#i think i scrubbed the Residue out well enough
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tattoo shop - e.m. blurb
main masterlist
an : something i was thinking about bc eddie obviously loves bigger women. should i turn this into a short story? :p
let me know! i love feedback <3
wc: less than 1k? maybe 1k? idk i didnt count LOL
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the thing about eddie is that he noticed he'd only ever have crushes on bigger women. it started in high school, when he had a crush on one his literature teacher. she was full, round hips and thighs that forced the fabric of her pencil skirts to stretch, and the outline of the buldge of her tummy. eddie could tell she would wear things to flatten her figure out, and struggled not to be that one weird student and comment on her body.
maybe it's milfs. maybe it's older women you were attracted to.
well, he leaned that way for a while. until he started his new job as a tattoo apprentice. you worked there, not chosen with talent or skills to actually tattoo pieces of artwork on bodies, or pierce flesh with needles all day. you settled for doodling at the front desk of the tattoo shop, and eddie managed to watch your every move.
you dressed in tight tops and baggy pants, always hanging off of your thick hips enough to show the hemline of your boxer briefs you wore. somehow you managed to look feminine while masculine at the same time.
you noticed him staring, but being too shy to say anything to the shaggy haired metalhead, you kept your distance and gave small, blushing smiles to him. he took it.
he didn't think he'd go from getting small smiles from you to bending you over his dining table at his place after a party he threw. but he did. eddie came on to you, told you how sexy you looked that night, asked if it was weird working at a tattoo shop with zero tattoos. that's when you asked him, who said i didn't have tattoos?
eddie quickly found out that you did. and you had a lot. they were littered over your stomach, your thighs and shoulders. how he managed to never see them was shocking, but what became even more shocking was when you accepted his flirty invitation.
i have to see it to believe it, sweetheart.
so, the house emptied towards the night, not a single person in sight besides you and eddie. you were in eddie's kitchen cleaning up solo cups and alcoholic residue when he walked in, thick with silence. he was watching you from behind, bending over his counter slightly to scrub away the stickiness.
"you don't have to do that, honey," eddie said as he walked toward you.
you stopped scrubbing with the rag, and faced him with the small of your back digging into the counter. "i know. just, felt like i should." you blushed, feeling heat rush to your cheeks from the mix of alcohol and embarrassment.
"you're a sweet girl, you know that?" eddie said with a cheeky smile, moving to stand in front of you as you stayed put.
"you don't have to compliment me," you said and averted your gaze. it was enough you had the epitome of your dream man standing in front of you, but he had to call you a sweet girl too?
"why wouldn't i compliment you? i think you're a real pretty girl. a real pretty girl who i didn't know had tattoos." he said with a smile, easing your nerves with a small joke and you felt yourself melt.
"they're just hidden. a surprise for whoever gets to see me with my clothes off." you admit and your face heats up even more, making eddie take a few steps closer to you.
"those lucky fuckers." he breathed, somehow closer than you remembered. close enough for his hand to ghost yours, and move to your hip.
"mm, don't know how lucky they really were if they never talked to me again afterwards," you said with a soft chuckle. he scoffed, moving closer and placing both his hands on the curve of your hips. you let him, the feeling of his large hands squeezing the parts of you that you hated.
"psh, you'd might need to get a restraining order on me if i ever saw these tattoos of yours," maybe he should've said something less forward, but the silence that rang through the house was so defining — he had you alone.
still, you played dumb. not necessarily dumb, you just wanted to hear him say it. "why would i get a restraining order on you?" you laughed. your hands instinctively rested against his abdomen as he brought himself closer.
"don't think i could ever leave you the fuck alone even if my life depended on it."
"eddie," you warned, as if you felt he was unsure about what he truly wanted, "you don't want me, i know you're acting like it but, that's not true,"
it came out weak, sad and almost insecure until eddie moved his hands up your curves, over the rolls of your back, and grabbing you with your cheeks in his palms.
"i don't really think you can tell me how to feel, isn't that right? i think i'm allowed to want whoever i want." he said confidently and your eyes went wide, doe like as if you were struck with the most impossible words you'd ever heard.
"you want me?" you squeaked, your voice not cooperating with you.
"will you let me have you, pretty girl?"
#plus size smut#smut#chubby smut#chubby#plus size reader#eddie x plus size reader#eddie x fem!reader#eddie munson x reader#eddie x plus size#eddie munson x plus size reader#eddie munson smut#eddie munson#stranger things 4#eddie x reader#eddie x you#eddie stranger things#eddie st4#eddie munson st4#smut stories#blurbs
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Health and Hybrids (XX)👽👻💚
[I can't remember the original prompt posters for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]
🖤Chapter navigation can be found here🖤 Click to browse previous updates.
💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)
Where we last left off... A LOT of readers google what an "ostomy bag" is! Danny reestablishes his comfort with the Arabic numeral system!
Trigger warnings for this story: body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) | my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.
💚👻👽👻💚
The next time Diana comes to visit her charge, her gloves are blue. Her scrubs are a pale pink. She is given a new face mask, and a new hair net, and walks through the double doors without needing to be buzzed in.
Alright. Perhaps the boy is not genuinely “her charge”. Still, he is hers to protect and to keep; although her position is, officially, as security to the medical team working with their young patient, the medical team knows as well as she does that the boy does not genuinely intend harm.
Is he prone to outbursts? Perhaps, but very few of them are powered. It is entirely understandable too, according to the mental health professionals on board the Watchtower: trauma affects how well one comports oneself and how one interprets their environment. They may see things, hear things, or misunderstand things, and believe they are under threat. The circumstance makes for a great deal of residual fear and mistrust.
Diana was once raised amongst communities of women with few untouched by battle fatigue. She recognizes the signs of lost time and of reawoken fear. She understands what battle-weary warriors are truly fighting against.
A doctor and a nurse mumble a greeting as Diana passes by them. “Morning, Wonder Woman.”
“Good evening,” Diana returns, eyes crinkling. One nurse visibly glances out the window—and then smiles, sheepishly, having forgotten their location in space. Time zones on the Watchtower are often…flexible; Diana, however, has only just returned from her day job. “How is the patient?”
A doctor jerks their head towards the monitor. It is only ever left on if no one else is in the room; privacy is key to recovery. The active monitor means that the medical team has left him alone for now. “Take a look. You might have to go kid wrangling again, Ma’am.”
Alright. Diana obliges them.
On the monitor, in little stick-figure form, are three figures, all sitting or crowded around the room’s singular bed. Her patient sits in his little white gown, legs still as ever, as Impulse drapes himself across the bedspread, and Robin (ex-Robin? Third Robin? Doesn’t he have a new name now?) stands at the bedside.
The Speedster wiggles, mouthing out words she can’t hear without a microphone. Robin is focused on something in his hand—a tablet, perhaps? If Impulse is chattering into the air, then Robin is short on answers; her charge, in comparison, looks back and forth between them, likely unable to understand what the two are up to.
Diana’s mask catches her sigh. “Busy, are they?”
“Do you think you can hold the red one down long enough for a refresher on proper PPE usage?” the doctor begs. The question appears to be genuine. “They just zoomed in a little bit ago. We’ve been trying not to disturb them, but without masks and gloves…”
…Her charge was still at risk for possible contamination or infection, as they couldn’t get consistently accurate test results on his immune system. Diana hummed. She could see the problem.
“I shall. Buzz me in, if you will.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The door clicks open. Diana strides through, unafraid of teenagers or similar ilk, and content with her position as designated scolder.
And, to his credit, the Robin at her charge’s bedside recognizes Diana’s lack of enthusiasm with the situation, and winces with artful precision. Silly boy— as if Diana would believe that any Bat would be ashamed of breaking a rule if they had already chosen to break it. She cannot help but be fond of each Bird’s eccentricities in their own ways. Robin hides the contraband food in his hand behind his back.
Impulse, however, hardly notices her approach, draped over her charge’s casts as he is—a whiteboard in his hand, furiously scribbling away at whatever attempt at communication he has decided to test today. Having met several male teenagers in her recent years, there is a decent chance he has been drawing genitalia as well.
Diana politely coughs into her mask. The gesture is entirely performative. Robin responds by hiding a separate can of energy drink—opened—on the side table behind him, in the hopes of hiding it from view.
Impulse, who failed to notice her arrival, continues to scribble. Occasionally there will be a burst of superspeed, but it will be in contained little bursts. He likely either wants to preserve the marker, or he is taking more care with his attempted art than usual.
Her charge looks up.
His eyes are still a concern—glazed with a green film, they jitter back and forth ever so slightly when he tries to focus on any one object in particular. He hasn’t indicated any discomfort with his eyesight, however, so it hasn’t been addressed beyond documentation.
The crack in his face—from two inches above his white, nebulous hairline and trailing down to his chin—is visible evidence of an injury or gouge of some sort, with new pink skin all around the edges as the only visible sign of inhuman levels of healing. Diana has seen a number of scars, and a number of healed, gaping wounds, but it is occasionally unsettling to set eyes on her charge and see the still-healing brain matter, skull, and inner sinus cavity through a viscous, green, not-quite-organic wound filling material.
There seems to be a consistent rate of healing, though. Diana can only hope that recovery is possible.
“Good afternoon,” Diana greets softly. Her charge’s discolored fingers flex as his face turns to look at her. “Are you well?”
His green-tinged lips part and then come together again. He’s not not paying attention—he listens very well, and has begun to use certain words in English to compensate for his need for communication. That being said, Diana has little idea what he is and is not capable of understanding.
Impulse, however, finally recognizes the newest occupant in the room. “Wonder Woman! Uh—we totally had permission to be here this time! Promise!!” he offers, immediately switching from someone gleeful to see her from someone remembering their misdeeds.
Diana is very lucky that her mask covers her fond smile. If it is her job to be stern today, she ought to live up to the task. “Did you, now?”
Impulse beams sheepishly, and rolls off of the casts of a bemused half-alien boy. “Yes! Remember last time when the nurses all said I could ‘come whenever’ and ‘bring a friend’ and—“
“You were asked to buzz in ahead of time and put on your protective gear?” Diana finishes, wry. Before she is able to scruff him appropriately, however, the superpowered boy is already gone and back—now with an askew hairnet, an upside-down surgical mask, and gloves a size too large for his hands.
“So I did that!” Impulse protests, the mask moving unnaturally over his face. “Look! All dressed up!”
It is a well-intended last minute effort. Alas, it would all be for naught. Diana scoops up a squawking speedster by the nape, and a now-blinded-by-a-misplaced-surgical-mask Robin, and trots them both back to larger medical.
“One moment!” Diana tosses back to her charge, who is, understandably, concerned.
Still. It takes Wonder Woman, two nurses, and a paraprofessional to successfully sanitize and gear up an uncooperative speedster. Robin sulks through the entire process, but capitulates to it with more grace.
Her charge’s green eyes shine and his fingers curl around his few personal possessions as Diana returns to him his companions; she wishes, so dearly, that she could ruffle his pale hair. “All done!”
The teenaged heroes sprawl across his bed just as casually as they had before—if better prepared for their environment. Robin largely gives her charge his space, careful not to impede where he isn’t wanted, but Impulse freely shares affection that her charge, at least, does not visibly deny.
Diana has her own routine to complete. She heads for the intravenous injection bags, pulls out a fresh one, and cracks the seal. After that, it’s shaking to mix the concoction and a fresh replacement.
Impulse grabs one of the toys off of her charge’s side table and brings it into his lap. The board is tilted, and all the slotted-in pieces fall out. He spends some time sorting them by shape, and then by color, until her charge lifts trembling fingers to pick them up, very carefully, one by one.
She’s impressed. His pincer grasp recovery has not been consistently smooth sailing. “Excellent work,” she praises.
Robin looks up from his tablet. Impulse looks back at her and beams. Her charge gives her a brief look, observes that she doesn’t need anything from him at the moment, and gets back to sorting the little pieces back into their allotted slot.
Impulse rests his chin on the steel arm bar of her charge’s cot. The pose seems…uncomfortable. “Hey, Tim. He got them all right.”
Timothy Robin taps away at his tablet—no doubt taking down documentation of his own. Diana can’t help but feel affection; every Bat and every Bird is so nosy, but if she wants to actually see those notes on her charge, she will have to press Batman for them with a reasonably-sized threat.
“Really?” Robin asks, eyes on the screen. “Do you think the pieces were matched based on color, or actual understanding of the numerical system?”
Diana looks down, line in her hand as she reconnects the intravenous bag. The toy in her charge’s lap is a mock clock face. Each of the numbers is printed onto the removable piece, in different cut-out shapes, and painted different colors.
The atmosphere changes. The air itself tastes different—something like electricity sparks on her tongue. And then it’s gone.
“No, he’s looking to put the clock face back in order, specifically,” Impulse confirms. Ah. Speedforce. Diana should have been able to recognize the feeling by now. “He’s kind of annoyed, actually. It’s like a baby toy.”
“Well, it is a baby toy.” Robin taps away.
“Yeah, that’s why it’s annoying. He knows he should be able to do it.”
Impulse buzzes again, and her charge hums, stuffing his flat hand between the board and the sheet until he can tip it over without grabbing at it. He repeats the same process, the only difficulty stemming from his shaking grip and his shaking eyes.
The urge to pull him close and pet his hair is understandable, Diana reminds herself, but not conducive to his long-term comfort. She smiles at him, as best as she can behind a surgical mask, and discreetly checks his drainage bags to see if they need replacing while she’s already close.
“All’s well,” she declares at last, finished with anything that isn’t social. Thankfully, having two teenagers in the room takes care of her charge’s most frequent issue—boredom. She claps her hands together, and her charge looks up at her, eyes vibrating. “Do you require anything?”
Her charge looks at her. Her charge looks at his friend. “Ouatair?” he tries to enunciate, tongue thick against the green-filled split in his hard palate. “Pleese?”
“Ithinkhewantssomewater,” Impulse rushes to translate, but Diana already knows this request. The water provided is chilled in a refrigerator, and it takes no time for her to find sanitized cup and straw—steel, so as to be safe when dropped, and relatively uncrushable, with a handle for simple gripping.
She presents it to him grip-first. His expression is grateful, and frustrated. No warrior wishes to be in the position of needing constant. Diana can understand the wish to do things on his own.
“Soon,” Diana offers, voice a whisper. “You’re already better off than before.”
Her charge grumbles into his cup. His tongue, half-green, finds the straw for him; he chomps down on the straw, slurps as loudly as he can, and sulks.
Teenagers. Diana finds herself unable to understand how Bruce has so many of them, and understands perfectly well how easy it is to take on a child in need and make them your own.
The cup goes back onto the side-table, half-empty.
“Hey,” Robin starts again. He puts his tablet to the side. The white board is pulled out of Impulse's hands and goes onto her charge's lap, and with only a little whining. “How’s this?”
Her charge mumbles something neutral. His eyebrows scrunch together, but he takes the offered blue marker from Impulse and lets the boy uncap it for him.
“Yeah, it’s more adult or whatever,” Impulse encourages. Her charge sticks out a green-mottled tongue, but takes the marker to the white board and writes. Robin peers over his shoulder to watch. “It’s just the alphabet. A, B, C, D~!”
Her charge hums the tune back to him, continuing seamlessly where Impulse left off. The teen hero beams.
Diana stills.
“Yeah, you got it!” Impulse encourages, and peeks over the edge of the board to see her charge hard at work. His letters are wobbly, certainly, and there are some that he misses, but the alphabet song is a longstanding English-language tradition. He know it. He knows it by rote.
“You missed the ampersand,” Impulse points out. Her charge scowls through the fissure in his face.
…There is no reason for Diana to get excited. Yet. Robin-the-former is already jotting down his own notes, pleased with his observations. There are many reasons and many ways this teenager might have picked up the song. J’onn famously picked up on Earth’s radiowaves before being transported to Earth; this could be further evidence that her charge has some connection to Earth, or it could be a connection to something more bizarre and unusual.
There is no shortage of unusual events these days.
And, of course, Diana runs out of things to do. She smooths down her charge’s blanket, which he hardly notices in his frustration. She refills his water. She is tempted to go grab her copy of The Art of War from her bag in the other room, which she has read before, but which she is rereading at behest of Bruce’s newest initiative: Tactical Book Club. She is optimistic about the opportunities for further education this will provide her comrades-in-arms, if not underwhelmed by the reading material. As long as the teenage heroes are in the room, Diana is obligated to remain with them, in the event that the danger level might…fluctuate. A book would give at least the semblance of privacy to the three.
Her charge makes a noise. “Hay!”
Diana looks up. In shaky hands, resting on his lap, he holds up a largely complete alphabet. There are one or two shaky letters—thorn, which is fairly common, and eth, perhaps less so—but otherwise carefully drawn, very neatly done.
“Excellently done,” Diana praises. The alphabet is a triumph of the physical work it takes to heal.
Her charge beams through his craggy face, buzzing with delight.
"I dunno," Impulse teases, upside down on her charge's legs. "They're kinda wonky."
The boy's face scrunches, smears the color away with a swipe of his arm, and draws something else.
The board shakes with his exertion as he lifts it back into place on his lap, and Diana allows herself to sigh, audibly; sure enough, as she had expected, there is a misshapen, blue, cartoon representation of a penis.
Robin full-on cackles with surprise, but Impulse falls of the bed with laughter.
Unfortunately, it is now Diana's job to figure out how to scold a teenager, and one who speaks no known language besides. Based on the resulting expressions she earns, Diana is unsure if the scolding works, but. Well.
...She tried.
#teenage shenanigans triumph over adversity#even trauma. Even pain. Even horror.#ALSO we finally get an outside POV on his FACE#Danny's body is perhaps a little more fucked up than he knows#health and hybrids#danny phantom#dp x dc#dpxdc#dcxdp#tw gore#tw medical#tw body horror#dcu crossover
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α!Gagamaru Gin x Gn! β!Reader headcanon
Omegaverse is my guilty pleasure don't @ me.
Warnings: Gagamaru is a bit weird, Silly even(he's insane)
There is always that distinctive scent lingering on you, the smell that you try to explain but your vague ability stops you from pointing it out precisely. It must be strong if your nose can pick it out. So misty, cold, and incredibly familiar. No matter how many times you wash the school uniform and scrub your skin red, it comes back the next day, at what time you can never point it out, however, it's evident that it's from school.
Gin is all-natural through and through (except when it comes to his hair), and the perfumes often irritate his sensitive nose, same with sweet-smelling shampoos and body wash, he believes that they are artificial smells that stain people's true character, he has also found that those who use fake odors have many insecurities to hide, be it their second gender or their natural aroma is an unfavored one in society, it does not bother him, but he has never favored deceit. Gin believes that his smell is quite pleasant, probably influenced by all the time he and his family spent hiking when he was a pup. It reminds him of the scent of rain, petrichor was what the doctor called it when he presented. A compliment that his brain only remembered because of the correct adjective used to describe his recently discovered asset.
He remembers it all too well, the overwhelming mix of raw and false fragrances in his middle school class, packed in a classroom with no windows open. He couldn't help the scrunched nose showing on his face every day, trying to find clean air to breathe without the biological chemicals burning off his nose, for the first time in his life, Gin could clearly express his emotion all thanks to newly flowered instincts and his personal preference. It was a shame it had to be distaste. As a pup, he dreamed of having long limbs to hike with, cross the rivers, and climb on rocks without his father helping him, but if this is what it's like to be a grown-up, smelling all the smelly smells that smell bad or good, he would rather be a pup forever.
His keen hearing and eyesight are no match for his sense of smell, but now he could pick out his parent's residual odor on the school campus, hours after they've left.
Maybe it was his bias that made him favor Betas more than Omegas and Alphas, the natural and soft undertones in a society full of suffocating chemicals were liberating for Gin.
His nose was able to smell the uplifting aroma that you contained, weaker than ever hidden behind countless scents. It stayed like that between you and Gin, him enjoying your smell from the other side of the classroom while you took notes and never glanced in his direction, your nose is weaker than others, never truly being able to sense the intense pheromones swirling around.
His communication is not the best, however, he does not care enough to improve it anymore. Some view his nonchalant attitude and simple words as a negative trait. He wonders what you will think of it.
With a bag tossed over your shoulder, you stroll the chilly hallways, getting closer and closer to your destination. But just as you are about to grab ahold of the handle to open the door to the classroom, it harshly unlocks itself. An unexpected occurrence makes you softly jump on your feet before even noticing the figure standing on the other side, staring down at you with a curious tint in his round eyes, he casts a shadow on you.
``Oh I'm sorry, I didn't expect anyone...`` He says.
``It's okay...`` There is not a lot to say about him, even if you are his classmate, you don't know much about him and are not planning on knowing. As you make room for him to pass, you can feel his shoulder press against yours before he finally frees the entrance and walks away from the class. It was a confusing experience, but nothing to note of.
Gin figures that his favorite activity is scenting, his mother and his father were the first people he tried to scent, and kept their scent on him as an eleven-year-old pup up til the last year of middle school.
He is aware that leaving his pheromones on your clothes isn't the best strategy, but neither is leaving his scent on your skin while knowing nothing of you. He hopes that maybe he can change that, perhaps you will recognize that the cold smell comes from him.
Gin is a person who listens to his instincts, it's a skill needed for his beloved hobbies, however lately as you come to school without his scent, the active feeling of annoyance is hard to miss, he wants nothing but to drag you into his bed and cover you with himself, until your nose smells nothing but him on you the whole week, til someone can't differentiate Gagmaru from you. Gin wants nothing but to become one with you in those mornings. It's a shame he can only touch a part of you "accidentally" for it.
He wonders if his scent ever comforts you.
Gin will always find a way to scent you no matter what, so you might as well stop trying to clean it and start seeking him out since he is the only one whose scent matches with the one clinging to you.
The nonchalant alpha has never taken any bait thrown his way, so when his classmates start looking judgemental of his actions, Gin never remembers their words, he has already answered them once and Gagamarus don't like repeating themselves.
Maybe that's how you got to the bottom of your situation, rumors and rude words about him flying through the school until they finally got mingled with your name. So that's all he had to do to make you approach him? Hmh.
You speak so calmly when he left no roundabout way for you and made you go straight to the point.
You ask him to stop scenting you?
He likes you, maybe even loves you.
You don't believe in love at sight?
That's okay, he'll make you believe it.
The next day he puts his plan to work and brings only the best snacks for you to enjoy during lunch. Try to be nice after all, it's his first time courting someone.
#gin gagamaru#anime#anime x reader#bllk#blue lock#blue lock x reader#blue lock gagamaru#Gin gagamaru x reader#gagamaru x reader#gagamaru gin#bllk x reader#Bllk omegaverse#omegaverse#omega!reader#bllk x you#bllk x gender neutral reader#gn reader
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PLEASE WRITE A PART 2 for accident! I’m obsessed
I hadn't planned on it, but... this has been arranged.
accident p. 2 (pedro pascal x gn/m!reader)
a/n: same vague universe as “marked," as always.
summary: you let him fuss.
It's well past midnight as you key into the apartment. Pedro busies himself by getting you settled, although his movements are almost as sluggish and haggard as your own. Six hours in the ER had taken its toll.
"Why don't you head up?"
You'd sat on the chair by the door, intent on untying your shoes, but had apparently been staring at them for the last few moments. Without a second thought, Pedro kneeled before you. "I'm gonna take the dogs around the block, and then I'll close up down here."
You are struck, not for the first time this evening, by an overwhelming wave of gratitude. How did you get so lucky?
He jingles the leashes, pausing to kiss your forehead before heading out.
It takes you way too long to get up. Some combination of exhaustion and low-dose Vicodin have you zoning out, effectively sleepwalking without Pedro to move you along. There is a pharmacy baggy on the counter, but by the sluggishness of your thoughts, the remainder of the prescription might need to go untouched.
Eventually, you drag yourself upstairs.
Everything feels dirty. The loaned scrub pants come off easily, shed in the doorway of the ensuite, to be dealt with later. (Thrown away, burned, ripped to shreds... Dealer's choice. Anything to be rid of them and put the whole evening behind you.)
You want to take the hottest shower possible, and scrub off the invisible hospital residue until your skin is raw. But the prospect of standing for long enough to get clean is... logistically impossible.
At least your dominant hand is uninjured. You reach around, fumbling with the buckle on the back of the sling. For a broken bone, it wasn't very high tech— just a few pieces of fabric holding the two halves of your left clavicle in place. But the damn thing may as well have been a rubik's cube, for how impossible it was to unstrap.
That's about where Pedro finds you: back down to your underwear, hunched on the closed lid of the toilet, frustrated to tears.
"This is so stupid."
"Baby," he starts softly. His dinner attire has been pared down to slacks and an undershirt. "Please let me do this for you."
A brown paper bag is set on the counter, so he can gently remove the sling, followed by the scrub top. Eyes closed, you wilt on the lid. Pedro reaches to plug the tub, without asking, though you nod slowly as he looks back.
The man busies himself as you watch on: changes into a well-loved pair of flannel pajama bottoms, tosses some lavender epsom salt into the slowly-filling water, swears a blue streak doing something suspiciously loud in the other room.
When he returns, slightly red in the face, the bath has been filled.
A not-insignificant part of you had hoped he'd be joining, but Pedro chooses instead to perch on the side, running a hand through your hair as you settle against the porcelain. From within the paper bag, a bag of mini Reeses cups are presented.
"Bodega dinner," he says proudly, adding, "you gotta eat something, baby."
"I'm okay," you whisper, though you're not talking about the peanut butter, at all.
"But you almost weren't," he says hoarsely. "I keep replaying that phone call over and over again in my mind. I think my heart stopped for a second. I just..."
You can only nod, mutely. The feverish, borderline frantic look in his eyes traps any response in your throat. (Honestly, he'd been looking at you like that all night. Hasn't really taken his eyes off you since he found you in the hospital hallway.)
So, you let him fuss.
Out of the tub, you lightly dread bedtime, though you've been fantasizing about sleep now for hours. The doctor had specifically warned against sleeping on either your side or back, instead sending you home with a diagram of how to sleep sitting up. Which sounds worse than a car accident, frankly.
But, upon entering, you discover the bedroom has... transformed? Your bed, normally centered, has been pushed into the corner. One nightstand has been abandoned in the middle of the room.
"I'll move that later," Pedro says sheepishly.
All the pillows on the bed, and from the chaise in the opposite corner of the room, have been gathered in a clumsy pile. The dogs have already assumed their positions against the footer.
Pedro shucks off his undershirt, and crawls into the makeshift nest. With pillows to support his often-fragile back, he reclines against the wall corner. Pats the mattress.
"You can't lay down," he warns, as you shift onto the bed. "The doctor was really particular about that."
"Sitting up," you echo. Although, at this point, you'd crash standing up if it meant you could finally fucking sleep.
Pedro splays his legs. "Come here."
Carefully, one-handed, you maneuver yourself according to his gesturing. Settling, back-to-chest, against him; legs between his legs. Propped up like a rag doll. As if on autopilot, Pedro's arm comes up to wrap across your stomach.
"This can't possibly be comfortable for you," you protest.
His lips brush your temple. "I promise." His grip tightens; you are a human teddy bear, which feels appropriate, since your brain is full of stuffing.
Each rise and fall of Pedro's chest presses warmly against you. There is nothing to wake up for tomorrow, no alarm to set— you'd cancelled your Sunday Brunch plans sometime between the IV and the x-ray.
"Hey." You loll your head against his shoulder. Can't meet his eyes, from this angle, but in the darkness of the bedroom, it doesn't really matter.
"Hey."
Your fingers lace with his, where they clutch around your side. "I love you."
"Mm." His chin hooks over the top of your head. "You have no idea, sweetheart."
#pedro pascal#pedro pascal imagine#pedro pascal one shot#pedro pascal rpf#pedro pascal x male reader#pedro pascal x reader#pedro pascal x you#pedro pascal fanfiction#pedro pascal fluff#the last of us#joel miller#joel miller x reader#din djarin#din djarin x reader
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Safe haven
Fandom: MCU
Pairing/starring: Natasha Romanoff & GN!reader
Word count: 1157
Content: PTSD, references to childhood trauma (abusive parent, violence, alcoholism), panic attack, there’s a sort of fluff too. Hurt/comfort.
A/N: “Coming back from their first mission, Reader has to deal with more than just the normal aftermath of the Avengers’ business.” This was kinda painful to write but also very cathartic. I hope you all find your Natasha if you haven’t already. Betaed by the lovely TanteFrutsel-CreativeNurse <3
Safe haven
You could already feel the anxiety stabbing at your heels as you hurried from the quinjet to your room. It had been a hard mission and things had gone wrong even though the overall trip had been a success.
Success.
It’s hard for you to think of it as that considering the destruction and violence you’ve not only witnessed but have helped dole out for the first time – sure, you know it came with the territory but apparently your training hasn’t prepared you fully for what it feels like to rip up in old wounds: one of the Hydra goons had had an uncanny resemblance to your so-called father. Although sober, the guy had been vicious, bearing down on you with...no, I won’t think about it. Not anymore.
As soon as you’re in your room, you strip out of the sweaty and dirty clothes, trying to ignore the flaky smudges that leave a reddish residue on your hands. Hands that are shaking. Angrily, you kick the clothes aside before turning to the bathroom, avoiding to look at the mirror image of a beat-up person with bags under the eyes.
The others had slept in the quinjet on the way home but whenever you closed your eyes, you saw Him. Maybe it’s the Hydra agent...maybe it’s the man who should have provided you a safe childhood but didn’t.
It’s not my fault, you chant silently as you turn on the water in your shower.
Not waiting for the spray to heat, goosebumps spread at the splash of cold along your skin that’s littered with tiny cuts and bumps. Well, some bigger than others. Absentmindedly, you poke at one of the welts along your side only to wince at the stinging pain from an underlying bent rib. You’ve had worse.
Eventually, the water changes, becoming scalding hot and you allow it to flow over you as you actively begin to scrub away the rest of the sweat, grime, and blood. Down the drain it goes, together with the last bit of restraint apparently, because you realize that you’re crying. Not full blown sobs but the silent constant dribble of tears that mix with the soap, making it sting a tiny bit in the abrasion on your cheek. You wipe at them angrily, barely managing to stop them.
Methodically, you finish washing and then drying, rubbing yourself raw with the towel while relishing the stinging pain. You think you’re doing quite well right until the moment where you open the closet and the darkness there throws you right back "home", sitting in your hiding spot and fearing the nights where your drunk father would get back, looking for someone to take his anger out on.
At that instant there’s a loud banging on the door that makes your heart rate quadruple.
“[Y/N]?” the voice is warped by memories that come surging.
The air sticks in your chest as if turned to molasses: thick, heavy, and difficult to expel or replenish, forcing you to breathe in laboured heaves. You’re vaguely aware of how tightly you cling to the nobs on the closet doors like a lifeline but it’s still not enough to keep you upright and next moment your legs give way. Landing hard on your knees, you don’t even register the pain it must have caused.
And there’s that knocking again. Insistent. Threatening even.
