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beskarandblasters · 6 months

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Brat Tamer!Din Djarin x F!Reader

Part two for A Good Friend to Have

Main Masterlist | Din Djarin Masterlist

Author’s note: Here’s the long awaited part two of my boyfriend David’s fic!! Edited by me 🤍

Summary: The Mandalorian follows you back to your apartment but he’s not after Sorrana, he’s after you.

Word count: 3.7k

Warnings: reader is able-bodied, reader is a sex worker, reader does not know Din’s name, dom/sub, revenge domming, disrespect of the creed (kinda), nipple play, hair pulling, restraints, Din can pick reader up, oral sex (M receiving), vaginal sex, sex while standing up, creampie, unprotected sex, cum eating, orgasm delay/denial, pet names, sir kink, no use of y/n

After an eventful evening at work you hurry to the curb to hail a taxi back to your apartment where Sorrana is waiting for you. When a cab pulls up you step in and let out a sigh of relief, then direct the driver to your apartment building.

It only takes a few minutes to traverse across the district until you get home. As you sit in the cab you look out of the window at the city lights and heavy rain, letting your mind wander, you recall everything that just happened at the brothel for a while, before your thoughts center back on Sorrana. Your heart breaks for her and no matter what you’ll do whatever you can to protect your friend.

The cab pulls up to your platform, you pay the driver before stepping out into the rain and rushing into your building. As you make your way to your apartment, you’re careful not to be spotted. While you don’t think you’ve been followed, you can’t help but feel a little paranoid. You finally arrive at your place and punch in the key code to open the door.

“Sorrana?” you call out, as you turn on the lights.

“I’m here,” she replies, quietly stepping out from your bedroom.

The two of you hurry across the room and embrace each other, glad to see that you both made it here safe.

“I’m so sorry I dragged you into this,” she whispers, holding you a little tighter.

“I’m just happy that you’re okay.”

“What are we going to do?”

You’ve been thinking about that on the way here. You remember a while back you had a regular at the brothel who had been involved in some shady activity. Nothing really dangerous but he was involved with smuggling. He even tried to pay you using some of the illegal goods he was sneaking off world a few times, though you always had him pay in credits. It might be a long shot, but you think he may be able to help take her off world.

“I have an idea” you say, before pulling a small cylinder lockbox from a shelf in your closet. You unlock the container to reveal the hidden cache of credits you’ve kept for a rainy day.

“Are you sure?” Sorrana asks, starting to piece together your plan.

“I’m sure. You can take these to a smuggler I know who will get you off world. Give him my name and ask him to let you stow away during his next shipment. I wish there was enough here to just clear the debt but this is the best I can do.”

“I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

“Don’t worry about that,” you reassure her, “What’s important right now is getting you somewhere safe.”

The two of you begin packing what little you can into a satchel, it isn’t much but you’ve made sure that the essentials are covered. You give her a change of clothes, a cloak to conceal herself, some rations, and the lockbox of credits. You hug each other one more time before starting to head down to the lobby but you freeze as you lead her into the hallway and see the Mandalorian.

“Kriff,” you whisper to Sorrana, before pushing your way back into the room and sealing the door.

“What happened?”

“That bounty hunter, from the brothel”

“He’s here? How?”

“I have no clue…I thought we’d have more time”

You hear footsteps approaching from down the hall and go silent. Your mind races thinking of what to do next, you’re standing in your living room frozen exchanging panicked glances with Sorrana.

“I know you’re in there,” you hear a low, modulated voice call from the other side of the door.

Each moment feels like an eternity, you can’t believe you were so close to helping Sorrana escape but there’s no denying it now.

“I’m not going anywhere until you open the door,” he calls out.

“Bedroom…window…fire…escape,” you whisper in the quietest voice you can manage, as you hold out a card the smuggler gave you with his address written on the back.

She tiptoes to your bedroom and silently pulls the window open. You take a few seconds to compose yourself. You approach the door and begin scheming ways to distract him again.

You open the door once again and see him, Mando standing across the hall leaned back against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. You close the door behind you as your eyes make contact with the visor of his helmet. He stands upright, and lowers his hands to his hips and begins to step toward you.

“You followed me home?” you say, acting offended to conceal your nervousness.

“I tracked you.”

“Listen-”

“No, this time you listen”, he interrupts, “I know you think you’re clever, keeping me busy to buy your friend time,” he tells you.

You step away before your back hits your door. He continues forward and places a hand on the wall behind you, his broad form now leaning over you.

“Yeah and it worked too, she’s long gone.”

“I don’t care about the bounty anymore.”

“Then why bother tracking me down?”

“My creed. I’m here to set things right. Teach you some respect.”

“Bold of you to assume I’ll give you the chance.”

“You will, or if you prefer, I can go back to my search.”

You pause for a moment, trying to get a read off him. Judging by his body language and imposing stance, he’s serious.

“Fine, if you’re not tapped out from before.” you giggle

“Good. Are you going to invite me in?''

You punch in the key code and the door opens behind you. You take a few steps back into your apartment and you turn around to quickly scan the bedroom to make sure Sorrana made it out. You see the window is shut and know she’s on her way. Mando follows you in, and begins calmly pacing the room holding onto his belt as he inspects your home.

You turn to face him in your living room, “So are you gonna take that cock out for me again?” you say, smirking at him.

“That’s not how this works,” he says, still circling the room

You stand there, puzzled by him. He’s not going to get thrown off so easily this time. You hear his footsteps approaching from behind, and stop when his shadow is cast over you. You turn to face him and tease him with another quip, but your mind goes blank as Mando looks down at you through pitch black glass.

“You’ll do as I say this time.”

“Alright big bad bounty hunter, I get it, what’s first?”

“Stand over there,” he says, gloved finger pointing at the center of your living room.

You walk over to the spot he directed and wonder to yourself, trying to anticipate what he’ll want with you next. He returns to walking the room but this time his gaze is fixed on you. A nervous excitement begins rising within you, he may be wearing a helmet but you know that look from last time. As you look back at his silent exterior pacing, you feel yourself getting wet imagining what’s to come.

“Get undressed,” he orders in a modulated voice.

You take off your damp cloak and step out of your outfit from the brothel, piling it all together on the floor beside you. The air cools your wet skin and sends a shiver down your spine. Mando stops his pacing, standing in front of you and taking in your shivering form, your nipples hardened from the cold air.

“Feeling cold?”

“Now you want to try and tease me?” you answer, trying to get a rise out of him.

He takes a step closer, closing the gap between you. You feel his gloved hands cup your chest, and the pressure of his firm grip sends a quick wave of pleasure over you. You feel yourself get wetter as he fondles you.

“Turn around.”

“Fine.”

You spin away from Mando, giving him a clear view of your body from behind. You gently arch your back to tease him, and feel your ass brush against his cock through his flight suit. You expect him to continue his fondling from behind, hoping to feel his cock press against you.

Instead, you’re met with the feeling of cool metal gripping your wrists and Mando binds them together with cuffs.

“What the-” you start, spinning back around to face him.

“It’s because you’re such a brat.”

“What did you say?”

“I called you a brat. You tease, make snide comments, and play games with me.”

“And?”

“And…I’m going to enjoy putting you in your place, and making a mess of you.”

Before you can reply with another snide comment, as he put it, Mando puts his hands back on your breasts. This time his fingers gently tugging on and running across your nipples, the sensation completely erasing whatever you had to say from mind. You realize small moans escape as you breathe and look to see if Mando notices.

“Already desperate?” he whispers to you, tugging a little harder.

The new tension prompts you to step to your tiptoes. You let out a gasp as you struggle to find your balance. You desperately tiptoe in place trying to settle into a position where the sensation of his fingers isn’t overwhelming you. No luck, more moans escape with each breath.

“That all you got, Mando?” you say between shaky breaths.

He finally releases you and the fog in your mind begins to lift. He walks back to your couch and takes a seat, legs taking a wide stance. You see the bulge of his flight suit and remember how full he made you feel before. You watch as he unzips the fly of his flight suit revealing his stiff cock.

“On your knees. In front of me.”

“O-okay, sure.”

You walk toward him to follow his order, imagining what he’ll have you do next. As you close the gap you feel your wet cunt growing more eager for Mando. You slowly lower yourself down to your knees in front of him, and take in the sight of his cock up close. It hasn’t been long since you last saw it at the brothel, but you still find yourself in awe of his imposing size. You look up at him expectantly, awaiting your new instructions.

“Now use your tongue, all the way from the bottom to the top.”

Without stopping to think you do as you’re told; mouth falling agape as you place your tongue on his balls and begin licking up his shaft. Mando lets out a groan in approval.

“Keep going, until I say so.”

“You like this Mando?”

“Just keep going, and you can call me sir,” he says, this time holding an intensely serious tone.

You comply, nodding your head as you continue licking up and down his length. He lets out more moans while you continue pleasing him as best you can while in restraints. The sounds you pull from him only drive you feral, you crave to please him even more. Unable to stroke him, you begin pressing your lips against him, now kissing the length of his cock between desperate licks.

“Good girl, that cock is your creed now. Better show me you can respect the importance of that this time.”

“Yes sir, can I take you in my mouth now?” you ask.

With a silent nod he gives you permission. You part your lips around the head and as you slide your mouth further down his shaft your jaw widens to accommodate the girth until you can’t fit another inch, there’s still more to take. You feel the pulse in his cock against your lips as tears spring from the corners of your eyes. His gloved hand takes hold of your hair as he pulls you off his cock and you gasp for air. He leans forward so you’re face to face with his metallic visage.

“That all you got?” he almost chuckles

“I could do more….if you released me”

“Maybe, but that isn’t happening. At least not yet.”

He leans back, your hair still in his hand, and you go back to sucking him off. His grip doesn’t force you so much as it guides you down to his balls. You begin sucking, licking, and taking them into your mouth and he uses his other hand to stroke himself.

“Please, sir, I want to feel you inside of me” you plead.

“Show reverence for your creed and I’ll consider it,”he answers coldly.

You open wide and take as much cock as you can fit in your mouth, tears pooling up and spilling from your eyes. You reach out with your lips and tongue for more, just barely reaching his base for mere moments before you return for air.

“Good girl,” he says.

“Mhm?” you hum, sending vibrations through his shaft.

He leans forward once again, this time running one hand behind your waist and the other under your ass. His muscles tense as he lifts you from the floor onto the couch, now straddling his lap with his cock between you. You whine and rock your hips but are unable to get his cock into you without use of your hands. He removes his gloves and begins caressing your form with bare hands. You collapse forward, resting your forehead against the cool metal pauldron, feeling his hands move down your back, over your ass, and finally stopping at your thighs.

“Please sir, I can’t take anymore, I need it,” you beg.

One arm reaches around to hug you by the waist, and with his other hand he reaches to touch your soaked cunt; gathering the wetness in his fingers.

“So wet for me,” he replies

“Please give it to me, sir.”

“Have you learned the importance of a creed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you have reverence for your new creed?”

“Yes sir, your cock is my creed. Please let me have it.”

He slicks his length with the wetness from your cunt, and slowly slides you back onto it. You let out a gasp as your walls expand to fit him inside. He lets loose his grip on you and places each hand on either side of your waist.

“Please, sir,” you whine.

“You can move yourself back and forth on my cock, and ask for permission to cum. This is the way of your creed” he dictates.

You begin rocking your hips back and forth, grinding your cunt against him in ecstasy. As you move against him you feel your pleasure build, an orgasm threatening to break loose. It feels like it takes almost no time at all before you’re ready to come undone around him.

“Sir, I’m close, may I cum?”

Without reply you feel his hand pulling and pushing you in concert with your grinding, intensifying the sensation. You hold yourself together, fighting the urge to defy your creed.

“I can’t hold it anymore. Sir please, let me cum,” you whimper.

He gives only a silent nod, permitting you release. The sensation of powerful climax is present throughout your entire body, your mind blank as you fuck yourself senseless on his cock. His hands move from your waist to cup your face.

“Good girl,” he praises repeatedly as you ride out the high.

His praises come to an end as you finish grinding, you rest your head on the back of the couch beside his helmet while you catch your breath. All while his now-soaked cock fills you.

“What do you say?”

“Thank you, sir,” you pant.

He presses a button on the forearm of his armor and you feel the cuffs release, falling off your wrists and clattering onto the floor. You move your hands onto his chest and push yourself up onto your feet, never letting his clock slide out, and begin bouncing up and down on his length. The sensation of pounding yourself deep on his cock is intense, the juices from your cunt runs down onto his balls and with every stroke they slap against you.

“Getting close again,” you whimper, “Please, can I cum again?”

“Already?” he teases, “Show me.”

You come undone once more, your cunt pulsing and fluttering as your legs turn to jelly. Tears pool in your eyes as you reach the peak of your climax. You hear Mando whisper a curse beneath his helmet.

“Already?” you tease, with a smirk on your face.

You stop bouncing, still straddling his lap with his whole length filling you up. You grind against him again and feel his grip grow firm around your ankles.

“Gonna blow?”

You feel his hands let go of you, then slide under you to caress your ass. Each time you slide forward his hands pull you in sync and each time you slide back he lets your ass brush through his hands.

“Just thought you looked pretty taking my cock like that,” he finally replies, adding “But no, I’m not done with you yet.”

“No?”

You feel his hands take hold of you again, this time lifting you up as he stands from your couch. You wrap your arms around his neck, hugging him tight to hold on. He starts gently fucking into you and it feels like bliss.

“Not until you drop the attitude,” you hear him say, in a deep tone next to your ear.

You’re too focused on holding onto him to give any reply, everything else you’ve done so far has you feeling exhausted. You half hoped that he was close, that way you’d get the satisfaction of teasing him about it, but you can’t complain. He starts picking up the pace and depth of his strokes and you can’t hide your moans, in this position you're practically moaning right in his ear.

“Harder,” you whimper, hugging him tighter

“Ask nicely.”

“Harder, sir. Please make me cum again,” you beg.

“You can do better.”

“Please, sir, I need you to make me cum. Your cock is my creed.”

“That’s better,” he says with a low chuckle

He starts thrusting deep into your cunt with his thick cock, and you feel another climax building up as your juices drip onto the floor. Your legs start shaking as you get closer and you know what’s coming next.

“Please don’t stop, I’m so close.”

“Then do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Your mind goes blank of all thoughts that aren’t Mando’s cock pleasing your cunt and you cum hard for him, soaking his cock as your squirt all over it. He pulls out from your dripping cunt and gives you praise, still holding you in his arms. You want to kiss him after that but with the helmet in the way you settle for the embrace. After you regain some composure he sets you back on the couch.

“Such a messy girl.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, it's a pretty little mess.”

You pause for a minute.

“Sir, I want to make you cum,” you tell him, asking for his permission in a way.

There’s no response initially so you turn around, facing your ass towards him as you bend over the couch and arch your back.

“Please, sir, I want your cum,” you repeat, swaying your hips back and forth

“Done being a brat?”

“Yes, sir.”

You hear him step behind you, and feel him gathering more wetness from your cunt to spread on his cock. He leans over you, the tip of his cock just barely presses into you as he takes your hair in one hand and places the other on your hip. He slowly slides into you and another euphoric wave washes over you as the full length of his member fills you. Then he begins thrusting into you over and over again, each snap of his hips bringing you both closer to climax.

“Sir, I’m getting close, can we cum together?”

“Not there yet, but you can cum for me.”

You try and hold on for him but it’s no use, moments later you’re cumming all over Mando’s cock. The sensation must be driving him feral because he lets go your hair, leaning down to wrap both arms around your waist and fuck you harder.

“Love the way you moan,” he whispers next to your ear, before adding, “Making pretty sounds for me.”

You’re still riding out your high as he continues thrusting into you. You can tell he’s about to climax, too, just by the sheer force he’s using. You’re wrapped tight in his arms and feel his cock plunge deep inside as he fills you with his cum. He lets out a long groan from the pleasure, you feel his cock pulsing inside you. After a few moments pass he pulls out of you, and you feel his cum dripping from your cunt as he sits beside you in post orgasm glow.

“Be a good girl now and clean this mess up,” he orders

“Yes, sir,” you answer, sighing your response in exhausted bliss.

Still on your knees with your cum filled cunt, you begin licking Mando’s cock clean. He lets out a few low moans as you work. When you finish he stands up and stuffs himself back into his flight suit before zipping his fly.

“I’ll keep my word, and end my search for Soranna,” he tells you.

“What will you do now?” you ask

“I’m going to go pick up another bounty while I’m here. It might be a while before I’m back”

“I know,” you sigh, rising from the floor.

“…But I do plan on coming back,” he assures you, “And when I do, I’ll be stopping by.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll be here.”

“That’s a good girl,” he says.

He walks across your apartment and shares one last look with you as the door closes behind him. As silence falls over the room you take a moment and take in your surroundings, your apartments a mess. The couch was pushed back from his relentless pounding, and the cushions are soaked in your orgasm. You’ve got some more cleaning up to do.

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penvisions · 3 months

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return the favor {chapter 22}

Pairing: Post Outbreak! Joel Miller x Smuggler! Reader || M! OC x Pre Boston QZ! Reader (flashback scenes)

Summary: Memories often spring up at the worst of times, but as you continue to travel alone there's not much else to occupy your mind.

Word Count: 3.5k

Warnings: minor character death, m! oc death, canon typical violence, canon typical language, cursing, insult, sexual content, non con, allusions to non con sexual advances, allusions to p in v, unprotected p in v that results in pregnancy, kissing, pregnancy, symptoms of pregnancy, mentions of nausea but no vomiting, allusions to child loss, fighting, blood, reader gets injured, joel gets injured, guns, gun violence, self-depreciating internal monologue, if i left anything out pls lemme know!

A/N: trying something new with this chapter, i hope it reads well! thank you to everyone who participated in the poll for the next few chapters of this fic! this one is a little shorter, but the next one will be a doozy. my mind is a little overwhelmed with school and tutoring and four different WIPS

ao3 link || series masterlist || main masterlist || ko-fi

Joel was trying.

He was trying to tamp down the anxiety he knew would thrum in his veins the second the gates of Jackson closed behind him. Back out in the unknown and unpredictable landscape. Winter was granting him a passive day, no snow, no biting wind, cloud coverage clear for the sky to shine a light blue to crystal clear you would think it was a brisk summer day. But the pause in extreme weather aside from the near freezing temperature did nothing to quell the pulse beneath his skin.

He was alone, traveling with a teenager he had come to care about in a dangerous way.

The journey had been meant to be made with Tess, first. Strong-willed, no-nonsense saint of a woman for taking what he could offer her and not asking for anything in return. Just wanting to share space and renown within a controlled setting that allowed for them to execute their runs and make what passed for a decent living back in what was left of the quarantine zones. To share their bodies when human nature sparked connection in the oldest and most instinctual of ways. She had turned an eye to his abuse of the very same things they traded for food, for water, for supplies for their shabby apartment that had seen far better days before they stepped foot inside.

Then journey was then meant to be made with you. A surprise in the moments after her death. Skilled in many things and willing to help a man suddenly saddled with a teenager he had no clue how to interact with. But he had, once upon a time. The situation tasting of irony and self-destruction. Selfless to the point of disembarking on your own path in the wake of his own attempt at running when faced with something too real for the world. Maybe in the Before times, it would have worked out. Perhaps a meet cute as he delivered his brother to an urgent care for a drunken blunder, a work accident he himself fell victim to, or a begged visit for Sarah should she had fallen off her bike or taken a tumble in soccer practice. Maybe then it would have been given life, hopeful glances and lingering touches that would have turned into nervous dates. Nervous dates that would give way to regular familiarity and then heated nights beneath sheets of his bed.

But it had never should’ve blossomed in the now, in the after. And yet, it had tried.

Ellie was mad. She wasn’t trying.

Not the first day at least.

Speaking when spoken to, ire and hurt flaring uncomfortably in moments he could sense weren’t aimed at him. At least not completely. Aimed at you, for going back on your word. Something you wouldn’t have had to do if he hadn’t screwed up so monumentally by falling for you. He had been wrong in his accusations, throwing the proposition you made to him all those days ago back in your face. Like you had forced yourself on him, forced him into thinking of you that way, of wanting you that way. But it had been him, his decision to take you up on it in his grief. Wanting to feel something other than the gaping hole that seemed to eat up more and more of him as the years went by.

But instead of just taking his body in the ways he allowed you to, you had also begun to heal that black hole he was made up of. Slowly and so minimally at a time that he hadn’t noticed until it was too late.

He stopped and made the time to teach her how to shoot the rifle, hoping it would help to bring her out of her shell. And it worked, he silently thanked the universe, it worked. She was cracking jokes and quipping like normal. Mirth lighting up her eyes and questions flowing from her. And he indulged them, as best he could. Telling her of how he supported himself before the world fell apart. About how he always dreamed of singing and making music.

But just as everything seemed to be on the mend, it was broken once again.

With the crack of a wooden bat.

“A-Angelo?” You voice was as shaky as your reaching hands, fingers brushing against the man’s face only a few steps away. He was older, that much was certain. Only a year apart back then, back when the world functioned in an entirely different way. Only a year apart, but two decades of time separating you now, turned into completely different people. A wave of emotions at finding your family by pure chance and circumstance in the wilds of a state you had never been to before while on your way to look for them hit hard. You both surged forward and embraced, the man’s arms coming around you and tightening.

“I thought it was you, the hair,” He choked out, deep voice cracking. He was so broad, tall frame looming over you, developed fully into a man who had survived the worst of nature and humanity. Just as you had grown into a woman who took nothing of ill nature aimed at you, taking the things that had happened to you and using it as a foundation to be stronger.

“It’s me, I’m okay.” You gripped his shoulders tight, pushing him back a little to look him over.

“No injuries, no bites, you’re okay?”

“Yes, yes, I’m okay….We both are.”

That’s when your mind decided to remind you of the other voice you heard, the feminine one.

A young girl, no more than her teens and far too skinny was half concealed behind a tree trunk a few yards away. Her eyes were brown, honey brown and beautiful and they reminded you of so many people lost to space and time. They shown just as Taylor’s had done, once upon a time. Like you had both talked of wishing to see on a bright new, chubby face…

“Oh.” The phantom jolt of a kick felt through the skin of your aunt’s stomach so many years ago sprung to life in the palm of your hand. “Oh, Angelo. I’m-I’m so sorry.”

He detached from you, taking a few steps toward the girl, now in between you both equally. He held out a hand to her, his gloves tattered and stitching frayed in certain places.

“It’s okay, she’s okay. She’s family.”

“You’re so beautiful,” You gently coached her out, hoping nice words would help her to feel safe. “I’ve never met you, but I’ve waited a very long time to. You- you can call me by my name or Bean, if you’d like?”

“This is our cousin, from mom’s side. Do you remember her saying that we needed to go East?”

A small nod, wide eyes taking in the situation.

“It was to find her. She’s good, smart, she can help keep us alive.”

“You’ve been doing good on your own.” She didn’t move, not taking a step to back away and put distance between you nor toward you in a hesitant greeting. Her wide brown eyes were alert, telling of the things she’d experienced and been witness to. Of how cautious she was in the face of new people, a good thing to be but completely unwarranted in this particular case.

“Yes, but…Adela, we…we need help. This season, it’s harsh and we don’t know this land as well.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, I know we’re practically strangers but we are related. I know that doesn’t mean much these days to some people, but it means a great deal to me. I will do everything in my power to protect you, just like your brother.”

Hours later, after a shared meal and an introduction of your gifted appaloosa, camp was made and secured. Adela was fast asleep, one of the blankets you had tucked underneath the saddle wrapped around her small frame inside her sleeping bag. Light snoring sounding from the bundle she made against the horse.

“We’re the only ones that made it.” Angelo said before you could even figure out how to ask after everyone. Outbreak day a rather taboo subject amongst those that survived it. For Joel, at least, for you it was easier to divulge but still not a light subject to talk about. You had been willing with Ellie, with Maria. The first to quell her curious questions, to allow her another perspective on the events before her time that shaped the world into the one that she knew. The second to appeal to her, to connect with someone who felt comfortable.

“We didn’t know anything was going on for a while, you know how it is working in a ware. house all day. But when I got home that evening, apparently grandma had passed during the morning. Scared the hell out of everyone when she came sprinting into the living room and lunged at dad.”

“I…I can’t imagine, I’m so sorry. I know I had a missed call from the house that day, but I had been running late. And then, you know….”

“It’s okay,” One of his gloved hands reached out, taking the closest one of yours and squeezing. “We both made it, Adela made it. I love our family and cared so much for everyone, but this world is too harsh for them. It was always going to be us and that’s the only comfort I have in what happened.”

Silently agreeing, you squeezed his hand back. He was right, your grandparents had softened in their age, his parents and your father caring for them together. Soft in their endearment too, not suited for a life of constant unrest, of constant fear and paranoia. Of scrounging for food and basic supplies, having to defend what was yours by any means necessary.

“I was traveling with a man from Boston QZ and a girl, we were trying to find her family out this way. The last lead would’ve taken us to the University of Eastern Colorado.” You admitted over dinner the next day, having taught Adela the basics of how to properly interact with a horse, how to climb up in the saddle. While she was tall, she was skinny. Alarmingly so, but Angelo assured you that he always made sure she had enough to eat. He was willing to go without to provide for her, to ensure her still growing body had as much as it needed, or close to it at least.

“We were just there,” He took a breath, savoring the smell of the coffee that you had brewed for him as you all settled around the fire for the night. Scraps of foil that had contained easy, portioned meals to through on the fire that Maria had provided you with. “Well, around there. We came across a group of people settled into an old lodge town. Not to far from the city actually.”

Something about the man’s tone had you delaying your questions until Adela had laid down to rest for the night, tired from the day of interaction. But she was warming up to you, a familiar comfortability between you both as you talked to her about her mother. She admitted quietly that Angelo wasn’t willing to talk about their parents, people she had never had the chance to meet. The chaos of Outbreak day and those following it too much for him to talk about.

“We-uh, we left the group pretty quickly.” The man cleared his throat, turning around to ensure that his little sister was indeed asleep and not feigning it in order to eavesdrop. “The leader, god – what was his name? It doesn’t matter, he was so nice at first. Preaching about how people need to stick together, that his flock chose him to lead them and look after them.”

Your heart sank to your stomach, religious fanatics always putting you on edge. The way they manipulated the words of the bible in order to further their own agenda. And the way Angelo described him as initially nice and welcoming. A ploy, a trap laid out to ensnare people.

“But the first morning there, he came to visit us in the small set up they provided us with. Asked Adela to go out on a walk with him while I was still asleep. She hadn’t wanted to go, but felt obligated. Like he was just going to give her a tour or somethin’ and it was harmless, ya know?”

The rush of blood in your ears was loud, but you strained against it, needing to hear the words coming from the man beside you.

“He- that motherfucker, he exposed himself to her. Said that if she wanted to stay and use their resources that she needed to earn her keep. She begged me to leave right that second, to gather our stuff and make a run for it. But I don’t her we needed to act like nothing happened, to wait until nightfall and take what we could. So we did….but if you said you were traveling with a girl…brown hair, short, scar in her eyebrow?”

“Yes.” You breathed out, body thrumming with fear. No….no…there was no way Ellie could’ve been taken by the same men. She wouldn’t willingly go with anyone, had been hesitant to even let you or Joel out of her sight for too long….That meant…Joel had to have been injured in order for them to steal her away from him.

“She was unconscious, they were…they were carrying her into the settlement.”

Your head shot up, drink spilling over your hands cupped around the thermos.

“No.” You stood, hands steady despite the flood of emotions raging around in your mind. “No, no, no. I know those people, without them I wouldn’t have made it back out this way. We traveled from the other coast.”

It was late, but you didn’t care. You were gathering everything you needed, your pack and half of the food supply.

Adela roused at the noise, springing up and reaching for your hands.

“No, please, don’t leave us. We’ve lost too much already.” Tears were in her wide eyes, tugging at your heart in more ways than one. You crouched down in front of her, clasping your gloved hands around her own. Giving her your undivided attention.

“Honey, please, listen to me. I’m- I – I don’t want to leave you two, but I have to. Please understand. The girl that you saw, that was…she’s important to me. And she needs my help. I’ll see you again, I promise. I swear to you, Adela, I will see you again. Behind the walls of Jackson, we can…we can have a life there.”

Standing, you pulled her into a tight embrace.

“I’ll tell you embarrassing stories about your brother from when we were little.”

Pulling the map from your pocket, you circled the spot for Jackson with a marker.

“Here, this map will get you back to a settlement. Jackson. It’s large, has walls, it works. Ask for Maria or Tommy, tell them my name and that I sent you. Tell them you’re my family, you are. Take this,” You moved to wrap your old coat you had draped over your lap over the small frame of the girl and push the map that would lead them back to Jackson in the man’s hands.

