#but like something something ptsd that rubs up against each other wrong. and having to learn to live and grow around it

[mamawasatesttube]

something i like to think about sometimes is that. man. you could really create some kind of perfect storm with the combo of tim's post-infinite crisis fear of losing kon again + kon's intense, but generally passive, suicidality. guy who was so convinced he had to die a hero that when it happened he didn't even seem bothered by it (because he can't be traumatized by his own death if it was what he was literally made for, right?) x guy who has developed a whole new type of mental illness out of the survivor's guilt 100x combo. put them both through the wringer at the same time with one easy trick (make tim think kon will try to sacrifice himself for something) (and kon very well might!)

[charnelhouse]

mausoleum (2)

Pairing: Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x F!Reader (other pairings later) Wordcount: 4.5K Warnings: gore. ptsd. references to captivity and torture. implied cannibalism. implied sex. there are mentions of hair. blood transfusion. needles. Summary: Red is grievously injured. 141 races against the clock to save her. A/N: Many thanks to @sprout-fics and @moondirti for reading through this because my damn eyes were crossing. Also, huge thanks to @ghostaholics who helped me with all the blood transfusion nonsense and ghost thots in general

Chapter 1

The rain continued to pour down with a violence. The pharmacy was cold-the kind of cold that was trapped in the linoleum and sunk into Price’s skin. Red’s hair had fallen out of its binding-spreading across the dirty floor. The blood was syrupy and dark as mud. Her eyelids hung heavy; her lips parted around uneven breaths. As if time had shifted, Price was suddenly seeing something else: Red Fox lying on that metal table in Kursk, her wrists bone-thin and strapped down. Her face so swollen it was nearly unrecognizable. 

It had only been a month. How could they have done the damage they’d done in a single month? 

But Price wasn’t an idiot, and he hadn't been an idiot then. He knew their enemies would have seen Red as something worth destroying. The sounds the men of 141 had made at the sight of her would never quite leave him. Incredulity. Shock. Rage. A wellspring of sadness had taken up residence within their circle. Red had been precious to them. Perhaps it was unfair to say that, but it was true. Regardless of what her and Simon had been, she’d also embedded herself into each of their lives and refused to move. She fought well. She survived better. 

Having to witness her be completely broken had destabilized them. It was as if the sky had cracked and fallen. The stars had collapsed against them and they could not push them back up.

Now, she had been nearly killed again.

Soap’s low cursing brought him back to the present. Johnny was hovering over her still form, his fingers gently pulling at the blood-drenched scarf Ghost had wrapped around her shoulder. 

She was conscious, but her coloring was worrisome. Soap worked on her vitals, revealing a penlight from his vest to check her eyes. The backdoor to the pharmacy jingled and Ghost whirled around, gun aimed. It was only Gaz.

“They had nothing,” he said, stalking down the aisle. “Guns had no bullets so it was all for show.” 

Price rubbed his jaw, feeling the tender hump of a bruise from a hit he’d taken outside. Cannibals. He hadn’t been surprised, though he felt like it was too soon for that level of desperation. They were probably the individuals who’d always wanted to-unafraid to commit something that barbaric when cans of food remained on the shelves. He’d seen men like that, especially in the military. They were the ones who signed up because they wanted a license to kill. 

He glanced to his left where Red’s attacker lay, his head twisted at the wrong angle. 

Good riddance.

If they hadn’t gotten here sooner…fuck. He didn’t want to think of that. She’d certainly been through enough with Kursk only a year or so before. Truthfully, it felt somewhat cosmic. Price was a logical man. He believed in what he could see, taste and feel. But after the outbreak, he had lost contact with his reason. 

Today had been lucky.

“Christ!” Gaz exclaimed once he spotted Red on the floor. “She alright?”

“Obviously,” Red replied before Price could. The words were faint, whistling past her lips. “Hi, Kyle.”

“Hey, darling.” Gaz’s eyes swung to Price. His expression worried. 

“Captain,” Soap murmured, turning to look up at him. The “captain” had stayed though Price had told them that they were all on equal footing. He supposed it was easier for them to remain in their positions. It allowed order. Familiarity. 

The fact was that there were no clear plans left. There were no predictable outcomes. Everything was belly-up, ass backwards. Fucked beyond comprehension. It made his teeth itch and his chest hurt. 

“What is it?” Ghost asked, striding past Price and crouching down beside Red. His gravelly voice was cut with a vulnerability he didn’t bother hiding. Ever since Red had been placed on leave, Ghost wasn’t himself. He’d been less cautious and more aloof if that was possible. He took mission after mission and then hid away in his room. Price watched as Ghost’s hand automatically went to her shoulder, his thumb finding her jaw to stroke it briefly before he moved it away. Another memory from Kursk shuddered through Price’s head. 

“You know what they fucking did to her,” Ghost choked out. He was losing it, completely falling apart. “You saw the reports. What the doctor said. What she said. She fucking remembers everything and-and I wasn’t there.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You know it is. If I hadn’t run…fuckin’ hell…if I hadn’t run…” Ghost couldn’t finish the sentence. 

”I can patch it for now,” Soap explained. “But I need more supplies. We’re runnin’ low.” He chewed his lip as he glanced down at the black bag beside him. “Everything is soaked in rain water and mud. I’m nervous she’ll get an infection.”

Red suddenly lifted her head, fingers twitching against her stomach. “House,” she rasped, lashes fluttering. She coughed and Ghost wordlessly curled his arm around her shoulders before subtly maneuvering himself behind her so that she could rest against his chest. It was an intimate move. She was a little thing and Ghost was unnaturally tall and broad. With her collapsed against him, it emphasized how Ghost dwarfed her in every way. They fit well together.

“What’d you say, love?” Soap urged, nudging her hair away from her face. “Your house?”

She nodded weakly before looking at Price. It took her a worrisome amount of effort to move her eyes. “Up the road. We-we have supplies…Price knows where it is.”

“I do,” he confirmed. “Soap—bandage her shoulder and we’ll get her there.”

“Aye,” Soap said as he began to rummage through his bag. Abruptly, he stopped. “Did she say we?”

***

The rain spat at them while the dense mud packed their boots. Thank god for the road. Gaz sat on the horse with Red, his arms secure around her waist as she rested against his torso. They’d swamped her in their dirty, sweat-soaked jackets to keep her warm. Beneath her hood, the tip of her nose and strands of her hair were the only things visible. 

The path was eerie, cloaked in a veil of mist and shadow. Price had seen the occasional body off to the side, rubbery limbs hidden in the grass or trees. He’d experienced a lot of fucking death in his life, but the kind he was witnessing daily made him prickle. It was wrong. You expect corpses on the battlefield, but not outside a quaint village and wearing giraffe-print galoshes. 

They walked in a single file line. He took the front with Soap. Ghost at the rear, shadowing the horse holding Red and Gaz.

“So,” Soap began as he inched closer to Price. “Have you been to her home before?”

“No,” Price’s fingers itched for a cigarette. “She recently inherited it from her parents. Before she left, she gave me the address.”

“It’s big I presume?”

Price chuckled. “It’s got its own wikipedia page.”

They’d come here for a few reasons. One-he’d wanted to find Red. She was part of their group. She was his family. She was vital and he wouldn’t leave her out here. Truth be told, he’d been scared. He knew her mental state when she’d been put on leave. She was in perpetual rigor mortis—her mind completely brutalized from what had happened to her in Russia. Even he didn’t know everything they’d done to her, though he could guess from her medical records. When he’d sat beside her hospital bed, she’d been so raw that he’d been terrified to say the wrong thing. He’d attempted to be a physical presence, offering her quiet words of comfort, but then she had left. She’d been effectively kicked out and Price wished he’d done better by her. 

It was why he’d been so adamant to find her. 

The idea of Red in isolation as the world ended left him stricken. He’d called and called, attempted to find her on the radio, but had only been met with static. 

The second reason was that he figured moving away from the cities and into farmland was their best option. Many of the great castles and estates had been running since the middle ages. They’d be ideal shelters when modern infrastructure ceased. No gas. No electricity. They’d go old school. 

He hadn’t really asked for the other’s opinions when he’d made the plan. 141 had been forced to flee the barracks, seeking refuge in one of their previous safehouses outside Edinburgh. After he was unable to make contact with Red again, Price had walked into the room, ready to declare the mission, but Ghost had beaten him to it.

“Red?” he’d asked, his mask pale in the dark. His head bent forward with his massive shoulders hunched. Ghost had been a fucking mess, forlorn and deeply angry. 

That was all he had to say. Red. The rest didn't matter. Where else would we go? What else would we do? Because they couldn’t move forward without confirming if she was alive or dead.  

“Yeah,” Price had replied. “We’re going to find her.”

We’re going to find our girl. 

In the distance, Price could see the road split. The entrance to the estate was to the right. He could make out the looming iron gate. There was so much greenery, overwhelming foliage.

Before they’d left the pharmacy, Red had described the traps she’d set up around the property. 

Be mindful of areas with too many leaves. Also, a bunch of trip wires. You’ll get your head shot off.

“God,” Soap drawled. “I missed you.”

“Such a sicko,” Gaz snickered, reaching out to take Red’s hand. 

Slowly, but surely the enormous house came into view. You could only make out the tips of the estate's spires rising above the trees. Red’s family crest gleamed from the center of the gate’s bars.

Soap whistled. “That ‘duchess’ nickname was a little on the nose. Thought Simon came up with that.”

“He did, but I don’t think he really knew Red was-” He gestured vaguely in front of him. “-all this.”

“Captain!” Gaz shouted and Price whipped around, gun raised and ready. Even from a distance, it was apparent that Red had gone boneless, head lolling forward. 

Simon was already beside the horse, his hands disappearing beneath Red’s hood to engulf her face and lift it up. Soap cursed and sprinted toward them.

“She wasn’t responding to me,” Gaz hissed, voice tense with unease. He grimaced as he lifted his arm to reveal the front of his shirt awash in blood. “I-I didn’t realize-everything’s fuckin’ soaked from the rain.”

“Open her jacket,” Soap ordered and Ghost ripped at the top of it, pulling it away from her body. Crimson sheeted down her chest, soiling her thin shirt. Ghost’s hands slipped from her arms to her cheeks, cupping them and incidentally smearing blood across her jaw and chin. 

“Jesus fuck, Johnny!” Ghost’s tone was one Price had heard only a few times in his life. It was wrinkled with nervousness–unhinged fear. “Did you not wrap it right?”

“I did!” Soap sealed his hand to her shoulder, but it was impossible to see shit in the rain. “Could have nicked an artery and we just—just didn’t know.” She was ashen, a waxy sheen clinging to her pallor. 

Price steeled himself. “How much can she lose?” 

He wouldn’t crack. Not here. He couldn’t afford it when everything was already bad enough.

“Twenty to thirty-five percent?” Soap checked her pulse. “Her heart rate is accelerating.” 

“God damn it,” Ghost growled, his eyes darting from her shoulder to her rapidly deteriorating color. “Red?” He shook her gently and her head lolled. She made a soft, whimpering noise before going quiet. “C’mon, Red—wake up for me.”

Her brow furrowed, her lids parting a crack before they shut again. Simon swallowed thickly, the muscles in his neck spasming. The hem of his black mask had ridden up to reveal blonde hair stained dark from rain and sweat. 

“Simon–” Price tried before the larger man suddenly straightened, snapping to attention.

Wordlessly, Ghost repacked the sodden gauze into the wound and rewrapped her shoulder. He shoved his gun at Soap and lifted her clean off the horse. He maneuvered her into his arms, cradling against his chest. 

“I can take her, Simon,” Gaz protested.

“No,” he replied flatly. “Have to avoid the trip wires and you can’t see shit from a horse.” He began to move toward the house. “Price-be my eyes here. Don’t want to get shot. Johnny–what do we need?”

 He was holding her like she was a fragile egg, stalking towards the looming iron gate without jarring her. Soap and Price jogged after them.

“Needle, blood bag, a rubber tube,” he replied. The storm had picked up again and Price wondered if God was fucking with them. “A donor.”

“I’ll give it to her,” Ghost said without skipping a beat. “I’ve done it before…” he trailed off and the rain washed out the rest of his words. 

***

Simon couldn’t think, at least not in a straight definitive line. Not good. He was capable of coldness on the field. He could patch one of his teammates up with one hand while shooting with the other. 

But, Red? Different. So fucking different. 

He’d broken the man’s neck in the pharmacy, but too little too late. She’d still been hit and she was now close to death. He rushed through the front gate, stepping over the wires that Red had described before she’d gone quiet. He should have been more aware. He should have been watching her the second she’d stopped speaking on that damn horse. It was torture as he attempted to race toward the front door of the estate while keeping her comfortable. He felt as if he was straddling a knife edge, kicking up gravel as rain water sluiced into his vision.

The air was frigid. The wind was biting at his neck.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured through the wet seal of his mask. “You’ll be alright.”

 Simon hauled ass up the stone steps just as Soap barreled past him to open the door. It was locked.  

“Fuck,” Soap punched the wood before turning to Ghost. “We can break a window?”

“Ghost,” Gaz shouted–a warning. 

Soap punched the door again, his knuckles splitting. 

“Ghost!”

“What?” he roared, whirling around to find a woman aiming a gun at them that was far too big for her. She glared, long dark hair falling in limp strands around her face. She was dressed in only shorts and an oversized t-shirt. Her green rain boots were covered in mud. 

“Who the fuck–” Her eyes fell to Red and she blanched, her mouth gaping in shock. “Oh my god!” 

Soap stepped in front of Simon and Red. “Alright, lass-” 

She lifted the gun higher. “What did you do to her, you fuckin’ assholes.”

Gaz slid around her, hands up. 

“Nothin’,” Gaz defended, voice steady and calm. “Look–we’re friends of Red’s. She got attacked in the village and she’s bleedin’ out-”

“How do I know you didn’t do it yourself?” The girl's lip trembled. “You-you could be using her as bait and-”

“WE DON’T HAVE FUCKING TIME FOR THIS!” Ghost bellowed. The girl flinched and Gaz slipped between them. Always the voice of reason. 

“She’s dying,” he explained. “Please let us in-”

Price appeared behind her and seamlessly snatched the gun from her hands. “Safety’s still on, love.” 

Startled, she nearly stumbled backwards over the steps before Gaz grabbed her by the arms, tugged her to him, and locked her against his chest. “Will you open the door now?”

Simon was done. He felt real fear begin to pour out of him, his whole frame shivering with it. He was taking on water too fast. He was sinking. Rage. Terror. He could not accommodate them both. He glowered at the woman, vowing to kill her if Red died. “Open. The. Door.” His threat spurted between his clenched teeth. His tone was frigid-dark and unyielding. 

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay–Slim–Slim said never to open it for anyone even if-if-”

Gaz released her and when she stepped toward the door, Simon realized she was crying. The rain had disfigured her features. 

“Just open the door, love,” Price murmured. He squeezed her shoulder and guided her closer. She winced when she brushed past Simon.

Visibly shaking, she pulled a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked it. 

***

It was utter chaos. They’d placed on the table, her injury no doubt staining the expensive wood. Simon scanned the kitchen and found it unadorned. It was all stone and wood, enormous and obviously meant to be utilized by an entire staff. He assumed that only the appliances had been updated, the rest was centuries old. He blew out a breath, feeling uneasy. The corners of the room were shadowed by the storm that howled outside. The windows provided little light and the woman-Bambi-was lighting several candles. Price and Gaz were searching for medical supplies in the storage closet across the room. Red had apparently invested in a plethora of equipment and tools long before the pandemonium had begun. 

Good girl - Simon thought. Red had always been one to prepare rather than wait for the other shoe to drop. 

“What happened?” Bamb was hovering beside the table, her arms crossed defensively over her chest. She looked dazed, eyes focusing on the crimson-drenched bandages at the base of Red’s neck. Soap removed a pair of scissors from his bag and began to cut through her shirt.

Bambi winced. “Oh-don’t-she doesn’t have many-”

“It’s fucked, lass,” Soap replied bluntly. “You should maybe sit in the next room.”

“I can handle it,” she returned with conviction. “I’ve…” she swallowed. “I’ve seen worse.”

Soap shrugged before removing the bandages. Heart thundering in his chest, Simon watched as Red’s blood spilled in rivers, pooling beneath her. Immediately, he flattened his palms to the wound.

 “Steamin’ Christ,” Soap rumbled before yelling at Gaz to bring him more gauze. He turned to Bambi. “You have small hands.” He gestured to the large first-aid kit on the table. “Find the sewing kit, clean and thread a needle for me.” 

There was red up to his elbows, everything drenched and slippery. The room stank of pennies. Tasted like he’d licked a metal instrument. Blood had never bothered Simon before, but he was beginning to feel lightheaded. That’s fear. 

“She’ll be alright,” Soap muttered, glancing momentarily at Simon before focusing on Red’s face. “She’s survived worse, yeah?”

Simon steeled himself, aware that he couldn’t lose his head here. It was bad. Her coloring was frightening and how could they have been so stupid to not have realized she’d been fading out? 

“Foolish girl.” Simon grunted as a deep, unsettling frustration began to simmer beneath his skin. Typical Red. Fucking martyr. Probably, felt herself losing consciousness, but didn’t want to be a bother. 

Anger was an easier emotion to carry. Anger had been the feeling he’d harbored when she’d told him about her condition right before Kursk. He’d run away from her. He’d been an immature fucking child and left her. He’d been inexplicably pissed at her and for what? Something totally out of her control. A complete accident that they were both responsible for. 

“We can figure this out, Simon,” she’d told him. “We don’t have to make any rash decisions. We don’t-we don’t even have to go through with it.”

“I-I just need some time,” he’d said. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back and we can-we’ll talk.”

He’d gone on a mission. Left her. It was only supposed to be for a couple of days, but she’d been so upset and desperate for her own distraction that she’d taken on a mission herself. A simple recon assignment. 

He had never forgiven himself when she didn’t come home.

“Simon,” Price had said, meeting him the second he’d stepped off the helicopter. “Simon-”

His stomach had dropped. He’d known it was about her by the look on Price’s face. 

“Where is she?” he’d growled and Price’s expression dismantled into something distressed.

“We don’t know,” he replied. “There was an explosion. She got separated.We-we think the Kursk faction took her.”

Next to Red, Price had always been Simon’s anchor in certain situations. He was reliable and he withstood every horrible disaster thrown at him. But when Red had been taken prisoner, the Captain had been visibly shaken. 

“Alright-shit’s about to get really messy,” Soap said as he yanked on a pair of latex gloves. 

“Here!” Bambi passed Soap the threaded needle. Soap had become the resident medic only because he had nimblest hands from dismantling bombs. He’d also picked up quite alot when he’d been fucking one of the nurses a few years back.

“Hopefully she doesn’t feel this,” Soap murmured before he poured rubbing alcohol over the angry slit.

Red’s eyes flew open, mouth slanting into a gasp. She twitched and moaned before attempting to shove Soap away. 

“Hold her, hold her,” Soap gritted. “I won’t be able to close it.”

Simon placed one hand on her uninjured shoulder and the other on her face. His palm encased it-spanning the entire side of her cheek and temple. Price appeared at the end of the table and held her legs down. 

Simon said her name softly. Her real one. He said it the same way he used to say it when it was just them and the morning and her shitty narrow bed and they’d probably just had tender, desperate sex. Her eyes found his and Simon smiled before realizing she couldn’t see it due to his mask. 

She hiccuped, her chest hitching. She was beginning to cry. 

“She needs to calm down,” Price barked. “Simon-”

Fuck it.

Simon ripped off his mask and threw it somewhere. Even though all of his enemies were likely dead, the mask still served as a crutch. It was still his armor.

But Red needed him.

Simon readjusted his grip and lowered his face so that it hovered over her own. “Look at me, sweetheart,” he demanded. “Look at me.” She blinked at him rapidly before she seemed to focus. Her lips twitched into what could have been a smile. It broke something inside him. 

“I’m here, alright,” he continued. “We’re all here. We’re just sewing you back up so we need you to relax.” The stench of blood and disinfectant wafted from the table. It stained his boots and hands. He drowned in it. 

Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. 

“Only a flesh wound, duchess.” His voice was dangerously close to cracking. He couldn’t find his direction. He couldn’t find much of anything when she looked so fragile. 

It’s fine. We’re okay now. Out of the woods. 

And then shit went south. 

Red’s lashes fluttered, her eyes rolling back. Simon reached down to grip her wrist. “Her pulse is elevating, Johnny.”

Soap cursed. 

“What’s happening?” Bambi asked. Simon took a deep breath in an effort to hold it together. He jammed his aching terror into his guts because he knew Red needed him strong. She needed him to be solid and dependable. 

“She’s going into shock,” Soap explained before he continued to stitch her now that she had gone fairly still, pinned to the table by Simon and Price. He was sewing faster than Simon had ever seen him do before. It would be a mess, but it would save her life. 

“Thatta girl, Foxy,” Soap cooed even though she was hardly cognizant. “Doing beautifully, lass.” He cast Gaz a sharp look over his shoulder. “Start on Ghost. Price can help me.”

Simon didn’t need to be told twice as he dropped into one of the chairs. It creaked violently beneath his weight. He ripped at the buckles and straps of his vest before removing it and his jacket. 

“Lucky for us, Red apparently stole multiple sorts of kits.” Gaz lifted an oven tray with a catheter set, elastic and needles. 

“She raided the medical facilities nearby before anyone even knew what was going down,” Bambi said. “Went a little overboard.”

“Typical.” Soap grinned as he poured antiseptic over her shoulder. She was unresponsive, which caused him to frown. “She used to tell us what she’d do in a zombie apocalypse. The girl was ready.”

Gaz slid next to Simon and lifted his left arm, flicking at the inside of his elbow. Simon curled his hand into a fist while Gaz secured the elastic around his bicep, the black rubber blended into the ink scrawled across his skin. It pressed deep into his Fox tattoo. 

Her gaze was locked to the top of his bicep. She squinted, her tongue darting along the cracked flesh of her lower lip. With a gentle finger, she traced the tattoo, her expression melded into a soft sort of wonder. After a moment, her eyes watered and she blinked it away.

“A fox?” she murmured, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Is that for me or another lady?”

He scowled. “Don’t be cheeky, duchess.”

Undeterred, she grasped his bicep and kissed the tiny fox. His declaration for her. He couldn’t help the shudder that vibrated through his bones. The warm, wet pressure of her pretty mouth. A devastating feeling burned through him as he watched her, small and beautiful and his. He must protect her, curl himself around her. Destroy everything else. Start at the root and tear it from the soil. Any fucking threat to her safety.

Well, he had failed her. Spectacularly. 

Gaz pierced Simon’s vein with the needle before directing it into a tube. He sighed, shaking away the dizziness. He was dehydrated and hungry and on no sleep, but it hardly mattered. 

Soap took the other needle and elastic before tying it around Red’s right arm. The IV catheter sat between Simon and Red as the dark - nearly black blood - was transferred between them. 

Simon studied her intently, feeling that if he looked away she’d die. Her heart would stop right on that table and he’d never be able to speak to her again. 

Red had been human for him. He’d watch her cry after a tough mission and she’d allow him to hold her. Burrow her face into his chest, cling to him and sometimes they’d fuck and sometimes they wouldn’t. Simon demanded her tears. Give them to me, love. Let me take your pain and I’ll never fucking forgive myself for being so late—for being unable to find you when you needed me most. Yes - he had failed her spectacularly and it felt as if he’d failed her again.

Your heart is soft, duchess. 

It is not.

Soft as Soap’s.

Soft for you, maybe. 

Gaz taped the needle to his arm, helping Simon elevate it just enough. Simon braced his elbows on his knees as he studied her skin and its new scars. He hadn’t even realized she was completely bare on top. He felt a weight drop in his gut-a basket of stones turn over beneath his ribs. Most of those marks were from Kursk. He swallowed. Rage. Again, rage. It set his nerves on fire and made his muscles spasm. 

You killed them. You killed all of them for what they did. You tore them apart. 

Suddenly, Simon reached out and took her hand. Due to their size difference, it was utterly dwarfed in his grip. He dragged his thumb across the vein in her wrist and felt the delicious thrum of it. 

“Her color is coming back, L.T.,” Soap acknowledged before finally stepping away from the table and dragging both hands down his face. He exhaled loudly. “Christ–I think I’ve lost a year off my life.”

Bambi glanced at him. “She’ll live?”

“Looks like it. Just pray she doesn’t get an infection.”

Simon prayed. 

***

Please share/reblog your thoughts, babes!

[xoxovanillq]

Safety Blanket

Pairing- Steve Harrington x GN!reader

Warnings- Friends to lovers, nightmares, PTSD, fluff, kinda cliche, sharing a bed.

A/N- Um, so I didn’t have service or wifi for over 24 hours and was so deprived of fics that I wrote a bunch.

Another night spent at the Harrington household, your home away from home. With Steve’s parents being gone so often, you had become used to staying over on nights where he didn’t feel like being alone in the big empty house.

Tonight was one of those nights, where you found yourself nestled beside him on the couch, watching whatever VHS he had put in the player, the light from the television being the only thing to illuminate your faces. You were ever aware of the presence of his hand on your hip, the way his breath fanned across your neck, it was all just enough to make your heart flutter, and your cheeks warm.

“You doin’ okay? I know it’s getting late and you don’t like your sleep gettin’ messed up.” Steve says softly, tucking a lock of your hair behind your ear.

“I might go to bed if you’re okay with it.” You reply, tone just as soft and sweet as his.

“Alright sweetheart, go rest.” The pet name makes your whole body warm, sending a shock through you.

You bid him good night and walked to the guest room, a place that started to feel more like your bedroom than the one at your own home. Your body relaxed against the soft bed, closing your eyes and laying for a moment before shedding your clothes, opting for just an old tee and some small sleep shorts. The second you tucked yourself under the light blue covers, you were fast asleep, body and mind exhausted from the day.

About an hour after you fell asleep, you were awoken by Steve loudly whispering your name.

“Y/n, wake up.” He spoke again, rubbing your shoulder gently.

“What’s wrong Stevie?” Your sleep-filled voice, somehow still sounding as if it was drenched with honey. The sound of your voice drawling out the sweet nickname made his heart melt.

“Can- will- will you come sleep in my room with me? Or can I sleep in here?” He asks quickly, worried you’d freak out and think he was weird or something. 

“Sure, let’s go to your bed.” Some of the sleep had cleared from your voice, and he let out a sigh of relief as you got out of bed. 

Steve kept a firm hold on your hand as the two of you ascended the steps to his room, his other arm encircling your waist to keep you close.

Once in his room, the two of you were quietly tucked into bed beside each other. Although it was a bit awkward at first, he eventually settled on slinging an arm around your waist, his other hand beneath his head. As he drifted to sleep, you lay awake, focused on the way his perfect pink lips were parted as he softly breathed. You felt like a bit of a creep, but tried to push the thought away, instead, opting to close your eyes and lull yourself into a calm sleep.

You were woken up at around 2 in the morning to Steve elbowing you. Your first instinct was to push him away, or to leave the bed, but when you looked over, he was curled up, seemingly having some sort of distressing dream. You reached an arm out, grasping his shoulder and loudly whispering his name, the same as he’d done to you earlier. 

After a few seconds, he shot up, eyes wide with fear.

“Hey, hey, just me, it’s just me.” You soothe, rubbing his back in a calming manner.

“I- I- everyone was gone, a hole opened up and everyone just fell in and was gone. You, Dustin, Nance, everyone.” You could hear the sheer panic in his voice. Your chest felt tight with worry, wondering how long he’d been struggling with this.

“Hey, hey, I’m right here, we’re all safe, everyone is okay.” Your calm voice wavered a bit, unsure if your words were helping. Before you could do much more, his face was tucked in the crook of your neck, arms holding you close. As you wrapped your arms around, you could feel hot tears hitting your neck. You continued to rub his back, allowing him to pour out all his emotions.

“M’sorry I’m like this.” He says in a broken whisper, guilt filling him.

“No, no, s’okay, just let it all out.” You soothe, and you can hear his sobs slowly stop. He picks his head up from the crook of your neck, long eyelashes dotted with tears like morning dew covered the grass. His under eyes were puffy and red, his eyes hazy and unfocused. “Hey, it’s alright, you’re allowed to be upset, especially after everything that’s happened.” You smiled sweetly, brushing his hair from his face before caressing his cheek, wiping a stray tear.

“God, I was so scared, you were gone and I never told you-.” He suddenly stops himself, shaking his head. 

“What? What did you not say?” You ask, heart beating a bit faster at the idea of him possibly reciprocating feelings.

“I- I never told you that I loved you.” He says quietly, dropping his head in shame. “I- I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” He apologizes quietly.

“Hey, Stevie, look at me. I love too, so much, always have baby.” Your voice shakes as you speak, and before you can get anything else out, his lips were pressed to yours. The kiss started tentative and slow, not sure of whether or not this was okay, but as he felt your lips begin to move, he kissed back with equal fervor. His tongue proded at your lips, causing you to part them, allowing him entrance. His tongue massages against yours, and you push him down on the bed, straddling him and kissing him deeper the before. He finally pulled away, gasping for breath as you clambered off him.

“Jesus Christ- I didn’t think that’d be happening tonight.” His voice was breathless, cheeks rosy and lips swollen and red. You didn’t think anyone could be prettier than he was right now, staring up at you with his blown-out pupils.

“Neither did I, but I’m glad it happened.” You say with a smile, laying down beside him and holding him close.

“We should sleep sweetheart, I think I’ll be fine now that you’re here, you’re like a safety blanket.” Needless to say, you’d spend many more nights in his bed.

[00ops1e]

simon riley and fatherhood pt.2!

i have had some thoughts rattling around my brain for when babygirl is older, i'd say these are for her tween (maybe teenage?) years. at this point, simon has more than grown into his role as a girl dad. hes mourning the fact that his little girl is not so little anymore, but he still sleeps peacefully at night knowing he has a couple more years before boys become an issue. at the moment, hes navigating things like sleepovers, hairstyles, and carting babygirl around to gymnastics, soccer, cheerleading, karate, etc... this may be a tad self indulgent, but i think it fits. is this possibly a glance into my childhood? not sure. i came back to this, yes. yes it is. im not sure if im completely happy with this but im tired and i want this posted now so BOOM.

wc: 1.3k

cw: mentions/inferred child abuse/ptsd???? references to simon's childhood, not proofread, SO SELF INDULGENT

when i think about simon during this era, i think about my childhood bestfriend's dad.

i particularly think about the role that man had in my life, and whether or not he knows what an impact he made.

when babygirl is in kindergarten, she just seems to click with one of the other girls in her class. im talking home phone numbers memorized, living within five minutes of the other, constantly together, teachers mistake them for each other

the girls are best friends.

so naturally, the friend, who i guess we'll call beth, (i told you this was gonna be self indulgent) is around the house a lot, and babygirl ends up at beth's and vice versa. she becomes a familiar face for you and simon, her demeanor and antics nearly matching your daughter's.

you and simon grow quite fond of this strange child! after all, babygirl could definitely pick out worse friends, beth was a good kid.

a year or so goes by, and simon begins to notice the way babygirl seems to always have beth over the house, and never the opposite? simon was never the one to make plans with the other parents for hanging out and things like that, but surely the poor girl wanted to be at her own house sometimes, right?

its not until beth is around nearly every day that simon starts to notice that something was... off.

at first he brushes it off, but something about the child's behaviour didn't sit right with him, rubbed him the wrong way.

he couldn't quite put his finger on it, maybe he was just overthinking it, maybe she's just a strange kid, he thought.

watching beth interact with you and him, always made simon feel tense, like someone was breathing down his neck or watching him.

he's unable to find the words to describe it to you, so he never really brings it up. he doesn't want to worry you unnecessarily, he once again brushes it off.

one sunday morning, simon finds himself in the kitchen, preparing pancakes and eggs for the girls, you leaning against the counter sipping on some tea and taking in the view of him.

simon is the type of dad to ALWAYS make breakfast for sleepovers

he definitely learned how to cook just so he could help babygirl get ready for school in the morning. always folds and makes her something to eat if she mumbles about being hungry.

the girls clamor down the stairs when they smell bacon. giggling and thumping as they race to the table, taking their respective seats.

simon does a little spin as he sets down the large bowls and plates of food. he sits down with a grunt, the kitchen is filled with sunshine and the sound of quiet chatter and laughter, forks on plates, and the smell of bacon in the air.

the meal goes the same as it always does, talking about upcoming plans and how school was going for both of the girls, overall it was a good, happy morning. everybody was in a good mood.

a collective gasp is heard as beth adjusts her chair, arm somehow knocking over the glass of orange juice in front of her.

you immediately get up, grabbing some paper towels to clean the mess. but simon stays glued to his seat, frozen.

in milliseconds, the dots connect in his brain.

beth reaches across the table to grab the cup, sleeve shifting ever so slightly to reveal just enough of a bruise to send a shiver down simon's spine.

simon feels his stomach flip when he meets the girls eyes from across the table, and recognizes the terrified eyes staring back. he sees the tension in her limbs, "is she, bracing herself?" he thinks

his mind is spinning, the realization bringing up plenty of cold, dark memories he wished would just stay buried.

the only thing he can think to tell the child, "it's okay." in the most matter of fact tone possible.

for the rest of the day, his demeanor is just... off

once youre in bed, you decide to ask him. softly though, the way hes acting is much different than you normally see on rough days.