Scrambling, you crawl on all fours in between the hanging clothes, not caring about the shoes and boots beneath you. You know logically that there’s no danger and that instead this is one of your friends...but it’s as though your calm reasoning has been shoved into a little box in the corner of your brain where it’s held hostage by your panic. Fingers claw desperately at the edges of the doors, pulling them shut just as someone calls your name again.
Much closer.
Too close.
They’re in the room with you but you can’t quiet your breath enough to remain hidden and so the closet is opened once more, letting in the light to disband the darkness that had enveloped you like a soothing shroud. Blinking, you look up expecting to see your fathers face but to your surprise you see delicate features framed by fiery hair. Natasha.
“[Y/N]...honey...”
She doesn’t say anything else, just sits down on the floor outside your refuge and holds out a hand for you to take if you want to. You try to focus on the gentle gesture, the outstretched arm that waits patiently for you to make the first move.
“It’s alright...you’re safe now,” Nat coos at you.
How can she possibly mean that? But you find no sign of anger or disappointment in her voice. “I’m sorry,” you whimper nonetheless, eyes glued to her hand.
“It’s okay.”
She wiggles her fingers as if it could tempt you to grasp them...and it kinda does.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, alright?”
It sounds so simple the way she says it and you see your hand reach out for hers, gingerly settling in her light grasp. Years of therapy and it’s never sounded so true, so sincere, before but even so there’s a huge chunk of your heart that is horrified of someone witnessing your breakdown.
As if on cue, spurred on by this new concern, the molasses in your lungs turns to concrete and your throat constricts. The world begins to grow fuzzy at the edges and Natasha’s voice comes from far away as she calls for you to breathe, to focus on her which is an impossible task.
Natasha says something which you can’t pick up on before strong arms pull you out of your safe spot. But they don’t bring pain this time – instead they begin to stroke your back while she chants something. It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s the rhythm of it that helps you force a bit of air in and out of your lungs. Not much, but it’s better than nothing and you can now hear her praise you for what you’re doing.
“That’s it, honey. Focus on the exhalation...slow and steady.”
You follow her guidance and breath after breath it gets easier and your logical thinking is gently unboxed until you are on the way to an exhausted calmness.
Slowly taking in your surroundings, you realize that you’re sitting butt-naked in Natasha’s lap. But she just cradles you in her arms as if it was the most normal thing.
Heat rises to your cheeks and your breathing picks up once more but Natasha will have nothing of it: “It’s okay, you have nothing to worry about, honey.” She looks you in your eyes for the first time, the grey full of understanding and pain that you never before realized was there. “You’ll be okay. I swear.”
And you believe her, allowing her to pull you closer to her chest to nuzzle in and drift away for a bit.
#natasha romanoff#natalia romanova#black widow#Natasha x you#natasha x reader#Natasha romanoff x you#natasha romanoff x reader#x reader#x you#x gn!reader#gender neutral reader#hurt/comfort#natasha angst#natasha hurt/comfort#natasha feels
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Missing Piece (Part Eleven) (NSFW)
Series Index | Masterlist
Summary: Cassian and Nesta are happily mated and in love, so why do they feel like something is missing? When a newcomer arrives in the City of Starlight, they learn that their bond is not yet complete.
Pairing: Cassian x Nesta x Reader (She/Her) (Poly Relationship)
Word Count: 2.7k
Warnings: smut at the end of the chapter, discussion of death
A/N: I apologize for the delay in getting this published and appreciate your patience. To make up for it, I’m planning on posting the next part within 48 hours.
⊱ —————— ❈ —————— ⊰
I sat in the bathtub until the water ran cold, scrubbing my skin so raw that it stung, desperate to be sure all traces of the male I killed were rinsed away. This was far from my first time being covered in blood, but it certainly felt different knowing I was the one who drew it. When I was too cold and tired to sit in the water any longer, I got out, stifling a groan as my sore muscles protested. I tied my hair back into a loose braid, careful not to tug on the stitches at my temple, and donned the nightgown Nesta had left for me. As she predicted, it was too long for my frame, but fit well enough to be decent. When I was ready, I took a deep breath before stepping out of the bathing room, acutely aware that this was not how I had imagined seeing Cassian and Nesta’s bedroom for the first time.
The two of them stood when I entered, both rushing over like I was a newborn foal not sure on its feet. Despite all that had happened, the care they displayed made my heart squeeze in my chest. “We have food,” Nesta explained as Cassian took my elbow, gently guiding me to the edge of their bed. The mattress was larger than any I had ever seen, likely built to accommodate one or more sets of wings, and I couldn’t help but think it would do quite nicely fitting the three of us. Once I was settled in bed, a tray with steamed vegetables and bread was placed on my lap. Nesta crawled onto the bed, sitting at my left side while Cassian took a seat on the edge, watching me intently, his trademark humor gone from his eyes.
“I’m okay,” I felt the need to say, taking a tentative bite of the food. In truth, I wasn’t the least bit hungry, but I figured a few bites would make the protective pair feel better.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” Cassian said, eyebrows pinched together. “Nothing about what happened tonight is okay. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, for all of it.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I replied, forcing a small smile that was meant to be reassuring. “If anything it was mine… I didn’t check the peephole and I walked home alo—”
“Don’t say that,” said Cassian, “this was definitely not your fault.”
“It was that damned male’s fault, and Amarantha’s, not yours though,” Nesta added, “never yours.”
We sat in silence for several breaths as I thought of what to say next. I debated pushing down my feelings, locking the memory away, and asking them not to mention it, but the residual terror and heavy guilt that was weighing on me demanded to be felt. “I’ve never killed anyone before,” I whispered, looking down into my lap.
“You defended yourself,” Nesta replied, placing a gentle hand on my knee. “He killed himself when he attacked you. You did well.”
“I didn’t even try to save him though,” I argued, my heart rate beginning to rise once more as I flashed back to that moment, hours before when I sat frozen while he bled out before my eyes. “I didn’t—” a sob cut me off midsentence, the emotions I’d been suppressing returning in full force.
The tray disappeared from my lap and I was soon being pulled into a set of strong arms. Cassian hugged me, whispering soothing words as my cries turned into wails. Nesta had scooted closer to me on the bed, and I could feel her rubbing circles into my back as I wept. For how long we sat there, I wasn’t sure, but when my sobs finally ceased, turning into whines and sniffles, I was exhausted. “Do you want us to go?” Nesta asked when I had caught my breath. I shook my head furiously, grasping at Cassian’s shirt. I felt like I was at the edge of an abyss and they were the only thing keeping me from falling in headfirst.
Cassian nodded, shifting me with surprising ease until I was laying down in between the two of them. He stood, moving to extinguish the faelights while Nests slipped under the covers at my side. I turned towards her and she cupped my face with her hand, running her thumb across my cheekbone in gentle strokes. “I’m so sorry this happened,” she whispered, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“You’re here now,” I replied, leaning into her touch, “that’s what matters.”
“I was so, so scared,” she said, her grey eyes filling with tears, “when I smelled the blood. I was terrified that I might lose you before I even had you.” I swallowed thickly, reaching out to intertwine my hand with hers. Behind me, Cassian slid into bed wordlessly.
“Nothing like that is ever going to happen again,” Cassian said. “I won’t ever let you get hurt again, I swear it.”
“We swear it,” Nesta added, sounding resolute, and I felt the bond between us sing with the intensity of their promise. In a moment of boldness driven by pure emotion, I leaned forward, pressing a chaste kiss to her lips. Then I turned around to face Cassian and did the same, running my hand along his stubbled jawline as I did. Kissing Cassian felt far different than kissing Nesta, but it filled me with the same glowing warmth, soothing my aching heart as I did. Cassian was smiling when I pulled away, turning back towards Nesta so as not to put pressure on my sore ribs. He snuggled into bed behind me, resting an arm around my waist. “Is this okay?” he asked, voice low and rough.
“It’s perfect,” I whispered, settling into my mates’ embrace.
⊱ —————— ❈ —————— ⊰
Madja left strict instructions that I was not to return to work until she cleared me, so I spent the days following the incident in the House of Wind with Cassian and Nesta. I spent much of that time in bed, resting my sore muscles and conserving energy so that my body would heal. Cassian or Nesta remained at my side at all times, and each night, we went to sleep together, with the two of them tucked against me on either side. The feeling of their warmth cocooning me was familiar, and it wasn’t until the second night that I realized I had experienced this before, in the dreams I had before I met them. Unlike in the dreams, though, I didn’t wake up in an empty bed, feeling like a piece of my soul was hollowed out. Instead, I was awoken each morning by one or both of my mates stirring, their gentle hands running along my back and through my hair, calling me from sleep. It was blissful to be so near to them, the contentment I felt when I was wrapped up between them was so deep it was nearly hypnotizing.
As the days passed and my body healed, I began to think about returning to my apartment. The thought made me shudder, but I didn’t want to outstay my welcome. We hadn’t discussed officially moving in together, only dancing around the subject from time to time, and I wanted to be sure they were certain about it before I made the House of Wind my home. Despite this, the thought of returning to that apartment made my stomach turn.
I pictured trying to sleep there alone with the blood-soaked floorboards and boarded-up window reminding me of what I had done. Imagining it made me feel cold all over, goose flesh appearing on my arms. I was thinking about it when Cassian walked out of the bathing room on the third day, and he seemed to pick up on my mood right away. “What’s wrong?” he asked, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. It was quite the sight: a big, strong warrior, one of the best that ever lived, his face soft with kindness and concern. My heart fluttered in my chest.
“Just—”, I almost told him but bit my tongue. I didn’t want to pressure them into inviting me to stay.
“What is it, sweetheart?” Cassian prompted his large hand encircling one of mine.
“I was just thinking about what happened,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Thinking about all the nice things you did to fix up my apartment, and now…” My throat constricted and I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“We’ll bring those things here,” Cassian said, squeezing my hand. “Or get you all new things, if you want.”
“Here?” I asked, avoiding his gaze.
“Or… if you’d prefer, we could get you a new apartment,” he didn’t seem enthused by the idea, something like disappointment seeping into his tone. “You don’t have to go back there. Ever again, if you don’t want to.”
“Do you— do you and Nesta want me to get a new apartment?” I asked, emboldened by Cassian’s sincerity.
“We…,” he hesitated, “we want…”
“We want you to move in here,” Nesta’s voice startled me, and I looked up to see her standing in the doorway. As usual, her silver eyes bored into mine, as though she was peering into my soul. I felt the bond between the three of us go taught. “But, that’s your decision to make.”
“You want me here?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“Are we sure?” Nesta scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Of course, we want you here. If it were up to us we’d never leave your side again.”
“But we don’t want to pressure you,” Cassian added hastily.
“I want to go back to my apartment,” I said without thinking. Cassian and Nesta froze, exchanging a look reminiscent of heartbreak, and I rushed to clarify. “To see it one more time, before I move in here.”
Cassian’s face stretched into a wide grin and Nesta smiled and her expression was tender. They blew out a breath, perfectly in sync with one another, and the tension in the air dissolved. Before I could say more, Nesta was on me, her arms thrown around my neck as she all but tackled me onto the bed. I winced, my ribs smarting slightly, but leaned into her touch all the same, my body melting into hers. She pulled back, cradling my face between two soft hands, and pressed her lips to mine in a passionate kiss. I nibbled at her lower lips, my hands settling on either side of her hips, but just as I was about to go further, she pulled back. “Shit, your ribs. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” I said, blushing and breathless. To our side, Cassian chuckled lowly, his scent cedar smoke and fresh rain, had shifted slightly, a note of heady musk now faint in the air. Lust. Any nerves I had were flushed out by desire, and I squeezed my thighs together, moving once more toward Nesta. She stopped my advances with one hand on my chest, her touch scorching my skin through my thin nightgown. Her cheeks were tinged pink and her pupils were blown wide, drifting down to the swell of my breasts and then back up to my face.
“A few more days,” she whispered. “We need you in full health for what we have planned.”
⊱ —————— ❈ —————— ⊰
‼️ Explicit Sexual Content - Minors Do Not Interact ‼️
Sleeping next to my mates for the next two nights was divine torment. Now that I was feeling better and all was right between the three of us, the lid we had on our physical attraction had been blown wide open. At night, my skin seemed to tingle beneath their touch and it was all I could do not to beg them to move forward with their plans. The feeling of Nesta’s soft curves pressed against my front, her silken legs tangling with mine as we slept was enough to make me ache with need. Likewise, Cassian’s hard body pressed against my spine, and the occasional brush of something stiff against my ass had moisture pooling between my thighs.
Sinful thoughts kept me awake, tormenting me with temptation that wouldn’t yield. Nesta’s slumbering form was particularly close to mine, and I pictured throwing my leg over her waist and grinding against her. I thought of how her nipples would harden, pebbling beneath her silk nightgown, and what it might feel like to slip the fabric over her head while Cassian ground his hips against me from behind. I imagined what it might feel like for him to hike up my nightgown and press into my cunt while Nesta—
My fantasy was interrupted by the star of the show himself, and I held my breath as I felt him stir behind me. He moved closer, resting his chin on my shoulder so he could whisper in my ear, “Did you have a good dream, my love?” he breathed out, the warm air on my neck sending shivers up my spine. The hand resting on my stomach moved slightly lower and pulled me backward, pressing my body flush against his. I felt his length twitch against my ass and let out a quiet moan. “Need some help?” he asked and I didn’t have to look at him to know he was grinning.
I was so distracted by Cassian’s roaming hand that I didn’t notice Nesta awaken until her hand was settling on the curve of my waist. “You smell divine,” she whispered, placing an open mouth kiss on the hollow of my throat, “and needy.”
“Should we give her some relief, Nes?” Cassian asked, nibbling at my ear lobe. I whimpered and Nesta let out a cruel, breathy chuckle.
“I don’t know,” Nesta whispered, her eyes not leaving my face, “has she been a good girl?” She lifted her knee slightly and grazed my sex, applying the slightest bit of pressure and then pulling back before I could buck my hips for more friction.
“I think,” Cassian said, his hand slipping lower until it rested mere centimeters from where I wanted it, “she’s been a very good girl.” His hand pressed between my thighs, rubbing through fabric, and I gasped.
As Cassian’s hand drifted lower, sliding under the hem of my nightgown at an excruciatingly slow pace, Nesta’s hands slide higher, cupping my breasts. At the same time, Cassian’s hand reached my cunt, and Nesta’s brushed over my nipple. I arched my back, moaning as Cassian’s fingers slid across my slit, dancing over my clit in teasing strokes. Nesta kissed me then, deep and more passionately than ever before. Her tongue probed against my lips in time with the movement of Cassian’s fingers, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before they had me undone.
Indeed, moments later Cassian dipped a single, thick finger inside my core, his palm grinding against my clit and sending me over the edge. I released a breathless yelp that should have been embarrassing, but my climax was so intense I didn’t care. My legs shook and my toes pointed as I squeezed my thighs together around Cassian’s hand. Nesta kissed me deeper and I felt Cassian’s mouth nip at the base of my neck. In the end, I was panting as I relax between the two of them, feeling utterly boneless and blissed out. Nesta giggled affectionately, running her fingers through my hair, and Cassian’s rough hand slid down my thigh, massaging the still-tense muscles. “There,” Nesta murmured, “now you can sleep.”
“What about you two?” I asked, my eyes already drooping. I was always the type to get sleepy after sex, but the contentment I felt then was like a sleeping draught.
“Don’t worry about us, love,” Cassian replied, the rumble of his deep voice reverberating through me.
“I want more,” I whined, my eyes already falling shut. I wanted to fight it, to demand we continue what we started and go back to chasing heaven with the two of them, but I’d never been more comfortable in my life.
Cassian chuckled and Nesta pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Soon, my love,” she whispered. “There’s plenty more where that came from.” I drifted off shortly after that, into a deep, dreamless sleep.
⊱ —————— ❈ —————— ⊰
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#Cassian x Reader#Cassian x You#Cassian Fanfic#Cassian Fanfiction#Cassian#Cassian ACOTAR#ACOTAR Cassian#Cassian Imagine#ACOTAR x Reader#ACOTAR x You#ACOTAR Fanfic#ACOTAR Fanfiction#ACOTAR#ACOTAR Imagine#my stuff#ff#nesta x reader#nessian x reader#poly!nessian#nessian#nessian fanfiction
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hey!! i hope ur doing good<3!
can u please write manzini fluff or just general headcanons w/ a reader who has a emo/punk style? if he'd try on anything or shop w/ reader, just stuff like that!
enjoy ur night/day💜💜
"Stop complaining mister, you said that if i won in the race i could do your make-up so hush" You snap at your boyfriend whose wiggling in your make-up chair.
"Yeah i didn't expect you to go all out you know, just thought you would do my make-up not make me a whole new person" He groans looking at the mirror the dreads that are clipped back pulling on some of the little baby hairs.
You put some light conclear under his eyes to make the eyeliner you smudge around his eyes really pop. "Now Kristoffer i need you to stay SUPER still so i dont stab your eye cause im bout to tight line it mmk"? you say holding his face in a death grip his cheeks pushing together making his lips smush.
"O-okay" he mutters i little terrafide that your are putting a pencil near his eye but non the less he lets you continue. "I trust you" he says as he watches the pencil get closer to his eye "Are you sure the grip you have on the armchair right now would tell me other wise" you giggle softly before pulling his lower eyelid down and gentaly running the pencil over it.
After you finish that up you quickly apply some mascara pulling the eye make-up together. You step back adimering you work before grabbing some highliter and lightly dusting it over his cheekbones and nose to give him that sorta Edward Cullen look.
"We done" he smiles desprately wanting this to be over "no not yet" you run to the bathroom and grab some black hairspray temporary dye. "YOUR NOT DYEING MY HAIR BLACK" Kristoffer jumps from the chair holding his hair as if it would fall out if you got the can anywhere near his hair.
"Its only temporay it will wash out in like 2 washes if you scrub hard enough" You say rolling your eyes sarcasticly while shaking up the tube. You hear a groan before the chair sqeaks as kristoffer sits back down he eyebrows scrunched hands clamped togther.
"You'll be fine kæreste (sweetheart in danish i did you google translate tho sorry)" you grab a row of dreads a spray over them the black washing over them completely before you move onto the next row. You made sure to do all the visible dreads first just in case there wasn't enough spray to cover them all and your glad you did as the can could only cover like 90% of the dreads.
"Hair all done what do you think babe" You spin his chair to face the mirror like they did at the salon. Kristoffer's eyes which had been shut tight slowly opening them squinting in the mirror before opening them completely taking in the whole affect.
"Wow babe, didnt think i would look this great with spray dye black hair gosh" he says with fake shock. You smack him lightly over his head rolling your eyes again at his antics. You move towards the closet to grab some clothes of his that could kinda match the look you were going for.
Only finding a black baggy shirt you were NOT happy you rummage through your draws and find a back singlet with some graffic design on it. You chuck it over your shoulder "Put this on" you say to Kristoffer "Wait i have to dress as well" he sighs but goes along with it "of course you have to dress up dont be ridiculous" you say leaning on your hip sassy chucking a pair of your black yoga pants that would stretch comfortably over his waist.
"Pants as well" he groans grabbing the pants you chucked at him before gripping the bottom of his shirt pulling it over his head gasping when he sees some black residue on the neckline of his grey shirt "Ah there spray on my shirt" "It'll wash out" you laugh grabbing it and putting it inside of the washing basket.
You turn back around and see a struggling Kristoffer his arms in an uncomfortable position bent at a weird angle with the shirt bunched up at his collar bone "Help" he says. You giggle before rushing to help him get unstuck.
Straightening the shirt once you fixed it you move a couple of his braid around to make them look nice and neat before turning around so he could remove his pants while also grabbing a couple of your studded belts, necklaces and bracelets with vibrant colours.
"The yoga pants are doing wonders for your ass babe" you laugh when you turn around "my ass always looks great thank you very much" he says snapping his fingers making you laugh even harder "really getting into character now, well put these on" you say showing him the assortment of accessory's you placed on the bed in there respective groups.
"Ooooo" Kristoffer says grabbing the colourful accessories and putting them on " How do i look" he smiles brightly showing off his outfit doing a quick 360 of it all "very snazzy" you giggle.
With the outfit you are currently wearing and Kristoffers new outfit you decide you need to do a cute little photo shoot. You drag you boyfriend over to you decorated wall and make him do some poses before you get dragged to go some selfies with him, laughing your asses off while snapping photos.
A week later Kristoffer comes back to your house running up to your room after your parents said that you were in the shower and you would be a couple minutes longer. He closes the door behind him and takes in the room's decor noticing something was a little off. His eyes leading over to your photo wall his eyes focusing on some of the new photos. A couple of your friends at some concert and some random ones of pets and then seeing a few of the pictures you two took together his eyes softening running his finger over the picture smiling softly.
Hope you enjoyed please do leave requests of anybody you would like i can even be people i haven't written before i am trying to get back into writing.
Taglist: @oppopotamus@violentnewmarley@saumspam@adissonsss
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NETDIR://URBANDICTIONARY.WEB, a kerry eurodyne / V ficlet (1000~ words, rated E, humor & smut)
V swipes a hand across the fogged bathroom mirror. His chrome palms squeak against the glass, squeegeeing off a section that he can see his reflection in— freshly showered, a little ruddy from the residual heat and harsh scrubbing where his brown skin peeks through his blackout geometric tattoos. Even the worst gigs could be showered away with the combination of ten-in-one soap, shampoo and motor oil.
And he wants to look good. He’s got a date— a date, honest-to-God, not burritos at Caliente’s or a marathon of reality TV at the Villa, but a dinner at some expensive ‘ganic restaurant that Kerry invited him to. V combs his fingers back through his damp hair from root to tip, that bright green mullet, peers at himself in the mirror. He turns his head, side to side, rubs his fingers across the stubble on his jaw. Maybe he should shave. He shifts, lifts up an arm, flexes a little. Maybe he should jerk off.
V turns in the mirror. He looks good, maybe even good enough for Kerry Eurodyne. And he’s not posing, because that’s stupid, even in the solitary safety of his Megabuilding bathroom, but he may be flexing a little, watching the way the muscles in his arms jump, the way the gunmetal tendons attached to his gorilla fists bulge a little and the plates of his chrome arms threaten to separate underneath.
“Hey Kerry. Hey, Ker,” his voice pitches a little, tries on a few different purrs, lets himself taste the way Kerry’s name feels in his mouth. “Kerry, baby, how’s it going?”
He’s going to crush this date. Fuckin’ kill it. He slicks his hair back a different way, tilts his hips and grins in the bright bathroom lighting. “Y’look good tonight, Ker.” Number one Solo, number one date. There’s no way he can lose. He’s got this. He leans forward, raking his eyes over himself. Mutters, “call me NetWatch the way I’m gonna go through your Blackwall—”
“Call me NetWatch,” Johnny repeats, stressing each word, “the way I’m gonna go through your Blackwall?”
“God damnit, Johnny!”
V nearly jumps out of his skin, whipping his head around to glare at the engram. Looking thoroughly unimpressed, he slouches a foot away on top of the closed toilet, his aviators having slid down his nose just enough to really let V see how deeply, truly unenthused he is.
“I’m in the bathroom. Is nowhere fucking sacred?” V complains, turning back around to give Johnny the literal cold shoulder. “I didn’t ask for comments.”
Johnny ignores him. In the mirror’s reflection, he shifts where he sits, crossing his arms over his chest. “You think that’ll work? That’s a good line to you? A real panty wetter?”
“Okay, peanut gallery, you got anything better?”
“I mean, yeah, I can think of plenty of better lines then referring to— what, what the fuck is the Blackwall supposed to be in this hackneyed metaphor? Kerry’s asshole?” V rolls his eyes, though admittedly, he hadn’t exactly thought it through that far. Snidely, Johnny adds, “you’re not even a ‘runner.”
V glares at him through the reflection of the mirror. “I’ll workshop it, alright?”
Johnny groans, “Jesus Christ.”
——
The slap of skin-on-skin bounces off the walls of Kerry Eurodyne’s bathroom in tandem with his moans. V’s got one hand under Kerry’s thigh, lifting his leg up high enough that it’s nearly atop the counter as he fucks into him hard and fast. Kerry takes him so fucking well, looks gorgeous in front of the mirror, V’s white chrome hands indenting the skin where he grips him.
Kerry groans, catches V’s hungry gaze in the mirror’s reflection and bites his lip. He can feel him purposefully clench around his cock; it’s downright pornographic. V can’t help but moan.
“God damn, Ker,” he pants, presses his mouth against the back of his neck as he mindlessly thrusts. He licks a stripe up his neck, bites at skin salty with sweat. He moans, “feel so good—“
Kerry braces himself against the marble, his other hand moving to stroke his own cock. “C’mon, V,” his single-syllable name turns into multiple with each thrust jolting him; Kerry arches his back, groans, “fuck me, fuck.“
“Fuck, you feel so good—“ V groans, feels his orgasm build in his belly, nearly delirious with it, the burn in his abs and the way his balls tighten, “fuck, Kerry, say my name—“
“V, V—“
“Fuck, call me Netwatch the way I’m goin’ go through your asshole—”
Kerry stops. V’s hips stutter to a halt.
“What?”
“What?” Responds V.
“No, seriously,” Kerry’s flushed face, now pinched with utter confusion, stares at V through the mirror’s reflection; when V avoids his gaze, he tries to crane his neck back to catch his stare face-to-face, which is more successful than it should be. Rarely, V has hated Kerry’s steadfast yoga habit, but today is one of those days. “What the hell did you just say?”
He doesn’t even sound mad, just utterly perplexed.
“I, uh…” The words in V’s mouth have melted into molasses, sticky and unpleasant. “I… say? What did I say? I didn’t?”
He did. He fucking did. He knows what he said, and yet all he can do, in lieu of speaking, is gesture fumblingly with his hands, which he no longer knows what to do with. His dick’s still in Kerry. He’s vaguely bewildered with himself and his own place in the universe, and what sort of higher entity he must have angered to have fucked up so spectacularly.
Somewhere far away, and simultaneously much too close, V can hear Johnny cackle.
“You’re gonna netwatch my asshole?” Kerry asks with a kind of mild concern that makes V want to curl up and die, even if his eyes are kind. “That somethin’ the kids are saying nowadays?”
Forehead thunking against the back of Kerry’s neck to hide his face, V groans, “let the relic fucking take me now.”
#cp 2077#kerry eurodyne#johnny silverhand#cyberpunk 2077#silverVdyne#v cp2077#v is a deadly kleptopunk solo SECOND a fucking gonk dingus FIRST AND FOREMOST#nsft#stomping in a glass house#alright i put it under a cut. just in case
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alright alright okay so
this line kind of implies that sydney's rejection (to put it lightly. sydneys near-murder of him.) is enough reason for him to return to his home country. i wonder whats waiting for him there? maybe hes just got no where else to go now?
this line here...
...tells us that he emigrated to america, presumably with his family..? but then why would he go back to russia, if his family is all here? just to run away from everything that happened? does he know he's Fucked Up™
adding in at the last minute as i re-read this........... the use of the pet name "doll" feels very... well, what do you think of when you think of the words "russian" and "doll" in the same sentence? matryoshka dolls represent the cycle of life typically... eeee.... the cycle of life and death... see the tie back to sydney? and his 'death'? and rebirth? because you can stack and un-stack the dolls as much as you like? aghhhhhhhhhh!!!! am i overthinking this? probably. but the fact that you can even point out these little details in chnt just to me shows the level of effort put into the podcast in the first place
and lmao. 'wealthy family'. do all nepo babies in the chnt universe just choose to become little freaks? i mean, soren, jeddie to an extent, elijah...
("yeah i like shepherding sheep. but also the taste of their young.")
also too...
...assuming the salamander was actually elijah, which of course could just be a throwaway line to describe him, but also considering the vagueness in this whole spiel in which the main characters are presented as metaphorical or in a really vague and mystical sort of way... ???
(he likes collecting salamanders and also tearing their limbs off... see shepherding comparison above... hmmm...)
i also think its interesting that the agents are following the people classified as entities
hmmm... chthonic abilities being something traceable? something something fervour effect being the residual of this... idk...
also, dont even get me started on how elijahs (apparent) home province, arkhangelsk, literally translates to "archangel"... i guess if i were to get all poetic and pretentious about it, he's returning to... 'heaven'..? or he's descended from 'heaven' as an 'archangel' for syd or whatever... hmmm...
but idk. i just think its funny to imagine elijah on a plane. like this dirty blood stained weirdo freak in scrubs and a purple wizard cloak sitting at the window seat watching the clouds
#idk. hes such an interesting character to think about#im also gonna make a tag for these long rant rambling thingies i think#kfy stream of thoughts chnt super awesome cool tag#how sick is that?#chnt#camp here & there#camp here and there#ch&t#elijah volkov
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Just a little idea I had, and for the purpose of this fic, Dapper has arms
Squeaky
689 words
No warnings just fluff
"Dapper!"
I turned the knob for the faucet off, and the water dripped periodically, that was the only sound though.
No pitter patter of feet approaching.
Just the occasional vocalization of a villager or mob behind barriers in the other rooms.
"Dapper? Come on, you know we have to do this at some point."
I left the bathroom and walked through the small hallway and into the front room.
I checked all the places she could be hiding in there and elsewhere in the mansion. In with one of her animals, behind one of his machines even under he and his sister's beds.
No luck.
Until my ears caught the sound of particles from a potion being used and I looked up.
"Dapper, what the fudge, how'd you get up there?"
"Hiding."
She signed.
"That's why you're up there, how did you get up there?"
"Potion."
"Where'd you get an anti gravity potion?"
"Secret."
He smirked.
"Well it has to lose affect at some point, you can't hide forever, young man."
"I can try."
As he signed the final word, the amount of particles significantly diminished, and he started to fall from the ceiling. Of course I caught him. And he rolled his eyes.
"Nice try."
I said as I carried her towards the bathroom.
"Not fair."
She crossed her arms.
"I'm sorry that you have to be clean sometimes. Don't you want to look and smell nice when you meet the new eggs?"
"Don't care."
"I think you do."
He pouted as we finally made it to the bathroom.
I took off his crooked and stained tophat and set it on the edge of the sink beside, us took off his armor and put it on its stand against the wall, and placed him in the tub.
She put up less of a fight than I anticipated, but didn't uncross her arms.
The water was already turning a pale grey and we hadn't even done anything.
"Well try to make it no longer than it has to be."
"Stupid.
He finally started to uncross his arms.
"I know, it's not fair, but you'll feel so much better after this, trust me."
I put some body wash that was praised for using on babies' skin on a piece of cloth and started gently scrubbing.
And very slowly, almost three months worth of dirt and sweat and debris came off her skin.
He even started to relax into the water as I finished washing his tiny body and poured cups of water over his skin to make sure there was no more soap residue.
"You really needed this, little one, doesn't that feel better?"
He was still pouting, but gave a very small nod anyway, as I put shampoo in my hand.