The man surged up and gripped you tight in a bear hug, his body wrapped completely around you like he would do ever since he had begun to tower over you as children.

“Please, be safe!”

“Seek refuge in Jackson. I’ll return there, I promise.” You urged as you mounted the horse, reigns tight in your hands.

You clicked your tongue and tugged hard, urging the horse forward. The sound of hooves beating on the frozen ground was the only sound in the quiet, frozen night.

The remains of the a few bodies were scattered about the derelict campus that had been the destination sought out by them. Joel and Ellie. Those you were searching for nowhere to be seen, only hints of them in the bullet casings, the torn-up dirt, a bat broken in half- the jagged ends of one piece soaked in a deep red stain of blood. Joel’s, if your cousin’s words and your spiraling thoughts were correct.

Internally cursing at the man for pulling it out, for not waiting for a better moment, for not thinking in the haze his mind must’ve been.

Just as you began to trace the trail of rather fat droplets, you heard the crunch of someone stepping on fallen leaves behind you. Before you could even turn around completely to face them, someone was wrapping their arms around your neck, cutting off your air.

Your last thought was of Angelo and Adela. Of Joel and Ellie.

‘It was hot. Sweltering. And your dress was too tight over your swollen middle. It was a small bump, barely visible from the front, more so from the side. You had thought you indulged in too much food one evening after a deer had been caught but the teasing jab soon delved into something more serious. Especially when the swelling hadn’t gone down in the following days and nausea became a morning ritual.

You had been ecstatic, a first for you. And exciting thing you had always wanted. A faint thought you hadn’t entertained even in a working world, a notion you hadn’t thought possible at all with the demise of the world. When you had told him, Taylor had shared in your excitement, immediately beginning to hoard everything he could loot from the nearby state park. Gathering everything you could use, whether it was to repurpose it or store it for the future.

You had found a pocket of happiness and security in the rubble of the world, hidden deep in the forests of Tennessee in the form of a man who welcomed you into his space when all you had wanted to do was run. Finding yourself injured and needing aid, he had offered it to you.

What had begun as a small stay to ensure you would heal okay, that your stitches were secure and wouldn’t pull. But the conversations that flowed from one to another over those first few days tied you to each other. Braiding together your futures in such a wonderful way. There was no way to know how badly the universe would fray the untethered strings.

The only consolation was that the nights were cooler, the evenings and mornings twinged with a chill that signaled the end of an unseasonable warm fall. But as time moved on, Taylor had pleaded with you to consider staying close to the cabin. You had agreed, the symptoms of your pregnancy making it hard to do much of anything for long. Hunting and patrolling far too much for you to handle at the moment.

You were tending to the horses when he appeared behind you, arms snaking around your shoulders. The tickling of his facial hair sprouting giggles from you. The horses snickered, sharing in your delight. After securing them back in the modest stable, large hands were wrapping around you and sweeping you off of your tired feet.

“C’mon, princessa, let’s go have a nap.”

“But I don’t wanna,” You whined, not wanting to waste the sunshine while it was still showing, winters notoriously gray and overcast in this part of the region. The looming mountains casting dark shadows over pockets of land. Thankfully the cabin wasn’t in one of those regions, hidden well by the tall trees and stained a dark green all along the roof to avoid searching eyes to those at a higher altitude.

“Who said we were gonna sleep, silly girl?” Taylor swooped down to kiss you fully on the lips. Stirring warmth in your core. With a deep laugh at the chasing of your lips after his, he carefully rushed up the stairs and through the front door. “I’m gonna devour you, you’re too good looking a snack to leave untouched.”

“Oh hush,” You curled your hands into the long hair he had tied into a bun at the back of his head. Taking the band from around it and causing the strands to cascade around his handsome face.

“Glowing and full of me, carrying our baby in your pretty little tummy. Good god, you’re constantly on my mind, princessa, you’re my entire world.”

“And you’re mine, mi amor.”

Bubbling giggles flowed through the cabin as he made his way up the stairs and through the small landing. Into the bedroom that you found happiness in the midst of the fallen world.’

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dividers by the lovely @saradika-graphics

taglist: @furiousmushroom@sawymredfox @ayamenimthiriel @bookloverkat @rosaaeles @narcissa-anastasia @littlemisspascal @oscarissac2099 @ghostwritesthings @76bookworm76 @elli3williams @sarap-77 @christinamadsen @vivian-pascal @dugiioh

#dev writes #fic: return the favor #tlou #tlou fic #tlou fanfiction #tlou fanfic #the last of us #joel miller #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfic #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #ellie williams #platonic ellie williams

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 4 months

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Hi, I had a random thought about Wylan Van Eck and it accidentally turned into a world building rant so enjoy… I guess?

Every so often I randomly remember that Wylan has canonically been to the races at Caryeva in Ravka and I just can’t help but wonder what the hell this situation was like. I don’t recall a lot of specific descriptions about Caryeva so correct me if I’m wrong but I believe it’s an environment quite similar to that of the Barrel and that boy was not thriving in the Barrel okay the stress of imagining young Wylan stuck with his father at the Caryeva races is so real. Like I’m not saying the entire place must be a hellhole but the key information we know about it (at least to my recollection and what I gathered about two minutes ago from the Grishaverse wiki) is that its main points of interest are gambling in horse races and producing alcohol, and we know that Vasily gathered a less than pleasant reputation whilst spending most of his time there gambling away what little fortune he had left. And also what the hell was Van Eck doing there in the first place? The version of Jan Van Eck we see him present to the other characters and therefore to us as the reader (since we don’t ever get his POV) would simply cease to exist at the impropriety of it all, he can’t get through a conversation about the Barrel without cringing and you’re telling me he went on a trip to Caryeva and took his presumably very young son with him? (I’m assuming this bc Wylan says he *used* to take him everywhere with him and Van Eck found out he couldn’t read when he was about eight). What was this situation???? Why was he there???? I wonder if this is another subtle hint towards the potential extent of less than savoury business Van Eck is involved in beyond Wylan’s knowledge, like when he suggests meeting on Vellgeluk (an island used mostly by smugglers and traffickers) and Inej is surprised he knows about it and Kaz responds something along the lines of “perhaps he’s not so much the upstanding merch he claims to be”.

The reference to Caryeva just always sticks out to me as slightly random in comparison to the other places Wylan lists his father as having taken him to - the Shu oil fields? Absolutely, this is a world (at least as I’ve understood it) currently moving towards its Industrial Revolution at top speed of course Van Eck of all people is looking to invest in oil futures he may be the worst but he is clever; the Ice Court? It’s a diplomatic event between the leaders of two countries, one desperately trying to maintain its neutrality to hold tightly to its place in the world economy as it very quickly develops (Kerch) and one desperately trying to impose itself as a greater world power than its being given credit for via violence and focusing its development on military-based progress like the tanks (Fjerda) (btw I think I’ve talked about this before in my worldbuilding posts but I have thoughts about the tanks and the general global development of the grishaverse so if anyone wants more theories/analyses on that let me know), so yes it absolutely makes sense especially since we’re starting to see (or at least I think we are but I’m not a historian I’m basing this on my understanding about how these things happened in our world and how they would develop in their world based on the distinctions between the two) the globalisation of the Grishaverse beginning; the Jurda farms in near Shriftport? We all know Van Eck has a vested interest in jurda and we also know it was a big part of his business long before parem came to the scene because it is a massively used stimulant throughout Kerch; Weddle? Absolutely, I don’t know if it’s been confirmed as the capital but if it isn’t it’s still a major city in Novyi Zem there are a thousand reasons Van Eck could’ve been there; Elling? Once again it’s entirely reasonable to imagine Fjerda having a vested interest in an alliance with Kerch to secure their place in the global economy and to manipulate what is almost definitely and imminent and unavoidable collapse of the country’s questionable neutrality; Elling makes sense because Van Eck probably visited Fjerda a lot and even if there wasn’t anything about alliances and military tactics and etc going on Elling is a port settlement and it makes plenty of sense to assume large amounts of trade take place here. (My theory about the military stuff if below, sorry the paragraph was too long to get it all in together)

(Ravka is in severe debt to the Kerch government and we know Fjerdan intelligence is well aware of this, especially since Matthias knew when he hadn’t been in the government for over a year and never worked anywhere near espionage, and Kerch is also a massive global power. Support for Fjerda from Kerch would mean support from the Southern Colonies and possibly even division in Novyi Zem, and whilst it would probably prevent the Fjerdans from any kind of alliance with the Shu due to the tension between Kerch and Shu Han being so high it would also probably not be necessary for them to make a deal with the Shu if the had the support of the Kerch. Ultimately, Fjerda and Shu Han are fighting for control of the same land, they just haven’t reached each other yet because they’re still stuck on opposite sides of Ravka. If either country gained control of the majority of Ravka’s land then it would lead to a fight with the other; Fjerda need global support if they have a chance of winning two wars immediately after each other and if Kerch are in fact going to have to lose their neutrality, as it seems they are being forced to do and definitely would have been forced to do if parem became a global resource (Van Eck even says himself on the matter that Kerch has enjoyed neutrality for too long), and already have high tensions with Shu Han and rising tensions with Novyi Zem (due to the assassination of the Zemeni ambassador, which I do believe was an attempt to start a war btw, that they blame the Kerch for and the Kerch suspect the Shu for) then they are the perfect target for Fjerda to form an alliance with. Kerch also has a very strong navy which Fjerda presumably lacks since their efforts have all been focused on Ravka, where they share a land border, so to enter a larger scale/global war they would need a navy on their side. Again, I want to emphasise I know very little about military tactics and history I am approaching this by imagining that it’s a logic puzzle, so you might be reading this and this and thinking that it makes no sense in realistic scenarios but this is just my theory)

But Caryeva???? Even if there weren’t standing for Van Eck and the Merchant Council to be plotting against Ravka, which I personally believe there is, it STILL WOULDN’T MAKE DIPLOMATIC OR BUSINESS SENSE TO GO TO CARYEVA. So in summary I think Van Eck was doing lots of messed up things that young Wylan didn’t understand because he was a small child so why would he, plus this was a time in his life when probably trusted his father, and I think that this is yet another of the very subtle ways Leigh Bardugo shows us that there is a lot more going on beneath the surface than we notice or that the characters have comprehended because it does!’t fit into the focus of the story. Whether or not Van Eck was planning on building his diplomacy towards Fjerda into an alliance or not (but I do want to add that the only other language he hired someone to teach his son was Fjerdan, so that may also be a hint), I definitely think that he was involved in something illegal to specifically be at the races in Caryeva. Like to vineyards or something for a trade deal, sure. But why, after going on and on about the questionable version of Ghezen he believes in and how the Barrel is a “den of filth” and calling gambling a “vice” and arguing with Kaz because he was offended when he said that speculating on the markets was a form of gambling, would Jan Van Eck be at Caryeva horse races?

Anyway I’ve been going on about this for way longer than I intended, hope this made some semblance of sense and thanks for reading

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fatkish · 2 months

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Of course, you can put a spin on my cat quirk user ♡

(Alright, just wanted to make sure.)

(Trigger warning: human and animal trafficking mentioned, also mentions of drugging someone)

Aizawa x Jaguar Reader

(The reader in this story is an actual Jaguar with a quirk that allows them to transform into a human)

Reader is a Jaguar who was naturally born with a human transformation quirk. They grew up in the Amazon jungle with their mother who was a normal Jaguar. The reader learned to hunt and was taught everything they needed in order to be a successful apex predator by their mother

The reader has human level intelligence due to their quirk.

One day, villains from Brazil found out about the reader. They eventually tranquillized and captured the reader, smuggling them into Japan were the villains planned to sell the reader in a black market auction

When the reader had woken up halfway through the shipping to Japan, they realized that their best chance of survival was to wait for the villains to let their guard down, then the reader could have a better chance of escaping. When the smugglers realized that the reader was awake they drugged them again, putting the reader back to sleep

Meanwhile in Japan, Detective Tsukauchi and the police had been tracking two of the main villains in charge of the auctions and running them. The police were planning a raid on the building the night of the auction. The people running it were notorious for human trafficking, the sale and trafficking of parts of or whole endangered animal species, kidnapping, etc.

Detective Tsukauchi was the lead investigator and asked Aizawa as well as Midnight to help in the raid. Midnight’s primary role was to help subdue the criminals as well as protect the heroes and police from any dangerous animals that might be found

On the night of the auction the reader wakes up inside a metal cage with a shock collar on their neck. They’re hidden beneath the stage in the storage area, surrounded by various cages with other humans and some animals

The humans all seemed to be young and mostly female, the reader could sense the fear that belonged to the humans in the cages. The humans also were wearing the strange collar that was around their own neck

The humans outside the cages all had white masks covering their faces. One of these people was walking around going to each cage and putting their hands on the humans heads. Once the person had come to them the reader snarled at them but was rewarded with a powerful shock running through their body.

The human placed their hands an the reader’s head, after feeling a weird tingling sensation, the human retracted their hands. The human then told the reader that they had better do whatever they are told, if they don’t listen, they will be shocked. With the effects of the drugs still wearing off, the reader didn’t question how they could suddenly understand what the human’s language.

Suddenly a loud voice is heard from above as the auction begins. After a few minutes, cages are wheeled over to a platform that lifts things onto the stage through the floor.

After the last cage before them is brought up, the human from earlier commands the reader to change into their human form. Not listening to the commands, the reader is shocked again when the human presses a rectangular object.

After that the reader transforms and a hook attached to a long pole is connected to their collar as they are led onto the lift

Outside the heroes and police are setting up and getting into position to start the raid. All entrances and exits have been surrounded. Once Tsukauchi has made sure everything and everyone was in place and ready, he gave the order to cut the buildings power supply thus signaling the start of the raid

As the heroes begin to enter the building and start taking out the buyers, auctioneers and other participants, the reader, having been sold to a wealthy businessman with a cat-girl fetish, is being led to one of the back rooms when the power goes out

Since the system that was controlling the collars was being powered by the building’s electrical system, once the power was shut off, the collars unlocked and deactivated

Realizing that this is their best chance at escaping, the reader transforms into their original form and attacks the nearest person in a mask. Using their natural predatory night vision, as well as their hunting skills, the reader slinks through the hall avoiding as many people as possible using the darkness to their advantage

After passing by a hall filled with a purple fog, the reader turns the corner and finds themselves back at the stage where a human with strange glowing red eyes protected by some strange yellow covering, is fighting the humans in white masks

This human had some strange long grey appendage? No, tool? They were using it to capture the humans and fight them. This human also smelled different than the humans in masks

Distracted by their predatory analyzation of the human, they didn’t notice that the human had defeated all of the other humans present. When the human suddenly turned their attention and focus onto them.

The human stared at the reader for a moment before removing the yellow eye coverings. Quickly retrieving something from its waist, the human tilted their head back, dropping some kind of liquid into its eyes.

The human, after a few blinks, stares the reader in the eyes as the human’s mane raises and its eyes glow red. Seeing this as some kind of human threatening display, the reader snarls as they bear their fangs and crouch into position to pounce onto the human if necessary

After a few seconds the human lowered its mane as its eyes stopped glowing. The human raised its front paw and told the reader that they are not a threat and that they are not going to hurt them. The human didn’t seem to have any sort of fear and was obviously not a prey but they were still wary of the reader.

Suddenly another human called out and was running up behind the human, before either human could react, the reader pounced onto the new human, believing them to be a threat. Sinking their claws into the human’s shoulders and about to go for the head, Aizawa shouts no, in distress.

Realizing that the human was upset by them attacking the other human, the reader turns to look at Aizawa as they get off of the police officer.

After checking on the officer’s condition and making sure they were okay, Aizawa turns to the reader after realizing that they stopped their attack after he told them to

Carefully approaching the reader, Aizawa asks them if they can understand what he’s saying and to lift their front paw if they can. The reader lifts their paw and afterwards slowly approaches Aizawa. Before the reader can get to close a purple fog surrounds them as a loud sound is made as they feel a sharp pain in their hind leg. Before they can turn and attack the human the reader falls asleep

After dealing with the clean up and arresting the criminals, Tsukauchi approaches Aizawa with a file containing a list of the items being sold. When looking at the file, Tsukauchi points out the reader’s information.

When Aizawa confirms that the listed information is true, that being that the reader is actually an animal with a quirk, Aizawa asks Tsukauchi what would be done with the reader.

Tsukauchi tells him that there really isn’t much he can do about what would happen to the reader, but that the reader would either be handed over to scientists or placed in a zoo or research sanctuary.

Aizawa decides that the reader would probably be subjected to experiments and would be forced to undergo extensive and invasive tests, he calls Nedzu and tells him about the reader

When the reader wakes up, they are laying on a pile of blankets with bandages wrapped around the top of their left hind leg. Looking around they are met by a white rodent.

The rodent introduces himself as Nedzu, he explains to the reader what happened and what their current situation is. He explains that humans are not used to seeing animals with abilities like theirs. He tells the reader that humans are likely to experiment on animals like them since they are different.

Nedzu tells them that since they are capable of understanding humans, that the reader’s best course of action is to learn to live like a human and understand human society. He tells the reader that he can help them and give them the opportunity to become what humans call a hero

After much discussion mainly on Nedzu’s part, the reader agrees to live at UA. Aizawa, being the one who found them, is put in charge of the reader and is made their handler/guardian

Aizawa teaches the reader what they need to know and how society works. While Aizawa teaches, the reader either sleeps or patrols the grounds. At night, when Aizawa is on patrol, the reader follows him as his sidekick.

Power loader creates a special suit for the reader to wear made of the reader’s own fur, that way they are not naked when they transform. The reader is officially a member of the Aizawa family

Hope you enjoyed this

#mha x reader #bnha x reader #aizawa x reader #mha aizawa #aizawa shouta #x cat reader #mha #bnha #aizawa sensei #bnha aizawa #mha pro heroes #bnha pro heroes

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tightjeansjavi · 10 months

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Jail Bird | Joel Miller x smuggler/raider f! reader | part 2

“All I’ve Ever Known Is You”

A/N: and so we have reached the conclusion of this tragic story of unrequited love. I warned y’all earlier that this would be a doozy. Tread carefully.

~word count: 2.4k~

Summary: Joel Miller refuses to let you go, and it proves to be a costly choice.

Warnings: major character death, depictions of violence, fatal gunshot, angst, grief, regret, emotional manipulation, mentions of blood, stalking, refusal to let a person go, anger, stubbornness, obsession, unrequited love, pining, possessive behavior, actions have consequences, lots of imagery used, dark themes, Joel is an emotional mess, protective! Joel, darkish! Joel, grieving! Joel, sprinkle of PTSD from the night Sarah died, this content may be disturbing for some viewers. Please read the warnings carefully, and do not proceed if this sort of content upsets you. +18 minors dni!

Cornered: (of a person or animal) forced into a place or situation from which it is hard to escape.

"nothing is more dangerous than a cornered wild beast"

Joel had no recollection of how many hours had passed since you locked him away in this cell. He should have known better than to trust you. He beat himself up over the fact that he let his guard down that easily. What the fuck was he thinking? You kissed him and suddenly nothing else mattered. He should have sensed you were going to trick him. Maybe if his mind wasn’t so clouded, he would have stopped you when he still had the chance.

“What do you mean you don’t know where your brother is, Tommy?” Ellie was walking alongside her uncle from the mess-hall, wrapping her arms tightly around herself to lock out the chill.

“I haven’t seen him in hours El. He’s been actin’ fuckin’ strange these past few days, ever since we brought that woman in from the woods. For all we know, he skipped town or somethin.’”

“My dad wouldn’t just leave without telling one of us. That’s bullshit. Where’s the jail located? Wasn’t he interrogating her or something?” Ellie quickened her pace to keep up with her uncle.

“Yeah, you’re right, kid. He wouldn't skip town like that. That’s unlike my brother, especially now. We’ll go and check the jail and see if he’s there.”

Joel pulled himself up to his feet with a heavy grunt when he heard the main door open with a loud creak. For a split second he thought maybe it was you returning to him, but that sliver of hope was quickly vanquished when Tommy and Ellie came into his peripheral.

“Joel?! What in the hell are you fuckin’ doin’ in there?!” Tommy was already pulling out his spare keys from his pocket and quickly unlocked the cell door. “What the hell happened?!”

Joel looked up with a defeated expression on his face. His eyes were rimmed red with glassy tears pooling in his irises. Ellie was at his side with her arms wrapping around him, hugging him tightly to her. “Dad, what happened?”

Joel leaned into the comforting touch that his daughter unconditionally provided for him. A heavy sigh passed through his cracked lips as his gaze fell upon his younger brother. “She tricked me.” Was all he could utter.

“Tricked you how?” Tommy scrubbed his hand across his face, shaking his head to himself. “She over power you or somethin?’”

“She kissed me, alright? She fuckin’ kissed me..and I fell right into her goddamn trap.” Joel’s tone was bitter, laced with frustration as Ellie helped him to his feet.

“Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me right now Joel? How long ago was this?”

“A few hours ago? I don’t know. She just fuckin’ locked me in here and ran. I told you when we brought her in that we have..history. I know I shouldn’t have let my guard down like that but—”

“Yeah you told me that she left you back in the QZ, and you spent all your time fuckin’ lookin’ for her. Maria said one of the horses was stolen right before dinner, so it’s gotta be your jailbird, brother.”

“Will you help me go out there and find her, Tommy? Please? I think she was just scared that somethin’ was gonna happen to her here, and that’s why she ran. If we leave her out there, she’s gonna die. I don’t want that on my conscience.” His arm was lightly draped around Ellie’s shoulders.

“Are you fuckin’—fine. I’ll grab a couple of the guys and we’ll go and look for her. She must mean a lot to ya if you’re willin’ to take these lengths. What’re you gonna do if we find her, and she doesn’t want to come back?” The three of them left the jail cell and treaded back out into the bitter cold.

“I’ll jus’ hav’to find a way to convince her to come back.” Joel stated what he believed to be the obvious. It wasn’t a matter of if he would find you. He would find you, and he’d do whatever it would take to convince you to come home with him.

The horses were saddled up with four men, including Joel and Tommy at the front. Maria told her husband that going after this jailbird was beyond stupid, and he agreed. He just had a rather difficult time telling his brother no after all the years they spent apart. Ellie didn’t like the idea either, but Joel always came back home to her. He always promised to return so this time would be no different as he kissed the top of her head, and smoothed down her hair gently. “Don’t worry about me kiddo. I promise I’ll be home as soon as we find her.”

“I know, Dad. Just be careful, okay?” She hugged him tightly.

“Always am.” Joel promised her.

The further away you were from Joel, and Jackson, the more at peace you began to feel. You didn’t believe that escaping jail would be that easy, but as soon as Joel fell into your perfectly calculated trap, you knew it was your ticket out and that you couldn’t waste another second. You had no idea where you were going to go now, and with darkness falling quickly, it would take a miracle for you to survive the cold cold night that lay ahead.

You had endured worse conditions before, and the chill didn’t bother you as much as you thought it would. You listened to the comforting crunch of snow beneath your horses hooves as your heart thrummed gently in your chest. Joel would have to be a fool to come after you now..or so you thought. Your moment of calm was fiercely destroyed when you heard the thundering of hooves approaching in the distance.

Joel fucking Miller just wouldn’t give up.

You heard him call out your name as a desperate plea through the once still snowy forest. It echoed through the surrounding evergreens, ricocheted off your thundering heart like a pinball machine. You eased your horse into a canter, desperate to escape Joel’s nearing approach.

Please! Please stop runnin’ from me darlin’! I don’t want to chase you, but you're leaving me no other choice!

He was closer now, far too close for comfort.

Your hopes for escape were cut short when your exit route was impassable due to the rushing river that stretched for miles on end. You eased your horse to a halt, frantically looking around as if you were a scared doe being narrowed on by a pack of wolves. The wind howled as you were reaching for your gun just as Joel, Tommy and two other men emerged on horseback through the snowy evergreens.

“Stay back! Stay back or I will fuckin’ shoot!” Your voice trembled like a branch being jostled through a harsh wind. Your finger held steady over the trigger despite your nerves and the frantic look in your eyes.

Joel cautiously dismounted from his horse with his hands above his head to show you that he didn’t come to harm you. He just came to ‘rescue’ you and bring you back home where you belonged. “Easy. Easy. I’m not gonna harm ya darlin.’ Please put the gun down, and then let’s talk. Okay?” His tone was soft, reassuring but it caused bile to rise deep from the pits of your stomach. You didn’t want to go home with him. You wanted to never see Joel Miller ever again.

“Like hell I’m going to put my gun down!” Your horse took a nervous sidestep to the left, nearly slipping into the icy depths below. “You need to fuckin’ let me go, Joel! I don’t want you!” You kept one hand on the trigger as you carefully dismounted from your horse.

“You know I can’t do that darlin.’ You know I can’t. Please just come home with me. We can put this all aside! C’mon. You’ll freeze to death out here.” He pleaded with you with an outstretched hand in your direction.

“I’d rather fucking freeze to death out here than go anywhere with you. Take five steps back right fucking now, or I shoot. Why can’t you just let me go? Why can’t you just fucking move on! I don’t love you, Joel. I never have, and I never will. What we had years ago was good, it was fun, but you’re chasing a fucking ghost. What you want from me is something I am not capable of giving you. You need to move on.” Now you were the one pleading with him. You didn’t want to have to shoot but if it meant that Joel Miller would never be in your life again…

“You don’t love me, sweet girl? That’s bullshit and you know it. All that time we spent together? It meant fuck all to you? I don’t believe it! You’re a terrible fuckin’ liar, and you’re making this way harder than it needs to be! Please, stop fighting me. You’re breakin’ my fuckin’ heart, baby.” He didn’t listen to your demand for him to take five steps back and instead took two cautious steps forward.

“I am NOT your sweet girl! I never was Joel! Stop trying to convince yourself that I have ever cared for you below a surface level! The only liar here is yourself. Now, you can turn around and go home and forget all about me. It’s for your own fucking good. You think that one day I’ll wake up and suddenly develop feelings for you? That’s not how the world works! That’s never how it worked, and you just have to accept that!” You kept the barrel of your gun trained on him as he stepped closer to you.

“Joel, maybe we should just—” Tommy tried to reason with his brother.

“No, Tommy! She’s comin’ home with me one way or a fuckin’ other.” He didn’t even look back at his brother as he took another step forward. His eyes were desperately pleading with you to give in and you truly were beginning to feel like a cornered doe with a pack of vicious wolves caving in.

Closer. Closer. Closer.

You saw Joel reach out to grasp your arm and the second he did, you went to shove him away. Screaming profanities at him with tears stinging your eyes. Your screams died in your raw throat when a gunshot shot rang through the air. It was not your own gun. It all happened so fast as the bullet tore through the flesh of your heart, where Joel had once built a home there. The windows shattered, the wood splintered, and the bed exploded into a cloud of down feathers. The house he forged with his bare hands laid in a pile of ash as you sank to your knees. Dark crimson blood pooled through the layers of clothing on your body as you struggled to take your final breaths.

Everything around you began to grow fuzzy as your lashes fluttered. The sensation of blood draining from your body like the rushing stream was eerily calming. You had never been afraid to die. Not when the world had gone to shit, and everyday could be the day that you would depart the living realm. The once white snow was stained scarlet as you slumped into Joel’s arms with one final breath.

Joel felt his own life flash before his eyes as the bullet tore through your flesh. It all happened so fast and there was nothing he could do to stop it as you slumped into him. He desperately pressed down on the wound as more blood filtered through your body. His hands were stained in it along with his clothes. There was so much blood and so little time. “No no no. Fuck! No. You are not dyin’ on me like this!” He relived images of Sarah dying in his arms flash through his brain as he let out a bone chilling sob.

“Tommy! Help me! Fuckin’ help me!” He finally looked over his shoulder at his brother who could only stare back from where he sat on his horse.

“SOMEBODY FUCKIN’ HELP ME!” He screamed as he clutched your body against his chest, rocking your slumped form as he cried into your cold shoulder.

No one moved a muscle. No one said a word as Joel held you for one last time.

Your body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as Joel struggled to lift you into his arms. Your eyes forever unmoving, staring up at him with a ghostly film falling upon your once vibrant irises. Your body grew cold. Colder than the temperatures outside and the skin around your lips was fading blue. Your time living on earth's hell hole was over.

“Who fuckin’ shot her.” Joel’s tone was deep and threatening as he trudged through the snow with your deceased form limp in his arms. “WHO FUCKIN’ SHOT HER?!?!” His voice cracked as fresh tears began to fall and land along your icy skin.

“ILL FUCKIN’ KILL—”

Tommy was already hopping down from his horse to attempt to console his wrecked brother.