"what are beth's parents like?" he blurts out in response.

you think for a moment, recalling the few interactions you've had with the girl's mother, "i've never met the father, and apart from friendly waves and talking for a few minutes on the phone about the girls, not much... why do you ask?" you say, shooting him a puzzled glance.

"did you see the way she looked at us when the drink was spilled? love, the poor thing looked like a deer in the headlights. she was scared."

"simon, i dont unde-" is all you can say before he cuts you off.

"there's something going on at home. i know that look. listen, the way she acts, 's been bothering me for a bit now, i didn't realize it till then..."

you look at him with your mouth open, unsure what to say to that.

"there was a bruise, around her wrist. now, i understand that today isn't exactly proof of anything. but please love, get to know the girl's mum at least..."

after that, he cant stop noticing little things about beth. the way she would recoil when babygirl suddenly shrieked, or moved too quickly in her peripherals.

he noticed the frequency of her apologies, for seemingly silly things.

as the girls got older, beth would hang around you and simon. it seemed like she didn't really need to be wreaking havoc with babygirl, she was perfectly content just chatting with her friend's parents,

his heart dropped when he realized that she probably just doesnt get to have this at home, or doesn't feel safe enough to.

he feels sick when he realizes she's started to loose that sparkle in her eyes, started to talk a little less, look down on herself more.

he sees so much of himself in beth, it makes him angry for her. how could anyone do that to a child? she doesn't deserve that!

his fondness for beth finally solidifies the fact that everything he went through in his youth, wasn't his fault. it gives him a bit of closure.

simon deducted that treating her like he does his own daughter was the best thing he could do. he makes sure that beth knows his home is always open to her, whenever she needs.

it seemed to heal him in a way he didn't know he needed, sure he gets to give babygirl the father he always wanted, deserved. but to be able to help a child that he sees so much of his younger self in?

its like getting to go back and hug himself, comfort himself from his own father.

"youre back again? pain in my ass, oh you know im only joking!" he says with a hearty chuckle, "come over anytime."

"get out of my house, *sigh* how are you beth? good to see ya kid."

"you know, i should claim you on my taxes, youre here enough.."

that kind of energy, but the way he says it is so heartwarming, jokey and dadlike.

simon is brought to tears one night, a few years later, when you and him talk about the changes you'd seen in beth, how much she's grown.

you reveal to him that beth had said something to you about how huge of an impact you'd made on her life, how the two of you became a safe place. how family is not just blood, but the people you find along the way.

thats the moment he decides that beth had become his second daughter, and the two of you loved her like one too.

okay so im definitely missing like half of what i had originally thought of, but thats fine, im tired. this was like- imagine a snowball rolling down a hill and just getting bigger and bigger. yeah. that.

im so sorry guys.

[castieltrash1]

for the sleepover: noah when you're having a bad day...

i think the way he'd handle it differs a lot when he's younger/older, so post-war!noah will be under the cut! i hope this makes your day a little easier, anon <3

pre-war!noah x gn!reader; hurt/comfort, unspecified angst, mentions of fighting

seeing you sad is something noah loathes more than most things in life. he’s a generally sympathetic guy, even to complete strangers, but he's extra sensitive when it comes to you. if he had one wish, it’d be to make sure you never even frowned again. that’s why when you are feeling down, he’s wholly dedicated to getting a smile back on your face. he doesn’t have much to his name but he’s determined, and the devotion he has toward your happiness results in a few too many creative remedies. flowers, of course, wild and pulled straight from a field he’s taken you to for picnics before. if you’re more of a sweet tooth, he’ll spend his last dime getting your favorite candy, tying a loose ribbon around it for added effect. he’ll sing, dance, and even tell bad jokes recited directly from a brightly colored book of gags. 

since he knows he can’t offer you a lot in other areas of life, noah tries to make it up to you in moments like these. if he can’t cheer you up quickly he’ll feel bad about himself, doubting his abilities to give you something as simple as happiness. of course, most of the time your negative emotions aren’t related to him at all, but that doesn’t mean he won’t internalize any sadness you do project. if you are sad about something he’s done or a situation between you two, he’s adamant about fixing it. at first, it might just seem like he wants to kick your relationship issues under the rug, but he eventually tells you that he knows life is short, and would rather spend every second he has with you feeling nothing but joy.

“we can’t just run away from this, noah! you really hurt my feelings.” swallowing the lump in your throat, you try to hold your voice steady as you confront him. “don’t you care about what i think?” you ask, feeling your skin grow warm in a mix of embarrassment and frustration, the latter of which only grows with each passing second that your boyfriend stands frowning in front of you.

“y’know i do,” noah replies, softening his tone after his earlier outburst. he takes a step closer to you with his palms outstretched, eyes wide and hopeful. “i just don’t like it when we fight. don’t see a point in all of it.”

“couples fight, noah. it’s normal.”

his lips quirk at the corners and, when you finally let him interlock his fingers with yours, a small smile spreads across his face. “can’t we just be happy instead?” you scoff, trying not to give in to his persuasive words and the way his thumb rubs gently against the back of your hand. you’re already forgetting what the fight was even about and why you’ve been giving him the cold shoulder these past few days. “c’mon, you forgive me, don’t ya?”

sighing, you pull him closer. “i really don’t know how you do it.”

“is that a yes?”

+ if you like being left alone when you’re sad, you’re dating the wrong guy. as long as you’re feeling down noah’s gonna be stuck to your side like glue no matter where you are. even if you're in the bathroom he’ll be sitting outside humming to himself, trying to strike up a conversation through the door. the last thing he wants is for you to be sad and lonely, so if he can only take care of one of those problems for now don’t expect him to be leaving anytime soon.

post-war!noah x gn!reader; hurt/comfort, unspecified angst, v slight mentions of depression/ptsd

after the war, noah’s naive, narrow view of the world and other people’s emotions within it develops into a much more mature perspective. it’s an unspoken thing, really, and he only brings it up off-handedly in rare moments that you collect over years of being with him. he’s seen and dealt with things he’d never dreamed of when he was younger and the effects of those situations are obvious in the way he treats you; especially if you knew him before and can see a direct contrast to his previously blind optimism. 

instead of trying to “fix” your bad mood, noah just lets you embrace it. he knows that sometimes there isn’t much to do but ride out the wave of emotions until it subsides. of course, he’ll do whatever he can to make your day even a little easier, but he won’t let you feel guilty for wallowing in it either. sure, he can show some tough love, but he’s a real softie for you! he'll only lash out if your negativity is targeted toward him specifically, otherwise, he sees no reason to add to your already lousy day. when he is the problem, well, the sight of your tears is enough for him to drop his grudge (eventually.)

“we spendin’ all day in bed?” noah asks, the mattress sinking slightly as he sits beside your curled-up form. “'s beautiful outside.” when you peer over the comforter to look at him, you find his gaze already fixated on the view from your bedroom window, a hint of a smile hiding beneath his untamed beard. the normally cheerful tune of the birds' morning call only serves to remind you of your own lingering sadness, and you let out a heavy sigh.

“right, well…” noah shifts, and you close your eyes, waiting for the sound of the door closing behind him as he goes to start his day. “c’mon, darling, scooch over.” instead, his rough palm pats your hip, determination clear in his steady tone.

you sit up a little, brows furrowing. “aren’t you gonna go out?”

he shakes his head, crawling under the various quilts and blankets thrown across your bed the second you give him enough space. “and leave you here to mope all by yourself?” his fingers dig into your sides, urging you closer until he can press a ticklish kiss to your bare shoulder. “nah…” the gentle touch of his lips lingers and he only continues once you’ve settled against him. “i think i can stay a while longer.”

+ noah is, underneath all the bluntness, surprisingly rational. if your bad mood is the result of a less-than-ideal situation, he’s a great man to have talk you through it. he’ll take you out for a drive, boat ride, or even just a walk, letting you rant about whatever is bothering you before offering his own advice. as long as you take it with a grain of salt, and execute the delivery with a bit more decorum, his suggestions can be a lot of help!

gosling sleepover sunday (no longer taking requests!)

[theetherealbloom]

UNEVEN ODDS - CH. 8

Chapter Eight: Darkness Exists To Make Light Truly Count

Summary: The Reader is dragged into the Last of Us universe and has no choice but to watch the events unfold or will she be able to change what was already written?

Paring: Joel Miller x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Age-gap Romance, Violence, ANGST, LOTS OF ANGST IM SORRY AGAIN, Swearing, Suicide, FLUFF, PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Crying, Suggestive content, the pandemic, character death, INFECTED, MY SCIENCE IS WONKY, probable plot holes, rusty writing, TLOU is dark please read at your own risk!

Word Count: 9.6k

A/N: Did I drag myself through hell and back writing this last chapter? YEP. Was I anxious writing this meaning that this would be the end of this series? YEAH. Did life get in the way and forcibly had to make me catch up with my schoolwork? UNFORTUNATELY YEP PLS– 

Song: Someone To Stay by Vancouver Sleep Clinic

Previous Chapter -> Epilogue | Series Masterlist

TLOU WORLD 2023

SILVER LAKE, COLORADO TO SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – ONE WEEK LATER…

The bitterness of winter as time month moves on, you are greeted with the sweetness of spring. When did your life become a series of countdowns? Was it all just a grain of sand in an hourglass? One moment you were stumbling through the snow, away from Silver Lake. Next, you’re on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah. Roughly 3,534 miles and you’re counting down the hours of today, vaguely knowing about what happens in Saint Mary's Hospital, the operation on Ellie, and the death of a surgeon triggering a chain reaction to stir violence with the former fireflies to kill Joel.

Each step into the city meant the possibility of losing them both to the future you seem to believe is set in stone, their stories already written and their fates chosen long before you had even stepped foot in the reality you couldn’t have possibly imagined existing. So you are standing and listening to him in that glistening emptiness, scavenging the remaining vehicles that contained any items to use. You hear your childhood sympathies banging against each other in a giant communal eardrum circle, trying to drown out melodies you can’t help but hum to. It feels like a part of your past follows you everywhere you go, a ghost you can’t shake, someone familiar but every time it places its hand in your hand, neither one of you could feel it.

Your weight is resting on the counter of the dilapidated kitchenette in an old RV, Joel tries to call your name, but you are now too deep into the thought that you don’t hear his rich and rough voice telling you about the broken guitar he found. Every part of you is somewhere else, a distant and dazed look in your eyes as you feel your vision blur. Joel approaches you cautiously, not wanting to startle you as he gently places his large palm on the side of your arm, rubbing it gently as he spoke softly, “Birdie… what’s wrong?” You blink up at him, your expression weepy and choked up, “Joel… there’s something you need to know.” He’s quick to ask, “What is it? What’s wrong, Darlin’?”

You feel your body melt at the nickname, but you gently place your hand on his, squeezing it as you said, “Joel… I know how all of this ends. I know how you die.” You watch as his shoulders rise, his breathing becomes still, and his expression was mixed with realization, curiosity, and despair. He swallows as he asks, “How… I thought you didn’t know everythin’?” You nodded, “Yes, I swear to you, there were parts I didn’t know or couldn’t remember. Everything except how all of this ends.” He frowns and grimaces, but never lets go of your hand, gruffly he says, “Tell me.” You move a little closer to his warmth, wanting to be close to him as you spoke, “Everything that will happen at Saint Mary's… the decisions and choices you make in the next few hours will be the cause of your death in the next few years or so. The Doctor you kill and um… You and Ellie… I don’t know if there’s a chance of a happy ending in this world or any way out of this besides going back to Jackson and convincing Ellie that she doesn’t have to go through with this or… fighting our way through the upcoming obstacles in our way.”

Joel shifts his weight from one leg to the other, bringing his eyes to yours, and at that moment you knew, the heat that radiates in his stare as he looks at you, every inch of skin comes alive as he drags his hand along your arm to your waist, sliding it and carefully securing you closer to him. Now, you are inches away from your lips to his, his nose touching the tip of your own with your foreheads pressed together, you breathe him in, close your eyes, and sigh in comfort. He cradles the side of your face and you lean into him, he gently asks, “What would you like me to do, Sweetheart?” You place your hand on top of his, leaving a soft kiss on his wrist and then replying, “I need you to stay alive. Ellie needs you… I need you to be here with us. Next, when the opportunity presents itself, please, I beg you, spare the surgeon.” He whispers his inquiry, “Why?” You sniff and feel your eyes well up, “Because his daughter will be the reason for your death. Look, I don’t care who else you decide to kill, just if you can… leave him alive.” 

He holds you closer as he shakily asks, “Why are you tellin’ me this now, Hon’?” You lick your lips nervously, placing your head on his shoulder as he fully embraces your figure, slowly speaking, “I… I’m scared, Joel. I’m honestly terrified of what’s going to happen next. I don’t want to lose you… I can’t lose you.” You shudder at the thought, the mere idea of it brings you to clutch him tighter, and he cradles your figure closer as he soothes you, “You won’t lose me. I’m persistent, remember?” You weakly laugh at that, and he wipes away the tears from your cheeks while saying, “Let’s go show Ellie what we found.” You open your mouth to speak but he has already read your mind, “We’ll figure it out and cross that bridge when we get there. Okay, Birdie?” He has changed all of your circuitry, the red and gold, writing all over your being. How he looks at you, his eyes say everything without a single word. You nod and whisper, “Okay.” He presses his lips to yours with passion and promises, “I’ll keep us safe, I swear.”

You step out and leave the abandoned RV, grabbing an old board game, and canned food. Joel yells out, “Ellie! Ellie.” Still, no response from the teenager sitting at the back of an old blue truck, and her mind seems to be somewhere else. “Ellie!” Joel yells a bit louder, which causes her to turn around to look at him, preoccupied, remote, distracted perhaps by the magnitude of what their arrival in Salt Lake City could mean.

“D’ya hear me?”Joel asks through the loud wind blowing through everyone’s hair, Ellie shakes her head, “No. What?” Ellie asks, and Joel excitedly shows Ellie that he found a can, “Well, we found this in there. Beefaroni. Chef Boyardee.” Calling back to their campfire meal, to which Ellie tries to sound enthusiastic, but ending up sounding flat, “Oh, cool.” Joel approaches Ellie, shaking the old cardboard box game, “And have you ever played this? Boggle? It’s a word game.” She politely and quietly shakes her head, seemingly uninterested but still trying to please Joel, she hands him back the box and he says, “Well if you wanna beat me at somethin’, it would be this.”

Ellie manages to nod her head, and you frown at her lackadaisical nature, noting that this isn’t like her at all. You walk to Joel’s side as he calmly spoke again, “Well, all right then. We’re gettin’ close. Hospital that way. May be the one we’re lookin’ for.” Ellie pushes herself off the back of the truck, the sound of dirt crunching beneath her boots as she replied, “Got it.” She grabs her pack while Joel shoves the canned food and board game into his backpack. Ellie approaches you both and Joel rolls his shoulder, showing her the rifle, “Take this for me?” Ellie grabs so he can throw the strap of the backpack across his shoulder, “Thanks.” He grabs the rifle once more, carrying it while Ellie nods in acknowledgment.

As the three of you walked along the ruined highway, Joel begins to talk, “They had a guitar in that RV. It was all smashed up but got me thinkin’ maybe I should find one. I haven’t played in forever. In fact, I was thinkin’ maybe I could teach you. I bet you’d be great at it.” Ellie merely hums and Joel asks her with a sort of hopeful tone, “Do you wanna learn how to play guitar?” There is no response from Ellie, your eyes shift from her to Joel, and you see him frown in concern, “Ellie?” She looks up, blinking at him as she hums in response, “Oh, yeah. That’d be great.”

Surprisingly, the entire walk into the city was quiet, there was no chatter from Ellie or Joel, no melody leaving your lips as you pass by abandoned cars. After what seemed like thirty minutes, Joel finally broke the silence once more, “Okay, so this is what I’m thinkin’...” Ellie already knew what he was talking about, “Cut through that building to get around that stuff, find the skyscraper, go up and look around.” You look at her impressed, while Joel says, “Actually, this time I was thinkin’ we blast our way through that rubble. I found some dynamite in that RV back there.” This catches Ellie off guard, “Really?” While you give him a suspicious look, “The fuck has gotten into you?”

Joel confirms he was joking around as he replied to you both, “No, so we’re gonna cut through that building, find a skyscraper, go up, and look around. But I had you both goin’, didn’t I?” You playfully rolled your eyes while Ellie nods once more. The group decides to cut through the building on the way to the hospital, and decide to climb an abandoned skyscraper to get a better vantage point and lay off the land. The red tarpaulins hanging over the scaffolding, “Look at this place,” Joel says as you all take a good look around your environment, “Talk about bad luck. Military drops bombs, not one of them hits the building you’re trying to demolish.” You peek through the rubble to see the sunlight streaming through, Joel cranes his neck to look up, “No way up.”

He approaches the fence gate inside the construction, the steel rattling loudly as he does, and walks through with you and Ellie trailing behind him. Joel spots a ladder peaking from above as you stand next to him, “I get Ellie up there, you can drop down that ladder down, maybe we go through that way. Come one I’ll give you a boost.” You both turn to look for her to find her looking through abandoned blueprints, you watch as Joel is more attentive to her as he asks, “You okay?” Ellie brings her head up to look at him, “Yeah, I’m fine.” Joel doesn’t buy it, “It’s just you seem extra quiet today, so.” Ellie feels the guilt bubble in her, “Oh… I’m sorry.” While you and Joel shake your heads, “No, it’s fine. Did you hear what I…” Ellie is quick to nod, “Yeah, boost. Got it.”

Joel steps on top of the wooden scaffolding, and Ellie grabs his outstretched hand, readying his stance while saying, “One, two, up.” You watch as Ellie pushes her body weight up while Joel asks, “Ya got it?” Ellie responds, “Yeah. Okay.” She’s just about to put down the ladder, however, the usually attentive Ellie is caught off guard by something and instead ends up just dropping the ladder and running off to look at something. Joel barked out, “God dammit, Ellie! Shit.” You also call for her, but there is no indication she hears you. You and Joel lift the ladder while he yells out to the teen, “You stay there!” To which Ellie yells back, “You gotta see this!” You climb the ladder first while Joel follows behind you, your voice echoes as you spoke, “Ellie? Where are you?”

“Up here!” Ellie says while you and Joel pursue her, perhaps worried at first that she’s in danger. Grumbling, Joel says her name but Ellie is quick to run, “Come on!” You and Joel wonder what the fuss is about, he calls her again, trying to get her to stop running so damn fast, “Ellie.” Again, she doesn’t relent, pushing faster to chase whatever caught her attention. Joel is breathing heavily as he mumbles, “Just wait. God damn it.”

After another flight of stairs, you pass by a ruined wall, as you sidestepped it, what you both find is Ellie, standing awestruck by the sight of a giraffe, peacefully munching on some leaves growing on the building. The feeling of enchantment rushes through your body, the familiarity of the scene that you had a glimpse of during your time back in your other universe. How important this meant to both of them.

Joel quietly approaches and stands next to Ellie, while you are to the left of her. Though time is ruthless, it showed you kindness despite the effects the Infected have wrought on the hope and innocence of the world in the end. But showing and by slowing down enough, a second chance to make amends. Ellie pointedly looks at Joel, “Don’t scare it.” To he replies, “I won’t.” He sets down his rifle, draws his weapons, and gives himself and Ellie a welcome reprieve from the darkness so that the balance may be restored. When the world welcomes you in, you’re closer to Heaven than you’ll ever know. They say this place has changed, but strip away all of the technology and you will see that you all are hunters, hunting for something that will make us okay.

Joel grabs a couple of leaves from the side of the tree and Ellie’s voice is in alarm as she asks, “What are you doing?” He reassures her, “It’s all right. Come here, hurry up. Come on.” Ellie walks towards him, a little closer to the giraffe, while you stand there nervously rubbing your arm. Joel spots your discomfort but quickly reassures you, “You too Hummin’ bird.” You exhaled deeply, trusting Joel and walking closer to the giraffe.

He passes leaves to you both, and there is a form of uncertainty between you and the giraffe, but eventually, you stretch out your hand and the giraffe approaches you, grazing on the leaves you have presented to the creature. When you were out of leaves, it then went to Ellie, happily munching on the leaves she had with her. There is something so precious about Ellie’s laugh. The whole is so much greater than the sum of these parts. You've heard the truth before, for in beauty there echoes a speck of our source. There's a voice inside your soul, that resonates through your skin and bone. Crooked mouth, quiet down, you let your fists come undone. The understanding that miscarried love will be reborn. There is hope in our eyes when we truly see each other.

Joel smiles lovingly at her joy, the honoring of every shadow, and gratitude for all that follows. Overwhelmed, wave after wave, you are more afraid to lose what you have found, even after all this evolving, it still feels unnatural, still pulls tight the muscles, and strains the arms and spine. Ellie’s laughs are melodious as she states, “So fucking cool.” There are no more leaves left for the giraffe to munch on, seemingly done, she begins to trot away. Ellie whines, “Aw, where is she going?” She begins to race after her, yelling out to her two guardians, “Come on, come on, come on, come on!”

As Joel was about to turn and call after her, you grab his wrist, causing him to look at you with concern, “What is it, Hon’?” Your heart melts at the nickname, you give him a soft smile as you took in a breath before speaking your heart out, “I have to tell you something.” He frowns in concern, “Now? Ellie might���” You cut him off while nodding, “Yes, now.” Joel leans a little closer, “What is it? Tell me what’s wrong.” You weakly laugh at his statement, knowing him too well to know that whatever is wrong he’d immediately want to fix it for you because that’s how he cares. 

A beat passes between you two, the sound of the wind rustling the leaves, the huffs of the giraffes from outside, and even a few birds chirping, seemed like everything was right where it should be. Joel opens his mouth, and at first, no sound comes out, but he gathers his courage and says, “Not that I wouldn’t say it first, ‘cause I would.” You smile at him knowing what he was implying, and you shake your head, “It’s no big deal,” You try to finish your statement but he cuts you off, his southern accent is more prominent as his voice goes lower, “I’ll tell you soon.” You hold the side of his face, as he looks at you while holding his breath ‘cause you both could, in a voice so soft and sweet, you say, “Until then, I love you.”

The darkness that hangs over him at first tries to reject it as his lips parts in astonishment and bewilderment. He would drag you through the muck while telling you that you belonged to a cleaner lifestyle. He thinks you'd be crushed underfoot by him, that you'd be able to see right through him, that he's just spewing hot air, that you'd be always racing after him as he chases after more svelte models, and that it would be a never-ending cycle. His mouth quivers and his beautiful southern accent is accentuated as he asks, “Are you sure? After everything I’ve done? After all the people I’ve killed?” 

You held your breath while you thought about it for a long, quiet moment. “I am willing to fit into any spaces you give me since I am aware of your sharp edges and have seen your beautiful curves. Bring on the muck if loving you takes becoming filthy,” you said. “And right now, I’m pretty in love with you, if that’s okay.”

He leans it to place his lips to yours, kissing you with such fiery passion you had only ever dreamed or seen in moves and read about in romance novels. His lips were warm and soft. They parted slightly, allowing my tongue to slip inside. Your bodies pressed together heatedly, breathing heavily as our lips pressed together. You could taste your shared breath, and feel the thud of your combined heartbeats. And just like that, he did not crave the language he always thought he needed. The warmth and softness of his lips, the taste and scent of his breath, and the subtle movements of both of your tongues. But even though he couldn't say it out loud, it was undeniable that both of their love for each other was palpable. It was in the way you laughed together, the way you touched each other's hands, and the way you looked at each other. Pulling away, to cup your face, and just like that a hand reached backward into a faraway dream and said, “Come on then, we better catch up to Ellie.”

Moving to the rooftop of the building, Joel pulls the door open and you see Ellie happily observing the herd of giraffes. The rusty door squeaks as it shuts behind you, looking over the towers of giraffes walking around the greenery that has taken over the ruined city. You walk over to Ellie’s side, making her the center between you and Joel. The weight of family and the pull of gravity. It seems like growing up didn't take long, you were a family pulled from the flood, you tore the floorboards up and let the river rush in, not wash away.

You recognize the parallel to the first time you stood on a rooftop with Ellie and Joel, looking over the view of a ruined city to find some absolute answer to a world that seemed so hopeless. Joel places his hands on the ledge of the rooftop, and he gruffly asks, “Is it everything ya hope for?” You look at Ellie, her lips forming a little smile, “It’s got its ups and downs, but you can’t deny that view.” It set your hearts ablaze, and every city was a gift, every skyline was like a kiss upon the lips. Joel looks at Ellie concerned mixed with uncertainty, “Look, I don’t know exactly where this hospital is…” The teen’s determination is unwavering as she swiftly said, “Yeah, we’ll find it.” 

He releases a shaky breath, he feels his parental nature returning, “Sure. It’s just… Maybe there’s nothin’ bad out there, but so far there’s always been somethin’ bad out there.” Ellie shrugs, “We’re still here, though.” Joel nods, “I know. I’m only saying there’s risk.” Ellie looks away but Joel shifts his weight to lean closer, insisting, feeling a presentiment of losing her, “We don’t have to do this. I want you to know that.” Ellie turns to look at him with furrowed brows and a frown, “What do you mean? What else are we supposed to do?” To which Joel responds, “Nothin’. We just go back to Tommy’s. We forget the whole damn thing.”

“After all we’ve been through? Everything I’ve done? It can’t be for nothing,” Ellie replies evenly. “I know you mean well. I know you want to protect me. You have. And when we’re done, we’ll go wherever you want. Tommy’s, sheep ranch, the moon. I’ll follow you anywhere you go. But there’s no halfway with this. We finish what we started.” She finishes giving her a touching speech with clear-eyed dignity. After a beat passes, Joel reluctantly nods in agreement. It becomes clearer now, if you listen just right, you can almost hear it. The symphony of secrecy, life, the search for love, but finding fear. We could hold our breath forever, or maybe for a while. The best will surely come, until then you’ll feel nothing at all.

You three proceed to cut through an abandoned emergency medical center left over from the outbreak. You see the ruins of triage tents outside, and a brief moment of déjà vu creeps over you, remembering the makeshift facilities and tents from your universe during the outbreak. Some vines overgrow the poles of the tents, there are rotting medical supplies and vehicles. Taking it all in, Ellie wonders, “Was it a FEDRA thing?” Joel shakes his head, “No. Army. They put these places up all around, the first few days after the outbreak. Emergency medical camps. Obviously didn’t last. They had me in one just like this.” Ellie quickly assumes he had his daughter with him, “With Sarah?” 

You look at him concerned and afraid that he would begin to lash out in anger as a defense, but he doesn’t. Instead, he shakes his head in disagreement, “No, she was gone already. So what was wrong with you?” Joel points to his scar, “It was for this.” Ellie nods in realization, “The guy who shot and missed. I figured that would’ve happened later.” There’s a shift in his voice that you catch, “No.” He slows his pace to a stop, “Second day.” You stop to look at him but Ellie continues to talk, “I’ve gotta hand it to the Army people and Birdie. They are way better at stitchin’ you up than I was.” 

“It was me.” This causes Ellie to freeze and turn around to see the rise and fall of her chest falter. Your eyes begin to gloss over and sting and the thoughts seep into her head with a terrifying blankness. It was nauseating. Joel baldly confesses, “It was me,” he says. “I was the guy who shot and missed.” He then moves to sit atop a concrete barrier, while you and Ellie also move to sit beside him, “There’s no story. Sarah died. And I couldn’t see the point anymore. Simple as that. And I wasn’t scared, either. I was ready. I couldn’t have been more ready. When I… When I went to pull the trigger, I flinched. Still don’t know why.” The raw admission, of him opening up himself to you and Ellie shows how far you three have come. A great tremor took over your body, a tightening of your throat and a short intake of breath, you try and will yourself to not cry. “Anyway, the reason I’m telling you all this is…” Ellie cuts him off, “I know why you’re telling the both of us this.”

He nods, “Yeah, I reckon you do.” And you hold his hand to stop his thumb from fidgeting with his pointer finger, unsure if you were comforting him or yourself. To remind yourself he’s still here. After a moment of silence and uncomfortable realization, Ellie says, “So time heals all wounds, I guess.” Joel ponders for a moment, before deciding to openly admit how much he truly cares for Ellie and you, “It wasn’t time that did it.” He unwaveringly, and lovingly looks at Ellie and you, squeezing your hand as he does. For Joel, everything you’ve been through, all the pain and death, it’s worth it because he has a daughter again and now you. It brings everything together for Joel. He’s succeeded here. He cares less about Ellie’s potential for a cure and more about not losing a person he loves again. He, is once again, whole.

Ellie quietly lets go of the breath she was holding, “Well, I’m glad that… that didn’t work out.” Joel nods in agreement, “Me, too.” He wipes away the tears with his other hand and then moves to wipe away the tears that you didn’t even realize had streamed down your face. The teen awkwardly shifts to move off the concrete barrier you three were sitting on, “We should probably get going.” Joel automatically agrees, “Yeah.”

There's something about sadness that leaves you wanting more. A sickness that breathes… from holding on to letting go, like the feeling of change is almost like dying. You know from time to time that hope seems but a foreign land. A distance that you cannot reach and a language you cannot speak. In his words, the movement of his eyes, the expressions on his face, the rush of your walking. And through all the things you'll find out and will hold on tighter to the surface of life. Like a moth to the flame, we become helpless to the beautiful ghost that true love sheds.

You continue your journey to the hospital, Joel hasn’t let go of your hand as you walk side by side with Ellie, he then asks aloud, “You know what I’m in the mood for?” Ellie quizically wonders, “What?” Joel smiles as he responds, “Shitty puns.” She laughs and you smile at her delight, rummaging her pack to find her pun book, flipping through the pages she finds one and says, “‘People are making apocalypse jokes like there’s no tomorrow.’” Joel clicks his tongue, making a face in mock offense, Ellie smiles, “Too soon?” Joel shakes his head and smiles, “No, it’s topical.” Ellie lets out a giggle, “Oh, I love this one! ‘Moon rocks taste better than Earth rocks. Why?” The man next to you scratches his forehead before shrugging, then Ellie answer, “‘Cause they’re meteor.’” You smile in amusement while Joel shakes his head, “Oh, that’s terrible.” Ellie throws back, “Fuck you. That was actually good.” He disagrees entirely, “That’s a zero out of ten.” You laugh, “Oh, we’re giving grades now?” His southern accent is prominent as he replied, “Damn right darlin’.” Ellie laughs, “All right, all right. ‘What did the green grape say to the purple grape? Breathe, you idiot.’” Joel rates, “That’s a three outta ten.” But Ellie tries to bargain, “Seven, minimum.” He shakes his head but tries to meet her in the middle, “I’ll give it a five. Five outta ten.”

In the moments that you feel that you three are closer than ever before, the world drops out from under your feet. The sharp sound of metal from something behind you causes you three to turn your heads in alarm, spotting the stun grenade, Joel moves to shield you and Ellie, bringing you three crashing to the ground. There is smoke that hazes your vision, and the ringing in your ears is sharp and painful, the world around you is a blur. You make the muffled sounds of Ellie yelling for you and Joel, tall figures with firearms taking her and you away from him. There is always something there, to take your hearts like thieves, there is always something there. A painful strike to the head and it all goes white, to close your eyes, to end this chase while unraveling the most essential thread.

ST. MARY’S HOSPITAL, SALT LAKE CITY — DAY

You slowly blink your eyes open, you hear the steady beat of your own heart with the help of the monitor near the side of your bed, and you feel the plush pillow beneath your head, you feel the cotton of a hospital sticking onto your skin while you are trying to get an understanding of where you are. Next, the smell of familiar antiseptic and bleach fills your nostrils, you first spot that you’re hooked into an IV drip, moving your head to the door frame, you feel your eyes widen and they dart across the room to see Marlene. 

You can’t bring yourself to move, as you observe Marlene studying you, finally she says, “You’re finally awake.” You blink once, then again, before swallowing your fears, “Where’s Joel?” Marlene pushes herself off of the wall and uncrosses her arms, “He’s in another room, unconscious but fine. Patrol didn’t know who you were.” Your breathing hitches, “Okay, where’s Ellie?” Marlene replies steadily, as if practiced, “She’s fine. She’s not hurt, mostly worried about you two though.” You narrowed your eyes in suspicion, “You’re going to operate on her.” Marlene sighs, defeatedly she nods, “Yes.” You lick your lips as a nervous tick, “You also know that I’m also immune.” The leader of the rebellion nods again, and you close your eyes to shake your head, “She’s just a kid. She’s everything to Joel… to me. Don’t do the operation on her, take me instead.” Marlene shakes her head in disagreement, “I can’t do that.” You tilt your head to the side, “Why not?”