I poured one final cup of water on her head, then picked him up and had him stand in front of the tub, and brought over a fluffy towel that was sitting next to her tophat.
I put the towel on his head and used it until it was deemed dry enough, then used it on his body, and then left him wrapped up in it afterwards.
He stood in front of the tub as the final bit of water went down the drain, wrapped up like a giant fluffy burrito, hair sticking up every which way.
I giggled, and she smiled, and I carried him to his bedroom.
"Aren't you glad we did that?"
"I guess."
She yawned.
"That took a lot out of you, didn't it?"
He nodded.
"Ready to get some sleep?"
"Sleepy."
So I put her on the bed and tucked her in tight.
"Stinky."
"Yeah, you were a little bit stinky, but that's okay."
"No."
"No?"
"You."
"I'm stinky?"
"Your turn."
"My turn to get clean?"
"Promised."
"You're right, I did say I needed one too, should I go do that now?"
She nodded matter of factly.
I booped his nose, and he booped mine.
"Goodnight Dapper, I love you, see you in the morning."
The lullaby sound machine faded as I reached the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and hung up my cloak.
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PROMPT #3: Temper
On one occasion shortly after her tenth birthday, he had labored over a forge stoked to extraordinarily brutal temperatures for bells on end, only to emerge in the evening with an immaculate crystalline lily and present it to her on bended knee.
"He forgot again," said Torben. "Didn't he."
Sigrid said nothing for a long while - a dangerous course of action with Torben, as he had a bad habit of imbuing her silences with unintended meanings. At length, at a loss for anything else to say, she muttered, "Hand me that," gesturing toward the scrub brush at his sandaled feet.
Torben scoffed in a manner that reminded her of the aunties at the bathhouse, though she knew better than to say as much to him. He did as he was told all the same, and she set herself to cleaning boot prints and residue off the front porch around where he sat. Sure enough, when next he spoke, it was with the wisdom of something he'd doubtless overheard from a gossiping adult. "I know it's the Grand Steward and all, but he could at least have hired someone to clean instead of making you do it. That's what all the families on your street do."
She swept a short bit of hair back behind her ear. "We couldn't find someone in time." She would know, as she'd been the one to make inquiries with everyone from Anshelm March to the palace with a cleaning bucket in hand.
Rather than offer her a rebuttal or broach a new line of argument, Torben reached into his pouch and withdrew a napkin folded over and over again into a triangle shape.
"What-" Despite herself, and despite knowing that it would make it that much harder to start back up again, she set down the brush and took up the parcel.
"Ommi's baklawa." She should have guessed, especially as her forefinger stuck to a bit of rosewater that had seeped through the heavy fabric. "She's been fretting for you all week - said it wasn't right you went without even a meal for your tenth birthday."
"I did have a meal," Sigrid mumbled.
"And did you cook it yourself?"
"No! There's a woman near my territory, Elza." Inwardly she chastised herself for using her given name, rather than Clematis - the mark of the sigil she'd recently inherited. Then again, the likelihood of Torben and Elza ever crossing paths was negligible at best. "I went down for a bit on my birthday, just to be alone for a bit. She was making a big pot of barley stew. I told her it was my birthday and she hollowed out a whole loaf of bread, poured a big scoop inside, and handed it all over to me." She laughed as Torben's nose wrinkled at the prospect of Undercity food. "It was delicious."
"Well," he said, begrudgingly, "if you liked it. It still isn't fair, though-"
"Sigrid?" her father shouted from the basement. "Who's there? Who are you talking to?"
"Dammit!" she whispered, then regretted it; her mother had never liked hearing her curse, and besides, neither of them had done anything wrong. "Just Torben," she called back.
"Tell him the silks his mother's been asking after are in the loft; I'll have them once I get a chance to look for them there."
Torben shrugged to indicate not needing the message to be relayed.
"Come bring me another pitcher of ice water, habibi, quick."
She stood at once - as did Torben, who jumped down from the topmost step in one go. "You need to come over for dinner by Lightsday, or else Ommi's going to think I'm not really checking in on you. You know how she gets. Just say the word and she'll make all your favorites."
"I'll let you know," she promised, and closed the front door with sharp finality. Begrudgingly, she set down the parcel of baklawa on the still-too-cluttered dining table and went to fetch distilled water halfway to freezing.
At first, Sigrid assumed that whatever her father had downed the previous evening had left him with a horrible headache: he was squinting, staggering and sweating worse than she'd ever seen him. Then she stepped down into the basement herself and immediately felt the urge to fan herself. It was brutally hot, worse than any summer in recent memory, and the forge raged with a flame she had not seen since their sojourn to Ananta territory the previous winter.
Her father did not drink the water she set down. Instead, he poured it all into a tall basin and conveyed a glowing shape inside it with his tongs. The object hissed and sizzled and the water at once boiled violently, only to simmer down within mere seconds.
"Perfect," he breathed, entirely to himself. "That's perfect, that's-" But as Sigrid turned to leave, he called, "Wait, Sigrid, wait!" He reached into the steaming liquid with his bare hands to retrieve the object within, larger than a child's head - and as he unearthed it for the first time, Sigrid could see the gemwork fashioned in the shape of-
A lily. A lily wrought from tempered blood-red garnet, set into a base of rose quartz sepals.
He had never spoken to her of her late mother's legacy, except to forbid her from visiting the Undercity. "No daughter of mine will consort with scum while I'm above the ground," he'd sworn - and thus did she often retreat to her territory when he did not come up from the basement forge for bells at a time. She did not even know how much he knew of the significance of the emblem she now held in her hands; his refusal of lilies at Khazabas' funeral had seemed a fervent enough disavowal at the time.
But there was a sadness in his eyes she had never seen from him before, and a sincerity in the set of his jaw that spoke at least halfway to his intentions. Before she could rush to embrace him, even in spite of the layers of sweat and grime caked over his flushed skin, he lowered himself: he bent down onto one knee and presented the lily to her, much as she'd seen adults present tokens to their chosen partners.
"Happy birthday, my love."
She accepted it gladly, if with some awkwardness - it was far heavier than any real flower she had ever held - and she was struck anew by a wave of embarrassment, even though it was merely the two of them together in their least presentable clothing. Even still, she summoned the courage to say, "Thank you, Papa. But-"
"But?"
"The Grand Steward will be here in just a few bells, and I still haven't-"
He cut off the rest of her words with a sweep of his great hand. "The bloody bastard is always late. Let me clear up down here, and then I'll help you with whatever's left."
She nodded, and smiled. "Thank you. Really."
He nodded to the lily cupped between her hands. "Go put that someplace safe."
Someplace safe. She spared a glance at the trapdoor in the corner of the basement - the one which eventually led to the wrought-iron gate - and, with another smile, retreated up to her room.
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[WIP] Pass the Broccoli (Sashea) - Dandee
AN: Hello! Dusting the cobwebs off my old wips, hope you like it! I started writing this like 4 years ago and come back to it sometimes. TW for blood &violent descriptions
Shea stands in the garage, hands in the pockets of her grey pant-suit. She gazes at the mess laid out in the middle of the floor, coming to nudge a mauled john’s shoulder with the tip of her Burberry lace up. His shoulder sags along the concrete, and falls back. Still fresh, somewhat.
She gives a long, heavy sigh. Picking up her briefcase, she steps over his beaten-in skull and makes her way to the laundry room.
Tchaikovsky drifts through the halls over the clattering of the dryer, little paws jumping up to greet Shea as she steps through the door. She gives Vanya a pat on the head and opens the dryer to take a quick peek.
Just Sasha’s gardening clothes. No blood, not that she can see anyway.
Vanya’s tail wags as he follows Shea into the house, his little nails pitter-pattering against the tile. Shea tosses her briefcase onto the breakfast table and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes.
On a Tuesday?
She braces herself against a chair and glances around the kitchen-- pristine as ever, aside from the pan in the sink filled with soap. The smell of Eggplant Parmesan fills the room, and Shea gives a short breath of a laugh.
Her favorite meal. Oh, it’s so fucking typical.
Running a hand over her sleek black ponytail, Shea heads toward the dining room— she stops, however, just shy of the doorway, and watches Sasha float about the table and angle the place settings to her personal brand of perfection. Shea folds her arms and leans against the arch.
Sasha’s perfect little ass wiggles with every move, her floral pencil skirt hugging her slender frame. From this angle it seems as if nothing’s wrong. To a blind eye Sasha would only seem like a perfect housewife, humming and setting the table with love and care, taking time to see that everything’s perfect before her darling wife comes home.
But Shea has no blind eye.
Aside from the macabre scene in the garage, Shea can always tell when her wife’s taken a job. She gets fidgety, obsessively precise and her hair-- normally a neat, platinum blonde finger wave-- always has a few curls out of place. Like a few screws come loose.
Which is pretty on brand.
Sasha shifts her gaze from the arrangement of red roses to a wine glass, lifting it to the light and inspecting it for smudges. Once it passes, she set it back down and moves to the placing of the plates. Then back to the linens, then to shining the golden cutlery with a cloth from her apron. She’s meticulous in her scrubbing, and when she seems satisfied enough, she drifts to the other end of the table. Shea can see the beginning of Sasha’s gaze coming up- and by now, after all these years, she’s learned good and well to move out of the way.
The knife flies across the room so quickly that Shea doesn’t even see it-- but the dull thud where it sticks out of the wall, inches from her face, leaves her unimpressed.
So does the little laugh that Sasha gives. She tries to cover her spook but Shea can see it all over her. Her frame buzzes with residual adrenaline, keyed up from the feet up.
“Darling-“ her fingers dance over her collarbone, “you startled me. You know better than to skulk like that.”
“Mmm.”
At that, Sasha does nothing but tilt her chin. Almost expectantly.
Shea’s tired. It’s been a long day and she’s not in the mood to play. She eyes the knife in the wall, runs a finger along the handle and pokes at it in vain. It’s jammed into the wood like a stovepipe.
Sasha’s heels clack slow off the tile. She comes to sidle up but not too close-- she’s doing that thing she does, when she thinks she might be in trouble. She gazes at the knife, too, and rests against the wall.
Shea catches another resentment, at the blue eyes coming into focus behind the knife. She’s trying it, she really is.
“Shea?”
Her eyes come into full focus.
“Mmhm?”
Sasha’s hair brushes the wall, a smile playing at her lips. Shea holds her gaze and there they are —in seemingly marital serenity, split by a golden knife. Shea’s not going win this one and she knows it. But she’s still Rightfully Upset and she’ll make it known.
Sasha doesn’t give a shit because she knows she’ll win.
“How was work?”
Shea shrugs and thumbs the handle one last time, pushing off the wall.
“Okay, I guess. No one died.”
Sasha smiles. It’s been an old joke between them, since they first partnered in the field. It’s an okay day, if no one died. It’s not right, but it’s okay.
In spite of herself, she reaches for Sasha, she comes to her with what seems like no conscious thought at all.
Shea pulls her in, hands smoothing down her sides. Sasha’s warm pressed against her, familiar and easy. Her shoulders rise with her slow drawn breath, and Shea claps a hand at her hip.
“Edwards retired.”
“Oh, no.” Sasha lays a palm over Shea’s chest, “Did you get a card?”
Shea nods, her tired gaze falling somewhere between them. “Yeah, I picked one up,” she says, “Signed it for you. Got her a giftcard to Applebees.”
Sasha hums. “I’m sure she loved that.” Her fingers play at the lapels of her blazer.
Shea gives a half chuckle, and nods. She looks down at her wife, who looks back at her, grinning. She looks tired, too.
This moment would have looked a lot different, years ago- a mess of tangled limbs and bruising kisses. Searching each other, feeling for gashes and wounds and breaks— clinging to one another with the desperation of a drowning man. In the beginning Shea saw most days as her last, and only prayed to God that she’d be the first one to go.
They’d been thrown on a case, two strangers living out of a Buick and dingy motels. They’d struck gold on a phone tap and busted The Bad Guys, putting four on lock and two in the ground. They came up quick, started catching the big-dog cases. Sasha began leaping from choppers while Shea secured the ground. Shea sat on scrapers and clipped grunts while Sasha went in below. They hopped from one place to another- traffickers in Laredo, narcos in Cuba. A cute little boat raid off the coast of Bahrain, Sasha throwing knives when they ran out of ammo. Sasha had dug a bullet out of Shea more than once.
Shea had carried Sasha out of Jersey when she’d nearly bled out. She’d been sure Sasha was dead, more than twice.
Five years in the field doesn’t seem like a lot— but dying hurts, folks. And almost dying hurts a lot more.
And love? Bad for business.
It didn’t take long for Caldwell to catch on. After two years partnered, the Bureau had discharged Sasha.
Sasha took the next year off. She painted and gardened while Shea gritted her teeth through partner after partner. They dropped like flies— Zamo went AWOL in Soviet Russia smack dab in the middle of a cult investigation, Chachki took a life sentence for picking up a part-time gig in North Korea. And that kid that went missing in Bermuda? She couldn’t remember his name, he’d only been on for a month- but he was from Azuza, she knew that. Got on a boat and never came back.
Hell, Hytes had lasted a little over a year— and up until a few months ago, Shea had really thought she’d make it. They paired well, and it was almost like running with Sasha again— but she just couldn’t keep her dick in her pants. She messed with one too many girls and boom- she found the wrong girl and got lit up like a Christmas tree in Miami, five in the chest and two in the neck, left in an alley like a goddamn modern renaissance piece. A crime of passion, they called it.
Shea had warned Hytes, she knew that family like the back of her hand. There’s a certain amount of tiptoeing when dealing with the mob, that’s how it’s always been. The Bureau had worked long and hard to stay in good graces with The Family, and Hytes almost fucked it all up— but in a true “eye for an eye” fashion, Hytes’ case closed early, the Matteo girl got off and the world kept turning.
It always did.
“If Alyssa’s out-“
Sasha brings her back. She cants a brow, running a finger over one of Shea’s buttons.
“-who’s running the prostitution ring?”
She can see Edwards now, lucky fuck- she’s probably doing high kicks down the aisles of the grocery store as they speak.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Sasha shrugs, pinching the button loose.
Shea tugs sharply at her hips. Sasha sucks in through her teeth and takes tight fistfulls of Shea’s shirt. She loosens her grip after a moment, eyes dark— and coming nose to nose, she lingers. She breathes soft against Shea’s lips, and her hips roll forward.
“I always wanted that one,” she whispers.
Shea can’t help the dull ache that starts in her belly. Her lips feather over Sasha’s.
“Sasha.”
“Yeah?”
Shea wills herself to her lips, rocking back on her heels when Sasha moves to graze over her cheek, her jaw, down her throat, to her neck- the softest of nips, in no pattern. Shea grips a hip tighter when she bites down.
“Sasha.” Her eyes fall shut and she’s quiet in her musings. When she returns to the present, however, her gaze lands back to the knife in the wall. She sighs.
“The garage?”
Ceasefire.
Shea, unmoving, catches Sasha’s gaze as she pulls back, coming up to meet her.
Sasha blinks, even and cool.
“What about it?”
Shea tilts her head, tries unclenching her jaw. Sasha lets go of her shirt, hands drifting to her forearms.
“We talked about this.”
At that, Sasha shifts her eyes. She shakes her head, “I didn’t have time-“
“You didn’t have time?” Shea catches her cheek, coaxing her back up to search her face. “How did you not have time?”
“I had to— think on my feet,” she says, curling her shoulders forward. She grips Shea’s arms but she still won’t look at her.
“What do you, okay-“ Shea stammers, her chest tightening, “how is that a thing? How is this any different—“
“Don’t you think I would be clean if I could?” Sasha cuts her off. She steps back.
“I don’t know.” Shea folds her arms.
“You know I would,” she says, and finally glares at her. “You know I would do everything I could to-“
“Do I?” Shea asks.
A bitter chuckle escapes, and Sasha shakes her head. “Don’t start.”
“No, no- I’m curious,” Shea’s getting warmer, and she shrugs her folded arms. “It’s been a while, babe, so how am I supposed to know anything anymore?”
“Jesus, Shea-“
“You know how I feel about this, we’ve been over this-“
“I know, I remember, I do-“
“-and you agreed. You agreed—“
“-but if you could just-“
“-that when we come home, we leave work. You told me, you promised me—“
“- I don’t know what you want me to say!”
Shea feels her forehead wrinkle when her brows shoot up. Sasha stands there, hands on her hips and eyes on the ceiling.
She shakes her head, “I mean, do you even want me to say anything?”
Shea closes her eyes and pinches at the bridge over nose. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not these days, what is and isn’t gaslighting- but Sasha rarely raises her voice.
#rpdr fanfiction#wip wednesday#shea coulee#sasha velour#sashea#lesbian au#crime au#fbi au#dandee#tw for blood and descriptions of violence#tw for descriptions of murder
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Derma-E Vitamin C Gentle Daily Cleansing Paste
Brand: Derma-E
Product Type: Cleanser
Price: $16.95 USD
Size: 4.0 fl oz
✔️Vegan ✔️Clean Ingredients ✔️Cruelty Free ✔️Sustainable Packaging
Star Ingredients:
Golden Turmeric, Echinacea: Antioxidants, brightening agents
Ancient Rice: Exfoliates
Beet Extract: Brightening agent
Kaolin Clay: Removes dirt, oil, and impurities
Texture: Exfoliating Paste
This is a pretty thick paste with small, exfoliating rice granules in it. It's a very gentle scrub and doubles as a mask.
Feel: Fresh
Your skin feels clean enough, but after swabbing with toner, I've noticed there's quite a bit of residue left behind.
Scent: 🌸
There's no added fragrance in this. All the ingredients are scent-neutral.
Results: So, a weird thing about this line of products is that they leave a little orange-ish, brownish stain above my lip. I have to be very careful about not getting any product up there - that seems to include the cleanser - to avoid that line of discoloration. I think it's due to the rooibos in this product line. The strange thing is that I only get this reaction above my lip.
After use, my skin feels fresh and clean. However, as stated above, after using toner, I noticed quite a bit of cleanser left behind. You can tell because the cleanser is peach colored, and I found a lot of peach on my cottonball after. So it's not the cleanest rinse.
The cool thing about this cleanser is that it can be used as a mask as well. Apply to dry skin, let it sit a couple minutes, then rinse clean.
I have noticed a general brightening of my skin. Like I've mentioned before, I have an age spot. I'd say it's about 50% less intense than it used to be. So it's an effective treatment line. I'm just not sure if it outweighs the drawbacks.
Comps: Coming in at the same price (17 USD) is Urban Veda Brightening Turmeric Radiance Facial Wash. Aveeno Positively Radiant Brightening Scrub is also about the same, and it's going to have more of an exfoliating effect like this cleansing paste does.
Urban Skin Rx Even Tone Gentle Gel Cleanser relies on Niacinamide and Azelaic Acid to brighten and even skin tone. At 16 USD, it's a good alternative to Vitamin C-based brightening formulas. Speaking of alternatives to Vitamin C, you may also want to check out Peach Slices Snail Rescue line. Snail mucin is an awesome multi-tasker, known for brightening and clarifying, among other things. And it's only 15 USD.
I've talked about Acure Brightening Cleansing Gel before. It's not the strongest brightener out there, but it's safe enough that you can use it twice a day without ill effect. And it only costs 11 USD, which is pretty good. The INKEY List also makes a Fulvic Acid Cleanser, which is more of a scrub, and is targeted for brightening. That's only 11.99 USD. The only thing I found that was cheaper than these is Pacifica Glow Baby Brightening Face Wash at 10 USD.
Do note that Pacifica has added fragrance in most of their products. And you may want to smell test Urban Veda and Acure before buying too.
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Carpet Cleaning Yorba Linda
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Camisado
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Word count: 32k
Fluff | Hurt/Comfort | Smut (not the aforementioned comfort)
Nightmares are never fun, but when Daryl catches you barrelling out of your house after one about the Claimers, he offers you something he didn’t think himself capable of - emotional support… and something else when he thinks you’re asleep. He goes on a run the next day, returning half-conscious and covered in blood, and the realization that your worst nightmare almost came true compels you to do something you didn’t think yourself possible of.
or
Camisado: an attack by night
In hindsight, this was probably something you should have expected.
Then again, the apocalypse and all its residual effects weren’t exactly expectable.
People prepped for doomsday - fully decked out bunkers in their basements, non-perishable food items lining the walls, bottles of water whose plastic was probably well past the expiration date - but nobody prepped for the toll the constant sight of walkers or the stench of death would take on your psyche.
You, well, you weren't ready for either.
The person you see in the mirror, you realize through bleary eyes, is you, caught between your body’s beg for sleep and your mind’s refusal to submit. The person you see is tired, deprived of a momentary mental peace, and searching for an escape from the four walls of your bedroom. The person you see, standing between your bathroom’s vanity and bathtub, needs the comfort of the night sky and the blinking stars you don’t know the names of. Turning on the sink, you run your shaking hands through the cold water, hoping to freeze them from their tremor.
You know where these reactions come from, even if they’ve dissolved into vague images and you can’t really remember. A pressure weighs down on your chest, a physical culmination of everything you’ve experienced, and you hate that its presence is a growing familiarity.
Another nightmare.
The sheen of perspiration from your sleep makes the pajama shirt you’re wearing stick stifling to your body, and you grasp haphazardly for your towel, wetting it and scrubbing underneath the fabric at what feels like layers of sweat. Shutting off the sink, you don’t bother another look at the mirror before hanging your towel back up, beelining towards your dresser in order to dig out a pair of socks to get out of this house.
Out.
Anywhere that isn’t here.
There’s an unease settled deep in your bones, it makes your fingers tremor on their own accord and your legs feel like styrofoam, but you push on, descending the stairs with an experienced silence. Lit only by moonlight, you put on your shoes and twist the doorknob, slipping into the night.
“Hey, what’re ya doin’ up?”
A whispered voice shocks you for a moment, and you immediately make a move for your knife which you’ve stupidly forgotten to grab, a panic thrumming through your veins before recognizing who it is, hearing Daryl’s unmistakable Southern accent when you peel away the darkness shielding his face.
On the porch just a few feet from you and smoking a cigarette - of course.
You immediately try to wipe your post-nightmare expression from your face - you couldn’t let him see you like this. Not when the sound of man could make tears prick at your eyes no matter how unfounded they were. Daryl’s not like them and you know it. But waking up from memories of them - of nightmares of them - make your whole body want to run at the slightest deeper voice.
“What? Are you my dad now? Giving me bedtimes?”
It’s not your intention to say something so rude - your mind isn’t running on enough sleep and you’re trying to rid the pressure in your chest like you're on a sinking ship armed with only a bucket. Your apology comes not long after, a stuttered rush as your legs become more sure underneath your own weight.
“Sorry- sorry Daryl I didn’t mean to- I just- “
He waves a dismissal, though he’s not used to how unsettled you seem, kicking up from his sit against one of the pillars he’s leaning on and stamping out the cigarette underneath the sole of his shoe. Something’s bothering you - he knew it the second you barrelled out of your front door, thin sheen of sweat exposed on a sliver of your bare shoulder catching the moonlight - and he loathes the protective instinct that sparks when it comes to you.
Daryl loathes the fact he wants to steal you away from whatever thoughts you’re having, that he wants to track down the catalyst of whatever’s making your cheeks hollow and your hands shake. He loathes that, in this moment, the light he’s only ever known as you has dimmed from your presence, and he loathes even more that he doesn’t know how to bring it back.
Useless.
He feels useless.
It used to scare him how much your happiness meant to him - how much his whole body and soul could warm from you - but he’s resigned himself to the fact that he, as stupid and emotionally-stunted as he is, has fallen victim to the most wholly consuming emotion he could have.
He’s never felt like this, like he’d just downed a heady mixture of love-filled liquor, but he feels it when he looks at you. As for what he thinks you think of him, sometimes Daryl’s not even sure you actually like him. Though, realistically, he knows you do, both of you much too addicted to the ebb and flow which has blossomed forth from a friendship he can’t pry himself away from. Anywhere he went, you went and anywhere you went, he followed. He’d protect you with his life and you’d had a few too many close calls trying to do the same for him.
The feeling swirling inside him, he’d realized long ago, is not infatuation like he had first thought - the influence of Merle making his initial reaction pin the blushing and fidgeting to simply desire - because infatuation doesn’t last months on end. He’s only ever known infatuation to be a firecracker, a quick loud explosion followed by an empty silence, but with you it’s like he’s lying in the sun, a constant buzz of warmth enveloping him.
An idiot, he supposes the name you’ve taken to call him fits quite well because he was an idiot to have ever believed that he could have outgrown that buzz. He can’t - doesn’t even really know if he wants to - and he’s been in the depths of a lovesickness that has taken root in him, only blossoming in affection time and time again.
“Where’re ya goin’, sunshine?”
You scoff at the nickname and Daryl’s heart murmurs when he hears a faint chuckle, the tension in your scrunched shoulders beginning to disappear. His voice is syrup, you notice, a warm blanket covering you on a cold night, though he sounds more like coarse salt. There’s always something in his voice that calms you - that makes you feel safe when you let yourself melt away in him - and you find it alarmingly easy how much you actually want to tell him and confide in him.
Hershel used to tell you to trust, and you did with him - do with Daryl to an almost consuming degree - but you don’t seem to have a good track record with the concept in general. Especially after all the experiences and losses which have stolen parts of you.
Maybe it’s time to let that history go.
“Just out. To the field. I need some fresh air. I feel like- like the walls of my room are gonna collapse in on me.”
It feels stupid, almost - makes you feel stupid - to vocalize your feelings. Something in you is telling you you’re overreacting, that you should just bolt back to your house and deal with the nightmare without bothering Daryl, but something else begs you to let him know you. More than he already does.
“Want some company?”
You’ve always tried to keep everything under control: learned everything you could about guns from Shane then eventually Rick, learned your fairly shoddy medical care from Hershel, Dr. S. and all the textbooks Alexandria had, forced your way onto hunts with Daryl when he became so much more likable without the influence of Merle and made him teach you how to fight. But you’re terrified of lacking - of a weakness.
In this world, weakness means death.
The strong claim the weak, sweetheart, a sneering voice from that night invades your thoughts, and the shake in your legs returns, your fists balling up at your sides. The sight of the dark forest sparks forward from your memory, and when you close them, the blood-covered car Daryl almost died beside and the man - Joe, his name seared into your brain - with the ripped carotid follows not long after.
You find yourself thinking that it’s your weakness which propels your nightmares, even if deep down you know your reactions are normal, and you hate the fact that you want to disappear into yourself - that you really do want to bolt back into your house and pretend Daryl didn’t run into you in the middle of whatever this is.
“No, I… I don’t want to bother you. Just go to sleep, man. Rick and everyone else probably want you on your A-game if you’re constantly out there.”
That’s an attempt, he’ll give you that, one that he might have fallen for if he wasn’t in that stupid protector mode you give him shit for, but it’s that which lets him catch the shake in your voice when you speak. He’s heard it before - when he first tried to talk to you after the prison fell and when you waited days after Grady Memorial to finally mourn the loss of everyone - and it’s not just something bothering you, he notices, that something is doing more than just bothering.
That nonchalance - the teasing that finds so much ease between the two of you - is a shield. He knows it is because he uses it too, but in his own way. More aggressive, he supposes. Regressing into the way everyone sees him.
Daryl growled and grumbled and swore because he hated that he’d sobbed every damn time into the crook of your shoulder. Still, he couldn’t deny the comfort that had blossomed forth when you’d accepted him - just let him ‘get it out of his system’ without deservedly calling him a douchebag afterwards - and replaced the shame he used to feel after crying. He’s not good with emotions, he knows that, but he wants to give what he feels with you to you.
“What makes ya think I ain’t on it now?”
So he tests the waters, a lilt of amusement in his voice that he hopes will put you at ease.
“Your impending lung cancer.”
It’s like a key fitting snug into the slot when a lopsided smile ghosts your face, a green light rushing confidence through him at that sign of comfort. Daryl’s been on his feet since he put out his cigarette, arms crossed over his chest like yours are over yours, and he takes a step forward, slow and tentative. He can read people, he knows he can, and that ability coupled with the familiarity of you helps him gage you underneath the dim moonlight.
“Look, ya want company or not? Y’ain’t never gon’ be a bother to me, anyways.”
There’s hesitation in your actions, your jaw tenses and he notices like a moth to a flame, but you can’t deny the tug your body experiences at his offer. Nibbling your lip, you weigh the pros and cons of accepting, staying rooted in place as he just stands and waits. Daryl works hard - you’d be an idiot if you thought otherwise - and he never seems to sleep enough, a dangerous combination considering his role in the community.
He had passed out once when you were all still at the prison, and Hershel recognized it as exhaustion the second Rick carried him into the little makeshift infirmary you and the old man set up. Your heart drops in your chest at the memory - you didn’t want his body in that shape again, let alone be the reason for it - but you can’t will your mouth to speak. Fuck, were you always this selfish?
Maybe it’s impatience that makes Daryl take another step towards you, then another, and he nears you until he’s barely casting a shadow over your body. You feel small as you look at him, broad chest and broad shoulders, but before you can speak - echo your statement about being an annoyance to him - he does, a quieter whisper that escapes not as rushed as before.
“I’m serious - let’s go.”
There’s an authority in his voice, a soft one that compels you to listen, and a smile breaks from your face that you don’t quite understand, brought forth by a warm feeling in your chest that you don’t understand either. It’s nice, you realize, to have someone as intimidating as Daryl want to take care of you - to make sure you’re okay - and you follow him wordlessly when he walks past you towards the field. He knows you better than anyone, and there’s no doubt in your mind that he’s the only person you would let anticipate your needs.
The field isn’t far, just a few houses down and just a few feet from the man-made lake. You’ve come out here before, a mental familiarity now tied to the solar panels that hide you from the people at watchpoint. Sometimes, if the weather was nice, you hung out with Judith and Carl as you made sure the kid could still read something other than those comic books you’d found for him. Daryl had caught the sight on many occasions. There was always something that lingered the whole day if he saw you with them, his brain allowing himself to indulge in the fantasy of a future with you, and selfishly, it feels too good for him to stop searching for you there.
The air feels fresh as you breathe it in - comforting - and if you tune out the groaning of the dead, the whole experience is almost idyllic, like a scene an artist captures in a painting. When you plop down on your back, uncaring of the grass tickling at the skin of your legs which poke out from skimpy night shorts, Daryl follows wordlessly, a grunt escaping his mouth because of his old man back that you always tease him for.
He’s always so silent, experienced footsteps marking his path, but the noise is oddly endearing. You like it. It breaks the image you have of how impenetrable he is, or maybe you like it because it reminds you that he’s here and he’s here with you. Maybe you like it because it reminds you that he’s here because he wants to be.
He’s never been here before, this little patch carved out in his brain as solely yours, and his heart is beating out of his chest at the realization you’re letting him be here, in this tiny space you find comfort in that he’s only ever admired from afar. It doesn’t help that you look breathtaking underneath the blinking stars, a soft moonlight casting shadows on your face that steals his ability to think, or that he can see the way the tension in your body erodes away with each passing second.
