” she noted. “Want to read me a chapter?”

John looked at his reading chair, the comfortable old soldier that it was. It was also the only place to sit in the room, and he went a little cross-eyed at the thought of Helen curled up in his lap in it.

There would be zero reading done, of that he was certain. He would debauch her for the first time in that chair, and maybe again on the table for good measure.

A virulent heat licked at his collar as he imagined it. Fuck him, but she was making him blush.

“Sure. Let’s take it to the living room,” he proposed, ignoring her lips pursed in a theatrical pout.

Minx. She knew exactly what she was doing to him—and he was increasingly unsure why he wasn’t just letting her have her way.

He scooped up the paperback book, her hand still firmly clasped in his other while he led them back to the recessed living room. He set the book down on the couch. “Want another glass of wine? I’m going to clear these dishes.”

He needed to clear his head, and he felt Helen look at him with some disappointment that felt a little bit like being stabbed.

“Can I help you?”

“No, this is your night off. Sit, relax. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.” She seated herself on the couch with only the book for company.

She watched John practically flee into the kitchen, and wondered if she’d done something wrong.

Regaled by the sound of clinking dishes and the faucet running, Helen looked around at John’s shelves. They were rather bare, though she noticed he had a bit of a CD collection on display. It plucked at her nostalgia for the days before everything could be so easily accessed via the hand-held computers known as phones but so rarely used for actually talking.

Standing, she decided to be nosy and thumb through them. He seemed to favor classics, from classical music, to rock and blues. There was very little on the shelf dating from past the 90s, and that made her smile for some reason.

“See anything you like?”

She turned to find John with two freshly-filled wine glasses in tow. He set them on the coffee table, before joining her at the built-in cd tower.

“Some good stuff here,” she agreed with a Chili Peppers cd in her hand. The fiery pool with the ocean in the background on the cover tickled the nostalgia center in her brain for sure. “Who are these guys?” She pulled out a black and white album with a high contrast photo of a guy with glasses, and a bearded dude.

“Never heard of the Black Keys?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, honey.”

She chuckled. “Ok, do not pull the my taste in music is better than yours card. I will leave.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he defended with a sly close-lipped smile. “I reserve that card only for books.”

She snorted in answer, and found herself gravitating closer to him, even just standing there looking at his music. She just couldn’t help it.

That really was some good wine he served with dinner.

She watched as he popped open the jewel case, feeding the CD into the slot of his player. He hit a couple buttons, and the speakers erupted with a very bluesy distorted guitar riff. It was loud, and John laughed a little as she jumped—conveniently, into his arms.

“Sorry.” He turned down the volume slightly, his arms circling her waist almost of their own volition. It felt so easy, being with her. Maybe from the very moment they’d met, it just felt like she should be in his arms, and acting on it made something loud and uneasy always clamoring in the back of his brain to go quiet. She swayed her head and shoulders a little to the beat; it was impossible not to.

“John?” she asked from beneath his chin, brushing the soft scruff of his beard with her nose. It filled him with a tingling warmth, in the very marrow of his bones, a pleasure in this closeness that just seemed too good to be true. It was like a drug, better than cocaine or heroin or anything else he’d ever tried, and he didn’t know how he would ever let her go.

“Yeah?”

“They made you learn ballet at your…school, but do you like to dance?”

He’d spent so much time in night clubs, hunting, and acting as backup muscle for Tarasov while he closed business deals, but it wasn’t a setting he really enjoyed. He wasn’t sure he really classified the writhing and arm waving one engaged in at the club as dancing. He was familiar with other dance forms, but they didn’t come up often in his life.

“I feel like you’re actually asking me a different question,” he teased, leaning into her to reach out to skip to a different track.

“I am?”

“You’re asking if I want to dance with you?”

The first metallic notes of Dan Auerbach’s guitar rang out, and John swayed to the beat, a hand on her svelte waist pinning her close. With a smile she moved with him, her other hand finding his.

“Do you?”

He looked down at her with a glint of mischief in those shining dark eyes, and so much warmth that a flood of heat washed through her from her hair follicles all the way to her toes. This man. She really would follow him anywhere. Maybe the wine they’d drank lubricated this thought process, but she knew that didn’t make it any less true.

