#desert rat at heart

[the-cheesemonger13]

something fun

[chaos-has-theories]

I FINALLY read The Unwanted Guest yesterday! And by "read" I mean "did a reading", I got to do Ianthe, none if us had read the script beforehand, and we randomly improvised with chairs to follow the scene instructions, it was absolutely glorious.

ANYWAY. I cannot decide what is hotter: Palamedes in his terrible half-burnt suit and the cigarette he doesn't know why he's holding, or Ianthe with her maid/butler routine.

Believe me, no one is more horrified to realize this than me.

[sunnami]

the 5 times you did (not) love each other and the 1 time you did.

summary. as the title suggests. this one was a request! i hope you enjoyed my version of this anon.

pairing/s. poly!marauders + lily / reader.

wc. 4.1k

tags. hurt/comfort, angst, peter pettigrew mention, not proofread, like seriously, fluff, happy ending.

cws: brief mention of violence and blood.

note: i am alive?? crazy. i began this fic, whilst sick, around august, nursing the worst headache ever. i wrote the middle of this fic, sick. and i think it's only fitting that i finished this fic. sick... honestly, i did not proofread any of this, i just know i lowkey love it. after the first one-thousand words, i just spiral and become delirious, so i don't even know what happened here. my first request finished! yippee! and thank you all for 2k :< i love you all so much.

i. 

SIRIUS BLACK did not love you—not even close, not even a little bit. Not even at all.

After Peter Pettigrew’s slight against his family, Sirius would never hold warmth or pity for the skittish mouse ever again. He was played for a fool. And, he did not know which betrayal had hurt more. Peter’s—or yours. (Had you known all along of your adoptive brother’s plans? Did you not think for one second that Sirius would, without a sliver of hesitation, put himself in the way of a killing curse to keep you safe? He’d have died before ever letting the fire in your eyes wither to ashes. Clearly, you did not share the same sentiment.) 

He wanted nothing to do with you. Ever. And if the rat-bastard dared to show his face, not even Death would know where to put Peter’s body to rest. Sirius would keep him alive until he begged for death—until the idea of living frightened him more than dying. And for you—beholder of his heart, captor of his soul, and co-possessor of his mind—he could only hope that you stayed far away. You had wrecked him—all of them. 

He wanted—

He did not know what he wanted. 

For when it came to you, Sirius Black was reduced to a man wandering the deserts—mistaking clouds for water, and the sands for grass blades. You had ravaged every fiber of his being; consumed his every thought and word. The most ironic part of all was that if you had been the one standing there—Sirius would have let you Avada him. Dumbledore could scold him in the afterlife—Sirius could care less. He’d have snapped his wand in half and asked someone else to fight you because Sirius had vowed from the moment he met you that he would never harm a hair on your head. He would never be the reason that tears stained your pretty cheeks. 

Well, apparently, trust and promises were not worth a damn thing nowadays. 

No, he did not love you—even as you stood on the steps of Grimmauld, your hair ruined by the downpour of rain. Your lips bruised and bitten from a nervous habit Sirius had yet to break out of you. 

“I didn’t know, Sirius,” you whispered—your voice the only sound falling on his ears amidst all the thunder and lightning. He only saw you. “Y-You have to believe me. If I knew—Gods, I would have told Dumbledore in a heartbeat. Fuck. I thought you knew me better than that.” 

He thought so, too. 

“Did you know?” Sirius began, taking a step forward and into the storm, a demeaning sneer on his lips. “That when Voldemort stood in our home, your portrait was right behind him? That was all I could look at. If I had died—you would have been the last thing I saw.” 

You had not replied. 

Sirius grit his teeth. “Go,” he said, voice hoarse. 

“Go!” he yelled, grateful for the rain as it masked his own tears as you flinched from the sound of his voice. Not the thunderclap, the lightning strike—but it was him who scared you. 

(But you had done so first.) 

When you apparated away, Sirius crumbled to the ground and pounded his fists against the asphalts where you were moments ago, screaming and cursing until he saw blood flowing with the rainwater.

It was laughable, really. The way he did not love you. 

It was not love that drove him to madness, pummeling Gideon Prewett into a bloody pulp for mentioning your name during a meeting with the Order. He had presumed you to be a Death Eater alongside your brother—Sirius instantly saw nothing but red. (He condemned Bellatrix, his own cousin, for becoming a madwoman. Yet, here he was, unraveled by the very thought of you. The very whisper of your name.) 

But whatever it was that had turned him into a fool and a hypocrite all at once, it was not love. 

ii. 

JAMES POTTER had no love for you—make no mistake about that. He loved love, and he did so fiercely and truthfully. But you and Peter had broken his trust—defiled his loyalty from the moment your brother had brought Voldemort to his doorstep. (Did you know that as he begged and screamed for Lily to hide with their son, Harry—he thought of you? For a fleeting moment, he saw your face, marked by fear and tear-rimmed eyes. And James knew straight away that he would spit on Tom Riddle’s bare feet if only to keep his family safe. If only to see you once more. Alive and well. But, you must not have thought the same—if you had conspired with Peter to sell him and Lily out to the Devil reborn.) 

The thought of you breathing was enough to keep James alive. 

But, that was not love. It was a mockery of it. 

No, he did not feel so much as a twinge of emotion for you. Not even as Mad-Eye Moody brought your limp body back to Grimmauld. It was not love that threatened the magic in his being—that simmered in his blood until the painted walls saw an indent of his fist. (“Poor thing,” McGonagall cooed as she pressed her palm over your forehead. Despite some of the members’ growing distrust for you, you still took an Unforgivable in their stead. “We can only wait. . . Four Cruciatus curses. . .”) 

What more did James need to want to rip Peter apart limb by limb? 

It was not love that rooted his feet by your side. Sitting hunched on a chair too small for his height, bags beneath his eyes, and the pale of his lips becoming noticeable to everyone who spoke to him. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to you lovelessly—hands desperately clutching your own. Sirius stood across the room, arms crossed over his chest, dagger-like eyes waiting for so much as a twitch of your finger. “I’m sorry.”

It was a plea this time.

He only hoped you did not ask him to love you. For James could give you the world, hand-pick the stars, and burrow his body deep beneath the ground if you had asked for it—but he could not love you. 

Everyone had told him not to hope that you would wake up. That your pretty eyes would not flutter open, and you would no longer look at him as you had before. But James was stubborn. He was selfish as he was stubborn. He did not love you—but he needed to hear the sound of your voice. And James would take it any way that he could. The soft cadence of a whisper, or a rough utterance of a single word. Molly Weasley told him to accept reality for what it was. (“You need sleep, dear,” the matriarch fussed. “There’s nothing we can do. Look at the Longbottoms. . . We can do no more for this one as we had done for them.”) 

In the still of the night, he left his reveries on the cold of your skin. “Wake up,” he demanded. 

“Wake up or else you’re the traitor everyone thinks you are,” James hissed. 

But his words held no heat—and his heart held no love for you. 

Make no mistake about that.

Then, when you finally woke up, disoriented and throat parched—a hazy recollection of the weeks before—James made sure that no more than four people could enter the room. He did not care if a hurricane, or if Voldemort himself—James had faced him once already, after all—threatened to break the door down. You were theirs to protect.

 (But not to love.) 

“We need to begin the questioning, James, you know that,” said Kingsley Shacklebolt, almost exasperatedly; weary lines written across his face. James would not allow even a toe beyond the doorway. An interrogation meant you had something to do with the attempted murder of James and his family. Whether or not you were innocent, James did not care—he just wanted you safe. 

(And a small part of him already knew that you were not your brother’s keeper. Just as they had absolved Sirius of his family’s sins. It would be unfair to not show you the same grace. But before his mind knew that, James’s heart and soul had known the truth all along.) 

He found Sirius gently tending to your every need, and already James knew that was Padfoot’s way of begging for forgiveness. The ebony-haired man hung onto your every word. He winced when you flinched, and pressed his apologies to your forehead, rasping for a kindness he did not deserve. Not after what he did. How he turned you away and cursed your name. How they betrayed you. 

James did not love you. 

But what else could he call the manacles that bound his hands and forced him to his knees when it came to you? 

Not. Love. 

iii. 

REMUS LUPIN could not bring himself to love you. But, he could not love Sirius, Lily, and James either. He was undeserving of such a privilege. But he was not allowed to love you; Remus could only hope that you saw even a shred of worth in him—to wrest each word from his lips and every breath from his lungs. But, he did not love you. No. 

Because loving you meant he was to tell you of your brother’s crimes. And Remus could not hurt you like that. 

“P-Peter?” you had asked, wearing the eyes of a fretful sibling. Remus lifted his hand to tuck a strand of hair gone astray behind your ear. Bellatrix had done a number on you—just as she had done to Alice and Frank. Remus was fairly certain that Sirius was off on a hunt for his cousin, his mind toyed with by the barbarity of war. What they could not do for the Longbottoms, they’d wring themselves dry to do for you. After the Lestranges’ attack, you suffered damage to your throat and memories. Remus could not bear to see you in such pain. 

He could not give you love, but Remus would offer up to you his every limb, and the weary skin upon his bones. 

“They. . .” Remus grimaced. How could he act as the bearer of bad news? He’d rather dive headfirst into shark-infested waters. Be anywhere else but here. In fact, Remus would rather snatch you away from the funereal walls, and hold you in his arms in the quietude of dawn, than be the one to bring anguish to your eyes. “They’re looking for him at the moment, love.” 

One question lingered in your eyes: Why? 

Luckily, Sirius was always the better one at sharpening a blunt knife. “He was a traitor,” he spat like acid. “A traitor to the Order. A traitor to us. He’s no friend of ours. Not anymore.” 

But Sirius knew—better than anyone else—how difficult it can be to truly hate little brothers, especially once they’ve gone. 

“No. . .” You trembled, almost retching as you sobbed into your palms. 

Remus held you then, the front of his shirt soaked in your tears, eyes firmly shut as you trembled and heaved in his arms. The sound of your guttural screams bounced off the four walls, and Remus had to bury his nose in your hair. You were alive. Safe. Breathing. But you felt cold as ice; an empty husk stripped bare for grief to take over. And Remus could do nothing but hold you. (He just hoped that wherever Peter Pettigrew was, Remus would not be the first one to find him. Otherwise, they would not be able to recover even a fingernail from his remains.)

“Hush, love,” Remus whispered into your ear as you cried yourself sick. Mourning the loss of your brother, reeling from the betrayal of a bond that was supposed to be stronger than blood. Remus would make him pay, he vowed as much to you. No, Remus and the wolf in him did not know how to love. But he knew how to hurt. And, that, he’d gladly do for you. His body was for you to use as a shield, his soul for you to strip bare, and his heart for you to thieve and never return. 

“Don’t cry,” said James, a shadow cast over his frames. “Not for Peter. Never. Fucking bastard will get what’s coming to him.” He laid on the vacant space of the bed, gently untangling your hands that were pressed over your heart. “I’ll make sure of it.”

They all would.

But not because they loved you. 

It was not out of love, Remus had to remind himself in the coming days, when he stayed diligently by your side as you recovered. Daily sessions with the best healer St. Mungo’s could offer—as if James would allow anything else. There were days your eyes would glaze over, your words rough and sluggish, and Remus would try his damndest to make you smile. 

It was the least he could do. 

For failing to protect you. 

But that was not love. 

(It was hope. Wretched, disastrous hope as he fell to his knees, and your name in between his teeth.)

iv. 

LILY EVANS was a fighter in all the ways that mattered. 

And from the very first moment she held Harry in her arms, eyes raking over his wrinkly, bloodied skin; all ten fingers and toes, her soft cries over his loud screaming—Lily knew she would trade her life for his in a heartbeat. Little, lovely eyes that would soon see the world in his own time. Lily adored him. Cherished every tear, snore, and giggle. She knew then, that a mother’s love was entirely different from any emotion she’d ever felt before. 

This was proven the first time Harry had gotten seriously ill. A few weeks after the attempted murder on the Potters, Harry was ceaselessly crying—screaming, even, every night—red-faced as he fussed every breakfast and dinner. Lily found herself at wit’s end. Her protectiveness had gone up a hundred measures; wouldn’t let anyone besides family or Madam Pomfrey see Harry. Yet, even with all the draughts and silly-flavoured syrups, Harry wasn’t getting better. 

“Lily dear, you cannot actually be thinking about this,” worried Molly Weasley as Lily stood in front of your door, holed away in the room where you had been recovering for the last few days. It would be the first time she saw you since the incident. More than anything she was afraid. Frightened that you would look at her differently. Whether or not that fear stemmed from love, Lily was not concerned. “We can call for another Healer from Mungo’s to have a look at Harry. . . Who knows what might. . .” 

Lily held Harry closer to her, lips firmly pressed, attempting to ignore the way his temperature was unnaturally high. “Might what, Mrs. Weasley?” She knew Molly was only talking out of concern, from a mother’s perspective at least. But she knew you better than anyone else. You would never hurt her, or Harry, that much she was certain of. And if you were the traitor everyone else was afraid of accusing you of, a sentence delivered by association to Peter—then let the guillotine fall, Lily would carry your crimes for you. 

She remembered ever-so clearly in her sixth-year, you with dreams glistening in your eyes. (“I’m going to be a Healer, Lils! Minnie said I’d be a great one. . . I want to protect those I love. . . I know I can do it. . . Oh, I can’t wait to tell Peter that I’ve gotten recommendations already to work at Mungo’s after graduation.”) 

And Lily recalled at that moment, she had felt a different kind of emotion that she had never experienced before. It was not love, of course. Tuney said she was too young and too stupid to know what real love was. But, at sixteen, what else could describe the way her heart fluttered and the way her lips threatened to break out into a smile whenever you lit up talking about your future? (It was just a crush, young Lily told herself.)

Only to be crushed and cast aside in the face of the war, where fighters took their place at the forefront of the lines, mothers and children hid; healers stretching themselves thin to be here, there, everywhere; where traitors walked in plain sight. 

“There is no one else I trust more with my life,” replied Lily. 

And that was that. 

Lily skirted around Molly and opened the door to your room, where Sirius, James, and Remus all stood at attention at the sight of her and Harry. She ignored them, and headed straight to your side. 

“Hello, love,” she greeted with all the gentleness she was made of, a smile creeping up to her eyes as Lily watched you turn your head at the sound of her voice. Truth be told, she did not know what her end-goal was in coming here. But being by your side had always made life a little more bearable, like all the illnesses in the world could not bring her down. And so, her magic had instinctively summoned her person to you. She, at least, was relieved to see colour returning to your cheeks, though the red in your eyes had dulled the hues she adored so much. 

“Is that. . .?” you croaked. 

Lily nodded. “Harry, meet—” 

One of the loves of my life, the most loyal and pure witch anyone ever has the privilege of meeting, someone I want to stay in my life forever. 

Lily’s smile wilted. “A friend.” 

Later, she would place Harry in your arms—her little hope embraced by her dream—and Lily would wonder if it was by pure magic that Harry calmed in your presence. 

For if love could hurt and destroy, could it mend and heal the broken as well?

But what a shame, for not one in that room carried an ounce of love for you.

(She would die for Harry, yes—but she would live for you.)

v. 

YOU did not love them, either. 

The very idea, thought—insinuation—was absurd. (Why, they deserved much better than you, after all.) With hands that failed to protect them, were you even allowed to hold them anymore? Did your heart have the right to breathe for them? You had failed as a sister and a friend—how much more would you have failed as their lover? Well, you’d never know. 

Because you did not love them. 

Merely wished them happiness and for the world to extend them kindness. For the sun to look brightly down on them, and for time to heal their scars and wounds. For if they were in pain, the earth would stop spinning. But such a request was not borne from love. 

Surely not. 

Because, then, that would have meant that it was love that teared you apart when Sirius cursed your name, when James turned you away, when Remus could not look you in the eyes, or when Lily—for all your history together—called you a friend. 

The whole of you was made by the parts of them. Each memory welded into the crevices of your soul. From the moment you had all found each other in the same train compartment, same common room—there was a shift in the fates that bound all five of you together. (The ties were red, but the thread was not of love.) You did not believe in Professor Trelawney’s talks of providence and destiny. 

Because if you did, then why was the universe so cruel? 

Falling—not in love—for four people who could very much do without you in their lives. Lacking severely as a sister to the point you had not noticed your brother fading and fading away into the shadows. 

Was love that unkind? That merciless? 

Then, you did not want to love at all. 

Oh, but magic or not, every creature on this earth selfish. 

You were no different. 

You wanted. 

Oh, how you yearned. 

“I LOVE YOU.” 

You barely had enough time to react before Sirius pressed his lips to the side of your head, arm covertly sneaking around your waist. The sound of the train whistling as parents yelled their goodbyes filled the station. You stood in the midst of the crowd, eyes never leaving one window in particular as you waved at Harry, now eleven-years-old and now off to Hogwarts. 

“Quite a random thing to say, husband,” you murmured, leaning into his warmth. “What for?” 

“Just because,” he replied in turn with a fiendish grin. “Well, perhaps for choosing us, for choosing me despite all my fuck-ups. For existing. For being the beautiful, wonderful, kind, precious you. I could keep on going, my darling. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” 

You wrinkled your nose, eyes rolling from fondness. “I love you too, quite unfortunately.” 

He only laughed and pulled you closer to him. “Let’s go home.” 

–

“I love you.” 

In the house built by new memories, warded by stronger protection charms, and filled with warmth and love—James said this to you each morning before he left for the Ministry, promoted after the war as Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Not one foot out of the door until he had showered you in kisses and the symphonies of his heart. James had always been loud, even in his time at Hogwarts. The war had not taken this part of him, and you figured James was too loud to let it be taken from him. He was unapologetically and unabashedly him. 

And you had loved him fiercely for that. 

“I’ll be home early tonight,” he said, a quiet intimacy washing over the both of you. The early birds of the cottage. “Wait for me?”

“Of course,” you answered without an ounce of hesitation, delicately chasing after his lips. “I love you. Be safe.” 

-

“I love you.” 

“Are you saying that to me or are you reading from the book?” you teased from where you laid on Remus’s chest, hours after James left for work, the afternoon bringing you two together in the living room. Lily was in the gardens, and Sirius was in the shed working on his motorbike. It was perfect. You felt the rise and fall of Remus’s chest beneath you, his heartbeat close to your ear. He was perfect. It was a miracle you had not fallen asleep to the tender lull of his voice. 

“Both,” he responded, hand coming up to trace the bare of your skin—a miracle you did not crumble or burn instantly from his touch. 

You hummed. “Then, I love you, too.” Then, you grinned, lifting your head to stare up at him. “You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you.” 

And, oh, how photographs could not capture the beauty in Remus’s smile as his eyes regarded you with such fire.

“My heart, my light, my desire,” Remus began, one finger ever-so softly tracing the curve of your cheek. “In vain I have struggled, it will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” 

–

“I love you.” 

Said Lily as she lied in your shared bed, red-nosed and her cheeks pale, sluggish. The Christmas holiday was generous enough to gift her with an unfortunate cold that had been going around the wizarding world. “But, please, go,” she commanded weakly, gesturing for you to join Harry who was stood by the door. “It’s a lovely day outside for making snowmen with carrots as noses and snow angels. Not for taking care of poor old me.” 

You rolled your eyes as you sat by her side, swiftly pressing a kiss to her forehead. “And I love you, which is why I would rather much be here, taking care of the prettiest snow angel to ever exist,” you countered, bringing a spoonful of broth to her lips. “Besides, Harry here has something to tell you. He’s made friends at school. One of them is Molly’s little one.” 

“Oh, you did?” Lily cooed, before sniffling weakly. “That’s lovely, darling. Tell me all about them.” 

“That’s not all, Lily mine,” you began mischievously as Harry’s eyes narrowed at you through his glasses. “This friendship apparently formed after fighting a troll.” 