Though, the image of you, sweat covered and wide-eyed as you barrel out of your house, still claws at the back of his mind. What made you like that? He wants to know.
Closing your eyes, you instead try to stop thinking - try to drown the memories of your nightmares in deep breath after deep breath - and for a second, it works, the pressure in your chest lightening before the image of that fucking car begs you to snap from the darkness of your sight. Daryl’s not dead, you remind yourself, but your body breaks into goosebumps anyways, a shiver racketing through you. He’s not dead. You know that because he’s close enough to you that you can smell the weird amalgamation of motor oil, cigarette smoke and what you’re pretty sure is the forest that you’ve memorized as him.
With a sigh, he shucks off his vest, wearing one of those shirts you had helped him tear the sleeves off of underneath, black fabric accentuating the width of his shoulders when he kicks himself upright at your side. Almost tenderly, he drapes it over your body, the action of him doing it and the care that perpetuates his actions warming you more than the leather itself. When you look up at him, gaze flickered up by your surprise, he sees your wide eyes. He sees the panic in them before his cerulean connect with you, and he swears his heart breaks, spit collecting in his throat that he has to swallow down.
You should be a little embarrassed, you guess, when your body moves on its own accord and curls up underneath the makeshift blanket, but all you can think about is how he’s okay, how everyone from that night is. Grip tightening, you pull it up, stopping when it’s just at the bridge of your nose, and you take a deep breath, overwhelming yourself with him, and the nightmares become a haze, trapped behind a wall of buzz and blur that has become Daryl.
He watches you as you melt into the grass, the tension in your shoulders falling. A surge of satisfaction rackets through him, not dissimilar to the one he gets when you smile up at him, the curve of your lips so inviting it makes him want to crumble. Grunting, he lies back on the ground, forearm underneath his head as he watches the stars blink in the sky, trying his hardest not to get distracted by the soft sighs of comfort coming just next to him. There’s an all too familiar feeling pooling in his stomach when he sneaks a glance at the way you look underneath his vest, your legs tapering out of the hem and reminding him how much of your skin he’s never seen before.
It makes Daryl feel slimy, the way he’s thinking about you, and he closes his eyes, covering his forehead with the back of his right hand as he matches the pace of your breath to try and calm himself. He can hear you shuffle next to him and he peeks into his periphery, catching you swallow a lump in your throat and a pang of guilt punches hard into his abdomen as if reminding him of what exactly brought the two of you here in the first place.
“Y- you gon’ tell me what’s botherin’ ya? What’s givin’ ya nightmares?”
His stutter is barely perceptible, but you catch it, the vulnerability in it stark like white paint on a black canvas. It makes your heart quicken in your chest, your breath catching in your throat when you turn your head to the side and catch him staring back at you. Stoic, like you’ve always known him to be, but the way he raises an eyebrow in prompt for you is a magnetic pull, and you’re hopeless not to respond.
There are a lot of things about you that Daryl’s content not knowing - he’d never asked about your past though he’d memorized every detail of what you’ve told him before - but he pushes this one moment. He wants to be there for you, even if he’s a little more emotionally stunted than anyone else you could confide in, and he needs you to know that. He needs you to know that he can be that type of person for you.
Fuck, he would be anything you want him to be if it helped you feel okay again.
“How do you know they’re nightmares and not just a bad sleep schedule?”
He tears his gaze from you as he thinks of an answer, biting his lip in order to hold back a small smirk, and he fights the urge to reach out a hand and pull down your sleep shirt that’s ridden up from your shuffling.
“Ya think bad sleep schedules make you all sweaty an’ gross?”
You scrunch your nose and kick his foot in faux offense, a similarly insincere annoyance making him kick back, his boot thumping in a dull back and forth against yours.
“Are you gonna ‘dream theory’ my REM cycles?”
Shrugging his shoulders, Daryl hums in acknowledgment before he speaks, attempting to be nonchalant. He’s never done this before - comforting someone is something so foreign to him - but in this moment, there’s nothing he wants to do more. If he knows there’s some way he can help you, he’s damn sure going to try.
“Ain’t never gon’ let myself be a shrink, but if you wanna talk, you can talk to me. Don’t look like nobody else is around.”
A panic washes over him when the words leave his mouth - did that sound rude? Dismissive? Like he thought it was some chore? - and fuck, does he realize just how hopeless at this. Biting his lip, he sits up, the ground suddenly feeling too harsh on his back, and he pulls his knees up to his chest, folding his arms over as he holds his breath for rejection.
It never comes, though, his tone much too raw for you to think he’s anything other than sincere. You know he cares about you, you’re not blind, but if you knew even half of the true scale, you wouldn’t hesitate to bare your soul to him.
Daryl’s grown a lot since you first met him in Atlanta, the man who used to grumble and swear and only talk to his bigot brother having become a man who drapes their leather jacket over someone shivering from nightmares. Jesus, he even offers them emotional support.
If somebody had told you then that you would be that someone, you might have laughed to the point of tears.
“I’ll tell you, but you- you gotta promise not to judge me or anything.”
You’re joking - mostly joking - it’s obvious in the lilt of your voice, but shame washes through him all the same at that mostly part. He’s not the best person at this, he knows that - thanks the Dixon men for that - but he has to learn how to be good at this because you need someone who is. It’s selfish, he recognizes that fact, but despite how underqualified he is, he wants that person to be him.
“Scout’s honor.”
His tight-lipped smile and three finger salute make you laugh, the sight causing his chest to clench with longing as the moonlight catches shimmer in your eyes. You look beautiful like this, unguarded as you tell him how you ‘know he was never a boy scout’, and even if he had been, he would never have the heart to disagree.
“It’s, uh, do you remember the night you met up with us all after the prison? When- when those guys showed up?”
Guilt hits him like a truck when he thinks about how he had spent time with a group like that, and his stomach drops when he hears the fear in your voice. You feel so… small - sound so small - and your presence shrinks until you feel like a child again. Daryl’s not used to you being like this, the you he knows is usually so strong in all senses of the word, and he hates that he can’t control the flare of anger washing through him. Swallowing, he nods, clenching and unclenching his jaw as he tries to keep his composure.
“I can’t stop thinking about it. Just… just everything.”
Fuck, how the hell are you supposed to vocalize this when you’d spent so long trying to pretend it never happened? That this - this weakness - isn’t a part of you?
“Like how there was so much blood and you’d think I’d get used to it by now - like- like the violence, I guess - but I keep getting these… these images of- of-“
Slipping your hands from beneath his leather jacket, you thread your fingers through your hair, tugging slightly with shut eyes as you try to compose your thoughts. Take a deep breath, you tell yourself, and you know Daryl can hear the inhale shake through your throat, but he says nothing.
“What if Rick hadn’t killed him? What if- what if-“
Those feelings which are tied so closely with experiencing those nightmares - your throat closing up, chest tightening, hands shaking so damn bad you feel them tremor at your scalp - hit you all at once and you can’t even do anything about it. It’s humiliating, you think, white hot tears you try blinking down are gathering at the corners of your eyes, but despite wanting to reach out and hold you, he’s frozen in place.
He doesn’t know what to do, and watching you try so hard to hold yourself together makes Daryl want to shrivel up and die. He hates the way you sound - he’s never heard you so… defeated - but before he can say anything, you’re speaking again, the breaking of your voice feeling like torture to him.
“What if they had killed you, Daryl? What if they beat you to death on the side of that car?”
Oh, and there are the tears. You have broken faucets on your face apparently, and you try to wipe them away but they keep coming.
“What if- what if they actually- to Michonne? To me? To- to Carl? He’s just a kid and he was crying and the guy was- and we all- they were gonna-“
Another breath, just take another breath, and even though you do, it isn’t helping.
You’re not sure when, in your attempt to compose yourself, that you’ve sat up and pressed his balled up vest into your chest, but only when you feel a drop of water on your forearm do you realize you’ve stopped your useless attempt at wiping at your face. You must look pathetic, you’re probably going to wake up tomorrow with puffy red eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to care as you clutch the leather like a lifeline.
“I was so scared, Daryl. And I- I froze. I was so useless. I could have- I should have done more, What if they-“
Fuck, he can’t let you think like that.
He can’t just let you keep crying.
“Shut up.”
Did he just-
A ‘what?’ falls from your lips, his two words so blunt and ill-timed it almost makes you laugh, half a smile having already worked its way onto your lips. He clears his throat, shuffling the distance he needs to close before he’s just inches away from you.
Kneeling, he straightens his back, an intimidating figure illuminated by moonlight, but you find nothing except comfort in the shadow that covers him just below his eyebrows. He grabs your shoulders, arms extending slowly at first so you can turn him away if you want, and goosebumps alight when you feel his skin on yours. Daryl’s okay and he’s here, his touch tethering you back to reality.
“It ain’t worth thinkin’ about, ya hear me? An’ y’ain’t useless - you’re the furthest damn thing from it. You had a gun to your head that them bastards wouldn’t’a hesitated pullin’, an’ ya did what you could’a, y’hear me?"
With his left thumb, he brushes away a tear that escapes when you close your eyes, trying not to stare at the way your lips part and your head tilts to meet the palm of that hand. He wants to stay like this forever, just holding you, but instead he speaks again, his right one now lifting your chin in a silent plea for you to look up at him.
“You’re better’n all of ‘em, an’ ya gotta leave that shit in the past. It ain’t worth thinkin’ ‘bout what could’a happened ‘cause it ain’t gonna, alright? Everyone from that night’s sleepin’ jus’ in that house over there, an’ they’re fine. So are you. An’ so am I.”
Sniffling, you nod, blinking away the last of your tears before you meet his gaze, offering him a small smile after you take a deep breath. It feels like catharsis, letting yourself just have a good cry. Even if his comfort is heavy-handed, just him being here and cutting through your nightmare with his terribly logical words is enough to set your heart and lungs into a steady pace.
Daryl pulls his lips tight, one corner quirking upwards before he clears his throat and lies down on the empty grass, bracing his head with his palms once again before he tilts his head towards you, an eyebrow raised and a teasing smirk you’ve familiarized yourself with taking place of the quick quirk.
“Y’got ‘bout three neurons synapsin’ in that head of yours, and ya gotta conserve ‘em thinkin’ ‘bout things that matter right here right now, y’understand?”
You can’t help the noise you let out, it escaping as some amalgamation halfway between a snort and a scoff, and you hit him lightly in his ribs, his amused expression only widening. Though this isn’t where you expected this to go - truly, you'd stopped expecting things the second your body had given into the urge to follow him here - it’s inexplicably nice to be here with him.
Actually, no, it’s not inexplicable, you know why you feel all warm and fuzzy despite the fact that tracks of tears are drying on your face, and now more than ever, you want to relent and just confess.
There’s never been a point in your relationship with Daryl that you’ve ever doubted you’re one of his closest friends, but in this moment, as he smiles satisfied without an inch of judgement towards you, you feel a tug at your heart that makes you think you could be more.
It’s probably stupid - he’d probably do this for anyone because he’s just that good of a guy even if he doubts it sometimes - but you let yourself entertain the fact he’s here, so close that you can feel the heat of his skin radiate onto yours, and you bite your lip to keep from breaking into a dopey grin.
Sighing, you lie back down, draping the vest width wise over both your bodies before closing your eyes and letting fatigue wash over you. It’s not as warm as it once was, half of your body exposed to the night because, in an attempt to cover Daryl’s upper body, he’s taken a good portion of the leather. A cold breeze winds through the air racketing through you and causing you shiver, your body subconsciously curling into the only source of warmth as you attempt to dig your way underneath more of the makeshift blanket.
“I just- I care about you, y’know? If- if you’d’ve died, I would have…”
He takes a deep drag of your voice, his heartbeat stuttering when he feels your hair ghost the skin of his bicep, your knees digging lightly into his thighs, and he wants to wrap his arms around you, to pull you into him. You’re tired, he can tell by your steady, slowing breaths, but almost selfishly, his desire to have you so close to him - curled up to him like those nights on the road, like he makes you feel safe - begs him to stay rooted in place, to stay silent so you don’t suggest going back to your house.
Tentatively, as if you would disappear if he moved too quickly, he drags his vest off him and drapes it over you, relishing your small noises of protest as your hand pushes it back to him so the two of you can share it.
Even bone-tired, you’re still stubborn like he’s so familiar with. He rolls his eyes, covering himself only enough for your disagreements to fizzle out. Quite honestly, what Daryl has laying over him is barely enough to cover his pec, and his sneaking suspicion - and hope - that you’ve already surrendered yourself to a sleep is only confirmed when he notices how still you’ve gone.
Your face, he doesn’t need to see it to know what you look like. He’s seared it into his memory - the curve of your eyelids, the lack of tension made obvious by the lack of your furrowed brows or your clenched jaw - and a pang of longing returns to his chest.
He probably shouldn’t - no, Daryl knows he shouldn’t because it’ll just make that stupid pang fester - but he cranes his neck all the same, keeping his body as still as he can so he can just look at you, a wave of affection washing over him in a second. Would this be what you would look like if he’d wake up next to you? You always gave him shit for how grumpy he could be in the morning, but, God, if this was what he opens his eyes to, his leather jacket replaced by his gray blankets, he’d be sunshine and fucking rainbows all damn day.
It occurs to him much too late that he’s staring, and you must have felt his gaze on you because you realize that you’re physically closer to him than you’ve ever been before, your drowsiness having lowered your inhibitions. You should pull away, you don’t know what type of line you’ve just crossed by huddling up to him like he was some kind of fire. With how hot he feels in his skin, he very damn well could be, and your pause is like water on a grease fire, emboldening him
In a second, he turns to his side, one muscular arm draping over yours and to your upper back, pulling you lightly into his chest. He returns onto his back when you curl against him again, and he scoots downwards just enough so that your head now rests on his bicep. It’s softer than you thought it would be, the relaxed muscle of his left arm feeling like a much better pillow than the hard ground, and your hand squeezes it in thanks.
He’s so warm, his presence making you feel so protected that you think you could cry for a wholly different reason than the one you’d already cried for tonight. Your cheeks are probably coated in heat right now, but your mind is buzzing so peacefully that you can’t bring yourself to care, the heady scent of him dragging you into rest. It feels like hours have passed since you’d barreled out of your house, but at the same time, it feels like no time at all. God, when did you get so tired?
Daryl doesn’t try to hide his smile, you’re barely tethered to consciousness as you lull down to sleep curled up to him. Fuck, he could die now and he’d have little to no regrets because he can’t stop the happiness flowing through his veins . Plus, there’s nobody to tease his satisfaction or about the fact his pride is sky-rocketing which is a far cry from the quiet cheering he’d get from whoever took the night watch with him all those weeks on the road.
“Don’t worry ‘bout nothin’, alright? You’re gon’ be stuck wit’ me for a long while, sunshine.”
There’s some of your hair, he doesn’t notice at first, which falls down onto your face and tickles at the curve of your skin when you laugh lightly and nod at his words, not trusting yourself to speak anything that isn’t slurred. Scrunching your nose, you push the wayward strand away, but it returns when you take another inhale. Only on your second scrunch does Daryl notice, and he brushes it away for you, his calloused fingers barely touching your skin for fear that their roughness might wake you fully. The feelings fluttering in his stomach double in intensity when you squeeze his bicep again, and, yeah, he really would have no qualms if his heart stopped right now.
Deep breath after deep breath.
He’s not sure how long he lies there just listening to you.
Daryl’s eyes are starting to feel droopy now too, his body having been teetering between consciousnesses since the second he’d stepped out onto his porch to have a smoke. He hadn’t even really meant to be out so late, let alone catch you running out of your house - hell, until tonight, he didn’t even know you had nightmares - but he’s glad he did. It’s been weeks since the Claimers, maybe even months, and he can’t help but wonder how long you’ve been dealing with the memories of them.
Was that why you always woke up so late?
His heart drops at the thought, the realization dawning on him that he’s been teasing you about something that’s been hurting you so much - shit, he should have known there was something more to you than that sunshine he always saw. Rubbing his eyes, Daryl sighs, shame washing over him like a waterfall, and he sneaks a glance at you, nibbling at his lip to keep himself from apologizing. Even if he did apologize, would it make a difference? Or would you just laugh him off and take his sincerity as patronization?
“Fuck, why’s it so hard to tell ya I care about ya? ‘Cause I do - probably more’n you know.”
He doesn’t even notice he’s speaking until a wave of liberation washes over him. It's as if the world is telling him that these words, the depth of truth he tries so hard to keep from you, are right - like you’re meant to hear them even though the thought of you catching him scares him to his core.
You don’t stir, your body as still as he remembers it being when he would take first watch, and tentatively, he reaches a hand to tuck a strand of hair back behind your ear. Daryl probably shouldn’t, but his touch lingers, a ghosting caress over your cheekbone, and there’s nothing more he wants out of this moment than to kiss you.
“‘S damn sure more than I’m willin’ to admit.”
Heart sputtering, he takes another deep breath, pulling his touch away as if pieces of himself would come off onto you.
Your skin is soft, your whole being is soft, and it’s a reminder that you’re nothing like him. He’s never been soft - never let himself be - and even though his rough edges have begun to erode after meeting you, he knows he’s stupid to think you could see him differently than anyone else.
But still, he pulls you closer, the chill of the night seeping into his bones, and he slips off what meager amount of leather covers him onto you. It’s late, there’s probably only a few hours left until daybreak, and he has a long day tomorrow.
There aren’t many times he thinks of supply runs as nuisances - someone has to do it, so he would rather it be someone like him than someone who couldn’t get their hands dirty - and as much as he likes Carol and Maggie, it sure beats sitting around in some rich prick’s house and talking all diplomatic or acting all suburban. Sometimes, Daryl even liked going on runs; it made him feel useful, like he contributed to something that made a future, but now, he can’t help but feel a little miffed at the fact he can’t gorge himself with the sight of you underneath the moonlight.
His arm slides slowly out from under you, one hand cradling your head so it doesn’t land harshly on the ground, and when you don’t mutter or jolt awake from his actions, he rises into a stand. It feels like he’s doing surgery with how cautious and careful he’s being, but he knows how little noise is required for you to reach for your holster, the pressure to always stay alert weighing you down every second of the day.
Good, you’re still breathing steady.
Maybe Alexandria’s making you more comfortable - letting you become a deeper sleeper - and he’s torn between being thankful and hating it, the thought that it could compromise your abilities outside the walls making his stomach flip.
You don’t go out nearly as much as you used to - you’re not only good for one thing like he thinks he is, those skills you’ve learned from Hershel keeping you locked in the infirmary most days - but he knows you’re far from compromised, the memory of when they failed to redirect the hoard and he came back to you lurching forward. It’s alarmingly clear in Daryl’s mind; your clothes and skin slicked over with walker blood, your hands the only things clean as you worked with Denise through the night trying to keep people alive, and he’d be blind if he missed the way your abilities have sharpened, every movement of yours so sure.
Stretching the necessary muscles - mostly, in your words, his ‘old man back’ - he bends down and hooks an arm underneath your knees, the other at the the nape of your neck, supporting the lull of your head with his elbow before he adjusts, letting your face fall into his chest.
Fuck - fuck - don’t get distracted, Daryl tells himself, but it gets harder and harder to keep his steps sure and his eyes on the sparsely moonlit pavement. It’s like he can feel the rush of blood through his arteries with each pump of his heart, and he has to remind himself of where you live, a surprising fact since that knowledge should have been easily embedded into his muscle memory from the sheer amount of times he’s made the trek there.
Don’t get distracted? When he’s holding you so close all his senses are filled with you? Thinking he could be anything but distracted is just straight up stupidity.
Rounding the curb to your house, he holds his breath as he opens your front door, face screwing inwards when it squeaks. A quick glance to your face tells him you’re still asleep, and he shucks his boots off onto your mat before gliding up your stairs. He walks nearly silent in those clunky shoes, but there’s something in him that doesn’t want to admit the fact he needs to shuck them. He chalks it up to the fact that the last thing he needs after his run tomorrow is for you to give him shit for the mud he’d tracked in, but he knows that it’s because he doesn’t want to risk even the slightest chance he could wake you.
Thank God the door to your room is open because that piece of white wood is so damn squeaky it drives him crazy when he visits. He’d have to drop by sometime with oil and fix it for you because-
Ow, fuck, what the hell just dug into his thigh?
A grunt pushes through his lips as he blinks, begging his eyes to adjust to the full moon streaming a decent amount of light through your window. Squinting, he realizes the dresser he ran into shouldn’t be where it is - he remembers it being on that wall over there - and your bed isn’t in the corner it used to be, neither is your desk.
You remodeled?
Shit, he knew your old room like the back of his hand, but now he has to be even more careful of not stepping on anything or dropping you if he slips on one of those stupid radio parts you and Eugene have been trying to fix up.
Daryl sets you down gently, cringing at the squeak of your mattress before his puckered face melts into a satisfied smile. Nimble fingers make easy work of your shoes and socks, but begin shaking when the thought of taking off other things shocks through him. Though, to his credit, he’s quick to erase what’s running through his mind, pulling his vest up off your chest and replacing it with that ugly as sin cheetah-tiger-zebra-something animal print blanket which only looks halfway decent because he can’t see most of the pattern.
Throwing the leather over his shoulder, the realization that he’s doing something as domestic as tucking you in sinks into him, tightening his chest and wringing it out like a wet towel. He looks down at you, taking in the moonlight rounding off your nose and casting a shadow over your cheek, but it does nothing to help his poor heart. It can’t cover how breathtaking you are to him.
Fuck, he should feel like a creep, Daryl knows he should, but the sight he’s seeing after what just happened, it’s impossible not to stare. Your face is so at peace that he wants to memorize it and lock it into his brain. For a second, his imagination crawls free from his logic, lurching forward into an image so damn vibrant and lifelike it’s almost embedded in him like a memory.
In the fantasy, he’s come home after a run, or a hunting trip, or a recruitment - really anything that took him away from you - and you’re in his bed, underneath his pleasantly boring gray blanket. In the fantasy, he shucks off his jeans and shirt, crawling underneath and joining you so he can hold you against his chest, letting the scent of you and the tickle of your hair against his face lull him into sleep. Maybe you’d even wake up at the dip in the mattress, turn to face him and press a sleepy kiss on his lips before muttering how you love him before dozing off again.
He’d go through hell and high water to experience that just once.
God, he’s so damn whipped.
Daryl knows it’s a fantasy, though, and tries to break himself from it before he gets too lost. It’s a life he wants, deeply craves for when nights get too long and too lonely, but he can’t help but think how much of an idiot he is for even entertaining the possibility that he’d ever crossed your mind in the way you’ve trekked through his. He’s not worth much, never been worth much, and you deserve the sun and moon and the damn stars - everything he can’t give you.
He turns on his heels, making it only a few steps before the urgings of Carol and Rick and Michonne and Maggie and even Glenn replay through his mind. They seat themselves at the forefront of his mind, and he finds himself wanting to confess more than ever. It might be the sleep in his bones that lower his inhibitions like a liquor - or just a culmination of months and months of a longing that’s begun to will itself physical - but before he knows it, his feet move him to the end of your bed, and his fingers fumble at a loose thread on the vest he’s holding.
“I wanna tell ya somethin’ too, I think. Think I - fuck - I think I might love ya, sunshine.”
Cringing, Daryl’s quick to open his mouth in a whisper again. Wow, okay, that’s not really what he had planned out in his mind, but he’s damn certain you’re not awake to hear it, so he’d just consider this practice. Baby steps, and all that.
“Shit, I’m bad at this. I jus’- sorry I ain’t man enough to tell it to your face.”
There’s a blush that rises up from Daryl’s chest, and he can’t help but internally laugh at himself - the fact he can’t properly confess to you even when he knows you can’t hear him making him feel so damn stupid. Sighing, he takes one more glance to make sure you’re still sleeping before finally turning to leave, a wave of tension escaping him, prompted by him finally vocalising his feelings, even if it falls on deaf ears.
“I, uh, hope ya get ‘nough rest. I’ll swing by an’ bring ya somethin’ nice tomorrow, alright?”
One day, you’ll know how he feels, and hopefully, you’ll feel the same.
Only when you hear your front door close does your vision return to you - how the hell the usually infuriatingly-observant Daryl Dixon you’ve known hadn’t managed to catch onto your whole ‘pretending to be asleep’ thing escaping you.
You’d just wanted to rest your eyes, lull yourself to the edge of sleep before returning back to your house, but you’d dozed off, weeks of running on only a few hours of rest taking a toll on you. Waking up being carried against his firm chest was a welcome surprise, and the feeling - the warmth and the affection and the care - held you back from opening your mouth.
You’d regretted it at first, felt bad since it was almost purely your selfishness that had let him carry you back, but now, as you lay on your bed and stare up to the ceiling, Daryl’s words repeating over and over and over in your brain, it’s not regret that’s washing through you. It’s something that settles deep within the base of your stomach, heavy like a stone, but so, so, so, pleasant.
Fuck, fuck, what the fuck?
Should you be feeling guilt? Shame? Everything running in your brain - everything you’re feeling - it’s an emotional overload, but at the same time, you can’t name anything that’s making those butterflies flap incessantly against your ribcage or making your heart pulse in your ears.
I think I might love ya, sunshine.
Just thinking of those words sends you gripping at your pillow pushing the plush into your face so you can fucking scream silent until your lungs give out. It’s hard to think when someone like Daryl - someone so emotionally walled off it took months for him to even be comfortable taking off his shirt to let you stitch him up when Hershel was busy - would even tackle something as juvenile as a crush, let alone a crush on you.
You should pinch yourself, see if what you’ve just lived through actually happened, but when you do, you find you actually are awake. What he’s said, so vulnerable and raw his voice recedes into that raspy whisper you've heard only a few times before, isn’t another one of your dreams.
Holy shit.
Curling in on yourself, you realize you’re smiling, beaming wide with your fists shaking in triumph. Daryl fucking Dixon loves you; Daryl - mysterious, standoffish, unsociable, lone-wolf Daryl - actually loves you. It feels like you’re floating off your mattress and on cloud nine.
How many months has it been since your feelings for him have crossed just mere friendship? Of wishing you had him next to you when you slept, warding away your nightmares like your own dreamcatcher?
It doesn’t need to be just wishful thinking anymore.
You fall asleep - actually asleep - not soon after, brain and body fatigued after a declaration to yourself laces over your now steady heart. Tomorrow, the second you get off your shift and he’s back from his run, you’re going to fucking sprint to Daryl’s house and confess: bare your soul to him, tell him all the things you’ve wanted to tell him since you’d realized how you felt, and maybe, just maybe you’d even kiss him silly if he lets you.
The next day passes uneventfully, a constant dull droll of people who have cut themselves on kitchen knives - how the hell they’ve survived so long is lost on you - some house calls to a few sick children, and then some textbook reading you can’t remember because your thoughts have been a constant replay of Daryl, Daryl, Daryl.
You should be embarrassed - you’ve never been so… distracted before - but you can’t feel anything but the giddiness of his return, like a child trying to fall asleep on the night before a school trip. Two honks of the pickup truck you’d hotwired break through the monotony, and you jump up from your seat, checking the state of the sun just outside your window. It’s still high, maybe just a couple hours past noon, and run crews, especially ones with Rick or Daryl, they made it a point to stay as long as they could.
Your mind runs to the worst case scenario before you can stop it, stomach dropping as you rush to your feet and out of your office, the sound of Rick’s yells only confirming that swirl of anxiety. Still, you zone in, working on autopilot as you make your way to one of the beds, grabbing a spool of thin black string - not ideal for stitches, but beggars can’t be choosers - and setting it on one of the rolling tables as Denise races from her desk. The metal of the scalpels and suturing equipment clang over each other on the plastic tray in almost perfect time with the bounding of her footsteps, and you reach for a bottle of disinfectant standing captive behind the glass of a display cabinet, swiping the bag of cotton balls just to the side of it as well.
Denise gets to the door just as you make it to the alcohol and it swings open, nearly smacking her in her face as a half-conscious, barely walking Daryl is carried in, both his shoulders dripping blood down his fingertips as Glenn and Rick support him. They unceremoniously drop his right side onto the exam table, earning the room a groan as the thin green padding does nothing to provide him any comfort, and at the sight of him, your heart sputters into overdrive, time seeming to slow as you try to dissipate the shake of your hands.
Stay professional, stay professional, stay professional.
But your body doesn’t listen, compelling you to stay stuck in place, your grip threatening to give out and drop the bottle and bag in your hands as your knees begin to tremble. Denise is calling your name, so is Glenn, so is Rick, and you can vaguely hear them though they sound underwater, your ears muffling their voices and replacing them with a ringing. It only takes a second - a second that’s felt stretched to an hour - for you to snap back to reality, quick feet shedding its unease as you nearly trip over yourself rushing towards Daryl.
Denise scrambles to grab and place the bowl of soapy water next to the exam table as Rick rushes to unbutton Daryl’s shirt with steady fingers that you beg yours to imitate, and Glenn returns with white towels, wetting them and cleaning around the gashes, dying them crimson from the coated skin. Pouring the disinfectant onto a cotton ball, you’re surprised to see that your hands have stilled, the pure muscle memory of cleaning the equipment running through your body.
“It’s your turn to suture today, so I’ll clamp the whole time, that okay?”
Nodding, you swallow the plug of spit forming in your throat, taking a deep breath and grabbing the tweezers to pull the lodged glass from the flesh of his left arm and the upper corner of his back. He’s never come back so beaten that the blood dripping from him dyes the deep green seat of the table, and the incessant thought that he might bleed out - that he might bleed out if you mess up - clams up your palms.
Denise already has her forceps, deciding to tackle the shallowest one first as she positions each tip onto either side of the shard, pulling his skin apart so you can grab it. She waits for a second before turning around, furrowing her brows as she tilts her head towards the wound, her other hand finding a clean towel to wipe around the gash.
“Hey? Did you hear me? Are you okay?”
You’re off your game - you know it, Denise knows it, and when you spare a glance at Rick and Glenn, they know it too. Wiping your eyes with the fabric of your sleeve - crying? It’s not the time to cry - you nod again, hoping the quickening of your breath doesn’t give too much away as you stand next to Daryl’s limp body. Bracing yourself, one of your hands lies on his forearm, the other inching towards the glass at his upper arm, but you can see your dominant hand trembling, as your tweezers grab the lodged glass.
There’s an attempt on your part to steady your hand, allowing you to pull at the shard slowly, holding your breath until it comes out after what seems like an eternity. Your chest feels tight and tears begin to pool that you try to blink away, heart beating through your ears so hard you can hear it and you can feel the desire of your knees to give out. Fuck, this isn’t good. You’re supposed to suture - a delicate process, an important process - but you can’t do that when you can barely see.
Setting down your tweezers, you rub your tears away with the backs of your hands as you try to fight your body’s reactions. It’s infuriating, your body fighting every logical thought in your brain, refusing to cooperate with the fact you want to stay professional, and you take a shuddering breath, turning away from the sight of Daryl’s half-conscious body as your fingers ball pathetically into fists.