John knew that his answer to any question that involved an activity with her would be a resounding yes. Groceries? Yes. The dentist? Fine. Just hold his hand. He was broken for her.

“Of course I do.” He lifted his arm to guide her in a turn before pulling her close again, and she simply couldn’t help it. The joy in her heart soared.

Then the vocals in the song began, and Helen couldn’t help the fuzzy warmth that spread in her chest. Need a new love? I’m ready. Want my time? I’m willing.

There wasn’t a huge amount of open space in the living room, but John was very good at making do, leading her in steps to the beat, throwing in fun checks and turns and behind-the-back maneuvers that made her giggle. She knew she sounded drunk. It was on him though, far more than the wine. He made her happier than any one had in a very long time. Maybe ever, if she was being honest with herself.

To make things even worse, the chorus of the song rang loud in her ears with the infectious guitar riff: I’ll be your man. Mmm, I’ll be your man. She didn’t know if he picked this song on purpose for the lyrics, or the intoxicating rhythm, but she felt it in her bones, and in her heart, and every cell of her being; she was so attuned to this man.

She almost tripped when he attempted to twist her up like a pretzel in a figure-eight step, but he caught her, laughing with her as he held her close.

“I’m not that good,” she apologized, clinging to him more than she really needed to. He was just…so solid, and if she was being honest all she really wanted to do was climb him like a fucking tree.

His arm around her waist was like a warm band of iron, and he smiled gently down at her. She felt herself melting like chocolate in the sun, her knees gone weak beneath her.

“That’s ok. I’ve got you.”

She couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped from her throat. Because, she knew it was true, and not just here being silly dancing in his living room. She realized she trusted him not to drop her no matter what they were doing, or what they were facing. That kind of faith in another person, much less a man, was a rare and precious thing.

“John…” she said softly, looking up into his warm dark eyes from so very close. She wasn’t sure if she was asking a question, or if she just needed to cite his name like a prayer, invoke him like a saint in her personal pantheon. Maybe it was madness, but wrapped up in his arms like this, he felt like something to believe in.

Her eyes drifted down to his mouth, those full lips she’d coveted since the moment they’d met, if she was telling the truth.

This was the moment that John’s will to fight it broke at last. He felt it inside, not like a hard snap, but a definite release, like a boat coming unmoored, being swept down a swift stream. There was no more resisting. He was lost to her.

Pulled like a magnet, he finally leaned in that fraction of distance to press his lips to hers. His kiss was like a sunrise in her heart; warm and bursting, soft and sweet. She couldn’t stop herself from standing on tiptoe with a low moan, looping her arms around his neck as she pressed her body against his. It won her something like a deep growl that thrilled her to her toes, and greedily she wanted more.

She teased the seam of his mouth with her tongue, begging entrance he gladly granted. She felt the tremor in his arms as he held her, so tightly that he nearly lifted her from the floor. He kissed her like a starving man offered a life-giving meal, and her fingers fisted in his hair at the back of his head, holding him to her, holding on.

His heartbeat a thundering timpani in his ears, John felt like Helen’s lips on his was the answer to a question his heart had been asking his whole adult life. She was the air he breathed, the sustenance necessary to live, and the desire to drink her down, to eat her up, was a dogged, insistent demand from the darkest depths of his soul.

He never wanted to let her go.

With a ragged breath he pulled back to rest his forehead against hers, his fingers digging into her sides. She might have bruises later.

She didn’t mind.

She wanted his hands, rough or gentle.

She wanted all of him, and if he didn’t return his mouth to hers she was going to scream.

“Helen,” he panted. “I—”

The tinny electronic sound of his phone ringing in his pocket interrupted what might have been a foolish—or a life changing—confession. “Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, knowing he had to answer it. That was the deal with the devil he’d signed, when he didn’t really have any better choice. He was on call all the time.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized.

She nodded, but did not extricate herself, leaning on his shoulder while he pulled the device from his pocket. It was Viggo Tarasov, and his heart dropped like a stone. It was rare that the boss Himself called. He absolutely had to answer it, and he had a feeling he wouldn’t like what his pakhan had to say.

With a heavy heart he lifted the phone to his ear, his other arm still wrapped possessively around Helen.

