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ponderingmoonlight · 6 months

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Gojo's little sister seducing Choso at Shibuya

Pairing: Choso x fem!reader

Word Count: 2,6k

Synopsis: When Gojo's little sister is at Shibuya in order to find her brother, she meets none other than Choso - a man that seems to have everything she has ever dreamed about. Is she able to seduce him?

Warnings: the end is spicy as hell so read at own risk, Choso being a lil slow but straightforward in the end, this has no real plot so be aware of brainrot

Tags: @96jnie @shebibtedmypepnis @chososwhoresblog @sanicsmut (you didn't ask for that but I tagged you anyway) @curlynoodle937565 @ifuckfictionalmen (thought you might like that) @nyahctrl @khaleesihavilliard

„Let’s see where you are…”, you mumble to yourself.

Satoru has some nerves, letting himself get sealed when the whole country needs him and his stupid six eyes and hollow purple. You’ll definitely make fun of him for the rest of his life for that. What else should you do? After all, you are his little sister. It’s your job to get on his nerves.

Your heels klick against the hard floor beneath almost therapeutically while your eyes scan the area. Seems like none of these fuckers are here. Who the hell is responsible for this whole mess? Surely not that volcano and flower guy from before, right? If Satoru is smart, he already exorcised both of them.

Something inside you makes you stop in your tracks. There is someone, without any doubt.

“Don’t be shy, you don’t have to hide from me. I promise I won’t bite. Just beating the shit out of you”, you announce into the darkness, the only thing lighting up the hallways being the colorful signs.

This definitely isn’t one of Satoru’s students, that’s for sure. None of them is already skilled enough to hide from your sharp senses. Fuck, even Nanami can’t escape you.

So, who the hell is this?

Your nerves begin to tickle just the way you like it, a bright grin plastered on your face. Finally some action, finally someone you can fight eye to eye. How long has it been since you’ve experienced that? Too long, that’s for sure.

Despite being Satoru’s little sister, you aren’t gifted with six eyes or unlimited cursed energy. No, even though being a member of the Gojo-clan you were never able to meet his standards, always a shadow by his side. Gifted with the same blue eyes but without the glow, gifted with a few strands of white hair but your head isn’t fully snow-colored. That didn’t stop you from becoming a grade 1 sorcerer, one of the bests under the special ranks. Yes, you are an exceptional jujutsu sorcerer all by yourself, without being gifted since birth.

But regardless of your big brother always came first, he loves you with all his heart. Protected you when you didn’t want to be protected, trained you even though you hated getting beaten by him, comforted you when all you could do was cry. To be honest, Satoru is the best big brother you could have asked for and it’s your responsibility to save him. What do you have siblings for?

“You’re starting to get on my nerves. Come out or get out of the way.”

Foreign steps start to echo through the hallway, making your heart hammer against your ribcage in an instant. These footsteps don’t sound familiar to you, you haven’t met whoever this is yet.

Your vibrant blue eyes dart towards the figure of what seems like a man, coming closer and closer to you. He’s tall, dark hair hanging into his face. Oh, his face…he’s really handsome with that tattoo over his nose. Since being Satoru’s sister comes with meeting many good-looking man, this is nothing new to you. But something about him is special, more your type. A look into his brown violet eyes is enough to get lost in them.

“You’re hot”, you coo out, heels clicking while you approach him.

“Who are you?”, his deep but bored voice questions.

Choso hates to admit it, but you’re easy on his eyes. Something about your appearance seems familiar while he’s sure he has never seen you before. That ocean eyes…

“You look like Satoru Gojo.”

“Yeah, I hate to admit it but I’m his little sister. Are we really that similar? I don’t want to look like him”, you remark, face twisted.

That means you’re his enemy, that means he has to kill you. Instinctively, he shoots slicing exorcism your way, attempting to pierce right through your heart at horrendous speed.

“Watch out, that is dangerous!”, you warn him, flying through the air with ease to avoid his attack.

Damn, you’re fast. Your speed is exceptional for a human being, almost as fast as Satoru Gojo himself.

“Let me come closer”, you hush.

Before he’s able to react any further, you stand right in front of him, fists flying his direction.

“You’re so quiet, what’s on your mind?”, you insist, careful to not get sliced open by his blood manipulation.

“I wish you were too”, he hisses before catching your fist mid-air and slamming your body into the ground.

“You’re so fucking hot when you’re mad”, you purr, hands grabbing his strong shoulders tightly.

Satoru would kill you right here on the spot if he’d hear you, always disliking your taste in men like nothing else.

“I think he’s kinda hot”, you admitted while eyeing the dark-haired boy from Kyoto named Kamo.

Satoru almost choked on his coke, eyes and face screaming in disgust.

Are you serious, (y/n)? What the fuck is wrong with your taste in men, why always the bad ones? Maybe you should get them checked.”

He roughly smacked the back of your head, making you almost lose it completely.

“Are you out of your mind, idiot? I heard your eyes can freeze if someone hits you in the head while you’re squinting!”

“Your eyes aren’t functioning properly anyway. How about someone like Yuta or somethin’, a nice guy with good intentions. Or even better, just do this world a favor and stay single.”

“Can you just shut the fuck up? You have nothing to say to me!”

“I AM YOUR BIG BROTHER-“

“CAN YOU TWO SHUT UP ALREADY!?”

Hehe. You smile to yourself while shaking your head, focus back on the man in front of you. Oh, you can tell by the way he moves that he’s absolutely buff underneath that cloak. And his eyes…They look even more stunning up close. What a gorgeous man. Yes, he’s definitely more than your type. Who is he?

“Tell me your name.”

With a swift motion, you’re back on your feet, curse-loaded fists aiming for him.

“Choso Kamo”, he presses out.

What’s wrong with you? Are you really trying to seduce him while battling? He’s your enemy, he’s on his way to kill your comrade, he…you…

Why are you so good-looking? And why does your confident smile make his usual calm heart flutter? You don’t seem scared at all, let alone determined to kill him.

“Oh, that explains the blood manipulation.”

“I’m here to kill Yuji Itadori.”

“Yuji, huh? What did that poor boy do to deserve your hate?”, you question, letting yourself fall into a split to avoid his blood.

“He killed my brothers”, he hisses through gritted teeth.

You stop in your tracks for a second, gaze fixed upon his. Oh. This certainly wasn’t the answer you were expecting. In your mind, all of these curses and the people working with them are cold-hearted monsters, walking on this earth to kill every human that gets in their way. But Choso…

You can feel his pain.

“I’m sorry to hear that”, you breathe out.

And you mean it. You’d be devastated too if someone killed Satoru, seeking for revenge with every fiber of your being.

Your glistening eyes and words make it hard for Choso to raise his hand against you. The eyes that look like those of Satoru Gojo, those eyes that are partly responsible for the death of his beloved brothers. No, he can’t let you get away, you are a part of the problem, you have to die, you…

You are grabbing his hand.

“If someone killed my brother, I would do exactly the same thing. But let me tell you this wasn’t easy for Yuji, he had no other choice-“

“I don’t want to hear it”, Choso yells, slapping your hand away, trying to slash you open again.

“Good for you I like my man feisty and strong. You’re a great catch”, you shout, entangling him in close combat again.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you understand that we are on different sides?”, he questions.

“Why though? We’d be a perfect match. I bet those fingers look good around my neck.”

The way Choso’s face instantly twists in disbelief and that little blush that creeps up his face are the best things you’ve seen for a long time while suddenly water rains down on him, fire alarms going off around both of you.

“Opsie, might have hit something important”, you comment, white uniform now soaked in water.

Did you really just say that? Are you too dumb to realize that he is your enemy, that romance has no place in his world, that he is fucking reincarnated? No, you are way too smart to not be aware of the fact who he is. You simply decide to ignore it.

But not only that, are you really flirting with him? Choso never really thought much about his appearance, it was never his goal to be ‘attractive’. But at the moment, when seeing your wet skin, your eyes lingering over him…

Something about your words and looks make him wonder.

“Do you…really mean that?”, he mumbles while blocking your attack.

“Huh, that you’re hotter than hell? Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m lying.”

Choso feels like fainting when your dripping face comes so close that it’s only inches away from his own, your mesmerizing orbs locking with his through wet lashes while your hands rest against his chest. Can you feel his heart hammer, can you tell that this the first time a women ever touched him? Oh god, what is he supposed to do? He has a mission, he needs to kill Yuji Itadori, he-

Your fingers start to draw small circles over the fabric of his soaked cloak, making something twitch inside his pants. Fuck, why do you have to look so absolutely stunning when your hair is completely wet, light up by purple light that makes you look almost angelic?

“Oh god”, he breathes out.

This feels so good. No, this is so wrong.

“You…you shouldn’t be flirting with me. I am party responsible for your brother getting sealed and killed. I am your enemy.”

“Urgh, stop talking about my damn brother, he’s fine anyway. He doesn’t let himself get killed by some idiots. And you don’t have to me my enemy. Let’s be…friends”, you suggest.

“Friends”, he repeats.

“Maybe more, who knows…I’m not mad about the things you’ve done. I fully understand why you’re outraged and what your mission is, I respect your motives”, you reply.

God, why does he have to be so breathtaking beautiful and relatable? Under all the men you’ve met, why is it exactly him you fell the hardest for? Why can’t it be someone like Ino or Todo? Why does it have to be him? Oh, Satoru will definitely kill you when he finds out about it.

But you don’t care. No, Choso has something you were looking for in every man you’ve met before. He is strong, outstanding smart, has clear goals, is straight up stunning and a little dangerous. You couldn’t care less about the fact that you’re standing on opposite sides.

You want him.

“You won’t stop me from killing Yuji Itadori.”

“I will have to try. But until then, there is absolutely no reason for us to fight, right? I’m into bad guys anyway.”

Choso looks at you completely lost at words. You, a breathtaking fine-looking and skilled jujutsu sorcerer, are really interested in getting to know him? This has to be a dream he didn’t know about until now, a deep desire that comes to life.

But he can’t resist. Despite all the things that speak against it, he can’t.

“Fine”, he grumbles.

“Great! Would you mind taking off that cloak so I can see your abs?”, you ask, eyes sparkling in excitement.

But why is this not enough? Why is a simple ‘fine’ not enough to fulfill that desire? Something inside him begs him to pull you closer, to hold your body firmly against his, kiss you and-

He swallows heavy. What has gotten into him?

“I won’t do that”, he automatically replies, gaze fixed on your pretty little mouth.

Oh, the things he wants to do right now, things he never thought about before. Is it because of the human body he reincarnated him? No, he never felt the desire to be close to a woman before. It’s because of you and the way you tilt your head, how you seem to know which words you have to use in order to drive him insane.

“Oh, was it too early for that? Fine, I’ll wait then… ”

Fuck it.

It happens faster than you’re able to react. With a swift motion, Choso pins you against a nearby wall, looking down at you with dark eyes.

“What do you have that other women haven’t had before?”, he hisses.

“Beauty, brain, power…”

You aren’t able to finish your ramblings. With rough hands, he grabs your waist and neck before pressing his lips against yours. You melt into his touch in an instant, too stunned by this sudden reaction. Instinctively, your very own hands begin to roam around his body, muscles now perfectly emphasized by the stream of water that pours down on both of you through the dim purple neon lights. Fuck, you’re melting like butter in his hands, your shared sloppy kiss being the only thing apart from the dripping water that fills the empty hallway.