“Hey- hey, calm down. He’s gonna be fine - we’ve done this millions of times. It’ll be a walk in the park, alright?”
Denise’s voice is so patient it makes you want to throw up, guilt setting deep into your bones at the fact you’re not carrying your weight and doing the one job you were assigned. Pure pettiness at your own body makes you move to grab the tweezers again, but when you hear Daryl groan in pain, another wave of tears - this time tears of frustration - fog your vision, making you blink once, twice, then three times, squeezing your eyes momentarily shut for good measure.
She’s right; you’ve stitched him up before, countless times when the prison was still around and even more since Daryl had refused to get care from a wifebeater before Rick killed the asshole, so why the hell can’t you will yourself to do anything to help him?
Denise’s hand wraps around your wrist, the warmth of her grip tethering you back to reality, and you can tell something about her’s changed, the impatient and expecting furrow of her brows gone into concerned slopes, the familiarity of her previous psychiatric studies seeping into soft eyes.
“Here, y’know what, you clamp. We’re gonna make sure Daryl’s gonna be okay. You just need to trust me and trust yourself.”
She takes the tweezers from you then, replacing them with her larger forceps and guiding your hands to a still where the glass is, watching you from beneath her lashes as the larger portion of her brain occupies itself with the monotonous, almost mechanical repeated motion shard to shard. Soon enough, your breathing regulates again, less pressure pushing down on the center of your chest and the tears have dried at the corners of your eyes as you focus on the simple task.
When all the glass is gone, piled up and clinking against one another on one of the towels Glenn brought, Daryl’s blood’s long been cleaned off, tattooed skin reflecting the sunlight as you work slowly on one gash. Not too slowly, but your previously trustworthy hands have you feeling as if you were back in that small prison cell being taught by Hershel again, speed reduced back to when you were still too nervous to pierce through skin.
Denise has long since moved on to checking up on Rick and Glenn, and your ears pick up that they had all been trapped by some herd, effectively being cut off from each scouted exit. The next thing they knew, Daryl was yelling something about ‘making their own’ and he did, in fact, jump through a window, foot getting caught on the ledge of it making him fall into the shattered glass.
Stupid reckless idiot.
Stretching your back and neck, you tie off the last stitch, reaching over to the soapy water which has cooled a considerable amount, and run it along the now closed gashes, listening to the steady in and out of Daryl’s breathing. You leave him on the exam table for another few seconds as you rinse off your hands, fingers and parts of your palms covered in his dried blood, and you nod over to him when you make eye-contact with Rick and Glenn, them following you and helping you move him to one of the beds.
Daryl hates sleeping on his stomach - he’s told you before that it makes him feel unprepared since it takes more time to jump to his feet than sleeping on his back - but the stitches are fresh and need to be kept dry and breathable for at least a day, not sandwiched between the furnace that is his body and the thick cotton mattress. It’s not like he’s awake to grumble about ‘the doctor’s orders’ like he usually does, anyways.
The next few hours you spend more or less at his side, taking momentary breaks to check up on some other patients in the otherwise uneventful infirmary, and Carol drops off some food for the two of you the second news gets to her that Daryl’s come back injured. It’s the rabbit you’d caught the day prior that Olivia shoved into the freezer probably, and you thank her as you down the stew, unaware of how hungry you’ve become until now.
She takes immediate notice of the worry lining the wrinkles on your forehead, deepening by the passing time, and she reaches out a hand, squeezing your shoulder in an attempt to comfort you, the knowledge of both Daryl’s feelings and yours floating around in her head. It didn’t matter how adamantly she’d confirmed them to either of your unconvinced ears, and she would hazard a guess that his stubbornness had rubbed off on you.
It takes a while after she leaves to have Daryl finally stir awake, groaning against the plush pillow his face has dug into before turning over onto his back, sharp pain shredding through his whole body. You shoot up at the sound, knocking over a few of the pens on the desk you’ve decided will be yours for the time being - thank God they’re not the chalk pieces or else Denise might have killed you - and rush over to his bed just a few feet away, quick hands urging him back onto his stomach as you apologize for the ‘stitches not being the best’.
Daryl scoffs out an amused huff, an undeserved macho-man lilt in his voice about how ‘it don’t even hurt’ that you see through immediately, biting back a smirk when you press a little harder on the tender flesh of a gash lying just beneath your ring finger and hear him swear. He rolls his eyes, acquiescing onto his stomach with no shortage of half-hearted complaints before you realize that there's an abandoned bowl of rabbit stew you had intended to give him when he woke up.
Sliding your hands from his elbows up his shoulders, goosebumps rise across his skin at the contact, his eyes widening as you busy yourself with adjusting the pillow behind him, heart sputtering like the revving of his motorcycle’s engine. He should be used to this by now, he thinks, the softness and tenderness of your touch just after sustaining injuries, but still he stares and allows himself to follow your urgings, sitting against the headboard and ignoring the stinging of the new stitches.
Retracting your right hand, you grab the cold stew and offer it to him, a tight pull of your lips widening into a grin when he thanks you and extends his good arm, grunting at the sharp throb of pain erupting from his back as he lifts the wood to his mouth.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
Daryl hums as he sets the bowl back down onto the little table by the bed he’s in, clearing his throat and tilting his head back against the beige wall behind him before he speaks, twisting his left arm and shocking himself with just how many gashes line the skin coating his bicep. Jesus, you must have spent hours on him, each one almost identical with the precision of the thread he’s so used to seeing on himself.
“Gonna take more’n a window to kill me.”
A laugh breaks from you and his eyes snap to the sound, pushing down a smile of his own as he watches you crouched and searching. The modicum of fight he had against falling asleep again drifts away from him as he lies back down - on his stomach, he reminds himself. Surrendering himself to his own body’s urgings, he drifts off again, back bare of the blankets he’d kicked off in an attempt to get into a sit, and the appetite-sating stew still sloshing around in his stomach.
You open your mouth to say something, the first syllable of your sentence just on the tip of your tongue, but the squeak of the bed interrupts your intentions. You turn back around, standing just to see him face-down against the mattress, pillow forgotten at the top of his head still propped up against the headboard. Pursing your lips, a smile creeps out from your teeth and you place the pens back onto the desk, walking over to him to pull at the covers he’s shed.
“I hope so… I’m just- I’m just really glad you’re okay.”
He’s halfway into a slumber when he feels the cool sheets over his back, mumbling back something incoherent - knowing him, probably something to ease your worry - and hooking his good arm underneath the plush of the pillow you’d urged underneath his face. It's not your intention to stare and you fully intended to stop staring, but then half a second passes, then a few, then a minute and Denise barges into your periphery, breaking you from the admiration that you’d lost yourself in.
Though, you can’t find it in yourself to feel any guilt, only embarrassment at being caught, the heat of a blush rushing over your cheeks before you pull yourself away from him, sitting back at your desk as Denise’s eyes flicker back and forth between the two of you before she connects the dots in her head.
You’ve rarely seen Daryl doze off, let alone fully sleeping - he’s sometimes up before the damn sun, and sure as hell up before you - and he just looks so… cute with his cheek pressed up against the white pillowcase, mouth parted with quiet snores escaping him. So unlike the usual furrowed brow and grimace you see him with, and you just can’t help yourself.
He stays like that for a few more days - in and out of consciousness, waking up for the occasional meal and bathroom break, mostly at night when he has to use a flashlight you had left out for him to navigate his way through the halls to avoid waking anybody else up. On day two, he moves into your office, his vest shucked off and hanging off the bedpost of the twin size that you sleep in on particularly busy back to back shifts now taken up by him and no doubt going to smell like his motor oil and forest by the time he leaves.
You can’t seem to find fault in that notion, though - there’s something about the way he smells that just tugs at the right strings in your brain, that long-forgotten sense of safety alighting.
You eat by him for almost all his meals, waking him up if he’s still sleeping and you both indulge in conversation after what has felt like weeks without it, most of the time being cut off by another patient just a room down. On day three, you talk him into taking a shower - ‘the stitches do not have a higher chance of getting infected, so you can’t use it as an excuse anymore, Daryl’ - shoving clean underwear and a new shirt into his hands, and he tries not to become too flustered at the thought of what a mess his room must have been when you went in.
He takes a quick one under your advice, scrubbing his hair with his good arm and skirting around his stitches - some downright odd threat still bouncing around in his head about you unthreading his vest if he broke any of the thread you’ve put on him. The second he emerges, his movements slowed with the caution of being silent and more or less invisible to the other patients, he pads down the familiar path to your office, towel hung around his neck and shirt half buttoned because it’s damn hard to button things when one arm refuses to lift for more than half a minute.
The door stands ajar when Daryl pushes it open, and he watches you doze off in your chair, a lantern lit at the corner of your desk with both your arms folded on the surface, your face cradled between the nooks and reminding him of how he used to sleep in class in his teen years. He knocks on the door - a one, two, three pattern the two of you have come up with for use during hunting trips - and you shoot up to attention, alarm in your eyes that melt the second you catch him looking at you, your mouth widening into a smile that makes butterflies erupt in his stomach. The expression’s so contagious he has to pull his towel over his face and wipe in order not to crumble lovesick into the floor.
“I have to put some stuff on your stitches, do you- do you mind taking off your shirt? I forgot to tell you before.”
He catches the stutter, but doesn’t bring it up as he pulls the towel back around his neck and returns to the bed, grunting when his butt hits the mattress and watching you as you bend slightly to get at a cabinet just below the sink. Daryl forgets for just a moment that you’ve asked him to do something until you turn back around to face him, jar of what looked like ointment in your hands and a patient smile on your face.
Hopefully, you haven’t caught him staring as he averts his eyes quickly, staring at the very interesting furnished wood floor as he fumbles to undo his buttons one handed.
His shirt is half-buttoned, sure, but there’s so many pieces of that godforsaken plastic that it’s just as hard to unbutton as it is to button. Daryl sighs, frustrated at how clumsy his fingers have become, his bottom lip caught between his teeth and eyebrows furrowed in concentration. You wait for a second after you finally get to him, an offer of help at your lips before he looks up at you, a hint of apology in them before he goes to grab at the hem of his shirt. Fully intending to pull it off from the bottom, he feels your soft fingers wrap around his wrist and his movements stop.
Maybe it’s the knowledge of how he feels that makes you more brazen, the desire to be more direct with your affections that drives you to say ‘here, let me do it’, but when he nods, a blush dusting his cheeks that you revel in, you can’t help but feel satisfied with yourself. Daryl grabs the towel and places it over his lap, feeling the familiar effects of your lingering closeness start to thrum through his veins, and he can’t help but stare at the way you’re watching your fingers move, trying and failing to stop himself from imagining your movements under a different situation.
He swallows the spit making home in his throat, pulse speeding up when your knuckles brush up against the skin of his chest, and he bites the inside of his cheek when you linger just a second longer. You smile at him, bottom lip tucked between your teeth, and if he allows his brain to wander, he’s not sure if it’s his imagination when he catches something else in the expression other than warmth.
Daryl’s body listens to you when you take a seat on the edge of the bed and tell him to turn over, thankful for the mattress pressing into his crotch so you can’t see what the fuck you’re doing to him, and he melts into the bedsheet when he feels your deft fingerpads along his skin, covered in something that smells really damn good.
It’s homemade, you tell him, and he learns it’s a mixture of lavender, lemon and honey. He also learns that your touch feels even better after a shower, the residual warmth of the water and the tenacity at which you rub at his skin lulling him down into another slumber though he’s slept more in the past few days than he probably has in weeks. His stitches have stopped hurting last night, the pain of them so commonplace that he’s become numb to it, and your calculated pushes into his skin do nothing but relax him, leaving him to try and suppress a lewd groan from leaving his throat.
“Thank you… for comforting me before your run, I mean. Honestly, I didn’t think you had a heart ‘til then, Tin Man.”
Your hands don’t still even as you speak, something so daunting about referring to that night, a guilt settled deep within you like you’re gauging how much he remembers - like you had let your feelings slip and not the other way around.
“Hm? Yeah, yeah, no problem. ‘Sides, I only did it ‘cause I thought it might compel ya to do these damn stitches nicer.”
Daryl looks over his shoulder as he responds, lips twitching upwards.
“If I’d’a known it wouldn’t, I would’ve jus’ shut up out there on that porch.”
A fake gasp of offense hits his ears, and his smirk widens into a grin, though it doesn’t last long when you press particularly hard against one of his closed gashes. You make a show of crinkling your eyes into happy crescent shapes, the warmth in your expression an antithesis to the pressure of your hands, but you move onto the next wound just a second later, leaving him no time to actually feel anything other than the playfulness which laced your touch.
“Wow, you really know how to make someone feel substantial in your life, Mr. Dixon.”
There’s something infuriatingly charming about that ‘pfft’ he lets out, the familiarity of nightwatches and hunting trips tugging at your heart, and his shoulders rise with the effort of making it before he reaches out, grabbing the pillow.
“I’d sell ya for a sip of water, Doc.”
His response is mumbled as he swipes his hair back with his good arm, wet strands falling along his neck instead of on the cotton case, and he pushes his face into the plush, shivers running down to his tailbone not from the cold, but from he feeling of your breath along his skin, blowing onto the ointment in an attempt to dry it.
“I thought you were supposed to be a Southern gentleman.”
Jabbing the skin of his back, you take a second to admire your handiwork - no infections, no tears, no bleeding - and indulge in the ripple of his back muscles and the flex of his arms as he shifts the bottom half of his body up fully onto the bed, reacting to the fact you’ve pushed yourself back into a stand.
“Nah, them’s cowboys. They ain’t the same as rednecks.”
He cricks his neck when he responds, turning his face towards you, a pleasant peace on his features - no harsh wrinklings of worry or pain on his forehead or lacing his eyebrows. Yawning, he rubs his face into the pillow, and you could melt into the floorboards at how cute he looks within the four walls of your infirmary office. If you could wake up to this sight, or slink into bed with this, there wouldn’t be enough words in the English language to describe how much your nights and sleep would probably improve.
“A common misconception, I assume?”
Bending back down to place the ointment into the drawer again, the dull thud of the jar’s thick glass resounds through the middle of your sentence, and when you turn back around to look at Daryl, you can already see through the dim light of your lantern that he’s already surrendered himself to the sleep tugging at him.
Still, he hums low in agreement, saying something incoherent into the pillow, the desire to keep listening to your voice coupled with his sheer force of will keeping him tethered to consciousness. He gives up though, all the fight in him leaving his body the second you pull the sheets over him, as if he was waiting for you to tell him it’s okay to fall asleep to finally succumb. There’s an odd sort of guilt that has settled in him - that drives that disagreement between his mind and body - and he’s only fought it since you confessed your nightmares to him.
It’s a sense of duty, he guesses. A desire to protect you even though he knows you’re fully capable. Daryl taught you how to fight - of course he knows you can protect yourself - but there’s still that ache in his chest everytime he leaves, that same fear he felt the night of those claimers and the night he came back from redirecting the hoard, growing and growing with each passing moment. But you’ve survived everything life’s thrown your way, and he hopes that you’ll continue to, by his side or not.
“Shut up and rest then, redneck.”
You turn off the lantern after one more glance at him, his back rising with a steady in and out you’ve grown more accustomed to hearing over the time he’s spent sleeping in your office, and you decide to go home. The sun isn’t out anymore, each passing day getting shorter and shorter, and if you had to hazard a guess, there’s only an hour or so before midnight, Polaris and the Big Dipper inching into a vertical line.
God, you should get home - sleep in a bed for the first time in nearly a week instead of hunched over on a desk in fear that Daryl might wake up in the middle of the night and need something. Maybe those cricks in your neck will thank you for it. Grabbing your sweater from the back of your chair, you shove it on, treading to the door on silent feet though you’ve learned Daryl has begun to sleep like a log, and break into the night, a weariness in your bones that makes you crash onto your bed without even changing your clothes.
The next morning you wake up almost as tired as you were before, and you decide to take a cold shower to wake yourself up despite the fact it might destroy your mood the second you step into the rush of water. You power through, though, and step out half an hour later, the thrum against your skin knocking out the tight muscles that have built up in your body, and descend down the stairs after getting dressed and brushing your teeth, grabbing your holster in preparation to check on the snares Daryl had set up.
He always said it was best to get at them early - gives the traps more time in the rest of the day to catch more game - though, you like to think it keeps the animals from suffering longer than they should. Alexandria needed the meat, and no matter how many rabbits or deer or squirrels you’d caught and skinned under Daryl’s experienced watch, a part of you still felt a little guilty, the detachment of just seeing a slab of meat in a grocery store no longer around for you.
A visit to the armory for your hunting rifle and pistol later, you make your way to the gates, waving up at the people on watch before you pull the gates open and escape out into the forest. Daryl gave you a lot of shit for your poor sense of direction - then again, he’s acting as if you would pick up on his lifetime’s familiarity with the wilderness in just a few months - but it was good enough to traverse the haze of green in Alexandria’s surroundings, each snare you’ve helped him set up catalogued in your brain.
Gaining on the first trap, you kill a few stumbling walkers before actually getting to it, raising your eyebrows when you see the rope empty. That’s… odd, but then again, the path it’s set on isn’t the most widely traversed by the rabbits hopping through. Pursing your lips, you sigh and make your way to the second, finding it empty as well.
Okay, well, today’s probably just going to be one of your slower days. That’s fine - it’s happened before.
The third one is empty too. So is the fourth.
Then on the fifth - the one you and him have set up specifically because it yields rabbits almost twice daily - it’s fucking empty.
It’s starting to get on your nerves, you suppose, swearing under your breath and running your hand through your hair, forgetting that it’s wet before the feeling of water on your fingers runs a white-hot annoyance through you.
Has Rick come out to check on them? No, his knots aren’t nearly as polished as the ones on the traps, so it can’t be him. Or Michonne? Maybe Carol? No - shit, you’re not sure if either of them even know how to set up those traps to begin with.
Fuck, maybe the rabbits have just caught on - go that way and you’re dead. Survival of the fittest, or something like that.
There’s no choice but to go back, the hour and a half you’ve allotted in the morning to be out here is nearly up, and you should get some actual meat on the string across your shoulder before returning. During the trek, eight squirrels cross your path, and with well-aimed shots from your rifle, they all find themselves tied into the twine, thudding dull against your side with each step.
It’s kind of humiliating to return to the community with such little meat, but it’s better than nothing - you would just have to leave the infirmary early and spend some more time out there to compensate. Olivia doesn’t seem to mind, though, as she just tells you to set it on the table to be skinned later, and you give back your firearms, narrowly missing that usually awkward conversation she insists on having with you. She’s sweet, it’s an undeniable fact, but God do you wish small talk died when the world began to as well.
Swinging the infirmary doors open, you greet Denise at her chalkboard, her fingers covered in the white dust as she rubs away some mistake she’s just made, and she nods back, turning her attention back to her scrawl.
You make it to your office just a few rooms down the hall a once, twice, three times knock to tell Daryl you’re coming in before you actually push, your eyes snapping to the bed only to find it empty. You don’t think much about it - bathroom break, maybe? Or he’s waded down to the kitchen in search of satiating his appetite - and you sit down, dissolving back into the routine of flipping open a textbook.
It’s like you’re in school again, the monotony of shovelling information into yourself that you’re not even sure you’re ever going to use. But still, it’s your job to know all this - all you can do is hope nobody will need a needle thoracostomy anytime soon.
Half an hour passes and Daryl still doesn’t return - you don’t hear your name called in that deep grumble, or that stupid ‘sunshine’ he’d begun calling you - and you miss it. Not just his voice, but his whole presence, your office suddenly empty without him whittling away at the half-finished arrows you’d brought from his house to keep him occupied.
It just feels… weird without him.
Getting up, you make your way out into the hall, deciding to use the excuse of ‘checking on others’ to justify popping in and out of different rooms. You’ve checked the kitchen and all the bathrooms, yet you still don’t find Daryl. Though, you do catch the attention of Denise when you enter the front half of the house - her orbit.
She calls your name, a question of ‘what’re you looking for?’ following not soon after, and when you tell her simply that you’re looking for Daryl, she tells you she’d let him go a few hours ago, just when the sky was beginning to break into yellows and oranges.
Shit, yeah, that’s right.
Daryl was only here because he got hurt. Now that he’s not - has motor function of all his limbs and muscles, you’re pretty sure - he can leave.
He must have been the one who reset all the traps, then.
Now that you think about it, that should’ve been so obvious.
Right.
Nodding, you return to your office - return to the textbook pages, to tedium without him or his snarky remarks that make you laugh - and you start counting down the hours until you can finally leave. With the silence, it’s not a surprise that you find yourself thinking about Daryl more, the determination to confess to him that you’d had before bubbling up again.
You should have confessed days ago, but him nearly dying - not really, but it felt as if he had come back from knocking on death’s door - jolted your plans into disarray, whirlwinding your thoughts of him into only the relief that he was okay.
Daryl’s always so sure in all his actions when it comes to survival - more capable than any man or woman you had come across after the apocalypse started - but he’s not immune to danger. One mistake, that’s all it takes for a routine run to turn into utter chaos, and perhaps it’s a misplaced expectation you'd held him to that made you think of him as almost invincible.
Seeing him carried in by Rick and Glenn, bloody and half-conscious - not greeting you with that small smirk of survival you were beginning to get used to - it’s a stark reminder of your stupidity, of a long faded naïveté, the belief that he’ll be around forever shattered like the glass of a window.
Daryl won’t be.
He’ll die one day - before you or after you.
But he’s not dead; his heart's still beating in his chest, his legs and arms are still strong enough to cock his crossbow - to trek through the forest in order to reset hunting traps - and he’s just a few houses down. He’s just a few houses down and he’s already confessed to you though it was under the belief that you were asleep.
He’ll die one day, sure, but it’s what you do before then that matters, isn’t it?
It takes almost your whole shift for you to break, that determination that has settled deep in your blood - bubbling, bubbling and bubbling over hours - finally overflowing. Pushing yourself off your chair and into a stand, you close your book with a heavier hand than you had intended, a thrill thrashing through your body.
Why should you wait any longer?
You don’t have a plan, nothing other than to barrel into Daryl’s house and tell him you love him, but after saying your goodbye to Denise and rushing out of the infirmary, you decide it’s only right to do something more than just that - you realize you want to do something more than just that.
Beelining for the pantry, you greet Olivia again and grab some stuff for a meal, hoping you can defrost the part of you that used to cook for yourself back in university. You grab an armful of ingredients - a can of corn, a jar of applesauce, a box of noodles, a squirrel which you’re pretty sure was one you caught - and race back to your house, dumping everything onto the tabletop before going back out in order to turn on your generator.
Wine and dine him - that’s the plan.
Well, more of just the dine part, really. The last thing you would want is for either of you to be buzzed when you bare your heart to him.
Skinning and gutting the animal has become muscle memory after spending so long learning from Daryl, and you find that all the time you’ve spent hanging around Carol during and after the prison has lent you some pretty decent cooking second-hand knowledge. The speed at which you prepare the meal almost causes you to cut your finger, but your slice narrowly misses flesh as it hits the vegetables you’d picked while you waited for the water to boil. Though, it also could have been caused by the anxiety which has now replaced your excitement.
God, you hope the food turns out okay.
When you’re done - it tastes better than you’d expected, honestly - everything in the pot gets thrown into a glass bowl, nearly overflowing due to the overestimated amount of water you thought you’d needed. It’s alright, though, learning experience and all that.
Quick feet take you back to your generator, and when you turn it off, even quicker feet take you back into the kitchen. Each step towards his house makes your heart thrum rapid in your chest at the path you’ve decided to take - the path that leads you into hopefully becoming something more with Daryl - but the anxiety instead begins to drown into a dull ache behind the anticipation of what’s to come.
I think I might love ya, sunshine.
The replay of his voice inside your head emboldens you, a smile worming way onto your face and you bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from splitting into a grin. Knocking - one, two, then a one-two-three in quick succession - you listen to a series of metal on metal clangings before the door pulls open.
“Gettin’ house calls now, huh?”
Daryl raises an eyebrow, the mass of brown hair that usually falls into his face swiped back with a quick run of his fingers before it returns as he leans against the doorframe, the muscles of his biceps flexing underneath his sleeveless shirt to hold himself up. The corner of his lips twitch upwards when he sees the food in your hands, and he pulls the door open, the arm that was previously support now extended in invitation.
“You wish. I’m just here ‘cause I made too much food. Figured it’s the least I can do for a couple nights ago.”
Shucking off your shoes, you make your way between his rooms into the kitchen as he follows you with silent footsteps, setting the dish onto the tiny island as you hear an audible huff of amusement from behind you. It always surprised you how organized the rest of his house was despite the whole floor of his basement being a mess of motorcycle parts and wood scraps from carving bolts, but as you round the corner, you notice the tabletop littered with cans of food and cooking pans.
“Think ya did enough puttin’ these in.”
He shows you the stitches lining his left arm, a few of the ones in his back peeking through because of how loose the fabric covering it is, and advances towards you, one hand brushing up against your back as he manuevors his body behind yours in order to reach one of the cabinets lining the wall. The sudden touch has your skin tingling and you push yourself into the cold marble digging into your pelvis by instinct until he clears the space and only emptiness takes it up, the air cooling without his heat.
“‘Sides, ya took care of me since I came back, so I thought I would repay ya.”
With a wave, Daryl gestures to the cluttering of ingredients just a few inches from you, a bashful smile on his lips as his thumb runs down the side of one of the bowls he’s just grabbed, fidgeting. Both you and him know he’s not the best cook - hasn’t been even before the world fell, according to him - but just the fact he’d even try for you makes your chest tighten up.
“Looks like ya beat me to it.”
The two ceramic dishes clink audibly against the marble when he places them on it, and he pulls open the drawer with the cutlery, thanking whoever owned this house before him for keeping enough for a small family.
“Probably tastes better’n mine ever could, anyways.”
You scoff when you hear Daryl’s words, but take the compliment with a small smile of your own, and you reach towards his outstretched hands, grabbing the fork and spoon in his grasp. He holds his stare when you imitate his movements, biting the inside of his cheek to try and not dwell on the fact his fingers brush up against yours.
Fuck, he thought he’d gotten used to your touch after the amount of times you’d fixed him back into working order, but God, you always feel softer and… nicer than he expects. Every damn time.
There’s a pause when your head turns left - a momentary lull, stretched longer from time seeming to slow down - and your gaze flickers up from the glass bowl to meet him. Neither of you make any moves to disrupt it until you notice the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and his jaw tightens.
Daryl doesn’t miss the way you linger - the way you hesitate detaching yourself from his touch - and he’s so lost in entertaining why that he almost keeps his arm up for too long after his hands are finally empty, narrowly missing the embarrassment that would undoubtedly follow. Though you're no longer looking at him, he finds it too damn hard to tear his sight from you, standing there, dumbfounded, until he hears your voice, a honey that’s begun to swim in his mind telling him to go sit.
The way his body chooses to listen to your voice is almost automatic, and it wills him to move, forcing him to look at the floor so that his hair will cover his blushing face. When he finally takes a seat, he bounces his leg, biting the skin at his lips raw as he waits for you, the tension in him beginning to disappear because of the space. He takes the chair that faces away from you and towards the wall, a deliberate choice to try and calm himself from the feeling of your back against his palm and your thighs against his, but its effectiveness wears off the second you place the two bowls on the table, a smile on your face that makes him want to melt the floor from the warmth in your expression.
Thanking you, his voice catches in his throat, breaking just after the first syllable, and he grips the edge of the ceramic, staring down at the pile of noodles that peek through the dark brown stew and shoving them into his mouth with a fork. You watch as he eats nearly his whole meal in the time it takes for you to finish half, an odd sense of happiness filling your chest at the fact he hasn’t changed his habits since you all got to Alexandria. Daryl always ate with a ferocity that reminded you of an animal - like someone was going to take the food away from him if he took too long - and it’s oddly adorable even though he sometimes made a mess of himself when he finished.
With a satisfied huff, he wipes his mouth with the backs of his hands, answering your questions about how he’s doing - ‘no pain’, ‘no infection’, ‘everythin’ feels okay’ - and trying not to stare at the way your tongue peeks out to catch the stew coating your lips. Or the way you look up at him as if his voice would escape you if you weren’t watching them come out. You’re just eating, an action that’s so innocent and has never elicited a reaction so visceral, but he shifts in his seat, feeling like he’s burning underneath your eyes.
“Something wrong?”
Your words come between the sounds of your spoon scraping against the inside of your bowl, and he shakes his head, letting out a stuttered ‘no’ before he abruptly gets up and walks to the sink, sipping idly at the canteen he’d left there after his hunting.
Daryl’s not sure why he’s become so fidgety all of a sudden - you’ve been to his house millions of times, ate with him millions of times - but his fingers meet his shoulder to rub at the knots that never seem to leave, just barely missing the pieces of thread. You take notice, furrowing your eyebrows before the lightbulb goes off in your head.
It’s the stitches that are bothering him, aren’t they?
Downing the last little bit of your meal, you push up from your seat and make your way to the sink, standing just beside him and giving your bowl to him when he reaches out his hand for it, canteen screwed back closed and lying forgotten on the tabletop. Tentatively, you reach out and let your thumb graze across his exposed bicep, concentrating on the way the stitches move with his muscles - admittedly, they’re not your best work, but they really shouldn’t have any more of a chance to get infected or to scar over than all the other times you’ve put them in for him.
Daryl’s heart stops in his chest the second he feels your skin on his, hiding it well with a bite to the inside of his cheek, and he carries on washing the four utensils and two bowls as nonchalantly as possible, apparently taking sudden interest in how clean he can make them, meticulously scrubbing with the towel in his grasp.
Since confessing to you when you were asleep, it’s like everything involving you is heightened - from the sound of your voice to the weight of your stare to the way your damn fingers make him fucking tingle. Saying it out loud made it feel real even though it was into the empty air, and, despite knowing that everything he said was real, it still felt like he was exposing some dark secret to everyone.
“Do you still keep the ointment where it usually is? You might break them if you keep picking at ‘em.”
You’re halfway to the basement stairs before you speak, and he doesn’t even notice you’ve moved until then, the linger of your touch clogging up his brain. Daryl manages to yell back a rough sound of agreement, and he turns off the tap, not needing it anymore now that you’re not around to make his mind all muddy.
Fuck.
He knows what’s coming next.
He knows what’s coming next and he knows that he should be nervous, but he can’t help but feel all giddy at the thought of you touching him again - no, you’re just doing your job. You’re just doing your job and he needs to mentally prepare himself unless he wants to pitch a tent while you’re rubbing that ointment that smells absolutely divine onto him.
Wiping himself off on his shirt, his fingers work at the buttons the whole time he ambles down to his room, shucking it off and throwing it in the general area of his bed the second he crosses the doorway. Daryl looks over just in time to watch it land with a dull thump, and his eyebrows flick up for just a second when he doesn’t see you there as well, fully expecting for you to tell him to lie on his sheets - fully hoping you’d tell him to lie on his sheets because if his body does react, at least you won’t be able to see it.