The man who shot you was known to be trigger happy. He only acted on impulse when you had moved to shove Joel away. He was already riding far far away from the scene when he realized what he had just done.

“GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME TOMMY!” Joel used the strength he had left to shove his brother away from him.

Tommy’s own heart broke when he witnessed Joel struggle to secure your deceased body onto your horse. All the younger Miller Brother could do was watch, and the image that laid before him would never leave his mind.

The only two people to attend your funeral were Joel and Ellie. He dug your grave in the town's cemetery. It took hours due to the ground being so hard and frozen. Ellie was there for emotional support. She might have never met you, but you meant something to her dad, and she wanted to be there for him in those final moments.

He laid your wrapped body into the cold dark earth below. His body had spent all of his tears, but that didn’t stop the physical dry sobs to part from his soul. He pressed a kiss to your covered head, whispering that he would once see you again. Your headstone was hand carved in stone by him, and when it was all said and done, Joel and Ellie stood above your grave, arms wrapped loosely around one another as her head gently rested along his shoulder.

“Who..was she to you, dad?” Ellie softly asked.

Joel slowly looks over at his daughter, his lips curving up into a gentle smile. He inhales, exhales with a puff of cold air departing his lips, “just someone I used to know, a long time ago, kiddo.”

Joel Miller had finally let you go.

Tagging people I think will enjoy! @chaotic-mystery @cavillscurls @morning-star-joy @sinsofsummers @cupofjoel @thetriumphantpanda @dinsdjrn @darkroastjoel @korynnekorynne @kirsteng42

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avastrasposts · 10 months

Text

The Pilot and his Girl - ch. 26**

So much happening in this chapter so it's a long one! And a happy chapter! Again, this is a series of scenes I've had in my head since the beginning, the events that take place as they finally make it to New York and I had a lot of fun planning them and finally writing them.

Series Master List

Warnings have their own post, please heed them if needed

Word count: 14k (you'll either hate that or love it 😅)

Morrow, the raider, turns out to be a decent guide. Either that, or the thinly veiled threats Pope hisses at him as he tugs on the man’s rope keeps him perpetually terrified enough to not try anything. He leads you all on back roads that avoid towns and main routes, and the closer you get to New York, the more confident he gets as he takes you into buildings, skirting around hordes of infected. It’s clear that this is territory he’s crossed many times as a smuggler, just as Frankie and Pope had around Arlington.

It takes almost three days of walking to reach Hoboken, the broken New York skyline slowly getting closer. You only realize you’ve reached the city when you see a shattered sign that reads Hoboken Beer & Soda Outlet, hanging off a bombed out building.

“You’ve done good, Morrow,” Pope says to the young man, as you all catch a glimpse of the Hudson River between demolished buildings.

“Thanks,” he replies, less nervous now than when he first started out. He’s still restrained but as he continued to lead you safely through the devastated urban landscape of New Jersey, the guys became less hard on him, sharing rations and making sure he was at least as comfortable as the rest of you at night. You thought it showed some humanity on the guys part but Frankie shook his head when you brought it up, out of earshot of Morrow.

“We treat him well so that he feels less inclined to fuck us. If we treat him fair he’ll think we’ll let him go without harm once we don’t need him anymore and that makes him want to make sure we’re happy with how he aids us.”

“But you’re not gonna let him go?” you ask, glancing over at Morrow where he and Pope are discussing the best way forward towards Sinatra Park.

Frankie shrugs, “We’ll let him go, but we’ll probably hand him over to FEDRA once we get to the intake area.”

Morrow had told you about the FEDRA intake area located at Sinatra Park in Hoboken. It was a small temp QZ where people were scanned, assessed and then allowed to take a boat across to the main Manhattan QZ if they passed. According to Morrow, most people were admitted as long as they were healthy. The QZ needed people to rebuild the city, the hope was to bring back some sort of normalcy inside the walls. He’d said there was even talk of a vaccine research facility, FEDRA attempting to locate and bring in any surviving vaccine researchers from across the country. It sounded hopeful but like most people, you were jaded at this point. You’d settle for a safe QZ devoid of fascist tendencies, decent food and an apartment where Frankie could make good on his promises about where he wanted to spend his time.

“C’mere, guys,” Pope waves Benny, Frankie and you over to where he’s been talking to Morrow. He points to a building about a block away, it’s been bombed and is tilting precariously to the right. “The plan was to go through that building, that’s the way they’ve been coming, the boat they use to sneak across the Hudson is moored on the other side. But, look at that,” he points to the first floor corner, bright orange and red tendrils visible through a broken window. “Morrow says those are new.”

“Fuck,” you hear Benny hiss behind you, and you mirror his sentiments. The bright red and orange hues means fresh cordyceps growth. Someone in the building has been infected, died and now the fungal growth is creeping out from their body, seeking out new ways to spread itself. Step on it and any infected within several miles will feel it and come running, the large underground mycelium network working to alert every part of a potential threat or victim.

“So we’re not going through there,” Frankie says and Pope nods.

“No, clearly not. The only other option is the building next door,” he indicates a large red brick building on the other side of a partially destroyed street. The building looks unharmed and the large glass door to the ground floor coffee shop stands open. “But that building hasn’t been cleared by anyone in a long time according to Morrow, it’s even possible whoever is responsible for the new cordyceps growth came from it.”

“So potentially a nice little horde of infected?” Benny sighs, pulling off his cap to run his hand through his hair and shoving it down again, backwards as usual.

“Probably not a horde, we would’ve seen more growth coming out of the building and I see none, but yeah,” Pope shrugs and looks back at the three of you, “definitely potentially infected inside.”

You take a deep breath and look over at Frankie, he’s looking at his boots, adjusting the leg holster on his thigh and he feels your eyes on him, looking up to meet them. You don’t even have to say anything, he takes a step closer, his hand finding yours, giving it a light squeeze of reassurance.

“Are there any options of going around, Morrow?” he asks the young man standing next to Pope.

“I don’t know how far we’d have to back track, the main path to Sinatra Park used to be a few miles back and further north but FEDRA blew up those buildings about a year ago because it got swamped by a horde.”

“So we either face this potentially infected building, or we backtrack and definitely have to deal with more infected,” Frankie looks over at Pope and Benny. “We’re pushing our luck the longer we stay out here, traveling through this kind of area I mean, we’ve already been out here three days.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Benny says, “we go slow, be careful, and go through this building, dealing with anything we find. It’s better than going into unknown territory.”

“Ok,” Pope nods, “we go through here then, everybody ready up.”

“What about me?” Morrow asks, his voice worried, “I don’t wanna go through there with my hands tied.”

Pope looks over at the three of you and you nod without thinking, letting him into the building with his hands tied would be cruel, and where is he going to run to now? Benny and Frankie seem to agree and Pope cuts the cable tie that’s around Morrow’s wrists.

“Do I get a weapon?” he asks and Pope scoffs.

“Don’t push your luck.”

Pope takes the lead, Morrow behind him with Benny taking up the rear as you all as silently as possible enter the building through the open doors. Inside the entrance you get a better look at the busted coffee shop, looted of anything useful years ago it seems. Tables and chairs are scattered across the interior, broken mugs on the floor, but thankfully no sign of fungal growth. Pope glances back and signals for you all to move towards the back door of the coffee shop, you can see it hanging half open next to the Please dispose of your trash here sign on the back wall.

You hold your breath, gun in hand and pointed towards the floor, as Pope puts his shoulder to the door and carefully pushes it open. The hinges protest slightly, a low squeak making you all freeze and listen intently. When nothing stirs, Pope slides off his backpack and slips through the opening. One by one you do the same and follow him through. Behind the door is a hallway, lined with cardboard boxes filled with supplies for the coffee shop and knocked over trash bags that makes the place reek of years old fermented coffee grinds and rat droppings. You pull the top of your sweater over your mouth and nose, wrinkling your face at the stench.

Pope spots a sturdy looking door at the end of the hallway, it looks like it leads to the outside and you pray for it to be that easy. But of course it’s not, as you get closer you see Pope mouth a silent Fuck, there’s no door handle on the door and it’s locked tight, he gives it an experimental shove. Turning back he motions down a hallway that runs along the outside wall, at the end of it is what looks like an internal fire escape staircase. Pope makes a couple of hand signals, and you all nod, up the stairs, try to find a way out and down to ground level again.

Pope and Morrow silently climb the stairs, Frankie and you following close behind. At the top is another door, leading into a hallway with doors on one side and three windows lining the opposite wall. Holding up the door, Morrow lets you all through it before he silently lets it slip shut, only the faintest click as the lock catches. But it’s enough to elicit a noise that you know too well.

The second you hear it, everyone freezes in their tracks, the tell tale sound of a clicker somewhere nearby, the screeching like inhumane fingernails over a chalkboard. You bite back a whimper, briefly closing your eyes as Frankie’s hand shoots out and grabs yours.

Everybody knows the drill, spreading out and silently finding cover out of sight. The clickers’ echo location, their screeching, works in the same way as a bats. Even if they can’t see you, when they screech towards you, the sound will bounce off your body and tell the clicker exactly where you are. Staying hidden and silent is the only way to escape them. They can be killed by a gunshot to the head, but that noise will attract any other infected in the building. The best, but very dangerous, way to kill them, is to sneak up behind them and stab them in the head, hoping they don’t suddenly turn and hear you. Killing them straight on is almost impossible, the infection giving them inhuman strength.

The space upstairs seems to be made up of a number of small apartments, the doors to them all open, four in total down the length of the hallway. There’s no shelter in the hallway and you all shuffle into the nearest apartment. Pope signals window back to Benny and Frankie and they nod.

“How?” you mouth to them. How will you all sneak out into the hallway, open a window and climb out without alerting the clicker? It seems impossible. Pope opens his mouth to whisper a reply when you hear feet dragging across the hallway and the tell tale sound of the clicker’s screech.

You move immediately, as quietly as possible you all sneak further into the small apartment, Frankie pulls you down behind the kitchen counter in one corner, Pope and Morrow duck behind the couch on the other side of the apartment door.

You turn around and glance towards the door and your stomach drops as you see Benny. His back is pressed against the wall and you realize what he’s about to try. His hunting knife is in his hand and he’s poised, ready to strike as the clicker staggers into the opening of the door, stopping and screeching loudly into the room. The grotesque creature, fungal growth erupting from down the middle of its head, obscuring almost all human features, lurches into the room. Benny makes his moves, the knife makes a sickening crunch as it connects with the clicker but it jerks out of the way and his hand slips, the knife sinking into the neck instead of the temple. Instantly the clicker wrenches itself away from Benny who struggles to get the knife out of its neck. You see Pope rush forward, the clicker screeching, the sound being answered by another screech somewhere in the building. Benny’s knife is still lodged in the clickers neck, Benny’s got one hand on the handle, another around the clickers neck, desperately trying to keep the snapping jaws away from himself. Pope skids around the clicker, his own knife drawn, avoiding the creature's flailing arms, and sinks it down to the handle into the soft tissue of the temple. The clicker screeches again, going limp under Benny’s grip and Pope wrenches his knife out and jabs it in again, twisting it deep in the fungal growth that’s taken over inside the skull.

Another screech goes up just outside the apartment door and you yell a warning to Pope, he’s just by the door, struggling to wrench his knife out again. The second clicker slams into him and Benny scrambles to shove the body of the first one out of the way, reaching out to stop the infected from sinking into Pope’s neck. Frankie rushes forward, pushing past you as Morrow bolts from behind the couch, heading for the front door, ducking around Pope as Pope gets his arm up under the creature's neck.

Benny grabs onto what’s left of the clickers jacket and it staggers back, slamming into Morrow who tumbles with a yelp as the clicker rips itself from Benny’s grip and snarls. It’s a tangle of limbs, the clickers wide open mouth, tendrils waving from its maw, Pope kicks frantically on the floor as Morrow’s arm hits him over the head. Morrow fights to get back on his feet, the clicker scrabbling to latch onto any living thing. It takes only seconds, but you feel like you’re watching in slow motion when Frankie reaches the clicker, gun in hand, and fires directly into its temple.

Both Pope and Benny stumble back, shoving the clicker away, on top of the first one. Morrow sinks down against the door, breathing heavy as Benny drags Pope to his feet.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, you ok, Santi?” Benny yells, searching any of his friend’s visible skin. Frankie rushes forward too, pulling back Pope’s collar to check. Pope breathes heavily, running hands over his throat, his chest, wrists and finally ankles and legs.

“I’m good,” he exhales before drawing a long breath in, “You?” he asks Benny who nods.

“Yeah, they never got close enough.”

“Guys…” you say, and they turn to you. You’ve crossed the small apartment and you’re looking down at Morrow. He’s silently staring at the back of his hand, blood and teeth marks clearly visible, his hand is shaking as he lets a sob escape, turning to look at the four of you.

“Fuck,” Pope exhales, the four of you are frozen in front Morrow, his fate sealed. He looks up at you all with fear in his eyes.

“Please, kill me,” he sobs, “please.”

Frankie reluctantly raises his gun, aiming at the young man's head, but you quickly put your hand on his arm, “Wait;” you say, “Is there anyone in New York you want us to give a message to, someone who should know?”

Morrow gasps for air, sobs threatening to take over as he shakes his head, “Just tell the captain I’m sorry I fucked up.”

“Your FEDRA captain?” you ask.

“No, The Captain, he’s my boss, and my friend I guess, he’ll find you once you’re inside, just tell him I’m sorry.”

“Ok, we’ll tell him, don’t worry, Morrow.” Frankie glances over at you for confirmation that he can carry on, and you look at Morrow who nods, closing his eyes. The gunshot is painfully loud in the small room and it makes you wince, the young man slumps over against the wall, his eyes still closed.

The irony of it is that it doesn’t take you long to get to Sinatra Park once Benny’s forced open a window and you’ve all scrambled down the side of the building. A few short, easy blocks, and then you’re standing again in front of FEDRA soldiers with guns trained on the four of you. Morrow was so close to making it.

You’re quickly scanned, all of you negative, and let into the small temporary QZ area. So quick and easy, you almost feel guilty. Morrow had led you safely through the urban hellscape that was New Jersey, and then, at the last moment, he’d fallen.

“He was trying to run,” Frankie says, to make you feel less guilty but even if that was right, who were you to blame him? The clicker went for Pope and you’d been frozen, Frankie had saved him while you remained frozen to the floor.

“We all have our strengths and weaknesses, cariño,” his thumb running over your cheek as he cups your face, “your job is not to take down clickers. Your job is to be mine, let me be yours, keep me sane, grounded, give me purpose.” He’s leaned his forehead against yours as you blink back guilty tears.

“But what if it’d been you, and I was frozen while you were attacked by a clicker?”

Frankie shakes his head, “I don’t think you’d be frozen if you were on your own with me or Ben och Pope, you’d be as ferocious as you were with Myers or when we first came to Arlington,” he’d said, his thumb still gently caressing the apple of your cheek. “You find your courage when you need it, I’ve seen it.”

“I want us to find his friend, The Captain, and tell him, we owe it to Morrow.”

“Yeah, we will, I’ll ask around when we get to Manhattan,” Frankie pulls you into his chest, arms wrapping around you, and you close your eyes, trying to not see the clickers and Morrow’s last moments in your mind again.

You’re all kept at Sinatra Park for a few days while they gather enough passengers for the ferry ride over to Manhattan. While you’re there you’re supplied with ration cards for food and supplies, a simple paper ID card and an address for your new accommodations. Once in the QZ you have three days to get settled, then you need to report to FEDRA’s work detail to be assigned jobs.

The ferry to Manhattan is surreal, it’s really just an old sailing boat, and you sit on deck, watching the broken skyline glide closer. It’s a beautiful day, late August, warm sun on your back and glittering water. If it wasn’t for the jagged, crumbling ruins of skyscrapers you’d think you were on a romantic weekend break with Frankie, taking a sightseeing tour on the Hudson. The illusion shatters the second you step ashore though, your papers are checked and then you’re scanned again by FEDRA before you’re let through the final checkpoint.

Once on the other side the four of you made your way to an address on the Upper West Side. You can’t help but giggle as you see the building, you’re in a fucking brownstone on the Upper West Side. The area is less bombed than other parts of Manhattan, so most people live here now, but still. You and Frankie are now living in a studio apartment within spitting distance of Central Park, worth more before the outbreak than you and Frankie earned combined in probably about ten years. If it wasn’t for the whole ‘end of the world’ thing, you’d be ecstatic.

You’ve been given accommodation in the same building as Pope and Benny, they’re just a floor below you two. Frankie and you had registered as husband and wife with FEDRA in Arlington, even if you’d never had a wedding or a ceremony. There had been some religious men of different faiths in Arlington who’d married people for a few ration cards, but it seemed so pointless to you both. Frankie was yours, and you were his, a glum ceremony in the apocalypse wouldn’t make any difference. So when FEDRA asked how you were related, he said you were his wife and then you were. The ring was still on your finger, the three diamonds a permanent reminder of the little threesome you’d almost become.

Walking into your new apartment feels like a massive relief. You love Benny and Pope and you’re happy they’ll be just downstairs, but to finally be able to close the door behind you, and have your own place with Frankie again, it makes your breath a deep contented sigh.

Frankie drops both your backpacks on the floor and wraps his arms around you from behind, his head coming to rest on your shoulder.

“Wanna check what the water pressure’s like?” he mumbles, his hands already slipping up to cup your breasts through your t-shirt.

“Oh god, a shower…” you moan, “I’d forgotten about showers.”

Frankie chuckles into your ear, “I’ve been dreaming about showers for a month.”

“You’ve been dreaming about us in a shower for a month,” you correct him and you can feel his chest vibrate as he laughs.

“True,” he says, grabbing the old Ikea bag filled with towels, sheets and hygiene supplies you’d been given when you’d been assigned the apartment, “so make my dreams come true, hermosa.”

“Cheesy, very cheesy,” you laugh at his wink but accept his hand as he pulls you through the small studio apartment. It’s just a room, not a very big one even, with an alcove for a double bed at one end, kitchen at the other. Apart from the front door, there are only two doors, one leading to a tiny storage room, the other on to the bathroom. It doesn’t have a bathtub, just a small shower in the corner with a glass wall shielding the rest of the room from the spray.

“If we try anything sex related in this shower we’ll either soak the room or injure ourselves,” you say, giving the small space a critical look. “Bedroom?”

“You mean the bed in the middle of the living room? Sure. But I’ll let you shower before I make good on that hour between your legs,” Frankie grins, “Make you think about how I’m gonna let you test the sound proofing in this building.” He pulls you in by grabbing your ass, his mouth finding yours as he pushes you up against the counter with a playful growl. You giggle into his mouth as he grinds into you.

“Never known a forty year old to be so horny, Frankie, you’re hornier than the guys I dated when I was a teenager.” You laugh as he growls into your mouth, his rapidly growing cock firm against your hip.

“Wish I’d known you when I was a teenager,” he mumbles, his lips moving down your jaw when he suddenly pulls back, “No, wait, the sex would’ve been terrible, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing back then.”

“Inexperienced little Francisco Morales? I would’ve loved that too,” you chuckle, pushing him off you. “I’m gonna shower, make the bed and I’ll let you show me your new moves.”

“You already know all my moves,” he nips at your bottom lip with a smirk before leaving.

The pressure in the shower is low but at least the water is hot and clean, steaming up the small bathroom. Frankie comes in after a little while and sits on the toilet, peeling off his layers as you dry off and step out.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, eyes on your damp curves and you have to slap his hand away with a smile.

“You’re all grimy, Frankie, shower first, then hands.” You wink at him and quickly jump backwards out the door as he tries to catch your ass.

The bed must’ve been the one originally in the apartment because it is nice….you groan as you sink into the large plush mattress. Or it might just be that you’ve spent most nights on a camping mat, because it’s like a cloud under you. By the time Frankie comes out of the shower, his damp curls like a halo around his head, you’re almost asleep.

“Nice bed?” he asks, grinning down at your sleepy face as he crawls on top, caging you in as he drops onto his forearms.

“Very nice bed,” you reply, smiling as he sinks down further to take your bottom lips between his teeth, making you open your mouth for his tongue. His warm body is like a weighted blanket over you as he slowly works to replace your sleepiness with arousal, when you let a first soft moan slip out he pulls back and looks down at you.

“Still tired?” he smiles as his warm hand grabs the back of your thigh and slides your knee up, opening you up to the heavy weight of his erection.

“Yeah, but you can keep going, if you’re good enough I won’t fall asleep.”

You shriek with laughter as your comment makes him slip down and blow a wet raspberry into your belly button, squirming under his fingers.

“So cheeky, as if you could fall asleep with what I have planned, hermosa,” he purrs, slipping down further to nose at the top of your slit. You feel his fingers caress the smooth skin on your thighs and spread you open as he makes room for his shoulders, the sight of his broad back between your legs never ceases to turn you on. You reach down to thread your fingers through his curls, making Frankie hum into your core.

“Time me, cariño, I said an hour,” he says, unfurling his tongue and letting the tip run the length of your fold. It’s such a slow, teasing movement that makes you clench around nothing, gasping as you sink further into the bed, trying to stop the giggle from getting the better of you.

“I don’t even have watc-oh shit, Frankie….”

You wouldn’t be able to say if it’s an hour or not, you lose track of time as soon as he starts teasing your clit, it has been a long time since there was time or safety enough for this. And you’ve missed it, holy fuck you’d missed it. His hot mouth pressed against your core, the thick tongue sliding into your entrance as his perfect nose circles your clit. He groans into you, his fingers digging into the meat of your thighs as you fist his hair, crying out as he pulls the first orgasm from you. He pulls back, strokes your hips, letting you catch your breath before he moves up over your damp skin, trailing wet kisses over every inch he can reach.

“Your old moves still work, Morales,” you smile at him as he reaches your mouth. Tasting yourself on him always makes your arousal flare up again, something about him mixing with you. He chuckles, letting his hand slide down between your legs.

“I noticed,” he says, his damp nose sliding down over your jaw as he slowly slips in a finger, “and you taste just as good as I remember.”

He lets his fingers open you up before he leaves your mouth, moving down between your legs again. This time his fingers slowly fucks in and out of you while his groans, vibrating over your clit makes you cant your hips against his face, chasing his tongue. He leaves you hanging, just on the edge, with a pained protest, as he removes his fingers.

“Turn over,” he says, his voice rough, helping you onto your belly, “keep your ankles crossed.”

“New move?” you ask with a grin over your shoulder, earning you a nip on your butt, before he runs his tongue over the mark.

“Maybe, I had an idea in the shower,” he gives you a crooked smile and bends down over you, pushing your head down to place a wet kiss on your neck, keeping you flush against the bed.

“Push your hips up, baby, like this,” he grabs your hip, guiding them up against his own. His heavy cock pushes in between your thighs, his hand guiding the head to run through your slick folds. The angle and your closed thighs makes him feel bigger than usual, the stretch making you moan into the sheets as he pushes in, his heavy pants blowing hot air over your neck.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he growls, he’s moving his hips, shallow thrusts into you as he slowly works his cock deeper in. “So fucking tight, hermosa, gorgeous girl, so good to me…fuck…can you take more?”

“Yes, please, Frankie, more,” you turn your head to find his lips, messy and uncoordinated as he groans into your mouth. He’s struggling to hold himself up, each thrust makes him want to fall over you, grind into your wet heat and cover your body with his own. You push back against him, taking him deeper as the angle pushes his hard cock to drag over every nerve ending inside you. The tight fit of him is making you whimper as he snaps his hips faster, grinding into you as he bottoms out. He’s pushing you into the bed, his heavy body trapping you under him as each thrust rubs your clit against the soft cotton sheets. Each groan from him makes your pussy clench harder, your orgasm suddenly hitting you, the sheet bunching in your fists as you cry out.

Frankie stutters and curses, a string of filth in Spanish slipping out as your pussy tightens around him.

“Where, cariño, where, I’m…fuck…close.”

“Inside, it’s ok,” you moan, his erratic thrusts making your climax hum through your body, arching up against him as he cries out. He suddenly drops down on you, his teeth sinking into your shoulder with a growl as heat fills you, he’s shuddering, his face buried against your shoulder, with a low gasp, he exhales.

“Fuck…” he moans, his mouth pressed against your skin and your hear the smile in his voice, “Fuck me that was intense,” he chuckles, panting as he tries to catch his breath.

“I think we ruined the sheets on the first try,” you laugh, flopping onto your back as he pulls out with a hiss, his spend dripping down your thighs. “I know, but it was worth it,” he puts his head on your arm and lets you pull him onto your chest, his head resting on your shoulder. “I’ll sleep on the wet patch.”

“I think you need a haircut,” you smile, pushing back his damp curls from his forehead. His hair has gotten long since you left Arlington, “a haircut or a ponytail.”

“Imagine Pope’s face if I turned up with a ponytail,” he chuckles, closing his eyes as you rake your fingers through hair, his breathing slows down and he hums, moving his head to give you better access, “I always love when you do that.”

“I know, Frankie,” you whisper, pulling the covers up over you both, Frankie’s warm body pressed against you.

It takes a few days for the four of you to settle in and start picking up odd jobs. You try to get a job in the FEDRA kitchen but you’re turned down, apparently any job inside a FEDRA facility is reserved for family members of FEDRA soldiers. And since none of the guys have any intentions of joining FEDRA again, you resign yourself to the same odd jobs as the guys. But there are other plans, and they start taking shape only a week after your arrival in New York.

One of the benefits of the four of you living practically next door is pooling your resources and making them stretch further. So most nights finds Frankie and you in Santi and Benny’s apartment, cooking dinner and hanging out, months on the road together had knitted you together into a family more than ever now. Their two bedroom apartment was bigger than what you and Frankie had and the kitchen had room for a large table where you often found yourself, if it wasn’t your turn to take care of the food.

This evening Benny’s peeling potatoes while the two of you wait for Frankie and Santi to get back from their job. They’d both signed on to dig up a new field for vegetables in a nearby park and it was hard work that left them tired and dirty each night. So when the front door opens and Pope steps in, grimy and sweaty, you throw him a sympathetic look.

“Hey, Santi, you’ve got time for a shower, dinner’s not ready yet,” you wave at him and he grunts a thank you, toeing his boots off.

“Frankie went to shower at your place, he’ll be here soon,” he tells you, pulling off his shirt as he heads towards the bathroom.

You lay the table and warm up some arepas while the potatoes boil on the stove. The door opens again and Frankie arrives, looking tired but smiling at you as you drop the last arepa on a plate and go over to him.

“Hello my sweet man,” you whisper, wrapping your arms around his neck, fingers tangling in the damp, now shorter, curls at his neck.

“Hello, mi vida,” he smiles back, his hands finding their way to your waist before he pulls you in for a kiss. Blame it on being safe, or the amount of sex you’ve had the past week or maybe ‘that time of the month’ hormones, but you can’t help but deepen the kiss, licking into his mouth and relishing the little surprised moan you pull from him as you tug at his locks, keeping him tight against you. You hear Benny sigh, pointedly, behind your back but Frankie’s got the message now and his hand is sliding up your back to grab your neck and hold you firmly against his mouth. The ‘welcome home’ kiss turns into a much more heated affair, dragging on until you finally have to pull back for air, Frankie’s lips chasing yours for a final press before he opens his eyes and smiles at you.

“You guys done now?” Benny huffs, mock indignation in his voice, from the kitchen.

“No,” Frankie says, his hands trying to get you into his arms again as you giggle and turn your back to him, pulling him into the kitchen.

“Sorry, Benny,” you apologize while your husband pulls you down onto his lap on one of the kitchen chairs, making you squeal when his fingers dig into your waist.

“I swear you guys are worse than teenagers,” Benny sighs but you hear the smile in his voice. “And Frankie, it’s technically your turn to do dinner so you owe me one.”

“Yeah, I know, we got delayed on the way back, we worked with a guy today who had some interesting information and we wanted to talk to him.”

“What kind of information?” you ask as Santi walks in, fresh from his shower.

“Remember ‘The Captain’ that Morrow mentioned, his boss?” he says, dropping down on a chair across the table from you. “Turns out, he’s the main boss, the guy who runs the smuggling in the QZ. And according to this guy we worked with today, he’s elusive. When you buy from the smugglers, you buy from one of his guys, never from him, he stays hidden because he’s pretty high on FEDRA’s wanted list.”

Benny puts down a stewpot on the table before he straightens up and looks at Pope, “Why is that interesting? Do we wanna meet this captain guy just to tell him Morrow died? Seems like a lot of hassle if the guy’s a ghost.”