“Da?”

“Good evening, John.”

John fought to keep the impatient snarl out of his tone, but feared he failed royally. “Evening, Viggo.”

“I’ve just heard some interesting things about your latest adventures about town. I think we need to talk.”

That was probably the understatement of the century.

“When?”

“Now.”

Of fucking course.

“I can be there in an hour.”

“Good.”

Viggo hung up, and John clenched the phone in his fist, fighting not to throw it across the room. He knew Helen heard every word for the way she sighed with disappointment, snuggling into the bend of his neck. The sensation of her front molded to his was heaven, and he didn’t know how to let her go.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized with lips to her forehead. “I have to go.”

“I understand.” There was some consolation, in that she sounded as devastated as he was.

“You’ll be ok here? My house is your house. Help yourself to anything you want.”

She made a kittenish little sound that sent all his blood straight to his groin. “What I want is leaving,” she informed him with a pouting lip, tugging on the front of his shirt.

He couldn’t stop himself then from stealing another kiss, a deep and probing thing that left her breathless and starry-eyed.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told her.

“Promise?”

“Yes.” John wondered what Viggo had in store. If he was in trouble, or if his boss would send him out to teach the Medvedev boys a lesson tonight. He didn’t want to go hunting that night. Everything he truly wanted in the world, he realized, was standing right in front of him, looking up at him with melted toffee eyes. He cupped her cheek, memorizing every detail of her all over again.

He realized with a startling clarity that he could never get enough of her.

The intensity of his stare sent a thrill jetting down her spine. “John…” He worried her a little, when he got like this. She wasn’t afraid of him, exactly—but some little intuition in the back of her brain sang out that something bad might happen.

“It’ll be alright,” he told her, sensing her unease. “I have to change.” He kissed her forehead again, and disappeared up the stairs to his room.

Helen plopped down on the couch with a sigh, crushed with disappointment but knowing this was how it was, and she understood more than ever now that it wasn’t his fault or his choice. She picked up the Villanelle book, No Tomorrow, stroking her thumb over the cover, but not cracking it open.

When John stalked down the stairs he was wearing one of his slim-fit all black suits again, his hair slicked back from his face. He looked beautiful, and predatory, sleek as a panther stalking in the jungle, and fierce attraction warred with dread in Helen’s breast. She had a feeling that someone might die tonight, and it was so strange to think in those terms with such a sense of acceptance.

At least she knew John’s prey would be no one innocent.

“Don’t forget you owe me a chapter,” she said in a sing song tone as he approached, waving the book, trying to lighten the pall that had fallen upon the room.

The smile he paid her was filled with melancholy; she felt it like a knife between the ribs. “I won’t,” he assured her, taking her hand to press his lips to her knuckles. He paused, looking down at this beautiful woman seated on his couch, with her legs that went on forever and the warmth in her eyes all for him. There was nothing he wanted more, than to stay there with her. To lay her down and kiss every inch of her perfect flesh. He probably should have told her that, but he just sighed, and let her go.

“I’m going to leave this here, just in case,” he said, all business as he showed her a blocky black automatic pistol. “There’s one in the chamber. All you have to do is pull the trigger. It has a long trigger pull but please do not touch it unless you need it, and be very careful.” He stashed the Glock in a drawer beside the couch. “I’ll leave the alarm on. If it goes off I’ll get an alert on my phone.”

With wide eyes she nodded. “Do you…think the Medvedevs will come here?”

“No, or I wouldn’t leave you here alone.” He honestly thought this was the safest place for her. “But…” One never knows.

“Okay.” He could tell that he managed to scare her a little, and he hated himself for it.

“I’m being paranoid,” he tried to assure her. He dared add, “Because you’re precious to me.” She softened then, and stood to wrap her arms around his neck once more. Embracing her was as intoxicating as kissing her, and again John warred with himself as to how he was going to leave.

“Come back to me,” she demanded softly, kissing the soft scruff of his cheek.

“Always,” he answered without allowing himself to think about it, pressing his lips to hers in a long, gentle kiss filled with all the yearning in his heart.

Reluctantly, he slipped from her grasp, and didn’t look back.

She watched him go, admiring his tall dark form even as he was leaving her.