She heavily sighs, “Your immunity is different from hers.” You scoff, “The cordyceps that she had since birth, grow in her brain, sending a chemical messenger to tell other cordyceps that she is cordyceps. You’re going to have to kill her just to get that damn vaccine. So, just take the plasma from me, it might contain the antibodies that you need to fight the virus.” Marlene places both of her hands on her waist “I can’t let you do that.” Exhausted you frustratingly growl, “Why? This has been the center of debate for years. The fuckin’ goddamn Trolley Problem! Plow into a group of people or turn and hit one person. Forcing you to choose to let other people die, but the solution was so simple.” Marlene takes the bait and asks, “And what is the answer?”

“Sacrificing yourself. And right now, Marlene, I have that choice. Either to let you kill an innocent girl, someone who didn’t ask to be brought into this fractured world to save what little we have left, or save her and all of humanity… with me, someone who never should have been here in the first place.” Marlene hums, “Well, you’re right about one thing… you aren’t from here.” You look at her confused and someone familiar steps into your room, the dark hair, black eyes, his stature lanky and tall, you shakingly exhale, “Adam. How are you even… What?” Another Firefly soldier comes in to retrieve Marlene, whispering that Joel is waking up. She walks away with the Firefly soldier and leaves you and Adam to talk.

He clears his throat, “I’ve been looking for you, and it's been weeks since your apartment burned down with you going missing. Do you remember anything that happened before the fire?” You shake your head, “I remember going to sleep after watching… yeah.” He nods, “You had brought home your research without any of the lab researchers or staff knowing. Your apartment burned down along with the research. I thought it was a little weird since… they didn’t find your body or any indication of you being abducted so I did a little bit of snooping around your desk, found the flash drive of your existing equations and theories before they took it away for evidence, had a hunch you were successful with your research and that you were out there somewhere.”

You manage to let out a chuckle, “Thanks for looking for me… I thought no one would notice if I was gone. It’s nice to have a friend.” He gives an awkward smile, “Did you have to bring yourself into this specific universe?” You rolled your eyes with humor, “It wasn’t intentional, I swear.” He gives you a knowing look but doesn’t tease you any further. Your mind begins to linger on the question you had since you woke up, “Why won’t Marlene just operate on me? It would be the best solution to avoid the upcoming massacre.”

Adam frowns and sighs, “When I first came here to look for you, Marlene had found me and then recruited me to join the Fireflies, but I had told her I wasn’t fit to fight and that I’m a scientist looking for a lost friend in their universe. You could imagine her skepticism but she eventually believed me,” You have a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as he continued, “After we made it to Salt Lake City, I had said that if things were to change, if you were to sacrifice yourself, to take Ellie’s place, it would completely cause the boundary between two universes to erode, and collide, destroying one or both entirely.” You look up at the ceiling, the fluorescent lights hanging from above, “Let me guess, our universe is next to this one.” Adam nods, “I’m sorry. I tested the simulation before I got here… There are certain points that you can change but most of it stays the same.”

“Do you know how this ends?” You asked, he raises his eyebrows, “Which part?” You think to yourself before speaking again, “All of it.” He nods then loudly exhales, “Yes. It ends… in a selfish choice. A lie. But you already knew that why do you need to ask?” Unwaveringly, you stare him down, your voice stern and steady as you say, “Because I’m going to make my selfish choice too.” 

It was quiet for a moment, the epiphany kicking in and settling between you and your friend. Adam shifts his weight on the other leg before reaching into his pocket, showing you a small rectangular device, “I managed to figure out the wiring and transmission issue, as well as the power issue with crystalized radium, and stabilized it with other elements. So, I managed to create a portable version of the machine you had. We can go home.”

That is what you were looking for all this time, right? A way back home. Now it’s right here in your grasp, just in reach but you feel no joy. No overwhelming sense of comfort or excitement. Nothing. You swallowed and shake your head, “No.” Adam is taken aback by your answer, “What? But you… your life back home.” You shake your head disagreeing, “That was never my home. You and I both know that. I was already researching a way out of that place, somewhere far away, and now… I’m here, free, and loved.” He shakes his head, “You can���t change what was already written.” You give him a sad smile, “The future is always changing. And I’ll make sure of it.” Adam insists, “And if you can’t?”

You leave all logic aside as you breathlessly say, “Then… At least they don’t have to go through any of the next steps alone.” Adam sighs and waves the device, “What do you want me to do with this.” You raise your eyebrows, “Go home, Adam. Ali needs you there, and as for my research… burn it. All of it, destroy everything.” He disagrees with you, “What?! That’s your life’s work?” You blankly stare into his eyes,  “We aren’t ready for this kind of this discovery just yet. The world is moving so fast over there, if we don’t slow down, we’ll crash and burn.” He tries again to convince you to come home, to go back to the simple life you had before, “But…” You cut him off, “Remember what you told me? All disasters start with a scientist being ignored.” Defeatedly he tilts his head down, then nods agreeing, “Okay.”

You glance out the glass window of your room, there are Fireflies running down the hall, and from a distance the sound of loud pops and gunshots can be heard echoing, followed by yelling and thumping footsteps of Firefly soldiers. You turn back to look at Adam, “Listen to me, you need to leave right now. Burn all of my research. I want everything wiped out from the Cloud and every hard drive to be destroyed, all of it. But seriously, you need to go. Joel figured out what the hell was going on and will kill anyone who gets in his way. I don’t think he’s himself right now… so please just go… and take care of yourself and Ali for me?” Adam achingly smiles with tears in his eyes, “Goodbye and good luck.” With a push of a couple of buttons, followed by a flash of bright light, your only chance, a way back to your original universe was gone.

The sound of people screaming and dying was getting closer, the unmistakable sound of gunshots fill your ears and you feel a sense of dread creep through your bones. It is never safe enough to fall in love in this world. How easy it is to give the thing you want the most and punish you for it. But you’re smart enough to know, you can’t escape the truth of what you want. Every move we make will trigger another, and every small mistake will be a messenger. Your lives are weaving like a thread within each other, faithfully sharing in our joys and miseries and all that the world can give.

A firefly soldier tries to take cover in your room, essentially holding you hostage. You stay frozen in your bed as you observe Joel as he stalks over with an eerie calm expression, easily aiming at him, spraying him with bullets to take him down, and you don’t move as you watch him flick the switchblade open, the silver glimmering in his hand, brutally stabbing the soldier, he screams in agony before his eyes roll back, dead. He picks up the assault rifle from the corpse before standing and making his way to your bedside, a sharp contrast to what you had just seen, he leans in to kiss your forehead, “Hey, Sweetheart. They were tryin’ to take you away from me. Sorry I didn’t come sooner.” You take in the grime on his face, blood, and dust, lovingly gaze into his eyes and wrap your arms around his waist, “It’s okay. I knew you’d come lookin’ for me.” He breathes you in, and for a moment, he can ground himself with you hugging him tightly, close to him, but a dose of reality kicks in when he hears footsteps of oncoming Fireflies, he says to you, “Can you walk?” You nod, “The drugs that they gave me might kick in soon, but for now, yes.” He nods and helps you up while saying, “Let’s go get our baby girl.”

You feel the cold tiles of the hospital floor, wincing now and then over the debris and rocks, you accidentally step on. Joel shoots his way through, cold-heartedly executing anyone who dares and tries and gets in the way of Ellie. You know deep down he’s disassociated, disconnected from himself and the world around him. There is no sign of remorse in his eyes, only clear-cut focus and calmness you can’t quite place.

Eventually, you make it to pediatrics with Joel holding a handgun instead of the assault rifle. A sign points to where the surgery room is, as you walk through the hallway, you notice the different cartoon jungle animals painted on the walls, spotting another giraffe, the gentle giant that represented a holy moment of peace with Ellie. You press forward, slightly limping with the wounds on your feet as you two make it to the end of the hallway and into the operating room.

Joel quietly pushes the door open, spotting Ellie on the table, ready to be cut open and dissected. He then pushes the second door open to stand by the door, and calmly he says, “Unhook her.” The nurses gasp and the lead surgeon steps forward, “How did you get in here?” Joel doesn’t care to reply to his question, pointing his gun at him, “I said unhook her.” Before you knew what you were doing you loudly spoke, “Dr. Anderson. Listen to me, I know what you’re about to do next, the moment you fuckin’ pick up that scalpel blade, he will shoot you with no hesitation. He’s not himself right now. So, for your own daughter’s sake… don’t fucking move and let the nurses unhook Ellie.” He freezes, not expecting what you had just said, he looks between you two and Ellie, “We need to do this. It could work, we could have a vaccine. A chance to win.”

You shake your head, “Vaccines only work if there’s the proper distribution. A collective effort to try and solve this problem together. You have no resources to distribute it, even if you did it would take years to form collective immunity and then we’d have to figure out how to get rid of the infected. We have to share each other's work openly and efficiently. So that together we might achieve what we cannot achieve alone, collective immunity.”

Dr. Anderson takes in the information, the true meaning of your words but eventually settles on a decision, one that would have major implications in the future. He grabs the scalpel from the tray, and points it at you both, “I won’t let you take her.” There is no hesitation as Joel puts a bullet through his head, the loud gunshot causes both of the nurses to flinch and scream in horror. There is a flat tone in Joel’s voice as he says, “Unhook her.” The nurses have their arms up, shakingly cowering as his voice booms, “Move!” They do as they’re told, unhooking Ellie from the IV, blood drips down her arm, “Cover her arm.” Joel said and one of the nurses places a cotton patch on top of it. He then tells them to turn around, which all of them do with no question. As Joel carries Ellie out of the operating room, you quietly say, “I’m sorry. Tell Abby that I tried. But the moment she comes after him, I won’t hesitate to kill her.”

You leave and catch up with Joel who is carrying Ellie’s limp body in his arms, the elevator doors open, and you both step inside. You made mistakes and did a few things right. It will take what it will take, baby that's life, you cannot change what you do not own, everybody knows. But if you live deep and love strong you get pretty damn close. The elevator doors open to the basement of the hospital, and you both quickly spot a car ready to climb into to leave. As you quickly walk towards it, you begin to fade in and out, your energy spent and feeling the effects of the drugs they had given you prior.

“You can’t keep them safe forever.” Marlene walks out of the shadows with a gun pointed at you both, and you feel yourself slip further into darkness, you hazily hear the words from Marlene, “No matter how hard you try, no matter how many people you kill, she’s gonna grow up, Joel. And then you’ll die. She’ll leave. Then what? How long till she’s torn apart by Infected or murdered by raiders? Because she lives in a broken world that you could have saved.” Joel nods, “Maybe. But it isn’t for you to decide.” Marlene throws back at him, “Or you. So what would she decide? ‘Cause I think she’d wanna do what’s right because your girl over there was about to sacrifice herself to spare you both and save the world. And you know it. It’s not too late. Even now,” She tucks the gun away back into her holster, “Even after what you’ve done. We can still find a way.”

That’s when you couldn’t hold yourself up anymore, your eyes roll back to your head, you feel your knees give out and your body comes crashing down to the floor. In this sea of change, understanding is our shore, you disappear with no control. The current is strong, your arms are weak. But you are the branch within his reach, though you cannot catch your breath. Joel isn’t able to catch you in time, and it’s as if the world had slowed down to watch your lifeless body crumple and shut down right in front of him and he’s never felt so powerless. He gazes down at you and then at Ellie, considering the rebel leader’s points, then he brings his eyes to Marlene.

ON THE ROAD, TO JACKSON — DAY

With his closed fists, he will feel like he’s succeeded. Outside of the walls of Jackson is an awful place as far as he can tell. You were victims of a constant loss, you three were not the enemy. He is afraid that his plans will lose their place. Maybe you all could hold your breath forever, or maybe for a while, knowing that the best will surely come like sunshine streaming down or the falling of rain. 

Through your sleepy eyes, contagiously bright, as you stir awake, you are now in the front passenger seat of a truck you do not recognize, stretches of tall trees whiz past your periphery as you slowly crane your neck to look at Joel, who is gazing at you with relief and a little bit of remorse. Slowly, you see it in his eyes. The landscape of being are endlessly competing, back and forth for an answer to existence that you can understand. Perhaps you’re looking far too closely, you can't see all the evidence in its entirety. The air in your lungs and the complexity of both of your love for each other and Ellie. But love travels like a rumor here, losing form with every ear, just a skeleton of something more.

Ellie stirs and starts to wake up confused in the back seat, “What?” Joel is quick to reassure her and says, “It’s all right. You’re with us. Take it slow. The drugs are still wearin’ off.” Ellie mumbles, “I was with the Fireflies, and then… what drugs?” Joel swallows down his guilt before steadily saying, “They were runnin’ some test on you and some others. Turns out there’s a whole lot more like you. People that are immune. Dozens of ‘em. And the doctors, they couldn’t make any of it work. They’ve actually…” There’s a small pause, a wavier in his voice as the flashbacks come back to him in a blur, “They’ve stopped looking for a cure,” he lies, and Ellie then asks him suspiciously, “Where are my clothes?” He fabricates another lie, “Raiders attacked the hospital. Barely got ya both outta there. We’ll find you two some new clothes on the way.” Ellie senses the bullshit, “Were people hurt?” Joel clenches his jaw before deciding, “Yes.” To which she asks, “Is Marlene okay?” His eyes get misty again as he drives, he can’t bring himself to admit the truth to her or spew out more lies, so he settles on something true, “I’m takin’ us home.” She turns over so he can’t see her face in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

You sit there stunned at Joel’s lies and see the strength of his resolve. You turn your head to look at him to find him gazing at you as if asking, begging through his whiskey-doe eyes, imploring you to not tell her the truth right now. You have to trust him, he knows where he’s going. The unbearable weight of a hidden question between exchanging looks, “Will you follow me, still?” You close your eyes for a moment, and Joel nearly falters, readying himself for the fallout, but instead, you take his right hand, with your own, squeezing it with reassurance. Some truths, over time, can learn to play nice and some truths are sharper than knives. No matter what category you fit into, truth's got its sight set on you. The light that we hold must be buried to bloom. And in spite of the uneven odds, beauty lifts from the earth. You’re the deal that everyone breaks when you’re without him. Only love proves to be the truth.

3 DAYS LATER…

THE OUTSKIRTS OF JACKSON — DAY

After a couple of stops, grabbing clothes and shoes from abandoned houses and stores. The car that he stole from the Fireflies had broken down, Ellie sat in the driver's seat as she traced her arms of the bitemark of the first Infected she ever faced. You were leaning on the other car door, right beside her, before quietly showing your arm the bite mark of the Infected a few weeks prior. She looks up at you in surprise, “You’re also… Immune?” You nod, explaining to her the possibility of now having the antibodies to fight the cordyceps infection along with the speculation of the radiation you had. She dwells on that information for a moment before asking, “Did the Fireflies try and test you too?” You look directly at her, “Yes. I’m not sure it worked though.” The lie that falls off your tongue tastes sour, but she doesn’t pick up on it, sensing that there was enough truth in what you said. Joel loudly shuts the hood of the car, “Well, she got us close enough.” He looks behind him before walking towards you and Ellie, “We gotta walk the rest of the way. Probably a five-hour hike but we can manage that. Remember?” Ellie smiles at the memory of the good times of the journey, “Yeah.” 

You hike through the woods, taking in the earthly smell of pine trees and dirt. The forest resets in hope, with every crunch beneath your feet, and the two people you hold most dear to your heart. Joel brings himself to talk about Sarah, “You know, Sarah and I used to hike like this all the time. I wouldn’t say it was her favorite thing. She wasn’t a fan of the mosquitos and such. But she was a big climber, or scampering. That’s probably the right word. That girl, she’d see a big rock, and just…” He makes a noise with his mouth indicating that she would bolt right through the trees to climb it, “She woulda liked you and Birdie. Not to say you and Sarah are the same. Definitely different kids.”

Ellie asks, “How so?” Joel glances at her and says, “Well, she was a lot more, I wanna say girly. And I’m not sayin’ you’re not girly.” She shakes her head, “I’m not.” Joel agrees, “Yeah, you’re not. So that. She was taller. She had a killer smile. Again, not sayin’ that you don’t. But you know why I’d think she’d like you?” Ellie indulges him, “Why?” The answer was so simple, quick, and witty, Joel says, “‘Cause you’re funny. I think you would’ve made her laugh. Anyway, I bet you would’ve liked her back.” The teen next to you agrees, “Yeah, bet I would’ve.”

Eventually, you make it to the edge of the mountain top, looking over the view of the community of Jackson, and it is absolutely breathtaking. The breeze causes your skin to form goosebumps, and feel the tickle of the wind behind your neck. Joel takes a breath and says, “There ya go. Not much further now.” He continues walking and you start to follow but notice Ellie standing back, she calls out to him, “Hey, wait.” He stops and turns to face her, she curses, “Fuck.” Then takes a few steps closer to him, “Back in Kansas City, you asked me about the first time I killed someone. When I got bit in the mall, I wasn’t on my own. My best friend was there and she got bit, too.” Her admission causes her to falter a little bit before she says, “We don’t know what to do, and she says, ‘We can just wait it out, be all poetic and just lose our mind together. And then she did. And I had to… Her name was Riley and she was the first to die. And then it was Tess. And then Sam.”

You and Joel shook your heads, “That’s not on you,” he said and she tries to argue, “I know…” He cuts her off, “Look, sometimes things don’t work out the way we hope. You can feel like you’ve come to an end and you don’t know what to do next. But if you just keep goin’ you find somethin’ new to fight for. And maybe that’s not what…” Abruptly, Ellie speaks up, “Swear to me. Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.” Joel doesn’t hesitate as he lies, unblinking as he replies, “I swear.” ​​She doesn’t believe him. She knows he’s not telling the truth. But she nods, and says “Okay.”

You hold his hand in support, and then it's just too much, to know that the streets still run with blood. So he tries to push it down, but it comes back faster and harder, tides are changing on a dime. And he’s just trying to keep his head above the water. Surrender's just a word, till you try it out and see how hard it is to hurt with someone else around, you. He’s the worst he’s ever been afraid of almost everything. The skies are clear but storms are always coming. Your gift to him is just to be bracing for the winds he always summons. His home, his heart, thank God you are someone who loves him.

End Notes:

Holy shit this took WAY LONGER THAN EXPECTED THATS ON MEEEE IM SO SORRYYYYY!

ARE YOU OKAY?? GIRLIE YOU GOOD? THIS NEEDS EDITING LATER BUT I HOPE YOU ARE ALL WELL AND YOU ENJOYED THIS CHAPTER! DRINK WATER! BREATHE!

Its was an ACCIDENT! I established in Chapter 1 that it was all vague and a mystery woOOoo bcs uhhh I don’t think I was supposed to already give that question an answer in the beginning of the series cuz why the heck would u still read this T^T Alsoooo cause you did trYYYyyy to but couldn’t (I.e Tess, Sam and Henry, you voicing out your protests to Kathleen, etc.) And as if you had any other option but to go with Joel, Ellie, and Tess to survive yk the Infected :,))

CONGRATS U MADE IT AND OMG YOU LITERALLY HAD THE CHOICE TO GO BACK TO YOUR OLD UNIVERSE BUT YOU STAYEDDD FOR LOVEEEEE HEHEHEHEH

The Birdie had bits and pieces of what happens in the game, and sHE TRIED TO SAVE THE DAMN SURGEON, but obviously, homie got shot in the head :)) So now she has to figure out a way to stop Abby without having the whole story OR INFOOOOO YAYYYYY

Even though you tried to tell him not to kill Marlene or the Doctor, that it would be the cause of his death. But he still did anyway, a choice that was already made the moment you both were ripped away from him. He was disassociating :,) which I relate to Joel bb

OKAY I MIGHT WRITE AN EPILOGUE BUT LOWKEY LET ME TAKE A NAP CUZ I’VE BEEN WRITING FOR ALMOST TWO DAYS STRAIGHT WITH NO COFFEE O_O

Anyways… AHEM… I LOVE ALL OF YOU SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSO MUCH! LIKE YOU HAVE NO IDEA. I give you hugs and kisses, and cookies for being so incredibly patient and sticking with me for my first-ever multi-chapter fic. CRAZYYYY.

TAGLIST:

@memento-mora @elijahssuit @tartiflvtte @lillylilly2 @kyuupidwrites @amethystwonder11 @syd-vixious @kidkrow666 @soulofapatrick @ponyboys-sunsets @superflymaterial @chaotic-imposter @vainbimbo @eva-stark @loki-an-idiot @littleshadow17 @undermoonlightwalk @afternoon-evening @notmysunnydale  @slurmp69 @gyllord @aerangi @mac5323 @friskynotebook @earth-to-lottie @chaotic-imposter @kodzuvk @hawkins-2000 @reallysparklychaos @trust-dreamcatcher @darkened-writer @memeorydotcom @welcomebackfelicia @rainbowpitofdoom @omg-its-typical-aesthetics-fan @marvelsimpcz @dorck26 @evienorville @munsons-queen @little-miss-bi @mxltifxnd0m @ohjoelmiller @coalix @taestrwbrry @avengersheart @gyllord @valentine-babe@missdragon-1 @ponyboys-sunsets @ipadkidsworld @otternanamilolo @issybee0611 @technicallysassyfox @cupcakemachete @manuchyy @darkened-writer @andyrazzledazzle @glossythor @virtueassassin @witchy-jadda @imonmykneessir @norr1e @mando-bix @thicficbich1 @adoringanakin @lalla-04p @reallysparklychaos @hollywoodmariposa @mando-bix @lunatic1012 @davosmymaster

[rise-my-angel]

Trembling Havoc

Credit: @knightwayne

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Length: 22.4k

Warnings: Violence, blood, trauma flashbacks, aggressive restraints, non specific depiction of ptsd symptoms, smut, handjob, p in v, canon divergence

Notes: Divergence only applies to discarding all of tlou 2 as canon so no knowledge of it is required. I'm sorry about the length, it's gone beyond my control. Direct continuation of Perilous Companions, part of the Confused Warmth series.

You never quite felt comfortable in other people’s houses. The feeling like you’ve invaded on a space that didn’t want any newcomers encroaching on their privacy, mixed together with a silent curiosity to how each individual choose to express themselves. The tables and walls around you sat clean and free of dust, debris, or even much in the way of personal belongings. Just a clinically organized arrangement of medical equipment along the desk you currently stood in front of.

It was so impersonal looking, no trace of scattered mind busy at work, no passion in the mess left behind in their wake, without even a peep if you touched any of it. Picking up something only to put it down would he reach out without a word and slide it back into place. Quite different from the chaos your home had been growing up. Tools and samples over any rooms surface with seemingly no reason, yet the second you came close to even slightly touching it your father would lash out at disrupting the order of things.

Somewhat similar, but Jerry wasn’t quite like that. No he and your father lived at opposite ends of extremity, and nothing felt more highlighted then how uncaring he was currently. Knelt over his desk looking over the samples laid out on them, a tsk following shake of his head as they told the same story over and over again. Whatever his previous fear of you harming him was, got left behind when you informed him there was a third guest you were waiting for. You wouldn’t do anything rash until she got here.

Having a moment to finally breathe, you leaned one hip against the side of the desk you were opposite of, thumb rubbing back and forth at the red still wanting to poke through from the vein on your inner elbow. You had wanted to push him, prove his delusions wrong, and so he had to squirm as you took a hasty blood sample of your own, before tossing the needle onto his desk.

The sight of blood drips on the metal top disturbed him more then watching it get painfully pulled out of your arm one handed. Were your father here, he wouldn’t have even hesitated the gun on your person to grab his supplies to pull the sample himself.

Both of you knew what it said, knew what everything was. In the early seconds of your arrival, Jerry found enough awareness to try and leap towards the satchel on another side table. He was a doctor not a fighter, not much of a man to put up a fight before getting shoved to the ground. All of it was in there. A thick warn journal stuffed to the brim with notes, overwhelmed with the manic thought patterns of your father. There were a few additions of Jerry’s own.

Trying to put the pieces together that your father left behind, despite knowing there were no blank spots in his research. A deep reaching inside of your chest spoke of what could be your sensibilities, a rational excuse for those you used to know. A plea of how far back your life went with this family should mean something, but there was no mistake in what had been done already. “You really think you know more then he did?”

Jerry raised his head up from his slouched over position, brows furrowed together in confusion as you gestured to the research journal. It had been a fair few minutes at that point since any words had been exchanged. “Last time I checked surgeons aren’t exactly the same as mycologists.”

Fingers tapping at either side of the desk, he twisted his face as if reaching for a memory. “Once things begun to settle, dead and sick people just seemed to fall into our laps and- well, you know what Phillip was like.”

Flickering between him and the door to the dark hallway, you perked up to hear over the low humming whirls of his machines for the signs of outside life. “You just so happened to be around a bunch of sick people willing to be experimented on?”

“Yeah-” Your head turned quickly to him once more, eyes narrow in doubt as he immediately backtracked. Voice lowering to more of a mutter, “Well no actually, but they were already infected it wasn’t like they were too busy.”

Jaw clenching, you glanced at the papers you snatched once more. Trailing over the scratches as you deciphered each page slowly, your father had been thorough even before you. You wished it to be ramblings of a scientist desperate to make the world right, take the immune and create a cure from their DNA to spread amongst the rest of the population.

That’s what it should have looked like, but nothing about your father’s work pointed anywhere near such a goal, and he didn’t care if the ends didn’t justify the means. The bodies they went through didn’t mean a thing to either of them. “The fireflies know what you do?”

Eyes met, but only one held a seed a deceit. Jerry was slow and calm in his speech, but his shoulders almost shrunk in on themselves. “The ones who matter do. I tell them what I need, they go and get it for me. It doesn’t matter what I do with them after that, people like Marlene just-”

“Want to help. Where have I heard that before.” The pleas of a man seconds before the air was flushed from him, but also, the assurances of a governing body that asked of it’s citizens to accept they only wanted to do right by them. FEDRA also wanted to help, but you had seen the bones of it’s untruth over and over spread across the fields of the country. “They know your body piles look a lot like the ones outside by any chance?”

Jerry rolled his eyes, “You really think the fireflies care about what they leave behind? You think their ultimate goal is to treasure our precious lives or to just control the ones left the way they want to? It’s been almost twenty years. They don’t care about being right they care about winning, and winners leave body counts.”

Your arms sat crossed your chest, fingernails digging into the skin of your palm to keep from any kind of lashing out. “My father as wrong.” You both locked eyes as yours stung in tandem with your arm. “And he killed himself over it.”

Jerry tried calling your name but your voice raised as noticeably as it wavered. “That sound like a man who thought he was winning?”

Congratulations on your apt observation skills, because a voice rung out that wasn’t in the home before. So much for waiting to get the jump on them. “If at first you don’t succeed, right?”

Jerry had jumped the same instance you did, turning to the side you looked at the woman now in the doorway. He said he only called her, so you took no chance. Pulling the gun from the back of your waist you pointed it at Jerry, eliciting a protest as he raised his hands in the air.

The woman asked your name in question, watching your free hand twitch at it’s side. Her face was calm and unexpressive, but there was something further deep in her eyes. You couldn’t quite decipher it, but if she was a leader you suppose that was a trained quality. “We didn’t have a chance to meet before, I’m-”

“Marlene. Yeah I know.” The side of your vision moved slightly forcing your head to whip back to the only other person in the room. His hands raising higher with a much clearer fear as the slight clink of the gun moving in your hand startled him still. “FEDRA must be feeding you guys well if you have enough gas to get all the way out here that fast.”

Her face falling just an inch to something akin to bothered but she seemed to swallow it down just as fast as it appeared. “I’m surprised you came back on your own. I was-”

One eyebrow raised as you watched a faux polite demeanour plaster all over her. This wasn’t a woman who got to where she was by being nice to people. “I’m not here for you, I’m here for that.” Your head gestured over to the work on Jerry’s desk. “Why do you want me if you got the samples he needed?”

Marlene tried taking a step to you, but your back straightened, eyes wide and blazing at her own as the gun once again made noise shifting from movement. Enough that she paused. Apparently some human life meant more then others. “It’s not that simple. We’re not Carvel, we don’t have his genius-”

Head shaking you bit the inside of your cheek to keep whatever wanted to bubble to the surface from taking priority. “You have his work though.” Using your other hand you dragged the journal over to you, flipping open a page that seemed to be more worn then others. Glancing down for just a second you barley risked taking your eyes off of her. “Subject failed to produce results. Subject, huh? From the description it sure sounds like me.”

Marlene and Jerry risked glances at each other, whatever unsettling feelings inside of Jerry reflected in her image of poise. “Results just means more testing is required-”

Your voice cut louder through his, causing him to startle back slightly from the angered tone. This time reading straight from the writing as you flipped to another random page. “Once a successful selection is extracted from the bone marrow, introduction of a b cell’s inability to process outside binding traits of unique antigens,”

Your head flew back up to look her in the eye, lungs begging for a deep breathe from how tight the nerves constricted inside you. Slamming the book shut with an aggressive thud you felt a toxicity flowing through your veins. “Now that's a lot of complicated terms, Jerry. You want to elaborate on what exactly he’s getting at?”

Marlene’s own jaw clenched as his patronizing voice explained in what no doubt had already been said to her. You just wanted to rub it in. You were feeling petty enough. “It means the body can’t replicate another persons antibodies. B cells die and when they do, if you don’t produce that exact combination naturally they’ll never come back.”

You didn’t feel it at the moment, but amusingly enough, you didn’t even get to the notes yet of what he was about to add. “Even if they could it wouldn’t matter. Cordyceps are symbiotic once they are in a host that is susceptible to them, brain damage is inevitable, they keep you alive to use your body and by the time you, turn,” The casualness of the man to put the word turn in quotations. “That isn’t the first instance they’ve taken control it just means that they’ve permanently damaged the hemispheres of your brain it doesn’t require for survival.”

The look in her eyes were a pained frustration. This was new to you, but not her. Whether it was Jerry himself, or your father, someone had already explained this to her. Despite that, she tried to reason with what she couldn’t defend. “But if it can’t survive her immune system-”

Jerry, so condescending was ready to outwit another person barley even gave a tone that his life could be at risk. “Oh it survived just fine.” Eyes flying over to him swimming in questions silent. “Technically ophiocordyceps unilateralis acts more like a parasite then a fungus. She’s still infected but something in her system is preventing it from taking control of her brain functions.”

It would have been so much easier to pretend as if you beat it out. That you're immune system was just superior and you never had to worry about it. You shook no, “The bite healed, why would the bite heal if I were-”

Jerry stepped towards you, causing a daisy chain of jumping to action at the sudden movement for all three of you. “I- let me prove it to you. I have a scanner in the drawer if you’d let me-” He looked at the barrel of the gun before waving his hands in defeat. “It’s in the one closest to you, Marlene pull it out and slide it over to her.”

Both of you watched like hawks. Keeping peace, Marlene kept one in the air as she very slowly moved the other to pass the scanner to you. Not a word was spoken, barley a breath echoed out as the pinch screamed in the air before a red positive flashed in your face. His voice was even more grating as you looked at the blank screen in one shining colour. “Like I said, it functions more like a parasite. It keeps you alive and unaffected but you keep it alive by feeding it.”

He looked at Marlene with an uncaring defeat. “She’s not immune. It just exists in her body unable to control anything, you couldn’t even spread it if you bite someone that hard because it wasn’t able to function beyond it’s own internal growth.”

Her face was almost sympathetic, like she understood the reality but was disconnected from it at the same time. “Carvel-”

It took almost too much energy to hold your body from shaking, like a shiver that refused to settle and now lived in your bones. “He said this is the end. He looked at all of this, he told you he couldn’t do it and killed himself over it. Everything this quack says it just off the backbone of my fathers work. What else could you possibly want with me?”

He didn’t answer this time, she did. “We’ve looked inside dozens of people. Dead, sick, healthy, but none of them had an immunity. We have no idea what we might find if you let us-”

“What? Cut me open? Explore my brain like a fucking science experiment?” She tried murmuring your name almost comfortingly, but your eyes stung too much to hear it. Pressure threatening to pool out of them. “I don’t exist to make everything right. You can’t sacrifice me just because you’re desperate to accomplish something for once in your fucking life, Marlene.” The air felt claustrophobic, closing in like walls as your chest burned keeping it all down.

“Your purpose-”

Liquid spilt down your cheek, not much but enough to have your limbs on edge, itching to run from these people. “My purpose isn’t humanity's responsibility. You don’t have the right to tell me I can’t live just so you can play savior. My father killed himself over the truth, apparently that doesn’t mean anything to people like you.”

For days afterwards, Marlene haunted your waking days. It took one very awful night of locking yourself safe up in a room with far too much of some kind of disgusting barrel made alcohol that you came unknowingly came across to drown it out. “You’re right. We are desperate, but believe us or not, you are for a greater purpose. Do you really want to stop us from doing just that?”

A cold wind swooped over your face, and thus back around you were two very different people. Joel had mentioned to you to bring gloves, but you didn’t realize how much you’d need them until about now. Running your fingers mindlessly over the length of the arrow you could feel how stiff the cold was making their movement, the only thing sparking life into them was the sharpness of the arrowhead point each time you pressed down on it.

You didn’t have many, but each one you tied a bright fabric around an end so it stood out when you shoved one into the ground. Not enough that it would stand out to anyone but when you three would come following the trail later. It was getting too late and the temperature plummeting too low to risk staying out here for much longer.