“If we’re gonna start smuggling again we need to figure out how, and if this guy runs smuggling in the QZ, we need to work with him, or take him out. But,” Pope says, holding up his hand to silence Benny who’s opened his mouth again, “the guy we talked with said they haven’t been able to supply as usual the past few weeks. And we know why.”

“You guys took out a bunch of his guys….” you say, nodding as it dawns on you.

“Exactly,” Pope grins, “we’ve already started undermining him, there’s a gap in the market. So we pick up their slack, send a message and we have a better chance of getting in on the smuggling market.” Pope looks pleased with himself as he starts scooping up stew onto his plate.

“Isn’t it pretty likely that The Captain is gonna be pissed off when you start taking his customers?” You look down at Frankie, he’s been quiet the whole time, his hands holding you steady on his lap.

“Yeah, most likely,” he agrees, “but we can handle that, and it means he’ll be more inclined to work with us, if we’re already supplying what he can’t.”

You look at Frankie, chewing your lip, you have more things to say about it but you don’t know how to say it without sounding dismissive. Truth is, you’re worried it’ll be a lot more dangerous than in Arlington; a rival gang, new territory, new connections need to be made and new routes, all while staying under FEDRA’s radar and avoiding any infected. But you can’t tell them not to, smuggling makes them use their skills, the things they’re good at and at the same time bring in things you all need. And you know their smuggling made a difference to the people in Arlington. When FEDRA rationed food and medicine too harshly, what Frankie and Pope brought in could help someone who needed it and at the same time keep you all fed.

They make plans during the dinner and you don’t say much. Frankie notices your silence and he doesn’t like it, his hand keeps reaching out to touch your leg, wrap his fingers around yours, or pull you closer as you all stand from the dinner table. You feel his worried eyes on you as Pope and Benny pour over an old New York map, strategizing. He can see your mind working and he has an inkling about where it’s going.

You bring it up later, when you’re alone and back in your own apartment. Frankie’s crawled into bed, pulled down the covers for you to join him, but you remain standing after you come out of the bathroom.

“I want to be part of the smuggling,” you say and Frankie drops his chin to his chest, this is where he feared you were going.

“I know you don’t want me too, but, firstly, I am not sitting at home waiting for the three of you while you’re away doing something dangerous. Again. I did that in Arlington and it sucked.”

Frankie opens his mouth to protest but you cut him off. “And I know you said you need me safe to be able to focus out there, but we’ve been traveling across the country for months and we, all of us, work well together. And you know I can handle myself.” You kneel down on the bed in front of him, making him look you in the eye, “Let me be your lookout, or let me do the trading while you three stand behind me and look like bad asses.” The last thing makes Frankie give an involuntary smirk and you smile, “Frankie, you know it makes sense, I’m a good asset, I can be useful too.”

“I knew you were going to bring it up again,” he says, sighing while he traces his fingertips across your temple to push a strand of hair behind your ear. “If it was anyone else, I’d say yes straight away. But it’s you.” He stops and locks eyes with you, those warm brown eyes you’ve loved from the very beginning, anxious, “You’re everything to me, and the thought of you getting hurt, or worse, scares the shit out of me.”

“The thought of you getting hurt scares the shit out of me too,” you say, letting him pull you closer, his arms looping around your waist so that you're sitting on his lap, knees on either side of his hips. “But it scares me even more to think about you getting hurt when I’m not there. Frankie, my very worst nightmare is you just disappearing, and I don’t know what happened to you, like what Hannah had to go through with Will, never knowing.”

“That’s my worst nightmare too,” he whispers, his voice low and pained.

“So don’t make me wait at home for you again,” you plead. He tilts his head and leans his forehead against yours, closing his eyes with a sigh.

“Ok,” he breathes, “ok.”

It takes a couple of weeks for things to get set in motion, gather the necessary supplies and information to start thinking about leaving the QZ on a smuggling run. FEDRA has taken the rifles but you’d managed to hide your handguns in your backpacks so you weren’t entirely without weapons at least. The first run is short but successful, Pope seems to have a knack for sniffing out passageways. After studying the map and walking around the north eastern end of the QZ for a few days, he’s found several potential entry points into old service tunnels that should run under the wall, next to the bombed metro tunnels. With you as a lookout, the three of them try two before getting lucky in the third one. It’s relatively undamaged, free from infected and leads straight to the 116th street Metro station in East Harlem. The entrance to the metro is blocked off but it doesn’t take the three guys long to clear a narrow passageway that they can easily hide from the outside.

A few days is also spent clearing two more ways in and out of the QZ. Pope has told you about how he’d learnt the hard way to never just have one route. Early on in Franklin the tunnel he’d used had collapsed while he was outside the QZ. He was trapped with no way back in so he had to crawl through the rubble of the collapsed tunnel, narrowly escaping two runners, who came through from a broken wall. Pope was flippant about the way he told the story, making you laugh, but he also told you he’d never been that close to death before or since, even in the army. It was a sober reminder to always have an escape route and he was adamant about having at least two back ups.

Finding connections takes a bit longer, building trust isn’t easy in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. But not surprisingly, it’s Benny who brings in the first real trade and solid connection for future deals. He meets an older man at one of the odd jobs he takes, clearing one of the streets, a rough and far too heavy job for the older man. Benny, in his usual manner, helps the man get through the day so that he can collect the ration cards he sorely needs. Grateful, the man tells Benny he has a sister who lives up in New Haven who sails down to Orchard Beach and trades in a number of things.

“She and her husband can get you almost anything you need, just place an order with The Captain’s gang and they’ll sort it.”

“What if I wanna trade directly with them? I can go out there on my own if I have to.” Benny asks and the old man hesitates, but Benny’s good natured charm serves him well and a few days later he has a time and a place to meet the old man’s sister.

The sister’s name is Jodie Graham, her brother contacts her via one of the two non-FEDRA radio centers set up, and vouches for Benny and his friends and the four of you set out for your first trade. It takes you only half a day to get to Orchard Beach, despite it being slow going in the bombed and ravaged terrain. The trade goes well, Jodie and her husband Damon seem relieved to see a woman together with the three big men flanking you. Despite their best efforts at looking non-threatening, they fail as they approach. Guns at their sides and heavy boots, they look very much like the ex Special Ops soldiers they are. It’s clear that it’s only her brother’s word that lets the four of you approach the boat they’ve come in on.

You don’t have much to trade with them yet but this first time feels mainly like a show of good faith.

“Any prescription drugs you can trade with us, we’ll be interested,” Jodie says, “that’s something we can’t seem to get from other smugglers. And the other New Yorkers, the ones who work for The Captain, they’re always reluctant to trade it.”

“Why?” you ask, you’ve been doing most of the talking, it felt natural when Jodie seemed to trust you more than the three men behind you.

“A misplaced sort of moral it seemed like,” Jodie scoffed, “as if anyone cares about drug addictions today, seems like one of the nicer ways to go.” She takes the bag of coffee beans you’ve handed her, “They won’t trade them, but I’ve got plenty of people who want them, so if you get your hands on any, we’ll pay very well for them.”

“I’ll see what we can do, we haven’t got any at the moment,” you say, keeping your tone non-committal. You already know you won’t be trading any drugs, it was a line Pope had drawn in the sand early on. One you wouldn’t be prepared to cross with Frankie’s history either. But it spiked your interest about the rival New York gang, maybe it was a common ground you could start with, some sort of honor among thieves, or smugglers in your case.

“Any supplies you need for your ship?” you ask, “We might be able to get you extra gear for it, there’s plenty of boat clubs around Manhattan and most of the supplies in them aren’t of much use to anyone without a boat.”

“Yeah, any sail cloth you can find, and rope,” Jodie says and you make a note in your book to search around the Manhattan coastline before the next trade.

Once you’ve agreed on when to connect again on the radio, the four of you make your way back towards Manhattan. By the time you get back to the apartments it’s late but you’re all in a good mood, the day has been a success.

You do four more trades with Jodie and Damon, filling your backpacks with an assortment of goods each trade, before the first hint of trouble crops up. Jodie’s the one who gives you the heads up.

“I like trading with you guys, you’re punctual, well prepared, and never give me grief, so I’m gonna warn you,” she says while Benny and Pope fill the packs with wares. Frankie and you are standing guard, keeping an eye on the beach. “The other guys, The Captain’s gang, they’ve noticed that someone’s taking customers, and they’re not happy.”

“You still trade with them?” Benny asks and Jodie nods.

“Yeah, of course, I’ll trade with anyone who’s fair, and they’ve been doing this for years now, always been decent. They had a slump but they were out here a couple of weeks ago.”

“Did you tell them about us?” Pope asks, glancing up at Jodie, unable to hide his annoyance and she scowls at him.

“I’m not stupid, I didn’t say anything. But they asked, didn’t they? Asked if I’d been approached by another gang and I said no.”

Pope closes his backpack and looks over at Frankie and you, you’re both still facing away from the ocean, but obviously listening to what Jodie’s saying.

“Did they say how they know there’s someone else?” you ask over your shoulder.

“One of your customers didn’t want what they usually trade, said they had another source.”

“Fucking idiot,” you hear Frankie say under his breath and you have to agree. You’d asked all your customers to be discreet. Your excuse being that you didn’t want FEDRA to find out, but you also wanted to keep things low key until you were established enough to have a good deal to offer The Captain. The last thing you needed was a gang war, fighting over territory.

“Thanks for the heads up, Jodie,” Benny says, hoisting his bag up onto his back.

“Watch your backs, they seem pretty pissed,” she gives the four of you a final wave as you turn back towards the city.

Jodie’s warning makes you extra cautious when you leave the QZ, but you didn’t expect them to find you inside the QZ. Benny makes the door frame rattle as he slams the front door to the apartment as he and Frankie come in. You and Pope jump to your feet from the couch at the sight of the two men.

“What happened?” you gasp, gently taking Frankie’s chin in your hand and tilting it up so that you can get a better lock at the gash over his eyebrow.

“We got fucking jumped,” Frankie growls, wincing as you brush hair from his forehead, it’s got stuck in the dried blood that’s smeared across his face.

“The Captain’s gang,” Benny expands, “must’ve followed us into that warehouse down by the high line we were planning on checking out. Five of them, think I lost a fucking tooth,” he grimaces and grabs his jaw.

Pope’s peeled off to the bathroom and now he returns with the first aid kit, pointing both men to the couch.

“They even said, and I shit you not, ‘regards from The Captain’ before they attacked, like we’re in fucking West Side Story or something,” Benny snorts, wincing when the movement makes blood drip from his split lip.

“Any internal injuries?” you ask Frankie as you help him take his jacket and holster off, he’s grimacing as his shoulder twists.

“No, I don’t think so, they got a couple of good hits in, but that was it. One guy slammed me shoulder first into a wall, but I didn’t dislocate it.”

“Please tell me you took care of these fuckers,” Pope growls while you grab alcohol and gauze to clean Frankie’s cut.

“One got a way, which is good I suppose, sends a warning to the others,” Benny says, “the other four we eliminated.”

“Gun fight?” Pope asks and Benny nods.

“We had to-fuck! Be careful!” he yelps when Pope prods a cut on his forearm. “I want her to do it,” he points to you, “better bedside manner.”

“Just shut up and tell us what happened,” Pope says, rolling his eyes at Benny’s wincing.

“We had to run,” Frankie says, “Only one of them had a gun, which was lucky, but a FEDRA patrol obviously heard the shots and we had to bolt. Didn’t even get a chance to get a good look at the warehouse or what they’d were carrying.”

“How did they know it was you?” you ask, “It’s worrying if they know what we look like, we won’t be safe in the QZ.”

“Someone we traded with must’ve told them, Benny does stick out, easy to recognise.” Pope holds up his hands apologetically when Benny protests, “sorry, but it’s true, you’re a huge blonde dude, not many guys are built like you.”

“We’ve got a trade in three days, outside the QZ,” you remind them, “we’ll have to be extra careful, this is a new trade too, it could be a set up.”

“You wanna cancel?” Frankie grabs your hand as it comes down from his forehead, his eyebrows knitted together in that familiar worried look. Glancing over at Benny and Pope you think it over, if you said you wanna cancel it you know they’d go with it, somehow you’ve become the one who says yes or no on a trade, trusting your gut instinct implicitly.

“No, this connection came from Jodie, I can’t see her setting us up,” you decide eventually, “but maybe we take a different route this time?”

“Sounds like a smart idea,” Pope agrees, “I’ll have a look at the map.”

You turn back to Frankie and clean up his knuckles, they’ve split where he’s hit someone, and place bandaids on the larger cuts. When you’re done he wraps his bandaged arm around your waist and pulls you closer on the couch, enough for him to bury his face into the crook of your neck. You can feel him inhaling deeply as his hand fists the back of your shirt and you dip your nose to his soft curls, sweaty and kinda dusty smelling from the day.

“I’m glad you came back in one piece, Frankie,” you mumble and he nods against your neck, pulling you tighter. He doesn’t have to say anything, you know why he does it, a silent thank you offered to the universe for letting him return home to you one more time.

One of the first things you traded Jodie for, in exchange for a large, brand new sail, were two walkie talkies. Battery powered, they were invaluable if you needed to split up. And today, with the new trade going down, they served their purpose. And in light of the new situation with the rival smugglers, Pope led you all out of a different tunnel, a detour, but worth it to minimize the risk, and bringing you out at 125th Street Station. You were meeting your new contacts at a nearby park down by the river and since your first meeting with Jodie you’d worked out a system where one of you stayed behind and kept watch from afar. Pope knew the city best and he would suggest a spot for a trade where he knew there’d be a good vantage point for someone to keep an eye on things. This morning youcame out early to the meet up point, taking time to make sure the lookout point was clear before the three men left you up there with one of the walkie talkies and a rifle. You weren’t the best shot, but you didn’t really need to be. So far everything trade had been smooth, but if things did go bad, a few shots from a hidden sniper would make anyone run for cover, whether or not you hit them. But the real advantage was that you were able to give the guys a bird’s eye view of the area and a head’s up if something seemed off, your gut instinct serving you well.

This morning all of you were on edge, the attack on Frankie and Benny making you extra nervous. It was difficult to say if it was the knowledge that The Captain’s gang was after you that made you jumpy, or if something was wrong with the trade. You’re splayed flat on your belly at the edge of a broken window in the half bombed out apartment tower, using the scope on the rifle in place of binoculars, those being next on your list of things you were hoping to trade Jodie for. Nothing stirs in the wide open park next to the river and when you scan the streets you can see from your perch, everything is quiet. You watch the three men make their way down a street and into the park, disappearing briefly from view before they reach the agreed upon location. In the distance, on the other side of the park, you see two men walking across and you relay what you see to Frankie, he’s got the other radio today.

The trade goes off without a hitch and you watch as the two men retreat across the park, back towards the small White Plains QZ that’s up north. It’s when you swing the scope back towards Frankie and the others that you see it. Three men crouching behind a car further down the street your guys are walking down. Fumbling for the radio you hit the button.

“Catfish, three men hidden behind a white SUV about a block and half down the street. Over.”

“Copy that, Jefa.”

Jefa… The call sign they’d given you still made you roll your eyes, and was only ever allowed to be used in situations when your real name shouldn’t be used. It had been Pope’s idea, of course, but Benny loved it and Frankie conceded that he couldn’t call you ‘cariño’ over the radio or in front of traders. So Jefa, boss, it was.

You didn’t feel very bosslike as you watched them slowly walk down the street, you could see Frankie telling them about the three men. At the next crossing they turned down a side street and you lost sight of them.

“Jefa, we’re going to flank them, let me know if they move. Over” Frankie’s voice came over on the radio almost as soon as they disappeared from view, you could hear them running along the street.

“Ok, I’ve got eyes on them, they’re still stationary. Over.”

Frankie clicks the button on the radio and follows Pope’s back down the street, Benny close behind. There’s a small neighborhood park, a ballpark only really, at the back of the block and they cut across it, quickly covering two blocks parallel to the main street they were on. It’s only a few minutes before they turn back towards the street again and they slow down, moving silently. They come out just below the black SUV, expecting to see the three men but the street is empty.

Frankie brings up the radio, “Jefa, come in, did they move? We can’t see them. Over.” He clicks the receive button and waits for a response while Pope and Benny quickly scan the street.

“Jefa, come in, do you copy? Over.” Only static comes back over the radio and lead drops into his belly. His eyes meet Pope’s at the same time as the realization hits, decoy. Benny curses under his breath and looks towards the tower, while Frankie tries the radio one more time, already starting to run towards the building.

“Loop the chain around it, it’ll hold her,” the voice comes from far away as you blink your eyes open in the darkness. “The captain’s gonna see her when he gets back.” The voice, a grumpy sounding man’s voice, retreats and you hear a door closing and locking. The back of your head hurts, as does the side of your face and the side of your ribs.

You’d heard them just a couple of seconds before they were on you, in the tower, someone’s shoe scuffed against the floor and you turned, but you weren’t fast enough to get off the floor. As you blink again, trying to shake the darkness around you, you feel the handcuffs around your wrists, and a chain rattles. It takes a few more seconds before you realize you’ve got a hood over your head, the scratchy material making your nose itch. The world is tilted sideways and it takes you a few tries to get upright, the handcuffs are tight behind your back. You wobble, almost tipping backwards, but a wall stops you from falling and you gratefully lean against it, trying to collect your thoughts, stopping the panic from rising in your throat.

Breath, in and out, stay calm, always number one, stay calm. Fuck, easier said than done, Frankie.

Focusing on your breathing, mentally going through your body to check for any serious injuries, you suppress the panic to the pit of your stomach, making you feel nauseous but it’s manageable. For now.

You don’t know how long you’re left sitting on the floor, you really need to pee, so it’s probably a pretty long time. When the door finally opens you’re stiff, hungry, pissed off and not happy about the rough hands that suddenly yank you off the floor. It takes all your willpower to not snap at whoever is shoving you through the door, a hard grip on your shoulder, an equal measure of anger and fear making your legs jellylike.

The air feels raw and it smells like you’re in a basement, being taken down a hallway, up some stairs and into a warmer room. Through the tight weave of the hood you see the light change, this room is brighter than the room downstairs that you were kept in, and it smells like food, making your stomach grumble

“This the lookout?” a man asks from behind you.

“Yeah, she was right where you said they’d put someone, perfect view of the park. Had a rifle and a radio.”

“Nothing if not predictable,” the first man says, as he moves through the room, you hear the springs of a couch or chair squeak as he sits down. “Who are you working for?” he asks.

It takes you a few seconds to respond, something is triggering at the back of your mind, the rough, low cadence, the accent so familiar.

“I don’t work for anyone,” you reply eventually, “I was just asked to be a lookout for a few hours, easy ration cards.” It’s a weak lie, but you’re not about to give them any more information than they obviously already have and your answer seems to have given the man food for thought as he doesn’t reply straight away.

“Let’s show her some good faith,” he says, talking to someone else in the room, “Get some water and some of the leftover rice.” There’s a word of protest from behind you but he cuts them off, “What’s she gonna do? She’s handcuffed and hooded, let’s treat her nice.”

The door opens and closes as someone leaves. The man left in the room gets off the couch and comes over to you, you flinch as you feel his hand grab the hood. He pulls it off and you blink against the sudden bright light.

“Holy shit, it is you…” the man whispers and as you see his blue eyes it hits you, the voice, the cadence, William Miller.

You lose your voice as tears well up in your eyes and Will puts his hand on your cheek, partly checking the cut you most likely have there, but also almost checking to see if you’re real. And you could ask the same of him, if your voice wasn’t cut off by a sob. His smile is watery too and he makes you stumble as he suddenly pulls you into a bear hug, so reminiscent of his brother’s hugs.

“I can’t believe it’s you, you’re here, how the fuck are you here?” he asks incredulously, pulling back from you and you grin, trying to swallow down another sob.

“I’m with Benny,” you choke out, “And Frankie and Pope.”

“Benny’s alive?” Will eyes go wide, he’s holding on to you with both hands on your arms, “he’s here in New York?”

“He was with me this morning. They all were and- “ you’re cut off by the sound of boots in the hallway and Will throws the hood over your head again. “You don’t know me,” he hisses before stepping back and you’re left confused as the door opens again.

“We’ll take her down again, let her eat, and then I’m sure we’ll be able to come to an agreement,” Will says, his voice sounding rough again, giving an order to the other man. Will’s hand takes hold of your arm, turning you around and you’re marched back the way you came, downstairs and into the damp smelling room.

“Take off her cuffs, chain her to the radiator, so that she can eat.” Will leaves you standing in the middle of the room but before he lets go and leaves, he gives your arm a quick squeeze. The other man locks a chain around your ankle and removes your handcuffs, leaving the hood on while he leaves the room.

It’s good that he does because you don’t think you’d be able to contain the grin on your face. Will is alive! William fucking Miller, alive and well in New York! And a smuggler…that thought hits you like a brick, Will is a smuggler, and Benny, Frankie and Pope have been taking out his guys, his friends. And Will caught onto that faster than you did, that’s why he put the hood back on. Whoever the other guys are, they won’t forgive you or the guys for stomping in on their territory and killing their guys. Even if it is Will’s brother. And Will knows that.

“This could get really fucking messy,” you whisper under your breath as you pull off the hood and sink down on the floor again.

Again you’re left on your own for several hours, the sun moves outside the small window high up on the wall, sinking low before it goes dark outside. Your thoughts keep flitting between joy at Will being alive and how happy the others will be when they find out, and worry about your three guys, Frankie especially. You know they’ll be in the process of tearing up the city to find you, putting their considerable talents to use to force information from anyone who might have some.

There’s a bare bulb in the room and at some point someone turns it on, casting yellow light over you. More hours pass and you start to wonder if you’ve been forgotten down here, or if something’s happened to Will. You’re also half expecting Frankie and the guys to burst in, guns blazing, in some wild rescue mission. Falling asleep is impossible, you’re too anxious, so when you finally hear footsteps outside the door, you’re already on your feet. The door opens and Will steps in, closing it softly behind him. A few quick steps and he envelops you in another bear hug, longer this time, and you can finally put your own arms around him too. He’s just as big and imposing as the last time you saw him, almost six years ago, a little bit more tired around the eyes, a few more silver strands in the blonde hair and you give yourself a few seconds to just enjoy the fact that he’s alive and here. He seems to do the same, holding on to you for a long minute before he finally lets go and steps back.

“It’s so good to see you, Will! I kept thinking it was a dream all day, but you’re actually here,” you say, grinning down at him as he crouches to unlock the chain around your ankle.

“Same, I kept thinking I was being delusional,” he chuckles softly and stands up, “When I heard your voice under the hood, I immediately thought of Frankie, that’s how I knew it was you.”

“You were faster than I was, I heard your accent and I couldn’t figure out who it reminded me of,” you smile, poking his chest just to make sure he’s real again. “You look good, Miller!”

He smiles but it drops off his face as something hits him, “You said you’re with Frankie, Pope and Benny?”

“Yeah, we got to New York a few weeks ago.”

“And Hannah?”

His question hits you like a punch to the gut, you can’t stop tears welling up in your eyes, you have to shake your head and drop your eyes, you can’t look at him as the realization sinks in.

“Do you know what happened?” he asks, his voice low and you force yourself to nod, the image of Hannah in Benny’s arms flooding your mind as you feel tears run down your cheeks. Will suddenly pulls you into a hug and you press your face to his chest. He’s holding you almost too tight, and you hear him inhale deeply, a long, ragged intake of breath, before he exhales and lets go of you.

“Tell me later, when you can tell me everything. I need to get you out of here now,” his voice is rough but determined, “I want you back with Frankie before he kicks down my door with a shotgun.”

“Yeah, probably a good idea,” you reply, your voice shaky but you swallow down the tears, hastily wiping your cheeks as Will goes for the door. Making sure the coast is clear he waves you forward and silently you make your way down the hall and up the stairs. It looks as if you’re in an old office of sorts, long hallways, conference rooms on the sides. The place is dark, only the dim light from the outside comes through in places, but Will knows his way. He leads you to what looks like a backdoor.

“I can’t leave, it’ll raise too many questions,” he says when the two of you reach the door. “Where do you live? I’ll come find you guys tomorrow.”

He opens the door and glances outside, stepping out a second later. You hear a door behind you open as you follow Will out, and Will grabs your arm, pulling you out fast.

“What the fuck?!” comes an angry, gruff voice, “What the fuck is going on, captain?”

“Nothing, Conway,” Will says quickly, “Go back to your shift, our guest wasn’t feeling well, I’m taking her out for some air.”

The man looks you up and down and back to Will, he’s got his hand on your arm, still holding the door open and you’re frozen, staring at the man.

“Where are her fucking handcuffs?” He takes a few steps towards the door and Will squeezes your arm, and you take a step back.

“Turn around, Conway, and go back to your shift, that’s an order, I’ve got her.” Will’s voice is solid, clearly in command, but it doesn’t work on the man .

“You’re either about to fuck her or let her go,” he says, another step towards the door, “and if you’re doing the first, I want in,” he leers at you, “If you’re doing the second, then we’ve got a big fucking problem, captain.”

“I’m just letting her get some air, now turn around and walk away, Conway.”

“She’s got air now, so bring her back in then,” he challenges, he’s at the threshold now, only a step away from Will.

“Conway,” Will says, taking half a step back and glancing back at you, “You really should know when to walk away.” The punch comes out of nowhere, Will swings and hits Conway’s jaw with a sharp crack and the man drops, his head making a nasty thud on the floor just inside the door. Will shakes out his fist and bends to grab the man’s limp body. “Get the top of that dumpster,” he says, motioning further down the alley, and you run over, pushing the lid back as Will grabs the man and tosses him over his shoulder. Whatever happened to Will in the past six years, it certainly hadn’t impacted his brute physical strength, he barely makes a noise as he hoists the man into the metal container and you slide the lid shut.

“Ok, wait at the end of the alley, stay out of sight. If I’m not back in five, go home, I’ll find you there.”

You nod and make your way over as Will disappears inside the building again. You wait anxiously in the shadows by the street but it doesn’t take long for Will to come back out. This time he’s got a jacket on, a backpack and your own backpack, gratefully you take it from him and the rifle he hands you.

“Let’s go,” he says, stepping out into the street.

“Are you leaving them?” you ask in a whisper as you follow him, nodding at the backpack and his gear.

“Yeah, I’ll tell you more later but it’s been coming on for a while, I’ve been wanting to punch Conway for months.” Will pulls a disgruntled face as you hurry through the quiet streets. There’s a curfew in effect as usual and you stay in the small alleys, hurrying across any avenues. You’re pretty far from the Upper West Side and it takes you over an hour to make your way back, Will telling you bits and pieces of what’s been going on while you duck in and out of shadows.

“I got reports a few hours ago, the guys took out four more of my guys, they’re trying to find you”, Will says as you skirt around Central Park.

“We were taking out your guys, Will,” you say, “Aren’t you pissed at us? We basically came in and started taking over your business.”

“Not pissed, just annoyed,” Will looks over at you and shrugs, “you did what I’ve done many times over, I have no right to be mad at anyone coming in and trying to take over the smuggling. I did the same thing, only I was successful. And since then, there’s been several attempts at trying to take over from me.” Will gives a low chuckle, “I’ve got to say, no one has come as close as you guys, you put a real dent in my operation, I was getting worried. The fucking irony of it being you and the guys, my own fucking baby brother.”

You can’t help but smile, Will has a point, the guys had used their Delta Force tactics against the one person who really would know how to counter them. That’s how Will had known there’d be someone in the apartment tower.

“And now they’re trying to find you, and I can’t blame them,” Will says as you stop and crouch, waiting for a FEDRA patrol to drive past. “I wouldn’t wanna get between Frankie and you. I’m assuming he’s as crazy about you as always?” Even in the dim light you can see Will’s smile.

“We got married,” you say, holding up your left hand, “not in a ceremony of anything, just registered as husband and wife with FEDRA.”

“Congratulations,” Will grins, “but I have to say, kinda disappointed I wasn’t invited to the wedding.”

“Dumbass,” you smile at him and he chuckles silently, “c’mon, the apartment is just down this street.”

You see dim lights on in the building as you approach. “We’ll check at Benny and Pope’s place first, they might all be there,” you say as you let the two of you into the brownstone. Will only nods and you wonder what kind of emotions are running through his head, only minutes away from seeing his baby brother for the first time in almost six years.

You give a low knock on the front door and by the speed it’s opened, you know they weren’t sleeping. Pope yanks the door open, he must’ve looked through the peephole because he grabs you and hugs you before you even have time to react, he doesn’t even notice Will standing slightly to the side behind you.

“Pope,” you protest weakly, “I’ve brought someone, get Benny.” You feel Pope’s arms fall from you and as you look up you catch the look on his face as he spots Will.

“Dios mío…” he breathes and Will grins as Pope looks as if he’s seen a ghost.