“You what?” Lily croaked, emerald eyes shimmering with concern and near-dread. 

“Did you really, Harry?” James popped his head in the doorway, clapping his son on the shoulder before ushering him inside the room. A spitting image side-by-side as they took the empty space by the foot of the bed. “Good boy. Father approves.” 

“Of course you would,” Lily shot at him weakly, melting when Sirius then entered the room and greeted her with a kiss to her cheek. “And where are you all coming from?”

“Outside,” announced Remus, tugging his tie from his neck. “Sirius and I took a quick trip to Diagon Alley to get some things that’ll make you feel better, Lily love.” 

And as the snow fell outside, lazy winds against the window, your little family gathered in one room, there was one thing you knew for certain.

You loved them. 

And they loved you. 

a/n: i wrote all 4k words while sick. crazy. but anyway, i wanted to believe in love again so here i am. thank you all so much for being patient with me. i promise to do even better in the next fics!

[panicbones]

oh this is not intuitive at all. i dont think it helps that it is not well optimized for a ps4 controller (i refuse to play a game like this on keyboard)

okay. i got new vegas. lets ride

[macfrog]

jet

🎉 thank u guys so much for 1k followers 🎉 i don’t know how we got here but i love you all endlessly and can’t thank you enough for all the love n support. here’s some smutty joel to celebrate 🤩 this might become something, it might not. i dunno. wanted to try it out tho. lmk your thoughts ✨

pairing: joel miller x fem!reader

summary: you and joel have an agreement: follow his movements, follow his orders, stay alive. what happens when, one night, he asks you to break the deal?

warnings: 18+ (minors dni!!!) post-outbreak!joel, pining i guess?? when don't i pine for this man, praise kink, light bondage, fingering, unprotected p in v sex (don't u dare), creampie, dom!joel, soft!joel, age gap (late 20s reader, late 40s joel), cursing, cute horsies

word count: 6.9k

main masterlist

Somewhere between Missouri and Illinois, last time you checked. Joel has the map, and you don’t bother asking him to see it much. You’ve been following the Mississippi north, on his orders, looking to hit St. Louis sometime tomorrow. Provided you don’t run into any trouble, that is.

It’s been three days with no safe refuge. Camping out in deserted houses with wood for windowpanes, stores infested with rats, office buildings with infected roaming. Joel figures the outskirts of the city are a good spot to stop for a couple nights, regain your strength, find supplies.

You’re a few paces ahead of him, only turning your head slightly when you notice an offramp, and looking back ahead when he doesn’t give any direction. You weave in and out of abandoned cars, hips swaying with the clipping of your horse’s hooves on broken asphalt, Joel’s horse in time at your heels.

You’d untethered the pair of them on a farm back in Nebraska. Joel had told you to stay put while he cleared the house, but you’d wandered over to the field when you spotted them. Timid, skittish, starving.

Five minutes hooked over the fence and they were both eating grass you’d pulled from the earth, right out of your hand. Joel’s heavy footsteps approaching had spooked them back a few steps, but you’d petted their muzzles and when he did the same, they soon warmed to him, too.

He’d jerked his head in a nod and muttered, “Good job,” before finding two saddles, strapping them on, and helping you onto the chestnut brown one – who you’d named Jet.

Joel had found tins of food in the farmhouse, and a switchblade for you to carry. He had a new stain on his shirt.

“Infected?” you asked.

He grunted in reply. Then rolled the tins into his backpack and hoisted himself onto his own horse, giving her reins a tug.

You knew that meant that yeah, there’d been infected inside. And recent, too, going by how well-kept the horses looked. It can’t have been longer than a week.

Joel’s silence as you both wandered down the farm track probably meant that there weren’t just adults in the house, either.

You’d glanced over to him, giving him a small smile. Bent over and reached for his horse’s ears, scratching where her soft black coat met her mane. The reins lay loose around Joel’s knuckles.

Protecting and providing for you was more important than some infected kids in a farmhouse. Joel had made that more than clear over the time you’d been with him. But somewhere, buried deep underneath years of fighting and killing, tucked away under a dusty flannel shirt, you knew his heart was hurting.

That was two weeks ago. Joel hasn’t talked about it, and you’re not interested in bringing it back up. Y’all got to the farm, took everything it had to offer, and you left.

Jet clicks her way along the highway somewhere south of the city. It’s still bright out; Joel reckons probably a few more hours of sunlight, so you know he’ll be scouting for places to camp out soon.

You lean back to stretch your spine, hand steadying yourself on Jet’s rump, her tail swishing as she walks. Her head bobs, looking from left to right, from the trucks with smashed windows sprouting moss, over to the trees losing leaves in the fall breeze.

It’s peaceful. Not much is, these days.

It’s quiet enough that Joel can listen for any sound of oncoming threat, and quiet enough that you can shut your eyes and pretend like you’re on some trail in the Texas country, on a warm summer evening; not exhausted, covered in dirt, weeks since you washed, days since you slept.

You’re humming gently to yourself, imagination taking you down by a creek where Joel pulls you by hand off the horse and you sit down to a picnic or something. He’d bring a basket. Maybe a bottle of wine, or a cheese board. Maybe he lays you back and kisses you on the blanket. Maybe his hand starts to wander up your thigh, skirt ruffling as he goes…

“Not much out here, is there?”

His voice startles you, bursting the seams of your daydream. He isn’t much of a talker, not unless you start it. You sit up straight and give your head a shake, as if dislodging the fantasy from your mind.

You twist around to look at his face; squinting under the bright white sky. Tired, same as you, lined, flecked with years and sun and survival.

“Hm?” he asks when you still don’t reply.

“Not a lot,” you finally say, clearing your throat and turning back to the road.

Finding the horses isn’t the only thing that’d happened two weeks ago.

Joel hadn’t wanted to camp in the farmhouse, hadn’t wanted to have to shift the bodies. Too much effort, or too much for you to see, maybe. You’d protested, heart set on a night’s sleep in an actual bed, but he hadn’t budged.

And you knew not to push him.

The sun was setting, though, so Joel led you down a dirt track toward a barn and burst the padlock. He tied the horses up just inside the door, used bundled up hay as a makeshift mattress upon which he laid out a blanket for you.

He barricaded the door as you lay back, did a walkaround of the place just in case any infected – or worse – were waiting to surprise y’all, and then sat down next to you.

Your head by his thigh, you put a hand on his knee.

“You can lie down, too, y’know.”

He grunted in response, breathing deep and steady.

“Joel.”

You took his shoulder and tried to pull him down to you, but the man is stronger than anyone you’ve ever met, even in his late forties, and you were convinced he’d only pretended to be yanked toward you so as not to hurt your feelings too much.

He remained upright. “Just want to keep watch for a while.”

Joel’s like this when you’re on the road. He’s cautious. On high alert. Always watching ahead, always listening out for whatever he thinks he might hear in the distance. Sometimes you can say something to him and have to give his leg a kick for him to answer you.

You’d sighed and pushed yourself up to lean your bicep against his. He furrowed his brows and scanned you from your jeans to your jaw.

“If you’re up, I’m up,” you told him.

“You need sleep,” he replied flatly.

You shrugged. “So do you.”

“What good is both of us tired?”

You sighed again and shook your head. You weren’t gonna argue with him.

Good thing he didn’t feel much like arguing, either. Ten minutes later he was on top of you, jeans loose on his thighs, head buried in your shoulder, fucking you senseless. Grunting and groaning into your skin.

You’d scored marks into his shoulder blades with your nails that you’re sure, if you peeled back his shirt right now, would still be there.

It’d tired you both out enough that Joel settled with your head on his chest, his hand in your hair, eyes trained on the barn doors. You don’t know if he slept a wink. You never know if he sleeps these days.

Joel hears the hoarseness of your voice and knows that you’re tired, ‘cause he clicks to his horse and she trots up alongside you and Jet. He pulls the map from his backpack. You tilt your head to take a look.

“Keep ridin’ for another hour,” he mumbles. “’m sure we’ll find somewhere soon. Looks like we’re still a little way out of St. Louis.”

You nod, rolling your head back. The cloudy sky burns your corneas as you watch a bird fly overhead. Joel slips the map back into his bag and you feel his hand on your thigh.

“You okay?”

“Mhm. Tired,” you whisper.

“Only a little while longer.” He gives your leg a small squeeze and his hand returns to the reins. He doesn’t fall back, instead, stays ambling along by your side. It feels like company. Feels nice. Feels…normal.

Two weeks is a long fucking time. Especially when your adrenaline peaks on the regular, sometimes multiple times in one day, and you’re alone with Joel all day and all night. Trusting each other, relying on each other. Saving each other time and time again. It was only natural that you began to rely on each other for…more than just survival.

You can’t remember when you found him. It was in the QZ, back when you believed in stability and structure. When you believed in people. Now, the only thing you believed in was Joel. Broken, hurt, shut-off Joel, who’d grumbled an apology when his shoulder brushed yours in the hallway and changed everything.

You like to think you were something new to him, something different. A challenge, maybe. Something worth holding onto, anyway, for reasons he was yet to let you in on.

He had an apartment of his own, with a bed of his own, which was something you weren’t used to. You shared a cramped apartment with Luce, a single mom with a two-year-old. Joel’s was where you went when the tantrums, the screaming in the middle of the night, the ration cards being destroyed either by ripping, by eating, or else by other means, became too suffocating.

Joel didn’t believe in anything or anyone, either. That’s what kept you coming back.

He’d just open his door and step aside to let you in. Barely a word. He’d ask if you’d eaten, and share his plate with you either way. Wordlessly picking away at the same food, making sure you got the last spoonful of soup, the last strip of jerky.

Most nights he’d fuck you until your mind went blank, nothing but the smell of him, feel of him, sound of him. No talking, no kissing, no touching. Just the sound of the bed springs, Joel’s soft groans as he bottomed out inside you. The feel of his hot skin, hips rubbing against the inside of your thighs. The bare, cracked brick walls of his apartment would fade away with each thrust, and then slowly seep back in when your orgasm began to wash away.

You knew it was time-wasting, for both of you. Scratching an itch. But some nights, it felt like more. The nights when he’d be so caught up in what he was doing, so caught up in you, that he’d forget to pull out. The nights his hips would snap messily and suddenly he was spilling inside of you, a deep groan humming against your skin between his teeth.

He wouldn’t care to ask, and you wouldn’t offer the information for free, but you remember every fucking time he did it. Where it’d happened, the position he had you in, how long it took for him to finally peel his body off of yours.

And afterwards, he’d let you sleep with your head on his chest. Let you play with his fingers. Let you talk to him; let you ask questions.

Didn’t mean he answered all of them. Didn’t even mean he answered much. Some, he’d give away more openly than others, but you soon got used to clocking when he was keeping a secret. Make a mental note of it, remember to chip away at it.

He trusted you, though; you knew that. Knew it by the way his fingers knotted safely in your hair, the way he’d lie naked with you until the sun came up. The way his breathing would slow, the way he’d mumble in his sleep.

You never talked to him about the incoherent words he’d breathe – but you could piece them together well enough to understand him better than his waken self would ever reveal.

When you brought up leaving, one rainy night weeks ago, he thought about it maybe twice over. Asked how he was supposed to keep you safe.

You do that already, you told him.

‘s different outside. You don’t understand.

It can’t be any worse than in here.

You’d taken a step forward, and he’d flinched, but allowed you to take his strong jaw in your hands. You tried to form a sentence, and when your throat closed up, eyes flitting between his, he took your wrists and lowered them. The shadow of a rain-spattered window doused in a sickly amber glow across his face.

You’d wanted to kiss him. And had he left your hands where they were just a few seconds longer, you think you might’ve. Joel saw it in your eyes, and stopped it.

Whatever. It had still convinced him. He packed his bag and you snuck down the fire escape the following night. Joel’s fingers were hooked around your belt loop the entire time, keeping your hip in stride with his all the way until you were at least a hundred feet away from the QZ wall.

His other concern was his age. Why someone like you would want to run away with someone like him. Forty-something, graying, past his peak. He has, like, twenty years on you. Once he made some reference about Bruce Springsteen and, when your face blanked, he sighed and took the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

I know who Bruce Springsteen is, asshole, you’d said, just didn’t get that reference.

He’d shaken his head and given you a sly, twisted smirk, then pushed you out the door of the apartment block you guys were searching.

Still, despite the years between you, you have one major thing in common.

You’re both good at getting each other…there.

Joel knows exactly what to do to make you tick. You know exactly how to push him until he does it. It’s in the way you look at him, the way you touch him. Things you say that make his stony eyes flit once down your body, and then you know you’re in.

It’s a little harder to do while on horseback, you gotta admit. The best you can do is look at him, say a sentence or two laced with want and need. Hope that he reads through the lines.

It’s worked a few times, when Joel’s suddenly found a shed or basement you can camp out in and then made it difficult for you to walk for the next couple days.

Right now, you feel too tired to even bat your eyelashes at him, never mind coming up with lines to turn him on. You’ve been on the highway for a few hours by this point, little sign of shelter anywhere nearby. Joel holds his hand out and you bring your horses to a stop in view of a hospital a couple miles ahead.

“That’s gotta be teemin’ with them,” you say, looking over to study his expression.

“Hm,” Joel agrees, and glances to the right.

“What you thinkin’? Sun’s getting lower.”

He takes a deep breath, pulls on the reins. “Know somewhere nearby.”

He heads off the highway with a click of his teeth, and you follow. You shut your eyes, chin burying beneath the collar of your shirt. You’d kinda hoped that he’d offer to clear even a small part of the hospital for you to rest up, maybe more, but you trust him enough to lead you somewhere safer, somewhere quieter.

That trust begins to wear thin, though, when the sun disappears behind the trees, drowning you guys in a low dusk, and the temperature begins to fall. Joel’s using what’s left of the gray light to guide him, slowing down to take a hold of Jet’s reins and line her up with his own horse.

“I thought you said an hour,” you mumble, grip becoming slack on the leather.

“Changed my mind,” he replies. “Almost there.”

Your eyes start to roll with exhaustion, hips aching from the position you’ve been sat in for hours now. It’s not until you notice the silhouette of a tall sign in the clearing, black against the fading purple sky, that you blink yourself awake.

Joel pulls you and Jet off the road to a deserted parking lot, shadowed by a motel. He slows the horses down, listening for any signs of life, leading them to the side of the building.

“Easy,” he whispers, pulling on the reins. Both animals come to a halt.

He slides off the saddle, hitting the ground with a thud. He takes your hands, pulling you down to him, and you glance around.

“Stay here,” he tells you, and you don’t have the energy to argue back.

He makes off, pulling his gun from his holster. You stand with a hand on each horse’s muzzle, gently petting. Joel’s gone for a decent amount of time, his silhouette slowly sneaking in and out of every room, spending a couple minutes in each before he clears it.

He returns with a box of pills, some gauze, and a bottle of water, which he hands to you. You take a long swig and pass it back, and he does the same.

“What will we do with Jet ‘n…?”

“Huh?” he asks, replacing the cap on the half-empty bottle.

“What’s your horse called?”

“She ain’t got a name.”

You tsk. “Bad owner.”

“We ain’t their owners.”

“Mine’s is Jet. Pick a name.”

Joel sighs and shakes his head, but you know he’s gonna spend all night thinking up some name to go with yours. “We’ll tie ‘em up out here.”

“What if something happens to them?”

“Well,” he says, leading them toward the shelter, “if somethin’ happens to them, it only means it’s about thirty seconds away from happenin’ to us.”

He jerks his head toward the first room as he ties them up, and you know the conversation is over.

You wander into the small, dingy room, pulling your jacket from your shoulders. It smells of damp, the wallpaper’s peeling off the wall above the bed. The sheets are in disarray, a little dusty, but they look clean enough. The bathroom walls are covered in grime. Drawers empty, closet doors missing, entire place ransacked.

It’s as good as you get, these days. At least it has a solid roof.

Joel settles the horses and closes the door gently behind himself. You’re already tugging your boots off, sat at the foot of the bed.

He rests his gun on the nightstand and straightens up, stretching his back with a quiet groan.

“’s cozy,” you offer, and he nods.

“Better ‘n risking that hospital.”

The bedsprings creak when you shimmy up the mattress, resting your back against the hardwood headboard. It ain’t the most comfortable, but then it’s not meant to be, is it? It’s only meant to be safe, which Joel’s made sure of.

He stands at the bottom of the bed, watching you as you bounce up and down a couple times, laughing quietly at the sound of the springs beneath you. His expression clouds over under low brows.

“Y’okay?” you ask, tilting your head.

He nods again. Eyes flitting up and down, from your face to your neck, back up, and then lower still. Your chest. Your stomach. Your legs. You feel your heartbeat quicken when he takes a step forward.

“Just had to find somewhere better.”

“Better?” You smile. “Have you seen the world, Miller?”

He leans his knee against the foot of the bed. His brown eyes darken even more, and his jaw tenses.

“Had to find somewhere better,” he mutters, “so I could fuck you in peace.”

Your breath catches. You stare from his lips back up to his eyes. His fists are balled tight. His chest heaves with steady panting. There’s something flickering in the depths of those warm eyes; an ember, drawing you in. Tantalizing you.

You sit forward, pushing onto all fours, and crawl down the groaning bed to him, rising onto your knees when your hands meet his shirt. Your chest against his stomach, you look up into his eyes.

His rough hands knot in your hair and he pulls down, yanking your head back and your chin up to him. He studies your face, outlined in the moonlight seeping through the window. Then he lowers his jaw and lines his lips against yours.

“That what you want?” he hums against your mouth. You swallow his words – they claw at your throat as they go.

“Uhuh,” you breathe back, trying to connect your lips. He doesn’t allow you; steadily dodges your jaw like you’re a pair of negative magnets, repelling off one another. You moan.

“Needy girl,” Joel whispers. “Two weeks too long for you?”

“Mhm.”

You’re not tired anymore. You’re fucking desperate. You feel your cunt dripping, seeping through your underwear, worsened when Joel’s hand reaches down between your legs and cups you through your jeans.

You gasp and grab his arms to steady yourself.

“Tell me what you want,” he says, hand tensing around your core.

Your lip trembles as you watch the way his mouth moves, how he shapes the words. His teeth locked between soft lips, dappled with brown hair, ends singed gray. The way he almost spits the words.

Your chest meets his torso when you breathe in, a deep, shaky breath. Joel notices; the corners of his mouth twitch, holding back a smile.

“Want you to…want you…”

He doesn’t wait for you to finish your sentence. He pushes you back and falls on top of you, strong body pinning you against the mattress, hand still clamped to your crotch.

His head dips to your neck where he bites, scratches and sucks, mumbling against your hot skin, “Tell me, baby. Use your words.”

Your head begins to swim, body starts pulsing with electricity. Baby. Joel’s pet names are limited to one thing. One activity.

“Want you to f– fuck, Joel – fuck me.” Fuck me fuck me fuck me.

His hand begins wrestling with the button of your jeans. Thick fingers fumbling with your zipper, taking your waistband with both hands and hauling it down. The force of it pulls you down the mattress too, squealing as Joel rips the denim from your legs. You lower your hands to help him, but once they’re tossed to the floor, he bats you away.

He’s shaking his head, tsking, then takes both your wrists in one of his huge hands. Fingers twisted around your delicate skin, pinning them above your head. The bed sighs around you when he pushes your hands into the mattress. Your back arches, your chest rising to meet his.

Your legs part, knees settling either side of his waist. Of course they do. It’s what you know now. It’s basic fucking instinct at this point.

His free hand returns to cup your sex, feeling how wet you are through your now soaked underwear.

“Baby,” he coos, “this all for me?”

You nod a little too eagerly, not that you’re present enough to care. But it beckons a smug smile from Joel, who begins sliding your panties down your thighs.

