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netherfeildren · 3 months ago

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Busy, Dying. Part 3;

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to my lovely and kind friend @FloBallestra whose beautiful beautiful art inspired me so much for this story. You’re the coolest, smartest girl in the world, Flo; I love being your friend.

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No Outbreak AU, A/B/O, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Soulmates AU, Infidelity, Cheating, Heat Sex, Knotting, Fluff & Smut & Angst, Premature Ejaculation, Scenting, Dacryphilia; Explicit Sexual Content, Dom/sub Undertones, Breeding Kink, Excessive Amounts of Cum, Aftercare, Touch Starved Joel Miller, Angst With a Happy Ending

Word Count: 6.8K

Read on AO3

Part 3;

The apartment with the small, warm room you bring him to is a radiant and generous place; some brightly lit bubble of life Joel hasn’t looked upon in years and years.

You tell him you have a roommate who spends all her time with her girlfriend—crazy in love. They work at the opera, too—set carpenter and sound design. Soon, they plan to get married.

You tell him all of this with a patently wistful look in your eye. Like you’re happy for your friends, and also terribly aware of what it is that landed you in a place like the Emmanuel.

In your bedroom, there are twinkling lights that hang from the edges of the ceiling, and a mess of a pink and cream colored bed at the center of the closely packed room, blankets and pillows piled high into what looks like a preemptively engineered nest.

You move into the space slowly, like you’re shy, hesitant to allow him into this sacred place, as you drape his borrowed coat over the back of the desk chair. The surface of which is cluttered with books and papers, a beaten up red journal, a laptop and makeup strewn about haphazardly. An etched glass bottle of perfume perches precariously at the corner's edge, the deep golden liquid within: still and undisturbed.

“I like your room,” he tells you.

But what he’d really like to say is that he feels in danger here, in this comfortable space. That he wishes he could run but that there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, also. Nowhere to run to. That he’s grateful. That the act the two of you are about to commit here will be undeniably selfish. That at the end of it all, he hopes you might forgive him.

The look on your face when you turn to thank him, one hand braced against the back of the chair as if to hold yourself upright, is full of the ardor of your unfurling heat, the weight of your biology, the reasons for finding yourself in the basement of an old church. There’s sweat dampening your hairline and a glaze in your eye that tells him soon you won’t even remember your own name, but you’ll surely remember his.

Joel feels suddenly flayed open, like some prey animal gutted by a wolf, spilling all of his own ravenous hunger out for your witness. It’s a moment of undeniable honesty. His own face, a mirror, his own skin damp with sweat. He’s painfully hard already with your scent on his tongue and fingers and surrounding him everywhere in this room. And the look on your face is so similar to the shiver in his gut, that he decides to be honest with his fears:

“We’re about to do somethin’ selfish here. With no thought for how it might hurt anyone.” Not even ourselves. “And I’ve always been a selfish man. But I worry for you.”

Your lashes flutter, as if taking in the weight of his words. But you smile, “Think I can’t handle it?” Another drooping flutter of your lashes, thick and curling. The fever turns you into an unreliable narrator. He can see the flutter of a too fast pulse beneath the thin skin of your throat. All bravado—you struggle to maintain the smirk. “I don’t think I believe half the things you say about yourself.”

“I don’t care about anything,” he tells you, palms splayed wide as if to show you all his cards.

“You’re a bad liar, Joel Miller.”

You know his last name without him ever having told you, and it feels like a sign. Like you already know everything there is to know about him, so obviously he’s supposed to be here.

“You can sit down,” you offer, slowly moving to shut the door. “They never stay here, we’ll have the apartment to ourselves for a few days most likely.”

He swallows his nerves, the reality that he’s never done a thing like this, been in this position before, slides down his throat to settle heavily in his gut as he sits slowly at the edge of the pink bed. On the nightstand there’s a dangerously leaning tower of books: Anna Karenina, The Second Sex, Emily of New Moon, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, an autobiography of W.B. Yeats, The Happy Hooker, The Act of Creation, Seven Gothic Tales.

A wishful romantic, a realist, a smart girl doing a stupid thing.

He stares at the stack unblinking. You like to read. This is who you are, this person who collects books in your small, pink room with the absent housemate and a brother who’ll only speak to you once a month. Parents who you want to be nothing like. Someone who works at the opera and likes to walk and eats too many sweets, with the golden perfume teetering dangerously at the edge of a desk.

Someone who’d dreamt of something better.

Suddenly, he can’t think of anyone else in his life whose small details he knows like this. Not a single person. Certainly not the woman he’s lived with for the past seven years. Perhaps not even himself.

And learnt in such a short time, too.

You move around him slowly, a gentle hand at his shoulder dragging to softly touch his cheek. He’s glad it’s you he knows like this. At least there is that.

“I’m not scared to be selfish. I’m scared of other things, but not that.”

He swallows, eyes wide and dry. And you’re so beautiful, and wanting him, what else is there to be but frightened and here, waiting for you to decide what’s next for him.

Your soft fingertip follows the curve of his cheekbone, back and forth, watching him with eyes that are not as afraid as his, but wide and young and honest. Full of the potential for life that has so callously slipped through his own hands. He thinks there’s nothing within him that can understand why you’d have found yourself in a place for lonely people. Why would you ever need a miracle cure the way he does? How could God or the whole world not want to miraculously cure you of any sort of loneliness you might have ever suffered? Desperate for the power to turn back the clock, change his whole life, find you at a time when he was young and unbroken and honest, too.

You push his hair back, fingers sliding through the thick strands, dancing over the shell of his ear the way they’d danced over the temptation of sugar. His blood throbs madly at his temples, his muscles spasming beneath his skin; he shuts his eyes, sucking in a slow, deep breath to steady himself. He’s not afraid to admit he’s afraid of this.

He hadn’t suffered any sort of real sex drive in years. His libido cold and inconsistent and… gone. He can’t remember the last time he’d slept with his wife, taken himself in hand. His erection this morning had been the first he could remember in months. Joel worked, he thought of the past, he did not consider himself. He went home, he existed.

He was so, so cold. Frozen.

Now, he is here.

Slowly, he brings his palms to your hips, gripping you there carefully, hearing the phantom sound of your moan in his ear as he’d made you come on his fingers. Unbelieving he’d had the gall to even touch you like that.

The hand at his ear moves to the buttons at the base of his throat, opening the first, the second. His breathing goes erratic, coming in quick, hot bursts. He pulls you in closer, spreading his thighs wider to make room for you, and his hold on you slips higher, mapping the curve of your waist beneath your sweater. Looking up at you with all the wonder of a man coming upon the answer to a question he’d been looking for his entire life.

He tries for sound once, falters. There are so many things he wants to say to you now, and all his bravado from the church has fled him. His strength gone under the feel of your soft fingers and the glow of your pink room in the warm fairy lights. Things he wants to say that might frighten you, disgust you, make you wet and pliant. He swallows courage once again.

“You’re going to let me have you.”

A muscle under your left eye flutters light and frantic, spasming with your nerves. You nod once.

“Fuck you, knot you—” he insists on clarification.

Another nod.

“Say it. Lemme hear it.”

“Yes. I’m going to let you have me.”

He pulls you in even closer, a groan as he presses his face against your belly, breathing in deep, filling his lungs until they hurt with your scent. The ache in his groin and his stomach beats behind his eyelids. Your fingers move quickly, undoing the rest of his buttons and then push his shirt back and off his shoulders, smoothing over the hot skin there up to his neck to ghost over the sensitive skin of his glands. He shudders a broken sound, pressing his face deeper into your stomach.

“The rest—tell me.”

“I’m…I’m going to let you fuck me, knot me.”

He pulls you in tighter, thank you thank you, he says against your midriff, mouth sliding against the knit fabric of your sweater that he pushes up your waist, uncovering the skin of your stomach for him to kiss.

Tugging the garment over your head, you let it fall to the floor from listless fingers, the soft shucking sound landing heavy against the carpet of the quiet room. You have on a black bra, soft, translucent lace, he can see the color of your nipples beneath, beautiful and succulent so his mouth waters. You’re like wild prey caught in his thrall, looking down at him with those bright eyes full of mirrored hunger. His fingertips make their slow, ghosting way up the skin of your back and then down again, mapping you, catching at the waist of your skirt to tug it down over your legs. You’re left only in your dark tights and tiny underwear. Hands on your hips he pivots you, taking a look at the back of a little thong. He feels perverted—he wants to bend you over and spread you wide and look at it all, press his fingers against tight, sensitive skin before getting to taste it all, too.

His legs shake and he hides his face against your stomach again, embarrassed with the intensity of his wanting, breath shaking in his lungs. Your hands smooth over his hair, comforting him, soothing and painful all at once. And cautiously, you begin to push him backwards until he’s stretched out and laying against the soft duvet.

It’s like he floats on a pink cloud, and Joel is nervous.

With his eyes closed, he concentrates on the feel of gentle fingertips moving over his chest, down his belly, sifting through the hair there to the clasp of his belt—open, his jeans, the zipper, parted. It’ll be his skin next. He breathes fast fast fast, he can’t remember the last time anyone touched him, and he has to focus intently on willing the boiling heat his blood full of mercury has become to calm down or he’ll spend in his jeans without you even having pulled him out.

At his sides, his arms are tangled in his open shirt, and he’s unable to defend himself when you climb on top, settling on his lap in nothing but your flimsy tights and your tiny panties.

He can’t look, he’s afraid of what he’ll see. He’s afraid of you.

“Open your eyes, Joel—”

The immediate realization that he’d been wrong before, that he is a weak man, that he’d never been able to escape it, that maybe all the sad, childless alphas of the world are a little bit the same—dying, it doesn’t bother him as perhaps it would have, had he not made it here with you.

“I can’t believe I found you,” he says in utter awe—eyes wide open now.

Your smile is beautiful when you lean over to kiss him. Fingers twisting into his hair as you moan against his tongue, sweet kittennish laps while you grind and press along his chest. He tries to twist out of his tangled shirt, frustration mounting at his trapped arms. He wants to pull you tight, grip you hard, feel your skin and leave his fingerprints everywhere, but you reach down, bracing your hand against his wrist to hold him down. Other hand coming up to circle his throat lightly.

At the provoking nature of your touch, his instincts finally come fully alive.

“This you pretendin’ to be in charge?”

“Yes,” you shiver, pressing your face to his throat, your hips starting a rhythmic cant against his abdomen.

The rumble, low and satisfied in his chest, is one of gratification. Happy to let you play for a moment, familiarize yourself with his body.

“Alright,” he says. “Enjoy it. It’s all you’ll get.”

He settles back, accepting he’s trapped for now whilst you slither lower, shuffling to straddle his thighs. Your touch is tentative, looking up with your own shy candor and glowing cheeks as you carefully grasp his hard flesh.

The muscles in his stomach bunch, a rough, pained sound clawing its way up his throat—he has to clench his whole body to stave off a humiliation.

“Fuck—” Joel whines.

Pulling back, you shove his jeans down his thighs and he toes his boots off, helping you to dispense with the horrible, confining clothes that hurt his skin. When he’s free, his sex lies there, heavy and jutting, and it embarrasses him. The angry, violent looking thing under your beautiful hand.

But there’s a sound in your throat, click clicking, whining too like him, and when you wrap your small fingers around his cock, the both of you stare down in awe. Your touch is too gentle, not hard enough. He needs more. Straining to wrap his own large hand around yours, he shows you how he needs it. Squeezing tightly he writhes on the bed, moving your palms up and down together, teeth clenched tight. He pulls away, letting you handle him on your own, and your touch goes light again, maddening.

“Does it hurt?”

“God yes.”

It aches, it needs inside.

He hisses when you gently part the spongy skin of the tip, foreskin rolled back, pulling the small slit open. Your eyes are glazed over, shiny with the fever heat now, like you don’t really know what’s going on anymore. Humming to yourself while you play with him.

His sac is heavy and tight, the space behind beats. He’s going to come soon, already. It doesn’t matter that you’ve barely touched him, it’d been so long for him, and you’re so beautiful on top of him, sweaty and fevered and ripe. He rips his arms violently from the trap of his shirt, seams popping and grips your hip forcefully with one hand, the other pulling your touch back to his agonized erection, moving your grip up and down brutally. Reaching to tuck his fingers beneath the half-cup of your pretty, lace bra, he tugs, letting one soft, full breast free.

“I’m so close,” he begs.

Your lashes flutter at his tone, nodding your head—I’ll be gentle, I’ll be gentle with you��slicking your palm over the wide, wet head, and then gripping there in a twisting motion, sliding down the length. It’s not hard enough, but goddamn it’s so good, too.

“I’m going to come in your hand, I’m sorry,” he says, too far gone to remember he was feeling embarrassed just a moment ago.

Suddenly, his semen is spilling hot and wet over your fingers and down your wrist, knot pulsing in agony. His animal snarl sends a shocked shiver down your back so that you’re gripping him even tighter, pulling his hips off the bed by the cock, your own high pitched sound meeting his deep one.

He ruts into your fist, moaning, crying your name, and your other hand joins your moving fist to scoop up his thick white come, bringing it to your mouth to smear against your tongue.

Joel is going to die.

He jerks you forward, over himself, fists twisting in your tights and wrenching them apart, snapping the clasp of your bra to tear it off. You’re crying his name back at him, writhing against him, wet hand sliding over his skin and getting come everywhere while you tell him how much you ache, how hot you are, how it hurts without him. How you need him.

Joel is needed, and it is a perfect, suspended moment.

Flipping you over suddenly, he crowds you with his heavy mass, pulling you up off the bed against his chest, belly to belly, fingers in your hair to tug your head back roughly and bearing the soft column of your beautiful throat, he closes his lips around your gland and sucks hard, the flavor of your pheromones flooding his mouth, sticky on his tongue like honey. Your fists tangle in his hair, pulling him in closer, bearing yourself further, a keening cry on your tongue as he ravages the supremely sensitive skin.

With a growl, he pulls back, running his rough hands all over you. Skin, bare and soft and hot. And with one rough tug, he rips the barely there panties from your hips, beneath him you’re breathing fast and hiccupped in a way that makes him feel like a predator and you some small prey. Your breasts are soft and lovely—on a quiet, hungry sound, he captures the tip of one in his mouth, sucking careful, then hard, biting gently, working the sensitive nipple with his tongue until you’re moaning and pleading with him for more. He can feel your hot cunt wet against his stomach.

“Hmm, such sweet, sensitive pretty tits. Do you like that, little omega?”

Your scent builds, blossoming and swelling and he feels the change in your temperature when you dip fully into the pit of your heat, his own rut responding in kind, coming up on him like a wave so that he feels suddenly that all sense has been lost and all he is, is a thing that takes, with you beneath him so ready to give.

He had warned you that this would be a selfish sort of thing.

Wrapping his big hands around your soft tits, he sucks on one and then the other, slapping the side to watch it jiggle and then, with a rough sound, nipping at it again like he’s angry at how it moves. He slides lower, teeth scraping along your ribs, tasting the curve of your soft belly, dipping to bite at the plump inner slopes of your thighs. Between your legs—God. Had he ever smelled something so sweet? Your arousal is thick and leaking heavily, pooling between your thighs onto the bed.

You’re beyond words or reasoning now, maybe that’s why he feels brave enough to say: “You can’t imagine the things I’ve done t’you in my dreams. Disgusting things. I wanna fill you so badly, mark you with my scent and my come. Want you to be only mine.”

He buries his face in your cunt, lapping at your hole and sucking on your pretty clit, so swollen. Spreading your sex open to admire what’s his.

Oh please, you cry above him, dragging your palms over your body to squeeze your own breasts tightly. He watches a lone tear slide down your temple in rapt fascination, and he’s certain he’s never laid eyes on such a sight in his entire life.

“Shh,” he soothes. “Let alpha kiss your little clit.”

He presses a full mouthed kiss to the swollen bud, eyes still locked on your face, flicking his tongue slowly back and forth. You’re so wet, pouring slick for him. Joel takes a deep breath through a clenched jaw, and distantly, thinks it would be wise of him to make you come first on his mouth. But as he straightens to his knees, his palms sliding up the backs of your thighs, the pads of his fingers pressed against the vulnerable backs of your knees, spreading you wide, touching skin softer than he even knew was possible, he knows he can’t wait any longer. Doesn’t want to.

You’re begging for it anyways. You don’t want him to wait either.

His wet cockhead brushes against your belly as he leans over to give you a long, lingering kiss. One last moment of softness, he thinks, before all reason is lost to rut.

He’d like to say so many other things. That you’re like an angel. That it makes sense he’d found you where he did. That he wants to do obscene things to you. Tie you up—ropes wrapped around your heavy breasts, your soft thighs, so that he might watch your skin take his marks. Keep you captured and bound.

Abstinence does strange things to a man.

Kneeling between your spread thighs, he lets his cock lay heavy against you, reaching halfway up your belly. Your palm slides over it, pressing at the hot skin, letting yourself rock against it, thighs flexing.

“This part is the worst,” you cry. “—So hot. Oh, I itch and burn everywhere, alpha.” Your words are slurred and febrile.

“You’re alright,” he soothes, taking hold of his thick flesh. “I’m here to fix it now.”

You claw gently at his shoulders like a desperate creature seeking safety. He tucks the wide head against your little hole, and eyes full of glorious fever, hair clinging to your sweaty face, you lift yourself up a little to watch him push it in.

As he presses inside you, Joel feels like he might cry.

He’s sure when he returns to that house not a home, that meager and cold place, that he will cry. Thinking he can’t remember when the last time was that he allowed himself to weep. Like touch, like lust, like all he’d deprived himself of for so long—his whole life, nothing but abstinence—Joel can’t remember the last time he let himself cry.