“Who is it?” you hear Benny call from inside and you quickly grab Will and pull him inside the door, forcing Pope to back up so that you can close the door. This is going to get noisy.

“Benny!” Pope shouts, stepping forward and grabbing Will into a hug, “you’re never fucking gonna believe who it is!”

“Who?” Benny calls back from the kitchen, he sounds tired and annoyed as he steps out, Frankie behind him, looking even worse than Benny sounds.

It takes Benny several seconds to register who he’s looking at, the two men staring at each other across the room until Will moves, stepping away from Pope and grabbing Benny.

“Come here, baby bro,” he chokes as Benny throws his arms around him, a strangled growl coming from his throat.

“How?” Benny splutters, his face buried in his brother’s shoulder, “How and how the fuck!?” He pulls away, grabbing Will’s face between his hands, “Where the fuck have you been?!”

“I could ask the same of you,” Will chuckles, his voice thick with emotions as he seems to just take in the sight of Benny’s face. “It’s good to see you again, baby bro, I didn’t think I would.”

“I never gave up on you,” Benny says, grabbing Will into a hug again, “I never fucking gave up on you.”

You put your arms out to Frankie as you see him and he’s on you with a few long steps, pulling you into his arms, his lips finding yours in an instant.

“We’ve been looking for you all over the city,” he mumbles, pulling back a little to run his thumb gently over the cut on your cheek.

“I know, and we have a lot of catching up to do,” you reply as his hands tugs you closer to him, his nose bumping against yours.

“Fish, give me a hug, I got your wife back for you,” Will says, letting go of Benny and enveloping both you and Frankie in a hug, Frankie grabs his shoulder and they bump their foreheads together.

“I owe you everything, brother,” Frankie says, locking eyes with Will, “It’s so fucking good to see you, you’ve got to tell us everything.”

It’s a long story and Will tells it as Pope makes coffee and Frankie cleans your cuts.

“From the beginning?” Will asks, and Benny nods.

“Yeah, from the beginning, outbreak day, what happened to you? I went to your office, it went up in flames.”

“When it all started going crazy, my phone died, I couldn’t get hold of any of you and I was thinking I’d just stay put in the office until it calmed down,” Will sinks down on the couch next to Benny, "But then the coffee shop, the one on the first floor, caught fire and we all got told to leave. It was chaos on the street outside and I tried getting behind the building to stay out of sight. But then I saw Emma, you know the barista you always used to flirt with Ben?” Ben nods and Will continues, “I saw her through the window, she got trapped by the fire, behind the counter so I had to get her out, got the back door open and managed to pull her out. But I think something collapsed, I don’t remember too well. All I know it hurt like a bitch and then I woke up in a triage tent somewhere, I got pretty badly burnt.” Will pulls up the sleeve of his t-shirt and shows the painful looking scarring on his shoulder.

“Fuck, that looks gnarly,” Ben says, leaning forward and running his fingers over his brother’s skin

“It goes down my back too, took fucking forever to heal.” Will lets his shirt drop back down, “They were gonna leave me in the local medical camp but I got lucky, you guys remember Colonel Middleton?” He looks over at Frankie and Pope who both nod.

“Yeah, from that fuck up in Yemen,” Pope says, “worst fucking officer I’ve ever met.”

“Well, he came through for me, he got me on a chopper to D.C, they had a burn unit still up and running there, military only. I was out of it for the most part but they patched me up. By the time I was able to stand up without the skin on my back falling off, it had all gone to shit. QZ:s going up everywhere, all the major cities bombed, including Arlington and D.C.”

He leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees, looking at Pope, Frankie and you, “I tried finding you guys, but I couldn’t get back to Arlington and then Middleton offered to get me to NYC, help rebuild. I…” Will’s head drops down, “I needed a distraction, a purpose, to keep going…” He turns his head and looks back at Benny who’s grabbed his arm, “I’m sorry, Benny, I should’ve looked harder for you, and for Hannah.”

At the mention of Hannah’s name, Benny shrinks, the big man visibly sinking lower in his seat as his eyes go dark, it makes your heart ache and you feel Frankie take your hand, squeezing it tight.

“I know she didn’t make it, Benny,” Will says, “it’s ok, I knew it was a long shot to hope that she was still alive. I just wanna know how she died.”

Benny’s jaw goes tight and you feel tears pressing up hot in your eyes, Pope’s exhaling slowly behind you and the silence seems to stretch indefinitely.

“Things in Arlington got bad,” you hear Frankie say, he’s looking at Benny who can’t seem to take his eyes off his shoes, “There was this guy, head of FEDRA there, who got power hungry. He had men around him who kept him in power thanks to the favors they got from him.Things started rumbling and Hannah got caught up in it, defending a kid.” Frankie stops and shakes his head, he’s struggling and he looks at you for help but Benny speaks up.

“She got taken to FEDRA lock up, Will,” Benny’s eyes are back on his brother, “and they killed her,” a sob racks his chest, a sharp inhale and Will’s arm goes around him, you can see his knuckles white from the grip on Benny’s shoulder.

“But we got them, we killed the ones who did it, Will, and I, we all, put her to rest, she wasn’t alone and I said goodbye for you too, I said goodbye for us both. I made sure she knew.”

Benny’s shoulders shake and you know he sees in his mind the same as you, Hannah’s body, just before Frankie and Pope wrapped her, bent over her face, whispering into her ear, before carrying her to the fire.

Frankie’s arm pulls you into his chest as the sobs overtake you, Santi pulling you both in closer as Will seems to have a battle raging inside him.

“You got them?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah, we got them all,” Pope says, his voice rough.

“Ok.”

Will’s head remains low between his shoulders for several long minutes, Benny inhales deeply and Will looks over at him.

“I know you took care of her, Benny, I’m grateful it was you.” He sighs and drags both hands over his face, rough stubble scraping against his palms, “I need air, I need to process, I’ll be back in a bit.”

“I’m coming’ with you,” Benny says, standing up at the same time as his brother, and Will nods, his jaw still tight.

“I’ll see you guys in the morning, alright?” he nods to the three of you, still on the couch.

After Will and Benny have left, you slump back against Frankie, you feel drained. It’s early morning, and the stress of the day is finally catching up with you. Frankie senses your fatigue and gently pushes you up off the couch.

“C’mon, hermosa, time to sleep,” he says, wrapping his arm around your waist to hold you steady against him.

“Sleep well, Santi,” you say and he nods, he looks drained too.

“Sleep well, hermana, let Frankie spoil you, ok?”

“I always do,” Frankie replies and leads you out the door.

Back in your own apartment you pull your clothes off and collapse on the bed, not even bothering to wash off. Frankie falls into bed next to you, tugging you tight against his chest, his arm as your pillow.

“You scared me,” he whispers, lips pressed against your forehead.

“I’m sorry,” you mumble back, “I knew you were looking for me though,” your nose buried in his sparse chest hair, tickling you as you speak. He’s tugging the covers up over you both and you tangle your legs with his.

“I’d never stop looking, cariño, you know that, right?” He’s got his arms properly wrapped around you now, his nose skimming over your cheek in the darkness, you can feel his lips brush over yours as you turn your face up towards him.

“I know, I’d never stop looking for you either, Frankie,” you whisper, finding his soft mouth and sinking into his kiss. It’s slow, warm and calm, letting you close your eyes and relax against him, his warm breath against your cheek as he pulls away and lets you fall asleep.

Chapter 27

Taglist: @pimosworld @i-own-loki @casa-boiardi @littlenosoul @stormseyer @mxtokko @javicstories @nunya7394 @welcometothepedroverse @harriedandharassed @meveispunk @hiroikegawa @jwritesfanfics

#the pilot and his girl #frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #pedro pascal #frankie morales fanfiction #frankie morales fanfic #the last of us #frankie morales fluff #the last of us fanfiction #frankie morales x you #pedro pascal character fanfiction #triple frontier #triple frontier fanfiction #frankie morales x f!reader #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie morales smut #frankie morales angst

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justagalwhowrites · 1 year

Text

Lavender - Ch. 10

You take Joel and Tommy around the QZ and reconnect while Andrew has misgivings. A continuation of Lavender Ch. 1-9 found on Tumblr here.

Main pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Length: 9.1K (sorryyyyyyyy)

Warnings: Smut :D YES FRIENDS JOEL IS BACK SO WE GET SMUT Oral sex, female receiving; unprotected p in v sex (wrap it up kids); no use of Y/N. Minors, DNI. 18+ only

“You’re not OK.”

You were staring at the doors where they’d just taken Joel and Tommy. You couldn’t stop watching the doors.

“Hey.”

Andrew’s hand went over your shoulder.

“Yeah?” You said, glancing at him for a moment before looking back at the doors.

“C’mon,” he said. “We should get you out of here, you’re not OK.”

You looked up at him.

“Can I stay with you?” You asked.

“Sure you don’t want to do your place?” He frowned. “I’ll go there…”

“Yours is closer,” you said.

“By a block!”

You shrugged. He sighed.

“Yeah, my place.”

He put his arm around you and tucked you against his side, staying mercifully quiet on the walk to his apartment.

Joel was here. In Boston. He was alive, he’d survived all this time. He was here. Sarah wasn’t.

“Hey Andrew,” his roommate, Steve, was on the couch, playing a GameBoy. He did a double take when he saw you. “Doc! Haven’t seen you in a bit. Thought you guys were doing better on the codependency thing…”

“Not the night for it, dude,” Andrew cut him off.

“No, it’s fine,” you sighed, flopping on an arm chair that you’d help them fix. You’d had to figure out an upholstery needle for that one. “You’re right. I’m just a shit show of a person at the moment.”

“What happened?” He asked, glancing back at you before going back to the GameBoy.

“Joel’s here,” Andrew said, putting a glass of whiskey in your hand and sitting on the floor by the couch.

“Wait what?” Steve turned and stared at you. The GameBoy made a sad sound. “Aw shit, that was my last life…”

“Sorry,” you said, taking a sip of the liquor. It was bad. You didn’t care. You looked in the direction of the clinic.

“The fuck did Joel come from?” Steve asked, sitting up and tossing the GameBoy on their gouged coffee table. “Five years and he just appears out of the ether? It’s THE Joel, right? The one you’ve been looking for since the outbreak started?”

“Yup,” you took another drink.

“And you’ve seen him,” he said. “It’s not like you heard about him showing up in like… Atlanta or some shit, right?”

“Oh he’s here,” Andrew said, sounding none too happy about it. You frowned. “In holding at the clinic as we speak, had to pry him off her to get him to go back…”

“You don’t like him,” you said it more than asked it. Andrew sighed.

“I don’t not like him,” he said. He was choosing his words carefully.

“Then what’s the deal?” You asked. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“I’m happy he’s alive,” he shrugged.

“But?”

“But,” he sighed, looking up at you, clenching his jaw for a moment. “Look, I talk to a lot more smugglers than you do.”

“Yeah, I really wish you wouldn’t do that…” you said but he ignored you.

“I know what people do outside the QZ to get by,” he said. “None of it is good. If he’s made it this long, it’s because he’s done some shit. Bad shit.”

“What are you saying?” You frowned down at him.

“I’m saying,” he said slowly. “That the Joel you knew? Is probably long dead. Unless the Joel you knew was a killer. Because the one who showed up here is.”

“We’re killers, too, Andrew,” you said quietly. “I killed a lot of people to get us here.”

“You killed infected,” he corrected you. “I killed infected. That’s different, they’re dead men walking then. It’s a mercy killing. That’s not the kind of killing I’m talking about.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said, shaking your head. “There’s no way…”

“He might have been a fucking raider for all we know,” he said.

“That’s harsh,” Steve said.

“It’s true,” Andrew replied. “Steve, you deal with smugglers all the time.”

“I cannot confirm or deny…” he replied but you cut him off.

“Come on, I work for FEDRA because I have no other options. I’m not a narc,” you rolled your eyes. “I know you buy pot, Steve.”

“Oh,” he said. “Then yeah, all the fucking time.”

“And what do they say about the outside?” Andrew asked. “About the people they trade with?”

“It’s… rough,” he said. “Even the smugglers have to do some shady shit. But that doesn’t mean he’s a raider…”

“He’s not a raider,” you snapped. “He’d never have put Sarah at risk like that…”

“Yeah and he showed up without her,” Andrew said. “Something killed her.”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” you snapped, jumping to your feet so you towered over him from his spot on the floor. “He’d have never done anything to hurt her, never would have let anything happen to her if he could do anything to stop it, he’d have died for that girl if he could have.”

“Old Joel, sure,” he shrugged, looking you dead in the eye. “You don’t know this Joel, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s been a long five years. For everyone.”

You sat back down, staying on the edge of the chair and chugging the last of the shitty whiskey.

“I just don’t trust him with you,” he said, voice gentle. “You’re fragile…”

“No I’m not,” you snapped. “I’ve survived everything you have.”

“Emotionally fragile,” he replied. “You’re better than me that way.”

You snorted.

“By our powers combined, we’re almost a functioning person,” you joked. He laughed.

“I’m just saying, I’m worried the guy is going to wreck you,” he said. Steve laughed, Andrew smacked him. “Dude. Not like that.”

“Sorry,” he was still laughing. “Sorry, Doc!”

Andrew sighed.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “And I don’t want you suffering because you went in all open hearted to some guy you don’t actually know.”

“It’s Joel,” you said softly. He sighed.

“Yeah, I know it is.”

The three of you stayed up drinking for a bit, your eyes always drifting back toward the clinic, where Joel was.

“Alright, come on,” Andrew said eventually, half pulling you out of the chair. “You need to sleep, I know you’ve been going all day today and tomorrow’s going to be rough.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to sleep,” you said, looking toward the clinic again.

“There’s nothing you can do for him right now,” he said gently. “And I think we can agree that the Joel you used to know would want you to get some sleep, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

You went to his room and got the pajamas out of the half drawer he’d left for you in the dresser.

“You know, if we’re actually aiming to break the codependency habit, we should probably not leave shit at each other’s apartments,” you said, changing with your backs to each other.

“We’re doing better than we were five years ago,” he said.

“A low bar indeed,” you said, getting in bed. He climbed in beside you. “Sorry in advance.”

“Yeah, I know what I’m getting into,” he said. “You do the same for me. Wake me up if you need it.”

He held his arms open and you tucked yourself against his chest.

“Same.”

There were planes falling from the sky again. You could smell burning jet fuel and the inhuman sound of infected was deafening, so loud you couldn’t move. You just fell to your knees, hands over your ears, screaming to drown out the other sounds.

“Help!” Sarah was in front of you, wearing the shorts and tank top she’d been in the last time you’d seen her, July five years earlier. You could see the metal of the barrettes in her hair, reflecting the fire as it burned. You reached for her but she was suddenly too far away, so far out of reach. But her voice somehow carried over the screams of the infected. “Help me!”

“Hey!” Andrew shook you, snapping you back into reality. It took you a moment to figure out where you were. You were hyperventilating. “It’s OK, I’ve got you…”

“Fuck,” your tense body loosened into the mattress. There were tears in your eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “Just breathe through it, you’re OK.”

You nodded into his chest and did the best you could to obey.

“What time is it?” You asked.

“Just after 4:30,” he said. “You did pretty good, all things considered.”

“Look at me, almost sleeping through the night,” you sniffed. “I’m like an accomplished infant.”

“I’ve been in worse positions with you,” he said. He kissed the top of your head. “This is just what we do.”

You stayed in bed until your heart rate returned to normal and got up, only then realizing that you didn’t have much in the way of clothing options at Andrew’s place and you certainly didn’t keep the things you liked the best there. It was a stupid thing to be worried about, but you wanted Joel to think you looked good. You wanted to feel like you looked good when you were with him.

“Want to go back to your place real quick?” Andrew asked, leaning against his doorway. Like he could read your mind. At this point, he probably could.

“No,” you said, putting on the shirt you had there. “I want to get to the clinic.”

He sighed but went with you.

“You’re going to be real early for work if you show up now,” you teased him, trying to focus on anything even slightly normal.

“I know, it’s a change of habit,” he half smiled at you. “Aren’t you usually making excuses for me?”

“We all just expect it now,” you shrugged. “You’re lucky I’m such an amazing doctor, they want to keep me sane so they’re stuck with you and your shit.”

“Should really abuse that connection as long as possible,” he nodded solemnly. “Pretty much the only reason I keep you around, only a matter of time before you get wise.”

You got to the clinic and he unlocked the front door, no other doctors there yet.

“You can’t get him for an hour,” he said, leaning against the front counter. “They picked them up at 6 p.m., Lee and Elias won’t let you fudge the waiting period…”

“Yeah, I know,” you sighed. “But I wanted to be here.”

You were starting to wonder why you’d ever left the clinic at all. It felt better here, being in closer proximity. You couldn’t see Joel but you knew he wasn’t far, close enough that you could be to him in just a moment if it wasn’t for the walls and guards between you and the holding rooms. You could breathe easier knowing he was close, knowing you were going to touch him again in just a little while. That this was as close to him as you could get and you’d done what you could to be there.

“C’mon,” he jerked his head and led you down to the doors for the holding rooms. You frowned but he just sat beside them and patted the floor next to him. “My lap’s a good pillow. Try to get some more sleep.”

“You’re lap’s a shit pillow, actually,” you snorted but sat down beside him, anyway. “You’ve put on too much muscle, you need some pudge. You’re too hard.”

Your head went into his lap anyway. He ran his fingers through your hair.

“Bake for me more and we’ll see what happens on the pudge front,” he replied.

You did manage to drift off for a few minutes, Andrew’s easy breathing and his hand in your hair making you feel secure enough to sleep again. But yelling from the other side of the door woke you up.

You shot up with a jolt.

“No,” you breathed, jumping to your feet and yanking on the doors. You knew they would be locked, you couldn’t get into the holding area without a security escort. You kept pulling anyway before you started beating on them. “Let me back! Let me back!”

Andrew pulled you back and you fought to rip yourself away from him.

“If he turned, you don’t want to see that,” he said, his arms caging you in. “If he’s turned, there’s nothing you can do…”

“He’s not dying alone!” You sobbed, straining and reaching for the doors. “I don’t care if he’s turned he’s not dying alone!”

The doors opened, a guard looking you over.

“Friends of yours in there, Doc?” He asked. You nodded. “They’re pretty demanding, wanting to see you.”

“So they didn’t turn?” You asked, going still.

“Just as healthy as they were when they went in,” he replied. You went limp in Andrew’s arms, relieved. The guard sighed. “They’ve only got half an hour left, want to come sit with them? On this side of the bars, can’t let you back further.”

You couldn’t seem to find your voice so you just nodded as fast as you could. Andrew released you and you all but ran into the holding area.

It wasn’t a place you knew all that well, always escorted on the occasions you needed to come back and euthanize someone who came in infected but still lucid. You hated this place, hated being in there, hated that it seemed to reek of death even though you knew it was clean and sanitized.

Joel was… loud. His voice carried and you were able to follow it easily, running full tilt until you found where he was. They were in separate cells and there was another set of bars separating the passage between the cells and where you were. Tommy noticed you first.

“I don’t give a shit,” Joel was yelling.”I need to see her, I need to see her right now…”

“Hey Kid,” he smiled sheepishly from the holding cell across from his brother.

You gave him a quick smile as Joel realized you were there. His eyes ranged over you, like he was reassuring himself that you were alive.

“Hey, Tommy,” you said. You weren’t looking at him. “Hey, Joel.”

“He make enough noise that they went and woke you up?” Tommy asked. You still didn’t look at him but you shook your head.

“Couldn’t sleep,” you replied. “Figured I’d just come here. I was going to just sit in the clinic but…”

“Everything OK?” Andrew asked. It was almost reassuring that he hadn’t felt the need to run with you. Almost.

“Yup,” you nodded once.

“My brother was just causing a scene,” Tommy said, giving him a wave. “I’m Tommy, by the way. That’s Joel. Seems like you’re a… friend of the Kid’s.”

“The Kid’s?” You could hear Andrew’s frown.

“What they called me back in the day,” you glanced back toward him. You were right, he was frowning. You looked back toward Joel and smiled a little. “Ten years ago now.” You realized that you hadn’t introduced anyone to someone else in… well, years. “Sorry, this is Andrew.”

When he didn’t say anything you looked back at him, giving him a look. He sighed and raised a hand.

“Hi,” he said, tone flat. You rolled your eyes and looked back to Joel. He was pretty much the only place you wanted to look.

“There’s a lot you have to do when coming into the QZ,” you said after a moment of awkward silence. “I’m going to take you guys through it today, get you housing, into the system to find work, that sort of thing…”

“Gonna be weird to be in a system again,” Tommy joked. You glanced at him. He was watching Joel, closely. Trying to get him to engage. “Course starting out behind bars oughta kick start that process for me.”

“God, I bet,” you said, talking more to Tommy but glancing at Joel. “Should be old hat for you now. I pretty much went from one system to another but hey nothing was as bad as when I was trying to get into that one 400-level bio class my senior year. Remember that, Joel? I had to be on campus at 6 a.m. on registration day so I could get one of the slots? I made you take me so I wouldn’t have to park…”

“You didn’t make me do anything,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I volunteered. Got to spend the morning with you, worth losing a little sleep.”

You smiled. Andrew was wrong. Your Joel was still in there. He always would be.

***

Joel hadn’t slept for shit. The dreams woke him up early. He’d dreamed of you dying before - more times than he cared to count, more times than he cared to think of. It had been a foregone conclusion then. He had the idea that he would have felt it when you died, sensed it somehow. He’d just… know. And he’d felt that way. The day after the outbreak, he’d felt it.

He stopped looking for you then. Couldn’t handle it, having it confirmed on the off chance he ever found something leading to you. Not that there was any kind of record keeping in the apocalypse but he lived in fear of one day finding out that you’d been infected, that someone had hurt you before they killed you.

But the lack of knowing left room for his mind to concoct the worst outcomes. You, torn to pieces by infected. You, shot and left to bleed out after your supplies were stolen. You, taken as a commodity by the kinds of men who grabbed power when things went to shit, killed when you were no longer useful. His unconscious mind had filled in every blank except one: you, alive.

Now that he knew you were, the dreams were a different form of hell. They weren’t images of what had happened, things he couldn’t change no matter how much he wanted to. Instead they were fates that could befall you, things he desperately needed to protect you from. When the dreams woke him up this time, he couldn’t handle it. He had to see you. Confirm that you were alive, whole. And they were keeping him from you.

He tried to keep it down for Tommy. He tried to ask nicely. It got him nowhere. It felt like he was going to lose his mind if he couldn’t just see you, just for a second, just to confirm that you were OK. The relief when saw you was acute, sharp. Like someone had healed a gaping knife wound in his chest. It took him a moment to even hear what you were saying.

You kept looking at him, like you needed to see him, too. Only ever pulling your eyes away to glance at Tommy or sometimes the man who’d come in with you. Joel knew he’d heard his name but he hadn’t remembered it. He was just thankful he seemed to be keeping his fucking hands to himself.

“Alright, step back guys,” the guard snapped Joel out of his own head, stepping forward with keys. He immediately obeyed. He started with Tommy first - probably punishment for Joel’s yelling overnight - and then moved to Joel. You were there, just one more set of bars between you. It seemed like unlocking that last fucking door took hours when he knew it had only been a moment and then he was holding you again.

You somehow still smelled like lavender. It didn’t make sense, how the fuck did you smell like flowers in the apocalypse? Maybe he hadn’t found you. Maybe he’d finally lost his mind and he was hallucinating in a ditch somewhere. He didn’t fucking care. You were soft and warm and smelled like you and your arms were so tight around him he couldn’t take a full breath and he didn’t care about that either.

“Can we get the fuck out of here?” Your… whatever he was said. “I hate it back here.”

You nodded against Joel’s chest before you realized that you’d probably have to speak to answer him.

“Yeah,” you said. Your voice was muffled by his shirt. “Let’s go.”

You hand slipped into his as you separated from him, as though touching him was the most natural thing in the world, and you followed your friend out of the clinic.

It was still dark outside, the city quiet.

“Welcome to the Boston QZ,” you smiled a little, looking up at Joel. “Your luxury accommodations for the end of the world.”

Tommy laughed. Joel smiled. You’d kept your sense of humor.

“Truly the finest,” your friend was walking backwards so he could look at you. Joel narrowed his eyes at him. “Ration cards, FEDRA housing, a black market that occasionally has AC/DC albums. We have it all.”

“You hid my Beatles CD at the clinic, I know you did,” you said, tone accusing but light.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tried to look innocent. “I do know that the next time you’re going into surgery and you just absolutely need ‘Hey Jude’ to get through it, it will magically appear.”

“You’re the worst person,” you smiled as you said it. “Just a kick in the balls personified.”

“How would you even know!”

“It was a very important part of my training,” you said seriously. “Studied ball kicking very intensely…”

“You’re ridiculous.”

You stopped at a side street and your friend frowned.

“I know you’re tired,” you said.

“So.”

“Don’t need an escort, Andrew.”

Andrew. Joel tried to remember it this time.

He glanced quickly at Joel then looked back to you.

“You know why…”

“And I’m saying I know that’s not a concern,” you cut him off. “I don’t need you to protect me.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you do,” he replied. “Maybe I know better than you here.”

“Andrew.”

He sighed.

“I’m checking on you later,” he said, pulling you into a hug and kissing your temple. Your hand stayed in Joel’s. He lowered his voice but Joel could still hear him. “Remember what I said. He’s not…”

“I’ll be fine,” you looked up at him. He quickly glanced to Joel, kissed your temple again, and left. You watched him go for a moment.

“Sorry about that,” you said brightly. “Andrew’s paranoid. Course I’m paranoid with him too so I guess it’s only fair… anyway, stop one on our tour is going to be my apartment. We can grab something to eat and I can get a few things to make getting you set up easier.”

You led them another block to a building that had probably once been luxury apartments but those days were long passed. Your place was on the third floor and Joel liked that there were two deadbolts on your door.

“Sorry, it’s pretty small…” you opened the door for them and turned on the lights. It was small, even by city standards. All one room, your bed against one wall with a small couch at the foot of it. A two seat table just off the kitchen that only had one stretch of counter. What little extra space there was was filled with shelves covered in books and CDs. “I never have more than one person over at a time but you guys take the table, I’ll see what I have here. Unfortunately Whataburger died with the rest of civilization and it never made it this far north to begin with so we’ll just have to make do with what I’ve got.”

You opened a tin - one you’d painted because of course you had - and put it on the table. Tommy all but dove into it, grabbing an oatmeal cookie and taking a bite, moaning as he did.

“Fuck, Kid, you still make a mean cookie,” he said, sitting back in his chair. You smiled.

“You just haven’t had cookies in a while,” you said. “Imagine if you could just get a fucking Oreo now?”

“Yours are still better,” he shrugged. Joel took one, too, looking at it for a second. He hadn’t had anything like this in so long - and nothing of yours in even longer. He took a bite, absorbing it for a moment. Tommy was right. You still made fucking delicious cookies. He watched as you rifled through your tiny kitchen, pulling things out, frowning, considering them, setting them on the counter. You were still… you. He didn’t understand it. How were you still you? After everything that had happened to the world, you’d remained intact.

“So first lesson in QZ foodstuffs,” you said, setting a few things out on the table. “Lots of shit that’s been preserved. Jerky is, unfortunately, your most reliable source of protein. We get the fresh stuff from time to time but it’s pricy. Andrew’s roommate Steve gets it the most but he usually asks me to cook it because they were teenage boys during the outbreak and couldn’t cook a steak if their lives depended on it…” You shook your head and smiled a little and then blushed. “Sorry, I’m rambling, I just haven’t talked to… Anyway! Dried fruit, I’ve still got some bread left from what I made the other day and there’s coffee. The coffee is pretty rough, fair warning, the beans are all like five years old.”

You poured them each a cup, grabbed a slice of bread and went and sat on your small couch. Joel frowned, taking a piece of jerky and his coffee and sitting next to you. You just raised your eyebrows at him but didn’t question when he put his arm on the back of the couch and you slid into your place against him, head on his chest. He put his arm around you. This was better.

“So how’s the ration card thing work?” Tommy asked after a moment of looking between the two of you.

“They’ve basically just replaced money at this point,” you shrugged, still tucked against Joel’s side. He could feel you breathing. “I think they were intended to work differently than that - I was only in some of those discussions. I helped Dr. Elias set up the medical facilities here at first so I know a lot more about that. Even though that’s devolved a bit, too. I’ve tried to keep the better things going as I can but we’re reliant on what we can get from FEDRA out of Atlanta when it comes to medications and supplies. Originally, ration cards were intended to make it so everyone had enough and no one took too much but of course human nature took hold. I work a lot - don’t exactly have much else going on in my life - and it’s just me, so I’ve got a bit of a stash built up. We can use that to help make sure you guys get set up in a decent place, have food to get you going, that sort of thing.”