“Fuck”, you moan into his lips, fingertips tracing through his wet hair.

This is straight out of your dreams. Making out with a man you didn’t even know an hour ago, a man that seems to have everything you want, a man who’s your enemy. But since when are enemies this good at kissing, since when is it allowed that they are so damn fine?

Why the hell are you so turned on?

He let’s go of you as suddenly as he grabbed you before, panting hard while looking down at you with glimmering eyes.

“I will search for Yuji Itadori now”, he proclaims, licking over his lips and closing his eyes for a second.

Slowly but surely, Choso returns back into reality, mind sorting itself. That felt good, way too good for his liking. If he didn’t let go, he’d probably stay here with you until the night ends. But he still has a mission to fulfill.

“You sure about that? Y’know, we could stay here a little longer, that fire alarm with all that water pouring down and the neon lights are kinda romantic…”, you begin.

“I’ll meet you again. Until then, don’t get in the way.”

One last touch. He allows his fingertips to brush over your cheek and mouth one last time before turning around and disappearing.

He’s gone, leaving you sinking down the wall as your knees give in. Mindlessly, your fingertips trace over your lips.

This really happened. Did you really just seduce the enemy? Your heart still hammers roughly against your chest, hands trembling in sensation while the water from above keeps pouring down on you. No man ever touched you like that, no man ever gave you that kind of feeling. Fuck, what did you get yourself into?

You chuckle into yourself, eyes fixed on the pouring water.

“If Satoru finds out about that…”

Click here for Part ll

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drdemonprince · 2 months

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I don't think I have it in me to be an abolitionist because I read that horrible story about the trans teen murdered in South Carolina and my knee jerk reaction is, those people should rot in jail, ideally forever, or worse. No matter how I look at it I can't make myself okay with the idea that you should be allowed to steal someone's life in such a horrible way and then just go back to enjoying your life. Some stuff is just too over the top evil.

You can have whatever emotions you want about that person's murderous actions, but the reality is that the carceral justice system is one of the largest sources of physical, emotional, and sexual torment for transgender people on this planet.

Transgender people are ten times more likely to be assaulted by a fellow inmate and five times more likely to be assaulted by a corrections officer, according to a National Center for Transgender Equality Report.

Within the prison system, transgender people are frequently denied gender-affirming medical care, and housed in populations that do not match their identity, which increases their odds of being beaten and sexually assaulted.

The alternative to being incorrectly housed with the wrong gendered population is that transgender people are also frequently held in solitary confinement instead, often for far longer periods on average than their non-transgender peers, contributing to them experiencing suicide ideation, self harm, acute physiological distress, a shrunk hippocampus, muscculoskeletal pain, chronic condition flare-ups, heart disease, reduced muscle tone, and numerous other proven effects of solitary confinement.

The prison system is also one of the largest sites of completely unmitigated COVID spread, among other illnesses, with over 640,000 cases being directly linked to prison exposure, according to the COVID prison project.

We know that number is rampantly under-estimated because prisoners, especially trans ones, are frequently denied medical care. And even basic, essential physical care. Just last year a 27-year-old Black man named Lason Butler was found dead in his cell, having perished of dehydration. He had been kept in a cell without running water for two weeks, where he rapidly lost 40 pounds before perishing. His body was covered in rat bites.

This kind of treatment is unacceptable for anyone, no matter who they are and what they have done, and I shouldn't have to explicitly connect the dots for you, but I will. One in six transgender people has been to prison, according to Lambda Legal. One in every TWO Black transgender people has been to prison. One in five Black men go to prison in America.

THIS is the fate you are consigning all these people to when you say that prisons must exist because there are really really bad people out in the world. We should all know by not that this is not how the carceral justice system works. Hate crime laws are under-utilized, according to Pro Publica, and result in few convictions. The people who commit transphobic acts of violence tend to be given softer sentences than the prisoners who resemble their victims.

We must always remember that the violent tools of the prison system will be used not against the people that we personally consider to be the most "deserving" of punishment, but rather against whomever the state considers to be its enemy or to be a disposable person.

You are not in control of the prison system and you cannot ensure it will be benevolent. You are not the police, the judge, the jury, or the corrections officers. By and large, the people who are in these roles are racist, transphobic, ableist, and victim-blaming, and they will use the power and violence of the system to terrorize people in poverty, Black people, trans people, "mad" people, intellectually disabled people, women, and everyone else that you might wish to protect from harm with a system of "punishment." Nevermind that incaraceration doesn't prevent future harm anyway.

You can't argue for incarceration as the tool of your revenge fantasies, you have to argue for it as the tool that it actually is. The purpose of a system is what it does. And the prison system's purpose has never been to protect or avenge vulnerable trans people. It has always been to beat them, sexually assault them, forcibly detransition them, render them unemployable, disconnect them from all community, neglect them, and unperson them.

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kirbyskisses · 11 months

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miguel o’hara x reader || “te amo” (masterlist)

the first night miguel is in your universe fills him with all sorts of conflicting emotions.

wc: 1,063

cw: an angsty line or two, light mention of blood. (minors/ageless blogs don’t interact)

—

when miguel quite literally inserts himself into your life he‘s not always sure what to do or what to say.

yes, he’s watched your miguel; he’s seen all his similarities and all the intricacies of this earth and memorized them through screens and study but he hadn’t plotted or planned to be here.

this earth’s miguel died. he saw an opportunity and he took it. a spur of the moment decision to pursue this happier life.

it should be easy.

just be miguel o’hara.

but when he first comes through the door of his house so early in the morning that the outside is covered in darkness, being “miguel o’hara” is the hardest thing in the world.

this is not his home. its layout is similar, but it’s filled with a love he’s never had before.

the fridge is decorated with baby photos and newspaper clippings of spider-man, a suit identical to his own. love permeates through every inch of the place.

it permeates through pictures of a precious baby girl who couldn’t be more than a few months. the daughter of the other miguel. the one he gets to father.

and you - the wife. his wife. the most beautiful woman in the world.

the woman who doesn’t know that her real husband is dead and replaced. the one rushing towards him before he can even process any guilt of what being that replacement might mean.

“¡míguel! do you have any idea what time it is?!”

he does.

he knows it’s 3am and that you were like likely waiting up for your husband - for the miguel o’hara of this earth to come back. he knows all to well that the bloodied, beaten miguel he walked by never will come back - there’s only him for you to chastise for worrying you so badly.

and he knows this is the moment where it is too late to turn back, too late to leave to his own nueva york because how could he? it would be unbearable to leave you alone with your sweet little girl to wake up in the morning in a world with no husband, no father and no spider-man.

he’ll take the anger and worry of coming home late if he can prevent that.

it’s better for the both of you.

it’s better that he’s your miguel o’hara now. it’s better that you’re his wife now.

it’s better this way, he convinces himself.

“we made a deal, papí!” you huff, all too ready to reprimand him. “tonight was your night to put her down! we said no web-slinging unless there was a total emergency…”

you trail off, eyes meeting his. they look relieved and tired and overwhelmed for a reason you can’t configure. your voice immediately softens once you realize your words, be they english or spanish, have no way of getting through.

“¿míguel…?”

he doesn’t respond, and when you put your hand on his grizzled cheek he sinks into your touch wordlessly as if it is the first time he has ever felt such romantic softness.

“qué te pasa, papí?” you stroke his face, taking a long look at him. “there…was an emergency, wasn’t there? you know you can tell me anything - ay!!”

you let out a yelp of surprise as he pulls you into him, leaning down to smell your hair and squeeze your small form tight - he wants to memorize everything. all the sensory details that he couldn’t get through lyla or a screen.

he mumbles, gruffly. “we lost a good one today… couldn’t save him. i’m sorry…”

and you whisper his name and hold tight, unaware of what he really means because how could you be? but he doesn’t feel any remorse for deceiving you - for letting you think he means some good natured cop.

after all, so many spider-men have lost one before. how is this any different?

how could he feel remorse when you hum in sympathy and kiss up and down his face? your lips are so soft and reassuring, as is your voice.

“it wasn’t your fault, papí. even spider-man can’t save everyone. i’m just happy you’re home safe and alive.”

that almost breaks him and his hold gets tighter. your fingers are in his hair - your breath calm and unsuspecting. he could get used to this.

finally, after a hold that seems to lasts an eternity, your voice rings out and breaks the two of you apart.

“estás herido, mi amor? there’s blood on your suit…”

“no. i-it’s… not mine.” he’s both lying and telling the truth. it isn’t his blood, it’s that of the miguel left behind. but right now and forever, they’re the same.

“i’ll wash up. get some sleep, querida.” he takes your hand from his cheek and kisses your knuckles - relishing in your touch before letting you go off to bed.

“i’m sorry for making you wait so long for me.” he barely manages to whisper out and you give this gentle smile and coo, arms around his neck.

“you don’t have to apologize for saving people, miguel. it’s what you do and it’s why i love you.”

for being a man so much bigger than you, he seems small and soft. he melts at the proclamation and puts his forehead to yours, desperate to hear it all again.

“dime de nuevo.” tell me again. he needs to hear it again - that he’s loved. that he’s celebrated by someone as kind as you.

all his anxiety melts when your soft lips slot against his once. “te amo, míguel.”

then twice. “te amo, spiderman.”

and then a third time. “i love every part of you. good and bad. the one who saves people, the one who looks out for others, the one with secrets, the one who fails sometimes and has to come home late because he’s doing what he thinks is right. sharp teeth, webs, scars and all, entiendes?”

and for the first time he kisses you - because this means you love him. every version of him including the one he is now.

“eres una bendición.” he murmurs, kissing the shell of your ear. you’re a blessing. because only a blessing could have given him the opportunity for something as amazing as a beautiful you and your daughter.

if only he could have found a way to make it last forever.

#miguel o’hara #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara x black reader #spiderverse spoilers #atvs #spiderman across the spiderverse #across the spiderverse #x latina reader #x latina!reader #x black!reader #spiderman x reader #fluff

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yandere-daydreams · 7 months

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Title: Gorefest.

Pairing: Yandere!Gojo x Reader (Jujutsu Kaisen).

Word Count: 1.3k.

TW: Gore, Blood, Major Character Death (Reader Is Fine), Implied Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Touching, Prolonged Stalking, and Delusional Behavior.

You found his latest gift on your doorstep.

It was a heart, this time – deflated but otherwise fully intact, blue viens still visible against pink flesh. A small puddle of blood and other gelatinous viscera surrounded it, but you ignored that in favor of wrapping the disembodied organ in your cardigan and unlocking the door to your apartment, too exhausted to fumble with your keys and too worn down to pretend you still thought you could get away from him on your own. His present was dropped into the ever-bubbling vat of crimson slurry you used to boil down his gifts until they’d been reduced to a less incriminating state, your shoes kicked off and left by the door. You didn’t bother turning on any lights. You were home, but you didn’t want to let yourself acknowledge that until he was gone.

You found Gojo in his usual spot; on the floor of your bedroom, his hands still stained red and one of your threadbare sleepshirts crumpled at his side, the dark material stained with something white and awful. That made two articles of clothing ruined, tonight. A few months ago, when the most he ever brought you was a half-beaten bouquet of roses and a list of questions for the strange man whose favorite place in the world seemed to be your living room, you would’ve been tempted to demand that he pay for the damages. You’d learned better than to imply you wanted anything from him, since then.