She heard the roar of the Mustang starting in the garage, and the trail of its growl as it prowled across the driveway, disappearing down the street into the night. She couldn’t help but feel like her heart sped away with it.

#john wick #john wick fic #john wick x helen #helen wick #john wick the night nurse #keanu reeves

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irondadfics · 8 days

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Please help bc i can’t find this fic anymore

i fear it might be deleted bc I've tried so hard to find this

So it starts sometime after endgame or far from home, happy shows peter tony’s workshop to get anything he needs that was Spider-Man related, he finds a new suit and friday is in that new suit. Peter in anger wants to throw away everything but a bracelet snaps to his wrist. In his new suit he gets transported to a different dimension and falls through a building. Peter wakes up and thinks everyone is an illusion. After finding out its all real we discover that peter snapped in this universe. Suddenly Docter strange comes through a portal and says that peter doesnt belong in this universe. He leaves and comes back after a little bit and tells peter and the avengers that he can make it so that everyone will forget that peter snapped (and died) so that the other universe peter can fit in. Only downside is that everyone will forget that peter was dead and that the “new” peter is from another universe. They follow that plan but the avengers do remember bc peter messed up the spell. In the final few chapters peter gets stabbed and doctor cho and aunt may discover that peter is from another dimension. There is also a bit where the avengers discover that pain meds dont work on peter bc he is more mutated that their peter. They also discover that he never had pain meds in his universe. At the end they scan peters body to take a look at all the bone fractures and see that all bones have been broken in a number of ways. (There was a story peter told about getting his hand stuck in tonys suit after the power went out).

Thats about all i can remember. I would really appreciate it if you found it!

Hello, could this be your fic?

Somewhere You Can Be Safe by sarcasmismyweapon

Peter's given access to Tony Stark's workshop to collect all the things that Tony might have worked on for his Spider-man suits. He discovers a new suit the man had worked on after the snap, overcome with emotion he breaks a few things. While cleaning up the mess he made, Peter finds a strange device that seems to react to his touch. The next thing he knows the floor is disappearing beneath him and he's falling into a void. Tony Stark and the Avengers are shocked when Friday alerts them to re-connecting to Peter Parker's Spider-man suit, seeing as the suit's locked up. They're even more shocked when they go to catch the thief of the suit after Friday confirms it's Peter's suit. Nothing could have prepared them for un-masking the thief to see the face of the boy they lost during the final battle.

#found fic #may parker #stephen strange #helen cho #avengers family #angst

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centurieslove · 4 months

Text

Three days passed.

Nothing changed. Merlin felt trapped in a nightmare, the motions propelling him through his duties whilst his mind swam, heart clenched tight in his chest. He didn’t feel like he knew how to stop, if he did- he had an awful feeling that everything would crash down around his shoulders, so, naturally he threw himself into every menial task he could get his hands on. Arthur’s chambers had never been cleaner. His hands felt dry and sore, the skin cracking from the constant saturation in soapy water, whilst his nails were collecting little half moons of black from the polish and the dirt. Not just Arthur's armour, but the whole armoury had been seen to, cleaned and reorganised, swords sharped and metal links polished. Bodies of colour flowed past him as he meandered through corridors, between his various chores, blurry, his steps dragging and autonomous. By the third day, he’d started on Gaius’s shelving too, and spent the whole day pottering about the edges of the room, peering over his shoulder at the body laid on the pallet, when he felt like he could stand it no longer. He felt pulled in two; he was consumed with fear whenever he couldn’t watch over Mordred - yet being in the same room was unbearable. His skin felt stretched tight across his forearms, tingling, his stomach heavy each night as he approached Gaius’ chambers. He didn’t sleep the first night. Instead, he sat numbly on his own bed, fists clenched in his lap, blinking his eyes as they stung, staring through the wall at where he knew Mordred lay. Each hour that had passed, with his stomach shrinking in on itself, Merlin’s nerves grew: he felt on a precipice, breath held, waiting for the rustle of movement, the exclamations, the calling for the King, Gaius’s low timbre as he coaxed water down a parched and unused throat.

But Mordred hadn’t woken.

Merlin had spoke to Gaius, the first day. The old man offered his same tired platitudes, stressing that Arthur needed to make his own decisions- but Merlin had turned away. It wouldn’t be so. Not when those decisions would lead directly to his death.