Now, he presses deeper, lashes fluttering, and he feels the hot press of tears behind his eyes. He slides his hands beneath your bottom, lifting you, filling you, and hisses, eyes on where he fucks you open. His hips nudging forward, rocking, until he’s balls deep, the wide, painfully sensitive tip of his cock pressed firmly against the mouth of your cervix. His burgeoning knot is an unspeakable ring of pleasure at the base. He bends, hunching over your splayed open form, to kiss your midriff, nuzzling gentle at your belly. Above him, you mumble nonsensically: his name, alpha, pleading for more.

Joel—it sounds more beautiful than he’s ever heard it said before. Like it means something now, not just a thing that exists, but a real person, too.

He pulls his hips back until only the wide head remains caught in the tight ring of your pussy—it’s so swollen, he can almost imagine he sees the blood beating beneath the thin, slippery skin. You’ve bloomed for him, and you’re so beautiful for it. He slides forward, hard, bumping roughly against your womb again and grinding there, making you really feel him. You wail once, long and sharp, and then the low pitiful sound of an animal trapped in a maw of teeth.

“Fuck—Oh, fuck,” he grits, letting himself fall forward on braced arms, looking down at where you connect, how you stretch so shockingly around the thickest part of him, the place just before his knot starts to swell. As if he could tear you apart.

His thrusts pick up speed, not bothering to measure the strength behind them, you were made for this after all. Perfect little omega cunt meant to be fucked hard—it starts to flutter around him, the wettest, most obscene sound he’s ever heard, squeezing and milking his length as you come on him for the first time.

“That’s it. Yes—” he growls, fucking you on his cock, your arousal dripping down onto his balls as he pulls out and slides back in with a deep, satisfied groan at the feel of his omega coming for him.

Joel loses his mind to the feel of it—better than anything else has ever been.

“Is your pretty cunt feeling good? She’s sucking on alpha so well, little one. This is what y’needed. I know. F’r me to fuck you until you wet my cock with your come.”

Wrapping his palm around your throat, reaching for your wrist to pin it to the mattress, the way you’d held him, prone and caught beneath him, he holds your pulse in two places, presses his lips to a third, the perfect, fragrant spot behind your ear. Tasting there, licking and sucking on the delicate skin. Ravenous mouth moving down to your gland, as soft and sensitive as your clit.

“Perfect, perfect thing. Can’t believe I found you—” he says again, taking your mouth now in a desperately hungry kiss. Your free arm wraps itself around his neck, holding him tightly. His chest fills with a heat so unbearable his heart feels it’ll burst, and then he’s settling as deep as he can, knot catching and swelling, and he’s pumping long spurts of hot come into your soft little womb, filling you.

His weight falls heavy over you, smothering your body with his much larger one, while he throbs deep inside of you, breathing in your scent, letting himself be suffused with your warmth.

Your smell, full of heat-fever, so sweet it sticks to his gums—it fills his head with thoughts of what next…what if? Plots to keep this for himself for the rest of his life because beneath all of that sweetness, all of that sticky slick that slides between your two hot, perspiring bodies, there’s him. Beneath all of that, him, him, his. Your bones are made of his own scent now. How could he ever let you go when you’re made of him?

“Look at me, look at me.” He pushes the sweat soaked hair out of your face, tilting your head back to get a good look at you. “You’re alright? Lemme see that angel face.” Your cheeks are burning hot, eyes unfocused, but you give him the most beautiful smile, sated and entirely trusting.

Your fingertips touch his own face, passing lightly over his eyelids and nose to his mouth.

“I’m okay. I’m okay, alpha. I’m here.” You tug his head closer with weak, heat-sick fingers. “More. More. I’m so hot—” But you shiver like you’re cold. “It hurts, please.”

“Tell me how it feels,” he rumbles. “Describe it to me.”

He goes limb-heavy over your body, pressing you into the bed, comforting you with his breadth. The skin between your eyebrows wobbles and creases, a tiny frowning pinch, and you make the most curious hiccupping noise. Like the answer to his question needs to work its way slowly through your silly, little heat-addled mind.

“Oh—it’s… it’s— Joel, it’s so good. I never thought—alpha, I never imagined it would be like this,” you mumble and slur. “So full.”

He watches the bright eyes fill with tears then, and spill over in a hot rush, clinging in large perfect droplets to long lashes of which he counts every single strand. The sight of your tears, of your overwhelm—it makes him come more. His cock jerks and swells impossibly fuller, and he begins to spurt again, filling your belly swollen with his seed against his own stomach.

“Silly thing,” he soothes gently. “S’no need to cry, little omega.”

“Oh, but Joel—” you sob, nuzzling into his throat, mouthing at the swollen gland behind his ear.

“I know it’s a lot,” he assures you, rolling the two of you over onto your sides, cuddling you close and gentle-like, petting your hair and letting the deep, rumbling sounds in his chest wash over you soothingly. “Just need some rest now. That’s all.”

He presses a kiss to your hairline, your brow, your mouth again—he licks into it deeply, pulling the edges wider to make more room for himself, his tongue tasting all along your own. He can understand your tears, how overwhelming this must be for an omega inexperienced in taking an alpha with a knot as big as his. It’s true that he might not have had much experience before this, but this is natural, after all. This is who Joel is and what he was meant for. This is exactly where he’s supposed to be.

I belong here, he whispers into your hair as you settle into him, melting into a heavy and sated sleep—so beautifully obedient, willingly submitting to his caring command for rest.

He feels so far away from where he’d started, from that mad creature who’d lost everything—that man with a daughter a whole world away. With nothing to hold on to and even less to lose.

He feels closer to his real self, here and now, than he has in years.

You had both been so alone and in so much pain, but he had found you.

The heat dips and swells in waves and bursts. You wake gradually from that first reprieve, calling his name, begging for something only he can give you. He takes you again and again, the bed so wet it sticks to your fevered skin, sweat and semen and spit. On your side, back to chest, his body cupped around yours in a shape akin to love, kissing your neck, your chin, the cup of one palm and the inside of a wrist. On all fours, mounted like a defenseless thing, fluttering, little hole creamy from use��spread it open, let me see what belongs to me. Splayed above him, little drip of a girl, cooing his name mindlessly, caressing yourself, sliding your hands over the round of your belly, cupping your breasts, tips of your fingers tangling in your hair while you writhe above him, and Joel…Joel is sure he will die beneath you, watching you like this. He moves inside of your slick heat, cunt like a little furnace. Your tears leak in a constant stream that he licks from your cheeks to slake his thirst.

Time is a loop and a loop and a loop and maybe the two of you exist here only, together now.

He thinks that he goes away from himself too, sometimes. Forgets his name and his past and who he was or who he could be and lives only inside your cunt, to fill and mark as his. He is certain that this is the warmest bed he’s ever known.

When he blinks awake and coherent, he feeds you soup he’s pilfered from the fridge and water that he drips into your mouth from his own, and feels sure that it must turn sweet on your tongue. If anyone could, it’d be you—turn water to wine.

Joel thinks he might finally believe in God now.

The gut twisting realization of all he could lose here, how he feels so happy beside you—it turns him from a faithless man into one full of zealous belief. And on a sigh, he feathers his lips over yours, the round of your cheek, the arch of your brow. He’s not alone anymore, and he’s happy. If he could, he’d hold onto this feeling forever.

Your eyes blink open, focused for the first time in hours or maybe days, but heat burns so brightly from the center of your navel, osmosing into his own belly, that he knows he only has a moment.

“Hey,” softly.

You murmur back at him, confused little hiccups of sound followed by a fluttery kiss to the tip of his chin, the bite of hungry teeth demanding flesh.

“Did you know you snore?” He laughs into the sensitive shell of your ear, rolling on top of you. His knot is sated for now, but it throbs with the feeling of his heavy length moving within you.

You blink once, wide eyed—then a funny little frown. “I do not!”

“Yeah, you do. It’s very soft like the purr of a kitten,” he tells you, nuzzling at the swollen gland at the slide of your neck. You make a soft sound at the back of your throat at the touch. “Yes—just like that.”

“Don’t snore—” you mutter, lashes fluttering and drooping. Too much conversation for the sleepy omega.

“Don’t go away yet. Talk to me for a little bit. Stay with me.” He squeezes the back of your neck and your eyes blink open, hazy and then alert.

“Do you have dreams?” He thinks to ask you.

“Oh, yes.” Your eyes droop again, there’s a smile on your face.

“What about?”

You hum, the look on your face is sly in that half-sleep space he’s trying to tug you out of.

“Of being great. Of being loved. Of being happy. Of family. Like a story book. I never thought I’d find anyone to love me,” you say with your eyes closed. Joel’s heart writhes in his chest, pains him as if it were cleaving in two. But you’re smiling, tangled in your dream, and say: “I want us to know each other so long and so well, we don’t need words to speak.”

He’s like an imposter in this bed, for all his feelings of belonging—unsure he could ever give you anything you really want.

“Does your brother look like you?” he asks all of a sudden.

“Yes. Very much. Does yours?”

“I don’t think so, but people say he does. Where it counts, we’re nothing alike. What’s his name?” he asks you.

You whisper it in his ear. Another one of the small things about your life that he knows about no one else.

The two of you tell each other things you’ve never told anyone else, funny things, sad things. Words full of hope that leave a bitter and longing taste in Joel’s mouth.

“Did you never want to have a baby?” you ask, and his heart jumps to his throat.

“I did once. She died.”

He can’t believe he has the courage to say these words which he hasn’t talked of in years and years out loud. Your eyes snap open, the pupil contracting so quickly it frightens him.

“Oh. I understand now.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I see it now.”

“What do you see?”

“What you were looking for.”

“What was it? Tell me—” For part of him feels he still doesn’t know.

“A way back to yourself, of course”

He nods, a feeling of relief so intense washing through his body, his limbs ache with it. Something chemical within him aligning for one perfect, singular second. He feels entirely known, and he thinks: this is the happiest moment of my life— before it fades away.

“Maybe. Yes.”

“Do you think it can be okay now?”

You press your entire palm against the skin of his face, as if you’d lift it off his skull and look at what’s held beneath.

“I don’t know. I don’t think it can ever be okay after something like that.”

“Please, don’t be sad anymore,” you tell him as if it were something so simple. As if it would just be within him because you’ve asked it so.

“I’ll try.” But he knows it isn’t something he won’t ever be hurt by. Joel realizes, with your simple words, this isn’t something he’ll ever be able to fix. That there will always be something missing, incomplete about him, and that no matter how hard he works, how hard he prays, how deeply he could ever lose himself inside of you, he feels sure it won’t ever be enough. He’s still in want of his miracle. “I’ll try,” he says again. “There are times I feel relieved. She suffered.”

“I’m sorry.” He can tell that you really are.

“We eventually all do. Perhaps that’s where the relief came from. She got hers over with quick.”

“What was her name?”

“Sarah.”

You put your hand over his heart, your face is wet with tears.

“Do you think this is a betrayal?” you ask him then.

The reminder of the woman who is his wife, who he had tried to love but who could never reach the bottom of that dark and fathomless well of cold within him to find anything worthwhile, it does nothing to him. Is it a betrayal? Surely to someone who cared it would be. But Joel cannot remember the last time they really talked, the last time either of them cared about one another. Maybe he’s a bad man. He’d chosen her for comfort, because it’d been what he felt he should do. Perhaps merely for something to do, or because he knew it’d be easy. Comforted by the fact that she was a beta and could thus never know him in a more intimate or painful way, in a way that would demand more of him. He couldn’t even accuse himself of not doing right by her because he’d always done what he was supposed to, what she’d asked of him which was so little, truly, that there could be no real claim of betrayal. At least, not before this, you, his knot locked within you and his heart on his tongue ready to be spit into your palm.

Yeah, maybe he’s a bad man. Certainly one who could never, ever deserve to keep this.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I know what the word means anymore.”

He bids you to sleep again after that, and in a brief respite of clarity, he has the wherewithal to call his house, to let the woman who lives there with him know he’ll be gone for a few days longer. But there’s no answer, and he’s relieved. In the following days, his phone does not ring.

As he stands before your bed, he takes a moment to study the picture you pose as. Curled in the center of your pink nest—you look lonely.

Do you even really exist if no one loves you?

Outside, there is snow in the night—winter come alive in the midst of heat. He climbs back into the bed, taking you into his embrace, arranging you perfectly, a sharp elbow, the soft knee—certain that he won’t ever be able to fix himself, to keep you, choking on gratitude that at least he gets this. He’ll preserve it in his memory for the rest of his life and maybe it’ll be okay.

As he lays watching you sleep beside him, entirely innocent in your vulnerability, and with such trust, lying here in this bed you’ve shared together, he has for a moment a great and treasurable illusion of the past. This feeling of being trusted by someone so entirely, that gift of someone’s safety and heart and rest handed to him with little compunction, for there is that much certainty in the care that will come from him. Watching the dreamscape unfold behind your fluttering eyelids, the membrane so thin there’s that almost indiscernible pulse of your heart beating through your body. The street lamp glow comes in through a split in the curtains to lay warmly over your lovely face, and there’s only faint sound, the blown snow. Little light, a heart of warmth.

It’s late now, he thinks, I could love you. Saying it out loud would be like creating a world with its sound.

He shifts his weight to make you more comfortable, your warm, soft weight rolling more heavily into his side, moaning unintelligibly in your febrile sleep, and then suddenly, lucid—Joel. The sound of his name in your mouth makes him real again for a single moment—how will he ever let this go? His throat is tight, perhaps with the strangle of tears—don’t leave me, don’t leave me, you murmur like you already know. And then settle quiet again, falling away back into deep sleep.

There is only your rest now, the soft sound of your sleeping, darkness. They are here, the both of them, together. At the center of all things, there is this bond; biology or heart or soul. Fate—perhaps.

He could bite you, make you his mate, fuck it all to hell. Run away again. He’s done it once before.

But how could he ever keep you without a miracle fix?

Outside there exists, as always, that great tragedy, that undying grief, that barren loneliness. But for now, there is this, and you, this enduring heart of warmth. His own dreams.

This cannot be happiness; that ever elusive thing. He must decide that in the here and now, in the presence of this enduring moment. This is the thing he can never earn and will not keep, and even perhaps, cannot realize for what it truly is.

All of this, he decides with his thumb against the mating gland at the back of your neck.

This is not joy, Joel lies and lies and lies.

Part 4;

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mssalo · 7 months ago

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safety - Part: V

Summary: After years of isolation, Joel Miller's life revolves around control and keeping danger at bay, his past as a soldier leaving him constantly on edge. But when a sweet, soft-spoken young woman starts working at the supply store, her innocence stirs something inside him. Despite his efforts to remain detached, Joel becomes obsessed with keeping her safe from the dangers he’s certain are lurking everywhere.

As his protective instincts morph into darker desires, the lines between safeguarding her and possessing her begin to blur.

Warnings will vary by chapter depending on the content.

Warnings: Dark!Joel, 18+ MDNI, Joel has major Trauma/PTSD, Mentions of war and combat-related trauma, Power dynamics, Unstable mental state,, Explicit sexual content, fingering in nature, rough sex in nature, praise kink, breeding kink, unprotected sex, Dom/sub dynamics, Joel’s possessiveness, sexual tension always, Joel went and got therapy :)

10k. Smut. Ending.

Enjoy!

Part I Part II Part III Part IV

· · ───────────𖥸──────────· ··

The morning sun filtered through the thin curtains of the cabin, casting a soft golden hue over the room. Joel had been awake for hours, his mind running long before dawn.

It had been years since he’d slept that soundly, since his body allowed him even a moment of peace. His usual nightmares—filled with screams, gunfire, and failure—had been replaced by something softer last night.

His arm draped over your waist, keeping you close as if, even now, he feared you'd slip away. You stirred slightly, your body warm against his, and for a brief moment, he felt something he hadn’t in so long—relief. But that feeling quickly turned into guilt.

The events of the previous night replayed in his mind, each detail sharper than the last. The way he had dragged you out of the woods, convinced something was after you, how frantic and desperate he had been to lock you inside the cabin, to shield you from an imagined threat.

Joel’s eyes traced your peaceful expression, and a sense of possessiveness flared inside him.

Ever since he saw you—so trusting, so sweet, too naive for this world—something in him snapped. He couldn’t stand the idea of you out there, vulnerable. You had no idea of the real dangers lurking in the world, and that infuriated him.

But the anger had twisted into something darker, something he hadn’t fully understood until last night. His obsession with keeping you safe had grown into an all-consuming need.

You stirred beside him, your eyes slowly fluttering open, and Joel’s gaze softened. When your eyes met his, you smiled sleepily, unaware of the storm brewing behind his calm expression.

"Morning," you whispered, your voice thick with sleep, oblivious to the gravity of what had happened last night.

"Morning," Joel muttered, his voice rough. His hand tightened around your waist, fingers brushing over the soft skin of your side. You stretched slightly, yawning before nestling back into his arms, completely unaware of the tension radiating from him.

"I guess we’re safe after all, huh?" you mused softly, your innocent words hanging in the air.

Joel tensed, his jaw locking. You didn’t understand. You never would. You trusted too easily, believed in safety that didn’t exist. He wanted to snap, to shake you out of that naivety, but the softness in your eyes held him back.

"You don’t get it," he muttered, his voice laced with frustration. "I’ve seen what happens when you trust the wrong people. When you let your guard down for just a second."

You frowned, turning to face him more fully. There was confusion in your gaze, concern, but also an oblivious trust that Joel had come to both cherish and resent. "Joel, last night… you were so sure something bad was going to happen. I didn’t understand. I was—" You hesitated, chewing on your lip, unsure of whether to admit the truth. "I was scared."

His grip tightened at your confession, his eyes darkening with something you couldn’t quite name. "You don’t need to be scared of me," he growled, his voice raw. "I would never hurt you. But I can’t—" His breath hitched, his hand fisting the sheets. "I can’t lose you."