It had been strange, taking the lead as you had set out that morning. Joel having full trust in letting you sniff out a trail they took until finally, you had come across the fresh remains of what was a campsite. A smirk almost formed walking into the smushed snow, fireflies never had much of a reason to be inconspicuous in the open land, stealth not important when their manpower usually had a lot of firepower.

A fire put out maybe a few hours ago still smelled the burning in the air, and you could only follow the trace as long as the sky remained lit. Abandoned pockets of old homes strayed about close to the state border but you were reasonably sure going any further west wasn’t where they’d go. Most don’t. Only twenty minutes ago explaining to Joel, “She’s probably going to have to stop to regroup or supply, she won’t just throw Owen back at us and knowing I’m with you coming alone isn’t an option. Not much in the way of camps around here anymore, my guess she’ll have to go all the way back to resupply.”

His eyes had narrowed in thought, his own plans mapping out in his head as the both of you had knelt down to the ground, wrapping the arrow in a bright marker to come back too. “We come back tomorrow early as possible then. Between the two of us, going through the night we can reach the border just short of two days.”

Ellie had protested at that one almost instantly, “Hey, I’m not just letting you guys do this on your own you know.” A debate was surely on the horizon between the two of them over Ellie being allowed to come, but you weren’t sure you could handle it right now.

You hadn’t been able to handle much conversation at all the past twenty four hours honestly. Shaking your head, you dragged Joel’s attention back once more as you tapped your finger along the map. “If they’re going all the way back to Salt Lake she won’t go through Idaho, she’s way more likely to cross at Bear Lake. Stop for the night and book it in the morning.”

Now, you stood pressuring your finger close to a little too deep into the arrowhead, the rock your elbows rested on sat high on the edge of a small cliff. You kept your back turned, letting Joel and Ellie fight between them on keeping her behind or not until the noise in your head drowned out their voices.

It was only the sudden appearance of Ellie at your side that brought you back into the stiff freezing of your hands. The agitation wasn’t held in her face, meaning it instead sat on Joel’s shoulders. She wouldn’t slow you both down, that wasn’t the issue. You suspect it was a tearing need on his heart to keep Ellie as far away from these people as he could that conflicted with her desire to stay together.

Eyes both gazed on the snowy view ahead, Ellie broke the silence as usual. “He’s not mad you know.” A ping in your chest risked speeding up to a fast beating heart. “Neither of us are. I mean it took me and Joel way longer to talk then you. And we spent way more time just with each other.”

Jaw clenching and unclenching, your mouth hissed it out as if the only way to force your vocal cords to even cooperate. “That’s not what you should hate me for.” You couldn’t brave looking at her anymore, and luckily Ellie seemed to sense not to push it right now.

The silence between you both blew calmly in the wind for a brief moment before it once again became too uncomfortable for her liking. So she picked at part of her brain that had toiled with her the entire time she tried sleeping the night before. “If they knew it wouldn’t work why kill people over it?”

Chest rising with a deep inhale, you finally moved to tuck the arrow away behind your back. The sting in your eyes either from the wind or the memory you couldn’t be sure. Arms coming back around you to cross your torso. “You ever want something to be true so badly that you’re willing to ignore every part of you yelling the opposite?”

Silence once more. The three of you had more than enough times this was true but for some reason only one came to mind that second. Covering a discoloured mess on a small child’s shin hoping when she woke up everything would be alright. “They had proof-”

Cutting her off you wrapped your arms around yourself tighter. “Knowing what’s true doesn’t mean you can accept it. Marlene, the doctors, they wanted to be right so badly it didn’t matter what they ended up doing. She wanted it, and she wasn’t about to let someone else get it before her.”

“Why?”

Why indeed, you thought. No one answer could cover their spectrum of rationality, but you could say one thing definitively. The one person who you knew perfectly well what lay behind their spoken reasoning. “Whoever gets it first, gets to use it the way they want.” Nails dug into your palms again. “Say what you will about FEDRA but they have the infrastructure to pass a vaccine through their QZ’s on mass. People like Marlene get it first, and suddenly they get to decide who deserves it. And who doesn’t.”

Ellie’s heart begun to beat harder in harmony with yours. “Why would some deserve it but not others, weren’t they supposed to be fighting for freedom or whatever?”

Holding back your bias was a much harder task then one might otherwise assume. Years of being hunted and assaulted by them left a bitter stain on your person for life, but they still were people. Not the one dimensional villains you used to see on television as a child.

Instinctively your brain was forcing you to focus on your breathing, making every inhale and exhale felt through your lungs outward. “People clammer to QZ’s because like it or not they work. Life sucks and they treat you like garbage, but they keep the sick out and try to have anything remotely close to a life as normal as best as people like them can manage.”

Bias, bias, bias. Your mouth was unable to not spew out what very well could be bias but it scratched at you too deeply to not feel it. “Just because the way you use your power is aggressive doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. But, you take that power away and suddenly your left with a void that needs to be taken over. Take FEDRA away and suddenly you have an entire population wanting the freedom to do whatever they want, and you can’t just take over a population and expect to control all of them because you say so.”

Neither had mentioned it, not really, but you knew about Kansas City. Ten days of success wasn’t exactly one for the history of victors. You knew that getting rid of FEDRA wasn’t enough. You had to have a plan for after. If not, you bear the weight of mistakes that came before you. You go in without a plan, you get Kansas City, you start slow and build up on respect, you get Jackson. But everyone there also knew it wasn’t exactly easy for them to get there, or common. Ellie started to speak, wanting to ask how that related but you answered before her anyways.

“You don’t do what Marlene did for twenty years without starting to ignore why you even started in the first place. Fight an enemy for long enough, and you forget you’re not supposed to turn into them.” It wasn’t fair, but valuing all human life was nowhere near as important as some might think.

Ellie was quiet for a bit, maybe a minute maybe more. But something still had a question mark all over it. “Why not just let us live? Just start over like here.”

Jerry had said something that night, a comparison of you few rarely ever saw or felt. But it was there, an echo of a voice that didn’t belong to you, repeating a kind of word that ingrained themselves into the further parts of your brain. Praise for your father almost never reflected the twisting damage sinking his own sanity further away the light still left around him.

Were it possible, one would have suggested it wasn’t really your voice at all that spoke. “Starting over means populations will try and rebuild our old lives as fast as possible. Not everyone thinks that’s a good thing.”

Footsteps in the snow didn’t hit either of your ears, but watchful brown eyes were glued to how much you didn’t bare looking at either him or Ellie. A distance he had seen mere weeks ago that he watched reappear in one fell swoop yesterday.

Joel didn’t interrupt as you spoke, something on your mind needed to get out and if it had to be on Ellie, fine. At least it was coming out.

Blood peeked it’s head from the slices your nails pressed into it’s skin. “Do you know how long it took for us to reach one billion?” Ellie shook her head no, just barley visible from the corner of your eye. “Thirty thousand years. It took thirty thousand years for us to reach one billion. In a hundred years we doubled that, the next billion took thirty years and by outbreak were were at six. Give humanity the chance to prosper and we’ll always found a way to do it on our own terms.”

The sombreness in your own tone sat within Ellie’s as well. “So they make a cure and they get to choose who gets it.” If she saw you nod yes, neither of you acknowledged it. History had always been that way though. Nothing was new. If the ruling class didn’t care enough about you, then who cares if you aren’t there to experience it.

“We’ve covered enough ground for today.” Joel’s deep tone broke through the tense air. Ellie spinning around expecting the same frustration she walked away from, but found instead a softness. Eyes bright and swirling with an affection that she had become so reliant on. “Let’s go. We’ll be walking in the dark if we stick around any longer.”

Nodding, Ellie left your side to grab her bag. Your body turning to follow her departing sight until only the broadness of Joel’s frame was in focus. His posture was antsy, wanting to say something but struggling with how or when to say it. In your mind, it could only be something you should be dreading to hear.

The work Joel had done to coax you into letting him, letting both of them, bring you softly into the life they were trying to make for themselves feeling like it was shattering before his eyes. Trailing behind them as you all treked back to Jackson.

Calling it home felt selfish to you again. A life that you fell back into let you escape once more, giving you a chance to assume you deserved more. But now? It all was converging on the only people who couldn’t bare watching it happen to.

Were you being distant because they couldn’t possibly understand how overwhelming your spinning thoughts were, or were you unknowingly, preparing to soften the blow. You hadn’t slept the night before, too consumed with the torment that this was a sign.

Protect these people, and then leave them alone. For good.

You were present for any conversation of planning, but lost elsewhere. You couldn’t even say if Joel or Ellie spoke to each other at all that night you were just that far away. Your form hunched over the bathroom sink, holding back any pain running water as hot as you turned it right over the cuts in your palms. The scars they’d leave might look noticeable if you could go half a day without digging your nails into them.

The tap had been running for too long. Joel would have known you weren’t in the shower from the way the water running sounded and he wasted no time barging in. Your eyes flickering to the side as you watched him shut and lock it behind him.

Instantly you turned the tap off, reaching to dry your hands with a hand towel but still not looking at him. “We not knocking anymore?” It was hard to determine if playful was intended in your tone.

“I did knock, you didn’t answer.” There was a lightness to his voice that any previous day would sink a smile onto your face but you summoned no such energy for him. Just drying your now already dry hands as if he’d just decide to leave. He murmured your name more then once but it didn’t really register. You heard it but almost in slow motion, and too late for Joel not to step towards you and grab the towel forcing your attention up to him.

Both of your faces steeled with something unreadable, Joel mindlessly tossed it behind you as his hand now hovered close to your face as if begging you to lean into it. But you didn’t. So he flexed it into a twitching fist before letting it just drop back down. “I don’t think you’ve been this quiet since the first day I met you.”

Right. The day you ruined everything by letting Tommy show you around town. Should have just turned away. Your fingertips tapped at the sink counter as you strained yourself to find words that meant anything. “I don’t know what to say.”

Joel’s face scrunched in what looked like anger. His body turning away as he ran a hand down his face for a moment. The agitation in his voice clear as crystal. “You can start with whether or not you’re alright.” The one shoulder you shrugged did not go over well. Joel’s voice this time slightly raising in volume as he said your name. “That’s an Ellie’s annoyed I gave her eighty chores to do in one night answer. Not a I’m worried for your goddamn well being answer.”

You felt bad as soon as it left your mouth, but there was an exhausted attitude you almost couldn’t contain in such a small space between you. “Don’t lecture me.”

His own voice turning more into an anger this time, his face almost irritatedly bewildered at how little he was getting through to you. “That’s what you think I came in here for? To yell at you like you’re a child?”

Your tone opposite, quiet and muttering. “Sure feels like it, Miller.”

Some point in the future you’d become thankful that Joel knew you so well. Pulling out his last name in any tone other then jabbing fun was not a good sign. His hand raised almost to stop you from saying anything, but he pulled back. Instead running it over his coarse facial hair to collect himself first.

Silver lining was that you weren’t an argument person. There wasn’t many times a disagreement between you and Joel turned into anything but silent upset. Yelling wasn’t a thing either of you cared for.

Joel’s large shadow stepped into your personal space as you dropped into an exhaust. Wanting both to sleep it away, and wanting to run forever from this. The warmth that always radiated from his body consumed you so gently as his fingers pushed your chin up to look him in the eye.

He was too kind for your silent, distant facade to handle. Not brave enough to reach out to feel his own skin, but your chest tightened in need as you looked at his face. Eyes way to expressive for his own good and highlighted such handsome features that you knew you’d never see on any other soul. His voice, just as dulcet as it was a raspy whisper. “You’re allowed to not be okay, sweetheart.”

His eyes shifted down and you could tell, somewhat embarrassingly, that he no doubt caught the brief second you considered reaching out for him. “Yeah, well this isn’t about me.”

If Joel were anyone else, he’d take that as bait. Argue with you until there was nothing left to be angry over, but your heart was heavy at how little he misread your signals. Instead he loomed closer into you, closing the gap to barley a foot of space between your bodies.

His large hand sliding up your jaw and cupping your cheek, thumb rubbing back and forth over what he could reach. Were you to wrap your smaller hand around his wrist like you loved to do, you’d have felt the jump in his pulse at how instinctively you leaned into his touch.

Ellie once described to Tommy that Joel was like the angry attack dog that only calmed down for it’s owners, whereas you were far more like a brooding feral cat that secretly yearned for ‘scritches’. A phrasing which made Maria almost spit her drink out at the cartoonish image she conjured in her head.

She wasn’t wrong though. His calming scent and warm closeness never failed to pull out the neediness in you. “I-” Squeezing your eyes shut for as long as stuttering air out your chest took before looking back into Joel’s eyes. “It’s hard to accept that this isn’t my fault, somehow.” Soft eyes squinting in doubt you elaborated. “Like maybe this all comes back to me and if it is then it’s not your responsibility to fix it and it sure isn’t Ellie’s.”

The man before you sighed, leaning down and pulling you up to rest his forehead against yours. Both your eyes closed as now the space between you was centimetres, sharing the shaky air you tried hiding away from him. Joel’s hand sliding to cup the back of your neck as his fingers toyed with the hair within his grasp, keeping you in place.

“You’re a moron.”

Alright, that was not what you were expecting. In fact you weren’t expecting it so much that without even realizing a laugh burst of your mouth, Joel’s own deep chuckle following. “Glad you finally noticed.”

You had a feeling Joel was rolling his eyes along with whatever slurred mumbling to himself he sent you, but he leaned to the side, his face now resting in just one of his favourite spots on you. The crook of your neck where his plush lips left tiny presses. Not quite a kiss, but a poke of attention for you to focus on.

“What did I say the other night?” His voice muffled by your skin, each tickle tempting you to just reach out and rest your hands on him. His other hand grabbed your waist, ready to pull you into him if you’d let him. “We do this together. We all got each other, and we’re going to keep it that way.”

Like years passing in the stars your hand inched over along the counter. The lightest of brush your index finger made with the soft material of Joel’s shirt he flooded your senses. Tipping through your fingers and rushing along your veins to clutch at your heart.

Like memory, as one of your hands reached up more to finally hold at his side, the other grasped gently at the wrist along the side of your head. Before you could speak, Joel wasn’t finished. Leaning back up to look you in the eyes. A seriousness painted across him once more, “Everything that happened, before I mean. None of that matters, not in how we see you and it never will. So if you keep worrying this is your fault, or that we’d be better off without you then you’ve got a hell of a lot of catching up to do.”

You felt the tension in your shoulders dipping, the heavy weight sliding off and down onto the floor like a puddle. Joel’s grip on you loosened, letting you turn with your back to the sink, resting against the uncomfortable edge. “I had a chance once. Not long before,” You paused, head tilting towards him with a pointed glance. “Probably a few months before Ellie got bit if I had to guess, I had him. I was right there, and what did I do? I grabbed what of his work I could get and left.”

Technically it was your fathers work, but both of you knew that wasn’t the point. Joel’s eyes gazed almost analytically. Taking in something and putting it together before jumping in. “If you killed him then none of us would’ve met. Not you, Marlene would’ve had no one to bring Ellie to. So scrap me meeting her either.”

To you, that was almost more devastating. Hints and stories whispered a version of this man you wouldn’t recognize. A hallowed out version of himself that didn’t care about letting people in. That is until he was charged with bringing this weird, loud mouthed kid out west and her very existence sparked something inside of him that no one else had ever come close to doing in twenty years. Not even his own brother.

Joel was put in charge of Ellie, but they made each other their purpose to move forward in life. Taking that away from them? Who knows where they would be by now, and what people they’d continue to let the angry world around them become, and god knows what Marlene would do with Ellie if you killed her only remaining medical professional.

His voice rumbled in his chest, you now close enough to feel it vibrate through you. “I can’t stop you from blaming yourself, but that doesn’t mean you’re right. Can’t say the same for Ellie though. She’s ready to blow a gasket if you even try walking away from us again.”

For whatever reason, that made you laugh again. Rubbing your eyes with the heels of your palm you failed to sense Joel moving right in front of you until he startled you with hands on your hips. Opening them back up you felt surprised if not bemused at the sparkle in his eye that trailed over where he could see.

Squeezing your hips, he started moving you up and onto the counter. Quickly catching on you hopped back yourself, only to get pulled close into Joel’s grasp when you got too far. His knee pushed yours open enough for him to force his way in between them, making you spread them on either side of his hips to accomodate.

The rough texture of his thumbs snuck under your shirt and tucked into the fabric of your waistline, but went no further. Shivers crawling the length of your spine as your neck craned to take him in from his hips to the soft hair that begged to be ruffled. Something in the tightness of his grip spoke to you what he was guiding you to.

It made you laugh again, more then you’ve laughed in days. “You can’t be serious.”

Joel raised his eyebrows with a troublesome smirk on his face. “Oh no, sweetheart I’m dead serious. Seems like you need a reminder how much you belong with us.”

You wanted to make a joke about this being why he locked the door, but you knew the truth was he was just impatient. His mind and body begging for you to let him come closer and you felt little obligation to turn him away.

Hand trailing up your body, smoothing the length of your arm Joel reached the side of your face to pull up into his own. Wasting no time as he kept your lips pressed against his. The front collar of his shirt grasped in your fingers within seconds while the other finds home on his waist.

His lips switching between soft and demanding felt more home then any kind you’ve tried to find before him. A rhythm of him deepening it, only to tease you with almost pulling away just to press his lips to you harsher. You could lose yourself in Joel’s touch.

Fall trap to a dark pit and remain stuck down there for as long as he leads you into it. Your nails reach up to trail over his neck, feeling a slight shiver poke it’s head though his confidence before mixing a hum with a groan as your nails slid to the back of his neck and up into the strands of hair they could reach.

Your free hand sliding down, teasing the bottom of his shirt unable to gain the advantage. His teeth sinking into your bottom lip, a ploy just to make you gasp. His hands moved to the sides of your jaw to tilt you up into his mercy as he brushed his tongue into yours just like he planned.

Your fingers trickling under his shirt, smoothing over the soft skin by his waist and almost smiling into the kiss when you felt his stomach muscles twitch under them. Joel almost seemed to struggle with pulling away from your mouth long enough to press a kiss anywhere else, and he certainly didn’t make it easy for you to pull away either.

A tiny gasp of breathe filled the space between you when Joel gave you just a second away, but you pushed back into him with a bite to his own bottom lip. A hiss leaving him gave you the chance to press your lips to his jaw.

Facial hair scratching at your touch all the way down to kissing down his neck. Knowing the burn his own beard would give you as it moved along your neck you nibbled gently to give a similar sting. Unable to see, you missed Joel craning his neck up slightly as his eyes fluttered shut. His lips much more plush from the force of his kiss parted slightly.

The quiet needing peace didn’t last long though. Your hands moved quickly to his belt and tried making fast work of it, but his large hands both encompassed yours. Keeping them in place as he pulled away from you. A disapproval in his eyes that mocked his frown.

Yanking your hands over to rest on his shoulders, he shook his head as his hands moved back down to do the work himself. “Is this all I am to you, just a piece of meat?”

The playful display of disappointment contrasted with the clink of him undoing his belt. The sound so much louder in your ears then perhaps was out loud, but he went no further as pulling his zipper down before pulling you into his own hips with a hand pressed to the middle of your lower back.

So badly you wanted to goof right back at him, tease and poke at his resolve until he had enough and just flipped you over but so much caught in your throat, too many emotions choking you up. The only response you mustered up was just a nod as you ran your thumbs over his cheeks like he did you.

Joel rid you of your shirt in no time, left only in a tank top where he almost smirked boyishly at your nipples through the fabric. “Fuck, good.” Finally recapturing your lips with a response as his large hands yanked down the material just enough to force your tits to spill out the strained fabric.

The warmth of his rough hands grasping at your chest in the cold winter air had you give close to whine in his kiss only to be made a moan as his fingers grabbed and toyed with both nipples at once. Your hands greedily pulling his hips into you more Joel let you pull his jeans down as much as you could manage from your position.

The scratch of his facial hair too much like the hair leading down his waist surrounding his cock. One hand let your fingers trace the very edge of his base while the other wrapped around his neck once more. Forcing his hands to leave your chest but finding a new task in pulling your own pants down as much as he could.

Finding just enough room to wrap what your hand could reach around the unfairly thick base of his cock, Joel muttered under his breath tensely. Not asking you for help, he let out a moan when the movement of yanking your pants totally down your thighs to your knees, caused your soft hand to grip him tighter and twist from the jostle.

His eyes were dark and the pupil threatening to take over any colour left in them, only to yank the grip of your pants he still had just enough for him to gesture down to your hand. Letting go you still hovered in the air almost ready to immediately return to him, but Joel slowed down.

Stepping back out of your reach to pull each leg off without ever taking those dark eyes off of yours, his much deeper yet thoughtful compared to the floating feeling in your veins. Your bottom half now exposed to the cold air, your hands dropped to your thighs with a slap. Your own gaze now greedy watching him pull his shirt off. His unfairly broad torso yet soft skin atop it as alluring as his lips.

Joel didn’t move to grab at you again, but slowly joining your thighs sliding his palms soothingly along each side. Just up and down, your own palms exploring his chest, like each time you’d discover something new. Both of his hands eventually finding their way to the edge of your tank top but never breached touching the bottom of the fabric.

Your heart racing in your chest, worried you should be used to it by now but Joel refused to chase that down tonight. Instead pulling you off the counter, and turning you to face the mirror.

The sight was just as strange to you as the one you kept trying to cover. Tits spilling out of your tank top, now with one of Joel’s hands groping and rubbing along your nipple, the other keeping you pulled into his chest as he ran his nose along the side of your head, eyes almost shut. Reaching your ear he pressed a kiss just under it before the bass in your ear sending your limbs into a frenzy to move somehow.

“Tell me where you belong, sweetheart.” Rumbling in your ear causing you to bit your lip, but the messy fluff of hair raised to show his soulful eyes yearning for yours. His hands firm on you and now unmoving as he waited you to make the next move.

Looking at the pair of you, you weren’t even the real equation. It was how much you fit in Joel’s arms, not how he moulded his chest against your back. Maybe being home for him, should be enough, face hopeful that you’ll see it too. A small smile gracing your face you reached behind you, wrapping one arm again behind his neck as the other grabbed at the hand on your chest.

Pulling up to kiss each knuckle you could only notice the faintest of scars along them, so it wasn’t his chest you found anything new this time. But you watched his reflection the entire time, each knuckle kissed ever so lightly before flipping to press a kiss to his palm. “I-”

Joel’s brows falling instantly grumpy, “If you say you’re sorry I swear to god.” His eyes rolled up into his head as did his head fall back in exasperation. There was the annoyed glare you were so used too. So you leaned back into him, letting yourself memorize how his chest feels against your back as Joel held one of your hips and slid the warm wrapped around you to do the same to the other.

“I was going to say here. I belong right here, right now.” Both of you looked at one another for a moment before a spark fired. Joel seemed to mumble something sounding like ‘damn right’, but how swiftly he found your clit distracted you.

One finger stretching down gather your wetness, he slid it through your folds with a grin at how easily it made you gasp. Rubbing tight circles into your clit he pushed his front against your ass. Keeping you trapped between him and the counter, unable to do anything but have your hands braced against the edge.

Joel’s fingers rubbed into you, slid down to tease at your slit and leaving the much more raw friction of rubbing the heel of his palm against your clit. The pressure much harsher as he did so you felt your chest bursting out of you.

The coiling in your pelvis burned so hot so quickly an inflamed burst was too sudden to even brace him for. Pleasure snapped through your core as you barley had breathe left to speak at all, “Joel- oh god, fuck.”

The stinging of his beard made itself known as his teeth scraped your own neck, unafraid to mark it up in his name like he was a goddamn teenager again. As if he needed to give Tommy anymore reason to poke fun at him for it, but the gasps and moans was a siren song to his ears.

His teeth almost bearing and his hair a mess in the mirror, you shook from the aftershocks in buzzing need for more. Joel’s appearance was an utter mess with narrowing eyes as he looked you over. Running his nose over your cheek he read his concern. Twisting just enough, you could feel Joel’s breathe on your face as one of his hands slid up your spine. You smiled gently, nudging your nose back at his best you could. “Anything you need.”

A light kiss as best you could was the cherry on top. Joel’s face twisting as he failed to contain himself, “Jesus fucking christ-” pulling back the hand on your spine grasped at the back of your neck and pushed down, moving your entire front to press against the cold counter.

Glancing up you panted watching Joel keep one hand possessively on you as the other pulled his jeans halfway down his thighs. The tip was leaking precum, as the rest of his cock sat thick between him. It’s girth almost enough to hide his balls just as thick and full as his cock throbbed like.

You bit your lip hard the second you cried out, his cock slapping up between your own legs, sliding between your almost wet folds and rebuilding that pleasure inside you. “Please Joel, please, I need..”

If the sight of his cock slowly getting covered by your own wetness wasn’t making his head spin so fast he might have slapped your ass for not telling him what it is that you needed exactly. But he couldn’t focus. Not while watching him slide so close to where he always dreamed about. “I need to get you ready first, sweetheart.”

The hand on your neck moved to cup your mound, but Joel found himself still as stone. Your own heart racing, almost too fast to be healthy but not having him right inside you was sending you too deep into your mind. Almost lost in a panic attack kept at bay by his touch. “Do you?”

Your thighs clenched around his cock as if they would get you what you needed. Your breathing harsh as Joel paused. His eyes shut closed, and dropped to rest near the back of your spine. “Jesus, you’re going to make me lose it,” He muttered with gritted teeth into your skin.

So lose it he did. It took the span of an inhale for Joel to grip his cock and push himself inside you. In a quick thrust he smoothly sunk as deep as he could get inside of you. The hand on your mound reaching up and slamming onto the counter beside your own tight grip. Both of you holding back a needlessly loud moan.

Joel’s first thrusts were shallow, deep inside of you and more like a grind as his chest pressed into your back. Then you moaned his name almost in a whisper, and he lost more of his control. Standing upright Joel roughly yanked your hips back into his with such force you felt the slap of skin jiggle across your ass as you bit down on your lip harder.

Then Joel pulled you again, and again. Thrusting his cock deep inside of you as each time he pulled you back onto him, smacking against the sensitive spots inside of you over and over with a rough force that gave you no room to get used to it.

Your breaths turned to gasps, and as the slamming of his cock got harder, and your skin smacked against his more aggressively they almost turned to cries. Joel’s teeth bared like an animal as the veins in his arms flexed from the strength.

The orgasm he already gave you not at all gone down to a reasonable level you wanted so badly to cry out at how much his cock made your insides burn and how badly you never wanted to let go of that feeling. Your walls fluttering against his cock and how much you soaked it with every brush inside of you, the sound of how wet you were just as audible as your skin pounding into one another.

You think Joel talked, your eyes barley able to stay open could see his mouth moving in some form between falling open. His neck taunting you as his head fell back just slamming his cock into you over and over without any thought to slowing down.

Your orgasm was less sudden but faster then you assumed it would be for a second time, the burning noise inside of you and weight in your chest had you clenching so tight around him that Joel found he had to work harder to pull part way out of you each time. His own length throbbed inside of you, so he pressed his body over your back once again, his hand pulling your chin to the side to kiss you.

Tongue and saliva between you making a true mess, a kiss as wet as how much you covered his cock with. The hand of Joels pressed into the counter slapped down onto your pussy, the force of it almost making you sob in need. His voice gritting in your own mouth, “Are you fucking kidding me?” He slapped again, not hard, but enough to match the slap of your ass against his hips. He did it twice more in tandem with his thrusts.

Keeping his fingers this time rubbing fast into your clit, a roughness to the touch that pushed you over the edge as soon as his voice spoke once more. “My perfect fucking girl,” Joel’s own voice strained and pitching higher.

A reoccurring problem, Joel almost letting it slip right as he feels you tighten so much around his cock it almost hurt. But he fucked you harder, pounded your orgasm with no gentleness whatsoever. His hand slid to cover your mouth as an actual sob left you.

Pushed over the cliff’s edge your second orgasm washed over you this time not like a sparking fire but flames spreading across your skin intending to cripple you. You moaned Joel’s name into his hand, as Joel’s hips punched into you once, twice and finally your own name fell from his lips in a needy moan.

The sight of brown and grey hairs hiding his face tucked into your neck you felt your orgasm soaking his cock along with the warm cum spilling inside of you. Grinding deeply into your cunt, Joel couldn’t even conceive pulling out of you until you took everything he could possibly cum into you with.

You both laid there for quite a while, possible longer then it took to fuck you both to that point. Joel’s head leaning up to rest against yours as you wrapped your fingers around his and rested his head just above where your heart pressed into the hard surface.

His cock stayed as deep and as soaked with cum inside of you for however long he needed. You almost said it. A lightness in your heart that brought you close to tears before your orgasm overcame your senses.

You didn’t know when it would be time to say it, but both of you held off. You felt it, and it weight so deeply on Joel’s soul that not saying it was starting to get harder even just waking up next to you tempted him.

Your hands barley left the other most of the night, but not in a lust field frenzy. Just soft strokes of skin against skin with your lips both finding the other again and again. Saying it was the hard part. But this?

Laying on your sides in bed, your hands both trailing over the others cheek, neck, shoulders, or tits in Joel’s hands case. This part you both were good at. Laying under the sheets, no light but the moon shining a glow around his profile? Large smoothly shaped nose the perfect frame for a drawing, if Joel didn’t glare and grumble at any mention of drawing his portrait.

Losing this would be catastrophic for all three of you. It was easy to understand how Joel felt that day, not getting there in time and losing Ellie? He might not have survived losing someone he felt in his heart as a daughter for a second time. And you were starting to realize having someone who finally showed you love and family would have you just the same.

Joel is a good man, a protector and he only did what his heart commanded of him. That’s what you needed to focus on. You weren’t sure when this is all over, Joel would let you walk away if you were honest with yourself.

He’s not an unhealthy or dangerous man, but someone, somewhere knows the word to describe Joel’s current supposedly unlabelled love for you, as soulful and possessive. To no ones surprise, Maria’s the one who was thinking of the word unable to figure out why neither of you could say it despite how clear it was.

Too bad Joel already said it twice, but didn’t actually realize it and neither did you. A fact which was starting to weigh more frustratingly the only other person in the house’s mind in particular who was more determined then all combined to make this family true.

That one person however, was probably more determined then that in arguing she should come along on journey. It resulted in the early hours of the morning Joel and Ellie having a stand off about her safety as you and Tommy both leaned back against the counter watching Joel fail to reason with a child.

Tommy originally walked in intending to offer backup for you two, but Ellie insisted it be her and all of you knew if you were hoping to sneak up on them more than three would be pushing it. “It’s nice to see that even after twenty years, Joel’s will power is just as bad at fifty six as he was at thirty six.”

A comment that distracted Joel with a flat glare long enough that she snatched her bag and the map on the table before walking out the front door. All with a satisfied smirk and Joel left with a loud sigh. Moving to grab his own bag Joel grumbled, “Just taking turns seeing whose more stubborn at this point.”

It took considerably less time to get to the cliff side again now that you all knew where to start. At least thankful your starting point was close to the part of the borders that lay mostly empty now. You had spent most of that time in silence. Spending those few hours trying to map out in your head the right route to take. What Abby was most likely to do with just two of them, one of which likely needing extra time to rest.

The first day was relatively easy. Travelling south meant you could still cut through the mostly empty towns with little risk of incident. Most places in Wyoming seemed to be less populated in the winter times, honestly the Northwest was just that way in general nowadays. The terrain was too rough in some places, and there just wasn’t a lot of access to easy resources if you weren’t acutely familiar with the area.

The quiet ease left your travelling companions less on edge as well. Their back and forths glimpsing small insights to the lives they led together when they travelled the country before you. The echo of the streets had Ellie’s voice carry the more riled up she and Joel made each other.

It was a kind of travel that wasn’t familiar anymore Once finding a life on your own to be a necessity, you had only two stages of it. One with music, and one painful silence. It was a miracle you even kept that tiny music player alive as long as you did, by the time it finally broke for good the quiet of nature almost begun to frighten you.

The closer to big cities you got, the more you remembered how skin crawling the screeches were as they howled out into the daylight. It’s why you ended up travelling at night so often, people were far less likely to go out in the dark and so the infected had little reason to be active. Now though it was still daylight as you walked behind the pair.

Watching not the events that forced them together, but the ease and affection between them which set their true foundation in the first place. Your own lack of voice stuck out, like it was louder then their own. There was still at least another day before you reached the state border so why bother interrupting things with what couldn’t possibly be much in the way of positivity to include.

The first night was trickier however. Once it grew too dark and your trio had settled it was much harder to act as if your silence wasn’t bothering them. Small sprinklings of conversation planning the next day gave way to what should feel like a normal night you had experienced with hem time and time again. It didn’t though.

Between how much you zoned out and how long it took for you to eat even the small portion of what you had, kept Joel’s eyes on you. The tension in your bones only worsened as you failed to even try and sleep.

In the early hours of the morning, Joel had awoken to you with your back up against a tree with almost everything on you ready to go. He didn’t in any way believe your claim that you hadn’t been up long, but it was too early to confront you about it, and not in front of the Ellie.