Mordred hadn’t woken the second day, either.

Merlin rolled his shoulders. The midday sun illuminated the corridor before him, and he let his eyes fall out of focus. He’d barely seen Arthur: each dawn, the king already been up and dressed, dismissing him with a list of chores, sending him away seemingly without a thought. Merlin had noticed the pile of papers and scrolls grow on the king’s desk, noticed the empty goblets left on his side tables, noticed the swipe of mauve under Arthur’s eyes. They didn’t speak more than necessary. Merlin didn’t ask. Whilst the rest of his world was smudged, Arthur shone out, the creases on his forehead rendered in such high a quality it almost hurt to gaze upon. But Merlin didn’t look away. The short, curt interactions, Your breakfast, sire, when he sat it on the table; Will that be all?, taking the hot plates from under the sheets; The council is ready, sire, when Arthur was still gazing out the window. Thank you, no, that's fine, you can take this, air that room, you're dismissed, that's all, light a fire, would you, I don't need…send for… Just a few short words between them and Merlin's whole world would sharpen into painful focus: but then Arthur would turn back to the window and it would dissolve again and Merlin would take the laundry away and Arthur would leave for council and Merlin would excuse himself quietly and Arthur would leave for training and Merlin would leave for the kitchens and Arthur would leave and Arthur would leave-

The ache in his arms, his shoulders, deepened, pressing debilitating loneliness even further into his bones. For one impossible moment, Arthur had opened himself up to magic. Merlin hadn't even had to chance to revel in it. With every second he protected the king, he pushed him further away, and his frustration grew; boiling away under his skin at the fates designing it this way. He- he couldn't protect him. He wouldn’t stop trying. He could keep Arthur alive, or he could keep his trust. He was going to have to accept that those were mutually exclusive.

His steps were slow and heavy down the hall, the whole castle seemed on bated breath - but with each corner he took his heart would lurch, in his mind’s eye Mordred came striding confidently towards him.

The castle felt eerily quiet. The halls were empty, cold and unassuming. The dust in the air had even stilled.

Merlin swallowed, his throat had been dry for days. He arrived outside the entrance to Gaius’s chambers, readying himself for another evening wearing a hole in his bedroom floor where he paced. His stomach no longer protested at the lack of food, shrunken and expecting little substance. He regretted not taking the opportunity to smuggle away the abandoned remains of Arthur’s breakfast; of which there was more and more left on his plate, ever since they’d arrived back at the citadel. Maybe he could still-

Merlin stopped short, murmurs of noise greeting him, a varying cadence of voices from behind the physicians door, with one voice in particular rising in crescendo.

"- don't understand it!"

Arthur. He didn't sound calm.

Merlin approached the door with trepidation, swallowed, then pushed it open.

Arthur, deep blue tunic bright amongst the dusty browns of Gaius’s chambers, broad shoulders heaving: he was staring at Gaius, face contorted and pained. Gwen’s features were similarly twisted, wringing her hands as she held them in front of her velvet dress.

“What’s…” he began. All three turned their heads sharply towards him.

Gaius hastened a step towards Merlin. Gwen attempted a smile in greeting, but continued to look grey and stricken. Arthur threw his gaze aside almost immediately. Merlin glanced between them all, eyes falling on to the bed where a body lay motionless, someone pale, young, with dark curls resting just in view.

Merlin felt weak, like he might throw up.

Mordred.

“Gaius,” Arthur said lowly, his voice hoarse. Merlin’s gazed dropped to where Arthur’s fists were clenching white by his sides, Gwen’s hands reaching out to gently touch his forearm. “Are you certain?”

Merlin looked at the old man, watched his face tighten with grim displeasure.

“I’m afraid so, sire.”

Arthur started pacing. Merlin could see the anger rising in his face, screwed up and confused.

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” he finally blurted out.

Gwen sighed, pulling Arthur round into her arms to stop his restless pace.

Gaius threw Merlin an inscrutable look, then started hesitantly, approaching the topic again like one would a wild beast. “He’s not showing any signs of recovery. His condition has not improved… it is my belief-”

Arthur grunted.

“- my belief, that he will not last the night.”