Your hips lift to let him drag the fabric down, biting your lip, not willing to wait another fucking second for him. Lace meets denim on the torn-up floor, and you sigh, settling back against the rusty bedsprings and mottled sheets.

Joel’s free hand ghosts from your wrist down to your elbow, teetering along the sleeve of your t-shirt over to the collar, where he pulls it so far down into the valley between your breasts that a small noise passes your lips.

“Hm?” he asks, fingers pausing against your breastbone.

“’s my only shirt. Don’t…”

He kisses his teeth. His gaze never lifts from your heaving chest, skin damp with sweat right underneath his fingers. You can see him tossing it over in his head. What he wants to do, versus what he probably shouldn’t.

He blinks. Decision made.

“Give you one of mine,” he growls, and hooks his fingers, dragging the fabric of your shirt lower and lower until the collar tears open and it’s another scrap lost to the motel room floor.

And then there you are, naked and writhing underneath him. He’s still in his dusty flannel. There’s sweat lining his forehead. He holds himself over you, hovering, taking every inch of you in and storing it behind his eyes.

You jerk your hands, trying to break free just to touch him, feel him, but he pulls away again, tutting.

“No, pretty girl,” Joel coos, “gonna take my time with ya.”

You moan in protest, still wriggling under his body. His grip on your wrists doesn’t loosen, not even when his free hand dips to undo his belt. The cold metal kisses your naked thighs when he pulls it through his jeans; the leather drags up your torso and across your face as he lifts it.

He takes your hands individually, careful and yet rough, urgent, and slots them between the slats of the headboard. Your head turns up to watch what he’s doing. The silver of his belt buckle knocks against the wood as he slips it under your wrists, feeding it between your skin and the mattress, wrapping it around the slat between your hands.

Then he slips the belt through the buckle, and pulls. Tight. Your hands come together, wrists kissing, the leather burning your skin the tighter he pulls. You whine, head rolling back to meet his gaze, fixed on yours.

“Since you don’t wanna listen.”

The drip in his voice, sweet like honey, smooth as whiskey, forces your legs open wider. Joel smirks, pushing himself down the mattress and out of your view.

Staring up at the gray ceiling, you’re left just to feel him. Feel him as his palms splay out on your knees, pushing them into the bed. Feel his stubble graze the inside of your thigh as he drags his tongue up, leaving a trail of wet behind.

Feel when he breathes a whisper across your aching cunt, something you can’t hear over the ruffling of sheets around your head as you toss around. And feel when his fingers part your lips, opening you up wide for him to really fucking see.

“Fuck, baby,” he says, and you find the strength to lift your head to watch. He’s leant over you, one arm hooked around your left thigh, holding it open, the other fucking…playing with you. Like you’re some fancy gadget. Like you’re brand new to him.

“So,” he runs two fingers from your clit through your folds, “fuckin’,” lines them up at your entrance, “pretty – for me.”

He pushes up into you, and your head hits the pillow with a stifled groan. You’re panting through your teeth, back arching the deeper he goes, stretching you out and rocking waves of sparkling heat through you. Waves that hit the other end of your stomach and come rippling back, throbbing around his thick fingers.

His arm bears down on your thigh, forcing your legs wide open for him. His hand cups your clit and you buck your hips, rutting against the base of his palm. Joel laughs softly.

“Patience, darlin’. Don’t want it to be over ‘fore it’s even started.”

Your head rocks back and forth, eyes tight shut. It’s all you can fucking do, tied tight to the bed. Joel pumps his fingers in and out of you, adding a third when you’re wet enough, thumb never leaving your clit.

You can feel your orgasm brewing in your stomach. Feel the tension between your hips. You’re chasing it, eyes shut, focusing only on Joel’s hand fucking in and out, in and out. You’re coming close, body pushing into the mattress, legs widening even more to let him slip a fourth finger inside you.

“Feel good?” he asks, almost with a laugh. There’s a smirk painted across his lips, you know it, even though you can’t find the energy to open your eyes.

You whimper in response, some small, muffled sound roughly shaped like yeah.

“Yeah,” Joel agrees, and his wrist flicks harder.

You moan every time his fingertips kiss the edge of your cunt, pushing against the soft walls. You moan when he drags them out, leaving you empty. Again, when he pushes them back in, rough and fast. And then when he lowers his lips to your ear and tells you how good you’re being, how pretty you look, how hard he’s gonna…

It’s like he changes his mind in an instant.

Withdraws his hand, slick-covered and still hooked. Pulls it away as quickly as he pulls your orgasm from your body. It drains from you; reduces back to an ache you can’t reach.

Joel slips his fingers between his lips as he readjusts himself, repositioning on the squealing mattress. Sucks them clean as casually as he would at a cookout or something, then takes your hips in both hands and straightens you up.

His jeans are tugged down barely past his ass. He’s not prepared to waste any time ripping his own clothes off like he did yours. Just leans forward, pulls his solid cock from his boxershorts, and spits into his hand.

You watch through eyes glazed with lust as he strokes himself a couple times, eyes always on your swollen cunt, groaning as his spit coats his shaft. Then he lowers himself to you and does the same, only running his length through your folds.

You whine, feeling that familiar thickness separate you so close to where you need him, and yet so fucking far.

“Joel…” you whisper, but he’s not listening.

Transfixed on the sight of his cock moving against your soaked cunt. Listening to the sweet, wet sounds the pair of you make. His tip catches on your entrance a couple times and you gasp. Just fucking do it already.

“Fuck,” Joel growls under his breath, and then…

It’s been months. Might even be years. But the feeling of him pushing inside you for the first time is still the same. Every. Fucking. Time. He’s bigger, thicker than anyone you’ve ever slept with before. And he knows it, because every single time, he glides into you without hesitation. No time for you to adjust. Just fills you up straight away, lets you deal with it later.

He’s cocky like that. Too careful when you’re on the road, and too careless when you’re between the sheets. Not that you’re fuckin’ complaining.

Your mouth falls open in a choked moan. Your lungs are gasping for air. Joel’s all you can feel.

Your elbows lift into the air, arms desperate to break free just to grab onto him, ground yourself, feel him close against you. Your wrists lock against the hardwood, leather digging into your skin as punishment for trying to break free. You’re stuck; nothing but the overwhelming feeling of him between your legs, filling you up and leaving you empty over and over again.

“Good girl,” he’s panting, still watching where his cock lines up with your cunt, and then disappears inside.

He leans down and his lips find home on your shoulder, sucking sweet marks into the skin like he always does. His tip bumps against your cervix, jolts of sensitivity pushing through you each time he bottoms out causing you to whine into his flannel.

“Fuck, Joel.”

“I know, I know. I got you. I’ll get you there again, baby.”

You had a routine. Follow his movements, follow his orders, stay alive. Deviate slightly from that routine, even for a minute, and you threw the whole agreement into jeopardy. One misstep on a crowded street dotted with cars once had a sniper open firing at you both for nearly two hours until Joel found him and put a bullet between his eyes. That time your curiosity got the better of you and Joel almost lost a hand stopping you from walking down an alleyway and straight into a wire trap.

Repeat it, Joel had said that night. Crouched by his apartment window, rain battering off the glass. Hands on the frame, ready to hoist it up and let you slip out any second. Repeat. It.

Do as you say, you whispered back. And only then did he pull the sash.

This is not the fucking routine. This is not the agreement. You fucked, of course you did. But that’s all it ever was. Hungry, touch-starved, desperate sex. Bored sex. We-almost-died-today sex. Not this.

Not: clear an entire motel just so nothing within a two-mile radius gets to hear you fuck me senseless. Strip me down, tie me up, push me to the edge with your hands, but don’t let me go without you. Curl your lips around my ear while you’re buried inside me and whisper praises. Whisper baby. Whisper…anything you like. Anything you wouldn’t say when the sun’s up.

This feels like it means something. To both of you. Feels like Joel’s looking for something in you, asking something of you. And you want to give it to him, whatever it is.

And maybe that’s the point.

He’s proving that he could make you do fucking anything. Let him tie you to a bedframe, push you close enough to the edge that you can feel the pressure of release beckoning you forward like the wind circling your ankles.

And you’re proving that you’ll do it. You’ll do what he says. Follow him to the edge, refuse to jump. Pull his body into yours, make it feel like home for a night.

He’s proving that he’ll take care of you, and you’re proving that you’ll let him.

Your wrists are burning. Leather digging marks, searing skin, then rubbing over it again and again to cut it deeper. It’s starting to hurt, if you’re honest with yourself. Your face probably gives it away.

Probably, possibly. Definitely.

Joel notices you quieten and lifts his head from the crook of your neck. Studies your face for a fraction of a second and knows.

“Hey,” he says, reaching up. He loosens the belt with one hand whilst still deep inside you, hips thrusting slowly just as a place marker.

When your hands slip free, Joel’s clasp gently around your wrist, fingers delicate over the sensitive, reddened skin. His eyes almost glisten at the sight.

“Baby…” he whispers.

“’s okay,” you reassure him, loosening his grasp on you and settling your shaky hands on his jaw. “I’m okay. Liked it.”

Joel lowers his forehead against yours and picks his pace up again, and you moan into the space between your lips. Your legs lift higher, knees bumping against his shoulders. His hips snap into yours, his jeans rutting against the inside of your thighs, the bed creaking with each messy thrust.

“Close, baby,” his voice vibrates against your lips.

“Yeah,” you whine, chest pushing against his. “Fuck. Right there. Fuck.”

Your arm drapes over his shoulder blades, nails dig into the rough cotton of his shirt. Your left hand is still at his jaw, fingers caressing his cheek. Joined together at your hips and your brows, gaze never really meeting for longer than a second, but still. You’re right there. Joel – he’s right there.

It’s new, it’s intimate. It’s almost…sweet.

“Gonna cum with me?” he asks, sincerely. He’s not trying to coax it out of you. He’s checking that you want to fall over the edge. Not for him, not because of him, but with him.

You nod and he returns it, sweat sticking his dark hair to his forehead.

With his eyes on you, flitting between your parted lips and your batting eyelashes, too scared to settle on either place for too long, he lifts your hips and fucks into you fast. Deep. Fucking – hard. Skin slapping against yours, breath hot and tangling with yours between your lips.

The pressure between your hips begins to build again, rapidly, Joel adding to it with every movement. Every push of his thick cock against your walls only draws them in tighter, closing around him, holding him closer to you with each moan escaping both your lips.

“Darlin’…” he murmurs in a broken voice, and you know. He’s starting to falter. Thrusts weakening.

“’m there too,” you reply, gasping for breath.

“Let me – feel you,” he says, “pretty girl.”

Maybe it’s the fact you don’t normally talk. Maybe the fact he never touches you the way he has tonight. Maybe it’s him wanting you to cum first, before he will.

Or maybe it’s pretty girl, that finally sends you over.

You look so good to him. You’re being so good for him. ‘n he can’t help it, has to let you know. Has to let every thought that passes through his head slip out past his tongue.

Pulling his chest flat against yours, you throw your head back to the pillow with a moan so filthy, so guttural that you’d be surprised if you don’t have company in five minutes.

Joel’s at your heels, face buried between your breasts, groaning into your chest as his cock twitches deep inside you and you feel him fill you up.

Your orgasm’s still knocking you senseless, every nerve in your body electrified. You’re holding Joel tight to your body, his ear flat to your chest, and you know he can hear your heartbeat. Know he’s listening to it throwing punches from behind your ribcage.

He’s still groaning through his breaths, heavy and thick with his release. Cock still deep inside you, still, softening. You lay like that for…well, you’ve no idea how long. But after a bit, Joel pulls himself up off of you and wanders into the bathroom.

You sit up on your elbows, taking deep, steady breaths, and let the stars in your vision dissipate. Joel emerges a couple minutes later and finally tugs his jeans down. He lifts both his shirt and the tee underneath off in one motion, tossing them onto the sideboard, then slips back under the covers, wordlessly hooking a hand around your upper arm and pulling you down onto his chest.

Your legs intertwine with his. There’s cum seeping out of you onto his thigh. Both of you, mixed up as one. His fingers sift through your hair, doing little to untangle it but trying all the same. His breathing in time with yours, his lips pressed safely to the crown of your head.

Before you know it, you’re sleeping.

Dawn breaks early. Too early. You’re still tangled up in Joel, feeling his chest rise and fall. Listening to his heartbeat – slow, calm. The drapes – not that there’s much left of them – are too thin to stop any light from flooding in. It’s only a matter of time before he wakes up.

The rough sheets sting against your wrists – red marks scoring them where Joel’s belt had been. You wince, running light fingers over the grazes, hissing at your fingertips as they go.

It hurts way less than it thrills you. This little reminder of what you did last night. What Joel did. The pain subsides the longer you touch the scars, knitted brows melting into a smile.

You slowly lift your head, propping yourself up on your elbow. Just watching him. The dust in the room frames him in a sea of white glitter, the slow-emerging sun lights across his face and dips where the scar on his nose sits.

His arms are still around your waist, cradling you. Holding you to him. You know he’s stirring when they tighten, and then fall loose. Façade back up. Walls slowly rebuilding.

You dress yourselves in silence. Run out of words to say. There ain’t nothing to say – nothing that wasn’t said last night. Joel sinks into the mattress beside you to tie his laces, and your arms brush against one another a couple times. It’s like fire on ice.

He’s first to leave the room. Just pulls his jeans over his boots and stands, unlocks the door and lets the light flood in. You check once over for anything left behind, and slip out. The air is cool, twilight still slowly washing away. You sling your jacket over Jet’s back and pull yourself up.

Joel’s t-shirt is loose over your shoulders. He gave you a fresh one from his bag. It smells like him, but you don’t let him see when you bury your nose into it to breathe him in. The hem bunches up over the top of your thighs once you’re sat on the horse.

His eyes scan down you once, surveying you in hisshirt. Then he swerves off back toward the road, silhouette cutting between the rays of sun streaming between the pine trees.

“Ghost,” he tosses over his shoulder.

“Huh?” You click to Jet to follow.

“Horse’s name. Ghost.”

“How come?” you ask when you’re side by side with him.

He shrugs, upper lip turning. “When it’s dark, you can’t hardly see her. She’s like a ghost.”

Joel’s hand surfs gently across Ghost’s mane, fingers scratching her shining coat. Your bodies rock in time with the sway of the horses’ walking. The echo of their hooves on the asphalt masks the silence for a few moments.

“Alright,” you eventually accept, turning away to watch the sun lift above the prickly treetops.

And to hide the smile tugging on your lips.

----------

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[temis-de-leon]

Love potion and Dateables - Part 3

Characters: Diavolo, Barbatos, Solomon and Simeon (x reader, separately)

Intro , Part 1 , Part 2

Masterlist

CW: fluff, hurt, insecurities, Barbatos is living in a horror movie for a hot minute, boys are crushing hard and MC is implied to be crushing hard too, pre-established relationship

A/N: I didn't know what to do for Simeon's part and it turned out to be the longest

.

Diavolo

His extensive knowledge on etiquette begged him to knock the door, but his longing asked him otherwise. He didn’t have much time until Lucifer came looking for him and he really, deeply, needed to see you.

RAD’s latest festival had been a massive hit, various stalls displaying regional costumes, homemade food and games, and he had been naïve enough to think he finally had the chance to take you on a real date. A moment with no interruptions for him to show you how he felt and for you to, hopefully, love him back.

Sadly, spirit week passed by and Diavolo barely had any time to see you. All he watched, from your stunning features to your sparkling eyes, had been from afar. And now, days later, he still felt a tingle in his chest whenever he remembered how you looked during the festivities.

So he knocked once, twice, thrice, until his impatience got the best of him and made him open the door.

The room was dark, but your scent still lingered. It felt weird, however. What was it? Your blood and sweat? The products you used on your body and your clothes? Scented candles, perfume, food…? What was it? A mix of everything, it seemed.

The guilt of intruding your private space mildly subdued when he saw the cauldron on the table.

So that’s what it was. Surely homework for Solomon, although he’d had to ask the sorcerer what was the purpose of this particular assignment.

The potion looked like blood covered velvet and it immediately reminded him of his future: a rich fabric drowned in danger. On the other hand, its warmth soon embraced his face, allowing him to imagine your fingers caressing his cheekbones, your lips covering his in a smile with ridiculous care.

Diavolo sighed and walked away from the table, not sure of what to do. He couldn’t stay and risk being caught by you, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night if he went back to the castle without talking to you first.

He checked his uniform, straightening his tie before brushing his hair with his fingers.

If he was lucky, he’d cross paths with you on the hallway.

Barbatos

The House of Lamentation was introduced to a new routine the moment Barbatos saw that rat. Mandatory deep cleaning once a week and very recommended evacuation once a month for disinfecting purposes. Barbatos would refuse to enter the house otherwise, which was the last thing he wanted to do because he hadn’t spent any quality time with you in days.

There had been chit-chat in RAD whenever he saw you, as well as short trivial conversations on the phone. He’d also tried to invite you to his tamest shopping trips and as much tea parties as he was capable of organizing, but damn the brothers for being jealous and making everything so difficult.

Never in his life he would’ve believe he’d feel thankful for a rat’s existence.

However, MC, if you didn’t open your door in the next ten seconds he would open it himself.

Barbatos knocked again, mouth full of saliva and heart jumping out of his chest. He could feel something crawling up his back, whiskers and soft fur exploring his skin under the uniform and tiny claws scratching whatever they could.

Unable to keep waiting in the deserted hallway, wide enough for any rodent to run up to him without being detected, he rushed inside your room and closed the door with a bang. He felt deeply embarrassed, thankful that you weren’t there to see his dishevelled state, but his demeanour changed when he smelt the room.

It was something he was very familiar with: the tea blend he made just for you! Smiling softly at the realization, he created an image in his mind; you trying to do the blend on your own and succeeding. It made his heart soar in pride and apreciation.

His mood quickly changed without him noticing and soon the only thing occupying his mind was you. How thankful you were of his actions, MC, how happy you made him feel by simply existing.

Feeling stronger than ever and giving himself a few more seconds to breathe and regain his rationality, Barbatos opened the door and stepped out of your room.

His fears be damned; he was in dire need of your presence.

Solomon

Your smell vanished soon after your departure and Solomon had to grip the edges of the table to stop himself from grabbing the vial again. He knew what would happen then, as it happened before. He would lose himself in the potion and the memories within, every reason he had to love you and to feel loved by you.

Your humanity, tainted, but still present, the colour of your eyes, the softness of your skin; the lack of horns and wings and tail. How you trusted him against everyone’s advice, like you knew there was more to him that no one else bothered to see.

And he refused to feel threatened by someone like Mammon; Barbatos or Simeon he could understand, but why Mammon? Why did he have to sit and stare whenever the Avatar of Greed reached the limit of his jealousy? And why did that limit lower when Solomon was present?

He frowned in anger and frustration. Ironically, the thing he knew would make him feel better was the one he was viciously trying to avoid. Was he even an option for you, MC? Asmo did tell him from time to time to go for it, but he also inserted himself in those fantasies, so Solomon tended to take his words with a pinch of salt.

Unable to resist the temptation of your comfort, he walked towards the cabinet and grabbed the vial again. How could such a small container radiate so much warmth? For so many years he had it and in just a few months it grew stronger than ever.

Reinvigorated.

That’s how you made him feel. You may call him an old man and he may be an old man, MC, but he wasn’t one to bend the knee and he wouldn’t start doing that now.

Feeling determined, Solomon vaguely waved his hand and watched as his room tidied up itself. Books flying to the shelves on the walls, spell equipment returning to its original place in the table and clothes resting in hangers.

You once called him Mary Poppins and he had yet to understand, but never mind that for now.

He’d give you enough time to make your own potion during the evening and then he’d go to the House of Lamentation. Having your friendship was enough, but King Solomon the Wise never settled.