He was lying on his side, toying with something large and vaguely circular, his grin that of a cat dropping a slaughtered mouse at its owner’s feet. He was surrounded by more of his ‘presents’ – the disembodied organs of whatever poor criminal or curse user he’d taken it upon himself to dissect. You were glad you’d kept the lights off. You could see the outline of small intestine strung along the walls, assorted gore left in carefully considered piles wherever Gojo deemed it necessary. It’d take hours to clean up, after he left. Demanding that he help would only give him the impression that you wanted to spend time with him, and you weren’t going to make that mistake twice.

You moved to speak, but as always, he just had to be the center of attention. It was like he couldn’t imagine a world where you might’ve done anything but focus on him. “Welcome home,” he half-sung, pushing himself up and pulling his oblong, mishappen keepsake into his lap. “Do you want to start with dinner, or should I run you a hot bath? Or, if you want, you could always have a little of me—”

“Shut the fuck up.” And then, pointing in the general direction of your front door, “Get out.”

“So cold, babe. And after I went through all that trouble to set this up.” The coppery stench was starting to get to you. You could only pray the neighbors wouldn’t notice, or that you’d be able to think of a feasible enough excuse by the time they did. “I got hurt for you, too.” He held up a hand, gesturing towards the faintest, shallowest cut on his cheek. “Aren’t you going to dote on me? You know, like you used to – after you found me in that alley and bandaged my wounds. What was the first thing you said to me? That I was too pretty to bleed to death alone?”

You didn’t encourage him with a response, only crossing your arms over your chest and deepening your scowl. “Get out,” you repeated. “I don’t want you here.”

His grin only broadened. “If you keep saying things like that, I might start to think you’re trying to get me to leave.” Exasperation bled into your agitated expression, and Gojo let out a bark of a laugh. “Look, I know you like to play shy, but I’d really like it if we could use tonight for us. We could watch a movie, or—”

You let out a frustrated groan, dragging your hands over your face. “You know what? Fine. If you want to be here so badly, then stay.” You shut your eyes, standing a little taller. “I’m getting out of here.”

“Running off to spend the night with another man? Ah, what a cold-hearted temptress I’ve fallen for.”

“Oh, I’m going to do more than just spend the night with him.” You really should’ve shut your mouth. You should’ve bitten your tongue, swallowed your pride, refused to tell him anything save for the fact that you weren’t going to stay here any longer. But, the blood in the air was getting to you and you could still feel the cold flesh of the heart against your palm and you needed to get away, and you needed Gojo to know you were never coming back. “I met someone – a sorcerer. He knows you’ve been stalking me, and he offered to help.” You flashed him a grin, almost as awful as his own. “His name is Nanami, and he’s strong enough to keep me safe from people like you.”

You waited for him to laugh, to say he didn’t believe you, or better yet, to get angry, to feel a fraction of the dread and the rage he’d forced onto you. When he didn’t say anything, didn’t scream or yell or gloat, you opened your eyes. He was still staring, but his smile was softer, his eyes half-lidded in a way that could only mean something bad. “Oh, baby,” he started, his voice dripping with faux sympathy. “Whose heart do you think I went through so much trouble to bring you?”

A pebble threatening to slip off of its cliffside; two ends of a torn wire, a hair’s width away from connecting. Whatever he was trying to tell you, you just couldn’t seem to process it. “What?”

“Right. I’m sorry, sweetheart – that’s on me,” Gojo chuckled. “You were always more of a visual learner.”

The object in his lap was taken up and rolled towards you, coming to a teetering stop at your feet, where the residual light from the hall could illuminate it properly. In a daze, you dropped your gaze to it, allowed yourself to recognize blonde hair, razor-sharp cheekbones, and glassy brown eyes staring lifelessly back at you. There was a dark bruise on his jawline, paled by blood loss, and the mangled stump that used to be his neck was encircled by ragged flesh, as if it’d been torn from his shoulders. Despite everything, his mouth was closed, lips still pressed into a thin frown. As if he didn’t have time to so much as scream before Gojo got to him.

You must’ve passed out. One second, you were staring down at the disembodied head of your savior, and the next, you were on the floor, lying limp and breathless as Nanami’s blood formed a puddle underneath you. Gojo was already at your side, hauling you up and against his chest. You felt his arms around you, then plush of your mattress against your back. You were aware, distantly, that he was straddling you, that his mouth was pressing into the dip of your shoulder, then the curve of your throat. “It’s alright,” he muttered, his voice partially muttered by his closeness. “Why don’t you come stay with me for a while, after this? I’ve got a room ready for you back at my place and everything.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Straightening his back, he let his lips crash into yours – his kiss lingering and deep and filthy. By the time he pulled away, he’d drunk the air from your lungs and frozen the blood in your veins, leaving you as empty and as lifeless as one of his gifts.

You thought, idly, of the heart being reduced to viscera in your kitchen, and wondered if you should’ve held onto it for just a few minutes longer.

“I’ll be able to spoil you properly, once I’ve got you where you’re supposed to be.”

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere imagines #yandere oneshot #jujutsu kaisen #yandere jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen imagines #gojo x reader #yandere gojo satoru #gojo satoru x reader #yandere gojo x reader #yanderecore #yancore

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f1rodrigo · 2 months

Text

the mclaren boy mystery | part two

l. norris / o. piastri

summary: in which your boyfriend is a formula one driver for team mclaren and when you finally decide it's time to start hinting to the world, the internet is confused on exactly which driver is your boyfriend. pairing: social media au || lando norris / oscar piastri x reader fc: jazmyn makenna a/n: sorry this took a little longer than i expected! it was so fun to make though. i didn't want to say who she's actually with because i feel like it's fun for the readers to have to figure that out too! so please share any guesses you have lol i'm interested to see what people think the outcome will be. hope you enjoy and thank you sm for reading<3

part one | sweet relief series | valentine's day drabble

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liked by yourbrother, maxverstappen1, and 101,225 others

yourusername happy birthday to my favorite brother, i love you and am so grateful to know i have someone in my life who looks after me like you do<3 here's my fav pics of us of course they're all racing related lol, our first love

view all 982 comments

yourbrother "my favorite brother"... As far as I know I am your only brother 😐

⤷ yourusername 🥱🥱🥱🥱 technicalities

yourbrother Thank you least favorite sister, miss those days. Have to get back out on the karting track, been too long since I've beaten you

⤷ yourusername been too long since you've been beaten, you mean?

⤷ yourbrother Yeah, yeah we'll let the track times speak for themselves

⤷ user1 ok but we have to admit the brother sister banter is kind of adorable

⤷ user2 no bc she seems so sweet 😭

user3 nah because what is max verstappen doing in this girls likes now????

⤷ user4 and the plot thickens 😯

user5 she saw everyone calling her a fake f1 fan and said take a look at this

user6 yn hater club how you guys feeling right about now

⤷ user7 🤡🤡🤡🤡

user8 honestly kind of hope she's dating one of them

⤷ user9 yall switch up so fast please 😭😭

user10 seriously..... you HAD to only post f1 related photos lmfao so totally pandering to the landoscar fans

user11 f1 school of wags next graduate

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liked by mclaren, yourusername, and 1,891,218 others

landonorris DOUBLE PODIUM!!!!!!!! couldn't have asked for a better race, congrats @/oscarpiastri and a huge thanks as always to @/mclaren 🧡

view all 5,871 comments

user1 I SAY THATS MY BABY AND IM SO PROUD 😭

user2 mclaren double podium... oh i used to pray for times like these

user3 oscar piastri you are insane omfg

user4 MY POOKIES LOOK AT THEM !!!!!!!!! 🫂

user5 save me landoscar SAVE ME

yourusername jumping up and down screaming and crying losing my mind

⤷ landonorris you should probably get that checked out....

⤷ user6 THATS IT, ITS YN AND LANDO IM CALLING IT

⤷ user7 nah nah nah this is so giving gf of the bestie banter

⤷ user8 agreed hopping on the oscaryn train 💪🏻

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yourusername added to their story

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oscarpiastri added to their story

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liked by kellypiquet, oscarpiastri, and 789,012 others

yourusername qatar gp smiles <3 practice timeeee

📸 @/kellypiquet

view all 1,281 comments

kellypiquet so beautiful

⤷ yourusername all you

landonorris eye spy a mclaren car down there?

⤷ yourusername ? i just see a tractor

⤷ landonorris not funny. 😐

⤷ yourusername i certainly laughed

⤷ oscarpiastri same actually

⤷ user1 i dont know how much longer i can take this

⤷ user2 GUYSSSS i am telling you its so oscaryn

⤷ user3 WHAT literally look at the Proof its so landoyn 🥱

⤷ user4 i am giggling we're literally in a shipwar

user5 she's so pretty i'm sorry guys i love her 😵‍💫

⤷ user6 well yes!

user7 patiently waiting for one of the mcl boys to main feed post her then we know for sure ‼️

⤷ user8 at this rate it still won't clear anything up

lilymhe miss u beautiful

⤷ yourusername omg i miss u more ms lily

⤷ user9 she has The wag stamp of approval WE MOVE!

user10 theres four e's at the end of 'time'....... landos number is 4 i've got it guys 😃😃

⤷ user11 seek medical attention STAT

⤷ user12 bro thinks this is a taylor swift album release

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liked by mclaren, landonorris, and 789,012 others

yourusername oscar piastri sprint race winner AND mclaren double podium, better start calling me the good luck charm

view all 1,281 comments

user1 nah bc you're onto something.....

user2 she can't be serious 😐

⤷ user3 well no shit it's just an instagram caption

user4 i cannot be the only one who finds the caption extremely weird

⤷ user5 nah i'm with you i've never liked her 🙄

⤷ user6 its just so odd like forcing yourself into the mclaren narrative completely taking away from the boys achievements writing it off as your own doing...