The desperation in his voice made your heart ache. You could see the fear behind his eyes, the fear of something deeper, something you couldn’t fully understand. But you had felt it last night. His need to protect you had been overwhelming, almost suffocating.

"Joel," you whispered, your voice soft, hesitant. "I trust you. I know you’d never hurt me. But last night… it wasn’t normal. You were so convinced something was out there. But there was nothing."

His body went rigid beside you, his jaw clenching as if he was trying to keep everything in. But you could see the cracks forming, the way his eyes flickered with memories he hadn’t told you about. And then, as if the dam finally broke, he spoke.

"There were these two girls," he muttered, his voice rough, strained. "Sarah and Ellie. Overseas, during the war. They were just kids… kids who trusted me."

You stayed silent, watching as his eyes clouded over with the weight of his memories.

"I was supposed to protect them. We were in a war zone, caught in the middle of a firefight. I told them to run. I thought I could get them out. But I didn’t see the sniper." His voice cracked, the guilt seeping into every word. "I didn’t see him, and… they didn’t make it."

Your heart twisted at the pain in his voice, at the way he carried the weight of their deaths as if it were his own fault. "Joel…"

"It was my call," he interrupted, his voice shaking. "I failed them, and now they’re gone because of me."

You reached out, your hand gently cupping his face, trying to pull him back from the darkness of his past. "You didn’t fail them. You were trying to save them. You can’t carry that alone."

But Joel shook his head, his eyes filled with so much anguish it made your chest ache. "I was supposed to protect them, and I didn’t. And now I’m afraid…" His voice dropped to a whisper, his grip on you tightening again. "I’m afraid I’ll fail you too."

You swallowed hard, the weight of his confession hanging heavy in the air. You didn’t know how to fix this, didn’t know how to ease the guilt that had been eating away at him for years. All you could do was be there, to remind him that he wasn’t alone.

"I’m here right now," you said softly, your voice trembling slightly. "I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m here."

For a long moment, Joel didn’t respond. He just held you, his body tense, his mind still lost in the past. But then, slowly, he nodded, his breath shaky as he pressed his forehead against yours.

"I’ll try to get help," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "I’ll try."

You smiled softly, brushing a thumb over his cheek. "You’ll get through this, Joel."

He didn’t respond, but the way his arms tightened around you told you everything you needed to know. He was still scared, still haunted by the ghosts of his past. But for now, you were there. And that was enough.

As the morning light grew brighter, the cabin was filled with a quiet kind of peace. You lay there in his arms, holding on to the fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, Joel could find his way through the darkness.

And for now, that was all you could ask for.

· · ────

As you and Joel made your way back to the campsite, the tension between you simmered just beneath the surface. His heavy footsteps matched your lighter ones as you trudged through the brush, but his presence seemed to envelop you.

There was something about the way he moved, always one step behind or beside you, that made you feel both safe and on edge.

Joel’s eyes kept darting from the treeline to you, his instincts always on high alert.

His protective nature wasn’t something new, but after last night—after everything—the intensity of it felt different.

You glanced over at him as you both reached the campsite, your heart sinking a little at the sight of the mess. Your tent was half-collapsed, your clothes and supplies scattered haphazardly.

Joel gave a grunt and immediately set to work, tying down the straps and packing up the gear. His movements were quick, efficient, but you could feel his eyes flicking toward you every few moments.

“I can help,” you said, reaching for the tent poles.

Joel’s hand shot out, gently but firmly grabbing your wrist and pulling it away from the sharp edges. His gaze locked with yours, dark and commanding.

“Let me handle the sharp tools, babygirl,” he murmured, his voice rough, gravelly.

The words sent a rush of heat straight through you, your cheeks flushing at the nickname. Babygirl. The way he said it—like you were something fragile, something that needed to be handled carefully—made you feel a strange mixture of annoyance and… excitement.

“Joel, I can handle a tent pole,” you argued softly, though the protest felt weak even to your own ears.

He didn’t back down, his grip on your wrist tightening just a bit. His lips curled into a half-smirk, his gaze flicking down your body before landing back on your face.

“I know you can handle a pole but `m not lettin’ you get hurt,” he said, his voice low, almost teasing. “You’re too goddamn precious for that.”

You swallowed hard, feeling the tension rise between you. There was something in the way he looked at you, like he was barely holding himself back.

His eyes lingered on you a little too long, dark and possessive, and you couldn’t help but feel like prey under his gaze.

With a quiet huff, you stepped back, letting Joel handle the rest of the packing. As you turned to grab your bag, your eyes fell on the spare clothes you had packed.

The heat of the day, mixed with the leftover tension from last night, made your skin feel sticky and uncomfortable. You glanced over at Joel, who was busy securing the last of your things onto his truck.

“I’m just gonna change real quick,” you called over your shoulder, grabbing your fresh clothes from your bag and slipping behind a nearby tree.

Joel didn’t say anything at first, but his eyes followed you as you moved, his jaw tightening when he saw you disappear behind the tree.

His body tensed, a wave of heat coursing through him as he pictured you undressing. The thought of you, soft and bare just out of sight, made his breath hitch.

He glanced down at himself, biting back a groan as he felt his cock stiffen in his jeans.

The image of you changing, pulling those jeans over your hips, slipping out of that old shirt—it made something dark coil inside him.

He was used to control, to keeping his emotions in check, but you were making it hard. Too damn hard.

Behind the tree, you quickly stripped off your dirty shirt, slipping into something clean and fresh. As you tugged your jeans up over your hips, you couldn’t help but feel Joel’s presence, even though he wasn’t directly in front of you.

His gaze, that possessive heat—it lingered, and you could feel it.

You barely had time to register the slip before Joel’s hands were on you, firm and unyielding, catching you before you hit the ground.

The rough bark of the tree dug into your back as he pressed you against it, his strong body flush with yours. You felt his breath hot against the side of your neck, his chest rising and falling, the grip he had on your waist almost too tight.

“Careful there, darlin’,” he murmured, his voice thick with amusement as his hand lingered on your hip. “Don’t need you hurtin’ yourself on account of some pants.”

You blinked up at him, startled by how fast he had closed the distance. His hand stayed on your waist, firm and warm, and you could feel the heat of his body pressing close to yours.

His eyes were darker than before, filled with something that made your pulse quicken. His gaze dropped to the bare skin of your waist, his thumb brushing over the exposed flesh as he let out a low hum.

“You’re gonna make it real hard for me to concentrate if you keep slippin’ outta those clothes, little girl,” Joel drawled, his lips curling into a smirk.

His hand drifted lower, teasing at the waistband of your jeans. “Not sure how much more I can take.”

You swallowed hard, your breath catching in your throat as you met his gaze. “I didn’t think you minded last night,” you said, your voice a little shaky as you adjusted your shirt.

Joel’s eyes flicked back to you, dark and hungry. “Didn’t mind at all,” he murmured, his voice low and gravelly.

His hands didn’t move immediately; they lingered, fingers splayed, and it sent a pulse of desire straight to your core.

“Fuck,” he muttered, his voice rough and gravelly, low like he was speaking more to himself than to you. “You’ve been drivin’ me fuckin’ crazy all morning.”

You blinked, trying to steady yourself, but the way he had you pinned made it impossible.

The hard look in his eyes as he stared down at you, the way his fingers dug into your skin like he couldn’t bring himself to let go… it was overwhelming. He didn’t move away, didn’t give you any space to breathe, to think.

“You have any idea what you do to me?” His voice was thick, dripping with frustration, but there was no mistaking the hunger behind it.

“Every damn time I look at you… can’t get you from last night outta my head. Got me hard just from watchin’ you.”

Your breath hitched at the rawness in his words, the heat in his eyes as they raked over your body.

Before you could even respond, his hand slipped lower, fingers trailing along the waistband of your jeans. His touch was deliberate, teasing, but there was no hiding the raw desire in the way he moved.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he growled under his breath, his fingers sliding over the button of your jeans, popping it open with a swift, practiced motion.

“I can’t wait any longer. You’ve been torturing me all morning, walkin’ around like that.”

You gasped as his hand slipped beneath the denim, his fingers finding your already slick heat. Joel’s eyes darkened when he felt how wet you were, a low growl rumbling in his chest.

“Jesus Christ, look at you,” he muttered, his voice rough as his fingers dipped between your folds.

“So fuckin’ wet already… you been thinkin’ about me too, haven’t you? Tell me, baby girl.”

His fingers pressed against your clit, rubbing slow, teasing circles that had your body arching toward him despite the tight grip he had on you. You whimpered softly, and that only seemed to spur him on, his touch growing more intense, more possessive.

“You like that, huh?” he growled, his voice thick with lust. “Like it when I touch you like this, when I make you feel like this.” His thumb pressed harder against your swollen bud, and you couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped your lips. “Fuckin’ knew it.”

His fingers slipped lower, one of them sliding inside you with ease, the wetness between your legs making it effortless.

He groaned low in his throat as he felt how tight you were around his finger, his breath coming out in heavy pants against your neck.

“Damn, you’re so tight,” he murmured, his voice rough with need. “You were made for me, baby girl. Fuck, just look at how you take my fingers.”

He added another finger, and the stretch made you cry out softly, your hands grabbing at his shoulders for support as your knees started to weaken.

Joel’s free hand gripped your hip even harder, holding you steady against him, making sure you couldn’t pull away even if you wanted to.

“Look at you,” he rasped, his breath hot against your ear. “Fuckin’ gorgeous, takin’ it so well… you’re so fuckin’ good for me, aren’t you?”

His fingers curled inside you, hitting that spot that made you see stars, and you moaned, your body arching into his hand.

Joel growled in response, his fingers moving faster now, thrusting in and out of you with a punishing rhythm.

“That’s it,” he muttered, his voice low and filthy. “You love it when I fuck you with my fingers, don’t you? So fuckin’ desperate for it.”

Your breath came out in ragged gasps, your body trembling with every stroke of his fingers.

He was relentless, not giving you a moment to catch your breath as his thumb continued to work your clit in slow, torturous circles.

“You’re gonna cum for me, aren’t you?” he growled, his voice thick with lust.

“I can feel it. I can fuckin’ feel you clenchin’ around me. Come on, baby girl, don’t hold back. I wanna feel you fall apart.”

His words, his touch, the roughness of his voice—it was all too much. You couldn’t hold on any longer. Your body tensed, and with a sharp cry, you came undone around his fingers, your walls clenching tight as the pleasure ripped through you.

Joel didn’t stop. He kept thrusting his fingers into you, drawing out your orgasm, his breath heavy against your ear.

“That’s it, darlin’. Fuck, you’re squeezin’ me so tight. You feel that? You’re fuckin’ mine.”

Your legs trembled, barely able to hold you up as the aftershocks of your release pulsed through you. Joel finally slowed his movements, his fingers still buried deep inside you as you sagged against him, breathless and spent.

He pulled his hand from your jeans, his fingers glistening with your release as he looked down at you, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded with lust. “Fuckin’ perfect,” he muttered, his voice still rough as he brought his fingers to his lips, licking them clean with a satisfied growl. “You taste so fuckin’ sweet.”

You were still trembling, leaning against him for support as he finally released his grip on your waist. But the look in his eyes, the heat still simmering there, told you he wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

“Don’t think I’m done with you yet,” he growled softly, his hand coming back to grip your waist, pulling you against him once more. You could feel the hardness of him pressing against your stomach, and the heat flared between your legs all over again.

“I’ve been hard all fuckin’ morning, thinkin’ about you, and now you’re gonna take care of that for me.” His voice was low and dangerous, full of promise as his fingers tightened on your waist. “Get ready, baby girl. I ain’t lettin’ you go anytime soon.”

Joel’s body stayed pressed firmly against yours, the rough bark of the tree digging into your back as you tried to steady yourself.

The heat radiating from him was overwhelming, and the weight of him against you was both grounding and dizzying. Your legs still trembled, the aftershocks of his touch lingering, but Joel’s presence only seemed to magnify the need burning inside you.

He let out a low growl, his hand tightening on your waist, pulling your hips closer to his. You could feel him—hard and ready, pressing insistently against you—and your breath hitched at the thought of what came next.

“Joel… what if someone comes?” you whispered again, your voice breathless, barely able to think through the haze of desire clouding your mind.

Your words trembled, but you couldn’t stop yourself from asking, the thought of someone stumbling upon you both sending a rush of nervousness through you. It was the only thing cutting through the intensity of the moment.

But Joel didn’t pull back. He didn’t even flinch. His hand slipped lower, his grip firm and possessive as he pushed your jeans down further, his movements slow, deliberate, and unwavering.

“Ain’t no one comin’, darlin’,” he muttered, his voice rough and gravelly, thick with lust and something darker. “This is my land. No one’s gonna find us. And if they do…” His lips brushed your ear, his breath hot and heavy, sending shivers down your spine. “I’ll shoot ’em dead for even thinkin’ about seein’ you like this.”

His words made your pulse race, the possessiveness in his voice sending a thrill through you, though something about the way he said my land confused you.

He’d never mentioned this before. But the thought slipped away as quickly as it came, overtaken by the rush of heat between your legs, the way his hands worked your clothes off with practiced ease.

You swallowed hard, your body aching for him even as your mind raced. “Your land?” you asked softly, your voice shaky with both curiosity and naivety. “You never told me—”

Joel cut you off, his voice a deep, rough growl in your ear. “Don’t worry about that, baby girl,” he muttered, his lips brushing the side of your neck. “You don’t need to know about that. All you need to know is that you’re safe. No one’s gonna touch you, see you, or hear those pretty little sounds you make for me.”

His words sent another wave of heat through you, your body arching into him instinctively, desperate for more. Joel’s hands moved with a confidence that made you dizzy, his fingers hooking under the waistband of your underwear, tugging it down, leaving you bare and vulnerable beneath him.

“And you…” Joel’s voice dropped to a dark, seductive murmur, his lips grazing the shell of your ear as his hand slid between your legs again. “You’re not thinkin’ about anyone else right now, are you? Just me. Just this old man you can’t get enough of.”

Your breath caught at his words, the way he threw the nickname back at you.

You’d teased him that morning, calling him a handsome old man with a smirk on your face. But now, hearing it from him, laced with possessiveness and dark intent, it made your stomach flip in ways you hadn’t expected.

Joel’s hand gripped your waist again, his fingers digging into your skin as he pressed you harder against the tree. “You like that, don’t you?” he growled, his voice a low, filthy rasp. “You like the way I take care of you. No boy your age knows how to handle you like I do.”

You whimpered, the heat between your legs growing unbearable as Joel’s words wrapped around you, making your head spin.

His body pressed harder against yours, his hips rolling forward, teasing you with the promise of what was to come.

You could feel him, thick and hard, pressing against your slick heat, and it made you gasp, your hands clutching at his shoulders.

“I’ve been hard all damn morning,” he growled, his lips brushing your neck as he ground his hips against yours, making you gasp again.

“Watchin’ you… thinkin’ about how good you felt last night, how sweet you sound when you come. You’ve been drivin’ me fuckin’ crazy, baby girl.”

His words sent a shiver down your spine, your body responding instinctively, arching into him, desperate for more.

The tension between you was unbearable, and the way he was pressing into you—teasing, taunting, never giving you exactly what you wanted—was driving you mad.

Joel’s hand slipped between your legs again, his fingers brushing over your swollen clit, making you cry out softly, your body jerking in response.

“Fuck, you’re so wet for me,” he muttered, his voice thick with lust. “You’re gonna take it so good, aren’t you?”

You whimpered, your hands clutching at him as his fingers toyed with you, pushing you closer and closer to the edge.

“Joel… please…” you breathed, your voice barely more than a whisper. You could barely think, the heat between your legs, the roughness of his touch, the darkness in his voice—it was all too much.

He chuckled darkly, his lips brushing your ear. “That’s it, baby girl,” he growled, his fingers teasing you with just enough pressure to make your body tremble. “Beg for it. Tell me how much you want it.”

You swallowed hard, the words falling from your lips before you could stop them. “I want you,” you whispered, your voice trembling with need. “Please, Joel…”

He groaned low in his throat, his hand gripping your waist even harder as he lined himself up with your entrance, the heat of him pressing against you, making you gasp. “You want this old man, huh?” he growled, his voice dark and filthy.

“You want me to fuck you right here, out in the open, where anyone could come?”

You nodded, barely able to breathe, your body trembling with anticipation. “Yes,” you whispered, your voice shaky and desperate. “Please.”

Joel smirked against your neck, his breath hot against your skin as he teased you with the promise of what was to come. “You’re gonna be the death of me,” he muttered, his voice thick with need. “But you’re mine. No one else gets to have you like this. No one else even gets to look at you.”

With that, he thrust forward, filling you in one swift, brutal movement, and you cried out, your body arching against his as he buried himself deep inside you.

Joel’s body was pressed so tightly against yours, it felt like the air had been sucked out of your lungs.

The rough bark of the tree scratched at your back, but the sharpness of it barely registered over the overwhelming sensation of him inside you.

His grip on your hips was almost bruising, his large hands holding you in place as he thrust into you, deep and relentless.

His breath was hot against your neck, coming out in harsh, ragged pants that matched the pace of his movements.

“You feel that?” he growled low in your ear, his voice dripping with rough need. “You were made for me, baby girl. Only me. Ain’t nobody ever gonna fuck you like this.”

You whimpered as Joel slammed into you again, each thrust harder than the last, making your whole body jolt with the force of it.

His hands tightened on your hips, pulling you back onto him with every brutal movement. He wasn’t holding back anymore. It was all raw, unfiltered desire, and it had you gasping for breath.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he groaned, his voice thick with lust as he pounded into you.