“We can’t have you wasting your money on us,” Tommy tried to wave you off but you scoffed. “The fuck else am I supposed to use it on?” You rolled your eyes. “I’d rather them go to something good than sit with me forever.”

After breakfast, you made Joel get off the couch and moved it slightly, prying up a floorboard below it. You pulled out an old shoebox and grabbed a few handfuls of cards from it, tucking them into a small bag.

“Trusting you guys with the location of my secret stash,” you teased. “Don’t go clearing me out now.”

You looked between them for a moment before something seemed to occur to you.

“Oh, duh,” you shook your head. “I don’t think I have much here that would fit either of you - Andrew’s a bit on the skinny side - but did you want to shower real quick? We can always come back later, after we get you some clean clothes and whatnot but if you want to clean up now, too…”

“Later’s fine,” Joel said quickly. He wasn’t sure he could handle being somewhat alone with you in your small apartment while Tommy got cleaned up. Not yet. Not if Andrew had clothes at your place.

“Then on to the next adventure,” you smiled and led the way.

You took them through the city, pointing out various landmarks and things of note (“That’s the speakeasy. Technically illegal but FEDRA officers are in there as often as anyone else, really the only safe spot for a drink in town.” “That’s where you go to find work until you can get something steady.” “Market’s here, use ration cards to get what you need…”). Your fingers were always laced with Joel’s. It seemed like everyone there knew you. Everywhere you stopped, someone said hi. Everyone called you Doc, like that was your name. Except one older man who made you practically jump out of your skin when you saw him.

“Abe!” You called out, waving your arm up high. He spotted you and you started pulling Joel along behind you to meet him.

“Sweets!” He pulled you in for a quick hug before looking Joel up and down. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Joel and Tommy,” you smiled so huge your face shone with it. Abe’s eyes went wide.

“Oh, Sweets,” he hugged you again. Your hand stayed in Joel’s. “I’m so happy for you. How’d you find them?”

“They showed up yesterday evening,” you were still smiling. “I knew they would turn up eventually…”

“You did,” Abe stepped back from you, lifting your chin with his fingers, smiling affectionately at you. “Just goes to show you shouldn’t listen to an old man like me.”

He looked at Joel at Tommy for a moment, like he was looking at ghosts, before looking back to you.

“Take it I won’t be seeing you tomorrow then?” He asked, half smiling.

“Hey, I said I’d bring you muffins,” you replied. “They just might be a few days late.”

“You’ve fattened me up enough,” he hugged you tightly. “How about I just see you around. I’m so happy for you, sweetheart.”

You watched him go for a second before turning back to Joel and Tommy.

“I’m so sorry, I am so bad at introducing people now,” you shook your head. “I’ve just known everyone for years… That was Abe. He’s the radio operator here. It’s underground, goes to the other QZs but FEDRA turns a pretty blind eye. I’ve been his most regular customer for the last five years.”

“Why?” Tommy frowned. “Why’d he seem to know us?”

“I’ve been looking for you,” you replied, starting off again. “I figured if anyone was going to make it out alive, you guys were. And I didn’t think you’d go to a QZ until you either absolutely had to or you decided life outside the QZ wasn’t worth the trouble and you decided to give it a shot on the inside. I knew you’d turn up eventually. So Abe’s been radioing all the other QZs for me twice a week every week to see if you’d turned up.”

Joel roughly pulled you into his chest, breathing in your hair. You hesitated for a moment before wrapping your arms around his waist.

“You OK?” You asked, voice muffled.

“Yeah,” he said. “Got you.”

He could barely pay attention to anything else that happened. You hadn’t given up on him. You’d been searching, calling around, trying to track him down, certain that he was alive somewhere. You hadn’t given up on him. He’d just given up on you.

Five years. Five fucking years you’d been almost exactly where he’d told you to go. Had he just gone where he’d said he’d go, he’d have tried Boston almost immediately. And he’d have found you. He could have been with you the last half a decade and instead he’d been wandering the wasteland that had been the United States, finding places to lay low, killing whoever he needed to for supplies, justifying it with survival. And you’d been here, searching for him.

There were a few changes about you he noticed as you helped them through the process of getting set up in the QZ. One was, you’d become a deft negotiator. You were still you about it - never cold or cruel, all kindness and sweetness as you bartered, leveraging your personality and skills in the process - but it was strange to see you go back and forth with the housing person to try to get them what you thought was a suitable place. You did it, though, counting out the ration cards in your bag and passing them over with a kind smile.

You did something similar at the clothing shop, chatting with the woman who was putting out new stock to get her to point out where the better stuff was and asking after the cashier’s child (“How’s that incision looking? Still holding food down OK? Need me to come by and check up on him?”) She gave you a discount and you told her to just come by the clinic if she changed her mind about her son, that you’d be happy to make a house call.

Five years you’d been here and you’d built yourself a life. You somehow managed to have everyone you met wrapped around your finger. It was the end of the fucking world and you’d made everyone fall in love with you. Of course you had. You’d stayed sweet and soft and kind through it all and Joel couldn’t understand it.

You stopped by the market on the way home and picked up a few things to make dinner and told Tommy and Joel to get cleaned up while you cooked. Joel went first, he needed to try to get his head right before being alone with you. He didn’t know how he was going to handle it, didn’t know what the deal was with you and Andrew, didn’t know what to want from you - what it was OK to want from you.

He put on the clean clothes and looked in the mirror at himself for a moment. Could you still want him now? Was that even a possibility? Should he just thank you for your help, go to his new apartment with his brother, and try to forget you? He didn’t know.

You were in the kitchen when he came out. There was a Fleetwood Mac album on and you were unconsciously bobbing your head in time to the music. Tommy gave Joel a look on his way to the bathroom, a look that said ‘don’t fuck this up you absolute idiot.’ Joel just shrugged at him. You glanced behind you.

“I’m afraid I can’t promise you anything too fancy,” you smiled a little. “But I do have some beer if you want?”

“Beer is good,” Joel nodded. You nodded back, sucking something off your thumb before going to the fridge. The beer was in large jars and you poured two glasses of it, handing one to Joel and taking a sip of your own before putting a baking dish in the oven. You busied yourself cleaning up the kitchen and Joel took a moment to look around your place.

“You still have the quilt,” he said, looking down at the bed.

“Oh,” you glanced at him, giving him a half smile. “Yeah. When I was packing a bag that night, I had some space and I really wanted to keep it if I could… turns out, it survived the trip.”

You’d had to patch it a few times over the years, some of the small purple flowers much brighter than the others.

“My mom made it,” you said, rinsing a measuring cup. “When she was pregnant with me. It’s the only thing I have of her, the only sign I have that she thought I might have been worth the trouble at some point, even if it was just for a bit. I didn’t want to leave it behind.”

He looked at you for a moment.

“It was her loss, Kid,” he said softly. You just shrugged. He went back to looking around your place, freezing at the photo on your nightstand.

It was framed - you’d painted it, flowers over the gouges in the wood - and Sarah stared back at him. His heart was pounding. He picked it up slowly, almost in a daze.

He hadn’t seen her face in years. You’d taken the photo on your hiking trip, just over a year before the outbreak. It was slightly off center. You were the only one looking at the camera. Sarah was looking at you, smiling, and Joel was looking at her. You looked like a family. You’d been a family. It was how it was supposed to be.

His eyes traced the planes of her face, trying to make sure he remembered everything right. Just where her freckles lay, the way her eyelashes fanned out, the few curls around her temples that were a bit more unruly than the others.

“Oh, Jesus,” you dropped whatever you’d been cleaning. “Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t think about that, I should have put that away…”

“Where’d…” he asked, still looking at the picture.

“I grabbed a few photos as I was packing,” you said quietly. “I have a few of the three of us, one or two of me and Nan, one of me and Becca… I had a feeling I wouldn’t be back so I wanted to make sure I had them.”

You were quiet for a moment.

“You can have that one,” you said. “Or one of the others. All the others, if you want. I’m in them, too, but they have… I’m guessing you don’t…”

“Didn’t grab anything,” he said, setting the photo back down. “It was too hectic. Was just tryin’ to get the fuck out.”

“I was only able to take stuff because of you,” you said softly, looking down at the ground for a moment before looking up at him. “I’m only alive because of you.”

The water turned off in the shower. You went back to cleaning up.

Dinner was surprisingly good. Joel wasn’t sure how you’d turned mostly canned stuff into something good but you had. It probably helped that he and Tommy had been living on shit or anything they could hunt for a while - wasn’t like they had fucking garlic lying around - but it would have been good regardless.

Tommy was kind enough to keep the conversation going through dinner, asking you questions that had run through Joel’s mind but he hadn’t been able to make himself say it. Like how you’d come to be known as doc. He had an odd moment of pride, hearing how you’d persevered and done what you’d dreamed of doing in the midst of it all. You said you also taught at the FEDRA school during the day before going and working in the clinic at night. The school was understanding when you got pulled away for emergencies - apparently mass casualty incidents happened in QZs, too - and it sounded like you enjoyed the odd balance you’d been able to strike between educator and medical professional. He didn’t, however, ask about Andrew.

“Well, Kid, I think you’ve spoiled me enough for one day,” Tommy patted his stomach. You smiled.

“Happy to have the chance to do it,” you said.

“I think I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted… go start settling in to the new place,” he got up and clapped Joel on the shoulder.

“If you need anything, you know where to find me,” you smiled. “Seriously, any time. I want to help. I’m happy to help.”

“Thanks, Kid,” he smiled before looking at his brother. “Joel.” He gave him a nod and then left. You watched him go for a second before taking a sip of beer.

“You’ve done well for yourself here,” Joel said after a moment of awkward silence. “Better than just survivin’.”

“Thanks,” you smiled a little. “Figured if I was stuck living through the end of the world, I should do what I can with it, right?”

“Suppose so,” he half smiled back. He took another drink of beer.

“Joel,” you sighed after a moment. “I should apologize for what I said yesterday.”

He frowned.

“What d’you mean?”

“Before I left for the night,” you weren’t looking at him, you were staring down at your empty plate. “When I said I loved you… I shouldn’t have said that and I’m sorry. I understand that it’s been a long time, a lot has happened, we weren’t even together when…”

“Don’t apologize for that,” he cut you off. Your eyes met his. “I… liked hearin’ it.”

“I just don’t want you to feel remotely obligated to me,” you said. “Not in any way. You don’t need to even be my friend if you don’t want to. I’ll still help you guys get settled, you can even consider it payment for saving my life when the world came crashing down if that makes it better…”

“I just don’t want to disrupt your life, Kid,” he said, sitting back in his chair. Fuck, you were pretty. “You’ve got a life here. An actual life. You’ve got a career doing something you love, you’ve got people, you’ve got Andrew… I don’t want to fuck it up for you.”

“You won’t.”

“Not sure Andrew agrees with that,” he said, grinding his teeth a bit. He thought of Andrew touching you, the way he held you, kissed your head, they way he must kiss other parts of you…

“Andrew’s being a jackass,” you waved him off. “He’ll come around.”

“How long have you two…” he trailed off. You frowned.

“We met during the outbreak,” you said. “Made it to the QZ together…”

“Is that when…”

You looked at him, head cocked, confused. It took you a moment to catch up and you laughed, hard.

“What?” He asked, his turn to be confused now.

“No, I’m sorry,” you caught your breath. “I’m sorry, I’m still not used to being around people I’m not already around all the time… No, Andrew is not my boyfriend.”

Joel must not have looked convinced because you kept going.

“I forget that it must seem odd for people who don’t know us,” you sank back in your chair, beer in hand. “But we’re much more like siblings than anything else. He was 18 when the outbreak happened, I found him in the woods on his own with a broken arm a few days after I left home. I set his arm and he traveled with us. We kept each other alive, saw each other through the absolute worst of it. I’d be dead on the side of the road somewhere in New York State if it wasn’t for him and he’d probably be infected if it weren’t for me. But by the time we got to Boston, we’d gotten so used to needing each other to survive, one of us couldn’t really function without the other. Took a few months before we could sleep apart. We got separate places when the QZ was really getting set up because we realized how we were living probably wasn’t healthy, but we kept doing it, anyway. But no, not the least bit romantic. Or physical. At least, not in that way. We still sleep in the same bed when one of us is overwhelmed or just has a hard day, it’s the only way we can really function. I stayed with him last night, actually. It’s the only reason I slept at all. He’s just… who I have. And I’m who he has. We get each other. We need each other. It’s a bit codependent but…”

Joel nodded slowly. He got it, in a way. He and Tommy had barely spent 10 minutes apart over the last five years. He had no idea how he’d handle being apart for a day. Even here, he’d be worried about him. Thinking he needed to keep him alive, at least for a while.

“So do you have… anyone else?” He asked.

“Are you asking if I have a boyfriend?” Your eyebrows were raised. He just nodded once. You have him a small half smile.

“No,” you said. “No boyfriends. Been hung up on this ex of mine for a while. Doesn’t make for a great dating life…”

“Sounds like a fuckin’ fool for letting you go,” he replied.

You shrugged.

“Well the end of the world kind of happened in there,” you said. “Think he gets a pass.”

He watched you across the table, your hair loose around your face, lips full. It’s not that he hadn’t been with other women since you. He had. If there was someone willing and he had the urge, he wasn’t about to say no. Getting lost in someone else for a bit was one of the few things that made existence worth it anymore. But it had been years since it had been anything but a fleeting escape. It had been since you.

“Can I get you another beer?” You nodded to his nearly empty glass. He just gave you a nod and you refilled both glasses, moving to your small couch. The Fleetwood Mac album had started over. You gave Joel his glass but walked past him and sat on your couch, one leg crossed over the other.

“Why do I feel like you’re trying to get me on your couch?” He asked, his eyes roaming over you. You shrugged.

“No one’s making you do a damn thing, Miller.”

He moved to the couch. You are stayed on your side of it, sipping your beer, seemingly happy to just have him close. He reached out and tucked your hair behind your ear, exposing your neck. There were white scars down the side of your throat to your shoulder. He frowned, tracing them.

“What happened here?” He asked quietly. You set your beer on the small table in front of the couch and glanced at him.

“That happened a few minutes after the last time we spoke,” you fidgeted with the seam on your jeans. “Nan had turned, pinned me down in my room as I finished getting packed. I’d already grabbed the shotgun thankfully, I had to shoot her to get away.”

“Oh Baby,” he said softly, pulling you against his chest. You melted into him. “I’m so sorry.”

You shrugged but pressed yourself closer to him. He enveloped you. You fit against him the same way you always had, like you belonged there. As though he’d been designed to hold you, protect you. But he’d failed at that. You looked up at him.

“I’m sure we both did a lot of things we aren’t happy with or proud of to get here,” you said quietly. “I wouldn’t have been able to shoot her if not for you. If you’d never called that night, I’d never have gotten the gun. I wouldn’t have known what was happening. I wouldn’t have been able to bring myself to hurt her if I hadn’t been trying to get to you. But you got me here. I’m alive because of you and Andrew. I don’t care what you did to get here, Joel. Only that you got here.”

He kissed you then, your lips soft and sweet on his. You stretched into his kiss and his tongue dipped into your mouth as he held your body close to his own. His grip grew firmer and your body shifted to align with his, him laying you beneath him, covering you with him. He pulled away from you slightly, searching your eyes.

“You’ll tell me if I do anything you don’t want,” he said, already breathless. You nodded but bit your lip. “What is it? I can stop, I can go…”

“No!” You said quickly, eyes going wide. “No, please don’t, I’m just… out of practice. It’s been… a while.”

He frowned.

“How long?”

You blushed a bit.

“Since 2003?” You said it like a question more than an answer. He tried to hide his surprise and brushed your hair back.

“I’d like to change that,” he said softly. “If you’ll let me.”

You nodded quickly and his mouth was back against yours.

He had to fight to go slow with you. It had been so long since he’d been with someone he cared about, so long since he’d wanted someone like he wanted you. But he traced the contours of your body, getting to know you again, what parts of you made you melt into him, what parts made you freeze for a moment. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what caused those moments. He kissed you softly, deeply. It was like coming home, like the world hadn’t ended, like he hadn’t been stupid enough to leave you to begin with. He was right where he was always supposed to be.

You pulled at his shirt and he took it off. Your fingers ran over his chest, tracing the new scars he’d collected over his years dodging infected and humans alike. You kissed each one gently, your lips staying against each spot on his skin for a moment.

His fingers found the hem of your shirt.

“Can I?” He asked. You just nodded. He pulled it up and away, tossing it somewhere near his. You had scars, too. One on your shoulder looked particularly bad. He kissed it before tracing it with his thumb.

“Bullet graze,” you said softly, sadly. “On my birthday in 03.”

He kissed it again, his mouth moving down over your shoulder to your breasts, tracing your cleavage with his lips. He reached around behind you, your back arching into him, and he unhooked your bra before gently sliding it off. His memory hadn’t done you justice, you were so much more beautiful than his mind seemed capable of containing. He touched you softly, relearning how your breasts filled his hands, the way your nipples peaked against him. He took one into his mouth, sucking you, holding you as you moaned and ground your hips against his torso. He smiled as he trailed kisses over your chest to your other nipple, sucking you there, too.

His hands traced over your body, down to your pants. He opened them, kissing back up your chest to your mouth before looking in your eyes. You just nodded and he pulled your jeans and panties down your legs, lifting from you just enough to leave the last of your clothes on the floor.

He went back to his place between your legs, kissing down your stomach until he reached your slit. Your breath caught and he pressed his lips to your clit, his tongue slipping between to gently tease you until he felt you take a shaky breath against him.

Joel dipped his tongue into you, tasting you, opening you to him. You moaned, hips working against his face and he smiled against you. He’d forgotten just how damn good it felt to give you pleasure, to make you lose yourself to him.

He slipped a finger inside you as he sucked your clit, curving it into the place he still knew made you melt and he felt you tighten around him.

“Joel,” you whimpered and fuck he’d forgotten how good his name sounded on your tongue when you were about to cum. He added a finger, sucked you harder, worked you until he felt you flutter around his fingers, a choking moan slipping from you.

He’d also forgotten what it was like to be desperate for someone. To want to be inside you so badly he’d shed his skin just for the chance to be inside yours. He was breathless with it, it felt like he’d die for wanting you if he couldn’t have you. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this hard, the last time his whole body ached with need.

You were still coming down from your orgasm when he took off his pants and underwear, leaving them on your floor. Your body was pliant as you panted for breath below him. He ran his fingers over your slit, slick and wanting, collecting your wetness and coating himself in you. He notched his head at your entrance and you moaned, reaching for him.

“Joel,” you keened. “Please, I need…”

“I know Baby,” he said softly, sinking into you as you gasped. He could only gain a few inches, you were almost impossibly tight around him. You moaned, rocking your hips against him and he almost collapsed against you. “Just let me inside you Baby, just relax and let me inside you…”

You whimpered, all but incoherent, and he took you by the hips, holding your in place as he worked his way deeper into you, opening your body to him until he was fully inside you.

This he hadn’t forgotten. He’d sometimes lived in the memory of just how you felt around him, how you felt like two halves of the same whole, how it seemed like you’d been made for him. It was the only justification he could find for anything feeling quite as good, quite as right, as being inside you. His head fell to your chest and he panted for breath, desperate to move but desperate to never pull back from you.

“Fuck, Joel,” you were gasping, your fingers in his hair. “God, I missed you. I missed you so much, I love…”

He cut you off with a kiss, pulling himself back from you just enough to thrust forward again, pushing all the way inside you with every stroke, needing to be fully inside you as much as he could.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered and you rushed to obey. He picked you up - buried deep inside you - and moved you to your bed. His movements became harder, more insistent, your body tightening around him with every stroke.

“Joel,” you moaned. He wasn’t sure you were even fully aware of what you were saying, your fingers digging into his back, your pussy tightening around him. “Please, need to feel you…”

He kissed you again, pressing into you harder, moving faster until he felt you start to come undone around him and he emptied himself into you, gasping for breath and all but collapsing on top of you. He held himself inside you, both unwilling and unable to move, you feeling too good to ever want to leave. You held him as your breathing eased, your body lax beneath his.

For the first time in more than five years, it felt like he was home.

A/N: Sorry for the delay in getting this posted! I've been on vacation this week trying really hard to pay attention to my husband and NOT fictional men. This chapter written in part in a poolside cabana on my cell phone this afternoon :)

Now y'all. This chapter has a happy ending and I need you to know... it's not the HEA yet. THERE'S SO MUCH MORE DRAMA COMING GUYS. So much more for them to work through and so much more to have happen - we haven't even met Tess or Ellie yet. But we gotta have little pops of happy in here, right?

As always, thanks so much for reading, reflagging and commenting, I love you all!

#joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #smut fic #joel miller x you #fanfic

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beelzeebub · 2 years

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you most definitely have already got this ask lol but I would love to hear more about what you picture the plot of Goncharov (1973) is (and what your opinion on the very popular gonchrey ship as well!) I am so tempted to get a poster you would not believe-

Ok so about the ship Gonchrey or Goncharov/Andrey (who si played BY HARVEY KEITEL). In my own lore, Goncharov is the main protagonist and Andrey is the main villan (it's kinda obvious from the poster lol) so I'd totally get why people ship them bc people tend to ship heros with villains. But with everyone having their own interpretation of who the chracters are, I can't comment on other people's view of them.

And now the lore! I’m sorry if this sounds stupid or doesn’t make sense, I’m writing it in a hurry and I will extend upon this in future. Also, this is not a Martin Scorsese story. It’s a mine, let’s be honest. I’m not saying this to brag but I’m not all that interested in pretending this film is real. For me, they’re just my OC’s from a funny poster I made for my mutuals. I’m saying this because I’m not trying to emulate writing of the great Martin Scrosese who I love very much. I’m just some rando person who likes mafia and gangster things. Hope that makes sense.

Oh and before I begin, no clock, boat or bridge scenes or anything of that sort is in my story. All these things were created by someone else and don’t fit in my story.

The story takes place in Prague, Naples and New York

Some info about Goncho and Andrey:

So Goncharov is the main protagonist of the story. Not much is known about him, his origin is very mysterious but it is later revealed the crime boss Andrey had his whole family murdered for owing him money and Goncharov is of polish-italian origin (I'm not sure what I want his real name to be yet). In the story Andrey is about 10 years older than Goncho in order for this to work, the actors are the same age but the eyepatch ages Andrey up so it works. Murdering Goncho’s family was one of Andrey’s first things he did after his rise to power. And so basically the story is about revenge. Andrey is half czech and half italian and he operates from Naples but his crime ring works all over the world.

If you asked Andrey how he gained all his wealth and power, he would tell you it was through hard work and that he came from virtually nothing. That's a lie as his family was very well off. The extend of his wealth can be also attributed to all the blackmails, murders, abductions, frauds, thefts and other crimes he and his crime ring commited. Maybe these are the things that constitute as "hard work" to Andrey. Andrey is also a classist and something of an ethnonationalist as he often refers to himself as full blooded italian and rarely admits his half slavic origin.

Here’s some info about Katya and Goncho’s relationship from other ask (some info about Sofia too):

In my own lore, Katya is very much in love with Goncharov but is also tempted by Sofia. To Katya, Goncharov and Sofia also represent two very different ways of living. Goncho is a smuggler but an honest one and Sofia works for her boss Andrey’s crime ring. Being with Goncharov means living a dangerous life on the run but somewhere down the line there is a possibility of settling down and living life through honest means. Being with Sofia means choosing a simpler, cushier life, a life of luxury but it also means being forever part of the crime world. Who will she choose? I don’t know and neither does Katya :)

Also, I’m toying with the idea of Katya being married to Goncho (simply becasue I tagged her as Katya Goncharova a couple of times lol) but I don’t know yet :))

Info about Mario and Ice Pick Joe:

Mario and Ice Pick Joe grew up together in Sicily and were both very poor. They are not related but share somewhat of a brotherly bond. Joe’s darker side started to show from a very early age. He loved to kill and dissect small animals which sometimes freaked up Mario (although he never judged him for his impulses). Joe also talked about joining mafia from an early age, it seemed like a natural thing to do. He never imagined himself as anything else than a criminal. Mario is academically very smart. Joe often said to him that someone this smart could go study and make something of himself through honest job. But Mario was a very cynical person from an early age and thought that the only way people like them can escape poverty is through dishonest means. Also, Joe is just a joy to be around (if you’re not the animal or a person he’s dissecting), he’s funny, great cook, loves music, unassuming but charismatic. And it’s not just a front, he really is like that, he has two sides, one of them is very dark. Mario, as smart as he is, lacks the charisma and is aware of that. He is brooding and sulking and cynical. Lacks the social capital ... and friends (except for Joe of course). He also likes to go to casinos and gamble, not because he needs the money, but he likes winning and he likes the fact that other people’s social status can’t help them there. He’d never admit this to you but he secretly wants friends and wants to be liked but he is just so goddamn unlikable to the majority of people that no amount of wealth can help him with that. Mario was also always ashamed of his humble origin. When the two of them joined the crime world, they joined Andrey’s crime ring. Joe is very loyal to Andrey because he sees him as someone who gave him a chance and saved him from poverty. Joe became Andrey’s best hitman and is free to act on his darkest impulses. Mario became Andrey’s accountant, handling money. But unlike Joe, Mario resents Andrey because Andrey is a big classist and often and not so subtly lets Mario know that he would be nothing without him. In the story, Mario befriends Goncharov (the met in a casino) and will have to decide whether he betrays his boss or not. And will he be able to convince his best friend Joe to work against a man he is very loyal to?

The Naples side of my story is probably my most developed part as of now. I still don’t have everything figured out.

How Ice Pick Joe got his nickname:

Ice Pick Joe's favorite weapon of choice actually isn't an ice pick, despite many people assuming that's the case. He doesn't have a favorite weapon or a torture method. He likes them all. His nickname refers to one specific event that took place shortly after after he joined Andrey's crime ring. One of Andrey's highest ranking lieutenants was suspected of stealing money and giving up information to a rival crime lord. He was subjected to many hours of interogation and torture but still he would not confess. Then Joe asked to try. The only thing he took to the room with him was in ice pick. Nobody really knows what happened in there but it took less than 15 minutes for the lieutenant to confess how much he stole and what information he gave up. Andrey then used this information and destroyed the rival crime lord. This event prompted Joe Morelli to gain an immense amount of respect within the crime ring and ever since that day everyone called him Ice Pick Joe.

Info about Katya and her brother Valery:

Katya and her older brother Valery were born in Moscow but moved to Moldova after Katya's birth. Their moldavian mother died during Katya's birth and their russian father was very abusive but mostly absent. Valery is 20 years older than Katya and he basically raised her on his own. Valery became a high ranking officer in the militsiya (soviet police) at quite an early age, mostly due to his efficiency. He soon became disillusioned by the brutal soviet regime and defected to the USA, searching for a better life for him and Katya. He became a weapon smuggler and that's how he and Katya met Goncharov. Valery and Goncharov fell out during an event where Valery thought Goncharov had betayed him after a heist gone wrong (he didn't betray him, it was misunderstanding). He also hates Goncharov because Katya fell in love with him and choose to leave with him.

#lol why is this so long #i guess i wrote more about the characters than the story itself whoops #you dont have to read this as it doesnt really answer your question #im gonna copy this to my lore post #beelz lore #goncharov #unreality

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andromeda-grace · 9 months

Text

Writeblr Introduction

Hi, I’m Andromeda (she/they). I am returning to Writeblr and decided to start a new blog for my WIPs and writing updates! I want to use this blog to shout out other Writeblrs, make posts about my current WIPs, and experiences in publishing. I mostly write original fiction but write fanfic when the inspiration strikes. I love Writeblr games and asks!

This blog is a safe space for all identities, gender & sexuality, neurodivergence, race, and religion. I do my best with content and trigger warnings.