Lucky for him though, she was asleep first on the second night. You were close to the border, and once you crossed it there was no question of where to go. Both you and Abby knew it like the back of your hand and where it made sense for her to go. There was no point in going deep into the state when everything in her life was situated in and around one city.

In the darkness, you could see the a shine of light faint in the distance, the moon reflecting in the water. From your position it would take maybe a few hours, get there midday but being so close made your nerves fire alight in your body.

Joel’s footsteps coming up beside you as the corner of your eye caught his large figure copying your position. Back against a tree with arms protectively across your torso, looking off into the distance.

“I’d ask if you want to rest for a bit while I keep watch, but I’m guessing even asking if you plan on sleeping tonight would be stupid.” Layers over your skin and the cold sting on your face from standing directly in the wind path had you missing how little space he typically stood by you with.

His shoulders close enough to bump into you as his voice rasped the quieter he spoke. Your throat not wanting to spill anything, you shook your head slowly but not much else. Hoping the light in the sky didn’t give away the tearing fear wanting to spill over.

For a few minutes the silence between you was comfortable, a peace that flowed naturally as long as you were just close to one another. It wasn’t often you broke it first, but it boiled inside. You couldn’t even look at him, you didn’t want to. The soft gentleness he always gave you when something was wrong inside would be too much to take right now, and breaking down felt like humiliation.

“I have no clue what we’re going to walk in on tomorrow.�� Joel’s head turned to look at you but ignoring the movement was necessary if you wanted to keep yourself together. “I don’t even have a plan when we get to her. I only shot her last time because she surprised me around a corner.”

Dulcet comforts of Joel’s deep tone softened the tightness in your chest that for days now had threatened to suffocate you. It always did in the quiet of the night. “It depends on her.” Your own brows narrowing, he continued. “This isn’t an ‘it ends one way or another’ type deal. We can all just walk away from this. Him being her dad doesn't mean saving Ellie’s life was wrong.”

Your hand twitched, thinking for the briefest of seconds that you’d reach out to grab his hand, but decided against it. If Joel wanted to be touching him, he’d already have found a way to initiate it himself, so you stayed put. Eyes forward on the lake you had no plan for. “Whatever she thinks he was, she’s wrong. Just because he loved her doesn’t mean he cared about her. That’d require him to care about anything other then himself.”

Joel didn’t need to know the man to be fully aware of how true that really was. “Seems to be a common thread in their types.”

If your question caught him off guard, Joel didn’t show it. “What happened? When you got there?”

It played in his head, the images, the sounds, the overwhelming emotions. You wonder just how often it’s been in his mind like that, or if it was saved for his dreams. “Nothing that even stood out, no one that mattered. He tried to get me away from him, then he was dead. Just another person who saw her as an a tool, not a girl.”

You knew that all too well. He wasn’t good at defending himself and he didn’t think twice about the people around him. Or the lives he had to kill along the way. You could still feel his voice echoing in the room, unashamed of laying out exactly what would happen were you to agree.

“I’d say we probably would’ve started with pieces of the optic nerve, chiasma, medulla and the brain stem.”

Marlene questioned that one, genuinely confused. “The optic nerve?”

“I mean if I was going to be in there anyways, could even take part of the thalamus.” His thoughts trailing off, almost talking to himself like outlaying a schedule.

You had to escalate to get anything of substance out of him. Gun pointed at Marlene slowly losing her calm while only the threat of an unknown filled needle stuck into his neck in threat did he have any emotions whatsoever. Even if it was only aiding you into getting out in self preservation. You could only be left to wonder if that day was the reason security was so much worse months later when he became the end of Joel’s story. Not that it worked, mind you.

Joel stayed up with you long into the night. Once the words started sharing from his mouth, you couldn’t prevent them from also spilling from yours. Most of it he either put together for himself or suspected, but it came out all the same. Not even giving you the chance it turns out, to return to the fear of the truth ruining what was between you.

His hand reaching over to turn your head to face him, hard to make it out in the dark. But behind the sharp seriousness on his face, still sat that underlying softness that was kept reserved for not many, yet somehow included you. “Would you tell me this is all my fault?”

Your heard skipped a beat in shock, almost pulling back if Joel didn’t turn to pull your waist close into him. “Joel-”

“Answer the question.”

A commanding presence that you yourself, suspected was given full force to not very many. So you shook your head no. Face fallen at the idea you’d blame him for what was out of his control- and then your face fell further with a new emotion.

A flatness with your eyes playfully rolling to the side before looking back up. His own face could just show you what likely was a hint of a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Alright, point made.”

Joel wasn’t going to start a losing battle, trying to convince you to get some sleep. For a while though, he was up with you. Pulled into his side as his soothing touch and warm voice eased a bit of that anxiety before he went to get some rest himself.

The panic returned the second he left your side, and yelled all the louder once you no longer could hear his shuffling about. Unlike the previous two days though, that panic never simmered even once they were both awake again. As the hike moved further, that feeling only pained.

You always hated Bear Lake. It was vast and open, rolling hills on one side and open spaces on the other that was densely populated during the summertime. The bright blue shined moreso in the sun then smaller bodies of water around. You were almost never allowed to go, and the only time you did?

Your father had given strict rules to the parent in charge of what you were allowed to do. Don’t let her sit in direct sunlight, she can only eat what’s been specially made from home, no letting her neighbour who asked her to come, to roughhouse with her, and no going anywhere near the water. Which also meant even being granted the fun of owning a bathing suit was out.

Yet you were excited that your neighbour asked because they wanted to finally have a day with you and their own friends without having your fathers obsessive eye. Of course though, the mother who took all the kids to the lake knew Carvel well, and so listened to his instructions to a tee.

It didn’t do anything for you now. The snow covering the ground with ice covering the bluest section of the water, and the flourishing nature that reclaimed the land would be picturesque to any casual passerby's on any other day.

Something was off here. The only still almost completely in tact buildings had debris and what looked like burned scraps littered around it. Inside of it was dark, from what was visible at a distance.

Joels eyes met yours with a weary hesitation, his chin gesturing to you before nodding over your shoulder. Both of you electing to obviously keep Ellie at his side, her own eyes wide as her hesitancy read much closer to an unsure fear then plotting concern.

Tents were on either side of the area, ones by Joel were old and rotting, while the ones you approached were fresher. Clean yet disturbed in some way. Crouching down in front of one close to the remains of a fire pit, you could see slashes. Cut into the tent with it’s inside contents strewn about to the furthest side of the tent. Almost as if pushed away if trying to get out.

Dried blood stained the front of the tent leading out into what now was covered by fresh snow. Pushing yourself up you glanced over at Joel and Ellie who were finding older traces of what you found. Signs of struggle that wasn’t quite clear of cause.

You couldn’t recall buildings around the more barren surroundings beforehand. They looked shabby, mostly wood and not particularly fortified. This was put here deliberately. Half buried you could see a combination of supplies and personal belongings.

Traces of people, impossible to know when they had been here and gone. Joel however, was finding a story he dreaded much more. The first sign being a scanner, screen busted and without power, only to follow the path of dumped out equipment.

Eyes flickering over to Ellie, it was recognizable what kind of equipment this was. All around the clearing they stood in was old FEDRA stuff. Her mouth opening in question, only for Joel’s hand to fly out, signalling her to turn far down how loud she was about to ask. Realizing what he meant, she stepped in closer to him. “Why would FEDRA be all the way out here if there’s no base or anything”

The dark colour in his eyes started to scare Ellie. Joel’s entire body almost frozen for a moment as it tensed up in anticipation. For some reason, her mind flashed her right back to a moment that look in his eye stood out for the first time.

In the middle of a Kansas City street after they both realized the QZ was wide open, and that exact intensity filled Joel until seconds later everything about the city exploded onto them. Everything in Joel’s chest pounding with the knowing that what it appeared to be, didn’t add up.

The whisper scratched at his throat as he looked at the seemingly abandoned area. “This wasn’t FEDRA.”

Making your slow way up to the largest building, it was dilapidated and dripping wet from melting snow making it’s way inside through the cracks. Similar to an L shape, there was a sheltered corner you couldn’t see from where you stood. Hiding a lurking figure that made no sound until something was close enough to set it off.

It was a shuffle that caught you. Such a light thump of something pressing snow down packed into the earth. The blood, the chaotic nature of what seemed to occur to whomever stayed in the area previously? Your findings told a different story then the worrying one Joel and Ellie had uncovered.

A free hand flexed as it readjusted the strap over your shoulder, not quite ready to put it at aim without knowing what you were walking in on. It wasn’t what you expected though. Hand gun held tight at one side, with a now much cleaner looking Owen at the other, both pressed up against the wall.

But not hiding from you, because as soon as you and Abby made eye contact? The realization of something about to happen proved Joel right in more ways then one. You had two different sides of a story in searching the area, and were it not what it was, it almost could be seen as fate that you had separately uncovered a tale twisted around your own ones.

Abby tried reaching out to gesture you to stop with a fear in her eyes, and just as your head tilted, jaw clenching in a rising fury of distrust, a bang rang out. Not just one, and not the sounds of weapons you knew were spread amongst you, Joel, and Ellie.

The same instance shots screamed out, so did a clicking screech from inside the dilapidated building you were closest to an open entrance too.

You wished you had a solid memory of what happened, or just all the details to understand. It flashed by so quickly. The yelling, shots ringing out. You used to wonder why people who witness or were victims of crime never seem to get their story straight, but it makes sense once you’ve lived the chaos for yourself.

Back slammed against a wall, you could see Joel completely covering Ellie. Pulling her into cover as bullets shot holes into the snow where they missed. One shot close to them, one near you causing you to duck not just out of aim but losing sight of the two of them.

Handgun pulled out at the ready, you turned in time to hear five shots. Three sporadic, and two no doubt from Joel followed by the smashing of glass. The clicking screech sounded once again as an infected seemed to fling itself into the daylight.

It’s attention caught not by you, but a shot hitting into it’s shoulder and a “Fuck,” that drove it’s attention. Leaping onto Owen it’s screeched so loudly it hurt. Your eyes, trying to push away the aggressive sickness inside your chest, turned back to the shots firing on the other side, Joel and Ellie had moved.

A fight all of their own, Ellie crouched behind scrap, eyes wide as you could both see Joel get the upper hand of someone who had gotten too close. Vision catching your eye from behind a building just enough for you to get them first.

If it wasn’t going wrong before, then everything fell to pieces just then. Ellie yelled your name as Joel had his own target, you yelled. “Ellie stay there, its o-”

Words stopping in your tracks, you felt it before you realized what happened. Your head slammed into the ground and a heaving musk in your face of rotting teeth and it’s screeches ringing in your ear. If not for your layers it would have dug it’s scratching fingernails into your skin as it thrashed on top of you.

The scene around you happened without your agency. Screeching from another one, more shots, tires, and Joel and Ellie yelling desperately. But you couldn’t hear what, or see beyond the splattering of mutating colours weighing the creature down on top of you.

Your knee rose up, hitting the creature enough to jostle it off for just seconds that let you kick. Multiple painful slams into it’s face to knock it back only to have it twitch it’s body to reorient itself. Head whipping to the side you could see the shotgun thrown to the side.

It jumped for you, you jumped for the gun. Flipped partially on your back to face it, you didn’t need wait for a close shot, it was already there. One shot pounded out of the barrel, splattering it’s head with blood as it’s momentum dropped. Scrambling to sit up you turned to the other screech and used your only other shot at the one focused on Abby just feet from you.

You didn’t need to look back after. Behind you, she took care of the one still fighting with Owen as you forced yourself up and out. Instead of seeing them, you could only hear the final muffled screaming of Ellie calling your name, and a retreating vehicle fading the voice alongside.

You got as far as the edge of what could be considered this property before the panic twisted inside of you so tight you felt dizzy. Throat closing in as you limbs filled with lead begging you to fall to the ground. This time the stinging behind your eyes didn’t care to hide.

Your stuttering gasps for air with eyes reddening with tears that free fell. You could only ask yourself, what the fuck happened? The image around you wasn’t clear, but Ellie tired to get to you, got grabbed, and well Joel wasn’t about to let them leave with her.

The anxiety overloading your system let drops of anger fill you. Unsure if it was really your plan, but turning in place you yanked your knife from it’s sheath and felt the need to scream fill you. Only, turning around, gave you something that didn’t look right.

Owen with his arm out trying to keep Abby away from him, his other painted in red. Neither of them noticed your slow quiet steps, grip on the knife no longer tight and a face twisted in thought as you took it all in.

Her face was distressed, but her voice was what only could be described as utterly pissed as she replied to something looking like a beg. “I’m not fucking-”

Close enough to catch Owen’s attention his hand outstretched to Abby dropped, but the other stayed up, covering him up. Your eyes narrowed and blood cooled trying to see if the covered bite was on his shoulder, or if this was far more urgent then that.

One step further, Abby pulled her own gun on your approaching figure. “Don’t.” Her own eyes were red but without any hint of the tears you refused to bother hiding. Her arm shook as she stared at you with fury, “Show me your side.”

You had to handle this now, you had to go after them. There was no time for this. “Abby, it’s too late.”

She just shook her head, “It’s not too late. Dad said you’re supposed to be the fucking answer, so answer.” Gun twitching in her hand gesturing to Owen. “Do something,” It almost was a shriek, and your bones jumped in startle.

You though, just looked at Owen. Face falling into a defeat as he did acceptance. Slowly dropping his hand down to his side. The meat of his neck filthy. Covered and so discoloured it almost appeared decomposing were it not also fresh with blood. While Abby said something more, you and him just shared a pointed stare.

You had turned to them angry and furious but not for this. No one, neither of them deserved this. But you suppose that’s why she wanted you to make this all right. “Abby,”

Her nostrils flaring, jaw tensing up to hold back a thought she yet didn’t want to divulge. Owen called her this time, a second time until the third shouted. Whipping her head to Owen he looked at her with a disapproval you expected towards yourself. “She can’t do shit, Abby. None of them can.”

Gun still pointed at you, but no longer staring you down with blazing expressions. Giving you the chance to move slowly, just putting the knife back. “What do you mean-”

Owen yelled over top her, “It means it doesn’t fucking work. There’s no cure in her blood or anything, okay? Your dad lied to you, all of us-”

One hand ran over her forehead and the other dropped to her side. Likely along the thoughts of who even cares now. “No, he told me okay? He told me, her, and that fucking kid are the key,”

Sickness bubbled inside of you. None of this was supposed to be about you, and truly it wasn’t. More akin to a denial masquerading as desperate anger. You didn’t blame her, not for this. The swollen red tear in his neck made you yearn for it to work. But what would you even do if it would?

Throat somewhat scratching at you, unfamiliar to the kind of yelling needed to over shout these two powder-kegs. “My father already knew it wasn’t possible.” Owen didn’t look over, at least you could confirm his honesty about reading it. Abby’s hand shook at the sudden move to take your bag off. One hand of yours raising as you slowly knelt down to go through it. “He knew people like me couldn’t be any cure way before your dad ever even had Ellie on his table.”

Pulling the journal out you stayed to the ground. Only reaching forward to let her grab it. It like the weapon, shook in her grasp but stayed closed. Her voice dropping to mutters as she stared at the worn cover. “Abby. I don’t have time, you-”

Her face whipping up at Owen incredulously. “I-no, I won’t, what?”

They went back and forth for more then a few seconds. He didn’t look good, the shake in Abby’s hands at least simmered the more the adrenaline pumping through her veins wore off. Owen’s only got worse the closer the doomsday clock stroked towards midnight. “He can’t be one of them.”

Hand pressed into you're forehead did little to alleviate the dizzying fog, your other hand rested on your thigh with little will to push you back standing. “You don’t die when you get infected. They take control of your brain and when they say you turn, it really just means the cordyceps take over your actions.”

“So they’re all still in there?”

Owen looked worried, but you refused to lie to him at his zero hour. “For a while. It-” Finally you just pushed yourself up from your thighs to stand. “No one can say when, but you’re still in there, just not in the pilot seat. Eventually you do sort of stop being aware of things, but only if you live that long.”

Turning away you let them talk, this- this wasn’t your business. Instead drawing yourself to the road beyond. If they weren’t Abby’s people, and they took Ellie and Joel it had to be fireflies. Who else has any interest in kidnapping a random teenager and a fully grown man out of nowhere.

Spinning around, routes and plans created a whirl of noise in your head as you only came to one conclusion. The hospital. It always came back to that place. The building you thought their torment had escaped for good.

Gut twisting uncomfortably, you couldn’t help but fear the proposal you needed to lay out on the table to present. You can’t do what Joel did, you’re nowhere near the kind of person he is to do anything like that let alone by yourself. He was better then you, but getting to him and Ellie was supposed to be in your hands now?

You fight to survive, not to protect. It’s never been something you’ve truly had to do, not for others. No one until Joel and Ellie existed to give you a reason for the fight.

One shot fired out, breaking the air’s thick silence. It took you more then a few minutes to even summon up the courage to turn around. Abby more then a few feet away from where you presumed Owen now lay out, knelt on the ground with her head in her hands. You refused to look further. This wasn’t about him, or either of them. You had to go, now.

Breathing deeply in and out, she didn’t hear you until the gun clicked. Muscle’s getting as far as twitching only to be pushed down with your demand. “Whatever you have, put it all on the ground and step back.” Her head half turned to look at you. Still no tears but a conflict on her face that none would envy. “There’s no negotiation this time, Abby. Either you drop your weapons or just you.”

Abby’s eyebrows narrowed as her face fell back for a second, “Did you r-”

Your face fell flat with a bit of an eye roll. You weren’t proud of it either honestly. In another lifetime you could hear Ellie already using her mocking tone on you, despite being the exact kind of thing idiocy that comes out of her mouth on a daily basis. “I spend half my time with a fourteen year old, shut up.”

With a roll of her eyes, she relented. Slowly standing to reveal what she had hidden and place it gently onto the ground, doing you the courtesy of showing the insides of her coat as well. Nodding to her, she stepped back far out of reach of you.

Standing quite still as you packed up some of the bulkier ones in your bag, before tucking the small handgun into the back of your waist. “Here’s what’s we’re gonna do. You’re going to help me get Joel and Ellie, and I let you walk away from all of this-no, I said we aren’t negotiating. You help me get them back, and all of this, you, me, Joel it’s behind us. You leave us alone, and we leave you.”

Her face scrunched in frustration. “What makes you think I even know where they’re going? Or that I’d even want to-”

“Listen, you want to be mad at Joel? Fine. I’m not here to tell you how to feel, but you’re going to help me find them because I’m doing you the courtesy of not pointing a gun at your head. I can’t change that you lost yours, and I’m sorry, I really am. But tearing apart my family isn’t going to fix the fact that Jerry’s dead.” Were it not for the body in the background, you might have felt angry enough to rub salt in the wound harder.

But the wound isn’t even fresh, it’s still bleeding copiously into her heart and someone needs to care even slightly about that. “This isn’t about revenge, Abby. This is about family. You had decades with him, I’ve had months.”

Your mind burned with questions about how she didn’t know. How she could spend all that time with her father and not know a real thing about what as behind the curtain? Not know what kind of man he was and why she didn’t see it.

But she nodded. And between your familiarity of the area, it was quick and easy to route a way towards Salt Lake City, and no doubt the one functioning firefly base that had any reason to house an immune fourteen year old girl for a second time. You knew as far as dwindled firefly numbers in the area, so there wouldn’t be many of them.

Still, Joel is the man who can brave a daring rescue because he’s strong and capable. You aren’t either of those things, so if there were enough of them keeping guard? You were going to need your own muscle to help, and that just so happened to be the one person who wanted your rescuee dead. Funny how tortuously cruel life is when it chooses to shove you down and laugh at the agony it ‘s caused.

It should have stuck out to you how easily she agreed in comparison to the vile anger she held Joel at gunpoint with just days prior. How willing she was to give her guns up, but honestly? Her about to make fun of you for just saying something stupid? It reminded you of those days on this very lake more than a lifetime ago.

How funny and innocent it used to be. A still way taller and stronger than you Abby dragging your arm over to the water trying to get you to dip your toes in, and making fun of you when you kept saying no.

Holding onto memories of two kids who have found new lives. Rebirthed as different souls of people that only have found each other at the ends of a gun. Fates sealed with blood once you made the grand mistake of returning to Utah not too long before an infected sunk it’s teeth into your arm.

The past didn’t bring you joy, nor even make you want to smile. You didn’t do much of it when you had been living through those years but your heart pleaded to think of anything else, because if you think anything near how real losing Joel might be? Especially knowing Abby’s own companion now lay out behind your path?

Dwelling on the worst path your anxieties could take you would only lead you down a darker route.

There were far too many similarities between now, and, well, far too many past incidents combined to let Ellie feel anything away from unsettled. The table this time around was dirty but at least she was sitting upright and more importantly, not unconscious for it.

Her arms had little ability to move, strapped at the wrists along with her ankles they were also at least less uncomfortable then having an actual chain handcuffed to her. Though it also meant she couldn’t do anything but sit there and try to figure out what the hell she was going to do when the guy came back.

The biggest obstacle besides confinement obviously was that she had no idea where anyone was or how many there were. There had been at least one driver, and two other guys who grabbed her and Joel separately. Ellie didn’t know just how close to this place they had been, but the washing alertness on his face when the two of them were looking at tossed equipment made sense now.

The fireflies used repurposed FEDRA stuff all the time, and now she’s here. There was a twofold fear of where was Joel and was he even okay and she didn’t even know what happened to you. Ellie hated this feeling, a gut twisting upset that maybe she was the reason this all went wrong. An infected jumped you, she yelled in terror causing Joel’s attention to shift and it all went wrong from there.

If fireflies were behind this why would they also take Joel? If they just wanted her why bring him too, or really why bother with any of it. All of this was just a big lie, or trick, or whatever in the end. She wanted to ask you more about it all, but Ellie had no idea where to even start or if she was brave enough to start.

It likely wasn’t a coincidence that she hadn’t brought it up since that night. Joel saw right through how much she was trying to hide being upset and it took just a small mumble of her name and Joel’s tall frame to break it all down until she was so exhausted she passed out. Ellie just wasn’t quite ready to risk going through all that again with you but now she doesn’t know what she’d do if you weren’t here anymore.

But she couldn’t do a thing. She was strapped in place, waiting in an empty room surrounded by an even more silent building. Only able to wait for something to happen, just hoping Joel was in the building somewhere, fairing far better then she was.

Whoever these guys were, they weren’t as dangerous as they thought they were. If they knew who Joel was and weren’t smart enough to put any substantial effort into restraining him, or they thought he was just some guy and severely underestimated what they had just started.

There were only three of them, yet they brought them both to the one place that circled everything that had been going on the past few days. Not nearly enough manpower was involved to indicate this was something more then personal, and the lack of experience these guys had? Joel had started putting the pieces together, and the word bait came to mind.

This hospital was just a beacon of nightmare. It had seen and perpetrated more blood then it had any right too. Bodies laid about in the hall at the hands of a man just protecting his own wasn’t even the most of it. You still had memories of being surrounded by blood and rot as you snuck out the only way you could on your own.

Testing on healthy dead people, a wide variety rang of infected, recently infected who still had some time left, and anything in between produced no results so they all were uncaringly dumped into the same disposal shoot that Jerry had unwillingly provided as your only means of escape. Realistically there were probably other ways, but knowing the building at the time would be crawling with guards and not knowing the layout?

Your key to escape was given to you by the hands of an immoral surgeon with a needle in his neck. So least to say sneaking in wasn’t something you knew the place well enough either for if it were crawling with fireflies.

The aforementioned temporary companion was crouched next to you gauging how many people were likely inside. You had no view of the front of the building from here, but climbing higher onto the cliff behind gave a better view of what surrounded it.

She was muttering to herself, mapping plans but in just barley audible whispers instead of silently in her head. Abby in fact, said a lot out loud. The lengthy time it took to get here was filled with interrogations that she failed to realize you were under no obligation to answer. Questions of you, your life, what you’d been up to were so silently shut down after the first hour that she ended up trying to bombard you with demands of information.

The fresh wound of losing Owen was looking less and less like a reason to hold back. As if telling you what kind of father Jerry was would change anything he’d done. Eventually her voice grated your ears so much, a typically non existent attitude shot out of your mouth as you walked.

“If he was such a stand up guy why did the hospital fire him right before outbreak?” Abby had stopped and turned with an eyebrow raised in confusion. You just walked right past her, bending down under a low branch as you continued. “Oh right, could have something to do with falsifying research results.”

There was a heavy quiet and it didn’t take looking back to understand that she had no idea what you were talking about. “That’s how they started working together. Two men pretending they understand diseases better then all doctors. Makes sense if you think about it.”

Once the courage to glance back at her, Abby’s eyes were trained to the side. Jaw clenching and unclenching in thought but still didn’t speak. If you kept going now, this was just going to make you feel rude and petty. “Trusting the guy who claimed a disease that infected around nine thousand people was man made, and basing a cure for humanity based on research from a man who was so wrong about it he killed himself.”

Were you not in this situation because of her and her family, you would be ashamed of how unfair you were being. “How can you talk about him like that?”

Rolling your eyes, your own expression was just confused. “Abby he almost killed El-”

Her voice raised this time, the crunch of snow stopping as she did so. Your own body turning back partway to face her. “No, about your dad. Do you really give that little of a shit about your own goddamn family?”

Glaring nothing was spoken for many moments. Your heart clenched and only two faces could be seen in your minds eye. She had no right to tell you who was your family when she was trying to destroy the only one that ever cared. She showed up at Joel’s own home and held him at gunpoint for something she knew nothing about. “Mine is in there, and yours is out in the snow over a mile back. Remember that.”

It had been silent since. Now you both were crouched looking inside the building from afar getting impatient with her lack of action.

Flipping off your bag, you dug through it without any acknowledgement of her. Pulling out a flashlight before flinging the pack behind you once again before looking up into what was now a growing dark.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

If she wanted a response, Abby would just have to follow. The closer you got to the hospital the more something felt wrong but there were too many already terrifying fears swirling in your head to know if this was instinct or just panic.

The closer you got to the back walls, it almost became nauseating. The lack of trepidation and confidence in your words dropped out of you with a slap to the face. If the fireflies were in any decent numbers, would they kill Joel before you even saw him? They’d just take Ellie but they’d leave Joel bleeding on the ground too horrify you long enough to force you into the same fate.

It was easier when you thought you could just abandon them to protect their life together from your consequences. When did that become so much more complicated? Why weren’t you just a stronger person and brave the fear like he had?

Shining your flashlight into the nearly blacked out window from filth, you saw nothing in the hall of your view. Abby’s approaching steps behind you moved much slower. “I don’t suppose giving me a flashlight is an option?”

Directing the light up to higher windows, everything in sight was just lifeless. No sounds were heard through your ear straining for hints. Little added up, why on earth would there be so little security for keeping prisoners like this? No sliver of view inside, no outer wall you turned had life.

Looking around for a second, you spotted a larger side entrance door. Cracked and covered in discoloured growth from nature and below, the door was blocked off from the outside but a window that was more then large enough to fit through sat by.

Grabbing a rock, you had barley just gotten up to it’s edge when Abby called your name softly. Your head turning with brows furrowed, her back was resting somewhat against a tree as her own gaze pointed to the text of the journal. Her first time actually reading it’s contents. “He was really going to do it? Even if it wouldn’t work?”

A single nod was all your will could summon despite her not even looking up at you but she had more to say anyways. “We uh, no one really knew anything. Most of the guards knew something was going on but no one really knew what. I mean in my defence I didn’t really go out of my way to find out after the fact. Guess it spared me from getting shot twice.”

Maybe not so long ago, the memory of shock as she looked at her bullet wound and back to you would be the haunting tormentor. But it wasn’t, what your mind mocked you endlessly so much it kept you awake most of the past seventy two hours wasn’t even what you saw. It was the feeling. Shaking in a panic so forceful you could pass out at the silence.

Praying that you would hear Joel coming down the hall at her threat and not the bang of a gun. You felt bad leaving her behind that day, a fleeting attachment to a life you once had. But now? She wasn’t any semblance of belonging in your life. A parasite leeching off of a trauma that sent not one, but three people in their own versions of a hellish nightmare.

She and her father were the reasons for how often you, Joel, and Ellie would wake up in the middle of the night almost desperate to make sure the other two were still there. It all cut too close to the edge, and wasting what little traces of calm left in your heart weren’t worth spending on that kind of baseless guilt.

You could feel the inside of your cheek screaming for you to let up, not even aware you had been biting down on it but the pressure only swam from your mouth to your veins and tightened the air in your lungs. “You just keep missing the fucking point.”

Abby’s head shot up, eyes flashing with a startlingly quick rising anger. “Excuse me?”

Eyes falling shut as you exhaled, you didn’t even return back to her own self once reopened. Just a spot on the snow below you. A passing sensation of cold shivering your bones and gone as quick, thinking of the high pitched laughter that erupted from Ellie days ago when her snowball hit you square in the face.

“Joel doesn’t give a shit about what they wanted. He never did, he went in there to protect Ellie. That’s it. They had her laid out, unconscious and ready to kill her just to get what they wanted and that’s what he did. He saved her from that.” You finally looked up, the sting behind your eyes hidden in the dark and the wind.

“He didn’t know your father, or me or anything about what this was all about, Abby. Joel protected Ellie and that’s it. So, if you’re going to stand there and tell me how shocked you are at what Jerry was doing then you sure as hell better leave Joel the fuck out of it. He was protecting his child. You think ours would ever do the same for us?” You risked losing your sensibility. Going off on emotion that risked turning into vile spite for the sake of hurting her feelings and that’s the life you wanted to avoid.

Letting Abby turn you into her isn’t what Joel saw in you. Turning back to the window, you eyed a larger rock to pull over that could help boost you. One last thought struck your mind, but didn’t turn, and muttered just loud enough that if she wanted to hear it she would.

Hopping up onto the rock, you leaned away with a wince to smash out enough to crack the integrity of the glass. Using your elbow to cut a hole big enough before tearing out a safe enough hole. Stepping over, you held a hand out to Abby.

Your ears straining for a noise that still never came, in either expected manner. You pulled one leg over, hovering above the frame as you turned your head. Tilted just to let your ear strain less as you then threw the rock as much as you could. Letting it smash into whatever remnants of decoration remained in the room.

No voices, but so far the more important? No shrieks into the dark and no echoing click to follow. Hand continued to stay out towards her as you found footing on the ground. If there were infected, they didn’t appear to be on this floor, but there was a distinct lack of humans as well which concerned you in a different way.

Head turning you shined your flashlight down the long hallway, seeing the edges of urgent care and all the way to the main lobby at the other end. Turning to Abby’s figure outside you put a finger to your lips and gestured with your free hand for her to come in.

Eyes pointed all the way down the halls. There weren’t many offshoot areas until the lobby but the ones there were existed in the pitch black. The main lobby however, glowed in a sort of yellowish orange, fueled by a generator if you were to wager. A generator that wouldn’t be on all alone. At least someone was here.

You didn’t bother waiting for her to catch up. Making your way slowly down the hall with a hand free to signal her to stop. Were you to look back, you’d see a clear agitation on her face and tensed in her every move.

Weapons all on you, but none out. Some in your bag, one strapped at your thigh and her own tucked behind your back. Guns were a no go in buildings for you. Years spent alone, shooting infected in a dark building was the backup of backups. You worked in total silence, having it out would be tempting to use it in fear.

Abby’s agitation kept on the gun behind your back. Your slow silence with watchful eyes forward unknowingly stirring something deep in Abby’s chest.

By the time you reached the main lobby, you shut your light off and tucked it into your side, assuming you might need it for higher floors. Your steps thudded louder as you walked freely towards the entrance, blocked off with wood except one door that sat free but kept shut with a heavy lock. One that you reasonably assumed was also FEDRA’s once, and looking up was a car haphazardly parked out front that you knew the two people you loved were brought in from. They were here, they had to be, and your heart sped up harshly.

Posted on a wall was a map, internally outlining what floors had what as you walked right up already making sure Abby was on the same level as you. “They’ll be on that floor.” Your finger reaching up to tap at a section, glancing to make sure she was looking.

Now that it was safe to speak, she was the one choosing not to. But it didn’t stick out, and maybe it should have. Joel and Ellie was all you could think about. Pulling back your hands rested on your hips as your jaw clenched thinking it through. “There’s only two labs they’d bring Ellie into if the fireflies know who she is. Joel might be more tricky, if he’s here he’ll go for Ellie. So it’s possible they locked him up in one of the old patient rooms.”

Pacing back you turned to her, still not quite registering what was going on. “They wouldn’t take him if they just wanted him dead, but I don’t get what they want from him.”

Abby's voice was tight, restrained to something that seemed to scratch at the force needed to push it out into her words. “They know its you.”

Turning to her, your heart paced a bit faster then before. “What does that-”

Her hands moved to her hips, down at her sides, the back in a nervous fidget. Eyes looking elsewhere trying to rationalize what spun in her mind currently. “They know you’ll come for them, they probably figure they can get you to trade. Yourself for Joel and Ellie, or just one.”