“You take me so fuckin’ good… like you were just waitin’ for someone to fuck you like this. Ain’t that right?”

You could barely form a coherent response, your mind clouded with the overwhelming sensation of him filling you completely, stretching you in ways that made your legs shake.

Every word he said seemed to sink deeper into you, each one driving the pleasure higher, making it harder to hold on.

“Tell me,” he growled, his teeth grazing your neck as his hips snapped forward again, the force of it sending sparks of heat through your body. “Tell me no one else gets to fuck you like this. Say it.”

You gasped, your hands clutching desperately at his shoulders for support, trying to steady yourself as the pleasure mounted.

“No one else,” you breathed, your voice shaky, barely audible over the sound of your bodies moving together. “Only you.”

A low, dangerous chuckle rumbled from Joel’s chest, his grip on your hips tightening even further.

“That’s right,” he muttered, his breath hot and ragged against your skin. “Only me. You belong to me now, baby girl. You don’t need anyone else. You need this.”

His words hit you like a tidal wave, each one sinking deep into your core, making you tremble beneath him.

The roughness of his voice, the filthy way he spoke to you, the way he claimed you—it had you spiraling out of control, and he knew it.

He could feel it in the way your body responded to every hard thrust, the way you clung to him, desperate for more.

“And you love it, don’t you?” Joel growled, his hips slamming into you harder now, his pace unrelenting.

“You love the way I fuck you, the way I make you come apart. Ain’t that right, little girl?”

You nodded frantically, your breath coming out in short, desperate gasps as he drove into you, harder and faster, pushing you closer to the edge.

“Yes,” you moaned, your voice barely more than a breath. “I love it.”

Joel groaned low in his throat, his hands roaming over your body now, possessive and rough.

His fingers slid up your shirt, finding your breasts, squeezing them as he slammed into you, making you cry out.

“Good girl,” he growled, his voice thick and commanding. “You’re so fuckin’ perfect. So tight, so wet… all for me.”

You could feel the tension building in your core, the pleasure mounting higher and higher with every brutal thrust.

Joel’s pace never slowed, his hips driving into you with the kind of intensity that had your head spinning, your body trembling under the weight of it all. It was too much, too fast, too intense, but you didn’t want him to stop.

“Fuck, you’re squeezin’ me so tight,” he groaned, his breath hot and heavy against your ear. “You’re gonna come again, aren’t you? I can feel it. Come on, baby girl, I want to feel you come for me.”

His words pushed you right to the edge, your body trembling as the pressure built to an unbearable point. “Joel…” you gasped, your fingers digging into his shoulders as the pleasure threatened to overwhelm you. “I—”

But before you could finish, Joel’s hand slipped between your legs, his fingers finding your swollen clit with unerring precision.

The moment he touched you, your body shattered, your release crashing over you in waves, your muscles clenching tight around him as you cried out his name.

Joel groaned low in his throat, his thrusts becoming even more erratic as he felt you come apart around him, his hips slamming into you with a raw, primal need.

“That’s it,” he growled, his voice rough and breathless. “Fuck, you’re so perfect… so fuckin’ perfect…”

He buried himself deep inside you one last time, groaning your name as his own release hit, his grip on your hips tightening as he emptied himself inside you, the pleasure overtaking him completely.

His body trembled against yours, his breath ragged, his fingers digging into your skin as he held you close.

For a long moment, the only sound was the harsh, heavy breathing between you, both of you trying to steady yourselves, your bodies still pressed tightly together. Joel didn’t pull away, didn’t let go.

His hands stayed on you, holding you possessively, like he couldn’t bear to be apart from you, not yet.

“You’re mine,” he muttered, his voice rough and thick with satisfaction. “No one else gets to have you like this. No one else even gets to look at you the way I do.”

His words were a promise and a warning all at once, and though your mind was still spinning, you knew one thing for sure—Joel meant every word he said.

You were his, and he wasn’t letting you go.

You pulled in a shaky breath, trying to gather your scattered thoughts. The tension in the air was still thick, the weight of what had just happened between you lingering like a heavy cloud.

Joel’s hands reluctantly pulled away from your body, and you could still feel the heat of his touch, the way he had teased you to the edge before you both had to stop.

“I need to get home,” you murmured, your voice still unsteady, a hint of the recent intensity lingering in your tone.

Joel’s eyes met yours, dark and unreadable for a moment. His hand lingered on your waist for just a second longer before he let out a low sigh, stepping back.

You saw the way his jaw tightened, like he was trying to pull himself together, rein in whatever was still simmering just beneath the surface.

“Yeah,” he muttered, his voice gruff, filled with restraint. “We’ll get you home.”

You both moved around the camp, the quiet between you loaded with everything unsaid. Joel’s movements were deliberate, quick as he packed the last of your things.

His eyes occasionally flicked your way, watching you as you gathered yourself, but neither of you spoke about what had just happened, the charged silence saying enough.

His hand brushed yours as he handed you a bag, and you felt that familiar spark again—the one that had drawn you in from the start, the one that always made your heart race.

Once everything was packed, Joel turned toward you, wiping his hands on his jeans. He didn’t say a word as he walked over to your car, already starting to hook it up to his truck like it was the most natural thing in the world.

You blinked, watching him in surprise. “Joel, I can drive myself home,” you said, your voice still shaky but firm.

He didn’t even look at you as he continued to secure your car to his truck. “Not happenin’,” he replied, his voice full of that rough authority that left little room for argument. “You’re not drivin’ alone.”

You crossed your arms, a small frown tugging at your lips. “I’m not a child, you know.”

That’s when he stopped and turned to face you, a hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. His eyes darkened slightly as he stepped toward you, his presence immediately overwhelming in that way you’d grown used to.

“Baby, listen to me,” he murmured, his voice low and steady, his hand lifting to brush a strand of hair from your face. “You’re not drivin’ yourself home. Not after this. Not when I can make sure you get there safe.”

The way he said it, with such finality, made your heart skip a beat. He wasn’t asking—he was telling. His protectiveness, the intensity in his eyes, left no room for argument.

You huffed lightly, trying to fight back the flush rising in your cheeks. “Fine,” you muttered, avoiding his gaze, but you couldn’t hide the way your body reacted to his words, the way your pulse quickened under his watchful eyes.

Joel’s lips twitched, clearly catching the shift in your demeanor. “Good girl,” he said quietly, the two words carrying more weight than they should, leaving you flustered.

As he finished securing your car, you both climbed into his truck. The hum of the engine filled the air, but the tension between you remained. He glanced over at you as he pulled onto the road, his hand resting comfortably on the steering wheel, the other tapping lightly against his thigh.

“You know I’d do anything to keep you safe, right?” he muttered, his voice rough, but with an undercurrent of something softer. “No one’s ever gonna hurt you while I’m around.”

You swallowed, feeling the weight of his words settle in your chest. “I know,” you replied quietly, glancing out the window as the familiar roads blurred by. “But, Joel… I’m not helpless.”

He let out a low chuckle, glancing at you with that dark, knowing look. “Darlin’, I know you’re not helpless. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you face things on your own.”

His words sent a shiver down your spine, the possessiveness in his voice unmistakable.

He wasn’t just protecting you because he thought you needed it—he was doing it because he wanted to, because he couldn’t stand the thought of you being out of his reach.

Joel’s hand rested on your thigh, his fingers gently massaging as the truck hummed along the road. His touch was casual, but the heat of it was unmistakable, spreading through you like wildfire.

You could still feel the lingering effects of what had happened earlier—the way his hands had moved over your body, the roughness of his voice as he whispered dirty promises in your ear.

The way he claimed you in the woods, his protective instincts morphing into something darker, more possessive.

But now, in the quiet of the truck, you couldn’t ignore the practical reality of what needed to happen next.

As your mind drifted back to the present, a thought popped into your head, and you knew you couldn’t put it off any longer.

“I, uh…” you started, shifting slightly under Joel’s touch. His hand stayed firmly on your thigh, the pressure increasing just enough to make your breath hitch. “We need to stop at a pharmacy.”

Joel’s brow furrowed as he glanced over at you, but his hand never left your leg. “Pharmacy?” he echoed, his voice low and rough. “What for, darlin’?”

You swallowed, suddenly feeling a little shy. “I, um… I need to get the morning after pill.”

For a moment, Joel’s hand stilled on your thigh, his grip tightening just slightly. Then, without a word, he nodded, his jaw working as he processed what you’d said. His thumb resumed its gentle, circular motion, tracing patterns over your skin as he let out a low hum.

“Morning after pill, huh?” His voice was gruff, but there was a hint of amusement lurking behind it. His hand squeezed your thigh gently, possessively.

“You know… our babies would probably be real cute.”

You blinked, glancing at him in surprise. You couldn’t tell if he was joking or if there was something more serious behind his words.

His face was unreadable, but the heat in his touch remained, and it made your pulse quicken.

“Joel…” you muttered, shaking your head as a smile tugged at your lips.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. Let’s handle one thing at a time. You get therapy first, old man.”

He chuckled at that, his grip on your thigh tightening, thumb brushing dangerously close to the edge of your waistband. His eyes flicked over to you, dark and intense.

“Still old man, huh?” he drawled, his voice dipping low, filled with that familiar growl that made your skin tingle. “You weren’t complainin’ about my age a few minutes ago.”

Your cheeks flushed, and you quickly looked away, biting your lip. The reminder of what had happened in the woods—the heat of his body pressed against yours, the way his hands had claimed you so thoroughly—sent a shiver down your spine.

Joel’s smirk grew as he caught the look on your face. He leaned closer, his breath hot against your ear as his hand slid just a bit higher on your thigh.

“What’s wrong, darlin’?” he murmured, his voice thick with amusement and something darker. “You gettin’ shy on me now?”

You swallowed hard, feeling the tension between you spike again, the air thick with unspoken desire.

His hand stayed firmly on your leg, his thumb brushing the sensitive skin just beneath your waistband. You could feel the heat of him, the intensity of his gaze, and it made it hard to think straight.

“I’m just… trying to be responsible,” you muttered, trying to regain some composure, but your voice came out breathier than you’d intended.

Joel chuckled again, his grip tightening. You couldn’t help but smile at that, a soft laugh escaping your lips despite the heat coursing through you. “But seriously… pharmacy first.”

Joel just grinned, his hand lingering on your thigh as he shifted gears, the truck humming beneath you both.

“Whatever you need, darlin’. But don’t think for a second I ain’t still thinkin’ about those cute babies.”

You rolled your eyes, shaking your head with a teasing smile. “Joel, again, you really should stop thinking about babies and start thinking about calling a therapist.”

Joel chuckled, the sound deep and rich, his broad hand squeezing your thigh possessively. “A therapist.” His voice carried that rough, teasing edge, filled with warmth. “Darlin’, I’m already workin’ on that, but don’t pretend you didn’t like the idea of those cute babies.”

You shot him a playful glare, rolling your eyes, but couldn’t keep the smile from tugging at your lips.

His hand stayed firm on your leg, the heat of his touch seeping through your jeans, making your pulse quicken. Joel had this way of making everything feel charged, every touch more than just casual, every glance heavier with meaning.

The tension between you both was thick, that lingering heat from earlier still hanging in the air.

When Joel parked, his hand found yours, gripping it firmly as if he wasn’t about to let go anytime soon.

Without a word, he got out and came around to your side, pulling you out of the truck and keeping you close, his hand wrapped around yours as the two of you entered the pharmacy.

You were barely inside before you spotted the familiar face of the pharmacist behind the counter.

"Hey," you greeted with a friendly wave, feeling Joel's presence looming behind you, his hand tightening around yours.

His grip was solid, a constant reminder that he was there, watching, protecting—even when it wasn’t necessary.

You explained to the pharmacist what you needed, but Joel’s energy shifted beside you. You could feel the weight of his stare as the pharmacist smiled at you, his fingers flexing slightly against your hand.

The slight possessiveness was impossible to miss, his jaw clenching just the tiniest bit as if he didn’t appreciate the friendly exchange.

When the pharmacist handed over the pill, you reached for your wallet, only to have Joel beat you to it, pulling out cash before you could even open your bag.

“Joel, I can pay for myself,” you protested, giving him a look, but his eyes were focused solely on the pharmacist, his tone gruff and unyielding.

“Of course I’m payin',” he said, slipping the cash across the counter, his voice low.

“I was the one cummin' inside, wasn’t I?”

The air between you thickened, heat creeping up your neck at his blunt words.

The pharmacist awkwardly handed Joel the small paper bag, and Joel gave him a curt nod, his hand never leaving yours as he turned, guiding you firmly out of the pharmacy.

Once outside, you could breathe a little easier, but your heart still raced from Joel's possessive display. As he opened the passenger door for you, his hand brushed your back, sending a shiver down your spine.

His protectiveness was palpable, but so was the underlying heat between you, simmering just beneath the surface.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you muttered once you were settled inside, watching as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

“I know,” he said, his voice a bit softer now, though still laced with that possessive undertone.

“But I wanted to.” His hand was back on your thigh as he started the engine, thumb tracing slow, deliberate circles over your jeans, the touch sending warmth through your body.

The truck’s engine rumbled quietly as Joel navigated the familiar streets, his hand still resting possessively on your thigh.

The drive had been mostly quiet, Joel’s fingers occasionally flexed against your leg, his grip steady and firm, as if he was grounding himself by touching you.

As the truck slowed down and turned onto your street, you blinked, glancing out the window. “Wait…” You frowned, turning to look at Joel. “How did you know where I live?”

He didn’t even flinch, keeping his eyes on the road, his thumb stroking over your skin in that calming, deliberate way. “You told me, baby,” he said smoothly, his voice a deep rumble that sent shivers down your spine.

You paused for a moment, trying to recall when you’d given him your address, but the events of the past couple of days had been so intense, it was hard to keep track.

Maybe you had told him?

You were still shaken from everything that happened, and besides, Joel always seemed so capable, like he knew everything before you even realized it yourself. Naively, you shrugged it off, not questioning it any further.

Joel pulled up in front of your house, the truck coming to a smooth stop. His hand lingered on your thigh, giving you one final squeeze before he turned off the engine.

For a moment, the two of you just sat there in the silence, the weight of unspoken words heavy between you.

You shifted in your seat, glancing at him, your heart racing.

“Joel… I really like you,” you admitted softly, biting your lip nervously. “But you need to get help before we start anything serious.”

His eyes flicked to you, a mix of surprise and something deeper flashing in his gaze. It was like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing—that someone like you, soft and kind, actually wanted him.

Joel had been so used to shutting people out, to keeping his distance, but here you were, offering him something real.

“You…” He trailed off, shaking his head slightly, as if trying to wrap his mind around it. “You actually want me? After all this?”

You nodded, your fingers nervously fiddling with the edge of your sleeve.

“Yes, Joel. I like you… a lot. But you’ve gotta work on yourself. Therapy could really help, you know? Before we can start something long-term.”

Joel exhaled slowly, his eyes scanning your face, searching for any hint of hesitation or doubt. But all he saw was sincerity, and that shook him to his core.

He wasn’t used to people sticking around—let alone wanting more with him.

He leaned closer, his voice soft but filled with a deep, raw emotion.

“If gettin' help means I can have you, baby… then I’ll do whatever it takes.” His voice dipped lower, almost a growl. “Everything, if that’s the outcome.”

Your heart fluttered at his words, the intensity in his voice sending a thrill through you.

Joel reached over, his hand cupping your cheek gently, his thumb brushing over your skin as he gazed at you like you were the only thing in the world that mattered.

“Darlin’,” he murmured, his voice thick with affection. “If this is what you need, then I’ll do it. No questions asked.”

You couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at your lips, the vulnerability in his words touching something deep inside you.

But you knew this was bigger than just you—it was about Joel getting the help he needed, about him facing his past and his trauma.

“Good,” you whispered, your voice barely above a breath. “Because I want you to be okay. For you, not just for me. You need it“

But the tension between you two didn’t dissipate—it only simmered beneath the surface, as his thumb brushed over your bottom lip, his gaze flicking down to your mouth.

“I’ll do it,” he whispered, his voice thick with promise. “I’ll go to therapy, I’ll get the help.”

Before you could respond, Joel was already opening his door, coming around the truck to your side.

He opened the passenger door and offered you his hand, pulling you out gently but firmly.

His hand stayed in yours as he led you to your front door, his fingers still wrapped possessively around yours.

As you fumbled for your keys, you felt his gaze on you, warm and intense.

He reached out, cupping the back of your neck, pulling you toward him with a soft but commanding grip.

“You make me wanna be better, baby,” he murmured, his lips brushing against yours as he spoke.

The kiss that followed was slow, deliberate—filled with all the unspoken promises of what could come if Joel followed through.

His lips moved against yours, soft but insistent, his hand slipping down to your waist, pulling you close.

By the time you pulled away, your heart was racing, your skin tingling with the memory of his touch.

“I’ll see you soon,” Joel whispered, his voice low, full of intent.

You nodded, your breath still shaky as you opened the door, stepping inside.

As you glanced back at him one last time, you couldn’t help but smile.

This was the beginning of something new, something real—and for the first time, you were hopeful that Joel could find his way through the darkness.

· · ─────

It had been eight months since the night that changed everything. Therapy had helped Joel more than he liked to admit, but some parts of him hadn’t changed.

The protectiveness, the obsession with keeping you safe—those only seemed to have deepened. But the dark cloud that used to follow him had lightened considerably.

The nightmares had lessened, the guilt had dulled into something more manageable. Now, he could breathe again.

But the thing he still couldn’t get enough of was you.

You were at his place again, spending time together after a long week.

He made dinner—something simple but delicious—and the two of you had settled on the couch afterward, the fire crackling in the background, casting a soft, golden glow around the room.

Joel’s eyes never left you. It didn’t matter if you were laughing, talking, or just sitting there; he watched you with the same intense gaze that always seemed to heat your skin.