⤷ user7 omfg yall are so dramatic just say you're jealous they're not dating you lmfao

⤷ user8 no fr because it is not that serious it's clearly a joke like she loves them cmon now

mclaren BRB getting your paddock passes for the duration of the season

⤷ yourusername i'm giggling, i love you guys 😙

⤷ user9 see mclaren is fine with it so yall should be too

⤷ user10 now i'm going to need all the haters to sit DOWN and shut the fuck UP

oscarpiastri wait can you send me that picture

⤷ yourusername i literally did already but okay

⤷ oscarpiastri ok could do with less attitude

⤷ yourusername you have not seen real attitude piastri

⤷ oscarpiastri 😧

⤷ user11 i think this just converted me to team oscar

⤷ user12 nah this is literally landoyn confirmation

landonorris 🍀

⤷ user13 i am picking up what he's putting down

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part one | sweet relief series | valentine's day drabble

taglist:

@landoscar-f1 , @urfavnoirette , @imsiriuslyreal

#lando norris #formula 1 #lando norris x reader #formula one #lando norris imagine #lando norris x you #lando norris smau #f1 2024 #lando norris fanfic #lando norris fluff #oscar piastri #oscar piastri x reader #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri imagine #f1rodrigo

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cutesilyo · 6 months

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the thing i really like about just for once in nerdy prudes must die is that it's best iteration of the musical within a musical trope that has become characteristic of the hatchetfield musicals

like both show-stopping number and deck the halls (of northville high) are catchy songs from in-universe musicals that were very much written to have plots that suck

and show-stopping number was so well-beloved because it is, frankly, a hilarious scene that robert manion put 100% into

but i argue that only just for once is thematically relevant to its musical and fully emblematic of the wants and desires of the character singing it

because what is just for once, as a scene? it's ruth singing a song because she thinks she's got a chance of doing it better. it's ruth singing a song about a character who looks back on the mundane miseries of her lonely life and — at the last second — remembering who she used to be before the pain set in. it's ruth singing her version of cooler than i think i am and reflecting on how she is perceived and wondering what it takes to break away from it. it's ruth singing right after she says, "in my dreams, i'm the star of the show."

of all the losers that max jagerman victimizes, only ruth says who she'd like to become beyond that. where pete can't even admit to liking steph at gunpoint and richie doesn't ever get the chance to verbalize what he wants, ruth gets on the stage in the few minutes of break time and just for once, the spotlight is on her.

and the really crazy thing about just for once is — it has the "i'm not a loser" motif. possibly the most iconic and important motif of the whole musical, it's the motif that starts the opening number. and here it is, in the silly musical within a musical by the silly character who has — until this song — always served as comic relief.

in the climax of the song, just for once is no longer the song of a character from the barbecue monologues. it's ruth's. in those few seconds, it's her lamentation of the life that max jagerman forced on her.

but that's the thing about the "i'm not a loser" motif. the way it functions in the musical is as a harbinger for max's violence. the police at the beginning ask, "what the hell happened here?" and its the motif that answers. pete is the first character that sings the line and is immediately beaten up by max in the next scene. then richie sings it and max kills him in the same song. when ruth has the motif running as the crescendo to just for once, it sounds absolutely incredible... and it should come as no surprise when max appears shortly after.

(as a quick note: you can also hear the motif after max makes the car crash, then max appears two scenes later. you then hear the motif in the cooler than i think i am reprise and max also appears right after the song. it's like max is instantly summoned by any instance of the losers trying to shake off the role he placed on them — of trying to defy him.)

tl;dr: the inclusion of the "i'm not a loser" motif in just for once makes it the big lipped alligator moment that wasn't. like yeah, it accomplishes its goal in being the funny musical within a musical trope! the character acting makes it a funny song, and its a funny character performing it! but it also furthers our understanding of ruth AND of what the "i'm not a loser" really is: it's the characters trying to develop past being nerdy prudes and max doing everything in his power to prevent that.

and it does all that while being a banging musical tribute to stephen sondheim and, especially, his song the ladies who lunch. which in itself is a massive flex on jeff blim's part. what a brilliant song in a brilliant musical.

#npmd #nerdy prudes must die #starkid #hatchetfield #mine #i just love this song okay????#anyway i just want to say #nerdy prudes must die is on youtube!!! go watch it!!!!

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softlyspector · 7 months

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Born lucky, under a bad star.

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

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~13k (sorry)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, nothing like this.

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

Lucky, in all the worst ways.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You agree.

Tommy, you, anyone else—can fucking wait.

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

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

The quiet that follows is painful.

Joel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happened?”

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

There’s a dark hole in your memory.

“I don’t know.”

And it’s the truth.

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

Aside from Tommy, maybe.

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

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

Protector.

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

Survive and provide and protect.

Joel.

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

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

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

Jackson loves Joel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Was he awake?”

“A little. Drank some water.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Heading out?”

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

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

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

“Probably about as good as you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s your brother.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe. But this is more important.”

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

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

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

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

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

His whole body aches. He feels sick.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A million?” He grunts.

“Three.”

“That ain’t a million.”

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

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

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

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

The feeling in his chest swells until it chokes him.

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

Everything, maybe.

His whole damn life.

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

He feels like fucking crying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A firm but unyielding presence.

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

Joel’s fingers are clumsy.

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

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

And nothing makes him feel so helpless as that.

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

Now, it doesn’t.

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

Ellie plays for him, instead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Anyway, I meant what I said.”

“Ellie.”

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

“Ellie.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“D'ya still wanna watch it?”

She does.

Joel is whittling.

It is decidedly not going well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Joel?”

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

“Still want me to cut your hair?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His whole body is nothing but reminders.

He is a patchwork quilt of scars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You what?”

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

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

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

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

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

Not before the outbreak, and certainly not after.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It shouldn’t be.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He fixes the window.

Some days are easier than others.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I ain’t helpless.”

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

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

“I know, Joel.”

When he looks at you, you visibly brace yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What if it was me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That ain’t it at all.

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

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

He doesn’t understand the guilt you feel.

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

Worse, he can’t do that for his kid.

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

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

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

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

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

Born lucky, bad star, like always.

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

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

He doesn’t say any of that.

Instead, he nods.

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

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

But you’re just quiet.

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

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

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

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

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

“Ellie—” He’d growled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He comes to you late one night.

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

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

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

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

Joel hardly ever talks about his folks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arrowleaf. Goldenrod.

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

It’s thick, cloying, pungent.

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

It’s making Joel fucking nauseous.

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

It’s the smell.

It’s the sun and the gentle breeze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything is, these days.

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

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

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

And he’s tired.

Exhausted, really.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All right.”

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

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

You roll your eyes. “Lucky for you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It gets easier.

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

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

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

“Breakin’ my neck can’t be much worse than what it is right now. We ain’t goin’ around the yard anyhow. Now c’mon, put your shoes on, kiddo.”

“It’s still raining,” she complains.

“Means no one’s outside to see me humiliatin’ myself.”

Ellie only rolls her eyes but does it anyway. He doesn’t need a hand anymore, but he’s shaky sometimes and despite your best efforts he’s still refusing a cane. But he also hasn’t been using the track in the yard in weeks.

That, and he actually has somewhere to be these days, figuring out better security for Jackson, looking after the patrol teams, assessing who was ready to be put into rotation. Managing is what he should be calling it, though he doesn’t care for it. He and Maria butt heads too often for it to be anything close to enjoyable.

When they pass the mailbox, Ellie points to the lavender. “I never thought to ask about it before. It’s everywhere. Some nailed above the door and everything.”

“Some kinda thing about protectin’ the home,” Joel explains. “Far as I remember, it protects from bad energy. Somethin’ like that.”

“I thought that was sage?”

“Sage you burn,” he explains. “And we get plenty of that too. Whole damn house smells like it.”

“Seems like the kinda thing Dina would do,” she says and then seems to realize who she’s said it to. But she doesn’t change the subject. “Didn’t take her for the superstitious type. Doesn’t seem like it really works anyway.”

Joel shrugs. “She was before the outbreak, I guess.” He watches Ellie from the corner of his eye. She’s steadfastly not looking at him, but she also doesn’t usually say so much to him. “Didn’t have reason to think of it for a long time. Lavender wasn’t exactly in high supply in Boston.”

Ellie nods.

“She used to, uh, put some in your backpack when she knew you was goin’ out. Same with me, always put some in my pocket.”

There’s a long silence. Jackson’s streets are oddly empty in the pouring rain. Lights glow in the windows; inviting, homely. “She didn’t have to do that.”

He shrugs and his shoulder only aches a little for it. “It’s just the kinda thing parents do, even if it don’t make any damn sense.”

“Yeah,” Ellie agrees as the turn toward the center of Jackson. “You wanna stop in the Bison?”

“Sure,” he agrees. “For a minute.”

“Full schedule?” She teases. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your sunset years?”

“Well, gotta have something to fill up the days, kiddo. Maybe one day you’ll actually be able to keep up.”

She just scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Yeah, whatever."

Joel tries not to smile.

Being mobile again, busy again, feels good.

It feels good, but it also means he’s in near constant pain.

He tells himself it’s good, that pain sharpens him, makes him better.

Until he’s slumped on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night, heaving his guts up from the ache in his leg.

You find him there, sweaty and panting, with a glass of water in hand. Joel pushes himself upright against the wall with a sigh as you close the lid of the toilet and flush it before sitting beside him on the cool tile.

“You’re overdoing it again,” you say, not unkindly.

“I ain’t tryin’ to,” he mutters and takes the glass of water when you offer it to him.

“I know.” You cover his free hand with yours. “Wanna get up?”

You smell faintly of peppermint, burned incense.

When he shakes his head, you stretch to flip the light switch over your head. He’s plunged into darkness, alone, for just a moment, before you settle again. The warmth of your head against his shoulder feels stolen.

For a long time, neither of you say anything. He breathes through the pain still crawling around his knee, the phantom flesh of his calf.

“I was a goddamn fool,” he whispers into the silence. “You know what I was thinkin’ that day?” He’s not sure where the words come from, the confession. It feels a little like the words are being pulled up out of his body, yanked right from the center of his chest.

“Tell me,” your nose is warm when it bumps against his collarbone.

“‘Bout Ellie. How I’d want someone to help her, if she needed it. So I helped that girl. Almost got all of us fuckin’ killed.”

You don’t answer, not at first. But eventually, you lean into him and say, “If you want me to blame you, I won’t. I will never find fault in kindness.” Your thumb strokes his knuckles slowly. “Never. Especially not yours.”

He brushes his mouth along your hairline, skin silken against his mouth. “Y’know when we was on the road, I was sure you’d get us killed. But y’always knew when to trust someone. How much to trust ‘em.”

“I. . .” you start and then trail off, fingers squeezing around his. “I was always lucky, and I always knew I had you at my back. If I messed up, you were always there.”

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness of the bathroom, and when he meets your gaze, he can see the glaze of tears in your eyes. You suck in a shaking breath and clear your throat but don’t continue. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there the same way.”

“This ain’t on you,” he says. “Don’t think that. It’s me. It was a long time comin’ somethin’ would catch up to me.”

You settle in against him, one hand digging into the sore muscle of his thigh. The heat feels like, the flex of your gentle fingers even better. The pain that doesn’t exist fades just a little.

“And for the record, darlin’, you were there the same way.”

It’s autumn again when you go back onto the patrol rotation. There’s frost on the windows and on the spikes of overgrown grass in the front yard. He just got back from a night watch on the wall.

You’re taking his old routes with Tommy, and you don’t tell him about it until the morning of. Not a fucking soul breathed a word of it to him, and he’s the one figuring out the goddamned rotations.

And Joel realizes though he’d been worried about you not wanting to leave Jackson anymore, not even being able to go near the gates, he was glad you hadn’t wanted to. It meant you were safe. Even if he couldn’t keep you safe anymore, the walls of Jackson could.

“I’m not doing this with you right now,” you say before you leave, pretending like he can’t clearly see your hands shaking before you walk out the door.

He follows you onto the porch. He can’t remember what he says, just that you look upset and then hurt, just that you don’t say goodbye when you walk away and that you probably don’t have lavender tucked into your pocket like he always did.

“Please.” A word he hardly ever says, a plea he never gives into.

He says it to your retreating back as you pass the mailbox, but you either don’t hear him or choose to ignore him.

Maybe he didn’t say it at all.

That day is hell. It’s long and pocketed with anger and anxiety. If something happens to you, he isn’t sure what he’ll do. He doesn’t like that you left him upset.

Maria doesn’t entertain his outburst about it when he finally corners her after looking for her all morning. “She was ready.”

“I didn’t even know we were considerin’ sendin’ her back out!”