A cold flash started to find it’s way winding up your spine. You weren’t a rescuer, you aren’t a savior you don’t have the mind for this. Something was screaming at you but your heart was tearing at you the second you lost them. Did what she say make sense or were you too distracted to dissect something you were missing?

Nodding you glanced one side of the room where a stairwell sat. Door blocked from the window you couldn’t see inside of it, but it wasn’t like the elevators were there for the taking. “Okay. So, we go up check that floor and if they aren’t there we just make our way to the next.”

Her voice shouted just as you tried to turn, “You really think he’s just going to let me go if I help you?”

It depends on exactly how much or how little these men hurt Ellie to be honest, but it wasn’t worth putting an unknown onto the equation. So you shrugged. “You know why he did what he did, Abby. And you at least helped me get this far. Everything is to protect Ellie, if you understand that so will he.”

Again, that was debatable but it was all to protect her. If she was hurt because of all this? Then no. Joel won’t be so forgiving, but there was a flicker of hope inside you at her nod, “I’m..yeah, okay. It-protecting family.”

That flicker wavered though, something in her tone set a sharp part of your brain on edge. She watched you watching her, a doubtful suspicious wave in your eyes as you stood still. A tingling in your limbs that told you to brace yourself. But you needed to get to them before someone else did. Deal with that later.

Joel didn’t recognize the man coming around the corner, but the aloof nature in his pace spoke of a casual uncaring that wasn’t what he recognized in any of the fireflies he’d met. But there was also a distinct lack of numbers here. Joel counted three walking around, only one with a weapon visible.

It was about ten minutes ago when he managed to undo the zip ties behind his back, and fifteen minutes since he heard two of the men arguing about what to do with them. “They should’ve been here by now, man. What are we supposed to do, I don’t know where the fuck to take her.”

The other voice was more muffled, further down the hall and harder to hear but the sound bounced off the empty walls giving Joel a better shot. “I have an idea, how about if they don’t show up we, wild idea stay with me man, fucking leave.”

The other one snorted while the muffled one’s voice grew more incredulous, “I’m serious man. We’re supposed to stay up here and what? Guard some kid and her scary ass dad until Anderson shows up to throw herself a fucking tantrum? Who cares he was an asshole-”

If Joel had one major advantage, it was knowing this had nothing to do with the fireflies, or Ellie. This was just some nobodies and one person with a grudge. Joel side stepped to press up against the wall right out of view of opening the main door when they spoke again.

“Jesus christ, okay no one is going anywhere okay? I don’t care what her problem is with these people and neither should you. We have orders to follow. Go switch with Bejan if you’re too fucking scared. I’ll be out on the landing if you need me.” The louder one must have made some kind of gesture in protest only to get shot down again. “Just fucking do it, Ian.”

That one sounded slightly older, but without any real firepower on them Joel was pretty certain these were far closer to angry street thugs then a level like fireflies or mercs. Not exactly high planned strategy to take them by surprise.

Steps coming back towards the door were brought along with mutterings under the mans breath. Posed like stone, even Joel’s broad frame wasn’t immediately spotted once the door opened but it was too late when the man did. Shorter and much leaner, Joel wrapped his head and airway in a lock, but didn’t quite tighten down yet.

Joel’s teeth bared as he all but spat in the mans ear with impossibly low bass, “All you have to do is tell me where you’re keeping the girl.” The young man shook, wanting to yelp but unable to get much past out of his mouth from Joel keeping his breathe short.

“Down the hall, exam room on the left- we didn’t do nothing to her. I’m just following orders man I don’t even know you people” Asking how many of them there are, he relented more. “Me and two others, one of them with the kid look man I didn’t do-”

Joel’s eyes narrowed darkly at him, the shooting was chaotic and fast but that didn’t mean he missed any single time one of those bullets came anywhere near where Ellie had been hiding. “So it was another guy with your face who shot at my daughter.”

Any chance the young man thought he had time to plead or cry, he was mistaken.

If this were a trap set by Abby then she would have to have planned it knowing you were going to be with them. Luckily for Joel, he had just enough of an ear for firearms to know what sounded what.

Two shotgun shots rang out at the lakeside, one ending a screech and another shot ending another followed by smaller ones. Ellie might not but Joel knows exactly what weapons you have on you at all times, and typically what you preferred for what.

He knew Ellie would be and probably still is terrified of what happened, and now especially not knowing where he was either. But he’d get to her. There was zero chance of anything else possible then getting her and him out in once peace.

Thing’s had been rough the past few weeks, but Joel is also certain that you weren’t about to let anything make today the last time you’d ever be with the two of them. Ellie more then once now had bugged him about telling you he loves you, but he knows you both sense it.

You knew and you felt it, and that’s the love that counts. You can say you don’t belong as much as you do, but none of that changes the true love between you three, that’s what you keep going for. Family.

Something Joel’s been trying to help convince you that you aren’t just like family, but you’re apart of theirs and he is no more sure then now, that you feel that was as well.

He grabs Ellie and finds you. All the plan needed, save for the current one as Joel gauges which scrap of sharp wood or metal, would do best for getting the jump on the remaining ones.

Counting on Abby just following suit, stopped a fair few feet before the stair door, and crouched down to get at your bag. Spare ammo sat in one internal pocket you moved your jacket to transfer it into there, just in case there was a clicking in the dark that might need more force in a tight stairwell.

The trouble was, that deep emotion of distrust growing in your stomach? In an instant, you felt Abby approaching your back and in a second, the gun in your back waist pulled out. Just as fast came the distinct metal clinking of having one pointed right at you.

Your head slowly raised as every bone chilled over in a freeze. Your heart leaping from your chest so wild you could feel the physical beat in your throat. Turning your head slowly, Abby stood a few feet from you. Standing tall with no shroud of shame, or hesitation.

Abby was still, and confident with the gun now pointed right at your head like she had been preparing for just this moment. And you realized, were just stupid enough to fall right into that trap.

Those men had shot at all three of you, but not the seemingly two random strangers whom also had been right in their sights. She let you turn, standing up with your hands, not up in surrender. But at your sides, spread enough for her to still see before letting them down entirely.

It wasn’t shock that left you feeling breathless, but the now torrential panic burning through your veins like wildfire, that you had let Joel and Ellie walk right into a trap, and you had been blind enough to bring the mastermind along for what she never planned as a rescue.

Abby inhaled deeply, collecting whatever spiteful excuses she was about to convince herself with no doubt. “Those were my guys.” Nerves shaking on the inside, you stood without moving on the outside.

“You’re right. You were always right when we were kids, you still are. Doing all of this for one man just trying to get his kid? It’s probably not right.” Shaking her head once as it to rid herself of conflict. Her back straightened as she stretched her arm out more to keep your unmoving self at bay. “But I don’t care.”

You stood, pounding heart blasting into the air and bursting through the roof leaving a tremble in it’s wake. Your words never even tried to reason, you felt sick and it overwhelmed you. No one cared about Ellie and that was the problem. Only Joel cared, and the sure of herself smug look on getting the better of you only told the tale that it didn’t matter how hard you tried.

In that story of their lives, Joel still is the only one who cares. Ellie didn’t mean anything to those people. Not to Marlene, not to Jerry and clearly, the same vile morality was formed perfectly into his daughter. They didn’t care about Ellie, and Joel was the only one who did. Someone had to do the same for him now.

Your eyes felt the pressure, unquestioning tears that were preparing to glisten over as you both watched the other. Like she couldn’t bring herself to just do it, like she was delusional enough to think she could convince you. “Neither of us had a choice in losing our dad. Neither should she.”

Ellie scrambled up straighter as the door opened, the creep’s face looking cleaner then when he walked out. Her own face, slightly red on one side with the vibrations still moving through the skin from how hard he slapped her. An instant response to having her spit in his face when he got too close.

Now, he stood straight. Huffing with his hands on his hips as he looked her over with contempt. “Listen kid, the next time you try that shit I’ll leave a worse mark then that. So how about you cooperate this time?”

Bejan wasn’t the most observant, so he missed the darting look she gave just before landing on his person. Guns in their holsters didn’t match with the wide eyed almost lecturing tone to his voice as he walked up to her. “My friend just wants a chat with your dad, okay? They’re just fighting, sometimes it can get a little intense between adults, okay? There’s no need for that fucking attitude you were giving me.”

She wanted to glare at him like nothing before her, but she was the one strapped to a table and he wasn’t. “You usually tie up your own kids?”

One eyebrow raised as he laughed dismissively. Pacing slowly towards you one hand tapped at one of his guns. “People out there do a whole lot worse things then we do. People like your dad. Did a bad thing to my pal’s own dad, it’s why she’s so mad.”

Stepping close into her space, Ellie tried backing away but strapped to nothing it just shook the surface under her. That glare much more like a shaking mask of fear, only to dart back out and remind herself to keep her heart in her chest.

“I know what kind of people are out there, and they all deserved what they got too.” The man towered over her, but she needed just a few seconds more of his attention.

“That poor doctor deserve to be shot too?” His face both pissed her off, and shook her insides cold but one step, two steps more was all she had to do.

Ellie didn’t feel brave, but she was finally starting to understand what Joel kept telling her. She didn’t always have to be brave. The water in her own eyes stung, just wanting to be back home with Joel, with you. Not back in this place. Her voice warbled, but it was enough. “Joel was protecting me,”

The hand by the gun moved slightly, and so did behind him. A figure shoving them self up against their back, one large hand covering his mouth and before any defence could be made, a sharp metal scrap already painted with the red of another, punched up into his chin.

Joel’s face twisted and seething as he fights against the twitches and jerks fighting the mans last tries at a fight. He could feel blood asking to spill out of his mouth, spits that would have covered her face and just given her one more image for a sleep filled with nightmarish dreams.

Pulling him down to the ground Joel waited until the shaking stopped. Shoving the man onto the floor, face slamming into the filth with a thud. Joel’s hands shook from the straining tension he held them in, and his face faring no better. Breathe heaving to relax the burning adrenaline in his veins as he looked up to Ellie.

Your lungs burned as you exhaled shakily from your nose. “Would Jerry do it for you?” Abby’s eye twitched slightly, “Put you on that table, ready to cut you open. Would your father rescue you? Kill whoever tried to stop him from protecting you, from saving you? Or would he just let you die because you meant nothing to him.”

The arm holding the gun shook, her eyes narrowing in flashes of indeterminate anger. “You have no idea what was between us, I don’t care what he did to you or some kid.”

You felt her anger radiating from her body, she could see the tears washing over your eyes that wanted to fall from it’s stinging home. If the building weren’t empty, she may not have even heard you. “I know exactly who he was, his life isn’t worth anything close.”

Abby faltered, watching you slowly pull the knife out of it’s sheath on your side. The grip of your hands so tight your knuckles bordered on snapping. “Please. Just let me do this.”

Looking down at her face, Joel watched the tears spill over as they both looked over one another for anything worse. Leaning down to her, Joel undid one of the straps of her wrist. Ellie going for the other with shaking hands and Joel tearing through the ones at her ankles like paper.

All four straps free, for just a second Joel and Ellie looked at one another. Words weren’t always their strong suit, but this was. Both wrapping their arms around each other the same instance. Joel pulling Ellie into his chest, keeping her in the safety of his arms.

Both of them needed to get out of here and find you, but only when both of them had the strength to pull away from the other.

Abby couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t live in the thick silence of air for more then a few seconds. “I said he did the right thing, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t want him dead for it. If that makes me a bad person, fine. I’m sorry. But I’m not giving this up. I want this.”

Nerves in your body screamed out in agony, the memories of two little girls with no idea what kind of people they called family, and unable to fathom anything beyond the jokes between you.

But that wasn’t you. That wasn’t your life, just a ghost. A haunting image that tormented you with what it would become, and how it refused to let you go. You walked into Jackson wanting to breathe before finding that new life.

Joel wanted that life with you. Abby wasn’t from this life, she was like a poltergeist dragging you back into the house screaming that you belong in the angry darkness she pretends to thrive in. She was the disaster threatening to destroy what love you so desperately wanted.

Voice tattered to a painful whisper your eyes grew dark looking at her. “I’m not giving him to you.”

In an instant though, both of your heads turned at the creaking of a door opening. The stairwell door found itself opening from the inside, with the sight of Joel coming through the darkness, with one arm holding Ellie to him.

Abby turned, outstretched arm aiming for him. Joel ducking as he covered Ellie’s body with his as he shot. It already would have missed from how fast he moved, but it missed even more drastically because you didn’t.

The second you saw him, feet moved on your own accord, throwing yourself at Abby and didn’t think twice before thrusting your knife into her stomach. Her shot rang off a wall and everything in her hold dropped to the ground.

You pulled it out just as fast, blood dripping from the blade just as it poured form her. Body knelt over before collapsing to the floor, sputtering and groans hardly able to come out.

Ellie darted out, grabbing the gun that fell to the floor and pointed it at the bleeding tormentor before them. Joel had both hands on her shoulders as they moved into the room, now stood hovering in the air as she scrambled closer to stand by you with a weapon.

Your eyes stung so much that it was maybe a miracle there were no tears, but perhaps because Abby didn’t deserve them. You shot her in the stomach once to save your own life, now you reopened that wound instead with a slice deep into her body the same place. Only not for you.

Looking over to Ellie, her eyes were wide and if not so fraught with anxiety, she might be able to say she was thrilled to see you. You grabbed her and pulled her back into your chest as you stepped back away from the red painting helpless on the floor as you put the knife back.

Turning to Joel you had nothing in your throat. Neither of you did that wouldn’t bubble over into something breaking. Whatever tears that wanted to fall from the events forced on you, none of them meant anything until looking at Joel standing before you. His beautiful brown eyes looking in only marginally better shape then yours.

You and Joel grabbed the other at the same time. Pulling you tightly into each others arms, his head diving into your neck as he breathed deeply your own forehead on his shoulder. Your hands holding him tighter then you had the knife.

You could feel his heart beating in his chest, his and yours the same. When you pulled away, all you did was drag Ellie back over. Her tucked between the middle of you and Joel as you took just a second to look at the one person who wanted to take it away like she had the right to dictate everyone else’s lives from her own anger.

Ellie darted forward once more but to the journal splayed out. Joel wrapping an arm around your stomach with his other hand on your hip as you held what you could reach watching her search for a something.

Her eyes still red and wet from tears, she tore out multiple pages and shoved them into her jacket as she slowly turned away. Your heart full at how she still tried giving the journal back to you. But in your hand? It wasn’t yours, not anymore.

The air filled with an alarm that day. The last time you were in this position. An ear bursting sound that blared atop flashing red for whatever was used in the building before. Someone came across Abby, bullet in the same place your knife now pushed into, and pulled the alarm.

You took off down the hall in a run, on what looked like a second floor you’d have to risk finding a place to jump out. Gun tucked back behind you, the harsh stomping of your feet against the steel floors didn’t even pick up no you or the other man who you came cross.

He thought you were one of them for maybe a second until he saw what you’d later burn over. A mark that told you they did in fact know what they were holding you for. But you needed to get out, and you pulled a shot before he did.

The halls, the alarm the nightmare like red glow cast the building like a maze you couldn’t decipher. A window with a hint of landing your only hope just ahead, and that’s where you went. Your fingers straining to yank it up enough to slip through, a voice called your name over the deafening sounds.

Your head turning back to the present, yet switching between in your vision. Enough blood to tell you what was her fate, and this time, there was no one left here to save what you had done to Abby. The smallest tugs in your soul at a life you once owned. People who held a place in a world that hadn’t existed for a long time, yet wanted to drag you back in tooth and crawl.

Was it really her there? In your sights beyond the water spilling down your cheeks? Or was it the memory of someone you already left in a nightmare, a ghost of your former self. The dull glow of the hospital tinged everything in a quiet yellow, but you saw flashing red and screaming blares above.

Your father hardly changed in those years apart. A twisted sorrow in his eyes as he stood helplessly meters away. Was it regret? Or just defeat that you weren’t fooled by the conjuring of a man who abandoned you until once more of use.

Your body part way out the window, one foot already on the landing you both casted in loud red, watching one another as your face sharpened. He wasn’t worth a goodbye, he wasn’t anything in your existence but a monster now. So you left him there. The final time you’d see each other.

Joel’s hand tight on your waist, you gripped it with your free one as you looked to another for the final time. Chucking the journal back onto the ground near Abby, she was still breathing but the blood said a story that didn’t harmonize with the kind violent lust she carried with her.

It would pool out until there was none left but a stain on a place that did nothing but haunt the ones you loved. She’d bleed out there, and you let her.

She was a ghost. Both of them were. Your fathers memory left in an alarm painted red, and Abby slipping away on the floor with her own for no one to see after you.

Both this silence and the phantom alarm fading behind you.

[moody-alcoholic]

Thunder

poor Simon needs a hug and a cup of tea :(

Summary: Simon x OC, established relationship, Hurt/comfort, mental health, PTSD, trauma, thunder and lightning. Mentions of sex (no smut) 1.2k words.

Masterlist

Enjoy <3

It had been a good day, a slow day we went for a run, I cooked pasta. We fell onto the sofa together turning the TV on for some background noise while we cuddled, our belly’s full and heads warm from the bottle of wine. Simon runs his hands up and down my arm and I feel myself dosing off, enjoying being laid on his chest listening to his heartbeat. Eventually we make it to the bedroom lazily making love, the incoming storm distantly rumbling in the background made the energy feel electric. I could tell something seemed wrong though, Simon just wasn’t himself, his movements felt off, his kisses quick pecks rather then the long and tender make out sessions I was used to.

“You okay?” I ask him as we lay in each others arms.

“Of course,” he says smiling and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. I smile back running my hands through his hair. I know how much he loves that. Feeling happy and satisfied I drift off to sleep.

The next thing I hear is a crack of thunder, I spring up my heart pounding in my chest. I take a few seconds trying to orient myself, my hand already finding its way to the bedside table. I see the the weapon lit up by a flash of lightning followed by another room shaking boom of thunder. ‘It’s just thunder’ ‘just thunder.’ I say to myself forcing my hand to close the drawer and take deep breaths. I look over to Simon’s side of the bed he’s not there.

“Simon?” I call getting out of bed and heading to the en-suite. I peak the door but he is not there ether. I take my dressing gown off the hook wrapping it round me. I leave the room, I don’t see any lights on. I call his name again, I’m starting to get worried now. I check the living room and kitchen, empty, all I have left is the basement. I open the door the light is on. He must be down here.

“Simon?” I call as I walk down the stairs, I don’t see him, fear takes over he could be anywhere I head over to the weapons closet I open the door and jump back seeing him sat on the floor knees to his chest back against the corner, his eyes wide. I force my face to change from fear to loving bending down in front of him.

���Thunder gets you too huh?” I say trying to sound as calm as possible. He nods, you can’t hear it as much down here, and I bet in the small closet with the door closed it’s almost inaudible. I smile reaching out to touch his knee, he’s shaking. He won’t hold my eye line for very long.

“Stay here, I’ll be back in a second.” I say closing the door for him. I rush upstairs back to the bedroom, the rain is coming down harder the thunder and lightning relentless, I have not seen a storm like this ever. I grab our pillows and duvet heading back to the door. I stop a second looking down in his bag. I grab one of his masks, I don’t know if it will help but I will try anything to calm him down.

I make my way back to the basement slowly opening the door back open. I bend down smiling, slowly I show him the pillows. He nods and I help him place them behind his back.

“Do you want me to sit with you?” I ask. He nods, I nod back grabbing the duvet and slowly squeezing in beside him. The space is small but I don’t care I wrap my arm around his shoulders encouraging him to lean on me. He does, I pull the duvet over him feeling his body tense. I kiss his head stroking his hair. He pulls the door closed with his foot and I sit with him, I was right you can barely hear the thunder down here. I whisper to him over and over again, it’s okay, I love you, you’re safe. After a few minuets I feel his body start to relax. I keep playing with his hair curing it between my fingers massaging his scalp. I sit there in silence for a little longer, he’s playing with something under the duvet, rubbing it, I saw it in his hands while I pulled the duvet over him but I didn’t get a proper look. I don’t care whatever it is it’s keeping him grounded.

“John always used to say, ‘thunders not scary it’s just God moving his furniture.’” I say kissing his head.

“Maybe Johnny can tell him to give over.” He says after a few seconds. I smile, he’s starting to come back to me. I slowly move one of my arms on his chest it’s not the most comfortable for me, he’s so much bigger then me but I relax against the pillow stroking his chest. We stay in the closet until I’m convinced the storm has passed. I don’t wake him when he falls asleep, I listen to him snore softly, hoping and praying I don’t accidentally knock any of the weapons down. When he wakes I can already tell he seems more like himself, he moves to sit up and I let him stretching my arms. I smile at him as he meet my gaze and holds it. He leans in and kisses me, a long loving kiss. I stroke his cheek as he pulls away.

“Thank you,” he says.

“It’s okay,” I say. “They should stop making thunder sound like mortar strikes.” He chuckles and gets up to his feet offering me his hand. I accept as he pulls me up, I bend back down to grab the pillows. As I pick them up I see what he was holding in his hands. It was a red skull mask, I frowned I had never seen it before. He sticks his head back round the door scrunching the duvet up. I show it to him. He looks sad all of a sudden. He takes it out my hand rubbing his thumb over it.

“It was Johnny’s.” He says. “Found it shoved in the corner of the room.” I reach over and put my hand on his.

"Keep it.” I say. He shakes his head handing it back to me.

“It was his it should stay here.” I nod not wanting to argue and put it on the shelf by the boxes of ammo. I close the door, maybe I should get this place carpeted for next time. I follow him up to the kitchen and he makes tea. He babbles about a mission he remembers with Johnny. He seems so much better, I smile and let him talk for however long he wants.

I think in a way we’ve helped each other, my brain switched into ‘nurse’ mode the moment I saw him distressed in the closet, I had enough of a distraction comforting him I completely forgot about the storm. I wonder if Simon has ever had a place he can feel truly safe in. I guess a room filled with weapons and John’s things is the closest he can get to a safe room. I smile drinking my tea, I would have to remember to check the weather in the future.

[juvenillia]

~ Death of Peace of Mind ~ 08: dreams

Simon 'Ghost' Riley x fem!reader

photo credits go to very talented @ave661

a/n: alright, this is the very first time i write something smutty/suggestive and I hope it doesn't feel off. Always glad to hear your opinion, reblogs are appreciated

CW/TW: mentions of ptsd, loss, guilt, canon violence, nightmares, suggestive content, masturbation, period pain

wordcount: 3k

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The night was cut short again, but this time out of reasons you couldn’t believe yourself. As you shrieked out of your dreams you could feel your heart pumping within your ears. You threw yourself onto your stomach and muffled a frustrated squeal into your pillow, before lying flat there. Another frustrated groan left your lips and with half lidded eyes you thought back to the miserable game your mind played on you. Your dream was filled with no other face than the one of god damn Ghost, well at least what you already knew from his face. Those perfect jaw, overlaid with a handsome blonde stubble, and those perfect shaped lips that dared you to get closer. Just catching a fracture of what his scent would hold. It was a total inappropriate way of imagining your Lieutenant and you knew that. Still, you were caught in the misery of your dreams.

Mask pulled up like he did while the smoke, holding this tempting and challenging smirk you’d imagine he would wear so often. You were back in the training hall. But this time, he was the one on top of you, pinning you down on one of those training mats. One of his rough hands holding your wrists in place just above your head, while the other gripped demanding around your waist and squeezing it. His thighs at each side of you, so you had no chance to move even an inch away. Not that you wanted it, not when he bends even further down. His dog tag lingering on your heavy lifting chest. “You know how to retread, don't ya Sergeant?”, his deep cocky voice send shivers down your spine, and you nodded while never braking eye contact.  He came closer until his body was crushed against yours, he kept himself hovering over you. His breath brushing over your now so sensitive skin. Your eyes dart down to his lips and before you could even register what happened his clashed down on yours. Passionately, hot, and sloppy kisses. You tried to move your hands, but his grip only tighten around your wrists, while his other hand wandered further south to squeeze your thigh. The two of you broke away momentarily to catch your hot breaths before he leaned back in with force and desperation, letting his tongue graze over your lips and you let him enter without hesitation. So needy, so desperate for his touch.

That’s when your mind brought you back into your dark and lonely room. Nobody there to give you a reason to feel this aroused. This was so wrong, but why did you pressed your thighs together and why was the need to have some kind of friction so huge? You exhaled deeply, your chest still trembling. You needed to shake those thoughts, those images aside, but not before giving in. Giving in to the carnal lust and let yourself feel good for once. The images of him on top of you never leaving your mind while you rub sloppy circles around your sensitive spot. Small moans leaving your throat, which you tried to cover up with your other hand. Your breath only catching up when you pushed a finger and then two inside yourself, your mind trailing back to that smirk and you couldn’t help yourself, imaging he would be the person between your legs right now. Your pace picked up and it didn’t take you long to push you over the edge, with a last muffled moaned “Fuck…Gost…”, you felt your walls clenching around your fingers.

Your hand remained inside of your soaked panties, while you came down from your high. The other hand rubbing over your forehead, realizing what you just did, or better said who you thought of while doing it. You turned on the lamp on the bedside table and looked at your wet hand and a sigh escaped your throat. “Only makes sense…”, you spoke calm to yourself before making your way up to the little bathroom. Your hand was soaked into your cum but also in the well-known carmine liquid. Cleaning yourself up and then the mess you created because you didn’t realize your period was coming. During this time of the month, you were more needy, easier giving in to the desperate urge to feel this release. “Damn hormones… ”, you hissed while cleaning yourself. To be honest, you had no real schedule on your menstruation, the stress, lack of sleep and other factors made an impact on the consistency of your circle, not even birth control could help with that problem. After you changed your clothes and the sheets you sat on the bed, still with embarrassed thoughts of your earlier actions. You were not embarrassed about the masturbation itself, but about the man you imagined doing it for you. He still was your superior and you just started building a bond of trust, and now your mind showed you those images that wouldn’t leave your mind so soon. Why even him? You had way better bond with Johnny and he was attractive as well, why that stoic and stubborn faceless figure of Ghost.

Another deep sigh, you were just happy that you were teamed up with Gaz tomorrow. So, you hadn’t to face your Lieutenant with that huge embarrassment in your chest. That’s how you drowned some painkiller in advance to take care of the upcoming cramps and went back to sleep. What you didn’t know there was also another person paying his attention to the two of you in a different way, but it wasn’t Ghost himself. It was your captain, because what you didn’t know was, that he caught a glimpse of both of you sitting at the terrace. He didn’t want to intervene, so he just watched from afar how a bond slowly grew between his Lieutenant and you. Something he was more than happy to watch. What shocked and surprised Price the most, was that for a short amount of time he didn’t saw Ghost sitting next to you. He caught a glimpse of Simon looking at you. Something so rare and for external parties never to notice but he did. He saw how Ghost vanished as the man looked into your eyes and how Simon approached you. That made John wonder, wonder if he finally found a way to break through him. To ease his mind. He thought back to the first day he met each of you and a smile played a long his lips while sipping on a cup of tea.

The next morning started rough; the painkillers didn’t help a lot while the pulsing pain of the cramps woke you up. You drowned another pill before glancing on your phone. Gaz already asked when you wanted to start. You texted him back that as soon as he would be ready you could meet up, so you did. “Mornin’ Kyle.”, the first name caught him a bit off guard, but he smiled gently back, “Good morning mysterious lady, I didn’t know we were on first names now.” You chuckled while taking the place on the computer next to him. “Apology.”, you scratched the back of your head. “Somehow caught yours.” He shrugged it off, “Don’t worry, Johnny already cleared the case y/n.”, and smiled back at you and you mirrored it before both of you started working on decoding the intelligence you collected yesterday. Usually, you would be angry about the situation. Your past self would’ve started a rampage for giving away your personal information so easily, but somehow you didn’t care. You felt at peace with the 141, so why should you hide yourself.

From time-to-time Price would come along, asking how you were doing, bringing in a freshly boiled tea in and some affirmative words to keep you going. It was already late afternoon as Johnny dropped by, catching you and Gaz laughing about something. “Hey, there misses I’m not here to make friends.”, he teased while taking the chair next to you. You exhaled, looking jokingly annoyed at him. “How the tables turn, huh?”, Gaz added with the same teasing tone. “I could go back to not liking you lads, okay?”, you said while typing another combination in the computer. “Naw, please dinnea. Like it that way.”, he chuckled while patting your shoulder gently. “Did you need something?”, Gaz said while his attention was drawn to the Scot being quite close to you. “Nae, wanted to make sure you have eaten. Dinnea saw you all day. Same goes for Lt.”, as soon as you heard his last word your cheeks started to burn. Images of your dreams flashed over your eyes again. You hated the influence he held against you without even being here. “How late is it?” – “It’s already five, mate.” “Bloody hell, we missed breakfast and lunch? Maybe we should take a break.”

You were so caught up in your thoughts that you didn’t realize the two men approached you. “Wait, what?”, you looked at them confused and still somehow embarrassed. “Yer okay, bonnie?” You only nodded and both men decided to accept it, for now. “Johnny recommended to get something to eat.”, Gaz looked at you and placed a hand in his stomach. “I would like to at least get that one fucker ready.”, your eyes trailed back to the screen. “Sure about that? You should also eat something.”, Kyle asked a bit with concern, but you nodded at him with a smile. “We just bring you something to eat over”, it wasn’t a question more of a statement before the two other Sergeants left the room and left your alone.

As soon as they left the room, and you were sure they were out of reach you let out a frustrated groan. Nearly smashing your forehead against the keyboard in front of you. You couldn’t shake those images of last nights dream away and you really couldn't say what was worse: Those inappropriate wet dreams about your superior or the heartbreaking flashbacks of your brother from another mother. You couldn’t ignore the warmth feeling that spread along your chest while another image of that smirk flashed over your mind. You didn’t even know how his smile would look like, but you were desperate to see it. Your head tilted to the side; a deep exhale escaped your throat. You hated the female hormones that made you go all vulnerable and dizzy of your emotions. You decided that work would distract you the most, so you went back to the cryptic intel.

Gaz came back and had a little dinner prepared for you while he kept smashing around on the keyboard. It took you quite another few hours before the two of you heard someone clearing his throat behind you. Price stood in the doorframe with a worried line among his forehead, one only a father could wear. “You two should get some rest and go on tomorrow.”, he said with his usual soft voice and Gaz nodded. “Roger, sir.” You also rubbed your eyes before turning to shut down the electronics in front of you. “Want to join us in the common room? Already got a few texts by Johnny.” A small wave of shame washed over your face, Ghost would be there as well, and you really wouldn’t be able to face him today. “Thanks for the invite, but I think I try to get some proper sleep tonight.”, you chuckle a bit nervous. “Alright, see you tomorrow, Sergeant.”, he playfully punched your shoulder before leaving you behind, but you couldn’t deny that his face was quite filled with concern.

Ghosts face never granted your mind even a second of peace. Anytime you closed your eyes you heard his deep voice and this seductive chuckle played along those pretty lips. It was unbearable. How could this have happened? You didn’t know, you had no answer then to blame your hormones for all that muss. It took you quite some time to ease your thoughts and drift away, but your mind wouldn’t let you find your peace tonight. To your distress it wasn’t even worse this time, not seeing your Lieutenant again but Droplet. How his numb body lay in your arms, and you couldn’t bring yourself to let go of him. The brightness of his eyes long gone. You could feel someone talking to you, you could feel someone pulling at your tactic vest while everything around you felt like a void. You screamed, screamed his name. Screamed after Randy. And just like that your own voice pulled you awake. Your chest once more trembling and out of breath you reached for the nightstand. Giving a quick look at the clock and you sighed. It wasn’t even 3 in the morning. You needed something to ease your nerves. Something to make you, and your sore limbs relax. The cramps getting worse and worse over the night.

You grabbed one of the plain grey hoodies with you initials stitched on it, your phone and made your way to the little kitchenette in the common room. Just some good hot tea to calm you down before heading back to sleep. You tiptoed the hallway trying not to wake anyone up. As you arrived at the common room of your units it was dark and completely silent. Something so unusual for that spot. You slowly walked up to the kitchen counter and just then you switched the light switch on. And just like this you threw your hands over your mouth to muffle a shriek. You blink in utter confusion, your chest slightly trembling from the fright. Ghost stood in the middle of the hallway to the men’s barracks, wearing a plain shirt and comfy looking pajama pants, and of course his mask. “Bloody hell… “, you exhale, “Nearly scarred me to death.” Still catching your breath, he walked closer to the kitchen. “Sorry.”, his voice was raspy, from the sleep you supposed. You declined him, and turning away, feeling how your face became a few degrees warmer.