Simeon

The moment he heard Solomon’s door close, his heart went up his throat, blood rushing through his body in excitement. The table was full of vegetables, meats and fruit native to the Devildom, the result of experimentation as a cure to boredom, and he deeply hoped you could stay for dinner. He needed more testers other than Luke’s sweet tooth and Solomon’s destroyed palate.  

To his disappointment, the only thing you did when you entered the kitchen was wave goodbye.

“Gotta leave, Simeon! Enjoy dinner!”

“Wait! MC!”

You turned around, fighting to force your arm inside the jacket with your schoolbag tightly secured between your legs. You looked at him silently, embarrassed? Probably due to the unnecessary effort when gathering your things.

“Why don’t you stay for dinner? There’s more than enough for all of us”

You smiled back at him, suddenly bashful, before pointing at your bag.

“I have homework to do, blame your roommate”

He laughed and rolled his eyes, trying not to show his dissatisfaction at seeing you leaving once again, but he could try another time. Probably best to ask in advance, though.

“What did he ask you to do?”

His hands went back to the food, cleaning, cutting and slicing with carefulness, but his eyes were set on you. Simeon couldn’t help but feel anything other than delight when he noticed you leaving the bag on the floor and coming closer.

“It’s a love potion, he said it might come in handy in the future”

“Did he now?”

For what, he may wonder. He hoped you never felt the need to use it; your heart was more than enough to enchant anyone you encountered.

“He showed it to me once, too” he confessed, not really thinking through what he was saying “It smelled rather nice; although I suppose that’s its purpose…”

His mouth stayed open, unsure of what to say next, before finally closing with a snap. Simeon’s attention went back to the food once more, failing to see your uncertainty at his words.

“And what did you…?”

He raised his gaze when you stopped talking and your shy demeanour took him by surprise. Did something happen? Did he say something wrong? He was about to ask, worried at your silence, but you beat him to it.

“Forget it, it’s nothing. I’m going home, okay? I need to study”

“Stay safe, MC”

You nodded, then grabbed your bag again and left the kitchen. Barely a minute later he heard the front door open and close one final time.

Whatever happened? Everything seemed to be doing okay, although he did stop looking at you for a short moment. Did the love potion have something to do with it? Solomon better pray that wasn’t the case, otherwise he’d be learning a new method of teaching very soon.

Fortunately for the sorcerer, thinking about the love potion again made him remember what he smelled when he saw it for the first time. A faint scent of old books, like a memory, and a stronger coat of cinnamon, cocoa powder and whipped cream.

He had a great idea.

Maybe a couple of pastries would make you feel better! He’d need to notify Lucifer in advance so someone could hide the desserts from Beel until you were finished.

Or should he deliver them in person? Simeon couldn’t avoid imagining you opening your bedroom door, smile wide in your face upon seeing him and offering him to eat his baking together, like many times before.

He’d make sure to prepare your favourites; he knew them by memory.

.

.

@hello-gloomy  @the-sassiest-toaster  @hero-nii-blog  @yourlocalyin  @elaemae  @eliciria  @darkflowerav  @zarakem  @yuuvis32  @anxious-chick  @commets-space  @deepestartisanhumanoidshark  @ourfinalisation

[inkskinned]

i know some of the poets outside of their books, like cameron awkward-rich; who was my seminar teacher for a semester in grad school. you know him, he wrote about keeping his hand on the walls of his stupid heart. he gave us a journal without lines in it, so the pages were all blank and naked. we had to write down 3 words every day, ruminations on our own lives.

in pink glitter pen, i watched my handwriting cramp and spill from pristine and well-meaning to the slant of someone deeply suffering. the words stopped being lyrical over the course of february. bad, it said. bad and bad and bad. each day carving out a little bit of marrow, the sparrow of my heart acting as roadkill. that winter i was only allowed to eat apples, like a horse. my ocd had decided i could only touch food if it was red. i was sleeping on the floor and a spider bit me.

i wanted him to be my thesis advisor, but it was covid the next year, and we never spoke again, and i'm worried that i embarrassed myself by asking him repeatedly. for my final project in his class, i wrote about my disability. i called myself a rat, fondly.

his most famous poem is titled Meditations in an Emergency. i didn't know it until three weeks after i had graduated from that university.

at one point, he sat me down after class just to discuss some of my work. it was a night class, and we were all a little drowsy. he blinked up at me. i think sometimes the way you see the world is a little bit alarming. i wonder about that, in hindsight. i wonder if all of us who are walking on thumbtacks always recognize when someone else's spine is the undulating form of a siren. i could see it in him and you can see it in me, if you're looking.

yesterday nat said some of this is worrying.

i told cameron i was fine and i told nat i was fine, but i think maybe all of us had learned a long time ago how to be fine the way a poem is fine - because it happens outside of you. it can be honest, the confession, but it cannot be spelled out across your ribs. we make our art so that the sorrow can hang, limbless, trembling on the fetid walls beside us.

you learn to turn the ugliness into some kind of work, because you must smash the entire human experience of your stupid bones and teeth and tongue into something, so that you have anything to show for it. otherwise, what is the fucking point. why were you suffering, if not to polish the runoff and say - the melancholy is the signature of my art. i took the splinters out of my gums and filed them down into a thesis. the thesis has been turned into a book which is getting published.

cameron, to my knowledge, still has not read it.

i hope he has found his way out of the maze. i hope you and i one day write our own lanterns. i hope we are able to find some kind of peace without viscera. without having to fight for it. i hope we are able to stumble without falling. i hope one day the sky is empty of vultures and we can cross the desert of our memories without starving.

in the meantime we get up and leave the circled shadow in the writing.

[sunderwight]

Time travel fic where Vader gets the chance to go back in time, any time, and change his history.

So he goes back to when he was still a slave boy living on Tatooine with his mother.

He avoids the Jedi. Qui-Gon doesn't get the money for the parts they need, so the Queen doesn't reach Coruscant in a timely fashion, and the ousting of the Trade Federation is delayed. Which sucks ass for Naboo. But, on the other hand, the confrontation with Maul happens smack dab in the middle of the desert, so Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan actually overpower him together and neither of them dies.

After the Jedi leave, Anakin uses his future knowledge and expertise in cybernetic implants to remove his and his mother's slave chips. A tragic accident befalls Watto, and a fire in the junk shop destroys most of his records, so no one who inherits the remainder has any knowledge of slaves (or anything else) missing from the inventory.

Shmi knows that something has changed. But Ani's always been a miracle, strange and unknowable in many ways, and yet still her son regardless. She goes along with it, even though she's apprehensive about affording water, shelter, and food as they are.

She needn't have worried.

At every turn, Anakin miraculously seems to uncover things they need, or opportunities for them to explore. Shmi finds decent work in various establishments -- cleaning garages and hangers, and cantinas after closing, mostly. There always seems to be someone willing to hire her on for a while, even if they already seem to have staff. Ani works his magic with scrap parts and whatever better pieces they can afford, when they have enough to spare (which is surprisingly often), and sells contraptions to the Jawas, junk dealers, or other interested parties. If he makes and sells some weapons to some enterprising bounty hunters or mercenaries, Shmi doesn't discern it, and Anakin doesn't volunteer the information.

But mostly, he works in prosthetics.

There's a pretty big demand for such in the Outer Rim, especially Tatooine, where the idea of anyone hopping into a Bacta tank is even less realistic than the idea of public swimming pools. People are losing limbs all the time, and good prosthetics are hard to come by.

Anakin makes good prosthetics. Even with limited parts and visible frustration, by the time he's thirteen, most of the planet knows where you go if you need an "extra hand", so to speak.

It's not long before the Hutts take an interest in monopolizing the resource, and seeing what else this talented young mechanic can build. Even if most Hutts rarely need prosthetics themselves, they like to be in charge of a hot commodity, after all. And it's hardly unheard of for them to lose an arm or two either.

Shmi worries. Anakin doesn't. Somehow, all of the local crime lords start to be met with unfortunate accidents. Their relatives and allies investigate, of course, and no one really believes in coincidences in the Outer Rim. But nothing turns up either. Falling cargo, suicides, misfiring weapons, heart attacks, choking on food, slipping and falling into sarlacc pits, it's all stuff that does happen. It just usually doesn't happen so often, to such a specific group of people, within such a short amount of time.

When Anakin is fifteen, Sidious sends people to fetch him. They approach him with sweet offers and seemingly-generous gifts, at first, as if it's not the most suspicious way they could go about it. His mother too, but it's such a stupid effort that Shmi finds them suspect even without prompting, and senses something off about them. Anakin's mother might not be nearly as Force sensitive as he is, but she is, and she doesn't like Palpatine's people even if she doesn't know who they are.

The next ones just try and abduct him. It's at least less insulting in its directness. They find themselves falling afoul of the many dangers of Tatooine instead. Such a risky place, people disappear out here all the time. Mind the womp rats and the krayt dragons.

Finally, Sidious goes himself.

His ship suffers a terrible malfunction upon its descent towards a planetside dock. A true tragedy. The Chancellor will be missed.

History remembers Anakin Skywalker as a footnote in the development of several innovative prosthetic enhancements, and a semi-obscure abolitionist who also advocated for the rights of clones.

[ivys-garden]

Since people seemed to like it, I thought I'd go more in depth to my idea for Pigeons in Minecraft. Criticism is encouraged and welcome

PIGEONS

Pigeons are a passive mob spawning in all forested biomes as well as deserts and tundras. Pigeons will also rarely Spawn in Woodland Mansions, Pillager Outposts, Witch Huts, Igloos and Villages

Pigeons have 8 distinct looks depending on the biome:

Pigeons can be Tamed by the player using any of the following:

● Carrots

● Golden Carrots

● Potatoes

● Seeds

● Pumpkin Seeds

● Melon Seeds

● Beetroot

● Melon Slices

● Glistering Melon

● Spider Eyes

● Fermented Spider Eye

● Apples

● Golden Apples

● Enchanted Golden Apples

● Sweet Berries

● Glow Berries

● Sugar Cane

● Honey Come

When Tamed, players can make pigeons sit, stand and Perch on their shoulder.

Bird Nests

Bird Nests are naturally occurring in all overworld tree types, they can be harvested by the player with silk touch or crafted like this:

Pigeons and parrots can be sat in Bird Nests and will lay eggs in there when fed (this doesn't require two pigeons or parrots, thisnis indicated by hearts above the birds head) This is the only way to breed pigeons and parrots. Parrot eggs have a yellow tint while pigeon eggs are speckled purple. Eggs hatch after 5 minutes, eggs can be collected via a right click from the player or when the nest is broken with silk touch. Eggs can be placed on the ground in sets of 4. Eggs placed on the ground never hatch. They only hatch when placed back into an egg

Deliveries

Pigeons that lay their eggs in a nest will claim it as there's, pigeons can claim up to two Nests at a time.

Right clicking on a tamed pigeon in a nest with an item in the player's hand opens an interface, similar to the horse, where pigeons can be given an item yo hold. Pigeons can only carry written books and bundles. Assuming the pigeon has claimed two Nests the player can send the pigeon to the other nest on either a one way or return trip.

A pigeon with an item will fly to the other nest, loading chunks as they do so (chucks loaded by a pigeon cannot Spawn mobs or perform tick updates such as crop growth, to prevent lag).

When the pigeon reaches the nest they will place the item into the nest. Items can be removed from the nest via a right click or via a hopper placed below the nest.

Pigeons can go through half block gaps to get to the nest, if they are unable to access the nest after 30 seconds they become frustrated (indicated by particles above their head) and drop the item on the ground.

Assuming that the player chooses for the pigeon to make a return trip, the pigeon will Fly back regardless as to whether or not it could access the nest.

If the player chose one way, the pigeon will stay in the second nest with the deposited item, unless it couldn't access the nest in which case it will automatically teleport back to the player

All players can use Tamed pigeons to send packages, regardless of whether or not they were the one to tame the pigeon.

Achievements and Advancements

Pigeons have one advancement and two achievements:

Special Delivery - Advancement for sending a package with a pigeon

Sky Rat Master - achievement for obtaining all pigeon variants

Spoiled Rotten - achievement for feeding a pigeon one of every golden food item

[altcvnningham]

pinprick {request}

adler x bell!reader x felix

request: for @reirats70, who asked for adler x bell!reader x felix !!

tags: nsfw mention, mdni, bell!reader, gn!reader (but the word 'pretty' is used to describe them), established adlerbell, mk ultra/separation mention, kissing, oral, author has never written felix before and is super nervous, adler is a little too happy for a man who should be in jail wc: 1.5k

a/n: slowly working through requests but this one was too exciting to pass up!! still a little hesitant to post full blown nsfw (when it isn't exclusively adlerbell at least) so i hope the lil spice included is okay :) this is my first time writing felix as well and i hope it satisfies!! thank you for the request <3

“It is quite interesting,” Felix muses to himself, almost as though you weren’t even there, held tight in his grasp and flitting restlessly like a moth in a mason jar. The latex-gloved hand that holds your face turns you back to face the light, where his eyes pierce yours again. “The way it seems to have left a scar in the iris. Pinprick. Almost imperceptible.”

Off to the side where even your periphery can’t quite catch, Adler sucks on a cigarette, leaning back against the cart table sat in the centre of the ops room; his presence lingers inauspiciously, as unavoidable as the smoke that billows in the air, huffed out in a plume of laughter from his unsmiling mouth.

“Yeah, well, with pretty eyes like Bell’s, you notice.”

The comment shouldn’t make your heart stir or your stomach flutter as pathetically as it does, but much like it always has, your body responds to Adler’s words in a way your mind detests to admit; he’s never been one for the most direct compliments, but the fact that this one isn’t even said to you somehow makes it all the more rousing to hear- like a dirty secret caught round an open doorway. As you attempt to turn your head to try and look at him, Felix interjects, a squeeze tighter around your flushed face.

“Very pretty. So, it was necessary to inject the compound straight into the eye?”

Suddenly the topic of conversation comes back into focus, the very reason for you being in your rather compromised position. With Harrow sequestered off in the other wing of the Rook bound to a chair, Adler had suggested to Marshall the use of Separation to help ease the process- or complicate it, you’d mumbled curtly- and had begun all misty-eyed to wax poetic about the night he’d used it on you, strapped to that gurney after Cuba. It’s a sickening topic to be caught in the middle of, left all the more a bitter taste in your mouth since Adler had made an unspoken vow never to bring up MK Ultra again. But in Felix’s piqued curiosity of the compound- be it vanity or a genuine willingness to pass knowledge along, Adler had offered to teach him how to make it, use it, how it worked. You want to scoff at him, as though he knew anything about the technical intricacies of the drug- though it isn’t as if he was about to drag Park back out of the desert just to give a more comprehensive lecture.

And for some reason, here you were, not quite the lab rat you were a decade ago but feeling painstakingly close to it, gaping up at Felix as his gaze runs you over like a man starved. Of what, you can’t possibly imagine. Hasn’t he had his fill of you enough these past weeks? Haven’t they both?

Adler’s voice pulls you back to the present, bookended by the faint chiming in the back of your mind. Ding.

“To get the desired results, yes,” Adler explains, barely regarding you with anything more than impartiality as he steps over next to Felix, studying you with similarly clinical indifference. “But I think this time just a shot to the neck should be enough. Harrow’s tough, but only ‘cause I taught her how to be. Trust me, the Achilles heel is there, she’ll crack easy.”

“Oh? And Bell was…?”

Adler smirks, and when he dips his head to peer at you over his aviators he actually looks at you, regarding you, not like the poked and prodded subject you’ve been for the last ten minutes, seemingly made of glass with the way their focus seemed to land through you entirely. A soft laugh leaves him- a rarity you cherish since he’s softened in his age- and he pinches your cheek, right above where Felix’s thumb secures a firm grip.

“Oh, Bell was a real tough nut to crack. We were there for hours. Stubborn thing, aren’t you?”

All you can really do is stare- you can barely open your mouth to talk, Felix’s hand squashing your face like a doll’s- but you suppose the question is a rhetorical one anyway, leaving Adler to bask in his smug superiority.

Felix chuckles, though his eyes don’t quite meet yours yet the way Adler’s does, instead now roving your face, the features made pink and prickled warm by the overwhelming attention from both men.

It’s a strange thing- you aren’t typically so flustered, certainly not around Adler, used to his bizarre attempts at affection, but Felix in particular had a way of making you feel special in the oddest ways. He’s direct, and that in contrast to Adler’s myriad riddles of non-answers and emotions shadowed over by impenetrable aviators made for… an interesting combination. Adler hadn’t changed much over the decade- a little softer around the edges, both in looks and temperament, but the sharp and jagged corners of your relationship still remains even with the mutable tenderness of passing time, not quite healing wounds so much as smacking a band-aid over the hole he’d nearly put in your head. That being said, you still ran circles around each other the same way you did back in Berlin, ever caught in the endless cat-and-mouse. Still fighting, still kissing, still not quite making up, then doing it all over again.

But Felix was to the point. There was rarely any guessing as to how he felt in your presence. Terse when impatient, rigid when agitated, but sweet and heartfelt, with a certain compassion that surprised you. His affection came easy, unbidden- a little shy at times, but he wore his heart on his sleeve, and admiration on his face clearly enough that Adler had eventually caught on. And where you’d feared that Adler would only increase his vigilance, tighten his grip on your leash, and usher his bird back into their gilded cage, rather, he was unexpectedly content to let Felix indulge his affections for you, to the point that now you felt… shared, almost.

An odd thing indeed.

If you could recall how it started, it was subtle and slow, very nearly unnoticeable. A graze of the knuckles here, a helping hand staying just a moment too long there. Adler sending you on fetch quests for the ex-Stasi, then turning to abscond with him in another room and vanish. Inklings of hushed conversations shared between them across the room, their eyes pointed to you with wry, bitten smiles. It was like having a pretty secret dangled right in front of your nose, but just so very barely out of reach that it was nigh insufferable.

Maddening, until those subtle scrapes turned to shared touches, Adler showing you off like a prize pony to Felix who’d all but watch in awe. You’d always been something akin to Adler’s reluctant pet, even back in the old days. You could never imagine how quickly you’d reassume the role, even after the years had whittled the effectiveness of your trigger phrase to nothing but empty words he’d occasionally use to mock you. As if you’d need it to do as he pleases. As if you’d need an incentive at all when the starry glint in Felix’s eyes is reward enough.

And it’s always been hard to keep up with Adler; with them both, it takes herculean effort to so much as keep your head straight. It’s one thing to have them dote attention upon you as they do now, and another thing entirely to find yourself one night in the kitchen as the whole house slept, held with your back to Adler’s chest in a vice grip, his tongue in your mouth, while Felix’s worked in near reverent devotion between your legs like a man starved. Your whimpers silenced only by the way they’d swap to take turns quicker than you could let go of the breath you’d been holding, keening over and relinquishing your hands to slide into blond tresses once more. With blind pleasure hewing your focus to a pinprick, it’d get harder to distinguish who was who, only able to discern the distinct pinching of latex gloves into the plush of your ass, or the scrape of pitted sandpaper scars along the inside of your thigh. A crazed thing, did it not excite you so much.

You blink back to the present moment when you feel the light, patronising smack of Felix’s hand against your cheek, pale blue latex nipping soft skin. He’s smiling, eyes bright with amusement, and in your daze you must have missed something, because you catch Adler’s smirk off to the side, remnants of a laugh that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Felix muses.

“Enough chatter. Let’s see what we can do to help Adler with this Separation, hm?”

And before you can so much as attempt to blurt a response he squeezes your face again, puckering your mouth, and plants a chaste- if not teasing- kiss upon your lips.