Instead, you’re sitting on his workbench, something you don't get to do very often since Daryl’s usually working on modifications of motorcycle parts or chipping away at his pile of arrows all the times you’ve been here. Though, it’s not for a lack of trying on your part.
The workbench is probably your favourite part of his room - just tall enough that you can sit on it and have your legs swing without touching the floor - and you’ve told him multiple times though he chooses not to let you indulge. Sometimes, and it’s not a very often sometimes, when he misses you after long runs, he’ll pat the wooden top in a nonverbal invitation just to see the smile that breaks through your face.
Daryl stands at the door as if this was new territory, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if unsure of what to do, suddenly feeling exposed though he knows you don’t care about the little bit of muscle definition he’d lost since the prison. You kick the legs of his chair in that same one, two rhythm he does when he wants you over, and he moves like a dog to a whistle.
Grabbing the back, he swings one of his legs over and crosses his arms across the top, leaning his weight and facing away from you. His straddle makes the denim of his jeans stretch deliciously over his thighs, accentuating just how muscled they’ve become and you bite your lip, screwing open the jar in your grasp to distract yourself from the thoughts threatening to invade your coherence.
The second you touch his skin, the grip he has on the chair tightens and he sucks in a breath, the cold of the ointment a stark contrast to the overheat of his body. The repetition continues a while longer, each passing moment allowing him to calm down until you speak again, a welcome break to the silence.
“Y’know, I still want you to know that I’m seriously grateful for what you did for me a couple of days ago. It, um, it meant - it means - a lot to me.”
Throwing a lazy smile over his shoulder, his response is immediate as he watches you bite your lip in concentration, and he smothers down the desire to give you another reason entirely to do that expression.
“Told you it ain’t a problem.”
You hum, a sliver of a smile taking place peeking through your teeth before you reset back into a look which is much more serious, turning your attention back onto the last two stitches you have yet to cover.
“And, um, after- after everything that’s happened, I really, really need you to know I care about you too, Daryl.”
He furrows his eyebrows at the drastic tonal shift. It’s not that you’ve never told him this - he’s heard it a lot and it usually follows with a scolding of how he’s ‘a reckless idiot’ and how he’s always putting himself in ‘unnecessary danger’ - but he’s never heard your voice waver when you say it, or how you stress the words as if they were the most crucial things you could ever say and it makes his heart rate pick up.
Oddly, it scares him.
But it also makes something sickeningly sweet swirl in him.
Your fingers detach from his skin, your gaze similarly falling to the floor in avoidance. He watches as you take a deep breath and he gets up, sitting back down on it - ‘like a regular person’, he’d heard you say before - so he can finally face you as he hangs onto each little sound that hits his ears.
C’mon, you tell yourself, just say it. Isn’t that what you came here to do? You know how he feels; you heard his confession though it wasn’t for your ears - frankly wasn’t for anyone’s except his - so what’s the point of being shy?
“More- more than you know.”
It doesn’t click for Daryl yet and his eyes narrow, the wrinkles in his forehead deepening as he tries to decode the secret message beneath your words. Your heart is pounding in your ears and you can hardly hear what you just said, but when your gaze flickers to his, recognizing the look of confusion and cluelessness on his face, you will yourself to speak. God, for someone who’s usually so smart, he’s so dense sometimes.
“More than I’m willing to admit.”
Realization washes over him like a cold shower - like he was dunked in one of those ice-fishing holes he’d seen people up in Canada drill when he was in school - and his eyes widen into maybe the biggest you’ve ever seen them, his mouth threatening to do the same.
“Y- ya heard.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Is that all he can say? Of course you fucking heard. You regurgitated his - basically - whole confession back to him and all he said was an observation? What the fuck, he was so sure you were asleep. How the fuck did he miss the fact that you weren’t?
“I did.”
Oh no. Oh fuck. This is it, isn’t it? Where you laugh at him and call him a fucking moron for thinking he could ever have a chance with you.
“And you’re stupid.”
Ah, there it is.
Daryl wants to apologize - wants to run and hide - but the second he opens his mouth and starts to rise from his seat, your hand holds him down with a strength and determination that makes his breath hitch.
“You’re stupid for thinking I don’t feel the same.”
A ‘what?’ escapes him before he can even think to stop it, eyes widening even more when your hand travels up his shoulder and rests at the back of his neck, using the leverage to pull him lightly towards you and you to him.
“God, you’re really an idiot, aren’t you? I love you, Daryl.”
You’re so close he can smell you, heady and mixed with the lingering scent of spices on your clothes, but it pales in comparison with the way you lean forward, your neckline dropping just slightly.
It’s enough, though.
It’s enough to make his stomach twist in want. It’s enough to make a heat rise from the length of his chest to the tips of his ears - for him to be screaming at himself to reach out and touch you instead of letting his arms hang by his sides.
“I think I’ve loved you for a long time if I’m being honest, and I can’t… I can’t think of a life without you. I, um, I think that’s why that night scared me so much - ‘cause I didn’t know if you were gonna be okay. If any of us were.”
Fuck, Daryl can barely focus on what you’re saying, but everything he catches makes his head swim, drowning him in a tide made up of everything he’s ever thought of - waking up next to you, kissing you underneath the moonlight, holding your fucking hand - and it knocks him over with the ease it uses to destroy sandcastles.
“It’s- it’s okay if you don’t wanna- I mean, if you don’t want to say it back. It’s even okay if you don’t want to, uh, be anything with me. I just- after everything we’ve been through, I wanted you to know.”
He’s looking up at you from where he’s seated - fitting, since he think you’re like a fucking deity in front of him. It’s the first time his eyes meet yours since you’d confessed and he’s captivated by the way your brows slope in a warmth that he recognizes as so authentically you. Silence fills the end of your sentence, a second of lull followed by another and another, but still, he makes no attempt to break it.
“Daryl? Say something please?”
Oh, right.
“I’m jus’…”
Clearing his throat, he finally moves himself, tentative and slow as he reaches out, watching your every move in case an expression of discomfort rises. It never comes, though. His touch is welcome, making your skin tingle when he brushes his thumb over your knuckles, and he feels your fingers wrap around his. You squeeze in a silent prompt for him to continue, and he can’t help but notice that you don’t loosen, holding onto him as if he would run if he wasn’t your grasp, and he finally finishes his thought, a lopsided smile on his face at how fucking right your hand looks in his.
“Jus’ thinkin’ ‘bout how much of an idiot you’re soundin’ like right now thinkin’ I don’t wanna be anythin’ with ya.”
You kick his chair in faux-offense when he stresses the moniker you’ve readily given him before, not used to being on the receiving end. His smile falters in exchange for something more serious, and he clears his throat before he scoots forward. Just a step, but you find yourself wanting him to be closer.
“I wanna be everythin’ for ya, sunshine.”
Daryl grabs your other hand after you use it to push a strand of your hair back, and he rests his knuckles in between your spread legs, holding yours as if they were made of glass. Humming, you shuffle yourself forward too, wrapping your grip around his fingers and unfurling them, placing his palms down on the exposed skin on either of your thighs.
Your movement shocks him for a second, the thought that he’d said something wrong ringing through his head, and he’s quick to form an explanation. Shit, did he come off too overbearing? Possessive? Was it because he said ‘everything’?
“I mean- I don’t want ya to take that the wrong way or nothin’. I jus’ wanted you to know that- that whatever ya want in a man, I’ll be it for ya.”
His fingers flex open as he speaks, allowing him to rise to his feet by instinct, a panic washing through him that your feelings would disappear at the drop of a hat. Daryl’s not good with talking, he never has been, but his body makes up for that fact, allowing him to be expressive when his words fail him - even if the abrupt movement borders almost embarrassing with how he rambles.
The second he rises to his full height, you tilt your head up to keep his stare and you can feel how agitated he is, a look in his eye as if pleading with you to forgive him, even though he hasn’t done anything wrong. Without another thought, your arms reach out to wrap around his torso and you link your fingers at his back, pulling him in a short nudge towards you, a reassuring smile on your face.
“I don’t want anything other than you, you moron. Just you, y’know? Just Daryl Dixon.”
There’s something so magnetic about the way you tilt your head to the side, and he sucks in a breath when the sight of you gets closer, face just a foot from his. He imitates your actions then, sliding his hands up your thighs and over your shorts, resting his forearms at your waist and basking in your undivided attention.
“Jus’ me?”
It’s almost like he doesn’t believe you when he questions - though, maybe he’s just saying that to hear you tell him again, the sound of your voice coupled with the expression of pure affection towards him much too tantalizing to let go of. Not yet. Not ever, he thinks
“Just you.”
Something wrenches deep in his chest, a suffocation from all his senses hitting him at once, and it manifests physical on his body, the tops of his thighs pressing against the edge of his workbench as if he was a sailor beckoned over by your siren song. Your fingers fidget idly where they link at his back, and you look up at him as he stares at you, eyes flitting to the bottom half of your face.
An inkling of understanding worms way into your mind and you smile, watching as his gaze sticks to the way your lips lift, and he nibbles at his own as if fighting himself on whether or not to speak. His internal debate takes too long for him to get a word in, though, your voice hitting his ears before he schools his mind enough to figure out something to say, but your normal ease is interlaced with a hesitancy - with a doubt.
“Actually… I do want something.”
You scoot forward still, and it feels like his air is pulled from him, the heat of your fingers disappearing for a second before your arms link at the nape of his neck, slid through the empty space between his which hold you at your waist. He swallows, mouth falling just the slightest bit agape when the breath of your words ghost across his chin.
“Can you… could you kiss me?”
No, that knocks the air out of him.
“If- if you want.”
Fuck, he’d be a different type of stupid to pass on this opportunity.
“Y’know what, sunshine? I think I could do that.”
The smile that takes hold of Daryl’s face is so boyish and genuine you feel like you could cry with how he’s looking at you. He doesn’t move his hands, he keeps the heat of his palms flush against your pelvic bones, and slowly lowers his head, giving you the opportunity to pull back.
But you never do, and the second his lips touch yours - chapped from his constant biting but so perfectly him - it’s you who pulls him closer, your fingers threading through his hair. He thinks it’s cheesy, the feeling of goddamn fireworks spreading across his skin, but he can’t figure out anything else to describe the tingle he gets running along his spine, bursting like he’s the night sky during Fourth of July.
When he pulls back, his lungs calling him to calm down and take a breath, he retreats to a swipe of your thumb, crossing the length of his scruff that was tickling at your chin and onto his cheekbones. You’re grinning at him, a sight that only makes his heart beat impossibly quicker as the sunset trickles in from the window just above your head, and your thighs no longer rest idly. No, your knees dig into either side of him, the feeling of your muscles flexing making him swallow as he watches your mouth move.
“Again”
It’s a delicious pull, the way your voice glides across those two syllables, and he leans back down, this time with a bit more confidence in his actions, his forearms now lying flush against your back. His tongue peeks out not a second later, sliding along your lips, and you part for him almost embarrassingly fast.
Again, yeah he could do 'again'.
Can someone get so much satisfaction from just kissing another person? Because Daryl’s never felt as much as he's feeling right now - you feel fucking soft and you smell so good and he might be going crazy, but he thinks you’re trying to pull his hips into yours - and his brain is losing all coherence as you move your mouth against his, opening for a split second just to return.
Daryl’s also pretty sure it shouldn’t be as hard as he finds it to be to keep his hands from slipping downwards and up underneath your shirt, catching himself when he feels the hem lift from his travelling touch. His fingertips graze you, their warmth contrasting your air-cooled skin, and though they meet for barely a second, a small whine erupts from your throat, vibrating from you to him.
Embarrassment floods through you at the noise, and you go to pull away, pulling him back with the fingers threaded through his hair as well, but all he does is groan at the sting - a delicious sting that weakens his knees quicker than he would like to admit - chasing your lips with a newly erupted hunger. His hands fall off your clothing and onto the workbench tabletop when he surges that little bit of space forwards, a thrum in his veins he can only seem to satiate with the little hums you’re making.
He’s sure more than ever that he can feel the way the roll of your pelvis quickens, and he submits to the lust that drives your hands downwards across his body. Daryl gives into your soft fingers, basks in the shivers that line him as they slide down the muscles on his chest and down the ones flexing at his abdomen, and the desire to grind into the apex of your thighs grows with each passing second.
You’re too fucking far, though, and every single little noise - hell, even your goddamn pulse - is driving him crazy in the best way possible.
His hands spread open on the clothed flesh of your ass, and he tugs you towards him, impatient as he feels each one of your pretty little moans line his lips. You’re flush against him now - pressing your everything against his everything - and you grind your hips against him, barely feeling the outline of him through the denim of his jeans.
Daryl’s cursing himself now, regretting the fact he’s not wearing those sweatpants you’d dug out of your closet and gave him when everyone first got to Alexandria, but it’s not so bad - you seem to like it, and that’s all that really matters to him. Rutting himself forwards, he basks in your heat, dipping his hands underneath your shirt when your touch catches at his belt loop, grazing the skin of his pelvis as you travel inwards and tug.
The feeling of thread skates along his fingertips, the inwards dent of your spine just an inch from where his palm is resting, and he pulls away, chest heaving with how long he’d denied his body of air for. You’re doing it too, he notices, a rhythmic in and out from kiss-swollen lips, and his whole being wants to lurch forwards to you, but he uses that little bit of self-restraint he still has to hold himself steady in his steps.
“We - fuck - we should stop, sunshine.”
You’ve forgotten your shame a long time ago, but you can’t help the pang which arises, dousing the desirous heady smoke in a wave of rejection. Hands drop from the zipper on his jeans and you feel him imitate the action as your shirt falls onto your skin, his rough palms no longer acting as a barrier between the cloth from you. Scooting your body back by instinct, you watch him as he steps away, questioning him as he runs his fingers through his dark hair.
“Why- what’s wrong? Do you not- am I misreading this?”
The shake of his head is immediate and he moves to sit at the foot of his bed, the angle offering a direct line of sight to you, and the urge to return to you only grows.
“Nah, it sure as hell ain’t nothin’ like that. Jus’- jus’ worried ‘bout them stitches ya put in me.”
Daryl’s hand scratches at the back of his neck as he speaks, a fidget he can’t break due to the stick of your stare on him, and his whole body is burning red at the strain in his jeans - feels it more than anything because he’s pretty sure he’s never been like this in his life just from someone’s attention.
“Ya keep touchin’ me like that, I’m not sure how long it’s gon’ take ‘til they pop.”
The little bit of humour laced with an overlay of disappointment - of apology - in his response makes you smile, and he reciprocates like a mirror, your expression of happiness consuming his heart in an affection much less lustful than just moments ago. Nibbling your lip, a rush of confidence surges through your body when you see the way his hand travels to his pillow, strewn aside days prior from the fact he still has no habit of making his bed, and places it over his lap in an attempt to hide how much he’s failing at calming down.
An odd sense of drive kicks in not even a millisecond later, and you let yourself give into that confidence, letting it fuel your actions as you hop off the workbench and surprise yourself when you find your body has made the decision to sway your hips just a little more. Daryl’s grip on that godforsaken plush tightens, and you watch him shift, pushing himself backwards by the heels of his feet as if he would run to you if he didn’t do something to stay seated.
“Y’know, there’s, um, there’s a way for us not to pop your stitches.”
One of Daryl’s eyebrows quirks upwards at your words, and he doesn’t make a move to stop you when your hand grabs the pillow and takes it off his lap. On the contrary, his whole body opens for you, arms falling to his side and thighs widening to accommodate the way you stand between them.
“That- that right? Wha’d’ya have in that mind’a yours?”
Daryl stutters when you swing a leg over his, his fists bunching up against the mattress as you perch yourself over his lap, so pretty looking down at him with a heady expression of love and lust. It takes everything he has in his body not to flip you over - not to lay you on your back so he can rip those fucking buttons off your clothes - and his jaw clenches when he feels the your fingers linger at he base of his neck, ghosting the strands of his hair.
Your tongue peaks out for a second, nibbling on your bottom lip as you’re in what he can only assume is a mental war of consideration. He’s not used to seeing you like this - around him, you’re always so relaxed, everything coming so naturally to you that he can’t help that ease that washes over him too - and he wants to break the silence to urge you on, but you scoot forward, a positively sinful grind just where he needs it most, and the only noise he can make is a deep groan.
“Let me do the work.”
Oh.
Anticipation coats him in a sickly sweet blush at the lilt of suggestivity - no, more overt than just a lilt, to be honest, but he’s too lost in the way your hands travel down his chest and to the zipper on his jeans to give that classification another consideration.
“Ya sure ya wanna do that? ‘Cause I remember someone callin’ me ‘a handful’, an’ she sounded an awful lot like you.”
Your movement stills and he almost regrets what he’d said before you scrunch your nose, a huff of equal parts annoyance and amusement escaping at the way he smirks when he says it. Worming your fingers underneath his, you bring his touch to the hem of your shorts, wrapping his arms around your waist for him as that feeling of annoyance dissolves fully, and something stronger - more lewd - overtakes at the sharp inhale of breath he lets out.
Learning forward, you let his hands dig into your ass, yours choosing instead to retreat back around his neck as if you’d done nothing at all to drive him crazy. If Daryl had even one thought in his head other than how fucking soft you are or how good you smell or how your hips move under his palms, they’re erased the second your breath fans his ear, a shiver rushing down to the base of his spine.
“I think I can handle it, Daryl. I thought- I thought you got over the habit of underestimating me.”
If you hadn’t stuttered, maybe - just maybe, though - he wouldn’t have that painfully handsome smirk still plastered over his face, but one good rut of his hips into yours sends a rush of arousal through you, his zipper rubbing against something devastating.
“An’ I thought ya forgave me for it.”
When you pull back, you see the blush rising from his shoulders, and he leans for your kiss swollen lips before a light tug on his hair - not back but down - tilts his head upwards and exposes the column of his neck, showing you the bob of his Adam’s apple as he reacts to the flood of pleasure.
“Forgiven, but not forgotten.”
It’s immediate, the desire to press your mouth against the stretched skin, and he’s watching you as you speak, smirk dropped into an expectant expression - as if waiting for you to do just that.
When your grip loosens and he doesn’t feel the relief of your plush lips, he wonders for a second if you held back just to spite him; whether you did or didn’t, he goads anyways, a tease with an underlay of lust, punctuated by his hands travelling over the swell of your ass and dipping underneath the openings for your legs, ghosting the fabric of your underwear.
“How is your right hook, anyways, Doc? Gotten any stronger?”
Daryl likes to give you shit for it - he’d pretended for a long time that the punch you threw at him when he pissed you off enough to even punch him didn’t leave him wincing every time he lifted his crossbow. It was only when he got over his pride that he finally acknowledged it, apologizing as you dug rocks out of his bloody palms after he’d fallen off his bike and skidded across the pavement.
It’s a sore subject sometimes, sure - especially since you’d apologized over and over again following the incident - but as its mentions waded into more conversations with the memories of him trying to teach you how to skip rocks, or the first time you learned how to skin and gut animals, there’s an odd sense of familiarity to the situation. A nostalgia, even.
“Wanna find out?”
Feeling your fists now balled against his chest, Daryl hums, choosing not to respond in exchange for testing his luck, leaning forward again and fucking elating the second he makes contact with your lips. Daryl’s hands slip out of your shorts when you kiss him back, an eager buzz at his fingertips the whole time he maps a path up underneath your shirt.
His chin tilts away from you as he grazes the band of your sports bra, keeping his forehead to yours for just a second before his face retreats an inch or two. It’s barely enough to speak - to form a volume louder than a whisper that won’t pound his gruff drawl against your eardrums - but it’s too far for you.
“Nah. Maybe some other time.”
The grin that upturns his lips is close to lascivious, and if it was from anyone else, you would have hurled him away in disgust, but the mischief intertwined with the words - and the fact it’s Daryl - sends hot anticipation through you, watching him with a near hazy gaze and staring as you wait for him to speak again.
“‘Cause I wanna see what you ‘doin’ the work’ really means. Y’gon’ give me a show, sunshine?”
He dips his fingers underneath the band of your bra, twisting his palm around so that he can pull you back by it, a sharp whine erupting from your throat that he makes a mental note to hear again - preferably feel it along his lips as they’re pressed up against yours. Nodding, you push against his chest with one hand, urging him to lie down as your other races to undo the button holding his jeans together.
A grunt is all you hear before his arm scoops under your ass and he lifts you, bed squeaking underneath your body as he spins the both of you around and your back hits the sheets. For a second, you’re reminded of just how strong Daryl is - how the swift movement reminds you of the prison’s field and when you had some of your first fighting lessons with him - and a different type of adrenaline courses through you, an excitement of how else he might choose to use his strength.
You break from your thoughts too late to keep him blanketed over you, and a quick peck to your neck later - he just couldn’t help himself from the way your head threw back, the column of skin just teasing him - you find Daryl standing on the hardwood floor, his presence no longer accentuated by the dip in the mattress.
Lifting yourself, you let your legs fall to either side of you, folding at the knees before you lean towards him, the neckline of your shirt dropping as more of your weight begins to rest at your shins, then to your hands. It takes almost all his willpower not to give into the urge of just pouncing on you like the animal so many people think he is, and he takes a step back, eyes never leaving your body even as he puts more distance between the two of you.
The more the scene in front of Daryl takes over his vision - a perfectly depraved image of you perched on his bed, your movements teetering on the edge of crawling to him and those two buttons doing nothing to hide your modesty - the more his cock throbs with the urge to reach out and touch you. No, the urge runs deeper than just a touch along skin.
He wants to feel you. He wants to feel you as you bare yourself to him and he wants you to feel him as he bares himself to you in an act so intimate his heart has only ever trusted you enough to do. It’s been so damn long since he’s touched someone, his days of drifting and drunken fervor forgotten for a while, but feeling someone? Daryl’s never felt someone like this before.
And it’s almost fucking torture for him, but still, he wants to take you up on your offer, letting himself hit the edge of his workbench before pulling the chair from wherever the hell he’d shoved it to just moments prior. He can feel his skin burn as he holds your gaze - his eyes holding a glint that makes your stomach twist in knots - and the cerulean you know as him form only a ring around his lust-blown pupils.
The legs of his seat lift off the ground with the force at which he tugs at it, but not a millisecond later, it screeches to a halt beneath him, his thick thighs spread wide as he leans against the back of it. Daryl’s so large on the meager wood, an imposing figure staring at you as darkness falls over him, the remaining streaks of sun from aboveground deciding to leave him in a shadow.
“Thought you were gon’ give me a show?”
He folds his hands over his crotch, running his palm over himself just to give him some goddamn relief, and you narrowly miss his words, focusing instead on the way his abs flex and relax at his own contact, and the groan he lets out when he decides to do it again. He tells himself that it’s because you’re looking at him like that that he repeats, but he’s been almost painfully hard since the second you’d put that ointment on him, and he’s dreamt of seeing you like this for months.
You don’t make a move, staying in a stationary lean towards Daryl as if he was supposed to be giving you a show instead, and he ceases his movements, clearing his throat and just waiting. Only when you stop staring, blinking your eyes up his body in a slow return back to his face, does he speak, resting his hands back in a clasp at his lap with an infuriating pull of the corner of his lips, the expression becoming more and more charming with each time he does it.
“I’m takin’ front row to watch ya, sunshine. So do it - get yourself ready.”
Shit, his voice sounds so fucking good, his normal gravel drawl deepened with arousal, and you press your knees together in an attempt to calm the way you seem to burn from the inside. His breath gets trapped in his throat for a moment when your hands lift at the hem of your shirt, and he barely holds back a strangled groan of disappointment when you stop and smile at him, leaving him in the beginning stages of regretting his decision before he recognizes the sprinkling of mischief in the way they sparkle.
You’ve never made a habit of disappointing Daryl, so why should you start now?.
Pulling off your socks, you adjust yourself, sitting directly underneath the light and letting him take a full look of the way your fingers travel down each button. He’s pretty sure he’s never seen anything so erotic in his fucking life - not in those R-rated movies he’d snuck into when he was a teenager, or in those Playboy magazines he’d stolen with his friends, and sure as hell not in those stories Merle would tell him when he got too drunk and high off his personal stash - and Daryl swears he can’t take his eyes off the way you expose your skin to him.
For him.
Your shirt hits the floor too damn late in his opinion, but his fervor is stealing his logical thinking and turning it into something more base at the sight of your exposed skin, the round of your shoulder down your covered chest and down to the tied knot of the drawstring shorts hugging your waist.
He should have pulled at it, Daryl thinks, watching you consider which item of clothing should be the one to meet his hardwood floor next. He should have pulled at it and undone it and slid off those fucking shorts. He should have taken your underwear off in that one same damn motion to save time. He should have-
Fuck, his mouth falls agape when your grip tightens around the bottom of your bra and you tug, a brief reminder tingling at his fingers about how good you felt there. It doesn’t last long, though, disappearing the second the elastic is up and over your head, back arched so provocatively he can feel his cock throb.
There’s a conscious effort on Daryl’s part not to grind into the hands he has placed over his lap, but it’s in vain when he sees the swell of your breasts rise as they catch along the band and then drop as they submit to gravity. The groan he lets out spurs you on, hearing a swear you’re pretty sure he doesn’t know he’s even saying, and you lift yourself onto your knees.
Crawling.
You’ve turned around onto your hands and knees and you’re fucking crawling with your head turned away from him, ass perked up and mouthwateringly swaying with each slow movement towards his headboard.
His headboard.
Just the reminder you’re in his bed - putting on a damn good show for him - has Daryl scrambling to get out of his jeans, the relief from the denim feeling as close to Heaven as something as mundane as that can. Though, as he sears the sight before him into his brain, he can think of something better - something closer to Heaven, though it may be more fitting to liken that feeling to sin instead.
Grabbing his pillow, you sandwich it between your spine and the wooden slab behind you, dextrous fingers undoing the double-knot you’d tied just this morning. Another second passes and you take a deep breath before slipping the shorts down your legs, trying not to think so much about how you must look when you fold into yourself slightly, and you let the fabric fall from your grasp, a lump of black cloth now contrasting the dark brown floor.
Daryl’s excitement is boiling over in his veins, a focus on you that he’d only ever used on hunts or runs, and he feels like he might melt into his chair the second your fingers loop around the elastic of your underwear, not even given a second to fully memorize the way the fabric cuts deliciously over the curve of your pelvis before those curls peek out, and he swears he’s slack-jawed staring.
How the hell is he supposed to think let alone keep himself from touching you when you’re just a few feet from him?
He hears his name being called - never in his life had he thought those two syllables could ever sound so good - and it nearly drowns him in a wave of arousal, but Daryl’s grounded by the way your head tilts in invitation, legs bent open in a line which beckons his eyes to trail up them. Both your hands fist at the sheets between your thighs as your arms push your breasts together, leant forward and telling him to ‘come here’ in a near whine that’s driving him crazy.
His feet press against the floor in the beginnings of a step, an immediate movement triggered by the need dripping from your words, but he has just enough self-restraint to remind himself of what you’d promised him. Daryl’s never been a particularly patient man, but for you - for your taste and for your touch - he might try. Delayed gratification, or some shit like that.
So he forces himself to stay seated, choosing instead to watch how you squirm underneath his gaze, a lust so pronounced in his cerulean that you’re surprised when it doubles - triples - at the way you rub your thighs together in a search for relief. You say his name again, even more of a plead than he’s heard before, but he still doesn’t react. Only when you move out of your sit in preparation to cross the mattress does he hold out a hand to stop you, responding in a deep growl that sinks deep into the pit of your stomach.
“That was a nice li’l tease ya put on for me, that’s for damn sure, but ya need to get yourself ready. ‘Cause you were gon’ do the work, weren’t ya?”
You nod, maybe too fast, but Daryl sure as hell doesn’t mind. Instead, he shifts in his chair, choosing to ignore the wood beginning to dig into his tailbone in exchange for the sight of you easing back against the pillow, a look of slight apprehension on your face as your hands rub down your thighs.
“Do it then, sunshine. Be a good girl an’ touch yourself.”
Fuck.
It’s not that you weren’t at least expecting this - the second you’d told him that you would do the work, you knew he might want you to do this - but to hear him say it so explicitly and laced with something that’s so desperate makes your arousal pool when you swipe your finger along yourself, the blossoming of pleasure from your touch seemingly heightened.
Shameless. Daryl’s pretty damn shameless as he memorizes the way you bite your lip and whimper, a light thud resounding through the room when you throw your head against his wall, the muscle of your neck exposed to him - as if you knew just how much he wants to run his lips over it and choosing to taunt him with the promise of a taste.
With each passing moment - stuck just watching you as his cock leaks pitifully onto his boxers - his regret compounds and compounds, replaced at an exponential rate with molten desire. Daryl wants to take your bottom lip between his teeth and pull it free from your bite, maybe even slide his tongue against yours so all the little noises you’re making vibrate along it, a muffle from him on you.
Even better, though? He’d free that lip of yours and tell you not to hide those sounds from him. He’d bask in them as long as they fall from you.
Your other hand slithers up your thigh to meet the one drawing slow circles on that little bundle of nerves - spreading yourself for Daryl so he can see the mess he’s to blame for - before trailing up your stomach and your ribs to palm across your chest. A choked moan escapes from your throat, and you rut your hips up involuntarily, a squeak of the mattress punctuating your actions, and your mouth falls agape in another as your fingers pinch.
Only when you hear your name - followed by an intoxicatingly guttural ‘fuck’ - do you realize you’ve closed your eyes. Opening them, you tilt back to face him and whimper pathetic when you see his cock in his unmoving hands, a dribble of viscous liquid running down his knuckles into a darkened patch on the last remaining piece of clothing shared between the two of you.
Did you do that to him?
The knowledge of his desire feels like a wildfire - made only more intense by the physical confirmation - burning you in his stare, and you swipe harsher, seeking for more friction and more feeling as you burn and burn and burn. You need more, though, an emptiness that doesn’t seem to quell by the rub of both hands and catching you stagnant on the rise to your climax. Throwing your head back again, your other fingers join at the apex of your thighs, pushing two into yourself in a movement that has you biting your lip into nearly a bleed.
Daryl can hear it, the lewd squelch of each movement, and he memorizes it - everything from the scrunch of your brows to the flex of your thighs to the way a moan scratches at the back of your throat, an extra focus on following the length of your fingers. They’re coated in you, and he runs his tongue along his lips in a desperate seek to just taste.
They’re messy, each push and pull, and you swear you’re dripping onto the sheets as you clench around yourself, rutting forwards - the desire to be full counteracting your propriety. It’s so easy to get lost in the pleasure, but at the same time, you can hear Daryl grunting, tethering your senses back to the fact his eyes are on you.
Fuck, it feels so good, the bliss of your climax just barely out of reach. You’ve never experienced it coming so quick, the pure force of the preshocks foreign as they wreck through you. Knees knocking together, your inner thighs trap your hands in place, blocking the sight of your core from Daryl, He curses, a growl ripping from his throat that almost overshadows the crash of his chair hitting the ground.