Maria just levels him with a glare that could freeze hell over. “That isn’t up to just you. And why do you think she didn’t want to tell you?”

He’s at the stables with Ellie that evening when you come home, waiting. It’s cold and his leg is aching something bitter and awful but he doesn’t move and Ellie doesn’t suggest going back home because she knows he won’t hear it. Dina stops by and he listens to them talk. Ellie’s face softens when she looks at Dina, cheeks a soft pink in the fading light, ducking her head and fidgeting with her fingers.

Joel tries not to pay them any mind, but it's hard not to find endearing.

When you and Tommy get back, it’s full dark. He wants to throttle his brother for not telling him you were going back out on the trails, but it’s too cold for much of that. All thoughts of strangling Tommy fly from his head as soon as he sees you, because you have a smear of blood on your cheek and down your neck.

“Goddamn it, what happened?” He demands, hands against your face before you’ve even fully dismounted.

“I’m fine.”

“That ain’t what I asked,” he sweeps his thumb over your skin, flakes of red shifting to the ground. The knot in his chest tightens as he watches it flutter through the air. “What happened?” He growls again. “Tommy?”

“The usual, Joel,” you pull his attention back to you. “It was just cleanup. A couple of infected. Nothing.”

“Uh huh,” he tilts your face one way and then the other.

“Just some splatter.” You shrug and smile at him; your mouth twitches, and he realizes you’re teasing him.

“Splatter,” he repeats flatly. “That ain’t funny. You ain’t funny. C’mon, let’s go home.”

Ellie and Dina have disappeared with your arrival but they aren’t far; he can hear their chatter as they walk along the street toward the center of Jackson, the echoes of their voices reaching back towards him. “I’ll deal with you later,” he says to his brother.

Tommy just raises his hands and says he’ll stable the horses. But he’s grinning and maybe that’s a good thing. It’s been awhile since his brother has seemed himself. It’s been awhile since the two of you have given him grief together.

“Leave Tommy alone,” you say as you walk toward Rancher Street. You seem steadier than you had been that morning, more confident, more yourself. It isn’t a long walk back, even with his leg, though he limps worse than usual because of the cold. You wrap an arm around his waist, your fingers digging into his back pocket, body warm against his side. “We did good together today.”

“Mhm. I’m sure you did.”

“You mad at me?”

“I wish you’d tell me,” he murmurs. “When you’re goin’ off to do somethin’ stupid. I need you to talk to me. Worried the whole goddamn day. You ain’t exactly in practice out there anymore.”

You hum and then nudge closer to him. “Put your arm around me.”

“I’m fine,” he grunts, maybe a little harshly.

“Joel,” you laugh and nuzzle your face against his shoulder. “C’mon. I’m cold and I had a rough day. Put your arm around me.”

So, he does. And he leaves it there until you’re in the bathroom, sitting on the counter in front of him, lavender plants stacked in the sink behind you once again as the colder weather sets in.

This is better. So much fucking better, than the other way around. This is right.

He cleans the blood away, finds the swell of a bruise on your shoulder and a cut lengthways over your collarbone.

It’s easy enough to take care of. It isn’t as bad as what he’d been imagining all day long.

He’s well in practice for this sort of thing, for bandaging and assessing wounds.

“Sorry,” he says as he works. “For this mornin’.”

“Mhm.”

“I worried all day. Not much I can do now, if you get into a spot of trouble.”

“I handle myself fine. Tommy was there. He’s a good partner out there.”

Joel grunts, dabs rubbing alcohol along the cut. “He is,” he agrees reluctantly. He supposes if you had to go on patrol with anyone, he’d prefer you go with his brother.

You touch him as he works, fingers patting over his jacket, the collar of his flannel, the frayed edge of the t-shirt beneath that. “I had to go back out, Joel. You would have argued with me and I can’t be afraid and useless forever.”

“Useless,” he scoffs and unspools a length of bandage. “You don’t know nothin’ about that.”

“Joel,” you say softly, exasperated. “Baby, you don’t know what it was like that day. I thought you were already dead.” Your voice trembles and you have to swallow harshly before you can continue. “Helpless and useless doesn’t even begin to cover what I felt. What I still feel.” You shake your head and cup your fingers around his. “I dream about it every single night and I still don’t really remember what happened. That scares me a lot.”

He slides his thumb along the gauze, your eyes wide and worried when he meets them.“I’ll never be who I was, sweetheart.” His voice sounds mournful to his own ears.

“You’re exactly the same man, Joel. I’m just happy you’re here and alive and you’re worried you aren’t alive the right damn way.” You shake your head. “I can’t ask for much more than what I have. Than what we do. Me and you. Ellie back in our life. A home. Food. Family. You,” you touch his jaw and smile. “Still here. Still taking care of me.”

There’s a lump in his throat, hard as a stone. “Yep.” He coughs in an attempt to clear his voice but he sounds just as wrecked when he speaks. “Patrol musta been real good to y’today.”

You just laugh, and the sound of it is wet. “Yeah. It was. I thought it would be terrible but I missed it.”

“I know you did.”

“You should come on a ride with me sometime,” you say slyly. “I bet it’d feel good to be back in the saddle. You’ve always been a good shot from the back of a horse.”

He has.

Maybe he should.

💞 If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Comments and feedback are so appreciated. 💞

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction

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bellawoso · 2 months

Text

Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve

Alexia Putellas x fem!reader

Read part 1 : here

Much to your Diego’s dismay, you did not end up calling Alexia, instead the jersey, adorned with a number that could change your life, was left screwed up at the back of your wardrobe.

You were going to call Alexia.

Until one of your other friends heard about it, and told you about the backlash and hate you would receive from some of Alexia’s devoted fans. In the end, you decided it wasn’t worth it, it was only a few years since you escaped your depressive cycle, you were not ever going to risk entering it again.

Truthfully, you regret ignoring Alexia, every time anyone hits on you, you always compare them to the blonde, Diego often calling you “pathetic” as you only spoke to her for 2 hours.

However, you realised that it’s too late to call her, and think of how weird the blonde would think you were if you called her a month later.

As once again you debated calling the midfielder, your door suddenly slammed open.

“¡Hola chica! Look I have tickets!”

As you inspected the tickets in Diego’s hand, your face contorted to one of disappointment;

England vs Spain tickets.

Fuck.

———————————————————————

Your England top had arrived just in time, you were going to wear a Spain one after Diego convinced you that you would be beaten up by the first Spaniard who saw you, you guess the England-Spain rivalry ran deep.

However, it felt a betrayal to your country to be clad in the red jersey, so you ordered one last minute, luckily you weren’t completely oblivious when it came to football, you knew of how Leah Williamson had captained England to a Euro’s victory.

So there you were, in blue denim shorts and your oversized Williamson Jersey almost reaching past your shorts.

It felt like you were cheating, which was stupid, you met Alexia for 2 hours, to push away the feeling of guilt you slipped on a jacket and made your way downstairs.

Diego only rolled his eyes, and sighed in disapproval at your jersey choice.

———————————————————————

Alexia was excited for her return which she had been informed of a month prior to the match, but everyone on the team had noticed a change in the captains mood.

Except only Jana knew the cause for her sudden sadness.

Alexia didn’t understand why your rejection stung so much, maybe it was because the two-time ballon d’or winner wasn’t used to it, or maybe it was because the whole two hours you were together, she had imagined a relationship with you. It felt too real, and she cursed herself for grieving something that never happened in the first place.

She pushed all of those thoughts to the side, and instead focused on the match ahead of her, it was only a friendly, but the idea of being able to hold the win over Lucy and Keira’s heads when they returned to Barcelona felt euphoric.

What she didn’t expect was to see you in the crowd, worse of all, in a Leah fucking Williamson jersey.

———————————————————————-

Spain were one nil down at half time. which was frustrating for Alexia, having to watch from the sidelines with promises of being brought on for the final 45 minutes, however as she stepped on the pitch, her attention was drawn to a white jersey, in a sea of red, only a few rows up.

You stuck out like a sore thumb, it was extremely hard to miss you. So when Alexia laid eyes on you, her heart stopped for a second, and the screams and cheers of the stadium became muffled sounds in her ears.

As you turn around to face Diego, Alexia can just make out the England captain’s last name on your back, bile rises to the Spaniard’s mouth and she quickly turns away.

A newfound determination to outdo the English Captain, to try prove to you that the only jersey you should be proud to wear should be hers.

Call it jealousy. Maybe. But whatever it was fuelled Alexia to score 2 more goals by the end of the match.

2-1 to Spain.

When you saw Alexia step out on the pitch, your breath immediately hitched in your throat, sending you into a coughing fit, which received a knowing chuckle from Diego.

“You fumbled amiga”

Honestly, you regretted teaching him some English slang, he used it against you constantly, and often laughed at himself after seeing you scowling.

When the match ended, Diego was quick to drag you to the stands, he was a big fan of Aitana Bonmati, and wanted her signature badly.

Although you were happy for him when the brunette midfielder came over to where you two were, you froze at seeing Alexia’s friend from the match, who was walking over with Aitana.

When Jana laid eyes on you, she knew what she had to do, she was quick to sprint off and get Alexia, who was talking to Lucy and Keira, and teasing them of the loss.

Alexia was no where near as nervous as you were, the blonde didn’t need to be, you rejected her, even though she was positive that you were returning her flirty comments at the past match.

The Spaniard was sure that you were in the wrong, you should feel guilty for leading her on, so she was quick to confront you when she saw you.

“You didn’t call, and I’m pretty sure I told you to wear better clothing colours”

You internally cringed at how straight to the point the blonde was, and couldn’t help but blush as she called you out for ignoring her.

“I’m sorry, I was nervous and by the time I felt ready to call, I figured it would be too late”

“I don’t know if I’m more upset about you didn’t call because you were nervous, or the fact that you have Leah Williamson’s name on your back”

“Get me a better one then” you replied, whilst looking down at her jersey and back at her with a grin.

Alexia quickly stripped off her jersey, as you took off yours too, luckily you wore a tank top under it, Alexia’s eyes quickly dropping to your exposed chest.

“Your not subtle you know?”

“Who said I was trying to be?” The blonde was quick to reply back.

You only chuckled in response, and slipped on Alexia’s jersey, doing a little spin “How do I look?”

“Beautiful, much better wearing the jersey you belong in”

You weren’t sure if Alexia truly meant that, or if her extremely forward words were due to English not being her first language, but either way your face flushed deep crimson in retaliation to her comment.

The click of a pen lid being taken off woke you from your trance, and you peered up at Alexia, who tugged you closer by your waist, and quickly scribbled down her number once again.

“Pot favor, call me this time, promise?”

“I promise Ale, I will even let you choose the colour scheme of my outfit when we go out” you quipped back with a smile.

With a smirk, the blonde midfielder threw the England jersey on the floor, and walked away to meet Jana so they could walk into the locker room together.

Diego quickly ran towards you, only to pick you up and swing you around.

“I told you she would want you amiga! Your a snack!”

“Diego please never call me that again”

“Shut up! You should be thanking me, with out me, she would have never re-given you her number”

———————————————————————

A/N : I am halfway through writing part 3 🤍

#Spotify #barcelona femeni #barcelona femeni x reader #woso community #woso #woso fanfics #woso x reader #aitana bonmati #jana fernandez x reader #jana fernandez #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas #leah williamson x reader #leah williamson #england women #england lionesses #spain women's national team #spain wnt #england wnt

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youraverageaemondsimp · 7 months

Text

“My darling.” // CelticSlave!Aemond Targaryen x VestalVirgin!Reader

THIS FIC CONTAINS DARK CONTENT, READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT.