It was like he was memorizing every detail of you—the way you tucked your hair behind your ear, the small smile that played at the corner of your lips when you caught him looking.

“Joel,” you teased, catching his stare again, “if you keep looking at me like that, I’m gonna start thinking you’ve got an obsession.”

He smirked, his hand finding its familiar spot on your thigh, his thumb tracing lazy circles over your jeans.

“Sweetheart,” he drawled, his voice low and rough, “if you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re not payin’ attention.”

You laughed softly, the sound filling the cozy room. "Guess I should start taking notes, then,” you teased, leaning into him, your shoulder brushing against his arm.

Joel’s smirk deepened, and he leaned in closer, his lips brushing your ear as he murmured, “You should. Wouldn’t wanna miss a single detail about this old man, huh?”

You rolled your eyes playfully, nudging him with your shoulder. “Well, you do make it easy to forget about the ‘old’ part sometimes.”

Joel chuckled, but there was a flicker of something more in his eyes.

He liked when you played with him like that—when you didn’t shy away from the age difference but turned it into something light, something flirty.

“Easy, huh?” he teased, squeezing your thigh a little harder. “I’ll take that as a compliment, darlin’.”

“It is,” you grinned. “I mean, you’ve definitely surprised me.”

Joel raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Surprised you, huh? What exactly are we talkin’ about here?”

You bit your lip, your smile turning a little mischievous.

“Oh, you know… how a certain someone hasn’t had any trouble keeping up.” You shot him a look that made your meaning clear, your cheeks flushing slightly even as you held his gaze.

Joel barked out a laugh, the sound deep and rumbling. “Well, I do what I can,” he said with a teasing wink, his hand sliding a little higher on your leg.

“Guess you make it easy for me to keep up, baby girl.”

You rolled your eyes again, but the grin on your face betrayed how much you were enjoying the banter.

Joel had a way of making you feel like the center of the universe when you were with him. It was in the way he looked at you, the way he touched you, and how he always seemed to find a way to make you smile—even when he was teasing you about the age difference.

The night wore on in that same comfortable, easy rhythm—talking, teasing, laughing together.

Joel had lit a few candles around the room, the flickering light adding to the warm, intimate atmosphere.

As you sat together on the couch, your legs draped over his lap, Joel’s hand continued its slow, steady path up and down your thigh, his thumb brushing the inside of your knee, sending little sparks of warmth through you.

At some point, the conversation drifted into something quieter, more meaningful.

You talked about the last few months, how much had changed, how much better Joel was doing.

He admitted that the therapy had helped, that he wasn’t waking up every night in a panic anymore. The nightmares still came, but they didn’t have the same grip on him they used to.

And it was because of you.

“I wouldn’t have made it this far without you,” he said softly, his voice thick with emotion as he looked at you, his eyes filled with an intensity that made your chest tighten. “You know that, right?”

You smiled softly, your heart swelling at his words. "I’m proud of you, Joel," you said quietly, reaching out to brush a hand along his cheek. "You’ve worked so hard… You’ve come such a long way."

Joel looked at you for a moment, his eyes filled with something deeper than gratitude—something more like devotion.

"I wouldn’t be here without you, darlin’," he murmured, his voice rough with emotion. "You pushed me to get better. You gave me a reason to."

Your fingers traced the lines of his face, the strong curve of his jaw, his stubble rough against your fingertips.

"You did this," you replied, your voice soft but firm. "You put in the work. I just… I just believed in you. And I’m really proud of you, Joel."

He seemed to take in your words, his brow furrowing slightly as though he didn’t quite know how to accept the praise.

His hand tightened slightly on your thigh, his thumb still moving in slow, comforting circles.

"You’ve been staying here a lot," he said, his voice low, almost hesitant. "Feels good, havin' you here with me. Feels right."

You grinned, feeling the warmth spread through you at his words. "Yeah, well," you teased, "I guess I kinda like it here too. You’ve got a nice place, Miller."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "It’s not just the place, and you know it," he muttered, his voice deep and full of meaning. "I like havin' you around, baby girl. More than I can say."

Your chest fluttered at the nickname, and the way his hand slid a little higher on your leg didn’t go unnoticed.

There was a warmth in his eyes as he looked at you, the same kind of warmth that made your heart race every time he called you "his girl."

You’d been together for months now, but the way he looked at you still made your stomach flip.

"I never thought… I didn’t think I’d ever have this again," he admitted, his voice rough. "Someone like you. It feels too good to be real sometimes."

You smiled softly, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to his lips. "I’m real," you whispered against his mouth. "And I’m not goin’ anywhere."

Joel’s arms wrapped around you, pulling you closer until you were practically sitting in his lap.

His hands slid up your back, his touch warm and comforting as he held you close. "You’re mine, and I’m keepin' you," he muttered, his lips brushing your ear.

"Can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have you here with me."

You grinned, leaning back just enough to meet his gaze, your hands resting on his chest.

"Well, I’m lucky too," you replied, your voice teasing but filled with affection. "Not every girl gets to say she has the strong, protective, handsome Joel Miller as her man."

He chuckled, shaking his head as his hand moved to cup your cheek. "Sweet talker," he muttered, pressing a soft kiss to your lips. "But I guess I like hearin' it from you."

For a while, you both stayed there, wrapped in each other’s arms, the warmth of the evening settling over you like a blanket.

The night felt perfect—easy, peaceful, and filled with the kind of love that made everything feel right in the world.

As you nestled against Joel’s chest, his arms still wrapped around you protectively, you couldn’t help but smile.

You’d come a long way together, and despite the obstacles, despite the darkness he’d had to fight through, you were here now. Together.

"Guess I’m stickin' around," you whispered, your voice soft but filled with certainty. "I kinda like it here with you."

Joel grinned, his hand sliding up to tangle gently in your hair. "Good," he whispered back, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. "’Cause I’m not lettin’ you go, baby girl."

You laughed softly, resting your head against his chest as the steady rhythm of his heartbeat filled the quiet room. You were home.

The quiet of the night settled over you like a soft blanket, the only sound the distant rustle of wind through the trees outside.

Joel held you close, his arms wrapped tightly around you as if letting go would break the fragile peace you had built together.

He breathed deeply, taking in the scent of your hair, the steady rise and fall of your chest against his.

There was a softness to this moment, something sacred and rare. It was the kind of quiet Joel had never known he could have—one that wasn't haunted by ghosts of the past or shattered by the weight of guilt.

He had come a long way, you both had, but the road behind you was littered with moments of doubt, fear, and the suffocating grip of old wounds.

There had been days when the darkness had almost swallowed him whole, when the weight of his past, the endless guilt over what he had lost and failed to protect, had nearly driven him away from everything good in his life.

But you had stood by him, steadfast and unshaken, even when he couldn't see a way forward. You had anchored him, reminding him of what life could be beyond the nightmares, beyond the pain.

Your presence, your love, had given him hope—something he'd never thought he would find again.

And now, with you nestled into his side, the warmth of your body grounding him, Joel finally understood what it meant to live for something more than survival.

His eyes drifted to the window, where the faint light of the moon spilled across the floor, a reminder that the world was still out there—dangerous and unpredictable as always.

But for the first time in as long as he could remember, Joel wasn’t afraid.

He wasn’t looking over his shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He had something real, something worth holding onto, and for once, he felt like maybe he deserved it.

As the minutes stretched into hours, Joel’s thoughts softened, his mind no longer racing with what-ifs and could-have-beens.

The weight of his past wasn’t gone, but it had shifted, lightened somehow, transformed into something more bearable.

It no longer consumed him. He had found peace in the present, in the steady rhythm of your breathing beside him, in the warmth of your hand resting gently on his chest.

He had spent so long chasing redemption, thinking he needed to be better, to do more, to fix what had been broken inside him.

But you had shown him that healing didn’t come all at once. It wasn’t about erasing the past—it was about learning to live with it, to carry it with him without letting it define him.

And in that moment, with you curled up beside him, safe and warm in his arms, Joel realized that maybe, just maybe, he had found his way out of the darkness after all.

The future stretched out before you both, uncertain and unpredictable, but Joel no longer felt the fear that used to creep into his bones at the thought of what might come next.

He had you, and you had him, and together you had built something stronger than the shadows that once haunted him.

There would still be challenges, moments of doubt, but you would face them together—because that's what you had become.

A team. A partnership. Something real. Something worth fighting for.

And as the night faded into dawn, Joel closed his eyes, finally letting go of the burden he had carried for so long. He was no longer the man who had lost everything.

He was no longer just surviving.

He was living.

And for the first time in a long, long time, Joel felt at peace.

· · ───────────𖥸──────────· ··

Sorry, I had to let these two end with some fluffy happy end. 😭

The End with the main story!

Will probably do spin offs and also a few of Joel’s therapy sessions as well as smut if y’all are interested.

Thank you so much for the support and all the nice comments, they were my favorite :)

xoxo

341 notes · View notes

54625 · 2 months ago

Text

If you hate seeing meaningless AI "art" everywhere then I humbly offer you read through this massive list of all of the symbolism I poured into a MCYT AU fanart that took me 70+ hours to make and is still the most beautiful thing I've ever made and maybe it will restore your faith a little

Image 1

In the first photo, they are all very close together and they are evenly spaced; to represent not only their closeness at the time, but also how there is no imbalance present in the dynamic yet.

However, even in this first image, their future is foreshadowed. Both of Fit's hands are visible - one above Tubbo and one above Pac - however he is only touching Pac, not Tubbo. Neither of Tubbo's hands are visible and his left shoulder is slightly raised, implying that he is lifting/adjusting the heavy camera - quite literally carrying all the weight, doing the heavy lifting, holding them up.

Also:

• Pac has a plaster on his cheek where his cubito had a scar.

• Fit has both his hands, obviously, but bites the nails on the left hand (the same one he will be missing in the future).

• The date written on the polaroid is a reference to the 3 out of 3 morning crew joke. Literally 3/3.

• Tubbo is on the far left side of the image. Not the centre.

Image 2

Not only are they stealing a coffee machine from the teacher's lounge, the fact that you are seeing this (diegetic) recording from a camera to begin with implies they also stole the tapes that caught them doing it.

They are still fairly evenly spaced, even if Tubbo is the tiniest bit behind, and Pac is almost tripping on Fit's shoe. However, Pac throws an enthusiastic glance back at Tubbo, clearly including and appreciating him. Tubbo has his eyes closed, and wouldn't have noticed.

Also:

• This is the last image we see without Fit's arm in a cast, implying he fell and broke his arm during this heist.

• The leg Pac will lose later in life is slightly scratched up.

• Fit is carrying the coffee machine, but Pac is holding on to the lead. This creates a direct line connecting them that Tubbo is not part of.

• Tubbo is on the far left side of the image. Not the centre.

Image 3

While they are setting up their headquarters, it's pretty clear Tubbo is doing most of the work. He has a work belt full of tools around his waist, and a tent peg in his hand. Pac is helping, pulling up the tyre swing, while Fit helps the least.

While Fit and Pac stand in the full sun, Tubbo is in the shade under the tent.

Hard to make out against the background of the bushes, all three of them have a butterfly near their heads. Above and to the left of Tubbo, a bright yellow butterfly with orange patterning that almost looks like sunglasses. To the right of Pac, a cool yellow butterfly with a green patterning that almost looks like a tick logo on a sports shirt. Above Fit, a white butterfly with a black mark that almost looks like a moustache.

On the tyre, they have all written their own names themselves. Fit's handwriting is straight and rough, in all capitals. Pac's handwriting is curved and italicised, in all lowercase. Tubbo's handwriting is round, in an inconsistent case. If you look at the sign that reads "Morning Crew HQ", you'll see that the writing is round, and in an inconsistent case. Tubbo made the sign all by himself.

Also:

• Fit's left arm is now in a grey cast, to mimic the prosthetic he will one day have.

• On top of the mini fridge is the coffee machine they stole. They were, in fact, able to cover their tracks well enough to keep it.

• In the fridge are cucurucho cookies and a cup of purgatory tea.

• There is a bottle of happy pills hiding in the grass.

• On the shelf there is a golden carrot (potato cannon ammo), as well as goggles and sunglasses.

• Pac has another, different plaster in the place of the scar on his face. His leg is still grazed badly, and on his knee he has one blue and one green plaster (Pac e Mike wow wow).

• Fit is wearing those military inspired cargo shorts, in army green. Which could mean anything.

• Even in the little stick-man drawings of themselves on the tyre, Tubbo is still sidelined, off to the left. He is also drawn smaller (less significant) than the other two.

• Tubbo is on the far left side of the image. Never the centre.

Image 4

(Image 4 is probably my favourite individual piece of all of these. Something about the mottled light on their skin coming through the trees, the subject matter and the colour choice I find really cosy and nostalgic.)

It is evening, and they are having a stick fight. Right at the bottom of the image between the grass, you can see a thin sliver of a slab/step, the same ones as in the previous image as they both take place at the HQ. Pac has his back against the same tree that the tent is on.

The date is November 9th, the same day that Tubbo (and Bad, but he's not relevant right now) fought and killed Fit in purgatory while Pac watched. This is a reference to that.

This is the last of the video tapes, and it is paused. Whoever's eyes you are looking through, whoever was watching these videos back, has stopped, and put them down.

Also:

• Fit's stick is shaped like a trident.

• Fit has a green cardigan tied around his neck, as a reference to his cubito's cape.

• Tubbo is on the far left side of the image, sidelined, never in the centre.

Image 5

While sitting and eating together, Tubbo is talking away to Fit and Pac, the former of which being too distracted to pay attention.

It is the first time a split really becomes visually obvious between the three. Between Fit and Pac there is zero negative space; within the image itself, they are overlapping. However, there is a large amount of negative space between Tubbo and Fit. Fit and Pac sit as a unit, Tubbo as an outsider.

Pac, despite being on the other side of the image, is engaging with Tubbo. Fit, however, is only looking at Pac, ignoring the other one, and his cheeks are ever so slightly flushed.

While Tubbo still has a lot of his baby fat, the other two's faces are slightly slimmer than they were in that first photo, and Fit is visibly lankier than he has been. This is symbolism/ foreshadowing for the other two growing up faster than Tubbo, and Tubbo lagging behind, but it's also literal. They're getting older.

Also:

• Pac's leg is yet again, still grazed, and this time his foot is in an ankle strap. (Some children are just very accident prone I guess, lmao). He also still has his cheek plaster, and his Pac e Mike wow wow plasters.

• The polaroid is marked with the date 4.1, the date of the confession. Which could mean anything.

• This particular photo is in worse condition than the first, implying present Tubbo (who owns all of these) has taken a lot more care in protecting that one than this one.

• Tubbo, left, sidelined, never central.

Image 6

(Image 6 is a very close second favourite. I am very proud of the marbled sky and I think you can really feel the wind in this one.)

The last photo from their childhood. The polaroid is marked with 26.7, the day after the first date, and the writing reads "a change in the winds".

Pac wheels a bike that has never shown up before, and it is in the same bright red as the roses in the basket. The bike is a physical representation of him and Fit quite literally "carrying something new" with them, something the colour of a rose. In case that metaphor is lost on anyone, it's a crush. You can see it in how flushed both their cheeks are. (And they will carry it until they are much older, and only then will it become something official, cause even AU hideduo is the slowest of slowburns).

Also:

• In previous photos, Pac would be the one including Tubbo, helping him, and paying attention to him. But now, even Pac is turned completely away from Tubbo, not even looking in his direction, preferring to look at Fit.

• Not only is Tubbo far away from the other two within the context of the image, but he also takes up a very tiny portion of the photo itself.

• Tubbo is waving, calling, but no one is responding.

• Tubbo was always on the left, always sidelined. He was never in the centre. Never the centre of attention. Never centred by his friends.

Image 7

A harsh pull back to the present. All of the colour is gone. All of the fun and non-literal shapes are gone.

You are seeing through Tubbo's eyes. You have been this whole time. He paused the video. Each photo and video you just saw was him looking back on those memories, after receiving the invitation got him reminiscing again. After looking back on it all, he pins the invitation, an invitation to Fit and Pac's wedding, onto the corkboard.

The memory board is old. It was made and put up when they were still kids. You can tell by the very old, worn writing at the top of the board, reading "morning crew 4ever!", in Tubbo's old, round, case inconsistent handwriting.

The three polaroids we just saw are up there, as well as an old drawing of their plans for the HQ, drawn/written by Pac. However, one of the slightly newer (still several years old) additions is a letter from Fit to Tubbo. The letter starts off friendly and kind, before in the mid section, a large portion of the writing is crossed out. Looking closely, you can see that that section is crossed out because the letter begins explaining that Fit and Pac started dating. Tubbo had received the letter, removed the parts that he didn't like (that made him feel left out), so he could pin a letter from Fit saying a bunch of nice things to his wall. He desperately wants a return to the old days. He has been left behind in the past, wishing for glory days that won't come back, and his friends have raced off into the future without him. By censoring half of the letter, he can delude himself into thinking nothing ever changed.

However, him pinning the wedding invitation onto the morning crew board symbolises him partially accepting defeat. He can't pretend this isn't happening anymore. Their relationship is part of morning crew whether he likes it or not.

Also:

• Tubbo has very clearly been picking at his nails, a sign of anxiety.

• The writing on the invitation that reads "Dear Tubbo" is in the same blue ink as the crossed-out portion of Fit's letter. It wasn't originally written by the couple. Tubbo wrote it there himself, to make it feel more personal.

• The wedding is on August 25th, the day of the first date.

• The way Tubbo is pinning the invitation to the board, he is covering up a lot of what is already up there. This represents how he feels about Fit and Pac's relationship; like it is stomping on and cancelling out their childhood, and covering up/ruining the way things used to be.