Merlin, stricken, said not a word.

“It was all for nothing,” Arthur grit out. Merlin stared at him. His eyes were wild with anger, searching for blame as if it was a beast he could slay, whilst Gwen, with endless patience, ran her hand down his arm. He turned, agitated, leant against Gaius’s workbench and hung his head.

“Arthur,” Merlin started.

He glared up at Merlin across the room. As if he’d caused it, as if Merlin had doomed Mordred himself - but, but, he hadn’t. Despite his desperate efforts. This… this was meant to be another failure.

Yet: Mordred was still dying, and Merlin, still failing.

"My lord," Gaius sighed. "You need rest." He stepped towards the king, but Arthur just shook his head resoundingly.

"I don't need rest, I need a damned explanation,” he demanded. "He is supposed to be recovering. He-” Arthur’s voice wavered. “That was the deal.”

He should have woke up. Merlin blinked, gaze desperately turning to Gaius, who’s grim expression gave little away. "It doesn't make any sense." he said, almost a whisper.

Cruel jokes were being played on him. He looked back to the bed. He half expected the young knight to jump up and embrace them all, revealing the entire thing to be but an elaborate charade. Yet, Mordred's lifeless form remained lifeless. Merlin felt anything but glad.

"His wounds were severe," Gwen said slowly, approaching the pallet. Her face was pained, and Merlin wondered who else she saw there lying, pale, on their death bed. "Perhaps they could do no more to save him."

Arthur's face was stricken in grief and despair, shoulders still shaking. Merlin’s head was ringing, his mouth dry and his throat sore from the bile, thoughts rushing fast to keep up with the events unfolding before him.

He thought of the three hooded figures, a misty cave, dark dripping around their shoulders. Releasing this judgement, holding Arthur to a promise that would - ultimately - doom him.

"They could have.”

Arthur glared at Merlin as he spoke up. Merlin blinked, realising he'd said it louder than he meant.

"What?" Arthur spat.

Merlin's eyes glazed over as he stared at the body on the bed then gave a slight shrug of his shoulder. "Triple Goddess," he muttered, as if that explained it. "They could have. Saved him. If they really wanted to."

The room fell silent.

Arthur started suddenly, giving Gwen's hands a firm squeeze and headed towards the door.

He spun round at the last second. “Send word if there is any change.” The King’s face was tight as he addressed his physician, who nodded, then Arthur stormed out of the quarters. Gwen sighed.

“If there is anything I can do—” she began.

“I will let you know, my Lady.” Gaius spoke softly.

Gwen smiled, small but steady. She rubbed Merlin’s arm and gave a small squeeze as she passed him, but Merlin could barely respond to return the smile. He felt his heartbeat follow the footfall until they were unable to be heard. His heavy breath suddenly felt so loud in the absence of Arthur’s rage and the silence left in Gaius’s chambers. He collapsed onto the bench.

“I—”

He couldn't speak.

Gaius slowly walked over and took his seat opposite, where the two of them sat for what seemed like hours.

Finally-

“He should be alive,” Merlin muttered. “He should be alive.”

Gaius crossed his arms.

“You're not happy?”

Merlin looked up in surprise.

“What?”

“Did you not want him to die?” Gaius's face betrayed nothing.

He furrowed his brow. “No. I mean—”

“You refused to heal him.”

“Yes, but—”

“Well, then.” Gaius stated, rising slowly from the bench. “You should be grateful that Arthur failed.”

Merlin grit his teeth. His eyes were burning again. This wasn't it, this wasn't- it wasn't supposed to…he never would have guessed that Arthur would have made that choice.

“Gaius, you don't underst—”

Gaius swung round, snapped at him. “No, Merlin, you're right. I don't understand.” The old man's eyes were alight, fiery as he shouted, but then something grey passed over them like a curtain being drawn and his whole demeanor shrunk back again.

“I'll leave you to celebrate your success,” he said quietly. And walked past Merlin and out the door.

more samples

#heheheh i added more to this scene last night and I just ADORe the pacing of it now. if i do say so myself #i've got 13k now and I'm frothing at the mouth #merlin fic #helen's 5x05 fic #merlin fanfiction #merlin fanfic #the disir #fic

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