MDNI.

block the tag #MAE:DARK!CONTENT to avoid seeing dark content from me.

Summary: Fetching water a little later than usual shouldn't really affect much of your life right? You're wrong, and you wouldn't find out until you found a celtic slave in a bad condition named Aemond.

WARNINGS: extreme noncon to dubcon, unprotected p in v sex, blood kink, degradation, breeding kink, violence, blood, murder, slight angst, stockholm syndrome(?), reader basically falls in love with Aemond even though he nonconned her, manipulation. not exactly historically accurate, this is just fiction so do not take it heart, hoping it isn't offensive, + not proofread // requested by @slytherincursebreaker !!

WC: 3.5k

You were an illegitimate daughter of a politician in your country, taken away from your mother to keep the scandal underground, you never had an easy life and your father only did the bare minimum, and to say your step mother and half siblings did not like you at all, they saw you as a pest more than anything, when the pontifex maximus was choosing vestal virgins to serve the goddess vesta, he had eyes for your family, specifically your sister but she did not want to go, and so they sent you instead, seizing the opportunity to get rid of you.

It did not mean you were fully free from their clutches however, as you grew in the monastery you were always slightly discriminated against but the other 5 priestess, having heard the rumours about your bastardised birth. But you still managed to get by, you remember how earlier this morning your half sister came to visit you, telling you that she is to be married soon, she came to rub it in your face because you were sworn to celibacy, and you could not engage in activities like such. She even bought her suitor along, who you swore looked at you with such lust, and you felt very creeped out.

This is why you deliberately didn't go and fetch water from the spring earlier today, he often came to visit the temple and watched you perform your duties to the goddess vesta.

Choosing to fetch water at such a late time shouldn't have any repercussions right? I mean, you did not do it earlier because you had a reason not to, not wanting to entertain the eyes of your half sister's suitor, so you're doing it now.

Wrong.

You didn't realise the threat back then, when you found Aemond being beaten up by a bunch of other men, kindness was something that came to you naturally, seeing him in such a state made your heart wrench, you shooed off the other men, reprimanding them for their behaviour and used your status as a vestal virgin to scare them off before looking down at the man who was covered in mud, and seemed to bleeding.

He had silver blonde hair, with only one eye as the other socket seemed empty, you wondered what had happened to him.

“Are you alright?” you ask and you he groans, turning over unto his back, you should leave, you shouldn't help him, but here you are picking him up, leaning his body weight against you and bringing him through one of the secret tunnels in underneath the infrastructure of the building, it was connected directly to another country, was made to use it in order to escape from war or to invade other lands, none of the common folk knew about this, and the people who knew didn't come here often either, as there was no such need for it anymore.

You sit him down in one of the 'rooms' which is just a big spacious squared tunnel, he plops down unto the ground weak and tired, breathing heavily, you quickly went back outside and fetched the water you forgot about and gave some of it for him to drink, you watched as he whimpered, swallowing in pain before he finally looked at you.

“T-thank you.” his voice was so weak, he was barely able to get any words out.

You gave him a gentle smile, and you realised that it was probably late, you had many questions for him but you kept it to yourself for now because you didn't want to bother him anymore, so left back to the temple where you resided.

“Why are you up so late?” you heard the head vestal ask, raising an eyebrow as she took in your appearance, mud covering your prestigious clothing, “I went to fetch the water head priestess, but I fell down on the way back.” you lie looking down, hoping she believes it, and to your surprise, she does believe it, she tells you to go to your quarters after putting the water down, so you do just that.

You visit the badly hurt person from yesterday once again, you knew you were not supposed to have any type of contact with a man, to remain pure as they will taint you, but you really could care less when its about helping others, you found him lying on the ground, likely sleeping, but your footsteps woke him up and he looked at you curiously, you gave him a small smile before giving him the bread you managed to sneak out without anyone noticing, along with water, you gave it to them and sat down, he reluctantly ate it before drinking the water. “Why are you doing this?” he asked you and you shrugged, “Is it so wrong to help a fellow human out?” you question back and he goes quiet, “You i never really got your name, or how you ended up in that situation.” you tilt your head as you watch him purse his lips.

“I am a celtic sex slave.”

You froze, he was a slave.

“My mistress threw me out, and I ended up on the streets without any shelter, and those men just wanted someone to mess with.” he sighs, swallowing the bread. You felt pity for him.

“Till you found me of course, I am extremely indebted to you my lady.” he says and you shake your head no, “I’m no lady, I am a vestal virgin that title is not of my belonging.” You said, and he tilted his head, not understanding what you had meant, he nodded but then his eyes widened “This is such an honour to be in the presence of such a being, sorry you must see me in this state, and… You had to touch me as well.” he apologises and you look down, you shake your head and tell him that it's okay and you did not mind.

You and Aemond had grown closer, he would tell you about his life before he became a sex slave, how he was treated, how you felt extremely bad, how your people treated the Celtics. And so you shared your problems in return as well, he provided you comfort which you lacked all of your life, for the first time you felt wanted, and you could not ignore the feeling that was starting to bloom inside you.

But you pushed it down, you are a celibate, you should not be feeling such things.

Aemond had taken a liking to you, you had a pretty soul as well as a pretty face, the way you looked in your white clothing, and whenever you would fix your scarf over the head afraid that your hair or skin would show made him more curious to see what is underneath the thick robes of clothing even more. He knows damn well that he isn't the first man to ever lust for a vestal virgin, there were many depraved others.

After Aemond recovered, you had showed him around the tunnels and dungeons, various routes that if something happens he can use them to escape, and you also showed the route which led to his country, and he noted it, telling you that he can use this to go back to his own people again and you gave him a small smile.

Though the thought of him leaving makes your heart wrench.

“Aemond, I have to go and attend to my duties now, I will meet you later okay?” you say quickly before leaving.

Though the later never came.

“She was caught sneaking around with a slave apparently, she kept him hidden, surely she committed adultery as well.” you heard the voice of the chief priestess tell the priest.

“That is utmost dishonourable, as a vestal virgin you are sworn to celibacy, how can you do this?!” He yells at you and you flinch, tears streaming down your face.

“I promise! I promise on the flame of vesta that nothing happened between us! I was just helping him out.” you plead on your knees.

“How can I believe you? That you are not ruined? You were helping a sex slave out? you want me to believe that?” he questions and you shake your head.

“Order her death by live burial, she will be buried underground with no food or water.” he commands, tone final.

You watched as one of the virgins who snitched on you, she smiled cruelly and your face turned into a scowl. She was the one who wasn't a virgin, yet you kept her secret knowing what would happen if others found out, but the moment she discovered something about you? She had gone straight to the chief priestess and told her, even fed her lies.

“No! No! Please listen to me! Nothing happened between us! You can check for my virginity if you want! Please.” you cried, at the priest and he simply dismissed you.

You were grabbed by his guards and were being led to your doom, dragged out of the temple forcefully and then the trial was processing when you heard a commotion, accompanied by panicked screams.

“There has been a rebellion! The celtics have rebelled against us!” You hear someone yell, and everyone panics, the guards that were holding you quickly let go before rushing off to fight, you run after them and go to the temple as well, eyes widening in horror as you saw the blood and how few of priestesses were being violated brutally by the rebels, their clothes were being torn by the celtic soldiers and you were spotted by two men who came over to you, grabbing you by your hands and shoving you onto the ground.

“This one's pretty, let me have her cunt first.” you screamed at them to let go and they fought against them, kicking one of them in the shins cause the man to stumble and fall, “This bitch–”

“Stop.”

They both immediately froze up and turned around, and you froze as well, recognizing the voice. “This one is mine, unless you want your heads fucking cut off, fuck off.” he spits harshly at them, and they bow their head before scurrying off and you furrow your eyebrows, Aemond looks at you with a smirk, the empty eye socket from before now held a blue sapphire in its place snuggly.

“This would not have been possible without you, I shall spare you for this.” he begins, pulling you up on your legs by the hair.

“W-why are you doing this?!” you asked in fear and Aemond shrugged before explaining, “For the benefit of my people of course, you Romans have treated us as nothing but barbarians, however I do not blame you for that, you are a kind soul.”

“I threw my life away for this, let myself get touched by filthy hands for this moment, and finally, it was all worth it in the end.” he chuckles cruelly, and you scrunch your face in a scowl, “The emperor—” you begun but you are quickly cut off by him yanking your hair and making you face where a body was laying, head detached from the body, he tuts, “This one?” he pulls out a head and shoves it right up into your face and you push it away, screaming, he lets gos of the head and it falls to the ground rolling away.

“He was nothing but a coward, running off in the secret tunnels, letting his people die, unworthy of ruling over the people, so instead, I became the new emperor.” he clarifies.

“If you are going to kill me, just do it already.” you spit, and he looks surprised at this.

“Doll, if I wanted to kill you, I would have done it long ago, besides I said that I would already spare you, since you were a kind soul, and once again, without you, I would not be here.” he smiles cruelly and you feel your stomach twist.

His grip on your hair leaves before it's attached to your forearm, hand gripping the skin cruelly as he drags you somewhere, and you noticed that it was the head priestess room, the nearest one in the temple. You quickly realised what he wanted to do, so you started struggling, annoyed by this, he picked you up and threw you over his shoulder, before carrying and entering the room inside, securing the curtain shut before he threw you on the bed.

You try to get up and run away but he pushes you on the bed, gets on top of you, and yanks your clothes away, tearing at your robes harshly, revealing your body to him, you quickly hide yourself but he pins your hands to your side and takes in your body, he groans at the sight of your chest heaving up and down, you wriggle underneath him, trying to kick him off but he captures your legs and pushes them apart before planting himself in between them.

“No! Please! No!” you cry out but he shuts you up with one of his hands, the other one quickly undoes his breeches, revealing his hard cock, he gives himself a few pumps and lines it up against your entrance. His tip prods at your entrance, he doesn't wait a second before shoving his cock inside of you, ripping your walls apart, making you scream in pain as you struggled beneath him, he watches as your blood leaks onto his cock, and his smiles at that before he looks at you, watching tears stream down your face as he takes what he wants, he immediately sets his pace at a brutal one, ramming his cock in and out of you.

Each movement was painful for you, your cries and screams muffled by his hand, your body jolting up the bed as he brutally thrusts inside, traumatising your walls, the free hand grips your breasts cruelly before he pinches your nipple harshly, causing you to arch your back, and whine loudly.

Using the least amount of strength you have you push him heavily off, and to your luck it works cause he is caught off guard making him fall next to you, and before you could get up and run, he grabs your waist and pushes you back onto the bed again, getting on top of you and choking your neck with both his hands.

“I was going to spare you, but it seems you do not want that, take it or fucking die.” he spits on your face and you wince, crying out once again as he enters inside you.

Your body betrays you, you know it when it suddenly starts to feel good, his tip hitting a certain spot inside of you, and soon you're moaning as well, unable to process this foreign sensation. “Yeah, that's more like it, my brave girl.” he coos and bends down to kiss your neck and you whimper when he bites down at your sensitive area.