• On the wedding invitation, the names "Tubbo", "Fit" and "Pac" all form a line, top to bottom. Just like that first photo. However, Tubbo's name is still at one edge, not in the middle, and is leaning ever so slightly to the left.

Image 8

So after pinning the invitation up, he goes for a walk.

He goes back to where their HQ used to be. It seems so different now. Everything is so dead. A tiny scrap of the sign hangs on, held in place by one remaining screw. (The sign that read "morning crew HQ" being almost completely missing is a very obvious metaphor for morning crew being dead). The mini fridge is barely visible in the back, turned over, long since claimed by the grass. A tiny scrap of the rope that once held up their tyre swing now sways in the breeze.

This whole time we have been seeing everything from Tubbo's perspective. We've been seeing through his eyes as he looks back on all of his tangible memories. But this is the first zoom out. This is the first non-diegetic image here.

It's just him. His hair has darkened now, no longer his childhood blonde. His clothes almost completely obscure him. He hugs himself. He's cold.

It's just so different now.

I hope you enjoyed reading, I greatly appreciate you if you did, I hope you found it at least a little interesting :) I put so much thought into all of this way back when

#qsmp #fitmc #pactw #tubbo #morning crew childhood friends au #morning crew #qsmp morning crew #54625art #artists on tumblr

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aventurineswife · 17 days ago

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ok so I just got an idea what if now hear me out what if sahsrau or sagau teen reader falls in love with all the older girls (basically by 'older' I mean the ones that aren't children) in the games (such as clorinde, hemiko, mavuika, yukong, jing liu, so on and so forth) however ever it's a one sided love like the love you have for a school crush and teen reader would do anything for them (and probably act like a golden retriever while near them) like the reader would make a full course meal for hemiko or they'd go to the most deadly cliff in all of amphoreus just to pick a few flowers to cast in epoxy resin and then gift to castorice what do you think of this idea also how many times would the reader do something that nearly kills before all of the star rail characters collectively put a collar and leash on them so they (the star rail characters) know where the reader is at all times

(°↓°) hay ummmmm sorry for sending you so many asks and ideas I just constantly think about stuff like this and I have a vary active imagination and all these ask aren't even a hundredth of the amount of ideas I have daily but if I'm overwhelming or tiring you then please let me know and I'll stop so please tell me I don't want to overwhelm or annoy you and if I am the I'm really sorry about that

First of all, don’t even worry! I love all of your ideas!

Second of all, oh my gosh, I love this idea! It’s so cute, and the dynamic would be hilarious and heartwarming all at once.

Imagine the teen reader just being so utterly smitten with all the older women, and they're going all-out with their kindness, trying to impress them by doing things like making them food, going on dangerous adventures to get the perfect gift, and just being adorably sweet while also putting themselves in perilous situations. The characters would be a mix of "How do we protect them from themselves?" and "What do we do with this ball of sunshine?"

Clorinde: Teen Reader might be utterly fascinated by her strong, commanding presence and her ability to stay so calm and collected. They might try to make her a surprise "peace offering" by doing something like organizing a dinner at the highest point of the city—completely forgetting that Clorinde probably doesn't care about a fancy dinner and is just relieved by simple, grounded gestures. But that’s totally fine! They’re doing their best!

Himeko: You can imagine the Reader, trying to impress her by cooking a gourmet meal, only to accidentally burn the whole thing because they got so excited. Himeko would laugh it off, and the Reader would probably get a pat on the back for their effort and determination, completely missing the fact that she doesn’t need gourmet meals, she’s just happy with their enthusiasm. They’d be grinning and wagging their metaphorical tail like, “I’ll try again next time!”

Mavuika: The Reader might try to follow her on dangerous missions, maybe picking some rare flower from a hazardous area because they think it’ll impress her. They're out there being a little reckless, thinking the more effort, the more love, and Mavuika would just be like, "You almost died for a flower?" She’d be both impressed and totally petrified.

Yukong: Teen Reader would try to follow her around everywhere, thinking they could be helpful by doing little tasks for her, like packing her bags, helping her with her paperwork—getting way too invested in her routine. In return, they’d get a gentle head pat and a soft “Thanks, I guess,” that would send them into a flurry of emotions. Their tail would be wagging so fast they almost fall over. Yukong would gently set them on the path to a more sensible task, but secretly find their enthusiasm endearing.

Jing Liu: They'd try to do everything in their power to show they could be of use, even going on dangerous tasks like climbing cliffs or fighting enemies without hesitation. Jing Liu would just stare at them, perplexed at how they almost walk into the line of fire just to impress her, her hand on her face as if she’s dealing with an extremely overzealous puppy. "I don't need you to risk your life... again."

How Often Would They Almost Die?

Too many times to count. Honestly, the Reader would probably end up in dangerous situations all the time because they’re so determined to impress everyone, thinking they have to go above and beyond.

Rescue mission? Oh, the Reader is volunteering to go straight into the heart of danger.

A dangerous cliff to gather rare flowers? They're there—right at the edge, trying to impress, even though they can barely stand still on flat ground.

Climbing or sneaking into dangerous places? You better believe they’re doing it and not realizing how close they are to danger.

At some point, the others would just start to keep track of them. Maybe they gently start showing up at every meeting or mission, ensuring the Reader doesn’t end up dead in a ravine somewhere.

The Leash and Collar Situation

After a few too many close calls (with horrified stares and possibly emergency surgeries), the characters would collectively decide: “We need to keep them on a short leash.”

This could either be literal or figurative. There might be some form of tracking device or perhaps a magical item that lets them track where the Reader is at all times. They would totally do it, no doubt about it. They’d probably joke about it, but it would be because they care so much (and also because they’re scared of their precious sunshine getting killed).

Kafka would probably be the one to sneak a device into their pocket.

Dan Heng would act like it's a duty to watch over them. "I was hoping you'd learn to be more cautious, but it looks like I have to babysit again."

Welt would be the one to insist on the practicality of this, then sigh with resignation every time the Reader tries to sneak off for another adventure.

March would be like, “At least they’re safe!” and probably start tagging along to prevent further chaos.

The Reader would be adorably oblivious to how much they are worrying their companions. They would be shocked at the idea of being monitored, "What do you mean? I just want to help and show my love!" But over time, they'd get used to it, though they’d keep trying to sneak away and doing overly grand gestures to impress them.

#x reader #honkai star rail #hsr #honkai star rail x reader #hsr x reader #sahsrau #genshin sagau

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cilil · 1 year ago

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𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞!𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐚𝐫 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 - 𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓎ℴ𝓊 𝒶𝓈 𝓉𝒽ℯ𝒾𝓇𝓈

Characters: Mairon, Gothmog, Eönwë, Tilion & Ossë; reader's gender is unspecified - all up to your imagination~

Featuring: 2nd person POV, vampire!Mairon, werewolf!Mairon, monsterfucking, Balrog anatomy, avian Ainu, merman, some Dom/sub dynamics, bit of predator/prey and other kinks, penetrative sex, intercrural sex, dirty talk

Warnings: Possessive themes, smut, tiny bit of degradation branding/burn marks, blood drinking/vampirism, mentions of impact play (whipping, spanking), swords/blades, bit of blood, biting, scratching

AN: Thanks to everyone who voted on my poll (back in the day). Sorry for the delay and here are your top choices plus our favorite birdy boy - hope you enjoy!

Mairon

𓂀 Once your heart is his, Mairon makes sure to live up to his reputation as the Lord of Gifts and the Lord of the Rings. Whether it is to seal a bond of marriage, asking for your hand or a promise of love and courtship, he crafts a beautiful ring just for you - showing everyone that you are now his and possibly also enhancing said ring with a few spells so he can watch over you.

𓂀 Yet gold is not the only way for him to mark your body; he also loves to use his fire to ensure neither you nor anyone else will ever forget where you belong. Mairon's preferred symbol to draw on your skin is The Eye, and he loves to place it right on your neck or chest so he can see it every time he takes you.

𓂀 His love and desire for you take many forms, as does he; when in the shape of a vampire, he enjoys biting you and drinking your blood while he makes love to you, strengthening the bond between you. He may sing to you to keep you calm while he feeds, and his song causes the wound and the vein he drank from to appear golden for a time until it slowly fades. Mairon expects you to wear those marks with pride and not cover them up.

𓂀 Whenever his form has more wolfish attributes, he also likes leaving bite marks, but his favorite feature is his knot. He loves how it swells inside you and stretches you out while he breeds you and how it keeps his seed inside until he decides he's done with you for the night.

. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭

"Do you think you can take it?"

Mairon slams into you with the full strength of his fána, making sure you can feel every inch of his hot, hard cock stretching you out without mercy.

"Do you think you can take my knot, my precious little slut?"

You barely manage to nod before a searing hot sensation makes you cry out in pain and pleasure alike. The eye symbol, proudly adorning your chest, glows in response to his words, like on the day when you were first marked by his hand.

Satisfied with your obedience, Mairon stops moving and allows his seed to fill you. His knot swells proudly, binding you to him, and you try to muffle another scream — only for him to deter you with a quick slap on your thigh.

"No," he says firmly, "let me hear it. I want to hear how much you love this, and you will not deny me."

Gothmog

☄ Contrary to popular belief, Gothmog can be affectionate and isn't afraid to show it. He likes to keep you close in public and holds you like a pretty little doll, making it clear to everyone that you belong to him and no one else may come close to you, let alone touch you. Even when he isn't around, the scent of fire and heat of his touch seems to surround you everywhere you go.

☄ Yet make no mistake: The Lord of Balrogs is incredibly strong and likes it rough. He may use his claws and fangs to as part of passionate love making and leave bite and scratch marks in strategic spots to ensure that everyone knows he has claimed you. Carry your marks with pride: To Balrogs, they are a symbol of strength and a sign that you belong.

☄ Gothmog's favorite way to claim and mark you, however, is fire - but he won't use his whip unless you ask him to. Instead, he may opt to simply use his hands to leave a nice and warm hand print on your skin; the same applies to any sort of impact play where he uses his hands instead of any tools. The touch of a Balrog leaves a lingering feeling of either cosy warmth or searing heat, and which one it will be is his choice to make.

☄ Aside from horns that you can hold on to, Gothmog also has a tail - and yes, he can and will use it. Not only is it a convenient as an additional limb to wrap around you and pull you close when his hands and arms are occupied and to keep others away from you, but he can also use it to fuck you if he so chooses, be it to tease you or for double penetration. He loves to test your limits.

. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭

"What a pretty little thing you are." Gothmog pats your head with his large hand while he continues to effortlessly bounce you on his lap as if you weigh nothing.

You would have cried out from the intensity of his massive cock thrusting in and out of you rapidly, but all you manage is a muffled moan; your mouth is currently occupied by the tip of his tail.

"We don't need the entire fortress to hear you," Gothmog said beforehand, and you agreed.

He is — for his standards — gentle with you, but you also know that there isn't much mercy to be had in Angband. You consider yourself lucky to be with him.

Your thoughts are interrupted when Gothmog rakes the claws of his free hand down your back and chuckles when he feels your throat vibrate with muted screams.

"And so good for me too," he adds to his previous statement. "Keep taking me so nicely and I might even let you rest after this round."

Eönwë

⚔ As sweet and affectionate as Eönwë is with you in private, he's not exactly fond of others trying to compete, particularly during avian mating season. He stays with you whenever he can, guarding you like a precious treasure, and watches the people who approach you, both when's nearby and when he's somewhere else. Should another suitor be so foolish as to approach you anyway, they will soon notice a very irate Maia glaring at them and posturing aggressively, every single feather fluffed up.

⚔ While you two are still courting and not quite ready for marriage yet, Eönwë presents you with a lovely promise bracelet or anklet (your choice), made of his favorite materials that he gathered himself. Nothing makes him happier than seeing you wear it, and conveniently enough it also serves as a reminder to other suitors that you are very much taken - by the chief of the Maiar, no less.

⚔ When Eönwë makes love to you, he can be gentle, but he can also be feral. Sometimes his desire simply overwhelms him. Depending on his current form, he has talons on his hands and will make use of them to mark you, even drawing ancient patterns on you to show everyone who claimed you. You can also expect to find yourself covered in love bites, with his favorite area being your neck.

⚔ If you enjoy rough sex and agree to try out some more "extreme" kinks, Eönwë would love to make use of his sword - the song of steel and battle is ingrained in his very being, after all. As much as the rational part of him hates to see you hurt, the feral part of him is fascinated by the way you shiver when a cold blade is pressed against you or when it leaves beautiful lines of red on your skin and draws a few droplets of blood.

. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭

Cold steel bites into your skin as the blade touches your throat, but you only have eyes for Eönwë. He's breathing heavily, and his fána glows with barely contained lust.

"I want you," he breathes.

You spread your legs in silent invitation. Surely he must know that you are already his; even if you decided to fight back now, which is the last thing on your mind, he would be too strong for you.

"Exactly like this," Eönwë says then, and you understand. He wants to take you with his sword at your throat, utterly at his mercy, and your skin prickles with excitement.

The prospect of submitting to the greatest warrior of the Maiar so completely is thrilling.

Eönwë enters you with one swift thrust, his free hand reaching for your hip. You make sure not to move, as you know he wants from you, and welcome him inside. The blade presses against your skin, but only lightly; his hold is steady, his posture impeccable, no blood is drawn.

You surrender.

Tilion

☽ Tilion loves antlers, his pride and joy when it comes to his fána, and wants to share that with you. If you yourself are an Ainu and grow your own pair, he will paint them silver with moonlight. If not, he will gladly hunt beasts of your choosing for you to claim their horns or antlers as a prize for you to wear and paint them as well. Nothing makes him more proud than everyone seeing that you belong to him.

☽ In order to make sure you are always safe, even when he isn't around, Tilion also crafts protective moon charms, infused with the light of Telperion's fruit. These are designed to keep creatures of darkness away, fearing his wrath, and may also glow to alert you to nearby danger. Not least of all they come with the additional benefit of letting everyone know that Tilion is only ever one call away.

☽ He loves to be intimate with you whenever he can, worshiping your body to his heart's content. Like his own hunt and war paint, Tilion enjoys painting your skin with matching patterns. These are expressions of love and companionship, glowing hymns to your beauty, but also marks of ownership and desire.

☽ For as hopelessly romantic as Tilion is, never forget that he's also a hunter. When lust overwhelms him, he is a passionate and wild lover, and sex with him can get rough. He enjoys chasing you, catching you and holding you down while he takes you, as well as leaving bite marks all over your body. Rest assured though that he will take good care of you after and do anything to ensure that you're comfortable and at ease.

. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭

"You are too beautiful for your own good," Tilion sighs, smiling as he kisses you on the lips.

You are both naked, lying together on a bed of moss in the woods of Oromë, and panting heavily after a wild and lengthy chase. Of course your lover has caught you in the end and carried you to a comfortable hidden spot to enjoy his prey.

Tilion trails his hand down your chest, your stomach, your lower body, and you spread your legs in anticipation. He wants you, you can see it; his midnight blue eyes darken with desire.

"There you go, little deer," whispers gentle praise against your lips before pushing two fingers inside of you. "You will be all nice and wet for me soon, won't you?"

You nod. Of course you will be; how could you not when you are with your beloved hunter, chasing your love and your pleasure with no less determination and ferocity than he chases his prey.

Ossë

⚡︎ Ossë is a capricious and jealous lover. His feelings for you are strong and passionate, and he will fight anyone who wishes you ill - or comes closer than he would like. The storms he conjures are mighty, and even if Ulmo and Uinen stop him from giving in to his jealousy, Ossë is also a mischievous Maia who will find other ways to mess with those who have wronged you or him.

⚡︎ You will find yourself getting showered with gifts from him, various trinkets that he picks up in the oceans of Arda: Pearls, seashells, items and parts from sunken ships, bones, teeth and also all sorts of fish and sea creatures he caught for you. Ossë delights in swimming, diving and hunting to his heart's content, but most importantly coming home to you with something new to show you.

⚡︎ Just like he himself is wild and fierce, so is intimacy with him. You will find yourself completely soaked, regardless of whether he takes you in the water (as he prefers) or outside, and covered in bite and scratch marks; Ossë simply can't resist taking a bite out of something as beautiful as you are. He also loves the thought that everyone can tell what you two have done afterwards.

⚡︎ Ossë enjoys being on top of you, all around you and inside you, having his tail wrapped tightly around you. After he's done making love to you, he likes carrying you around like a precious little pearl and singing to you in ancient tongues until you fall asleep. You may also notice that, whenever you've been with him, the scent of seawater sticks with you for days.

. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭

The sand feels warm against your skin, but Ossë's form is cool and smooth. He rolls over so he's lying on top of you, his tail wrapping around your legs, and flashes you a toothy grin, like a hungry sea monster about to devour its unfortunate prey.

"Should I take you here, marilla? Or should I drag you to the bottom of the ocean first?" he teases.

Clawed, webbed fingers hold onto you possessively, and Ossë wastes no time nibbling on the side of your neck as you writhe underneath him.

"Please have mercy, o lord of storms," you gasp, entertaining his little game to entice him to go on.

You know your words had the intended effect when you feel something hard pressing against your thigh.

"Perhaps I will," Ossë muses, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

His tail keeps its grip on your legs, and he pushes his now-exposed cock between your thighs to rut against you.

"We will even start slowly," he whispers, "but worry not. You shall feel my full strength soon enough."

. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭. . . . . ◟੭

marilla (Quenya) - pearl

Thanks for reading! ♡

taglist: @angbangbaby @asianbutnotjapanese @a-world-of-whimsy-5 @bluezenzennie @edensrose @elanna-elrondiel @eunoiaastralwings @i-did-not-mean-to @just-little-human @saintstars @singleteapot @urwendii

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sodapopwrites · 7 months ago

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a ballad of flame and shadow part five

pairings - lucien vanserra x rhysand's sister!reader, azriel x rhysand's sister!reader, platonic!cassian x rhysand's sister!reader

summary - she let worry, hopelessness, and grief cloud her once more. she sent herself into a stupor of avoidance and found that the only company she could stomach was cassian, much to the distress of azriel. at news of her brother she finds herself unable to hold it together and cassian has to pick up the pieces before azriel is able to say a word to her.

word count - 2.6k

a/n - i am trying my best with the time skips guys. i know theyre vague. but get ready for rhysand's return in the next chapter! oh god that man has no idea what he's about to walk into. also buckle up for the slightest bit of feyre meddling. also let's give cassian a trophy for being god's strongest buffer.

read the rest of the series here!

Years had passed and she’d let her dynamic with Azriel revert to whatever it was before Amarantha. Whatever it had been when their family was whole. They didn’t speak of their brief union. If one could even call it a union. Nobody spoke of it. They let the pair keep their secrets.

Cassian took his seat beside her at the dinner table once more. Azriel had returned to his place further down the table. She had gone back to waking up from nightmares and crying herself to sleep. A bitter replacement for Azriel’s whispered words of comfort and gentle caress. Azriel no longer let his shadows curl around her. He kept them up in a shield around himself. She no longer looked to meet his eyes in amusement whenever Amren and Cassian started to bicker. Any eye contact was rarely made between the two. They had gone back to silent longing tinged with something else now, the whisper of the way they missed each other, haunting.

Azriel didn’t dare push her. He didn’t dare ask her why she had kissed him that night decades ago. Why she had started to finally seek him out only to push him away. He didn’t let himself. It was easier this way. Easier to ignore that they had ever shared a bed, hushed secrets, lingering touches, peaceful moments. Easier to ignore that they had shared anything at all. But he carried it with him constantly. The golden thread of that unrequited mating bond wrapped itself around the aching loss of her.

The necklace he had given her. A dainty replica of his siphon. A testament to his willingness to give himself to her completely. He’d see it peeking out from under her clothes. See the silver chain shine against her skin. See the glittering cobalt glass wink at him as it lay in the dip of her collarbone. She wore it still. A small piece of him.

Maybe she carried it too. That aching loss of him.

────────────── ⋆✩⋆ ──────────────

She could never fill it. That hole he had carved into her heart. She had tried for centuries before she had ever even had him, to no avail. But now that she had gotten a taste of his endearment she found herself searching for the flavor of it everywhere. But she never found it.

She had grown thin, ribs straining under the skin wrapping her chest. Her hair had grown longer than she ever used to let it. Her under eyes held a constant stain of purple now, nobody knew if she even tried to sleep anymore. She wandered around the house like a ghost, only able to bring herself to talk to one person. To keep one companion. Cassian.

They sat on one of the many balconies adoring the House of Wind. She found it easier to be outside. There was something about floating around her brother’s house that made her sick to her stomach. Something about knowing that she might not ever see him wander those halls ever again, that made her feel like the very smell of the place could suffocate her. So instead, she spent most of her time lurking on balconies.

Cassian watched her carefully. Watched as her finger slowly circled the rim of her wine glass. He doesn’t know how many glasses she’s had today, but he’s willing to bet on one too many. Her eyelids were heavy even if they were far from sleep. They had spent the morning training. Something he was tentative to do lately. As she lost more and more weight, as her eyes grew more and more hollow. But it was something she insisted on. Everytime she sensed him going easy on her she would land harsh and insistent blows on him, until he grew annoyed enough to snap back with full force.

The bruises from their sparring match could be seen peeking out from the billowing fabric of her dress. She had opted for looser clothing as of late, a half hearted attempt to hide her near sickly form. He eyed the purple tinted skin with a new found wary,

“Azriel has been patrolling more often lately.”

Her entire body seemed to stiffen at the mention of the spymaster. He continued gingerly,

“There are whispers of a human girl residing in Spring Court”

Her hold on the glass in her hand tightened dangerously. Don’t do this. Don’t give any inkling of hope for the breaking of this curse. She wanted to scream it at him but she stayed quiet. She thought of Lucien for the first time in years. She hadn’t let herself wonder how he was, if that anger he held for her still burned as bright as it had that Calanmai many years ago.

She thought of him, trying to get Tamlin to fall in love. Trying to get the beast to soften enough for a human girl to get through to him. She thought of Lucien’s own distaste for humanity and what kind of snide, vaguely humorous remarks he must be making about the poor girl. A small smile played on her lips at the thought of it. She let the smile die as fast as she had let it come,

“Whispers?”

How had Azriel managed to hear anything of the sort? If Tamlin truly was close to breaking his curse the last thing he would want is people knowing, for fear of Amarantha finding out. There was only one person capable of sending word to Azriel without anyone finding out. Her heart felt like it was about to beat out of her chest. Cassian looked like he didn’t want to tell her but he let the words slip out anyway,

“Rhysand managed a faint and entirely too short message.”

The glass in her hand shattered. The wine in it flooding over her fingers in a mixture of blood. Glass embeded in the fragile skin of her palms. Cassian lept from his seat to cradle her hand in his own. She could barely breath. Barely think.

He had sent word. The first whisper of him in nearly fifty years. He had sent word. Not to his sister, but to his shadowsinger. He was well enough, held enough power, to send word.

Forty nine years of lost hope came shattering around her. Forty nine years of wondering if her brother had any power left at all came crashing down on her. It was like this one drop of hope had shattered every defense she had spent forty nine years building. Drops of red were falling from her fingertips. Dripping down onto the folds of her gray dress. She barely noticed.

She barely noticed Azriel slide onto the balcony from where he had been skulking behind the doorframe. Barely noticed Cassian trying to pull shards of glass out of her skin. Barely noticed as Cassian pulled her up from her chair.

Her head was spinning. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the news. Rhysand would not have risked saying anything at all if he didn’t think that maybe this was the key. That this human girl was the key to his freedom. To Prythians salvation. She was dizzy and weak. Her stomach churned.

As Cassian pulled her from the balcony and towards her room she felt Azriel reach out. His hand brushed her shoulder in what was barely a touch. But it was enough. Enough to send a spark through her whole body. She couldn’t bear it. Before she could stop it, the miniscule contents of her stomach came hurtling up her throat. She couldn’t stop herself from heaving in the hallway.

Azriel watched as Cassian tried to get her to her room. He watched as his brother held up the entirety of her weight as she gagged into the fine carpet of the hall. He watched as the Illyrian general hauled her into her room. Helpless. Not knowing if he should follow. Not knowing if his presence would be too much for her.

He thought of the way she had been drinking lately. Like she was using it as a way to not feel anything at all. A numbing so she wouldn’t have to think of him. Think of her brother. Think of Lucien. Think of anything at all. Something to keep her from herself. So she could sit mindless and let the wind brush against her features as she wasted away on night dusted balconies.

────────────── ⋆✩⋆ ──────────────

Cassian knelt with her in her bathroom. Holding her hair away from her face as she vomited. He winced at the sight of her frail form expelling what little food she had willed herself to consume that day. When she finally calmed he pulled upright and let her settle on the floor, leaning against the bathtub.

He tried to ignore the shadows that crept into the room as he started running hot bathwater. Tried to ignore the way they inched closer to him as he gently pulled her up, rid her of her dress, and placed her in the steaming water. He tried not to wince at the bruises littering her back, her arms, her chest. Tried not to wonder why she wasn’t letting herself heal. Bruises like that always vanished quickly from her skin. He tried not to think that he was enabling some twisted form of self harm when he trained with her.

Her eyes were closed. She couldn’t get herself to open them. Even as Cassian cleaned the cuts on her hand, as he bandaged them gingerly, as the gauze he wrapped around them became uncomfortably tight. She cringed and he ran a hand down her arm in a soothing gesture, before going back to fretting over her injury.

Her head would not stop pounding. As Cassian pulled her from the bath, as he wrapped a robe around her, as he led her to her bed, and tucked her underneath the covers. It was like a routine, a clear tell that this was not the first time he'd had to do this. Sharp pains bolted their way through her entire nervous system at every movement. She settled into the soft pillows and cool sheets of her bed, letting the feeling lull her into calm.

Shadows curled their way through her room. Twisting across the floor, reaching for her, worried and frantic in movement. Cassian observed them carefully with something like guilt etched in his face. Guilt that he was the one she allowed with her in this moment. Guilt that he knew Azriel stood outside her closed door itching to come inside. He followed that feeling out of her room, leaving her to sleep, hoping she would let herself sleep.

He cast one more look back towards her before he left. Not missing the way the shadows had crawled up the sides of her bed to rest with her, to curl into her hair, and around her hand. To lull her to sleep. Cassian pushed the door open and was immediately met with Azriel’s towering form.

“She’s okay”

Azriel shook his head. Something like anger brewing behind his eyes and in the curls of shadow circling his arms. Cassian raised his hands in surrender and Azriel let his posture fall.

“It should have been me”

The one to clean her up, to help her wash the day off, to carry her to bed.

“You know she wouldn’t let you”

The flash of pain that seared it’s way across the shadowsingers features sent a pang through Cassian’s chest. He let out a deep sigh and patted his friend on the shoulder once before leaving Azriel to stand outside her door.

He traipsed into the sitting room where Mor and Amren had been sitting. Mor looked at him with worry etched across her beautiful face.

“Is she okay?”

He shook his head, “I shouldn’t have told her like that”

Mor held out a hand to him, he took it, and crashed onto the sofa next to her. As if he was exhausted. It was her turn to shake her head now,

“It would have hit her the same either way. There was no way to tell her that wouldn’t break her a little.”

“It shouldn’t break her”

Amren said it so casually, as if she didn’t know why their friend was reacting the way she did. Mor and Cassian knew she knew all too well, but sent incredulous glances at her nonetheless.

“She let herself believe that everything was hopeless, sank into it, even started to relish in it.” Mor’s voice was tired and strained as she looked to Cassian.

“Even the idea of Rhysand returning, of Prythian starting to heal, it opens up the door to things she isn’t ready to deal with.”

Amren let out a huff of air, something between a sigh and a laugh, “Will she ever be ready to deal with it?”

────────────── ⋆✩⋆ ──────────────

There was a dip in her bed. A weight had settled somewhere close to her and it caused her to wake from an uneasy slumber. She blinked awake. Slowly. Azriel sat on the edge of her bed. A hand outstretched to her and eyes pleading. Begging her to take it. Just this once. After all this time. Just take his hand.

She took it. He brushed his thumb over her bandage and looked at her. He thought of her heaving up her many glasses of wine. Thought of the way her blood trailed down the hall as Cassian pulled her to her room. Thought of the way she had winced away from his touch as she was swept away from the balcony.

He whispered her name. The word was etched with a desperate request to meet his eyes. She did.

“I need to ask only one thing of you”

She blinked at him. It looked like it pained him to say it. To speak to her at all. It was like he was out of practice after her many years of adamant avoidance. She nodded for him to continue.

“If youre going to use something, to forget, use someone, for comfort..”

The new found drinking habit. The way she trailed Cassian as if he could shield her from every shadow Azriel sent to look after her. He swallowed and took a deep breath in.

“Use me”

He looked like he might cry. The idea of it shook her enough that she finally spoke to him. A hoarse whisper. Barely audible.

“Is that what you think I was doing? Using you?”

A long pause. A stretch of quiet filled the room. He held her hand still. Still brushing his fingers over the blood stained bandange.

“I think….I think you desperately needed a distraction from the world. From old flames.”

She sat up now. Letting herself bring her hand to his cheek. Cradling his face. Forcing him to keep looking at her.

“It was more than that”

It was all she could choke out.

“Was it?”

His voice sounded more broken than she had ever heard it. Those two words rattled her. Her hand fell from his, her other sliding off his face, and falling to her lap. He stood swiftly and moved to leave. He stopped at the door and tried to regain some of his composure before leaving her room. He called his shadows, from every corner of the room, pulling them back to guard himself. He turned his head slightly, not completely allowing himself to look back at her over his shoulder.

She could have sworn he whispered something along the lines of I miss you before he pulled the door closed behind him. A dull golden ache thrummed in her chest as he left.

Was it?

Hundred of years pining for him gone to waste. She had wasted it on a couple years of comfort. Had made it seem like he was just a distraction from something bigger. As if she hadn’t spent her entire life trying to find something to distract her from him.

Was it?

Why couldn’t she ever just let anything be easy?

taglist:

@littlepippilongstocking

#azriel x reader #acotar #bat boys #cassian acotar #morrigan acotar #amren acotar #azriel acotar #lucien vanserra x reader #night court #rhysand #azriel angst #azriel shadowsinger #azriel x you #azriel x oc

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phoenixeclipse-lmkau · 4 months ago

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Empressnight_30 asked via Ao3:

What if Mk and Bai He, the adopted children of Shadopeach, were yandere for the reader? They get reunited with their fathers and meet the reader. Mk and Bai He are a bit apprehensive of the reader but slowly warm up to them. They start thinking that the reader is a mom to them. That’s when they become platonic yandere.

Mk trying show off his cool moves to his “mom” and Bai He would be picking flowers for her “mom”. Mk and Bai He see all of five of them being a happy royal family. They reluctantly accept Spirit as their Aunt. They want to ride of her like their dads but knows it will make their “mom” upset.

They are both bloodthirsty but not as bad as their dads. You know, since it is a Warlord Au. They would do anything for their “mom,” and just like their dads, they wouldn't push the envelope and would back off if their “mom” told them to.

Like the idea of the family being yandere for reader.

>>>

Oh, I like these dynamics for sure. That would be a cool read for sure. I however have a different approach that I was planning.

Mk does have a slight Yandere gene that he got from Wukong and Macaque, this gene is directed for someone else though. In this au he was born from the stone like Wukong. However because Macaque was always around the island he also got some attributes from him.

So, this boy has six ears, golden eyes and of course his dark brown fur. He is more powerful than in the show but of course also has a hard time controlling his power. Well that depends on if I have the monkey duo raise him or if I have Pigsy raise him. Probably Wukong and Macaque, just got to get through some plotting issues I’m having. Some changing stuff around.

Anyways, when he meets Reader, he would definitely see her as a mother figure, he’s a loving kid so doesn’t dislike her but he’s slow to warm up to her as a true friend. And for some reason she’s starting to pop up everywhere, he doesn’t know that she was his dads wife at first. But when he hears about it.

He actually tries to protect her from them, he likes his freedom and doesn’t want hers for be taken. So, he wouldn’t try to keep her on the island, but he would be very protective, like VERY protective of her. I see him as a stone trying to help her but also tries to make his dads happy, he doesn’t want his dads to be mad at him per say but he doesn’t want to take Reader’s freedom away. His feelings are very conflicted.

As for Spirit, he actually likes her. She’s a strong monkey demon who is willing to let him spar with her, and she helps him learn where his blind spots are. And NOT to underestimate your opponent. He does however find that she can be slightly annoying at times.

Bai He, oh now she is a character that I want to delve into a bit. I’ve actually got three ideas for her. Yes, one of them is the warlords raising her, another is that Reader could find her and take her in and the last is pretty angsty.

I see her as being slightly clingy since she was an orphan and wants the best for her mother, who cares for her a lot.

In the version that Wukong and Macaque raise her they find her abandoned by her parents who drop her off a ship. She washes up onto their shore and they take her in since she is so young, and their wife was human and would hate for them to throw out a human child. They grow fond of her and take care of her until they reunite with their wife. (Who she grows fond of immediately. Her dad and baba can comb through her hair just fine but her new mother is so gentle and sweet with it. She takes her time to care for not only of her hair but also to talk about anything and everything that she could ask about. She doesn’t make the world outside sound scary like her dads. She makes it sound beautiful.)

She also likes having another girl around that she can talk to.

She isn’t Yandere for Reader but she does want her to stay with the family. She wants Reader to be her mother in every way possible but she respects Reader’s decisions. No matter what this little girl loves and cares for her family even when they decide to travel away from each other.

The other version of Bai He was was thinking of was Reader taking her in actually. Reader raises Bai He along with two other rascals who are her oldest children. Anyways Bai he loves her mother and wants her life to stay just how it is. (The monkey duo have to win the child over too now)

And with this version… hehe~ Lets just say that the monkey duo don’t realize she’s adopted, they think that she’s Reader’s bio kid… So ya know, drama! They go trying to find Bai He’s dad but come up with nothing. They are jealous over someone who doesn’t even know Reader.

The last version was a more angsty one. In that version I thought about having Bai he as someone who the Lady Bone Demon/The Mayor raised to be LBD’s host. So she’s more traumatized but eventually after the LBD arc she’s adopted and loved by… dun dun dun Reader and the warlords!

Anyways I’m still deciding on the kids, but they aren’t Yandere for Reader. They instead want her to have the freedom she desires. So there is some tension between them and their dads, but they are loved by all three of their parents no matter what.

All of the kids have differing opinions on Spirit too, since she has ice like powers, Bai He finds her hard to trust. She doesn’t like the cold.

Hope this answered your question!

#dead dove do not eat #sun wukong x macaque #yandere sun wukong #yandere macaque #sun wukong x reader #macaque x reader #shadowpeach x reader #Cursed warlords #cursed warlords lmk au #cursed warlords au #ask #ao3 ask

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inchidentally · 9 months ago

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something about those pictures of Oscar with his friends really got me crazy about landoscar. Their lives are infinitely different and i feel like thats a huge part of their dynamic. I'm not even going to say that they complement each other anymore, it's an entire opposites attract at this point. and it got me thinking about Oscar's fascination with Lando. Oscar's "you went everywhere!" or picking Lando for a having a good time MULTIPLE TIMES.... etc. Lando's "oscar's cool he's calm and relaxed" or "he's down to earth". so many times where the difference in their lifestyle showed yet the other person is interested in that. thinking about Lando going from club to club to club to country to country to model to model vs Oscar has probably vacationed in the same place with the same people for a month and has had the same gf since high school. i just feel like they both would integrate into the other's life so well because each one has got a missing piece of the puzzle for the other. you know what i mean? like does that make sense?am i sounding crazy again? thoughts?