“Something’s wrong?”, his deep voice sending shivers down your spine while your brain gladly reminded you of your dream from last night. You shook your head, while your hand grabbed the kettle. “Just nightmares…”, you say while filling the kettle up. Ghost walked over leaning against the kitchen counter, not entering your personal space too much, but still hovering next to you. His eyes were sat on your figure, and he couldn’t help but his brows narrowed at your sight. Swollen and tired eyes, dark circles around them and your face seemed so red, you must be burning. “I know that feeling…”, his voice was still distant but filled with earnest comprehension. You instinctively pulled two mugs out of the cabinet and placed some chamomile in it. To caught up in your own thoughts, “Will it get better some day?”, the question hung heavy in the room, and you could hear him exhale deeply.  “You just learn to adjust, I guess…”, his eyes were pinned onto your figure, you could literally feel his gaze burning into the side of your head. But maybe you felt just a rough warmth spreading across your face furthermore. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

The whistling of the kettle dragging your thoughts away as you slowly poured the hot water into the mugs. “If you want to talk…”, he started once more, now adverting his gaze. Did he stutter? No that was impossible, “I’m… I’m good at listening.” You immediately looked at him after placing his offer. A full-on flush creeping over your cheeks as soon as your eyes met. You turned around to hand him the mug, a soft and nearly shy smile formed onto your lips, “I appreciate it, Lt. Thanks.” He gladly took the mug out of your hands, and you could’ve sworn to see his eyes crinkle again. Maybe it was just a yawn that signaled him to go back to bed, but maybe it was this smile you longed to see. Just his presence next to you let you melt. So, you decided to leave his side as soon as possible, even if another part of you wanted to get even closer. Inhaling the scent clinging onto that damn shirt, or even better, his balaclava, You shook those thoughts aside. “I should probably head back to bed.”, you said in a calm and soft tone. Trying your best to keep the words steady, he only nodded and before you could think of something else you found yourself in your bed again.

Not to mention that his Ghost haunted your dreams again, again in such a delicious and delightful kind, it left you aching for more. God knows how wrong it was, you knew how wrong it was, but those dreams, even if it was just for a fracture of time, they would gift you some peace. Some relief between all the vicious circles around you. If you would’ve only known that Simon himself found quite a thing in seeing you around. You made him tea, that alone meant a lot to him, especially when it was perfectly well made. He made a mental note to ask you where you’re actually from. But much more importantly, you slowly opened to him, you showed that you would trust him so maybe he could bring himself to give you a bit of this trust back. When he looked in your eyes, he saw a soldier, a soldier that had fought for her whole life. Something similar he saw in his own when examining himself in the mirror. Still, you were filled with so much more than the will to survive and obey. He wanted to learn what was hidden behind those pretty eyes. A sigh escaped his throat as he switched the light out.

taglist: open just lmk

@yyiikes @saffronimagines @originaldeerhottub @illuminwtesz @killergoddess97 @kaelaiscool

[story-telling]

••••••••Not again••••••••

TW: nsfw, fluff, smut, bondage, power dynamics, panic attacks, flashbacks, ptsd, restraints

Adam wandered down the carpeted stairs, his hand held on the railing (he has in fact fallen down the stairs before). He often remembers that day. Lawrence running into the hallway and holding Adam making sure he didn’t break anything, meanwhile Adam was laughing in a panicked state.

He continued down, smelling the coffee mixed with old books coming from Lawrence’s study, he smiles as he hears Lawrence humming to himself while washing up some dishes. Walking towards the kitchen he admires his boyfriend’s figure from behind, wearing his suit as always, blonde hair swooped to the side, cane leaning against the kitchen sink. He walks up behind him and slaps Lawrence’s behind.

“Cheers for washing up Larry, wanna make me a sandwich next?” He lets out a laugh as Lawrence shakes his head with a small grin.

“Why? Because the last time you did it you dropped the mayo?” Lawrence dries his hands on the tea towel and rubs his hands through Adam’s hair, leaving a small kiss on his cheek. Adam rolls his eyes and moves his cheek to join Lawrence’s lips, they part and look at each other. Adam smiles.

“What?” Lawrence raises his eyebrow and holds Adam’s hand.

“Nothing… it’s just.. you’re pretty” he smiles wider while Lawrence strokes his cheek, blushing. He pulls Adam in closer by his waist and gives him a light peck on the forehead.

“Y’know. I was thinking about something” Adam says pulling away slightly. “What if. We tried something new. In the bedroom. That is” Lawrence is slightly taken back with this request but insists on listening. “Go on” he replies, wondering what Adam could possibly suggest this time.

“Well, what if, what if we tried light bondage? You know. Like. Being tied up, restrained. Things like that” Adam looks away (not a fan of eye contact) and Lawrence thinks on it, he grabs his cane and walks on over to table and sits.

“Adam, darling. Do you think that would be a good option considering, well. How we met?” He bends over and puts his hands together on his knees.

“Look. I know it’s a long shot but maybe I’m over it! Maybe this shitty situation doesn’t have to, I don’t know, ruin my life!” Adam’s voice slowly raises as he gets frustrated from his past being mentioned.

Lawrence stands up and holds Adam “hey. Hey. It’s okay, I’m sorry. We can try it and if it goes wrong. I’m here. Okay?” He looks at Adam’s eyes and strokes his cheek “i love you” he kisses Adam and smiles.

“I love you too” Adam pauses and smiles. “Doctor Gordon” he kisses Lawrence’s jawbone and leaves a trail down his neck, he puts his hand around Lawrence’s waist and pulls him closer, his hand wanders and lands on Lawrence’s rear.

Lawrence lets out a breath and moves into Adam’s embrace. He guides Adam’s face back to his using his hand on his chin, he applies his thumb to Adam’s lips and wipes them. “My pretty boy” he smiles and grabs his cane taking Adam by the hand, leading him upstairs. Adam follows like a lost puppy, his hand in Lawrence’s. They were soft and his nails were neatly trimmed, adam enjoyed occasionally painting Lawrence’s nails especially when he was bored. They enter the bedroom and Lawrence turns on the light.

“Now. Be a good boy and sit on the bed” Lawrence says in a stern voice as he stands above Adam, taking his tie off and unbuttoning the top of his shirt. Adam sits and stares at him, puppy eyed, he admires his boyfriend in all his glory and wishes to obey his every command.

“Yes, doctor” Adam replies sitting patiently on the bed. Lawrence wraps one end of the tie against the bed post and makes it tight as possible. He walks back over to Adam and tightly grips onto his hair. (They have engaged in power dynamic stuff before so he wasn’t new to it) Lawrence forces Adam to look at him and he bends down to kiss him passionately gripping his hair tightly, slightly tugging at it. Adam groans a little into Lawrence’s mouth and he lets out a smirk.

“Let’s see that pretty body of yours. Lie down” Lawrence snaps his fingers and Adam does as he’s told. He takes Adam’s top off just before he lays down exposing his chest, Lawrence kisses his chest and leaves a trail of kisses down his abdomen, Adam lets out a little whimper of frustration and holds onto Lawrence’s hair.

Lawrence slaps Adam’s hand away and looks up at him “I’m in charge. Okay? What I say goes”. Adam looks at him and nods. “Yes what?” He grabs Adam’s arms and holds them up against his head “yes doctor.” Lawrence lets go and smiles at him while stroking his hair “good boy”.

Lawrence moves down to the end of the bed grabbing the other end of the tie and Adam’s ankle. He begins to bind the tie around his foot leaving a little room, he ties a slipknot for emergency release just to be on the safe side.

“You okay darling?” Lawrence asks Adam. He nods his head yes and Lawrence continues, he moves back to Adam and climbs on top of him so he hovers on his knees just above Adam’s waist. He unbuttons his shirt and hunches over to kiss Adam’s neck.

Adam tries to move his foot, of course it doesn’t move and he is restrained.

The bathroom.

The chains.

The blood.

The gun.

Everything.

Adam closes his eyes and starts hyperventilating, he starts crying and screaming “NO. NO. NOT AGAIN” he’s shaking and pushes Lawrence’s off him. Lawrence rushes to untie his foot and Adam slumps off the bed holding his head and crying.

“I CANT GO BACK. I DONT WANT TO. IM SCARED” Lawrence sits and holds Adam rocking him back and forth while stroking his hair. “Sshhh. It’s okay. I’m here, you’re safe” Adam continues to cry and shake “please. Don’t. Shoot. Me” he cries out breathlessly and puts his face into Lawrence’s chest. Lawrence looks up. Remembering that time. His heart breaks when he remembers Adam’s face. Frightened. Confused. They both hold each other while sat on the floor as Adam calms down, very slowly.

Lawrence holds Adam’s head and picks him up “wanna watch coraline and I’ll make us some pop corn?” Adam smiles softly and sniffles, wiping his nose “yes please” he grips onto Lawrence’s shirt as he gets carried downstairs.

🩸🩸🩸Thank you for reading!! 🩸🩸🩸

[diorsirenskkn]

Ultraviolence ~ loki l.

Chapter One

Desc: You’re a psychiatrist for the Avengers focusing on PTSD and trauma rehabilitation. When Thor's estranged brother gets sentenced to live on earth till Odin sees fit, you find yourself with the job of helping Loki.

————— ୨୧ —————

"Mornin dez" Stark entered the compound's kitchen, immediately heading for the coffee pot as you drank out of your own cup.

"Good morning Anthony." You said irritatedly. Anthony always found a way to rub you the wrong way. No matter what is was, he always pissed you off. Maybe it was the whole big brother little sister relationship you two always had, or just both your sarcastic personalities bouncing off of each other.

"Dez !" Natasha, Your big sister, said running up to you with her wide, pearly, smile. You smiled giving her a big hug in return. One grumpy Yelena followed behind, snatching Anthony's fresh cup of coffee right out of his hand with a smile.

After escaping the red room, you dedicated your time to gaining your psychology degree and fighting crime with the fellow avengers. You had 'superpowers' yourself, probably the only reason you were an avenger in the first place. You acted as a team therapist, as well as specializing in trauma recovery. Today you began to help the dreaded assignment, or at least that's what everyone told you it would be like. You had never met Loki Laufeyson, but you were about to.

"You almost ready?" You snapped out of your trance, watching Fury walk through the door. Him, Anthony, Thor, and Bruce would be helping and supervising you throughout the project.

Loki had been commanded to stay on earth under the avengers custody until Odin, deemed it fit for him to return to his homeland. Thor visited daily, mostly coming back torqued after some argument they had.

"Mhm," you said, gulping the last bit of coffee you had left, grabbing your books, notepad, and pen.

As they all accompanied you down the eerily unoccupied hall; zero words were exchanged as you finally made it to the gods chambers.

Anthony pushed ahead of you all. After swiping a keycard, using his hand print, AND a retinal scan, the door let out a loud series of clicks. He quickly moved out of the way as Thor took lead, pushing the door open walking in unbothered. Anthony and fury followed, you being last in line. As you entered the room, Loki sat chained to an interrogation table. You sighed at the seemingly overprotective security. You had once been in his shoes, except instead of trying to take over a whole city you tried to assassinate the whole team.

This occurred right after you were freed from Dreykov's custody. You failed to believe your sisters were your sisters, and that the avengers had saved you. As you held your own sister cornered against the wall, she said your name. Not your number, not your code. She humanized you. For the first time in your life you heard your given name aloud.

"Does he really have to be chained to the table?" Your accent thick, shocking the man sitting across the table. Anthony rolled his eyes and laughed.

"While we're in here? Uh, yeah. When we leave do whatever floats your boat. Just remember I'm not cleaning up your bloody corpse." You rolled your eyes sitting at the seat already pulled out for you.

"Who's this?" Loki looked over at the three men. Anthony had already started to leave, done with the situation at hand.

"She's a—a friend, who wants to help you.." Thor stuttered out, clearly not good at coming up with something on the spot. Nick rolled his eyes as he crossed his arms impatiently.

Fury was hesitant to even entertain your idea of treating; or at least attempting to treat Laufeyson. He was a full case file waiting to be closed. Another relic in Shield's database.

"I've got it from here, I'll let you know when I want out." You laughed, ushering them along.

As the door clicked shut, you brought your hands out and allowed the magic to flow through your palms and to the cuffs.

"I'm letting you out. And remember these hands aren't just for unlocking cuffs." You smiled as he rolled his wrists, rubbing the faint lines they left with his opposite hand.

"So are you going to tell me what you are?" He snarked. You laughed under your breath, opening your note pad.

"I'm one of them, but I'm also a psychiatrist." You looked up from the yellow pages, staring right into his eyes. His face contorted through plenty emotions, before settling on one. Anger.

"I don't need a fucking psychiatrist." He spat through gritted teeth, anticipating you to be upset.

But you stayed content.

"No, but I'm sure I can help." You shrugged, continuing to remain eye contact. He rolled his eyes and stayed silent.

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" Your brows furrowed, keeping that contact as you clicked your pen.

"I have a feeling your going to ask them anyways." He rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

You ignored that, letting a sigh escape from your lips.

"So, I have your file here, at least what we were able to obtain from your brother-"

"Adoptive, brother." He cut you off.

"Adoptive, brother," you sighed. "Is there anything you'd like to share before we go through your history?" Quite monotonously said.

"I'll correct you as we go." He replied slouching back in his seat.

After about an hour of back and forth about what Thor had said and Lokis take on it, you finally had your notepad full. But, you hadn't got to current events just yet. You could feel his knee bouncing faster and faster as you neared the present.

"If you wish to stop at anytime please tell me. The only way I can truly help you is if your honest with me, and trust me." You hadn't even bothered bringing Odin up; despite the fact he's the source of it all.

He rolled his eyes and sat upright. 

"I don't need your pity." He sneered once more.

"What makes you think it's pity?" You cocked your head, putting your pen down.

"It's all anyone offers. Pity or hatred. Nothing more, nothing less."

"It's empathy, Loki. And to be fair the hatred is well deserved, you came into these peoples planet, their home, and tried to take over." You took a pause. "But it can be forgiven."

"Do you truly think I'm stupid enough to fall for the fake ideology that 'all can be forgiven?' I am a god you dull Midgardian. I cannot, and WILL not be forgiven for my actions, and I could give two shits if they did." Your eyes widened a bit at the speech, but without fail you had a comeback.

"No, not everyone will forgive you. That is impossible. And something all of us have to cope with. We are not perfect, god or human. And we also have to accept that. I think that's something we should work on; as well as this feeling that you don't deserve forgiveness." You said rather calmly for just being called a dull Midgardian.

He said nothing in response, concluding your session. As you took a peep at your watch realizing it had been about an hour, you flipped you notepad shut, and raised you hand to put his back in cuffs.

"Someone will escort you to your room in a few minutes. I look forward to working with you, Loki." You smiled at him. He frowned, more confused than anything.

As you made your way around stark tower, you arrived at the conference room you were supposed to meet at after the appointment.

"Agent Novikov," Fury greeted you. Anthony gave a nod and Thor gave a smile. A moment of silence passed as you settled into your office chair at the table, cracking open your notes.

"So, how'd it go with reindeer games?" Stark finally broke the silence. His hands intertwined, resting on the glass table top.

You sighed, briefly looking at your notes.

"I have reason to believe he has significant trauma, mostly surrounding his upbringing and parentage. As well as a suicide attempt, that led to his run in with Chitauri. Possibly anger issues, more or likely stemming from childhood. Other than that I've seen worse cases; he's not a lost cause." Your brows furrowed as you glanced over your notes quickly again.

"So, what's your course of action?" Fury questioned.

"Therapy, socialization, possibly medication? Not quite sure about that though; I do think he should be socialized with the team, treated as if he's not a threat. That would be good for him."

"Woah woah there, slow your roll, he is a threat. And I'm not sure it's a good idea to have him outside of his cage until we're sure he's improving." Stark intervened. You nodded in agreement.

"Of course. But as soon as I'm sure he's improving, I'd like to further discuss socialization with the team." You agreed, standing up with your note pad and pen clutched to your chest.

[theprettyarachnid]

hi! it's me, the same anon again... i mean, i'm the same anon that have been sending all the requests of arcane ;)

i hope you're having a great day and that you're sleeping well (we both know that last thing is not true anyways haha)

could you write some arcane char hcs when they have a nightmare about the reader?

a/n: hello! im doing okay, have had a couple of rough days but that's okay! i hope you're doing well though!

also not to flex but two posts in one day

warnings: nightmares, suggestion of ptsd, slight angst, slight violence

characters: jinx, vi, caitlyn, ekko, viktor, jayce, silco, vander

Jinx

🕷 Jinx's nightmares are memories of her childhood and it's usually twisted so you take the place of someone else in her memory

🕷 She has nightmares about you abandoning her because of something she did

🕷 She also dreams about being the cause of your death because she's a jinx and she's dangerous

🕷 Jinx moves around a lot when she has nightmares so when she wakes up you're usually already up with your arms wrapped around her

🕷 A lot of the time she tries to push you away while wiping tears off her cheeks but you don't budge

🕷 Eventually she gives in and stays put

🕷 "do you want to talk about it?"

🕷 "what's there to talk about?"

🕷 Jinx can come off really mean after waking up from one of her nightmares but you've learned to not take it personally

🕷 To make her feel better, you'll redo her braids or let her give you another tattoo which tends to make her feel better but overall she really doesn't talk about her nightmares

Vi

🕷 Like Jinx, her nightmares are versions of her past or her worst fears

🕷 She dreams about you being kidnapped by Jinx and getting injected with shimmer against your will

🕷 She dreams about you ending up like Vander and not being able to save you

🕷 Vi doesn't move around much when she sleeps so when her nightmares wake her up, she slips out of bed without waking you up

🕷 Eventually you wake up and know she's gone so you go looking for her

🕷 A lot of the time she's right outside staring at the city

🕷 "hey"

🕷 "shit... did i wake you up?"

🕷 "no, no you didn't... come back inside it's cold"

🕷 Vi will just say she's fine but you drag her inside anyway

🕷 You bring her back into your room and hug her

🕷 Sometimes she'll just quietly check you for injuries and you just let her because you know it makes her feel better

Caitlyn

🕷 She has nightmares about someone getting back at her by hurting you

🕷 You know this is a constant fear of hers and definitely one that plagues her dreams

🕷 Caitlyn mumbles incoherently during her nightmares which wakes you up

🕷 You try to talk to her and calm her down while she's still sleeping but other times you have to wake her up

🕷 "caitlyn, cait wake up!"

🕷 When she wakes up, she automatically goes into a defensive mode until she realizes it's just you

🕷 Caitlyn usually talks about her nightmares because she knows it's just going to bother her by ignoring them

🕷 You make each other a cup of tea and sit in the living room before she talks about it

🕷 "i... i just don't know what i'd do if i lost you"

Ekko

🕷 Similar to Caitlyn, he dreams about someone getting back at him or about not being able to save you

🕷 He often dreams about you dying and him not being able to go back and fix it

🕷 Ekko wakes up in a cold sweat usually sitting straight up and waking you up as well

🕷 "ekko? ekko, whats wrong?"

🕷 As soon as he looks at you, he grabs you into a hug and stays silent for a pretty long time

🕷 During that silence, you just rub his back telling him that you're here and that you aren't going anywhere

🕷 He can be kind of jittery and unable to go back to sleep so many times you just have him lay on top of you while you trace shapes onto his back until he falls back to sleep

Viktor

🕷 Viktor has fallen asleep plenty of times on his desk surrounded by tools and inventions

🕷 His worst nightmares involve those inventions such as hextech and you

🕷 There's a reason he doesn't let you into the lab but even with those precautions he still fears something will happen

🕷 Viktor tends to wake up kind of aggressively when he has a nightmare

🕷 He runs a hand over his face when he realizes he fell asleep on his desk again

🕷 Once he wakes up a little more, he immediately goes to your room to check on you

🕷 You're usually asleep curled up in the blankets with the side lamp still on showing that you were waiting for Viktor

🕷 Viktor is very quiet so he'll slip into the room, change, and lay beside you turning off the light

🕷 Sometimes you wake up and notice how tense Viktor is making you give him a small smile

🕷 "is everything okay?"

🕷 He lies to not worry you but you've known him long enough to know when something isn't right

🕷 Viktor isn't one to talk about his nightmares or fears, especially with you because he doesn't want to worry you, so instead you just wrap your arms around him and play with his hair

🕷 You tell him about your day and any gossip you might've heard

Jayce

🕷 Before he became a councilor and gained the nickname "The Man of Progress" Jayce didn't have many nightmares concerning your safety

🕷 It wasn't because he didn't care, he just knew that you were safe and that the chances of something bad happening to you was very slim

🕷 But once he was seen as a VIP in Piltover, suddenly he became a lot more paranoid when it came to your safety

🕷 His nightmares are about someone using you to blackmail him or worse, you dying because of his own stupidity and impulsiveness

🕷 A lot of the time Jayce tries to play it off and act like nothings wrong when he has a nightmare, but you always know when he does because he holds you just a tad bit tighter, burying his face in your neck or hair

🕷 Whatever you do, do not bring up any council stuff it will just make him more upset

🕷 He'll appreciate if you just play with his hair and plant a kiss here and there

Silco

🕷 Silco? The Silco, most dangerous man of Zaun, doesn't get nightmares. Especially about other people

🕷 At least that's what he wants everyone to think and for the most part, he has everyone fooled... except you of course

🕷 His nightmares are honestly probably the most horrific, just because he has seen and done a lot of horrible stuff

🕷 The ghosts of the people he's killed and wronged haunt his dreams and many times he's woken up in a cold sweat from his nightmares

🕷 He dreams of you getting tortured right in front of him, you turning into something not human because of shimmer or all the other radioactive chemicals in Zaun that he's to blame for, he even dreams of himself hurting you

🕷 Plenty of nights you find him out on the balcony, smoking a cigar

🕷 "silco? why're you up?"

🕷 He just tells you to go back to bed and he'll be in once he finishes his cigar

🕷 If you refuse and stay out with him, you'll usually sit on his lap occasionally sharing his cigar with him

Vander

🕷 Because he's in control of Zaun, there aren't many people crazy enough to mess with him

🕷 But the thought of Silco getting revenge by hurting you is always at the back of his mind

🕷 He also fears that you'll find out what kind of person he used to be before you met him and that you'll leave him

🕷 Vander isn't proud of those days and the last thing he wants is for you to know that side of him

🕷 When he does get nightmares, which isn't very often, he'll usually go down to the bar and make himself a whiskey

🕷 He isn't exactly the most quiet when getting out of bed or moving around in general so he's gotten used to you coming downstairs shortly after him

🕷 Even when you're still half asleep, eyes barely open you still go downstairs to check on him

🕷 Vander always grabs your hand and leads you to a chair because he's worried that you might trip and fall

🕷 You two usually sit in a comfortable silence, you usually leaning against him trying not to fall back asleep

🕷 You always wait for him to finish his drink before asking if you two can go back upstairs

🕷 Most of the time he carries you up the stairs to your shared bedroom

🕷 Once you two are back in bed, you curl up into his side telling him how much you love him before falling back asleep

🕷 Whether you know it or not, those words coming from you mean the whole world to him

[cjsinkythoughts]

Inner Conflict

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Reader

Word Count: 3586

Warnings: !FATWS SPOILERS!, Cursing, Some Angst, Some Fluff, Sam and Bucky being idiots, Mentions of PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression

A/N: Here’s Part Three to my FATWS Series, which I’m making a masterlist for that you can find Here. 

Uh…it’s a little long, and I apologize for that. It doesn’t even encompass the whole second episode, only the first half, so a Part 3.5 will be coming out later today probably (it’s my day off work so I have all day to relax and write!) I tried not doing a line for line rewrite of the episode, but there are quotes from the show in here. Mostly it’s Reader’s thoughts and feelings towards what’s happening while conversations are going on around. Reader’s backstory is a bit more unfurled. It’s more action packed and more scene-for-scene of the episode than the previous two. Less emotions shared and less hurt/comfort type of thing, but that’ll be back in the next part probably along with more scenes not in the show. The next part I’m planning won’t be as long, it’ll mainly just be the Couples Therapy scene and a bit more angst with her and Sam and her and Bucky.

Because there’s four more episodes and I don’t know what’s going to happen in them, I’m kinda hesitant on spilling out exactly what is going on with the Reader and what her role was on the original team, but we’ll get there. Also, I wasn’t expecting to be writing multiple pieces for one episode, but if the other episodes are as packed as this one, prepare yourself for more parts than anticipated. We’re already on Part 3 and I’ve got Part 3.5 coming. Just bare with me as I don’t know what’s going to happen in future episodes! Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it! 

(Not beta’d so excuse any mistakes.)

!SPOILERS UNDER CUT!

Walking out of the shower, ruffling a towel through your hair to dry it off, you froze at the sound of the TV. A sigh left your lips. It’s all he’d been doing the last few days - watching the news. Keeping up with the tour for the new Captain America.

You peeked out of the small bedroom to find Bucky sitting on the floor, brow creased as he watched John Walker talk to the Good Morning America hostess.

“You shouldn’t be watching that.” You spoke up, leaning on the doorway, still patting your hair dry. He glanced over to you, taking in the towel wrapped around you, before looking back at the TV. Seeing you like that wasn’t anything new. “Buck, I’m serious. Brooding over it won’t make anything better.”

“What do you want me to do?”

You let out a sigh, shifting your feet and biting your lip as you thought about how to respond. “I-I haven’t figured it out yet. But obsessing over the new guy-”

“Aren’t you mad?”

You frowned at his question, his eyes meeting yours once more. “I told you already that I am.”

He tilted his head, which he did when he was confused, his eyes narrowing. “Why don’t you show it? Why aren’t you screaming or cursing or crying or something? You, of all people-”

“Because it won’t help anything, Buck.” You shook your head, pushing off the wall. “I want to. But if I let myself go down that road…” Dropping your gaze to the floor, you take a breath, collecting your thoughts. “This is such a complicated situation, James. I’m being contacted left and right for a statement on the new Captain. People trying to see my reaction. Senators trying to get me to meet with him. I can’t let myself snap. I can’t.”

He scowled. “They’re still bothering you?”

A dry chuckle escaped your lips and you nodded. “Makes me miss the days when no one knew who I was; when I was the behind-the-scenes seventh Avenger. But I made that choice to come out, and I have to deal with the consequences now. Blowing up will only-”

“Even though I never met him…he feels like a brother.”

That one statement stopped you in your tracks. Bucky’s head whipped back to the TV, his jaw ticking, his nose scrunching up.

“Did he really just say that?”

Bucky merely nodded, his chest heaving as he tried getting his breathing under control. “Feel like snapping now?”

You purse your lips as you held in the tears stinging your eyes. After composing yourself, you moved over and grabbed the remote, letting out a tiny sniffle as you did so. You tentatively touched Bucky’s shoulder, silently asking him if he needed anything from you. His response was to open his arms, so you quickly got down besides him to hold him.

“He is my brother, doll.”

“I know, Buck.” You pressed a soft kiss to his head, which rested against your bare shoulder.

Your bare knees are pressed harshly against the wooden panels of the floor, and you’re twisted awkwardly, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. As long as he was comfortable, you would take the uncomfortable position. As long as he was being held, you would take the soreness it would leave. As long as you could help him be some sort of okay, you would take not being okay in this position.

 You two sat like that for a few more moments before your phone buzzed. You gave a sigh, pulling back and holding his cheeks in either hand. He wasn’t crying, although he was on the verge of doing so. You’d seen him cry before, so you knew he didn’t mind. For you it was a different story.

Bucky had maybe seen you cry twice since the whole Blip thing went down. And one of them was over the phone, so he didn’t see it so much as he heard it. You didn’t let yourself cry in front of him. Or anyone, for that matter. It was a part of you. The only person you ever felt comfortable enough around to cry in front of…wasn’t there. And you couldn’t change that.

“We’ll figure it out.” You told him, nodding gently and letting a small, sad smile quirk the corners of your lips up. “Okay? We’ll figure it out.”

The clench in his jaw loosened as your fingers worked circles into the hinge, making him relax and nod back. You pressed a tender kiss to his forehead before standing up, moving across the room to where your phone was on the counter. You assumed it’d be another government official or news reporter, so you were slightly shocked to see ‘Sammy’ flashing up at you.

Your eyebrows furrowed as you read his message, a slight pout forming on your face. 

“Doll?” Toned arms wrapped around you, warm and cool, his chin setting on your shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Sam. He needs my help with something.”

“I’m coming with you.”

You turned in his arms, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Why?”

He shrugged, licking his lips. “You might need help.”

“Bucky, you can’t go if you’re just going to yell at him.”

“I won’t.”

You studied his features. He was lying, you knew that. Of course he was going to snap at Sam for giving up the shield. He was mad and they got on each others’ nerves every chance they could find, so of course he was going to.

But you still found yourself saying yes and telling him to go pack a bag. You were never able to say no to Steve and it seemed that got passed on. What a nuisance it was.

****************

And you were so right. It was the first thing he said once Sam came into view coming down the stairs.

“You shouldn’t have given up the shield, Sam.”

“James.” You squeezed the hand he was holding, voice pleading for him not to do this right now. He huffed, stepping back to let you greet Sam properly, giving the man a hug. “Hi, Sammy.”

“It’s been a while.” Sam commented, pulling back and holding you by the shoulders. “You look good. Not that you’ve ever looked otherwise.”

You gave him a small smile. “You do too.”

“Thanks for coming. I know it’s short notice, but-”

“It’s fine, Sam. Really.” You insist.

Sam nodded, before eyeing Bucky. “Did you have to bring him?”

“Samuel-”

“This is wrong.” Bucky cut in, staring Sam down, falling into step besides him as the man started heading outside.

“James-”

“Hey, hey. Look. I’m working, all right?”

You rolled your eyes as the two started arguing, stopping your stride to take a breather. You used to joke about babysitting them, but it didn’t feel like a joke anymore and you were getting tired of it. All the bickering for no reason. The contempt they held for one another. Steve made you promise that you would look out for them, and you were trying, but they weren’t making it easy.

When you joined them again, you raised an eyebrow at the direction the conversation turned. How the hell did they get from arguing about the shield to what a wizard is?

“Ahh! Haha! A sorcerer is a wizard without a hat!”

You gave Sam a look as he babbled about how he was right. “Sorcerer Mickey has a hat. Isn’t that, like, how he gets his powers and everything?”

Bucky grinned at you. “Thank you!”

“Excuse you!” Sam scoffed, pointing an accusing finger at you. “We were having a conversation!”

“Yeah. A stupid conversation I just ended. Now I’m gonna be in the plane. Feel free to join me when you’re done being idiots.”

They both spluttered, but you were already walking away, leaving no room for arguments. As you loaded onto the plane, you spotted the Lieutenant whom Sam mentioned who had been helping him out with missions. Torres, you thought, remembering his name from a previous phone call with your friend.

“You Lieutenant Torres?” You asked, walking up to him.

He blinked, before his eyes widened, a grin appearing on his face. He seemed young, which you were perfectly okay with considering you’ve been working alongside old men for the past decade. It was always nice to work with a fresh face, which you found after you started working with Wanda and Peter.

The thought of the two youngest members made you falter, not having heard from either of them since Christmas almost six months prior, but you quickly recovered yourself, shaking away the worries you had for them.

“You’re Y/N Y/L/N! I’m a huge fan! I’ve read all your files!”

Chuckling a little, you held out your hand. “Most of those are heavily classified.”

He ducked his head with a little blush, rubbing the back of his neck after shaking your hand. “I, uh, I might’ve…used connections.”

“It’s okay.” You reassured him, throwing him a wink. “I won’t tell. Can you tell me what’s going on? Sam didn’t exactly explain the situation.”

He nodded, getting into ‘work mode’, something you’ve seen in most military men, informing you of their recent missions and the group known as the Flag-Smashers and giving you a file on them. He was in the middle of telling you about his solo mission in Germany when your two fellas came in, sending each other small glares, but remaining quiet.

Bucky caught your eye and sent an apologetic look your way, to which you just smiled at before turning back to Torres.

“Well I’m glad you’re okay.” You told him once he was done.

“Oh yeah. It wasn’t that bad.”

You laughed and nodded. “I’m sure. You seem like a tough kid.”

He smiled, before looking around and jabbing his thumb behind his shoulder. “I-I’ve gotta go, but-”

“We can talk later.” You promised with a grin.

“Really?!”

“Of course! I have a feeling we’ll be working together more, and I like getting to know who’s gonna have my back.”

He beamed and nodded, walking backwards. “That’d be awesome! Talk to you later then!”

You giggled as he turned around and jogged off, pumping his fist in the air. You turned to a grinning Sam and nodded towards where Torres left. “I like him. Seems like a nice kid.”

“He is. Very energetic. A little reckless, but he’s got a good heart.”

You hummed, the smile falling from your face as you flipped through the file Torres gave you. “So…Munich?”

“Yeah. Listen, I’m sorry again for taking you away from the search, but-”

“Search is off.” You informed him quickly, not looking up. “Until further notice.”

The plane went quiet, before Sam cleared his throat. “So…no sign of Wanda yet, then?”

You shut the file, looking up at the men whose features were laced with concern. “I’m gonna go talk to the pilot. Behave while I’m gone. No pushing each other off the plane.”

“Doll?”

You were stopped by the hand that grabbed your wrist as you passed Bucky. You shot him another smile, knowing it wasn’t convincing enough for him, but it being the best one you had. “I’m okay. I’ve just gotta ask him some questions.”

************

Opening your mouth to stop him, you groaned when Bucky jumped out of the plane before you could speak. First Sam jumps without sharing the plan, then Bucky jumps without having a plan. Or a parachute. Or wings. Or anything.