[vestaignis]

Сипуха - хищная птица среднего размера. Ее габариты весьма скромны: длина тела колеблется в диапазоне от 25 см до 50см, а вес – от 200 до 800 гр. Размах крыльев 85-96 см. У некоторых особей может достигать 110 см. Оперение птиц – пушистое и мягкое.Верхняя часть тела имеет рыжеватый окрас , при этом вся поверхность тела усыпана крапинками. Живот, морда и грудь – белые, зачастую с наличием пятен. Лицевой диск в форме сердца с коричневой каемкой и темные, почти черные глаза. Уши сипухи расположены несимметрично. Левое - на уровне лба, правое - на уровне ноздрей. Сипуха – одна из наиболее широко распространенных птиц земного шара. Она встречается на всех континентах, за исключением Антарктиды, и на многих островах. Однако сипуха не переносит холодного северного и засушливого климатов, поэтому она не встречается в северных регионах Канады, Европы и Азии, а также в районах высокогорий и пустынь. Ее можно увидеть на высотах от 0 до 4000 м. над ур. м. Встречается в самых разных местообитаниях. Сипухи выбирают открытые области, где мало деревьев,вдоль водоемов и на болотах, на пустырях и в оврагах.Иногда сипухи селятся рядом с автомобильными дорогами. Хорошо приспособлены к жизни рядом с человеком, часто их можно встретить на фермах, в сараях и колокольнях.

Интересные факты о сипухах:

В ХХ веке люди заселили сипухами районы, в которых они раньше не встречались: Галапагосские острова, Гавайи, Сейшельские острова. Целью заселения было избавить эти районы от крыс. Однако на Сейшелах совы начали охотиться не на крыс, а на сейшельскую пустельгу, что привело к резкому сокращению её популяции.

В Англии сипуха прожила в неволе 25 лет.

При приближении человека сипухи начинают раскачиваться и строить гримасы.

Несмотря на то, что сипухи - ночные птицы, иногда они охотятся и днем. Чаще зимой или в период выкармливания птенцов.

Прозвище «призрачная сова» сипуха получила за свою способность резко возникнуть прямо перед лицом ничего не подозревающего человека, не издав при этом ни малейшего звука.

The barn owl is a medium-sized bird of prey. Its dimensions are very modest: its body length ranges from 25 cm to 50 cm, and its weight ranges from 200 to 800 grams. The wingspan is 85-96 cm. In some individuals, it can reach 110 cm. The plumage of birds is fluffy and soft.The upper part of the body has a reddish color, while the entire surface of the body is dotted with specks. The belly, muzzle and chest are white, often with spots. A heart-shaped facial disk with a brown border and dark, almost black eyes. The barn owl's ears are arranged asymmetrically. The left one is at the level of the forehead, the right one is at the level of the nostrils. The barn owl is one of the most widespread birds of the globe. It is found on all continents except Antarctica, and on many islands. However, the barn owl does not tolerate cold northern and arid climates, so it is not found in the northern regions of Canada, Europe and Asia, as well as in areas of highlands and deserts. It can be seen at altitudes from 0 to 4000 m. above the ur. m. It is found in a wide variety of habitats. Barn owls choose open areas where there are few trees, along reservoirs and in swamps, on wastelands and in ravines.Sometimes barn owls settle near highways. They are well adapted to life next to humans, they can often be found on farms, in barns and bell towers. Interesting facts about barn owls: In the twentieth century, people settled barn owls in areas where they had not previously met: the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii, and the Seychelles. The purpose of the settlement was to rid these areas of rats. However, in the Seychelles, owls began to hunt not rats, but the Seychelles kestrel, which led to a sharp decline in its population.

In England, the barn owl lived in captivity for 25 years.

When a person approaches, barn owls begin to sway and make grimaces.

Despite the fact that barn owls are nocturnal birds, sometimes they hunt during the day. More often in winter or during the feeding of chicks.

The barn owl received the nickname "ghost owl" for its ability to abruptly appear right in the face of an unsuspecting person without making the slightest sound.

Источник:/mir-sov.ru/owls/barn-owl, ://zoopark-vl.ru/ zhivotnye /pticzy/sovy/sipuha/, dibird.com/ru/species/sipuha/,://pikabu.ru/tag/Сипуха,://tulazoo.ru/nashi-zhivotnye/ptitsy/sipukha.html,

[boxofbonesfic]

 

Title: Blood and Sand (2 of 2)

Pairing: Werewolf!Moon Knight x Reader

Wordcount: 8,594

Summary: You are selected to accompany your mentor on a dig, but what you find in the desert instead makes you wish you had never come at all.

Warnings: Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Murder, Kidnapping, Cults, Implied Torture, AU, Smut, Monsterfucking, Lycanthropy, Cannibalism

A/N: honestly, thank you for reading part one because this is just… porn and violence luckily for me, those are some of my favorite things to write, LMAO. we knew this was going to be self indulgent, so i hope it’s your kind of self-indulgent too. to be clear: this part has all the fuckin’; human, monster and otherwise. 😂❤️ spanish translations provided by the amazing @negronispagliato❤️ bottom divider by @firefly-graphics!

💀

“Oh thank fucking Christ.” 

You wake with your head pillowed in Steven’s lap, his eyes dark with concern. You shift, moving to get up—but your skull erupts with pain. Sharp tendrils of it that strike at the nerves behind your watering eyes. Even talking is too much, your jaw aching as you attempt to open your mouth. 

“No, Love, don’t.” He holds you still, large palms cradling your face on either side as you whimper. Steven’s eyes harden with anger. “Prick made you read too much.” The hard edge in his voice is unfamiliar—unsettling, even. You aren’t used to seeing anger on Steven’s face. No, that emotion is much more reserved for Marc or Jake—but he’s nearly trembling with it, his lips pressed into a thin line. 

“I’ll fucking kill him.” The words are so low you barely hear them—hell, you half wonder if you’ve imagined them. For a moment, a shaft of the setting sun sinking beneath the frame of the narrow window, and his chocolate eyes turn a molten, animal yellow. 

“I will eat his fucking heart.”

Steven has the patience of a saint, laying there unmoving until the pain subsides enough for you to crawl out of his lap. Your whole body feels exhausted, wrung out and limp. The water he offers you is tinny, but you’re used to it—every drink of water you’ve had in recent memory tastes like this, it’s almost all you know. 

“What happened?” You croak, fingers struggling to hold onto the chipped mug you both share. Steven looks angry—and then ashamed. 

“You read,” he says slowly. Reluctantly, he brings his sorrowful gaze to yours.

“And we ate.” 

They do not come for him again that night, and you’re grateful for it, burying your face against his chest, clinging to Steven beneath the threadbare blanket—the only one you have. You suppose at least that you are grateful that there are no rats, no spiders or insects. They keep the the corners, skittering away whenever he comes close. 

They can sense it, you think, the thing beneath his skin. You can too. 

—

Marc kisses you hungrily, his fingers tangling in the curls at the nape of your neck as he tugs your head back. With his other arm he pulls you hard against his chest. You go willingly, easily, arching your back against him. He’s not back yet—not fully, not really. 

The other priests can’t read the Word like you can, don’t feel it the way you do—so it takes longer for Marc to come back to himself from the jackal-thing, the moon-drunk thing, and sometimes when they bring him back to you, it’s still worming around inside his head. 

Like tonight. 

Claws prick at your skin, stroking the line of your throat. Marc’s too-sharp teeth pull at the lobe of your ear before he kisses you again, sloppily. 

He tastes like copper.  

“Make me forget.” It’s a demand, not a request, but it’s one you’re happy to oblige. 

“He’s hard behind you, the fat length of him pressing insistently between the cheeks of your ass. One hand slithers beneath the tattered hem of your tank top, trailing the pads of his fingers across your nipples. The other squeezes the curve of your hip. He doesn’t pull your pants down all the way—full nudity is a privilege you cannot afford anymore. Not with the guards doing random checks now, now that they know.

Pricks. 

Mikhail especially seemed to take great pride in discovering you, often standing at the observation window when he had no reason to—the weight of his cold gaze heavy on you every time. 

Marc boxes you in with his body—you suspect both because he enjoys the feel of you pressed against him with nowhere else to go, and because from this angle, they can only see his back. Marc kicks your legs open a little wider, humming as he spreads the thick beads of precum leaking from his tip across his head, and you shudder as he slides against you with a lewd squelch. Your breath catches as he traces your pulse with one sharp claw. 

“Are you afraid of me?” There are two voices in his throat, twining around one another like vines. One is Marc’s, the one you know, the one that growls your name hungry and low—

And the other one, the one that knows you. 

“No.” You aren’t. You should be, should always have been, but for some reason, you never are. There’s so much fear here, running in your veins, oozing out of the fucking walls, you don’t want to feel it with Marc, too. You reach behind yourself to palm his cock with slow, sure passes until he moans into your hair, hips bucking into your hand. You clench around nothing, and Marc chuckles darkly into your hair like he knows it. 

“I can smell it, you know?” He breathes, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear. “How wet you are,” his hand snakes around to your front, sliding down beneath your loose waistband to cup your cunt, fingers slipping eagerly through your folds. He bites down hard enough to bruise, and you whine his name pathetically. 

“Marc—!”

“See?” He circles your entrance with deft fingers, the rough stubble on his face rasping against your cheek. “So ready.” Your eyelids go slack, your head lolling back against Marc’s shoulder as he presses two thick fingers into you, moaning low. “Soft and sweet and ready…” You don’t even think he’s talking to you, now, mumbling to himself—no, to Jake and Steven, probably—about his enjoyment of your body, how good you feel, how much he wants you. Marc scoffs at a comment you didn’t make, confirming your theory. 

“Made for us, huh?” Marc draws a line with the tip of his claw over your nipple, and you feel his lips curve against your throat. “Maybe so.” He grips the back of your head with one hand, the other still buried in your cunt as he kisses you again, hungrily swallowing the whimpering moan you try and fail to contain. He sucks on your tongue, running the sharp points of his canines along it before releasing you.

“Steven says you’re made for us.” He watches your face with pale yellow eyes, enjoying the look of dizzy bliss you know is there. You whine when he thumbs at your clit, your eyes rolling as you clamp down around his fingers. He grins.

“I think he might be onto something.” Everything you know is turned on its head now—everything is real, because how do you know it’s not? Gods and Monsters, the veil is open, forever torn for you now, and you see them all. 

“Maybe so,” you run your tongue across your lips and he follows the movement with rapt attention. “Or maybe you were made for me.” 

He laughs.

Marc scissors his fingers inside you as you go to pieces. Happy, it seems, to shoulder your weight because your trembling legs will not do so on their own. He alternates between sucking at your pulse point, and mumbling heated, possessive promises into the curve of your jaw. You feel each word as he says it, maybe even a little before, his lips moving against your skin. 

“You feel so good, Baby, m’gonna feel you on my cock next,” You’re too gone to be embarrassed by the wet sucking noise your cunt makes when he pulls his fingers out, watching as he lifts them to his mouth, deftly cleaning each one with long strokes of his tongue. It’s almost enough to make you forget where you are, what you’ve done.

What you’ve become.

You aren’t like him, but you aren’t like you anymore, either. You see the words in your minds eye even when Loki’s book isn’t before you, feel the weight of them on your tongue days before you speak them. No, you are changed. 

It’s why you need this as much as Marc does—it’s the only thing you can control. 

“Hands on the wall, Baby.” You brace your palms against the wall as he nudges your thighs wide with his knee, pulling the waistband of your pants down to your thighs. You can’t help but arch back a little as he slides his cock through the soaked and swollen folds of your cunt, moaning your name. The low, guttural appreciative sound he makes as he sinks in is almost as good as the burning stretch of his entry. You arch, pushing back against him until he’s seated all the way inside, his hips pressing tight against the curve of your ass. 

“Fuuuck.” 

You’re blissfully full, stars dancing behind your closed eyes and then—Christ—he starts to move. Marc grips your waist with both hands, holding you good and still. Your fingers scrabble against the concrete wall, teeth sinking into your lip as he drives into you, pulling nearly all the way out before filling you completely again. 

Maybe Steven’s right, you think, as Marc wraps one hand around your throat, pulling you flush against his chest. Maybe I was made for them. It certainly lends credence to his theory, the way your body fits perfectly into the hollow of his like this, his cock filling you so completely that there’s barely even room for breath. The hand on your hip drifts to your belly, pressing down as he slides back in. His lips curve against your ear. 

“Think I can feel me in there?” He asks, before pressing down harder. You writhe against him, your body hot. “Maybe if I press harder…”  Marc holds you like that for a while, pressing down on your belly with one hand as he ruts into you, growling. You’re practically a mess by the time he begins to work at your clit with his thumb, circling it softly.

“M-Marc, fuck,” You grit his name out as you cum again, twitching pathetically in his arms. Marc’s head falls back, his eyes closed as he revels in the feel of it, you clenching around his cock like a vise. He presses in deeper, a and fuck, you hadn’t even known he could. And you feel his teeth—blunt now—press hard into your neck as he spills inside of you, the warmth of it making you shudder. 

He stays like that, his teeth buried in your throat while he pants, fingers flexing on your hips. 

Marc cleans you up, sacrificing a portion of what little water you are allotted to clean the mess he’s left between your thighs, and you return the favor, before laying down heavily on the cot. Marc curls around you, placing his body between you and the door. 

—

“She’s not going.” Jake has placed himself between you and Mikhail, his arms crossed. “She’s not well.” You aren’t. You’ve been… wrong since your reading the night before, your head swimming with symbols, and a man with a bird skull for his head; bleached white like it had been baked in the unforgiving desert sun, tall enough to move the moon across the sky. Your nose is still bleeding sluggishly, too, you taste copper when you lick your lips. No, not a man—a God. 

KHONSU.

Why do you know his name? 

“This is not a debate.” Mikhail sneers. He’d come alone today, unlike every other time he had been sent to fetch you. Loki didn’t take chances when it came to security, you’d learned that by now. So why was he here? Alone?

“Loki wants her.” He jerks his head at you, blue eyes dark over Jake’s shoulder when he meets your gaze. “Move, freak.” Perhaps he doesn’t know the difference between the three, or maybe he just doesn’t care, but a lump forms in your throat when Jake squares his posture, fingers curling into tight fists. 

“What, you going to fight me in chains?” He mocks. “I said move.”

“No.” 

You’re expecting more of Mikhail’s smug condescension—not for him to ball his meaty fingers into a fist and punch Jake. His head snaps to the side, and you watch a satisfied smirk spreads across Mikhail’s face in response. He tries to shoulder past in that moment, using Jake’s surprise as an avenue around him. 

You hear the sick sound of bone crunching as your brain struggles to understand what you’re seeing. Mikhail’s arm is broken, hanging limply at his side, while Jake stands over him, his lip curling. 

“I see how you look at her.” He kicks him, and Mikhail looses a pathetic whine as the breath is driven from his lungs. “Patético.” He squats down, gripping Mikhail’s short, blond hair. 

“Let go—fucking stop!” He shouts, and finally, you hear the guards clamoring at the end of the hall. 

“The fuck is going on down there?!”

“You hear that?”

It doesn’t deter Jake though, as he cocks back and drives his fist into the other man’s face hard. His eyes are dark, jaw set tight. The muscles in his back tense and flex as he draws back again, and the spray of blood that coats his face as Mikhail’s nose breaks this time coats Jake’s face, flecking his skin with thick drops of red. He licks his lips before bringing a sputtering, gagging Mikhail’s  head level with his own. His eyes are red and crossed with burst vessels, nose smashed in and lips burst open.

“Fuck you!” He screams, his voice cracking with pain. “You and your fucking whore—”

“You think I don’t know what you were planning? What you were going to do?” Jake asks, cocking his head like he really wants to know the answer. “March her out of here, take her someplace nice and quiet,” Jake pauses, spitting on the ground beside Mikhail. “Asqueroso de mierda.” Fucking pig.

“Quiero que sepas que eres un muerto viviente. Entiendes? You’re done.” You’re a dead man. I want you to know now, understand? So when it comes later, it isn’t a surprise.  Jake doesn’t let go, not even as the sound of frantic footfall grows closer, only seconds away, now. “So when it comes, it isn’t a fucking surprise.” 

The guards storm into the room, shouting, weapons drawn. There’s so much blood, Mikhail’s bones are sticking up through the ruined meat of his arm, not to mention his face. Loki follows, his face contorting with anger.

It takes Rumlow pressing his pistol to the back of Jake’s head to make him  stop, to make him let go so they can drag Mikhail out of the room as he wails, cursing the both of you. You can tell Loki wants to punish him—punish both of you—but he needs you. You to read the book, to be the conduit he can’t be, and Jake to partake of the sacrifice, to consume the flesh and appease the God whose power they’ve stolen. 

And Mikhail needs medical attention.

Loki settles for roughing  Jake up a little, the guard team taking turns until he’s had enough, waving his hand to call them off. To his credit, Jake looks fairly unfazed, despite the physical evidence otherwise. 

“Perhaps housing the two of you together was a mistake.” He replies, and you scowl at him. 

“Kidnapping people for your fucked up rituals was a mistake.” You reply, and he laughs. 

“How cute.” Loki’s slow smile sends a shiver down your spine. “You still think you’re people.” 

They don’t come that night—too busy with Mikhail, you expect. 

Which is good, because Jake Lockley is nothing if not an opportunist. You wake as he’s fitting your knees over his shoulders, gazing up at you hungrily from between your thighs, his black honey voice rumbling in your ears. 

“Ábrelas pa’ mi.” Open for me. There is utter silence around you, no footsteps, no quiet conversation from the end of the hall. For the first time in weeks—months—you are truly alone. 

So there is no one to hear the rising cacophony of your voice as Jake sets to work between your thighs, his tongue lashing against your clit, and fingers prodding eagerly at your entrance. Your eyes roll, a breathy moan worming out from your throat. You can’t help yourself from rocking your hips against his face, and Jake smirks, his lips curving against your cunt. 

“Te sientes bien, nena?” Feel good, Baby?

“U-uh-huh,” you nod dumbly. Your unfocused eyes stare unseeingly at the dark ceiling, one hand tangled in his messy curls just to have something to hold on to. Jake groans when you pull, his fingers pressing into the softness of your thighs as he holds you still. There’s a hunger, a desperation in his touch that is markedly different from the way Marc, or Steven does. 

Like he knows he may never get another chance. 

You arch up off the cot, and Jake’s palm cracks against your thigh in warning. 

“Still.” He cuts his eyes at you from between your thighs. “No hagas que me repita.” Don’t make me say it again.

He devours you until you’re trembling, toes curling as you cum with a wail. Jake’s fascination with your cunt is obsessive, the way he maps every inch with his tongue, checking the lines with his fingers just in case. He rolls his tongue against your clit, chuckling darkly when you convulse. When he’s finally had his fill, Jake rises from between your legs, wiping your slick from his mouth with the back of his hand. 

For a moment, he just looks at you, studying the lines of your body and committing each one to memory. You feel strangely vulnerable laying there beneath him, not because this is the first time—it isn’t, and at this point you’ve lost count—but because you realize this is the first time any of them has ever seen you fully naked since the first time, not just with your shirt rucked up beneath your chin, or your joggers pulled down around your thighs. 

You reach for Jake, kissing him and tasting yourself on his lips and tongue as he fits his hips between your thighs like a puzzle piece. The full body shudder that erupts is impossible to hide as his cock slides against you. Jake grins down at you. 

“Esto es tuyo, déjamelo darte.” That’s yours, Querida. Let me give it to you.

The thick, rigid length of him takes up every inch of available space inside you at this angle; and Jake glories in it, pressing your thighs apart and back, muttering silent curses as he throws his head back. He pulls out, quickly filling you again with a wet, vulgar noise that would’ve embarrassed you had you the capacity to consider it, but you don’t, not when Jake is looming over you. He isn’t an emotive man, not even a particularly talkative one, but like this… He practically sings.