My Writing: Genre and Representation

I love horror, sci-fi, and fairy tales

I don’t enjoy romance (if it’s only the pursuit and drama), but I love writing nuanced love stories where people communicate well and put effort into building relationships

Lots of queerness and queer relationships

BIPOC main characters

Neurodivergence- shout out to the undiagnosed ADHD queens, the anxiety, and masking/coping behaviors

Trauma, out of context, is seen as personality

Smut- sex is a part of life and it’s fun to write. Get down, make mistakes, get messy. My sex scenes aren’t just conventionally attractive people putting on a show. I emphasize body diversity, complexities of gender identity, and emotional state

Tropes:

Found Family

Villains

Redemption- working to be a better person, even when it’s hard

Poly-Amory- we often have more than one close friendship, and have variety and nuance in those different relationships, so the same thing goes for romance

Morally gray/Feral girls- women have so much responsibility put on them for the emotional wellbeing of others, but what if they aren’t capable of that? (think Broad City/ Bottoms)

Finished works:

The Devil You Know- short story- Out now! Find your copy here

Genre: horror, vampires, fairytale

Vibe: The Green Knight x The Witch

Anya has built a quiet life for herself, trusted as the village healer as long as she keeps her magic hidden. All of that changes when a strange traveler arrives at her doorstep. The man looks human, but Anya senses an old and powerful magic within him. Intrigued, she allows Owen inside. He claims to have been an apprentice to a witch, and Anya, despite her suspicions, finds him to be a kindred spirit. They begin a romance, both finding comfort in one another.

Their peace is broken when a family comes to Anya in crisis. Their child has been cursed, and is transforming into a monster. Desperate to save the boy, Anya asks Owen for help. He can grant her the power to break the spell, but it requires blood and forbidden rites. Knowing that she can’t break the curse alone, Anya faces a choice with deadly consequences.

WIPs:

Bubblegum Capital

Genre: Queer Cyberpunk

Vibe: 1984 x Legally Blonde

Novaczek is on the brink of fame. They’re an amateur gamer about to break into the pro leagues. But their dreams are crushed when work denies them time off for the championship.

Novaczek decides to play on shift and is caught. Everything comes crashing down. They find themselves at rock bottom having lost their job, company housing, and girlfriend all at once.

In a world where your value is measured by your social ranking, Novaczek has to claw themselves back up, hustling for money and favors from friends. As they work their way back up the ranks they discover an underbelly where nothing and no-one are what they appear to be.

Love, Asunder

Genre: Gay Vampires, Family Saga

Vibe: 1917 x Hellboy

James Townsend was supposed to be starting his new life, an American abroad, with a Fellowship at Oxford University. All of that changes when Germany marches on Paris. James can’t remain in the classroom while teachers and students leave their desks for the battlefield. So James enlists as a volunteer ambulance driver on the Front. The days stretch long with violence and misery, but he finds purpose and friendships in the trenches.

Then he meets a man, a smuggler providing supplies and information to the Allies. Etienne is so different from the soldiers, bright and charming. They begin a secret romance, disappearing together when they can, and writing letters in between.

An opportunity comes to meet in Paris, and James is overwhelmed at the opportunity to spend time with Etienne in the City of Love. Free to spend their days together, James quickly discovers just how much Etienne has been hiding from him, and enters a world of magic, beauty, and death.

Tropes and fun stuff:

Butch witches

Femme werewolves

Playing the vampire tropes straight

Magical Underground

Found Family

Bio-Family responsibilities

Many, Many different kinds of love

I'll be sharing moodboards and snippets along the way! Looking forward to learning more about the other talented Writeblrs out here!

tagging: @hillnerd-art @suffrajett @starknstarwars @em-dashes @blind-the-winds @leave-her-a-tome @athenswrites

#writeblr #writing #gay vampires #writeblr community #writers on tumblr #witchy shit #novel writing #horror #fairy tales

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devnmon · 3 months

Text

save who you can save // t.s.

A prequel to Long Long Time, detailing the first time the two met.

pairing: smuggler!reader x tess servopolous slowburn

Summary: One of your smuggling deals goes wrong– almost deathly wrong. A stranger decides you're worth saving.

word count: 12k

warnings: descriptions of several injuries, reader gets beaten up, non-sexual nudity, tw for random guys in the qz, physical assault, mentions of blood, death, drugs, and typical tlouverse violence... reader is mid 20's, tess is early 40's, tess gives reader stitches (but it's ok they're unconscious), mentions of tess's past, tess and joel aren't a thing in this, but he is an asshole for the better part of the fic [lowkey enemies to friends w/ joel]. pining (a lot of mutual pining oh my god guys.) also pls don't come at me for inaccurate qz stuff, this is fanfic. nonbinary pronouns used the reader is afab! also this fic starts in readers pov and ends in tess's and i just realized that so don't hate me for it! xx

a/n: happy valentines day GAY PEOPLE. this is for you guys. and all the tess fic lovers. here is my prequel of Long Long Time that i wrote a little over a year ago when tlou hbo came out. i pour my heart into each and every fic i write. this is my child, be kind with her. i hope you all enjoy and don't forget to reblog to support your favorite creators!!

That day she found you, beaten and bloody with several injuries, was the day she had quite genuinely saved your life.

You never should’ve made this deal.

Becoming a smuggler required more skill, more cunning –more than you had. Somehow, you’ve ended up right where you never thought you’d be: on the sour end of an unstable client.

You knew your stock wasn’t as satisfying as the client demanded, but the amount of ration cards seemed too good to be true. It happened to be– regrettably you’d been a fool to try and weasel out of the deal without repercussions. Nothing was ever that easy in this world.

The first thing you felt was the end of a very sharp knife pressing into your back. Then you heard his voice in your ear, speaking punctually.

“Where do you think you’re going? Nobody gets past me. Not even you. I let you think you’re good at sneaking around. But I see everything.”

Your breath hitched as his grip pulled you backwards into the alley. Once you turned away from the main road, you were met with another man, one you knew accompanied another man you dealt with often. He was dressed the same, and had that classic sketchy-guy look that told you exactly who’d approached you this hostile.

It was a particularly unstable client, one you hesitated to continue business with due to his poor self-control. He was a junkie through and through, just a man too weak to settle into this world, needing a constant escape. You had unfortunately promised him a supply you didn’t have, and things escalated too far soon after.

There was no reason to call for help either; it would be that easy for him to rat you out to FEDRA for selling pills. Even if those same soldiers were frequent customers of yours. Your voice had gone hoarse and the cut on your lip swelled enough to make it hard to speak.

You couldn’t decide what was worse, the fact that you never saw this coming, or that nobody would be coming to your rescue.

Crack.

Your shoulder was slammed into the wall with enough force that you toppled to the floor. Followed by multiple kicks to the stomach and sides, with not even a second’s notice. Your lunch felt closer to coming up with every rough kick of their boots into your torso.

The amount of stock wasn’t nearly as close to what the client demanded, but his ration cards seemed too good to be true. To be fair, you weren’t cut out to be a smuggler; you were a fool to try and weasel out of the deal without repercussions. It was never that easy in this world.

Your knuckles scraped against the blacktop like sandpaper while attempting to stand, painted crimson while your skin ripped. When your vision went double, then triple, squeezing your eyes shut alleviated the pain for just a moment.

Other than the blood you felt gushing from your hands, the throbbing in your head and torso made it difficult to move without immense pain. Weakened by several blows to the stomach, your legs finally gave out. Your ankle twisted the wrong way as you fell, while your palm caught on a sharp piece of rock, scraping it enough to burn. You were damned if you tried to yell for help.

You huff a breath, before a sharp pain stopped you short, coughing up blood that pooled in your chest. On all fours like a dog you were, with the two men standing above you muttering to themselves.

Mercy, they called this having mercy on you.

Some form of laceration cut deep enough to drip red hot blood down your forehead, and there was no doubt you had several more covering your body by the way everything burned. It dripped down your face and made everything blurry.

Coughing hoarsely, you somehow found the strength to pull yourself off from the prone position, finding a wall to sit up against. Each time you moved, it felt as if your body was getting ripped apart. Your bones felt like glass, your skin like paper. Blood gushed from a slash on your arm, and your stomach had taken one too many blows to pull yourself to your feet.

How the fuck did this happen?

You had been traveling through the QZ during late afternoon, around the central hob of trading. In the midst of the zone's chaos, you ducked into an alley as a shortcut, which was your first mistake. Minutes later, you had been roughly attacked from behind, and thrown against the wall with one motion.

“You got our pills, bitch?” Two sets of feet pointed toward you while weakened.

“I need more time,” you breathed, convincing yourself more so than the man in front of you, “My dealer’s stingy with his supply. I can get it out of him, though. Soon.” Your arms raised at your sides, knowing how many people secretly carried knives around the QZ. There was no way you were taking that chance.

A pair of hands grabbed the collar of your shirt, lifting you up so you could hear them clearly.

“We want the rest of our pills. And a pack of cigs. End of the day tomorrow. Or you’re all the way dead. You hear me?”

The other man approached, unsheathing his blade and immediately pressed it to your cheek, standing not even a foot from your body. His blade was forced onto your skin so hard that it drew blood, and you called out in pain.

“End of day tomorrow. The usual spot.” The one holding your collar said pointedly.

A fast nod of your head paired with the incessant throbbing of his words within your mind had you struggling to comprehend anything. He released your collar, which resulted in you toppling onto the ground once more. The blood you coughed up afterwards stained your shirt, wiping it away with the sleeve of your flannel.

You’d survived the chaos of outbreak day, almost running yourself into the ground trying to escape everything. That was the day you knew this would be a life of running, until you arrived in Boston.

You weren’t sure about the Quarantine Zone at first. But then you saw a bed and pillow to sleep on every night. No more camouflaging yourself in the backseat of a car or suffering drastic temperatures and hoping you wake up not frozen to death the next day.

To be fair, you tried to sign up for work shifts, but manual labor was never for you– especially not when it was shoveling shit, or transferring corpses to burn in fire pits. That kind of work was not how you intended to live out the rest of your life.

That was when you landed on smuggling, since people had to be desperate for some kind of relief after taking orders from soldier douchebags all day. You probably would’ve been better off in the academy, not taking shit from a weasel of a dealer whose name you forgot, but whose ponytail you remembered. You’d gone from risking your life every day in the open world, dodging the swarms of runners underground to being forced into risking your life trying to make the junkies and downright miserable people of the QZ happy.

Now, you’ve accepted that you were going to slowly bleed to death in this alley. Part of you wanted to resist, but the idea of not having to deal with anything like this ever again. It would just be that much easier to close your eyes and succumb.

You whimpered at the pain running through your leg, a patch of maroon seeping through your jeans. Too weak to put pressure on any of your own wounds, you let your eyes close in defeat. The voice at the back of your head protested, wanting you to get up and fight for your life. But you just couldn’t.

Eventually the air got cooler which you noted meant the sun had gone down, and you were in and out of consciousness. Warily, you opened your one good eye, spotting the patch of blood that had spread further from the gash on your leg. The sight made you queasy, so you closed your eye again and went back to unconsciousness for a while. It was the lone way everything stopped hurting, and bliss once you floated into it.

“Psst. You alive?” The words rang sharp in your head with an ache so bad you couldn’t focus. The nudge at your foot woke you a bit, pulling you to consciousness slightly. No reply earned you a slightly harder kick to the leg, which shot another stinging pain up your leg. You groaned and your body moved a bit.

Is someone there?

Footsteps crunched against the blacktop, getting slightly louder.

Fuck, please don’t hurt me, please, please..

“I’m just gonna check your pulse, so if you can hear me, don’t freak out.” Your head moved an inch weakly, unsure about this person being so close to you. A low groan of discomfort came from your chest, alerting the woman you were conscious.

“Hey, hey. I’m not going to hurt you. Just needed to know if you were alive.” The voice was low, and it sounded feminine through the ringing in your ear.

“H-help… me…” You managed to speak, your mouth and tongue tasting like iron.

The woman went silent for a moment, taking a look over the state of your injuries.

“You’re pretty fucked up, honey. God, what piece of shit did this to you?” She picked up on the multiple gashes on your body, staining your clothes, and your shoulder was visibly out of place.

You decided to open your eyes to see who was crouched next to you. It was no use, your vision was still spinning from earlier. Sharp pains drummed against your head and obscured your ability to see. The one sole thing you could make out was someone with long, light colored hair and a dark pink shirt, but you kept looking around to see if your vision would come back.

“Shit. I’ve gotta get you out of here. Just- just hold on. Name’s Tess, what’s yours?” You picked up on her moving about, unzipping what you assumed was her pack.

You mumbled again, still unable to speak clearly.

“Right, dumb question. So, I’ve gotta stop your bleeding, and your shoulder looks dislocated. I can only do one of those things right now, and then we can get you someplace safe. That means I’m gonna have to put pressure on your leg. Okay?” Her words came out matter-of-factly, and she seemed like a true survivor of this world.

You begin to protest, moving slightly away from her and moaning with distrust.

“Look, I promise, I will get you out of here. But I can’t have you leaving a blood trail through the streets. Alright?” She asked, and you hesitated for a moment, but nodded slightly.

“Okay, this is going to hurt, but I need you to keep it quiet so it doesn’t attract soldiers. Can you do that?”

Immediately, you shook your head no, and you heard the woman mumble to herself while she shuffled through her bag.

“Here, bite down on this. It’s a clean rag, and I promise that if you scream, it’ll be a hell of a lot quieter than if you didn’t have it.” She raised the rag up to your lips and waited for you to open your mouth. Somehow you trusted her to let her put it in. If this were some other old injury, you wouldn’t be giving an inch. But you happened to be on the brink of death right now, and you realized she’s probably saving your life.

“I’m gonna put pressure on your cut now.” You heard her rearrange herself to be crouched over on the other side of you. With both her hands, she pressed down firmly on your wound. The stinging pain that died down earlier came right back when her hands made contact. She noticed your wound gushing through the first bandage in her hand. You groaned loudly into the cloth, grateful for its existence.

“I know it hurts…” The woman spoke again, “Just hang in there. I’m gonna wrap your wound, and then once we’re safe, I can stitch it up.”

You begin to protest, borderline trusting the woman in front of you. Then you realized, she was the only one here.

"Look, I need to get you out of here. Need to get us out of here. Soldiers are gonna be swarming the streets all night, and it's almost sundown. I can take you to my place, and I’ll have a better chance to take care of you there. I know you probably don’t trust me, but it's the least I can do."

Considering the current situation, you didn’t have much of a choice.

“Do what you… h-have to..” you muttered weakly.

The pressure on your wound had lightened, while one of her hands rested on it as she used the other to grab for her bag again. She met your eye level for a moment, glancing up to survey your state. She went back to wrap some gauze around your thigh, tying it tighter than you would’ve liked, even though you knew it would help your wound begin to heal.

“Okay, I think the bleeding stopped. You poor thing, let’s get you out of here.” You watched her zip up her pack and shrug it onto her back, while grabbing yours with her other hand.

“It’s probably gonna hurt a lot if you try to stand, but we gotta get you up one way or another.” You felt her at your side, slipping your left arm around her shoulder. She had already noticed the sharp inhales you were taking upon moving from your spot.

“Here, lean on me. I’ll carry you. Just keep breathing, honey.”

The minute she began to lift you was when you knew something was really wrong with your other arm. It tingled all over and your shoulder ached something awful.

“‘M t-tryin’– it hurts…” had been uttered under your breath with another whine of sharp pain as your body moved with hers.

“I know. Shhh, Shh. Hey, Just put one foot in front of the other. You’ve got this.” Something about her voice was calming you, and it almost made up for all the pain. The two of you begin walking, slowly at first, testing out your strength for the journey. It took a minute of tripping over your own feet to steady yourself.

“Promise we’re gonna get you fixed up, brand new.” She muttered under her breath, low enough so other people nearby didn’t hear.

Somehow her words kept you going, limp after limp. Tess made sure you knew when you had to take a step up or down, and kept you going the whole time.

“Yeah, you got it. We’re halfway there. Keep it up, doin’ great.” Her words reverberated in your head with an echo. You couldn’t see where you were stepping for the majority, but you trusted her to guide you. Another few minutes of walking had your body much more worn out than normal. Once she stopped at the side of a building, her arm went to push the door open.

“Here we are.” Tess kicked it shut behind you two, and balanced you against her body. The interior was warm on your skin, but somehow your body still shivered to its core. Inside, you could hear people shifting around, but the sounds blended together amongst your attempt to stay upright.

“I’m s-so cold…”

The strength in your body was draining with every step you took; you were ready to collapse.

“I know, but you gotta keep your eyes open a little longer. We need to get you up these stairs. Then we’re home free.”

You didn’t protest as she brought you closer, inching up each step carefully in order to not strain yourself. Your legs ached with every step, persevering to make it all the way.

The last step up the top stair drained the last of your stamina, evident by the way your fingers throbbed with each beat of your heart. You were out of it more intensely than when you had been outside. Your whole body was sensitive with some form of pain you couldn’t quite pinpoint.

Tess led you down the short hallway, stopping in front of her door. She fumbled with her keys, although the jingling chain sounded more like glass breaking in your head. The door flew open, and she brought you inside, tossing your pack to the side while tossing her keys in another direction.

“Alright, let’s set you down on the couch. Should be more comfortable than the damn ground.” Tess scoffed as she brought you over, keeping an eye on your limp. She turned you to the right, your bad arm on the outside of the couch as you were lowered down onto the cushions. When your feet were finally off the ground and your back rested against the pillows, it made a world of a difference.

“Fuck… I’m so tired. Everything hurts.” You stifled a groan, but Tess saw how much pain you were in. Your eyes scrunched together every time you tried to move and there were multiple patches of blood seeping through your shirt.

“I know. But I can’t leave your shoulder the way it is.”

“My shoulder?” You hadn’t the slightest idea what she was talking about, your arms felt fine.

No, it’s definitely the shock you’re in.

“It’s dislocated. Pretty swollen already, you must be in shock. And I already told you that I’d have to pop it back in. Before we left, you don’t remember?”

“No…” You mumbled, trying to recall; your memory was so groggy; you couldn’t remember half the day.

“Shit, you probably have a concussion too.” Tess reached to the back of her jeans, pulling out the same rag as before. “But I’ve gotta set your shoulder before it’s permanently damaged. It’s probably been way too long already.”

“How d’you know all this? Were you a doctor or something? Before?” Tess turned to face you, and you were able to focus on the features of her face for a moment. Her eyes were a light hazel color, and you could see little strands of grey peeking through her light brown hair.

“Or something… I did a lot to survive after the outbreak. Learned a lot more to survive the hard times.” Her words trailed off, and she went to grab something from another part of the room. Tess had collected an old shirt of hers, and came back over to you.

“Okay, so… I’m not good with pain clearly. Hope you still have that rag. Cause I’m gonna yell… or pass out. Either way, it’s gonna hurt a shit ton, and I’m gonna need it.”

Without a doubt, Tess pulled the rag from her back pocket for you.

“Got it right here. Kept it out of my pack cause I knew you’d need it again. This is gonna hurt a lot more than just some pressure on your cut.” She began tying the t-shirt together in a specific way, but you weren’t sure what she was doing with it.

“Shit. I know… I know. Just do it.” You groaned, feeling a slight tingling sensation in your left hand shooting upwards to your shoulder.

Tess set the now tied shirt onto the floor, as she kneeled down next to you. With one hand, she held the rag up to your mouth, and you bit down on it. Among the various other pains in your body, your shoulder was the worst of all. Taking a few deep breaths to calm yourself enough, Tess met your eye once she had leaned down in front of you.

“Ready?”

Wordlessly, you nodded your head. You were trying to keep calm, but the shock was wearing off and your pain came flooding back. One of Tess’s hands grasped your forearm, though you could barely feel her grip.

“Okay. One, two…”

Crack went your shoulder back into its socket with one swift motion. Just as she thought, you went groaning into the rag once again. Tess took her hands away and grabbed the makeshift sling she had tied together earlier.

“Does that feel better?” She asked, watching you spit out the rag. You took another deep breath in and out, surveying the current feeling in your arm.

“Yeah.” You weren’t sure if you believed it yourself, but for now you decided to. “Pain’s still there, but it definitely feels different. Better than before.”

“Good. Here, you’ve gotta wear your arm in this sling while it heals.” Tess lifted the tied up sling over your head, and it slipped on easily on once she had it situated the right way.

“Could I get those pills now? The idea of any kind of grace from the amount of pain I was just in sounds like a dream.” You tried to laugh, but a cough came up instead.

“Yeah. I’ve got Oxy, Hydro, Morphine…” She trailed off, not even knowing if you knew what she was talking about.

“Honestly, whatever you think will be best. I honestly don’t know anything about dosages very well, and I trust you. Besides, I just wanna knock out for the night. I’m fucking exhausted.” Your words slurred a bit, due to your swollen lip, but Tess heard you well enough.

“Alright, I’ll be right back.”

Instead of trying to keep your eyes open, you shut them again in an attempt to alleviate the pain in your head, but it pounded nonstop. You listened to Tess’s boots on the wooden floor walking around to ground yourself. A couple minutes later, she returned to where you lay on the couch.

You peeked your eyes open, and she’d crouched down with two pills in one hand and a cup of water in the other.

“Got you water to wash it down with, if you want.” Her cupped hand held two of the white pills and you raised your good arm to grab them. Patient as she was, you moved slowly.

There was no indication of any burdensome look on her face, which was odd– no one had ever been this kind to you before. You didn’t know how to feel about it.

Slipping the pills between your lips, you grabbed for the cup of water. It began to slip out of your hand the minute Tess loosened her grip.

“Here, let me. You’re gonna be really weak for a while, so just close your eyes and relax.” She said, to which she brought the cup to your lips with no hesitation.

“Now, while those pills kick in, I’ll see what I can do for your gashes and other injuries. All I want you to focus on is getting some sleep. You’re safe. I promise.” She touched your hand softly, then stood up and walked off to leave you space to rest.

Once you closed your eyes, you felt the exhaustion wash over you, though it finally felt good to rest again. A few minutes passed, and the groggy effect of the pills began to set in. You were out in no time.

In the meantime, Tess darted back and forth gathering supplies to fix you up; she’d sterilized a needle and thread to stitch up your leg, and took the last of her ace bandages out from her pack to use for your ankle. She grabbed the bottle of whiskey on the countertop, and brought what she needed over to you, couchside.

Before Tess took the needle and thread between her fingers, she cut away the area of denim that was ripped from your gash.

“Sorry, kid. I’ll get you some new pants.” To be fair, those jeans of yours were filthy with dirt and muck stains you’d never be able to wash out. Not to mention the blood that spread had well enough to become a large patch. She attempted to wipe up the dried viscera around your cut best she could, dabbing with the alcohol lightly to sanitize it. She’d counted on you being unconscious from the pills to start stitching up your gash. Hands steady, she looped the needle and thread through your cut, pulling it closed with each tie.

Though it wasn’t the most ideal situation for something like this, Tess had the experience. Stitching up cut after cut on the road for god knows how long, trying to keep moving forward, but somehow someone always got hurt. People kept dying, or turning– and that wasn’t even the worst part. Upon making it to Boston, she learned what it was to be calm under situations like this. To become cold. It got the best of her, more often than not; any idea of the old her was lost to dreams of the world before. She never looked back, never slowed down, never took even a moment for herself. Her routine was based strictly around finding the best way to get by in the QZ. The constant eye of FEDRA’s guards and firefly bombings were enough, let alone the mile-long lines for rations that were barely ever in. It was too much to subject herself to being controlled by an invasive military, especially after all she’d done to survive. Each person Tess left behind etched a sliver of her humanity off, chipping away the heartfulness she once carried with pride.

Save who you can save, the last words whispered to her by someone that sacrificed themselves so she could make it to Boston. Everything blurred together sometime after getting admitted into the city; by then, she’d worn down that kind version of herself into the ground. Possibly that same place where she heard those words before. Quickly, she gained a reputation with Joel by her side in the smuggling business of the zone. It paid well– better than hard labor all day for a cruel amount of flimsy ration cards, just to repeat the same thing over the next day. There was a respectable line Tess drew between the things she’d done in the name of survival, and things she strongly disliked doing.

Tess’s time in the QZ had only reinforced that rigid outer shell of hers, confident the softer, weaker person inside her was left behind for good.

She’d almost made it through the day without finding any trouble, but her path through the streets was detoured by FEDRA vehicles and it happened to be the quickest route back to her place. Tess’s steps were quick, aiming to make a b-line straight back.

Then her eyes caught the image of your thoroughly beaten self, and attempted to shut down the itch in the back of her throat she couldn’t quite scratch.

Just keep walking, she’d told herself. But her subconscious knew better. Then those words echoed lightly through her head.

Tess, save who you can save…

“Shit…”

She thought she’d forgotten them all. But time never does. Those poor souls lost to hordes of runners, clickers, stalkers– each one shoved down so deep inside, and the outside shell of her was simple glass.

Keep walking, just keep walking…. No–

She truly tried to keep going, but each step gnawed into her further. Remembrance of the ones she’d lost shattered the glass holding her back, and glued her feet to the ground in place. A quick curse had Tess looking back over her right shoulder, catching a glimpse of your unmoving body. She’d figured if this were a trap, others would’ve already surrounded her.

A deep sigh came from her exhale of a tightly held breath; her heart pounding against the inside of her chest, as if something about to burst. Any second thought of moving further had vanished, her feet pivoting against the concrete, toward the stagnant body lying soundless against the brick wall.

Darkness swallowed every corner of that alley; Tess was fortunate to even have seen you at all.

It wasn’t often she found herself stopping for anyone that needed help, let alone in the QZ. Underneath the swollen and crimson stained injuries, she saw a young individual subdued and unconscious from their injuries. That was the moment she’d called out to you.

Tess shook those pre-Boston nightmares from her mind, putting all of her focus onto fixing up your ankle. With the discoloration of bruises that covered your ankle, it baffled her how you were even able to trek as far as you had gone. Her eyebrows furrowed relentlessly, each one of your injuries more surprising than the last.

“Jesus, kid. What the hell did you get yourself into?” She muttered to herself, before grabbing the roll of bandages from her pack. Tess was so focused on getting your ankle wrapped, that she hadn’t heard the creak of the wooden floor from behind her.

“Tess… what’re you doin’?”

Unbothered by the voice, her hands kept working. Though, she knew she’d woken her roommate from his slumber. Joel Miller hadn’t thought this was what he’d be seeing at almost two in the morning.

“Wrapping an ankle, the hell do you think I’m doing?”

“Tess. who the fuck is this?” By the tone of his voice, she knew he was pissed. She dare not poke the bear this late.

“It’s uh… well, no. I don’t know. They couldn’t speak when I found them.” She’d finished securing the bandage around your ankle, and placed it back down on the couch.

“Do you even know their name?” Joel stepped towards Tess, his brow furrowed.

“Joel… they were lying beat up and bloody in an alley. I wasn’t gonna take the chance and leave them there to die.” She reached for the other pillow on the couch, and placed it delicately for your ankle to rest on.

“Well, did you even check their pack for weapons?”

Tess huffed a breath, and stood up straight, turning to the man.

“I was a little preoccupied making sure they weren’t bleeding out. Besides, they didn’t have any on their body. But if you insist…”

She took the moment now to move towards your pack she’d thrown into a corner earlier, taking out a notebook, some ration cards, and a couple bags of pills.

“What the fuck? Tess, this could be a setup.” Joel muttered, the tone of his voice unsettled by the situation.

“What? No. No fucking way, Joel. I’m telling you, they would’ve died out there if it wasn’t for me.”

“You’ve gotta stop tryin’ to save people that ain’t worth it. That’s how we’re still alive, why we’re here and the dead ain’t.”

“No, I don’t believe you. They’re unconscious and didn’t even see you, by the way. I think you’re fine.” Tess shook her head while she spoke.

“Well, it’s our business that goes to shit if you’re wrong.” Joel spat, beginning to walk back to his door.

“I don’t really give a shit. Not tonight. What I do care about is making sure this person stays alive. I couldn’t care less about distributing pills to junkies.”

She did care about the smuggling, just not as much as she did about keeping you alive for the night.

“Yeah, whatever.”

His door shut and locked, leaving Tess alone with you for the night. She collected herself after that conversation, preparing anything she might need throughout the night to treat you. Just in case.

Her muscles finally relaxed the minute she’d sat down in a chair adjacent to her couch. While she draped a blanket over her legs, Tess took one last look at you, studying your rising chest and calm features.

You’re gonna be alright.

Beams of sunlight painted the walls with a glowing warmth, cast across the older woman’s skin. Morning broke early, waking Tess before either of the habitants that resided in the Boston apartment. She’d always been a light sleeper, despite that it was loud most hours in the walls of the QZ. Living in Detroit her whole life had certainly accustomed her to it.

Her hazel eyes opened against the light, finding themselves staring upwards at the ceiling. Tess had woken up several times throughout the night, which had become a normal occurrence for her. Events from last night flashed through her mind as she rose from her slumber. Her slumped position resulted with an uncomfortable spot in her neck from the chair she’d been in all night. Tess sat up as best she could, grasping the nape of her neck for comfort. No matter how many times she tried to get rid of the pain, nothing relieved her. Defeated by the lack of sleep, she rose from the chair and looked over at you still asleep on the couch.

Rays of sunlight happened to catch right over your face, peeking through the blinds as they awoke you from rest. Yesterday had become a blur quicker than light.