You grab onto his shoulders for support, and he hums in satisfaction, one of his hands travel down to your clit before rubbing fast circles it, and you felt your stomach tighten at that, before something snapped and you were moaning extremely loudly, nails digging into his skin as the pleasure hit you like a huge wave.

You cried out his name, and he hushed you and continued to thrust inside of you, grunting, you felt his thrusts become more sloppy before he halted, pushing himself into you as far as he could go, and moaned as his seed spurted out of him, he slowly rode it out, painting more of your walls white.

“I want to see you pregnant.” his hand rests on the lower part of your abdomen, as he caresses it gently with his thumb, before pulling out and leaning down to pepper kisses on the area, as if a kiss will ensure your pregnancy.

His hands fondle with your boobs, thumbs flicking the nipples as he massages the flesh, “they will be filled with milk..” he says in a daze.

You saw him getting hard again and your eyes widened, before you could get up on your elbows, he pushed you down once again again, holding your legs apart and pushing them up, making the knees bend, touching your chest.

He lines his cock before shoving it brutally inside again, he trapped you in a mating press while he thrusted above, your walls drummed with pain at the overstimulation, you were whimpering.

“Fucking it take it you slut, look at how your expression matches that of a whore.” he degrades you, hips snapping at each words, you felt a sting in your heart at his mean behavior.

“This is what you were made for, to be a fucking whore that men can use, not a vestal virgin, having this much of a perfect cunt and wasting it is unbelievable.” he groans and you feel tears start to fall down at his insults.

He pulled back and groaned at the sight of how there was still blood covered on his cock, your blood which coated him so perfectly, and he felt him nearing his edge, his hand gripped your cheeks before forcing your mouth open and then he spit into it, “Swallow, you whore.” he commands and you obey scared.

“Fuck, you're my whore aren't you? my pretty little whore who will let me fuck my children into.” he moans. “I can't wait to make you mine, my empress who will rule along with me, give me children, my darling- oh fuck—”

You felt the familiar feeling of heat arise in your stomach again, as he hits the same spot again and again, and soon enough, you're once again reaching your peak, arching your back at the intensity, he then finishes inside of you again.

That night was a nightmare, he took you multiple times, he made you take him in your mouth, and he did the same, lapping at your cunt for hours on end as he relished in your taste.

You remember passing out, unable to take anymore as exhaustion weighed upon you.

You woke up groaning, you slept like a baby, that's until you moved a little bit and your body aches like hell itself, and you get up, stretching to relieve the pain, you looked over to your side and spotted Aemond fast asleep, completely bare and then you remembered the events of the night prior.

You saw the sheets which were now covered in your blood, your virgin blood, and you were pure no more. You felt doom settle in your core but you felt relieved in a weird sense of way.

Suddenly there was a commotion outside, you gathered whatever was left of your robes before covering yourself with it, hiding your intimate parts and exiting the room.

You gasped as the scent of blood hit your nostrils, and almost threw up, but then what caught your eye made you surprised, you noticed how the head priestess, and all the people who have wronged you in the middle, tied up as the guards lazily kept them in check.

When they spotted you, they screamed insults at you and you winced, anger coursing through your veins at such an intense rate.

“My empress, look at them, look at the people who wronged you.” you heard Aemond whisper in your ear from behind you, and you got startled, you turned to look at him and you watched as he was almost naked except the sheets which were loosely held together by him on his lower body, hiding his intimate part, the same sheets which were covered in your blood.

“Look at them, see how they are still blaming you? What do you want to do huh? Does it not make you mad?” he asks and you turn your attention back to them again, it frankly does make you mad. “I would never treat you like that, I love you. My queen.”

“What do you want, my little empress?” he asks and you make up your mind.

You collect the water in a small dish and Aemond watches you in confusion, but then you make your way towards the flame of vesta, and pour water over it, putting it out and the head priestess' eyes widen in horror.

“Kill them all.” your voice was more clear than ever.

“Spare the head priestess, and that one, for they shall be buried alive.” you say coldly before you walk back to Aemond, who welcomes you in his arms.

“You heard your queen, do as she commands.” he orders his men before he escorts you away from the scene and into the room once again.

He pushes you on the bed and crawls atop of you, “I wasn't joking when I said I want you pregnant, doll.” he coos and you gulp.

“Impregnate me, my king, I want to carry your heirs.”

And that was enough to make Aemond go insane, before he took you once again.

And soon, you fell pregnant.

Giving birth to a girl, who Aemond adored.

Life seemed to be well and perfect.

Maybe you don't really regret this at all.

———

GENERAL TAGLIST ;

@watercolorskyy @cl-0-vr @chompchompluke @namelesslosers @snowystark @spookyaemond @sweethoneyblossom1 @this-isnt-madness @persephonerinyes @eltherevir @sidni3003 @aleidag1rly @cryingforlife @fan-goddess @hannaeditzs @grungegrrrl @thekinslayersswordhand @aemondsbabygirl

Bold is who I cannot tag, DM to be removed!

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen smut #aemond x reader #aemond smut #aemond x reader smut #aemond targaryen x reader smut #MAE:DARK!CONTENT #aemond targaryen #aemond x fem!reader #aemond x you #dark!aemond x reader #dark!aemond targaryen x reader #dark!aemond targaryen #dark!fic #tw: noncon #tw: dubcon #house of the dragon smut #aemond fanfiction

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steddieas-shegoes · 18 days

Text

i wanna make your heartbeat run like roller coasters

for @subeddieweek day one with the prompts manhandling and accidental subspace

rated e | 3,520 words | please check ao3 for tags

⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕

Eddie gets pushed against a lot of lockers.

It’s rarely accidental.

It’s always painful.

He doesn’t exactly have a lot of meat on his bones. Every hit leaves a bruise.

So when Steve fucking Harrington does his own dirty work for once, even though he graduated the way Eddie was supposed to, it’s just a bit embarrassing that it doesn’t hurt. It feels…kinda like he should be on his knees.

Which is really not something he wanted to think about when Steve’s got a hand on his shoulder, gripping hard enough to bruise, and something like fear in his eyes. Why is he scared?

“Did you sell weed to Robin?” he asked, teeth clenched.

Jesus fucking Christ. Steve’s got himself a band nerd girlfriend. How the hell did that happen?

“No, I sold to her friend. She waited by the treeline talking to herself the entire time.”

Eddie could hear his own voice shaking, but he wouldn’t back down. Black eyes were kinda metal weren’t they?

“Which friend?”

“Dude, I don’t even know. Someone else in band.”

The hand on his shoulder tightened and he barely bit back a whimper.

Steve’s eyes were very pretty this close. They were pretty from far away, too. Honestly, having Steve this close was probably rewiring something already broken in his brain. Having Steve’s hand on him like this was making his brain do somersaults trying to stay focused.

And then his hand was gone.

Eddie breathed in, breathed out.

“Sorry. I-” Steve shook his hands out and backed away. “Sorry.”

Eddie ignored whatever the fuck was happening in his stomach. It shouldn’t be happening so it isn’t, simple as that.

“Maybe you should ask your girlfriend if you’re so worried about her buying drugs.” Eddie should learn to shut his mouth at some point. “I only sell to the people who come to me first.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I remember.” Steve wiped his hand down his face. “Sorry again.”

Eddie looked him up and down, taking in the fact that he was genuinely apologizing. No one ever apologized for knocking him around, not even when it was on accident.

“You good?” He eventually asked.

“Yeah. Just, she’s been through a lot. I didn’t really want her to get pressured into buying something,” Steve sighed. “Has she come out of the band room yet? I’m supposed to bring her to work.”

“Uh, yeah man, everyone left an hour ago.”

Eddie watched Steve’s face fall as he checked his watch and must’ve realized the time.

“Shit. Okay. I must’ve lost track of time.”

Steve looked pitiful. Eddie’s seen dogs in alleys who looked less beaten down and neglected than Steve currently did.

“I can help you find her?” Eddie offered for some unknown reason.

Well, he knew the reason, but he was choosing to ignore it.

“She’s probably already at work. It’s my day off so I ended up getting distracted with something and didn’t realize it was so late,” Steve admitted, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. “Thanks, though.”

Wayne liked to tell Eddie he was too nice to undeserving people. Lord knows he gave his dad too many chances and got let down every time. He even tried to be friends with Tommy Hagan in middle school because he could sense something was going on with Tommy’s dad much like his own.

But Eddie liked to remind Wayne that Eddie is often considered undeserving and he took him in and gave him multiple chances regardless.

“You wanna smoke?” Eddie asked, despite knowing he barely has anything left after the long week of midterms for students. His busiest times of year were right before school breaks, midterms, finals, and graduation weekend. He usually stocked up, but with Rick being in prison again, he had to try to stretch what he had out.

“Uh…smoke what?”

“Weed.” Then it hit Eddie that maybe Steve was into harder stuff. But he hadn’t ever even bought from him in high school. Tommy had, Carol had, almost everyone at his parties had, but Steve never did. “I have regular old cigs too if you prefer.”

“Yeah, man, cool,” Steve sighed with relief.

“I got a spot behind the cafeteria if you wanna…”

“Sure, yep, let’s go,” Steve nodded, gesturing towards the double doors that led outside to the cafeteria and auditorium buildings.

As they walked, Eddie’s mind raced with thoughts of being alone with Steve, Steve’s arm brushing against his, Steve pushing him against the wall of the cafeteria, of Eddie dropping to his knees and unbuttoning Steve’s pants and-

“I’m really sorry about what happened back there.”

Steve’s voice shook him from his thoughts, but his dick didn’t quite get the memo. When did he even start getting hard?

“No worries, dude.” His face scrunched in disgust at calling Steve dude. What was next, the bro pat on the back? A fist bump? “Kinda jealous of how protective you are of your girlfriend.”

Okay, actually, what the fuck? Eddie needed to shut his fucking face, right the fuck now.

“She’s not my girlfriend, but uh, I don’t think you’re really her type either,” Steve gave him a look, one Eddie knew well and one he couldn’t quite believe he was seeing on Steve’s face right now.

“Right, right.” Eddie wouldn’t make him say it, especially if it was actually the look he thought it was, but maybe he could offer a little something in return. “Yeah, she’s not really my type either.”

Steve stopped just before they reached the hidden area behind the dumpster and picnic table for staff to smoke.

“Really?” Steve’s eyes were wide. “So you’re more into…someone like…me?”

Eddie was actually leaking into his goddamn boxers. Why was he getting turned on just talking to Steve?

“That would be one way of saying it,” Eddie said. Still easy enough to back out of it, at least. Could just say he likes women who wear polos and use more hairspray than Melvald’s has ever carried at any given time.

“Huh,” Steve continued walking to the picnic table, sitting on top of it and kicking some dirt off the bench by his legs for Eddie to sit. “So those rumors were true?”

“That depends on if I’m gonna make it back home to my very loving uncle if I say yes.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Obviously, I’m not gonna judge you about it when my best friend is-” He cut himself off and Eddie had to give him major credit. The Steve he used to know never would’ve cared if he outed someone, or at least never would have realized that was wrong. He coughed and then looked down at the bench. “You gonna sit?”

Eddie sat down on the bench, extremely close to Steve’s legs. Almost touching. Was that heat coming from his body or was Eddie just extremely warm?

“Did you actually wanna smoke or did you just wanna get out of the hall?” Steve asked after another minute of awkward silence.