“Shh. I want to see if I can get in any deeper. I know you’d like that.” Your cunt squeezes down around him as if in response, and Jake chuckles. He slides his hands down your thighs like he’s holding you steady as he presses in. Once he’s in as far as he can get, his hips fitted against yours almost too tightly, there isn’t room in you for breath, let alone thought. And whichever words do make it into your head simply just… come out of your mouth, even if they’re just half formed. 

“Sh-shit, Jake—what’re you—fuck—!” Luckily for you, he’s not really listening anyway, his dark eyes focused on the slick mess between your legs, but you can’t stop the train now that it’s started, whiny, needy pleas falling from your lips without your say-so. Jake cups your chin, dragging his thumb across your parted lips.

“Stick out your tongue, baby—mierda, así mismo-!” fuck, yes, like that-! Jake squeezes your cheeks between his thumb and forefinger before leaning down to suck on your tongue as he slams into you, groaning. Your head is spinning, eyes wide and glassy as your lover places his index and middle fingers on the flat of your tongue.

“Chúpame.” Suck. You obey immediately and without complaint, closing your mouth around his fingers. Jake moans so low it sounds almost like a growl, his fingers digging into the meat of your hip as his eyes roll shut. He thrusts in hard and you gag around his fingers, whimpering. They’re slick with your drool when he pulls away, thick strands of it connecting the tips of his fingers to your puffy, kiss swollen lips. It’s like the sight inspires him, and he takes them again, furiously devouring every gasp and moan you release as he continues to fuck you. 

Every single one of your nerve endings is writhing with pleasure, a veritable ocean of it overwhelming you as you’re swept away beneath it. Jake is everywhere, his hands on your face, your hips, your breasts, your cunt—in your fucking mouth—you don’t know how to process it all. 

You’re cumming before you realize it, choking out a curse as you press your face, your teeth into the side of his neck. His cock spasms inside of you only moments after, sticky warmth oozing out of the place where you’re joined as Jake presses his forehead against yours, eyes closed. After a few seconds, he collapses to the side, sliding out of you only for an instant before he pulls you against his chest. You shiver as he slips back in just as easily. 

The next words he speaks are uttered quietly into your hair. 

“Can we sleep like this, querida?”  His fingers trace patterns on your skin. “Please.” You don’t ask why—you don’t need to. 

“Yeah,” you nod against his chest, and he pulls the blankets up around your shoulders. “Okay, Jake.” He presses a kiss to the space between your shoulder blades, and as your world fades to black, you feel his lips moving against your skin, mouthing the words he won’t say out loud. 

—

“King of crossroads

Travelers and Thieves

Accept this offering, accept his flesh and blood as penance—”

Blood streams from your nose as you read the Word, coating your lips and dripping down your chin. You can taste it in your mouth as you form each   syllable. Your skull feels like it’s about to split open—there’s not enough room inside for infinity, after all. You see yourself spread out like a series of mirrored reflections in every direction, in every lifetime.

You read the book in every century, you worship the God of Moons and mirrors at sacred altars raised high above the chaos below and profane ones, hidden in in the deep, secret places. You are a thousand you’s who have come before, whose blood stains the pages like yours does—

As you read, he eats. 

You barely hear the screams anymore—it’s so hard to hear them, over the noise of a thousand thousand lifetimes—but in your doubled, tripled, infinite vision, sometimes you see it. 

The thing in your lovers’ skin, the jackal-thing, tears the arm from a crying man, but you cannot smell the blood. Your nostrils are still full of incense from somewhere else, but you hear the sickening sound of splintering bone, gore staining the jackal-thing’s wide maw. It turns unfocused, yellow eyes on the guards in the outer circle of the ritual room, snarling. Distantly, you suppose you are aware of the sound of straining metal, stone cracking as he, they, it, strains to reach them, it’s long arms outstretched. 

“Stop.” Loki’s voice is eons away. He shakes you—you don’t feel it. Your eyes don’t even stray from the page. “Stop, I said!”  The commands blur into insignificant background noise, you cannot hear Loki now, because He is here. You can feel him, turning his attention to you as his power flows in through your soul and out through your mouth. And when He slips in to look through your eyes, His disgust makes your own lip curl. 

UNWORTHY.

Loki slaps you then, his palm cracking across your cheek, snatching the book from your hands. The last few syllables die out on your tongue as he snaps it shut. You stand there, dazed and blinking at your empty hands. Slowly, you bring your hand to your face, sweeping the tips of your trembling fingers through the sticky wetness just above your lips, and they come away dark red. 

Below you, the beast strains to reach the soldiers still. You squint at the links connecting the collar at its throat to the anchor set deep into the concrete—are they stretching? As you think it, there’s a metallic snap as it bursts, affording the creature another foot forward. It strains at the two on it’s arms, pulling with all its might. 

You know you don’t have long before he reverts, before the bones begin to crack again, turning skin to ragged meat as his body changes again—

You cannot let that happen. 

Loki doesn’t expect you to lunge for the book, to drive your shoulder into his chest as hard as you can. The air rushes out of his lungs, and he stumbles back, cursing breathlessly.

“What the fuck are you doing—”

You snatch the book from his limp fingers. Book is an exaggeration for the stack of loosely bound, frayed papyrus you hold in your hands, between two carved slabs of soapstone. It practically hums against your skin as you hold it now. You will decide which parts you read.

“You have no idea what you’re doing!” Loki snarls, staggering toward you. “Give me—”You step back just as the second chain breaks, leaving only one. Someone shoots, a bullet passing through the meat of the jackal-thing’s shoulder, but the wound closes up before your eyes, knitting back together till there’s nothing a there but short wiry fur and a few drops of blood. 

“Boss!” One of the guards calls up to Loki from below. “He’s—”

The final chain snaps, and the beast looses a triumphant snarl. “Shoot!” Loki screams. “Fucking shoot it!” You watch, horrified as the rain of bullets tear into its flesh, chunks of stinking, steaming meat littering the floor by its feet. It doesn’t seem to care, luminous yellow eyes fever bright with bloodlust. The ragged holes in its flesh close almost as instantly as they appear, bone and sinew mending back together as the soldiers scream. You watch as it tears one of their arms out of the socket, its wide jaws frothy with blood and spittle as it crunches through the raw, red meat of it. 

“Kill him!” Loki is screaming, the remaining guards flocking to him as the beast, the jackal, tears through the men in the sacrificial circle. “Fucking shoot him!” The carved stone beneath them is slick with blood, the whole room stinks of it, hot copper and fresh meat. Their boots slip against it as they struggle to escape, many of them having fired their entire clips into his unwavering chest. 

The words flow from your mouth like electrical current, bypassing your brain as your tongue forms words you’ve never heard before, words that leave your head buzzing and ringing. There’s pressure behind your eyes, in your skull, a full feeling that leaves blood leaking from both your nostrils. The text becomes one word, a single word, and you know the book has changed to meet its maker’s will, the one who speaks through you now, whose clear moonlight burns at your insides and streams out of your mouth as the words singe your tongue. 

DEVOUR. 

DEVOUR. 

DEVOUR.

You both feel and do not feel Loki press the cool muzzle of his pistol to the back of your head. 

“Stop. Fucking. Reading.” He seethes, pulling back the hammer. 

You wouldn’t even if the choice was still yours, but you don’t tell him that. You can’t, not with your throat full of the most ancient of magics. He pulls the trigger, and you feel the bullet burn against your skin—but it does not penetrate. Instead, it falls to the floor at your feet, rolling until it falls down into the gory mess below. He’s behind you, but you can see him anyway—the moon is a mirror, and all mirrors are your eyes—his face ashen, blinking as he fires again, and again, and the bullets all fall uselessly away like pebbles. 

“We need to go!” Rumlow is covered in blood, his face bearing the marks of the beast’s displeasure. “Fucking now!” He racks another round into his gun as he barrels up the stairs. Behind him, your monster is making short work of the three remaining guards on the lower floor. “If she wants to stay here and burn her-fucking-self to ashes, let her! There’s always another voice, ain’t that what you said?” Loki nods, casting you a dirty look. “Let’s go!”  as it stands there in the pile of steaming gore, it lifts its shaggy head up toward the moon framed in the skylight, and howls.  

“We need the fucking book!” He argues. He steps towards you, like he means to pry your fingers from its smoking pages, but he reels back, screaming. A monstrous hand the size of a butterfly net bursts through Rumlow’s bulletproof vest, and somehow you can hear the wet sound of the merc’s body trying to function around the intrusion—a wet, sucking noise—before he drops to the ground, still. 

The jackal-thing steps over him. The dark fur around its mouth is flecked with bits of meat, and it runs its tongue along its muzzle in obvious anticipation of more. But instead of advancing on your fleeing captors, it turns to you, fixing you with those terrifying eyes. 

COME. 

DEVOUR.

COME.

DEVOUR.

The God steps into you as one might shrug on a too small coat, steadily and aggressively working his way into your body, filling you like a helium balloon. The same presence you’d felt when you first touched the book overwhelms you now, and more burning light pours from your eyes as he peers about the room with indisputable anger. The voice that comes from your mouth is not yours, is not human. 

It is the sound of sand, of tides, of ages and of cold fire. 

“YOU WHO HAVE ABUSED MY POWER.” White fire pours from your lips, dripping down to the floor to pool like liquid. You do not take a step forward, Khonsu does, and the stone cracks beneath your combined weight. “YOU WHO HAVE SLAIN THE INNOCENT. WHO HAVE ENSLAVED THE PRIESTS OF MY HOUSE.” They run then, making for the doors, but neither you, nor Khonsu feel the need to chase them. 

It makes no difference. 

“YOU WILL BURN.” 

You lift your hand, and you feel the jackal’s blood slick fur against your palm as he leaps at your command. The halls are filled with a veritable symphony of pleading and screams as his jaws find them—or you do.

Loki makes it all the way to the vehicles, dragging a broken leg behind him as the two of you follow closely behind. It is more satisfying than you can admit as you wrap your fingers around his throat, his flesh blackening and peeling away as you lift him. 

“My hand was forced,” you say, grinning as the realization dawns . “But you will never force it again.” 

He doesn’t have vocal chords left to scream with as he burns. 

You know it when Loki dies, because you feel all the power go out of you, your body crumpling like a doll. He’s gone, the God, the ancient thing wearing your skin to exact his vengeance. You feel like an empty glove, and you lay there in the sand as the garage burns behind you, smoke curling into the dark night sky. The shape of his presence remains within you, though, and your spirit rushes back in to fill the space. 

Exhilarated, giddy exhaustion fills you, hell, you feel like you might even be high. You’re flying, your blood singing with the echoes of the power of ancients, even as you lay there, your body exhausted. 

The jackal-thing approaches you, yellow eyes bright as it covers your body with its own. You’re barely clothed now, the signed remains of your tank-top and joggers easy enough to strip off. You feel magnetized, like you have to touch and be touched, like the energy thrumming in your veins needs their help to release. And by the impatient, possessive way the jackal-thing looks at you, you gather they feel much the same. 

The beast snuffles at your hair, and then licks at the space above your collarbone, huffing. You whimper when his teeth break skin, arching your back against his chest. There’s a deep rumble that sounds almost like Marc’s laughter before it looses a growl, laving at the blood-sticky skin of your throat. 

His tongue laps at the blood between your breasts, and you hiss, your nipples peaking stiffly. You aren’t afraid, not of him—of them. You don’t know that you’re really afraid of anything anymore, not when you have but to speak for the ancient power to fill you like a water balloon. 

Claws press at your soft skin, goosebumps rising in their wake as you feel his grip tighten around your waist. He wants you on your belly. You know it instinctively, like the knowledge had come from your own head, and not from elsewhere. 

You whine as he pulls away, but you roll over, your hands slipping in the sand. They don’t wait for you to position yourself fully, tugging you back against the creature’s furry hips, it’s sticky, pink cock pressing insistently against your already slick folds. It feels like fireworks are popping off beneath your skin, and you can hardly contain your joy. 

They’re dead. Not just dead but punished, and you are free. 

Free.

Your mouth opens as he slams inside, the throbbing knot at the base of his cock forces you open even further and you let out a breathy wail. You suppose you should be ashamed, afraid, you should be a lot of things—but what does that even mean, now? Now that you are this? What even are shoulds in the face of what you have weathered?

The jackal-thing looses a pleased growl, rutting into you with sharp, hungry thrusts. They soon punch not only the air from your lungs but the thoughts from your head, your eyes rolling as you fall forward onto your forearms. He bears down on you with singleminded insistence, carving space out from within you that you know you’ll feel later. 

“Oh God, oh God, Jake.” You mumble their names amidst streams of nonsense into the crook of your arm as the pleasure condenses into an aching point in your belly. “M-Marc, p-please, I need—S-Steven—” Teeth close around the meat above your collarbone, and you let out a wail that echoes across the dark sand as you cum fitfully. If not for the possessive hands at your hips holding you in place, you’d have fallen flat on your belly onto the sand. Instead, you twitch and whine in his hold as his cock throbs heavily inside your slick, spasming cunt, flooding you with sticky heat. There’s so much of it you can feel it leaking out of the place where you’re joined, dripping down the backs of your thighs. 

When you try to move, the jackal-thing growls at you, and you resolve to stay still, at least for a little while. You can feel it’s tongue move against the wound, laving it slowly, lovingly. He pulls out of you, and there’s a sickening crack as his body begins to revert again. You sit gingerly on the remains of your joggers and close your eyes as you wait for silence. 

You hate this part—you know it hurts. 

Soon, though, there is skin pressed against your back instead of wiry fur, and when you venture a glance over your shoulder, Steven looks back at you, bloody and exhausted. 

“Hello, Love.” 

—

You know you’re grinding blood and viscera into the luxurious white carpet as you enter Loki’s rooms, but the mess only brings you a giddy sort of satisfaction. There is so much blood—so many bodies. You’d stopped counting Loki’s sacrifices, and you find yourself wondering if the bodies number the same—if somehow they cancel one another out. Part of you hopes they do, that the scales will at least be balanced, if not weighted in your favor. But there is another part of you, a new part—but somehow ancient at the same time—whispers dark words of reassurance that you can barely discern from the background noise of your own thoughts. 

They deserved it. Vile murderers, usurpers—

Their deaths were too merciful. 

The suite looks like something out of a magazine, like a five-star hotel come to the goddamn desert. There’s even air-conditioning. He had lived above you in luxury for months—you don’t even know how long, not really—while only floors below the two of you had been kept in terror and squalor. 

It would have been laughable if you hadn’t had to live through it yourself. 

It doesn’t occur to you that you’re destroying things until the first bottle of expensive cologne becomes victim to your cold, unthinking rage as you grab it off of the dressing table and lob it into the mirror. You watch the pieces of glass burst and shatter into uncountable fragments. For a moment, you see your own bloody face reflected back at you before it crumbles. It’s unbelievably satisfying. So much so that you pick up something else—a watch, a fucking rolex—and hurl that too. Golden springs roll away underneath the dresser as the pieces shoot off in all directions

 Steven doesn’t say anything as you grab the heavy looking table-clock too, and beat it into pieces against the table’s surface. 

You stand there, panting in the aftermath of your rage, a trail of destruction leading across the room. Steven pulls you into a tight embrace, and you sob into his chest, openmouthed and wailing. You had watched as the beast had slaughtered everyone—and and it was right to do it. As somehow, it—they?—had kept every promise made. 

Mikhail’s ruined throat, the beast feeding you warm, slick pieces of Loki’s beating heart—

So why aren’t you whole yet? Why do you still feel like a piece of you has been carved out, lost forever? Replaced with something ancient? Unknowable? You cling to Steven, terrified that if you loose grip on him, you’ll loose your tenuous hold on reality. He lets you cry, stroking your head and mumbling soft affirmations into your hair until you’re only sniffling, instead of sobbing brokenly against his skin. When you’re ready to, you pull away, and rub the back of your bloody hand across your face. 

He tucks a finger under your chin, those big, dark eyes of his swirling with emotions you cannot hope to name.

“Let’s get cleaned up, shall we?” He asks with a weak smile. “Can’t go back to civilization looking like we killed people.” 

“We did,” you say, looking down at the dried blood staining your palms. There is a soft voice that curls up like smoke from the darkness at the edges of your thoughts, sounding so much like your own that you aren’t entirely sure it isn’t you thinking it—They deserved it. They deserved justice.

Steven’s smile falters. “They would have killed us, Love.” 

“I—I know. I know. They deserved it.” Your fingers curl into righteous fists. You remember the hail of bullets at the dig-site, every screaming, pleading person Loki forced down the beast’s throat, and those thoughts curdle the self doubt sitting in your belly. The God’s booming voice echoes in your memories. 

UNWORTHY. USURPERS. KILL THEM ALL.

“They deserved it.” 

You explore Loki’s bedroom, the press of a button unlocking an equally luxurious bathroom. You’re stripping before you realize it, the ragged, dirty clothes you’d been wearing discarded on the tile floor. The water is hot as soon as you turn it on, and when you step gratefully under the spray, you nearly begin to cry again. You haven’t bathed properly in months—you don’t even know how long you’ve been here. Steven steps in behind you, and the two of you stand beneath the rainfall shower head, watching red swirl down the drain. 

Steven takes such care with you, you almost worry he thinks you’ll break, shampooing your hair, detangling the thick curls with his fingers. You relax against him, the muscular planes of his chest pressed against your back. He rinses the suds from your hair and skin, cupping water over your head. You let him.

 As the ash and blood wash from your skin, you discover new scars, ones you could not even hope to notice in the dim light of your cell. It’s like you’re rediscovering yourself, relearning what you look like, who you even are. You feel like a different person now, than the one who’d been brought here, her head bagged, wrists zip-tied—

No, you are someone else now, someone else entirely. 

Steven cups water over the bite mark on your shoulder, and you hiss at the sting of it. He doesn’t stop though, pressing an apologetic kiss to the skin between your shoulder blades as he cleans your wound. 

“Made a right mess of you, he did,” Steven replies. “Eager bastard.” 

“Well, it’s not like he can kiss me,” you say, and Steven laughs. 

“I-I think I can fix that,” he says, his voice thick with sweet, eager confidence. You fear for an instant that some spark of the earlier fire still remains inside of you, but as Steven caresses the curve of your jaw lovingly, you do not feel the all consuming fire—you just feel him. 

He presses kiss after kiss to your lips until they’re parted and swollen from his attentions, his firm hand on your chin holding your head steady as he works. Steven only stops when you’re dizzy and panting, fingers scrabbling against his slick skin as you try to hold onto him. He pulls you down onto his lap on the shower bench, groaning as his cock presses against your cunt. 

“F-fuck, Steven,” the words are gasped against his throat as your fingers dig into the meat of his shoulders. “God-!” He holds your hips steady, the two of you rocking against each other. How does this feel more intimate than when he’s actually inside you, his cock sliding through your slick folds with audible noise, his other hand tangled in the curls at the nape of your neck with his face pressed to the side of your throat. You’re eager for more contact—desperate for it, even, but he keeps the pace frustratingly slow and steady.  

“Used to dream about when we’d get t’do this—patience, Love—with no one bloody watching.” Steven rocks his hips into yours, and you pressing sloppy, needy kisses of your own against the skin of his neck and shoulders, and you feel his hips buck against you as he chuckles. 

“Fuck, you little minx.” He grips your wrists behind your back with one large hand, forcing you to arch against him. He groans before leaning down to tug one of your nipples between his teeth. ”Fine pair we make.”

“Oh yeah?” You ask, fighting to keep the words even as he wraps his lips around the other nipple, and your toes curl. “And what pair is that?” Steven releases you with a pop, and then releases you so he can squeeze your breasts together, admiring your swollen, puffy nipples. 