Where am I? What happened to me? It hurts everywhere…

You shifted lightly with a groan, eyes still closed. A headache pinged at the sides of your temples, and you took a sharp breath out of reflex. You weren’t able to move your body freely; exhaustion had drained you enough. Out of the blue, you heard a female voice echoing in your ears. Your one good eye opened, and it took a minute to adjust to the light, along with any blurriness.

“Hey, you with me?” Her voice called out to you, unintelligible at first, but once you focused on the words more, you understood.

“Where… where am I?” You mumbled, attempting to lift yourself up. You didn’t know what was worse; not knowing where you were, or not being able to lift your body normally.

“Don’t try to sit up. You’re safe, but you’re too weak to sit up right now. I saved you last night, patched you up. Remember? My name’s Tess.”

“Not really…” you sighed, accepting your weakened state.

Tess knew it would take more than just one night to gain your trust; she also knew Joel wouldn’t be as patient. She crouched down by the side of the couch where you were, getting closer to make sure you heard her.

“So, I pulled you out of that alley last night, patched you up and kept you safe the past twelve hours. I think that warrants me your name.”

Your eyes glanced over her figure, the image of Tess still fuzzy. Considering all the factors, and the fact that you were still alive, you gave in and told her your name. Tess nodded contently and spoke again.

“Well, you probably have a concussion. But I cleaned and bandaged up everything else I could. Your left arm was dislocated, but I popped it back in last night. That’s why it’s in the sling. Don’t try to move it much, it’ll take a while to heal. As for your ankle, it’s twisted pretty bad. Bruised, too. You’re gonna be off your feet for a while.” Surveying the bumps and bruises you’d received, she set other supplies to the side on the floor.

You glanced down at your body, pulling back the blanket over your legs to find your stained jeans and the stitched up gash, with other bandaging around your ankle.

“You saved me? And bandaged me up?” You speak clearly for the first time, and Tess stopped in her movement.

“Yeah. You’re lucky to be alive. I wasn’t gonna let you die out there.”

“What..” you swallowed, “What happened to me?”

“From the looks of it, you were on the bad side of a shitty deal gone wrong. Like I said, you’re lucky to be alive.” Her tone was calm, and impressive to see in a situation that was anything but.

“You went through my pack?”

“I found you in an alley. Almost dead. Can you blame me?”

“Guess not…” you said, sighing and trying to sit up. With one arm in a sling, you were having trouble moving without anything hurting. The pills were wearing off little by little as time passed.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t do that. You’re gonna be couch bound for a while.”

“What? No way. I need to… I have business and shit I need to get done–”

“Don’t play coy. We know you’re a smuggler.” She shoved her hands in her pockets, pacing in small circles.

“Well, you went through my bag. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Wait, did you say we?”

Before Tess could respond, a gray haired man emerged from behind her, jutting into the conversation.

“You’re real cocky for someone that almost ended up dead from one of your clients. For all I know, this whole thing is a setup for you to rob us, kill us, or somethin’ else. But I ain’t gonna take that chance. Not now, not ever. Are we clear?” His southern accent came out as he spoke, and it wasn’t often you heard a voice like his among the Boston streets. It was intimidating enough; you didn’t trust him.

“Yeah– okay, dude. Jesus, I don’t even know who you are. I didn’t know you guys were smugglers!” your voice strained while you lift your arm to gesture.

“Joel, I was the one that brought them here. Like you said, this is on me. And I’ve got it. Walk it off, Texas.”

The man named Joel walked backwards, dark eyes trained on you until the moment he turned around and left. He shut the front door in haste.

“Is he always that tense?” You ask, taking a deep breath.

“No. It’s not every day I bring anyone back to this apartment. Let alone someone who looked half dead, like yourself. No offense.”

“Yeah… Why did you save me, by the way? You could’ve just left me there. But you didn’t.”

“I told you… I wasn’t going to let you die. I thought you were dead at first, but I took the chance and saved your damn life. Is that what you wanna hear?” Your vision was still a little blurry, but you could focus on the woman’s features much more easily up close. You finally made out the face of your savior, Tess was a woman with light brown hair, longer than her shoulders but not too long. Her eyes were green, and there were lines on her face from time passing. With her stern voice, you wouldn’t know her face would look as calm.

“Well, thank you.” You admitted, half ashamed you even thought about staying there to die in the first place.

“You’re welcome.”

Just as the silence settled, your body became aware of every injury you’d received. A sound of discomfort slipped past your lips, furrowing your eyebrows together.

“Are you in pain? What hurts?” Tess began looking over the stitches she’d done the night before.

With a groan, you replied, “Everything…”

“Alright, I can give you a couple more pills for the pain. Uh wait– do you need to use the bathroom? I assume it’s been a while…”

“Oh, yeah. I think in my near death I’d been.. You know, going without the ability to control it.”

“Right… Well, I can get you a clean pair of clothes, but it won’t do any good if you’re wearing your own body fluids. Do you– would you like a bath?”

Immediately insecure, you realized how filthy you must’ve become, spending most of yesterday soaked in your own blood and urine. Quickly, you nodded while looking down, shame washing over you.

“Okay, Joel’s not gonna be back for a few hours. I can spare you some new clothes and underwear, but your boots I can just clean off later. I’ll re-wrap your injuries after, too. For now, we’ve gotta get you cleaned up.”

She lifted you from the couch dutifully and slung you over her shoulder to head towards the bathroom. Tess recognized your sounds of discomfort, a string of sharp breaths and muffled groans you thought she didn’t hear.

“Almost there. Here we go.” Her hip pushed the door open, sitting you on the chair next to the tub. Once the water was on and flowing, Tess found the right temperature and began filling the tub. She made her way back to you, and began to untie your boots, placing them off to the side. She took off your button down shirt, which revealed more black and blue bruising across your back and shoulder. You hissed a breath as she pulled the sleeve down off your left arm. Before moving further, Tess looked toward you with kind eyes.

“It’s okay. Don’t feel ashamed. It’s just hard now. But you’ll be alright… Can I continue?” Her hand rested on your good shoulder patiently. You nodded silently, realizing the intimacy of the situation and looked down at the floor.

Slowly, cautiously, and gently, she undressed you while the tub filled beside you both. Not only was your body covered in bruises and scrapes, but dried blood and other viscera had caked on a few layers. The bandages from last night were discarded to the side, fresh ones in the other room for when you were clean. She saw your reaction as you entered the water, your face contorted in both pain and pleasure while you sat. The warmth of the liquid against your torso was another level of soothing, flooding your skin with goosebumps and washing off some of the dried blood upon submerging yourself into the tub. Tess grabbed a washcloth and bar of soap, lathering it up before wiping it across your back.

“I don’t know how to thank you. This is…”

“You don’t have to say anything. And you don’t have to thank me. Please– please don’t thank me.” Tess knew this wouldn’t make up for the numerous people she’d left behind– left to die so she could persevere ahead. But all she had to do was goddamn try.

A comfortable silence settled between the two of you, sighing while she kept cleaning off your body. Her hands were soft against your skin, sending shivers up your spine. Though she was doing something as intimate as washing you, it didn’t bother you as much as it would have on any other occasion. She carefully avoided running over your scrapes and other open wounds, yet still washing them lightly with the soap and water. Before long, the water had become a dark brown color from how much had washed off of you. Tess began to drain the tub, keeping the faucet running as it drained.

“Mind if I wash your hair?”

It was just a simple question, but it sparked your anxiety a bit more than when she undressed you earlier.

“Uh.. sure.”

Tess washed out the tub with a bucket while you sat in it. She lathered some shampoo between her palms, rubbing it across your scalp with gentle fingers.

You couldn’t deny, Tess’s hands were calloused and rough, but they felt like heaven against your scalp. Rubbing the pads of her fingers into your head was somehow better than all the times you’d done it yourself. Eyebrows furrowed against the sensation, and you groaned lowly. You somehow alerted Tess, wondering if she’d pressed too firmly on your head.

“What happened? Does it hurt? Sorry if I’m going too hard–”

“No, it’s great. Keep going.” You breathed.

“Okay..” she chuckled a bit before continuing, then used the bucket to wash the rest out from your locks before applying conditioner. One of her hands grabbed the brush on the floor, slowly untangling the mess of knots in your hair. The warm water calmed you like nothing you’d experienced before, at least not since after the world fell. Appreciation flowed through you, and the comfortable silence reinforced that all the more. It was a safe feeling, one you shared with this kind, and beautiful woman. She’d washed the leftover soap and conditioner off your body, and began to towel dry your skin in a gentle manner.

“Here, wrap yourself in this. I’ll be right back with the clothes.” Quick footsteps brought her to the pile of clothes she’d attained over the months on the run. She’d returned to the bathroom with a few things in hand, and approached you. Carefully, she stood you from the tub and stepped back onto the floor while wiping the remaining water droplets off your back.

“Thanks..” you shivered a bit against the cold air, wanting to be clothed and back under the thick blanket. The socks she slipped over your feet helped warm you, while carefully slipping on the rest of her clothes. Tess even brought a spare sports bra for you to borrow for the time being. Something about the way she moved so calmly, spoke with such a soothing voice that made this whole situation seem lighter. On any other day, you’d be stressing about finding the right pills for a client or risking your life outside the walls. Her soft movements sparked something inside you with a new kind of warmth, and it almost atoned for everything you’d been through the past 12 hours.

Once you were dressed, Tess towel dried your hair and began to tie up another sling for your arm.

“When you’re back on the couch, I’m gonna put some ice on your ankle. It’ll help with the swelling and probably some of the pain.” You nodded silently, taken back constantly by her kindness.

“If you’re in pain, I could give you another dose of pain meds. But it depends on if you want to eat something beforehand. It’s been since yesterday since you ate anything, probably for the both of us. I can fix you something to eat, though.”

“Oh, uh, sure.” You weren’t completely sure what you were doing here still, your mind foggy from the night before. The way your injuries burned and ached against one another had you aching for some kind of relief– any kind at this point. How you got yourself here, you weren’t sure of either.

Not much later, Tess came over with something suitable for you to eat, before giving you a couple more pills for the pain. Again you fell drowsy from the pain medication, resting the day away. With you resting calmly on the couch, Tess did her best to stay awake until Joel returned, running on less than five hours of sleep. It felt like ages before he came through the apartment door once again.

“Hey, can you… keep an eye on them, please… I barely got any shuteye last night.”

“I just got back–”

“Joel, please.”

“Fine.”

“Don’t hurt them, Miller. Seriously. Or I’ll hurt you.” She mumbled under her breath, trudging to the door.

“I’ve got it. Just go.”

With that, Tess collapsed on her mattress, not even bothering to pull the sheet over her, before drifting off to sleep the minute her eyelids fluttered shut.

On the couch, you woke to a silent morning; no movement could be heard amongst the apartment. Your eyelids fluttered open, turning your head to look for Tess; instead you were met with the dark eyes of Joel Miller. His figure sat across from you, adjusting the gun in his hand so you could see it well.

“You try anything funny, you get a bullet.” Joel raised his hand to gesture with the weapon. He noticed the bags under your eyes were dark and sunken in, making you appear more dead than alive at the moment, despite all the bandages.

“You wouldn’t shoot me here. It’d be too loud and soldiers would be here quicker than light.” You rasped, coughing lightly from your dry throat.

“Wanna bet?” He leaned in with a menacing glare. You kept eye contact with him as he began to stand, the intimidation not making a dent in you. It was enough to make Joel second guess his opinion of you for a moment.

“Joel, stand down.” Tess called from the other side of the room. You called her name from the couch, and she quickly replied.

“I’m here. Do you need anything?” She came into eyesight now, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and casually wearing a sweatshirt. Tess gave Joel a look, motioning for him to leave the room.

“Yeah. I need to get out of here and home.” Your eyes watched the older man get up, watching as Tess approached, “My client’s probably freaking the fuck out and wreaking havoc across the QZ looking for me.”

“About that…” She strolled over to where you were, taking a seat, “You need to tell me who did this to you.”

“What? N-No… I can’t. He’s my client. I can deal with him.” You shot up in your seat, groaning slightly.

“Oh right. Like that worked out so well last time?” Joel spoke, walking away. Your eyebrows furrowed in annoyance at what Tess was suggesting.

“Trust me, kid. You’ll thank me later.” She added.

“I’m already thanking you later. I’ll probably be owing you for the rest of my life.”

“No, kid–”

“Don’t call me kid. I’m grown. I can take care of myself.”

“Okay, you’re gonna have to prove it, then. You still need time to heal.” Tess insisted you lay down again, but her words flew in one ear and out the other.

“I need to not be couch bound and sleeping through the day! I need to have a life, some kind of life in this shit hole of a city! Don’t you get it?” Your voice was rising, straining against the irritation.

“I do, trust me. I do. It’s why we got into that business, too. But hun, you didn’t deserve what happened to you. I hope you know that. Now, I’d like to know…” She leaned in closer, lowering her voice to look you in the eye.

“Let it go. It doesn’t matter!”

“Yes it does. Who did this to you?” Her voice spoke pointedly, holding strong eye contact with you. Your eyes closed for a second, throwing your head back with a sigh.

“His info is on the third page in my notebook. You’ll know it’s him cause his orders take up almost the whole fucking page.” You pinched the bridge of your nose as Tess stepped toward your pack, rummaging through it until she found the notepad. Pocketing it, she walked over to Joel’s door, ajar, and spoke.

“Texas, make our guest something to eat. I have some business to attend to.” She turned toward the door, exiting the apartment with your notebook in hand.

“Wait, Tess!”

Your voice fell on deaf ears; she was already down the hallway and gone. Once the man emerged from his bedroom, you shared a plain look as he made his way to the kitchen. Before reaching for the cupboard doors, he grabbed the bottle of amber liquor and poured some into a glass.

“Pour me a glass of that, please.”

“Are you even old enough?”

“Are you kidding? I’m 25. Now can you pour me a damn drink already?”

Silently, Joel rolled his eyes and poured some into a glass for you. It was his peace offering before he went back to find something for you to eat. You ended up sharing some soup and crackers with Joel for dinner, awaiting the older woman’s return afterwards.

An hour or two passed before Tess made her way back. You were resting on the couch when the door opened. She took a sharp breath in upon entering, and let the door slam behind her louder than usual. It gained your attention and Joel’s, looking toward the door. You heard her hiss a breath, while she shook out her fist.

“Shit, Tess. What did you do?” She walked further into the apartment, the light glimmering against the fresh blood across her lip.

“Took care of that client of yours.” She muffled a groan, stretching out her fist while her knuckles bled.

“Did you kill him? The fuck–” You began to try and stand on your good foot, but stumbled before you could get any closer to her.

“What? No, I didn’t kill him. Just taught him a lesson. That smug fucker. I don’t know why you did business with him. He’s a bad junkie. You never do business with a bad junkie.” She sat down near you again, noticing the empty whiskey glass nearby on the floor.

“He was my most frequent customer. Shady as hell, if I’m honest, he kinda scared me. That’s how I knew it was him when I got attacked.

“That’s naïve of you. Why would you ever do something that risky by yourself?”

“I… didn’t have anyone else who was willing to risk their lives sneaking around the QZ. So I said fuck it.”

“Well, I still think you’re a dumbass. You’re just lucky you’re staying out of the smuggling market for a while.”

“No, I told you I can’t. I need to–”

“You need to rest and heal. I swear to god, if I hear one more word about you getting on your feet before you’re a hundred percent, I swear I’ll chain you to the couch.”

“Jesus, fine. I won’t go back out there. Throw my entire business away just to wait till these injuries kill me in the middle of the night, I guess.”

“Hey, you’re gonna be fine. The only reason I’m being an asshole about this is because I want you to survive. I didn’t pull you off the street to let you go back to that shitty situation.” Her words were honest, even if you didn’t believe them.

“Well, thanks. I guess.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it.” She shrugged your thanks off and went about her business.

The future weeks proved to be the longest haul you thought you’d ever been in. It consisted of a lot of reading, sleeping, and wishing you could be on your feet. You ended up asking Tess to take a trip to your place and retrieve some of your things; you were tired of having to put her out of her own clothes to wear. Plus it would just be more comfortable for you. Tess checked your injuries daily, reapplying bandages and cleaning on a steady schedule. She would not let you die from infections after doing all she could to save your life that night.

The two older individuals went about their days more regularly once you were out of the woods with all of your injuries. Tess helped you to and from the table so you could join them for meals, otherwise spending the day rereading old books and magazines while trying to find other things to do than just sit around and rot. You were grateful for Tess saving your life, but this healing process was a bitch.

Standing wasn’t as easy as you thought it would be, especially having been off your feet for days on end. Much less the blood loss you’d experienced, it was humbling to not be able to get around on your own. Slowly as the first week passed, Tess helped you get back on your feet bit by bit. You had enough strength after another week to stand on your own.

One day, the smuggling duo was planning a run while surveying a map they’d drawn up. You nonchalantly watched, sitting in a chair neary. They hadn’t noticed you, until you mentioned a route they hadn’t heard of, and her attention turned to you, impressed with your knowledge and jotted the trail down for later.

“Wait, question. Do you guys know Robert?” Your arms crossed over your chest.

Both Joel and Tess turned towards you now, their eyes widened and faces grim.

“Why?” Joel asked with a stern voice.

“He’s one of the guys that uses that route. At least, his guys do. So be careful.”

“You’re telling me you used to run with Robert?”

“Only for a little. Seemed like he wanted more than just business… with me. But I got out of there before it was too late.” Tess scoffed, a smirk forming on her face.

“Tell you what. You wanna keep smuggling, you join us when you’re fully healed.”

Joel turned to her, but she shot him a look and turned back to the map silently.

“You’re sure?” You asked, sitting up.

“I’m sure. Not gonna let you put yourself in danger again when you could have us at your side.” She looked back down at the map and continued jotting in her notes.

“Okay, cool.” You smiled to yourself, thinking Tess didn’t see, but she glanced up for a moment after she heard your words. She noticed the eagerness in your eyes and felt her heart skip a beat.

So, it wasn’t all for nothing, you thought.

You weren’t given a second chance to live just to lose what got you through the days and weeks on your own. This gave you another opportunity to survive with individuals by your side; you wouldn’t be alone anymore.

Caring came far too easy for Tess. She'd seem cold on the outside, and sure, she was a reserved person. But to see you so overjoyed about being able to continue smuggling, she couldn’t help but have a little warm feeling in her chest.

She thought the first time would be the only time a spark would flicker inside her. But then you were laughing at something idiotic one night, and she felt it again. The tensions between you and Joel had broken– finally. For the first time in a while, Tess saw multiple things looking up: you were recovering on a steady pace, and on an even better note, becoming a friend to her. She read you books, mostly classics from what she’d traded for. Ultimately grateful, you listened intently to every word she read, while trying to not fall asleep from her soothing voice.

Under all the scratches and bruises, Tess saw your kindness and personality reveal with everyday that passed. She became privy to the way you saw the world with a gentle hand, reinforcing that spark in her chest. Yet that same spark came with guilt; she knew it wasn’t fair to fall for you after all you’d been through. She wasn’t sure if you’d ever trust someone like that again. So that spark was only kept as embers, in a lockbox on a very high, very dusty shelf in her mind.

Another week of healing went by, and you were finally able to stop wearing your arm in a sling. You spent the day traveling back to your place to grab some things you’d need for the next few days. Tess insisted you stay in the apartment with her and Joel while you healed. You hadn’t been home since the day you were attacked, other than the days Tess was kind enough to retrieve some things for you.

As of present day, you had gained the ability to walk on your ankle back after almost a month of being off it. The first thought in your head the morning of was that a trip outside the walls of the apartment. You also knew others might want to pay you a visit if you returned back by yourself, which is when you mentioned the idea to Tess.

“Yeah, you’re definitely not going alone. I’ll come with. When do we leave?”

“Right now.” You grinned at her with content before you went to grab your pack.

The two of you flew down the steps and out the door, Tess following behind you with caution. Your first step into the outside air was something you missed within almost a month of being indoors. While it wasn’t exactly sunny, the cool air was refreshing against your skin and differed greatly from the apartment.

“Don’t run off now.” the older woman muttered, shutting the door behind her. Just from the way you moved, Tess could tell you were in need of something like this. You looked around at the same old streets of the QZ like it was something completely new. She felt lucky to be the one seeing this part of you, the healed and healthy part.

“C’mon, I’ll lead the way.” You turned back to her, noticing her hazel eyes trained in your direction, then shifted to the path in front of you. A few minutes of walking passed, and you’d picked up some pairs of eyes looking your way from people on the surrounding streets. It was more of a side eye glance than a stare, but still you noticed it. After being terrified to leave the four walls of the apartment, being perceived was a bit more intimidating than you thought it’d be. You slowed your steps, letting Tess catch up with you.

“Um, Tess?” You mumbled, glancing back towards her.

“What’s up?”

“All these people keep staring...”

Tess surveyed the area before noticing something you hadn’t, and she chuckled.

“They’re not looking at you, they’re staring at me.” You did a quick glance back and forth, fidgeting with your fingers nervously.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Let’s keep going.” You turned back after nodding to her, hiding the tiny smile that snuck its way onto your lips. It was almost like walking with a scary dog at your side, except said scary dog was the taller woman trailing behind you.

From the way multiple pairs of eyes shot in her direction, some glazed over, some didn’t notice as you passed by. Other pairs of eyes widened as they fell on the figure of the woman behind you. You don’t know how she’s done it, but Tess Servopolous has the Boston QZ wrapped around her finger. It seemed everyone–including Joel Miller himself– had themselves under her spell. They did whatever she wanted the moment she asked. There was no second guessing her, and when she said to do something, you were damn well to do it. You learned the hard way during your healing process, stubborn and complaining that you couldn’t get around on your own.

One night when you were bickering, she’d tried to convince you that you weren’t ready to try and walk on your bad ankle yet. Stubborn and impatient, you kept talking back to her.

“Don’t even try to get up.”

You’d been overstressing yourself about getting back on your feet, so as to find another way to keep smuggling.

“Watch me.” You had hoisted yourself off the couch halfway, then used the last of your stamina to pull yourself the rest of the way up. The first step you took was with your good foot, but the minute you stepped with the other, you groaned and stumbled from the pain, landing on the ground.

“I told you…” Tess was at your side before you could attempt to move yourself back to the couch.

Gentle and slow, her hands around your body were familiar as if you’d known them to be the hands of a long time lover. They were just Tess’s hands, but to you, they couldn’t hurt or kill any more than they could wash over your injuries with a soft touch. When you got a better look at her for the first time, you saw the kindness in her eyes, and her heart in the actions she took towards you.

Common human decency was to take care of someone injured or sick, but you felt something different in the way she tended to you. It was in the way she used her hand to lift up your chin to check how your cuts were healing. Especially when she inspected the one on your lip for a bit too long, claiming it was healing fast and that you shouldn’t try to open it again. All you could hear when she spoke was your own heart beating in your ears, lost in the hazel of her eyes. She’d even found you a cane, but you paid it no mind and kept letting her help you instead.

“I’d hate to feel like a burden…”

“It’s alright, I don’t mind taking care of you.” A warmth flushed through your cheeks when her words hit your ears.

You could tell somewhere deep down, Tess used to care for people as easy as breathing. From the way she knew so much about patching others up, she wanted to keep people going, no matter the circumstances, you knew she cared much more than she showed.

Being on your feet again, outside those same bland apartment walls brought a new feeling you weren’t able to identify. It was different not walking alone for once in the streets, always having to glance over your shoulder just in case. Now when you looked over your shoulder, you saw Tess, and you hoped she’d stay in your life for longer than just when you were healing from your injuries. She meant too much to you to just forget about after she’d been by your side the whole time.

The route to your apartment wasn’t far from where Tess lived, and you were there within no time. It was a bit overwhelming once you came up to the door, fidgeting with the keyring until it clicked into the lock.

“Well, here we are.” You opened the door, stepping into the stale air of your place. Things were as you’d left them, with a few odds and ends out of order from when Tess had stopped by for some of your toiletries. All your knickknacks were scattered about, some across the countertops and any spare surface you could find. Some, if not most, were collected on the road, and others were from your home when you first fled.

“Nice place you got here.”

“You should know, being the only person to be here besides me in the past few weeks.” you chuckle, shoving your keys back in your jeans pocket. They actually happened to be Tess’s, but you couldn’t tell the difference anymore. She didn’t mind either.

She’d been contemplating a lot on the walk over, worried about what might happen when you were fully healed. Tess knew there was a problem when her heart warmed at the sight of you sleeping peacefully on the couch, then remembered what you’d been through and wanted to burn the whole QZ down.

It was almost gone when you started to heal, until she couldn’t sleep thinking about what could happen to you when you went back out there. A wave of restlessness washed over her, and it’d been very hard to accept the fact that you could end up right back where she found you.

“Guess you’re right.” Tess muttered, stepping into the cool air of the apartment.

“I’ll be a minute, gonna grab some clothes and then we can head back.” You spoke, her eyes trailing down your back as you walked into the other room. Silently, she moved about the main room, her eyes catching all the different little objects around the space. Tess didn’t know how you had time to collect all these different things– from shells to rocks to other small toys and charms that lay about– there was no shortage of oddities. Before she knew it, she was standing in front of your open bedroom door. Timidly, she peeked inside to see you rustling through a few drawers and shoving clothes into a backpack.

“Nice… room. Cozy.” You glanced up at her for a moment while folding the clothes to put in your bag.

“Thanks, I tried to make it as home-y as possible. Makes up for the whole quarantine zone thing.”

“I get it.” Tess chewed the inside of her lip nervously, stepping into the room slightly, leaning one of her arms against the doorframe.

“Do you? That place of yours is barely decorated.” You snarked, trying to cover up how aware you were of how domestic she looked standing in your bedroom doorway. She was perfect with the light beams of sunlight peeking over her shoulder.

“Guess stuff like that doesn’t really matter to me.”

But she wanted it to matter; she wanted it to matter to her so desperately. For you, she’d do anything– put up with whatever you threw at her, because she cared. There wasn’t a way to tell when Tess noticed this fire burning inside her, lit aflame by your out righteousness.

She pined to see reminders of you every day when she wakes up. To see you when she opened her eyes in the morning. You’d simply been indented into her mind, and refused to give way.

“Y’know, you’re still welcome at my place after you get back on your feet. Seriously. My place is yours.” Tess took a step into your room nervously.

“Oh, well thanks. That means a lot. I mean… I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done for me. It’s not like we won’t see each other ever again. I’ll probably spend most nights at your place when we start working together.”

I would never want to stop coming around you either way…

On the instance of becoming friends with the woman who saved your life, it occurred to you quite rapidly that the feelings you had for her weren’t just appreciation. It shouldn’t have been that easy to realize you wanted her… to be entranced with her in a way so distracting. Some days you weren’t sure if you were actually feeling better on account of listening to every groove of her voice streak through your mind with no return. You could hardly believe she was standing in your apartment as of today, let alone sharing a space so intimate as your bedroom.

“Besides… It's your apartment. You must both want your respective space back.”

Tess sighed, masking the pit in her stomach when she thought about you on your own again. God forbid you ended up right where she found you; that would be a gut wrenching nightmare. It was already hard enough seeing you beaten up and barely hanging on to life. To even ponder the idea that it could happen again? She’d take absolutely no chances.

Getting protective when you’ve known them for three weeks, Tess? Pretty weak to let someone in while you couldn’t protect the rest of them.

“Even when you do start working with us, you’ll be right between me and Joel. That way you’ll always have one of us on your six, watching your back. We’ll have your back.” She started with a small smile, while simultaneously ignoring the voice in her head. You met her eye and nodded with a smile, zipping your bag shut.

“Very considerate of you, Tess. But if you don’t teach me how to hold my own, I’ll start practicing on Joel.” You slung your bag across your shoulder, watching as Tess followed you out.

“Oh, I’ll definitely teach you. Joel will just have to be fine with being the dummy.” She followed with a chuckle, taking another look at the interior of your bedroom like she would never see it again.

“Well, don’t worry. I’ll still be on your couch tonight.” You said, before walking out the door and locking it behind Tess.

The only epiphany Tess had that day was that she never wanted you to leave. Never wanted to lose sight of you, never wanted to be without you, could never even imagine losing you. Tess had stuffed all those warm feelings down in a tight little box that sat on a dusty shelf in the back of her mind. When she would revisit the idea of actually having a chance with you, she was unsure. But she’d do her damndest in the meantime to shove away those pesky butterflies in her stomach.

It would be a long, long time before she revisited that box again.

a/n: i linked it at the top but i will link it here as well, this is a prequel to another one of my fics called long long time. You can find that fic here and all my other tess fics here!

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