“We can smoke.” Eddie reached into his pocket, hating how tight his jeans were in the front, and grabbed his lighter. His pack of cigarettes were usually stored in his van because he rarely smoked them, but luckily he’d brought them with him all week to sneak smokes between classes. He pulled one out and handed it to Steve.

He started to light his own when Steve leaned down, his face right next to Eddie’s, breath hot on his neck.

“You aren’t gonna light it for me?”

Eddie whimpered.

He would deny it a million times over if anyone asked. He almost had himself believing he imagined it.

But Steve laughed and backed away, pulling out his own lighter and giving Eddie a second to catch his breath.

What the fuck was that? Did Steve know he was making Eddie’s brain flatline?

He watched Steve take a long drag out of the corner of his eye, his mind shuffling between ‘what if he fucked me right here?’ and ‘get the hell away before your dick pops a hole in your jeans.’

Steve’s lips were so pink, and looked so soft, and just wet enough from licking his lips before taking the next drag, and Eddie was really going through it right now.

He’d gone through his Steve Harrington phase just like everyone else, thought it was over when he graduated. Had avoided the mall all summer when he heard he was working at Scoops so he didn’t have to see him in those tiny blue shorts. Had even gone so far as to avoid being around when the kids were being picked up from Hellfire because Dustin mentioned Steve was his ride.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Except for Eddie’s imagination was impressive, and his late night thoughts turned into very vivid scenes of Steve working him to the edge and making him beg, or pushing him against a locker and making him take his cock with barely any prep, or-

“Dude, anyone ever tell you you’re kinda space-y?” Steve’s voice once again lifted him from his thoughts, though he felt a bit hazy.

“Think I’m comin’ down with something,” Eddie squeaked out. All he was coming down with was a sickness deep in his chest: Harrington Heart-itis.

“Did you hit your head?” Steve sounded concerned now, setting his cigarette in the ashtray left on the table and moving so he had one leg on either side of Eddie. His fingers landed in Eddie’s hair, pulling his head closer and inspecting it for injury. “I didn’t think anything but your shoulders hit, but maybe-”

“No,” Eddie gulped. He should pull away. “Didn’t hit my head.”

Steve’s fingers tightened, not quite painfully, but enough of a bite to it that Eddie whimpered. Again.

Steve’s grip loosened, but his fingers stayed buried in his curls, and Eddie felt pressure guiding him to rest against Steve’s thigh.

“You eat today?” Steve asked, though his voice sounded kinda far away, like he was above the surface of the water and Eddie was sitting at the bottom of a pool looking up at the sun. “Eddie?”

“Hm?” Eddie blinked up at Steve. “I ate.”

“When?” Steve’s hand was cupping his cheek. “Lunch?”

“Mmm, no,” Eddie shook his head, blinked. “Breakfast? Cereal.”

Steve cursed under his breath.

He was so pretty. Had he been told how pretty he was? Surely when Nancy was with him, she told him.

Even if Robin liked women, she had to at least notice how pretty he was, right?

Steve’s sharp intake of breath somewhat centered Eddie.

“I’m gonna drive you home, okay?” Steve whispered, leaning down so his face was only inches away.

Eddie could kiss him. It would be the easiest thing in the world to lift his head the final two inches to make their lips meet.

“Eddie, eyes open,” Steve’s fingers tightened again, gaining Eddie’s full attention. “Should I call someone? Are you dynamic or something?”

Eddie’s brows furrowed. What did that even mean?

“Like the sugar thing?” Steve continued.

“Diabetic?” Eddie still felt a little hazy, but he was starting to come back to it with Steve’s hand migrating from his hair to his shoulder. “No, my sugar’s fine.”

“I’ve got some soda in my car. I can drive you home and then bring you to school in the morning. You probably shouldn’t drive like…this.”

It all came crashing down when Eddie realized how vulnerable he’d just been, how he’d actually lost track of time, not sure exactly how long he’d been sitting between Steve’s legs with his hands in his hair before he started coming back to earth. He stood up, maybe a bit too quickly, rocking a bit before finding his balance.

“Woah, take it easy.” Steve held his hands out, grasped his biceps to hold him steady. “You were pretty far out of it. Don’t rush it.”

How fucking embarrassing.

Eddie had only gone down that far one time with someone and they got freaked out when he was giggling and couldn’t walk on his own because his legs felt like jelly. But that had been on purpose. This was- Steve didn’t– Jesus Christ.

“I’m fine now.” Eddie was not fine. He knew what would happen if he left right now. Aftercare was a major part of this whether Steve was prepared for it or not. “Just, um, walk me to my van.”

Steve looked like a kicked puppy, but Eddie didn’t have the time to explain all of this to him.

Steve Harrington didn’t know how much of a freak Eddie was even if he did know he was gay. There’s no way Steve participated in any type of BDSM with the many girls he slept with in high school.

There was absolutely no fuckin’ way Nancy Wheeler let herself get tied to a bed and get fucked by Steve.

He shook his head at the thought.

“I’d feel a lot better if you let me drive you. I promise we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Steve sighed. “I just don’t know if you should drive when you went down so hard.”

“You have no idea what even happened,” Eddie argued, pacing back and forth. “I can drive. I just need to walk it off.”

“You don’t walk off subspace.”

Eddie froze. Steve was standing right in front of him now, concern in his big, stupid, adorable eyes.

“How do you even know about subspace?” Eddie whispered.

“I slept with half the high school and two guys in Indy. I know what subspace is, Eds.”

Eddie must still be in space. Or maybe another galaxy.

“Sorry, did you just say you slept with two guys in Indy?” Has Steve seriously fucked more guys than Eddie has? Eddie, the resident gay man of Hawkins, has only been with one man in his entire life and Steve has apparently slept with two?

“Well, I wasn’t gonna sleep with two men in Hawkins!” Steve threw his hands up before putting them on his hips. “I hit up a gay bar and didn’t realize it doubled as a BDSM club until I was already in it and then a nice guy showed me the ropes. Literally. There were ropes involved.”

Eddie snorted. Steve was pretty and funny. Great. Just what he needed.

“I have a quick recovery, so I’ll be fine to drive home,” Eddie tried, though even he could hear his voice still shaking.

“No one is that quick,” Steve wrapped an arm around his shoulders, tugging him into a hug. “Has that ever happened before?”

“Not like that.”

“We should probably talk about it.”

The last thing Eddie wanted to do was talk about how someone playing with his hair and moving his head around while showing the bare minimum of care was enough to send him into subspace, but he had a feeling Steve wasn’t gonna give up easily.

“Fine. What should we talk about? How no one ever touches me gently so the moment someone did, I slipped? How I’ve been avoiding seeing you anywhere in public because I knew it would make my crush come back full force? Oh, I know!” Eddie laughed hysterically as he pulled away. “Let’s talk about how I still think about you in your stupid basketball shorts when I’m fucking myself on four fingers, which is never enough because I can never reach the spot I need to. Or how I once cut out your yearbook photo to keep for jerking off material because my mags weren’t enough. Could even talk about how earlier I wanted you to put your leg between mine so I could rub off on you. Or maybe the weather if you’d prefer that.”

Eddie was panting, could feel the heat on his face rising as he realized everything he’d just said, admitted, to Steve.

He’d never said any of that out loud. Shit, he’d barely said most of it in his own head.

Steve’s arms were pulling him in and Eddie let himself have it, let himself feel small for just a moment. If Steve wasn’t completely disgusted by what he said, then he would at least accept this offering of kindness for now.

They stayed like that for a while, long enough that Eddie started to wonder if he could just live here, right in Steve’s arms.

“It’s looking a little cloudy,” Steve said quietly, hands still rubbing Eddie’s back slowly.

“What?” Eddie still felt a little out of it, but that was entirely out of left field.

“You said we could talk about the weather.”

Eddie snorted. “Oh my God, you’re so-” Eddie looked up at Steve, who was smiling down at him. He felt off-kilter, being the object of that particular Steve look. “Stupid.”

It was fond, probably too fond for someone who needed to protect himself from whatever the hell was happening. He needed to shut this down.

“It’s been mentioned,” Steve’s eyes flickered down to Eddie’s lips, then back up to his eyes. “You good to head out?”

Eddie started to nod, but stopped.

This was his only chance. He wasn’t dumb enough to think he’d ever be alone with Steve again. If he was gonna kick start a spiral over feelings, he might as well go all out.

He stood at his full height, almost eye level with Steve, and leaned in.

The kiss was not even close to perfect. In fact, as far as kisses go, it was probably in the bottom three for Steve. Eddie chose not to think about how he screwed it all up.

But once the initial shock wore off, and Eddie put his teeth away, Steve’s hand cupped Eddie’s cheek and he licked past his lips.

Leave it to Steve to turn this around, make it something worth the risk.

Their lips moved in sync, both of them deepening the kiss without making it too wet, too filthy for a public space.

It was, dare he say, romantic.

Most kisses Eddie had managed to have were dirty and rough, hidden away in dark bars and alleyways, not exactly prime teen romance.

Of course Steve was good at this, of course he made Eddie melt against him, and of course Eddie was going to start writing hearts around Steve’s name in his notebook as if they were high school sweethearts.

When they pulled apart, it took him a minute to open his eyes. How stereotypical.

Steve was already looking at him, softer than he probably deserved.

“You’re pretty good at that,” Eddie breathed out.

“It’s been mentioned.” Steve’s lips turned up in a smirk before he pulled away completely. “Let’s go.”

They walked back through the school, stopping at Eddie’s locker to grab one of his textbooks as if he actually would use it. By now, he didn’t really need the textbooks to get his work done. And he was actually committed to getting it done this time around.

They were quiet as they continued out to the parking lot, only a few cars belonging to teachers left, maybe a few students stuck here for football or basketball practice. Steve’s car was towards the back, but Eddie’s was almost all the way in the grass field by the main road. It was less risky leaving it further away, less likely that anyone would slash the tires or key the side.

“You’re sure you can drive?” Steve asked as they stood outside his car.

“Yeah. Only five minutes to the trailer. It’ll be fine.” Eddie shrugged like it was nothing, but he was actually a little worried the kiss set him too off balance to focus on the road. Fuck the subspace, Steve’s lips were like discovering a new galaxy.

“Can I call you later? To check on you?” Steve seemed hesitant to ask.

“Uh, yeah? Do you…have my number?”

Steve shook his head, opening the door to his car and reaching into the glovebox to find a pen and an old receipt. As Eddie wrote down the number to the trailer, he thought about how much worse this would be tomorrow, how shitty it would be to have had this absolutely out of this world experience with the one person he never thought he could and then be left with scraps for the rest of his life.

“You uh, you don’t have to call, man. Don’t feel pressured. My uncle will be home so it’s not like I’ll be alone.”

Steve took the paper and pen back, folding the paper and putting it in his pocket and throwing the pen back into the car.

“I’m gonna call.” Steve moved a piece of Eddie’s hair from in front of his face. “You got a phone in your room?”

“No, but the one we have reaches to the bathroom?” Why the hell did he need one in his room?

“Good. Need you to be alone.”

“Steve, what the hell does that mean?”

“How else am I supposed to tell you what I wanna do to you?”

Well, fuck.

Day two: ao3 | tumblr

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #subeddieweek #sub eddie munson #dom steve harrington

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