ANON PLS you make nothing but sense !!

literally the things like they love about each other being the ways they're different!! Oscar has been a fanboy for over 8 or 9 years ?? of Lando not just bc of Lando's successes in racing but he's also an ardent follower of the ways in which Lando is extroverted and wild and funny and unpredictable. as you said Lando always says what he likes the most about Oscar is how steady and down to earth and just a good person he is.

and their holidays like this one always make me think of the latest sportbible and their ideal first date ideas where Oscar is super traditional and has only ever had one first date in his life so far - and Lando's like oh we fuck before we even get out the door for dinner safhalfghalfgasjfgajls

Oscar politely seeing the sites with Lily in a 'Mark's travel agent recommended it' set of locations and then a holiday rental with old friends going karting playing tennis and eating pizzas and gasp!! not shaving !!... vs Lando practically begging strangers in three different countries to cup his exposed breasts and ovulating nipples while playfully evading fans' attempts to track his movements like an Aeolian sex sprite turning a lush golden shade of tan beneath the kisses of an adoring Mediterranean sun

and the way in which that all translates to them as teammates and now friends but also how they're still so gently pawing at said friendship bc they want to spend more time together but don't want to directly push for it and their reactions to team orders drama is to laugh together and put on smiles for the other and the way they gloated over the drama faced by other teams during silly season bc Lando kept slipping up acting as if they'd been together "years" already instead of barely two and they gently push the muzzles of fans and media and netflix out of their time together like needy dogs trying to sneak into a bathroom likeeeeeee they are so something thoroughly unique together !!!

#inchreplies #landoscar #inchidentallyanessay

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confusedmothboy · 14 days ago

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hello hello. i would love to hear your thoughts on how you think travis’s dynamic with his mother(and father) was pre-crash! and also with his mother post-crash. no pressure to answer this i’m just Thinking about it now

YESSSS the martinez family is so interesting to me and its never touched on like at all

just a disclaimer thers a lot of speculation around them that delves more into stereotypical hispanic gender roles that probably influenced their dynamic and i am listening to all of it BUT im also white as fuck so i'll be speaking from my experience that obviously. doesnt include that

all the yapping is under the cut

in the first frames, travis isnt even in the shot. coach martinez hands the bag over to javi, and the camera pans over to travis, who's standing just brooding. i think this kinda immediately hits us with "javi is the golden child" or at least the only one acknowledged in a positive manner with his parents.

when it finally does pan over to travis, he's standing pretty far from everyone, showing the audience the distance from the rest of his family he tries to keep. he could help, but doesnt. i think its interesting how coach martinez tasked his 12 year old with loading up the car instead of his 15 year old whos perfectly capable ykyk. i think this sets up a lot of the resentment we see with travis both towards his dad and towards javi. javi, for whatever reason, is already seen as more capable by their dad than travis is.

this scene is usually skipped way over because of what comes right after it, and you cant really see it in the single screenshot, but javi completely shrugs off his mom's attempt to hug him goodbye. preteen angst? maybe. mirroring coach martinez and/or travis? ohhhh most definitley.

except coach martinez knows that in certain situations, appearance mattters. javi can shy away from parental affection, travis can be off doing whatever, but a husband should kiss his wife goodbye. except she SO does not want that. people speculate dv, affairs, just a general unhappy marriage, but i think its more indicative from a narrative point that this is a traditional family. mom, dad, two brothers just a few years apart, thats like. the goal family pretty much everywhere. they are absolutely nuclear. i feel like the lack of divorce thats very needed here can imply a few things, but overall, we know that this is an appearance-heavy, traditional, "normal" household.

travis gets in the car right after that, neither him nor his mother attempting to say their goodbyes. again, its hard to know whats intentional and whats just the script instructions saying [act like a moody teenager]. whatever.

travis clearly doesnt like his father, saying that coach martinez never even liked him, saying he was a shit dad, all that at his father's gravesite. lets just take a moment to acknowledge how batshit it is that coach martinez works at the same school that travis is relentlessly fucking harassed at and seemingly does nothing about it. i see him being the "getting bullied scares the weakness right out of someone" type, hence why we can assume he never tries to help his son out. he approaches coaching the same way but this isnt a coach martinez analysis this is about travis (and javi)

in these kinds of family dynamics, usually theres a "safer" parent, like you got one you cant ever talk to and then the other who you have a bit more connection with. but neither is trustworthy, because in the back of your mind there's always something nagging that "[safe parent] is still putting up with [other parent]'s behavior and doesn't try to do anything about it, even when it impacts me". because of this, i cant imagine travis having any sort of healthy dynamic with his mom either. in houses like these, sometimes its easier to blame the safe parent when they dont rush to your defense.

on javi: coach martinez obviously respects javi more. or at the very least is easier on him than on travis, most definitely because javi is the younger of the two. that's probably why coach martinez's behavior and travis's attitude dont rub of on javi as much as they could have. notice how javi's the only one that their mother tries to hug goodbye? notice how travis, being a 15 year old who's been bullied and ignored by people at school and at home, is desperate for physical affection the second nat starts to fall for him out in the wilderness? yeah. im sending brain waves over to you rn to convey what i cant exactly put into words. only when travis is out of his home and without both of his parents can he begin to deconstruct the resentment he built against javi. i also think that him being so aggressive with javi right after the crash was a form of preservation for javi's mental state. travis wanted javi to not only admit that their dad was awful (validating travis's experience), but also to protect javi and force him to build the same walls against their dad to save him from the adverse effects of oh i dunno seeing him impaled on a tree?? in travis's mind, until nat and him have that conversation, it's easier and safer to just say "nah i always hated him" and move on. theres a lot i could say about the realism in the martinez brother's dynamic but this is so long already and i have to get to school like 10 minutes ago

overall the family dynamic between these four actually drives me insane. both because we're shown so much and so little and OHHHH its delicious and awful and far too close to home

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets season 1 #yellowjackets thoughts #travis martinez #coach martinez #javi martinez #mrs martinez (yellowjackets)#top ten most tragic characters in the show and she doesnt even have a name #mothboy yaps #sorry if this is incoherent #ughhggh

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velvet-vox · 3 months ago

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Revisiting what Epic Mickey 2 tried to say about trust, second chances, and daddy issues.

In celebration of the recent release of Epic Mickey Rebrushed, and with the possibility of a remake of the second chapter of the franchise on the horizon (one that's most likely going to overhaul the original game's narrative by a lot, like, a complete and utter do-over of the story), I think it's finally time to take a second look at the story that Epic Mickey 2 was trying to tell, the elements that were put in place, and the noticeable shortcomings that it ultimately faced.

Despite how undercooked the story of EM2 turned out to be, I genuinely believe that the writers were actually taking the franchise into the right direction, as a lot of the creative decisions taken in the final game are things that, upon closer inspection, are actually really interesting and build upon what was introduced in the first game pretty naturally.

I have a lot of nostalgia for this game, so much so that even if I grew up and I've realised that the story stinks, I'm not gonna lie: I still feel very impacted when I watch its animated cut scenes; I guess it has to do with how much confidence this game has for itself, it transmits said confidence to me, the viewer, and gets me invested; even if the plot is rather mediocre, you can tell by Oswald's anime-shaped eyes in the final 2d cutscene of the game that the writers were fully confident in what they were trying to say.

I had in mind various ideas on how to add depth to my findings, such as thinking about introducing the character of Mortimer Mouse into the mix, but in the end, I thought it was best to simply analyse the ultimate game for what it became, not for what it could have been.

One important thing that I wanted to highlight immediately before I start, is this post made by user @emoevanafton , who goes into greater detail about the relationship of the Gremlin characters, even if he/she/they kind of over justifies Prescott's actions, making him slightly come off as if he never did anything wrong when that's not the case.

I'm sure there are many other analysis posts made on the Gremlin's family (some of which I actually have right beside me as I write), but I particularly enjoyed reading this one, so I wanted to highlight it some more.

I will also only be talking about the story, because while the gameplay is something that I care about immensely, it's not something that I actually want to talk about, plus, everything that I have to say about it is just "Make it better" and that's it.

So, the very first thing we need to do in order to see if there's anything worth keeping from the story of Epic Mickey 2 is ask this question:

What was Epic Mickey 2 actually all about?

Daddy issues (WHAT?!?) everywhere.

For starters, I'm actually going to jump directly into the less obvious stuff, and discuss how EM2 further expands on the distant father/forgotten son relationship dynamics introduced in EM.

For a brief reminder, one of the sticking points of Oswald's rivalry with Mickey was that he felt that Walt Disney, their father, abandoned him in favour of Mickey; in other words, Mickey is the so called "Golden Child", the younger sibling, the one who gets all of the attention, while Oswald is the independent firstborn, the eldest son (Julius the cat is irrelevant to the story as of now), the one who has to be responsible for himself and for others.

While the actual truth behind Walt's abandonment of Oswald is far more complicated than what the two brothers eventually realize, it's the effects left by these sequence of events that shaped their family dynamic in this way, and the entire emotional core of the first game is about Oswald letting go of his grudge against Mickey and Mickey making up for his mistakes by unleashing the Thinner Disaster upon Wasteland.

In the sequel, Epic Mickey 2, Mickey and Oswald have already resolved some of their family problems, so the story attempts to expand upon these themes with the introduction of a second complicated family dynamic in the story, whose members are meant to act as foils to Mickey, Oswald and Walt Disney.

Who am I talking about? I'm talking about the family of Gus, our favourite gremlin grandpa, Gremlin Jamface, a new character who was originally meant to have Markus' role in EM, and Gremlin Prescott, a previously minor side character in the first game who has now been promoted to the role of major side antagonist in this installment.

These three Gremlins and their relationship are meant to neatly parallel the messy family dynamic of our playable characters, so that the story can better showcase Mickey and Oswald's view of trust and need for approval.

It can come off as pretty subtle due to the lack of a climactic resolution for our Gremlins' involvement within the story, but the parallels between the characters are clearly there, and are exactly between:

Walt Disney and Gremlin Gus:

For those of you who are unaware, Gus is, indeed, a father figure to both Prescott and Jamface. Whatever the two of them are actually his biological children is still a point of debate amongst the fanbase; however it's rather irrelevant to our current discussion, as neither Mickey nor Oswald are technically Walt's biological children either.

Gus is also a father figure to all of the Gremlins in Wasteland, who we could use as parallels for the other cartoons that Walt as worked to, such as Snowhite and Sleeping Beauty, but it's admittedly a far-fetched strech.

The thing that we need to keep in mind when talking about the parallels between Walt and Gus is the impact that they had on their kids, as Walt doesn't really have an in-universe personality or explanation for his actions; we, the audience, may know from a meta perspective why Oswald was abandoned for the sake of Mickey, but inside this franchise, as far as the characters are concerned, Walt Disney might have just been an awful dad who abandoned his first kid because he felt like it, I'm not going to use real life history to construct my argument because it feels unfair and rather... out of touch, to say the least?

Anyway, both Gus and Walt are older father figures who end up being mythologised by a lot of characters in the game. They both have two other characters, who are delegated as their closest children, look up to them for sustain. Unfortunately, both of them also ended up neglecting the oldest of said children, leading them to build up anger, while favouring the youngest, but while Walt can no longer make peace with his creations for the trauma they ended up going through due to being dead, Gus, is pretty much still alive, but hasn't yet made peace between his sons due to a series of reasons. Maybe he would have been able to do so in that theoretical third game, but we can only speculate.

Oswald and Gremlin Prescott:

Oswald and Prescott are the two independent older siblings, whose qualities and successes are never fully appreciated by their father figures.

In a way, Prescott is an answer to the question of "What if Oswald adhered to his original role as one of the major EVIL villains of the first game?"

Both Oswald and Prescott are the "rulers" of a forgotten land and their denizens, Oswald is the king of Wasteland and its toons, while Prescott is the lord of the Floatyard and its abandoned rides, a literal wasteland inside of Wasteland.

They are both quite temperamental, but also very intelligent: Oswald meticulously recreated Wasteland in his sanctuary, while Prescott recreated Epic Mickey 1 in the dioramas, which also showcases another trait they have in common, their hopefulness, devotion to their idols, and opposite arcs, Oswald looked up to Walt, while Prescott looked up to Gus; Oswald started out hating Mickey and grew to like him, while Prescott started out loving Mickey and grew to hate him, and eventually they both looked up to the Mad Doctor but were backstabbed by him.

Speaking of the Mad Doctor, both Oswald and Prescott have a similar relationship with him:

Oswald wants to appeal to his surrogate father figure, the Mad Doctor, as compensation for not receiving the approval of his original father, Walt Disney.

Prescott wants to appeal to his surrogate father figure, the Mad Doctor, as compensation for not receiving the approval of his original father, Gremlin Gus.

Mickey and Gremlin Jamface:

Despite Gremlin Jamface not being as noticeable as Prescott or Gus (there are no 2D images of him in the game, besides the cutout of the Mad Doctor's diary), he's still an important character to the game's story, hence why he is present in the level before the final boss fight.

Mickey and Jamface are the youngest siblings, as well as the golden child of their respective families, showering in all the attention of their older siblings.

They are the ones getting all the attention from their parents and the people around them (Jamface is well respected by the Gremlins and the denizens of Wasteland at large, and Mickey is loved by his friends and the general audience)

I could go on and on into further details, but I'd rather keep this section short and I think I've made my point.

So, these characters are clearly meant to be foils, what does this mean? Well, you see I think the reasons why said relationships were set in place was for the game to expand on them with its story; I'm not sure how the rewrites affected things, but I believe the general plan was always to further explore a messy family dynamic and how that affects all of its members.

Admittedly, Walt Disney himself should have been a bigger part of the game story if that was the case, but I'm strictly sticking to what we got.

The Second chances (redemption?) theme.

Despite what one of the brush's main mechanics of befriending the enemies through paint might actually tell you, the Epic Mickey series never started to seriously entertain the idea of "redemption" until the second game, which makes sense, since Paint and Thinner were never strict representations of good and evil in the first game.

In fact, while the Thinner Disaster was caused by, well, Thinner, the Blot himself was created and made evil not by Thinner, but by Paint.

Paint and Thinner, while in different ways, are both equally responsible for the situation Wasteland is in at the start of the series: Mickey's curiosity and lack of an understanding of their powers is what caused all of the problems at the start of the EM1, and it's only by mastering their abilities that we, the player, and by extension Mickey, manage to finally put an end to them once and for all.

Paint, much like Thinner, is portrayed more as an utilitarian tool rather than a moralistic one; painting enemies is less about redeeming them for the sake of making them good and more so about the utility that you can get out of turning them to your side.

It's also why the Clocktower battle canonically ends with the Thinner solution: you are not actually meant to use only Paint or Thinner as the answer to all of your problems.

Anyway, in Epic Mickey 2, the writers tried to tie the paint and thinner mechanic to the ideas of redemption and second chances introduced in this second chapter.

Whether or not the final implementation is something worthy of existing, I'll leave it up to you; sorry, I'm too tired.

The Thrust Theme:

Finally talking about the Mad Doctor, his similarities with the Blot makes me think that just like him, he was meant to embody the game's conflict with thrust and fatherhood.

Let me explain: what makes The Blot such a memorable villain despite having literally zero personality or speaking lines is the fact that he is the embodiment of conflict inside of the game; every single theme, every single world building element, every character drama always ties back to him somehow, making it impossible to dismiss as just a massive threat for the protagonists to overcome.

I believe the writers were trying to write the Mad Doctor into the exact same position that the Blot filled, and on top of that, he was also written as another foil for Mickey since:

- They both created an army of monsters and "technically" lost control over it: Mickey created the Splatters, and Mad Doctor created the Blot Works.

In particular, the Blot Works Dragon seems a parallel to the Blot itself. I wouldn't say the Dragon is a one for one with the Blot, but he does have similarities with him indeed (also, in the first game, the Blot's design was inspired by Maleficent's dragon form at the end of Sleeping Beauty, aka where Dark Beauty castle comes from, and the first boss of Epic Mickey 2 is a dragon, so there's enough evidence at our disposal to make said claim).

- They both want to get out of Wasteland, but Mickey was already out, was forced to go to Wasteland due to the Blot, eventually got out thanks to his selflessness, and chose to re-enter Wasteland to help his friends, even if he couldn't come out of it in the end; while Mad Doctor was originally out before ending up in Wasteland, chose to work with the Blot, betrayed and manipulated everybody who trusted him in order to exit the place, and in the end, that either leads to his demise or to a change in his worldview.

- They both have Guardians, even if the Mad Doctor stole them.

- They were both first seen as villains in the eyes of Wasteland's denizens, and it's only after they help restore the place and fix their previous mistakes that they are able to gain people's trust, even if the Mad Doctor ends up betraying said hopes.

And finally, both of these characters are connected to the theme of thrust in some way, shape or form.

Mickey gained Oswald's thrust, but he later betrayed it because he didn't reveal that he was the one behind the Thinner Disaster. Guess who else did something similar?

Anyway, sorry if this seems like a very inconclusive ramble instead of an analysis, I've lost passion for this project a while ago due to outside events. Feel free to add to what I have said, and share your opinions and observations with everybody.

#epic mickey #epic mickey 2 #epic mickey remake #epic mickey rebrushed #mickey mouse #oswald the lucky rabbit #walt disney #gremlin gus #gremlin prescott #gremlin jamface #the blot #the mad doctor #analysis

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