“The voice and the vengeance, of course,” he says, pressing another kiss to the skin between your breasts. You moan and shiver as the leaking head of his cock pushes hard against your entrance, your clit rubbing deliciously against the base. He teases the both of you, pressing until his head’s almost inside, and then pulling away again until you’re panting, hips straining uselessly against his firm hold. 

“Steven please,” you whine his name pathetically. “I-I want to cum—!” Steven nods at you, his face the perfect picture of understanding. 

“I know, Sweetheart. I know you do. A-and you’re gonna, I promise. As soon as I think you’re ready, m’gonna let you cum. Can’t force things—he was rather…” He pauses, like he’s searching for the right word. “Rough with you earlier.” You know you should appreciate Steven’s consideration, his mindfulness of the fact that you’d already them lay claim to your body—your shoulder still bears the stinging bite mark the jackal had left on you. Instead, you let out a frustrated whine at his words, attempting to force yourself down onto his cock. Steven clucks his tongue at you, before pausing, and then he chuckles. 

“Marc says we should make you wait extra long for that.” He lifts your hips easily despite your efforts, moving you back and forth across his tip. He lowers you just enough that the head of his cock pops inside, and you mewl, clenching down around him. “But since you feel so fucking good inside, I’m not gonna do that.” 

Steven’s head lolls back against the tile and he thrusts shallowly, teeth sinking into his lip before he pulls you off again. This time, he guides you to the bench before sinking to his knees on the floor of the shower. Steven spreads your legs wide, tugging you to the edge before kissing you. 

“Let me make you feel good,” Steven mumbles against your mouth. “Wanna make you feel good, Love.” He trails wet, sloppy kisses down the side of your jaw and between your breasts, mumbling praises against your wet skin. “So fuckin’ beautiful,” Steven sighs, pressing another to the skin above your cunt. “So perfect.” You whine as he peels your thighs apart, tossing your legs over his shoulders. 

“You don’t have to be quiet anymore, Love,” he says, glorying in the shrill whine you loose as he drags his finger through your folds. “So let’t hear it.” Where Jake and Marc are hungry, eager, Steven is diligent. Methodical. He sucks on your clit, working his tongue against it with slow, deep strokes that leave you gasping, your thighs clenching around his curly head. 

“God, fuck, Steven,” sentences are a chore to form, so single words have to suffice as you tangle your fingers in his hair just as his own circle your entrance deliciously. Your hips undulate against his face, your eyes closed. The orgasm takes you by surprise, your thighs trembling as pleas, praise and curses all fall  from your lips in equal measure, and you aren’t sure which ones you mean. 

“Fuck, yes Steven, feels so good, fuck-fuck-fuck, please—” You’re a simpering, weak-limbed mess when he finally releases you, your legs like jelly. It takes little maneuvering to get you back into his lap again, and this time, Steven wastes no time. He positions you above his cock before dropping you down, letting gravity help him fill you. It punches the air from your lungs in a sharp exhale. 

You can barely focus on breathing though, not when he feels like this inside of you. The fullness is delicious, leaving you gasping when he repeats the motion, lifting you until his head’s almost out, and then dropping you back down again, but still desperate for more. More that Steven wants to give you, more that you don’t know you can take, but that you’re more than willing to try. Your cup runneth-the-fuck-over with pleasure, throbbing on every nerve ending, choking out every other thought. 

“Oh, Love,” he groans, rolling his hips into yours. “There it is.” Steven’s hips buck against yours; short, teasing thrusts that stimulate, but don’t fulfill. Finally, he sheathes himself in you to the hilt, his hips bucking softly against you like he’s looking for more space inside where there is none. The mark from where they’d bitten you as the jackal is still there, humming with power. Steven laves his tongue against it, moaning, savoring the coppery taste of your blood on his tongue. 

“God,” Steven gasps against your skin, holding you close and tight, curving his hips up into yours with increasingly desperate thrusts. “F-fuck, you’ve no idea—” You’re not sure if he’s sputtering out a response to Marc or Jake, but you don’t really have the spare capacity to consider it. Not when Steven is whispering feverish praise and promises into the curve of your throat, and then making good on them with every thrust. 

“Feels s-so good , fuck, want you to cum on my cock—!” He’s almost as bad as you, mumbling possessive nonsense as he slots his teeth into the marks the beast left behind. Briefly it occurs to you that he shouldn’t be able to, but then Steven grinds his thumb against your clit and the electricity of it makes you think pointedly of other things. Like the way his body feels against yours, and you’re close, so fucking close—Your knees tighten around his hips, digging into his sides but he doesn’t seem to notice, or care. 

With a whine and a shudder, you go boneless in Steven’s arms, your eyes rolling as the fireworks become bombs, become supernovas, and your cunt clamps down around his throbbing cock like a slick, wet fist. Steven kisses you, and you taste your own blood on his lips as he slams you back down, holding your hips still and in place as he cums too. 

“Mmm, yeah, mmmfuck,” his head is leaned back against the tile, curls plastered against his skull from the water. Steven stares unseeingly at the shower head above you, holding you tucked against his chest as he fills you. You rest your head against his chest, your own heaving. 

Steven finally releases his death grip on your hips in favor of drawing shapes against the skin of your back. You’re not eager to move and neither is he, keeping you caged comfortably against his chest. There are scars here too, old ones, healed over and almost gone, new ones, fresh, pink wounds you know will leave still more. 

You catalogue them, listing each one as your fingers travel across his skin. Chest. Stomach. Forearm. You don’t even realize you’re doing it, not really, not until you feel Steven’s lips curve against your hair. 

“What’re you doing, Love?” 

What am I doing?

You remain silent and thoughtful as Steven helps you off of him, murmuring assent when he asks if he can clean you off. It’s not until you’re getting out of the shower, watching him toweling off, counting the scars on his back—that you realize. 

“I’m cataloguing.” You say, laying a hand on his back. Steven jumps. 

“What?” 

“I’m counting them. Your scars.” You lick your lips. You know you can’t take them away, you can’t erase them—but you can avenge them. Loki’s network is vast—your lips curl into a small smile. Was vast. Now it is rudderless, a snake without a head. You will dispose of the rest of it. The dark fury in your head feels righteous, and when your eyes meet Steven’s, they are bright with the same. 

“I want to pay them back.” 

fin

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[ Next ] [ All In One ] part 1, MDNI

The vibrant colours of the setting sun blend effortlessly with the cool, dusky sky, bringing a sense of tranquillity. With every step you take down the deserted street, your eyes dart around. Your gaze keeps scanning your surroundings. The faint smell of old rain on the ground fills your nostrils. It's a sharp contrast to the day's disappearing warmth. You tread carefully, being cautious not to let the hard soles of your boots echo against the cold concrete. Despite the ache in your legs and the dull throb in your sore feet, you maintain a brisk pace. Your heart pounds in rhythm with your hurried footsteps.

In your right hand, which is glued to your side, you hold a hefty knife. The handle feels cold and digs into your skin. Your sweaty palm makes maintaining a steady grip a constant struggle. This forces you to adjust your hold occasionally to prevent the sharp blade from slipping through your fingers. As your gaze scans a row of abandoned houses, your eyes glide along the overgrown front lawns. The sight triggers an unsettling realisation — you have never been in this neighbourhood before.

A cold shudder trails down your spine. You swallow hard, trying to loosen the knot of fear tightening in your stomach. The thrill of discovering unknown places is usually a welcome feeling. It means you may find something useful. Whether it's a warm jacket, a gun with a few bullets in its chamber, or an abandoned stash of food. But when the sun sets and darkness takes over, unfamiliar territory is the last place you wish to be. Right now, you have no choice. You are miles away from your home. No matter how hard you are determined to push yourself, you won't be able to reach it tonight. You need to find another place to spend the night in. Roaming the dark streets at night is not an option — it's a risk you are reluctant to take.

The houses in this neighbourhood are all abandoned. But the dead could still be lurking within these dilapidated homes. As you continue walking down the street, you find yourself peering through the dusty broken windows. Eventually, your gaze falls on a particular house. Its windows are boarded up, though the front door stands ajar. You hesitate for a moment, your senses on high alert, listening for any signs of movement. Though you'd prefer to wait a few more minutes, the night is growing darker, and you can't keep standing on the porch. A biter could sneak up on you, and you don't wish to be its dinner tonight.

Deciding this place will have to do, you hold the knife in front of you and push the door. As it creaks, the sound reverberates through the air, causing you to grimace. You step inside the dark hallway, feeling the tension mounting. When no one jumps out at you from the shadows, you retrieve a flashlight from your backpack and turn it on. You explore the first floor, checking the living room and kitchen. A quick peek into the bathroom downstairs and an empty broom closet reassures you of your solitude. Apart from the sea of dust, broken furniture and an expired can of tomato soup, you find no signs of life. The shadows, once threatening, now offer solace in their silence.

Before climbing upstairs, you secure the front door and all the windows. You double and triple-check each one, making sure that no one else will get in or see you creeping around the house.

When you come to a halt at the top of the stairs, a sense of unease washes over you. The hair on the back of your neck stands up. For a moment, you are convinced you hear something, akin to a whisper or a hushed footfall. Your heart races and your muscles tense, preparing for a biter that might be looming behind one of the closed doors. But it's a false alarm. A tiny rat scurries along the floor. You jump when the tiny creature brushes past your boots with its coarse fur.

As you step into the bedroom, the first thing you notice is the bed. It's been stripped of its mattress. The headboard is in a pitiful state, splintered and broken, a mere shadow of its former self. The rest of the room is sparse, furnished only with a chair and a dusty dresser, which you shove in front of the door. It serves as an extra layer of protection in case someone or something sneaks up on you in the dead of night.

Before settling down in the relative safety of a dim corner, you can't help but glance out of the window. Your eyes scan the backyard. You assure yourself that no biters are creeping around. Only then do you allow yourself a moment of relief. With a shaky hand, you pull the curtains closed, sealing yourself from the outside.

The world you are living in now has drastically changed, and you despise it. At first, you believed you might survive. The dead, or 'biters' as you've come to refer to them, were a constant source of terror. Their incessant low growling, the lifeless, pale gaze of their eyes, and their insatiable hunger terrified you. Yet, you weren't alone. You had a family: a mother, a father, and a brother. They made each day in this apocalypse easier to bear.

However, one time, your father was attacked. A biter cornered your mother, causing her to stumble, fall and freeze in terror. Without hesitation, your father shielded her from the dead man. Unarmed, without a gun or knife, he did his best to make the biter retreat. That day, he saved your mother but was bitten. Over the course of two nights, your father grew weaker and weaker. One fateful morning, you found him dead in the backyard. A knife embedded in his heart — the same one you now always carry with you — he killed himself since he knew what awaited him. He refused to become a dead walking man.

And yet, he turned into a biter. You were kneeling beside him when his eyes peeled open. Your father lunged towards you. His mouth opened and closed repeatedly as he tried to sink his teeth into your arm. Your mother was crying, begging you to leave your father alone. To keep her from intervening as you pulled the knife from your father's chest, your brother had to coddle her in his arms. You weren't conscious of your actions. But you knew you didn't want to die, nor did you want to see your brother or mother getting killed. So, with a shaky hand, you plunged the knife into your father's skull, causing his body to collapse on the ground.

That day, your father died twice. The last time he died, he taught you an important lesson — always aim for a biter's head.

You and your brother buried him together. Your mother, overwhelmed by grief and despair, stayed inside the house and locked herself in the bedroom. From then on, your world was forever altered. The constant sorrow that washed over you was like a tidal wave. A relentless pain that welled up in your heart and threatened to make you break down in tears at any given moment. But you swallowed all your emotions, including the terror that gripped you daily. You had to be strong, not just for yourself, but for your mother and your brother.

In a cruel twist of fate, you were separated from them during a terrifying encounter with a horde of biters. The days passed one by one. Slowly. No matter how long and hard you looked, you couldn't find them as if they had vanished into thin air. There was a possibility that they were dead and that the next time you will see them, they would be among the biters. Yet you refuse to even let such thoughts settle in your mind. You cling to the hope that when you find them, they will be alive and well.

In the early hours of the morning, noises emanating from downstairs wake you up. At first, you're disoriented, struggling to comprehend that you were indeed sleeping. But as the loud clamour persists and even increases in volume, any chance of falling back to sleep is eliminated.

Blinking, you try to adjust your eyes to the harsh brightness of the morning light. It filters through the dirty curtains. Your skin is freezing, and the cold is seeping into your bones. The fear that grips you. You don't dare to move and remain glued to the floor, sitting in the corner of the room. You listen to the commotion downstairs, your heart pounding in your chest. To combat the creeping chill, you move your fingers. This repetitive motion makes your blood flow through your veins again, providing a much-needed source of warmth to your otherwise icy body.

You know you must get out of this house before whoever is downstairs decides to explore the second floor and discovers you. Fear runs through your body like ice-cold water. You aren't a fighter; you have never been. Even outside, when you encounter a biter, it's a struggle for you. The prospect of having to fight the dead within the confined space of this home is terrifying. There is less room to manoeuvre. Escape could be more difficult, and a fight could end before it begins if a biter sneaks up on you. Your only other option is to risk jumping out of the window. But you've never been fond of heights. Not to mention the very real possibility you might injure yourself.

You pack your backpack. Casting a sweeping glance around the bedroom, you ensure nothing of value is left behind. Gathering your courage, you push aside the dresser that's been barricading the door. Your senses heighten as you leave the room and approach the staircase. You tiptoe down, gripping the railing. The sound of footsteps in the living room intensifies your alertness. You draw your knife, ready to stab any biter that comes into your peripheral view. Right now, there's no room for caution. Your survival instinct is in high gear because you're determined not to get bitten.

After rounding the corner, you press your body against the wall and peek inside the living room. Your eyes immediately land on a towering figure. His back is turned towards you, so he's unaware of your presence. You have never seen such a big-biter before, let alone fought one. However, he is blocking your only way out. If you want to exit the house, you need to reach the front door. You can't climb out through the windows because they are all bolted shut. And if you want to step a foot in the hallway, first you need to cross the living room. But it's impossible while the biter is still in there, and your only choice is to deal with him.

In your mind, you toy with the idea of tossing something across the floor. The noise might divert his attention long enough for you to sneak past. But this might not work. Your gut tells you that your only viable option, although terrifying, is to approach the biter from behind and plunge your knife into his skull before he can turn around and grab you.

At first, everything goes according to your plan. You are quiet and avoid drawing unwanted attention towards yourself. Yet, as you are about to strike, the biter spins around and lunges at you with an unexpected ferocity. Your knife slips out of your hand. It clatters onto the floor. You are knocked off balance, your feet betraying you on the deceptive carpet. The fall is harsh. Your back collides with the unforgiving ground. A loud groan of pain escapes your lips as you feel the shock of the impact.

You roll to the side, keeping your eyes, wide and filled with fear, fixated on the biter. You notice his face is concealed — he is wearing a skull mask. This means he can't bite you. The realisation strikes you like a bolt of lightning. It reignites the dwindling flame of hope inside of you and causes a surge of strength to flood your body.

The biter is relentless, showing an uncanny level of determination for a dead man. He charges at you, his hand extending as he tries to grab your hair. Despite still being on the floor, you push your body backwards, just barely evading his grasp. The carpet burns your exposed skin as you slide towards its edge. Your legs kick and slip on the dirty, coarse material.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," you start swearing. Your eyes race across the floor, desperately searching for something, anything, to use as a weapon. Your heart pounds in your chest as you realise you don't know where your knife has landed.

As the string of curse words tumbles from your lips, the dead man, who had seemed unstoppable until now, suddenly comes to a complete halt. You, too, freeze. Your mind races as you try to figure out what made him take a step back from you. There is a brief moment of silence, but then you come back to your senses. This is your chance to flee. With a burst of adrenaline, you push past your fear and leap to your feet.

"Duck!" The man roars, his voice booming in the quiet. The sudden command almost throws you off balance and you stumble again. Nonetheless, without you realising it, your body reacts to the order, and you do as told.

He moves closer, his heavy footsteps making your heart pound even louder in your ears. You stop breathing, convinced that you've walked straight into his trap. But, to your surprise, he doesn't attack you. Instead, he lunges forward and stabs a biter that had crept up behind you.

Ever since you were left alone, you haven't seen a single other person. But now, you find yourself standing in front of another human being. It's a strange sensation. It's as if you've forgotten how to interact, how to react, and even how to contribute to a simple conversation. You're wary and apprehensive. You don't know who this man is, where he comes from, or what his intentions might be. Yet you can't bring yourself to leave. You want to at least say thank you before fleeing.

After all, he saved you. Even if he initially tried to cut you with your knife.

[whoishotteranimepolls]

Fandom observation nicknames and funny tags: Part One Piece

Okay, one piece fandom it's your turn and I'm going to highlight your creativity. Again this is not meant to shame or call anyone out. I am genuinely impressed with the creativity and you guys made me laugh. So again in my opinion these were too good just to be lost in the tags or in the anonymous messages, several you sent me. So expand post at your own risk. This one is unhinged

*updated as of May 4th with more tags and new characters

I have mentioned this before, but for some reason that is beyond me. One Piece fandom you guys refer to your characters as daddy and mommy (And it's in a kinky way) way more than any fandom. I think I should just start with the list of characters that have been labeled as such before I go into the creative names for individual characters. Because trust me who makes the list and who doesn't is actually funny.

One piece Daddy's: Shanks, Mihawk, Buggy, Sir Crocodile, Benn Beckman, Killer, Sanji, Rayleigh, Roger, Doflamingo, Rosinante/Corazon, Katakuri, Ivankov, Arlong, Yamato, Marco, Izou, Smoker, Garp, Sengoku, Zeff, Kuzan/Aokiji, Kizaru, Fujitora, Akainu, Blackbeard

When it comes to the One piece Mommy's: Nico Robin, Boa Hancock, Charlotte Smoothie, Charlotte Galette, Charlotte Amande, Vice admiral doll, Catarina Devon, Ivankov & Crocodile

Now due to popular demand the new category the One Piece Babygirls: Ace, Buggy, Sanji, Luffy, Sabo, Zoro, Ussop, Marco, Crocodile, Doflamingo, Kid, Law, Bepo, Killer, Mihawk, Shanks, Perona, Yamato, Kuzan/Aokiji, Kizaru, Fujitora, Rosinante/Corazon, Katakuri, Smoker, Robin, Nami, Vivi, Jinbe, Hatchan, Roger, Zeff

Now when it comes to individual characters there have been some interesting standouts but I'm just going to do some highlights because you guys have so many characters

Ace: "Depressed sunshine orphan boy with daddy issues", "ace has that grungy line cook riz you know he lays legendary pipe", " he got goofy older brother swag", "Beautiful butch dyke wife", "Ace my greasy fire narcoleptic king", "The narcoleptic babygirl", the greasy crusty desert rat. "He would be worth the burn risk", "my favorite fire donut", "something about greasy alabasta ace hits so different", "with his riz he's probably a walking STD risk but it would be worth it. Just look at him probably also probably got a couple bastard kids running around the grand line", it's ok he's still greasy in my heart worlds most feral baby boy he looks like he eats dirt I could fix him (force him to bathe regularly)

Arlong: "Y'all are too afraid to recognize the truth too afraid of his drip, his swagger, his saw nose, to admit that he's hot also live action arlong?!?!the only sexy fishmen," "arlong looks like a toxic florida frat bro," "I legitimately think there's something wrong with me sometimes due to how bad I want arlong the rancid personality enhances the appeal", "yall are p****" arlong is sexy put some respect on his name look at those lips the laugh the hair!"