The sounds wrench your eyes open, and you watch as he crawls across the mattress to get to you, a scowl on his face that’s both familiar but different. It’s not disdain, not anger, but a full-bodied concentration, like you’re the only thing on his mind and he’s planning something - something he won’t give up on trying to achieve.
“Shit, let me taste. Please. I wanna - fuck - can I touch you?”
His voice is scratchy from desire - seemingly pulled out of his throat by sheer willpower - and you nod, an equally ruined moan of ‘yes, please’ barely breaking above a breathy tone. Swearing, he jerks his grip from the sheets on either side of your pelvis to your wrist, drawing your fingers out from you and shoving them into his mouth, all sense of decorum and decency replaced with a rushing urge to taste you.
You can feel Daryl’s tongue run along your skin, hot and wet gathering and drawing out everything he can from each crevice, lewd grunts reminiscent almost of the way he eats after days of starvation, reminding you of how uncaring he is to veil his enjoyment. Nearly a second later, his lips detach with an audible smack before he takes your other hand, opening his mouth to let you slide your fingers along that same smooth muscles until he lets you slip from him.
Heat erupts in you when his voice groans your name, the abrupt - and unsatisfying - halt of the build to your climax forgotten as Daryl’s palms hold your thighs open, your body pulled down the mattress and onto your back so he can tilt his face downwards to watch the way you clench in a desperation to be full again. Fisting his sheets, you watch as he sets his jaw, leaning almost all his weight on his hands to keep you open for him, and he swallows, the bob of his Adam’s apple followed quickly by his tongue popping out over his lips.
His eyes flicker back to yours, fingers beginning to dig lightly into your skin, and a silent seek of permission lines his expression. When you nod and a breathy whimper of Daryl’s name follows soon after, he swears the sound swirls through his brain on repeat. And when you rut your hips up in invitation - in a plead - he’s helpless to his desire and he descends, an eager swirl of his tongue making you choke on your own moan.
Daryl’s beginning to regret as more of your noises flood his ears. He’s not regretting the fact he’s finally tasting something he’d spent months fucking dreaming about and pining after, or the fact he can feel the way your legs are trembling as you try to keep your hips still for him, or at this situation as a whole - not this situation at all - but at the fact he’d just watched you. He’s such an idiot just sitting on that damn chair and letting himself get hard as a fucking rock watching you do all that to yourself.
He could have been here.
In bed.
With you.
Touching you.
There’s no smile on Daryl’s lips and no smirk on his face, just a determination to make you scream as if he had a personal vendetta against those masochistic delayed gratification morons whose stupid philosophy kept him from you. Though, he did learn some things from his stint as your damn voyeur, and he shows you as much when his right hand pulls from you, returning in that same circle you draw onto yourself.
Only then does his scowl break, an expression of satisfaction gracing his handsome features at the way your grasp tightens around his gray sheets and your mouth falls open in an exclamation of pleasure.
Another circle, then another, and you burn in his wildfire, your hips rolling up into him and crying out when his dull fingernails dig into the flesh of your thigh to keep you still. You want to - fuck do you want to just submit to him - but your body doesn’t listen, disobeying your mind’s plead to still with the tremble of muscle at your thigh.
Daryl notices - of course he fucking notices - and he raises a teasing eyebrow, his ego boosted through the damn roof after hearing your pathetic attempt at smothering a whimper.
“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful, sunshine. An’ ya taste even better’n I thought.”
You keen at the praise, driving him crazy in the best possible way when you clench below his tongue once more, and he slips a finger in, rutting himself into the bed for some relief from the way you’re making him feel just by being here. Daryl pushes to the knuckle, thicker and longer than yours, and curls, watching your face for every little pull of your eyebrows and scunch of your nose.
Insanely observant - like always.
Turns out he knows just which buttons to push - both when he wants to piss you off and when he wants to make you crumble for him.
“Can- do- do ya think I could add another? I don’t wanna hurt ya today an’ I don’t want ya limpin’ tomorrow.”
Nodding, your left hand goes to grab his, your forearm sliding against your pelvic bone, and you wrap your fingers around his wrist before he takes your grip, urging it into his hair and aching to feel the sensation of your tugging coupled with the taste and warmth of you. He pulls his face away when he doesn’t hear you, peppering your inner thigh in a smattering of wet kisses and placing your right hand to join your left before speaking, but his movements never stop, his knuckles beginning to get coated in you.
“Ain’t gonna use that pretty voice‘a yours? I know it can do more’n jus’ moan an’ yell at me.”
The second sentence makes you chuckle, just one breath of air escaping you in a ‘ha’ before your words contort into something more raw. You’re vaguely aware of what you’ve said - ‘please, Daryl. Yes, please’ maybe? - but you can’t be bothered too much for the details, the familar knot of your climax tightening in the base of your stomach.
Just a little more.
It’s all fervor of touch at this point, an intoxicating mixture of Daryl’s own spit and you dripping down the facial hair that scratches you so fucking deliciously, and the second he pushes in another finger, it only takes half a dozen strokes to push you over. A crescendo of back-arching sensations overtake and he can feel you spasm, contracting around him with a tightness that makes him shudder.
He memorizes you as he slows his hand’s actions down to languid, pulling himself up to his knees as your hands drop to the sheets and basking in the pride of being the reason why you’re in this state - the breathy whine of his name and the contort of your face will be seared into his brain, so help him God. If Daryl thought your happiness sparked alight adoration, seeing your chest rise and fall with shaky breaths and feeling you swipe so tenderly across his forehead alights something that consumes his whole being.
“Daryl,”
He doesn’t realize he’s mirroring your smile until he feels his cheeks sore up, and he gives into it, pure bliss on his face when he sees the bliss on yours. Resting the back of your left hand on your forehead, you watch as he breaks eye-contact only to stare at the way his fingers look leaving you, another heave of pride puffing up his shoulders when your warmth clenches to keep him in.
It’s filthy - obscene - but, fuck is it perfect.
A second later, Daryl’s gaze snaps back to you, a deliberate show of sucking his fingers clean, and his tongue darts out to catch the coating of his lips. Memories of the last few minutes flash through your mind, and your trembling legs snap closed, trapping his left hand between them. He doesn’t stop you, just keeps himself there and squeezes appreciatively at your thigh before he wipes away the liquid glistening his chin, a Cheshire grin adorning his features.
“Daryl.”
Covering your face, your voice comes out muffled behind the back of your hand, the feeling of his stare heavy as it drags along your body. Humming, he pulls his hand from your thigh, watching them fall open, and the other from his chin, wiping both dry on his boxers before he leans back on his legs, sitting down on them between yours.
You’re still spasming, the sight from where he’s seated allowing him to take in full appreciation of it, the arch of your back, as well as the jut of your chest. Shit, he knew you would look good, but fuck he didn’t expect you to look this good. What monumental thing did he do in his past life to get so lucky?
“Jus’ enjoyin’ the view.”
The sound that breaks from your throat is halfway between a scoff and a laugh, and you kick up to a sit with still buzzing legs, him between them. Daryl doesn’t pull away when your head rises to just a few inches from him, only places his hands on the sheets on either side of your waist, leaning towards you and swallowing as he watches the affection take hold of your features.
Lazy smile on your face, you run your hands through his hair, holding him in place and admiring before slotting your mouth over his, the innocence of the intended quick peck corrupting the second he swipes his tongue over the seam of your closed lip. Daryl’s arms snake around the small of your back before sliding his hands over the swell of your ass and down to the underside of your thighs, pulling your hips against his as he palms over the flesh beneath his touch.
You can feel him, the outline of his cock along with the soft fabric of his underwear rubbing against you, and in a fervour, you lean into him, letting your fingers catch along his waistband and dipping your hand in. Daryl’s warm - no, hot - and heavy in your grasp, and you run him along in a stroke, feeling a nibble on your lips when he fails to pull away in time to bite at his own, not able to suppress the groan he lets out.
It vibrates along the inside of your throat, all the way down to the hollow of your collarbones and it sends goosebumps along your sweaty skin, reciprocating his sound with one of your own just before he holds you against his chest and flips. The mattress squeaks beneath the two of you, and the small whine becomes an almost comical noise of surprise as your chest hits his, your arms trapped between Daryl’s body and yours.
You feel his smile forming against your kiss, and you pull away to take a breath, only then realizing that he’s straddled you over his body, the thin fabric of his underwear being the sole barrier between the two of you. Biting his lip, Daryl watches you retract, the corners of his mouth lifting as the heavy rise of your chest comes into view, and he fights the urge to take it between teeth - to roll his tongue over you and suck until you can do no more than moan.
Later, Daryl reminds himself.
Anticipation hangs heavy in the air - makes him drunk with determination - and he plants his feet into the mattress, the strength of his legs sending him back first into the pillow you’d left propped up against the headboard. Your body floats on his, your thighs on either side of his keeping you seated as he moves, and you scramble to press your palm against his stomach. It’s a feeble attempt at staying steady that leaves only shallow scratches on his skin, but neither of you seem to notice as the shift in position causes him to rub against you.
Daryl chokes on a groan when you grind down on him - intentionally, continuing even after he’d stilled himself - and his palms grasp at your ass, encouraging your push and pull until he thinks he might overheat and combust.
Fuck, if you keep doing that - keep feeling like that - how much longer until he makes a bigger mess of himself?
Barely a second passes before you slide back against his thighs, lifting yourself up on still slightly shaky legs to pull his boxers down and off his legs. It registers to neither Daryl nor you how desperate you’re being - you’ve spent your whole life avoiding the concept of selfish, but you’re helpless to the neediness of your own body - and he pops free from his boxers with a relieved sigh, his hands squeezing you appreciatively.
He was going to fucking suffocate, he swears.
His cock juts out against your stomach, the tip of him swollen and leaking as you look down between the two of you, biting your lip as your fingers wrap around it, your thumb swipes him over before he feels just one languid stroke - soft fingers, and Daryl realizes what a damn idiot he is for even thinking he could have replicated this pure ecstasy from a simple touch.
Swallowing, your hand stills, shifting your hips slightly as you adjust on top of him, a wave of nerves hitting you like ice through the heady warmth of lust. You’ve touched him underneath the cover of his boxers - felt the outline of him over the fabric of his underwear - but, fuck. He’s so… big.
It’s a juvenile thought - probably a juvenile way of phrasing it, too - but that’s the only thing you can think of when you finally see him bare for the first time. Daryl’s big. His shoulders widen out like a mountain range against the wood of his headboard, miles of hardened muscle down from his chest to his torso that keeps his body upright, and you can’t help but think about how fucking large he is both in your hand and against your body.
Why the hell did you only use two fingers?
Why the hell did you think that would be enough?
“Hey- hey, we don’ need to do nothin’ if ya don’t want to, y’know that, right?”
You barely notice you’re staring before he speaks, his right hand gently tilting your chin up from your grasp around him to his face. There’s an affection in Daryl’s eyes - a tenderness he’s gotten so used to hiding from you until you weren’t looking at him - and you get lost in it for a second, heart pounding as you feel yourself move almost into tears at the look.
Like a switch, he turns off his mind-numbing desire, the urge to make you feel okay overtaking him like that night just a few days ago. Observant. How did you expect him to miss the way your apprehension shines through each little feature of your face? Especially when all Daryl’s been doing for months is stare at it? You come first - you’ve always come first for him - and you huff out a small smile before responding, stuttering more than you had hoped you would.
“Yeah- I- I know, but I want to do this. Especially with you, Daryl. I just- I don’t- I don’t want to disappoint you.”
It feels oddly stupid to hear yourself say the last part though the intention rings true to the core of your being. There’s no doubt in your mind he loves you - that no matter what happens, Daryl’s not one to fall into someone’s bed without feeling something deeper than surface level - but there’s also no doubt in your mind that he wants to feel good. There’s no doubt in your mind that you want to be the reason he feels good, but, God, can you do that?
He leans in then, a light brush of his thumb across your cheekbones before he presses his lips to yours, and your heart wells up in nothing but comfort before he pulls away to respond to you. For someone who spent so long alone - protecting himself and locking people out, ready to attack like a wildcat - Daryl can’t help but feel the need to offer himself up to you, mentally, emotionally and physically.
“C’mon, you could never. Don’t worry ‘bout nothin’ ‘cause you’re doin’ fuckin’ perfect, sunshine. Got me makin’ a mess down these damn sheets an’ my damn boxers.”
His words - though very much lewd and suggestive - makes a smile breaks from your lips and you nod, a rush and renewal of confidence surging through your body. You melt into Daryl, leaning forward to press your nose right up against his and slipping your tongue in a careful caress against his so he can feel your nod. A jolt of excitement ripples through every patch of his skin, and he tries to still his hips from rutting into your hand when you stroke him again.
Scooting just barely forward, you pull your mouth back before you bite at your lip - swollen from his kisses, and he thinks he could die right now and be okay with it. You’re a fucking sight, but then again, you could be doing the most mundane thing in the world and Daryl would want to keel over at your feet.
A second passes, then another, and he can feel the hesitation in your actions, your thighs tightening around him as you build up just that tiny bit more courage you need and the furrow of your eyebrows as you stare downwards, half-lidded from the lust threatening to rob you of further contemplation. It’s slow, your movement, but Daryl endures though it feels like torture. You need this, he knows you do, and he would never be able to look at himself if he did anything to hurt you.
Grabbing your hips, he squeezes to get your attention before calling your name softly. A balm to soothe your anxiety, you suppose, and you wonder if he knows what you need before you even know.
“If ya want, jus’- jus’ keep goin’, alright? And if you wanna kick off’a me an’ try another time, that’s more than okay.”
He’s got a satisfied smile on his face though he thinks he might combust if you don’t do something - or in this scenario, a someone who, preferably, is him - and you can’t help but chuckle lightly when you see how genuine the small lilt of his lips are.
Wow. When did he get so… good with words?
“‘Sides, I ain’t exactly hatin’ the thought of diggin’ my face between your thighs again, anyways.”
Maybe not.
Scoffing disingenuously, you realize your grip has long dropped from him in favour of bracing your two palms at his chest, and you nod with that expression of slightly parted lips that drives makes him want to kiss you fucking silly. Daryl wants this - more importantly, you want this - and you take a breath before you slide over him, a brush of your core across the length of him which wrenches air from his lungs.
Another breath, a still of your thighs before they move again, and he feels your dominant hand wrap around his cock just as the mattress begins to dip beside him. On your shins, you lift yourself up just enough to notch his cock at your entrance, indulging yourself - and him, judging from his growl and furrowed brows - in a swirl to gather the remnants of your arousal.
Daryl can see everything that’s happening - the depraved way his cock inches closer to your curls, a teasing cover of what he knows is a wet, warm, velvet - and God fucking damn it you’re making it hard for him to just stay still and not rut upwards. He’s concentrating the hardest he’s ever concentrated trying to memorize the sight, and when you slowly begin to sink down, he truly thinks he might be in heaven.
Sure, he knew this was going to be good - knew it every damn time he would stroke himself heavy to the thought of doing this - but he wasn’t ready for just how intense it would be. It might be because of how long Daryl’s been stuck in the company of only his hands that he feels a sticky, syrup of pleasure consume him, but there’s more than just an inkling in his half-functioning brain that knows all these sensations come solely from you.
“Fu- fuck. Yeah, jus’ like that. See? Y-you’re doin’ fi- fuck- you feel good.”
Your knees nearly give out from the smatterings of butterfly tingles travelling down from your stomach, and you sink down further at his praise, the stretch of him an addicting burn. More - you want more - and you can’t help but clench around him each time he adds more pressure to the fingernails pressing dull against your pelvic bone, an almost suffocating squeeze he can’t get enough of.
Daryl sets your whole body electric as he brushes up against a devastating spot, making you whimper and scratch at him - and when your full weight returns to press him against his mattress, he can’t help but groan at the way he’s becoming obsessed with the feel of you on top of him. He’s not lazy, not by a long shot, but he wants to be underneath you for the rest of his damn life.
To hell with decency. To hell with responsibility.
To hell with anything but you.
It’s not a surprise how full you feel after he slowly slots - perfectly slots - into you, and he groans deep and guttural when you grind forward, rubbing your bundle of nerves up against him. You don’t move in another motion for a few seconds, needing that long to adjust to the way he curves against you, and he’s the furthest damn thing from disappointed. How else would Daryl be able to admire the way those two syllables of his name sound so fucking good falling from your lips? So he just listens and drowns himself in your noises.
That is, until you lift yourself - until you start a rhythm that tightens your abdomen and makes you flutter around him - and he’s groaning out words as if he’s never had a filter between his mouth and brain before.
“Christ, you’re so pretty like this. So pretty on my cock, y’know that?”
More. Daryl’s voice is just as addicting as the drag of his cock, and you mewl into the empty air as you throw your head back, the sweat-covered jut of your muscles sprouting from your collarbone making him want to mark up all the skin there.
He’d do it if you let him. God, there’s so many things he would do if you let him. He’d give into that primal part of him that yells at him to leave lovebites so people know you’ve got someone to warm your bed - that that someone won’t be them. You’ve got him, and with each lift of your hips, he wants you to remember the feel of him. Daryl wants you to remember that it’s him you’re moaning for. That it’s him you’re moaning from.
Each bounce of your chest is making his throat dry, and he can’t fucking take it anymore. Like Eve to the apple, his mouth slots over the curve of flesh, running his tongue along the protrude of nerves, and your back arches so intensely you nearly slip from his attention. Daryl detaches from you then, and you don’t realize you’ve closed your eyes until you see the glisten of spit across his lips.
“Was that - shit - did that feel- feel alright for you?”
It catapults you, the sight of pure desire in his features along with the weave of pure desire between his words, and your thighs shake with the effort of keeping you up. You’ve just heard him, you tell yourself, but with each drag of his cock and the way his bed squeaks each time he lifts his hips to meet yours, you can’t focus enough to form an answer.
But then Daryl uses his stupidly big hands and pulls you down by your waist onto him, stilling your steadily increasing rhythm and knocking the breath out of you, a whine ripping from your throat at the feeling of being full but nothing else.
“I asked y’a question, sunshine. Be a- fuck- use your words an’ answer it.”
You clench around him at the way his voice lowers, dragged down by lust and he swears at the feeling. It’s like all his sensations are heightened to a point with you, a roll of your hips becomes a douse of oil, and your voice is a throw of him into a fire.
“Yes, Daryl. Ye- yes, it felt more than alright. Want you to- want you to kiss me everywhere.”
His skin lights up at the way your voice drags along the second half of your words and he spreads his palm flat between your shoulder blades, dipping his head down and pressing your collarbones against his lips before he takes the skin between teeth and sucks. It’s getting colder now, breaking into autumn, so he could mark you up underneath the neckline of your shirts. Then only he would know - only he would see the brush of purple and pinks across your fabric covered body.
“Even here?”
The purely depraved sound you’d let out should have been approval enough. but you moan a ‘yes’ anyways as he stares at the wet patch on your skin. Your hips stop bouncing when his right hand sets sight onto your chest, indulging in a quick tug that he soothes over with a wrap of lips over the sensitive bud, and he groans into you when your movement becomes a heavy grind.
“What about here?”
Daryl’s words make your arms nearly give out from the vibrations and slight scratch of his teeth - your body becoming so embarrassingly sensitive from the fact he’s underneath you - and you brace yourself against the muscles in his abdomen so you can keep yourself propped up enough to breathe. Head thrown back, you take deep pull of the air, dense and humid from the heat of your body and his, and it lies heavy in your lungs with desire.
“Yes, anywhere. Everywhere.”
Growling, his hand drops back down to your waist, rough fingers digging into your pelvis that you can’t quite register through your haze of lust. He pulls you harsher now, spurred on by the compound of his rising climax, and his grip grows stronger - firmer - as he encourages each circle of your hips, grinding up to meet you in a fit of impatience.
A moan claws through your throat when his lips travel up the column of your neck, meeting yours in a fevered kiss and all you can think about is the overtake of his tongue and teeth across your senses. Daryl pulls away to hear your pants - inhale, exhale, a rhythm sped up by the way you’ve tried to refuse the burn of your lungs - and he only takes a second’s breath before his mouth reattaches to your skin, paying extra attention to that spot that makes you tighten around him.
Just below your jaw, he makes sure to leave a good one there - an obvious one - then down to that fucking muscle that protrudes each time he calls your name and you turn to face him. Those splotches will no sooner turn a deep red, and the sight of your previously unblemished skin now painted with a declaration of his attention makes him throb inside you, an impossible tingle of pleasure blanketing his brain.
Overwhelm, overwhelm, overwhelm.
Daryl wants you to overwhelm him - take him over from the inside out with your sounds and your scent and your taste.
“You’re perfect - shit. Lettin’ me mark you up, so ya look even prettier than ya do right now.”
He doesn’t mention the fact everyone will know you’re his by morning, but by the way you’d pushed your neck into him and tilted your head back to show him more, he’s inclined to believe you don’t care. God, maybe you even like it - maybe you like being his - and he grips you harsher, trying to keep himself from thinking about it hard.
The squeeze surprises both you and him, the pads of his fingers wetting with your arousal when they brush against where you’re swallowing him, and your lower body jerks towards the touch. There’s no shame in your actions when your right hand grabs Daryl’s, and you urge him to rub where you’d been nudging against his curls in a desperate search for friction. There’s no shame because you’re far too close to your climax to have any, pulse hammering through your ears and spurred on by his voice and his touch and his lips and his damn being.
He’s an all-consuming destruction and you crumble to it, deliciously with a roll of your hips, the drag of his cock heavy as your thighs shake with the effort of keeping you upright on his soft mattress. The added stimulation of his determined swipes make you feel like you’re drowning in a heady honey, and its thick syrup steals your coherence. You can’t think - can’t form a full sentence to properly warn him of your burning muscles - and you can’t be too sure what you’re saying is even intelligible.
“Daryl, I don’t think my legs can- D-Daryl, please- I need to- I need you to- please.“
Your movements have slowed - he’d noticed the change in pace when you first started to falter, a dull throb of desire plateauing the tension in the pit of his stomach instead of building it towards the finish - and he buzzes alight with a growl. One second. That’s all he needs to flip you both over and you land with a squeak of his mattress, both his hands travelling from your waist to underneath either of your thighs.
Fingers twisting into the sheets beneath you, your legs snap closed around his waist the second he lifts them to it, and the flash of your climax comes with one swift pound of his cock dragging against something devastating. It's a warningless shockwave which spreads from your core to the very ends of your body, each rock against you sending more through you and you damn near cry out his name.
No, you do - you are - and your voice breaks after the first syllable, pulse after pulse of sensations across your skin. Swearing, he furrows his brow and doesn’t relent his pace in a selfish search of his own satisfaction, each throb of his cock directly connected to the way your heat clenches and spasms and your face contorts tighter in pleasure. Another moan has him reeling and, fuck, do you sound and feel and look better than his late nights had tried so desperately to conjure up.
Daryl could get addicted to you - everything about you - and maybe the intensity of each pang of affection should scare him, but it doesn’t. It clearly doesn’t because his fingers worm their way to that bundle of nerves he knows will just pull more of everything from you, and he can’t stop watching the rise of your chest with each panting breath you take, mesmerized by the sight.
Feeling your knees slide up his waist, he hooks his left hand underneath your thigh and lifts it over his shoulder as he leans down, spurred on by the lewd expression of your swollen lips hanging agape and blanketing your body with his. The abrupt movement sends Daryl nearly falling over you, but he still has enough brain cells to push his forearm into the mattress and keep himself up, just an inch of empty air taken up by your breathing that he closes with a sloppy kiss before trailing more down your jaw.
It can’t be comfortable, you notice the angle at which he’s bent his neck, but he doesn’t grunt or complain, just keeps descending as he sucks a smattering of lovebites - taking extra pleasure in the sounds erupting from your throat when he darkens the ones he revisits. Your hands have traveled to Daryl’s back somewhere in his haze, your desperate attempts to find a relief you don’t really want from each roll of his hips making you scratch lightly at his skin. Though your nails are dull, there’s just enough pressure in them to make him feel it and the sweet soft sear rackets through his body, chipping away at what little bit of control he still has over himself.
“Such a fuck- fuckin’ good girl - lookin’ so pretty when you- when you were givin’ me a show. And ya take my cock so well, too, ain’t ya? You’re like a damn dream.”
Daryl doesn’t realize he’s spoken until he hears you whine and feels your chest press up against his as you react to his voice. He’s getting drunk off the knowledge he can do this to you - the realization that he’s the only one that you’ll let do this to you making the intoxication only headier - and he snakes his fingers in a return back down to where you wrap around him, rubbing quick, tight circles as if he was convincing you he’s all you need.
Your warmth clenches him, a leg shaking climax less abrupt than your last trembling your thighs - sensitive nerves doubling the pleasure - and he can feel himself submit to another delicious pull towards his finish. He takes you in then, memorizes the feeling of your sweat-soaked skin against his, and he can feel the coil in the base of his stomach tighten.
Somewhere in your haze, the grunt of your name draws you out and you feel the growing stutter of his hips, finally looking down to where he's joint to you for the first time. You’re split open swallowing him - the throbbing length of him coated with you, catching the little bit of remaining sunlight like a spotlight begging you to look - and Daryl bites his lip to keep a groan trapped in his chest when you mewl.
Fuck, he isn’t going to last much longer if you keep sounding like that.
And he doesn’t.
The noise propels him towards his end with little trouble, and he watches himself slip out. He watches as he pushes his cock against your stomach so he can see how far you’d taken him, and a lewd, primal pleasure spreads from deep inside his being. Knees locking up against the mattress, Daryl growls your name so roughly you would have sworn he was angry if he wasn’t grinding against you.
He’s not, though, and you know it.
Even if he’s set his jaw so hard you think he might bite through it - even if his eyes are barely two slits looking down at you, cerulean shadowed over with the scowling furrow of his brows - he’s not angry, and there’s a small part of him that wonders if he ever could be when he has you like this.
Leg dropping from his shoulder, you lift up to meet him, your abdominal muscles and thighs flexing at your movements. Red and slick, he balls his fists up at either side of your head and moans your name when your hand wraps around him, running him in a stroke that nearly has his arms giving out. It’s a simple movement, he knows it is, but it makes him keel - makes him whimper.
Who would have thought Daryl Dixon could whimper?
“Shit, sunshine, I’m- fuck- I’m gonna-“
Maybe it’s the intimacy of this - the trust that the both of you needed to feel to ever pursue exposing yourselves in body and soul - that makes each rising step towards his climax feel so intense, but he can’t dwell on why much longer when you swipe back the hair falling into his face, tucking it so gently behind his ear he forgets for a second how vulgar this moment is.
“Do it, Daryl. I want it.”
His heart stammers in his chest at how ruined your breathy command is, and he swears the beating stops when he just sees affection in your eyes - admiration. You’re beautiful underneath him and he’s helpless to replaying your words over and over and over.
It doesn’t take long for him to give you what you want.
Fuck, he’d give you anything you ask for.
Euphoria - sweltering euphoria splintering from where you touch him - hits Daryl half a dozen strokes later, and all his muscles lock up as he spills onto your stomach, your name rolling off into the empty air of his bedroom and mingling with the scent of sweat and pleasure. Rope after rope, his release marks your skin until you’ve taken all you can from him, quick breaths escaping your lips and his as you both try to recover from the intensity just moments ago.
In and out, in and out until slowly, you’re both steady again.
“Your legs alright?”
A light laugh breaks from you at how he chooses to break the silence - so utilitarian, so Daryl - and he just stares as he furrows his brows down at you, expecting and waiting for you to answer. Threading your hand through the mop of hickory atop his head, you stare back, eyes crinkled upwards from the push of your smile-risen cheeks, and something sweetly familiar swirls in his chest.
Leaning all his weight on one arm, Daryl swipes a finger at the hair fallen unruly onto your face, imitating your actions as he swipes it back, tucking it away so he can really, really see you. Soon enough, the expression he has morphs into one that’s much softer - one he’d only ever shown when he knew you couldn’t catch him - and a small grin forms on his lips, corners tugging upwards.
God, he looks so fucking cute with a flushed pink face and you pull him in for a quick kiss.
“I love you, Daryl. I love you.”
The noise that escapes him catches in his throat, your confession making him feel as though he could cry from how tenderly you say his name after brushing your lips against his. Sure, he’s heard you say it just today, but each time you do, it makes him feel something different. More intense? More affection? Whatever it is, it makes him want to crumble at your feet and devote himself to you like you’re a deity and he’s just some mortal man hoping for your blessings.
“Don’t change the subject.”
It’s funny though - ironic - him saying those words while that’s exactly what he’s doing.
“I need to develop more thigh muscles, don’t I?”
Daryl acknowledges your response with a noncommittal grunt, but you can tell by the way he raises his eyebrow that it doesn’t really satisfy him.
Pressing light kisses between your collarbones, he boxes you in with the arms he has bent beside your head, giving you enough space between his hips and yours for you to lift your pelvis up, testing the weight that you can push on your legs. There’s no denying there’s something there, more of a dull ache than a shock of pain, but you hum a response anyways, a gentle caress of your fingers making him breath a soft sigh of pleasure.
“They hurt a little, but now won’t compare to what I’ll be feeling tomorrow.”
The movement of your hips causes something wet to brush up against Daryl’s stomach and he grimaces, mostly at himself for forgetting about the mess he’d left on you. Letting himself have one last peck, he pushes himself up and off you, mattress dipping in accordance with his weight while your hands falling from the steady caress threatening to pull him into sleep.
A shock of uncertainty rattles through you, but before you can open your mouth, he quells any question of his care for you by shaking his bangs from his eyes, offering you an apologetic smile before nodding to his bathroom and walking over. He tries to be quick, swiping a clean towel from the towel rack, spurred on by the reminder you’re in his bed and waiting for him to clean you, but it takes a much more sinful turn when he starts to think about it too long.
Shit, he can’t help the guilt lodging in his chest when he feels a swirl of desire, trying to distract himself by dampening the cotton in his hands underneath the rush of water. It’s his fault your thighs are sore, isn’t it?
Turning the sink off, he rushes back to you, bare feet slapping dull against his hardwood floors, and when he reaches the doorway, the sight of you makes him stutter his actions. You’re not doing anything, just resting the back of one of your hands over your forehead and breathing a steady in and out which has your chest rising and falling, legs bent the same way you do when you crash after running from a hoard with him - which he probably won’t be able to see the same now that he’s seen you like this - but Daryl stumbles over his discarded boxers anyway.
Did he throw them that far?
At the sound, your neck turns to him and your face breaks into a grin so vibrant it puts the sun and stars to shame, leaving his body a slave to yours when you beckon him over with a tilt of your chin. He sits at your side, the front of him obscured by the rays of setting sun streaming in just behind him, and swipes gingerly at the mess, pursing his lips in apology and squeezing your wrist when your skin breaks out in goosebumps from the cold.