Torres looked at you, but all you could do was shrug. “I dunno what to tell you, kid.”

“You’re not gonna do that, are you?”

“No.” You reassured him, shaking your head. “I’m gonna wait ‘til we land like a normal person and take my bike. I just have to pray that they’ll wait to do anything stupid until I get there.”

They didn’t wait. You’re pretty sure they didn’t even think about waiting. By the time you got to them, they were fighting - and losing, might you add - to six really strong people on top of two semi trucks.

Because why wouldn’t they?

Oh, oh. And on top of that, the fake was there, throwing the shield. The shield that didn’t belong to him. The shield that meant so much more than he would ever know.

“Hi, doll! Sorry we started the party without you!” Bucky shouted from where he was hanging off the edge, that close to the street and getting his head torn off by the tire.

“I’m so tired of babysitting you two, you know that?!”

“Oh! Sorry we’re such an inconvenience for you! Blame him! He jumped the gun!” Sam shouted, coming to fly next to you as you rolled up your sleeves, standing on your bike, using one hand to steer.

“Can I get a little help already?!”

“Sam-!”

“On it!”

Knowing that no matter how much they pissed each other off, Sam would make sure Bucky was okay and vice versa, you focused on getting to the top, where Walker and a buddy of his were struggling a little bit.

You climbed up to the roof of the semi no one was on, wincing when you heard your bike skidding across the pavement. There goes half your salary.

You couldn’t dwell on it for very long, considering one of the guys appeared in front of you. You recognized the fighting - the strength - and faltered, a memory resurfacing at a very bad time.

~

“C’mon, honey. You can do better than that.” Steve grinned at you, holding out a hand to help you up.

“Excuse me for not having super strength, Rogers.” You huffed out, taking it and letting him pull you up.

“You don’t need to be stronger than me. You just need to be smarter.”

“That’ll be easy.” You teased, stretching your arms before getting into your stance again. “You’re a dumbass sometimes.”

“Yeah, well, who chose to be friends with this dumbass?”

“Everyone needs a dumbass for a friend.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “So I’m your dumbass?”

“If you want.”

The grin he shot you made your heart skip a beat. “If you’ll have me.”

~

You blinked, but Steve wasn’t in front of you anymore and you weren’t in the gym in DC. 

The guy caught the punch you distractedly threw and twisted your arm, making you cry out, kicking him in the back of the knee and flipping him over your shoulder.

You went to kick him again, but he caught your leg and threw you against the side of the other semi. You were able to grab onto where Bucky had ripped through the side, but you winced as the metal cut through your palm. Sam had just flown under the trucks, taking Buck with him, and you knew when a fight wasn’t worth it, so you quickly moved around the truck, letting Walker and his pal distract the Flag-Smashers, before letting yourself fall onto the side where the grass was.

You wanted to lay there, to catch your breath and curse yourself for getting distracted. You hadn’t had a flashback like that in a while. But you didn’t let yourself. You had to make sure the guys were okay.

Standing up made you cringe; you could feel the throbbing in your shoulder from where it was no doubt dislocated and your leg was aching, the muscle probably pulled when the guy threw you.

“Doll!” You turned, seeing Bucky and Sam sprinting towards you a few yards down the road. “Hey, hey.” Bucky immediately had his hands hovering over you, scanning your body. “Are you okay?”

You nodded, shoving his hands away. “I’m fine.”

“What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

“I think I dislocated it.”

Sam frowned. “What the hell happened?”

You gave him a weird look, starting to limp across the field to where you noticed a side road earlier. “They were super soldiers, Sam. And we got our asses kicked.”

“Yeah, but you know how to fight a super soldier-”

“It’s been a while.”

“Bullshit.” Sam side stepped in front of you, making you stop. “What happened?”

“I-I just got distracted, okay?”

“Y/N. Look at me.” Bucky took your face between his palms, eyes worried. “Are you okay?”

You nodded. A tired sigh left your lips and you looked anywhere but his eyes. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just hurting. My leg, I think I pulled it or something-”

“C’mere.” Bucky turned and crouched down, making you blink.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t be walking. We don’t wanna make it worse.”

“But it’s just a strain, it won’t-”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Just get on the man’s back, Y/N.”

You bit your lip before sighing and carefully climbing on his back. He shifted you gently, making sure to hold your leg with caution, leaning his head into yours when you hooked your chin on his shoulder. “You-you don’t have to talk about what happened. Just-just know that when you do…I’ll be here, okay?”

You nodded, moving to press your nose against the column of his throat. “Okay.”

But you could never tell them. How could you? How could you tell the world’s longest POW that you were having nightmares? How could you complain to an Air Force vet who served two tours in Afghanistan and watched his best friend get blown out of the air that you were having flashbacks?

You weren’t sure if it was PTSD or anxiety or depression. Maybe all three. It didn’t matter, though, because you didn’t want to admit it. You wouldn’t admit it. No one thought the Blip messed you up that badly. No one thought Steve leaving did that much damage. And you were okay with that. You were okay with them thinking you were healing - that you were fine - because they needed to see that it could be done. That they could be fine, too. Especially the men walking, Sam teasing Bucky per usual.

It wasn’t until a horn honked that you allowed yourself to be pulled out of your thoughts. A scoff left you when you realized who it was, switching the side you were laying on so your cheek pressed up against the cool metal of his left shoulder, facing away from the jeep.

You tried ignoring the guy as he talked about working together and shit, taking a shuddering breath, making Bucky squeeze your uninjured thigh. There was no way you were working with him. You couldn’t. It’d be like betraying Steve and you didn’t need that on top of all the other things you were dealing with.

You couldn’t deny the need for a ride though. The airport was 20 miles away and you were hurting pretty bad. You suspected that was the reason the guys relented, Bucky tenderly setting you down in the jeep between him and Sam, careful of your injuries.

You stared at your lap as Walker and Sam talked shop. You understood where they were coming from, you were always able to see both sides of the coin, but it didn’t mean you were going to willingly work with him.

“I got mad respect for all of y’all, but you were kind of getting your asses kicked till we showed up.”

You scoffed at that, finally raising your eyes to meet Walker’s friend’s. “Like you were doing any better?”

Bucky reached over to grab her hand that was resting on her lap. “You know, I’ve been trying to get in contact with you.” Walker faced you, eyes raking down your form. Bucky shifted in his spot, but you ran your thumb over his knuckles before he could do or say anything stupid.

“Yeah. I know. My phone hasn’t stopped blowing up for a week. Thanks for that, by the way.”

Walker frowned. “If you just answered-”

“I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you’ve done. I’ve been a little busy doing my job to blow smoke up your ass on national television. Sorry if my saving people’s lives has been an inconvenience for you, but some wannabe playing dress up isn’t my top priority.”

Walker’s brows furrowed and he was about to say something, when Bucky cut in, asking his friend who he was. You were already that close to jumping out of the jeep, when the guy, Hoskins, told you three that he went by ‘Battlestar’.

If the situation wasn’t so aggravating, you would’ve laughed when Bucky immediately told the driver to stop, opening the door before the car even stopped. “C’mere, doll.” He murmured, lifting you up into his arms bridal style, before walking off, tuning out Walker as he shouted after you two.

You pouted a little when you saw Sam still talking to the guy. “What’re they talking about, Buck?”

“Some nonsense about him not replacing Steve. Just trying to be the best Captain America he can.”

You laid your head against Bucky’s chest. “The best Captain America is Steve. He can never be Steve.”

“I know, doll.”

“Steve told me once that all he was trying to do was be a good man…it’ll always amaze me that he didn’t see he was the best.”

You missed the distraught look Bucky shot towards you, the look in his eyes almost heartbroken while you talked fondly about his best friend. The tortured scrunch to his features seemed to melt away at your next words, though, and he held you tighter as you curled into his hold.

“Just like it amazes me that you don’t know how important you are to me too, Buckaroo.”

[rebeldaydreams]

If you’re up to it I’d really like to see how each bad batchers or collectively take care of the reader when he/she/they are really anxious or have a panic attack. Thank you dear!❤️

I love this request so much!! thank you for sending it in ❤️ I kept reader gender neutral! obvious warning for mentions of panic attacks/ptsd.

The Bad Batch + helping you when you're anxious/having a panic attack

Hunter:

Hunter would be able to sense your increased heart rate and unstable breathing from the other side of the Marauder.

He often gets sensory overload due to his genetic enhancements, so he can empathise with you and understands how bad it can get.

He is by your side in an instant, calming you down and trying to help you regulate your breathing.

“You’re ok, mesh'la. I’m here.”

Gets you anything you need – snacks, blankets, etc. – although usually all you want is for him to stay by your side. He’s always happy to oblige.

Usually in these situations you’ll end up lying on your bunk in his arms.

Hunter’s not a big talker, but if you need to get anything off your chest he’ll listen and offer advice or reassurance if it’s needed.

Otherwise, he’ll just murmur sweet nothings and kiss your forehead to calm you down, until you fall asleep in his warm embrace.

Crosshair:

Crosshair isn't exactly known for dealing well with other people’s feelings, but for you? He tries his best.

He's incredibly attentive, so can always tell when something’s up.

When he finds you alone in a quiet corner of the ship, he drops whatever he’s doing to be at your side.

“y/n? what do you need from me?”

You don’t even say anything – the two of you know each other so well that at this point, words aren’t needed.

When you silently reach out to him, he knows what you want and sits beside you, gently pulling you against him with an arm around your shoulders.

Cross is a man of actions over words, so catch him doing things like running his fingers through your hair or holding one of your hands and rubbing gentle circles into your skin with his thumb.

“I’ve got you, Ad’ika [little one].”

Tech:

You usually go find him when you can feel yourself slipping. It’s not that he wouldn’t care otherwise, he just tends to bury himself in his work and you might not see him for hours, otherwise.

“T-Tech?”

“Yes? Are you-“

The moment Tech looks up from his work and sees you stood there looking like you’re about to break down, his whole demeanour changes and he immediately drops what he’s doing.

“Oh, mesh'la, what’s wrong?”

He guides you to the nearest seat and kneels in front of you, taking your face in his hands and wiping your tears away with his thumbs.

“Breathe with me, y/n. In…out…that’s it. That’s good.” He’ll hold your hand and rub gentle patterns into your skin in time with your breathing to help regulate it.

Tech hates seeing you like this, it breaks his heart, so he’ll do whatever it takes to help you feel better.

“Sorry I interrupted your work-“ Tech gently shushes you before you can finish the sentence and kisses your forehead.

“You’re more important than anything else, y/n.”

Echo:

Out of all the members of Clone Force 99, Echo is probably the most experienced with this kind of thing, as quite a few of the clones he regularly worked with suffered from panic attacks and PTSD.

As such, he is very empathetic and knowledgeable on what to do to help.

He’ll take you somewhere quiet and secluded and sit with you.

If you need to talk, he’ll listen, but if all you want is his company then he’s more than happy to stay with you as long as you need.

He’s very good with helping you through breathing exercises, and this was how he usually helped his brothers when they’d suffer from panic attacks in the barracks.

The thing that works the most efficiently for you, though, is when Echo takes one of your hands and presses it against his chest.

“Hey, focus on me, cyar'ika. Breathe.”

Encourages you to close your eyes and just focus on the feeling of his heart beating beneath your fingertips. It always helps to ground you.

Expect lots of soft kisses and quiet declarations of how much he loves you.

Wrecker:

Wrecker doesn’t like it when you’re distressed, and he can’t fix the problem by punching something. It makes him feel powerless.

Thankfully, he learned some very helpful tips from Echo to utilise - like the breathing exercises.

He likes to recline on his bunk with you sitting between his legs – your back to his chest. Feeling him breathing with you is always a big help when it comes to calming you down.

“I’ll keep you safe, little one.”

Lots of soft kisses!

Lula has also become a big comfort object for you, so whenever you’re having a panic attack the first thing Wrecker does is run off to find the doll.

If you don’t fancy talking, Wrecker will sit and tell you stories of his many daring feats out in the field to help take your mind off things. The usually ridiculous stories always make you smile.

You’ve heard most of them before, but you don’t mind.

[thefanbasewhore]

To Forget.

Summary: Buck has a nightmare and just wants to forget about it, of course with the help of his girlfriend.

Warning/content: (18+), suggestive content ahead. Biting, slight degration, rough sex, mentions of PTSD but Bucky is a soft little angel towards the end. P in V, oral (female receiving)

Paring: Bucky Barnes x reader

A/N: I don't ever write smut, so this kinda sucks but also took me 2 weeks to write 😡

He's curled on the floor, chest heaving as he takes a deep gulp. Eyes ablaze but wide with sadness, fear of the demons who drown him every night he closes his eyes.

The smallest step has his head snapping in your direction, hand reaching out as if he was looking for something to protect himself with but with a few clicks and gears turning the vibranium hand unclenches a sigh of relief leaving his lips.

"Hi baby." His heart is still pounding, mind still racing as he remembers the reason he's in this predicament. Faces of those he's wrong, guilty he's the reason families mourn and children go without father's. Bucky opens his arms, wanting you close, wants the feeling of anxiety and guilt to go away.

Without hesitation you sink down next to him, finding a home between his arms, chest warm and comforting.

"It's alright Buck, I'm here." Lifting your head to face him, petting his hair as you press a soft kiss to his lips. His eyes are sad, glossy with unshed tears, chest irratic against your own. "I'm here."

A hand against his chest reminds him to breath, taking deep breaths out his nose to ease the burning chest. "You have to start waking me up when you move off the bed, don't like you sleeping out here by yourself."

"You look so peaceful, it would be a crime too."

A warm, soft hand glides up the bare skin of your inner thigh, skillful and unforgiving as it pushes deeper and deeper underneath the hem of the shirt. Bucky's eyes flicker to your own, sad and wild but also, filled with an aching hunger felt deep inside the pit of his stomach. The blues mixed with a sense of panic but layered with cloudy lust. "Wanna forget sweetheart."

The words mean nothing as a finger presses against the bundle of nerves covered by your panties, which momentarily surprises and makes your jump, warm lips press against the junction of where your neck and collar bone joint. "Help me forget?"

It's hard denying such a request especially feeling the cushioning of his bottom lip follow the line of your collar bone with wet, sloppy kisses. He's sucking at the skin, nibbling and paining it purple in his wake, fingers now running over the hem of the black, lace panties. His other hand reaches over, vibranium knotting into your hair, cupping the back of your head to angle your face towards his, it's not soft - rough and meaningful but just enough to make your heart pound and between your legs wet.

Longing eyes as he bites his swollen lips, staring at each other for an eternity - or that's what it feels like. The tension is high, his hardness heavy on your inner thigh as he moves closer, coolness of dog tags felt through the thin shirt, the contact hardening your nipples. Eyes dark are feral and when you dare look away - down at where he throbs against you, he harshly yanks at your hair. "Eyes on me, sweet girl. I still haven't gotten my answer yet."

"Yes, yes, yes." That's all he needs as a tongue wets the skin of your neck, a smooth trail of saliva making your neck his. Flesh hand reaches between, squeezing your tit softly, rubbing it through the shirt and feeling it harden.

Clearly frustrated, his fingers pull at the hem of the shirt with a growl, soon enough it's up and over thrown across the room with little regard. Hands squeeze every round piece of flesh, gentle but meaningful as lips bruise your skin.

His chest flushes against your own, now with heavy breaths for an entirely different reason. Frustrated hands find the barrier between his hand and your aching arousal, face mirroring the irritation because of it as two hands push into hem before shredding them with little regards.

You barely have time to gasp as his fingers fill you, smooth kisses presses against the line of your stomach as fingers slide out before curling up into the spot that makes you cry.

He's relentless, at first it's too much, trying to move up the bed from the source but he holds you still, grounds you underneath him until you're soaking his hand, whining out for him.

"More, more, please." At this point you don't know what you're begging for, something snaps inside you. Warm and filled with a tingle that numbs both legs but between his fingers which move in and out at an unforgiving pace you can't feel a thing.

It's impossible to form words as he hits a spot so deep you cry out.

"Look at you.." He teases but hard eyes are anything but playful, they're cruel and condescending and never leave your own. The way he talks is so filthy, degrading but love every word that falls from his mouth. "All dumb, can't even speak. Am I making you dumb, sweet girl?"

The words get stuck in your throat again, the feeling on his finger hit deeper and deeper as your mouth falls open in a silent scream. Eyes feel heavy, half way closing as walls flutter around his scissoring digits. "Gonna come for me, honey?"

"Mmmm!" Is all you can manage as a pair of teeth sink into your inner thigh, it doesn't break the skin but will leave a mark that will last days.

"Yes you are, look at you. I want it, give it to me." A tongue runs out to roll over the burning skin, soothing it with wet saliva and a few kisses as his fingers milk you through. "There it is, you're gorgeous, baby."

It happens so fast, white, hot pleasure that temporarily blinds you. A dark bliss with shaky thighs, they only thing that pulls you back is the feeling of lips against your inner thighs and clicking of plates and shifting of gears as cool vibranium pets your hair, skimming over your hair line. "You with me, bunny?"

A weak nod but that's all he needs before a long stride of his tongue catches a taste of your cum, squealing at the surprise and sensativity of post orgasm. "Bu- Buck -."

You can't form words once again and he can care less. He's ruthless, nibbling at the over-sensative bundle of nerves, licking and moaning with the slightest shift of his own hips

Hands fall to feel the smooth hair, stands a little longer on top fill into the gasps of your fingers, pulling harder- harder then you usually would but Bucky doesn't seem to mind.

"Buck - ugh!" The sounds are filthy, wet and sloppy as one particularly hard pull of hair muffles a moan that vibrates your whole lower half, legs start to shake as thighs tighten and cup his ears.

He's putting his all and everything into you, drunk on the feeling and taste as everything else in his broken mind disappears - he's tense, angry but only filled with thoughts of you, you, you.

For the second time within only minutes of each other you cum, Bucky doesn't dare move, taste every single drop he could manage before pulling away. Arousal smeared across his face as he sits on his knees between open legs using the back of his hand to wipe whatever he could manage.

The loud announcers of the soccer match on the television is the only sound next to the heavy breathing, breasts moving with every breath and Bucky can't look away. Metal fingers cool your nipple, squeezing and pinching as you let out a gasp and cower from the touch. The hand fingers your chin, clicking as it curls against the chin and pulling eyes to his open.

He doesn't bother with words, instead closes the gap between both of you. Taste of yourself tangy on lips, a strong tongue parting lips as the shift of hips has his cock kissing your opening. He tests the waters, pushing forward for the bulbous head runs up and down and up again to touch the bundle of nerves that makes you moan under his mercy.

Tears of frustration prickle eyes but his tongue continues to messily run over every part of your mouth - the roof, the tongue, sucking lips purple and swollen - he can't get enough. It's torturous but soft, lips are kind and caring and considerating on the distraction for the moment.

"You're so beautiful, how'd I get so lucky?." He sounds drunk whispering against your lips, slurring and slow as flesh fingers knot the back of your hair to bring you deeper into his lips. "Can't get enough of you."

"Buck, need you." Wether he hears the words or completely ignores them, his tongue rolls over your own, sharp teeth catching the fat of your lip as his hips tut into yours. He's throbbing against your inner thigh, pre-cum mixed with your own arousal soaking the skin.

The small hand goes unnoticed as it slips down his hard stomach, following the trail of hair that leads to him. His lips are too busy, messy and wet as they move against your own. A hand wraps around his hardness, momentarily separating where you two meet, a small gasp parting lips.

His eyes flutter close as you pump him, pressing soft, gentle kisses against his shoulder. The skin is hot, and still tastes salty from his dream but the whisper of your name under his breath has you reaching forward, fingers at the base of his neck to bring him to your own lips.

You take this time to squeeze and he groans, unaware of your true intensions to push him off, hands against his chest to apply a force that's enough to knock him into his back.

Pretty blue eyes with soft alabaster skin, which flushes compared to the disholved light pink blanket that's fabric tightens under his body weight but never leaves your face, well maybe a second to watch you straddle his thighs, rub your aching pussy against this heavy length.

He doesn't fight as you lift yourself up, rubbing the throbbing head against your folds before slipping into the warm, wet hole with a hiss.

"Jesus, sweetheart." He groans, every inch sending a shock of pleasure up his spine but also stretching you so good it's intoxicating. Drunk on him, the way blue eyes beg you for more, bites his lip and smirks seeing just how ruined you already look.

Finally he's snug, not an inch left to move but you're so warm he doesn't know if he wants to, so you decide to for him. Pressing a hand against his chest for support, giving him an experimental roll that receives a deep breath, "That's it."

"Look good like this." Cool metal squeezes your left breast with his admittance as your hips finally find their rhythm.

Bucky flesh hand follow the lines of your stomach, over the roundness of your breast grab ahold of the posterior aspect of your deltoid, the other cool one is digging dents into the skin of your hip as another skillful roll of your hips has his head rolling back onto the ground.

His mouth hangs open, soft praises filling the air.

You're so good to me.

That's it honey, feel so good.

Eyes squeezed shut as small, sloppy kisses are felt against his neck. A set of teeth digging into the skin and something snaps. A snarl with teeth, fangs on full display as he uses his hand placement as an advantage to turn the pair of you. He pulls out with a hiss, angry and red but the hand against your back guides you to lay on your stomach. With a gentle but meaningful push pressing your cheek to the floor and keeps it there, his other hand curling around your hips to pull them towards him.

Without a word he splits you open again, easing himself until you're a withering mess, under the mercy of his hand which keeps your head grounded, the surface of the floor cool on contrast with the skin of your cheek. He doesn't waste any time, pulling out before trusting so deep you feel him in your stomach.

It doesn't stop, over and over again. Every ounce of frustration is felt as he sheths every inch of himself inside you. Brutal, almost painful but clouds your mind, barely can speak as his hips snap against your own.

He's taking it out on you, so lost in his pleasure he's temperily blind from why this even started in the first place, all he can concentrate on his how good and right you feel, the sound of your arousal every time he trusts into you, the way his name falls from your lips.

A small ache starts to form from the repeated force on your ischial but it's burns so good as he continues to split you open.

"Fuck..." He moans, "So good, sweetheart."

His hips are faultering and slowly loosing rhythm as he hears his end, the vibranium fingers squeeze your ass before pulling away and coming down to hard you see black and feel the rush of blood to that area makes you dizzy.

It's a sharp, searing heat that fills your stomach. Under his mercy as he claims you his, teeth scrape but his lips follow behind to soothe. A hand cups the back of your neck, pulling you towards him but his hips never stop, he's filling you with a brutal pace as your back makes contact with his swollen chest.

The hand wraps around the front now, squeezing the tender area of your neck and you're a mess, feeling his other hand press down on the bundle of nerves that makes you squeal, begging for more.

Arousal coats your legs, thank God he's holding you up because they're shaking, unsteady as he bottoms out inside you again. The bulbous head stretching you to no return, he changed the angle by flexing an knee for more force and you're done for.

Teeth nipping your ear, down the sensative skin of your neck that's already covered with all his love bites, soothing them with the warm surface of his tongue. Heavy breathing in your ear all you could hear as all your other sense dull out, falling limp in his arms.

It's numbing the way the orgasm hits you, blinding and all you can feel is a red hot release that bubbles your chest, makes you cry out for him. All you can hear is a moan in your ear, the "Good girl," as Bucky nears his end.

Almost seconds later, hips still against your ass, pressing harshly as white spurts coat your walls and follow with a small kiss against your shoulder.

He's breathing heavy, slowly lowering both of you on the floor but doesn't dare pull out, instead pulls you close to his chest, sensative and twitching.

He's breathless, but looking over your shoulder to see the closed mouth smile with an appearance of a dimple. "Thank you, baby doll. Feel better already."

His tongue clicks at the imprint of his hand on your cheek, red and on fire but due to the post organism haze you barely felt it. The outline of his fingers starting to rise off the skin, it would be there for a while. "I'm sorry." An apologetic kiss touches your arm, follows a trail up and to your back, soft breath fans your neck, "I was too rough, took it out on you."

Sleepily shaking your head with a goofy grin, "Was good, like it."

A hand cups your head, lifting it front the hard floor to place a pillow there and gently placing it there. The other rubs soothing circular motions over your ass check, with a small frown.

"Bucky, it's okay. I'm fine."

"Don't like hurting you, was too rough." He argues, guilt creeping at his shoulders, weighing then down aa avoids eye contact.

"I liked it." Despite your sore extremities you turn to face him, one hand comes up to cup his cheek, rub the high globes of his face and vibranium soon follows to cover yours. "You were not too rough, in fact, wanna give me a matching one on the other side?"

[acdeaky]

out of the blue (3am calls)

warning: mentions of nightmares, implications of PTSD, fluff

note: this is (technically) my other submission for @celestialbarnes’ 4k writing challenge! i chose the prompt ‘bed’ and dialogue 9 ‘“was it the nightmares again?” “no” “you suck at lying”’ congrats again, rachel! and enjoy 🤍

read my other submission here!

word count: 1.9k

“...sorry that i can’t come to the phone right now, but- james?” you picked up, hearing the shaking breaths of bucky’s down the line as he tries to self soothe himself.

“hey,” he sighed down the receiver; you could imagine his metal hand running through his shortened locks, too. “did i wake you?”

“no, no, i’m always awake at...three-fourteen in the morning.” you replied, a teasing tone to your voice as you rubbed your sleep-ridden eyes.

“i just needed to hear your voice,” to ground me, he wanted to say, “i’m sorry, it was selfish.”

“i don’t mind, i wanna talk to you.” you smiled, knowing in a minute or so you’d be leaving the confines of your apartment to walk across the hall to bucky’s.

the other side of the phone stayed quiet for a moment, the only thing being heard was the static of the line. you didn’t want to say anything, knowing bucky usually needed a minute or two to collect this thoughts before he asked you to come over.

his excuse was that he felt like a burden; your response was always the opposite. ever since you had met him, something you always reminded him was that you were there for him, knowing what he had been through. although he was hesitant, the majority of the time you were by his side in the early hours of the morning.

“can you come over? just for a little while?” bucky’s voice was small, quiet, as always when he asked those four words. both of you knew that you’d be there much longer than ‘a little while’, but you didn’t mind when you forever replied,

“of course.”

it wasn’t long before you pulled a hoodie over your head, slipping on some socks before making your way to your front door. you grabbed your keys and opened your door, turning and twisting the lock as quickly as you could.

the hallway seemed darker than usual that night, the chill of the wooden floorboards seeping through your socks and hitting the pads of your feet as you crossed over to bucky’s apartment door. you knocked, waiting for the answer which came only a second or two later.

“i’m sorry.” was the first and only words he spoke as the door swung open.

“it’s okay.” you replied as bucky stood to the side, allowing you to step through the door before he closed it behind you.

the bareness of his apartment always worried you; it felt as if there was little progress happening, but it was. slowly but surely, and bucky knew this, he was just waiting for the right moment to ask you to go shopping with him. help pick out a new sofa, one you found comfortable. maybe even a coffee table, or a dining table so you had a proper place to sit while you ate your various take-outs every week.

it wasn’t like you didn’t see each other enough for him to ask, but he was hesitant; worried you’d say no, that he’d miss judged your friendship, your relationship even, that you were only a source of comfort on nights like this and not a friend who helped make a house a home.

even after that time you’d been with him whilst buying new bed sheets. his mind kept telling him right place, right time, that you didn’t actually want to do that with him, but you’d felt obliged to when running into each other in the store.

he was wrong, of course. your friendship meant the world to the both of you and you adored bucky, but he needed time and so did you. so, your friendship was just that: friends who saw each other the majority of the time, who found any free moment to spend together and who slept next to each other on nights like these...

bucky locked the door behind you before grabbing himself a quick drink, watching your figure as you stepped into the side of the living room and hovered over the blanket and pillow on the floor.

like usual, you said nothing, only following the same route into his bedroom while bucky left his now empty glass in the sink. just as he turned the corner, you were pulling the covers back, pulling off your hoodie and sliding under the sheets.

he watched for a minute, waiting for you to find a comfortable spot with the sheets pulled tightly around your body.

his mattress was cold, still hard, yet comfortable, from when he first bought it. the sheets were soft, too, your choice - of course - colours which you had said complemented his eyes; it was more difficult hiding the blush on his face than you hiding the price tag. he bought them anyway, knowing that you wanted the best for him and hoping that you’d put them to use some time.

and use them you had. there had been many nights since that day which you had spent in his bed, curled up against him as you feel asleep and bucky attempted to. you were the only reason the sheets got washed often; other than you and him on nights like these, nobody else used them.

it wasn’t long before he moved from his place by the door, following your early actions and joining you under the covers. ever the gentleman, bucky stayed on his side while you stayed on yours, him on his back with you on your side facing him.

it took for you to move closer to him, pressing your body into his for either of you to begin feeling any comfort.

the warmth of bucky’s body was a pleasant contrast to the mattress, both of you slowly warming up the longer you were huddled together. truly, you hadn’t meant to lay like this, but after climbing under the sheets next to him for the first time, bucky pulled you into his side and wrapped his arms around you. as if on instinct, your head laid on his bare chest, a hand resting in the middle of his torso as you shifted onto your side.

there were some delicate whispers from the two of you before you drifted to sleep. your kind words soothed bucky’s mind as he allowed himself to relax and settle back into the pillows; a luxury he rarely let himself have. his allowed you to feel them reverberate in his chest, his low hums acting as a settler for your thoughts.

both of you were asleep moments later.

-

“was it the nightmares again?” you asked the following night, your back against the headboard of your bed, the bright moonlight shining through the thin curtains you’d forgotten to pull across the window earlier.

“no”

“you suck at lying.” a light giggle came from you, followed by bucky’s unpleased sigh. you were right; he knew it and so did you, but you wanted him to admit it.

“i really don’t.” you scoffed lightly at those words, knowing that he didn’t even believe his own words.

“james barnes, how have you not yet learned that you cannot lie to me? i know you.” like always, there was a teasing tone to your voice, trying your best to cheer him up over the phone, especially when you could just tell that the nightmares were bad tonight.

for a moment, the other side of the phone feel silent, except for some light rustling of covers. you knew he was laid on the floor, blanket on top of and under him. regardless of how many times the two of you had tried, bucky could never find comfort inbetween his sheets unless you were there by his side.

“buck? you still there?” you hadn’t meant for your voice to go so quiet, but you really didn’t want to stop talking to him; you never wanted to stop talking to him.

“yeh, yeh i’m still here-” his sentence was almost cut off by three rough knocks at your door, making you body stiffen.

“hold that thought, buck.” you replied, moving slowly off of your bed and towards your slightly open bedroom door.

“doll, its okay,” he spoke softly, noticing the slight quiver to your voice. “its only me���

“could you not have told me that?” you laughed, speeding up to open the door as to not let him stand in the hallway for much longer.

“hey.” he smiled as the door opened, dropping his phone from his ear before ending the call.

“hey.” you mirrored his smile, doing the same while moving to the side to allow him in. as you shut and locked the door, bucky went through his usual routine every time he stepped into your apartment this late at night. his keys were dropped into the bowl on top of the cabinet by your front door, then he grabbed a drink fro your kitchen that was adjacent to your entryway, and then he met you in the doorway of your bedroom, your arms open and waiting for him.

he gladly accepted the contact, always relying on you to ground him when it felt like he’d been floating for too long. and tonight he had been.

both of you used the minimal light from the moon to figure out your way to your bed, his right hand never letting go of yours until he finally had to. the covers were pulled back from where you had left them moments ago, the sheets now cold.

the two of you laid in your bed moment later, bucky being the first to be settled on his back as you began to be pressed against his side, your head on his chest. along with the curtains, earlier you had left a small window open, allowing the noise of brooklyn at night to seep through to your room. neither of you would be falling asleep anytime soon.

“i love you, buck.” your whispered confession making its way to bucky just before he closed his eyes.

“love you, too.” he replied, not allowing the true meaning of his words to be heard.

“no, bucky,” you sat up, leaning your weight onto your right elbow as your left hand reached out for his cheek. “i love you, okay? i love you.”

there was no words for him. he truly hadn’t expected the weight of your confession and it has shocked him beyond words. all he could think to say was,

“i love you, too, doll.” his shy smile made an appearance, reminding you of the first time you saw each other. with that, you leaned forward, placing a delicate kiss onto his lips, the corner of his mouth and on his cheek.

bucky’s smile never faltered, only growing wider the longer you planted kisses upon his skin.

after leaving a lingering one on his jaw, you moved back to face him, resting your forehead onto his. “goodnight, baby.” you whispered, pressing one last kiss on to his lips.

“goodnight, doll.” bucky repeated your actions, leaving the both of you in a fit of smiles.

and, just like earlier, you laid on your side, your head resting above bucky’s heart with his vibranium arm around your shoulders. the two of you were asleep a few moments later, the steady beat of his heart bringing about a peace which you always felt around him.

-

taglist (for people who i think might enjoy this): @forever-rogue @buvky @buckys-darling @barnessupremacy @wallflowerbarnes @bvckysmoon @gryffindorwriter @lokiscollar @propertyofpoeandbucky @buckys-bug @aerynwrites

bucky taglist: @marvel-rhapsody @bloomingbucky