Akainu: "The world's next top authoritarian," magma Daddy, "He makes donuts and I still love him"

Bartolomeo: "the man hasn't showered in probably a week he's obsessed with the strawhats he'll pee anywhere and he's an absolute dweeb he's like a stray mutt that followed me home look at his fit it's AWFUL AND FABULOUS he's gross and dumb and if something bad happens to this silly barrier- creating puppy i'll LOSE IT"

Belo Betty: "True story: Belo Betty made me, an Aroace woman have a sexuality crisis."

Ben Beckman: Dilf, "retirement blorbo", "Benn Beckman is a religious experience", "to me? beckman is the character with the most sex appeal ever. raw sex appeal. I would [redacted] if I met this man. just sayin", "He can ruin my life any day of the week", "Also lest we forget pre TS Beck a++ quality right there I just want someone smart who will also hit a guy with a gun is that so much to ask for", "This p**** wants what she wants and its always going to be Benn “back breaker" Beckman", husband material, "men are like wine in order to get a good vintage you want the one that's aged", he had that sexy blind and reckless loyalty about him", "Beckman is a fine aged vintage of wine as men should be", "DEAR GOD the things I WOULD DO to that man LIKE [redacted] and [redacted] because [redacted] and [redacted]", "idk how to explain it but he's so wife", "benn beckman? more like benn breastman ok sorry yeah anyways. said it before and ill say it again beckman exudes raw sex appeal like jesus christ. why would you not want to fuck this man ive had lesbian friends who said he would be an exception to them which is so real his tits are big he loves his captain he STUBBED HIS CIGARETTE IN A MAN'S EYE UNDER THE GUISE OF DEFENDING HIS CAPTAIN so fucking sexy mwah mwah beckman my wife you are so hot SO HOT. in conclusion benn breastman you will forever be a top sexyguy in my head oh also forgot to add. he canonically gets bitches which is so real. he could get me any day", "Oh dear I just realised I have a thing for older men with grey hair and have substance abuse issues I choose to believe lung cancer does not exist in opu", "

Buggy: Assigned clown at birth, walking disaster, "my pathetic sniveling wet clown", my Beloved, "he has blue hair and pronouns", Failboy, "the skrunkly clown", "my clown wife", "he has that fail boy cringe", "buggy has the stronger levels of foolishness and fumbling his way to success", "the cringefail clown extraordinaire buggy", "he is silly and pathetic like a bisexual divorced dad",

Catarina Devon: "my problematic lesbian sugar mommy”,

Cracker: "if Cracker just let his hair down he'd be unstoppable i fear", "get wrecked cracker", "I am so curious about the people voting for cracker let me study you please", "cracker getting murdered as expected", "you can't do my biscuit husband like that", "i find cracker really hot"

Crocodile: desert daddy, Babygirl, "He's like if tony soprano was trans", crocodaddy, crocomommy, Big titty mob boss, He's 8ft tall and I would let he ruin me,"Mr. Sandman", "the human sandcastle," "literally has sand in his britches", "son of a beach", "World's Most Expensive Sand Sculpture", "he's got 99 problems and his hook is one of them", "casino blorbo", "I would subject myself to sandburn any day for THE SIR FUCKING CROCODILE Anakin Skywalker don't go here because I WOULD love sand if it was like 8 feet tall and had a voice like that absolutely rabid he could stick his sand in so many places and I'd thank him crocodile is one of those guys i wanted to hate so bad and then went actually no i want this guy carnally Crocodile has some weird rizz goin on and i need to climb that sandcastle", "I'm so sorry but I need to eat crocodile's pussy", "With Sir Crocodile you can have Sex on the Beach. Literally. Plus he owns a casino so you could probably sip on the cocktail version too...while getting some cocktail.", "mafia vibes and style", "crocodile's got style. class. you will be wined and dined in the most exquisite way you can imagine", "He's got DADDY vibes", " One handsome mafia boss", "I love crocodile but also i wanna punch him and i feel like hes got the sandiest pussy/dick that shit will give me a rash", "my evilest baby boy", "Crocodile invented evil trans swag just saying", "im sorry az but crocodile was my dilf awakening", "in Crocodilf we trust",

Dragon: "the revolutionary scrungle dragon",

Doflamingo: "Dofy's got some wierd (potentially fun) energy but he would NOT treat you well he'd be awful", "The psychopathic pimp on a shoestring budget. Seriously dude, San Diego Zoo called and they want their flamingos back. That coat is so last season.", "fashion travesty", "Doflamingo dresses like an eye test and will probably steal your credit card by the end of the night not because he needs the money. because he finds it hilarious", "Mingo is just a spoiled frat fuckboy who's too full of himself to be interested in anyone/anything else", "a balding white man", "evil florida man my beloved they dont understand you", "Budget Pimp who robbed San Diego of their world famous Flamingo flock"

Eustass Kid: Pirate punk, "He's a sopping wet loser", "a man wearing eyeliner and nailpolish is by definition hotter", "my scrungy little fuck", he would also probably give me an STD and it would still be worth it

Franky: " Three words light up nipples"

Fujitora: "fujitora yes plz that like calm collected way he fights makes me KNOW hed take care of his partner real good", "have you seen how he slurps his noodles? I just know he could eat me out in ways I could never imagine"

Gol D. Roger: "the "Tom Selleck" of Pirates. He mustache'd the gold somewhere. You think these puns are bad wait until you hit my NSFW tags. Can't believe no one pointed those out yet, his name is a literal gold mine of innuendo. king of pirates? nah he's the king of rogering roger this roger that roger anyone he damn well pleases he has the D", "why does no one thirst after Gol like i do? youre all weak! cowards", "sorry but i am all about his dads mustache", " I can't be the only one that wants to ride that mustache"

Jinbe: "I wanna suck on the webbing between his fingers", does anyone else contemplate how soft Jinbe's tits are to lie on or is that just me?

Kaido: "beefcake beast of a man",

Katakuri: "I'm a monsterfucker at heart", "Katakuri is literally so good man he's a family man #he's badass he's got a great sense of honour you know I had to go for the mochi man", "donut king", "KATAKURI MY MOCHI MONSTER TEETH KING CHAMPION HUSBAND THAT I WOULD CLIMB LIKE A MOUNTAIN #I'M ALWAYS ON MY CLIMBING AGENDA WITH MY ONE PIECE KINGS!", "i just know this man would treat me right we love kata", "Kata definitely ticks that hot box"

King: "King is literally the most beautiful OP character you can't change my mind", "Gotta chose the melanin yknow", "king is so ajdhjdjdjchjd bark bark bark bark", "I saw King and decided he is my blorbo", "king of my [REDACTED]", " I know he's like 20 ft tall and I'm probably the size of his d*** but it would be worth it. I would gladly choose death by snu snu for one night with him"

Killer: "big tiddy murder boyfriend",

Marco: Bird daddy "Mr. Dr. Emotionally-Stable Scrungles", "surfer hippy electric blue glasses wing flapper", "DR. MMMMM", Fineapple

Luffy: "l am in the minority here I need luffy's gomu gomu no [REDACTED]"

Mihawk: The Vampire Pirate, Goth Dad, the sword father, Pirate Dracula, the big titty goth husband, "I think mihawk would treat you right. i want mihawk to treat me right", "I love his gay wine uncle energy", "I appreciate that he dresses Like That everywhere extra ass bitch", "hot vampire cowboy pirate", Morticia Addams, "Mihawk oozes 'step on me' energy",

Robin: "she has irresistible weird girl rizz", "big tiddy archaeologist gf"

Rosinante: "my insane clumsy tall dilf", "wife material", "he has cringefail dad swag", "rosi is everything to me actually. I would climb that tall clumsy king like a tree", "the klutzy mime", "he has that pathetic depressed clown vibe thats irresistible", "He's the epiome of strong but silent, he's the asshole with a heart of gold, he has everything", rosinante is hot tho and his clumsiness somehow enhances it", "I've said it before and I'll say it again I WOULD climb that clumsy king like a tall tree want to kiss him until his silly jester makeup is all over me too", "I am loyal to the guy who actively sets himself on fire",

Sabo: "bc he said killing woth lead pipes and then he just kept doing it its the crazy for me"

Sanji: fail wife, Cooking Daddy, "I NEED sanji to f*** me to tuesday and make me dinner before and breakfast after", "The man will feed you the best meal you've ever had and genuinely compliment something about you", "His fighting style is 'kick the problem until it goes away' and he chugs Love Women Juice", "he can cook and fight and he's damn fine while doing both"

Shanks: Margaritaville Himbo, "Dilflicious", "the deadbeat malewife wifi user", "I am a whole lesbian but if there were a butch girl version of these men I would let shanks ruin my life", "favorite guy in the local frat" He's probably a walking STD risk but he's hot and I'm a slut that has a thing for red heads, "the unwashed bitch", "LOOK AT THAT SCRUFF ON SHANKS the three scars on his face that smile", "my Scrungle drunk bastard", I would volunteer to be his next baby mama you know shanks got a few a dozen red haired children all over the grand line tell me I'm wrong," " The biggest fuckboy to ever whore about the Grand Line."

Smoothie: "ah...smoothie....or as i call her... one piece tsunade Imaoo", "ultimately my desire to be crushed by Smoothie's thighs won out", "SMOOTHIE. THANK YOU mommy long legs... gauhggfghgh......i want her to juice me pleeeeaaaseeeeeeeeeee /silly",

Silvers Rayleigh: "Silver Fox Rayleigh", "he's old but he can get it", "Rayleigh has that 'your daughter calls me daddy too' energy", "he's a gilf who married a literal queen", "rayleigh has spent his entire life SERVING CUNT", "Raiyleigh has that gilf energy despite having no kids", I need him in so many different ways I cannot list", "he has my heart around his little finger", "Rayleigh makes me howl like a dog I swear", "I mean come on look at his HAIR his GLASSES that incredible STARE even his wrinkles are hot", "Rayleigh got the 50 year anniversary in the bag idk why you would go for anything else", "helloooo????? Rayleigh is the hottest old guy in one piece please", "I would let rayleigh ruin me and I would thank him", "Rayleigh to me is more like a really smooth mead", "genuinely may be the hottest man of onep just like. objectively", "rayleigh you will always be famous for being the most fuckable old man ever. there may be dilfs galore out there but ur the only gilf in my heart", "that scene where Rayleigh gets out of the ocean shirtless After swimming to the island of women I actually said Daddy out loud",

Smoker: "Smokedaddy", "Smokestack. 'Ole Smokey. Smokin' Hot Smoker", "smokers allergy to keeping his Tits covered compels me", "i do love smoked sausage i'm sorry i'll see myself out", "smoker he's just so beefy like fuckkk and he's like almost 40 i just wanna be smokers lil housewife", "smoker is a beautiful lesbian to me", "smoked sausage I just *know* he's got more to work with than a cocktail weenie", "SMOKEYBEAR PAPA SMOKE MY KING i would smoke him like a chimney if you're pickin up what I'm putting down wink wink nudge nudge he really would kill my lungs but it'd be a fun time", "SMOKER PAPUCHO RICO I NEED HIM", "smoker is solid (despite being made of smoke)", "smoker. smo-yan. ultimate "guy who is allergic to wearing shirts" and honestly? he's so right for that. he needs to show off his tits! in a one piece man boob ranking he's coming number 2 (after crocodile) i said this in dms earlier today but it needs to be released to the world "fat d*ck fat tits fat ass he has it all" smoker is PACKINNNNN in every way he's genuinely so attractive, even just considering him physically and look at his sexy facial scar also (beck also has one. very good) and his slicked back short hair.....not to mention the things that are very endearing about him personality wise - he does masculinity like NOBODY ELSE. genuinely NO ONE does it like him like. he's gruff but he has a very strong personal moral code and he really *does* care..... the man's a tsundere and he's never been cruel to those undeserving like in his introduction - kids bumps into him, spills ice cream on his pants YOU KNOW WHAT SMOKER SAYS? YK WHAT HE SAYS? "my pants ate your ice cream." KILL ME NOWWWWWW HES SO FUCKING HOT IM EATING MY OWN HANDS and then he GIVES THE KID MONEY TO BUY MORE ICE CREAM. jesus christ smoker big d*ick big tits big heart i fucking love him good god", "something something vague moaning sounds I would call him smokey just to provoke him", "

Trafalgar Law: "DR. Slut", "He has them tattoos which makes me go fucking feral", "A stoner greasy boyfailure", "the edgy emo orphan boy with daddy issues", 'My tried stressed bitch", "law is hot because hes pathetic has tattoos and is the narrative's favorite punching", "i am DERANGED over a depressed formerly-suicidal surgeon",

Yamato: "I need my trans man big naturals...... I know nothing about one piece but yamato lives rent free in my brain and my heart at all times the only anime figure i have is of him and i don't even watch the fucking show", "he's new + he's trans + he's over 8 feet tall + he's a wolf god what more could you want?!", "he is filled to the brim with TRANSMASC SWAG", "it's transmasc dog boy swag for me he's my best boy", "Yamato's boobs call to me I need to motorboat yamato titties. whoa who said that", "yamato could crush me and i would thank him yes indeed", "I just found out Yamato is Literally a whole entire meter taller than me & that's all the convincing I need", "my canon transmasc king", "cant compete with is the fact that on top of beautiful yamato is just. fucking huge like i can not will not get over it every time i remember he's 8'7 in canon I'm like aaaAaaAaAAaAAAAaa kiss me on the mouth big boy", "as an aroace person. if yamato stepped on me id thank him. thank you for your time", "hes literally the whole reason i started watching/reading one piece

Zoro: "The President of the strawhat's local big titty committee", "The king of boobs", "Beautiful butch dyke wife", I would probably get an STD but it would be worth it, "his stupidity and gay attire make him very appealing", canonically the biggest tits in one piece, He got them big naturals, "Big honkabadonkaroo hoinkybadinkirs massive man tiddies Zoro", "Zoro oozes 'I won't let anyone hurt you' energy", "zoro is hot because of his big naturals

Zeff: "He will wine and dine me before leaving me lovingly bedridden the day after. And he actually takes care of his kid", "Zeff is honorable and can cook and clean and bathes and almost dies for a kid that's not his and then adopts him" He's got line cook energy. If you know you know

I definitely know I'm going to have to add to this since there's so many more characters and you all are definitely going to get more creative after seeing the list.

And a few observations. Why did Sanji make the daddy list and not Zoro? Characters that I thought would be short cliff notes turned into some of the longest sections And characters I thought would have some of the longest sections turned into some of the shortest ones. And I still think this was worse theyn JJK I just forget how unhinged this fandom can be because your unhinged craziness is dispersed amongst so many characters. And I haven't decided which fandom's next.

I now have my answer on why Sanji made the list and not Zoro. Overall the fandom is just thirsty so very thirsty. Hence the many updates to this list

Commentary added as of May 4th.

Characters that I never thought I would ever add to this post are on here and I am so confused. When I started this blog, I was warned that the JJK fandom was unhinged horny and thirsty AF. But in my opinion, the one piece fandom is much worse. Just look at this post for proof. One Piece you guys are definitely the thirstiest fandom by far I mean Catherine Devon has a section. You guys just hide it better than the JJK Fandom. Plus I do regret challenging a few of you to come up with tags as a joke because you definitely delivered

[redflagshipwriter]

Halfa Cass 8 pt 3

masterpost

“I have a high degree of confidence that the tools are collected from this neighborhood. I have compiled a list of buildings where a workshop might conceivably operate.”

Cass nodded, engaging the locks on her batcycle. Damibat started pulling up the cover and handed it to her to snap into place. “Thank you,” she said, belated. Cass ran her tongue over the backside of her teeth. “Engineering power?”

“No conspicuous consumption,” Damibat reported. Professional for sure. “In light of the unknown power source for the tools themself, my leading theory is that the mechanic uses this unknown material for their workshop.”

She nodded. Made sense. Fit together, puzzle pieces that click together. The hunters both clicked through the belt mechanisms for grapples and then they soared together. Air blew into Black Bat’s face, buffeting her into an embrace. They cut through the air silently, Black Bat a second behind the case lead, Robin. 

His leads were:

Former car shop. Abandoned 4 months.

Basement floor of apartment building owned by mob affiliate.

Store front, shut down after cashier-owner murdered, gun crime.

In the right neighborhood, Black Bat started to feel a certainty. This was the right place. The mechanic was here. Something in her heart told her. It thudded, warm and reassuring, a reminder that she was breathing oxygen and pumping blood. Everything was well. Nothing was ghostly.

One by one, the Bats Black and Small crept in through windows and around blocks, looking for clues. 

Former car shop: Genuinely deserted! Black Bat felt proud of Gotham. It was nice that no one was creeping and crawling. Well. She was creeping and Robin was crawling, but that was different.

Basement floor: occupied, by many rats and still water. Biohazard. Black Bat put her breathing filter on and resigned herself to writing a report and request for cleanup. Very dangerous. Possible Legionnaire’s disease and others. Yuck.

Store front: Gotham fail. In use as a marijuana growing facility. Big sigh.  Do better, friends.

“Hardly a real crime,” Robin scoffed. He snapped his cape behind him and pulled out his grapple, angry with himself. Must have been wrong. Incompetent. I don’t like me when I fail. “Wasted time.”

Cass frowned, hesitating to follow. “No…” she said. The certainty hadn’t left her. Something in her hunting instinct knew. There was at least one trail to follow. She could sense it nearby.

Robin snapped to look at her. He didn’t say anything, but she knew what he was thinking: That’s unusual. Why is she uncertain? What does she perceive?

She cracked a faint smile behind her mouth mask. “Follow,” Cass requested. Robin, sweet and disciplined Robin, switched roles seamlessly. He followed her and she followed a sense that she hadn’t noticed before today.

They went over one block, and then up, up, up. A low income apartment building. Windows were dirty on the outside, smog and birdshit. The residents didn’t care to enjoy the view outside: there were curtains, UV blocking film, and taped up posters. She came to the ledge outside a 7th floor apartment and paused, frowning. 

“Here?” Robin breathed it so quietly that only their shared headsets picked it up. 

Cass nodded. 

The window was obscured. Unfortunate. Cass wiped at filth forlornly, but there was a poster taped on it. There was a small peeking spot to sneak a look through, about two centimeters wide. Black Bat spidered her way across the window to line her face up to look into the apartment.

It was dim, lit by a green glow from a big screen, probably. Video game? Black Bat spied the back of a sofa and a shadow cast by legs hanging over the edge. Someone was sleeping there. Hmm.

She turned her face expectantly to Robin. He was typing into the wrist computer. “Leased by a young woman,” he reported sotto voice. His eyebrows went up. “A civil engineering student at Gotham U. No other residents on the lease.” He tilted to show her a pale young woman with a narrow face and brown hair. Flat color: dyed? Suspicious or fashion choice?

Cass squinted back inside at the sleeping person. Must be Jacqueline. Criminal mechanic was female? Neat. Go girls, go! Go to jail in this case, but still. Neat.

“Shall we enter?” Robin was clearly ready to go.

Black Bat shook her head. “Daylight,” she said practically. Pass to the Signal. It’s only fair. Optimal time to sneak and creep is when school is in session; apartment empty. Nighttime is better for confrontation. “Docks now?”

Comms clicked. “I was waiting for you to ask,” Oracle said, smug, good timing, I have everything under control. “I have what might be Lex Luthor moving something across the bay tonight. Interested in taking a look at what he wants to sneak out of Gotham?”

Hell yeah.

[kalak]

Love luke's chaotic energy tbh. He's like yeah I'm just gonna trust this crazy old man in the desert. The death star?? Idk but I shot some womp rats for fun, this is gonna be a cakewalk. His first instinct when encountering darth vader is shooting at him he starts bar fights randomly he just goes with what the force says on missions, He's like yes Vader's been the hulking shadow terrorizing the galaxy for twenty years but I think he can be Good I Trust him to do the Right Thing. This guy is the epitome of idk what's going on but I trust the force and my feral instincts. He's like if a geese was given a lightsaber and also a very very big heart I love that for him