Clearing his throat, Daryl treks back to the washroom, a profuse blush he catches on his face that he attributes to the embarrassment of his stumble and not the way you’d smiled at him. Certainly not how his immediate thought was how many times he wants to see you like that - how many times he’d want to fall asleep to that sight or wake up to that sight or come home to that sight. And definitely not because he would know exactly how you’d gotten to that state in the first place.
He splashes his face with the cold water, a stark contrast to the overheat of his skin, and nearly sprints back to you in a desire to feel the glow of your aftermath.
Rounding the corner, he stops at the doorway to just take in the sight of you cuddled up in his gray sheets, the stupid overplush hugging your body and making you look almost tiny curled up beneath it. His lips tug upwards without much thought, his chest welling up in something so foreign that it almost feels suffocating. But it feels so nice, too. So fucking nice.
“What’re you looking at?”
He’s perceptive, but maybe you are too.
Though, Daryl’s not making a particular effort to hide his stare, either.
“You.”
A scoff breaks from you at how sincere he sounds, an ease laced one he hasn’t heard in ages that you use to hide the heat of your blush. You’re happy, he notices, juvenile pride warming his heart knowing he’s the reason why, and he catches the glint of a smile when you lift the covers for him. Patting the remaining empty space on his mattress, another flood of pride washes through him when he recognizes it as an invitation to join you - an invitation extended for him to crawl in next to you - and he can’t help but wonder how long it’ll take for his bed to become yours, too.
Daryl can’t will his body to move fast enough.
Slipping underneath the sheets, the second his body touches yours - your hand sliding over his chest - you wrap yourself up in him. Your legs are between his, and it’s so unknown to him, the hold of you is so light, so tender and it’s - fuck - it makes him almost cry. He doesn’t ever want to leave this; he doesn’t ever want to leave you.
He turns to face you at that thought, brushing away the hair obscuring your cheek from him so he can press a kiss against the rise of your bone. A breath of air escapes you when he pulls away, and underneath the scattered sunlight, you can see the cerulean blues that have become your home soften.
“I love ya, sunshine.”
Daryl’s not open about affection and you’ve known that well before you’d fallen for him - could tell since the moment you’ve considered him just a friend - but alone, he’s a puddle of mush for you.
Maybe, he doesn’t want to be anything else.
“And ‘m sorry”
You hum at his words, a small noise of confusion which he can feel when he buries himself into the crook of your neck - like he does when he hugs you, you’ve realized - and he trails his hand down your body, ribs to waist then tapping at your thigh before wrapping a timid hand around it. The action is an apology in and of itself, but paired with the way he’s giving you those puppy eyes, even if you’d been mad at him, you couldn’t have been for any longer
“No, it’s okay. I- I liked it. I like you.”
Oh.
“Promise you’ll tell me if anythin’ ever hurts again?”
Fingers threading through his hair, you pull him up for a kiss, and each knot of tension in his body melts the second his lips hit yours. Daryl’s never given much thought about Heaven - not since he’d stopped going to church every Sunday - but he’d repent his mountain of sins if it meant a life with you after all this. He’s damn sure it’s going to be a whole lot of repenting, but he’d do it.
“Promise.”
Oh.
Could one word sound so full? Full of trust? Of honesty? Of… of…
A feeling hits him like a goddamn 18 wheeler - no, a swell. A rapid swell of something different that erupts straight from his heart and paints every inch of his skin. Daryl’s known it for a while, fought with it and succumbed to it despite his best efforts, and it swells and swells with its four-lettered title.
Love.
There are no more words exchanged. Though, after all you’ve been through with him, there’s no need for them. He can feel it - he knows you can too - and he’d spend the rest of his life making sure you’ll keep feeling it.
You’re both sated, his arm slung across your shoulder, holding you against his chest with the curve of his forearm despite the slick of sweat coating your bodies. Maybe it’s too hot, but neither of you say anything. No, it feels perfect.
Daryl doesn’t stop his stare as he watches you slowly doze off, a reminder you’re here with him - no longer a fantasy he chases. You’re light in his mind and presence, and a flood of pure affection crashes through him, letting your slow breaths lull him into a slumber.
That night, the two of you sleep better than either of you have in weeks. Maybe even months.
And when Daryl wakes up barely before you, the smile that plasters over your face the second you see him makes his heart stop, the overwhelm of affection taking hold of him. You’re both late to relieve the previous watch shift - rendered helpless to the desire of being tangled in the sheets again - but when the two of you manage to pull yourselves together enough, you take him by his hand and lead him to the walls, a swing in your step he’s sure he’s reflecting as he watches you.
God, you’re so beautiful to him - so bright.
You’re just like sunshine.
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nighthawks (iv)
series masterlist || previous chapter
word count: ~5.3k+
warnings: smut (18+ only): masturbation (m&f), unprotected piv sex (don’t do that), hate!sex, spanking(!!!), minor degradation, butt stuff for one (1) second. also: references to age gap, language, x fem!reader
a/n: after last chapter’s shenanigans, i reworked some things and now we are simply descending in to rampant filth. there is nothing but smut in this chapter, so if that isn’t your thing, you can skip this without fear of missing plot.
DAY FIVE
You flop to your back, kick your legs out from beneath a threadbare blanket, scrub a hand over your cheeks. Below your narrow bedroll—the one you found squirreled away in a hidden compartment, the one you felt no compunction stealing for your own use—a buckle in the steel floor scrapes your spine.
Sleep seems a foreign concept, a scheme of the nebulous past. You cannot find rest when your blood pumps hot through your veins. You cannot doze, however uncomfortably, with this warmth in your gut, this churning thing that claws at your stomach and makes fuzzy your mind.
We—don’t—fuck—bounties , Mando had said upon returning to the ship. He’d shoved the incapacitated bounty into the carbonite freezer with scarcely a glance, his movements wavering, unpracticed for a hunter of his talent.
You open your eyes. The ceiling, formed of grey unbreakable iron, stares down at you, mocking in all its similarity to a certain helmeted mass.
So long as you’re under my training, we don’t fuck bounties into submission.
You huff into the night. And just why not?
Gods, Kiminn.
Thinking of him now brings a repentant pang to your chest. Somewhere below, in the belly of the Sunder, he hangs in a block of carbonite, slumped at the waist, head bowed and arms drooped at his sides. A limp, incognizant fool, tricked by the oldest scam in the books. And though his body froze with ease, forever marking him as malleable and gullible, his erection remains, hard as ever, never quite diffused despite the drug you slipped and watched fizzle in his drink.
Thinking of him then, though, in that muggy cantina with the bad liquor and crummy music…
You roll to the side, squeezing your legs together. Best you don’t think of it anymore.
Only—it’s a challenge to keep your restless mind from wandering the well-worn path to him and the feeling of his girth folded beneath you. It had been quite some time since you felt a pair of warm lips caress your own, and Kiminn kissed well. It had been quite some time since you experienced the delightful pressure of a rigid cock against your clothed core, and Kiminn presented himself as an eager offering, one you would have drank to the full and discarded without care. Stars, you would have ground your clit against his bulge until you shattered, never mind his sour breath and sweaty palms. Simply his presence, his willingness, his size, was enough for you.
Your ruined orgasm lingers between your legs, an incessant buzz that grates your nerves more than the buckle beneath your bedroll.
Mando says you can’t fuck a bounty, can’t risk lowering your guard and ending up in a pool of your own blood? Fine—but he didn’t say you can’t fuck yourself.
Turning to your back, you strip your lower half and settle your head in the relative comfort of the folded sweater you use as a pillow. The wan light of the galley drenches your bare legs in a soft glow, and you sigh, eyelids fluttering shut as you skim your hand over the valley of your stomach. Instinctively, your muscles tighten at the feather-soft touch, but you will yourself to relax. The door stands locked to the outside; you are safe here.
The galaxy slows, narrowing to a pinpoint as your fingers find your damp heat. A residual wetness from the evening’s earlier escapades remains cornered at your entrance. It’s not much, only enough to coat your first two fingers in sticky slick.
It will have to do.
Planting your feet on the floor, you swirl your fingers over your clit, pushing against the nub at each new swipe. You hum in delight to feel the bundle of nerves so sensitive already. Hello, old friend. A beaming grin cracks your face, and you giggle, low and intoxicated.
Oh, you’ve needed this. Since before Kiminn you’ve needed this. All those torrid emotions of the last five days—anger, anxiety, fascination, suspicion—seem to melt as sparks of pleasure ignite your carnal senses.
The pleasure mounts as you work your wrist faster. Over and under, a dip of your finger to the growing wetness at your pulsing hole. You squirm, jaw dropping on a quiet moan as your fingers nudge the place you feel most empty. You tickle your finger there, thrumming the delicate chords of your body. Back and forth, up and down, but never in, never quite enough.
Your chest heaves, head tilted back against your pillow, as your hips buck upwards in desperate search for release. But you want this moment—this sacred, vulnerable moment—to last. Each time you find yourself at this place, this precipice of glory, you will yourself to stay— staystaystay. There is nothing better than this, surely. If something better than this exists, you don’t care to know of it.
When you can stand the emptiness no longer, you anchor your free hand to your clit and slide your drenched fingers within the tight cavern of yourself. Your throat hiccups around a moan. So tight, so wanting. Dank farrik, even in your contentment with yourself, a thread of desire for something more—something thick and stretching and masculine—niggles the back of your mind.
“Later,” you whisper, uncertain of your own meaning. “Later—oh gods—”
In and out you pump your fingers, pushing yourself to the brink of ecstasy with each forward motion. Your left hand worries your clit in a steady circle, and you scissor your fingers against your pulsing walls. Hot breath leaves your mouth in aching gasps, murmured whines. So—close—so—close.
Teeth set in determination, you open your eyes. The room’s low light doesn’t illuminate much, but it is enough to watch yourself unfold. Watch the hedonistic slip of your hand between your legs. Watch your hips jerk against your swallowed fingers.
With little warning, you burst. Pulse after wrecking pulse of energy rips through your body. You shudder through it, a supernova peeling you apart, and a broken mewl parts your lips as you come down from the peak of pleasure.
In the afterglow, you smile, soft, edged with stardust. Your heart rate slows, your breathing evens. You stretch your arms over your head and smirk at the twitching muscles in your thighs.
That was good. You needed that. Kiminn’s cock—any man’s cock, for that matter—might have satisfied your need all the more, but you are content with your own abilities. For now.
Pulling your shirt over your head to ward off the galley’s persistent chill, you find your discarded blanket and snuggle beneath the musty, dust-ridden weave. Sleep seems tangible now that you’ve soaked your fingers and eased the flurry of desire in your cunt. A quiet dream laps along the current of your mind, and you step, bare foot and sated, into the stream—
—and for the first time in five days, you find rest with ease.
//
Din lies naked on his bed.
A bed—yes, a bed. Has he had one before? He cannot remember, but here, on a bonafide mattress complete with soft sheets and a plush pillow, sleep evades him night after night.
It is a rote occurrence—his spiraling descent into some pitiful excuse for sleep—a tragedy performed for an audience of one:
He comes unglued as the door seals shut on a whoosh. Separated from the armor he wears as a second skin and the mask of apathy that defines his features, he falls to the bed, broken and bare. The mattress molds to the length and contours of his body, the pillow shrouding his head in downy comfort. The bone-deep maladies plaguing his limbs soften in this tender, delicate place; and he is cocooned by a warmth and an opulence he has never before known.
He hates it.
The tall, arched ceilings throughout the upper deck—the triad of circular viewports which bathe his bedroom floor in streaks of starlight—the cockpit with stuffed leather seats—the fresher with textured glass and a chrome-gilded mirror.
Kriffing hell, it’s excessive. He never wanted this, never asked for a ship painted in luxury. He gave up the bulk of his credits for the Sunder on the promise of her speed and agility. He paid without stepping inside, too eager to leave the star system that took his child—his ad’ika—from the palm of his trembling hand. Had he known how plated with frippery the Sunder was he might’ve reconsidered.
In the sole place he can bring himself to acknowledge the flesh beneath the armor, he feels alien, ousted by his own incompetence. He is gargantuan and ambling, an overgrown child toddling on unsure feet. He was not made for this—for smooth linens and well-stocked galleys and a living apart from subsistence. He was made for struggle: hand-to-mouth, tooth-and-nail. Breaking bone and bloodied hands and running, running, running.
This he knows.
This is the Way.
Tonight, however, Din is too distracted to fight. The angst which carves through his bones—tells him this is too much, he is unworthy, he is nothing but a glorified butcher—knocks at the door, but he ignores the siren call.
Later, he thinks, uncertain of his own meaning. Later.
Hair dripping from a shower, body slack atop the cotton-soft comforter, his length strains against his stomach, pulsing. Needy.
Later, he thinks again. This is now.
He feels a measure of shame upon wrapping a hand around his throbbing cock. It’s not the physical act of finding release which floods his face with a flustered heat; in that purely human act he finds no regret. No, what skewers his gut are the images that flash before his mind, unbidden, delicious.
In his mind’s eye, he sees you. Like a glittering moon, cratered with feminine mystery, awash in the galaxy and tied to nothing but your own inhibitions—he sees you. Perhaps for the first time.
The cantina is empty, silent, bloated with a fragile sense of peace. The room glows, heavenly lit by dripping candles swung over wooden beams. Splat—splat—hot wax dripping, worming its way between the ancient floorboards.
Din lounges in his booth, as he did before, when reality forced him to remain in his place, hard and aching. Only now Kiminn sits blanketed in obscurity, and there is naught but you and the Mandalorian. In this fabrication, Din’s head—free of its metal cage—rests against the wall behind him, his legs spread, propped on either side of the bench. He strokes his cock as he watches you, as he drinks you in.
You writhe against the boy’s leg like a bitch in heat. Your hands pressed flat to an invisible table, he sees it all: the swirl of your hips, the brush of your cunt against Kiminn’s bulge, the rise of your breast as it inches closer to the neckline of your blouse. You are laid bare before him, a thing of ancient lore. All woman , oozing power and might and everything that brings a man of his caliber to his knees. In this place, he willingly kneels.
You meet his gaze across the room. You see his face and your hands lift—shaking, perhaps; yes, shaking—and you pull at your blouse. Your breasts spill like soft fruit from a basket, and you are moaning, tugging your hands through your hair, eyes shut and mouth open. You are cumming at the sight of him, he thinks.
Din sucks in a sharp breath, and the image fades, rippled like disturbed water. It doesn’t matter. He’s close.
He brushes a thumb over his weeping tip, jerking his length faster, harder. The galley—you—on the other side of the wall yet he cannot stop. He grits his teeth as he works himself to the edge. The sound of his hand slapping along his wet girth propels him closer to the chasm of release; he imagines the sound belongs to you and your hot, sticky cunt.
He will cum to the thought of you tonight. Then no more.
No more.
He spills over his hand, his stomach, with a guttural whine. Good—it feels good, like a burden lifted from his shoulders. Mind empty, ringing with pleasure, he massages his length until there is nothing left to coat his skin. When he is spent, his cock remains stiff in his hand, and he holds it, fingers wrapped tight around himself.
Oppressive silence. It threatens to swallow him whole.
Din looks away from the white liquid curling around the hair on his pelvis and releases his cock with a heavy sigh. He is tired; more than anything, he is tired. He’s getting too old for this. Maybe not in his physical body, but in his heart. He can’t take the constant fight and wrenching ache much longer before he crumbles to dust and is blown away on a western wind.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and finds a discarded rag on the floor. After wiping himself clean, he stumbles on shaking legs to a small dresser against the wall. The glass of water he left there—how many days ago now?—tastes stale, but he welcomes the hydration. It’s not often he truly nurtures the human side of himself. Bracing his hands against the low furniture, he ducks his head between his shoulders.
He wonders if Grogu is sleeping better than his far-away father.
//
DAY SIX
You wake at the witching hour, when all hangs suspended in viscous, amber tension. The galaxy—all of creation—holds its breath in anticipation of something. Something wretched, something divine. Who can say but the stars themselves? You dare not attempt to predict the future anymore. You’ve learned your lesson.
It is not uncommon for you to rouse in the middle of the night in search of a snack. Long days call for good meals, and though food on the Sunder remains in consistent supply, it is less than exciting. Tasteless and bland, more salty than sugary. It does the trick in silencing your hunger pains when they rise, but you miss the delicacies of home: hearty cuts of sugared wriklu, tea-smoked silk bread, dragonturtle salad. You crave something ripe with flavor, but you’ve yet to locate the Mandalorian’s hidden stockpile of sweets. Not due to a lack of trying, though. You’ll find it—eventually. Everyone, even droid-esque grumps, hordes candy.
Your muscles ache, body worn thin by your less-than-comfortable sleeping arrangements. Rolling to your side, you sit up in a stretch, groaning through the pops and pulls of your joints. You rub your eyes as you stand, a small yawn parting your dry mouth. Water—you’ll get water first then hunt for sweets.
The galley door opens on hiss, and you pad into the dark hall. The tap water from the fresher faucet tastes fine, if not slightly tangy with metal. New ship, you remind yourself.
Holding the glass of water to your chest, you wander down the hall into the small annex leading to the cockpit. You like it here, have often found solace beneath the overhead viewports when you can’t sleep for fear of the past coming to haunt your dreams. Though no anxiety hounds your spirit tonight, simply standing beneath the swirling stars, tilting your head back to appreciate your smallness in the immensity of space, sets you at ease. You hum in appreciation, a smile curving your lips. You never thought you’d leave Inora, much less see the galaxy. So perhaps, as your mother once said, good can come from bad.
Or perhaps fortune simply favors the wicked…
The annex shines with the lambent blue of the emergency lights laden around the ship’s baseboards. It’s enough to see by, but only darkened silhouettes, hazy outlines of things you know to be vivid under proper lighting. You lift your hand toward the viewport. Starlight sketches the width of your palm and the lengths of your fingers, and when you curl your fingers inwards, the light follows, glimmering, magical. A tittering laugh bubbles to your lips and escapes before you can swallow it. A bird free of its cage; a child, somewhere deep inside of you, reveling in a moment of levity.
“Find something amusing?”
Whirling on your heel, the glass of water in hand clatters to the floor. Liquid wets your bare foot, and the cup rolls away, knocking against the wall.
“Mando!” You clutch a hand to your chest. “Shit, you scared me.”
The Mandalorian sits at the narrow booth in the corner, clothed in darkness, arms draped over the back of the bench. Not eight hours ago he’d sat in much the same position and massaged his own cock while watching you in the cantina. Your cheeks grow warm at the memory you haven’t allowed yourself to revisit. You shove it away once more.
Later.
“What are you doing out here? Skulking around?” There’s more bite to your tone than you anticipated, so you clear your throat and cross your arms over your chest. Defensive, yes, but who wouldn’t be before him?
His helm tilts in question. “I could ask the same of you.” A pause. “It’s late.”
“I was…” You frown. What were you doing out here? You can’t remember. His stare penetrates to your very soul, carding through your hard layers with ease. “Thirsty,” you finally say.
He gives a noncommittal hum then goes silent, staring. Staring.
You remember the nakedness beneath your sleep shirt with no aplomb. Any self-assurance you felt upon waking evaporated the moment the Mandalorian broke your reverie with his graveled voice. It’s too late—too early—for this, for him. You aren’t strong enough to withstand his presence when the memory of what he did as you bagged Kiminn tickles the forefront of your mind.
Maker, he’d touched himself when watching you in the cantina. You’d seen it—a simple squeeze of his cock, an adjustment of his hard length—and it was over as soon as it began, but you’d seen it. And you think he’d wanted you to see. A chill prickles your skin at the thought.
Had he—truly? Had he wanted you to know your sensuous playacting sent blood rushing to his cock? Had he wanted you to see him press his palm to himself in search of relief? He must’ve because he hadn’t been discreet. You can conjure the image of him rolling his hand over his bulge with little effort. It stands in stark relief to anything else you saw throughout the day.
Maybe… Gods, maybe you should have fingered yourself to the thought of him, not the bounty but the Mandalorian in all his silent surety, palming himself as he watched you hump Kiminn’s leg.
A nervous lump rises to your throat, and you fist your hands at the hem of your shirt, tugging the fabric closer to your knees.
“I was thirsty,” you say again, answering a question he never asked.
Silence stretches thin like gauze, porous and delicate. Then—
The Mandalorian shifts his leg to the side; the fabric of his pants draaag across the leather bench with the slow movement. Legs spread, he cocks his head once in a come here motion, a silent command. Glittering starlight highlights the faded orange of his gloved fingers as he pats his thigh. Once, twice, three times.
I told you, girl: I can put you over my knee.
Your feet move of their own accord.
Your better judgement dissolves, sand between fingers shaking in anticipation.
Mando reaches out to circle his hand around your wrist as you draw closer to his side. His touch is polite, patrician in the way he guides you to lean over his proffered thigh, and you go easily, bending at the waist to drape yourself across his legs. In the room’s dim lighting, you failed to notice his lack of armor before, but you see it now. Or rather, you feel it. The material of his thick-woven flight suit bleeds through the soft cotton of your sleep shirt and snags along the sensitive parts of your skin. He is close, closer than he’s ever been, and you find yourself in a precarious state of limbo: To submit or not to submit? That is the question.
Hard muscle flexes beneath your chest, and you gasp, dropping your neck from its stiff incline. Question answered. You want this. Whatever this is—whatever he wants to do to you—once and only once, you will kneel willingly before his throne.
He presses one palm to the back of your thigh, anchoring you to his leg. The leather of his glove is cool on your hot skin, and you bite the inside of your cheek to keep from releasing another breath. Gods, you feel like you’re drowning, desperate for air, and he’s barely even touched you. His right hand tucks an errant lock of hair behind your ear, and you shiver, blood pulsing rapidly through your veins. You can smell the wax he uses to grease his blaster on his glove.
“Tell me to stop, and I will,” he murmurs. Is it really possible for one voice to be so deep, so studded with gravel and a natural husk? You aren’t sure, but the sound goes straight to your core, cunt squeezing tight around nothing.
It takes every ounce of strength you have to speak in a clear, resolute tone; he won’t hear you beg. “Don’t stop.”
The pendulum of ambiguity skids to a halt. It hangs motionless, and you know:
There’s no going back.
Mando trails his fingers down the ridges of your spine before finding the hem of your sleep shirt. He moves the covering over the rise of your ass so it pools in the small of your back. A rush of recycled air breezes over your body, and your knees draw inward at the sensation, but Mando adjusts his spread, forcing your legs apart again. His hand settles on your bare bottom, gloved-fingers pressing the supple flesh he finds there.
“How old are you?” he asks.
After a moment of uncertainty—Does it matter? I’m here aren’t I? My legs are open for you. For You—you tell him, and he huffs through his nose; a mythosaur-like sound, a sardonic imitation of the likeness he carries on his pauldron.
“A young thing.” He pinches your skin, and your eyes fall shut. “Compared to me.”
The first strike of his hand on your ass sends you lurching forward. Tiny pinpricks of pain scatter up your spine and set the hair at the nape of your neck on alert. He does it again, to the untouched side of your bottom, and you stifle a whine by forcing your cheek against his leg. Gasping, you curl your fingers in his pant leg to keep from dripping to the floor, molten and moldable like candle wax. You look upwards, sealing your gaze on the viewport overhead.
You remain unaccustomed to such an intimate view of the universe. And in these slow hours, when the Sunder hovers in the balance between a necessary assignment and a moment of respite, you bask in the untamed glory of space. It robs you of your breath every time.
The Mandalorian smacks your ass again, this time harder, frustration ebbing along the fringes of his touch. You grit your teeth when your exposed clit catches on a fold in his pants. Kriff, that feels good. In spite of the pain that comes with every spank—and they keep coming, smack after smack, your skin burning under his hand—your clit rubs against his thigh each time, and an explosion of pleasure diffuses the pain. On one particularly hard swat, your mouth drops open on a heady moan. Mando kneads his fingertips into your swollen ass cheek, and you squirm, searching for the friction of seconds before. He dips his pointer finger to the cleft of your most intimate opening. Swirling his finger there, you whimper.
More, more, more; it’s not enough. Never enough.
“Filthy,” he mutters. He drags his finger, wet with your juice, up the crevice of your ass before swatting you again.
Once more, and you grind your clit against his leg without shame. Once more, and you seal your arms around his opposite leg for stability as you rut against him. Once more, and—
The orgasm that hits you is a slow, creeping thing. Your knees tremble as your body undulates against his thigh, pussy weeping between your legs. You gasp through it, eyes squeezed shut.
“Ooohhh,” you sigh, dreamy, weightless, a flower petal in the wind. Your body jerks through the aftershocks as you come down from release.
You feel Mando’s gaze tighten on your face. “Fucking filthy little thing.” Funny—in the recesses of your mind, where all is clear and not muddled by desire, he sounds prayerful. Worshipful.
Mando doesn’t allow you a moment to recenter before he grabs both shoulders and wrenches you to a standing position. Pitching forward on foalish legs, you catch yourself on the polymer-coated table, though you slip, falling to your elbows no thanks to sweaty palms. The rustle of shucking clothes invades your ears, and you arch your spine.
“I’m going to fuck you,” he says, and your head bobs in a desperate nod. “I’m going to fuck you better than the boy in that cantina even thought he could. Do you understand?” When you only nod in response, he grabs your chin, pulling your head back. You can’t see him, but he covers you like a steel trap, doors locked, thrown into an abyss of need. “Answer me.”
The voice that escapes your mouth cannot be your own. You swore you wouldn’t beg and yet: “Yes. Maker, yes. Please. Please, please fuck me.”
He frees your chin, and your head falls forward between your shoulders in a heavy, intoxicated slump. You brace your legs, forearms tight on the table, and when he slides the fat head of his cock between your wet folds, your throat hitches on a mewl. Oh, he feels divine, and he’s barely even nudged your entrance.
Drawing in a deep breath, you move your arm to push away a sweaty lock of hair from your forehead. The movement sets the Mandalorian off balance where he steadies himself on your hips, and he slants forward. His cock skips your pulsing hole, sliding on a bed of slick to prod the tight ring of your ass.
“F-fuck,” he stammers.
You grab his forearm, shaking your head. A single word falls from your lips before you can think better of it: “Later.” You return his large hand to your hip and wiggle your hips, pushing against his erection. “Later.”
Mando notches his cock at your pulsing cunt once more. With one hand on your hip and the other gliding over the skin beneath your shirt to grab your shoulder, he thrusts forward. His rigid length pierces you, forcing you to accommodate his girth with nothing but your arousal and leftover cum to guide him. It’s a tight squeeze—Gods teeth, he’s big—but you welcome the edge of pain. He stretches the cavern of your pussy, molding you to the shape and form of him until you aren’t sure where you end and he begins. He sits sheathed tight in your core, and you feel him pulsing, feel his heartbeat in his tip, nudging that spongy spot in your depth.
He withdraws, then, and you hear your wetness smack around his length as he moves. Again, he pushes to the hilt and withdraws. An unhurried pace, fingers tight on your flesh. You place your forehead on the cool table and focus on the sensation of him—big and broad and bullish—slowly splitting you apart.
“F-feels so good,” you whisper. The complement is not meant to flatter nor to curry favor. It merely slips, like so many things do in this erotic place, from the heart of you, unbidden and unquestioned.
He removes his hand from your shoulder and grounds himself at your hips. He growls something—something foreign and untraceable—beneath his breath, and before you get the chance to ask, he hammers his cock into your cunt. He drives into you as though he intends to create a new ditch in the earth, one perfect for planting, soft with dirt and swollen with potential. Over and over, pounding back and forth into your pussy like you are nothing more than a ragdoll. Your jaw hangs limp, and each impact of his cock punches a drunk moan out of your chest.
An orgasm, one more sparkling than the last, buzzes in your cunt, and you crawl for it, greedy thing that you are. He makes you feel good enough to writhe in desperation, the sensitive nub of your clit aching for attention as he takes you.
More, more, more; it’s not enough. Never enough.
Mando wraps a forearm around your chest and hauls you upwards until your back meets his chest. Your toes strain against the chilled floor, fingertips slipping at the table’s edge. At this new angle, the head of his cock plunges against the most delicate spot of your body, and you sob in pleasure. Your fingers twitch, tilting inwards in search of your clit, but he bats your hand away.
“Don’t you dare,” he growls, and you keen. His voice—oh, you could cum to the sound of his voice alone.
He presses his thumb to your clit, all the while his hips jerking a shallow rhythm against your ass. Circle after circle, thrust after thrust, until you grasp your orgasm in hand like a treasure. You stare at it, that glowing, elusive thing, and with a final thrust and swipe of his fingers over your clit, the shining orb bursts.
You cry out in something akin to delirious agony, body wracking with tremors and mind-numbing pleasure. Slouching at the waist, you convulse through the high, barely aware of how Mando’s length slips from your dripping heat. The delirium of your orgasm fades all too soon, though, and then it’s the sound of his hand on his cock, pumping, pumping. A wet slapping noise that reignites the endless desire in your cunt. You twist, go to look over your shoulder and watch him unfold, but he’s too fast, too hidden behind towering walls to allow you to witness him crumble.
He presses his hand to your face, forcing you down against the table with a thud. “D-don’t. Fucking—st-stay there.”
You inhale and catch the scent of your cum and his desire on leather fingertips. It’s a salty, musky aroma, and if you could, you would bottle it, wear it around your neck like a fucking heathen.
Mando cums with a strangled groan, spraying your backside with his warm seed. It trickles between your ass cheeks, carving a narrow path to your cunt. What you wouldn’t give to taste it.
Without warning, the behemoth slumps in exhaustion, draping his body weight over the expanse of your back. His helm digs into the flesh of your neck, and you swear you can feel his hot, labored breathing against your skin. But perhaps that is a figment of your wanting imagination. You still aren’t convinced he isn't a machine beneath the helm. A well-endowed machine, but a machine all the same.
He rolls his softening length against your heat, and you whine, pushing back against him, but he doesn’t take the bait. He shuffles backwards, and that same sound of cloth moving on cloth dampens your desire. Whatever this was—whatever he just did—it’s over now.
Mando slaps your ass once more, and you hiss, stumbling forward, hips knocking against the edge of the table. Your shirt falls back into place, covering whatever modesty remains in your repertoire. Your throat runs dry, cracked with too much air, and you glance across the room to where your glass lays empty on the floor.
Bright light floods your vision, and you wince, lifting a hand to cover your face. Blinking through the spots that swim over your eyes, you look to the side. Mando stands in the hall, and seeing him under the room’s harsh light, you want to scoff knowing he’s as broad without the armor as he is with it. He shakes his wrist once, twice, flinging whatever juices remain on his fingers to the ground.
Then he lifts his face and his visor hits you.
“Go back to sleep,” he says.
He leaves before you can call him a prick.
NEXT CHAPTER
#din djarin x reader#din djarin smut#the mandalorian x reader#the mandalorian smut#pedro pascal x reader#pedro pascal smut#nighthawks fic
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